Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Essek does not make Caleb ask him for distance. 

Right now, securing Ikithon’s conviction is paramount. It is a kindness, surely, to anticipate and act on this need, to eliminate at least one fraught conversation from Caleb’s surely heavy docket. It is the most basic of courtesies between—

Between—

(Essek pinches the inside of his lower lip between his incisors until it stings.)

It is simple, is the point. Little more than a routine matter of optics, requiring neither request nor explanation. At such a delicate time, it would not do for such a pivotal witness in the case against Archmage Trent Ikithon to be seen with a Kryn national, especially one of station, lest there be rumor of undue influence, uncertain loyalties. Essek, as a matter of course, has stepped out of sight.

(Oral arguments began this week. Jester has been keeping him updated on the case, when she remembers to Send, and that information was particularly welcome. Essek can only trust that the Soul has put together a damning, incontrovertible argument, though with Caleb and Beauregard involved, it could only be that.)

It has pained him, each time he turned down an invitation to see the Nein, but nowhere is far enough from the vicious eyes of the Assembly, the Trust, the Lens, to quiet the voice of Essek’s nascent conscience, to smother that worry that he could be the lever that lets the monster slip his snare. Essek would never risk something so important to Caleb, to the Nein, over any want of his own, least of all something so petty as a want for companionship.

Besides, he is busy. There is plenty of work to be done here at Vurmas, and travel would be uncertain, dangerous even— 

He can again be a friend once he’s no longer a liability—

Patience, patience is a virtue—

(He reminds himself of all of this as he paces in his cabin. Actually paces, because there is no one to see him lay aside all his affect and presentation. Because it’s not the same if he can’t feel the reverberation of his feet hitting the floorboards echoing up his bones. Because this particular variety of anxiety can’t be killed, but it can be tamed with movement and exhaustion, and so maybe if he walks a hole into the floor it will put away its teeth.)

All his logic doesn’t quash the animal hunger to go. To tuck himself in among his denmates somewhere dark and low, and snarl at their foes should they approach. He worries after Beauregard, so new an Expositor, attaching her name to such a dangerous case. After Yasha, who is with her in Rexxentrum, Xhorhasian but not Dynasty, and so in a nebulous legal state.

After Caleb, who is risking everything to expose the man who ruined half his life. Who must relive horrors Essek can only barely comprehend every single day to do it. Who wants to burn off the cancer on his homeland without being consumed himself.

(Caleb wants to settle this the right way, but Essek would be party to any number of wrongs to have this problem put to rest with finality. To give Caleb a lasting peace. But it wasn’t his decision, and he has no place but on the sidelines. So instead, he paces and frets.)

Essek cards the recalcitrant magic of the north between his fingers. It’s not too late to call on someone in Rexxentrum. Could twenty-five words really be such an imposition? He could bend Common into shape, speak concern and comfort into Caleb’s ear.

I am thinking of you—

He will fall, you will make him fall—

If there is anything, anything at all, you need of me—

Essek calls up and dismisses the magic half a dozen times, doubt choking him before he can commit to the casting. What if Caleb isn’t alone? What if Caleb is working?

What if Caleb doesn’t want to hear his voice?

Finally, he casts, but to Jester instead.

“Have you heard from Caleb? I’m thinking of him. I hope the trial draws to a swift and successful close, but I’d hate to pry.”

Bless her, she responds immediately.

Oh, they’re kicking ass! Beau’s so good at this, it’s amazing. He's doing okay, but he’d love to hear from you, I just know it.

Jester wouldn’t lie to him—if she says Caleb is well, then he is well—but in this moment her optimism isn’t contagious.

He’d love to hear from you.

Maybe.

But then maybe not.

Either way, Essek can wait until it is absolutely safe for him to call.

Essek fills his days with nearly more work than he can stand—the logistics of keeping a place so remote well supplied, the constant charting of the dangers, the cataloging of artifacts and encounters—but still, he finds himself able to worry. 

But, should politics trump justice, the Nein would make sure their own fled in safety, of this he is sure.

Caleb could come here, if this went so very badly he tells himself. He doesn’t Send, doesn’t make the offer, but he makes himself ready to make good on it, should circumstances merit it.

It helps, a little, to know he would be ready.

Essek! ESSEK! It’s over! They did it, they got him, it’s over, they’re taking him away now, he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s so fucked, this—

Essek drops the parchment he’d been reading, the ability to command his fingers lost as his mind must work double time to synthesize her breathless Sending into meaning before he loses his chance to reply.

Him? So fucked? It must be Ikithon she’s talking about, he’s lost track of the days, has the judge already come to a decision? 

They must have. Oh, Caleb must be so relieved. 

“Ikithon, I assume? Good.” He pinches his tongue between his teeth, counting out words. “That’s a relief and a victory. Please, if you’re there, pass along my congratulations to both of them. Be well, Jester.”

Yeah, yeah, of course, I’m here. Hey, does this mean you’ll come see us again? Come to mama’s, we’re celebrating there, soon. Tomorrow. Beau. Wine.

Essek can’t help but smile as her grammar deteriorates. Jester has never had a more formidable foe than Common’s poor meaning to word ratio. Essek more quickly composes his second reply.

“I’ll happily attend with wine. Will likely travel via Rosohna, can retrieve any other local delicacies. Can make one detour to transport others if needed.”

Caleb’s going to take us from here, that’s okay. Yasha wants bugs. Caduceus wants mushrooms. Beau says the good wine, no skimping. Afternoon. Be there.

“I will endeavor not to disappoint, then. All my love to you and the Nein.”

He can hear her disapproval over wasting the words he could have spoken—Esseeeeek you could have said more! Like two whole sentences—and having been harmlessly vexing puts a smile on his lips.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he can risk seeing his friends again.

It takes hours before he works up the courage to Send to Caleb. A half dozen pieces of paper wasted, trying to craft his message. How can it be so fraught, simply speaking with someone he already knows? It should be easy. It would be easy, if the two of them were anyone else.

But it is Caleb, and Essek is terrified to misstep with him.

“I hear that you’ve bested him. It’s no small feat, and I’m glad both for your country and your own peace that he’s dealt with.”

It’s a relief. Caleb’s voice shakes, as if he is exhausted, as if he doesn’t quite believe it yet, and Essek’s chest tightens in sympathy. A burden lifted. I hear you’ll be joining us tomorrow. I hope for us to finally meet in peace again.

Essek almost Sends a reply. Caleb’s voice, even attenuated by distance and magic, is such a balm to his soul, but—

He sounds so very tired. 

So instead Essek says nothing.

Essek steps into the shaded, lush interior of the Lavish Chateau with his disguise still in place. Drow don’t elicit the same suspicion in the Coast as they do further inland, but he would have still drawn eyes in his own skin. Even with the trial over, better no more people than necessary know he came here. He would have Teleported directly into the lobby, but Jester’s hasty directions from the morning weren’t quite reliable enough for his sense of self-preservation, so he’d used a more familiar waypoint. 

Familiar, but not exactly happy ground to retread. Regardless, he refuses to begrudge them a visit to Nicodranas. It is a lovely city, and it bears no blame for being hard to divorce from the very worst night of his life. (His life to date, a pedantic and unwelcome part of him chimes.) That history is something he can—and will—refuse to dwell on for now. He has no painful history associated with Jester’s home after all, and beloved friends within. 

Those friends have already begun their revelry. They’re spilling out of a booth and around some haphazardly arranged tables, loud and already a bit rowdy. Caduceus, Beauregard, and Caleb all watch him enter, idly curious, but they must find his illusion convincing, because their focus falls off the rather unremarkable man he’s temporarily become and back to the people gathered at their tables in short order.

Essek allows himself to linger on Caleb, once he’s sure he won’t be caught staring. He looks more exhausted than Essek has ever seen him, worse than Cognouza, worse than the days after, but also lighter in some ineffable way. He doesn’t scan the room on a nearly clockwork timer like he used to, doesn’t sit curled into a guarded hunch over the table. For once, in all their history, Caleb isn’t looking over his shoulder, literally or metaphorically. 

Instead he’s engaged fully with his family, open and bright, moving and smiling easily. He looks—Essek hesitates to call it happy. Free, perhaps. Unburied. 

Unbidden, anxiety blooms under his ribs, sneaking tendrils into his stomach. What if he upsets that peace? What if he is a reminder of more bitter days? How can they not also think about what he confessed in this city, once they see him? He could leave his gifts with the barman, disappear back outside—

And disappoint Jester.

He grits his teeth, indulges one paranoid look about the space with a subtle See Invisibility. Knowing nothing untoward is lurking, he lets the magic of his disguise unravel and steps up from the ground to his customary elevation. Immediately, Jester squeals—

“Essek!” 

She bounces out of her chair and vaults herself over the table with impressive nimbleness. Essek opens his arms in preparation to catch her, lest she send them both tumbling. She scoops him up and spins him in a dizzying circle before letting him go. 

“You made it, finally! I was wondering if you’d gotten lost, or had a mishap, or—”

“I had no trouble at all, Jester, just a little caution on my part. But—” he continues, before she can begin again, “I’ve brought wine, and mushrooms, and bugs, and—” from his own enchanted bag he pulls a waxed paper box of frozen—both in the sense of temperature and time, via an extravagant bit of dunamancy— “keltaly. Just in case you were feeling nostalgic for the east.”

The whipped cream and fruit dessert is too rich and saccharine for Essek’s tastes, but this is one of Verin’s favorites. He presents it to Jester with a flourish. She nearly tears the top off, breaking the enchantment, and lifts it to her nose.

“Black currants! Oh, oh, Carlos!” she waves past Essek. “Can we have, like, a lot of spoons?”

The barman trails Jester and Essek to the table and sets a pile of spoons down in the center. Jester samples the desert, and Essek passes out the rest of his goods before taking the only remaining seat at Caleb’s left side. Essek folds himself into it, careful of his elbows. He is pressed very close between Caleb and Caduceus. 

“Travel wasn’t difficult, I hope?” Caleb asks in an undertone.

“Only in the sense that I had to travel by circle, which led to me being cornered for several tedious conversations on the way to acquiring my bribes.”

“Oh, bribes? Herr Thelyss.” Caleb’s severe tone is surely meant to tease, from the way the corners of his lips can’t quite stay pinned down. 

“You weren’t neglected in my plot to curry favor, don’t worry.”  

Essek pulls his personal copies of the survey reports from his Wristpocket. Nothing groundbreaking, but they’ve found a new crash site, or at least one that’s new to the Dynasty. A few artifacts were recovered, which Essek had the opportunity to inspect personally before shipping them back to the Dynasty for further review. Hopefully Caleb will have time to digest the reports before Essek must leave, but if not, well, it’s unlikely Essek will need them anytime soon. Caleb can be trusted to take good care of them until they can ben retrieved.

Caleb sets his drink aside, pops a globe of light into existence, and begins reading.

“Oh,” Beauregard calls, low and long, thumping a hand onto the table with a vicious thwap. “That’s a party foul, my guy.”

Essek turns to look at her, to see who she is calling out, but finds everyone (excepting Caleb, who’s reading) is staring at him. He points to himself, finding that language has abandoned him, and Beauregard nods vigorously.

“You’re not allowed to use the written word to disable Caleb. Now you gotta finish your drink.”

“Leave off him, Beau, this is—” Caleb starts without looking up. He finishes his sentence with an emphatic but incomprehensible gesture. 

“Rules are rules,” Veth crows, in defiance of her entire history.

“I don’t have a drink.” Essek knows that protest is feeble, trivially rectified. He’s only just sat down, and he’s already drowning. Gods, he could throttle them. Gods, he loves them.

“Someone get Essek a drink!” Beauregard shouts over her shoulder. 

“Essek likes nice things,” Jester adds, before smiling sweetly at him. Essek cups his hands around his mouth, so that only she will see him stick his tongue out at her. (He should be above that kind of behavior, of course, but where else would he indulge his uncouth impulses?) She grins, wide and unrepentant, scrunching up her nose in delight.

Light only knows what beverage is delivered in a fetching crystal glass. Essek sighs, hopelessly beseeching the ceiling for mercy, as nearly every single person he loves begins chanting chug, chug, chug while pounding the table hard enough to threaten toppling his punishment into his lap. 

Essek rescues it and waves at them to stop. When they quiet, and only then, does he lift the glass to his lips. The bouquet whispers wine , and a decent vintage at that. Closing his eyes, Essek tips the glass up and drinks it more quickly than it deserves—but decidedly not chugging, thank you very much—and sets the glass primly on the table in front of him. 

He doesn’t feel any different, but then he won’t for a little while. Hopefully, Jester’s arranged some kind of accommodation for them all, because if things continue as they’ve started, he will be ending the night somewhere that legs or minimal magic can take him and no further. 

The evening, unsurprisingly, devolves rapidly from there. 

Essek commits two more party fouls in rapid succession, but baldly refuses to accept his fourth demerit, only slightly mortified that it took him that long to realize Beauregard was making them up on the spot.

(“You just want me to drink more.” 

Or that’s what he’d meant to accuse. His tongue had gotten caught on the Common consonants and hissed out more instinctual sibilants instead. Beauregard just grinned with her teeth and topped him off.

“Nope.” She pops the p. “Just want you to catch up.”

He should have brought her something he didn’t like. It would make it easier to resist sipping at it, so it doesn’t find itself wasted in a spill. Hopefully he remembers for next time.

If there is a next time, the worst part of him interjects. He promptly tries to drown it with a wash of pinot gris.)

Jester cajoles a reasonably competent band into existence, which pulls most of the Nein away from the table. Caleb, especially, seems eager, leaving Essek’s reports behind on the table beside the tall, heavy glass that had held his beer. Essek cards through the stack, curious. Caleb is nearly finished. Does he remember things just as clearly while inebriated? Essek certainly doesn’t, but then he doesn’t have Caleb’s mind for—for everything.

It’s a very good mind. Very nearly perfect, set in an exemplary vessel.

Essek slaps his hand over his mouth, as if the thought could leak out that way. He glances around, but of course no one heard his thoughts. His shoulders ratchet down from where they’d jumped to nearly level with his ears, and he takes a long sip of his wine, then begins to nudge at the edge of the reports, until they sit in a pristine stack, each piece of paper perfectly aligned. 

Fidgeting, Essek, is unbecoming the voice of a tutor long since departed rings unbidden. Essek fidgets more out of spite, twisting his rings around his fingers, lining up the discarded glasses and silverware so they’re squared with the table’s edge, as if by tidying his immediate surroundings he can bustle the surge of affection from his mind as well. 

“Surely you haven’t come all this way just to sit by yourself?”

Essek freezes. He hadn’t even heard Caleb approach, he’d been so caught up. Caleb drapes himself into his former chair, loose limbed and a little bit flushed. He’s undone his shirt a bit, baring the hollow between his collarbones and hair nearly the same color as his beard. 

“Ah, well, I run the risk of more chastisement otherwise.” Essek lifts and shakes his nearly empty glass. 

Caleb smiles, laughing at him, but only with his eyes. 

“Dance with me, and I’ll keep you safe from the big, bad monk.”

“Oh, will you then? How?” Essek rests his chin on his hand and arches an eyebrow at Caleb.

“We’ll dance circles around her, but if she gets too close, I have illusions and evocations aplenty. Perhaps I could even conjure a demiplane to hide in, if you’re truly so frightened.”

“Oh, that’s quite impressive. Who wouldn’t be safe in such a learned practitioner’s company?”

Caleb’s eyes dip away, just a moment, out of modesty, surely, but he retains enough boldness to rise and offer Essek his hand. 

Essek reaches out, but hesitates. 

“I don’t actually know what’s in fashion, this far west,” he murmurs.

“Oh, anything will do. But I’ll lead, if you like. I don’t mind.”

Essek takes his hand, which feels unbearably reckless. Caleb lifts him effortlessly out of his chair, and the few steps to the impromptu dance floor don’t offer Essek enough time to second guess himself.

Caleb, mercifully, confines them to a four step. Essek cheats a bit, tweaking gravity here and there to drift after Caleb. Caleb chuckles when he notices, threatens to dip him, of all things. 

“Don’t you dare, Widogast.” Essek hisses. “The room is spinning enough as it is.”

“Oh?” Caleb says with mock innocence, as if his delicately crafted expression hides the light of mischief in his eyes.

“Don’t test me, young man, those bar stools look like excellent companions.”

Caleb laughs, spins them both slowly enough that Essek can’t object.

“Speaking of companions, I have been thinking.”

Thank the Light for party fouls, because Essek takes a beat too long to process those words, and so Caleb is already speaking again before he can properly begin to panic over them. 

“Aeor. Would you—were you serious about returning for a proper exploration? If you are,” Caleb pauses to craft a euphemism, “still secure in the North, might we set out from Vurmas? If you would want to go with me, of course.”

“Yes.” Ah, but Caleb had asked two questions. “Yes, I was serious, and I want to return. With you.”

A grin, brighter than any that has ever graced his lips in Essek’s memory, blooms onto Caleb’s face, and he really does dip him, sweeping Essek low and then back up. The sudden movement is only half of why Essek’s head spins—Caleb tugging him close once he’s upright accounts for the rest. Essek wants to be furious, he truly does, but Caleb is still grinning at him, and in the light of that, Essek can only marshal the gentler kind of heat. 

Aeor again! Essek tucks his chin low, reflexively hiding his expression, his delight. 

If Caleb is serious, of course. If it’s not simply the drink, or the elation of victory, talking. Essek bites the tip of his tongue, to keep himself from saying anything foolish, and sways with Caleb until the song ends.

Chapter Text

Are you certain? I think I could get there on the first try.

Essek rolls his eyes, casts Sending again. He can picture Caleb’s infuriating little smirk at knowing that no matter what, he’ll get the last word, but that doesn’t deter him. 

Preparations for their return to Aeor have given Essek latitude to call relatively often. It’s a challenge, trying to coordinate twenty-five words at a time, but they’re managing. Essek, of course, tries not to make a pest of himself, confines his Sendings to decent hours, but it is nice to hear Caleb’s voice regularly. Even if sometimes, he pretends proposing absurd risks constitutes helping.

“Do not Teleport here, you madman. Imagine what Veth would do to me if I had to dig your body out of a glacier.” Essek pinches the bridge of his nose. “Light.” She’d gut him. Slowly. Twice, somehow.

Caleb wastes part of his reply with a low chuckle. Fine, I will come on the ship with the rest of the luggage, since you are so insistent. 

“Thank you for seeing sense, Mister Widogast. You will be expected and accommodated. Uraya will be there, you’ll like them, I think.” 

Reckless, incorrigible man. Teleporting to Vurmas, alone. Ludicrous. Even if he had an anchor, it's surely weakened to the point of uselessness by now.

Essek runs the blade of his thumb along his teeth, forcing himself to stop before he gets to a nail. What could the hurry be? It couldn’t be that he’s eager to see Essek, could it?

Your friend, ja? I’m sure they’ll be interesting company then. If sea monsters attack though, it may force my hand.

Essek huffs, shaking his head. That is baldly bait, fishing for a concession, and he won’t rise to it. If memory serves Fjord is the quarry in that regard, not the Nein generally. The voyage will be fine, and besides Essek will have the station moved south by then to meet the supply ships. If Caleb does something foolish—

He won’t do something foolish. Essek sympathizes with his desire to begin, but there are arrangements that must be made, precautions taken. It will just be the two of them, after all.

Essek hasn’t heard what the rest of the Nein think of that, if Caleb has told them at all. Jester hasn’t mentioned it, certainly, which means either she approves or doesn’t know. 

She would be teasing him if she knew. She likely doesn’t, then. Maybe that’s why Caleb hasn’t mentioned it to anyone, because it would surely get back to her and she would have something to say about it.

Maybe Essek ought to say something, as a precaution, but no, Uraya will be appraised of their plans, would be closer at hand anyway. It’s not as if anyone from the Nein could come to their aid faster than the rangers. 

Perhaps Caleb has kept quiet about their expedition because he doesn’t want them to fret. 

Surely that’s all it is.

“Oi, Commander! A ship’s been spotted!”

“Ours, I trust?” Essek replies. 

He hasn’t Sent to either Uraya or Caleb yet today, but as of last night, they were on schedule. Essek shields his eyes from the sun, squinting at the horizon. The hull might be vermaloc, the flags Dynasty. It, at least, does not look like an Empire vessel.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. Make ready, we’ll be heading back to the last bay as soon as we’ve exchanged cargo.”

His people will be highly motivated on that task—fresh supplies are one of the few joys available in the north, and the ship will bring letters and gifts from home—and Essek has always made a point to order certain indulgences, paid for with Den funds if necessary, to keep up morale. As for them, already the last season’s finds are boxed up and waiting on deck, ready to be sent back to the Dynasty. 

Usually, Essek is not overmuch excited by the supply ships, but this one carries Caleb. Promises an expedition unlike any other, with man equality as singular. Ah, but it will be hours yet—

There is a cry on the air, like some great bird. Essek turns back, looks out over the water. There is an eagle, huge and bronze, descending toward the deck in a tight spiral. It is nothing native to Eiselcross, and, instinctively, Essek brings his hands up, ready to cast, squinting against the morning sun. The great bird dives at the deck, sending his men scattering, before pulling up at the last second and turning into a man. 

Caleb Widogast drops neatly onto the wood, then bows, low and sweeping, like a performer. 

He looks good, better than ever, perhaps. His hair is neatly braided back, excepting a few artful locks caught on the breeze, and he’s wearing a carefully trimmed beard to buttress him against the cold. There is a roundness to his cheeks that speaks to ample, good meals, and his coat looks new and warm. He has a scarf that spills down his chest, and it is finely woven, perhaps custom, with little cat prints stitched in along the edges.

Essek’s hands drop, familiarity softening his stance, but the tension on the deck is thick, with an unfamiliar human mage suddenly on the ship. He can see his people looking to him, waiting for a cue to guide their reactions. Essek does the first thing he can think to ease them—

He laughs.

“Impatient, aren’t we?” 

The shift is palpable. His people grumble and jostle, but the tension melts away. 

“Well, I finally saw a chance to move things along without ending up as a corpse in a glacier.”

Essek shakes his head, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. This man.

“The ship you left carries our supplies, we must still wait for it.” Though, of course, Caleb knows that. 

“Moving things along, as I said.”

He takes out his necklace of amber, murmurs the word that opens it. With a flash of light, it transmutes into five pallets. Not all their promised vittles, but a goodly chunk. 

“Well,” Essek turns to his lieutenant, who’s looking a bit nonplussed, but then Essek can hardly blame her. “Mister Widogast has gotten us started.” A little magic, a few words, and Essek has halved the weight of pallets. “Best get this stowed.”

She snaps off a hasty salute and calls out orders, sending people this way and that. Essek’s contribution done, he steps out of the way, nearer to Caleb.

“You are showing off,” Essek accuses, not bothering to hide his amusement. 

Essek hasn’t forgotten, exactly, just what kind of wizard Caleb is, what command of the arcane he has, but this display has brought it back to the forefront of his thoughts. He is so very good, so very clever. And very soon they will be on their way, together and unencumbered.

“Ah, well, I’ve had little occasion to practice. Someone insisted I take the long way here.”

“Someone wanted to make sure we began in good health.”

“So cautious.”

“Do you really want to risk having to limp back to the outpost on the first day?” Caleb makes a face Essek ignores. “Come, I’ve given some thought to where we will begin, but I’m eager to hear your opinions.”

Essek leads them to his cabin. It is much as it always is, sparse, except that nearly every flat surface is overburdened with papers. Caleb doesn’t even wait until the door is closed behind them before pulling out his own map of Eiselcross. Lacking an obvious place to put it—and lacking the patience to let Essek clear him a space—he simply crouches down and spreads it out on the floor.  

Rather than chide or tease, Essek gathers a few odd and ends to hold the corners of the map down and hands them over. Caleb digs out something from his components—cocoons for Polymorph—and places one down at their approximate location. 

“I thought we might enter where we did the last time,” Essek begins, setting aside the reports that obscure his own map and bringing it over. “We’ve made some improvements, widened the tunnel leading in. The patrols keep the wildlife away up to the first chasm.”

“I agree, it is a good entrance, and I will have my bearings. If the weather is good, we could fly there. With a tailwind we could even start from here—” Caleb places another cocoon down, miles off the shore. 

“Caleb,” Essek tries to interrupt, but Caleb doesn’t seem to hear him.

“You know Polymorph, don’t you? If not,” Caleb reaches for his spellbook, begins to unlatch it, “I have it here, it really is quite useful—”

Caleb begins flipping through, ready to show him the spell. 

“Caleb.” 

Only then does Caleb look up at him. 

“We ought stay with the ships, let them anchor nearby.”

“It would take less than a day though, we could cover such ground as eagles.”

“Really, Caleb, what is the hurry? I confess, I’m excited to begin as well, but you’ve been trying to compress our timeline for weeks now.”

Caleb’s eyes slide off Essek. Composing a lie? Essek clamps down on the thought. He won’t think ill of Caleb, not in front of him. 

“I’m excited, as you say.” That has the timbre of truth. Just, perhaps, not the whole truth. 

Well, Caleb hardly owes him a baring of his soul. It is so strange that he has a specific goal in mind? Perhaps Essek is the fool, eager to roam such a dangerous place for the sake of it, for the company he’d have doing it. No, it is obvious in hindsight, Essek should not have flattered himself, thinking that Caleb was excited to share this journey with him in particular. 

The sting is what Essek gets for theorizing with incomplete information. He knows better, after all. He sinks to his knees, arraying his robes neatly around him, right across the map, and considers the actual problem at hand. 

“I wanted to make sure Vurmas could endure my absence. I sent for almost double the usual amount of supplies, you know, and I specifically asked Uraya to return, to relieve me. They can maintain the status quo here nearly indefinitely, they have the connections, should it be needed. All this to say, I am prepared to be gone for months. Was there something you must return to the Empire for, in a little time? If there was, if you would have said, I would have done things differently.”

“No,” Caleb shakes his head. “No, I am not rushing to go because my time is limited.”

Essek says nothing, in case Caleb wishes to expand on that, to say what it is that makes him want to hurry, but Caleb only tugs at the ends of his sleeves, frowning at the map.

A secret he wishes to keep, then. Essek can respect that. Can work with what he knows. Can compromise when he must.

“I will need that spell from you.“ Essek reaches out, holding the excess of his sleeve up with his off hand, and nudges the second cocoon closer to the line delineating the shore. “Perhaps here instead. It gives me enough time to properly bring Uraya up to date and lets the ships get a little closer to the safety of the shore. There are other arcanists assigned here but—” Essek doesn’t stop the lopsided smile forming on his lips. “I’m the only one with combat experience, should there be a sea monster of some kind.” Essek glances up at Caleb. “You mentioned such a danger more than once. I’m quite worried.”

Caleb huffs, meets his eyes again.

“Getting into fights without us?”

“Oh, daily. It’s nearly the entirety of my social calendar.”

Caleb smiles then, a real one. Essek can only stand the force of it for a few seconds before he has to look back down at their maps. 

“We have been a bad influence on you.”

“I disagree entirely.”

Caleb hums, a considering noise, then picks up his cocoons, begins putting away his map. 

“A little time, then we go. That’s fair.”

“It’s decided then.” Essek rises, bats imaginary dirt off his robes. “I know you have the tower, but there is space in this plane if you’d like. I trance in here, generally, so the suite goes unused.”

Essek doesn’t mention for how long it’s been kept with Caleb in mind, since they’re keeping secrets.  

“Oh, ja, that would be nice. If you really don’t mind?”

Essek waves his objections away.

“Not at all. Make yourself at home.”

Did Caleb make it okay? Are you guys having fun yet? Are you makinggg outtt? Since we’re best friends you have to tell me. Doot!

Essek will never get used to the suddenness of Jester’s Sendings. They are unique in the entirety of Essek’s experience. It must have something to do with her Archfey.

“Caleb is safe and sound. We are exchanging spells. I have nothing to report in that vein, my dear. I hope you endure the disappointment.”

Essek realizes a little late that Jester Lavorre could construe exchanging spells into some kind of euphemism, but attempting to clarify would only make him look guilty, so he doesn’t. 

He tries to put any thoughts of making out or anything adjacent from his mind entirely. Nothing to indulge, not with Caleb sitting across from him. Even if—

No. Absolutely not.

That does settle at least one lingering question—the Nein know their plans. The relief Essek feels is unexpected, but welcome. A secret kept with Caleb is one thing, but kept from them is another. 

“Jester?” Caleb says, though surely he knows the answer.

“Asking after your health.”

Caleb huffs a low laugh, pink tinting his cheeks. Of course he knows that wouldn’t be all of it, can guess the kinds of things she’d say.

“So thoughtful, our Blueberry. I’m sure she said nothing untoward.”

Essek looks down at his spellbook. At the drying ink. Polymorph stares up at him, freshly copied from Caleb’s handsomely battleworn spellbook.

“Dear Jester? Of course not.”

Caleb gives him a few more of the utilitarian magics that served him well on the road. Essek shares with him a few of his more esoteric pieces, just to see what he'll do with them. The chronurgic ones especially. 

He knows, after all, that Caleb prizes those the most.

Days later, they are passing through Dagen’s Door once again. 

This time they are only harried by the stationed rangers, who are eager for their rations (and the liquor, and the candied crickets, and the letters) which Essek tries to disburse with as much haste as propriety allows. He gives the captain a Sending Stone for which Uraya has a mate, and then finally extracts himself. Caleb is nearly crawling over the edge before Essek finishes with the formal goodbyes. 

It’s on his own head, if he falls. He has more than enough ways to arrest gravity before he comes to harm. Essek does not hurry over to him.

With a pointed look over his shoulder, Caleb shrinks into a small bird and dives down.

Once more into the breach then. Essek becomes a bat, and follows.

Those first days pass in a nearly manic haze. They comb through nearly every crevice of the city they stumble into, methodical in the way they couldn’t afford the first time. (Free, in the way Essek wasn’t, subsequently.) 

With just the two of them, it’s easier to avoid trouble than engage with it, so more often than not, they are able to use Caleb’s Tower to shelter when they must rest.

Though it is rest, of all things, becomes something of a contentious issue. Or rather, the comparative differences in their need for it. Some days Caleb seems to take their differing physiologies personally.

Tonight, Caleb has fallen asleep on one of the couches in his Salon. Essek sets aside the millennia old tome he’d been reading and allows himself an uninterrupted look. Caleb’s thumb is marking his place in the book that’s cradled against his chest. His head is tipped into his shoulder, hair spilling down his neck and onto the pillows, and there is a small frown, like even unconscious he resents the interruption to his study, on his lips. Still, there is something beautifully unguarded in Caleb at rest. Something profound, that he would let himself be so vulnerable in front of Essek. 

Essek wants to be worthy of that kind of trust. And perhaps the first step is making sure Caleb doesn’t spend tomorrow with a sore neck.

Essek pushes himself out of his chair, slips the book from Caleb’s hand, marking the page with a bit of paper that didn’t originate in the Tower. Caleb grumbles a little, turns into the back of the couch. 

“Caleb,” Essek murmurs. Caleb grunts. Essek nudges one of his legs, insistent but not rough. “Caleb, you ought to go to bed.”

Caleb scrubs at his face, then blinks his eyes open to glare up at Essek.

“You aren’t tired yet,” Caleb grumbles pointedly. 

“I might be,” Essek replies airily, and he is, a bit. “But we are not talking about me.”

“You get so much more time with the material,” Caleb mutters, pushing himself upright.

Ah, this again. They’ve discussed this so many times that Essek has become genuinely fond of having this argument.

“I spend that time taking notes, Caleb. My memory isn’t as perfect as yours,” Essek responds, like he usually does. “To bed. Everything will be here in the morning. I won’t read ahead of you.” 

Essek makes that promise every night. Usually, he keeps it. Caleb glowers at him, but levers himself off the couch, staggers to the center of the Salon. Essek watches him rise, arms crossed. It’s hard to maintain any semblance of sternness, when he feels such affection.

Once Caleb is out of sight, Essek begins tidying their materials. He peaks at the book Caleb was reading, but only a little, only at what he’s already read, in keeping with the spirit of his promise. He can see why Caleb didn’t want to put it down—it’s quite the tempting treatise on transmutation. He worries the edge of the impromptu bookmark, wondering how the premise will be supported. But no, he promised.

Essek sets the book down. Perhaps he ought to stop for the night as well, as a show of good faith. 

Weeks they spend together, and it must be weeks, though Essek’s sense of time has nearly completely unraveled with no sky, no appointments, no deadlines to gauge its passing, wandering through the ruins.

They delve and read and talk and speculate and experiment—seemingly without pause or end. Books keep appearing in the Salon, the laboratory grows weed-like into the unused suites. They have half a dozen rituals completed, twice that nearly done. Essek is confident that they’ll reduce the casting time of most to seconds, with a little more refinement.

Essek is also sure he could do this forever.  

But for all the wonder, all the mystery here, it is the thing Caleb will not speak obsesses Essek most.

What does he want to find?

The shape of Caleb’s fascination is not hard to pin down—he’s always had an interest in fate, in time. The materials he deems worthy of his deep consideration are plain to Essek, given the close quarters they keep. 

And there is the matter of the things they have in common. The regret, the guilt. 

Essek has inklings. Things the others have let slip, mentioned obliquely, the outline of the terrors lurking in Caleb’s history. He supposes those are a matter of public record now, at least some of them, at least in the Empire. (But Essek would not learn of Caleb that way. He prefers the methods he’s had, the revelations gained in mutual trust. To unravel the problem himself, rather than having the answer handed to him, neutered and impersonal.)

He is not so dense as to miss the connection. 

He just hopes he can be worthy of the secret, if they do find Caleb’s catalyst. 

They come to the Mausoleum of the Forgotten from nearly the opposite direction, so Essek does not recognize it at first. They passed it over quickly, the first time, but now Caleb indulges his curiosity.

Essek drifts down along one wall, taking it all in. It reminds him foremost of the ossuary under the Thelyss estate. The air here is as heavy with the memory of grief as those rows of bones, the only traces left of lives lived are the names writ on plaques set in the walls. 

Essek stops before a row. The plaques are all identical except for the names they bear. They look lovingly crafted, as if they were commissioned by the same person, or perhaps by a family with an exacting taste for tradition. Essek brushes the dust of centuries from the topmost of the set, and suddenly there is a voice in his mind. It is soft, with the halting unsteady cadence of the bereaved. Essek cannot understand it, he didn’t think to cast Tongues before, but a few words he thinks he recognizes—some root or sister language to Common. 

Love, rest, heart—

The epitaph is enchanted in. How very Aeoran.

Curious, Essek casts Tongues and touches the plaque again.

My love, rest well. Not a day will pass that I will not miss you, in defiance of your final wish. Forgive me, for keeping you always in my heart. 

Curious, Essek touches the next one. The same voice, just as somber but more steady, speaks in his mind. 

I did not think I could love again, until you. For a century, I thought his crypt held my heart, but you found it still beating. You are just as dear to me, and so I will heed your advice. He gave me the same advice, you know. In time, in the next place, I will submit gladly to your joint teasing. Until we are reunited, be at peace. 

Essek touches the remaining plaques, all are farewells, each seemingly to a spouse, except for the last, bidding goodbye to a father. Someone long-lived memorialized four partners here. 

Essek touches the first again. Hears the raw grief in the voice of a ghost. What did this first husband think? Did it trouble him to grow old with his lover seemed fixed in time? By the end, did either of them regret it?

Essek wouldn’t. He would grieve, bitterly, for the circumstance of their parting, but if it were possible, he doesn’t think he could regret having something worth grieving. 

Worse, he thinks he envies this long dead man his grief, envies the love he gave and got in turn. To have wrenched bliss from heartache, if only for a time. To be worthy of the precious hours of the other races, to be trusted with so much of their lives. 

To be trusted with the hours of a particular man.

He wants it. The joy, the pain. Wants it with the ravenous hunger that drove him to treason.

Essek is breathless with the realization. He would ruin nations for Caleb. Would do worse. Would do anything.

But this is not a theft, not a political game, but the heart of the most singular man Essek knows. He cannot take, no, he can only try to be worthy. He pulls his now shaking hand away from the plaque. 

“Find anything?” Caleb’s voice unfurls in his mind. Essek looks over his shoulder, to where Caleb is holding a piece of copper to his mouth. He is lingering by one of the slanting doorways, open curiosity on his face, but impatience in his posture.

Would Caleb regret it? A rebellious part of Essek wonders. Could I be someone he wouldn't regret?

He swallows around a lump building in his throat. It seems unfair that only the words of the survivor were spared, when it is those that went before Essek would need to interrogate to know. 

“Not anything we can make use of, just graves. I think we can move on.”

Chapter Text

“Come, come, let’s go.” 

Essek frowns to himself. They’ve barely cleared this room. Certainly it is not flush with arcane mystery, but meticulous inspection has turned up gems, both metaphorical and literal, before. Care has yet again fallen victim to their march onward, it seems. 

If Caleb was eager before, he’s been practically militant since they returned to the Genesis Ward. Each level they descend, something ratchets tighter in him—he grows quieter by the hour, his excitement tempered into tension, perhaps even anxiety. He allows them the pretense of exploration, stopping at every room for a cursory look, but his mind is clearly elsewhere. In hindsight, their destination is obvious. There is only one place that could have obsessed Caleb so. 

Essek, not for the first time, almost asks Caleb if they ought to go directly to the T-Dock. 

Almost, but he doesn't think he could cut through the veneer Caleb’s maintaining without scoring the man underneath, so he doesn't. Caleb hasn’t taken care to hide where he’s been leading them, surely he must know that Essek knows. Likewise, he must know that they both know he is choosing, for whatever reason, to not take the most direct route. No sense, then, in stating the obvious. 

Essek gathers his furs tighter around himself and follows Caleb back into the hall. 

When they at last come to the end of that familiar corridor, Essek does not expect Caleb to hesitate. 

He stops at the threshold and stands there so still and so long that the fear he’s sprung some trap begins to take root. Essek opens his mouth, Caleb’s name balanced on the edge of his teeth, but before he commits to speaking Caleb rolls his shoulders back, straightens his spine, and steps inside. 

Caleb enters the room containing the remnants of the Temporal Dock as if it is a chapel, slow and quiet and reverent. Essek follows, chin tipped down, in deference to the space and the wonder it contains. The power to undo both their sins sits here, or at least the pieces do. Not just to atone, not redress, but unmake their wrongs. Not to wash a stain, but to have never marred the fabric of their lives at all. It is a heady thing, to again be in its presence.

Essek remembers the way Caleb had looked when they’d found it the first time—like a starving man, presented with a feast. And yet, he’d turned away, hardly able to stand the sight of it. Like one taste would have been the death of him.

He looks much the same now.

Free of the chase that hampered them last time, Caleb walks an exacting circuit around the periphery of the room, counting his steps under his breath. Then he walks another circle around the dais at the center, still counting. His eyes dart here and there, and it’s plain to see that he’s absorbing everything, perhaps already beginning to reconstruct the original from the rubble in his mind’s eye, surely synthesizing what’s here with what they’ve already learned.

Caleb comes to a stop nearly where he’d started, right on the edge of the dais. His breathing is labored, as if he is out of breath and trying not to show it. As if taking the measure of the room had cost him miles. His back, though, remains arrow straight, as painful to see as the hunch he sometimes folds himself into. 

Watching him now, Essek has a realization, a staggering flash of conviction. This is not for him. Whatever he might gain, delving back into his own timeline, Caleb could gain so much more. He has sacrificed so much, striven so hard, in so little time, to stand here. If they are to continue on at all as anything but footnotes in each other’s histories, Essek must defer to him in this moment.

Knowing that, it is easy, perhaps easier than it should be, to wait at the periphery for Caleb to decide what he will do. 

Caleb still isn’t facing him when he finally breaks the silence.

“Is this still something that you consider?”

Essek drifts closer, as if summoned, and looks at the dais, the runes there. The question feels as if it is one of the most important Caleb has ever asked him. Essek kneels down at the edge of runes, soaking in the intricate weave before them, and considers his answer.

It could be magnificent, to accomplish this. It could be terrible.

"I have spent my life in the pursuit of the ability to control one's future,” he begins. “And that path has led me to making many mistakes. As my shift away from that began, I wondered at the possibility of fixing one's past, and since we found this, I've thought of it often." He runs his finger along the side of the raised platform, skirting carefully the symbols of power. "A possibility of retracing one's lifeline. Adjusting things. But such pursuits are selfish. For the more you understand time, understand you cannot see the ramifications of changing such things. Were I to have found this before I found you, perhaps I may have done some incredible, terrible things with it. But I accept my regrets now, and I'm here today with this knowledge, in this moment with you, because of those mistakes. And as much as they hurt me, I don't want to change a thing."

Caleb is silent behind him for one heartbeat, then two, ten. It is almost a minute before Essek gins up his meager courage and turns to look back. 

"How about you, Caleb Widogast?" Essek asks gently.

“My lifespan is a little shorter than yours.” Hurt blooms behind Essek’s ribs—Not a day will pass that I will not miss you, in defiance of your final wish—but he doesn’t let it show. “But for many years I have thought of this very thing—”

Caleb trails off, his lips pressing into a thin line, his gaze becoming glassy and distant. Essek sits in absolute silence, barely daring to breathe, as the entirety of Caleb’s being turns inward. 

There is such pain in him. Essek can see it as plainly as he can freckles dusting his nose. As plainly as he can see his great mind at work. Essek wants, desperately, to dispel this agony, but he lacks the ability.

“Of course, it would work,” he whispers, finally, and if it were not so perfectly silent, Essek would not have heard. 

“Will you do it?” Caleb could. Is this why he wanted Essek to come with him? Why he did not ask the others? Does he know, already, what Essek would do for him, if only he would ask?

He won’t, couldn’t, unwind his wrongs, but Caleb’s? To know that Caleb could be free of his guilt, his hurts? Well that is another thing entirely.

Another bolt of stark realization—he would damn them all at Caleb’s word. He is only good enough to fear the cost, not good enough to deny Caleb what he wants. He would go down in hellfire to wash Caleb’s past clean, if he asked it, mourning that the sin of it would rest on his shoulders, but not regretting it. Never regretting it.

“Will you do it?” Essek breathes out shakily, rising again. “I will help you.”

It is so near to a confession, he feels as if there is nothing but sheer gossamer between the world and his heart. But it is not quite that, and it goes unacknowledged as such. 

Caleb shudders, shoulders tucking in and down, but his hands are steady when he reaches into his components, drags dust up the length of his arm. Green light carves into the structure of the dias, reduces it to its component atoms. Caleb casts a handful more times, ablating paper and piping, metal and stone, then switches to fire, hurling it like the bursts of arcane power are somehow heavy. Perhaps, in a sense, they are.

“Good,” Essek murmurs, retreating back to the edge of the room. He raises his hands to help but stops—no, perhaps he ought not. Perhaps this is something Caleb must do alone. Instead he works to contain the smoke, so it does not choke them or give them away. 

When there is nothing but smears of ash and dust, Caleb is left standing perfectly still at the center of what was once the dias, his back to Essek. 

Essek waits, for a moment, then drops back to the ground. Lets his boots announce his presence as he walks closer. Before he gets close enough to touch, Caleb speaks.

“I guess we should keep going.”

He turns, and there are tears falling freely down his face. He doesn't seem to notice them. He looks as if he’s barely aware of where he is. 

Proof, as if Essek needed it, that this room, this work, represented far more than Essek ever knew. And now Caleb has set it aside, permanently.

“Absolutely not.” 

Caleb blinks at him, somewhat owlish, as if he’s struggling to understand.

“We are backtracking to a safe place and stopping,” Essek continues, firm.

Essek slowly, with more telegraphing that even a novice would require, draws his hands through the forms for Prestidigitation, lifting the tears from Caleb’s cheeks before they can freeze. They catch the light from Caleb’s globules, glittering, before being consumed by Essek’s spell.

Essek closes the distance between them, that same hand extended. He places it gently on Caleb’s unresisting forearm.

“We’ve done enough for today.”

“It’s only two thirty-four, there’s plenty of day left to—” Caleb gestures vaguely, trailing off.

“And there will be tomorrow, and the day after, and after, and so on. Please. For my own peace of mind, then? I will make us a dome, happily.”

“No, I’ll—I’ll make the Tower.”

Essek could let Caleb go, and propriety demands he should, but instead he slips his hand to the center of Caleb’s back, walks so close that their coats brush. He doesn’t flatter himself that he could hold anyone together, but he has to do something. To try to ground him somehow.

Essek only withdraws to let Caleb cast, once he deems a place suitable for the entrance to the Tower, and then he slinks closer again. It doesn’t feel safe to pull away until they’ve crossed the threshold into safety.

But safety isn’t cure. Not for this.

Caleb stands, listless, in the foyer, as if he isn’t sure what he should be doing. Essek wordlessly peels him out of his coat, handing it to one of the many cats that have gathered to greet them, then sheds his own outer layers. Less encumbered, Caleb wanders toward the center and begins to drift up. Whatever Caleb set aside when he destroyed the T-Dock, the lack of it has unmoored him in some fundamental way. He needs someone better equipped for comfort, but all he has is Essek. 

The Nein would know how best to help him, but they are not here, and Essek cannot retrieve them. With only himself at hand, Essek will have to make do. 

First things first. Veth would not let him be alone, not right now, so neither will he. He casts Fly to catch up before Caleb can shut himself away. Essek intercepts him five feet above the floor of the Salon. They hang in the air, waiting for Essek to act. 

“Caleb, are you—” all right? No, of course not, obviously not. “Do you need—” Oh, but what could Essek offer?

What would Jester do? Essek bites his lip and opens his arms. Caleb stares for a moment, trembling so, so faintly, and then he collapses into Essek.

He sobs like a rockfall—sudden and devastating. Words start and die on his lips. Essek isn’t sure he’d have understood them even if they’d lived. Instead of wondering at them, Essek squeezes Caleb tight against his chest, as if his arms could provide protection like Yasha’s do.

Immediately, he feels out of his depth. He doesn’t even know what is wrong, so how can he begin to soothe? (As if this is a hurt words and gestures could salve.) Panic rises in Essek—what if he makes things worse?

Essek clamps down his spiraling thoughts. He knows what to do, in theory—start small. Break the problem into manageable pieces. Be pragmatic, like Fjord might, in a crisis. 

They cannot continue to just hang here in the air.

Essek quirks the gravity around both him and Caleb, pulling them through the air toward one of the couches. It’s easy, then, to fall, to guide Caleb down between the back of it and Essek’s body. Instinct tells him low, secure, covered, so Essek pulls his outermost robe over both of them like a blanket, tucks Caleb under his chin. Cats, three or maybe four, slink up onto the couch with them, tucking warm spectral bodies into their negative spaces.

He might not be able to stop the breakdown, but perhaps he can contain the rubble. Perhaps that will count for something.

Caleb is still sobbing, hands wound tight in Essek’s clothes and still managing to shake anyway. Essek doesn’t bother with platitudes, they are worthless, but he thinks he can get away with truths. Beauregard would.

“You’re safe. I’m here. I’ll stay here, for as long as you need.”

Caleb doesn’t acknowledge that he’d heard, so Essek doesn’t say anything else, just holds him, lets Caleb hold onto him in turn.

It aches like a knife between the ribs to be so useless.

Caleb cries until he cannot, but even once he’s quieted, he doesn’t try to move. Essek doesn’t begin to consider asking him to. His breathing slows, his body finally relaxes, and Essek would tear down the heavens before he allowed anything to disturb Caleb once the relief of sleep takes him.

For hours, he stays sentinel there, arms around Caleb, guarding the fragile respite he’s found. For hours he tries to think, but he comes no closer to deciding on what else to do, on what to say when Caleb wakes. If he should say anything at all.

All his learning, all his intelligence, and he doesn't even being to know how to start helping the man—

The man he loves.

He’s only sure that one more weighty revelation might be the end of Caleb. He thinks he brought a—a colleague. Maybe even a  friend. All Essek’s adoration isn’t helping him be either. Caleb needs him to be stable, to be a fixed point, not to add to the tumult. 

Essek will bite his tongue, until better days, then.

In the meantime, he presses his cheek against the crown of Caleb’s head. Memorizes, to the best of his ability, the feeling of Caleb’s body against his. If only this were anything. If only this were enough.

It must be nearly evening when Caleb begins to stir. First, it is only small movements, low noises, but they’ve spent enough time in close quarters for Essek to be able to interpret him waking for what it is. Essek forces himself to relax his grip, to give Caleb room to move. Instead of pulling away, though, Caleb turns further into Essek’s chest, as if hiding from the lowered lights of Salon. 

Maybe he isn’t ready to wake, to face reality again. Essek trails his fingers across Caleb’s back as he settles his arms into their previous curl. Maybe it will be yet a few more hours here. Essek begins to resign himself, but Caleb then goes rigid against him.

“Caleb? Are you all right?” Essek murmurs. 

Caleb pushes himself upright, sending the gathered cats tumbling. They howl their protests and scamper off. Essek holds out his hands, as if Caleb might fall. 

“I’m sorry, I—” Caleb looks between Essek, the lounge, and the far wall, unable to decide where to rest his eyes. His complexion darkens, as ruddy as if windburnt. He takes a shuddering breath, then another, too quick.

“Don’t,” Essek interrupts. He pushes himself up as well, reaches out for Caleb’s arm. His fingers wrap around Caleb’s wrist and he squeezes, tugs it close, as if by doing so he could pull Caleb’s gaze. “You have nothing to apologize for. I won’t hear any argument otherwise.”

Caleb finally finds a place on the floor to rest his eyes, begins to stammer again.

“Really, it’s all right. If you like, we won’t dwell on the last few hours, but please, do not carry on as if it were anything else than what our friends would have done.” Essek continues. He sets Caleb’s hand in his lap, covers it with both his own. Caleb slumps into his side, and it is an honor to bear up his weight.

Essek wets his lips, takes a deep breath. It feels important, to at least broach the matter that led them here.

“I don’t know what it meant to you, to destroy the T-Dock. I won’t do you the disservice of speculating either. Tell me now, later, or never, whichever you prefer. But if you would feel better telling someone, I will listen.”

“Are you sure you would want to know?” Caleb whispers into his shoulder, voice shaking.

“I am worried for you.” Which isn’t an answer, exactly. He wants to know, of course he does. He wants to know everything about Caleb, to become expert. But he won’t make Caleb retread bitter ground for it. So he deflects instead, for the moment. Plays for time, so Caleb can think on it, properly. Caduceus would insist on sustenance, surely, so. “I’m sure it’s almost time for dinner. Come.”

Essek requests a meal from the cats, broad instructions for something homey, relying on the fact that they are a reflection of Caleb and will be able to guess their master’s tastes better than he ever could. 

Caleb is silent as Essek orders around his servants. Essek is not often beset with the urge to fill silences, but he’s not sure this one is anything but festering. The Nein would not leave Caleb alone with his thoughts at a time like this. 

Essek has already offered his ear, but he can still be a distraction. After all, what is an aristocrat but a gilded nattering machine?

Essek would never have acquired the skill for prattle had he his druthers, but he’s been subjected to enough of it to pick up the basics. It might as well be of use, just what to bloviate on—

The past, in any capacity, is out. This is not a moment for nostalgia. The rules out schooling, talk of family. 

The present, their present, at least, seems similarly fraught. 

Magic, perhaps, but not chronurgy, obviously, and perhaps not anything they’ve worked on so far. Something familiar enough that Caleb could follow, if he wished, but strange enough to carry no immediate association. 

Ah, Essek has been answering letters concerning any possible leads on brumestones in Aeor for some months now. The Dynasty has no access to airships, and conventional shipping is hampered mightily by the Blightshore. A more ambitious up and comer has set their sights on recreating the technology. (They are also not so subtly angling for Essek’s own station. It would have rankled him even a year ago, but now he’s just happy that someone with a more practical than theological bent might take his place when he inevitably vacates his position at Vurmas.) 

Caleb asks a few questions as Essek relays what they’ve found, almost smiles at a few of the more amusing anecdotes about the complicated Den politics surrounding the situation. Surely, he knows all Essek’s talk is meant to be a distraction. Essek bites down on the urge to ask if it’s helping, or if he is the one being indulged. Either it’s welcome or it’s not, Essek has already committed to this path.

It takes until the halfway point of their meal before Caleb is ready to really say anything.

“Would you really have helped me?” 

Caleb is holding his fork in his fist, his thumb braced against the tines. Essek sets his own down, laces his fingers together in his lap, giving Caleb his full attention.

“Yes.” Simple. Direct. True.

Caleb licks his lips. Visibly gathers his thoughts. Essek waits. 

“But you didn’t want to use it, to go back?”

“No.”

Caleb’s eyes roam the table as he works out how he wants to phrase the heart of the matter. Essek waits, patient as a mountain.

“Do you think I did the right thing?” 

Caleb slumps down as he speaks, making himself small. Essek wants to reach across, to pull him up, but he’s certain he’s exhausted all his latitude in that regard.

“Did you do the right thing?” Essek begins. He reflexively adopts a register suited for teaching. It is perhaps not inappropriate—his favorite student has brought him a question he cannot answer outright. Perhaps they can reason it out together. “I think that is impossible to say, too broad a scope. The right thing for whom? You? I think only time will tell, and it will depend on how you decide to move forward. For me? As I said, I had no desire to use it for myself. For the Mighty Nein? Do you know if any of them would have had an application? To my knowledge, only Veth has shown interest in the arcane as we practice it. Beauregard has the capacity, I think, but not the temperament.”

“No, I don’t think anyone else would have wanted to go back. Not with the risks.”

“The risks. There was a large failure space, we both have to acknowledge. Time is fickle, it doesn’t tolerate transplantation well. Our safety, the stability of this timeline, would have been in question, no matter how careful we were. So now we ask, did you do the right thing for the world? You did the cautious thing. I think there is a little bit of solace to be had in knowing that, if anyone else would attempt to use magic of that caliber for ill, they would have one less example to guide them.”

“And if they wanted to do good?”

“Well, good can be done in many ways. Our hypothetical mage is surely not without other options to improve the world.”

Caleb shrinks further down. Essek continues with a softer tone.

“It was brave, to have acted, I think. Either way. But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved. I don’t know what you wanted to change,” Essek holds up his hand, forestalling anything Caleb might say. “I meant it when I said you need never tell me. But I am glad to know you will remain in this time. That no one will be able to steal it out from under us. And—” Essek suppresses the urge to fidget. Looks right at Caleb, though he’s still not meeting his eyes. “I will help you in this time, too, in any way that you may require it. I promise.”

Caleb nods. Levers himself more upright, then hunches forward, putting his cutlery to its usual task. 

The rest of the meal, Essek lets pass in silence. A heavy silence, perhaps, but not a tense one. 

“I think I’m going to go to bed,” Caleb says as he pushes away his (mostly) cleared plate.

It’s a lie, one Essek is meant to see through. He is not so dense to misunderstand the request for space. It feels like having a bone prised away from its fellows, to watch Caleb rise, to let him go, but Essek does it without complaint. He seems more prepared to gather his thoughts now, and certainly not in need of smothering.

“Good night. I will see you in the morning,” Essek calls after him, trying to sound sure. 

Caleb’s eyes light on him, only for a second, but he nods.

“In the morning.” 

Essek learns, in bits and pieces, about Caleb’s parents. About how they died. About what Caleb had thought to do about that. 

Each piece of Caleb’s history, no matter how jagged, how venomous, Essek treats as precious. A sacred burden, tucked behind Essek’s ribs, as if the cage of his heart could be a worthy reliquary. 

He sees the eighth floor of the Tower, and each room therein, eventually. Each feels hallowed, even the barbed memories. Essek is grateful to have been deemed worthy of a visit.

(Here he thought he could not loathe Ikithon more, but he finds a way. 

That wretch is trapped, helpless, in an Empire dungeon. If Essek could only slip inside—time and gravity are malleable instruments. You can make a man die forever, if you know what you're doing. Essek could pin his final breath to the last syllable of time in the multiverse, and wring out him along a single bloody axis from tomorrow until then, if he could just be alone with him.

Fantasies of vengeance, however, must remain only that. He has a much more important duty, as Caleb’s companion until he sees fit to call off their expedition, and nothing will sway Essek from the task.)

“I’m glad you were here.”

Essek hums, noncommittal, until his mind catches up to his ears. He freezes, hand hovering over ancient papers, as he truly processes the words.

“Here?” he asks, voice only just not shaking, as he goes back to sorting their spoils.

They’re calling the end of the expedition today, splitting what they’ve found. Caleb has most of it memorized, but there are yet things he hasn’t had time to study. Essek would happily take everything else, but one day he will have to vanish from the Dynasty, and it might come for him. It would be a shame to have taken a trove, only to have to leave it behind, out of both their reach. 

“Ja.” Caleb bumps his shoulder gently with his own. “I am glad it was you, here, you know.” Ah . This. “To have not had to make the decision alone. To have someone there who would understand.”

“Of course, Caleb.” For you, anything Essek does not say. He plucks a thin pamphlet up, adds it to his take. 

“I might note, though, in the interest of completeness—” There is a curl of amusement to Caleb’s voice. It didn’t leave, entirely, after the T-Dock, but its relative scarcity left Essek missing it. “That you never once mentioned the Primal Artifact. One must be here.”

There is little Essek can say that would not implicate him. He sets a book aside, it would do better in Caleb’s care.

“Ah, well, perhaps another time.” He settles on, finally.

For a moment, there is only the shuffling of papers. Essek tries not to feel anything about it. Almost manages it too, until Caleb bumps his hand with a notebook.

“Another time, then.” Caleb smiles at him, soft, real. “Ja, I could do another time.”

Chapter Text

The air just in front of Caleb’s front gate shimmers, and then Essek materializes out of nothing onto the flagstones, a fashionable few minutes past the time he’d been told to arrive.  

Prudence has him in disguise, though now the glamor against his skin is nearly as familiar as his own silk shirts, and manners set him outside of the residence, instead of in the foyer. Even with the invitation, he prefers to first knock on the door, to be welcomed in. Besides, the short walk up the path allows him to take in Caleb’s little house, which sits tucked into a charming but unassuming corner of the Tangles. 

The setting sun has burnished the windows to an inviting gold, but now there are cheery boxes hanging just below, nearly overflowing with catmint. The apple tree in the garden still peaks just over the roof, currently adorned by someone—surely Jester—with alchemical lights and garlands. It reminds him of another house, far away, and he can’t help but smile to himself at the memory of it. As Essek lifts his hand to the door knocker, he notes the fresh coat of paint. Caleb’s been hard at work since the housewarming party, nearly a year ago, making this place a home.

Essek would have visited between then and now, wished dearly to, but a dead man ought be sparing with his appearances at any one address. These first months on the run, after all, are vital to his future safety. To his ability to see his dearest friends later.

But Caleb will only become a new professor at the Soltryce Academy once, so Essek could hardly miss congratulating him.

Jester told him to knock in a specific way, should he come in disguise, so that they would know it was him. As if they would not answer the door. As if he could not make his identity plain enough to be invited in, where he could drop any disguise. Still, if she hears, it will make her happy, so he raps out the pattern. 

Behind the door, Essek hears heavy footfalls on the floorboards. Someone throws themselves against the door, then, in an endearingly poorly disguised voice, Jester asks,

“Who’s there?”

“Just a friend from the east, here to congratulate the new professor.”

“Essek!” she cries, and throws open the door. She looks much the same as always—a relief—and is as brash as ever, grabbing him by the wrist and bodily pulling him inside and into her arms. Essek slumps into her, letting her take his weight, impulsively reaching back. 

Oh, it’s been too long. Too long since he’s been around anyone he can trust, around anyone he knows. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the sound of his own name.

“That’s a cute haircut, but you can drop the disguise! It’s only us here,” Jester murmurs into his ear. 

On the next exhale, Essek lets the magic coating his skin unravel, revealing only himself. Jester pulls back, her hands still on his shoulders, to give him an appraising look. Essek rolls his shoulders down, tips his chin up, and submits to her inspection. He’s not been able to keep his presentation up to his previous standards, but he doesn’t think the aimless travel has done him a great disservice either. (And he did try, with what make up he could find, for the occasion.) Jester narrows her eyes, tucks some of his hair behind an ear, smooths down his sleeves, then grins. 

“C’mon, we set everything up in the garden!” 

Essek lets himself be pulled from the foyer through the kitchen (where Caleb’s tabby is sulking, poor thing. Essek pauses to blink slowly at him, the way Caleb taught him, but dear Mittens only presses further back into his hiding place atop the cabinetry) and through the back door. High stone walls encircle a tidy space, stone pavers carving out paths between patches of soft grass and lush flower beds and carefully tended vegetables. The whole thing has a beautiful geometry, crowned by the apple tree at the back, towering over it all. A small table holds food and drink—Essek takes a glass—before he’s caught up in exchanging greetings and more hugs. 

(“It’s good to see you,” Caleb hums into his hair, after sweeping him up. Essek presses both his hands flat against Caleb’s back, leaning further into his shoulder. Breathes in the smell of linen and human skin. Imagines that he can feel Caleb’s heartbeat through both their clothes.

“You as well,” is all Essek trusts himself to say.)

They all have stories to tell, and Essek is eager for their news. He spends the first hour happily immersed in harmless gossip, talk of schooling, plants, work, neighbors, the odd sea beast. (He catches Caleb’s eyes as Jester recounts the story. Caleb looks away, failing badly to suppress a smile.) Essek doesn’t have much to report—he has become a professional stranger since he and Caleb faked his death, concerned mostly with passing from place to place as unremarkably as possible. Maybe, one day, he’ll settle, at least for a little time, but right now the better part of prudence seems to be in constant, unpredictable movement, and that has left him with little to bother sharing. 

It’s more talking than he’s done in months, and both his voice and energy begin to flag. He removes himself to the edge of the garden, settling onto one of the benches, and relaxes into the smooth stone wall. Soaks up the happy press of his friends’ voices, the scents of the garden, even the low thrum of the city.

This is the first time he’s felt safe since the last time he was in Rexxentrum, ironically enough. He and Caleb engineered an accident, in view of a detachment of Vurmas rangers—once arrangements at the outpost sufficient for his conscience had been made—then came here. At the time, Caleb called a rented room above a fair to middling tavern home, but then Caleb can make a paradise anywhere he likes, so long as he’s not overtired, so it’s not as if the accommodations were actually wanting. 

Essek spent the next few weeks traveling between Rosohna and that room, always in disguise, to gather what news he could. He saw his death announced, gossiped with the servants of his mother’s estate after his funeral, watched his towers emptied. 

None of it was proof, of course, that no one suspected his death was a lie. That his treason hadn’t been found out. But if nothing else, there was an official story, and any fallout would be contained to those parameters. No public manhunt. No upsetting of the peace, at least from the Dynasty side. 

In the meantime, Essek was free, so long as he wasn’t himself. 

Essek looks down at his hands. It’s a novelty to see his own fingers curled around his glass. Not the day’s fiction, or gloves to conceal when magic wouldn’t do. Just him. He flexes his hands until the tendons and veins tent his skin, until his bones press up and starve his capillaries of blood, his knuckles of pigment.

What a life he now lives, what a bed he must lie in, that the sight of his own body is now strange to him.

At least he yet has places he can call sanctuary, where he can sit clad in his own skin, his own clothes. How laughable, that he finds such a simple thing precious. And yet, it is so very precious to him.

Essek’s thoughts are interrupted by Caleb dropping heavily onto the bench beside him. He’s flushed pink—surely pressed into drink by their friends, perhaps embarrassed by their effusive praise.

“There’s no need to be such a wallflower, Herr Thelyss.” Caleb’s voice curls up through the formality, his eyes crinkle at their corners, as he teases.

Essek can’t help the wry smile at his erstwhile den’s name. He supposes, if the lie of his death holds, his mother would continue to claim him. What is one more votive candle in the den’s chapel, for a foolish young man lost in the ice? Perhaps it was even a sort of kindness, for his den to mourn him early rather than have to suffer publicly the truth of him.

“On the contrary, Pro-fes-sor,” Essek enunciates every syllable of Caleb’s new title clearly. Caleb’s face darkens a shade or two, and he ducks his head down, the hair that’s fallen loose of his tie making an attempt at a veil. “I find my seat a most perfect place to enjoy the party. You see, my absence has left me low on kompromat, and where better to cultivate it than here?” 

Essek gestures with a finger at their friends, and the chaos that’s brewing as they settle back into their familiar, loving mutual haranguing. Veth and Fjord are surely about to cause someone grievous injury, what with the way their ribbing is reaching a crescendo and Caduceus is growing ever more resigned. If history is any guide, they are about to devolve into something foolish and delightful. He can think of several members of the court who would have spontaneously perished of mortification if pressed into their happy melee.

“You will have to pay very close attention then, my friend, because you can only blackmail people with shame, and they are ashamed of very little.”

Essek laughs, taking a drink of the wine to cover the smile that lingers.

“What about a trading of intelligence then? Tit for tat?”

“Oh?” Caleb says, suddenly coy, glancing sidelong through his unruly bangs.

“I travel far, you see, and come across many strange and tempting things.” Essek pulls his gift from his Wristpocket then, a book with provenance (supposedly) from the Calamity, full of ancient, transgressive thoughts. What Essek did to get hold of it—well, no one was hurt, and they wouldn’t have liked the original owner anyway, and mischief is allowable under their shaded morals, so. He didn’t wrap it, he had neither the materials nor the patience, but he did find a ribbon to bind it with a bow. He holds it up in front of Caleb, just out of reach, and they both indulge the lie that he would ever really withhold it.

“And what would I have to give for such a prize?” Caleb asks, his voice sauntering down into a low, careless register.

Essek looks away, taps the spine of the book against his chin, as if he is deeply considering a price.  

Truly, he had hoped to spend at least a few days here, with Caleb and the materials from Aeor he kept, or at least preserved in the Tower. Caleb isn’t due to assume any real responsibilities under his new position for weeks yet, so if he could spare a little of that time—

Essek glances back at Caleb, entirely accidentally meeting his eyes. They are sitting very close, aren’t they? Has he always had so many freckles? Essek swallows, sets the book on the bench between them. 

Well, there is more than just the arcane Essek hoped to investigate here, if he can work up the courage. 

“Excuse me? Mister Widogast?” 

The stranger’s voice speaks directly to Essek’s limbic reactions—with a murmured word, the flick of shaking fingers, he becomes someone else—as the rest of the Nein crow that’s Professor Widogast to you. Caleb fairly jumps from his seat, striding back toward the house just a bit too quickly to be entirely casual. Essek’s glamoured hands clench around his glass as he tries to ground himself against abject panic by repeating to himself the things he knows.

The odds of any one person possessing the true sight are slim to none. 

If Caleb had reason to suspect such a person were in Essek’s proximity, he would find a way to tell him to flee. 

If Essek could not flee, then the Nein would protect him.  

Bits of conversation drift out of Caleb’s house, impossible to parse from where Essek is sitting. He glances between Beauregard and Yasha, gauging their reactions. Yasha tilts her head, her mane of white braids tumbling over her shoulder as she listens, but she turns back to her wife after only a moment, unconcerned. 

Someone familiar then. A neighbor, perhaps. Caleb has been here for some time now, it’s not at all strange that a neighbor might call given the obvious celebration. Still, Essek lifts up his cup, using it as an excuse to survey the rest of the Nein.

None of them are worried.

Essek lowers his hands, but doesn’t relax. Reviews, to himself, an accent not his own, one nebulously foreign to this land, that he might pin on some distant city, in case he is cornered into speaking with this person.

Caleb returns to the garden, a man following after him. Essek can’t help but assess with an eye geared toward threat—but the slim man, handsome, perhaps of elvish descent—looks harmless. His clothes are too cumbersome to effectively hide a weapon, his manner too careless to be an act.

Essek casts Detect Magic anyway, but it comes up with nothing.

Essek forces himself to unwind, just a bit, so as not to seem amiss. He can’t keep himself from watching Caleb converse with the man. He seems at ease. Familiar, then. Almost certainly a neighbor. Perhaps even a friend. Essek maintains his disguise. Best not reinforce any untoward rumors about Caleb or his loyalties, in a city so suspicious as this one.

Caleb leads the man around the garden, making introductions. Deftly deflects the stranger’s attention away from Essek, though a novice could have redirected him. He seems entirely focused on Caleb. Essek watches his smile, wide and open, watches the way his body moves, angling always toward Caleb, always to be in his line of sight. 

Attraction is a foreign verse, one he learned by rote, but he knows well the measures. The neighbor is interested.

Essek feels faintly sick, almost dizzy, like that awful tilt before a fall. And yet, he can’t look away from the neighbor, though he ought, though he wants to. Not when he touches Caleb’s arm. Not when Caleb smiles back at him, cheeks tinting even darker than they were.

Essek chastises himself, trying to reassert some control. What right does he have to feel this way? To feel like something is slipping away from him? Caleb is not territory that can be encroached. 

No, he is a person, a brilliant, wonderful person, who deserves someone who can share his life. Someone who’s every moment wouldn’t be colored by fear. Someone who could greet guests at the door.

And Essek? Essek could never deserve the same. Can't, not anymore, and certainly not here.

This man could give him that, possibly. He couldn’t bear the baggage Essek does, surely. And if not him, then someone else perhaps. Caleb must have suitors aplenty. More might yet drop by.

Caleb deserves it, to be courted by the very best his homeland can offer. Essek is not the thing he needs, it was foolish to dream otherwise. He might not even be the thing Caleb wants. 

Essek finally manages to tear his eyes away to stare into his drink. Looks at eyes not his own, mirrored by foreign wine. Perhaps it was a mistake to come. It would certainly be a mistake to stay. What if someone saw him here? He’d never forgive himself if that lost Caleb his new position.

He looks up, plotting a path back to the house, but Jester catches his eyes. She breaks away to snatch two pastries from the table. One she takes a bite of, but the other she delivers directly to him. 

“Oh, I’m all right,” Essek tries to demur, but she just waves it under his nose, mumbling unintelligibly around a mouthful of frosting and berry jam. Sensing he’s already lost this particular battle, Essek takes the tart, and Jester sits down beside him, managing to arrange her skirts without getting crumbs or jam on them.

“Are you okay?” Jester asks, with incongruous subtlety, before taking another bite. 

“Fine. Why would I be anything else?”

Jester arches an eyebrow at that, then motions at his pastry. Essek deigns to take a bite. It is expertly constructed, he has to admit, even if the sweetness almost makes his teeth hurt.

“That’s just Heinrich. He’s harmless,” she continues.

Essek doesn’t react outwardly, though he’s a bit chagrined at being so efficiently read. He takes another bite of the pastry just to get a moment to think. 

“Of course. Still, I’d hate to cause trouble.”

“Essek. ” Jester cuffs him on the shoulder, softer than unusual, perhaps unsure of the bounds of his illusion. Essek accepts it without reaction. “You’re not trouble.”

At that, though, Essek must give her a look.

“We are all a little bit trouble.”

She huffs, pursing her lips at him, and he knows he’s outmaneuvered her on that point. Essek leans into her just a little bit, to be magnanimous in his victory.

“I really am all right. Just cautious, these days.”

“If you say so.”

Jester leans into him instead of leaving, tucking her head carefully into his shoulder and lapsing into a silence she only braves sharing with a few. Essek takes another bite of the pastry before offering her the rest. She takes it, because of course she does, and loops her arm around his elbow as a kind of thanks.

Yasha begins playing on her extremely intimidating harp, something with just enough structure that someone could dance a waltz, if they liked.

And it is a waltz that Caleb pulls the neighbor into.

Is that what they looked like, all those months ago, in Jester’s home? Or has the neighbor charmed Caleb in a way Essek never could? Perhaps he will stay the night here, instead of Essek.

Essek wishes he could be happy for Caleb, but instead only jealousy sits in his heart, and then shame on its heels. What a terrible friend he is, to begrudge someone so dear happiness he could never provide. If he were better, if he were properly reformed, if he were someone else, he would be. Caleb’s happiness could sustain his own.

But he isn’t.

Caleb passes the stranger off to Fjord, taking a recalcitrant Beauregard as a partner instead. Essek rolls his shoulder up, gently jostling Jester. 

“You could try to dance with him, see how easily embarrassed he is,” Essek whispers, light in a way he does not actually feel. 

“That does sound kinda fun.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

Jester chuckles, licks the last of the frosting and crumbs from her fingers, and stands. Essek watches her cut in with all the grace of a building collapse and get her way regardless. 

He should feel bad about it, but instead he finishes his wine and lifts himself from the bench. The book he leaves where it lies, there for whenever Caleb wishes to retrieve it, and he slips into the house. It's empty, except for the poor, put-upon cat, still sulking atop the cabinets.

"Look after him, Herr Mittens," Essek says, inclining his head, and then he Teleports away.

His maudlin mood has betrayed him—he is retreading old ground. 

Normally, he wouldn't return to a city he'd so recently visited, but he had rather a good time listening to the public lectures at the local Conservatory, and the taverns nearby had good wine.

When he was a student, he was never one to while away hours over drink with his fellows, but now that those days are behind him, he’s found something very pleasantly like nostalgia in watching students carouse and argue. It's no wonder Caleb wanted to teach.

Caleb—

He would like it here. That's all Essek allows himself to think about it.

He landed at the edge of the campus, near a tenderly manicured garden. He would love to walk it, but at this hour, far far, west of where he’d just been, it’s too bright for his tastes, so instead he ducks into the nearest tavern for relief. 

It isn’t particularly crowded, but neither is it empty. Most of the people here are wearing student’s robes, but there are enough lay people that he does not stand out. He glances a little more closely at the decor as his eyes adjust. He’s been here before, though certainly not with this face. 

He takes one last look across the patrons, a few look at him back, but he sees nothing obviously amiss. No harm then, in idling a little time away here.

The barman grants him a glass, generously filled with a Tal’dorean variety, and he takes a seat at a table by the wall. He can overhear some older students arguing, none of them quite right but also not entirely wrong, and he smiles into his glass. Would Caleb wade in, once he’s settled into teaching, or leave them to learn through trial and error?

Surely there are taverns like this one in Rexxentrum, but—

Essek takes a long drink. He really shouldn’t have come here, but he can probably make it somewhere else before he must rest. Somewhere even more anonymous than this. Of course, then he’d have to make due with wherever he landed, should he turn up off course. 

Well, he needn’t decide anything before the end of this glass. 

He listens to the students argue. (A young elf has doubled down, determined to defend this hill to the death, but is entirely wrong. Essek doesn’t do anything so uncouth as chuckle as their voice reaches a shout, but he is amused. Hopefully the tiefling sitting opposite wears them down, they have the right idea.) Watches others come, mingle, and then leave in new configurations. 

Eventually, he finds his glass empty, and with that, time to make a decision. It’s still early here, but his day has been long. Would it really be so dangerous to stay in this tavern, if only for as long as it takes him to trance?

Essek exchanges his glass for a room key, ascends the stairs at the back of the room. One of the people at the bar gets up, he notes. That doesn’t have to mean anything at all, but he can’t help but listen for their footfalls. 

Can’t help but hear them follow them up the stairs. 

Essek takes a few steps down the hall, then tucks himself against the wall, pretending to examine his key. He hopes that the person will simply walk away, toward their own room, and prove him simply paranoid.

But instead, they say,

“Haven’t I seen you around here before?”

And Essek goes cold.

“I sincerely doubt it,” Essek replies. He tucks the key into a pocket sewn into the back of his trousers, replacing it with his focus as he turns to face his tail. Prayer beads, heavy and perfect, fall through his fingers as he hums the hymn under his breath, pulling an Echo from the interchronal medium to stand precisely behind him. “Can I help you?”

They are lanky, tall, edges bright with a poorly finessed glamor. But the thing that frightens Essek is the magic glowing around their eyes. 

They know.

And they are far too close. 

Essek casts, trying to pull them backwards under a surge of gravity. They take the blow, but shrug it off, charging forward despite the set back, brandishing a knife. 

Essek twists, and the knife, instead of plunging between his ribs, catches him low. Luck, the muddle of illusion, it’s hard to say what saved him. It burns, a curdling heat, worse by an order of magnitude that the bite of metal has any right to be. 

Poison. It must be.

His Echo pushes through him, expending itself into Lightning, taking his attacker by surprise. They might not have come alone, so instead of Teleporting and risking it being Counterspelled Essek Hastes himself and runs. He’s not usually fast, but the magic is burning through him, pushing him. He stumbles down the stairs, sprints through the bar, and makes it outside. He doesn’t have long, but he doesn’t need long, just a few seconds out of sight. 

Just before the Haste fades, he bites out the component to Teleport and reappears on the floor of another inn. 

He was aiming for the place he’d spent the previous night, but there’s no telling where he’s actually landed. It’s unoccupied, at least. Small mercies.

He lies there, dazed, bleeding, distantly aware that the poison is spreading and he could be anywhere. 

With shaking hands, he starts on the first problem—he summons his Secret Chest and pulls out a potion, drinks half. He feels the wound pull closed under his hand, but the burning is no better. He pours the rest on the gash. It stings, the magic in the draught reacting to something in the wound, and begins to foam. Essek bites down on the meat of his thumb to keep from screaming, until time dulls the burn.

He slumps back, breathing through gritted teeth, wondering if that did anything at all, or if he’s just wasted half a potion. The room spins along some undefinable axis. Of course, that wouldn’t have done anything for the poison that’s already in his system. 

He fumbles at the edge of the Chest, trying to find another potion. There was more than one, wasn’t there? Surely he hadn’t been so careless—

Where are you—

The thought feels foreign, buzzing against the inside of his skull. Usually his instincts don’t argue with him so articulately.

But where he landed is not the problem of the moment. He just needs to find the other potion. 

A groan slips through his teeth as he levers himself up, trying to search the chest while also propping his uncooperative body up on it. He fumbles at the contents, but his arm, his body is so heavy, and when the room takes a particularly hard turn, he falls back to the floor.

Are you okay—

He’s just tired. He’ll pull himself upright in a moment. Get the potion. Trance properly. 

Essek—

Just a moment. He just needs a moment. Just until the room stops spinning.

Essek!

Chapter Text

Essek Thelyss you answer me right now! You weren’t making sense to anyone last night, and we couldn’t scry and we’re worried sick! Answer me!

Essek is startled out of his stupor by the trepan of Jester’s voice appearing suddenly and mercilessly in his consciousness. The spike of adrenaline her words bring—who is there, is someone in the room with him, has he been found—fades as he scrapes together the fragments of his awareness. He slots just two pieces of information in place—that it is her and she is Sending—in the seconds before the wretched state of his body makes itself unignorable. 

He feels faint and shaky, like he’d had an entire cask of wine and then fell from a roof, sore from the wound and the hours on the floor, and, entirely involuntarily, he groans into the spell. He feels it connect fully then, so, unable to rectify that mistake, he continues—

“Sorry, I’m all right. I had something of a rough night here in—” He pauses. Looks around, but no helpful clues manifest. “Wherever this inn is.”

Essek rolls onto his front as the spell ends, pressing his forehead into the uneven but mercifully cool floorboards. (Is the room warm, or does he have a fever? Light, the last thing he needs is a fever.) He expects that to be the end of it, him alive and accounted for, leaving Jester free to go about her day’s business.

But no—

What happened? Do you need help? I’m really worried. You never act like that, talking nonsense. Are you okay? Can you teleport here? Pretty please?

Essek tries to push himself upright, but his head spins and his stomach pitches, and he slumps back to the floor. It’s not even that uncomfortable, honestly. Best just stay here.

“Oh, I think that would be a very bad idea, teleporting right now.”

That’s not an okay thing to say to me, you understand that right? Now I’m even more worried! Essek, what the fuck happened to you?

Essek almost starts with the truth—Assassin. I got away, but they must have poisoned the blade—but his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. Could he really tell her that? She’s already upset. 

“I’m going to live, Jester.” He laughs, and hopes it doesn’t sound hysterical. “I just feel a little sick. It might have been the wine. It’s okay.”

Essek thinks he might have more words, but he doesn’t care to count, so he lets the spell fade. 

Are you sure you can’t Teleport? Jester’s voice is so very small, and it breaks Essek’s heart. You sound so fucking bad. We’re both so fucking worried, Ess, you left in such a hurry and now—

Who’s both, Essek wonders. Her and Fjord? Fjord is too his friend, and Essek has generally assumed anything he shared with Jester would make it to Fjord one way or another, but usually she doesn’t call him out so often when they talk. 

“I really shouldn’t. I’ll be okay. We’ll talk soon, once I feel better. I promise.”

There’s nothing for a long while, and he thinks he’s convinced Jester. That’s for the best, really, that lets him focus on his breathing, on riding out the waves of nausea and pain as the last of the poison works its way out of his system. 

He’s almost convinced himself he feels well enough to get up, when magic pricks again at the edges of his consciousness. 

Jester tells me you are well, but you did not sound it last night. Send to me, when you can? I worry, my friend.

“I’m fine, Caleb. Your worry is misplaced. I hope you enjoy the book.”

Essek doesn’t Send.  

He starts to, dozens and dozens of times, but cannot quite settle on the words. What would be correct? Caleb is surely a busy man, and Essek has no news of import. Hells, he hasn’t so much as read anything that wasn’t his own spellbook in months. His world has been reduced to paranoia and phantom knives glinting in shadows.

(It’s easier, talking to Jester, and not just because usually she initiates. If sometimes he’s nearly brought to tears by the sound of a familiar voice, well, that’s between him and whatever room he’s rented for the night.)

It would be good to see her again. No, it would be fucking fantastic, to borrow a turn of phrase. The glare of the sun off the ocean could ignite him, and it would be an improvement over this shabby room with its poorly framed, drafty windows and thin walls and loud neighbors. 

(The cold makes his side ache. The wound healed, but not cleanly. His fingers trail along the ridge of skin, repetitive and anxious. It is a reminder, he tells himself, to be more careful.)

But what if those knives he imagines manifested on their ship? In her mother’s home? What if Veth came, husband and son in tow, to see Jester and Fjord while they were in port?

Could Essek live with himself, if a drop of their blood were spilled in his defense?

Essek pulls his cloak tighter and talks himself out of reaching out to anyone at all. 

But against his better judgment, Essek does find himself again in Nicodranas. 

(Jester, as she does, wore him down. She did give him enough warning to thoroughly obscure his trail, to spend days doing little but Teleporting and trancing. He’s had more trouble since that night leaving Rexxentrum, and there is no amount of caution that would be unwarranted where his friends are concerned.)

Well, to be precise—and precision is a virtue—Essek finds himself on a beach just outside the municipality of Nicodranas proper. The junction between land and sea is a paradox—exposed, in that there is functionally nothing to hide him from any that might look, but private, because the road is lonely and far off and who would come here looking for anyone, let alone him?

Still, he has grown uneasy without something sturdy at his back in these months. Grown maudlin, with the knowledge he has no choice but to become used to this feeling, as there is nothing else. And currently, he has grown a little bit drunk, to blunt the sharp edges of his anxiety. Not enough that he couldn’t Teleport—he doesn’t ever do that, not after that night—but just enough that he can relax into the presence of his friends. 

There is, in deference to his own comfort, a very large, very ostentatious umbrella over his head, and in deference to his paranoia, a very large rock at his back, between him and the road. He felt a bit ridiculous demanding this spot, specifically, but he was indulged and has paid for it by minding the odds and ends no one wanted to lug all the way to the place, well away from the threat of the tides, where Caleb cast his Tower.

It is an agreeable little nest, all things being equal. It is more agreeable once the sun chases Caleb into it. (Even a little time in the strong light has turned him a bit red, but he, entirely of his own volition, stripped into his underthings almost immediately, so who can he blame but himself?)

(Ridiculous, ridiculous man.)

Essek cannot work up any guilt about monopolizing Caleb’s time, however inadvertently, since he came to this outing alone. Essek knows he cannot actually read anything into that, so he doesn’t let himself. He doesn’t ask about the book either, lest it lead to talk of that night. Besides, they are having a lovely discussion about how best to simplify a few utility spells for beginners. In a way, it reminds him of their best days in Aeor.

(Sure, they’ve traded the Tower Salon and its chalkboards for sand and fingers, but there were more clothes all around back then. Still, all that is beside the point, being—he can sit and work with Caleb, only interrupted by those dear to them, and he is just intoxicated enough to ignore that this will not continue forever.)

“Ach, I’m out.” Caleb shakes the cup that had contained mostly juice flavored with a bit of rum. “Do you want anything?”

“No, no, I have enough here.” Essek gestures with his still half full glass. “Be quick though, you’ve been burnt badly enough I think.”

“Ja, ja, ja,” Caleb laughs, waving off Essek’s concern. “Besides, the sun is going down."

So it is. 

The perpetual darkness of Rosohna was easier, but he understands, at least a little, the fascination with light when it looks like this. The dying sun sheds its pain into beauty, painting the sky and sea in vivid, unreal glory just dim enough for Essek to appreciate.

He looks out past the edge of the umbrella, and watches the ocean for the first time today. Watches Caleb as he walks across the sand, gilded by the warm, fading light. He is a good match for sunsets.

Essek wishes, so fervently it borders on prayer, that everyday could be like this one.

It has been so easy to fall back into rhythm with Caleb. Like it has only been hours since they’d last parted, and not months. Essek expected Caleb to be distant, distracted, but no, if anything he’s the opposite. Essek should be content to still have that rapport, that companionship, even if only infrequently. It should be enough. 

Essek leans back into the rock, and his side twinges, making him wince.

It will have to be enough. He is as much a liability as he’s ever been. Across the sand, Caleb is arguing with Beauregard as she mixes him another drink. (She’s going to make it too strong, he can tell from here.) Essek lifts his own to his lips. If he still has days like these ahead of him, it will be all right. 

Just past Caleb and Beauregard, Jester comes bounding out of the surf, making directly for him. Essek sets his glass down in the sand, pressing until there’s a divot deep enough to cradle it, and picks up linen wrap she’d brought with her. Perhaps she’s cold, and done with the water for today. Essek shakes the sand out of the top, and holds it out to her.

“No, no, the sun’s going down! You can finally come out!”

“I’ve been quite all right—”

“Esseeeek, please, come swim with me!” 

“Jester,” Essek huffs, ducks his head. “You know I don’t do well in deep water.”

“Then just wade, a little bit. I won’t let you fall, I’m super strong and you definitely weigh less than Fjord.”

Essek fights down the urge to look over his shoulder. (As if he’d see anything but the rock. The gentle rolling dunes. The surely empty road.)

“Fine. Just this once.”

Jester grins, because it’s never just this once with her, but wading at dusk is a concession he can live with indefinitely. Essek rolls the hems of his pants up, and lets Jester slip her arm under his elbow to better drag him along. 

As they get closer, Essek spots Fjord further out in the surf, eyeing him. Jester wouldn’t be above walking him into a prank, and this shirt wouldn’t be improved with saltwater. 

Modesty is a strange thing. Essek took such pains, at one time in his life, to craft a careful presentation, to avoid even the implication of vulnerability by wrapping himself in fine layers. Now he only has a loose shirt, in deference to the heat, and he finds he’s not particularly ashamed to shuck it. 

He undoes the buttons, careful but quick, and begins to tug it off his shoulders. Yasha won’t mind holding it, surely, just for a moment— 

Jester chuckles in her way, baldly about to build to some suggestive comment, but all at once her cheer disappears. 

“Essek? What—your side, that scar—” she lifts her hands to her mouth. “Essek, what happened?”  

Essek looks down at himself. At the thick line of keloid just under his lowest ribs. It really does look bad, doesn’t it? He tries not to look at it, most days.

“It’s nothing, Jester.” 

Suddenly self conscious, Essek pulls his shirt over him again, steps back. He realizes that everyone is looking at him. That Caleb is looking at him, pale despite his sunburn, a cup and damp sand by his feet.

“That looks like it could have killed you!”

He pulls the shirt even tighter around his torso, bends a little forward, in spite of himself, like that could erase everyone’s memory of the blemish. He suddenly feels deeply self-conscious, agonizingly shy. He can’t bear to look at her, to look at any of them, so he looks at the ground instead.

“It’s nothing now.” He thinks he manages to sound confident.

Jester comes closer. Essek watches her feet on the sand. When she reaches out, to touch perhaps, he catches her hand gently between his own. 

“Really, Jester. It’s fine, I’m fine.” 

“When?”

“Oh, months ago now.” Essek laughs, a fragile, desperate sound. Nothing like mirth. “I was behind on my collection of scars.” Essek bites his lip, stalling for an instant. “Any adventurer should have them, yes? Better late than never.”

Jester is quiet for a moment, but then—

“The party at Caleb’s. After you left—”

She is too clever by half. 

“Jester.” Essek ducks his head low, finally catches her welling eyes. “I am fine. Don’t be upset over a hurt long past.”

“It looks like it really hurt.”

“It did, but only for a little bit. It hardly hurts at all now.” 

Essek hadn’t really planned to mention any of this, not here, not when it would dampen his friend’s relaxation. They deserved this, to have it unmarred by his self-inflicted troubles. 

But of course he’s gone and ruined things.

“But it still hurts?” Jester says, her eyes fierce. “You lied to me, you said nothing was wrong! But—but—but someone stabbed you!” 

“When you messaged me, nothing was wrong anymore.” Essek squeezes her hand, tries for a smile. But no, that’s not enough, she’s still upset with him. And he doesn’t know what to do about it, how to stop her being upset. So he falls back on old instinct—retreat. “I think—I think I am tired. Maybe it’s time for me to retire to the Tower, if that’s all right.”

“Yeah, Essek, it’s okay, of course. Just—” Jester pokes him in the shoulder with her free hand. “You stay for breakfast this time! No excuses.”

“I promise, I will see you at breakfast.”

“Good.” She withdraws her hand. “You better.”

So bound, Essek slinks back to the portal cut in the fabric of this plane, as fast as he dares.

If he hadn’t promised Jester, he might have risked Teleporting from the foyer. The boundary between the demiplane and the material was metaphysically fuzzy enough that it might work, so long as the door was open. He stood a good chance of not dying. Of landing at his intended destination, even. 

But he backed himself into a corner, and he can’t break such an easily kept promise to Jester on top of everything else. At least he trapped himself somewhere comfortable.

He distracts himself through a bath thinking through how to make that Teleport successfully, should such a thing ever be necessary. (It would be a good paper, should he ever get the time.) After divesting himself of the lingering sand, he asks the cats for dinner, to be taken in his room. He’s spoiled enough of this outing, but maybe by skipping the meal with everyone else, they can put him and his troubles out of their minds.

Besides, he has to plan his next few weeks—where he will go, who he will be—and the complete safety of the tower affords him an opportunity to do so with a peace and security he won’t have again for some time.

He’s bent over a map with a slide rule and charcoal, when a knock at the door startles him out of his plotting. There isn’t a clock in the laboratory Caleb conjured for him, but he’s sure it’s late. Past dinner, anyway. A part of him, the coward, wants to pretend he didn’t hear, but if it’s Jester at the door, she won’t stop. 

So Essek gets up, to face his fate.

He does not expect to find Caleb standing on the other side of the door. The first thing Essek’s dumbfounded mind notes is that he’s dressed again, though not so carefully as he was this morning. 

“Hallo,” he says, hand still hanging in the air. It falls slowly to his side.

“Good evening,” Essek replies, mostly on reflex, his better manners lost as he is consumed by a single question—What is Caleb doing here? 

“Ah, may I?” Caleb gestures at the sitting room behind Essek. 

Still wrongfooted, Essek steps out of the doorway. 

“It is your construct,” he murmurs. Something tight passes over Caleb’s face, but it’s gone before Essek can make sense of it.

Caleb steps inside, far enough that Essek can shut the door. Essek is glad for that, privacy being a comfort to him in all instances. Caleb looks around for a moment, as if checking his work, wringing his hands, and Essek’s own mind is blank. What could Caleb possibly have to be nervous about? And, truly, why has he come?

Before Essek can ask anything, Caleb begins.

“I’m sorry if this is overstepping, but I went into town, and—” Caleb produces a small jar from his pocket, holding it out. Essek takes it, inspecting it. Porcelain, with something strongly herbal inside. Caleb is rubbing his forearms, digging in hard enough with his thumb to leave a line of red skin behind. “It helps, with softening scars, that is. You said it still hurt.”

“I, ah—” Essek doesn’t know what to say. He looks between Caleb and the jar. It feels unreal, that anyone, that Caleb, would go to the effort over something so small. Finally, he settles on “Thank you.”

“I’ve used something like it, the formula varies, but reputable apothecaries carry it seemingly everywhere—” Caleb cuts himself off abruptly, like he does sometimes when he catches himself rambling. 

“I’m sorry if I made the injury seem so dire, but, truly, this is unspeakably kind, Caleb.”

“It looked dire.”

“It wasn’t—”

“Are you aware of how you sounded—”

“I was fine.”

Essek was too loud, it’s obvious, from the look on Caleb’s face. Too insistent. He scrambles for something, anything, to defuse this moment, but Caleb beats him to speaking,

“Why, if you are so hunted, do you not come to us? Did you feel so unsafe in my home, in any of our homes? Did you think we wouldn’t have welcomed you? Protected you?”

“Caleb.” This should be plain. “I couldn't bring this trouble to your doors. You deserve to be happy, to be safe.”

“And you don't?”

Essek smiles, rueful. Caleb’s expression only hardens. They both know the answer to that, so Essek will not dignify the question.

“Thank you for the ointment, my friend.”

That should be the end of it. The ceasefire in an argument that is unwinnable by either side. Caleb will go, will leave Essek to his solitude. But, against all sense, Caleb stays and says,

“I—I liked the book. Very much.”

“I'm glad to hear it.” And Essek is, really. “If I ever find the like again, I'll send it to you.”

“You could bring it yourself.” Caleb tips his chin up, defiant. 

“Caleb—”

“No, Essek.” Caleb pinches the bridge of his nose. “ Scheiße. I worry after you. And now that I know my worry is deserved, what am I to do?”

“Do you worry over Fjord, or Jester, or Kingsley, out on the unforgiving ocean?"

“Yes, but—”

“They weather their storms, and I weather mine.”

Caleb brings his thumb to his mouth, runs the nail along his teeth. Stares at Essek as if he is an equation out of balance. Essek fights the urge to shrink.

“How many times?” Caleb finally asks.

Essek winces.

“There have been three incidents.” Caleb makes a small noise, like he’d been struck. Essek rushes to continue, as if he can stop Caleb from imagining, “One wasn’t even about me, per se, I think they just wanted to rob someone and I was there. Nothing came of it. Nothing came of any of them. Please, I don't want you to waste your time fretting over me.”

“Essek, it's not a waste! I—I—” Caleb reaches out, takes Essek’s hand in his own. Cradles it against his chest. His eyes well, bright with tears. Essek feels such a villain. “Essek, you’re—”

"Don't. Please, whatever it is, don’t."

"Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot say, then?" Caleb squeezes his hand, but the gathering tears don’t fall.

"You are upset, and you might say something you do not mean. Something you will want to retract in a less fraught moment," Essek whispers. Caleb stares at him with an utterly impenetrable expression. Essek gives up before even trying to parse it out, instead closing his eyes and slipping his hand out of Caleb’s. "Truly, thank you for thinking of me. For the gift. Good night, Caleb."

Breakfast is raucous enough that Essek can barely think, and thereby something of a relief. He enjoys his porridge, made exactly as it would have been in Rosohna, and watches his variously hungover friends grouse. Eventually Caduceus doles out Restorations, once little Luc wakes up and fails entirely to mind his volume.

Essek only promised the single day, and as much as he wants to stay, now entirely clearheaded, he feels the fear creeping back in. He should leave, before long—

—Luc tugs at this father’s hand, begging him to be allowed back out on the beach—

—Essek should leave before he puts them in more danger than he already has.

He keeps everything close out of habit now, and he’s already dressed. He picked a destination early this morning. Everyone has been greeted, which will have to suffice as a goodbye. He just needs a moment to step outside, when it will not be so obvious he is attempting to make his escape. 

That moment comes soon enough, once the spectral cats begin to clear their plates and his friends begin to filter downstairs. Essek follows, somewhat at the back of the group, hiding in his way. He doesn’t want to have an argument about this, about anything, not after last night.

He thinks he’s about to get away cleanly, but he is stopped, just before he can leave Caleb’s Tower. He looks down, at the hand hooked around his elbow, long fingers with ease-softened calluses, holding him in place. 

“Send to me, this time.” Caleb’s eyes hold his, as if he’s trying to impress his will with only the force of his gaze. “Or I will Send to you, if you would rather. But do not make me wonder after your health for too many nights in a row.”

Cracks show in Caleb’s surety almost immediately—his eyes roam over Essek’s face, searching, perhaps, for some proof Essek will comply. 

“If that’s what you really want.” Essek huffs, bitter. “Though I haven’t much to say, these days.”

“There is weather everywhere. Tell me of it.” Caleb’s hand trails down, from elbow and across forearm before settling under Essek’s palm. “Anything, Essek. Tell me anything.”

“All right.” Essek swallows, a heavy and unfamiliar feeling settling in his chest. “All right, I will.”

Caleb lifts his hand, cradled so delicately in his own, until it is even with his chin. 

“A promise, then.” And Caleb presses his lips to skin over Essek’s fingers, like it is the somatic that will bind him to his word. 

The way the heat lingers, even hours later, it might have been.

Chapter Text

“It helped, the, ah, ointment. Thank you, again.” Essek frowns. Jester must be rubbing off on him, because saying so little does seem such a waste now. “It’s raining here. It rains rather a lot, apparently. I’ll be glad to leave.”

I am happy to hear it, friend. If you have run out, I could find the ingredients, it wouldn’t be any trouble. Just ask, ja?

Essek isn’t out, technically. He replaced what Caleb gave him with something similar he found in Marquet, once he could see the bottom of the jar. It seemed prudent, if he were to try something new, to still have the original in order to compare.

(And if Essek prefers the scent of the tincture Caleb chose, wants to be able to remind himself of it, well—)

Both worked to soften the scar, though it’s not erased. And time, too, is its own sort of balm—the more he sees it, the less it pains him, the less foreign it feels on his skin. 

You can become habituated to quite a lot, he’s finding. 

“They give excellent lectures in Jrusar. I could send you a token, if you would like to attend.”

Will you be there? is all Caleb replies. Not even asking after the specialties of the Conservatory, or who has or will be rotated in as guest professors. 

“No, I’ve already left. I stayed longer than was perhaps wise, but the city is a warren, so I think I’ve gotten away with it.”

Save your magic then, but perhaps bring it when we see each other next. I’d like to hear your summaries in person. Be safe, Essek.

“Do not panic, I am fine, but I encountered a, ah, motivated countryman today.” Essek’s hands are shaking. He fists them until his gloves creak under the pressure, pressing them into his thighs. Oh, this was stupid, no worse, selfish, he’s going to worry Caleb over nothing. He’s fine, fine, he doesn’t need to be bringing this up. No one needed to know, he just—

Today was the first time someone has said his name out loud to him in four months, and it was only to try to condemn him back to the Queen in the Web.

“It’s sunny. I hate it.” 

Thank you. Caleb’s voice is shaking. For telling me. You can always come here, you know, no matter what. I know you know but, ach, Essek, I just. Caleb pauses for several heart beats before finally finishing. Worry.

Essek doesn’t reply. He knows, he knows, but—

Light, what if someone found him at Caleb’s home? Essek would surrender, immediately, or try to, but what if Caleb didn’t accept it? What if Caleb tried to save him?

The thought makes him dizzy with panic—Caleb, limp and gutted, not in a nightmare city but in his tidy little cottage. No Jester, no Caduceus quick at hand with a diamond and faith. This time he would grow cold, his soul distant, until Beauregard or Yasha or someone else Essek’s never met found his body—and Essek bends doubled over, pressing his forehead to his knees, because the room begins to spin in earnest, barely dragging air past his clenched teeth. 

No, no, he cannot, no matter what Caleb offers. Not right now. Not when he could only bring trouble Caleb does not need.  

I think I should return to adventuring. My first years are trying to reverse engineer Polymorph, and chimeric teenagers pay little attention to anything.

It is a curious mix of warmth and guilt Essek feels when Caleb reaches out first. His tone is light enough, perfectly conversational, but it is an inescapable fact that it has been days since they’ve spoken. Essek spent a little time with a caravan, pretending to be a courier, to get further into rural territory. The backcountry will give him places to flee, now that he’s seen them, but there was little privacy to cast, let alone something that wasn’t strictly necessary, as Seeming was.  

“Better that than graviturgy. My peers endured some injuries that still pain me to recall, trying to exceed their reach.” Essek bites his lower lip. “I have been well.”

Well, all things in perspective, I suppose. School will soon break for a few weeks, and I will be visiting Nicodranas with Beau and Yasha.

Essek knows what Caleb is asking, but he cannot bear to make a promise he might not have the courage to keep.

“I hope you enjoy yourself, the break seems well earned. I hope it’s warmer in Nicodranas than it is here. Give everyone my love.”

Esseeeek I know you’re, like, on the run and stuff, but so are we right now so you might as well come visit. Do it.

“Oh? What have you done now? Is it pirates or is that dragon turtle chasing you again?”

I won’t tell you unless you visit. I miss you and also it would be super great to have a cool wizard with fancy spells.

If it were truly a matter of life and death, she would surely have said something more direct. (Light, she didn’t wheedle Fjord into firing on someone just to also be on the run did she?) And besides, her line of logic is not at all sound, it absolutely does not follow that he ought visit simply because they both now have pursuers, but—

Essek misses her too.

Essek places his hand over his eyes, concentrates on the ship, trying to feel out the ripples along the weave her Sendings left, and casts.  

The first thing after the oxidized air he smells is salt. He tips his hand up a bit and looks down, to see wooden planks just below him. He’s probably on someone’s ship, at the least. 

“Essek!” Jester’s footfalls are all the warning he gets before she slams into him. The fierce sunlight is peaking through the cracks in his fingers, so he doesn’t remove that hand, but he does try to hug her back with his free arm. She’s mostly pinned it though, so he only manages to pat the small of her back. 

“All right, which was it?” 

“Oh, pirates, we got too close to Darktow.”

“Of course, you did.”

“It’s just super lame we’re still banished, I mean, it’s been forever.”

“Patently ridiculous,” Essek agrees, letting her take his hand and lead him. If memory serves, she’s taking him into the captain’s cabin. He peaks between his fingers once the shine becomes less punishing, confirming it. It’s still a little bright for his tastes, but not as bad as the deck, so he lowers his hand to fold it in front of him with the other. 

“Oh, it is kind of sunny today. Wait, I have an idea!” Jester flits away and begins rummaging through the room. 

“Are you in urgent danger, or did you simply want a mage handy?” Essek asks, trying to sound as amused as he feels. 

“Oh, I mean, they’re pretty close, but not in firing range. If you, like, used magic to explode—” Jester pauses her search to wave her hands for emphasis. “—their ship, maybe, that would be super great.”

“I can be enticed to explode their ship, yes.” 

Jester looks over her shoulder so he can see her rolling her eyes. He smiles, the annoying, suuuper pretentious one, and she spares him a glare before going back to her search, shouting Ha! a moment later.

Essek recognizes the paints, of course he does. He’s benefited from them before. Jester sets herself down on the floor and opens a jar. Her brush arcs twice, sketching the shape of spectacles. 

“So, are you and Caleb talking again?” That phrasing could not be more loaded if she’d tried.

“I have been Sending, when it seems appropriate, at his request.” 

Jester nods vigorously, then taps the end of her brush against her chin, thinking, before making another stroke. 

“He likes hearing from you, you know.”

“Does he?” Essek tries for an unaffected tone, and almost manages it.

Almost, but Jester looks up at him, pointedly. Essek refuses to flinch. If she weren’t in the middle of painting something, there would have been a staring contest, but she goes back to finishing her work well before he would have capitulated. In a few sure strokes, she finishes a pair of smoked glass spectacles for him. 

“Ta-da!” She holds them out.

At one time in his life, Essek would have had reservations about accepting the gift, any gift, but now he puts them on immediately. 

“Oh, you look really cool.” 

“Thank you, Jester.” Essek says with genuine relief. 

“And, yes, he does like hearing from you. I can tell.”

It’s a good thing Essek’s eyes are obscured now. Jester can’t see how he closes them tight. 

“Well, it’s good to have outside confirmation I’ve not been a bother.”

“Essek. ” Jester caps her paints again with more force than strictly required. “You’re not a bother. Go see him, he’s stuck there teaching kids magic, I bet he’s, like, forgetting how to talk to adults. About adult things. You know.” She looks up at him to bounce her eyebrows. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Essek lies, badly, right through his teeth.

“You’re just digging your heels in, but you don’t have a good reason,” she sing-songs as she studies the paint covered brush, then looks around, probably for something to clean it. 

“Jester, I have a very good reason.” Essek sounds sterner than he means to. As an apology, he Prestidigitates the brush clean. “I—I had a, ah, run-in, since last I saw you.” 

Jester tucks the brush away into the box with the paints, then gets up to tuck it all back into its place.

“I know,” she says softly, finally. “Caleb mentioned it, when they all came to visit us in Nicodranas.” She turns back toward him, looking contemplative. “You could have come.”

“I really couldn’t have.” Essek looks to the floor. “Light, I ought not have come here, it’s dangerous, I’m being—”

Suddenly Jester is grabbing his arm. Her touch stops him up short. In spite of himself, he presses into it.  

“What do we need to do?”

“What? You don’t—”

“What do we need to do to get them to stop? You and Caleb tried to fake your death, but like, can we do that better? Or try a different plan? There has to be something.”

“There exists something, yes, I suppose—” Essek starts, his mouth moving instinctively, stalling with nonsense so he can try to think.

It was bad enough to have gotten Caleb involved. If Jester starts, she’ll rope them all in, Caleb back in—

Jester pulls him into a hug. Essek, for a few sacred moments, melts into a kind, familiar touch and thinks nothing at all.

“If they keep finding you alone, you might as well be with us.”

Essek presses his forehead into her shoulder, clings to her, instead of answering. 

It’s not hiding, Essek reasons, if he really did want to watch the moonrise. 

He hardly ever risks such time out in the open, especially not to just look up and appreciate the night sky. It’s very like nostalgia, staring up at that field of stars unimpeded, watching the slow dance of the moons. It would need the light pollution to be home, but he never cared for the green pall reflecting up at the sky anyway.

Behind, Essek hears footsteps. He doesn’t flinch at the long easy strides, even as they come closer. No one who meant him harm would be so obvious if they somehow found this ship, and no one on the ship would do worse than make a joke at his expense. 

Still, Essek glances over his shoulder. Best not get out of the habit. 

Fjord waves at him as he walks up the steps to join him on the quarterdeck. Essek inclines his head, barely sketching a bow. Little formality is needed between friends, after all. Fjord joins Essek at the gunwales, leaning forward on the railing until they’re nearly eye level with each other. 

“Nice night.” Fjord breathes in deeply, closing his eyes for a moment. The salt smell deepens into something richer, almost earthy, for a moment, but it vanishes on Fjord’s exhale.

“Indeed.”

Does the captain simply want to observe his ship in motion? Or perhaps the devotee wants to commune with his deity? Either way, Essek feels suddenly out of place, as if he has intruded. He straightens, readying something polite with which to excuse himself. He feels a little bit more fortified after the quiet to rejoin the chaos below decks anyway. Before he can speak, though, Fjord continues,

“Jess is down there Sending to Veth about some scheme.”

“Oh? Who’s counting for her?”

“Kingsley, which is a treat, because he can’t, or won’t, count past ten.”

Essek laughs softly.

“A treat. That’s one way of looking at it, I’m sure.”

Fjord hums, smiling in a way that can’t just be about Kingsley’s grasp of arithmetic, as he reaches up to scratch his nails through his beard. 

(Does Caleb still wear a beard? It’s coming up on high summer in the Empire.)

"I'm glad I caught you, actually.” Fjord glances at him, meeting his eyes. His words make Essek’s heart skip a beat, even though there’s not an ounce of threat in his tone nor his posture. “You know, right, about my former patron?” It is such a hard pivot from anything Essek has been thinking about, his first reply is to just blink.

“What you—and Jester and the others, of course—have told me,” he starts once he’s able to switch tracks. “It’s not something for which you require aid, is it? I—I haven’t much studied demi-gods but—”

Hmm. How tied is it to this plane, anyway? Killing it outright, well, he and Caleb found a few texts that referenced the subject, but it would be no small feat. Removing it, however, like a pest relocated out of the house—

Fjord holds up his hand, gently cutting off Essek’s train of thought. 

“No, no, just, you know that it’s still out there?” Essek nods, trying to parse out where this is going, if Fjord isn’t asking him for help. “I am happiest, I am at home out here.” Fjord gestures out at the moonlit sea. “I thought, once, that I could have nothing before the problem was dealt with. That would come first, and anything I wanted or hoped to have must come second. That the time wouldn’t be right until then.”

“I think I understand.” Essek looks away from him and back out to the expanse of cold, dark water. So it takes Essek by surprise when Fjord’s hand drops onto his shoulder.

“The time was never going to be right, Essek.” Fjord squeezes. “If I had waited for that perfect time, well, there’s no such thing. I’d have lost her. I’m sure someone else would make her just as happy, but I’m glad it’s my privilege.”

Essek lifts his head, high and proud, on reflex, as if playing at detachment could take the sting out of having been so obvious in his feelings, so helpless in his predicament.

“You make her very happy, I’m given to understand.”

Fjord tugs him, just a bit, so that Essek will face him. There is no pity in Fjord’s face, no derision either, though Essek would never expect such a thing from him. Just a kind of earnestness that only comes from people saying something they truly do believe.

“It could be your privilege to make him happy, Essek.”

Essek clenches his teeth so tight he can feel it clear through to his scalp, so he cannot embarrass himself by spilling out all his anxieties and recriminations onto the decking between them. He lets the rush of panic—what if Caleb were hurt because of him —and anger—don’t you care about his safety—and petty indignation—I don’t make my decisions so lightly—wash through him until he feels he can be civil. Fjord deserves that he remain civil.

“Don’t you think he deserves better?” he asks, finally, because he must say something.

“Are you sure that’s the right question?” Fjord’s hand slips away, but only after clapping him once between the shoulders. “I know, it’s not my business, really, but as a friend to you both, think about it. Caleb’s no fool. Thinking you know what’s best for him kind of does him a disservice, don’t you think?”

“I—”

“Think about it. And come back down before dessert, or else. Her words, not mine.”

The pirates' ship does catch up with the Heroez part way through the next day. Essek is glad for the glasses as he stands on the deck, surveying their opponent. His target, really.

Jester is adamant he do something real fucking cool and scary, but Essek waits for Fjord’s nod before he casts, in deference to his position as captain. His focus in one hand, his other weaving together the ambient magic, he draws gravity into a vicious point on the enemy ship’s trajectory. The sea lurches up, foaming and seething, and then the ship crashes into it, right above the waterline. The gravitational sink rips and compresses the wood to almost nothing, and it immediately begins to list. There is frantic commotion—smaller boats lowered into the water, movement inside the hull, quite a bit of yelling that’s just audible. Essek breathes out, releasing the spell, as Jester and Kingsley both excitedly jostle him.  

The choice between strangers and Jester, Fjord, and Kingsley is an easy one. And while he didn’t explode the ship (explosions really aren’t his forte anyway, he prefers other instruments) he thinks this a potent enough lesson. And it will certainly allow his friends to make their escape. 

“Hah! Our wizard is better than your shitty boat,” Jester crows.

Essek huffs. Caleb is the Nein’s wizard, though—

Sun aside, the quasi-pirate life isn’t worse than being a fugitive. 

Of course, the sun is something of a problem. Essek steps back, tucking himself into what meager shade there is on the deck. Once Jester finishes her taunting (handed effortlessly off to Kingsley, who continues with enthusiasm) she joins him. 

“Where are you going to go today?” Jester asks as she slips her arm under his. 

“Secrecy is half the point,” he replies, which earns him an elbow pressed into his ribs. “Probably the far side of Tal’dorei. I have a few tokens but I ought to refresh them.”

“If I gave you part of the ship, would that make it easier to come back?”

“It would.”

“And you’d have to come back, every so often, to get a new one, because they go bad.”

“How do you know so much about Teleport and its mechanics?”

“So you would.”

Jester doesn’t wait for him to answer, instead pressing a piece of fabric into his hand. It’s sturdy canvas, like what might be used for a sail. 

“Now, if you’re in trouble, you could also come here.” Jester closes his fingers around the sailcloth. “Here, or the other places you know well. And you could come when you want. Or when we want you. You know.”

Essek leans into her and closes his eyes. 

“I know.”

Would you come visit me? I have something on which I need your opinion. The garden is safe at any hour, just let yourself in.

Caleb. The sounds of the market Essek was perusing fade to only a murmur as he composes under his reply. 

“I must be certain, well, you know of what. But I will come soon, if you need me to. Before the week ends. Be well.”

Essek has developed something of a protocol around fleeing when he knows he’s been found. He employs it now. He lays down false trails, a Contingency, visits three continents in as many days.

He’s sure several someones would have something to say about his paranoia if they saw it first hand, but at the end of it, he feels confident that the heart of the Dwendalian Empire is the last place someone would look for him.

Essek drops onto the grass of Caleb’s garden, late in the afternoon. The high walls shield him from the worst of the sun, but he still finds himself wincing as he looks around. No one is here, and it is oddly quiet, considering the hour, like he has stepped into a place of special, particular peace. It feels too intimate, perhaps, to have arrived within the walls, but then he was given specific instructions. 

Essek walks up to the back door, lifting his hand to knock. No special rhythm this time, just a couple of sharp, quick raps.

“Come in!” he hears Caleb shout. He sounds more distant than a house of this size should be able to manage. 

The door is unlocked, the kitchen neatly put away. (The cat is no longer atop the cabinets, though there is a ball of orange fur in a corner.) Essek drifts further in, slowly, his glamour falling from his skin as he delves further into the sanctuary of the house.

It looks as if no one is home. If Essek hadn’t heard Caleb call, he’d almost assume no one had been here in days, from how precisely it is kept. But before Essek can start truly questioning his hearing, he sees the entrance to the Tower, tucked into the hallway and leaking amber light. Essek floats inside and calls up,

“Caleb?”

“Ja! Coming!” 

Essek closes the door behind him, mostly, in deference to any possible indecision in Caleb’s cat, and waits in the foyer. The light here seems softer than it used to, but perhaps that’s just Essek’s imagination. 

Above him, Caleb descends through the iris, falling slowly on the cushion of his magic. 

He looks, to put it bluntly, a vision. 

Caleb Widogast must be the only person who can be flattered by the Empire cuts and colors, but flattered he is. The vivid jewel toned vest tapers his waist but broadens his shoulders. His linen shirt is a bit rumpled, the cuffs rolled up to nearly his elbows, bunching it around his upper arms, but in a way looks unaffected rather than sloppy. He’s left his hair loose, so it can curl freely around his face, his neck, his shoulders.  He’s even bothered with kohl, for some unfathomable reason, but it makes his eyes look lovely.

And he is still wearing a beard, despite the season.

Caleb drops lightly onto the platform, then sweeps down the stairs. He stops, just shy of Essek, and holds his arms out in question. Essek might have deflected without injury to either of their pride, but he steps into the space Caleb has made, lets those arms wrap around him. He leans in, breathing deeply of the spice—a cologne, certainly—and the sharp tang of magic he finds against Caleb’s clothes. It is heady and soothing, and Essek indulges for as long as he dares. 

“I am here, as requested.” Essek murmurs as he finally pulls back. “Now, for what am I required?”

Caleb retreats, a little, just enough that they can look each other in the eye, but not so far that his hands cannot linger. 

“Might we have dinner first, if you don’t mind? It’s time here.”

Essek knows, at that moment, he’s been played—he’s just not sure to what end. He blinks at Caleb, whose broad, clever hands are still on his arms, who’s still awaiting his reply.

He’s already put such effort into coming here, to quiet his conscience about spending a little time. Whatever he’s walked into, it will be with Caleb. 

“I don’t mind at all.”

Caleb takes him by the hand, disarming him, leading him into the gravitational anomaly at the center of his little paradise.

It could be your privilege— 

Essek takes a steadying breath as they rise. 

Instead of the dining room, Caleb stops them at the Salon. They’ve taken plenty of meals there, so in itself it’s not odd. But as Essek looks, he notices Caleb has fiddled with the details of the space. 

There never was that pair of large, plush chairs, tucked at an intimate angle with a table between, just by the fireplace, for instance. 

And that is where Caleb leads him. Cats scurry out, and Caleb begins placing orders with them, before gesturing back to Essek, for his turn. Nearly thoughtless, Essek asks for a taste of home. Something to put him on surer ground. 

He settles into one of the chairs, Caleb the other. It is as comfortable as it had looked, deep and soft, and perhaps wide enough for another. Essek glaces to the fire, away from his dinner companion, at the thought. 

Dinner is, of course, lovely, and Caleb passes it with amicable conversation. Essek doesn’t ask about the matter that was supposed to have drawn him. In fact, he briefly forgets about it entirely, because he brings up the idea of removing Fjord’s former patron from this plane over their digestif and a discussion of the mechanics consumes them both for nearly half an hour. 

“It would probably require another expedition, if he wanted to try.” Caleb chews on his lower lip thoughtfully. “We’d make him come with us, of course, and then there would be Jester. Then we wouldn’t be so dependent on healing potions.”

“Light, what a relief.”

Caleb huffs and hands his empty glass off to one of the cats, then folds his arms on the table and leans over them.

“That isn’t why I asked you to visit, though.”

Essek sets his own drink aside. The warmth it had lent him flees his body. There are many things Caleb could have asked him here to discuss, but only a few that would have warranted a bit of subterfuge. Essek folds his palms in his lap and pretends they are not slick.

“No, I wouldn’t think so.”

“So. I have been thinking.” Caleb shrugs, affecting a nonchalance that doesn't quite reach his expression. “And it is not a fraught moment, any longer. That was your objection before, ja?”

Essek tries to swallow, but his mouth remains dry. He could Teleport, once more, if he could make it downstairs. How embarrassing—to run. If Caleb would permit him, that is. He probably has more than enough magic for a powerful Counterspell. How embarrassing—to be unable to run.

Essek doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he only nods. 

“I care for you.” Caleb’s voice is nearly a whisper, but heavy with emotion. Essek tenses under its velvet weight. “Very deeply. More than is wise, perhaps, given our situations. But my heart is adamant, anyway. I would not presume, but—” Caleb reaches out, across the table, palm upturned. An offering. A question. “I have a suspicion about your feelings.”

Essek should shut this conversation down. Should lay out, in agonizing detail, the reasons he cannot that he’s branded into his heart, as if that might ever stop it feeling. But he’s not sure where to begin, if he could make it through even the first of his fears with his composure intact. So instead he stares at Caleb’s outstretched hand so he doesn’t have to meet his eyes, and says the thing he fears most to be true,

"I don't know if I can be what you need."

And Caleb deserves everything.

Essek closes his eyes, imagines Caleb withdrawing his hand, the way he should. Imagines him frowning, considering, then nodding along, piecing together for himself what Essek already knows. 

But in the meantime, he feels as if he cannot breathe. As if the whole world is holding its breath with him, as if all of time is pinned under the gravity of his moment, teetering before the crash back to reality. 

“Essek.” And he is not stubborn enough to deny that call. Essek opens his eyes. Meets Caleb’s. He has never seen anyone look like this—so determined and yet achingly fond, as if Essek is something he can puzzle out with tenderness. "I know that you are what I want."

How is Essek meant to argue against that?

Essek places his hand into the waiting cradle of Caleb’s. The heat of his skin feels like sunshine, sears him down to his bones. Essek’s heart stutters in his chest, but he does not move. 

Caleb squeezes his fingers, and this time, Essek knows he is lost. 

Still, the specter of the better man he’d tried to be takes his tongue, a last gasp,

“I would be painting a target on—”

“Larger than the one I painted on myself? Essek, friend, I have crossed the Cerberus Assembly, publicly. Embarrassed the Crown, while yet allied with your people. And yet, I endure here.”

Caleb’s thumb draws a soothing arc over Essek’s knuckles. 

“You would have to take precautions, but you already do. I know, they might become tiresome, but we needn’t always be in Rexxentrum, and I would help shoulder that burden happily while we are. You could be safe for all the days you would share with me, with but a bit of thought.”

Essek laughs, a little high and watery, surprising even himself with it.

“You make it sound so simple.”

“Must it be complicated?”

Oh, but it is. It is, and Caleb knows that. Essek will immeasurably complicate his life, in ways neither of them can yet predict. And whatever hurt, whatever regret that would follow, Essek would be culpable.

“It must be.” Essek cannot run from that. He is better than that, at least for today. “But complication hasn’t made either of us shy away, has it?”

Essek is better, but not good. Not selfless. One day, perhaps, but not this one. If they are to hurt regardless, then why not try to have what they want in the meantime? 

“I would very much like to kiss you.” Caleb moves, deliberate and precise, without letting go of Essek’s hand, and then he is sitting on the edge of Essek’s chair. It should feel as if he is looming, but instead he feels like the blessed cover of night overhead. “May I?” 

The ghosts of those words caress Essek’s lips. He is so close already. 

“Yes,” Essek says, like letting Caleb initiate will absolve him of anything at all. “Yes.”

Caleb lips meet his own, warm and soft, methodical in application. He tastes faintly bitter—like the way the air smells after aracana burns it—and sweet—like the wine they shared. It balances, like sugar in strong tea. Essek breathes in long through his nose, and parts his own lips further, inviting more. The part of him that cannot ever quiet compares Caleb’s mouth to the offerings of his favorite tea house, and decides they never crafted anything so exquisite. 

Caleb lifts their entwined hands, presses Essek’s palm along his jaw. Essek lifts his other hand, to better cradle Caleb. His fingers slot easily into place, as if they were meant for this.

Caleb may have started, but it is Essek who teases his way further. If Caleb were to change his mind in the next moment, Essek will not be left with memories of only tender inquiries. 

Caleb gives under pressure, he discovers. Breathes out, shuddering at his core, like the walls do in a thunderstorm, and lets Essek take his fill. His teeth are too blunt to offer any kind of passive sting, but the hot silk of his tongue is paradise. Essek winds one hand up from Caleb’s cheek and into his hair, uses the other to pull him closer with a fist full of vest. Caleb falls nearly into Essek’s lap, and the weight of him presses some of the anxieties out of Essek's bones.

Caleb is so achingly unguarded in his responses, warm, and pliant against him. Essek’s experience in this regard has been with an eye to lower guards, curry favors, extract concessions, so he has learned to be a quick study, so as not to lose the upper hand. But finally, perhaps, he can put some of his bad instincts to good use. It is easy to build a catalog of what he likes. Easy to try permutations—tongue and teeth, pressure and release.  

And if the study makes him feel deliriously, perfectly as if he has slipped out of time, all the better.

Caleb pulls away first, which Essek supposes is a kind of accomplishment, but stays close, forehead pressed to Essek’s, their breath still mingling. Essek idly runs his knuckles over Caleb’s flank, just to feel the heat of him. 

“Will you stay?” Caleb’s voice is so small, suddenly unsure, for how well kissed he looks. Essek laces his fingers together at the small of his back, encircling him as if Caleb were the one prone to flight.

“As long as you need. As long as you want.” As long as I can.

Complication, as they acknowledged, will come. One day, but probably not tomorrow. Tomorrow Essek will get to be here. 

Caleb presses one last kiss to Essek’s lips, closed mouth and chaste, like a seal on wax, like a baptismal mark, like his lips can impart truth into Essek’s mouth.

“As long as, then.”