Afterwards, I lie awake in the darkness, listening to his breath. The wind has risen. I can hear the sea, the waves breaking on the shingle, the gulls. Faint noises outside the window, a woman’s voice calling, drunken singing and a shriek and a crash. A woman’s laugh.
I have seen a dragon dancing on the wind. I have seen the sea. The sky. The cold of frost. The beauty of the world.
I have felt the sun on my face as it rises over the desert. I have felt clear water running beneath my feet.
I have known sorrow, and pain, and happiness, and love.
Love.
I bring one of the candles to burning. Marith stirs at it, claws roughly at his face. Mutters something. Pain in his voice. I smooth my hand over his forehead and he sighs and relaxes back deeper into sleep.
King Ruin. King of Death.
I go over to the wall where his sword hangs, take it up, walk back over to the bed.
The gulls scream at the window. Shadows crawl on the walls.
I raise the sword over his heart.
Look down at him.
A kindness. That was what Tobias said.
A kindness. To him and to me.
I put the sword down. Curl back beside him.
Sleep.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Two young men, boys really, sit side by side against a large grey boulder on the moorlands north of Malth Salene. Marith leans his head on Carin’s shoulder, Carin’s arm rests lightly around Marith’s waist. They sit on the edge of a low cliff, looking out over a tumble of rocks to the sea. Still and calm weather, gulls bobbing on the water. A seal head watches them. Far above a kestrel hovers. In the distance the sound of goats being called in to milk. They pass a bottle leisurely between them, warm and comfortable in a summer evening. Their horses graze contentedly a little way off, tethered to a hawthorn tree still bearing the last of its blossom.
‘We should get back,’ Carin says.
‘Why?’
‘Well … I don’t know. Maybe we just should.’
‘No.’
‘Fair enough.’ Carin kisses Marith’s hair. ‘You’re hogging the bottle again.’
‘Of course I am.’ Marith passes it over to him, curls himself more comfortably into Carin’s body.
They watch the gulls soaring on the wind, a fishing boat out in the bay.
Carin says, ‘You’ll be king, one day.’
‘Just realized that, have you?’
‘No, but, I mean … When you are …’ Carin shakes his head. ‘Never mind. I’m just being maudlin.’
‘Don’t be.’ Marith sits up a little, looks at Carin. ‘What?’
‘You as king … I don’t know … It can’t be like this when you are, I suppose.’
‘I’ll have to stop sleeping in gutters, you mean?’
‘Ha, yes. But more than that. All of this. You’ll have to do things. Rule.’
‘You’ll be Lord Relast of Third. You’ll have to do things, too. The same things, really. Only smaller.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
‘Now you’re making me maudlin.’ Marith rests himself back against Carin. ‘So stop it. We’ll find time for this. I’ll order it.’
‘And we’ll be old and boring by then anyway.’
‘We will. You’re hogging the bottle now.’
‘I’m not.’ Carin kisses Marith’s forehead. ‘Just not letting you hog it.’
‘That comes to the same thing.’ Marith sighs, runs his hand idly down Carin’s arm. ‘Do you want to be Lord Relast of Third? Really want to be, I mean?’
‘Really want to be how? I will be. I can’t want it or not want it.’ Carin kisses Marith’s forehead again. Can tell Marith’s becoming troubled again. The happiness lasts so briefly, now. He shouldn’t have started this conversation. But it bothers him. The thought of Marith being king. ‘It’s probably all much less interesting than it looks anyway,’ he says. ‘Signing papers. Listening to people boring on. Having people executed. A lifetime of tedium, I should think.’
‘Should you?’ Marith smiles sadly. ‘Perhaps tedium would be good for me. A long and tedious reign in which nothing happens and about which the historians have nothing to say.’
‘King Marith the Eminently Forgettable.’
‘Indeed.’
They look at each other and something passes between them and Carin turns away and squeezes his eyes shut for a moment like he’s in pain. ‘I suppose we could always run away,’ he says. ‘Become travelling minstrels.’
Gratitude in Marith’s face for the things unspoken. The things they both know but never say. He smiles again his sad smile. ‘Bandits. We’d have to be bandits. Because you can’t sing.’
‘My love is like a lily fair, White her skin and gold her hair … You’re quite right, I can’t.’ Carin gets up and pulls Marith up after him. ‘Bandits, then. Shall we start tomorrow? Go roving across the wild woods in search of dragons and damsels and rich caravan trains?’
‘We could. Why are we getting up? It’s comfortable here.’
‘Because I want to go down to the sea.’ Carin scrambles down the rocks and splashes into the water, waves breaking over his boots. ‘Let’s catch a selkie!’ He steps backwards and the water hits him around his waist. ‘Gods! It’s cold!’
Marith follows him, laughing.
They clamber around on the rocks, and Marith almost slips and falls in, and when they eventually make their way back up to their horses they’re wet through and breathless and happy, and when they ride back to Malth Salene they’re scolded for arriving at dinner late and dishevelled and caked with wet sand.