was the womb of history, and he was a witness – charged and tried.
Maybe he was even a child of it. A nurtured specimen of this tumultuous womb. A small, untouched heartbeat in the midst of it, as chaos reigned around him.
Untouched, that is, except for the illness that plagued him. But that was a secret he did keep. It would not make it into the paper that the man behind the voice that so many clung to had been stricken. They depended on him, and he would not have them worry.
After all, 'stricken' didn't mean dead.
But because of it, some things made it into the paper that might not necessarily have happened at all. Feverish things. Episodes that might bear resemblance to one Avante of Manor Dorn's kitchen nightmare dealing with spidery demons and phantom fingerprints.
So perhaps 'compromised' would be a better word.
Never mind that Avante maintained traces of evidence on her person.
The newsboy had been compromised.
F I f t e e n –
The Seeds of Sabotage
Since Letta was out, Enda took her old fingers to stitching me up where I needed. They were not quite as steady, but they knew what they were doing.
As I was lying there, suffering freely in the post-adrenaline pain of it all, wincing tears streaming down my cheeks, Tanen appeared at the doorway. In all my rawness, I was pummeled by a mix of emotions at the sight of him. Frustration at him seeing me like this. Shame at my lack of gratitude and the way I had treated him before now. Embarrassment that my tears showed no reservations in his presence, and pride to override the embarrassment. The distinct wish, above all other feelings, that he would just go away, or simply had never come at all. Then none of these other feelings would matter.
And I'd be dead.
Because of that one redeeming reminder, I allowed him his presence at the door. He stood there a moment, recognizing my suffering.
In his bandaged hands was a token of sorts. One customized, reinforced silvery garment. I recognized it immediately.
Without a word, he cast it to the ground there, pointedly, and then left – leaving it at my feet, so to speak. No words were necessary.
My initial reaction was a tentative flare. But there was no 'I told you so' written on his face. Only something grave in its own triumph.
I snuffed my welling eyes closed, slicing off the last tears and tying off the rest that were pending. Creating a moat about myself would not help anything. Tanen's offering would.
Might.
It was not something that I took to, but he had made a fair enough statement. When Enda was finished, I limped to the discarded garment and went through the resigned, painstaking motions of lacing it onto myself, so that no one else had to know of it. Tanen may have earned himself a chance to be heeded in this, but I was not going to have 'Tanen is Right' laced all over me for the whole of the house to see.
I hid it safely under my tunic, knowing it would probably be discovered soon as I was treated for my ailments, but determined to keep it in perspective while I could.
*
'Keeping things in perspective' was not something that came easily in Dar'on in that time, however. If one attempted such a thing, he would likely only be laughed at. Perhaps corrected, or left in the dust entirely.
For in patterns of change, things have the nasty habit to do just that – change.
Dice in the wind.
You might keep the game in perspective, but then the dice are rolled.
And then the game changes.
*
My fever dreams were gone, but they were replaced by nightmares with new faces. It seemed it was simply one great masquerade conspiracy, an onion that peeled off one mask after another, a snake that shed its skin only to be renewed.
I went to sleep at night and could not shake one very haunting image: that which painted a vivid landscape of the wardog's attack.
But it was not my own endangerment that spurred the dream. Instead, it was Dani and Viola on that doorstep, at the mercy of the rampant beast, pitiful in their defense. I couldn't say where my perspective was rooted, but I was aware of Tanen's. He watched from the window, not moving a muscle. I screamed at someone to do something, because I seemed anchored in helplessness, but no one came to their aide. The door could not be forced open