Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  AYLAN AND Trieste let out a long breath when Torrant’s and Yarri’s cupped hands met, and then the two friends met eyes and laughed.

  “It is sooo not funny how their well-being controls the entire lot of us!” Trieste exclaimed, and Aylan gave her a weary smile.

  “Of course not,” he replied. “It’s the most deadly serious thing in the world.”

  Trieste looked at him with deep compassion. “It has been very hard on you, watching him here?” Not really a question, the phrase still invited confidence.

  Aylan swallowed and looked away, tucking Trieste’s hand in his arm as they headed toward the dance floor. The other regents had gathered around the oblivious “brother and sister” and were, by numbers and presence, maneuvering them both onto the dance floor.

  “I have no words,” he said at last. “There are so many painful things that need to be done, and he’s taken it upon himself to do them all. We’ve gotten help”—he nodded at the regents—“but the cost. Oh, Trieste, the price of what we’ve done….”

  Aylan found he couldn’t continue. He watched as Torrant and Yarri faced off on the dance floor and the others assumed their positions in the double facing line that began the figure. Trieste looked at his hardened, lean profile and touched his shoulder gently, with all the sisterly affection in her soul.

  “Here, Aylan,” she said, troubled. “Let’s dance and pretend for a moment that we’re back at school and that your worst worry is your next bed partner.”

  Aylan flashed her a grin, the remnants of that callow boy gone completely, even in his best, brightest smile. “Tell me that I can sleep in your stable or your servants’ quarters instead of the ghettoes tonight, and it’s a deal!”

  “Tell me you haven’t been sleeping in the ghettoes!” She gasped, appalled.

  Aylan raised his eyebrows. “Well, mostly I’ve been sleeping in Ellyot’s flat—but I have the feeling I might be out on my ear tonight.”

  Trieste shook her head. Already, she could foresee a long, taut period of stealth and subterfuge—things she and Torrant had never been good at. “If it will keep you out of some poor girl’s bed tonight, of course,” she said with gentle mockery and a hand on his arm. He put a hand on top of hers, and they progressed to the dance floor.

  “You know, Spots, if I’d known you were going to turn out so wonderfully, I might have been nicer to you in school.”

  Trieste grinned back, the gentleness still there, and faced him and curtseyed. “Never you mind, you horrible boy—I’ll find a way to exact revenge later.”

  Aylan tilted his head back and guffawed, his teeth glinting and his smile and charm suddenly in full force in his booming laughter. The younger regents were so shocked hearing that sound from him that with the exception of Torrant, they missed the cue to the first step, and the rest of the world almost got to see the moment when Torrant wrapped his arm around Yarri’s waist and held her hand with the chiming of bells that weren’t there.

  Almost.

  “You still need to get out of this city within the week,” Torrant murmured to Yarri as they moved through the figure. His hand lingered at her waist. Her thumb rubbed the back of his wrist before release.

  “Only if you come with me, brother,” she said sweetly after they parted, moved around the next people in line, and reconnected.

  “You know why that can’t happen!” They held crossed arms before them, and two steps in and two steps back, and two steps in….

  “Because you’re stubborn enough to get yourself killed before you leave this task to someone else?” she snapped, and they whirled away from each other and into the next figure. For a moment, Torrant was bewildered to find himself face to face with Trieste.

  “I see your customary grace has deserted you?” she asked kindly as he blinked at her with stupid eyes, his feet completing the steps on their own.

  “She’s being obstinate,” he muttered, and she shook her head.

  “If you could see yourself from her eyes, you’d know who was being willful.”

  “I have a goal, here, Trieste, and it’s of sizeable importance!”

  They whirled, his palm passed Yarri’s in allemande as they exchanged glares, and then he was back talking to Trieste. “Oh please!” she continued. “I’ve heard nothing but the greater good since we set out. Cwyn was insufferable about it all the way here!”

  “Where is he, by the way?” Torrant asked, not daring to look around the room as they moved down the line.

  “At my townhome. We were able to lease a place for the winter.”

  “Well, good. Make sure he stays there as often as possible!”

  They whirled into allemande again, and when Torrant found himself across from a partner, he was facing Yarri again.

  The music would soon pick up speed, and the figures would be performed with increasing rapidity until the music’s crescendo, when all the dancers would be breathless and laughing. For Torrant and Yarri, the tempo of the music only served to underscore the passion of their argument.

  “Trieste agrees with me!” Yarri said triumphantly as they clasped hands and whirled front, then back, then front again.

  “Well, Trieste is unaware of the danger!” Torrant snapped, coming face to face with her as her hair tumbled forward. Unconsciously, his hand came up to her face to push it back, and even as she glared at him, she moved her cheek into his touch.

  “You can’t go around calling all the women in your life foolish because they disagree with you!”

  “I’m not calling you foolish,” he protested, and the music picked up the tempo a little. “I’m saying your thinking is all Triane and no Oueant.”

  “You mean Rath’s Oueant, or our Oueant?” she asked quickly, whirling into his arms and then away, her skirts whipping around her ankles and her hair lashing the air around her head.

  The dance swung her back into his arms, and she had a personal and up-close view of his misery. “If you think I’m proud of what I’ve done here, you haven’t been paying attention,” he said, his bleak voice causing the rest of the dancers in their party to shiver.

  “Then why stay?” she demanded, angry at the pain in his voice, angry at the terrible struggle against defeat in the set of his shoulders, angry that he should stay here where his beautiful spirit was in danger of being crushed.

  “For us!” he cried, as they clasped hands in an allemande and then traveled around their circle, allemanding with other dancers they barely saw. The music was rushing now, and other sets of dancers were tripping, laughing, falling into gay heaps of giggles and lightness. The regents and their coerced partners were keeping up with the music desperately, holding the weight of this private conversation in their frantically tripping feet.

  “For all of us,” he continued as they met again. They spun from the allemande into another side-by-side figure, their feet blurring, their chests heaving, and their faces flushed. “I cannot keep our family safe until I make the world safer for us to live in.”

  “We will survive without this,” she gasped. “What good is our freedom if you are not there to share it with us?”

  He looked at her and almost stopped dancing. “What good is being together when our children will live in fear?”

  “Fear isn’t death!” They stepped out and regarded each other for two beats before the musicians took a breath and started the final roundel. The music resumed furiously.

  “Tell that to the two wankers Cwyn felled in a back alley, Yarri,” he hissed, and this time she did stumble, and his hand was at her elbow to haul her up.

  “Well, then”—she recovered, running lightly on her toes—“all the more reason for you to come home!” She taught these dance figures to frightened children, and by the three gods, she was not going to let them best her, not now.

  “What do you want from me?” he cried, finally out of patience as they whirled away from each other and past the dazzled, fraying dancers in their set.

  “I want you to come home. If you l
oved… us… you’d come home!”

  He could see the naked glint of tears in her eyes and cursed himself for the entire scene. There had to be a better place to have this conversation. The hunger to be near her, the hunger to connect with her—it had driven them both to do this foolhardy thing.

  “If you loved me,” he gasped as the music climaxed to a finale, “you’d wait!”

  The music crashed to an end, and they stood, three feet apart, glaring at each other in a clash of wills that dominated the ballroom. They were flanked by twelve exhausted, sweating people who were bowing dazedly with the final chord as the rest of the dancers in the ballroom erupted in frenzied applause. Their breath caught together, and Yarri opened her mouth to resume the argument when Aylan showed up at her elbow, and the line of winded dancers made way for the next set.

  Like magic, Trieste was at Torrant’s elbow, urging him off the floor, helping him find his feet when he was too busy locking eyes with his beloved to see where he was going.

  “Ellyot,” she breathed. “Ellyot….” She gave a vicious pinch. “Ellyot!”

  “Ouch—Trieste, I know you’re there!”

  “Well, pay attention to me, Ellyot Moon,” she hissed, “or someone’s going to think you’re ensorcelled or something.”

  He breathed deeply, and he and Yarri broke their electric gaze. He caught Trieste’s frantic, exhausted glare and found himself laughing a little.

  “Well, I see we put the rest of you through your paces,” he observed, taking Trieste with him to the punch table.

  “People will be talking about that dance for years,” she snapped in disgust. “Why couldn’t you just wait until later?”

  He gave Trieste a cup of punch and then his complete and undivided attention for the first time that night. “Because if I get her alone I’ll never let her go,” he said simply, and she almost dropped her glass.

  “Well,” she said at last, resigned to share a fate with the only family besides Alec she’d ever had, “you’re going to talk alone before she leaves, and I’m thinking you’d best accept whatever you two come to terms with then. I see why you don’t want to go—you’ve been making progress. We’ve heard about it. Word of the fiery young regents on the floor has even made it to Otham. But, T-Ellyot—you can’t do this forever. And you can’t do this alone.”

  Torrant grinned at her, a fair approximation of the grin that had melted her heart when they were younger. Then he was gone, moving to clap the young men, Aylan included, on the back and congratulate them on a set well danced. Before he left her side, he said, “Now there’s where you’re wrong, Lady Trieste. I am certainly not alone.”

  He and Aylan left shortly after that, but not before he’d kissed the hand of every one of Marv’s sisters and thanked them for a lovely set.

  Four of them smiled and laughed and then flushed as his lips touched the back of their hands, but Kerree did not. Instead, she cast a sideways glance at Yarri, who was standing next to Jessee and trying to make polite conversation with Aerk and Keon.

  “You two need to stay out of the public eye together,” she said softly but with direct intent. “Only the blind could miss what you are.”

  “And I think a blind man would have heard us,” Ellyot replied dryly, “but I do take your point.” Then he was gone into the darkness with Aylan, leaving the proceedings so dim and drab that when Aleta and Essa entered with their retinue—nearly a fifth of the entire assembly—there was scarcely a ripple of interest.

  Eljean stayed at Trieste’s side and watched the two of them disappear out the door.

  “I know that look,” the Queen of Otham said gently, and Eljean looked down at her and smiled. She was a pretty woman—almost as tall as Torrant, with fine, dark hair and an attractive, willowy grace. Torrant had hardly noticed her as he was dancing with the short girl with the big chest and unruly autumn-colored hair.

  “What look is that?” Eljean asked mildly, and then he caught her all-too-perceptive gaze and looked away, flushed. “That obvious?” His heart thudded in his throat and then his stomach, and then it fluttered in his chest. He was supposed to meet Zhane that evening, after the ball, and he wondered miserably if this terrible moment of regret would haunt him then too.

  “It’s only obvious to a fellow sufferer,” Trieste said kindly, laying her hand on his arm. “Yarri told me she encouraged him to take lovers. She was afraid his heart would get too lonely.”

  “I don’t think I was what he had in mind,” Eljean said roughly, and Trieste patted his arm.

  “He’s only ever had one person in mind,” she said meaningfully, and his smile grew a little more lost.

  “I don’t know how to feel about that,” he mumbled, half to himself. “The world felt better when they touched.”

  Trieste leaned in, the kindness never leaving her pretty, elegant features. A long-ago summer evening echoed in her voice, and the silhouettes of a happy young man and a child in front of an orange sea danced behind her eyes.

  “Just remember, he was never really yours to begin with. Not even a little tiny bit, not even at all.”

  Eljean found a perfect understanding in her blue-eyed gaze and suddenly wondered what it would be like to have a sister.

  Providence

  TORRANT AND Aylan hit the apartment first to gather their gear and then slipped silently into the night. It was, in fact, fairly easy—most of the guards were around the ball, since Regent Minero had raised a big stink that week about how they were all in danger from “this Triane’s Son” character.

  Given that Triane’s Son had disturbed the regent during activities that could have gotten him imprisoned—if not crucified—Torrant had to wonder if it wasn’t his wife and daughter making the stink at home, before the stench rolled into the Regents’ Hall. Either way, the guards were all out protecting the elite, and Torrant and Aylan could have been a brass band instead of shadows on the chill breeze coming off Hammer Pass.

  The wind-shadows huddled in the ghetto, crouched in the darkness of an alleyway filled with broken crates, rotting fruit, and used wine, waiting for an evil man to burst out of a crumbling brothel with a terrified boy in his grip.

  The waiting time was filled with self-doubt.

  “I can’t believe I did that,” Torrant muttered to himself, his breath pluming a little. This close to Samhain, the weather was not so much cold as damp—summer had ended abruptly the week before, but true, chill, and crisp autumn had not yet started. The days were still warm, but this day had been hazy and soft with clouds.

  “The argument during the dance?” Aylan asked cheerfully. His entire demeanor had been disgustingly cheerful since they’d left the ball. “It was amazing. They’ll be talking about that one for decades!”

  “It was stupid,” Torrant muttered. “I can’t believe I put us in that sort of danger.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up over it—Yarri did her part. Besides, it’s good to see you bollix things up. It makes me believe you’re human.”

  Torrant rolled his eyes. “As though that whole debacle with Eljean wasn’t enough proof of that! Or, hey! If we really want proof of my imperfection, there’s always….”

  Suddenly Aylan wasn’t across the alleyway from him anymore; he was right there, eye-to-eye, his angry breath dusting Torrant’s face. “Don’t say it. Djali was no more your fault than the death of your family… and Eljean….” Aylan looked over his shoulder and spat. “Eljean was Eljean’s fault. The first time was as honorable as getting a fourteen-year-old drunk and then taking yes for yes. The second time was a gift, and he shat on it, and that’s not your fault either. No.”

  Aylan backed up and made a visible effort to control his temper. “I’ll stand by it. The only real mistake you’ve made so far, mate, has been that dance. And I’ll treasure it ’til the day I die. Now, hush—he’ll be out in a moment.”

  They retreated to the shadows again and to their own thoughts. Torrant spent the first minutes fretting about how to make Yarri retur
n to Eiran, as quickly as the fastest horse could carry her.

  But thinking about her led to thinking about her, remembering her voice, her eyes, and her smell. Ah, Triane’s perfumed breath, her smell! For the first time in months, his blood beat warm from his chest, and his skin fit around his muscles in a snug and tidy fashion, like skin should, and not like a giant’s robe on a child’s body. For the first time in months, air was air and not fouled and fetid drain water, weighing down his shoulders and his lungs until he could no longer breathe from the ache of missing her. For the first time in months, he was hungry—even for food, but mostly for her.

  For the first time in months, he was whole and well and strong.

  I could send her away, he thought, suddenly calm. Oh yes, he could. But the odds of his surviving after she left were considerably lower.

  Aylan looked at him across the alleyway and saw the smile, all of it, beautiful, like sunrise, or children playing in water. Aylan almost closed his eyes and laughed at the sight, but at that moment there was a commotion at the door and business to be done.

  The guard had done this before. He knew that if he grabbed his victim’s neck, the fear would be worse and the control would be more. He knew the things to say to make the boy comply, the threats to his family, the threats of more pain. He knew how to make the boy feel worse—telling him he deserved to be violated, telling him he wanted it. He knew all about raping children in alleyways, but he didn’t know to expect the nightmare contortion of cat and man threatening him from the front while his partner wrenched his arm behind his back and held a knife to his throat.

  “So…. Duan,” Triane’s Son said conversationally to the guard after calming the terrified boy who was crouching in the shadows. “Where is he?”

  “Tonight’s not my night with him,” the guard whined. “How would I know?”

  Torrant shrugged, plied the end of his sword on the stays of the teal-and-black-liveried trousers until they were in tiny pieces, then took a couple of strips of the man’s skin with them. “Oh, I don’t know…. You lot haven’t been too bright so far. I figure you’ve got, what? Two, three hiding places for him. Am I right?”