I finally left our room late in the night, when I hoped I wouldn't run into anyone. I didn't want anyone to read my emotional collapse in my face, which Jaden would certainly be able to do.
Padding barefoot downstairs in my sleep-clothes, I felt like a kid sneaking into the kitchen for desert, a feeling that only intensified when I saw a flicker of candlelight and froze on the steps. Someone else was awake.
"I can hear your footsteps." It was Joshua's voice. Of course he'd heard.
I made a face to myself and came the rest of the way downstairs. "Why are you up?"
"Brooding," he said caustically, "as you'd put it. Why are you?"
"I didn't have any dinner." I crossed the kitchen to cut myself thick slice of bread and rummaged around for something to put on it. Joshua didn't say anything while my back was turned. His silence was heavy.
Once I had stuffed my mouth full of food, I took another look at him. He looked tired enough to be falling asleep in his chair, but his back was rigid as he stared at the glass in front of him. It was empty, but by the looks of the half-full bottle in the middle of the table, he had emptied the cup several times. A matching glass, full, sat in front of the chair opposite him, as if he was expecting someone.
"You're not brooding. You're mourning."
He grunted as if annoyed I'd said so but didn't deny it. I recognized this way of mourning for a fallen companion-in-arms. After a battle in which they'd lost people, royal soldiers and guards would drink together, setting out full glasses for the dead as well as the living. When I was little, Cabrel had told me about the tradition and said that once all the living had gone to bed, the spirits of the dead would drink their fill from their cups and then depart our world for good.
But Jaden had told me that it was other living people who drank from those unattended cups while the mourners slept. Not out of disrespect, but so that the mourners would wake up and see that their offering had been accepted.
"Then it's fake," I'd said, more than a little annoyed that the restless spirits I'd been told about didn't exist. "And they're tricking people who are already sad."
"They're not tricking anyone, thiefling. Anyone who knows the ritual of the unattended cups has probably also played the role of the drinker for other mourners. And because they do it for their friends and family, they know there will always be someone to fulfill the ritual for them."
"So they know they're just pouring a drink for a living person? Why not just drink it themselves, then? That's what I'd do." It had seemed very simple then.
Jaden pinned me with a serious look. "If the ritual isn't meaningful for you, then that's fine. But for some people, the illusion matters no matter how fake it is. It's symbolic for being able to do one last thing for someone you loved. And it's a token from someone who loves you, supporting you in mourning."
"By drinking your wine?"
"One day you'll understand," he'd said softly. "Unfortunately, the most anyone can wish for a child is that they discover what it is to mourn as late in life as possible. No one escapes it forever."
It was funny that I had never thought about that while I thought Jaden was dead. I had never properly mourned him at all. Perhaps even when I told myself that I accepted he was gone, I had never really lost hope.
But Joshua was mourning, and there was only one person he could be mourning for.
"Luca had family. Irina Laycreek will make sure he's honored," I said, thinking that a noble who would get a proper funeral didn't need this. But I knew immediately that was the wrong thing to say.
"I killed him. I owe him this," Joshua said stiffly. "He was— I owe him a lot more than this."
"You were friends."
"Yeah." He closed his eyes briefly. I was horrified to think that he might be holding back tears. Joshua did not cry in front of me. But his eyes were dry when he opened them. "Yeah, because he was friendly. You know. When his father's expectations weren't making him shrivel up, he could be so charismatic and easy to talk to, I think it stumped him that I didn't like being around him. Everyone else at the castle got the message that I wasn't there to make friends, but he didn't. Sometimes when I got tired of playing the part of a repentant grouch for Tobias—"
"As opposed to the unrepentant grouch you actually are."
—I couldn't resist acting like Luca could actually be a friend. Like he actually knew me. That's the worst part. He believed he really did, and I let him believe that. He didn't know anything about me. Sometimes I hated him, for acting like he knew me, and then there were sometimes when I..."
I kicked his foot. "Keep going!"
"Stop that. I don't know. I suppose sometimes I wanted to pretend he did know me. It was easier to stand playing my role if I sort of believed it, that my days of being an assassin were behind me and I was really reformed. But I could never pretend that for long because it— it wasn't true, it couldn't be."
"Because if it was it meant Roman really had sent you to be captured. And he wasn't going to get you out."
"Thanks," he said dryly. "Yes, those were in fact my worst fears for five years."
"And somehow that made you best friends?"
"Well. I guess. I resented him, but I was drawn to him, but I couldn't let him figure out what I really was, and I frankly I was condescending and rude to him a lot and he should have told me to screw off about a hundred times, but he never did. He always thought I didn't mean it, even though I usually did. And it was probably my fault for confusing him, because sometimes I told him he was my only friend and I appreciated him and I meant it."
"That doesn't sound like you at all."
"Yeah. But he never realized that. He deserved better."
I scuffed at the floor under the table. "No, yeah, he did. It's just, can I ask you something, even though I shouldn't?"
"Hell, Morane, since when do you ask?"
"Just trying to be nicer, as an experiment. My question is, if you did care about him in some ways, why kill him? You're good with a sword. Not as good as I am—"
"I'm better than you are."
"Debatable. The point is, couldn't you have disarmed or disabled him without killing him? Was there just no way to do that?"
He was silent for a while. "I didn't try," he said at last.
"Why not?" I had a checkered history with many people, but if, for instance, I was faced with Caer in a fight, I would find a way not to kill him.
"I wasn't there to leave people alive. I was there to scare people. To show them that the revolution is powerful and dangerous. And to get rid of threats to us if I could. There was no reason to spare Luca." He sounded like he was convincing himself. I didn't know what to say to that.
When we had sat there for a few minutes, he started talking again. "It always seemed like Luca was offering me a choice. And if I chose him, I would actually become Captain Joshua Blaisze, and fight for the throne for the rest of my life, training guards and ingratiating myself to nobles and maybe marrying one of them someday."
"If Luca was one choice, then Roman was the other, right?"
"Yeah. Exactly." He sounded relieved. "I was worried Roman had thrown me away, so sometimes I wanted to turn to Luca. But it's not true. Roman didn't want to send me away. I'm still his right-hand man. I stayed loyal and so did he. So I didn't need Luca."
My mouth fell open.
"What? Why are you being weird?"
"Me? You're the one being completely ridiculous. Are you saying you killed Luca because Roman had made him irrelevant?"
He looked a little embarrassed. "I guess I'm saying that's why I able to stomach killing him."
"Joshua. You need to talk to Roman."
He clearly dismissed the notion before it was fully out of my mouth. "I am not talking to him about Luca. He wouldn't get it. He would just think pretending to be the captain completely messed me up. I wouldn't have thought twice about killing him if this was before I was captain."
"This isn't right. Everything you do is for Roman. You've given him years. You gave up your identity for him. You can't define yourself by what he would expect of you."
"That's not what I'm doing. I'm defining myself by me. The real version of me, before pretending for years changed me. The version Roman knows because he was there when I was real."
"That's what I'm saying! You're acting as if those years of your life don't count because Roman didn't witness them. You're not the same person you were, that's fine. You're not broken. You're not less real. You're different."
"I'm not supposed to be different." His foot bounced against the floor in an anxious rhythm. It had been silent before, but his pent up energy was building. "Being the captain wasn't supposed to change me."
"Yeah. You had stupid expectations. It changed you anyway. You wouldn't be mourning like a royal guard if it hadn't."
"It just felt right," he mumbled.
"And that's fine. You picked up new things. You're allowed to change." You're allowed to change, I repeated to myself. "Talk to Roman. Better yet, talk to yourself. Sort yourself out."
"Sort yourself out," he retorted.
"I'm trying! Neither of us knows who the hell we are anymore, that's why I'm the one qualified to tell you to sort yourself out."
He rubbed his face. "I'm going to bed." He didn't move.
I picked at the crumbs on my plate. "I'm sorry about Luca."
"Me too."
"Talk to Roman."
"Don't tell me what to do, Laerhart," he said without anger, and stood up and started up the stairs.
"And sort yourself out!" I called after him.
Soft echoes of my voice made the kitchen seem even emptier in his absence. I cleaned my plate and thought about going to sleep tired enough not to dream, to lie next to Nemia without thinking about Luca or Cabrel.
The full glass on the table glinted in the nearly-gone candlelight. The wick spluttered in its puddle of melted wax and made the wine appear to splash like waves. I turned the glass in my fingers, watching how the reflection of the flame stayed perfectly still in the spinning glass.
Luca, I thought, I'm so sorry.
I'm sorry you had to die and I'm sorrier that Joshua had to kill you.
I'm sorry you were on the wrong side of this war when I doubt you really cared if we even had a queen or a minister.
I'm sorry that you won't be the last to die and that you won't be the last one who didn't deserve it.
Things are out of my control and it's my own fault and that puts your death on my head, but I promise I won't forget you. I won't try to run away anymore. I'm going to stay here. I'm going to deal with my mistakes. I'm going to try to make better mistakes. I'm going to make my choices everyday, even though I know I might make the wrong ones and get the wrong people hurt, because Nemia's right, it's better to be here and terrified and fighting for what I think is right than fighting for nothing somewhere else.
Luca, I promise I'm going to be brave.
I drank, and set it back on the table in the darkness, one mouthful left in the bottom. Just in case Luca's spirit came for it after all his mourners had left.