Work Text:
Viago swam into view as Illario attempted to right himself, somewhat hampered by the restraints binding his arms behind him to his chair. He shuffled himself more upright and blinked hard several times, grimacing at the dull lance of pain in his left cheek. It felt like more than a bruise, but his eye wasn't swollen shut yet. Slowly, the room came into focus along with the man leaning up against a large desk, arms folded across his chest.
"Shouldn't you be celebrating?" Illario tried to put some humor into it, but his voice didn't want to cooperate any more than his face did. He could hear the bitterness seep in like blood through a shirt. Taking stock, some of his larger wounds seemed to have been tended to already. The stab wound in his chest throbbed, but wasn't visibly bleeding, and the cut along his right leg was in similar shape.
"I don't like parties," Viago said flatly. "But I will return later. Right now, we need to talk."
"What could you possibly want to talk to me about that couldn't wait?" Illario scoffed. "I assume you know of my perfidies already, or tonight may have ended differently."
"I don't want to talk to you at all," Viago leaned forward slightly, his eyes flicking behind Illario to signal someone else in the room. "You need to accept a couple of truths. Even I can't keep you alive if you continue wallow in ignorance and a misplaced sense of entitlement."
Illario felt his bonds cut, and a younger fledgling he didn't recognize stepped forward and offered him a compress. He took a moment to massage life back into his wrists before taking it. The compress was cold, and smelled of mint and elfroot. He sighed and shoved it up against his face to almost immediate relief.
"Truths?" this time he did manage the hint of a smirk as he looked back up. The effect was probably somewhat spoiled by the compress, but he had to try. "That I'll never be First Talon? I hardly need you to tell me that. And what does the Fifth Talon care of my survival? I'm just any other Crow who failed to kill their mark."
"I don't care, but the First Talon does, not to mention your grandmother," Viago sighed in clear irritation. "The idea that you are just 'any other Crow' is as pernicious and false as the childish and callow notion that somehow life should be fair. You aren't and it isn't."
"I can get that philosophy for less than a copper from a seer down in the market."
"Most philosophers and seers won't poison you in your sleep if you fail to learn quickly enough."
Illario rolled his eyes with exaggerated drama and regretted it instantly as another lance of pain shot along his right cheek. Probably broken. Viago raised an eyebrow but didn't comment.
"Yes, fine," Illario sighed as the pain faded and he leaned back in the chair. "Is that part of your lesson? Or just a bonus?"
"Consider it both," the man flashed a smile which gave Illario pause. Viago de Riva didn't smile. Well, not at him anyway.
"Andraste's tits!" Illario swore, peeling the compress away from his face and frowning at the offending item. His eyes were having a little trouble focusing, and his mouth suddenly felt dry. "Really? Poison?"
"Of course not," Viago scoffed, tilting his cane towards Illario with both hands as he leaned forward. "I just need you to be a bit more.. tractable than usual. I'm sure you can bear this iniquity at least as well as all of the other injustices you seem to suffer under."
When had he picked that monstrous thing up?
"Yes, alright," Illario tore his eyes away from the cane after a moment, forcing himself to focus. If he stared at Viago's beard hard enough, he could almost maintain enough anger for a proper smirk. "What's this wisdom you want to share, then? I really do have places to be later tonight, what with my busy schedule. Besides, my grandmother would be even more disappointed in me if I failed to send a note of apology to Rook for that nasty stab—"
Viago moved so quickly that to Illario's eyes the man blurred into the form of a two headed snake. As his eyes refocused poorly, he realized the head of Viago's cane was jammed under his chin, one of the snake's fangs pressing hard enough into his neck to almost break the skin. Several of the worst things he could imagine flashed rapidly though Illario's mind as he considered what would happen if the Talon decided to exercise just a little less restraint.
"Consider this the only warning I will ever give, Illario Dellamorte," the Talon leaned in close enough that Illario could see the flecks of lighter blue in the man's irises and smell the leather of his armor. "If you so much as hurt the feelings of anyone in my House again, I will take great pleasure in ensuring your gruesome, lengthy, and exceptionally painful death is a cautionary tale that Crows will tell their fledglings for the next thousand years. Do you understand? Or do you need a demonstration?"
Illario held Viago's gaze for a moment, resisting the urge to try and back away before blinking hard several times. As his vision cleared yet again, Viago was back in his original position sitting on the edge of the desk. Both of his gloved hands rested on the head of his cane, which was planted firmly on the floor. There was no indication that he'd moved at all. Illario swallowed hard, the sharp pressure of the fang pressed to his neck vividly etched in his memory.
"While unwelcome, the truth is that there is no contract or assignment you could have designed for yourself that would ever have been repaid in your grandmother's unfettered approval."
Illario exhaled sharply, but Viago put up a hand sharply to forestall his reply.
"But that is not your failure. You have failed utterly to think like a Talon should. How they must," Viago said after a moment, his tone measured in a way Illario had rarely heard him use. "Poor alliances, bad contracts, and unnecessary risks? You've indulged in precisely the things that threaten your House the most. Risks cost you people you can't afford to lose. Outsourcing your own parricide and failing to confirm success? Absurdly incompetent."
"Oh, is that all?"
"Not hardly, but I'm not here tonight to give you an exhaustive list of your faults," the talon thinned his lips and gave Illario a stare that told him that conversation was reserved for later. Something to look forward to. "Most of what you've done has brought misery to you, but your alliances endanger all of us."
"I could have taken care of the Venatori," Illario grumbled, frowning. His face was beginning to feel numb, which should have been an improvement, but just made him feel uneasy.
"That's debatable, but doesn't really matter," Viago sat up, leaning his cane back against the desk and crossed his arms. "We say 'The Crows rule Antiva' not just because it is true, nor is it just something we say. We repeat it to make it true. Without the support of the people of Antiva, we would be as vulnerable as any other group that regularly defies the crown."
"We exist because people without power decided to take it for themselves at the end of a knife, and we keep on existing because the people of Antiva believe we continue to do it all for them," Viago sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose as he furrowed his brow. "I don't know that you will appreciate this now, but when you partnered with the Venatori, you placed yourself at odds with a free Antiva. You cannot be their pride and their cause when you bow to those who would see them in chains. Failing to understand this is so much bigger than any of your personal deficiencies."
"Oh, good," Illario slurred, the numbness spreading to his tongue and teeth. His head felt impossibly large and heavy.
"Blood of the Maker," Viago swore, standing over Illario with an angry frown that swam in and out of focus. "How much were you drinking earlier tonight?"
"Glasses or bottles?" Illario was pretty sure he had fingers a few minutes ago, but as he lifted a hand to be sure, Viago swatted it back down and he was left wondering.
"Perhaps I really should have started with a catalog of your faults, you great drunken fool," Viago leaned out of sight for a moment, and Illario felt a sharp pain in his arm. Looking over with a good deal of effort, he saw the man withdraw a rather large needle and stow it back in a case at his side.
"This will be quite painful," Viago stared at him with an expression that Illario could only think of as annoyed anticipation. "But we need to burn the alcohol out of your system before there are any … unfortunate side effects. We can start again when you have recovered sufficiently."
A searing fire began coursing through Illario's arm starting with the injection site, and rapidly spreading to the rest of his body. He tried to grit his teeth against the pain, but the sound of his own voice roaring filled his ears as his vision went red in a mist of agony.