“Where have you been, boy?”

Tomas Orellen stopped in the front room of the ramshackle house and looked toward the elderly man who’d spoken. Wether sat in the corner, in a wooden chair gone gray with age. He’d painted the runes for a cushioning spell on the seat, so it was just about the only comfortable chair in the place.

Between them, two of the others were snoring in their blankets on the floor. The rest would all be in the back room. Or upstairs, if they were willing to brave the fragile staircase.

“I went for a walk,” Tomas said, speaking just as quietly as Wether had.

The old magician crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair.

“You can’t take walks that long. They’ll start thinking you’ve gone off to betray us, and then where will we be?”

That’s a new one, thought Tomas.

“Am I a traitor now?” he asked. “When I left the house earlier, wasn’t I a favored son receiving special treatment? I must not have appreciated it much if I turned to treason.”

“You were a such a happy lad when you were small. I didn’t expect you to grow up with such a load of sarcasm in your heart.”

Wether occasionally mentioned having met Tomas when he was younger. Tomas didn’t recall the man at all.

“And don’t speak of going off letter again. Not you. It’s bad enough for the others to do it.”

“How many letters have they even had to follow?” Tomas said. He didn’t care enough to hide the disgust in his voice. “Three? Four? And now they’re all so tired of it and ready for it to be over. I’ve followed dozens. I would have followed these, too, without complaint if they would only leave me alone and stop taking everything out—”

“You may be still a child,” Wether said. “But we can’t afford for you to act like one.”

“How am I the one being childish?”

“Rillard shouldn’t have struck you. He should keep his fears to himself at a time like this and do his duty to the family. All of us should. But even if every one of them moans and complains about their lot, you cannot.”

“Why?” Tomas demanded.

“Because you’re the Lord’s son,” Wether muttered.

Tomas stood with his hands in the pockets of the fisherman’s coat, confused enough by the old man’s reasoning that he couldn’t respond right away. The air smelled heavy, sweet, and rancid. Someone, probably Sara, had been burning incense to cover the scent of rat piss.

“Our family never had a Lord,” Tomas said finally. “Not in the way common people mean it. It was only for show, to ease business with those who care about such things.”

When he’d been young and felt very proud of his position, he’d been quickly corrected by his mother. Lord and Lady Orellen were a decoration. Their household was an elaborate, aristocratic theater the clan used for dealing with the many important people around the continent who were comforted by the illusion that they were shaking hands with a nobleman rather than a practitioner.

In the Enclave, Iven’s power came from his magic and the Seniors’ belief in his potential. The title had followed that, but it had no power of its own.

“What is Iven even supposed to be the Lord of, if all our lands and businesses are gone?”

“Of us, boy.”

“The Seniors—”

“You must know the dynamic is different now. It’s different from anything our clan or any other has experienced. Our strongest sorcerers and elders follow the instructions of a single man because they must. As the years pass, they hold us together with news of his power and his care for us because we have so few things to bind us. More and more, he becomes a talisman to everyone who follows his instructions, so that we can continue to follow them until this is all over. If he is not our true Lord now, he will be by the end of it. And you are his son.”

“I don’t even know him anymore,” said Tomas.

“You are his son,” the old man said again. “If you do not have absolute faith in him, how can the rest of us?”

Tomas opened his mouth, but he couldn’t find any words that wouldn’t just start another argument in the house. He spun and headed up the stairs.

Madness, he thought, dodging a broken board. What a mad opinion. Does he really think that I have the power to influence all of these older magicians who resent me for my relationship to Iven?

Was Wether saying Tomas’s duty to the family was to look everyone in the eye and say, “Have faith in Father. He has great plans for us all!”?

“I think his last personal message to me might have mentioned if he expected me to be some kind of mouthpiece for him.”

It had been…not uncaring, but distant. As all of them had been for the past few years. I hope you are happy. Enjoy the new books. Study hard. Your sisters and brothers are well. Mother and I love you.

A letter for a son you no longer knew. For a boy whose hopes, fears, and heartaches you hadn’t been a part of. A letter for a stranger, from a stranger who maybe wished it wasn’t the case.

But apparently some people expected Tomas to pretend he was their Lord’s son. Not a fake Lord. A real one.

Nerth is right. Politics is unfathomable.

Tomas wove around a few sleeping people to find his bedding in the back of the single upstairs room. The son of the great Lord Orellen checked his covers for bugs, found several, and crushed them all with disgust. He stuffed his ears with wads of torn fabric so that nothing could crawl in them while he slept.

I should have just stayed at that nice inn with him, but then they’d all panic. Or think me a traitor, apparently.

If the mage came in the next two days, they would all leave together. If she did not, they would fight for a few more…maybe Tomas would be sent away as his father and the Seniors had ordered. Maybe he wouldn’t.

It doesn’t matter anymore. I can’t leave him.

His heart pounded as the thought settled in his mind. Even this morning before daybreak, when he’d angrily told Rillard he would gladly send the man off in his place, he hadn’t truly meant it. Tomas had lived his whole life by the letters. And he still had a life, so that was something.

He had hoped the magicians here would get a grip on their feelings and follow the instructions. He’d assumed they would.

Deep down he hadn’t really been afraid that they would all fail to do what the messages said.

Because nobody ever had before. Not in any of the places he’d been so far.

Resentment. Whispers behind his back. He was used to it.

He’d even been struck before, twice, by family members. He’d been shocked to death the first time it had happened, a couple of years ago. Now that he’d gotten it a third, he decided that being a man’s height must make it more acceptable for people to take their tempers out on you.

Or perhaps it was all his own doing. He’d lost some measure of shyness and stopped keeping his thoughts to himself every time he landed in a new place.

Apparently, some of his relatives found the fact that he had thoughts at all offensive.

But never before Granslip Port had Tomas really feared that the people he was with would go rogue and abandon the plan altogether. Something had been different with these ones from the very beginning. Maybe there were just too many of them. He’d never moved with such a large group. It was usually only two or three in company together.

And now it’s not even them going rogue I have to fear. It’s myself.

He wasn’t going to leave Kalenerth.

He could have. Even after seeing the boy sing and realizing who he was, he had been planning to keep his distance. Even after realizing he was living with the aunt whose health was failing, even after the woman died…Nerth had seemed like he might be all right living under the church’s wings with the priestess who admired him.

Tomas had thought he was a stranger to the younger boy, and so it had been possible to believe that they were only meeting in passing and it should stay that way. Two Orellens in hiding, coming together and then disappearing from each other’s lives again—Tomas was used to it.

He learned to read because I told him to. He kept the secret because I told him he must. He remembered me as clearly as I remembered him.

Tomas squeezed his eyes shut.

I never did grow out of it, did I?

When he was around the same age as Nerth was now, he’d been briefly placed in a house with his older sister Adora. She was only two years his senior. He’d been overjoyed. He’d been so hungry for her to feel the same way, and…she didn’t. She hadn’t been mean, but she had been inconvenienced by the intensity of his interest in her. And completely confused that he felt close to her when she didn’t feel close to him at all.

“We barely played together at all when we were little,” she’d said. “I was always closer to Dallie, and you were always closer to Rella. I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you were expecting from me.”

I kept sending letters to them all, too. Long after they stopped bothering to send them to me.

Their letters had always been unsatisfying in the same way that Father’s and Mother’s were, but for a long time he didn’t care. He would send. And they would reply.

But eventually, even Tomas…pitiful as he was…couldn’t ignore the fact that their letters were only ever replies. After a couple of years, none of his siblings reached for him the way he reached for them.

Even I have some small amount of pride.

Not much though.

Everywhere he went, Tomas collected traditions. They were the only things he’d found that didn’t change. His name changed. His home changed. His friends changed so often that he no longer bothered to make them.

But for four hundred years in Bolampor, there had been a festival on the first day of Saint Tock’s month.

And for more than a century, the thirteen-year-old girls and boys in the village of Urma had walked in a line up a staircase that led nowhere each day at dawn to signal the end of their youth.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Their feet had worn the stone down to almost nothing in places. The stairs would crumble before the tradition did.

Tomas had thought families were supposed to be like that—a promise that couldn’t be forgotten by the members or broken by time. And then, even when he’d realized that it didn’t work like that…he still wanted it to.

He wanted love to be an oath.

For him, it had been. Only he’d had a painful tendency to swear it to people who didn’t understand it in the same way he did at all.

I thought I was wiser now. I guess not.

Kalenerth remembered him. Kalenerth had thought of him over the years, even if it was only rarely. They weren’t strangers to each other after all.

Tomas had pricked his finger trying to stitch the coin to the tiny boy’s clothes. The blood had soaked into the fabric. He remembered being satisfied about it, like a little idiot, because it made the gift of the magic coin even more serious.

He could feel the gold luck piece now, weighing in his pocket against his hip.

Father would probably be horrified I’d given it away. I’m sure it wasn’t just a gesture. Tomas had never confessed it to anyone, though he had worried about it quite a few times. His father had frequently collapsed from exhaustion during that last year before the evacuation of the Enclave. That he had bothered to make a strange enchanted luck coin for each of them during that period was suspicious. Imbue it, ask it a question, flip it…it will be right only slightly more often than not, so use your head first. Don’t keep asking it the same question over and over hoping for a different answer; that’ll break the luck.

What a peculiar set of instructions. It does sound like something he would only have given us to remember him by. A nearly useless piece of luck magic…with some advice to keep us from overusing it and treating it like our god.

Tomas was tempted to pull it out of his pocket and flip it right now, but he shouldn’t in the house with these people. He always kept his gifts from his parents hidden. They were usually very nice. The twelve stone chest, in particular, might prompt a couple of these aunties and uncles to forget their tenuous relationship altogether.

Good spatial storage made life on the run much more comfortable. And it wasn’t easy to come by. Tomas’s chest wasn’t an antique as far as he could tell, so one of the family sorcerers must have resurrected the art of making the things.

I suppose if I’m to be a real Lord’s son, I might as well get something out of it.

Eventually, he fell into a restless slumber. He dreamed of his family, all of them, but their faces kept changing so that he could never be sure it was really them.

When he woke, he went to talk to Wether. He found the old man downstairs cutting into a wheel of cheese.

“I should have told you last night, but I was distracted by what you said. I overheard someone in the street saying that an Acress was spotted going into the Church of Clywing yesterday.”

Wether frowned. “Was that all you heard of it?”

“A big man with big eyebrows. Someone named Cob?”

“Oh.”

Wether’s face was grim. “If the rumor was about that one, it was probably true. He’s got a recognizable face.”

The old magician had been living in Granslip Port before the Orellens even went into hiding, so he should know.

“Any chance him visiting the church means nothing?” Tomas asked without much hope.

“They called him back to the Enclave a couple of years ago,” said Wether. “He was in Kashwin for a long time, but he’s one of their more powerful mages. I suppose they wanted him close to home before they made their move.”

“Wether, do you understand politics?”

He shook his head. “Local ones, perhaps.”

“The Acresses are starving people to death, right? That’s the business with the missing crops?”

“So cold, boy,” Wether said with a frown.

Tomas shrugged. “It’s not as if I think it’s fine; I’m just not surprised. Should I be?”

“I worry about you young ones, growing up with this,” the man grumbled. “Circon will get by as far as food goes. By my estimation. Tighter belts everywhere. A bad winter. A worse spring. They’ll eat everything on hooves, so the cattle industry will be down for years to come. But they stopped the exports soon enough…that was the real point of it, if you ask for one old portalist’s opinion.”

“To stop exports?”

“Acresses are squeezing the country to soften it up for our former friends to the south. Now, to feed its citizens, Circon has to break promises to allies who were counting on it for their own suppers. And on top of that the people here are scared and angry with the government because of the price of things. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Acresses have plenty tucked away in their larders to swoop in and buy the affection of those angry people for themselves.”

“I guess it’s good to be in control of everyone’s food.”

“Have you read your history?”

“Not that much,” Tomas admitted. “I study my spell books, but they don’t send me much history to learn.”

“We haven’t had a practitioners’ war on the continent in centuries,” said Wether. “I suppose if Terriban has his way, we’ll all find out what it’s like in much more detail than we’ll enjoy.”

“All right,” said Tomas. “Well, thank you for explaining it. I’m going for a walk.”

“Don’t take such a long one this morning! If Lizen does show up, we’ll have to go hunting for you!”

Tomas was already out the door.

#

Kalen had just finished working on the wash basin in his room when he heard the quiet scratching that he and Tomas had agreed would be the older boy’s request for entry. Kalen opened the door for him, and he slipped inside.

“You haven’t disturbed the silencing ward,” Tomas whispered. “Good.”

Kalen sighed. “Do you think I’m going to accidentally play with your magic sand?” he whispered back. “I’m not a baby.”

Tomas stepped into the ward circle and motioned for him to do the same. Once it had been re-imbued with magic, Tomas brightened and produced a dark brown bread roll from his pocket. “Breakfast?”

Kalen took it. “Thank you.”

“And I see you used some of the paint I gave you already.” Tomas was staring across the room to where the basin was covered in wet paint and filled with steaming water.

“I was about to have a hot bath. It can wait.”

“I’ll power it for you before I leave if the spell circle runs dry,” Tomas offered.

Kalen tilted his head. “Why? I can just do it again myself.”

“Oh. All right. I didn’t want to assume your capacity. You’re still young.”

Are there practitioners who run out of magic after heating water? Kalen wondered. That must be upsetting for them.

“Today I thought I’d teach you a spatial spell, and we’d make plans together,” Tomas said, smiling at Kalen.

“What kind of plans?”

“Last night you asked me what I was going to do about the letters—”

“And you said you couldn’t do anything but hope the others came to their senses on their own.”

“I just realized I don’t know what you’re going to do,” said Tomas. “Why did you leave Tiriswaith in the first place? Were you just traveling with your aunt to seek medical attention? Do you plan to try to go back?”

Kalen sat down on the floor and crossed his legs. “I’m not entirely sure where I’m going next,” he said after some thought. “I’m not going back home. I’m not going to go back until I’m powerful enough to protect all the people around me from anyone who might come to hurt me.”

Tomas looked surprised.

“I have somewhere I need to be in just over two years,” Kalen said. “I was waiting for someone to meet me here and help me get there, but since that person never showed up, and since I don’t think I should stay here much longer, I’ll head in that direction on my own.”

“On your own? How far is it?”

“I have enough money to make it if everything goes well.”

“What kind of appointment are you planning years in advance?” Tomas asked.

“What if I tell you, and someone finds you and uses their magic to steal the information from you?” Kalen asked.

He didn’t feel the question was unwarranted, but Tomas’s eyes widened. “I wouldn’t tell them anything!”

“Rats go to the worst pits in the hells,” Kalen said. “I know. You told me that when I was little.”

Tomas blushed.

“But isn’t it something we should consider? I’m sorry I know that you’re supposed to go to Olipa in Northern Tsunar, because that puts you in danger—”

“Are you going to meet family?” Tomas interrupted.

Kalen felt like the older boy was ignoring an important question. “I’m not.”

“Are you going to meet someone who will look after you?”

“I’m twelve.”

“You seem to think that’s a much more impressive age than it is.”

Kalen scowled at him.

“Sorry. I’m not trying to insult you or make you mad, I’m…do you want to come with me?”

“You can’t take me with you. I’m not mentioned in the letters, so it’s bad luck isn’t—?”

“Forget the letters,” said Tomas, leaning toward him. “If the letters didn’t exist and you didn’t know anything about the luck magic at all…if I wasn’t with the others, and it was just me and you making decisions right now in this room, would you want to come with me?”

Kalen stared at him. “But it’s not like that…”

“You are being very literal. Pretend. Do they not have pretending on Tiriswaith?”

That was silly. You couldn’t make important decisions based on the way you wanted things to be instead of the way they were. He did give me the magepaint. I suppose I can indulge him.

Kalen thought about the question.

“You’re taking an awfully long time,” Tomas said hesitantly. “Don’t feel like you have to say—”

“Be quiet,” Kalen commanded. “If you want me to pretend, you have to give me time to think through everything that goes with the pretending.”

Tomas looked confused, but he fell quiet.

Tsunar was in completely the wrong direction, so Kalen wouldn’t be going with Tomas there. Even by portal. Unless there was another portal group in Tsunar who could send them back in the right direction?

But in this pretend, he wants me to assume the magicians he’s with don’t exist. So no portals?

“I wouldn’t go with you,” Kalen said.

Tomas’s face fell. “Oh. That’s understandable. I just—”

“I would want you to come with me instead. Tsunar is the wrong way. I need to head east. I would like for you to come with me and teach me magic along the way. Before we left, we would come up with a way to rob Barley & Daughters—”

“We’re not going to do that!”

“But it’s pretend,” said Kalen, smiling at the older boy’s expression. “So I’m pretending that I get everything I want out of Granslip Port before I go. After Barley & Daughters, we’ll steal all the Orellen books in Cob Acress’s library. He’s got some. I saw them. We’ll burn their Enclave to the ground, break the scrying plates they’re using to find us, and ride east in a fine carriage, reading and discussing spatial magic the whole way.

“It will probably take us months and months to get where we’re going. So I’ll teach you some spells I know, too,” he finished.

Tomas took a deep breath. “Let’s do it,” he said, clenching a fist in determination. “Not the pillaging and burning…I admit it sounds like it would be fun, but not for very long before we died. And not the fine carriage because those are too conspicuous. But I’d like to travel with you.”

“You can’t,” said Kalen, frowning at him. “Your luck…”

“Damn my luck!”

Kalen suddenly felt like he was talking to his younger cousin Veern, who often had more passion than sense.

“No,” he said, in the same even tone one had to use when talking Veern down from eating tree bark on dares or pulling pranks on girls. “Don’t damn your luck. I don’t want something bad to happen to you because of me. So you can’t really come with me.”

“I don’t want to leave you behind. And you don’t hate my company, so—”

“That’s not enough of a reason.”

“You’ll come with me. Or I’ll go with you.”

“You can’t even get the other Orellens to send you where you need to go. They’re all jealous of the ones being sent away. I don’t think dragging me along is going to make them more willing.”

“I don’t remember going into that much detail about—”

“I’ll be fine. Thank you for worrying about me,” Kalen said quickly. “But I can take care of myself.”

“If the mage comes in time, we’ll get to do what the others want. They’ll be in a better mood. There will probably be enough power to take you along with us. I could insist. They won’t want to show up all together without me, so if I threaten not to go without you…”

Kalen frowned. “Why would you do that for me?”

“I’m your big brother. I want to. That reminds me…” He rummaged in his pocket and produced the coin. “I want you to keep this. Imbue it sometimes even if you don’t need to ask it a question.”

He held it out on his palm, and Kalen stared down at the familiar gold circle.

“Why? Your father gave it to you, and you haven’t even seen him in years. Don’t you want it for yourself?”

“I’m not sure what it does,” said Tomas, looking down at it, too. “But it doesn’t make sense for it to be only a luck piece. Now that I understand a little more…well, I think it might be something protective. So you keep it.”

Why is he like this? “Tomas, it’s yours.”

Tomas dropped it onto Kalen’s lap. It slid between his knees to thump onto the floor.

“It meant a lot to me when I gave it to you.” His smile held a touch of sadness. “I know you probably don’t think of me as your close family. That’s all right. We only knew each other on that first day, and it would be strange if you did think of me that way after all this time. But I’ve realized that I think of you as my little brother…and if you don’t mind, I’ll just keep doing that. Let me give it to you. And let me stay with you, at least until you’re somewhere safer than this place.”

Kalen stared at him.

It was too much. Too odd and uncomfortable.

We’re just not as close as he wants us to be.

Kalen felt a connection to Tomas, but not one so clear-cut and intimate.

I’m not his little brother. He’s not my family. He doesn’t know me at all. Lander will always be more of an older brother than he is. Lander was with me when I grew up. Even if I think Tomas is kind, and he’s important to me somehow, it’s different …

Kalen’s thoughts of home, and his true family, suddenly triggered something deep, deep in his heart. Tomas had shouted that he loved him, that long ago day. Back then, he had carried Kalen in his arms to that hidden place in the grass and declared it to the world like it was something unchangeable.

So childish. He’d just met me moments before. Something like that can’t be real.

Only it could.

The very first second he’d held Fanna in his arms, Kalen had been willing to give her anything. His soul. The world. Their parents.

And one day, hopefully soon but probably not, Kalen would go back home. She might be twelve years old. She might think him a pitiful, strange boy…a man…who loved her for no real reason at all.

But he would still love her. He would still want to be her brother. He couldn’t imagine that ever changing.

“You can’t just stop being an older brother, can you?” Kalen said in a tone so serious that Tomas looked taken aback. “Even if you’re not related by blood—”

“Technically I think we are…”

“It’s forever,” Kalen concluded.

He would give Tomas Orellen this. And maybe, one day, he would get it himself.

“I will be your little brother,” he said, picking up the coin. He gripped it in his fist and held his other hand out toward Tomas.

“We’re going to shake on it?”

“It’s like a promise, isn’t it? Now that I’m old enough to understand it.”

Tomas drew in a shaky breath. “Like an oath,” he said softly.

He’s so peculiar, thought Kalen. It’s because he grew up here around all these mad people.

Tomas clasped his hand.

“You can come with me for as long as you want,” Kalen said, gripping it tightly. “Or I’ll go with you, if it’s in the right direction.”

Tomas didn’t let go either. He stared into Kalen’s eyes. “All right. Where are we going then?”

“To the Archipelago. For the next apprenticeship tournament.”