Page 20 of Arrows

He was still armed, bow and quiver. He found a corner to set those in.

He picked up Lorre’s clothing and folded it and put the folds atop a chest, in the corner, which he discovered to be holding other fabric. He put the hair-pins in a shallow seashell he found near the mysterious collection of twigs and sticks and woods. The seashell shimmered, iridescent; and for a moment Van’s heart cracked open at the thought of home, the simplicity of waves on a shore, the inn’s hearth and long tables, his father’s gruff embrace, evenings spent learning to help his mother with the accounts.

He had written home faithfully, during the hasty weeks of training and mobilization. He had not written about Lorre; he had not had time, these last tumultuous days. He did not know what he could possibly say.

He had written about Milo. About the new friend who’d decided, that first day, that they were going to be friends; who had never cared that Van came from a tiny drowsy fishing-village and did not know about Court fashions; who was unobtrusively everyone’s friend and had a reliable unhurried hand with a bow and woke up grumbling and unfocused before the first cup of strong hot tea.

They’d both volunteered. They’d both believed in this: protecting their home. They had that in common, the way they’d discovered they had other things in common: a liking for music, being fond of animals, an anchor in family and home. Milo couldn’t whistle, but could play the guitar, though he hadn’t brought his; Van had not ever learned an instrument, but could mimic sea-birds and song-birds and any tune he’d heard clearly enough, and Milo had laughed and applauded him for it.

Black pearl hair-pins in hand, in the Sorcerer’s tent, Van wanted to whistle a little aching note; he wanted Milo with him, so intensely he thought his bones would break with the wanting. He wanted Milo’s arms around him again.

He thought that maybe he knew what he wanted, now.

Except he also did want to be here. Because Lorre, he thought, needed him. Someone, at least.

That headache. Those insults, even while the magician had been trying to help. Every one of Van’s instincts stiffened up in outrage at that. An abomination, indeed. Maybe Lorre was sometimes a raincloud, but the magician also liked foot-rubs and spinach tarts and saving people, because the truth of the day was that Lorre had saved people: without him a battle would’ve happened, and not everyone would’ve been safe.

Van himself, and Milo, had not had to learn how it might feel to harm another person. Because of Lorre.

He put the last hair-pins in the iridescent seashell. He made the strawberry tea. He kicked off his own boots and rolled up his sleeves and loosened the tie at the neck of his shirt. He did not have oil, nor smoothing vanilla hair-scent, today; he was just himself. But maybe that would be enough; Lorre had liked him well enough the first time.

He glanced around. No thundercloud had returned. Lorre had said to borrow a book, if he liked; Van went to look at the three in a haphazard stack by the map. He avoided touching the map itself.

One book was old-fashioned courtly poetry, one was in a language he didn’t know, and one proved to be botanical, a ninety-year-old treatise on forests and folklore and the supposed individual attributes and energies of various trees and shrubs. Van picked that up, carefully because of the age, and settled into the bed. The morning folded into afternoon in a muted patter of unseasonal rain.

He was halfway through a chapter on the uses of juniper as a grounding meditation aid when a gust of cold blew open the tent-flap. Van put the book down; Lorre slid out of air and raindrops and coalesced into a person, golden-haired and blue-eyed and naked.

Van, watching, couldn’t not want: the leaping power, the grace, the strength and prettiness and blatant display. His body responded.

Lorre put his head on one side. Hair tumbled down his back. “The Barrialian philosophy of trees? How are you liking it?”

“It’s dense. Slow. But interesting. Learning about juniper. How’s your headache?”

“You’re not afraid of me.” Lorre went over to collect tea. “You ought to be.”

“Oh, I am. I’m just not going anywhere.”

“Hmm.” Lorre finished half a mug of tea in one possibly inhuman gulp. Water-drops hung diamonds in his hair; Van wasn’t sure whether they were real rain-flecks, from the weather outside, or if the magician had forgotten a piece or two. “You don’t need to stay.”

“Do you want me to stay?”

“The Queen will send the volunteers home in the morning,” Lorre informed him, not an answer, unless it was. “The regulars will stay on for support. They’re working out a border zone. A new treaty. I eavesdropped, before I got bored. Maybe I should go to Penth. They have sand-cats.”

“You can’t—we just almost went to war with them, and you want to—”

“I don’t care.” Lorre put the porcelain teacup down, on the table and not on air this time. “Is that difficult to understand? I said I’m not on your side. I’m not on anyone’s side. I’m on my side.”

“That’s not true,” Van said. “That can’t be true. You left breakfast for me, this morning. You stopped the war.”

“I just—”

“Thought about me. Did something nice. Those breakfast rolls.”

“Don’t make too much out of a gesture.”

“You didn’t have to do it, and you did.”

“I’ve been hungry.” Lorre came over to the bed as Van got up. “Not because I couldn’t find food; I could. I wanted to know what that felt like. I didn’t enjoy it. I like strawberries and honey and goat’s-milk cheese.”

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