Once Betrayed, Twice Shy

Going east

FARAH

The courtyard is cold and very quiet. Marcus is standing near the old bench, the one in the corner that gets the afternoon light, and he looks at me when I come through the side door with the expression of a man who has made a decision and is carrying it carefully.

“What’s happened?” I ask.

“Nothing’s happened,” he says. “I need to tell you something.”

I wait.

He looks at the grounds. At the dark tree line beyond the wall. He has the quality of someone choosing words with more care than usual, which for Marcus — who chooses words carefully as a default — means something significant.

“When he went east tonight,” Marcus says, “he didn’t think about it.”

“I know,” I say.

“You don’t know what I mean yet.” He looks at me. “In thirty years, I have never seen Caspian do anything without thinking about it. Every decision — strategic, personal, everything. He thinks. He considers. He chooses.” A pause. “Tonight he moved east before Soren finished the sentence. Before anyone had a full picture of what we were dealing with. Before there was any strategic reason to go east rather than north.” He holds my gaze. “He just went.”

I’m quiet.

“He doesn’t know I’m telling you this,” Marcus says.

“I figured,” I say.

“I’m telling you because—” he stops. Starts again. “I’ve known him for thirty years. I’ve watched him carry the curse and the pack and the history of it alone for thirty years because he’s decided that alone is the only safe way to carry things.” His voice has shifted — still controlled, but something underneath it that isn’t his usual warmth. Something older. “And I am telling you, Farah, that whatever is happening between you — whatever it is — it’s the first time in thirty years I’ve seen him not choose alone.”

The courtyard is very still.

“Marcus,” I say quietly.

“I’m not asking you to do anything with it,” he says. “I’m not telling you to feel something you don’t feel or do something you’re not ready to do. I just—” he exhales, ”—I thought you should know. What it looks like from the outside. What going east looks like, when you know him.”

I look at him. At this man who has been in my corner since the second week with the easy generosity of someone who decided I was worth it before I’d done anything to earn it. Who brings me terrible jokes and contraband snacks and honest information and has never once asked for anything in return.

“You love him,” I say. Not romantically. Just — the fact of it, the thirty-year weight of it.

“Yes,” Marcus says simply. “Which is why I need him to stop being alone in it.”

The word lands somewhere it shouldn’t and I think about a man who went east first and you know why said in a level voice and hands around a wrist that held on longer than necessary.

“Marcus,” I say.

“Yes.”

“I already know,” I say quietly. “What it means. I’ve known for a while.”

He looks at me. Something in his face that releases — slow and quiet, like something that’s been held for a long time finally allowed to set down.

“Okay,” he says. “Good.”

We stand in the cold courtyard for a moment.

“Go to bed,” I say.

“You go to bed,” he says.

“I wasn’t sleeping anyway.”

“Neither was I,” he says. He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and looks at the dark tree line and then back at me. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “I think you’re the best thing that’s happened to this territory in thirty years.” He says it the way he says things that are true — simply, without performance. “And I include myself in that assessment, which should tell you something about how seriously I mean it.”

I look at him.

“Goodnight, Marcus,” I say.

“Goodnight, Farah,” he says.

He goes back inside.

I stand in the courtyard alone for a moment. The cold is sharp and clean and the sky is beginning, very faintly at the eastern edge, to show the first suggestion of dawn. Not light yet. Just the absence of full dark.

I think about conscious choice.

About both parties.

About a man in a study right now who is probably not sleeping either.

I think about what you do when you know something and the other person knows something and you’ve both been orbiting it for months and the orbit is getting smaller.

I think about going east.

I go inside.

I don’t go back to my room.