Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  When the quiet had seeped completely back into the bedroom, and Torrant was seated cross-legged on the bed, scribbling furiously onto one of his music parchments, Aylan said, “He wants you.”

  Torrant stopped writing and looked up. “Who?”

  “Eljean.”

  “Eljean has a lover now. I’m sure his little crush has faded away.” Torrant bent his head back down and wrote a few more words to the lyric that had been rattling around in his head since he’d left Rath’s den of poison. If they weren’t out in the ghettoes, being the bane of the Dueance guards on the first rest night, Aylan almost always slept in Torrant’s room. They had roomed together very successfully, and reasonably platonically, when Aylan had stayed at Wrinkle Creek, and Aylan appreciated the bed with springs and fresh ticking once a week. He also appreciated that Torrant didn’t sleep, not really, unless his brother was there to watch his back and to warn him if the two of them were needed.

  “How many lovers do you think I had before our little moment in the sun?” Aylan asked, annoyed that Torrant would not see what seemed so obvious to Aylan himself.

  Torrant snorted, picked up his lute, and thumbed a melody from the strings. “I don’t even want to guess,” he muttered, closing his eyes for a moment before making another notation.

  “Torrant, this is bloody important. What is it you’re writing there that won’t allow the fact that this boy with a crush is the weakest member of our little brotherhood? One indiscreet word, one bad day, one temper tantrum near the wrong crowds, and he could get you killed.” Aylan shoved himself off the chair by the lamp; he’d been trying to read a “forbidden book” that Stanny had smuggled to them, and while usually he appreciated a good romance, he was annoyed that Torrant wasn’t taking this seriously.

  Torrant looked up and met Aylan’s gaze with a serene, level look of his own. “Eljean is Eljean—we can neither change the way he feels nor predict what he will do in the future. What we can do is give him unconditional acceptance, which is, I’m damned sure, a thing he’s never had offered to him before in his life. Like you said, you had a crush on me for years, and not once in all that time did I feel it necessary to shove you away or hurt you because I did not feel the same way. Just because I don’t feel the same way about Eljean as I do about you doesn’t mean I should treat him with any less dignity, right?”

  “He’s dangerous, and you have a serious blind spot about this!” Aylan protested.

  “He’s young.” Torrant shrugged. “And if I have a blind spot it’s because I can’t believe I’d be the object of all of this attention if I wasn’t Ellyot Moon, the lost child of the last rebel in Clough.” Torrant’s face suddenly darkened, and he frowned at the lyrics in front of him, and in a fit of dissatisfaction he made as though to scratch out the entire work.

  “Wait!” Aylan cried, saving the song before he even knew what it was about. “What are you writing, anyway? I’ve never seen you try to destroy your work before!”

  “Augh!” Torrant gave a cry of sheer frustration and barely remembered to cap his inkwell before throwing himself backward on the bed and running his hands through his hair. He felt the tingle where he kept his white streak hidden, and in a giant exhale he let the spell go, just for a moment, and tried to put his thoughts in order for his friend.

  “Torrant,” Aylan said, frowning at what was in front of him, “this is shite. This is political propaganda at its worst. ‘We must worship Triane because joy is part of life’? Ugh. Here, wait, let me destroy this for you. I want to pretend you never wrote it!”

  “Be my guest,” Torrant breathed, staring at the ceiling above him and remembering a window in the loft of a barn, open to the stars at sea. The wrinkle and rattle of the cursed piece of parchment didn’t even faze him.

  “Why did you write this?”

  Torrant sighed. “No one remembered,” he murmured. “No one remembered. It was the day I walked in, and Rath was telling the last survivor of Triannon that the Goddess’s children were ‘tricky’—they would grow to be dangerous, and that’s why they needed to be killed. But tonight at dinner… he said ‘It was a miscommunication among the leadership.’ It’s total shite, but no one remembered. Not his men, not even our boys—none of them remembered. I just… I wanted something in print. I’m just so afraid that if we get caught and our bodies strung up above the Goddess-blighted city, no one will know why!” He took a shuddering breath and continued to fight the helpless tears sliding into his hair from the corner of his eyes. “Poor Ulvane,” he rasped thickly. “The man begged for death, Aylan, so he wouldn’t betray his sister’s son. Doesn’t that sort of courage deserve to be remembered?”

  “Mmmm,” Aylan acceded, wondering if Torrant even realized he’d forgiven the man who had wielded the knife that shed his father’s blood without even a batted eyelash. In a heartbeat, he had understood that the hand that held the knife was not the will that had driven it home. Didn’t that sort of compassion deserve to be remembered? The room was quiet for a moment, while Aylan fought his instinct to take his brother in his arms and comfort him in any way he could. In the silence he remembered a tune, a melody of Torrant’s that had been sung by a group of women at the marketplace as he’d been buying food.

  “They’re still singing ‘Berries for Breakfast,’” Aylan said into the hush. “They’re singing it at the marketplace, they’re singing it as they work, they’re singing it to their children as they fall asleep….”

  “Who’s singing it?”

  “People. All the people in this otherwise shite-acular town. They’re singing your song because it touched their hearts. Facts are easily forgotten, my brother. Feelings resonate in your bones until your last breath.”

  Torrant sat up and wiped his face, and Aylan closed his eyes to squash that temptation to take his brother in his arms, especially now, when he had a reason to hope.

  “A song?” Torrant asked. “About what?”

  Aylan had to laugh. “About the things that touch your heart, brother. The things you’re most passionate about.” He grimaced because he knew this was going to be rough on the both of them. “The things that hurt you. If you want the people here to know how their lives are hurting the world, you let them know how they’ve hurt you. Words, mate—they’re your bread and butter, they always have been.”

  It wasn’t as simple as that, of course. Aylan knew that with this one suggestion, he was sentencing Torrant to an evening of exile in the place where his worst memories lived. But he also knew that Torrant was right—the one thing Rath had going for him was that no one truly knew the extent of his perfidy because the facts were never documented, and the news that he was out and about in other countries being a shite-arsed wanker would never be read to his own people.

  Torrant looked at his brother, at his over-pretty features, especially that lovely, pouty mouth, and wondered how Aylan could have once thought that all he had were his body and his looks. It was a brilliant idea, really. In the back of his mind, Torrant remembered Lane Moon saying something about how maybe he would change the world with words. More recently he remembered a small woman who had given her life to save the books of poetry she had loved the most. Well then. If poetry could be a weapon, who better to wield it?

  “You won’t leave while I’m working?” Torrant asked, and his heart in that quavering voice was as naked as Aylan had ever heard it when the snowcat wasn’t involved.

  “If you don’t mind my snoring, that’s a promise,” he reassured and crawled up the bed to put his head on the pillow and close his eyes. He knew that Torrant would reach out and touch him if he were asleep. Touch his hair, his cheek, rub his thumb on Aylan’s jaw, if Aylan weren’t awake to feel it. Torrant wasn’t in love with him—certainly not the way he was in love with Yarri—but he needed that physical reassurance that his brother, his friend, his family, was there, nearby, where he could be touched.

  “I know you’re awake,” Torrant said, his pen scratching frantically on the parchment wi
th excitement and hope.

  “You’ll forget,” Aylan murmured back, not even sure if Torrant heard him in his creative haze. Torrant’s free hand absentmindedly reached out and rubbed his friend’s arm.

  “Mmmm…,” he mumbled, and the night spun on.

  He worked until dawn peeped through the windows of the double doors, the melody apparently playing in his head because he very rarely picked up the lute but instead hummed the song as he was writing the words. When he was done, he stood and stretched, then covered Aylan (again! The man was always flopping spread eagle when he slept) with one of the blankets Bethen had stuffed in their luggage. Then he stripped off his own breeches, hose, and his satin huntsman’s vest, which had long since been unlaced. He crawled into bed in his lightweight, linen shirt, not caring about the wrinkles since it was laundered soft.

  As his mind relaxed and his body tightened around itself in sleep (he never truly relaxed in sleep) he thought of Yarri. He’d been thinking of her as a child, as he’d written the ballad of the two of them escaping the deaths of their family, but something in him longed to touch her as an adult, as the fiery, competent, lovely woman who had lain with him before he’d set off here to this morass of politics and despair. In his mind he conjured an image of her so perfect, so true to life, that he could smell the chamomile and yarrow that she used in her shampoo.

  He sighed a little, forgetting Aylan on the other side of him, and formed a little cocoon in the hunch of his shoulders; as sleep claimed him he disappeared into this little world and dreamed of red-gold hair like rough silk and sober brown eyes in a piquant face. He dreamed of the smell of yarrow, chamomile, and roses, and the chiming, jingling, singing sound of bells.

  He dreamed of Yarri.

  HE MET Yarri’s eyes at this part, and she smiled gamely back.

  She had told him—numerous times—that the worst part of his absence had been just that: his absence. But he had seen what life in Eiran had been like after he and Aylan had left. He had seen the stalwart, covert fight of the people in Eiran to keep the soul of what made them good in the face of the sickness that had crawled into their midst like a rotting worm to the inside of a sweet, innocent apple.

  Tonight she shook her head, much of her earlier irritation set aside in an attempt to be strong for him as he did this. No matter whose bed he shared at the end of Beltane, it was a certainty that he needed all of them—every last child, every last cousin, every last friend—to sing with him now.

  As she watched, the terrible guilt weighed at his shoulders, even as he lifted his head to his children—every last one of them with a white streak in their hair—and sang. She wondered yet again if she could ever convince him that this part, the part he’d seen in his dream, had been the easiest part of the whole business.

  That was when Evya caught her eye and smiled with a lift of her eyebrows, her face still pretty, and her sloe eyes still lovely after all these years. Stanny’s beloved had become part of the strength of the family since those awful days, but she had always said rather ruefully that the only real hand she’d had in the deeds of Triane’s Son had been to hand Yarri a bag of hammers.

  Torrant had always told her soberly that without a bag of hammers, all would have been lost.

  And every year, Yarri met her sister-by-marriage’s eyes and reaffirmed what they all knew: small acts of kindness and bravery often won the war.

  Part XV—The Yearning Moon

  Dream of Beloved

  THE ORPHANAGE was just as Torrant remembered it, even in the dream.

  Yarri and the children had painted bright, happy murals on the yellow, recycled sailcloth that hung on the walls and carpeted the floors of what was once Lane Moon’s winter overflow warehouse. He had since rebuilt a larger building and donated this one to the victims of Rath’s policies, and Yarri, perhaps because she was an orphan herself, had taken on the orphanage as her livelihood.

  Of course, Yarri was only eighteen. The place had been her idea, and she knew every child by name and had been teaching the youngest ones their letters from the time she could first sneak away from the schools she was supposed to be attending in order to school the children. But still—she was young enough to require supervision. The town elders, of whom Lane was one, volunteered two or three days a month to come in and assist and take funding requests to bring to the town meetings, but it was Yarri who provided the driving will to make the place thriving, happy, and warm.

  She had help—before Torrant left and Roes had moved to Wrinkle Creek with Aldam, Roes had been a frequent presence at the orphanage, and the children had often teased that Roes was even pricklier than her name. Aylan had worked there between traveling jobs for Lane, and other young people who had come to play with the Moon children as they were growing up made the orphanage their livelihood as well.

  Evya, Stanny’s wife, was there as often as Yarri. So was Aln, who, mourning his brother and his lover, both part of the militia killed in defense of Triannon, seemed to take more solace from his work with the children than he did from the company of any of the adults of the town.

  Aln was there this day, as well, and Yarri’s automatic hand on his shoulder was covered with Aln’s own, long-fingered hand, as well as a great deal of gratitude.

  “It’s looking good!” she praised, taking in the poster with letters and numbers on it. The poster was to encourage reading. They were going to hang it over the treasured shelf of books rescued from Triannon. The orphanage, which had housed so many of the students after the attack, seemed the logical place to gather the precious little volumes of poetry and stories. The colors were bold purples, oranges, blues, and greens, and if there was not enough yellow in it for Yarri’s liking, she was pretty sure that was her own bias and not to be confused with any other fact. She and Aln had always enjoyed drawing together, but until Kert had been posted at Triannon with the militia, Aln had always been too wrapped up in his beloved to spend much time working with her.

  “Have you heard from Stanny?” he asked, and Yarri bit her lip and shook her head.

  “It was going to be a few weeks for him to get back,” she told him. “I’m sure he’ll be here by the next rest day.”

  “He’s been gone before,” Aln told her gently, not talking about Stanny. Yarri’s face tightened, and her throat got full. She shook her head, hard enough to make herself dizzy.

  “This is different,” she said roughly. “You know it. I know it. And the damned priest seems to know it as well.”

  “Has he been back to your house?” Aln looked concerned. Most of the other town elders tolerated the priest, shining him on when he said something outrageous or pushy or dumb. We don’t want to attract attention, Lane, the constable had intoned quietly at the swimming hole last week, where the two of them seemed to do most of their business in the summer. He was not, however, so quiet that Yarri, with her group of charges nearby, hadn’t heard him. She certainly hadn’t had any trouble hearing Lane Moon’s answer. We dishonor those boys if we don’t hold fast to what we know is true. And that had been the end of it.

  Yarri’s smile was a little thin, but it was still a smile. “Uncle Lane won’t let him in the house, not after what he said to Starry. He’ll come knocking. Auntie Beth will offer him the scrapings of the pot if he’ll eat it on the porch, and that’s as far as he gets. The rest of us just walk right by him, like he’s another wicker chair.”

  There was more—there were the things the priest said to her, under his breath, as she was walking by, and the things he said to Carl, the Miller’s boy, when she wasn’t around, but she didn’t want to go into these things with Aln. Aln had enough problems remembering to breathe in and out, remembering to tie his shoes and brush his bird’s-nest brown hair and eat to sustain his slender, bony body. The last thing Aln needed was to be burdened with….

  “There’s more you’re not telling me, isn’t there?” he asked quietly, and she grimaced in return. “Don’t treat me like I’m made of glass, Yarri. I’m in mourni
ng—I’m not stupid. And I’m not so far gone as to let a friend put up with the sort of shite the priest can throw to the four winds without at least offering to help.”

  “What’s he been saying to you?” she asked in sympathy.

  Aln gave her a sour look, and with a final glance at his handiwork, began to put the paints away. The children were all out playing with Evya, but they would be in soon for a snack and a nap for the younger ones and quiet reading time for the older ones, and if the paint was still out, the mess would be spectacular.

  “The usual,” Aln responded finally, making sure the colors were in order. “He says the same thing Clough’s been spewing about my sort since before you and Torrant came over the hill. It’s just….” He looked up, toward the raftered brown dark of the ceiling. They’d been trying and failing to think of ways to convert that vast space above them into another story. Their resources just didn’t stretch that far.

  “It’s just harder to hear someone tell you that your love was wrong when your lover isn’t here to tell you it’s been right all along,” Yarri finished for him, and then wanted to kick herself for her honesty when Aln’s tears spilled over.

  “I’m sor—” she started, but Aln pulled her into an embrace. It was the first time he’d allowed anyone to touch him since Aldam had brought him out of a sorcery-induced sleep when the news of the lost militia at Triannon had surfaced.

  “Don’t be sorry,” he whispered hoarsely into her hair. “Don’t be sorry, and don’t let that bastard get to you. And don’t ever forget that your beloved is fighting for all of us, you hear me?” He gave a muffled sob and shuddered in her arms. “He must succeed, because I won’t even think that they died for nothing. Take heart from that, Yarri. It’s all I’ve got….” And then he couldn’t speak anymore. In a moment, Evya and the children were coming in, and Evya’s bright voice sobered quickly when she saw Aln pulling reluctantly away from Yarri and wiping his face with the back of his hand.