Chapter 327

When he went to bed, he almost regretted not lingering to speak with her. The slave was all but mute, and he'd given way to the awkwardness he felt between them and left her behind. 'I had questions…' He recalled the absurd ease with which she hefted his armor. 'She had no business being able to do that.' Yet she had. 'Was she a soldier before we harvested her ears?' He had to wonder, and that curiosity kept him wondering more and more. And down below, the singing of the miners carried on, and combined with that curious nature of his, sleep was kept at bay for far too long.

Well rested or not, Raymond got up in the morning before the sun rose, the long habit was so ingrained that he didn't even use the banded candle alarm. That device, if he were to call it that, was ingenious. The bands of the candle each took one hour to burn through, and each one was a separate piece held to the one above and below it by small wooden picks, thus allowing one to add or remove time as needed. With this was a small strip of fabric that held round metal balls, with a lip that could be placed between the layers and pinned in place.

As the layers burned down, eventually that 'lip' between layers would fall away, and with it, the metal balls would tumble free and the noise of their falling to the floor would awaken the sleeper. Raymond however, made no use of it, instead he simply got up, went to the common baths, cleaned himself up, and changed into his clothing for the day.

Only when he had completed this routine with the hour still very early, did he go to Nua's room.

His hand went to the knob and turned it, then he froze. He released his hand, and knocked. He waited for the noise of her waking and rushing to see what he needed. But there was nothing, not a sound.

He knocked again. 'No slave would last long if they were so heavy a sleeper.' He thought and opened the door. The bed was made, everything was clean. 'Did she stay here at all last night? Did she run away? If I lost 'two' on this journey, I'd never hear the end of it.' He cursed and then stopped.

'If she ran away now… would it be worth it to chase her… who could blame her?' He asked, recalling the loving affection between the innkeeper and his wife, and the noise of the miners as they enjoyed music and beer…

'Like a child tasting candy for the first time… of course she ran away.' Raymond thought, 'I wish she'd waited a little at least…'

"I suppose I'll just have to hire a coachman… but before that, I suppose I need to make sure she didn't steal the damn horses." He mumbled and took the stairs down to the now empty main floor and went out the door with a yawn. 'Maybe she slept underneath the carriage after all?' He wondered as the cool morning air brushed over him.

It was the sound of a loud splash and the noise of an empty bucket being dropped to the ground that jarred him from his thoughts. 'Who would be washing anything at this absurdly early hour?' He wondered, and followed the noise around to the side of the table where a stone well stood.

There he found her. The darkness was no real impediment to anyone in the Black Scripture, it might as well have been daytime as far as he was concerned. Her clothing was folded neatly on the ground a few feet away from her, an empty bucket by her feet, and her naked body drenched in water from head to toe.

'She came out here early to avoid being seen.' He realized, but to his surprise, she heard him as well.

On some level, he should have felt at least some desire, save for the very small strip of metal around her neck, she was nude, her body was statuesque in a word, and despite what had been done to her golden hair to ensure her mutilated ears were always exposed, she had the form of a lean, athletic woman and long, slender, coltish legs.

But he could feel not even a hint of desire, nor did he even truly notice the rest of her for what his eyes took in. "Your back…" He whispered while she, caught off guard, alternated between wanting to turn her back to him and knowing she wasn't supposed to show such disrespect.

In the end she compromised by turning to the side. "Master! I wasn't running away! I… I wanted to be clean so I didn't stink and…" Her hands went up and down as if she wasn't sure what to cover, until he caught his senses.

Raymond sucked air through his teeth, "You've been injured… show me your back."

She let out the tiniest mewling noise, but her feet inched around in rotation until her back was bare to his eyes. He stepped closer, up and down her flesh were deep scars, ridges like some mountain range of nightmares that left almost none of the original flesh from her shoulder blades to her lower back. Her arms went up to her chest and covered herself, even though he couldn't have seen it.

"By the six…" He said, it wasn't just old injuries, there were ample new ones, but not so new that she could have gotten them last night. He looked down on the ground for the bandages she should have had, and found none. 'No… she never smelled like herbal potion… I'd have noticed that.'

"When did… when did this happen? I didn't do this to you?" Raymond demanded, his hand came up to touch the gash in her lower back that showed signs of starting to heal on its own, and then thought the better of it and drew his hand away.

"I'm aware of my ugliness, master. I will not forget it, I promise." Nua apologized for her wounds, and though he couldn't see her face, he knew from her voice that the 'neutral mask' was there again.

"No, it's not that…" Raymond said.

"Has my lord not done this to countless elves? Or has my master not at least seen it?" She asked, glancing over her shoulder.

"No… no, I'm with the Black Scripture, or was, I worked outside the city dealing with monsters mostly, and… no, no I haven't. Doesn't it… aren't you in pain?" He asked as she inched a little farther from him, and her muscle movement caused the injured place to expand and contract only a hair, briefly letting him see how deep the scar would run when the wound finally healed.

"As I said, master. I am broken. You will not need to repeat the recent lesson, I promise." Nua could not completely suppress her shiver when she said it.

"Then… the recent marks?" He asked.

"Your comrade tested me, as I said. Twenty lashes, and a knife test, and I passed… master." Nua explained.

"Knife… test?" Raymond asked but it was more of a distraction to buy time for his mind to process what he was seeing.

'Dominic wouldn't do this… he couldn't have.' Raymond told himself and tried to picture it… only to succeed with ease. 'Yes… he could. He easily could.'

"For elven bodyguards… I am to drive you, and… protect you if I must." Nua explained.

"You can fight?" Raymond asked, his mind reeled under the assault on his senses, from the smell of blood, from what he saw before his eyes, from what he imagined, and from what he heard from her own lips.

"No, master. It is my job to die if I have to." Nua explained, and a memory tickled at the back of Raymond's mind, a long discontinued practice. Some humans used elves as bodyguards, training them not to fight, but to get in the way of any blow in order to protect their master's life. They got better lives, generally. But if their owner died in an attack, the elf that failed would receive an agonizing death. 'That practice fell out of favor over fifty years ago at least…'

"Master… if you don't intend… something else, may I dress?" Nua asked, and Raymond blinked his eyes as he snapped out of his daze, he'd all but forgotten her nakedness in the face of everything else.

"Yes… of-of course. But… why weren't you healed?" Raymond asked.

"Potions cost money and if they used herbs I would have stunk." Nua explained matter of factly while she began to wiped off the water and put her clothing on again. "What value is a little pain for me if it is an expense in coin or comfort to you to fix it, master?" It was a rhetorical question, one she wasn't expecting an answer to.

"And… why didn't you tell me you were injured… why not use the bathhouse here…?" Raymond asked, and she blinked her sky blue eyes at him.

"Because master is a Cardinal. It wouldn't please you to know that an elf bathed in the same water as people, and it wouldn't matter to you if I was injured unless it kept me from work. I can still work, so it doesn't matter. So I came here to clean the wounds myself… I didn't know My Lord would be up so early… if it pleases you, I can have something brought to punish me with." She said it all with such eerie calm, without any pleading or begging, not since she'd asked him the first time not to hurt her if she worked hard.

'She might be lying…' He tried to tell himself, 'Maybe she is rebellious and that is why Dominic beat her the way he did…' Again the image came to his mind of Dominic bringing the lash down on her flesh over and over… and it was far too easy. 'A test… it sounds like something he would do…' Raymond had to concede that much.

"Nua…" He said, and she went down on her knees and faced him again.

The faint orange light of the sun was starting to rise.

"Master?" She asked without looking up at him.

A thousand words went through his mind, and Raymond discarded them all. "Stand up, we're going to go to the apothecary and get you a healing potion."

"At this hour, my lord… I'm sure they won't be open." She answered and looked at the horizon as the light crept toward the well where he stood.

"I'll make them open. Just get dressed and come on." He said, and Nua rose to her feet to obey, and when she was dressed, she followed him to the stable.