Inks
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Word Count - [2,313]
« II Ars
Perseus woke on the floor of his workshop. He lay there, blinking up at the ceiling – vision blurred in his left-eye, unfocused in his right, head swimming – as coherence found its way to his thoughts. The oil lanterns hanging from ceiling fixtures across the shop were unlit, the window shutters open. The room stood bathed in deep, warm, late afternoon sunlight. Perseus watched dust motes drift through the sunbeams, suspended in the still, workshop air.
Slowly, or perhaps swiftly, his thoughts organized themselves. With them came memories.
He’d been finishing up the pattern for a possible crossbow design, his table cluttered with papers. Lines and measurements, calculations and images sketched out lightly in graphite. He remembered a moment of intense vertigo, and white spots blooming across his eye. Remembered the world skewing sharply, an explosion of pain high on his temple, the press of cold stone beneath his hands. It had taken him a moment to register that his legs had given out, that he’d collapsed, that he was currently laying on the floor. He remembered a moment more of overwhelming disorientation, and then—
He’d passed out.
In hindsight, not all that surprising. He hadn’t slept since the celebration, some...few nights ago. Had eaten only when he couldn’t keep his hands steady anymore. He’d been busy. His mind had been churning, and he’d been compelled to give the ideas a shape. The same compulsion he’d had as long as he could remember. The last few days, though, he’d felt consumed by it.
“Oh, you’re up now, are you?”
Even half-addled, Perseus recognized that voice in an instant. It was an unpleasantly familiar voice – thin and reedy, like the man it belonged to. A second later, a face loomed over him, mouth turned sharply down at the corners, brows furrowed. Tuvius Acer didn’t look happy. He rarely did.
“Look at you.” The accountant sighed and leaned back, out of view. He must’ve pulled a stool up to Perseus’s blueprint work table (what Perseus should’ve done, in hindsight). “I suppose it was too much to hope you’d sleep – or eat, or have a proper wash – after I went out of my way to check on your wellbeing the other night.”
“…” Checking on his wellbeing. Was that what Acer had been doing?
“Though it seems you at least disposed of the majority of those dreadful pens,” Acer continued. “Thank goodness. The assassination failed, perhaps, but regardless – being found with that sort of contraband in your possession would have been a disaster for the Artifex name.”
The assassination failed.
Perseus sat up, and, as if in retaliation, his head roared with pain. He fell back with a sharp, unhappy sound, caught his weight on one elbow, and pressed a hand to his temple. His head throbbed to the beat of his heart. Nausea swam down from his skull to the back of his throat.
“—the very reason you were sent here in the first place. And I with you, need I remind! Reduced to little more than a glorified babysitter, watching you eat away at your family’s assets, and all because you—”
Perseus lowered himself back to the floor in increments and reconsidered the…the severity of his condition. His wild black hair spilled over his forehead as he rested it against the cold slate. He closed his eyes, curled a hand over them.
The assassination failed?
“—to a word I’m saying, are you?”
Perseus very…very much wished Acer would leave. Or that he hadn’t come to begin with. Why was he here?
“Why are you here?” he asked - aloud, this time.
There was a long pause; during which Acer was likely making a highly-offended expression. Perseus couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t looking.
Migraines, he was used to. This was something…else. And if the nausea would just…settle, just a bit…
“Well,” Acer said, his voice stiff, “since you asked: I came to inform you that I sent a message to Lady Artifex earlier, detailing your most recent…undertakings. I doubt you care,” Perseus didn’t, “but I felt it proper to let you know, regardless. Of course, when I got here, an hour ago, you were…well.”
The man trailed off pointedly.
“So, of course, it fell upon me to go out and get you something to eat, lest you lay there and let yourself die of starvation or dehydration or general self-neglect. I suppose I should just be grateful I didn’t have far to go, at this point.”
It was, perhaps, the first time he’d heard Acer refer to his workshop’s location – sitting neatly on a corner just outside the Ruby Jewel, on a street filled with artisan shops and merchant stalls – in a positive light.
Somewhat belatedly, Acer’s first sentence registered.
“…Eat?” Perseus asked. His stomach rolled. Despite a rational awareness that his body needed it, that hunger was part of what had caused his condition in the first place, he wasn’t…sure…how he felt about food at the moment.
“Yes, eat,” Acer repeated, irritably. “I also took the liberty of filling the one, single mug you own with water, although I don’t remember this place having hot water, and there are two spigots attached to your sink.” A note of reprimand crept into the steward’s voice.
“It didn’t,” confirmed Perseus. “I, ah…”
-had wanted a hot shower; had already understood the basic principles behind a gas-powered water heater; inlet, outlet, gas, and pressure release valves, drain, pilot assembly, burner, a rod of magnesium or aluminum to protect against rust, a tank of-
“You what?” Acer said, cutting through Perseus’s…reminiscing.
“I installed a water heater myself,” Perseus summarized. “A small one. Somewhat…somewhat recently.”
“Oh. An important application of time and money, I’m sure,” Acer said. “Regardless, you should get up. You can eat and...compose yourself…and then I can leave you to your-” Acer was almost assuredly making a gesture, “-whatever it is you do.”
“Mm,” Perseus replied. Most reluctantly, he pulled his hand from his eyes and slit them open; the light hurt. Moving, when pushed himself upright a second time, hurt more – but now he was ready for the surge of nausea, for the feeling of intense pressure squeezing at his skull. He remained upright.
He had, possibly, given himself a concussion with his fall.
He counted to three, then glanced up at Tuvius. The man had, in fact, pulled up a stool, and was perched on it. His back was a stiff, straight line, and he struck a rather severe figure with the sunlight at his back. A brown, paper-wrapped package sat on the table behind him, along with the water, as he said.
The thought came to Perseus slowly, as if through a haze, that he hoped Acer hadn’t ruined any of his blueprints or sketches. Then his vision wavered and thought fled him, for a moment.
Acer’s expression, when he could see it again, was pinched. “On second thought, stay there,” he said. “…You aren’t going to be sick, are you?” The steward reached back, and held out the mug for Perseus to take.
Perseus did so, although even that much felt like too much effort. Disorientation turned his fingers into pale, unfamiliar strangers, folding themselves around the mug’s handle and drawing it to him.
Almost certainly a concussion.
“Honestly, Vanitas, I cannot fathom why you let yourself-”
“The magister,” Perseus said rather abruptly, staring down at his mug, watching the faint ripples his unsteady hands were causing in the water. “You said he was…” He could see his own reflection, faint on the water’s surface. “…That the assassination failed.”
“It did,” came Acer’s firm reply. Perseus sipped at his water; fought, briefly, to keep it down. “…Of course, you wouldn’t have heard about it, shut in here. The Magister made an appearance on those…those displays they have posted throughout the city.” Perseus recalled the speculums. Recalled wondering at them; at the possibilities. “He even gave a speech. He seemed a bit…unwell,” Acer was grudging to admit, “but, then, he is an older man. It must have been quite traumatic for him to be targeted for an assassination, of all things.
“Thankfully, that Orator man and most of that ANO group have already been captured – I don’t imagine you knew that, either - so hopefully that will settle matters.”
Perseus said nothing, content to drink his water and let his thoughts sort themselves while Acer talked. When his mug was mostly-drained, Perseus cut through Acer’s current topic (a young enlil woman Acer had spoken with in brief this morning, and whose rude mannerisms, apparently, reminded Acer of him) to ask for whatever food he’d bought.
“This,” Acer said, handing over the brown parcel with a sour expression, “is exactly the sort of thing I’m talking about, you know. Such a brazen lack of manners. I suppose it’s the sense of entitlement that comes from being raised in a wealthy household. Poor Lady Artifex, I can’t imagine what a terror you were to-”
The package turned out to hold a thick, wheat-flour piada. The folded flatbread was stuffed full of milky-white, melted cheese (robiola, most likely), spiced pancetta, thinly-sliced peppers and tomatoes. Leaves of fresh spinach peeked past the bread’s toasted edges. However long he’d been out, the piada was still warm to the touch. Perseus spent a long moment staring down at it. Despite the way it made his head pound, his mind kept churning out information.
Piada: a dough of salted wheat flour, moistened and kneaded with milk and oil, cooked on a flat dish; a flexible bread that can be filled with a variety of –
“Are you going to eat it or just look at it all day?” Acer asked. “I hardly know your…tastes, but if you don’t like it, maybe feed yourself next time instead of-”
“It’s fine,” Perseus said, mostly so Acer would stop talking. “It looks…” He stopped, hunting for an appropriate word. “…Good? It looks good,” he decided. Then, as an afterthought: “Thank you.”
Perseus took a tentative bite and chewed it slowly. The piada tasted as good as it looked, but he probably would’ve eaten something lighter, left to his own devices. The food sat like lead in his stomach, and each roll of nausea threatened to bring it back up.
When Perseus had made his way through half of the flatbread and Acer had just gotten into a…thorough explanation of his working relationship with an SSA scryer – a demvir named Pavel, who was now missing and, to Acer’s apparent horror, suspected of ANO associations – someone started knocking at the front door. Acer startled, and twisted in his seat. Perseus remained where he was, and took another slow bite of his piada. His head still hurt, rather fiercely.
Acer shot Perseus a suspicious look. “Are you expecting company?”
Perseus stared back at him.
“…Oh,” he said after a moment. “Was…That was not rhetorical?”
Acer sighed and stood as the knocking continued. “One moment!” he called to the door. Perseus watched the steward’s feet pick their way across the workshop until another wave of nausea rolled through him. Swallowing it back down with a mouthful of water, Perseus set his piada to one side.
“Ah, no, I’m not,” said Acer from the doorway. “I am his steward, however. If you have a message, I will see it to him. …Yes. …Yes, of course. …Ah, no, that won’t be necessary. …Good day.”
A workbench obscured the man’s upper half, so Perseus watched Acer’s pants legs, framed in the doorway. The steward stepped back and eased the door shut, then stayed where he was. Quiet, for once.
He’s reading a message, Perseus’s mind provided. From the Scryer’s Service. …From her. Sent to me. In response to the message he sent this morning.
His sigh was soft – drowned out by the hum of half-working machinery and whirr of unfinished projects. He looked down at his mostly-empty mug and waited, brow faintly furrowed, lips thin. He pressed a hand over his right eye, almost mindlessly.
He didn’t notice Acer until the man was looming over him again; a slight tilt of his head, palm hard against his cheek, and Perseus could see the message, held tight in Acer’s left hand.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. He waited.
“…Cut off,” Acer said, in a tone that suggested he hadn’t finished processing the information yet. “Lady Artifex is cutting off your access to family funds.”
“…Ah,” said Perseus. Something in his chest loosened that he hadn’t realized was tight. “Well. Okay then.”
His heart pounded, his head ached, and the nausea, while slowly abating, still churned in his stomach.
But for a moment, relief rinsed everything else away.
He’d been concerned that his mother would demand he return home, to Prenditus. This. This was…
This was something else.
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