The Theft of Sunlight by Intisar Khanani (story reading .TXT) 📕

blanket. “What about you? Will you be going home to some country lover of yours?”

I laugh. For the first time in a long time, this subject strikes me as funny. “Not likely,” I tell Bren. “If you think country families don’t want thieves, you should see what they think of cripples. Goats will sing before I marry.”

Bren doesn’t answer. I look up, focusing on his face. He is staring across the room, his jaw clenched. He’s angry. I lift my hand, but I can’t quite reach his cheek. He turns to look at me. I lower my hand at the hardness of his face, the cutting darkness of his eyes as he meets mine.

“It’s all right,” I tell him uncertainly. I’m not quite sure why he would be furious. It must be what I’ve said about him. Perhaps my tears have bothered him more than I realized; perhaps he despises me for them. Or maybe I’ve just said something else foolish. I swallow, meeting his gaze. “I didn’t mean that about Kelari Freshna.”

He lets his breath out in a bark of laughter that has none of the lightness of his other laughs. “Never mind Kelari Freshna. You’d better get some sleep. This will all look different to you in the morning.”

It will? I shake my head. “Bren?”

He stiffens slightly, just a faint tightening of his shoulders, but I see it because there’s no shirt to hide it.

“Your name isn’t really Bren, is it?” I whisper. I don’t know why I ever thought it was. No, I’ve known it wasn’t, but I wanted to forget that, even as I wanted to believe a thief would only ever thieve small things, not kill or imprison or meet my gaze without apology while admitting his wrongs.

“No.” He rises and moves to the door without looking at me. “I’ll send Kelari Bakira in with food for you. You should try to eat before you sleep. It will help balance out the medicine.”

I don’t have any better name to call him by, so I use what he has given me. “Bren?”

He pauses, his hand on the doorknob. There is something terribly final in the way he stands.

“I’ll see you again, won’t I?” I don’t know why it’s so important to me, but I can’t bear to part with him like this, a jumble of emotions and words that don’t make sense, the possibility that I’ve wronged him after everything. Have I? He’d been upset, and then I used his name and that bothered him more. His not-name.

He turns toward me, his face shuttered, emotionless as a painting or a stone wall. “I’m not sure, Rae. It might be better if you didn’t.”

He steps out, holding open the door for Kelari Bakira to bring me a tray of food. And then he’s gone.

I don’t want to have lost Bren’s regard, not because I’ve said or done something, or demanded truths of him I didn’t really want to know. Whatever was in that brew is mixing me up, making me say and think things I would normally keep hidden. Even if he is—even if he has done things I can’t understand, I don’t want—I don’t know what I want. I press my cheek into the pillow, and hope that the morning will bring some clarity.

Somehow, I doubt it will.

Chapter

31

I wake to a sense of surrealness, as if the room I find myself in is something I once saw in a dream. But it wasn’t a dream, was it? This room, the low bed I lie on, the familiar shapes of the mosaics . . .

“A drink of water, kelari?”

I turn my head to the side, my neck stiff. Kelari Bakira—that was her name, wasn’t it?—leans forward from her cushion. At my look, she rises and offers me the glass of water from the bedside table. I nod, and struggle to sit up while she hovers beside me. My arm hurts, a throbbing that immediately drives my worries from my mind.

Bakira holds the cup to my lips, and I take a few sips, the water cool and refreshing. I glance down at my arm, the white bandage wrapped around it covering the stitches. Twenty-some stitches. And a bitter brew that left me spouting nonsense to Bren in the middle of the night. Had I actually suggested he marry Kelari Freshna?

“Is he still here?” I ask, desperately hoping she’ll tell me Bren has gone out, that I won’t have to face him again with the absurd things I said last night between us. Won’t have to face what he thinks of me now.

“The young master?” Bakira asks, setting the glass down. “He said to send for him when you were ready to leave.”

“Oh,” I manage. But I had told him I wanted to see him again, hadn’t I? Because I couldn’t possibly have left an avenue open for me to escape without facing the humiliation of my words. And actions. I distinctly remember my hand in his hair. Oh God.

“Let’s get you up, then,” Bakira says cheerfully. Despite her panicked performance of the night before, she proves herself quite competent, helping me to rise and change into fresh clothes. She sits me down on the edge of the bed and brushes and rebraids my hair as I stare at the floor, unfortunately rehearsing as much of our conversation as I can dredge up from the night before. I played with his hair. And grieved that he was only what he ever told me he was. And suggested he find a girl among Red Hawk’s thieves or marry the village shoplifter. I clench my jaw and hope Bakira can’t see the flush warming my cheeks.

When she is done, I thank her, forcing a smile.

“Of course, kelari. Here are your things.” She gestures to a tray set beside the bed. It contains my sash, my bone knife, and the archer’s journal.

“Ah,” I say, and that’s apparently all I need to say, for she fetches the items herself, laying the knife