PART III | Chapter XXI
3:21 | Two Is Company
“But wait, I’m still hungry!”
The man just outside his cell stilled, but didn’t turn. “I
just gave you the food,” he growled lowly, leaving his back to Zyric. “You haven’t even had time to touch it yet. How in the Mother’s name are you gonna pull off tellin’ me you’re ‘still’ hungry?”
“I mean, I’m…umm…I
was still hungry after lunch? And after breakfast too,” Zyric said. “I need more than just this or I will still be hungry after I’ve done and ate it, ‘cause what you’ve been givin’ me ain’t enough.”
Finally, the man shot him a look—a brief, flick of a glance—and Zyric tried his best to look hopeful and underfed. The guard rolled his eyes. “Mother of all, for a runt you eat like a team of wild swine…” He started back up the stairs.
“But-”
“Tomorrow,” the man barked out, sounding reluctant. “I’ll bring more tomorrow. Tonight, you can sleep on your bottomless empty stomach for all it matters to me…”
Only after the heavy thud and subsequent clatter of the door above shutting and locking sounded did a grunt and a soft shuffling come from behind him. Zyric turned just in time to catch Rhyan’s initial glower as he crawled out from beneath the prison cot.
“That,” Rhyan muttered, dusting off his arms and chest as he stood, “…cannot become a long term solution.”
“Yeah, well…at the moment it’s all we’ve got. You said yourself you’re tired,” Zyric pointed out, “…and it’s not as if you can go all whooo-oooh, oogity boogity, wiggly fingers on them every time one of ‘em comes down. ‘Sides…” He shrugged, “…kina doubt I could keep a straight face through it all if you did anyways.”
Rhyan gave him an odd look.
“What?”
“I don’t wiggle my fingers…” Rhyan said, only the barest bit defensive, “…or make whatever strange, strangled owl impersonation sound you just made…”
“Okay, whatever,” Zyric waved him off. “The
point is-”
“-that I need to get out of here,” Rhyan finished for him, “…before the both of us starve.”
“Well, yeah, sure,” Zyric said, watching with a puzzlement as his companion stepped up to the prison bars. “But…I mean, look, let’s be realistic. I’ve been in here for days now already, and it’s not as if you can just bust right…” As Rhyan held a hand out to it, running his hand along the broad side and whispering something Zyric didn’t catch, the lock glowed for an instant a bright, electric blue, and the next second gave a soft
click, “…through…” Zyric pursed his lips. “Or…maybe, you know, I was wrong, and…obviously you can. Yeah, that’s…useful. A lot. How long have you been able to do that?”
Rhyan glanced up to him as he approached. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been able to do that since you got here, haven’t you,” Zyric muttered flatly.
Rhyan gave him a confused look, as if he thought he were either misunderstanding the statement or Zyric was very, very stupid. Since it was a simple statement, Zyric didn’t appreciate the look. “Of course,” he answered eventually, “…but it isn’t as if it’d have much use earlier…” He pushed the lock shut again, and Zyric made a distressed sound as it clicked back into place, “…as it still isn’t of much use now.”
“Not of
use?” Zyric quoted disbelievingly. “How can you say it’s not—? You
locked it again! Why did you lock it again?”
“I see,” Rhyan said, “…so you were intending to…parade out there, on your own, unarmed, without a plan, and…take on the entirety of whatever you happened to find—single handedly, mind you—without qualm right before making your daring escape to who knows where?”
“Err…” Zyric rubbed a hand behind his neck, frowning, “…well, when you say it like
that…” Rhyan, apparently, didn’t deem that worthy of a response, and Zyric huffed. “Okay, whatever, so…maybe running out
right now isn’t the best of ideas…”
“No,” Rhyan agreed. “It’s not.”
“I just…said that,” Zyric grumbled sorely. “You don’t have to…repeat…” He sighed, giving up. “Alright, so what do
you think we should do?”
Rhyan’s eyes turned to the tray of recently delivered food and water. “Eat, perhaps?” he suggested, and Zyric’s face lit up, his irritation forgotten.
“Right! Almost forgot about that,” he said and moved immediately over to the cot. “And I’m starving too…I saved a bit up from lunch, to give you when you woke up in case you were hungry, but…then I got hungry myself and ate it.” At least he had the decency to look sheepish. “But you can obviously share this with me, for certain. That is…umm…if you’re hungry?”
“I…” Rhyan looked thoughtful, as if he hadn’t actually taken time to think about it. Then, he said, “I feel like I haven’t eaten for days.”
Zyric broke a roll and held out a half, which Rhyan accepted, and then happily started back up talking again. “Makes sense, I guess. I mean, you turned up here way early morning and passed right out, slept all day, and then only just woke up so…guess it depends on when you last ate the day before that but whenever it was, it’s been at least all of today…”
“Breakfast,” Rhyan said, quietly enough as he started slowly in on his roll that Zyric didn’t hear clearly.
“Hm?” he grunted back around a mouthful, to which Rhyan glanced up, briefly grimaced, and looked promptly back down.
“The last I ate was breakfast the day before I arrived,” he repeated after swallowing down his own bite, “…so…it’s been nearly a day and a half.”
“Oh.” When he finished with his half, Zyric sat back, hands at his sides without reaching for more, and Rhyan gave him a pointed look.
“You’re through already?”
“Not as hungry as I thought,” Zyric said, and at Rhyan’s obvious disbelief, he added, “And besides, you…prolly need it more than I do. I ate a full breakfast and lunch, after all…”
“You just said you were starving,” Rhyan countered flatly, to which Zyric said nothing, but didn’t move. Rhyan sighed. “Look, you’re larger than I am, and thus you need more food. I’ll be fine.”
“You’re callin’ me fat?” Zyric retorted.
“I am saying,” Rhyan said with thinly strained patience, “…that you are both taller and more muscular than I am…both of which require added sustenance to maintain.” When he ventured a glance, Zyric was grinning, almost cheeky.
“Thanks.”
Rhyan met his look, unimpressed. “It was an observation, not a compliment.”
Zyric shrugged, unaffected. “Thanks anyway…and thanks for, you know, bein’ all considerate and determined to share the food and stuff.”
Rhyan pursed his lips. “It’s your food to begin with, and I’m not being considerate, I’m being logical.”
“Logical,” Zyric repeated curiously, eyeing the ceiling with a careful, considering expression, as if its cracked grey stones held within them many secrets. “Are you always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like…all stone-faced grumpy,” Zyric said, “…and…irritable.”
Rhyan glowered narrowly. “I am neither ‘grumpy’ nor irritable,” he grumped irritably, “and that’s redundant besides. Those are synonyms.”
Again undeterred, Zyric snickered and leaned back. “Figures,” he said, folding his hands behind his head—food still untouched—and shutting his eyes.
Rhyan’s glower softened to a frown. “What does?”
“That after all this time,” Zyric said, “…with me all by my lonesome and bored as all of anything…the first person who finally shows up for company is friendly as a prickly pear and harder to talk to than one, to boot.”
The glower returned. “From what little I know of you so far,” Rhyan muttered dully, “…it seems you’d have little trouble making conversation with a
wall.”
“Well, yeah,” Zyric said as if there were nothing more obvious, “…but walls don’t talk back, and that gets pretty boring after the first few hours.”
Rhyan stared, incredulous. “The first few…
hours?” Zyric opened one eye and flashed him a grin; Rhyan rolled his eyes in the opposite direction. “Ugh. You’re…beyond hope,” he diagnosed. “And not funny,” he added, as that seemed it needed saying, “…in case you were inclined to wonder.”
“Mm…mhm…” Zyric’s smile never dipped, “…which is why you’re tryin’ not to smile.”
“I assure you, I am not smiling,” Rhyan asserted, “…and the feat is effortless.” He turned to the food, twisting the spoon idly in its bowl. “I still don’t understand how I ended up here, of all places…”
“Magic?” Zyric provided unhelpfully.
Rhyan gave a weary sigh. “If only your propensity for stating the blindingly obvious could be put to practical use…”
“Maybe…you were fated to keep me company,” Zyric said, unconcerned with the jibe and entirely too cheery for Rhyan’s tastes. “And…look, if you’re really not going to eat that, I’ll be happy t-” Rhyan lifted the spoon to his lips, and Zyric’s eyes followed its path—before rapidly darting away at the end as it disappeared into his mouth. “Right, or I won’t. You can have it.”
Rhyan blinked. “What?” he asked after swallowing the mouthful. “You can have half of it,” he offered honestly.
“No,” Zyric said, “because now it has your spit on it, and I’m not interested.”
Rhyan shot him an obscure look. “You’re quite serious? What are you, six?”
“Sixteen,” Zyric corrected. “Doesn’t mean I have to be keen on sharing saliva with some random guy I don’t know…”
“Oh, for…” Rhyan set the spoon back down and without so much as an eye roll held a hand out to Zyric. Zyric stared at it, his posture radiating the subtle wariness of someone faced with an unfamiliar insect that might or might not be poisonous. “Ideally, you shake it,” Rhyan explained helpfully after a long moment of inaction, and Zyric’s brows drew together.
“Oh…” Tentatively, he reached out, and Rhyan clasped his hand in a neat, solid grip.
“Rhyan Merseille,” he greeted promptly, “…third son of the Estate Lord Darion Merseille of Ire, and heir to…nothing. I am, like you, sixteen summers of age, I enjoy reading—classic Tursian and ancient Dalaric poetry in particular—as well fencing, horseback riding, and a good game of Queen’s Gambit or Stone Soldiers any day. There.” He released Zyric’s hand. “Now that we are no longer strangers…” He brushed his hand briefly on his trouser leg, an action Zyric didn’t pretend to miss, and then lifted the spoon, tapped it against the side of the bowl, and held it out to Zyric, “…are you suitably prepared to swap spit with me?”
Zyric’s face alone, Rhyan decided, made the entire comment worthwhile. “That’s not funny. At all.”
“Oh?” Rhyan quipped back without pause. “Because I thought it was, a bit…”
Zyric’s eyes said everything that his mouth didn’t bother to.
“Just wipe it off, if you must,” Rhyan instructed, looking more bored than irritated or concerned. “It’s not as if I’m some infection-riddled beast materialized from the great dark beyond for the sole purpose of corrupting your immune system with my saliva…”
Zyric pursed his lips, and took the spoon. “So…” He eyed the utensil warily, and then the food, “…Queen’s Gambit’s the card game, I know that one, but…what’s Stone Soldiers?”
“I’ve heard it called Stratagem or Gridlock as well, but in essence it’s a logic game played by two or four persons on a board with pieces of stone, marble, wood, or glass it doesn’t really matter…and you go to war against each other. It’s probably better that you haven’t played,” Rhyan said, “…I can’t imagine you being particularly good at it.”
Zyric blinked, spoon halfway to his lips. “An’ why not?”
“Didn’t I just say? It’s a logic game,” Rhyan repeated, and Zyric glowered around a mouthful, pointing the empty spoon at his companion.
When he swallowed, he said, “I’m
not stupid, okay?”
“I don’t remember saying you were,” Rhyan responded neutrally, and Zyric rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, but you
implied,” he persisted.
“And one would have to wonder why…” Rhyan said without emphasis, leaning back against the wall and shutting his eyes. Unbeknownst to him, Zyric pinned him again with a glare.
“Why me, huh? Did I say somethin’ to offend you?”
“Nothing offensive, no,” Rhyan said, “…but you do happen to be the only other person in the room, and given that I am apparently, and I quote, ‘grumpy’ and ‘irritable,’ I didn’t figure I needed a reason.”
Silence hung between them for some time after that. Wordlessly, they split the soup and the water, making no conversation in between. It was Zyric who, after twenty some odd minutes, caved first, ever desirous of something to fill the quiet, and still admittedly curious on a number of fronts about his new cellmate.
“So…where were you trying to go, anyway?” he asked, and Rhyan spared him a half-second glance. “I mean like…obviously you weren’t trying to end up here, but…you must have been trying-”
“Nowhere.”
Zyric frowned. “You said it was a teleport spell-”
“Which it was.”
“-so you must have been set on headin’ somewhere,” Zyric persisted.
“No.” At Zyric’s look, Rhyan sighed. “It was…an accident.”
“Well…yeah, you didn’t wanna be here, but-”
“No, it’s not…” Rhyan hesitated. “You don’t understand,” he said. “The
spell was an accident,” he clarified, and Zyric blinked, confused. “I felt that something awful had happened and I wanted to look in on my brother, so I cast a seeing spell to try to…at the very least discern what was going on…”
“But instead of a seer’s spell you…cast yourself halfway across the continent?”
“I cast the spell fine,” Rhyan defended himself. “I just…sort of…lost control of it, a bit…in the middle…”
“Oh, I see,” Zyric repeated, not seeing at all. “Just a bit, was it?”
“My magic doesn’t work like normal, alright?” Rhyan snapped. “Ideally, a mage draws from a steady flow, a reserve of energy in their body, and pours that into the spells but…I don’t…
have that,” he said, “…or…barely at all, in any case. My brother does, a little…more than me, but…I found that I could still make magic, when I was younger, if it was an instinctive, emotional reaction…”
“Like…a rock starts falling for your head so you explode it to pieces?” Zyric provided, and Rhyan gave him an odd look.
“More like…a group of boys gang up on you and your brother isn’t there so you think they’re going to break every bone in your body, and then suddenly none of them can see and they’re screaming and clutching their eyes and you run until you can’t breathe…but…” He shrugged, “…yeah, something like the falling rock, too, I suppose…”
“You…” Zyric trailed off, at a loss. “Why would anyone-”
“The point of the matter is,” Rhyan cut in, “…that I learned to harness my emotions and use them to power my spells—fear, anger, sadness, it doesn’t matter, they all work. The more powerful the feeling, the more energy I have to work with, but…they’re also more volatile.” His eyes were on his fingers, downcast, but a frown still made itself evident on his brow. “I haven’t had much…practice…working with anything but small things. I saw something that I didn’t expect, and…things didn’t go according to plan.”
“That sounds…kina dangerous, actually,” Zyric said, “…and…why did you do this when you hadn’t practiced at all?”
“I’d practiced some,” Rhyan insisted. “It’s only…you’re one of three people in this world who even know, I-” Abruptly, he cut off and shook his head. “Nevermind, it doesn’t matter. I did it because I needed to find out what had happened to my brother…see if I could help him…”
“And…did you?” Zyric ventured.
Rhyan shot him a look. “I ended up
here.”
Zyric winced. “Right. Umm…sorry.”
That appeared to be all the venom Rhyan had, though, because he, too, slouched a second later, as if weakened by his own outburst, and after a silence that probably didn’t last as long as it seemed to, he muttered, “Don’t be. It’s not as if it’s any fault of yours…”
Zyric eyed his companion critically, all too aware of the unspoken implication behind those words. Eventually, he countered it aloud, “S’not
your fault either…” and Rhyan glanced up, one eyebrow arched.
“Oh, no? And how do you see that?”
“You said it yourself you hadn’t had much practice. I can’t believe you didn’t give it your best try, though, and you can’t really expect more than that out o’ yourself, can you?”
“What good is my best if it’s not good enough?” Rhyan countered. “I
failed. I can’t help my brother, I don’t know what happened to the man who helped me, and I don’t know how to get back. I’m lost, trapped in a cell Mele only knows where with a stranger, helpless, and otherwise useless to everyone, including myself and you. To answer your question, yes, I can very well expect better out of myself than that…”
Zyric opened his mouth.
“Sorry.”
Zyric startled, confused. “What for?”
“For…” Rhyan waved his hand in a loose nondescript gesture, “…everything. And…” Eyebrows drawing together, he released a defeated breath, slinking another inch down against the wall, “…nothing. Forget it.”
“Erm…” Zyric graced him with an uncertain frown, “…you know that…doesn’t actually make much sense,” he supplied.
Rhyan didn’t so much as glance at him, his eyes shutting as he drew a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I should have at the very least ended up on the opposite side of the tether. That I didn’t just…doesn’t add up…”
“Like…whatever you’re sayin’?”
“The coins were connected. It’s the only way I forged the link over such a great distance in the first place,” Rhyan continued, apparently unconcerned or unaware altogether of Zyric’s sideline commentary. “So if I were to follow any slipstream of magic it would take me there…” He shook his head, “…not to some utterly random location…”
“Coins?”
“Yes, coins,” Rhyan repeated, telling Zyric that he was, at the very least, listening. “Coins imprinted with the images of the sister goddesses and imbued with magic to help my brother and I communicate with each-”
“Wait, like…” Zyric shifted his weight, digging for something in his pocket, and Rhyan pursed his lips, irritated at being so brashly interrupted, “…this kind here?” Zyric brandished the trinket from his pocket, holding it up, and Rhyan’s pulse tripped on a beat.
“You…” Disbelieving, he all but gawked at the unmistakable gold medallion, “…
stole-”
“I didn’t steal nothin’!” Zyric snapped, jerking back as Rhyan reached forward, and the noble glared daggers.
“I didn’t steal
anything,” Rhyan corrected automatically, “…and that,” he ground out through grit teeth, “…is
Baisyl’s. I won’t pretend to know how in all the hells you got your hands on it, but-”
“I didn’t know it was hers,” Zyric growled back, “…and it wasn’t as if I could return it anyway. I found it on the deck wedged between the planks in one of the hull cells they were keeping us prisoned in, and—wait…”
“Wait-”
“-how do you…”
“…know Baisyl?” they finished at the same time.
Something like the arrival of a tidal wave, everything made sense to Rhyan at once.
It wasn’t luck or a mistake at all. Zyric had been
on the ship with his brother, which explained how he got hold of the coin, and how Rhyan had ended up casting himself to a seemingly unrelated place. It was why the tether split in opposite directions, why it was hard to focus; Baisyl must have only managed to hold on to one of the coins but lost the other, leaving Rhyan to, purely by chance, end up with Zyric’s end of the magic thread.
Unfortunately, that didn’t explain…
“What happened?” Rhyan asked. “When did you last see hi—her? What do you mean imprisoned? Was she hurt? Is she…here? Do you know-”
“Wait, wait, wait, whoa…” Zyric held him off, putting up two hands as if to physically blockade against the barrage of questions, “…slow down a sec. I really don’t know…” he said, and Rhyan’s heart sank a fraction. “Our ship got raided,” he explained, “by pirates, and the last I saw of her was the day before that. I was attacked in my sleep, woken for a second and then BAM out again before I woke again to find myself in a cell on another ship, not with my brother, and…really not knowin’ what in all hells had happened…”
“So you…don’t know where she is,” Rhyan said, trying not to sound hopelessly disappointed.
“Hey…” Zyric’s tone was tentatively, subtly comforting, meaning only that Rhyan had failed horribly at not letting his feelings bleed through, “…I…do think she got away,” he said, and Rhyan’s attention perked up.
“Why do you say that? I thought you didn’t see-”
“I didn’t,” Zyric said, “…so yeah, I don’t know for absolute positive, but…they let everyone else go, see. Everyone but me, that is, and the only reason they kept me was ‘cause…well, I, umm…kina…accidentally told the captain who my brother was, seein’ as how I didn’t think it would matter, and convinced her that he’d be back for me no matter what…but the only reason she seemed to want him at all in the first place was ‘cause…she thought he’d be keepin’ to Miss Baisyl…”
So the fact that the pirate captain was looking for Baisyl meant he’d escaped somehow.
“That makes sense,” Rhyan agreed, “…but…you were at sea. Did you…come to dock? How would anyone have gotten off the ship?”
“No, we never docked,” Zyric said, and Rhyan’s stomach lurched ominously. “Not until after they’d gone missing anyhow…but we were close enough to land, I think, at that point to make it, if you jumped over and headed straight for it,” he consoled. “The water must’ve been pretty frigid, but a strong swimmer likely coulda made it…”
Rhyan thought he might be sick. By the way Zyric trailed off, his sentiment must have showed.
“What is it?”
Rhyan shook his head, swallowing down panic and bile and trying desperately to approach the situation from any logical direction that didn’t point directly to his brother’s death. “No, that…can’t be right. Baisyl, he can’t…he wouldn’t, he doesn’t know how…he never learned to swim…”
“…he…?” Zyric repeated uncertainly. “Don’t you mean-”
“
No,” Rhyan snapped out, a sharp, broken edge to the words that he didn’t have the energy to mask, “…I don’t mean ‘she,’ I mean
he. Baisyl is—was—is…” His voice wavered, “…my brother…he was cursed, had a spell to…that…made him look like a woman, but…” He swallowed again, hard, “…he hated it. He’d said he was going to jump…that’s why I hired a guard to look out for him in the first place…I-”
“Hey, wait…” Instinctively, Zyric moved in, a thousand questions on his mind but none of them important enough to voice yet, “…I’m sure…Baisyl can’t have died? Why would they be looking still if they thought that? And my brother disappeared too…maybe they escaped together? Dee’s a strong swimmer. He wouldn’t’ve let someone just drown if he had any way to stop it…”
“Why would anyone do that?” Rhyan blurted, disbelieving and still at war with a tumultuous sea of fears. “Why would anyone…leap into the cold sea for a stranger, it doesn’t…make any sense-”
“My brother was there to protect that noble woman,” Zyric said. “If the Miss Baisyl Merseille that he was assigned to guard is really your brother, then…he’d be dead too before he let any harm come to her…err…him,” he corrected, indecisive.
“Your brother is the guard I hired…” It was half a question, half a realization as Rhyan’s eyes flicked with new understanding over his cellmate, the rich, coffee brown skin and fighter mentality suddenly fitting right into the puzzle.
“Zyric Akuwa, at your service?” Zyric responded, and then frowned. “Come to think of it…can’t believe I didn’t recognize your surname earlier when you were talkin’ about swapin’ spit with me…s’pose I was distracted…” Rhyan pursed his lips, “…and you do look a lot like her, you know, I knew you looked familiar soon as I got a look at you…less tits o’course, but-”
“Alright, that’s quite enough-”
“-she was really, really…” At Rhyan’s look, Zyric hesitated, “…pretty…”
“Pretty,” Rhyan repeated flatly.
“Umm…yeah,” Zyric said. “Seein’ as how you’re her brother an’ all I don’t think I’ma get into it any deeper than that.”
“Why do I feel as though I should sock you?”
“Be…cause…brothers tend to seem to feel the need to sock people who want to sleep with their sisters?” Zyric offered tentatively, and then a second later added, “
Not,” hastily, “…that I wanted to do that, at all, just that, you know, I realized that it might have mistakenly come out sounding a bit like I did, but I don’t, so-”
“My brother might be
dead, and all you can think about is getting between his-”
“No!” Zyric blurted. “Not at all, that’s not—no, no…definitely…not. Umm…”
“I need to get out of here,” Rhyan said before Zyric could dig himself any deeper. “I need…I have to find out what happened to him, if he’s even…still…”
“He is.”
Rhyan glanced over.
“I’m sure of it,” Zyric said, “…and you won’t be convincing me otherwise until you’ve absolute proof that it ain’t so. Both of our brothers are alive.”
Part of Rhyan’s mind screamed at him for being so foolish, but he
wanted to believe the words, more than anything, and why abandon hope before all of it was lost? “Alright,” he conceded after a drawn pause, “…I believe you…but I’m going to need you to tell me everything you know about this place if we’re going to even think about escaping.”
“Ahh…” Zyric frowned a bit, “…right, like, umm…what kind of stuff?”
“You were taken in here,” Rhyan said. “Surely you’ve seen it at least once and know something about the layout? How many guards there are? What to look out for?
Where we are…?”
“Oh. Yeah. Heh…” Zyric strung a hand back through his hair with a guilty, sheepish look that did nothing to bolster Rhyan’s hopes for success. “See, the thing is…”
“You were unconscious.”
“Blindfolded,” Zyric corrected.
“Lovely.”
“Don’t have a clue where we are,” Zyric added. “Don’t even know what city we’re in.”
“Even better…”
“All I’ve actually seen with my own eyes since bein’ captured is the ship holding cell I was in and…the walls of this place.”
Rhyan relinquished a heavy sigh. “Well…let us start with what we do know, then, shall we?”
Zyric mulled over that for a second. “It’s…dark in here?” Rhyan shot him a look. “The captain’s a fairy, if that helps,” Zyric said, and Rhyan shut his eyes. “And…most of her crew seem to be orcs or other fairies and mixed breeds…very few full humans from what I could tell.”
“So we have magic to deal with on top of everything else.” Rhyan opened his eyes only to frown pensively at the ceiling. “While not comforting, that’s good to know, I suppose, from a strategic perspective. Anything else?”
Zyric nibbled his lip, looking for all intensive purposes to be actually thinking seriously. Then, after an extended pause he said with all due gravity, “I’m…hungry.”
Rhyan dropped his head back to the wall. After the soft thud of impact, he made a point
not to wince.
Carthak City, Western Quarter The staircase he followed wound in a tight circular pattern upwards, snuggly nestled between the walls of the blacksmith’s and the carpenter’s shops, though it provided access to neither. Instead it opened onto the roof of the former’s, and when Kedean stepped out, closing the door neatly shut behind him, the sky was still barely dark enough to discern morning’s approach from the lingering black blanket of night. It was also raining—that soft, nearly weightless variety that felt more like thick dew or cool mist on the skin than actual raindrops—and he stepped out into it, his first thought that Baisyl would be happy when he woke if he managed to make it above ground.
It snowed but once every five to ten years in the port city, so for practicality and simplicity’s sake most rooftops, like this one, were flat and open. It allowed their resident owners to use them for additional storage space or small vegetable gardens, and come dawn, the perch would provide a sweeping, eagle’s eye view of much of the city. For now, though, Kedean wasn’t interested in the view.
Setting his boots, vest and tunic aside and assuring that nothing was in danger of getting in his way, he positioned himself in the middle of the all but empty space, and started in on his morning routine. The roofing was thick enough and well enough separated from the residents’ living area that he knew his movements wouldn’t disturb the lower levels, and as his body settled into the familiar, nearly mindless patterns of motion, stretching and warming sleep addled muscles, his thoughts took a wandering course, mapping out the day’s events to come.
He needed to seek out Jerith and find out how the mistaken rumor of his death had spread. He needed to find out who all that he knew was present in Carthak and what, if anything, they knew about the fairy captain Desper and, if nothing, who he ought to go to that might know something. He needed to find out where the pirate’s crew had headed, possibly who she worked for, and ideally what she’d done with the prisoners of the
Fair Lady.
The more he worked through his priorities, though, the more Kedean’s thoughts seemed to veer off their path, edging back time and again towards the subject they truly wanted to linger on, namely: his noble traveling companion for the past week or so. Halfway into a set from one of the Bokhati training temples, a barely visible frown crossed his features.
He meant to speak with Moreah about Baisyl’s predicament, yes, but that wasn’t what itched at him. The fact was, he’d agreed to see Baisyl to Carthak. He didn’t intend, any longer, to deliver him to his ‘betrothed’ seeing as that seemed to be the last thing Baisyl wanted, and he obviously couldn’t expect the man to want to tag along with him on the rest of his search for his brother. And yet…
What did that mean for the two of them?
They’d arrived in Carthak. Did their path together end here?
Logically, it seemed to, and as far as Kedean was concerned, that ought not bother him. It never had, in times past. Parting ways was simply the way of things. He met people, appreciated good company when he found it, and was grateful for positive memories when he left. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about people or places, he simply never grew…
…attached.
‘
Do you know what you are like?’ The whisper of a memory came to him unbidden, wrapped in a female voice, achingly familiar and warm but untouchable, like a promise of sunshine or a painting of fire.
‘
What am I like?’ he’d asked—how many years ago had it been now?—and she’d smiled, beautiful and sad as a melody on a harp that sung of wars lost.
‘
You…are like the sun. You bring light and blessings to those who happen in your path…but your journey is just as unchangeable. You cannot be slowed or stopped or altered by those you meet, no matter how they might wish to keep you…and you will leave as surely as you come. That is why I love you…’ This was, without fail, where his heart lurched with guilt and self loathing, no matter how he still tried to suppress it, ‘…
and why you can never love me in return…’
Kedean gave up, violently shoving aside the memory and stilling his movements in favor of shutting his eyes and turning his head to the sky. Baisyl and Natara were nothing alike. It wouldn’t do to compare them, or allow the status of his relationship with the former be confused with that of the latter; they were unrelated and completely separate. Best for now, though, to put both from his mind.
The rain was as light as before, barely there, but cool against his skin, and he let his hands clench and release—once, twice—drew a slow breath till the crisp wet air filled his lungs, let it back out, and sank to his knees. There, eyes still shut, he bent his head down, touched a hand to his forehead and then his chest, and set to clearing his thoughts.
Meditation and prayer, as Kedean saw them, were but two steps in a single process. Prayer was the act of reminding oneself of all the positives in one’s life and offering up unadulterated gratitude for those blessings to the heavens. In order to achieve that, however, one required a blank slate, a mind emptied of all of its worldly dissatisfactions, and thus, meditation was a necessary precursor, a simple but often trying process of erasing negative and conflicting energies from one’s conscious.
He found that particular process more trying than normal on this morning.
Each time he came close, a sliver of a thought wriggled its way back to the forefront—a strand of mahogany red hair between his fingertips, distant eyes like burnt gold on a face nearly as dark as his own, or skin as pale as a vanilla flower that pressed into his touch like it belonged there—and Kedean grit his teeth, struggling valiantly to fight his losing battle.
He knew the instant Baisyl stepped onto the landing.
It wasn’t the opening and closing of the door or the click of footsteps so much as the fact that the
air seemed to change. Not the direction of the wind or even an identifiable smell, but a subtler undercurrent of something Kedean loosely tagged as ‘energy’ and could only guess had something to do with Baisyl’s magic, however much or little of it there was. It happened every time the man stepped into a room, and while Kedean had barely noticed it at first, he recognized it immediately now.
He took silent relief in the welcome reprieve from his fruitless efforts at peace of mind and observed, “You’re up early,” without turning.
The smile in Baisyl’s voice was audible when he replied, “I suppose I am…” and Kedean noted that he must have stepped out from the door already, because his voice had deepened, taking on its naturally smooth, rolling pitch.
“Did you sleep well?”
There was chopped sound that might have been a scoff or cut laugh before Baisyl replied, “Horrendously. And you?”
‘Likewise’ lingered on the tip of Kedean’s tongue, but he withheld it in favor of, “Passably,” and listened to the quiet approach of his charge’s footsteps.
“What are you up to out here?”
Kneeling in the rain.
“I was…” Kedean pushed, slowly, to a stand, “…praying,” he said, and brushed off the damp knees of his pants, purposely failing to add ‘…
or trying to, rather.’
“You pray?” Baisyl responded, his tone neutral and unassuming, and Kedean’s eyes followed him to the roof’s edge, where he leaned against the low stone wall providing a barrier to fence the space in.
“I do.”
“To which deity?” Baisyl kept his face forward, his attention on the sea of rooftops before them, bathed in the ever brightening blue-grey light of dawn.
“The goddess, Mele, and her sons and daughters…” Kedean answered, “…and any other who takes time to hear the thanks of the earthbound races.” Baisyl turned, his mingled surprise and curiosity evident in a look that Kedean had seen before; many, after hearing that he practiced any form of religion, expected to hear the name of some foreign or exotic god drop from his lips, if only because of his appearance. He saved Baisyl the trouble of asking. “If my father brought with him a tradition of religion when he left whatever people I was born to, he never shared it with me.”
Baisyl had the decency to look bashful. “I apologize,” he said after a time. “I’m sure you grow weary of others making assumptions.”
Kedean shrugged by way of answering and, after a moment’s debate, stepped up towards the edge to join his charge. “There’s little I can do about it. My father brought no culture he cared to pass on but our language. What faith I do practice…I learned from Zyric’s mother.”
“I suppose…my experience with organized faith of any stripe is somewhat stilted,” Baisyl admitted. “As far as my eyes have seen, it’s a conglomeration of power-hungry men who self-appoint themselves the sole dictators of how others should live their lives in order to best please forces far beyond their control…”
Kedean gave a small nod of acknowledgment. “It can be that,” he conceded. “I don’t recall ever being ushered into my current belief system, but…it seems to me that when Emalisse believed in something, it was…difficult not to feel that it was worth believing in.”
“I think…” Baisyl remarked thoughtfully, “…that I’m beginning to see why yours and my opinions on women differ so drastically.”
“Oh?”
“You met all the good ones,” Baisyl accused, and Kedean chuckled openly, taking quiet pleasure in the way Baisyl’s lips curved just barely upwards into a smile in response.
“Possible,” Kedean confessed, “…but…unlikely, I think. I also find it hard to believe,” he added, “…that you never once had a decent woman walk in and out of your life.”
Baisyl huffed. “You might have an easier time believing it if you’d lived my life,” he said, and Kedean gave a concessional shrug.
“Also possible,” he admitted, “…though it doesn’t sound as if I’d want to.”
Baisyl spared him a glance. “No? Surely mine’s been easier than yours,” he said. “Even with all my little petty trifles included…”
“There are a countless variety of hardships in any life,” Kedean answered, “…only the most basic of which can be solved with mansions, gold pieces, and titles of nobility.”
Baisyl blinked. “Well…” he said after a long moment, “…at least I don’t have to fret over you sleeping with me for my money. What a weight off my mind…” When Kedean glanced his way, Baisyl arched his eyebrows in a neat, challenging gesture. “Yes?”
Kedean shook his head, looking back out over the houses. “Nothing, milord.” Nothing in the slightest. Except that he did, very much against his will, find himself smiling. “She was a good woman, though,” he said, as much to get the words out there as to change the subject, “…as fierce in spirit as she was frail in body.”
Baisyl took a moment absorb the words, and then said, with curious hesitance, “You speak of her in past tense.”
Kedean was surprised without meaning to be. Of course, he’d never said, so how could he expect Baisyl to know? “She passed, seven months pregnant with my father’s third child,” he answered finally. And then, because it felt as though it needed saying, he added, “It was many years ago…and she left a great number of positive things in her wake.”
Baisyl nodded, a small, understated motion, and said nothing, but he didn’t need to.
They stood together for some time after that, each keeping their silence, but it was, thankfully, a comfortable, unstrained silence, and Kedean found he didn’t mind in the slightest, watching and waiting out the morning with Baisyl as yellows and oranges bled into the grey-blue sky, the mist rain giving the air a shimmering, luminous feel. It was fully light, the sun making its first brave appearance over the city wall before Baisyl spoke again.
“What happens today?” He asked it quietly enough that it barely registered at first, and Kedean had to blink and reprocess the question before coming up with an answer.
“I find Jerith, the head of the mercenary band currently residing here, talk with those I know, and try to find out as much as I can about the status of the fairy captain and where I might find her…I also have someone I want to introduce you to,” he said. At Baisyl’s curious look, he continued, “If we are very lucky, she might be able to help you, or know where to find you help…but I wouldn’t get your hopes up.”
Baisyl turned his eyes back to the city, his face unreadable. “And tomorrow?” he asked.
Kedean studied his charge’s expression, his body language, the set of his jaw, and yet, while Baisyl could be ferociously expressive in the spur of the moment, he also had the art of shelling himself up in a blank cocoon mastered to perfection. “I suppose that would depend on what happens today,” Kedean answered finally, and he wondered, as Baisyl’s gaze flit downwards, to the stone wall under his fingers, whether his charge’s hesitation had anything to do with the questions plaguing him earlier.
Was the question not ‘What happens today? Tomorrow? The next day?’ so much as it was ‘What
happens? Is this it? Do we end here?’
Baisyl’s brows drew slowly together, a small, barely perceptible tension thinning the purse of his lips, and Kedean felt a spark of dread for those questions. Because he couldn’t provide the answers any more than Baisyl could. Then, Baisyl glanced to him, drawing his eyes up the length of his chest, to his face, and opening his mouth.
“We should-” Kedean started in an attempt to waylay whatever question might be thrown at him.
“Do you always pray with your shirt off?” Baisyl asked, barreling over the rest of his sentence without a hint of hesitation.
Kedean blinked. “Ah…I…” He cleared his throat, having expected more or less anything but that. “I was…” On second thought, given the way Baisyl’s eyes were skimming unabashedly over him now and making the prospect of bending his charge over then and there ever more appealing with each passing second, perhaps avoiding the topic altogether was the safest of plans. “Are you hungry?”
Baisyl groaned. “That’s
cheating,” he accused.
“More like evasion,” Kedean countered.
“Kedean-”
“This isn’t the place for this-”
“Not the place for what?” Baisyl asked, a picture of innocence, and Kedean sent him a pointed look.
“With all due respect, milord…”
“Mm?”
“…while you are a talented actor when you put your mind to it…” Kedean said—and when had he come around to face Baisyl, leaving the proud noble trapped between his own body and the low wall behind him? He reached out, drawing his hand under Baisyl’s chin without thinking and taking guilty pleasure in the way Baisyl tilted his head cooperatively up into the motion. “Wide-eyed innocence is not your strong suit.”
The corner of Baisyl’s lip curled up, like a tendril of smoke, and Kedean wanted to taste that smirk. “Very well, perhaps not,” Baisyl conceded. “How about blunt honesty then, hm? If you say this is not the place, then I will defer to your more solid judgment, however…I would ask that you promise me something.”
His instinct to respond ‘
Anything’ before Baisyl’s proposition was even made startled Kedean, and unnerved him more than he cared to admit, but he stifled it, saying instead, “What is it?” He repressed a shiver when Baisyl’s hands settled on either side of his waist.
“In the unlikely case that there was any doubt in your mind,” Baisyl said with the quiet, methodical air of a man at confessional—or laying out the terms of a business proposal, “…I want you…and I want to have you, at least once more, before we reach that point where we are never to see one another again…”
Kedean wasn’t sure which was stronger: the rippling,
raw desire to take Baisyl up on his offer in that moment, or the sharp, piercing
ache of dread and loss at the thought of never laying eyes on the man again. He needed to swallow, curl his fists, or break something, but instead he leaned down, dipping his head until their foreheads brushed together and the whisper of Baisyl’s breath ghosted over his rain-dampened lips.
“I think I can manage that,” he said, and let himself shiver when Baisyl slid his hands up, over the wet expanse of his chest and leaving a trail of heat in their wake before snaking around his neck.
“Good.” Teeth caught his lower lip, nipping and tugging him in, and Kedean sank into the kiss without reserve, hungrily applying himself to the hot, teasing mouth under his own.
He found it strange, but pleasant to note that, though Baisyl’s body was taller and broader, and hard where only the night before it had been soft and yielding, it was still undeniably the same person: the same tongue curling into his mouth, the same set of lips and hands drawing out sounds from him that he never intended to make. And he still
fit into the curve of Kedean’s embrace, filling the space like the second half of a two piece puzzle.
Kedean drew the hand at Baisyl’s chin back, along his jaw, and into the short, wavy wet locks at the nape of his neck. Baisyl’s soft, low grunt of appreciation—combined with the way he
ground up against Kedean’s body, providing the both of their trapped arousals with titillating friction—made it embarrassingly difficult to remind himself that there were in fact a lot of good, solid reasons why they were not going any further than this on an open rooftop.
“Baisyl-”
“You…
started it,” Baisyl accused in a keening, frustrated growl, and Kedean took the opportunity to catch a breath. He decided Baisyl looked delectable with his eyes shut, his red hair black with rainwater, and his kiss-swollen lips pursed into a tight, stubborn line.
“I did, did I?” he asked, and Baisyl opened his eyes just enough to glower heatedly. “Because I seem to remember
you kissing m-”
“I,” Baisyl ground out with pointed emphasis, “…was not the one strutting around with half of my clothes off-”
“Strutting,” Kedean repeated.
“Yes, strutting,” Baisyl said, “…or…standing there…innocently, as if you honestly had no idea what sort of—
why aren’t we doing this here?”
“Because the woman two houses over tends to the plants on her roof shortly after dawn,” Kedean said point blank.
“I’m sure it’s nothing she’s never seen before…”
“We can be seen from the window of that building across the street-”
“Don’t like showing off?”
“-where two young
children live…”
Baisyl gave a deflated groan, and muttered sourly beneath his breath, “You’d better make me scream when you finally deliver…”
“What?”
“I’m starving,” he said louder, this time enunciating clearly. “Show me to breakfast.”
“Of course, milord.”
A/N: Look, I've got Kedean talking about personal things...this is a big step for him. I also got them to watch a sunrise together; I feel like I should get romantic bonus points for that or something, even if it is completely cheesy and wasn't actually part of my original intention. Anyway. I do sincerely apologize for the second teaser in a row, but think of it this way: that whole scene might have been skipped if I had decided a week ago to cut the chapter short and leave you guys with just Zyric and Rhyan. o.o
Review as a late birthday present to me? Ya only turn twenty-one once! :D
P.S. I'm pretty sure I can promise now that the NEXT time they get into the thick of it like this...it will not be just a teaser. ;)
