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The rooms on the third floor of the Van Eck mansion have double-thick windows. The family’s rooms stay warm—Jesper and Wylan; Marya; Inej for a night or two; Colm when he visits and Jesper puts himself on best behavior; Plumje on sleepovers when her brothers paint her toenails and let her stay up and eat as many cookies as she likes. Van Ecks protect what matters in their ways: with stacks of kruge and double-thick windows against winter storms.
The shout reaches through the glass, anyway, another roar lost between the pounding rain, cracking lightning, rumbling thunder. It sounds distant and pained.
The lamp comes on a moment later from Jesper’s side of the bed nearest the window. Wylan thrashes, tangled and confused in the bedsheets, kicking out at the covers and tearing at his nightshirt and too wild-eyed to know what anything means. Jesper reaches for Wylan, Wylan pushes him away. Their mouths are moving, sounds overlapping, and the windowpane shakes beneath gloved fingers with more than the demanding rain. Jesper wins; Jesper always wins. He pulls Wylan close against his vain bare chest, both arms around Wylan to keep the smaller man’s arms pinned, and they’re both tired but Wylan is worn in ways Jesper simply is not.
Jesper turns to call something to the doorway. A moment later, Marya walks in, a dressing gown over her nightgown, long hair pulled into a fraying braid. She adds no sounds loud enough to make their way through the double-thick windowpane, and really one of them should have noticed by now that someone is watching. Do none of them have an ounce of sense?
(They don’t, he knows that.)
Marya sits on the bed and wraps her arms around them both, and they’re probably saying things like, it’s okay, or, we’re here, or, you’re safe. And they’re probably crying, though with their heads bent so close to one another, it’s impossible to determine from behind the double-thick glass.
Years ago, Wylan came to Kaz’s office and said, “May I tell you something?”
Kaz said, “Yes,” not because he necessarily cared, or wished to care, about any stray confession, but because he never knew what information might prove useful.
This information was not useful so much as enraging. Wylan stared at him with determinedly dry eyes and white knuckles and recounted the story of a particularly horrific incident, of something that happened under the storm-dark clouds that hid even a man so righteously wealthy as Jan Van Eck from Ghezen’s eyes. Wylan told the story start to finish. Of what happened when he was ten years old. Of every detail, even how he cried and begged and pissed himself from fear and pain. Of how, somehow, he believed even that torment came from love.
Kaz listened patiently. It was summer and crows perched outside the window of his attic office hoping for a visit from the Wraith.
Kaz poured two tin cups of whiskey.
Wylan, who rarely took the heavy stuff, knocked his back.
“Why are you telling me?” Kaz asked.
“You’re the only person I can tell.”
Wylan understood Kaz too well to say that he didn’t care. Kaz cared. He did not hug or comfort or offer outrage—should he be surprised at the horrors of Jan Van Eck? The man who had his own wife committed for birthing an insufficient son? The man who spotted and captured Kaz’s weakness from only a heartbeat’s honest glance?
But he cared.
“Do you want him killed?”
“No, thank you.”
“If you ever change your mind,” Kaz said with a shrug and a sip of drink.
“I only have nightmares during particularly bad storms.”
“Only,” Kaz repeated.
When Wylan was on his way out, Kaz called after him.
“Show me once more, Wylan.”
Wylan did, not for the first time. He moved deliberately as he unbuttoned his shirt sleeve and pulled it back to reveal the crow and cup on his forearm.
“If you change your mind on having him killed… you may, when Plumje is that age.”
Wylan shook his head. “He’ll never touch her.”
Kaz shrugged. Nevers were terribly comfortable things, and they were men who lived their lives on opposite banks of the canal.
Marya will wake up first the following morning. She always wakes up first. Maybe she’ll stay in her bed for a while, postpone the cold and curl up to read a few more chapters of a novel. She enjoys the recent trend of stories about young women taking to piracy or stagecoach robberies. Maybe, though, she’ll wake up first and leave her bed. Maybe she will be the one to find their guest asleep on the settee in the parlor. She will drape a blanket over his sleeping, suit-clad form, because the parlor’s windows are only single-thick panes. She will be careful not to touch the boy who is not quite like a son to her, but she knows is somehow, secretly precious.
Jesper will wake up next. He’ll come downstairs, groggy and trying to be careful, because he will want Wylan to keep sleeping a while longer while he brews tea and puts together a passable breakfast in bed after Wylan’s rough night. Jesper remembers the first meal he cooked for himself and his da, the watery soup and burned biscuits. He remembers the first time he roasted a pheasant he’d shot and managed to make it taste good. He doesn’t remember exactly when food came to mean love, but it does. So he’ll wake beside his puffy-eyed husband with his gorgeous face salt-stained, and he’ll decide to make him breakfast to start the day well. And he won’t wake the softly snoring man on the settee, but he will change his plans and make three cups of hot chocolate instead of tea, leaving one by their sleeping friend.
Wylan won’t see Kaz that day. Not likely, at least. He won’t even hurry downstairs the way he used to. He’ll be distant and respectful. But he’ll make sure they always have chocolate shavings when the weather turns for nights the worst dreams come to him, because he knows when those memories hit that Kaz will be close.
Kaz will drink the hot chocolate. He will enjoy it, even if it’s cold by the time he wakes. He will take his hat from its hook by the door and leave an empty mug on the table.
Just like he will the next time a bad thunderstorm rolls over Ketterdam.