11. The Rain Garden #2
“I was in love once,” Imalroc heard himself say.
He looked out at the rain garden and tried to let the memory of Briga surface.
It was not Briga he pictured, but the red sand of the Arble.
He should feel something. He wanted to feel something besides the snowy numbness blanketing his insides at the onset of the memory.
“What happened?”
“I watched two fighters beat him to death in the Arble. Melgreth Hize had me chained to the wall.” Imalroc flicked what remained of the sprigs toward the water and watched them float. Too little weight in the world to leave even a ripple.
He could feel Rerdas staring at the side of his face, could feel how horrified he was, like maybe he stared at a ragged hole in the side of Imalroc’s head. Or the one he constantly felt in his chest. Skin and blood laid over bone, and all of it guarding nothing.
A warm hand curled around his forearm, fingers slipping beneath the sleeve of his tunic. “What was his name?”
Imalroc contemplated shaking him off, but it felt a little too good to have him there. And he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a chance to say Briga’s name aloud to someone who wanted to hear it. “Briga.”
“What was he like?”
The red sand faded away, and in its place he saw brown eyes and a shy, uncertain smile. “He was good. He sang all the time, but… not that well. He was gentle.” Imalroc’s vision warped, swam, and he looked up at the sky, blinking furiously.
His voice grew unrecognizably hoarse, but he couldn’t stop.
“He was so homesick. He dreamed of going back to the Midlands, to his grandmother. He used to ask me to write letters to her, even though we wouldn’t ever be permitted to send them.
He’d introduce me to her in the letters, over and over, and he couldn’t tell me what he felt but he told me to write to his grandmother that he was falling in love with a man who frightened him—” He choked and pulled his knees tight to his chest.
The world blurred horribly. He couldn’t see anything, as if there were a milky lens over each stinging eye. Excellent. Now he was—he was fucking crying. Wasting water in the desert.
Rerdas reached to pull him close, and Imalroc warded him off. “That’ll just make it worse,” he mumbled thickly.
He blotted his face with the back of a hand, his wet cheeks and disgusting nose.
But the thing he needed to say next brought another wave welling up with it.
“The thing is…” He gulped for air. “The thing is, he probably could’ve survived if he’d never met me.
I provoked Hize, insulted him, wouldn’t do any of the shit he ordered, fought back when he touched either of us.
So Hize hurt him to punish me. It was my fault. ”
Rerdas made a low, pained noise. “No,” he said.
“It wasn’t. Melgreth Hize murdered him, and the battleboxes gave him the weapons to do it.
None of this ever should have happened to you.
” He shuddered, his empty palms twitching in his lap.
“I swear I’m going to get you out of this, Imalroc. You’ll be free.”
Free to do what? To be what? But he couldn’t face that, not when he felt like a sheet of glass webbed with cracks. One more tap in the right spot and he’d be in pieces.
Imalroc pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets until his cheeks stayed dry. It didn’t take much; he never cried for long. Been a while since he’d had to deal with the last bout of it.
When he was ready, he looked again at the long, deepening shadows obscuring the plants and overtaking the water. Warmth leeched from the air. Darkness pooled in the rain garden.
He stood, and Rerdas followed his lead. They brushed sand from their clothes, scrambled up the embankment, and walked back to the courtyard entry. The street glimmered golden with torchlight, gilding the faces of passersby.
“You know what I think you should do?” Rerdas said suddenly. “As vengeance?”
“Force-feed Melgreth Hize his own flame-roasted fingers,” Imalroc said flatly. He turned to Rerdas. “You thought of that too?”
Rerdas smiled despite everything. “Well. That wasn’t my exact thought, but it does sound like a decent idea.”
“What was yours?”
“I think, once you leave the battleboxes, you should go on and live a life full of hope and joy and… wonderful things. Live the life he tried to take from you.”
Imalroc’s throat closed. He didn’t know how to do that. Hope and joy couldn’t just be snapped into existence. He didn’t even know where to begin looking for them.
“And,” the huntmaster added, “I suppose you could still do a little roasting, too.”
Imalroc sputtered, a half-despairing laugh, but Rerdas looked so pleased with himself that he laughed again.
“Let’s not go back to the house yet,” Rerdas said. He took a step away, beckoning Imalroc in the direction of the noisy end of the street. “I’d wager that’s the bazaar. Let’s go see it.”
“I don’t much like crowds.”
“We’ll keep to the edges. I just want you to see it. There’s more to Kibo than a battlebox.” He took another cajoling step. “Have you ever had a pepper purse? They’re made with cactus. You must try it.”
Rerdas backed away, and Imalroc found himself slowly moving after him.
The huntmaster grinned, and Imalroc rolled his eyes and gestured for him to go first. If they were going to be around more people, he couldn’t pretend it was worth the risk to march on ahead.
Someone might recognize him, even so far west of Kirinoll.
But it was surprisingly—unsettlingly—easy to stalk just behind Rerdas’s shoulder, watching the light play over his eager profile.
“Why would you think cactus is going to compel me?” Imalroc muttered at him.
“It’s delicious—”
“It’s spiky.”
Rerdas cast him a smiling glance. “Look who’s—”
“Don’t you dare.” To emphasize his point, Imalroc poked him in the ribs.
“I think it’s an apt comparison.” Rerdas wriggled away from his jabbing. His smile turned a little sly. “Delicious, and I want it in my mouth.”
Imalroc snorted, but he couldn’t keep from running his hand up between Rerdas’s shoulder blades, then trailing down his back. He was so painfully grateful that Rerdas looked at him like that, even after all he’d confessed and how pathetic he’d just been.
The bazaar crammed a massive square, and it was packed with light and people. Row after row of stalls bristled with gleaming wares, sellers extolling their virtues to a shuffling line of curious onlookers.
Even at the edges, there was no way to entirely escape the press if they went into it. Rerdas glanced back at him in silent question. A huge waft of steam billowed overhead, rich with the scents of cooking pots, and Imalroc’s stomach rumbled. He nodded once before he could change his mind.
They joined the flowing crowd. It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. People brushed by his arms without taking any notice of him, and in the denser thickets he huddled close to Rerdas, breathing the scent of citrus in his curls.
The market was not entirely open-air, but the winding sections of it that were enclosed were built of wrought iron and colored glass, fanciful structures like nothing Imalroc had ever seen. They passed through kaleidoscopic tunnels of light, beneath garlands of herbs and night-blooming flowers.
Rerdas tacked hard toward a succulent-adorned sign advertising the lauded pepper purses.
They turned out to be delicate fried dough stuffed with strips of grilled, brined cactus and onions and spices Imalroc couldn’t name but which combined in a flavor so spicy it made his nose run.
Rerdas bought him two more as soon as he saw him inhale the first one.
“Alright,” Imalroc said, and made an ‘o’ to let out a puff of heat. “Fine. This is a worthy obsession.”
“Told you.” Rerdas grinned triumphantly.
“Yes.” Imalroc flashed teeth back at him. “And I understand the comparison now. I suppose I’d want more of me in my mouth, too.”
Rerdas put a hand over his face, shaking his head.
Laugh lines cut merry little crinkles into the corners of his briefly closed eyes.
When he opened them, Imalroc stared. He’d never looked quite so closely at Rerdas’s eyes.
Maybe it was just this light, but there was a band of pale, soft gold amid the green of his irises.
It was like looking down into an impossibly clear ocean in sunlight.
“They’ve got a kick to them, though, haven’t they.”
Imalroc blinked out of a daze. “I am mildly on fire, and it was worth it.”
“Egg fizz. That’s what we’ll get next.” Rerdas pointed out another stall and waded toward it. He stopped when they were close enough to see the counter and the decanters displaying samples of opaline liquid. “Oh. I don’t think…”
Imalroc leaned curiously over his shoulder. “What?”
“They only sell that kind in public houses in Kirinoll. It’s not allowed in an open market like this.”
“If it’s not allowed in Kirinoll, we have to try it.”
“It’s alcoholic.” Rerdas quirked an eyebrow at him. “You don’t… Do you mind that?”
He’d only had wine, and some absolutely foul fermented thing that Master Xavian let him try. That shit had him staggering, vomiting up his guts by nightfall. Training the following morning had been a disaster.
But this looked more appealing. Each bottle had its own shade of pale color. It was very pretty.
“I’d like the pink one,” he announced.
Rerdas smiled his glowing, devastating smile and slipped forward to order. He returned with a tall, rough-cast clay cup in each hand, and offered one to Imalroc. The drink was as lovely as it looked, velvety and faintly floral. He tried Rerdas’s too, tart and airy.