40 Spring 509
“Then turn blue.”
There’s only a split second afforded to Caspian to throw the greasy-haired brute called Thargan a look of incredulity. A sharp retort’s on the tip of his tongue when the backhand comes, the strike sending him hurtling back towards the same wall where he’d been thrown just moments prior.
“That’s not how it works,” he hisses, flinching and throwing up his arms when Thargan rounds on him again.
“Ain’t you said y’was a Vantha?” Thargan demands, words slurring and liquor-laced - though Caspian doubts he’s any more articulate even at his soberest hours.
What those hours might be, he’s yet to witness.
“I said I’m half,” Caspian replies.
“So turn jus’ a half a yers blue. Lef’ half, right half - don’t matter a petch to me. Just go blue.”
Stumbling slightly, Thargan gives him space, if only to retrieve a rapidly emptying bottle of rum from the rickety table. With his back turned, Caspian eyes the only window in the room. Though he might be able to outfox the brooding lout to the door, he’s not certain how many of the slavers might be idling about the rundown shanty they’ve taken up as their makeshift headquarters and dilapidated domicile - not sure either how many in the slavers’ company there are to begin with. They’d dragged him up a flight of stairs when they brought him here a week prior, but he’d been blindfolded and only half-conscious, and there’s no telling how many other rooms might be on this floor. A sorry escape attempt it would be if he made it out to the hallway, only to be met by several Thargan’s lying in wait - and even if he made it all the way down the landing and onto the first floor, it’s even more likely, if they have any sense, that there’s at least another one of them left to guard the building’s entrance.
But the window -
Thargan’s cursing and fumbling with the bottle, his blundering only mangling the stopper.
The paint on the window ledge was green once, sage or even a cheery mint, before the damp had gotten to it through the building’s shoddy infrastructure. The wallpaper’s long been torn off but shreds of it remain, splinters of many-plumed blooms and arching vines in warming hues. Maybe this was someone’s bedroom, sometime long ago, and instead of the blaring rays he can’t shield himself from, that startle him from the exhausted slump he’s crumpled into every night since he’d been taken, the light had dappled to gently rouse through curtains made of lace. Every home in Sunberth bears tales of this ilk, the cobbled remnants of what might have been a former life or a rounded dozen - so volatile is ownership in this ramshackle city, property changing hands frequently and often by bloody means. Even in his room back home -
The designation is a startling one, in its newness, its stark contrast to his explicit objections to date to the contrary - but above all how easily he had given in to it. It’s been four years since being ripped from Avanthal - is four years all it takes?
Though Thargan is plenty a fool, and judging by the reeking stains down the front of his poorly patched tunic, none the wiser for the keg’s worth of beer he’s already burned through, he’ll undoubtedly undo the stopper one way or another, and these long moments where Caspian’s holding his breath so hard his heart’s pounding in his ears will pass - and so will what might be the likeliest opportunity for escape he’ll ever get.
Door or window, then?
His eyes dart wildly between both.
Window - it’ll have to be the window, and for the past three days someone’s left a cart directly beneath it loaded with crates and staling hay, and there’s no way around this but cart or not, it’ll be a sheer drop - an experience, he tells himself, that will be over in a second, and is far better than taking his chances by walking directly into the heart of the slavers’ den.
He makes a mad dash to his left, just as Thargan’s finally found his way into the bottle. But even by the first of his footfalls does he feel, deep down, that this wasn’t enough- Thargan isn’t quite drunk enough, was never that incompetent enough from the start - and he himself was never fast enough, and he’s been battered and near-starved for a week leading up to this, maybe even longer if he’s really lost all sense of time.
It doesn’t take much for Thargan to close in. The room’s not that big to begin with, and Thargan and the table had already taken up most of it. But Caspian’s got his fingers lodged beneath the sill, yanking the window upwards through the resistance of warped wood and cracked paint. Against his fingertips the cool night air whistles - and he heaves higher, enough for a zephyr to burst in, curl against his wrists and up his sleeves, muss his hair and alleviate, for a split second that lingers, the feverish flush that’s plagued him since yesterday afternoon -
For a moment, he’s flying - and with the air whipping about him, he can almost imagine he’d made it out onto the streets below.
But he slams instead onto the creaking, grime-streaked floorboards, the world falling to a dark deeper than night.
Boxcode credit: Rohka!