Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
They end up in the garden. The late morning light drapes like linen across the ground, and Ky has found a hat somewhere, though Ethram would put good money on him not being able to get sun-burned or freckled.
Ethram, who rarely has to worry much about either, stretches out in the warmth.
His promised tea drifts steam past his face.
Forest wrens bicker in the hedgerow, and it’s all peaceful and gentle.
It makes it that much more jarring when Ky looks up from the weeds he’s started idly plucking at and starts up the conversation again.
“Whatever this creature is, it is coming for me,” he says. “Hunting for me.”
“Here?” It doesn’t seem possible when they’re sitting in such sun-rich peace.
“It can’t come here. I’ve hidden here.” Ky gestures around them.
Ethram can’t see anything that looks like it’s hiding anything. His garden is looking well, though. Green all along the edges of the fence, and marigolds at his windows and rosemary at the door.
“All the nets are set,” Ky says. His gaze goes distant. “If only I could find some riverleaf. It used to grow all over once. I’m sure it did.”
Ethram has never heard of riverleaf in his life. “Okay,” he allows, pulling Ky back into the conversation. “So we’re safe here.”
“It does not mean that it’s not looking,” says Ky. He tugs a clump of straying meadow grass out with a violent wrench. “Others will be hurt if it comes.”
Ethram thinks of Dean Parl and the Leightons, and Etta and Marc and all the others. It must show on his face, because Ky reaches out to grab his knee.
“I would not let it,” says Ky, low and terrifying. “I intend to go meet it.”
“Not alone,” says Ethram, almost reflexively. He probably deserves the look Ky gives him.
“There is nothing you could do to assist in this,” he says. “You’ll stay here.”
Ethram sips his tea. He wants to argue, but what can he say? “You can’t go alone,” he says. “We’ll figure it out.”
It’s a useless answer, but Ky does him the dignity of not pointing that out. He weeds in silence for a while.
“If we can warn the Admiralty, perhaps an airship can be here to meet it.”
He sits back on his heels. “This isn’t a stormbeast. An aether gun won’t hurt it.”
Ethram watches him through the curling steam. Would an aether cannon not hurt him either? The thought is terrifying and also reassuring. He presses his lips together. “How much like you are these things?”
“They felt familiar, like reflections. Perhaps we were alike once. I do not know what they are now.”
Felt familiar. Another grounding sip of tea. “So you have met them. When you came to me, you were hurt. It wasn’t an accident in the storm, was it?”
“No, something had been chasing me.” He goes back to his work. “I could not remember how I had been injured, but I think now it must have been these creatures. Perhaps I only survived by finding you.”
Gods, Ethram is glad he opened his kitchen door that night. “Ky. Don’t go without telling me first.”
“What good would telling you do? You cannot help me in this.”
“If I could remember your name—”
“Ethram,” says Ky, gentle as a summer morning. “I do not think you can.”
“I don’t understand,” he says. “It is here. I must know it.” He knows, and yet he can’t form the word. It slips from him, like a fish from a net.
“Knowing who I was before won’t change anything, except to make my past unavoidable to me.”
“It might make you more likely to prevail,” he says, and his hands are tight around his mug. “You do not know what you are lacking. Why can I not remember?”
“I know who I am.” He stabs the gardening fork into the soil. “I do not need it.”
“Don’t go without telling me first,” repeats Ethram, firm. The tea has gone cold, but he hardly cares. What matters is that Ky hears this, understands it.
The breath that leaves Ky is heavy, and the air shifts around him. The aether ripples out and brushes over Ethram’s skin, raising hairs and leaving prickles. It’s not an agreement exactly, but it is an understanding.
Ky picks up his tools again, and there’s just the shift of soil, and the scrape of metal on pebbles, and the birdsong in the hedgerows. Peaceful. Safe.
Ethram wishes he could believe it.