Solo Dignity Is for the Dead

[Caspian]

x

5 Spring 522

Halfway up the lane lined with nettles and burnt briar patches, past the townhouses with the red tin roofs, Caspian senses something is wrong. The sun is setting, winnowing right through the alleys and into his eyes, and he throws a hand up over his brow, following the sounds of his sister’s footsteps across the gravel. Loss of vision has always bothered him. In mist, in fog, in waning torchlight. In that moment just after waking when he stumbles out of bed and his depth perception isn’t quite there, has him fumbling around a finite space with which he should already be familiar. It unsettles him here – as it should. They’re well into Daggerhand territory now. They could have left home half an hour earlier, or even half an hour later, and he wouldn’t have had to deal with this, this clear telegraphing that not only is he walking uphill and finding it to be an effort, he’s half blind too.

But beyond and beneath his physical discomfort is the feeling that things are not as they should be. And it’s more than the fluttering of nervousness that had settled upon his stomach once he’d announced to Taalviel that it was time to rip the stitches, that they couldn’t hide from their father any longer. That the only way to preserve what little dignity they had left was to walk right into the trap, instead of waiting around for it to spring.

”Who says it’s a trap?” Taalviel had said, brow furrowed. “A trap is a surprise. Dad knows exactly where we are, he’s known for ages-“

And that had been too much, far more information than he had wanted. But if he’s being honest, none of it was unexpected or new.

When they crest the hill, turn the corner – he doesn’t stop, though he feels the compulsion to. As if he’s come to the end of a long journey, as if this is a vista, a work of art, an act of supreme, divine intervention worth a breath. But the house in which he’d grown up is none of those things. It’s just walls, and roofs, gray and cracked and intact, standing stronger than he had on the ship that had brought them here.

The house will outlive them all, he thinks. Him, his sister. The rats and roaches and even the wharves, when the sea comes to swallow what it’s owed.

And then there’s the window – he thinks fleetingly, his eyes immediately drawn to it – his window, the one they had bolted shut until he realized there was no point in running away. For some reason the sameness of that window shocks him the most. Surely someone had taken his room the day he’d finally found the courage to leave.

Is it just anticipation that’s churning his gut? Is it the fact he’s barely eaten since they’d landed, hasn’t really slept, couldn’t even find much of a will to smoke – wanting and feeling repelled all at once, all of it roiling over in him until all he could do was pace his room. Stare out at the sea. Press the golden ring beneath his thumb, imprint it into his skin. No matter how much he held it, it never seemed to warm –

He’s still gazing up at his childhood bedroom window when the glass explodes.

x

[Caspian]

x

What falls out of his window isn’t something readily identifiable.

Except it kind of is. It’s round, covered with a lank mop of hair, and it has two eyes and a nose and a mouth, and cheeks like stamped rosy apples. It’s a doll’s head the size of a quart pot, made of something heavy like ceramic, that shatters immediately upon impact with the ground. Caspian thinks – as anyone might in the spur of the moment – that it’s someone’s actual head, likely non-consensually separated from their body, but in the second in which it arcs and falls, his mind very helpfully notes that there’s no blood spewing from the end where the neck should be, and no one’s blush is that red and symmetrical. And smiles usually don’t stick during decapitation.

He looks from the thing he can describe but can’t explain, to his sister, then towards the house. Shouting erupts, and more broken windows, though thankfully no doll bits are sailing through. Just a good old-fashioned slamming of bodies against panes, what sounds like the smashing of chairs. In silent agreement they rush towards the house. There’s another oddly calm, mildly invasive thought pricking him here – who in their right mind runs towards the sound of danger? But this is their father’s house, the house they grew up in, and if it’s under siege they’re going to at least get a better look.

They creep under one of the windows on the first floor, already bashed through, glass crunching beneath their boots. The sound of the skirmish that had broken the window’s already moved into the adjacent room. Quickly peeking over the ledge into what once passed for a dining room, Caspian can see the full range of the wreckage – long table upended, silverware scattered across the floors, broken candelabras and the remnants of bottles of ale. They still don’t have a clue who’s fighting who or why – until a familiar screeching yip sounds through the din.

Zhassel.

The Kelvic Hound who had replaced their mother.

“She’s still alive?” Caspian hisses at Taalviel.

“Stay optimistic,” Taalviel replies. “Knowing Dad’s ways with women, this could be an entirely new Dog. Mother three-point-oh.”

“Jokes from you still don’t sit right with me,” Caspian says as he takes a deep breath and heaves himself over the ledge, and into the house from which he had once run. Taalviel swiftly follows suit, and the siblings get their reception and fanfare in the form of two figures barreling in, colliding and destroying the last intact cabinet in the room.

Despite being pinned and half-strangled by a man near twice her size, Zhassel yips and barks right in his face, hands clawing at any available skin she can reach. It would be easy, Caspian knows, to simply stand by. See how this plays out. It wouldn’t be the first time, his hoping that someone else might come along and kill her, and make all their lives the easier for it. But he’d already committed to his course of action the second his boots hit the floorboards, and he springs forward now, swirled Obfuscate dagger in his hand. The man attacking Zhassel isn’t ready; Zhassel’s got one wickedly scummy fingernail buried in his eye. There’s no ceremony, no honor. None of it’s needed. Caspian pounces, driving his dagger right between the man’s shoulder blades. The man lets go of Zhassel, just to grapple with him – but it’s far too late, and his pulling against the screwed sides of the unusual blade do him no good. Caspian twists with him, twists the blade – wrenches it free, and with his knees on either side of the man’s waist, stabs down, right into his heart.

Time stops, or so it seems to him. It hangs in the air above their heads, a pendulum frozen mid-swing. But then a broken huff of a laugh breaks out.

Zhassel’s grinning broadly at him, standing on both feet while he’s still locked in his embrace with the dying, twitching stranger on the ground.

He rips the blade from the man’s chest. Staggers to his feet, wipes the blood against his knee, watching what passes for his stepmother warily all the while.

“That really you, Custard? Hell. Thought you’d be taller,” Zhassel snickers.

The retort he readies takes a backseat when stamping and shouting sounds down from the floor above them.

“Let’s wrestle later!” Zhassel says, smile gone, eyes focused on the ceiling. Were she in her Hound form, her ears would have been pricked. “Daddy wants to know you’re home.”

They follow her up the stairs.

x

[Caspian]

x

Two men with daggers face off on the landing. They’re both shabbily dressed, both worse for wear, essentially identical for all their scruff and scars, though one has a gold hoop earring and the other a mouth full of blackened teeth, which he bares at Earring Man as if this is a maypole they’re swinging around, and not a duel to the death. There are bodies on the ground, a woman with one of her arms sickeningly snapped, and two men with their skulls crushed in, their limbs entangled. The two live men with the daggers have little regard for the corpses, and stamp, kick, and stumble their way over them as they stab and parry at each other.

Caspian doesn’t recognize any of these people. Maybe that’s for the best. Realistically speaking, anyone who runs in his dad’s crowd - mercenaries, and generally anyone willing to get their hands dirty for a few silver – probably doesn’t have a very long life span. But Zhassel knows Tooth Rot, as Caspian gleans from the whirling howl with which she dives at Earring Man.

“She’ll be fine,” Taalviel says, though Caspian knows it’s not a top concern for either of them. They run down the hallway, the sound of steel ringing through the air.

Caspian knows where they’re going, who they’re looking for, without having to ask. When they burst into the master bedroom, Taaldros’ sword is swinging in a wide arc, blood streaming from its length to tip and glowing in the orange light of the day’s end. A body hits the floor – another man neither Caspian and Taalviel know.

From down the hall Zhassel is cursing with glee; fighting sounds from the other rooms in the house as Taaldros’ men push back the invasion. Caspian stands with his dagger still dripping from the man he’d stabbed on the first floor. His blade, his stepfather’s – they make twin pools that seep into the seams of the floorboards, collect in the knots. What color had these floors been when the house was first built? Before anyone had stood here and died?

There are moments in life one anticipates, plans, rehearses. Dreams of, even if it isn’t wanted. Fears. But as Caspian looks his stepfather in the eye for the first time in seven years, he finds this moment doesn’t fit into any of those categories. He never imagined he’d return, never pictured, even compulsively, what he would say to his stepfather if he saw him again. The city could have caved in on itself, become one enormous quarry of iron and skeletons and murk, and he would not have thought it a tragedy.

“How many more?” Caspian asks, his voice remarkably steady, though his grip around his dagger tightens and shakes.

Taaldros notices. Of course he does. He’s always known Caspian from head to toe and made no effort to conceal he doesn’t much care for what he sees.

Out in the hallway, Zhassel screeches, trills with delight, and one of the men screams. Then there’s the sound of a body hitting the floor, Zhassel’s laughter resounding through the air.

“Zero,” Taaldros replies.

x

[Caspian]

x

There are beginnings and endings; there’s not much in between. That’s how Taaldros lives, from what Caspian remembers about his stepfather, how he moves, how he breathes. Each action is the opening of a window, the slamming of a door, the snuffing of a candle - the clearest of demarcations from one choice to the next. He’s always thinking, all decisions made while still in motion. So it doesn’t surprise or unnerve Caspian when Taaldros’ eyes slide from him, done with him, as he strides across the room.

It also comes as no shock when Taaldros pauses by Taalviel, squeezing her shoulder lightly but meaningfully before exiting.

They help drag out the bodies. There are seven total, Taaldros’ enemies. On the other side of things are Taaldros, Zhassel, Tooth Rot, and a husky woman who limps out of the kitchen and spits a molar bloodily onto the parlor floor.

“Who’s this?” the husky woman asks upon spotting Caspian and Taalviel.

Valid question; they’re wondering the same.

“Kharis’ brats,” Zhassel snipes before anyone else has a chance to reply.

Taaldros doesn’t offer further explanation; doesn’t glance so much Caspian’s way as Caspian, hauling Earring Man up by the legs, follows Tooth Rot out the door, who’s got him by the arms. They’ll have to call the corpse something else, though; whatever Zhassel had done to fell him evidently involved ripping said earring straight out of the lobe, which flutters from the side of his face like a bloody flag.

There’s nothing worth taking off the bodies. Out of habit, Taalviel fiddles with the chain she finds around the woman’s neck, the one dead on the landing with her arm snapped, but it’s so rusted and caked with blood that it isn’t worth the effort of bringing back to shine. Tooth Rot is sent to find the coroner, or whatever they call the person who carts the bodies away – always in business, that one, in rain or shine.

“Who were they?” Caspian asks his stepfather when the commotion in the house is finally settled. The lantern lighters have long since come and gone, and the moon shines down brightly. There’s still blood everywhere, though he and Taalviel had set to mopping up the worst of it, still tracks and traces that the moon sets condemningly aglow.

“Nothing special,” Taaldros replies. He’s got an ale in hand, and swigs down half the bottle easily. Mops his dark hair back from his face. He’s older, that much is written into his features, more weathered than Caspian remembers. But he’s still aquiline and sharp, still the stalker, the predator. The brute. “Boxley” – that was Tooth Rot – “stuck his nose where it wasn’t wanted, maimed someone’s nephew. They took offense.”

And now they were all dead.

“Heard you got one,” Taaldros continued casually.

“Zhassel had pretty much screamed his ear off. He didn’t know where to look.”

There’s one table still left standing. Two chairs, somehow still intact. Taaldros takes a seat; takes a sip. A beat passes, and Caspian joins him.

“You here to stay?” Taaldros asks. “Taalviel says you’ve taken up in the Sunset Quarters.”

That’s probably not a lie; Caspian had spotted his sister, Taaldros’ ever-favorite, flitting off earlier to convene with him. This was expected, but it doesn't sting any less. She’d probably told him everything, in her crisp and curt manner informed their stepfather exactly what had happened over the last few years. But Caspian has a feeling Taaldros already knew exactly when they’d landed, and where they're living, even without Taalviel’s informing him. They have eyes and ears everywhere, and it would have taken mere minutes for the whispers to reach him here, from the docks at Baroque Bay.

It was all a conspiracy, a soot-streaked affair that was wrapped around him tight, yet to which he wasn’t invited.

“Nicer than this shykehole, sure,” Caspian replies, meeting his eye.

Taaldros has a dark fury to him, even in his calmest moments. A presence that rattles, that makes one shrink even at their finest hour. Caspian had once seen him make a young woman burst into tears with a single look.

It’s not that Caspian isn’t afraid. In his lap, his fingers are twitching. But he won’t bend, after all these years can’t so visibly break again. He won’t wring his hands. He won’t run away.

“I expect you’ll be looking for work,” Taaldros goes on.

“That, or work will find me.”

Taaldros snorts. “We’ve plenty to be done around here, if you’re interested. I can see you’re no brawler. But there’s just as much use for a thief.”

Caspian crosses his legs. Crosses his arms. “Alright.”

Taaldros blinks. Considers him in the dark. “You agreed very quickly.”

“I made up my mind before I got here. Wouldn’t have made much sense, would it, if I showed up just to petch around, waste our time.”

“No,” Taaldros says, considering him carefully, an expression on his face that’s – not bad, necessarily. Just new. “No, it wouldn’t have made sense at all.”

Slipping towards them through the shadows, Taalviel appears at Caspian’s side. Holds out a bottle of ale. Caspian looks from his sister to the glass. To his stepfather.

He holds up the bottle.

The clink of their bottles rings through the battered house.

x

[Caspian]

x

Buzzed, feeling light – like he is the moonlight, the reason for setting it all aglow – Caspian leans in the doorway. Peers in at the bedroom he had once called his own.

They’d been incredibly lucky to have lived here. So many in this city live piled on top of each other, and here they’d had enough space to divide amongst themselves. Rooms for Taaldros and Zhassel, Caspian, Taalviel, and whatever cronies happened to float through. Still more space, enough for any of Taaldros’ allies also on the lam. They had doors of their own they could shut – never mind that said doors were so often battered in, kicked in, or hanging off their hinges, depending on whose tempers were riled that day. So many of Caspian’s friends – if one could call them that – shared one room with all their siblings, some with as many as five, of those five some barely out of swaddling clothes, all scrabbling and squalling and scratching within the same four walls.

So things, relatively speaking, hadn’t been all bad.

Is he just painting it all over, though, just to - cope? Brushing the unpleasantness of the past under a rug? Standing here now, he has to forcibly remind himself he left for a reason, put as much distance as his meager wallet at the time could manage. Ran to Ravok, a place that glittered, where he, too, could shine as brightly as he dared, where his daily bread didn’t have to come at someone else’s expense. No matter all the anarchy of Sunberth, there are freedoms it can’t give him, and he’d found it in another place tightly tied in theocratic will. It’s counterintuitive; more than that, it’s over. This is who he is now, with someone else’s blood drying in his nail beds. This is his reality. Everything that had come before it was just a dream.

The room is smaller than he remembers. There’s not much that’s changed about it – the bed frame is new, though nothing of import. There are new scratches on the walls, chips in the paint that span wider than his hand. In the corner someone’s dumped a pile of clothes, on top of which is a hairbrush – thicker, like a paddle. A woman’s. The bristles are knotted with someone else’s hair, long and dark. The nightstand by the bed is the same, and on it rests a near-empty bottle of perfume.

The room still feels like it’s his. Surprisingly, like a friend he hasn’t seen in a very long time. Yes, a friend – remarkably, somehow, like a force with his best interests at heart.

And yet –

He glances at the perfume. The clothes in the corner. Now that he’s studying it more, he can pick out a wrinkled skirt lying in the heap.

Not really his at all.

“Dad says we can stay, if we want.”

Caspian jumps. Twists around sharply to see Taalviel, who had crept down the long, dark hallway without his sensing.

He really needs to get a hold on that.

But he snorts, pushes off from the doorway. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“You sure?”

“It’s – weird. You know how much I hated it here.” So often they’d locked him in this room, barred the window so he couldn’t throw himself out. It was a prison cell, until he’d learned there was no use in running, that he really was safer here than anywhere else in the city. “But right now – I just feel like. I don’t know. That everything’s okay. It is what it is. And you and I – we’re going to be alright.”

They’ll come back tomorrow to sort out the rest of the mess in the house. But as for right now –

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go home.”

x