"Don't frame it as something you're doing for me."
"I'm not doing it just for you. I'm doing it for myself, for Catonia, for the Federation, and for you. You've a dragon and a girl and a whole life waiting for you in Elucia, and the only thing standing between you and it is me." His expression softened. "I am not going to be the weight that drowns you. If Father had chosen Avren, I might have been less motivated, but since Father has chosen you and you don't want it, I have to step up and do what's right for both of us. So, stop fighting me, and let me do this properly."
I had no answer to that because he was right, and I shouldn't let fear of something that was probably only a remote possibility risk everything Arlen had achieved so far.
"Fine," I said. "But I want a vow from you first, and I want it the old way, hand to hand, so you can't wriggle out of it later by claiming you were being loose with your words."
"Name it."
"There's enough left in the jar for a fourth dose. You know that." I held his gaze. "Swear to me that you will never ask for it. Three and done. The fourth doesn't exist."
"The fourth doesn't exist," he repeated. "Easily sworn. I don't want a fourth. I need the third to cement my recovery, and after that the work is mine to keep, with no more help from the greycap. You have my word." He put out his hand. "On our mother's name, since you're being theatrical about it. Three, and then I walk it into the sea myself if you like."
I took his hand. His grip was strong, stronger than it had been in weeks, and I held it while searching his face one moretime. Addicts were known to make promises they never intended to keep just to get their next fix, but Arlen looked sincere, and I knew him well enough to recognize the truth on his face.
The problem was that he might mean it now but change his mind later, and now that he knew where to get the greycap, he didn't need me to get it for him.
50
ALAR
“Show me a man on his easy day, and I have learned nothing. Show me a man on his worst, and I have learned everything.”
—King Alaranthus Tekumuton II of Catonia
"You're going to wear a track in the floor," Arlen said. "Sit down. You're not the one about to face a firing squad."
Our parents weren't a firing squad, but everything was riding on the next hour, and he was right that I was more nervous than he was, which was odd.
Perhaps I should take that fourth dose of greycap after all. It had performed a miracle for Arlen. Maybe it could settle my nerves as well.
I stopped my pacing and looked at him. "I'm glad that you are in such a light-hearted mood. Make all the jokes you like."
"Of course. That's the whole point." He straightened the line of his coat across his knees. "Father isn't coming to see whether I can recite the Precepts of Truth or the Elurian Federation'sconstitution. He's coming to see whether I can command a room."
He was so calm it frightened me almost as much as his despair had only days ago. I told myself that was unfair, that I was looking for the shadow of the greycap in every bright thing he did now, and that Arlen was allowed to be himself without my reading a hidden hand behind every word.
I forced myself to sit down.
When the guard opened the door and announced our parents, I stood up and walked over to greet them.
Given their expressions, they weren't expecting to see anything encouraging despite my reports on Arlen's miraculous recovery. I couldn't tell them about the greycap, so they had no reason to expect that much had changed. At best, they could hope to see Arlen restored to how he had been before the window collapsed into the room.
They were doing me a favor.
They were in for a pleasant surprise. Or so I hoped.
My father's mouth was set in a flat line, and my mother came a half step behind him, looking exhausted and sad beneath all her court polish.
Then Arlen smiled at them, and the room changed.
"You both look as though you've come to identify a body," he said. "Sit, please. I promise, I'm a great deal livelier than the last time you visited me."
My father frowned, looking surprised, and my mother's hand went to her throat.
And then my brother went to work, and it was extraordinary. It was Arlen at his best. Charming and animated like he used to be at court and at the annual balls, where all the eligible ladies swooned over him, and even some who were not.
He simply started a conversation with my father as if the last months hadn't happened, as though they had been a baddream we were all agreeing to forget. He talked about the border dispute between Heldor and Narevelle, and turned it over with that quick dry wit he was known for, naming exactly where Heldor would bluff and where it would actually fight, and then he made a joke at Duke Rosten's expense that startled a bark of laughter out of my father. It was the first I'd heard from him since I'd returned from Elucia.
