Kelsam

Esar returned after the better part of an hour and hefted an enormous tiffin box from the refectory onto the table.

“What’s all this?” Kelsam asked.

“I didn’t know what sort of things he’d like to eat, so I got a little of everything.”

“That was thoughtful of you.”

Kelsam went to the kitchen to fetch plates while Esar unstacked the tiers, and when he came back, Jason was surveying the banquet set before him with apparent trepidation. Then Esar took the lid off the last container, and Jason’s expression turned to one of relief.

“Oh! Rice. It is rice, right?”

Esar launched into a brisk explanation of what each dish was and what it contained, speaking so quickly that Kelsam could scarcely keep up, and he already knew what everything was. There was Tsill-style lamb curry and spicy northern vegetable curry, voihi and rasati soup, barla rolls, dumplings, and rice. Esar finished and looked at Jason expectantly.

“Um. Can I have some rice?” Jason asked.

Esar scooped rice onto a plate for him. “And?”

“Just the rice. Thanks.”

Esar muttered something under his breath, but pushed the plate of rice towards Jason before gesturing to Kelsam.

“You should eat more than just rice,” Kelsam said. Bringing all this food was Esar’s effort at making peace; if Jason didn’t accept the offer, Esar might take it as an affront.

“I don’t know. My stomach doesn’t feel great,” Jason said.

“Try the voihi, then. That’s what my dad always made when I was feeling a little off.” Kelsam lifted the lid of a crock that had been nestled in a larger tray, and the mild, sweet scent rose with the steam.

“Couldn’t you just use your vitricity to make it all better?” Jason said.

“Sometimes it’s easier to just drink some voihi,” Kelsam answered gently, pretending not to notice the bitterness in Jason’s voice. He placed the bowl in front of the boy.

“What’s in it?”

“It’s just broth pureed with sweet vacks and a few spices. We grow the vacks here, actually.”

Jason snorted. “Sweet vacks?”

“Yes?”

The boy exploded with laughter. Esar jumped at his sudden outburst, but Kelsam only winced. There was nothing mirthful about his laughter. It was an eruption of desperation and overstimulation, and once it began he seemed unable to stop. Poor kid.

“I’m sorry,” Jason gasped, tears streaming from his eyes. “It’s just so—it’s all so ridiculous—”

“It’s all right,” Kelsam said.

The laughter came to an abrupt halt. “No, it isn’t! How can you say that it’s all right? How can you possibly say that, when you don’t know anything!” Jason slammed his hands down on the table, and half the voihi sloshed out of the bowl.

“That’s. Enough.” Esar loomed over Jason like a gathering storm, and the boy froze. “Listen. I told you, you are not going to die here. But there is nothing else we can do tonight. I’ve welcomed you into my home, given you food, and I am going to do damn well everything in my power to get you home again. The least you can do is have a little patience!”

“Why? Why should I trust you—either of you? Who the hell are you, anyway?”

Voihi dripped off the table onto the rug, but neither Esar nor Jason seemed to notice. Kelsam sighed and picked up Jason’s abandoned towel, which he used to start wiping up the mess.

“If you really thought I meant you any harm, you wouldn’t be talking to me like that.” Esar’s voice was level, but Kelsam heard the edge in it. He was hanging by a thread. So much for the walk cooling him down.

“This is a Sanctuary,” Kelsam added. “You’re safer here than you would be anywhere else.”

Jason snorted. Perhaps Kelsam should have anticipated that he wouldn’t be impressed. But Esar . . . a strange expression had passed over his face when Kelsam said it was safer here than anywhere else. He wasn’t sure what to make of it, but it unsettled him.

Both Esar and Jason sulked through the meal, making Kelsam feel like he shared the table with two sullen teenagers rather than one. But the silence was better than shouting. Even if no one seemed to have sufficient appetite for the feast that Esar had laid before them.

“You still haven’t told me how you knew we were coming,” Jason said. He’d eaten a few bites of the plain rice, but for the last ten minutes he’d only pushed it around on his plate.

“Because I dreamed it. And when I dream about something, it happens. Usually.” Esar rubbed his temples.

“Seriously? Your dreams come true?”

“Yes. It’s even worse than it sounds.”

“Is that something that everybody can do, too, like the vitricity?”

“No. It’s because I’m a Tresuan.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “Like I know what that means.”

“It means he sees future events in his dreams,” Kelsam said, watching Esar closely.

“How convenient.”

“Mostly it’s just useless.”

“Doesn’t sound useless,” Jason said. “I mean, if you can find out for sure if I’m really going to make it home—”

“I can’t control what I dream about. Most of the time it’s . . . insignificant. Events that may be momentous for the people involved, but of no importance in the greater scheme of things.” Esar spoke in a flat, almost dull tone, but Kelsam’s pulse quickened. There had been a time when Esar told him about those dreams, when Kelsam read his journal over his shoulder, before . . .

Jason frowned. “Weird. How does that work?”

Esar stared at him. “I go to sleep. I have dreams.”

“It’s . . . complicated,” Kelsam said. Even after all the experiments to understand and focus Esar’s power, he still didn’t really understand it. Mostly he behaved as if Esar’s dreams didn’t exist.

Meanwhile, Jason had moved on to another subject. “And how come when I talk, I can understand you, and you can understand me? You’re not speaking English. That’s magic, too, isn’t it?”

That was a question that Kelsam could answer. He pulled his attuner out of his pocket and placed it on the table in front of Jason. “What you hear is the Current of meaning that lies beneath our spoken words. By attuning the Current, you can communicate with anyone, no matter what language you speak. They can understand you, and you can understand them. I have to use an attuner, but Esar can just . . . do it.”

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The attuner was a small device, about the size of his thumb, made of ceram and inscribed with tiny channels. It was actually quite an advanced model, strong enough to function so long as he was within a few meters of the device. Jason reached forward as if to pick it up, then drew his hand back quickly.

“You can have it back,” he said.

Kelsam shrugged and reclaimed the attuner. “Is there anything else you wanted to ask about?”

“No.” Jason almost shouted the word. “Unless it’s about me getting back home, I don’t care.”

He’d closed himself in again, like a snail drawing back into its shell. Curiosity occasionally broke through that shell and allowed Jason to stretch out a bit, giving Kelsam an idea of who he might be when he wasn’t terrified and defensive. Esar was silent as well, sitting still when Kelsam would have expected him to be pacing around again, turning his nervous energy into aimless motion. What was he thinking? What did he know?

“Okay, fine, I have one more question,” Jason said. “Where’s your bathroom?”

* * *

Kelsam set Jason up with a futon in the garret for the night. Esar didn’t like to go up there if he could help it—he had to stoop to keep from banging his head on the low ceiling—but neither Kelsam nor Jason were tall enough for that to be a hazard. Once he made sure the boy had all he needed, Kelsam went back downstairs to find Esar standing with his hands clasped behind his back, keeping watch over Naomi like a sentry on duty.

She was in a true, deep slumber now, her body recuperating from the strain of depletion. Kelsam had covered her with a blanket, and she’d curled up on her side, her hair covering her face. In that moment there was nothing unusual about her, nothing to set her apart from the hundreds of teenagers who attended the Sanctuary school. But . . .

“Who is she, Esar?” Kelsam asked.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.” Esar didn’t take his eyes off the girl.

“That’s not a real answer.”

Esar’s shoulders drooped. “I don’t have a good answer for you.”

“What kind of answer do you have?”

“That she’s a girl. A human.”

Kelsam frowned. “I may not be as smart as you, Esar, but I’d figured out that much on my own.”

“I’ve had dreams about her before,” Esar said, and Kelsam fell silent. Finally, they were getting somewhere. “Dreams that never came to pass. It was a long time ago.”

“At the University?” Kelsam asked tentatively.

“Mostly. At least one before that, even,” Esar said.

“What sort of dreams?”

“Frightening ones.”

“Ah.” Kelsam turned towards the door. “Thank you for explaining. It’s all perfectly clear now.”

Esar’s laugh had a bitter edge. “I am awful. I think if I don’t say a thing, I can keep it from being true. I can keep it from hurting you.”

“The only thing that hurts me is knowing that this is hurting you. I know it’s hard, I know you’re carrying this burden and I just want to help any way I can.”

“So I end up hurting you no matter what.”

“You know that’s not—” Kelsam slipped his arm around Esar’s waist. “Besides, I’m a grown-up. I can handle it.”

Esar hugged him so tightly that Kelsam could feel the terror in his trembling embrace. “What if I’m wrong, Kels,” he whispered. “I can’t—I can’t bring it all together. I can’t make it fit. I can’t . . .”

“It’s all right,” Kelsam said, even as his own heart beat faster. He had to stay calm. Esar needed a pillar of strength when he got like this, not to have his panic reflected back at him. “Just tell me what you do know. Maybe I can help you to make sense of it.”

“I can’t. Damn it, I don’t even know why, but I can’t!” He tried to break away, but Kelsam held on to him. “I think it’s because I’m afraid,” Esar continued, words pouring out faster and faster. “Because I think what if I didn’t say anything—then. What if I didn’t say anything and they didn’t go and your sister and all of them would still—be—alive—”

“Esar, stop!” Kelsam made his husband look him in the eyes. “You know that’s not true. You know it’s not . . .”

Esar took a few deep, shaky breaths. “I know it’s not,” he said. “But—”

“Stop,” Kelsam held Esar as his breathing slowed and the tension in his body eased. His instinct told him he ought to let the subject rest for the night, to let Esar speak in his own time. He reserved his anger for the ones who had done this to Esar—even the ones who died in Bhadrat, leaving Esar to blame himself for what they’d put him through. And Kelsam was so, so tired. Probably best to just go to bed, to look at the matter with fresh eyes in the morning . . .

But another glance at the girl sleeping on the floor boosted his resolve. He released Esar and took a step back before asking again,

“Who is she, Esar?”

Esar closed and opened his fists. “You must not let anyone else know what I tell you. And remember what I told you before. She is a human child.”

Why was Esar so insistent that the girl was human? “I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”

“I believe she’s a Rispara.”

Kelsam opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Esar might as well have said, “I believe she’s a monster.” But the girl sleeping on a futon only a few feet away certainly didn’t look any more like a monster than she looked like an angel. Sure, her eyes were a strange color, but she seemed . . .

Human. Just like Esar kept saying.

“How do you know?” Kelsam asked.

“Because I’ve read about them. There are accounts at the University from the survivors of Vas, people who knew them. They didn’t talk about them like monsters or weapons. They remembered them as friends.”

“I thought they were gone,” Kelsam said. “But we all thought the constructs were gone, didn’t we? Only you saw them coming . . .” Something snapped into place in Kelsam’s memory. “You saw a Rispara, too. The man in your dream. The man with the red eyes.”

“What?” Esar’s eyes went wide, and his hands shook. “I don’t remember—what are you talking about?”

“I . . . don’t remember well, either,” Kelsam said. “It was that night, when I came to Thaliron after your brother was born.”

He spoke carefully, trying to keep his words from stirring up too many memories—memories that hurt even before Esar’s brother’s death, but were even more painful now. Esar was already across the room, though, throwing open the doors of the cabinet he’d brought back from the Tresuan house in Thaliron after his brother’s funeral. He scanned the books lined up on the shelf, pulled one down and leafed through it, then shoved it back in and tried another.

“It’s not here,” he said. “Damn it, it’s not here! It must still be in Thaliron. Probably on the same damn shelf—what else do you remember, Kelsam? Anything?”

“You . . . were scared,” Kelsam said. He tried to remember the words he’d read over Esar’s shoulder, but other memories clouded his mind. “There was something about the University.”

“Nothing about a girl? Nothing about a child?”

Kelsam shook his head. “No, there—there might have been another man there? But I don’t remember anything about a child.”

Esar sighed and closed the cabinet. “I know that I dreamed of her . . . then. But I only remember pieces, here and there. It’s all such a mess in here.” He held his head with both hands, digging his fingers into his hair. “I’m a bloody disaster.”

“But what if we got the journals? And they must still have the records from the experiments at the University. We could send for them—”

“I don’t know who’s listening, Kels.” Esar paced back and forth across the room on the one path that was open, between Naomi and the table. “I don’t know whom we can trust. I feel like the earth is about to crack open under my feet, and I don’t know where everyone will stand when it happens. I’ve felt that way for a while now, and I know what you’re going to say, I should have told you instead of dithering and doubting and telling myself I was probably mistaken." Esar took a deep breath. "Last night I dreamed that three constructs rose out of the Ocean and attacked Thaliron.”

Kelsam’s breath caught in his throat. “Three constructs? But there aren’t any constructs anywhere near the capital—”

“That girl ran in to fight them,” Esar went on. “The dream was hazy, but her face was clear, and I knew—at least, I suspected that she was going to show up today. I know it doesn’t make any sense, Kelsam. I probably got something wrong. I probably shouldn’t have said anything—”

“No, no!” Kelsam said. “I’m glad you told me. I wish you’d told me sooner.”

" I may still be mistaken. Just because I can sense an omen doesn’t mean I know what it means, and blight me if I know what to do with it. This is my mother’s sort of thing, not mine. She was always so damn sure of herself, even when she had nothing to go on but a hunch—”

“She’s not here,” Kelsam said warily. It was never a good sign when Esar brought up his mother.

“And where is she? Where is the all-powerful Tresuan now? I don’t buy for one moment that she’s retired. She can swathe herself in gray and run off to the mountains and maybe that’s enough to fool them back in Thaliron, but I know her better than that.”

Kelsam wondered if Esar’s mother had foreseen Naomi’s arrival as well, but thought it better to steer the conversation away from that touchy subject.

“What are we going to do about Jason?” he asked.

“What about Jason.” Esar paused and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand. “Why is he here? I still can’t understand that.”

“He said—”

“Oh, I heard him. I know the immediate chain of events. But why was he there? Why is he here? There’s something I’m missing. Something he’s hiding.”

“Esar . . .” Kelsam yawned, fatigue finally getting the better of him. “I don’t think we’re going to answer that tonight. Unless . . .”

Unless Esar saw something else in his dreams tonight, something that might fill one of the holes in their understanding.

But tired as he was, sleep did not come easily to Kelsam that night.