Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  Aylan shook his head, the raw day showing in the corners of his eyes and the weary lines of his mouth. “Eat,” he ordered gruffly, wiping his mouth with his hand. “Eat, bathe, and then we’ll put you to bed.”

  “I’m not a child,” Torrant complained—but he did as Aylan told him, just this once.

  BY THE time he was showered, dressed, and lying under thick covers, he was shivering in fever almost as badly as he had been shivering with cold on the mountain face in the snow. Aylan sat at his bed, waiting for Trieste to return with Gregor and Professor Austin and listening to Torrant talk to ghosts.

  Ellyot, get out… get out, Ellyot. I’ll take care of Yarri, just get out. Tal, you’d love it here in Eiran. The boys are so pretty you’d weep, and a lot of them would dance with you at Beltane. Qir, the ocean is just like you. It’s huge and boundless, and you can run the horses forever and ever and ever. Mama, I’ve met this girl named Trieste, she’s lovely…. No, Mama, she’s not Yarri. I’ll be there for Yarri, Mama. Tell Kes not to worry. But you’d like Trieste. You’d be her friend forever, even when Yarri and I are one. Moon… Moon, Courtland’s a celebrity here in Eiran. Your brother’s a good man, just like you. I’ve met a boy who needs you, Moon. He’s pretty, so pretty, but he’s fair and not Tal’s type. He needs a father, Moon. Tell Lane that Aylan needs someone to teach him how to be a man.

  And so on. A confused jumble of the people Torrant had loved in the past and the people he loved in the present, allowed by fever to meet in his overwrought heart. Aylan was tired, mortally tired, but he stayed in that chair, clutched Torrant’s hand, and waited for Torrant’s lover because he was afraid if he left, his friend would slide into the morass of the past and nothing would keep him in the present, nothing at all.

  When Trieste burst in with two professors in tow, Aylan was too weary to jump, but he did sit back and nod to them in respect. None of them were prepared for Torrant’s reaction when Professor Austin leaned over the bed to lay hands on his chest in what was a required touch of healing.

  With a startling burst of strength, he sat forward, clutching Aylan’s hand convulsively, and started to yell at the top of his already overtaxed voice.

  “Get away from her, you bastard! I’ll kill you. I’ll….” Austin jumped back in shock, and as soon as his hands broke contact with Torrant’s chest, Torrant fell back down in bed, murmuring, “He won’t touch you again, Yar…. He won’t touch you again, Aldam…. You’re safe…. You’re both safe…. I’ll kill him again if he touches you….” His murmuring fell off, and everybody in the room was left in a shocked silence.

  “He needs healing, Austin,” Gregor said quietly. “I don’t know how you can do it, but he’s exhausted and sick, and he’s going to need some help.”

  “Move.” It was Aldam’s voice, quiet but firm, behind the huddle at the bed, and the four of them simply parted in surprise.

  “You’re supposed to be asleep,” Gregor protested. “I must be slipping if I can’t cast a simple sleep spe—”

  “He needs me.” Without ceremony, Aldam bent over Torrant’s bed and said words that, to Trieste and Aylan, sounded almost like a nursery rhyme. “I’m going to kiss you like a lover,” he murmured, “but I’m not trying to be a lover. You don’t even know me.”

  Abruptly, Torrant’s unfocused eyes sharpened, and he looked directly at Aldam with a tiny smile. “Of course I know you. You’re my brother.”

  “Yes.” Aldam nodded, touching foreheads so Torrant did the same. “And you’re my brother, and the scary men are all dead, and you kept us safe.”

  “Yarri….”

  “Yarri too.” Aldam took a breath. “Now it’s time for you to be well, brother.” And with that, he bent the last distance and touched lips, and Aylan and Trieste were fascinated at the soft and subtle exchange of lights around their faces as Aldam took the fever away. When he was done, he stood up with a wobble and turned back around toward his bed.

  “One of you can stay and watch over him,” he ordered without ordering or even raising his voice. “But the rest of you can go away now. He needs to sleep.”

  “I’ll stay,” Trieste said with such certainty Aylan looked at her, wondering at the change of heart.

  “All the scary bad men are dead, now, Aylan,” she said with a sardonic, self-loathing twist to her mouth that she must have learned from him. “The least I can do is make sure his dreams are sweet. Besides”—her voice softened—“you’re done in. You did your part. Now it’s my turn.”

  The professors, sensing their presence was no longer needed, made their apologies and gave firm instructions to come fetch them if anything changed, and then left the room. Aylan, responding to Trieste’s urging, stood wearily up and stretched. He turned to Trieste and took one of her slender, fine-boned hands in his and kissed it.

  “Now that I’ve yelled at you until your heart is raw, it’s time to forgive yourself, Spots. If you can look him in the eye when he wakes up, that’s all he’s ever asked for.”

  Trieste gratified him with a true, albeit soft, laugh. “Oh gods, Aylan—how can you be such a wonderful person in the body of such an insufferable ass?”

  “It’s almost a gift, isn’t it?”

  “Go—go sleep. And… and thank you. You were right out in the snow. He kept his family from the scary bad men. It’s nothing to despise him for.”

  AYLAN NODDED, kissed her cheek, and left quietly. There was a look on his face as he closed the door that would have told her he had far to go this exhaustive night, but she was in no frame of mind to decipher it.

  Trieste’s eyes were focused hungrily on Torrant. Aylan had helped him dress in breeches, but he lay in his bed shirtless, the signs of strain from sickness and weariness in his face eased by Aldam’s healing. She studied that face carefully, the firm jaw, the intriguing mouth, the narrow nose and sharp cheekbones, and tried to discern the traces from the day in his face. Was he still the same boy she had looked on at the end of summer, the one who had stood up to Aylan, the one who had made her laugh, just hours ago, before he’d made her gasp and almost scream?

  Not a soul, not a sword, not even a snowstorm.

  He had kept a child safe as their families had been murdered. He had survived a trip over Hammer Pass with two weaker people in tow. Something had to have been inside him, something strong and large and feral, to have done that. The thought zinged into her, leaving her breath and her back a mass of cold prickles. Today could not have been the first time Torrant had killed. He would have known what it was to kill a man before now, no matter how sweet the heart she had seen in his eyes.

  Without thinking, she reached out and feathered a caress along his cheek, and that one corner of his mouth quirked up. She smoothed his lips with her thumb, and the tiny smile deepened a little.

  “Trieste,” he murmured, “you didn’t go.”

  Ah, Dueant, have mercy. Triane, give hope.

  “I’m right here, Torrant,” she said out loud, and with a shift of her weight she kicked off her shoes and nudged him a little with her hip. As close to sleep as he was, he was not too tired to move over a little and raise his arm. She fitted her slender body next to his, laid her head on his chest, and breathed in the scent of her first lover, whom, she now decided, she would love as long as she could.

  “You looked at me for a long time,” he said as she settled herself. “What did you see?” His eyes had not opened yet, and she wondered how deep he was reaching for the reserves to make sure she was still there.

  “Nothing that wasn’t there before,” she told him truthfully. “I was just too blind to know it was there. Now sleep, sweetheart. I’ll be here when you wake.”

  “Mmmm… pretty, pretty Trieste….” He smiled a little, and then he was under. It took her only a little longer to sleep, savoring the calmer, healthier warmth emanating from his body. Carefully, she traced that wonderful upper lip with her finger again, realizing deep in her soul she had told him the absolute truth. There was nothing in
his face that had not been there before; she had just chosen not to see.

  She was there when he awakened in the deep morning of the next day.

  AYLAN DID not go immediately to his room.

  Instead, he took a zig in the hall when he ordinarily would have zagged and found himself in the older girls’ dormitories, pounding on the door of the plump blonde girl who had so willingly giggled her way into his bed the night before. Until he actually felt his fist hit the wood, he could have sworn he didn’t know her name.

  Her slightly wandering blue eyes widened in alarm when she opened her door, and before she could squeak “You’re not supposed to be here,” he had forced his way into her room. “You. Go.” He barked at her roommate, and without fumbling for a robe, the other girl (another conquest, but long, long ago) fled.

  “Why?” he asked tightly, watching her face for clues. He saw full understanding dawn instantly, but then her eyes darted to the side, and she pulled her most idiotic smile from the tips of her toes.

  “Why what?” Her tongue darted out and licked her upper lip, and he came as close to striking a woman as he ever had in his life.

  “Why Aldam, you traitorous bitch?” He didn’t flinch with the harsh word, but she did. In fact, her eyes grew bright, and when they met his, all pretense had drained away.

  “It was supposed to be the other one,” she answered, more intelligence in her face than he’d seen to date. “Ellyot….”

  “Torrant?”

  “Everybody knows he’s the last Moon!” she cried impatiently. “I don’t know why the professors and the future Queen of Otham bother to treat him like a simple healer!”

  Aylan advanced a step, close enough to see the flaws in her skin and the asymmetrical nature of her eyes and mouth, and breathed hard through his teeth. “Lyssia, what, exactly, makes you think he’s the last Moon?”

  The girl paled. “In Clough,” she murmured, looking somewhere past his left shoulder. “They circulate copies of a picture Rath claims survived the fire. It shows two sets of twins—nobody knows their names. In fact, one of the younger ones was rumored to be—” Her mouth twisted in disdain. “—tainted by the whore’s moon. They said that’s why Moon never revealed his name in his list of heirs. But the other one was Ellyot Moon, and this… boy, your friend, looks more like him every day.”

  Ellyot was the stronger one. Aylan actually wondered, for a moment, if it were true, if Torrant hadn’t become deranged by the deaths of his family and his terrible flight across the mountains and become someone else, but reality came back to him with a thump.

  “Was that before or after you saw him in the nobles’ classes, like politics and fencing, darling?” he asked with a sneer and had the satisfaction of watching Lyssia flush.

  “Why would he be taking them if he didn’t plan on coming back to Clough to take his place?” she flung out desperately, and Aylan seized her shoulders and shoved her back against the wall.

  “What’s it to you?” he snarled. “What business is it to you if he’s Torrant Shadow or Ellyot Moon or Jebeeznes of the outer Jeweled Desert? Why was it worth it to you to take me to bed and betray him, and his brother of the spirit, you miserable, lying whore?”

  “I wasn’t a virgin!” Her eyes closed tight then, and real tears, the kind that made eyes red and noses swollen, leaked out, and he realized he was holding her shoulders hard enough to leave bruises. With a terrible effort he released his fingers and backed away from her, not reaching out a hand as she sank to the floor.

  “I know that, darling,” he drawled, affecting an insouciance he was far from feeling. “In fact, I have firsthand knowledge, if you remember?”

  “There are still virginity laws in Clough,” she murmured on a held-back sob. “And he was… he was a Regent, and I didn’t realize…. I thought if he was, you know, older, had some power—I thought it would be all right. But after a week, he… he told me he’d report me….” Lyssia met his eyes with such naked desperation Aylan had to look away. “He wanted a spy here.” She shook her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It was like sopping a running stream with a napkin. “He said I needed to tell him anything of interest—anything about the worship of the whoring moon, anything evil about the professors—who’s queer, who’s drunk. He just wanted information, that was all. He said when I graduated, he’d marry me to one of his sons, and then….” She started sobbing openly into her hands, and Aylan could barely make out the words. “I didn’t want him to touch me anymore… but it’s not like I could stop him….”

  Aylan backed away and let her cry, looking irritably around her little room for something to give her so she could wipe her face. Unlike Torrant’s and Aldam’s room, in which everything was simple wool or cotton, finely made but not expensive, everything in this room was brightly colored satin, silk, and linen, and all of it was scented with enough vanilla to make his nose itch. With a grunt he found a dry towel in the washroom and tossed it to the sobbing girl against the far wall.

  “So,” he drawled when she had gotten some self-control, “sleeping with me was….”

  “At first it was punishment”—she shrugged—“because Orland said you were queer, and he wanted me to know how good I had it in Clough.”

  Ouch. “And then?” he prompted.

  A puff of air that might have been a laugh escaped her, and she tipped her tear-ravaged face upward, more naked at this moment, in a dressing robe and thick nightgown, than she had been when they’d tumbled in bed. “And then you were a benefit,” she murmured with a small womanly smile of her own. “Ellyot Moon didn’t go home like they thought, so they didn’t get him. That was fine, though. His retard friend walked into the trap all by himself, and everybody knew the big fish would follow the stupid little one. They didn’t even need me. I got to have you for free.” In a terrible surge of bitterness, he was fiercely glad she’d had a small triumph as a woman, and he hoped she’d hold that moment close. It might have to last her for the rest of her life.

  “For free?” He kept his voice even.

  “If Orland knew how good a queer was in bed—” She laughed contemptuously. “—he’d probably do a few men himself.”

  “So you liked my bed?” he asked, kneeling down and making sure he had her complete attention.

  “You were definitely the top one out of two.” She tried a seductive smile, and he had to fight another urge to smack her.

  “Well, I may be the only one you get besides your froggy old prince,” Aylan said, still with a light, even inflection. “Especially when I tell the boy’s dorm about this horrible rash.”

  Horror spread over her features, and he could see the implications dripping in through her own self-pity. “Please.”

  “Yes—that’s what you said last night.” His smile was reptilian, he knew, but he couldn’t keep it off his face.

  “Please, Aylan, no….”

  He stood and cast a thin, lizard expression down at her again, hoping she remembered this look when she tried to scrub the memory of his fingers from her skin. “I really would have that looked at.” He nodded earnestly on his way out the door.

  “Gods, Aylan—you know—I know you know…. Your family name is Stealth. You come from the Jeweled Lands, you must know what it’s like….”

  Aylan opened the door, keeping the same hideous grin on his face. “Lyssia, darling,” he cried loudly, loud enough the whole dorm could hear, “that’s awful—I hope it doesn’t spread….”

  “Aylan—Aylan, no….” But she clearly knew it was too late, and her arms wrapped protectively around her knees as she rocked herself for comfort. Any fool could see it was the last human contact she was going to get for a long time.

  “Stay away from me and mine.” His voice dropped for a moment, and he was no longer smiling. “And if you want your frog prince to let you live, I’d forget to mention this little conversation. If you do tell him, he’ll think you led all of Rath’s men into a trap.” The smile came back, and he pitched
his voice for the dorm again.

  “I’ve never been so happy to have passed out in my life, darling. Thank the Goddess I never touched that!”

  He hammered the last word so hard, heads were popping out of doors like gophers from their holes, even as he walked down the hall. Lyssia’s thin keening was soon drowned out by the wildfire roar of gossip that was not going to spin her way.

  Summer With Friends

  AYLAN GOT another letter that spring reminding him of his duty toward his home. He ripped it into tiny pieces, coated it with aged brandy, and set it on fire. He didn’t tell Torrant, Trieste, or Aldam. Instead, he accepted Torrant’s shy, half-embarrassed invitation to stay with the Moons from Beltane to late summer and didn’t once mention he was planning to get kicked out of school.

  Two weeks before Beltane, Professor Gregor knocked timidly on Torrant’s door—the professors made it a point never to visit the older students. There was too much going on in the older dorms they didn’t want to know. As it was, Torrant’s call of “Dammit, Aylan, you know you don’t have to knock!” was answered with Trieste’s giggles, and even though the two of them were fully dressed and had obviously been studying when Gregor walked in, he was still flushed and embarrassed when they turned to stare at him.

  He stammered badly for a moment, before Torrant offered him a seat on the bed and a cup of water. Gregor sank down on the bed and smiled, shaking his head, taking in the simple hangings and home-crafted trappings of the room of the boys from Clough. His dismay was apparent even as he sipped his water.

  “What is it, Professor?” Trieste asked gently, looking sideways at Torrant, who shrugged.

  Gregor sighed and began speaking plainly, as though to get the embarrassment over with. “Torrant—do you know who Aylan is?”

  “A horse’s arse, who hasn’t been laid since Solstice?” Torrant answered, trying to keep things light, and Gregor gave a small smile. Aylan’s temper had, indeed, been foul since Lyssia had been laughed out of school for her unfortunate… ailment.