“N-No, the girl I was caring for has an illness I’d never seen the likes of before. I only wished to save her, if I was able, as she comes from a similar background as me. I took on a fondness for her, one that drove me to travel from the city in search of something, anything, that I could potentially use to help her.” His voice was trembling just as much as his body was, but his face remained more or less passive. It was helped by the fact that an entire half of his features were made to be rigid by the massive wound that had been cut through them at one time or another. He was trying damn hard to maintain his composure in front of someone he assumed to hold a fair bit of power amongst the northerner’s, and in some capacity he was succeeding, but at the same time it was clear that he was struggling to not break down into a hopeless mess of ugly sobbing once again.<br/><br/>Malta's description of his was less than becoming, and the general's offer to the soldier who'd retrieved him made the pretty young creature's stomach turn. He was being spoken of like an animal at an auction, and he despised it. It reminded him so of his and his and Adonis' Claiming Day, and he could have released what little food he held in his stomach right then and there had he stopped struggling to keep it down. He was motioned forward, but despite his best efforts he still wasn’t able to walk on his own. Between the cold that had set into his body and the fear that made his knees knock his legs were a bit too wobbly. Malta dragged him forwards, not exactly unkindly but he certainly took no care to be particularly gentle with the little elf. The boy latched onto his lower lip firmly at the man’s threads, and he squeezed his eyes shut tightly, mulling over his options in his mind.<br/><br/>He could lie, but he was fairly sure that if he was caught he would be immediately and brutally executed … Or, perhaps just thrown to the men and then brutally murdered after that. He could tell the partial truth, that he didn’t have any inside information. Having been tossed to the slums to die quite some time ago that was very much true. He was never fed direct information from his people, as they looked at him and saw nothing but a shit stain on an otherwise perfect crisp, white tunic. He was the filth of the world, and so why would they allow him to indulge in any of the knowledge of their inner workings? He could also tell the truth. Having a brother who was a member of the high society he was, on occasion, fed tidbits of information when he spent time with his twin. It was never anything imperative, of course, but perhaps these brutes didn’t need imperative, perhaps they just needed him to spoon feed them information gradually for them to keep him alive … Nikodem forced his eyes to open before blinking rapidly a few times to stave off the tears that threatened to leak from them. He made eye contact with Alrian general.<br/><br/>“I-I’m an outsider within Khryoskyra … They cast me from my home and left me to die,” the boy paused, attempting to swallow the lump that kept forming within his throat and averting his eyes again to regain his composure. When he returned his gaze to Vahit he continued, “I … I can’t tell you anything. I don’t have any information,” he dropped his head, cringing to himself as he wondered if he’d made the right decision. He was lying, and he prayed that he’d not be caught in that lie. His body language was that of someone who was uncomfortable, clearly, but then even someone telling the full, unadulterated truth would likely be uncomfortable in the situation that he found himself in there.<br/><br/>He shook his head slowly, leaving it hanging limply so that the pair of men in the room could not see the tears that he could no longer control. Was to die a quick death better than to survive a life of torture in such a place? He was pondering that now, his head and his heart tearing him in two different directions. His heart screamed that he needed to do whatever he could to survive, that he needed to try his best to make it out and back down to his home, to his little patient and his beloved brother. His head told him that such a feat was very simply impossible in such a hostile environment to someone of his background and stature. So, the boy just choked out in a pained tone, “I don’t know anything.”