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Essek was always a castastrophizer. He planned for everything, made his decisions ahead of time, and prepared for the worst possible outcome. He had considered the possibility as soon as the door closed that his father would not come home.
That did not mean that he was prepared for the tidal wave of guilt he’d feel when his mother came home, white-knuckled and holding the little black scroll case (but not magic, oh no— something much worse) that declared his father legally, officially, dead. The Umavi had placed it silently on the mantlepiece, had a half a glass of wine, and gone to bed that night to sleep. Then, the next morning, she hadn’t spoken of it. The most she’d done was have her morning meal with them before retreating to her office for the day, like she always did.
Essek had stolen away from his tutors, today. His mother must have given permission for him to take time away, or maybe his tutors just felt bad for him — his father had been consecuted, but there were no beacons close enough to Bazzoxan. He had served alongside the Umavi for lifetimes, her loyal partner, and had been fast approaching perfection in his own right. And now he was gone, and it was Essek’s fault. It was always Essek's fault.
He was outside in the garden, his shirt untucked and his cold-weather cloak wrapped tightly around himself — hood up and all. It wasn’t cold enough to justify it, but he just needed to be separate from the world, with a physical barrier between it and him, in a way his bedroom door never could be. He was an aristocrat — he never got privacy. Oftentimes, not even when he was in the bath.
He had a book in his lap, but he wasn’t doing anything with it. Essek didn’t think he was capable. Not right now. Perhaps that was why he didn’t startle when he heard the back door open, and the scrabbling of footsteps as whoever it was struggled to shut it again. Essek folded in on himself further as he heard the door finally click closed. The sound of footsteps hurrying across the yard to him came, then, and they stopped at what he guessed was a few feet away.
“Umm…” Verin clicked his tongue to sound like he was knocking on a door.
Essek half-turned. His brother was indeed a couple yards away, wringing his hands. Venom rose to his tongue, but he didn’t have the energy to spit it. His “What?” came out softer, more subdued, than he’d intended it to.
Verin took a hesitant step forward, and then trotted over to sit cross-legged in the dirt in front of Essek. He looked at his brother for a moment, taking in the look of dishevelment, and then mussed up his hair to try and match the way the older Thelyss’s bangs were falling into his face. He was at the age where everything was copying his older brother — some days, it was flattering. Today, it felt like mockery.
“Mother ate breakfast with us this morning,” Verin said, glancing determinedly at a spot above Essek’s shoulder as if afraid to make direct eye contact with him. Like Essek might turn him into stone. “And, um, my tutors didn’t come fetch me. Miss Kaly helped me dress, but then told me that I had the day off.”
Verin looked down at his hands, his brow creasing further. “Did I do something bad?”
Essek ran his fingers through his own hair, pushing it out of his face as he gathered the strength. Of course nobody had bothered to tell Verin.
Of course.
“No.” He buried his face in his hands and sighed heavily. Screw his courage to the sticking place, so to speak. Essek leveled himself, as best he could, and then sat up again to look his brother in the eye.
“No, Verin. Nobody is angry with you.”
His lip wobbled like he was about to cry. “Promise?”
He held up his hand, offering one of his fingers up and hooking it. “I promise.”
Verin hooked his finger with Essek’s. “Promise it on the Luxon?”
Essek raised an eyebrow. “I’ll do you one better, brother. I’ll swear it on my research.”
A few tears dripped down his face, but Verin was smiling as he took his hands back to rub his tears away with his sleeves. “Okay.” A silence fell for a moment before Verin quietly said, “… then what’s the matter?”
Essek sat up and let his head rest against the tree (with an asterisk; this was Roshona, after all) behind him. “Come here,” he said, a sigh tinging his voice. Verin shuffled over to curl up against his brother’s side, and Essek wrapped the cloak around the both of them as he put his arm around Verin’s shoulder. He let Verin hide in the darkness of the cloak for a moment as he thought about how to phrase it and finally decided that Verin was a child, but he was not a fool.
“Do you remember when Father told you about Bazzoxan, Verin?”
He nodded.
“It’s very dangerous down there. Father and the other soldiers fight the monsters, remember? And they keep the people safe.”
Verin nodded again, and Essek felt his fingers curl tightly into his shirt — his younger brother had guessed where this was going. Essek continued anyway; hearing the words spoken were better than letting yourself spiral into anxiety.
Essek looked up through the branches of the tree*. Calling it a tree was sort of a misnomer; it was really a semi-magical fungus that was designed to grow to look like a tree, leaves and all. They were ridiculously expensive, and were usually considered novelty luxuries. As far as Essek recalled, it had been a naming day gift for his mother one year. He breathed in slowly through his nose, and out again, so that his voice didn’t catch. “Father went into Bazzoxan to fight the monsters, the last time he left. Then, he didn’t come back. Under Dynasty law, if someone is missing for a year, you can legally declare them dead — but in cases like these, it’s more like six weeks.”
He felt Verin stiffen, could feel his younger brother’s heart rate spike. Felt his little hands curl tighter into Essek’s shirt, tightly enough that his mother would glare at him about the wrinkles and he would find a lie to tell so that Verin didn’t get in trouble.
“I’m sorry, Verin,” he said, wondering if his brother understood how much he meant it. If he could ever tell him. “Mother received his death certificate yesterday. Father isn’t coming home.”
Verin sniffled. “F-For sure, for sure? Or…”
He squeezed his brother tighter, just for a moment. Comfort. Miniscule. The most he could provide, knowing that it was his fault that his father was dead. “There is always a possibility,” he said, feeling the words like acid in his throat. “But you know that I do not believe in false hope.”
The small boy started to cry. It wasn’t a luxury he would often be afforded, later in his life — Essek knew this well. He must have been Verin’s age himself, the last time he cried. He wasn’t even sure if he remembered how anymore. He just held him. Essek let his brother seek the comfort, the warmth, the intimacy, that he never got — not from Essek, or their father. Certainly not from their mother. Any of the nursemaids or servants were too scared.
Essek knew how lonely it had been, to be Verin’s age growing up in this house. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to protect his brother, not forever. But for now, for this moment in time, he would try. Essek would try, and he would do anything he could to make sure Verin was safe and happy.
Guilty, he felt the asterisk appear beside that statement in his mind.
As long as it didn’t get in the way of his research.
Verin startled him when he tilted his head up and said, “What about consecution?”
Essek looked down, pretending to look surprised. “Who told you that big word?” he asked, pitching his voice up to pretend to sound somewhere between cross and surprised. “You’re too young to know words like that!”
He didn’t smile, not this time, but Essek felt him relax just a little bit, and that was enough for the moment. He dropped the act and shook his head minutely.
“I am sorry, Verin. Bazzoxan… is far away. A Beacon can only catch your soul if you’re close enough.”
“But the light of the Luxon is everywhere,” he whined, starting to cry again.
Essek wanted to swear and scream and hit somebody. His brother was hurting, and the stupid, dogmatic propaganda of this country was contributing to it. He closed his eyes for a moment to think of an analogy, and then, one came to him.
“If Mother were to shout for you,” he said, nodding towards the house, “you wouldn’t hear her, would you?”
Verin shook his head. “She’s all the way in her office.”
“Think of it like that. Mother represents a Beacon, and you represent a consecuted soul. If Mother called you, you wouldn’t hear her — but you’d hear me if I called you, wouldn’t you?”
He nodded.
“Then think of me like…” Essek paused, frowned. “I cannot remember the name. Some human deity, the one who guides souls to death. The souls who do not return to us. You would hear me call you, but you wouldn’t hear Mother. But if you could hear both of us, and Mother called you, you’d go to her, wouldn’t you?”
Verin hesitated, and Essek grimaced.
“Yes, that is a bad example. You understand what I mean, though? The Beacons can only bring people back if they’re close enough to hear it call, more or less. Bazzoxan…” He shook his head minutely. “It’s just too far. I’m sorry.”
His brother curled in on him again, and Essek let him stay there, protected from the world by the cloak like he was. “I hope we both get consecuted,” he said, voice quivering. “And I hope we never have to leave Roshona.”
Essek had a visceral reaction to the suggestion of consecution. He was only twenty-three years old, barely physically mature, and he already despised the idea — but, then, he’d spent his entire adolescence dreading finding out that he had once been someone else entirely. His ear flicked. “Maybe you’re already consecuted, Verin.”
He looked up, eyes wide with fear. “Would I have to go live with someone else if I was?”
His heart broke, just a little bit. “Not if you didn’t want to,” he said, assuming that it was true. He’d never heard of a consecuted soul not joining their old den, not politely thanking whoever had kept them alive for fifteen to twenty years and returning to wherever they belonged, to their real family, but he knew it was theoretically possible.
Verin shook his head. “I don’t want to leave you, Essek. You’d be lonely then, wouldn’t you?"
Not really, he thought. But part of him knew it was a lie — and even if it wasn’t, he still would have said, “Of course I’d be lonely without you, Verin. Just because I don’t always like you doesn’t mean you aren’t my best friend.”
He sniffed and shifted to cling to Essek’s arm, which he allowed. “You’re my best friend, too,” he said, like that wasn’t the saddest thing in the world. Common children had friends their age. They went to school, played in the street, had girlfriends or boyfriends and drank things they weren’t supposed to. But he and Verin, they were raised like they would be old souls returning to new bodies. Little boys who were already centuries old. Essek wasn’t, and everyone had been shocked — a prodigy like him, a brand new soul?
The Umavi had been ashamed of it, so Essek had decided he needed to go above and beyond.
Verin, he thought, was a good person. A pure heart. He wasn’t just innocent and childlike — he was kind, in a way that many in the Dynasty weren’t. He was warm, and not terribly bright, but well-meaning enough to make up for it. It was cliché and mildly blasphemous, Essek knew, to refer to someone as a light — and often it was reserved for romantic partners. To call someone your light was to call them your everything — your heart, your soul, your god. Essek thought that if gods could love as genuinely and wholly as Verin could, if gods could cry over ants and borrow books from the library just to find out what was the safest thing to feed the birds, if gods could look at someone who ignored them and oftentimes resented them and see them as the whole world — well. Then maybe that would be a god worth worshipping.
Needless to say, though, Essek was sure that Verin could not be an old soul. Some might have assumed he was an Umavi, but they would have known precious little about Dynasty culture. The Umavi were distant, pretentious, caring only in the most absent way. They wanted to teach, and often they did, but their mother in particular simply didn’t care for her children. They were tools. Expectations. Vessels for older souls and objects of political power.
No, Verin was too kind to have lived before. Too loving. Too warm. He wasn’t the cold, white light of the Luxon, the seeking of knowledge and of purpose — Verin was the warmth of a Summer night, the sound of cicadas, the peace of true sleep.
Essek would protect him as long as he could. If he were very lucky, then maybe Verin would grow up to be a better man than Essek ever could be.
But he knew this country, and he was not one for empty hope. So he’d give Verin whatever he could, for now. And when the time came that Verin was too old to take it, when the time came that he needed to step on Essek to get ahead…
Well, Essek certainly wouldn’t hold it against him.