“I think,” said the Chief Minister of Penth, tall and taut as a bowstring in desert-sun robes and practical trousers, “that you altered our land. Our home. Without telling us. An act of aggression.”

  “Technically,” Lorre retorted, “you invaded first. You crossed the border. And you haven’t said thank you, about the water.”

  “We crossed the border because we needed assistance, and because this land used to be shared land, free to all, before Averene started swallowing up the world.”

  “Mostly it’s just the local baronies,” Lorre said. “Don’t exaggerate. You could’ve asked me for help.”

  “Would you have come?”

  “Probably. If I wasn’t busy. I’d’ve got round to your drought eventually.”

  “You are a weapon,” the Chief Minister said, “and you serve the throne of Averene. We needed to show strength.”

  “I don’t serve anyone,” Lorre said. “I happen to like living in a palace, for the moment. Tell your little human conjurors to stop muttering about earthquakes and dropping me into deep holes. It won’t work, and I don’t appreciate being called an abomination yet again.”

  The Chief Minister glanced at her magicians. They wore blue, a grey-toned dusty hue that stood out against the bronze armor of her people. They stopped conferring with each other, and glared at Lorre.

  Van, who sympathized with people wanting to glare at Lorre, nevertheless scowled back. Whatever Lorre was, he was also a lonely young man whom people tended to believe the worst of; he did not deserve that sort of insult.

  Milo murmured, “If we’re going to fight I wish they’d get on…”

  “I don’t think we’re going to,” Van murmured back. And mentally added a prayer to the Goddess along those lines. With emphasis.

  Queen Ryllis took a step forward. “Would you like to discuss terms?”

  “Also I don’t like conversations with armies pointing sharp objects at me,” Lorre interjected. “I really do think you should send them away.”

  The Chief Minister folded her arms. “We need our strength.”

  “That’s your warning,” Lorre told her.

  “Or what? What would you do?” She waved a hand: encompassing the lines. “Would you destroy us? Kill everyone here on this spot? To make your point?”

  Queen Ryllis said, horrified, “Lorre. You wouldn’t.”

  General Freye appeared to be considering it, given that the everyone under discussion meant the enemy.

  “I don’t like killing people. Too messy. Not to say I wouldn’t, but I don’t feel like it just now. But…” Lorre glanced over, across the field. His gaze found Van, and lingered. He grinned, suddenly: mischievous, kittenish, younger in the same way he’d been with sex-fluffed hair, fleetingly accepting a foot-rub. He did a theatrical finger-snap.

  Light built. Flared. Shone from armor, spears, swords, harnesses.

  It burned outward. It did not cause harm, not that Van could tell—but from this side of it he saw the Penthii army shudder and stumble and stagger, blinded.

  “I like light,” Lorre said conversationally, “and fire. Someone gave me a very useful idea about reflections and sunbeams, last night. Would you all like to see what I can do with the sun? Or would you like to leave now?”

  His voice was low, lazy, self-assured. It carried across the world, over lines and camps. Everyone heard.

  No one else got the reference to last night, Van hoped. He damn well hadn’t told Lorre about sunshine on oceans for this. He wasn’t sure whether to blush or apologize.

  The Penthii lines trembled. Lorre turned up the white-hot radiance more.

  The lines broke. Soldiers fled. In shambles. Giving way before a magician, a youthful sapphire armed with sunbeams and confidence.

  In a matter of moments the Penthii Chief Minister stood alone, facing the Queen of Averene, and General Freye, and Lorre, who was now playing idly with a yarn-ball of fire, and the extent of the Averenish army behind that.

  She said, unflinching, “Would you like our surrender?”

  Lorre made a shower of fire-flowers flare and rain down and vanish, above everyone’s heads. “That’d be nice.”

  Queen Ryllis looked at him, and outright sighed, and said, “Minister Amara…we don’t mean you harm. We never have. Can we speak? Just us. Together.”

  Chief Minister Amara was older than the young Queen of Averene, hair hidden under sun-cloth but lines around her dark eyes, and at her mouth; she turned to look at the clamor of Lorre’s rushing river, at the abandoned hills behind her, the abandoned shields and spears. She turned back, and her gaze swept over Queen Ryllis: resigned, determined, considering options and her people and her home.

  She said, “Yes. We can negotiate, you and I.”

  The world heard, and breathed out, a shudder of reprieve. Ven felt it in his shoulders, his knees, his gut, all the way through his boots. He saw it, sensed it, as the susurration spread.

  They did not have to fight. They did not have to kill, or die. Not today.

  “If you would like advice about rivers and the land,” Lorre began.

  “From you,” the Chief Minister said, “no.”

  Queen Ryllis looked at him kindly, and said, “Thank you for the assistance, Lorre, but no,” and turned to the General. “If someone could bring a table, and writing-paper…”

  Lorre looked at them—at the conversation, the negotiation, the compromises and healing that would happen without him, which he was not a part of—and then looked away. He bent, and touched the earth at his feet; the last of the torn-open fractures had finished mending. The grass kissed his fingers, before he straightened again.

  When he turned back, toward the army and Van and Milo, who had not been dismissed, he did not move with quite the same flawless grace as usual. Van wasn’t sure anyone else could tell. But he’d seen the Sorcerer of Averene flop tiredly onto a bed, the night before; he’d seen Lorre kick a table and wince and then heal himself. Something of that was at the corners of blue eyes just now.

  He responded before thinking about it. A tiny shift of weight, not even a step forward.

  Lorre saw him do it. And visibly debated the response, for a split second. Then put out a pretty hand, languid, and beckoned him.

  Milo started, “You’re not—again—” but Van had already moved.

  Too late, he realized that he should’ve stayed, should’ve reassured Milo. But that was difficult, too, in ways he hadn’t examined. And Lorre might need help.

  Lorre did not need help, or pretended not to. Van ran over to his side, and then realized that that meant he, plain bowman Evander Roche, was in the company of his queen and his general and the world’s greatest magician.

  The Queen, waiting for a table, cushions, ink, had come back over. She said, to Lorre, “Thank you.” It was real; it was also a dismissal. “People would’ve died. And you prevented that.”

  “I didn’t do it for you. I told you I’m not on your side.” Lorre lifted a shoulder, let it drop. “I don’t like war. The land doesn’t like war. Disruptions. Wounds. And also I’ll be going through your royal library and treasury, when we get back.”

  General Freye made a hissing teakettle sound. “The treasures of Averene—”

  “One of your ancient histories has a tale about the Fire Prince, and your treasury has his Crown of Endless Flame, and I want both.”

  The furious teakettle sputtering grew. “My Queen—”

  “Oh, don’t complain about it,” Queen Ryllis said, “it’s a small enough price for not going to war. And the Crown’s silly anyway; it’s too hot to wear or touch, and it isn’t even as useful as a sword would’ve been. You can have it,” she added to Lorre, “but please be careful, it’s melted three chests and reinforced iron crates already.”

  “I can touch it,” Lorre said. “It won’t hurt me. Go finish your negotiations. I won’t move that river again. You can put the boundaries of human kingdoms wherever you’d like.”

  Van, at his side, worried more. And couldn’t look back, in case he saw anger on Milo’s face. Anger, disappointment, hurt: he knew he deserved them all.

  He did not know what more he could do. He couldn’t be two places at once. And he couldn’t not help, if Lorre needed that.

  “Are you keeping Bowman Roche, then?” General Freye eyed Van. “Not that anyone’s objecting. Bowman, you follow his orders, understand?”

  “It’s not an order.” Lorre swung away, a butterfly-flutter of lavender and raspberry and piled-up hair and gold-and-pearl hair-pins. “And I’m not keeping him. Only for now. Come with me, please.” That last was for Van; he trotted a few steps at Lorre’s side, until the magician stopped and said, “Not walking—” and put a hand on Van’s arm.

  And the world dissolved into swirls of air and fire and gemstone light.

  Chapter 6

  Van couldn’t see, and then he could. The outline of Lorre’s tent rushed in: glowing blues and violets, sage-green and snow-white samite. The heat of the fire in its gleaming bowl. The sprawl of the map, altered, flung across the marble table.

  He felt his lungs fill, felt the air in them. He gazed at his magician, astounded, wordless.

  “Oh, don’t.” Lorre put a hand to his own temple, fleetingly; pressed fingertips there. “I didn’t want to be stared at. This was faster.”

  Van managed, because that was the easiest of his overflowing questions, “Headache?”

  “No. It’s only people. Humans. I’m going to be a raincloud. I want you here when I come back.”

  “A raincloud.”

  “I need…let’s just say it’s magic. Read a book. Nap. Whatever you’d like. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”

  Van nodded, because clearly he was not in control of any part of this conversation. Lorre shut his eyes, opened them, did a little all-over wriggle as if settling bones and muscles back into shape, or testing them for flexibility.

  And then all his edges softened, blurred, faded. Dissolved, right there, like a chalk drawing under rain. Gradual but abrupt, here and gone, human body turned into a slate-dark billow of icy wind and sleet, which gathered itself up and blew out of the tent before Van could even comprehend what’d just taken place.

  The heap of Lorre’s robes collapsed with a small sigh, a tumble of brocade and satin, raspberries and lavender in stripes and ruffles. A clatter of pearl hair-pins landed on the top.

  Van stood there and stared at satin and pins. He didn’t know for how long. The day had gone from flat sun to silvery gloom, outside. The tent was firelit and snug.

  He’d known Lorre wasn’t fully human. He’d known. There’d been jokes about shapeshifting, earlier that morning.

  He hadn’t known anything, nothing at all. He hadn’t understood. And he’d dared to think he could offer some assistance, to a thundercloud, a river-child, a magician.

  One of Lorre’s hair-pins, a knot of black pearl and thick gold, caught the light from the fire. It winked at him: encouragement, perhaps. It was here, and Van was here, and they were here, together. That was as real as anything was.

  He was still armed, bow and quiver. He found a corner to set those in.

  He picked up Lorre’s clothing and folded it and put the folds atop a chest, in the corner, which he discovered to be holding other fabric. He put the hair-pins in a shallow seashell he found near the mysterious collection of twigs and sticks and woods. The seashell shimmered, iridescent; and for a moment Van’s heart cracked open at the thought of home, the simplicity of waves on a shore, the inn’s hearth and long tables, his father’s gruff embrace, evenings spent learning to help his mother with the accounts.

  He had written home faithfully, during the hasty weeks of training and mobilization. He had not written about Lorre; he had not had time, these last tumultuous days. He did not know what he could possibly say.

  He had written about Milo. About the new friend who’d decided, that first day, that they were going to be friends; who had never cared that Van came from a tiny drowsy fishing-village and did not know about Court fashions; who was unobtrusively everyone’s friend and had a reliable unhurried hand with a bow and woke up grumbling and unfocused before the first cup of strong hot tea.

  They’d both volunteered. They’d both believed in this: protecting their home. They had that in common, the way they’d discovered they had other things in common: a liking for music, being fond of animals, an anchor in family and home. Milo couldn’t whistle, but could play the guitar, though he hadn’t brought his; Van had not ever learned an instrument, but could mimic sea-birds and song-birds and any tune he’d heard clearly enough, and Milo had laughed and applauded him for it.

  Black pearl hair-pins in hand, in the Sorcerer’s tent, Van wanted to whistle a little aching note; he wanted Milo with him, so intensely he thought his bones would break with the wanting. He wanted Milo’s arms around him again.

  He thought that maybe he knew what he wanted, now.

  Except he also did want to be here. Because Lorre, he thought, needed him. Someone, at least.

  That headache. Those insults, even while the magician had been trying to help. Every one of Van’s instincts stiffened up in outrage at that. An abomination, indeed. Maybe Lorre was sometimes a raincloud, but the magician also liked foot-rubs and spinach tarts and saving people, because the truth of the day was that Lorre had saved people: without him a battle would’ve happened, and not everyone would’ve been safe.

  Van himself, and Milo, had not had to learn how it might feel to harm another person. Because of Lorre.

  He put the last hair-pins in the iridescent seashell. He made the strawberry tea. He kicked off his own boots and rolled up his sleeves and loosened the tie at the neck of his shirt. He did not have oil, nor smoothing vanilla hair-scent, today; he was just himself. But maybe that would be enough; Lorre had liked him well enough the first time.

  He glanced around. No thundercloud had returned. Lorre had said to borrow a book, if he liked; Van went to look at the three in a haphazard stack by the map. He avoided touching the map itself.

  One book was old-fashioned courtly poetry, one was in a language he didn’t know, and one proved to be botanical, a ninety-year-old treatise on forests and folklore and the supposed individual attributes and energies of various trees and shrubs. Van picked that up, carefully because of the age, and settled into the bed. The morning folded into afternoon in a muted patter of unseasonal rain.

  He was halfway through a chapter on the uses of juniper as a grounding meditation aid when a gust of cold blew open the tent-flap. Van put the book down; Lorre slid out of air and raindrops and coalesced into a person, golden-haired and blue-eyed and naked.

  Van, watching, couldn’t not want: the leaping power, the grace, the strength and prettiness and blatant display. His body responded.

  Lorre put his head on one side. Hair tumbled down his back. “The Barrialian philosophy of trees? How are you liking it?”

  “It’s dense. Slow. But interesting. Learning about juniper. How’s your headache?”

  “You’re not afraid of me.” Lorre went over to collect tea. “You ought to be.”

  “Oh, I am. I’m just not going anywhere.”

  “Hmm.” Lorre finished half a mug of tea in one possibly inhuman gulp. Water-drops hung diamonds in his hair; Van wasn’t sure whether they were real rain-flecks, from the weather outside, or if the magician had forgotten a piece or two. “You don’t need to stay.”

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  “The Queen will send the volunteers home in the morning,” Lorre informed him, not an answer, unless it was. “The regulars will stay on for support. They’re working out a border zone. A new treaty. I eavesdropped, before I got bored. Maybe I should go to Penth. They have sand-cats.”

  “You can’t—we just almost went to war with them, and you want to—”

  “I don’t care.” Lorre put the porcelain teacup down, on the table and not on air this time. “Is that difficult to understand? I said I’m not on your side. I’m not on anyone’s side. I’m on my side.”

  “That’s not true,” Van said. “That can’t be true. You left breakfast for me, this morning. You stopped the war.”

  “I just—”

  “Thought about me. Did something nice. Those breakfast rolls.”

  “Don’t make too much out of a gesture.”

  “You didn’t have to do it, and you did.”

  “I’ve been hungry.” Lorre came over to the bed as Van got up. “Not because I couldn’t find food; I could. I wanted to know what that felt like. I didn’t enjoy it. I like strawberries and honey and goat’s-milk cheese.”

  “And pearls in your hair.” Van reached out, cautiously in case any lightning stopped him. It didn’t, so he touched shining gold, ran his fingers through the storm-damp shimmer of Lorre’s loose hair. “And silks and satins against your skin.” Lorre’s breathing was a bit shaky, he observed. “You like being touched.”

  “I want you to fuck me,” Lorre said. He said it with the usual cool arrogance; but he tilted his head into the touching, too. His body was beautifully aroused, luscious as ever. The words hovered in the air, rain-splashed, drenched in want.

  “Oh Goddess,” Van said, accidentally aloud.

  “Decidedly not. Do you mind doing that?”

  “No! I mean—I want to. Whatever you want.”

  “Yes,” Lorre said. “Whatever I want. Make it hard.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I wouldn’t care if you did. I can heal.”

  “No.”

  “Orders, mine, following them.”

  “No. I’ll make it harder, if you want. Rough, if you want that. But I won’t hurt you.”

  Lorre appeared to be thinking this over, then shrugged, nodded, and said, “Go on, then,” and waved a hand at Van’s clothing, which vanished.

  Not out of sight, this time. Van noticed that. Just over on a chair. And that recognition, Lorre listening to him, left his insides tangled up with strange yearning compassion, with desire and melancholy, with the awareness that this was what they would have, just this, one last time.