II

About an hour and three baths later Adrian was scrubbed clean, his skin raw and red from scraping the accumulated filth. He was currently in cotton trues and nothing else as he worked on helping Isi get more presentable. She had also been scraped clean, her skin showing a slightly darker red hue from the abrasive soaps as well and her hair the pristine shimmer of platinum once again shining as it lay in damp clean lines down her back. He brought the scissors up and carefully cut her long hair straight across her back at the hips. It was not the first time she had had him cut her hair, but it was the first time he had done so with nice scissors that didn't rip and pull.

She stood there naked looking at herself in the tall glass mirror, her fingers playing over her protruding ribs. She looked starved, but then so did he, his ribs stuck out just as far. Slowly she reached up and pulled her newly washed and trimmed hair over her shoulder. Her fingers deftly started parting the hair into seven different strands before she began weaving it in an elegant braid that she lay over the shoulder. Once done she tied it off with a scrap of silk ribbon that had been brought with the dress that had been laid out for her.

Turning she took the scissors and stood up on the tips of her toes reaching up to snip his hair. Adrian caught her by her wrists and stopped her, opting instead to seat himself on the floor and allow her easy access to his head. For the next few minutes, he closed his eyes while she cut, as she hummed a soft song he didn't recognize under her breath. When she had finished with his hair she leaned down and began trimming his beard. He was surprised she didn't simply cut the damned thing off, he had thought about doing it himself multiple times, but she simply trimmed it up. Lightly brushing a bit of hair off of the bridge of his nose she stepped aside and let him look at himself in the mirror.

He barely recognized himself.

In that polished glass, he looked nothing like what he used to, gone was the young man of 17 years who had marched out to war, fresh and as green as a sapling during Green Leaf. The man sitting in front of the mirror was hardened, the dark brown hair on his head cut evenly if simply had a touch of premature gray in it. Not much, just a few strands. The beard on his chin was short, about an inch long, and the chin area a lighter color of brown, almost blond. One scar ran down from just under his right eye down almost to the jaw, the gouge roughly sewn by the very hands that cut his hair and now rested on his back as she surveyed her handiwork. Where the scar went into the beard no hair would grow, giving him a particularly savage look. The biggest change, however, was his eyes.

Before his green eyes would sparkle with joy and life, now, however…

Inside was something dark, vengeful, jaded…

As he looked into his own eyes he wondered what that Kurtz guard had seen before he had died. Adrian could still hear the man’s gargled screams as water entered his mouth, entered his lungs. He could still feel the burn in his arms as he held him down until the fight had left him…

He felt a squeeze on his shoulder, and blinked, glancing up he saw Isi staring at him through the reflection of the glass. He locked eyes with her, her amethyst ones staring deep inside his very soul, nodding as he got up and turned to face her. His hand came up, the pointer curled under and the thumb pressed flat lightly against her chin, he lifted her face, angled it up to his own, and leaned down and kissed her, pressing his bruised chapped lips against hers.

It was a soft thing, a thank you in action when he felt he could not express it in words.

She smiled against his lips and pulled away, over to the clothing they had laid out for her. It was simple and comfortable clothing as they would not be going out to meet any guests. Food had been brought up for them and the two of them fell on it almost ravenously, devouring it in next to no time. It was the first good meal Adian had eaten in almost six years, five in the work camp and another seven months that he held the Fortress of Marumar on the Kurtz-Helheim border before he had been ordered to surrender the keep to the enemy after a treaty was made.

It almost did him in.

Breathing deeply he closed his eyes, nostrils flared as he fought back the sting of tears refusing through sheer effort of will alone he would not break down and weep, not here. He felt deep inside of himself, snatching at the anger that had kept him alive these past years and embraced it. It didn't take long before the immediate threat of weeping was over, replaced with a slow-burning rage that calmed his frayed nerves, and helped him think straight.

The only reason he had not gotten to eat a good meal in the past six years was because someone had betrayed him. Someone had purposefully left his name off of the list of people to be ransomed. There was no way it could have been a mistake, all of his subordinates were ransomed back, and the coin matched the contract meaning that his name had never been put on there.

He would find the person that had done this to him and there would be a reckoning, and reparations of the most violent sort, this he had sworn years ago, and this he planned to do…

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Isi yawned, her small hand covering her mouth and he suddenly felt very tired himself. With a smile, he led Isi over to the bed and helped her in before sliding in next to her. She turned and snuggled up against his side, her head resting on his chest, and was out in seconds. Adrian smiled sleepily looking down at her, it felt like someone had attached lead weights to his eyelids and he struggled for the briefest of moments before giving up and closing his eyes, he placed a kiss on her forehead and was out in seconds, following her into the dream world and completely forgetting he was supposed to tell his friend what had happened these past five years…

***

“Then High-hand Haidris had that unfortunate reversal, we held the keep for almost seven months against the Kurtz empire’s forces,” Adrian chuckled darkly, his eyes distant as he saw the past and not the room or occupants around him. “I swear there was not a single rat left uncooked by the time the Emperor had treated with them.” Heathri’s wife looked sick at the thought of eating rodents, she didn't know, couldn’t have known, for the past five years of his life, a rat would have been a king's bounty. “We were ordered to lay down our arms and locks and surrender the keep over to the enemy commander.” He smiled slightly, the smile never reached his eyes as both his hands curled into fists. He felt strange sitting there, warm, safe with a belly full of food and wearing something more than rags again after so long, he pushed the feeling aside and kept telling his story. “For my consultation, I had been informed that our fortress had cost the Kurtz empire an extra 450,000 thousand coins in the treaty tent, plus what we cost him in the field those seven months.”

“I remember hearing about that, the kingdom was in an uproar about handing over the land, and for such a small amount of money,” Heathri spat the words out as though they tasted of bile, and Adrian blinked out of his fog and smiled at his friend.

“Indeed, it was a poor recompense for the lives we spent,” Adrian nodded, glancing over at Isi. She was currently plucking at the frills of her dress in discomfort, obviously annoyed at being so restricted in her clothing that she couldn't even really sit down properly without his aid, what with the large bustle on it. Though she hadn't complained when the corset had gone on, as even on its tightest setting it barely squeezed her. She was too damned skinny, they would have to fix that. Adrian cleared his throat and began again. “There was an error,” he paused, chewing the word around in his mouth. “A mix-up, when the list of men to be ransomed arrived together with the chest of gold my name had been left off it somehow, the Kurtz quartermaster swore there was no mistake because the amounts counted out evenly with the names...” Adrian’s face had grown dark, “Though my officers were rescued I was put in with the un-ransomed men, and we were all marched to Kultar to be sold to the highest bidder or shipped to work camps.”

“Surely you protested!” Heathri’s wife, a woman named Freya, had pulled in a gasp of horror.

“Ha!” a short humorless laugh forced its way out of Adrian’s thought, “Of course, I protested all the way to Kultar, I protested up till they threw me in the work camp as a slave to work the Synid mines for them.” Isi stopped messing with her dress and glanced over at him giving him a reassuring look. “Once in the camps one learns not to protest, it's much better to simply keep your head down and try not to piss anyone off.” Adrian possessed, “Though you can't look too weak or everyone will prey on you.” he tried to shake off the memories of those poor bastards who couldn't protect themselves. “I worked their mines for a long time,” five years seven months, and three weeks he had counted it out later at the time he could not have told one day from the next. “Isi was thrown in at some point, I think perhaps two or three years into my imprisonment.”

“They just threw a woman into a work camp full of slaves? What did they think would happen?! Were the guards making sure she was properly protected?” Heathri’s wife sounded beyond scandalized.

“No,” he responded and at the confused look on Freya’s face he explained. ”You have to understand how a Kurtz labor camp works,” Adrian said, running his hand through his hair. “There are no guards inside the camp, just on the parameters, the guards only show up to drop off food supplies and new slaves, when the quota was not met, and you really didn't want to be around for the latter of those, and honestly it was probably best to stay away from the two former ones as well, gets pretty nasty most of the time...” he looked at her, “So to answer your question, no no one was going to help her or protect her, except for a daft fool like me,” a real smile touched his lips at that, and both Heathri and his wife smiled back, Heathri looking a little proud of his childhood friend. “And then we had the best kind of luck, self-made, a fight broke out, a lot of people dying and when the guards rushed in to prevent the slaves from killing one another Isi and I slipped out, only ran into two guards.” one had been drowned in the river by Adrian, the other…

He glanced over at Isi, wondering if it was just a trick of the light that seemed to make those amethyst eyes glow right then or there or if she was doing something, just like she had done to that man…

There hadn't even been enough of him to bury, or identify as human…

“We walked from the port city of Haltra all the way here, four weeks, doing our best to avoid any and all Kurtz patrols, which proved easy enough as no one would stop a couple of beggars, or if they did it was only for sport, and we would not have been much sport at all.”

“Four weeks?” Heathri breathed out in horror.

“Indeed, and I shall say it is damned good to be home.” he sighed as he leaned back in his chair. “Heathri, have you sent word to my father yet of my return?

“No, not yet, I thought it would be best left to you-”

“Thank you,” Adrian breathed a sigh of relief. “For now I just want to spend the majority of my time eating and sleeping, I don't think I can handle complex matters at the moment.”

“Well this is your home, I can't think of a better place to recuperate, we shall leave you, for now, rest, and please do not hesitate to ask for anything at all...”