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Mareth finds him—after two hours’ searching, receiving increasingly dubious looks from the guards and servants that he passes—in the High Hall, leaning on the balcony overlooking the city. He is facing away, and the pose could be a careless one, but Mareth knows better. He stops a few paces back, wondering if this place was chosen for its solitude, if he ought not to go for now and leave the talking for later.
Hamnet saves him the agony of waiting. “Sound carries so far out here,” he says, not turning. “I could hear you coming from the entrance.”
Mareth looks doubtfully at his feet, clad in the same slippers he has always worn. “If you would rather be left—”
“Alone?” Hamnet turns his head to one side, not quite looking back, but Mareth can see something of his face now: pale and rigid, dark circles beneath his eyes. “I have spent enough time alone of late.”
So Mareth walks up and joins him at the balcony, mirroring Hamnet’s posture, his forearms braced against the stone. “How... how fare you?”
It is a foolish question, and he flinches as he says it. Something unreadable ripples over Hamnet’s face, quickly replaced by a blank mask. Up close, Mareth sees that his hollow cheeks are damp, his eyes red. He gazes out unceasing at the gentle lights of the city and leaves the question unanswered.
Just as well; Mareth is grateful, though he knows this silence is not meant as a respite for him. “Hamnet,” he says, and Hamnet twitches, a shudder passing through his body. They are scant inches apart. “When I learned what she had done with you, I—” Blood on his knuckles, blood on the stone. His throat scraped raw. Hard faces and hands barring his way. “I could not get near you.”
“You tried?” Hamnet sneaks a glance at him, sidelong.
“Of course I tried.” Mareth wants to reach for him but holds himself in check, fearful that Hamnet will spook if he moves too quickly, if he touches him. “I—every day, I—”
The flicker of a smile at the corner of Hamnet’s mouth, too sharp for his face. “It will be you she puts in a cell next.”
“Hamnet.” Something in his voice makes Hamnet turn at last and really look at Mareth, tearing his gaze away from the view—from the lamps which, Mareth realizes in one sickening moment, mean all the thousands of people—mean light—mean that he is not alone. A hot rush of sorrow, of rage. “I’ll kill her. Do you hear me? I will—”
“No,” Hamnet says fiercely. His face is briefly alive, and he looks for an instant unchanged except for the weeping. “No, Mareth, do not touch her.”
“Are you—defending her?” Mareth demands. “You could have died, you could have gone mad—”
“She is my mother—”
“She does not love you!”
For the second time in as many minutes, Mareth is horrified at himself. He wants to apologize, to beg forgiveness, but now the words will not come. He could fall to his knees with the shame, and nearly does, but Hamnet takes him by the arms. His grip is iron, his face set in lines harder than stone. “She is my mother,” he repeats, “and she did that to me. Think now what she could do to you.”
Mareth can only stare at him. That sudden blaze of life is gone and the gaze with which Hamnet fixes him is filled with a dreadful desperation; only his eyes are bright. “I could not bear it,” Hamnet whispers, “if she hurt you too.”
He crumples then at last, pitching forward against Mareth, who catches him as he always has. Hamnet buries his face in Mareth’s chest and makes lost, broken sounds, and Mareth holds him, brushes his lips to Hamnet’s hair. “I am here,” he murmurs, light as moths’ wings. “I am with you.”
Hamnet presses closer still. “Stay.”
Mareth knows he cannot stay—not forever. He will have to report, will have to tell Judith, at least, that her brother has been found; he will have to bow to Solovet, and he will manage that, somehow, because Hamnet asks it of him. And all of this sooner rather than later. But for the moment he lets Hamnet cling to him, trembling finely, and closes his eyes, while the lights burn on below them.