Chapter Text
“The last of the extra gear has been cleaned out of the spare stall,” Xenk says, dropping into his customary with a truly unfair grace for someone who’s spent the past hour hauling around old saddles, blankets, and assorted tack. “Perhaps we should endeavor to keep it clear this time?”
Ed nods and says, piously, “I don’t know how it got so messy.”
Xenk, the only member of the combined households who isn’t in the habit of dumping his old clutter in the nearest convenient location, gives this the dry look it deserves. “Indeed. In any case, Kira shall at least have a place to stable her mount upon her arrival.”
“Good,” Ed says. “I made up her bed, too.”
“So I saw.” Xenk’s voice hasn’t lost any of its dryness as he raises a deliberate eyebrow and says, “If she can even get into it. If I counted correctly, you provided her with a full six blankets.”
“It’s cold out,” Ed protests. “She might want them.”
“I thought it might be a trap,” Xenk says, with a spurious note of apology in his voice. “As she would not be able to move out from under their combined weight.”
“Do you think that would work?” Ed asks, momentarily diverted.
Xenk shakes his head. “I’m afraid she’s too clever for such stratagems.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what we get for raising her to think for herself.”
It’s not, strictly speaking, that Ed wants to keep Kira here anyway. After her first night home she’ll go back to her own home, a trim little cottage on the bank of one of the inlets that leads down to the lake, no more than a five minute walk away. It’s probably for the best—even if Kira weren’t an adult who deserves her own space, their own cottage probably couldn’t house both her library and Ed’s ever-increasing collection of blankets without bursting at the seams—but coming home to a cold and empty house is no kind of welcome, and somehow the tradition has been established that she’ll spend her first night here, with them.
Whenever that is. “Looks like snow off to the west,” Ed says casually, as if he hasn’t been studying the clouds all day. “Might delay her a day or two.”
Xenk, who clearly isn’t fooled, gives Ed an uncomfortably compassionate glance. “Likely so,” he says. “But her letter said she was leaving Fireshear within a day or two of its sending. We should see her soon.”
“Yeah,” Ed echoes. “Soon.”
It doesn’t matter. It’s not like this is unfamiliar; between all the roaming members of his family, Ed’s lost track of how many nights he’s spent waiting for someone to come home. The important part is that Kira is coming.
“I’ve laid in some potatoes, and the butcher says we can have a chicken whenever we want,” he says. “With any luck she’ll be here by her birthday.” Four days away, now. It might happen.
“I hope so, indeed,” Xenk says, and at least there’s some comfort in knowing Ed’s not waiting alone.
**
The second night, Xenk is already mending tack at the fireside by the time Ed drops heavily into his own chair. He’s grumpily aware that he lacks Xenk’s usual grace, but his back hurts and his knee is aching and he’s got more important things to worry about right now.
“I swear, the young people in this town are turning into nothing more than a pack of hoodlums,” he grumbles, cautiously stretching his bad knee towards the warmth of the fire.
“From the little I saw, you were holding your own against them,” Xenk says. He reaches forward and brushes snow from Ed’s hair. A brief, intimately familiar warmth sparks from his fingers and the soreness eases.
Ed scowls. “Up until they overran my position.”
“Your fortifications were poorly constructed and tactically compromised,” Xenk informs him. “Next time, I would advise seizing the high ground and ensuring that you have a solid defense to your back.”
“Next time I’m going to know better than to have a snowball fight against half the children in Targos,” Ed says. “Vicious little things that they are. You know, when I was young we just settled for trouncing each other and leaving our elders out of it.”
“And how many of your elders volunteered to be trounced?”
“I wouldn’t say I volunteered,” Ed protests. “It’s just that young Geanet has a very convincing face.” One that she’s clearly learned to use to some effect. Ed’s been keeping an eye on her for about a year now, and one of these days he’s going to have to have a talk with her parents about bardic training. At least then she can use her trademark woebegone expression for good.
“Of course you did not,” Xenk agrees equably, and then somehow the conversation is turning to the much more fraught topic of who is going to get up to cook dinner—which they both know will inevitably be Xenk, as Geanet isn’t the only one in Targos who knows how to use a tragic face to her advantage—and Ed can almost forget that the storm that’s swept in from the west has, apparently, delayed Kira another day.
**
Or two more, apparently, because by sunset on the third night it’s evident she’s not arriving that day either. Ed swallows his disappointment, puts a pot of soup on the stove, and gets out his lute in an attempt to keep himself busy.
It even works, more or less. He starts with old tunes he hasn’t played for a while, ones that need a certain amount of focus to pick his way through them successfully. The music even draws in Xenk, who brings a saddlebag over and starts on one of his arcane repairs, humming along under his breath.
He’s so deeply absorbed in the work that he doesn’t notice when Ed slips into the Tuern boat song, a familiar friend that doesn’t need more than half his attention, and takes full advantage of the opportunity to study Xenk’s profile in the firelight.
Three nights in a row sitting quietly at home by their own hearth. Ed really must be getting old, although he has to admit, if only to himself, that there are much worse fates than to be sitting here with his husband. Xenk is bent over his work, hands capable and sure, brow just slightly furrowed. His annoyingly confident jaw is as irritatingly perfect as ever, the corner of his extremely exasperating mouth slightly crimped in concentration. He’s let his hair grow out recently, and in the firelight the jaw-length locs are threaded with just the slightest hint of—
Ed’s song comes to an abrupt halt. Xenk, still focused on his own work, misses the cue. He continues on with the rest of the bar—“Onward, the sailors cry”—before belatedly registering that he’s singing alone. He turns a concerned look to Ed. Whatever he sees in Ed’s face only intensifies the worry, and he asks urgently, “What is amiss?”
It’s important not to panic. Panic won’t help anything, and anyway Ed’s better than that. “You didn’t say anything,” he says, which, reasonably enough, doesn’t seem to do much to alleviate Xenk’s concern. “Maybe we can go to Fireshear,” Ed says. He sounds calm. Detached, even. That’s good. Panicking won’t help. “Clarience can probably help. Or someone else at the temple.”
Xenk’s staring at him now in outright alarm. So much for not panicking. “Help with what?” he asks. “Ed, are you quite well?”
It can’t be as bad as last time. Xenk had healed Ed’s aches just yesterday, so Ilmater can’t have deserted him completely. Presumably. “There’s silver in your hair,” Ed blurts, and then desperately wishes he hadn’t.
Inexplicably, and entirely unhelpfully, the worry drains out of Xenk’s face. “Ah,” he says, as if that makes perfect sense. As if it’s entirely to be expected, after a century of apparently immortal perfection, that he’d suddenly start changing now.
And he has. It’s not just the hair, Ed realizes with ever-growing panic. Now that he’s looking—-now that he finally, perhaps too late, knows what he’s looking for—he can make out fine lines at the corners of Xenk’s eyes. Even his hands, so steady and sure on his work, are thinner than they used to be, skin just a little too loose in a way that Ed recognizes from studying his own fingers as he plays his lute.
“Ed,” Xenk is saying, firmly enough to catch his attention even through the fog of alarm. “I promise, everything is well.”
“No it’s not,” Ed protests. “Xenk. You’re aging.” And, now that Ed stops to think about it, suspiciously unconcerned about that fact. “Which you already knew,” he accuses, and Xenk looks down at his hands with a tiny half-smile that isn’t nearly repentant enough for the situation at hand.
“Which I already hoped,” he corrects gently. “I did not know it to be true until now.”
Alright, even Ed has to admit that changes things. “Great,” Ed says. He’s not entirely sure what it says about his character that annoyance feels like a vastly superior alternative to fear, but he’s going to hold onto it for as long as he can anyway. “What in the nine hells is going on that you hoped you were aging, couldn’t be sure, and didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t wish to say anything until I had cause to believe it to be relevant,” Xenk says, as if that’s any kind of reasonable excuse. He looks up and offers Ed the same rueful half-smile he’s been giving to his lap. “You know, I think, that I was brushed by the Beckoning Death as a boy, and that it is that legacy which has so prolonged my life.”
“Right,” Ed says, because he did know that, has known it for years, and definitely would not forget such pertinent information in an entirely unfounded panic that Xenk’s oath to Ilmater had been compromised again.
“I have always considered it to be a complex . . . blessing,” Xenk goes on. “A gift, to be sure, but one that comes from such evil. It has given me time to continue to combat the works of Szass Tam, and others like him, but that time comes with a not inconsiderable price.”
As if Ed doesn’t know that, too. Hasn’t heard Xenk talk about the friends who are gone. Hasn’t known the always-unspoken truth, never openly acknowledged between them, that someday he’ll be one of them.
“I have thought for some years now that it is a price I no longer wish to pay,” Xenk is saying, and everything clicks into place.
“You never said anything about this,” Ed protests, although he’s not at all sure what he could have said if Xenk had. Still. It’s the principal of the thing that matters. “I didn’t know you were worrying about it at all.”
“Perhaps I should have,” Xenk says, with what sounds like true regret. Bastard. “But it’s a matter that I find difficult to discuss, and . . .”
“And?” Ed probes, when nothing more is forthcoming.
“And I did not wish to be talked out of my decision,” Xenk says. “Once I had come to one.”
“Alright,” Ed says slowly, because the present evidence at least makes it clear what that decision was. Xenk’s right. There’s no point in talking him out of it now. “But what did you do?”
“When we were in Waterdeep at Midsummer, I went to the temple and asked a boon of Ilmater.” Xenk shrugs. “I did not know if it would be granted or not. I know of no similar case. But I hoped it might.”
Midsummer was a little more than six months ago. “Right,” Ed says, because he’s not sure what else to say. “And it did.”
“You truly do see grey in my hair?” Xenk asks, and he sounds so hopeful that the last of Ed’s exasperation melts away.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m afraid there’s no doubt left. You’re turning into a grumpy old man just like the rest of us.”
There’s so much more he could say—this is Xenk’s choice, obviously it is, but to not even say anything—but it’s not like there’s much point. What’s done is evidently done. Xenk seems entirely at peace with it, which means that all that’s really left is for Ed to come to terms with the idea.
With the idea of Xenk getting old alongside him. Of aging. Of, one day—
Well, it’s not like there’s a rush to figure out how he feels about this. “Ok,” Ed says.
“Is it?” Xenk says, with a penetrating glance, and Ed shrugs.
“I have no idea,” he answers honestly. “But as long as it’s what you want it doesn’t really matter what I think.” And then, when that doesn’t seem to be enough, he adds more gently, “If it’s what you want, then I’m glad you’ve got it. The rest . . . I just need to think about.”
**
Ed has high hopes for the fourth day, but is pragmatic enough to find ways to keep himself busy despite them. It turns out to be for the best; not only does he manage to work his way through several long-delayed chores, but he even manages not to obsess too over Kira’s arrival until midafternoon, when he abruptly runs out of work and finds himself with entirely too much time to think.
The days are short, this time of year, and the shadows are already stretching out from the edge of the forest by the time Ed, recovering from a spirited attack on the cobwebs in the loft ceiling, sits down beside Xenk, who sets his letter aside and offers Ed a sympathetic smile.
“It’s fine,” Ed says, out of some faint hope of forestalling whatever horribly empathetic and understanding thing Xenk’s about to say. “She’ll be here soon enough. It’s not like it’s the first time we’ve had to reschedule a holiday when someone didn’t make it—“
He stops abruptly. Xenk, always so reliable a listener, is suddenly—and unsubtly—not paying attention. His head is cocked just slightly to the side, gaze gone to the door, and he’s smiling. That’s all that it takes to get Ed up and out of his seat, and by the time he’s halfway to the door he can hear it too: the sound of hoofbeats approaching, the quiet jingle of tack, and then Holga’s voice yelling something and Kira answering in return.
They spill out of the cottage and there she is, shadow stretched so far before her that it’s arrived at their door a good few seconds before she does. And then Kira’s here, actually here, dismounting just in time to be tackled into a hug by Holga. Xenk, with the ease of long practice, adroitly avoids Holga’s rush and calmly takes the horse’s bridle out of Kira’s hands, while Ed stands to the side and awaits his turn.
It doesn’t take long. Soon Kira’s in his arms, pouring out answers about her trip—good, but long, and she hates the cold—and asking after all of them in turn. Xenk claims his own hug, a quick sideways embrace, before leading the horse off to the stable, and then the next few minutes turn into a blur of bringing in saddlebags, getting Kira settled, making tea, dispatching Ria to the butcher’s to claim the promised chicken, and, after all of Kira’s complaints about the cold on her journey, hunting down just one more blanket to lay on her bed.
Dinner, once they all finally sit down to it, is everything Ed had been trying not to get up his hopes for. Xenk is at his table every night, of course, and Holga and Ria come over at least once every tenday. But there’s something about having them all here, under one roof, that eases a tension Ed never realizes he’s carrying until it’s gone. He’s roasted twice as many potatoes as he thinks they need, which of course means they all disappear in the first ten minutes, and Xenk, with no little triumph, even produces an almond cake he bought at the market yesterday “just in case it should prove necessary at some future date.”
It’s while everyone is enjoying their cake and tea that Ed recognizes his strategic moment. Taking advantage of a lull in the conversation, he says, “You know, kiddo, twenty-nine years ago we were having a very different kind of night.”
Kira sighs in what looks more like resignation than exasperation or embarrassment—fair enough, she’s had twenty-nine years to figure out just how inevitable this speech is—while Holga rolls her eyes and Xenk pretends to look attentive. “It was the worst blizzard of that winter,” Ed goes on, undeterred. “I could barely find my way down the street to the midwife’s cottage, and I thought the poor woman was going to refuse to come back with me. By the time we got here, struggling against the wind—“
—“Uphill both ways,” Holga mutters—
“Mom said it didn’t matter whether you had the midwife or not because she was ready to do this on her own,” Kira says, with the air of someone reciting a well-learned lesson. “And she was right, because ten minutes later I was born, and the midwife said she’d never seen such an easy birth, and Mom said that was because she’d done all the hard work already while she waited for the two of you.”
“Yeah, alright, you know the story,” Ed says. “But I was going through one of the old trunks in the attic this morning, and I found something that seemed appropriate for today.” With a flourish, he leans over into his knitting basket and produces a tangle of wooden dowels and knotted cords. It takes a moment to sort the whole thing out, which rather ruins his dramatic timing, but mercifully he still has his audience’s attention by the time he dangles the corded chair in front of them.
It looks just like he remembers, thick rope anchored to a wooden seat, knotted cords all around to form supportive sides. Two gaps, for what he remembers as excessively adorable chubby thighs, and a multitude of faded stains from a variety of culinary experiments. He hasn’t thought about it in years, but today of all days seemed like a fitting time to unearth it that no one can blame him for choosing to show off, just a little.
Holga huffs a laugh. “Haven’t seen that thing in a while. You remember it, bug?”
“I haven’t fit in there since I was a year old,” Kira protests. “Of course I don’t remember it.”
“Your mom made it for you when she was pregnant,” Ed says. “I hung it up when she was done, just where she wanted it here, at the table.” He gestures into the empty space. It’s amazing, now that he’s talking about this, how easily he can picture the chair swinging there, Zia and her enormous belly supervising as Ed wielded his hammer. And, overlaid like tissue-thin pages, Kira hanging in the seat, Holga spooning mashed carrots into her. And four-year-old Kira demanding a big chair just like the adults, pulling it up determinedly beside Ed’s even though it left her just barely able to see over the edge of the table. And arguments with teenage Kira over who was going to clear the dishes, and quiet evenings alone here with Xenk, and—
“Anyway,” Ed says, before he can get too carried away with sentimentality. Holga will never let him hear the end of it if she notices, and Xenknis already giving him a shrewd look. “Zia kept insisting that I had to test the damn thing. I kept telling her that it was fine, that I knew how to hammer in a nail and that it wasn’t going anywhere. I’d had time to learn not to argue with anyone that pregnant, though, so eventually I went down to the cellar and got a sack of turnips and set it down on the seat.”
Holga is already smirking. Xenk, who evidently can also tell where this is going, looks faintly appalled. “Whole thing came tumbling down right away,” Ed admits. “Your mom was always pretty smart, kiddo.” Both moms, but Holga really won’t let it go if he says that. Besides, it’s nothing she—and Kira—don’t already know. “But in the end we got it back up, and we used it for a couple of years until you got too big to fit. You ate your first birthday cake in this chair, you know.”
“And mashed potatoes,” Holga says, with a reminiscent gleam. “And beets.”
Ed remembers the beets vividly too. He’d thought, walking into the room, that there had been some kind of slaughter. There are still dark red spatters in the wooden floor that he’s never been able to completely scrub away.
“Well, it might be for the best you found that,” Kira says. She takes a deep breath and looks around the table with an expression Ed’s never quite seen on her face before, something deep, and settled, and intensely, immensely joyful. A knot inside his chest twists with anticipation even before she smiles, small and sweet and entirely confident in herself, and says, “Actually, it’s really good timing. There’s something I want to tell you all.”