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CHAPTER THREE: "show off."
HER FACE FELT FOREIGN UNDERNEATH HER FINGERTIPS, HER SKIN WAS NOT HER OWN. At least, that's how Mercy felt after asking Tolya to contort her features as he had done to his captain until the face she saw in the mirror was nothing more than a stranger in her clothes.
Mercy had never been tailored before and if she had anything to say about it, she never would again, if only to avoid the questions asked when she had first raised the idea of changing her own face.
Sturmhond's reason was characteristically ambiguous, nothing more than a sarcastic 'it's good etiquette to be less attractive than your employers.'. But, however vague his reasonings were, the privateer was relentless in his own interrogations as the Heartrender reluctantly altered the shape of her eyes and the slope of her cheekbones.
"No offence little Pirate but no matter how gorgeous you are, will the Darkling really remember one runaway Materialnik?"
"No offence Privateer but keep talking and I'll make sure you don't need a tailor to give you a broken nose."
"Noted."
And so, they stood onboard the deck of some stolen whaling vessel in alien faces and far nicer clothes than Mercy had even imagined herself wearing again. Sturmhond looked surprisingly in his element, languishing in the foul looks of the Darkling's grisha as they looked upon the otkazat'sya amongst them with disdain. It took every single cell in her body, whatever power grounded her to the metals, not to make the men regret their stares and by the looks of it, Tamar felt the same way. Perhaps they finally had something to bond over.
Swarmed by faces, familiar and unfamiliar, one absence was like an unending ache in the back of her mind. Despite his best utterances, Sturmhond had insisted Aarav captain the ship that would intercept the Darkling in however many days or weeks and Mercy had the slightest inclination that splitting up the duo was to ensure she and her crew held up their end of the bargain. She couldn't blame them, after all, pirates weren't exactly notorious for their ethical decision making. But that didn't mean that she liked it.
Perhaps as a mercy, the Darkling was yet to show his face, rather ordering from his quarters that they sail to the coast of Noyvi Zem. Apparently, the Sun Summoner was hiding away in a village so insignificant that Mercy didn't bother to pay attention to its' name and they'd been docked at that location for little over a day now - with no sight of the supposed saint.
All this waiting made Mercy feel lethargic at best, lifeless at worst. Being surrounded by the Darkling's henchmen in the time it took to sail from Ravka to the shores of her old home for meant that unless she wanted to face a brutal end that not even her new acquaintances could save her from, any grisha gifts were kept firmly hidden. And with it came the tiredness, the symptoms of illness, all sorts of unpleasantries that make sea travel infinitely worse.
