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Harok shakes his head slowly. “Did something happen to her at the Rose Palace? Perhaps her madness came from whatever made her leave.”

Tobi scrapes at the dirt on the ground with his finger tips, “I do not know. She never spoke of what it was, no matter how I raged at her.”

Harok pulls Tobi tighter into his arms and kisses his cheeks, one after the other, then his jaw, then his lips. Tobi realises he had tears on his face. Harok had been kissing them away.

“My Suskara, it was not you...” Harok kisses Tobi again. The kiss grows deeper.

When Harok pulls back from the kiss, Tobi is panting.

Harok says, “Why did your mother go to live at the Bride House?”

“We had nowhere to go after we left the players in Fanost. I thought I might have to find work whoring in Lunatum. But I wrote to my father for help and he sent a carriage for us. He agreed to see us, but his letter was cold. He did not invite me to the Rose Palace, but to an audience at the Ivory Palace in Ceruleum. I had to beg him, but he agreed to arrange for my mother to be cared for by the Brides of Zai. It was expensive but he would pay. That is why I ended up with Copperhead Circus. How I ended up in Cyrus’s bed. His players worked in Northern Azuria. I wanted to be there so I could visit my mother. But all she talks of now is demons.” Tobi hiccups over a sob.

Harok says quietly, “Demons.”

“Yes. And it is strange because before that, she always said she knew too many mummers’ tricks to ever believe in any demon or God. But after we left the Rose Palace, it seemed like all she talked about were Gods and demons and magic.”

Harok looks strange for a moment. Oddly distant. “And you,” he says. “Do you think demons are real?”

“I have heard,” Tobi says, “that it is a great heresy to claim that you did not truly slay Diazuul. So if I claimed not to think him real, I would be committing a crime?”

Harok’s lips quirk into a smile. “A great crime, Suskara. For such a thing I would punish my kushessa myself.”

Tobi laughs, but there is a gasp in it. A wave of need amongst his deep ache of regret.

“And your mother, do you miss her? If you stayed in Northern Azuria to be near her, you must be angry that I took you away.”

Tobi shakes his head. “My mother has not recognised me as her son for years.” He sighs and snuggles closer into Harok’s arms. “I used to visit her every moon, but it became so painful. She did not know me. I would lie and tell people I was going to see her, I would say I went every moon, but in truth, I would just go to Ceruleum and visit a tavern or a luxoli house. I haven’t been to the Bride House for over a year’s turn.” He sniffs again. It is a relief to admit he stopped visiting his mother. He has never told anyone such before.

“Suskara,” Harok says softly. “You did your best for her. Would you like to see her again? Even if she does not know you?”

“Perhaps,” Tobi says slowly. “I could. If that could be arranged somehow. If you could come with me. I would like you to meet her. Even as she is now. I could go to Ceruleum with you and the traders perhaps but…” He sighs heavily.

“And is this truly all you want? Really? To see your mother? You do not wish to return to Azuria? To your life there?”

Tobi takes a breath. He sees no reason not to tell Harok his truth. He has already told him his darkest shame. That he stopped visiting his mother. That he left her to her madness. “When you first took me I was certain my father would send the Azurian army to rescue me. I thought I would go back to Attar, a great hero after being snatched by a forest king.” He almost wants to laugh. It sounds so foolish. “But now I understand, my father cares nothing for me. The empire cares nothing for me. They will send no one for me. Lymok told me he had contact with Azuria and that they charged him to make sure I never left the forest alive.”

“And you are sad?” Harok says. “That Azuria did not rescue you?”

Tobi shakes his head. “I realised something else, after what Lymok said. Whether he told me the truth or not, being here. Seeing the Ambolk ways. It is different. For a man like me.” He takes a breath. “A year ago,” Tobi says, “The Azurian Empire killed my brother.”

Harok’s eyes are soft. “Your brother?”

“I did not know him,” Tobi says. “I had not seen him since I was seven summers. But the story is well known. They say he fell in love with a male slave and he was exiled into death for it.”

“For love?” says Harok, frowning. “Is it wrong to love a slave in Azuria?”

Tobi shakes his head. “A male slave, for a man. Sins of the body are a crime in Azuria.”

“Pleasures of the deep earth are a crime,” says Harok. Not a question. More like something he distantly remembers.

Tobi frowns. “Lymok calls it that. Pleasure of the deep earth. Why is it called that in Ambolk? There is a sidu in the Artemian faith, Surrus, who is connected to the deep earth. But she represents the harvest and fertility. In Azuria, the deep earth means the richest soil. Where all food and life come from. Why do you call luxoli pleasure of the deep earth?”

Harok says, “I do not know why, Suskara. It has always been called so. I always thought it was because…,” Harok stops, he looks strange. His face has an expression Tobi has never seen before. He sounds amused and almost bashful when he says, “I always thought it was because the man’s kush is also for shit.” His voice cracks. And he laughs. A great boom of a laugh. A sound Tobi has never heard from him before. “I was a boy,” he says, after a moment of laughing, breathless. “I knew what my pleasure was and I knew it was called so. That was what I thought, what I always thought. And I wanted that. To bury my cock in a man’s kush. So I thought that was why what I desired was called so.”

This makes Tobi laugh too, “There is more to luxoli than kush fucking,” he says, slapping a hand playfully to Harok’s face. Harok draws him into a tight embrace. Tobi’s face is pressed close to Harok’s chest. He looks up at Harok. Harok’s eyes are crinkled, creasing the lines of black paint below them. And Tobi thinks he can see that boy. Who desired men, but freely, simply and could enjoy the thought that he would one day take a man to his bed, have a male lover, a male kushir. None of that a crime.

That boy, the boy Harok was before his father died.