“Not well.” He snorted. “Mind if I join you instead?”
“Oh, I think I’ve reserved this entire stretch of railing for the night. Sorry,” she said with an extra sarcastic note.
“And what will I do now that I can’t stare out and admire the visual beauty of Risen’s skyline glittering on the far bank?”
Eira laughed again. “Of course you can join me.”
He rested his elbows on the railing and stared out, as though he really could see the skyline.
“What’re you looking at?” she couldn’t resist asking.
“Not much of anything right now. I’m completely blind at night.” He shrugged. “But…I canfeela lot.”
“Like what?”
“Like the subtle shifts in the air between breezes, or the way the moonlight is broken by clouds drifting across the sky. Or how I feel moisture condensing in the air for rain—or fog, maybe. I can hear the boats clanking over there—” he pointed “—their ropes straining softly. I can smell the river water—fresh, but with a nasty tang from the sewers that dump into it.” He glanced her way. “The world doesn’t stop existing for me because I’m blind. It just exists differently.”
“Seeing differently…” Eira stared at her palm, recalling training with Alyss and trying to sense even the slightest fluctuations in her power. “How did you learn how to do that?”
“I don’t remember.” He shrugged. “Asking me that is like me asking you, how did you learn how to see? You’ve always just done it, right? I was born this way, I never knew anything different.”
Eira hummed and a brief silence passed between them like the fog that, sure enough, crept across the river as Ducot predicted. Maybe, eventually, she’d ask him if the morphi understood channels in the same way Solaris sorcerers did. When that day came, he might even be able to help her explore or harness whatever abilities she had…ifshe had them.
“You disappeared today.” He disrupted her thoughts. “I was worried about you.”
“Deneya was the one to take me; I was fine.”
“I know. I still worried about you.”
“Aww, are we close friends now?” Eira said the words like a tease, but they carried the weight of sincerity.
“Not in the slightest.”
“You wound me.” Though Eira couldn’t blame him.
“But I suppose we’re headed in that direction.”
A tired smile crossed her lips. “Well, I consider you a friend.”
“Such a privilege. If risking my life is a show of how you treat your friends, I can’t wait to see how you treat your enemies.” Once more, a sarcastic remark with the underpinning of sincerity. Perhaps it was natural among people who regularly risked their lives to find flexibility when it came to moving past such concerns in their line of work.
“Ducot…” Eira hesitated, glancing around. Her voice dropped even lower. “Do you think it’s safe to talk here?”
“Nowhere is safe. But…” Magic pulsed out from him. Ducot continued to stare forward, but Eira got the sensation that he was suddenly, somehow, looking everywhere at once. “If you mean can anyone hear us? I don’t think so.”
“I hid something in the hallway.” She trusted him to know which one she spoke of. “It’s out of the way. But so you know it’s there.”
“Understood.” She appreciated that he didn’t pry as to what it was or why. Ducot was clearly accustomed to only receiving the bare minimum of information. “Though I don’t think that’s what youreallywanted to tell me.”
Eira ran her fingers over the railing. “I’m jumping at shadows.”
“You should be the shadow the world jumps at.”
She snorted softly and came clean with what was on her mind—what had been on her mind the entire day since her encounter with Deneya. “I’m worried that the inspiration forthat groupis still alive.” She didn’t dare say “Pillars” or “Ulvarth” outright.
“If she says he’s dead, then he is.” Yet even as Ducot spoke those words, his mouth pressed into a firm line. Eira couldn’t quite read the severe expression.
“You have your doubts.”
