Chapter 2: The Blue Door
Things you learn about Xaden Riorson over the course of one dinner, in order:
He arrives early. Not a little early. You get to the tavern with the blue door a quarter of an hour before you said, intending to claim the table in the corner with your back to the wall, and he's already in it, with his back to the wall, nursing a glass of something amber and watching the door like he expects it to attack him.
He stands up when you walk in. Nobody has stood up for you when you walked into a room since your grandfather died. You don't know what to do with your hands.
He's not wearing his uniform. He's wearing a dark grey shirt, open at the throat so the relic shows, and a black wool coat, and he looks so unreasonably good in the warm tavern light that you nearly turn around and walk back out into the snow.
"Lieutenant," he says.
"We're not on duty."
A pause. "Then what do I call you?"
You don't have an answer for that. Nobody has ever asked. You sit down instead, and he sits too, and the barman brings you a glass of the same amber stuff without being asked, which means Xaden ordered for you, which means he knows what you drink, which is a whole other problem.
You were going to be cool about it. You had a plan. You were going to eat first and ask about the transfer over dessert, calmly, like an adult, like an officer.
You last about forty seconds.
"You signed my transfer."
He goes still in that way he has, where everything stops except his eyes. "Garrick," he says.
"Garrick."
"I'm going to kill him."
"You're not going to kill him. You're going to answer the question."
"You didn't ask a question."
"Why did you sign my transfer?" you say, and hear your voice go thin, and hate it. "Was it the fight? Did you want to keep an eye on the one rider who embarrassed you? Or did you want me in your wing so you could get your rematch on your own terms, on your own schedule, whenever it suited you? Because I've spent a year thinking I earned that posting. I thought somebody read my flight reports and decided I was good enough. And it turns out it was just you being a sore loser with a pen."
The tavern hums around you. Somebody laughs at the bar. A log shifts in the fire.
Xaden sets his glass down very carefully.
"Your flight reports," he says, "were buried."
You blink. "What?"
"Your old wingleader. Halloran." He says the name like he'd like to set it on fire. "You flew more patrol hours than anyone in the southern wing for two years running. You logged three wyvern sightings that turned out to be real, which is three more than anyone else down there. You pulled Ressler out of a crevasse in a whiteout on a dragon that had a torn wing." His jaw tightens. "And every one of those reports sat in a drawer in Halloran's office because he didn't like that you made him look lazy. You were running supply crates to the eastern huts. You. The best natural flier I've seen in this outpost, hauling flour."
You open your mouth. Nothing comes out.
"I didn't sign your transfer because you beat me," he says. "I signed it because you beat me, and I went looking for who you were, and I found that drawer. And I spent six weeks arguing with Halloran and the outpost commander and anyone else who would listen until they let me have you." He breathes out. "I'm not sorry I did it. You belong in a combat wing. I'd do it again tomorrow."
The fire pops.
"But I should have told you," he adds, quieter. "I'm sorry I didn't. I've never been good at telling people things."
You stare at him across the table for a long moment. Then you pick up your glass and drink half of it in one swallow, because it's that or do something embarrassing with your face.
"Ressler would have been fine," you say eventually, because it's the only thing you can find.
"Ressler," Xaden says, "was upside down in a crevasse with a broken leg."
"He'd have figured it out."
"He told the menders he'd seen the gods."
You laugh. You can't help it. It comes out cracked and surprised and a little wet, and he watches you do it, and the look on his face goes careful and open at the same time, like a door left unlatched.
"You asked what to call me," you say, when you can talk again. "Off duty."
"I did."
"Nobody's ever asked. Everyone in the southern wing called me by my surname. My mother calls me by my full name when she's angry, which is always. Halloran called me 'the flour hauler' for two years, and I let him, because it was easier than hitting him."
Something cold and lethal flickers across Xaden's face at that, and you file it away to enjoy later.
"So I don't know," you say. "Nobody's ever given me the choice."
He considers you. The candlelight moves on the side of his face.
"Then I'll wait," he says, "until you decide. I'm patient. I have a duty roster."
You kick him under the table. He doesn't even flinch. But the corner of his mouth moves, and stays moved, for the rest of the meal.
He eats like a man who's been hungry before. That's the next thing you learn.
He doesn't talk while the food's on the table. He's not rude about it, just focused, methodical, and it's somehow the most human thing you've ever seen him do. When the plates are cleared he leans back and looks at you, and the candle between you throws the scar on his eyebrow into sharp relief, and he says, "Ask me something."
"What?"
"You spent a year not asking me anything. You've had nine notes and you haven't sent one back. Ask me something. Anything."
You think about it. You turn your glass in your fingers.
"Why did you want dinner?" you say. "Really. Not the rematch. That I understand. Why the dinner?"
He's quiet for a while. You think he might not answer.
"Because when you beat me," he says, "you didn't gloat. You looked at me like you'd known exactly what I was going to do before I did it. Nobody's ever looked at me like that. Like they could see the seams." He turns his own glass a quarter-turn on the table. "I wanted to know what else you could see."
Your heart is doing something structurally unsound.
"My turn," he says.
"You don't get a turn."
"I bought dinner."
"You didn't. I'm splitting it."
"You can try." He leans forward on his elbows. "Why were you watching me that closely?"
You freeze.
"At the challenge," he says. "You found a hitch on my left side that my own father missed, and he trained me from the day I could hold a blade. Nobody sees that in an afternoon. Not even you." His eyes are very steady. "So how long were you watching?"
You could lie. You're a decent liar. You've lied your way out of punishment duty and a marriage proposal from a fisherman in the eastern huts and at least one wyvern-related court-martial.
You don't lie. You don't answer, either. You just look at him, and you know your face is giving you away, and you can't make it stop.
He sees it. Something moves in his expression, slow, like a man walking out onto ice and finding it holds.
"Hm," he says softly.
"Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You said hm."
"Hm is not a word."
"It is when you say it like that."
The barman comes to clear the glasses, and you've never been so grateful for an interruption in your life.
He walks you back to the outpost through the snow. The road climbs between pines, and the lamps on Samara's walls glow gold above you, and the dragons are dark shapes on the ridge, watching. Neither of you says much. Your shoulders brush. Once, on an icy patch, your boot slides and his hand is at your elbow before you've even finished slipping, and then it's gone again.
At the gate he stops. You stop.
The guards on the wall are very carefully not looking at you. Someone up there is going to tell Garrick about this before you've even reached your bunk.
"Tomorrow," Xaden says. "Midday. The drill hall."
"Tomorrow."
"I want to be fair with you, so I'll tell you something." He pulls his coat tighter, and in the gate-lamp his breath clouds silver. "I fixed it."
"Fixed what?"
"The left side. The hitch on the recovery." His eyes hold yours. "I worked on it every morning for four months after you put me on my back. It's gone. You won't find it again."
Your stomach drops through your boots.
"So I've got nothing," you say.
"You've got one thing I haven't figured out yet."
"What?"
He looks at you for a long, long moment. The snow falls between you in soft, slow flakes, catching in his dark hair and on his lashes.
"You never answered my question," he says.
Then he turns and walks away up the hill toward the officers' quarters, hands in his pockets, leaving you standing at the gate in the snow with your heart in your mouth and a whole garrison of witnesses pretending to look the other way.