Chapter Text
Caleb is – rarely happy.
But for the moment he is deeply relieved. He is relaxed and generally safe. It serves, for the moment.
They had arrived at the Blooming Grove in a nearly hysterical mess of blood and tears, sheer exhilaration mixed with the lingering horror of the past day. Now Caleb lies awake after sleeping for – the sun shines through the windows – nearly ten hours. It is an incredibly rare luxury: to wake fully rested, on a schedule determined only by his body’s needs.
Jester is still dozing across the room, sprawled across her bedroll and gently snoring. She has an arm thrown over Molly, who is curled sleepily into her like a cat. Caleb fetches the blankets they have kicked off in the morning sun and folds them before leaving the room.
It’s surprisingly quiet throughout the temple. It’s not until Caleb is outside that he can hear any hint of the rest of the Nein. He follows their voices – Veth is chattering, joking with Fjord about something or another – and finds them sprawled by the hot springs. Beau is half-submerged, her elbows resting on the edge and her head tilted back as she heckles Veth and Fjord, who have stayed dry on the blooming grass. With a heaving gasp, Yasha emerges from the water beside her, hair dripping wet and smile beaming.
Beau is the first to see Caleb and wave, but at her greeting, the others quickly all turn in his direction. He nods and says his hellos as Veth scampers to his side.
Caleb pulls her into a sideways hug as they walk together to the edge of the hot spring. It is so warm and bright, and the birds are so loud and vibrant. Veth slips her hand into his and squeezes as she says, “You slept for so long. I had to make sure the Clays didn’t drug you.”
“She didn’t actually do anything,” Fjord says helpfully. “You feeling better?”
Veth pats Caleb’s hand. “You needed the rest.”
“I’m glad to see you all,” Caleb says, squeezing her hand back. The air is fragrant, floral. He is so – alive, after all. “I’m okay. Jester and Molly are still sleeping. I think, ah, that dying and coming back to life takes a lot out of you.” He says it in a joking tone that only half-lands, but luckily no one dwells on it. “Essek?”
“He didn’t want to soak with us,” Beau says. “So he’s off with Caduceus gathering tea for healing and harmony or some shit.”
“We’ll have lunch here,” Fjord says, “and wait for Jester and Molly to wake up. Then we should decide what to do next.”
Caleb is two sips into his warm, delicious soup when he chokes.
<Trent Ikithon is dead,> an intimately familiar voice says inside his head. <Come see me, if you can.> Caleb coughs up liquid and thinks to himself, near hysterically, that she sounds hoarser than usual. As if she has been yelling or crying. <We need to talk.>
“Caleb?” Veth has a hand on his forearm and is thumping him on the back.
“I will,” Caleb says – but he’s not sure if he is fast enough to respond to the Sending. He tries to swallow another series of coughs to no success.
Once he finally regains his breath and dignity, he waves Veth off with a thankful pat. “I’m okay,” he says. “It’s – I have – I just got a Sending. From Astrid.”
Jester shoots up from her seat. “Trent? Is it about my parents?”
“No,” Caleb says, still dazed. He looks around at his friends, all intently staring at him from around the large kitchen table in concern. “Trent Ikithon is dead.”
It turns into a long, stressful afternoon.
After some discussion, Jester Sends to High Curator Yudala Fon. He confirms that the Archmage of Civil Influence and Caleb’s old teacher is, in fact, dead. They sit in stunned silence for a few moments at the news.
“We can go home,” Veth says at last, taking Jester’s hand in her own. “We can take our families and go home.”
It makes things simple in many ways. Fjord agrees to return to Nicodranas with Veth, Jester, and their families. Yasha decides to stay in the Blooming Grove with Molly and Caduceus until Molly is well enough to travel.
Caleb will return to the Empire.
“This could be a trap of some kind,” Fjord says dubiously. “What does she want from you?”
Caleb shrugs. “She said to talk. I am willing to talk.”
“I’ll go with you,” Beau says. Caleb accepts this with a nod. “It might be time for me to check back in with the Cobalt Soul anyway.”
Essek is the last to speak. “I’m not – I should return to my post, perhaps –”
“The Scourgers will not be after you anymore,” Caleb says urgently. Beau makes a half-aborted questioning noise. “Make your choices based on that.”
“Caleb,” Essek says, flustered. “I’m not sure how you can make such a promise –”
“I can,” Caleb says. “Astrid will listen. She will do me this favour. If the Martinet wants you, he will have to find another way. It’s not a guarantee, but –”
“Okay,” Essek says, and the entire table’s attention now swings to him in disbelief. He squares his shoulders. “If you say I will be safe, then I believe you. I will return to Eiselcross, and from there I will make plans to return to Rosohna. I think it is time I come to terms with some things.”
Caleb meets his eyes across the table and nods.
“Is this some kind of self-sacrificing thing,” Yasha asks, leaning in, “like are you going back just to give yourself up?”
Essek spreads his hands and says softly, “Not unless you think I should.” He looks around the table, waiting. When no one else speaks, he continues: “Otherwise, I intend to – move forward, best I can, and bring the knowledge we discovered in Aeor back to my people. It will have to be done carefully, over time, lest the Dynasty gets any ideas about sweeping into the ruins full force – but it should be done.”
“You’ll challenge the entire religion?” Beau asks.
Essek shrugs, a sharp smile on his lips. “Eventually. I will start with more research – I need facts, knowledge, to start sowing some seeds of doubt, perhaps.”
“Huh,” Beau says. “Alright.”
There is a still, heavy silence in the room.
“You have to promise you’ll tell us if you need us,” Jester says desperately, looking first at Caleb, then Essek, then Caduceus. “Promise – this isn’t forever. We aren’t separating forever.”
“No, of course not,” Fjord says at the same time that Molly makes a soft, confused noise at her distress and reaches across the table for her hand.
“We’re the Mighty Nein,” Beau says. “Nothing’s getting between us.”
“And nine for real now,” Caleb says. “Nine until the end.”
“Yes,” Essek says when Jester looks at him pleadingly. “I will let you know if anything happens.”
They spend one more night together, at Jester’s request, curled together in the darkness of the Blooming Grove. Caleb lights up the room again with memories. Jester cries, and they pile into a hug, and no one comments on her sniffles because they’re too busy wiping away their own tears.
Astrid greets him formally, her back ramrod straight. Eadwulf stands just a step behind her. Ikithon’s tower rises behind them and lingers like a menacing shadow.
“You look well,” she says in the sort of tone that Caleb knows means she thinks he looks like shit. She speaks in Common, in that achingly familiar accent.
“I died,” Caleb responds in Zemnian, ignoring her sharp inhale, “and came back not two days ago. So you will understand if I say I’m not much in the mood for bullshit right now.”
Astrid studies him for a moment. He looks back at her. She is tired, with heavy bags under her eyes, and is obviously still healing from something with a cut lip and an ugly bruise visible on her shoulder. Whether that means she has no access to magical healing, Caleb does not know, but he does feel more sorry for her than he should, and he opens his mouth to apologize the same moment she turns away from him.
“Come in,” she says. At Wulf’s nod, Caleb follows. Astrid leads them to something of a sitting room before she collapses into a chair, visibly favouring her right leg. “Sit,” she says. Then, in Zemnian: “I’m tired.”
Caleb sits in a seat across from her. Wulf hovers for a few more moments before he too lowers himself heavily on the edge of a couch – Caleb notes that he does not sit by Astrid’s side, and thus the three of them form a neat triangle.
“Are we safe to talk here?” Caleb asks.
“Possibly the safest we will ever be,” Astrid says curtly. “It is my home. Trust that I have magicked it appropriately.”
Caleb acknowledges this with a nod.
“We’d like your help,” Astrid says at the same time that Caleb starts, “I need a favour.”
They stare at each other. Astrid waves for Caleb to go first.
“We have an ally in the Dynasty,” Caleb says carefully, “who we know – or strongly suspect – that Trent, perhaps at the behest of the Martinet or perhaps by his own agenda, has been hunting for weeks. Call off the Scourgers. Keep him safe, and I will help you.”
Wulf leans forward in interest. “A drow?”
“Yes.”
“In the north, with you?”
“Yes. He helped us and traveled with us for a time.”
Wulf snorts. “He’s safe.”
Caleb levels a glare at him. “Were you assigned to him?”
“Clearly, I didn’t succeed,” Wulf says pointedly. “And then we were all reassigned to you, collectively.”
“If the Martinet comes calling, then,” Caleb says. “Or anyone else at all. Promise me that we will not be sent after him.”
“We,” Astrid echoes, arching an eyebrow. Caleb does not blink. She sighs and leans, cupping her chin with a hand. “But yes, you have your promise.”
Caleb allows himself to relax then and drags a hand tiredly to rub at his eyes. “Tell me what you need help with.”
Astrid and Eadwulf share a glance. Caleb tries to read into it – he had been part of this once, hadn’t he? – but the expressions on their faces are largely inscrutable to him.
“Trent’s death was an unfortunate tragedy,” Astrid says, in a way that suggests it was no such thing. “As you know, he was coming up in age. It is not entirely unexpected for him to pass away –”
“Is that really the best story you’ve got?”
“As you know,” Astrid says snippily, “we recently suffered an attack at Vergesson Sanatorium. Traces of dunamancy at the location suggest it may have been the work of Dynasty agents – if they can infiltrate into the heart of the Empire as such, it is not surprising, though certainly unfortunate, that they were able to strike at the Archmage himself. We will return to war against the cricks. Is that the story you would prefer? It’s certainly easier.”
“A tragedy, then,” Caleb says.
Astrid hesitates, and Caleb catches the way she glances at Eadwulf.
“The Volstrucker operated entirely under Trent,” Wulf says. “There are – we trust that this is an ideal outcome, for many. You and your friends included. It’s known, well enough, that Astrid was tapped as his potential successor. This works well for us.”
Astrid smiles then, briefly. Sharply. “I think collectively we were all fully aware this day would come. Even Trent has said as much before. It won’t necessarily be a simple transition, but it isn’t entirely unexpected either.”
Still, Caleb sits disbelievingly. It couldn’t be this easy.
“It does help,” Astrid says, looking straight at him, “that the Cerberus Assembly is largely focused on the greater mystery of the disappearance of Archmage Vess DeRogna. The Martinet seems to have some suspicion that she intended to employ the Mighty Nein to travel with her to the ruins of Aeor, but by all accounts, you and she left Balenpost separately. She was never seen again – and neither were you nor your friends, by any Empire powers beyond the Volstrucker.”
“A tragedy,” Caleb repeats flatly. “We are still owed quite a sum of money.”
“For a job half-complete,” Astrid shrugs. “I hope you were paid at least half up front.”
“Need I fear for my friends?” Caleb asks.
Wulf gives something of a chuckle, and Caleb gets the distinct impression that he is both amused and impressed. “People certainly have questions, but you are an odd group – it is not entirely easy, to put pressure on an unaligned group of people, the majority of whom are not citizens of the Empire. One of you is allied directly with the Cobalt Soul; all of you have mysterious ties to powers within both the Kryn Dynasty and in Nicodranas. On top of that, there is no discernable reason for the death of Lady DeRogna, so far from the ruins of Aeor, beyond, perhaps, an attempt at destabilization.”
“If Ludinus wants war,” Astrid adds, “putting pressure on you and your friends will not be enough. But if he does not want war, then escalating things with your friends may be far too volatile.”
“Does he want war?”
“Perhaps.” Another shrug, another glance between Astrid and Wulf. “We think he wants a show of power, perhaps, especially now that both the Cobalt Soul and Augen Trust have turned suspicious eyes on us. But with Trent dead as well, he cannot risk anything. The Cerberus Assembly needs time to regroup.”
“So he supports you, because at least you are known to him,” Caleb says.
“Something like that,” Astrid says. “I also have, of course, the devotion of the Headmaster.”
Caleb has only distant memories of Zivan Margolin, the Headmaster of the Soltryce Academy. But clearly the Archmage of Conscription has had enough competence to have kept his post over the past twenty years.
“He’s a peacekeeper,” Wulf says. “And Astrid has been his favourite instructor at the Academy since she started.”
“You teach?” Caleb remembers, of course, that she has mentioned it before, though only vaguely. “Classes, at the Academy, not just – personal tutelage?”
“Yes,” Astrid says.
“From the first moment she could,” Wulf says. He looks at Astrid, and this expression Caleb can read: he is proud of her, for this. “She had to campaign the Headmaster for it; she chased after him for months. And she teaches frequently, far more than the rest of us. It is part of why no one can dispute her claim to Trent’s seat as the Archmage of Civil Influence.”
“And the leader of the Volstrucker,” Caleb says. “Have you recruited children? Like Trent did us?”
Astrid sighs heavily and leans forward. She presents her hands beseechingly. Caleb hesitates – she looks at him steadily, without wavering, and that is enough for him to scoot forward in his chair until he can take her hands.
“I have,” she says softly. Her hands are rough and calloused in Caleb’s. The dark tattoos climb from her wrists, bracing around her forearms. But still, her touch is intimately familiar.
“You recruited them, despite knowing what Trent would do to them?”
“I did.” She closes her eyes now, breathes out quietly. “It was better I pick them than him. And it is better now, that I have picked them.”
“They’re loyal,” Wulf adds unnecessarily.
“We were loyal,” Caleb says. Still, he does not let go. “You recruited them as pawns.”
Astrid opens her eyes and meets his gaze. “Ask yourself, Bren. Can the Empire exist without us?”
Caleb frowns. This is a question he has turned over in his head many times. “There has to be a better way.”
“We’ll take them older,” Astrid says tiredly. “And we certainly won’t train them the same. But as long as this Empire exists, Bren, us Volstrucker will exist alongside it. We serve the Empire, just as the Cobalt Soul does, just as the Augen Trust does. What’s done is done. Will you help us?”
“So they’re still going to train children to be spies and assassins,” Beau says critically. She bites her ice cream as Caleb takes a long drink from his beer. The sun is beating down on them in the mid-afternoon heat.
“Not children,” he says. Caleb has made no attempt to hide where he is or who he is meeting from Astrid and Wulf, but he still finds himself glancing around suspiciously. “Not anymore. We’ll make it a genuine course of study and tap them when they’re older, more ready.”
Beau just looks at him. “We?”
“What are we –” Caleb gestures between them. “The Mighty Nein? We are not children. We fight. It’s just a different kind of cause, a different kind of soldier. Unless you would stop all wars. Unless you would see the Empire crumble. Would you abandon the Cobalt Soul, if it was asked of you? You know it is not without its problems either.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Caleb does not answer.
“You’re going to help them?” Beau asks instead. “Will you be a part of this?”
Caleb shrugs. “For now, I think. Not forever. I want to – I have my own plans, for the future. If everything shakes out.”
“We should be bringing them to justice,” Beau says. She crunches on the ice cream cone. “For everything they’ve done. To you and to others.”
“I would not see a single other person jailed because of my old teacher,” Caleb says tiredly. “No more – no more cells and prisons and locked rooms, because of that man. There is no justice to be found that way.”
Beau studies him for another long moment. Caleb wants to take another drink but lets her take her time and does not hide behind the stein. She is antsy, he can tell, and not entirely happy with this development – but she cannot deny him, either.
“Okay,” she says at last. “I will be there, tomorrow. Let’s go over it all together.”
“It’s her house,” Caleb says. “I think – trust me to handle this one, Beauregard.”
Beau sighs and frowns. She wears her displeasure so openly, at all times. “Don’t let this swallow you, Caleb. Don’t forget. No more children on the pyre.”
“No more children on the pyre,” he repeats. “Are you staying at the Cobalt Soul?”
“Yeah.” Beau pops the last tip of the cone into her mouth. “I swear they gave me the shittiest and smallest room in the hall. I’ve been poking around a bit, seeing what I can find out about Zeenoth – about my trial. But Dairon isn’t here; they’re due back in a week, so I’m sort of just kicking around.”
“Let me know if you need help,” Caleb says. “We are going to force them to change, you and I. We are going to make our home better.”
“It’s safest this way,” Astrid says. “If you must – if you really must, you can stay elsewhere, but I think this is the best idea. I have full control of this space.”
So Caleb stays and sleeps in Astrid’s manor. He pretends not to notice that Astrid and Wulf sometimes emerge from the same bedroom in the mornings and does not wonder if they were doing more than comparing notes. He had been a part of that, once, too, but some things are better left behind. He will keep it simple while he is here. This is what he tells himself.
After a week, he goes out and buys clothes more suitable to the Empire fashion and weather. The guest room he stays in the first night turns, day by day, into a familiar place to wake. He reacquaints himself with parts of the city and develops a rapport with the owner of an inn and bar called Cat’s Eye a twenty minute walk away – far enough that he rarely seems to run into anyone else he knows there but close enough that a drunken stumble back to the manor still feels within the realm of safe.
It is a very different life. So quiet, without all of the Nein constantly around him. There is suddenly more personal space than he really knows what to do with.
<It’s really nice here today,> Jester Sends to him one evening. Caleb jerks and spills some of the beer he was drinking, the liquid sticky and clinging to his hands as Jester chatters. <We went to the beach and Nott even went into the ocean but then Luc almost got swept away and –>
The usual cut of her Sending is somehow less funny when Caleb is the one receiving, sitting in his room, alone, with only the faint sounds of the city in the distance for company. But certainly he is buoyed to hear her, to indulge in a brief moment of her familiar voice, and he responds to the Sending gladly.
With time, Astrid heals from all of her visible injuries.
He spends the days with her and Wulf, contending with what Trent has left behind.
“This isn’t even half of it,” Astrid says apologetically as she shows Caleb the boxes of papers, notebooks, and files stacked in her drawing room. “There’s more upstairs. We had to – we moved quickly, to retrieve what we could from the country home and the Sanatorium, but we suspect someone got to his tower before we did. And there’s more, still, from all the various safe houses we know about, and probably more still that we don’t.”
“We’re going to audit this program,” Caleb says with some measure of disbelief. “The paperwork.”
“Someone has to do it,” Wulf says quietly.
“They will have to interview and induct me formally,” Astrid explains. “But Trent didn’t tell us everything – far, far from it. No one has a comprehensive scope of where he was assigning missions and sending our people. This is necessary, to understand what he did.”
“There is no understanding it,” Caleb mutters. But he takes the nearest box anyway and sits at a chair.
The three of them talk little while working. Caleb is comfortable with the silence – after so much time apart, what is there to say? Either everything or nothing, and neither will lead to understanding between them. So he works diligently, often late into the night. Astrid and Wulf help him at first with Trent’s ciphers – many of them are alien to him now, after so many years away – but when he comes to discern the pattern behind them he is quick enough to pick them apart himself. Weeks of paperwork unravel before him and he files them all away in the empty boxes Astrid has waiting. He writes high level summaries and presents them. Important dates or persons he think might be particularly notable he hands to Eadwulf, who has been designated the keeper of the large map of Exandria pinned to the walls of Astrid’s study.
He works patiently, quietly. Beau doesn’t understand it – every time they meet and eat together, she becomes more and more incredulous when Caleb shrugs and says he is just sorting through paperwork.
“But they still go out?” She asks, tapping her finger on the table. “You’re just sorting paperwork while they’re doing fieldwork?”
Caleb cuts his steak patiently. “They know the Volstrucker and their usual haunts. They have decades of relations with these people and with Trent’s affairs. I am only a liability if I go with them.”
“We fought Lucien,” Beau says impatiently. “He was basically half a god. You are not a liability.”
“They keep me looped in on the big picture,” Caleb says. “I know where they are going and why. They act on my suggestion more often than not, and they have never hesitated to explain something to me if I ask. But the agents they meet in the field – that is their domain, not mine.”
“They could be lying to you,” Beau says. “They probably are.”
Caleb eats his lunch.
“Let me follow them,” Beau says at last. “At least once. Let me see if they’re really where they say they are.”
“They can teleport,” Caleb says dryly. But Beau fixes him with a stare and he sighs and nods. “I will tell you the next time you can reasonably follow.”
Caleb does tell her, and Beau does follow. She trails Astrid and Eadwulf nearly five hours into the Pearlbow Wilderness as they seek a contact that Trent supposedly visited thrice a year – the nature of the visit is uncertain and remains so as the three of them, Beau included, return empty-handed.
“It looks like it’s been abandoned recently,” Astrid tells Caleb, and Beau repeats the same to him in Common the next afternoon. “Not even much in the way of magical concealment.”
“Did someone get there before you?” Caleb asks.
“If they did, they were very good,” Wulf says. When Caleb asks Beau, she just shrugs irritably.
Caleb nods and hands Wulf another file. “I think this may have been where they kept the beacons, for a time.”
Much of Trent’s files follow discernable, predictable patterns. The Archmage of Civil Influence has certain responsibilities: they encourage a love of the Empire and quell dissent. Their students are equally adept at charming foreign dignitaries and important nobles as they are silencing uprising and revolutions. There is an endless stream of case files concerning members of elite society and local leaders, basement-dwelling aspiring-terrorists and patrician plots against the King. Possibly the Volstrucker prevent as many assassinations as they carry out, by killing the other would-be killers first. Caleb does not miss the irony.
But the beacons – Trent was undoubtedly hungry for them, Caleb thinks. They didn’t necessarily fall into his domain – they belonged more to the Martinet and his warfare, Lady DeRogna and her magical histories, or even Lord Uludan and his foreign relations. Caleb knows Volstrucker were used to guard them, and he suspects that Trent had leveraged their necessity to ensure his own continued access.
“Honestly it was dreadfully boring,” Wulf says mildly when Caleb asks. “But guard duty always is until it isn’t. I would have hated to be in Zadash when one of them was taken.”
“What happened to the Scourger?” Caleb asks. “The one who let Dynasty agents get away with the beacon that night?”
Wulf meets Caleb’s eyes. “Killed himself less than a month later. I never asked what Trent did to him.”
Caleb duly processes this. “Did you ever look into one of them? A beacon?”
“Twice,” Wulf says. “I don’t think Astrid ever did.” He gives something of a smile that lands more like a snarl. “We were too valuable to be risked as guinea pigs but too lowly to be given free access to such an artifact. For a long time, they were very heavily guarded. They were afraid that using them would link them permanently to the Dynasty somehow or communicate with them in some way. It was more about trying to extract the magic than look into it.”
Maintaining eye contact with Wulf, Caleb pulls a black marble from his components pouch. He sets it in his palm and speaks: a black and consuming sphere appears in the corner of the room, drawing in a cabinet and a set of chairs and crushing them to dust.
Wulf watches. His face is carefully schooled to a neutral expression, but after Caleb ends the spell, Wulf reaches out and grabs him by the forearm and forces Caleb to turn to him.
“So it really was you in the Sanatorium,” Wulf says. His grip is strong, powerful. The black tattoos stand out starkly on his skin, especially in comparison to Caleb’s pale wrist. “Astrid told me, but –”
He cuts himself off and stares at Caleb.
“I’m back,” Astrid calls out from downstairs, the door creaking, and Caleb is able to jerk his arm away.
<– ready,> Jester giggles. <Caleb, the Nein Heroez docked today, and you should have seen Marius when Fjord said he probably wanted to sail with them again, he –>
It’s a blessing, really, Caleb thinks as he responds. This time he’d only been reading a book, so there were no casualties to add to the undoubtedly long but loving list of messes created by Jester’s Sendings.
He likes to imagine her and Fjord as wild and free, relatively unburdened upon the sea far from Rexxentrum. He feels shackled here in the city, bound by personal history and duty, and hearing Jester’s voice is always a sweet reminder of the home he’s had for the past year. It’s just as well the Nein are not here – he would not want to bore or burden them with all of this.
Caleb finds, three weeks into his time in Rexxentrum, a file on Essek. He reads through it with a frown –there is a loose account of his whereabouts over the past couple of years, a list of known associates, and something of a character evaluation: intelligent for a creature of its kind, it reads, but arrogant, greedy, and corrupt just as the rest. claims to work alone – generally appears to be true; it is isolated and thus unlikely to rally support within the Dynasty. stable and unlikely to act undesirably.
Essek is 118 years old, Caleb learns, and his brother is the Taskhand in charge of the Aurora Watch in Bazzoxan. After he reads the files, he burns them.
He eats dinner with Astrid and Wulf that night – Astrid calls him into the kitchen when he is looping his scarf around his neck, already intending to walk to the Cat’s Eye. She hands him a ladle of soup to taste and he burns himself on it, pathetically, though she snorts and smiles when he does, and Caleb feels for a brief moment a sharp, unnameable regret that pierces through him. The taste of Zemnian is warm on his tongue as they eat and make small talk over the meal.
They spread to their various piles of papers after dinner. Caleb is sorting through more to do with the beacons and their movements, Astrid is tracking down the outcome of a series of negotiations she remembers attending with Trent in Bladegarden, and Wulf stands frowning at a map of the Dunrock Mountains.
Hours pass, and Caleb finds himself rubbing at his eyes tiredly. Astrid is humming, he realizes, and upon focusing he recognizes it instantly – it is a Zemnian lullaby his mother used to sing for him. The three of them had sung it for each other, sometimes, in the hardest of nights. Before.
“I used to sing it for you,” Astrid says quietly. She is watching him. “You didn’t respond to much, but you were always happy to hear this.”
Caleb has wondered, of course, over the years. “I’m afraid I don’t remember.” He tries to keep his tone even, unchallenging. “Did you visit often?”
“When I could,” Astrid says quietly, at the same time that Wulf cuts in and says: “Constantly.”
She shoots Wulf an angry look. He meets Caleb’s gaze and says, “She visited you every two weeks, without fail, the entire time you were in the Sanatorium. She would sneak off in the middle of missions to visit you.” He has his arms crossed. “I stopped visiting you after the first year. You didn’t seem to care either way.”
He was angry, Caleb realizes. He is angry still. Wulf was always careful with his rage, realizing very much what an effect it had coming from a big man like him, and that seems to still be true – his anger is slow, simmering, in the protective set of his shoulders as he tilts his chin challengingly at Caleb now.
Astrid reaches out, lays a soothing hand in the small of Wulf’s back. And this too is painfully familiar, still, though the speed at which Wulf resets himself at her cautioning touch – he schools his face to a careful, toneless neutrality and rolls away the tension in his shoulders – this is practiced, Caleb is sure, over the past many years.
“You think she has forgiven me too quickly,” Caleb says softly.
Astrid snorts. “I have not forgiven you at all, Bren. But I am not angry at you, and for that, Wulf cannot forgive you either.”
The next day, Caleb prepares Sending. Astrid and Wulf leave in the middle of the afternoon – supposedly to meet with some “friends” who have recently returned from the Blightshore. Caleb works and eats alone. He drinks at the Cat’s Eye and stumbles home.
He stops, for a moment, on Astrid’s doorstep. He tilts his head back to look at the stars, but they are hard to see through the bright Rexxentrum lights. Trent’s tower still looms like a shadow in the dark.
Jester and Fjord intend to visit next week. Beau had told him at lunch the day before. Caleb breathes out – he can smell the beer on his own breath, and it fills him with a sense of shame – and he imagines Fjord’s steadying presence, Jester’s laughter. In Rexxentrum, there is only silence.
<The stars are dark where I am,> Caleb Sends. His spell takes the form of an echo: he copies the style of Essek and pleased to feel the spark of magic between his hands as the spell connects. <Are you still in Eiselcross? Or have you returned home? Can you see them dancing in the night?>
There is but a short pause, and a familiar voice returns to him. <It is good to hear from you, Caleb. The stars are bright in Eiselcross. I leave for Rosohna tomorrow.> There is a beat, long enough that Caleb thinks the response has ended. <I miss you all. Talk soon.>
Caleb feels – light, perhaps, or it may just be the buzz of alcohol through his veins. He is still awake, reading, in his guest bedroom when Astrid and Wulf return soon after, whispering amongst themselves.
It is an old feeling, this squeezing hole in his heart as he imagines Astrid and Wulf together, guarding each other’s backs on missions, dancing around each other in battle as if they were trained as two parts of a whole – because they were, they were, and Caleb knows that when he broke they must have had to relearn it all. Now they are a decade removed; they must be just as deadly and honed as they were meant to be. As he was meant to be, once.
Sleep does not come easily that night. He tosses and turns, alone.
At breakfast, Astrid tells him in clipped tones of their successful meeting the day before.
The last conversation between the three of them has changed something between them; it is as though a veil has dropped and there is only the divide of the years between them as they regard each other with new wariness across the way. Caleb is not unfamiliar with their displeasure – Astrid is insufferably, coldly polite and Eadwulf glowers at him in silence – and in an odd way, Caleb finds himself soothed by it.
He Sends to Essek again after eating and wishes him a pleasant journey and an easy return to his home. Essek answers. Caleb Sends to him again, twice more throughout the day. He does not know if he’s doing it only because he’s lonely, without the Nein. Essek answers, every time.
He passes another week like this. Astrid leaves the manor briefly for pockets of time, supposedly to meet with other members of the Assembly, but Wulf remains with him and collectively the three of them spend long hours together, still digging through decades of paperwork, still attempting to make sense of a legacy of Trent through paper and ink. There are few others involved – once, there is a knock at the door and Caleb leans against the archway into the foyer as Astrid and Eadwulf talk to another Scourger in low voices at the door, the familiar black marks arcing up the stranger’s arms as well.
“Can you trust her?” Caleb asks when she leaves.
Astrid says shortly, “The ones we cannot trust are being taken care of. We can trust her.”
Caleb gives her a nod and returns to Trent’s notebooks.
With the initial pretences at friendliness dropped, it is far lonelier for Caleb, even as they bury their heads in paperwork. Astrid will still link her pinky with Wulf’s index finger, Caleb notices, if they sit near to each other. It was, when Caleb knew her many years ago, the one sentimental gesture she allowed herself. He suspects it still is.
There are definitely still the small smiles, the knowing looks. Caleb used to know. They used to be three – now they are two and one, a decade and more between them. There are so many more memories apart than there were together.
Caleb is at least half-drunk again when he Sends that night: <Are you busy? I miss you.>
When Essek responds, Caleb steps outside of Astrid’s house. He tips his head back again to the diminished stars in the city lights. He casts Teleport – vanishing, recklessly, from the middle of Rexxentrum and appearing with a less-than-graceful stumble into Essek’s study in Rosohna.
“Hello,” he says to the slim drow hands that catch him.
“Hello,” Essek responds softly, and Caleb pulls him in for a hug, and Essek holds him, tight, until the tears stop coming.
Essek is – he is kind, to Caleb, for the rest of the night. He gently untangles himself from Caleb at some point – Caleb makes something of a wounded noise before he can stop himself, and he bites back the sound shamefully – but Essek is firm.
“I am tired,” he says politely. “Maybe we can –” And he squeezes Caleb’s hands and lets his voice soften, just for a moment. “Let’s do this when you are sober,” he says, “and when you mean it.”
There is a tenderness in his voice that cuts through to Caleb, and he clears his throat and straightens shamefully. “Yes,” he says roughly. His head hurts. His heart hurts. “I apologize.”
Essek reads to him that night until he falls asleep. In the early hours of the morning, when Caleb is awake and aching, he Teleports himself back to Rexxentrum.
He apologizes to Astrid and Wulf during breakfast. Astrid is reading some report, her eyes fixed on the paper as Caleb clears his throat stiffly.
“I left,” he says quietly, “and I’m sorry. I paid a dear price for it, but still I left, and I moved on with my life when you did not or could not. I would understand if you felt abandoned and resentful. I hurt you both by leaving.”
Astrid goes absolutely still. Wulf looks at him in silent fury.
“We’re not looking for your pity,” Wulf snarls at the same time that Astrid says: “Thank you, Bren. Sincerely.”
Caleb gives her a nod. He gives Wulf a long, strained look – Wulf breaks eye contact first, and Caleb thinks that for now, that has to be enough.