a lot of competition for it. If he could find her… talk to her—
Yohan’s fist rapped his forearm and gave a gesture toward the door. The latch rose, struck the bolt, and fell. Pavek and Yohan scurried for their weapons; Ruari crouched beside the bed, one arm around Akashia. A hook-shaped device, not unlike Ruari’s lockpick, slid through a hole in the door to snag the string, but the knots Pavek had tied after curfew meant that the string couldn’t be withdrawn through the hole and that the bolt couldn’t be moved from the other side of the door.
Pavek, standing beside the door, mimed sliding the bolt free; Yohan nodded agreement and Pavek pushed it loose and lifted the latch itself, then he retreated hastily as the door began to move. It had happened quickly enough that he hadn’t given a thought to who might appear in the doorway and was speechless when it proved to be a hale and healthy Zvain.
“Pavek!” the youngster shouted through a gleeful smile. He spread his arms wide and, ignoring the sword, flung himself across the room. “Pavek!”
Wiry arms locked firmly around Pavek’s ribs. Tousled hair and a still-downy cheek pressed against his chest. Stunned and vaguely perplexed by Zvain’s affectionate explosions—it was hardly what he’d have expected after leaving the boy behind, hardly the way he would have reacted were their positions reversed—Pavek draped his free arm limply around the boy’s shoulders, lowering the sword until it rested against his leg.
“Who’s he?” Ruari and Yohan demanded together.
“Zvain. He—” Pavek began, but Zvain was quicker.
“Pavek saved my life after my father killed my mother and Laq killed my father. He stayed with me, right here. He had plans. We were going to put a stop to the poison. Then he disappeared, just vanished one afternoon.” Zvain swiveled in Pavek’s arms, fixing him with a wide-eyed stare that was far more open and trusting than anything Pavek remembered seeing while they dwelt together in the bolt-hole. “But I knew you’d come back. I knew it! And you have, haven’t you? You’ve found a way to stop Laq, haven’t you? And these people are going to help?”
“Zvain, that’s not—” The truth, he wanted to say, but Ruari cut him off.
“What is he? Your son? Your son that you left here?”
Trust the half-wit scum—the oh-so-predictable half-wit scum to see everything with his own peculiar prejudice. “Zvain’s not my son—”
Zvain cut him off again. “More like a brother. Aren’t you?”
Something was wrong, subtly but terribly wrong, though it would be harder to admit that the youngster was telling a pack full of lies than to go along with the glowing portrait he created of their prickly weeks together. He was still seeking the words that would explain the contradictions he felt when Ruari seized his sleeve.
“You left him here. You were looking all around that afternoon. You said it was templars, but it wasn’t. You left him here, all alone—”
“Can’t blame him for that, Ruari,” Yohan interrupted softly but urgently. “We weren’t exactly gentle with Pavek here that day. He wanted to keep the boy clear of us. Can’t blame him for that, you least of all.”
To his credit, Ruari relaxed his hold on Pavek’s shirt and stepped back to take Zvain’s measure. By temperament, at least, they could have been brothers. Zvain released one half of his grip on Pavek’s ribs and took Ruari’s hand.
“Are you Pavek’s friend now?”
“You should’ve told us, Pavek,” Ruari said through clenched teeth and looking at Pavek, not Zvain. “Once you knew we were safe in—” He blinked and cocked his head; Telhami had worked her mind-bending spellcraft on him, too, leaving that gray hole in his memory where the name of that safety should lie.
“Safe? Where?” Zvain asked, looking from Ruari to him. “Where’ve you been. You weren’t in Urik. I know. I looked everywhere.”
“Once we were safe at home,” Ruari finished. The interruption gave Pavek a necessary half-moment to think. “Where have you been?” He looked down into the open, trusting face, which blinked once and returned to the wariness he remembered. “Not here. No one’s been in this room since I left. And you’ve changed, Zvain—”
Ruari seized his shirt again. “Of course the boy’s changed! You left him. He couldn’t live here, not alone. You should rejoice that he survived and that he doesn’t hate you for abandoning him. You should swear that you won’t leave him behind ever again. Ever!”
Pavek supposed Ruari was right, supposed he should swear