They have no idea how to talk to each other. Even once they've reached the capital and been able to put down their weary loads... Creeping Dust is drawn and pale. Spinner extends a hand and his brother just looks down at it for a moment before his eyes flick up, face pinched with feelings he won't name.

"I'm not who you remember, Little Brother," he says, raspy.

"Why not?" And there is naivety in his reply.

Time has been unkind to his brother, he can see that clearly enough. But he has thought every day about sleeping on the porch beside his brother as the setting sun bathed their mountains pink and orange. He imagines the smell of mist and pine.

He gives his brother space, watches from a distance at the way Creeping Dust and Savage Dust stand next to one another. He sees their quiet conversations, but does not try to listen. He sees their vicious training bouts, their gruff instruction to the survivors who came with them.

Their cohort is all haunted, grim and perpetually weary but unwilling to stop for one moment. They all want revenge for what was done to them. Spinner can help with that, if perhaps it might give them peace.

But even as he brings plans and intelligence to his brother, Creeping Dust won't really talk to him. He is merely another cog in the machine of war, a war Creeping Dust is determined to win.

So Spinner talks to Savage Hawk instead. A fellow temple builder, one of great strength and stature and able to survive the hideous conditions of slavery.

"He was looking for you," the berserker tells him. "As soon as we showed up at the school, he asked us all if we'd worked with you somewhere else."

An impossible hunt. How many Little Brothers had the temple builders taken? Spinner smiles ruefully.

"He was looking for me, and now I'm here he doesn't recognize me."

"Hm," Savage Hawk agrees. "He always thought you were dead. Asking all of us... just confirming it to himself every time we said no."

Spinner supposes he understands that. "So am I staying dead?"

There is a pause.

"Your brother is a difficult man, Spinner. No one can make him do anything, not me and not you. He'll come around if he's going to."

It's poor reassurance.