The worst of it is the noise of them. The shouting, the scuff of sandal on stone, the scrape of bronze on the wood of the temple door. Hot summers and lean rains have bred discontent—crops dead in the field, hunger stones tall in the water. Smarter men would flee, or join the mob, but Shesheca and I are not smart men. We are third sons, the both of us, and instead we clench the shafts of our quarterstaves to the whitening of our knuckles, and there is fear in Shesheca’s trembling face, inches from mine.

The wizards of the temple are conduits to the Ninefold God. It is them we serve, and it is through them that magic flows into the world. So why should it be, the people clamor, that the rain does not fall and the grain does not grow? What is to be understood by it, when the wizards summit the temple’s terraces and cry out to the God, and return with nothing to show for it? What good is a conduit which carries no water?

I would not have chosen to die here, in this temple, for the sake of these wizards. I do not want it. But if this is the end the God has decreed, at least we will be beside each other. At least Shesheca will be there.

Here is a memory, from the days when the rains still fell as they once did in the mountains and the swollen river surged past the fecund banks, nourishing the fields through spring and summer. I was hardly a man then, my beard sparse and downy and my heart uncertain as I stood among the others in the temple grounds—third sons, all of us, tithed to the wizards. A holy caste of sacred guards, or damned men, depending on who you asked.

I remember how I shrank before the watching crowds, trembled at the chanting as the wizards drew a spell of binding tighter around our souls. I was scared, I admit, of what was to come—but then there was Shesheca beside me, his rosy cheeks and fulsome lips, and when I looked into his eyes, it was as the arrival of springtime. No matter how hard I looked for it, I could not find my fear mirrored in those eyes, and when he offered me the gentlest of smiles, a simple gesture of reassurance, it was as though I could have taken flight.

Did I recognize what I felt, then, the flutter in my chest, the way the image of him fixed itself in my mind? I could not tell you. Outside the temple walls, such feelings are forbidden. Unnatural. But here? Among the sacred discarded, among the third sons? Among the wizards whom we serve?

I do not know what might have happened, had I done more then. I measured my yearning in the sting of training staves on my palms and the way Shesheca smirked at me, offering a hand after knocking me to the mat. I measured it in the darkness of the temple barracks, pale moonlight streaming through a high window, just bright enough to see the shape of his chest as it rose and fell in the bunk beside mine. I measured it in the rhythm of his footsteps in the line ahead of me as we escorted the wizards on pilgrimage, to the Great Temple in the south, where his steadiness was like the beating of my own heart.

I regret that I had not the courage, that my shyness allowed me only to wonder and dream, convinced I was foolish in the dreaming, that it would be enough only to yearn. But in fairness, it seemed in those days I had nothing but time.

Here, again, is a memory, of more recent years, when the monsoon first grew short and the rains too spare to feed the rolling river. My beard grew fuller and my calluses rougher, and the world became grim and dangerous. My memories of those days are dark and painful: the still, putrid face of a young girl staring up at me, lobbed onto the temple steps as a judgment against us. The distant light of flame in the street when a grain riot spilled from the boatwrights’ quarter. Reports of cities burning to the west, to the north, growing ever closer as their citizens became raiders and ventured afield in a desperate bid to survive.

It was a late night on the temple wall, my head spinning and my lips dry as I tried not to hear the wailing in the street. Water rations were in effect for us, and even in the cool of the night, the summer heat was dizzying—but then he was there, beside me, his face mere inches from mine.

“You look terrible,” Shesheca said, brow furrowed. “You need water. Here.”

It was all I could do to nod, so great was my focus on keeping my heart from vaulting out of my chest when his fingers brushed against mine, his waterskin passing between our hands, the cool drops of its contents wetting my cracked lips. All I could do to nod and gasp, “Thank you.”

Shesheca returned the waterskin to his side and looked out across the city, his jaw like carved stone against the flicker of the torches. He must need water, too. Had it been selfish, to take the gift? Had I drank too greedily? I don’t know how much time passed as I grappled with the anxieties of my heart, but I know the world seemed to freeze when, at last, Shesheca turned again and met my stare.

“What do you think,” he asked, raking his eyes across my body with little of the gentleness I knew from him, “will come to the city first, raiders or rebellion?”

How could I answer a question like that? How could I tell him, whose face had known no fear, that I wished for no conflict at all?

But Shesheca stepped forward, and suddenly he too seemed a thing to shrink away from, a great unknown at which to tremble. “What would be your greatest regret,” he pressed on, “if the city burned tonight?”

I looked up into his face and saw that it was hungry, and though I had by this point fought bandits and raiders and wild beasts in the protection of the wizards, I shuddered, for this made me afraid most of all. But here, in the temple, though the world outside us was burning… here, where the rabble in the streets cared not what became of the tithed third sons?

The memory of that night—of the way our eyes devoured each other, of the way Shesheca’s body felt, after, pressing into mine, our lust secreted away in the dark of some empty storeroom—is like the sweetness of the honey that chases a bitter medicine. This is what I am thinking of, later, once the people grow too hungry and I must learn the answer to the question Shesheca asked.

It is dark when the shouts come, when we stumble out of the barracks. Nothing is as it should be when the mob arrives, but the two of us find each other in the chaos. They are at the temple door, and I am breathing in Shesheca’s air, trembling at the sound of their coming as they beat against the wood, try to force their way in. I hear snatches of their terror—the outer wall has been breached, the wharf is burning, the acolytes have been overwhelmed even in their magic, the high wizard has fled—or worse, skewered their own heart at the temple’s summit in a desperate bid to appease the rabble—

But it all falls away when I look upon Shesheca’s strong jaw, his fulsome lips, and see fear in the darkness of his eyes.

I reach out. I brush my hand against his. “What would be your greatest regret,” I ask, “if we burn here tonight?”

This catches him off guard. His quivering lips part, revealing a grin like the dawn come through the darkness at last. “How can a man regret,” he says, “who stands with you now, the one who saw my nervous smile and set my heart at ease when we stood in the courtyard at our tithing? Who has stood with me atop the wall for ten summers and ten winters?”

My breath hitches in my throat as the wood of the door cracks and the bars that hold it buckle.

I would not have chosen to die here, in this temple, for the sake of these wizards. I do not want it. But if this is the end the Ninefold God has decreed, then I will meet it, for it is not so bad an end to die here, like this. At least we will be beside each other. At least it will be Shesheca’s face, in the end, inches from mine.