Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  When it was over, Torrant fell into a dreamless sleep, his body folded so tightly in on itself that Aylan wondered he didn’t wake up in pain. Aylan cradled him against his shoulder like a child. Unlike the misery of his mind and heart, his body was feeling pretty good. The aches of the day had been scrubbed clean by the abrasive pleasure of their coming together, and he had to laugh as he stroked the trimmed, chestnut hair. Oh, had he never met a child with sunset-colored hair, he would think this was all love had to offer.

  Torrant had always known there was something more. It was one of the things Aylan loved about him—his complete faith that there was more to love than the sweet feeling of flesh. It was what gave Aylan the faith, in this still moment, to think of Starren Moon, to wonder what her womanhood would offer him, and to give thanks that he had seen so much of her childhood.

  He stroked Torrant’s hair again, kissed his forehead, and was not disappointed in the least when Torrant whispered Yarri’s name.

  TORRANT WAS dreaming. His heart and his soul were as naked as his body in Aylan’s arms, his mind open to dreams that were truth, and he was dreaming of Yarri.

  Yarri

  “YOU TWO are as nervous as a cat by the tide. Why don’t you just go home, for sweet Triane’s sake!” Aln’s voice held exasperation and compassion as he bent to pick up the basket of cookies Evya had just dropped into the paint Yarri had spilled not a moment before.

  The children had picked up on their jumpy mood, but instead of responding to it by acting out, they were unusually quiet. The silence itself was worrying on Aln’s nerves, like the oppressiveness of the clouds before a storm.

  “Waiting at home would be worse than waiting here,” Yarri said, moving back to the kitchen area for some towels and a wastebasket, and Evya nodded wholeheartedly. “Stanny’s letter said sometime this evening….”

  “He’s just been gone so long!” Evya burst out. “I know he had stops to make, and he visited Roes and Aldam in Wrinkle Creek….”

  The two women snorted in tandem, because they had not been happy about that. Professor Austin had come to Eiran to work with the other survivors of Triannon to raise resources and rebuild, and since Eiran now had three full-fledged healers and several in the student body scattered about the town, Roes and Aldam had been called back to Aldam’s snug and expanding practice. Between Torrant and Aylan in Clough, Stanny running the merchant’s route, and Roes and Aldam in Wrinkle Creek, the family felt spare and thin indeed.

  “And he had that ‘other thing’ he’s been doing!” Yarri came back and shoved one of the towels at Evya, who, although better at keeping secrets than the family first suspected, had finally let something drop about the “special project” keeping Stanny busy for the last couple of years, as well as making the family a fortune by selling rich farm dirt and metal ore.

  Evya wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out at Yarri, and Yarri rolled her eyes. Together they both turned to Aln, who had opened the can of worms anyway. They rarely complained, either of them, about how badly they missed their beloveds. Now that Stanny was due home at any moment, their hearts were ready to unburden themselves of some of the loneliness.

  “Maybe he had a chance to write a letter?” Yarri suggested wistfully, picking the cookies up and throwing them in the little trash can. It had been her most secret hope, but she hadn’t given it voice, in case all she received was Stanny’s account of his visit. And Stanny, Goddess bless him, was not at all good at telling stories. She was afraid she would have to pull his hair and then his teeth and then his toenails to get some substantial news.

  “For you,” Evya said gently, patting her back and nudging her out of the way with her hip at the same time, “I’m sure there’s at least a song.”

  “I bet Stanny’s bought you something from every town!” Yarri suggested brightly, and Evya smiled.

  “I asked for scarlet and indigo from the mountains. I want to dye some lovely cloth and piece us a handfast blanket.” Evya made the shy admission as she bent to the floor and scrubbed at the glop of blue craft paint with a big, stained towel they used just for such spills. Evya had refused to handfast Stanny in the past. She had never wanted to commit to their love that strongly.

  “That would be wonderful.” Yarri beamed at her from the sink, where she was washing her hands. She heard the thump of the smaller door in the vast space and turned to see Cwyn in the entrance, jerking his chin toward her. A tentative smile lit on her piquant mouth like a shy bird, but he shook his head quickly negative, and she and Evya both gave depressed sighs.

  “I’d better go see what he wants,” she muttered, wiping her hands on her skirt, but she already knew. If it wasn’t news about Stanny, it was another round of letters from the priest.

  Embarking on a career as a forger had never been her intention, but it pretty much amounted to Cwyn’s grand scheme to keep the government at Clough from noticing their priest had gone missing. Lane had agreed to it—of course he had, since he’d helped Cwyn lug the two bodies they’d left in the alley that day into a cart that was bound for their dumping spot on the river. He hadn’t had much of a choice. He’d been lying about seeing Carl Mildew since that day as well. Yarri figured if he could do that, then she could, at the very least, do a little bit of calligraphy in the family name.

  Cwyn had needed to flirt a little with the junior postmaster in the militia, but since the man had already been a playmate, he had been easy to convince. Every week a round of letters came from superiors in Clough, and every week a round of letters went back in the priest’s handwriting. Yarri had to say the forgeries were some of her best artwork, and she thought even Torrant would be impressed with her storytelling skills.

  She made the man sound like the fire-breathing soul of Rath’s genocidal philosophies, the scourge of the unrighteous in the little city-state. In fact, she was pretty sure that thanks to her creativity, he was on his way to being promoted. It was almost a shame he was dead.

  “Is the post in?” she asked quietly as she neared Cwyn, and he nodded, his eyes glinting. The little—well, not so little any longer—terror thought this was the greatest game ever. She was glad he and the junior postmaster seemed to be staying on good terms, because it gave him someone to brag to about the whole affair. Cwyn tended to change bedmates often enough that a little monogamy was a breath of fresh air.

  “You’re going to have to get creative this time,” Cwyn told her on an oath. “They’re asking if you would be willing to come back to Clough for the snows.”

  “Oh gods!”

  “Something about an ‘ultimate resolution.’ I don’t know what it means, but it sounds like bad news for our boys in Dueance.” Cwyn ran his tongue around his teeth and chewed his lip. Yarri got the feeling that all of Torrant’s stories, poems, and books on history had made a bigger impression on her young cousin than they had on her.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, gnawing on the back of her third knuckle. It was a nervous habit she hadn’t known she possessed until they’d watched Torrant and Aylan disappear down the main road of Eiran that last time. Since she’d watched the two bodies of her greatest enemies disappear into the river, the skin on that knuckle had gone from worried to shredded.

  Cwyn shook his head, and there were sudden shadows in his eyes. They all looked like that these days, Yarri thought with a vicious nibble. It had been bad enough when it was Torrant and Aylan, but since Aunt Bethen had gotten… thin and tired, and since Aldam and Roes had needed to leave… well, there had been too many shadows, even in Cwyn’s eyes.

  “I’m thinking that they need to win,” he said fiercely, and for a moment, there was nothing about joy in his eyes at all. “I’m thinking that the things you’ve been reading and the things you’ve been writing back are abominations. I’m thinking that Torrant and Aylan were right when they said this had to be done.”

  Yarri was saved from answering when Starren came running in, scarlet skirts flurrying around her ankles, and knocked her
older brother out of the way. Her sunset-colored braid was so frazzled it was more of a guideline than a rule, and her pale face was flushed in blotches.

  “He’s back!” she panted. “He’s back, and he’s brought refugees!”

  Yarri took one step in the direction of the door to rush out and grill Stanny for news of her beloved. Then she took another step into adulthood when she moved back and looked at Evya.

  “Go,” she murmured tautly. “He’s here… the news will wait.”

  Evya didn’t need to be told twice, and they all moved from the doorway as she sprinted by them in a swirl of plum-colored skirts, dashing at her cheeks as she ran. Yarri touched Starren’s shoulder before she could follow, and Starry turned to her as easily as that child did everything.

  “There is news, isn’t there?” she asked wistfully.

  Starren smiled her sweet sunshine smile, as graceful and open as the dawn. “There’s a whole packet of letters and songs, just for you.”

  Yarri nodded, then wiped her eyes with practical fingers and turned away, nodding. “Good,” she said. “Tell him I’m glad he’s back. I’ll be home for dinner.”

  Starren left, but Cwyn didn’t immediately follow. Instead he leaned against the doorway, looking at her with those shadowed eyes. His brown hair was a curly mess around his head, and his vest was its usual jaunty cut, but there was something odd and adult about his gaze.

  “What?” she asked, keeping her voice irritated because it kept her from losing complete composure.

  “Mama’s really sick,” he said ruminatively.

  Yarri swallowed. “Yes—yes, I know.” Bethen had tried to hide it—in fact, she was still hiding it. None of the townsfolk had remarked on her tiredness yet, or the haunting pain in the bright-brown eyes. Lane, certainly, behaved as though nothing were amiss, but Cwyn…. Cwyn had always depended on Bethen—to read his moods, to keep him in line. More and more these days, he had been the one taking her chores from her and telling her to rest.

  “I can’t watch her be sick, anymore, Yarri,” he said. “I can’t. I want to join them. One day you’ll wake up and I won’t be here, and you’ll know where I’ll be—”

  “Cwyn!” Yarri gaped at him, appalled. “You can’t. We need you.” It was the truth, she thought frantically. More and more, as Bethen had fallen sick, Cwyn had taken on the family responsibility Torrant and Aylan once shouldered.

  “But the world needs heroes,” he said with a glint in his eye. “I think I could be one.”

  “The world needs men!” Yarri returned fiercely, moving in to her cousin even as she had to look up at him. “And real men know when to serve their family and when to serve the world.”

  “So which one’s Torrant?” Cwyn taunted. “Which one’s Aylan? You tell me—are they here, serving their family?”

  “No,” Yarri returned, her brows pinched into a scowl so the tears wouldn’t escape. “No, but if anyone else could do what they’re doing, you’d better believe they would be. No one can be your mother’s son for you, Cwyn—that’s a job all your own.”

  And then, because she couldn’t bear the conversation anymore, she turned away from him and went back to Aln to make sure the rest of the spill was wiped up. Aln looked at him with questioning eyes, but Cwyn shrugged and smiled, his usual gap-toothed, sexy-evil grin back in place, and he went back out the little door at the back end of the warehouse.

  “What’s the little terror planning now?” Aln asked as she returned, trying to lighten Yarri’s mood. They had sat together in the stables, when Yarri had been but a child and Aln and Kert had been courting. Torrant and Kert had liked to ride together, and Aln had never cared for horses. Yarri’s fat pony had been made for pets and smaller children, so she used to give rides to them. Aln had watched, bemused, as they had all endured Cwyn’s antics as a child, and now he watched as the handsome young man stormed away with pain in his eyes.

  Yarri tried to dredge up a smile, but she couldn’t. “He’s planning to be a hero,” she answered, moving over to the tiny ones who were done with their cookies and juice and yawning for their nap. “He’s planning to be a hero, and I just told him he had to be a nursemaid.”

  “Who says nursemaids aren’t heroes?” Aln asked, catching up to her and bumping her shoulder with his.

  Yarri gave him a sad smile and a happy voice. “My point exactly!” Then she poured all the warmth and optimism she wasn’t feeling into her voice as she took a washcloth to tiny hands and mutinous mouths and lined them up for their last nappy change. She was trying hard not to count the hours until she could leave Aln with the militia and run home to at least the memories of her beloved.

  When she arrived home, she walked into the snug, crowded kitchen with the butcher-block table and right into Stanny’s cheerful embrace. She looked past his shoulders and around the rest of the family. She was surprised to see two strange young men at the table, eating Starren’s cooking as though it were fruit off the moons themselves. It was then she remembered Starren’s words about refugees.

  She smiled kindly at the two young men and then looked at the twin expression of focused speculation on Bethen and Lane’s faces. Something was definitely not to their liking.

  “Hello,” she greeted them hesitantly, making eye contact with Lane, who nodded at the young men. “I’m Yarri—”

  The dark-haired young man, the one with the open face and sloe eyes, stood up and smiled happily, shaking her hand with enthusiasm. “You’re Ell…. Torrant’s beloved. We’ve heard all about you!”

  Yarri looked surprised. “You have?” She was reasonably sure Torrant hadn’t been spreading word of her as “his beloved” all throughout Clough!

  “His songs,” the young man explained. “I mean, he never used your name, so when we thought he was Ellyot, we didn’t know it was you—but since Stanny here told us his real name, there’s no one else those songs could be about!”

  A slow, shy smile flushed her cheeks. “Really?” she asked, the sure knowledge that her beloved hadn’t forgotten her warming a stomach made cold by Lane and Bethie’s grave looks.

  “Yarri,” Lane said, his steady voice breaking into her thoughts, “these young men are Quin”—the dark one bowed with a smile—“and Cal”—the surly blond one nodded his head in her direction. “I think you might be interested in how they came to meet Torrant.”

  Stanny made a shuffling sound, and she looked at him for more information, narrowing her eyes and quirking her eyebrows when her cousin was less than forthcoming.

  Stanny hid murky-green eyes from her, picking at a rough place on the wooden counter, and touched Evya’s hand as it encircled his broad waist. “You’ll want to hear their story first.”

  Yarri listened to the two young lovers ingenuously talk about meeting in an alley when they were interrupted by a “magic cat-man.”

  “It was pretty funny, really!” Quin said enthusiastically, enjoying being the center of the family’s attention. “I mean, there we were….” He looked surreptitiously at Starry, who rolled her eyes and made a “carry on” gesture with her hands. “You know….” His own hands were doing inarticulate, suggestive things, and in spite of the tension in the room, Yarri found herself laughing a little.

  “I remember,” she murmured dryly, although it had been one night, not one tryst among many.

  “So there we were, just about to… you know, and he comes running up out of nowhere. He had to leap over us, and he practically ran up the side of a building to slow down… and his shirt was all bloodstained and torn. He was something to see!”

  “Dueant’s bare white arse,” Yarri murmured faintly. “In broad daylight? He was wearing the cat in broad daylight?”

  “There’s more,” Bethen said somberly, and Yarri closed her eyes.

  “We knew he was going to be giving help to the ghettoes!” Cwyn protested. “What is the big deal?”

  “A rest day clinic, Cwyn!” Bethen returned, entreating her son to listen. “Regents to help—wh
at if one of them decides to betray them? What if—even worse—one of them is harmed for his involvement? Do you remember Aylan? Do you remember his poor heart, after that?”

  “Aylan will live!” Cwyn protested. “What he is doing is important!”

  “Not more important than his life!” Starren protested, and Cwyn turned toward his little sister and took her hands in his own.

  “Yes”—he nodded savagely—“yes, Littlest, yes, more important than his life. Can’t you see that this is beyond the boys we love? They’re more than that now. They’re heroes—they’re larger than themselves, and we should be proud of them!”

  “Oh yes!” Quin nodded, and even Cal nodded with some enthusiasm. “There would be so many more children taken, so many more crucified, if it wasn’t for what Triane’s Son does at night!”

  Everybody turned to him in shock, because it wasn’t the clinic, and it wasn’t “Ellyot” arguing on the regents’ floor, and it wasn’t a little “surreptitious” stalking as the cat.

  “At… at night?” Yarri said faintly, and Starren had the presence of mind to push the solid, raw-wood, kitchen chair behind her so she had some place to sit down.

  “They call it night work,” Stanny said with obvious reluctance, and the whole family turned toward him in dull surprise.

  “Night work?” Bethen asked, and Lane provided her chair and then wrapped his arms around her shoulders so she wouldn’t fly apart.

  Stanny nodded, and even as Torrant saw the moment in his dream, he cringed as Stanny related the half-starved, half-crazed, half-witted version of himself that he’d been that day at the clinic. Stanny left nothing out, including what the regents must have let drop when Torrant and Aylan weren’t there to stop them. Yarri heard it all, from the assumed death of the abusive guards to the color of Torrant’s eyes.