[ XVIII ]

"Stop!" The shout echoed through the plaza like a gunshot. Eldronrhet lurched to a stop, yanking back on his swing, but keeping the black sword up at an angle like he was about to slice it down right into Keyd's neck. Rhet's fingers dug into me, his breathing ragged in my ear, and I couldn't take my eyes off Keyd. He wasn't dead, he wasn't dead yet. And something—someone—had stopped Eldronrhet.

I tore my eyes away from Keyd and looked around the plaza, in the same direction Eldronrhet had just whirled in. One of the ghereen guys, the three that had been hanging back before, had moved forward. It was the young guy with with the ponytail, who didn't seem a lot older than Keyd. He'd thrown out his arm in a useless reach towards Eldronrhet, and he honestly looked fucking terrified.

"Stop," he said again, quieter, but not meaning it any less. "Stop, this is...this has gone too far! Eldronrhet, you said he had been killed trying to escape, resisting arrest! We didn't want that outcome, but if he brought it on himself...it was unfortunate, but acceptable. But if you do this...it is murder."

"And so?" Eldronrhet snapped at him. He looked back at Keyd, like he was checking to see he was still there and hadn't moved. He hadn't. Eldronrhet flicked his sword down and jammed it right back against Keyd's neck again. This time hard enough to cut, because I could see a trickle of blood down Keyd's skin. "Does the method matter? The result is the same. Raen Keydestas will be dead, and only we will know that it happened this way rather than how it was told."

"Spreading word that he was dead was none of our choice," Arirsanya muttered. He still had Rysa's sword at her own throat as she lay very still and pale under him, staring towards Keyd. Then, louder, "that was something you did, and told no one the actual truth! No one other than yourself. Did you really expect he would not return?"

"He will not return, if you would stop interrupting what I am trying to do!" Eldronrhet said. He jerked his head at his soldiers. None of them moved—they just looked confused and baffled. I wasn't even sure what Eldronrhet was trying to get them to do. Attack Arirsanya? Attack us?

"The agistar is your family," Hesketoan said, and even he sounded unsure about this whole thing. But he didn't seem like he was gonna stop it. He was staring at Keyd, who was still on the ground with Eldronrhet's sword digging into his throat. A big jagged spot on his leather armor looked a lot darker than the rest, almost burned. Did Eldronrhet do that? As goddamn scared as I was, a blind anger boiled up under that. I couldn't fucking stand to see them do this to Keyd.

"This...this is not…" Ponytail-guy looked around kind of wildly, like he couldn't believe he was the only one who thought this was fucking nuts. I thought I saw oen marks on the back of his neck, just under the edge of his collar, but couldn't be sure. "I cannot do this."

"You are either with us, or against us." Arirsanya snapped, like he was just done with this guy and his whining. Rysa tried to wriggle under his foot, but that shield was still holding her. "There is no other choice, Rajhnyon, and you already made yours."

Rajhnyon. I didn't know anything about this guy. I knew he sat at the very end of the council seating, because he was newer. Like anybody on the ghereen, he'd've come from a big important family with a big important name and history, with a lot of pressure and responsibility riding on him. Maybe that's why he'd teamed up with these guys. Because they'd seemed powerful, and Keyd had seemed weak.

Rajhnyon didn't do anything for a few seconds. I saw his chest heave once up and down, but his expression didn't really change as he stared around between Arirsanya and Eldronrhet and Keyd. And then:

"Perhaps I made one choice." Rajhnyon lifted his arms up in an oddly graceful move, touching them to his shoulders. A ripple of energy surged into his hands as he pulled them away again, purplish-black shards twisting out of his shoulders to form into a wide curved blade in each of his fists. His voice shook a little, but his hands were steady. "But now, I'm making another. I am sorry, but I'm against you."

Holy fuck, I hadn't expected that. Neither had anybody else. And Rajhnyon hadn't pulled out those weapons as a bluff—he was already moving, and he was fucking fast. One second he was standing about twenty yards away, and in a rushing blur of motion he was suddenly right the hell on top of Arirsanya, whirling both blades down in a brutal slashing arc.

Arirsanya barely managed to block him, throwing up his arm, a curved shield spiraling off his arm in just enough time to clash against the blades. I felt the impact as a faint jagged hum in my chest. His other arm, the one holding Rysa's sword, flailed up and away from her so he could keep his balance.

"Yktemur chakt!" Arirsanya bellowed, and the shield around his arm exploded. Black glittering shards flew out in a huge curved dome, throwing Rajhnyon backwards and skidding him across the cobblestone. The guy managed to take the hit, roll, and get back on his feet real quick, but he looked dazed and unsteady.

But it'd gotten Arirsanya's attention off Rysa, and she knew how to take an opportunity when she got it. Almost the same second Rajhnyon had hit Arirsanya's shield, Rysa'd rolled away from underneath him, scrambling clumsily to her feet. She was still in the misty purple haze, and her movements were awkward and slow. While Rajhnyon was tumbling around on the ground, Rysa smashed her bound fists down on Arirsanya's arm. Her sword dropped out of his hand, clattered to the stones. She ducked down to grab it at the same time Arirsanya whirled back towards her, but he was too distracted and off-balance to do anything fast enough.

Rysa whipped around and tossed her sword towards Keyd, who threw out a hand and snatched it out of the air. He shoved himself to his feet and slammed it right into Eldronrhet, who'd been distracted by Rajhnyon and Arirsanya and only had a split second to get his sword up in front of him. They clashed together, Keyd almost body-checking him and shoving him back, the sound of metal against metal shrieking out into the plaza. Keyd didn't give Eldronrhet a second to breathe—he was right on him again, moving fast and quick with Rysa's sword, brutal little stabs and short blunt slashes, keeping Eldronrhet on the constant defense with no opportunity to strike back.

Of course Keyd still knew how to fight. He just had to be fucking careful. I didn't know what getting hit with an energy attack would do to him, if his body could take it or not—if any normal body could. I'd been hit with that shit before, but I'd had the ability to absorb it. Keyd didn't. And neither did I, not anymore.

At the same time this was happening, Ansa slammed the palm of her hand right into the face of the soldier in front of her. It wasn't a punch or a slap, it was almost like she'd high-fived his forehead. A ripple of something crackled over him, a low thrum I felt right in the pit of my stomach, and the soldier started to vibrate. shaking so hard that the edges of his armor almost blurred. Then he just collapsed in a crash of armor down to the street. Thick black blood leaked out of his nose and ears and mouth, his eyes wide and staring at nothing. He didn't move at all.

One of Eldronrhet's soldiers had moved up to flank Keyd from behind while he and Eldronrhet were slashing and hacking at each other, Keyd never easing up or slowing down even for a second. The second I opened my mouth to shout a warning, Ansa rushed in, catching Eldronrhet at his side and yelling something in Isji as she did. Eldrorhet had to turn from Keyd to block her, and Keyd whirled around to face the other soldier who was just throwing himself into a full-on swing with his sword.

Keyd ducked low, spun around the guy's side to his back while he was stuck following through with the momentum of his attack. Keyd brought the butt-end of the sword down right against the back of the soldier's neck, above where the collar guard of his armor ended. Even without that being a real weak spot for the clar in general, that was a shitty place to get hit. The soldier made a weird gagging, gasping noise and went right down on his knees, and Keyd hit him again with the sword hilt right in the side of the head. The soldier crashed over onto his side, twitching a little. Keyd leaned over his knees, panting, one arm wrapped around his stomach, but only for a few seconds.

I could hear Ansa's furious shouts as she drove Eldronrhet further back from Keyd, a hard pulse of energy jarring out every time her real sword and his oen one connected. The air almost rippled at the same time, and Eldronrhet almost looked like he was getting shoved back by an invisible force. Behind them, Rajhnyon and Arirsanya were still grappling with each other, Rajhnyon with his short curved swords and Arirsanya meeting him with some kind of weird oen weapons clutched in his fists, the actual blade starting above his knuckles and stretching out at least two feet, sharp and triangular. The way the handles framed his entire fist, it almost looked like brass knuckles with a giant blade stuck on top of them. He and Rajhnyon kept clashing into each other, striking and blocking and twisting, Arirsanya trying to make straight thrusts into Rajhnyon's torso and Rajhnyon trying to slash back at him.

I was still standing like a dumb fucking useless idiot off to the side. And I was alone—Rhet wasn't holding me back anymore, I had no idea where he was, when he'd let go of me. I hadn't even noticed. The soldiers that had been around us were gone, and I had a feeling some of them had legitimately fled the scene. Not all of them had looked like they wanted to do what they were being ordered to. But there were still enough of them in the plaza to outnumber us.

And I didn't see Rysa, until I realized she and Rhet were in the shadows of a nearby building together. The hazy purple cloud was gone now and Rhet seemed like he was working on whatever was keeping her hands stuck together. Her wrists finally popped apart and the two of them split in opposite directions, Rhet immediately smashing up against another of Eldronrhet's soldiers with his sword and Rysa lashing out at another one—one of the guys who'd marched her into the plaza in the first place—with an explosion of black twisting ropes from her wrists.

Eldronrhet's soldiers were getting knocked the fuck out real quick, but they weren't real organized or acting together at a group. And there were still a couple of people, like Hesketoan and one of the other generals, who hadn't gotten into the fight. I'd never seen any of these people actually in a battle, unless it was sitting around throwing insults in a council. Almost all of them were generals, they'd been in war and seen a hell of a lot of combat and led a lot of combat, but this was...almost a brawl. It wasn't organized and it wasn't pretty. Flashes and bursts of energy lit up the plaza, sending little shocks and thrums through my chest, but it was nothing like what it'd used to feel like.

I saw Hesketoan shouting something, to somebody, maybe the soldiers, maybe his own buddies in this fucking mess, but there was really no one to hear him. People were just fighting, striking at whoever they could find that didn't look like an ally. And even though we had Rajhnyon suddenly on our side, it was still five against a hell of a lot more, if I even counted. The chaos was kind of helping, but if the soldiers ever followed any actual orders or worked together we'd probably all be dead.

There was a flash at the corner of my eye, and I whirled around to see a soldier running straight towards me, a sword drawn and his eyes locked on me. Not anyone else, he was definitely coming for me. He probably figured he could just cleave through me like he was slicing a fucking onion and just run right on to somebody who was actually a threat. I was alone and totally defenseless; I didn't even have a weapon, except—

Keyd's sword. The thing was fucking ceremonial, but it was still a sword. I scrabbled for it and wrenched it out of the sheath, gripping the engraved handle with both hands. It didn't feel natural or familiar because it was so short and small, and everything I'd ever practiced with had been heavier and plainer and bigger. But this dude was coming at me and I had nothing else.

The first thing that actually came at me was a streak of crackling energy the guy just threw my way, like we were playing fucking dodgeball. And it worked, because I had to hurl myself to the side, heat scorching past my shoulder and cracking into the wall only a foot or so from me, burning a blackened smoking hole there. He obviously wasn't gonna hit me with anything I could defend against.

My heart was pounding and my mouth tasted like metal and all I could do was stare at the soldier, but he didn't seem to be getting closer, and everything was real fucking slow and focused. Grey light slid in an easy glide across the front of his armor, and I had the time to notice it. I heard footsteps pounding on stone in almost a slow rhythmic beat, a crashing and roaring in my ears, the metal designs on the sword pressing into my skin. The guy had armor everywhere but his head, his face. If I just ran right at him, I could maybe get a hit in. It'd take him off guard. He wouldn't expect it.

Then something hit me, hard, from the side. Shoved me out of the way, nearly knocked me into the gutter. The wind slammed out of me, leaving me gasping and with my vision hazy and crinkling with grey. There was a far-away clank of metal on stone as Keyd's sword tipped out of my hand. A shadow stepped over me, loomed over me, and I had no idea if I was saved or screwed.

A clash of sounds above my head, a couple grunts and blurs of motion that I couldn't get my eyes to focus on, and somebody in full armor crashed to the cobblestones a few feet away. The soldier who'd rushed at me. His face was turned towards me, and black blood bubbled out of his mouth as he tried to stutter something out. I crab-walked backwards fast as hell, until my back slammed into a wall and stone rasped against my skin through my clothes.

Then the person who'd checked me out of the way in the first place was suddenly leaning down towards me. I'd thought it had to be Keyd, throwing himself all heroic on top of me, but it wasn't.

"Hahd!" The arched pattern of triangles across his forehead was the first thing I saw, then his whole face, then the thing that looked like a giant fucking scythe he was gripping in his hands, black and swirling with purplish energy, made of solid oen.

"Hello!" Hahd said, like we were passing each other on the fucking street or something. "Not too late, are we?"

"Christ, no," I panted, scrabbling around in the mud until I managed to get up to my feet, grabbing Keyd's sword off the ground as I did. The soldier was still in front of me, on his side. The front plate of his armor had split open like a busted tin can and there was a dark wet gash underneath. "Fuck."

Hahd flashed me a grin. "More of us coming, don't worry," he said. He prodded at the guy, who he'd basically sliced open from throat to stomach, and he just kinda...flopped limply over onto his back and didn't move. Blood throbbed hard in my ears with every sickeningly hard pound of my heart, and I tasted copper in my mouth. I had to look away, head pounding.

Hahd had said more of us coming. Who, and why, and how? Not that I was complaining, but I wasn't even sure where Hahd had come from. And then I realized….Rysa. She'd been in Lojt for over a day; she'd probably been doing this before they'd caught her. Gathering up people, getting them prepared in case something like this went down. Maybe even expecting it to happen. Eldronrhet wasn't a guy to just throw up his hands and back down, not after everything. Even if we told him Keyd was absolutely necessary for ending the war, he'd probably think he could do it better, or that we were lying.

"Here," Hahd said, and curled his hand around both of mine and the grip of Keyd's sword. Energy buzzed against my hands and a blackish-purple flame licked up the blade, blazing with a sharp swirling light. "Might help."

"You're gonna stay with me, right?" Even if he'd just turned the sword into a fucking Excalibur lightsaber or something, I was still the biggest weak link in this fight. I was gonna get myself killed. I was actually surprised I hadn't been the first target, since I'd go down so damn easily. And it'd seriously fuck up Keyd if I did.

"Don't worry," Hahd said again. We were still off to the side, partly down one of the streets, no one was paying attention to us. But they would.

"I'm worrying, dude! Can you at least hide me or something?" I said. "I can't do shit right now, even with this." I waved the sword at him frantically. If I was invisible or hidden, at least I wouldn't get targeted right away and maybe I could actually help in the fight.

Hahd actually considered that for a second, then shook his head. "Too risky to keep up," he said. "Alan, I know you're not a soldier, but you're not alone here. If you need to stay out of the way, no one would think less of you."

That was the last thing I was worried about; some kind of stupid ego thing. I just wanted to help my friends and not die in the process. But Hahd could actually help, and the longer I held him here the less useful he'd be. Back in the plaza, a voice that was familiar yelled out in pain, followed by a slam of metal against metal. And now a hazy mist was coming down from the sky, a half-assed rain, and that wasn't gonna help any part of this situation.

"Okay. Just go," I said, grabbing Hahd by the shoulders and pushing him out into the road. "Just go."

Hahd dashed off without another word. I flattened myself against the wall, gripping Keyd's sword and trying to peer around the corner to see if there was anything I could do, someone to help that wouldn't almost get me killed. Dark shapes and shadows clashed against each other in the plaza in the misty rain, most of them too hard to see from where I was and without much light. There was a ring of camp lanterns on poles set up around the area, but they didn't do that much. I couldn't tell who was who, what was going on,

And then, two shadows stumbled towards the edge of the plaza, away from everyone else. One was kind of pushing the other back, driving them into constant defense like Keyd had been doing to Eldronrhet. But the person wasn't defending themselves nearly as fast or good—they looked like they were barely holding up, using both hands to grip the hilt of their sword, staggering further away at any opportunity, closer to one of the lanterns. Dull gold light glinted off black hair, and reddish-brown hair.

Fuck, Keyd.

The other soldier basically had him cornered, away from everyone and by himself, with just a sword and what looked like barely any strength left. Then I recognized the other soldier—he was one of the ghereen guys, one of the generals, either Dsmirchale or Ereojrhet. Jesus Christ, this guy wasn't gonna go down easy and he didn't even look hurt, he was just whaling away at Keyd like he had nothing better to do. Almost like he was fucking teasing him. He had plenty of time to use some kind of energy attack, but he wasn't. He was just wearing him down the old-fashioned way, slamming down big wide swings with his sword that left him completely open every time, but Keyd had no time to get in a hit of his own. His arms were shaking in between every strike he blocked, I could see that even from here.

Keyd shouted something to the guy something in a lot of Isji but I did catch one word on all of it—Dsmirchale. So now I fucking knew who he was, I just had to get to him not kill Keyd. Bot I was far away, and all I had was a stumpy little sword with some magic coating on it and this guy was a general and even if I could reach them in time there was no way—

But I had to. I shoved off the building and took off, sprinting as fast as I fucking could towards them. Dsmirchale had his sword raised again, and this time and huge glow of energy surged up along the blade, bunching up in a big buzzing hum near the base that looked fucking bad. Keyd was moving to block him, but I didn't think it was gonna do any good this time.

A sudden screech tore through the air, like a giant fucking bird was soaring overhead, and then a shadow plummeted out of the sky and slammed down onto Dsmirchale before he could swing. He went sprawling down to the cobblestone, flailing, a person-shaped shadow on his back. His aim went wild and a blast of energy blazed off his sword and drove itself harmlessly into the street, leaving a wide smoking scorch mark in its wake.

The shadow on his back stood up. It was Dahne, a pair of glittering wings flaring from her back, all jagged crescents and swooping lines. Had I even known she could fucking fly? She hopped off Dsmirchale's back, and kicked him over onto his stomach. Light flashed in her hands, rolling down her arm to her fingertips, into what looked like a pair of flat black rings. She stepped one boot down on Dsmirchale's wrist, said something in Keyd's direction. He'd come out the corner he'd gotten backed into, and he grabbed her shoulder and said something back. Then Dahne spun around and dove right back into the fight, leaving him alone.

My first thought was to get to him. Even if I couldn't fight at all and Keyd only partly could, at least we could do it together. He'd ducked down low and it almost looked like he was talking to Dsmirchale, who seemed like he was down for the count. Keyd had Rysa's sword resting against the back of his neck, so he probably wasn't gonna try to move. But then;

"Arirsanya!" Dsmirchale bellowed out, and great, great, was he gonna tag his buddy into this fight? Keyd probably couldn't take any more, and when I looked wildly around the plaza and saw Arirsanya charging towards us, he looked a little battered but not like anything was slowing him down. Why the fuck had Dahne left Keyd alone, he was the one who needed the most goddamn backup! I broke into a run again—because Dahne throwing herself out of the sky like a bird of death had distracted me from actually moving—but Arirsanya was closer, and faster.

Then somebody tore right past me, closed the distance in like two fucking seconds and barreled right into Arirsanya. Just a straight-up tackle, no weapon, no anything except a full body-slam. They went rolling together, tangling and flailing and struggling like a couple of angry cats, and I heard somebody make a kind of raging cry of pain. Arirsanya was the first to stagger to his feet and I still had no idea who the other person was, but now I was there and I had a blazing sword in my hand and so I slammed the blade down right across Arirsanya's back like I was swinging a baseball bat.

Arirsanya grunted, staggered forward, but otherwise nothing really happened. I didn't even make a mark on his leather armor. He sucked in a heavy breath and whirled around, probably just to see who'd given him an annoying slap on the back. When he saw me, clutching my little sword and staring him down, he actually looked he wanted to laugh. But he looked fucking pissed off, too.

"You and Keydestas are so very alike," he said. "Fighting uselessly for something you'll always lose."

"I don't see us losing," I said, even though I had no idea if that was true. I could still hear the sounds of fighting behind me, but maybe he was right. Maybe we were losing.

Arirsanya snorted. "Of course you don't. It's why you refuse to stop this, to accept that everything you've tried is falling apart, that you have nothing left."

"Kinda sounds like you're talking about yourself," I said, and that's when Arirsanya stopped looking like this was funny at all. Those weird brass-knuckle blades suddenly twisted into his hands, dark and honestly kind of terrifying, because I sort of knew how to block a sword attack but what the hell were those things and how was I supposed to stop them?

A vibration suddenly rumbled up through my feet, and something tore through the ground right under Arirsanya, raising and cracking the cobblestones and churning up dirt and stone, throwing him off his feet. He hit the ground back first and rolled over, coughing, trying to get back on his feet as fast as he could. I looked over and saw Ansa crouched a couple yards away, her hand pressed flat to the ground, a long strip of torn up ground stretching from her fingertips all the way to the edge of the plaza. Before Arirsanaya could really get up, she charged him, like a sprinter taking off from a starting block, coming at him with her sword.

I ducked out of the way as the two of them started laying into each other, quick and furious. Dahne was crouched on the ground nearby, holding her head and trying to pull herself up, but she looked unsteady. The back of her hair looked wet, shiny. Blood? Maybe. Arirsanya and Ansa were practically fighting on top of her. She managed to heave herself up shakily and tried to crawl away in the other direction. I was heading for her before I knew what I was doing, dodging around Arirsanya and Ansa. I hooked my arms under Dahne's and dragged her a few feet across the cobblestones. She didn't seem to want the help.

"Alan, haol daemakij, daemajakeotAnsadama," she gasped, trying to twist out of my hold. Don't help me, help Ansa, she'd said.

"I can't help her, I can't fucking fight!" I'd done absolutely nothing to Arirsanya except briefly annoy him. All I could do was try and get Dahne out of the middle of this. But I twisted my head around to look back at Arirsanya and Ansa. They'd managed to pull apart and were circling each other, but Ansa's sword was lying a dozen feet away and Arirsanya still had his. Ansa was leaning heavily on her left leg, like she couldn't put much weight on the other one.

Ansa threw out her hand and a ripple blasted out through the air, almost like the warp of heat waves. Arirsanya dodged it, but he wasn't moving that fast. They were both hurt, but Ansa looked worse off. Arirsanya charged her with both oen blades forward, probably trying to just get the fight over with before he couldn't handle anymore, and Ansa couldn't get out of the way in time. They smashed together, and a spray of black blood splattered across the cobblestones—whose, I had no idea. Dahne shouted something in my ear but I didn't know what I was supposed to do.

Then a sliver of light streaked through the plaza and drove into Arirsanya's shoulder, jarring him loose and off-balance. All of us fucking looked around because where the hell had that come from, and what the shit had it even been? It'd come from the right, and the only thing in that direction was a narrow little street that branched off one of the main ones.

And someone was standing in the middle of it. I was pretty sure it was a dude, but they had a huge fucking bow gripped in their hand, held out in front of them and blocking their face. The whole weapon was jet black, curved and full of swooped sharp shapes, and flickering with deep purple light. From here I couldn't tell if it was actually just entirely made of oen or some kind of regular weapon built with the entities, but the giant shimmering arrow nocked to it was definitely pure energy.

The second arrow tore through the air and slammed into Arirsanya's chest, and something happened. Either the arrow exploded or it absorbed into him or something else, but it just fucking disappeared. Arirsanya wrenched backwards like he'd been slammed with a sledgehammer, staggering away and nearly falling to a knee. Ansa collapsed on the ground near him with a grunt, heaving in ragged breaths. Another arrow crashed into Arirsanya, the stomach this time, doubling him over with a breathless grunt. Didn't seem like he was getting hurt, but he was definitely distracted as hell with all these arrows pummeling him.

I dove to Ansa's side, skidding down on my knees and scooping an arm around the back of her shoulders, trying to pull her up and on her feet. She seemed dazed, unsteady, and couldn't really respond to me trying to help her. She was like dead weight, and I couldn't even get her halfway off the ground. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Arirsanya finally throw up his arm and get a shield around his neck and head while more arrows twapped into the rest of him with loud leathery smacks.

Ansa's weight suddenly got a whole lot lighter, and Dahne's face peered at me from Ansa's other side. "Come on!" she said, and started heaving Ansa towards one of the streets that led out of the plaza, just to get out of the way. It didn't seem like Arirsanya was gonna get to come after us right away, so we had a few seconds to get Ansa somewhere out of the way. Maybe Dahne could help her; all soldiers knew basic healing spells and maybe she could do something.

We set Ansa bodily down in a doorway, and she slid down against the door and slumped there, panting and sorta shaking herself back into reality.

"Kair?" she asked, blinking hard and scowling. She tried to move her leg, and gave a sharp grunt and grimaced when she did. "Ykte!"

"Demua haikahm ukuen?" Dahne asked, doing a fast check-over of Ansa's leather armor, turning her head side to side, lifting her arms, moving her hands. Her right leg was obviously a mess, but the other one seemed okay. "Nyent yaskare ukuen?" Just this? Anything else?

"Shenfe haikahm. Hejkaji mrij," Ansa sighed out, closing her eyes and gritting her teeth. Just that. I'm fine. "Jehranj. Hanaat." Stupid. Stupid. Two words for stupid, the second more intense than the next.

"Ekyn daemajakal kyrol. Ekyn daemajakal nkere. Jehranj bahn." You helped me. Helped us. That's not stupid.

Ansa cracked one eye open, and the two of them looked at each other quietly. Dahne was still holding Ansa's hand, paused in the middle of checking her for injuries. She'd been pausing for a long time. She looked incredibly serious,

"...arka bahn," Ansa said, and shelooked away from Dahne and towards me. "Get back to the fight," she said. "I'll be fine."

"I think...that it's over," Dahne said. She was staring back into the plaza, and even before I turned around I realized I couldn't feel the punches and buzzes of energy anymore, and everything was a hell of a lot quieter. Had everything really...ended? What had happened? Who'd won? Was there even a way to win this at all?

For the first time, I realized that we weren't really alone in the area anymore. A pretty damn big crowd had gathered up—I'd been too busy trying to stay alive to notice until now. But a bunch of people having a big noisy fight right near a camp had drawn a lot of attention; soldiers clogging up the streets and even some peeking down from rooftops. I was too far away, too dazed and exhausted to see faces, to figure out what any of them were thinking. They just looked like an audience watching a really brutal sport, tense and transfixed and maybe a little overwhelmed.

Light footsteps padded towards us, and I turned to see our mystery archer jogging our way, still holding that ridiculously huge black bow in one hand, now lowered to his side. And now I could recognize him. Even with his still unfamiliar short hair. Kir. What the hell—hadn't he been arrested? At this point I practically expected Darban to show up, and the last time I'd seen him he hadn't been able to get out of bed.

"You're all right?" he asked, kind of to all of us. He twisted his arm as the spoke, and the entire bow just dissolved into a blackish mist and whirled around his arm before disappearing through his clothes. Ansa managed to give him a sarcastic look without saying anything, but Dahne nodded and rose to her feet. Kir caught her by the back of the neck and she did the same, and they said a couple quiet words to each other before Kir's eyes wandered past her shoulder and fixed on me.

"Alan!" he said, like he hadn't realized it was me. Maybe he hadn't. Dahne stepped aside and Kir came towards me, holding down his hand. I grabbed it, and he hauled me up to my feet in a rush. The guy was real strong, even if he was on the shorter and lighter end of the clar spectrum. I could feel a buzz in his skin, maybe the oen from that bow mark settling down into him again. I'd seen his oen marks before, but never what they did. Archery. Huh. Seemed to make sense.

"Hey, man, it's good to see you," I said, wrapping him up in a big tight hug. It'd felt like fucking years. His hair even looked longer than before. I felt him laugh, and then he took me by the shoulders and held me at arms' length.

"Same for you," he said. "Especially unhurt."

"Weren't you...arrested? What the hell happened?"

Kir lifted one shoulder. "Hm, we were. But when Rysanys, Hahdesyan, Dahnerajh, and several others showed up at the place we were being held, our guards did not put up much resistance," he said. "There were only two of them, and they didn't wish to have a losing fight."

I laughed. "Sure, sounds totally reasonable. Jesus. Fucking...shit."

Kir squinted at me, and suddenly he was grabbing the back of my neck and pulling me closer. "Are you all right?" he asked, real quiet, real serious.

"I—yeah." My body was exhausted and wrung-out and shaking from the adrenaline rush, my head ached, my chest felt small and hard to breathe with, my eyes would barely focus on anything, but I was...okay.

"Alan," Kir said, almost sternly.

"I just—a lot of shit just went down," I said. "Not what I'm used to. Seeing this kind of...stuff." It'd been a long time since I'd been this close to a real fight. I'd forgot what it was like, how fucking scary it was, and why even with the abilities I'd used to have I'd never been trained like a real soldier. That wasn't how I fought my battles either.

Kir's hold on my neck loosened up a little. "You've seen a lot of things that even our people haven't," he said. "Certainly a lot your people don't often, I would think."

"Yeah." God, I was so tired. Kir's words made sense, and I knew how to respond, but it all seemed to be happening on autopilot. It'd been a long time since I'd been through anything like that, and the last time I had I'd almost died. When I swayed forward slightly, Kir caught me. An arm around my shoulders, another steady on my elbow. I almost pulled away, and then...gave up. I let myself lean on him, face on his shoulder, arms loose at my sides. I had no idea how long I stayed there, but it was at least a minute or two. And Kir didn't seem to mind.

"He's all right," Kir said eventually to somebody else, definitely not me, and slowly unwrapped me out from his arm. I glanced up, forcing my eyes to focus. Keyd was standing right in front of us, damp from the rain and bright little drops of water standing out in his hair.

"What just happened?" I asked, and Keyd reached out and took my hand. I let him pull me close, still not sure what the fuck was even happening, especially not when Keyd folded his arms around my shoulders and half-hugged, half-slumped onto me. I wasn't ready for it, and staggered under his weight. Kir grabbed me under the arms and kept us both up.

"Christ, Keyd, you okay?" I grabbed at him, suddenly panicking that he was hurt, trying to feel him all over for some kind of injury,

"Okay. Very okay." Keyd's arms tightened around me so hard I almost couldn't breathe, and then he eased off a little. A red ribbon of blood slicked down to his collar from the little cut Eldronrhet had sliced open on his neck, soaking into his shirt, but most of it was clotted and dried by now. And the rain was speckling some of it away. Keyd gripped the sides of my face in his hands, hovering his forehead right near mine. "You? You're all right?"

"I'm fine." I really didn't want to ask what happened? again, because I was getting sick of the question. There wasn't much of a clear answer, either. Since we were dead or arrested, somehow we'd...won. Or at least come out of this fucking weird brawl battle on top. I had to guess everything was kind of okay, for the moment.

I did something, moved in some way, and Keyd flinched against me and hissed in a soft breath. I only heard it because his face was right next to my ear.

"What, what? Are you okay?"

"Okay," Keyd assured me again in English, but he did put his hand on the big blackened spot on the side of his leather chestpiece. "It's not that bad."

"Does anyone want to ask if I'm all right?" Ansa said crankily from the doorway, and I laughed. Which probably sounded really insensitive, but she'd sounded exactly like Rhet.

"Are you all right?" Keyd said immediately and very seriously, and Ansa snorted and looked exasperated.

"Just need a Healer," she said. She nodded towards the huge crowd of people that was clogging up the streets and starting to edge into the plaza. "There's got to be somebody over there."

"I'll find someone," Dahne told her, and headed off. I'd bet everyone needed a Healer in some way or another, except maybe me. I was okay, except maybe being in slight shock or adrenaline overload or something. Nothing really seemed real, more like a really vivid dream or maybe like being extremely drunk. When I looked around the plaza everything seemed kind of far away and disconnected, like I was just watching a movie. But Keyd's arm around me felt real, about the only thing that did.

More soldiers had been fighting with us than just Hahd and Dahne and Kir. There was another guy with the standard military haircut and his leather armor half sliced to pieces on his left side, and he had Hesketoan on the ground at his feet in one of those hazy purple clouds. Kir was talking to him, making motions like he wanted to move Hesketoan somewhere else. Hahd had a small group of people around him, a couple women and men who looked like his buddies, and it seemed like he was thanking them, or basically telling them they'd done a good job. Friends of our friends had shown up to fight with us, and probably all thanks to Rysa.

Keyd kept his arm around me, and I kept mine around him, as we moved slowly back towards the center of the plaza. People did look hurt, like Rhet holding his right arm close to his chest and supporting it with his left, and Hahd was sprayed all over in black blood—if it was his, I had no idea. He didn't look that hurt. But all Eldronrhet's soldiers were down; either lying in unmoving heaps or getting restrained, and so were most of the generals and Worthies who'd started this. They were kind of grouped together in one area; Dsmirchale and Ereojrhet and Arirsanya had been tossed in a miserable-looking pile together, all hazy with that cloudy purple stuff. Arirsanya's armor looked like somebody had punched about a dozen burned holes in it, and I had to guess that was Kir's work.

Suddenly, Rysa just popped up right in front of us. She looked messy, bloody, and still kind of pissed off, but in kind of a triumphant way. I was just glad to see she was okay. She had somebody wrapped up in the oen marks from her wrists like black ropes, so many and so tightly that I couldn't even tell who it was. She flicked her hands, like she was shaking water off them, and the person twisted and flopped down to their knees, squirming and grunting.

"Here's something for you," she said to Keyd. Black blood streaked her face, matted her hair. A cut tore down one leg of her pants, nearly from thigh to knee, the whole wound clotted with black. Keyd gave her a real pointed look, but she shook her head, gestured to whoever she had all wrapped up like a weird inky present. "First, this."

The smooth black ropes on the person's head peeled back, like weird boneless fingers, and Eldronrhet's furious face glared out at us. Oh, fuck this guy, had he seriously just survived? Probably by hiding in a corner somewhere—I hadn't seen him at all during the fight after he and Keyd and Ansa had been duking it out.

Keyd still had Rysa's sword shoved through his belt, and suddenly he flipped it out, spinning it easily around in his fingers like he was twirling a baton, and then whipped it up against Eldronrhet's throat. Rysa's oen pulled aside, baring a nice clear patch of skin for the sword to rest against. Eldronrhet's throat rolled, and the metal tip pushed just a little deeper into his skin.

Keyd stood there for a long second, the sword tip tucked up under Eldronrhet's chin. Then he shook his head once, slowly, almost too slow to even mean anything. "If you were me, in this moment, you would kill me," he said. Soft, a real pleasant library voice. But I think everyone in the damn plaza heard it. "There is a part of me that might even find it relieving to do. I wouldn't enjoy it, not the way you would. You are still my family, however contrarily to that word you have behaved. My mother would not—"

"You do not get to speak about her!" Eldronrhet snarled. Rysa ticked one finger, and one of the thicker black ropes pulled tight around Eldronrhet's neck, making him gasp and wheeze for breath. Keyd caught Rysa's eyes, gave her a look or made a little gesture, something, and the rope eased looser again.

"Neither myself, nor my father, killed her," Keyd said quietly. "We did not take her away from you. She took herself away from us—from all of us. You may have hated my father for that, hated me for living while my mother did not, and perhaps that's understandable in some way. But what you did here has nothing to do with my family. You only cared about the influence you were losing, the power you no longer had, what my father did take away from you. What you thought you could easily take back from me."

Eldronrhet didn't answer, just shut his mouth in a furious white line. If I were Keyd, I'd be beating the shit out of this guy. But that's why Keyd was a better person than me. He could actually restrain himself.

"This is over," Keyd said to Eldronrhet. "Everything you were trying to do here, it is over. The Worthies are over. Everything is likely to change once we make our peace with the clarbach, and you will have no place in it. All you wanted to do was hold our people back, claiming traditions and culture were more important than anything. But when our traditions and culture are hate and fear and prejudice...they need to change. And they will."

Keyd took a deep breath, and stepped back. Held out the sword to Rysa, who took it carefully and put it back in the sheath at her side. "Arrest him, please," he said to her then.

"Gladly," Rysa said, and she yanked up on the oen ropes that Eldronrhet was still wrapped in and dragged him to his feet. Eldronrhet was still glaring at Keyd, and kind of at me, and because I was an immature dick, I flipped him off. Not that he knew what it meant, but it still felt good in a real petty way.

"All of these soldiers are officially under arrest," Keyd said, louder and more to the entire plaza. "For treason and war crimes, and—"

Keyd stopped when somebody staggered up to us, a guy with his hair falling out of a ponytail. Rajhnyon, the guy who'd changed sides at the last damn second and actually helped us. He dropped on his knees in front of Keyd and practically slammed his head down to the ground. I didn't see this done a whole lot. I'd only seen Keyd do it. It was an ultimate show of respect, about the most humble thing anyone could possibly do.

Rajhnyon was already babbling, just vomiting a whole bunch of tangled words towards Keyd's feet. "I'm—agistar arjala—I am so sorry, it wasn't—I didn't know it would go so far, what they would do, I—I didn't want—"

Keyd crouched down in front of the guy, touched his face and tilted him up so they were staring right at each other. Rajhnyon shut up right away, eyes wide and shoulders heaving.

"It's difficult to forgive something like this," Keyd said, and Rajhnyon shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut. "But even more difficult to ask for that forgiveness. You fought here, defended me. While I cannot trust you completely, I cannot believe you are an enemy. You made one choice, and then another. Either could have been the right one, depending on who came away from this victorious."

"I know I made a mistake," Rajhnyon said, his voice rasping out fast and desperate. "I should—I know I ought to take any punishment the others do."

"We'll see," Keyd said. "The actions of traitors are not our first priority. Ending a war is. Would you agree?"

"I would," Rajhnyon whispered.

"Good." Keyd sounded firm but somehow gentle, sort of the way he'd talked to the soldiers at the valley. "You will be arrested, with the others. For now. But your actions here will be considered later."

"I understand," Rajhnyon said, and willingly let Rhet come up and lead him away when Keyd motioned at him.

Then Keyd seemed to forget exactly what he'd been talking about or even doing before Rajhnyon came stumbling up, and didn't do anything for a few seconds. He was also probably exhausted and overwhelmed and I didn't blame him at all for it. But the uncertain pause in everything broke whatever had been holding back all the soldiers who'd been drawn to the fight. Suddenly they were all coming into the plaza, talking, buzzing excitedly, heading right for us. Keyd basically got swarmed with people and kind of got whirled away from my side, but in what looked like a good way. These were all people who seemed real glad he was alive, that the Worthies had been stopped and arrested and the chaos and confusion in Lojt was basically mostly over.

I managed to get away from the biggest part of the crowd and just kind of stand back, out of the way. While I was watching Keyd, half-smiling and half-wishing I could go to sleep for about a million years, Kir suddenly popped up at my side. The guy I'd seen him talking to earlier was one of the people who was flocking around Keyd, and I nodded towards him.

"Who's your buddy, there?"

"Tfor Kaehldestan," Kir said. "And old...well. Complication. But someone who didn't want to see what the Worthies were doing come to pass."

"I'm guessing that's what a lot of these other people are here for," I said, thinking about the people I didn't even know who'd shown up with Hahd.

"I would think so," Kir said. "Darban would have been here, if he could."

"Shit, right, how's he doing?"

"Well. Much better." Kir's smile was small but real. "Moving around for some periods of time, now. Complaining quite a lot about it, when he wasn't allowed to. I expect he will somehow make his way here, no matter what Ihen tells him against it."

"That's good. Great. That's so great."

"You know," Kir said. "I've never thanked you. You've always supported us—whether you knew you were doing it or not—and have always cared about us, and treated us no different from anyone else. It's fairly impossible for anyone of our race to behave completely normally around the two of us, even if they aren't against our relationship, as you...likely know. So you understand what it means to just be...accepted."

"You've thanked me," I said. At his wedding he definitely had. "But, you're welcome."

Kir smiled at me, but as he did his expression changed, going from gently pleased to almost overjoyed. I wasn't surprised at all when I turned around and saw Darban coming into the plaza. He had a dark wooden stick clutched in his right hand, basically a cane, leaning hard on it and almost dragging his left leg as he walked. His left arm still looked kind of floppy and not completely under his control, but at least he was moving it. Ihen was at his side, not holding him up or helping him, but clearly watching out and making sure he was handling himself okay.

Kir got to his side fast as anything, an arm up around his back and the other resting on his hip. Darban turned, slow and a little awkward, caught Kir's shirtfront with his clumsy half-working hand, and hauled him into a kiss. Just right out in the open, which I'd never seen them do other than their wedding. And Kir got real into it, so enthusiastic that I turned away for a couple seconds, just for like...privacy.

When I looked back, the three of them were moving towards Keyd. The crowd slowly realized who was trying to get through and started to scramble out of the way, until Darban finally got up to him. They actually hugged each other, which was sort of surprising but mostly not. I was just fucking glad to see both of them, everybody, all the people I knew, alive and generally all right. How we'd got through the last half hour was basically a goddamn miracle, but we'd all made it. Together.

And we all had a long way to go still, but we'd finally hit the beginning of the end, and the start of an entire new world.

#

The second 'official' meeting between Keyd and Alief happened back in the Kitsa valley, the same fucking day. I'd tried to get Keyd to rest for like two damn seconds, but that just wasn't his style. This time somebody'd set up a tent down on the valley floor, but it was open on two sides—both the sides that faced the two camps. So everybody could see them inside, this time sitting on either side on a tiny table. There were a couple rolls of paper on the table and some pens—well, they were fucking quills, but close enough. And I could see all of this up close and for myself, because this time I was there.

A lot of people were, actually. Rysa, me, Oredaiken, and Lahjenlehr for the oenclar. Alief had brought that one woman from Uillad just like I'd thought, Ociir, fucking Asaed, and another man and woman I didn't know. I figured they were maybe her other advisors, since Ociir and Asaed both were. I was surprised about Asaed, because there was no way Alief had let him know about the real shit that was going down. But he was the war guy, so he probably had to be at a war-ending thing, whether Alief actually wanted him here or not.

There were two other people there who weren't soldiers or politicians. They were Keepers; one oenclar and one clarbach. Our Keeper was Jarynphar, Kir's friend, and the clarbach Keeper was a woman. They eyed each other like they were seeing some kind of fascinating new thing they really wanted to study. They were there to basically watch what went down and actually write down any official forfeit, since something like a single valley was understood without it but the entire country...everyone wanted to make real sure it was legal and legit and no one could back out later. Not that there was actually a chance of Alief or Keyd doing that, but an actual written record was probably a good idea in general.

Keyd and Alief sure knew how to get shit done efficiently. They outlined the treaty down into real simple points, past the general forfeit itself. The oenclar weren't allowed to engage the clarbach on other worlds, and vice versa. The clarbach weren't allowed to attack or invade or do anything aggressive towards any oenclar cities, and vice versa. Neither race was allowed to ever engage each other in any kind of battle, warfare, ambush, attack, or anything else on any other part of Clarylon, either. Basically, they couldn't fight anywhere in the entire damn universe.

Ociir and Rysa stood next to each other the entire time. Sometimes Rysa had her hand on his shoulder, and sometimes Ociir linked his arm through hers. In fact, they'd openly hugged each other in front of every damn person in the valley before the meeting had really started. Everybody would have seen it. No idea what people would think of it, but it was an interesting start to this whole new chunk of clar history.

Once Keyd and Alief got everything figured out exactly the way they wanted, which didn't take long at all, Jarynphar and the other Keepers wrote it all down. On the same piece of paper, in two columns—one version of the treaty in Isji, and the other in Ebai. Which made a lot of sense. Keyd read it over and approved it, Alief read it over and approved it, and then weirdly Keyd had Rysa read it too. Rysa's eyes flicked back and forth over the paper, looking at both versions of the treaty. She spent more time looking at the left side, the clarbach's half. I realized she was the only person here who could read both languages.

"They're the same," she said eventually, and then glanced at Jarynphar and the other Keeper. "Not that we don't trust you," she said. Jarynphar didn't look offended, and neither did the clarbach Keeper. It wasn't like there'd been a lot of trust between these races in the past, so it was probably understandable to make sure the treaty said the same exact thing.

Then Alief signed her name in graceful loops and swoops right under the clarbach half, and then Keyd signed equally as neatly under the oenclar half. And then everybody who was in the tent signed too, under their 'half' of the treaty—as witnesses or just as people who supported the treaty, I had no idea. Rysa hesitated before she signed, and then put her name down in Isji right in the middle. Asaed looked like was really didn't want to fucking sign any damn treaty, and his signature was an angry scrawl that barely looked like letters even to me. He was the last to sign. But then Alief picked up the quill—that Asaed had thrown down on the table and kind of splattered some ink across the edge of the treaty—and held it out. To me.

"Me," I said, kind of stupidly.

"Of course," Keyd and Alief said at the exact same time. Keyd looked startled at her, but Alief just did one of those eye-smiles and kept on holding out the quill to me.

Somebody was gonna have a field day with this later, gay foreigner alien signing their huge important peace treaty. But I took the quill, and tried my fucking best to sign my name decently. I didn't have nice handwriting even when I was using a real damn pen, and I'd never got the hang of quills. My signature, in regular English, looked real weird next to all the names written in Isji and the clarbach alphabet. But now it was there, permanently. I'd put it next to Keyd's name, and he caught my eye and smiled when I handed the quill back. He'd noticed.

And then...that was it. I was the last person to sign. The treaty was fucking made, and the war was over.

#

Keyd and I spent the night in the camps back in Lojt, maybe the last night we ever would. I could tell Keyd wanted to be in the middle of his soldiers, knowing that he belonged here again and—even if he wasn't universally adored by everyone—nobody wanted to fucking overthrow him now. Well, there probably were some supporters of the Worthies lurking out there that we'd have to weed out and deal with, but nobody who could do anything like Eldronrhet had tried to do. Things were, for right now, stable.

Keyd'd already spent most of the day talking with people, soldiers eager to assure him they hadn't wanted anything to do with the coup at all, or ones that were a little more reserved about their support and wary about the whole peace thing—but not dismissing it or Keyd completely. There were also the people like Yelanjuhn, who walked up to him, basically told him, "don't screw this up", and walked away again. I'd been right there when that'd happened, and Keyd had looked at me with such a what the fuck expression that'd I'd had to laugh.

My energy level had taken a real fast dive a couple of hours after the whole fucking fight and treaty signing had happened, the last of the adrenaline wearing off and all the aftermath of the political stress catching up to me all at the same time. Keyd had picked up on it and nudged me in the direction of our old tent, telling me he'd be right there, and I was real happy to do just that. Once I was inside, I stripped completely out of the clothes I'd been wearing for days, heated up a little pot of water on the portable stove-thing Keyd usually used to make weird tea with, scrubbed myself down as well as I could, and then climbed into the bed. Exhausted, but determined to stay awake until Keyd came back.

He really did show up just a few minutes later. Watching him push through the door flap of a tent and duck inside was so nostalgically familiar that I smiled just to see it. It'd been a long time since since we'd even been in this tent together, and it felt like something from another life. Keyd pausing just inside the door once he saw me in the bed was also real familiar, something I must've seen at least a hundred times. Even the same expression on his face—the one that was always halfway between surprised and happy.

"Hey there, hero," I said, propping myself up on one elbow.

"What?" Keyd tilted his head like a puzzled puppy, which was flat-out adorable.

"You ended a fucking war today, man. One that's been going on for centuries. That's pretty damn heroic."

Keyd scrunched up his face, shook his head. "Not really, no."

"Yes, really. Completely really. Get over here."

Keyd came over to the bed, sliding himself down on the edge of it, sitting right up by my head and turned towards me. Nice to have him close, but it hadn't been what I'd meant at all.

"No, come on. Clothes off, get in. I'm already way ahead of you." I flopped the blankets back so he could see just how many clothes I wasn't wearing. I was tired, my head hurt, and sleep sounded amazing, but I wanted this more. I'd almost watched him die, again, today. I wanted a real reminder that he was alive, that we both were.

"Oh. I see." Keyd bit down on a smile, and didn't waste any time catching up.

"That's how it works in stories, man," I said, watching him shamelessly as he unbuckled and unbuttoned and untucked and pulled and stripped everything off himself, scattering everything around on the floor. "The happily ever after. You save the day, win the battle, end the war, and then you get the guy at the end."

"I thought I already had you," Keyd said, swinging a leg over mine and planting his hands my by shoulders, hovering over me all warm and naked and so fucking beautiful. Heavy gold light from the lantern blazed across his hair, bringing out the coppery reds in it. Soft shadows flickered across his face, his eyes bright and crinkling up with a smile. He hadn't washed, and maybe he smelled a little and had some blood on him still, but I didn't fucking care.

"Well, we never do anything the normal way, why break tradition?" I slid my hands up his shoulders, feeling the muscles under his warm skin, all the strength in him. "So you just got me first."

Keyd came down to kiss me, soft and deep. His hands dug into my hair, raking against my scalp, his elbows caging in around my shoulders. He held me there, pressing endlessly and enthusiastically against my mouth, teasing and biting and breathing into me. Just before I was gonna push him away for air, Keyd pulled away. He found my hand, caught it between his own, pressed it to the middle of his chest.

"You had me first," he said, with just the tiniest emphasis on me.

I couldn't even get on his case about being sappy. That just sounded...nice. However messy and weird and fucked up the start of our relationship had been, there'd always been something. The thing that'd got us this far, pulled us through all of this shit together, the little hooks we'd gotten into each other that just wouldn't shake loose. Maybe something in him had grabbed me first, maybe something in me had grabbed him. Maybe it didn't really matter. It'd kept us together, it'd gotten us through everything, brought us this far. And it'd keep us going forever, as far as I was concerned.

I ran my hands down his sides, trying to pull him closer to me, and Keyd made a soft grunt and flinched away from my left hand. But he didn't say anything, didn't pull away, but now I knew something was up. I remembered the dark burned spot on his armor—I could even see it, lying in a heap on the floor with his clothes—and I craned my head around to try and get a look at his side. And—

"Oh, Jesus. Fuck, Keyd, are you okay?"

"I said I was," Keyd said, but it looked ugly. A big cloudy black and purple bruise colored his entire side in a huge splotch across his ribs, and the skin was seared red and angry. Even a few blisters bubbled up, pale and yellow. I knew he was real good at pushing through pain, but he couldn't just ignore this shit.

"Did anyone look at this?"

"Later," Keyd said, sounding a little impatient. "It doesn't hurt much."

"You don't heal like you used to, you idiot," I said. "D'you remember that?"

"It won't kill me." Keyd ran his hand over my forehead, pushing my bangs back. "I don't want to be touched by anyone but you, right now."

"You're fucking impossi—" I started, but Keyd cut me off with a kiss, twisting his fingers hard into my hair. I kissed him back, still kind of pissed off at him, but not in the mood to argue. He was right; it didn't look like it was gonna kill him. But now I had to handle him real carefully, and I just hated seeing him hurt. "Fine. For now."

Keyd immediately got back to work kissing me, smiling as his cheek rubbed against my bristly one, his hands moving steadily down my chest, playing over my nipples, his mouth following. It was slow and thorough and I tangled my hands in his hair, trying to keep my breathing even and calm because I was gonna lose it so fast if I didn't. I tilted my head back and stared at the ceiling of the tent, the lantern swaying on the hook above us, the patterns of shadow and light shifting on the canvas walls, the smells and sounds of this tent comforting and familiar.

Even with Keyd sucking and nipping at my chest and rubbing his hands down my stomach and down towards my hips, I managed to blurt out my really dumb thought. "We're not gonna get to do this much anymore, huh."

Keyd pulled back, looking messy and out of breath and worried. "Do...what?"

"Have sex in this tent," I said, laughing and rubbing my fingers through his hair, messing it up even more. "You know, without a war, not really gonna need camps like this anymore."

"Oh." Keyd relaxed, and then he put his head down and chuckled against my shoulder, a rush of hot breath against my skin. "There's probably enough space in our rooms to set one up inside," he offered, starting to nip and lick at the side of my neck, slowly moving down towards my chest again. "If you ever wanted."

I tried to imagine this tent set up in the middle of our room, like the backyard camp-outs I'd done with Ashley as a kid, staying up late telling stupid scary stories with flashlights and shadow puppets. Thinking about me and Keyd doing that together made me grin at how innocent and cute it sounded, and I thought Keyd might actually have fun with it. But the idea dissolved and fell apart when Keyd's mouth kept on moving lower, hot and wet and full of scraping teeth and nowhere near innocent. "Jesus, Keyd!"

"I want to give you anything you want," Keyd said, in a breathy and low voice that could've made me come right then if I'd actually been looking at him. I barely managed to hold on just because I'd had my eyes closed.

"Fuck," I said uselessly. I tangled one hand blindly in his hair, jamming the other against my teeth and squirming against the pillows. I was not gonna come already before he'd even touched me, I was not, nope, no.

Hands slid down my thighs, gently pushing my legs apart. "What do you want now?"

My brain buzzed uselessly, heat burning in every inch of me, my breath heaving in my throat. I risked opening my eyes, watching Keyd settle further down between my legs, his face flushed and mouth shiny and wet. "That. You. This," I managed, and then, "wait, no, stop."

Keyd laughed, then rested his chin on my hip and looked up at me with his eyes huge and dark, barely any blue showing at the edges. "Which one?"

I struggled up to my elbow, using my grip on his hair to pull him up to me, and kissed him. It was clumsy and full of clacking teeth, but Keyd smiled into it and curved his hand around the back of my head, holding us together. I grabbed his shoulder, trying to be careful about his side, hanging on tight and desperate. I just wanted him close right now, close as we could get. I wanted to feel his breath and hear any little sounds he'd let himself make, feel his heart against mine and look into his eyes while we fucked. And maybe that made me a big sap, but Keyd was a pretty strong influence in that department.

I broke the kiss to catch my breath and look at him, just to remind myself that after everything—I still had him, and he still had me. We'd survived everything together. For an intense second we stared into each other's eyes, panting and clutching at each other, both of us smiling for no real reason.

I love you, I fucking love you, I wanted to say, but...he already knew. And he was telling me the same thing without any words. And probably without the swearing, too. We told each other all the time, every damn day, with everything we did.

"Alan," Keyd said quietly, not asking or questioning or anything—just saying my name. He bumped our faces together, just a little nudge that tipped our foreheads together and mushed our noses. His fingers moved in my hair, stroking the back of my neck.

"Stay up here. Stay with me," I breathed out. "Right here with me."

"Always," Keyd murmured back, smiling against me, and tilted all his weight into me. We keeled back onto the bed, a tangle of arms and legs and mouths, and I didn't care what we did, as long as we did it together.

"Tell me if I hurt you," I murmured when my fingers skated over the raised blisters on his side and the puffy swollen skin all around the bruise. It was almost his whole side; it was hard to avoid.

Keyd kissed me gently, lingering for a long time just barely against my mouth before he finally said, "you won't."

#

Keyd was awake and looking at me across the pillow when I opened my eyes again, his hand resting lightly on my neck. No idea what time it was, how long I'd been sleeping. Did we have to do anything, go anywhere, meet anybody? Well, obviously, yeah—we had a shitton of things to do for probably the rest of time, but...right now, at this second, did anyone need us?

Keyd shook his head when I asked. "I asked to be not...bothered, for a while," he said, that little hesitation happening that meant he'd been searching for the right word in English. Frequency was gone again. "I think, at least that, I need."

Couldn't agree more. So much had happened in the past twenty-hour hours, and Keyd'd been at the center of all of it. I'd only been part of some of it and I was still completely wiped out. But, because this was Keyd, and alone time with him was never just a lot of lying around doing nothing, I couldn't bet on taking it too easy.

And when I asked if we were just gonna stay in the tent for a while, Keyd shook his head again. "I want to show something to you."

A prickle swept down the back of my neck. Whenever Keyd said something like that, it was always interesting...but not always good. One time it'd been the rooms in the rhun, the ones he'd secretly set up for us to live in together. Another time it'd been bringing me to Lojt for the first time, and then telling me he was gonna use Earth as a decoy while the oenclar army tried to retake Clarylon.

But I said, "okay," and sat up when he did. But then he just rested against me, his warm damp chest pressed to my back, his chin on my shoulder. His arms slipped around my waist and he just held me there for a long minute, doing this gentle side-to-side rocking thing. I hadn't expected it, but it was real nice and I wasn't gonna complain. Even though he wasn't wearing a shirt, something thin and rough wrapped around his chest rubbed against my back, like bandages. He also smelled like he'd washed up, a spicy soap smell floating off of him. So he'd gotten himself taken care of, at least.

"Thank you," I said quietly, reaching a hand back to tangle it in his hair. "You gotta take care of yourself, okay? You're not like you were before, and you're not indestructible. Can you just promise me that?"

"I promise I'll try." Keyd's arms squeezed me a little tighter. "I might forget, sometimes. I forgot yesterday. You can yell at me, for that."

I laughed. "I don't really want to yell at you. I'll remind you. Strongly."

Keyd chuckled and nudged the side of his face into mine, and I could feel the hair of my beard moving around against his skin. It was really gonna take some time to get used to this. But so far I didn't mind it. It was definitely nice not to have to bother with shaving all the time, even if it was a little itchy.

Keyd and I sat there together for another minute or two before I said, "didn't we have somewhere to go?"

"No rushing," Keyd said. "Not anymore."

Sounded good to me. And we took everything slow, from how long it took us to finally get out of bed, to getting dressed, to leaving the tent together hand-in-hand. I felt like a teenager again, walking around holding hands with someone I really liked, but only in a good way. An excited, good butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling. We were doing this in public, passing dozens of soldiers who couldn't miss it, and that simple little thing was so damn important. To let everyone see what they already knew, without hiding or pretending...I'd actually never thought we'd do this kind of thing. I'd've never pushed Keyd into it, but he'd decided on his own.

Keyd took us to a tent that was a little different from the standard ones, and I recognized it as the kind that the oenclar usually opened rifts inside of. Keyd talked to the soldiers standing outside of it, a couple quick and quiet words, and then he gestured for me to go inside.

There was a rift inside the tent, and stepping through it took me to a place I wasn't familiar with, but it practically could have been somewhere in California. Greenish-brown hills with scrubby brush clinging to the sides, a line of trees to our right and a couple of tough weedy bushes scattered around us. The sun was bright but weak, the air cool, like maybe it was early spring. My nose itched a little with the heavy smell of grass, and I thought I heard the sound of rushing water nearby.

Keyd came through the rift at my side, and I touched his hand. "Where are we?"

"Rtenshe," Keyd said. There had to be a sh in the word because he stumbled over the sound. "You've been here never, not before. A training barracks and colony is here." He gestured off to the right, and up a sloping rocky hillside I saw a cluster of buildings spread out on top of a flat plateau, bright and hazy in the distance. "Also, something else is here."

"And that's the thing you want to show me."

"Mm." Keyd took my hand, linked our fingers firmly together, and turned us towards the trees. Well, it couldn't be too bad if it was on another planet. I couldn't read Keyd's mood real well right now, other than he was tired and a little distracted—but none of that was surprising.

We didn't have to go far to get where we were going. A hundred or so yards into the trees was a small building that looked a hell of a lot like the architecture style in Lojt; big square stones, a tall archway of striped teal and rusty-red blocks. Two soldiers—a man and a woman—stood in front of the archway, like guards. They were only in plain leather armor but they were both holding long weapons, like pikes or spears. Through the archway I saw what looked like a dirt path, and not the inside of an actual building.

The soldiers straightened up to sharp attention as Keyd and I got closer. Pretty sure they recognized who he was. I wondered if they'd heard about the end of the war, if news had gotten out here already. Keyd was so on top of everything that he'd probably already managed to send messages to safe world colonies and barracks, or at least gotten someone else to do it. Keyd gave both of them a nod as we went by, and they responded with deeper bows, angling their weapons away from us and keeping them pulled close to their chests. They didn't say or do anything else.

Once we were through the archway, it looked like we'd walked into a some kind of specially planted forest path. Ahead of us were two long lines of huge trees planted in perfectly straight rows. Their bark was black and rough like the dead forests in Clarylon, but the branches were growing leaves—silvery-green ones that fluttered and shifted in the breeze. They kind of looked like oaks, thick trunks with deep grooved bark growing out of knobbled roots that poked out of the dirt. I had no idea how tall they were because the leaves and branches were too thick to see through, but they were definitely big trees. A low wall ran behind both rows a couple dozen yards back, fencing the whole area in.

The two trees closest to us and the archway were the biggest, and I could see that the line of them got slightly smaller as it went on, like they'd been planted over time. There weren't really that many of them, but they were all big goddam trees and there was a good amount of space in between each of them. Enough room for their branches and roots to grow and spread. The dirt around them looked darker and heavier than the rest of the ground in this area, like it'd come from somewhere else. Above us the branches tangled and wound together, making the whole place like a long black tunnel with a ceiling of of fluttering leaves. Keyd's grip on my hand got tighter and tighter as we walked, slow and silently, down the path.

The trees near the end were much smaller; still decently big but nowhere near the size of the ones at the start of the path. The last two in the row didn't have big enough branches to meet overhead yet, even though they were close. After them was a really long empty space, and then...one single tree. Much smaller than the rest, and all on its own. It sat by itself on the right side of the trunk was only about as big around as a person, and it was maybe twenty feet tall. Its branches didn't spread out very far; it just stood straight and alone all by itself, leaves rustling quietly.

Actually, there was something across from it. It just wasn't a tree; it was a box. Hard to see because it was made of dark wood that blended in against the dirt. Another prickle pinched at my neck just looking at it, and I wasn't sure why. It was just a box, but Keyd was practically breaking the bones in my hand with how hard he was gripping it, and he was staring at the box too.

"Hey," I said quietly, because something about this place felt like it needed soft noises, and wiggled my poor cramped hand in his. "Keyd."

"Oh." Keyd snapped back into the moment, loosened his hold up right away. "Sorry."

"s'okay." I looked around at the trees again, listened to the wind swish through the leaves like little whispers. The place could have been creepy, but it wasn't. It felt peaceful, almost comforting. Old, somehow, maybe from the size of the trees or just something about the whole atmosphere of this place. Like there was a lot of history to it. Even though I wasn't religious at all, it was the same kind of feeling I got when going into churches. A sort of humbled, quiet, and respectful place.

"Keyd, what...is this?" I asked, finally, when another minute or two had passed. I really wanted to know—not just why Keyd had brought me here, but what these trees were.

"This is the one thing we took with us, from Clarylon," Keyd said quietly. "Too important to leave behind, and they...are living. They needed care."

"These used to be in Clarylon?" I said, and Keyd just nodded. I could only fucking imagine how hard it'd be to move trees, especially ones this big, from one planet to another. Sure, they had magical rifts, but short of somehow dragging one of those through the ground and around the trees somehow, I had no idea how they'd done this. Or why. They had to be really damn important.

"You saw my father's funeral," Keyd said suddenly, and prickles started burrowing down my spine, all along my back. "You know we don't...under the ground, with our—after death. Not the way some races, like yours, do."

"Bury," I said, my throat suddenly dry.

"Bury," Keyd repeated. "We don't, not with...most. But with the agistar, there's difference. We do this. It isn't a bury, or not thought as the same. After ajonaskamenji," the Isji word for the funeral pyre, "we take what's left. And put in the ground, but with this."

Keyd held out his closed hand to me, and slowly uncurled his fingers. In the middle of his palm was something that looked exactly like an acorn. Maybe a little darker, more greyish than a normal acorn, but the same size, the same shape, the same knobby little cap and shiny skin.

"You plant a seed with the ashes," I said, and looked back at the long line of trees behind us. "Every agistar?"

Keyd nodded. "Every one, and also their aifot. Across from them." He gestured to the right side of the path. Aifot really meant something like 'spouse' or 'partner' but in this case it could really only mean wife. The oenclar had never had a woman agistar, and obviously no gay couples. "Well. Arjateyn, would be the more best word."

"Arjateyn." I felt like I'd heard the word before. "What's that mean?"

Keyd gave me a small, but genuine, smile. "If we were married, you would be that."

Anybody mentioning me and Keyd and marriage had used to twist my stomach up in nervous knots, send weird prickles down my back, even if I wasn't against the idea at all. It just sounded too weird, something I couldn't match up with us and how Keyd's world worked. Now I just wanted to know when. When could we start doing it for real, made this shit happen. It was a real sudden shift I hadn't even known I'd made, and what a fucking time and place to realize it.

But maybe it made sense. The trees' branches all reached for each other over the path, grew into each other and tangled up, some of them impossible to tell where they ended or started. A lot of these people, maybe most of them, had probably been in arranged marriages, but that didn't mean none of them had cared about each other. I'd gotten the impression that Maedajon had really and legitimately loved Keyd's mom, no matter what the situation of their marriage had been. Maybe some of the others had had relationships like that, were lucky enough to have what Keyd and I did.

Keyd had turned away from me, and was looking towards the end of the row, the single tree that was so far away from all the others. The empty spaces had to be there for Keyd's grandfather Maedestin and his wife, whose name I didn't know. Neither of them were dead, but they still had spots left for them when they were. And that meant...

"This is my mother's tree," Keyd said, to the lonely little tree. As soon as he did, a little gust of wind stirred up and the branches of the tree bobbed gently, like it was nodding at him. Something hot and tight wedged itself into my throat. No one talked about Keyd's mom, especially not Keyd. I didn't know anything about her. But she was buried here. This tree had grown out of her ashes. Which was...I couldn't think of it as morbid. The way Keyd had explained it, the whole thing just sounded respectful.

Keyd's arm lifted up from his side, almost reaching out towards the tree. "I haven't been here since we left Clarylon," he said, sounding almost ashamed about it. "I'm sorry."

I stayed quiet. If Keyd needed to do this, then it was about damn time. He kept so much of this kind of shit bottled up that him talking to a tree actually relieved me. At least he was talking.

But that was all he said. I watched his shoulders rise and deflate with a single long, heavy breath. Then he turned to me again, holding up the acorn.

"To do this, for my father, is what I want to do. When we can, in Clarylon. I want...to do it with you. For you to be there."

"Hell yeah, of course." This sounded like something really important, basically burying his father, even if the clar didn't really do that. Maedajon's funeral had been the pyre, and for most people that was the end of it. But if there was one more thing to do for his dad, and Keyd wanted to do it with me, then of course I would.

Keyd looked around at the trees, closing the acorn back into his fingers. "It needs to be there, Clarylon. Not here. We will move these back, where before they were. They grow in the rhun, in a garden. You haven't seen that. And…"

He took in another long, slow breath. Then: "some time, in a distance from now, I'll be here too. There, next to my father. And…" Keyd hesitated, and turned to look right into my eyes. "You could be here too, with me."

This really could have been depressing and weird, standing here talking about dying and be being buried together under trees with a long line of Keyd's ancestors, but it wasn't. This whole place felt safe, branches knitting together into a protective shell, the leaves rustling in gentle little whispers. It was peaceful here, and I could only think it'd be the same back on Clarylon where these trees were supposed to be.

"Yeah," I said, still trying to swallow past that lump in my throat. "Yeah. I'll be with you."

I'd never given a single damn thought to what I wanted to happen to me after I died, but now I couldn't think of anything better. Hopefully it'd be a long fucking time from now, but it sounded better than rotting away in a box under the ground. Maybe it was just clar culture rubbing off on me too much, but I was really starting to get creeped out by graveyards and the idea of burying people. This sounded a thousand times better.

"Not soon," Keyd said, like he'd read my thoughts. He was pretty good at that sometimes. "But I wanted to...show you here, this place. What it is, what it means."

I couldn't think of anything else to say but, "thank you." I moved to take his hand, and Keyd held on tight.

Neither of us said anything for a while. The trees rustled around us and I could still hear the sound of rushing water somewhere deeper into the actual forest. We had a pretty complicated and busy situation waiting for us back in Clarylon, and I was okay with taking some time to breathe before the storm really hit us. Spend a few more peaceful minutes here, together.

I realized Keyd was staring at the wooden box that was across from his mom's tree, and had been for a while. There was really only one thing that could be in there. His dad's ashes. I was suddenly aware of the weight of the sword at my side—I wondered if Keyd had noticed me putting it on this morning and what he'd thought, knowing he was bringing me here. I closed my hand around the engraved hilt, the metal cool against my fingers. I'd only known Maedajon for about a week a year ago, but the guy had left pieces and traces of himself everywhere, and he'd always be part of everything Keyd did—personally and politically.

Then Keyd took a few steps towards the box, cautious and slow like he was coming up on a scared wild animal.

Do it. Talk to him, I encouraged him, but didn't say it out loud. You need to, you've needed to your whole damn life. Just get it out, anything you need to say.

Suddenly Keyd just crashed to the ground, like his legs had given up and quit on him. He went hard to his knees, slumping like a puppet with its string suddenly cut.

"I'm sorry," he said, in a thin and raw voice. His eyes were locked onto the box, and his arm jerked like he wanted to reach out for it, but couldn't. "I'm sorry, I—arlu ikit kehlaios suerejan anrle, bsen demua asdemakin bahn..."

For at least a minute Keyd broke down into muttered and shaky Isji, his head bowed almost down to the ground and his breath heaving in sharp pants. I almost thought he was crying, and it took every ounce of control I had to keep myself from going over to him. But this was something he didn't need me for. This was between him and his dad. I could be here, supportive, but not involved.

After a while, Keyd lifted his head again. His eyes looked red, and he scrubbed the back of his hand across them furiously a few times.

"I'm so sorry," he said. English again. I guess he wanted me to hear this, if he was bothering to use it. Some of his next words came out in Isji, but what he was saying was clear enough.

"It could have been different. Everything could have. If I—if I had let it. I kept you away. I hated you, for nothing more than what I assumed you would think of me. That you would hate me, that I would be nothing but a traitor and a failure to you. It wasn't fair, that I would think that. I never gave you a chance to prove any different. I don't think I would have listened if you had."

I couldn't point out all the arguments here—how could you ever know what he thought, he never told you, he never tried, he hurt you just as bad as you hurt him—because that wasn't gonna be helpful. It wasn't the point. Keyd had to get this all out, all this misery he'd been keeping inside him for years and years. How badly Maedajon had fucked him up, even if he hadn't meant to, even if he'd done a hell of a lot of things to try and make life better and easier for Keyd, it hadn't mattered for most of Keyd's life. He'd still thought he had a dad who'd hate him, reject him, maybe even have him killed, all for something he couldn't change about himself. How was Keyd supposed to have a decent relationship with his dad, thinking any of that about him? And his mom had been gone since he was a little kid. He'd only had Rysa.

"I'm so sorry," Keyd said one last time, in a thin and croaky voice. "I wish I could have loved you."

Now I had to go over to him, and I dropped down on my knees next to him. The ground was damp and cold through the fabric of my pants. I put my hand on Keyd's back, rubbing a circle between his shoulders, not sure what to say. If I should even say anything. I could feel him shaking under my fingers, and taking in slow forced breaths.

"I was a terrible son," Keyd said suddenly, roughly, and scrubbed the back of his hand across his eyes again. He wasn't crying, but it looked like he was really fighting it back hard.

I had to say something then. "Fuck, no, you weren't. You did your best. Better than I'd've ever done. And he knew he hadn't done real well by you, he really did. It probably doesn't mean much now, but he knew it was his fault that you guys had a fucked up relationship. He didn't blame you."

Keyd sighed. "No. It doesn't mean much now." He got to his feet suddenly, kind of pulling me up with him since I had my arm around him. "To me, he was important. Bad or good. I miss that he's gone, but I don't know...if I miss him. I don't know if that makes sense. It sounds...terrible to say." He looked at me, almost like he was waiting for me to judge him for it or tell him how shitty he was being.

"It doesn't to me." I said. "He made you miserable, but he was still your dad. I get it."

Keyd closed his eyes for a second, not looking much happier. Then he put his arms around me, crushing me hard against him, and sighed heavily. "Let's go home," he said.

#

The next couple weeks were the weirdest I'd had since Keyd and Rysa had crashed my life onto a totally new course a year ago, and that was saying a lot.

Things happened fast—way faster than I'd've thought. Lojt was suddenly crammed full of people; oenclar soldiers and civilians, and now clarbach soldiers too. The ones from the Kitsa valley. Their camp had basically been allowed to merge into the oenclar camp in Lojt because, hey—everybody had permission to be wherever the hell they wanted in Clarylon now—so everyone had to be on top of each other and dealing with each other constantly. There'd been some kind of order made where nobody was allowed to carry physical weapons around, and there was serious trouble if any oenclar and clarbach were found fighting in any way. And for a bunch of people who had never interacted with each other except trying to kill each other, or never even seen a clarbach before like some of the oenclar civilians...there was definitely a lot of tension and confusion and general weird shit going on in the city.

There were oenclar soldiers in Uillad, too. It'd been a tradeoff; the soldiers from the Kitsa valley had been allowed to come to Lojt as long as a relatively equal number of oenclar soldiers were allowed to go to Uillad, mostly around the barracks outside the city. Since most clarbach civilians had never even seen an oenclar before, and the soldiers had, it was slightly less invasive that way. Because every part of Clarylon now technically belonged to nobody and everybody, there'd been no way anybody could protest against doing this. It was supposed to be temporary, but a way to hammer home the fact that there wasn't a war now—nobody could fight with each other anymore, even if they were camped right on top of each other, even if they still didn't like each other.

And they definitely still didn't like each other. Nobody, not even Alief and Keyd, had expected that to change. Maybe it wouldn't ever change. I had no idea how long this weird double semi-occupation of the two cities was even supposed to last, because people were playing cautiously nice with each other now, but there was no way they'd all put up with it for long. The clarbach stuck to themselves, the oenclar tried to avoid them, everybody side-eyed each other like one wrong move was gonna start a fight. Except they weren't allowed to fight.

It still happened, obviously. Oenclar and clarbach—both soldiers and civilians—got into shouting matches and arguments where they didn't even bother with frequency; they just yelled at each other in their own languages about nothing at all, usually backed up by a couple of friends. Sometimes it turned into shoving each other back and forth, then hitting, then messy brawls that had to get broken up by other people. Sometimes it took a while for somebody to step in. But there were soldiers—both oenclar and clarbach—who had figured out that these stupid fights didn't help anything. They didn't ease any tension; they only made it worse. Ansa especially liked to break up these kinds of fights, and I think she went patrolling around the camps honestly looking for them. The punishments for fighting were strict and unfun, and most people who got in trouble for it never seemed to do it again.

But once in a while, here and there, I saw more hopeful signs. On one seriously windy day, one of the lanterns that light the camp got blown off its post and crashed into an oenclar soldier's tent just as she was leaving it, whisking it up in instant flames. The only people nearby were a handful of clarbach soldiers, who rushed over to help put the fire out before the wind made it even worse. When the panic was over the clarbach looked like they had no idea what to do, realizing they'd helped an oenclar and not sure exactly how to handle that. The oenclar soldier had hesitantly thanked them, and they'd kind of nodded and shuffled away awkwardly.

I saw soldiers and civilians trading supplies sometimes, often without anybody saying any words to each other—a weird bartering system of pointing and offering, nodding or shaking heads, and grudging gestures of thanks. That seemed to be the most civil interactions they all had with each other, and I wasn't the only person who noticed it. Kir even suggested to Keyd to purposefully limit some of the supplies the oenclar soldiers were getting, so they had to trade with each other for stuff they needed. It wasn't that weird to have shortages in camps, and once Keyd and Alief had a quiet little meeting together, suddenly both sides had different supplies running low. The clarbach were still getting their supplies all the way from Uillad, so nothing about it seemed suspicious.

Keyd and I were going back and forth between the cities all the time, usually to talk to Alief but also to check on the oenclar soldiers that were there. Bringing Keyd to Uillad for the first time had been really interesting, and he'd taken it all in with a weird mix of awe and discomfort—the same way Hahd had been about it. Alief was pretty good about realizing how weird it'd be for him, and tried to make things go as easy as possible. Keyd did the same, whenever Alief was in Lojt.

We were meeting a hell of a lot of clarbach too, starting with Alief's advisors. Ociir, obviously, we already knew. And fucking unfortunately I already knew Asaed, and the guy was not happy about the war ending or anything else going on. When he and Keyd officially met for the first time (the treaty meeting hadn't really counted) to talk about the soldiers in Lojt and Uillad, I honestly thought Asaed might take a swing at him. Every sentence he said sounded like a threat, and he said a lot of things not in frequency that were probably real fucking rude.

"He hates me just as much," I told Keyd afterwards, who actually seemed shaken by how outright hostile Asaed had been. "So hey, welcome to the club."

"No wonder Alief had to work around him, if he was truly the one leading the war," Keyd'd said. "I've known soldiers like him, the kind who can only find their place in battle. Who don't fight for a cause or victory, but only for the sake of fighting." He'd made a weird little sound in his throat. "Eldronrhet was like that."

"Maybe we can introduce them to each other and they can be penpals," I'd said, and Keyd had laughed faintly. "I'm sure Eldronrhet'll need a new hobby in fucking jail."

"We don't know that will happen," Keyd had pointed out, which was true. All the Worthies and generals and other soldiers who'd willingly been part of the coup had trials scheduled, for the crimes of treason, war crimes, and generally being huge assholes. It was a lot of goddamn trials for a lot of goddamn people. But Keepers would decide what would happen to them, just like they'd decided with Gannekein. Rajhnyon was still slated to get a trial, but Keyd was considering pardoning him. Just for the fact that he'd probably saved Keyd's life by switching sides at the last second, I was totally fine with that if it happened.

Alief's other advisors were a woman who basically represented business owners and merchants, and a guy who was there from something they called the 'service' section of clarbach society, which seemed to cover a lot of things. Their Healers and Keepers were part of it, but so were things like the mail delivery and traders and city guards. Apparently the military was technically part of it too. I really didn't know much about how clarbach society actually worked, but we were probably gonna have to pick it up real fast. Alief had seemed just an intrigued and mildly puzzled by the strict oenclar caste system.

The third or fourth time we went to Uillad, Rysa came along too. Ociir met us there, and the first thing he did was take her to see her family. Keyd and I didn't go, because it seemed like a real personal thing, even if Rysa insisted that the both of us were also family to her. But when we all met up again later, Eleon and Rysa's slightly younger sister Ohean were with them, and they all seemed really happy to be back with each other. Eleon and Rysa had never even met, since he'd been born after she'd left Uillad, but that didn't stop them from getting along immediately. Probably helped that Eleon had always absorbed Ohean's positive feelings about Rysa more than Ahieel's, and had always wanted to meet her.

A couple weeks went by both super fast and really slow—it always felt like we were running at top speed, even though days still felt like they were crawling by, but things that'd happened two days before felt like weeks. The changes, the pace of everything, it was all absolutely insane. In the middle of it all I got a letter from my mom asking if we were coming home for Christmas. We, not just me; Keyd automatically included. It'd made me smile, even though I had no idea if either of us could take the time away from everything to go hang out on Earth for a few days.

"Of course we can," Keyd assured me, when I showed him the letter. "Your family is as important as anything else. And if everything here falls apart if I go away for a few days, then we have a much worse problem."

"Got a point there," I said, and kissed him. "Thanks."

"Nothing to thank me for," Keyd said. "And, maybe, a break will be...nice."

"Oh my god, you don't want to work every single second? What's happened to you, man?"

Keyd elbowed at me and laughed. "We have work to do now. remember? Alief will be here soon, and I know she'll want both of us there. Come on."

#

"Alan, Alan. Alan, wake up. Alan."

A loud whisper, urgent and excited. I mumbled a little and twisted in the cool sheets, realized something was on top of them and keeping me mostly pinned in place.

"Alan. Alan."

The whisper again, louder now, and then a hand touching my shoulder. I blinked, grumbled, and opened my eyes into cool grey-blue light. Keyd was on his hands and knees on the bed, leaning over me and almost vibrating with excitement.

"Mmh, what?" I said through a yawn. I reached up, sleepy and clumsy, to touch his hair and smooth it down. The dark curved ceiling of our bed in the rhun hovered behind his shoulders, making him stand out against the shadows.

Keyd scooted back off me, giving me room to move. "Alan," he said again in that breathless little voice. He caught my wrists, tugged at me. "Alan, come here. You have to see."

"'mkay," I said, and let him heave me up out of the bed and get me on my feet. Then he took me by one hand and led me out of the bedroom, into the main room.

Our bedroom had heavy curtains on the windows, but this main room didn't. The floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end always looked over the city sprawling down the hill below, a view that went all the way down towards the ocean. Keyd pulled me towards them, but I didn't see anything. Until I realized how much I could see.

Everything in the city looked lighter, buildings brighter and their colors more obvious, the orangey-red and golden tiled roofs, and the sky a cool grey that could have been any overcast morning on a regular planet. Instead of the dull colorless dark that it'd always been. Buildings and trees threw faint shadows across the streets like the light of real early dawn.

"Do you see it?" Keyd said, breathless next to me and clutching at my arm.

"Yeah," I said, dazedly. It had to be because of how many oenclar and clarbach were here in Lojt together, slowly starting to balance each other out over just a few weeks, affect the light here. It wasn't anywhere near normal, but it was so different from how everything usually looked. And then, I noticed something else—probably the specific thing Keyd wanted me to see.

"Oh. Oh wow," I said faintly.

It was watery, faint, and greyish, but it was definitely there. The sun was rising over the cliff to the east. The sun. Something I'd never seen on this planet. Even though it was just a flat greyish ball, half hidden behind streaks of fog off the ocean, it was still there. It took my fucking breath away. No wonder Keyd was freaking out.

"Holy shit." I turned, gaping at him. "Keyd."

"I know. I know." Keyd suddenly grabbed me around the waist, spinning me off my feet and whirling me around a good couple times. When he put me down, both of us panting and a little dizzy, neither of us let go of each other. He kissed me, hard, grabbing the sides of my face in his hands and curling his fingers in my hair.

"Is that real? That's really real?"

"It is," Keyd said, backing me up against the window, his hands framing my face. Neither of us were looking at the sun anymore, but the light from it was clear on Keyd's face, probably on my face too. "It is."

"It's fucking beautiful," I said, and Keyd gave me an even more beautiful smile, the one that crinkled up his eyes and stretched across his whole face. He kissed me in the early morning light, pressed up against the windows with the rising sun at my back. So much was changing already and we had a long road ahead of us, and I couldn't wait to see what was coming next.

---

And that was the last chapter! But there's still an epilogue to come. But the main story is, basically, at an end.