Lyn

The negotiations failed spectacularly.

When the dim, overcast dawn broke, Lyn was utterly convinced: there wasn’t a single living soul left in Iron Pass, except for the shifter who had fought against his own kind, and the red-haired man named Justin, who, truth be told, would have been better off dead. But no — Justin didn’t even have the decency to lose consciousness. He howled so horribly that Lyn’s first act was to walk over to the corpse of one of his “guards,” half-crushed under a dead horse, and rummage through the saddlebag. He found a vial of that wretched concoction they’d tried to force on him earlier and poured all of it down the redhead’s throat.

After drinking the sedative, Justin passed out, though his breathing remained heavy and ragged — well, how else could he breathe? He was in terrible shape. His nose was smashed — someone must have kicked him in the face with full force. His eyes seemed intact, but Lyn couldn’t be sure; his entire face was smeared with blood. His hands... Lyn tried not to look at them. Something had to be done about his hands. Something? Say it, at least to yourself, you miserable coward. They’ll have to be cut off. Above the elbow? Or below? How does one even amputate — what kind of strength is needed to sever a wrist in one clean strike, instead of sawing back and forth like an impotent old man fumbling with a whore? Lyn cast a quick glance at one of the bloated, purplish-red hands with fingers splayed in all directions, and immediately looked away. At the very least, he needed to drag Justin indoors. The man was still lying in the courtyard where the massacre had occurred...

Lyn grabbed Justin under the arms and dragged him to the nearest living quarters he could remember (and wasn’t he heavy!). Somehow, he managed to hoist him onto a bed. Then he thought: wrong move — if the hands needed to come off, it would’ve been better to do it there, on the courtyard stones... So, if he could cut off the wrists, he’d need immediately to wrap with cloth the... stumps, or what? God Almighty, or Wise Athena, or whoever’s listening, give me strength...

Somewhere at the edge of his awareness, Lyn belatedly realized that this was Sophia’s room. Sophia, who was now lying in the courtyard along with her handsome bodyguard. And this was their beautiful, wide bed.

“Sorry, I’m not inviting you to my bed,” Lyn said aloud. He tried to smirk, but what came out was a choked sob. He realized that if he glanced at Justin or thought about Sophia and the others again, he’d either vomit or start crying. So he hurriedly stepped outside.

That’s when he remembered about the shifter. Lyn sat down on the ground next to him simply because this was the only other living person around.

The shifter lay as though unconscious. Lyn finally had a chance to properly look at him. Tall, thin yet athletic, with dusky skin; about Lyn’s age, or perhaps a bit older. He wore typical Arya clothing: trousers, a long shirt cinched with a belt, and a white fur vest. Everything except the vest was black, adorned with black embroidery and patterns. His hair was also black, shoulder-length, straight, and very shiny, trimmed as if with a ruler. His face was slightly asymmetrical, with high cheekbones and slightly slanted eyes framed by arched eyebrows — as though all his features had been gently smoothed upward toward his temples. Lyn caught himself wanting to touch that strange face, to run his hand upward along it; he grew angry at himself — there couldn’t have been a more inappropriate thought in their current situation. Handsome. But then, who among them wasn’t handsome? The Arya probably threw all their sickly and disfigured off a cliff like in Sparta; after what Lyn had seen this night, he wouldn’t have been surprised at all.

The guy stirred and opened his eyes. They were crystal blue, making his face seem utterly unreal. The Arya muttered something questioningly in his own language, as if unsure who he was or where he was.

Then his face contorted with panic. He fumbled through his pockets, pulling out rings of dark metal one by one and hurriedly slipping three onto each hand. Only then did he look at Lyn as though truly seeing him for the first time.

“What are you going to do with me?” he asked softly, speaking quite decent Hellenic. “I am not your enemy. I wanted peace. I am a healer.”

“Oh, of course,” Lyn said, glancing at the pile of corpses. “I pity your patients. I’d crack a joke about the Hippocratic Oath, but you’ve probably never heard of it.”

He hugged his knees and tried to think.

Alright, what exactly happened? Someone decided to disrupt the negotiations — and succeeded spectacularly. Lyn remembered the Council discussing the risks to the envoys. “...There are many opponents of peace, both among the Bizanthines and among Arya... What a blessing that at least they are not among those present," the Great Logothete had said, possibly hinting at someone on the Council itself...

If everyone now believed Lyn was dead, perhaps it would be easier for him to remain that way? It was the closest he’d come to freedom in years...

“I’ve heard of Hippocrates. Why didn’t you kill me?” asked the Arya.

“Shut up. I’m thinking.”

The stranger timidly inquired, “Will you tell me what about? The situation is also a mystery to me. I know how you Bizanthines say: 'One head good, but two is...’”

“...much louder,” Lyn cut him off.

There was another possibility: someone didn’t just want to disrupt the negotiations but intended to kill him personally — the Archon of This World. A monstrous act, but precisely because of its enormity, it made perfect sense if someone wanted to provoke public outrage. Odd that it hadn’t happened earlier. What could these people want? War, perhaps. Surely not everyone believed that war with heretics was too costly. The Church? Alright, that was worth considering later; for now, it was clear that to prevent a major war from breaking out immediately, it would be better for Lyn to be alive — meaning he needed to find a way back to Bizanth as soon as possible. Yes, he had to return, no matter how much he wanted to escape Bizanth altogether, and tell someone on the Council. But who...?

“So why didn’t you kill me?” the Arya persisted. “You are the Archon of This World, aren’t you?”

Lyn was silent for a moment before reluctantly admitting, “Apparently, my power doesn’t always kill. I don’t exactly know how it works.”

The Arya blinked, his gaze intrigued. “I see... Have you ever conducted any experiments?”

“So you’re a healer and now a scientist, too?”

“Did you expect me to be a barbarian?”

“Of course not — your Arya friends were such refined and intelligent people,” Lyn said coldly. “I’m sure they conducted some experiments.”

The man fell silent for a while. Then he resumed his refrain:

“Kill me. I don’t want to be a prisoner.”

“What is it with you — kill me, kill me! Where does this idea come from, that if someone dies, you have to kill even more people? Does that make anything better? It’s like throwing more wood onto a burning house! Do you think that would help? Or do you think if I kill you now, the dead will rise?”

The stranger looked at him in surprise and remarked, “Then you must never have lost anyone, if you don’t know the urge for revenge.”

And that was the breaking point for Lyn.

“Oh, sure, what would I know! You’re the only one who’s ever lost anyone! For your information, you miserable avenger — it doesn’t do any good! You don’t save anyone; you just end up with another dead person! Someone who wasn’t all that terrible — not always, anyway, because no one is terrible all the time! Maybe they just made a mistake—isn’t a person allowed one mistake?!" Words poured out of him like blood from a severed throat. He should have stopped long ago, but he couldn’t. He was desperately out of breath. “They just made a mistake, but you decided everything for them, decided they shouldn’t exist anymore, but really you just didn’t bother to think it through properly — there must have been a way where no one had to die... Where everyone could live... There’s always a way if you’re smart enough...” His whole body was shaking, his hands and forehead slick with cold, sticky sweat. And then fear struck him, a sudden, inexplicable terror, but no less vile for being baseless. “But if you’re not smart enough, this is what happens: bam — and now it’s not just one dead person, it’s two... Or a hundred... A hundred people died because I was too stupid to save anyone... and they’ll never...”

He was gasping. His heart felt like it would burst out of his chest, and he was starting to feel nauseous. The world blurred before his eyes worse than after a couple of bottles of the worst wine. Lyn suddenly thought he might die.

The Arya was now watching him with genuine concern.

“Breathe slowly. May I check your pulse?”

“No! Don’t touch me. This will pass. It always... eventually... passes. Just... leave me alone.”

“Please. I am truly a healer. I’ve seen people with attacks like yours.”

Lyn jerked his head awkwardly — something like a nod — simply because the panic had grown so overwhelming that he couldn’t think anymore. The stranger took his wrist.

“Just breathe. Inhale... Exhale... Close your eyes. Breathe. It’s okay. Listen to my voice. Nothing bad is happening; it’s just a nervous episode. The attack will pass soon — you know that yourself. Inhale... Exhale... Try to picture a place where you feel safe and at ease...”

Lyn wanted to tell him exactly where he could shove his inhale-exhale, but suddenly realized that the measured voice was actually calming him down — at least a little. The fingers on his wrist were cool, firm, and gentle. The bit about a safe place was nonsense, though. Lyn had never had such a place, and what of it? He tried to imagine a seaside home where he could live with Iliphyia and a few others, if only his mother would sell off her cursed brothels. It wasn’t hard; he had imagined it so many times before. White plaster walls, terracotta roof, little lizards darting along the sides of the house. A garden. Branches poking flowers through the windows, scattering petals on the balconies — everyone always saying, “We should trim them tomorrow,” but no one ever did. A library... Homer, Aristotle, and Pliny the Elder. Dust swirling in the sunbeams streaming over the shelves... Mother reading in a wicker chair, her legs tucked under her... The air always salty and fresh, in storms you could even hear the waves sometimes. The sea just a short walk away. You could gather a couple dozen mussels clinging to the rocks — and if you roasted them with wine and herbs, it would be enough for dinner, as long as you avoided the sea urchins... And no one, absolutely no one, would ever try to shatter this quiet life. The worst disturbance would be stray cats yowling as they fought in the garden at night...

“Is your head still spinning?” the Arya asked matter-of-factly.

“No. Well… almost,” Lyn muttered. At least his hands had stopped trembling like those of a paralytic.

“Good. The episode is subsiding.”

He let go of Lyn’s wrist, and Lyn suddenly realized he hadn’t wanted him to.

“You’re right. Revenge saves no one,” the Arya said quietly. “You’re wiser than I am; I didn’t always understand that. Listen… What happened here — I blame myself for it, too. People are made that way; they chastise themselves for things they can’t control. But really, it’s not our fault — neither yours nor mine. Those who were to blame have already paid the price. And… I don’t know who else you failed to save, whose deaths you hold yourself responsible for… But this time, at least, you saved me. You pulled me back from the Other Side. Of course, it’s not much, and you don’t even know me, and maybe one day we’ll find ourselves enemies. And yet. In Bizanth, you people love numbers, don’t you? One person is, at least, more than zero.”

By now, Lyn had mostly pulled himself together, and the shame hit him like a wave. He had let someone see him at his most pathetic — what a triumph!

“Save me the pep talk. I’ve screwed up royally, and I don’t need pretty lies about how it’s not my fault,” he growled. “You say you’re a doctor? Then think of something to do for your redheaded friend. He’s in far worse shape than I am.”

In the next moment, Lyn understood, for the first time, the true meaning of the overused phrase “his face lit up with hope.” Because the gloomy, angular face of the Arya truly changed entirely, as if some kind of lamp had suddenly turned on inside. No, not a lamp — it was like the sun itself had risen. Lyn found himself thinking, with an odd pang, whether there had ever been (or would ever be?) a face like that for him in this world.

“He’s alive?!” the Arya exclaimed.