The Silver Lake (58 page)

“Were you asleep during the ‘carry a shield’ lecture?” he’d spat.

It was High Summer before Brax could carry any kind of a weight with his shield arm despite Usara’s priests.

His own voice now, not the voice in the tower’s.

Spar shrugged anyway. For Brax, it
was
his shield arm, he reminded himself. He’d given up their old life; their old
point of view
for the chance to die young so that the God of Battles might smile at him. Once back in Anavatan he’d thrown himself into his training with a new strength of purpose that only Spar recognized as a desperate pretense that he was fit and whole. Everyone else thought he’d been blessed by Estavia and treated him like some kind of mystical hero raised from the dead.

Like Kaptin Haldin raised from the dead.

Spar had dropped the ragged illustration on Brax’s chest in the infirmary the next day with a baleful expression and at least the older boy’d had the decency to look contrite. Not that it mattered. Blessed or not, he’d set himself on a path that would get him killed unless Spar could prevent it. He’d better hope that Spar could.

Expression wrathful, Spar sent the arrow whistling toward the practice dummy and, even without concentration; it buried itself in the very center of its chest.

Spar’s eyes lightened at the memory; Brax protecting him from Cindar as he always had, protecting him, defending him, looking out for him.

Lifting his arm, Spar measured it against the arrow shaft in his hand with a thoughtful expression. Tanay had made sure they didn’t wear castoffs for long, but he’d still need another jacket by this autumn. Blessed by good food and warm blankets, they’d both grown two inches that summer; he’d ripped the back of his tunic getting it on last week, and Brax had gone through three pairs of sandals in four months. It was unlikely either of them would ever be as big as Kemal, never mind Yashar, but Brax was already filling out, the pinched, sallow cast that hunger and suspicion had stamped on his features slowly fading before confidence and security.

Spar snorted cynically. It was fading before pimples and facial hair, both of which were making Brax unbearable in the mornings. He was aging, too, but you didn’t see him obsessing over his looks, he thought, shaking his head.

He smiled faintly. Eleven days after they’d returned to Anavatan, Tanay had brought him to the kitchens for a special meal of roasted lamb kebaps, halva, and lokum to celebrate his tenth birthday. Apparently, the priests of Oristo
knew
these things, but Spar had always suspected that, with all the excitement over Brax, she’d just wanted him to feel special. He didn’t mind. He already felt special when he was with her. That was enough.

Besides, around here special was overrated, he thought as he watched Brax take a blow to the shield that nearly sent him flying. Face set in a carefully neutral expression to hide the pain the blow had caused him, he advanced on Bazmin again and Spar shook his head; around here, special caused bruises and broken bones.

Beside him, Arjion called an end to the archery practice and, after carefully unstringing his bow, he turned and made his way through the pairs of training warriors, Jaq at his heels. He was the youngest delinkos ever allowed on the training ground, thanks to Brax and his unswerving belief that Estavia had brought them both here for some great purpose. That belief had put a specially shortened bow in Spar’s hands a full two years before most delon became proficient with a sling, a weapon he’d mastered years ago. The infantry fighting masters had been so impressed with that and his abilities with a knife—abilities any half decent lifter his age had managed—that there was talk about beginning him with a short sword in a few weeks.

A scornful expression crossed his face as he took the stone steps to the infantry quarters at a run. Spar had no intention of learning any other weapon earlier than he had to. He’d had seen what happened when you faced the enemy at any age and that wasn’t going to happen to him. He’d been raised as a thief and thieves didn’t face their marks, and although he might not be thieving anymore, he didn’t see any reason to change that basically sound strategy.

The dark place agreed.

Cindar’s words, spoken before the raki had addled his instincts. The dark place often threw up images of the first father he’d ever known although it always made him feel vaguely uncomfortable and guilty. Sometimes he put Yashar’s face in front of them, sometimes Brax‘s, if he didn’t want to see it, but he didn’t do it often; Cindar’s words were usually too sensible to ignore, especially now that he was surrounded by teachers who believed the best way to survive a battle was to kill the enemy.

“The best way to survive a battle is not to be in one,”
he thought derisively,
“as a warrior or a seer or anything else; and no gloried city guard’s gonna tell me any differently.”

Seated across the courtyard, Elif turned her milky-white gaze in his direction. The painted protections on her cheeks seemed to glow ominously and he ducked quickly through the infantry doorway, only pausing once he was well inside the cool corridor.

“And no four-hundred-year-old battle-seer is either,”
his thoughts continued as he headed through the dormitory wing. He’d made that decision when he’d come to after the fighting, still clutching Chian’s cold fingers on the battlements of Orzin-Hisar. All their training only got you crippled and finally killed. Chian had shown him that.

With that in mind, he’d managed to avoid both Elif and Liel—after the seer-kaptin had returned from the wild lands—for nearly thirty days, retreating to the dark place when he couldn’t physically retreat to a dark corner or a shadowy rooftop. But finally Brax had caught up with him on the western wall overlooking the mouth of the Halic-Salmanak as he’d known he would.

The older boy had climbed up beside him and Jaq, leaning his back against the cool stone of the corner sentry box. Setting his left elbow carefully into his lap, he’d stared out at the city’s many rooftops, watching the flocks of starlings turn and wheel in the sky, with a speculative expression.

“You can’t see them from here,” he said after a while.

Spar’s eyes tracked across Brax’s face suspiciously without moving his head.

“The Western Trisect docks,” the older boy explained. “They’re too far up the strait.”

A sarcastically raised eyebrow was Spar’s only response and, a faint smile quirking the corners of his mouth, Brax leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

“ ’S a hot day,” he noted after a few moments.

Spar just shrugged.

“If we were still on the street, we’d be down at the docks right about now, I guess,” Brax continued. “Sitting in the shade under a pier; maybe sharing an apricot or a few dates, or walking in the shallows looking for fish-hooks or buoys. Hey, you remember that fishmonger’s cat that used to go swimming in the surf, looking for baby crabs?”

Spar nodded warily, but Brax just smiled. “Yeah, it’d be too hot to work for a couple of hours anyway,” he continued. “Not until after the sun had set a little.”

Spar glanced over, drawn by the unusually nostalgic tone in the other boy’s voice despite himself.

“Those were good moments,” Brax continued. “When we were warm and fed, and safe for a while, yeah?”

Spar gave a one-shouldered shrug in neutral agreement.

“But soon enough we’d get back to work,” Brax continued. “We’d go up to where the crowds were watching the northern ships unloading, or where the merchants were fighting over customers in the marketplaces, anywhere we might not be noticed, anywhere we might lift an asper or two.”

Spar cocked his head to one side, curious about where this was going. The dark place inside was silent as well, waiting.

Brax absently shifted his left arm a little, his face relaxing as the pressure eased on his injury. “It was exciting sometimes,” he said, “especially when we got away with it, you remember?”

Spar nodded.

“But I was always scared that it wouldn’t last,” Brax added with a frown, “that Cindar or I’d get pinched and you’d end up at Oristo-Cami. We never made enough to put anything by, and we never would have. We just weren’t good enough.”

Spar’s brows drew down. “We made out,” he said defensively.

“No. We made do. That was all. And it wasn’t gonna be for long. If Cindar hadn’t been killed that day, it would have been the next day or the day after that.” He looked away.

“You know, all my life I could never do anything better than anybody else,” he continued after a moment. “I couldn’t run faster or climb better. I wasn’t stronger or meaner or smarter. I wasn’t a great lifter; I was good, but only just good. Now I have all this,” he gestured back toward the temple, “but nothing’s really changed.”

“I thought you were a
champion,”
Spar said, allowing a slight sneer to color the last word.

Brax shrugged. “That doesn’t make me any better at doing it. I can’t fight or ride half as well as the others. I never will, not now, not with this.” He made a stiff gesture with his left arm. “And one day that’ll probably get me killed.”

“No, your stupid habit of diving headfirst into battle’ ll probably get you killed.”

“Whatever. My point is that I was only a good lifter, I’ll only be a good warrior, but I’ll learn whatever I have to learn to keep from getting pinched or killed. But you’re different. You know things. Even on the streets you were better at knowing things than anyone else I ever knew.”

“That’s ‘cause you never knew any seers.”

“I knew Graize.”

Spar blinked in surprise. In all the time they’d been at the temple, even before the battle where the gray-eyed boy had reappeared like an apparition, Brax had never spoken his name.

“Graize is powerful,” he answered distractedly.

“You told me he was just a cheap trickster.”

“He was.”

“And now?”

Spar shrugged. “Now he’s a powerful trickster.”

“Whatever. You may think he’s better than you, but he’s not. He’s just older, but he’s gonna get better if these rumors about him being trained by the Yuruk wyrdin are true.”

Spar shifted uncomfortably. “What’s your point?” he demanded.

“That he’s dangerous and that he’s not gonna go away. It doesn’t take a seer to know that he’s our enemy; he always was, and he always will be. But he’s never gonna get past my guard with an edged weapon ever again. All I can do about it is to get better with the sword and the bow, but you can get better in your head. And don’t give me that
I was too messed up at Serin-Koy to face it
crap. Yashar may buy it, but I don’t.”

Spar cast him a glance of mock injury and Brax gave him an exasperated look in return. “I’m not saying you weren’t messed up,” he allowed, “but that vision you had didn’t burn out your abilities any more than this injury took my arm. You know it and I know it. You’re ten years old now; this young and scared routine’s not gonna fly much longer. You gotta make a choice. You wanna protect yourself from them, that’s fine, but just make sure you don’t protect yourself so hard you lose your best weapon against them all, including Graize. That would be playing right into his hands.”

That would be playing right into Illan Volinsk‘s, hands as well,
the dark place agreed.

Now it was Spar’s turn to look away. “I know what I’m doing, Brax,” he replied quietly.

“Well, just make sure you do, ‘cause if you let Graize get stronger in his head than you, he’ll take you down.” The older boy caught and held his gaze. “And I won’t be able to stop him.”

Any more than he could stop him before,
the dark place supplied bluntly.

And that had been Brax’s unspoken point.