I didn't have an answer for that one that I was willing to say in a room. The honest answer was that I'd told myself, both times, that I was coming in to refuse, and I'd believed it right upuntilherscent reached me through the door that morning and took the legs out from under the lie.
I'd run like a green fighter who'd lost his nerve at the gate, and that was the first mistake. Coming back was the second, because the smell of her was still in that doorway hours later, and it came home with me and sat in the forge the rest of the day.
I worked through it. Work was the answer to most things. I cleared a backlog of plow fittings, repointed a logger's sled-runner, and when my hands still wouldn't settle I pulled a bar and started a blade, because that always settled them, the old rhythm of it, heat and fold and draw. By the time the light went gold, I'd hung the knife on the east wall, oiled and sleeved with the others.
Twelve blades nobody had ordered. I stood and looked at them a while, and told myself it was good to be ready. A man who'd watched as much bloodshed as I had kept blades within reach. That was all it was.
Prudence wore a lot of ugly faces, and this was only one of them.
Kazan showed up at dusk.
I heard the rig before I saw it, that big engine cough he'd never bothered to tune, and then he filled my doorway, horns nearly brushing the ceiling. The Bastion. Forty marines and a broken arm hadn't taken him down. Now he wore flannel and smelled faintly of goats.
"You're coming to supper," he said.
"No."
"Maisie's friend's in town. Maisie wants the whole crowd out tonight. We're feeding people. You're a person, allegedly." He looked past me at the wall, and his face went blank for a second. "Another knife?"
"It's good practice."
"Mm." He didn't call me a liar; he never did. He just stood there, being alive and content in a way that should have been impossible for a man who'd done what we'd done, and waited me out. "Maisie asked for you special. She thinks you're sad."
"I don't need to be fixed. And I'm notsad."
"Then come to eat and be rude. Nobody'll stop you." A pause. "Wear a shirt without burn holes."
"I'll wear what I want."
Only as I pulled it on did I realize he'd tricked me into agreeing.
The orchard glowed. It always did this time of year: the star-figs hanging gold-tipped and violet through the rows, the cottage windows warm, lanterns strung along the porch and out into the trees. Half the unmated males in New Knossos had turned out to stand around being enormous and shy near a fire pit, clutching cups they were too nervous to drink from.
The mated ones had brought their wives, small bright shapes tucked under enormous arms, and the whole thing had the careful, hopeful feeling of men who'd been told this was how you built a future and were trying very hard to believe it.
I hated it the way you hate a thing you don't get to have.
Kazan's place had changed since I'd last let myself come out here. There were human-sized touches everywhere now, low steps to the porch, a railing at the right height for a small hand, a whole second set of everything scaled down and built in, and Kazan moved through it all without thinking, ducking nothing, his tail sweeping slow and content.
Five years ago this man had helped bring an empire to its knees. Now he carried a tray of cups out to nervous bachelors and bent to let his wife steal one off it, and she laughed up at him. He looked at her like the rest of the galaxy didn't exist.
It looked like peace. From where I stood, in the dark past the lantern line where I could see the exits, it looked like a manwho'd handed a small mortal creature the keys to everything that could ever hurt him, and called it a good trade.
This party was to find Chloe a husband, and I had no place here.
It didn't take long to spot her. I could have found her with my eyes shut. She was at the center of the loudest knot of people on the porch, a cup in one hand and the other going, and her voice carried out over the yard, pitched to make the crowd lean in.
She'd done something to her hair, curls and ringlets that a forbidden part of me wanted to touch. She had a scarf around her shoulders, one of Drevus's, human-sized and well made, which meant somebody had already been buying her soft things, and the thought made me want to huff.
Ridiculous. I had no claim on her, and she deserved good clothing.
She was telling a story. Something about Earth, a job she'd had, a man who'd done something stupid, and she made herself the fool in it, every time. The joke always landed on her. The crowd roared, and she beamed like she'd won something, and underneath the beam, in the half second before the next line, her eyes did a fast, flat sweep of every face to count who was still laughing.
She was counting smiles the way I counted exits.
I knew that look. You wear it when you've learned that the room can turn, and you'd rather be the one to make it laugh before it makes you bleed.
Something in me that I'd been keeping cold went dangerously warm.
