Chapter 30: Ch. 030 – (Then) You Should See the Other Guy

Jonathan lay in his hiding place, fading in and out of consciousness. Even under normal circumstances, it was impossible to keep track of time down here, but with the pain and the fever dreams on top of it, he was completely unable to tell the difference between his nightmares and the waking nightmare that had become his life. He woke several times to the sound of slamming doors and his makeshift bedroom being ransacked, but he had no way of knowing if that had happened repeatedly, or if it hadn’t actually happened at all. He dreamed that his attackers found him, but when they pulled him from the sick bed to finish the job he always woke to find himself alone, curled up like a wounded animal, and waiting to die. 

Without food or water death would find him eventually, even if Fedon didn’t. He dreamed about the dwarf too, and their fight. Sometimes he shrugged off the heat as less than an annoyance before crushing Jonathan’s skull like an egg, and sometimes he was burned so badly that you could see the bone of the dwarf’s skull beneath the flesh that had been melted off by Jonathan’s fiery attack. Both of those outcomes horrified Jonathan in equal measure. When he woke with cracked lips and a growling in his stomach he couldn’t ignore his will to live, finally forced him to get up and look for something to drink, but the pain was too great. He collapsed after only a dozen steps, and wasn’t quite able to make it to the warehouse door before he passed out again from the pain. 

“There ye are, Jon,” Kaspov said when he finally found him.  “What in the blazes happened to ye?” 

Even though he was sure that he was dreaming, Jon opened his mouth to tell his friend anyway, but no words came out. His lips and tongue were so swollen by his beating that all he could do was moan faintly.  

“I’ve been looking for ye for a day now - we all have on and off.” Kaspov said grimly as the dwarf checked his body physically, his expression soured as he pulled away Jonathan’s clothes to look for clues as to what happened to him. “I’m going to get some help. Ye rest here, and I’ll be right back. Yer gonna be just fine.” Jonathan had no idea if he was right back or not. He passed out again from the pain and awoke later, back in his own bed with one of the dwarves on Kaspov’s crew, Erkom he thought, forcing him to drink some water until he thought he was going to drown.

There were a few more memories like that, but every time the dwarf with him was different. Once it wasn’t even a dwarf he knew listening to his heart. He didn’t understand what they were saying, but he’d learned enough about dwarven tone by this point to know that it wasn’t good news. Did they not expect him to recover? He tried to ask but Kaspov just said, “Here you are lad - something for the pain,” before forcing him to choke down more water. It wasn’t water though. Or even beer. It was some kind of liquid fire that burned all the way down, sending him sprawling down another corridor of drunken nightmares. 

At some point later he finally awoke from those, covered in sweat like he’d broken a fever. Jonathan couldn’t say if it had been a day or a week, but for the first time since the beating he felt almost normal. That normality only lasted until he tried to move though. Then he felt a dozen agonies radiating out from different points of his body. He was fairly sure he hurt more now than he did while Fedon was beating him, and all he could do was lie back and gasp for breath while he tried not to scream. That was enough to wake Erkom who was sleeping in a chair near his bedside with a brand across his lap. 

“Easy does it now,” he said, with his thick accent. He knew some Wenlish from his time as a logger, but he was decades out of practice. “Ye just rest now. Ye been hurt real bad.” 

“How bad,” Jonathan asked, almost afraid of the answer. 

“The doc says ye will be fine if ye rest and everythin’ mends like it should, but I ain’t no expert now, am I?” the dwarf said. 

“Well that’s good news at least,” Jonathan answered, trying his best to be the man his father had trained him to be, even though everything hurt. “So if I’m going to be okay then what are you doing here?” Erkom was a hard worker and seemed like a decent dwarf, but he had no love for humans, so even if Kaspov had a soft spot for him, he hardly expected the other dwarves he worked with to care. 

“Kaspov tells me how to spend my shift.” Erkom said. “He wants me here watchin ye, then I’m here watchin ye.” That at least made sense to Jonathan. Getting paid to watch the fragile human was probably a lot easier than overhauling locomotive brakes, or whatever they were doing this week.

The day passed uneventfully, with Erkom helping him more with water than with conversation. Even with the pain it was the best day Jonathan had in a week it sounded like, and part way through the third watch Kaspov finally showed up. “Well look who’s finally awake,” he said, walking through the door, “that’s real progress if I say so meself.” 

“It’s nice to see you too.” Jonathan said, smiling weakly. “It sounds like I really owe you one.”

“Several actually,” the engineer smiled, “But don’t ye worry, I got yer debts tallied all nice and neat in my log.” 

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“Of course,” Jonathan said immediately, “I’ll pay you back. I’ll—” he stopped talking as both of the dwarves broke out into gales of laughter. Jonathan felt like he missed the joke, but eventually, once he dried his eyes and stopped laughing, Kaspov clued him in. 

“Those logs ain’t for ye lad. They’re for the court. I know ye’d be good for it if it came to it, but yer assailant Fedon will be footing those bills,” the dwarf gloated smugly. “He’s already admitted that he tried to kill ye because of some nonsense about ye being a spy, but I’m having none of it.”

“No?” Jonathan asked, confused. “Does that mean I need to defend myself against being a spy now too on top of everything else?” 

“Nah,” the dwarf dismissed his concern with a wave of his hand before taking a sip from his flask before passing it to Erkom. “There isn’t a shred of proof there beyond his certainty. He’s already switched his argument to yer use of sorcery in yer fight with him. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on.” 

“He doesn’t?” Jonathan asked again. He’d definitely used his fire magic in that fight, and even if it was subtle he wouldn’t think it would be that hard to prove. Surely the dwarves had a way to detect magic, didn’t they?

“Of course he doesn’t.” Kaspov said, taking the flask back and offering it to Jonathan who held up his hand. There was no way he could drink any more of whatever passed for dwarven whiskey and pay attention to this conversation. “Me and the boys testified to that already. We ain’t never seen ye spy or use magic, and even if we did, ole’ skinflint Maxom’s logs already put ye in the clear.”

“What? How do the bills Maxom writes for me every week prove anything?” Jonathan was genuinely perplexed by this plot twist.

“Because they say very clearly that on the night of the attack he sent ye home with hot mushroom chowder. Hot - right there in black and white.” Kaspov said, winking heavily at Jonathan. “The boy wants to cry about getting splashed with hot soup after trying to crack yer skull? No one is about to give that sort of behavior the benefit of the doubt. Even ye know that using magic inside the city of Khaghrumer means certain death. Even a boy like ye would never do something so foolish, would ye Jon?” 

“Of course not,” Jonathan smiled dumbly as he took in all the new information. Reading between the lines it was easy enough to see that Kaspov was coaching him, on what to say if it turned out the Magistrate wanted to talk to him from his sickbed, even if it sounded like that wouldn’t be the case. The old dwarf might be telling the truth on some technicalities, but he was wiley in ways Jonathan would never be. That wasn’t even the funny part though. The funny part was that Maxom’s stupid weekly bills actually came in handy for something besides screwing him over. That was unexpectedly hilarious, but Jonathan found that when it was time to laugh, it hurt so badly that it quickly became a groan of pain. 

“Ye just rest, lad. Rest with the assurance that yer enemy will be picking up the tab for yer extended recuperation.” Kaspov said, passing Jonathan the flask. This time he actually took it. This conversation had taken quite a lot out of him. “Oh, and I do believe we owe ye congratulations on yer first fight. 

“It doesn’t feel like I won anything,” Jon answered, working up the courage to swallow a mouthful of the potent dwarven liquor. When he finally did, he felt the fire attack his throat again, but this time the warmth that followed was a welcome relief from the pain he’d been suffused with all day. 

“Well - ye just wait until ye see the other guy before ye say that.” Kaspov smiled cryptically. “Because the way I see it, Fedon was definitely on the losing side of that fight.” Jonathan thought about those words long after his friend left. The soup must have really messed his attacker up. That was the only way to interpret those words, but Jonathan wasn’t sure whether he should feel proud or ashamed about it. He’d never attacked a person in anger before after all, and given the reputation of firebloods, it didn’t seem like a good way to start. 

Kaspov had someone from his crew stay with him every day until Fedon went to trial three days later. He was fined and forced to pay restitution, but otherwise it was a slap on the wrist since Jonathan was expected to make a full recovery. He spent two more weeks in that bed with someone checking on him once a day before he was finally able to get up and move around on his own. As Kaspov told the story he had three cracked ribs, a concussion, and a lacerated liver that Jonathan could still see the evidence of in the form of a nasty bruise on his back and side if he used a mirror. Once he was better the dwarf even admitted that he was touch and go for a few days, but he still seemed proud of him for putting up the fight he did. 

Apparently no one thought humans had much of a chance against dwarves in a one on one fight, and after he went back to work, it was the major topic of conversation for a few days. Jonathan could believe it. The stone men were tougher and stronger than they had any right to be. He looked forward to never having to fight one again, especially after he saw Fedon in the yards one day. Before the fight his bully had been the consummate city dwarf with a clean shaven face, and well groomed hair, but after his fight with Jonathan he’d taken to growing out a patchy beard to try to cover up the terrible scaring that dominated the right side of his face. Fedon hadn’t lost an eye in the fight though, and used both of them to glare at Jonathan every chance he got. The dwarf might have lost the chance to kill the human without anyone finding out who did it, but Jonathan was under no illusions he would do whatever it took to make his life as miserable as possible going forward.

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