Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  “Queen Trieste of Otham,” Torrant and Aylan said absentmindedly.

  “She’s looking good, isn’t she?” Aylan asked encouragingly, and Torrant nodded a little, still pale.

  “You know Trieste—she could make sackcloth look good.”

  “You look fine,” Aylan reassured when it looked as though Torrant was just going to stand there, pale and clammy, clinging to the shadows like a baby to a blanket.

  “I’m thin, Aylan. I have scars all over my body. I lost my mind and butchered my hair. She’s going to take one look at me, decide I’m not worth the trouble, and go riding off into the hills.”

  “Impossible!” Aylan laughed, at exactly the same time Aerk and Jino looked at the both of them and said, “You two know the Queen of Otham?”

  “Some of us better than others,” Aylan replied, rolling his eyes in Torrant’s direction, but Torrant didn’t hear him. He was too busy panicking.

  “Maybe it would be better if she rides back to Wrinkle Creek,” he muttered to himself. “She really needs to not be here. It’s dangerous here. I know it’s dangerous here….”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Eljean asked in bemusement, but when Torrant met Eljean’s green eyes to answer, his own hazel eyes got wider, his face got paler, and for a moment, all the young men wondered if they were going to have to catch him as he fell to his knees.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” he denied, an unreadable, twisting expression on his face as he looked at his greatest mistake. “In five minutes, every person I’ve ever slept with is going to be in that ballroom, but there’s nothing wrong with me. Not a blessed thing.”

  Eljean flushed terrifically, and Aylan burst out laughing. “You know,” Aylan said philosophically, sneaking a flask of something stronger than cider out of his cloak pocket and giving it to Torrant to sputter over, “I don’t know if a ballroom would be big enough to hold all the people I’ve ever slept with.”

  Torrant shook his head, a little fortified by the drink and a little more fortified by Aylan’s amused calm. “You have no idea,” he said on a puff of air, and in spite of Eljean’s discomfiture, the young men all laughed. A little color returned to Torrant’s face, and he squared his shoulders and moved away from the wall.

  “What are you going to do?” Aerk asked kindly.

  Torrant smiled then, and it was brilliant enough to make even Keon and Marv stumble. “My girl’s here for a dance—I’d better ask her, you think?”

  With a burst of confidence and joy, he strode through the giant doors into the brilliantly lit room. The sound of string instruments warming up drifted in after him.

  “Wait a minute,” Aerk said, in sudden realization, “he’s going to ask her to dance? But they’re supposed to be brother and sister!”

  Aylan blinked at him. “So?”

  “So I don’t know what you people do in the country, but in the city, that’s unheard of!” Aerk squinted up at Aylan in a confusion of panic and exasperation.

  Aylan frowned. “It’s just figure dancing, right? Not a waltz? It should be all right?”

  Aerk blew out a frustrated breath, and even more shaggy hair escaped its queue. “Have you been paying attention to where you live, mate? That’s not how it works here.”

  “Well, you’re not going to stop him!” Aylan’s chest hurt. No, not now, not when they were so close to an actual touch on the arm, a connection, a chance for the world to be made right again.

  Aerk looked at him curiously, and then squinted his eyes and frowned, his fine brain working busily. After a second, during which they all watched as “Ellyot Moon” made his way across the crowded ballroom, he turned to his friends. “Marv—didn’t you say your sisters are here?”

  “They’re right over there—like a pack of rabid housecats. Why?” Marv pointed to a group of nicely dressed young women with wildly different features and hair colors, all born within a few years of each other.

  “Good grief, man!” Aylan exclaimed. “How busy was your father?”

  Marv shook his head in a long-suffering gesture. “I don’t want to talk about it. Why are we walking toward my sis….” It took Marv a moment sometimes, but he wasn’t stupid. “No. No. No!”

  “Please no?” threw in Jino, looking with a pained expression at one of the taller girls who had a wealth of cocoa-colored ringlets spiraling around her shoulders from the crown of her head. Absently he ran a hand through his perfectly coifed, curly hair, making it stand out in stunning disarray.

  Aerk and Keon looked over to where “Ellyot Moon” was making his way to his sister, and together they caught their breath. The tide had less pull from the moons.

  “Not a chance,” Keon said decisively. “We need to grab our partners and gather round them—maybe we can shock the assembly with a new trend or something, but they have got to have some cover.” Suddenly, a painfully insincere smile graced Keon’s lean and angular features. “Lyssee, sweetheart, are you feeling like a dance?”

  “What do you want?” Lyssee was one of the two taller girls, with straight dark hair and dreamy, almond-shaped eyes, but her gaze honed in on the obviously hurried and flustered young men coming her way.

  “Marv—are you going to answer her?” asked the girl with the cocoa-colored curls.

  Marv winced. “Look,” he said to all of them, doing everything with his body but digging a hole in the marble floor with his toe, “I really, really need your help. I know we delight in making each other miserable, but this is bigger than the lot of us, and if I could explain it I would—but for now, would you dance with us?”

  “No-oh!” gasped one of the smaller girls, a redhead with startling green eyes. “What? Is it ‘dance with your sister’ day?”

  “Yes,” said Jino uncompromisingly. He looked over Kerree’s shoulder to Ellyot and the short, plumpish girl with the overabundance of autumn-colored hair. “Please—whatever—” He cringed, looking at Kerree again. “—whatever history we may have, is there any way you could simply give us this for our friend?”

  Suddenly, everyone—regents, sisters, even Aylan—became unaccountably sober. “Ellyot” was a new friend, but everybody remembered the sweet, awkward young man who wasn’t at the ball this time, but who had shadowed the young regents for the last few years. The hole Djali had left never gaped so very large.

  Kerree met her sisters’ glance. “Of course,” she said after a moment. “Ladies, pick your partners.” With that, she seized Jino’s arm and hauled him toward the floor, where the musicians were just a few more tuning notes from breaking into song.

  Aerk ended up with Kylee, the sweet, round blonde, and because she had an edgy smile and a caustic sense of humor, he enjoyed himself. Keon and Lyssee squared off almost like adversaries. Keon spent the rest of the evening flushing as Lyssee rolled her eyes at his halfhearted attempts at conversation. Marv bent his arm to escort Meggee—perhaps his mildest sister, although she suffered no lack of intelligence. It was probably for the best, he decided with a sigh, as his dark-haired, blue-eyed sister took his arm and smiled gently. Meggee would be less inclined to chide him as they danced.

  Jessee eyed both Aylan and Eljean speculatively—they were both tall, and she was by far the shortest of the five girls. Before she could make a choice, Aylan bowed apologetically.

  “I’m afraid that aside from Yarri and her cousin Roes, the Lady Trieste is the closest thing I’ve had to a sister—while you all square off, I’ll go ask her to dance—” He took Jessee’s hand then and kissed the back of it. “—but it will pain me exquisitely to leave such charming company. I do have a weakness for redheads.” With that parting remark, Aylan sent a meaningful look at the rest of the party to move toward Torrant and Yarri before the dance started. Then he set off to the pretty, dark-haired woman who was eyeing the reunion of “Ellyot Moon” and his “sister” with a certain long-suffering bemusement.

  Jessee watched him go with star-spangled eyes, barely noticing as Eljean bowed awkwardly and took her arm.
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  “Is he always that… that… that beautiful?” she asked somewhat breathlessly.

  “No,” Eljean replied sourly, mentally rehearsing every dance he knew and hoping that whatever the musicians played, it would be one of them. “Usually he’s an out-and-out surly prat who would as soon spit on you as say ‘hullo.’ What he just did there was like watching a rabid dog dress himself.”

  Jessee looked up at Eljean, who was busy looking across the room at Ellyot Moon and the short girl in the plain dress. “You don’t like women even at all, do you?” she asked musingly.

  Eljean glared at her. “Would you like to get closer to the consort to say that?”

  “Don’t worry—I’m very discreet. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of my suitors feel the same way about women. I make a good friend for that sort of suitor.”

  Eljean looked at her—wholesome smile, green eyes, and all—and felt his eyes go wide. “Well, where in the stars’ dark were you when I first came to this Goddess-blighted city?” he asked crossly, and she laughed.

  “Here—when we start dancing, if you focus on my hands when they’re up, it will help you not stoop so much as we move, you think?”

  Eljean couldn’t help but grin back at her, and as the grin lit up his face, Jessee sighed. “It would figure,” she said philosophically, but her smile never dimmed.

  Jino’s conversation was far less pleasant.

  “So, are you going to tell me why we’re trying to distract attention from your friend and his lover?”

  Jino tripped, swore, and eyed the as yet empty dance floor in despair. “She’s his sister,” he hissed, glaring at the girl who, of all of Marv’s sisters, had caused him more aggravation than any other female of his acquaintance. Although he tended to groom extensively, he found himself wondering at the cut of his huntsman—was it too loose? Too tight? Something felt off about it, and he hauled at his collar to make sure he could breathe.

  Kerree eyed the two people in question with sharp amusement. Ellyot was standing, just standing, near the girl, his face sober and polite as they made what appeared to be civil conversation. The strain of the two of them not touching was enough to make her breath constrict in her chest, even from this distance. They had to touch. It was imperative. The wrongness of their skin being apart was like the wrongness of snow falling upward—it could not be allowed to happen.

  “And I’m Triane, Goddess of Joy, so pleased to meet you!” Kerree chortled in disbelief, and Jino forgot his embarrassment and put his face close to hers in order to hush her.

  “Regardless of what you think, that girl is Yarrow Moon, Owen Moon’s daughter, so just keep your sarcasm to yourself!”

  Kerree was a little stunned—it had always been so easy to needle Jino. She hadn’t truly comprehended how serious he and Marv had been. “Wait a minute….” Kerree was also extremely bright. “If she’s Yarrow Moon….” She looked at Jino in shock. “You follow him! You… you and my brother and your friends—you’ve been following this man. Did Djali even know?”

  “Djali wouldn’t have cared,” Jino said somberly. “Djali would have followed him regardless. He’s been as open as he can with us, and now you know enough to crucify us all. Are you happy with that much power?”

  Kerree’s troubled expression was answer enough. “Your friends are—” she began, but then she gasped. All of Ellyot’s friends gasped, because they all saw it. The torches burned brighter, the chandeliers glowed, and that refractory C string on the viola was suddenly gloriously in tune.

  “Dueant’s temper—we need to get over there!” she exclaimed.

  “Dueant is the god of compassion,” Jino replied calmly. “Swear by him rightly, and I’ll have faith that we make it.”

  As a party, they gathered around Ellyot Moon, who had just taken his sister’s hand.

  Oxygen

  AS TORRANT drew nearer to where Yarri stood looking anxiously out at the assembly from Trieste’s side, the light, the noise, the myriad colors, the high and low voices, the discordant strings, the frantic efforts of his friends, all these things ceased to be.

  Triane’s blessed kiss, how could he have ever left her?

  He moved closer, remembering all the times he had returned to Eiran after spending time at school or his internship at Wrinkle Creek. He had lived to watch her shriek and scramble out of a tree and into his arms, and even when she was still a child, even when Trieste had been with him as his lover, they had still slung arms about each other and not parted for hours.

  Not running to her and swinging her up into his embrace was an effort that made his jaw clench and his teeth grind.

  Then she saw him, her piquant, round-cheeked face swinging unerringly toward him, eyes searching him out through the crowd, and he heard the clamor and roar of cathedral bells, drowning all thoughts in the spaces between the beats of his heart.

  They both kept moving, walking toward each other, and when they were close enough to feel the heat off the other’s bodies, they stopped, their eyes locked, a misery of things they could not say flashing between them.

  “You’re looking well,” he murmured inanely, his gift for courtly speech doing him no justice for the moment.

  “You look….” She shook her head. “You look magnificent and like hell, both at the same time, do you know that?”

  A small smile twisted his lips. “I am aware that I’ve looked better.”

  She glanced away for a moment, saw something that brought her back to herself, and turned back. “Trieste said we mustn’t touch,” she told him unhappily, a discordant xylophone of sound. “I think if I don’t feel your skin under my hand I might scream, but she says….”

  “I was going to ask you to dance,” he interrupted, and the smile that graced her features made his heart start beating again—except it was pounding in his stomach, and that was somehow wrong.

  “That’s good.” She beamed at him. Then her expression grew thoughtful. “You don’t seem surprised to see us.” She realized. “I thought at least you’d be surprised.”

  “I dreamed about you.” His voice was rough, gravelly with the agonizing relief of those small glimpses of her. “I saw you coming. I couldn’t….” And now he had to look away, because it was almost a lie. “I tried to make Aylan ride out, to tell you to go back. To tell you it was too dangerous, and I was fine.”

  “You don’t look fine!” she hissed, staring hard at him.

  He swallowed. “I’m alive,” he replied with as much dignity as he could muster, “and it is still more dangerous for all of us to have you two in the city than outside of it!”

  “You’re alive?” Her voice raised a notch, and with a quick look around, she ground it down relentlessly. “You’re alive—do you think that qualifies as fine? If I found you bleeding in a ditch, would you have told me that you didn’t need my help because you were ‘alive’?”

  He fought and lost the urge to grin. “If I were bleeding in a ditch, I would have to concede that I wasn’t ‘fine,’” he said, his eyes sparkling, his best smile urging her to smile too. He was alarmed when she didn’t—his smile was his best defensive weapon against her fearsome will.

  “You are too thin,” she said, her voice near tears. “You are too thin, and you have butchered your hair, and I can see from here that your eyes have not matched your smile in a very long time. If I can see that, how bad are the things that I cannot see, ‘brother’? What is there under the surface that you have let nobody heal?”

  He swallowed and took a step back. “I have not needed a babysitter in a very long time, ‘sister,’” he replied coolly, but she didn’t miss the way his face flushed or the heat rising off his body as he stepped back.

  “What is it?” she asked, her voice suddenly gentle.

  “You cut your hair too,” he said through a closed throat, and she flushed.

  “Trieste’s maid insisted. She kept trying to put it up, and it was too heavy to stay.” There was a miserable pucker at her eyes, and Torrant had
a moment to wonder at the argument that would have precipitated the newer, shorter hairstyle, which allowed the complicated coif that tumbled from her crown to her neck. It would not have been pleasant or easy.

  “So I cut it,” she said at last, almost defiantly. “What is your excuse?”

  She took a step forward, inviting confidence, certain that he wouldn’t back away from her again, not willingly, and was appalled when he stepped back a second time.

  “Sweet Dueant’s tears… what on earth would make you afraid to be near me?”

  He looked away and saw Aylan kissing Trieste’s hand. The eyes of both his friends were fixed on him and Yarri. “Oh Goddess, Yar,” he whispered, not sure if she could hear him, “the things I have done.”

  He looked back at her, and she was close enough to hug now, but he dare not. The vibration around them started at his toes and worked its way up. He had no idea what would happen if he took her into his arms, but he knew it would have nothing to do with the touch of a brother for a much-loved sister.

  She knew it too, because her touch on his bare wrist was full of more self-restraint than he would have fathomed from her. Her fingers felt a little clammy, but warm, as though she’d been clenching her hand, and her skin was soft, so soft, sanded to sweetness by the constant coarseness of yarn through her fingers.

  He felt air, sweet, true air fill his lungs above the stench of the city for the first time in months.

  She came a little closer to him, and her other hand was cupped around the invisible mystery between them that they had both kept sacred since they were young.

  “This,” she said softly, holding that cupped hand between their chests, “this is all that matters. In this space, you told me, everything is good. That hasn’t changed—” For the first time, he heard her choke on the sound of his name, dammed up behind her tongue.

  “No,” he answered, cupping his other hand on top of hers in comfort, “you’re right, of course. That is the one thing that can never change.”