Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  Zhane turned his head and sucked Eljean’s thumb into his mouth, and Eljean groaned a little in memory and anticipation. Zhane released his thumb, and Eljean slid it down the side of his lover’s cheek before bending over for a kiss. He tasted himself on Zhane’s tongue, and for a moment it was exciting, remembering the things their bodies had done together in the night.

  Zhane was the one who pulled away. “It would be sweet to lie here all day,” he said, “but the sun is nearly up, and you have so much to lose.”

  “Mmmm….” It was a sound of protest and resignation. Zhane pushed him away with a little laugh.

  “Go, Eljean. Triane’s Son is waiting.”

  “Triane’s Son is in his flat, dreaming of a pretty girl!” Eljean protested with a laugh, standing up to pull on his boots.

  “Triane’s Son is out on the streets, doing murder,” Zhane said seriously, shocking him badly. “You didn’t know?” he asked when Eljean had to sit down, his weight making the bedsprings groan and the frame rattle.

  “He’s a regent!” It sounded absurd even as he uttered it.

  “He’s protecting you!” Zhane responded, sitting up in bed and allowing the faded blue coverlet to slide down his thin body. “Did you think that those two guards would just go away and forget to mention all of the young regents helping my people?”

  “Night work,” Eljean realized, suddenly seeing things he wished he hadn’t.

  “Yes.” Zhane sat up and pressed his bare chest to Eljean’s back, and Eljean remembered that he was wearing Ellyot Moon’s shirt. “Are you no longer in love with him, now that you know what he is?”

  Eljean closed his eyes, seeing Ellyot as he had been the day before in the sunlight on the steps of the Regents’ Hall, tumbling off a wall for the sheer joy of it, resting his head on his arms in unspeakable weariness. He saw his long-fingered hands comforting a child and then the aftermath: Ellyot, fever-eyed and joyful at seeing his kin and singing in a dim little pub, with his eyes closed in longing. That beautiful young man, with all his gentleness, was outside on the streets committing murder?

  “I don’t know what he is,” Eljean said truthfully. “Do you?”

  “He’s our savior, Eljean. I think that makes him more important than your crush, don’t you?”

  “Mmm.” It wasn’t a real answer, but then, Eljean didn’t have one. “Will I see you again?” he evaded, still smiling in hope. “May I bring you pretty things, clothes, sweets…? Do the things that lovers do when they can meet eyes in the morning?”

  Zhane kissed the back of his neck, the faint stubble of his dark beard rasping pleasantly, but even the touch of his lips on Eljean’s skin was sad. “I don’t work during the first rest day,” he said. “I would like to see you then, yes.” Work. Eljean had forgotten that Zhane had been “working” on their first night together. “But,” Zhane continued, as though fully aware that Eljean’s jerk into reality was complete, “I would prefer you pay me nothing, not even foolish trinkets, if you don’t mind.”

  A thick swallow, a truly painful comprehension. “I understand perfectly,” he rasped, and then he couldn’t bear the conversation anymore. He kissed Zhane, hard, abruptly, and with some of the confidence he had been missing the night before, and then grabbed his cloak where it lay crumpled on the floor and fled the dim little room.

  He remembered his way from the night before. In the chilly predawn light he could see no sign of movement—certainly no guards, which had been his main fear. So when he heard voices coming from an alleyway behind a crumbling, uninhabitable building, he came as close to wetting himself as he ever had in his adult life.

  And then he recognized the voices and almost fell against the wall in relief.

  “Dueant’s broken nose, you’re still bleeding!” Aylan’s harsh tones were unmistakable, especially when he was admonishing Ellyot about his health.

  “I’m sorry—I was slow tonight. I got in your way,” Ellyot apologized, and Aylan’s frustrated growl was more eloquent than words.

  “You were distracted. I never should have let you go out. We’ve got to stop the bleeding. Can you change again?”

  “Mmm.” That was negative. “I refuse to let you go out alone. And no, I can’t change. If I do, I’ll have to channel a little to stay upright, and then Stanny will know something is up.”

  “As opposed to now, when you’re soaking through your godsbedamned shirt?” There was fury in Aylan’s voice, Eljean noted with surprise. Whatever the two had done last night, it must have been awful.

  “The wound would have killed you,” Ellyot said softly. “Don’t get that way—I will survive, and it would have killed you, and this is just practical, that’s all.”

  “Practical suffering. Nice, I like that. Now wait….” There was a ripping sound, some harsh breathing, and then, Ellyot’s suppressed, “Auughh!”

  “Serves you right, you wanking git arse!” Aylan snapped. “You couldn’t have just killed them, passed out in the street, could you? You had to get all noble.”

  “I was trying to see if they’d told anybody….” He hissed. “Oueant’s bare ass, Aylan, you’re going to open it more!”

  “You were trying to give them a fighting chance!” Aylan accused. Ellyot, as open as he always seemed to be, didn’t deny it.

  “The younger one… he’d been abused. You know that, right? If the bleed in his brain didn’t kill him… I thought that maybe it might….”

  “Make him a better person?” Aylan’s sarcasm was unmistakable, and then his voice sank to something approaching tenderness. “Make him Aldam?”

  Ellyot’s sniff was full of dignity, even heard around the corner of a crumbling building in a filthy ghetto. “Nobody can be Aldam but Aldam.”

  Eljean heard a half-choked laugh, and Aylan’s next words made it clear that all was forgiven. “There, it’s as good as it will be until you get some sleep and another change. If I’m quiet, I can sneak in while Stanny’s sleeping and get us each another shirt.”

  “Good plan,” Ellyot praised. Eljean wondered if the man ever said something that wasn’t meant to warm his listener.

  There was quiet then, as the air turned a soft gray, and the two men worked to still their breathing after their hurried doctoring.

  “That last song you played, the one about berries in the morning?” Aylan broke the silence unexpectedly.

  “The one called ‘Berries in the Morning’?” Eljean could almost see the sweet, chiding half smile on Ellyot’s face, but not while Ellyot was soaking through a wadded bandage with his own blood.

  “That was about Auntie Bethen, wasn’t it?”

  “Mmmm. Do you think she’ll like it?”

  “I…. It’s just…. Every morning when Stanny and I would stay out to drink, to get laid, to whatever, I’d get home in the morning, and it’s the only home I’ve ever had, you know? Even Triannon never felt like home. And there’d be Bethen, knitting, eating, whatever she had to do to stay awake. And you’d be sure….” Aylan choked a little, on laughter or tears Eljean couldn’t tell. “You’d be damned sure that whatever you did the night before had been so horrible, so depraved, that it would have to be kept secret from the family for all time.”

  “And then Bethen, or sometimes Lane, would tell you that they loved you. And it would suddenly seem not so bad.” Ellyot’s voice had grown a little stronger, and between the two of them, Eljean could almost yearn for a home that would feel safe.

  “Can I ask you something before I break into my own rat-hole for my last shirts?” Aylan’s voice was so low that Eljean had to strain to hear it.

  “I’ll have Coryal send you some more,” Ellyot said, “and sure, brother. You know about everything there is to know.”

  “I don’t know what would cause you to bring a terrified ball of fur and claws across Hammer Pass in the winter. What possessed you, brother, when the odds were so stacked against you as it was?”

  A half laugh. “The same thing that made me steal her fat pony,
which, I might add, was almost as useless over that damned mountain.”

  “What was that?”

  Torrant sighed. Even Eljean, listening around the corner, hugging the wood of the building he shared with the two men so closely that he would have splinters in his back for days, could hear the reluctance in Ellyot Moon’s voice.

  “I was all she had. The day before, she’d had a home, and brothers to fill it, and a father and two mothers, and friends and family. That morning she had me and that….” Oh no. Now Eljean knew why he’d been so reluctant to answer the question and why Aylan had spoken of confessions and safety before he’d asked it. It was a near thing—Eljean could hear how near it was, even around a building corner—but Ellyot Moon managed to keep his composure.

  “Her cat died, and I wasn’t there,” he said thickly, “and crying over it isn’t going to change it.”

  “No tears today, brother?” Aylan’s voice sounded sad, as though he would have welcomed them.

  “Oh no, brother,” Ellyot returned, his breath hitching with several kinds of pain. “Not when we’ve so many more to shed—that’s a thing I can feel in my bones. Now go and sneak into your flat for those extra shirts. I’d like to at least have breakfast with Stanny before he goes.”

  Eljean took his moment to leave, sightlessly fleeing a scene he could only envision. He was running so quickly and blindly that as he approached the enormous brick wall that he had no idea how to scale without Ellyot’s help, he almost ran into Djali’s struggling, grunting backside.

  As it was, the sight of those flailing legs was enough to make him snort with laughter. The sound made Djali lose his grip, flounder in midair for a moment, and then land solidly on said backside with a thump, a groan, and a grunt.

  “Good gods,” Djali said bemusedly from the ground, his moon face never quite losing its smile. “What are you doing here?”

  Eljean realized he’d rather die than answer that question honestly to one of his friends. “Nothing,” he mumbled, his face flushing a brilliant scarlet in the gray light. “Nothing happened.”

  Djali’s smile was both understanding and sweetly superior. “That’s too bad for you, Eljean, because my stars were realigned and the moons set right in their orbits last night.”

  Eljean chuckled, truly happy for the usually hapless Djali. “She’s a lucky girl,” he said, meaning it. “Now here, I think if you use my hands as a vault, and if you help me walk up the wall once you get there, we might be able to get back to our flats before the guards wake up.”

  It took some puffing and some muffled swearing—Eljean was highly amused to hear Djali use the phrase “Triane’s purple tits!” and was pretty sure he must have gotten that one from Aylan—but eventually they were both on the other side of the wall, trying to figure out which apartment was Eljean’s (who was on the ground floor on the far wing from Ellyot) by counting rooms. They failed miserably and had to resort to peeking over the patio to see if they recognized the room inside. Djali himself still slept in his rooms in the consort’s palace, so sneaking into his own bed was damned near impossible.

  “If we have to keep this up,” Eljean panted, hopping up and down to look over a fence with a drop off behind it, “I’m going to plant a damned flowerbed as a marker.” He could see a perfectly made bed through the panes of glass that made up the double doors onto the patio. Definitely not his flat.

  That made Djali laugh. “Yes, it was so much easier following Ellyot to the ghettoes. This was the first night he didn’t escort us back.”

  Eljean flushed. “He was… busy.”

  Djali came down from his tiptoes quickly, having almost been caught by the older regent who lived in the flat he was peering into. “I know what he was doing, Eljean,” he whispered, as the two of them crouched to the far side of the next enclosure. “I’m not a child. The guards would have done so much harm if their story had spread. Better they die than Triana’s home gets burnt down with her in it, you think?”

  What a good man Djali had become when Eljean was not looking. “It doesn’t bother you?” Eljean asked at last, as the two of them slunk down to the next patio fence. They were talking in low tones, hoping not to disturb any more sleeping regents. “I mean….” Deep blush, a hope he wasn’t wrong about what his friends knew and what they pretended not to. “I commit treason just by wanting what I want, but you? You’re the consort’s son….”

  Djali looked down and took a moment to lean against the fence of their chosen patio of the moment. “Ellyot Moon has shown me more kind words, more attention, and honest praise in two months than I’ve seen my entire life in the damned palace, at least from people who weren’t paid to keep me happy. If my father wants my loyalty, he needs to buy it with more than pretty clothes. Did you hear them, this morning, coming back from their night work?”

  The abruptness of the question had Eljean reeling back from the fence as he was peering over it, but that was good, because for no reason at all, Eljean felt tears welling up again, and he was tired of feeling like a little girl. “Yes. I’m getting to be good at eavesdropping.”

  “You know… I don’t care if they’re lovers or not. I think sometimes I’d give my life in an instant to know that someone loved me the way they love each other.” Djali didn’t look at him as he said it; he had moved on to the patio beyond Eljean and was spending all his attention frowning over the wooden partition. He gestured Eljean over to make sure he recognized the right place.

  “Does it look like a hurricane hit it?” Eljean asked, ignoring for a moment the chest-aching implications of the last thing that Djali had just said. Djali nodded, and Eljean sighed in relief.

  That nameless emotion kept trying to break through, but Eljean stomped on it tightly; he would be a man about this, he would. “You’re right,” he said, “about that other thing—about being loved.” He took a deep breath and pulled his emotions together. The apartment he could see past the double-paned glass doors was a complete disaster; the bed was torn apart, his clothes were scattered in piles all over the floor, and the wardrobe doors were wide open because the wardrobe was too small to house what was in there. It was exactly as he’d left it. “My flat at last. Would you like to sleep on my couch for a bit?”

  It wasn’t until Djali was snoring on his davenport in a borrowed shirt and he was pulling himself under the covers in his own clean nightshirt, that he fully let go and howled sobs into his pillow. Even then, he couldn’t define what he was crying for. His lost chance with Ellyot Moon? His found lover, who would share his body with countless others in the next week and not accept a penny from Eljean? His new understanding of his friends and how he had chosen better than he knew? Maybe it was all of it, and added to that, the terrible memory of Ellyot Moon’s misery over a cat he’d brought with his sister over Hammer Pass. Eljean couldn’t answer the why of it. All he could do was weep.

  It wasn’t until much later that he asked himself why he hadn’t gone into the alley to help the two heroes when he’d heard that Ellyot had been hurt. It had been a cowardly act, when Ellyot and Aylan already knew that he was aware of the two of them.

  The answer left a sour taste in his mind, and well it should have.

  The only help he could have offered would have been Ellyot Moon’s own shirt, but that he was resolved to never give up.

  AYLAN’S THREE middle daughters regarded the healer soberly, each one covertly petting a kitten that they thought their parents didn’t know they’d smuggled to the faire. Torrant caught Yarri’s eye as he sang and nodded toward the kittens he was sure were from the latest litter of one of Anye’s many descendants.

  Yarri shook her head, rolling her eyes, and looked pointedly at Aylan. Aylan rubbed the bridge of his nose and shrugged, one arm around his lovely wife.

  Starren grinned with no remorse whatsoever, and Torrant shook his head, continuing the bridge of the tune and looking down at the three girls with a sweet, forgiving smile.

  The youngest of the three, named Sunset b
y her father after her mother’s hair or so he claimed, ventured closer. She had heard the stories of the healer and the youngster who would be his beloved, but this was the first time the cat was mentioned.

  “That was very brave,” she told him soberly, and his smile dimpled on one end. She smiled back, an open, glorious smile so much the mirror of Starren’s as a child that Torrant felt his heart take wings and fly.

  “I have a weakness for little girls and kittens,” he told her with a wink toward her wriggling pocket—and another one toward Yarri.

  Yarri sniffed, pretending her heart wasn’t softened, but Sunset’s smile turned slyer, wily. Now she was the spitting image of her father, and Torrant had to fight to keep his voice clear. “And pansy purple eyes,” he finished. Sunset blushed, and the healer continued his song.

  Part XIV—In the Shadow of the Cold Moon

  Rath

  IF RATH had been an imaginative man, he might have figured out how the younger regents were escaping the environs of the regents’ apartments, the Regents’ Hall, and the palace without being seen. His east-facing window overlooked the regents’ square and every rest day morning he stood there religiously, watching the comings and goings from the regents’ flats—the whole reason they were there.

  The debacle of nearly three years before, when a number of the young people had been discovered doing perverted, unmentionable things, had led him to the conclusion that keeping the ruling body of Clough as morally pure as its leader could allow for no more private estates. Just the thought of it made him shudder. His own son hadn’t held a seat at that time, and had been kept as far from the people his own age as possible, but the risk that moment had held for the house of Rath—it was unimaginable.