Ban met his eyes, unsure what to say.
Rory was unusually serious, almost sad looking. “Some of them are wizard marks?”
“I bled myself here.” Ban touched a small lightning-shaped scar on his left shoulder. “And here.” He lowered his hand into the water, where a lineof scarring cut horizontal across his belly, just over his navel. “But most are from war.”
“Impressive.”
Ban grimaced. “Better not to have any. I get caught too often, blade through my armor.”
“You don’t wear armor sometimes, though, isn’t that right? Because you’re a spy and a wizard?”
“True, some. I have very good leather armor that doesn’t make the noise of mail or plates.”
The look Rory gave him insisted on Ban agreeing to the impressive nature of his scars, and Ban felt compelled to say, “Morimaros hardly has any scars at all, for he is so good a warrior.”
“Father wanted me to marry Elia, before the foreign kings offered,” Rory said, so abruptly Ban scrambled to follow the thought path.
He frowned. “I… can see how it would’ve been… advantageous. Better for Errigal to join our power to the king’s line that way, through Elia, than keep our contract with Connley. It might’ve made you king, eventually.”
“You loved her,” Rory said, ignoring the shift into politics, “when we were children.” His red hair caught the sunlight streaming in the window, reminding Ban of the fiery strands in Elia’s curls.
Ban’s eyes lifted east, toward the ocean, toward Aremoria. For a moment, he was stuck: no breath, no momentum, lips parted, thinking of her.
She would surely have his note by now.
“You still do,” Rory said softly.
Ban refocused, reaching out of the tub for the cake of soap perched on a small washstand. “I saw her, at the Summer Seat. Before she left with Aremoria.”
“And?” Rory leaned his elbows on his knees, oddly urgent.
“It’s been over five years. She’ll be safe with Morimaros, that’s what matters right now.”
“Did she truly deny Lear her love?”
Ban attacked his brother with a hearty splash. “Hardly!”
Standing and wiping water off the front of his tunic, Rory asked, “Then what?”
“The king has lost his mind; how do you not know that? You’ve served as his retainer for a year!” Irritated, Ban scrubbed at his arms with the soap and, in a fit of frustration, ducked down under the water. Small waves heaved over the sides of the tub.
“You should be careful what you say about the king,” Rory said, once Ban had emerged.
Ban scowled. “Why?”
“He’s your king.”
As if it were that simple.
“He was never mine,” Ban said, low and dangerously—half because he believed it, and half to shock his brother.
“Ban!” Rory loomed over him. “He can’t hurt you anymore, the way he once did. You’re the Fox now, and a wizard, and learning iron magic, too? I’ve only been home for an hour, but I already see how everyone in this Keep adores you, and you could take whatever you wanted of Errigal, with nobody to stop you! Why be afraid of King Lear?”
The earlson’s breath panted from parted lips, his hands held out where he’d flung them in his angry enthusiasm.
Ban sat naked in the tub of cooling water, gaping up at his brother. It was too near Ban’s actual intentions for him not to be impressed.
Suddenly, Rory closed his mouth, two dark spots of red flushing his cheeks, blending all his freckles together. He stomped toward the door between their bedrooms.
