“I have oft noted that a man’s stupidity increases

directly in proportion to his anger.”

from the journal of Scanlin Ross, First Sword in Tyrian, Believer

He ran. He did not forget; he did not feel much better for the effort, but he ran nonetheless. Not away, but, to some degree, from.

Lian’s acute perception burned like a flame at Aralt’s heels. Distance, he thought, jogging on with two swords impeding his progress, he wanted—no, needed—some distance. When the pearly beach collided with upthrust rock, he stood panting in the warm sun, staring at the towering formations dotted with fisher birds. Crashing waves and winter’s chilling ice cut further and further into the sea stacks each year, whittling them into grotesque caricatures of their former selves. Here, where water had long since cleaved the shore, the Kosantyr—six towering monoliths—stood, lonely sentinels guarding the eastern shore of the inland sea the locals called Loch Bethu. Turning away from the lake, Aralt climbed steep, sandy trails into the forest, alert to a myriad of wildlife scattering before him. The sun was high overhead by the time he reached a familiar secluded glade and found Scanlin waiting for him. His First Sword’s mare was tethered nearby, her coat a patch of smoke amid red and green spring leaves.

“Matarel’s glistening ba—”

“Deep peace to ye, too, Aralt.”

“Listen, Grey…”

“’Tis rare a day I tell ye to shut yer great gob, Tremayne, but this be the day. Ye been hours away. The entire company is twistin’. Russ is blatherin’ about a trip underside a fishin’ boat, Deyr has a mind he’s to be packed off to live on a glacier, we’ve all but bound Lian to a chair to keep him from comin’ after ye, and Cori Jame don’t know what to make o’ the whole affair. A fine thing it is to force a woman o’ the faith to defy the next Kavistra o’ Askierran.”

“Did you really just tell your commanding officer to shut up?” Aralt asked, letting both scabbards down into the grass.

“Nay. I told a foolish git that looks a trifle like him.”

Aralt shook the sweat from his hair, slicking it back with both hands. His shirt was plastered to his soaking back, and his breeches hugged his thighs as he bent forward to draw breath. He ran his tongue over parched lips. “You know me well enough to know I’ll return when I’m ready.”

“Thought I did.” Scanlin eyed him thoughtfully before tossing him a canteen. It was still cold. “What fool o’ a commander did ye have to not learn ye dinnae gae off without water?”

Aralt drank deeply.

Scanlin stretched out his legs, leaned back against the silver-striped maple beneath which he sat, and drew a wooden whistle from a pocket. His fingers flew as he ran up and down a scale. He held the low note a moment before speaking again. That was Scanlin. Think first, then act. “Ye been someone other than yerself since Lian came. Especially since the Feast o’ Light.”

“He knocked a Shirahnyn skyship out of the sky!”

“We dinnae see that.”

“We saw what he did last night,” Aralt countered. “You saw what he did. And that isn’t all you’ve seen.”

When Scanlin did not respond right away, Aralt snorted in disgust. Anger he had tried to expel swarmed him like angry wasps.

“If ye mean the scar, aye, I saw it.”

“You must have seen it back in Sylvan. The night he came, while I was…” Running away. He gritted his teeth. “And I suppose Perryn knew as well?”

More slowly. “Aye.”

“And that’s it? By the Seven, Scanlin, I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. That he endured that…sweet…saints and sinners!” Aralt looked around for something to kick. “I should have been told immediately.”

Scanlin lifted an eyebrow. “Should ye then?”

“Don't play games with me, Grey. I’m not in the mood. We thought he was dead and now we learn—”

“I’m not playin’ ‘games’ and ’twas ye thought him dead.” Scanlin’s words cut with the precision of a surgeon’s blade.

“There was never any evidence to the contrary!” And ever so much more to suggest that he had perished, leaving Aralt with cherished memories seared by pain, a bundle of letters, and a captured image of his kervallys in a frame no larger than his thumb. He had left it with his mother. She was better at keeping memories alive than he was.

“Precisely who are ye tryin’ to convince here, Wolf? Sweet Mercy, man, ye needs settle what ails ye, and in a hurry. Ye been a long time healin’ after all that’s happened to ye, but I haven’t seen ye this irascible in years.”

Aralt ignored the comment, focused as he was on the taut line of an ugly, wriggling truth. “We couldn’t find him after he was taken from Kyrrimar, he turns up here, and you found it convenient not to mention that somewhere along the way he had been diced up by a pissing Shirahnyn. What else haven’t you told me? You talk to him all the time. What?”

“Convenience had nae part in it,” Scanlin told him, an unmistakable edge in his low voice. It wasn’t like him to use that tone. It wasn’t like either of them, not talking to one another. “It wasn’t ‘convenient’ the first time I was asked to hold me tongue in such a matter and, I assure ye, it was nae easier this time.”

The first time was Aralt, a dozen years before. He had implored Scanlin not to tell Commander Glynn the extent of his injuries for fear his father would be informed, he would be recalled home, his military apprenticeship brought abruptly to an end. More, his bid for youthful independence stolen. His skin prickled at the memory.

“That was different.” Every muscle in his body felt like an overturned screw. He stomped away from his First Sword, kicking his way through the long grass. He needed to regain composure and could afford a display of petulance with this man. A silver shadow darted between trees at his right, beckoning. Kaio.

He had not gone far when he heard Scanlin’s gentle reply. “Aye, it was.”

And Scanlin had risked his own military career, not to mention his honor, to keep the secret as long as he had.

“Then why?” Aralt asked, letting go of balled fists. He lifted his gaze to above the tree line, at the broad expanse of rosy sky knitting shower-bearing clouds. Anywhere except Scanlin’s compassionate face. The flash of anger had gone, but Aralt could sense it still. Crouching nearby. “Why didn’t you tell me?” He was not prepared for the answer.

“He required it o’ me.”

Aralt could not miss the significance of Scanlin’s phrasing.

He probed at a sore shoulder as he circled the glade, the tall grass waving about his knees. He glimpsed the kaio—no, two kaio—partly concealed in the sheltering undergrowth. There would be no threat of slitherdogs in this place. He retrieved the swords and put them on a flat bed of clover and tangled yellowbuds near Scanlin and sat now. “Is that why you didn’t sign the roster? A shift in allegiance? You should have just told me.” He would no more keep Scanlin from service to the Kynseis than he would Tevin.

Scanlin fingered his whistle, as if practicing a tune. “If e’er I’ve gi’en ye reason to question me ultimate allegiance, I am truly sorry.”

His First Sword raised the slender pipe and piped a fitting accompaniment to his last words. The lyrics came back to Aralt in a rush of memory.

Surely it is God who saves me

I will trust in Him and not be afraid…

Aralt ground his heels into the dirt. “You expect me to believe that Lian’s Creator didn’t want me to know about what happened to him? I thought being his kervallyn had its privileges.” The words sounded peevish, but it was too late to retract them.

“I’m tellin’ ye Lian Kynsei dinnae want it told, though why, ye’ll have to put to him. ’Twas nae an idle request.”

“Nothing he says seems to be.”

“Peace, Aralt.”

“Peace yourself, Grey. Lian commands more power and more respect than he knows what to do with.” More than he even wants.

“He’s kavistra…” Scanlin said, shrugging slightly. He shook his peppered head as if Aralt were a very dense child. That was happening more often.

“He could be kavistra,” Aralt corrected. “You of all people should recognize the difference between kavsa and kavistra.”

“Oh, I do. Make no mistake. And I tell ye, he is the kavistra. Now. Whether either one o’ ye quite kens it or nae. Sweet Creator, Aralt, even in his weakest moments—and I’ll grant ye, he’s shown us that side o’ him—he walks with the Spirit in a way I envy! Cannae ye see that?”

Aralt looked away. What did he see? He ran his thumb along his scabbard. Tooled knotwork guided his hand to the hilt around which he wrapped his hand. That he could trust. Not vague notions. Scanlin was waiting for an answer. Aralt did not suppose his First Sword was going to like the one he was prepared to give.

“You want to know what I see? What I really see? I see an immature, secretive, foolhardy, hypersensitive boy that can turn me inside out with a blink of one of his big black eyes.”

The words could have been tantamount to heresy for the look on Scanlin’s face. He blinked in astonishment, and wrinkles Aralt had only lately noticed deepened.

“You may find him a bastion of ‘deep peace,’ but I find him thoroughly…” he stopped mid-sentence, clambering to his feet. Lian. Just beyond the perimeter of his senses. Approaching.

He searched the glade, listening, hating the thought that Lian Kynsei could stroll in unannounced and unnoticed, the way he had multiple times in Sylvan. Worse, he had escaped Sirram’s watch—again. He might as well put Deyr in charge of the boy for all the luck he was having with those he deemed more responsible. A flash of silver on the periphery of his vision alerted him to the movement of the kaio, but no sign of Lian. Yet…

“Wolf.”

Scanlin must have repeated his name more than once to have landed on such a low note. His First Sword was also on his feet, whistle tucked into his vest pocket, sword slid halfway from its weathered scabbard. Crushed clover dotted his breeks. The well-curried smoke-grey mare behind him flicked a tufted ear forward, back, then returned to stripping tender leaves from a Fergus beech.

“What’s eatin’ ye now, man?”

Aralt spun to face him, hugging himself tightly. His shirt clung to his sweaty torso. The sun had passed behind increasing clouds, leaving him chilled. “Can’t you feel that? Can’t you tell he’s around here somewhere? Watching us.” Watching me.

Scanlin shook his head slowly, his hair shifting from white to brown in the cloud-filtered sunshine. “’Tis the kyth o’ kin, I reckon. The oneness o’ spirit. The touch on your soul, not mine. They gave that gift to ye, Endru and Liana did.”

“Would that I could give it to you,” Aralt muttered in reply. And not for the first time in his life.

A wave of sadness passed briefly over Scanlin’s face, but he relaxed, buckling his scabbard on his belt. “If Lian’s comin’, I’ll leave ye to it an’ gae find out what our lad did to escape from Telta and Sirram. Unless ye have need o’ me?”

Don’t you dare leave me here alone! But this was his battle. His duty. And, if he was going to choke on his own boot, yet again, he did not need an audience. He watched as his First Sword mounted, moving the aged mare across the glade to the level foot trails leading back to Bethulyn.

Aralt called after him, “How did he even know where to find us?”

“I suggest ye ask him. But,” Scanlin said, reining his mare to a half-halt before moving on, “seems to me ye don’t really want to ken the answer to that question yet.”

* * *