I J rf '~' I

Nonetheless, relief flooded him as Nikki returned, barely visible behind an armful of straw, bits trailing behind, more bits falling toward their small lamp.

"Dammit, fry." Deymorin rescued the lamp. "Be careful!"

Another silent objection from Mikhyel, which he ig- nored. His head hurt. He wasn't interested in any more discussions on child-rearing.

Nikki flung the armload down and stalked off again. Sev- eral more such trips had a sizable pile from which Nikki built himself a nest. Then he wrapped himself in his cloak and threw himself down, leaving the majority of the straw still in a pile.

For them.

And underneath, real concern that his gift would be rejected.

Deymorin met Mikhyel's glance, and Mikhyel's barrister face slipped away, leaving a sense of relieved amusement.

Deymorin went to Nikki's excess pile to throw an armload toward Mikhyel, who began arranging it against the wall. A second armful landed where he'd been sitting. A third . . .

Deymorin snuck a glance at Nikki, found one half-lidded blue eye watching him, felt the hope surge underneath . . .

And tossed the third armful on top of Nikkinest, cloak and all.

Nikki sputtered upright, visually indignant; Deymorin smiled, and said softly, "Thanks, fry."

Nikki burrowed back into his nest, and out of the tangle of hair, straw, and young man came a simple, muttered, "Welcome."

Deymorin plucked a straw free of the blond curls, and returned to arrange his own nest, not to sleep, but as pro- tection against the chill and to cushion the hard stone. He settled, upright, fully intending to spend the night awake.

"That's not necessary," Mikhyel said.

"Didn't say it was. I'm just not exactly sleepy."

He didn't add that he wasn't running the risk of Gan- frion coming anywhere near his brother, or that a part of him hoped the damned rapist would try. Mikhyel frowned, and turned toward the stone, a black shadow among shadows.

"Khyel, I'm . . ."

"Sorry? I know that, Deymio." Weariness permeated Mikhyel's voice and the underneath as well. "I . . . know that."

Deymorin slumped into his own mound of straw. He couldn't imagine what Mikhyel must be feeling behind that wall of nonemotion. He feared what ancient nightmares lurked within Mikhyel, ready to plague them all tonight.

He wanted Mikhyel to know, deep within, that it wouldn't happen again. He wanted the nightmares, Ganfrion . . . all of ithe wanted that gonepurged from Mikhyel's soul forever.

And all the wanting in the world wouldn't make it go away.

He wanted to hate Mheric. But the Mheric of his memo- ries was too different for Mikhyel's memories to take solid root in his own mind. He couldn't make the man who had been his father, who had taught him to ride, and wrestled with him, and laughed with himhe couldn't make that man capable of the acts the evidence increasingly suggested.

Besides, Mheric was gone.

So in the absence of Mheric, he hated Ganfrion and all his ilk. Hated those who took pleasure in another's humilia- tion and pain. He thought of what Ganfrion had forced his reserved and frail brother to do, and he thought of what he'd do to Ganfrion, should the opportunity arise. . . .

And found in those plans some relief from past guilt.

Mikhyel's shadow rippled. Pale fingers and a fall of torn lace appeared, slipped toward the cloak, caught the hem . . .

and froze.

Images seeped into Deymorin's mind. Glitter of gold braid, black wool padding his knees . . . Mikhyel's knees.

Matte weave turning sleek and shiny as fresh-oiled leather.

Water, or some other liquid, oozing through the wool, wick- ing through black, kidskin breeches.

The wall slammed down between them. The cloak slipped free, the white hand vanished, and Mikhyel bur- rowed into the bare straw.

Only a blind man would need an interpreter.

Deymorin unfastened his cloak; Mikhyel jerked. A frowning eye appeared over a narrow shoulder.

(Keep your damned clothesand your pityto yourself, Rhomandi.} The words hissed in his mind.

"Don't be a fool," Deymorin said, deliberately aloud.

Steadfastly ordinary. "I don't need it. Yours is soaked." He tried not to think of how it came to be that way: a foolish gesture, doomed to failure. The eye disappeared.

(Go to hell.} "For the love of Darius, * don't need it. You do. You've been ill, remember?"

The shadow shifted, gained eyes and a pale face.

"We need you. Barrister."

The eyes disappeared, this time behind lowered lids.

Deymorin sensed compromise and raised an arm.

"Share it?"

Mikhyel pushed himself upright, braced his elbow on his knee, cupped his chin in his hand, and frowned across at Deymorin. Then he buried his face in both hands, and his shoulders began to heave: laughter, Deymorin realized in some bemusement.

He raised his arm again, hopefully, and with a final shake of his head that set his hair to rippling in the faint light, Mikhyel relented. As his arm closed around Mikhyel's shoulders, Deymorin felt bone beneath the layers of cloth- ing, and beneath the layers of self-control . . .

Rings, he thought, no wonder Mikhyel kept himself separate.

Exhaustion. Cold. Consumed with fear that he'd fail everyone, his brothers, his city, just when they needed him the most.

But nothing about this most recent humiliation. There was no self-pity beneath Deymorin's arm, and no regrets.

Nothing of Mheric or Ganfrion or anything that Deymorin had expected. The Barrister had done what the Barrister had to do. For his brothers. For the City.

As the Barrister always had.

Deymorin had coined the phrase Hell's Barrister for the cold-eyed advocate who had faced him before the Syndicate and won. Khyel had been seventeen. Younger, by several months, than Nikki was now.

And the Barrister had been Mikhyel's armor ever since.

Deymorin realized that now. He knew that, as much as he hated that facade, Mikhyel needed it. Desperately.

And he conjured the image now, using it to counter the self-doubt, picturing the Barrister outmaneuvering his el- ders in the Council, controlling the debates through his elo- quence, his scholarship, and the unnerving figure he cut on the rostrum.

"Rings, Deymorin," Mikhyel whispered aloud, keeping his inner-self sacrosanct. "How would you know? You were never there."

"Wasn't I?" And he thought of those times he'd come to Rhomatum, unannounced, and stood in the Council Chamber, listening from the crowd as the acting Rhomandi bent the City to his will.

"Damn you, Rhomandi," came the uneven whisper.

"You could have told me."

Deymorin shrugged.

Mikhyel sighed heavily, and sagged against him, and Deymorin could almost feel him wrapping himself in Deymorin's fraternal reassurance as surely as he wrapped his body in Deymorin's cloak.

Across the pool of light, beyond the final flickerings of their tiny lamp, Nikki lay alone, radiating rejection, then self-pity, then guilt for feeling sorry for himself, then feeling sorry for Mikhyel, because he was sick, and then jealousy because Deymorin could make Mikhyel feel better and Nikki could only make him worse, and jealousy for Mikhyel, lying there sharing Deymorin's cloak with Deymorin's arm around him, and for that warm feeling they exuded.

Not in words; Deymorin rarely received anything so co- herent from Nikki. But Mikhyel was trying to sleep, his head sinking deeper into the cloak, and Deymorin tried to think of himself as a cloak against Nikki's thoughts, as the cloth shielded Mikhyel from Nikki's curious eyes.

Thoughts that soon turned to Ganfrion, curiosity that centered around the inmate's comments. Images of Mikhyel and Deymorin, and a sense of wondering if it could be true; wondering about the years before he'd arrived, trying to imagine the two of them together. . . .

A new image then, of two men beneath one cloak, of Deymorin's arm around Mikhyel. And Deymorin's hand brushing Mikhyel's hair. And Deymorin's head bending over Mikhyel'slike a lover's.

And from under his arm, out of the haze of exhaustion and near sleep, came need. Desire. Hope. Emotions that mingled uncomfortably with those images from Nikki.

And vanished, as Mikhyel came awake.

Mikhyel pushed away, escaping Deymorin's touch, and Deymorins' cloak. Gathering his soiled and damp garment off the stone floor, Mikhyel moved away from the circle of light, isolating his feelings from the cocktail Nikki was serv- ing them all.

Nikki watched him go, despair and self-loathing adding themselves to the mix.

"Damn you, Nikki," Deymorin said slowly, deliberately, and realized with a marked lack of surprise how little Nikki's stricken look moved him, realizing, at that moment, how amazingly simple it would be to hate his youngest brother.

Mikhyel clenched his fists and squeezed his eyes closed, trying to force Nikki's formless anguish from his mind. He wished Deymorin would take his recriminations back, would leave Nikki his comfortable illusions, the easy secu- rity of love without reservations, without conditions, if not for Nikki's sake, then to quiet all their minds.

But that, he knew, wasn't possible. Not for Deymorin.

For Deymorin, lovetrue adult lovewas never uncondi- tional, it was a by-product of respect and admiration of a person toward whom he was predisposed to feel affection.

Never mind he'd raised Nikki to expect otherwise. Never mind they both had.

Anger, betrayal, curiosity: all those and more flowed from Nikki. Strongest of all was fear. Nikki had realized at last what Mikhyel had done, and he was scared, his con- jured images far more horrific than actual fact had been.

Nikki didn't understand that the deal was made, that he was safe for the night.

At first Mikhyel passively accepted that flow of brotherly anguish. Then he actively sought it, drawing it out like poi- son from a wound. The effort left his pounding head filled with uncertainty and strange images of himself and Deym- orin and Ganfrion, but he could mark those images as Nikki's and ignore them.

And he could send back to Nikki a soothing salve of reassurance, of safety. His reward, as his younger brother finally settled into exhausted, quiet sleep, was his own peace. Peace and Deymorin. Within arm's reach, an instant and instinct short of making that contact that would grant him undeni- able access to Mikhyel's thoughts.

Deymorin was trying to stay quiet, trying to control those instincts to eradicate the pain and the humiliation that he believed Mikhyel must be experiencing, but despite those valiant efforts, Deymorin's concerns filled the air like a thick, cloying smoke.

Deymorin's concerns. Deymorin's guilt. Mikhyel wished he could explain to Nikki that once Deymorin ceased reliv- ing the past, lifeall their liveswould return to something akin to normal.

Deymorin wondered whether he should leave Mikhyel to his private thoughts or push him to purge those thoughts with expression. And Deymorin was worried that, if he chose incorrectly, poor, violated Mikhyel might fall over the edge into some pit of self-hatred that would destroy him forever.

And on a more basic level, Deymorin couldn't under- stand Mikhyel's reactions now. Deymorin wanted him to break down, or to turn Deymorin loose on Ganfrion. Mi- khyel's cold acceptance of the incident . . . frightened Deymorin. An assessment Mikhyel doubted Deymorin would make of the emotions he radiated.

More importantly to Mikhyel, those memories of Mheric that Deymorin believed Mikhyel needed to purge were as far off the mark of past truths as Nikki's imaginings were regarding Ganfrion's pack.

Speculation. Deymorin hadn't gotten as much of Mikhy- el's past as he'd thought.

For which ignorance Mikhyel was exceedingly thankful.

"Nikki's an ass," came out of that turmoil at last.

"He just hasn't figured out how to keep quiet yet. He tries hardtoo hard, I sometimes think. Maybe that's why he can't hear us." He shrugged, for all it was too dark for Deymorin to see. "Who knows?"

"And you don't care to find out."

"Not at the moment."

"Doesn't excuse what else he was throwing around."

"What was he supposed to think, when you coddle me more than you do Kiyrstin, whom you supposedly love so deeply?"

"Kiyrstin doesn't need coddling."

"Neither do 1."

"Looked in a mirror lately?"

" 'Fry'? Why don't you complete the question . . . big brother?"

"I wasn't thinking that."

"No? You could have fooled me. Poor little fry. The closet was a damned long time ago, JD."

"The closet. What makes you think I care spit about the closet?"

"I don't think, I know For the past month, every time we're in the same room that damned outdated image floats between us."

Even as he spoke, the black hole that was the door of the closet at Darhaven flashed in Deymorin's mind. An instant later, it was gone, a conscious shut-down from Deymorin. But he was too late.