Chapter 4 #2
Vaike navigates it all with the steady, unhurried confidence that Evran has come to understand as competence so thorough it appears effortless.
He speaks to each person with his full attention, remembers names and details and the names of children he heard about years ago, listens more than he talks, and when he does talk the room listens back.
Evran watches him and thinks that Vaike was built for this, the fighting and the ruling and the diplomacy and the patience, the quiet work of being a leader who is trusted because he has earned that trust a thousand times over and continues to earn it with every interaction.
It is late afternoon when a retainer approaches Vaike with a summons, the Rendari Warlord would like a private word before the evening, and Vaike turns to Evran with slight hesitance.
Evran touches his arm. "Go. I'll be fine."
Vaike studies him for a moment, those grey eyes searching his face, weighing whether fine means fine or fine means I will say whatever I need to so that you can do what needs to be done.
Whatever he sees there satisfies him, because he nods.
He leans down and presses a kiss to Evran's temple, just above the braid, and goes.
Evran watches him disappear down the corridor and allows himself exactly one steadying breath before a voice erupts from behind him.
"Are you the one who came in with the Drakkari?"
He turns.
There are two of them, standing side by side in the corridor with the restless energy of young people who have been waiting impatiently for something interesting to happen and have decided that Evran is it.
They are the same height, the same build, lean and coltish, and they share the same dark Rendari coloring, deep brown skin and black hair and sharp-boned faces that promise to be striking once the last of childhood softens from them.
But where one is practically vibrating with excitement, bouncing on the balls of her feet with a grin that takes up half her face, the other hangs back slightly, hands clasped in front of him, watching Evran with quiet, careful eyes.
They are obviously twins.
"I am," Evran says. "I'm Evran. And you are?"
"I'm Tria," says the one in front, and she is already reaching for his hand, shaking it with an enthusiasm that makes his arm rattle. "And that's Arin. We're Warlord Harath's, well, you've probably guessed, everyone always guesses, it's the face thing."
"She means we look alike," Arin says quietly, from behind his sister's shoulder.
"Obviously we look alike, Arin, we're twins."
"You said 'it's the face thing.' That's not clear."
"It's perfectly clear. Evran, was that clear?"
Evran is smiling so wide his face hurts. "Very clear."
"See?" Tria turns back to her brother with the triumphant air of a girl who has won an argument she was never going to lose.
Then she whips back to Evran, braids swinging.
"We heard you were here and we've been waiting to meet you all day.
Father said we weren't to bother the delegations, but you're not busy anymore, are you?
Your Warlord just left, we saw him go, and you look like you could use someone to show you around. "
"Tria," Arin starts.
"Unless you don't want to, which is fine, we understand if you're tired from traveling, the mountain pass is brutal this time of year."
"I would love to be shown around," Evran says.
Tria beams. Arin's shoulders drop with what might be relief, whether because Evran agreed or because his sister has stopped talking is difficult to tell.
"Brilliant," Tria says. She hooks her arm through Evran's, presumptuous as though she has known him for years rather than seconds, and begins steering him down the corridor.
"We'll start with the library. No, the south garden.
No, oh, Arin, should we show him the reading nook first or the embroidery room? "
"The reading nook is quieter," Arin says, falling into step on Evran's other side.
"The embroidery room has better light."
"It's almost evening. The light won't matter."
"Fine. Reading nook first, then the embroidery room tomorrow when the light is better. Evran, do you embroider?"
"I weave," Evran says. "But I would not be opposed to learning."
Tria's eyes go wide. "We could teach you!"
Evran lets himself be pulled along and thinks that he has not felt this light, this easy, this pleasantly overwhelmed in a very long time.
The twins are sixteen and full of the fire that comes from being old enough to have opinions and young enough to believe every one of them is revolutionary.
Tria is a force of nature, all energy and forward motion, a person who enters a room and rearranges it simply by being present.
Arin is her shadow and her counterweight, quiet where she is loud, measured where she is impulsive, and yet there is a steadiness to him that speaks of a different strength, one that holds rather than pushes.
They show him the reading nook first, a windowed alcove on the second floor of the eastern wing, tucked behind a tapestry and outfitted with cushions and a low shelf crammed with books.
"This is where I come when Father is being impossible," Tria says, throwing herself onto the cushions. "No one ever finds me here."
"I found you here yesterday," Arin says.
"No one important ever finds me here."
Arin absorbs this insult with the patience of a boy who has been absorbing them for sixteen years and sits down beside Evran on the window ledge. Below, the courtyard is busy with the last activity of the day, retainers and warriors crossing in purposeful patterns.
From the reading nook they move to the embroidery room, empty at this hour, the long tables covered in half-finished work and the walls hung with samples that range from competent to breathtaking.
Tria waves a dismissive hand at most of them.
"That one's mine. That one's Arin's. That one we don't talk about. "
"It was a learning experience," Arin says softly.
"It was a catastrophe."
Then the greenhouses.
The moment they step through the glass-paned doors, Evran understands something about Arin that no amount of conversation could have told him.
The air is warm and thick and green-smelling, heavy with moisture and the rich dark scent of growing things.
Long wooden tables run the length of the structure, and on them sit pots and trays of every size, bursting with plants in various stages of growth, herbs and vegetables and flowering things Evran does not recognize, their leaves bright and reaching toward the light.
Arin leads him through the rows with a quiet authority that is entirely unlike his usual deference, pointing out species and explaining cultivation methods with an intensity that only surfaces when a person is sharing the thing they love most. His voice is still soft, but it does not falter.
He knows every plant by name, knows their needs and their cycles and their temperaments, and when he brushes the leaf of a pale green seedling with his fingertip, the gesture is so tender it makes Evran think of Eira with a pang of recognition that settles bittersweet in his chest.
"These are from the southern valleys," Arin says, pausing at a tray of tiny bright-leafed plants that look wildly out of place in a mountain greenhouse.
"They shouldn't survive at this altitude, but if you regulate the temperature and adjust the soil acidity...
" He trails off, glancing at Evran. "Sorry. I know this isn't very interesting."
"It is very interesting," Evran says, and means it. "I have a garden back at the Drakkari stronghold. I know exactly what you mean about adjusting for altitude. We had to rework the entire south terrace when the first frost came early."
Arin stares at him, and it is the most direct eye contact he has maintained with anyone all day. "You garden?"
"Religiously," Evran says.
Something shifts in Arin's face. The wariness does not disappear entirely, and Evran suspects it never does, but it eases, loosening by small degrees as trust finds its footing.
He begins showing Evran the rest of the greenhouse in earnest, and the questions come faster now, less tentative.
What does Evran grow? What is the soil composition in the Drakkari highlands?
Has he tried grafting mountain root onto lowland stock?
Evran answers everything, asks questions of his own, and watches a shy boy slowly forget to be shy.
The transformation is quiet and gradual and deeply familiar, because Evran remembers what it was to be a young person whose passion was dismissed as unimportant, whose interests were tolerated rather than valued, and the simple act of being taken seriously can unlock a person in ways that nothing else can.
Tria waits by the door with her arms crossed and an expression of fond, theatrical boredom. "Are you two done talking about dirt yet?"
"Soil composition," Arin corrects, without looking at her.
"That's the same thing."
"It is absolutely not."
They argue about this all the way back through the stronghold, and Evran walks between them and feels something bittersweet settle in his chest. He thinks about Eira.
He thinks about what it means to find kinship in unexpected places, to recognize the shape of someone's heart by the way they tend to growing things.
The light is failing by the time the twins lead him back toward the main courtyard.
The stronghold glows in the dusk, lamplight spilling from windows and doorways, and the banners on the walls have gone dark and still.
The air is cooling, carrying the scent of cooking fires and the distant sound of music, someone tuning a lute, the first tentative notes of an evening that has not quite begun.