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“If you think you can do any better, please feel free to help.” He smirked and flicked the stack of papers in his right hand. “That’s right, you have far more important things to figure out.”
“You’re forgetting that I am quite an efficient counter. I count almost everything. Just tell me what the numbers are, and I’ll work the beads for you.”
The plea came out fast and in a tone not dissimilar to a child begging their mother to release them from their daily chores. The look Kalen gave me was like that of a mother, too. Reluctant and disapproving. Nonetheless, he stood from his chair and perched his backside on the edge of the desk.
I squealed and ran to the chair, sinking into its worn upholstery. It was still warm from the hours spent under Kalen, and the leather was scented slightly with him. I reset the beads on the abacus and looked up expectantly. Kalen gazed back with equal measures of curiosity and regret. It wasn’t an unusual look, so I just waited for the numbers.
On the fourth day,it was finally silent between the two of us. Only the scraping of beads against the rod and the dullest song of numbers as we worked through the last pages of another ledger. From what Kalen had told me, this one tallied up the levees made against some of Leoth’s more miserly tenants. There were no insults, no awkward shuffling around the office, no tense puffs of air expelled from even tenser mouths.
I hated it.
Whenever there was silence, my mind spun. Why does he sit so far away? What is the look he gives me now? Do his eyes dim, or is it just the shade cast by Erudia? The questions never stopped. The more I ignored them, the harder they smacked against thewalls of my skull. The effect was so strong even my jaw ached to ask them.
I decided I would. Starting, of course, with the least threatening: “Don’t you ever find it strange that you seem to know everything about me while I know nothing of you?”
“No.” Kalen appeared unsurprised at my sudden question. He was still looking down at the papers as if his answer was just another number in the lines of his chart.
“Well, I find it strange,” I replied.
“I figured, since you took the time to point it out.”
There was a light smack of a bead hitting its twin on the opposite side, and then silence. Kalen felt the absence of productivity and looked at me in ire. I folded my arms across my chest.
“Keep counting,” he ordered.
“Not until you oblige me with a story of your youth, Preserver.” I was keeping another tally in my mind. A private, pleasurable task. The number of times I sent those glorious eyes spinning. As the air stilled around us, the score racketed up and up.
Finally, he caved. “What would you like to know?”
Everything, I wanted to say. But I knew I could not, and that he would make fun of me if I did. I closed my eyes and pictured the tangle of confusion that surrounded Kalen in my mind. Carefully, I plucked at it, feeding one golden string loop through loop until I landed on a knot.
“Do you have a family?” I don’t know why I asked it. There were so many other things I wanted to know, but this one came tumbling out of my lips before I could take it back.
“I did...I do,” he stammered, seeming as flustered as I was by it. “It’s complicated.”
“Well, uncomplicate it. Start with the easy ones—your parents.”
He laughed. “There is nothing easy about my parentage.”
I gave him a serious look, one that told him I was not daunted, and neither should he be. He’d seen my stubbornness before, and so he began.
“The man I call Father, Akkius Herja. He was what they called the Light Cleaver.” Something ancient in me quivered. Kalen looked up at me, ashamed. “The Shadow Sage named him the strongest of the Faders in his youth and so he led her armies throughout the centuries—though there was nothing to lead. There had not been a war of any kind after the gods arrived in this world. Sages weren’t the quarreling type.”
“Well, what type were they?”
“The plotting type. The scheming type. The kind of family who wore the most beautiful smiles on their faces as they pressed blades into each other’s backs.” Kalen stood up from his corner of the desk and moved to the divan to get comfortable. “Not unlike my own.”
Kalen had six brothers; all bore before him. My heart softened at the prospect of his being the runt of the family. I pictured him plump and pink and adored. All those siblings to pinch at his extra fat, a father to teach him the sword, and his mother, who would let him tug at her hair as they sat by a fire in the great halls of Sythe. Mortal though the pair were, passing moment to moment in a forever kind of love.
Adryada Fryga, she was called, had been a young apprentice in her father’s apothecary when the Shadow Sage ordered the Shadowfaders to depart from her island and breach the border lines into Grovesny, the Land faction. They’d weathered strong winds and violent rain during the crossing of the Alto from Sythe and arrived with barely any morale left in them. Though they couldn’t be killed, Ione had sent a furious storm with the hope that it would tear apart their ships, or toss a few demons into the angry sea, at least.
The Sages had all grown wary of each other in the years rightafter they came of age, and mistrust sowed itself into the dirt of every faction. For months, the Shadow Sage had been sending out reconnaissance troops to the corners of the Continent and Ione knew it wouldn’t be long until they ventured inland. Dario was younger and even more lackadaisical than he seemed now.
The precaution of his older sister was well warranted. Kalen’s mother had said even as weary and downtrodden as the Shadowfaders were, their blood-red eyes stayed sharp, seeking out death wherever they could find it. They walked for miles and miles inland until they reached her small village and discovered her quaint home.
“My mother was a witch,” Kalen explained rather bemused. “She could smell the rot of their souls, the evil of their will.” He told the story with large gestures, his face alight with pride. “The only problem was, my father could sense her, too,” He frowned. “Call it his gift, or just finely-tuned military tactics, but magic calls out to him somehow.”
Adryada’s father was mortal, but the success of his brews and potions had been heard of far outside the boundary lines of Grovsney. Sweet tasting elixirs sold in bottles of blown glass shaped like little hearts were sure to make a princess fall in love with a pauper. An osha root draught drank with a little knob of burnt bread would clear hay fever. The dusty old backroom of the Fryga’s was filled with little miracles. Of course, none of the ingredients in anything they sold would have been sufficient on their own. But muddled together with a little bit of Adryada’s magic, indeed they were miracles. Costly ones at that.
