Twenty Five: Exhaustion

Arlen had never expected to feel so bad over a tattoo.

It wasn't that he had never expected Jordan to get one, or even that he would be happy about it, but he had had something more ceremonial in mind, something that felt a little bit less like a branding. Marick had ordered it to keep Jordan in line, to stake a kind of ownership, and Arlen couldn't help but feel that a little more of his chance at a decent relationship with his apprentice had just slipped through his fingers.

"Head down," Kur, Marick's pet tattooist, placed a big hand on the back of Jordan's head and forced it to the table. The boy straddled the workbench, his head still covered by the multitude of scarves he wore to stay hidden, even though he'd removed his cloak and jerkin. His knuckles were white on the sides of the table, breath heaving in and out. All over his back were marks, a few shades darker than his skin, that stretched from his shoulders down his spine and ended just above his hips. Some were little more than jagged lines, and others looked more like images of something, though of what exactly Arlen couldn't put a finger on.

Jordan stifled an involuntary noise as the needles touched his skin. Arlen fidgeted and focused on readjusting his leg. All this time standing had caused a dull pounding ache that he could feel in his teeth, and he fervently wished Marick wasn't there so he could excuse himself a brief sit.

"Was this really necessary?" he muttered, bracing himself as his employer came over. Marick's eyes were fixed on the Unspoken boy on the table with an unreadable look in his eye, but at this he turned and offered Arlen a sharp smile.

"You object?"

"No," Arlen said carefully, "I'm just questioning the timing."

"Right before he leaves his tutor's vicinity for several weeks seems like a perfect time to make the point," Marick replied. "Especially since other forms of bonding don't appear to be happening." Something must have shown on Arlen's face, because his voice sharpened. "Am I wrong? He seems no fonder of you than he was at the start. Education holds this guild together, Arlen, we need that kind of loyalty. If you can't instil it then perhaps another could. You know you wouldn't be left without an apprentice."

"I am doing what I can with what I have," Arlen said through gritted teeth. It was a threat, so thinly veiled as to be almost transparent. "Circumstances preceded me. And the boy has a very unusual background. He's taking more time."

"And in taking that time, he sometimes needs some firmer reminders." Marick gestured. "Don't get too soft on him, Arlen. He'll start taking advantage of you."

He walked away, leaving Arlen battling his own frustration. He knew all of that, but knowing it didn't make his leg heal any faster, didn't make the boy any less otherworld. It didn't make the world something other than what it was – a scrap heap of pain, bad luck and missed opportunities. Arlen had zero intention of letting the boy go, and Marick knew it.

He moved over to the table as Kur wiped ink and smeared blood from the boy's skin. The Devils' horned mask grinned from between the tops of Jordan's shoulder blades, almost garishly dark compared to his other markings. Whenever Arlen had pictured this moment, he had thought he would feel some sort of pride, but he only felt faintly nauseated. The Devils weren't a noble cause by any means, but there was some dignity in it; they influenced the way the world worked and did the jobs no one else would do. It set them above petty thieves and bandits. Branding apprentices like livestock for the sake of enforcing an unnecessary point felt very petty indeed. The boy would always come back, whether he had the mark or not, because his sister's safety was reason enough. Arlen didn't understand it, but he knew enough about choosing marks to identify an unbreakable incentive when he saw one.

He was starting to wonder – though he tried to keep it out of his thoughts, it kept crawling back in – whether Marick had done it to get at him rather than Jordan. The tattoo was the teacher's call, and Marick had taken that from him.

Jordan climbed down off the bench. Kur had bound a pad of gauze to the tattoo with thin bandages, but Jordan still moved like he expected it to tear open at any sudden move. He dressed quickly and gingerly, not looking at anyone else in the room.

"I expect to hear good progress when you return, Jordan." Marick had settled by the fire, gaze like a predator who knew they had their quarry trapped. "After all, you're committed now."

"Come on," Arlen muttered, gesturing Jordan from the room. The strength of the crackling magic in the air almost hurt as it went past, and he had to admit himself impressed that the boy hadn't set anything on fire. Progress up the stairs was slow, each step a shock of pain to his skull. He would be relieved when he got back and could finally sit. He half-expected to get to the top and find Jordan had left without him, but he waited at the carriage door when Arlen finally hauled himself back into the alley.

They rode in total silence, except for the rumble of the horses' hooves outside and the driver's tuneless whistle. Jordan was trying not to cry and pretending he wasn't, but the occasional hitch in his breathing gave him away. Arlen had to stop himself rolling his eyes. It hadn't been ideal, and Arlen was pissed, but it wasn't that painful or traumatising compared to a demon attack or misjudging a jump from an upper floor. Or, indeed, a rotting crossbow wound. And it wasn't like he'd got his on the side of his head.

"It's not pain," the boy muttered, when they were nearly back where Arlen had met him. "If that's what you're scowling about."

"You'll have to enlighten me, then."

Jordan seemed to consider what he was going to say, and then he said, "Every time I think something I want is in reach, this place shits on it."

Arlen snorted. "It shits on us all, kid. You aren't special."

"I'm the only Unspoken double-timing with the Devils."

"I'll concede to a fair point well made." He cocked his head. "But I'll tell you free of charge that it took a shit-lot of bad luck to get me to where I am. And as soon as I got to the next stage, and I had been getting on well for years, oh look." He hit his false foot with the end of his walking stick. "Turned out I was overdue. Listen, kid, you could see this as a bad thing, or you could choose to see that both these routes help you in the other one. If you can't come round to that idea, you'll sink. I can see you fucking sinking, and I bet Yddris can see it too. He thinks the answer is getting you away from me, and maybe it is in the short term. But you can't run from Marick, kid, and you can't run away from that magic in your blood, either. So buckle up, because you don't know what bad looks like until you start drowning."

Jordan didn't respond, but he had stopped sniffing. He reached back to touch the spot where the tattoo had gone, and some of the buzzing seeped out of the air around them.

Hopefully he'll see it, Arlen thought, scowling. I'm too busy trying to keep my own dark-damned head above water.

He dropped Jordan off at the mouth of Yddris's street, and watched, eyes narrowed, until the figure disappeared through the Unspoken's front door. Perhaps he should have said something more, though what he wasn't sure. He could hardly express his distaste for Marick's decisions with one of his men driving the carriage.

He put his head out of the window and called up, "Can you take me to the candle factory strip? I have an errand there."

The driver scowled down at him but nodded, and looked a deal more willing when Arlen handed up a Cert for the trouble. It pained him to part with it; he had very little of his own money left and was fixing to have even less with the boy gone, which meant he'd be even more reliant on Usk than he was already. Parting with one Cert, though, was a less painful prospect than limping all that way on foot and then trying to find a way back to his rooms again.

Arlen withdrew into the carriage as it lurched into motion. He missed getting around under his own volition, withdrawing to the cover of deep shadows, relying on his own body to get by. His body had betrayed him, just like everything did in the end. The evenings watching the city flicker with light from rooftops seemed like a memory of another, less painful lifetime.

Holes, he thought irritably, holes in the brain. Too much time inside.

He left the carriage as far up the main street as he could bear to walk, as his leg was threatening to give up on him. Darin opened the door at the first knock and let him in without a word. The fire was stoked high in the grate and the room was oppressively warm, and there was a smell suffusing it that Arlen couldn't quite...

Incense. His throat squeezed shut with a panic that he quickly shoved away.

"Not yet," Darin muttered, seeing the shift. "But soon. I've been getting the neighbours in to watch her while I'm at work in case..." He trailed off, voice strangled, and he turned sharply away to set a kettle over the fire.

Arlen limped to the single chair in the room and collapsed in it, clamping his teeth shut on an audible noise of sheer relief. He unclipped the straps at his waist and mid-thigh, then eased the cup loose from his knee and set the leg to one side. Immediately it began prickling and burning with pain, all the way down to the toes that weren't there anymore. He gave them an experimental twitch and wondered if he really had gone completely mad.

"How often do you wash that?" Darin said after a minute, wrinkling his nose. "I shouldn't be able to smell it through the candles, Arlen."

"It's not the leg," Arlen grunted, then amended, "not just the leg."

"How often do you wash?"

"Fuck off, Darin." He'd rather stink than suffer the indignity of Usk helping him bathe. Their tub – more of a barrel - wasn't big enough to sit down in, so the best he could do himself was a rag bath. The thought of just asking the brute to do it made him want to throw up.

Darin stared at him, somewhat balefully and occasionally with a glance at the false leg against the wall, and Arlen glowered back.

"I don't know why you still bother coming," Darin said. "You haven't been in to see her for years, but now she's dying," his voice cracked, "you're suddenly interested again."

"I seem to remember you cornered my apprentice to get me to come."

Darren paused in stirring his tea. "Are we just a business transaction to you? What are you going to do when she's not around anymore? Pretend I'm not still here?"

"You'll still get the money if you need it," Arlen said. From where, I'm increasingly uncertain about. "Don't know what you're getting so cranked up about, you don't exactly enjoy my visits."

"Because I'm an idiot, I expect." Darin sighed and brought over a cup of hot tea. Arlen glared at it for a minute, but took it when it didn't budge from in front of his face. Heat blossomed against his palms, pulling some of the focus off of the crackling pain in his leg. He held his hands against it until it burned.

"I didn't ask you what I thought the reason was," he grumbled. Darin perched on the table near the front door and offered a strange smile in response.

"I keep hoping you'll change," he said. "But you never do."

Arlen glanced at the closed door in the corner of the room and then back at Darin. He blamed the new philosophical attitude on stress.

"How long's the physician given you?"

"Any time." Darin swallowed, eyes reddening. They had already been bloodshot when Arlen arrived. "She's lasted longer than they expected already."

"You working tomorrow?"

"I'm always fucking working, Arlen."

Arlen chewed on the inside of his cheek, lip curling. His apprentice was leaving the next day, and Silas would be raring to start the second he left the city limits. Marick wasn't proving as predictable as he'd once found him. The thought of hauling the leg back on and rattling back to the dead quarter filled him with exhaustion.

"There's a carriage up the street," Arlen muttered, not looking away from the door. "Go tell the driver to leave."

Darin's eyes narrowed, peering at him as if looking for some sign of a trick. Then he stamped on his boots, shrugged on a jacket and went out into the night, closing the door softly behind him.

Marick's going to string me up for this, Arlen thought wearily, if Usk doesn't get to me first.

He knew it was stupid to stay. He risked bringing other Devils to the door of 33 Wick Row, but it no longer felt so urgent to take stringent precautions. He needed time to clear his head, away from Silas and away from an employer who was starting to concern him. He couldn't shake the feeling that his limb loss had already done the damage he'd feared it would, and he had been far too slow to realise it.

Never overestimate how useful you are to someone, Darin's father had once said to him, or they'll crush you underfoot one day.

Darin returned on a gust of cold wind, setting the fire flickering. Arlen took a long drink of hot tea to ward off the chill. He wrinkled his nose at the bitter taste, and Darin snorted.

"Sorry, I can't afford the premium stuff." He kicked off his shoes again. "Wouldn't normally buy it at all, but Ma really wanted some. Shopkeeper gave me a good deal to take a sack of stale leaves off his hands, so..." He picked up his own cup. "Tea it is."

Arlen grunted. He couldn't remember the last time he'd bothered with tea – it had always seemed a pointless indulgence before. Before, though, he could move around and occupy himself. He wasn't about to admit that the warmth sinking into his bones was a nice feeling.

"What's the deal?" Darin was still watching him over the rim of his cup, pale eyes intense. "I'm not letting you hide out from some crime or other in here. If that's what this is, you can limp right back out of that door."

Arlen scowled. "Stop calling the neighbours in."

Darin raised a brow. "Don't start pretending you care now. I'll start worrying that you're warming me up for bad news."

"You trust strangers in your house all day?"

"They aren't strangers. They're neighbours. Might be a foreign concept to you, but they're not a threat. And I don't have anything to hide."

"I'm not talking about that..."

"She's a dying old woman with no money, Arlen. No one with ulterior motives would bother offering, especially not if it involves cleaning her up." He caught the look on Arlen's face. "She can't get out of the bed, let alone sit over the chamber pot. You think I'd be asking for help if I didn't need it? I still have to work, and I'm not going to let her lie in her own mess all day without anyone checking in. You aren't the only one with problems."

Arlen leaned forward, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. The problems didn't end when he left the dead quarter, then.

"I'll stay here during the day," he muttered. "Stop calling the neighbours in."

"You don't have anyone to rob and kill instead?"

"Do I look like I've been able to fucking work?" Arlen hissed. "If I'm going to go mad staring at a wall it doesn't matter where I am, does it? Might even buy me a few days before my employer gets bored and has my throat cut."

"Your apprentice said he was still earning you money."

"My apprentice is leaving the city today and won't be back before the light season. That's plenty of time to prove how useless I am on my own. If I don't find a way to work with this, he'll kill me before long."

Darin's expression had changed into something more thoughtful, and Arlen didn't like the way he was looking at him. He fidgeted, aware that he'd said far too much. He blamed it on the pain and the stress of the evening, the vague feeling of impending doom he felt when Jordan stepped out of the carriage an hour ago. He should have kept it to himself, but saying it aloud had made him certain of the inkling he had had while Jordan was being tattooed – he was in a more precarious position than he had initially thought.

"That's part of your problem, I'd wager," Darin said, point at the leg leaning against the wall. "It doesn't even look like it fits properly."

"It doesn't," Arlen snapped. The leg was the one thing he was struggling to see a way around. He couldn't get about without it, but it was a liability in his work. "I can't wander into any shop I like with wanted posters scattered all over the city."

"It's also impractically cumbersome."

"I know," Arlen growled through gritted teeth. "Are we done stating the obvious?"

Darin's expression was still a little concerning, but he nodded. His mouth hardened into a thin line. "You're not the only one with contacts. But if you're staying, then you can start by peeling these." He hauled a sack of potatoes off the floor. "And then you're going to have a fucking bath."