Chapter Twenty-One: The Sun
What filled the lecture hall could only be described at a wordless and continuous murmur; a low, flat babble like rain falling on a street. One wouldn't really call it loud, just a fluid garble like a river of hushed voices. A hundred or so Tower students packed shoulder to shoulder at the tables, and from what Majic could discern from the top tier at the back of the room, they were all discussing what to expect from their yet unseen teacher of this new subject: Advanced Application of Incanted Magic. Judging from the news travelling around the Tower now that classes had resumed, even as the armies of Taflem and Meverlenst continued to skirmish outside of Kimurak to the dead north, Majic wasn't surprised that they were rather interested in meeting the purported hero who had released the seal on the Tower those weeks back; who had killed the deluded Bishop and the Hand of Kimurak; who had restored the beast known as Bloody August and walked away from it.
When the door banged open and in he stalked, that babble shrank to what felt like a curious or stunned silence. His dark figure all but stormed to the front desk and dropped a stack of books on it with a resounding slam, and he turned back to appraise his class with a look between annoyance and boredom. The silence stretched on. Obviously, they'd expected something a little different. Someone not a few months short of 23 years old, someone who didn't look for all the world like he'd rather burn down the Tower than be teaching at it.
"Alright," he said suddenly, his voice projecting impressively across the auditorium as it was known to do. From his vantage point, Majic could see a hundred sets of shoulders sit up a little straighter. "Let's get something right out in the open."
It was decidedly strange to see his usually rough-edged Master dressed so nicely, in a black dress shirt and black vest held snug with a pewter chain, dark slacks, dark shoes. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, the shirt was undone at the collar. He wasn't wearing a tie, only his Tower pendant.
Okay. Maybe it wasn't so strange after all.
"This is a subject that has nothing to do with how much you know. It's how well you can use what you know. I don't care if you can recite every alternate incantation for every spell in goddamn existence, it won't do you any good at all if you can't figure out how to use them to the best effect." He had his hands folded behind his back as he spoke, sounding more irritated than anything else, and the students exchanged a few scandalized smiles at his unfiltered language.
"If you can't taylor your knowledge to work at its best for your use, you have no business using sorcery on a battlefield. Not knowing your own strengths and preferences will not only endanger your own life, but everyone else relying on you. As you must know, there has been recent need of real combat for the first time in…a long time. I saw it myself; and I was disappointed as hell to see how little the Tower has allowed you to apply the skills they've taught you in practice. You're not always going to be standing still firing at rocks like a bunch of children, and if you've decided to take this class, you're ready to admit that and work on changing those habits. So, that said, do any of you use alternate wording that differs from the default taught?"
After a moment of hesitation, a girl slowly raised her hand on the far left of the room, and Orphen pointed at her brusquely. "Yeah, you."
With a clear flush to her cheeks, the girl stood, a petite brunette no older than Majic in a standard issue third-class robe with a gleaming, recently-earned Tower pendant swinging around her neck. "Master, Tower standards dictate that the default incantations taught are chosen for efficiency's sake. The short spells are quickest to use."
"Maybe for efficiency, but not effectiveness. Using an incantation that's wrong for you will not only produce an inferior effect but also drain more energy than it should for the effect that's emitted. It creates a bad connection. Like using a sub-par metal for conducting electricity. By not knowing what is optimal for you, you are throwing away undirected energy for a lesser result, even when speed is not an issue. So how about you sit down if you're just going to try to contradict me instead of answer the question?"
The girl sat quickly and a quick titter ripped through the class. A few more hands went up, volunteering incantation variances they knew of, and Orphen started writing a few on the chalkboard. Pencils were scratching around him on parchment, and Majic relaxed a fraction, watching silently from the back of the class with the strange thought in his head that he wasn't sure if he'd ever seen his Master's surprisingly perfect handwriting before.
Written on the board now were a few familiar phrases, and some completely foreign.
Enter my arms, Nera.
Amber shield from my fingertips.
I withdraw thee, Shrew's Dance.
Majic wasn't there to learn as much as for support, but he found himself learning more about why Orphen taught him the way he did than he would have ever imagined. Watching him, it wasn't long before it was obvious that he would adapt to teaching a class at least as well as he'd adapted to teaching a single apprentice. If not better, since the constant distractions that impeded Majic's lessons would have trouble cropping up at the Tower in the same way as they had during their travels. Already Orphen was off on a tangent, explaining different methods of building invocations, and he'd written examples of certain types on the board. One was an imbedded command. One was Malkalvian. One was an operative assembly.
"It may sound redundant, the same crap you've heard since your first day here, I know. But sorcery cannot function without means. Your energy can only be funneled through a conduit to reach its ultimate effect; otherwise it's like a spark with nothing to burn. That conduit can be modified by changing the operatives in your incanting for a more streamlined connection, or by choosing a different type. You're all probably going to hate it, but the only way to figure out what works best individually is to do the legwork."
He went on about operatives and modifiers, potential energy, the Malkalvian and Kislevian clans stemming off the Dragon Families, and diagrammed out the parts of an example incantation in chalk that Majic found himself picking up his own pencil to copy down. Papers flipped around him, pencil lead scratched furiously. And so it went for the hour until the class was dismissed and the Master made his exit.
Majic stuck around a few minutes afterward, flipping casually through his unexpected amount of notes, to catch a few comments from the students he might relay to Orphen later, even as he was apt not to care in the least.
As seemed typical, the boys were more accepting, though aggravated at the amount of work the class seemed ready to heap on them, and their hands cramping from having to take so many damned notes. The girls crossed their arms, turned their noses to the sky and declared their displeasure with their teacher's abrasive manner, despite the familiar stars glowing in their young eyes while they said it. No one would find any of it funnier than Orphen would, that was to be certain. Cleo, however, was bound not to find it amusing whatsoever. Their arguments lately had taken on a different color and tone than ever before.
After all, it wasn't like he'd expected they would actually stop fighting.
o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o
When he woke, he was alone. Shifting around in the massive, four-posted galleon of a bed, half asleep and blinking, he reached out further to find nothing but an expanse of cold sheet, and sat up. One would think he'd be used to waking up alone, but for the past couple weeks he'd grown accustomed to something different, warmer, and decidedly preferable. He already knew he had trouble sleeping when she wasn't there next to him.
"Cleo?"
His mind was still slow with the residue of sleep, and he came up on his hands, peering around his dark quarters, which were incomparably nicer than his student lodgings from seven years past. The remnants of the fire glowed red under the wide stone mantle, a bed of livid burning rubies that illuminated the room just enough to discern the dark shapes of the furniture and walls. The armchair by the fireplace, the enormous wooden desk, the calico scatter of discarded clothing on the floor, and the washroom door, firmly closed with a thin line of candlelight fluttering in the space between the bottom of the door and the polished stone floor. What time was it? It felt almost like morning.
He stared at that shivering thread of light for a moment before reclining back, pulling the heavy, fur-lined covers up over his bare arms and closing his eyes again, breathing out on a long, exhausted sigh, settling into the silence and resuming the slow descent into sleep for long moments before a sound shook him awake.
The faraway sound of a single, subdued sob. Into hands or a washcloth or a towel. Then a sniff. And his legs were swinging over the side of the bed and carrying him to the door before he was even entirely conscious, tugging on his cotton pants on the way.
He stood quietly at the door until he heard it again, about a minute later, softer and wetter this time, but not soft enough that it didn't reach through the wall and strangle him the way it always seemed to, and in response, he tapped on the door with one knuckle.
"I…I'm in here…" she said on the other side, startled, her voice clearly strained.
"I know that, I can hear you." He said flatly. It was too late and he was too tired to fuck around. "What's going on?"
"N-nothing. Geez. I just…I'm just in here for a minute, okay?"
"Enough. What's wrong?"
"Nuh…nothing's wrong…"
He sighed, biting down on the contrary remark that was squirming at the tip of his tongue, letting a slow lungful of air out and leaning against the door before he spoke. Of course something was goddamn wrong.
"What did I do?"
She forced a little tearful laugh. "Nothing…you didn't do anything. Really, Orphen…nothing's wrong."
"Cleo."
"I'm fine. Go back to bed. I'll be back in a minute."
"You want me to go back to sleep listening to you fucking cry?" He hadn't meant that to sound quite as hard-edged as it did, but shit. He'd gotten pretty good at editing himself on the fly, a few slips ups were to be expected. "And you call me an asshole…"
"Nuh…no. I…I'm sorry…"
"Cleo. Open the door."
"What? No."
"Are you hurt?" He shook the doorknob in building annoyance. He'd already had quite enough.
"No!" An edge of distress was creeping into her tone, edging up his frustration level unreasonably. Maybe he was just tired, but he had a class in the morning. He wanted to go back to bed. With her. He wanted to be done with this part. She knew how much he hated it when she cried. He hated how it felt. She knew that. Why did she continually subject him to that frantic, spine-stiffening desperation for her to stop?
"Well, are you sick?"
"…I don't think so…"
That was an interesting answer. "You don't think so?"
"No."
"Then what the hell are you doing in there?" he snapped.
"Orphen, sheez, why the hell do you care?" she flared, her usual old defenses kicking in seamlessly. He leaned forward on the door, both arms braced on the wood, his anger reflex itching viciously.
"Oh, goddamnit." he sighed, tipping his forehead forward against the door, eyes sliding closed.
It was only a few seconds before suddenly the lock clicked and the door opened, giving under his leaning arms and he had to jerk back to avoid falling through. When her candlelit face appeared in the open door, her mouth was set in a hard, grim line, a crumpled leaf of parchment gripped in one curled up hand.
"Shit, give me warning…" he exhaled before nodding tersely to the paper in her fist with a lift of his eyebrow. "What's that?"
"A letter," she said stiffly. "From my mother."
His skin prickled. Maybe he didn't want to know after all. "Your mother," he repeated.
"She's…commissioning a stagecoach to take me back to Totokanta."
He wanted to snatch that letter out of her fingers, but instead he tightened his grip on the doorframe to occupy his hands. "Of course she fucking is," he said shortly. "How long ago did you get that?"
"I got it this morning," Her shoulders were dropped forward, visible gooseflesh risen on her bare arms. "I…I couldn't sleep, thinking about it. I didn't want to tell you."
"So…instead you were going to just disappear back home without telling me?"
Cleo's eyes came up at the dangerous note of anger that had sparked in that question. "Of course not."
"Well, great, you were going to say goodbye before you took off?"
"I wasn't going to take off," she insisted, both volume and anger rising in her tone.
"But you are going to leave, aren't you? I'm sure it's been long enough since she sent it that your gold plated coach'll be here by morning, won't it, Princess?"
"Orphen, fucking let me talk. You're being a total dick."
"Okay, talk. You're going, aren't you? If you weren't, you wouldn't be locked in the goddamn bathroom tormenting yourself about what to do."
She scowled bitterly. "I…I don't know what I'm going to do. But she doesn't want me here. Because of the fighting so close…and of course, she has things planned."
"Of course she does," he said again, a wounding sarcasm intensifying while he spoke, turning from the doorway. "Why wouldn't she? She needs to get you the hell away from me. She'll probably have all your wedding guests waiting for you when you climb out of the carriage. That's what she wants, isn't it? To marry you off?"
"I suppose that's her ultimate objective," she spat, folding up her arms in a defensive stance.
"Well, good for her. And good for you, too, if that's what you want." Now he was being unreasonable. He knew it.
"You know that's not what I want!"
"Maybe it's better that you go. It won't be long before they ask me to go with the next dispatch to the front, anyway."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know. Nothing, I guess."
"Bullshit! Why would you even say that to me? Is that some kind of threat?"
His head jerked back in her direction, a pointed glare blazing at her even from the shadows, the only light streaming from the wilting candle in the washroom. "What? Fuck. No, it's not a threat. Just a fact."
"You are such a prick. You think I want to go?" she hissed. "You think if it was up to me I'd want to leave? Wouldn't I have done it sooner than now?"
"Haven't you been threatening me from day one you were going to turn tail and go back home?"
"And weren't you the first to applaud that brilliant idea?"
Dammit. Ouch and dammit. Yeah, he had been. For all the wrong reasons, but he wasn't about to start on that with her. He had to fight against an intense irrationality that was simmering in the back of his mind, and threw her a pained look. "That was…then."
"Well I couldn't go through with it, could I? Even when I probably should have. And so you'd think I'd want to leave now, of all times? Now?"
His hands came up in a gesture of surrender and exasperation. "If you don't want to leave, don't fucking leave. She can't just choose your life for you, can she? Who gives a fuck what she wants for you, it's your goddamn life, Cleo. Isn't it?" As usual, his vocabulary dwindled considerably the more she worked him up. "If you were locked away in there twisting yourself in knots about it, trying to figure out who's more important to make happy…it's you. It's fucking you. Not anybody else. It's not for anyone to decide. Even if the whole country's up in arms fighting around you. I can't make you stay, and she can't make you go, no matter how much it probably feels like she can."
She was staring at the floor now, her arms folded tight across her chest, one leg stuck out in a defiant stance; but when she spoke, she sounded once again like she was about to break down. "Do you want me to stay?"
He nearly growled at her. "What? Of course I do…"
Cleo looked up at him with a storm blazing in her eyes. "Why?"
He either wanted to laugh or break something, and all his muscles snapped tight. What the hell did she mean why? If he didn't want her around…all the things he went through to find her when they took her…EVERYTHING that had happened and everything since…didn't she know what he'd been through just to be here with her now? She had to know. Hadn't he proved that to her? He often suspected she said things just to see how much he could take before he'd snap. The words he'd intended in response to that were 'Are you just saying that to piss me off?'
Instead, what flew out of his mouth was something different. Part of him felt it coming out and wanted to reach out and catch it midair, stuff it back down his throat for a better time. But it was too late. Somehow he should have known it was going to happen this way. He was so goddamn predictable.
"Why!?" he sneered, blindly provoked. "Because I fucking love you, that's why!" He said this with as much boiling frustration as a man could fit into his voice. And seriously. She couldn't have been any more surprised than he was. As usual, his mouth had a mind to get him into as much trouble as it could, and for a second, he thought his heart had stopped beating. He felt his skin go cold.
Oh God. Oh fuck. He wasn't ready to do this.
She was deathly silent, and he could feel her eyes locked on him, even in the dark. Somehow, from the silence it had brought on, one would think he'd insulted her so unthinkably she couldn't formulate an immediate reply. And…maybe he had. An image of Tistiny Everlasting's disgusted face flickered across his mind's eye, creased with the horrid prospect that some worthless, nobody piece of shit might accidentally fall in love with her daughter that was oh, far too good for the likes of him. Even at the time, he'd wanted to spit at her. Now he wanted to fall through the floor and was telling himself the same thing.
But it wasn't something he could take back. He couldn't tack any comment to the end of that to soften the meaning. That particular cat had unexpectedly been dumped out of the proverbial bag.
"Christ," he breathed anxiously in amendment, turning away and walking into the dark towards the bloody glow of the fading fire, suddenly violently queasy.
She didn't move from her spot, through her arms had dropped limply to her sides and she stood there in her little white silk slip, looking completely blank. "What did you say?"
"You heard me." Well, nothing else to say now.
"Orphen…"
"Cleo." He responded. He had nothing to save him. She had him now. Cornered. Checkmate.
She seemed to collect herself for a moment before continuing. "…Do you mean that?"
"I mean it," he said despondently, staring at the coals with arms crossed tight over his chest. "I didn't mean to say it, but I mean it."
"You…didn't mean to say it?"
"Well…it just…I don't know. You don't say it either…"
"Because I don't want to feel like I'm holding a gun to your head. It was bad enough last time…"
He shrugged, unfolding his arms and hooking his thumbs in his empty side beltloops.
"You didn't say it then, either."
"I was…" She stopped and nodded, the sound of parchment crumpling in her hand sounded like crackling fire. "I know."
Her soft barefooted steps tapped on the icy stone floor and onto the braided rug in front of the fireplace, approaching him slowly to stand next to him, to stare at the sunset colored ghost of their once-roaring fire. With a jerk of her wrist, the ball of paper landed in the coals, slowly blistering and smoking, uncurling enough that he could see tangled, scrawling words of black ink cursive backlit by the orange glow of heat before it finally flickered into a soft, silent ball of flame and quickly dwindled to a black wisp of ash. While he watched it, her arms came around him from behind, her cold cheek pressed against his shoulder blade, and he started slightly at her sudden touch as though expecting retribution instead of affection.
"I wasn't trying to figure out how to leave without telling you, okay? I don't want to leave…I thought you would know that."
He made no question or comment, only stood, wearing his tension and habitual reserve like an impenetrable suit of armor. It was such a sad thing to see him returning inexorably to his instinctive distrust, his kneejerk expectations of being used and rejected. "Orphen…"
"I don't know what I'm doing," he muttered fiercely, almost more to himself than to her. "Why am I doing this?"
He felt her breath on his back when she responded, her arms tight around him. "Doing what?"
"This," he insisted uncomfortably, his eyes fastened on the fireplace, speaking so flat and soft he barely sounded like himself. The usual sharp edge that defined his unique, strangely beautiful voice had completely eroded away, leaving an exhausted husk. "You…and me. Whatever this is. I don't know. I'm horrible at this. You're upset; I yell at you. I can't…there's something wrong with my brain."
"No, there isn't," she whispered.
His shoulders jerked under her cheek with a silent, self-depreciating snort. "I'm going to remind you that you said that."
"I love you."
Of course, hearing it should have made him happy. But no matter what she said, there was something wrong with him. Why did finally hearing that so plainly inspire such dread? It wasn't as though he didn't know it. But regardless, he was gripped by a dizzying cocktail of relief and elation and crawling terror. With her ear pressed to his back, she heard him take in a long, slow breath and hold it for a moment, before he let out a tiny, bewildered laugh that sounded distinctly on the verge of tears. "Why?"
He asked it of her as though she'd said she wanted to swim with sharks; as if she'd just said the most ridiculous thing in the world. "Could you answer that question easily if I asked you the same thing?"
He seemed to slump a bit. She knew he couldn't. He could barely say how he felt, let alone why he felt that way. "No..." he sighed.
"Well, then, you know it's complicated. Why does anybody do anything? I guess I could pick it apart and get back to you on it…"
"No no, don't think about it too much…or you're bound to realize how little sense it makes. And that it's not going to work."
"Like you already have?" she asked sadly. "Besides. I already tried telling myself that a long time ago."
"What a fuckin' mess."
Now she breathed an anxious laugh, holding onto him tight while he stared at the fading coals, relaxing only a fraction when one of his hands came up from his belt to skirt reticently over hers before settling over it. How long they stood like that was unclear, that silent truce stretching on into the thin hours until the candle in the bathroom drowned itself, its flickering glow replaced by the vesper of impending daybreak that glowed golden between the separations in the heavy drapes.
Finally she spoke, a wisp of warm breath on his back. "Orphen…I'm cold."
Without a word, he turned, using their clasped hands to usher her back to bed where, under the weighty covers, he accepted her into his arms with a nervous reluctance as though acting against the warning of instinct. How quickly a single argument could stretch that stone wall of silence completely between them was almost uncanny, and it was with a touch of despair in her voice that she acknowledged it: the daunting task of trying to build on this unstable surface, this castle on wet sand. If every snag was going to be met with this predictable but heartbreaking whiplash response of accusations and anger, he was certainly right in his supposition that they were fighting a losing battle.
"What are we going to do?" She asked this in a stony voice that was bereft of any hope. She didn't mean about her mother's commissioned stagecoach; that much was obvious.
In the dark around them there was no answer, only a glut of things still left unsaid. Finally he turned towards her, tightening his embrace suddenly and pressing his cheek against the side of her neck, holding her against him in wordless contrition until the chill began to thaw and she relaxed into him, her fingers sliding up the nape of his neck and into his hair. He bent to drop an uneasy kiss on her cold, bare shoulder, then another on her collarbone, his warm breath chasing each kiss upward until he found her mouth and sealed his against it; a kiss deep and as possessive as always. And as was usual, everything that was wrong between them washed away in the press of flesh and lips and hands, like rain washing away dust. But just as her lips had warmed and opened to him, he drew back and paused cautiously in a manner that reminded her of a first kiss in a moonlit bed that felt like a thousand years past.
"You shouldn't…you know."
Cleo blinked up at him in the dark, already woozy. "I shouldn't…what?"
He hesitated again. He had such trouble saying that word, it was absurd. "…love me…"
"Are you setting me up to ask you why again so you can get mad at me, because it's supposed to be obvious why I shouldn't?"
"It is obvious…you know why…you know what kind of…person I am…" This was so stupidly hard.
"Why is this coming up now?" Inevitably, she sounded frustrated.
"Why wouldn't it? We haven't talked about it."
"I don't want to hear it," she said. "Don't tell me why you think I shouldn't love you. It's my choice, and it's too late for you to tell me that now. It's already done. If you really wanted to warn me, you should have done something about it a year or two ago when you might have changed my mind. "
"Didn't I? I went out of my way to be as big an asshole as I could…"
"You did, didn't you?" she agreed lazily, running her fingers back through his hair and down the column of his neck. "Was that to make me hate you?"
Resisting a sudden shiver, he sighed. "No…Yes. Sort of."
"Well, for some reason, it didn't work. How long have I known you, anyway? They weren't all exactly your sunniest days. So then, tell me, if I'm obviously too much of a twit to figure you out for myself. What kind of person are you, exactly?"
He froze up again, biting back a derisive retort that was bound to only make things worse. It was hard to decide what to say. That he was a murderer? A complete fucking mental case? A total fuck up? That he'd ruthlessly slaughtered a hundred men in his rage over what they'd done to her? That he was going to be a possessive, insecure, temperamental nightmare of a lover? That he was a half-crazy, self-interested asshole that had fought tooth and nail against any sort of attachment to her as though it meant certain, agonizing death? Well. That one she probably already knew.
But the truth was, she didn't really know a damn thing about him. Not really. And did he want her to? Did it really matter?
Shit. Once again, he'd done this to himself. When would he learn to keep his mouth shut?
He'd spent his whole life regretting, fearing and being burdened by the past. By things that couldn't be changed. By things that haunted him while he slept. Murders, deaths, injustices that he stubbornly clung to, blaming them all on himself as only he could. But he hadn't had a nightmare for over a week, and he could only expect he had her to thank for it. If he really told her what kind of monster she was sharing a bed with…what would she say? He didn't know if he could handle watching her recoil from him in revulsion and shock. If he told her some of the things he'd done, would those horrors in his past begin to taint her as well? Would they wake her violently from her sleep? Maybe it was an irrational fear, but he was nothing if not a little high strung.
Her hands were on his face now, drawing it back down to hers for a kiss, and he could see her; a net of pale hair scattered around her face and over the pillows. The sun chose that moment to crest the distant horizon, a thin thread of cold winter sunlight falling through the curtains and over her face as she smiled up at him, her arms lifted up and his red headband still streaming from around one little wrist. She never had removed it, even after he'd returned. He would be the first to admit that his intuition in the area was woefully lacking, but even he knew that definitely meant something.
He began to construct a shaky reply, and she stopped him, settling back against the pillow and replacing her lips with the pads of her fingertips against his mouth.
"Don't answer," she amended softly, blinking her eyes beautifully against the sun. "When will you get it through your head that I don't care about that?"
He dropped his face into the pillow beside hers, exhaling wearily against her neck and curling his arms under her waist, pardoned from condemning himself and adoring her fiercely for it.
"I don't know," he murmured. "Never?"