"Yes. An assassination attempt on a sitting Warlord during the Gathering, ordered by his own half-brother, that's not just a crime against the Drakkari. It's a crime against the summit itself. Against the peace that holds the clans together. None of the other Warlords would stand for it."
Bran is quiet for a long time, staring into his cup as though the tea might offer counsel. When he looks up, his face is drawn, the lines around his eyes deeper than they were yesterday.
"Be very careful," he says.
The warmth is back in his voice, but it has changed, deepened into something rawer, something that comes from caring about someone and being terrified on their behalf and choosing, against every instinct, to trust their judgment.
"Torsten is a different creature than Vaike," Bran continues, and each word is deliberate, weighted with the gravity of a warning that needs to be heard and understood and taken seriously. "He is dishonorable. He is ruthless. He fights dirty, and he does not back down when cornered." He holds Evran's gaze. "He will take what he feels he is owed, Evran. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
Evran understands. The understanding lives in the cold place beneath his ribs, the place where the memory of Lord Galen's hands still sometimes surfaces in the dark. He understands exactly what Bran is telling him, understands it in his body before his mind articulates it, because his body has lived through this kind of danger before, has stood in a room with someone who believed he was owed something and intended to collect, and the memory of that night still wakes him sometimes, still makes his skin crawl, still lives in the part of him that flinches when hands move too fast.
"I'll be careful," he says.
Bran studies him for a long moment more. Whatever he sees in Evran's face, the fear and the resolve and the terrible calm ofhaving made a decision and refusing to be moved from it, seems to satisfy him, or at least convince him that arguing further will accomplish nothing.
He reaches across the table and grips Evran's forearm, the warrior's clasp, and holds it. His hand is enormous, engulfing Evran's arm from wrist to mid-forearm, and the strength in it is careful, controlled, holding without crushing.
"You are braver than you think you are," Bran says. "But bravery without caution is just another way to die. You come to me if anything happens. Anything at all. You don't handle this alone."
"I won't."
"Promise me."
Evran meets the big man's eyes. "I promise."
Bran holds his forearm a moment longer, then releases it and sits back. He picks up his cup, finds it empty, and stares into it with an expression of mild betrayal. Then he looks up at Evran, and the ghost of his usual warmth surfaces through the worry, faint but unmistakable, a good man's kindness refusing to be extinguished no matter what the circumstances ask of it.
"You're a good lad, Evran. Vaike chose well."
Evran's throat tightens. He manages a nod, pushes back from the table, and stands. At the door, he pauses and looks back.
Bran is still sitting at the table, his massive frame hunched slightly forward, his empty cup cradled between his hands. He looks tired, and he looks like someone carrying a weight that has just gotten heavier, and Evran feels a surge of gratitude so fierce it nearly undoes his composure, gratitude for this man who listened and believed him and did not dismiss his fear and did not try to take the decision from him even though every instinct in Bran's body must be screaming at him to do exactly that.
Evran opens the door, steps into the corridor, and closes it softly behind him.
The hallway is quiet. A guard stands at the far end, another at the junction where the eastern wing meets the main corridor. Evran leans against the wall and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and breathes, letting the cool stone steady him.
He thinks about what he is willing to do, and finds the answer has not changed.
He pushes off the wall and walks toward their room, and the braid swings against his neck with every step, and the weight of it is an anchor, a reminder, a promise.
I will keep you safe,he thinks.
Whatever it takes.
Chapter 10
Delia finds him before he finds her.
Evran is halfway to the eastern wing, still carrying the weight of his conversation with Bran in the tight set of his shoulders and the restless churning of his thoughts, when a hand catches his elbow. He turns to find Delia's face close to his, her dark eyes tight with worry, the kind that suggests she has been carrying it for hours and has only now found its proper target.
"There you are," she says, and her grip on his arm is desperate in the way that only comes from searching too long, the grip of a woman who is not going to release what she has found until she has satisfied herself that it is whole. "I've been trying to get to the eastern wing all morning, but your guards are not letting anyone through who isn't Drakkari."
"Naela's orders," Evran says. "After last night."
"I know about last night." Delia's voice drops, low and urgent. She glances up and down the corridor, which is empty but for a Rendari retainer at the far end who is conspicuously not listening, and pulls Evran sideways into an alcove, one of thewindowed nooks that dot the corridors of the Keep. The stone bench beneath the window is worn smooth by years of use, and the light that comes through the glass is thin and pale with early spring. "Sit. Sit down."
Evran sits. Delia does not. She stands in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest, her mouth set in the firm line he is beginning to recognize as her version of controlled fury, the expression of a woman who has been told something terrible has happened and has not yet been given the opportunity to do anything about it.
