Then again.
Well, he has to be in there. Haven’t seen him since the meeting, and Arrin was complaining that someone else was complaining that he never showed up for a later briefing. Which means he’s there. Father doesn’t disappear. He makes other people feel like disappearing, but he never does it himself. Before I can shrink away from the door, like my feet want to, I just go ahead and open it.
A narrow hall greets me, hollow and devoid of colour.
To the left is Father’s study, books and maps on each shelf, desk covered in files, scent of cigarettes and leather. No sign of him. Cautiously, I walk through, my boots creaking against the wood floor as I near the desk. I glance down at the photographs spread in a haphazard array. There’s Malek holding a weathered Safire flag, triumphant. Another with Mother sitting by the sea, a child in her arms, her face too young. She was only my age when she had Arrin. They say the marriage came first, but I suspect it was the other way around. The last photograph is of Father leaning against an elaborate sandstone building with Southern roundels. Next to him is a short, unsmiling woman. Her black hair swallows light, a rifle across her shoulder, expression fierce.
A long-ago ally turned into his worst enemy.
Lehzar.
It’s scrawled right there, in dark ink, and though I have no idea what went sour between them—Sinora and my father and Malek and Evertal—it doesn’t matter. Blood runs down my hands again, sticking to my skin. Mother struggling for every ragged breath in my arms. That gasping wet sound.
I grab the knife sitting on his desk, the slender one for opening letters, and thrust it into Sinora’s heart.
Weak laughter reaches my ears.
I turn with a start and find Father watching from the adjoining room, half-hidden by a leather chair. He’s slumped on the floor against the wall, legs bent at the knee, bottle in hand.
“You want to kill her?” His voice wavers. “It’ll take more than that. She’s clever as sin.”
My squashed terror springs back to life. I’m not sure if it’s in response to being caught, or seeing him drunk. Probably both. And I’m ready to run. Get away from the bullet that’s been waiting for my selfish face. Get away from the inebriated General of Savient who despised me even before I insulted him publicly.
But he holds out a hand, palm towards me, like he’s cautioning an animal. “Stay.”
I don’t move.
“You’ve already trespassed here,” he says. “Might as well have a drink for it.”
“I came here to apologize for today, sir. I shouldn’t have said it. I was upset and—”
“Sit down, Athan.”
Athan.
He says it like it’s nothing. Like it’s easy, meaningful. But I can’t remember the last time he addressed me by name, and familiar desperation rises inside. The wanting of something I can’t explain. That place in me only he can reach. He looks uncomfortably alone there, smoking his cigarette. He never smokes. Not like Arrin and Kalt, who always have the things in hand, but he sucks it down now, fingers shaking slightly against the flimsy paper, expression disturbed.
Slowly, I walk over and sit on the floor next to him.
He hands me the whiskey. “Have the rest. You’re not as noble as you pretend.”
He’s right, but Cyar’s warning is still in my head, so I place it on the floor beside me, untouched. He doesn’t seem to notice my decision, staring at the wall, smoking. Moments pass. I can feel my pulse scattering.
Finally he says, “Everything happens as God wills.”
He’s never said that out loud. Everyone else prays for war, prays for peace, prays for this and that and whatever else, but Father makes it happen. He’s always made it happen.
I rest my arms on my knees. “I guess.”
“Are you ever going to be more committal?”
I shrug.
“Ah, you’re too good at this.” He picks up a pen, flicking it between his stumbling fingers. “By the time I was fifteen, Athan, I’d already learned how to survive alone. Desert fever took my mother. My father was cut down by Landorian bullets in Thurn. He never knew how to win, only how to fight. Fighting forever and gaining nothing.”
I listen, seeing Mother’s coffin, the way the cold earth took it completely.
Nothing’s gained without sacrifice.
“But Sinora. She was outside the game, outside the rules,” he continues, more to himself, “and that’s why I made her my ally. We had both been stolen from. She believed in my desire for justice, before she…”
He trails off, burying the secret he almost revealed.
“You knew her in the South?” I venture.
Father’s head falls back against the hard wall. “Yes. We saw the disaster that was Thurn, the crimes there that no one remembers. The way these Northern kings took land that wasn’t theirs and tried to make an entire people think and be as they preferred. And now they’re surprised by unrest? They believe they have the right to own others, to force loyalty. But you can’t, Athan. Loyalty is in the heart. It must be earned.” He closes his eyes. “It was supposed to be me, not your mother.”
His words stick on one another, slurred, and a tremor of pity kicks me in the gut. I don’t want to give it to him. Not now, not like this, but I say, “I believe you, Father.” I think he needs to hear it.
Father shifts, looking at me. His boots nearly touch mine. “You were right about her today. She hated war. She hated what I did, and she’d hate what I will do next. But the world doesn’t care how noble you are, son. It only cares about strength.”
I feel myself nod.
“And yet I trusted her.” He tilts his head, studying me. “Arrin’s barely controllable, and Kalt craves everything I have, but you…” He takes a drag, exhales smoke. “Would you believe she never wanted you? Your mother, I mean. She didn’t want to give me another son. When she realized she was carrying you, she tried to beat you out of her own womb, but I stopped her. I wouldn’t let her do it.”
His words don’t register. They hover between us, everything suddenly turned upside down. My past. My present. Mother desperate and fighting to shield me from his ambition in the only way she could. He, in the end, offering me life. I don’t want to believe it, it’s backwards, but he nods and says, “It’s the truth, ask Arrin.”
I realize my hand is a fist, biting into my own skin.
“But I have always believed in you, Athan, and I want to trust you. Can I?”
His question finally sinks in. He wants my loyalty. He always has, and it’s not just because of my scores. It’s deeper than that, something I owe my life to him for, and the possibility is like a tailspin, gaining momentum as reality blurs. Every one of his words is from a bottle. That has to be it. But I crave them, savouring them despite the whiskey on his breath. I’ve been waiting every day of my life for even a fraction of this. I’ve waited without even realizing it. Watching him come back from campaigns and hoping that he might offer me more than a cuff on the head. Waiting for a glance that wasn’t cut on a knife point.
Waiting for a reason to try.
“Yes,” I say. “You can.”
It’s not a lie, and I hate that it isn’t.
He leans near, a secret for me alone. “The truth is I gave Sinora that first rifle, but she was the one creating chaos. She studied the Landorians so closely she could always spot an officer no matter how they tried to hide. She knew their tricks. She’d pick them off one by one until the rest didn’t know where to turn or what order to follow. A silent, shrewd war.” He points his pen at me. “But I have a way to stop her, Athan. And if we stop her, stop this chaos she thrives on, then the world will be better for it—in the North, in the South. This doesn’t have to last forever. This can end. We’ll have peace.”
I nod, overwhelmed by that impossible offer.
An end.
Enough.
Home.
He’s never said that before.
I’m desperate to believe, and he smiles very slightly, half-hidden. Then we sit like that, sprawled together, quiet.