Canticle [Historical M/M Romantasy]

"Now this is the good life! Why can't you take me to more places like this, huh?"

Genesis pulled his hat down low over his face and flipped the collar of his coat up against the sunshine, sticking to the protection of K'aekniv's hulking, slanting shadow as they continued up the path into the mountains. The humidity was oppressive. And so was the smell — salt and mold and the faintest tinge of distant smoke. The last hinted that they were headed in the correct direction.

"You are here...to work," Genesis said, scanning the woods ahead. There were signs other than the smoke, though they were harder to make out now than they'd been under cover of night. Parts of the undergrowth that had been disturbed, broken low-hanging branches. The leavings of a horse, piled on the side of the path. The turn-off would be one hundred paces ahead. Perhaps more, considering he was walking in K'aekniv's shadow, and K'aekniv never moved at an optimal pace.

"I still don't know what you want me to do," K'aekniv countered, ducking one wing so that he could shoot him a look over his shoulder. Something with raised brows and a smile that didn't show any teeth. "I don't speak French. Or that other one, that...bak...bis..."

"Basque. In French. Or...Euskara. Or—"

"Whatever. What the normal people here speak, yes?"

"Correct."

"But you speak it?"

"That...is the entire point," Genesis said, fighting against the reflex to rub at his pounding temples. Moving through the Abyss with K'aekniv always involved an undue amount of touching and clinging. And he hadn't yet had the opportunity to clean his hands. "I do not speak the language. I have searched many local libraries for...materials. However, the journal appears to be written in a...very specific dialect. In order to achieve the best translation, it will be necessary to consult the local population."

Genesis had hoped that the matter of Jean-Luc's journal would prove to be a pleasant distraction from the ongoing business with Ravensdale and the djinn. It had turned fast into a nightmare once he'd realized how much of the knowledge of Jean-Luc's native language was stored in the heads of the local farmers rather than in books. Apparently the people Mirk's grandfather had been reared among valued conveying information orally. He should have suspected as much. Jean-Luc's penmanship was terrible.

He had hoped it wouldn't be an issue. He had hoped it would only necessitate a few visits to the mountains to consult with some manner of local elder, who all the valuable information of the community had been entrusted to. But the majority of the elderly individuals with magical potential he'd spoken with on his last visit had responded to his polite requests — made in a mixture of French, Spanish, and the appropriate gestures, to ensure he was understood — with what Genesis assumed were curses and religious gestures against sinister forces. Several had thrown rocks at him.

Thus, K'aekniv.

"If you can't talk to them, I don't know how you expect me to," K'aekniv said, shrugging his wings and swiping at the sweat beaded on his forehead with the back of his arm. He paused right before the bend in the road that marked the hidden passage through the forest, ducking his wing and looking back at him again. "Is that it?"

"Yes. The path will be...approximately twenty feet past the turn."

"What the hell did you do to them?" K'aekniv looked him up and down, frowning at whatever he saw of note. "Don't tell me you went there looking like this."

Genesis frowned back at him. "I...do not know any other way to look."

"Why the hell do you think I brought this?" K'aekniv took the wing corset he'd insisted on bringing out from under his arm and shook it at him. "You think I like wearing this shit?"

"I am aware...you do not. I do not understand why you brought it."

"Because you can't go talking to normal people looking like some kind of spirit! You have to look normal!"

Genesis grinned in distaste at the word. Normal. He had never understood what K'aekniv meant when he said it. What counted as normal seemed to change by the hour, and K'aekniv was always exceptionally offended when he told him as such. "The...people have magical potential. They should be aware of the existence of non-humans."

"That doesn't mean they want to invite one in for supper! Holy Mother, no wonder you didn't get anything...here, help me put it on. You know it's a bitch getting all the strings tight on your own."

Before Genesis could protest, K'aekniv was stripping off his uniform shirt and wrapping the corset around himself, wriggling and squirming and sweating buckets after only a minimal amount of movement. Genesis's grin of distaste widened as he watched K'aekniv try to catch both his wings in it. "The sooner you help, the sooner it's done," K'aekniv said, pointedly, after cursing one of the strings that'd already snapped.

It was a miserable, protracted affair that neccessitated the use of his magic as well as his hands, and not only out of an unwillingness to touch K'aekniv's sweaty back. By the time they were through, Genesis felt faint from working in the sun and K'aekniv was wheezing, hunched over with his hands braced on his knees as he tried to catch his breath without snapping any more of the wing corset's straining strings. K'aekniv pawed through his discarded shirt until he came up with a bottle of a clear substance. He needed to suck half of it down before he could summon the strength to stand up straight.

"If this takes more than two bottles of samogon, we're fucked. I need the other two for me."

Genesis was of the opinion that, if anything, K'aekniv required fewer regular bottles of liquor. But he'd had that argument with him enough times to know not to press the point. If K'aekniv was correct, and conforming to an appearance more familiar to mortals was a necessity, then perhaps being half drunk would ease communication.

"Where's this road?"

"As I...said. Twenty feet ahead."

K'aekniv walked off as he struggled back into his shirt. The magic on the corset and the size of the shirt made it appear more or less like K'aekniv didn't have wings. At least he required no further direction to be able to find the track hidden in a particularly thick grove of vegetation. No matter where the Seventh traveled, K'aekniv could read the natural landscape just as well as a local. Genesis sincerely hoped that ability transferred to the locals themselves.

"It must be shit around here for the people to need to hide themselves like this," K'aekniv grumbled as he beat his way through the underbrush, inconvenienced by no longer having his wings free to help him along the way. "At home, people can just be out wherever and everyone understands. You only have to do this magic shit when someone from the city comes around."

Genesis didn't know what to say about this. He'd been to where K'aekniv was from. And the people there had looked at him exactly the same way the people hidden in the mountains looming above Biarritz did: with eyes that first went wide and then squinted nearly shut, lips scrunched or pressed thin, always moving away from him as they made their half-arcane gestures. As if they wanted to conjure wards against him, but couldn't stand lingering near him long enough to properly cast them.

The village wasn't far from the main road. Yet K'aekniv had to stop once again at the outskirts to brace his hands on his knees and wheeze and curse and drink down another few fingers of liquor. Genesis took advantage of the pause to clean off his hands and adjust his coat on his shoulders, turning the collar back down. Then he forced himself take off his hat and put it away along with his handkerchief.

Genesis searched his memory for what to do, tried to recall all the subtle gestures he'd seen the foremost expert in social graces drop into before confronting unknowns. Shoulders slightly curved, knees slightly bent. Hands open and loose at his sides. Head tilted downward just a hair. Brows level, mouth twitched up into a smile that didn't show any teeth.

Genesis suspected it looked as unnatural on his body and face as it felt. That was only confirmed when K'aekniv glanced his way and burst out laughing.

"...what?"

"You look like someone pissed in your tea, Snegurochka."

All Genesis could do was sigh through clenched teeth. He wasn't certain when he'd done that. He had been trying to keep from becoming tense. His body must have betrayed his best intentions, as it seemed to do so often as of late.

"Relax," K'aekniv said, straightening up and clapping Genesis on the shoulder. "There's no magic thing for you to wear to look normal. So just keep in the back and let me do the talking, eh?"

Once again, Genesis could do nothing other than yield to K'aekniv's expertise in the matter. He stuck to his shadow as they walked down the main road of the village, into its main square.

The houses were much less provincial than Genesis had expected. He'd anticipated something more like the villages K'aekniv had led him through in the frozen hinterlands where he'd been raised — sturdy, plain wood constructions, a few parts of them painted, all of them squat and low with thatched roofs.

All the buildings in the mountain villages of the hedge mages near Biarritz were made of stone. Tall, sprawling, rambling houses that families of thirty or more all appeared to live in together. Most of them were set back far from the road, peeking out from behind wards and trees. The buildings closer to the road were the common ones that all the inhabitants shared: a smith's workshop, the communal oven, an apothecary, an inn. And the village's main well, at its very heart. There had to be an abundance of water mages in the village. It was an ornate fountain rather than a utilitarian well, enchanted so that the water that rose from its center in a bubbling arc gathered strength from the humid mountain air rather than dissipating away into it.

It was just past midday; most of the village's inhabitants were absent. The only ones out in the central square were two elderly men, overseeing the work of a much younger man who was fiddling with some manner of arcane device, all of them perched on the lip of the fountain. K'aekniv approached the younger man, flashing Genesis the gesture to hold his position and wait behind his back as he went.

Genesis had provided K'aekniv with the company's translation charm for just this eventuality. He'd enchanted it himself to accommodate the tactic K'aekniv employed, addressing the young man in the rough, grammatically incorrect Russian of his youth spent talking to similar young men in similar villages. It was difficult to hear both the original and the French translation at once, but Genesis thought the charm accomplished the task well enough for their purposes.

"Hey! Hey, brother! Can you help me?"

Neither the young man nor the older ones were looking at K'aekniv. Instead, they were all staring past the half-angel. At him. Both of the older men waved their hands in superstitious gestures to ward off evil, and the younger man hid his arcane device away in a pouch at his waist.

K'aekniv had come prepared for this. He drew a fresh bottle of liquor out of his trouser pocket, shaking it at the young man, his voice taking on the tone of someone who was showing his teeth around in a friendly manner

"Let's have a drink. You need to take a break when the sun is this hot, yes? Otherwise the poludnitsy will come for you for sure."

The charm refused to even try to find a correlation for the word K'aekniv used to describe one of the magical entities that fed on his home village's population. But the bottle, evidently, spoke for itself. The young man slapped the lip of the fountain beside himself, then produced a wooden cup from the pouch at his waist that the arcane device had disappeared into. K'aekniv flopped down beside the young man despite the glares and gestures thrown at him by the older men, and filled the young man's cup.

"You must be the smart one here," K'aekniv commented, after taking a similar cup from his trousers and pouring himself a drink. "Fixing the planter is a bitch. And in this sun? You really need a drink."

The young man made an odd face, his eyebrows darting upward and his mouth falling open. "But you aren't from here," he said, once again looking away from K'aekniv, across the square at Genesis. Unwilling to subject himself to the noontime sun, he'd moved off to the shade of the smith's workshop to keep watch on the situation as it developed. The smoke from inside made his eyes and his nose smart, but anything was better than standing in unobstructed sunlight for a half hour while K'aekniv bartered and bantered.

K'aekniv laughed, slapping his knee instead of cuffing the young man on the shoulder. "Planting is planting! Maybe the planter is a little different here or there, but you still need to grow on the right line for everything to come up. Even if you're up in the mountains." K'aekniv squinted off at them, taking a much shallower sip than usual from his cup. "Plowing up those must be the real bitch. But a smart guy like you has probably figured out some way to make it better."

One of the old men hissed something at the young man beside K'aekniv, too low and too quickly for Genesis to make an attempt at translating the words. The young man threw back his cup and held it out for a refill. "Your friend came up here a few days ago."

"My friend is people stupid," K'aekniv said with another laugh as he refilled the young man's cup. "But he's smart at magic, just like you."

"His people are only supposed to come out at night." The young man chose his words carefully, his attention divided between the translation charm pinned to K'aekniv's shirt and Genesis.

"Bah, he's just a guy like us. He only looks like some spirit. But he can talk to them, if he's in the right mood. Why? Have there been things that look like him hanging around lately? Your priest not doing his job?" K'aekniv brushed a finger over the cross hanging from the young man's neck. Along with another talisman, the form of which Genesis didn't recognize.

The young man didn't answer K'aekniv's question, glancing back over his shoulder at the old men hunched together on the lip of the fountain. "Our priest left before the frost cleared this spring."

Genesis drew Jean-Luc's journal out of his breast pocket, paging through to the last entry. None of them were dated, but buried in the scrawled lines of the first page of the last entry, he spotted a word that he had theorized could be spring. Cautiously, Genesis drew upon the shadow cast by the smith's workshop, examining the feel of the book in his hands.

The cloth that bound it was warm. The warmth of a living thing, the warmth of something that yearned for the sun. A warmth Genesis had felt before, but always shunted the memory of fast out of mind, lest he be consumed by that heat and find himself burned away into nothing.

A k'amskec wasn't meant to be touched by such things.

His attention was jerked back toward the fountain in the middle of the square by K'aekniv laughing and rising to his feet. "Of course! A trade's a trade! You tell your deda over there that I'll keep him from bitching too much, and I'll take a look at your planter. Even if it's different than ours, I might know a thing or two."

The two elderly men were already leaving the square, their narrow shoulders pressed together and heads bent as they walked fast off down a path that wound its way through the houses and the common buildings, up into the mountains. Giving up on pretense, Genesis traded the journal for his hat and forced himself back out into the sun, joining K'aekniv at the fountain, where the young man was gulping down another measure of the company's potent liquor, his knuckles white on the cup he had clenched in both hands.

"Easy as can be," K'aekniv crowed at Genesis as he ushered him over. He had the same self-satisfied look on his face that Genesis recalled from all the times he and Mordecai had talked a spare room or a free meal out of an unsuspecting innkeeper. "You'll have to do a little work, but you always want to do work."

"...explain."

"Koldo here can read enough French to get by, and he said he can ask the old folks about any old words he doesn't know. He'll take a look at your book and answer your questions."

At the mention of his name, the young man hunched on the edge of the fountain made a gesture over himself and scooted away from them. And then ran his hand through the splashing water of the fountain, spreading the dampness over his unruly, curling black hair, as if it'd grant him an extra measure of protection against the sun, still unrelenting even after the arrival of autumn.

Genesis sighed. "And...in exchange?"

"The old folks have been having trouble with some spirit or another by the river. They had to leave the field back there empty this year because it kept trying to drag people away. It's probably just some little rusalki or whatever, no big deal. But since their priest fucked off, they don't have anyone around who can talk to the spirits."

It was as if Genesis could feel Jean-Luc's journal struggling against the magic on the breast pocket of his coat. Frowning, Genesis jerked the its collar back up for good measure. All the talk of superstition had to be having some kind of minor thaumaturgical effect. A thing invoked so frequently was bound to respond, even if called by its improper name.

...that or he'd been in the sun too long.

"Well! The sooner you start, the sooner its over," K'aekniv said, stretching out a hand to Koldo still vacillating on the lip of the fountain. "Let's get going, eh? But I'll warn you, if I'm going to help with any work, I'm going to have to take my shirt off. It's too fucking hot with all this sun."

With a reluctant nod, Koldo took K'aekniv's hand. "No one wears their shirt working the fields here."

"Good! Then no one should bitch at me..."

Genesis felt like the situation was getting out of hand. But he had no choice other than to go along with it if he wanted to quiet the book in his breast pocket. With his arms crossed tightly over his chest to ward off the sun, he followed Koldo and K'aekniv toward the path the old men had taken, up into the mountains.

- - -

It was worse than Genesis had anticipated.

The fallow field by the river had grown waist-high with grasses and saplings after only a single season left untended. But none of it was tall enough to provide any protection from the sun. Which left Genesis stranded in the middle of it, able to call the shadows up to the level of his knees for some paltry comfort, but not able to summon a pall over himself to ward it off completely. Not without sending the pair of old men and Koldo into fits.

The old men were still watching him closely, perched on one end of a log K'aekniv had dragged into the middle of the field, while Koldo sat on the other. Presently, K'aekniv was squatting beside Koldo, turning the arcane device over in his hands and mumbling to himself as he attempted to sort out the magic on it.

Genesis knew it would only be a matter of time until K'aekniv gave up and handed it to him. But until then, he'd keep his distance and take stock of the restless energy that ghosted across the fallow field on the wind.

The field was bordered on its north side by a river, wide but fast-moving. On the other side, the forest was thick, the terrain rising sharply up into the mountains proper. There was something worth investigating in that forest, Genesis suspected. The old men refused to fully turn their backs to it. But the glare coming off the river's rushing water made it difficult to examine the forest by sight. Doubtlessly K'aekniv would judge it to be a social misstep, but they'd already made it that far without anyone throwing rocks at them. Genesis reached in his breast pocket for his sun-lenses, to take a closer look.

His knuckles brushed against the cover of Jean-Luc's journal while his fingers searched his pocket for the lenses. The warmth radiating off the journal was at least twice as potent as it'd been in town. Genesis was uncertain what to make of it.

As he slipped the lenses on, he listened to K'aekniv arguing with Koldo and the old men. "This shit planter is fucked. There's no magic left in it! What? Huh? Your deda used it when he was a kid? When's the last time you had a...a...harvest witch to talk to it? Never? Then of course it's shit, everyone knows you have to trade with a witch to get the planter to listen! Genesis!"

Genesis ignored K'aekniv, a fraction of the tension that had gathered in his shoulders flowing out of him as the world dimmed to a manageable brightness. With the worst of the sun gone, he could properly see into the forest across the river. The trees and the underbrush were much less thick than they appeared from a distance. The shadows gathered in the forest were not equal to the brightness of the sun and the quantity of vegetation available to cast them.

Perhaps the old men's fear was not entirely superstitious in nature. Though that fact didn't make Genesis feel any better about having rocks thrown at him the last time he'd visited the village and attempted to negotiate with its inhabitants.

"Genesis! I know you can hear me, you bastard!"

Sighing, Genesis relented and went to see what could be done about the villagers' arcane device.

A quick examination of the thing proved that both the villagers and K'aekniv were incorrect about its mode of operation. It was a rudimentary tool used to locate areas of increased ordered potential, with a sloppy attempt made to attune it to wells of Earth elemental power. In Genesis's opinion, it would have been more expedient to start anew with another piece of wood and a proper compass that was unmarred by inexpert runes. But Genesis wasn't blind to the way that K'aekniv kept close to him as examined the device, and the expressions of both Koldo and the old men, which were suffused with some piercing emotion Genesis didn't understand the finer points of.

K'aekniv claimed that Kaldo understood French well enough to help with the translation. Genesis spoke to him in the most direct French terms he knew. "I will repair it. However...I require two things."

More religious gestures from the old men, as Kaldo shook as if swept up in a cold wind. But the young man nodded his assent.

"We must...begin work on the book. I will help you with this as I work. And...I will examine the forest across the river before sunset. I trust that removing the problem there will generate some good will." Genesis directed the last of this to K'aekniv, who still had the translation charm and knew him enough to understand his meaning, even if he didn't catch all the words. The half-angel turned toward the villagers, explaining it to them in a way Genesis could never quite manage to do, translation charm or not.

"Hey, Koldo. Ask your deda if he'll feel better about this if we take care of his spirit. Then we can work without worrying, yes? There's no field or river spirits here, it has to be in the woods. Once it's gone, nothing will come for us and we can take it easy."

The chain progressed, Koldo translated to the old men. Genesis listened closely to the words, but Jean-Luc's native language was so suffused with long, muttered vowels, so absent of gestures, that he couldn't follow it as spoken. Only once he saw the words written down, properly, without Jean-Luc's muddy attempts to turn it half francophone, did Genesis suspect he'd begin to understand. The old men put their heads together, and the broader of the two spoke, making some sign against evil at Genesis without looking at him as he declared his intent to his younger relation.

Genesis ignored the coldness twisting in his chest, the darkness that crossed his vision. The people had good reason to fear him. They were being reasonable. He was the one allowing sentiment to dictate the flow of the debate, ignoring reason in favor of steeping in that cold feeling that stole over him whenever met with teeth bared in anger and harsh gestures.

"He says it's a deal," K'aekniv said to Genesis, who had lost track of Koldo's halting French while he'd brooded over the useless arcane device and the equally useless sensations of his body. "But I can add something. I've had it with this piece of shit wing corset. If they'll put up with you, then they'll put up with me."

Before Genesis could advise K'aekniv against it, reminding him of his earlier insistence on normalcy, the half-angel was tearing his way out of his uniform shirt. At least K'aekniv remembered to transfer the translation charm to his trousers before wrecking it. Rather than untying all the strings that held back his wings, K'aekniv flexed the muscles of his shoulders and chest and burst forth from the wing corset in a flurry of sparks and feathers.

"Ah! Better! Now! Clearing the fields...I haven't done this in forever..."

The two old men were off the log in an instant, and Genesis had to fight his reflexes to keep from snatching a knife from his coat pocket to stand against them. They didn't get to their feet; they dropped to their knees and pressed their foreheads to the ground, palms flat upon it. Amidst their frantic prayers, Genesis recognized one name said over and over again — Mikael, Mikael.

Genesis kept considering the merits of the knife as K'aekniv flapped the stiffness out of his wings and Koldo struggled to translate what the old men were asking them. "It...is he like...Lord Mikael? Has he come to protect us?" Koldo asked Genesis, now either too afraid or too in awe of K'aekniv to look at him directly.

Genesis glanced at K'aekniv. The fact that any of them could confuse K'aekniv, so unmistakably full of human energy and humor, for an Imperial angel, spoke to how little the people of the village must have seen of the Empire. "...explain. How do you know of Mikael Dishoael?" Genesis added, when the young man only stared at him with wide eyes upon his first request for more information.

The narrower of the two old men started talking into the dirt, his forehead still pressed against it. Koldo's translation was littered with halting pauses as he struggled to explain. "Lord Mikael was our protector. He blessed our priest and our fields. Every year since...since they were boys. But he didn't come this year. Is he our new Mikael? His son? He said he had a son." Koldo made a religious gesture at K'aekniv, who was too excited by the prospect of manual labor to be paying any attention — he'd launched right away into testing his magic on the grasses and underbrush, rambling on about how the vegetation there burned much better than the sort that he was accustomed to razing.

There were too many coincidences. Too many points that matched up, forming into a startling array that Genesis disliked the implications of. But he needed to be rational. Sentiment was getting them nowhere, as evidenced by how the villagers were still praying and shaking. "Mikael Dishoael is dead."

Wetness gathered in the young man's eyes. And once he'd passed word to the elders, both of them began to wail outright. Genesis paused in his questioning to interrupt K'aekniv's rampaging and direct his attention toward the distraught villagers.

"Huh? You knew Mikael? Ah, I'm sorry." K'aekniv rubbed at his forehead with hands that were already sooty, grimacing. "Get up, get up. I'm no lord. But I'll make sure this field comes in good for you next year. I promise."

One of the old men managed to cobble together something in French. "Thank you, thank you. We're saved. With angel, saved."

At the very least, the whole debacle made it slightly easier to convince Koldo and his elders to assist him with the first paragraph of Jean-Luc's journal. While K'aekniv used his magic and his right-hand sword to clear off half the field, Genesis perched on the log beside Koldo — who still kept a judicious distance from him — and worked through a translation. Genesis wrote it down on a fresh sheet of parchment alongside notes on what extrapolations he could make about Jean-Luc's native language.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

His given name was not Jean-Luc, unsurprisingly. None of that first paragraph surprised Genesis, once its contours began to emerge.

My name is Aritz. My house is the one with the vines beside the river. Its body was destroyed, but its spirit lives in me. This book is for you, the next stone in its foundation. Listen to my story and rebuild our house strong.

Once his suspicions were confirmed, Genesis called K'aekniv over to talk to the old men and Koldo. They were all too transfixed by K'aekniv's work to be paying Genesis much attention, to give his questions serious consideration. But they listened to K'aekniv with a reverence that bordered on the way that Genesis had seen other humans treat their religious icons. In some ways, Genesis was glad for it. It would make the whole process easier, no matter how many days it took. And no matter how it made the coldness rise up in his chest again.

This was how it always went, both with mortals and mages. First, he was a monster. Then, once others learned that the monster was chained, he was a thing to be ignored. An inconvenient tool; no more, no less.

It was approaching evening by the time K'aekniv and the villagers' rambling conversation had died down. Against his better instincts, Genesis had retreated to the bank of the river, taking shelter in the slanting shadows that sprawled across it from the other side instead of keeping close and listening for any errors or misunderstandings in their conversation. He'd had enough of the sun. And he suspected the villagers would be more forthright with K'aekniv alone than they would be if he was nearby. K'aekniv understood the intent of this type of person, and this was a rare instance where intent mattered more than exact words. The exact words could come later.

The intent was what would answer his questions about why the vast shadows across the river didn't align with the potential of the forest.

"See? I told you everything would work out," K'aekniv called out to him, wandering over with his hands knit behind his head, as relaxed as if he'd been in his preferred tavern in the City, or in the fields of his own people, far to the north and east. "They even said they'd help us all day tomorrow. Since the harvest is in and I'm fixing their field for them. Though you'd better fix their planter tonight to make sure they listen."

Genesis nodded, slowly. "What...did you learn of their relationship with Mikael?"

"It's just what they said. He came here every few years and got them all to give him their prayers and took their money for protection or some shit. Friends with their priests, or something." K'aekniv frowned at this, scratching at some bit of straw lodged in his ponytail. "Weird, if you ask me. The Empire doesn't shit around with peasants like this. But Mikael was a pretty weird angel, marrying some human woman and all."

"And...what of the house?"

"The house?"

"The translation."

"Oh! That. Eh, it's the way they talk about their house spirits, I think. With us, the domovoy and the kikimora live in the house and do little things for you. With them, the house is the spirit. Or it works the same, anyway. Where I come from, if you're a bastard and you do shit things to your family and your people, the domovoy and the kikimora get pissed off at you. Here your house gets hit by a storm or a tree and falls down. It's everything telling you you're fucked and you'd better change."

None of it made any sense to Genesis. He'd been to these houses, both the sprawling constructions in the mountains above Biarritz and the small, thatched-roof huts that K'aekniv remembered from his youth. He had seen evidence of the creatures the people referred to as spirits. As far as Genesis could discern, the creatures had little concern for the humans they lived among save for in the same way any entity held an instinctive resentment for a landlord to whom they paid rent, either in kind or with gold. All the talk of emotions, of anger and betrayal and neglect, were how the people made sense of the inequities among them.

But, again, from experience, Genesis knew it would be a waste of his words and time to attempt to explain these things to K'aekniv. He believed in these things as much as the villagers, who were leaving the field now, another of the Seventh's bottles of liquor in hand. And belief was impossible to argue against with reason alone. It could only be debated by example, with evidence.

The evidence lay across the river, in the darkening forest.

"What's going on with that?" K'aekniv asked, flicking a wing at the forest across the river. His feathers were streaked with soot from clearing the field, the same as his body. It made Genesis's fingers twitch. "Some magic, eh? It doesn't feel right."

"You...are correct. I will pursue the matter. Until then...I advise you to wait in the river."

K'aekniv moved to sit down. Genesis stopped him with a curl of shadow about his arm, unwilling to grasp it outright. The half-angel yanked his arm away, cursing.

"In the river. Not...by."

After a moment, K'aekniv laughed. "Why take two baths when you could just take one? Whatever...as long as you stop bitching at me..."

Genesis didn't know what to make of this comment, but he put it out of mind. It was his turn to do honest work, as K'aekniv put it. He plucked the translation charm off K'aekniv's trousers before he could go wading into the fast-moving river and lose it, then stepped into the shadows cast onto the river's bank by the forest and crossed through the Abyss to the other side.

Protected from the distracting golden light of the setting sun, under the too-cold pall of the forest's shadows, it all began to make sense.

Fifty paces from the river's bank, sharply uphill and out of reach of flood waters, were the remains of a house.

Genesis walked its perimeter slowly, his senses open and hands held loose at his sides. It was a middling house. Not as large as the ones closer to the village, though its foundation stones were wide and solid and covered with moss and vines. The charred remains of its timbers had provided ample material for both to grow upon. As Genesis circled the ruined house, he became aware of a thinness in the air, a wavering akin to that of heat off a fire, only the feel of it was cold rather than hot. The Abyss was close there, drawn into the realm by the lure of what had been destroyed. Which was both the house itself and the jumbled, instinctual magical protection that had once warded it, before the source of those wards had been reclaimed by the universal chaos.

My house is the one with the vines beside the river. The body was destroyed, but its spirit lives in me.

Genesis had solid grounds to believe that the inheritor of the wards that had formerly been on the house very much would have liked to renew them, if only he knew about their existence. He stopped his circling at the northern-most cornerstone of the foundation, where the space between the realms felt thinnest, and searched about in his pockets for something that would provide evidence to the house of this fact.

He didn't know why he had kept it all those months. The rational part of his mind said it would be wasteful to offer the handkerchief over to the shadows, even though the stains on it could never be properly removed. It was made of a particular silk that was the specialty of the guild artificers in Lyon, where its owner's godmother had procured it. Imbued with potential in every thread, an empty vessel crafted to amplify whatever had been put in it. And what had been put in it was blood.

The silk was lilac. A temperamental color that the guild artificers had just mastered a few decades ago. Edged in a silvery lace that was the specialty of another set of artificers, one much more skilled at crafting things that glittered and gleamed than at creating vessels for magic. The height of court fashion, or so he'd been told. Genesis felt that it was a waste of time and gold to create this sort of finery, trinkets that served no real purpose. Especially when it was bound to be ruined, no matter how carefully one handled it.

Genesis draped the bloodied handkerchief over the northernmost cornerstone, placed Jean-Luc's journal atop it, then set to work with his charcoal.

He attempted to keep his mind focused on his work, but it inevitably drifted after so many hours spent focusing on warding off the draining effects of the bright early autumn sunshine. Genesis could only hope that his lack of concentration, his lapses into sentiment, would amplify his work rather than rendering it useless.

It had been raining when he'd found that handkerchief. A cold drizzle that saturated everything, that had reduced to a fine mist by the time he'd found its owner. Initially, he had assumed the worst. That he'd burned along with the rest of them, that if they were fortunate, they would find better evidence than ash and bone amidst the rubble, like they had with his father. The bodies of angels did not burn like those of humans. It stood to reason that a half-angel would only be reduced by half. That example had been proven by his sister, whose feathers remained in a glittering heap where she'd been struck down.

But Genesis hadn't felt him in the remains. The passing of that great elemental potential would have left a mark; the Earth would have worked slow through retaking its own, drawing it back in like rainwater through topsoil before releasing it to another avatar. Everything relating to the Earth was slow, save for when forced onward faster by a mage imposing their will upon a process that took months, not seconds.

After twenty minutes wasted crouched among the scorched stones and fallen timbers, so much like the ones he was presently writing upon, his open senses had caught traces of that missing presence. Of that unnatural warmth, of potential spilled recklessly. Fruitlessly. He had followed it into Nantes. As was often the case, things returned to their source, even though the spell paper that he'd used to get there hadn't been directed at that location. Once there, it hadn't been difficult to find him.

Genesis had felt ill-at-ease walking into that alley. Just as he felt ill-at-ease now in the remains of Jean-Luc's — Aritz's — house, sketching runes atop its foundation stones. It was out of order, the process turned back upon himself. A k'amskec was meant to reduce things to nothing. Yet there he was again, gathering up fractured bits of what remained and trying to make something whole out of them. It required him to work against his nature. The situation, both then and now, called for someone opposite him. Someone who understood mending and soothing as instinctively as they understood how to breathe.

All Genesis understood was that a profound act of unmaking had been done in that alley, just as it had on that hillside. An incomplete kind, a corrosive, slow decay that savored lingering, the antithesis of how he'd been taught. There was no joy to be found in destruction, K'anak had told him, no warmth. Only satisfaction. A calmness, as things were returned to their source.

Genesis could not rebuild the house on the hillside, just as he couldn't undo what had been done in that alley. He could only halt the process of destruction, draw a circle around it and pause what had begun. He could keep the shadows at bay by drawing them into himself. Whether what was left in the center renewed itself or crumbled away into nothing depended on someone who was the antithesis of what he was.

Once he had finished sketching the ring of spells around the bloodied handkerchief and journal, Genesis stepped back from it and waited to see what would emerge from that circle. Whether there was will inside of it to persist, or whether the only force that remained was a desire to return to the chaos. To be at rest.

In Nantes, Mirk had taken his hand in both of his own and grasped it with a force that didn't match the blood and the life remaining inside him. In the hills above Biarritz, a yellow-green gleam raced around the foundation stones. And at their base, despite it being the first week of autumn, fresh curls of grass unfurled from the dirt and the ash.

The d'Avignons were nothing if not persistent.

A low hissing drew Genesis's attention, dragged him out of his sentimental ruminations. There, at the opposite corner of the foundation. Something dark and quick slithered away from the stones as if burned by the magic that coursed through them. That, Genesis recognized. One of his own, drawn out of the Abyss by the temptation posed by so much potential and warmth left unprotected.

Genesis pocketed the journal and the handkerchief and pursued it down to the river, where K'aekniv was waiting.

It was caught. There was no place left for it to hide, no shadows for it to return to — he was there in the dark, to banish it back to the Abyss. And on the other side was the river, the water glinting with the last rays of the sun, and K'aekniv stood in the middle of it. But the creature was clever and had grown strong on the house's remains. It decided to fight rather than flee. An inconvenience, but Genesis could respect fighting until the last.

K'aekniv, as always, was distracted by some nonsense. But not distracted enough to let the Abyssal creature slip past him. He caught one trailing appendage in the water, dropping to hands and knees to pin it down with his right hand. Genesis attempted to keep his mind fixed on his duty as he waded into the river without first pausing to take off his boots and roll up his trouser legs to finish it off.

But it wasn't as harsh as that, not truly. The shadows he flung around the creature, that swarmed it and ate it away into nothing, were only a way to return it to what it once was. An aspect of the Abyss, something that had been given form and substance only as a natural consequence of the realms seeking balance. It would come together again, in time. And in time, it would return to Earth, alongside him and all the other creatures in the void, to reduce the realm to nothing. If only so that it could start again, in some other form.

"Hey!"

Genesis didn't realize that he'd lost track of things, that he'd been standing in rushing water up to his waist without moving until K'aekniv shook him by the shoulder. Then the cold and the damp and the unbearable feel of river muck sucking at his ankles brought Genesis back to himself, and he frowned.

"...we're done."

"Is it all good?" There was some expression on K'aekniv's face, lowered brows and a frown that didn't have any malice in it. It took Genesis a moment to register it as the face K'aekniv made when he'd done something that concerned him.

"The...matter is settled."

"That wasn't some spirit," K'aekniv said, squinting down into the water where the Abyssal creature had vanished. "That was more like something you make."

Genesis nodded, once.

The expression changed, K'aekniv's mouth twisting and pinching, as he pointed off at the slope on the other side of the river. "What was over there?"

"It was...as the journal indicated. The...house by the river. With the vines."

K'aekniv turned his squint at him and sighed. "Come. Koldo told me about a place, we'll go and take a break. You'll like it."

Genesis sincerely doubted it. But he followed after K'aekniv nevertheless, focusing his attention on the unpleasant sucking at his feet as he dragged himself up out of the river instead of letting it linger on the remains of the house in the forest behind him.

- - -

"Only you would try to use some potion on a place like this."

K'aekniv said it with a laugh, one that Genesis didn't understand the meaning of. It was only reasonable to purify a water source before bathing in it. Genesis still distrusted the spring. But night had already fallen. There'd be no time to bathe properly that evening anywhere other than the spring, not if he wanted to fulfill all his duties.

That and Genesis didn't think he could bear traipsing around in soaking, muddy trousers for a single second more than he already had.

Further up into the mountains, where the forest was interrupted by rocky rises pockmarked with caves, the river narrowed. And nearby, close to the mouth of one of said caves, were hot springs cultivated by the local mages that tinged the air with sulfur. Genesis crouched beside the one K'aekniv had said Koldo recommended, enduring the cold and the damp until the potion he'd dropped into the pool made the water clear.

K'aekniv hadn't waited. And Genesis hadn't minded, since that meant the potion would also take care of most of the filth that came off the half-angel as he sprawled out along the far edge of the spring. When the glow of K'aekniv's winglight through the water shone true, Genesis sighed, turning away to undress.

Behind him, he heard K'aekniv laughing to himself. "I won't look, Snegurochka. I promise."

Frowning, Genesis offered his ruined trousers over to the shadows rather than bundling them up for later washing. The muck at the bottom of that river had been particularly rancid. "That is...not the point."

But out of habit, Genesis gathered those same shadows thickly around himself until he'd gingerly picked his way through the rocks and the mud beside the spring and submerged himself up to his chin. Its depth surprised him. As did the fine feel of the sand beneath him, like silk that had been stretched along the whole bottom of the pool.

It wasn't optimal. He hadn't brought along any of his particular potions and salts, meant to cleanse and strengthen and grant calmness. And there was the issue of K'aekniv still leering at him from across the spring, his arms draped over the rocks that ringed it, yet another bottle in hand. But it was better than nothing.

They sat in silence for five and a half minutes. Then, as expected, K'aekniv started talking at him.

"So what's your problem, huh?"

K'aekniv often launched into conversations like this. He offered no explanations; he made no gestures to signal his intentions. Staring at K'aekniv's long, tarnished hair swirling about in the water made Genesis's fingers twitch at his sides.

"...explain."

"Some shit is happening here, yes? You look all sad."

Genesis hadn't been aware of this change in his bearing. And K'aekniv wasn't entirely correct in his assumptions. He felt little desire to share what he had learned of the house on the other side of the river, what he could extrapolate from how it'd reacted to the spell he'd cast over the foundation stone and the bloodied handkerchief and Jean-Luc's journal. But he knew K'aekniv wouldn't leave him alone until his curiosity was satisfied.

"I...suspect that this...exact area is where Jean-Luc d'Avignon was born."

"The old timers speak the right language, anyway. And you said there was some house on the other side of the river."

Genesis nodded. "There was...little left. However, it...is logical to conclude it was the house referenced in the journal."

"Why?"

Trying to leave out as many technical details as possible, Genesis explained the spell that he'd cast on the ruined house to push away the Abyss. For once, K'aekniv listened without interrupting. But he kept staring across the spring at him, watching his face as he sipped at his bottle of horrid liquor.

"Are you going to tell him?"

"Be...more precise."

"Mirk. Are you going to tell him his deda's house is up here?"

Genesis debated the matter for a time. The water was surprisingly hot. The local water mages were skilled at their craft. Aside from K'aekniv's presence, it was almost as good as a proper bath. Almost. He still was disinclined to risk washing his hair in any pool of water shared with K'aekniv. "Once I am...more certain of the journal's translation, I will consider it further."

"But why not tell him now, huh? He's sad too, with all that shit going on with the rich people he knew from back home. Maybe it'd make him happy to come talk to his deda's place."

"Do you believe...this to be the case?"

Genesis was certain about half of it, at least, instead of none of it. He was well aware of the fact that something about that miserable ball Mirk had dragged him off to had upset him. But he knew nothing about the exact cause, nor about its specific remedy. He had anticipated that witnessing the punishment of the mage responsible for the death of his family would have set Mirk's mind at ease, even if it was at the hands of Imperial angels. By all external measures, it had generated the opposite effect.

"It's a funny feeling, going back to where your people are from," K'aekniv finally said, after thinking it over, picking at some detritus underneath his fingernails and flicking it off into the gathering night beyond the ring of silvery light cast by his wings. "At first, you feel a little sad. But after it's over, you're glad you went. It's easier to think of the good times instead of just the shit that happened."

"I...see."

"Listen. How did you feel when you came to the City? That's as good as home for you, it's all your people ever talked about."

Genesis frowned. "I had...expected something different."

He had expected a place where he'd finally be understood. Where every day was no longer a struggle against custom that was unfamiliar to him, where everything was the inverse of what he knew to be true. Instead, he'd found the crumbled remains of five thousand years of effort, all of the City's great edifices morphed into pale after-images of what they'd once been, the same as the K'maneda itself. It had made him feel cold inside. It had made him feel even more out of place, the pain in his arms matching the pain in his head at seeing everything turned backward upon itself.

But the pain hadn't been enough to make him leave.

"It wouldn't hurt to tell him, anyway," K'aekniv said, dissatisfied with his response, considering the downward slant of his brows. The half-angel was sweating profusely in the heat from the spring. It was doing little to remove the soot streaked across his face. "I've told you a hundred times, Genesis, you need to tell people things. They get pissed off when you don't."

Genesis lifted his hand out of the water, making the rightward gesture for closure, for shifting the debate to another topic, the start of the next round. It was close enough to the gesture K'aekniv and the other members of their company made when they wanted him to hurry up and talk of a different matter. "It is...immaterial at the moment. Presently, he is indisposed."

"Huh? In..."

"Ill."

"Too sick to come see his deda's house? I didn't see him at the healers when I went over with Slava."

Genesis nodded. "The...return of his seasonal illness, I believe."

K'aekniv's face shifted into a frown again, as he looked around, up at the trees and then down into the water. "Huh. I always forget, it's so fucking hot all year long over here. The City is a little better, but you never get a real winter. When was it?"

Genesis didn't understand why the weather was such a constant topic of conversation with K'aekniv and the rest. Of all the things that were evident in the world, the weather was the clearest. He credited it to all of them being from places similar to that hidden village above Biarritz, where harvesting produce dictated the tempo of all aspects of life. "Two...evenings ago. Approximately."

"Is he up on the third floor? I should go talk to him, his mama said that he liked it..."

"No."

K'aekniv's face screwed up once again into an expression that Genesis couldn't read. "With that rich relative you went to see? Slava said a bunch of them came over the other day...put them up together in one of those big rooms..."

"...no."

He made an expression that showed the whites of his eyes, exhaling hard through his teeth. "Don't tell me you put him in some closet, you bastard, normal people don't—"

Genesis raised a hand again, making the gesture to halt, for silence. "I have been...seeing to him. He is in his quarters. They have...adequate shielding."

"Seeing to him?" K'aekniv was squinting at him now; Genesis wondered if he'd finally noticed the sweat rolling down his face.

"I have followed the procedures outlined by his mother. He is not left alone for an undue amount of time. He is not left facing the wall or the ceiling. I have...also collected on a debt owed to me by one of the...artificers in the engineers. I have been assured that the...ear warmers will be completed within three days."

Abruptly, K'aekniv burst out laughing. Genesis sighed through clenched teeth and waited for him to come back to his senses.

"You! Worrying over a man like you're his baba! What, did you drink something weird at that party you all went to?"

Genesis had consumed nothing at that party, not after inspecting the state of the kitchens. That aside, when surrounded by so many wealthy mages of unknown potential, he refused to risk leaving himself incapacitated. But something had happened there, aside from the duel between Mirk and the remaining member of the family the Imperials had wiped out. What it was, Genesis was uncertain. He suspected he had made some sort of severe social error, regardless of Mirk's constant assurances to the contrary.

"I had...the impression this was the proper course of action. Was I incorrect?"

"It's exactly what you should do," K'aekniv said, pointing his half-empty bottle at him. "That's why it's weird."

"It was the logical course of action. The infirmary's shielding is...inadequate for an individual with as much empathy as he possesses. Likewise...the majority of the healers are ordered empaths. I...feel nothing. Thus, I am best suited to see to him, under the present circumstances."

Genesis didn't know why the conversation felt as if it had shifted from a casual debate to a crucial one. Or why K'aekniv was grinning at him. In a warm way, with raised brows, instead of just showing his teeth.

"How many times have you told me to fuck off when I'm sick, huh?"

"This is...a different circumstance."

"You hurt me, Snegurochka," K'aekniv said, though his grin didn't change. If anything, it grew wider. "All the things I do for you, and what do I get? Maybe I need to start being all little and soft and nice too..."

"Your physical dimensions are...immaterial to this discussion."

To Genesis's horror, he felt the sudden press of a calloused foot against his leg. He recoiled, but there wasn't enough space in the spring to make a proper retreat.

K'aekniv cackled, and he made a poor attempt at pitching his voice upward. "Oh, messire! Messire, will you come put the blankets on me? Come make me some tea, I'm still cold! Put another log on the stove too, and come tell me a story, and feed me kasha..."

"This is inaccurate," Genesis hissed at him, pressing himself hard against the rock wall of the spring, preparing to call to his magic.

"Then what's it like, huh?" K'aekniv jabbed the bottle at him again, showing his teeth in the same way he did when he found the entertainment at any given tavern to be inadequate, when he wished to replace it with a bout of fighting.

"He is...incapacitated. He cannot speak." Genesis frowned, considering the merits of using the shadows to drag K'aekniv underneath the spring's surface. He was aware of exactly how long the half-angel could hold his breath. And it would result in both his hair and wings being clean.

But he gave up on the idea when K'aekniv settled back down into the water, laughing to himself as he draped his arms over the rocks at the spring's edge instead of poking or prodding him further. "I'm just fucking with you, Sengurochka."

Genesis refused to concede the point. For one thing, K'aekniv had never been able to adequately explain what that expression meant. For another, there was still a certain tenseness in K'aekniv's shoulders, which spoke to his willingness to resume prodding him, should he find his answers on the present topic inadequate.

"I know you care," K'aekniv continued. "But it's weird, yes?"

"What is...weird?"

"You being so soft to someone." The smile vanished from K'aekniv's face in an instant, replaced by that same expression he'd shown to him down by the river, a soft, frowning expression with brows lowered. Concern. "Is this that debt shit again? You still feel bad for what happened with his family back then?"

Finally, a question that he could answer with confidence, with no lack of clarity. "I will never be able to repay that debt."

K'aekniv sighed, but nodded his head, in a way that made it clear enough to Genesis that he understood. And that he didn't blame him for holding onto this debt. It was the one thing they could always agree on. Certain debts could never be repaid. "I know, I know. But, you know..."

"...what?"

"You have to be careful with a person like Mirk. You wouldn't know, since everyone else is a real bastard and will take anything they can get and be happy. But with a person like Mirk, why you do something means a lot. He would be sad to know you're only being soft because you feel sad about what happened, I think."

Just as soon as he'd found his footing in the debate, Genesis felt as if he'd lost it again. K'aekniv's reasoning had turned as slippery, as ever-shifting as the sand at the bottom of the spring. "I...do not understand."

K'aekniv's expression shifted again, turning to the screwed up face he always made when he was truly thinking about something, his eyes squinted with effort. Genesis felt much the same way. It was exhausting trying to keep track of the conversation. "Unless...maybe...you can't be that stupid..."

"Explain."

"You don't like him, do you?"

"...that word is inexact. Explain."

"What is that shit word English people use for it...fancy? But not fancy like nice clothes. Fancy like want to fuck."

Genesis was forced to draw his hands up out of the reassuring warmth of the spring and rub at his temples. At least he could be assured they were clean this time. He had that much confidence in the purifying potion's strength. But no confidence left for anything else in that miserable, jumbled conversation.

"Listen, listen," K'aekniv ranted at him, leaning across the spring toward him with a certain uncharacteristic focus in his eyes that Genesis found startling. "How do you feel about all this, huh? Just sad? Or do you like going and pretending to be his baba? Does it make you happy?"

Genesis gave the matter some consideration, in the hopes that it would permit him to spend the last ten minutes he had time for in the spring in peace.

But no matter what way he turned the question about in his mind, he was at as much of a loss for adequate words as K'aekniv was in posing the question itself. It was a matter he had long since tried to put out of mind, that troubling feeling that kept stealing over him as of late, continually forcing his body to ignore reason. He hadn't felt such a lack of control since he'd first left his rooms as a child.

But everything else was different. Everything else was strange, inexplicable. Genesis tried to be rational. And yet, at the end of it all, he was forced to accept he knew as little as he did of what was happening to him as he did Jean-Luc's native tongue. His predicament was even worse with the feelings; he had no strangers in that uncharted land that he could turn to for guidance, no interpreter to make sense of things.

It had all started with that illness in the spring. Genesis was beginning to believe that Mirk's claims — that he'd hit his head while stumbling about in a daze, and that it'd fundamentally broken something inside his skull — had to have some truth to them. Nothing else could explain that intrinsic shift, that bewildering warmth in his chest.

Genesis had always felt a profound coldness whenever other people drew too close to him, whenever he was prodded or embraced or clung to. It always reminded him of being seized by his shoulders and being trapped underneath a weight he couldn't struggle past, of hands no shadows could peel away pinning down his own hands, keeping him still enough for the bindings to be carved into him. A brightness that was akin to madness, a light that stripped away every shred of himself and left behind nothing but an impossible desire to cut and smash and strangle until he was free. It made him feel bare, weak. Alone.

And yet...

It still made him feel weak in a way, that warmth. He felt powerless to resist it. But the light was different. Warm, dim. Like guttering candlelight just bright enough to cast long shadows. For all that it exposed, it left three other things hidden. No one had ever touched him before in that way. With such consideration, with such profound concentration. Most people he'd met since he'd left his rooms treated touch like a hammer, flung around with no concern except that it smashed what it crashed into. It was impossible to determine the meaning behind such gestures, so recklessly given.

Genesis wasn't certain of the meaning behind any of the gestures Mirk made. But he could tell from the way everything about him sharpened, how his head tilted first to one side and then the other, how he thought for long seconds, staring without blinking before reaching out, that he placed importance and care on each motion. Perhaps it had something to do with healing. Mirk claimed that his body bore no resemblance to the others he had healed, that he had to listen closely to it, that he had to feel his way through by the breadths of single fingertips to understand how it functioned.

Maybe that was why when he had pressed all the pain and stiffness out of his back, it had had such unexpected effects. Even though he'd been so ill his senses had been trapped wide open, raw and exposed to every smell and brush and tinge of magic, Genesis had felt only the faintest brush of it in Mirk's hands. He had produced most of the warmth and release from touch alone. Afterward, it felt like he'd soaked in a bath for two hours, the water never turning cold.

And maybe that warmth, that magic that was so ephemeral and vague that even his senses could baarely percieve it, had had a lasting effect. Maybe that was why he had not felt coldness, the irrepressible urge to escape, when Mirk had clung to him afterwards. The weight of his head on his shoulder had been pleasing, the pressure of his body against his side calming. Like when he had reached out to K'anak for reassurance and the press of his hands against his back had calmed him instead of making him feel trapped and afraid. But also, not like K'anak at all.

K'anak had never held his hands the way that Mirk grasped his. With a combined strength and delicacy that should have been impossible to achieve. As if Mirk was somehow knew, despite his claims not to be able to feel a single thing from him empathically, how often his fingers ached from handling magic, from pinching charcoal and pens, from the slightest cold, from being bashed against others to hit and claw and destroy. Mirk touched his hands more carefully than all the royalist finery his noble family had both stolen and lost.

There was something warm in that. Something that made him want more of it. Something Genesis felt like he could never understand.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by a second terrible scrape of callouses against his leg. Genesis spit out the first thing that came to mind in an effort to drive K'aekniv's foot away.

"It feels...warm."

K'aekniv frowned at him across the spring. "What does that mean?"

"It feels warm. I...do not know if this is the same as liking."

Heaving both his wings and his shoulders upward, K'aekniv sighed. "I guess at least that's not sad. Even you wouldn't feel all warm and nice being sad." The half-angel paused, eyes narrowed as he drained the last of the liquor from his bottle. "No, even you can't be that much of a bastard."

Genesis had had enough of being scrutinized, of all of K'aekniv's questions and expressions that never made any sense. He drew the shadows close about himself in preparation to leave.

"You're going already? You always sit in the bath forever." K'aekniv's expression turned back to a leer. At least Genesis understood what that meant. "What, you don't like sharing your bath with me?"

"As I said. I must...see to him. As his mother instructed."

K'aekniv laughed again. To himself, not at him. "I don't think this has anything to do with his mama."

Genesis didn't have any idea what K'aekniv meant by that. And he had neither the time nor the patience left to properly consider it. He drew the shadows in tight around himself as he rose, shoving himself upward onto his feet and backwards through them in the same motion, slipping out of reach of K'aekniv's winglight and well within reach of the fresh uniform he'd brought with him to Biarritz. It was impossible to go anywhere with K'aekniv without needing to change all his clothes.

But K'aekniv's laughter followed him through the shadows, louder, and he called out to him from where he remained in the spring, surrounded by his perpetual gray-white halo of light. "I'll be down in the village! Koldo and his deda said I can stay with them! You'd better not show up before breakfast! And bring more samogon when you come, we'll need it to make things easier."

Hissing in exasperation, Genesis scrambled back into his clothes and left both K'aekniv and his accursed rural customs alone in the dark.

Even if going to tend to Mirk made him feel odd, at least he wouldn't spend the whole time pelting him with a thousand impossible questions. Not until autumn released him.