He shook his head. “It’s … not about guilt, okay? It’s about security.”

She nodded. “Whomever you’re protecting, I swear I won’t tell anyone, not one word.”

Kirdain looked away. Her honest expression was a bit too much right now. It was stunning how easily she had seen through him. He wanted to talk about it. He wanted someone else to know. He wanted someone to be angry and sad and hurt with him because on his own his anger became rage, his sadness became despair, his hurt became suffering he couldn’t easily stomach.

“I’ll tell you”, he said. “I think…. It’s better. I don’t…” I don’t want to lash out at her if I meet her again. Even thinking that made his stomach twist. He knew, that despite all his effort he was his father’s son. And so he knew what it meant to not control his own rage.

Ashra offered her hand for him to hold but he shook his head. He kneaded his fingers in his lap as if he prepared dough while searching for the right words.

“I told you about that storm, yeah?”

“Yes.”

“Good… good. When… that storm was over, and I woke up, I wasn’t alone. Someone was there with me. She woke me up, actually. Threw stones against the treehouse’s door and told me to open up. When I did, she told me that she was here to take me home. And … I didn’t want to go at first. But she told me that the herd was… the told me they were already in the city.” He smiled sadly. “And I trusted her. So we went back, fast. We entered the city through the gate closest to my family’s home…” He laughed without any trace of joy. “I had just slept for days but I was so tired, I didn’t question it. I didn’t question that she maneuvered me home as fast as she could.”

“Who is she?”, Ashra asked.

Kirdain drew a deep breath and licked his lips. “My mother”, he said softly. “My mather had come to the outpost, she had lied to me to get me back to the city, and she brought me in through the gate that wasn’t protected because she knew in what kind of trouble I was, the second I left the outpost.”

“That … is messed up”, Ashra said.

He shook his head slowly. “I’m not finished”, he said.

“Oh.”

“We had missed the messenger who had been sent to take me home by only a few hours but he beat us back to the city. We were on foot, you see. But when I was home for maybe half an hour, the city guard showed up. I was only halfway through figuring out what exactly was going on when my father gave me away.”

“And your mother?”

“She tried to protect me but there were too many. And father was holding her back, too.”

She shook her head. “But nobody knew about her involvement?”

“No. Father backed her, and so did I.”

“Why?”

Kirdain looked up, a stern expression on his face. “She’s my mother, Ashra. And I knew… or I strongly suspected that whom I had heard had been a horse. I figured, that I was either going mad or a Vandrainor. So I was pretty safe.”

“But they didn’t know that.”

“No.”

“So… you’re father backed her, but not you?”

He shrugged. “Yes.”

“…Why?”

Kirdain closed his eyes, blinking back tears. Why? There were many reasons for that. Telorim and Agnesa hadn’t married out of love, really. They had met each other during a prolonged stay of mother’s caravan in Agshraf and had a thing for a brief time. But not brief enough.

She had become pregnant and the caravan wanted her to stay back. A young mother, especially a young mother that worked as a guard, was of no use. His family on the other hand had wanted her to either marry him or go away. And so she agreed. She didn’t want to change her profession so it would be easier to have a home with a real family where the children could grow up, and she could return to whenever she was able to.

She gave birth to a boy, Janus, who died in the first summer after his birth. A pair of twins didn’t even make it through their first season, they died without names.

Kirdain, who should have been the fourth child, was the first to really live. And the disappointment he was for his father was also due to the weight of four ghosts, living on his shoulders. Telorim never forgave him for that, just as he never forgave Agnesa for giving birth to children who were too weak to survive.

“Because he loves her more, than he hates her”, he said slowly. It wasn’t the easiest answer but closest to the truth. Even after all these years, still closest to the truth. “He protects her because sometimes he remembers that she’s his wife for a reason.” He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure that, by now at least, he knows that she was the one who broke me out of that cell, you know? I told people it had been Atela, but mother had managed to get a skin of water with … oh I don’t know, a crazy powerful conjuration to me. I walked through the wall and she was outside.”

“… that sounds like the kind of thing people kill for.”

He nodded. “I didn’t ask. And I never told you, remember?”

She rolled her eyes. “So… your mother broke you out of prison?”

“Yes. She … she was pretty sure whatever they had in stock for me would kill me. So she gave me Mini-Mane, her donkey, supplies that would last me to Ur, and a map with places where I could join the caravan.”

Ashra shook her head. “I always believed you… made up that storm or… I don’t know just walked home because you were sick of waiting.”

That hurt. “You really think like that of me?”

She shrugged. “It’s what I would have done”, she said.

He shook his head. He remembered that night he had camped in the forest. Well hidden from the guards on the wall, anticipating, hoping, for someone to come. For someone to tell him that everything would be okay. But nobody had come. Not even Ilandi. He had wanted them to come so desperately. Had heard in his head how they had offered to tag along, played ridiculous conversations in his head.

“The next day”, he said, trying to escape his memories, “Atela came. She found me while I was preparing Mane. And she talked some sense into me.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. You know, how we should ever be a proper pair if I was one the run, stuff like that. So we agreed that I needed to get back to the city and … suffer whatever consequences there were.”

“She didn’t want you to give up your mother?”

He shook his head. “I think she knew I would never have done that.”

Ashra shook her head. “It’s still crazy, you know? You wanted to make things right and… told just another lie.”

He shrugged. “I couldn’t let them kill my mother. And after desecrating a ritual, and freeing a prisoner… there was hardly anything else they could have done. Grandmother helped me, though.” He remembered how she had rushed him in a corner, told him not to say anything, and just agree.

“Maybe my mother talked to her.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Oh, no. Grandmother Blacksmith. Hinala. Ilandi’s grandmother.”

She nodded.

“Anyway, she told me to just agree to whatever the council proposed.”

“And you did?”

“Of course. I was so fucking scared…”

“Mhh. Have you talked to your mother at all since you came back?”

He licked his lips. “No”, he said. “She wasn’t there. Hasn’t been home in two years, apparently.”

“I’m sorry”, she said.

He took her hand and gave her a half-smile. “It’s okay”, he said. “I wouldn’t have known what to say if she’d been home anyway.”

He allowed her to pull him closer. She smelled of horse and wood, her scales were warm.

“You know, I think you lied to me. That damn river makes you tell the truth.”

She laughed silently, he felt the vibration going through his body, too.