Free Till Human Voices Wake Us by Victoria Goddard

crossing the road by a bus stopped in traffic before them. It bore an advertisement for Raphael’s next film on its side. Of course it did. He stared grimly at his own very-much-larger-than-life face and wondered if there were any possible way Kasian wouldn’t ask him about it. At least it was a reasonably good picture, and since the film was a nineteenth-century period drama the clothes were surely not too outlandish to his twin’s eyes.
    Kasian remained silent until they had crossed the road and were going up the steps past the National Gallery. “I’m not sure where even to begin asking questions, sha óm .”
    “It’s a—” There was no word for advertisement in Tanteyr. “A notification for a—a play coming soon. Which I’m performing in.”
    “Evidently.”
    Kasian had spent their journey so far gesticulating enthusiastically about cars and buses and storefronts and mobile phones and drains, and either not noticing or not caring about the people who whispered in their wake. He seemed to be noticing now, but only grinned.
    Raphael focused hard on burying all hint of glamour under the dull comportment of his ordinary self. It was difficult with Kasian humming beside him. For some reason it reminded him of how he had spent the first week of the Game tromping angrily along the Euphrates. He’d been unfortunately prone to a kind of high dudgeon as a young man—not that much had ever come of such displays.
    He congratulated himself on his calm demeanour now, just as Kasian said: “Do you know, when I thought to myself about what you could possibly be doing, after I had come to hope you were alive I mean, I could imagine you had won the musician’s crown—but an actor! Never! What did you think I was doing?”
    “I didn’t think about it.”
    “Gabriel must have told you we were alive—he didn’t?” Kasian’s voice changed when Raphael merely glanced sidelong once and then away again. “Nor did he tell me you were. But you must see each other at times.”
    Sunday night’s awkward conversation crossed his mind. “Only when our duties meet.”
    “You didn’t ask after us? You never tried to find me?”
    Ysthar was where the lost boys went, he thought glumly, remembering Circe’s sardonic words. Their parents had been renowned—were still renowned amongst the magic folk—for finding the lost. He could mention the names of Damian Raskae and Pharia Cloudbringer, captains of the Red Company, to any of his friends and waken a reaction more surpassing wonder than if (say) he were to tell them he was the Lord of   Ysthar. Damian and Pharia had found the lost of all shapes and descriptions, from an erring husband to a sense of the miraculous, from a garden to the Moon Lady’s heart … but they had not come to find their middle son, whom Damian had never liked.
    Kasian was still waiting for an answer. Raphael reminded himself of the need to shade disingenuity into shyness, cursed his inability with the spoken word as composed by himself (he was far better with other people’s words), and at last said simply, “At first there was no way.   And later … I stopped thinking about it.”
    “That’s a sad thing to say.”
    Which was perfectly true. And with that they arrived at the pub, and Kasian rejected whatever he had been going to say in favour of admiring the painted magpies on the side of the building. There were seven of them flying or perched around a fairly loose rendition of the crown of   Ysthar, in the shape of a chaplet of white roses, which told those who were of the magic folk that this was a house under the protection of the Lord of Ysthar. Those who weren’t of the magic folk tended not to notice it.
    Raphael had painted the fresco years before and touched it up every once in a while for a free round and the chance to strengthen the sanctuary protections he’d wrought around the pub. He needed a place to go, even he, where those assassins would not come. Few places in the world