“I wasn’t sure if I would still find you here,” I remarked, in as neutral a tone as I could muster. Tempest currently—that is, the morning after last night’s incident—lay in the shed she was so accustomed to, staring up at the ceiling. I didn’t think she had been sleeping when I had intruded, but she didn’t seem fully awake, either.
“I promised I would stay until I am properly dismissed.”
“I guess my wife doesn’t have the authority to dismiss you, eh? Only me?”
“Your wife never told me to leave your household. Nor even your guestroom.”
“Oh?” That genuinely shocked me. I gestured to the puffy, ruddy claw mark on her face. “What was this love tap about, then?”
“Before I go into that, I feel I should explain something else,” she said, setting herself upright. “You don’t need to worry about how you’ll go about feeding me.”
“Hm?”
“The oats and nuts. I noticed you were always careful in how you delivered it to and from my room, as if you didn’t want your wife or your child to see you. I asked Gamila how often your family eats those kinds of foods, and her reaction told me that it can’t be a cheap or sustainable option around here. Is that correct?”
“Awfully perceptive of you… But well, maybe I didn’t want to tell you so soon, afraid you’d go all ‘self-sacrificial’ on us again.”
“I suppose that’s a reasonable fear, given my antics.” She offered a quick, fleeting grin. “But for the record, I didn’t come here empty-hooved. I brought along a small bag of gems which I can use to repay you for any costs incurred on my behalf. And if that runs out, I’ll find some means of becoming self-sustaining.
“Though back to your question: No, this was no mere love tap. But I assure you that your wife came into my room with peaceful intentions. Made it clear that although she could scarcely forget who I once was, she was willing to look past it, she would let me stay a while. Let water under the bridge wash away. Because maybe I could be a good help to the household, because Gamila had taken a liking to me. But most of all, because she could tell some part of me deep inside had changed.
“You’ve grown soft on me over time, Gelfand; that much I’ve noticed. And the trust of a child like Gamila was never in question. But that sudden compassion from an unexpected place… I don’t know, it triggered something within me. I felt a compulsion to tell her all about the nightmares I’ve been having.
“In one of these nightmares, I’m back under the charge of the Storm King, leading a zeppelin fleet through the Griffonstone wetlands. Not exactly these parts, but close enough. We’re raiding local villages, carting off valuables, food, and other supplies, as well as select prisoners. We don’t have a set course or timeline; we’re powerful enough that our plan is simply to maraud about until our coffers and holding cells are full, and then return to HQ.
“But one tiny village—I know not its name—puts up a far more spirited fight than all the rest. After the skirmish there is little left but ruins. So we round up all the survivors, adult and child alike, and take them captive. There is one cub—I know not his name—among this lot who is without parents; whether they were lost in the battle, or he was already an orphan, I do not know. He is scarcely older than your dear Gamila.
“Might I make it clear by now, if it is not already: This nightmare is no fiction, but an old memory of mine. There is no short supply of them that start and end similarly.
“So this orphaned cub, I pay him no mind, as I am busy captaining my ship. But my crew, the bored brutes that they are, bully and harass him to no end. He’s made an example to every other griff on board that the limits of their cruelty are not to be tested. It’s pointless, since no other griff wants to make a target of themselves, anyway.
“Several days later, it’s as simple as this: We discover we’re missing a prisoner. Sixty-seven griffs instead of sixty-eight. Who could it be? A deckhand growls and asks if the young pathetic one has been seen; he hasn’t. We search the zeppelin top to bottom to no avail. Such as it is, the ship never touched ground since we picked him up, and all the griffons had their wings clipped before being taken aboard, so the only conclusion is that at some indeterminate point in the last twenty-four hours, he jumped overboard. Our cruising altitude is eight hundred feet at a minimum.
“That’s it. That’s the end of his story. I did not know his name, I did not know his age, I did not know what he called his home or his family, or whether he had either of those things. I did not know if he jumped in the hope of escape, or merely to cut his suffering short. I did not know if he fell by accident, or if one of my crew went too far with him. Yet I made no changes in how I captained my ship, for his story had little impact on my and the Storm King’s plans.”
I shifted where I stood, more than a little uncomfortable. During the reign of the Storm King, stories like this were always circulating, and after a certain amount of time I had learned to drown them out. But it was something else to hear them right from the source.
Tempest looked at me expectantly, as if awaiting my response to an implied question. In that moment, she felt as much like a stranger to me as the day she had first arrived on my doorstep.
“Gelfand,” she spoke up again, “how many of my victims do you think are looking down on me, eager to see me experience one one-hundredth of the suffering I’ve caused?”
What was I supposed to say?
“Do you not think they are owed even that much?”
Why was she asking me these questions?
“Would you feel so forgiving if it had been your little Gamila inst—”
“Shut up!” Something inside me finally boiled over. “I can’t answer these questions for you! Why in all the lands would I be in any position to? Don't you know they never have satisfying answers anyway? All I know is the past is the past, and… I still don’t know what you’re even doing here!”
My words took Tempest by surprise almost as much as they did myself. I don’t remember what else was said, after that point; just a meek exchange of apologies from the both of us, before I let her be once more.