Black Hearts, Part Eleven (PG)
Feb. 22nd, 2007 08:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhal“Terinu, are you all right?” Mark called out for what was probably the twentieth time. It had been perhaps two days since his interview with Chan, going by the number of meals served by the sullen guards. The alien boy had been in a silent funk that entire time apparently uncaring that his friend Matt had been unable to sneak any more food to him. Mark had not seen the handsome young man since spying on his covert exchange with Terinu.
He could see the boy's reflection in cell door, curled up in a miserable ball. Mark would have though the kid would have turned away from the cruel pictures still taped to his door, but instead he faced them. When he opened his eyes they would be the first thing he saw, which might be one of the reasons he'd been ignoring Mark's entreaties to talk. Was that a sign of bravery, resolution, or the need to self-inflict psychic wounds from his inability to rescue Leeza Blake?
“Whaddya want?” Terinu finally answered. His voice sounded slurred, woozy. Come on Ter, you gotta eat. You know what happens to ya if you don't, Matt had said. Unless the kid was some kind of double-jointed wonder, he had to be in agony by now at least, his arms forced behind his back for at least forty-eight hours.
“Are you okay?” Mark asked.
“Fine,” Teirnu answered, voice flat. “Just great.”
He had to keep the boy talking, get his brain out of the all too familiar pain loop he was stuck in. A horrible vision crossed Mark's mind of somehow directing Terinu from starvation to overindulgence, leaving the short gray boy as a squat and round as Mark had been when he'd first arrived at Vorkosigan House. Talk, he told himself, words, not food, are the only shot at helping this kid. “What's with you and Blake? Why is she so important to you? Why does Chan want to hurt her?”
“Blake... Blake is like Matt, she's always watchin' out for me,” Terinu answered slowly. “Once... I ran from Chan, after I...” He shook his head. “Doesn't matter anymore. Anyway, I ended up getting' caught by the GSA, after I thought I was free of her. Ended up being convicted as a pirate and sold off to a bio firm to be dissected. I was brought to a refueling station to be transferred to another ship, when the station was attacked. I scarpered free of the guards that were escorting me and bumped into Blake in an elevator shaft. She helped me out of my cuffs and then I helped her re-power her ship. We just got clear of the station before it blew. Blake didn't care I was a crook, she just helped me, no questions asked. Even defended me from her stupid cousin, who wanted to chuck me into the brig.” Terinu swallowed hard. “Later, Chan laid a trap, caught me, Blake, Rufus, and her cousin Lance. I fooled Chan for a little while, pretendin' I wanted back in with her, long enough for them to escape. Except that Leeza stayed behind, to try and get me away from Chan. Chan ended up goring her with a knife. If the GSA hadn't shown up after the Treona's emergency screamer went off, she would have died. Died for me.” He shook his head. “I don't get it.”
“Why does Chan want you so bad?”
“There's nobody else like me in the universe,” Terinu said. “I may be the last of my kind alive. She found me, raised me, trained me to be her personal throat cutter. She was pissed as hell when I told her to fragg off.”
“The problem with raising your own assassin is that their loyalty isn't a guarantee,” Mark noted.
Terinu grunted. “Not for me. Remember when I told ya my race was genetically engineered? The guy who did it built somethin' special in. Whoever is the one givin' the orders when we grow up, we see as our master. If Chan gave me an order, I obeyed it, period. No choice. Couldn't argue with her or nothin'. I just had to do it.”
“But you don't now?”
“She beat the crap out of me just before she speared Blake.” The boy swallowed again. “It was enough to... convince me she wasn't my real master.”
“The man who commissioned me, Ser Galen, I never saw as my master,” Mark said. “It was enough that I had no idea who I was. My whole life was bent around the idea of replacing my brother Miles, in a substitution plot designed to send Barrayar's government into chaos. I didn't even have my own name, just his. I was so empty, readying myself to take over Mile's life, I didn't realize until Galen was dead that I'd never had one of my own.”
“Looks like you made out, judgin' from those fancy duds you're wearing.”
“I had the advantage of a remarkably flexible family,” Mark admitted.
“I got no family, just a few friends,” Terinu said, staring at the terrible pictures, “and I'm runnin' short of those real fast.”
“What would Leeza want you to do right now, you think?” Mark asked. Maybe if he could motivate the kid to rescue her, it would get him out of his funk. Damn, if Miles were here he'd have had the kid coming up with escape plots of his own two days ago.
“She wouldn't want me to work for Chan again. Hell, I don't want to work for Chan again.” Terinu sat up awkwardly, reaching out to touch at one of the pictures of his friend with the tip of his long tail. Then he sighed and got to his feet. “Then again, there's a lot of stuff I've done that I never thought I'd do.”
Oh, no. No, no, no. He'd meant to motivate the kid, not make him suicidal.
“Guard! Hey, guard!” After a moment, the corridor hatch opened and the guard came in, demanding to know what Terinu wanted. “I want to talk to Lady Mavra,” the boy said. The guard grunted and left without another word.
“Terinu, this is a bad idea,” Mark said, trying to figure out how to stop the kid.
“If it'll keep Blake alive, it'll be worth it,” Terinu said, not facing Mark's reflection. A moment later Mavra Chan walked in, looking pleased.
“Something you want to say to me, Mouse?” she asked.
“I wanna go back t' work for ya,” Terinu said, staring not at Chan, but somewhere over her shoulder. Seeing Blake in some cell beyond here? Mark wondered.
“I've heard that song from you before, Mouse,” Chan said. “Why do you think I'll believe it this time?”
“I want ya to stop hurting Leeza,” Terinu said, tail dropping flat to the floor as he ducked his head down. “Stop hurtin' her and I'll do anything you want, I swear!”
“To have you zap me and short out my eye again when my back is turned? No deal, Mouse,” Chan answered.
“Ya don't have to let her go or nothin', just don't hurt her!”
Chan appeared to consider that a moment. “A hostage for good behavior? That might be acceptable, if I was sure of your sincerity.”
“Waddaya want out of me?” Terinu begged, “how can I prove it?”
Yeah, how? Mark wondered.
She tapped the glass of his cell door. “Get on your knees and beg, like the rat you are. Beg well, and I'll let Leeza Blake live. Act like it's just a show, and you get to watch her die.”
Her eyes glinted in triumph, as Terinu nodded slowly and dropped back down to his knees, bowing low in front of her, until his head almost rested on the floor. “Lady Chan, please... please don't kill Leeza. Please stop hurtin' her. I'll do anythin' ya want me to, but please don't hurt Blake no more.”
Chan leaned up against the door, looking down on her prize. “Welcome home, Terinu,” she whispered.
TBC
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-23 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-23 07:50 am (UTC)Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh
mjkj
Re: Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh
Date: 2007-02-23 07:37 am (UTC)Re: Re: Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh
Date: 2007-02-23 07:42 am (UTC)*is relieved*
mjkj
no subject
Date: 2007-02-23 10:45 am (UTC)I hope, I just hope, that he can chuck his swearing as soon as Leeza's safe.
*ponders a little* for some reason, though, getting him in the Nexus offers a neat solution about him being the last of his race... ahem.
I am soooo looking forward to learning where this is going. Wonderful work (as always!)
Just a couple of things I did notice - one of them was pointed out by
“looks like you made out, judgin' from those fancy duds you're wearing.”
Capitalize. "Looks like..."
A moment later Mavra Chan walked it, looking pleased.
Chan walked in