I started stitching. Small, even stitches.Neat work lasts longer than fast work, little blade.The thread pulled through his skin with a soft resistance, and I focused on that sensation, on the mechanics of repair, because if I thought about how close he’d come to dying I might not be able to finish.
His chest rose and fell steadily beneath my hands. The sigils on his skin caught the lamplight, black swirling patterns that I’d noticed before but never let myself study. They were beautiful, in an odd way. Strange and intricate.
“You’re good at this,” he said.
“I’ve had practice.”
“On yourself?”
“Sometimes.” I tied off a stitch, started the next one. “Sometimes on Torek, when he came back from jobs. Sometimes on Turnip, when he got into fights with the wildlife.”
“Turnip gets into fights?”
“Turnip starts fights. He’s territorial.” I glanced toward the door, where the boar was lying in his usual spot by the hearth.His tusks were still dark with blood. He’d need cleaning later, but for now he seemed content to rest. “He killed two of them.”
“I saw.”
“He’s a good pig.”
Silence settled between us. Comfortable, somehow, despite the circumstances. I kept stitching. He kept not flinching.
“You weren’t always here,” he said.
My hands paused on the needle. “No.”
“Before Torek found you. Where were you?”
I’d known this question was coming. Had felt it building in the spaces between our conversations, in the way he looked at me sometimes, like he was trying to read a language he didn’t quite speak.
“Somewhere bad,” I said.
“How bad?”
I pulled another stitch through. Focused on the thread, the needle, the steady rhythm of repair.
“I was property,” I said. “For three years.”
He went still under my hands. Not the stillness of pain, but the stillness of attention. Of someone listening with their whole body.
“There was a man who ran a transport operation. Legitimate cargo on the manifests, other things in the hidden holds. People, mostly. Women and children, bound for markets in the outer systems.” I tied off a stitch. Started the next. “I was seventeen when his crew took me off a refugee ship. Twenty when I got out.”
“How did you get out?”
The needle trembled in my fingers. I steadied it.
“The man who owned me made a mistake,” I said. “He decided I was broken enough to trust. Gave me duties in the galley, access to knives. Thought I was too scared to use them.”I looked up at him then, met his eyes. “I wasn’t scared. I was waiting.”
“For what?”
“For the right moment. When the guards were drunk and the ship was in hyperspace and there was nowhere for anyone to run.” I pulled the thread through. “I killed three of them. The man who owned me and the two guards who came when they heard him screaming. I used a knife from the galley. It wasn’t quick, and it wasn’t clean. I don’t regret any of it.”
He didn’t look away. Didn’t flinch from what he saw in my face.
“Good,” he said.
One word. No judgment in it. No pity. Just acceptance, plain and simple, like I’d told him I preferred my tea without sugar.
I exhaled. Hadn’t realized I’d been holding tension in my shoulders until it released. Something I’d been carrying for years, suddenly lighter.
