Keifon closed his mouth. “Oh. Hm. …Well, uh, have you done surgery? Hands-on, I mean.”
“Yeah, back at Blackhall. Years ago. No practice since then.”
“Um… well, I’ll fix it, then.”
Agna slumped on her cot. “I’m sorry. This is one of those things, isn’t it. That I’m supposed to know, and don’t.”
“It’s all right. I can teach you if you want. We can practice on something easier.”
“Yeah.” Her body straightened, regaining some of her holiday enthusiasm. “Thanks.”
Keifon surveyed the leak as Agna went about lighting the lamp. A sizeable puddle had formed on Agna’s side of the tent and trickled toward the door, but her backpack and cot had escaped the rain.
“Well,” Agna said, “presents?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
She bounced on her toes and dove for her overstuffed backpack. Keifon let her go first, savoring the anticipatory flutter under his ribs. Agna turned back with an armful of dark cloth. “It isn’t a good time, I know, but…” She held it out to him, and he weighed it in his hands. Wool, it seemed, which explained her comment. He let the bundle unfold.
“For your trip,” she said. “I know it’s cold in the mountains.”
Keifon righted the garment and slipped it on. It was, indeed, the wrong season for a long wool coat with quilted lining. It was, indeed, cold in the mountains. It was all he could do not to hug himself. Instead he took the coat off and folded it carefully. “Thank you. That’s so thoughtful.”
“Does it fit all right?”
“Perfectly.” He draped it over the end of his cot and knelt to unbutton an inner pocket in his backpack. He kept his back turned, gathering his thoughts. “I asked at the shop, and they said if you’re traveling, this is the way to go.” He turned and passed the flat metal case to Agna.
She cracked the lid and squealed. “Thank you, thank you!”
Keifon breathed again as Agna settled by the lamp to admire the pastel crayons’ colors. She explained how the effect differed from that of oil paint, its nearest analogue, and how she might apply this new medium to her next drawing. Keifon basked in her excitement. She resisted the urge to try them out and packed them in her stationery case. The two of them gathered their steaming bread, their gifts for Nelle, and the favors that had not yet been distributed.
As the bonfire’s orange light enveloped them, Keifon offered silent thanks. Lundrala was the time to celebrate the people you loved. The day wasn’t long enough to finish his thanks.
Agna: Conspiracy
Agna convinced Keifon to come with her and mend the tent roof on the riverbank. He had protested at first, saying that he needed the campfire to finish the weatherproofing with melted wax. She reminded him how nice it would feel to get into the cool water. Finally she set out, trusting him to follow, and found a spot separated from the other bathers by a stretch of open water and a patch of tall brush at the shoreline.
She slipped behind the scrim of plants and slipped her dressing gown off. It was a little easier this year. Not enough to go swimming in front of the whole camp, but she was comfortable with Keifon. She slipped into the deeper water and felt her swimming clothes saturate and cool against her skin.
Keifon’s head appeared over the edge of the bank. She waved. That hadn’t taken long. He had brought the tent and his mending kit with him, and sat at the edge of the bank where the ground was dry. He arranged the folds of the tent in his lap, centering the worn spot in the roof where he could reach it. Agna lay back in the water, soaking the sweat from her hair. She envied Keifon’s short cut, and wondered whether it might be worth the hassle of having it trimmed every few weeks. Her mother would be apoplectic. – Of course, that wasn’t a mature reason to do it.
Keifon wiped his face with his forearm and pulled a length of string over a block of beeswax. His eyes wandered to the river. Agna pointedly held up a handful of water and let it drain.
“In a minute. I haven’t even started.”
“Suit yourself.” She dove under, squeezing her eyes shut. The cool water pulled the heat from her skin. It couldn’t pull away her exhausted frustration, of course. Not technically. But it helped. She surfaced and floated, kicking lazily to counteract the current.
“How are your parents?” Keifon asked. He was setting stitches now, attaching the patch with surgical precision.
“Fine. Same as always. Though…” Agna ran through their last letter in her mind – her father’s letter, primarily. She slid closer to land, sitting on the pebbly shore where the water was just deep enough to riffle over her body. The air was sullen and hot against her face and shoulders, but it was worth it to carry on a conversation without shouting. “They seemed a little too interested in Marco. What we’ve been talking about, and what I… think of him.” She twisted her shoulders uneasily. “It’s strange. I feel like they’re getting at something, like they have ulterior motives, but I can’t imagine what.”
The thread drew through the canvas with a quiet whisking sound, just over the hush of the water. “Does Marco work for your father?”
“No, he works for my aunt – my father’s sister. She runs the other half of the agency. The two of them split it up years ago.”
Keifon turned the section of tent and fanned himself with a loose corner. “They’re in competition, then?”
“Only technically. They don’t make a show of it, but most of the time they collaborate. You should come in, it’s much cooler down here.”
“Mmn. You’re the heir to your father’s side, right? Who’s the heir to your aunt’s side?”
“My cousin Violetta, but she doesn’t want it. She just wants to paint. They’ll probably give it to…” She sluiced water over her exposed skin, considering. “Someone like Marco, I guess. An employee who shows promise.” She shrugged. “Especially since he and Letta seem to be, you know. Together. If he marries her, he’ll get the agency for sure.”
“Ah.” Keifon was quiet for a little while, except for the tug of the needle through the canvas. “What if he doesn’t?”
“What, marry Letta?”
“Yeah.”
“…Then he probably still gets the agency. Letta’s an only child, and even if she has kids, they won’t be old enough to take it over when her mom wants to hand over the reins. Marco’s pretty well placed.”
“Would that be a problem for your family? Losing it to an outsider?”
Agna slid down the bank so that she could submerge up to her neck, and crossed her arms behind her head. If Naire-ceisi lost her agency to Marco and Agna stayed in Kavera, what then? It would be the end of the Despana dynasty in the Murian art market. Agna’s goosebumps had little to do with the temperature of the water. A two-year assignment could swerve the course of one hundred and seventy years. It didn’t seem right, somehow. She couldn’t tell Keifon that, twofold – she couldn’t admit her dreams about Wildern and opening her own gallery, and she couldn’t tell him that she stood on the verge of collapsing her family’s legacy. He would cry. And then he would tie her to the mast of the next ship bound for Nessiny.
“I suppose it would be a blow to the Despanas, yes. They would be well-regarded for having built the agency, but it would be in someone else’s name. We would become a footnote eventually.”
She tipped her head back to watch him. He tied the thread and snipped it with the tiny scissors from his kit, then folded up the tent. He would have to finish it back at camp, as he’d complained. He stripped off his shirt and dropped it next to the tent, then kicked off his shoes.
Keifon settled next to her on the bank, stretching his legs in the current, and splashed handfuls of water on his face. His sigh was half groan. “Better.”
“Told you.”
“What I’m thinking is… your family would have an investment in having Marco marry in, wouldn’t they. If they think he’s a good heir, it’s better to have him be a son-in-law than an employee.”
Agna slid a
look sideways at him. “You’re too good at this.”
Keifon shrugged, his dark eyes darting away. “It’s how I was raised. Everything in Yanwei works that way.”
“How exhausting. – Well, I guess they would have an investment in it, sure. Lina seems to think that the family is behind him and Letta. But it’s too early to say for sure.”
“And…” He fidgeted, shifting toward the stream, and finally pushed off to tread water. He didn’t look at her as he spoke. “She isn’t the only eligible heir.”
Agna kicked lazily underwater. “Oh yes, she is. At least for him. Lina doesn’t date men.”
Keifon cleared his throat. The water riffled, reflecting the late-afternoon sun around him in a fractured blaze of light. He didn’t speak, and slowly Agna realized that this was intentional.
“…What?”
He half-turned toward her. She hardly heard him over the stream. “Well. You do.”
“I do what?”
“…Date men.”
Men. As though it were plural. Ha. Agna backed up to piece together his fragmentary comments. She isn’t the only eligible heir. She darted past him into the deeper water, diving under and surfacing somewhere else. Her teeth chattered. “It’s – that’s ridiculous. What, marry Marco off to me?”
“Then… your father steals the promising employee. Or… if they want to merge the branches… if Marco has one branch and you have the other…”
“Ugh.” She windmilled her hands, splashing in a radius that didn’t quite hit him. She wished she could crawl out of her skin and leave it on the river bottom.
He wasn’t wrong, though. Merging the agencies through marrying their heirs would let them consolidate without appearing to convey a lack of confidence in either branch. It would be devious, but effective. And her father was strangely interested in how she was getting along with Marco. “Ugh!”
“I’m sorry.”
“No – it’s not your fault, it’s just – Marco would never fall for that. He’s too smart to be used as a pawn.”
“But he’d end up with both branches, in the end. And it’s not as though you’d agree to a straightforward marriage arrangement.”
She splashed him.
He shook the drops out of his eyes. His arms, flung out for balance, seemed fragile against the deep water. “And, well. Maybe he’d actually fall in love with you.”
Agna pounced at him and grabbed his slippery shoulders to dunk him underwater. She felt the resistance leave his muscles, letting her shove him down. Silvery bubbles rose under her chin. An irrational stab of panic clawed at her stomach, and she clutched his arm to haul him back up. He could swim as well as she could, if not better. But seeing his body through that murky water touched an atavistic fear. Keifon breached the surface, his hair plastered against his head. He was fine. Of course he was fine.
“I’m sorry – I’m sorry,” she stammered. “That was stupid.”
“It’s all right.” He wiped the water out of his eyes and flashed half of a smile. “I know it’s just how you show affection.”
Agna blushed, but she could not be diverted. “He wouldn’t,” she insisted. “Marco. He wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t allow it.”
His laugh was voiceless. “You don’t get to decide that for him. We’ve been over this.”
“What I mean is, I’d tell him. That he should stay with Letta. That I’m…” That I didn’t even measure up to a backwoods farmhand. Even if he was smart and sweet and wonderful and she loved him and they were probably perfect together. Her stomach clenched.
“Don’t.” Keifon’s hand was warm on her cheek, and anchored her to the world. “I would tell him that you’re twice as wonderful as you say you are.”
She swam out of arm’s reach. “You don’t speak enough Nessinian for that yet.”
“I’d learn.”
She smiled, brittle but real. “You would.”
Keifon slowly rolled over on his back and floated, letting her calm down. Agna considered doing the same. The sky was too bright right now. She treaded water near him and watched the smooth rocks and the darting fish in the shallows. She imagined the water pulling away her tension and paranoia. She imagined floating here forever.
“Your parents want you to be happy,” Keifon said quietly. “If they’re pushing too hard about Marco, I’m sure it’s out of love for you.”
“I can be happy without getting married,” Agna protested.
“Of course you can. But…” He closed his eyes to the sky. “When someone experiences something good, they want to share it. I’m sure they want you to be as happy as they’ve been.”
The skin across Keifon’s collarbone was a shade lighter than the rest, a faint halo where the torque had blocked the sun for so long. Agna sensed that he missed being married, not only to Eri but to anyone. It was part of the life he wanted and part of the person he wanted to be. It was true that she could be happy without being married. She wasn’t sure he could be. And there was a little envy in his voice, in considering that her parents wanted something good for her. Agna regretted the vehemence of her outburst, if not the words themselves.
“I know they mean well,” she admitted at last. “It’s just… it’s such a bad time, after… after Laris.”
Keifon rolled into the vertical, treading water with long, smooth strokes. “They don’t know that, though.”
“I know.” She sighed, ducked her head to feel the cool water on her face, and slicked her hair back. “What now?” It wasn’t a question, and he waited for her to answer herself. “I want to ignore all of this matchmaking nonsense and talk to Marco about art. That’s what.”
Keifon smiled. “Do that, then.”
“I think I will.”
Agna: The Home Front
Agna looked up from her copy of Blackhall’s, letting it dip into her lap as she realized that Keifon was reading his ex-wife’s letter again.
“How much longer?” she asked, though she knew.
“Four days.” He folded the letter and slid it into its envelope. It was made of cream-colored paper, addressed twice in black ink: once in Kaveran, once in Yanweian.
“Are you nervous about seeing Nachi, or...?”
Keifon landed on his back, arms crossed behind his head. “I’m not sure. All of it, maybe. Going home.” He sighed, and Agna watched his chest rise and fall. “Do you ever get nervous about going home?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She marked her place with her woven bookmark from the festival and leaned on her hand. “It’s a long way off.”
“Not really,” Keifon said quietly. “Seven months.”
“That’s more than half a year,” Agna retorted, unnerved that he had it figured out so precisely, and then felt foolish for having stated the obvious. “But I do feel nervous sometimes. Because of the agency, and my parents. Things like that. I don’t have – you know, situations like yours. Kids and exes and things.”
He laughed bloodlessly. “One kid, one ex.”
“…Two,” she said softly.
“He’s not a factor anymore.”
“Yeah, but... I thought you might worry anyway. It’s an excuse to worry.” He turned his head to glare at her, half-seriously, and Agna smiled. “I know you.”
Keifon’s eyes softened. “...yeah. You do.”
The leaves were beginning to turn. Agna balanced her vicarious excitement against her nervousness. He would take a safe path, and he knew how to defend himself. And she would be fine, of course. The solitude would be calming, for a change.
***
On the last day, a dozen people appeared at their campsite just after dawn. Agna shook Keifon awake and stuck her head out of the tent to plead with them to wait a few minutes. By the time she had thrown a few more layers over her nightdress and slipped out to let him get ready, Nelle had lit their campfire. Agna thanked her and filled the kettle with water.
Keifon emerged, unshaven, yawning, embarrassed at all of the attention. Nelle grabbed him and
hugged until Agna was sure his back would break, and slipped a vial into his pocket. Baran pressed a wrapped parcel into his hands, making him promise not to open it until he got home. Masa brought him a packed lunch, free of charge. Everyone wished him safe travels and congratulated Agna on her dedication and promised to help her out whenever she needed it. And one by one they drifted away, back to their own tents and their own businesses. Nelle was the last to go. Edann never came. And eventually it was just Agna and Keifon at the fire.
They ate bread and cheese and drank tea, commenting on what the others had said and done. Nelle’s gift had turned out to be an aromatic mixture that made Agna’s head swim when she leaned too close. For sleep, Keifon read from the label. The scent was supposed to be soothing.
They finished breakfast. Agna swallowed the uneasy tension that had risen into her throat. She couldn’t cry. It would be silly. Keifon went off to shave and change; Agna sat by the fire and took deep breaths of the chilly morning air. She changed in the tent while he was gone. It would be her space alone, for a while. She could stretch out as much as she liked.
She heard his footsteps before he came back into the tent. She hadn’t gone out to meet him, just in case her treacherous eyes couldn’t be trusted after all. Keifon packed away his clothes and stood facing her, empty-handed.
“I... I’ll miss you,” he said, his voice turning harsh and whispering. He cleared his throat. “Thank you so much for this.”
Agna tried to think of something breezy and flippant. When nothing would come, he closed the distance between them and took her into his arms instead. And that was the end of that. She sniffled, trying to muffle her hiccupping sobs against his shoulder, but Keifon swayed with her as though rocking a child.
“Ssshh. Not for me. Please.”
Agna struggled out of his grip and shoved him in the shoulder. “Of course for you. Stupid. I’m going to miss you, too.” She took a pair of frustrated, spinning steps around the tent, as if to find a way out. “I know you’re coming back, I know it’s stupid. I can’t–” She wiped her sleeves across her eyes, furious with herself for having ruined his farewell.
The Healers' Road Page 34
