Page 22 of Arrows

“You could. If you wanted.”

“You don’t want that.”

“I don’t?”

“Not like…” Lorre sat up. Grabbed a blanket, a sea-green heavy thing. “Never mind.”

“Not like what?”

“You want what you want, and I don’t want you, and you don’t want me.”

“That,” Van said, once he could talk, “was cruel.”

“Was it?”

“You’re trying to tell me that you don’t actually care,” Van said, sitting up too, both arms around his knees in the sudden iceberg freeze, “about me.”

“Of course I care.” Lorre made an exasperated gesture; the fire leapt higher, in its copper dish. “I care when any piece of the world gets hurt. A salmon, a fox, a blade of grass, a vein of copper, you.”

“A blade of grass.”

“Don’t ask me to be what I’m not.”

“No,” Van said. “I’m not asking for that.”

And, in the firelight, Lorre looked at him, and was the first to look away: down at the folds of green blanket, the tumbled bedding, the foot of the bed.

Van scooted closer. Next to him.

Lorre’s voice was smaller than usual. “The general called you…Roche. Your name?”

“Evander Roche. Van. Nice to meet you.”

Lorre’s smile flickered, tugged at the corner of his mouth, ducked back into hiding. It was a surprisingly real smile, wry and shy and human. “Yes. I’m just Lorre. No family.”

“I know who you are,” Van told him, and nudged him with an elbow, companionably, the way he would’ve with Thom or Claudette or even Milo. “Kind of hard to miss, with that hair.”

Lorre laughed. Outside the rain picked up, drumming through the afternoon.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Why not?” Lorre pulled strawberries out of the air with one hand, a glass dish out of emptiness with the other, and offered him a berry. “Go on.”

“Do you collect things that’re magic? Like the book about trees. Or whatever’s in that purple bottle.”

“The bottle’s just a dye.” Lorre handed him another strawberry. They were resplendent, perfectly juicy and red and ripe. “I made it accidentally out of blackberries and indigo and shadows when I was trying to make a cloak, and I can’t work out how to undo it, and it turns everything that color the second it touches anything. I’m not infallible, as it happens, a fact about which I can see you’re astonished.”

Van snorted.

“I don’t properly collect things. Sometimes. If they’re dangerous and I think they’re better off with me.”

“Is that why you want the Fire Prince’s Crown?”

“Because of that,” Lorre said, “and because he and I—” He stopped, fast enough to be a confession. The dish of strawberries hopped over to the map table.

“I won’t ask if you don’t want me to.”

“Don’t.”

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