Chapter 35 - Promise (Patreon)

The room was smaller than it looked from the doorway. Four people, one bed, two chairs, and a window that faced a wall. Sari had hung a spare blanket over it anyway, and in the permanent dim light it was easy to lose track of whether it was morning or afternoon. Arien found he didn't particularly want to know.

He lay at the foot of the bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to his sisters breathe.

Alia slept most of the time, which the healer said was normal and exactly what her body needed. When she was awake, she was quieter than Arien remembered. Usually, her silence meant she was thinking. Now she seemed to have stopped expecting anything to happen next.

She ate whatever she was given, and her answers rarely went beyond a word or two. Once, in the middle of the second night, she whispered Mama so softly that Sari’s arms were around her before Arien had even registered the sound.

He didn't sleep much. Whenever he tried, his mind returned to specific, useless details: the particular sound the gate latch made when it needed lifting, the smell of the barn in winter, the teeth marks on the bars of his old crib that had been there when he arrived and would presumably still be there now, buried in the ash.

He had lost parents before. He knew how it worked. You survived it because you had no other option, and then one day it hurt less, and then one day it became something you carried rather than something that carried you.

Knowing that didn't make the ceiling any more interesting to look at.

On the third morning Sari made him go downstairs.

She hadn't asked. She had put her hands on his shoulders and physically pushed him toward the door with a cheerful brutality that reminded him painfully of Sari at nine years old, dragging him around a sunlit pasture and naming every plant she could reach.

"You need to eat something that isn't bread," she said.

"I can stay with Alia—"

“Alia is asleep and will stay asleep, and she doesn't need you watching her do it.” She steered him firmly toward the stairs. “Will is already down there. He's been there since dawn.”

Arien gave up arguing and went downstairs.

Will was indeed at the corner table with a bowl of porridge he had apparently forgotten about, staring blankly at the wall. He looked up when Arien appeared and immediately straightened a little, as though he had been waiting for him.

"You look terrible," Will said.

"Good morning to you too."

"I mean it as an observation, not a criticism." He pushed the porridge toward the center of the table in what was apparently meant as an offering. "Sit down. Mili says they have eggs."

Mili, reading the room with the accuracy of someone who had worked a tavern floor for years, produced eggs and disappeared without being asked.

They sat in silence for a moment. Outside, the city was already loud with the chaos of a place absorbing bad news. Loaded carts creaked through the streets, voices carried from below, and somewhere nearby two people were loudly arguing over prices.

"My brother wrote," Will said finally. "He wants me to come to the capital as soon as I'm well enough to travel. He says it isn't safe here, with the border situation uncertain."

"Is he right?"

"Probably." Will looked at his hands. "He also says he's sorry about our father. That he was a good man." A pause. "He didn't know him very well. They argued a lot."

Arien didn't say anything. There wasn't anything useful to say.

"He was teaching me an overhead combination," Will said. "We hadn't finished it. I keep trying to remember the second part, and I can't get it right." He stopped, then forced himself to continue. "It's stupid. It's just a sword technique."

"It's not stupid."

"It feels stupid."

"It's not."

Will nodded, very slightly, in the way of someone accepting something they didn't entirely believe but appreciated hearing anyway. He picked up his porridge, only to set it down again without eating.

"Your mother," he said carefully. "And your sister. Kreft said—"

"I know what Kreft said."

"Do you think they're—"

"I don't know." The words came out flat and final. "I try not to think about it too much right now. When I do, I can't—" He stopped. Rebuilt the wall, quickly, with the mechanical efficiency of long practice. "I'll think about it when I can do something about it."

Will looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded again, the same small nod, and this time it meant something different.

"Alright," he said. "Then we'll think about it together. When you're ready."

That night, after Alia had been settled and Will had retreated to the corner of the room with the focused expression of someone performing mental sword drills, Sari sat beside Arien on the floor with her back against the bed. Neither of them spoke for a long time. Outside, someone was singing badly and at significant volume. A dog answered. The singer did not stop.

"I keep thinking about the cows," Arien said finally.

Sari turned to look at him.

"Lazy and Fat. I don't know what happened to them." He paused. "It's a stupid thing to think about."

"It's not stupid," she said, which was exactly what he had said to Will that morning, and they both noticed it at the same moment, and Sari gave a short, shaky laugh and pressed her face briefly against his shoulder.

He put his arm around her, and they stayed like that while the bad singer found a second verse. Eventually even the dog gave up, and the city slowly grew quiet around them.

He didn't sleep for a long time after she did.

But he stayed still, and he kept his breathing even, and he let her rest.

Several days later, the time came for Will to leave for the capital and join Malbek. Rain had fallen almost without pause since their arrival in Ribenne, and that morning it turned into a full storm. Kreft briefly considered delaying their departure, but there was no telling how long the weather would last. In the end, they pulled on heavy cloaks and prepared to leave.

Arien waited with Will while Kreft finished preparing the horse.

“I hope we meet again soon. Remember to write sometimes. If I don’t reply, it just means I’m short on money, not that I’ve forgotten you.”

Will looked at him seriously, then reached beneath his cloak and pulled out a knife. In his small hands it almost resembled a sword, with a fine wooden hilt engraved with the Greyrock crest and a narrow, slightly curved blade. Arien had never seen it before.

“Kreft found it in the ruins of the estate. It was Riztor’s. My father gave it to him.” Will turned the knife in his hand. “I always wanted one like it. Riztor probably forgot it in his room.”

Arien didn’t know what to say. Will tightened his grip on the hilt.

“My brothers never wanted me around. Not really. And before you, I never had a real friend.”

“Will—”

“I know your family was paid to keep me company,” he continued quickly. “I know that’s why you first came to the estate. But you didn’t have to become my friend.” He met Arien’s eyes. “I want you to be my blood brother.”

Arien stared at the knife, then back at him.

“And someday, if the King hasn’t brought them home, we’ll go to the Tyranny ourselves,” Will said. His voice wavered, but he forced the words out. “I’ll become strong enough. Strong enough to bring them back.”

His fingers trembled around the knife.

“And to make the people who did this pay.”

Arien wanted to remind him that they were only children, that neither of them knew where the captives had been taken or what waited beyond the border. But he couldn’t make himself say it.

The fire in Will’s eyes stirred the anger Arien had buried since the attack. He thought of the burned house, the bodies of his father and brothers, and everyone dragged across the border: his mother, Lisa, Lady Helia, Syl, and countless others.

The helpless anger was painfully familiar. Years ago, he had felt the same thing sitting in a courtroom while a judge sentenced the drunk driver who had killed his parents.

The driver had been young, from a respected family of lawyers, with no prior record and an apparently convincing display of remorse. He received a five-year suspended sentence and a seven-year driving ban.

That day, Arien had wanted a weapon. He had wanted to deliver justice himself, both to the driver and to the judge, who he later learned had been a friend of the killer’s parents.

On Earth, he had swallowed the injustice because there had been nothing he could do about it. Here, things were different. Here, he could become strong enough to act.

“Revenge,” he said through clenched teeth.

Will nodded and drew the blade across his right palm. Blood welled along the cut before he handed the knife to Arien. Without hesitation, Arien did the same. The sting barely registered as they clasped bloody hands.

Neither spoke until Kreft called from the road. Will tightened his grip once before letting go. “Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

Will climbed onto the horse behind Kreft. A moment later, they were riding away through the rain. Just before the road carried them out of sight, Will looked back.

Arien raised his bloodied hand.

He watched until the storm swallowed them.

The cut in Arien’s palm throbbed as he watched the empty road.

For days, he had kept his anger buried beneath grief, plans, and the wall in his mind. Now, with Will’s blood drying against his own, there was no point pretending it wasn’t there. He was angry at the raiders who had destroyed his home, at the soldiers who had arrived too late, and at himself for being powerless yet again.

Something shifted in his Status.

Avenger: a cold fire of vengeance burns in your blood. The names of the dead walk beside you, urging you forward. As long as your thirst for vengeance endures, you gain +0.5 perception and +0.5 Vitality per level.