Rowan grinned again, and Astrin slid down in his seat so he could rest his head against the back. He closed his eyes, trying to shut Rowan out.
“You don’t look too good, you know.”
“Yeah, I know. Shut up.”
“Perhaps you shouldn’t have drunk so much last night.”
“Oh, ha-ha, very funny.” Astrin glared at him but couldn’t seem to find the energy for any more. He closed his eyes again and swallowed hard, looking distinctly green around the mouth.
Rowan wasn’t really happy to see Astrin in distress. To tell the truth, he’d much rather have sat next to him, put his arm around him, and rested Astrin’s head against his own shoulder, but he couldn’t do that.
They seemed to have fallen into a pattern that vacillated between deep friendship and almost its opposite. Rowan had to admit much of it was down to him. The closer they grew, the angrier he became that there could never be more, never be enough. He took that anger out on Astrin. It was unfair, but he couldn’t seem to control his feelings.
“Must have been the bacon and eggs you had for breakfast. They were quite greasy. The eggs were runny, weren’t they? And….”
Astrin opened his eyes and gave Rowan a venomous look before his eyes widened, and he swallowed hard.
“I um… I… I think I should….” Without another word, he got to his feet and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Rowan feeling like a complete shit.
When Astrin had not returned half an hour later, he felt even worse. He was on the verge of going in search of him, when he had an idea.
“Hey… you okay?”
There was a long pause, during which Rowan began to panic.
“Like you’d care.”
“Of course I care. I was worried. Where are you?”
“Throwing up.”
“Harsh. Is it still hurting to talk like this?”
“No. It’s fine… mostly.”
“Where are you?”
There was silence.
“Astrin?”
More silence.
“Astrin, are you okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You went quiet.”
“Can’t talk and throw up at the same time.”
“Shit… still? Where are you?”
“In hell.”
“All right, I asked for that one. Are you in the toilet?”
“Yeah.”
“Stay put. I’m on my way.”
“No, we’ll lose the seats.”
“Fuck the seats.”
“No. I’ll be okay. I—I feel better now.”
“Liar.”
“Ugh.”
“I can feel it, Astrin. When I’m in your head, I feel it. I know you feel like crap.”
“No prizes for that, Rowan. I… I’m….”
Astrin broke off and fell silent again, and Rowan sighed, getting up. A middle-aged woman in the next seat had been sharing boiled sweets with him for most of the journey. He asked politely if she wouldn’t mind taking care of their seats for a little while.
“Is he feeling poorly… your friend? It takes some of us like that, traveling. Me, I’m back and forth on this train so often that I may as well have a seat with my name on it. Don’t worry. You go and see to that young man of yours, and I’ll make sure he’ll have somewhere to rest his bones when you get back.”
Rowan gave the woman a searching look, but she simply smiled in an open and friendly way. He nodded and began to fight his way through the crowd.
There was a queue outside the toilet, which was quickly turning into an angry mob. They glared at Rowan as he pushed his way to the front, but he ignored them. “Oh, for goodness sake just go find another toilet,” he grumbled at a man who was trying to elbow him out of the way. Rowan knocked aside the elbow and tapped on the door.
“Ast–– Oh shit. Cody it’s me. Open up.” For a while nothing happened, so he knocked again, more loudly. “Cody.”
Again there was a silence, then a click as the door was unlocked. Ignoring the heckling from the crowd, Rowan squeezed into the cubicle and shut the door behind him. There wasn’t much room, but considering it was a toilet on a train, it was clean, didn’t smell too bad—except for the acrid smell of vomit—and was larger than he’d expected.
Astrin had slid onto the floor and was resting his head on the toilet bowl. He looked up at Rowan like a lost child.
“No need to ask how you feel. You look bloody awful. Have you been being sick this whole time?”
Astrin frowned. “Not all the time. But every time I think I’m feeling better and try to stand up, I….” He swallowed hard. “I get sick again.”
Rowan handed him a bottle of water he’d picked up from a vending machine on the way. Astrin took the bottle gratefully and sipped. He leaned his head back against the wall and peered at Rowan through slitted eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“For getting so pissed last night and making myself sick this morning.”
“Hey, you’re the one being sick. There’s no need to apologize to me.”
Astrin smiled thinly and took another sip of the water. Leaning against the sink, Rowan watched him. Even sick and sweaty, sitting on the floor of a toilet, he was still beautiful.
“Can you try to get up? There’s an angry mob out there. They’ll break their way in with burning torches and pitchforks in a minute.”
Astrin groaned. “Really?”
“Yep.”
“Gods, how the mighty have fallen.”
“Not so mighty; not so fallen. Come on. We’ll go outside for a while.”
Nodding, then wincing, Astrin got up and squeezed out of the door to catcalls and lewd suggestions, which he ignored. Rowan, on the other hand, glared at each and every one of them.
It was hot outside, very hot. Without the air conditioning, it was the kind of dry heat that made it hard to breathe. The fact that the train was traveling fast helped a little, but the balcony was sandwiched between two carriages so there wasn’t enough breeze to properly cool them. At least there was no one else there.
“Feeling better now?” Rowan asked gently, and Astrin nodded. He didn’t look better. He leaned over the railing, gulping in breaths of the hot dusty air.
Rowan stood and watched as Astrin struggled with his nausea. Occasionally Rowan handed him the water bottle from which Astrin sensibly sipped, until the color started to come back to his cheeks. Finally, the rigidness left his shoulders.
The wind whipped the hair around Astrin’s face, and after a time he stopped trying to control it, simply closing his eyes and letting it blow. Rowan thought it made him look primal, like some kind of elemental spirit shining in the darkness. The darkness, of course, was metaphorical as it was anything but dark with the sun glinting mercilessly off the chrome and shimmering on the surface of the glass.
No, it was not dark, although it felt as if it were. For all the heat and light, Rowan felt cold, like a small child crouching in the dark, terrified of what was hiding in the shadows. He’d been terrified for a while now.
Eventually Astrin turned to Rowan and said, “I thought I told you not to leave our seats.”
“Huh… fine gratitude for saving your life.”
Astrin groaned. “Seriously, though. We have more than three hours left. I don’t want to stand up the whole way. To be honest, I don’t know if I can.”
“You worry too much. I have it covered.”
“You do?”
Rowan led him back to the seats, which were being guarded fiercely. The woman had moved so that she was facing two empty seats on which she had piled baggage, and the boys’ jackets made them an impenetrable fortress. She gathered the things together when she saw them and dumped most of it on the floor around her feet.
Not liking to point out their seats had been opposite each other, they sank down into the empty seats. Rowan let Astrin sit by the window.
“Feeling better, dear?” the woman asked, patting Astrin’s knee.
Astrin nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
“Here, have a boiled sweet, it will take the taste out of your mouth and keep it moist. It’s barley sugar, good for an unsettled stomach.”
Astrin was about to turn it down, then thought better of it and took it with a nod of thanks.
The woman was now very talkative, clearly under the impression that, as she’d been entrusted with caring for the seats, she was now accepted as a friend by the two boys. Rowan did his best to make polite conversation, while Astrin remained silent and withdrawn, initially staring out of the window, then falling asleep with his head on Rowan’s shoulder.
When Astrin first slid sideways, Rowan went stiff, his eyes widening. As soon as he realized Astrin was asleep, his attitude changed entirely, and he became gentle and careful, settling Astrin into a more comfortable position cradled against him. Closing his eyes, Rowan rested his cheek against Astrin’s soft golden hair. The woman watched him with a shrewd expression in her eyes.
“He’s very sweet, your young man.” The words snapped Rowan back from the edge of sleep, making him open his eyes.
“Sorry?”
“He’s very sweet, beautiful too.”
Rowan glanced at the person in the fourth seat. He seemed to be fast asleep. Swallowing nervously, he nodded and gave her a tight-lipped smile.
“He is. He’s very… um… sweet.” He huffed. “But he’s not… I mean, he’s just a friend.”
The woman leaned forward conspiratorially. “But you wish he weren’t, don’t you?”
Rowan’s eyes widened. “No. I….”
“It’s all right, dear. I won’t say anything—but I think
you
should. You make a cute couple.”
“We’re
not
a couple.”
The woman smiled and nodded, sitting back in her seat. Rowan turned to stare out of the window. He was flooded with emotions. Embarrassment was one of the prime ones, but there were more, so many more. For a moment he allowed himself to believe that it could be, that there was a chance they could actually….
He heaved a sigh and closed his eyes, resting his head back against the seat and relishing the heavy weight of Astrin’s head on his shoulder. Without conscious thought, his hand rose and stroked the softness of Astrin’s hair. His heart fluttered when Astrin murmured and snuggled deeper into his shoulder. Terrified, he let his hand drop and opened his eyes to find the woman looking at him. She winked and scared the hell out of him.
Astrin didn’t wake until the train was pulling into the station. For some fifteen or twenty minutes, they’d been passing through outskirts of the city, consisting first of shack-like dwellings, some made of mud and clay and others nothing more than hastily tacked together sheets of corrugated metal. The shacks gave way to long, low brick buildings, housing whole families in one or two rooms. These in turn were left behind, replaced by more substantial homes, gradually becoming more spaced out with hints of green here and there from gardens and squares.
T
HE
C
ITY
ON
THE
H
ILL
T
HE
TWO
friends stumbled off the train and had their first sight of Agavi, capital city of the Southern Kingdom. It was built around the huge palace complex, the Heart of the South, where the royal family of House Michael had its principal residence.
The complex itself was on the summit of a high hill, and the city spread around its base. Tall tower blocks with shining silvered windows reaching toward the sky, and temples with gold and silver roofs and jewel-bright energy panels, provided color to the black and white hues of the hotels, office blocks, shops, and trading areas.
Around the first slopes of the hill, the commercial buildings gave way to the residential areas. Houses of all shapes and sizes decorated the green skirts, growing grander as they rose toward the high walls of the palace complex.
Compared to the beautiful city that surrounded it, the palace complex was squat, ugly, and sinister. Astrin and Rowan exchanged glances. It was ironic that not only was the Heart of the South rotten at the core; it looked it.
“What do we do now?” Astrin asked.
“I’ve no idea. You’re the one with all the answers. I’ve just been following you.”
Rowan’s tone was light, but Astrin turned to him with a frown on his face. “Do you really think that? That I have all the answers?”
“No,” Rowan said carefully. “Not all of them, but you seem to know what you’re doing out here in the big wide world. You’ve been leading me, teaching me, protecting me. You’re so strong and sure of yourself and—”
Astrin’s eyes widened. “Really? That’s what you really think about me?”
Rowan nodded, uncertain. “Are you angry about it?”
“Angry? No, not at all. Surprised, I suppose. I didn’t think…. That’s not how
I
feel.”
“Then how
do
you feel? That’s one thing we never talk about.”
“How do I feel? Scared. Scared is how I feel, especially now that we’re so close. I know they’re there. My father is there, so close. I’m his only chance, maybe the only chance for House Raphael. It all rests on my shoulders, and it is so—”
“
Ours
, Astrin—
our
shoulders, not yours. You’re not alone.”
Astrin opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. Impulsively and shockingly, at least to Rowan, Astrin hugged him and whispered, “Thank you. That means a lot.” Then he disappeared into the milling crowd, leaving Rowan to hurry after him, fearing to lose him in the throng.
Outside, the station streets led off in every direction, confusing the boys with their similarity. As the complex was on the summit of the hill, they figured anywhere that led upward was good, although they didn’t really want to venture into the residential area since there wasn’t much chance they’d learn anything useful there.
Allowing their feet to lead them, they soaked in the unique flavor of the South and, in particular, of Agavi, its heart.