Chapter Text
Let me tell you a story tonight. The moon is high and strident, and the trees are so quiet it almost seems they’re watching us over this velvet-dark field. I am holding the world’s greatest treasure in my hands, and I will tell you where it came from.
It is the night that reminds me. A long time ago, over these very fields, a great band of horses came riding. Merchant horses with silver and leather from the steppe, and a poor insignificant bundle of three. It is tucked in a green fold of cloth high behind the lead merchant and does not speak a single word though its eyes are so big in the dark.
He is tired, this little one. He smells things that are not from his home and clings fast so he does not fall off. There is dirt on his face and a blank in his eyes, and his breathing is tight. When the merchants come into the city they will leave him, this little one, in the door of an orphanage run by someone with no soft spots left in their heart. In the door of a tumbledown orphanage down in the slums, in the Docks of Vesuvia. He will cling to the lead merchant’s hand for a moment, looking up without words, and be shaken off.
He will be beaten, that very night, for not answering when he is spoken to. He will live in that place for a scant two years, learning many things no child should know, before he does what all reared there must do and runs off into the streets; and this time he does not return.
He is too timid to steal and too tongue-tied to beg. But he is big for his age, strong and fast when he isn’t sick. And despite the rain and spoiled food, he is not sick too often. He trades other young ones for food and places to sleep, curled in that fold of green cloth. When he is seven, they ask him to chase down a newcomer to their territory, a small boy with white hair and strange eyes who can disappear. If he gets him, they say, they’ll leave smoked eel by his sleeping spot for a whole week. And Muriel does not like them much, but he is hungry. He goes along, and when caught with their group stealing food is left to take the fall for them. A shopkeep grabs his arm and is suddenly thrown off balance by a small child with white hair and dimples. The shopkeep strikes him, but he just laughs and runs away, beckoning Muriel after.
Muriel chases him through the heart of the slums, to the very reeking water’s edge, and there loses him: curious, the child speaks to him, saying he’s never seen him with the others. His name is Asra, and he is just five years old. Muriel asks if he is magic, and as they talk Asra becomes bolder. He appears again, looking roguish, and asks if Muriel wants to see what he can do. In what neither of them realize is an exceptional display of magical aptitude, he opens a curtain of illusion and ushers a very reluctant Muriel into a tiny corner he has turned into home for himself. Muriel is standing with his scrap hugged around himself, tired and dumbfounded, when he realizes Asra has quietly hunched in the corner, holding himself and crying. He is hurt by the shopkeep, and as he blows on and kisses his own bleeding arm Muriel realizes just how small and vulnerable he is. He tries to be brave even as he’s crying and Muriel helps to patch him up, reassuring him when he asks that he will not tell the other boys where he’s hiding. In return, Asra shares some food and a great deal of conversation with him, even as Muriel is drifting in and out of sleep. His parents went away for an important job and never came home, and then scary men with spears came to the house, but he got away before they could find him because of Mister Fox. A magic man, is Mister Fox, who no one else can see! He helps him stay safe and hide from scary people, and teaches him lots of things! Muriel is sure it is just how tired he is, but he fancies he sees a sly orange fox in a purple robe winking at him over Asra’s head as he talks. He falls asleep, and wakes an hour later as he always does, just to find the smaller boy draped over him in a tiny, trusting embrace. He’s afraid to wake him, and this isn’t so bad. He’s still chubby, and far too naive. Muriel knows he won’t survive without a gang or going to an orphanage, and who knows what would happen to a magic baby in those places. He’s been cared for, and will have to be broken in. It doesn’t sit right with him. He likes how soft he is.
Begrudgingly, he looks after Asra from then on. At least, at first. Asra is everything opposite to him, and Muriel does not understand anything about him. But the pair quickly bond, and bond tightly.
Through one hiding place after another. Through ruin and through fights and through fugitive nights they stick side by side, Muriel proving to be the only other person who can catch even glimpses of the fox that haunts Asra. Asra insists this is proof of magical talent, and trains Muriel in whatever he shows inclination for. Eventually the pair begin turning a modest living off enchanted masks and other small accessories. The Lord Count throws excessive parties, and Asra has a charming face and a smooth tongue. Muriel carves and forms the masks and paints them, Asra enchants them for glamour and beauty, charm and grace, and sells them to party-goers in the palace neighborhood. Through the years Muriel has proved no more liking of crowds than he ever was, and hardly less timid. He stays back, and one night Asra bears home a smile and a mention of someone named Ianthe.
Ianthe. The name falls from his tongue oftener and oftener, and he lingers much longer than usual in the city. She is a potion-seller in the palace district, just their age, and so much like Asra; so quick-witted and eager to laugh. So kind. And fearless as the day. Muriel’s heart knows jealousy for the first time as someone else touches those heartstrings so precious to him. Though many times Asra pleads him to come and meet Ianthe, or suggests that she come to their hiding-place to meet him, Muriel refuses both. Some few times, even then, she is with Asra on his way homeward, meeting Muriel in his waiting-spot at the edge of the slums. She is warm. She is pretty. Worst of all, she is daring. One day, at her suggestion, the two of them accost the carriage of the Count’s bride as it enters the city. Asra tells him the tale with the stars in his eyes: it was incredible. Nadia is the Countess’s name, and she favored their boldness— even said they might make fine magicians. He has never seemed more alive. A link to the palace, however tenuous, sends his hopes of becoming a proper, learned magician to unbearable heights: from that day on his whole heart is bent on it. He dreams of studying there, in the palace, and grows more restless with their poor quarters each day. He contrives meetings with the Countess to this end, as she travels the city; she favors him, is charmed by his sweet face and his silver voice like everybody is. Muriel watches him grow so terribly hopeful, and can bear to speak nothing against it. He is but fifteen years old himself, but he knows enough to know she’s right. Asra would make a magnificent magician. And to escape the slums at thirteen? Before they leave their mark on the dearest soul in all the world to him?
What little choice he had in the matter is soon taken away from him. One night while Asra sleeps, on his way home from the forest where has been gathering wood for the masks, Muriel sees four men hiding in a shadow just down the street from their home. Upon getting closer he sees uniforms of palace soldiers and prepares to draw them away. But he hears the man giving them orders and freezes right where he is. They are being given directions straight to where he and Asra are currently hiding. They’ve been watched? They are being instructed to— what?!
Dropping his burden, Muriel heads them off. Never mind that it’s three against one. Never mind that they are all grown and armed. Muriel confronts them in an alleyway narrow enough to block and does not pause to ask why they’re doing this. It does not matter. With the strength of a cornered thing he tears into them, blind and deaf to all else till the soldiers fall under him. Heaving, bleeding, trembling from head to foot, he hears one man’s laughter and applause. And at last he sees the fourth figure, and knows all is lost.
The Count grins so wide in that ugly little side-street. He is well-built and well-dressed and clean as he admires the ferocity and the strength of this child.
“You’re the other one, aren’t you. The brute. Well done!”
All is lost. All is lost. “Wh— what did we do?!”
“We? Don’t give yourself credit, boy. It’s your friend I’m after. The puck.”
“Asra— he’s done nothing to you. We aren’t thieves! Leave— leave us alone!”
His voice is tearing. There’s blood on his hands. In his mouth.
“Ah, you see, I wouldn’t mind that.” the Count preens his gloves, curls his lip. “But you’re not leaving me alone. Your puck intends to finish the business his parents started, and it’s not about to spoil my Masquerade!”
“Asra’s parents abandoned him!!” Muriel is shaking but he does not budge. “Whatever they’ve done is nothing to do with him! They ran off!!”
The Count’s face changes, curiously. “Is that what he told you?”
“It’s what happened.” Muriel swipes the blood and snot running plentifully from his nose as he barks it out, thoroughly eaten up by despair. He draws himself to his full height, trying to pant hard enough that it doesn’t look like the panic it is. All is lost but he must not run.
After a long, unpleasant look, the Count grins hugely, and then laughs. It is cruel, but it is not entirely insincere, and his words needle merrily through it.
“Nerve! I like it! Why don’t you sell yourself to my ring and I’ll forgive the brat?”
“Yes.”
Muriel blurts the word with such eager, relieved force that Lucio stops smiling, staring in mild disgust at the creature too stupid to see he was clearly joking. Muriel interprets it as hesitation and doubles down, stepping forward.
“I’ll do it.”
Lucio looks again. He is tall for his age, and likely to get taller, already built like an ox; gleaming with sweat and smattered with blood. And those green, green eyes burning with their naive earnestness, perfect and honest and aflame!
It’s so ridiculously misplaced that it’s funny. It’s hilariously funny. The Count of Vesuvia throws his head back and laughs till his sides hurt, and when one of the soldiers stirs he kicks him, hard, and he stops moving.
“You’ll do it, huh?” he laughs again, so loud the cats yowl back. And then he stops, and smiles upon the boy with all his lovely teeth exposed.
“You will.”
It’s a statement this time, brimming with golden curiosity. He sounds like this when he gets a new horse. Still the ox does not comprehend.
“And you’ll leave Asra alone. Forever!”
On the powers, not an ounce of duality! Asra is nothing now. Lucio purses his lips, rolls his shoulders.
“Why not. So long as you keep your end of our deal, I’ll keep mine.”