They set out the next morning just after dawn. Uachi was not surprised to find that Lord Emón did not come to see them off, and most of Diarmán's brothers were apparently still abed; only Leán, the next eldest, had come. His mother also came down, looking tired and pale.

"I wish you wouldn't," she said, reaching out to touch Diarmán's face. "You put too much stock in all this." With a weak gesture, she indicated the stately keep and everything it signified. "If your grandfather discovers what you're off to do..."

"It's ours, Mother," Diarmán replied. "It is Grandfather's now, but when he's gone, it's ours. He shouldn't have the right to throw it away and leave us with nothing. It is an insult to you."

Moigré looked at Diarmán for a while, frowning. Then she leaned in and kissed his cheek. "You're a bold boy," she murmured, as if Diarmán were not already a man. "You remind me so much of your father."

Uachi watched this exchange with passive interest, noting the set of Diarmán's expression and the twitch in his jaw after Moigré's comment.

"Come on. Give our farewell to Padréc and the others, Mother. Leán, take care."

Leán clapped Diarmán on the shoulder and offered a hand to Uachi, which he took and shook firmly.

"Good weather, safe travels, hot food," Leán said. "Keep your blade sheathed while you're at court. ...Both of them."

Rolling his eyes, Diarmán took hold of his horse's saddle and swung himself up. Striding to his own horse, Uachi followed suit. He raised a hand in farewell before urging his horse into a trot, following Diarmán out of the courtyard.

***

Within the first hour or two of their ride, Uachi caught sight of a shadow slinking along the side of the road, and relief washed through him. Farra. She had refused to enter House Eldran, and part of him had worried that she'd left him for good—but Farra always went off on her own adventures and then returned. She passed in and out of sight throughout the day's ride.

That evening, Diarmán pulled his horse up near a stand of trees, glancing back over his shoulder. "Objections to stopping?"

"Perhaps my mouth would object, but my arse has no complaints," Uachi said. He shifted in his saddle, stiff and sore after the long day's ride.

Diarmán swung down from his horse, groaning with discomfort as he put two feet on solid ground. Uachi followed his lead; he stretched his arms above his head and rolled his neck, sighing and lifting a hand to massage the crux of his neck and upper back. "There is nothing to make a man feel his age more acutely than a long ride."

Giving Uachi a wry glance, Diarmán seemed prepared to say something sly, but he dropped his gaze a moment later. "Don't talk like an ancient. You can't be much older than I am, and I'm a young man yet."

"Eight and twenty summers or so," Uachi said. "There was a time when it was difficult to keep track."

"Too drunk? On liquor or on women, Uachi of the North?"

Uachi responded to the true question, disregarding the joke. "Street urchins in the Holy City do not keep calendars." He peered into the gloaming, seeking a glimpse of Farra.

Diarmán had been unlacing the straps that held his bed roll to his horse. He paused, then turned to look at Uachi curiously. "You did not tell me you were from quite so far north," he said.

Realization of how much he'd said came too late, but it was not so great a detail; the Holy City was vast. He shrugged brusquely, pulling down his own bed roll and tossing it on the ground underneath a tree. "Were you so interested in my history?"

Shrugging, Diarmán turned back to his unpacking. "We're nearly friends at this point, so perhaps I am," he said.

"Don't be hasty," Uachi muttered. He unlaced a water skin from where it hung at his horse's side and then lifted their pack of food out of his saddlebag. "I'm not very good to my friends."

He was, of course, thinking of Matei, and how his own foolishness in falling in love with Ealin had led to such grief for one of the only people he had ever cared about.

The two of them chose places for their bed rolls and organized their cooking implements, and then Diarmán sat down with kindling and the dry wood stored over in their baggage while Uachi went off in search of more dry firewood in the stand of trees. He had only taken a few steps when Farra appeared with a murr, brushing along his leg.

"For such a big creature, you're quiet as a shadow," Uachi said, rubbing her head with a smile. "It is good to have you back, girl."

Uachi was still searching beneath the trees, gathering a good armload as Farra supervised, when the sound came to him from near at hand: music. He stood up straight, brow knit, and glanced back over his shoulder toward their camp. For an instant he considered whether there was any danger...but a bit of flute music was hardly a death knell.

Still, Uachi strapped the bundle of firewood together and lifted it over his shoulder, and then he started back toward camp, one hand on his faithful dagger. When he arrived, he saw Diarmán sitting on the other side of a small fire, golden light playing across his pale face and his bright hair. He was playing a flute.

Uachi stood for a moment on the edge of the trees, a curious feeling stirring in the pit of his stomach. It was something like discomfort...something like longing.

Diarmán glanced up at him, and his glittering eyes met Uachi's from the other side of the fire. The song continued, trilling high and fluttering low, beckoning.

On unsteady feet, Uachi advanced toward their camp site. He dropped the bundle of firewood and then sank to his knee, tugging a couple of good pieces out of the bundle and arranging them carefully around the fledgling blaze Diarmán had kindled. As he worked, he felt Diarmán's gaze on the back of his shoulders and listened to that song. He hadn't known that Diarmán could play.

He hadn't known that music could be so beautiful.

He hadn't known that he had felt so unbearably lonely without Ealin until this very moment...this very moment, when the music seemed to soothe something inside of him that he had not consciously acknowledged was aching.

At last, he could not pretend to be arranging the fire any longer. He looked up and saw that Diarmán was still gazing at him, his lips on the flute. Diarmán rose to his feet, the music rising and then falling into a sweet lull. He advanced toward Uachi with slow steps, his bright curls falling over his brow. Uachi stayed where he was on his knees by the fire, looking up, and further up, as Diarmán approached until he was standing just before Uachi.

He dropped his flute from his lips and smiled down at Uachi. "Thank you for bringing the firewood," he said.

As the last strains of that sweet, intoxicating song hung in the air, Uachi was left confused. He gazed up at Diarmán in perplexed silence.

"Shall we eat?"

Surprise update!