miles baines: riff-raff! street rat! (mimicks) wrote in emillion, @ 2013-12-22 20:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, !log, !plot: as i lay dying, evander finch, miles baines |
i came as dirt and i came as its price.
Who: Judge Evander Finch & Miles Baines
What: An unexpected nighttime visit, checking in on his ailing friend.
Where: Finch estate, nobles district.
When: Late November, during the plague.
Rating: G.
Status: Complete.
The difference between the tenements and the nobles district was appalling. Miles had wrapped himself up in a scarf and wandered the streets to see the sights with his own eyes; frozen corpses of vagrants were occasionally levered out of the gutter, loaded onto carts, and rolled off to be dispensed with (or perhaps analysed, he thought clinically). The commoners and of the tenements had little recourse apart from the Cathedral, left to fend for themselves in the throes of the plague. This district, on the other hand... All of the Finch manor’s inhabitants were put to bed for the night: quiet, peaceful, and still. But when Evander next opened his eyes, blearily cracking them open to the dark and shadowed room, one of the shadows by the wall moved. The sound of a book sliding off the shelf, the rustle of papers. Someone was paging through one of the novels by the faint moonlight through the window. Bored and aimless, as if this were a public library and not a private residence, his friend’s locked and guarded bedroom. “Who—why,” the nobleman began hoarsely, delirious from painkillers and potions, “are you—” A hacking cough interrupted his question and his thoughts. Evander stirred beneath his sheets, an attempt to sit up no more than tossing. He was exhausted, too much so to turn away what he hoped was a kind gesture. (What they said about good intentions and hell was another matter entirely. There were few opportunities for him and this shadow to speak freely; he would not argue here.) “Miles?” “The very same, last I checked.” The book snapped shut, its spine cracking as if it were a jaw, a set of teeth. Miles ran his hand over the embossed leather, tracing the letters on its cover. It couldn’t truly hold his attention, however, and so his focus drifted back towards his sick friend. Dropping the book, the thief took up position at the foot of the lord’s bed. The situation was uncomfortably intimate, perhaps, but this was one of the few places they could speak as Evan and Miles, communicating across the gaping distance of their titles and roles. “How are you feeling?” “Could be worse.” The judge cleared his throat, that a friend was at his side was enough to allay symptoms for the moment. “Brother’s still missing.” Miles’ expression was unreadable in the dark. “So I heard. I’ve had some of the lads—” his reliables, the little army of urchins who reminded him far too much of himself, “combing the interior gates, but no word.” “Aye, his guild has their own party looking for him. No word, nothing.” The man recalled a network reply from one of the Fighters Guild councilors, repeating the phrase as though he could think of none of his own to say: an orator turned mimic, a finch turned mynah. Evander paused to let the word sink in, the lurch in his stomach caused by both illness and worry. He tried again to sit up, this time successful, pushing the soft (suffocating) duvet. Even at death’s door, the nobleman rested in luxury. His friend didn’t move to help him. “You and yours?” There was a pause, as if Miles couldn’t quite decide on how to answer the question, as if he were weighing the various levels of intimacy he could confess in this private bedchamber. But they’d already shed those walls between them, hadn’t they? There were few friends he could be honest with, so he might as well... “Brother’s ill,” Miles said, also echoing the nobleman. They didn’t speak Theodore or Lionel’s names. “You’re all being bloody inconvenient, you know, succumbing like this. Constitution of a baby lamb, the both of you.” “A feat to synchronize this to your schedule, Miles,” Evander replied after a moment of hesitation (to gulp and recover from the stinging in his throat). He stretched a veil of strained, perhaps forced, humor over the worry for both their brothers, so tightly the undertones of his anxiety was still evident beneath the shaky smile. “Take my word that next time, will aim for the c—constitution of a grown sheep.” “I hear that in some cultures, eating animal hearts grants you some of their strength. Perhaps you could talk the cook into it.” Miles’ gaze slipped to the rest of the darkened room, involuntarily absorbing what he could see of their lavish riches. Their voices were soft by necessity, swallowed up by the ancient furniture and carpeting and hanging tapestries illustrating some sort of magnificent, long-ago battle. The War of the Lions, perhaps? Another stifling pause. He’d noted that stutter, filing it away as an archivist might. Evander’s cough broke the silence, his own gaze following Miles’ but unable to determine where it rested. His attention turned back to the younger thief at a snail’s pace. “That so? Could invite you over to dinner, try it together.” Or not. Delirium had tangled with drowsiness; what he suggested—for the pair’s lives to overlap in public—was not something he would consider in his right mind. But Evander yawned instead of correcting himself, bringing a heavy hand up to cover his mouth and rub his eyes. “Someday, perhaps we should,” Miles lied. A floorboard creaked out in the hall—the house shifting on its foundations, or a family member or servant (more likely the latter) coming to check on their lord? Miles jerked to attention like a startled cat, eyes narrowed and watching the door intently, waiting and listening. Perhaps the soft murmur of voices had managed to draw someone. Either way, he knew he’d overstayed his welcome. Pausing by his friend’s bedside, Miles bent to pick up a fallen pillow and tossed it lackadaisically onto Evan’s chest. “Get well,” he said. “Fumiya and Azalea would be ever so irritating without you around. I probably won’t be back to check on you—busy social calendar of the sick and ailing to visit, you know how it goes. Faram’s warriors never rest.” There was another flash of teeth in the darkness, his humour dark and moribund before Miles melted back into the shadows. He was no ninja; his exit wasn’t as smooth as his entrance, and he had to fuss with the casement for a moment before he could swing himself out onto the window ledge and slide his way down the rooftop and outer walls of the manor, trying his very best not to fall screaming and flailing through Lord Edwin Finch’s window or similar. With a grunt, Evander clung onto the pillow and bid his friend a delayed farewell before falling back into a dreamless, fitful sleep. |