Unnamed and Unfinished Ort Fic

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“So, it’s… Ort, is it?”

Castti sat down across from the fully-armored, wild-eyed man. She lowered herself carefully into a rickety wooden stool, holding a stein of steaming hot mead in each hand.

“Sir Ort Edgeworth,” he replied vacantly. “I suppose.”

Castti sat down one stein in front of herself, and extended the other to the knight. He stared at it. His gauntleted hands clenched reflexively, but neither separated themselves from what they were currently holding, the steel hilt of a blood-drenched great sword.

Castti pushed the mead across the table to him. “You’ll have to put that down.”

Ort looked around him at the nearly empty room. It was the dead of night, and they were in an establishment that you would walk into with an armored man holding a freshly bloodied sword. Around them were a half-dozen empty tables, and behind the bar was one large, stone-faced man and one small, hawk-eyed woman. When the party had stumbled in half an hour ago there had been a good handful of working women, clad too thinly for the bitter night outside, but they had all quickly scattered to their private rooms. Castti had cleaned out their pockets paying for some rooms for themselves and for silence, and a quick and quiet discussion had led to Throne and Agnea filtering away to one room, Temenos and Crick to another, and Castti setting down the final, dazed, glass-eyed member of their party to gently disarm him.

Temenos had seemed to trust the haunt she was sitting across from implicitly, and had been focused on the injured Sir Wellsley. Throne clearly hadn’t, but she had left all the same. Castti was assuming that Throne was actually standing behind a wall or nearby door, listening, because she likely had the same thought about the black-haired knight that Castti did: that he had to be disarmed completely and kept that way for a while.

Ort took in their meagre company, and seemed even to pick out where others were sequestered in inside rooms, like a hawk hearing rabbit and mice in the snow. Castti weighed her options for what else to say or do, and decided that waiting quietly for a while was better.

Slowly, with a pinched brow, Ort removed his right hand from the blade. It was kept in a firm, expert left-handed grip as he moved to set it onto the table so it would sit between him and Castti. He did not look at what he was doing until he heard a wet sound, a little splatter.

Castti did not look at it, hoping he wouldn’t either. But he did; a puddle of blood and a scrap of gore had fallen off of the broad blade of his sword and landed in the middle of the table, where it now shone as it oozed flat.

“Oh, God,” said Ort, completely flat. And then all at once his face lost his color and his grip began to shake. He tried to lower the sword softly onto the table, but it clattered out of his hand. “Oh, God,” he said again, and with a careless hand through his hair he smeared his forehead with blood.

Castti breathed a sigh, but kept it silent. She did not delight at the pain entering his eyes, but it meant that he had just exited a much more dangerous state. Now she had some hope that he was properly taking stock of his own actions and wouldn’t lash out unthinking.

“Just leave it for now,” said Castti. She focused on keeping her hands still and her tone even. “Please, take a drink. I insist.”

Ort shook his head. His mouth opened and closed. His shock was gone, and the feeling which had replaced it was not pleasant. He put a hand over his eyes—more blood—and breathed heavily.

Castti redirected. “Temenos told me you’re quite young for a Sanctum Knight. Is that true?”

He still took a second to speak. “Yes. Yes, we—it’s an honor. We were actually permitted to skip over a few years of training, it…” His black eyes, glimmering with emotion, appeared over the spiked steel of his gauntlet. “It was. It was planned,” he said bleakly. “I don’t know how. It was. Was it a set-up? All along, was—”

Castti did not know enough about this man to pick safe topics of conversation. “How about taking off your gloves, Ort? That should make it easier.”

Ort looked at his gauntlets, and minutely shook his head again. Castti took a quick glance at the inn workers behind the bar and, to her lack of shock, saw that they were not feeling reassured by the proceedings so far. “Would you please?” Castti asked him.

The need to be polite finally urged Ort forward. Shakingly, he pressed a level that seemed to loosen his right gauntlet. It took some doing still to slowly release it from his hand, the tightness of its technology reminded her more of Partitio’s engines than the inert, layered armor Hikari or Throne wore. “It—I—I—I was never meant to be a Knight. It’s the only thing that made sense. Others were passed over, more seasoned, better trained—She wanted an idiot.”

“Do you need help with your gloves?”

“No. No.” Still he shook as he wrested the other gauntlet off of his dominant hand, because that one had met with the splash-back of the blood he had shed that day. “Soaked—God,” he said, and Castti indeed saw that the thing fabric glove that protected his left hand from the gauntlet was soaked in blood. “Each Hell. I—killed—”

“There’s no need to talk about that right now,” said Castti, nearly convinced it was futile as she said it. There was absolutely no way that the workers watching them did not know Ort was a murderer, and it was a matter if days if not hours before they figured out who he killed. She had come in here with three men who were all clearly churchmen, still emblazoned with holy symbols, and what had happened in Stormhail was not going to remain in Stormhail for long. She could not imagine they were pre-disposed to like churchmen and, objectively, the scandal was so wildly fascinating that the news was going to spread like influenza.

Ort was sharper than he claimed he was. He looked very briefly at the same workers and then shut his mouth. He stripped the gloves from his hands and stared at the lacy patches of blood underneath. He cleaned them on a table-cloth without looking, and then shakily pressed a similar lever on his throat that loosened the armor on his neck.

“Take a drink, please,” Castti said again.

He obediently picked up the stein and drank. Having forgotten to drink herself, Castti did the same. The mead was a perfect temperature and quite strong, with a bite of alcohol under the buzz of honey. Sweet and deceptive; perfect for the establishment’s needs, and it would hopefully soften Ort enough to sleep on it as well.

Having drunk once, he drank again, more deeply. His eyes closed, and stayed closed for a while. Since he seemed to be collecting himself, Castti let him have the silence, out of the corner of her eye, she watched the bartender and the worker make signs at each other with their hands.

When Ort finally opened his eyes, he fixed her with a look that was more firm but no less haunted. “Who are you, stuck to this plot that has naught to do with you? Or does it not?”

If he could be suspicious, he was thinking. “My name is Castti Florenz,” she said, having weighed her options and decided that gaining Ort’s trust was more important than shielding her identity from the onlookers. (She wasn’t even totally sure what that identity was.) “I am an apothecary. I have been travelling with the Inquisitor for some time now.”

“And why is that?”

“At first, we were merely going the same way on a difficult road. We continued being of use to each other so consistently that we decided to remain so,” she summarized. It was complicated; they were mutually attached to several people who frequently required healing services. Temenos himself was a fine friend when he wasn’t in a mood. “I can tell you that my knowledge of his doings is rudimentary, and I think I am just now realizing how rudimentary that is.”

Ort exhaled, a single, bitter chuckle. He seemed to consider saying something, but thought better of it, returning to his drink again.

“If you have any other questions, I’ll seek to answer them.”

“I have questions, but not for you,” he said darkly. “No, one; where is Crick taken?”

“The Inquisitor took him to a room here to begin healing him,” Castti responded. “I intended to also—”

Ort set his drink down and moved as thought to stand. “How bad are his wounds?”

“Serious but not deadly,” Castti replied confidently. In actuality they could be deadly, but only if untreated. Between her and Temenos they would be able to take care of it. What remained a question was if they would effect them long-term; Kubaryi had cut deep and likely intended to kill. They would never know, because Ort had cleaved her skull in half before she could be asked questions. (That skull-cleaving had been done with such strength and skill that Castti wouldn’t blame anyone who was hesitant to be alone in a room with Ort now.) “I will ask you to give him just a little time to stabilize him; we’ll be able to visit soon.”

Ort visibly hesitated. Castti could guess at some of the things he turned around in his mind as he considered his answer, but not all. She knew he and Crick were close friends. She knew he had been just yesterday a Sanctum Knight and Kaldena’s loyal man. She knew that he had to feel tremendously unmoored now that he had killed several of his fellow knights and was essentially on the run. What she did not know was if there was any history between him and Temenos and, if there was, what its nature was.

“Would you let me look at you first?” Castti asked, offering both an excuse to delay and a reasonable thing to do with the time. “I want to make sure that you’re in good shape yourself instead of realizing you need assistance when I’m busy with Crick.”

“I’m not wounded,” he said.

Castti blinked a few times. She pointedly did not look at the listening workers. “I think you just don’t remember being wounded,” she offered.

“I…”

“Things went very quickly. It’s not uncommon to miss having been hurt in such a situation, or to shake it off until later. Finish your drink, and then I’m going to examine you.”

Ort looked up at her with undisguised suspicion. “I’ve lost my taste for the drink,” he said. “Let’s just get on with it.”

The funny thing was that she had considered just slipping some slumberweed into his drink and refrained. She nodded and moved to stand. After tossing a few things around in her head, she leaned forward to gather his sword and dirty gauntlets. “May I?”

He nodded.

Castti picked them up, feeling the now-icy wetness soaked into everything. She marched with more poise than she felt to the door that Throne and Agnea had disappeared through and knocked on it.

After a moment of silence, it creaked open, pushed by a pale hand, which as sure as night belonged to Throne Anguis.

“Thought so,” Castti said.

“Smug,” Throne judged under her voice.

Castti shouldered the door a little further open. Throne was still fully dressed, her leather armor tied up to her neck and down to her boots, and likely had not moved from the spot the whole time. She merely raised an elegant eyebrow when she saw what Castti was carrying.

“Take care of these, please,” Castti asked her. “I hate to ask it, but I know you can.”

“You’ve got as much on your plate, if not more,” Throne whispered. She held out her arms, and Castti made the gristly exchange; another ghost of blood was left on her forearms, and Throne’s were full with the weight. “Does he want them back?”

“Yes. Do whatever you can.”

“Gloves are lost.”

“Then lose the gloves. The rest, though. I’m going to look him over now.”

“Is he hurt?”

“Maybe, maybe not, but he does need distracted. Thank you. Oh,” she said, after staring to turn around, “and the table too, Throne.”

“Sure. Go through the other door, the rooms they gave us are just for girls.”

“Oh,” Castti said. Then, “That was sweet of them to let us in, then. Okay. See you soon.”

Throne hummed in response. Castti, having turned her back on her and her front to Ort, felt more unmoored than she expected to. Still, she heaved a heavy breath, crossed her arms before her, and walked confidently over to the bar. “Is there another room I can take him temporarily, please?”

“…Are you really an apothecary?” asked the woman. She had a surprisingly slight voice.

“I am.”

“Do you think you could look something over for me after?”

That was not really a request, though Castti would have been happy to do so whether it was a requirement or not. “I certainly can.”

“Right this way,” she said.

Castti heard Throne picking up and scraping things behind her. She could hear Ort clattering beside her. They followed the woman to the other side of the house, presumably where work was done, and were led into a room that… was not subtle. It was at least comfortable, if not as sanitary as Castti would normally ask for her work.

This was very risky for them, Castti reflected as the woman snatched a few things up so quickly that Castti couldn’t even see what they were, left, and closed the door on them both. The inn was either used to harboring fugitives or used to hiding clergy, and she wasn’t sure which option she preferred.

…That was a lie. She preferred they be harboring fugitives, who may have nowhere to turn, than hiding clergy, about whom recent events had proved that they could have probably avoided the steps it took to arrive here.

“Does anything hurt?” Castti asked.

Ort collapsed onto the seat of an embarrassingly sized upholstered fainting couch and closed his eyes. “Now that I’m half-settled, I think something is wrong,” he admitted.

“Where?”

In summary, Ort was badly bruised to the point of being contused in several places, including his off-arm and right side, the most serious injury being a completely unfelt sword-slash on his abdomen. He looked generally shocked to see it and was quiet for a while as Castti cleaned him and bandaged him.

“Nothing permanent, no loss of mobility, but do you best to be gentle on it until it scars over. Otherwise you risk re-opening it, which will set the healing process back to day one,” Castti summarized. “I’ve sterilized it but I do recommend you let Temenos hallow it to speed up the process.”

She pointedly did not watch Ort process the information. After he was quiet for a while, she said, “Unless you have clerical abilities yourself?”

“Ha. No.”

“Some Sacred Knights also have the ability, I hear.”

“Some do.”

Not him. Somehow she had sensed that already. Though she would be lying if she said she thought Temenos was more ‘pure’ than any of the rest of them, or even better deserving of divine favor, yet still she knew he had something Ort did not, or herself for that matter. Aelfric was on him and not them; whether the man she knew today was a result of the blessing or the blessing had come as a result of who he was she could not know.

She returned his shirt to him, which was when he appeared to recall he was undressed. He began to replace his clothing and under-armor rapidly, to Castti’s discomfort. She no longer showed her annoyance at people treating the necessities of her job like they were dirty, but it still did annoy her. She sometimes needed to see skin; it was the skin they were born with and often the skin they had just puked all over. Heavens forbid. “It will heal with or without.”

“Let me ask you another thing,” he said.

“Of course.”

“Do you think we are being listened in on?”

“I have no way of knowing,” she said honestly. “I do assume the proprietors are cautious.”

“Hm. What do you know about the Inquisitor?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What sort of man is he?”

“That hardly narrows it down. But I think I understand,” Castti sighed. “Temenos is sharp; I think if I were to use one word for him, it would be that. He’s intelligent and perceptive, he’s good at getting people turned around. He’s secretive, nearly labyrinthine in his habits of hiding anything he can about himself and obfuscating the quest to get there. He can be slightly underhanded in doing what he’s decided to do and so terrible at asking for help that he handicaps himself in his great quest to avoid it. All of this is done in the effort of expertly, fastidiously disguising the fact that he is a decent man, which he seems horrendously embarrassed about. He’s thoughtful, kind-hearted, and so focused on righting wrongs and correcting injustice that he’ll throw a fit if he can’t move the gears that turn the world by himself. Don’t let him fool you; he’s vague and evasive only because he’s embarrassed that he feels so strongly. If something’s wrong, he won’t rest until he rights it; if it’s his fault he’ll tear his face off about it. The church could not have picked a man more suited to the job of fixing its own mistakes. And yet, I find myself wishing they had picked someone else anyway.”

“That is not his job,” Ort responded after a few seconds of silence.

“Oh? What is his job, then?”

“Rooting out heretics.”

“Goodness. Who fixes the church’s mistakes, then?”

“No one does that.”

“Well, no wonder.”

“Miss Florenz,” Ort said, somehow both sternly and apologetically. “I understand that you feel the Inquisitor is a good man, and I respect that you know him well enough to esteem this opinion.”

“That was my basic point.”

“Do you think he is a liar?”

Castti hesitated.

In her opinion, a good person could certainly be a liar. She believed that ‘perfect’ and ‘good’ were opposed to each other, and that ‘good’ almost always meant ‘good enough.’ Besides that she was very much not in the business of rooting out lies herself, being rather predisposed to letting people say whatever they wanted to say and make whatever excuses they wanted to make if it placated their pride enough to let them help her. Often, she had no idea what the truth of a situation was; it was rarely important to her doing her job and often detracted from it. Any apothecary trying to decide whether someone deserved their help more than another was poisoning their aid, she believed.

But did she believe that he was a liar? He obfuscated the truth, sometimes. He hid his intentions to serve a purpose. She had rarely met someone who so solidly believed that the ends justified the means. “Yes,” she said. “I think he bends the truth sometimes, and potentially more often than I can tell.”

((of course then the later point would be that he never lied to Crick, and always treated him as a person, not as an inquisitor, not as if it were part of his job.))

Ort nodded stiffly. Castti had already decided to not say any more if Ort didn’t ask, and he didn’t.

“I’ll go see how Temenos is faring with his patient now,” she said. “Feel free to follow me, but I’ll ask you to let me in alone first.”

“Is that necessary?” he asked.

Castti could be a liar too, if she felt it necessary. “Yes.”

--

Castti closed the door behind her and hurried over to the bedside. “How is—oh.”

Sir Crick Wellsley was laid on top of the black sheets of a quite extravagant hardwood bed, its canopy frame above draped with silver-studded black silk, like the night hung over them. It had to be an expensive room; everything was detailed with stars and lacquered black, and a silver moon hung above them on the ceiling, cut-glass and glittering. She stopped because Temenos was seated on the bed, leaning over the Knight; she stopped because the Knight was not passed out but groggily awake, his lips paused mid-syllable.

“…That’s a good sign!” She said after a moment. “Sir Wellsley, I’m glad to see you awake!”

Temenos backed off of Crick, but only slightly. His face was half exhaustion and half strain; Castti could see that his eyelids were swollen and red. Crick himself was more like half-awake, lying supine and blinking slowly as he took Castti in.

“Miss Florenz,” he eventually said. Also a good sign, since that was short-term memory recall at work. “I’m glad to be alive. I’m not sure about awake, at the moment.”

“You must be in a lot of pain,” she said, approaching the bedside. As she neared, she instinctively reached out a hand to brace Temenos, who also looked like he was about to fall over. He closed his own hand around it, dry and cold.

“Nn… yes,” Crick said, visibly testing a few of his limbs. “Less. A lot less. But it’s still a lot of pain.”

“Yes,” agreed Castti, who had personally witnessed Temenos wrench a sword out of his back, and then had personally staunched the effusive bloodflow which immediately followed. “I’m sure it is.”

“I more feel… slightly…” Crick blinked a few times. “Not real? The pain is still real. Some of the other stuff, though.”

“He feels extreme bloodloss,” Temenos said. His voice was almost like his normal voice, in the way that nettle tea was almost real tea.

“Right,” Castti said. “Sir Wellsley, you’re currently in a temporary state of disorientation. I promise it will pass, but it may be aggravating for a while.”

“I’m not upset,” he said, and closed his eyes. His face was very pale, his skin very tense. “Temenos made me more blood.”

“He. You made him more blood?”

“Yes, Castti,” he sighed. He moved to grab his staff, but it wasn’t on him. He had let it drop onto the ground.

“You can do that?”

“Yes. We can talk about it later,” he said, in the tone of a man who had clearly depleted his own resources to ‘make more blood’ for someone (or just used his own??).

“I’d be interested. Sir Wellsley, you surely feel poked and prodded enough, but would you consent to let me look over you too? An apothecary can sometimes catch—”

“Yeah, sure,” he slurred. “Temenos has been telling me for half an hour that you’ll fix me up better. You’d think listening to him that he couldn’t even fix a dropped plate.”

“This is very flattering,” Temenos noted. “So flattering that I may just leave and not come back.”

“Sir Edgeworth is right outside,” Castti noted quietly. “You may want to prepare yourself before speaking to him.”

“Ah,” said Temenos, and chose to lean backward until his head thumped on a bedpost instead.

“Ort’s here?” Crick said, completely surprised.

“Yes,” Castti said, with a brief look at Temenos. “You may be missing some patches from your memory today, but that’s completely normal. How about while I take a look at you, you can tell me what the last thing you remember is?”

“Is Ort okay?” Crick asked. Castti pulled a black-lacquered chair away from a desk so she could sit at his side… instead of on his bed, like some clerics she could name. “Why is he here?”

Castti was about to gently ask him the last thing he remembered again, as that might alter her answer. Temenos, however, knew him better. “He killed Kubaryi after we found you, as well as three other Sanctum Knights of the Stormhail Cathedral once pursuit began. I weighed the options between leaving him there and taking him with us and took him with us. I will gladly keep telling you this if you need, I find it all quite impressive and appealing.”

Crick did not so much as flinch as Castti began manipulating the skin around his wounds. “By himself?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. That’s really good. He’s so good at this stuff.”

“Is he.”

“I should’ve been helping him.”

“You are an absolutely fascinating man, my dear, lost little lamb.”

“Stop calling me stuff like that,” Crick grumbled, his brow furrowing. “Feels funny.”

“You’re agitating my patient. Sir Wellsley, I need you to turn over so I can see your back.”

“Oh, he’s your patient now,” Temenos sighed, his head still back against the bedpost, eyes closed.

“I have officially taken over custody. You’re about to make yourself into an additional patient. Temenos, he suspects you quite seriously of something, though I’m not sure what,” she said in quick whisper, once Crick was turned over and hissing in renewed pain.

“Oh, I suppose he does. Maybe I was the mastermind behind it all,” Temenos said. The words may have sounded carefree, but his tone had dropped from airy and tired to low and sharp. “Likely it’s all a base power-grab, motivated by greed; hopefully I manipulated him into violence, because the alternative is that he really chose to do that by himself, which would be just awful.”

She recognized it was sarcasm, but she did not appreciate it under the circumstances. “Temenos. He is in an unstable state, and I think he is considering severe solutions to the problem if he decides you are a problem.”

“Oh, no doubt.”

“He was initially in shock, but he’s fully cognizant now and making me slowly regret not drugging his drink.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Temenos. Sir Wellsley, would you please adjust your arm—yes, just like that.”

“You can call me Crick, ma’am,” Crick said into the silk pillow, clearly in a lot of pain and incredibly polite. “I think you’re a lot older than me and I don’t want to seem. You know. The uh. Like I’m rude.”

“Well, that’s so sweet,” Castti said. She glared at Temenos and he clamped down his giggles by biting his lip. “I don’t think you’re rude. I think you have suffered massive bloodloss.”

((Need to have Tem just say ‘invite him in girl I can handle it’ and then incredibly he does. Conversation before sunup, dawn, convinces him to follow, so path actions are accurate.))