Chapter 40
Thealina
Sixty years in the past and Valandor’s still the same.
The same worn stones beneath my boots, the same cracked glass in the butchers’ window catching the late sun like a blade’s edge.
The streets carry the same smells: old smoke, salt from the docks, meat and the sourness of unwashed bodies in the tight alleys I pass by. It makes my stomach twist.
If only I’d got a room in the centre of town rather than by the docks, though those rooms were much cheaper coin.
Soon the bad smells wash away the closer I get to the café. The sourness of this hot day replaced by sweetness and caffeine.
I slip in like a shadow. The door groans: I guess they didn’t fix the hinges in this time either. No one looks up. Not when I step inside, not when I place my order and not when I take my usual seat outside in the corner.
Waiting.
Watching.
I’ve claimed this corner three days running now, and no one’s chased me off. Nor have I been able to spot Rafe, or Sam.
He doesn’t appear to have the routine here in 830 as he does in 890.
No coming to the café for morning coffee, nor for his evening beef and gravy roll.
My last option is to go into Rafe’s office and ask to see Sam.
I’d have played it that I was a lover of Sam’s and urgently need to speak with him, but that risks my future with Rafe, seeing as I meet him in Alarithia in 841.
The sun cuts low between the roofs and alley’s, painting the square in streaks of molten orange. Its low position so blinding I shade my eyes with my hand, blinking against the sharp glare.
The table rocks beneath my elbow, one leg shorter than the others, same as they are in my time. The heat sticks to the back of my neck, but I can’t remove my shawl, just in case.
One thing I’ve learnt about myself in the last few days here is I love to people watch. Folk are so fascinating. I sit, wondering what they do for coin, what their magic is, if they’re nice folk or awful, if they’re happy, or sad. Their desires and secrets.
Before I knew it, hours had gone by, and a burst of laughter snaps my head up. Sharp, bright, unguarded laughter. The kind of sound no one makes anymore.
It comes from a figure dropping into a chair two tables away, one hand slapping the table’s edge, the other tossing a coat over the back of his seat. Sun catches his hair, and when he turns, grinning at something said behind him, the weight in my chest anchors.
Sam.
The painting I found in Rafe’s box does not do him justice. He’s a beautiful boy, thick brown hair, wide smile with dimples, strong nose and kind, gentle eyes.
I’ve never heard his laugh before, but now I see why he was nicknamed Chuckles. Even when he’s not laughing his face holds so much genuine joy and humour.
My heart stutters—Rafe followed.
A slower, faint smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as he takes a seat across from his brother.
I miss him. I miss him so damn much, the urge to reach out and brush my hand across his skin is strong. He’s what… twenty-three here? Sam a couple years younger. They’re just boys, still full of so much innocence.
Rafe’s gaze drifts over the square. I tilt my head, letting my shawl slip lower, and stare down at the battered rim of my cup.
“Still breathing then, Chuckles,” Rafe says, his voice as low and rough as I recall.
Sam grins. “Against all odds, brother.”
The café boy drops two mugs on their table. Sam raises his in a quick salute and drinks. “Would’ve been here sooner, but Maren’s lot were setting traps for me.”
“Traps?”
“Women, Rafe.” Sam grins. “Beautiful, ruthless creatures. Can’t go six paces without one trying to steal my coin or my heart.”
“Neither worth much.”
Sam laughs again, a raw, bright thing that punches through the square like a bell roll.
It scrapes across something in me, not because I’ve known it, but because I haven’t.
Because this is what will be lost. Five days from now, the world will swallow that sound.
The stones at Sovo will drink his blood, and no one here will be any wiser.
They’ll still talk about women and drink and coin.
They’ll forget this laugh, this brightness.
Everyone except Rafe.
My nails bite into the wood of the table at the hollow knowledge of what comes next for these two boys. And the unbearable weight of sitting here while it’s still days away.
“Talking of women…”
“Give it a rest, Chuck.”
“Rafe come on, who’s going to keep you company while I’m gone.”
Rafe snorts, squinting as he looks to the sun.
“I just, um…” he squirms, scratching his jaw. “Just feel like I’m waiting for something. Someone. You know?”
My heart clenches. Me? Could it be his soul knows me before his mind.
“No,” Sam laughs. “No, I don’t Rafe. You know what they say, if you don’t use it, you lose it.” Sam jerks to his brother’s crotch, making Rafe sit up straighter and clear his throat. I roll my lips to smother my own snicker.
“You still leaving tomorrow?” Rafe asks, leaning back, boot hooked around the chair leg.
Leaving… tomorrow. Fuck.
“Mm,” Sam murmurs, fiddling with the rim of his cup. “Job down south. Hauling for Maren’s people.”
“Thought you wanted out from them.”
Sam shrugs. Casual and easy. “Pays well. Gives me a break from your hard ass.”
Rafe watches him with narrowed brows a beat longer than necessary.
He’s lying to you, Rafe. Press further and stop him using your name, then run off and let the dust settle.
The tension I can almost taste, but the marketplace hums on.
I steady my breathing and memorise the set of Sam’s shoulders, the cadence of his voice, the way Rafe’s brooding expression shifts around him. There won’t be many chances like this. If I fail, I’ll never know Sam, but I would like to.
I watch. I listen. I wait.
Rafe stands. The scrape of his chair against the stone louder than it should be. My fingers twitch with the urge to reach for him. He says something I don’t quite catch to Sam, claps a hand on his shoulder, and walks off toward the east side of the square.
I watch him go, my yearning heart trailing after him.
The way his broad shoulders move, the tilt of his head as he dodges a passing cart, the ripple of muscle in his legs as they move in long, sure strides. Gods, I miss him.
For a moment I forget the square, the sun, Sam and the dry taste of dust in my tongueless mouth, and I let myself watch him like a woman allowed to love him.
He turns the corner and vanishes. I press my palm flat against the table, grounding myself.
“I’m the better brother, you know.”
I peek up. Sam leans back in his chair, watching me with a crooked grin. One brow raised.
“Couldn’t help noticing you watching him.” He tips his chin toward where Rafe disappeared. “Common mistake. Handsome bastard, I’ll give him that. But it’s this way you should be looking.” He winks, full-toothed grin.
Sam is handsome indeed, but it’s my Rafe that truly stops me from noticing anyone else.
I keep my face half-hidden beneath my shawl, but it only seems to amuse him.
“Quiet type, are you?” His grin widens. “That’s ok, I’ve enough yap for the both of us, and lucky for you I’m all for the dark and mysterious.”
I let him look at me. It doesn’t matter if he thinks I’m pretty or strange or pitiful. All I need is a moment. A space away from watchful eyes and listening ears.
He rises to his full height, an inch or so shorter than Rafe, but I still need to crane my neck. He crosses the space to my table in two strides.
“Name’s Sam,” he says, resting a hand on the back of the empty chair opposite mine. “May I?”
I gesture, a slight wave of my palm. The none marked palm. I’ve yet to see his.
He props his elbows on the table, leaning in with a conspirator’s grin. “Most women in this town would rather throw a shoe at me than share a table. It’s my lucky day.”
Comical. I reach for my leather-bound book and quill in my Taka encased pouch. It still shocks me my idea worked, and I was able to travel with coin, small vial of linking serum, book and quill and some remaining Taka.
I scrawl a quick line that has Sam curious, then howling. I didn’t mean for it to be funny.
‘Liar.’
He reads it again. And laughs some more. It’s a beautiful sound, one that makes me smile till all my teeth are showing.
“Well, godsdamn,” he says, grinning and runs a hand through his thick brown hair. “Didn’t figure you for sharp. You look like a sweet little package wrapped up in more sweetness.”
I tilt my head. Quill ready.
‘I’m sharper than you look.’
Another burst of laughter.
“And cruel. Beautiful and cruel. Dangerous mix, ya know.”
The corner of my mouth twitches, not quite enough of a smile, but enough to egg him on and continue flirting with me.
Beautiful and cruel is never two words anyone has used for me, not that my courting list is extensive, but it does startle me how easy it was to slip into a different persona when no one knows me.
Or who I’m married to. Cruel and beautiful—I like that.
“Tell you what…” Sam leans in some more, his apple scented breath fanning my heated face. “You walk with me, and I’ll show I’m the brother worth the second glance.”
‘Reckless offer.’
“The only kind I make.”
I stand, tucking my book beneath my arm. He rises too, offering a half-mocking bow.
“Lead the way, silent one.”
As we leave the café, I notice how both of us keep our marked palms tucked away, mine beneath my shawl, his in his trouser pocket.
He’s none the wiser of who walks beside him.
The hum of the square fades to a dull thrum but Sam keeps talking, half to me, half to himself, stories about women, cards and near-misses with angry husbands, bragging about the time he supposedly outran the Watchkeeper force in nothing but a pair of boots and a stolen cloak.
It’s been a while since I dated or flirted but I’m sure one of the rules is you don’t talk about past lovers. Right? It’s all performance. It’s got to be. All armour. Someone pretending they aren’t afraid.
I let him talk.
At one point, he teasingly bumps his shoulder against mine as we turn a narrow corner leading to an alehouse.
“You’ve got dangerous eyes, you know that? Woman like you, a man could fall straight in and never find his way out.”
Your brother… hopefully.
Thinking of Rafe has a pit of longing growing deeper. And in this moment, all I want is his strong hands touching my naked flesh and his whispered words healing my heart.
I don’t write anything to Sam this time. I just look at him and let him feel it. His grin wavers, unguardedness flickers beneath his easy charm. It’s gone a moment later, replaced by the same cocky tilt of his mouth.
“Well,” he says, clapping his hands together, “you’ve let me waffle, but now I have to know what your story is.”
I let the silence stretch before linking my arm in his and head to the tucked-away alehouse. Low roof with a battered sign swinging above the door. The perfect kind of place no one remembers names in.
Soon, as the street narrows, winding like old veins through the town’s bones, and the world stops watching, I’ll give him the words he doesn’t know he’s running toward.