Random 56

Sylvie was just in time to see Sebastian twisting the thug's arm with one hand. In those few moments, the patient had woken up and started to mumble, then almost shriek when the half-elf's face came into view. In order to stop the man from fleeing or causing any trouble, Sebastian-Kai had, somehow, twisted an arm so far behind that it was impossible to even move, even when lying on the floor. While doing this, Sebastian looked up apologetically. "He woke up, after all."

"Yes, good." At least Sebastian wasn't twisting the arm attached to the injured shoulder. The dragon standing on the stove next to the kettle, hissing and bristling, was a minor worry. Sylvie ignored him, hoping for the best, and crouched next to the patient, tilted her head to look him more or less straight in the face. He seemed to see her, at least.

"Hello? Would you like your shoulder set?"

At first, there was only whimpering, until Sebastian loosened his grip a bit -- and whispered something into the man's ear. Whatever he said, it was a good way to make the other party very, very pale. "Uhm. Yes, yes ma'am, I would... I would like that." The man turned brown eyes to stare at Sylvie, panic in his eyes.

"That would work better if you were sitting up." Sylvie felt rather out of her depth here. Physical conflict was something she did her best to avoid. And as much as she wished him ill, panic made things too unpredictable. So she told Sebastian, "You know that if he does not cause any more trouble, I'd be very cross if you broke him again after I started patching him up, right?" That was a fact, too.

"Perfectly clear, my dear." Somehow that 'my dear' sounded a little wistful. "I shan't hurt him any farther unless he becomes violent himself. I hardly grabbed his injured arm, did I? No, I do not make it my business to kick a wounded dog. Never." And, he really looked it.

The thug stared at the two in disbelief. Where the hell had he ended up? Two lunatics, talking so casually about violence? And he was supposed to be the tough guy, right...? Nevertheless, this all smacked his common sense back to reality, so the thug sat up, swallowing bile and looking a little nervous... or a lot more nervous than what seemed to him. "Um. This... gonna hurt?"

"Yes," she answered, matter-of-factly, adding, "We do have medicine that should help." She gave Sebastian a quick look, hoping for a cue. She wasn't sure if he had a plan involving a carrot-and-stick setup, or wanted him dosed as soon as possible.

For a moment the man looked a bit worried. "Yeah, that'd be great, uhm... you're not gonna off me, are you?"

To which Sebastian said: "No, I do not think so. I dragged you all the way here to talk, and I could have killed you whenever I wanted. Also, the beautiful lady here, your nurse and mine, would perhaps knock me senseless should I go back on my word. So -- you will live. I'm assured it's nothing personal."

"Er, yeah. Well... it's a bitch... getting enough cash to eat."

The half-elf smiled. "It's nothing personal for either of us, then?"

"...no. Um. Yeah, can we... could you just... you know, get this bone thing over with?"

Sylvie had made use of the time the prattling won to measure out a little of the painkiller - it smelled like she expected, and she assumed the extract was as strong as it could be made - and diluted it with a little of the tea Sebastian had been working on. When she reached for the teapot, Ayu-Asra swarmed up her arm and made himself comfortable on her shoulders, draped across the back of her neck, heads peeking over her left shoulder. Since he settled and only very quietly whistled, she only rolled her eyes and left him there.

She handed over the cup and said, "Here, drink this. What's your name?"

"Uh..." said the unlucky bastard at first, staring at Ayu-Asra, eyes wide before taking his chances. This was scary shit, and even if the cup held poison, it might be a faster way to die than left with these lunatics and the two-headed lizard. He gulped the liquid down and said, finally: "Kaisre, ma'am."

Sebastian-Kai-Fox, on the other hand, was busy staring at the doorway, though still ready to attack if Kaisre would turn aggressive. Not that he thought that likely, collarbone and all considered.

Kaisre was quiet for a while, hiccoughing once. "You're not gonna torture me, are you?"

Sebastian smiled and looked at Sylvie.

She took a deep breath. Her eyebrows drew down and her lips thinned as she kept her first thought to herself. Are you hanging by your wrists on a wall of a cellar? was probably not a useful thing to say.

"No." Less coolly she added, "It will still hurt, though. Can't be helped. Let's get that shirt off you." She helped him, taking care not to jostle his injured shoulder more than neccessary.

Sebastian-Kai-Fox-Hat kept quiet, opting instead to return to boiling some more tea, whereas Kaisre swallowed and nodded, acting compliant enough. Once his shirt was off, it was pretty obvious the break was bad. Kaisre stared at Sylvie and the other outlander for a while, then at the surroundings.

It was all too much for him, really. This made no sense. "Okay," he finally said. At that point he was presented with a belt, followed by: "Bite on leather. It will hurt," Sebastian said, not altogether unsympathetically.

Kaisre took the advice.

Sylvie would have agreed it made no sense, but since a job had been put in front of her, she'd do it best as she could. She stood behind Kaisre, eyes unfocused as she concentrated on feeling into his shoulder. One of Ayu-Asra's heads rubbed against her jaw and was summarily ignored.

Her voice sounded absent. "Need to put the ends of the bone together," she explained, and moved Kaisre's arm to help with that, paying attention nothing got pinched in the fracture. Once that was reached she wove the very basic pattern that sped up healing, keeping her hand on his shoulder. It was not fast for broken bones, but it might win him a week in all; mostly she wanted to raise the chances that the ends of the bone would not separate again. She forgot to warn about the momentarily terrible itching that went with it.

For a moment, the thug was grateful about the belt -- it really, really did hurt, and he twitched and struggled for a bit, but did not fight back. Sebastian wondered for a bit if this wasn't the first time the man had broken a bone, but was somewhat certain this was the first collar bone fracture the man had ever come across.

After the pain, the itching was almost better than the pain, but it was still irritating.

Finally, he spat out the belt. "That tasted like cabbages," Kaisre said weakly.

"Well, that would be because I had to wrestle with one of the other three," Sebastian said, setting three more cups of tea on the table, seemingly ignoring the man.

Sylvie tied Kaisre's shirt into an improvised brace, so the sleeves looped from under his arms over his shoulders, pulling his shoulders back.

Still not sounding all present, she said, "You should get better bandage soon. Dry. And not try to move the arm much." Propping herself up on the back of a chair she blinked rapidly to clear her head. The sheer weirdness of the scene, Sebastian setting out tea for someone he'd said had tried to kill him, did not assist clear thinking.

After a few moments she pulled the chair out - and a little further away from Kaisre, not that she noticed - and sat down to the patien't right. The dragon on her left shoulder had one neck snaked back to rest its head between its folded wings. The other watched the stranger with bright eyes.

For a while, the patient seemed groggy. "I'll do that, ma'am," he said past broken teeth, his face and shoulder still hurting some. The nose wasn't broken after all, Sebastian noted, but didn't think much of that observation. "Um. Ma'am? Thank you, and... uh... you, mate. I ever see you --"

"You would do best to run away than than threaten me," the half-elf said, sangfroid. "We have questions."

Kaisre blinked, utterly confused. "Employer, you mean?" he looked at Sylvie for a while for confirmation, but then decided to speak anyway. "Yeah, it was this hobnob Saba from elsewhere. Point was to see if anyone was going to snoop, and the pay was good."

"Not good enough, I'm sure," Sylvie said maybe not entirely under her breath, looking straight ahead and rubbing her cheek to hide a sharp smile. Ayu-Asra nipped at her hand. Pushing his head away, she found a more friendly-looking smile and asked, "Do they hire you often?"

Kaisre began to chuckle -- or giggle, depending on how one took that sound, but it was obvious he was amused. Perhaps a little light-headed, just perhaps. "First time, I have to say. Never seen 'em before, and it was just really odd that the guy insisted on written instructions. A bit barmy, if you ask me. I was supposed to cut off, er, the ear off anyone who snooped. I was going to go to the butcher's and just ask for a pig ear as evidence and collect the bounty. Doubt the Saba brat'd have noticed anything amiss."

Sebastian, keeping quiet, agreed with that assessment of the Sabas.

"I would almost like to test that idea." Sylvies eyes crinkled with amusement for a moment. On the other hand they could not be completely incompetent; they had done a pretty good job of messing up the city.

And the surrounding lands, full of harvest. Sebastian had been doing some mental calculus and come to the conclusion that it would even take the wildlife some time to recover.

It only served to make him angrier.

"Sure, do it," Kaisre said dreamily. "Goddamn. I feel pretty nice, all things considered, ma'am."

This caught the half-elf's attention. "I would suppose he is heading toward dreamland? Not that I would blame him."

Sylvie shot Sebastian a nervous look and asked Kaisre, in carefully conversational tone, "Do you have a time and place where you were supposed to hand over that proof?"

She looked from him to Sebastian, and over her shoulder at the door to the rest of the house. How would they explain an unconscious thug in the kitchen in the morning?