Only now, it felt oddly hollow.
Dreams plagued him that the earth crumbled beneath his feet, as did this constant feeling that he was not where he was supposed to be. Go home, that voice told him, but folk he trusted most had asked him to stay away. His brother, Elia herself, the impossibly practical Aefa, Kay Oak, and even the good king Morimaros, when he had managed to find time to sit with Rory. They all had implored Rory to be patient, to wait until the time was right.
The insistence that he remain tucked away in Aremoria felt less like concern, and more as though Rory were being dismissed.
He continued to smile, to flirt and charm, to listen and converse sincerely, yet through it all the urge to be elsewhere distracted him like a constant itch, even ruining such a brilliant festival day as this.
Behind him a bird squawked, and he whirled sharply around, nearly spilling the too-full cup of cider in his hand. A boy stood there, and behind him a tall man holding a pole with a perch at its top. Tethered there was a parrot, head cocked and tail flared. Rory did not think the parrot appreciated all this spectacle. But he smiled at the boy. It was Isarnos, son of Twice-Princess Ianta, and heir to the throne of Aremoria.
“You’re Ban the Fox’s brother, aren’t you?”
Rory managed to withhold the cringe. He turned it into a brighter smile instead. “Ban the Fox is my brother,” he said, and winked.
Isarnos eyed him suspiciously, as if he did not understand the distinction.
Truly, there only was one in Rory’s mind—or, he suspected, in that of any person from Innis Lear. But he’d become rather tired of the implication that Ban was better, more known here in Aremoria, even though it was absolutely true. Rory had fostered here for three years and had been perfectly adept at war, but he was always meant to return home to Errigal and be the earl. While Ban had been banished here and by hardship and magic earned a wild yet strong reputation even these civilized Aremore folk admired—if with a tinge of fear. Rory did not like being overshadowed by his brother’s taller reputation, did not like being defined by Ban’s achievements. He was used to being his father’s son, the future Earl Errigal, as was natural and expected, and that was the definition of title, place, and self he understood.
This constant suggestion that he was second to Ban aggravated Rory and chafed at his pride now, as it never had before.
“I wish I had a brother,” Isarnos continued.
“As you should!” Rory exclaimed, crouching to put his face slightly lower than the prince’s. “Brothers are grand—when I was your age, my brother and I used to charge about ruins and play we were valiant warriors, or sometimes earth saints ridding the world of the massive old worms.”
“Dragons!” Isarnos said. “Did you have dogs?”
“We did, sometimes.”
“Can you do magic?”
Rory winced, letting it be exaggerated. “No, alas, I cannot do any magic, though Ban promised once to teach me some. Did he ever teach you?”
“I was too little, my mother said. But he showed me fire in his hand, and he could talk to my birds and the barracks kittens.”
“That seems a very valuable skill. He ought to have taught you.”
Isarnos pursed his lips and nodded hard. “How come your brother went back to Innis Lear? Why isn’t he here with you?”
“He…” Rory paused. The exultant noise of the crowd washed over them, and the parrot flapped its emerald wings. “He’s taking care of our father, and … and there are many things at home to be looked after. He’s very good at looking after them.”
“Wizards have to be. And brothers, too, I suppose.”
Rory agreed, though it sank in, all of it—the itch to go home, his vanity and resentment—and he understood for perhaps the first time that Ban had every reason to never want Rory to reappear.
“I hope,” he said slowly, “you’ll get a good wizard of your own, when you’re king. And that you’ll count me a friend on Innis Lear.”
The prince lifted his chin and stared at Rory with eyes a shade lighter than the king’s. “But you’re here. Will you go back to Ban and trade him to us again?”
Rory laughed—it was rather like a trade. “I might!”
And then he stopped cold. Though he was loath to admit to blame, he knew it had been his long-ago confession to his father about Ban and Elia’s love that had banished his brother here. Rory had been at fault for pushing his brother out of Innis Lear, though it hadn’t been his intention. Ban did not know—at least Rory did not think so.
“Trust me, Rory,” Ban said. “Go.”
“Some villain has done me wrong,” Rory murmured back.
No, Rory refused the weave of that thought. His own banishment could not—could not—be Ban’s fault.
But the courtyard reeled around him, and Rory felt the dizzying sensation from his dreams that somewhere he could not yet see, the city had begun to crumble.
“I have to—go, Your Highness,” he said to Isarnos, and the prince’s face fell, but he nodded.
Rory pushed into the crowd. There the royal guard lined the courtyard and watched from balconies for any danger; there the king’s dais; there a tight circle of musicians with lyres and fiddles; there—there his own mother, a glittering, ginger bird in a huddle of Alsax and Rennai cousins. She saw him, too, and smiled politely: they had little enough to say to each other. Lady Dirbha Errigal had carved a place here in Aremoria, cut her Learish bonds.
He had asked, when she’d happened upon Rory last week at the Alsax townhouse, “Why, Mother, did you never come home?”
She had eyed him imperiously, shocked at his presumption. “And what?”
“Be—well, take your…” Rory had stumbled, for he’d not truly known the shape of his question.
Dirbha took pity on her son and said, “Your father breaks the rules. Why do you think you are
