Chương 174: Chapter 170. New Plan

The boys gave themselves two more days before any of it had to begin. There was sense in it: the ship wanted provisioning, water and salt-meat and crates of the fruit that grew nowhere else, and Morgana's people saw to all of that with brisk hands. But mostly there was no sense in it at all, and that was rather the point. They had crossed half a world and heard the worst of what waited at the end of the road, and tomorrow's work would keep until tomorrow.

By a kind of unspoken agreement, the lot of them set the whole weight of it down for a while, and were simply where they were. And where they were turned out to be a very easy place to be. Ithrenaar in the morning light was almost unfair. The sea came in every shade of blue a sea had any business being, and a few it had no right to; the cliffs rose green and gold above the harbour; the air smelled of salt and citrus and someone's cooking always close at hand. Adom slept late, which he never did.

He ate too much, which he also never did. He found the frostpetal fizz the islanders drank against the heat, and a flatbread folded round grilled fish and a bright, sharp sauce that he made Sam try and then ate most of himself. On the second afternoon he got hauled into a game of Krozball on the hard sand below the walls — islanders, a few of Morgana's soldiers, Kafi grinning like it was a feast day — and he played like he hadn't let himself do in years. All of that for fun and the plain joy of the thing.

Karion held forth to whoever would stand still for it. Damus, of all people, learned to fish off the rocks, and was fiercely proud of the three he landed. Sam read in the shade and came out only to laugh at the rest of them. This, Adom thought, more than once. This was the thing he'd come back to live for. Not the saving of the world, but the fizz, the fish and his friends being idiots in the sun. Then it was the third morning, and it was time.

They gathered their few things and went down to the harbour, and Morgana came with them to see them off, though no running this time, and no honour guard. Just her, and Bedivere a pace behind, with the bright clean morning, and the ship at the quay with its sails already shaking loose.

"You're sure it has to be now?" Morgana asked.

"A week wouldn't cost the world much, all things weighed. And the company's been good." She gave a small shrug.

"We don't get a great deal of it out here."

"I wish we could." And he did.

"But there are classes waiting on me, and a stack of magus business that's only grown taller while I've been away. Can't be helped." He smiled.

"When this is behind us, though — when it's all settled — we'll come back and take that week. Take a month. As many as you can stand to host."

"Listen to you." Morgana's mouth curved.

"All grown up and responsible. Magus business." She shook her head.

"It feels like yesterday the worst worry in your life was packing on enough muscle down at the Combat Athletic Club." Adom laughed, and so did Sam.

"Good times," Adom said. And it reminded him he ought to look in on the old crowd soon. Hugo, Kaius, Phil, the rest of them; they'd all wound up under the Magisterium one way or another, and he'd let far too long go by.

"I'll send word," he told her.

"For real, this time. I think I've got a way to reach you." Her eyebrow rose.

"Have you? My home is not, you may have noticed, the easiest place in the world to post a letter."

"Wind elementals." He'd watched them ride in over the crossing.

"They can reach this place without the slightest trouble; I checked. And I've a friend who's an elementalist. I'll ask her to carry letters out to you on hers." There was a small pause, then..." Her," said Morgana.

"Her, is it?" said Karion, lighting up.

"Oohh," Sam agreed.

"She's a friend." Adom felt the ground going out from under him and kept talking anyway.

"An elementalist. She is not my girlfriend."

"Did anyone say girlfriend?" Karion asked the open air.

"I don't believe the word girlfriend was spoken."

"You were about to."

"Was I, though?"

"Regardless," Adom said, with what dignity he could gather, "I don't have a girlfriend." He looked round at all of them.

"And before this goes any further, not one of you does either, so let's all mind the stones we're throwing."

"Speak for yourself," said Damus, and everything stopped. Adom turned. Sam's mouth had come open. Karion had gone completely still.

"... I beg your pardon," Karion said." What?" Damus looked back at them, serene, and offered not one word more. He had the best card at the table and no intention of showing it. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"You can't just say that and—" Sam began.

"I can," Damus said, and adjusted his cuff.

"And I have." He didn't elaborate. He never would, in fact, however the subject was come at in the months that followed; but that was a problem for later mornings than this one. Bedivere's laugh broke first, that great rolling thing of his, and then Morgana was laughing too, the tiredness gone clean out of her face for a moment.

"God," she said, pressing the back of a hand to one eye." That. That's what I'll miss. The whole lot of you, carrying on—" she waved at the bickering tangle of them, "—I'd forgotten what it was even like, to have it around."

"Then we'll bring it back," Adom said.

"You don't get to build a place like this at the edge of the world and then complain that nobody visits." He waited a beat, then…

"You're not as far off as you think, Morg. Not anymore. We found you once. We'll keep finding you." It wasn't really enough for what he meant. But she seemed to have understood, so he left it at that.

"See that you do," she said. From the deck above, one of Lowe's men called down that the tide was with them and the wind sat fair, and they'd best be away while both still held. So that was that, then. Bedivere came forward and took Adom's hand in that walnut-cracking grip of his, one last time.

"When you see your father," he said.

"If the moment ever sits right for it; tell him the Papa's still above the ground. He'll know the name." There was an old fondness under the bluster as he said it.

"And tell him he turned out better than I ever beat him into expecting. He'll know what that means well enough."

"I'll pass it on," Adom said, chuckling at the nickname, and finding himself very much wanting to hear his father tell it"He'll be glad of it. More than glad." He added.

"He'd want to hear it from you himself, I think. When things are quieter."

"Aye. Perhaps he would. When things are quieter." Then Morgana stepped in front of them.

"Wait. Before you go." She lifted a hand.

"Let me look at you. Properly. You two especially—" Adom and Sam — "stand still a moment, and let me." They stood still. She looked at both of them, fixing them in her memory, taking in whatever it was she meant to carry off this dock and keep. Neither of them said a word. It didn't seem the moment for it. Then she pulled them in — both at once, an arm round each neck, the way she had the day they'd arrived — and held on.

"Next time we meet," she said against them, "I want it to be in peace, just like this. The two of you turning up out of the sea for no better reason than to be a nuisance." A breath.

"So take care of yourselves out there. Both of you, all of you. And whatever it costs, whatever you have to do—" her voice caught, but she didn't fight it, "—don't die. Please. Don't die on me."

"We'll do our best," Adom said.

"Do better than your best."

"... We'll do better than our best." She let them go. When she stepped back, her eyes had gone red at the rims, though her voice held steady, and she didn't trouble to pretend otherwise.

"Go on, then. Before I make fools of the lot of us." They went up the gangway. Lowe's crew cast off, the lines coming in wet and heavy, and the ship swung its nose toward open water and the veil beyond. Adom found himself a place at the rail. On the quay Morgana didn't wave. She only stood there with Bedivere and the two brothers and watched them go, getting smaller, the green cliffs and pale towers rising behind her, the blue of that sea widening between ship and shore.

She lifted a hand once, near the end, when they were almost too far to make out. Adom lifted his back. Then the harbour folded shut behind them — the veil drawing across it the same way it had drawn open, sky and water closing over the place as though it had never been there to find — and Ithrenaar was gone, and there was nothing ahead but grey sea. The boys stood still at the rail, and when the island was well gone, Adom found he couldn't put it off any longer.

"There's a thing I should say. Properly." He turned from the water to face them.

"I asked the three of you to come on this with me, and I told you it was for the company. That part was true." He hesitated a bit.

"It wasn't the whole of it." The others waited.

"Your families." He made himself say it plainly.

"If this goes the way it might — if it comes to standing Morgana up against the Emperor — then proof won't be enough on its own. She'll need houses behind her. Names with weight. And the three of you happen to come from three of the names that carry it." He grimaced.

"To be clear, I didn't bring you out here to use you. But I'd be lying if I said the thought never crossed my—""Adom." Karion lifted a hand.

"Stop talking and let me save you the speech." Adom stopped.

"For whatever it's worth, you have mine," Karion said.

"Not the house's to give yet, I know that, that's my father's word, not mine. But I know how the man thinks." There was none of his usual performance in it, only a plain certainty.

"He's a Dimitri to the bone, and there are two things he despises above all else in this world: being made a fool of, and a man who'd sell his own people. Lay proof in front of him that the Emperor's done both — sold Sundar's own subjects and murdered his brother to bury it — and you won't have to ask House Dimitri for a thing. We'll already be standing there."

"... Thank you," Adom said.

"Same from mine." Damus added.

"House Lightbringer doesn't move fast. Never has. But it doesn't forget an oath, and the old houses swore to the founding laws same as anyone: fratricide, the slaving statute, all of it." He leaned on a bar.

"My father will want the proof set in front of him twice over before he commits a single man. But once it's there, he commits all of them. I'd stake my name on it." He paused, as if realising something.

"I suppose I'm staking it already, just by being here." Satisfied, Adom turned to Sam, who had gone quiet and was already shaking his head before Adom could get a word out.

"Don't look at me like that. I'm not a lord." Sam pushed his glasses up.

"My family sells things. Very well, and for a great deal of money… but we sell things. We're not sworn to any founding law, we don't owe the crown an oath, and I'm not the head of the house, my father is. I can't stand here and hand you the Harbinskys the way these two can pledge their banners." He said it flatly, which was unlike him.

"And merchants don't think in oaths anyway. They think in ledgers. Which way the wind's about to blow, and how to be standing on the right side of it when it does."

"I know," Adom said.

"I wasn't going to ask you to—""I'm not finished." A dry flicker of a smile, very Sam this time.

"Because when it comes to ledgers, the day there's hard proof the Emperor's been selling his own people to slavers; the day that's out, and the houses start to move, and anyone with sense can see how it ends?" He looked at Adom.

"No one on this earth changes tables faster than a rich man who's just watched the safe money get up and walk. My father first of all. When it comes to light, the Harbinsky house will know precisely where to place its coin. I know exactly how he counts." Adom observed the three of them, and felt the weight he'd been carrying since the breakfast table ease by a fraction.

"Thank you," he said.

"All of you. Truly."

"Don't go sentimental," Karion said.

"It doesn't suit you." And that was the end of it. The wind held fair, the ship came round, and they set their course back across the long grey miles toward Arkhos.