Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  He heard a rustling, and although he didn’t turn his head, he did close his eyes and breathe softly so he could savor the scent of her. Yarri was freshly bathed, with her hair in a functional braid, and wearing a wool skirt and a thick blouse, because it was chilly outside and they would be leaving soon. She put her hands on his shoulders and rested her chin on the top of his head for a moment, and he fought the urge to hide his words from her sight.

  If she was old enough to take to his bed, she was old enough to see into his heart.

  “Dear Djali,” she began softly. Her hand moved up, and he caught it before she could gnaw on her knuckle. He kissed the poor, scarred finger softly. She sighed and readjusted her position so she was resting her chin on his shoulder and wrapped her other arm around his shoulders.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry that I allowed your beloved to die. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop you from hurting yourself. You put your faith in me and I betrayed it, and my only way to make it right is to fix the world that trapped you and forced you to gnaw your own heart out in such cold absolution. Your song is being sung far and wide now, my brother, and every time I hear it, my heart breaks that you are not there with me.

  “Triana, my bright little bird, take good care of your Djali….” Her voice trailed off then, and she wiped her wet cheek on his clean collar as she finished the letter. There were people in the letter he hadn’t told her about, things he had done that she didn’t know, and then there was their family, dead these twelve years. By the time she was done reading, she had circled the desk and sat in his lap, and he just sat, hugging her, unsure of what to say.

  “All this,” she said through a clogged throat, “and you won’t be able to stay?”

  He buried his face against the hollow of her neck and tried for a certain dark humor. “How long do you want that list to be, beloved?” It was apparently the wrong thing to say, because she put her hand to her mouth and gasped, and for a moment he wished passionately that his much-vaunted ability with words would stop failing him with the person he most wanted to see heart-to-heart with.

  “Shh…,” he murmured and shifted her so he could stand and hold her, sheltering her, keeping her from the chaos of the world he was fighting for both of them.

  “Cwyn wants to come with you,” she said against his chest, and he swore. Yarri tilted her face up to him, her lashes spiky with tears, and he bent his head and kissed a salt drop from the corner of her mouth. His skin, stomach, and body suddenly tightened, and in a shiver of anticipation, he realized it had been a week since he’d had time to hold her like this, a week since they had… since they had….

  “He can’t!”

  The wrench between what came out of his mouth and what his body wanted was so violent that he was surprised his eyes didn’t pop. She stood on tiptoes and rubbed his lips with hers, teasing the grim line of his mouth with her tongue.

  “He’ll follow you. Whatever it is you’re doing that’s taking you away from us tonight, Cwyn will follow you. He knows it’s important, and he wants to be a part of it. You know him—and you know he’ll help if you let him and hinder if you try to stop him….”

  “Gods…,” Torrant swore, because she was right and because his hands were fisting in her skirt, and he could feel her stockings underneath it. He wondered if she had those tiny smallclothes underneath them, or if she was…. Ah gods, his hands hit bare flesh. He brought his palm up to cup her bottom, while he delighted in her little cry of surprise and arousal.

  Yarri whimpered, and her face fell into the hollow of his neck and shoulder, her breath tickling the sensitive skin there. “Just let him come.” She kissed his neck. Ah gods, her soft lips nibbled under his jaw. “Give him a job to do. He’s spent months feeling useless.” A delicate little tongue ran from under his jaw to his ear, flicking there for a moment, and then her voice and her breath whispered in his ear. “He’s capable of so much….”

  Torrant gasped, and then his hands ran over her bottom under her skirts, finding her tender, slick flesh and probing delicately.

  Yarri’s little cry of surrender would have had him agreeing to haul the moons down with both hands for a thorough scrubbing. Inviting their prickly, trouble-prone cousin on a bit of night work was nothing at all.

  “Yes,” he whispered back in her ear, then rubbing his jaw on the wetness still tracking her cheeks. “Yes… just… now?”

  “Yes,” she said, “oh yes, please….”

  And he lifted her then and captured her mouth in a sweet, salty kiss. Still holding her, he shuffled backward, using his backside to close the study door abruptly while they forgot sorrow and remorse for a breathless, electric interlude, totally lost in each other.

  “YOU’RE JOKING, right?”

  Aylan squinted at him as he woke up from a nap, and Torrant briefed him on Cwyn’s accompaniment. Aylan still spent some time at his flat. The folks in the ghettoes had gotten used to his presence, and in spite of Duan’s betrayal, Aylan liked being there for them. They were his people now, as much as they were Torrant’s, and he wouldn’t trade that for a new flat—no matter how appealing Trieste’s spare bed was. But that didn’t mean he didn’t enjoy the rest day at Trieste’s either. Where Torrant’s rooms had seemed like luxury after the broken couch and broken windows and broken floorboards of his own flat, the safety and airy space of Trieste’s bedroom and the big bathtub were luxury, and Aylan was hedonistic enough to want to take advantage of that.

  Being awakened from his nap on clean sheets, after a soak in the tub with scented soap, interfered with his self-indulgence, and the news made him cranky.

  Torrant smiled apologetically and hoped the hour he’d spent in the study didn’t show on his face—or any other part of him visible to Aylan. He’d told Trieste he’d wake the man up for dinner, since he had unwelcome news anyway, and now was rather wishing he’d let Yarri tell Aylan while they were eating.

  “Cwyn’s spent the last five months being completely helpless,” Torrant said now, because even though Yarri (the brat!) had been using undue influence, what she’d said had hurt his heart with the truth. He knew that feeling. “He needs to feel useful—and you yourself said he was good at this. We couldn’t have made a cleaner kill than the priest and the miller’s boy, and we wouldn’t have hesitated, either of us.”

  Aylan sat up in bed and wiped his eyes, and then squinted harder at Torrant. A slow smile crept up his full mouth, the kind that had made Torrant’s knees weak when they’d been younger.

  “Yarri talked you into it, didn’t she?” he asked, and to his delight a hard flush bloomed from Torrant’s neck at his badly tied cravat to his hairline.

  “She may have said something, yes,” Torrant replied with a stoic straight face, “but she was right.”

  “Of course she was right—she’s going to be right as long as you do your thinking with your bollocks and not that thing on your shoulders.” Aylan laughed, getting out of bed and going for the clothes Torrant had brought him when they’d stopped by the regents’ flat.

  “Well, there seems to be some blood flowing to them these days,” Torrant said with dignity, “I’m sure not all their decisions are bad.”

  “Well, if their thinking gets me killed, you wank, I promise you I’m coming back from the stars’ dark to cut them off!” Torrant yelped and protested, but before Aylan’s hearty laughter could him drive him out of the room, Aylan stopped him with a question.

  “Your letter, mate—you finish it?”

  Torrant couldn’t look at him. “All written, signed, sealed, proofed by a child who holds my heart.” He tried to say that last with a light voice, but Aylan wasn’t buying it.

  “When they get that letter, they’ll tell you that it’s not your fault.”

  Torrant raised his eyebrow and quirked his lip. “I’m sure Duan would disagree heartily,” he said, “but point taken. The study’s open, if you’d like to write one.”

  Aylan’s look was particularly wide and shiny-eyed. “Right. Djal
i might like to know how those little twins were doing at the clinic.”

  Torrant nodded, heading for the door. He’d forgotten that detail—but then, he’d had more people to write for. “Absolutely, but hurry—you need to be there for dinner so we can tell Lane’s and Bethen’s third child that he gets to be in mortal danger tonight.”

  CWYN, OF course, was insufferably delighted.

  “Do I get a sword? I’ve been practicing!”

  “A dagger should be sufficient,” Torrant said warily, watching the way the young man’s eyes sparkled. He had to remind himself that by the time he was Cwyn’s age, he had already brought Yarri and Aldam down from Hammer Pass and disposed of his own share of bodies in the interim. He rather thought he’d been less gleeful than Yarri’s cousin, but he didn’t think he’d been any more capable.

  “What about a cloak? One of those black leather cloaks like the two of you would be amazing—except not as beat up as Aylan’s. That thing looks like it got lost in a slaughterhouse.”

  Torrant winced, and Aylan put down his bite of beef.

  “You’re right,” Aylan shot hollowly. “It is absolutely imperative that you don’t get a cloak like mine.” And then he shot Torrant a look of unadulterated venom across the table that Torrant returned blandly.

  Yarri, sensitive to some undertone she didn’t understand, looked at the two of them curiously. She looked to the regents to see if they had caught anything. She’d learned that the body of young men seemed to serve as an emotional barometer to her beloved, and their expressions could very often gauge what it was she had missed when he’d been here, in the heart of enemy territory, without her.

  But the regents were all talking among themselves, discussing Torrant’s apparently impressive showing on the floor that week. He had thanked her earlier—told her with frank admiration that he wouldn’t have been able to pull it off without some of the regents she and Trieste had swayed through their wives—but Yarri doubted she had done anything of importance. She had heard her beloved speak, and she knew to the pounding blood throbbing in her chest that his passion could sway anybody with a heart or a mind.

  Cwyn started asking questions about what he would be doing that night, and the strange tension between Torrant and Aylan evaporated like the salt breezes of Eiran. Yarri almost resigned herself to having to ask him again when they were alone when she saw the expression on Eljean’s face.

  Tormented did not even begin to describe the torsion in Eljean’s eyes as they fastened on her beloved’s face, and yearning was twisted beyond agony and into fury in the lines carved at the corners of his mouth. Yarri’s mouth opened with a soft gasp, and she sliced a look of scalpel sharpness in Torrant’s direction, but he was answering a question from Cwyn and didn’t see. She caught Eljean looking at her, that terrible, excruciating fury still burning in his gaze, and the words in his heart practically scored themselves across her eyes.

  He has a secret you should know.

  “SO,” YARRI asked pleasantly as they were walking in the crisp early twilight toward the bonfire in the Goddess’s quarter, “why don’t we buy Aylan a new cloak?”

  Torrant looked at her warily through the golden blue light, wondering that her cheeks could glow so brown when she hadn’t been able to run loose in the city as she had in Eiran. Then he checked on Aerk, who was at her other arm, to see if he thought anything was off in the request. Aerk shrugged, and Torrant continued the conversation warily.

  “We could,” he replied, equally pleasant, and it was true. As he’d told Aylan, the cloak was bloody now. Regardless of what Aylan wore, the magic would continue to course under their skin, fed by the life in their veins until death freed it.

  “Is there any reason you haven’t gotten him a new one?” she asked with that unrelenting pleasantness that told him she suspected something.

  Eljean drew up on Torrant’s other side, and he automatically checked to make sure Aylan was in the midst of the party with his black leather hat so he would be harder to see. The plan was to walk to the bonfire in a group, and then separate after they burnt their letters, sending their thoughts to beyond the stars. After that, they would make their way to the smaller west gate. Cwyn was waiting there with the horses, and they would hopefully be well and gone from the city before the evening curfew bell rang. They would finish their job sabotaging the ugly, terrifying structure on the hillside and camp nearby (although not too nearby, if their plans worked right), to return the next day after the afternoon bell.

  “Right, Ellyot,” Eljean was saying sweetly. “Why don’t we get Aylan a new cloak?”

  Torrant cast him a dark look with some surprise in it. He and Eljean had gotten on fairly well in the past weeks. After Eljean’s return to the Regents’ Hall the morning after Djali’s death, it seemed as though whatever the two of them had been was just as well forgotten, and Eljean’s sense of self-preservation, as well as his sweet and self-deprecating wit, had made him a valuable asset to the group. Yarri’s arrival seemed to have smoothed over any rancor Eljean had held toward him. Although Torrant had never spoken about how she’d come to know all the details of that awful night, he had guessed that Eljean had supplied most of them.

  He’d been so relieved to have the moment with the three of them, smelling the sweat and sorrow in Aylan’s hair, having Yarri’s soft cheek against his own, that he hadn’t been able to mind.

  But this secret—this one was between him and Aylan. No matter that Eljean had stumbled upon it—revealing it before Torrant himself was ready was unpardonable.

  “Aylan is welcome to wear any cloak he pleases,” Torrant replied mildly, “but it won’t alter the usefulness of the one he’s wearing now.”

  “Really?” Eljean demanded, his voice hard, surprised, and dismayed.

  “Really.” Torrant allowed his eyes to flash blue as he looked at Eljean, hoping Yarri wouldn’t catch it.

  “Then why does he keep it?” Yarri wanted to know, and Torrant couldn’t look at either of them.

  “Penance,” he said with an artificial smile aimed at the wide walkway between the marketplace and the river, “for not paying better attention at fencing class.”

  Yarri’s eyes narrowed, and she opened her mouth to argue, but they were waylaid by a guard bent on harassing the regents. Torrant was the one who walked to meet him, and although nobody could hear what he was saying, everybody who knew what it meant saw his eyes flash blue.

  Torrant returned to the group a few moments later, while the bemused guard stood, his hand cupping his private parts and smiling vaguely.

  “Obnoxious prick,” Torrant muttered, returning to the group. Yarri caught the trembling in his hand as he tucked it back into her elbow.

  “What did you do?”

  “He seemed so fond of that body part, I gave him permission to get better acquainted with it.”

  Yarri put her hand over his and felt that it had gone cold. “Time was, you would be on your knees, vomiting in the street when you did that,” she reprimanded, and Eljean cocked his head, interested.

  “I’ve had some practice since then,” Torrant admitted. “You may have noticed, but according to Rath, I’m not entirely human.”

  “Bollix,” Yarri hissed, but Torrant bent his head toward her, and for the first time, the regents saw an expression that looked brotherly on his face.

  “There are things I’ve had to do, little sister, and things I’ve had to get good at.” His eyes, even in their normal, human, hazel color, were so intense that Yarri suddenly looked even younger than her barely eighteen years.

  “So I don’t get to comment?” she asked, trying for irritation but mostly just looking lost.

  But Torrant, being Torrant, smiled a little, comforted her, kissed her temple, gave her a voice. “Your comments are welcome, Yarrow Root. Whether or not I follow your advice, well, that’s a whole other story.”

  Tonight it worked.

  “You have your letter, ‘Ellyot’?” she asked, smiling tenta
tively.

  “Next to my heart. Yours?”

  She cupped her hand at her chest and looked to him hopefully. Her smile grew stronger when he did the same.

  The gathering in front of Olek’s for Samhain was both subdued and cheerful. It had been a long time since the people in the ghettoes had been allowed to honor their dead, and now they had so many more names to honor.

  During the clinic, Yarri and Trieste had helped to console the children and young people who hadn’t been allowed to learn to read or write, lest their “unholy doctrines propagate.” Many of them had lost parents or siblings, and they wanted to write letters, telling their missing ones not to grieve—they would all be together soon.

  The two women had written a lot of letters that day, and as Yarri watched the children venture to the fire, lips moving as they asked the Goddess to take their words to the stars, she ignored the ache in her wrist and thought that she could write a thousand more.

  With a glance at Torrant’s face, hollow cheeked and shadowed in the firelight, for a sudden moment Yarri saw, truly saw, the wellspring of his passion, the lifeblood of his sacrifice. Her hand locked with his, and together they advanced to the bonfire and cast their letters into the flames, both of them murmuring the names of those they had lost.

  Tal, Qir, Owen, Kles, Myrla…. Yarri glanced at her lover, wearing her brother’s name. Ellyot. Father, mother, brothers… oh, I miss you. I don’t remember much, I was so small, but I remember love, lots of love, like a giant bubble between me and the pain of pebbles on my feet. Forgive me when I hesitate; forgive me that I don’t want to sacrifice him to your memories. You left me with a shield from the cold, with a smile when I’m sad, a warm body for my womanhood, with a lover and a protector with the other half of my heart. Forgive me if I don’t want to lose him too.

  Torrant’s face gathered intensity as he tossed his letter to the flames, and she saw his lips move with unfamiliar names.

  Ulvane, I’m sorry. You gave your life to protect him, and I failed you. Djali, Triana, I’m sorry. I promised you a better world, but it didn’t come soon enough. Mama, Kles, Owen, Tal, and Qir, I’m sorry. You gave me life, and Yarri to protect, and I’m risking it, I’m risking her, because I couldn’t come back to you in that barn and save you. Ellyot…. His eyes narrowed, and his jaw clenched so tightly a vein at his temple throbbed in the firelight. Ellyot, my brother, my friend, I’m so sorry. I stole your name, the man you could have been, and I’m not working fast enough. I’m not doing enough to make our people safe. I’ve borrowed your memory, soiled your identity, and it all hangs so fragile, like a door with a hinge of grass. Forgive me, my brother, for getting snarled in my own pain and not doing more to honor who you were, who you could have been, my brother of the heart.