Kai nudged him.“Only child, you?”
“I don’t think this is… standard for siblings.”
“Well, don’t get all sensitive about it.That’s why the gods gave us two ears.Andtwo eyes.”He grinned, vengeful; when River still had nothing for that, Kai rolled his eyes and stormed down the hall, issuing River a wave to come along.“Gods, what d’you want me to do, cry about it?Nalu’s a prick.End of.”
At a loss, River followed him.“This is why none of us trust you,” he grumbled.“You’re unhinged, all of you.”
Kai snorted but didn’t disagree.“Fine.Just for you, I’ll play a sad song about it tonight.”He looped an arm around River’s neck and jostled him.“Have something ready in D minor for the accompaniment.”
River restrained a groan and disentangled himself from Kai’s grip.Since the luthier at the music shop finished the violin Kai ordered, he had been insufferable.River didn’t even know about it until one night when he’d sat down to practice a waltz he’d found sheet music for.A few bars in, and suddenly it was a duet, Kai’s part coming in muffled from the room next door.
It became an unspoken routine.Occasionally River was tired, would opt to go straight to bed, sleeping to the low murmurs of strings through the wall.Other times he played piano alone, wondering where Kai was, if he was able to find sleep.He found himself hoping he had.
It was practical, not compassionate: a well-rested Kai meant less of a headache for the others.
“Ah!”Kai poked at him.“Are you embarrassed?You clench your jaw when you’re embarrassed.”
Any ounce of sympathy River might have felt for him disintegrated.“Move along,” he ground out, shouldering past Kai.“I know you’re feeling small and pathetic now that your brothers are around – ”
“I’m mourning the loss of my ear,” Kai said solemnly, hand over heart.
“ – but not everything is a fucking game.”
“Of course it is,” Kai retorted, speeding after him.“There’d be no point in anything if there wasn’t a fabulous prize to win.”
River wished it wasn’t the sole protector of Oseidos who’d just said that.
“Archpriest Saros will return shortly,” said a bald-headed old bookkeeper they ran into in the high priests’ wing.He shifted a bundle of scrolls under one arm, squinting out the wide window to Lodestone.To the wrecked building and glistening ice spire Etan and Nalu had left in their wake.“Given the… impromptu nature of this visit, I asked Captain Etan and Lieutenant Nalu to wait in the garden.”
Kai followed the man’s gaze, looking dreary as one hand absently played with his ear.He’d healed the remaining damage on the way, but there was no returning the sizable chunk missing from the helix.He lowered his hand when he caught River watching him.“What?”He stepped aside and gestured royally.“G’wan, after you.”
Kai marched through the priests’ wing, his good mood dampened, barely sparing anyone else a glance.River hurried alongside him, feeling more like a jailor than a seleneschal.An unsettled, tempestuous energy simmered beneath Kai’s forced calm, like he was searching for a fight, waiting for a reason to attack and dub it self-defence.
“Hey,” River whispered as they approached the ceiling-high glass doors leading to Saros’s lunarium.He held out an arm, barring Kai from shoving past him.“Calm down.Your brothers are here.They’ll leave.It’s not like Saros’ll be upset with you for whatever they did.”He peered through the foggy glass at the blur of green beyond and muttered, “Saros practically worships you, anyway.”
He cringed.He didn’t regret feeling that way, but regretted the hell out of voicing it.
When River glanced back at him, Kai was looking right back, his eyes clearer.Contrite.He nodded silently, in thanks or apology, River wasn’t sure, and thrust open the door to the lunarium.
A wall of humid air hit them as they crossed into the bright, circular chamber, a drastic change from the cold dark of Llyr’s grave.A handful of acolytes in aprons and gardening gloves darted back and forth between bushy green plants, watering or pruning, repotting or harvesting.Much of Saros’s favourite tea flowers grew here, leaving the thick air perfumed with rose and lavender and fresh, peppery herbs.
They found Etan and Nalu waiting within a small viewing pavilion in the centre of the greenery, Etan, leaning against the balustrade; Nalu, helping himself to a bowl of grapes at the round table.Kai tensed as he and River neared them, hesitating to pat himself down for his pocket watch.
While anyone could tell that the three of them were brothers, Etan and Nalu did not have the rakish, faux-charming mien that Kai put on, nor the artistic air that River remembered in Hilo.Etan glanced at River once, his broad face smooth with disinterest, before returning his attention to a sign reminding acolytes not to touch the nettles; his skin was lighter than Kai’s, his hair longer and wilder, pinned at the back of his neck with a comb of whale bone carved into the Mahina clan’s insignia, a crescent moon speared by a sword.
He looked every bit a naval captain, assured in his own power; and Nalu, every bit an enforcer.Like Kai, his face was scarred, one jagged line marring his cheek, an empty eye socket, and disappearing into his short black hair.
As River approached behind Kai, Nalu graced them both with his attention, his mouth twisting into a mean grin that seemed to suck the air out of the atmosphere.“Ah,” Nalu began, his eye on River as he popped another grape into his mouth.“New toy?I thought you were screwing one of Mam’s maids.”
“Nah, she got relocated to the Tannos,” Kai said, unbothered.“You’re thinking of the cook Hilo fancied.”
Etan chuckled, said something back, but all River could focus on was the heaviness of the air, the way the summer heat bore down on them through the glass ceiling.He counted his breaths, deepened them, registered he was leaning against the pavilion’s balustrade.
“Sorry,” Kai whispered in the gods’ tongue, pulling himself up to sit on the balustrade beside him.“That’s just Nalu not concealing his magical signature.Real big man trying to show off.”He jutted his chin, indicating a couple of mundane acolytes watering a camellia shrub outside the pavilion, their faces pale and tight.“It seems he’s gotten stronger recently, at least since I saw him last.He wants us all to know.”
River pressed his palms into the cool wood, grounding himself.“It feels… similar to yours, I think,” he mused, thinking back to the settling blast from Kai’s ward.
“It would, aye.We’re related and all.”He brightened, shifted to face River.River supposed that something as esoteric as magical signatures would be a topic of interest to a wardsmith.“A skilled spellcaster can suss out relatives from a crowd.But signatures can change, too; lovers and close friends can take on each other’s signature, sort of like…” He gestured vaguely.“Musical notes, harmonising.”
