The scream tore from Lysander's throat, raw and animal, echoing off the Crucible's cold iron bones. It wasn't the controlled agony of the flogging, nor the delirious cries of the fever. This was pure, immediate, shattering pain, concentrated and brutal. Orlov's gnarled hands, strong as iron clamps, held him flat against the burlap sacks while the old man peeled the dried mud poultice from his ravaged back.
It felt like ripping off a layer of skin fused with scabs and infection. Every tug sent white-hot razors of agony slicing through his nerves. He arched, muscles straining against Orlov's implacable strength, his vision whiting out, the world dissolving into a roaring void of suffering. He tasted blood again, biting his tongue to stifle the next scream, succeeding only in choking it into a guttural sob.
"Hold still, boy!" Orlov grunted, his breath smelling of stale spirits and metal shavings. "Worse than a gutted fish, you squirm! Infection's receding. Flesh is pinker. Angry, but alive. Means my gut string holds. Means you might live to owe me more." He tossed a chunk of dried, blood-streaked mud aside with a wet thump.
Lysander panted, tears streaming freely down his temples, mingling with the cold sweat coating his face. He felt utterly exposed, vulnerable, the cool air like ice on the raw, weeping lines Orlov had sewn. The crude stitches pulled with every ragged breath, a constant, sickening reminder.
Orlov produced his flask, the pungent reek of raw spirits flooding Lysander's nostrils even before the liquid hit his back. The agony returned, blinding and fierce, a searing baptism that stole his breath. He convulsed, a strangled cry escaping him. Orlov ignored it, dabbing roughly with a piece of filthy, but relatively clean rag Brynn silently handed him.
"Stitches hold," Orlov announced, peering closely. "No pus. Just clean blood and serum. Good." He scooped fresh, wet mud from a bucket Brynn had brought – where she found clean mud in the Crescent was a mystery – and began packing it back onto the wounds. The cold was a shock, then a numb relief after the fire of the spirits. The pressure was immense, making the stitches pull anew, but it was a duller, deeper ache compared to the sharp agony of the poultice removal.
"Leave it two days," Orlov commanded, wiping his hands on his perpetually stained coat. "Then we do this again. Try not to roll onto it in your sleep. Or do. More practice for me." He stood, groaning as his joints cracked. He fixed Lysander with those pale, unsettling eyes. "You're a canvas now, boy. Silas painted his message. Pain. Shame." He gestured vaguely at Lysander's back. "What you paint over it… that's yours. If you survive the priming." He gave Brynn a curt nod. "Keep him still. Or feed him to the furnace." With that, he turned and limped away, melting back into the foundry's deeper shadows.
Lysander lay trembling, utterly spent. The aftershocks of pain vibrated through him, leaving him weak and hollow. He felt Brynn's presence beside him, a silent, watchful pillar. She didn't speak, didn't offer false comfort. She simply waited, perhaps ensuring he wouldn't pass out or vomit.
Slowly, the roaring in his ears subsided. The foundry's ambient sounds filtered back in – the distant drip of water, the soft crackle of the banked fire, the low murmur of voices from the other side of the cavernous space where the Collective had discreetly retreated during Orlov's ministrations. He focused on the cold, wet weight of the mud, a grotesque comfort against the lingering sting.
Brynn moved then. She didn't help him sit up. Instead, she unfolded another rough-woven blanket, thicker than the first one. She draped it carefully over him, tucking it around his shoulders, mindful to avoid putting pressure directly on his packed back. The added weight and warmth were immediate, a barrier against the foundry's chill and the vulnerability Orlov had exposed. It was a simple act, devoid of sentimentality, yet profoundly grounding. It said, You are here. You are covered. The worst, for now, is over.
"Canvas," Lysander rasped, the word tasting like ash. He remembered Orlov's words. Silas painted his message. The flogging stripes were a brutal inscription, a declaration of worthlessness carved into his flesh. A public erasure. He shuddered, the movement sending fresh twinges through his back. "What… what can be painted over that?"
Brynn settled back on her haunches beside his pallet. She didn't look at him, her gaze fixed on the towering, dormant furnace nearby, its cold iron bulk a silent monument. "Scars tell stories," she said, her voice low and rough. "His story. Or yours. Depends who holds the brush." She picked up a small piece of scrap wood from the floor, turning it over in her calloused hands. "This was part of a crate. Carried fish, probably. Smelled like it. Now?" She gestured vaguely towards Remy's workbench. "Could be a peg for a lute. Part of a child's toy. Kindling." She tossed the wood fragment aside. "What it was doesn't matter half as much as what it becomes. Or what it's used for."
Her words hung in the cool air. Lysander stared at the high, soot-blackened ceiling, the shafts of fading daylight weak and dusty. He thought of his hands. Remy had seen the pianist's calluses. Tools for a specific purpose, now seemingly useless. But were they? Orlov saw a canvas. Brynn saw… potential scrap? Or something else?
He thought of the sounds of the Crucible. The loom's relentless rhythm wasn't a symphony, but it was creation. Remy's whittling wasn't virtuosity, but it was making. Jax's anvil clang was communication, command. Brynn's fiddle… her fiddle was raw feeling given sound, a weapon and a shield. None of it conformed to Silas's rigid structures. None of it was 'perfect'. But it was alive. It was becoming.
His back was a ruin. A testament to Silas's power, his cruelty. But Orlov was right. It was also a canvas. The pain was the primer. What came next… the healing, the survival, the choices he made in this grimy crucible… that would be the paint. Would he remain Silas's discarded, broken masterpiece of shame? Or could he… dare he… become something else? Something forged in filth and defiance, like the scrap Remy transformed?
The enormity of the thought was exhausting. The physical agony had subsided to a deep, heavy throb, a constant companion. The emotional landscape felt vast and terrifying. He closed his eyes, pulling the thicker blanket tighter, seeking the oblivion of sleep. But the image persisted: his back, a brutal landscape of scars. And overlaid on it, faint and tentative, like the first strokes of charcoal on a blank page, the possibility of something new. Something his.
He drifted, not into peaceful sleep, but into a restless doze haunted by discordant notes and the scraping of a bow across raw strings. The canvas awaited. The brush, trembling and unsure, was in his hands. The only palette available was pain, resilience, and the uncertain symphony of survival echoing through the rusted heart of the Crucible. Brynn's presence beside him, silent and watchful, felt less like a guard and more like a witness to the first, terrifying stroke.