Patriarch Bomin’s study lies behind the mansion. It is a separate building designed after a gazebo, but much larger to accommodate his polished wooden desk, a seating area for guests, a fireplace, and other furnishings. The circular design offered both beauty and a sense of refuge. Flowers intertwined their stem along its posts, and beneath its peaked roof, hanging fabric panels waited to be unrolled. They are long enough to touch the floor and are used to keep warm during the winter, or if the day is too windy, they will be partially rolled to let in a breeze, but not a gust.

  The building is situated at a fair distance to allow for privacy, and the open area surrounding the gazebo provides a clear line of sight for potential eavesdroppers. Cian can remember playing a game where he and Keegan would try to sneak up on his uncle, using camouflage to blend in with the surrounding greenery. Each time, his uncle never failed to spot them, throwing a small pebble in their direction to lightly tap them on the forehead. They would play the game for hours until his uncle had to stop them if he wished to get any work done. One moment his uncle would be in his study, and the next he would vanish. Like a silent snake slithering through the grass, his uncle snuck up on them and pounced. He attacked with tickling fingers until his sons were almost breathless from laughter. Afterward, he bid them to play somewhere else for a while lest he continue his assault.

  Now, instead of a sense of playful anticipation, Cian feels apprehension as they cross the grass, following the stone slabs that form a pebbled pathway.

  Inside the gazebo, Bomin went to sit behind his desk and indicated for Cian to sit in the chair opposite. The boy complied, his back straight and hands folded together on his lap. He watched his uncle open a drawer and pull out two sheets of paper covered in familiar handwriting.

  “How is your recovery?” Bomin asked, laying the papers on the desk. He then moved to place both of his elbows on the wooden surface, lacing his fingers together so that he could rest his chin on them. His hooded crimson eyes peer at him curiously, and Cian is unable to hold his gaze. Cian’s eyes drift to the scar on his uncle’s left cheek. It is the only imperfection that marred his lighter olive skin, a burn mark from when the mansion had been set on fire fifteen years ago. His uncle had gotten it when he saved his life as a baby. “Great! There’s still some soreness, and certain movements can leave me short of breath, but my healing is coming along fine,” Cian responded, his tone chipper and expression forcibly lax. Bomin smiled at him.

  “I’m happy to hear that. Even though Patriarch Griff assured me of your safety, it does my soul well to see both my sons in good health.”

  “You should never worry about us. My cunning and Keegan's ingenuity are a hard match to go up against.”

  Bomin chuckled lightly. “Indeed, you are devious, Cian.”

  The way his uncle said the word had Cian vigilant. It somehow felt like a trap he unwittingly stepped into, and now he had no clue how to get out.

  “After learning you were successfully retrieved, I sent word to Keegan, asking what happened specifically. Patriarch Griff could only provide me with so much information. I was kept on pins and needles waiting for a response, and then a letter finally came, but the author was not who I expected.”

  His uncle unlocked his fingers to move the papers side by side. “...Keegan fought valiantly to keep the man from attacking me while I lay prone. Hitting the floor had severely disoriented me, and it took me a moment to stand. Unfortunately, Keegan was repaid for his bravery with a slash across the back from the man’s knife…,” Bomin read out loud. He took a pause, opening the drawer once again and pulling out a few more papers, shuffling them until he found the one he needed. “...Once I realized the man intended to use the conduite, I shouted at Keegan to stop him. Your son acted without hesitation and kept the man at bay. Even after receiving a clean slash across his back, your son kept fighting until Cian and I could come to his aid…”

  Wukong.

  Cian felt his throat go dry. Wukong had only mentioned speaking to his father about what happened; he never said he had sent a letter to Bomin. Did it slip his mind, or did he wish Keegan to face consequences for almost giving in to unholy temptation? Perhaps he disliked Cian's attempt to hide the truth? No, that could not be it. The other boy would gladly see him get in trouble for breaking the rules at The Cornucopia, but this was not something he would throw Cian to the wolves for.

  “Once I was sure you were aboard the steamship, I had sent another letter to Patriarch Griff and requested that his son send me his account of what happened under Lake Kai. Son Wukong is a rather thorough recorder, as should be expected from a Davarnian,” Bomin said, causing Cian to jump in startlement. “I don’t want you assuming that I don’t trust you, Cian, but something within me advised me to hear another side of the story. Keegan was initially meant to write to me, yet he waited for you. I can’t be faulted for being suspicious.”

  “Cian, what actually happened under that lake?”

  “What Wukong and I wrote,” Cian replied without delay. “You have to forgive me, Uncle. I must’ve misremembered events.”

  “Cian.”

  “Everything had become a bit cloudy after the man broke my ribs. The pain from that and the knife wound I suffered left me in a horrible headspace—”

  Cian quit talking at the sound of a chair scraping against the floor. In an instant, his uncle was kneeling before him, grasping him by both shoulders and looking at him with imploring eyes. “Cian, tell. Me. The truth.”

  His uncle knows him so well.

  He felt defeated.

  “He doesn’t mean…to get so angry, Uncle, but you know how Keegan is. That man had hurt me, hurt Wukong, and wanted all of us dead. He was too strong. Keegan had wanted to defeat him and the means…didn’t matter.” The last words are what bring a look of dawning in Bomin’s eyes.

  “Keegan wasn't fighting the man to keep him from the conduit. He was fighting the man for it.”

  A statement. A truth. The truth. Cian did not bother to affirm his uncle’s conclusion; there was no point. “Survival over death, we aren’t experienced soldiers, and Keegan thought he had no other choice.”

  His uncle let go of him, leaning back with a sorrowful expression. He had never seen his uncle look like this before, and it made him uncomfortable. “You made one,” Bomin said. “You took that man’s life.”

  “Exactly! I killed him! I sinned. All Keegan did was entertain the idea, but didn’t go through with it.”

  “If that is all that was to it, Cian, you wouldn’t have lied about the events.”

  Cian opened his mouth, but words evaded him. “It pains me that you had been put in a position where your only option was to take the life of another. I never wanted you to be tainted by such a decision, yet you did what you had to. But answer me this, Cian. Would you do it again?”

  He looked down at his hands, scraping his nails along the back of his knuckles. If traveling through time were a reality, and Cian was placed back in that cavern with the knowledge he had now, he would try to find another way. Binding, or knocking the man unconscious, is the preferred method, yet if Cian were unable to, and it came to that point again, he would take the man’s life. He tells his uncle as much. “Sometimes I hear his dying breaths in my dreams, and other times I’m waking up from a nightmare of blood. I don’t like the feeling, and can’t imagine growing accustomed to it, but I still stand by what I just said. I would kill him.”

  “That is the difference between you and Keegan,” Bomin said. “Can you honestly say he thinks the same as you?”

  No. Cian can not.

  Keegan had the mind to hurt the man far worse than he had hurt them, and unlike Cian, turmoil over his actions would not have come. In Keegan’s mind, the man deserved whatever damnation was coming for him. Cian had been spurred by propriety—the need to keep those he loved safe, so he slit the man’s throat. Quick and efficient, and unwilling to prolong it. Initially, Keegan probably had that thought, but it had been consumed by the need for revenge, a bloodlust that was not so easily satiated. Ironically, Cian does not see the issue in his brother’s thoughts because that is all they are. If he does not act on them, then why worry?

  “He doesn’t act, but not by his choice. You’re the reason his hair hasn't darkened so far.”

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  Oh, Cian must have said the last part out loud. Wait…what does his uncle mean? “I’m confused. I haven’t been doing anything.”

  His uncle stood up with a sigh, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and pointer finger. The man walked to the side of his study, looking out at the sky. When his uncle did not move or say anything further, Cian got up from his chair and went to stand next to the older man. The clouds drifted by at a lazy pace—they were big and fluffy, and a cluster of them reminded Cian of a small lamb. He watches the lamb float across the sky before disappearing as the winds change the cloud’s shape, and it becomes nothing more than a shapeless mound of white. “I’ve tried to be over kind, over strict, yet nothing seems to reach Keegan. The Mindwrights who have held sessions with him tell me he has the spirit of anger and struggles with turbulent waves of emotion. The boy has been like this for years, and no amount of talking with Mindwrights, prayer, medicines, my understanding, or your mother’s seems to help. Worse yet is that you, Cian, exacerbate the issue.”

  Cian flinches as if he had been struck, the calm from watching the clouds is all but gone, and he is reeling. He has always been sympathetic to his uncle’s plight because he had witnessed his aunt and Uncle treating Keegan differently. Not in the way of overly special or harsh, but in a way they hoped would find him when warring sentiments wracked him. Cian liked to think he was an aid in their endeavor, keeping his brother calm and distracted with his ludicrous antics. To be told otherwise, hurt him. “Uncle, I do what I can to help Keegan. How am I making it worse?”

  “You shield him from too much,” Bomin replied, shifting his gaze from the sky toward Cian—the sorrowfulness from before still not having left. “Whenever he gives in to temptation and acts out, you lie on his behalf and burden yourself with repercussions that should fall on him. You divert people’s attention by acting like a clown so that they assume your brother is the sane one, the one with a level head. And now you’ve killed for him! Not because you feared for your life but because you feared for Keegan’s soul. You knew he was going to cross the line, so you dipped your toe past instead.”

  “I don’t…I don’t do that,” Cian said, backing away from his uncle. He tried to sound confident in his objection, but his words wavered.

  “Cian, you always have.”

  —————

  “Why do you need so much linen in the first place?” Keegan asked, struggling to push the small cart loaded with bolts of white fabric stacked on top of each other. The stack is twice his height, and if he is not careful, it will pivot to one side, spilling the clean linen onto the street. If that happens, he can only imagine how angry Alma will get. She was already with Cian, and Keegan was a bit as well. Cian had offered their services when Alma expressed a need for help to fetch new linens for her teacher, Healer Sophia, yet only Keegan was here. His brother had told him to go along, and he would eventually meet up with him—a complete farce. “We turn them into strips to bind people's wounds. Teacher doesn’t like washing and reusing binding strips unless she has to.”

  Fair enough, Keegan supposed. “If Cian doesn’t show his face by the time we reach your teacher’s home, I can have his fireworks, right? This cart is heavy, and it’s unfair that I have to pull it by myself,” Keegan said. As a reward for their good deed, Healer Sophia promised the young boys a Dragon’s Tail each, a cylindrical tube with a string attached at the end. When you lit the string, an explosion occurred, shooting a ball of red into the sky that then burst into an array of colors in the shape of a flying dragon. Such spectacular works of pyrotechnics are imported from Faux Point, the tribe of Adoptore designing them, and are a special treat for the people of Fallen Petal. “You can have his, but you act as though he wouldn’t try to steal them from you.”

  “Cian can try, but he won't succeed.” Keegan’s declaration was marked by a haughty crossing of his arms, causing Alma to laugh. Her laughter is cut short by the ugly shouting of her name. “Alma Tenshi!”

  Ahead of them, stalking down the street with his nose in the air and his mouth set in a deep frown, is a boy around their age. Merrin of the Vale Clan. He is a short, stoutish boy, with his off-white hair slicked back, and blueish-green robes tailored for regality, but that makes him come across as pompous. It did not help that his clan insignia is that of a Magpie outlined in pure gold, as he liked to boast. Following him are four other boys from his clan, dressed similarly, but with their off-white hair varying in style, some with it up and some with it down. They walked as if they were part of some pose, and Merrin was the leader. “Hello, Merrin! You seem better,” Alma greeted when the group neared. She graced the group with a soft smile, which was met with a sneer from Merrin. “I seem better? How can you say that when I have this hideous thing on my face?” Merrin pointed to the large scar spanning from his brow to his chin in a diagonal pattern.

  The tribe of Heartsease offers introductory martial arts courses to children interested in becoming soldiers or who wish to become Bearers—the name for individuals who join the Hands of the Covenant. A group that roams across the earth and does the Lord’s work through charitable acts. They are primarily a respected group, but they will at times encounter individuals who wish to cause harm, so their members must be trained to defend themselves or those they care for.

  This was the first year Keegan and Cian were allowed to attend, as children must be at least nine years old to participate. Merrin is a year older, but he had not decided to participate until this year. Rumors spread amongst the children that his mother had forced him to wait, citing her concern over his frail stature. To say Merrin’s pride had been hurt was an understatement. The courses were held on the Patriarch’s land, farther left of the mansion, where the soldiers’ training field lay. Merrin had walked onto the field with an air of false confidence. He had lied to the children, stating that he had undergone special training the previous year and had only joined this one to see how it compared. He kept up the charade the entire first week, then came the second week, when they were allowed to use training swords.

  The training swords were made from wood, but they were carefully carved to mimic the heft of a real steel sword. Their instructor had them practice swings, a set of downward slashes followed by an upward stroke to block an invisible opponent. The forms were repetitive, and soon Merrin had grown disinterested. When the instructor had stepped away for a moment, Merrin took his opportunity to fetch a real sword from the many stored in the weapons house. He came back brandishing the glistening steel, waving it around in a disorganized manner, much like a child who knew nothing of what they were doing. Cian had been the one to admonish Merrin’s behavior, critiquing it as needlessly reckless and dangerous, ironic considering Cian would do worse when he got to The Cornucopia.

  Merrin brushed off Cian’s words and continued to play with the sword. It did not help that Alma had attended as a watchful bystander that day, at Cian's behest, who had been energetic in his attempts to persuade her to join the courses along with him and Keegan. Merrin had been instantly smitten with Alma, doing his best to win her favor, although nothing he did seemed to work. That is partially why he stole the sword—to impress Alma and the other children watching him. With all eyes on him, Merrin grew daring, tossing the sword in the air and deftly catching it before it hit the ground. He managed without incident for the first couple of throws, but on the third one, he tripped over his own feet. It was a horrible realization as all eyes followed the trajectory of the sword. Merrin had cried out as soon as the sword touched him.

  Alma had acted quickly, pulling her satchel forth; Healer Sophia had demanded that she always carry it on hand. She struggled against Merrin’s kicking and screaming, but she managed to tend to the bleeding line on his face before shouting for someone to get an adult. Cian had been ahead of her, having already run off to look for the instructor or whoever was available. In the end, Merrin had been seen to by Archdoctor Ebenezer, who had told him he should thank Alma for her quick reaction. Keegan does not believe the boy ever did, nor does he think he ever will, especially now.

  “The scar will be less pronounced as you age. Just give it some time,” Alma said, her voice even. Keegan wanted to commend her for remaining calm, even when Merrin attempted to murder her with a look. “Time? I wouldn’t even need time had you done a better job!”

  Keegan stood next to Alma in an instant. The other boy had not come any closer, but with how irate he was, that could change at any moment. “My clan’s physician told me you used Thornmilk Paste, and that it’s not gentle on skin. I might not have had scarring if you hadn’t interfered that day!”

  “So you would’ve preferred being a bloody, crying mess?” Keegan asked. He felt an elbow in his side from Alma. “I did what I could,” Alma interjected before Merrin could retort. “After you cut yourself, you rolled in the dirt, and I’d been worried about your wound becoming infected. I also didn’t know the depth of your cut, and using the paste seemed the best choice to account for that, as well as keeping it clean. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done more.”

  Merrin took a step closer, being mindful of Keegan, but too full of fury to be bothered. “Apology not accepted, stupid girl! You ruined my future by disfiguring my face, and I expect proper atonement! No woman will marry me when I look like this, so pledge your fidelity to me, and become my wife when we’re of age.”

  “You make it seem girls liked you in the first place,” Keegan said, moving in front of Alma. He felt her tug the back of his tunic, asking what he was doing in a whisper. The boy ignored her, too fed up with the attitude of the other standing before him. “And how could Alma ruin what was already ugly to begin with?”

  The fist was inevitable, and Keegan had been prepared for it, but he had not needed to worry. Before Merrin could lay a hand on him, he was stopped by a swift kick to the back of his knees. “If you children fight, then you risk not only hurting my assistant but also dirtying my linens! If either happens, I will be wrath incarnate!” Healer Sophia yelled. She is an elderly woman, older than Archdoctor Ebenezer by a decade, with wrinkles, paler olive skin, and round glasses. Her ashen-gray hair is braided on one side while the rest is free-flowing down her back. She is dressed in flowing robes in different shades of violet and yellow with white accents. Despite her age, she maintains an upright posture that speaks to her strength, and her crimson eyes are like a lion’s, fierce in their stare down at Merrin.

  “I only wanted a civil conversation, but—”

  “Did I inquire as to what you wanted?”

  “N-no.”

  “Then I want you and your friends to leave.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Speak anymore and I will treat this as an impromptu consultation and charge your parents an exorbitant fee! If you try to argue, then I’ll make sure you need my expertise, but I doubt you want that,” Sophia said, cracking her knuckles before raising a fist. The warning did not go unheeded by Merrin. The boy stood up and gestured with his chin for him and his people to leave, not without sending a withering glare in Keegan’s direction.

  “Thank you, Teacher, for stepping in,” Alma said, bowing her head in gratitude. Sophia scoffed, but lightly patted the top of Alma’s head before barking at Keegan. “Don’t just stand there, boy! I’ve wanted long enough for the two of you, and that is the only reason I even came to check on you.”

  Keegan hurried to comply with his elder’s wishes.