Aftermath

"I'm awake," Peturabo announced.

Mors glanced at him, then ignored him.

He reclined in a wicker chair, having switched to a smaller knife blade to carve his wood. The shavings vanished before they could fall onto his black clothes; anyone who looked closely would find they had already piled into a small mound in the corner of the room.

Peturabo stared at Mors for a while, seemingly intending to warn him with his eyes not to remain so indifferent.

His mind was still muddled, as though a tightly wrapped layer of gauze bound his thoughts, making gray-white and colored spots tremble and overlap before his eyes. Fatigue weighed down his limbs as if they had been bound in steel, impossible to move.

Thirty seconds later, Peturabo lay back down. The feeling beneath his head made it hard for him to tell when Mors had changed his temperament and fetched him proper soft blankets, a mattress, and pillows.

Then, from the courtly tassels hanging beside the pillow and the soft brocade fabric, he concluded that Mors was indeed not the one he should thank.

"Harkon came by," Mors said leisurely, his words carrying the same soothing rhythm as his blade lightly scraping over wood. "He apologized for his negligence and declared your victory."

He put a little force into the knife's tip, trimming the outer curve of the wood clean. "I told him that when you woke, you would claim your reward. I trust you have decided what it is."

"Yes," Peturabo said. Mors's repeated lessons had taught him that after giving, one had to declare what one wished to receive. "I heard that the library of Lokos has been sealed for many years, and the key to its doors rests in the hands of the royal court's noble houses."

"A very good choice," Mors said, blowing lightly to keep the shavings from interfering with the blade.

Peturabo looked upward at the familiar ceiling. His thoughts remained a dark, gloomy fog. His body burned, yet his forehead felt cold, as if he were being swept about by rolling tides. Nothing was clear.

Only then did he remember how he had collapsed.

His belated anger flared at once. He propped himself up on his elbows, blood pounding through his veins.

"Someone tampered with the water," Peturabo snarled through gritted teeth.

Most of his anger was directed at himself, because he had trusted too easily and failed to notice the trap. Worse still, before others' eyes, he had fallen into Mors's arms.

That tormented him a hundred, a thousand times more than the pain in his skin and flesh.

"Princess Calipha came specifically to explain this matter to me," Mors said, turning the wood over and studying another surface. "The poisoner killed himself before he could be interrogated. The one I captured did the same."

"I allowed them swift deaths."

Mors let a scornful breath slip through his teeth. "That man actually thought he could deceive me and poison me. Who did they think they could fool?"

Peturabo felt that Mors was speaking in veiled insinuations. Pain still assaulted his thoughts, as though someone were striking his head with a blunt weapon.

"Lie down a little longer, child," Mors advised flatly.

Peturabo obediently lay back in bed. Many questions swirled in his heart, rising and sinking in turn.

He thought of this sudden attack, of Harkon, Andos, and Calipha, and of when Mors had arrived at the scene, disguised himself as an ordinary citizen, and gone onstage to personally bring Peturabo's performance to a close.

He remembered that yesterday—if he had not slept for more than a day, then it had been yesterday—Mors had finally offered him direct praise. Honey-sweet, brilliant flowers had begun growing seductively in his heart, nearly spilling from reality into his dreams, then reflecting the lucid light of wakefulness back from that dreamlike beauty.

He thought of how Mors had been watching him, and his heart softened.

"Do you know who wanted to poison me, Mors?" Peturabo asked, turning his head.

"In theory, I do not. It is nothing more than the jealousy of other nations finally drifting to Lokos. A usurper encounters this sort of assassination attempt fifty-two times a year."

Mors encountered some difficulty with the carving on the wooden block. By all reason, he ought to put an exceedingly old-fashioned eagle on the front of the emblem, but he had always hated Rome; if he carved a double-barred cross instead, the mockery would be a little too obvious.

"And in reality?"

Mors set the wooden block facedown on the table beside the chair and tossed the knife over with it. Out of sight, out of mind. He turned the wicker chair to face Peturabo.

"The one who came to me was the brother of a Lokos soldier. The one who approached you onstage was a spy from another nation."

"A Lokos man was involved?"

"His brother died on the road while coming to fetch you and me. Do you remember those three soldiers?"

Of course Peturabo remembered. The boy met his gaze for several seconds, and the two of them tacitly skipped over the subject.

They each had their reasons for being unable to feel grief, and neither wished to pretend before the other, putting on an act of moral nobility and sentimental compassion.

What the boy truly cared about was something else.

"The other half of your story came from Calipha," he said. "When did you exchange information with her? Why couldn't you tell me yourself?"

"Because I wanted you to hear it from others. I wanted your ears to hold not only my voice, but other people's voices as well."

Besides, he hoped that the princess would be willing to look after Peturabo for him in the future. He was already beginning to find it tiring; it was difficult to imagine how parents in this world raised one child, much less several, to adulthood.

Peturabo turned his head away in disagreement.

Mors felt about on the table, hooked a finger around a gold-inlaid fruit tray, and slid the dish of plump, glistening grapes to the chair arm within reach.

He ate one himself and tossed another to Peturabo. Peturabo caught it, sat up a little straighter, and leaned against the headboard as he ate the sugar-restoring fruit.

"Tell me what you think, child," Mors said casually and indistinctly as he rolled a grape in his mouth until it burst.

Peturabo bit the fruit apart. "Would the same story really differ when told by two people? It isn't as though I refuse to hear it from you."

He made the two slightly pointed teeth in his mouth knock together, producing a sound only he could hear through his bones.

He knew Mors was right. If he wished to lead Lokos forward, he had to hear the voices of the people of Lokos. What he had seen and gained had already given him an example.

Yet Peturabo was still somewhat confused.

"But I do not wish to waste so many words talking with you all the time." Mors closed his eyes and lightly rested the back of his head against the upper edge of the chair.

"Is that so?" Peturabo looked at him suspiciously.

"Speak honestly, quickly," Mors ordered with his eyes still closed. He did not want to indulge Peturabo's old habit.

Peturabo sat up a little straighter. He had recovered considerably from the fog of the poisoning, and with that came the return of his nimble reason.

Only after swallowing the fruit did he hug the blanket, turn his head, and say in as calm and low a voice as possible, "I thought you were going to leave again, Mors. I thought you were preparing to do so."

"I was out of your sight for half a day, and you began imagining things?" Mors opened his eyes. His pupils shifted as he looked at Peturabo through his disheveled, lifted hair.

He pondered for a moment, then said bluntly, "That is not bad, either."

"Huh?" Peturabo raised his brows.

"If you are not baselessly jealous that I correspond only with Princess Calipha, or guessing at other thoughts that even I cannot fathom, then that is a good thing. You do not want me to leave, but I am not in a hurry to go, so it is not a problem."

A breathy laugh escaped Mors's mouth.

He settled his head properly again, melting into the wicker chair like cheese beneath the sun, becoming inseparably intimate with it.

"You think there is nothing wrong with me?" Peturabo felt a warm current flow over him, making his mind run more smoothly as well.

"Oh, I do not expect you to become perfect," Mors said softly, enjoying the silent service of the chair perfectly fitted to the human body. "As long as your problems do not hinder important matters, then let them be."

He shifted his shoulders and found a more comfortable angle.

"I will not repeat grand principles anymore. You are a clever child, after all, and I am the embodiment of laziness. I have nothing to say for now. If you are tired, lie down. Do not disturb me."

That warmth retreated from Peturabo's head to the soles of his feet.

"So the principle is that I can never be moved by your behavior." Peturabo forcefully lay back onto his pillow.

Mors muttered a few words. "That is right. Fine."