#jack be whumpy

Leander’s boots sounded very loud, thudding on the reed-strewn floors as he made his way down to the kitchens. The castle was relatively quiet this time of night, but a few cooks and kitchen maids still tidying up gave him puzzled looks and confused bobs of their heads as he came into their territory. He’d tried to make sure as few people would see him bring Emauri into the castle as possible, but it would never have gone completely undetected.

Leander headed for the big main door where deliveries were trundled in. Sure enough, a man stood waiting in the little courtyard beyond, leaning against the handles of a wheelbarrow. The contents were covered by a piece of rough cloth, but one pale arm dangled out of the back. It did look concerningly as though a corpse had been brought up to the castle.

The man who had brought it was not one of Leander’s own guards. He’d not wanted to risk the gossip being spread around the castle itself. A courier from the town would likely talk as well, but it was more likely to be dismissed as the oddities of the nobility. And anyway-

Leander tossed the man a golden coin, then held up another. “For your discretion,” he said firmly.

“Oh, of course, sir,” the courier replied, his eyes on the money. Leander handed it over and moved to the side of the wheelbarrow, steeling himself before pulling the cloth sheet back.

Emauri was breathing, but that was about the best that Leander could say. He looked worse in the moonlight, sickeningly pale and frightfully thin. He was bleeding from somewhere, and the fresh blood stuck to the dried grime coating his skin. He wasn’t conscious. Leander hadn’t thought he would be.

“You’ll want to keep that cloth on him, I expect,” the man said, looking faintly amused. “Them rags fell right off when the guard pulled him out of the cell.”

Leander hastily wrapped the roughspun cloth close around Emauri’s frail body and lifted the limp form into his arms. Godsbelow. He’d probably weighed more when Leander had met him as a boy.

Emauri’s head kept falling back, lolling on his neck, and Leander found he couldn’t bear the sight of it. It looked too much like a dead man. So he shifted his grip, adjusting his hands so he could brace Emauri’s head against his shoulder. His long hair was stringy, caked with sweat and filth; it felt like wet straw. Leander pulled a fold of the cloth up to hide Emauri’s face.

He met with a few castle residents on his way back through the kitchen and up the stairs. Several of them looked taken aback at the sight of the Lord Protector carrying an unconscious man through the corridors. “Someone I used to know,” Leander explained whenever he ran into someone, and left it at that.

He’d chosen the room carefully. It had crossed his mind that he could secure Emauri in the castle keep, which functioned as a prison but was far and away better than that hole he’d been rotting in. But Leander somehow hadn’t wanted to see him behind bars again. So he’d found a spare room in a quiet wing of the castle, on one of the highest floors. It had wide windows that would let the light in, but none of the windows on the upper floors opened, which Leander felt was a good precaution. He’d made sure the room had a sturdy, comfortable bed- it was obvious that Emauri would not be able to leave it for some time- and had asked one of the servants to bring up a tub and draw a warm bath.

Some part of his mind still railed at him, insisting that he was treating an enemy too kindly. Leander ignored it. Emauri was a traitor’s son, but he didn’t deserve to die forgotten in a dungeon.

Leander elbowed open the door of the room he had chosen. The bed had been made up just as he asked, piled with thick furs, and a tub of water stood against the far wall. A soft cloth hung ready over the side.

“Here we are,” Leander told the near-corpse in his arms, unsure why he felt like he should say it. He crossed the room in a few swift strides and set Emauri down next to the tub, pulling back the roughspun wrapped around him.

“Godsbelow,” Leander muttered, his stomach roiling.

He’d seen Emauri’s pitiful state in the dim light of the prison and the cold gleam of the moon. Now, seeing him in proper firelight, Leander wondered if he’d only brought him out of prison to die more comfortably.

Emauri was skeletal. Not thin, not even starved- skeletal. There was no meat, no muscle left. He was jutting bones draped with skin, washed almost translucent by years without sunlight. Bruises stained his face, marched their way down his arms, spilled over his chest and stomach. Any areas that weren’t bruised or cut were dotted with festering sores, and his whole frame was caked with filth. His body was cool when Leander reached out to touch it, and he snatched his hand away, thinking of the cold flesh of dead men.

The fresh blood was coming from a couple of deep gashes in Emauri’s back. They didn’t look newly inflicted; rather, they looked like older wounds that refused to heal properly, tearing open at the slightest movement.

Leander had intended to get started right away, but he found himself sitting back on his heels and just- staring. It seemed very much as though Emauri had been thrown in that cell seven years ago and simply left there. Leander knew the guards had to have fed him and given him water at least sometimes, but it looked as if they hadn’t. Had they ever bothered to go inside the cell and see how wretched their prisoner had become? If they had, had it mattered to them?

How long has he been like this? Surely not the whole seven; he would have died by now. He must have been slowly fading, the end rushing up faster than the beginning. It was easy to imagine the boy Emauri had been, still strong and healthy, pacing the cell and snarling arrogant curses at the guards.

It was also easy to imagine when that voice had finally fallen silent.

“Enough,” Leander told himself sharply. He’d meant to get the worst of the blood and filth off before bathing Emauri properly, and he set to it now. He dipped a corner of the roughspun into the tub and attacked the darkest patches of grime.

It was slow going. He’d feared to use soap or wine in case Emauri couldn’t stand it; his only weapons were water and the roughspun. Seven years of grime resisted him valiantly. He learned his lesson about scrubbing too hard and fast when a too-vigorous motion succeeded in knocking a crust of dirt from Emauri’s shoulder, but tore open one of the sores beneath. Leander had to be careful, after that.

Eventually, though, he felt as though he’d gotten the worst of it. The roughspun was black with filth. He’d burn it when he had a moment. For now, though, it was time to get Emauri into the proper bath.

Emauri was frail, but he was tall- Leander had remembered him shorter than himself, but stretched out on the floor of the castle he could tell Emauri had gained an inch or so on him. It was easy to lift the collection of bones Emauri had become. It was not so easy to sort them out into a tub of water that seemed suddenly much smaller than it needed to be. Emauri’s eyelids flickered when Leander lowered him into the warm water, and he made a sound that might have been an attempt at a word but was more likely just a feeble moan. He did not wake. Leander wished he would; senseless as he was, he couldn’t hold his own head up, and Leander had the difficult task of bathing him and simultaneously keeping him from drowning.

The water almost instantly turned a horrible grayish-pink, the color of rotting flesh. Leander stared at it, feeling oddly overwhelmed. I should have known one tub wouldn’t be enough.

He set his teeth, wet the soft cloth, and started in. He found that he could use an arm to brace Emauri up while leaving his hands free, as long as he resigned himself to being thoroughly soaked. Emauri did not resist him at all, so it was easy to reposition him as needed. And with the water softening the coat of dirt and dried blood, Leander could work a little harder at removing it without causing fresh damage.

When the cloth started to drip greyish instead of clear, Leander carefully positioned Emauri’s head back against the side of the tub and went down for a fresh bucket of water. He could have had one of the few servants who were still awake bring them up, but somehow it felt right to do it himself. Besides, they had enough to do keeping a large cauldron of water ready to fill the bucket when he needed it. They watched him flinging quantities of filthy water tinged with blood out the kitchen door and said nothing. Leander wondered if they would, if they knew who he was attending to upstairs.

Six trips up and down the stairs for more water, and Emauri finally began to look something like the boy Leander remembered. His dingy hair washed out to the silvery blond Leander knew, and he was able to work the worst of the knots out of it. The skin that had hidden beneath the coat of grime was papery and pale, and the bruises and cuts showed up far more starkly against it. There were dozens of marks and wounds Leander hadn’t been able to see before. A scar at his temple, quite old. A ring of raw flesh around his ankle where the shackle had been. That collection of cuts on his back, which Leander guessed had been made by some sort of lash. Several of the nails were missing from his hands and feet. One of his legs had been broken and healed badly. Leander was no physician, but he knew Emauri would not be able to walk on it.

He also knew that the former prisoner was ill. With what, he couldn’t have said. But Emauri’s thin body trembled, and it went beyond cold. Even after Leander had lifted him from the tub and dried most of the water from his skin, a sheen of sweat formed over it. When Leander pried up one of his eyelids, the slate-grey eye beneath was glassy with fever.

But Leander had to attend to what he could first, and he could do nothing for whatever disease had claimed Emauri in the prison. He could, however, get him proper clothes- save for the fact that Leander was shorter than Emauri and far more broad in the shoulders and chest. None of Leander’s shirts would fit him. He’d have to borrow one from some servingman or one of the guards.

Leander moved Emauri closer to the fire and folded the cleanest corner of the roughspun over his emaciated frame, just in case someone got curious and looked in. Then he turned to the washtub, deciding he might as well see to that, too, and fetch a shirt on the way back.

The full tub was heavier than he expected, and a frustrated part of him that had never bothered with castle manners wished that the windows up here did open, so he could throw the water out and only have to lug the empty vessel. He dragged it as far as the staircase before realizing that he was inevitably going to slop water all down the stairs. Someone could slip and be injured. Worse, the senior housemaid would be livid. And he still hadn’t found anyone to borrow a shirt from.

The answer to both Leander’s problems came with a chuckle and a rattle of armor. “Leander, what are you doing?”

Rainier Velue- Second Captain of the Royal Guard, tall as a pine, slim as a reed, and Leander’s closest friend in the whole world- stood behind him on the staircase, looking bemused at whatever Leander was trying to accomplish.

“Help me,” Leander panted, hefting the washtub down the first step.

Rainier obligingly took hold of the rim, and Leander gasped in relief as the washtub became much lighter and easier to balance. Together they heaved it down several flights of stairs which hadn’t felt so numerous when Leander had merely been toting a bucket, and sluiced the water out the kitchen door to join the rest of it. Even the last of the kitchen staff had gone to bed by now; they were alone.

“Should I ask why there’s blood in that water?” Rainier said quietly. “I’ll keep your secrets, you know, if you’ve done something stupid.”

Leander snorted, then turned it into a heavy sigh. He could trust Rainier, he knew that. But Rainier had very good reason to despise the Tarasques even more than Leander himself had. Could he be trusted with this?

He has to be, Leander decided. He’s my captain. And my friend. He has to know.

“Can I borrow a shirt?” Leander asked instead of answering.

They went up to Rainier’s solar together, keeping their steps as quiet as they could- Abril, Rainier’s wife and Leander’s First Captain, was sound asleep. They both knew that if they woke her she would not hesitate to make her displeasure known. Lord Protector or not, she’d thrown boots and books at Leander’s head more than once. Her aim was wicked.

Rainier slipped in to retrieve a shirt and came back victorious and unbruised, a bundle of muted blue cloth under his arm. “If this is for you, it won’t fit,” he warned, his green eyes twinkling. “For all the rich food the cook shoves at you, you’re still a scrawny shepherd boy.”

Leander jabbed an elbow in his ribs for that and led him, almost without knowing he was doing it, down the corridor to the room where he had put Emauri. At the door he turned to his friend. “I won’t ask you to agree with me on this,” Leander said. “But I will ask you not to tell anyone else except Abril. I wouldn’t make you keep a secret from her. And the two of you can be as angry with me as you want, just- be angry with me alone. It was my decision.”

Rainier’s easy smile had dropped from his face. “Leander, have you done something you shouldn’t?”

“Probably,” Leander sighed, and pushed open the door.

Nothing had changed. The fire had burned a little lower, perhaps, but that was all. Emauri lay on the hearth, still silent, still senseless, wrapped in the roughspun.

“Mother of mountains,” Rainier swore, his eyes wide. “Who’s that? What’s happened to him?”

“I found him when I went to look at the old gaol,” Leander answered. He crossed the room and bent down beside the almost-lifeless form, working the shirt over his head and his arms and settling it over his chest. It still fit badly, but better than one of Leander’s would have done. He balled up the roughspun and flung it into the fire. “Help me get him on the bed.”

Rainier pulled back the furs on the bed and Leander gathered Emauri into his arms again, setting him down on the mattress. He thought Emauri’s eyes flickered again, but once they had settled him, he lay still.

Rainier was looking him over, his lip caught between his teeth. “I think you’d better get Master Brindle to have a look at him, whoever he is,” he said. “He’s sick. And starved, and-“

He broke off suddenly, brushing a lock of the silver-blond hair away from the face and bending down to look more closely. Leander knew he’d worked it out, then.

Rainier turned disbelieving eyes on him. “Leander,” he said, very softly, “tell me this isn’t who I think it is.”

“It is,” Leander answered. “I don’t know how it is, but it’s Emauri Tarasque. Alive.”

“I can fix that,” Rainier bit out, and drew his dagger.

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