Chapter Text
It would have been smarter if he had turned away.
It had been well past midnight, easing into the hour of the ox (unlucky echoed in his head like a death knell) and he had been coming back from an errand best left unmentioned in Leyndell. To be specific — Letho had decided to cut through a shantytown outside the gate, and it was there that he’d he heard the crying. A thin grouping of shacks made of rotting wood set at strange angles, tacked down cloth and poor tents, the yap of dogs. And then… an infant’s cry. There was nothing muffling it — the baby making the sound was outside, the same as him. He looked around for someone — a parent clutching a bundle of rags, a thief, anything. But… he could see no one out besides himself, and the crumbling towers blocked the Erdtree’s light, and left him feeling small and strange in his loneliness. And the child cried and cried.
If he had any sense, he would have left it. Of course, if he’d had any sense, he would have stayed with the army, too… Letho adjusted his hood and changed routes. The shantytown on the edge of Leyndell wasn’t big or insulated enough for people not to hear… so they must have been ignoring it. Was it a beggar’s child? Or a less helpless creature playing mimic?
He rounded a corner and passed out of the town proper, to the edge of the refuse-strewn crossroad. The baby cried again, nearly at his feet — Letho looked down, and realised the bundle ahead of him was not a bag of trash at all. If it weren’t for the baby’s attitude (and lungs) he would have passed by, ignorant.
Unease crawled through him. The child was lucky a beast hadn’t happened by. Only Letho — a bastard and a cutthroat was preferable to the maw of a wolf, wasn’t it? He crouched to gather up the child, and it quieted in increments.
There were strange lumps and protrusions around the bundle, and the face was dirty. Letho licked his thumb and wiped the cheek. Little came off; it startled him to realise the dirt wasn’t dirt at all, but scales.
The baby opened its eyes and ceased crying outright, though they sniffled. The irises were gold and reflected the Erdtree’s light, the same as his. So… not a human child, or not entirely. He sniffed it, and thought… probably an omen.
That explained someone leaving it at the crossroads. The people here had nothing — and if an omenkiller came looking… he didn’t think omens were saved for the army. Not bairns, anyway.
Letho had fought beside one of those, once. They were… His throat seized with fear. His hands trembled. He ought to put it back. No… it would have been more merciful to kill the child himself. He could do it with his knife — slit the throat so it would die quick, and bury the body somewhere. He could build it a little cairn and pray for the soul. The Erdtree would never take it, but perhaps some spirit in the world would take pity.
The baby was watching him. It was too small to even hold its own head, had only sort of started to look like a baby instead of the ruddy potatoes that newborns resembled. Letho hesitated.
It was a cold night. The crying had stopped, but when had the babe even eaten last? It was probably already dying. Letho found himself thinking—what harm would it do, really, if he took it back? The earth would reclaim its body soon enough, and Letho could spare a few days.
One bastard’s favour to another.
He shifted the bundle to his chest. The babe quieted the rest of the way. What had his father done when he was a boy?… probably talked to him, or sung. “Come on, then.” Letho looked around, but neither man nor beast appeared. He exhaled and took off at a trot, choosing a strange and winding route home. No sense making it easy for anyone that might have followed.
#
After the war against the giants had ended and the snowy woods where he was born became Forbidden, Letho found himself near the capital, drifting unmoored. He met an Herbalist that lived in the woods, who kept a cabin and was happy enough to have his help and his company, and did not ask many questions about the messy business of before. They would, perhaps, also forgo questioning this — though this seemed to ask a great deal more of them than anything else Letho had. It was one thing to take in a grown man who was cagey about his past… but an omen’s crime was writ on their skin plain to see. Born wrong. Did it matter that they’d done nothing, when a parent’s sin could be passed on?
When he walked through the door that night, Ambrosia was already asleep, and he could hardly wake them to ask. Letho made sure the door was latched and bolted, then went to their larder to figure out what he could do for the child. He didn’t exactly have a teat to suckle it, but infants needed… something.
A little bit of colour was returning to the bairn’s cheek. It seemed almost unnaturally silent, at least compared to the children he’d known. Perhaps it was too weak by now to cry. Yes. Perhaps that was it.
They had a little goat’s milk. He took that out to heat, reasoning that it might be safer, and anyway that newborns did not handle chill well. Doing all of this one handed was the height of difficulty, and once the stove came into the equation, he had to lay the baby down in his bed to work. At that it squeaked and threatened to protest, and Letho had to drift back from his work several times before the sniffling could turn into full-blown hysterics and wake the other inhabitant of the cabin.
When the milk was warm, he encountered the next problem, which was that babies couldn’t drink from cups. He really had not thought this through, and now the poor creature would die not of natural causes, but from Letho’s own incompetence. A horrid notion.
Letho cast around, and was struck by a fit of drowsy brilliance: he seized their store of clean bandages and opened it to tear off a section, and he soaked that in the milk. He took the pot with him to set at his bedside (at a safe distance! He did not care to hurt the child, or himself) and sat beside the babe, and picked it up to try to nurse with his rag.
The infant’s eyes glittered. It latched onto the milksop readily. Letho made a soft noise: it was that easy?
He shifted to draw his knees up, and sat with the infant cradled thus, as if he could hide it from sight with no more than his body. The rag ran dry. He dabbed it in the milk and gave it back — the little one latched on again — he had no idea how much children should eat and hoped it had the sense to stop when it had a full belly.
Three more repetitions. The pot was low. The baby shut its mouth and wrinkled its nose in protest. Letho sighed and put the scrap aside, adjusted his grip on the blanket. He realised the baby would likely soil itself, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it besides replace the swaddling when it happened… he would tackle that when he had to.
He drank the last of the milk himself (no sense in it spoiling) and considered their sleeping situation. He was afraid of crushing the child, if he lay with it… perhaps if he slept sitting up. He wouldn’t sleep well, but he could do it, and had before.
The infant shifted in its swaddling clothes and grunted.
“Go to sleep.” Letho told it. It opened its eyes to peer at him and continued trying to wriggle free. He loosened the swaddling — a hand with scales and horny growths burst out, and went to grip his tunic.
His heart clenched. Someone had cared for the child. When had they realised it would become an omen? He wondered, and looked at the rough wool of the swaddling. Had they prayed the scales were something else? Had they shut their eyes until they couldn’t?
… even leaving it for beasts, they had left it in a blanket… They could have taken it when they’d left the child by the roadside. It was a little comfort, far too small to be of any consequence. But in the shantytown, where everyone had nothing, its presence lingered on his mind.
His grip tightened, not enough to hurt. He would control himself. Letho brought up a hand and stroked the baby’s cheek, marvelling at how small they were — that he could fit the whole of his palm over their face, touch the back of the neck with his fingers. He couldn’t have ever been so small.
“You don’t deserve your lot.” He told the little one. Of course, it was too young to do more than gurgle. Letho sighed and drew the blanket up around his legs, put his back to the wall, and tried to sleep.
#
He woke up to the sound of humming. Uneasy and poor-rested, he opened his eyes to scour the room. The night before had not been a dream, and — the baby was gone from his lap. Letho reached for a knife and focused on the other figure in the cabin; Ambrosia was standing by the stove, bouncing a bundle of brownish cloth. They turned to examine Letho, and arched their brows. The humming stopped.
With a look that spoke leagues about their opinion of his work, Ambrosia addressed him: “Went for a bit more than thieving last night, did you.”
“Um.” In the morning light, Letho’s decisions seemed far starker and stranger. He’d picked up danger and carried it home with nary a thought. “… I was goin’ ta ask.”
The Herbalist sighed. They turned their face back to the baby.
“Should they be babblin’ so fast?” Letho wondered.
“That depends on how old they are,” Ambrosia was handling the child gently, as gently as they’d ever handled Letho, which gave him hope. “Where did you find them?”
“The shanty,” He nodded in its direction. “Outside Leyndell. Had some work thereabouts.”
“I see.” The Herbalist did not ask what kind of work. “They might be older than they look, then. If they were underfed… a woman cannot produce if she isn’t eating well herself.”
The baby’s swaddling was a different cloth to the night before. Letho pushed himself to his feet. “I can leave with them.” He said, an apology in his tone if not his words. “I meant nothin’ by bringin’ them here. I just…”
“Aletheia.” The Herbalist glanced at him, a frown tugging their weathered lips. “Then you understand what you have done.”
Their hold was ginger, and their fingers were brushing the bairn’s cheek. The cabin was full of poisons, Letho realised; he’d collected many of them himself. If Ambrosia wanted to kill a babe without pain, any one of those, even the smallest dose, ought to do the trick. He reached out without thinking — Ambrosia acquiesced the child. The baby’s face scrunched up at being moved, though when they spotted Letho they settled. Their cheeks were ruddy. Letho thought the skin would probably grow ashen with time — omens, like the nightfolk (like me, part of his heart whispered, things the Order would rather keep locked out of sight) were not destined for living beneath the sun.
“I can leave.” Letho repeated, and sounded hollow to his own ear. He could leave, and survive on his own. But how should he care for the child? It would have been easier to do away with it.
It had very small hands. They grabbed everything — it got hold of a loose lock of his hair and pulled. Letho grunted in pain.
“I am not asking you to go.” Ambrosia assured him. “I only wish to know that you understand the gravity.”
Letho swallowed. Keeping an omen was suicide. Omenkillers had wiped whole villages for the crime of sheltering them. It was not unlike harbouring an ex-Confessor, he thought, and had to bite down a laugh. “… I don’t mean to ask you to risk everything for my bad choices.” He could find his way back to the Forbidden Lands somehow, he was sure. The King had sealed them not long after the Shattering had begun, but kings rarely accounted for thieves in any truly useful manner. And beyond the confines of the golden order, an omen should be safe. The problem would be getting the two of them there alive.
The Herbalist laid their hand over Letho’s, where it was cradling the baby. “You were worth the risk. I am sure they are, too.”
#
Letho would not have called it easy. The child was not difficult in the usual sense — it rarely cried, it ate easily and well, and it slept most of the day, as children seemed wont. The difficulty lie in how quickly it grew. Within two months of their… attaining it, it would push up on its stomach, raise its head and consider the room. Four months saw it rolling. It was not so much faster than a child should have been, but it was enough to give Letho pause. The baby would track motion. It would try to squirm after toys. It was perfectly manageable for the moment, but what of when it could crawl? Run? Children were not content to be trapped indoors, like pets.
He cut back on his work. It wasn’t worth the risk of getting looked at, when they were smuggling an omen bairn right under the capital. Instead he made trips into Leyndell with medicine for peddling, while the Herbalist cared for the baby. They probably should name the poor creature, Letho thought. He hadn’t been given a name of his own properly until he’d been eight winters (when he was strong enough to weather the attention of spirits) but before he’d had a milk name, and it seemed fair enough that the baby should too. The difficulty lie in deciding on one. Perhaps something like No One would be the best — something to ward off foul luck.
He got a little money for the medicine, and went to barter for necessities. Flour, and cloth, and a bit of sandpaper. The last was admittedly an indulgence, but it was one Ambrosia should not object to.
There was whispering in the market. Letho listened to that with one ear while he browsed the stalls, his hood up to discourage notice of his features. Ashen skin and gold eyes were not… typical. Luckily no one seemed very interested in him, lost as they were in gossip.
“… talk of war…”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Peace has been the state of this kingdom since nearly the beginning of Queen Marika the Eternal’s reign…”
“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it. She’s not here.”
Letho shifted in discomfort. He didn’t linger on it much — having an infant at home had taken the bulk of his existing attention — but remembering the Shattering turned his stomach. The Golden Prince had been slaughtered, and the demigods were on the verge of war. He hoped it wouldn’t fall into his lap, but he wasn’t holding his breath. At least their cabin was off the main path. Perhaps the crown would not think to look there for soldiers.
“You know, they say more omens have been born this year than any other in history.”
A hush followed. Letho could not say he was exempt from it. He looked around, heart fluttering and a cramp in his stomach. He hurried away and finished his shopping, and tried to put the whispering out of his head.
#
“It’s getting harder to get much o’ anythin’ past the wall.”
Six months. The omen hadn’t died yet, and was rolling around the cabin with alarming dexterity. Letho was mostly keeping to legal work, but he had a finger on the pulse of the underworld, and sometimes that meant going to the seedier end of town for a drink.
“You’d think this talk of war would make it easier.” Letho muttered, and shared a commiserating glance with the bloke beside him.
“You’d think.” The blackguard rubbed the bridge of his nose. “But Morgott the Grace-Given—”
Was that who’d ended up on the throne? Letho hadn’t minded the news in ages.
“—is locking down everythin’, assigning night guards an’ all sorts of…” The man paused and sighed. “You know, the fellow’s been recruiting out of the slums.”
A laugh bubbled out of Letho. “What! How desperate is he?” If you could fight worth a damn you probably already had loyalties, and the rest of them… well. Lepers, cripples or the destitute didn’t good soldiers make. Unless all you were wanting was canon fodder. His mood soured. “Where’s the fellow even from? Don’t recall him amongst the queen’s brood.”
Blackguard shrugged. “Does it matter? The Erdtree accepted him, or… it ain’t rejected him.”
Letho supposed it didn’t. When would he have to worry about kings in anything more than hypotheticals, anyway? The laws were mostly lip service. If you knew the right hand to get coin in, anything could be bought or sold. If Morgott thought he could uproot commerce, more’s the pity.
“He’ll tone down on it when his nobles pitch a fit.” Letho guessed, and poked at his pintglass. “Black market doesn’t just cater to the likes of us.”
“Fft. Don’t talk to me about tha’, ain’t got no business muckin’ around in what you do.”
“And what do you think I do?” Letho asked, amiable, and waved for another round of drinks.
Blackguard’s eyes flickered from Letho’s face to his belt, where he wore a bandit’s knife. Letho inclined his head.
“That’s for self defence. Ain’t slit throats since I retired, you understand.”
Blackguard’s lips twitched. He waved it off and took his ale to drink. Letho had been mostly honest. His hands were a great less bloody now than when he’d been working for the crown.
#
Letho left the bar later than he should have. No one with honest business walked the streets after dark, in the capital or anywhere else. He didn’t see anyone out that looked suspicious, not even lurking in the alleys, which was… weird. There’d been a heyday of muggers, thugs and bandits in the wake of the Shattering. Seemed for a while you couldn’t spit without hitting one of the fuckers in the eye and getting shaken down for his trouble.
Letho stuck to the side of the street and walked at a sedate pace, watching the world from under his hood. Most of the guards passed him right by.
He went from the main street to the north-east gate path, and saw a massive man in the distance, with a strange, irregular outline. Letho paused. Maybe he’d be better off taking the rooftops. For all he knew, that was an omenkiller…
He sidestepped into an alley. The man didn’t turn to face Letho. Probably safe, then. The building beside him had a sturdy windowsill he climbed up onto, then reached for the eave overhead and pulled himself up. Much better. He started across the roof in a crouch and leapt to the next.
He glanced to the side in passing, checking the street.
The man was gone.
Ah. Not good. Letho started to move faster. Behind him, something heavy hit the clay tiles.
Letho didn’t draw the knife on his waist, but his fingers twitched towards it. He spun in place. To his devastating lack of surprise, the man who’d been on the road was now on the edge of the roof Letho had just scuttled across. Of course he was. He looked like he towered over Letho even in a crouch. Letho didn’t come down from the peak of the building to check. “Uh—good evenin’?”
It wasn’t an omenkiller, so that was something. Though Letho… it took him a moment of looking to understand what he was facing. The man rose up — he was crowned by a mass of curving, jagged horns, concentrated to the right of his head. What looked like a tail was swaying behind him — the end had similar protrusions. And his eye reflected the golden light of the Erdtree. An omen.
Letho relaxed a little. An omen was hardly a threat. One yell and half the guard would descend on the both of them. It’d be suicide, but Letho was spiteful enough to do it if he had no other option. Bold fellow, if he was standing out in the road, full night or not.
The man stood up. He was of a level with Letho, who was standing a few feet above him on the peak of the roof. Terrible. Objectively awful. Letho didn’t even have a sword on him, he didn’t want to fight an omen on a rooftop.
“What,” The omen started, in a voice that startled him — the stranger didn’t sound like omens were supposed to, though Letho couldn’t quite put his finger on why. “Dost thou think thou art doing on this rooftop?” Actually… Letho thought he seemed familiar.
“Um.” Letho put his hands up out of habit. It tended to make people mistake him for harmless, or at least hapless. “I was walkin’ home.”
The omen did not seem impressed with his answer. Well, that was too bad; it was the whole boring truth. Ugh, Letho could swear he’d seen that judgmental look somewhere before… “And I assume thou hast papers?”
Papers. Letho flashed the man a smile. “Oh, aye, if that’s all yer wantin’!” What the fuck was his life. An omen had followed him onto the roofs to identify him. This was terrible, he’d clearly drank too much. He reached for the pouch on his waist, and watched the man tense. Letho slowed his movements to try and discourage any accidental stabbings. He withdrew the papers — they were forged, but it was a good forgery, and he didn’t think whatever bloke was watching over this end of the capital would know the difference or bother to ask someone who would, not at this hour — and passed them over.
The omen took them; Letho watched his eye track down to the Registrar’s Seal (that had been the trickiest part to fake, mostly because you couldn’t. The seal was real. It had been… appropriated… from a legitimate set of papers. Removing and transferring the wax had been a misery, or so he was told. Letho had paid a king’s ransom for the bloody things.)
Letho waited. He tried not to twitch.
The omen ran his finger over the seal. “… this… appears to be in order.” His eye tracked back up to Letho, glittering with suspicion. Probably trying to figure out why someone with papers was on the rooftops. That was what placed him.
Letho jolted. He was looking at Margit, the Fell Omen. The last time Letho had seen Margit, the fellow had been standing over the corpse of a giant. He looked different in the nighttime.
Seemed like he didn’t recognise Letho. Probably for the best, that; Letho had undergone a name and career change since they last crossed paths. “Since when do omens care about papers?” He put his hands up. “The guard start recruiting, now?”
Margit growled at him. But he didn’t crumple the page, to Letho’s gratitude.
“It’s just a question, I’m honestly curious.” Letho bounced on his toes. “Last I heard…”
“Get off of the roof and go home. There’s a curfew.” Margit shoved the paper back toward him. He was wiry, long-limbed, and looked like he hadn’t eaten enough — maybe ever. The years hadn’t been kind to him. His nose had gone bumpy from harsh sunlight, and the lines in his face were far deeper. But he’d never looked well.
Letho folded the parchment and packed it away on his hip, watching his company. “Sure. Yeah. Happy to do that.” He retreated to the edge and climbed down under the omen’s watchful gaze. Aware of Margit’s eye on his back, Letho headed to the gate, and left the capital. And he never saw Margit around town after, so he… mostly forgot about it.