DREAD

Written on October 22, 2021 (♎︎)

Author's Notes: Written for Whumptober 2021 for prompt No. 17: Field Care 101 (Dread).

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Not since he had been an unproven fixer working along the Jiris had Rudovich encountered real helplessness. Power had pushed him beyond that. Money was a balm to fear; influence a ward against disquiet. When he saw the cardinal, however, thirty years and thousands of gil sloughed away from him.

Rudovich recalled the green boy who'd brokered for him and fallen short the summer prior—recalled knives and irons and bloated bodies left to rot on the shore. Everything was mouths and eyes now, open and accusing, and there was no price he could pay to turn them toward another.

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