The stick creaked, bearing his weight, and in a jerky hop, he stepped forward.
Stopped. Breathed. Shifted the stick a little along the carpet. And stepped forward again.
The agony on his face, the thin tension in his hands, the harsh gasps in his throat—Held could even see the jump of his heart, punching in his neck with a furious violence. He wanted to stop it. But that angry determination was the man who rode on clouds. The skyman who had fallen through the roof of the world. So Held let it continue, too and always, as some proof that the fire had taken a leg and nothing more.
It had cost—Janez dropped to the end of the bed and sat there with a reeling gasp—but not all. Held stepped close, grasped the soft hair between his hands, and pressed his lips to the warm, invisible crown Janez seemed to wear there, a band of gentle heat hidden under gold.
A hand clasped the back of Held’s thigh, high and intimate, and he was stuck fast to Janez’s side. There, with Janez’s head cradled in his arms, heavy and secure against his chest—there, it was as though Held could keep this particular skyman all for himself, right there. Could this simple touch hold him—hold them—together, away from fire and water?
He turned his head to rest his cheek upon Janez’s hair and caught blue eyes in the looking glass.
Blue eyes that were distant. That topped a tight expression. A man staring at the empty space where his leg had once been. And—though Janez knew it not—in the arms of someone who loved him.
“I am not supposed to love or care for any being with legs—mythical or not,” Held told him. “Yet I do.” A flicker of a confused smile crossed those pale features. “I know you cannot understand me, but…I love you. So much so that I would cease to be without you. This is…nothing. You remain, as do I. This means nothing.”
Janez was shaking his head, with that faintly bemused expression, yet Held must have conveyed something—emotion, if not meaning—for Janez rapped the stick once against the floor and struggled to stand.
And gently pulled away.
The skyman stood in the looking glass, tall and proud, handsome in his sleeves and silken hair. The shoe and stick matched in their gleaming blackness—the deep blue of the ribbon and the undercoat set his eyes ablaze.
They shimmered.
The water spilled over. His lip shook, and with a choked sound, Janez lowered his face into his hand to hide. Another strangled cry escaped his heaving chest. Held’s heart twitched at the show of pure misery. He stepped forward, between man and mirror, kissed his hand, and then drew it down to press his lips to the closed lids over streaming eyes. Pressed comfort and love there, pressed whatever it was that had spellbound him the first time Janez had touched his mouth. He wiped away the salt water with his lips—men were made of the sea, but lived in the sky. He knew that now. And when the storm calmed, he touched their mouths so faintly together they barely touched at all.
“You are a skyman,” he breathed there, a secret he would have given the world to be able to say so Janez understood it, “and no less for this.”
Janez’s eyes remained closed. His hand came to rest against the back of Held’s neck. Their foreheads rested upon one another.
And they breathed. Together. Held watching, Janez—waiting, perhaps. The sounds of hammers in the harbour drifted endlessly through the open windows, yet it was as though time moved around them, not through them, and left them as statues, forever intertwined. They had turned to stone and ceased.
“Ich liebe dich,” Janez croaked. Thick and throaty. His face was dry again, his skin pale yet too warm under Held’s thumb where it grazed a shadow of the sickness that still lingered.
Held mustered a word. One of the few he knew, and the only one he’d learned for himself. The one that Janez kept saying to him. The word that Alarik had wept in the sickroom.
“Mein.”
Blue eyes flashed. Shoulders straightened. The chest expanded in a breath…and when that sharp gaze shifted higher, staring over Held’s head to the looking glass, there was a hardness there. A brightness.
“Du bist mein,” Janez murmured, and the smile was a little firmer than before.
“Mein,” Held echoed. On a whim, he pressed his lips to the rasp of rough hair along Janez’s jaw—and then time restarted.
He could hear boots.
Held stepped back just as the door opened, and Doktor entered, carrying fresh blankets.
He eyed them and stopped.
Janez took another breath and tore his eyes from the looking glass. He turned, the stick twisting in the carpet a little, and smiled at Doktor. It was thin and full of pain, but there was a determination behind it, like eyes under a mask.
“Doktor,” he said. “Gehen wir sie überraschen.”
Doktor smiled warmly—the authenticity somehow strange on his cold, angular face—and waved at the door.
Fingers tightened on the stick. A breath pushed at the undercoat.
And then—one lurching, hopping step at a time—the man walked back into the sky.
Chapter Forty-Four
“WE NEED A solution, Your Majesty.”
Alarik longed for the days—and luxuries—of mad kings and cruel lords. In such days, without the wolf at his door, he would have had this damned councillor’s head on a pike, simply for the whining annoyance.
“I am aware,” he said heavily, the groaning emphasis a warning.
A warning not plain enough, it seemed, for such an idiot man. For he chirruped, “Without King Sigurd’s assistance—”
“I know perfectly well what we face without his assistance!” Alarik thundered.
An uneasy silence fell, and Alarik leaned back in his chair, massaging his temples. He sorely did not want to be here. If not for the good doctor’s banishment—and Sofia supporting it all the way, bless her soul—he’d have been sequestered in his brother’s chambers with that odd little foreigner, watching for—
His gut rolled, and he pushed the thought away. No, no. Janez had lived thus far. And if he should be broken and rendered into a childish thing in need of constant care, then so be it. He was the brother of the king. If he needed care, he would have it, and the very best.
But none at all if his kingdom was defeated. He rallied his thoughts and sighed.
“Councillor Baumgartner, you may take your leave.”
Thoughts would be easier without this twittering idiot.
“Your Majesty—”
“Your leave, Councillor.”
That, at last, seemed sufficiently dangerous. The councillor gathered up his books and retreated, bowing all the way, and only when the guards closed the great doors behind him did Alarik lean forward again.
“Although impertinent, Your Majesty, he makes a point,” the first minister said. “We must secure that alliance—or find another.”
“And we shall, but it will not be with Janez,” Alarik said icily. “He has paid enough of a price. More than enough.”
“Perhaps the young princess, Your Majesty? If we look north, rather than west—King Olaf has been recently blessed with a son, and has no love for our enemy.”
“What can we offer above all others? There are plenty of princesses of Ingrid’s age, and with greater purpose to Olaf. They trade, too, like us.”
“Defence,” came the swift reply. “They have the material, but not the skill or treasury for naval . We have the opposite. And our enemy is their own—long have their shore villages been subject to raids and pillages.”
Alarik frowned at the maps spread out on the council-room table. “You propose a joint navy, of a sort?”
“Potentially, Your Majesty.”
It was grossly ambitious…but it could work. Olaf held the straits; he controlled access to the great oceans of the west, on which Sigurd’s men preyed. Olaf had never been an enemy—or much of a friend, it had to be conceded—but a formal alliance…
And he had but one son. If Ingrid were to wed the boy when they were both of age, then she would be the mother
of a king in her turn.
“Send an entreaty to Olaf,” Alarik commanded. “Make no disguise of our intention, he is not a man to fall prey to flattery. And—”
A guard slipped from the room when the great knock sounded upon the door, and Alarik bit back a curse.
“If that is that wretched—”
The door opened.
Alarik’s temper was snuffed out like a pinched candle flame. Janez. Dear Janez. Standing, grey-faced, his weight supported by a mere stick, his trouser rolled and pinned to obscure the missing leg, the existence of which was made all the more obvious by the great, gaping space below it, and the single shoe. He was dressed in his habitual garments—shirt and waistcoat, loose breeches—rather than the uniform he was meant to wear to such occasions.
Oh, but hang the occasion! He stood. He lived. And although he looked dreadful, there was a mask in place. Not his brother, but his second heir. No sibling, but a sailor and a diplomat. Still, Alarik couldn’t bring himself to address him as such.
“Brother,” he murmured.
“My apologies, Your Majesty, for my lateness.”
Alarik shook himself.
“It is nothing. Sit. Boy, fetch more wine.”
The councillors gave greetings and wishes for well-being. A cupbearer brought a glass of wine, which was drained in an instant and immediately replaced. Janez’s hand shook upon the table, and his hair was darkened at the temples—but after the second cup, he relaxed back into his chair a little and waved those trembling fingers.
“Please, do not let me interrupt official business.”
Alarik cleared his throat. Very well. If Janez insisted on the meeting being concluded, then he would conclude it, and as swiftly as possible.
“We are discussing a potential alliance with Olaf, to expand our naval capability.”
It was apparent within moments of the ensuing discussion that Janez was there by sheer force of will, and that alone. He was usually one to speak up with great knowledge of naval matters and the potential for the improvement of the service. But now, he sat passively and quietly while the admiral trumpeted about questions of supremacy in a shared force, and said nothing when the minister of the treasury decided that a joint merchant service to protect trade ships would be an excellent plan, but a joint fighting force too costly.
Alarik cast a glance at that grey, absent face, and decided against further matters.
“This is all irrelevant if Olaf is not willing to join with us,” he said. “Send the word, and we will open our arms and tables to negotiations for Ingrid. Doubtless she would like the opportunity to go abroad once in a while, and visit other lands, and be the better lady for it.”
Rumblings of hesitant agreements.
“You may take your leave, gentlemen. We will resume in the morning.”
Only when the last of his advisors had left them, and the servant had been despatched to fetch Doktor Hauser, did Alarik permit himself to shed crown and kingdom, and look not at his second heir, but at his younger brother.
The younger brother who had fought with him so bitterly, who had thrown such angered words of his unhappiness and sense of personal injustice at his lot in life, and then had nearly died on the filthy deck of a lowly sloop for the country and family that had so used him.
The younger brother whose face was pallid, the hair at his ears damp, and whose fingers shivered faintly upon the table.
“While I cannot express how glad I am to see you up,” Alarik said, “I also cannot shake the idea that you ought not to be.”
A very faint smile crossed that grey face, but the head was shaken.
“I wished to see my family.”
“Your family would have come to you.”
“As though I were dying?”
Alarik flinched.
“I have no wish to do so,” Janez said, “and I felt as though I was suffocating. I needed to move.”
Doktor Hauser slipped into the room without a word. That foreigner, Held, trailed in his wake but hung back as the doctor exchanged his patient’s wine for something else, pale and foaming.
“I wish to eat with family,” Janez said weakly to him.
“You shall. This will ease the pain, but will not induce a sleep.”
Alarik thought Janez looked so stretched thin and exhausted that if the pain were removed, he would be bound to sleep. But he said nothing as the cup was lifted in a quivering grip, and Janez drank the dubious liquid down.
“Doktor,” Alarik said uncertainly. “Are you quite sure—”
The cup slammed down.
“I am not a damned child!” Janez’s eyes flashed fire. “Do not speak around me like I am some dumb—”
Held slipped from the shadows. Wrapping his fingers around Janez’s wrist, he slid his other hand under the cup and urged it upwards once more. To Alarik’s surprise, Janez—far from backhanding the impudence—yielded and drank. And when the cup was empty, Held removed it entirely and retreated behind the doctor like he was merely a servant doing a duty.
But Alarik knew of few servants who would shield their masters from cannon fire, or remain up with them for nights on end through fever-dreams.
He cleared his throat. “I believe Ingrid would delight in seeing her beloved uncle, no?”
She would. And by Janez’s response—to grasp for his cane, and mutter about the royal chambers—Alarik knew that something other than enemy fire had struck him.
“Doktor. Leave us a moment. Take Held, too. We shall come shortly.”
When the door closed, Alarik rose. He took the seat beside Janez and clasped his wrist, a narrow band of too-warm skin between glove and sleeve.
And said, “The first night after—after, I sat up with you in the doctor’s chambers, so sure you were to die. Do not give me hope now, only to endanger yourself by pushing too hard, too soon.”
Janez stared blindly at the table. Licked his lips. Breathed, “I could hear you.”
“Me?”
“You said you were there. But when I reached, you weren’t. Nobody came.”
Alarik’s chest tightened. Those muttered pleas, the weakly clutching hands. They echoed in his ears and grasped at him with phantom fingers. He felt guilty, even as he knew he had no reason.
“You looked right into my face,” he said, fighting to keep his voice even, “and you begged to know where I was. You knew no one, Janez. I was there, I promise you. The only ones who were not were Mother, as the pass has not yet reopened, and the children. Ingrid has been begging to see you. Sofia came. I came. We were there.”
Janez’s eyes reached his own at last. They were wide and desperate. He looked almost like a child again, and it struck Alarik deep in his gut.
He reached out and clasped the back of Janez’s neck, bringing their foreheads gently together.
“You were never alone,” he breathed and felt shaky fingers curl into the crook of his elbow. “Never.”
When he leaned back, Janez’s eyes had closed. He was far too pale, trembling visibly, and his hair was dark with sweat all about his face. He was still sick. Still weak. But the grip of his hand said there was more damage in refusing him than in permitting the exertion.
“Come,” Alarik said softly. “Ingrid has pined for her favourite. The guards can bring a litter, if—”
“I will walk.”
“Janez—”
“I will not appear weakened to spies and strangers. Not in time of war.”
Alarik somewhat thought that war had little to do with it but held his tongue. He offered an arm and helped him to his fe—foot.
It was a slow and painful process up to the royal chambers. The awkward hop was clearly agonising, and Janez refused all assistance beyond the council-room door. By the time they reached the private wing, even his voice had failed; he could only grunt his thanks to the guard who opened the doors.
“Uncle!”
Ingrid’s cry was shrill. A blur of yellow and blue shot from the bay window, and before
Alarik or Doktor Hauser could step between them, the child was upon her beloved uncle. The crash to the carpet sounded painful, yet Janez didn’t cry out.
Rather, he clutched her close, and buried his face in her yellow curls. Her thrilled chatter—including, of course, a scolding for bringing no gift from his visit to Grandmama—masked any noise he might have made there, but his shoulders shook, and in a moment more, she implored him not to cry.
The door closed behind Hauser and Held, and Alarik threw his kingdom to the wind. He knelt, something he hadn’t done since he was a boy, and wrapped arms about his brother and daughter. Skirts rustled, and his wife joined the huddle—until they could consume Janez in the warmth and welcome he’d been so bitterly unaware of in the grips of that terrible fever.
The enemy had taken nothing.
And Alarik would be damned if they were to try again.
Chapter Forty-Five
HEALING CAME SLOWLY.
Held could see the pain that Janez would not paint upon his face. When the chamber doors closed behind Doktor and the last of his potions in the evening, Janez would collapse into the pillows like the very life had been drained from him to leave an empty shell.
Yet once there, he would rage. He cried, more than once, with hands clasped over face as Held brushed his hair. He threw things in outbursts of anger and shouted until Doktor returned, summoned by white-faced, anxious guards. Or he would lie passive and silent under Held’s help and then dismiss him with a single word and turn into his pillows.
In his servants’ quarters, only the adjoining room, Held could hear him cry regardless.
And for a little time, Held could do nothing. Janez was in too much pain for Held to lie with him and soothe the passions. The potions made him sick, and still the fever came and went so he could not abide touch. Other times, he simply didn’t seem to want it and would shy away.
But as the dark nights slowly shortened, and the white foam upon the land melted away, the shadows of physical pain began to ebb from that pale face, and the terrible wasting thinness of his body was arrested by the continual offerings from the kitchen.
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