Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Winter’s Night, a minor winter festival, falls on a chill, damp day. Ethram suffers the crowds for an appointment at the university, and then he braves them again after because he had made a promise to Ky.
He buys the prettiest set of winter ribbons he can find.
The linen is embroidered with small patterns of leaves and stars, and costs exactly as much as such fine work is worth.
He feels foolish about it until Ky ties them neatly to the hallway arches and kisses him thoroughly beneath them.
It pleases Ky to have them, and so it no longer feels foolish at all.
He weaves through the first week of winter in an entirely pleasant mood, so much so that his university neighbour, Sol, frowns at him when he greets her, and the tiresome trio think it an invitation to stop by his office for no reason other than to harass him.
He eventually dislodges Yates and Larsen, sending them off with strict orders to not return. Taylor stays, though, leaning on the edge of his desk.
“Larsen will be insufferable for days,” she says. “I can’t believe you laughed at his joke.”
“I did not,” says Ethram. “He must have imagined it.”
“Oh, his imagination is not so good as that,” she says, quite cheery. “It’s good to see you happy, Hart.”
If Ethram is happy, which he feels is a dubious thing to claim after the morning he’s had, it doesn’t last much longer. Mullins appears in the afternoon. He stays near the door, a healthy distance between them.
“There’s been another incident,” he says, holding out another folder. “In Appley.”
Ethram’s retort dies on his lips. Appley is in Elveresk. It’s close enough to make him wary.
“If whatever this is reaches Esk, then the destruction will be immense,” Mullins says. “We suspect the Well is drawing it in.”
The Well is the archipelago’s largest aether source, and so his reasoning is sound. But it’s wrong. Ethram knows it is not the Well drawing the creatures closer. It is Ky.
He flicks through the contents of the folder, stomach sinking. “You have survivor accounts.”
“We do. Would you read through them? I know you think you’ve nothing to help us with, but you were the only person, before these survivors came forward, who had experienced anything like these beasts and survived.”
“Beasts.” He skims through the account. Darkness, claws, howling, teeth. One saw a tall figure, almost a person. The other saw a giant hound-like beast. “I will read it,” he says. “Has anything injured these beasts yet?”
“No,” says Mullins, but his word is drawn through his teeth. “Except we believe the original attack involved six creatures—”
“That wasn’t in the last folder I received.”
“You are not liaising with the airguard,” says Mullins. “Why would you get all the information?”
Ethram wants to throw the folder at his head. He takes a deep breath. “Very well. Six creatures.”
“Less now. In the last attack, they estimated four or five. Something has happened to at least one creature. That implies they can be destroyed.”
Not by men such as Mullins, he thinks. And he isn’t sure if Ky destroyed the beast, or just…swallowed it. Became it, or it became him? Did the order of words matter, really?
He feels sick.
When he gets home, Ky is at the kitchen table, baking.
A tray of currant cakes sits freshly baked by the hearth, and he is braiding biscuits to follow them.
There is steaming tea in the pot, and Ethram pours two cups as he settles in to watch.
The rhythmic twist of pale gold dough under Ky’s hands is as obliging as the yarn when he knits, becoming exactly the shape he intends it to be.
“You’re tired,” says Ky. The dough folds, stretches.
“I’m worried,” corrects Ethram. “Mullins came by.”
Ky’s hands still. His fingers sink into the dough. “Did he.”
“It’s fine. He only had some news for me. Appley has been attacked.”
“When?”
“Two nights past. Some survivors have given accounts.”
Ky goes back to his work, weaves the biscuit dough together, forming the plait design that is so common in Esk, twisting each biscuit like river reeds. “Did he give you a copy of the report?”
“In my satchel. You’re welcome to look, but it’s as we thought.
It’s the same creatures that have been chasing you.
” He picks a few dried currants from the bowl on the table.
They’re sweet, carrying traces of summer and sun.
For a heart-aching moment, all he wants is summer back.
The dappled light, the crushed meadow grass. The taste of berries on his tongue.
“Not chasing. Hunting. Whatever these creatures are, they have remnants of my original power. That is why they are hunting me, because they hunger for more. In some ways, these shadows are more me than they are not.” Ky sets the biscuits in neat lines, each perfectly the same.
His fingerprints are in the dough. Shallow, gentle divots of care.
“When I died, the power that spilled from me must have been immense. That is the origin of your Well, the creation of it. Those who were with me when I died were torn apart. My attackers. My attendants. My lovers. Gone forever, or so I thought. Some of them may have stolen enough of my power to stay…present. Partly me and partly something else.”
“I did not realise—” He breaks off as Ky reaches over the table and rests his palm against Ethram’s jaw. Ethram leans into him. “I should have realised how much you have lost.”
“It was a long time ago. I have been dead and sleeping for an age.”
“But not anymore.”
“No. And these shadows of mine are not sleeping anymore, either.” He traces down Ethram’s neck, pushing his collar open.
“The longer I stay in Esk, the stronger I become from soaking in the power that I once lost here. And the stronger I become, the stronger these false shades of me become, too. My power has consumed them, changed them. They are my missing scales. My reflections.”
“They are killing people.”
“Do you think I have never killed anyone?” Ky tips his head in silent question, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Those missing scales are the worst of me. Just as all you have here—” His fingers press into the dip of Ethram’s collarbone. “—is the best of me.”
“And if you take all your missing scales back, strip your power back from these beasts, then what will you become?”
“Nothing more and nothing less than what I am.” He is surely leaving flour on Ethram’s skin as he traces back up past his pulse point.
“And something entirely different, too. Aren’t we always becoming different, you and I and every other living thing?
Otherwise, we would be nothing but echoes ringing on, empty, forever. ”
Ethram closes his eyes. The hearth crackles, and rain knocks gently on the kitchen window. He can hear something else too, under the rain. The murmur of a raging distant river.
Perhaps a storm is coming.
“These creatures will consume me, or I will consume them, but it cannot go on as it is. Look at me.” He tips Ethram’s chin up so that their gazes meet. “Let us put it aside, my heart. Eat these cakes with me. Read by the fire with me. Come to bed with me.”
And Ethram does. He puts it all aside and goes with him, because there is nothing else in the vast and ceaseless world that he’d rather do.