"Meya! It's him! To the left!"

Arinel's frantic hiss and the rigorous shaking of her arm jolted Meya from her petrified trance. After an instinctive sideways glance at the Lady, she whipped back around. She had just begun combing the area, when her gaze skidded to a halt just at the opposite lip of the alley.

Across from the blood-testing gatekeeper with his candle and needle, another masked man sat himself behind a table laden with a ledger, an abacus and a coin tray. A loose queue of blood sellers carrying varying numbers of tin jars meandered up to him from the simmering blood vats, where they had freshly vacated the jars containing their own (or their children's) blood.

The latest seller—a young brunette who eerily resembled Jezia both in hairstyle and height—had just staggered up and slammed three blood-crusted jars onto the tabletop. Next in line was a man wearing a mask with HERZIN emblazoned across the forehead in weathered white paint. He ambled forth to take the girl's space, clutching the handles of two tin jars in one hand, and in the other, the sleeve of his son's black veil.

Meya gave Jerald's arm a tug to rouse him, then threaded her way to the nearest stand selling ivory carvings, deer antlers and other animal items. Jerald knelt down and pretended to browse the wares, providing cover for Meya to act the bored teenage daughter while she spied on their target.

Elmund Herzin was of middling height and build, yet the boy's head barely reached his waist. His yellowish hand hung limply from his sleeve, attached to a bony wrist that would've fitted his father's grasp with room to jostle in.

The lass with the ponytail tottered tipsily away, her earnings clutched in one fist and her bandaged arm in another. Elmund dragged his son along as he hurried forth, thrusting the jars onto the wobbly table with a clatter. The gatekeeper scribbled a number in his ledger, tossed the jars into the half-filled barrel behind him, then pinched up two coins from among the several rows of white-silver in his tray.

"That'd be two silvers for ya." He looked up and slapped the pay into Elmund's waiting palm, catching a glimpse of Elmund's son as he did. He gestured a distracted finger as he bent back down and ready his quill with a dip in the inkwell,

"Ya might want to give it a coupla months next time. Boy's pale as a Northerner."

The advice was drowned in the jangle of coins as Elmund occupied himself with the drawstring of his money pouch. His two silvers secured, he marched off without even the barest nod to the gatekeeper. His son stumbled after, the soles of his straw slippers barely lifting off the pavement as his legs lagged leaden behind the rest of his body.

"Dad—" The boy gasped as they passed by Jerald, who was pretending to admire an ermine scarf. Elmund did not slow nor turn around. "—Dad, I need a rest."

Meya slipped seamlessly behind them in time to hear Elmund's prompt retort,

"And I need to see a man about a dog. So move them legs."

Either out of protest or fatigue, the boy abandoned his feeble attempt at walking. Elmund's hand freed his son's slipping sleeve, only to snatch at his collar instead. He was on the verge of soldiering on, his son's windpipe be damned, when the boy panted out a few more words,

"Three bronzes." He negotiated, mustering his strength and looking up as his father turned to face him for the first time, "You promised."

The light brown skin of Elmund's knuckles paled as he tightened his grip on his son's collar, conveying the inner turmoil his serene mask had obscured. He seemed to be debating whether to part with some change and be rid of his son instantly, or to be miserly and endure pestering all the way to the gambling ring. In the end, impatience won, and Elmund yanked open his pouch, rummaged for the bronzes and brasses scuttling at the bottom, then tossed them to his son as if they were coated with pus.

"Now shoo!" He hissed with a contemptuous jerk of his head as he hitched up his sagging belt, then barked over his shoulder as he hurried off, "And have dinner ready when I'm back!"

The boy stared after his father's receding back for a moment, then shuffled away to fall heavily against a blank stretch of tunnel wall, where no vendor had claimed as backrest while they peddled their illegal goods.

Meya hung back until he had slid down to the cold stones, his head on his knees, before drawing near. The boy resurfaced, probably alerted by the shade of their combined shadows sweeping over his huddled form. He surveyed the five cloaked figures spread out behind Meya, then pressed his back against the wall and his unsteady feet on the ground, ready to vacate at once.

"This your spot, miss?" He croaked, swaying from blood loss and shivering from the cold. Meya's heart writhed as she crouched down one leg at a time, as slow and cautious as if she were approaching a cowering bunny.

"No. I'm looking for Elmund Herzin's son." She settled on the bare stone, her legs tucked to the side. The boy seized up in fear at that revelation.

"Dad owes you something, too?" He sputtered, no doubt having arrived at the worst conclusion possible due to long experience, then raised his trembling hand and pointed in Elmund's direction, "He's got two silvers on him. But not for long. You'd better hurry."

"No, no, no. I just happen to have something of yours." Meya corrected him, both hands raised in a hasty gesture of reassurance, then wiggled one at the congregation behind her for them to bring forth the Eye already.

There was a brief rustling of cloth as Heloise rooted in her pocket and dug out a silk casket. She knelt down before the boy, tipped open the box and turned it to face him.

The boy drew in a sharp breath of bewilderment as his glowing eye stared back at him on a bed of velvet. He glanced up at Meya, then down at his eye, and back up again, his pale lips slightly parted in disbelief.

"You settled the debt?" He managed at long last, his voice strangled as he flattened himself against the wall, as if hoping to sink away and become part of the gray stone, "I don't have gold. I don't have blood. I don't have nothing to pay no more."

"You need only to come serve our Lady." Meya forced her voice through the bitter lump of swallowed tears and fury in her throat. She edged slightly closer, propping one hand on the ground to steady herself, "You'll have your eye back, and plenty of meat to put some flesh under that skin, and some blood under those cheeks."

The boy considered it for roughly a beat of his feeble heart, then shook his head. An unwise move, as it sent him cradling his head in nausea right after.

"I can't leave Jaise." He whimpered, his voice muffled by his knees as he curled in on himself, like a frightened, naked hedgehog whose spines had been plucked, "I have to have meals ready for Dad every day. And work in the orchard. And come give blood here every fortnight."

But you don't need to!

Meya longed to retort, even though she knew it probably wouldn't elicit the response she wanted. She couldn't understand the boy. Meya was never one to bow and meekly accept unfairness. She would've been long gone to make a life of her own if it were her.

But should the boy's reply have come at any surprise, though? The boy had routinely sacrificed his blood to satisfy his heartless father. Even went so far as pawning off his eye as debt collateral. He was quite far gone. And Meya had no idea how to coax him back to his senses.

As if he had sensed her frustration, Jerald laid a firm hand on Meya's shoulder then stepped pass her to the forefront. He knelt down before the shivering poor thing, then asked in a tender voice,

"What's your name, young lad?"

The boy started, then glanced up. His lips glistening with drying tears, he croaked out.

"Atmund."

Jerald gave a few deep nods, then cocked his head and unfurled a melancholic smile.

"It's a great name. Pity your father uses it so sparingly."

Atmund sniffed, then slithered a hand behind his mask to rub at his spilling eye. Jerald picked his other eye up from the casket, then leaned closer, his voice lowered yet no less gentle,

"Atmund, I am Sir Bayne, a knight. I serve under Lady Crosset." He reciprocated with his own name, then cut straight to the chase,

"Our Lady would deal with your permit—and your father, if need be. My only question for you is," Atmund glanced up, his hand still stuck behind his mask. Jerald's kind smile widened.

"Would you like to come with us, and never have to sell one drop of your blood again? See the whole of Latakia with your own two eyes? Travel the road to Aynor with two strong legs?"

Atmund seemed momentarily stunned, but it wasn't long before his lips churned with hesitance. Jerald edged a step forth and pushed harder,

"Should you stay, your father would continue letting your blood for two silvers every fortnight. Until the day you collapse. Or die."

Atmund visibly shuddered at the prospect, and Jerald leaned ever closer, gazing straight into those empty eye sockets probably obscuring a wide, fearful eye.

"You know it would not get any better. You know you are nearing your limit. You have to admit defeat, Atmund. Tis the only way you could move on to new beginnings."

"What about Dad?" Atmund blurted out, his pale hands clenching to trembling fists on his wobbly knees, and Jerald steadied them with his large hand.

"You owe him nothing, my lad. Whatever I imagine he may say to the contrary." The knight shook his head firmly, his gaze never once wavering from Atmund's, as he enunciated in the hopes it would correct the twisted belief Elmund had used to poison and manipulate his son so horridly,

"No father should feel entitled to be repaid for siring a child. Nevertheless, you have paid much more than any son would have, to a father who has given nothing but his name and his seed."

Atmund's lips trembled as he gritted his teeth against a second onslaught of bitter tears. Jerald squeezed his hand in comfort, but he was no longer smiling, and his face was downcast.

"You are worthy of a father's love, Atmund. And you will find it elsewhere."

Those quiet words sent hot tears bubbling up in Meya's eyes. It all made sense to her then. Of course Jerald would understand Atmund's dilemma. He himself had been rejected by two blood fathers, abandoned to be raised by the church. And as Meya studied him as he warmed the now openly sobbing Atmund's hand within his, she couldn't help wondering if Jerald himself had found a father of his own.