As tempting as it had been to return to the beach and avoid Lian altogether, Aralt positioned himself on a fallen mock hickory and waited.

It took longer than anticipated, but at last Lian’s huff of labored breath reached his ears as the boy crested the hill on the beachside of the glade and tromped into view. Aralt mentally added “unpredictable” to his earlier list. The long walk had turned Lian’s upturned nose pink, and his black hair drooped in limp strands around his equally sunburned face. He had not changed his clothes, and Aralt could see the ugly line of coarse black thread that knotted the torn fabric of his blue shirt back together. Poor Susa’s handiwork. He hoped the surgeon had used something more appropriate on the boy himself, if stitches had been required at all. Lian halted before him, blackened staff thrust forward like a kavistra’s ornate, heartwood kavistath. Aralt sighed. Behold the winded prophet. Behold the hope of the nation.

Between breaths, the boy apologized profusely and with great ceremony for the morning’s fiasco. “My error in judgment was inexcusable,” he finished at last, bowing deeply. “For that, I am truly sorry and seek your forgiveness.”

Aralt grunted as he rose, thinking wickedly about heading back to the city the same way Lian had just come. Instead, he told the boy, “You and Deyr have something in common.”

Lian hesitated. “And that would be?”

“You’re both lousy liars.”

Lian uttered an indignant squeak. “I am not lying. I am sorry. I shouldn’t have used your brother’s sword, and I certainly shouldn’t have taken it from Russ.”

“Yet you did.”

“I—uh—thought it was mine at first.”

“Yours? You mean the one you reTuned?”

Lian nodded, thrusting his free hand into a trouser pocket. He poked at yellowbuds with the toe of one boot, averting his gaze. “When I realized it wasn’t…it was too late. Russ was adamant about the exorcism. I didn’t understand what he meant about ‘spooks’ at first. I don’t understand half of what he says, and I can speak most of the Kierran dialects and several other languages to boot. He’s an addle-brained addict. I don’t know why you tolerate it.”

“You,” Aralt shook a finger at him, closing his hand into a fist as he realized how much like his mother he must look just then. “You seem to think you can change the subject anytime you see fit not to answer.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

Cheeky. Aralt grumbled under his breath. There was a reason he did not work with cub warriors and young apprentices. The only adolescent he had ever tolerated the company of was his own brother. Devailyn Kynsei was a close second. “More to the point, you have no business sparring with anyone. Your parents made that clear to me when you were hip-high and they caught us having a battle with palm branches. They said you were going to be a healer, not a soldier.”

“They didn’t know me very well yet.”

“They didn’t have to,” Aralt told him, fumbling for the right words. “They just…knew. Because…”

“Because they were my parents?”

“Because they were, and you were—are—soul-touched.” Whatever the jig that meant. Aralt wasn’t sure anymore. Lian brought a whole new definition to the word.

“Everyone has my life all planned out. When am I going to get a say?”

You’re the last Kynsei standing, Aralt wanted to tell him. You don’t get a say. And, he had to admit, he would hate being told that, too. He had also lately promised the boy that he could go and be whatever he wished and Aralt would defend his decision to do so. He hoped he hadn’t spoken out of turn.

“About that sword—”

“We’re due back at Bethulyn,” Aralt said as he snagged his swords and headed toward the beach. “End of discussion.”

“But—”

“I told you, we are not having this conversation.” He regretted it the moment he said it. He might as well have donned a placard advertising his desire to argue at all costs.

“But why? My parents aren’t here to object. I mean, I wish they were here. More than anything I wish they were here. But they aren’t. You are and you’re a warrior. You can teach me. Or let Scanlin teach me. He taught you, didn’t he? I’m a fast learner. Watch me. I practiced with Valryn the summer I spent at Linishael—for sport,” Lian added quickly, hurrying to keep pace. He seemed eager to continue his education. “Mostly staves. Well, brooms.”

“Your parents would not have approved,” Aralt found himself saying, and Lian lowered his eyes, the smile slipping away. “Neither would mine. You and Valryn cooked that up between you, and you’re lucky you weren’t found out.” Young Valryn had probably appreciated Lian’s friendship in the absence of an elder brother he knew scarcely more than Lian did, but what Aralt remembered of his fire-tempered youngest brother suggested an ill-matched pair.

“It was just for sport,” Lian muttered. We hardly ever got hurt.

“Hardly?”

“My arm wasn’t even broken…”

Aralt puffed out his cheeks and kept walking. Lian and Valryn sparring in secret at Linishael in Leyth. That scandal could have rocked Askierran into the sea. Oh, Aralt had vivid enough memories of his father sparring with Endru Kynsei with quarterstaffs and knew full well that was how the two had met as youths. Everyone knew that story. Tall, enigmatic Endru, lately arrived with his mother from some Sea-Lords-only-knew island, had bested Fharyl in a contest, knocking the younger boy on his arse. Sported, yes. The idea of Endru using a weapon for war was ridiculous. Rumor had it he had done so once as a young man during the war between Raemynn and Kitheria, but it compromised the entire premise that gave a kavistra authority.

“Kynseis carry no weapons.” It had long been his understanding they needed none, and Lian’s recent demonstrations added credence to that. But Devailyn…

Yes, that’s it exactly! If only you knew…

“Flame and ice, boy. Don’t do that,” Aralt snapped, glancing around. His earlier blunder left him feeling vaguely self-conscious. A flash of silver fur just beyond his line of sight reminded him they were not alone. Not that the kaio would betray their conversation. Tree growth dwindled at the edge of the dune, and he dug into the crumbling hillside with his heels as he descended to the beach. “If only I knew what?”

“I can’t even explain it,” Lian told him, bracing himself with his staff as he followed Aralt down the hill.

“You could try.” When that failed to elicit a response, Aralt shifted tactics again. A fine game of King’s Peg, this. No, a poor game, he decided. Neither of them was winning. And so much remained at stake. “Where’d the Shirahnyn knife come from?”

The boy slid to a stop, plopping on his backside in the sand. A trickle of a landslide issued from underneath him as he scooted the rest of the way down the hill. As if his best set of clothes wasn’t already ruined.

“Come on, come on. I saw it last night,” Aralt said, gesturing to where the boy’s trouser leg had pulled out of his boots; the concealed sheath now lay exposed.

Lian swallowed deeply, retrieving the palm-sized crystal blade from its hiding place. He handed it to Aralt, again avoiding eye contact.

“Blood crystal. And good blood crystal at that,” Aralt commented, inspecting the short, narrow blade in the waning sun. The knife reminded him of the red crystal pegs that had held him down after lonn Tirehl’s men had captured him years before, when a routine courier’s mission became anything but. A brutally strong crystal, malleable as marathis, but with no song he had ever perceived. The Shirahnyn favored it for construction. Even the skeletons of their greatest airships were spun-crystal. “Uncommon stuff north of the archipelago. Where’d you get it?”

“I found it.”

Liar.

“All right,” Lian conceded. “A friend gave it to me.”

“A friend? You mean a Shirahnyn friend?” You mean the man you set loose in Sylvan.

“Didn’t,” the boy bit back, then snapped his mouth shut.

“Did he give you the scar on your chest, too?”

“No!”

Aralt winced. That had been unfair of him, and they both knew it. He concentrated on the faintly glowing crescent of one moon just discernible above the clouded horizon. A spring storm was brewing over the lake. Still no answer. He tossed the knife into the sand. Lian’s hand closed around it instantly.

“Do you realize Russ could have skinned you alive and not realized it until all that was left was your bones?”

“Aye, k’talyn,” the boy answered with painful formality, eyes again downcast. Aralt hated it. It made him look like a beaten Shirahnyn slave. He had seen too many of those in his travels. Boys younger than Lian scurrying around grand estates. Boys that were supposed to be grateful they had not been abandoned at the Infant Gate in whichever city they had been born.

“Did Perryn see that scar when we were at Sylvan Keep?” He already knew the answer, but put Lian on the spot. He wanted the truth, bitter brew that it was.

“Aye, k’talyn.”

“And Scanlin?”

A longer pause. “Aye…k’talyn.”

“And you asked them not to tell me. Why?” Did the boy not think he cared? That he wouldn’t understand. That he was the only one that would.

Lian scrubbed at his face with his hands. He stood up and brushed himself off. “I don’t know. I just…I don’t know. I was confused and I was frightened. I was going to tell you. When I was ready.” When you were ready.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Huh?”

“You said I, but you meant you…”

“I didn’t say that,” Lian squeaked.

“You didn't have to!”

They stood, staring at one another, Aralt’s heart beating hard in his chest. He flicked a lock of hair from his eyes. Lian’s face was red with more than the afternoon sun. Above them, thunder rolled low and long like timpani. Fisher birds scattered from their rocky thrones high in the sea stacks, and a shiver of air stirred the sand.

“You should have told me,” Aralt said carefully, struggling to keep his words and emotions in check. Time spun widdershins and he was face-to-face with his father, Fharyl’s strong, kind face awash with tears as he tried to comfort his angry, humiliated son. Aralt had rejected his compassion. Had rejected them all. And yet his father’s words returned to him as surely as the waves of Loch Bethu rushed along the shore. “It…it wasn’t your fault, Lian. Did you think I would be angry with you?”

“No.”

“Ashamed?”

“No.”

“It must have been terrible to—”

“Of course it was terrible,” Lian snapped at him. He expected nothing less. He had said far worse to those he had professed to love. “But it isn’t what you think, either.”

Not what he thought. He did not see as it could be anything else but what he thought. What he knew from his own experience. Did the boy not see how difficult it was for him to broach the subject at all? To share Lian’s pain when his own still felt like shards of crystal? “I realize this isn’t easy for you—”

“Me? This isn’t about me. It’s about you. And right now, I don’t want to talk about it.” But the boy’s thoughts betrayed him yet again. How can I tell you anything? I don’t even know you anymore. But I know what they did to you.

Lian drew a sharp breath, stepping back, as if intimidated by something in Aralt’s face. Probably his eyes. He had been told often enough that he had the eyes of a wolf—unsettling to his enemies, but he had always thought the boy unafraid of him. He supposed he had never before given cause for fear. It troubled him that he did now. This was not going to plan. Of course, he hadn’t formulated a plan, so he only had himself to blame.

“I should go.” Lian pushed past him, heading toward the smooth, wet sand of the beach.

Aralt spun him around, releasing his grip almost immediately as the crawling sensation he had felt before shot up his arm. Whips, pins, and stinging nettles! He clenched his fist, then released it, willing the discomfort to leave through pulsing fingertips.

“We’re not done here—and we’re not doing this again. If you have something to say, say it. Say it now. Or never say it again.”

“They hurt you,” Lian said softly, bending to pick up a pale green egg no bigger than the tip of his thumb. He cupped it gently in his hands. “They hurt you in ways they never hurt me. You said it wasn’t my fault? Neither was it yours. I could have helped you, if you’d let me.”

Sweet Creator. He did know. But the revelation did nothing to make Aralt less defensive. “Help? Help me? With that? Mother and… You were little more than a baby, Lian. Why would I ever have told you that?” I didn’t even want my parents to know!

He read the truth in the boy’s dark eyes. Lian had known. Lian had always known. The thought nearly made him sick. Not even Alira knew the extent of his humiliation.

“Why didn’t you let my father help you?” the boy asked, searching for the ground nest from which the egg had been dislodged. Why don’t you ever let anyone help you?

Aralt shook his head. “It was too late by the time Endru knew anything about it.”

“But…” Lian placed the egg in the tiniest of nests tucked amid a rocky outcropping.

“But nothing! I told you, it was too late.”

The damage had been done. He had refused the field surgeon’s scalpel when they proposed reopening the tissue to cleanse it of the inks and sooty poison that produced such scarring. He would not be subjected to further bloodletting. Not at anyone’s hands. He bore the penalty. His stubborn pride had nearly cost him his life. That was what Endru had to contend with by the time Aralt was taken to Kyrrimar.

“I didn’t understand when I was younger. Not entirely. You might have explained later—when I was older.”

He still wasn’t old enough in Aralt’s eyes, but the boy’s own suffering negated that truth. It isn’t what you think…But it was. He knew that it was. And for that, his hatred of lonn Tirehl filled his belly with such fury as he had rarely known. It left no space for Lian’s empathy.

“Revisit the nether place just to satisfy your curiosity? I think not. You used to cry when Valryn pulled the wings off starflies. You might have known something had happened to me, felt sorrow for my pain, but you would not have understood the humiliation.” He turned abruptly, leaving the boy behind. In the quiet of the day, the whispering shoreline reflected the anger he felt inside. He no longer wanted to talk about it. Not about what had happened to Lian and certainly not about what had happened to him. Too close, thunder growled in the darkening sky. The kaio would be scattering, searching for shelter.

“Do you still think I don’t understand?” Lian yelled after him. “And I suppose I don’t understand what it means to be humiliated, either? Or—or—to be desperate? Hungry? Terrified? Or what it means to lose a brother? What do I have to do to understand you, syr Tremayne? Die?”

Aralt set his jaw, fighting for calm as lightning flashed to the north. The boy was losing control of his emotions, just as he had in Sylvan. Only this time, Aralt was going down with him.

“I can’t help what happened to Devailyn,” he said evenly, uncertain, still, what that even was. They had arrived too late. Too late. He had been unable to help, just as he had been unable to help his own brother.

“You couldn’t have helped anyway!”

Aralt spun on his heel, stalking back to where Lian stood. What compassion they had shown for one another was gone and something in the air delighted in their anger.

“Put a cork in the sarcasm, boy. Done’s done. There’s no going back. Not for you. Not for me.” Not for Devailyn. Or Kynlan.

“You don’t even care,” Lian spat. “Not about any of it. Or them. Or me. You just went on with your life, didn’t you?”

Aralt laughed bitterly. How little the boy understood what the past few years had cost him. But he wasn’t about to admit it. A flicker of red danced in the periphery of his vision. He blinked it away. When it manifested again, tendrils of fire on the horizon of his perception, he was even angrier than he had been moments before.

“What would you have had me do, Lian? A man chooses a path then follows it. He doesn’t mourn yesterday’s mistakes, no matter how painful they are. He goes forward, he makes a difference in today and tomorrow, and he doesn’t stand there bleating like a stupid shegt. Do you ken, boy? Do you?”

“Aye, k’talyn.”

Aralt rolled his eyes. “Aye, k’talyn,” he mimicked Lian. “Listen to how you sound. Everyone thinks you’re destined to be kavistra. Start acting like one.” His words might as well have pulled the cork from a bottle of fermenting cider.

“You don’t! You made it clear enough that you think I’m an idiot!” Lian faced Aralt defensively. With his head raised, his eyes narrowed in concentration, he looked so much older, so much more self-assured. The six Kosantyr, the water-hewn monoliths, hulked behind him like mighty guardians. “Everyone keeps saying that I will be kavistra, but no one understands what that means. Or why I’m not. Why I can’t be. I’ve tried to keep the faith, but no one knows what I’ve been through!” Or what I’ve done.

“And no one will because you keep so many secrets. Do you know what happens when you do that?” Aralt asked him. “People stop asking. You want to prove you’re worthy of being a kavistra? You can start by being honest, not to mention exercising a little self-control.”

“You’re just trying to avoid the issue. You’re always trying to avoid the issue.”

“I’m trying to avoid the issue? What about you?”

“You never give me a straight answer!”

“Maybe that’s because some things are none of your damned business!” Aralt towered over the boy, yet Lian stood undaunted, brandishing the staff like a weapon. He could feel the pulse of the heartwood. Sand swirled against his feet. Flashes of red traveled the ground, mingling with flashes of blue.

“Who you gave your innocence to should have been none of my business,” the lad remarked, his eyebrows rising, his tone animated. “But you never hid things as well as you thought you did.”

“Who I ‘gave my innocence to’?” Aralt laughed, but his humor was as short-lived as his love affair with Larissa Kyncaid had been.

“Why is that so funny? You think I don’t know anything about…that. You have no idea what my life has been like. You don’t know the first thing about me. And you really don’t want to. Not now. Not unless I can be who you think I am. Who I was. Well, I’m not. I’ll never be that person again!”

As if any of them were. Scanlin was only too right on that count. But Lian hadn’t finished. Worse, Aralt feared he was only getting started. Sea Lords and Saints! Had the boy bottled up all his words for years and now made of them an unwanted gift?

“You don’t even want to be held to the oath you made to my parents!”

That strung. But not so much that he couldn’t dish up something of his own. “Is that so, little man? And just what do you know about being the kervallyn to a reckless, undisciplined, pesky fourteen-year-old?”

Lian’s face could not have deepened a further shade. Crimson, he glared at Aralt until he looked near to exploding. The heartwood sang a low pitch between them, dividing the crawling indigo and crimson sparks that lit the air around them. “So, now I’m reckless and pesky? I thought I was kavistra. Everyone keeps telling me that I am.”

“Well, I’m not. Because maybe you aren’t. Ever stop to consider that? Ever consider that the clergy that’s supposed to Confirm you thinks you aren’t, either?” Aralt had neglected to share the full content of those letters with Lian before, but it seemed likely that the boy knew. He knew everything else. The wind rose with every angry exchange. Lightning flashed, too close.

“How dare you…. How dare you! Of course I think about that. All the time I think about that, and I pray for guidance, but not you. Oh, no. I’m Aralt syr Tremayne,” Lian said, lowering his voice in imitation and puffing out his chest. “I’m the laird of two lands. The Northern Alliance would collapse without me. I’m going to kill the scum-buzzard-Shirahnyn-araketh that tortured me and killed my brother! I ignore the very Creator because He isn’t going to show up anyway—”

“Lian,” Aralt warned, feeling the first droplets of cold rain on his face. More lightning, and there they were, standing at the edge of an immense lake.

“Don’t talk to me. Just don’t talk to me! You dangle me at arm’s length like a soiled rag that’s going to get you dirty. I'm inconvenient and embarrassing like an unclaimed child—”

“Lian, stop it. The storm—”

“What storm? You want to see a storm?”

“I’ve seen plenty. And I repeat: stop it.”

“Why? Why should I even listen to you? You are not my kervallyn. You said you would be, but you’re not. Not when I offer you my soul and you spit in my face just like that filthy mingin skimler did to Devailyn before he—he—” The boy gasped for breath, one hand on his staff, the other clutching the clumsy stitching on the front of his shirt. The air around them filled with ragged filaments of light, dancing blue, darting red. “You mark my words, Aralt syr Tremayne. You don’t deserve the honor that was bestowed on you. They never should have trusted you. You never loved them. You never loved me! Lonn Tirehl was right. You just wanted to be important. Now that it comes to it, you spit in my face. You spit in my father’s face, too!”

Aralt slapped him—hard. An involuntary motion executed before he could even think. Lian sprawled in the sand. They stared at one another, neither able to quite parse what had just transpired between them. Whatever the boy had intended to say next was lost. Likewise, the heartwood’s melodious voice ceased abruptly as the staff flew from his hand and hit the shore. A wave rushed over it, playing with it as it sizzled in the shallows.

“If anyone is bringing dishonor to your father, it’s you,” Aralt grated. “And if you’re so sure that oath meant nothing to me, then why are you here?”

“I don’t know! I was lost. I wanted to find you, but I didn’t want them to come here, too. I thought they were following me. I knew they were following me. But it was so cold, and I was so hungry and…. You said I would be safe, but I’m not safe. I’ll never be safe. You don’t even want me here.” He kicked savagely, sending a spray of sand and fragments of light flying across Aralt’s boots.

“I have never said that.”

“You didn’t need to say it!” Lian drew the small red knife and waved it in the air. “Sometimes, sometimes…I think I should have used this on myself a long time ago. That’s why it was given to me. If I lost all hope. If they were going to take me. He showed me what to do. I’d rather die than have them take me again. It wouldn’t hurt half as much as the dagger you’ve put in my heart!”

“The nether place is no discerner of men,” Aralt growled at him, struggling not to yank him up and skelp him again. It wouldn’t do. Lian was a child. It wouldn’t do. He pressed his hands to either side of his head. He showed me what to do. He… Tinari’s grace, who had shown Lian, soul-touched child of the Spirit, how to take his own life?

“When Kyrrimar was burning, I thought I knew what hate was. Then, when they, they—” Where words failed, images did not. Devailyn Kynsei, beaten, naked, lying amid the flowers in the very garden in which Aralt had stood when Lian was carried away. Devailyn, kavistath in hand, eyes brimming with fire. Lian shattered the vision, plunging the red crystal knife into the sand until only the ebony pommel remained visible. “I thought I must not have known what hate was before. But you…you make me hate myself!”

“I make you hate yourself?” Aralt gasped, bowing under the weight of Lian’s pain and horror, his mouth dry with bitter memories. “I make you wish you’d used a knife on yourself? Blood and ashes, what did I ever do to you, Lian Kynsei?”

“You weren’t there!”

“I was there!”

The boy squirmed backwards out of range, cringing. Aralt stalked after him, as more splashes of rain fell on his face. He drove the Shirahnyn knife deeply into the sand with a bootheel. The lights followed him, more red than blue. Lian moved again, his concentration now on the wave of crimson twisting in Aralt’s wake.

“I don’t know what happened in Kyrrimar before we got there, Lian, but I was there. Scanlin was there. Telta and Tevin were there. I didn’t want to remind you. Can you fault me for that? I don’t know what’s wrong with you half the time. I don’t even know where you’ve been for three years. Or who you’ve been with.” He showed me what to do. What to do…what to do…

Lian’s gaze broke from the light to Aralt’s face. “Then why haven’t you asked me?”

“Why haven’t I…? Did you think I was talking to myself? I’ve given you every opportunity I could. But instead of explaining anything, you badger me about all-hell else, you intrude on my thoughts, and you put my own men in a position of conflict.”

The last bit came as a surprise, but while he was raging he might as well spew it all out like vomit. The hot sun, hidden now by scudding clouds, had only made the blaze of ignited anger more volatile. Son of Tremayne, a voice whispered. He tilted his head, giving it a shake. You know who your enemy is…

“I…I do want to know where you were, how you managed to stay alive with j’thirrin after you like you claim. I also want to know how I’m to lure that boy-raping snake lonn Tirehl out of whatever burning lair he’s settled into. Or can you tell me? No? Can’t or won’t? How am I supposed to keep you safe from an enemy that managed to lay siege to Kyrrimar and seemingly vanquish God’s own Children when you don’t tell me what I need to know? Do you understand? Your questions about my past are irrelevant. And I don’t want your compassion. It doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is right now. So keep your childish insolence out of it. Either you need me, or you don’t, and if you don’t, then why are you wasting my time?”

“I don’t know,” Lian shouted back at him, clambering to his feet, shaking with an uncommon rage. “And I don’t care what you say. You obviously wish I wasn’t here!”

A wicked smile edged Aralt’s lips. Lightning splintered over the plum-dark waters of the Great Lake. Cold rain pelted them, and he no longer cared about the danger, caught up as he was in the cyclone of emotion assailing them both.

“Now that you mention it, Lian, I do wish you weren’t here. What I wish is that you were home in Kyrrimar with your family. While I’m at it, I might as well wish Devailyn and Kynlan were both alive, too, but that kind of wish isn’t worth shite at this point, and I don’t waste my time with shite!”

Lian stood for a moment, mouth agape, rain turning to sleet around him. The boy seemed to be expecting more. Oh, there’s more, plenty more. Just let me catch my breath, you glistening little fish. Your father would be ashamed of you, and I don’t even want to know what your precious Creator thinks!

Lian was pale unto death. Aralt swallowed hard, formulating his next words. But the boy would not wait. Before a single word crossed Aralt’s lips, he turned slowly and walked into the surf. He bent to pick up the staff, dragging it along behind him like a broken stick-esri. Worms of light slithered after him only to drown at the water’s edge.

“Come back here!” Aralt’s command mimicked the thunder. Lian ignored him, splashing deeper, tossing waves tugging at his now-drenched clothing. “Lian Kynsei, by all that’s blue in heaven, you will heed me!”

The boy stopped then, shoulders shaking, head bent. Aralt closed the distance between them in long, boot-soaking steps, his face hot with anger.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me when…” he spun the boy toward him, beheld the tear-streaked sunburned face cringing with the expectation of being struck again, and forgot to finish his sentence.

Sweet Creator. He had done this. Not some stranger in a distant land. Not lonn Tirehl or any of his ilk. He had done this. He felt ill.

“Lian…”

Lian averted his eyes, pulling away. He choked an incomprehensible reply as he sloshed drunkenly on, waist-deep. Chest-deep. Sea and Land, Aralt thought, what was the boy going to do? Swim away?

“Lian, wait.” Aralt waded after him, catching his breath as glacial water poured over the top of his boots. He caught Lian by the elbow and guided him toward the rain-pocked beach.

A moment earlier the lad had been waging a mighty verbal war; now undone, he quaked like an exhausted child who had forgotten the source of his anger. Or a broken soldier, reliving the battlefield, reliving capture. Drowning in nightmares. Aralt knew too well what that was like. He quickened his pace when Lian pulled away from him. The boy dodged from one side to the other, then fell to a heap in the sand, tears flowing down his cheeks, rain beating the earth around him into a sloppy puddle.

Aralt bent down, gently tipping the boy’s chin up with two fingers. They both cringed. Scanlin was going to knock him into the next parish when he saw Lian’s face.

“Did I hurt you?” Stupid question, that was.

Lian shook his head, then nodded, then shook it again. Black hair slapped his face with each motion. Thunder pealed across the dark sky, and Lian buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry. I’ll leave Tyrian, if you want. I didn’t mean to bring them here. I’ll die if something happens to Perryn and Wynter and rest of them—”

“Lian—”

“—I’ll go away, and you won’t have to deal with me…” Or lonn Tirehl.

“Lian—”

“—no, no,” the boy moaned, rocking back and forth, hands clutching his dripping sleeves now. “I’ll go away, I promise. There must be someplace I can hide. Are there Riahi here? Maybe they will take me. Maybe they came for Dev. Please tell me they came for Dev.”

“Lian!” They both flinched at a near crack of thunder. More lightning split into a dozen tracks along the cloud line.

“I…Aralt? I…”

Lian was trembling now, with cold, with pain, with a confusion Aralt could feel jangling noisily at the back of his brain. Not again, not again. He fought the sinking feeling, clawing his way back to sanity as he had clawed his way to safety after Kynlan had been swept away over the falls.

“Please, I—”

“I’m here, lad,” Aralt said calmly, pushing the pain just far enough away to keep himself sane. No doubt remained that the lad was unfit for travel. Perhaps unfit for his greater purpose. His heart twisted. Sweet Creator, what was he to do in that case? What were either of them to do?

“Aralt, I—”

“Aye, lad. I know. I know.”

“I don’t know what else to do!” Lian wailed, looking more like a distraught child than a lad on the verge of fifteen. I offer you my soul.

Aralt did not understand. He was shaking, himself.

“Please don’t leave me,” Lian pleaded, reaching both hands toward him, trembling with fear and with the last tendrils of uncontrolled rage losing their ugly grip. “Please,” he whispered.

Aralt sank to his knees, touching Lian’s fingers with his own, gripping the narrow-fingered hands tightly. Lian clung to him desperately, gasping…slowly, slowly finding the strength to quell his emotions. Still, he held on to Aralt’s calloused hands. It was not really what the boy wanted, he knew, but just then he could do no more.