by Amy Bai
"Your other—?" Oh.
Kyali.
"She always insisted she was all right, too," Saraid murmured. "She'd have remade the whole world before she'd let go of that. She has, in fact. Will you let her do it forever, Taireasa?"
Clumsy with shock, Taireasa met a pair of forthright eyes filled with sorrow.
"You're not the only one who stayed with her," Saraid said softly, and Taireasa flung herself to her feet, understanding in an instant. Her heart was trying to fly out of her chest. She couldn't seem to fill her lungs and she staggered away, fighting the air, the carpet, the unendurable twist of shame and guilt and grief clawing at the center of her. Her feet tangled and she dropped to her knees. The pain made her eyes fill. She felt around for a chair to help her stand, tears like liquid coals sliding down her face.
Two thin but surprisingly strong arms hooked under her own and she was pulled first up and then forward, into an embrace like being wrapped in living branches.
"You can let go now, Taireasa," Saraid said.
All the walls came down at once. She was remembering pain, pain like nothing she'd ever imagined, pain and fury and determination, a love like scalding sunlight and an icy iron resolve: Kyali's terrible gift to her.
"I can't—I couldn't—"
"It's not all right, child. It's not. You're not and neither is she, and you're both very young, and you need one another. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your choice. Stop carrying it, Taireasa. Let it go."
Taireasa gave up, put her forehead on a bony shoulder and sobbed, a shuddering release that wrung first the breath and then all the strength from her. Saraid bore her back down to the cold stones and the crumpled carpets, held her like her own mother hadn't since she was very, very young. She had no idea how long they remained that way, but eventually she realized she wasn't the only one weeping, and that was enough to let her get a grip on herself.
"What do I do?" Taireasa rasped, hating the trembling hoarseness of those words, the way they sounded anything but queenly. "I don't know what to do."
Saraid stroked her head. "Stop trying to make the world what it was," she said simply.
That made no sense. Taireasa was about to say so, but suddenly it did—suddenly it made perfect sense, falling together neatly and inexorably. She could see the line that drew her to Kyali, that held them together. That held her to Devin, to Kinsey, Annan, Maldyn, Curran. Saraid. It was all there, a set of currents flowing and shifting around one another, shaping the world that was hers.
Not the world she wished, but the one she had to work with.
"Oh," Taireasa whispered, stunned. "Oh, oh gods."
"Finally," her teacher murmured and let her go, standing with a faint grunt. She swept up her cloak while Taireasa was still blinking and shrugged it onto her shoulders.
"Saraid, wait! You can't go now!"
"Of course I can," she said, laughing. "I have a bed, and it's calling my name. And I've set you straight, haven't I? Well then. What more can an old lady be expected to do?"
"But—but I have—I need—"
"You need to think. And to sleep, my dear, perhaps that most of all."
"I have her nightmares," Taireasa said miserably, because there wasn't really anything left to hide now, was there?
Saraid sighed. "You don't have to, though. Surely you know that? Stop punishing yourself, Taireasa."
It brought her up short. She stood mute and stunned while Saraid let herself out. Then she sat by the fire, staring at nothing, thinking as hard as she had ever done in her life.
You're both so young, and you need one another.
None of that was wrong, none of that was even difficult, so why had she needed Saraid to tell it to her before she could see it?
Kyali wasn't thinking any more clearly than she was. Kyali had not been, all along. She was stubborn, and she was insisting that she was all right: it was what Ky had always done when she was wounded. She refused to acknowledge friendship because she would have no choice but to acknowledge—and admit—the terrible things she had suffered in the name of that friendship. She only tried to make her way forward in whatever desperate mending of herself she could manage alone. And Taireasa had let her do it, wrapped up in guilt and just as confused.
It was obvious, and so desperately, sadly, courageously wrongheaded of both of them that it brought tears back to her eyes. Taireasa sniffed, refusing to cry again, and reached for a quill and paper to write a reply to a report.
Thank you for the report. As to the rest, you have no less of my love, nor ever shall.
That was enough, for now.
What Kyali did with it was up to Kyali.
Taireasa rolled the paper and sealed it, then went to find a page, who would give it to a lieutenant, who would deliver it to the Lady Captain.
* * *
She'd aimed for the drill hall and from there the stables, where Ainhearag was probably tormenting the horse boys: she was not a patient creature, and often said so with her teeth.
A ride in the freezing wind was exactly what Kyali needed.
But the lower hall appeared to be full of the latest new arrivals, echoing with weeping and shouted orders and what she could swear was the outraged screeching of chickens. She'd like to know who had managed to bring a flock up the mountain. Peasants were stubborn, resourceful people.
Taireasa's words still rang in her ears.
"Damn," Kyali hissed, rubbing her chest, which felt like it was full of air and glass, and ducked behind a tapestry into the hidden passageways before anyone could see her and want something from her.
They'd discovered Faestan's secrets much like this, pushing through a hidden door they had found into a maze of dusty tunnels. Taireasa had hooted like a mad little owl, fingers wrapping around her wrist, and dragged them unhesitatingly into the darkness. Taireasa had always been blazing trails into the unknown, pulling one awkward, reticent general's daughter along for the ride—
"Stop," Kyali said, and shoved the heels of her hands into her forehead.
Everything I thought I knew has turned out to be wrong—
"Stop," Kyali growled. Ice. Snow. A bloody blizzard of it, swallowing everything she'd known and done before…
Before.
Her feet weren't carrying her to the stables. She frowned, looking around—she should have brought a light—and pushed open the nearest doorway just to see where she'd ended up. It cracked, and she listened for voices or footsteps, but it was quiet and bitter cold: one of the wings on the northern wall, where nobody wanted to live yet.
Hearing nothing, she let herself out, then hung her head when she recognized the tapestry and realized she'd brought herself to the Cassdall section.
Why in hell had she come here?
Scowling darkly, Kyali turned to find somewhere else to be… but of course Annan chose that moment to appear around a corner just as she was heading back in. "Captain," he said, his face doing that thing she couldn't interpret and didn't want to, by the gods, no, because she absolutely wasn't thinking of… of… that. "Something you wanted to discuss?"
"No," she said with total certainty, and was most of the way back into the passage before she remembered there actually was something she needed to discuss with him, damn it. She halted, half in and half out, fighting with herself. "Yes," she finally sighed. She swung back out, trying to ignore the tiny, amused look that flickered across Annan's face and vanished into the non-expression she was much more comfortable with.
"The guardroom's empty," he said, and went that way before she could form an objection. But that was stupid. It wasn't as though just walking back in there would get her drunk and make her—make them—
Stop it right now, she snarled into her own head, beginning to wish she'd never crossed Taireasa's path today, or ever.
The Cassdall guardroom was empty, as Annan had promised, and there was, thankfully, no evidence of bottles of any sort on the shelves. There was a stuffed couch by the fire with a blanket, a buck
et of water, a kettle on a hook. If he hadn't told her he had rooms in Kinsey's apartments, she'd have guessed he slept here. Then again, she had spent more than one night at her desk in the lower hall.
Annan waved a hand at the table, where several maps were spread out, marked with ink in his precise hand. A pot of ink and several quills sat at one corner. The quills looked slightly chewed at the feathery ends.
"You should have an office," she said, apropos of nothing, and Annan shrugged.
"This works well enough. It's quiet, it locks. I've certainly had worse."
"Mmm." Kyali folded her arms and squinted at the paths marked on paper. "Is that—?"
"Waylen's route, yes. He followed the river. I'll speak to him when he arrives, which ought to be tomorrow if the Lord Corwynall did indeed head out this morning. I want to know what the lay of the land is there." Annan leaned forward over the map. Kyali stared stupidly at the top of his dark-haired head, then caught herself and bent over the map too, trying to ignore that this brought them far closer than she wanted to be.
"I can give you something with far more detail," Kyali said, and tipped her head when he shot her an irritated look. "You could have asked," she added, because sniping at him was the only distraction there was, and the air-and-glass sensation in her chest was beginning to feel too much like an ache.
Annan's eyes were nearly black up this close. He didn't scowl at her, only stared, holding her gaze steadily and perhaps a little too long before raising that eyebrow again. "I suppose I could have," he said, which wasn't exactly the pithy retort she'd been braced for. "What was it you needed to speak to me about, Captain?"
Right.
"I wanted to know if you'd had any word of Tuan's plans for Maurynim."
Annan eyed her thoughtfully. "I'd have told you. No. Have you heard something new?"
"No," Kyali grumbled, and slid one of the maps closer to her just to have something to do with her hands. "I have not."
It had been a stupid question, hardly even a question at all. But Annan didn't point that out. Instead he braced his hands on the table's edge and gave her a look that seemed to see too much, then frowned.
"You're thinking of going to their defense."
He didn't sound incredulous, or scornful, or even particularly startled by the notion, so Kyali looked up from the maps and nodded. "It would need to be completely unexpected," he murmured, chewing his lip, plans beginning to flicker in his eyes. "They'll send far more troops if they know we're coming. Hard to accomplish such a thing in secret, on a mountain in winter."
"Yes," Kyali said, trying not to be annoyed by this statement of the obvious. She'd already thought of all of this. She wanted ideas. None of her officers had any to offer.
"You'll think of something," Annan said mildly. She huffed in irritation, fighting air and glass and memory, and the complicated logistics of a war where they were forever outnumbered.
"I should go," she said, and pushed herself upright.
"You should," Annan agreed soberly, which made both no sense and entirely too much sense.
They'd agreed to forget the—that, but being in a room with him made her palms itch, and Taireasa's damned words were circling in her head like lost birds, and she just wanted to hit something until her knuckles bled. Annan got to the door first and pulled it open for her, a gracious, courtly gesture that had just enough irony in it to sting.
Kyali hesitated, stuck between wanting to throw that gesture back in his face and wanting to get out of the room and away from him—and then, gods damn it, out of nowhere they were pressed up against the threshold, breathing into one another's mouths. She was going to shove him off. This couldn't possibly have been her idea.
—Why else had she come here?
I stopped assuming anything about you some time ago, Kyali Corwynall—
She'd bitten into his lip. He made a sound that said he didn't mind that nearly as much as she would have in his place and ducked, sliding his face under her jaw, scraping with the edge of teeth and the faint stubble on his skin—oh gods. Her spine arched; she went right up on her toes, air leaping out of her throat, telling him more than he needed to know about how that felt. He wasn't wearing armor, and his chest rose and fell swiftly under her palms, which didn't itch anymore sliding over the moving warmth of him under cloth. He smelled of leather, mint, snow, sweat. He licked a line down her neck and her knees went wobbly.
Then his fingers found the laces at her hips and she was reaching for her daggers, shoving him away, her lungs locked on a scream. She hit the wall so hard she knocked most of the breath out of herself, and Annan staggered back, blinking.
She couldn't get enough air. She couldn't see him. She could only see Cyrnic's face—Brisham's—Viam's—Walderan's—
"Captain," Annan said. His voice was shaking just slightly. It brought her back to herself, to the absolute, stupid, humiliating discomfort of this moment. Kyali dropped the daggers before her hands could do anything else she wasn't planning on. They clanged to the floor and she pressed her fingers into her temples.
—Everything I thought I knew has turned out to be wrong—
She couldn't breathe for another reason now, and she dropped her hands, made herself meet his eyes. She wasn't expecting him to have come closer. She wasn't expecting the hand that curled warm and solid over the side of her face, and she certainly wasn't expecting the air-and-glass ache in her chest to expand into something hurtful and strangely, horrifyingly sweet.
"I'm sorry," Kyali growled, and kissed him again before he could say something that would make it worse. She didn't want to talk. She didn't want to think. She couldn't stand to feel. She just had to stop all of it, now, stop being afraid, and this was the only way forward.
Annan froze for a long moment and then took her mouth with his—gentler, more carefully this time, probably because he knew she still had a sword and another dagger in her boot, and she was clearly a little mad.
She undid the laces herself this time. She was shaking so badly she almost couldn't, and his fingers had a faint tremor in them too, so it was several minutes before they stood before one another with far less by way of defense than either of them was used to. She couldn't look him in the face. She couldn't look anywhere else. She only wanted it over with. But the blood was racing in her veins, her nerves were afire, and her heart was thumping so loudly he could probably hear it.
Annan did that thing with his teeth again and she wobbled into him, appalled and fascinated, her fingernails scraping down his sides. He was warm. He twitched and shuddered, and then he was bolting the door shut and turning them both around. Her knees hit the edge of the couch and she toppled, surprised, very glad the sword was on the other side of the room because she was so close to hurting them both right now, wracked with shivering, fighting the darkness in herself. Panic twisted sickly through her.
He leaned over her, eyes serious and unreadable, pressing in the last place she wanted him to be. But she had invited this, had wished it, it meant she wouldn't have to think for a little while, she was so tired of being afraid, and besides she was hardly going to back down now—
Oh.
Kyali went still, her eyes going wide.
Memory rose, knotted every muscle, and was chased away by the—by what Annan was—dear gods.
He began to move, and every thought in her head vanished, along with her breath and what little control she still had over her expression. Kyali arched up with him, needing to move, needing to choose, and together they found a rhythm like a horse's sway, or a tide scraping the shore. Annan made a soft sound and buried his face in her neck. It went on, and on, stripping away the last of her self-restraint, smoothing out the edges of her anger and her fear, washing it all away in a flood of mindless sensation. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, forgetting everything, all of it, hating herself, hating how grateful she was for the sudden, perfect silence in her own head.
It got very much better then, or perhaps it was very much
worse. She didn’t know anymore. She couldn't swallow the sound that tore out of her as the world flashed white. Annan's breath hitched once, then again, and he shuddered, holding her without holding her, his eyes shut tight.
They lay still then, tangled together on a couch far too small to hold them both. The fire popped and crackled. Kyali tilted her face away, still trying to get her expression back under control, still not having any luck with that.
It had been such a stupid thing to do. She'd never thought—
Gods help her, it hadn't occurred to her she might like it. It had never occurred to her she could.
A callused finger traced her collarbone. She scowled. Another joined it, moving lower, drawing slow, simmering circles, making nerves still recovering shudder and sing. She glared over at Annan, found him watching her with that narrow-eyed look of challenge that had started this whole stupid mess in the first place.
A third finger, moving yet lower. It was wildly distracting. She bit the inside of her cheek, started using her own hands, taking a certain satisfaction in the way his own breath halted and his eyes lidded.
"I was thinking we could sail men down the river on rafts," Kyali said, and almost grinned at the offended look that crossed Annan's face. "To Maurynim," she clarified. Then she shut up, because the noise she’d make if she kept talking wasn't going to have any dignity in it at all.
"Mmph," her opposite number said, breathless but not beaten. She knew this game, though the pieces were unfamiliar. She wasn't playing fair, but neither was he. And she was certain he had more experience to draw on than—no. No. She wasn't thinking of that.
She didn't need to think of anything at all right now.
Annan was going to win, she knew that much when he moved his hands lower still, did something that pulled a startled moan out of her, and kept right on doing it while her heels thudded against the couch arm and her fingers got too clumsy to be useful.
Oh.
They could talk about Maurynim later.
