“Someone does.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Sit down, Jes.”
Jesper didn’t want to sit. That desperate itch was crackling through his body. All he wanted was to run straight to the Barrel as fast as his legs could carry him and throw himself down in the first gambling parlor he could find. If he hadn’t thought he’d be arrested or shot before he got halfway there, he just might have. He sat. Inej had left the unused vials of the chemical weevil on the table. He picked one up, fiddling with the stopper.
His father leaned back, watching him with those stern gray eyes. Jesper could see every line and freckle on his face in the clear morning light.
“There was no swindle, was there? That Shu boy lied for you. They all did.”
Jesper clasped his hands to keep them from fidgeting. You’ll both be glad to know where you stand. Jesper wasn’t sure that was true, but he had no more options. “There have been a lot of swindles, but I was usually on the swindling side. A lot of fights—I was usually on the winning side. A lot of card games.” He looked down at the white crescents of his fingernails. “I was usually on the losing side.”
“The loan I gave you for your studies?”
“I got in deep with the wrong people. I lost at the tables and I kept losing, so I kept borrowing. I thought I could find a way to dig myself out.”
“Why didn’t you just stop?”
Jesper wanted to laugh. He had pleaded with himself, screamed at himself to stop. “It isn’t like that.” There’s a wound in you. “Not for me. I don’t know why.”
Colm pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked so weary, this man who could work from sunrise to sunset without ever complaining. “I never should have let you leave home.”
“Da—”
“I knew the farm wasn’t for you. I wanted you to have something better.”
“Then why not send me to Ravka?” Jesper said before he could think better of it.
Coffee sloshed from Colm’s cup. “Out of the question.”
“Why?”
“Why should I send my son to some foreign country to fight and die in their wars?”
A memory came to Jesper, sharp as a mule kick. The dusty man was standing at the door again. He had the girl with him, the girl who had lived because his mother had died. He wanted Jesper to come with them.
“Leoni is zowa. She has the gift too,” he’d said. “There are teachers in the west, past the frontier. They could train them.”
“Jesper doesn’t have it,” Colm said.
“But his mother—”
“He doesn’t have it. You have no right to come here.”
“Are you sure? Has he been tested?”
“You come back on this land and I’ll consider it an invitation to put a bullet between your eyes. You go and you take that girl with you. No one here has the gift and no one here wants it.”
He’d slammed the door in the dusty man’s face.
Jesper remembered his father standing there, taking great heaving breaths.
“What did they want, Da?”
“Nothing.”
“Am I zowa?” Jesper had asked. “Am I Grisha?”
“Don’t say those words in this house. Not ever.”
“But—”
“That’s what killed your mother, do you understand? That’s what took her from us.” His father’s voice was fierce, his gray eyes hard as quartz. “I won’t let it take you too.” Then his shoulders slumped. As if the words were being torn from him, he’d said, “Do you want to go with them? You can go. If that’s what you want. I won’t be mad.”
Jesper had been ten. He’d thought of his father alone on the farm, coming home to an empty house every day, sitting by himself at the table every night, no one to make him burnt biscuits.
“No,” he’d said. “I don’t want to go with them. I want to stay with you.”
Now he rose from his chair, unable to sit still any longer, and paced the length of the room. Jesper felt like he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t be here anymore. His heart hurt. His head hurt. Guilt and love and resentment were all tangled up inside him, and every time he tried to unravel the knot in his gut, it just got worse. He was ashamed of the mess he’d made, of the trouble he’d brought to his father’s door. But he was mad too. And how could he be angry at his father? The person who loved him most in the world, who had worked to give him everything he had, the person he’d take a bullet for any day of the week?
This action will have no echo. “I’m going to … I’ll find a way to make amends, Da. I want to be a better person, a better son.”
“I didn’t raise you to be a gambler, Jesper. I certainly didn’t raise you to be a criminal.”
Jesper released a bitter huff of laughter. “I love you, Da. I love you with all my lying, thieving, worthless heart, but yes, you did.”
“What?” sputtered Colm.
“You taught me to lie.”
“To keep you safe.”
Jesper shook his head. “I had a gift. You should have let me use it.”
Colm banged his fist against the table. “It’s not a gift. It’s a curse. It would have killed you the same way it killed your mother.”
So much for the truth. Jesper strode to the door. If he didn’t get shut of this place, he was going to jump right out of his skin. “I’m dying anyway, Da. I’m just doing it slow.”
Jesper strode down the hall. He didn’t know where to go or what to do with himself. Go to the Barrel. Stay off the Stave. There’s a game to be had somewhere, just be inconspicuous. Sure, a Zemeni as tall as a modestly ambitious tree and carrying a price on his head wouldn’t be noticed at all. He remembered what Kuwei had said about Grisha who didn’t use their power being tired and sickly. He wasn’t physically sick, that was true enough. But what if Matthias was right and Jesper had a different kind of sickness? What if all that power inside him just liked to bounce around looking for someplace to go?
He passed an open doorway, then doubled back. Wylan was sitting at a white lacquer piano in the corner, listlessly plunking out one solitary note.
“I like that,” he said. “Has a great beat—you can dance to it.”
Wylan looked up, and Jesper sauntered into the room, hands swinging restlessly at his sides. He circled its perimeter, taking in all the furnishings—purple silk wallpaper flocked in silver fishes, silver chandeliers, a cabinet full of blown-glass ships. “Saints, this place is hideous.”
Wylan shrugged and played another note. Jesper leaned on the piano. “Wanna get out of here?”
Wylan looked up at him, his gaze speculative. He nodded.
Jesper stood up a little straighter. “Really?”
Wylan held his gaze. The air in the room seemed to change, as if it had become suddenly combustible.
Wylan rose from the piano bench. He took a step toward Jesper. His eyes were a clear, luminous gold, like sun through honey. Jesper missed the blue, the long lashes, the tangle of curls. But if the merchling had to be wrapped up in a different package, Jesper could admit he liked this one plenty. And did any of that really matter when Wylan was looking at him like that—head tilted to the side, a slight smile playing over his lips? He looked almost … bold . What had changed? Had he been afraid Jesper wouldn’t make it out of the scrape on Black Veil? Was he just feeling lucky to be alive? Jesper wasn’t sure he cared. He’d wanted distraction, and here it was.
Wylan’s grin broadened. His brow lifted. If that wasn’t an invitation …
“Well, hell,” Jesper muttered. He closed the distance between them and took Wylan’s face in his hands. He moved slowly, deliberately, kept the kiss quiet, the barest brush of his lips, giving Wylan the chance to pull away if he wanted to. But he didn’t. He drew closer.