by Lisa Cach
“I’m glad to hear you remember that!”
“It’s more than you’ll ever be offered, whore that you are. No man will pledge his sword to you.”
As she quivered in rage, her shoulders back and chin high, I felt all my own anger drain out of me, replaced by pity for her. The only value she could imagine for herself came from men. All her rank, all the respect others gave her, all her wealth and safety; she knew no other path to them than through marriage. Behind her defiance, behind her self-absorbed need to have all males’ eyes upon her, was the fear that she was nothing without male regard. And in this world, she was right to think so. Precious few women got to choose their own path.
“Go along, Wynnetha,” I said softly. “Don’t waste your time on me.”
She worked the piece of gristle between front teeth for a moment, doubtless trying to decide whether it would be an admission of defeat to leave as I suggested. “Whore,” she said again, shoved aside the curtain with enough force to tear it from one of its rings, and flounced out.
Her mood and words stuck with me, much as I wished I could brush them off with as little care as they warranted. I found myself churning over her insults, my blood bubbling with an echo of her agitation. Sleep seemed far distant, and yet with Mordred here I didn’t dare wander through the villa, seeking the distraction of company and entertainment.
I grabbed my cloak and slipped outside. The spring night had a wavering chill to it, touched with a hint of the coming summer. Or maybe I’d been cold for so long that even this barest hint of warmth seemed balmy to me. I found the path, and guided by the light of a half-moon, half-risen and half-hidden by clouds, I wended my way to Maerlin’s workshop.
A dim orange light seeping through the shuttered windows told me he was there, and I gave the merest scratch on the door before pushing it open. We’d grown informal while planning the sword presentation with Terix, and this workshop had begun to feel a place of comfort and friendship.
“Nimia!” Maerlin said, looking up from yet another sheet of endless calculations; I thought sometimes he meant to discover the geometry of life itself in his numbers and diagrams. “I thought you’d be enjoying the banquet.”
“Mordred steals my appetite.”
“The press of bodies takes mine. I’d rather a cold bowl of leeks alone, than boar in cherry sauce while wedged between yet another pair of chattering women.”
I paused in taking off my cloak. “Would you rather I go?”
“I don’t count you as a woman.”
I raised a brow. “Last time I checked, I had the parts.”
“And I can vouch for their authenticity. No, you know what I mean. You’re not a chatterer. Apollo save me from women who mistake blithering for wit. Listening to them makes my head go numb.”
I took off my cloak and hung it on a peg, then sat across from him at the worktable, plopped my elbows down amid the scrolls and paraphernalia of his studies, and sank my chin into my hands.
“Has Mordred seen you?” he asked.
“Not as far as I know. He can’t have missed Terix, though, so he’s likely wondering.”
“You should stay here, then, where there’s no chance of his spotting you,” he said.
“Mordred wouldn’t try something in such a gathering, surely?”
“Better to not find out. The man’s clever as a weasel at getting what he wants.”
“Only with less regard for civility,” I said. “It could be safer if I left altogether. Wynnetha came to tell me how it would be the very best wedding gift if I could leave before she takes up residence here.”
“Here? No, they’re to have a house inside the walls of Corinium. They won’t be at the villa; a new wife needs her own home to run, or so I’m told. Though I can’t see why she’d want the work of ordering and arranging things, myself. Hiring servants. Choosing furniture. Tiresome.” He shuddered. “Now you’re smiling. Why?”
I shook my head, unwilling to explain. Terix could make me laugh on purpose, but Maerlin did it by being completely, utterly sincere. “Still, she has a point. Now that it’s spring it will be easier to travel, and there’s no reason for me to stay. I think Terix and I should go.”
Maerlin dropped his quill. “Leave? You can’t leave! What—what about the vision with the chalice?” He flung a hand toward where the pink crystal chalice sat on a shelf, wrapped in fleece and leather. “It’s unfulfilled.”
“I was thinking about that on the walk over here. I’ve done my part, haven’t I? I brought it to you, ‘that which you sought’ for so many years. Much as I don’t want to give the chalice up, it’s not really mine—or yours—any more than the moon or stars are. It has its own fate.”
“I need you for the incantation,” he said.
“I don’t know it.”
“It comes to you when you need it.”
“As it may well do for you. Maerlin, I don’t want to stay here any longer. There’s no place for me here, and I can’t watch Arthur and Wynnetha set up house together; it will kill me. I can’t do it. I can’t,” I said, and the tears that had been churning inside me ever since I looked from the oak tree and saw Arthur’s anguished face gurgled up from my chest and overflowed my eyes and my throat. My weeping was a high-pitched, nearly soundless keening like a flute blown by a novice, punctuated by ugly gulping gasps.
For all his other faults and ignorance, the man did at least know what to do with a weeping woman. He came around the table and scooped me up, carrying me to the narrow cot against one wall where he sometimes napped. He lay down with me and I clung to his chest, burrowing my face into it as his hands stroked down my back.
“You remember what happened the last time I consoled you,” he said.
On Mona. Yes, I remembered. That cool, languid desire that had a power and a life all its own, and came to us whether we wished it or no—it had swept away all remnants of sorrow and left passion in its place. “Don’t touch my bare skin,” I snuffled, “and it won’t happen.”
His palm skimmed down over my side and hip, a gentle caress that gradually soothed me. The tears died away and I sighed, closing my eyes and relaxing in his embrace, my head resting in the dip of his shoulder. I laid my hand on his chest and felt the warmth and firmness of his body through the cloth; I rested one leg over his long one and wiggled closer, feeling safe.
Safe. A smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. Six months ago I would never have thought to put that word together with being pressed up against Maerlin.
“I don’t want you to go,” Maerlin said, his voice so soft I barely heard it.
“That’s kind of you to say.”
His hand stopped on my hip. “It’s not kind to tell the truth.”
I lifted up on one elbow so I could see his face. He was glaring at me. “Your pardon,” I said. “I had no idea a small nicety could enrage you so, oh mighty wizard. Will it appease you if I say, ‘How truthful of you,’ or will you smite me with your fearsome powers anyway, for my insolence?”
His lips tightened further. “Are you teasing me again?”
I blinked prettily at him.
His glare turned to a scowl. “Why do you do that? Why don’t you take me seriously?” He scrambled off the bed, leaving me to flop onto my stomach. “Why am I such a source of fun for you?”
He seemed truly distressed standing there panting down at me, and it upset me that I might have been the cause of it. I sat up, leaning on one arm, my legs folded to the side. “Maerlin, I’m sorry. What’s wrong? I never meant anything; I was being playful, as friends often are.”
“Friends.” He spat the word.
“I do consider you my friend,” I said in confusion.
“Yet you would leave me. Is that what friends do? Abandon each other?”
“My leaving is about going toward something else. It has nothing to do with you.”
“You would have stayed for Arthur.”
“Because I was in love with him.” I got to my feet and stabbed a finger at his sternum. “Love makes people do stupid things, against their own best interest. So yes, I would have stayed for Arthur. But since that’s not an option, I’m doing what’s best for me and leaving.”
“You said ‘was.’ ”
“What?”
“Are you still in love with him?”
“I’m doing all in my power not to be.” I’d had a month to come to terms with Arthur never being mine. All that had saved my sanity during that time was the intense preparation for presenting Skalibur. All that had saved my heart from utter desolation was that Arthur had been so careful for us to keep our distance, and so I had not grown accustomed to him. I had never expected him in my bed at night, or to be greeted by him in the morning. He had not sat beside me while we dined, or walked with me in the evenings. The longing had been terrible, and I had thought him foolish, but I understood his wisdom now.
“He wasn’t right for you, you know. You wouldn’t have been happy.”
I snorted. “Suddenly you are an expert on affairs of the heart.”
“Even someone as hopeless as me could see that he would never understand you. You’d have had to shrink yourself down to fit within the limits of his morals, and you’d live your life according to his sense of duty. Pursuing his goals, which aren’t his to begin with, but those of Ambrosius.”
“I thought you loved your brother,” I said in surprise. “Where does all this bitterness come from? This sneering at a good man?”
“It’s truth, neither kind nor bitter. And never sneering. Arthur is all that is good in this world, here. Britannia. He is the Britons’ best hope for a better future. But you are not of this place, Nimia. You are not a Briton, and your life is not limited to this damp, distant corner of the world. Sooner or later you would have seen it, and love would have become a chafing harness.”
“Or it would have transformed me into something better than I am.”
He grabbed my shoulders and gave me a shake. “ ‘Better’ can never mean being other than you what are meant to be.”
“Who’s to say what that is? The more I learn about the Phanne, the more I question if they are such a good thing to be a part of. You, Tanwen, Akantha, even poor Una, and me; there’s not a one of us who is half as good a person as Arthur. This quest of mine, to develop my powers and find my mother and, now, the labyrinth . . . The more I pursue my ends, the worse I feel. What’s the point of it all?” I cried, my voice rising. “I’m chasing shadows, and each time I catch one I feel the darkness grow greater inside me. So, yes, I liked the idea of being with someone I knew was good, who had honorable goals. Someone who made me feel that if I devoted myself to him, I could be good, too. And you’ve done exactly the same.”
His eyes lit with triumph. “You weren’t in love with Arthur. You were in love with the idea of who you’d be with him.”
I took a step back. “Love should make you into a better person.”
“Not a different person,” he countered, moving forward. “Nor can you take the easy path of clinging to the hem of Arthur’s tunic and letting him pull you along. You have darkness in you? So do I. So does everyone. It’s up to you to wage your own battle with it. Don’t make a man do it for you, and then call it love instead of cowardice.”
“What do you know of love?” I shouted at him, backing up as he pursued me. “Who have you ever given up everything for? If you’ve never wanted to, it’s because you’ve never been in love! Don’t lecture me on how I should feel, when you don’t feel at all. You’re as cold as one of Ambrosius’s marble statues.”
“I wish to all the gods that I still was. At least then it was quiet in my own mind. I could think. I could spend weeks working on a question of astrology, or the blending of metals, and not even a full hunt with baying hounds riding past my door could distract me. Now look at me,” he said, flinging his hands out to encompass his workshop, which looked no different to me than it always had. He, however, seemed to be coming undone, his hair disheveled, his clothes hanging crookedly. “I can’t string together the simplest thread of logic because every time I try, all I can think of—” He cut himself off.
“Thinking,” I said. “It’s always thinking with you.”
“All I can feel,” he said, glaring at me, “is how much richer my life has become since you came. I don’t want you to leave, Nimia, because—yes—you are my friend, and because you understand me.”
“Not half as well as you apparently think I do.”
“I don’t want you to leave because for the first time, I can imagine having a woman at my side with whom to go through the years. With whom to share ideas, and even with whom to travel and explore beyond the shores of Britannia.”
“You don’t need a woman for that. You’ve gotten along quite nicely with Brenn, up until now.”
His skin turned red and his neck muscles tightened. “Why are you making this so difficult?”
“Tell me what this is, and maybe I can answer!” Although I had a suspicion what he was trying to say, I couldn’t believe it. I had to hear it from his own lips, and even then I didn’t know if it would be credible. I could only think he’d worked himself into an irrational, uncharacteristic state: Arthur’s marriage was giving him strange thoughts about his own life. He had felt so little for so long, even a boyish infatuation would feel overwhelming to him.
“I’m trying to say that I want you to stay with me. I don’t want to be alone again.”
“Find yourself a basket full of cats, if you don’t want to be lonely.”
“Nimia! I—”
I put my hands on my hips and stared at him, waiting.
“I—”
“You must not feel strongly about it, if you can’t muster the energy to say it.”
He gave me a dirty, angry look. “I think I might be in love with you.”
“Then you think wrongly. No one who uses ‘think’ and ‘might’ in a declaration of love truly feels it.”
“You scared me into saying it that way. I meant to say ‘I love you,’ and to say it with great force.”
“Scared you? Me?”
“You’re not reacting how you’re supposed to,” he grumbled.
I flung out a hand in invitation. “Please, do instruct me.”
True to himself, he took me at my word. “You were supposed to be quiet, and blush, and look meek and hopeful. Then, maybe, cry. Just a little.”
I burst into laughter.
He turned his back to me and stomped to the worktable, where he made a show of tidying up and ignoring me.
“Maerlin.”
He flinched, and kept tidying.
“Maerlin,” I repeated, and came up behind him. I laid my hand on the small of his back and softened my voice. “I’m sorry I laughed. It wasn’t at you; it was at the image of me as meek and quiet.”
“It was a very pleasant picture I had drawn in my mind,” he mumbled.
“You would never have thought you wanted me, if I were meek and quiet.”
He spun around and grabbed my forearms, his face alive with emotion as I had never seen it before. The glowing green of his eyes stood out against the flush of his skin, and his mouth was pulled in a tortured grimace as if the passions of his heart were too great and too unfamiliar to be spoken through the rough messaging of his expression. “I don’t think I want you. I know I do. I’ve wanted you since I first heard of you, from Fenwig.”
“Impossible.” I pulled against his grip, and found myself unable to escape. Held so easily in his hands, without any visible effort on his part, I was reminded of how very strong he was despite his lithe appearance and light-footed grace of movement. Held this close, I felt his height and the broadness of his shoulders, and knew the slender, almost and
rogynous impression he sometimes gave for the illusion it was.
“I knew it from the first words he spoke: ‘My king’s lady is of a strange beauty, with long black hair and spiral tattoos, and she plays the cithara as if her hands were guided by the gods. She was most grieved by being parted from her infant son, and in her desolation has fled from my king and gone in search of her family.’ ”
“You could know nothing from that.”
“I knew you were Phanne; I knew you had intelligence and patience if you had mastered the cithara; I knew you had a loving heart. I knew at long last that here was the woman who was meant for me.”
“These ‘knowings’ mean nothing, Maerlin. I felt that Clovis would be of great importance to me when I first saw him, and what did it get me except heartache? Arthur felt something similar about me, and what did that bring him? Again, nothing but heartache.”
He gave me a little shake. “All you do is prove I’m right. You have been ‘of great importance’ to both of them. Without you, Clovis would not have all the power he does, nor would he have a son. Without you, Skalibur would not exist. Knowing someone will be ‘of great importance’ is a different feeling from knowing when you’ve met the only person you could ever love.”
“But . . .” I realized he meant it, and that he knew what he was saying, what he was feeling. I stood there gape-mouthed as a fish on land, trying to understand how the marble statue had come to life and chosen me. “But you treated me so terribly, for so long.”
“I did not!”
“You acted like you didn’t care what happened to me. You let Mordred have me. I thought all that mattered to you was that you got the chalice.”
“This will come as a great shock to you, Nimia, but—I’m not comfortable showing people how I feel.”
I lowered my brows at him. “See that I am not fainting at this stunning news.”
“Are you teasing me? You’re teasing me again, aren’t you?”
“Do you feel teased?”
He squinted one eye and looked off up into the corner. “I don’t know. Maybe. That’s the other problem, of course. I don’t often know what I feel, until my actions reveal it to me.”
