"Preparations will begin immediately," Bran says, looking around the hall with the easy assurance of thorough preparation. "Leona and I will ride ahead with the advance guard with the Warlord's retinue following. We'll need the mountain horses saddled and the eastern stores packed. I trust I don't need to tell anyone how to do their jobs."
He pauses, and the grin returns. "But if I do, Leona will be happy to remind you."
Leona smiles easily at his joke. She is a lean woman, older than Bran but aging more gracefully, sharp-featured and steel-eyed. Her brown hair is adorned with ornaments and braided around her head, the way she has been wearing it since the weather started to pretend to be warmer, and she has been a constant in Evran's life during his time with the Drakkari. Her presence, her guidance, and her comfort have always felt motherly in a way hewould never tell her under penalty of death, but always privately thinks about. There is something about the way she watches him that reminds him of no one in his own family, an attentiveness that expects nothing in return, and the absence of any precedent for it in his life only makes it more precious.
"I would be more than happy," Leona says pleasantly.
Bran laughs, loud and unrestrained, and reaches over to clap her on the shoulder. She gives him a fond, patient look and the hall resumes its noise. Bran begins talking logistics with the stablemaster, something about supply carts and the condition of the northern pass, and Leona is already marking something in the journal she carries constantly.
Evran turns to Vaike.
"The Gathering of Clans," he says. He has heard the name before, in passing, in the way one hears about distant events that do not concern them directly. He knows it is important and he knows they must travel to reach it. Beyond that, his understanding is thin, built from scraps of overheard conversation and the general sense that it matters deeply to the people around him even if no one has thought to explain it to the outsider in their midst.
Vaike takes a drink of his mead and sets the cup down. "Every three years, the clans come together to discuss the things that keep us alive. Trade agreements. Military alliances. Political matters." He pauses. "Marriages."
Evran's stomach flips. The word sits between them, heavy with implications that Vaike has placed there deliberately, because Vaike does not say things by accident. Evran can feel his pulse quicken and forces himself to keep his expression neutral, to not react to the word or the weight behind it until he understands what it means.
"It's held at Heldrin's End," Vaike continues, "in the territory of the Rendari clan. They host. They arbitrate. The other clansbring their delegations and their disputes, and for two weeks we eat their food, drink their mead, and try not to kill each other."
"That sounds very diplomatic of you."
Vaike's mouth twitches. The movement is subtle and brief, the closest thing to a smile he allows himself in the great hall where anyone might see it, and Evran treasures it the way he treasures all of Vaike's small, private expressions, cataloging them in a collection he keeps close.
"It is an honor to attend," Vaike says. "The Warlords bring their inner councils, their warriors, their families." He turns his head and looks at Evran fully, and the firelight catches the hard planes of his face, the strong jaw and expressive eyes. "I want you by my side."
The words land in the center of Evran's chest and spread outward, certain and bright. He feels them settle into the spaces between his ribs and take root there, feels the way they reshape something inside him that he had not realized needed reshaping. Vaike says things plainly and without artifice, and the simplicity of it is what makes it so important. He does not say I would like you to come or it would be appropriate for you to attend. He says I want you by my side, and the want in those words carries the weight of everything Vaike is, everything he has built, everything he has chosen.
Evran opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
"Of course," he says, and he means it honestly, even as a small anxious thing stirs in his belly and begins to uncurl. "I'd be honored to go."
Vaike nods once, as though the matter is settled, which for him it probably is. Vaike does not agonize over decisions. He makes them and moves forward, and the world arranges itself accordingly, or learns very quickly that it should.
Leona's voice cuts in from across the table, and when Evran looks up, she is watching him with twinkling eyes. "It will be your first time going through the mountains."
"It will be," Evran agrees.
Her expression softens, the steel in her gaze giving way to something gentler. "Spring is the most beautiful time to see them. The snowmelt feeds the rivers and the wildflowers come up in the passes. It's a hard ride, but a good one."
Evran smiles at her. "I'm looking forward to it."
Bran catches Evran's eye from across the table and beams at him, his whole face lit up with genuine, uncomplicated delight that makes it impossible not to smile back. "You'll love it, lad! Heldrin's End sits in the greenest valley you've ever seen. Farmland stretching out for miles, air so clean it'll make your lungs ache. The Rendari know how to host, I'll give them that." He taps the side of his nose conspiratorially. "And their ale is not half bad."
"Their ale is the only thing about the Rendari that isn't half bad," Kellin mutters, loud enough to hear, but Bran is already laughing again, unbothered.
The rest of the meal passes uneventfully. Evran drinks his mead, listens, and tries to absorb the information that he is going to ride through the mountains to attend a gathering of Warlords. It feels enormous, an event that belongs in someone else's story, and yet here he is, sitting at the high table with a Warlord's hand on his neck and a place in the delegation that no one at this table has questioned. The distance between who he was when he arrived at this stronghold and who he is now feels so vast that he cannot quite hold both versions of himself in his mind at the same time.
When the meal ends, the hall begins to empty slowly in the contented way people meander when their day of work is finished and there is nowhere to go but home. Everyone exceptthe Warlord, who is always busy and does not rest until the day is truly over. Evran watches as Vaike rises, speaks briefly with Bran about something Evran does not catch, and then heads for the corridor.
Evran follows.
He catches up quickly. Vaike, despite his schedule, is never in any hurry to rush things along. He knows that whatever is waiting for him will continue to wait until he has arrived and, in some instances, he even purposely draws the wait out. Evran knows there is strategy to it, especially when it is his council waiting or a foreign dignitary who becomes anxious the longer they are made to wait, but tonight he appreciates his lover's ease because it allows him to fall into step beside him without having to jog.
He reaches out and catches Vaike's sleeve in his fingers.
"Vaike, please wait."
Vaike stops and turns to look at him. He gives Evran his full attention, and when Vaike gives his full attention it is a physical thing, a weight, a gravity. Those grey eyes settle on Evran as though he is the only thing in the corridor, in the Keep, in the world. As though there is nowhere else Vaike needs or wants to be. Evran has been on the receiving end of that attention many times now and it still does something to him every time, still makes his breath catch and his thoughts stutter, because no one in his entire life before Vaike ever looked at him and made him feel as though he was worth the full force of their focus.
