Leaves of Revolution (13 page)

Although the birds were a variety of colors, they were clearly all seekers, sheltering in the relative warmth of Tobias’ barn. It took him a minute, but he finally spotted William’s bird, Aelwyn. No doubt Aelwyn’s mate, Sirian was here somewhere, too. There were more birds in the rafters than he could match to owners, though. One, a smoky charcoal-colored bird, was watching him with interest. Zander wasn’t sure if the creature was amused or sympathetic.

“How did they get in?”

Kian chuckled as he shrugged. “Maybe they followed you – just so they could do that.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Raeyan,” he muttered toward the ceiling.

Despite his best efforts to clean himself off with icy water from the pump in the barn, by the time they stumbled back out of the snow and into Tobias’ kitchen, the mess in Zander’s hair had frozen solid.

It might not have been so bad if Quinn, William, Thomas, Linnea, Marcus, and Tobias hadn’t
all
been sitting at the table eating when he walked in.

“You’ve got a little bird problem in your barn,” he said to Tobias.

Tobias chuckled under his breath. “Yes. I should have warned you. I have a hat I always wear when I go in there.”

“Always? Quinn’s bird did this to me, not yours.”

He’d done it again – referred to Quinn informally in front of the other guards. They reacted as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.

Quinn, however, was barely managing to conceal laughter. William and Thomas seemed to be having the same problem. He didn’t make eye contact with anyone else – his neck was getting hot enough already.

“Oh, I’m sure we have some extra guests right now,” Tobias said. “I had no idea how much company we’d end up with when I built that window for mine to get in and out, but the others always seem to find it.”

“Do you have more than one of your own?” Owning one of the birds – or, rather, having a seeker accept a person as a companion – was somewhat rare. None of the guards had one, with the exception of Marcus, who was technically Quinn’s advisor, not a guard, and those who had them most definitely only had one.

“I don’t know if I’d call them my own, but a good number of them like to roost in the barn. Half a dozen or so will occasionally consent to being made useful.”

Quinn stared at him like he’d grown a third eye. “You have several seekers you can use?”

“Yes.” Tobias’ response was indifferent, delivered as he took another bite of potatoes.

“Well, that could be useful.”

“Indeed. They’re rather handy companions. You’re welcome to ask for their services in whatever way you need, Your Majesty, although I wouldn’t try it today. All of the ones I know are picky about storms like this.”

The look on Quinn’s face might have made Zander laugh out loud if he wasn’t so… something. Embarrassed? Freezing? Confused?

He didn’t even bother to mumble an excuse as he made a hasty exit from the kitchen.

ZANDER WAS HALFWAY DOWN the hall when he realized that someone was following him. For a second, he couldn’t decide whether to turn around and see who it was or just hope they’d go away. After deliberation, he decided he’d rather know if it was one of the other guards – so he could find a place to hide other than the room he was sharing with them.

What he saw when he glanced back made him stop in his tracks.

“Finished with breakfast already?”

Linnea shrugged. “I’m not all that hungry this morning.”

“You should be; you’ve got…” The look on her face stopped him again. “You’ve got to be sick of people telling you what you should be doing,” he said instead.

“And here you thought you were slow on the uptake on things in this world.”

“Not everything is so different here.”

“I wouldn’t know. I never got the chance to compare.”

He paused, studying her furrowed brow and the faraway look in her gray eyes. “That bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“If you had known about the gate before you came here – that there was a way to travel to a whole different world, and your older brothers were allowed to visit it, but you never were, would it bother you?”

“I don’t have older brothers.”

The look she shot him was more than worth it.

“So you just figured out how to be a jerk all on your own?”

“What can I say? It’s a talent.”

“I guess one talent is better than none
.
”

“I’ve gotta take what I can get, Nay.” He chuckled. “In all seriousness, though, yes, that would bother me. I would have probably snuck off and done it anyway.”

“That might be a little easier to do on your side than on mine.”

“Maybe,” he allowed. “Of course, if I knew I might get permanently
stuck
, I don’t know if I’d have taken the risk.”

“It would be worse to be stuck on the other side.”

“How do you figure
that
?” He reached up and wiped away another drip from the melting mess in his hair – melting slowly at that, since it wasn’t exactly warm in this hallway.

“Well, for starters, losing ninety percent of my lifespan, missing all of those days with people I care about…”

She had a point – he’d never given much thought to that aspect before. “Of course, you people over here only live ten times as long if you don’t get attacked by a rabid animal, or poisoned by some plant, or murdered by your stepfather.”

“Samuel was murdered in your world, you know.”

“Still, in my world there are no armed guards who consider beheading me for not saying ‘Your Majesty’ when I talk to Quinn Robbins.”

Linnea grew quiet, giving him a plaintive look that he liked much, much less than her murderous one. “Is that what you’re so upset about?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Who said I was upset?”

Her eyebrow arched into an impossibly perfect
v
. “Who said I was stupid?”

“Well, if you think I’m so upset, did you consider that it might be because I have an enormous clump of bird poop on my head?”

His harsh tone didn’t faze her. “No. If you were in a regular mood, you might be annoyed, but you’d see how it was funny, too.”

“Is that why you followed me? So you could laugh at me about it?”

Even the accusation of following him didn’t make her flinch. “No. I came to see if you might want some help – or at least some company.”

He didn’t understand the sudden tightness in his throat; he coughed to cover it up. “You want to help me clean bird poop out of my hair?”

“Okay. Keep you company.”

Five minutes ago, he’d wanted nothing in the world more than he wanted to escape from all human contact. Now… he wasn’t so sure. He started walking down the hall. “Are you going to stop trying to make me talk about my feelings?”

She followed. “Are you kidding? You think I’m going to pass up an opportunity to focus on someone else’s problems?”

“Go back to the kitchen, Linnea.”

“Are you sure? Because
I’m
not sharing a room with anyone, and none of the guards are going to pop in there and give you a hard time. They’ll at least knock first.”

He whirled around to face her. “You’d let me clean up in there?”

“Sure. If you’re nice enough to me, I might even let you heat up some water over the fire and leave for a while so you could have a bath. There’s a washroom between my room and the one Quinn and William are in.”

“
I
can be nice.”

“Go and grab your clothes. And a comb.
That
I won’t share today.”

“So, are you doing okay?” Linnea asked when Zander showed up in her room with his stuff.

Without looking at her, he set his clean clothes down on a chair and headed toward the fireplace. A large pot already hung from the hook over the fire.

“Did you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Linnea! You shouldn’t be carrying that kind of stuff, should you?”

“Oh, calm down. Someone else left the water in here. I just put it over the fire.”

“Still…”

“Zander, nobody has time for me to be helpless. There’s cold water in that bucket right there. You can carry that into the washroom if it’s so important to you.” To punctuate her assertion, she sneezed loudly.

He couldn’t muster quite the same dirty look as she could, but he tried his best. “Bless you. And you’re asking me if
I’m
okay?”

“Yeah, I am. Surely you have a more interesting answer than I do. I’m a ridiculous mess who might not ever be completely okay again – the least you could do is provide a distraction.”

He stared at the flickering flames of the fire, debating exactly how warm he needed the water to be. “I’m as fine as anyone else – except I don’t know what I’m doing with, well, anything, and I know the other guards wonder exactly what the heck I’m doing here, and everyone in the house is in the Friends of Philip except for me, and I don’t have any useful advice for anyone, and there is bird poop in my hair.”

Keeping his eyes trained on the fire, he braced himself for her laughter, but it didn’t come. After a long moment, he turned to face her.

Her expression was soft, serious. “Was that so difficult?”

He stood and picked up the bucket of cold water to carry it to the promised washroom. “I don’t know if it was difficult, just useless. What does it matter if I’m upset? Nothing changes.” Walking away from her, he went into the adjoining room and took his time dumping the bucket into the small tub. For good measure, he grabbed a washcloth and soaked it before heading back to the room.

She was still there, sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him calmly as he started trying to scrub his hair. “Do you want to join the Friends of Philip?”

“Linnea, I’ve been in this world for exactly five minutes. I barely even know what that means. It’s some kind of crazy commitment of your life to a cause on a planet I have nothing to do with!”

She frowned. “You could only commit your life anymore to this ‘cause’ if you donated limbs or were actually killed, you know.” She sneezed again.

He wished he had a handkerchief or something to offer to her, but he didn’t, and she beat him to it anyway, pulling a white cloth from her pocket. “Limbs might be easier.”

“Exactly. You know, it’s a step that you moved to Philotheum, and that you agreed to do guard training, and you’ve been a little more pleasant with everyone – most of the time – but when are you going to start acting like you really belong here?”

“How about when I actually
do
?”

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “So, in your mind, then, never.”

“Yeah, probably. I
don’t
belong here. I’m not from here.”

This time she buried her face in her hands. “This? Really?
This
has to be the similarity between you and William? It took me forever to figure out what drew Quinn to both of you, and, well, I’m disappointed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“
You
, and this whole not-belonging here because you weren’t born here nonsense.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Do you know why people – the guards – are treating you like you don’t belong here?”

“Because I slip up nineteen times a day and don’t call Quinn ‘Her Majesty’?”

“Well, yeah, that’s part of it, but it’s more your reaction to it than anything else. You’re a hero who earned your place here as much – or more than – any of the other guards. And you have a legitimate reason to be used to just calling Quinn by her name.”

“It’s not legitimate to
them
.”

“It’s not anything to them. It’s none of their business. It’s between you and Quinn, and if she doesn’t call you out on it, it’s not their problem.”

“She should call me out on it.”

“She should. And you should quit doing it, at least in front of them, but that has nothing to do with you belonging here or not.”

He sucked air in through his nose. “So how do I belong here, Linnea? When I’m not even supposed to be here?”

She was quiet for a second, pensive. Then she looked at him. “Supposed to isn’t real, you know, Zander.”

“What?”

“This world you have in your head, this other place you’re ‘supposed’ to be – it’s not real. Don’t look at me like that. I know the other world
exists
, but the image you have in your head of yourself being there right now – that’s not real. Trust me. I have a world like that in my head, too… a whole world of what’s ‘supposed to be’ with Ben and decorating a nursery in the castle.”

He swallowed.

“But it’s all just imaginary. That’s not how it happened. Ben’s not in this world, and you’re
not
in that one. Maybe it’ll change in the future, but today is never going to be different. Where you are, right now, is how it is. This is where you belong. Nobody belongs any more or any less than you. And if you would just accept that, you would start to feel it.”

The spot he’d been scrubbing on the side of his head was starting to get sore.

“Yeah, it’s clean now, Zander,” Linnea said.

He dropped his hand. “So what are you saying I should do, join the Friends of Philip?”

She shrugged. “I’m saying you’ve already
joined
, only without the tattoo. Whether you get it or not is up to you, but don’t walk around thinking you shouldn’t be able to or you’re not entitled to. Like it or not, you’re one of us now.”

The water over the fire was bubbling; Zander grabbed the hook and swung out the little metal arm to bring the bucket out of the heat, and picked up the thick oven mitt. Before he slid it on, though, he looked back at Linnea. “Is getting the tattoo really as painful as the stories about it?”

“It would get you out of barn duty for a day or so.”

He chuckled softly. “All right. I’m going to take a bath. It will be nice to actually be clean.”