Chapter Text
Blaidd had not allowed himself to ponder the thought before, nor was there an opportunity. Matters such as finding the entrance to the Eternal City far outweighed questions of why Ranni's newest wayfarer hadn't uttered a word, even long before the Tarnished somehow fumbled her way to Caria Manor. It had poked at him on some occasions, though they remained few and far between. A passing thought. A musing he did not care to humor, lest he strays from the task at hand wondering of business that did not belong to him.
Now, however, with the Erdtree mere ashes at the feet of the ruins of Leyndell and the Tarnished declared Consort Eternal to his mistress, he ponders.
It feels rude to ask why she never speaks, so he does not. Though many would describe Blaidd as loutish in his manner of expressing himself in a wholly unrefined way — more brute than a bureaucrat, Iji loved to point out — that does not mean he lacks tact.
It could be a number of things that have left the Tarnished mute, and he does not wish to pry for details that may be sour upon his ears.
On the other side of the coin, he is positive that the weight of his curiosity will one day crush him to death.
As Lady Ranni's shadow, Blaidd belongs to her Consort in the same essence. He follows the Tarnished just as he would his original master. Most days he remains in close proximity. All the fortunate for Blaidd to come up with his own conclusions on the matter through observing her. If he cannot bear to ask her those burning questions himself, he can stave his inevitable demise by speculating as she goes about her day.
An injury? He wonders. No, it couldn't be.
The Tarnished and he, before The Age of Stars had truly been cemented, shared the battlefield many times. Blaidd as her wall, steadfast and unpenetrable, and she the trebuchet. Even before they could be considered proper comrades during the Festival of Radahn, that fight had quieted at least one of his concerns.
The Tarnished be merely wordless, not voiceless.
His ears swiveled violently the first time he heard the cry of pain caused by the ensuing barrage of meteors sending the Tarnished flying into the sand to avoid them, only to be slammed full force with the flat of Radahn's greatsword due to unfortunate footing. He had not pinned it as her voice at first, as he thought the Tarnished simply lacked the capability to make any sound at all.
When he chanced to turn and see who had fallen, he was surprised to see her scrambling to her feet, grunts spilling through her clenched teeth as she made to stand with the rest of them once again.
At the time, he had been too impressed with her to ruminate on the prospect that she had indeed made noise. Just that, through her potentially immense pain (the General hit as hard as he appeared to), could she still find the strength to face General Radahn, and win at that.
No truer warrior had he known than her. One he could fight in tandem with under verity of trust and instinct alone. They needn't words to work well together, surely a proper match to serve Mistress Ranni and her purposes.
On the surface, it may seem unrelated, his reverie of skirmishes past, but he thinks of them now. For perhaps the third time since he has known her, she proves his theory true. Illuminated by the golden candlelight filling the enclosed room, she hums and ahs as she cranes her neck to watch while her newly commissioned cloak is pinned in its proper place by thin, practiced fingers.
He has accompanied his Lord to a fitting of court regalia. An ongoing project to test the skill of her seamster, a demihuman of little renown, yet personally requested all the same. The Tarnished exemplified a method of communicating and emoting— speaking—with more advanced hand motions than Blaidd could ever hope to learn let alone follow, and Ranni had miraculously understood and assigned the little thing as the Tarnished's personal tailor.
As far as Blaidd has seen, Boc is skilled, but to warrant a personal request, following a fervent search party in order to fill it, was just barely grazing the edge of excessive if you asked him.
He watches from his post beside the door as they converse in the only way most people are able to speak to the Tarnished: filling her silence with their own words aplenty. To think that a verbal exchange with someone of her sort would ordinarily be considered impossible, there is something about his Lord, something he has noticed in his periphary from the very beginning. Something amiable, that encourages you to speak with her about all manner of things.
He watches on and thinks that it could be in the way she hangs off every word like it honestly, truly matters to her. He never bothered with acknowledging such a triviality when it was just that, a triviality. He wonders when it ceased to be so in his mind.
Boc prattles on about this, that, or the other whilst he pins layers in place to fit around the Tarnished's waist. Blaidd in all honesty isn't listening to the tale he spins much at all. The Tarnished, is, however.
She is smiling. She nods when she is expected to and voices her responses with short little sounds from her throat to affirm or deny or express distaste that "one could throw such a fit over a miscounted cross-stitch."
That's what he believes that noise means, anyway...he truly has no idea what the seamster is on about.
Boc ends up pricking her hip with one of his pins and the Tarnished lets out this small, startled noise. Not hurt, thankfully, Blaidd most of all would know something as small as a pin wouldn't hurt her in the slightest.
She laughs, as well, when Boc very nearly bowls over in his haste to apologize. It is a small, inoffensive thing, more a giggle than true laughter, but the look on her face tells it all. She appears so decidedly fond when she bends to put a stop to Boc's pathetic kowtowing. Blaidd realizes this is one of the very few times he's borne witness to this side of her. It is strange to see when set beside her battle calm and model solemnity for comparison.
She amends the little thing's fussing, her fingers squeezing and petting and lingering just so to console him, the giggling tapering off into silence at Boc's mumbled discontent. Quickly enough they get right back to fitting the admittedly gaudy pattern to her curves, Boc taking more care with his pinning this time.
One could describe the passing moments as contented, intimate.
However, Blaidd and the Tarnished were friends long before Lord and Sentry. When she lets it slip, he sees how she looks so very forlorn. Though the expression holds only for a brief moment, it is enough to give him pause.
Blaidd can only wonder and speculate as to the machinations and thoughts of the Tarnished. For she is as off-handed as she is congenial to most, balancing it so well he wonders how she gets away with being so closed off.
Perhaps because she cannot speak.
That must be it.
—
It is on a rare day of solace when Blaidd goes without his armor, and the weather and activity outside the walls are unremarkable enough to justify the Elden Lord making her own rounds about the estate without too much fuss from the castle guard, does he dare broach the subject with Ranni as she sorts the library.
"Thou wishest to know of her affliction?" She asks, seeming uninterested as she piles text after text upon her growing collection of favorites. She does not care to look at him, "Hast thou not considered presenting thy question to her, and not I, Blaidd?"
He had expected as much from her, but he does not falter. He knows, Ranni knows, that is an implausibility if anything at all.
"I have, actually," he says, "But how am I to receive an answer if she cannot speak?"
A pause, where the pair of them, very obviously, ignore the fact that they've gotten as far as they have with the Tarnished in the same condition she is in now.
Still, Ranni does not look at him, she simply gestures offhandedly to her now finished acquisition for him to carry for her, and shuffles away, "Thine Lord speaketh. For thou, it be only a matter of understanding what she says to thee."
"I haven't the patience, for it to be a single question at that, to learn a second language."
He is indeed able to do so. The series of gestures and signs he often sees the Tarnished using to communicate with Ranni can be learned. In fact, some of the things she "says" have stuck with him, as she says them often and he was able to glean some meaning from her gestures. But he does not know enough to receive an answer to his query. Despite his ability to learn, he is indolent, and unashamed in his thinking that such a tall order is also a useless one, even for his fellow. Not to mention how time consuming it would be.
That is why his Lady is here anyway, in this respect, to interpret her Consort if needed.
He lets the silence stretch. It lasts as long as it takes Ranni to approach her desired bookshelf and begin placing the books she collected in alphabetical order on the lowest shelf. Another thing he is mostly apathetic about, so he stands there and waits for her to concede.
Eventually, she dares a glance his way when reaching for another book, which turns into contending eye contact. Today, her vast white hat is nowhere to be seen, so he has a full view of her pinched expression. A bonus: she cannot hide from his stare while pretending to be enigmatic about it.
Blaidd shall not be cowed. He refuses to learn the hand language.
"Another dogged soul. Perhaps made to vex me, the pair of them," she says it with the pretense of anger under her breath, but verily she knows he catches her words with his acute hearing. She is not angry with him, nor could she truly ever be.
After a few seconds of further staring at each other, Ranni's set shoulders sag like a marionette with cut strings. She takes the rest of the books from him in such a way that can only be described as "snatching" and glowers at the floor as she moves to the next bookshelf.
"Fine."
Blaidd tries not to preen in his victory.
"Be not too impassioned. The tale of how she became this way is not mine to tell. Though I may not be culpable of misdeed if I telleth thou what ails her."
"Would you, now?"
"A tongue she does not possess, brother mine."
That is enough cause for his thoughts to race.
Subsequent to their banishment, their gift of grace ripped away just as death had been, Tarnished had not been able to scar, as far as Blaidd knew. A gash upon one's back would heal completely with their ressurection. So should an appendage that was lost.
In light of this, the circumstances of which his Lord would lose her tongue permanently threaten to haunt him.
Was it never there?
Did illness steal it away?
Or worse — had it been forcefully taken from her?
Blaidd has seen many depravities in his time, all without batting an eye, but that thought alone makes him ill.
He had not bothered to hide the emotions undoubtedly showing on his face despite his inhuman features. Ranni, however, can easily place the growing distress in his thoughts. She offers him a serene smile which inexplicably calms him. Perhaps the fact that the one who clearly loves the Tarnished most wastes no energy wringing her hands over notions of the past is consolation enough. He can rely on that, at least.
"Thy brewing bate be soothed. Our Tarnished is hale." Albeit not whole, is left unsaid. She continues her sorting.
"It's in my nature to worry, you know," Blaidd watches, arms crossed, as Ranni purses her lips into a thin line, tracing her fingers over the spines of her stack like she is parsing their titles before she places them to her liking. To the naked eye it would appear to be a benign tic. In reality, it's a peculiar motion, deliberate, like she's searching for something. It must be more than sorting for her today. She is being particular, selective.
"Which raises another question," Blaidd makes a vague gesture, indicating the vast room and the many empty shelves, "Why sort it all yourself?" He may already know the answer, but he doesn't file himself in with the likes of Seluvis, of those who pretend to know more than they do, it is safer to cover all of your bases.
Without warning, or waiting for him to adjust his posture for that matter, Ranni dumps an armful of books in his hands, which he has to flounder gracelessly to keep them from falling to the floor, "Thou'rt particularly curious this morning."
Blaidd is roughly three Rannis tall, so it should not be possible for her to look down her nose at him, but she manages to do just that in a manner befitting Carian royalty.
He snorts and wrinkles his nose at her in a manner such befitting a cad, "Curiosity suits me just fine," he says to her.
"'Tis a game, perhaps? Thou'rt plagued with boredom? Such folly could only be dredged from the malaise experienced by a housecarl such as thou."
"Should I be insulted at being called a housecarl?" He thinks on it a moment when Ranni gives him a blank stare in place of a response, "Well...I am."
They move to another set of shelves, far enough away from the ones previously being filled that he finds himself silently questioning what the contents of these books are. He looks down at the load on his hands, his good eye widening marginally at the title he sees.
How to Pick Up Fair Maidens
"Thou chaseth this clew of useless knowledge. Should I also inform thee of what order my Lord dresses each morning?"
Their Tarnished, their Lord. A fair maiden indeed. Another section of Blaidd's brain bursts with questions as to why Ranni — blast it, the royal family— would be in possession of such a tome. Perhaps this is how the Tarnished was coerced into espousal. Though it would make more sense the other way around. He can only speculate, after all, he wasn't around for most of the developments currently active in his life. He isn't sure if he wants to explode into a fit of hysterics or tears.
Blaidd ignores Ranni's declaration of "Nether garments first" when he doesn't respond quickly enough. It's horribly crude for his Mistress to make such jokes, but he cannot dwell on that. Instead he focuses on the tap tap tap of her fingers against the book in two of her hands, deliberately willing his thoughts away from 'fair maidens' and their implications. He knows Ranni raps her fingertips against whatever surface is most convenient out of frustration when she's been caught out doing something she thought was not obvious. It makes his ears twitch, the way the acoustics of the library cause the noise to bounce around the stone panelling, reverberating the sound in an almost aggravating tempo. Blaidd's left ear flicks irritably, pulling slightly at the scar on his brow. Ranni taps and taps some more as she divests him of book after book, each carefully looked over then placed upon a shelf or set within another indistinguishable pile on the floor. The 'how to' manual, he sees, ends up on the floor.
"Is it such a secret that you can't even tell me?" He asks after a beat, when Ranni practically floats between messily dumped piles of unorganized books, scrolls and tablets and he is forced to stride after her lest she make it an excuse to ignore him proper. He hopes he was able to temper his disappointment at the prospect. Blaidd is part of her very being. If she is unable to confide in him, after everything, then—
"Thou knoweth of the demi-human that resides here within the manor?"
An entire jar of butter would not have further smoothened the journey of those words past her lips. She relinquishes the question so easily, an admission in itself, that Blaidd almost reels with how swiftly she caves to his whim.
It takes a moment for Blaidd to remember how he should respond. He settles on something objectively daft, "The seamster?" Leaving the next string of words out that would be damning if he was not appointed Vanguard, knower of most business: The little thing that frets over cross stitch? That practically worships the ground the Tarnished walks on? He can scarcely believe such a creature would unwittingly catch Ranni's attention beyond what was necessary.
Which means that it is necessary.
Just what has the little thing done to justify that?!
Ranni gives him another blank look. He scrambles for a remedy to his ineptitude with words. But as is his curse, he cannot find any more that may appease Ranni. Instead, he trades his dignity for answers.
No matter what line of thought or questioning Blaidd chooses to pursue, he finds the door he was looking for. But when he wrenches the damn thing open, he is only left with more agonizing questions. Frankly, he is sick of it. No denizen within the Lands Between could give a straight answer even with a dagger at their throat.
So he shall beg.
"What of him, Ranni? Please." It is as desperate as he can seem without falling to his knees.
His mistress sighs once more, as if exhausted with this conversation. It is only then Blaidd notices how small she is. Compared to her original body, she is quite tiny, now even towered by the Tarnished, who has physically grown with her status practically into godhood. However, a meek mind a small stature does not make, as Ranni can crush him with nothing but a single word and may not even bat an eye afterwards.
Still, she appears frail, exhausted, though a mere doll is her body from now unto eternity, limitations and all. Blaidd thought it a mere impossibility. She struggles to reach a shelf just out of reach of her fingertips. Blaidd assists by nudging the book out of her hand and firmly onto the end of the shelf. Her lack of verbal response to a typically unwelcome action says many things, and he wonders to himself more fervently.
How long has she been filing through these books, chasing her mysterious quarry for a reason he may fail to understand, for her to be so visibly tired? For it all to be in relation to the self-effacing demi-human who had shown up from nowhere and relentlessly clings to the shadows unless the Elden Lord is present.
"He is of certain importance to our Lord."
Blaidd blinks owlishly at that, "So, by extension, he is of certain importance to you."
Ranni gently shakes her head, which Blaidd doesn't believe is indicative of a denial. It is more like she is recalling something disappointing.
Things are making less and less sense.
"He weeps, sometimes," she says, more softly than usual, her voice is layered with a distant, muffled sort of sadness, "I oft ponder what for."