As they walked, Joros held a hand over his chest, finding it hard to breathe even an hour later. And he knew that an hour had passed, because it had worked. Somehow, it had worked. The sun had returned, and the Twins were gone for good. It hadn’t come without a terrible cost, but what were a few lives when held against the sum of the world? That was an arithmetic his father had taught him well, one of the precious few things he’d taught Joros. A single life was nothing. A handful of lives had no significant cost. The number of deaths before it began to matter, before it began to mean, was a high number indeed.
There had been a high cost for this. In the great ledger book of life, it had all been worth it ten times over. But Joros felt very much like he had been robbed at knifepoint, and what had been paid did not feel insignificant.
All those around him looked similarly plundered, and some more than others. Those of Scal’s followers who hadn’t wanted to return to the madness of the mountain looked dazed—they’d likely seen a large number of their fellows fall in the battle, perhaps people they’d become friends with over the long weeks of traveling. Because they hadn’t gone back, they were easy to identify as the sort for whom grief was like a smothering shroud, rather than a spark to tinder.
And the pack . . . they all had the look of people who’d been beaten and left for dead. Joros had wondered if Aro would make any sort of farewells to those who had been so ardently interested in his well-being, and if he had, he’d done it subtly enough that they hadn’t been prepared to find him a corpse.
Rora, of course, was worst of all, but that was only to be expected. They’d managed to convince her she didn’t have to help carry her brother’s body, so now she stumbled along ahead of it, where she wouldn’t have to see the body, the boy Etarro walking at her side with his hand in hers.
His own sister was still unconscious, still in Deslan’s arms. She must be getting tired—she was a strong woman, Joros knew that well, but Avorra was practically old enough to be called a woman rather than a girl, and she’d never been skeleton-thin like her brother. Joros adjusted his steps slightly to move to Deslan’s side. “I can carry her for a time,” he said, softly, because breaking the grieving silence that surrounded their group felt like irreverence.
Deslan glanced over at him and then away. “I’m fine,” she said just as softly.
Joros felt his jaw tighten. He’d caught a glimpse of her face, back in the dead-town, where she’d sat cradling Avorra as all the others had pulled Rora off him. There had been so much in her face, and he’d looked away before his mind had a chance to process all of it, but there had been so many similarities with the looks on the faces of the pack. He’d been hoping he’d imagined it all on her face, at least.
He wondered if he should have stayed—gone with the hotheaded youngsters back to the mountain, to wreak havoc and revenge. So long ago, before all his plans had shattered to pieces, that had been his goal—position himself for greatest advantage once the Fallen had fallen to their lowest. It would make it so easy to step forward and place himself as their leader, a veritable army to do his bidding, to do anything he wanted, to accomplish all his goals—
But what would he do? He had no goals—the only thing, the last thing, he had planned for: accomplished and done. The Twins were gone, he had done that—but what next? He had no path and no purpose; nowhere to go, and no one to go to. He had nothing.
The melancholy had sunk deep into his bones.
Ahead, Rora stuttered and stopped. Those walking immediately behind her barely managed not to run into her. Joros saw what had brought her to a halt: the sunlight, shining off the rooftops of a town ahead.
They’d avoided all towns on the way to the mountain, on the way to battle. But returning . . . it was Deslan who gave reluctant voice to what no one else was willing to say: “We should rest for a while. We haven’t slept or eaten in . . . gods know how long. And”—she shifted her arms significantly—“someone should look at the girl.”
They all nodded or murmured agreement, but still, no one moved. A town meant people, and people meant talking and explanations and celebrating when they all felt half dead. Perhaps worse, there was the potential they would find another dead-town, and more death seemed unbearable. The safer thing would be to avoid this town and all others, to simply make it back to the estate, where they could nurse their wounds and bury their dead.
Etarro finally tugged gently on Rora’s hand, and they started forward once more, toward the town.
They could hear the celebration even from far off, which at least meant the townsfolk were alive—mixed curse and blessing as that was. It swelled outward to draw them in, and then faltered. Joros wondered what it was that gave the townsfolk pause: whether it was the corpse, or all the grim looks, or the unavoidably matching faces of two sets of twins.
The Long Night was only an hour gone. It took longer than that for people to refind the trust that had been stolen from them in the darkness. It took longer than that to refind humanity.
Joros stepped forward from the cluster of their group. Robbed as he felt, he was wise enough to know he was in far better condition than most of his companions.
He swept his arm back in the direction they’d come, where, in the far distance but still disconcertingly visible in the sunlight, the mountain lay dormant. “The Twins are dead,” he told the townsfolk. “The Fallen are broken. We were there when it happened; we are part of the force that defeated them. If you can give us an hour of rest, and if you have a bit of food and water to spare, we will tell you all we know.”
That was a safe trade, and an easy choice to make. From the perspective of the townsfolk, at worst they were looking at feeding, housing, and being entertained by a ragtag group of vagrants who were in no condition to fight. There was little at stake for them.
As food and water were passed around, and the town’s bone-cutter was trotted out to take a look at Avorra, Joros sat at the center of the crowd of townsfolk, weaving the tale for them, mixing the grandeur of killing gods with the reality of a battle hard fought. He could have held their attention for as long as he chose to—they all gaped like fish, and his hands held the lines that had hooked them. It gave his people the time they needed to rest, largely ignored by the townsfolk. It gave them the relief of not having to tell their own part in the story.
When Joros ran out of tale to tell, his people were happy to leave, and the townsfolk were happy enough to see them off—Joros wasn’t entirely sure any of them had actually believed a word he’d said, but it didn’t matter. They’d gotten food and rest, the bone-cutter had pronounced nothing severely or overtly wrong with Avorra—and, too, the townsfolk had given them a shroud for Aro, and a sling to make carrying him easier. Rora had watched them wrap her brother with a stricken look on her face, as though realizing his death all over again. It was a hard thing to see.
Most importantly, his people had all learned they could survive human interaction—which was good, because there was more of it to come.
They could avoid some towns, but the tale needed to be told. The people needed to hear, and know what had happened, and know who had saved them. And, when the sun set, they needed to believe that it would come back.
When Avorra woke, she simply blinked, and said nothing. If she was spoken to, she would turn to face the speaker, but she wouldn’t answer. Couldn’t, perhaps.
It distressed Etarro far more than Joros would have expected—there had always been so much tension between the twins, like oil and water mixed. He would never have described them as close. But when his sister wouldn’t acknowledge him, would only blink at him owlishly, he choked on a sob and fled her side.
When they resumed their journey, gentle tugging could pull Avorra to her feet, and she would walk where she was directed. Where before Rora and Etarro, hand in hand, had silently led the group, they now added Avorra. Just as silent, walking with her hands strung between the two of them, walking wherever they guided her.
Like everything had been since they’d defeated the Twins, returning to the estate was as terrible as it was a relief.
It finally gave them a true and well-earned rest, but meant telling the tale over again—and for the first time, Joros had no part in it. That was with good reason, as he’d played the largest role in Aro’s not returning to them alive. The rest of the pack, Sharra Dogshead particularly, could hardly stand to see Joros there even when he remained perfectly silent. He couldn’t blame them for it, not really. Maybe one day they’d accept that it had been Aro’s doing, Aro’s choice, but the wounds were too fresh for that sort of acceptance. Let them have their hatred.
Rora was given the open-armed welcome she hadn’t received from her pack for more than a year. Grief, it seemed, was enough to wash away any lingering grudges. No telling if that would last, but Joros saw relief on enough faces that he suspected it might. Somber Etarro and silent Avorra were given similar welcome—for all their harsh ways, Joros had noted a particular softness among the pack when it came to children. Sharra Dogshead, weeping openly, crouched before the twins—a slow and painful process with her bad leg. She spoke to them too softly for Joros to hear, her eyes drifting frequently to Rora, to Aro’s shroud. At the end of it, she held both her hands out to the young twins. Etarro gripped one with tears standing in his too-old eyes, and then reached over to lift his sister’s hand into Sharra’s other.
Joros remained at the periphery of it all. For the first time, he hadn’t been thinking past the next step, the most immediate goal. Get them back to their home. With that done, Joros wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He had no more plans, no more goals, nowhere else to go.
Once she’d finished her weeping, the Dogshead stood on her crippled leg and called for everyone’s attention. “You’re all welcome to stay here,” she said to those who were not her pack, “for as long as you need.” Her eyes settled on Joros, and immediately communicated two things: that the invitation did not extend to him, but that she would not call him out specifically. She would only make him feel unwelcome, without the trouble of actually throwing him out the door. If he wanted to, he could choose to ignore the first part and impose on her hospitality. It was his home, after all.
But he looked at the others in their little knots of grief and camaraderie, and he knew that staying would never draw him into any of those circles. He was sick of being scorned and abhorred until he was needed to do the difficult things they couldn’t stand to do; he was not some tool that could be kept locked away until he was useful.
His eyes found Deslan in the crowd, but she wouldn’t look at him. She’d been avoiding him, intentionally, ever since she returned from the mountain.
So he left, feet re-stirring the dust that had just begun to settle on the sun-touched road. He had no path and no purpose; nowhere to go, and no one to go to. For the first time in longer than he could remember, he was alone. That was fine; he didn’t need anyone but himself. Other people had only ever gotten in his way.
He had won, he had succeeded—and all it had cost was everything he had, everything he was. It was simple arithmetic. It was the way of the world.