Never Show Your Hand

[rodentus_callidus]

Never Show Your Hand

With the state of nerves he was in, his keen ears picked up the fight outside within seconds, his spine creaking alarmingly as he straightened from his patient. A patient who heard the sounds and recognised them as fast as he did, and had a knife at his throat before he could squeak.

"Quiet, if I were you, doctor," Sorka hissed. Sebastien very carefully didn't gulp, or move. Or breathe. Gods, of all the days. Of all the people. The one day the most deadly Wekha enforcer in Carogne dropped into his surgery, a bloody bunch of bully-boys show up on his doorstep and get in a brawl with her guards.

A very short brawl, and the sudden silence had every hair along his back rising in needling fear. Her knife slowly shifted position against his throat, aligning itself along his pulse, and he felt his lungs slowly freeze in terror. Not good. So very not good.

"Mischling! You have some explaining to do, mischling. Get out here and do it!"

He felt Sorka turn to him at the voice, sensed the weight of question and accusation in the air, and shook his head desperately. "Not mine," he whispered. "Very not mine, and you are believing me because it is true, and you must believe me ..." She shut him up with a nudge of the blade, and he fell silent, quivering.

"What do they want?" she asked, slowly, sweetly, like rotting roses. He swallowed, and shrugged.

"Money? Victim? The usual?" he asked softly, head tilting curiously, and very deliberately away from the knife, as he geared up for the important suggestion. "Maybe ... you?" Seeing as how her guards had been outside, and fighting with the bloody Polizei raiders, and seeing as how Sorka was hardly on their list of favourite people, and he hadn't been due a raid for at least another week ...

Suddenly, he felt the knife move away from him altogether, and he almost squeaked with shock. Then there was a hard grip in the fur of his neck, and a reptilian tongue flicked roughly over his ear. He did squeak at that. But quietly.

"Get rid of them," Sorka whispered softly, leathered menace in her voice, her snout nuzzling close to his ear, over his skull, that tongue flicking gently. It set his spine creaking, that sensation, all his prey instincts screaming in fear of being eaten. Not that she'd eat him. She wouldn't.

That would be too bloody merciful for her.

"How!" he gasped, trying to pull back, held tight by the fingers curled in his fur. She laughed at him, a sound like the earth crumbling beneath your paws, and he knew that if he didn't do as she asked, didn't find a way, she would kill him. Very slowly. But if he did do as she asked, did try to hide the presence of a Wekha enforcer in his surgery when the bloody Polizei had fought her cronies outside his bloody door ... that would be so very, very unwise of him. So very unwise.

So. So. The water's rising, the fire descending. Where do you go, little rat? What do you do?

He reached behind him, groping until he found his cane, bringing it to his side carefully. She let him, stepping back a little as he straightened with it in hand, standing aside as he turned towards the door out into the apothecary. He felt her eyes on him the whole time, as he moved slowly and warily into the other room, to face the Polizei.

When in doubt, always choose the water. That was the first thing any rat learned.

"Where is she?" A snarl, from somewhere over his head as he ducked into the other room, and then there were giant paws around his shoulders, slamming him up and back into the doorframe. He cried out, his shoulders screaming in protest, but managed to keep his grip on the cane. Not to use. Not yet. Not to use yet.

"Who?" he gasped, a momentary deception, a stop-gap. The brute slammed him again for his troubles, and he squealed, not hiding it, letting them have the fear they wanted, craved. Think me weak, idiots. Think me weak.

"She's in there!" he yelled, getting his breath back. "In the surgery! She sent me out to get rid of you!"

Behind him, he felt fire turn to ice, and grow deadly in the silence. Maybe the brute and his compatriots felt it too, maybe they were just that eager for a fight. In seconds, he found himself carelessly thrown aside, dumped to the floor like so much rubbish, and three people moved passed him as he whimpered, one of them making a deliberate point of treading on his tail in passing. Bastard.

They stopped just inside the door. He heard them as he pulled himself up, re-firmed his grip on the cane. No sound from her, from Sorka. She would be standing, most likely on the other side of the treatment table, facing them with a knife in her hand and blood flowing from between her ribs, down her left thigh. Injured. Far too injured to take them all, though he was sure she'd do very much damage in the attempt. Too weak, and they knew it.

Too bad for them they didn't know everything.

The first, the one just inside the surgery door, fell in seconds, a thrust through the lower back up into the ribs rather terminally ruining his day. They hadn't even heard him pull the sword from the cane, hadn't even bothered to listen. Never did. Little rat, little mischling, too weak to be a threat. Idiots.

He felt the second turning back towards the door, towards him, but far too slowly. He put the point of the sword through the brute's throat, aiming for the sound of startled breathing, and then he felt something fly past his ear, knowing the third had actually woken up enough to the threat to fight back. He dropped to his knees, recalling the dimensions of the room so deeply etched in his memory, striking out towards the sound and sense and only possible location of his attacker.

He heard the scream as he sliced viciously through the creature's testicles suddenly cut off with a thunk as something embedded itself in his throat. Sorka. Not helpless. Weak, but not helpless. Never that.

He stayed kneeling as the silence fell back on his little surgery, his little rooms. Stayed on his knees, because it was safer, it put the table between him and her knives, and because he couldn't have stood up if he tried. He felt himself shaking, trembling from the bones on out, and distantly recognised the symptoms of his own shock. Violence. Always violence, and so good at it, such a knowledge of wounds and wounding he held, but how he hated it. How he had always hated it. The doctor fixes bodies. Not destroys them. The doctor was not meant to destroy.

He felt her behind him, felt the presence, scent and feel and sound, and he sensed too the air of calculation, surprise, wariness. And something else. Some flavour to the air that he could not place, didn't understand. He puzzled over it, distantly, remotely, not present enough to be afraid.

"You are a surprising little one, aren't you?" she asked, finally, moving to rest her hands heavily on his shoulders. He shuddered, gently, remembering himself with the touch. "A very surprisingly little creature."

"Not really," he murmured, voice white and somewhat broken. "Not so much. Only do what must be done, ja?"

"And what must be done is single-handedly take out three Polizei?" There was a dark amusement in the observation, and he found himself bristling, found himself laboriously climbing to his feet, feeling her hands slip briefly away to let him, then return, latching almost possessively onto his shoulders. Somewhere inside himself, he found room to be terrified by that, but he had more urgent problems.

"But I did not," he noted softly. Her hands clenched a little in reaction, squeezing bruises from the doorframe, but he ignored that. "I did not kill them. You did, Miss Sorka. Don't you remember?"

She was very still, very quiet. She did not answer. So he went on.

"Miss Sorka, the most deadly enforcer in all Carogne. Even injured, you are so mighty you destroyed them all. It must have been you. It could not have been me. Not poor, blind Sebastien, who could not stand up to a breeze, let alone Polizei! Why, that would be such a foolish thing for me to do! Tchu! When half my custom is Polizei, surely I would not be so stupid as to murder three of their officers?" He shook his head, slowly and pointedly. "No. No, no. It could not have been me, Miss Sorka, who saved your life and risked my own in the process. That would be stupid. It must have been yourself, who knocked the poor doctor out of the way while you destroyed those who dared threaten you."

She was silent so long he began to be afraid all over again. If she disagreed, if she took offense, if she decided to ignore his position and throw him to the wolves for that one moment of fear and betrayal he'd given her ... And then, she started to laugh. Low and dark, soft and rough, a crumbling sound, deadly, bright. He stiffened under her hands, listening to that laugh, the fear old and dark and crawling inside him.

"You," she said at last, when that terrible laughter had subsided a little. "You. Are a very, very surprising little rat. Little doctor." She leaned in close behind him, pressing herself along his spine, her tongue in his ear once more as she whispered, almost purred. "I think I like you, little doctor. Yes indeed. I do think I like you."

It was only after she withdrew, peeling herself off him with maddening intent, and slipped silently back into the underworld darkness she had come from, that he managed to unclench his shaking fingers from around the little poisoned scalpel he had slipped from his pocket as he stood. Only once she was gone did he manage to let go. Never show your hand. Tchu. Never never show your hand.

And then he sat down, sat very still, for a very, very long time.