The Rebel Assassin

Chapter 53: Drinking to the Dead

I finally left our room late in the night, when I hoped I wouldn't run into anyone. I didn't want anyone to read my emotional collapse in my face, which Jaden would certainly be able to do.

Padding barefoot downstairs in my sleep-clothes, I felt like a kid sneaking into the kitchen for desert, a feeling that only intensified when I saw a flicker of candlelight and froze on the steps. Someone else was awake.

"I can hear your footsteps." It was Joshua's voice. Of course he'd heard.

I made a face to myself and came the rest of the way downstairs. "Why are you up?"

"Brooding," he said caustically, "as you'd put it. Why are you?"

"I didn't have any dinner." I crossed the kitchen to cut myself thick slice of bread and rummaged around for something to put on it. Joshua didn't say anything while my back was turned. His silence was heavy.

Once I had stuffed my mouth full of food, I took another look at him. He looked tired enough to be falling asleep in his chair, but his back was rigid as he stared at the glass in front of him. It was empty, but by the looks of the half-full bottle in the middle of the table, he had emptied the cup several times. A matching glass, full, sat in front of the chair opposite him, as if he was expecting someone.

"You're not brooding. You're mourning."

He grunted as if annoyed I'd said so but didn't deny it. I recognized this way of mourning for a fallen companion-in-arms. After a battle in which they'd lost people, royal soldiers and guards would drink together, setting out full glasses for the dead as well as the living. When I was little, Cabrel had told me about the tradition and said that once all the living had gone to bed, the spirits of the dead would drink their fill from their cups and then depart our world for good.

But Jaden had told me that it was other living people who drank from those unattended cups while the mourners slept. Not out of disrespect, but so that the mourners would wake up and see that their offering had been accepted.

"Then it's fake," I'd said, more than a little annoyed that the restless spirits I'd been told about didn't exist. "And they're tricking people who are already sad."

"They're not tricking anyone, thiefling. Anyone who knows the ritual of the unattended cups has probably also played the role of the drinker for other mourners. And because they do it for their friends and family, they know there will always be someone to fulfill the ritual for them."

"So they know they're just pouring a drink for a living person? Why not just drink it themselves, then? That's what I'd do." It had seemed very simple then.

Jaden pinned me with a serious look. "If the ritual isn't meaningful for you, then that's fine. But for some people, the illusion matters no matter how fake it is. It's symbolic for being able to do one last thing for someone you loved. And it's a token from someone who loves you, supporting you in mourning."

"By drinking your wine?"

"One day you'll understand," he'd said softly. "Unfortunately, the most anyone can wish for a child is that they discover what it is to mourn as late in life as possible. No one escapes it forever."

It was funny that I had never thought about that while I thought Jaden was dead. I had never properly mourned him at all. Perhaps even when I told myself that I accepted he was gone, I had never really lost hope.

But Joshua was mourning, and there was only one person he could be mourning for.

"Luca had family. Irina Laycreek will make sure he's honored," I said, thinking that a noble who would get a proper funeral didn't need this. But I knew immediately that was the wrong thing to say.