a coward. I am useless. Then Theron corrected himself, as he always did. No. I’m just useless at this. But I can help the deer. I will.
Gavin’s lips were pressed tightly together, his face white. He was holding himself strangely. Everything about him seemed strange. The dagger in his hand, poised to strike, his eyes fixed—
On Theron.
Behind him, Elban watched. There was no sound. Even the panting of the dogs had stopped.
Gavin took two steps toward him.
“No.” Theron didn’t mean to speak. Even as the word escaped his lips—without even a hitch, and ns were hard—he was thinking: this is not happening. This would not happen. The machine doesn’t work this way; this is not the plan; Gavin would not do this.
Just hang on.
Then Gavin moved. He had not seen his brother on the training field in so long. He had no idea how fast Gavin could be, and even now the part of his brain that appreciated a well-made machine was admiring the way all the parts of Gavin’s body worked with all the other parts, the fluidity of his movement, the sureness of his steps and the practiced line of his arm as he drew back the dagger; the way his brother’s torso and hips swiveled to deliver the maximum possible energy through the arm and wrist and hand to the weapon, focusing all of the strength and beauty that was the human body at its finest and best-trained into the fine-honed tip of the blade, sharpened beyond what the eye could see.
Theron closed his eyes.
A breeze. The warmth of his brother’s body passing within a hairbreadth of his own. A grunt, a thud.
He opened his eyes. Gavin’s dagger was buried at the base of the deer’s skull. He had severed her spinal column. She was dead.
All pleasure and excitement vanished from Elban’s face, replaced by anger and distrust. Gavin pulled his dagger from the deer’s body and wiped it on his trousers. With an illogical sidestep he swiveled, put himself between Theron and Elban. He still held the dagger point down but there was something dangerous in the set of his shoulders, the stance of his legs. It was a fighter’s stance. Gavin was waiting for an attack.
Elban made a noise. The hounds all stood as one and took a step closer. The courtiers were silent. In front of Theron, Gavin’s shoulders flexed.
Their father was going to kill them both. He would have them torn apart. “Gavin,” Theron said, low—meaning what? That he did not know what was going on, but he knew they were in danger. That he did not want to be torn apart by hounds.
“Quiet.” Theron could barely hear him.
The moment lasted only a few seconds but it also lasted longer than the fifteen minutes it had taken the deer to die. The moment lasted forever. “Well, then,” Elban said finally, as if they’d just finished a negotiation, although nobody else had spoken. He spun his horse and rode away. The courtiers followed. Gavin’s and Theron’s own horses, confused, stamped impatiently at the ground.
“Gavin,” Theron said again.
Gavin didn’t look at him. With the courtiers moving away, his whole body slumped, as if all of his bones had gone soft at once. Hoisting himself up onto his horse looked as if it took immense effort, and his posture in the saddle was grim. If posture could be grim. The human body was an amazing machine, not just effective but flexible and expressive. Even in defeat, Gavin was beautiful.
“Come on,” he said over his shoulder. Theron came.
* * *
In the workshop, for the first time, Theron seemed to notice the spatter of dried blood on his glasses. Deer’s blood. He chipped at it with a broken fingernail. Judah found it too fascinating, the slow erosion of the perfect circle of blood.
“He was supposed to kill me, wasn’t he?” Theron said.
“He didn’t kill you,” Judah said. Her hallucinations were intense and the words came out a sideways purple color. She was glad Gavin had not killed Theron. She was glad of the fact of Theron, perched on his stool, warm and alive. But there was a reason she could not be happy. Something she was forgetting; something that was drowning with Gavin’s mind in whatever chemicals he’d found.
Theron laughed. It was an ugly laugh. It huddled in a corner and brayed at them. “He thought about it, though. He seriously considered it.” He turned away from her, back to his machine. Like a door shutting. “Never mind,