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“He owes you many favors,” Mort said.
“Does he?”
“Yes. A tormentor will always owe a debt to the tormented.”
How did he know Tom was Tristan’s tormentor?
Tristan’s most powerful memory of Tom was back in high school, having his head forced into a toilet bowl and then having the toilet flushed. He didn’t share that information with Mort, because he would rather have died than re-live that humiliation verbally.
It was only a matter of minutes before Tom came, shambling with tiredness. It had been ten years since high school, but the sight of him still triggered Tristan. He knew Mort had roped Tom into helping once, but twice seemed a bit much.
“You told me you knew first aid,” Mort said.
“Yeah.”
Mort pointed a finger at Tristan. “Aid him.”
“Christ, Tristan, again?!”
Tom’s frustration was clear. It was almost like he became the mouthpiece for Mort, who did not make such exclamations with so much energy.
“You can fuck off,” Tristan said. He didn’t care if he bled out if it meant he didn’t have to be humiliated by Tom again.
“I don’t want him in my house,” he said turning to Mort. “I know you’re trying to help, but I’m hard to kill, so you know what? I don’t need this. Any of this.”
He went to storm out of the front door, but Mort gripped him by the back of the shirt and hauled him back.
“I am not asking, mortal,” he said in those ice-cold tones.
“You can’t order me around,” Tristan snapped back.
Mort’s eyes flickered for a moment with deep respect. Tristan was right. Mort couldn’t order him around if he didn’t want to be ordered.
Mort’s tone softened. “Please, Tristan. Let this man be my tool. Let him help you as I wish to help you.”
“He is a tool,” Tristan agreed. “Fine.”
He allowed himself to be sat at the kitchen counter, and he allowed Tom to once again help him. Tom’s hands were not like Mort’s. They were big and hot and kind of hammy. But they were operated by someone who had taken a first aid course.
To Tom’s credit, or perhaps to Tristan’s shame, he did not ask why there was a chunk out of the back of Tris’ head.
“We’re going to have to shave around the area so the sticky stuff has something to stick to,” Tom said.
Once that was done, and once a proper dressing with all sticky stuff around the edges had been procured, it was not that hard to fix what had been broken.
“Can I go back to bed now?” Tom yawned.
“Certainly,” Mort dismissed Tom.
“Take a beer,” Tristan said, feeling especially generous.
Tom didn’t take a beer. Tristan was happy about that.
“Very well,” Mort said in the voice of an ageless, tireless entity who had still somehow been tired out by Tristan’s antics. “I think it is time we both got some rest.”
11
“Please don’t take matters into your hands like this again,” Mort said. “It’s not merely that you hurt yourself. It is that you are ineffective when you do.”
The next morning had come, and with it, Tristan’s anticipation of the long, painful talk about valuing his life.
The talk had begun. The pain had not, but he saw it lingering in Mort’s eyes. It was only a matter of time before he was made to hurt in some way. Perhaps Mort would wait for him to heal from his explosion wounds, or maybe he’d be inventive. Tristan felt a sick kind of anticipation at the idea either way.
“I told you last night that you had removed the mark. While that may be physically true, it is not entirely true.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The mark was just an indication of the claiming. You can’t cut the deeper claim out. It’s not on your body. It’s on your soul.”
Tristan felt a pulse of anger. “You’re telling me someone owns my fucking soul.”
“That’s exactly what I am telling you.”
“So if I had…” Tristan made a yanking motion above his head. “I wouldn’t have gone where most people would go?”
“You would have been taken into service.”
“Wait. Are you saying I sold my fucking soul?”
“That’s another way of saying it, yes.”
“What did I get for it?” Tristan extended his arms and gestured at his mobile home. “This? All this nothing?”
“It’s not uncommon for such bargains to bear little fruit,” Mort said. “These deals are often tricks played by lesser gods. I would have liked to have hunted down the deity responsible for marking you, but now the marking is gone, that is going to be more difficult.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that?”
“I had to think. One of us has to think, you know.”
He meant it as a slightly acerbic comment, but it hit Tristan like a jab to the solar plexus.
Tristan felt small and stupid and scared. In Mort’s eyes, he was like a toddler who had taken scissors to his hair. Mort might look similarly aged to Tristan, but he had to be fucking old. Like thousands of years old. Compared to his dark majesty, Tristan was a mayfly. A stupid, toddler mayfly.
