Waking to a pitch black room with her markings seething like acid etchings Akkali nearly snapped the neck of the first person she found within reach. Luckily it was Drystan, the only man capable of actually surviving such an assault.
"Where are we?" she asked, stretching out her impossibly sore limbs and finding her tongue had a cotton-like taste for some reason.
"Antenox outpost in Sonnes," replied the Inferi from where he sat slouching in a chair at her bedside. "The keeper here decided to house you in the basement in case you had a fit and tried to wreck something when you woke up." She caught sight of his smirk as he turned up the wick on a nearby lamp sitting on the floor. "I informed her and her revenant of your destructive tendencies. Their names are Sachiel and Moiral, by the way. Moiral's bit grumpy, but they're a good sort."
She slung her feet over the side of the low cot she had apparently been laying in for more than a few days. Her clothes were gone, and she was wearing what amounted to a wool bag with an opening in the back for a bedpan. All in all it wasn't one of the worst situations she could imagine herself waking to. The room was warm and dry, she trusted the company, and it was pleasantly quiet. The rug beneath her feet was ghastly, though. The jagged pattern was so garish she was glad age had faded the colors to rusty orange and a sort of rotten lemon yellow instead of the eye-bleeding shades she suspected they had been when first woven.
"How long this time?"
The man's expression became an odd mix of guilt and sadness. "A fortnight. You were worse off than last time. Much worse. Sachiel swore up and down you were dead for the first few days and Moiral was convinced Arathron was wasting his time trying to reel you back in."
"Is Arathron-"
"He's fine," Drystan assured her with a placating gesture. "I'll be healing and talking to myself for the trip west but he doesn't think it's a big deal." He picked himself up out of his chair slowly and stretched out his own legs. "Speaking of which, I should head out now that you're up. Farseeth has been hounding me to get a move on for days."
Nodding she moved to stand and discovered her body was opposed to the mere idea of being upright. Reluctantly she stayed put and resigned herself to waiting for her still-sleeping limbs to catch up with her will to move. "I'm going to worry, you know."
The Inferi shrugged. "We'll be fine."
"Archer and Lauthen are just as neurotic about being careful as you say I am," she said with a scowl. "And they fight just as dirty as I do. Whatever took them out isn't going to be a random demon or werewolf sent to clean up some Oratio's mess. You and Arathron are both absolute shit at planning ahead, Drys. It'll get you into trouble this time."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ser Cynical." He folded his arms against his chest and leaned against the door frame. "Let us worry about that. You should clean up, speak with Sachiel upstairs, and maybe head out to check in with the clan. I'm not completely sure all those things are out of the warrens so we asked Caspar and Kvasir to stay with them just in case."
Akkali sighed, feeling unexpectedly exhausted despite just having woken up. She had been away for over a month, normally not anything to get worried over, but with Drystan heading off on a high-priority task she really did need to get back and check in. He was right; there was no way either of them could tell if any more of Basilides-Cyril's war party had been left below ground. Knowing that Caspar was with them let her worry a little less; the man could never remember to lace his boots properly but he was a powerful Hesperi, probably at least as powerful as she was despite both his and his revenant's distaste for violence. Her clan had taken to looking after the man like their favorite scatterbrained grandfather and she trusted they would be safe enough while he was with them.
"We're heading out to meet up with a Hesperi," offered Drystan as a bit of reassurance. "Senior Inferi Catherine Laudine. Apparently she was born at the Wall. And I have Tiernan's map; his father's family made the best charts in the western Oribian and his memory is infuriatingly perfect."
"Well at least you'll have some magic to pull your ass out of the fire. Or light a fire under your ass, depending on her disposition."
"With any luck she'll turn out to be another you and I won't be wanting for a cynical opinion on every bloody thing that crosses our paths," he sneered at her only half-joking.
She curled her toes in and out on the rug, trying to forcibly will her muscles to work properly after spending so long laying still. The spiny tingling was an annoying but acceptable sign that they were starting to work again. "Better make sure you say your farewells to your zealot in person. Writing him a note in his holy book seemed not to have gone over so well. Think he might actually cry this time when you leave him behind."
"Nah, Tier can barely bring himself to crack a smile," said the Inferi with a grin. "He'd never shed a tear over me traipsing off again. Besides, he thinks what Arathron and I have done is pretty... unsightly."
"And you're perfectly fine with leaving it at that?"
"No, but it's not as if there's anything I can say to change his mind." He shrugged and she saw the very rare glassy-eyed frown of defeat emerge upon his face. It was a helpless, haunting expression she hadn't seen since the day she told him that the two Enkiri he had rescued from their former lives as pleasure-house slaves had ended up dying in childbirth only a few months after he lead them to freedom. There was nothing anyone could say to lift his spirits when he was in one of those moods and suddenly she regretted even mentioning the Inquisitor in the first place. "It just is what it is. You'll see."
Somehow reminding him of how she had told him repeatedly that this was exactly how things were going to work out felt a little too cruel, so instead she said, "I'm sorry, for whatever that's worth."
The man smiled in relief, obviously having expected the pointed reminder instead of sympathy. "Thanks for not rubbing my face in it."
She held out her hands and flexed her fingers towards him. Walking back across the room he pulled her up to her feet and held her wrists until they were both sure she wouldn't simply fall over again. "What do you mean, 'I'll see'?"
"Tiernan's taken a room at the boarding house here in Sonnes," replied Drystan. "He's been keeping an eye on the girl, Hallia, to make sure the exorcism took and Cyril didn't have any last-ditch tricks up her ghostly sleeves."
A chill bled through into Akkali's stomach and pure venom seeped into her voice as she hissed, "If he put that kid through one of their damn interrogations I swear to your god I'll-"
"Tiernan would never do that," snapped the man in a sharp, chastising tone. "I'll tell Sachiel you're awake and she'll send you down some water to bathe. You want it heated?"
Considering the offer briefly she shook her head. "A bucket of well water will be fine." Nodding he turned back towards the door to leave. "Drys?"
"We'll be careful, promise," he said, casting a lopsided grin over his shoulder.
"I was going to say don't be stupid. Or needlessly reckless."
"Of course you were." He stood in the doorway for a moment with his foot hanging mid-stride, then turned around and unexpectedly threw his arms around her shoulders and hugged her tightly. "I'd consider it a big favor if you looked out for Tier, I really would."
"The Inquisitor can watch his own ass. And following Baedorn your ledger for favors is deep in the red." When Drystan refused to put her down after a minute or so of holding her suspended on the tips of her toes she muttered, "Let go or I'm killing you while Arathron's unconscious."
"Please, Akkali."
She looked down over the back of his shoulders at the mottled rug. "Why do you think you're not coming back?"
"I just have this feeling that it's going to get bad. Just... very bad." Sighing he set her back on the floor and tried to force himself to smile. "But you know that."
"Of course I do. Trying to say you want my help?"
"I want you to keep an eye out for Tiernan," he replied. He held up a hand to ward off the snide remark they both knew she was going to make. "We'll send word through Kvasir or Snerra if we find anything over there or on the way that will threaten the clan."
After a quick exchange of thank-yous Drystan let himself out of the room and headed up the stairwell at the opposite end of the hallway. Akkali stood leaning against the door, wondering when the tingling numbness would finally vacate the left side of her body. It wasn't until a middle-aged woman with short-cut black hair and more than a few scars along her neck and arms appeared in the stairwell hauling along a large tin bucket of water that she managed to shake herself out of her half-asleep stupor.
The woman shot her a quizzical brown-eyed look. "You sure you don't want a nice warm bath after everything you've been through?"
Akkali shrugged. "It's a waste of time. Instinct tells me I need to get back and plan a northern escape route for my clan."
She nodded in agreement. "Sound plan." Throwing her thumb back over her shoulder she left the bucket and a few clean towels by the Enkiri's feet and headed back towards the stairs. "I'm Sachiel, by the way. Don't get too offended if I don't talk to you much; Moiral and I have been spending most of our time coordinating messages between here and the Wall."
"What's going on at the Wall?"
"Greedy land-grabbing Imperial nobility, same as the last fifty damn years," chuffed Sachiel. "Taking an entire Legion into the Wastes with no talontraders and a wyvern resurgence going on? Apparently it's a sin to receive aid from pagans nowadays. We can already see that will go brilliantly. Hope they all get eaten by the scaly bastards." The woman began marching back upstairs. "Take your time. I left your clothes somewhere down there, cleaned 'em, and your boots are at the end of your bed."
"Thank you."
"It's no trouble." She waved as she disappeared around a turn in the stairwell. "I'll let that Brennan know you're awake. He's not permitted in here. Those zealots and their contrived morality'd probably see me hanged and my books burned before the noose got tight around my neck."
Akkali laughed despite the fact that she knew that Sachiel was being wholeheartedly serious about her remark. It was refreshing to finally come across someone who had the same cynical opinion on the Inquisition as she did.