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Marin would not say that he waits in anticipation. There are things to do, places to be, money to be made. But spring - spring is the season for war and so, inevitably, when the first spring breeze comes in from the sea, he throws open his windows and waits for someone to appear miraculously on his window ledge.
She never does of course. Instead, when he sees the fluttering sails of the first ship to harbor, or the when irises begin to push through the earth his mind turns to memories. Marin is, generally speaking, not a contemplative type. He thinks best on his feet. But when the spring breeze blows through his open window his thoughts drift. He thinks of how he’d last seen her, standing in the doorway of the stable they’d been given to make camp in for the night. The old healer was at her side and the flame of a lantern had made her golden-hair dance with fire in a way that reminded Marin of the night he’d found her sitting on his window ledge, drinking his wine, how her fingers had gripped his collar and how eager and soft she’d been despite that. He thinks of that often, but he doesn’t remember Danica’s soft laughter as easily. He always remembers her voice calling his name through morning mist and how he’d turned on his side. The sound grows fainter, more strained, as if the distance between them has increased. Perhaps it is the fog of time; perhaps one day Marin will forget entirely.
That last moment before she’d left – Marin thinks about that too. He’d valued his pride over any last sight of Danica, of that cursed Senjani raider who’d boarded his ship and then never left his side. Until she had. Drawn away by something that fulfilled her more than any Dubravan merchant son could have, no matter his riches, or handsomeness, or charm. Marin has no doubt that he’d have sunken to his knees and held Danica’s legs and pleaded. He has no doubts either that no matter how he debased himself or how desperately he pleaded, she would not have stayed. And he knew too that even with everything that the years bring, Marin, if by some miracle of Jad, could go back to his pallet in that stable and hear Danica call his name, clearly, and then softly, with resignation and understanding – even then Marin would not have turned to her.
It is not even that his pride is so valuable to him, though he places a great price on it indeed, it is that, Danica had been so straight and forthright. So prideful even in the face of so many dishonors. Danica, stripped of her weapons and in the chamber of a council of foreigners, had still stared them in the eye and pulled him back from an assassin’s blade. Even stripped and condemned as a savage, she had never lost herself. She had been kneeling on the ground, hands gripping the overgrown grass and even on the verge of tears, she had not begged the djanni as he walked away. You have been loved, Neven. You never stopped being loved. That was the sort of woman Marin loved, so he could not have turned to face her voice any more than he could have fell to his knees and begged her to stay. How could he? Danica, who’d taken a killing blow from a brother lost ten years and loved him enough to let him walk away. Danica, strong and prideful and full of strength, burning for things that Marin could never give.
Those were the thoughts that came to Marin when he thought of her. It was not as often as one might ascribe to a pining lover, but then Marin had never been that sort of person to wither away in love. Pero’s love had grown in the space between, and had sprung out into full bloom when returned to Dubrava and the woman who had not been waiting for him on Sinan. Marin’s love is not that; not a seed carefully nurtured. It is just another thing of him. Like his pride. It can be set aside in lieu of more pressing matters. And he was Marin, second-son of the Djivo family whose father and brother sat on the Council of Rectors and the Small Council, who traded in both Seressa and Asharias, who loved the ocean breeze and the sailors, and the Khatib winter and whose skill with the sword was great enough to stand against four djanni. Love is sweet, and bitter, but there is more to life than that. The seasons continue to turn and the chariot of Heladikos rises and falls.
Spring came, spring went. Sometimes Marin came with it – returning from wintering in Khatib when he can escape the press of a winter in Dubrava and the women that such a winter might involve. With each passing season, his love for the sea grows and it has started to displace the well-bred women and girls of Dubrava, charming as they are. In autumn there is a guest in their guard house with broad shoulders and red hair and Marin thinks that this is the wrong season entirely, and the wrong Gradek entirely.
But Neven, who had called himself Damaz as he’d walked away down a road that led back to the khalif, looks at him and there is recognition there. He is older, still young, but older in the way that soldiers can be. He shifts on his feet and Marin thinks: here is a boy who has crossed half the known world and escaped from the khalif and the severed past, and he is tongue-tied!
Since he knows exactly what it is that Neven asks, and since he knows the exact answer, Marin speaks first and tells the boy that he does not know where Danica is. With Ban Rosca, wherever Skandir has gone. Neven does not wince at the name. But he stands there a little like a stunned pigeon.
“I thought -.” He lifts his head and looks at Marin there. He has Danica’s eyes, though perhaps it is more correct to say he has the Gradek eyes. Marin has only one Gradek to compare it too, so he allows himself this. “I thought she might be here.”
“Ah,” is all Marin says.
Marin does not know what to tell Neven, only that he thinks these siblings are quite similar. He’d thought that watching the boy walk away in the Sauradian forest, down a road that surely led to Asharias. What sort of boy could hear such a thing from their sister and still turn back? But then, had Danica been any different? She’d looked at everything Marin could have offered – and she saw it surely, because Marin had not truly tried to hide it at all, and because Danica had the sharpest eyesight this side of Jad’s heavens – and she had walked away too. But he understands too. They are so straight-forward these Gradek! They see that which they want and they cut straight towards it like a blade in flight. And they always hit their mark.
Except now Neven is on the threshold of the Djivo manor in Dubrava, which, is after all, still quite far from Asharias. His name is Neven now and he resides in Senjan and he means to return there, he says, when he has found his sister. Marin does not know where Danica is, nor where Ban Rosca and his band are. But the Djivo household is always the first in Dubrava to know, and well, there are always placements for disciplined guards if Neven would like to stay and wait?
Autumn brings him Neven, and winter brings them both to Khatib aboard the Blessed Ignacia. They bring dried fruits as offering to the Eldest Daughter and high-quality lapis lazuli for her guest who will come again soon. On the terrace of Sinan isle the Eldest Daughter takes on look at Neven and tilts her head. How odd the world is, she says, that you should find your way here.
Neven says nothing. He looks up in the sky where the sparrowhawks are flying. The white sails of the few ships in the harbor flutter in the wind. It is not yet spring, but spring is coming.
The nights are still cold enough that the servants have stoked the fires in his room. The wine today is a superb red, a gift from the Eldest Daughter of Jad on Sinan. He is watching the twin moons rise in the sky outside his opened window. Marin is not waiting. He is not. Danica is an arrow. She is a knife whistling through the air, always finding its mark. Marin can only stand still; she will come, or she will not. It is nothing he can change at all. Sometimes that is the way life is.