“You really should be paying me,” Saoirse muttered as he flipped through the pages. “Do you know how much effort I got to put into this? I’ve got to read it, I’ve got to translate it. I’ve got to make sure I pick the right words. In Bridgespeak. It’s great for daily stuff, but it’s so hard to-”
“If you taught me Vwosi like you said you would, you wouldn’t have to do this.”
“It’s not like you ever come ask me to teach you.” Saoirse grinned. “I’m starting to think you might not actually want to learn that bad.”
Kai Fen pulled his shoulders up, dropped them. He looked away from Saoirse, who wheezed a laugh as he flipped to the next page.
“Right on the money, aren’t I?” He glanced up. “You don’t seem like you’re good at sitting still and learning anyway.”
“Excuse me? I’m a very good student.”
“I thought the Enyese didn’t lie?”
Kai Fen rolled his eye. “Have you find the right page yet?”
Saoirse snickered, and he flipped a few more pages before nodding. “Yeah, I got it. We left off at…” He let out an exasperated huff, raised his eyebrows. “The ancient history of the Iskritsya mountain range.”
“Huohua mountain range,” Kai Fen murmured.
“It’s the same thing.” Saoirse scanned the page, made a pleading expression at the words. He tapped his fingers against the page. “Why do you need to know this again?”
Kai Fen leaned forward over the table, arms folded so he could rest his head on them. “It’s where Burning Rock Temple is.”
“The place where you can speak to Enshu?”
Kai Fen nodded. Saoirse looked at him, and Kai Fen looked right back. He couldn’t tell what was happening behind Saoirse’s eyes. They’d changed lately, become distant and uncertain and watchful. Saoirse sighed and leaned back, crossed one of his legs over the other and rested the book against his knee.
“Hope you learn something good,” he murmured. Then he cleared his throat, made a show of hitting his fist against his chest, and began to read. Kai Fen watched him for a while. Saoirse hung his arm across the back of the chair beside him, and he looked like he wanted to put his feet on the table but wouldn’t. He squinted at the page, leaning in to it to scan words he was uncertain of before translating it to Bridgespeak.
He always got ready to turn the page before he had to. Kai Fen had brought it up once and learnt that Saoirse used to turn pages for a pianist.
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1.6k words! Wowza! Illarion yells at Kai Fen. Kai Fen tries to be comforting, isn’t good at it, ends up being antagonistic a little. There’s some fire. It’s angsty. Mostly wrote this to try and make myself feel better but you can read it too if you want.
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Illarion had his fists clenched, those faux-gold rings of his glinting in the lowlight. His shoulders rose and fell with each breath, and Kai Fen imagined that if he were a dog, the hair at the base of his neck would be on end. As it was, his usually half-lidded eyes were wide, alive and wild, the pupils acting as two twin mirrors that reflected back fire, fire, fire.
There was a wall of it. Kai Fen watched it too. It reached up, ever higher. The way it encompassed the building so entirely made it look like there was just a tower of flames burning away the air, fire eating fire as it reached up to the sunless, starless grey sky that loomed above them. At any moment, it looked like it might rain. With the way things were going, Kai Fen doubted that the world would be that merciful.
This was meant to be a safe place. They were meant to hide here, to wait for Michil to catch up to them. This was supposed to be safe.
How foolish he was to think he could be safe anymore. The world knew his face now, knew his name. There would be nowhere safe for him for a long, long time.
“Someone did this,” Kai Fen said. It felt like such an obvious and stupid thing to say, but they were the only words he could make come from his mouth.
“No fucking shit someone did this,” Illarion spit. He stared at the fire for a second longer before turning and kicking at a clump of grass. It went flying, roots and soil, against a tree with newly sprouting buds. He kicked at the ground again.
What was going on? Kai Fen had seen Illarion angry— he’d seen him threaten to punch someone for looking at the three of them a bit longer than he’d liked— but he’d never seen him like this. Something about the way he was moving looked so unnatural, so unlike the way he usually conducted himself. His usual loose movements were made stiff, rigid. He looked like he’d seen a demon.
“Illarion.”
He turned to him, coat puffed around his squared shoulders and swinging around his jutting arms. Still that height, that illusion of bigness, was revoked by the fear in his eyes. He was trying to hide it, mask it with anger and aggression and with physical strength, but behind all of that it was still there. Kai Fen saw it. He recognized it.
He understood why Heila had been nice to him even when he hadn’t deserved it. She’d seen the same thing in him.
He wished he knew what to say like Heila might. He could ask what was wrong but he didn’t want to pry, and how would he even try to comfort someone like Illarion? They weren’t even friends. He looked at Illarion, and Illarion looked back at him until crackling erupted from the charred skeleton beams. The two swivelled as a piece of wood fell to the base, a smolder of black ash and orange yellow glow.
Illarion said what Kai Fen was certain was Vwosi curse. He shook his head, stared at the burning wood, and shouted the swear. He kicked the ground again, sending soil towards the flames, and did so again, and again, and again until he was bent over himself and laughing, his hands on his knees and head down at the ground.
“Vikwo curse this damn land.” He stood upright as the building groaned and leaned left. He laughed and set a hand on his hip, the other being raised to block out the light as he looked up towards the sky. “That about confirms that.”
“Confirms what?”
“Someone’s bringin’ back old methods.” He started walking back in the direction they’d came, hands in his pockets and posture nonchalant. Kai Fen kept up with him, eyebrows creased. How was he just acting like his outburst hadn’t happened? “You find some dry plant, you find someone with a little lightning…” He took his hand from his pocket, wiggled his fingers for emphasis. “And bammo, you’ve got yourself a fire.”
“But... why?”
“I gotta say, I’m impressed.” He looked at the sky. Thick smoke had joined the heavy clouds on their parade. “You, perhaps single-handedly, are bringin’ the civil war back into the open. I mean hey, it was a matter of time, but you and your uncle and all that shit? You definitely sped the whole thing up.”
Kai Fen stopped where he was. Was he being serious? “That’s not true.”
Illarion turned on his heel. He kept walking, backwards, keeping a nervous eye on the rising smoke. “Oh it’s not, isn’t it? You some expert on our wars now, huh?”
Kai Fen raised his chin and squared his shoulders. Illarion did the same thing but exaggerated it, made an obnoxious face at him. Kai Fen growled and clenched his fists. “I know enough to know this is just a bloody place. Vwos eats itself and rebuilds with what came in the spit out the remains. It’s what it does.”
“You know everything then, do ya?”
“Apparently more than you. I know you’ve never picked up a book.” That was mean. He didn’t regret it.
Illarion marched towards him and Kai Fen stood solid. When Illarion grabbed him by the front of his coat he grabbed ahold of his wrist and elbow, and the two of them glared into each other’s eyes. Kai Fen saw himself reflected back, face screwed up tight into angry furstration. Illarion sized him up and Kai Fen knew that in a fight between the two of them he’d lose. Illarion was bigger than him, older, stronger, more ruthless and fearless, and he had Vikwo’s lightning to call upon if he wished. But he wasn’t about to let his fear show. He wasn’t coward.
Illarion yanked him in closer and bent his knees to even their heights. “I beat kids like you up.” Kai Fen believed that. “Your rich clothes, your rich talk, the wealth you got pouring out your pockets that you don’t even realize. I know ‘bout you, kid. Sister liked fairytales, liked the thought of some secret prince in a faraway land. Got subjected to a newspaper reading at the bar. You’re inescapable. Even in death you had family money to look after you, yeah?”
Kai Fen wanted to be able to say something back, something that might turn the sting of the words back around and stab them right back. But there was nothing. Illarion wet his lips and reaffirmed his grasp.
“So you listen here, mudak.” That sounded like an insult. Kai Fen’s lip curled, his teeth bared. “This land, this place? You don’t know shit about it. Anything you think you learnt about Vwos - the language, the wars, the whatever - it’s wrong. All of it’s wrong. You learnt it from the rich, yeah? Their books, their stupid politics. But they don’t gotta deal with what they cause. That money they’re sittin’ on keeps them untouchable.”
Illarion let go of him and Kai Fen stumbled before he stood straight. His face felt hot, his earst burned, but whether it was from anger or embarrassment he couldn’t tell. Illarion turned away from him, started walking again.
“So you listen to Ilya here,” he said over his shoulder. Kai Fen could barely hear him. “Someone got stupid and took a man they shouldn’t’ve, and you made a big huge stink about it that got a lot of people angry, and now someone’s settin’ buildings on fire to send a warning to you. Whether you like it or not, Prince of Nowhere, the civil war’s back, and some of that’s on you and that name of yours.”
Illarion stopped, sighed, pushed his hair back from his face and looked up at the sky. “I gotta get back to Zalizinch,” he murmured. Kai Fen could barely hear him. He pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered something, kicked at the ground and sent yet more grass and clumpy soil flying through the air.
He spun around on his heels, stood there with his arms spread wide and a huge smile. “Hey, want to hear something great?”
Kai Fen had a feeling that whatever he was about to say, it was going to be the opposite of great. “What?”
His smile grew wider, more wicked. It reminded Kai Fen of when he’d been his enemy. Maybe he still was. He laughed, put his hands on his hips.
“The war’s back in Vwos, and I still got no way and no money to get me and my sister out of it!”
A little bit of Kai Fen’s rage ebbed to tentative sympathy. The Blylahn invasion might have come close to home, but he’d never been in danger from it. There were guards, fences, trenches, forest. They were secluded. And had anyone gotten close, had there even been a chance they might reach the estate, he would have been whisked away to somewhere safe.
Illarion didn’t have that. If something burnt down here, the quickest way he had away from it was to walk. And feet could seldom outrun a flame.
Kai Fen’s lips twitched a few times, and more nervous than he’d like to be, he tried a gentle, “I’m sorry.”
Illarion faltered. He blinked, eyebrows creased, and then he turned. He shoved his hands back into his pockets. “It’s fine. Can’t really do shit about it.” He sighed, pushed his hair back again. It was starting to look like a habit. “Come on.” He waved a hand forward. “Let’s try and find somewhere to wait out this rain that looks like it’s comin’. Only good thing about mountains is they got caves.”
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1.4k words of Illarion and Kai Fen. I honestly just wanted to write these two interacting.
The night wore on thin and cold, the air sharp, and Kai Fen pulled his parka closer. Michil was off in his sleeping bag, and though there was one laid next to him for Kai Fen, he didn’t know if he’d be getting much sleep tonight. It was too frigid, and the air too still. It was like a constant cut into his skin.
It was so cold that he could almost forget that they were only a day away from the Enyese border.
Almost.
“You still up?”
He didn’t dignify Illarion with a response. Instead he just watched as he lumbered around the campfire, sat down on the other side of it. He raised his hands to warm them, the flames reflected in each of those rings he liked to decorate himself with. Most of them were fakes, painted metals, while others were plated. But a few were real. Did Illarion know? Did he care? Or was his taste simply anything gaudy?
He really was going to love Enyang.
“Don’t blame ya,” Illarion continued. “Hard to sleep, with it being freezing and all.” He glanced up. “S’why I wanna go south.”
“South,” Kai Fen repeated. He sniffled and wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. “That’s so vague.”
“Drekku.”
Kai Fen snorted. “That’s not south. Drekku’s east. Enyang, Gorra, and Nakbe are all in the south.”
“East is south.” Illarion blew air into his cupped hands, his legs bounced. He really did look cold. Did that stupid coat do nothing for him? “West is south. East is south. Anythin’ that isn’t fuckin’ rocks and snow and ice half the year is south. You got southerner brain. Directions can actually mean somethin’ to ya.”
Kai Fen rolled his eyes. It was such a Vwosi thing to say, to change all the meanings of the words just to suit himself. He sighed and slumped, shivered. There wasn’t even a wind to take refuge from. Just a steady onslaught.
A log on the fire shifted and fell into cinders. Illarion leaned back and grabbed another from the pile Michil had chopped up early, plopped it down into the flames. He jerked his hand back the second the log left his fingers. Kai Fen watched as the thick bark split away from the wood, as smoke arose from the gnarls, untileventually, it joined the others in their flame.
He’d be back in Enyang tomorrow. At that point, he’d be full traitor.
“Any Enyese you can teach me?”
Kai Fen spared him a glance. “No.”
“What d’ya mean no? You taught that Saoirse kid some phrases, huh? And he ain’t even here.”
Kai Fen scowled. “That was Saoirse,” he muttered. “I don’t have anything to teach you.”
“What’s ‘at supposed to mean?”
Kai Fen looked up. Illarion was sitting with shoulders squared, chin raised. He didn’t look angry but he looked near it. Kai Fen rolled his eyes and looked towards some of the trees. “It means that I don’t want to teach you. It’s hard. There’s tones.” Tones that Saoirse had been able to pick up on. Tones Saoirse said sounded like music, that he thought were beautiful. Tones he struggled with but tried so hard to get right every time.
Enshu, he wanted to see him again.
“They speak Bridgespeak where we’re going anyway,” he muttered. “You’ll be fine.”
“Mm. Goodie.”
It was silent for a while. Kai Fen watched the trees, watched for a sway in their branches that never came. He stole a glance back at Illarion. His knee was still bouncing, his arms pulled inside that coat of his, his head ducked down behind the collar. His eyes stayed glued to the fire, a crease between what were supposed to be eyebrows.
Illarion glanced up, and Kai Fen met his gaze.
“What are you starin’ at me for?”
“You’re the one who sat across from me.”
“Vikwo,” Illarion hissed in an amused curse. He leaned forward, pushed his hair back from his face. He wheezed out a breathy laugh and Kai Fen scowled. He hadn’t done or said anything funny.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Illarion considered him, shook his head. “I just can’t believe rich people really do act like how they say.”
Kai Fen raised his eyebrows. He leaned back on his hands, let a bit of a smirk onto his face. “What, exactly, are they saying?”
Illarion perked up, grinning that stupid toothy grin of his. It was the first time Kai Fen had seen it and not thought it looked threatening. “Uppity, bossy, never in the wrong. Always gotta have it their way, don’t got to compromise. And very bad at sharing.”
“And that’s what you think of me?”
“Well, you’re bad at sharing.”
“What? How?” He had made Kuratsa be plenty generous to him.
“You keepin’ all your language to yourself, for a start.”
Kai Fen snorted, rolled his eyes. But he half-smiled anyway. He wasn’t sure that he liked Illarion, was positive that he didn’t trust him. But he was starting to understand what it was about him that made Heila like him: they both had that knack for conversation that he just didn’t have. He could just as easily picture Illarion walking into a room and leaving with a bunch of new friends as he could Heila.
“We won’t be in Enyang very long,” Kai Fen muttered. He looked south, where the sky was covered by clouds. It looked like rain that way. “Just long enough so I can speak to Enshu. I need to be gone before my cousin realizes I crossed the border. It wouldn’t be worth it to teach you.”
“Then why’d you teach Minnet?”
“Minnet is his mother,” Kai Fen corrected. He pulled his coat sleeves down over his hands, pulled his shoulders in to his ears. “I thought we might go to Enyang some day. But you know what happened.“
“Yeah.” he raised his eyebrwos and shook his head. “Damn. Us older brothers got to clean all the messes, huh?”
“You have a brother?”
Illarion shook his head. “Sister.” He chuckled. “Though she’s never fucked up as bad as this.”
Kai Fen would have been offended if he wasn’t so terribly right. It would be hard pressed to mess up as badly as Zhihao had. He watched the flames lick their way up the log. It was half charred now. “How old is she?”
“Same as you, pretty sure.”
It was strange to picture someone his own age looking at Illarion as an older anything, let alone as family. He existed in a void in Kai Fen’s mind. He was the guy who sold them train tickets, the guy who sold them out, the guy who tried to kill them. But he had a sister somewhere. He had family.
He was pretty young, too. Seventeen, eighteen. Kai Fen wasn’t sure.
Illarion added another log to the fire, cursing when the flames jumped up to meet him. He retracted his hand, shook it, kicked some dirt at the flames like that might punish them.
Where were this guy’s parents?
Parents. Kai Fen leaned to the side. Things he didn’t have anymore, unless the emperor had been right and he wasn’t his son. He had to get in to Burning Rock Temple, had to get into the pool of water. He had to speak to find out how his mother could have been lying and telling the truth at the same time.
He never thought he’d say it but he actually missed Linast, even with the springtime allergies the snowmelt flowers had brought him. He missed getting coffee at Tikhon’s, he missed sharing a flat with Heila.
He missed Saoirse. He hoped he was doing okay.
“What’s it like? Bein’ a prince?”
Kai Fen jerked his head up. He hadn’t been sure of what Illarion said at first, but once it settled he let out a nervous, startled laugh. Of all things. He wrapped his arms around himself, rubbed his thumb over his sleeve.
“Exhausting.”
Illarion nodded sagely. “What I thought.” He pushed off his knees with a grunt, shook out his coat and shoved his arms back through the sleeves. “Put the fire out before you sleep, yeah?”
Kai Fen blinked, sat up a bit straighter as Illarion walked passed him. “You want to freeze over night?”
“We got blankets, coats, body heat. We can survive a little cold.”
“This isn’t a little cold, it’s-”
“Put the damn fire out before you go to bed.”
Kai Fen shut his mouth. Anything else had to say died. He turned back to the flames, watched them dance. “I’ll put it out,” he muttered.
“Alright. Get a little sleep tonight, kid.”
Kai Fen hummed an acknowledgement, but he was already miles away. Tomorrow he exchanged refugee status to treasonous outlaw. Tomorrow he had to be confident enough to lie in the empire of truth, and he had an ex-soldier and an ex-enemy with him. All he had to do was pretend he was mute and communicate everything through writing. Enshu went blind there.
A flame consumed a leaf growing from one of the logs.
He’d be in Enyang tomorrow.
Kai Fen sat there until the fire burned itself out, and he shuffled into his sleeping bag next to Michil. They still had a long way to go in the morning. He should try and sleep while he could.
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He had to stop being so nervous. There was no reason for it.
He was only meeting the boy he spilled his thoughts out to on paper for the first time since their one-off chance meeting on the road outside Daleri. He was only meeting Michil, whose post had been changed to Linast for training on the boats, for the first time since their first meeting. Michil, who he told everything to in his letters because he’d been almost certain the two of them would never see each other again.
Michil, whose first impression of Kai Fen was him getting a bit too drunk and falling flat on his face.
Michil, who still wanted to talk to him anyways.
Michil. Who was taller than Kai Fen, was bigger than him. Who was proud of his facial hair even though it only grew on his chin and upper lip, who boasted about the amount of push-ups he could do, who had made good on his promise to bring Sevda flowers and give her an apology from Kai Fen.
Michil, whose letters were littered with please’s and thank you’s and stories that showed his good manners.
Michil, whose train Kai Fen could see coming in through the tunnel.
It was far away one second and there in the next, all screeching gears and coal smoke and wind. More of Kai Fen’s hair, excited, freed itself from his hair clasp and buffeted his face. Squinting and standing rigid, he forced himself to breath.
Breath.
Breath.
Breath, and don’t freak out. Definitely don’t freak out.
As the doors on the trains opened, Kai Fen became certain of one thing and one thing alone: even though there was no reason to, even though it was stupid stupid stupid, even though nothing was wrong and all he was doing was meeting his friend at the train station....
Oh Enshu, he was definitely freaking out.
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Then Bronwyn noticed him. She gave a few more words to Saoirse, glancing over and over in his direction, until she finally let go of him. She started over to him and Kai Fen wasn’t sure what to expect. He knew he deserved a good shouting at. He’d brought a strange girl into the housing complex - a place he was allowed in only because of Bronwyn’s hospitality - and had caused damage to the property. That was his fault and he deserved whatever lashing Bronwyn had for him.
She paused in front of him, reached a hand out. Kai Fen shut his eyes, prepared himself for the worst. To her, he probably seemed like nothing more than some misbehaving foreigner. When nothing came, not even a frustrated cuff on the ear, he reopened his eyes and found she’d pulled her hand back. She was just looking at him. He couldn’t read her face.
“Can I hug you?”
Kai Fen didn’t know what to say. He just looked at her, his lips parted. He knew he should say no, that he should turn it down. But the way she’d asked it picked at the threads keeping him together, and he didn’t have the strength to turn it down. Instead he just looked down and swallowed and leaned himself towards her - he didn’t know how to say yes, his throat just wouldn’t let him. He was glad she understood.
Kai Fen sucked in a breath as she wrapped her arms around him. She held him like she was worried he might break, and Kai Fen was thankful for it; he wasn’t sure his body could handle much more hurt. Something liquid and quivering filled him to the brim, and for a second, he worried that everything might come spilling out.
“What happened to you?” she whispered.
Kai Fen didn’t know what to say.
It had been so long since someone had held him like this.
He missed his mom. He wanted her back.
He forced himself to swallow, to sit back and be the one to pull away. He took a deep breath and hated the way it wobbled. He couldn’t look anywhere but down.
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Kai Fen yanked his arm back, scowled down at the ground. “It doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “It changes nothing.” It changed so much. “I have to find my uncle.” He looked back up at Saoirse and expected him to tell him to stop being selfish, to go after Heila and find her so they could talk and apologize and come back with rabbit in tow, but instead he found something worse.
Sympathy.
Understanding.
Saoirse saw right to the truth he was desperately trying to mask. Kai Fen took the damp blanket being offered to him by Tamar and draped it over Saoirse, ignored the offer to join him under it. Saoirse knew him well enough to know that when he was scared, he found something else to focus on. It wasn’t far to the housing complex, and Kai Fen could deal with the cold better than he could that understanding.
A white puff of snow went up and when Kai Fen turned, Kuratsa had replaced it. She stared at the three of them, eyes wide.
“Is… Is this true?” She was staring right at him. “Did she kill someone?”
Kai Fen really wished she wasn’t involved in this. He averted his eyes. “No, she didn’t.” And he kept the company of liars.
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