Chapter 21
Theren waits for Isre in the shade of a pinon pine, in the green space behind one of the Losan Stronghold buildings.
A line of cypress blocks the view of the city’s sprawling greenhouses and high--efficiency farms. It’s hot, but he likes the heat, and the smell of the earth, and the sound of his feet scraping the ground.
Since the day before he’s felt raw, like everything is too loud, too bright, too rough. He doesn’t know why he’s here—-why he’s now allowed to see Isre when he hasn’t given Arias anything of substance. Just a suspicion; just speculation.
The back door of the nearest building opens, and Arias steps out, followed by a young man with light brown skin and black hair. Lean and narrow, with an eager stride. Isre.
Theren comes to his feet just as Isre breaks into a run.
He collides with Theren and laughs, the sound muffled by Theren’s shoulder.
His short hair tickles Theren’s jaw. It takes him a moment to bring his arms around Isre; he’s too bewildered by how different this feels, now that Theren is bigger and Isre is older.
Isre pulls away, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand. “How are you so much taller?”
Theren smiles a little. “Fever.”
“Fever.” Isre touches the back of his hand to Theren’s forehead. “Holy shit.”
They move back into the shade of the pine tree, where there’s an old wooden table coated with dust and pine needles. Theren sits across from Isre, and Arias stands apart from them, his back against the trunk of a tree. He has to listen in—-Theren still isn’t trusted enough to be left alone.
Theren is struck by the memory of his last day with Isre, Isre standing behind him, almost his height, asking him to get Imbued after he swore his oath, so he and Theren could stay in touch.
Only that Isre was gangly and hunched against his own new height, and this one sits straight and has stubble on his chin.
“You’re a soldier,” Theren says to Isre.
It’s an old habit, from years of reading people for Rava.
It’s easier to just tell people what he suspects about them and read how they react than to ask them questions, which are as likely to prompt lies as truths.
He realizes, too late, that he doesn’t want to read Isre, doesn’t want to know the tangled mess that his brother is feeling.
Isre’s concern is already itching at the back of his neck, too persistent for him to block. He must not look well.
“They told you?” Isre says.
Theren shakes his head. “Your posture.”
“Impressive. Yeah, I’m a technician,” Isre says. “Used to be a pilot, but I went where the need was.”
Isre was always good with technology. He liked to play with old machines, the kind no one in Cedre used anymore.
He could open something up and tease it apart and make it work again.
To Theren, all of that was so far out of reach that Isre seemed like a miracle worker.
So he’s not surprised to hear his brother is a technician.
It’s the pilot that Theren can’t see in him—-that’s the part of Isre that Theren doesn’t know. Not yet, anyway.
Isre touches Theren’s hand, and it takes all of Theren’s self--control not to pull away. Warmth sinks into him, and he relaxes a little. This is his brother in all ways but blood. As Arias has been saying for the past few mornings, You don’t need to be ready to fight right now. It’s almost helping.
“I heard you were hurt,” Isre says. “Enough to need surgery.”
“I’m all right.” Theren lays a palm over his ribs. The wound is still sealed, just in case, but it’s closed now, thanks to Cedre healing. “Arias said you flew in from Cedre Station. Do you still live there?”
Isre shakes his head. “I have a friend who does, asked me to volunteer my time to look over their escape shuttles. I live in Losan, though. Needed a change, after . . .” The pain in him is like the deep ache a person feels in an old injury, right before a storm. “After.”
They’re only skimming the surface, talking about work, as if that matters to either of them now.
But it’s easier than talking about what else is between them: Kesia’s betrayal.
The Knights’ funeral. Isre’s secret dealings with a Scout who turned out to be the Hope of Cedre.
The four years Theren spent in Valla. Theren knows they can’t stay here, apart from it, for much longer—-but he can’t bring himself to take the plunge.
“I live between a bakery and a little dairy,” Isre says. “Wind blows one way, it smells like fresh cookies. Wind blows the other way, it smells like manure. It’s kind of like reading your fortune every day.”
Theren smiles. “And today?”
“Chocolate chip.”
Isre’s laugh fades too quickly, and Theren knows the respite is already over. He braces himself.
“How long have you been here?” Isre says to him, softly.
“Almost two weeks.”
“Why wouldn’t they let me see you?”
“The Sword is suspicious of me.” Theren glances at Arias, who’s making a show of not listening in, gazing through the cypress branches at the city beyond them.
When Arias doesn’t stop him, he goes on: “Mostly because of Kesia, though that’s not all.
I’ve been—-cooperative. To earn back their trust. But it will take time. ”
Isre raises his eyebrows. His curiosity itches in Theren’s head.
“You call her ‘Kesia’ now,” he says, as if that’s anywhere near the most important thing Theren just said.
“After what she did, she’s lucky I’ll even say her name.”
“She helped you, you know. She came to me—-”
“Yes. I heard.”
“Then you know she’s not all bad.”
“I know no such thing.” He says it a little too harshly. Theren is squeezing his hands together so tightly his fingers are starting to go numb. He pries them apart and rests them on the table in front of him.
Isre’s eyes drop to the tattoos on his hands.
“She’s known exactly where I was for the last four years,” Theren says. “Don’t you think it’s strange that she suddenly came to you after four years of letting you believe I was dead? She was perfectly content to let me endure—-” He cuts himself off.
“Endure what?” Isre says.
“Don’t.”
“I just want to know why—-”
“Isre.”
“—-why you were gone for so long and then suddenly you were able to escape, like it was easy—-”
“I said, don’t!” Theren says, his voice lifting, almost a yell.
Isre and Theren sit in the quiet. There are distant voices, the chattering of birds, sirens from the city, but around them everything is still.
“It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t,” Theren says, his voice tight.
Isre’s eyes are glassy.
“I’m sorry,” he finally manages to say.
Theren wants to tell him not to apologize. He doesn’t want this—-this tension between them, the uncertainty in Isre’s eyes, in his hands, even in his posture. Like he’s facing down a wild animal, and he’s not sure what it will do next.
“I’m just so glad you’re alive,” Isre says, and Theren remembers, all at once, that Isre has a gift for this, for saying the one simple thing that Theren needs to hear.
He reaches for Isre’s hand and closes his eyes. His brother feels warm and steady, like the low crackle of a fire at the end of an evening, exactly as Theren might have predicted, if he’d been asked.
“It’s been terrible, not seeing you,” Theren says, and just like that, the tension evaporates.
Isre squeezes his hand.
“So I got married at eighteen,” he blurts out, like it’s a confession. “That’s probably the biggest thing you missed. Don’t worry, it didn’t take.”
Theren lets out a startled laugh. “It didn’t take?”
“Yeah. Only lasted a few weeks. Then I found out she was a criminal.”
“I take it you mean that literally.”
“Yeah. She was a con artist. She said her name was Harmony—-”
“Never date someone whose name is also a concept.”
“Now you tell me. Anyway, I’m not sure why I jumped into it so fast . . .”
And Theren lets Isre’s warmth settle into him as he listens.