Nightsworn | The Whispering Wall #2

Fifty Five: Fittings and Rumours

"Is there any way you could make this less awkward for both of us?" Arlen drawled. He tried not to shiver at the draught currently bothering his nether regions. The man in front of him taking measurements around his thigh only grunted.

"If you want one that actually fits, quit whining." Darin glared balefully at him from the corner where he had been conversing with a friend from the candle factory. "Before everyone gets as fed up with you as I am."

Arlen ignored him. Ever since the incident with the captive, Darin had been cold and short with him as if Arlen had ever pretended to be anything other than a Devil. The fact that the captive would have killed Arlen without a second thought given half a chance – he'd been commissioned to do exactly that, even, before Arlen caught him - didn't seem to factor into any of Darin's reasoning. He would have liked to know what exactly Darin had thought the Devils actually did, for it to distress him so much. He hadn't even let it go when Usk had put the would-be assassin out of his misery and killed him.

"If I let him go alive, he might come back and make another attempt on me!" Arlen had said, in the face of Darin's outrage. "I suppose if you were me, you'd just let him wander off, tell whoever he worked for where you lived and who you kept around you, and sit waiting for him to come back and try again? I don't have time for that shit."

Darin had left without another word.

The weeks that had followed, they had not spoken to each other once. Arlen had resigned himself to it and scouted around to find this engineer himself, but the night before Darin had reappeared at his window intending to take him. In Darin's position, Arlen admitted to himself, he would not have come back at all. So instead of biting back with equal animosity as he wanted to, he simply didn't dignify the barbs with any response.

"How fast can you make this thing?" Arlen asked. He hoped he didn't sound desperate, but what he had seen so far had looked too promising to keep the edge from his voice. Instead of an imitation foot, the prosthetic plans had detailed a kind of blade with a flat base, with a detachable framework that would allow him to wear a boot on it. The engineer had made no promises about running on it but hinted that it could be possible, depending on his outcomes. Walking upright had seemed far-fetched an idea enough up until this point. Arlen could adapt jobs and plans to suit his needs, as long as he could execute them in the first place.

"A few weeks at least," the engineer, Porter, straightened with a groan and returned to his work bench to write something down. "This is the first coin I've had in many a week that hasn't had to go straight on food."

A few weeks. Arlen could do a few weeks. He just didn't like the 'at least'.

"Good," he said, because he didn't have much choice. "Is the down payment sufficient?"

Porter's inherently surly face cracked into a wry smile. "Aye, sir. I thank you for your generosity."

Not generosity, Arlen thought, I'm paying to save my life. But if believing so maintained the man's goodwill enough to keep the pressure up on the project, Arlen was happy to let it lie.

He pulled his trousers back on over his undergarments, and then strapped his current prosthetic over the top of it. His stump still tingled and burned from Porter's prodding; the engineer had expressed some concern that it was too early for the wound to be carrying his weight on it, a concern that Arlen had roundly ignored, along with all the comments about how thoroughly covered up he was – above the waist, at any rate – and the number and severity of the scars on his legs. Arlen had clenched his jaw and taken it, even as he wanted to deck Porter for the audacity. He needed the man far too much to carry through.