Crownless Tyrant

Due had returned before dawn.

Alistair heard him on the path – the familiar footsteps, slightly hurried, the pace of someone whose bind had told him something was wrong and who had been walking faster without deciding to.

The door frame was empty, and the door itself was on the floor.

Due stepped through and stopped. His eyes moved across the wreckage – five bodies dragged to one side, broken furniture, glass, and blood on the stone floor, and Alistair sitting against the far wall with bandages wrapped poorly around his shoulder and ribs.

"Six," Alistair said in a low voice. "One left."

Due didn’t ask how. He crossed the room and crouched next to Alistair, his hands moving across the bandages with the practical attention of someone who had done this before.

He checked the shoulder first, then carefully lifted the cloth over the rib wound. His expression tightened.

"This is deep," said Due.

"You really think so?" said Alistair, a bit of sarcasm in his voice.

"Deep enough that you shouldn’t be sitting upright pretending it is manageable."

"I’m not pretending anything, and I’m sitting because standing hurts more."

Due looked at him for a moment with the particular expression he wore when Alistair said something that was both honest and completely unhelpful.

Following that, he went to work.

He had brought medical supplies from the settlement. Proper ones – clean cloth, a paste that smelled sharp and medicinal, a thin cord for stitching.

He worked on the rib wound first, cleaning it with a steadiness that didn’t match the tightness in his jaw.

"Hold still," said Due.

"I am."

"You’re holding still badly!"

Alistair clicked his tongue, yet he stopped moving.

Due stitched the wound with careful precision, while Alistair watched the ceiling and tried not to react when the needle went through skin already angry from the cut.

The base was quiet except for their breathing and the sound of the cord pulling through flesh.

"The name they said," Due spoke without looking up from the stitching.

Alistair furrowed his brows. "You heard."

"I felt the obligation shift in you when they said it, through the bind." Due tied off a stitch and started another.

"I’ve felt that shape before, once, when you mentioned someone who should still be here. Same weight and same direction."

The silence that followed was not uncomfortable.

It was the silence of two people who had been bound to death long enough that neither performed concern nor demanded explanation.

The information was there, and what happened with it was Alistair’s decision.

Due finished the stitches and moved to the shoulder wound.

This one was cleaner, though deeper than it looked, and he worked through it without speaking for a while.

Eventually, he said, "Caldren found something in your history. Something he thinks is a pressure point." He paused, his hands still. "Is it?"

Alistair looked at the ceiling. The wood was cracked where the sixth assassin had come through the roof.

"It was," said Alistair. "A long time ago."

"And now?"

"Now it’s a name." He was quiet for a moment. "That’s all I can say."

Due nodded, and he didn’t push. He finished the shoulder bandage and sat down against the opposite wall, where he could see the broken doorway and the path outside.

His hands weren’t entirely steady as he settled.

His reduced capacity was visible in moments like these.

The sustained deployment across three major operations since the anchor had taken more from him than he had been saying.

Before the ceiling, before the cost, he would have been mapping every thread in the settlement at the same moment while having this conversation.

Now he focused on one thing at a time.

The wind outside picked up, carrying dust through the ruined walls. Morning light was starting to show at the eastern edge of the sky, grey and thin.

"You nearly died tonight," said Due.

"I know."

"I’m not saying it to state the obvious. I’m saying it because Sun Harvest doesn’t bend easily." He looked at Alistair directly. "But, you dying would bend it considerably. I don’t want that."

Alistair’s lips twitched, almost a smile.

Due noticed. "That’s not meant to be amusing."

"It’s not, and it’s the way you said it."

"How did I say it?"

"Like you’ve been rehearsing it."

Due adjusted his collar. "I may have rehearsed several versions of that sentence on the walk back. The bind was telling me something had gone wrong, and I had a lot of road to fill."

Alistair almost laughed. The movement pulled at the stitches in his ribs, and he stopped instantly, his hand going to his side.

"Don’t make me laugh," he said.

"I’ll try, and it’s harder than you would think."

***

They sat in the broken base as the sky lightened. Due got up once to check the perimeter, came back, and made tea from supplies he had brought.

The normalcy of it – Due making tea in a room where five people had died hours ago – was something Alistair appreciated without needing to say so.

"Don’t stretch for three days," said Due, handing him a cup. "The muscle underneath the rib wound is damaged."

"Understood."

"You won’t listen."

"Probably not, but it’ll be fine."

Due sighed and sat back down.

After a while, Alistair said, "The sixth knew she could run before she arrived. That was always the plan. The other five were supposed to weaken me or kill me, and she was there to deliver the name and survive to report what happened."

Due was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "That means Caldren sent five people to die so that one person could say a word and watch you react to it."

"Yes."

"That’s a significant expenditure for intelligence gathering."

"It is."

Due looked at the bodies against the wall. His Characteristic read the fading obligation threads on them – contracts fulfilled, debts settled by death.

"They were paid in advance," he said quietly. "All of them. The contracts completed upon deployment, not upon success, and they knew they probably weren’t coming back."

Alistair was reluctantly impressed by the cruelty of it. He said nothing, and Due said nothing, and the morning continued arriving outside.

***

Elara and Silas returned with the sun.

Elara came through the doorway, and her eyes moved across the base in one sweep.

She saw everything – the bandages, the blood, the careful way Alistair was sitting, and the five shapes covered with cloth that Due had placed outside.

She said nothing about it.

She went to the supply situation and began fixing it. Reorganizing what the fight had scattered, salvaging what could be salvaged, assessing what needed replacement.

Silas stood in the doorway. He looked at the marks on the floor, then at the covered bodies outside, and finally at Alistair.

"Alistair! Are you fine?" asked Silas.

"Six," said Alistair.

Silas looked at the base one more time. His posture had shifted into something more alert – the Dark Interval picking up traces of the fight automatically, reading the environment the way it read everything.

"The one who ran," said Silas. "I can... find them."

He said it the way he said things that would cost the Characteristic. Already decided, informing, not asking.

Alistair’s eyes widened slightly. Before he could answer, Silas tilted his head toward the broken window, his expression going flat.

"Someone else is already here."