Trelisti must've been going soft, because the sight had him running.
He was certain he reopened a wound as he bolted down the hill, tripping over a loose stone and skidding down the rest. The world spun, and he felt a sharpness in his lung the whole way. But he didn't want to lose sight of him.
"Lydiia's light, you look terrible," Tellik said, aghast when Trelisti finally caught up to him. He was with another man in the camp's interior, seemingly headed towards another tent until Trelisti showed up.
"Well it's a good thing," he huffed, clutching his ribs. There was a growing pinch between his lung and his bones. "I can't see myself."
"You dumba—" Tellik started, then shook his head. He uttered something to the man beside him, who gave a slight argument before another response from Tellik shut him up. He guessed it had to do with the wave he gave Trelisti.
"Tija ett. Now you," Tellik continued threateningly, pointing to a stone not far away while the other man walked off. "Sit down. You already managed to loosen your rib again."
"You can tell?" he said, but it was obvious when the words came out as more of a wheeze. "I thought chests aren't your speciality."
"Lungs are challenging. But it's easy to set a bone." He waited for Trelisti to sit before pressing a glowing palm to his chest. The space filled with a strange hum. "You'll probably feel this one. Sorry."
He didn't sound very apologetic as a jerk—the sensation strangely similar to ripping out a tooth—threw off the inside of his chest. It was followed by a slight click, then a bonding warmth, and a feeling somewhere deeper that he could only describe as gummy. It made him want to throw up.
"Now don't do any sudden activities. My healing's only going to last if you don't agitate it, so wait about a day or two," Tellik instructed, pulling his hand away. "You're lucky Orjma fixed most of the serious stuff up."
"I thought I'd be fine. I've barely felt it since I woke up," he replied, a half-truth. Until now, he felt better than he thought he would, but it was still far from a normal level of pain. "I guess I should thank you, shouldn't I?"
"Damn right. Do you even know how worried you had us?" Tellik lectured, a scowl deep in the grooves of his face. "Avalon, especially—I've never seen someone so torn up about a person they just met. You'd better have a good excuse for getting your ass handed to you."
"Hey, give me a little credit. I got most of 'em on my own," Trelisti said defensively. "And I did the hard part with the last one. Which reminds me—what happened to the body? Did they take the chains off it?"
"Chains? Why would they..." Tellik started to ask, then scrunched his brows. "Why'd you need to use those?"
"It was a set of pulse chains. The last guy was an asazai."
"What?"
His response came out as a shout, which he quickly covered with one hand. A few bystanders looked over—most in concern, some in annoyance—which Tellik ignored while trying to return to a flat face. It was still easy to see the alarm stir in his eyes.
"Whatever you do, don't mention anything related to him or his creatures. Especially to Ti'mano or Ruali," Tellik said under his breath, voice deep in warning. "They're the only other two who speak Common. But everybody recognizes his name, and if they think we're associated with him, the first thing they'll do is bring it to my father. We're already on a thin string with him, but that might be the difference between further exile and ordering our deaths."
"Your own father would do that?" Trelisti asked. He could only assume the him Tellik mentioned was Hjerti.
Darkness hollowed his cheeks. "He's waiting for the chance to."
Trelisti spent a moment watching, waiting for anything else to show underneath that sunken face. There was a sliver of bitterness, but Tellik wasn't really the angry type, and instead, it just seemed like an ache.
"Tellik," he started to ask, holding the slightest caution. He didn't seem concerned with hiding it anymore, so at least in Trelisti's mind, it was worth the question.
Beside him, Tellik shifted upward, braids swaying as he turned to him. "Yes?"
No more stalling. He could see the shift in his mood before the words came out.
"What is your place within the Qorasi?"
A delay. A stunned, yet somehow expectant look, like he'd known it would come up eventually but thought he'd at least have a little more time. It dropped into something dim, Tellik searching the silence for an answer before he finally decided on the words.
"A failure," he said far from proudly, gaze returning to the ground. "Depending on who you ask, the specifics'll change—an exile and an outcast, a stain on the family honor, whatever. But they all consider me that much."
"Then who did they want you to be?"
"A firebrand. A summoner. A competent fighter, or at the very least, an exceptional healer." His voice was soaked in frustration, in a stinging but muted sadness. "And of course, my father wanted a potential leader. But I doubt you've even been listening enough for that to make sense."
Trelisti really had tried. The last few days on the boat, he'd learned more about Tellik than during the entire time in Embrias. During the first day, though, he hadn't been paying as much attention, and it was really starting to show. The absence of an answer was enough for him to continue.
"My father, Kharo, is the current leader of the tribe—a title we call Jabir pako, or the Great-man, which functions similarly to a king. There's an expectation that his entire family, especially his sons, show impressive strength, preferably in the form of a firebrand. Being chosen by Lydiia rather than Fehr—that is, being a lightweaver—is a sign of weakness, since Fehr is the one who grants us the power to summon familiars. An extremely talented lightweaver might still be accepted, but it's a disadvantage off the bat. So I wasn't starting off in the best position."
Tellik's frustration was obvious as he joined Trelisti on the rock, and the rest of the story rolled off his tongue.
"Between that, an entire childhood of shortcomings, and my...untraditional taste in a partner, I've always been an insult to my father's honor. Out of my eight half-siblings, I'm the only one who failed to summon a familiar during my coming-of-age test, so that was strike one—something that labelled me unfit to be a Qorasi, much less a potential tribe leader. Strike two came when Nada and I were found out. By then, I was already miserable, and we both knew there was nothing for us here. So we left for Rosvanii, got married, and spent the best two years of our lives there. Until...well, you know what happened."
"Right." Trelisti didn't need to see his face to know of the heaviness it held. His tone was weighed down enough. "So you left without a strike three?"
"In my father's mind, there shouldn't have been a strike one." Tellik's response was quick and dark. "And even you should be familiar with the rule: once you leave the tribe, you've lost the privilege to come back. I don't fit either of the exceptions—we just got lucky that the scout who found us is in Nada's family."
"What are the exceptions?" Trelisti asked. Depending on how their interactions had gone so far, there might've been a way to play into them.
"Whatever you're planning won't work." A flat, decisive answer. "In the Qorasi, you have to be given explicit permission to leave and return. Ti'mano is an example; my father needed a translator for increasing run-ins with outsiders, so he sent him to the city for a few years to study languages. Ti'mano has since taught his son, Ruali, so that nobody needs to go to Rosvanii again. That's how much the Qorasi hate outside contact."
Trelisti was about to ask any more when Tellik read his question. "The only other exception doesn't apply to us, but to other tribes. If you were taken against your will and found your way back, you can return. But in the Qorasi, getting taken at all marks you as too weak to be a member."
Trelisti stewed over the answer for a moment, then uttered a curse. "No grey area, huh?"
"None," Tellik replied. "Right now, you and Avalon are being treated as suspicious guests, while I'm the same as a criminal. The only reason they're so much as hearing us out is because they want to know about the group who attacked us, and they needed you to wake up for that to happen. Luckily, Ti'mano and Nada's sister have been advocating on our behalf, but I guarantee you my father's going to want to have an audience with you soon. We've got to get a story straight before then, and somehow, find a fa'ih summoner willing to help us. I honestly don't know that either of those is achievable."
"Just how rare are they?" Trelisti asked, the most pressing question escaping him. They could deal with everything else later, but above all, the feather was the highest concern.
"In truth," Tellik said, fist clenched so tight it was pale. "I don't know any besides my father."