by Traci Chee
He missed them. He missed them so badly it was like parts of him had been carved away, and all the places where they should have been were bright with pain.
But they were gone. Because of him. Because he hadn’t been able to stop. He still couldn’t.
And without a battle to fight, he couldn’t forget either.
So he looked south toward Oxscini, and hoped for battles there.
• • •
When they reached Epigloss, a city of bays and bridges, he sent out bloodletters. They wove among the buildings painted saffron, emerald, vermilion, and fuchsia in search of information on the impressors.
Everyone came back with the same news.
The impressors were finished in Oxscini. Over the past month, Serakeen had bought all the branded boys that remained and withdrawn his support from the operation. The arbitrators had closed shop. The crews of impressors had disbanded or moved on to other crimes. There were no more candidates in the Forest Kingdom, or, if the rumors were to be believed, anywhere in Kelanna.
Had they found the boy they were looking for?
A small part of Archer was relieved. It isn’t me. Another part was angry. He’d let Sefia go for nothing.
But the greatest part of him was disappointed. That the mission was over. That he had no more enemies to fight.
Archer paced the captain’s quarters of the Brother, treading over and over the stained carpet while his bloodletters idled away the hours belowdecks, waiting for instructions.
Once, he’d lost everything—his memories, even his name—to the impressors. It wasn’t until he met Sefia that he’d begun to piece the shards of his identity back together.
But somewhere in Deliene, he’d gotten lost again. Maybe it was the moment he decided to become a hunter. Maybe it was later, bit by bit, on the road, or during those evening skirmishes.
Or when he killed Kaito.
When he didn’t go after Sefia on the cliff.
The only home he’d known in the two and a half years since he’d been kidnapped, and he’d let her go.
Now he was adrift, and in need of a mooring.
He could stay on with the bloodletters. They could find someone to fight. There would always be someone to fight.
But he didn’t know if he wanted to anymore.
Didn’t know if he could, after what he’d lost.
“We thought it might come to this,” Frey said when Archer told them.
They were gathered on deck—all nineteen of them—like shadows in the twilight. His bloodletters.
“You did?” Archer asked.
“This is your kingdom.”
“I didn’t plan on—”
Aljan took him by the shoulders. Up close, Archer could see that the white paint the boy applied to his face every morning had begun to crack. But the mapmaker showed no signs of doubt when he said, “Go home. Go see your family. Tell them you love them.”
Archer looked guiltily at Scarza, Griegi, Keon, the others. How could he have taken them all this way, only to leave them?
“If you don’t come back,” Aljan said, “we’ll know you stayed.”
“I’m not going to—”
“You should,” Frey interrupted, echoing the words he’d spoken to them so long ago, “if you can.”
Could he?
He’d been telling himself for so long he couldn’t go home, not after what he’d done, he was too different, he didn’t belong there.
But without the mission, without Sefia, where else did he belong?
“What about the rest of you?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about the rest of us,” Scarza said, clasping Archer’s hand in his. “I’ll get us home safe.”
They’d acquired a horse for him, as if they’d already known what he’d do. He embraced them all, one by one.
“Go home, brother,” Scarza murmured before they parted. “Be at peace.”
Archer mounted. The horse’s hooves sounded hollowly on the dock. From the deck of the Brother, silhouetted by stars, the bloodletters saluted him. A sign of respect. A farewell.
He rode west.
Toward home.
• • •
He arrived at the lighthouse as the last embers of sunset died away. He rounded the wooden walkway, hands passing over the railings as he glanced up, watching the transparent storm panes of the lantern room and the light racing out to sea.
Behind him, in the arc of the bay, the village of Jocoxa glimmered, the houses lit up by lanterns, the windows warm and orange. The calm waters were a blue so deep it was almost black, tipped with crests of gold.
It was peaceful, this place he used to call home.
He passed beneath the lighthouse tower and descended the narrow steps to the family quarters, where the old green door greeted him, both familiar and foreign at once. He paused. The smell of seared beef and tomato sauce was in the air.
He could have entered without knocking. He used to, when he’d lived here.
Archer’s knuckles struck the wood—once, twice.
After a moment, the door opened, and his aunt Seranna stood there, her short plump form almost filling the doorway. She frowned at him for a moment, as if she didn’t recognize him.
Archer moved to speak.
Her eyes widened. She threw her arms around him, crying, “Emery, it’s your boy! Your boy is home!”
She hugged him so tight the breath went out of him.
He hugged her back.
There was a clatter from the kitchen, and Archer’s mother came rushing to the door. At once Seranna relinquished her hold on him, shoving Emery into her son’s arms.
His mother.
Emery had always been stout, like her sister, and strong. But she seemed more fragile now, as if she were made of flour, liable to burst apart at the slightest touch. She smelled the same, though, like spices and machine grease.
His mother.
Archer rested his head against hers. Her tears wet his cheek.
Over her shoulder, he saw his grandfather and his cousin Riki watching him. His grandfather, looking stern and proud; Riki, taller and ganglier than he remembered. What was she, twelve now? She’d been ten last time he saw her.
“My boy,” Emery said again and again, “my boy.”
“Hi, Mom,” he murmured.
When she finally released him, she took him by the hand and dragged him into the kitchen, barely allowing him time to hug Riki, who clung to his waist like she’d always done, and his grandfather, who clapped him firmly on the shoulder with a gruff, “Good to have you back.”
Seranna dashed up the stairs to the lighthouse, calling, “He’s home! He’s home!”
“Sit.” Emery pushed him into a chair and plopped down beside him, smiling and wiping her eyes. “How are you? What happened to you? You’re so tall! Tell me everything.”
Archer’s grandfather began setting hot dishes on trivets in the center of the table—a steaming red stew of beef, tomato, and eggplant; a bowl of white rice drizzled with oil; smaller bowls of fresh herbs and flatbread.
Riki climbed into the seat beside Archer, leaning back in her chair and balancing herself with her knee against the edge of the table. “Was it impressors?” she whispered.
“Riki!” Grandfather snapped, like he was reprimanding her for being impolite.
“Sorry,” she grumbled.
“Yeah, impressors. They had me for a long time . . .” Archer glanced at his mother, whose eyes welled with tears as she bravely tried to smile. “But then I was rescued.”
“By who?” Riki asked.
“By a girl. Her name’s Sefia. She . . .” He shook his head, straightening the faded cloth napkin beside his bowl. “I owe her everything.”
Emery glanced toward the front door, as if looking for Sefia. “Wh
ere is she?”
“She’s not—”
“Is she pretty?” Riki interrupted.
“Yeah.” Despite the twinge in his chest, Archer smiled. “Dark and beautiful, like water at night.”
“The water’s dangerous at night,” Grandfather said.
“Yeah.”
Emery shoveled his bowl full of rice and stew, sprinkling a handful of green herbs on top. “My boy,” she said, “always a lover. Eat. The others will catch up.”
“Mom, please,” he said, taking the dish from her. “I can serve myself.”
She smiled so brightly it hurt. “But now that you’re home, you don’t have to.”
As she set his bowl in front of him, two men descended the steps from the lighthouse. One of them was his uncle Rovon, slender like his daughter, Riki, with thick black hair. Archer stood, and Rovon embraced him, firmly, as if to reassure himself Archer was really there.
“Calvin,” he said. “We thought you were dead.”
“I didn’t,” Riki chimed in faithfully.
He hadn’t heard that name in years. It didn’t even feel like it belonged to him anymore—like a pair of shoes he’d long since outgrown. Still, Archer clasped his uncle’s arm as they released each other. “I felt dead, at times,” he said.
The other man stepped forward then. He was paler, softer, like soap, with the gentle paunch of middle age. Among his freckles, his kind blue eyes crinkled at the corners.
Archer didn’t recognize him.
The man extended his hand. “Calvin. We haven’t met. I’m Eriadin.” His palm was damp, but warm and strong.
“This is my new husband,” Emery interjected quickly. “Eriadin, this is my boy.”
New husband? Archer stepped back. His father had been killed a long time ago in service to the Royal Navy, and his mother had never remarried after that. It was hard to think of her as married. “Oh.” He hesitated. “Welcome to the family.”
“She was lost without you,” Eriadin said, moving to a chair on her other side. “I can’t tell you how much it means that you’re home.”
They sat and began eating again—except for Emery, who continued to watch Archer like she would never get enough of him. Beside her, Eriadin smiled.
“Seranna’s watching the light for us,” Rovon said, taking a fistful of flatbread. “Says she got to see him first, and one look’s enough to last her through dinner.”
“Not for me,” Emery said. “Forever won’t be long enough for me.”
Archer squeezed her hand.
Her gaze passed over his scars, lingering briefly on the blistered collar of skin at his neck. “You look . . . well.”
“Strong,” Eriadin added. “Emery always said you were strong. You must have spent a lot of time fighting your way back, huh?”
The food suddenly felt like glue in his mouth. They all looked so hopeful. “Yeah,” was all he said.
“Eat,” his mother commanded. “You’re too skinny.”
They tucked into their meal. He avoided most of their questions, but in truth they didn’t ask that many, their conversation turning quickly to what had been going on in the village while he was gone, how Riki had grown, Grandfather’s arthritis, and Seranna’s headaches. And it was a strange feeling, fitting in here again, because despite all that had happened, this—his family, and him included—hadn’t changed. Even with Eriadin, who laughed and joked as easily as the rest of them.
But there were some things he couldn’t say. Things that had happened to him. Things he’d done. Things that would break their hearts, if they knew. He couldn’t do that to them.
And more than that, he was afraid. That if he started talking about the mission, the bloodletters, he wouldn’t want to stay. With every silence, every unanswered question, he built up the wall between that life and this one and hoped it would not break.
“Have you been in Oxscini the whole time?” his grandfather asked near the end of their meal.
“No.” Archer shook his head. “I ended up in Deliene for a while.”
Rovon helped himself to another serving. “Did you run into any of those bloodletters while you were up there?”
Emery shot him a glare, but Riki sat forward in her chair eagerly.
“You’ve heard of the bloodletters?” Archer asked. He’d known the Delieneans had stories about them, but he hadn’t known the stories had traveled so far.
“Everyone’s heard of them,” Riki said, like he should already know. “They’re heroes.”
“Heroes?”
“They’re the reason the impressors are gone.”
Emery dug her fingers into Archer’s hand. “I wish we would’ve had some of them around when you were taken. Those impressors never would have gotten away with it.”
Archer tried to smile, but he felt it falter on his lips.
“So, did you meet them?” Riki asked.
“Meet who?”
She rolled her eyes impatiently. “The bloodletters. I heard they’ve all got scars on their necks, like you, except they’ve got these tattoos on their arms that make them invincible.”
“Riki, no one’s invincible,” Rovon corrected her.
“The bloodletters are. I heard they’ve got a sorcerer with them who casts enchantments to make them bulletproof. And their leader, Archer, is so tough he even killed his own lieutenant for disobeying him.”
Archer cringed, remembering Kaito—the bullet puncturing his skull, the light dying in his eyes.
“A good leader protects his own, if you ask me,” Grandfather said.
“You never have to take a life, Riki,” Rovon said very seriously, looking into her eyes. “You always have a choice.”
Archer folded his napkin. Almost picked a fight with his uncle. Almost walked out. Rovon had worked in the lighthouse since he met Seranna. He’d never even served in the Royal Navy. The Oxscini-Everica conflict had always been a distant nightmare to him. Even now, with the Everican-Liccarine Alliance, the war must have been little more than a rumor.
A choice?
Sometimes the choice was kill or die.
Noticing Archer’s silence, Eriadin cleared his throat and tossed his napkin into his empty bowl. “Anyway,” he said, “I don’t suppose you met those folks, right, Calvin? It sounds like you’d know if you had.”
Archer’s hand went to his neck, but the worry stone wasn’t there. His fingers brushed his scar instead. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I would.”
• • •
Later, he stood in his old bedroom, surrounded by tokens of the boy he used to be. A woven blanket his grandmother had given him the day he was born. His father’s crimson uniform, hanging in the corner. A brass telescope on a tripod. A collection of seashells on the windowsill. One of Annabel’s hair ribbons tucked beneath his pillow.
The boy who’d lived in this room had never killed a man, an enemy, a friend, a brother.
The boy who’d lived in this room hadn’t known that kind of loss, grief, guilt. He hadn’t resented his own family because their lives hadn’t been touched by violence. He hadn’t hated himself for what he’d done.
Could he live here, even if he’d never be that boy again?
He leaned against the window, pressing his forehead against the cool glass. Far below, the base of the cliffs was white with ravenous waves.
Emery joined him. “You’ve gotten taller,” she repeated, almost accusatorily.
“I’ve been gone over two years.”
They were silent for a moment, looking out into the dark. The spur of the headland had claimed over a hundred ships before the lighthouse was built to warn them off the rocks. The Aurontas family had been manning the lights for generations. Archer was supposed to have taken over the operation from his grandfather, also named Calvin.
“What do you think of Eriadin?
” Emery asked.
He didn’t answer. “How’d you meet?”
“He was shipwrecked off the Dragon’s Nest.”
The Dragon’s Nest was a cluster of rocky spines a few miles out. But no one had wrecked there since Archer could remember.
“The lighthouse?” he asked.
“It was my fault,” Emery said flatly. “After you were taken, I . . . I was lost. I let the light go out. Eriadin was on a lumber barge—the only survivor. He washed ashore in Calini Cove. You remember the place?”
Yes. He’d gone there with friends on his sixteenth birthday.
He remembered his skin wet and sticky with salt. Annabel had been splashing him. He remembered legs and knees and arms, the backs of her hands dappled with sand. And her voice, a ripple of light in the hot thick air.
He had touched her elbow.
There had been a kiss. Lips and tongues.
“I remember,” Archer said.
“Some kids found him and brought him back. I went to apologize, to explain, to beg his forgiveness . . . and he gave it.” Emery sighed, a fondness in her voice Archer had never heard except when she talked about his father. “I don’t know how anyone could do that, after what I’d done, the deaths I’d caused, but Eriadin did. He said we’ve all done things we’re sorry for.”
“Do you love him?” Archer asked.
“Yes.” She leaned back and smiled, cheeks dimpling. “Very much. He loves us too. He even took our name.”
Eriadin Aurontas—a lumberman turned lighthouse keeper. How easily names changed. How easily people slipped from one identity to another.
Or . . . maybe not easily.
Maybe you had to go through a lot of tragedy. Maybe pain and death wrung you out over and over, until your old self bled away.
He’d become Archer because he couldn’t remember who he’d been, and once he’d remembered, he’d stayed Archer because being Calvin didn’t seem right anymore.
And deep down, he didn’t feel like he deserved it.