Chương 171: Chapter 167. Reunion

Morgana came round the last of the stone at a dead run. Adom had half a heartbeat to take her in before she reached them. Dark hair longer than he remembered, pulled back out of the way; the blue eyes; and under the fine coat, a faint silver tracery, running down both forearms. She'd grown into herself entirely.

There was a whole country in the way she carried herself now; even like this, even sprinting across a quay like a girl half her age, having clearly thrown over whatever dignified welcome she'd planned the instant the ship came into view. Then she hit both Adom and Sam at once.

She got an arm around each of their necks and pulled, with real strength in it — more than there had any business being, given the size of her — so that Adom and Sam were hauled down and into her and more or less folded together, the three of them staggering on the stone." Look at you!" she said, laughing, her voice cracking on it.

"Look at the both of you! What — what happened?"

"Hi, Morg," Sam managed, muffled against her shoulder.

"You're enormous. Both of you. It's absurd!" She pulled back far enough to hold them at arm's length, gripping a shoulder of each, looking from one to the other and plainly not believing it.

"I left two scrawny boys in Arkhos. Scrawny. And now—" She reached up, and she did have to reach now, which seemed to delight and offend her in equal measure, and shoved a hand roughly through Adom's hair, white streak and all.

"Now I have to climb you. When did you get the right to be this tall? Who said?"

"It mostly happened on its own," Adom said." Mostly." She rounded on Sam, mussed his hair too, knocked his glasses sideways, ignored the protest entirely.

"And you. Taller than me. Sam. You were a foot of nerves and spectacles last I saw you."

"I'm still mostly that," Sam said, straightening his glasses.

"Just taller." She laughed again, helpless with it, and pulled them both back in, one under each arm, and for a moment said nothing at all, only held on.

"It's good to see you," she said at last, quieter.

"Both of you. You've no idea." Morgana was the nearest Adom had ever come to knowing what an older sister might be; and growing up, he hadn't often had cause to wonder. Neither he nor Sam had ever quite known what to do with their emotions running high, and they knew it least of all just now, with a whole delegation drawn up and watching and Bedivere a pace off and half her court ranged along the quay.

He could feel Sam beside him doing the same arithmetic he was: that they were men grown, and guests, and that flinging themselves at her the way some part of them wanted to would look like exactly that: children mobbing an older sister. So they held themselves in. Stood straight. Let her do the climbing-over while they bore it with as much dignity as two men could who were being thoroughly mussed in front of an audience. Under the held breath, though, he was simply glad.

Glad she was here, and that she was whole, safe and laughing, after years of nothing but second-hand word that she still lived. It was strange, to feel so much off so little. They'd had only a few months of her before she left; a single season, set against a whole life. And yet those few months had fixed something between the three of them that all the years since had failed to wear thin. A lifetime's belonging, struck in a handful of weeks. He had never been able to explain it, and had long since stopped trying."

Ahem." That was Bedivere. A pace off, hands folded and patient as a mountain, though the cough had been deliberate, and it landed. The sound reached Morgana, and Adom watched her begin to put herself back together. The warmth didn't leave her; it folded away behind a straighter, cooler composure, the sovereign returning to her spine a vertebra at a time, until the girl who'd sprinted across the stone was gone, and the woman who'd built all of this stood in her place.

Before she let go, though, she caught a cheek of each of them between thumb and finger and pinched, then grinned at their matching winces." There," she said.

"Now behave." Then she released them, drew herself up, and turned to the other two, and the change was finished. Her gaze settled on Damus first, taking his measure.

"Young lord Lightbringer. A long way from your father's halls." She inclined her head slightly.

"I keep an eye on the company these two keep. A Lightbringer at their side wasn't a name I looked to find there. Be welcome."

"The honour's mine, Your Highness." Damus bowed his head, grave as ever.

"I've seen a little of what you've built; on the way in." A flick of his eyes toward the walls, the towers, the long rows of cannon.

"It is quite impressive." She had the ghost of a smile.

"It had better. It cost enough." Then she came to Karion, and her mouth curved.

"And a Dimitri at his shoulder. Your house and mine have stood on opposite fields before now." She put out her hand.

"It troubles me not at all. You came; that's the whole of what counts with me." Karion took the hand.

"Gosh… you're so beauti— Ow!" Damus's elbow caught him in the ribs.

"—iful island," Karion finished, a full octave higher than he'd started.

"Beautiful island. That you have. Here. Which I am. Looking at." He appeared to hear himself. His ears went red.

"Your Highness. It is an honour. I'll stop talking now." This was frankly a thing to behold, because Karion was, by some distance, the most successful of them where women were concerned: easy, polished, never once at a loss that Adom had witnessed. In all the years Adom had known him, the only woman ever to leave him flat-footed had been Naia, who had since gone on to become an ambassador for the Tirajin, which made her nearly as hard to get an audience with these days as Gus. So this was new.

Morgana let the silence sit just long enough to be merciful, then took pity.

"This is flattering," she said, with no apparent mockery anywhere in the smile she gave him.

"And rare, I think. A Dimitri lost for words; I shall have it noted in the annals." She moved on before he could decide whether that helped.

"Be welcome, all of you. While you stand under my roof you'll be treated as what you are: my brothers' family. Which makes you mine." Hearing her call him a brother, out loud and in front of everyone, was a good thing to feel, Adom thought. Morgana glanced toward the younger of the two men who'd come down with the guard.

"Kafi, would you see their crew and the others looked after? Food, drink, somewhere to rest their legs. They've had a long crossing."

"On it," Kafi said. Then, instead of going, he stayed exactly where he was, looking at Adom. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. Morgana caught it and her expression softened.

"Oh, forgive me. Adom, this is Kafi. And the tall one trying so hard to look unbothered is his brother, Raz." Raz gave a short nod when their eyes met, which Adom returned with a smile.

"Kafi is a great admirer of yours," Morgana went on, plainly enjoying herself.

"We get the Sundar papers out here, eventually, months late and half of them missing. He read every line that ever ran about you. The Ghost of Arkhos." She chuckled.

"I believe at one point the plan was to extract an autograph from you and, conditions permitting, a Krozball lesson."

"Princess…" Kafi said, going red. But Adom was already grinning, and stuck out his hand.

"Both of those can be arranged," he said.

"It's nice to meet you, Kafi. And the lesson stands; I'll hold you to it." Kafi shook his hand like it might come off.

"I… yeah. Yes! Thank you, mister Ghost!" He seemed to decide that was a high enough note to leave on, and went.

The tea was, as promised, very good. Better than that, in fact. Adom went back for a third cup and would have been embarrassed about it if Morgana hadn't looked so thoroughly vindicated each time he did. It was floral and dark at once, with something underneath it he couldn't place and didn't want to, the kind of thing he'd have happily spent an afternoon trying to take apart. He told her as much, and she looked insufferably pleased. And then the afternoon simply went.

They spent hours at it, the lot of them, doing nothing more useful than filling in the years. Where everyone had ended up. Who'd grown into what. The stories got retold and corrected and embellished and corrected again. Sam came out of his shell by degrees, the way he always did once the room was small enough; Karion recovered his composure enough to be charming, and then funny, and at no point made any further reference to the island being beautiful. Morgana laughed more than Adom had ever seen her laugh.

Nobody mentioned the thing they had crossed half a world to discuss. Not once. It sat in the corner of the room, and every one of them knew it was there, but by some unspoken agreement they all decided it could keep until morning. There was time. For one evening, there was time. It was late when Adom finally felt the weariness catch up with him: the crossing, the veil, the long strange day of it, all arriving at once.

Morgana saw it before he said anything, and called the day to a halt like the good host she was, and they were shown up through the quiet house to their rooms. His was simple and clean, a window open to the sound of the sea. He was asleep almost before he'd decided to be. And he slept the whole night through, dreaming of nothing at all.

Morning came slowly, and by the sea. Adom surfaced into it by degrees, aware first of the sound of waves, then a breeze came through the open window and moved across his face, as he lay there a while with his eyes closed and let it, in no hurry to be anywhere. Then he noticed the breeze was not the only thing on his face. There was a warmth to it. And weight. With a wet drag from jaw to temple that paused, and then came again, unmistakably, a tongue. That ought not to be happening.

So Adom opened his eyes, and found a great deal of black filled his vision, and out of it, very close, two luminous green eyes regarded him with mild interest. The puma, as he realized a second later, did not stop licking. It lay across him in its entirety, its head lowered to his, its breath hot and faintly fishy, and having got his attention it simply went on grooming him as though this were a long-settled arrangement between them. Adom held very still.

You're not Morgana, he said, into the quiet space behind speech, are you? The huge head jerked up, green eyes going wide, and the whole vast body of it went rigid where it lay. How is a human doing this? I'm a druid, Adom said. It lets me talk to most things. My name's Adom. The puma considered him from very close range, the surprise in its eyes cooling into open curiosity. A low rumble started deep in the great chest and traveled down through Adom's ribs. Ragna, it said at last, with evident pride.

I am called Ragna. It is a name nature gave me. Adom smiled. Nice to meet you, Ragna. Then he shifted, and got precisely nowhere; the animal hadn't budged a hair. Would you mind very much getting off me? You're heavier than you look, and you look extremely heavy. Ragna held his gaze a moment longer, as though weighing whether the request merited compliance. Then he rose, unhurried, gathering all that black weight up off the bed in one fluid motion, and sat back on his haunches to watch what the human would do next.

Adom sat up, swung his legs off the bed, and got to his feet with a groan that was mostly satisfaction. He stretched until something in his spine popped, rolled his shoulders, and felt better than he had in weeks. The bed had been kind to him. So had the silence. So what's your story, Ragna? He padded over to the window and leaned into the morning. I didn't expect to find midnight pumas this far out. Your kind keep to the deep forests, last I knew. Long way from home, no? Ragna's tail moved once across the floor.

I was taken from it as a cub, he said. Men with nets and chains, who killed those of my blood that fought them and sold the rest. I passed through many cages. The green eyes settled on Adom. Then a woman opened the last one. She had been in a cage herself, once. We understood each other. So I stayed.

"Huh," Adom said quietly. It was a simple word, but it meant several things at once. He was turning that over when the door opened. A young servant stepped in with a tray and a brisk good-morning half-formed on his lips, took in the enormous black shape sitting in the middle of the floor, and stopped as though he'd walked into glass.

"Master Sylla, I am so sorry. He must have slipped past the guard." He looked ready to throw himself bodily between Adom and the cat, tray and all.

"Are you hurt? Did he do anything?"

"Oh, no. No, it's fine, truly." Adom crossed the room, hands raised, gentling the man as much as the situation.

"He's a friend. We've been getting acquainted all morning. No harm done, I promise; he was a perfect gentleman about it." The servant looked from Adom to Ragna and back, and some of the terror drained out of him, replaced by plain relief.

"... Right. Of course. Thank you, sir." He recovered himself, straightened the tray.

"The others have gone down to breakfast, and it's being laid now, a few minutes yet. Unless you'd sooner take yours up here? I can bring whatever you like."

"No, thank you, I'll come down. I've been horizontal long enough." Adom smiled at him.

"And thank you; for the worry, and the tray. I appreciate it." The walk down was easy, the house bright and salt-aired around him as he followed the smell of breakfast and the sound of voices to a long room open on one side to the sea. The others were already at the table. Bedivere too, a teacup looking faintly absurd in one enormous hand.

"Morning, everyone."

"Hey," Sam said, glancing up.

"Good mor— oh, shit!" Ragna padded in at Adom's heel, unbothered, and swept the laden table with a slow gaze. As for Morgana, she took one look and laughed.

"I see you've met Shadowpaw." Adom paused, halfway into a chair.

"... You call him Shadowpaw?"

"I do. Have done for years." She raised an eyebrow.

"Why?"

"He told me his name's Ragna."

"He told you?" Morgana set down her cup.

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"I've gotten good at druidism." Adom settled into the seat.

"Most animals don't have much to say, but creatures like him aren't most animals. Midnight pumas carry their own magic, and an intelligence to match it. They know who they are." That earned the cat a long, reassessing look. She tried the name out, careful with the shape of it.

"Ragna." Ragna's head came round at once, ears forward, the green eyes fixing on her. There was no mistaking the recognition in it. Morgana stared.

"... Huh. He's never answered to Shadowpaw like that. Not once, in all this time." She looked at Adom, half accusing.

"You're here one night and he's already telling you his secrets?"

"Druid thing," Adom said, dropping into the seat.

"The names we hand them aren't always the ones they carry. He answered to Shadowpaw because it came with food, most likely."

"It did rather," she admitted, and reached down to scratch the cat behind one ear, murmuring the true name to him again like a small apology. Ragna leaned into it and rumbled, magnanimous in victory. Breakfast was, like the tea, a quiet act of showing off. Fruit Adom didn't recognise and bread still warm and half a dozen things from the sea, all of it good, the morning light coming off the water and filling the room. Sam relaxed. Karion held forth.

Damus, who Adom had half expected to stay buttoned up among strangers, instead got Bedivere talking shop — old campaigns, a swordsman's questions — and listened to the answers like a man storing them away. Bedivere also told a story about Arthur that Adom had never heard, and the old knight's laugh filled the room just like it had filled the quay. It was easy. For an hour it was simply, uncomplicatedly easy, and Adom let it be, enjoying it for exactly what it was. But an hour was an hour.

And somewhere in the lull after it, with the plates cleared and the tea poured a second time, Adom felt the weight of the thing they'd all been so careful with the day before settle quietly back onto the table. He didn't have to raise it. Morgana felt it land the same moment he did; he watched her notice. She turned her cup a half-circle on its saucer, and when she spoke the ease had gone out of her voice.

"All right," she said.

"You didn't cross an ocean for my tea, good as it is." Her eyes went to Adom.

"Ask." So he did.

"Your father," he said gently.

"Your family. What really happened to them? And to you?" Morgana was quiet. Then she looked, not at Adom, but at Bedivere, beside her. The old knight met her eyes, and gave a single slow nod, then she turned back to Adom.

"I was about seven years old when it happened," she said.