Hermes accepted Carrick's words for whatever truth of the moment the vampire offered him. The comment about never drawing the sword he was from its scabbard, left some hope in him that he might be able to eventually do what he was best at. "God of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of orators, literature and poets, of athletics, of weights and measures and invention and commerce in general, of liars, and of the cunning of thieves. A divine messenger laughing on the wind." He licked his lips, playing right into Carrick's estimation of him by acknowledging his ancient namesake.
"Russian before Greek," he said finally. "I already speak the language and their alphabets are linguistically similar enough that it'll be easier to go from one to the other."
The slave let out a heavy breath and reluctantly pulled himself from his master's lap to pick up the pile of homework he'd done over the course of his week in solitude. It was a few times more pages than he normally produced owing to his very keen desire to not get beaten for stepping out of line further and the sheer amount of time he had on his hands. His penmanship was still a near exact replica of Carrick's own. He'd learned the letterforms from that hand. It seemed wrong to try to figure out what his own might ever look like if he tried. "French might be sooner than you anticipated, my lord." Lacking anything better to do or instruction on what Carrick specifically wanted from him, he'd filled pages upon pages of stories. They were his own stories, told to Carrick and Carrick alone, a history nobody cared to ask about in his life then or even now really.