Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  “Good night, Djali.”

  “Good night, brother.”

  WHEN MORNING came, cool and gray at last, Eljean swung out of bed first to go to the privy, and when he came out, Djali was waiting. The two of them met eyes for a moment, and Djali said, “I bet they won’t be up and about for another couple of hours….”

  A slow smile came across Eljean’s features. The week before, he and Zhane had stayed in bed until the sun was high in the sky, and he had needed to sneak past what felt like a battalion of guards in order to get home.

  “We could stay until the afternoon bell….” Then the rest day curfew would be over.

  “And walk home together through the marketplace….”

  “As though we hadn’t done anything wrong.” Eljean’s wicked smile made Djali smile in response.

  Djali’s smile abruptly faded, and for the first time Eljean noticed his eyes were not the glacial blue of his father’s, but a warm, faded brown. “We haven’t,” Djali said soberly. “Done anything wrong, I mean.”

  Eljean’s grin grew wider. “Hurry up and pee, Djali—I want to miss the changing of the guards.”

  Later that afternoon, Eljean kissed Zhane a hurried good-bye—the bell releasing the curfew had rung, and Eljean couldn’t bear, after the sweetness of the afternoon, to watch his lover get ready for work.

  Zhane stopped him as he’d made to run out the door, taking his hand and dropping a kiss on Eljean’s knuckles. “You know I have to, right? You know my family will starve, right?”

  Eljean fought against saying “I have money.” He wanted to scream it. He wanted to take this bright young man with the wicked sense of humor and the sloe eyes out of a place where a “decent flat” meant the floorboards were only rotting in places. He wanted to live with him, if only for a short burst of the affair, in a place where they did not have to hush themselves at night for fear of the soldiers who might walk by.

  If nothing else, Eljean wanted him not to have to prostitute himself in the back alleys of the ghettoes, where he made his living off the contempt of the same people who passed the laws that wouldn’t let him earn an honest living elsewhere.

  All this passed behind his eyes, and Zhane laughed fondly. “Eljean, if you’re going to keep working for Triane’s Son, you’re going to have to mind your expressions better!”

  Eljean tried to smile, failed, and nodded. “Just…,” he started, shook his head again, and tried one more time. “Just let me know, please, when it’s safe to offer?”

  Zhane pulled back, seeming to gather dignity out of the steaming, thick air. “It will be safe to offer when you’re no longer in love with Triane’s son,” he said evenly, and Eljean had to look away.

  “I don’t know why,” he said miserably, “but caring for him doesn’t mean I care for you any less.”

  “But you cannot be my Prince Charming, Eljean, and take me away from all of this, unless I am your heart’s desire.” Zhane smiled as he said it, and forced his voice to lighter notes, and still, there was something of heartbreak in his face that made Eljean take Zhane’s face in his hands and push him back against the wall, pinning him there and devouring his mouth in the sort of kiss that made their skin catch fire and tore groans from their chests that they didn’t know they were making.

  It took so much more than he’d known was in him to pull away, and Zhane’s eyes were still closed in wonder as he did. Eljean dropped a kiss on each closed lid and whispered, “Wait for me” into the curve of his ear before backing out of the room as though his own conscience were at his heels.

  When he burst into the Amber Goose, he saw Djali and Triana tucked quietly into a corner, holding hands and leaning in so close their mouths sometimes brushed cheeks or lips or ears.

  Djali saw Eljean standing at the swinging doors, nodded unhappily, then bent down, picked Triana up against him, and kissed her so soundly that when he finally put her back down her knees nearly buckled. Djali grinned, hauled a chair from a nearby table behind her and settled her down into it, then dropped a quick kiss on her forehead before meeting Eljean at the door.

  As he neared the doorway, the end of curfew was announced by the bells, and the two of them made for the marketplace to walk the hour it took to get home when they weren’t sneaking down alleyways.

  They had just turned from the main ghetto avenue onto the evening market when they ran smack into Dimitri and learned the true meaning of gnawing fear.

  Dimitri looked shocked to see them at first. What was truly surprising was the speed at which he pasted a ghastly smile on his face and greeted them, then insinuating himself between the two of them as they walked.

  “Hullo, gentlemen!” The false heartiness was nauseating. “What are the two of you doing in this neck of the woods so close to curfew?”

  “We’re here to sodomize a Goddess boy, Dimitri—go tell my father that and leave us alone.” Djali’s eyes, the ones Eljean had just noted for warmth, were as cold and hard as river rocks at thaw.

  “Oh come now!” Dimitri protested. “I was only doing what my King requested of me—keeping an eye out on his beloved son.”

  “Did you hear that, Djali? You’re a beloved son now!” Eljean made a show of moving between his friend and their betrayer, and Dimitri glared at him.

  “Better than a poofty Goddess boy!” His contempt showed through in earnest, and Djali sneered at their old tormentor.

  “You know, Dimitri, it’s really not saying much when your only claim to moral superiority is that you don’t shag men. You could beat up old ladies, eat an orphan’s kitten for breakfast, and rape a virgin and her sister before lunch, and you think that because you’ve never kissed a man, you’re still a good person.”

  Eljean snorted laughter so hard he was afraid he’d spit across the street. “But probably not a considerate lover!” he howled, and Djali laughed with him.

  “I don’t see what you two think is so funny!” Dimitri huffed. “You’re both near the Goddess quarters of the city right after curfew. If it weren’t for your father, Djali, you could be crucified for that alone!”

  “My father would love to see me crucified,” Djali told him, sobering, “if it weren’t for how bad that would make him look in front of the other regents. And what about you, my friend? How is it you’re here?”

  Dimitri’s eyes darted sideways, and the two men could easily guess.

  “Why, your only other excuse, besides visiting the ghettoes to rape little girls and eat their kittens, is that you were here to spy on us. By all means, report to my father we were here. Tell him that we were out after curfew and took refuge in a coffee shop when we saw the guards. Tell him the owner was nice and grateful for the silver. Tell him anything you want, actually—including that bit about sodomizing a witch—but don’t expect me to be all excited about trusting you with my activities or being injured by your cruelty, because that time has passed.”

  Eljean and Djali kept walking, even as Dimitri stopped and watched them with, it appeared, haunted eyes. “All I ever wanted was to be your friends!” he shouted, and Eljean looked behind him at the man he’d thought he’d die for.

  “All you ever wanted was someone to look down on,” he said, the truth dawning on him at last. “It’s hard to look down on people when you’re so damned low, Dimitri. Remember that the next time you go hunting for friends.”

  They kept walking stolidly, neither of them looking behind them after that. As the marketplace became more and more the higher-end set of merchants that they recognized, Djali let out a long whistle and a sigh.

  “Do you think he saw us come out of the Amber Goose?” he asked anxiously.

  Eljean shook his head. “No—but I do think he’s going to be on our tails for as long as it takes to bring us down.”

  Over the early evening crowds shopping for their dinner produce, Djali saw men wearing his father’s livery, and he swore. This one was something colorful about Triane’s violet-tinted bosom, and Eljean thought he needed to start
paying more attention to Djali’s curses because they were getting pretty spectacular.

  “Did you enjoy your day, brother?” Djali asked as the men neared them.

  Eljean nodded and made an affirmative sound, and Djali nodded decisively toward one of the men.

  “Good—because between Dimitri and the funeral services, I don’t know if we’re going to get another moment like it in quite a while.”

  And with that, Djali moved forward to make a very convincing show of being shocked by his uncle’s death.

  Triane’s Son Rising

  TORRANT CROUCHED on top of the wall that divided the back alley of the regents’ quarters from the Goddess ghettoes and prayed beyond prayer that the damned guards had never learned to look up.

  Something about the secretary general’s visit the previous week must have alerted the men as to how the regents had been getting out of the regents’ courtyard without alerting Rath or any of his cronies, because the night after their ill-fated dinner at the palace, guards had patrolled that back alley at night with clockwork regularity.

  Torrant and Aylan had become adept at reading that clock, timing jumps, leaping over unsuspecting heads. Torrant had, while Aylan was sleeping, placed another spell on his cloak, asking that it help Aylan’s feet soar like his heart did, in truth, when he thought of Starren Moon. Aylan had caught on the first time a missed leap that should have landed him on top of a guard’s head had, in fact, landed him ten feet beyond, in the shadows of Eljean’s porch.

  “You couldn’t have thought of this sooner?” had been his sour response. “This is even handier than having you bleed for my thrice-damned wounds.”

  “You’re welcome” was Torrant’s dry rejoinder. Aylan rolled his eyes, and that had been that.

  But tonight, Aylan was not with Torrant. With a burst of his little-used charm, as well as his good looks and some luck, he’d managed to chat up a young performer he’d saved from the guards in the marketplace. After advising the young woman from the Desert Lands that the people of Dueance were right bloody prigs about young ladies in leotards—no matter how purple—especially in public, and loaning her some clothes from the stores at the clinic, Aylan had talked her into performing after Torrant at the Amber Goose that rest day.

  Torrant’s new song had brought down the house, and since he didn’t take any tips, young Selken had more than earned Torrant’s rations from the young regents who thoroughly enjoyed her sinuous rhythms to the contortionist music in her own sinews. Aylan’s reward for the regents’ generosity had been a squeal, a hug, and a quickly whispered suggestion in his ear that had him both flushing and dodging out of the Amber Goose to his own flat within moments.

  Torrant wished him Goddess speed and urged him to take the night off, then walked Aerk, Keon, Marv, and Jino back to the regents’ courtyard the long way. Djali would be staying in the palace that night so he might be ready for the funeral show the next day. The other regents had all wrapped pastries, jerky, bread, and hard cheese and put it in his trunk so he might never have to take meat from his father’s table again.

  Eljean had gone to the tavern three doors down in search of Zhane, who had not shown up that evening as he’d promised.

  Eventually, the young men were all ensconced in their own beds—or on their fellows’ couches. The general unease that permeated the regents could be seen in the fact that they paired up and took turns sleeping at each other’s flats. Djali and Eljean hadn’t been the only ones who had needed reassurance after the dinner in the home of their king.

  Torrant went back to the ghetto, over the heads of the guards, to make sure there weren’t going to be any special retaliatory surprises in light of the funeral the next morning.

  Djali had been of two minds about the matter.

  “I don’t know, Ellyot—the place could either be swarming with guards, to prove that father isn’t sentimental about his mad brother-in-law, or they could be nowhere to be found besides our backyard, simply to keep the peace. I know what he thinks is bad form, but not much about the workings of his mind, to tell the truth.”

  Torrant needed to be sure, and so he had gone.

  He’d been bored stiff, especially without Aylan to keep him company. He skulked the now-familiar back alleyways of the ghetto, seeing neither denizen nor intruder in the heavy, end-of-summer night. As he watched the two guards below him trudge from the far end of the alley toward him—still not looking up!—he sighed.

  Just as well. He was damned tired.

  He had delivered a slew of babies in the past week—most of them coming, as babies will, in the small, dark, body-aching moments of the night. Since he and Aylan were out and about in the ghettoes anyway, that alone would not have been too much of a hardship, but the guards, too, had been a full presence since Ulvane’s death.

  They could not, in conscience, kill every guard who got in their way. They spent most of their time dropping down on the men, bashing them on the heads with their sword hilts, and dragging their bodies somewhere, anywhere, but the Goddess ghetto, where an attack on a guard would be met with full retaliation. The guards, for their part, must have been too embarrassed to admit they’d been ambushed, because there was never a furor and an uproar about the misplaced night watchmen, and they’d been doing this sort of thing—to fewer guards, for the most part—for the past four months since they’d arrived in Dueance.

  Aylan had remarked, just the other night, that he could count the dents on the helmet of the guard he had bashed. Torrant had wondered that the man didn’t die of too many concussions, and then both of them had checked carefully to make sure the man wasn’t just feigning unconsciousness. He had been, but not for long.

  This week there were twice as many guards to drag to the marketplace, and even when Torrant was partially turned snowcat, it was a hardship.

  And the regents’ floor had been a nightmare.

  Convinced that his brother-in-law was a victim of the Goddess’s brethren, Rath and the secretary general had spoken passionately for a purging of all the white-streaked gifted in the ghettoes.

  “But what would you do with them?” Aerk asked when it was his turn on the floor.

  The answer was frightening. Apparently, some of the funds taxed from the ghettoes in the last year had been allocated to build a giant brick barracks on the hills overlooking Dueance, to be used for the “reeducation” of the Goddess folk.

  “I’ve been outside the city, Consort,” Aerk had replied numbly, “and I have seen no such building.”

  “Construction has just begun” came the cool reply. “But in light of recent events, I think it prudent to round up the suspected perpetrators and keep them in a makeshift camp until it is completed, in the spring of next year.”

  Aerk’s face turned white, and Torrant knew without looking that so had the faces of the other young regents—and their growing number of supporters in the upper tier. If his own palms were any indication, there were an awful number of clammy-handed, terrified, and shocked leaders of a country that had just spiraled out of their control.

  “Consort, there is room for three moons in the sky,” Aerk had said almost desperately. “Why is there not room for Triane’s children in our city?”

  “Just because the Whoring Moon is in the sky,” Rath had replied thinly, “does not mean we have to follow her.”

  “And just because Triane doesn’t follow your will,” Torrant called, hailing Aerk off the floor from the anteroom and speaking even as they crossed paths, clasping and releasing icy hands in passing, “doesn’t mean she whores!”

  For once in the entire five-day nightmare of a session, Rath was caught unaware.

  “I’m sorry?” he’d asked stupidly.

  “You assume that because your brother-in-law is dead, he was assassinated by Triane’s children. Why? What connection had Triane’s children to Ulvane? I understand he rarely, if ever, left the palace. What would they have to gain by bespelling an ill man?” Torrant tried to keep the relentless
anger out of his voice. He had to pretend, at all costs, that he wasn’t aware that Ulvane himself had been a Goddess child.

  And he had to pretend, even to himself, that he wasn’t the Goddess-gifted who had murdered the poor old man.

  “I….” Rath looked at the secretary general, and then at the whole of the Regents’ Hall as though the answer should be obvious to all of them. What he received in return was the stare of the entire House of Regents, who thought he should have an answer.

  “You’re talking about segregating and… and what? Torturing? Lecturing? Starving? Whatever it is you have in mind for an entire race of people, you’ve planned it without our consent, and now you’re talking about implementing it early without even giving us cause to believe these people have done anything wrong!”

  “He was found dead without a mark on him!” Rath sputtered in confusion.

  “As I would have been, had I eaten at your table,” Torrant replied equably. Into the shocked inhale around the room, he added, “You do recall, sir, that our food was not wholesome. Perhaps Ulvane accidentally ingested a little of it.”

  Rath flushed and then paled, little red patches lacing his cheeks and throat. “How exceedingly ill-mannered of you to bring that up,” he muttered.

  “I wouldn’t have had to, if you’d even considered it as a cause!” The regents were with him. Torrant could feel it—they were following the conversation, and Rath’s foothold was looking more and more precarious. Torrant might not defeat him completely in this one conflict, but he could inflict some damage.

  “Are you trying to say I killed my wife’s own brother?” Rath knew how to play on the sympathy of the hall, if on nothing else. People still remembered Willa fondly—Torrant needed to tread lightly here.

  He laughed, kindly, as though reassuring a child. “Of course not, Consort. Everyone knows how warm your feelings must have been for your wife’s family.”

  Torrant met the consort’s eyes, and if nobody else in the room knew, Consort Yahnston Rath knew that Ellyot Moon was fully aware of the lie.