NOTE: I ended up deleting this entire subplot and because I didn’t think it added anything to the book and I was worried it made Sycamore seem too unsympathetic that he hadn’t made an effort to contact his parents before. If deleting it was the wrong call, don’t tell me, because it’s too late now!

+ + +

Marut rubbed at his eyes until his hazy vision cleared. They weren’t in the mountains any longer. Sycamore hadn’t sent them back to the steppe, or to the badlands. They stood on a narrow dirt path, and beside them ran a flowing stream with rosewood trees growing on the banks. A hawk-cuckoo called from the branches. The air was damp and balmy with spring and smelled of wood smoke. Marut turned to look behind him, where a small collection of buildings clustered where the path met a larger road, all of them flat-roofed, perfectly square, and painted various bright shades of green and yellow.

“We’re in Chedi,” he said, realizing. 

“Yes,” Sycamore said. He put his arm over Rhododendron’s neck and leaned his weight on her. Marut could sense nothing through the bond, as if Sycamore were too stunned to know how to feel. “But I meant to bring us to Banuri.”

Marut moved to him and set his hand at the back of Sycamore’s neck, holding him there gently, his lungs filled—somehow—with the air of home. “You’re a wonder. Can you walk? We’ll go ask for aid in the village. They can tell us where we are.”

“No,” Sycamore said. “I know where we are.”

A sound from behind him caught Marut’s attention. He turned to see a man leading a goat on a tether. He had stopped to stare at them, and Marut was sure they made an arresting sight in their long Sarnoy coats with horses finer than were ever seen in a rural village like this one.

“The way is yours,” Marut said, taking Bunny’s reins to move him from the path.

But the man didn’t look in Marut’s direction at all. He was staring at Sycamore, eyes fixed on his face, and Sycamore stared back at him as the bond flooded with sudden, painful shock.

“Dhanu?” the man said uncertainly.

+ + +

Sycamore could walk if he leaned on Rhododendron for support. He felt shaky and queasy, weak with the abrupt emptying of his magic, and his fingertips remained numb even after his hands warmed. His palm throbbed steadily. Was it the exertion of transporting, or the shock of the destination? He had felt worse the last time, but that was with his shoulder shattered into a hundred fragments.

His father was silent as he led them the short distance to the house—the same house Sycamore had grown up in, tucked away in a grove of apple trees at the end of the path, with the stream curving away behind it. It looked smaller than he remembered, and shabbier, the green paint chipped and faded. His mother’s rose bushes still grew along the front of the house, covered in buds just beginning to show their color. A rough homemade chair sat beside the door with a gray cat perched on the seat, grooming its face. It hopped down as they approached and strolled off around the side of the house, its fluffy tail held high like a banner.

“How did you know me?” Sycamore asked, finally managing to bring his cloudy thoughts into order.

His father glanced over. “The scar above your eyebrow. You fell when you were very small and split your forehead open on the edge of a table.”

Sycamore touched his fingertips to the raised line of scar tissue. He had wondered more than once where the mark came from. His parents had surely told him at some point, but he’d forgotten.

Marut set the horses loose to graze in the orchard and helped Sycamore into the house. The interior was just as it had been in Sycamore’s childhood, one room furnished with divans that served as sitting and sleeping surfaces, a few storage chests, and the household altar. Bundles of drying herbs hung from the rafters, and garlands of last year’s apples. The oilcloth window coverings had been drawn back to let in the warm air, and late afternoon sun poured through, gilding the room in golden light.

Sycamore sat on one of the divans, feeling that he was still lost in a blizzard. Marut and Sycamore’s father discussed practicalities about horses, food, and cooking. They went outside to do something with the horses, their voices drifting through the window. Sycamore finally stirred himself to bend over and remove his boots and socks. With his bare feet planted on the dirt floor, the earth began murmuring its green springtime thoughts to him.

By the time Marut came back into the house a few minutes later, Sycamore felt mostly alive again. Marut had brought him some dried meat and the last of their cheese, and Sycamore devoured every crumb and then said, “Where’s my father?”

“Making tea. I told him there’s no need, but he wouldn’t listen. He said your mother is in the village visiting her niece who had a baby a few days ago.” Marut sat down beside him, his thigh pressed to Sycamore’s. “You look so much like him.”

“Do I?” Sycamore brought one hand to his own face, as if he could feel the resemblance. That was how his father had known him. 

“Now I know what you’ll look like in twenty years.”

“Thirty, surely,” Sycamore said. He let out a shuddering breath. “I should have listened to you about the weather in the pass.”

“We’re here now, and safe. And you saved us a week off our journey. Let me see your hand.” Marut took Sycamore’s hand in his and studied the cut on his palm. “Clotted over already. That’s good. I’ll wrap it anyway to keep it clean.”

“I can heal it,” Sycamore said, but in truth he was still so drained he wasn’t sure he could manage. He sat while Marut dug through the saddlebags and came out with a strip of clean linen, which he gently wrapped around Sycamore’s hand and tied off with a knot.

Sycamore’s father came in halfway through this process, holding two cups, and stood in the doorway to watch without any expression as Marut tended to Sycamore’s injury.

“Marut is my husband,” Sycamore said, and held Marut’s gaze when he glanced up, daring him to say anything contradictory. It was the truth in every way that mattered. No priest had married them, but they were married nonetheless.

“You were as tall as my elbow when you left us,” his father said. “And now you’re grown and married. Oh!” His eyes went bright with unshed tears. He shook his head and came forward to offer Sycamore one of the cups. “Have some tea.”

They sat and drank. Sycamore and his father considered each other from opposite divans. Sycamore hardly knew what to say to him. Nearly thirty years had passed since Sycamore was taken to the capital. The man who had taught him to fish in the stream and climb trees and had kissed his forehead every night before bed was a stranger now. 

“You’re dressed for winter,” his father said at last.

Sycamore shifted on the divan. He was in truth somewhat overheated in his coat. “Yes. We were south of the mountains. It’s not much past the thaw there.”

“The mountains,” his father repeated. “Because of the war?”

Sycamore looked at him, this village man in his homemade clothes with his weathered face and gray hair. He was old, an old man, and had likely never in his life gone farther than Seoni, a day’s walk to the west. In Sycamore’s childhood, he had seemed infinitely knowledgeable and wise, full of information about birds and fish, and how to tend apple trees so they would bear the most fruit. He wasn’t a fool, but Sycamore would be surprised if he knew there were nomads in the Khentii, or even that anything existed south of the mountains at all.

“We were on a mission and got separated from our patrol,” Marut said. “Then we ran into a snowstorm crossing the Koramandi. Sycamore—Dhanu brought us here with his magic.”

Sycamore’s father looked back and forth between them. “You didn’t mean to come here, then.”

“No,” Sycamore confessed. “We need to return to Banuri. I didn’t aim well.”

“I see.” His father placed his hands on his knees. “Well. We’d be happy for you to spend the night here before you go on your way.”

The skin around Sycamore’s eyes felt tight. His hand throbbed against the hot cup of tea. Beside him, Marut shifted on the divan. Sycamore wished he had brought them anywhere else in the world, even to the very bottom of the ocean. He had been right: too many years had gone by, and he was only a painful reminder of the past.

A noise came at the door. Sycamore stared down at his cup as the door opened and his mother came in.

“Oh,” she said, stopping there in the threshold. “Yuvan, I didn’t know we had guests.”

Sycamore looked up at her. She had hardly changed aside from growing old. Her braided hair was as thick as ever, only silver, and her purple gown as jauntily draped, with a blue shawl trailing from her shoulders. She exuded magic in a way he hadn’t noticed as a child, or had only thought was part of her wonderful, familiar maternal aura, the transcendent glow of her love.

“Who is this,” she said, her voice high and shrill.

“Dhanu has come back to see us,” his father said.

“No,” she said. “It can’t be.” She turned aside and drew her shawl up to hide her face, and then went out of the house again, leaving the door wide open to the evening, and Sycamore’s father calling after her wouldn’t bring her back.

Sycamore sat on the divan, a numb, thoughtless lump, as his father went out into the orchard and stayed there for some time. Marut sat beside him, drinking tea in silence, until at last he said, “Should we leave?”

“Probably,” Sycamore said. He rose to his feet. He could feel Marut’s concern and confusion but could do nothing to ease either, not when he was so concerned and confused himself. “Wait here.”

He found his parents sitting on a weather-worn bench in the orchard. The trees were in full bloom and the air was sweet with their scent. His parents looked up as he approached but said nothing. In their weary, lined faces, Sycamore could read decades of grief.

He knelt on the ground at their feet. “Forgive me. I’ve distressed you.”

His mother blotted at her eyes with the hem of her shawl. She reached out and cupped his cheek in one hand. Her eyes searched his face, and he wondered what she saw there, or how he had changed since she knew him. 

“You’re full of magic,” she said. “They were right about you.”

“I had a good teacher,” Sycamore said, thinking with a pang of how Temur had wept this time when they said goodbye.

“You’re a sorcerer in truth.” She dropped her hand and sat back. “And bonded, your father tells me.”

Shame swallowed Sycamore whole. He should have come to visit years ago, or at least written a letter; neither of his parents could read, but there were people in the village who would read a letter for a few coins. Instead, he had let them wonder about his fate year after year, growing old in this house where they had raised him. Yes, he had duties to the king, but he had duties to his family, too, and he had sorely neglected those.

“Forgive me,” he said again. “For coming here without warning. For not coming sooner. I didn’t want to cause you pain, if you would rather not see me. But I caused you pain anyway by not coming. I made the wrong choice.”

His father shook his head. “You were six years old. You were taken from us. How could we blame you for anything that’s happened since?”

“Nirav told me you would never come back,” his mother said. “Do you remember him? The wizard who trained me, and he was trained by a man who went to Banuri for a while, but in the end the sorcerers decided he wasn’t skilled enough to join them. He said you would be made to think we wanted to send you away, and encouraged to forget us.”

“I was,” Sycamore said, with a chill pricking the back of his neck. Who had first put the thought in his head? He couldn’t remember. Some messenger boy, some kitchen scullion. There were many mouths in the palace ready to whisper into a waiting ear. He had clung fast to the belief that his parents loved him, but doubt clung to him in turn. Wouldn’t they have put up more resistance if they truly wanted to keep him?

His mother’s smile didn’t touch the sadness in her eyes. “It’s all in the past, Dhanu. The ancestors have given us the gift of seeing you once more, well and happy. I’ll be grateful for that. Come, let’s go inside before we lose all the light.”

+ + +

His parents offered the spare divan for the night, but Sycamore could feel how intensely Marut wanted to be alone with him and said they would be pleased to sleep in their tent out in the orchard. Both moons were high and cast enough light that they had no trouble setting up the tent. Sycamore could likely do it with his eyes closed by now, or with only one hand.

“We could stay here for a while,” Marut said as they laid out their furs. “A few days, at least. To rest the horses and get some supplies.”

“We can get better supplies in Seoni. I’d like to leave tomorrow. It’s still a week to Banuri from here.”

Marut was silent as he undressed and lay down. Then he said, “Will you tell me what’s on your mind?”

Sycamore lay beside him in the dark of the tent, his thoughts churning like the blizzard as it bore down upon them from the pass. Too much had happened in the past day—in the past few hours. He had truly thought they would die in the pass, and he had acted without thinking, doing whatever he could to take Marut away from danger. His palm throbbed, wrapped in its bandage. Here they were a world away from the steppe, and that alone would have been a lot to take in. Finding that he had sent them to his parents’ village caused more emotional upheaval than he could process.

“I was taken from them,” was what emerged from his mouth. “I was so young—Marut, I was only a child. And I was taken away because I have talents that can serve the kindgom. But couldn’t that have waited? Another five years or ten—I could have learned from my mother, or gone to Seoni and been close enough to come home regularly. I don’t see why it had to be then.”

“It didn’t,” Marut said. “You were badly used.”

“My whole childhood, I gave to Chedi. And now Chedi demands the rest of my life, too.” Sycamore could hear the bitterness in his own voice, raw and futile. “I’m sorry. Here I am lamenting, when my parents are alive and I’ll speak with them again in the morning. What must you think of me?”

Marut’s hand found his bare shoulder. “Please don’t. We have different sorrows. At least in the temple we were allowed to be children. They wouldn’t give me leave to join the scouts when I first asked because they thought I was too young.”

Sycamore smiled to think of a young, beardless Marut already so set on his destiny. They were quiet for a minute, Marut stroking Sycamore’s collarbone. Then Marut said, “I didn’t realize you had figured out how to do the—how to transport us.”

“I hadn’t. I thought about it some. It’s blood magic, or maybe it needs pain. Or both. But I hadn’t tried it at all, if that’s what you’re asking. I just couldn’t think of what else to do.”

“We could have ended up in the sea,” Marut said, so closely mirroring Sycamore’s earlier thoughts that he was startled into laughter.

“Good thing we didn’t. I don’t know how to swim.”

In the morning, Sycamore woke at first light to the sound of birds singing. Marut was still asleep, and the bond felt so warm and peaceful that Sycamore let him be. When he couldn’t fall back asleep after a while, he carefully crawled from the tent and dressed in the dewy predawn light.

He found his mother awake as well, sitting in front of the house with the cat in her lap, purring and butting its head underneath her chin. She lifted her hand in greeting as Sycamore approached, then rose to her feet, the cat leaping away as she stood.

“Your father’s still sleeping,” she said.

“So is Marut.” He gazed down at her. She looked so small, wrapped in her shawl against the morning chill.

“Walk with me,” she said.

They made a circuit through the orchard, his mother stopping here and there to examine a tree. Sycamore had sometimes wondered if the apples he ate in Banuri came from his parents’ trees, although he knew it wasn’t likely. What would his parents do when they were too old to maintain the orchard? He had never thought of that. He had no money to send them; anything he needed was provided to him by the sorcerers’ council, but he had no funds of his own.

Birds in a cage, Temur had said, and Sycamore was beginning to see that he was indeed caged, only so comfortably he had never noticed the bars.

“Marut and I need to leave today,” he said as they walked. “With the war—we’re needed in Banuri.”

“I didn’t expect you to stay.” She reached up to touch a single blossom. “Do you need supplies?”

“We’ll pass through Seoni. But thank you.”

She seemed so calm, or perhaps resigned. He remembered her sobbing in the road the morning he was taken, bent over in the dirt. Years ago. She wouldn’t plead for him to stay this time.

He longed to crawl back into the tent with Marut and bury his face in Marut’s warm neck. Marut wouldn’t plead for him, either, and Sycamore wouldn’t want him to. If Marut ever did, Sycamore would give in immediately. Only the loyalty of those around him kept him from breaking all his vows.

His mother drifted onward, the hem of her gown trailing through the damp grass. “When I was pregnant with you,” she said without looking at him, “you were turned sideways within me, so that your feet were—” She touched her side, right below the ribs. “Right here. Oh, you prodded me! Always moving, always kicking, so full of life. When you were born, I thought I already loved you as much as anyone could. But then I loved you more and more with every day that passed. You were the joy of my life.”

Sycamore stared at her, stricken. He had no comfort to offer her, and didn’t know if his efforts would be welcome anyway.

Her face twisted with a wry smile. “I haven’t thought of any of this in years. Seeing you has brought everything back to me. Forgive my rambling.”

Sycamore cleared his throat. “Were you ever taught to scry?”

“No. I never saw the use.” She glanced up at him, her eyes widening. “Oh! Do you mean—?”

“I keep a scrying bowl in my rooms in the palace. If you’d like—if you want to—I could teach you how.” He felt his mouth twitch as he pictured Sarangerel scowling at the water’s uncooperative surface. “I’m not too poor of a tutor.”

“I would be glad to learn,” his mother said.