Ted forgot about the wife of the mercenary. He had such fun playing cards with Mad that he did not even think about the situation in the ladies' room, where the thieving hag had disappeared with the bottle of branthen. When he heard that the woman had been found lying on the sink, unconscious and covered in vomit, he honestly had to search for an answer inside his brain until he could fake a convincingly shocked reaction.
"I shouldn't have showed her where the bottle was." Ted shook his head, tearing his hair. He hoped the display of guilt would convince the captain.
The captain looked away. "It was not your fault, cor. I have been told she had an alcohol problem that she did not…manage well. You could not have known, cor. Any sane person would have left it at one glass or declined entirely."
"Will she survive?"
"Difficult to say, cor, I don't know if the doctor has been able to get her back on her feet, or even into a verbal state again."
Walking was the absolute last thing one should have done while so incapacitated. It sounded like no one aboard the airship even knew how serious an alcohol poisoning could be. With a body that small, the woman could suffer instant, acute organ failure after downing a whole bottle of branthen. It would have been a dangerous feat for anyone, let alone a petite lady.
The mercenary who had committed to the misfortune of being married to her did not reveal his identity. This made Ted slightly nervous. Being the devil he was, he could not stop himself from doing certain bad things. The woman had been threatening to his social power on the airship, and besides, she had been so obnoxious that Ted couldn't help but be happy about her state, no matter how dangerous it was to play with life and death.
Mercenaries were tough, they could not show much emotion, and they certainly could not start openly weeping or accusing people of things while on a mission – and revealing one's identity as the husband of this gem of a woman would have meant jeopardizing the payment from Ted. After all, the wife was not supposed to be aboard the airship at all.
The news about the condition of the woman were rather sad for anyone normal enough to refrain from unpaid murder. She had passed away.
Madorn gave Ted a funny look and slipped him a note.
MEET ME ON THE DECK. MIDNIGHT.
The sunset they were flying away from was as golden as the gold in the hold. With its cruel rays, the sun took every last chance to torment Ted before the arrival of his sweet, familiar darkness. Eknie was acting strange – it was like she tried so hard to hide her joy over the passing of that terrible woman. She was so good that Ted was the only one who noticed anything weird about her.
Ted waited until midnight and then went to meet Mad on the deck, away from curious ears.
"I want to let you know I am not a threat to you or your cult," Madorn whispered and slipped another lump of chewing tobacco inside his mouth.
Ted thought about how the scientist was going to discard the lump later. He arrived to the conclusion that Mad would simply spit it out overboard, possibly hitting some poor fellow on the head, or maybe knocking a few feathers off from the fancy hat of a fine lady. This amused Ted greatly.
"Good to know." He smiled in the darkness, hoping that the shadows could hide his amusement. He didn't feel like explaining his thought patterns about random lumps of chewing tobacco hitting people.
"If I thought otherwise…well, that would be an incentive for me to get rid of you. That would be terribly troublesome for me," he continued.
"Rest assured, I know I can't research things from the grave." Madorn was so calm, yet he started to mirror Ted's movements again.
Suddenly, it occurred to Ted that he did the exact same thing when he was trying to please someone. Mad playing him. Mad was treating him as an equal, a formidable ally, and with the earlier displays of his genius-level intelligence, such things were enough to make Ted Tobias feel appreciated and even flattered.
Eknie was good, yes, she was very good, but Madorn was bending without any groveling. He was even better.
Ted could see himself ending up in a situation where he would have to pretend to treat Eknie as his equal. However, even though he would have never prioritized the scientist over himself, with Madorn, there was no need to pretend.
Ted internally chastised himself for being so wishy-washy with his emotions towards the markswoman. He had to know where he stood. Madorn – he was a challenge. Eknie, with all her skills, was not.
She was so much prettier than Mad, of course.
"You seem fine with associating with me," Ted said. "May I ask how? Where do those nerves of iron come from?"
"From having to adapt." Mad looked towards the vast darkness of Middlemost Sennas. His dark hair had its own, vivid life in the wind, and perhaps some would have thought of him as quite handsome.
Ted knew that in the light of the sun, all the wrinkles caused by nights of reading would be visible and the scientist would look very much like a professor. Professors were supposed to look tired and manic at the same time.
"I have my priorities in order. Progress, discovery, science – they come first. Not inane notions of what is good for me or bad for me. Unless you restrict my coffee and tobacco intake, we remain as allies and friends."
"You are a brave man, Mad."
"Bravery…if you want to paint me in a positive light, that will do. But I'm simply not brave enough to stand up for people I neither know nor like. Like that woman. What was her name, even? She died and you had something to do with it. Big deal."
Madorn shook his head. "Just don't kill anyone actually useful. I don't want blood on my hands, but your fate is yours. I will stay out of it."