Chapter Seventy-Two: A Real Storm

The date of the festivities approached, and the clouds began to blacken and rumble. Even in the oppressive heaviness of the wet air, buildings in the Tolmish quarter put up their festive garlands, and Osmund saw girls in the street carrying baskets of honeysuckle and lillies and decorating thresholds, singing little tunes as they went, half remembered verse, half pure invention.

“You still need a mask,” said Rylan while they waited beneath an awning for the rain to pass.

They’d headed up the street together to complete a last-minute delivery, a rare happenstance, but Osmund was glad for the change of pace. He was very nearly done sorting the ledger, and though his spine and writing hand were none too happy, he was riding high on the feeling of accomplishment.

He’d spent a lot of time recently with Ken, attempting to tease out more information about the counterfeits, and with her brother, who seemed to be always there, quiet as he was. The two treated him as a friend, inviting him to join in their card games or to share fresh-caught mussels at the fishwives’ stalls by the water. Osmund felt he was close to being able to ask outright about the coins, and about Mylo. Maybe even about Pravin himself, and where they might be meeting.

“Which ones are left? I’ll choose what’s available, it’s no fuss.”

Rylan ignored his attempt at politeness. “I’ll carve it tonight. Decide soon.”

“Alright then,” Osmund relented, tamping down on his secret excitement. “I’ll think about it. Oh, has it stopped? Here’s our chance!”

They made it back to the docks and found Ansley, gaily dangling his legs over the edge of the pier and drinking from a flask at his hip while he watched the ships on the horizon. “Oh, a pheasant for sure,” was what he said on the matter when asked. “Don’t look offended now. A pheasant is a jolly fellow everyone’s happy to see, even if he’s scared of his own shadow. Some kind of bird, at least. Siggles, what do you think?”

A passing Sigebert carting a few barrels said, “Yes, I see it. Or why not a deer? Though even Rylan might find it hard to carve on short notice.”

“Game animals,” Osmund said resignedly. “Of course.” He turned to Rylan. “What do you think?”

“Hal, Ry doesn’t have opinions, it’s too much bother,” Ansley said.

Rylan studied Osmund awhile. “Not a deer,” he said at length. “Not a pheasant.”

“Thank you,” Osmund said, gratified. “I think it’d be nice to feel a bit…well, majestic, for once.” He’d have asked for a horse if it wouldn’t have made for a comically long face over his own.

Rylan kept walking in the direction of the storehouse, where Ken was loitering, and Osmund followed, thinking they’d be sheltered from the next bout of rain. Instead of going inside, however, Rylan continued down the pier, and Osmund, after a moment’s hesitation, kept pace beside him. The constant ebb of the waves hummed in their ears.

“Slow day,” Rylan said.

It was unlike him to make idle talk. Even more unlike him to initiate it. “Do you have many of those?” Osmund obligingly asked as his blond-brown hair limply tumbled in the ocean breeze.

“Near the end of shipping season. Fewer boats.”

Osmund sought a way to keep the conversation going. “Looks like we’ll have a real storm,” he observed, gesturing at the black clouds and faraway flashes of thunder.

“It will miss us,” said Rylan.

“How can you tell?”

Rylan shrugged. “Been here long enough to know.”

Sailors and dockworkers were scarce this far down the pier. They were nearly alone but for the gulls overhead and the scattering of boats in the anchorage. It was a strange sensation, to be somehow alone, and yet so close to that vast ocean which breathed life into a great number of Şebyan’s industries. He felt suddenly that they were out at sea, unmoored from the rest of human life.

“Ansley said you weren’t fond of the ocean,” Osmund said, remembering. “You grew up on a farm, right? You and Ken.”

“Yeah.”

“Farm life must be very different from life here in a big port city.”

“The ocean is a dragon,” said Rylan, unexpectedly figurative. Underneath the pier, the water was deep, not a glimmer of sand or sediment. “It swallows people in. I won’t get on a boat unless I have to.”

He paused and added, “Ken has no one else but me.”

“What about the others? Ansley and Sigebert, and Ro and Alice? Even if something were to happen to you…”

He trailed off, not wanting to further give voice to the thought. “You can’t replace your family,” Rylan said simply.

An unwanted image arose of Father’s face as it had appeared in the moments after his death. Osmund inhaled, and said nothing.

He looked over at Rylan instead. Something glistened gold in a stray beam of sunlight, peeking under the low cut of Rylan’s loose shirt. It was a ring on a chain. Osmund had seen glimpses of it before, but had never been bold enough to ask. He opened his mouth, then shut it again.

“They’re good people,” said Rylan after a time. “The others. I just want something more for Ken. A real family.”

“She has you, a brother who cares. That’s more than I ever had.” Osmund had let loose the words without thinking. “W-what I mean is, it’s admirable. That you want to be there for her.”

“Used to want more.”

“Like what?”

“Stupid things. A sword in my hand.” Rylan’s normally unexpressive voice now let in a trace of his disdain for his youthful self. “I left home at 14. Trained to become a squire.”

He certainly had the build for it. Still, Osmund was surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. It was alright. Felt like a real man. Wanted to show my family I could protect them. Then our parents died. Illness. Not bandits or raiders.”

Osmund had never heard him volunteer this much information before, let alone about himself. “So you went home,” he guessed.

“Back to my sister. I was grown by then. Tried to make it work for a while. The farm. But had to sell it, all of it, and the animals. Went hungry before long. Asked the knights I knew for money. Then the usurper took the castle. We heard in Saltbruck there were ships headed for other lands. What do you want?”

The final question felt so disjointed, Osmund thought for a moment he’d misheard. He dragged his gaze away from the wide ocean again. “Me?”

Rylan was really not suited for idle talk; his ears were turning pink, having to repeat himself. “What kind of life do you want?” he specified awkwardly.

“Oh.” Osmund smiled. So, this was the other’s attempt at friendliness. It was charming just how unpracticed he was at it. “Just to be happy…I suppose.” Rylan stayed quiet, prompting with his eyes, so he continued: “Spending time with friends, exploring the world, and, um, attempting to have a future…with the man I love.”

He’d said the last after remembering what he’d learned from Ken of her elder brother. He’s a stick-rider, like me. Most of the men Osmund had slept with back in Valcrest had been ardent about keeping any inconvenient urges they felt entirely separate from their “real” lives. They would never use a word like stick-rider to describe themselves, the way they used it to describe their disgraceful whore of a prince.

Rylan didn’t seem to feel any shame about who he was. But he still clearly wasn’t used to speaking on the subject. “Is he good to you?” he asked at last.

“Yes. The best.”

“You said he…”

Osmund was puzzled. “…He, what?”

Rylan didn’t answer right away. “Nothing,” he said. Then, “Turn around.”

Still confused, Osmund looked. Rylan was pointing to the city of Şebyan behind them.

“Oh,” Osmund said.

Those occasional fingers of light had glanced their way through the clouds and were illuminating the gently sloping city in a wet, shimmering golden halo. Landmarks rose from the painterly vision. The Heavenly Spire, where ordinary Meskato prayed for guidance. The office of the Civic Bureau, where Emre had taken him to get his documents forged. At the top of the incline, standing a shoulder above the complex of buildings surrounding it, was the governor’s mansion in all its resplendence. Even from here, Osmund could see the tiny shadow that was Cemil’s balcony. 

Osmund felt a dizzying burst of some new emotion. It welled up inside sooner than he could put a name to it. It looks so beautiful, my city.

“No views like this on a farm,” Rylan said. And Osmund realized the other man had brought him here on a day like this just for this purpose.

His mouth was still slack, eyes frozen on the sight, when a faraway rumble of thunder made him jump. He swept his loose hair out of his face and came back to himself, piece by piece. “We’ll be caught in the rain again,” he managed, more for something to say.

Without hesitation, Rylan shucked off the patchy, loose coat he was wearing and offered it to him. “Cover your head with it,” Rylan suggested.

Osmund had a stray memory of the road to Kaliany nearly a year ago, when Cemil proposed they share a spare fur-lined caftan as a blanket. The thought brought a burst of heat to his cheeks. “Th-thanks.” Suppressing the memory, he wound the coat over his shoulders and used it to form a hood over his hair. “Should we head back?”

The wind brought in a few blasts of ocean spray, and raindrops pattered over the boardwalk, but the feared downpour never came. They half-walked, half-jogged back to the Guild Quay, where they found Ansley and a few of the other working men talking to a group of coyly smiling Tolmishwomen, who were levering too-small baskets against their hip and acting as if they’d passed the docks strictly on business.

“Oy, Ry, Hal,” said Ansley as they approached. “Where’d you get off to?”

Osmund tried to stammer an answer, suddenly embarrassed, but Rylan’s eyes—pale green flecked with amber, he found himself noticing for the first time—were locked sharply on the storehouse, and his every muscle had tensed. He broke from their group and into a run towards the storeroom’s open door.

“It’s just Mylo and a client!” Ansley called futilely after him. He sighed. “Thick as a brick wall.”

Osmund barely heard, beginning to trail after Rylan anxiously. He, too, was overcome by a sick feeling in his gut.

“Alright, you little sneak, cough up what you stole. All of it. Now.”

Ken stood cornered against a row of cargo, her ankles pressed together and shoulders hunched, appearing half her age. Boxing her in were Mylo and an unknown man lavishly dressed with velvet mantle and hat, the very picture of a wealthy Tolmish merchant. At Rylan’s appearance, Ken raised her eyes pleadingly. Osmund wondered if she was saying help or stay back.

“I haven’t got anything,” she muttered, looking back down at the floor. “I said we got rats sometimes, it can’t be helped!”

The merchant puffed an angry laugh. That was all the acknowledgment he afforded Ken before addressing Mylo, like she was a hound and he, her master. “Three complaints now I’ve fielded about volume,” he sneered. “My reputation is suffering out there. I’ll have the money back and more for damages to my name.”

Mylo turned on Ken. Eyes and tone both were dangerous. “What have you done with it, girl?”

Rylan moved protectively in front of his sister. “She hasn’t got it,” he said, his eyes hard. “Talk to me.”

“Oh stand aside, boy,” Mylo barked. “No one’s going to batter your beanpole sister. It’ll take her that much longer to earn it back if we ruin what little’s good on her face.”

Rylan’s hand disappeared into his trouser pocket. The merchant drew a sword in response, almost too fast for the eye to see.“Ry, please don’t!” Ken begged through tears.

This was all too much for Osmund to take. He took a step forward.

“I have your money,” he announced.