by Amy Lane
“Wait.” Eljean stopped for a moment, looking as though something had just dawned on him. “Isn’t that treason? Isn’t that terrorism? Are you really asking me to be a part of that?”
Torrant and Aylan met grim eyes over Eljean’s head, and Torrant brought Heartland a little closer to the cart and let the placid horse navigate himself, the better to lock eyes with a nervous Eljean. “Eljean,” Torrant said deliberately, “I’m going to ask you this once. And after that, I need you to remember your answer—or not—depending on what you decide.”
“No,” Eljean mumbled.
“I’m sorry?” Torrant asked, confused.
“No. No, you don’t have to erase my memory. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I spoke up that way. I am. I’m trying every day to be braver. I swear I am.” He was babbling, like a silly child, and about to burst into tears.
“It’s fine, Eljean,” Torrant said gently. “I just—I don’t want you involved in anything you don’t want to be. We grew careless, speaking that way in front of you. I don’t want our—” He grimaced. “—our intimacy to force you to do anything against your morals, that’s all.”
“My only morals to date have been the ones that saved my skin,” Eljean said baldly. He looked away, watched Heartland’s graceful, lazy canter, then looked up the beautiful shiny bay coat to see the man who rode him and finally, met Torrant’s eyes.
“I would do anything to save the memory of the last two days,” he said at last, unmindful of Aylan. “I would commit treason, become a terrorist, whatever I needed to do, to not be ignorant again.”
If he’d thought the declaration would make Torrant happy, he was disappointed. The expression on that lean, handsome face was almost haunted.
“You may regret it, Eljean, but you’re grown. I’ll treat you like it. Don’t worry—we won’t tell you the details. You can be as surprised as anyone else, if you like.”
Eljean grinned crookedly, his narrow face looking like a shy child’s. “That would probably be best,” he said, and Torrant winked at him as they rode on.
SIX-YEAR-OLD DJALI, Aylan’s youngest, started to move in on his beloved Uncle Torrant as the part about Moon Hold faded away. He dragged Triana, Ellyot’s oldest daughter and Torrant’s oldest grandchild, with him, and in spite of her rumbly tummy, Triana went.
This was the part where their names were mentioned. They liked this part—a lot.
Torrant looked at both of them and smiled, and he and Aylan met eyes over their heads. Yarri, seated a little behind him, snuck a hand out to the small of his back and rubbed with gruff comfort.
If only, if only….
Part XVII—The Sacrificing Moon
A Dizzying Fall
AERK AND Keon were waiting for them inside the shadow of the smaller city gate as they rode up.
A group of guardsmen, led by Dimitri, had charged their way into the Amber Goose in the blue of the morning before the curfew bell rang. They had left with Triana, half awake and terrified, dressed only in one of Djali’s old shirts, which she had slept in.
“Djali ploughed into our flat, terrified,” Keon burst out, after Torrant hauled Aerk behind him on Heartland and Keon had boarded the cart, “and we couldn’t think of a damned thing to do. We told him to wait for you, but the minute curfew rang, he was out of the flat like a shot. I think he went to see the consort… but….”
“Oh gods,” Torrant muttered, his mind working furiously. “Holy gods, merciful Goddess….” His hands were shaking, and he had to fight the wave of blackness and nausea that swept over him. The thought of Triana, innocent, timid Triana, facing Rath by herself and Djali, confronting his father without his friends…. Sweet Dueant, violated Oueant, holy Triane….
“Aylan, take the horses as soon as we get to the regents’ square, right?”
“What are you going to do?” Aylan asked, alarmed.
“I’m going to go knock on Rath’s door and ask for our friend’s sweetheart back—can you think of anything else to do?” His voice pitched and cracked on the word “sweetheart,” all his worst fears encased in the idea of Rath holding someone he loved hostage, knowing how that situation must end.
“Not a damned thing,” Aylan muttered. “Oh gods….”
They were all deadly silent, picking their way through the heavy traffic after curfew with white-knuckled care and all possible speed, but Torrant made them pull up and dismount before they were within a block of the regents’ square.
“Go, brother,” he ordered to Aylan. “I’ll meet you at the Goose as soon as I can.”
“I’ll come back….”
“Don’t. You take too many chances near the regents as it is.” They had never really discussed with the other regents why Aylan wasn’t open with his presence at the regents’ square. Four years before, Aylan had been involved in a sexual scandal in the heart of Dueance—one that had ended in the suicide of two friends he’d held very dear. Neither of them had wanted to dredge up memories or expose Aylan to the risk of being recognized—and crucified—but right now, as Torrant saw his friends, his pawns, in terrible danger, it was foremost on his mind.
“Stay out of trouble,” Torrant said, trying to be a disciplined leader instead of a panicky friend. “Go to safety. I’ll be there when I can.”
As he spoke, the last lance of sun stabbed past the walls of the city, and the lot of them headed from the main city street to the regents’ square and toward the consort’s palace.
“What are we going to do—just knock?” Aerk asked nervously, and Torrant dodged past an important-looking woman with bleached hair and dark skin who gave him and the others a narrow, disgusted look as they passed.
“You are,” Torrant muttered, thinking as he went. The front of the palace was looming—larger than the Regents’ Hall, taller than the flats across the way. It was built of marble and granite, all in square lines and bulky, imposing blocks. Sneak in? Yes, Torrant could do that. Knock down the front? He could see how it would be daunting—but his friends were game for anything, and he wouldn’t hold them back.
“You and Keon are going to go knocking on the door, asking to see the consort, asking to see Djali—whatever. You’re both in good standing, you both have the right to be there. Do what you can to get inside that place, and maybe talk Djali out of attacking his father with a mace and a rusty sword while you’re at it.”
“And you and Eljean?” Aerk asked, looking at Eljean doubtfully.
“Where are Marv and Jino?” Torrant asked, thinking, thinking, but never fast enough.
“Probably looking for us….”
“Eljean—I need you to go get them. Bring them back to the stairs before the palace. Djali is going to need backup, whatever the outcome.”
“And you?” Keon asked, curious.
“I’m going to be doing what Rath fears most,” Torrant muttered. “I’m going to be using my gifts on the very walls of his palace.”
“No!” Eljean looked at him, panicked.
“No what?” Torrant snapped, looking up from his planning daze.
Eljean looked furtively at Aerk and Keon, and Torrant shrugged him off. “They can be repulsed by my monster some other time,” he snapped. “Do you think I’m going to risk Djali or Triana when the snowcat can save them?”
They were up the stairs now and in the shadows of the giant columns and the stone canopy meant to shade speakers and to help the acoustics from the palace steps. The combination of the shade and sunset made the night air chill. There was no business at the palace that evening, and all the guards stood at the foyer on the inside, so the wide stage of the entrance was all but deserted. Torrant stood stock-still in the shadows of the palace and gazed up the side of the building. There were ledges, windows, and balconies, all of them very square, gray, and balanced, to go with the columns, arches, and clean lines of the palace itself. The balconies were far apart—but not too far for the snowcat.
He aimed a glance to the side, where a tall stone wall partially separated
the palace from the Regents’ Hall, which sat perpendicular. The wall was a good ten feet shorter than the stone canopy over their heads, and there was a smaller gap—about the length of a medium-sized human—between the canopy and the side of the palace proper. To a snowcat’s eye, the whole works looked like a personal staircase to the palace balconies. The buildings were designed to form three sides of a square, with the public road pouring into the courtyard making up the fourth side, and the palace, sitting across from the regents’ flats, was the secondary building. The architecture meant that while they could easily scope out the palace, the shade of the columns, the canopy, and the columns themselves worked to shield the young men from view of the quad as they gazed up at it and tried to reason some hope from the cold-prickled terror that walked their skin.
“I can climb that,” Torrant muttered to himself.
“You’ll scare Triana silly,” Eljean said desperately, looking furtively at Aerk and Keon.
“Triana knows,” Torrant told him absently, aware that Aerk and Keon were looking avidly at him, wondering what they were talking about. “Triana has been raised around magic her entire life. Do you think Olek’s food and ale comes from the substandard supplies allowed in the ghetto alone?”
He gazed up the side again and then squinted, swearing. Without a word, he ran down the stairs and looked back up at the same spot. “Buggering-git-wanking-arse-shite-crapping-motherless-pig-goat-slug!” he burst out, and the others followed him down.
Aerk sat abruptly in the middle of the courtyard. “Oueant’s slit vein. Ellyot—what are we going to do?”
Triana didn’t know how to write—at least not well. It had been illegal to teach the Goddess’s children letters and numbers from the moment they’d been herded into the ghettoes. But there could be no doubt as to what the symbol, the large circle looming over the intersecting smaller circles, could mean. It was the Goddess moon, and it was inscribed on the glass pane of the balcony window in blood.
“In the shade,” Torrant said hoarsely. “If this works, I’d like to keep my head and my place on the floor, thank you very much.”
They scrambled back up to the relative protection of the stone canopy and the columned arches. Torrant ran behind the arch to the right, the one closest to the stone wall and the stone canopy above their heads.
He spared some attention for the two very puzzled men staring at him and gave them a game smile. “Gentlemen, if what you’re about to see makes you want to change sides, do me a favor—wait until Triana and Djali are safe, could you?” He waited for their wide-eyed nods and then abruptly turned into the snowcat as their mouths gaped in wonder.
They all watched in awe and fear as the giant predator made its way to the stone wall and leapt to the top in one bound. Another bound and it was above their heads, on the stone canopy. Before they could run to the gap between the canopy and the palace wall to see what their compatriot was doing, there was a ruckus from the great double doors. They jumped, their hearts thundering in their chests, and Djali was spilled out at their feet by a pair of gloating guardsmen.
Djali was pounding on the great oaken doors, splitting his hands against the bolts that held them together and screaming Triana’s name, before the echo of their closing had faded from the courtyard.
“Djali!” Aerk barked, and between him and Keon, they managed to pull their desperate friend back into the shade of the column. As one, the young men were gathered there, facing the wall, when Torrant made his next leap.
“Holy gods!” Djali breathed just as Marv and Jino ran up breathlessly behind them, tired of being trapped in the rooms. They too raised their faces to the dark-gray wall of stone, and they swore under their breath as they saw the terrible cry for help, written in blood, and the creature who was, without a doubt, Triane’s Son bounding upward, balcony by outcropping by ledge.
“Is that…?” Marv asked, and this time Eljean kicked his shin before he could let out the name that might damn them all.
Instead of protesting, Marv turned eloquent eyes toward his friends. Aerk gulped and nodded, and they resumed their staring.
Night had fallen in the time it had taken them to gather in the quad and watch the snowcat’s ascent, and only the last violet vestiges of twilight remained in west to speak of daylight.
When the bloodstained glass door burst open, Djali’s pale shirt could be clearly seen, fluttering around Triana’s slender body as she flew back against the stone railing of the balcony, screaming epithets at the people inside the room. Her sun-and-strawberry-colored hair was loose around her hips, and she looked both fragile and terrifying. For a moment, there was hope, just a spark of hope, that Torrant’s leaping figure would get to her before whoever was in that room had a chance to hurt her.
“Oh gods,” Djali groaned and then screamed her name again.
“What’s wrong?” Keon demanded. “What are they going to do?”
“He was deranged!” Djali couldn’t keep his eyes from his beloved on the balcony, who screamed until her voice cracked, until the echo itself cracked and smashed around the walls of the indifferent square. “He told me that I would see how dirty she was, a Goddess’s girl… and I tried to tell him”—Djali was openly weeping now—“I tried to tell him that she was innocent… so innocent… and kind. But he said he would have his guards show me what she really was…. Triana!” he bellowed, his own thunder drowning hers out for a moment. “Triana!”
She turned toward the sound, and even from the four-story distance they could see her pale face, her brave smile. She smiled even as she caught sight of Triane’s Son, heading her way, and even, they all imagined later, as she scrambled to her feet on the balcony ledge.
Aylan, who had ignored Torrant’s edict to stay away, could have told them that she was trying to climb the balcony to escape. He would have given much of his soul to tell her that she needed to hold onto the ledge and swing. She would have made it, he thought sickly, watching her teeter there, preparing to jump to the nearest balcony, where Triane’s Son was heading.
“Oh gods….”
She ran lightly, her steps sure and faithful that the slender ledge would be under each foot as it landed, and even Aylan thought for a moment that she would make it….
Until a bulky figure, in black-and-teal livery, burst through the doors after her and hurled its weight clumsily at the gracefully running figure. Triana’s foot slipped and, like a hobbled bird thinking it could fly, she dove off of the balcony and fell to the ground, bouncing against the edge of the stone canopy first in a spray of blood, her white shirt fluttering around her wheeling body like wings.
Torrant’s roar of agony could be heard all the way to the ghettoes, and Djali’s scream alone brought regents and guards outside to see what had befallen.
All eyes were on the still, broken body, and Aerk and Keon numbly let go of Djali as he ran to his beloved, screaming her name.
Aylan was the only one who looked up in time to watch the snowcat take a foolhardy leap from the balcony he was on to the canopy, and he heard the howl of pain as a fluid shoulder snapped under the unthinkable pressure. The bone thrust jaggedly through the flesh and the fur, and Aylan fought his own nausea at the thought of that much pain. He watched, mindless of his own weeping, as his brother rolled off the roof of the canopy, changing in midair to pour shakily onto the ground by Triana’s broken body and sob in agony and denial.
Only the other regents saw him land, and Aerk and Keon saw the ripped clothes where the bone had shredded flesh and cloth when he’d broken it. They helped to support him, mindless of the wet blood that came from his clothes, as they huddled around Triana’s body and mourned.
“Oh, Djali,” Torrant moaned, working hard to support his own weight and see through the blackness in front of his eyes.
Djali turned a frighteningly calm face toward him.
“You tried to warn me,” he whispered. “You tried to tell me it wasn’t safe. You knew… you tried to tell me.”
&nb
sp; “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here.” Torrant all but sobbed. Oh Goddess, he had to move, he had to stand, he had to do something because the pain. It was his whole body, his snapped and healed arm, his heart, his soul.
“I should have listened,” Djali said simply. “Oh… oh, beloved….” He knelt by her, his knees sinking into the blood puddle that leaked from her skull, and touched her still-warm flesh with a trembling hand to close the sightless blue eyes. There was a shout from the great, implacable open door, and guards came streaming out.
Torrant whirled toward them, and the other regents followed, making a wall between the guards and the body.
“You will not touch her!” he cried, his teeth bared and Goddess-blue lightning sparking in his eyes. “We will take her to her family, but you will not touch her!”
He risked a glance behind him and saw that Marv had unhooked his cloak, and he, Jino, and Keon were gently moving that terribly liquid body onto the cloth. Aerk turned to help them, Eljean took an end, and the five of them bore the body away from the profanity of the palace, knowing that Ellyot Moon wouldn’t let the guards assail them.
He also saw the regents and guards who had streamed into the courtyard at Djali’s terrible scream, and who now parted reluctantly for the spectacle of the grim parade. Hundreds of people watched, some delighted by the uproar, no matter how grim, many of them appalled by what their leader had wrought. Hundreds of people had come to see a death, but only the eight of them had come to prevent it.
Torrant looked around at his friends and knew another swollen river rush of panic.
Seven of them. There were only seven of them in the courtyard.
Djali was nowhere to be seen.
Djali Hearth, Child of Joy
THOUGH NOBODY in the square wanted to be associated with the young regents carrying the body away, everybody wanted to see them—that was the nature of gossip. It took some time for the regents to make their way, bearing their grisly and precious burden with them.
