only a starved dog’s logic about bones
One week, six days to Beltane, 1017 II Age
“Yuri tells me you helped him summon his familiar.”
That was Viktor’s voice, leaning against a wall outside the guest lodgings Guang Hong had arranged for revelers arriving for Beltane. Shen-Osheth was the largest of all the elven capitals, extending all the way from the harbor up the river delta where a maze of bridges spanned dozens of river offshoots, where in some of its lowlands the houses had been crafted on stilts to defend against springtime overflow, where elves of all kinds and mages alike serenely padded gondolas up the elegant canals. That Guang Hong’s people had enough space to reserve three entire guest houses in different parts of the city just in case of arriving revelers was a fact that had never been lost on Otabek. The Southrons had long surpassed the Northerners in openness and hospitality, and had fostered an environment meant for trade, for the exchange of ideas.
The pearl of the south, they called it, but it wasn’t so simple: Shen-Osheth was a labyrinth of many cities, ever moving, ever changing; not just one gem, but several.
He stepped out of his quarters to join Viktor on the long balcony that overlooked the canal below, granting the Prince a cool nod before leaning his arms against the reed-woven rail. “Your brother helped himself,” Otabek murmured calmly. It was, in a way, the truth; all he’d done was get Yuri out of his own way long enough for his magic to do the rest.
When he’d come north from the wilds, exhausted from constant battles, weary, he’d taken on a job in Yakov’s guard because it was the path of least resistance. An honor, supposedly, to be recognized in such a way, particularly considering his race. Yakov had not been alive for the first age but he was of the first generation of the second, and so he’d heard the stories. Perhaps that was why the North remained more closed off, more traditional, nestled into the protective embrace of the looming mountains. He’d developed a begrudging respect for Viktor. Begrudging because, if the stories were true, Viktor was part of the reason why the wilds had gotten so bad to begin with.
There was no denying his talent, however. No denying the power of his magic.
Viktor had not moved to join him, which suited Otabek just fine. “What are your intentions for my brother?”
Direct and to the point. Otabek wondered exactly how much of the story Yuri had told. Or perhaps Viktor had sussed something out of Yuri’s thoughts; families could do that, and whatever push and pull existed between the two brothers Otabek had no doubt of their protectiveness for each other. “I don’t have those kinds of expectations,” he said calmly, considering the irony of being asked such a thing by Viktor, who’d taken two entire nations to war once over something that hadn’t even really been a soulbond, not truly. Otabek hadn’t been alive back then, but it had been the rangers who’d been left to deal with the consequences of the weaker west. He pursed his lips: “They breed resentment, don’t you think?”
“I’m not entirely sure what you’re implying.” There was, underneath his charm, a certain amount of danger in the Northern Prince; a readiness to remind the world of the nature of things, of the improbability of a victory when set against him. Otabek did not have to look back to imagine the flicker of challenge in his blue eyes, or the way his heart-shaped smile would have vanished, replaced by something cutting and serious.
You know precisely what I’m implying, Viktor. This was not the front to engage him on, though; Otabek was beginning to suspect the past was, perhaps, more complicated than he’d once believed. “Are you asking me to keep my distance?” That would be, somehow, utterly unsurprising to hear from a Northern High Elf, who were the closest descendants to the clan his ancestors had fought against and then lost to in the first age.
And now they had the wilds, the blight. Primeval, misunderstood forces with no one to tend them.
“No.” It was the first surprise of the whole conversation, the first thing Otabek had not expected. He turned back to study Viktor, who was looking away, silver hair drawn up in a high ponytail, expression unreadable. “But you should know that if you hurt him, I’ll ruin you.”
“I knew that already.” If there was anything to know about Viktor, it was that.
“Then why persist?”
Otabek considered this, and decided to offer Viktor just the one warning: “You won’t like my answer.”
“Try me.”
“Very well.” Strange, the way Lilia and Yakov had come together for this: the most talented sorcerer amongst all of the elves, and yet he understood none of the forces that really made a life worth living. “Has it honestly never occurred to you that he doesn’t have to share your fate?” Otabek didn’t say the rest, but he narrowed his eyes; thought it, and for a moment he believed that perhaps even Viktor might have thought it, too:
that after a hundred years, neither do you?
- - -
One week, five days to Beltane, 1017 II Age
“You’re an early riser.” Viktor had learned to expect as much, though to a certain degree even he wasn’t sure why he’d bothered keeping tabs. He couldn’t have said the same about the habits of most of the other Easterlings, but then again, none of the other Easterlings had presented a sunrise riddle to him and then subsequently refused to explain themselves; none of them had stood on the deck of the ship enduring their opposing elements just to watch him separate waves.
“Viktor?” Finding the Northerner outside of his room was a surprise; Guang Hong had given all of the travel groups guest houses in carefully chosen districts of the city, and without his friendship with Phichit, Yuuri would’ve regularly lost his way to the house reserved for the party traveling from Hasetsuil, which was set up on stilts over one of the flood plains, where every street and walkway was vaulted over the delta, part of a crooked, sprawling maze. “I like sunrise,” Yuuri said, which was part-truth. The phoenix liked sunrises. The phoenix had swept into his life and remade him in the image of a morning person, forever unable to sleep with the prospect of a rising sun on the horizon.
“I thought as much.” He smiled, vague and a little distant, and looked down the twists of the crooked street. “You won’t be able to see it particularly well from here. Walk with me?”
Was anything with Viktor really an offer? This sounded like one, but given his station, it’d be rude to decline. Yuuri hesitated, and then a bit of curiosity struck, flickering like a lit candle in a subtle breeze: “You know your way around Shen-Osheth?” Of course he does. He’s probably been here dozens of times …
“Not really,” Viktor admitted with a soft chuckle, and then he glanced down through the reeds towards the stream meandering below. “I listen to the currents.”
“Oh.” Yuuri wasn’t sure how that would help; he could track the movement of the sun overhead and still not wind up in quite the right place, amidst Shen-Osheth’s woven maze.
“It’s enough to get to the harbor,” Viktor explained, flashing the polite curve of a smile once more. Then he gestured to his left, to underscore the point. “It’s this way. Are you coming?”
“… Sure,” Yuuri murmured, still uncertain, because there was nothing the Prince of the North could possibly have wanted with his company. He turned, and found himself face to face with Viktor, who’d put both hands on his shoulders, and was applying that same strange scrutiny, like Yuuri was something he was still trying to piece together:
“Let your yes be your yes,” he said, quietly but firmly, the sort of thing that could’ve sounded like a reprimand but somehow, Yuuri knew, wasn’t; underscored the offer in the first place, the importance of his own choice.
“Yes,” he said then, though he was eager to get out from under Viktor’s hands, to look away from that piercing, hauntingly blue gaze. “I’m coming.” They walked together in silence for some time, marked only by Viktor’s brief pauses as streams ran together: something that would’ve been almost unnoticeable, if he hadn’t already mentioned the way he read the river currents; slowly the walkways became broader, and shuttered shops became more recognizable, and Yuuri knew they were getting close.
Surrounded by the muted purple light of pre-dawn, Viktor finally spoke: “Why did you come out for the storm on the Ardor?”
So this was it, then. The conversation Yuuri had thought might’ve come just after the storm, except he’d woken up alone, and then Viktor had said nothing for days. “I don’t like small spaces.”
Yuuri had a bird familiar; Viktor supposed that made sense. It also felt like only part of the truth, which was what every conversation with Yuuri Katsuki was like, watching the halfling withhold wholesale parts of himself. It irritates you because you do it was Viktor’s thought, wrapped in Yuri’s voice. He’d been thinking about Yuri a lot since arriving at Shen-Osheth; even though there was Beltane to get through and then months before the trip out West it was still a reminder that the next stage of the wheel was imminent.
Viktor had not gone west except to extract vengeance in exchange for peace.
A hundred years ago.
Back then he’d called it justice.
“You stayed,” he murmured carefully, dissatisfied: “For hours. When I caught you …”
“I lost track of time,” Yuuri murmured, defensive. Fire had always come so easily to him, and he’d never really sought out storms. The idea of being drenched by one in both the physical and metaphysical sense had never occurred to him. That there was some danger, perhaps, in too much exposure. And yet here was Viktor, the best water mage of the age, asking him questions.
Was that dangerous? Perhaps.
“I was watching you,” he said suddenly, because that was the truth in its most essential form. “It was mesmerizing.” You were mesmerizing. There: that was the real danger. This perilous interest in a thing he could never have. The way it had been so easy to let Viktor sweep magic over him and then fall asleep listening to his steady heartbeat.
That was the real threat.
“Ah.” They were coming up on the docks now, walking out onto one of the piers where the bay would stretch out before them, serene. The sun would rise off to the left, and Yuuri instinctively turned that way to watch as the phoenix materialized on his shoulder, a subtle, translucent scarlet. “Curious.”
“What do you mean, curious?”
“I felt the same way, once, watching a sunrise a few miles out from Hasetsuil.” How long had it been since he’d felt anything like that? For that matter, had he ever? “Are you still going to deny it?”
“… No,” Yuuri breathed, and the rising sun was reflected in the dark pools of his eyes, made them molten. “But I wish you’d quit asking about it.”
“Why do you insist on hiding so much of yourself?”
“Curious,” echoed Yuuri, aware that perhaps it wasn’t the wisest thing in the world to do, to mimic the high prince. “Why do you?”
One corner of Viktor’s mouth tugged upwards in a wry smirk. Two challenges in two days. There was a fight in the halfling, a flickering, unpredictable fight; but a fight nonetheless. In places where it would have been more prudent to cede their ground both Yuuri and Otabek had held firm.
Courage, by its very definition, was always a surprise. “I have my reasons.”
Yuuri smiled, but Viktor thought it looked a little bit sad, even with his face awash in rising gold. “So do I.”
- - -
One week, four days to Beltane, 1017 II Age
Travelers from the West arrived for Beltane; tired and hungry and haggard. They’d come in from the desert roads and had haunting stories to tell about the creatures that stalked the wilds. Guang Hong knew one of them, apparently; a human mage named Leo, who’d looked at Viktor with an abrupt, sudden terror, all careful dread.
Guang Hong had swept him away before there could be answers.
Seung-gil, who usually had less than nothing to say, turned to look at Otabek, his expression flat and unreadable: “Evidently the roads are getting worse.”
“So it would seem.”
- - -
One week to Beltane, 1017 II Age
The Northerners went together to the night market. Shen-Osheth was famous for them: vendors and artisans of all types had decided to make their home in the pearl of the south, and the stalls stayed lit long after dark with hanging lanterns that glowed in dozens of different shades, lit by the subtle pulsing of magical light.
Yuri spent more than he should have with a man who sold stylish, well-made tunics. Georgi accompanied Mila through a store selling amulets, looking melancholy at first and then increasingly thoughtful. Viktor was engrossed by a glassblower, pocketing a freshly molded bird with a long, sweeping tail. Otabek spent little and said less, though he came along for the entire night with a tolerant, subtle smile, and when Mila bought them all tiny torches that lit up in different colors and then challenged everyone in a race back to the guesthouse he obliged, laughing in his own quiet, reserved fashion as he and Yuri struggled to keep up with Viktor, who’d sent the stag forward first, and followed without hesitation every lucky turn it took, every haphazard shortcut which just happened to work out in his favor.
“Cheater,” grumbled Yuri, as he pulled up in third place, just behind Otabek, and he stalked up to his brother to wave a shower of silver sparks in Viktor’s face. “You and your lucky breaks, Vitya —“
“It’s only natural,” Viktor murmured, smiling his heart-shaped smile, eyes crinkled by mischief at their edges. He was carrying a blue flare, and it reflected in the bright of his gaze as the stag stalked off down the hallway, getting fainter with every step until the bright white of its form had vanished. “Can’t help it.” Then he plunked the magical sparkler down in an empty vase, an invitation for others to do the same, and turned to head for his own quarters. Goodnight, Yura.
Lately he’d been an early riser. He lifted a hand to say goodnight, and Yuri didn’t need to see his face to feel the edges of his smirk rippling through the family bond. Mila and Georgi came in minutes later, each of them confessing to different wrong turns on the way back at least once. Which was to say: Georgi admitted to a wrong turn, though it seemed the run had raised his spirits a little bit; he offered a small smile as he said it. Mila insisted she’d gone on the scenic route. They’d each added their own sparklers to the bouquet Viktor began in the vase: Viktor’s blue, Yuri’s silver; Mila’s red and Georgi’s purple.
Otabek’s gold.
Unwilling to sleep just yet, Yuri climbed from the balcony up to the roof of the guest house, folded his hands behind his head and looked up at the stars. Otabek followed a few minutes after, as slow and silent as a creeping shadow, and when he came to sit cross-legged next to Yuri there was a package tucked under his arm. “I have something for you,” he murmured. “It’s from your mother.”
“Really?”
“Mm.” Otabek handed it over, something soft, wrapped in olive silk and tied up by a sprig of vine, a sure sign of Lilia’s work, and Yuri smiled a little bit at this reminder of home, half a world away, before he undid the wrappings. Inside was a hooded cloak, so deep a midnight blue that it was nearly black: like the night sky, overhead. As he unfolded it the embroidery on the back became clear: the sigil of a unicorn, sewn in strands of a silver so pale it was almost white with deep, purple eyes.
“… Viktor has one of these,” Yuri murmured, holding it up to examine in the moonlight before sweeping it over his shoulders. Viktor’s was silver, and the stag was white, and its eyes were the same cerulean blue as his. “She made it for him when he got his stag; they’re nearly indestructible … I used to steal it from him all the time, when I was younger.”
I wanted to be him, back then. Viktor had loomed so large in his childhood; his brother, the living legend.
“Now you have your own.”
“Thanks to you,” Yuri murmured, drawing his knees up to his chest, and resting his chin on them.
“What I did was next to nothing,” Otabek replied quietly, glancing up to study the crescent moon. “You’re not meant to be like him, you know.”
“I do know that.”
“Do you?” Otabek asked, and he turned to fix Yuri with the piercing dark of his gaze. “Before I came to Mosciren the other rangers spoke of two brothers. Be wary of the elder. He has soft eyes and a hardened heart.” Yuri’s brow furrowed and he rose to Viktor’s defense, ready to object, to insist that something horrible had happened once, a long time ago; that nobody, even the banshees, had any right to judge, but Otabek shook his head slightly, pressed a finger to the blonde’s lips, and continued:
“So I asked: what of the younger? And they said: he has hard eyes, and nobody knows his heart. But I know now. I’ve seen what guards you. The younger of the two brothers has hard eyes and a gentle heart.”
“Tch.” Yuri tried to snort, but a subtle blush dusted his high cheekbones, and there was a soft smile threatening to break out under the scowl he’d tried to frame. “… It doesn’t feel very gentle.”
“I imagine not.” Otabek turned to look back up at the moon. “Sometimes I think that we banshees are the only people who’ve ever learned that purity does not necessarily equate to kindness. What I want to say to you is this: what you have, Yuri, could never possibly be a thing like weakness.”