“So what are you going to do?” Sornjia said.
Tahki scratched at his wound. “I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t have asked for your help.”
He had told Sornjia everything last night: the dark shape in his room, the water, the black gates, Zinc, the cat. Sornjia hadn’t ridiculed him, but that didn’t make Tahki feel any better. He wanted his brother to tell him he was being paranoid, that it was all in his head, that he should see a doctor. But Sornjia had listened, both sympathetic and patient, never once calling his sanity into question.
Sornjia sat beside him. “You won’t like what I have to say.”
“How do you know?”
“You want me to say it’s anxiety or something logical, something you can contain and control.”
“Maybe it is.”
Sornjia pointed at the marks on his chest. “Those don’t look like a manifestation of an overworked imagination.”
Tahki reached for his shirt and tugged it over his head. “Fine. What do you think happened?”
Sornjia curled his fingers into his palm. “I feel like a sparrow’s wings are fluttering just under my eyelids.”
“Sornjia.”
“I have a confession to make,” Sornjia said. “But you can’t be angry.”
“What kind of confession?”
Sornjia reached under his pillow and pulled out a handful of blue paper. Tahki stared at the paper. “It came a few days ago,” Sornjia said. “Gale brought back a stack of letters from Edgewater. I found it before she sorted through the pile.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” The encounter with Dyraien might have been avoided if Sornjia had told him about the document papers.
“I couldn’t leave you alone,” Sornjia said. “The castle, I think it’s afraid of you.”
Tahki sat on his hands so he wouldn’t scratch. Though he should have been furious at Sornjia, it was nice to have someone to talk to, even if that someone spouted crazy theories.
“The castle isn’t alive,” Tahki said.
“Didn’t you always say you wanted to give your drawings life? That you treat architecture like a living, breathing thing?”
“It’s just an expression. Besides, I’m the victim here. That thing attacked me. Not the other way around.”
“How big did you say the cat was?”
“It was the size of a sandbull, only slender.”
“Right,” Sornjia said. “And you just happened to get away because you’re such a great fighter?”
Tahki frowned. “What do you mean?”
“If a creature that size wants to kill you, it will kill you.”
“It did try to kill me.”
“It barely scratched you.”
“I thought you said you believed me.”
“I do. But I think you’re interpreting the events wrong. I think the castle is trying to tell you something, and you need to listen.”
Tahki flopped back and the bed moaned. The cat had been real. He couldn’t deny that. Did that mean the water had been real as well? Or the dark thing in his room? Had the cat visited him the first night?
“I think you should tell Rye,” Sornjia said.
“Why would I do that?”
“You trust him.”
“Which is exactly why I shouldn’t tell him. He’ll think I’m crazy.”
“He helped you with Zinc. Why wouldn’t he help you with these encounters as well?”
“Because Zinc is real. But these encounters? I’m not sure what they are. No one else has seen them or heard them or been bitten by them.”
“Which is all the more reason to tell Rye,” Sornjia said. “Trust is something that situates itself inside you and ties all your muscles and bones together. It’s a feeling of wholeness, a feeling of control even when you have none. He’ll listen to you, Tahki. He’ll believe you.”
Tahki pulled a pillow over his face and let out a muffled groan. “I’m not involving Rye.” He threw the pillow on the bed. “And don’t you try to involve him, either. He’s not some merchant I upset in the market you need to apologize to on my behalf. Pretending to be me here could get us both killed.”
Sornjia bowed his head. “If that’s how you feel, I’ll leave it be. But we can’t ignore what’s been happening to you. Dyraien is hiding something. I sensed something inside him when he came to the house, something unsteady, like he and I teetered on a thin piece of wood, trying to balance the other’s weight. Maybe he has something to do with the strange encounters.”
Tahki knew Dyraien wasn’t telling him everything about the purpose of the castle, but it made no sense to bring Tahki here just to torment him. “Dyraien gave me my freedom. Where would I be if he hadn’t hired me?”
“He has control over you, over the castle, over the people in the castle. And when people like that lose control, they become dangerous.”
“Dyraien isn’t dangerous.”
“He’s a prince about to lose his country. There isn’t anything more dangerous than a person about to lose something.”
A metal pot banged against the wall downstairs. “Make yourselves useful and set the table,” Gale’s raspy voice called.
They stood up at the same time. “What should I do, Sornjia? I can’t tell Rye. I’ve caused him enough trouble.”
“You need to find out what Dyraien is keeping behind those black gates.”
Before Tahki could reply, Sornjia skipped out of the room. Tahki followed his brother downstairs into the kitchen. Gale had set out a plate of clams and a large bowl of rice.
“Too busy to help with lunch?” she asked.
Sornjia smiled. “Tahki is having nightmares.”
Gale snorted. “Problems of entitled children are never problems.”
Tahki picked at a clam. “You don’t have anything else?”
“I have an old shoe you can suck on,” Gale said. She stuck a glob of clam in her mouth and chewed in circles, the way a gingoat chews hay.
“Thank
