Chapter 315

Zesshi felt an unexpected sense of relief when she entered the room and found that Layali was still where she'd been left. The heart in Zesshi's breast had quickened for a moment when she touched the rusted iron handle of the door, and began to slow as soon as the small girl came into view. 'So the locks don't work… marvelous. What a place.' Zesshi thought, but covered her thoughts with words.

"Lie down on the bed, I'm going to remove your bandages." Zesshi said, and Layali wordlessly obeyed.

Zesshi's fingers deftly undid the knot just above the girl's ankle which held the wrap in place, and with slow and steady care, after raising the injured leg in one hand, she began to unwind the bloodstained white cloth.

"How… how long till you leave me behind?" Layali asked, looking up at her caretaker with luminous and fearful trembling pupils.

"Don't worry about it." Zesshi said after a few more turns around the girl's leg. "We're still a long way from Arwintar, Brain will kill your tormenter, and then you'll be put in a nice place and everything will be fine."

Whether a 'nice place' existed or not that would take her, Zesshi had no idea, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

"No, he won't… he… he doesn't have a sword anymore… and it's all my fault… it's all he's got and I took it away from him… he can't fight without that…" Layali began to whimper a little, and her little childish eyes filled with tears. "He can't fight, can't kill Cerebrate… he can't fight in that tournament… he's traveled all this way and I ruined it! I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to! And I don't want to be left behind!" She began to weep. "Why're you even taking care of me if you're just going to get rid of me?!"

The girl wept, her words, all over the place; her fears, scattered, but Zesshi had to ask.

"How do you know about the sword? I tossed that away." Zesshi replied, then corrected her, "And I'm the one who messed it up, just so you know."

Layali rubbed the snot from her little button nose and laughed, "I might have known, you're bad at stuff… lotsa stuff… I saw where you tossed it, I thought it was funny Brain didn't sleep with his sword like he did every night so I looked at it… An then… then I looked around, you didn't toss it far enough, saw what was left of it…"

Zesshi's face turned red. "Damn it!" Her ears drooped a little, "I heated up his sword to help seal your wound, but I went too far with it, and the damn thing just kept getting hotter, it was… it was ruined. Brain was busy with you so I… when he said just toss it away, I thought he meant literally. So I tossed it where I figured… but you did."

Layali laughed in spite of herself, and then shut down, staring up at the ceiling while Zesshi resumed the process of removing the bandage until it was gone and all her wounds were exposed again. Zesshi lowered Layali's foot onto her thigh so that the young girl's leg was elevated, and looked over the many marks. The bleeding was gone and they were looking better.

"I'm… I don't know the answer to your question." Zesshi said at last. "I just… I can't stay in this country anymore. I don't know where to go, I don't have a home anymore as far as I'm concerned. In a way, I'm just like you."

Layali gave a long hard look at her. "Nuh uh. You're strong. Real strong. You can do whatever, nobody can say no unless you let em. I'm the opposite. I can't say no unless people let me… nobody wants to feed me… I go hungry… nobody wants to protect me… I'll die… Cerebrate finds me again… or someone like him… all I can do is cry… if nobody helps me… I don't wanna die anymore… I don't wanna be alone either! There's no nice place for kids nobody loves! I'm going to die out there, and lucky means it'll be quick!"

She went back to her quiet weeping, "So why're you taking care of me if you're just gonna let that happen later anyway…? I already took Brain's dream… took away his sword…"

"He'll buy another…" Zesshi answered, and snapped her mouth shut at the girl's dismayed expression.

"I saw a magic sword once… I was… I was serving in my father's house, a merchant was visiting, super important man I guess, and… he offered my father the chance to buy one. A dozen platinum coins…" Layali said, her face bitter and twisted.

"I can barely believe Brain didn't just… get rid of me over the potion, let alone the sword…" Layali pursed her lips, and Zesshi only cocked her face slightly to one side.

"Potion…?" She asked.

Layali pointed to her eye. "When we met… he was gonna buy a horse then, he had plenty of money, went out to rescue a priest… but we've got no horse, do we? So… he spent it all… or nearly all, on a healing potion for me… maybe the priest found out I was a half elf, or maybe potions just cost that much… but I've… cost him a lot… getting rid of me… it makes sense… it makes sense but… it makes sense but… but… but… I don't wanna be left behind…"

She cut herself off, and said a swift "shhh. Don't say anything. Please." Layali pled, and closed her eyes.

Zesshi's ears twitched, the steps out in the hall could have been anyones, but then… 'No, the pace… that's how he walks… hmpf, I never thought about that before.' The half elf wanted to sigh at her own ignorance being removed yet again, but instead she focused her eyes on the girl lying on the bed pretending to be asleep.

Brain entered the room and held out bandages and some cheap clay bottles sealed with white wax. "I have what we need, good… she's asleep. This stings and I'd hate to make it hurt."

Zesshi nodded along, "Yes, she was in pain, but exhausted, I guess." It was true enough at least.

"Good, now let me show you how to do this." Brain said, and began the slow process of instruction. Zesshi's nimble fingers fumbled a fair bit… "Not so much, it doesn't do any good to overuse it on the same spot, you just want it to be over and just barely around the wound, we don't have to drown the bandage."

Zesshi turned red faced again and again as he taught her how to do field first aid without magic, and little by little her fingers fumbled less as they went along.

And while they worked, Zesshi chose to address him on what Layali brought up. "So, do you really plan on leaving her somewhere?"

Brain raised his eyes from Layali's face to look over at Zesshi who was steadily massaging the injured muscle of Layali's legs to help it loosen up. "What brought this on?"

"I was just thinking, you and I both know you can't 'win' at this tournament. Not with me there, so… are you really okay with just dropping Layali in an orphanage somewhere?" Zesshi asked, and Brain thought that over.

"I was actually hoping to find a family to foster her. There are former elven slaves in the northern part of the Kingdom of Nazarick. A lot of families there, they're dark elves rather than wood elves… but still… if I explain things, I'm sure someone would take her in." Brain suggested.

"Why not keep her with you?" Zesshi asked, and tried to ignore Brain's sigh.

Brain looked down at the sleeping girl, his thumb wavered a little, but he brushed aside a bit of stray golden hair to reveal the eye that had once been missing. Without looking at Zesshi, he spoke to her, "I can't. I can't take care of a kid, I don't know the first thing about how to raise one. I've barely managed to keep this one from dying. Besides, I'm a human, the only thing she knows about human men is that they either don't care about her, or want to hurt her. She'd never want to stay. And more than that, I'm not a good man, Zesshi. She'd grow up on the road and learn nothing a girl should learn, by staying with me. I'll find somewhere good for her, a nice house, some good people who want a child, and I'll make sure she's safe. That's all I can do. Now drop it."

Zesshi abided by his wishes, and didn't ask further. But she didn't move either. Nor did she forget what she'd overheard. Brain came and went from the room, bringing a meal, and saying, "You two take the bed, I'll be fine on my bedroll on the floor."

The half elf didn't argue, and Layali did not break her act of pretending to be asleep. 'She's really good at that…' Zesshi noted in the back of her mind, and did her best to copy the act when darkness set in, and waited for Brain to leave.

He moved with silence that would have been the envy of almost any member of the Black Scripture, but it was no match for Zesshi's senses, her ears twitched as she followed after him. The buildings of the town were not overly large, nothing compared to Ikari, but there were enough multistory buildings for Zesshi to follow him with relative ease from a distance.

'Not a good man, he says…' She thought while she watched him hop over the low wall to the mayor's estate. 'He's going to go and set more slaves free.' Zesshi never had the best opinion of the idea of 'heroism' for heroism's sake, most members of the Black Scripture felt the same, but there were those, like Time Turner, who genuinely felt the need to protect the weak 'because' they were weak.

While her own views hadn't changed much, it was hard not to admire the conviction of action. And so, she followed him, though not within… and then it hit her. 'I… I haven't seen any elves in this town… no half elves, no full elves… and if some of them were in that house…?' She jumped atop the roof of a building and stared into the darkness, watching through the glass as Brain began grabbing objects of silver and gold and throwing them into his magic pouch. Cups, plates, flatware, small bowls…

The estate had a multitude of windows to let in natural light, and she watched as he went from room to room, pilfering what he could cram into the pouch, until he seemed satisfied, and left the way he came.

The whirlwind of emotions grabbed Zesshi harder than the tentacles had previously grabbed Layali, and she jumped down to where he stood, grabbed him by the throat before he realized she was there, and with a running start that lifted his legs from the very ground, she jumped beyond the low walls and through the night air.

"Zeschi… Schwat are you doing… can't… breathe…" He gasped as he flailed in the dark until she landed with a thunderous crash to the ground well outside the town and slammed him bodily to the ground, knocking the wind from his lungs and sending him into a spasm of coughing and choking, unable to rise as she glared down at him.

"You're no… rescuer! You're a common thief!" She shouted down at him with her fists clenched and her body trembling with outrage.

In a disconnected sort of way that reminded Brain of the moment of his defeat by Gazef Stronoff years before, he was keenly aware of everything around him. And like that moment, he felt an unusual kind of calm, despite his coughing and choking as he struggled to rise, and spat out…

"Fuck… you… Zesshi."