Chapter Text
Seven years passed.
()
Kabru arrived late to the harbor. On the road out of the city, an ox-cart had collided with the carriage in front of theirs, and they had stopped to aid the wounded.
“Gods, now we’ll barely make it. I don’t know why you’re being so calm about this.”
“They are not going to turn around and sail off if we’re late by ten minutes, Marcille. They will wait.”
“It’s about the first impression. We need to stick it to these interlopers that we are competent, composed, and we have the situation under control—”
Competently and composedly they bumped to a stop by the docks, where Marcille knocked her forehead off the lintel as she stepped down to the street.
The tall sails of the ship looked like thunderheads.
The harbormaster, too relieved to be irritated, began running through introductions at high speed:
“—graduated top of her class—”
“—founder of a medical school in the north—”
“—the fastest ascendance to captaincy in the Can-, er, Dungeon Squad’s history.”
He was wearing an eyepatch. On his shoulder stood a one-winged crow.
They pressed hands briefly.
“Welcome to Merini, my lord.”
“You can call me captain.”
()
The captain wore no rings, and his hair was a little shorter.
He had not mentioned anything about his eye, in the letters they had sent throughout the years.
Once Kabru had drawn him, in the margins of his letter. In his sketch he’d clothed him in the uniform of the Canaries he had encountered in the northern vasts, who travelled not by ship, but by wolf-drawn sledge. His little face peeking out from the thickly furred hood, like an arctic fox from its den. Eyes smudged ink, two glints of black.
This is what I think you look like now, he wrote.
Half a season later came the reply:
No. Too hot.
He had drawn back, too: This is what I think you look like now.
Close. I have got something of a beard now.
Hm. I don’t know.
It keeps me warm. Shall I shave it off?
Maybe…
But he had not drawn himself, and neither had Kabru. And he had not said, I have no right eye, as Kabru had not said, today I turned thirty, sailed across the meridian of my life. I am older. I am scarred. Will you have me, just as I am? Will you still have me? All that’s left?
()
In the chaos of the dungeon’s first-floor market, Marcille cornered him behind a fruit vendor’s stall.
“Why are you being so cold?”
“I didn’t think I was being cold.”
“Wake up, Kabru—we need these people to like us. If they choose to seal this dungeon, it could be decades until another so suited to our needs forms. Our research cannot wait that long.” Hers could, but Kabru appreciated the sentiment. “If you cannot flirt with that captain of theirs for whatever reason, you could at least break a smile. It is hardly difficult work, with that face he’s got.”
“What face he’s got?”
She squinted at him. “Are you ill?”
“Things are in order here?”
Marcille nearly jumped out of her skin. His teleportation had gotten so precise. Like watching his hawk seam the sky.
“Y-ees, we were just—inspecting this stall, which seems very, orderly…”
“Good. Then we would survey the lower floors, time permitted.”
“Yes, let’s, the lower—”
Kabru’s hand warmed as he vanished, as if someone had held it for a second. Something rattled into his palm. When he opened his hand, he found a peach pit.
()
Their eyes met, in the great forests of the second floor, among the cathedral of the heartwood and sapwood, which had stood for eons. Mightier even than the ones they had known, called home, once.
One thought, He looks strong.
The other thought: He looks just the same.
()
What to tell of seven years?
They said the ship with blue-stitched sails no longer braved the great channel. That there had been a falling out with that peculiar kingdom in the south. The youngest son of Kerensil was no longer to be found, in the mountains and the long grasses where the emeralds lay rusting. Some even said he had run off to sea. That, if seen, he was much changed from the portraits of his youth.
There was no accounting. What a shame. Maybe the boy had been unhappy.
Let us talk of more pleasant things. The weather is fine today.
()
While they were inside, the storm began. The steps up out of the dungeon ran downwards. The sky loosed like an arrow over their heads and rain played in the streets.
The governor hosted them at his manse, where the guest list burgeoned rapidly and there were not enough forks to go around. The fine cheque floor was once again coated in mud.
At dinner, he was seated across the table from him, where they bandied blandishments like a pair of trained monkeys, while the governor and Marcille stared holes into their foreheads:
“The weather is poor.”
“I do not mind rain. At least on land it falls only from the one direction. Dinner is early here.”
“It is the dwarven custom.”
Under the table, a foot had arrived on top of his.
“I was not aware. I’ve not been very well-traveled, in the past.”
Kabru put his other foot over it. “I’m glad you have found the opportunity,” he said.
After the plates were cleared—at the unheard-of hour of nine—the musicians struck up in the ballroom.
Ask him to dance, Marcille mouthed at him. Kabru pretended not to see. That level of facade was beyond him, skilled as he was. The top of his foot still glowed.
He attended absentmindedly to a conversation with several of Marcille’s fellow academicians, while listening in on the trio of half-foot noblewomen surrounding the exotic new commander:
“—all these wounds from fighting monsters?”
“Yes.”
“They must have hurt terribly.”
“I am not unaccustomed to pain.”
“So brave of you. Not like so many of these so-called explorers in this town, who title themselves adventurers before they’ve even gained the second floor…”
“And your—ahem, sight? It must have been a great battle indeed in which it was lost.”
“That was incurred before the dungeons,” he said. “I lost my eye when I left my husband.” He stood abruptly. “I’m afraid I must quit this party. The journey has been wearying.”
“Oh, but—of course, you must be… yes, we will see you on some other…”
Kabru yawned exaggeratedly into his sleeve. “What on earth is wrong with you today?” Marcille scolded.
()
What to tell, of seven years? That they passed like a day? What then to tell of the day? That it took years for the moon to rise?
Kabru ran next to the gutters; slipped, fell, laughed in the mud, rose. He didn’t care. The rain was good water, would make him clean. This storm was not yet over, would shelter here a while.
Years pass as years do. Minutes as minutes. It is the unconstant heart which measures unfairly. The pulse which yesterday lingered, gets up and races on. We do not beat steadily. We aren’t clockwork people.
()
The door was unlocked when he got home.
On his sideboard, the crow eyed his puddles disapprovingly as it scavenged through his foodstuffs.
“Age has not much improved your manners.”
“Your crow is of a constant nature. He was eager to make land. Fish wasn’t much to his liking. You’ve misplaced my goshawk.”
“She hunts. She’ll return, in time.”
“As did I.”
“As did you. Welcome back,” Kabru said.
“I am home,” said Mithrun. They fell down together.