Chapter 9 #2
The silence that follows is deafening.
Bran does not move. His hands are still around his cup, his eyes still on Evran's face, but something in him has gone very, very still, having heard something he was afraid of hearing.
"Does Vaike know?" he asks, and his voice is careful in a way it almost never is.
"He knows Torsten questioned me at the fountain. He doesn't know." Evran falters, and the memory surfaces unbidden, fingers on his braid, the words pretty bird spoken in a voice that turned Evran's stomach, the appraising look that stripped him to his bones. "He doesn't know the extent of it."
"And you're afraid of what might happen if he did."
"I'm afraid of what will happen." Evran's voice tightens.
"Vaike will react. Publicly, violently, in a way that plays directly into Torsten's hands.
If Vaike attacks him at the summit, if he even threatens him, it gives Torsten legitimacy.
It makes Vaike look unstable, aggressive, unfit to rule.
It turns the other clans against us." He shakes his head.
"The turmoil it would cause is exactly what Torsten wants. "
Bran lets out a slow breath through his nose. His grip on the cup has tightened, knuckles white, and for a long moment neither of them speaks.
Then Bran says, "You're thinking about using that to your advantage."
Spoken with the recognition of having been at war long enough to know what a strategic mind looks like, even when it belongs to a soft-spoken southerner with dirt under his fingernails and a marriage braid in his hair.
"I might be able to get information out of him," Evran says.
The words come out level, calm, as though he has rehearsed them, which he has not.
They are forming themselves as he speaks, solidifying from the formless mass of fear and determination that has been churning in his gut since last night.
"Something that could unveil his plans. Show his conspiracy to kill Vaike.
If I could find proof, real, undeniable proof, and bring it before the other clans. "
"Then they would rally behind the Drakkari," Bran finishes.
"Yes. An assassination attempt on a sitting Warlord during the Gathering, ordered by his own half-brother, that's not just a crime against the Drakkari. It's a crime against the summit itself. Against the peace that holds the clans together. None of the other Warlords would stand for it."
Bran is quiet for a long time, staring into his cup as though the tea might offer counsel. When he looks up, his face is drawn, the lines around his eyes deeper than they were yesterday.
"Be very careful," he says.
The warmth is back in his voice, but it has changed, deepened into something rawer, something that comes from caring about someone and being terrified on their behalf and choosing, against every instinct, to trust their judgment.
"Torsten is a different creature than Vaike," Bran continues, and each word is deliberate, weighted with the gravity of a warning that needs to be heard and understood and taken seriously.
"He is dishonorable. He is ruthless. He fights dirty, and he does not back down when cornered.
" He holds Evran's gaze. "He will take what he feels he is owed, Evran.
Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Evran understands. The understanding lives in the cold place beneath his ribs, the place where the memory of Lord Galen's hands still sometimes surfaces in the dark.
He understands exactly what Bran is telling him, understands it in his body before his mind articulates it, because his body has lived through this kind of danger before, has stood in a room with someone who believed he was owed something and intended to collect, and the memory of that night still wakes him sometimes, still makes his skin crawl, still lives in the part of him that flinches when hands move too fast.
"I'll be careful," he says.
Bran studies him for a long moment more. Whatever he sees in Evran's face, the fear and the resolve and the terrible calm of having made a decision and refusing to be moved from it, seems to satisfy him, or at least convince him that arguing further will accomplish nothing.
He reaches across the table and grips Evran's forearm, the warrior's clasp, and holds it. His hand is enormous, engulfing Evran's arm from wrist to mid-forearm, and the strength in it is careful, controlled, holding without crushing.
"You are braver than you think you are," Bran says. "But bravery without caution is just another way to die. You come to me if anything happens. Anything at all. You don't handle this alone."
"I won't."
"Promise me."
Evran meets the big man's eyes. "I promise."
Bran holds his forearm a moment longer, then releases it and sits back.
He picks up his cup, finds it empty, and stares into it with an expression of mild betrayal.
Then he looks up at Evran, and the ghost of his usual warmth surfaces through the worry, faint but unmistakable, a good man's kindness refusing to be extinguished no matter what the circumstances ask of it.
"You're a good lad, Evran. Vaike chose well."
Evran's throat tightens. He manages a nod, pushes back from the table, and stands. At the door, he pauses and looks back.
Bran is still sitting at the table, his massive frame hunched slightly forward, his empty cup cradled between his hands.
He looks tired, and he looks like someone carrying a weight that has just gotten heavier, and Evran feels a surge of gratitude so fierce it nearly undoes his composure, gratitude for this man who listened and believed him and did not dismiss his fear and did not try to take the decision from him even though every instinct in Bran's body must be screaming at him to do exactly that.
Evran opens the door, steps into the corridor, and closes it softly behind him.
The hallway is quiet. A guard stands at the far end, another at the junction where the eastern wing meets the main corridor. Evran leans against the wall and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and breathes, letting the cool stone steady him.
He thinks about what he is willing to do, and finds the answer has not changed.
He pushes off the wall and walks toward their room, and the braid swings against his neck with every step, and the weight of it is an anchor, a reminder, a promise.
I will keep you safe, he thinks.
Whatever it takes.