24. Killian

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

KILLIAN

H ector was in turmoil.

I had worried about him for lots of reasons since he'd come to us. The looming threat of Avianitis. The opposing lack of a bird. The wall, and the horrors that happened there. His obvious dissatisfaction with the scraps of humanity I could offer.

I was no Brett, full of adoration to heap on someone like Hector's sweet, soft brother. I'd rather thought myself more like Minerva, but watching her pull Helena in with a grip at the back of her neck and kiss her passionately, well...

Was I somehow simply inferior to all the people I knew? Unable to have the same soft emotions after too many years on the wall?

Had I killed too many people? Was I simply broken, unable to love and unworthy of it in return?

"You're being an ass," Orestes said, coming up behind me and clapping me on the back. "That's your stubborn face. In case you didn't know. You're asking yourself if you could possibly be wrong, and then saying no, no, it's not possible. Killian is never wrong."

I snorted and rolled my eyes at him. "Killian is constantly wrong. I'm just a man, Orestes. We're all wrong, all the damned time."

He gave me a small smile in return, nodding. "Good. Since you taught me that, I'm glad you remember it. So hurry the hell up and grab hold of what you want." He turned to look at where Nestor of the Duck Clan was asking Hector questions about his bolt thrower. The flirty fuck was smiling at Hector like he was about to invite him back to his bed with his wife that night. "I know you're worried about Avianitis. You don't want to cause his death. But Killian, he's Nemedan now. He's going to get it. He can't spend the rest of his life celibate and alone. That's worse than dying of Avianitis. You wouldn't do that to him, would you?"

A stone dropped in my stomach, watching that pretty bastard Duck bat his eyes at Hector.

Orestes... well, he didn't think himself clever. A lifetime of his father telling him he was too large and unintelligent had done that. But Orestes was often wise beyond anyone I knew. Still sometimes, I thought it a tragedy he would never lead a clan in Nemeda, because he was a natural leader. He could have been a great one. His wisdom was more than simple cleverness, like Minerva's quick mind. His was something deeper. An understanding of people and how their minds worked, and then being able to draw those understandings to their logical conclusions. To what people might do, which I'd always thought a puzzle beyond human comprehension until I'd seen Orestes simply... know.

It was, I thought, why he got along with Hector so well. They had much in common, and Hector also seemed to have an innate understanding of the world.

Take, for instance, the way he was inching away from Nestor as they spoke. Even though he still didn't seem to understand that the man was flirting with him, he did understand that Nestor wanted something, and knew it wasn't something he wanted to give. I stifled a grin at that.

Still, Orestes was right, and I had a lot to consider. After the meeting of chieftains. That was always a fucking annoyance and a half.

Naturally, the meeting didn't fail to annoy me even more than usual.

"We need someone to do it," Nestor was saying, his voice irritating, ingratiating and too-sweet, like the oranges his people grew. I preferred lemons, and right then, I wanted to smash an especially tart one into his glittering opal eyes. "Orestes will be perfect for the role."

He wasn't exactly lying, since the magic that had created the clans didn't allow us to lie at all when the clan chiefs were all together. But his words were as slippery as his oily duck feathers, meaning absolutely fucking nothing.

Because the fucking assholes had decided to send Orestes off to Urial, to try to maintain peace with the stubborn bastards to the north. Not because they knew him and realized he was precisely the kind of man who should be a diplomat. Oh no. They simply wanted to be rid of him.

He was strong and wise and most of all, the former Eagle Clan members all still saw him as a kind of chief-in-waiting. Where he settled, many of them would follow. The chiefs were worried that having him anywhere in Nemeda would unsettle the tenuous balance of power among the clans, still teetering drunkenly after the death of Memnon and destruction of the Eagle.

"He's been in Crane lands for years, and it hasn't caused anyone any trouble," I insisted.

Balthazar, clever Balthazar, who was supposed to be on my fucking side, gave a sigh, shaking his head. "His father was alive then. The people who were Eagle still see him as a symbol of what they want. As long as he's right there, they'll continue to see him. They'll think there's a chance he'll take the reins and the clan will be rebuilt."

"Forget that," Otus the bastard Falcon sneered. "The Crane don't get to have two clan chiefs. It unbalances everything. The Crane already have too much power without an extra clan chief."

I rolled my eyes. "Orestes isn't acting as chief among my people, and you all know it. I have more than twice as many people as any other clan, and none of you have ever complained about that. Is that a problem now, too? Maybe you should stop feeding us too, since we know how to fight. We're a danger, while we protect you ungrateful?—"

Brett grabbed my shoulder, stepping between me and the others. "Orestes will do this well, Killian." His face was serious and eyes soft as he met my spitting rage. His sheer calm drained some of my anger at the injustice of sending Orestes away as punishment for his father's crimes. "Maybe some of the people here have decided this for the worst of selfish reasons, but we don't have to. We know him, maybe better than he knows himself. Orestes would make a fine diplomat, even if that isn't why the others want him to go."

But Orestes . . . was my friend.

I should have been used to it, after thirty years on the wall. Shouldn't have even batted an eye at losing yet another person I wanted to keep. It was the way of being a Crane.

Rather dramatically, I considered asking Orestes for a feather to tie into my hair, since the selfish fucks were taking him away from me.

Once again, politics played out behind everyone's backs, slimy as eels, and the Crane lost.

The Crane always lost.

I gave Brett the briefest of nods, letting him know I had myself under control, even if it was only just. Then I snarled at the scheming snakes I'd thought would put Nemeda first. "Fine. Protect your power, since that's all you care about. Orestes will make your peace. He'd have made a better chief than the lot of you."

"Likely so," Balthazar agreed, conciliatory fuck, but I refused to even look at him.

"Is that it, then? Or is there something else you'd like to take? Want the Crane palace? I'd gladly give any of you the wall." I met the Falcon's eye, since he was the greediest monster among them, but he looked away. "That's what I thought. I'm done. You can go back to bullshitting each other, since you'd clearly be more comfortable that way."

I stalked toward the exit of the great central tent where we were meeting.

"Melodramatic as always," Otus muttered behind me, but I didn't turn to face him. I'd have hit him in that moment, and as high as my temper was running, I knew that would cross a line.

"Melodramatic, perhaps," Brett agreed, but then his voice went cold and hard in a way I'd rarely heard from him. "But he's not wrong about any of it. Everyone wants rid of Orestes because he's inconvenient, even though he's spent more than ten years defending us with his life on the wall. We take the Crane for granted. We're taking Orestes for granted. Maybe we all need to take some time to think about that. To be grateful for all we're being given by those who are constantly in danger to give it."

As I left the tent, Minerva's strident voice pointed out, "Some of us didn't even spend our own year on the wall, and I think that shows. Perhaps we should end the rule about proxy years for chiefs being acceptable. We, of all people, should know all the struggles of all Nemedans."

I almost laughed at the idea.

Most of the clan chiefs wouldn't have lasted a day on the wall. Distractible Balthazar, cowardly Otus, or tiny delicate Velma of the Hummingbird Clan—people like them were why the proxy years existed to begin with.

I'd never held it against them before. Some people simply weren't suited to fighting, and that was fine. They gave something else to Nemeda.

I just wasn't feeling especially generous right then.

Not when I had to go tell one of my best friends that his people were throwing him away because his existence was inconvenient.

He was with Hector, in the small area where the Crane tents had been erected.

Somehow, my people had known. Usually, they mingled with the others at the summer gathering. They went to the central bonfire, sat on the logs there, talking to people from across Nemeda, many of them catching up with friends who'd spent time on the wall or passing on messages from those who couldn't join us to their clans of origin.

It was usually a celebration. Happy.

Today, they were waiting for me, somber and concerned. They'd set up our tents in a circle, away from the others, and started a small campfire in the middle, a pot cooking something atop it. One had a barrel of Hummingbird mead cracked open, and he handed me a goblet of it the moment I stepped into the quiet circle.

They all stared at me, as though awaiting execution orders.

I'd never been one to pull punches, so I turned to look at Orestes. "They're sending you to Urial as a diplomat. They say they want you to make peace with the king."

"They want rid of him, you mean," one of the others muttered.

"Yes. They want rid of him." I looked back at Orestes. "I'm sorry. I tried."

He gave me a sad smile and came over to wrap an arm around my shoulders. "I never doubted it. But don't go to war with the other clans on my account. I'll be fine."

Of course. Always, he was trying to make peace. He wouldn't listen if I told him he would make a fine diplomat, but some things, I supposed, you could only learn by doing.

Hector marched up with two goblets of mead in his hands, and used the second to fill all the others—Orestes's, mine, and after a big gulp, his own—to the top. "I think it's time to drink that entire barrel of mead. If that's all the other clans are going to give us, other than work they don't want to do themselves, we should take full advantage."

Orestes nodded, and we smacked the goblets together before downing the lot.

"We Crane have to stick together," Orestes told Hector, putting his free arm around him and pulling him in so the three of us were all connected. "The rest of Nemeda don't understand us, but that's okay. We all have each other." He looked up at the rest of the Crane in the small clear area. "The Crane!"

"The Crane!" they all shouted.

And we drank.