Chapter 21: Wherein Gazes Pierce Deeply

The comings and goings of people in and out of my room became my dreams. Mitchillie washing and dressing my wounds, the initial biting agony of the salve she put to calm the skin, my own cries of pain – a dream. The Grand Master feeding me soup with a small wooden spoon, patting my head – a dream. Some young man washing my hot face with a refreshingly cool cloth, again and again – another dream. At night my friends the rats came out to visit me, their encouragement, their comforting voices – my dream.

    Through it all, I slept, one day and one night, until day came again. I slept on, deeply, tiredly, as if sleep would fix everything that was wrong with me.

    "It's time to wake up," someone said.

    I shook my head, no.

    "Rat," the old man said, "you need to wake up."

    My name had a magical pull over me, like a string tied to my heart. The old man tugged on it and I was drawn out from the deep murky world I had submerged in. My eyes opened, my eyelashes fluttering against the fabric of the pillowcase. It was morning, and he was sitting in a chair by the bed. I was lying on my stomach with my cheek mashed against the pillow. I wiped drool from the corner of my mouth and the side of my face and blinked.

    Did he just call me Rat for the first time? I regarded his face; was he honestly concerned about me?

    "How do you feel?" he asked.

    "Like I was run over by an entire train," I croaked.

    "Are you thirsty?"

I was, very. I nodded into the pillow.

He picked up a glass of water. "You can turn onto your back. You heal remarkably fast."

    Gingerly, I obeyed. Someone had put a soft cotton shirt on me, I eased myself onto my back, my muscles tensing as, carefully, I nestled into the mattress. The Grand Master handed me the glass and I drank in small sips.

    "Rat," he began as I was drinking – there, he said it again, now I could be certain. I blinked at him over the brim of the glass. "I'm sorry."

    I coughed on the water, distrust flashing its light through my brain. So this was the old man trying to appease me? I lowered the glass but didn't say anything, staring at him, curious to see how he would go on.

    "I am at fault. I should have warned you or taken you with me," he continued his voice annoyingly soft. It was annoying because it was all working on me, his seemingly sincere apology, his use of my name, I couldn't be mad at him like I wanted to be. "I promise that I will do my part with better care from now on."

    "I can't trust you," I said bluntly, trying to shape my own heart with my words. But my silly heart was betraying me; like a dog, it was alarmingly easy for him to please me. "It was a magician who did it to me. And it wasn't the first time I met him. Don't all magicians answer to you?"

    "Rat, do you remember his face?" His voice was disturbingly serious.

    "Yes," I answered tentatively.

    "Picture him for a moment in your mind and let me see who it is."

    I didn't have a chance to reject his request, because the magician's face was already in my mind; it had jumped there the moment he had been mentioned. I felt the little peek, the subtle and hasty intrusion. It was unpleasant and terribly intimate. Automatically I tried to block it, my head fortifying itself.

    But he got his little peek, it was all he needed. "Quintoxe Orgrette," the Grand Master breathed out angrily, his face darkening with disgust; he shook his fists in the air. "Slime," he muttered underneath his breathe. "Filth. Maggot."

    I snorted at the Grand Master's stunted swearing repertoire. He came back to his senses and awkwardly put away his fists. "He is an ill-content magician, unfortunately, one of several," he explained, "Cooper overshadowed many magicians. Some of them could have been splendid War Magicians if they had put their heart into it. But it is a malady that magicians have, a weakness. – They powerfully long to be recognised. It is stronger than their will to reach excellence in magic. Ah, and some of them, you could say, are merely bad weeds."

    "What are you going to do?" I asked.

    "I'll have to think about it." The Grand Master rubbed his chin. "If I invite him for an audience, he'll know what I intend and will pack his bags and leave the Kingdom. I must find his whereabouts without him sensing my scrying. And when I get my hands on him, I will treat him to some Argentbane."

    "Argentbane? That's the stuff they put on me?"

    The Grand Master frowned. "Unfortunately, yes."

    I nodded with satisfaction. "Good."

    "He probably will never come out of it," the old man said, his voice strange. "They never do, the weak ones, they rot within their flesh until death finally finds them. It takes a while for most to come out of the effects of Argentbane. Do you understand the miracle of your recovery, Rat? Do you understand the recklessness of our King? He is not a sane man, to do what he did to a mere boy."

    "I'm not completely human," I said with confidence, "I'm part rat."

    "This is a serious matter, Rat," the old man scolded gently. "We rarely use the punishment of Argentbane. At best, it takes a few years to rise out of its influence. It is the most severe punishment inflicted on Wielders."

    I didn't bother to argue my point, especially since I wasn't sure where my confidence came from. "When I turn myself into a rat," I said, "it cancels anything that hurts me when I'm a boy."

    "Have you done it before?" he asked, intrigued.

    "Only once before."

    "How did you do it this time?"

    "The others helped me," I said. "The other rats came and invited me to play with them."

    "And you were, uh, playing with rats the entire night?"

    I nodded. "Rats have very clever games."

    "Can you speak with any other animals?"

    "When I'm a rat," I said, "I can understand cats and mice, but they aren't as intelligible as rats."

    The old man mulled this over in his head. He seemed immensely engaged, as if we were discussing some brilliantly complicated riddle. "I wonder if your name is a coincidence or intentional," he said slowly as his mind was busy weighing some other idea. "Rats are everywhere, aren't they?"

    I nodded.

    "Do the rats of the city talk with the rats of the palace?"

    I nodded again.

    "So, in a way, they are like a web of communication    ."He grinned. "Marvellous."

    I caught on, my face brightening, "I can do it." The old man raised an eyebrow at me. "I can find what's-his-name, with the rats' help. He'll never know it; he'll never think to suspect rats as spies."

    The Grand Master frowned. "You must promise me that you will not go seek him out on your own."

    I swallowed. I didn't want to make such a promise, because that was exactly what I had intended to do – to go seek this Quintoxe fellow on my own, to even up the score with my own methods. I was so young, and yet my soul was so bitter and twisted. I longed to hear the screams of the man who had made me fail and taught me the meaning of pain.

    If I could not make the King suffer, I would make Quintoxe suffer, and I would see his agony with my own eyes. "All right," I lied, "it's a promise."

    The Grand Master looked at me quizzically, as if my thoughts were clear to him. They probably were. He didn't trust me in exactly the same way I didn't trust him.

    "Mr. Grand Master," I said, trying to change the subject, and also because there was something I needed to ask. "I wonder," the old man waited for me to ask, "why does the King hate Cooper so much?"

    "Ah," he settled back, "it is a long and short story, as old as any story that involves Kings. He despised Cooper because he is a weak King, and weak Kings, as a rule, hate strong men."

    "Did he kill Cooper?"

    "Kill him? No, he never would." The Grand Master stroked his chin thoughtfully, "He needed Cooper to protect the Kingdom. But that was precisely what made him grow insane with jealousy and hatred. And it didn't help that Cooper spoke so openly about his opinions concerning Kings, concerning women's rights, concerning the whole monarchial system. He was a creative lad, always seeking new ways to improve things. That was what made him a spectacular magician."

    "Did Cooper hate the King?"

    The Grand Master smirked bitterly. "He had good reason to. But he was always smartly playing a game, like an actor upon a stage."

    "What was his reason?"

    The Grand Master shook his head. "Don't trouble yourself with it."

    "I'm already troubled by it," I insisted. "I'll find out, even if you won't tell me."

    The old man exhaled dramatically, making it clear that I was nagging him. "Then try then and find out if you like. It is not widely known, Cooper was discreet about many things."

    "I wonder if Cooper dying was his way of getting revenge on the King," I thought out loud. The old man's eyes widened at my remark, he stared at me.

    "Why would you say that?"

    I shrugged, I really didn't have a reason for saying most things. Words tended to travel from wherever words were formed straight to my mouth without consulting my thoughts.

    "He would never," the old man said, "kill himself intentionally." There was something very closed off about the way he said it, as if he didn't want to discuss it any farther.

    And then suddenly, I glimpsed something I didn't intend to see and the Grand Master didn't wish to show. My eyes simply went right through what they saw and, thrusting forward like a knife, into the old man's soul. And there, there I found pain, terrible pain.

    It made me shudder and look away. He an old man; he couldn't be allowed such emotions. I was surprised to realise how well such a strong emotion was being hidden, yet now I understood that it was present in everything he did, in every moment I was next to him. And then, as if the glimpse I had caught was a flower bud in my mind, it began unfolding, opening up, unraveling, revealing the source of this pain.

    A wave of pity towards him overcame me; he didn't even notice that I knew what he was hiding so cleverly.

    He was hurting. He was melancholy. He missed Harlock Cooper so badly.

    Yet more than that, even stronger, was his unbearable remorse. But remorse for what? What was it that the Grand Master regretted doing, or not doing? I wondered about the mystery of Cooper's death, and the questions the Grand Master had, questions about himself. I now knew him well enough to see that even when he asked a question with no apparent answer, he was already forming a theory in his mind.

    Did his theory of Cooper's death make him regret?

    I looked out the window. It was late morning and the sun was shining brightly. Autumn was here, and soon the rains would start and the sun would hide for many months. I had to catch it when it was still burning. "I think I want to go out for a walk," I said in a strained voice.

    The Grand Master gave me an odd look. "That will be for the best," he agreed.

A/N - This was another favourite scene of mine. Going back to Rat after not touching it for over three years, I can't remember my thought process while writing this, so I was surprised by how wise Marning can sound. Also, I love their relationship and the contrast there is between the old man who has learned to hide his pain and his true feelings as opposed to the boy who is nothing but raw emotion. I knew I wanted to achieve something along those lines and I wonder if I'm the only one who was moved by this scene.