Stopping at the window Wren had shown him, he unlocked the lever and swung the glass open. A cold wind blew against his face, chilling his skin. The earlier rain had ceased, but the promise of winter kissed the air.
He turned back to Tal. "Ready to lighten your life with another glorious risk?"
The shadow of a smile touched Tal's lips, but he made no response.
Garin stepped carefully out the window and edged along the ledge. His heart pounded hard in his chest, his stomach turned, and his hands prickled at the sight of all the space below them, all the more frightening from how the moon palely lit it. But he swallowed hard and kept edging along until the ledge widened and he could sit, finally breathing a relieved sigh.
Despite having decades on him, Tal was as graceful as a cat as he padded along the ledge to sit next to him.
They looked out over Halenhol, the howl of the wind the only sound between them. Halenhol was wreathed in a low-hanging fog, and only in noble manors and along the streets did murky lights shine. The distant forested hills were hidden from view, and the moons, both yellow and blue, hid shyly behind the thin clouds.
Garin spoke the first words that came to mind. "I followed you here to Halenhol because I wanted to see more of the World. I knew there was so much to life beyond Hunt's Hollow, beyond hoping for rain and chasing the town's girls in hopes of one day settling down on a farm of my own. My father was a soldier, a captain in the King's army, and had seen his fair share of the Westreach, and the stories he told me and my siblings had always stuck in my mind. And beyond those, I remembered all the tales of Markus Bredley, of Gendil of Candor… of you.
"But the World isn't what I thought it would be. I wished for its glory, its wonder — but there's far more to it than I ever wanted."
"I'm sorry." Tal's murmur was almost lost beneath the wind. "I failed you as well."
Garin turned toward him. "No. You haven't failed me, or you hadn't — not until you said Falcon was dead in the tower."
His wanton mentor didn't meet his gaze, but stared up at Cressalia, the yellow moon.
"When I first learned who you were," Garin continued, "I had trouble seeing Brannen Cairn as Tal Harrenfel. After all, I'd spent the last five years around your farm, watching you chase hens in the yard, roll in the mud with pigs, and live in a hovel that was mean even by Hunt's Hollow standards.
"But then I remembered all I'd seen you do. The bandits on the road, and the quetzals. The ghouls in the castle. And even back in Hunt's Hollow, how the Nightkin attacks had ceased for five blessed years. Then I knew it didn't matter what name you went by — you've always been the same man. The same…" Garin shrugged, trying to find the word, then finally settling for, "The same legend."
Tal snorted. "Legend. Falcon made up that legend, Garin, don't you realize that? At the King's behest, to bolster the flagging spirits of his citizens, the bard aggrandized my few good accomplishments and skirted over all I've done wrong. Falcon called me Devil Killer, but I didn't slay Heyl in Elendol. He claimed I single-handedly held off the Sendeshi army at the Pass of Argothe, but that was the moment I deserted the King's own. No mention is made of my time in the caves of the Dwarven Clans, acting as a mercenary and an assassin. No word was written of the true reasons I slaughtered the Yraldi marauders a whole summer long — not to protect innocents, but only to kill or finally die. And Magebutcher — only those who know the truth call me that thrice-damned name."
Garin found impatience building up in him, but he tempered his words. "I know your legend is a lie, Tal. I'd have to be blind not to know that by now."
His mentor's eyes gleamed in the scant moonlight as he glanced over. "If that's meant to cheer me, it's doing a poor job."
"You're missing my point. What I'm saying is that despite your legend, you are the Tal Harrenfel everyone believes in. Maybe you're not the best duelist in the Westreach, or a slayer of demons. But at your heart, you're a good man, Tal."
A harsh laugh escaped him. "A good man? A good man would never leave his friend behind."
Garin stared at the pale outline of his mentor as Tal again stared up at the moon. After a long stretch of silence, he repressed a sigh and rose. "Just think about it."
He turned away, but Tal's words stopped him. "You were already a man when you left Hunt's Hollow, Garin. But I've never believed it more than now."
Garin didn't turn back. He suspected it wasn't the wind that made his eyes suddenly sting.
He nodded, then skirted along the ledge to slip back inside the castle.
Tal kept an eye on Garin until he was safely across, then leveled his gaze back at the murky face of the yellow moon.
"Cressalia," he muttered. "You damned bitch." She was called the Regretful Sister — which was exactly the kind of company he didn't need right then.
He found himself mulling over the youth's words. He wanted to believe them, desperately wanted to. But they were riddled with holes and flaws. Garin thought he knew him, but he didn't. Tal had kept the worst of his past hidden from him still.
We only ever know the surface of others, he mused. Only see the face they turn toward us. Even of those he professed to love, it was true. After all, didn't he keep faithful to a woman he hadn't seen in two decades, a woman who had bound herself to another man and had a child by him? Didn't he keep faithful even when he hadn't really known or understood her then?
But she'd believed in you. Even then, before all of your deeds good and evil, she'd believed in you. She made you feel understood.
To his surprise, a smile creased his lips. Perhaps that was just it. No one could ever know another fully. But to not know and to believe in them anyway — perhaps that was the secret he'd struggled so long to find, the key to the door that led away from his self-imposed solitude.
He'd never been brave. Regardless of how others saw him, Tal had always been struck with fear at violence. Even with the bandits at the Winegulch Bridge, whom he'd been reasonably sure he and Aelyn could kill, he'd been afraid. But Garin had given him courage then. He'd known he would never let him down if he could help it.
And neither would he leave Falcon to die alone.
Tal rose and spared one last glance at the moon. "Regrets don't always make you weak," he conceded to her. "Sometimes, they help you remember what makes you strong. But I don't have you to thank for remembering that now."
Smiling wider still, he found his way back inside.
Impervious
Tal pulled open the tower door. As he entered, Wren, Garin, and Aelyn all looked over at him, a mixture of emotions crossing their faces — startlement, fear, anticipation.
"I'm going," he said even before the door closed behind him, the words rushing out before the lingering doubts could stifle them. "I'm going after Falcon, even though I'll likely die. But I have to go." His gaze held Garin's. "It's who I am."
Garin gave him a small smile.
Wren, however, had only a glare for him. "Don't say it unless you mean it."