“Agreed.”
She ducked past a thicket of coat racks. “I think a wardrobe is next for me. I can live without bookcases for a while longer. Seeing as I only have a few books yet. An empty bookcase just begs to be filled.”
Keifon smiled to himself. “Someday, though.”
“Yeah, someday I’ll get my books back from home, too. Till then I won’t tempt myself.” She eyed a disembodied headboard and footboard, leaning against the wall. “I wonder if they allow paying for things over time. That’s done, isn’t it?”
Keifon shrugged. “It’s something they do in Yanwei, anyway. You try not to get yourself in debt, but if the shopkeeper knows your family, they’ll trust you to pay. I don’t know how they establish trust here.”
“Hey, the bank gave me a whole building, and I’m a shiftless foreigner. So that’s a good sign.” As the sentence left her mouth, she became aware of the proprietor hovering behind her. She whirled around. “Good morning!”
“Good morning. New in town, are you? A new healer for the Benevolents?”
“Got it in one. We’re looking to buy a kitchen table and chairs, solid, not too showy, and two double bed frames.”
“Uh — one,” Keifon said.
“What? You need one, too. Honestly, two doubles, sir.” She took Keifon’s elbow and turned him aside. “A double is just a two-person bed, all right, if that’s what you’re upset about. It’s so much more comfortable.”
“I’m fine with a cot,” he said.
“You absolutely are not. — Excuse us, please.”
The furniture seller began to bustle away. “I’ll… just pick out some table samples, then, and show you when you’re ready. All right?”
“Thank you. — So no,” she said to Keifon, “absolutely no. Look. You buy it now, when you move, you take it with you. The end. One less thing to buy for your house someday. Don’t make this complicated. We can afford this much. A little at a time. Prioritizing. That’s all.”
He rested his hand on the polished ball on the end of a bedpost. “I just… hm. All — all right.”
“Cut corners somewhere else. I am sleeping comfortably, blast it.”
He let out a voiceless laugh. “You know it might take them some time to build and deliver it.”
“That’s fine. As soon as possible, though, I want down comforters and bolsters and oh, now I just want a nap.” Before he could slip out of this momentary lightness, she waved to the shopkeeper. He weaved through the maze to meet her.
“See anything you like?”
“Yes, those two there, either one for me. Kei?”
“Um, they look fine. How much are they?”
She managed to keep him from fleeing the store as she discussed prices with the shopkeeper. In the end, they got a deal on a table, four chairs, and two bed frames, with delivery and assembly. They promised to come back for more, and scored a recommendation for a cabinetmaker for the wardrobe and bookshelves.
“So it is camping tonight,” Agna said, as the bell jingled behind them. “It sounds kind of fun, to be honest. Though we don’t have any firewood. Hm. Another thing for the list.”
“I suspect firewood is affordable around here, at least,” Keifon said. “With so much forest. I think I saw a stand in the market that sold firewood.”
“Yeah, me too. We’ll stop on the way back.” They rounded the corner, looping the long way away from the furniture store to see what they could of the city. This neighborhood held a lot of closely packed houses with shared walls and timbers across their facades. Many of their windows were outfitted with windowboxes, still barely green at this time of year.
“I feel like I should at least try some windowboxes,” she remarked. “I’ll ask Nelle what would grow up here.” Her herbalist friend from the caravan had traveled around the country all her life, and knew the geography and climate of every corner of Kavera.
“Mmn,” Keifon said. “Good idea. There are three sides of the house with sunny windows; that seems like a lot of potential.”
“It would look more homey… well, to me, anyway. Murio is full of rooftop gardens and trees in pots and all sorts. Not as many trees planted along the streets, so we green it up however we can. Besides, there isn’t an end to the growing season like you have here.”
“Must be some place to have a garden.” Keifon tilted his face into the afternoon sun as they passed by a gap between two buildings.
“Yep. My sister would lose her mind in a climate like this, where everything dies off every year. Or she’d just do experiments all winter, and make things from dried herbs like Nelle does.” She shrugged. “Won’t have to, though. She and Esi are settling down in Murio when Esi gets back from her assignment. So she’ll always have Nessiny’s climate.”
“Hm.” He seemed about to speak, but kept his peace. Knowing him, it would have been something like life is unpredictable, you never thought you’d be shopping for furniture in a foreign country with your cranky Yanweian best friend, and here you are. And that was true, for the most part. But Lina and Esirel were the pole around which everyone else in their peer group navigated. They’d been childhood sweethearts, for goodness’ sake. They’d already been together for ten years, nearly half their lives. Life was not unpredictable for them. Something had to be stable in this world.
These days, Agna knew where she’d be in a few years — though if someone had asked her on her graduation day where she’d be now, the answer would have been very different. She’d have said she’d be back in Nessiny, having just returned from her assignment overseas, and starting as a junior agent in her father’s art agency.
“Are you all right?” Keifon touched her elbow.
She shivered and tucked her hair behind her ear. “Just… thinking about how it could have been if I’d gone home after all.” Her life now felt strange and fragile, held aloft by her own will, something that could shatter in an instant. The urge to ask him to stop walking fought with the need to not look like a whining child.
“Hey.” He stopped for her, after all, and brought her around to face him. “It’s not too late, if you think this was a mistake.”
“No — no, that’s not it. It’s just — it would have been so easy to end up in that life, and it would have been a good life, too. I’d miss you, and I don’t think I’d be happy in my father’s shadow for long, but it would be safe, and easy. And all it took to come here instead was just… saying I wanted to. That’s it. And my whole life is a different shape.”
He ran his hand up and down her arm. “That is all it takes. Standing up. Making a choice. Deciding what you have to do. I’m still amazed at what you’re doing here. I can’t wait to see where it goes.”
Agna talked to distract herself from the uneasy flush on her neck. “Who am I to decide that this was the right thing to do? I think it was, yeah, but nobody had to approve it. Nobody stopped me, and nobody said yep, you’re doing the right thing. I just… did it.” She narrowed her eyes at the smile he was trying to hide. “What?”
“And you say I’m too dependent on authority.” He didn’t mean it seriously; his voice acknowledged the irony. “No one stamped your plans with the seal of approval, no. You decided to do what you wanted whether your parents were on board or not. But that means no one can stop you, either. That’s… freedom, isn’t it.”
She took in the houses, the budding trees along the street, this city she had chosen as her own. She could walk in any direction. And he would come with her. “I guess it is.” She took a deep breath and looked up past the tips of the trees, pinkish against the sky. “It’s kind of scary.”
“Mmhm.” He squeezed her arms. “Glad you’re with me.”
She crossed her arms to cover his hands in hers, no longer caring, for this minute, whether anyone saw. “Me, too. Thanks.”
If she’d gone back to Nessiny, she would have dimmed that smile of his, too. She didn’t want to admit that, didn’t want to claim that power, even though she knew it was true. He
would have recovered. He’d survived worse fates. But she knew his life had changed along with hers. “That’s why I’m here,” he said.
“Tch.” She turned to walk down the slanting block. “You’re here to tend to broken bones and break hearts and cook amazing food. In some order. I’m here to heal people and sell art. Probably in that order.”
“Good plan. Let’s do that.”
* * *
They set up cots in their living room that night, having had enough time to clean only the living room and the kitchen. The room was twice the size of their tent, which hadn’t had a fireplace, nor a window that let in the moonlight. The larder was only stocked with a few jars and boxes, and the load of firewood in the courtyard would hardly last a week. The room smelled like fire and soap. Tomorrow they’d do more. Tomorrow they’d keep building on what they’d done today. Then the next day, and the next, and the path that led to her safe place in her father’s shadow would fade into the distance behind her.
“It’s so quiet. — I’m sorry, were you asleep?”
“Not yet.” Agna listened to the muffled city outside the window. A wagon passed, with the clop of horses’ hooves and the rattle of wooden wheels on the cobblestones. A dog barked. “I guess it’s normal.”
Keifon settled onto his pillow. “Is it? There was more noise in the camp. Voices, coughing, the patrol going around.”
“Well, yeah. Four hundred people in the same campground. I guess there are that many on this street, but not all out in the open.” Something creaked, and she gasped.
“It’s just the house settling.” His tone was kind and calm, an antidote to her mental image of burglars in every empty corner of the house.
Agna swallowed and pressed a hand against her racing heart. “Yeah. All right.”
“You’ll get used to it. I bet you don’t even notice the sounds your family’s house makes.”
“Our house is stone, stone behaves itself. You Westerners and your wood.” She wanted to laugh, to drive out the idea of hearing these creaks like footsteps in an empty house — as she would, someday, when he was gone. She wanted to sleep, after the mindless fear coursing through her system hada chance to thin out. Besides, part of her didn’t want their first day in their new city to ever end. That was childish. It would end just like so many days on the road had ended: a new place, a safe place, and a familiar voice.
“Today,” she said. “At the furniture store. I’m sorry I cut you off. Is there something else wrong? It isn’t more than you can afford, is it? Because we could still cancel the order.”
“No, that isn’t it. Well…” He sighed. “Now that I’m out of the caravan, I wanted to send some money to Nachi. Try to. When I visited last fall, Eri gave most of it back anyway. So I have more money than I’m comfortable with, right now. Money wasn’t the problem.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that idea, or whether to tread anywhere near the topic of his daughter and his ex-wife. And she had the idea that suggesting practical solutions like opening a bank account would be wide of the mark, right now. She listened until he was done, as her heartbeat settled into its resting rhythm. That seemed to be what he needed.
“In the furniture store, that was… It’s also that I don’t want to impose. To act as though I have a right to be here. To take advantage of your generosity. It seems wrong to be storing furniture in your house.”
“Hm.” She hadn’t thought of it as her house, from the outset. It was a joint project with Jaeti, and she was borrowing the living space until the museum and gallery needed to expand. It wasn’t as though she had inherited the family estate. Someday she’d face moving somewhere else, as their exhibit space grew. Until then, she’d thought of Keifon and herself as equal partners in this arrangement.
It was strange to think of herself as some beneficent landlord to her former traveling companion. It was a role she’d never intended to take. It weighed on her chest to think that he thought he was imposing on her, that he was reluctant to take up space. It didn’t seem like a comfortable way to live. She remembered how Esirel had always seemed a little sad and wary when she stayed over school breaks at Agna’s house — even though Agna’s parents had greeted her warmly and never asked for anything in return, even though Esirel was nearly their daughter-in-law by the time they graduated. It had never made sense to Agna, and she wasn’t keen to repeat the experience with another friend.
“Well,” she said, “I want you to be comfortable while you’re here. I want you to feel like you don’t have to camp anymore. It bothers me to think that I’d be sleeping in a real bed and unpacking my stuff, when you’ve just got a cot and a backpack. That’s what seems wrong to me.” The layout particulars fell into place in her mind, the empty spaces turning into livable space as their purchases arrived. “I mean — once we decide who gets what room, I think it’ll start to feel more natural. I figured we’d pick tomorrow, before the furniture gets here. We’ll talk about it then.”
“Wherever you want to stay,” he said. “I’ll take whatever you don’t need.”
She huffed out a breath. “Don’t be that way. You’re a full member of this household, as far as I’m concerned.”
“It’s — it’s not the same. But-but thank you.”
Agna snuggled into her beaten-up pillow. “We’re in this together. I’m not taking you on as charity, you’re not imposing on me, none of that. There’s a lot to do right now, and I just want to get it done and plan for what’s next. That’s all.”
Keifon absorbed her lecture for a moment. “Mmn. I understand what you want to do.” His blankets rustled as he stretched out. “I think it’s a good approach. I can try. Dealing with what’s in front of me, for now.”
“Yep. Like they say in Kavera, don’t borrow trouble.”
“Heh. I guess so. It’s hard to break the habit.”
Agna laughed toward their new ceiling. “If there were a position for a professional trouble-borrower, we’d have the house paid off tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’m not that bad, am I?” He was chuckling with her, though. They had made it to this new place, this new venture, with their partnership intact. The Benevolent Union had thrown them together two years ago, but they would not fall apart when they weren’t forced by circumstance to stay together. Agna had known for a long time that they had built something, grown something, bigger than the Union’s assignment — she told herself it had been that way ever since they’d sat by the lake in Laketon together, but it had been true longer than that.
Agna crossed her arms behind her head as they wound down toward quiet. She heard Keifon getting comfortable on his cot.
“Thanks,” he said. “For everything, today. For the walk, and letting me stay. Everything. Being you.”
His compliments still made her ears feel warm, and she was still glad that he couldn’t see. She had grown used to his opinions of her. She had learned to stop arguing with them. It was something to live up to, after all. “Thanks for being here, too. And for being you.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.” She almost added Welcome home. She wanted to say it; the words lay in a warm ball on her stomach like a sleeping animal. She was certain she could say it almost properly in his language, too. But he’d argue, and they’d break this peace, and they’d end the day badly. She left the words there, unspoken. Someday she’d say them, and he wouldn’t argue about his right to be here or the temporary nature of their arrangement.
It was one more goal to add to her list.
Keifon: Apprenticeship
The clerk’s shoes ticked on the polished floor, and Keifon followed the straight lines of the boards, trying not to look up at the doors on either side. He gathered his resolve and confidence and calm. He would be respectable and trustworthy. He would be sincere. He would not put on his casual bedside manner, not for his new mentor. He would try to be the self that Agna knew.
“Dr. Rushu?” The clerk paused in one of the doorways. “The new apprent
ice is here.” She glanced at him, and Keifon interpreted her pause as the Yanweian one, diplomatically silenced. “Is it a good time?”
Keifon heard a woman’s voice reply. The clerk waved him in, and he passed through the door before her.
“Welcome, Keifon.” The doctor set a stout wooden cane against the floor and leaned on it as she stood. Despite their common ancestry, she held out her free hand to greet Keifon in the Kaveran fashion. In such a short phrase, her accent did not give away hometown or class, not quite. All Keifon heard was warmth and maturity, borne out by the doctor’s long white ponytail and her pained hesitation in standing. Keifon’s carefully marshaled calm flickered. It was the first time in months that he’d encountered someone from the home country, someone who would understand what he was.
“Thank you, ma’am. I appreciate the opportunity, and the privilege of training with you.”
She waved at a chair opposite her desk and pulled up in her own chair as Keifon sat. The clerk laid Keifon’s file on the edge of the desk with a trace of crisp impatience.
“Thank you, Teiga,” the doctor replied in Kaveran.
“Will you need anything else, ma’am?”
“No, no, go on. We’ll have a good long talk.”
“Very well. Good day.” She directed a nod at them and closed the door as she left. The doctor hooked her cane over the arm of her chair, keeping it in reach. “So. What brings you to Wildern? I’ve read the file; it seems this is not your first post in Kavera.”
“No, ma’am.” Even the truth could be turned and folded in so many ways. “It’s a complicated situation. I wanted to make a new start in Kavera. I still have family in Ceien. And this hospital presented an opportunity to compromise between both.” Even before the new mountain pass was completed, the ride between Wildern and the southern Yanweian city of Ceien was short enough to travel a few times a year.
“Indeed. Family?”
She was not so disapproving as she might have been, but he read the implication in her surprised tone. His file must read Keifon the Medic in black ink, on one page after another, as stark as the mountains against the sky. Nameless do not have families. That was the point of their punishment. Legally, he did not have the right to call Nachi family. Not anymore. Legally, she did not have a father at all.
The Healers' Home Page 4
