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He wakes up in a bed. The ‘waking’ part is more of a surprise than the ‘bed’ part, though neither one is expected. He didn’t think he’d ever wake up again. He had almost made peace with it, too. It was sort of glorious, dying at the hands of the god of war. She wouldn’t have pulled the punch. If he lost, he lost. He had seen her fiery visage closing in and known, with almost comforting certainty, that he was about to die.
And then he wakes up in a bed.
He tries to jolt upward to get his bearings. Pain twinges in his abdomen, a horrid concoction of burns and cuts and bruises and half-dead flesh. He hisses, gritting his teeth.
“You shouldn’t do that,” someone says.
He really does jolt upward, this time. It hurts like a bitch, but he forces himself to sit upright and reach to his side for his sword. It isn’t there. He turns his head to look, just in case the practiced motion failed him, but no dice. His sword is gone. Growing frantic, he checks his belt for his knife, then his boots for any of their weapons. Nothing. Nothing at all.
The same voice from earlier sighs. “I told you not to do that.”
It finally occurs to him that if he’s being held captive, he ought to assess his captor. If they removed his weapons, they likely want something from him. Under ordinary circumstances he could kill someone with his bare hands, but these circumstances are far from ordinary. He will need months, if not years, to recover from the Pyro Archon’s tactics. His captor, in all likelihood, could overpower him right now.
He looks up. Standing at his bedside, holding a glass of water, is the man who’s been following him all this time. The vegetable farmer—Ororon.
“I changed your clothes,” says Ororon, setting the glass down beside him on a small table. “Everything is safe—all your weapons and your delusion. Be careful not to move too much. I can only do so much without a real healer, and I didn’t think you’d want me to bring one here.”
Ororon looks so genuine. He can’t believe he dismissed him to his own soldiers, called him a non-threat. Serves him right, he thinks bitterly, underestimating someone and then ending up at their mercy.
“Drink it,” Ororon says, pushing the glass of water into his hands gently. “You’ve lost a lot of fluids. It’ll help.”
“You should have let me die,” Capitano chokes out, and then, blissful nothingness.
***
Capitano wakes again to the dark and quiet. It must be nighttime, he thinks. He fumbles around with his hands, trying to regain his bearings; at least he appears to be in the same location. Next to him, the wooden table seems to be in the same place. He reaches out over it, trying to feel where it ends, and—
Something crashes to the ground. Glass shatters.
Moments later Ororon rounds the corner, a bright handful of electro-charged phlogiston particles shining in his hand. “Are you okay? I heard something.”
Capitano looks down and realizes he’d knocked over the water glass from earlier. Ororon must have left it for him, ready for when he woke again. The glimmering fragments on the wet tile floor make something twist in his already-battered chest.
“Oh,” says Ororon, his face looking almost bashful. He turns around quickly. Maybe Capitano just imagined the expression. “I should have left you a light. Sorry. I’ll get you another glass. It’ll only take a minute.”
He walks back out the way he came, leaving behind one of the phlogiston lights in his hand. Capitano takes the chance to observe his surroundings. He’s in a small room, just the bed and the side table and a row of drawers. To his right is a large window with white linen curtains and an empty clothesline hanging in front of it. The only entrance to the room, aside from the window, is a doorway with rows of wooden beads hanging down from it, through which Ororon left.
Capitano is still staring at the bead curtain when Ororon comes back through it. He seems startled to notice Capitano’s eyes on him, but walks over regardless. “Here,” he says, handing the glass of water to him directly instead of setting it on the table. “I’ll sweep up the glass. Don’t get up. You could cut yourself.”
He pulls out a dustpan and, without further ado, begins sweeping the broken pieces into it. Capitano examines the water from every angle, smells it, dips his finger in it, freezes part of it, and finally, after determining it free of poisons, drinks a small sip. Aside from being very cold, which is primarily his own fault, it’s quite pleasant.
“Don’t drink too fast,” Ororon scolds, but his voice lacks the bite of a real reprimand. He takes the glass back, then after waiting about ten seconds, offers it again.
Capitano drinks another long sip, then stares at him. “Why,” he says finally, “are you doing this?”
Ororon doesn’t even look up from the dustpan. “I don’t want you to die.”
“You know what I am,” Capitano says, because he is a fool, and cannot keep his foot out of his mouth if his life depends on it.
“Yes.”
“You know what I would do, if I were given the chance.”
“You would save Natlan,” Ororon says quietly.
Capitano tilts his head. “No one believes me when I say that. They always think I have ulterior motives.” He drinks another long sip. The iciness of the water is nice against his throat, a contrast to the burns on his skin.
Ororon picks up his dustpan, full of glass shards now, and says, “I believe you.”
He tries to drink more water but the glass is empty already. Instead, he sets it down on the side table, taking care not to knock it over again. “Why?”
Ororon looks at him for a long moment. “Because I don’t have any other choice.”
“You believe I’ll really rescue this nation?”
Something happens with Ororon’s shoulders, like how a four-year-old might draw a shrug: unnaturally high shoulders, stiff neck, no forward movement. “I don’t know.”
“Why did you save me, then?” Capitano asks, half-skeptical and half-genuine. “If you don’t know, why did you make this decision?”
Ororon takes the empty glass and leaves. Capitano thinks that’ll be it, except that he comes back not thirty seconds later holding a bowl. “Broth,” Ororon explains, placing it carefully in both of Capitano’s hands. Capitano’s gloves are missing—he doesn’t know how he missed that detail before, with his bare hands against the bedding—and the bowl is warm against them. The temperature makes him tense up. The last warm thing to touch him had been the Pyro Archon’s flaming sword. Before that… He doesn’t know anymore.
“Why?” he asks, quieter this time.
Ororon guides the bowl up and tips it, just enough that the broth touches his lips. “Chicken broth,” he says, which is the opposite of an answer. “Made with carrot and cassava from my garden. You should only have liquids for now, but maybe tomorrow you can have something else.”
Capitano doesn’t quite know what to make of him. He drinks the broth.
He manages to drink just over half of the bowl before his stomach starts to feel like shit. Ororon takes it away again, somehow detecting his hesitance. “I’ll put it in the kitchen. Call for me if you want it. I’ll bring it to you.”
“This is your home,” Capitano says. It isn’t a question.
Ororon nods.
“You are harboring an incredibly dangerous, highly wanted fugitive in your home,” he reiterates, just to impress the gravity of the situation upon him. “For the sliver of a chance that I’ll save your nation.”
Ororon’s mouth does something odd. Not quite a frown, but not neutral either. “If I had let you die, there would be no chance at all,” he says.
Capitano doesn’t know what to say anymore. Ororon extinguishes the phlogiston light and leaves. The curtain of beads swishes behind him. Capitano watches until every bead has come to a complete standstill, and then a while longer, just for good measure. He sleeps heavily.
***
His injuries render him useless for the next several days. Ororon comes to visit him occasionally, bringing water and food and leaving them on the table next to him. He brings medicine to ingest, one day, but Capitano rejects it, and he doesn’t ask again. He must also be changing his bandages, because someone is doing it, but Capitano can’t recall it happening.
Being confined to a single space makes him, above all things, bored. He has nothing to do here—nothing but stew on memories of fire and flame and the consuming pressure of defeat. He does his best to avoid thinking about it.
He sees Ororon, sometimes, through the window and its white linen curtains. One time, he is hanging up two shirts to dry on the clothesline. Another, he is watering his vegetables and trimming the leaves of a small tree. Yet another, he is simply sitting on the short wooden fence that separates his terrain from the wild, watching the horizon with a slight smile on his face.
Capitano watches him through the window with fascination. He is so simple, and yet so complex.
***
He thinks it’s been about four days, judging by his body’s healing progress, when he finally decides to try something.
“Ororon,” he says, using his commander’s voice.
Ororon glances up at him as he sets down the plate of grilled yam and coconut rice, looking more curious than fearful. “Yes? Do you need something?”
“A hot bath, and a roll of bandages, and any medicinal supplies you’ve been using on my wounds,” he demands. “The best beef the Masters of the Night-Wind has to offer, and a couple of mystery novels. The most thrilling and suspenseful you can find.”
“Okay,” says Ororon. An hour later he reappears with two rolls of bandages and three jars of magic-imbued ointments, and gives them to him without any complaints or warnings.
Faintly surprised, Capitano takes them. “You really brought them.”
“You asked,” says Ororon, plain and simple. He draws back the quilt and offers both his hands to Capitano. “Come on. I can help you walk to the washroom—I drew a bath for you.”
He half-considers telling Ororon he didn’t expect any of those things, not really. He could say it: Foolish man, you fell for my tricks, and now I will kill you, because I’m a Harbinger and that’s what Harbingers do, we kill people and we don’t even have the decency to feel bad about it afterwards. It would be easy. He’s said it before, not in so many words, but with the sentiment all the same. He’s regained a great amount of strength already, enough that he could probably walk on his own, and definitely kill on his own.
“Alright,” he says instead, and takes Ororon’s hands.
The washroom is just through the bead curtain and to the left. Capitano fakes a stumble to get a look at the rest of the house. It’s small—just the washroom and the large main room with an open-air kitchen to one side. Two pots sit on the stove, next to one large pan. A small drying rack houses two plates, two bowls, and one tall glass. There are no cabinets; that must be all the dishware he owns.
“I broke your water glass,” Capitano notices, eyes fixed on the dish rack. He isn’t sure if he feels bad about it or if he’s just observing. It’s an empty sort of guilt, a dull realization. “You had two, and now you only have one.”
Ororon makes that odd expression with his mouth again, an unreadable half-twist. “It doesn’t matter. Usually I’m the only one here, so one glass is enough.”
But you aren’t the only one here, Capitano thinks forcefully. Not now. Not anymore.
“I can show you around the house another time,” Ororon says firmly. “Don’t spend too long on your feet—it puts a strain on your abdomen to stay balanced.”
He’s right, so Capitano follows him into the washroom. Ororon helps take off the black coat he’s been wearing. It’s much too light to be Fatui-issued. They only provide winter clothes, even for foreign travel. The clothes he’s wearing now are unmistakably Natlan garments, loose pants and a blue shirt with a front tie at the waist.
Ororon helps him untie the shirt carefully, then remove it without agitating the wound in his abdomen. It’s by far the worst one left; his leg has mostly recovered, and his arms, while sore, are no longer in danger of spontaneously bleeding. It’s likewise fine when he helps take off his pants. Capitano has been alive too long, and in the Fatui too long, to care about people undressing him, and although he’s vulnerable, Ororon is pointedly unarmed and has shown no indications of hostility. He has no reason to fear for anything, until he reaches up, above the shirt, above his collar, above—
“No,” Capitano snaps, shoving away both of Ororon’s hands with his arm.
Ororon looks briefly taken aback. “I was only trying to untie your hair,” he says softly. This time, when he reaches up again, Capitano lets him. He didn’t notice his hair at all, but it’s been in a loose braid, apparently. Ororon undoes the braid one strand at a time, then lets his hair fall around his shoulders.
“Don’t take off the mask,” Capitano says, more harshly than he intends. “You don’t want to see what’s underneath it.”
Ororon blinks, tilting his head to the side. “But it’s already off,” he says. “You haven’t had the mask on at all, these last four days.”
Capitano feels all the blood drain out of his face. His exposed face. Fuck, he hasn’t shown his face to anyone in years. He can’t remember the last time someone outside of the Fatui has seen him. Well, not since the unsightly things began, at least.
In the doorway, Ororon turns back to look at him. “I know you asked for hot water, but it’s only lukewarm. I can make it warmer if you want, but I noticed you didn’t like the hot soup. Let me know if you need anything else.”
With that, he slides the washroom door closed, and Capitano is alone.
The bath isn’t hot at all. It is, infuriatingly, exactly what Capitano wanted. He sits in the water and raises his hands slowly to touch his face. He’s grown so used to the mask that he forgot, in his injured state, that it could come off at all.
***
That night Ororon deems him well enough to sit in the main room of the house with him and eat at the dinner table. He ladles out a bowl of stew and sets it down in front of Capitano, and then ladles himself another.
Ororon sits across from him and sets down his own bowl, which is filled to the exact same level. No more, no less. “I couldn't go to the Masters of the Night-Wind, and I can’t afford the really nice cuts of beef, but I hope this is close enough,” he says.
Capitano, feeling a little taken aback, realizes that the stew is full of beef chunks. It also has potato and carrot and radish, and a dollop of thick cream on top, dusted with herbs.
“Snezhnayan,” Ororon says by way of explanation. “Or at least the closest thing we can get to it, out here. It’s supposed to have pickling brine in it, but I don’t pickle anything. I hope this is close enough.”
He takes his spoon and digs in without waiting for Capitano to respond. Good thing, too, because Capitano has no idea what to say. He isn’t from Snezhnaya, not really, but the smell of the stew is familiar. The Tsaritsa’s palace allows each Harbinger to request whatever they want to eat while they’re there, but Capitano rarely requests anything special, so they often serve him local cuisine instead. He doesn’t quite think of Snezhnaya as home, but it’s not far off.
Ororon looks up from his bowl briefly and furrows his brow slightly. “Is it too hot? You can wait until it’s cooler. I won’t be offended.”
Belatedly Capitano takes a sip of the soup. It’s hot, but the heat doesn’t spark memories of flames against skin. Instead he thinks of warm flames in the nation of cryo. How odd, he thinks, scooping up a potato that nearly burns his mouth. How odd that fire can end lives here, and yet save them elsewhere.
“You didn’t need to get beef,” he says finally. It’s a moot point, since he’s eaten nearly half of the bowl already. “I only made demands to see if you’d run off. You’re smart; surely you knew that.”
“I knew,” says Ororon mildly. “But you asked for it, so I did my best.”
Capitano isn’t sure what Ororon wants with him. It leaves him vaguely unsettled in a way that most people don’t. Most people wait for him to give orders. Most people don’t ask him things out of the blue. Most people don't ask what he wants.
“Do you know where my mask is?” asks Capitano finally.
Ororon’s mouth twists into a slight frown. “I don’t think you should wear it until you’re done healing.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
The frown eases up from Ororon’s face. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I know where it is.”
“You wouldn’t prefer me to wear it?” Capitano asks, bordering on desperate. He can barely recall what he looks like—he hasn’t taken his mask off in so long, not even by himself. There are no mirrors in Ororon’s house. He doesn’t think he wants to know, anyway.
Ororon does that shrug thing again. “I don’t mind.”
Capitano does something odd with his face. Fuck, now that he’s thinking about it, he’s probably always doing something odd with his face. He’s used to having his expressions hidden, and being able to do whatever he likes with his facial muscles. Maybe he’s smiling; maybe he’s grimacing; maybe some fucked-up in-between. “Isn’t it hideous,” he says finally, not a question at all. He laughs, a dry sound thick with irony. “Isn’t it awful.”
“Not really,” says Ororon, like it’s nothing. He considers for a moment, taking a bite of carrot from his bowl. Then, he says, “You have half a face. I have half a soul. It’s not so bad, once you get used to it.”
They eat in silence. When Capitano finishes his bowl, he asks for a second. Ororon smiles a little, and gets it for him.
***
“Like this,” Ororon says, and he demonstrates again.
Capitano fumbles with the brown paper. His hands aren’t as steady as they used to be, before everything. Back in Khaenri’ah he was a commander, a man renowned for the stability of his sword. Then Khaenri’ah fell and his hands gained a permanent tremor. He can settle it most of the time, but in the aftermath of his defeat at the hands of the Pyro Archon, it’s harder to forget the lasting sting of battle. He slips up again, messes up the fold to tuck the paper in on itself.
Ororon makes a noise halfway between a sigh and a laugh. “It’s alright. I can do it.” He reaches over, curling the brown paper around the zucchini squash and tucking it in around itself with quick, easy familiarity. As he fastens the paper to itself at the ends, his fingertips brush against the back of Capitano’s hands.
Capitano folds his hands into his lap and tries to avoid looking at them. They’re not as bad as his face, but he still doesn’t like them. He has to see them more frequently, for one.
Ororon’s hands come to a standstill on top of the wrapped vegetables. “If you want your gloves back…”
“No,” Capitano interrupts, for a reason he can’t quite place. Then, to seem more reasonable, he says, “The burns are still healing. Gloves would agitate the wounds.”
Ororon nods. He turns back to the table and sets up another piece of brown paper with vegetables, this time carrots and radishes. He passes Capitano the paper and waits.
“You can do it much more easily,” Capitano points out. “It would be more efficient to do it yourself than to continue attempting to teach me.”
Ororon’s mouth quirks up a little. Wordlessly, he places his hands on top of Capitano’s, going through the same wrapping process as usual, one slow step at a time. One end of the paper. The other end. Make them meet. Slot the corner of the paper into itself. Fold it over. Secure the ends. Fold the top and bottom to cover the vegetables. Seal it off with some adhesive.
“There,” he says, once the vegetables are wrapped. “That’s all of Uncle Okanbi’s delivery done. I’ve told everyone not to come by because I’m ill. I’ll leave them at the Stadium of the Sacred Flame tomorrow for the others to pick up.”
Capitano looks at him for a long, long moment. “Why haven’t you asked?” he says finally. “If you saved my life for information, surely you ought to actually get the information from me. Otherwise it wasn’t worth your while at all.”
“You’ll tell me later,” Ororon says. “Once you’re recovered, you’ll tell me plenty. Not everything, most likely, but you’ll tell me enough. Then, I’ll assist you with your plan, and cooperate with your demands so long as you listen to mine in return. Once you’re recovered, I’ll be your assistant, just like you’re mine now.” He nods toward the wrapped vegetable deliveries on the table.
Capitano doesn’t think what he’s provided is anything close to assistance. He thinks Ororon would have done all this at twice the speed had he been alone. “You will be more helpful than I am, I hope.”
Ororon smiles and huffs a laugh through his nose. “You know I will.”
Capitano supposes he does know that, now. Huh.
***
He gets restless. That’s the thing about recovery—it happens just fast enough that the rest time it requires is worthwhile, but just slow enough that you nearly lose your mind in the process. Ororon did indeed bring him a few mystery novels, but he’d read one of them before, and the other two he finished within a day each. There’s only so much mystery a man can read while the nation he wants to save is falling apart around him.
“Tell me about Citlali,” he demands, while Ororon is gardening one morning. Capitano is sitting along the fence, watching him work.
Ororon looks up at him. There’s a smudge of dirt on his forehead. “Who?”
“Don’t play dumb, it doesn’t look good on you.”
Ororon cracks a tiny smile at this. “Does anything look good on me?”
Stupid question. Even the dirt smudge looks good on him. “Intelligence,” Capitano says, which is also true. “We both know you’re much smarter than you let on. Vegetable farmer, my ass.”
“You’re right. I’m not just a vegetable farmer. I also raise phlogiston aphids.”
Capitano isn’t quite sure he remembers how to laugh with his fucked-up face, but he thinks he comes close. Ororon, looking faintly pleased, goes back to his vegetables. He whispers something unintelligible to his radishes. He calls them sweet names, sometimes, things like ‘darling’ and ‘baby’ and whatnot. Capitano would think it’s odd, except that Ororon grows some of the best vegetables he’s ever had, so there must be something to it.
“Citlali,” he repeats, just in case Ororon really didn’t hear him.
Ororon’s mouth quirks up. “I don’t know anyone with that name.”
Capitano frowns—maybe frowns? He’s so bad at remembering which expression is which just by feeling—and says, “You told me, just last week, that you do.”
“You didn’t ask about ‘Citlali.’ You asked about Granny Itztli.”
Capitano sighs through his teeth and leans back against the tree trying valiantly to burst over the fence. “Is there a difference? They are the same person.”
“Calling her Granny Itztli is respectful. If you want her only disciple’s knowledge, you should address her as such.”
This manages to startle him. “Disciple?” He hid the connection remarkably well. Capitano had expected that Citlali would just be one of his tribemates, maybe a neighbor or an acquaintance. But a disciple? Her only disciple? Capitano can’t help but admire his nonchalance in the face of his earlier ambush.
“Yes,” Ororon says. “She taught me everything I know.” He kneels back down and tends to something, maybe a yam, patting the dirt around it gently and drawing a heart around its roots with his finger.
Capitano makes a noise that, once it comes out of his nose, sounds almost amused. “Even how to grow vegetables?”
Still looking at the yam, Ororon smiles. “No. I taught myself these techniques. Granny was the one who told me to follow my heart, though, so she endorses the vegetable farming.”
“And the aphid raising.”
Looking a little taken aback, Ororon glances at him. His surprise melts into amusement easily. “Yes,” he says, his voice oddly gentle. “That too.”
Capitano watches him work in his garden for another few minutes. He moves from plant to plant slowly, with great care, treating each one with unfaltering forgiveness and encouragement. Capitano has never seen anything like it before. Even when the Prince had established his miraculous underground gardens, growing produce without sunlight, the plants were treated with clinical reverence rather than personal attention.
Finally, he remembers that he was trying to get information out of the man, so he opens his mouth to ask again. What comes out is, “Is this place truly safe?”
Ororon doesn’t look surprised by the question. “It is for now,” he says, too frank to be anything but the truth. “Everyone knows it was a Masters of the Night-Wind illusion that saved you, but they’ll search my entire tribe before they come to me. Everyone thinks I’m… not as capable. They’ll say I couldn't have cast the illusion anyway, because of my—condition.”
Capitano tilts his head. He’s so used to expressing his emotions like that, rather than with his face, that it still comes naturally. “You are Granny Itztli’s only disciple,” he points out. “Is this not enough to convince everyone of your skill?”
Ororon sighs out a dry, joyless laugh. “No. They think she keeps me out of pity.”
“She is undoubtedly a genius. By that logic, as someone who was taught by her, you ought to be too.”
“Not really,” says Ororon. “Granny says being a genius is lonely. I’m never lonely—I’ve got my plants and my aphids and all my uncles and aunties who come to visit once in a while.”
“And the fugitives you hide,” Capitano says drily.
Ororon’s teeth catch the sunlight when he smiles. “I don’t make a habit of it,” he says. “It’s just you.”
***
Capitano tries again, a few times, to get information about Citlali. It’s easy to ask about her, to disguise his interest in Ororon’s activities as interest in Citlali’s teachings. Yet the more he watches Ororon work, not just on his vegetables and his aphids but on talismans and spore powders and illusions, the more he realizes he may not need Citlali at all.
One day, maybe ten days into Capitano’s recovery, Ororon glances up from a talisman he’s drawing with his own blood and says, “You don’t have to watch me like that. I’ll just tell you what I’m doing, if you like.”
Capitano isn’t used to this kind of straightforwardness. He missed it—Snezhnayans disguise everything in layers of metaphor and allusion, but Natlan’s people are refreshingly blunt. Ororon even more so than most. Ever since Capitano called him out on that first lie, he hasn’t tried again since. If Ororon can’t answer something, he just stays silent. No need to doubt him, not how Capitano doubts everyone else.
Although he doesn’t respond aloud, Ororon begins narrating as he works. “I’m drawing a temperature-maintaining talisman,” he explains, dragging his index finger carefully in a half-circle. “When it’s attached to something, it should keep it at the same temperature for up to forty-eight hours. Good for preserving ice in hot regions. I guess you could use it in Snezhnaya too, to keep warm.”
“You’re drawing it with your blood,” Capitano observes, leaning a little closer to watch his work.
Ororon nods. “You can use ink or animal blood, but it’s more powerful using the caster’s blood.” He motions toward the thin, sharp pen at his worktable. “If I make a small enough puncture, I can draw pretty precisely.”
Capitano realizes, with mild respect, that he has stabbed himself through his index finger to get the thin blood flow necessary for writing the talisman. It must sting, he thinks, especially if he’s dragging the wound against rough paper immediately after inflicting it. The fresh blood is dark and glimmers in the sunlight.
“It takes a long time to learn talisman designs,” Ororon says, as he idly traces over some of the lines he’s already drawn, refreshing them. “Even Granny couldn't teach you these in time for your plan.”
It’s useless, Capitano hears. You don’t need to watch.
He keeps watching anyway. Ororon waits for a moment longer, then continues silently working on his talisman, drawing loops and loops and loops of his own blood onto the paper. It is, Capitano thinks, sort of morbidly beautiful.
When he finishes, Ororon places the talisman carefully on the shelf along the wall. It looks like it was designed to be a spice rack, part of an ordinary cottage designed for ordinary people. Ororon has repurposed a great deal of his house, though it’s not apparent at first glance. One of his large pots is always full of some strange concoction. His mailbox serves as a phlogiston aphid hive full of honey. He grows magical spores alongside his radishes and yams. His spice rack is full of talismans. Capitano is so used to the impersonal grandeur of Zapolyarny Palace that Ororon’s cottage, by comparison, feels gloriously lived-in.
“There is something I could show you,” Ororon says eventually, once he’s filed the talisman away based on some indecipherable sorting system. “It might not do anything for you, since you’re not trained, but we could at least try.”
Intrigued, Capitano leans forward. “One of Granny Itztli’s teachings?”
“Of a sort,” Ororon says. “She does it a lot, at any rate.”
Capitano doesn’t quite know what that means, but he nods anyway.
Tiptoeing, Ororon reaches up to the very top shelf along the wall. It’s so high up that he must have custom-built it himself—he’s not a short man by any means, and still has to struggle to reach it. There’s no way this would be built into an ordinary cottage. He retrieves a lacquer box and sets it down on the table.
“Take a seat,” he says, so Capitano carefully walks over and sits down in the chair diagonal from him, closer than when they sit across from each other.
Ororon takes something out of the box and weighs it in his hand. “This one,” he decides. “The dosage isn’t too strong—it shouldn’t be hard to start with.” Then, with a spark of electro against the phlogiston candle on his table, he sets the candle aflame.
“I thought you would be teaching me something,” Capitano says, a little skeptical.
“Yeah,” says Ororon. “Granny taught me how to roll joints. If you can meditate correctly while you’re smoking this specific blend, you can sometimes make contact with the Wayob. Even if not, you can connect with the inner self. I kind of think Granny just likes being high, but she’s done some pretty impressive things while high before, so maybe she’s onto something.”
Capitano usually avoids anything that would lower his inhibitions. Harbingers are all trained to do that—no drinking, no hallucinogens, no non-prescribed medicines. Still, something about Ororon’s quiet certainty as he lights the joint intrigues him.
Ororon takes a slow, pointed drag of the smoke to demonstrate. “It’s safe,” he says. “And the blend is right.” Then he offers the joint between two fingers.
Capitano takes it. He presses it to his lips and breathes in.
Smoke curls in his lungs, smoke and no air—smoke, fire, burns, defeat, death—
Capitano drops the joint and shoves his chair back from the table, eyes wide. He’s too well-trained for battle to gasp for breath, but he wants to, so badly.
Ororon extinguishes the flame instantly and turns to face him. “Are you alright?” he asks urgently. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have done that, not after the—anyway, what can I do? You’re okay, it’s okay, it’s okay here.”
Capitano shakes off Ororon’s hands from his shoulders. “I’m fine,” he snaps. Then, when the echo of his voice sounds harsh even to his own ears, he revises. “I’m alright. Thank you for putting out the fire.”
“I—well.” Ororon swallows thickly. “I didn’t mean to—I swear, I really didn’t intend that. I didn’t lie to you.”
“I know you didn’t,” Capitano says, too shaken to bother covering up the truth. “I can tell when you lie. You haven’t lied once, while I’ve been here.”
Ororon doesn’t even look surprised. “No,” he says quietly. “I haven’t.”
They sit at the table in silence. Capitano finally remembers how to breathe normally, and inhales in slow, measured counts through his nose.
Finally, Ororon says, “I’ll do it for you.”
Capitano does something that feels like raising his eyebrows.
“If you need someone to connect with the Wayob,” Ororon clarifies. “I can do it for you. I’ve done it before, and you know I can’t lie to you. It’s just as good as doing it yourself, isn’t it?”
Something in Capitano’s chest feels odd at the implication, the idea of Ororon being as indispensable as part of his own body. “You’re making a bold assumption,” he says. “You’re assuming I’ll keep you around as part of my plan, once I’m recovered. I only need a few more days. Who’s to say I won’t leave without you once I’m alright to travel?”
Ororon just laughs. “You won’t.”
With a start, Capitano realizes that he’s right. He won’t leave Ororon behind, and it has less to do with the life-debt he owes him than he’d like to think.
***
True to his word, Capitano recovers enough to walk and move and fight on his own on the fourteenth day. Has it really been two weeks, he wonders, as he eats breakfast in Ororon’s kitchen and watches him kneeling in his garden. It feels like it’s been a moment. It feels like it’s been a lifetime.
When Ororon comes back inside, Capitano stands from the table and says, “I’m leaving today.”
Ororon closes the door behind him and half-smiles. “Already?”
“This nation won’t save itself,” Capitano says, which is true. Already the Abyss is encroaching more and more upon the edges of the country. He can sense it acting up, can feel it in his five-hundred-year-old bones.
“You’ll need this, then,” Ororon says. Only then does Capitano realize he’s been holding Capitano’s own mask this entire time. It’s covered in a thin layer of dirt, like it’s been—
“Buried?” Capitano asks, half baffled and half amused. “You buried it?”
Ororon nods. “No one ever looks in my garden,” he says, smiling deviously. “I’m just a vegetable farmer, didn’t you know?”
“And phlogiston aphids,” Capitano says.
Ororon’s smile grows. He grabs something from his seat of the table. A bag. A fully packed bag, ready to leave the cottage at a moment’s notice.
Capitano is sort of impressed. “You really did know we were leaving.”
“We?”
“Yes,” Capitano says, putting on his commander’s voice again. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
Ororon laughs, like the very concept is ridiculous, and adjusts his bag on his shoulder. “Come on, Captain,” he says, holding the cottage door open. “Let’s go.”