“You need it, you mean.”
“No, I...”
Arthur huffs. “You can’t fulfill your destiny if there’s no bargain.”
“That’s not why. I... I don’t want the troubles from outside our valley to come here. What we do is worth it. It’s how we keep ourselves safe and well.”
“Not you,” Arthur points out. “You’ll be dead, or so changed by your run you leave, like all the surviving saints before you.”
Rhun shrugs uncomfortably. “Maybe it won’t be me.”
“It will be you,” Arthur says bitterly.
The silence between them twists into brambles.
“Unless,” Arthur says slowly, “unless something is wrong, actually wrong, and there’s a chance to change it.” The thought sparks fire at the base of Arthur’s spine, and behind his eyes, a passion Arthur usually does not allow Rhun to see.
Rhun stares at Arthur’s eyes, then mouth, then looks abruptly away.
“What if we could change it?” Arthur presses, ignoring the meaning of the glance.
“This is only one patch of diseased barley,” Rhun insists.
Arthur slides him a disbelieving eye. “Only one patch,” he repeats, hoping that maybe,maybe, in this sudden crack in the bargain there might be a place for his ambitions.
“We should take it to Mair,” Rhun says.
“Yes.” Arthur claps his hand on Rhun’s bare shoulder and takes off, skinned carcass of his kill forgotten where it hangs in the tree.
•••
RHUN FOLLOWS AFTER, WATCHING ARTHUR’Sslinking walk, the sharp thrust of his arm as he shoves branches out of his path. His friend is prickly as a cat, just as prideful, just as dangerous, just as beautiful. As always, Rhun wishes he could convince Arthur he’s good enough to do anything. He’s known Arthur his whole life—known everybody in Three Graces as long—and liked him when he was a girl, and liked him more after the secret exploded and Arthur turned all jagged and lethal and determined to prove he was the manliest of men with sneers, loneliness, and a weapon in every hand. In any other valley, Arthur would be too pointy for his own good. Here he’s tolerated because nobody is afraid his edges can do any harm.
If this is a break in the bargain and the valley is losing its safe magic, Rhun needs to find a way to fix it, so nothing bad can happen to Arthur. Or anybody. He’ll find a way. That’s what Sayers are for: keeping everyone safe. Rhun knows who he is and what he wants, so never questions why he’s widely believed to be the best. And Rhun knows Arthur will never be chosen to run, will never be able to compete, because Arthur doesn’t know anything about himself except what he isnot The best can never be defined by what it’s not, he said to Arthur once. It did not go well.
As they push through the narrow footpath toward the Sayer homestead, the sun lowers enough to turn the air from bright orange to a gentle pink, dappled with warm shadows and the first evening birdsong. Woodsmoke finds Rhun’s nose, and he can’t hold on to the verge of fear any longer. The season is changing, and he loves it. He loves summer, too, and spring and winter, for every season brings different work and different things to laugh about. He sighs a great, happy sigh, loud enough Arthur hears it and glances back.
Arthur recognizes the expression on Rhun’s face and puffs a laugh. “You’re a fool,” he says fondly.
“Everything will be all right,” Rhun says. “And just as it’s supposed to be. You’ll see.”
“I could take you more seriously if you had a shirt on.”
Though it’s Rhun’s instinct to tease Arthur about how good Rhun knows his shoulders and chest look, he refrains, smiling a shrug instead.
Arthur’s eyes narrow, and he nods, leading the way again. It’s cooling, and itisa beautiful evening, but none of that matters when there’s such a troubling note of uncertainty in the form of that diseased barley. It’s amazing that Rhun, even gregarious, bighearted Rhun, could be so quickly distracted by nothing more than pretty autumn twilight.
The Sayer homestead consists of three stone buildings: a house, a barn, and a secondary house that’s mostly kitchen and storage this generation. The main house has two full stories instead of only lofts, and a strong slate roof, but the others are thatched like the cottages down in the valley. A fenced-in lawn feeds their goats and gives a walk to the chickens, but all their horses are down in the valley with the rest until the winter sets in. It’s quiet, as most of the Sayers are out helping with the harvest today. Only a thin trail of smoke slips up the chimney, trickling down to nothing as Arthur and Rhun arrive.
Together they step out of the forest into the flat yard just as a girl shoves out the front door and dashes around the back edge of the house to vanish again into the trees and farther up the mountain.
“Was that Mairwen?” Arthur asks.
“It looked like her hair,” Rhun says, disappointed she didn’t see them and stop. He starts on again, but Arthur hesitates, staring after Mairwen. Higher up the mountain from the Sayer homestead is only hunting and Lord Sy Vaughn. Mair is no hunter.
Rhun puts out his hand to open the front door, but his mother opens it first. She startles back at the sight of him, then shoulders past. “Get to town; see if you’re needed,” Nona Sayer instructs. Nona is as tall as all the Sayer men. To Rhun she passed her brown skin and coiling hair, and to her youngest the same plus a straighter nose. She was the first person from outside to settle in the valley in a generation, but since the bargain welcomed her, fast healing the bruises and starvation from her journey over the mountains, so did the people. She glares at Arthur, whom she took in when his mother ran off and his father refused him. “Same for you, boy.”
“What’s wrong?” Arthur asks, nicer than he’d have asked any other living person, because Nona always treats him like one of her rough-and-tumble boys.
