[fic] An Easy Mark
...so I guess we finally bit the ficbullet. Ehe. So is it still fanfic if you're using your original characters in a pre-established setting? I don't know, man. Weird interstitial spaces are cool, though!
Title: An Easy Mark
Authors: mithrigil and puella_nerdii
Fandom/Canon/Whatever This Counts As: Echo Bazaar
Characters: Amaryllis Waithe, Graeme Gillespie, and assorted asshole animals
Rating: PG-13 (violence, and Amaryllis's horrible taste in men)
Summary: Sometimes it takes a knife to dig out a secret.
Notes: Stands pretty well on its own, I think; though their past threads give it context, I don't know how much of it is needed. (Basically: Amaryllis is a little guttersnipe who beats things up! Graeme is a Scottish actor with a Mysterious Past who is entirely too charming for his own good! Together, they are very awkward.)
The Medusa's Head's quiet tonight, or as quiet as it ever gets. The patrons have learned to leave Amaryllis well enough alone, at least, so she's got a nice table to herself in the back, with Well-a-day and Piper perched atop it. People've learned not to fix them with any funny looks, either, but cat claws and rat pistols will do that for you.
"Still say y’ought have bashed his brains in," Piper says; if it's possible to squeak and grumble all at once, he does, bares his teeth at the man still nursing the lump on the head Amaryllis gave him.
"What little of 'em he's got." Amaryllis snorts, swirls the bottle of Greyfields before her but doesn't drink it. "Ain't worth the trouble, and he won't trouble me no more if he's smart at all."
Piper chitters. "You're too soft, girl. Why, now's when you ought to be building up your name-"
Yes, Well-a-day cuts in, flicks his claws out, as a thug and a thief, I take it. She's not a neddy-man.
"No," Piper says, "but they's got awful nice sticks, so they has-"
"Sticks too big for the likes of you." Amaryllis pushes her bottle away. "I've got food, I've got work, even got meself a new dress yesterday, don't see why you've got to go on about me and my name and all the rest of it."
Cats don't sigh, but they're good at glowering. You are exceptionally poor at keeping secrets.
"I ain't keeping no-"
The sound a warm body makes thumping against wood isn't unheard of down here, not in the least, but this one cuts through the air enough to cut Amaryllis off mid-thought. It's not quite the disturbance of a fight, a wetter sort of sound, more like the end than the start. A top hat rolls across the floor and lands near Well-a-day's paws.
She snatches the hat up before Well-a-day can claw at it. Not a bad one, even if the top's gotten a bit crushed. Should fetch a few Echoes, at least-
- wait. She holds the hat before her, turns it around in her hands, plucks a strand of blond hair from its brim. Lots of folks what's got blond hair, she tries to tell herself, but Well-a-day climbs into her lap, sniffs the hat, and he doesn't need to tell her anything, she knows from how his ears flatten.
"It's Graeme," she says, doesn't push her chair in so much as she lets it topple in her rush to get up. "Graeme's here."
She doesn't have to run far. She finds him bent over a table, gripping the edge like he couldn't stand up otherwise. And his jaw's hanging slack like it does when he laughs, but that's not the sound coming out, not at all.
Amaryllis dashes to his side, knocks a few toughs out of the way to do it, but they ought to know better than to get her temper up by now. "Graeme!"
He looks up, forlorn and mad. The person behind him looks up just the same, withdrawing his knife with a flicker of red.
For a moment, Amaryllis's heart leaps into her throat; it plunges back down again all right, but too deep, into her stomach. She seizes the man by the wrist and wrenches it back until she hears a snap-Well-a-day's yowling at her, and Piper's nipping about her ankles, but she's all but deaf to them. "Get out!" she shouts at the other man, brandishes his own knife. "Get out afore I cut you to ribbons-"
The blighter fancies himself dangerous, it seems, and doesn't retreat when Amaryllis sweeps the air. A moment later, it seems more like insensibility than bravery. He's gone white, the bravado dripping off him at the realization that his wrist's been broken nearly off. She hurries that along with a well-planted kick to his gut, and knife still in hand, just dares any of the rest of the crowd to come at her. They stay back. Good. She stuffs the knife into an empty boot-sheath for now and hoists Graeme up, props one of his arms over her shoulders. He's not very heavy at all, really, not nearly as heavy as he ought to be.
And there's the laughter she expected, threaded with a kind of slick heaviness that makes Amaryllis' stomach wrench. "..here to talk to the manager," he mumbles, or something like it.
"You ain't in a state to talk to no one," she says, tries to keep his head from lolling too far to the side. Well-a-day and Piper clear a path to the door for them, and Amaryllis won't ask just why the gentleman all set to block their way shrieked and scrambled behind the bar, but she'll be glad for it. Finally, she heaves the both of them into the night. It's almost a pleasant one, for the Hill; they're upwind of the worst of the marshes, and the fungus clusters at the streetcorner are putting off a soft glow.
"I am," he says, a bit more distinctly-Christ, this is worse than when he was clawing at the walls-"talking to them gets me out, he gave me coins the last time, dinnae have to do aught for them but say my piece..."
Her hand comes away wet and dark from his side.
"Oh christ, you're bleeding." Hard to tell how much in this light, but the blood feels fresh, and the smell's starting to cling to him. "We've got to get you off the street."
The laughter strengthens, then fades into ragged coughing.
"Blimey, 'e looks a fright," Piper says, scampering over the tip of her boot for a better look.
"Don't I know he does?" Amaryllis snaps. "Come on, then, I've got to get him back to me lodgings."
Piper chitters, and she gives him a swift kick. "He's bleeding, you sod! And it ain't like you or that curst cat can help me carry him."
You can carry him well enough, Well-a-day says, laps up some of the spilt blood. Can you help him with the rest? I wonder...
"Wonder all you like." She grunts, grabs Graeme behind the knee (oh sweet god in heaven she's touching his thigh) and hoists him onto her back the way firemen do, braces herself as best she can. "All right," she says, "let's get you home."
His weight atop her is lighter than she thought it would be, and somewhat difficult to balance; it only gets worse when a shudder wracks through him, or he mutters something inane about the objectionable lizard in his tub.
"No lizards and no tubs, neither," she mutters.
"Nasty things, tubs is," Piper says.
"Shut it, you."
God knows how long it takes her to reach the door of her boarding-house, stopping as she does with every shudder, stumbling with every sigh. Blood seeps through her blouse, trickles down her back, and knowing it isn't hers makes her skin crawl all the more. Her landlady's playing chess with some of the borders when she walks in, but once she gives them a good look, they swallow their questions. Graeme lolls his head and tries to offer them what appears to be a tip of his hat and what would be a winning smile if the corners of his mouth complied.
"Always got to charm everyone, don't you," she says. Well-a-day undoes the lock for her so she doesn't have to shift Graeme around to reach her key, and the four of them stagger inside. At least she picked her room up a bit this morning, though it's not half so nice as the widow's was. Still, the bed's clean and the covers don't even have holes, so she oughtn't feel bad about laying Graeme down atop them, even if she'll have to wash the blankets later.
And where will you sleep, if he has your bed? Well-a-day asks; she could swear he's snickering. D-n that cat.
Stretched out on the bed, she's able to get a better look at Graeme's state, and it's not a good one at all. Sure, his clothing's improved and he's even wearing almost dainty white gloves, but the tears in his coat and the grime on his boots attest to him walking in places where men of his mien plain don't belong-to say nothing of the wounds behind the tears and the odd burbling in his chest. He looks up at, or a bit beyond, Amaryllis, smiling, reaching for her cheek. His right hand has to cross his chest to do it-the left doesn't move at all.
Rat, Well-a-day says, make yourself useful and fetch the bandages. And a needle and thread, come to think of it.
"I don't take no orders from cats, you-"
"Then take it from me," Amaryllis says, stoops down so Graeme can feel she's there. "Piper, he don't look good."
"If he don't,” Piper says, with as close to a leer as a rat can make, “why're you-"
"Stop it!" she shouts, flinches when she remembers Graeme's right there. "It ain't funny, none of it."
Well-a-day's head rests on her shin. You remember what I told you about boiled water, girl-and for the Masters' sakes, wait until it's stopped boiling before you dab any on his wounds.
She swallows. "Right."
I'll have the landlady bring it up.
"Right." Amaryllis clears her throat. "...thanks, then."
Well-a-day scoffs, flicks his tail. If you really want to thank me, behave more sensibly.
Graeme’s right hand still grasps at her shoulder but never lands, like across his torso is too far to go. But no matter what she says about it not being funny, any of it at all, his throat still bobs and chest still hitches, trying to laugh it all off.
"Make yourself sicker that way, you will," she says, smoothes some of his hair away from his forehead like the older girls used to do with the smaller ones at the workhouse when they caught fever. She catches his hand so he won't have to struggle with it so. "What happened to you?"
He's still not looking into her eyes. The focus is more at where they would be if she were farther off than she is-where, perhaps, she ought to be. "More coins from the manager," he slurs. "Could buy my rummle-gumption. Cannae play without coin."
"What kind of coin?" she asks, squeezes his hand tighter.
He yelps; his fingers quaver. "Coins from hell to get me out."
"The Brass Embassy?" Has he got himself tangled up with-she shakes her head. "But you're right here, you are, you ain't talking sense-"
"Where we are is hell," he says, in the crispest, falsest accent she's ever heard.
"It ain't neither, it's Watchmaker's Hill."
"Hell," he corrects.
"It's like the last time, ain't it?" she asks, and she doesn't mean to hold him so tight, truly, but her hand clenches. "When you was off-"
"Do they go in my eyes?" He hasn't shifted out of the stage-voice, the one that sounds so strange and dry after Scots. And he doesn't tighten his hand on hers-if anything he stretches it, fingers grasping at whatever she can't hold.
"Do what go in your eyes?"
He opens them, wide and dilated something awful, on hers. "The coins."
She can't help but recoil, her hand twitching in his. "What would you do that for?" she asks, checks his side: the flow of blood's slowed but hasn't stopped, and red still drips sluggishly onto the covers. How deep did the knife get him? Not too deep, she hopes, she might be able to drag a doctor in to stitch him up but the one she knows isn't used to stitching up what's still alive.
Piper drops the bandages and needle and thread at her side, and Well-a-day trots in with the landlady bearing hot water and a cloth after. "There you are, dear," she says, though her gaze frosts a bit when she sees Graeme sprawled out on the bed. "Friend of yours, is it?"
Amaryllis hesitates. "A friend is all."
Graeme looks at the landlady with a sort of suggestion of a smile and that same flicker of his fingers, tipping the hat without a hat to tip, and then sags down to the bed, dazed and drained.
It almost looks like his skin's yellowing underneath. Amaryllis chews her fingernail. "I've got a bit of FF Gerbrand's Tincture of Vigour," she says, "if it's still hurting you something awful."
He laughs, weaker than she's ever heard. "There's better for pain," he says, back in Scots, "cannae get it here."
"Well it's all I got," she says, her hackles rising like Well-a-day's. She hesitates. "That, and a bit of laudanum. I-well. Suppose you'd like that."
For a moment, he says nothing at all, just settles his eyes on hers. After that he laughs so heartily that blood wells up visibly through his coat.
"You're opening it back up!" she cries, nearly scatters Piper and Well-a-day with how quick she rises from kneeling. "Hold still, I-d-n it all, I ought have patched you up earlier-"
He doesn't stop. He probably can't. And Well-a-day growls, It might be worse than you think.
"It's bad enough already, ain't it?" she shoots back, tries to wrestle his arms down, at least. She-well. She will have to get him out of his shirt at this rate, won't she. She swallows. No point in being delicate if he's already bled through the coat; she hauls his arms out, tries to hold the rest of him down. God, it's worse than dressing a three-year-old-worse, because she never flushes from the kind of heat three-year-olds put off. And Graeme is putting off heat, every time he grapples for her, always with his right side, struggles to laugh and to stay in his shirt, dripping red as it is.
"Hold still," she tries to tell him over the horrible swelling laughter and Well-a-day's yowls and Piper's squeaks, and once his coat is off, well, there's no saving the shirt so she gives it a good tug and she didn't mean to tear a good chunk of it loose like that but it parts like paper -
-and leaves a red sheen over a tangle-a thicket-of scars.
It would explain how light Graeme was to carry, and the peculiar way he stands. From the shoulders up, one could see nothing, but from the left arm down as far as the wrist and the chest it failed to protect, he's-not withered, but stretched, as if that side of him had to force its way through the scars to grow. The blood from his shirt and the wound in his side spreads over the ridges of it, and some go so deep that they're still somehow clean, in the cracks between hard panels of skin.
"Oh," Amaryllis breathes. Even Well-a-day's silent. The bit of shirt slips from her hands; she doesn't much care what happens to it. There are hundreds of questions she wants to ask, thousands, but they all crowd in her throat at once and so she ends up half-standing and half-sitting, wordless and doing her best not to gawp like a fool.
It's Piper that speaks up first. “Water’s stopped boiling.”
Oh. "All right, then." She moves to it in a daze, and she's sure she dips the cloth in and wrings it out like she ought, but so much of her's still lingering next to Graeme and those scars, all the twists and turns and cracks of them. She kneels with the bowl and cloth, sponges his side as gently as she can-does he feel any of it, through all that hardened skin?
"It'll-it'll be all right," she says, steels her voice against faltering as the cloth tinges red. "Don't think it got you deep. "
He shifts and winces under her touch, but it isn't laughing or flinching away anymore; when she looks up from the cut, he's staring at her hand, his lips and eyes settled into hard, considering lines.
"I-I'm awful sorry," she says, barely dares to meet that gaze. "I didn't mean-"
"Stitch me up first," he says-low, and the burr makes that staidness almost curt. "I cannae die here."
"You ain't going to." She can promise him that much, at least. Swallowing, she reaches for the needle, holds it in the bowl long enough to burn it clean the way Well-a-day taught her. She near drops it once or twice, and hopes her hands won't shake so awfully when she has to stitch Graeme up.
"My hands is smaller'n yours, mum," Piper squeaks up. "And I've seen what you do to a good pair of socks. Let me stitch 'im."
She does drop the needle, but fishes it out fast enough. "If Graeme don't mind."
He turns to her what little he can and nearly glares. "I willnae die here. Stitch it up, whichever of ye fains it."
Piper picks up the needle and begins the process, and he wasn't lying, he is deft with his stitching. Amaryllis dabs the blood away, looks down. Even if she's not looking under the scars she can feel them under the cloth, ridged and thick. "I'm sorry."
"For what, not having me off to the Devil?" He laughs, though there's more air than sound in it. "I wouldnae forgive ye if ye did."
"For-" She swallows, her hand shaking. At least Piper's paws are steady. "Didn't mean to have off with your shirt like that."
"Cannae sew me up otherwise."
"I know," she says, twists her free hand in her lap. Oh, he won't make this any easier, will he? "Not sorry about stitching you, just-well. Them scars. Dunno if-dunno if you meant me to see 'em like this."
"I never mean anyone to see them, like this or else," he says. Piper's needle takes him deep enough to make him twitch, but he grits his teeth, practiced at dealing with pain. "This way’s as good as any."
Amaryllis reaches for his hand, squeezes it; she doesn't know if that'll take the edge off it any, but she can hope. "How'd-if it ain't too forward or nothing, how'd you come about them?"
He smiles, softly. It's a mite unnerving. "Ye ever seen a dumbwaiter?"
"The kinds they put in hotels?"
"The same. My house had a wee one when I was a laddie, for papers and tea and the like. Just my size, until it wasnae."
Must've been a fancy sort of house, she thinks. "So you crawled in, did you?"
He nods, tucking his chin to his chest. "Playing hide-and-seek with my sisters. And it fell."
She winces, almost in spite of herself. Piper's nearly finished the stitching-he bites off the end of the thread, knots it good and proper. That ought to hold while Graeme rests, at least; she can find a better stitcher for him later. Did they have to sew him back up after his fall?
"And that's how you got banged up?"
"Yea. Didnae leave the bed for half a year at least, and even then."
"I'm sorry," she says again, because what else can she? "It must have hurt something awful."
He laughs, rolling his shoulders into the mattress-and groans, briefly, at the stretch of the wound.
Still don't see what's funny." She moves to press the sides of his wounds close together again, give the stitches time to resettle. "Careful, you'll rip 'em out."
"I laugh that ye say it must have hurt." He imitates her well, if a bit strained, considering.
She looks down, chews her lip. "Well, it must've, mustn't it? Even if they gave you something for it."
"Lass, I was juts a laddie, what, ten, eleven years on? I cannae remember what pain I was in. First I was asleep all through, and always with something for the pain."
Ain't so long ago, she almost counters, but the distance between ten and now must be double again for him what it is for her. Slowly, she spreads her fingers over the mess of scars, far enough down from the wound so she won't tug it open. It's a bit like touching hide. "And that's why the laudanum, is it?"
"It's nae enough, nothing is down here, but it does its pairt."
She closes her eyes. Well-a-day's hovering somewhere about her knees, but he's got sense enough not to say anything. She doesn't think she'd know what to say to him, really. Her stomach twists, and she pries her eyes back open, looks at his uncovered left arm, the pockmarks dotting it. "Suppose it weren’t," she says, quietly.
He follows her eyes, sees what she sees, and doesn't have a laugh for that. "Able lass, ye are."
"Don't live long my way if you ain't," she says simply enough.
He wriggles the fingers of his left hand, doesn’t lift the rest of that arm from the bed. "Did I hide it well?"
"Well enough," she says. "Didn't know about the laudanum 'til I saw the bottles, and then I guessed a bit."
"Sunlight isnae the ain thing I miss," he says somberly, still tapping the fingers of that hand on the covers. The glove is stained something awful, sweat and blood the whole way through. "And I dinnae take it for a thrill, so there's naught in the honey."
"Wouldn't be like you to," she agrees, clutches her skirts. Her stomach knots tighter, but it's nothing to what he must be feeling-do the scars always pain him, she wonders, strokes them cautiously and hopes it's soothing and not awful. "When'd you-when'd you start needing stronger?"
"When I started taking stronger," he says. "I ran off and made my own way soon as I could-I was still a laddie, 'round seventeen-and I thought, it's the same but stronger, and doesnae cost so much as that, it ought to work for longer..."
She's seen enough decide similar that she can't fault him for it, really. "You ran off?"
"Well, I couldnae run, then. But I did. Stole out of Edinburgh afore I finished school and started in the theatre soon as I could."
It's not her business to ask why, she knows, but her mouth hasn't caught up with the rest of her on that. "Why'd you do it? For the theatre?"
This-this starts making him close up, even if the stitched-up wound still bleeds.
"Well, never mind that," she says, her ears reddening, wipes the blood away and curses herself for a fool. Stupid, stupid, stupid of her. "Awful young to be on your own-for someone like you, I mean."
"I was," he agrees, only wincing a bit as she daubs at the wound. "But they found me, and we had it out, and they let me off when they saw I could make it. They said they'd disinherit me, I said they were welcome to, and they did. They're still up in Edinburgh-my brother-in-law's fixed to take my da's place."
"Good for them, I suppose," she says. She ought to take the cloth away now, soak it again, but her hand lingers. His scars aren't so awful to touch, truly. "And you did make it well enough."
"Nae for some time. But they saw I could."
She tries to smile. "You ain't dead. That's a kind of well enough."
"It is at that."
The bleeding's almost stopped altogether. Amaryllis sighs, but doesn't sit back, can't yet. "You asked me how I ended up here, remember?"
"I did," he admits, stretching out under her touch.
"How'd you?"
"I'd been abroad. America. I came back, went looking after my patron, and he sent me off again-and I got caught."
"And he ain't come after you?"
"That's my Heart's Desire. To find him again."
"So he's the one you was talking about," she murmurs, ears getting even redder. She wasn't completely wrong about that, seems like, but it's little comfort. "You said your Heart's Desire was getting out of the Neath. Wasn't a person at all, you said."
"I said I'd have to get out to find it," he corrects, smiling. "I havenae found him here, and-" It's strange, to hear Graeme almost choke on words he doesn't want to say. "I cannae repay what I owe him. I'm down here because of him, he's a dochtie man, and I know I'm here because he couldnae save me this time-"
It nearly breaks her throat to ask, but she does. "Do-well. Do you love him, then?"
He looks, from the slow close of his lips to the knot on his brow, to be seriously thinking about that.
"I cannae say," he tells her, after a moment that stretches and aches. "It isnae love-I've never been in the kind ye mean, lass. But I value him. And anywhere but here, I'd die for him."
"Oh," she says, and only the brush of Well-a-day's tail against her thigh reminds her that the two of them are here at all, or that there's aught to this world but Amaryllis and Graeme and the bed. "Scat, you," she murmurs to the both of them, and for once they obey, slipping out the door.
"What sort of patron is he, then?" A fool question, but she'd feel more the fool to say nothing at all.
His laugh is brief, unsettled, and his eyes drift toward the ceiling. "An actor himself-knighted for it five years ago. A favourite of the Prince of Wales."
She whistles, low and soft. "Didn't know they made you a knight for that."
“They do when the Prince of Wales loves ye."
That type of favourite, then. Amaryllis's ears will never return to their normal colour, at this rate. "For acting," she says, half to herself. "Think they'd ever knight you for it?"
"For pantomime?" He laughs brightly and shakes his head. "Nae, nothing so common. Raleigh's a Shakespearean and all. Finds new things in that tangle of words and brings them out of his body. That's why the Prince loves him, he's nae seen the like and neither have I."
"Can't imagine doing it meself." Amaryllis rests her chin on the bed. Her hand's not left Graeme's side yet, she realises, but if he hasn't said anything she won't either. "Met him in the theatre, did you?"
He laughs again, slowing, as if to count everyone in the room, even if it's only the two of them. His skin, under her touch, is warm, his heartbeat steadying. "Met him on a shipwreck off the coast of Africa."
"You didn't neither." It's like something out of a play, but Graeme's like something out of one, or he tries to be.
He smirks. "Ye have me there."
-and here she thought she was teasing him back, the way he always does her. Her ears heat again. "Well, if you ain't going to tell me honest, don't tell me at all," she says, louder than she meant to.
"I cannae," he says, soft enough by contrast for her to have to strain to hear. "For his sake more than mine."
And now she feels a fool for shouting. "All right, then." She looks up at him, over the tangle of scars. "Suppose we've all got things like that..."
And his hand covers hers, keeps it flush to his skin.
Her heart stutters so sudden it's almost painful; she wonders if he can feel it through her hand. If he can, it doesn't stop him from tightening his. The cloth is sticky with drying blood, but he's so warm underneath, so steady...
"Thank you," she says, so soft it's more a suggestion of the words than their sound. "For telling me. For-for everything."
"Ye ken the worst," he says, his left arm still on the covers.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, the back of her throat stinging.
He smiles, and interlaces their fingers, his gloved but stained, hers not. Her breath dies in her chest-she tightens her fingers enough to let him know she's there, can't bring herself to do more, but oh, he's warm and solid and-and so beautiful, in spite of the blood, in spite of the scars, in spite of it all.
"Ye cannae think me braw, after this," he says, chuckling a bit, or simply breathing laughter into his words.
"If I said I did, you'd just laugh, so you would."
"I would." He grins.
She doesn't. “Then I won’t.”
.
Title: An Easy Mark
Authors: mithrigil and puella_nerdii
Fandom/Canon/Whatever This Counts As: Echo Bazaar
Characters: Amaryllis Waithe, Graeme Gillespie, and assorted asshole animals
Rating: PG-13 (violence, and Amaryllis's horrible taste in men)
Summary: Sometimes it takes a knife to dig out a secret.
Notes: Stands pretty well on its own, I think; though their past threads give it context, I don't know how much of it is needed. (Basically: Amaryllis is a little guttersnipe who beats things up! Graeme is a Scottish actor with a Mysterious Past who is entirely too charming for his own good! Together, they are very awkward.)
The Medusa's Head's quiet tonight, or as quiet as it ever gets. The patrons have learned to leave Amaryllis well enough alone, at least, so she's got a nice table to herself in the back, with Well-a-day and Piper perched atop it. People've learned not to fix them with any funny looks, either, but cat claws and rat pistols will do that for you.
"Still say y’ought have bashed his brains in," Piper says; if it's possible to squeak and grumble all at once, he does, bares his teeth at the man still nursing the lump on the head Amaryllis gave him.
"What little of 'em he's got." Amaryllis snorts, swirls the bottle of Greyfields before her but doesn't drink it. "Ain't worth the trouble, and he won't trouble me no more if he's smart at all."
Piper chitters. "You're too soft, girl. Why, now's when you ought to be building up your name-"
Yes, Well-a-day cuts in, flicks his claws out, as a thug and a thief, I take it. She's not a neddy-man.
"No," Piper says, "but they's got awful nice sticks, so they has-"
"Sticks too big for the likes of you." Amaryllis pushes her bottle away. "I've got food, I've got work, even got meself a new dress yesterday, don't see why you've got to go on about me and my name and all the rest of it."
Cats don't sigh, but they're good at glowering. You are exceptionally poor at keeping secrets.
"I ain't keeping no-"
The sound a warm body makes thumping against wood isn't unheard of down here, not in the least, but this one cuts through the air enough to cut Amaryllis off mid-thought. It's not quite the disturbance of a fight, a wetter sort of sound, more like the end than the start. A top hat rolls across the floor and lands near Well-a-day's paws.
She snatches the hat up before Well-a-day can claw at it. Not a bad one, even if the top's gotten a bit crushed. Should fetch a few Echoes, at least-
- wait. She holds the hat before her, turns it around in her hands, plucks a strand of blond hair from its brim. Lots of folks what's got blond hair, she tries to tell herself, but Well-a-day climbs into her lap, sniffs the hat, and he doesn't need to tell her anything, she knows from how his ears flatten.
"It's Graeme," she says, doesn't push her chair in so much as she lets it topple in her rush to get up. "Graeme's here."
She doesn't have to run far. She finds him bent over a table, gripping the edge like he couldn't stand up otherwise. And his jaw's hanging slack like it does when he laughs, but that's not the sound coming out, not at all.
Amaryllis dashes to his side, knocks a few toughs out of the way to do it, but they ought to know better than to get her temper up by now. "Graeme!"
He looks up, forlorn and mad. The person behind him looks up just the same, withdrawing his knife with a flicker of red.
For a moment, Amaryllis's heart leaps into her throat; it plunges back down again all right, but too deep, into her stomach. She seizes the man by the wrist and wrenches it back until she hears a snap-Well-a-day's yowling at her, and Piper's nipping about her ankles, but she's all but deaf to them. "Get out!" she shouts at the other man, brandishes his own knife. "Get out afore I cut you to ribbons-"
The blighter fancies himself dangerous, it seems, and doesn't retreat when Amaryllis sweeps the air. A moment later, it seems more like insensibility than bravery. He's gone white, the bravado dripping off him at the realization that his wrist's been broken nearly off. She hurries that along with a well-planted kick to his gut, and knife still in hand, just dares any of the rest of the crowd to come at her. They stay back. Good. She stuffs the knife into an empty boot-sheath for now and hoists Graeme up, props one of his arms over her shoulders. He's not very heavy at all, really, not nearly as heavy as he ought to be.
And there's the laughter she expected, threaded with a kind of slick heaviness that makes Amaryllis' stomach wrench. "..here to talk to the manager," he mumbles, or something like it.
"You ain't in a state to talk to no one," she says, tries to keep his head from lolling too far to the side. Well-a-day and Piper clear a path to the door for them, and Amaryllis won't ask just why the gentleman all set to block their way shrieked and scrambled behind the bar, but she'll be glad for it. Finally, she heaves the both of them into the night. It's almost a pleasant one, for the Hill; they're upwind of the worst of the marshes, and the fungus clusters at the streetcorner are putting off a soft glow.
"I am," he says, a bit more distinctly-Christ, this is worse than when he was clawing at the walls-"talking to them gets me out, he gave me coins the last time, dinnae have to do aught for them but say my piece..."
Her hand comes away wet and dark from his side.
"Oh christ, you're bleeding." Hard to tell how much in this light, but the blood feels fresh, and the smell's starting to cling to him. "We've got to get you off the street."
The laughter strengthens, then fades into ragged coughing.
"Blimey, 'e looks a fright," Piper says, scampering over the tip of her boot for a better look.
"Don't I know he does?" Amaryllis snaps. "Come on, then, I've got to get him back to me lodgings."
Piper chitters, and she gives him a swift kick. "He's bleeding, you sod! And it ain't like you or that curst cat can help me carry him."
You can carry him well enough, Well-a-day says, laps up some of the spilt blood. Can you help him with the rest? I wonder...
"Wonder all you like." She grunts, grabs Graeme behind the knee (oh sweet god in heaven she's touching his thigh) and hoists him onto her back the way firemen do, braces herself as best she can. "All right," she says, "let's get you home."
His weight atop her is lighter than she thought it would be, and somewhat difficult to balance; it only gets worse when a shudder wracks through him, or he mutters something inane about the objectionable lizard in his tub.
"No lizards and no tubs, neither," she mutters.
"Nasty things, tubs is," Piper says.
"Shut it, you."
God knows how long it takes her to reach the door of her boarding-house, stopping as she does with every shudder, stumbling with every sigh. Blood seeps through her blouse, trickles down her back, and knowing it isn't hers makes her skin crawl all the more. Her landlady's playing chess with some of the borders when she walks in, but once she gives them a good look, they swallow their questions. Graeme lolls his head and tries to offer them what appears to be a tip of his hat and what would be a winning smile if the corners of his mouth complied.
"Always got to charm everyone, don't you," she says. Well-a-day undoes the lock for her so she doesn't have to shift Graeme around to reach her key, and the four of them stagger inside. At least she picked her room up a bit this morning, though it's not half so nice as the widow's was. Still, the bed's clean and the covers don't even have holes, so she oughtn't feel bad about laying Graeme down atop them, even if she'll have to wash the blankets later.
And where will you sleep, if he has your bed? Well-a-day asks; she could swear he's snickering. D-n that cat.
Stretched out on the bed, she's able to get a better look at Graeme's state, and it's not a good one at all. Sure, his clothing's improved and he's even wearing almost dainty white gloves, but the tears in his coat and the grime on his boots attest to him walking in places where men of his mien plain don't belong-to say nothing of the wounds behind the tears and the odd burbling in his chest. He looks up at, or a bit beyond, Amaryllis, smiling, reaching for her cheek. His right hand has to cross his chest to do it-the left doesn't move at all.
Rat, Well-a-day says, make yourself useful and fetch the bandages. And a needle and thread, come to think of it.
"I don't take no orders from cats, you-"
"Then take it from me," Amaryllis says, stoops down so Graeme can feel she's there. "Piper, he don't look good."
"If he don't,” Piper says, with as close to a leer as a rat can make, “why're you-"
"Stop it!" she shouts, flinches when she remembers Graeme's right there. "It ain't funny, none of it."
Well-a-day's head rests on her shin. You remember what I told you about boiled water, girl-and for the Masters' sakes, wait until it's stopped boiling before you dab any on his wounds.
She swallows. "Right."
I'll have the landlady bring it up.
"Right." Amaryllis clears her throat. "...thanks, then."
Well-a-day scoffs, flicks his tail. If you really want to thank me, behave more sensibly.
Graeme’s right hand still grasps at her shoulder but never lands, like across his torso is too far to go. But no matter what she says about it not being funny, any of it at all, his throat still bobs and chest still hitches, trying to laugh it all off.
"Make yourself sicker that way, you will," she says, smoothes some of his hair away from his forehead like the older girls used to do with the smaller ones at the workhouse when they caught fever. She catches his hand so he won't have to struggle with it so. "What happened to you?"
He's still not looking into her eyes. The focus is more at where they would be if she were farther off than she is-where, perhaps, she ought to be. "More coins from the manager," he slurs. "Could buy my rummle-gumption. Cannae play without coin."
"What kind of coin?" she asks, squeezes his hand tighter.
He yelps; his fingers quaver. "Coins from hell to get me out."
"The Brass Embassy?" Has he got himself tangled up with-she shakes her head. "But you're right here, you are, you ain't talking sense-"
"Where we are is hell," he says, in the crispest, falsest accent she's ever heard.
"It ain't neither, it's Watchmaker's Hill."
"Hell," he corrects.
"It's like the last time, ain't it?" she asks, and she doesn't mean to hold him so tight, truly, but her hand clenches. "When you was off-"
"Do they go in my eyes?" He hasn't shifted out of the stage-voice, the one that sounds so strange and dry after Scots. And he doesn't tighten his hand on hers-if anything he stretches it, fingers grasping at whatever she can't hold.
"Do what go in your eyes?"
He opens them, wide and dilated something awful, on hers. "The coins."
She can't help but recoil, her hand twitching in his. "What would you do that for?" she asks, checks his side: the flow of blood's slowed but hasn't stopped, and red still drips sluggishly onto the covers. How deep did the knife get him? Not too deep, she hopes, she might be able to drag a doctor in to stitch him up but the one she knows isn't used to stitching up what's still alive.
Piper drops the bandages and needle and thread at her side, and Well-a-day trots in with the landlady bearing hot water and a cloth after. "There you are, dear," she says, though her gaze frosts a bit when she sees Graeme sprawled out on the bed. "Friend of yours, is it?"
Amaryllis hesitates. "A friend is all."
Graeme looks at the landlady with a sort of suggestion of a smile and that same flicker of his fingers, tipping the hat without a hat to tip, and then sags down to the bed, dazed and drained.
It almost looks like his skin's yellowing underneath. Amaryllis chews her fingernail. "I've got a bit of FF Gerbrand's Tincture of Vigour," she says, "if it's still hurting you something awful."
He laughs, weaker than she's ever heard. "There's better for pain," he says, back in Scots, "cannae get it here."
"Well it's all I got," she says, her hackles rising like Well-a-day's. She hesitates. "That, and a bit of laudanum. I-well. Suppose you'd like that."
For a moment, he says nothing at all, just settles his eyes on hers. After that he laughs so heartily that blood wells up visibly through his coat.
"You're opening it back up!" she cries, nearly scatters Piper and Well-a-day with how quick she rises from kneeling. "Hold still, I-d-n it all, I ought have patched you up earlier-"
He doesn't stop. He probably can't. And Well-a-day growls, It might be worse than you think.
"It's bad enough already, ain't it?" she shoots back, tries to wrestle his arms down, at least. She-well. She will have to get him out of his shirt at this rate, won't she. She swallows. No point in being delicate if he's already bled through the coat; she hauls his arms out, tries to hold the rest of him down. God, it's worse than dressing a three-year-old-worse, because she never flushes from the kind of heat three-year-olds put off. And Graeme is putting off heat, every time he grapples for her, always with his right side, struggles to laugh and to stay in his shirt, dripping red as it is.
"Hold still," she tries to tell him over the horrible swelling laughter and Well-a-day's yowls and Piper's squeaks, and once his coat is off, well, there's no saving the shirt so she gives it a good tug and she didn't mean to tear a good chunk of it loose like that but it parts like paper -
-and leaves a red sheen over a tangle-a thicket-of scars.
It would explain how light Graeme was to carry, and the peculiar way he stands. From the shoulders up, one could see nothing, but from the left arm down as far as the wrist and the chest it failed to protect, he's-not withered, but stretched, as if that side of him had to force its way through the scars to grow. The blood from his shirt and the wound in his side spreads over the ridges of it, and some go so deep that they're still somehow clean, in the cracks between hard panels of skin.
"Oh," Amaryllis breathes. Even Well-a-day's silent. The bit of shirt slips from her hands; she doesn't much care what happens to it. There are hundreds of questions she wants to ask, thousands, but they all crowd in her throat at once and so she ends up half-standing and half-sitting, wordless and doing her best not to gawp like a fool.
It's Piper that speaks up first. “Water’s stopped boiling.”
Oh. "All right, then." She moves to it in a daze, and she's sure she dips the cloth in and wrings it out like she ought, but so much of her's still lingering next to Graeme and those scars, all the twists and turns and cracks of them. She kneels with the bowl and cloth, sponges his side as gently as she can-does he feel any of it, through all that hardened skin?
"It'll-it'll be all right," she says, steels her voice against faltering as the cloth tinges red. "Don't think it got you deep. "
He shifts and winces under her touch, but it isn't laughing or flinching away anymore; when she looks up from the cut, he's staring at her hand, his lips and eyes settled into hard, considering lines.
"I-I'm awful sorry," she says, barely dares to meet that gaze. "I didn't mean-"
"Stitch me up first," he says-low, and the burr makes that staidness almost curt. "I cannae die here."
"You ain't going to." She can promise him that much, at least. Swallowing, she reaches for the needle, holds it in the bowl long enough to burn it clean the way Well-a-day taught her. She near drops it once or twice, and hopes her hands won't shake so awfully when she has to stitch Graeme up.
"My hands is smaller'n yours, mum," Piper squeaks up. "And I've seen what you do to a good pair of socks. Let me stitch 'im."
She does drop the needle, but fishes it out fast enough. "If Graeme don't mind."
He turns to her what little he can and nearly glares. "I willnae die here. Stitch it up, whichever of ye fains it."
Piper picks up the needle and begins the process, and he wasn't lying, he is deft with his stitching. Amaryllis dabs the blood away, looks down. Even if she's not looking under the scars she can feel them under the cloth, ridged and thick. "I'm sorry."
"For what, not having me off to the Devil?" He laughs, though there's more air than sound in it. "I wouldnae forgive ye if ye did."
"For-" She swallows, her hand shaking. At least Piper's paws are steady. "Didn't mean to have off with your shirt like that."
"Cannae sew me up otherwise."
"I know," she says, twists her free hand in her lap. Oh, he won't make this any easier, will he? "Not sorry about stitching you, just-well. Them scars. Dunno if-dunno if you meant me to see 'em like this."
"I never mean anyone to see them, like this or else," he says. Piper's needle takes him deep enough to make him twitch, but he grits his teeth, practiced at dealing with pain. "This way’s as good as any."
Amaryllis reaches for his hand, squeezes it; she doesn't know if that'll take the edge off it any, but she can hope. "How'd-if it ain't too forward or nothing, how'd you come about them?"
He smiles, softly. It's a mite unnerving. "Ye ever seen a dumbwaiter?"
"The kinds they put in hotels?"
"The same. My house had a wee one when I was a laddie, for papers and tea and the like. Just my size, until it wasnae."
Must've been a fancy sort of house, she thinks. "So you crawled in, did you?"
He nods, tucking his chin to his chest. "Playing hide-and-seek with my sisters. And it fell."
She winces, almost in spite of herself. Piper's nearly finished the stitching-he bites off the end of the thread, knots it good and proper. That ought to hold while Graeme rests, at least; she can find a better stitcher for him later. Did they have to sew him back up after his fall?
"And that's how you got banged up?"
"Yea. Didnae leave the bed for half a year at least, and even then."
"I'm sorry," she says again, because what else can she? "It must have hurt something awful."
He laughs, rolling his shoulders into the mattress-and groans, briefly, at the stretch of the wound.
Still don't see what's funny." She moves to press the sides of his wounds close together again, give the stitches time to resettle. "Careful, you'll rip 'em out."
"I laugh that ye say it must have hurt." He imitates her well, if a bit strained, considering.
She looks down, chews her lip. "Well, it must've, mustn't it? Even if they gave you something for it."
"Lass, I was juts a laddie, what, ten, eleven years on? I cannae remember what pain I was in. First I was asleep all through, and always with something for the pain."
Ain't so long ago, she almost counters, but the distance between ten and now must be double again for him what it is for her. Slowly, she spreads her fingers over the mess of scars, far enough down from the wound so she won't tug it open. It's a bit like touching hide. "And that's why the laudanum, is it?"
"It's nae enough, nothing is down here, but it does its pairt."
She closes her eyes. Well-a-day's hovering somewhere about her knees, but he's got sense enough not to say anything. She doesn't think she'd know what to say to him, really. Her stomach twists, and she pries her eyes back open, looks at his uncovered left arm, the pockmarks dotting it. "Suppose it weren’t," she says, quietly.
He follows her eyes, sees what she sees, and doesn't have a laugh for that. "Able lass, ye are."
"Don't live long my way if you ain't," she says simply enough.
He wriggles the fingers of his left hand, doesn’t lift the rest of that arm from the bed. "Did I hide it well?"
"Well enough," she says. "Didn't know about the laudanum 'til I saw the bottles, and then I guessed a bit."
"Sunlight isnae the ain thing I miss," he says somberly, still tapping the fingers of that hand on the covers. The glove is stained something awful, sweat and blood the whole way through. "And I dinnae take it for a thrill, so there's naught in the honey."
"Wouldn't be like you to," she agrees, clutches her skirts. Her stomach knots tighter, but it's nothing to what he must be feeling-do the scars always pain him, she wonders, strokes them cautiously and hopes it's soothing and not awful. "When'd you-when'd you start needing stronger?"
"When I started taking stronger," he says. "I ran off and made my own way soon as I could-I was still a laddie, 'round seventeen-and I thought, it's the same but stronger, and doesnae cost so much as that, it ought to work for longer..."
She's seen enough decide similar that she can't fault him for it, really. "You ran off?"
"Well, I couldnae run, then. But I did. Stole out of Edinburgh afore I finished school and started in the theatre soon as I could."
It's not her business to ask why, she knows, but her mouth hasn't caught up with the rest of her on that. "Why'd you do it? For the theatre?"
This-this starts making him close up, even if the stitched-up wound still bleeds.
"Well, never mind that," she says, her ears reddening, wipes the blood away and curses herself for a fool. Stupid, stupid, stupid of her. "Awful young to be on your own-for someone like you, I mean."
"I was," he agrees, only wincing a bit as she daubs at the wound. "But they found me, and we had it out, and they let me off when they saw I could make it. They said they'd disinherit me, I said they were welcome to, and they did. They're still up in Edinburgh-my brother-in-law's fixed to take my da's place."
"Good for them, I suppose," she says. She ought to take the cloth away now, soak it again, but her hand lingers. His scars aren't so awful to touch, truly. "And you did make it well enough."
"Nae for some time. But they saw I could."
She tries to smile. "You ain't dead. That's a kind of well enough."
"It is at that."
The bleeding's almost stopped altogether. Amaryllis sighs, but doesn't sit back, can't yet. "You asked me how I ended up here, remember?"
"I did," he admits, stretching out under her touch.
"How'd you?"
"I'd been abroad. America. I came back, went looking after my patron, and he sent me off again-and I got caught."
"And he ain't come after you?"
"That's my Heart's Desire. To find him again."
"So he's the one you was talking about," she murmurs, ears getting even redder. She wasn't completely wrong about that, seems like, but it's little comfort. "You said your Heart's Desire was getting out of the Neath. Wasn't a person at all, you said."
"I said I'd have to get out to find it," he corrects, smiling. "I havenae found him here, and-" It's strange, to hear Graeme almost choke on words he doesn't want to say. "I cannae repay what I owe him. I'm down here because of him, he's a dochtie man, and I know I'm here because he couldnae save me this time-"
It nearly breaks her throat to ask, but she does. "Do-well. Do you love him, then?"
He looks, from the slow close of his lips to the knot on his brow, to be seriously thinking about that.
"I cannae say," he tells her, after a moment that stretches and aches. "It isnae love-I've never been in the kind ye mean, lass. But I value him. And anywhere but here, I'd die for him."
"Oh," she says, and only the brush of Well-a-day's tail against her thigh reminds her that the two of them are here at all, or that there's aught to this world but Amaryllis and Graeme and the bed. "Scat, you," she murmurs to the both of them, and for once they obey, slipping out the door.
"What sort of patron is he, then?" A fool question, but she'd feel more the fool to say nothing at all.
His laugh is brief, unsettled, and his eyes drift toward the ceiling. "An actor himself-knighted for it five years ago. A favourite of the Prince of Wales."
She whistles, low and soft. "Didn't know they made you a knight for that."
“They do when the Prince of Wales loves ye."
That type of favourite, then. Amaryllis's ears will never return to their normal colour, at this rate. "For acting," she says, half to herself. "Think they'd ever knight you for it?"
"For pantomime?" He laughs brightly and shakes his head. "Nae, nothing so common. Raleigh's a Shakespearean and all. Finds new things in that tangle of words and brings them out of his body. That's why the Prince loves him, he's nae seen the like and neither have I."
"Can't imagine doing it meself." Amaryllis rests her chin on the bed. Her hand's not left Graeme's side yet, she realises, but if he hasn't said anything she won't either. "Met him in the theatre, did you?"
He laughs again, slowing, as if to count everyone in the room, even if it's only the two of them. His skin, under her touch, is warm, his heartbeat steadying. "Met him on a shipwreck off the coast of Africa."
"You didn't neither." It's like something out of a play, but Graeme's like something out of one, or he tries to be.
He smirks. "Ye have me there."
-and here she thought she was teasing him back, the way he always does her. Her ears heat again. "Well, if you ain't going to tell me honest, don't tell me at all," she says, louder than she meant to.
"I cannae," he says, soft enough by contrast for her to have to strain to hear. "For his sake more than mine."
And now she feels a fool for shouting. "All right, then." She looks up at him, over the tangle of scars. "Suppose we've all got things like that..."
And his hand covers hers, keeps it flush to his skin.
Her heart stutters so sudden it's almost painful; she wonders if he can feel it through her hand. If he can, it doesn't stop him from tightening his. The cloth is sticky with drying blood, but he's so warm underneath, so steady...
"Thank you," she says, so soft it's more a suggestion of the words than their sound. "For telling me. For-for everything."
"Ye ken the worst," he says, his left arm still on the covers.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, the back of her throat stinging.
He smiles, and interlaces their fingers, his gloved but stained, hers not. Her breath dies in her chest-she tightens her fingers enough to let him know she's there, can't bring herself to do more, but oh, he's warm and solid and-and so beautiful, in spite of the blood, in spite of the scars, in spite of it all.
"Ye cannae think me braw, after this," he says, chuckling a bit, or simply breathing laughter into his words.
"If I said I did, you'd just laugh, so you would."
"I would." He grins.
She doesn't. “Then I won’t.”
.