Friday Fade-Out! - Bending the Unbreakable, Part 3

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A bird woke Niro to inappropriately bright sunshine and steel bars, rousing him from a bed that was unreasonably comfortable, if small. The room he was in was of a strange design, obviously renovated,  the rock still pale and fresh where the Ailill had re-purposed the higher ranked servant quarters. It had to be the servant quarters, as the birdsong was that of a blue morngale in full courtship, pointing to the wee hours of the morning, and the sun was burning straight into the small chamber. Since the servant quarters were on the outer east wing of the king’s castle, where it was hot in summer and freezing cold in the winter, there wasn’t any other place to have this kind of sonata as a wake up call.
As for the steel bars, they had been sunk right into the thick outer stone of the window sills. Three steel rods, almost as wide as Niro’s arm, huddled together like lonely trees. The door had been modified in much the same way. A big window had been cut into the elm wood, then criss-crossed with a sprinkle of iron, steel and what looked like copper. Enough space to look through, enough metal to keep anyone from reaching in or out. An eight by six foot prison for a high prized pony. Why they had put Niro of all people in such a nice cage, he couldn’t fathom.
There was nothing in the room to make a weapon from, only a rickety side table with an earthen pitcher of water, a small wooden bowl with bread in it, and a chamber pot. Oh, there was a stool next to the window, but it was made out of woven willow branches. Comfy, but not prone to splintering.
At first, Niro just sat at the foot of the bed, blinking into the sunlight and pondering. He didn’t feel thirsty anymore, so they probably had force-fed him water while he had been out. He was still dirty, but not as much as he had been when he had fainted, so someone had put a wet cloth to him, too. And lastly, he wore new clothes. Well, pants, at least, and they were of a light, soft, tough, woolen fabric. Better than what he had worn in the last weeks, and better than what he had seen on the servants in his father’s household.
So he had survived. He had not an inkling of an idea why he was still alive, but the room, the pants, the watering, it all was a sure sign the Fae bastards didn’t want him dead, and didn’t plan to kill him any time soon. He just didn’t know why.
Adding to that, the Ailill made him wait for an answer. Waiting was a torture on itself for a twelve-year-old, but since he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for weeks, even the mid-day heat couldn’t stop Niro from taking advantage of the bed.

The next time he was woken, it wasn’t a bird, but the door squeaking on its new hinges. Niro jumped at the new sound, slapping his back against the rough hewn stone behind the bed as an Ailill with almost white hair and a crippled ear stepped into the small chamber. Had he been full-blooded, he should have been hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, judging by the wrinkles around his eyes and the sagging in his cheeks. The pointy canines gave his mixed heritage away, though, and the leather armor on his body told its own story. Not a good one at that.
“I see, you recognize the crest, then?” the cross-breed asked, lisping away on the words in his fight against the pointy Lamia canines.
Niro ripped his gaze away from the blackened grooves in the hardened leather, his eyes twitching over his visitor’s face like irritated flies. “You’re a trade guard, aren’t you?” he asked, trying not to think of the stories he’d heard about those who wore the howling dog on their armor. Trade guards were held in the same regard as mercenaries, ruffians with no home and— as the stories depicted it— no morals to plead to.
The man nodded once, then twice, almost as if unsure himself. He kept to the door, blocking it in a thoughtful, awkward way, taking his time to look through the clean, smallish cell, watching dust drift through the last rays of sun playing against the south wall. Finally, he looked back to the boy cowering on the bed like a startled cat.
“I am to take you under my tutelage, manling. Had I known you have no possessions to speak of, I wouldn’t have bothered looking for a ride on one of the ox carts.” He paused, staring at Niro’s naked chest until the boy squirmed. “Do you at least have a shirt?”