She’s probably the one I have to thank for the spring cleaning.
“Is she the one who baked you bread?” I ask.
Zan’s eyes flash with amusement. “No. That was Kovan.”
I blink, then place the name. “Kovan?The Sage of Resolve?” Bakingbread?!
I remembered the feel of his magic here, many moons ago, but I hadn’t realized what thatmeant.
In the early days of the Quiet—maybe years—it had taken all my focus to maintain the stasis. I hadn’t been aware of much, then.
Zan nods. “Kovan was the first sage I brought here. The Order had instructed him to take down the Quiet, but he wouldn’t do it.”
Kovan,rejecting his duty?
Obviously I knowIdid, but somehowhischoice is the one that’s tilting my world on its axis.
Zan continues as if I’m not still reeling. “Kovan was the first sage I stole from the Order. I didn’t have a plan, hadn’t expected to meet someone affiliated with them who wasn’t a waste of air. I impulse-shifted to get him out of there, then had to hibernate. Kovan stayed on the mountain for months to defend me, unasked. It... changed my perspective on humans, and what could be possible for them. And for me.”
So at least once upon a time Zan had had the normal transformation sequence for a dragon.
I’m afraid of the answer to this next question, but it somehow feels very important to ask. “Has there been no one since to guard you?”
Zan shrugs.
He does that to minimize a subject he has strong feelings on that he doesn’t want to engage with, I’m noticing.
“It’s hard to test what someone will do when you can’t defend yourself,” he finally says. “It’s why I have mostly relied on the Quiet to be my shield, but only when I felt confident the priests wouldn’t organize an expedition to search for me here. That hasn’t been true in a while, so I’ve been unable to transform. Which was, I suppose, their goal, ultimately.”
To defeat him by making it so he could never rest.
Yes, I think the Order has not changed for the better.
But the people, they still—or perhaps again?—haven’t won over, not completely.
Not if sages still want to be saved.
“Kovan and I only met in passing when we were younger,” I offer to the memory of Zan’s loss. “Once it became clear how strong we would be, the priests were always careful to keep us apart. At the time they told us it was so that if one of us were ever taken out, the other would still be safe to act.”
Zan nods. “But what they were actually doing was decreasing any chance of solidarity between the two biggest threats to them.”
I look at him sharply. I suppose someone who has worked on behalf of sages against the Order for generationswouldsee so clearly what no one else in my life had ever seemed to. “Yes.”
How has he lived with the reality of that darkness in the world for so long and never given up trying?
My stomach clenches. Not until now, anyway.
We’ve finished crossing the meadow from the temple to the cottage, and at the door, I hesitate.
He’s watching me again, but not hungrily this time, and oddly that makes memorenervous, because I know he’s hiding that but don’t know what it means, what he expects.
And it doesn’t feel like I deserve to have this, after everything I did, and didn’t, do. After all of Zan’s time here, that he should still be a mere guest.
What if I don’t like it? What if Zan is studying me so carefully he realizes that all I can see here is another obligation—
Zan opens the door easily. “Let’s take a look. I’m not sure how long it’s been since someone was last up here, so it might be a little dusty.”
“How will I cope,” I murmur.
