Chapter 5

The sun pounded like an avalanche. The long dry grass hissed warnings in the breeze. Van's mouth had gone dry, despite earlier tea; he swallowed, felt the weight of his quiver, swallowed again. Milo, beside him, was still pale under the starburst freckles.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, in the lines as they'd been ordered. They waited.

The Penthii Chief Minister had come forward. With an army at her back. Van could see the outlines of pikes, spears, sharpness. Lorre's veil danced, blurring shapes into indistinct opals.

"They can't come through," Milo said softly, maybe for Van, maybe for himself. "They can't."

"They want to." Van stopped. "They need to. Lorre said it was about water, down there in the desert—"

"And he gave them a river. Shouldn't they leave?"

"Would you feel threatened," Van said slowly, "if you woke up to find a new river running right past you, a new canyon…because your enemy did that, in the night…would you take it badly, do you think…"

One of the blurry shapes made a gesture. Lorre's barrier burst with iridescent light like a wound; but it absorbed the hit, scar gradually fading.

The Queen of Averene, General Freye, and the Sorcerer came past, hurrying but not too badly. The Queen was saying, "If we simply talk to them—"

"Now that we've made them angry, you mean?" said the General. She was glancing at every person they passed: evaluating her army. Preparing for a fight.

"If I were them I'd be happy about the water," Lorre said. "We solved their problem. They're being ungrateful."

Lorre today had dressed up in myriad shades of purple: mauve, indigo, raspberry, blackberry, lavender, other variations Van couldn't name. The robes definitely couldn't've belonged to any traditional historian or scholar, given that fitted waist, that plunging tantalizing neckline: a tease, a mockery of tradition, a promise.

He'd piled the golden hair atop his head in a fantastical heap, studded with pins of raw gold and black-and-white sea-pearls. His feet were naked, and he'd pushed the sleeves of the robe-layers up. The folds made his wrists more slender, vulnerable.

"Not everyone thinks the way you do," Queen Ryllis said. Lorre now looked genuinely perplexed, and protested, "But I know the world best."

The world in question lurched abruptly. Grasses shuddering. A crack forming. Under Lorre's shield.

Van couldn't breathe.

"They can go under," General Freye said aloud, unnecessarily, but she was making a point. "Lorre, you said they couldn't—"

"I forgot about tunnels momentarily. I can fix that."

"They have magicians." Queen Ryllis's jaw was tense. "Did you know that?"

"They don't have magicians," Lorre snapped. "They have three humans with some talent for guessing how to hum very specific tunes in the dark."

"What?"

"Most of you are tone-deaf, so these three are better than that, at least."

"Lorre—"

"Now I'm irritated," Lorre said, "and I don't like people hurting my grass. Time to be done with this, I think."

His hand came up, a slim swoop of elegant fingers. The shield dropped. No more barricade between forces.

The wind ebbed. But the world wasn't motionless. The earth began to put itself back together, along the newly opened fault-line.

Murmurs rose on both sides, susurrations of wonder, of fear. Lorre took a step forward, trailing Queen and General in his wake. He did not shout, but everyone heard him regardless. "I think you should leave."

"I think," said the Chief Minister of Penth, tall and taut as a bowstring in desert-sun robes and practical trousers, "that you altered our land. Our home. Without telling us. An act of aggression."

"Technically," Lorre retorted, "you invaded first. You crossed the border. And you haven't said thank you, about the water."

"We crossed the border because we needed assistance, and because this land used to be shared land, free to all, before Averene started swallowing up the world."

"Mostly it's just the local baronies," Lorre said. "Don't exaggerate. You could've asked me for help."

"Would you have come?"

"Probably. If I wasn't busy. I'd've got round to your drought eventually."

"You are a weapon," the Chief Minister said, "and you serve the throne of Averene. We needed to show strength."

"I don't serve anyone," Lorre said. "I happen to like living in a palace, for the moment. Tell your little human conjurors to stop muttering about earthquakes and dropping me into deep holes. It won't work, and I don't appreciate being called an abomination yet again."

The Chief Minister glanced at her magicians. They wore blue, a grey-toned dusty hue that stood out against the bronze armor of her people. They stopped conferring with each other, and glared at Lorre.

Van, who sympathized with people wanting to glare at Lorre, nevertheless scowled back. Whatever Lorre was, he was also a lonely young man whom people tended to believe the worst of; he did not deserve that sort of insult.

Milo murmured, "If we're going to fight I wish they'd get on…"

"I don't think we're going to," Van murmured back. And mentally added a prayer to the Goddess along those lines. With emphasis.

Queen Ryllis took a step forward. "Would you like to discuss terms?"

"Also I don't like conversations with armies pointing sharp objects at me," Lorre interjected. "I really do think you should send them away."

The Chief Minister folded her arms. "We need our strength."

"That's your warning," Lorre told her.

"Or what? What would you do?" She waved a hand: encompassing the lines. "Would you destroy us? Kill everyone here on this spot? To make your point?"

Queen Ryllis said, horrified, "Lorre. You wouldn't."

General Freye appeared to be considering it, given that the everyone under discussion meant the enemy.

"I don't like killing people. Too messy. Not to say I wouldn't, but I don't feel like it just now. But…" Lorre glanced over, across the field. His gaze found Van, and lingered. He grinned, suddenly: mischievous, kittenish, younger in the same way he'd been with sex-fluffed hair, fleetingly accepting a foot-rub. He did a theatrical finger-snap.

Light built. Flared. Shone from armor, spears, swords, harnesses.

It burned outward. It did not cause harm, not that Van could tell—but from this side of it he saw the Penthii army shudder and stumble and stagger, blinded.

"I like light," Lorre said conversationally, "and fire. Someone gave me a very useful idea about reflections and sunbeams, last night. Would you all like to see what I can do with the sun? Or would you like to leave now?"

His voice was low, lazy, self-assured. It carried across the world, over lines and camps. Everyone heard.

No one else got the reference to last night, Van hoped. He damn well hadn't told Lorre about sunshine on oceans for this. He wasn't sure whether to blush or apologize.

The Penthii lines trembled. Lorre turned up the white-hot radiance more.

The lines broke. Soldiers fled. In shambles. Giving way before a magician, a youthful sapphire armed with sunbeams and confidence.

In a matter of moments the Penthii Chief Minister stood alone, facing the Queen of Averene, and General Freye, and Lorre, who was now playing idly with a yarn-ball of fire, and the extent of the Averenish army behind that.

She said, unflinching, "Would you like our surrender?"

Lorre made a shower of fire-flowers flare and rain down and vanish, above everyone's heads. "That'd be nice."

Queen Ryllis looked at him, and outright sighed, and said, "Minister Amara…we don't mean you harm. We never have. Can we speak? Just us. Together."

Chief Minister Amara was older than the young Queen of Averene, hair hidden under sun-cloth but lines around her dark eyes, and at her mouth; she turned to look at the clamor of Lorre's rushing river, at the abandoned hills behind her, the abandoned shields and spears. She turned back, and her gaze swept over Queen Ryllis: resigned, determined, considering options and her people and her home.

She said, "Yes. We can negotiate, you and I."

The world heard, and breathed out, a shudder of reprieve. Ven felt it in his shoulders, his knees, his gut, all the way through his boots. He saw it, sensed it, as the susurration spread.

They did not have to fight. They did not have to kill, or die. Not today.

"If you would like advice about rivers and the land," Lorre began.

"From you," the Chief Minister said, "no."

Queen Ryllis looked at him kindly, and said, "Thank you for the assistance, Lorre, but no," and turned to the General. "If someone could bring a table, and writing-paper…"

Lorre looked at them—at the conversation, the negotiation, the compromises and healing that would happen without him, which he was not a part of—and then looked away. He bent, and touched the earth at his feet; the last of the torn-open fractures had finished mending. The grass kissed his fingers, before he straightened again.

When he turned back, toward the army and Van and Milo, who had not been dismissed, he did not move with quite the same flawless grace as usual. Van wasn't sure anyone else could tell. But he'd seen the Sorcerer of Averene flop tiredly onto a bed, the night before; he'd seen Lorre kick a table and wince and then heal himself. Something of that was at the corners of blue eyes just now.

He responded before thinking about it. A tiny shift of weight, not even a step forward.

Lorre saw him do it. And visibly debated the response, for a split second. Then put out a pretty hand, languid, and beckoned him.

Milo started, "You're not—again—" but Van had already moved.

Too late, he realized that he should've stayed, should've reassured Milo. But that was difficult, too, in ways he hadn't examined. And Lorre might need help.

Lorre did not need help, or pretended not to. Van ran over to his side, and then realized that that meant he, plain bowman Evander Roche, was in the company of his queen and his general and the world's greatest magician.

The Queen, waiting for a table, cushions, ink, had come back over. She said, to Lorre, "Thank you." It was real; it was also a dismissal. "People would've died. And you prevented that."

"I didn't do it for you. I told you I'm not on your side." Lorre lifted a shoulder, let it drop. "I don't like war. The land doesn't like war. Disruptions. Wounds. And also I'll be going through your royal library and treasury, when we get back."

General Freye made a hissing teakettle sound. "The treasures of Averene—"

"One of your ancient histories has a tale about the Fire Prince, and your treasury has his Crown of Endless Flame, and I want both."

The furious teakettle sputtering grew. "My Queen—"

"Oh, don't complain about it," Queen Ryllis said, "it's a small enough price for not going to war. And the Crown's silly anyway; it's too hot to wear or touch, and it isn't even as useful as a sword would've been. You can have it," she added to Lorre, "but please be careful, it's melted three chests and reinforced iron crates already."

"I can touch it," Lorre said. "It won't hurt me. Go finish your negotiations. I won't move that river again. You can put the boundaries of human kingdoms wherever you'd like."

Van, at his side, worried more. And couldn't look back, in case he saw anger on Milo's face. Anger, disappointment, hurt: he knew he deserved them all.

He did not know what more he could do. He couldn't be two places at once. And he couldn't not help, if Lorre needed that.

"Are you keeping Bowman Roche, then?" General Freye eyed Van. "Not that anyone's objecting. Bowman, you follow his orders, understand?"

"It's not an order." Lorre swung away, a butterfly-flutter of lavender and raspberry and piled-up hair and gold-and-pearl hair-pins. "And I'm not keeping him. Only for now. Come with me, please." That last was for Van; he trotted a few steps at Lorre's side, until the magician stopped and said, "Not walking—" and put a hand on Van's arm.

And the world dissolved into swirls of air and fire and gemstone light.