“Oh, a picnic! Lovely. And it is cooler in here, isn’t it.”
“Yeah. This’ll be a great studio for you. I can’t wait to see it.”
Kneeling on the blanket, she filled their cups. “I think you should tell the stories in Yanweian,” she said, and set the teapot on the tray. “That’s how you remember them, right?”
He considered the request. The food had helped to clear his head, but stripping back a layer of translation meant one less thing to have to think about. “Yeah… all right, if you don’t mind listening in Yanweian.”
“Nah, it’s good practice.”
He sat cross-legged on the blanket. “Hm, so, what have I already told you?”
“Doesn’t matter, I said.” Agna fluffed her skirt over her knees as she got comfortable across from him. “Start wherever you want.”
It was easiest to start without names, to explain how many people were in his unit and how the specialties worked — the scouts, the front line, the archers, the medic.
“You were the only medic?” Her question came in Kaveran, and Keifon had to backtrack.
“Yeah. One in each unit. In a war they’d have a med tent out behind the lines, and it’d be my duty to administer first aid to everyone in my unit and get them out if they were hurt.” Or killed. But he spared her that part.
“Were any of them — you know, Tufarians?” She raised a hand, wreathed in a spring-green glow. It winked out like a candle’s flame as she closed her hand.
“Very few. It’s against Tufarian principles to serve in war. Even in peacetime, all they’d do is train us on anatomy and things.”
“Huh. In Nessiny it’s against the law for anyone from the Academy to serve in the King’s Army. Anyway — I don’t mean to lead you off course.”
“Nnn, it’s all right.” He turned on the blanket to lean on the wall. Agna blew on her chamomile tea as he told her where they’d come from. Several had been orphaned wards of the Daranites or pulled from the street, like he was. A few were from families without enough money or connections to send them to proper training. A few had come from apprenticeships gone bad — tossed out when a business went under, or fled from abusive mentors. A few came from good families, younger sons and daughters who took their chances in the military rather than working for their siblings. And some of them were born nameless, with no prospects other than the Church or the Army. Most of them, to some extent, believed that dedicating their lives to gods and country was the right thing to do.
His tea was cool enough to drink when he began to say their names and recall their stories. He talked about Fu’s charts and the lost tournament and the sheep. He talked about the time Zan had nailed Shen’s boots to the floor after she’d caught him with a woman from Unit 124. This led him to talk about the occasionally contentious relationships in the unit, and the bedrock respect and love that no arguments between lovers could break. “Alaste,” he clarified in Nessinian. Familial love.
“I understand,” she said.
He shied past the topic of Kazi. He talked about their training and their assignments to evacuate civilians in flood zones and fires, or to quiet complaints when workers began to grumble. He saw Agna stiffen, and set his cup down.
“Not violently.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “We were just a show of power. A reminder of a higher authority.”
“What about the police?”
“Hrrm… well, it isn’t illegal to protest, or even to go on strike. And the police aren’t connected to the Church; they only answer to the aristocracy. People trust the Church more, even if we’re armed. And we’re more like them, most of the time. Most of the police forces are middle class. All in all, it comes off as more hostile to call out the police than to have an Army unit show up.”
Agna groaned. “Your country is so weird.” She scooted across the blanket with her cup and saucer to sit next to him.
“Maybe. Your country swaps out its royal family all the time, right?”
“Pff. That’s just politics.” Her voice wasn’t serious, and Keifon twisted his mouth. It didn’t mean anything. They could try to explain the differences between their homelands all night, but what was important was here in this room.
“Tell me more about them, though,” Agna said. “The people in your unit.”
He went on. There was still more to say. Through the curtains, the last glow of sunset faded out into streetlight. He told her about their card games, some of which the two of them had played together on the road. He told her about trying to learn songs on the nanbur based on the others’ tuneless humming. Agna got up to clean out their cups, shook in fresh tea, and poured more water.
He told her about Rendai, whom he’d always liked but never approached. It had been hard not to stare at Ren’s broad back during drills, sometimes, and Keifon had always tried to direct him away from the others’ practical jokes. He had never told anyone about his crush on Ren, except for Kazi. Leaving his cup aside, Keifon stretched out on the blanket, pillowing his head on a folded arm. Kazi had teased him about it, referring to Ren as “your big ox” and suggesting that he was dense and provincial, even though Ren read in the evenings nearly as much as Keifon did.
Keifon glanced up. Agna fidgeted with her cup as she listened. She wasn’t blushing quite as hard as he was.
He looked away. “It wasn’t important, in the end. Ren only liked women, as far as we could ever tell. Just… just a memory.”
“Kind of a nice memory, though,” Agna offered.
“Yeah.” He smoothed out a fold against the floor. “I know you don’t want to hear about Kazi.”
Agna let go a tense breath, as though she’d been holding it. “I don’t want to hear you hurt yourself over Kazi. Again. I mean… you have to have happy memories with him too, right? Things that don’t make you feel terrible?”
“Yeah… yeah, plenty.”
“Well… you could tell me about those.”
He swallowed. “You’re sure.”
“I’m sure.” Agna lay on her back, her arms crossed behind her head. “I want you to remember everything. Good and bad. And if you need to talk about the bad parts, I’ll listen. But tonight… I want to hear why you love them, why you’re part of them. Because even if you have to leave, you are a part of them, and they’re a part of you. Forever.” She turned to meet his eyes, and he saw the lamplight reflected in them. “Maybe it’s the Church of the Balance influence talking, but that’s what I was raised to believe. Your memories connect you to them. I want you to remember that. And with Kazi… well, yeah, I’m angry that he brushed you off the way he did. I remember watching you hurting, when we first met. But the good things that happened with him are still a part of you, too. No matter what happened afterward.”
He turned toward the floor, squeezing back the rush of tears. Agna stroked his shoulder, but she said nothing as he recovered. If she’d said any more, he wouldn’t have had the strength to resist. Part of him was still deliriously tired.
He could see her view of things. It was a beautiful thought. He was no longer a member of Unit 279, but he had been, and that would always be true.
“Kazi didn’t… approach me, flirt with me, at first. We were both new to the group, and he was curious about the medic’s training I was taking. What I was reading. What I thought about local politics. He… he just talked to me. Like I was no different from anyone else.” He turned toward the open air. Agna’s hand withdrew, and she watched and listened.
“It doesn’t sound like much, and maybe it isn’t. But I was so…” He squeezed a fist under his ribs, at his core. “Ripped up. Patched together. Still… bleeding, really. The Daranites kept me through the winter, till I could function, but I wasn’t well. I hadn’t expected to live through the winter. I wasn’t sure I’d wanted to, except for giving my life up to the Daranites. I’d betrayed everyone I loved, and lost everything. And there he was, this smart, driven person, who saw me as though I were whole. As though we were equal. And be
cause this self-assured person saw some kind of potential in me, I believed it. I felt like I could be whole again. I felt capable, and worthy, and — desirable, when we got to that point, eventually. I know I was supposed to believe those things on my own, but I couldn’t, just then. Not without his help.” Keifon reached out for a sip of his cooling tea to open his tightening throat. “It sounds like he rescued me, but it wasn’t like that. He refused to believe that I needed to be rescued. He just expected more of me. And I wanted to live up to that.”
“I bet you did live up to it,” Agna said softly.
“I tried. I trained with the unit and I got stronger, I studied with the medics and I learned. It gave me something to focus on. And… well… eventually I figured out why I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I asked him if we could go out sometime when we had some leave, and… he said yes.”
She smiled, and a little of the shaky nervousness in his chest let go. Her eyes slid away, as though she couldn’t look at him for too long. “Was he how you figured out you liked boys, or was that earlier?”
“Oh, earlier. Much earlier. I went around saying I was going to marry one of our ranch hands when I was five.” He was grateful for the chance to laugh with her for a second, even though it sounded strained. “I didn’t even consider girls till I hit puberty. But Kazi was my first — well, if he’d let me call him my boyfriend, he would have been the first. Fan and Eri came before him, both girls. I was fifteen, sixteen when I dated Fan, and Eri after that.” There had been one other failed dalliance between the two, and while it was still a fond memory, it hadn’t amounted to anything worth counting. Agna watched the ceiling and nodded.
“Being with him wasn’t always easy. I told him he cared about his cause more than he cared about me, and he never really denied that. And part of me is still angry at what he said, what he asked me to do in the end. That he just — shoved me aside, to benefit his career. But I have good memories, too. We trusted one another, and I don’t think he trusted too many people. He told me about his plans — not the stuff he told everyone else, his ideas that he was still working on, and what he was worried about. I told him about everything that had happened with Eri, and how it was hard to rebuild after that. And he never stopped pushing me to keep trying.” His free hand rested on the blanket, half-extended, but he rethought the timing and tucked it under his cheek instead. “I - I had some relapses, early on. I’d take my leave day and my pay and just — drown everything. Kazi didn’t yell, didn’t break up with me, even when I — when I yelled at him to. He just said—” His voice wavered, and Agna closed the distance between them after all, squeezing his arm. He pawed for her hand instead. Their fingers curled into interlocked spirals. “—He said, ‘you can do better than this.’”
“And you could.” Her voice was wobbly now, too, which went right to his throat. “And you know that now. He showed you, and now you carry it with you.”
He could only nod, wanting her to go on talking, to give him the words that warmed and healed his soul the way her green-glowing hands had warmed and healed his body.
“It’s all right to miss them. Even Kazi. I don’t want to say you shouldn’t feel bad. But you seemed so alone today, like you were losing everything. I wanted you to remember how much you are loved, and what made you happy about belonging with them. You always seemed so proud of being a part of the Army. And I wanted to understand that. To share it, a little. So thank you.”
“Thank you,” in Kaveran, was a short phrase. He got it out. The rest came in his grip on her hand. Agna let go to sit up, and he followed, ignoring the ache in the shoulder that had been pressed against the floor. He saw it coming. He knew the softness in her eyes and the lift to her chin when she wanted to hug him. It couldn’t come often enough. They were sweaty from the overheated kitchen, but he held on and breathed her in.
“You aren’t alone, Kei. We’re not alone. We’ll make more friends, and someday I know you’ll find someone who makes you feel like Kazi did.”
“So could you.”
“Tch.” She pulled back, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “Anyway. You’re still going, still living your life. And I’m glad of that, every day.”
A manic little laugh shook loose in his throat. “Stop—stop saying things. You’re too good to me.”
“No such thing.” She grinned as she nudged the side of his head, then leaned in to hug him one more time. “Go get some sleep. I’ll clean up the tea service. And if I leave before you get up, get some rest tomorrow.”
“Yeah. I will. Thank you.”
The night was warm enough that he left the blanket in the front room. It would remind him of this conversation tomorrow, when he cleaned the apartment. He folded the uniform to code on top of the dresser, and gave a last salute to his memories.
Agna: The Lay of the Land
It was too bad she wouldn’t have a planning board, at least not yet. Agna had pictured the notice board from the Benevolent Union base in Vertal, packed with assignments and contacts. She’d post dossiers of her potential investors, their known connections, and their business dealings. She’d create a dizzying web of the influential people of Wildern.
In reality, Jaeti’s office was the best place to work — it was connected to the library, and it was cooler than Agna’s studio during the afternoons. Every available space in Jaeti’s office held maps and drawings already, and under no circumstances could anyone else move or cover the smallest corner.
In the end, she used not vast arrays of notes on a wall, but simple paperboard folders. They began to fill the shoulder bag she used to carry her purchases home from the market, and she filed them in a crate when she got home. It was still the only bit of furniture in her studio, though she had picked out a rug and a drawing table for the future, after the hospital had paid her a few more times.
After her shifts, shopping trips and chores, she headed to the library for her research. Seeking out references in Jaeti’s files and in the library’s books on local history, she read till dark. She read about the lumber industry first, and the growth of the town. Families arrived and ascended, rose, fell by gambling or competition or filial apathy. One of the most prominent lumber clans, the Migullens, had been bought out six years ago by the West Pine Company. The statue in the market square where Agna and Keifon had eaten on their first day was of an ancestral Migullen; it paid homage to a legacy that had already died out. Its successors had thrown in their lot with the other companies or moved away or simply dropped out of the records.
The West Pine Company remained, headed up by a clan named Kalen. They bought up smaller sawmills and lumber outfits and amassed an ever-larger power base. Their current leader was a woman in her seventies named Quasta Kalen, who seemed to be quite the aesthete. Her name turned up again and again in news stories about society parties and gossip items about shipments of fine furniture and goods coming up the canal. Agna began a separate file for her.
Now that the Migullens had receded from the stage, the Kalens’ greatest rivals were a company named Vogal Lumber, founded by a family of the same name. The Vogals hadn’t entered the news much in the last three decades — few marriages, few new acquisitions, several deaths of distinguished and elderly relations. Agna found notices about one of their young scions who was involved with the local theaters, but the company itself seemed to be either stalling or biding its time. Despite the wealth rolling into West Pine, it seemed that the lumber industry as a whole was less volatile and lucrative than it had once been. The initial frenzy of claiming land and establishing a market had calmed down into a more stable situation, with wild speculators and minor players absorbed into a few large companies.
In general flow and form, it wasn’t unlike the history of the aristocracy that Agna had learned as a child — one family split into two, then merged with another, started a feud with a third, and pushed a fourth off the stage. The Families might fancy themselves unique movers of history and culture, but the regional squabbles of a gr
oup of logging companies and entrepreneurs echoed their grand plans more than any of them would admit.
As history books turned into newspaper archives, Agna began to take notes about the current landscape. The Migullens were all but gone, investing their remaining wealth in other logging companies, or moving on to other interests in Laketon and the hill country east of Vertal. Only a few stalwarts remained, and they were relied upon for dissenting viewpoints in newspaper articles about the canal, the Benevolent Union base, and now the new Tufarian church. Apparently, people could find a way to complain about churches being built. Too large, too fancy, why wasn’t the little church they had before good enough? It had been good enough for their grandparents’ grandparents, which meant it should be good enough forever.
Agna wondered whether Jaeti harbored any sympathy for the old townie line. One afternoon as they compared notes, Jaeti had commented pessimistically on the old Tufarian church’s upcoming demolition. She had fretted that it would make a nice home for something, as long as they repaired the roof and replaced the windows. Since most of the buildings were made of wood here, Agna wondered what would constitute constructing a whole new building in place of the old one. Keeping this to herself, she merely made empathetic noises in Jaeti’s direction and offered her more tea.
She was beginning to understand the major forces at work in Wildern, at least. The Benevolent Union had been instrumental in the building of the canal that had accelerated the logging industry, and the rise of the new base had brought successive waves of new settlers to town. The Church of Tufar, in turn, had been buoyed up by the influence of the Benevolent Union and its small army of doctors, healers and teachers, who were under the auspices of the bronze god as far as believers were concerned. The church under construction a few blocks from the Benevolents’ hospital was theirs, and when the engineers and earthbreakers were done, it would be many times the size of their rickety storefront headquarters near Agna’s gallery. Someone operating in their name had bought a number of paintings and pieces of statuary. Tufarian Art Buyer?? joined her list of potential trustees.
The Healers' Home Page 10
