They let Raya in to visit her brother a few days after the crime. Her parents, thankfully, had been unaware of the course of things until Raya had brought help. Hemsten, Tharin, and another guard escorted Novar away, before Raya’s parents had a chance to talk to him. The young man was covered in blood and his eyes full of tears—he went willingly. Tella’s body was borne out in a stretcher, with a cloth to conceal it, while Councilwoman Santhee spoke quietly to the family. She said they would be holding Novar until they determined what had happened.
There were three guardhouses in the town of Olston. There was one on each side of town nearest the walls, and another up on Old Sun Rock, a few feet from the Council’s longhouse. It was up on the hill that they were keeping Novar, in the small garrison’s only prison cell. He was not chained up at all, just laying there on a worn-out straw cot.
“Novar,” Raya said.
“’Morning sis,” he said, without moving. “I’m s… never mind.”
“What happened?” Raya asked. “Why did you do this?”
Novar rolled off his back, and sat hunched over on the cot’s bench. They had given him clean, albeit poor, clothes to replace his bloodied ones. He looked at her, then back down at his feet. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said.
Raya nodded her head. “I would,” she said.
“Tella was going to leave Olston,” he said. “She wanted to go to the city.”
“Why is that grounds for… this?”
Novar shrugged. “I’m not like you,” he said. “Running out of the town every day, ranging out to Vagren when they ask you too. You got lucky, Raya. You always do. Tella was going to leave, and if I didn’t go with her, she would leave me too.”
He fell silent, and Raya didn’t speak. He looked so sad, and so ashamed. He couldn’t stand to look at her.
“I didn’t think. All I could feel was terror, terror at the very thought of being alone…” he trailed off, then, before Raya could speak, added, “Here or out there.” He rested his head on his knees, and she couldn’t even see his breathing, just the still bump of his back.
Raya almost turned to go. “Is there anything I get you, anything you want?”
Novar looked up. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “But I just want it all to be over with. I wish I had just gone—dying out there with her would have been better than… well, what I’ve done.”
“See you soon, Novar,” Raya said. She would visit him again, just to keep him company.
Hemsten was walking toward the guardhouse when she left. He was wearing simple clothes, not his on duty armour. He looked grim, but not sad. “I just talked with a few members of the Council,” he told Raya, when he saw her. “Your brother’s to have a public trial a month from today, on the 26th of the next Moon. Will you testify at it, if they call for you?”
“I will,” Raya said, quietly. “It’s the right thing to do.”
Hemsten shook his head. “He should have just left town…” he said, as he brushed past Raya and went into the guardhouse.