"Then listen to one who will soon be your keeper. We will tend to the woman, and bring her, and ourselves to Pho-boteth."
This time, it was not Anita, who stood at a loss of words, but Davin who spoke up. "You are not yet bei'thal, foreign male. You hold no power over us." Agitation tried to force its way into his speech, though he had long forgotten how to be agitated.
Without thinking, Davin balled his hands into fists; tapping his foot softly, nearly imperceptibly, he furrowed his eyebrows unseen beneath his chiffon headscarf. Anita's ears perked at the movement of her partner, but the darkness of the moon-shadow obfuscated his erratic behavior to Keubroc.
"Put away your weapons" Keubroc intoned to Davin with the authoritative voice that had carried him through the early years of the Three-Pronged War, "we are bringing this woman to justice."
"Justice. What is justice? This word means nothing to us." Davin barked.
"Then perhaps you do not need to know it." Keubroc replied dismissively.
"Zhijfr."(Snake/deceit) he muttered even more softly than the tap of his toe, but Anita heard it. With hyper sensitive ears bought and paid for at the cost of her soul, she was the only one who could possibly hear the words of the man her mind once loved. But her once native tongue now sounded foreign and harsh to her ears. "Zhijfr vz Akly'ln abh" (Snake on feet the(definite article-plural) mine/our)/ proverb that indicates not just danger, but that careful action would be needed to extricate oneself form the situation - articles come after the noun, are definitive and generative (a/the) and are always required, even when using a possessive) He brushed her arm gently to call her attention.
Unfortunately, these were words that could not be absorbed by the blindfolded woman. The wounds had been too deep, the scar was calcified and she had forgotten their meanings long ago. But for Davin, nourished with the fresh scent of days gone by, could feel the last vestiges of his humanity well up in his heart. "Zohdil abh affa, Zhijfr vz Akly'ln abh." (Heart of mine forever, there is a snake around our feet)
He speaks a phesra! realized Reiba, after some thought, a forbidden language; a language of those so thoroughly conquered that Pho-Boteth wanted to forget they ever existed. Which one, it was impossible for her to tell, but what would an agent of the Empress be doing speaking a forbidden tongue?
"Cut out your tongue or I will cut it for you. We do not know those words anymore!" Anita screeched her reply in Yibouhese. When the blindfolded man did not comply, she added emotionlessly, "You will do this now.
"I cannot do what was asked of me." he replied, still frozen in a stance of attack.
"Then there is one duty left." Anita recited words that had been burned into her mind and Davin's, and into the mind of any who might be called Bei. "When the breaking has broken the broken shall be destroyed."
Keubroc stood entirely befuddled with what was transpiring between the two, that is, until the daggers in Davin's hands dropped unceremoniously to the ground. Reiba relaxed and collapsed into a heap, trying to tend to her wound and stop the bleeding.
"Zhijfr!" barked Davin loudly at Reiba and Keubroc but he followed his orders nonetheless. He pulled from a long thin satchel of black, hanging around his torso, a jyangye blade, a long, ceremonial dagger too thin to serve any purpose in combat. He brought the blade to his collar bone before Keubroc understood his intent.
"What is he doing?" Keubroc, "This is pointless. We don't have to shed anymore blood."
"You do not understand. You are not yet bei'thal." she jeered at him and put. "The breaking has broken. He is useless and must be discarded. Discarded and hidden."
Davin slid the needle-like blade into his chest cavity with the precision of his training. The dagger would eventually pierce his heart, and when it was pulled free, his life would quickly drain, leaving behind a nearly unmarred corpse that offered few answers to whomever found it. This was one of the first lessons Bei learned after they had been freshly compromised. It was, after all, the most important.
The hilt of the jyangye dagger protruded from behind his collar bone, and he stood, the needlepoint blade now the only object preventing his fluids from gushing from his body. "You do it, Ehrnyi. Pull it out and end this grey dream."
Anita complied, walking to the man who was once her husband, and placing her grasp on the dagger that would end his life. As she did so, he whispered so softly that only Anita could here. "Ehrnyi, Ehrnyi Khelbl, that is your name. Do not forget it again. It is too precious to me."
Without ceremony or warning, Anita pulled free the blade and Davin crumpled to the ground.
