Wizard Rescue Pavoni 1

[setenaya]

Anat’s shoulders went tense as the captain’s bedroom door opened. But the captain’s familiar, jeering voice did not follow; nor did the click of his wolf’s nails on the floor. Instead he heard voices in a language he had never learned, and the clash of plate. And when he dared twist to look, he did not see Space Wolf colors.

White Scars.

His first thought was that they were here as guests, that the captain had decided to be generous with his allies. But as soon as he thought of it he knew that could not be true. They were in full armor, still stained with the gore of battle—hardly the state one went to a friend’s quarters in—and the captain would never have let them come here without him.

Something else was happening. There had been alarms blaring, earlier; he had assumed the threat fought off, though no victory celebration had ensued. Perhaps…

Perhaps the other loyal legions had taken exception to the Wolves keeping traitors alive, even in this state.

Or maybe the Emperor’s Executioners had simply finally fallen from grace, like better legions before them. Perhaps the other barbarian legion was to replace them.

Should he beg for mercy, or death, or stay silent?

There were only two of them, he realized after a moment. Their insignia… He couldn’t recognize those ranks. Neither was a khan, but beyond that he had no idea.

Well, a slave wasn’t to use military address anyway.

One of the White Scars dropped to his knees by Anat and started to briskly look him over, so matter-of-fact that it took him a long ridiculous moment to realize what he was doing.

A medical examination.

They were deciding whether to take him with them.

He knew should beg them to at least beg them to put a bolt through his skull if he didn’t meet their standards. His brothers would have managed that much. But his tongue felt miles away. That happened, lately. This body that he’d put together so carefully felt like a disjointed pile of parts, toys that belonged to someone else.

The other White Scar, who’d been keeping both Anat and the closed door in his line of sight, abruptly knelt too, by Anat’s feet.

“Sogetai—”

“It’s fine. They won’t look for us here until we’re long gone.” He was speaking Gothic, now, though with a thick accent.

Anat could feel the man touching his shackled ankles, and he forced himself to go limp against the pain they inflicted on being tampered with. (He’d had practice. The captain liked to pretend to try to force them with his knife, and laugh at his face distorted with pain—not so perfect now, he’d say—and take him when he was still twitching afterwards.)

This time, it didn’t come. The White Scar behind him—Sogetai—eased the shackles off his ankles, almost gently, and moved to do the same for his wrists.

The medic—he clearly had training—had moved on from limbs and torso and was checking for a concussion now. Probably. (Why hadn’t he done that first? They always wanted to see his face.) He brushed the red hair from Anat’s face (from the socket, please, no, don’t—but at least he kept himself from pulling away) and met his single remaining eye with the blank visor of his helmet.

“Guess you regret that face, huh?”

Anat flinched. But he forced the words “Yes, master,” past his traitor tongue as the other Scar put hands to the back of his neck.

His body had once been his masterwork. Now it was nothing more than an effigy to debase his absent primarch.

“Poor bastard,” the first White Scar said, and patted him on the shoulder as the collar came off.

“Don’t call him that,” said Sogetai from behind him, sharply enough to make him start towards the medic. “I’m Sogetai, he’s Temechi. You can use those names.” His voice was softer now.

“You’re just scaring him, Sogetai,” said Temechi. He took Anat’s hands and pulled him to his feet.

He had been chained there kneeling so long that when Temechi let go of him he had to brace himself against the captain’s bed to keep his feet under him.

(It shouldn’t have mattered. But he was no longer what he had been.)

For a long moment (a dangerous indulgence) he stared at the familiar Fenrisian wood grain and tried to gather himself. It didn’t work; he was taking too long, they’d lose patience. He turned himself around, hands reaching back to steady himself, to remove the temptation to cover his body.

He shivered. The Space Wolves kept their ship colder than the Thousand Sons ever had, and he could no longer use biomancy to regulate his temperature. He was all but naked, and in front of fully armored marines he was sharply aware of what he’d thought himself inured to.

They both still had their codpieces on, at least. The captain had never let anyone fuck him with armor on, but some of his brothers…

His brothers. His brothers. These White Scars were going to take him away from this place, and his brothers—

“Please,” he said. “My brothers. They’re kept elsewhere, four levels down, no, five…” His eye was burning; he was desperately trying to hold back ugly tears. He needed his face for this. “Please. I’ll do anything.” He would anyway, of course. But perhaps they didn’t yet realize that.

Even if he persuaded them, how much effort would they spare? Could they even find them? He had never been to his brothers’ shared cell, and certainly no one had ever given him instructions. His world had narrowed to the captain’s rooms and the hall where he rewarded his followers. He had no good information to give. All his suffering hadn’t bought him even that much.

They would think he didn’t care, that he’d betrayed them—they must already think that he had betrayed them—they would be left behind to bear the captain’s rage at losing his plaything.

Temechi took him by the shoulders, cutting his babbling short as with a knife.

“Look at me.”

He did. They were almost of a height—he a little taller, measuring eye and eye, even despite the armor. He had once been proud of that; it had been difficult, increasing the length of each bone without damaging his implants. No good now.

Temechi sighed. “Not that that does us any good—”

Sogetai let out a disgusted breath of air. “Take off your helmet, then.”

Temechi made a sound that might have been a laugh. As Temechi removed his helm, Sogetai moved behind Anat, wrapping a blanket—one of the ones from the captain’s bed, by the smell—around his shoulders, then tugging him over a second discarded blanket to sit on captain’s bed. He sat beside him, making the bed creak—it never had been meant for the weight of power armor.

Temechi followed, going to one knee to keep their heads level, and met Anat’s eye again. He had a serious expression on a tired face—was he trying to project earnestness? Anat wished he were better at interpreting expressions; he had always been distracted by analyzing the faces themselves. A common failing among Pavoni.

“Look—tell me your name.”

Anat almost didn’t understand.

(The captain had certainly never bothered. Whore slut nithing Magnus—)

It might be a trick—he might want to hear Whatever pleases you—but if it was not, then… then he would at least get to hear his own name. It had been a long time. “Anat.” His voice was a cracked whisper.

Temechi frowned, then thrust a canteen into his hands. When Anat had taken a sip—water and electrolytes, he’d hated this stuff once—he went on. “Anat, I promise that we are not going to leave your brothers here.”

It was everything he wanted to hear, so how could he believe it? Tell me the price, he thought. How could it be real without one? But Temechi was silent now, watching him intently, and his expression betrayed nothing of what he might want in return, or even if he had been telling the truth at all.

Anat had read poems and heard music that spoke of the eyes as expressive as emotion—not Prosperine; they had had little need of such metaphors. He’d never understood it, anyway. Here and now Temechi’s eyes might have been lifeless glass for all the meaning he could find in them, and staring at the skin and muscle surrounding them (surely that was what the songs had truly referred to?) he felt as if he were attempting some form of primitive divination. There was nothing here for him to read.

He was so focused on Temechi’s face that he almost forgot Sogetai on his blind side, certainly forgot to focus on the way his weight tilted the bed and blocked the light as he moved. So when he felt Sogetai’s hand on his head he couldn’t help but start, even though it was just a touch, not a blow.

At least there was no punishment for jerking away. (Not yet, at least.)

Sogetai’s thumb stayed in place; his palm and fingers moved rhythmically back, raised, then lowered again. Anat found himself timing his breath to the strokes.

(He had been close to hyperventilating, before Temechi gave him the canteen—like a panicking child before his first implants. He should have been appalled at himself, but he knew his weaknesses too well by now.)

Temechi was frowning a little now—but then, as if finally noticing Anat’s focus, he smoothed out his face and went on.

“Another squad is headed to their location now. We know where they are, and we’re getting them out. There are four of you on this ship, right? We’re not going to leave anyone behind.”

Four. They had the right number, and no one had died since… since he’d last seen Raherka. It had been the longest with him.

“The Great Khan bid us to do this, and we will.”

Anat felt a bitter stab of envy—a primarch there and strong and giving orders, and oh what shame he’d brought to his own gene-father—which he forced down as best he could. Temechi was still talking.

“I swear, as his son—as your father’s brother’s son—I swear to you that this is the truth.”

The Space Wolves would say that oaths sworn to a slave were nothing, that breaking them meant nothing. But questioning Temechi’s word would be an insult, and questioning what an astartes said of his primarch—a killing insult. Anat bowed his head.

If it was true—was it the Great Khan, and not these sons of his, who wanted him… He could not keep himself from shuddering.

Temechi was frowning again, and then abruptly gone, out of Anat’s field of vision. Rooting through something, by the sounds. Well, they’d want other loot, especially if their primarch wouldn’t let them keep him.

But perhaps he still thought too highly of himself, as the captain would say. The Great Khan certainly had not heard of Anat of the Pavoni before… before. Perhaps he still had not. He had sent these sons of his to get Anat’s brothers, too. Perhaps he wanted all of the Thousand Sons—for old friendship or pride or grief—and Anat himself might slip through the cracks. Perhaps he only meant that the sons of Russ not have them, and the rest was truly up to the brotherhood here.

Sogetai was still stroking his hair, like the captain with his wolf.

Was that what they wanted him for—if it was them who wanted him—to be their wolf? No. No. He had no pride left, but he would not... Not to his brothers. Not to humans either, he hoped not, but his brothers…

As if he would have a choice. The captain certainly hadn’t given him one, and his brothers must already think…

Temechi was back, holding one of the captain’s off-duty tunics. The blue one. The captain had flipped its hem over his head as he choked on him, and that was Penamun’s blood staining the hem, from when—no. He would not think of that.

“You can have something better when we reach the Radnashiri,” Temechi was saying, and Anat made himself reach out for it. He pulled it inside-out over his head—a small rebellion, but he knew the inside scratched and the outside was soft—and then pulled the tangle of necklaces over it. His neck and shoulders felt strange with the metal off them, if only separated by a later of fabric.

With numb fingers he pulled the one the vessel’s chief rune priest had left on him some days past from his neck—the yellow teeth and claws of some small thing that, the man had told him mockingly, wolves ate. (Of all those the captain had shared him with, the rune priests were the worst.)

He wished he dared hurl it away from himself. Instead he let it drop by Temechi’s feet, and hoped he or Sogetai would crush it under their boots.

“Only the one?”

He froze, hands against the mass of chains and beads at his neck—protecting the damn things by instinct.

Temechi’s face twisted in something like pity as he realized what the rest of the jewelry was.

Spoils of Prospero, like him.

If he hadn’t known better he’d have called Temechi’s voice gentle as he asked, “Are there any other Prosperine things here?”

My brothers, he almost said. But he knew that wasn’t what Temechi meant.

“There’s some more jewelry in that box with the broken latch.”

(The captain had broken that too, latch and hinge, drunk on mjod and looking for something to… Anat didn’t like to remember. It had been a bad evening.)

Temechi had the box open, now, and he was staring. “That can’t all be…”

“It’s not,” Anat said.

Treasures of Fenris, spoils of a dozen, a hundred other worlds…

(His brothers had kept books, once, from their conquests. They had thought of it as preservation, but had they been doing wolf-work? All ash now, in any case.)

“We don’t have time to go through everything,” Sogetai said abruptly, and Anat flinched again.

“Right,” said Temechi. He turned, saw the extra blanket forgotton on the floor, spread it out, ripped two long strips off the end. Then he swept the box off its table and upended it, spilling gold and jewels onto the rough wool. A second shake for the few stragglers, a last look to make sure nothing was stuck, and then he folded the cloth around them and tied it into place with the already-fraying strips.

He handed the package to Anat. “If there’s something you don’t want, pick it out once we’re on the ship.”

Anat took it and cradled the bundle to his chest. (If they cared this much about the jewelry, he tried to tell himself, maybe they had meant it about their brothers looking for his.)

“Anything else?”

“No.”

Apparently his word was good enough, for once, because that was that. Temechi nodded, brisk and sharp, and reattached his helmet.

“If only one of us can shoot,” he said, helm locked in place, “it had better be me. So Sogetai will carry you.”

The astartes Anat had been around lately would have taken that as an insult worth a blow. But Sogetai shrugged, wrapped the blanket around Anat and his bundle, and scooped all up in his arms.

Temechi was checking the hall. “All clear. I’ll take point this time, since Anat is unarmored.”

(Odd that he didn’t usually, if Sogetai’s aim was so bad. More to the point, where were the Wolves? This area had little strategic value, but it was far within the ship—had they really managed to come here alone, without alerting anyone? How? A Thousand Sons squad with Athenaeans and Pyrae might have managed it, once, but another legion…)

He was jolted from that speculation by a crunch, and flinched on reflex before he realized that it must have been the skull-necklace. As he’d hoped, Sogetai had crushed it underfoot.

How long had it been since anything he hoped for had happened? He wanted to laugh, but if he did he might not be able to stop, and they couldn’t afford him making noise. (He couldn’t afford annoying them.) So he made himself breathe evenly, and focused on the weight of cloth and metal between his arms and chest as the White Scars broke into a run.