“Were you waiting for me?” He found the books and the people attached to them. Dagan, Kajja, Innan, and the councilor from Dagan’s conservancy, Thad, were tucked into a corner with good sunlight and several carafes of something or other. Dagan looked up and smiled at him.
Hen smiled back and waved, and then felt ridiculous for the wave.
Dagan blew him a kiss and went back to reading.
“Yes, I was,” Piret was saying in the meantime. “I don’t know if the Council is ever going to decide what to do, but we need to talk about what we’re going to do.”
“You and me?” Hendrik looked away to thank the server who set bread, fruit, and cheese in front of him. She even brought him a cup of juice-and-water, since he’d been sticking to that and ale.
When she left, Piret settled across from him. “Of course. The Council can talk about it and send as many scouts as they want, but it’ll be you and me doing the heavy lifting on any expedition into the City. We should let them know that whatever they want us to do, we’re the ones who make any calls once we’re inside.”
Hendrik was quiet for a long moment. “So, we’re not going to talk about my previous objection to you, or anyone, going back in there?”
“I thought I’d spare you losing that argument. The Council is wasting enough time. Thad got so fed up this morning he abandoned them to ‘do something useful’ with the scholars, instead. We’re soldiers, though. We know our duty.” She set her jaw.
“Piret, we’re not soldiers anymore. Well, you are, but—”
“No,” she interrupted.
“What?”
“I’m not a guard anymore. I left after the Archives. Lied and said I wanted a family. Bought a little place in the Tavern District—the one Kajja found me in, before.”
“Oh, so when she found you drunk and sad, you didn’t actually own the place yet?”
Piret deadpanned, “I was planning on it. Just hadn’t done it yet. Then I stayed with the guards to get into the Archives for the resistance. After that, I couldn’t do it anymore. Saw way too much.”
Hendrik shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. How long was that, after Lyla?”
“Not long, or I would’ve been out of the guards already.” A slight pause as Piret took his carafe and poured herself some juice. “I never saw her, you know. Lyla. Never opened her box.”
Hendrik swallowed hard, remembering the claustrophobic, dark tunnel full of long wooden boxes. “That’s right. Do you wish you had?”
“Not sure,” Piret admitted. “At first, I did. Now, especially talking to you, seeing your eyes when it comes up, no. I’m fucked up enough.”
Hendrik sighed. “I’m not sad anymore. I mean, I am, but it just—I lost a few pieces of me that day.”
“I think I saw a big one go. When you pulled the lid off his box.”
Hendrik waved for the server. He needed some ale, at least, for this conversation.
Piret leaned over, catching his gaze and holding it with her own intense, dark one. “Hendrik. Listen to me. You think you’re not sad, but you are. You’re sad and you’re angry and you’re afraid, and all those things are a reasonable reaction to what we’ve seen and done.”
Hendrik wanted to look away but somehow couldn’t.
“Haven’t I always been honest with you? Even when it’s brutal?” she insisted.
He nodded.
“I’m sad and angry and afraid, too. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be. But you cannot let it rule your life. Not now.”
“What life?” he asked with a snort before he told the server, “Ale, please. Thanks.”
Yes, he wanted a life. That much he knew now. But how could he make one with all this going on?
“I’ll have one too, please,” Piret said as she scurried away. “You walked through death alone, you idiot, and you came out the other side here. This place is practically utopia, compared to what we’ve known our whole lives. I mean, fuck order and light if this is chaos and darkness.”
“It’s pretty great, yeah. Apart from the people in charge not being able to decide anything.” Because sarcasm was a worthwhile defense, after all.
Piret glared right through it. “You might’ve changed but you’re still you. I’ve changed, but I’m still me. I know what you have to do just like I know what I have to do. So, stop wasting our time like we’re squishy woodland councilors and let’s talk like the soldiers we are.”
Hendrik shook his head. “You’re sure I’ll go, huh?”
“Hen, even if no one else does, we have to. If no help is coming, the resistance needs to know, and they need all the fighters they can get. If it’s just reconnaissance with some scouts, we’re the only ones who know our way around the High City. If it’s an assassination mission—”
“Assassinate the murder-god? Do you hear yourself?”
She didn’t miss a beat, “Then we have to be there to cover for the resistance and make it look like some shit Heart Wood plot if it fails. No one else can get hurt, and the only people who can make sure of that are us. And if you make me do it alone, I swear by the burning stone, Hendrik, I will send my ghost to haunt you as you ride the night mare in your sleep. Every fucking night.”
Hendrik licked his lips, accepted his ale, and drank deep. Only then did he trust himself to say, “I don’t even know who I am, anymore.”
She reached out and took his free hand where it lay on the table.
He started, but after a moment relaxed and squeezed.
She said, “Yeah. That’s why Kajja found me drunk. But I had already gotten in with the resistance. I just didn’t know how to channel all my sadness and anger and fear into that. I didn’t know how to choose something for myself.”
That hit a little too close to the mark. Hendrik winced.
