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Weapons blessed by a goddess are strange things, Ike thinks, catching himself yet again in the motions of caring for his father’s axe. The blessing stripped away the damage accrued from three years as a grave marker. Now, Urvan won’t dull on armor or bone. It won’t stain with blood or melt from magic. Putting it back as a grave marker is too much like opening a window for thieves, but Urvan belongs with his father. It’s a dilemma.
He’ll ask Soren.
He leaves the armory and walks through the gardens of Mainal Cathedral. Usually, he’d turn to the library, but not in Begnion. He checks Soren’s rooms first, and then checks to be certain these are the correct rooms. They seem emptier than usual. He sees why when he opens the wardrobe. The spell books and staff are gone. Soren’s travelling cloak, also gone.
Ike leaves, closing each door carefully as he does so, and walks very quickly back to his own rooms. It’s an absurd amount of space he’s been allotted, a bewildering piece of luxury to give to a man who counts windows and watches doors. Through the receiving room, through the sitting room, through some room with no discernable function, and into the bedroom, Ike goes.
There, the search ends. For all the room is immense and the bed overgrown, the color scheme is light and Soren’s hair is a shock of darkness against cream pillows.
Strange. It’s only mid-afternoon.
Ike checks his wardrobe and nods at the cloak now inside. The spell books are neatly stacked upon the bedside table, save for the green-backed tome tucked beneath Soren’s arm. Soren’s boots stand at attention at the foot of the bed.
Sitting down on the other side of his bed, Ike unlaces his boots and kicks them off. He unfastens the bits of armor he’s still wearing—being a savior of the world evidently means wearing armor at all times, for some reason—and sets those on the nearer bedside table. He lies down and rolls over, pulling his cape over himself as a sheet as naturally as breathing.
By now, Soren is awake for all his eyes are shut. Ike thinks his eyes are shut. It’s difficult to see with so much hair falling into Soren’s face. Ike shifts until their faces are level, then reaches to brush the strands back into order.
Soren flinches. He hugs the spell tome tighter to his chest.
Ike lowers his hand. He closes his eyes and dozes a bit despite the softness of the bed.
He wakes to the sound of bells and the sight of Soren’s eyes. Soren looks away immediately, staring at a point on Ike’s chest.
Ike props his head up on one hand. “If I put Urvan back on Dad’s grave, do you think someone would steal it?”
A long pause, Soren’s breath stirring his hair. “In Gallia? Unlikely.”
“It’s been blessed now. Valuable for a thief.”
“Sub-humans still don’t use weapons. No one else knows where his grave is.”
“Soren,” Ike chides.
Soren’s mouth sets in a hard line. “The laguz still don’t use weapons,” he mutters. “And they respected Commander Greil.”
“I need you to mind your language if you’re going to come to the grave with me.”
Soren meets his eyes.
“Mist wants to go back to the village where we were born,” Ike adds. “Titania knows where, but I thought you might want to show me where it was we met.” He reaches, slowly, and brushes Soren’s hair out of his face. It takes some doing. “I think I’ve remembered, but it’s vague.”
“I’ll be able to identify the spot. When do we leave?”
Ike sighs. “Whenever the ceremony ends. You’d think you could save the world, tell people you were going home, and actually get to go.”
“They need to honor you. It’s how they process their own survival.”
“Well, I’ve had enough of it. A general has his army: you’d think I could send them in my place.”
“Send Gatrie,” Soren suggests, deadpan.
Ike chokes on a laugh. “I already redirect the women to him. He has to be tired by now.” He smiles faintly, watching Soren’s grip loosen on his tome. “I wish there was somewhere to send all of Mist’s suitors, though. She’s getting so fed up.”
“Your father was one of the Four Riders of Daein. You are you. Your sister is an accomplished healer, equestrian and swordswoman, as well as the chaos goddess’s chosen ambassador to our army,” Soren replies. “Obviously any military family that thinks itself sane would want to sire Mist’s children.”
Ike rolls his eyes. “Right, those nieces and nephews I’m never going to have.” He has an odd thought. “Do you want children?”
Soren’s eyes grow very round.
“I don’t,” Ike adds. “Not the same way Mist doesn’t, but I still don’t.” He’ll die on his feet someday, fighting to the last, and he knows the weight revenge leaves in a child’s heart.
“I don’t want to pass on my bloodline. And I’m not sure I could survive outliving your children.” The last is a soft mumble, but Ike hears it all the same.
“Calil and Largo adopted a Branded girl,” Ike says. He’s not sure why he says it. He wants Soren to say no and Soren already has.
“Ike, this is a terrible time for this conversation.”
“Sorry,” he apologizes. “Thinking about my dad, and all these people trying to get me into bed… It’s on my mind, I guess.”
“It’s a time of change,” Soren acknowledges. How someone can be both the world’s bluntest man and always know the right thing to say, Ike will never know.
“Speaking of time,” Ike says, sitting up, “were those the evening bells a few minutes ago?”
Soren hums in the affirmative, stationary beneath the sheets.
“You don’t want dinner?”
“No.” His already pale hand pales further, knuckles white about his tome once more.
“I’ll ask a servant to bring us something,” Ike decides. One of these rooms has to be acceptable for eating in.
Soren is up in an instant, his hand catching at Ike’s sleeve. “Don’t.”
Ike blinks at him, uncertain before he understands. “It’s not unheard of for a general and his tactician to have dinner together. Maybe it’ll offend someone in the banquet hall, but I think the Apostle will let me bow out.”
“That’s not…” Soren trails off. Shuts his mouth and looks away.
Ike waits.
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here,” Soren says.
Ike raises his eyebrows at the books on the table and at the closed wardrobe.
Soren looks chagrined. His slight bedhead is, as always, adorable.
“We don’t have to let anyone know you’re sleeping here,” Ike offers. “I’ll tell the servants that my rough army ways won’t permit any cleaning done in here. It won’t be the strangest thing I’ve had to do for privacy.”
Soren hugs the tome to his chest. His face turns paler than usual.
“Even if someone found out, there’s nothing about you that could hurt my reputation in any way that matters,” Ike continues. Cover every contingency, that’s the way with Soren. Ike counts them on his fingers. “We’re the same age even if we don’t look it, we’ve saved the world, we have the respect of royalty, we have a pile of gold to rest on for a while, I’m looking forward to simple mercenary work again, Mist’s known for ages, I don’t think any of our friends would be surprised… Is there any other reason to worry?”
Not looking at him, Soren taps the mark on his brow.
“Micaiah’s Branded, too,” Ike says. “Daein wants her as its queen, and that’s Daein. By the sound of it, that’s going to be their second Branded royal in a row.”
The attempt to calm Soren backfires immediately, more immediately than Ike could have thought possible.
“But they don’t know,” Soren protests. “They have no idea what she is. They’re going to find out, and they’ll turn on her. That’s what Daein is. That’s what beorc do. It won’t matter how highly they think of her now when they find out what she is.”
“Jill came around,” Ike counters. “There are bound to be others. Maybe it won’t matter in too long.”
“Ike, it matters now.”
“I know,” Ike says, paying more attention to the way Soren has begun to tremble. Soren doesn’t seem to realize he’s shaking, or he’s decided to completely ignore it. “All right,” Ike says. “I won’t let anyone know you’re here. I’ll tell a servant I’m really hungry tonight and they’ll send extra. People are already talking about how ‘General Ike can out-eat a tiger laguz,’ so no one should be surprised. All right?”
Soren hesitates, then nods.
“I know my reputation is important for the business,” Ike says, “but my tactician is even more so. Practically speaking, I mean.”
Soren says nothing to that, but Ike hardly expects him to respond to anything so sentimental. Not in a mood like this. Still, the shaking lessens somewhat.
Ike puts his boots back on slowly. He stands and asks, “Any idea what food I want tonight?”
“Something that will keep overnight for breakfast,” Soren says without a pause for thought.
Ike nods, exits his many rooms, and returns shortly after. Pulling his boots back on, his hair spilling down to his hands, Soren looks oddly small.
“Anyone who didn’t like it could leave,” Ike says.
Soren looks up at him sharply.
“I mean it,” Ike says. “I don’t want anyone in my company who wouldn’t respect you because of a thing like bloodlines. And if you don’t want them finding out when you stop aging, we can leave. I don’t know where we’d go, but somewhere.”
Pulling his hair back over his shoulders, Soren never takes his eyes from Ike’s face. “Why are you talking so much about the future?”
“Because you look scared,” Ike says. “You only ever look scared after someone’s nearly killed me. Or if you think I’m going to hate you for something.”
“So you decided to talk about not hating me.”
So I decided to talk about not being dead. Ike sits back down on the bed, close enough that Soren edges away. “Is there a reason I should hate you?” Ike asks.
Soren doesn’t answer. He closes his eyes very tightly and turns his face down, shielding his face with his hair.
“I don’t think there’s ever going to be a reason,” Ike says.
Soren begins to cry. Small, snuffling sounds amid the shaking, more emotion than Soren once showed in an entire year. Ike gathers him up on instinct, heart pounding more than it has any cause to. Soren tries to shy away and press into Ike’s side in the same instant.
There’s nothing to do but ride it out. Combat fatigue, maybe, or an old insecurity resurfaced. Or something happened, something new and present that chased Soren from his rooms and into Ike’s.
“If you tell me who you’re hiding from, I can make sure they stay out,” he promises.
Soren shakes his head against Ike’s shoulder. “Everyone.”
“So, what, I’m not a person?”
Soren keeps shaking his head.
“How long are you going to stay holed up in here? The maids are going to try to get in here eventually.”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Soren replies. “Only until then.”
“You’ll miss saying goodbye to Kurth,” Ike points out, and it would take an idiot much worse than Ike to fail to notice the way Soren tenses. “Did something happen with Kurth?” Couldn’t be. The respect Kurth shows to strangers is nothing compared to how he treats his friends. “Does Kurth know what happened?”
“Don’t,” Soren begs, grabbing at Ike’s sleeve. “Ike, please don’t ask him.”
“If something was hurting me, you’d never stop asking.”
“Please.”
“Will you tell me yourself?” Ike asks.
Soren tucks his face against Ike’s neck.
“Eventually, will you?” Ike asks.
Soren nods. It must be a nod, because if there is one thing Soren does not do, it’s nuzzle. Soren pulls back shortly thereafter, eyes uncertain and red. Redder than usual, at least, the whites as well as the pupils.
“I’m going to check on the food,” Ike says. He leaves and returns in time to catch Soren picking distinctly long strands of hair off the sheets. “We have food.”
“No servants?”
“None.”
Soren nods and follows him into the sitting room. Ike lifts the silver lid from the silver tray, watching for the way Soren’s mouth quirks at the incongruent sight of simple sandwiches. They sit on the floor like the boys they once were, crunching through greens and chewing through thick crusts. Ike spreads his cape across their laps to catch the crumbs.
“What kind of work do you think we’ll be getting from now on?” Ike asks.
Soren’s voice is rhythmic and steady as he reports his predictions. There’s something immensely reassuring in the way he begins to recalculate their prices, absolutely cold-blooded and calculating. “We may want to charge bandit removal by the number of bandits. Charging by time would shortchange us unless we worked via ambush. Charging by corpse has an untrustworthy history, but your reputation should carry us there.”
They talk about future recruitment and fort maintenance, building a library or enlarging the stables first, and compensation for the wounded and the families of the deceased. They talk about other renovations, better training facilities and a new chimney. They debate whether a world in which continent-wide war will go unpunished by a goddess will be a safer world when so few had realized the divine consequences to begin with. Ultimately, Ike simply sits back and listens, nodding to Soren’s stream of unfaltering, if unfeeling, logic.
“Bed?” Ike asks only once a yawn interrupts Soren. They take their turns at the wash basin in Ike’s bedroom, spitting into the same cup after scouring their teeth with cleaning paste. Ike strips down to his smallclothes and undershirt, Soren to a black shift beneath his robe. The bed is much too soft when Ike actually intends to sleep, and Soren follows him onto the floor without question or comment, if with a pillow. Ike’s cape is small for two people, but they sleep under it together just the same.
“Are you sure?” Ike asks, pulling on his clothing. “Maybe I could bring you something from the library.”
“You carrying books is going to attract notice,” Soren dismisses immediately.
Ike decides not to take that as an insult. Heroes aren’t allowed to carry anything, it seems. “I could stay in for the morning.”
“That would attract notice, too. I don’t mind doing the accounts.”
Ike sighs. “Fine. But the banquet hall tonight, right?”
“Fine, yes.”
“All right.”
Not without misgivings, Ike leaves Soren to his chosen solitude.
The morning drags on with formality until Ike attempts to slip away and inadvertently sets off an impromptu parade once outside Mainal Temple. Such is Begnion, grateful for peace and the return of their Apostle. Between Ashera’s judgment and the deaths of the senators, the religious and political upheaval has been and will continue to be immense, but the populace knows where it stands with Ike.
He returns in the early afternoon to find Kurth waiting for him. He bows to the new king, and Kurth’s sad smile instructs him to do no more.
“Will you walk with me, Ike? I’d like to speak with you before my sister and I leave.”
“What about?” Ike asks.
“Your staff officer,” Kurth replies. “My sister--”
“I can’t discuss that,” Ike interrupts.
“Ah.” Kurth stands up straighter, his face young and his eyes old. “Then he’s told you.”
“He hasn’t,” Ike says. “Something’s happened, and Soren would rather I didn’t know. If he’s offended you or the dowager queen, I apologize. He’s very blunt.”
“He’s done nothing of the sort,” Kurth assures him. “He was exceptionally polite to my sister.”
“But not to you?”
Kurth holds up a hand and smiles, the expression wry where it meets his eyes. “To me as well. It was my sister’s actions that were…” His smile is his mouth in a shape, nothing more. “In any case, will you let him know that the hospitality of Goldoa is open to him?”
“I didn’t realize Goldoa was open to anyone,” Ike says. The memory of struggling through caves of lava only to be threatened by dragon laguz is still fresh, regardless of the further fighting to follow.
“You are personal friends of her king,” Kurth replies. “Goldoa will accept your travelling party, within reasonable number.”
Aware of a weight heavier than the wind of words has any right to be, Ike bows. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
“My sister...” Kurth frowns, his eyes sliding from Ike’s face, a thoughtful downward glance that is somehow familiar. “She wishes to see Soren prior to our departure.”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty.” Ike offers no excuse.
“I see.” Kurth’s moment of silence cannot be mistaken for hesitation, but there’s a considerate edge to it. “The matter is important, but it can wait.”
“For how long?” Ike asks.
Kurth smiles faintly. “A very long time, I hope. I also hope it won’t need to.”
Torn between loyalties and at a lack for a diplomatic answer, Ike says, “I’ll be sure to tell him.”
“Thank you, Ike. Please pass on my well-wishes, and those of my sister.”
“Of course.”
When Kurth smiles truly, it makes him look all of fourteen. Again, something in his expression pulls at Ike’s memory. The mess hall in their old fort, he thinks without knowing why. He’s reminded of that somehow, but Kurth’s never been there.
Belatedly, Ike bows, and they part company.
He doesn’t bother asking Soren if he’d like to see the dragons off. As he has the entire day, he goes without his shadow to the courtyard. Nasir and Ena make their goodbyes with him before returning to Gareth, Kurth, and the dowager queen. Lips pressed tight, Almedha searches the crowd, standing slightly apart. Her hands work her shawl. When Kurth speaks to her, she feigns calm, but Ike can see through it from across the courtyard. Her distress doesn’t seem obvious to anyone else besides Kurth, but maybe everyone else is better at keeping a diplomatic face on.
He shouldn’t speak with her. Soren would hate that. Ike keeps his distance.
As soon as the dragons leave, Ike makes his excuses and returns to his rooms. Soren has effectively set up a small office, procuring paper of an absurd quality from the desk in the bedroom. When Ike enters, Soren doesn’t look up from his work.
“They’re gone,” Ike says.
Soren nods. His quill scratches on.
Ike pulls in another chair from the sitting room. It’s bulky but certainly light enough for him. He sits down next to Soren and looks at the numbers.
“As long as we forbid ceremony to interfere with their use, the blessed weapons will reduce our expenditure considerably,” Soren reports. “There’s some debate over what belongs to whom—and was originally bought by which country’s funds—but I’m sure I can manage something.”
“Right,” Ike says. “It doesn’t quite feel fair, though.”
“The blessing enhances the weapons’ longevity, not their strength,” Soren replies. “We would have high quality arms anyway. Now we simply won’t need to pay for as many.”
“You’re right.”
Soren hums, writing on.
Ike gets up and pulls more of the curtains open. The light is warm. He looks out across the cityscape until the soft silence registers.
A glance over his shoulder, and Ike sees:
Soren, twisted at the waist.
The curve of his mouth.
Red eyes, too old and young at once, beneath a red marking framed by hair so deep a green as to be nearly black.
Something in Ike goes quiet, the hush in the dark that brings a man to loosen his sword in its sheath.
“Ike?”
“Do you remember when we were fourteen and I tried to get you a Thunder tome?” Ike asks. “The day Dad signed you on to stay. I gave it to you in the mess hall.”
Soren chokes on a smile, possibly a laugh. “You mean a Light tome,” he says, the corners of his mouth lifting as he speaks.
“I thought it was Lightning,” Ike says. “Thunder doesn’t zap people—it’s just a sound—so I thought you wanted Lightning.”
“You were so disappointed,” Soren says, and there it is, there’s the smile from the mess hall. There and gone, as quick as any of Soren’s rare smiles, but as equally unforgettable.
“I was,” Ike agrees, his stomach growing tight.
Soren’s brow furrows, and Ike’s eyes flick up to his Brand. Soren’s frown deepens.
“Oh, right,” Ike says. “Kurth apologized on his sister’s behalf. He didn’t say what for.”
Very slowly, Soren stands up from the desk. His mouth opens and closes.
“And we’ve both been invited to Goldoa. Whenever we want to go, we can.”
Soren’s lips move.
Ike takes two careful steps forward, head tilting one ear forward.
“I don’t want to go,” Soren repeats.
“We don’t have to,” Ike promises.
“Do you want to go?” Soren’s voice is steady, but his eyes beg Ike to say no.
“They’re not used to foreigners and the entire country is going to be grieving for a while yet,” Ike says. “I might want to go eventually, but not anytime soon.”
“I can’t go.”
“All right. Then we won’t go.”
“You don’t--” Soren swallows, his hands fisted. “You don’t want to know why?”
“Because you’re one of the Branded,” Ike says. That’s not a lie. “You think they’ll ignore you later even if they acknowledge you now. That would hurt, so we won’t go.”
“Ike, she thinks--” Soren cuts himself off a second time. He folds his arms before his chest, his chin disappearing beneath his collar. He squeezes his eyes shut, shaking.
Ike walks forward and takes him by the shoulders. “I know,” he says, tightening his grip when Soren tries to break away.
“Did he…?”
“Kurth didn’t tell me,” Ike promises. “But... You have the same eyes. And the marks on your foreheads... Nasir has one, too, though.”
“Rajaion’s hair was the same color as mine,” Soren says, voice dull.
“Was it?” Ike thinks back. “It was, wasn’t it?”
Silently, eyes tight shut, Soren begins to cry. The drops roll down his cheeks, and Ike doesn’t know what to do.
He tries, “But King Pelleas was claimed as her son.”
“As Ashnard’s son,” Soren corrects, voice breaking. “As Daein’s king. Ike, I can’t—I can’t.”
“No,” Ike agrees immediately. “Daein has Micaiah. As far as anyone is concerned, Ashnard’s heir was Pelleas. As far as I’m concerned, it was Pelleas.”
Soren presses into his hands, and Ike loosens his grip to let Soren edge into an embrace.
“It could be a really uncanny coincidence,” Ike says, Soren’s hair brushing against his jaw. It certainly doesn’t feel real.
“She knew,” Soren whispers. “About the old woman. She found an old Crimean woman moving from Crimea to Gallia and bribed her to take her, her... She said she’d thought it so strange the mark on Pelleas’s forehead had disappeared.”
Ike hugs him as tight as the smaller man’s frame will permit. “No one is going to make you be king, Soren.”
“I know.” But Soren still won’t stop crying.
“What’s wrong?”
Soren shakes his head against Ike’s shoulder.
Ike waits him out. It occurs to him, with growing horror, that if this is true, he’s killed Soren’s grandfather as well as his father. “I am so sorry.”
Soren tenses further, somehow finding more space within his body to retreat into.
“For Dheginsea. I heard he was happy to have Almedha back. I think he would have been glad to meet you properly.”
The crying only worsens. Ike inwardly berates himself and promises to stay quiet.
Finally, trembling with exhaustion rather than fear, Soren pushes himself back, cheeks shining. “I thought she would be a beorc woman,” he mumbles.
“How come?”
“Laguz won’t speak to me when they know what I am. Why would one carry me to term?”
“Because she wanted you,” Ike offers.
Soren looks up at Ike in a clear accusation of idiocy.
Ike shrugs. “Stranger things have happened. And lately, too.”
Soren looks away. He winces. Ike knows that look well: headache.
“I’ll get you some water.”
Soren catches his hand.
“Fine,” Ike says, giving him a little tug. “You can come too.”
Sniffling, Soren tries to hide his face against the back of Ike’s arm. Fortunately, the bathroom has plumbing with water good enough to drink. Soren drinks and washes his face, bending over the sink and cupping his hands beneath the tap. Ike holds back his hair.
Once his breathing is steady, Soren immediately returns to his books. Ike sits beside him.
“Oscar mentioned something about better armor for the horses,” Ike says.
“His and Titania’s, maybe,” Soren allows. “Mist’s stays light.”
“Yeah, I’m not armoring my sister’s horse better than my sister. But they’ll all need new shoes.”
Soren makes a note of it. They work until dinner.
Soren sits at Ike’s right hand, Titania at his left. It’s usually the other way around, but neither of his senior officers seem to care. The smaller dining hall is still vast, small only compared to the banquet hall, but enough people have gone home that the smaller room is necessary.
He tries not to, but he still keeps a close eye on Soren the entire night. Soren looks his usual impassive self, blunt where he isn’t sharp, biting where he doesn’t smooth. Soren would probably never forgive him if Ike tried to hold his hand under the table.
“Is something the matter?” Titania asks quietly.
Ike looks at her and she nods. Ike worries about Soren: this they understand.
“Stay.” He puts a light hand on the pile of books.
“Fine.”
They go to bed.
The next day, they make their goodbyes and head home. Days and distance pass.
“Home again!” Mist shouts, cantering up the hill ahead of them. “I’m going to air out the kitchen!”
“Wait up!” Rolf shouts after her, lagging on foot. Boyd follows, then Oscar and Titania with their horses in line. Mia offers her arm to Rhys, the healer once again coming down with something.
Business as usual is exceptionally surreal, worse than it was returning from the first war. A thorough cleaning of the fort takes days. Once everyone is settled, Ike announces his intent to go south to Gallia with Urvan. Mist already knows, Titania volunteers, and the rest make their decisions based on degrees of exhaustion and current employment.
That night, Soren slips into Greil’s old room, the reconstructed version of Greil’s old room, traces of water damage still lingering at the edges. Lying awake, Ike tenses only for a second at the intrusion. The moment recognition occurs, he pulls back the sheet enough to let Soren in.
“I’m coming with you,” Soren whispers.
“I know,” Ike says. “He was your dad too.”
Soren presses his face against Ike’s shoulder, and for a reason he can’t name, it’s Ike who begins to cry. A wet trembling at the corner of the eyes, nothing escaping, but it’s still the most he’s cried in years. He blinks it away.
They sleep until morning, and then they pack light. It’s time to move on.