Malik lifted his eyes as he heard the odd gait of the Master Assassin hurrying through the training yard. He rose from his seat on the steps leading up to the dais of the courtyard and went to the man, holding up an arm.
"Safety and peace, brother," he said, his voice dull.
"Safety and peace are things I'm not allowed," snapped the Owl, his eyes falling on the empty sleeve at his brother's side. So, they'd amputated. "You have my sympathies."
"Damn your sympathies, Jameel." Malik fingered the empty sleeve, as though a phantom pain wracked him.
"And damn your barbed tongue, Malik. I don't have time to stand here chatting with you about our limbs or lack thereof. Where the hell is that Novice of yours?" The Hawk gave him a studious look down his nose, a brow risen at the injured Master's tone.
"Why do you seek him out in a rush? It's not as if he's going anywhere." Surprise crossed his face for a split second as Jameel all but lifted him from the ground, bunching the collar of his robes in one bloodied fist and putting him on his toes.
"I'll take your other arm if you've let that boy come to harm, I swear." Their eyes locked as Malik curled his lip and grasped Jameel's wrist with his good arm, forcing himself back down onto his feet. The two stood in heated silence before Malik turned and walked toward the barbican. Jameel followed him with an irate stare.
The one-armed man stalled after a few paces, looking at him over his shoulder.
"What is he to you? But for your eyes, I'd not wonder at calling him your b*****d." Shaking his head, the Master Assassin stepped into the caste, giving a nod to the guards posted on either side of the doorway as he made his way to the infirmary. He looked up as he heard oddly accented voices sounding out the common tongue of Masyaf. The speakers were doing well enough, despite the misplaced emphasis on some syllables and the just plain oddness of the voices that jarred his ears.
The conversation halted as he neared the room. Jameel's brows rose as Altair moved by dressed in Novice robes. Well, if he'd been demoted to such a level, he may as well wear the uniform again.
"What's wrong with your voice?" he asked. The demoted Master Assassin glanced back at him over his shoulder.
"What's wrong with your...everything?"
"Business." The man limped the rest of the way into the infirmary. Lex lay on one of the pallets, giving him a wan smile when he entered, as if he'd been expecting him. "What happened to you?" Stupid question, Jameel, he told himself, but it was out of his mouth before he could stop it. Someone had to ask it; no, he had to ask it seeing as no one else seemed to have bothered apart from keeping the Novice's alive. Despite being a bloodless white, his lips had obviously done something with the stuff, as they'd split and bled a good bit from the look of the scabbing, and the rest of him looked similarly drained.
Then again, he knew he didn't look much better with an arrow sticking out of his leg and glass littered down his side. It had pierced his light armor easily, leaving him to bleed his robes red. It hurt, but for now he would do as much as he could to shrug it off. He needs more attention than I do.
"I dunno," came the rasped answer. "I just...fell over." Lex took a breath and forced himself to a sit, echoing the man's question, "What happened to you? You look like you ran into a window sideways." Jameel cracked a smirk. If only that were so. He watched as the boy coughed and grabbed a servant passing by with a pitcher of water, dropping to a heavy sit with a grunt. The servant merely bowed, unquestioning of how the Red Owl had received his wounds, knowing he would tend to them himself soon enough, as was his wont. Jameel gritted his teeth as he heaved Lex up by the back of his robes.
"Get up. Yallah." He held the jug down to his level, letting him drink. He stole a swig before passing it back to the boy. Lex finally pulled away, coughing. "Easy." He took another drink himself. He must have gotten sick from the heat...
"Okay, I'm sick of looking at that. Hold still, would ya?" The Novice shifted to his other side and began picking out the bits of glass with deft fingers. Jameel watched as the boy he'd begun tending decided to do the same for him. Lex paused to wipe the blood off on his own pants and began picking again, putting pressure on the wounds to staunch as much of the bleeding as possible. Jameel picked at the glass, getting a particularly stubborn piece out of his shoulder. He also snapped the arrow that was still in his leg and removed it completely. It hurt, a twinge in his jaw the only outward sign of it.
"I should have seen it coming..." he muttered, almost thinking aloud. "They knew..." Lex frowned.
"Who knew?" He picked out the last bits of glass in his leg and daubed away the blood, taking a last, sparing sip from the pitcher before using the rest to cleanse the wound. "Hey, can you grab some bandages?" he asked to the servant who'd stood off to one side during the entire episode. When they returned, he took the roll and wound it around the wounds, tearing them with his teeth and tying them off tightly.
"Ravenwatch." Jameel examined the arrowhead his leg had been stabbed with. The originally ebony stood out despite the coating of blood. Intricately made and tough to break, the edges curved backward into twin prongs with serrations around the edges. He dropped the arrow to the floor carelessly. He'd seen many of those, most of them zipping by his ear or his face, or scraping against his chest armor. There were even a couple that nearly killed him. For mercenaries, they knew what they were doing and were very good at it.
"Oh. They sound...birdbrained." Lex picked up the two halves of the arrow, working the wood around until the head popped off. Uncoiling the twine from the fletch of the arrow, black feathers drifting to rest on the floor with the broken shaft, he tied a knot around the arrowhead and fashioned himself a crude, sinister necklace. He didn't know what possessed the boy to do it. He wouldn't ask.
"Far from it. They are very smart. Fooled many Assassins." He managed to get a piece of glass lodged in his lower shoulder out. That was a deep one. Hopefully none of the shards had broken inside his body. He'd have much trouble getting those itty bitty pieces of, especially if one was missed and found its way to his vitals. This will scar...
"I'd like to see that." Lex checked over his shoulder, picking out the smaller bits of glass by feel. He glanced up at Jameel as the man looked over at him. "Don't think they'd fool me." He looked away, bristling silently. Novices. They all thought themselves immortal and all-knowing until a sword was thrust through their stomachs when they fell for a feigned retreat by the enemy.
Jameel stared at the floor as he spoke, "They had me think they were coming to Masyaf, but they found me in Acre instead. If that's not deceit, then I don't know what is." Indeed, it was almost a tactic of theirs to make people paranoid, for then the target would make a mistake. One misstep and they struck. They also had the knack of showig up in the worst of spots: a foggy Acre for one. To top all this off, their movements were forged around well-trained, large groups and well-crafted weapons. It was like they were bred to hunt Assassins.
"See, now, that's what you did wrong. That's like standing on the high ground and calling somebody out for a fight and then being on the low when they get there." Lex broke into his musings as he sat next to him, crossing his legs and holding onto them as he leaned against the air. Jameel bandaged the cuts on his side and shoulder. "Why not just call up your friends'n'clothesline the bastards when they meet you on your terms thinking they're theirs?" He stood and put his weight on his leg. It held. "Huh." The sound was somewhere between a laugh and a sigh as he walked the width of the room before sitting back down.
"That's the problem. They'll send one of their crows as scouts. They usually follow that bird and attack something. This time they used it like a calling." Unpredictable, that's what they were. Part of their paranoia tactics, setting people on edge by doing the utterly unexpected. He'd even heard the guards in the cities they'd hounded him to call them madmen in masks because of their actions. Well, it worked for them, and he could only hope the Templars didn't catch wind of the deceptive ploy and set its use in order for themselves.
"Oh, for God's sake, Jameel, shoot the bird, stuff the damn thing, and mount it to the gates of Masyaf!" Lex said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. "You'll have a nice, big collection of cheap a**, ugly as sin birds to sell for a tidy profit, too, if you like milking the tourists."
Jameel did not respond, but glared icy daggers against Lex. Oh, he wanted to shake him. He wanted to shake that boy until his bones rattled; he wanted to give him the good lashing his parents obviously never had so that he'd never speak in such a way as this again as long as he lived in his home. It would never--had never--been that simple, and to come up with such a neat, tidy little plan flew in the face of all the years he'd been harried by the mercenaries and only just managed to get away.
Lex flinched as the daggers hit home, an icy ball sinking through his chest to his stomach like a punch in the gut. Actually, several punches. A few kicks, too. And a wrecking ball. He bit his cheek and hung his head. There goes my damn mouth. He'd apologize for what he said, but later. Much later. It didn't seem healthy to attempt it at the moment. The Assassin stood and limped away.
The Novice had hit a painful nerve, but Jameel wouldn't kill him for that, just brood on it. He took a seat on a ledge that overlooked a part of the village. I shouldn't underestimate Ravenwatch. The last time he had, it had almost been the last thing he did in life. I still have the scars to prove that... Jameel absently fingered the scars on his chest, remnants of his near-fatal encounter with Ravenwatch. He'd still been young, young and stupidly cocky as that Novice, and almost as easily caught off his guard. These foes of his made great fighters, deceivers, thieves... They'd make the Brotherhood proud...
By the time the Red Owl heard his footfalls behind him, Lex had contemplated many things. How to keep his mouth shut. How to not open it without thinking first. How he'd rather face pirates, ninjas, those Ravenwatch people, Templars, and Assassins all at once, rather than slog around looking for someone who more than likely could kill him with a look. Hell, another bout of heat stroke would have been better.
But there was the man before him. Lex sighed and braced himself to die with what little dignity he could muster.
"Hey... Whatever I said, I'm sorry."
The Assassin turned his head to look at Lex, no longer having the death stare from earlier. Instead, it was replaced with regret. His hood was down, revealing fully a clean shaven, tan face and short, dark hair that wasn't as long as his own, which brushed the nape of his neck, but longer than Malik's, which the Novice had seen when the man had left the infirmary minus an arm. Jameel sighed and motioned him over. It took a minute for him to react, still not used to the downward facing hand with fingers curling toward it meaning "come here."
Silence hung over them as Lex sat beside him, one arm propping himself up, the other across his bent knee, the previously splinted leg dangling over the ledge.
He let out another breath and muttered, "Forgiven. You know..." Of course he doesn't know, dolt, he reminded himself, but forged ahead, "All the near-death experiences I've had were when I was up against Ravenwatch. Not even the Templars have come close to killing me." He revealed the scars. "These are from the daggers and arrows that should have killed me." The boy's eyes widened considerably at the sight. Good. Let him see what they were capable of. Maybe it would be a lesson to him. "I'm still here through dumb chance." Jameel sealed up the robes.
Silence resounded again for a time before Lex next spoke.
"Means you're better than them, those." He looked him in the eyes. "You're still here. Means they aren't good enough to beat you." He looked away after a moment, drawing a few swirls in the dirt and hoping he wouldn't receive another death glare. Jameel shook his head. The words were sweet, but sweet nothings were still nothing when cold, somber fact was fixed before his eyes.
"It's because they want me alive. If they wanted me dead, they would have done so the first moment I laid eyes on one of them. Their employer happens to be my brother, Kadin." His voice faltered. "He joined the Templars, hired those mercenaries by convincing King Richard..." The words died on his tongue. He dropped his head into his hands, hiding his face in his palms. He didn't say anymore, couldn't say anymore. He'd dubbed his brother a traitor for his actions, but it was still hard to kill a sibling, even one that made it perfectly clear he wanted to be an only child with countless attempts of fratricide.
The other looked at him, unsure of what to do, what he was and wasn't allowed to do. Finally, he decided to screw the rules and throw caution to the proverbial wind. He looped an arm over the taller man's hunched shoulders. Jameel removed his hands from his face and looked at Lex.
"Y'got friends, Jameel." It wasn't much, but it was all he could say, all he could offer. Not much more than a loyal arm and a blade to guard his back. Jameel looked at the slender arm draped over his shoulders and smiled. It wasn't one of the hollow smirks he usually gave to the other residents of the keep. No, this was a genuine smile. Lex returned it.
"How's your leg?" For a moment, he looked confused, then shrugged.
"Better. Still sore, but walkable. Gonna be a b***h to break next time."
"Feeling up to a little training?"
"More books with squiggles and dots in them?" Ah, so Malik had finally started him on something, even if the boy did say it with the same expression as if he'd just been asked to eat a glob of manure.
"No, sword training. We'll start easy and continue from there." Jameel gave him a conspiratorial glance as he slipped a throwing knife from its sheath at his belt. Even though Lex was Malik's student, he couldn't help but show the Novice what he knew. After all, he was looked on as wise and understanding, as any owl, and Malik had lost an arm, to add that to matters. "You may not be my Novice, but you still need training."
"Yeah, sure, let's do it." He flipped the dagger between his fingers just to show off to his friend, Lex's eyes following the glinting blade as it tumbled end over end, up and down. Jameel almost laughed aloud as the realization hit him. A friend. He'd finally made a friend he could keep, not even the threat of his brother chasing him away. This day just got better.
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