20. Gone and Returned
Chapter twenty
Gone and Returned
Rerdas awoke just before dawn to the sound of distant clanging. He rolled over in the bed, disappointed to see the empty rumple of sheets where Imalroc had lain.
The persistent noise echoed again outside. It was too dissonant to be the sound of a bell; it sounded more like someone smashing giant metal pots together. He climbed off the mattress, a bedsheet looped around his waist.
The sky was a bruised blue with gray hints of daybreak. He pressed his forehead to the round windowpane and squinted out a few people scurrying through the streets.
Not scurrying. Flat out running.
A thud vibrated from the floor below him, and a muffled shout. The whole inn was coming awake far too quickly. He dropped the sheet and grabbed for his clothes.
Noise from the lower floors bubbled up the stairs as he descended, scrambling toward Etiana’s room. A door flew open at the opposite end of the hall, and a harried man shouted something at the pair of servants trying to drag an overflowing trunk into the hall.
Rerdas backed into Etiana’s chamber and locked the door behind him. His gaze veered over the space. Aunt Uralta was the only occupant of the bed, hidden beneath a pile of blankets up to her chin. She shifted and turned like a restless dreamer. The air was chilly from the open doors of the balcony.
“Eti?” Rerdas skidded through the balcony doorway and out onto the little ledge with its iron railing. His cousin sat at one corner of the balcony, her robe rumpled around her. She did not look back at him.
“What’s going on? Have you seen—Is something burning?” The air tasted like soot, much more pungent than wood-smoke.
“If you lean over the railing and look down the street, you can see it,” Etiana replied dully.
He propped himself against the railing and peered into Drida’s gloom. As soon as he leaned far enough to see straight down the line of the street, an orange and yellow blot appeared. It emitted an unmistakable, flickering glow.
“Eternals,” Rerdas muttered. It was far away, at the very center of the city, but even from this distance he could see that the fire was huge. It must have caught on something enormous, some massive structure that went up like tinder. “Is that...”
“The battlebox. Bren Kul Mari.”
“Gods above and below,” Rerdas whispered.
He remembered watching the barrels of temple oil trundling into the battlebox in an endless parade.
And all those buildings around the battlebox, wooden.
Of course people were fleeing the inn. The entire city could be devoured.
“It could spread.” He swung back to his cousin. “Fuck, I need to get Imalroc.”
“He’s not here.”
“Well, he’s got to be around somewhere. He’s not in his room, and he’s probably enjoying the chaos and throwing things at—”
Etiana wouldn’t look at him. “He’s gone.”
Rerdas stared down at her. She had one hand clenched around the iron railing. All the questions and frantic plans galloping through his head guttered and winked out. He did not want to hear whatever came next.
His cousin spoke anyway. “The Southerners came because they wanted Imalroc. They’re going to make an army out of battleboxers. They offered him freedom, and he chose to go with them. I saw all of it.”
“You must have it wrong.” A strange, ringing calm reverberated through his chest. “He wouldn’t just leave. We had... There were things to discuss. He wouldn’t leave like that.”
“I tried to get him to wake you. I swear, Rerdas, I know what it means to you. I tried to stop him from leaving without… without even saying—” She swallowed hard and shifted to face him, and Rerdas saw she had been crying.
She reached out and took his hands, but he barely felt it. Everything was numb.
“But...” His knees went watery, and he sank down next to her.
Of course. Of course it had come to this.
He should have handed over Imalroc’s contract the first day they’d met.
He should have found another way to get the onyx.
Instead, he had sent Imalroc over and over again into battleboxes.
Rerdas unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth and almost laughed. “I’m… such a fool. It’s my fault.”
Etiana twisted to wrap her arms around him. “No, it isn’t.”
“I risked his life, I put him in pain, I told people he was broken and I asked him to accept it.” He’d miscalculated so badly. Imalroc was unbelievably strong, but Rerdas never should have asked him to bear so much.
“The whole stupid scheme was mine, Rerdas. I’m sorry.”
He wanted to flee up the stairs, sink into the bed, and slip back into his dreams from the night before. “He deserves to be free,” Rerdas said faintly. “It was all he wanted.” Tears climbed the back of his throat.
Gods, he should not have let himself imagine a future with Imalroc in it. It was spinning away from him, and in its place was a forsaken landscape. The people he loved slipped through his fingers. One by one, they would leave him. He would be alone.
“Etiana.” His cousin’s name, distant, hoarse, and withered.
“What?” Etiana sniffled against his shoulder.
“Rerdas.”
Rerdas felt Etiana stiffen, and then they jolted apart. His cousin’s hands were still on his shoulders as they both turned toward the voice that came from the bed.
Rerdas looked, and though his vision was blurry with tears, he saw Uralta Toriem struggling to rise. Etiana let out a choked scream and flung herself toward her mother.
Rerdas closed his eyes, tears seeping out beneath his lashes and slipping silently down his cheeks. He did not know whether it was loss or relief or hope or love that was bursting the seams of his heart. Imalroc had left him, and Uralta was awake.
One had gone, and one had returned.