They reached a small tent on the edge of the camp, where Morgyn and who Brysen now figured was her girlfriend stood guard.
“For new warriors,” Launa said, opening the flaps. Inside was a plush rug with cushions all around it and a small washbasin on a stand with clean water and soft brushes. Skins of water, milk, and wine hung from pegs on the tent poles, and a tray of food on a low table sat beside a burning brazier under a pot, which steamed and warmed the night air.
“This is not forever, so don’t get comfortable,” Visek grunted. “Only new pairs on the first night.” He looked to the risen moon and snorted.
“Your bond is vital to your fighting power,” Launa explained as her son left. “Whatever vows you make tonight must be unbreakable. They may be your own—we do not have dogma on what ties one soul to another—but you must be tied, completely. You are responsible for each other, as Anon is responsible for all of us. To fail each other is to fail him, and to fail him is to fail us, and failing us will invite retribution.”
They both nodded. Just because they’d survived a few days with the Kartami didn’t promise them the next ones.
“Good,” she said. “Tomorrow, you will wake with the sun, and then the sky will test you as it never has before. Rest well, or don’t. The choice is yours. Until then.” She bowed her head to the dirt, the Altari way. Brysen returned with the winged salute, which startled her. He noticed Morgyn, who was still holding open the tent flap, suppressing a smirk.
“Careful,” Launa warned. “Not all Kartami have as warm a sense of humor as we do.”
She left them, and they both exhaled. Brysen chugged a skin of fermented milk while Jowyn collapsed against a support pole, staring at him. When Brysen had finished drinking, he looked around. “Nice place we’ve got here.” Sarcasm was his only defense against the words he didn’t know how to say.
Jowyn, however, had no such reluctance. “What under a blazing sky of fire do you think we’re doing?” he whispered. It somehow also sounded like a shout. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were having fun.”
“I am,” Brysen told him.
“They want us to attack the Villages tomorrow!”
“They’re just trying to get a rise out of my sister,” Brysen said. “If she’s with the army that’s coming, they’ll want her to see me, get mad, and attack. It’ll kick off a battle for real, and that’s when we can make our move.”
“‘Our move’?”
“I’ll kill Anon during the battle,” Brysen whispered. “I’ll be up above. I’ll have the drop on him.”
“You’d miss the ground if you were aiming at it, Bry.” Jowyn sighed. “You’ve got a lot of talents, but aim isn’t one of them.”
There was no cruelty in the comment; it was simply true. “But what if I don’t have to aim? What if I don’t use a spear?”
Jowyn was listening.
“There will be hawks sent up to fight us off,” Brysen explained. “I can use the Hollow Tongue to command one to attack.”
“Brysen…” Jowyn shook his head. “You don’t know if you can do that. You never even got Shara to hunt a mole. You don’t know anything about how the Hollow Tongue works, and if you screw up, they’ll kill you for trying. You’ll be strapped in that kite and they’ll drop you before I can do anything to help.”
“That’s only if I fail,” Brysen said. “I don’t know why you assume I’m going to fail.”
“I don’t assume that,” Jowyn said, “but even if you succeed, he’s just one warrior among literally thousands.”
Brysen shrugged. “You see how they worship him. It will break them if he dies. They won’t know what to do, and while they’re confused, we’ll make a run for safety behind the barricades.”
“They don’t look like the sort who get confused.”
“Why won’t you trust me on this?” Brysen hated the whining pitch that his voice took. “Why won’t you believe in me?”
“Because I do believe in you,” Jowyn answered, his own voice bending like a knee to dirt. “I just don’t want to see you killed and I don’t want to see you throw away the gift you’ve been given just to spread more death in this world. We have enough death. You can do something else. I’ve seen you do it.”
“You saw me command a bird to do what I wanted it to, even though it was impossible,” he said. “That’s what I can do. That’s what I will do.”
“No.” Jowyn crossed the tent to stand directly in front of Brysen, making eye contact so hard, it pressed Brysen back against the tent’s canvas. “I saw someone kind and beautiful and brave start to find the kindness and beauty and bravery in himself and to harness it for something other than the bloodshed our stupid world has taught him. That’s the impossible thing I saw. Not the Hollow Tongue. You. I saw you.”
Brysen felt the blood rush to his face. He looked at his feet; he looked at the floor. His lower lip quivered. The anger he felt toward Jowyn tipped its wings and dove, faster than any living thing could fly, and became pain. He didn’t trust that sort of kindness, couldn’t believe that kind of faith in him. He had power now, and a great and bloody purpose, but he still couldn’t believe he was beautiful or brave or kind. He hadn’t proven it yet. He had to kill Anon. Maybe then he could believe it. Regardless, so far Jowyn’s praise felt like lies, and they hurt worse because Jowyn believed them to be true. He was embarrassed to think these same stupid thoughts that always clipped his wings, and being embarrassed hurt, and being hurt embarrassed him more, and so his tired old thoughts dove and dove and dove and found no ground beneath them.
If I could just do this one great thing, he thought, then I’d break this tired turning of my mind. If I could just do this one great thing, it wouldn’t just change the world. It would change me.
I’d slice the sun from the sky, Jowyn had said, and Brysen wanted to be worth that statement.
He longed for proof that Jowyn meant what he said. He felt ridiculous and stupid, but all he could think of were reasons not to trust Jowyn, even if he was making those reasons up on the spot. Jowyn had seen his scars; Jowyn had seen his moods; Jowyn had seen his ridiculous faith that he could be more than people thought he was, that he could change the world. Brysen couldn’t hunt a weasel, let alone a whole world.
Some assassin I’ll make, he thought, and he was crying now. He felt like such a weakling, such a wimp.
“Hey, it’s okay.” Jowyn put his hands on Brysen’s shoulders and bent his neck so their eyes would meet even as Brysen turned away. “Please, hear me, Brysen. I meant everything I’ve said—I go wherever you go … but I truly think you have another path. You’re a healer, Brysen. Wars are lousy with killers, but those who can heal? They’re rare birds. Irreplaceable. You are irreplaceable, and I fear what happens to this world without you in it.”
Brysen let Jowyn’s thumb touch his cheekbone below his eye, let him wipe the tears off.
“If you say something about my ‘gentle soul,’” Brysen sniffled, “I’ll punch you in the mouth.”
Jowyn smiled. “But there are so many better things my mouth can do than get punched.”
Brysen laughed and wiped his nose. “You have a terrible sense of humor.”
“I have a terrible desire to kiss you,” Jowyn replied.
Brysen’s eyes were wet, but his lips were suddenly dry. His heart pecked at his throat. He felt dizzy. Wasn’t this what he wanted? He had thought his heart was a circling hawk, carving the same path in the sky over and over, but maybe it was a hawk on the fist, bound and tamed and terrified to fly. Maybe he had to let it go, risk it to the world and trust its safe return, though the wind was wild and predators stalked its shadow.
“I have a terrible desire to let you kiss me,” he said, allowing his hawkish heart to fly at last, and Jowyn took his face in his hands, looked into his eyes, unblinking, and the tiniest twitch in his lips sent a smile through Brysen’s entire body. The air between them became that smile.
Brysen breathed in, and in that breath he reached his own hands up, pulled Jowyn’s face to his. And he kissed him. He felt Jowyn’s rough smile against his lips, and their mouths bent together into a laugh.
“What? Did I—What?” Brysen pulled his face away, ears burning like a bonfire. Had he kissed wrong? Had Jowyn not wanted that? Had he ruined everything?
“The hairs on your chin,” Jowyn laughed. “They tickled. I was never ticklish before.”
“Things change,” Brysen whispered, relieved.
“I’m glad they do,” Jowyn replied, his hands on the back of Brysen’s neck. With the tiniest pressure, he nudged their faces back together again.
Like a drowning body gasps for breath in desperate heaves when it breaks the surface, Brysen gulped the air from Jowyn’s lungs. He might’ve lived his whole life drowning had he never shared his breath like this, would never have known what it was to breathe through lips like these.
When Jowyn pulled back, a small trail of saliva bridged between them, stretching to break on Jowyn’s chin. They laughed at the absurdity of it, how strange it was to have bodies when both their hearts were only wind and light.
His hands dropped to Jowyn’s side, felt the heat of him, the pressure as he pulled them together, and now they were nothing but bodies, and they crushed their lips together so tight that no wind could blow between them, no heat escape. Like when a log falls on a blazing fire, sparks burst to the sky as Jowyn’s hands slid down Brysen’s back, to his hips, to the hem of his tunic.
He let Jowyn lead.
“Is it okay?” Jowyn whispered, and Brysen said, “Yes,” and let the hands touch the skin of his side, where the old burn scars made a map of the moments when he’d wanted to leave his body behind. He sank into his skin under Jowyn’s touch, let his shirt rise up over his head and off. He never wanted to leave this body again, he’d never loved it so much as now, broken as it had been, whole in all the broken places.
Their limbs entangled. Brysen turned. He felt Jowyn’s breath on the back of his neck, one arm wrapped around his shoulder to his chest, hand pressed, open-palmed, holding him like a falcon holds the fist. The other hand rested feather-soft on his jutting hip. He tripped a little and they nearly fell forward, which reminded them they were still standing.
They laughed.
Jowyn whispered into his ear again, “Is this okay?” and Brysen nodded yes, because his only language was his body, pressing back, and Jowyn moved to the rhythm of Brysen’s breathing, just like in the war barrow. There was pressure, Jowyn’s grip tightened, and Brysen let out a sound he hadn’t meant to, a high yelp with a warble, like someone had stepped on a songbird.
“Sorry,” he said, and Jowyn’s gentle laugh had no unkindness in it.
Jowyn asked him again, “Is this okay?”
And Brysen found the word for yes, and he said it and weighted it with every other word he could remember—yes for sunrise, and yes for laughter, and yes for crying and for wanting and for cursing. Yes for needing and for hunting, and yes for flying and for heartache and for grieving, and yes for then, and yes for now, and yes for later. Yes for the yesses he never got to say before, and Jowyn repeated “yes” and meant the same and meant the opposite. And it was every word they’d ever said together and every word they feared they’d only ever say alone, and they said yes like breathing, yes like wind, like sky, like storms. Yes like lightning. Like lightning. Like lightning.
It rained all night and was still raining in the predawn dark when Brysen slid out from under Jowyn’s heavy arm and dressed himself. He ducked under the tent’s side flap, crawling through the mud and the dark past the two sleeping sentries in their trenches. He had a smile on his face as he crawled, the happiest he’d ever been and, he figured, the happiest he’d ever be again.
He had decided that he couldn’t risk Jowyn’s life in battle. He wouldn’t. As precious as Jowyn had told Brysen he was, that was how precious the strange pale boy was to Brysen. And though he was used to being invulnerable, Brysen had seen the changes in his skin, the easy bruising, the blisters and scabs. Jowyn’s body would break like anyone else’s in a war, and the thought of that strange skin tearing was too much for Brysen to bear. He would not allow it.
He’d used a bit of berry wine from the tent to scrawl a quick note on a tiny, torn piece of tent cloth and gently reached up and slipped it into the folds of Morgyn’s robe, safe from the rain, where she’d find it if she went for her knife. He hoped she’d read it and understand. He wanted it to be clear Jowyn had no part in this; maybe she’d see fit to let him escape when the deed was done. He hoped she’d heed the message, a kindness from one person who’d been in love to another.
Before the sun came up, one way or another, Brysen would fulfill his destiny. He hoped that if he didn’t come back, Jowyn would eventually forgive him, or at least remember the best of him.