Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  It was also the sound of instant danger, and one cave-in had come much too close to making sure the obsidian and granite blackness in the core of the mountain had been the last thing they’d ever seen. The minute they heard that sound, support beams were rushed in from their storage places in the other caverns, and wherever they were working became suddenly that much more secure.

  They used the timber from the mountain and sold the soil and the minerals to the villagers. It was the perfect, self-perpetuating enterprise, and the whole venture might just allow Torrant to leave Clough before Rath found a way to kill him.

  If the breathless, freezing black heart of the mountain didn’t kill Stanny first.

  But in spite of the dangers, of the cold that seeped into his fingers and his joints even in the summer, in spite of the weight of the mountain threatening to crush the space above his head, Stanny found he didn’t hate the Hammer, nor did he fear the omnipresent, pressing dark or the smell of earth. He didn’t dream of cave-ins the way some of the men did, the ones who didn’t last long on the detail. In an odd way, he’d discovered that this place, this limited, womblike network of caves, was really the “beyond” he’d always imagined.

  Because no one but him had ever imagined it at all.

  With a rippling of heavy muscles—a legacy of his mother’s broad build—and a heave, the edge of the pick rooted through the cold granite, and there was a sudden, welcome echoing plink of a sound.

  Stanny gave a shout, and the other men started dragging in the timber supports.

  They were so close, and they’d just found another cave. Solstice might have come early this year.

  The Hardest Job of All

  STARREN SAT quietly at her mother’s side, minding her own knitting as Bethen minded hers. Evya sang sweetly from the kitchen as she washed the dishes, her voice easily the best in the family’s, aside from Torrant’s. The song was sad—as it often was when Stanny was off on one of his mysterious bits of business—but there was an underlying contentment in it. Evya was happy in their home, and now that she and Stanny had stopped ripping the ocean with their storms, Starren and her parents were happy to have her there.

  She had certainly served them all well in the last month, helping with the cooking and the laundry and the general cleanup. Bethen had been more than grateful, remarking often that the house had never been so clean. Of course, that had always been a bittersweet compliment, because truth to tell, it had never been so empty either.

  Starry looked up to where her father sat at the kitchen table, doing accounts. He used to do them in his study, but Starren had the feeling that he’d moved them out to the kitchen table for the same reason she had started knitting by her mother’s side or that Stanny and Evya had started sleeping in the downstairs loft instead of their flat above the warehouse.

  “You look upset, Lane,” Bethen said from her chair, her busy fingers one of the few reminders of her earlier vitality. “Don’t tell me nobody’s buying dry goods this winter.”

  Lane’s pause told Starren that he was debating whether or not to share the source of his frustration with his wife. Time had been when anything at all was food for discussion, but he had been delicate lately about giving Bethen bad news. Starren looked up curiously, just in time to watch Lane’s habit of confiding in his best friend win out.

  “That priest got a letter last week, calling him in. It was Rath’s personal hand this time, something about “Needing all hands in the city to minister to the city….”

  Bethen gave a short laugh. “Meaning they need help controlling the Goddess quarters—I think that means Torrant’s winning!”

  Lane paused, pleasantly surprised. “Why, yes—you must be right! Go, Torrant!” He shook his head then, back to his original point. “But what about the summons?”

  Bethen’s hands briefly massaged her yarn. It was a scrumptious peach color, almost the exact shade of Starren’s hair when she was little. It was, she’d told Starren, a baby shawl for Starren’s and Aylan’s children, when the time came. She had a lovely, heart-piercing blue chosen as well, for a boy’s blanket, the exact color of Aylan’s eyes.

  “Ignore it,” she said now, thoughtfully. “Simply ignore it.”

  “But….”

  Bethen’s grin was impish and sweet, and for a heartbeat, her age and her illness washed away, and she was as gleeful as a girl Starren’s age.

  “It’s perfect—as far as anyone in Clough knows, the snows are too deep to reply anyway. By the time they’ll expect the sodder, odds are good that the state of Clough will be entirely different.” Outside, the wind whipped the window panes, and the snow lit up the frame of darkness outside. The storm had been coming up from the southwest and threatening for a week. If Triannon had still stood, the sky’s fury would have kept anyone from coming up that way. It was more than wild enough to keep any “letter of state” from being delivered, very possibly for two or three months.

  Lane blinked, and his grin was relaxed. “You’re right, Bethie—it really is simple. Thanks!”

  “Well, beloved, if that’s all that had you worried, would you care to sit down and read to us?” Bethen asked with a little flirt. Lane was on the verge of telling her he had more paperwork to do, Starren could see it. Instead, he stood and straightened his papers and his ledger, marking his place for later, and then moved to the divan to pick up the adventure book they’d been reading since Cwyn and Yarri had left. It had been Bethen’s choice, and it had also been, if Starren remembered, one of Torrant’s favorites when he’d stayed at home.

  Evya came in as Lane was reading, and she pulled out her work basket as well to piece diligently on the wedding quilt she had planned as a gift for Stanny during their Beltane handfast. Their father’s reading was interrupted as the women compared projects.

  “I need to think of something to make for Cwyn.” Bethen sighed. “I’ve made something for everybody else, but that child….”

  For a moment, she stared out past the kitchen and into the blackened night. Yarri’s last letter—which had come with a note from Aylan that had been read ragged—told them that Cwyn would probably be wintering at Wrinkle Creek, since the odds weren’t great that he’d beat the snows and get back to Clough. Although Bethen hadn’t been expecting him to make it at all, the news that he was so close and yet not there seemed to make her restless and uncomfortable.

  That boy’s needed looking after since the day he was born, Littlest, Bethen had ruminated just that evening. You, darling—you were always too easy to please. When night came, you’d nestle in with anyone—Torrant, Stanny, Roes, and that doesn’t even count Aylan, right? And it wasn’t fair, because I wanted to hold you too. But Cwyn—he’d take me or Torrant or nobody, not even your father, and you know he worships Lane! But mostly me. And ever since, if I haven’t been there, it’s like he’s lost his keel or his star or his sweet damned mind. It would be nice, this last… this one winter, to have him close. It would be good to know he won’t be in trouble, just for now.

  “The pattern will come to you, Mama,” Starren reassured now. “It always does. Don’t rush it.” Bethen smiled and patted her daughter’s knee, and then they all quieted down and listened to Lane resume the story. Starren, who had always been somewhat of a tranquil child when she hadn’t been tangling with her irrepressible brother, sat back and reveled in the peace for a moment, until her mother’s gentle snoring broke the silence.

  Starren’s face aged dramatically for a moment, the angles of her cheekbones becoming sharper, grooves of anger working their way next to her mouth. A year ago, her mother’s evening wouldn’t have been over yet. There would have been clothes to mend and a room to straighten and plans to make with Lane or Stanny or Roes, if she’d been present. There would have been arguments about the town council, and someone invariably would have pricked Bethen’s unexpectedly passionate temper. A year ago, Bethen would have been awake for two more hours, filling the house with her heart.

  On this miserable w
inter’s night, she was dozing over her knitting, one of four projects she had yet to finish in her project queue. It was going too quickly.

  “What are you doing?” Evya asked quietly, and Starren glared at her sister-by-handfast over her shoulder as she slipped Bethen’s knitting needles from her nerveless fingers.

  Without answering, Starren marked the pattern, figuring there were four rows from the last repeat, and then slid the needles, connected by their long, smooth leather cord, from the stitches.

  “Wha!” Evya repeated, but Starren shushed her with a glare, and, unmindful of her father’s surprised look, ripped out the last four rows and slid the needles back in, making it look as though her mother had finished in exactly the same place, only one repeat back.

  Carefully, she wound the yarn back into the ball and put the project back into her mother’s still hands.

  “Starren,” Lane said pleasantly, “can we speak to you in the kitchen please?”

  Starren’s eyes narrowed. Her mother would know that look, and her father knew it too. It was her stubborn look. It didn’t happen often, but when it did, she meant business. It wasn’t as though this were the first time she’d done this.

  When they gathered in the kitchen, Evya stood, arms crossed, her look of outrage unmistakable. If anyone had tried to sabotage her project, she would have peeled the skin from his toes and worked her way up.

  Lane, however, knew that his usually tranquil, serene Starry wouldn’t have done it without reason. He simply leaned back against the table, crossed his arms, and smiled slightly until his daughter, his beautiful, long-limbed, easy-moving daughter, began to shift uncomfortably in her house shoes, playing with the end of her sunset-colored braid as she did so.

  “She’s almost done,” Starren muttered resentfully.

  “So?” Lane asked, nonplussed.

  “So!” Starren couldn’t believe that her father, her handsome, smiling father, could be so obtuse. “So—she’s only got four projects to go after that one! She’s finished wedding shawls for all of us girls—you included, Evya—and two baby blankets a piece. She’s only got me and Roes left, and some sort of gift for Cwyn she hasn’t decided on yet, and that’s it! She’s done! Her project queue’s finished!”

  “Oh gods!” Evya blanched, in spite of the fact that she’d warmed to her toes to know that Bethen had planned a gift for her.

  Even a good man doesn’t understand the sacredness of a woman’s project queue. Lane looked at his daughter and his son’s wife blankly, until Starry, in a rare display of temper, stomped her foot, her fists pounding uselessly at her side as she hissed at them for the sake of not waking her mother. “Don’t you understand? That’s it—these are the last things in her queue forever! Her whole family has gone, Da, and it’s not fair! I know they all have their reasons, and their reasons are all good, but I’m tired of good! She’s raised four children and fostered four more, and dammit, Da, she deserves more than just the three of us! That queue of projects— that’s all she’s got! When that’s done….” Starren stopped and dashed her hands against her cheeks, her voice finally breaking.

  “When that’s done—” Her father hauled her up against his chest, and she cried against it and his warmth and his familiar, safe smell of dust and books and sweat, knowing that it still wouldn’t be better, not even when she was done crying. “—when that’s done, Da, she won’t have any reason to stay.”

  “Ah gods, Starren,” Lane whispered, and then he reached out a hand and grabbed a tearful Evya by the front of the shirt and hauled her into the hug as well. There was nothing to say, not a thing that wasn’t the truth, and all they had was each other, the small remnants of his full family, clinging to their core in the heart of his home.

  None of them were expecting the door to explode open and a figure swathed in snow to stumble in, cursing and slamming the door behind him.

  “Triane’s purple ti—”

  “Cwyn Moon, don’t you finish that sentence!” Starren commanded from her father’s arms. Breaking free from Lane’s slack embrace, she rushed to her brother, and, heedless of the snow or his surprise or the fact that he shouldn’t be there at all, she jumped on him, sending him back against the wall as she alternately tried to hug him through layers of snow-crusted clothing and beat on his chest in mock irritation.

  “You horrible Terror!” she squealed, tugging on his coat sleeve so she could hang it up in the mudroom. “What in the name of the stars’ dark are you doing here on such a night?”

  Cwyn looked up at his sister and his father. Now that half his clothing had plopped to the floor in a puddle of melt, leather, and wool, his face looked leaner, and his eyes looked sadder, and on the whole he was not the same Terror who had ripped out of Eiran champing at the bit to be a hero.

  “I wanted to see all of you,” he said humbly, “and I really wanted to see Mum.”

  “Cwyn?” came Bethen’s voice from the living room.

  “Don’t get up, Mum!” Cwyn hollered, shedding his last outer layer. “I’ll be there in a moment!”

  For once, there wasn’t a single scolding word as Lane, Starren, and Evya picked up his outer clothes and took them to hang in the mudroom to dry. Instead, they all listened, with their hearts in their mouths, as Bethen’s most worrisome child stumbled into the sitting room, sank to his knees, and lay his head into his mother’s lap.

  Song for a Winter’s Night

  TRIESTE STILL had the other regents to dinner, but although Aylan showed up occasionally, there was a huge, heaving, yawning, dark gap at the table.

  For three weeks Yarri had been pointedly ignoring that gap, and the regents—sensitive that they were responsible for escorting Yarrow Moon outside the townhouse and for relating all things Yarri inside the townhouse—tactfully ignored the gap for her.

  And for Torrant.

  He wasn’t obvious—ever. He would ask them how dinner was, whether Trieste had anything to report, if the play the night before had been as boring and as pedantic as the legal plays were.

  They were the ones who brought up Yarri, the color of her gown, if she had said anything funny or thoughtful, or if she had any news gleaned from her social rounds during the day.

  She and Trieste had been planting quite a garden of Goddess supporters, just by teaching the women in their circle to knit. Torrant had been grateful and had cordially conveyed his gratitude through Aerk, Keon, Marv, or Jino, and even through Eljean, who took his turn with the others on escort duty.

  The hunger in his eyes for news of Yarri was bitter, slicing, and painful.

  He and Aylan still went out on the hunt, and there had been some near misses. Aylan started leaving his cloak at the door when he’d enter Trieste’s. Yarri caught him once, with a fresh network of cuts on the disfigured leather and had run out of the room with a pursed mouth and bright eyes.

  She hadn’t joined them for dinner that night, and when the subject came up, Aylan barked something harsh and mean, and the subject was closed.

  Every day, Trieste sent a message through Suse, asking for the honor of Ellyot Moon’s presence at her table.

  Every day, Torrant replied, Should my lady Yarrow request my presence, I would gladly come.

  Solstice was coming—the new year, the day of giving gifts to sustain them through the darkness of winter—and there was something awful about the two of them not speaking before Solstice.

  Torrant had fought for—and won—the right to celebrate the Solstice holiday without being accused of treason for not being at the “patriotic dinners” that had taken the place of the worship of the gods. The irony that he apparently wouldn’t be spending this hard-won Solstice with the person he’d fought for the most was strangling.

  Two days before Solstice, Marv and Jino were out doing the night patrol, and dinner at Trieste’s was unusually static. Keon was trying too hard to tell the story of Torrant’s glorious victory on the floor. He mentioned the flashing blue eyes for the fourth time, and Yarri stood up abrup
tly, overturning her chair with an obscenely loud bang. Her cheeks were blotchy red, and for a moment her rushed breathing was the only sound in the suddenly silent room.

  “Just tell me…,” she started and looked away. Unfortunately she looked to her left and caught Aylan’s wary, level look. Her breath dragged into her lungs with a little moan, and she pinched the bridge of her nose, hard, as though trying to squeeze her emotions back into a gift-wrapped box.

  “Just tell me,” she said more softly, finally meeting Aylan’s eyes miserably. “Tell me that he plans to live. Just tell me that he plans to live through this. It’s all I want to know.”

  Aylan’s mouth quirked, just a little, a tiny smile so close to Torrant’s same expression that for a moment Yarri’s heart leapt. “Of course he does, Yarrow Root,” Aylan told her gently. “He’s never had plans of doing anything else.”

  That night, Eljean slipped out hours before Aerk and Keon, and Aylan overtook him on the way to the regents’ flats.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked harshly, and Eljean avoided the other man’s eyes but kept his determined stride.

  “Someone’s got to do something,” Eljean muttered.

  Aylan’s laugh wasn’t pretty. “You, Eljean? Giving romantic advice? Really?”

  Eljean’s flush steamed the frosty air. “Really,” he returned with dignity. “If anyone can analyze a terrible mistake, wouldn’t I be the one?”

  “And what mistake is ‘Ellyot’ making?” Aylan asked, his sarcasm undimmed.