A flight of birds lifted from the trees ahead, triggering a fit of terrified squawks that dissolved into a silence thickened by the trees and snow. If not for the crunching footsteps to break up the emptiness, they’d feel the quiet deep in their ears. Ormir watched as ashen bark embered and peeled away from the wood, leaving a bone-like trunk behind to hold up the canopy. He thought about how a less skeptical man would’ve found the vision oddly prophetic; the char climbing an endless row of burnished marble pillars, like the ruin of a great empire. He reminded himself that he was a skeptical man, and to leave such interpretations to the preachers and carnival swindlers. Ormir didn’t bother to look behind them. If he did, there would be only a blackened trail of soot, skeletal trees, and two tracks of silver footprints.
In most circumstances, drawing any degree of attention in the middle of an unfamiliar and darkening wood would’ve put Ormir well over the boundary of comfort. But travelling with an utterly unphased human torch had its reassurances. Here was a capable, self-assured man who had stared death in the eye more times than Ormir’s career as a soldier had ever warranted, very likely with more confounding elements reeling in his system, and still stood and taunted the next. It was clear that, unlike Ormir, luck had not yet pulled its favor from Emre. There was no reason to believe that proximity to a gladiator would restore any of the grandeur or social capital lost to time and circumstance, rather that he sensed there would be no hesitation from Emre to soak up a blade or two on his behalf.
The handkerchief Ormir smothered over his nose was of little help. The burn of Emre’s acrid burp had eaten through the fabric, crawled past his body’s natural defenses, and reached his eyes. He stifled a cough, even as each individual node and fibre in his lungs screamed for relief. “How is there still a cell of functioning liver left in you?” Ormir exclaimed.
There was the question he’d been considering himself. He cleared his throat, blinking the pained moisture from his eyes. “Nonexistent.“ A layer of propriety was shed somewhere along the way. Ormir felt naked without it, but simultaneously liberated from the weight. Problems were piling higher, the threat of Aetheron drawing nearer, and there was a chiding voice gnawing at him for being steered so far off-course from what mattered. He and Afshin had not yet had any real conversation about their failed diplomacy. About their prospects. “A start would be to draw a hot bath. Decant a decent vintage, something imported, full-bodied. Try to forget the last forty-eight hours ever happened.” The thought of pouring most of a coveted Lysaran red over the balcony was an oddly seductive thought. Above the handkerchief and below a set brow, Ormir gave Emre a shaded look. “Not intended as a slight on present company.” He said, as flatly as he could with his nerves still sizzling.
“I imagine you’re eager to get back to your deathsport?"
