Ileaha crossed to the chair before the writing desk and set Medair’s satchel in its lap. The movement had an air of confirmation and finality about it, as if Ileaha was declaring a homecoming. Medair walked into the room far less certainly, feeling stupidly shy.
"You are wanting to sleep, I know," Ileaha said, and left her, closing the door firmly. The air of light conspiracy was unexpected, especially when Ileaha had been so furiously wounded that very morning. It felt like decades ago, but the sun was not far past midday.
The depth of Ileaha’s hurt, and how much of her apparent recovery was merely brave show, was difficult to judge. Medair had not missed the way she had altered course when speaking of Avahn, and her departure felt abrupt. But it was apparently Avahn who had sent her. Could she believe Ileaha had simply chosen to accept and move on? The very thing Medair had struggled so long to achieve. She supposed the important thing was to make the attempt.
Too tired to speculate further, Medair crossed to the bed and sat down. She felt out of place, but pushed the uneasiness aside. Sleep would dull the edge of some of her doubts, and if she was to find any way to help, to think of some solution, she needed rest to clear her mind.
There were tiny blue smudges on the very outer edges of Illukar’s eyelids. Medair lay staring at them, trying to remember if they had always been there. They might be a symptom of fatigue, or something every Ibisian had, and she had never noticed because she’d never before had the occasion or the desire to study the details of a sleeping Ibisian’s face.
It was still the same afternoon, though the angle of the sunlight suggested it was closing in on evening. She’d woken listening to his steady breathing and found him lying next to her, arranged on his side in a position loosely symmetrical to her own. The scratch down his cheek looked older, though it would be a long time before it faded completely. He was dressed in linen, as if he had meant to go out and only stopped for a short rest which weariness had prolonged. That mass of pale hair shone in two neat braids, and he smelled very clean. Quite captivating.
Medair was taking the opportunity to enjoy him, to examine each quirk of his delicate brows and pale lashes, and these little smudges which she’d never looked hard enough to notice before. He was such a beautiful man, and she supposed that was part of the reason she had been drawn to him, along with his intelligence and fine sense of courtesy. But she had fallen in love with him for his smile, and most especially for the tale he had told her of Ourvette’s Lake, because he had found his own family’s pride amusing.
It was hard to resist touching him, but Medair scarcely let herself breathe in case he woke up and felt he must immediately go take up the reins of his Dahlein. It was a soap bubble moment.
On cue, he opened his eyes. Clear grey, with a scattering of darker crystal flecks. She was glad he didn’t sit up immediately, but lay looking back at her. He shifted his hand, so his fingers just touched her splinted ones, and his eyelids dropped as if he was overwhelmed by that simple act. The soap bubble didn’t break, and they lay there until a whisper of power trickled into the room and Illukar looked away.
"They are attempting to stabilise Falcon Black," he said. "The majority of the task was to be done with stone, and this casting will be to fuse the supports. The first of many, for it is the work of several days. Weeks, perhaps."
He didn’t get up, despite the continuing increase of arcane noise. Medair, feeling glad, shifted her fingers so they brushed back against his, and watched his expression change. It meant a very great deal to him that she wanted to touch him.
"And Tarsus?" she asked reluctantly, not certain she wanted to know any answer.
"No sign. The traces have seemed to fix on him, and then dissipate. Likely, the device absorbs them as it did my own casting. The physical searches continue and Sedesten has spoken to a representative of the Shimmerlan’s inhabitants to arrange a hunt in their territory."
"What will you do with him, when he’s captured?"
Illukar’s brows drew together. "His ultimate fate is a matter for the Kier. Even without Estarion to fuel his ambitions, there are too many who would use him to challenge us, or who would appoint themselves champions of his welfare. Impolitic to kill him, imprudent to let him live."
"Would the Kier be…prudent, then?"
His gaze shifted back to their hands, the tips of her fingers still only grazing his. "I have never known the Kier to be unjust," he said, but continued past prevarication. "He warred against us, no matter that Estarion worked the strings. It is possible the Kier might choose to have him executed. But imprisonment is more likely. I expect it will be a country estate: constant guards, little freedom. And for us, a lifetime of denying that he has been disposed of more permanently."
That would be easier to deal with than an execution. Medair sighed softly, wishing that Tarsus had proven to be an obvious charlatan, the painfully greedy kind who would not rouse such conflicting emotions. "I will never be sure if he was truly Corminevar," she said. "Before the Conflagration."
"No."
Medair watched shadows cross Illukar’s face, speculating on their meaning. "Finrathlar is very much the same, isn’t it?" she said.
"Its proximity to the Shimmerlan seems to be the greatest change," Illukar replied, and she saw that she had guessed correctly. Something about Finrathlar disturbed him.
"What is it?" she asked.
His lashes swept down again, then he closed his eyes briefly. "It is very much the same," he said, and there was a thread of loss in his voice. "I am in the room which I have long called mine, in the city which is my home and my charge. My mother is buried in the grounds of this house. I recognise it all and cannot mark out something which is not as I left it. Yet today my oldest friend spoke of having travelled with me through a place I have never seen, dealing with a race I have never met." He flattened his hand on the bedspread. "Is this my home, or something which merely resembles it? Did the true Finrathlar die in flame? Did Sedesten? Was The Avenue burnt to the ground and a copy erected in its place? Am I trying to save a place which is not even mine? Am I an impostor in my own home?"
Tiny lines had formed on either side of his mouth. He looked as if he were in physical pain.
"You are Illukar," Medair said, slowly. "And–" She hesitated, then covered his hand with hers. His long, slender fingers made hers look stunted. "I think this is not quite your home. The Conflagration seemed to be–" She chewed her lip, trying to decide just what she thought the Conflagration had done. "I don’t–" She paused again, uneasily. "If there had been no shield wall around Athere, and we had been altered to Estarion’s purpose, I don’t know what I would be. Medair, evidently, but would I have been a Medair who, when she blew the Horn of Farak, destroyed defender instead of invader?"
"I do not think that likely," he said, and she smiled at him, but continued even though she did not like where her thoughts were leading.
"Whether the Conflagration truly killed them or not, those who were outside Athere must have experienced the change as death." Medair looked away from those clear eyes. She wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t already concluded, merely speaking out loud what weighed on his heart. "They would have felt the flames on them, they would have run screaming and been overwhelmed. Is it something other than death, to be reborn the same day in almost exactly the same situation? Those horse-people certainly aren’t the people they were before, and nor is Kyledra and all the other lands drowned in the Shimmerlan. Finrathlar looks the same, but it is not. And yet, that doesn’t change anything."