She still wasn't sleeping. Not after she had left the dead there in the woods, alone, unattended, un-washed, and open to the elements. It had been the best she could do at the time, and along her travels towards Kirkwall she had find a place that had helped her remove the chains from her "jewelry", but if she were to try and go home, to show back up in her parent's house.
Well she couldn't could she. Kirkwall was not the same as it had been when she had been stolen away. 'And they hadn't bothered to plan it back out right when they rebuilt after, had they?' She sighed as she moved along the road, through various shops in Lowtown. She needed to find the blacksmith's shop, and she had been pointed along when she had gestured her question to someone on the street. It wasn't as if she couldn't talk, after all, she could. She just...
Wouldn't. It was better if she didn't after all. She was afraid if she did, she wouldn't be able to stop telling all the horrors she had seen, Guiding the dead. But it hadn't been all bad -- there was a peace among the departed that always seemed to calm her. After all, Prim had spent the last nearly 15 years among the dead. After that long, one tended to find them more comfortable than the living.
But before she could do anything else in this life, she needed to be rid of the reminder of her enslavement. She was free now, in the Free Marches, home in Kirkwall -- she could seek out her parents, if they were still alive, honestly, they probably died when the place blew up. And maybe Alesander was still here -- it was a foolish thought. He would have already been shuffled off to someone else.
She should have stayed and been content with a life that would have been loveless, but comfortable and safe.
The past was always so much easier to decide what to do with, once it was just that, the past. The future, she could catch glimpses of, but they didn't always give her a clear view. The problem with possessing the type of magic she did -- it was always left to interpretation, and she had never learned how to spin the stories around what she saw like some of the greater ones had.
Ducking inside the blacksmith shop, she waited for the man in front of her to notice she was there, gently clearing her throat to capture the attention she couldn't speak to get. She schooled her face into one of questioning, already moving a hand towards one of her wrists to make a cutting motion when the man turned. Surely she could do this without having to speak, it wasn't that difficult to understand, or at least, Prim didn't think so.
The strange criminals had left him here, in the care of one of their contacts. Ashaad did not think the old man could stop him from running, if he chose to.
He could not make that choice. The criminals had his weapon. Something between his honor and his soul, he felt bereft without it. Ungrounded. Whether they knew that or not, Ashaad couldn’t say. It probably made the most sense to deprive your prisoner of all weapons, no matter the meaning attached to them.
With nothing else to do, he’d begun taking up the old man’s work. It was better than sitting idle, his mind wandering endlessly. Not that nails and horseshoes could truly occupy his thoughts – only that the labor quieted them. Made the time disappear, infinitely preferable to the alternative. Thus occupied, he didn’t notice the woman when she came in.
Only when she cleared her throat to draw attention did he turn around, frowning at the interruption. Customers were the old man’s business – literally. Not his. Besides, she was rude, making that chopping motion at him. Had some order run overdue?
No. Ashaad looked more carefully, taking in the state of her clothes. The iron bands on her wrists. It … Didn’t seem like a game gone awry. And slavery was only legal in Tevinter, though that didn’t stop people from selling other people.
Was that part of their enterprise, the criminals who had brought him here? They hadn’t chained him, but that they had his glaive was as good as.
“Okay. Stay quiet.” He could do this, as long as the real smith stayed dozing on the porch. Rummaging around for tools, Ash produced a fine handsaw from the rack.
“Put your hand on the bench.” Most likely, they wouldn’t have wasted good steel on shackles. He’d ruin a blade or two, but get through them eventually.
Oh good, at least he had understood her when she had made the cutting motions over her wrists, and didn't immediately assume she wanted to die -- she had had such a time getting the chain's removed from them, but those had been hacked at for so long that she had feared for the safety of her hands if they had continued. The same with her ankles. And when he told her to stay quiet, she gently rolled her eyes, sighing a bit. She could be quite, Prim was an expert at staying quiet after all.
The man seemed familiar, she thought, as she placed her wrist down on the bench, wrapping part of her robe over her hand so a stray cut wouldn't take a thumb off. At least he hadn't immediately tried to reason with her that sawing her whole hand off was the only way to get the shackle off. That had been.. unfortunate. Her conviction wavered some as she looked Ash over, before she cautiously nodded. He looked more trustworthy.. and if he tried to angle the saw in such a way that it looked like he was about to take the hand off, she'd yank it back and run.
She could live with them a bit longer if it meant keeping her hands. She could live with them on her forever if it meant keeping her hands. There was no little bit longer, she would choose to live with hands that could find her work, than to lose them and probably her life in the process. She smiled sheepishly to him, looking at him through her lashes, the inside flesh of her lower lip pulled between teeth to worry a bit, the corners of her mouth either pulling down further or returning to their normal position as she continued to worry, jaw moving side to side with the action.
Thanks, it was barely a whisper, voice airy with disuse, but the intent was clear. She was grateful that he seemed to actually want to help her.
Sawing through even mild steel was not quick work. Ashaad bent over the table and held on to the shackle with his other hand, holding it still and as far away from the woman’s skin as the metal would allow. He was far from being any kind of healer, but the skin below looked rough. Irritated or even scarred, he couldn’t quite get a good look with the band still in place.
These had been on her a while, then.
Was she being chased?
He quickly found that he didn’t mind the thought of that. An excuse to get into a fight, even if her captors proved to be one and the same with these Coterie bastards. He’d lost his glaive, but there were weapons enough scattered around the smithy.
The saw finally chewed through the bolt on the first shackle.
“It’s nothing.” Ashaad shrugged off her thanks and worked her hand free, fingertips lingering briefly on her blemished wrist. He did not want to think about the types of slave master that might casually ruin a woman’s hands. Good that she’d gotten away when she did.
“Other hand, when you’re ready.” Ash examined the saw, then busied himself for a moment changing out the blade for a fresh one.
Prim closed her eyes as he worked, knowing that the closeness was just because he was physically sawing something off her body. It didn't make it any easier for her to feel any safer around the larger male, but it was as it was -- she needed these cuffs off her wrists, the ones on her ankles she could come back for another day, those she could hide with her robes, these though? Every time she reached for something, or had to raise her arm a little too high, they showed, and even if she was in a city where selling people was no longer allowed, it didn't mean that someone wouldn't grab her and drag her along to a city where it was.
When the metal came away from her wrist, she paused, his fingers on her skin making her freeze a little, before she raised it up, rubbing the skin gently with her other hand for a moment, the sigh one of deep contentment that she could physically touch her own skin on her wrist without the moving of metal. How long had she needed to self-soothe by rubbing her thumb over the large strawberry shaped birthmark on her wrist, that had been covered, no matter what she had done to try and move the cuff, all the time by metal. Now she had access to it again, and it was immediate, thumb pressed into the birthmark, that rested in the "vee" the muscles of her arm made, the valley where the blue of a vein might be seen if the lights were bright enough, and they were never truly bright enough to see. It might have looked like she was trying to soothe the brief touch away, but in actuality, that touch had grounded her a little, made her certain that he wasn't going to cut her on purpose, wasn't going to suggest that she take her hand off to be free.
He was kind.
He wasn't going to hurt her, nor take her back to the slavers outside the city.
So in time, she looked up at him, and placed her now free hand in her lap, as she shifted to put her other hand up on the block, allowing him the moment to change out the saw blade, her head tilting a little as she watched him. She could see a bit of the thoughts there, now that the touch had confirmed for her that he was, in fact, a person she could be comfortable around. She nodded her head, to indicate she was ready, before she drew her lower lip between her teeth, worrying the skin there a roll or two, before she let the skin go and tried not to think about how she wanted to bolt as soon as she could. The living still made her nervous, and probably would for a long time, she had been in the realm of the dead for far too long at this point. Ready, as she could be, at least.
This was very peculiar. Ash was not a talkative man by nature. Yet even he was starting to become aware of the extended silence, with nothing but the saw and the noise from the street to distract. Well, and the old smith. He snored with a sound like coppers rattling in a tin can.
No way she couldn’t hear it, too. A faint smile tugged at the corner of Ash’s mouth as he sawed through the second shackle. When it finally came away, he collected up the pieces and bent to hide them in the scrap bin, eyes dragging over her face to confirm she did not mind.
Afterwards, he hesitated. Normally payment would change hands, he knew that by now. It was just how things worked in the south. In Qunandar, it would have been different.
Of course, a runaway slave would have no coin. Nor did the Coterie’s watchdog deserve to be paid for Ash’s work. Fine, then. He stood, wiping his hands on his apron. Loosening the strings, he threw the sheet of leather aside.
“Miss. Wherever you’re going, may I walk you there?” It was more polite than saying what he thought, if only just: that she looked like she had nowhere to go at all. That she might face recapture if she stayed on the street alone. Ashaad pulled a finished sword off the counter display and tucked it through his belt. It didn’t hold a candle to his stolen glaive – but it would work in a pinch. He’d trained with many weapons as part of the Antaam.
“I’m not supposed to leave, but …” What could the Coterie do to him? They appeared to need him alive, for reasons they had yet to share.
As the second cuff was freed from her, she heaved a heavy sigh, the feel of tears threatening to spill over her lower lashes -- she was free. She was finally free, the physical reminder of her bondage finally gone, she could now start on the mental shackles that still held her, but for now, this step, was the first in a long line of them she would have to take to consider herself whole once again, but for now, this was the start of life as it should have been, had she not run away.
She needed to see the old family house now -- maybe her parents were still there, maybe her financé was somewhere in the city still? No, she wouldn't hold out hope that she could go back to the life she had thrown away over a decade ago, but she needed to see if the house was still there, if her mother and father still lived. She knew from people talking that there had been an invasion back then, but she wasn't sure what it was, or.. the decade she had spent in that tiny room embalming the dead had robbed her of much of her knowledge, she knew simple things, but anything more? Lost to throwing herself completely into her work.
And as the man moved to come with her, she thought better of heading towards her family home, if she went to a nice house, he may demand they pay for her... that's what had happened the last time, wasn't it? Even if he seemed kind, could she really trust just any stranger. He.. he had cut her shackles off, she reminded herself, as her fingers went to the loop around her neck. It wasn't as apparent that it had been a shackle. Her owner had wanted to make sure she was presentable at rituals, which meant not having a thick band of metal around her neck, so instead, it was a single large ring of silver around her neck -- over time she had worked it into her dressing, using the ring as a way to drape her robes artfully for when she worked. She rubbed the metal, thankful that it had nothing on it that could identify her old owner, the man who had kept her, it wasn't his anymore, it was hers, and her way to make payments in the future if needed.
She wouldn't have it cut free from her today, someone would have to take it off her dead body since it was the only thing of value she had. Prim shied away some, as he took a sword off the counter, but..
He wasn't supposed to leave, the question on her face asked with a raising of her brow, a narrowing of her eyes some, why would he insist on walking her, if he wasn't supposed to leave, was he as much slave here as she had been in Nevarra? She bit her lips together before nodding once, she'd accept him to walk her -- she would just have him walk her back to a tavern or inn, and then once he was gone she would go and look at her family home, to see if it was still there or not. It was simple enough, that or she'd go to the public bath house to get the grime off her, she was certain that she needed to scrub her wrists for an hour. She needed to go into the lower parts of town too, find out if someone in the area was already doing embalming work, or if she would corner the market with her skills. But walking is nice.
And a walk would be nice, it was... just a walk after all, what trouble could a walk be?
