Chapter Text
SkekSil led them again along obscure corridors, avoiding the main and quickest routes to the Library. SkekLi tried to picture what sort of state the Emperor must be in, for everyone to be so wary of even running into him. SkekSo had two forms of wrath: the quiet one where his eyes scooped out everything inside you and examined it dispassionately, and found and prodded the places where you hurt; and the loud one where he raged like a rabid arduff and struck, bit, summoned some inexplicable strength from his skinny frame to throw you bone-crackingly against a wall or table or another Skeksis. Both of those states were best avoided, but skekLi had never seen either one of them at such an intense or sustained pitch that the entire Castle had fallen into a habit of cowering and whispering.
Happily, they reached the library without incident. SkekSil rapped three times on the door, then disappeared into the shadowed and silent halls with nary a “mmmhh” issuing from his throat.
Normally, skekLi would have made up some jest about this uncanny silence on the Chamberlain’s part, but he had no heart for it now. He tended to find humor even in grim circumstances. Say, that time skekSo had terrorized them in the bathhouse, and after he’d left them be, skekLi had immediately made up an unflattering ballad about the Emperor’s nether regions, to skekGra’s consternation–but that had been funny because they had been in it together, and he had thought then that maybe they really were in it together. Now, not only was skekGra no longer in anything with him, skekLi didn’t even know what had happened to him. Did they have him locked away somewhere? Had they tortured him, mutilated him? Surely they hadn’t–they couldn’t have slain him, the Emperor himself had decreed that Skeksis do not kill Skeksis.
The Satirist tried to slow his breathing. He would know soon enough. As the door opened inward just enough for them to slip through single file and skekOk’s long hand beckoned them in from behind it, the panicked sensation leapt along all his nerves, a scalding ice in his bloodstream. He had to steady himself on the doorframe as he entered the library behind skekNa.
SkekOk shut the door with a deeply harried expression. His face registered brief surprise at the outdated clothes skekSil had scrounged up for them (smelled of mothballs, too), but he too was clearly in no mood to crack a smart remark about it.
The Scroll-keeper nodded to each of them in turn. “Welcome back to the Castle of the Crystal. I regret we’ve had to receive you under such–irregular circumstances.” His eyes stayed a bit longer on skekLi’s face. SkekOk was one of the few Skeksis whom skekLi would count as a friend, and had also been on very good terms with skekGra.
Sighing, the Scroll-keeper waved them over to a cluster of three armchairs with a low table between them. “Seat yourself, please. There’s water for you.”
SkekLi noted that the water was made available in small wooden drinking bowls, not glass or clay or ceramic. It was almost as if SkekOk expected one of them might be dropped. This was hardly encouraging. SkekLi sat down heavily in one of the chairs and clutched the water stupidly like a childling clutching a fizzgig kit, failing to really hear whatever prelude skekOk was giving about his heavy duty as the Castle’s historian to apprise them of recent events of historical significance, which had transpired in their absence–
“SkekOk, please, just tell me if he’s alive,” skekLi squawked, unplanned, unelaborate, and interrupting.
SkekOk tried to glare. “SkekLi, protocol. You need to let me–” His face fell, as though mirroring whatever he saw in skekLi’s own eyes. “Hush, Satirist, of course he’s alive. How monstrous of you to even think that he should have been– disposed of, in a such a way. It is against our laws. You know this.”
SkekLi had almost stopped listening again at “of course,” choked down a sob of relief. He stared studiously down into the bowl of water, quivering uncontrollably, a few additional drops sliding down his beak and joining its contents.
“Steady there, you’re fine, drink some of that,” muttered skekNa. To skekLi’s surprise, the Slave-keeper said somewhat apologetically to skekOk, “See, the Chamberlain was a little dramatic when we casually inquired about a few of the Skeksis, specifically about the–the…”
“Heretic,” skekOk supplied.
SkekLi, who had been taking skekNa’s advice and raising the little bowl to angle his beak into it, did in fact drop it. SkekNa handed him his own bowl without comment, without even glancing at him, and continued addressing SkekOk, “–Heretic. Okay. Anyway, Chamberlain began squawking and carrying on to ‘never say that name again.’ He made it sound pretty dire.”
“Ah. I see. Well, I fear it is quite dire. And skekSil is correct that the Heretic’s name and former title are not to be uttered, nor written. He is very much alive. However, we won’t be seeing him again. Nor is the intervening history particularly….easy.” SkekOk cast skekLi another meaningful glance. The Satirist tried to steady himself, to be attentive. At least skekGra was alive out there, somewhere.
~~~
SkekNa couldn’t help but gape and even suck in his breath a couple times at the bizarre, grisly tale skekOk related. SkekLi, in the chair beside his, was a complete wreck, but fortunately the Satirist didn’t have, say, the Ornamentalist’s habit of wailing and beating his breast. SkekLi just sat there shaking, occasionally whimpering involuntarily (and perhaps not even conscious of it). What a ridiculous, sensitive fellow, skekNa thought, although the very next moment he thought on how relieved he was that he would soon get to see skekUng. SkekNa was no fount of compassion nor of deep philosophy, but one thing he had learned to recognize during the protracted torture devised to remove his arm was when he was being a hypocrite. He decided not to say anything sadistic or malicious to skekLi, for maybe a week or so. He also took his leave of the other two immediately, when the history had been told in full. Better to leave skekLi in the care of his old friend, and anyway, skekNa had other people he would rather be around.
He proceeded straight to skekUng’s quarters, rapped on the door with his hook. The door took its time opening, and then the face that peered out registered wariness before anything else; skekUng’s eyes darted along the corridor, then he yanked skekNa in by the hook and shut the door hastily. This was bad, if even skekUng feared to run afoul of skekSo.
The two stared at each other for a long, uncertain moment.
“Took your time getting here,” skekUng volunteered at last.
“Chamberlain made us bathe. Then skekOk told us everything.”
“Great. Where were you? Unum gone, no message–”
“Held ransom by Gruenak pirates.”
SkekUng rubbed the bridge of his beak, an errant strand of his customary spittle drip sticking to his wrist. “Of course you were, because the whole world is going batshit insane.”
“Is it true?” SkekNa canted his head, sniffing at skekUng as though some smell of iron or blood might yet remain on him.
“Whatever skekOk told you is the official truth.” SkekUng inched in a bit closer.
“So he went mad. Because of…keeping prolonged, voluntary company with–the urRu.”
"Yeah.”
“And you drove the nail in.” SkekNa spoke with a mixture of admiration, mild arousal, and some peculiar sense of dread. He wanted to fling himself at skekUng, grapple him against the wall, lick every inch of him, he had missed him, but–surely, he wasn’t afraid? Intimidated, perhaps? The trespass had been heinous on skekGra’s part, but such a punishment–to lose not just a limb, but possibly one’s mind–? And skekUng had carried it out.
“I did.” SkekUng also sniffed at skekNa, leaning in near his throat.
“Did it make you happy?”
“Yes,” the answer came very quietly, right next to his earhole. SkekNa shuddered. SkekUng gripped him suddenly, biting and licking at his throat in what seemed a near frenzy, also attempting to explain in broken phrases. “Don’t get me wrong–not happy that our former Conqueror betrayed us–not happy, to lose that talent, that great mind–no one’s happy about that, skekNa– But the deed itself? You know me. You know me–too well to need to ask that question.”
He had a point.
“You–-did more than kill someone,” skekNa said after quietly letting skekUng bite his neck for a few moments. “You-–changed someone. It’s true too, what Scroll-keeper said–that Scientist chose the spot, so he wouldn’t be too changed? You didn’t lobotomize the bastard?”
“No, of course not. Shit, is that what you thought? He’ll be–a bit different, maybe, but not destroyed. You’re right, that would be worse than dying.” SkekUng stopped nibbling and nosed lightly at skekNa, almost plaintively, disappointed by the latter’s unnerved mien and failure to return his advances. “He’s just–been marked, given a pain, that will never let him forget he betrayed us. We’d all like to put him out of our minds, but skekSo’s still bristling with rage whenever anyone sees him. He doesn’t want us to speak the name, but he’s not letting us forget either. I’d lay low if I were you. Emperor is looking for a reason to punish someone else.”
SkekNa allowed himself to be reassured by the first part of skekUng’s monologue. The Scientist might be annoying, but he knew what he was doing. It was fine, a particularly fitting form of maiming when one thought about it. SkekNa had lost his hand because he’d struck the Priest; so, if skekGra wanted to lose his mind to heretical and frankly suicidal ideas, then, well, let it be so.
Finally letting himself lean into skekUng, skekNa curled the fingers of his right hand into the wispy but dense feathers at the back of the other’s head. “Lay low, huh? Lucky me, I have to go tell Emperor that skekSa paid our ransom to those Gruenak pirates–it was skekLi’s fault, really, that that even happened–and that she expects reimbursement from our treasury.”
“Oh, fuck’s sake.” SkekUng’s grip tightened. “You are not going anywhere near the Emperor right now. You say it’s skekLi’s fault? Let skekLi deal with it.”
“Um, I don’t think that’s a good idea. Satirist–is going a bit mad himself at the moment. He’s flapping his beak about, you know. If he pisses skekSo off, the trouble will only fall back on me. I was the one in charge.”
“Fine, I’ll fucking tell skekSo then. You’re going to stay here, unless specifically summoned, and preferably be in my bed ready to thank me for my trouble when I get back.”
“You don’t need to–”
“Well, I’m going to, I’m pulling rank, sit down and shut up.”
“Wait, I only just got here!” skekNa protested, feeling, irrationally, as though skekUng might not come back.
“I should deliver the news as soon as possible, he’ll be sore with all of us if there’s too much of a delay–”
“Just stay a second? I missed you.” That was only the second time skekNa had admitted any such thing, but these were exceptional circumstances. It had been strange enough to be kept from the Castle by force for unum and to not know when he would see skekUng again; but to come home to find that skekGra was banished and the entire Castle was on pins and needles with the Emperor, and to feel something like sympathy for skekLi’s plight–it was a bit more than a Skeksis such as himself, who preferred keeping life simple, could take in at a glance.
SkekNa had grabbed onto skekUng’s sleeve, a bit pathetically, as the latter made a decisive course for the door. SkekUng whirled back around with a growl, wavering, then ducked his head down again to reach skekNa in a clatter of snapping beaks and lapping tongues.
“–fuck is this you’re wearing?” skekUng rasped out as they scrabbled at each other, reaching down and noticing for the first time that the garment was not elaborate or layered, just a simple unbelted tunic under a cloak with a ridiculous metal collar. “Wait, is this–”
“Uh, yeah, the shit we wore before skekEkt saved us. Chamberlain hustled us straight from the baths to the Library, got these clothes out from somewhere for us.”
SkekUng held skekNa out at arm’s length and burst out laughing. “We actually dressed like that? By Aughra’s withered eye socket, you look ridiculous.”
“Fuck you.”
“Take that off, it offends my sight,” skekUng said, apparently rhetorically since he was already pushing skekNa back against the wall and hauling the whole mess up over his head himself. “At least it doesn’t take half a trine to remove,” he admitted, tossing it aside. Not having the aforementioned time to divest himself of his own garments, he only loosened and unclasped enough to get himself inside the other Skeksis. SkekNa hissed and clawed frantically at him, the words I missed you like flashes of lightning behind his eyes, not saying them again. They might be true, but no point in overusing them.
SkekUng hauled the other Skeksis to his room after and dumped skekNa on his bed, leaning down to pin his wrist there for a moment. “Just stay right here. Don’t set one damned foot off this bed, right? I just need a bit more info from you, then I’ll go report to Emperor on this clusterfuck, it shouldn’t take long.”
~~~
After skekNa had departed in haste-–enviable, where he was headed, skekLi thought bitterly–-the other two remained hunched in their armchairs for a few silent awkward beats. Then skekLi leaned in, looking up at SkekOk pleadingly. Even though they were alone, he added an extra layer of privacy for the other’s benefit, as the Scroll-keeper was clearly uneasy enough as it was. SkekLi spoke in what they’d termed Lower Middle Gelfling; language changed over time, and that had been the form and manner of the Gelfling speech back when the–the urSkek had first arrived, and none of the Skeksis now remembered it, and only the two of them (and skekGra) had ever bothered to study it.
They were both not exactly fluent, there not being much opportunity to practice a dead language. “SkekOk, I know you what said, here–is what you will say, to paper, for the story of the paper. What you must say. I beg you. Tell me, real story.”
SkekOk glanced away with a guilty look, paused a long time, then gave a beleaguered sigh and fussed with his endmost pair of spectacles. “Real story, yes. Don’t speak of it, skekLi. Never.”
“Of course.”
“Real story is, most of same. Heretic brought in the Mystic, to dinner. Told us, like I said: Skeksis are…not unmarred–er, not whole. Should be one with Mystics, maybe make the old things again, two into one. All real.
“Not real: He did not scream or swear. He did not say Skeksis–bad coinage, argh, um–didn’t say Skeksis are worthless. Didn’t threaten Emperor. He didn’t scream and swear first; not until other Skeksis did scream and swear first, at him, at the Mystic. Threw food, other Skeksis. Me too,” SkekOk admitted frankly, drawing back into his collar a bit. SkekLi didn’t have it in him to be indignant at such a minor detail, and motioned for him to continue. “He said, he brought in the Mystic to show Skeksis that Mystics–cannot hurt Skeksis. Never speak of it, that he said that. Emperor will take your tongue.”
SkekLi nodded. “And–the–-” Not recalling the word, he pointed to the top of his head with a wince.
“All real, that punishment, as I told. Now listen: Skeksis not meant to know, only Emperor and Hunter, but–words will travel, quietly. You know. Never speak of this. Hunter followed them, to the Desert. Said, it looks like they–like wounds get a little wiser–er, get a little better. Said, they often sleep like–like fizzgig, close…” SkekOk demonstrated with his hands curled together.
SkekLi gaped, a sense of rage momentarily smothering his anguish so completely that all he felt was hatred. The fucking Conqueror, who would not suffer his friend of all these long trine (his friend who adored him, or, had at one time) to even occupy the same bed as him, would coil himself up with a Mystic? How dare he?
“And they walked, into the desert,” skekOk finished. “Maybe week ago.”
“He deserved it,” skekLi hissed, lapsing out of their private language. The other blinked at him in surprise. Then skekLi hunkered over and laid his head on the little table between them, something crawling up from his chest and seizing his throat in a paroxysm of sobbing.
“Oh no,” muttered SkekOk, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. “Look, you really can’t do that here, someone might come in, someone might hear you. The Castle is perilous right now. Please, pull yourself together. Just for a moment? For the sake of all the suns! Just hold it together for a few minutes, I’ll take your back to your rooms.”