CHAPTER 15 TYCHO
TYCHO
We’re given a second room, which is a blessing— at first. After the tension in the tavern, I’m not sure anyone would’ve found sleep if we’d been trapped in shared quarters all night long.
But then it occurs to me that we’re going to have to divvy up the two spaces, and it simply serves to amplify the growing friction among all of us.
It’s clear Sephran doesn’t want to room with Malin— and I doubt he wants to spend any time at all with me.
I have no idea where Jax’s preferences would fall, but I hate the thought of our clear division continuing.
Poor Leo probably doesn’t care, but I’m sure he’s not ignorant to any of it.
So, in an effort to escape everything, I take first watch.
The innkeeper spoke true, and most of the rooms are occupied by men and women who’ve been hired for the harvest season.
Unlike the tavern, which was still bustling when we left, the inn’s sitting room was empty when we returned, everyone gone to bed or gone home.
It’s after midnight, so the main door is barred now, the desk abandoned.
The clerk left a lantern burning low, but I sense that it’s only because I’d taken a post near the front door and he didn’t want to leave me in complete darkness.
I’ll have to toss another coin his way when we leave in the morning.
The thought reminds me of the way I bet that silver during the card game. I’ve spent too much time playing among officers and noblemen, so I forgot that throwing down a coin so casually would indicate an arrogance I don’t truly feel.
The worst part is that it’s not unlike the way Alek behaves.
As soon as I think it, I internally recoil. I resent the idea that I am anything like him at all. But this awareness leaves a bitter taste in my mouth that refuses to go away. I probably drank too much ale earlier, and that’s not helping.
But the instant I have that thought, I remember the mugs full of tea that Jax and Sephran chose for some inexplicable reason.
Ugh. Maybe fresh air would help. I should walk a patrol anyway. I push off from the wall, pull my bow off my shoulder, and unlatch the door.
Once I’m outside, however, the air doesn’t feel fresh at all. Heat still clings to the shadows, humidity making everything sticky. It’s usually cooler this far north, but summer seems to have settled over Emberfall with a vengeance I can’t escape.
Maybe it’s a stroke of luck. Scravers hate the heat.
I can’t say I’m much of a fan myself. Back when I worked in the tourney with Grey, we were two hundred miles south of here, and summers were downright miserable.
I still remember the night old Worwick, the man who ran the place, showed up with a scraver in a cage.
The creature was half dead from exhaustion and dehydration.
Iisak. My heart gives a tug, and I have to shrug it off. My friend has been dead for years.
I wonder what he would think of everything that’s happened. Iisak wanted to find his son so desperately— and then when he did, he died to protect him.
This trail of thoughts is going nowhere. I have no idea where Nakiis is, and I have no idea what Iisak would think of any of this. He was always friendly, always fatherly, always kind and thoughtful in a way that Nakiis is . . . not.
But maybe that’s not Nakiis’s fault. He had his reasons for being wary of others.
Just like I do, I suppose.
These memories cling, and I try to shake them off.
I walk a loop around the inn, letting the tiniest hint of my magic seep into the ground, seeking any sign of an enemy.
When I’m near the back quarter, I check the stable.
As I ease down the aisle as quietly as I can, the sleeping horses barely pay me any notice, with the exception of Mercy, who offers me a low nicker, hoping for a caramel.
Of course I give her one. She presses her warm muzzle against my jaw, the heat of her breath sneaking along my throat to whisper under my armor. I pat her on the neck and move on.
But there’s nothing. No sign of danger, no magic in the air, no whisper of sound to carry on the night sky. Nothing at all.
It should be a relief, and it is, but it’s also a disappointment. I’d kill for a distraction.
When I cross the dark stretch of ground between the stable and the inn, a cool breeze whips between the buildings. The light shifts, revealing movement in the shadows. A person in the darkness.
Before I can think, I have an arrow nocked, the string drawn tight.
“Tycho!” The figure lifts its hands. “Tycho. It’s me.”
I freeze, then carefully loosen the bow, lowering the weapon to my side.
“Jax,” I breathe, because it is him, the shadows still cloaking him in the moonlight, though the stars find a tiny gleam in his eyes.
His armor is gone, leaving him in a tunic and loose trousers.
He’s lucky I didn’t shoot him. “Thank fate,” I whisper.
“I not mean to scare you,” he says.
“What are you doing ?” I snap— and because I was scared, the words come out ten times sharper than I intend.
He looks a bit affronted, and honestly, I can’t blame him.
“Looking for you,” he says, his voice equally sharp. “What else?”
That makes me feel like an idiot. I jam the arrow back in my quiver and hang the bow over my shoulder. “Fine,” I say. “Come on. I’m on watch.”
Without waiting, I turn and head for the front of the inn. Jax falls in step beside me.
He walks with a slight unevenness due to the false foot, but it’s more of a heavy step than a limp.
It’s fascinating to me that he’s grown so used to it that he was able to abandon his crutches entirely.
I still don’t know the story of how it even happened.
Did Rhen order it? Was it one of the soldiers?
Much like that little moment over the tea or the thickness of his accent when he speaks the language here, it serves as a reminder that Jax has built a life for himself that I know nothing about. Even now, we’re speaking Emberish and I hardly even realized it.
As we turn the corner to come back around to the front side of the inn, there’s more light.
A lone lantern hangs over the doorway, the wick trimmed low.
Down the road, the tavern hasn’t closed up shop yet, because light spills through the windows.
The voices of men and women carry on the night air, but they’re faint.
A horse is trotting somewhere in the distance because I can hear the clopping from here, though the road is empty all the way down the lane.
I don’t know what Jax wants or why he was looking for me, but this echoing silence emphasizes just how vast the distance is between us.
“Can we sit?” he finally says. “Or you need to stand?”
I can’t figure out his tone, and the defensive part of my brain wants it to be salty, antagonistic. But honestly, it just sounds like a question. I have to clear my throat so I don’t snap at him again. “We can sit.”
He doesn’t wait for me, and he drops onto the top step that leads into the inn. As soon as he does, it invites the question of how close or how far I should sit, and I hate that my thoughts are so twisted up in deliberation and calculation when everything used to feel so easy.
Was it easy? Or did I just imagine it was?
Maybe he reads something in my shadowed expression because he sighs. “Tycho,” he says quietly. “Sit. Just sit.”
I don’t know how he always does this, but a note in his voice loosens something inside me, tugging at an old memory.
It was the first night we spent together, when every fiber of my being was drawn tighter than a bowstring.
He was so patient and so careful in a way that unwound my worries and let me confess all my deeply buried truths.
And just like that, the low, easy timbre of his voice unwinds me now, because I drop to sit on the step beside him.
Unexpected emotion swells to fill my chest and clog my throat.
I can’t breathe. I can’t speak. I can’t see.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes and hold my breath, because allowing anything else is going to turn me into a puddle in the dirt.
Eventually, my lungs are screaming, and I let out my breath in a rush.
When I do, words fall out of my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“I’m sorry.” The words are so broken that I can’t even tell if he understands them.
I switch to Syssalah anyway. “Jax, I’m so sorry.
” Then my voice catches, and I have to hold my breath again.
My hands are pressing into my eyes so hard that it hurts, and my insides are clenched so tight I don’t know how my heart is continuing to function.
For a moment there’s nothing but silence, and then I hear him sigh again, a soft sound against the night.
But he shifts on the step, and suddenly his hip is against my hip, his thigh against my thigh, his calf against my calf.
His hand falls on my knee, and then, to my absolute shock, his head falls against my shoulder.
“Tycho,” he breathes.
It’s too much. The clenching in my chest stops my heart altogether. My lungs refuse to function. But I put a hand over his and hold it there like it’s the only thing anchoring us both to the world.
Then he murmurs, “You’re supposed to be keeping watch.”
If anything could break through my emotion, it’s that. I swear and jerk my hand away from my eyes, trying to focus.
Jax gives my knee a gentle squeeze, and I feel it all the way through my body. Any hope of focus is gone.
But he lifts his head from my shoulder and lets go, pulling his hand away.
I reach out and snatch it back, winding my fingers around his, pulling his hand to the center of my chest like a treasure.