‘What would you have me say?’ he asked.
‘That you believe it is a dream. It’s all I ever want you to say.’ Diera whispered the words.
Sol reached out a hand to her, touched her bare shoulder where the sheet had fallen from her soft skin.
‘I won’t lie to you,’ he said.
Diera shrugged off his hand, threw the covers aside and stood up, her back to him. He watched her take in a deep, relaxing breath before she reached for her shirt and skirt. There was nothing more to be said. There never was. But he couldn’t let her leave the bedroom like this. It was a mistake too often repeated.
‘I’ve tried to tell you how real the vision is. How intricate the detail is that I have seen and, Gods drowning, I have seen it so many times. How can it be a dream?’
‘How can it be anything else?’
She wouldn’t face him.
‘It’s a message.’
Now she did and on her face, still beautiful and framed in fair hair streaked with grey, was the contempt that had become depressingly familiar.
‘And one day you’ll be able to tell me what it says, right? And when will that be? Right now? Tomorrow?’ She picked up a shoe and threw it at him. ‘Never?’
Sol caught the shoe and dropped it onto the bed. He pushed back his covers and stood. They stared at each other for a time from opposite sides of the mattress. Diera snatched her shoe back off the bed and rammed a foot into it.
‘The visions have been more vivid of late,’ he said into the void. ‘But I still don’t understand it all.’
‘Don’t say it,’ said Diera, expression a warning, the bed an inadequate barricade. ‘Just don’t.’
‘They’re in trouble. I cannot ignore it.’
‘Trouble? How can they be in trouble?’ Diera jumped onto the bed. She raised her fists to beat him but he snared them easily enough. ‘They’re all dead, Sol! Dead. Their troubles are over.’
Sol caught her gaze and held it. He could see the pain within her. The desperation for him to be other than he was. As for the love, that was fading. He let go her fists and her arms dropped to her sides.
‘Death is no guarantee of peace,’ he whispered. ‘The demons taught us that.’
Diera sobbed. Her face crumpled and she held the sides of his head in the palms of her hands.
‘But the demons are gone,’ she said. ‘You of all people know that. The threat is finished. It’s over.’
‘I want nothing more than to believe that is true,’ said Sol. ‘But I don’t.’
Diera slumped to the bed and buried her head in her hands. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Five years, Sol. Five years of this and you’ve been getting worse and worse. The Raven is gone a decade past. We are your life now, me and the boys.’ She raised her face to him and the tears spilling from her eyes drew some to his own. ‘Please, Sol, this obsession is killing us. Let the dead be. Come back to me. I need you. We all need you.’
‘And I am here,’ he said. ‘But I must find out what is happening. I cannot rest until I am sure they are at peace.’
‘How can you ever know? They’re dead!’ Diera shouted the word into his face, levered herself from the bed and strode towards the door.
‘There—’
‘I won’t hear this any more, Sol. I won’t.’ Diera smoothed her skirt and faced him, forcing herself to relax. ‘I can’t deal with it. When you were hunting the demons I understood. Because I wanted a future free of those things for our boys just as you did. But this? This is chasing shadows. It will always be unfinished and I am sorry for that. But you have to accept it. Open your eyes to what is in front of you now, don’t keep them on the distant past.’
Sol sat on the bed and massaged his hip. It was beginning to ache. The spell was wearing off again.
‘It doesn’t feel distant. Not to me.’ He looked up at Diera. She was studying him but wouldn’t meet his gaze. ‘I stood in that doorway and watched Hirad die. I could have done something. I could have saved him.’
‘And that’s what all this is about, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘Redemption for you, for your imagined failings.’ She shook her head. ‘I’ll never understand why you torture yourself. None of the other survivors are. They know what they did and they know what you did. You’re the living embodiment of a hero, Sol. Why can’t you see that?’
‘Because heroism didn’t save Hirad or Erienne, or Ark or Thraun, did it?’
‘No, but it saved Balaia and me and Jonas and young Hirad. Those of The Raven died doing what they always did. Be proud, not desolate.’
‘I am proud. And that’s why I have to know if there’s trouble.’
Diera shook her head. ‘You hear but you do not listen. And you are blind to what you are doing to me and the boys.’
‘No, I’m not,’ said Sol, moving around the bed towards her. ‘It is as much to protect you as it is to help my friends if I can.’
Diera gave a short laugh. ‘Don’t try and justify your obsessions using us, Sol. At least be honest with yourself even if you can’t be anything else. I’m asking you one last time. Think, really think about this. Then come down and join your family or don’t come down at all.’
There was a hammering on the door downstairs. Diera cracked.
‘Can they not give us a moment’s peace?’ she shrieked. ‘We’re not open for three hours!’
Sol was in front of her in a moment, taking her by the shoulders and sitting her back down on the bed.
‘I’ll go,’ he said quietly.
He pulled on his clothes and left the bedroom without saying more though his mind was drenched with words. His heart was beating hard and he was aware of a growing confusion. Sol shivered and tied his shirt tight at the neck. On the stairs, pain flared in his leg, an old memory resurfacing. The docks at Arlen. The sweep of a sword. Hirad saving his life. Again. The imagery was so intense it was within a ghost of being real. Sol leaned against the wall and descended more slowly, letting his shoulder slide along the age-smoothed dark timbers.
The hammering on the door was repeated.
‘Patience!’ roared Sol. ‘I’m coming. The Gods save me from the curse of the impatient drunk.’
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Sol could feel the heat from the ovens in the kitchens to his right. A clatter of pans told him at least one of the staff was already in. Evenings at The Raven’s Rest were always busy. It helped that so many of the city’s influential people were regular customers but Sol liked to think that both the food and the wine cellar were worthy of those he served.
Ahead of Sol, a short passage led out to a fenced yard where he could hear at least one of his sons, Jonas probably, playing a loud game with friends. And to his left, his pride and joy, if he could be said to experience joy these days. His bar. No. Their bar. A place of laughter, memory and reminiscence. The place where he always retreated when he tired of the attentions of state. When he was allowed to.
The place where The Raven would live forever.
But now, walking towards the heavy, bound oak door that let out on to the street, he wondered if this shrine to his past really was poisoning his mind. Diera thought so. Sol walked slowly past the portraits of his friends a decade and more dead. He didn’t feel the barbs of grief as he had done in the early days but he didn’t think he’d ever shake the regret that he would never stand with them again.
Sol could hear Diera’s voice in his head, telling him to move on. Celebrate their triumphs, learn to smile.
He couldn’t. He never had been able to, and now his head was full of disaster like it hadn’t been in five years, ever since he stopped hunting demons. Sol let his gaze trail over the portraits of Erienne, beautiful of face but sad of mind; Thraun, forever troubled but so loyal; and Ilkar, sharp-featured and acerbic, before pausing as he so often did at Hirad.