Chapter Text
The hawk king swoops in from the sea, and over Phoenicis Hall drops something that flashes in the morning sunlight. It falls from the sky toward the ramparts, where the heron prince, standing windswept and alone, snatches it out of the air.
The hawk wheels again overhead, his scream echoing between the mountains. The heron turns the bounty over in his hand: it’s a medal, gold alloy, ornamented with a crimson ribbon, bearing the family crest of some merchant lord. The pale sunlight catches it, and the heron’s eyes linger on the dark tracery - blood drying black in its embossed edges.
The hawk king descends to alight on the roof nearby. Before his feet even touch the ground his talons are vanishing, beak melding back into his face, feathers clearing away from his skin in a rush of magic. He becomes a man, but his amber eyes still gleam with a predatory keenness.
“How many?” Reyson says.
“Two,” Tibarn says. “Both full-rigged, traders under a senator’s insignia.”
“It went well?”
“In all the ways that matter,” says Tibarn. “It turned out only a few of them were up for a fight.”
Any satisfaction Reyson feels is tempered by a familiar sense of discontentment. It still bothers him that other people are fighting his battles, but the battles won’t get fought otherwise, and he can’t complain without being spectacularly ungrateful. He bows his head. “Thank you,” he says. “King Tibarn.”
“I’ve told you, you don’t need to bow like that,” Tibarn remarks, casually enough. A gust of wind ruffles them both. “Nobody bothers with that here.”
Reyson knows this. He doesn’t mean to be overly stilted. Hawks care little for the social etiquette common to other nations, but old habits are hard to break. Even his Modern speech, now fluent, comes with a silvery edge that marks him as an outsider: the Ancient Tongue still haunts the cadence of his voice. Coolly he says, “Is this not a transaction between nations?”
“Is it?” says Tibarn.
“You act not just for me, but for my people.”
“Yeah, well,” Tibarn says, rolling his shoulders. “It’s not like I’d let it slide if you weren’t here to motivate me.”
Reyson looks at the medal again, but at that moment a tang of pain zings in the air like electricity, and Tibarn gives a hiss of displeasure. Reyson looks up. The hawk has stopped his shoulders mid-roll, and is inspecting a spot on his upper arm.
Reyson tilts his head at him. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” Tibarn says dismissively. Reyson, craning his neck, sees the tear in the hawk’s sleeve, and a bloodstain drying dark on the fabric. “Something must have grazed me. Don’t worry about it. Those bastards couldn’t do real damage to me if they brought out every warship in Begnion.”
Reyson can believe that Tibarn didn’t notice the wound until now. The king rarely comes back with scrapes, but he gets so caught up in battle - a little wound is just an element of the excitement to him, a confirmation that it was worthwhile, a trophy of a different kind. Yet to see him bleeding still makes Reyson’s stomach tighten. “Let me look at it,” he says, almost automatically.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Tibarn says with a wave of his hand. “It’s just a scratch.”
“Most things are just a scratch to you,” Reyson says, approaching him and pocketing the medal as he does so. “Please let me look. It’s the least I can do.”
Tibarn concedes, with suitably stoic reluctance. Up close, Reyson peels back the torn fabric of the jacket to inspect the damage. At least Tibarn was correct - the wound is, as he said, just a graze just over the bicep. It looks worse than it is. Whatever bolt or arrow hit him, it ripped across his tawny skin, leaving a shallow but ragged gash that still weeps down his arm. A crust of blood has dried around it, and the iron has left a microbial residue that’s in need of cleansing.
A few years ago, the sight of it would have made Reyson feel ill. Now, he’s gratified to find that he doesn’t even flinch; he feels his face stay where it’s meant to, and he feels suitably cold. It’s progress.
“Not too ambitious,” he mutters to himself in the Ancient Tongue.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” Reyson says. “Hold still.”
He closes his eyes, holds Tibarn’s arm steady with one hand, and hovers his other hand over the injury. Even without touching it, he can feel it as a heat beneath his palm, an angry disturbance in the fabric of Tibarn’s being. For a moment he feels - or maybe imagines - the echoes of battle in it, thrumming through Tibarn’s body in a series of sympathetic vibrations that begin here. Reyson dawdles briefly over those sensations, builds on them in his mind - a hail of arrows, wind knifing over wings, talons spilling blood onto a pitching deck; the moment of injury, so well-matched to the atmosphere as to go unnoticed, a natural component of the fray.
These things map easily onto the presence of Tibarn himself. The things Reyson feels from him are familiar and definitely not imaginary: his emotional footprint is reassuringly hawklike, strong and confident, with a healthy streak of impulsiveness that splinters through him like lightning.
Except…
Reyson hesitates, furrowing his brow. There’s something else in Tibarn’s heart - it wouldn’t be any of Reyson’s concern, except that it’s out of place. It calls attention to itself, like an inappropriately sweet chord in a dissonant place. Something is wrong - not catastrophically, but still. Has it been there before? He’s never noticed it.
“Reyson?” Tibarn says.
Reyson shakes himself, and realigns his focus. He’s not in the business of untangling other people’s hearts these days, and now isn’t a good time to start. The important thing is that Tibarn ought not to have spilled his blood, not when there is so much other blood that well deserves to be spilled.
So Reyson shuts his eyes and hums a line of chant. These days his voice still feels harsher and clumsier than it used to, but at least he can phonate again, which is more than he could say for some time after the massacre. The wind whistles thinly around the two of them, and he feels a trickle of terrestrial harmony, drawing out of the air and into himself. It shimmers through his veins, blossoms in his fingertips; and with some effort, he redirects it into Tibarn’s flesh. These days he needs to picture the process in mundane detail: he urges the body to fight infection; wills the blood to clot, then to scab; vitalizes the components that scaffold the injury, rebuild the tissue, knit the skin.
In a matter of seconds, the order of things is restored. He opens his eyes, and the wound is entirely gone. Only the blood, drying in flakes on Tibarn’s skin, indicates that anything was amiss to begin with.
“Really?” says Tibarn, half amused. “That was barely a wound at all.”
“It was still a wound,” Reyson says, peering at his own handiwork.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Come back in one piece next time,” Reyson says.
Tibarn gives a huff of laughter. “I’m used to it. Does it really bother you that much?”
Reyson hesitates, idly brushing dried blood from Tibarn’s arm with his thumb. Under his hands, Tibarn is warm and alive, built practically invincible. He can rub up against chaos like a purring cat. Of course he can take a hit. He already has the scars to prove it - he got them long before Reyson came into his life.
So Reyson has been a little self-indulgent here. Part of him, yes, simply does not like seeing avian blood spilled, no matter how little. Another part just aches for proximity. Justice, vengeance, bloodshed, victory - the euphoria of those things comes naturally to hawks; it lingers on them like a crackle of electricity, or a whiff of liquor. Once, such things would have been too rich for Reyson’s blood. Now he can take them, even savor them - if not firsthand.
His touch lingers over the place where the wound had been. Then he looks up and meets Tibarn’s eyes. The hawk regards him with a sort of laid-back curiosity.
“I wish you’d let me come with you,” Reyson finds himself saying.
Tibarn stiffens. “Not a chance.”
“I could help,” Reyson persists. “I could sing. I’ve practiced - I’ve gotten some of it back.”
“I can see that,” Tibarn says, craning his neck to look at his arm. “You didn’t so much as sing a note for years. And now look. You didn’t even leave me a scar.”
Reyson falters. Although he’s been several years in Phoenicis, learning the Modern Tongue and interacting with practically nobody but hawks, he still fumbles with their norms. “Should I have?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tibarn says. He moves his arm out of Reyson’s grasp, not too harshly. “The point is, you stay out of the raids. That was what we agreed on. I’m not risking you being hurt, or taken, or…”
He trails off, unwilling to speak the unthinkable into existence. Reyson looks away. “Then this is the least I can do,” he says.
“You don’t owe me anything,” Tibarn says. “Save your energy next time, all right?”
For what? Reyson almost says, but bites his tongue. He peels his gaze away from the not-wound and looks up at Tibarn. The hawk king’s brow is now furrowed with reproach - an attitude that Reyson recoils from; it reminds him of his first year in Phoenicis, when he was a mess, half-mad with grief, barely coherent. In that time, Tibarn often reproached him for not exhibiting proper regard for his own well-being. Reyson likes to think he’s been a little easier on Tibarn these last few years. He’s at least learned to hide some things better. He can appear a little more controlled, and exhibit a little more gratitude.
But as he meets Tibarn’s eyes, he again feels that strange presence in Tibarn’s heart - a disturbance, not unlike the disturbance of the gash on his arm, sticking like a burr in a fabric that ought to be whole and clean. Not quite regret, or pity, or fear; not quite lust or desire, which Reyson is used to feeling from most people in a low-level miasma, Tibarn included. No, this is something else. Reyson can’t parse it.
It’s unsettling. He feels the weight of the item in his pocket, and the weight of Tibarn’s eyes on him, and suddenly would rather be alone.
He takes his leave in a few short words; then turns, and begins down the hewn stone steps into the castle. As he descends, he hears the beat of enormous wings as the king returns to the air.
Back in his quarters, he ties the medal with twine, and secures the twine to a wooden fixture that hangs by the window. It holds several other items - various symbols of office, a fractured monocle, a ducal signet ring, various mangled coins. The raids only happen so often - the hawks don’t want to court open war, not having the resources to fight the most powerful military state on the continent; they must content themselves with the indignity of periodically spitting in Begnion’s face. And the king didn’t always fetch back trophies. Reyson had never asked him to, and he’s not sure what possessed him to start. But he’s about to complain. They’re appropriate reminders.
Now they hang there, a pittance of payment extracted from the enemy, each representing blood in the water and wrecks in the deep. Here they sway gently in the sea breeze, like strange wind chimes - a reassurance and a taunt at the same time. Something has been done; it is far from enough.
Reyson peers out over the crags of Phoenicis, and tastes a storm on the air.
“I think you’re being too subtle, to be honest,” Janaff says. “I doubt herons ever courted with things like that.”
“It’s not a courtship,” Tibarn says. “I’m not courting.”
“You’re bringing him trinkets,” Ulki points out.
“I’m just trying to help,” Tibarn says, rubbing his temples. “It’s nothing more than that. I know how helpless he feels, and I wanted to give him something he can see.”
“And that’s working, is it?” Janaff says.
“It’s hard to say for sure,” Tibarn says. “But I think so. It seems like it pleases him all right.”
“Whatever you say,” says Janaff. “But if you want to change tack, you could try blackberries. I think they’re still in season. Or is it too late?”
“Say, is this ethical?” Ulki pipes up. “Strictly speaking, isn’t he kind of your ward?”
“He’s under my protection, not at my mercy,” Tibarn says, annoyed. “He’s not a fledgling.”
“But if it worked out badly - ”
“It doesn’t matter how it works out,” Tibarn says, “because, again, this isn’t a courtship.”
“Yeah, Ulki, this isn’t a courtship,” Janaff says, pulling an almanac off the shelf. “Now, grapes at this time of year, depending on the breed - ”
“I only mean that he’s… vulnerable,” Ulki says, with that slightly labored air that lets you know he’s making an effort. “Could he handle something like that?”
“For the goddess’s sake, he can think for himself,” Tibarn says. “It’s no business of mine whether he gets into it with someone. It’s not going to be me. I know you two have the high privilege of giving me shit, but you’re wasting your time.”
“Right from your mouth, he can think for himself,” Janaff says. “So what if he wanted something to do with you?”
“That’s a ridiculous question.”
“Is it?”
“Janaff,” Ulki says.
“Bug off, I’m being sensible.”
“Just because you’re older - ”
“Just because you’ve never - ”
“Both of you quiet down,” Tibarn says, rallying. “Think for a second. It’s only been a few years since the massacre. How stupid do you think I am?”
That shuts them up. Ulki’s gaze slides away; Janaff’s face shutters uncharacteristically. It doesn’t take much to summon up memories of the massacre. The two of them were with Tibarn that night, wheeling above the burning canopy of Serenes, smoke in their eyes, wet scarves tied over their mouths and noses. Janaff had squinted, trying to see through the branches and the flames and the smoke, while Ulki strained to hear so much as a gasping breath below.
At last the three of them had returned to the hawks’ temporary camp, soot-black and coughing - heron prince in hand to be reunited with his father. No other survivors. Janaff and Ulki had stubbornly proclaimed willingness to go back out, to keep searching, even though their strength had clearly been flagging. Tibarn had forbade it; he’d done the last flyover alone, and more to have a moment to himself than out of any lingering hope.
Now, Janaff and Ulki fall silent for longer than Tibarn anticipated. They’re all recalling the same things, Tibarn included, and he feels half-ashamed for invoking the tragedy. For all Janaff’s bravado and Ulki’s stoicism, the two of them are more sensitive than they let on. Tibarn knows. He saw Janaff hiding tears that night, and Ulki retching, each off on their own. They’d both tried to pass it off as the effects of the smoke.
“Much obliged for the concern,” Tibarn adds, less harshly. “But I’ve been letting him take the lead in all this, and he seems… pretty singleminded.”
“Alrighty,” Janaff says, somewhat deflated, putting the almanac back on the shelf. “If you’re happy with that.”
“Don’t mope,” Tibarn says, changing the subject so that he doesn’t have to contend whether he’s happy with it or not. “Ulki, don’t you have a patrol to head? Janaff, drills with the new guards?”
The two of them head off out of Tibarn’s window, already beginning to mutter jabs at each other. In the ensuing quiet, Tibarn exhales, scrubs his hands over his face. A cumbersome malaise descends over him. He tries to chalk it up to the dark mood of the moment - his fault, for bringing up the massacre. Of course it haunts him. It haunts all of them.
But if he’s being honest, the idea that he and Reyson could be anything - not even anything particular, just more than ward and protector, vengeful specter and avenging arm...
Well, it’s just that ironically, he sometimes feels like he knew Reyson better when the heron didn’t speak a word of the Modern Tongue. In the first year, Reyson had discovered how to be angry: with some guidance, he’d discovered what it meant to have a fighting spirit. It had taken awhile, but there had been something intimate, something almost primal about coming to understand each other first via raw emotion, unmediated by words. Tibarn had even helped Reyson re-fledge himself after a long period spent grounded and convalescing. He still remembers the feel of those feathers, delicate bones and slim wing-arm muscles under his hands, slowly regaining their strength and flexibility.
And when Reyson’s facility with Modern had grown, when Tibarn had helped with that too - on those sunny evenings, when sloping sunlight illuminated one of Phoenicis Hall’s dusty libraries, when Tibarn leaned over Reyson’s shoulder as he read haltingly from Modern script - well, whose mind wouldn’t wander? Who wouldn’t get a little distracted, seeing the way those delicate lips formed around unfamiliar sounds, the way his throat moved with the working of his tongue? His faint smile of satisfaction when he mastered something? Who wouldn’t linger over the silken sweep of that pale hair, the graceful hollow of that shoulder, given such proximity? No one with a brain or a pulse.
Tibarn recalls those moments with over-sharp vividity. He had needed to exercise great diligence in remaining alert. He’d had the strange, irrational feeling that if he were too absentminded, he might accidentally reach out and touch Reyson’s hair, or shoulder, or jaw. It was almost startling, how easy it was to sink into those details. But he can’t imagine anyone else would feel differently, if they had the opportunity to hover so close.
But Reyson doesn’t need him like that anymore. Reyson can speak and fly on his own. Which is good. It’s good that he has gained independence. It means there’s been progress. He’d needed a reason to live, and vengeance on humankind fulfills that need, and Tibarn can always offer that to him. It’s something, even if it doesn’t necessitate so much one-on-one time.
Only Tibarn feels a new distance between them now, one that has nothing to do with any language barrier. If there’s a new fire in Reyson, it burns unnaturally cold, and only takes its fuel from one thing. Is it even possible to get close to someone like that? Revenge settles over Reyson like a shroud, or rather an encasing membrane: he appears to walk in the same world as everyone else, but he is no longer touchable. To touch him is only to touch the intervening layer, and subject oneself to all its leaching toxins. His eyes are keen and icy these days. Tibarn hasn’t seen him smile in a long time.
So no one gets close to Reyson like that, not anymore, Tibarn included. Except, apparently, when he comes home from a raid with a scrape that needs tending - then Reyson will grace him with that feathery touch, with the distant attention of his eyes, with that spring-green essence of song that soothes from the inside out. (It’s practically incentive to get careless.)
Every time Tibarn strikes a Begnion ship, he feels cold threads of violence weaving themselves into the space between himself and the heron. Even in the healing, he felt it, this sense that only one thing binds together, and in due time there may not be room for anything else. It may already be too late, the damage too deep to heal into anything good.
Then again - what right does he have to criticize? Reyson is the only survivor of his race. The important thing now is that he survives, continues to survive, and so however he chooses to survive is how things must be. No one can blame him for growing colder. At least now he moves with pride.
It haunts them all. Tibarn has no right to believe that he’s being haunted any more than anyone else.