The elf is bedbound, splinted, feverish. Despite the healing concoctions applied and plied with, her stab wound is infected; inflamed and oozing.
Perhaps she wasn't the only one armed with poisons. If so, she thinks, she is still winning on numbers; the Ríastrad agents' advantage slashed from three-to-one to the more manageable one-to-one, and she can even manage a little more mischief before her ailment finishes her.
She wakes from a shallow, pain-wracked, sweat-soaked sleep to find a familiar stern face at the bedside.
"Ryssa," she says, and coughs a little, which is painful. She feels her wound freshly crack and weep beneath its bandages; possibly with blood, possibly something worse, but she smiles anyway.
"What do you think you're doing," the paladin says.
"Sleeping much, if not well," the elf tells her truthfully. "I told them that this is a sign. That we won't rise like you do, but see, your god is on our side. I am struck—" and she coughs again, and closes her eyes through the fresh internal agonies, and suffers Ryssa to slide a hand under her head and carefully put a cup of water to her lips. She sips a little, lets her head loll. "I am struck down, but see, your god smites the traitors and wreckers who took your right hand."
"I almost suspect you'd poison yourself for the chance to lie there and be stricken and get such use from it," Ryssa says, mouth hard; her eyes less so.
"That," the elf says, smiling up into her sad gaze, "would be a last resort," and Ryssa snorts a little and presses a cool hand to her brow.
"What part of keep your fool self alive is so hard, girl?" she says.
"The Ríastrad determined to prevent it, mostly." The paladin's fingers feel absurdly cold, and she shivers. "If you're here for the third, you'll find the trail cold; they've never once dared come near you this whole time."
Ryssa looks at her, jaw clenched, in silence.
"I would hate to think you abandoned our plans and came here just to scold me," the elf says.
"Scold you," the paladin says. "Scold you."
"I'm not so selfless to die without the best bargain for it." Everything hurts, and she is very tired, eyes fluttering. Perhaps, with Ryssa here, she may be able to sleep a little better. "Please tell me you haven't left everything in disarray," but she doesn't stay awake for whatever the outraged answer is.
The answer, as she gathers when someone other than the paladin will sit and not be angry at her and actually say anything useful, is that the paladin has upset everything. Everything. She has turned her back on every careful calculation and measured strategy the elf painstakingly calculated and simply decided to go in a straight line from wherever she happened to be to wherever she happened to want to go, and carved a swathe through everything that looked at her wrong en route.
The elf spends an interminable time working herself to a sitting position against her pillows, trembling and running with sweat and helplessly grunting with pain on every breath, grits her teeth through a fussing healer changing her bandages and venturing that she really, she really ought to rest and not strain herself.
"The paladin," she demands, when she's certain she can school her face into obedience, and glowers at Ryssa when she hastily enters.
"What do you think you're doing?" the elf says. "We had plans—"
"Show me where the plans were 'get stabbed and die'," Ryssa says. There are dark circles under her eyes, and she is turned flinty, now she doesn't think the elf is taking her last breath right this instant.
The elf looks pointedly at the pile of papers beside the bed.
"Oh, did you really—" Ryssa snatches them up and shuffles through them. "You did. You did." She throws them back down, flings her hands in the air. "You kept this secret from me, you knew I wouldn't—"
"Wouldn't what."
"Wouldn't allow it," the paladin says, distinct and deliberate. "Not this."
It hurts to laugh, even small and bitter. "You know what I'm good for," the elf says. "This was due, this was overdue. Thank me, at least, for turning it into something they bought dear."
"You are not a thing!"
Ryssa's fists are clenched so tight, shoulders shaking with rage, that the elf half expects her eyes to have turned god-ridden black. Her voice is a low snarl, and her feet fall like the pacing of a predator. She advances slowly.
"Not much of one, any more," the elf says, as carelessly as she can manage when she is fever-ridden and dizzy from sitting up, and trying to be angry with the paladin, and possibly about to be throttled.
Instead, the paladin kneels by the bed.
"No," the elf whines. "I hate it when you—"
"You are not a thing," Ryssa growls. "They can convince you that you are, but they can't make you one. You are not a thing."
"You think you're a thing," the elf objects. She wishes she could simply lie down again easily, fingers clutching uneasily at the sheets as the room spins. She thinks Ryssa's scowl deepens.
"Hush your mouth," the paladin says, and the elf passes out triumphantly.
