Chapter Text
Darvis was snoring when Xenk woke at dawn. Xenk shifted on his makeshift bedroll on the floor and peered up at Darvis, who in his sleep had rolled so one of his arms hung off the mattress.
Xenk studied Darvis's face, which was only slightly careworn. Unlike many, he did not seem younger in repose, though he did seem less burdened. There was a crease on Darvis's cheek, the imprint of the edge of a pillow. Xenk watched as Darvis's eyes flickered beneath his eyelids, small movements echoed by twitches of his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth.
What might Darvis see, Xenk wondered, if their positions were reversed?
***
Xenk dressed quietly, though he left most of his armor resting in the corner of Darvis's room. He backed out into the common room quietly, pulling the door shut. When he turned, a girl was watching him from the kitchen area.
He cleared his throat. Straightened his posture and tugged a bit at the cuffs of his tunic. "Good morrow to you."
The girl--Darvis's daughter Kira, he assumed--raised her eyebrows. "They really weren't kidding about you."
"Did you think it likely?" Xenk asked, genuinely curious. He did not typically interact with children, even slightly older ones such as Kira, unless he was saving them from brigands or the occasional beast. As such, he'd had little experience in gauging children's penchants for naivete.
(Xenk remembered little of his own childhood, truncated as it was. Even as he aged more slowly, after Thay's fall, the time of wonder had been lost to the poisonous fog with everything else.)
Kira scraped a pair of tongs through the kitchen hearth and plucked something out. "Holga doesn't tell jokes the way my dad does," she replied. "And Simon's default tone is sarcasm." With a quick flip, she tossed that something to Xenk.
He caught it in one hand and then, to his chagrin, dropped it immediately with a flinch.
"It's hot," Kira said, smiling. "Sorry."
Xenk shook his hand a couple of times. "What is it?"
"Breakfast," she replied. "A potato."
Xenk retrieved it from the floor, rolled it against his palm. "I do not mean to impose," he said.
"We have so many potatoes," Kira said, retrieving another from the hearth and setting it on the table. "Lord Neverember sends us them directly from the palace stores."
"Quite generous," he responded. He strode to the table and stood next to a chair, waiting for Kira to join him.
"He gave us this place, too," she continued. She rooted around in the larder. "It's much bigger than where we used to live in Rock Bottom," she told him with a frank air. "I think Lord Neverember felt bad when I moved out of my old rooms in the palace." She walked over and set a trencher of potted meat and a dish with butter and cheese on the table.
"Did Lord Neverember require your absence, then?" Xenk pulled a chair out for Kira and smiled as she inclined her head, graceful as a duchess as she sat.
"No," Kira responded as Xenk sat across from her. "But Dad and Holga wouldn't have liked living in the palace, and I wasn't going to stay without them." She shrugged and looked around the room, somehow projecting satisfaction. "I like this better anyway."
They ate in friendly silence for a while, then Xenk offered to brew the morning tea. Conveniently, this meant he was out of direct sight when the front door swung open and Holga entered, whistling.
Recalling Darvis's warning about Holga's typical morning demeanor, Xenk made sure to stand very still, though he set his hand on a pot lid in case he needed to shield himself from a blade.
"Morning, Holga!" Kira called out, mouth half-filled with potato.
"Hey, bug," Holga said, voice rough but somehow melodic. Then she spotted Xenk. "Yendar." She seemed to do some sort of calculation, eyeing him with increasing suspicion.
When the moment stretched longer, Xenk began to plan in which direction he should leap so that, if he parried a thrown weapon, it would not ricochet anywhere close to where Kira sat at the table.
Kira, for her part, peered at Holga. She looked back at Xenk, then at Holga again. "Dad brought him home last night," Kira announced, "so I made extra this morning."
Holga's hostility immediately vanished. "All right." She slung her axe onto a table by the door and straddled the chair next to Kira by the kitchen table. "Thanks, bug."
Xenk hastened to fetch two more potatoes from the hearth. He set them before Holga with a flourish just as the kettle whistled.
Once he had served tea to the others, Xenk poured for himself and settled again.
Holga, having already dispensed with one potato, set an elbow on the tabletop. "So your dad brought him home?" she asked Kira, though she stared at Xenk directly as she spoke.
"Yup," Kira replied.
"Huh," Holga said. "He say why?"
"No," Kira said.
"Huh," Holga said.
Xenk sipped his tea.
Darvis stumbled out of the bedroom.