Aleksander lay blinking at the ceiling, trying not to breathe too deeply and pull on his wound. "Okay," he said, "Okay. So. Maybe let's walk through everything in chronological order."
"Right," Plat said. He was out of Aleks' line of sight, since he had pulled up a chair to the bedside instead of learning to magically float on the ceiling as Aleks had suggested. They were going to have to add miraculous feats of convenience to the training docket one of these days.
"So," Aleks said, remembering the task at hand. "The Glaevor Lords had a meeting, which you attended. The Elkarin rebels had an assassination attempt, which I attended. Good so far?"
"I don't know anything until you barged in," Plat said, which was reasonable. As far as Aleks was aware, Platt didn't have a secret ability to be in multiple places at once. A pity, really.
"So I barged in," Aleks said, "To the closed meeting. Which was not closed to me actually, since I'm Glaevor royalty."
"Why did you do that?" Plat asked.
Aleks waved one hand absently in the air. "I was running away. I wasn't running to. Destinations completely slipped my mind."
"I didn't actually notice when you came in," Plat confessed.
"You said you saw me—"
"I was distracted. I only noticed when you made a scene."
"Wait!" Aleks said, pointing up at nothing in particular, "Wait, I remember why I came in! Because there weren't that many assassins. I figured they would be too scared to follow me into a room full of armed men." That was one thing Aleks did admire about the Glaevor lords. Comfort hadn't turned them complacent.
"I thought you didn't want the assassins to get caught," Plat said.
"Well," Aleks said, "They didn't get caught did they? Turned around at the door. But that's why I had to be secretive. Couldn't burst in and yell for the guards."
"You did yell," Plat said, which was obnoxious. Why was he bringing up the facts during this discussion they were having specifically for the purpose of setting the facts straight?
Aleks rolled his eyes. That made his headache worse, so he decided not to do it anymore. "We're getting there. First I was going to sneak away. But my shirt was all messed up, and I didn't want anybody to see, so I turned toward the wall. Which is where the refreshments were."
Plat scraped his chair against the floor as he scooted just a smidge closer. "Pity we didn't have cupcakes."
"Plat," Aleks said, pausing to collect his thoughts, "Were there cupcakes earlier? Did you eat them?"
"You're getting distracted."
"Did you," Aleks said, "eat the cupcakes? "
Plat grabbed the edge of the blanket that had been folded back from the headboard and flipped it back over Aleks' face. "Focus," he said, "You're never going to get back on track if you leave it here."
"Alright. Fine. So. I started grabbing things at the refreshment counter…table…place," Aleks said, slowly pulling the blanket down so that he could see again. He had a lovely view of the ceiling.
"You grabbed things?" Plat said, and Aleks realized he must have trailed off.
"There was a cup," Aleks said.
"They had wine poured out already," Plat explained, "Were you feeling shaky then? You spilled—"
"That was on purpose," Aleks said, tapping his chin with one finger. Sometimes he would wake up and get dressed and walk down to breakfast, only to wake up again and realize that he had dreamed the first bit. Blood loss could be like that, but backwards. It made waking feel like a dream. "I was thinking—I turned to walk away because I wanted to get out. But then I remembered that I had turned toward the wall to hide, and that people were going to see my clothes."
"You dropped the cup," Plat said.
"I was just thinking," Aleks said, "That I needed to hide something red, and I was holding something red, and so I could probably cover the one with the other. So it wasn't so much of a spill as a pour, I would say."
"You wanted to tell me something," Plat said, "You started looking around—and when you saw me you looked right back."
"Oh!" Aleks said, "Yes, I remember now. I knew I was going to fall over, and I wanted someone vaguely trustworthy to know."
"And then?"
Aleks bit his lip. He had been thinking several things—that the assassins should be able to get away by whatever way they had come if they were quiet about it, that he knew his limits well enough to understand that he was not going to be able to finish walking across this room, that things would not go well with him if he was brought to the regular doctor that served the royal family and his older injuries were discovered, that Plat might not have noticed that anything was wrong even though he was standing not ten feet away.
"You said," Plat blurted, trying to stifle a laugh, "You said, 'It's blood!' and then you fell over."
"Ah," Aleks said, feeling a little bit sick. "I must have been afraid that you wouldn't see through my disguise. But that doesn't sound right. I thought you said I wasn't arrested?"
"Oh, you aren't," Plat said. He sounded like he was in on a joke.
Aleks threw up his hands, a little more violently than was probably good for him. "Then what does everyone think happened? Don't tell me they caught the assassins. Did you bribe the doctor?"
Plat leaned forward over the bed so that Aleks could see the mad glee on his face. See? Magical hovering. It really wasn't that hard.
"They think that you were reminded of blood when you spilled the wine," Plat explained, "And it gave you such a shock to think about being injured that you fainted."
Aleks set his lips in a thin line, determined not to laugh. That would probably be painful. "Well that's just cheating. I mean, I'm cheating. This definitely does not deserve to have worked."
"You know," Plat said, sitting back into his chair, "I bet you could walk up to my dad, tell him that you're Thunderblade, and just walk away and he'd think you were joking. Your dad too."
“Don’t tempt me,” Aleks said, “And thanks. For dragging me back here.”
“That was the easy part,” Plat said, “You should thank me for keeping a straight face.”