He hugged her. Agna calmed despite herself. Keifon kept her steady as he spoke. “Thank you for – for missing me back. I don’t think you know what that means to me.”
She had been awake for barely an hour, and she was already dizzy as though she’d been up all night. “Not fair,” she murmured. “Trump card. Hugging is a trump card.” She could feel a chuckle knock around his ribcage.
“You can play it, too,” he said, and drew away a little. Agna sniffled. Keifon leaned in to kiss her forehead, and darted off to grab his backpack and lute case.
She didn’t say goodbye as he flew from the tent. She called “Safe travels!”, and he turned to wave. And that was all.
***
During the day, she managed the clinic, one patient after another. The first day left her exhausted, her concentration sputtering out by day’s end, her head crowded with other people’s energy signatures. She apologized and closed the clinic early. On the second day she took Keifon’s medical kit with her and used his tools when she could. She had trained in medical tools at Blackhall, but it had been some time since she’d listened to a heartbeat through a stethoscope instead of through her hands. The patients didn’t comment. She began to get used to switching back and forth, using her art when the situation called for it, conserving her energy. It began to feel natural.
Lines began to form in the clinic, despite her best efforts. Even conserving her energy wouldn’t let her treat two doctors’ worth of patients at once. She learned to stop tensing up when there were people waiting, because they arrived at the front of the line as tense as she was, more often than not. And then their energy, when she connected, was jangling and harsh. Agna worried and castigated herself for this, because Keifon would have been better at it. He would have put them all at ease, or even made them enjoy waiting. But eventually it got easier.
Agna imposed order. The first person in line took this spot, and the next, and progressed in a certain direction around the wall of the clinic. She borrowed some extra books from Wayron and stacked them on a spare stool by the door, along with some wooden toys from Baran. Agna began to greet the patients cheerfully, striking up conversations as though this were only a trivial setback. The patients often started conversations among one another. She listened to their interconnecting stories, lost in a swirl of narratives that flowed one into the other, as their neighbors chimed in with tangents and sequels.
She noticed that if she had been talking to one of the patients, it was easier to read them and find their currents. She knew the theory; she had always known the theory. It was why it had been so difficult to help Keifon, so long ago. Their energy carried their baggage, good or bad. But it was a help to her now.
On days off, she and Nelle fell back into doing their laundry together. They talked about the plants that ripened this time of year, the gossip around the camp, and the plans that Agna had begun to formulate for this year’s fall festival. As their laundry dried, they suited up in leathers to hike through the underbrush and collect berries and roots. Agna brushed the burrs out of her hair, kneeling on the tent floor. She experimented with painting with berry juice and making plant-based ink.
She got one short note: Keifon had reached his destination. He said thank you again. He didn’t say much else. Lina’s and Marco’s letters continued. Rone wrote her with a new address. He had moved to Prisa. He didn’t explain why.
She became more conscious of the sounds of the camp at night, falling asleep listening to creaking and coughing and the pitchy crackle of the torches.
***
Masa agreed to make Nessinian food for the fall festival, an exotic holiday to the rest of the caravan. Fox, his apprentice, popped over to the clinic tent now and then to ask questions about ingredients or traditions. He was ravenous for new information, having learned Kaveran cuisine inside and out. Agna told him what she knew as she packed up the tent, and he helped her dismantle it before the caravan moved on.
The merchants gathered for the fall festival at a campsite outside Wildern. Agna ate a little bit of everything that Masa and Fox had made, listening to the others as they talked, argued, opined and proclaimed. She slipped away from the table to find the cooks and to compliment them on their skill. Fox grinned. Masa put her to work carrying more platters out to the tables.
Nelle reached a precise titration of tipsiness. When most of the others had disbanded, leaving the survivors in quiet clumps around the bonfire, she leaned on Agna’s shoulder. “In Wildern, we should go out. You and me. All right?”
“Yeah, we should.” Agna had wanted to explore the city and get some real information to bolster her dreams of relocating, but it would be a more pleasant trip with some company. There were theaters in town, and a library; there would be things to do.
Nelle drifted around the bonfire, talking with each of the remaining clusters in turn. Agna watched the flickering firelight against her back. It was strange that the two of them should stick together like this. But then, they were close to the same age, and shared a few interests... maybe it wasn’t so strange. Agna had to put aside the thought that she could only be truly connected to people from Murio and the Academy. It wasn’t true anymore, if it ever had been.
Rone’s religion said that everyone was connected. They believed that just being human made them fellow travelers in life, to a certain extent. That was a bit of a stretch, Agna thought. But maybe being alive was one drop, and being part of the caravan was another, and every experience they shared was one drop and the next, and so the cup was filled. Nelle had become her friend somehow, and Edann had become Keifon’s, for a while. And Keifon... Agna watched the fire on her own for a while.
Somewhere on the other side of the mountains, he was back together with his little girl. The thought tied a knot in her throat. Her knowledge of Kaveran art was more specialized, and her healing work was more laudable in the grand scheme of things. But she was proud of having made the reunion possible, too.
***
Wildern had already had a tiny storefront library when the Benevolent Union base had been built, but now it had a grand two-story building with a central atrium, crammed with books. There were two theaters and a singing company that performed outdoors in good weather. There were clothiers whose wares made Agna’s chest constrict with homesickness as she passed outside their windows. She didn’t know what was fashionable anymore, but she longed for silk and fresh linen all the same. She was saving her money, just in case. In case of what, she wasn’t sure. She had become used to doing so.
Nelle loved the idea of a library afternoon and a theater evening. She bent over herbalism texts, spread out over the tables, as Agna wandered through the stacks. Agna inhaled the air and watched the dust motes in the sunbeams. She found a librarian and introduced herself in hushed, polite tones. The librarian found another, who found a historian, who swept Agna into her office and shut the door.
Two hours later, Agna floated back to the center of the library to find Nelle. Her brain was packed, her throat was raw, and her blood was full of lightning. Under her arm she gripped a folder full of notes, names, ideas. Dreams. Potential.
Nelle closed her array of books and grabbed her by the arms. Her eyes lit up with the promise of conspiracy.
“Later. Dinner,” Agna whispered. “Starving.”
They found a restaurant, where, before the entrees arrived, Agna laid out her notes on the tabletop.
Wildern was growing, and with it grew its cultural offerings. The library, the theaters, and the Benevolent Union school were a solid foundation, but talk had begun of museums, trade schools, and more churches beyond the old Eytran church.
The historian, Jaeti, was a specialist in northwestern Kaveran history, and had been looking into the possibility of opening a history museum. She had found a few available spaces – most were storefronts left behind as their tenants moved into newer, larger buildings – but nothing quite suited her plan. She had also found little enthusiasm in funding a history museum i
n a city that seemed so poised for the future. But with an art gallery linked to the history museum, both might have a greater chance of survival.
After dinner, Agna dragged Nelle past one of the vacant buildings and fogged the windows with their breath. She would write to Wildern every day for the rest of her assignment if she had to. She would grovel to investors, live above a storefront, and invest everything she made on the road. She would spend every bit of goodwill she could raise as a scion of the Despana family. It would take teamwork and long, thankless hours. But she could make this real.
She walked away for now, returning to the theaters with Nelle. They read the flyers posted outside, their breath steaming in the air. Agna buried her chin in her scarf and hugged the folder against her side. They had a brief, unserious debate and settled on the play that started earlier. Nelle spun through the cold night on the way home, lobbing back Agna’s incoherent, gleeful chatter.
Agna composed a letter in her head that night as she fell asleep, an invisible companion to her regular letters to Rone and Esi and Lina and Marco. Things are good. I miss you. I hope you’re doing well.
Keifon: Past and Future
Eri rested a hip against the doorframe. “You look better.”
Keifon tried to stifle a yawn. “Joke?”
“No. You looked terrible last time, that’s all.” But she moved aside into the warmth and light of her parents’ house and let him come in. Her parents’ eyes fixed on him. He inclined his head, determined not to rise to their bait, determined to prove that he didn’t deserve their continuing resentment.
Ignoring all of them, Eri sauntered toward the back of the house. “Can I get you something?” Keifon lowered his backpack and his nanbur case to the floor by the door, shed his new coat and soaked boots, and scrambled to catch up. He shivered on the kitchen’s slate floor. Eri was already pumping water into a teakettle.
“I-it’s good to see you,” he chattered, rubbing his hands.
“Nachi’s asleep,” she said. “We could wake her, but she wouldn’t go back to sleep, and she has school tomorrow.”
“I understand.” He couldn’t even resent the decision. He could hurt for a while longer, more keenly, now that his girl was just a couple of doors away. But school was important, and they’d have more time later. Not enough. But a little more.
She leaned against the scarred wooden counter, crossing her legs at the ankle. Her eyes softened. “You’re really all right.”
Half a laugh escaped his cold-tightened throat. “Yeah. I’m – I’m good.” He caught the half-dozen layers of meaning in her voice and in her posture. He could read her like a measure of music, tones over tones. Are you drinking again? No.
“You stopped wearing it.” Her long hand touched the hollow of her throat, swathed in the neck of a soft wool sweater.
“...Yeah. Actually... wait a minute.” Sniffing, Keifon darted past the elder Sans and knelt by his luggage. The bag of money sat cradled in clothes in the center of his backpack. He extracted it and carried it to her, feeling like a child who had caught a frog. “It’s from – selling my torque. And some of what I made this past year. It isn’t much. I’m sorry.”
Eri set it on the table. The coins settled against one another. The stove crackled behind her. “You’re sure you’re all right.”
“Yes! Damn it. – Yes.” He reined in the old snappishness and quickness to anger. Too much time had passed. He couldn’t slide back. “I’m sorry. I’m – I’m cold, and exhausted, and–” hungry, it seemed pathetic to heap that on top of everything else – “and I know I deserve it, but I’m too tired to cope with your parents right now. I’m fine. It’s going well in Kavera. Really well.” Once he had started, he couldn’t stop. He breathed on his hands. The blood was returning to them now, and his clothes were drying out. “I’m getting experience in the trade. I – I’ve been working well with the – the person that the Benevolents assigned to me. I miss home, I miss Nachi. But it’s been good.” He looked into her eyes, to prove his sincerity and to see her relent. “I’m getting better. I promise.”
Eri puffed out a scoffing sigh. “All right. I’m not your godsforsaken jailer.” She turned to lift the kettle from the stove and poured him a cup over loose black leaves. “Are you hungry?”
“Umn, yes. But you don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t.” Muffling her movements, she opened a cabinet and busied herself with plates and knives. Keifon wrapped his hands around the scorching cup and basked in the steam. Even if it blistered the skin off his fingers, he wouldn’t care. He hoped the rain would stop before tomorrow. He hoped he would be back tomorrow.
“Eri?” Her mother peeked in the door, surveyed the layout of the room, and was apparently satisfied with what she found. “We’re going to bed, kitten.”
Eri set down her arsenal and rounded the table to give her mother a kiss on the cheek. “Goodnight, Ara.”
Eri’s parents’ steps creaked up the stairs as Eri finished her task. She slid a plate loaded with two sandwiches toward Keifon on the table and wiped her hands on a towel. Keifon felt his ears burning. “...Thank you.”
“If you want to talk, we can go out by the fire.” Her voice had softened, too. Keifon knew this voice, with its quiet drawl. It tightened in his chest. He cleared his throat.
“Mmn. Sounds nice.”
She took the teakettle; he took his plate and cup. They left the money bag on the table. Keifon glanced at it as they passed out of the kitchen. She hadn’t counted it, so the amount wasn’t in question. Did she think that he was buying her approval? He’d brought money before. It was for Nachi, that was all. It was the least he could do.
Eri sat on one of the chairs by the fire, tucking her feet under her. It was a little easier to take her mannerisms as time went on. It hurt a little less. She was more Nachi’s mother than his own former partner now. The balance shifted more every time he visited. Time kept moving. Keifon sank into the other chair with the plate and cup balanced in either hand. His stomach growled, but he had to drink her in, to convince himself that she was really there. She was back to cutting her hair short, fringing softly around her face. She was still careless with her limbs, like she had just woken up. She was still lovely, but he could appreciate that more distantly now. He had to.
“...You look good, too.”
She smiled ruefully. “Thanks.”
Keifon bent aside to set the teacup on an end table and tried not to inhale the sandwiches. The last stretch into the city had been interminable; the cart had bogged down four times in the mud. Keifon had agonized about the rain getting into his nanbur case, and arriving too late to see Nachi. But, he reminded himself, he had made it here. He was at Eri’s fireside, and she was listening.
The firelight warmed the planes of her cheek, outlining the border between light and shadow. She didn’t look at him as she spoke. “I should mention, before it gets too late – one of my cousins had a room for rent. It’s not far, and it’s a reasonable rate. I’ll take you there when you’re ready.”
The warmth spread from inside him, meeting the fire’s glow. “Oh... thank you.” He took a sip of tea and started on the second sandwich. “Is it... is something wrong with the money? It’s for her. That’s all.”
“I know,” Eri sighed. She folded her arms and rested her chin on them. She looked so young curled up on the chair. “But it’s a lot. Isn’t it?”
“Nn. I guess. Forty thousand, thereabouts.”
“God’s blood.”
“It’s what I can do.” He didn’t trust himself to speak without resentment or bitterness tainting the words. This is all I can do. I can’t be here. “Please take it for her.”
She rolled her neck, and he saw the real fatigue in her movements for the first time. “Some of it. Keep some for yourself. We’re all right, and she’d be devastated if you starved to death for her sake.”
Keifon smiled despite himself. “I’m not going to starve to death.”
; “What are you going to do? Stay in Kavera?”
Trust Eri to strike right where he was weakest. “I... I don’t know.” He took a couple more bites to stall, to formulate an answer that made sense, an answer that would convince himself as well as Eri. “I love my work, even though traveling is... it’s difficult, sometimes. But it’s worth it. I’m doing good for those people, and learning, like I said. I think...” He swallowed and set the empty plate aside, then propped one heel on the edge of the seat and leaned on his thigh, echoing her posture. “The Army would let me go honorably if I kept working for the Benevolent Union. There’s... in Wildern, right over the border, the Benevolents just built a new hospital. I think I could... I could apprentice there. And study, and someday be a full-fledged doctor.”
“Then what?”
“Stay there, I think. I can’t... I can’t risk coming back for good.”
“Ugh. Because of that asshole.”
Keifon tightened his jaw against the words that crowded his head. He was there for me when you weren’t. Until he wasn’t. You have that in common. But then... she was defending him, wasn’t she, in her own way. Defending him against Kazi. Keifon rested his forehead on his folded hands. “Because of Kazi, yes. Partly.”
“Are you still talking to him? Writing, or anything?”
“No. Not since I left. He wouldn’t have it.”
She let out a breath and relaxed her shoulders. “That’s one thing.” Her gaze leveled at him. Shaken by the turn of the conversation, he hoped that she would find something worth honoring. He had come so far, whether she realized it or not, and he wanted her to know that he had.
“I think... I think I’m over him. More or less.” He found a way to take another breath. “I haven’t found anyone else yet. Friends. People who have been good for me. But I’m not seeing anyone. Not exactly.”
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