Lar makes a threat

“Who are you making faces at?” Lar grumbled as he unlocked the gate.

“What am I making faces at,” Vin corrected.

Lar stopped with the key still in the lock. “What?”

“What creature am I making faces at,” the boy said. “Looks like a pack of dogs to me.”

“What?” Lar cried.

“Kisór dogs.”

Lar threw open the gate and leapt at the boy. He caught him easily at the end of his long arm: Lar’s reflexes were faster, and there was nowhere for Vin to run in any case.

He yanked the boy up to his chest and growled, “Who’s the dog?”

He watched as the boy’s eyes went wide and his mouth gaped, trying to suck back the air that Lar was draining from his lungs. Lar knew it would feel like a tremendous weight crushing his chest, but he supposed a boy raised among elves would know what was happening to him.

“Who’s the dog?” Lar asked softly. “Whose blood is better than whose here?”

Vin clenched his teeth and shook his head.

Lar leaned his head down to press his nose against the boy’s. “If I take too much air out of there, you’ll have a hard time filling it back up again,” he threatened.

“Better not, Lar,” Surr said from the other side of the gate. “Then we’ll be in trouble.”

Lar snarled and shook the boy he held out of frustration with the other. He would teach Surr to keep his mouth shut later.

But he pushed Vin away and allowed him to breathe again.

He waited quietly while the boy coughed and choked, too desperate to breathe to pay any mind to the fact that he was drooling all over himself like the dogs he so despised.

Lar smiled.

When he had caught his breath again, Vin wiped his mouth on the back of his arm and gasped, “Who are you?”

“What am I, don’t you mean?” Lar corrected. “I don’t know… don’t I look like anyone you know?”

The boy stared warily up at him.

“I am Lar.”

He abruptly laughed at the boy’s startled reaction and stopped just as abruptly. He knew it would frighten him more than a simple grim face could have done.

“Listen to me, Vin, son of Egelric. You better not call your enemies ‘dogs’ again. You don’t know how much you owe to a dog. And you don’t know how much you owe to me, either.”

“Why? Because you locked me up and fed me this mess, fit for hogs?”

“I gave you more than you’re worth to me. Now, I’m about to blindfold you and carry you out of here, and you better keep quiet. And if I find out you told anyone what you’ve heard or seen down here, I’ll crush your lungs so flat the juice will leak out your nose. Got that?”

Vin was either sage or frightened enough to say nothing.

Lar pulled the key out of the lock and dangled it in front of the boy’s face for a moment before slipping it into his coat.

“I know how to hold a grudge, boy. And if you see an old elf who looks like me back there, you tell him so.”