Chapter 24
“Is that new?” I murmur to Zan.
He shrugs.
Gah!
“Takes a bit of effort like this,” Zan says distantly, “but with our bond as it is now, it’s possible.”
Sunani glances up at me, tension in her. She doesn’t know what we’re talking about, and I’m not sure Zan wants this secret spread.
Plenty of other things for her to be tense about anyway, so I address the first one.
“Sorry to spring that on you,” I say.
“Which part?” Sunani asks dryly.
Ha! “Putting you on the spot about the table. But I don’t want people to be able to pretend that Teren is simply gone.
I want them to have to remember him, and I thought you would too, and since you’re not a town representative but are from Crystal Hollow, people will still feel like they can approach to see his work—”
“And I’m beautiful,” Sunani says wryly. “Can’t forget that.”
“Yes, but in my partial defense, I told Teren yesterday that I wanted to share a table with you so that I could punch anyone who gave you trouble about that.”
Sunani’s eyebrows shoot up.
“She did,” Zan confirms, as if he will somehow seem less biased. But then he adds, “You’ll be doing me a favor as well, giving her someone else to punch.”
Hey! “I have only punched you, like, three times.”
“Really.”
“And you deserved every one.”
Zan snorts.
“And,” I say, turning back to Sunani who is watching us with some bemusement, “I really do need your help setting up the table.”
“I can show you how to lay out Teren’s work,” she agrees, adding with a slight flush, “I have seen it many times.”
“Oh, I don’t actually need help with that part. Given my training, my memory is literally uncanny. What I don’t know how to do is set up the dratted booth to begin with.”
Zan snickers at me.
“Do you?” I demand.
The sound cuts off.
“That’s what I thought.”
Zan narrows his eyes. “I could probably figure it out.”
“Yes, and that’s just the impression we want to give, isn’t it?”
“Two people who share human struggles—”
“Or two people who can’t even manage to set up a booth and can definitely be trusted with the safety of an entire island.”
Zan scowls.
I smirk at him. I won an entirely mundane argument about how humans work!
...Given that I am human, the fact that that’s noteworthy is perhaps just as damning of me, actually. Dang it.
“What happened to Nomi’s door?” Sunani asks us. “Oh—the Order? Or—”
“Not me!” I point at Zan. “He has a thing about destroying walls, I’m learning.”
Sunani’s lips quirk.
She’s taking this—us—well, I think?
“I’ve done that twice,” Zan mutters.
“That I’ve been present for.”
He arches his eyebrows at me. “Shall we start counting how many walls we’ve each broken in five hundred years, then?”
Hmmm.
He’s had more time to break walls, but on the other hand, I did a lot of destruction in a very short time before I created the Quiet—
“I’m still winning,” I finally say.
“Or losing,” Zan points out.
Valid, but that actually leaves me pensive as I take the first step inside.
Breaking down walls isn’t what I want to do, actually. I think I want to build them—but... differently?
With doors, maybe.
I stop in the entryway, blinking.
“What’s wrong?” Sunani asks.
“I was expecting to find my ice cream melted on the ground here,” I say slowly, coming to alertness. “I suppose with the house wide open anyone could have come in—
“It was me,” Zan cuts me off. “After I finished my search for Teren on the island I came back here to put it in the ice house before heading to the meeting. It’s past the kitchen—mmph.”
He breaks off in surprise when I practically tackle him in a kiss.
But how can I not, when he prioritized the people we care about and was still thinking of me and trying to support me all the while?
“You’re the best,” I tell him fervently as he blinks at me, a little dazed.
Ha. I did that!
Happily I tug him after me, the place where our hands touch magically and existentially warm.
After a moment Zan must realize I don’t actually know where the ice house is because he tugs me a different way, out the door to where a much smaller ice house waits.
The ice cream is still a little melted, but not as bad as I feared.
Sunani asks, “Could you re-freeze it? Is that something sage powers can even do?”
“Great question,” I murmur.
“You don’t know?”
I shrug. “My life was very focused on learning ways to murder people. Hang on, I think I’ve got this—”
Gathering my wrath, I spin into a new kata, flowing my magic through a form to increase wrath in the ice—which is weird in the abstract sense, but very similar to what I’d once planned to do to the volcano, so—
The ice bulges.
And grows with another crack, and grows, and then the stone of the ice house is starting to crumble—
Quickly I reverse the kata, sucking the flow of magic back into me.
The ice implodes from within.
Which for some reason causes the outside of it to bulge farther even with a hollow center, and the ice house shakes.
We all freeze, waiting for it to settle, to see if anything else happens.
Then the ice inside just sort of... crumbles.
Zan starts shaking with laughter.
I scowl. Okay, so maybe what I was planning for a volcano was a little much for a tiny ice house.
“I’ll bring Nomi more ice,” I mutter.
Sunani stares at us, wide-eyed.
Zan tells her, “You should see what Yora does to eggs.”
“Hey!”
Sunani says faintly, “Perhaps I’d better handle Teren’s crafts.”
“Well,” Zan says prosaically, “you definitely can’t see what Yora does to blankets.”
“Unfair! There were no blankets on the bed when I exploded it!”
“We certainly wouldn’t know now.”
Sunani asks, “Was that an accident too?”
“Oh, no, that was very much on purpose,” I explain. “We only need one bed, after all.”
I stick my tongue out at Zan, who rolls his eyes at me while smiling.
And Sunani, finally, starts snickering herself.
Ha! I knew she had a backbone and that we could be friends! Take that, worrywart Teren!
...Even if her amusement is somewhat at my expense.
Sunani stops abruptly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be laughing when Teren is gone—”
“No, absolutely not,” I cut her off. “The Order doesn’t get to take any more from us. They don’t get to steal our joy. And they don’t get to keep what they’ve taken.”
Sunani looks at me and slowly nods. “Yes. Let’s get to work, then.”
Despite her beauty, Sunani’s presence near me doesn’t seem to set Zan’s instincts off.
Regardless, Zan is too twitchy with all the looks angled at me to stay without snarling, which I enjoy but is frustrating the hells out of him.
So once Sunani and I have the booth set up, Zan takes off to go retrieve more ice for Nomi before all her food goes bad, and check in with her about how things are progressing.
I ignore the gut-wrenching feeling of bereftness as he walks away, because I’m not going to trap him with me, either, even if being separated feels almost physically painful.
And leaves Sunani and me alone at a table that absolutely no one is approaching.
The awkward silence between us—two people who have no idea what to say to each other—is beginning to feel oppressive, which pisses me off enough that I’m able to gird my loins and break it.
But what I blurt is more revealing than I meant.
“Are people really not going to eat ice cream anymore if I’m the one making it?”
“Too soon to say, I think,” Sunani says quietly. “It’s going to take people time to process what they feel. I don’t know how much luck you’ll have today.”
“We,” I correct automatically.
Zan has gotten that difference between we and you or them under my skin.
Sunani doesn’t agree or disagree immediately, which makes me worry about how she’s feeling about sitting here with me. I didn’t mean to bully her into it, but maybe she felt like she couldn’t say no to me, which is the opposite of what I wanted—
“I think you’ve misunderstood how popular I am,” Sunani finally says. “People just want me for my looks. They don’t respect me. So having me at your side here... I don’t think it’s going to help you as much as you want.”
I remember how everyone in the meetings took notice any time Sunani spoke. Like the fact that she was speaking at all made her words more worth attending to.
“I think you might be wrong about that,” I say slowly, “but that’s not the main reason, anyway. Or constructing the booth.”
“I assumed it was to piss people off who will feel like they are entitled to me.”
Gods, she’s sharp. “I mean, yes, but in a more basic way it’s because if anyone gives you trouble they’ll find out what it’s like when they’ve pissed me off, and I was really looking forward to that.” I sigh. “Maybe I scared them off too hard at the meeting already. Annoying.”
Sunani studies me for a moment. “What exactly did Teren tell you about me?”
“Both too much and not enough,” I say wryly. “In retrospect I think he understood your strength as so obvious he didn’t think it bore mentioning.”
Sunani blinks, then shakes her head. “I’m not sure he’s aware of how I feel about... politics.”
Or him, she doesn’t say, but I hear it anyway.
“He may realize more than you’ve given him credit for,” I say. “But Teren did specifically say that he didn’t think it was fair to put you in more danger.”
“Then he definitely doesn’t understand enough,” Sunani snaps.
Oh ho! “Maybe you should tell him that.”
Sunani considers that. “Maybe.” Then she looks me in the eye and asks, “Did he tell you about my condition?”
The way she says that makes me think it’s not something we’ve been talking about.
I shake my head slowly.
“It’s not a secret,” Sunani says with a shrug. Wow am I beginning to hate that extremely normal gesture. “I have a chronic illness that is... manageable, now, but it will worsen over time. But it’s largely invisible to people.”
Well that provides some perspective. She knows that however much people want her for her beauty now, not only may they not stand with her once she gets older, she believes they’ll consider her a burden.