Chapter Text
From the beginning of my life, I have been looking for your face.
But today I have seen it.
Erik was watching the house burn. They had gotten to the Marko estate a few hours too late; Lord Marko and his son Cain were long gone, along with the rest of the family and the embezzled gold. From the staff quarters behind the house, Erik could hear the shouts of Azazel and his men rounding up the last of the servants who were in the midst of fleeing. Erik didn't know where they would want to run; Marko's estate was right at the edge of the kingdom, with the desert at its doorstep. The only discernible options for the servants would be to wander the desert, or flee to the neighbouring estate belonging to Stryker, who was rumoured to be an even crueler master.
Shielding his eyes from the blazing afternoon sun, Erik squinted into the distance. He could already make out faraway figures trudging through the sand in panic, bearing their meagre belongings on their heads like leaf-cutter ants. He was willing to wager that those were the higher level servants, prone to eavesdropping and privy to gossip that their lower counterparts wouldn't know. They must have been tipped off that Shaw had sent Erik and his men on their way. Erik's hands tightened on the reins of his horse, and beneath him Magneto let out a low whinny. He absently brushed a soothing hand across her back.
"Everyone's gone," Azazel called out as he rode up to Erik, his own magnificent red steed rearing away from the smoke and soot carried over by the wind. "Well, except for three servants who were locked up in the back."
Erik's mouth tightened. If there had been anyone of importance, Azazel would have already said so. "Make sure they're seen to. Otherwise, are we done here?"
Azazel cast an uncharacteristically doubtful glance towards the staff quarters behind him. "I think you'll want to see this."
They dismounted, tying their horses to a few nearby palm trees before entering by the back door, which hung askew by its broken hinges. The staff quarters were sparse and rundown, and Erik wrinkled his nose at the smell of something fishy rotting in the kitchen. He would never allow his own staff to live in such inhumane conditions.
The three remaining servants were huddled together in the communal living room. There was an old couple in plain yellow garb, trembling as they held each other, probably too slow to have fled with the others. Bracing a protective arm over them was a completely veiled young woman, feet apart, chin tilted up in defiance. Only her eyes were visible, and Erik caught a glimpse of bright, angry blue lined with dark kohl.
And then he looked closer at her robes.
They were black silk with gold trim, and along the hem was a very familiar, intricate pattern of golden crescent moons of three different sizes, meant to represent al-Barakh, al-Bilan and al-Mooq. Erik stepped forward and peered closer at the print, confirming his suspicions. It was exactly the same as the pattern on his mother's robes, except that hers had been red and purple, signifying her high rank in the clan. Azazel's insistence on him seeing the servants suddenly made sense.
Erik's eyes flicked up to meet the young woman's. "Which clan are you from?" His B'oktuan was rusty, but the traders at the market who still spoke the old dialect understood him well enough.
"I think she's a mute," Azazel said from behind him. "We tried to question her earlier but she just kept gesturing angrily at us."
"Tell me the name of your clan," Erik said, this time in Genoshan. The young woman remained silent, but Erik didn't miss the way she edged just a little closer to the elderly couple.
"Please, sir, we are not affiliated with any clan," the old man said, his grip tight on his wife. "I work in the stables, my wife in the kitchen."
They were both trembling too hard to be lying. Erik tilted his head at the veiled woman. "And yourself?"
"She really doesn't speak," the old woman said this time, her voice almost a whisper. Erik had to lean in to hear her words, and this made her shrink back in fear even more. "I think she is one of the harem girls."
Erik didn't respond. The veiled girl still kept her gaze on him, steady and unafraid. Her eyes, though. Erik thought of the deepest lake he had ever seen, back at the oasis near his village, where a young boy had once drowned. "Do any of you know where Lord Marko has fled to?" he asked.
All three servants shook their heads.
Glancing at his men, Erik gave them a nod. Azazel nodded back, alert and poised as always, while behind him, Janos' lips had thinned in annoyance. "Get the horses ready," Erik told them, watching as his men filed out. He cast a quick glance around the quarters: it had been spared the fire that had engulfed the main house, but ash and smoke were now starting to filter in through the windows.
Now the couple and the girl were huddling closer, but Erik raised a reassuring hand. "We will take you into the city if you wish it. Do you have a place to stay?"
The couple just stared at him, their brows furrowed in confusion. "We are not going to be captured and sold?" the old man asked tentatively.
It made Erik wonder just how many labour laws Marko had been flagrantly disregarding. "Do we look like slave raiders? We're not barbarians." His expression must have been exasperated enough because he could see the young woman's stance relaxing slightly, while the elderly couple exchanged a vexed look.
After a hushed discussion with his wife, the old man finally said, "We have relatives we can stay with in the city."
Erik's gaze flickered over to the veiled woman. Doubt had at last crept into her eyes, lines of tension creased around them. He knew what he must have looked like to her: dressed entirely in black, his steel sabre in its leather scabbard slung over his right hip. With no royal or military insignia, Erik could easily be a rogue mercenary, or even a desert bandit.
He glanced out of the window, and even from this distance he could make out the beginnings of a sandstorm on the horizon. Plucky as she might be, she wouldn't get far.
She shifted under his gaze, and he couldn't take his eyes off the pattern of her robes. So similar to the red and purple ones he kept in a chest under his bed, similar enough to cause a tight ache in his throat.
Clearing it carefully, Erik spoke in B'oktuan this time. "If you don't have anywhere to go, you can come with us. Or stay here and be picked up by slave raiders. Your choice." The couple stared uncomprehendingly at him, but the veiled woman looked alert, considering.
After what seemed like an eternity, she carefully nodded.
***
It was an hour's ride to the city, and they rode hard to escape the oncoming sandstorm. Azazel and Janos each bore one half of the elderly couple on their horses, while the veiled woman, after her initial reluctance, rode with Erik. He had considered searching her for hidden weapons, but when he had advanced towards her, he hadn't missed the fear in her eyes, and the old couple had protested loudly as well, citing a few of the many laws that protected the modesty of women. Erik had backed off, fighting back a smile. It would be amusing if they knew he was the one who had suggested these very same laws to Shaw.
Without further ado, the woman had mounted Magneto and sat in front of Erik, primly clutching onto the saddle. But once Magneto went into a full speed gallop, Erik had to brace an arm around the woman to keep her from falling off. An accidental brush made Erik uncomfortably aware that she was rather flat-chested for a dancer, all lean muscle and nothing like the soft, bosomy women Shaw kept in his harem. Erik forced away the grim possibility of malnutrition, making a mental note to get some food into her as soon as possible. He did not relish the idea of discovering whatever else Marko had gotten away with in regards to mistreating his servants.
Once they reached the city limits of Genosha, they dropped off the old couple first with their relatives somewhere in the old quarter. Erik briefly wondered if the veiled girl might follow them, but she remained on his horse, her eyes shielded by the intricate headscarf, ever enigmatic. They continued onwards to the palace, entering by the west gate to avoid attention and fanfare. It was dark enough that the first moon was already out, but not the other two.
Alex was waiting for them outside the stables. "Let me guess, Marko--" he trailed off when he spotted the veiled girl on Erik's horse, his eyes widening. "Who's that?"
"Your grandmother," Janos said serenely as he handed over his steed to a waiting stable boy, not at all affected by Alex's scowl of displeasure.
Azazel's chuckle was low and gravelly. "The girl is the last of Marko's servants, she had nowhere to go," he said by way of explanation.
"Taking in strays now, are we?" Alex said, which was quite rich, considering his background and how Azazel had rescued him and his brothers from the streets. But when Erik shot him a chastising glance, Alex was helping the girl down from Magneto, regarding her with soft, sympathetic eyes, so Erik held his tongue.
Another stable boy appeared with canteens which they took turns passing around, and as the girl discreetly lifted her veil to free her mouth for a drink, Erik caught a flash of red. "Nice mouth on that one," Azazel muttered. Erik wasn't even aware he had been watching.
Erik forcefully dragged his eyes off her. "She must be wearing rouge," he said shortly, refusing to be enticed.
Once they brushed most of the dust and dirt off, Erik left the veiled girl in Alex's custody. "I'll be back once we find a place for you," he told her. She didn't nod, didn't signal yes or no, and Erik wasn't quite certain whether she would still be there when he returned. Which was fair enough, servants ran off all the time, but finding someone from his mother's clan was very rare.
"Wait here for me," he told her, but she was already turning to watch Alex brush down the horses.
***
Shaw was still in his dark green prayer robes when Erik and his men filed into the study, and he gave them a benign smile. "Leave us," he told his attendants, who bowed and left the room, silent as ghosts. Once the door closed, he looked expectantly at Erik. "What of the House of Marko?"
Erik's fists tightened. Whenever there was bad news, Shaw preferred the bandage to be ripped off quickly. "Marko was tipped off," Erik said. "By the time we got there, he had set fire to his own home, and only the servants were left. None of them knew anything."
His smile slipped. "And the gold?"
Erik shook his head.
Drawing in a deep breath, Shaw started to pace very slowly across the magnificent B'oktuan carpet on the floor, which had been a present from Erik for the previous Lunar Festival. Azazel and the rest of the men waited, breath held as taut as a sitari string. But Erik knew Shaw better than the rest of the men, and Shaw's anger was never explosive and unpredictable. It was cold and calculated, the freezing burn of bare skin pressed against ice. Shaw simply continued to pace, deep in thought, and Erik rested his gaze instead on the large oil painting above the fireplace, a commanding portrait of Shaw decked out in all his war finery.
"I'll send word out to our allies to keep an eye out for fugitives," Shaw said at last, his mouth a tight, displeased line. A casual flutter of the hand meant they were dismissed, for now, but Erik fully expected to be reprimanded in private another day.
On the way out, Erik bumped into Ororo with a basket of laundered veils, and he caught her by the arm, remembering his other problem waiting out by the stables. "Do you need a serving girl?" he asked her. "Azazel found a woman who has just lost her master."
Ororo sighed, her hand on her hip. "I'm sorry, Erik, but the staff quarters are full as it is, what with the extra help we've taken in for the festivals."
"Oh." Erik thought for a while. There was a spare room in the women's wing, next to Raven's quarters. "I'll take her into my household, then. But I don't think she will stay long."
Ororo shot him an amused sideways glance. "Why do you always scare your women off, Erik?" she asked, before continuing on her way. She probably had not meant for her words to sting, but after having Marko slip through his fingers, Erik wasn't quite in a disposition to be teased.
He was startled out of his sour mood when he returned to the stables and saw the veiled woman still waiting there, feeding a bag of oats and rusks to Magneto. He tried to mask his surprise by frowning. "Well, the palace has more than enough servants, so you're coming home with me."
The woman simply nodded, caressing Magneto's velvety nose.
***
Erik had ten acres of land outside the citadel, and it was where he retreated to when he had finished a call of duty, or one of Shaw's special 'tasks'. Over the years he had built himself a large, extensive domed house of stone and red brick, the same fiery colour as Azazel's steed. It was big enough to house himself, his servants, and guests (who were rather infrequent, so the unused rooms grew musty until Darwin started using them for linen storage). To the west of the house lay a vast garden that grew almost every local vegetable, from the humble common stewleaf to the highly sought-after lobster-root, a favourite of Raven's.
Behind the garden, Darwin kept a henhouse, as well as some goats that provided them with plenty of milk. Erik did not particularly like drinking it, but he was partial to the soft, pale cheese that the milk yielded, taking it with bread and the dark local honey Darwin traded for at the market sometimes.
Travellers who were passing by and seeking temporary hospitality - shade, a drink, gossip - had somehow nicknamed Erik's estate 'La Maison Rouge', and the name had stuck. "Go along Market Road, until you see La Maison Rouge, then turn left," locals would say while giving directions to the Pilgrim Trail. "The head servant will give you a meal if you play a game of dice or two with him." Erik knew of this; he had reprimanded Darwin before for being over-generous with strangers, but he could hardly fault a man who ran his household so efficiently otherwise. It was hard to get good help these days.
Erik wondered now at the silent girl seated in front of him, her scarves fluttering in the wind and in his face as they rode. Would she fit in with his household? Raven would be welcoming enough, but Angel took time to warm up to other women, wearing her distrust proudly like a sash. Erik wasn't worried about Darwin, who had an unnatural ability of making everyone feel at ease, and the other house servants would usually follow his lead.
They reached the estate just after full dark, the third moon already high in the inky sky. Erik was exhausted and in need of a hot bath, and he was sure the girl would appreciate the same. He dismounted Magneto first, then helped her down.
Darwin was lighting the last of the lamps by the main doorway, and his face split into a grin when he spotted Erik. "Back so early! I did not expect you so fast." His gaze fell upon the veiled maiden. "A new addition to the household?"
Erik's exhaustion was sudden, bone-deep; he found himself itching to wrench away from that burning, scrutinizing gaze of hers that had haunted him all day. "She had nowhere to go," he said simply. "She's mute, by the way. Get the girls to prepare a bath and clothes for her."
Darwin nodded, putting the torch aside. "You'll want one too, right?"
"Of course, I do not pay you to laze around all day," Erik said dryly, and Darwin snorted, shaking his head. The girl's eyes were now flitting back and forth between them, shaded and wary. Erik didn't blame her; a master and servant talking as equals must have been confusing.
"Come with me," Darwin said gently to her, and Erik was left in the hallway, watching them in the flickering light of the lamps, Darwin's hand calm and easy on her arm.
***
The screams roused Erik when he was nodding off in the bath.
He jerked awake, reflexively grabbing the dagger he kept on the table beside him. The shouts and shrieks were coming from the women's bathhouse next door. He climbed out in a hurry, dripping wet, and grabbed the woollen towel Darwin had laid out for him, wrapping it around his waist. He sprinted towards the women's quarters, the towel flapping against his damp legs.
Angel was already hovering outside the doorway of the bathhouse, craning her neck to watch the commotion. She made way for Erik as he darted inside, immediately asking her, "What's going on?"
"There's a man in there," she said incredulously, and Erik's first thought was that they had caught a peeping tom.
The women's bathhouse was smaller than the men's, and it also felt far more claustrophobic, thanks to Raven. She kept an incredible assortment of bath oils and soaps in here that the female servants shared, storing vats and tubs filled with cloying moringa oil, creamy Alkmaar jasmine soap and a hundred other exotic scents that only served to torture Erik's sinuses. He stepped around several of these vats now, approaching the small crowd of women who were shouting and scolding a pale, huddled figure in the middle. Raven, it seemed, was leading the pack. Beside her, Erik could see a tub of steaming jasmine-scented bathwater that had been prepared for the newcomer, but it remained untouched, the water rapidly cooling.
"What in God's name--" Erik stopped. Raven was angrily holding up the black and gold robes of the mute servant, but in front of her stood a naked man, hands covering his crotch. When his kohl-lined eyes met Erik's, everything fell into place.
"You..." Erik pointed the dagger at him, and the man flinched slightly.
"How did you not check whether she was a woman?" Raven said accusingly, holding up the robes as if to emphasize her point.
"Am I to check the genitals of every person who enters the house?" Erik retorted, causing a nervous titter among the watching girls. "Has he said anything?"
"Still a mute, I believe." But Raven's stance had softened, her sharp eyes raking over the naked man. He was around her height and unusually pale, paler than even Raven who spent the majority of her time dancing indoors. His dark hair was a little longer than Erik's, bangs falling into his eyes. He shook them away, staring warily at the small crowd huddled around him. His hunched, weary posture reminded Erik of a cornered old dog, beaten and trapped but ready to bite its way out.
"All right, enough," Erik said at last, picking up a nearby towel and tossing it to the man. "You're coming with me."
***
Darwin managed to procure a tunic and pair of drawstring pants that fit the man, and even then they hung a little loosely on him, the old clothes of a servant who had left to get married. The man was demolishing a bowl of hot stew now, making Erik wonder when he had eaten last. He avoided looking in Erik's direction, keeping his gaze strictly on his food. The kohl had been washed off, and without it, his eyes looked brighter now, sharper.
Once the bowl was scraped clean, Erik asked, "Do you want some more?"
The man hesitated, but Darwin wordlessly pried the bowl from his hands and went to ladle in more of the lamb stew. The man only paused for a second when the bowl was set back down in front of him, diving in as though it were his first helping. Erik and Darwin exchanged a look.
It was too late to send this man back to the palace for further questioning, and Erik had already alerted his guards to watch over the newcomer. "He can sleep in my room tonight," Darwin said, which really meant, I'll keep an eye on him, he's not going anywhere.
"Fine," Erik said, and he really did mean it. He was tired, he was aching, and so far, the man had not given him any cause to be wary. Once he was done eating, Darwin led him out of the kitchen and down the dark corridors leading to the men's quarters, speaking in a low, soothing voice. The man turned, once, eyes glittering like a cat in the dim light. He gave Erik a single, sharp nod, then turned around the corner and disappeared.
That night, Erik dreamt of an oasis, its lake so deep that it seemed bottomless.