Lynn Flewelling - The Bone Doll's Twin

The summer that followed was hotter than any even Cook could recall. Arkoniel kept the boys at their lessons as best he could while they fretted that the war was passing them by.

Ki turned thirteen on the fourth of Shemin. His voice cracked wildly at odd moments now and he proudly showed off a faint line of downy black hair on his upper lip.

Tobin would soon be twelve, and though his cheeks and lip remained bare, he now matched Ki in height. Both boys were still rangy and coltish in build, but endless days of riding, chores, and arms practice had given them a wiry strength no town-bred boy could match.

Arkoniel continued to marvel at their bond. No two brothers could have been closer in love than these two. In fact, it seemed to the wizard that they got on with each other better than most brothers did. Despite the fact that they shared nearly every waking hour of the day and the same bed at night, Arkoniel seldom heard a harsh word pass between them. Instead, they challenged each other good-naturedly at all pursuits and shamelessly supported one another when caught in some prank around the house. Arkoniel suspected that Ki was behind most of the mischief, but it would have taken magic or torture to get the truth out of either of them.

Two years of careful tutelage had polished Ki up like a good gem. He spoke as fair as any country lord and managed not to swear most of the time. He still had a boy’s unformed features, but he’d prove to be a comely fellow in time and Arkoniel suspected he had the wit to go far at court if he chose.

Or at least as far as a landless knight’s middle son could go with the right patronage. His father’s title was an empty one; it would be Rhius or Tobin who sent him higher, and even then it would not be an easy climb unless Rhius chose to adopt Ki—an unlikely prospect.

Had this been a normal household, the difference in the boys’ stations might have made itself felt by now, but this was not a normal house by any measure. Tobin knew nothing of court life and treated everyone as his equal. Nari fretted over this, but Arkoniel advised her to let the boys be. Judged on his own merits, Ki was as worthy a companion as any young prince could ask for and Tobin was happy at last—for the most part, at least.

His strange bouts of foreknowing seemed to have passed, and with Lhel’s help he’d reached some accord with Brother. The spirit had grown so quiet that Nari joked about missing its antics. Arkoniel asked Lhel if it was possible that the spirit might go to rest at last, but the witch shook her head and told him, “No, and you don’t want for it to.”

If Tobin thought at all of his mother’s death, he said nothing. The only indication that it still haunted him was his aversion to the tower.

The only apparent clouds on the boy’s youthful horizon were his father’s absence and not being allowed to join him in Mycena.

Since Ahra’s visit the previous summer, Tobin and Ki were painfully aware that boys younger than themselves had gone off to war. Arkoniel’s assurances that no boy of Tobin’s station, not even the Prince Royal himself, would be allowed in battle did little to assuage his wounded pride.

At least once a month since then, both boys tried on the armor Rhius had left behind and swore it nearly fit, though in truth the sleeves of the hauberk still hung well below their fingertips. They kept up their arms practice with grim determination and splintered enough practice blades to keep Cook in kindling through the winter.

Tobin capitalized on his hard-won writing skills and always had a thick packet of letters ready for his father’s couriers. Rhius replied sporadically, and his letters made no mention of Tobin’s pleas to join him. However, he did send a swordsmith to the keep. The man took their measure with his strings and calipers; within the month they each had proper swords to practice with.

Otherwise, life went on as it always had until one summer day when Arkoniel overheard them trying to guess the distance to Ero, and how they might present themselves to strangers on the road. That night he quietly fixed a small glyph on each of them as they slept, in case he had to track them down later.

Ki and Tobin didn’t run away, but all through that long hot summer they grumbled and fretted and talked of war, and Ero.

In truth Ki had been to the city only a handful of times, but he relived each visit from memory for Tobin. Sitting by the dusty toy city at night, he would point here and there, painting a picture with his words, making a new section come alive in Tobin’s imagination.

“Here’s where Goldsmith Street lies, or thereabouts, and the temple,” Ki would explain. “Remember I told you about the painted dragon on the wall there?”

Tobin questioned him closely about Aurënfaie horses and traders he’d seen at the Horse Fair, and repeatedly made him describe everything he could recall of the ships in the harbor, with their colored sails and banners.

It was Tobin, however, who taught Ki what lay inside the walls of the Palatine Circle, for Ki had never been there. Tobin had only his father and Tharin’s stories to go by, but he’d learned them well. He quizzed his friend on the royal lineage, as well, lining the little kings and queens from the box up on the Palace roof.

During the day they roamed the woods and meadow wearing little more than short linen kilts. It was too hot most days for more. Even Arkoniel adopted their fashion and didn’t seem to mind when they snickered at his pale hairy body.

Lhel stripped for the heat, too. Tobin was shocked the first time she stepped from the trees to greet them clad only in a short skirt. He’d seen most of Nari often enough when she changed her shift or bathed, but never any other woman. And Nari was small-breasted, soft and pale. Lhel was nothing like that. She was brown all over, and her body was almost as hard as a man’s, but not flat and angular. Her breasts hung like huge ripe plums and they swayed as she walked. Her legs and flanks were firm, her hips wide and rounded, and her waist slender. Her hands and feet were as dirty as ever, but the rest of her looked as clean as if she’d just come from swimming. Tobin wanted to reach out and touch her shoulder, just to see what it would feel like, but the very thought made him blush.

He saw Ki blushing, too, that first time, though he didn’t look all that embarrassed. They both soon grew used to the sight of her, but Tobin did sometimes wonder what her skirt might hide. Ki said a woman’s nether parts were nothing like a man’s. Now and then he’d find Lhel watching him as if she knew his thoughts and he’d have to look away, coloring more hotly than ever.

“Do you think Prince Korin has to fill the wash kettle at the Palace?” Ki complained as he and Tobin toiled into the kitchen yard with their buckets. The wooden horse carving he wore stuck against his sweaty brown chest as he heaved his bucket up onto the edge of the steaming wash cauldron. It wasn’t even noon yet, but the Lenthin day was already sweltering.

Sweat ran off Tobin’s nose as he emptied his own bucket. Leaning over the cauldron, he blew the steam out of the way and let out an exasperated groan. “Bilairy’s balls! Not even half full yet. Two more trips and we’re taking a swim. I don’t care if Cook yells herself hoarse.”

“Command me, my prince,” Ki chuckled, following Tobin back out the gate.

The most recent drought had lowered the river between its banks. They had to pick their way over jumbled stones crusted with dead rockweed to reach the water’s edge. They were almost there when Ki stubbed his toe badly. He let out a strangled groan as he bit back a forbidden word; Nari had already clipped his ear once today for foul language. “Damnation!” he hissed instead, gripping his bleeding toe.