He’s barely let go of Darren when another hand closes over Leth’s shoulder. Squeezing lightly, Evain looms over. “We met yesterday, of course, but it’s a pleasure to see you again, Darren.” Evain leans forward into the space between Leth and Darren.
Annoyance pricks through Leth. Does Evain really need to flirt with everyone they meet?
But it seems not to work this time. Darren’s eyes flick to Evain’s hand on Leth’s shoulder, and his smile doesn’t fade but he takes a step back. “Of course, I look forward to working with all of you. Professionally. And I’d love to spar with you too?”
“Sounds lovely,” Evain says. “Oh, there are our horses.”
He squeezes Leth’s shoulder one more time—a warning? A habit? Surely he doesn’t know the way it sends dizzying flutters through Leth’s veins—and saunters away.
Darren coughs and runs his hand through his floppy hair. “I think he might have misunderstood me. We’re very professional in the Riverswords.”
“Of course,” Leth says, baffled. He has no idea what Darren thinks Evain might have misunderstood.
As Leth checks over Star’s tack, Bricks calls out to Evain. “Are you sure you don’t want a pony?” Her lips purse, the expression calling attention to a white scar along her jaw. The frown is directed at Evain’s flashy black stallion. “Your boy isn’t suited to the weather we’ll hit north of the border.”
From the way Daziroth turns his head, ears pricking forward, then back, Leth would swear the horse understood her. It’s an eerie moment—until the horse turns again to rub his face on Evain’s shoulder.
Evain shoves Daziroth’s face away. “I know Daisy doesn’t look it, but he’ll handle the cold just fine.”
Daziroth really doesn’t look it. Star and the Sephinians’ bays aren’t as rugged as the shaggy Lanwatch ponies, but they’ve all grown in thick winter coats. Daziroth, however, is as sleek and glossy as if it’s the height of summer.
Bricks frowns and pushes the point. “The folks here will take good care of him while we’re away. The weather’s mild now, but our winters get real rough real quick. Storms blow up out of nowhere.”
“They’re my winters too,” Evain says. “I lived outside Aliso for twenty years.”
Leth’s gloved fingers pause beneath Star’s girth.
“Radiance, did you really?” Bricks laughs. “You’d know better than me, then. Don’t mind me, I always have to check. We get the occasional summer flower up here, badly dressed and badly mounted.”
Evain laughs too. “Then I can only be grateful you didn’t criticize my dress.”
After checking the girth’s tension, Leth mounts up. His new clothes fit perfectly, allowing enough movement even though they’re thicker than his old clothes. What doesn’t fit perfectly, though, is Evain’s casual mention of twenty years.
Leth doesn’t know much about Evain’s past. He’s never asked or wanted to ask. But they were in the Locksmiths together for almost two years, and Leth picked up a thing or two. He knows Evain joined the Locksmiths three years ago, though he doesn’t know why. He knows Evain has traveled. Evain once mentioned having visited Dansa’s medicine temple in Praia, though he used the sacred hot springs for rather non-medical purposes.
Leth was in the kitchen once when, over a bottle of wine, Evain told Melanne he spent ten years in the Scasca Isles. And he once mentioned a year spent hopping between Etenian pleasure boats. A year seducing priests in Ellaroc, the city of waterfalls.
A year here, a year there. The years add up, and they add up to at least fifty with the addition of twenty years outside Aliso—while Evain doesn’t look a day over thirty.
“Everyone ready?” Evain stands in his stirrups, overlooking them all, and his half-bound hair streams behind him. “The tender embrace of my homeland awaits. The mountains of Lyrisenia are pining for my return.”
The years add up, but so do Evain’s exaggerations. Leth should know better than to take anything Evain says seriously. Shaking his head, he nudges Star forward with his calves.
Morning brightens over Lanwatch’s sharp-slanting roofs and the shopkeepers salting their doorsteps. Centuries ago, when Lyrisenia was a vibrant empire, Lanwatch sat astride a bustling trade route. As the empire splintered and demonic incursions escalated, Lanwatch’s merchants fell back in favor of soldiers. The barracks and garrisons from that era still stand today, but the soldiers have since moved to other regions, leaving Lanwatch quiet.
Two gates mark the border. Sleepy guards crank open the wooden inner gate as Leth and the others approach. Bricks pauses her string of ponies to chat briefly. The second gate towers above the first. Its great stone wings spread wide open against the city wall, held fast by years of climbing vines and built-up earth and frost. Centuries have passed since the stone gate last closed, because what protects Lanwatch and the rest of Charain isn’t the gates, but the occasional shimmer in the sky overhead.
Leth nudges Star to a quicker walk as they pass through the gates. Stone columns mark the border and the base of the Northern Barrier a hundred feet from the city gates, and Leth finds himself eager to press forward.
He catches up to Evain at the head of the group, just before he leaves his homeland for the first time in his life.
The trees are the same on either side of the border. Whip-thin, resolute evergreens, dark-needled and glittering with frost. The road is the same hard-packed earth, and Leth doesn’t even feel the magic of the barrier. The only change is that one moment, the ancient border posts are in front of him; the next moment, they’re behind, and a brand-new land spreads out before him. A land where nobody knows Leth ka Tariel, or the man he’s failed to be.
Leth inhales a breath of winter, and something loosens around his heart.
Two years ago, he joined the Locksmiths for a reason. A belief that gods shouldn’t be bound to one place and one purpose. Maybe he shouldn’t be bound either, shackled to family traditions nobody else seems to follow and chained to divine teachings his god won’t reward him for. Maybe out here, he could learn to do something crazy like want something nobody told him to want.
“Never thought I’d see the day.” Evain’s half-bound hair sways behind him, and a strange, contemplative look crosses his handsome face.
