“I wish we could have truly been little brother and big sister,” he answered. “I wish I could have known you then.”
“As do I,” she told him. And I wish those were more than just empty, polite words we both say because we know they’re demanded by etiquette. “Stay here with me now? Let Vatarh feel us together for once.”
She felt his hesitation and wondered whether he’d refuse. But after a breath, he lifted one shoulder. “For a turn of the glass or so,” he said. “We can pray for him. Together.”
He pulled two chairs to the side of the bed, placing them an arm’s length apart. They sat, they watched the faltering rise and fall of their vatarh’s chest, and they said nothing more.
Jan ca’Vorl
“ I have to ride as quickly as I can to Brezno,” his matarh had told him. “I’ve instructed the servants to pack up our rooms for travel. I want you to follow along as soon as they have the carriages ready. And, Jan, see if you can convince your vatarh to come with you.” She kissed his forehead then, more urgently than she had in years, and pulled him into her. “I love you,” she whispered. “I hope you know that.”
“I do,” he’d told her, pulling away and grinning at her. “And I hope you know that.”
She’d smiled, hugging him a final time before she swung herself onto the horse held by the two chevarittai who would accompany her. He watched the trio clatter away down the road of their estate at a gallop.
That had been two days ago. His matarh should have made Brezno yesterday. Jan leaned his head back against the cushions of the carriage, watching the landscape of southern Firenzcia pass by in the green-gold light of late afternoon. The driver had told him that they would be stopping at the next village for the evening, and arrive in Brezno by midday tomorrow. He wondered what he’d find there.
He was alone in his carriage.