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It’s strange, Hal thinks, how frequently the idea of being a story has come up in the last week. Well, maybe not that strange. He knows that people are more prone to think in terms of grand overtures and heroism when times get hard. And times haven’t been this dire in quite a while. It’s perfectly predictable that his companions would begin to cast themselves as protagonists in a play; it allows a certain distance from one's own deeds. It makes room for survival.
But Hal isn’t thinking about grand epics or three-act tragedies right now. The sweeping arc that makes up a life lived in full doesn’t interest him as much as the little stories. The tales told in the span of minutes, or hours. Exchanges that seem mundane at first until you look back and notice that you have unwittingly repeated the same motif dozens or hundreds of times, like a parrot clung to a single stanza of a sonnet.
That, Hal thinks, is what being a story really is about. Nothing grand or coherent. Just endless repetition of the same two or three tiny beats, over and over and over until they become indistinguishable from identity.
Case in point: he remembers entering the Lloy estate for the first time— how utterly overwhelmed he’d felt around Thaisha’s family. How the memories of blood and muck and shit from the eastern front had still been so fresh in his mind that he’d kept worrying that he reeked of it, even though he’d showered beforehand. How guilty he’d felt about admitting he preferred the art of theatre to the glory of war, while standing in the presence of the literal architects of Azgra’s downfall…
And here he is again, years later, sitting in the Lloy estate, overwhelmed by an entirely new and different family—if one could call it that. He swears he can still smell the sewers on him from three days ago, though he’s (fairly) sure he’s managed to shower since then.
Thaisha sits to his right on the sofa, playing a pivotal role in planning their next moves. Bolaire sits to his left, less animated than Thai but still chiming in when he has something useful—or just particularly vivisecting—to say.
Most of the people in this room don’t yet know that Bolaire is the mask. They aren’t aware that the body that currently lounges with lazy familiarity against Hal’s side in fact belongs to a Crow Keeper rogue, and is likely fighting for its life.
Nobody knows the sound of the applause Hal heard when he stared into the backs of Bolaire’s eyes: the rending thunder of creation, the roar of artistic triumph, an intimacy infinitely deeper and sweeter than sex. This is all for you, sweetling… I am all for you…
When he thinks about it for even a single second he seems to lose ten or twenty, and returns to the present feeling drunk and disoriented—
And so very, very guilty.
“And on top of all that, let’s not forget the small matter of the militia,” Bolaire is saying, during Hal’s latest re-entry into the conversation.
“Militia?” echoes Teor. “What militia?”
He, Kattigan, Azune, and Julien have been standing like sentinels at the doors to the parlor for at least an hour now, less out of any real anticipation of danger, Hal suspects, than out of restless habit.
“Three hundred and fifty men,” Azune says. “Most were recently dismissed from the Revolutionary Guard. The Halovars and others have been trying to recruit them into mercenary groups, but Varen Kadorn put out word that there would be … more purposeful work… if they could afford to wait for pay…”
“Kadorn is an honourable man,” Teor declares.
“It was Azune’s idea,” Murray clarifies, unprompted.
“Regardless,” Azune continues, shooting Murray a rather flustered look. “I was expecting a few dozen volunteers, maybe, if we were lucky. But there are apparently three hundred and fifty men ready to take up the banner again, should we need them.”
“That is… incredible!” Teor says.
“They won’t be ready for long if nobody pays ‘em,” Kattigan grunts, sounding far less impressed.
“Precisely,” Bolaire agrees. “Which is why I brought it up. I can take care of a certain sum, but I think Ms. Lloy, Mr. Halovar and I have some creative accounting to do.”
The Lord Wicander perks from where he’s seated by the fire. For an accomplished babbler, he’s been unusually quiet this evening. He’s in far over his head. Hal never thought he would feel quite so much empathy for the boy.
“Oh…!” he says, eyes wide. “Are we talking about… fraud? I’ve never done any laundering before!”
“Never done his own laundry either,” Tyranny chimes in from beside him. Every so often, her tail jabs at the logs in the fire, stoking them as though it’s second nature.
Murray snorts.
“Oh honey…” she sighs, “Don’t you worry. We’re going to teach you both of those things, like, first thing tomorrow.”
“Even if we can pay them, we still need somebody to organize them,” says Thimble, then, from a top stack of coasters on the coffee table. The despairing tone of her voice says the other half of her thought: and Thjazi is gone.
“I think I have a solution to that as well,” Azune says then, and the room turns to look at him.
Hal shivers. He knows the shape of that silence. Knows how a room leans, collectively, toward a single point without quite admitting it has done so.
Azune has managed to win the trust of men who would kill him on sight if they knew where he was right now. He drifts through their ranks, not like a shadow, but a sunrise: showing everyone their own perfect landscape, even though the pictures do not match. He is disciplined, devoted, and dangerously competent. If anyone could gather three hundred and fifty blades and turn them into something more than a memory—
—which is precisely why he cannot. If he leaves his post in the Revolutionary Guard, this movement will forfeit their most valuable double agent: a window into the workings of the city’s defenses that they can’t possibly afford to lose. Surely he isn’t about to volunteer himself?
Hal leans back, just slightly, letting the moment stretch. These are the scenes he lives for, if he’s being honest. The turn. The reveal. A line that changes the shape of the scene.
Azune does not rush it. When he speaks again, it is with the same quiet caution as always:
“Sir Davinos should take them under his command.”
The strangest sorcery of all, Hal thinks, is how the same silence can be reverent in one heartbeat and reviling in the next.
Hal feels the shift like the fall of a blade, as every mind in the room scrambles to reconcile what has just been said with everything they know to be true.
Across the room, Julien Davinos has gone very, very still.
His micro-expressions change too quickly for anyone not trained to catch them: disbelief first, sharp and bright, followed by something darker, defensive. A flash of anger. A flicker of something that might be fear—
—and then, threading through it all, something that makes Hal’s brows lift.
For the briefest, strangest moment, Julien looks—well—
He looks like Hal felt as he stared at the writing inside Bolaire’s cheeks. Awestruck. Captivated…
“Um, are you fucking kidding?!” Thimble exclaims.
Hal blinks and the moment is gone. He glances back to Azune. If there is anything to read there, he cannot find it.
Someone clears their throat. Someone else shifts in their seat.
“Okay. Hold on…” Thaisha finally says, in that low tone she only ever uses when the children she adores beyond measure are trying the last shred of her patience. “You are going to have to explain that one.”
“Right.” Azune inclines his head. “Well, I think it’s pretty self-evident, actually. Sir Davinos has taken command before, both under the Royce banner and at Castle Torch. He understands how to organize, how to train, and how to maintain discipline in a force that does not yet trust itself. More importantly”—and here, just for a fraction of a second, his gaze darts back to Julien—“he is not currently bound by expectations that would limit his movements.”
“That’s a nice way to say everyone thinks he’s either useless or dead,” snorts Kattigan.
“Why not have Teor or Kat take command?!” Thimble explodes like a tiny firework, fluttering a few inches off the table in fury before forcing herself back down again. “They’re not bound by expectations either, and they’re also not the fuckboy who took down Thaz!”
“Oh no. There’s no way I’m leading anything. Fuck no,” Kattigan says, immediately backing up against the doorframe like he regrets speaking. “If I fight, it’ll be on my own terms— just me’n Wulferic.”
“And Teor is too conspicuous,” Azune takes the opportunity to add. “It seems like half the city is looking for a lion man right now—”
“Not just the city,” says Thaisha, “Teor, what did you even do?!”
“I don’t know!” Teor exclaims. “I think they want to turn me into a coat. Or a statue? Or both.”
Through the turmoil, Azune and Julien lock eyes again, and Hal can see an entire conversation unfolding between them wordlessly.
Then Julien abruptly exhales.
“Look.” He says, and any question about whether his voice carries the power to command men is immediately answered.
“I am aware that I have not always seen eye-to-eye with many—most—of you,” he says. His tone is deceptively light, but his jaw twitches uncomfortably. “And I know that I have made… certain choices…that do not curry any favor. But over the last few weeks it has become abundantly clear to me that, in the grand scheme of things, we are all very much on the same side of this particular disaster. Thimble—” He looks to the fairy still fuming on the table. “The dead are coming to destroy our home. And I may be petty, and a poor excuse for a son, but I will not let my grievances dictate the fate of our world, nor of our families. Not again.”
Thimble huffs and looks away, folding her arms and muttering something that sounds suspiciously like bullshit.
“That said,” Julien adds, a touch sharper now, as something less polite slips in at the edges, “I would also not decline the opportunity to ensure that House Tachonis finds itself gravely outnumbered and outclassed when next we meet.”
The silence shifts again, from condemnation to contemplation.
“I know my word doesn’t carry much weight here,” says Vaelus, “but having seen this man fight, I can’t think of a reason why you wouldn’t want him to train your men.”
“He might create a militia of promiscuous drunks?” Thaisha counters, but Hal is surprised to hear no actual venom in her words, and Vaelus actually laughs in response.
He’s even more surprised when, after a beat, Julien laughs as well.
“I will build you the most brutally effective fuck-castle Pasitar has ever seen.”
“Oooh, what’s a fuck-castle?” asks Tyranny. “Can I join the militia?”
“Tyranny!” Wicander balks.
And just like that, the tension seems to subside, and an idea that should have been a non-starter for fifty different reasons suddenly seems like a plausible path forward.
Hal feels it happen, though the conversation blurs again. Talk turns back to coin and contracts, two things Hal might want even less to do with than blood and death, after all these long months of laboring for the deed to the Round. He frankly doesn’t know what he would have done without Olgud and Bolaire to keep the books—and, increasingly, everything else…
Bolaire…
He blinks and he’s back in the sewers, driving a blade into the bowels of his best friend, staring straight into his eerie blue eyes until they guttered and gave in.
He hadn’t hesitated. Bolaire asked and Hal had just—taken up the blade. Like it was obvious. Because it had been obvious, in a way. Tactically, it gave Hal a glimpse into the mask’s inner workings. The group received a Crow Keeper to interrogate for information, and Bolaire acquired a fresher body. It was a smart play all around.
But that wasn’t why Hal had done it.
And that wasn’t why Julien Davinos had just accepted command of three hundred and fifty men.
“You’re drifting, darling,” Bolaire’s voice, low in his ear, startles him back into his body.
The gathering is dispersing around them, people taking their leave—either upstairs or elsewhere— to seek a few hours of sleep before daybreak.
Beside him, Bolaire rises with a fluid, unhurried sort of grace. The scene has concluded, and he—more than anyone—knows how and when to make an exit.
“You could walk me home, if you like?” he says, turning back with a raised brow and a coy smile.
It’s an innocent proposal on the surface, but Hal knows what he’s really asking: are you staying with Thaisha, or coming with me?
He starts to let himself imagine what might happen if he followed Bolaire into the night—and then stops himself. He’d already all but promised Thaisha that they would spend some time together. And there’s something in his blood, seductive and terrifying like the thrum in Thjazi’s damned paint, that is telling him if he leaves with Bolaire he won’t come back—certainly not tonight. Certainly not unchanged.
Perhaps not at all.
His gaze flicks to Thaisha, still deep in conversation with the group that remains, still rooted so firmly in the work before them that the world seems to organize itself around her.
He searches for something to say that is not a confession, and comes up empty.
After a moment, Bolaire’s expression softens knowingly.
“You are very tired, Hal,” he says, gently.
“Aren’t we all?”
“Mm. Some more than others.” He places a hand on Hal’s shoulder, and Hal tries not to shudder. “On second thought, it’s best you stay here,” he continues, easing the decision from Hal’s grasp before he is forced to make it outright. “Thaisha will tend to you.”
“She always does,” Hal says.
Bolaire’s gloved fingers brush his cheek in parting, and Hal wonders if Bolaire has the contours of his face memorized—if he ever contemplates the way they’d fit together…
Hal’s eyes follow him until he’s passed through the door and into the shadows beyond, then drift almost accidentally toward the place where Julien had stood for most of the night, leaning in the threshold with careless, catlike irritation.
The space is empty now. Not terribly surprising on its own, but—
Hal’s gaze moves across the room, seeking out Azune.
He does not find him, despite the fact that Hal clearly recalls hearing him ask Thaisha if he could spend the night at the estate so he could catch up with Teor and the others. He’d sounded so awkward about such a simple request that, for a moment, Hal could have sworn the boy was sixteen again, asking Hal if he could—maybe, if it wasn’t too much trouble— have another roll of bread at dinner.
It’s possible that Azune retired—Hal certainly wouldn’t blame him, with the schedule they’ve all been keeping. But ‘Teor and the others’ are still right here in the parlor…
When he goes to stand, Thaisha reaches blindly to grab his hand. Hal gives her fingers a gentle squeeze, but disengages.
I’ll be right back, he says without saying. And Thaisha, after all these years—after everything—still trusts him completely, not even sparing him a glance or interrupting her current thought as he walks away.
He wonders if she still would have believed him if he were following Bolaire, or if she would have known the difference in his intentions by touch alone.
He leaves the house on sluggish legs and makes his way toward the stables.
The door is wide open, and the air—thick with the familiar olfactory melange of hay and beast and leather—pours out into the night to meet Hal’s lungs as he approaches.
Inside, a single lantern swings gently from a hook overhead, casting long, shifting shadows that make the space feel larger than it is.
Hal slips in quietly, crouching by an empty stall, careful to position himself where the glow spills just shy of his boots. He knows how to steal or dodge a spotlight, after all.
Sure enough, Julien Davinos stands at the flank of a horse as dark as his leathers and locks, his movements precise and practiced as he checks tack that, to Hal’s eye, has already been checked. The animal shifts beneath his hands, sensing something unsettled in its rider, though it cannot name the source.
“Just what the fuck do you think you’re doing, Nayar?”
Hal starts, thinking he’s already been made, but the name at the end of the question is not his.
“I’m making sound decisions,” Azune replies, from where he lurks to the side of the stall. “Somebody around here has to,” he adds, flippantly, and for a moment he sounds so much like Thjazi that Hal’s heart aches. “You’re the head of House Royce’s defenses, Julien—and a literal Commandant. If we can retrieve your bannermen from the Einfasens, the combined force will—”
“You know I am not talking about the tactics. You do not make poor plans.”
He rounds on Azune with a coiled energy that seems to pull the very air tighter around his frame.
“I am asking why you chose to unveil it like that. In that room. In front of all of them at once.” He scowls. “I once received a warmer reception at the melee in Ezir.”
Azune grimaces. “You deserve better from them, Julien. They don’t understand what you’re really capable of—but they will.”
“Trozhna’s tits, this is exactly what I mean!” Julien snaps, agitation breaking clean through whatever composure he had been maintaining. “You can’t just say things like that!”
“You just said Trozhna’s tits—”
“Never mind then following me out here like a lost hound. People will start to wonder.”
Azune’s mouth curves faintly.
“Wonder what?”
Julien huffs, turning back to the horse and readjusting the saddlebags with more force than necessary.
“You know what! They think you’re the reasonable one! You are the reasonable one. You can’t have them thinking that you’re—”
“That I’m what, Julien?” Azune presses, stepping closer.
Julien goes very still again, and Hal has the sudden thought that, despite all of his years with the theatre, he couldn’t choreograph a scene with this much tension if his life depended on it.
“I want to know what you think I am,” Azune cajoles. “I want to hear you say it.”
Julien does not say it. He whirls around, catches Azune by the collar of his cloak, and drives his blade through his gut—
—kisses him passionately.
It is abrupt, unmeasured—the kind of decision made in the space of a heartbeat and carried through with absolute conviction.
And Azune answers it without the slightest hesitation.
His hand lifts, grabbing hold of the blade in his belly threading into Julien’s hair, drawing him closer with a gentle steadiness that feels almost studied in its restraint, as though he has poured hours into learning exactly how many of his own fingers to slice off how much to take from this man and when.
Hal can’t look away. Can’t remember how he got here, or where here is—or when.
“I think that you’re fucking impossible. Infuriating,” Julien hisses when they finally part. He does not pull away entirely, his forehead resting against Azune’s. “And I don’t—”
He exhales a small, almost helpless sound, and his hand releases Azune’s cloak, only to claw through his beard instead, heated and possessive.
“I don’t want you any other way.”
Azune smiles.
It is the slightest thing, but it transforms him, slipping warmth through his features like light through the somber depths of a lake.
“Mutual,” he murmurs, before returning to Julien’s mouth for another taste, brief but somehow all the more affectionate for it.
He tries to step away but Julien chases his lips, and they stumble until they hit the wall hard enough to send the wood vibrating against Hal’s shoulder. The impact does absolutely nothing to deter them, and for a moment Hal finds himself watching the two deadliest men he knows make out like fumbling, frantic teenagers.
“Julienngghhh—fuck! Julien!” Azune pants, and there is no reason for Hal to be here; he has already learned what he came here to learn. But he can’t force his feet to move. “You gotta—gotta get out of here…”
“Mmm, or you could haul me up into the hayloft…” Julien suggests, nipping Azune’s lower lip. “Really take your sweet time with me…”
“I’m serious!” Azune says, but his voice is faint and bright with a joy that Hal has never heard from him. “What happened to people will start to wonder?!”
Julien mutters something that is doubtlessly both sweet and savage, but gradually relents, dragging a hand through his hair as he turns toward his horse.
He swings up into the saddle with practiced ease, dark curls tumbling around his face as the horse dances eagerly beneath him. He looks like some fey-touched prince pulled straight from Tír Cruthú—or from the pages of those pulpy romances Hal sometimes finds strewn about backstage at the Round, and for a moment he sees exactly how a quiet, duty-bound boy could lose his wits about a wild thing like Julien Davinos.
Hal can only hope that Azune hasn’t lost all of them.
“I’ll see you in three days' time,” Julien announces. “… if Dol-Makjar isn’t dust by then.”
“Jules…” Azune says then, and the name says everything else that he doesn’t. “Come back in one piece, please.”
Something soft flitters across Julien’s face like a moth before it yields to the lamplight.
“No promises,” he replies, with rakish ease. “But I’ll make sure everything important still functions for you.”
The wink is almost an afterthought.
And then he’s gone, horse and rider slipping into the night in a scatter of fading hoofbeats.
Azune remains where he is, gaze lingering in the direction Julien has gone, as though following him outward to the horizon he holds in his own eyes.
Hal feels Bolaire leave again and again—fading across the threshold into shadow.
“There you are,” says Thaisha, sometime later, when he finally drags himself up the stairs. “Where did you wander off to?”
“Quick errand,” he deflects, hands finding her hips almost by reflex. She’s changed into one of the long satin robes she wears to sleep, and the heat coming off her is an instant comfort.
“You smell like a barn,” she teases, but he can tell that will be the full extent of her inquiry, and he’s absurdly grateful for it. For her. “Go grab a shower, but then—” She lifts a brow, hands fidgeting with the open collar of his shirt the same way they have since she was nineteen and smitten. “Did you want your own room tonight, or…?”
“Honestly, Thai? I am much too tired to get up to anything interesting,” he admits, nuzzling his face into her shoulder. “But I could really use the company tonight…”
“I’ve got you, hon,” she replies, her long nails sweeping over Hal’s scalp in a hypnotic dance. “Shower first, though. I’ve had my fill of hay and horseshit for the week.”
Hal wakes early, but the bed is already empty. Never mind the fact that Thaisha has recently been on the road—and in battle—while Hal has slept in his own bed every night for the last week. He’s not sure he’s ever been able to beat her out of the sheets.
He finds everyone down at the dining table. Thaisha and Teor are lost in a longwinded debate about supply routes as Kattigan devours a plate of eggs like he intends to spar with the cutlery immediately afterward. Thimble is fluttering by Azune’s left ear, whispering something that must be a joke, if the grin on Azune’s face is any indicator. Hal is relieved to see she’s not trying to shove her sword into his ear drum. At least some of the tensions have eased…
Azune meets his gaze as soon as he crosses the threshold, and Hal finds himself averting his eyes.
It’s a pattern that continues throughout the meal: a strange inversion of the way they’d circled each other at Thjazi’s wake. Hal pushes fruit salad around his plate in ever-shifting tessellations.
The same little stories, repeating themselves over, and over, and over—
“Hal,” says Thaisha, “Wake up, sunshine!”
Her ring-adorned hand snaps gently in front of his face until his eyes focus, and then points to the door, where Azune stands watching him with a tilted head.
“A quick word before I head out?” he asks, once again slipping into that familiar tone that appends if it’s not too much of an inconvenience.
“Yeah. Of course,” Hal replies, trying his best to shake off some of his unease as he rises from the table and follows Azune into the foyer.
For a moment Azune just considers him.
“You were awfully quiet last night,” he says, then. “I figured you would have spoken up if you had reservations about the plan…”
Right into the thick of it as always, Hal thinks.
“I don’t. Not—not really,” Hal says, and then sighs. “I guess I just imagined that you would have reservations.”
”Because of Thjazi.” Azune says. It isn’t a question.
“And several other things—but yes, mostly because of Thjazi.”
Azune frowns a bit, and Hal can almost see his thoughts drifting somewhere distant.
“You know, he never really blamed Julien for how things went…” he says, then. “I didn’t entirely understand it at the time. Maybe I never will. But he… he seemed to know what needed to happen in the moment. Julien was young, and Lady Aranessa’s favorite… and if it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else. An Einfasen, maybe—or a Tachonis—”
Azune is wearing the same expression he’d worn when he told Hal that lieutenant Il-Kafsareh had been fired: mild, benevolent even—but with an undercurrent so intense it steals Hal’s breath.
“You’re saying my brother arranged his own downfall to give himself the best chance of escape—?”
“At the expense of one ambitious kid with an already messy reputation?” Azune finishes the thought. “Sounds kinda like something your brother would do, doesn’t it?”
Hal blinks and a piece of the world seems to shift sideways.
“What… What has Julien said about it?” he asks.
“What makes you think he’d say anything about it?”
“You can’t tell me it hasn’t come up between you—” Hal says, before he realizes how many of his cards he’s shown and snaps his mouth shut.
Azune’s brow furrows and his head tilts to the side again.
“What conversation are we having here, Hal?” he asks, and the wariness in his voice is suddenly less seasoned soldier and more cornered adolescent.
Hal sighs and kneads the bridge of his nose.
“I don’t know. I … I followed you to the stables last night…” His fingers brush aside the folds of Azune’s cloak, revealing a trio of little mauvy marks tucked just beneath.
“Okay…?” Azune says, more perplexed than alarmed. “Um… why?”
“I don’t know!” Hal repeats, sharper than he intends. “I thought—”
He doesn’t know what he thought.
“The scene I saw unfold in the parlor didn’t make sense,” he tries again. “The way he looked at you…” He exhales, frustrated. “I knew there had to be more to it…”
“You run a theatre, Hal,” Azune says, sounding slightly baffled. “There’s always more to a scene than what makes it into the script. My feelings for Julien weren’t relevant to the discussion.”
“Weren’t they?” Hal asks, somewhat helplessly.
Azune’s eyes dim dangerously. “If you think my judgment is compromised—”
“I don’t!” Hal insists, “I really don’t—not about the militia, at least. Julien was right when he said that you don’t make poor plans.” He watches a faint blush spill through Azune’s cheeks, as though he’s only now registering exactly how much Hal might have seen or heard, despite his kiss-bruised neck. “I just… I know I’m not your father, Azune, but are you sure about him? And I don’t mean for the task at hand. Just… for you.”
“Are you sure about Bolaire?” Azune counters. “Because I didn’t think I’d need to explain to you what it feels like."
"... what it feels like?" Hal echoes, uncertainly.
"To hold a weapon who only wants to be wielded by you.”
Hal doesn’t answer. Can’t answer.
For a moment, he simply stands there, Azune’s words settling into him like a clay mask into his palms, and the sound of applause echoes from beyond the walls of the estate—from beyond the borders of Pasitar, cosmic and unholy.
This is all for you.
He sees Julien pressing Azune to the wall, porcelain-pale in the lantern light and framed in curls thick enough to get lost in. He sees the little quirk of clay lips as Bolaire says you could walk me home, if you’d like—and hears Julien add: really take your sweet time with me…
Hal exhales, slow and uneven.
“That,” he says at last, “is an extraordinarily poor way to justify anything.”
Azune’s expression doesn’t shift.
“It isn’t justification,” he says, with a wisdom that no twenty-something should have unlocked yet. “It’s just the truth.”
If only Bolaire were here to hear that.
Hal laughs, but there’s no real humor in it. He smears a hand down his face, briefly hyperaware of the shape of it, and the fact that it is—for the moment—still his.
He clasps Azune on the shoulder and squeezes.
“This story could end very badly for us, kid,” he declares, only for Azune to grip his shoulder twice as hard.
“Who said it ends?”