Three full days passed before William regained some mockery of consciousness, which amounted to incoherent babbling and incessant blinking.
A word or two. Nothing coherent. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), the only one
who seemed to follow his logic was Cell. Sithe, for her part, didn’t seem
interested in trying to engage him intellectually.
She had received a follow-up letter from Godric, with very
crisp instructions on how to help William recover, and none of them involved
trying to decipher his sick-babble. This didn’t stop Cell from trying, however.
Mid-afternoon on that third day, amidst the clang and bustle
of an orphanage full to bursting, a new figure entered into the private
infirmary that had once been a kitchen. Sithe, delegating the minutiae of
their patient’s care to Cell, approached this new arrival the way a lioness
would stalk a gazelle.
“I will have an explanation,” she hissed. Suddenly, the
entire front room of the Breckenridge Children’s Home was dead silent. The boys
and girls who lived here seemed to know, intuitively, that when Miss Sithe was
in a certain mood, making noise was
an activity best left to the reckless and / or suicidal.
The boy she was currently accosting was taller—but
younger—than William, but otherwise could have passed for his twin. He didn’t
bat an eyelash in response to his matron’s ire. He said, slow and easy, with an
undercurrent of indignant anger: “I may not have joined Akar’s guild, Ma’am, but I learned what I could before I
left. Somebody left a corpse out
behind Belthor’s forge. I had to make sure it was ... taken care of.”
“And that took three
days?!” Sithe seethed. “Vincent, I have been more than patient with you. I
understand that you’re used to a certain way of doing things, and I’m not
stupid enough to think that yelling and screeching at you will be enough to
change those habits. But vanishing for this long without a single word is absolutely inexcusable.”
“William had a sister,” Vincent said, and now there was a
sulk in his voice. “I had to make sure she was okay. Not the easiest task, mind
you. The old adage still holds true, you know.”
Sithe blinked.
“... If you aren’t important enough to have two names, you
aren’t important enough.”
* * *
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