Chapter Eight
River
As usual, River heard Kai before he saw him.
“What,” Kai complained somewhere down a side passage in the altarhouse, “yous didn’t even clean up after yourselves?”
River stole behind a statue of Llyr, a bad habit he’d picked up from Ione. Still he remained, ears straining, the cold wall seeping into his back. Bad habit or no, one really could learn more from eavesdropping.
One of Kai’s brothers shoved him back a step, forcing him to walk behind them. “The ice’ll melt on its own.”
“And until then,” said the second brother, “it’ll serve as a fair warning to think twice before they cross us again.”
Their voices quieted, dissipating into the shadows further down the passage. His breath held, River slinked after them, keeping himself flat against the wall.
It was unnecessary – the Mahinas, corrupt as they were, were still allies – but something in the voices of Kai’s elder brothers unnerved him.
Proximity and an abundance of empty threats had forced River to lower his guard around Kai: even at his meanest, Kai was no worse than a mangy dog, either craving attention or demanding to be left alone.
But Kai’s brothers screamed danger.
“You’ll’ve only pissed them off,” Kai groused, trailing after them. “They’re already after sending scouts to test the ward. I had to sweep a body out to sea just last week.”
River’s breath caught. Did Saros know this? Why had no one told him?
Etan and Nalu Mahina halted, and River ducked into a narrow alcove. When he peeked out, they had turned, and despite being around Kai’s height, they both seemed about seven feet tall as they stared their youngest brother down.
“Don’t you worry about the Moths,” one of them said – Etan, River gathered, from the captain’s brooch decorating his dark blue uniform. “We’ll handle them.”
“You keep playing house with the Artem brat,” Nalu added, pinching Kai’s cheek. “Let your brothers do all the hard work while you strive for the charmed life of a concubine.”
Kai jerked his head back. “Watch yourself, Nalu,” he warned. “Once the Warden of Oseidos and Menon Incarnate unite, you will find yourself suddenly bereft of allies.”
Nalu laughed. “Big words from our clan’s greatest failure.”
“Bereft isn’t that big of a word, Lulu.”
Etan clamped a hand over Nalu’s shoulder, murmured something, but Nalu shook him off.
“Does our Menon Incarnate know what you did?” Without warning he grabbed Kai’s ear, twisted it like he was a child. Kai didn’t so much as flinch. “Has She forgiven you your sins?”
Etan sighed. “Nalu, leave it.”
Kai bent, but his fists remained clenched at his sides. “We’re all murderers,” he muttered. “Not just me.”
A concentrated blast of magic pierced the air, powerful enough that River felt the chill of it all the way to his end of the hall. Nalu released Kai, chuckling when Kai staggered back a step, clasping the side of his head.
“That’s enough.” Etan gripped the collar of Nalu’s uniform and yanked him back.
“Mam’ll be pissed if the pair of yous fight again.
She’s still not over yous capsizing the Hydros.
” He hauled Nalu away with him, both of them stalking shoulder-to-shoulder down the hall and through the door to the high priests’ wing.
Kai made no move to follow. Gradually he straightened, his hand falling from his ear; he stared after them, fury palpable as frost condensed and melted around his fists, waiting for the command to sharpen into blades.
It seemed unwise to approach, but curiosity won out and had River slinking out of his hiding place. Kai did not budge, even as River crept into his line of sight – and then Kai’s eyes were on him, wide with directionless rage. He reeled, one fist raised and brimming with razor-sharp icicles.
River froze, more startled than afraid, and Kai blinked, his arm dropping like lead. “Swords,” he managed, shaky. “Menon wept, don’t sneak up on me.” He let out a breath, a long, exhausted woosh, and forced out a nervous laugh. “Ione’s still got you following me around, huh?”
River clenched his jaw, his neck hot. But then Kai raked his hair back with another anaemic laugh, revealing the ear Nalu had grabbed, black and red with frostbite.
“Ah, that. Brinicle. Not sure who taught Nalu that wee trick.” Kai fingered his ear, wincing; a blackened piece of cartilage cracked at his touch, leaving a thumbprint-sized void.
Kai held the chunk of cartilage on his palm, mute with shock, before he pivoted and hurled it down the hall.
“Fucking hurt. You know, Etan’s always all, Be good, don’t fight, but then he goes and lets Nalu get in the first hit. What’s with that?”
River genuinely couldn’t think of a response for that, for any of it.
Kai nudged him. “Only child, you?”
“I don’t think this is… standard for siblings.”
“Well, don’t get all sensitive about it.
That’s why the gods gave us two ears. And two eyes.
” He grinned, vengeful; when River still had nothing for that, Kai rolled his eyes and stormed down the hall, issuing River a wave to come along.
“Gods, what d’you want me to do, cry about it? Nalu’s a prick. End of.”
At a loss, River followed him. “This is why none of us trust you,” he grumbled. “You’re unhinged, all of you.”
Kai snorted but didn’t disagree. “Fine. Just for you, I’ll play a sad song about it tonight.” He looped an arm around River’s neck and jostled him. “Have something ready in D minor for the accompaniment.”
River restrained a groan and disentangled himself from Kai’s grip.
Since the luthier at the music shop finished the violin Kai ordered, he had been insufferable.
River didn’t even know about it until one night when he’d sat down to practice a waltz he’d found sheet music for.
A few bars in, and suddenly it was a duet, Kai’s part coming in muffled from the room next door.
It became an unspoken routine. Occasionally River was tired, would opt to go straight to bed, sleeping to the low murmurs of strings through the wall. Other times he played piano alone, wondering where Kai was, if he was able to find sleep. He found himself hoping he had.
It was practical, not compassionate: a well-rested Kai meant less of a headache for the others.
“Ah!” Kai poked at him. “Are you embarrassed? You clench your jaw when you’re embarrassed.”
Any ounce of sympathy River might have felt for him disintegrated. “Move along,” he ground out, shouldering past Kai. “I know you’re feeling small and pathetic now that your brothers are around – ”
“I’m mourning the loss of my ear,” Kai said solemnly, hand over heart.
“ – but not everything is a fucking game.”
“Of course it is,” Kai retorted, speeding after him. “There’d be no point in anything if there wasn’t a fabulous prize to win.”
River wished it wasn’t the sole protector of Oseidos who’d just said that.
“Archpriest Saros will return shortly,” said a bald-headed old bookkeeper they ran into in the high priests’ wing.
He shifted a bundle of scrolls under one arm, squinting out the wide window to Lodestone.
To the wrecked building and glistening ice spire Etan and Nalu had left in their wake.
“Given the… impromptu nature of this visit, I asked Captain Etan and Lieutenant Nalu to wait in the garden.”
Kai followed the man’s gaze, looking dreary as one hand absently played with his ear.
He’d healed the remaining damage on the way, but there was no returning the sizable chunk missing from the helix.
He lowered his hand when he caught River watching him.
“What?” He stepped aside and gestured royally. “G’wan, after you.”
Kai marched through the priests’ wing, his good mood dampened, barely sparing anyone else a glance.
River hurried alongside him, feeling more like a jailor than a seleneschal.
An unsettled, tempestuous energy simmered beneath Kai’s forced calm, like he was searching for a fight, waiting for a reason to attack and dub it self-defence.
“Hey,” River whispered as they approached the ceiling-high glass doors leading to Saros’s lunarium.
He held out an arm, barring Kai from shoving past him.
“Calm down. Your brothers are here. They’ll leave.
It’s not like Saros’ll be upset with you for whatever they did.
” He peered through the foggy glass at the blur of green beyond and muttered, “Saros practically worships you, anyway.”
He cringed. He didn’t regret feeling that way, but regretted the hell out of voicing it.
When River glanced back at him, Kai was looking right back, his eyes clearer. Contrite. He nodded silently, in thanks or apology, River wasn’t sure, and thrust open the door to the lunarium.
A wall of humid air hit them as they crossed into the bright, circular chamber, a drastic change from the cold dark of Llyr’s grave.
A handful of acolytes in aprons and gardening gloves darted back and forth between bushy green plants, watering or pruning, repotting or harvesting.
Much of Saros’s favourite tea flowers grew here, leaving the thick air perfumed with rose and lavender and fresh, peppery herbs.
They found Etan and Nalu waiting within a small viewing pavilion in the centre of the greenery, Etan, leaning against the balustrade; Nalu, helping himself to a bowl of grapes at the round table. Kai tensed as he and River neared them, hesitating to pat himself down for his pocket watch.
While anyone could tell that the three of them were brothers, Etan and Nalu did not have the rakish, faux-charming mien that Kai put on, nor the artistic air that River remembered in Hilo.
Etan glanced at River once, his broad face smooth with disinterest, before returning his attention to a sign reminding acolytes not to touch the nettles; his skin was lighter than Kai’s, his hair longer and wilder, pinned at the back of his neck with a comb of whale bone carved into the Mahina clan’s insignia, a crescent moon speared by a sword.