Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  “Besides that,” he said, relaxing a fraction. “Do you know what his family is?”

  A shadow passed over Torrant’s face, a memory neither he nor Aylan had shared with anybody. “I know a little,” he said quietly, and Gregor nodded again.

  “He was supposed to go home this summer for… for education he can’t get here….”

  “But he’s coming home with us!” Torrant was surprised, but Gregor clearly wasn’t.

  “I know. I’m glad, actually, but”—and now his pained expression deepened—“but now his family is refusing to pay his tuition unless he comes home.”

  “Does Aylan know this?” Torrant asked seriously, and Gregor shook his head.

  “I….” He flushed. “I love my students.” He looked away, embarrassed. “I really do. Aylan was a horse’s arse, and thought just that much of himself, from the moment he arrived here, I think. But not now. You’ve been his friend, Torrant, and at first I thought—but I didn’t realize….” He looked around at the simple room again, and now it was Torrant’s turn to flush.

  “The Moons are simple people, Professor,” he said with a shrug, “but they’re not poor.” His gaze darted to Trieste, darted back, and he spoke through his own embarrassment as Gregor had spoken through his. “I… Yarri and I have money coming in from Courtland, constantly. I-I hardly use any of it, and Owen Moon had already arranged for my schooling. He…. It was important to him.” Torrant shrugged again. “Consider Aylan’s schooling paid. I can get the money from Uncle Lane when we go back—will that be soon enough?”

  Gregor nodded, relieved. “Thank you. Aylan has a good friend in you.”

  “You’re not going to tell him, are you, Professor?” Torrant asked, suddenly worried.

  “No, but it only proves my point.” And with that, Gregor stood, bowed slightly, and left Torrant and Trieste in the suddenly uncomfortable silence of the spring afternoon.

  TRIESTE HAD made no such promise of secrecy, however, a thing she was particularly happy about the morning they made ready to leave.

  “You’re sure a duffel bag is all I need?” Aylan asked anxiously. Trieste was in his room, sorting through discarded clothes and piles of gifts he had bought and decided not to take, helping him pack.

  “We’re staying with friends, Aylan, not packing for court,” she assured him with some exasperation. “You’re spending your summer helping Torrant in the warehouse—you need old clothes to wash, old clothes to wear, and something nice for dinner.”

  “Double that,” he ordered abruptly, putting three more sets of shirts, short breeches, and a nice cloak in the pile, and Trieste let out an aggrieved sigh.

  “They’re merchants, Aylan—”

  “They’re decent people!” he interrupted, the expression in his pretty lavender eyes almost hunted, and Trieste felt a surprising pang of sympathy for him.

  “So are we—and you’re not sleeping with their moon-destined, now are you?”

  Aylan stopped and raked a hand through his tousled curls, and Trieste could have cursed because he was still damned beautiful. If she had made that gesture, she would’ve had to brush her hair for an hour to get it back into a plait.

  “Yarri’s going to hate you and forgive you,” he said. “There’s just no getting away from it. The dance should be very amusing, but you’ll win because she can’t. If you don’t muck it up, you’ll have a friend for life.”

  “Well, thank you very much. If I think that’s something to worry abou—”

  “But you’re a good person, Spots! It’s not like I’ll ever have a chance to meet decent people again.” His voice sank, and he was looking carefully at his folding (which was just as atrocious when he watched himself doing it as it was when he didn’t pay any attention at all). Trieste had an abrupt suspicion, and she suddenly cursed the “manly code” of pride Torrant and Gregor had been practicing when they decided not to tell Aylan about his tuition. But then, she thought in exasperation, Aylan would probably have understood it perfectly.

  Well, she didn’t. And she had promised nothing.

  “Don’t be melodramatic, Aylan,” she said with some asperity, concentrating fiercely on her own neater folding. “It’s not like you’re not going to be with us for another three years. We might even make a decent person out of you in that time, right?”

  There was a weighty silence, and she prayed for him to take the hint, but he was male, and apparently needed a bigger hint. “I don’t know, Trieste,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “I might not be here for the rest of—”

  “Oh, of course you will!” With a huff, she shoved the rest of his clothes and his toiletries into the large duffel bag Torrant had pulled out of Aylan’s closet and told him to fill. Their small cart had been full as it was, and he and Aldam were leaving many of their belongings at the school.

  “Trieste… you don’t know….”

  She couldn’t stand it anymore. If she had been ten, she would have kicked his shin in frustration. “By Oueant’s amazing manhood, Aylan, do you really think Torrant would let the school send you home?” She tried to pick up his duffel bag so she could make a stunning exit by hauling it with her, but it was appallingly heavy and fell to the floor with a thump. She kicked the damned bag instead of Aylan’s shin and huffed her way in an embarrassed flurry out of the room. Aylan watched her go with an expression he could not free from surprise.

  ONCE THE snows were gone, the journey to the sea was an easy ride. They stopped again at the shrine at the midway point, and Aldam’s little moan of dismay when they saw that Triane’s stone alcove had been shattered cut straight into all their hearts. After they dismounted and settled the horses, without a word, the four of them set to gathering rocks and then mounting them into a little stone cairn to take place of the carved alcove. It was heavy work, and it lasted until sunset. When the men were done, they were grateful Trieste had thought to break in the middle and make dinner at the little fire pit, although not as grateful as they would have been if she had known anything about cooking.

  “You should have told me you couldn’t cook!” Aldam admonished, adding onions and carrots into the flat-tasting potato soup she had tried her hand at.

  “I’m a woman. I thought it came with the equipment,” she replied sourly, and both Torrant and Aylan had laughed—a lot.

  “About the only thing that comes with anybody’s equipment,” Aylan added dryly when they were done, “is the sensitivity of the equipment itself!”

  All of them had laughed heartily at that, and the soup was salvageable, after all.

  Trieste had never camped out before, and she was skittish at every sound. Torrant finally combined their bedding so she could snuggle against him, but when she fell asleep (making shushing sounds with her breaths that were too delicate to be called snores), he found he could not. He lay staring up at the stars, and at Oueant, the one moon which had yet to fall below the tree line, wondering at the black feeling in his stomach that even their laughter had not been able to discharge.

  “What are you thinking?” Aylan’s voice was pitched low enough that he didn’t startle.

  “I am thinking about Triane, Goddess of Joy, and what it must take to desecrate her altar,” he replied softly, finally putting words to his feeling of unease.

  Aylan’s bitter laugh blew through the mild night. “Is that all? Why don’t you figure out how to unseat Rath and fix Clough while you’re at it, brother?”

  Torrant’s answering chuff was just as bitter. “One problem at a time,” he retorted. Then, after a thoughtful pause, he added, “But it’s not like they’re not connected, after all.”

  “No,” Aylan agreed painfully. “It’s not like that at all.”

  “It’s like poison, isn’t it? A snake’s venom—once it’s in a body, it just makes all the tissue foul and dead, until the body itself dies.”

  “Yes, that’s what it feels like.”

  “It’s spreading—Rath’s poison is contaminating all our lands. I wo
nder….” It was a hard thought to voice.

  “What?” Aylan’s voice was getting sleepy, there in the sweet dark, and Torrant could use his rest as well.

  “I wonder if that’s what Gregor thinks Aldam and I will find in the Old Man Hills—what hatred can do to… to everybody.” He wasn’t saying this right. He would have to find the words, he thought fretfully, because this needed to be said right.

  “I think it makes me hate it back,” Aylan said, his voice so hard and flat Torrant turned to look at him, seeing his wide, bright eyes drinking in the moon.

  “Remember you’re loved too, brother,” he said, feeling foolish for talking like this. He wouldn’t have had the nerve to say things like this to Aylan in the bright of the sun, with his friend’s sardonic smile at the ready. “Don’t forget how to love back.”

  “I’ll try, brother. For you, I’ll try.”

  ALDAM HEARD the insistent pounding first, the one he had first noticed that winter night long ago, and just about the time Trieste scented the air with a delighted smile, they came out of the woods and reached the bridge over the river. The sea was visible below them, vast and comprehensive, as well as the little, self-important city of Eiran.

  “It’s small!” Aylan said in surprise, and Trieste turned to him to scold.

  “What—Triannon is a metropolis?”

  “No!” Aylan grimaced good-naturedly. “It’s just…. It’s started to feel as though our world revolved around it—I mean, Torrant’s did!” And then he realized how it sounded and blushed the color of the sunset behind them. He was still stammering when Yarri scrambled up her usual tree lookout, gave a squeak, which sounded like “You’re early!” and then scrambled down. Torrant slithered off Hammer fast enough to make a more skittish horse jump and thrust the reins at Aldam so he could sprint across the bridge to the hill rise and greet her. Their friends subsided and watched in hushed fascination as the two of them ran toward each other. Torrant picked her up and whirled her around, holding her awkwardly large body like the child she wasn’t quite, and the meld of their voices was, for a moment, the only sound in the evening. The silhouettes of the soon-to-grow girl and the near-to-grown man were vivid against the reflection of the red sunset off the sea.

  Had Trieste or Aylan known it, they both made a similar sound in their throats.

  Aldam looked at both of them sympathetically. “No,” he said, answering the question neither of them had asked. “He was not ever really yours to begin with.”

  Then Lane walked up past his reunited children, reaching out to ruffle Torrant’s hair as he went. The boy was so immersed in his quiet conversation with Yarri that he barely managed a distracted smile. Lane was laughing softly to himself when he got within earshot of Aldam.

  “All day long she watched that damned map he made, waiting to see you clear the trees. We pulled her away just long enough for supper, and when she got back to it and saw how close you were, she let out a word I think Bethie will have to smack her for later. Ah gods”—Aldam swung off Clover and greeted Lane with a bone-crushing embrace—“it’s good to see you!”

  “We missed you!” Aldam exclaimed earnestly. “I wanted to come back during Solstice….”

  Lane nodded thoughtfully. “I know, I know—your letter said Torrant was too exhausted, and you sent him to sleep when he would have traveled. I need to talk to Torrant—” He looked up and searched out Aylan in the deepening twilight. “—both of you,” he amended, “about that.” Aylan would have been alarmed, but the welcoming smile on the bearded man’s face was so warm after the pause, he could find no reason why he should be.

  “You must be Aylan!” Lane smiled and offered a hand, and Aylan took it with a bob of his head. “And you’re Trieste!” Trieste offered a graceful version of a curtsey from the seat of the cart. “It’s so good to finally meet you. The boys have been writing us about you since the beginning of school!”

  “Except Aylan’s no longer a wanker,” Aldam said seriously, and Aylan laughed. Good—he’d been nervous during the entire trip.

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” Aylan said. Sliding off his horse and taking the cart pony’s reins, he offered his hand so Trieste could hop down. “Just ask Trieste—I’m sure she still thinks I’m a wanker.”

  “I think you have a lot to pay for from your wanker years, yes,” Trieste said primly, but she took Aylan’s hand as she said it and smiled her thanks.

  Lane chuckled, then looked back over his shoulder and called to the two figures coming up the hill behind Torrant and Yarri. “Oy—Stanny, Roes—over here. Come take the horses down to the stables with Aldam. Right, Aldam?”

  Aldam stopped, wide-eyed, with a smile on his face of such sweetness it lit up the gray velvet twilight. “Right, Uncle Lane,” he said automatically.

  “Right, Da,” Roes said at the same time. Aldam made a courtly little bow, and Roes ignored it and hugged him fiercely. She felt so good—compact, sturdy. Roes was the one person Aldam could always count on. Stanny walked by them both with a rolling of his eyes, clapping Aldam on the shoulder as he did so. Aldam smiled and moved toward the horses to do his duty, but his eyes never left Roes. She smiled shyly as she continued to look directly at Aldam. Her mouth moved; she was saying something about missing him and about dinner, but all Aldam knew was that her hand was in his and they were home.

  EVEN AYLAN could see the things the two were saying were not as important as the contact they were making with their eyes.

  Stanny shook hands with Aylan and bowed to Trieste, then took their reins and called to his sister. He looked at Aylan with a large smile, and Aylan found himself responding to this enormous young man with a broad smile and freckles in the same way he’d responded to Aldam. They both required patience and a certain amount of protectiveness he’d seen in Torrant but didn’t really recognize in himself.

  “You’ll be rooming with me,” Stanny said happily, “along with Aldam. I hope that’s fine—Mum and Da’s house is full to bursting with Aldam and Torrant back. Mum’s been using their old room to hold yarn. She had to shove their old beds together to make-fit.”

  “Do you snore?” Aylan asked and was rewarded with Stanny’s full and handsome grin.

  “Like a cattle stampede—but my flat’s got two rooms and a right nice couch in the front room. We figure Aldam will be back and forth between my flat and home, so he gets the couch.”

  “That’s more than generous,” Aylan said, meaning it. Hesitantly he looked at Lane. “I’m really—” The word stuck awkwardly. “—grateful you’re letting me—” Trieste made a sound. “—us, stay with you all this summer.”

  “Don’t be,” Lane said with another welcoming smile. “You’ll both be working hard for it. Room and board doesn’t come cheap!”

  But both Aylan and Trieste had the feeling that a summer of being with family was going to be without price, as well as very dear.

  “NOW, COME on, you two!” Lane called to Yarri and Torrant. “We’re holding up dinner. Yarri—come take Trieste home, right?”

  The girl’s heavy sigh carried like a burst of gray through the dark. “Right, Uncle Lane.” She and Torrant came toward them, and Torrant pulled his hand from hers to put it on her shoulder. It was obviously a reminder.

  “Yarri—this is Aylan and Trieste—they’re my friends now. You be polite.” The implicit warning in the words told everybody there that part of their earnest conversation had been about Trieste—and it hadn’t gone well.

  Trieste gave an inward groan and tried for humor and understanding. “Oh come on, Torrant, that’s a sure fire way of making her despise me on sight.”

  “We can barely see each other,” Yarri said flatly, and Trieste was glad because the darkness hid her grimace.

  “All the more reason for us to go in. Come,” Lane said firmly, and they all set off down the hill.

  Lane, Stanny, and Roes were busy catching Torrant and Aldam up on the family news, so Trieste took a few of the lighter parcels off the
cart and made a determined effort to walk next to an indifferent Yarri.

  “Torrant tells me you like to paint and draw,” she said brightly. “I think that’s wonderful.”

  “It’s not a skill they value at Triannon,” Yarri replied darkly, and Trieste had to agree.

  “You need freedom to see with your heart,” she said, and Yarri made an unwilling sound in her throat. It was obvious the girl didn’t want to agree with anything Trieste had to say.

  “Torrant can make better pictures with his gift anyway,” Yarri returned after a pause, and Trieste was easy with speaking from her heart.

  “Torrant can make truth—and there’s very little in truth that’s the color of your dreams, don’t you think?”

  The sound Yarri made was a combination of impending defeat and resolve not to surrender. Trieste wondered miserably what their final battle would be, and really hoped they’d win.

  “We turn here,” Yarri said flatly. “It’s nothing fancy.”

  “No,” Trieste agreed, looking at the warm and tidy two-story home with the yellow-painted boards they were approaching. “But it does look like home.”

  “It is home,” Yarri replied, her voice openly unfriendly. “It’s mine and Torrant’s home.”

  Trieste gave a little sigh and followed her rival up the porch and into her fate at the hands of the chaos within.

  AFTER THEY split off from the groups of family, they walked for a while through streets unfamiliar to Aylan but ones Torrant and Lane seemed to know like the sound of their own voices. They turned from the main avenue and went through a series of alleys toward the same rise and to the river they had just crossed, only farther downstream. As they walked, Aylan listened with undisguised envy to the easy conversation between Torrant and Lane under the roaring of moon-driven water. A vision of his last conversation with Lord Stealth, second vizier to King Granth of the Jeweled Lands, blew through him, leaving him cold in the warm, salted dark, and he lost the thread of their discussion for a moment. Then Lane called him to the present abruptly.