Rye looked only at Dyraien and pulled the design gently from his grasp. Dyraien’s white knuckles eased a little.
“Yes,” Rye said. “I approved it.”
Tahki wasn’t sure he heard right. He stared at Rye, at his calm expression, not daring to speak, not daring to wonder why he lied.
“Nothing has worked so far,” Rye said. “I thought maybe we’d take a chance.”
Dyraien’s face relaxed a little. He studied Rye, and the longer he looked at him, the more composed he became. There was trust in his eyes, and something else Tahki couldn’t place. Hurt, maybe, like he wanted to be angry but something about Rye prevented him.
“I see,” Dyraien said. He turned to Tahki. “I didn’t expect Rye’s judgment to be so poor. I apologize for taking my anger out on you. Please, try harder next time. Things are not going well in the capital, and time is running out.” He faced Rye. “Be sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Dyraien strode back into the queen’s room and shut the door behind him.
Tahki tensed, bracing for the inevitable patronization.
Instead, Rye said, “I’d like to show you something.” He motioned toward the front door.
Tahki rubbed his wrist, listed a dozen horrible things Rye would do to him as punishment for disobeying a senior order, but followed anyway.
HE MOVED an arm’s length behind Rye. They walked northeast on the dirt road, and Tahki noticed the faintest bit of green blooming on the brown grass. The cool air chilled him, but it was better than the intense heat back home. One summer, he’d run outside without shoes on and burned his feet so badly an entire layer of skin had peeled off. He had thought he’d never walk again. How foolish he’d been, overreacting to a little burn, now that he had real troubles to worry about, like where Rye was taking him, if he’d lost Dyraien’s trust, if he’d be asked to resign.
After an hour, when his legs grew tired and the silence grew unbearable, Tahki said, “Are you taking me to the middle of nowhere to shoot me or something?” He meant it as a joke, but it came out a little too serious.
Rye slowed so they walked beside one another. “Has anyone ever told you you’re overly dramatic sometimes?”
“I like to think of it more as logical pessimism.”
“You really think highly of yourself, don’t you?”
Tahki shrugged. “There’s nothing wrong with confidence. I know my flaws as well as my strengths.”
“And what do you think your flaws are?”
“Apparently, I’m overly dramatic sometimes.”
This won him a smile from Rye, and despite the recent failure of his design looming over him, Tahki smiled back.
And then he pictured himself kissing Rye. The sudden thought was both ridiculous and surprising, since Rye had never given any indication he was interested in him. And why should Tahki want him to be? He and Rye seemed worlds apart. Still, Rye had been right about the design. Maybe he really was looking out for him. Why else lie to Dyraien?
Tahki scolded himself for letting his mind wander to such a place. Now more than ever, he needed to find a solution. For the second time since arriving in Vatolokít, his architecture hadn’t stood up to expectations. If he didn’t get this next design right, he’d be finished.
They walked another ten minutes before Tahki saw a pile of stones in the distance. As they grew on the horizon, he noticed they weren’t rocks but ruins. They followed the Misty River up to the stones. Rye stopped inside a broken rock wall and folded his arms, waiting for Tahki to look around.
Tahki examined the rubble. The dark red and brown stones lay strewn across the pale dirt in an orderly fashion, like they marked graves. Broken pillars had fallen across the cracked ground. Bits of marble lay here and there. Part of the roof that hadn’t been demolished came to a point at the top in a non-Vatolok style. Vines of brown ivy climbed the walls. He found traces of dark oak tables and some shattered blue pots. Then he came across one column still intact, and noticed small golden elephants painted on the side. On another wall, a half sun had been carved in relief.
He stared at Dhaulen’aii’s emblem, not quite registering it, like when a stranger calls your name but you don’t recognize them, and there’s an awkward moment where your brain tries to remember something that’s not there.
The Dhaulenian temple was out of place here. It didn’t appear destroyed from age or weathering elements. It looked ransacked. Tahki stopped in front of the altar. Back home, it would be covered in gifts for the gods to take back to their home, a place called the Dim. He remembered he and Sornjia would help their father craft colorful gifts out of paper to leave on the altar. Their father would tell them stories of the Dim, how when people died the gods brought their spirits back with them to this afterlife, where they were given a new body and new life. Tahki had asked his father why the gods did this, what they hoped to gain from the process, but his father’s answer was always frustratingly vague.
“It’s a Dhaulen’aii temple,” Rye said. He didn’t pronounce the name exact, but it was a difficult name to pronounce without speaking the language. Tahki almost corrected him but then thought better of it. “They used to have a lot of temples like these around the capital, but after the borders closed, they were demolished.”
Tahki’s thoughts turned dark. Did Rye know where he was from? Was he going to ask Tahki to leave, to turn himself in? Was this a courtesy? A warning? He’d read a book once where a man adopted a wild black-winged fox, but when the fox grew up, the man realized the animal didn’t belong in civilization, so
