Angelfire | The Whispering Wall #3

Nineteen: Kindnesses

Jordan's head hurt.

It wasn't the worst headache he'd ever had, but combined with the boulder sitting in his gut and the relentless tremoring of his legs and hands, he felt wretched anyway. He couldn't go and lie down, because Astra was passed out in his bed, nor could he go and sit in the front room, because Yddris and Nika were fighting again. Everyone else was out on jobs and errands, so he hid in the courtyard with Ren, throwing narrow sticks of kindling for her to fetch.

Ren had run straight to Yddris's after Silas had attacked him, and had returned with both Yddris and Nika. Jordan had been on the floor when they arrived, with Arlen leaning over him and Darin still cradling his head after the seizure. The assassin had sworn vehemently in some guttural language that Jordan was certain he'd heard Usk speaking sometimes and vanished down an alleyway, dragging Darin with him.

"Rest up," the man had told him firmly as he'd propped Jordan against the wall. "Get some sleep. Ignore that shithead, he's pissed with everyone at the moment."

And then Yddris and Nika had been kneeling in front of him, demanding to know what had happened.

Well, he couldn't lie about it; it was fairly obvious something bad had happened, and both Unspoken knew about Silas. Still he'd been hesitant, knowing that his safety was one of the biggest points of contention between the two Unspoken - and as he had both expected and dreaded, the arguing started the minute they got home. That had been the previous night; Nika had been away for several hours in the intervening time, and when he returned he had still been in the mood to argue.

He suspected the tremors hadn't helped. He'd been woken in the early hours by the disruption in Nictaven's rhythm, as familiar to him as breathing. It was an echo of how he'd felt when Harkenn's rune wall collapsed during the demon siege; for several seconds he could not tell which way was up, and then the pounding headache rushed in. He'd staggered into the living room to find Yddris and Henrik kneeling by Astra's prone form, and then spent the rest of the early hours on a bedroll in the front room while she recovered in his bed. She hadn't woken yet, but Nika had assured him that it was just an exhausted sleep now. Though no one else had been hit as hard as Astra, tempers were fraying more easily than usual.

"Thought I might find you hiding out here." Koen sat down on the bench beside him. Jordan hoped he hadn't noticed his flinch, so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he hadn't noticed the man arrive. Koen picked up a stick of kindling and Ren rushed to squat near his feet, green eyes fixed unerringly on the stick, ears up and tail flicking. He threw it, and she dashed after it with a swish of thick black fur.

"Head still hurts," Jordan muttered. And everything else.

But he wasn't about to tell Koen about Silas.

"Mine too." Koen sighed. "Looks like Cara might have been right about the Wall, more's the pity."

"Mm." It was not a comforting thought.

"Don't suppose you know what they're fighting about this time?" Koen said, after a moment of silence that wasn't uncomfortable. Jordan was suddenly, violently grateful to have met Koen, the least complicated, least demanding relationship he had in his life right now. He had to fight down a tightness in his throat before he could answer.

"I rarely know exactly what it is, but it usually starts with something Yddris did." He sighed. "They can't half keep a fight going. Has it always been like this?"

He hadn't really expected Koen to answer; though he had graduated, Koen hadn't been Unspoken much more than a couple of years longer than Jordan had. Hap or Henrik would have been the better bet, but Koen surprised him.