Alisiyad Chapter 32 ~ Tender Loving Care (Part 2)

“Liseli?  Liseli, can you hear me?”

Liseli cracked her eyes open, startled, wondering how she had gone from leaning over the body to lying on her back on the floor, looking up at the worried face of Russ.

“What?” she said dumbly.

“I think you fainted.”  He gave her a half smile, but the worry didn’t leave his eyes.

She turned her head and saw Leeton standing beside the crouching Russ, and she groaned.  Fainted.  How useless. She sat up, and shook her head, still feeling a bit woozy.  “Oh.  I’m alright now.”

“I don’t think so.  When’s the last time you ate something?”

She looked at him blankly.  Eating?  How could he think of eating at a time like this?

“Slept?” Russ persisted when she remained silent.  “Have you even had anything to drink lately?”

“I . . . I don’t . . . look, it doesn’t matter, we have to bar—”

“Like hell it doesn’t matter,” he snapped uncharacteristically, and she was briefly taken aback by his anger.

“Look Russ I’m not a china doll,” she snapped back.  “You don’t have to worry over me.”

“Well one of us has to.”  He wasn’t in any mood to back down, apparently.  “I’m not gonna let you kill yourself before anyone else even gets the chance.  Now stop pretending you’re okay and admit that you need a rest.  For God’s sakes you just passed out!”

“This isn’t the time—”

“—For being stupid,” he finished for her, even though that was not what she’d started to say.  “You can’t drag bodies around, period.  You’re not strong enough.”  She opened her mouth for a protest, but he glanced up at Leeton and went on, “Now, there’s no one storming the castle yet, and I know there’s food here because they fed me, so I’m gonna get Liseli something before she starves.”

Leeton nodded impassively, and Liseli got the feeling that he didn’t really give much of a shit what happened to them.  “I will secure the building,” he said, with unnatural calmness, not seeming to recognize the absurdity of one man barricading all the doors in short enough time.

“It’s easier to break things all by yourself than fix them,” she blurted.

“Truer words . . . .”  A ghost of a smile played across his face.

Russ frowned.  “Liseli, you’ve got to rest.  You look like hell and you’re not gonna be of any help to anyone if you keep on like this.”

Tears welled up unexpectedly when he said that, and Liseli blinked rapidly.  How ridiculous, she thought with dismay, to cry at something Russ said.  Get a grip.

“Alright,” she acquiesced.  “Fine. We’re going to die anyway, I might as well eat before it instead of rushing around worrying.”

“We’re not gonna die if I can help it,” Russ said, sounding so certain she almost believed him.  “Come on.”  He helped her up.  “I would tell you to wait here and rest while I went looking, but I don’t trust you to actually rest.”

She smiled faintly.

“Take one of my dogs with you,” said Leeton, and she could feel Russ stiffen.

“Why?”

“Because it will be able to sniff out where the food is kept, and you wont have to wander around aimlessly wasting time and energy,” Leeton said, but it still seemed as if he didn’t truly care if they took the dog or wandered aimlessly.

“Right,” Russ agreed reluctantly.  “What do I . . . I mean, how do I tell them to . . . .”

Leeton turned and looked pointedly at one dog, who leapt to attention.  “Lead them to food.  Human food,” he ordered, pointing toward Russ and Liseli.  The dog trotted over and looked up at them expectantly.

“Well.”  Russ forced a smile.  “Lead on, then.”  The dog turned and headed down a hall to the left without pause.

They followed, and before long the dog veered into one of the rooms.  When they rounded the corner after it a moment later, they found themselves in a large kitchen with a well stocked pantry attached to it.  Liseli was impressed at the dog’s unerring sense of direction and smell, and she murmured, “Good dog,” as it sat and resumed its expectant stare.  She did not go so far as patting it on the head; that seemed practically disrespectful to such a fearsome, intelligent being.

Thankfully, there were no dead Ricallyn in the kitchen — Liseli didn’t think she could eat a bite if there was, no matter what Russ said or did to try and make her.  The room was in disarray, but that seemed to be the fault of Leeton rather than his dogs — the cupboards hung wide open, and several drawers lay on the floor with their contents split, as if they’d catapulted out of the cabinets.  There was a big, industrial sized wash basin in one corner, with spigots for running water, and Liseli made a beeline for them, turning the water on full blast and plunging her hands underneath the stream.  She hated having to touch dead bodies and was not going to eat with those same hands until the death was blistered off them with hot water and soap.  Russ followed her, and adjusted the temperature wordlessly.

As he leaned over the washtub next to her, she noticed for the first time that the sleeve of his shirt near left the shoulder was torn, and had dark brown stains on it, like dried blood.  Instead of seeing his skin through the tear, she caught a glimpse of a dirty looking bandage.

“Russ!” she surprised him with her exclamation.  “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”  Privately, she kicked herself for not noticing right away.  It should have been one of the first things she saw when she found him.  And as if that failure weren’t enough, how long had they been working together to move bodies without her seeing the injury?  How could she be so clueless?

Russ shrugged, grabbing a large cake of soap from the edge of the basin.  “I got that a few hours ago, I don’t even feel it anymore.”

“The bandage looks dirty,” she said, pulling away the torn sleeve to look at it closer.  “Looks like a pretty haphazard job, too.  Did you wrap it yourself?  How did you get hurt?  Did you clean the wound before wrapping it up?  You could get infected if you just—”

“It’s healed,” he interrupted.  “Don’t worry about it.”

“I want to look at it,” she said stubbornly.  “And I want to know how you got hurt.  Did the Ricallyn do that?”

Reluctantly, Russ shook his head.  He turned and pointed to his other arm.  Liseli was dismayed to see a similar tear in his sleeve, and he said, “These are just from some other Adayzjians.  I tried to steal bread from them.”

Liseli bit her lip. Two wounds, why hadn’t she noticed either?  “Well, I want to look at both of them, and redo the bandages,” she insisted, as if it would make up for her previous blindness.  It had been dark, she told herself, and there was so much to worry about that she just hadn’t looked closely.

“It’s really okay,” Russ protested.

She shook her head, and ordered, “Take off your shirt.”

“You should eat first.”

“What, and puke all over you when I see the wound?  Better do it on an empty stomach.”

“The cuts aren’t that deep, and anyway I told you they’ve healed.  I heal faster now, after, you know, the dog attack,” he said the last words quietly, as if the dog in the room with them might overhear.

“Russ, just take off your damn shirt.”

He sighed, but put the soap down and pulled the shirt up off over his head.

There was dried blood all over his chest and arms, and Liseli gasped involuntarily.

“Don’t worry, most of it isn’t mine.”

“What the hell have you been doing?” Liseli asked incredulously.  “And why didn’t you tell me about these cuts?”  She reached out to gingerly touch the angry red scars that ran down and across his chest, as if someone had started to carve a tic-tac-toe board on him.

Russ flinched away.  “Those still hurt,” he admitted, but didn’t answer her questions.

Liseli set her mouth in a grim line and looked him in the eyes.  “I want you to tell me everything that happened since you got here, and why you’re covered in blood and why all of it isn’t yours,” she demanded.

“It might take a while.”

Liseli shook her head and thrust his shirt under the flowing water, bunching it up into a makeshift wash rag, and grabbed the soap.  “You can tell me while I’m cleaning you up,” she said, leaving no room for protest.  “And don’t leave anything out.”

And so, as she removed the grungy bandages from his arms, he began to relate everything that had happened, beginning hesitantly with the way Alisiya had come on to him in the alley after they arrived.  Liseli said nothing, but bit down on the inside of her cheek hard to keep from interrupting to curse out the dead woman.  He went on to tell her about the Osviran girls, and the Ricallyn soldiers, and the chain of prisoners they led here to the temple.  When he got to the part about the Osviran girl joining him in his cell and Alisiya taunting him about her purpose, Liseli bit down on her cheek so hard she felt the tinge of blood joining with her saliva.  But she didn’t say anything, determined to hear the whole story without getting hung up on one or two parts.

As he had said, the wounds on his arms were miraculously already well on their way to being completely healed.  They would leave vivid scars, but she realized that it was thanks to the Chaiorra water still in his system that the slashes weren’t still fresh, and hadn’t become infected.  Her hands shook with anger as he calmly related the events of his near death at the hands of the Ricallyn priest, and looked at him in surprise when he explained how he gotten free and killed the man.

He paused, and was silent for a moment.

“Is that all?”  She knew it wasn’t all, because it did not explain how Alisiya had ended up dead in the courtyard outside.  But he seemed to be waiting for her to say something.

“I killed a man,” he said, searching her eyes as if he expected to see reproach or disgust.  “I stabbed him to death and kept on stabbing him after he was dead.  I’m not sorry I did.  I just . . . didn’t know if you’d . . . .”

“Understand?  Approve?”

He nodded.

She snorted, and turned to rinse out his shirt.  “He’s lucky you killed him before I had a chance,” she said, and snapped the shirt in the air like an exclamation point.

He smiled, looking considerably more relaxed.  “I was worried you might think I’d gone a little crazy.”

“We’ve both gone a little crazy.”  She returned his smile, holding his shirt out to him.  “Crazy 1 and Crazy 2.  Here, you might want to let it dry out before you put it back on.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s the least I can do.”  She stretched up and put a hand on his shoulder, pulling him down so she could kiss him.  “My poor Russ,” she whispered softly, drawing away.  “I’m so sorry they hurt you.”  Inwardly she added, I should have been there when you needed me, when you were all alone and they were trying to kill you.  I should have been there but I wasn’t, because I can’t get through the Gates on my own, I had to rely on Leeton.  And quieter still, a voice whispered to her, What will you do if someday a Gate stands between you and him and you have no other Key to help you through?

Russ put a hand on either side of her face and returned her kiss, and she allowed the alarming thought to melt away in the warmth.  There was nothing between them at the moment, no matter what the future might bring.

“So,” she said, “what happened after that?”

And so he went on, telling her how the Ricallyn had tried to use the little girl, Fortya, to summon their leader, Ricalli, and how he had stopped them.  And then, how Ricalli had come anyway and what he and the others had done to Alisiya.

Liseli did not betray just how much grim satisfaction the matter of Alisiya’s death gave her.  If anything, she felt the punishment wasn’t enough.  No revenge was enough to make up for what Alisiya Leeton had done.  Unbidden, the sad eyes of her would-be child appeared in Liseli’s mind, and she closed her own as if it would help keep the vision away.  It didn’t.  She could see the girl as clearly as if she had been a flesh and blood child standing before her, saying, You did not save me.

She knew Russ felt guilty that he hadn’t saved Alisiya, it was so like him to feel sorry for her even after she had tried to kill him multiple times.  Liseli just patted his arm and said, “It’s not your fault.  She brought it all on herself.”

He just nodded, and slipped the damp shirt over his head.

Having washed up as best they could at the basin, they turned their attention toward the pantry.  Liseli had nearly forgotten their reason for coming to the kitchen in the first place, caught up with Russ’s injuries and his story of what had all happened to him.  But he hadn’t forgotten, and was still determined to see her rest and eat something.

A cellar door was open inside the pantry, with steps leading down into the cool dark.  Russ trotted down the steps into the blackness as if it wasn’t even dim, but Liseli didn’t much relish the idea of finding some hapless Ricallyn who had tried to hide down there, and she turned her attention to the food stuffs on the pantry shelves.  Russ came back up shortly, carrying a side of ham.  He smiled at her and proclaimed, “There’s enough food down there to feed an army.  I don’t know what it is . . . they don’t have refrigerators and freezers just like we do, but they’ve definitely got some kind of technology to control the temperature.  You should see it,” there was admiration in his voice as he set the ham down on a table with a thump.  “There’s more than one room down there, and one of ‘em all packed full with frozen meat, just like a butchers’ shop.  And there’s just about every kind of fruit and vegetable.”

Liseli followed him out of the pantry, nibbling dutifully on a roll of bread.  She smiled wryly, thinking that Russ had never been that excited about food storage back at the Burger House.

“So, is there anything in particular you want?” he asked, inspecting an array of knives sheathed in a knife block like a regular chef.  “There’s ingredients for just about anything.”  He drew a large knife out and nodded at it in satisfaction, then turned on the ham.

She watched him inexpertly carve slices off the block of meat, and said, “We need to get back to work soon, so let’s just eat stuff that’s already prepared or ready to eat.  We don’t have time to put together a regular meal.”  She glanced at the dog, who was so silent and still in its watchfulness that it was easy to forget it was there.  “I’ll bet he’d like some ham,” she said.

“You give it to him.”

“Aw, Russ.  You should try making friends with the dogs.  Who knows how long we’re going to be holed up in here with them.”

“I’m not real big on the idea of losing my hand,” Russ shook his head.  The dog seemingly understood what they were talking about, or maybe it was just the scent of ham that piqued its interest, because it edged closer to the table and looked up at Russ with hopeful eyes.  It almost made Liseli laugh to see the monster behave like any dog after table scraps.

Russ hesitantly tossed a hunk of ham toward the dog, and drew back as it snatched the meat out of the air with its powerful jaws.  It gobbled down the meat and inched closer, wanting more.  “It’s a good thing this place is well stocked,” he said, begrudgingly tossing another bit of ham.

Just then, all the doors around them slammed shut.