I t was strange to be back in this place, especially under such circumstances. Despite myself, I was nervous. The archives that Iya had
showed us were extensive. Max, Sammerin, Brayan, and I brought boxes of records back up the Towers.
Iya had, graciously, given us his private apartment in the upper floors of the Tower of Midnight. The apartment was spacious and immaculately elegant, like most rooms in the Towers. When we arrived, two long, fabric- wrapped items were waiting for us on the table. There was a note with them.
Maxantarius and Tisaanah—
I believe these are yours. They have spent six months locked up in the Orders armory, but I thought you might like them back. Unfortunately, I suspect the time for needing them has not yet passed.
Iya.
When I unwrapped Il’Sahaj, I grinned. It really did feel like being reunited with an old friend. I suspected Max felt the same way, though perhaps a bit more reluctantly, as he held his spear once more.
“One day, I won’t have to pick this thing up again,” he muttered. One day, hopefully. But not today.
We spent hours combing through pages upon pages of documentation in silence. Perhaps we were all grateful to have something to focus on.
We made it through only one of six boxes in three hours. After Max turned the final page, he glanced at the others and sighed heavily.
“We aren’t sleeping tonight.”
“You weren’t going to be sleeping tonight, anyway,” Sammerin pointed out.
“That is likely true.”
I flipped through the scattered folders before me and paused at one leather-bound stack of papers. A smile spread over my lips.
“I have an idea.” Max, Sammerin, and Brayan all looked to me. I held up the papers—a roster. “Maybe we can take a small detour. Just for a few minutes.”
 |
I WASN’T USED to the cold anymore. I tugged my cloak tighter around my body and adjusted my hood. It was dark now. Max, Sammerin and I— Brayan had chosen to stay behind—stood in the shadows, watching groups of uniformed men and women leave the mess hall. Dinner had just ended. Their attitudes were more subdued than one might expect. None looked our way, which was probably for the best.
I grinned. “There he is.”
Even at a distance, I recognized him right away. He was a little taller, a little broader, but that messy halo of curls was the same.
Sammerin called out, “Moth!”
The boy lurched to a stop. The light from the mess hall silhouetted him as he turned to us, utterly still.
Sammerin lifted a hand.
For a long moment Moth did not move. Then he approached us, slowly. “Sammerin?”
Even that one word made my eyebrows leap. Gods, his voice sounded different.
“Hello, Moth,” Sammerin said, smoothly. “Have you been practicing?”
Moth drew close enough that we, finally, could see his face. In six months, he had gone from a child to a teenager. A scar nicked his lip,
running down nearly to his chin. And yet, he still had that innocent roundness to his face.
Max gave him a wave and a bemused smirk. “Good to see you again.” Moth just stood there, like he didn’t know what to do with himself.
I couldn’t help myself—I ran to him and drew him into an embrace. He was almost as tall as I was, and broad enough that running into him felt like colliding with a wall of bricks. But when he said, “Hi, Tisaanah,” with his words slightly wavering, he seemed just like the child I used to practice magic in the garden with every week.
I released him, and his eyes, shining and bright, darted between the three of us.
Max looked amused. “Happy to see us?”
After a long pause, Moth spoke. “I thought you were all dead,” he said, and broke down into tears.
|
WE COULD STEAL ONLY a few minutes with Moth—he was due back at the barracks, and we didn’t want to be seen by everyone else yet. But that was more than enough for him to tell us what these last few months had been like, especially because the most meaningful information came not from what he did say but what he didn’t. Moth’s emotions were loud and his face expressive, and though the military had dampened some of that in him— which, honestly, made me a little sad—it was still obvious how difficult it had been.
“Why are you here?” he asked, eventually. “Are you— are you staying?” He cleared his throat and added, “It would be best for Ara if you did.”
My heart warmed at that, because I knew that the reason Moth was asking had nothing to do with the noble greater good of Ara.
“I hope so,” said Sammerin.
“You hope so?” Moth repeated. “What does that mean?”
A bell rang in the distance, and he glanced nervously over his shoulder. “I should go.”
But he didn’t move—like he was half afraid that if he let us out of his sight, he’d never see us again.
“Everyone still talks about you, you know,” he said, haltingly. “They all remember you. That didn’t go away.”
Moth addressed all of us, but he looked only at Max.
Max tried to be stoic, but I knew him well enough to see how deeply this hit him.
“Are you… really back?” Moth asked. “Back for good?” “That’s a complicated question.”
Gods forbid that Max ever said anything that could be interpreted as a promise he might not be able to fulfill.
“How about this,” Sammerin said. “We came back here to do whatever we can to make this better. Can we promise we will succeed? No, because no one can make those kinds of promises. But we aren’t leaving until we try. If this doesn’t work, we will try something else.”
He spoke the same steady tone he would use to comfort a patient through uncertain odds. Somehow, it made even the unknowns seem manageable.
Moth seemed slightly more satisfied by this answer. The bell rang again, and he jumped. “Fuck, I’m late.”
Sammerin’s eyebrows leapt. “Such language, Moth.” Max looked a bit proud.
Moth let out a tiny laugh, bid us an awkward goodbye, and started to run back to the barracks.
“Moth,” Max called. Moth stopped and turned. “Show us your magic.”
He grinned and cupped his hands. Yellow-white light bloomed between them, illuminating his grin, zipping through the air in sparking rivulets. His hair rustled with the force of it. The sparks flew to the sky and made it past the tops of the trees before fading like embers.
“I haven’t broken anything in a month and a half!” he added, somewhat proudly, and Sammerin laughed as he gave us a wave and hurried away.
|
AFTER SEVERAL MORE HOURS OF preparations, we returned to the bedroom Iya had loaned us. Brayan retired to the other one in the apartment, and
Sammerin, understandably, had chosen to stay in the city for the night rather than sharing a bed with Brayan—an image that made me snort laughter despite myself.
Though it was very late, Max and I hadn’t even tried to sleep. Now Max leaned against the wall beside the balcony doors. The windows overlooked the boundary between the shore and the land—a ragged edge, as if the city was clawing its way back inch-by-inch from the ocean.
“I still cannot fucking believe that I’m doing this,” he muttered. “You said that last time, too,” I said.
“And look at how that turned out.” I winced. He had a point there.
I watched him, silhouetted against the moonlight. He was shirtless, the broken tattoos and patchwork of scars over his back in full view, one hand tucked into his pocket and the other braced against the glass.
“What if we aren’t any better at doing this than she is?” he said, quietly. “You will be.”
Certainties were rare and precious in times like these, but one I held in firm regard was the fact that Max would be a wonderful leader.
I rose to join him, and together we looked out at the empty, star-dusted sky.
“Where is Ishqa?” Max muttered. “He was supposed to be here by now.”
“He will come.” “He’d better.”
We were both having the same thought. I glanced at Max.
“I have a question,” I said. “Hm?”
“Let us imagine that everything goes well.” “Let’s.”
“Let’s imagine that you take the title of Arch Commandant tomorrow, and Nura never returns, and we are able to make peace with the Fey, and the war ends, and the seven Alliance nations remain peaceful, and everyone is happy.”
Max let out a wry chuckle. “I’m imagining, but your storytelling is getting increasingly lax on believability.”
“Then what?”
A pause. “Then what?”
“Will you keep the title?”
“No,” he said, like the thought was ridiculous. “Arch Commandant, or king?”
“Either. First of all, it was a ludicrous fraud that combined the two titles to begin with. Arch Commandants have historically done a terrible job of just ruling the Orders, let alone running a whole Ascended-damned country.”
Agreed.
“But even then, even if the titles were split again, I don’t think I’d keep the title of Arch Commandant, either.” He scoffed. “If my twenty-year-old self could hear me say that, he’d fucking kill me.”
“Why not?”
“Because…” His brow furrowed. “I don’t know. I don’t believe in it.”
“Perhaps you could make the Orders something worth admiring again.” “Me? No. You though? You could.”
He said this so earnestly, so simply, that it knocked me a little off kilter. I swallowed past a sudden lump in my throat.
“Max,” I said. “There’s something that I want to—”
BANG!
The door flew open hard enough to slam against the wall. My hand was already closing around the hilt of my sword as I turned.
Brayan stood in the doorway, every inch of his body tensed. A piece of parchment was crumpled in a fist in one hand.
“You fucking lied to me.”
