11th Ashan, 719
T
For a change, Pharan didn’t care.
“Why won’t your sister talk about you?” Orik leaned forward, the weight of his lean body comfortable against the Avriel’s own. He wore last night’s tunic again, the rust-red fabric crumpled and wine-stained.
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“She isn’t here.” Orik dropped forward and the bed creaked in protest. “And you are her brother.”
“Nymae and I aren’t particularly close,” Pharan said. He had reached out to trace the contours Of Orik’s face with his fingers. Talons, pale as bone and just a little sharper than fingernails, dug into skin without breaking it. The Biqaj didn’t as much as flinch.
“Why?”, he asked.
Pharan rolled one shoulder in a tentative shrug that made his wings rustle against the frame of the bed. “When Nymae left Athart I was a child. When she returned, I was about to leave—we never had much time to get to know each other.”
“And yet you came all the way from Athart to help her. Although you seem to have little interest in the matter yourself,” Orik observed.
And although I knew Jaene was here, Pharan thought. He studied Orik’s face again. The Bijaq eyes had taken on the color of the sky at dawn, the iron-blue shot through with streaks of rust. A scar, almost as long as one of Pharan’s fingers, graced the side of his face. Pharan wondered how he could have missed it until now.
“What did Nymae tell you about our family?”
“Little.” Orik ran his thumb across the front of Pharan’s tunic, driving wrinkles across the pristine, midnight-blue linen. “She mentioned she was looking for her older brother and sister; that they had left Athart and never came back.
Orik’s fingers stilled. “She spoke about becoming a warrior or a hunter. Or a bandit leader—but I am reasonably certain she was joking about that one.” He paused, lips curving in whatever memory played out before his inner eye. His expression sobered. “I was surprised when I saw her again and she was running a weaving mill.”
“I doubt it was her first choice, either.”
Orik snorted. He reached out to run his fingers across the brown and gold feathers of Pharan’s wing despite the Avriel’s warning glance. It was only after a moment he dropped his hand. Pharan sensed the man’s mind work behind guarded features, moving around the intangible puzzle pieces of his and his sister’s relationship.
A bit passed and then another. The murmur of the street below seeped into the room, filling the silence between them. Pharan thought of the things he had to do before he was expected at the harbor. Things he wanted to do before saying his farewell to a city he didn’t plan to visit again anytime soon.
“Could you have run the mill?”
Orik’s words caught Pharan off-guard. He had reached out to smooth over the wrinkles left by the Biqaj’s idle hands and halted mid-motion. Belatedly, he continued. “Maybe.”
It was what his father had wanted. At some point. After there had been no one else who could have run it but he and Nymae, and his sister had made clear she followed through with their father’s wishes only because she considered it her obligation as a dutiful daughter.
Neither had appreciated his decision to not get involved. Unlike his father though, his sister had never complained—her usual harmless jabs aside.
Orik’s eyes lit up with his smile. “Maybe,” he echoed. Pharan’s hesitation had not been lost on him. “But you didn’t want to, either.”
Pharan stayed silent.
“Ah. Family. Complicate sometimes, with all the duties and the occasional guilt—“, Orik started, then stopped when he noticed Pharan’s expression. He inclined his head then moved to stretch out beside him. “Relax. The times I find someone of your people worth talking to are far and few in between—and even your sister would have scratched out my eyes over what we did.”
Orik tried to reach out to him, but Pharan caught his hand by the wrist. “There is still time,” the Avriel mocked. His talons pressed into the other man’s flesh until Orik drew a sharp breath. Without warning, Pharan relinquished his hold on his arm. “At least a break or two, when I have to catch my ship.”
“Or you stay a day longer,” Orik suggested as he rolled on top of him in a rustle of fabric and feathers.
“Or you come to Athart with me,” Pharan suggested.
“As your what?”
“I could always need a slave.”
The Biqaj starred down on him for two, three uncertain trills, then released his breath. “Sometimes it is hard to tell when you are joking and when not.”
Pharan smiled, an expression that tugged only at the corner of his mouth.
“See that’s what I mean,” Orik grunted, his eyes dark with amusement. “I am just a momentary distraction to you.”
“What terrible prospect”, Pharan murmured as he reached up to pull the other man close.