by Amy Lane
“The same mistake I made,” Eljean answered miserably. “Neither of us had enough faith in Torrant.”
Aylan’s sigh plumed in the air. “You’ll want to go in the back way,” he said after a few more squelching steps through the slush.
“Really? Why?”
“It’s bloody hot in the lower rooms when there’s a fire in the grate. He’s been going without his shirt lately.”
Eljean looked quickly at Aylan to see if he was being mocked but saw nothing but sly appreciation on the other man’s face.
“The back way, then?” Eljean asked with enthusiasm.
“Oh, absolutely!” came the cheerful reply.
Torrant heard them, of course, but he assumed it was Aylan being uncharacteristically clumsy and didn’t bother with a shirt. He was just sitting on a stool in the front room, playing the lute to himself and making notations on the parchment in front of him. He didn’t look up until he heard the second set of footsteps over his threshold, and then he was too surprised to worry about clothes.
Eljean wasn’t. With a slam of his heart in his ribs, he took in Torrant’s pale, glistening skin in the firelight and realized that the carefully stolen hours he’d spent in Zhane’s arms hadn’t diminished his longing one bit. The painful, yearning lump in his throat was hard to breathe through, so he was content to let Aylan speak first.
“What in the hell…?” Torrant began, putting his lute to the side.
“That’s what we came to ask you,” Aylan replied, pulling a canvas-covered paper packet out of his cloak and tossing it blithely.
Torrant fielded the packet and opened it carefully, smiling at the meat and potatoes inside. Aylan rummaged in the cupboards for a moment and returned with a fork and a bowl for the food, then perched on the counter with an expression that said clearly he planned to make sure Torrant ate every last bite.
“I’ s’e all ’ight?” Torrant asked between healthy bites. He was glaring at Aylan, though, a thing that told Eljean if it weren’t for their presence, odds were good he wouldn’t have thought to eat. It was impossible for him to look leaner without looking positively gaunt, and for the first time Eljean wondered at the toll that keeping him healthy had exacted on Aylan.
“No, she’s not all right!” Eljean answered for him. “None of us are all right—don’t you see? All of that nonsense about moon-destined, and the two of you make it true! If you’re not touching, the moons are ready to be cast from the skies.”
Torrant swallowed his bite hard, staring at Eljean in surprise. “Romantic advice, Eljean? Really?”
In response, Eljean kicked the couch and grunted, and Aylan leaned back on the counter and laughed. Torrant started to wrap up his packet of food, and Aylan abruptly stopped laughing.
“You never hold a grudge this long, mate—I don’t understand why you haven’t snuck into her room and kissed her until she forgave you. And don’t put that food away. Eat it, or I’m going right back to Trieste’s and telling them both that you look like the muck from a stable. If you think things are ugly now, wait until they descend upon you with soup!”
Torrant took another bite and chewed with thoughtful slowness. Aylan crossed arms and raised his eyebrows—he could wait all night.
“I’m not holding a grudge, you know,” Torrant said at last, after another swallow.
“Then what?” Eljean asked. His foot hurt, and he huffed to the front of the divan and sat down at the far end—far away from the glistening, pale, scarred, and lovely skin, and those discerning hazel eyes.
Torrant shrugged, looking into the fire. “She’s right. She’s right to be angry. I’m hers—I’ve always been hers, and… well, I’ve risked myself, and she doesn’t understand why.”
“So why don’t you just apologize and get it over with?” Eljean demanded. “I mean, really—after what I did to you, and you forgave me. Why wouldn’t she forgive you?”
Torrant looked sideways at Eljean and laughed faintly. Then he looked up and met Aylan’s eyes, and Aylan flushed down to the opening of his shirt, under that crisp blond hair.
“I can’t apologize because I’m not sorry,” Torrant said lowly. “I don’t regret it, not for a minute. Anything that lets Aylan sit here, living and breathing and nagging me to eat—I can’t be sorry for that, even if it hurts her. I’d rather hurt my lover than sacrifice my brother; it’s that simple. I’m just….” he couldn’t finish the sentence, but Aylan could.
“You’re afraid she wouldn’t understand,” he said softly, and Torrant’s miserable eyes met his. Although there was no romance in it, no attraction, not even a hint of the sex that must have passed between them, the look was so intimate that Eljean had to look away.
“I can’t believe you’re afraid of anything,” Eljean muttered, staring at a spot on the once-pristine carpet beneath his feet.
“Hurting Yarri is a close second on my list,” Torrant said dryly, the charged moment between him and Aylan apparently over.
“What’s first?” Eljean asked tactlessly.
“Having someone else die for me” came the immediate reply, and Eljean shook his head.
“I knew that one,” he said, his tone dripping with self-disgust, and Aylan laughed, no extra bitterness added.
“She just wants to know you plan to live, that’s all, brother,” he said when he was done laughing, and Torrant widened his eyes, a small smile flirting with the corners of his mouth.
“Oh—well, that’s an easy enough question to answer her, you think?”
He looked absolutely shy as he said it, and Eljean’s heart suddenly pounded with affection for the man. Dammit, he’d thought he was done with this!
“Absolutely.” Aylan grinned shamelessly, enjoying Torrant’s discomfiture very much. “I say you go answer it immediately!”
“Tomorrow night, after rounds,” Torrant answered, almost to himself.
“Why not tonight?” Eljean demanded, and Torrant flushed.
“Because the next day is Solstice—and a rest day.” He couldn’t meet either of their eyes. “I… I would like a little time to, well… to make up, if she’ll let me. Right?”
Aylan could barely contain his amusement. “That shows a sound judgment, don’t you think, Eljean?”
“Yes,” Eljean said, suddenly tortured by images of what sort of “making up” the two of them would do. Oh, he had thought he could be so adult about this! Abruptly he stood. “Yes—I think that would be perfect,” he agreed, hoping he was telling the truth. “Now, if you will excuse me, this little boy must go to bed!”
Torrant rose to see him out, a bemused smile on his face. “Thank you,” he said soberly. “It was nice of you to come by. Will you be at Solstice, for dinner?”
Eljean stopped his rush out the door to think about it. He’d planned on being at Trieste’s and then sneaking back to the ghettoes to see Zhane. “For part of the time, yes,” he replied, doing his own flush.
Torrant smiled encouragingly. “Good—if she doesn’t kick me out of her bed forever, we can spend Solstice together.”
“Nobody in their right mind would kick you out their bed forever, Ellyot,” Eljean blurted and then wished he could bite his tongue off and choke on it. It didn’t matter. Torrant heard the name—the name Eljean had fallen for in the first place—and his smile remained cordial and understanding. But nothing more.
“See you tomorrow on the floor, right?”
“Right.” And with that, Eljean gave a little bow and fled the room.
THE WEATHER turned from cold to freezing the next night. Not even the guards were up to doing much but huddling around bonfires on the corners of the streets and drinking from hip flasks when their captains were elsewhere.
Torrant and Aylan took a quick look around, making sure that nobody was out in the cold or dying for lack of a blanket or firewood, and then ran back to Torrant’s flat for his little packet of Solstice gifts—most of them handmade. By the time they returned, all of Trieste’s household was in bed
as they crept in through the stable entrance by the servants’ quarters.
Torrant followed Aylan down the hallway until Aylan turned around and rolled his eyes. “The guest bedroom is down this way, you dumb wank—Yarri’s room is up the stairs and to the immediate left.”
Torrant blinked and then flushed. “I…. You know, maybe I should just take the other guest bed,” he whispered, and Aylan smacked him upside the head.
“If you’re going to sleep in my room tonight, it’s going to be in my bed,” he hissed. “If you’re going to make up with the person you’re supposed to be with, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be tonight.” With firm hands, he turned Torrant around and gave him a little shove.
“Triane’s Son, my sainted arse,” he grumbled, shooing Torrant down the hallway. “More like Triane’s little tiny mewling infant fouling his nappies with his goose-hearted cowardice….”
Torrant looked over his shoulder at his friend, stuck out his tongue, and then soft-footed his way up the stairs to Yarri’s bedroom.
The next day he would see that, like the rest of the house, the walls were painted white, and there was a lovely, understated rug over fine hardwood floors. He would see the white, billowy curtains and the white bedframe, as well as the several brightly colored afghans and quilts Yarri brought in to break up all that unrelenting pale good taste.
Tonight, he only saw Yarri.
He used to watch her sleep when she was an infant. In fact, he had a clear memory of one sunny morning when her mother had propped her up on some pillows in a beam of sun coming in through the living room window. She’d been too young to even smile, but she had turned her wrinkled, alien face toward the window and stretched out her little spider fingers and monkey arms and had fallen asleep like that—arms outstretched, reaching for the sun.
Granted, they hadn’t done much sleeping, but during their two nights together, when they had slept, her arms had done the same reaching thing, but toward himself, stretching or folding or twisting, but always reaching to hold him, to touch him, as though he were her sunshine during the long, cold night.
This night, she had her face turned toward Triane’s light coming in through the window and her hands tucked against her chest, protecting her heart. Her eyelashes were matted and clumped, as though she had cried for a long time as she’d fallen asleep.
He was going to venture near and put his palm on her cheek when she awakened abruptly, and she was staring at him in the dark, with reddened, shiny eyes.
“Beloved?” Her voice was still hoarse, and he wondered how late she had waited for him, hoping he would show.
“Always,” he said softly, coming forward to touch her cheek like he’d planned. She captured his hand there and closed her eyes.
“You do mean to live, don’t you?” she asked softly, and he knelt near the bed in a crinkle of leather and a slight jangle of his sword and the heavy belt at his hips. He placed his face close enough to hers so they could feel each other’s breath and made sure her eyes were locked on his.
“Don’t ever doubt it.”
“I’m so scared for you, all of the time,” she confessed, and he was moved, terribly moved, because he had been certain that nothing scared her, ever.
“Don’t be scared for me now.” His thumb brushed her cheekbone, trailed down, found her pouty lower lip. His breath caught when it curved under his touch.
“Why’d you wait so long?” she asked, and he pulled back a little.
“Because I can’t tell you I’m sorry.”
She pushed up on an elbow and reached out to him, cupping his stubble-roughened chin in her palm. “I’m sorry,” she said instead. “I’m sorry—I should trust that you mean to live. I should know you wouldn’t sacrifice your brother’s life to make your lover happy. The things I love about you, I’ve known all my life. I shouldn’t forget them now.”
“How should you remember?” he asked, leaning into her touch as she’d leaned into his. “Two nights together—how does that make a girl sure of a lover?”
Yarri sat up in bed and moved her hands to his sword belt, and suddenly his clinking noises got louder, and then were punctuated by a big thump as the whole works fell to the ground.
“Let’s make it three,” she said, and stood and worked the clasp of the cloak at his throat with urgent fingers. “Let’s make it three nights, and then four, and then we’ll lose count, and then I’ll remember for….”
And then he captured her mouth in his, and the word “forever” was lost in the now, as they touched and touched and touched.
TORRANT AWOKE as a blue and frosty dawn blinked through the window and burrowed his face a little deeper into Yarri’s hair. Her body, all nude skin, softness, slickness, and warmth, was pressed backward to his front, and he adjusted his arm so his fingers lazily stroked her abdomen.
He wanted to freeze this moment in his heart, a lovely tropical fish in the depths of a frozen lake, or a seared etching on the page of his mind. He wanted this moment forever so he could take it out and look at it from every angle, see the texture of her skin under his hand, feel the perfect, dim light illuminating the curve of her neck, the glorious rusty-wood color of her hair, the mysterious shadow behind her shoulder blade, and taste the warm, purring contentment in his stomach. His soul was overwhelmed by the harmony of bells.
This moment was the reason for Triane to hang in the sky.
Then he felt it, under the flesh cupped in his palm, a tingling, a magic, a sweetness that made his heart flush and his skin chill with amazement and wonder.
He had been a midwife since his mother had first handed him a newborn baby—Yarri—and sat him in the corner. He had delivered many babies since and cared for countless women with that magic flourishing, growing gravid and fecund in the heart of their flesh. He could tell, from the moment the magic first tingled, if the life inside the glittering buzz-cloud was male, female, or not meant to be.
This cold Solstice morning, in the heart of his enemy’s land, he felt his beloved conceive.
He literally stopped breathing for a moment, caught up in the wonder of it, and when he did breathe, it was the harsh, ripping breath of a man coming up from an icy plunge into shock.
Yarri sighed, snuggled backward into his arms, and he buried his face into her hair, trying to squeeze back the tears that were sliding into his pillow.
Of course, he thought bitterly. Of course. Yarri would do this. Yarri, who was more Goddess thinking than gods’. Honor wouldn’t matter, and all her compassion would be aimed at the source of her joy.
He wasn’t sure whether to laugh bitterly or joyfully, and in the end, never did decide. He simply prayed to all the gods at once, weeping into his beloved’s hair, as he felt the division of cells, the rushing of blood, the rearrangement of matter in the universe that meant his beloved would live on in their commingled flesh.
They were having sons.
ELJEAN MOON-SHADOW looked at his father curiously. He was not a curious person and had always taken the yearly Goddess story at face value. He had never, until this version of it, put together the year of his birth with the year his father and mother had spent in Clough.
His companion—a pretty young man today, who smelled spicy, like blackberry bushes, and had shown signs of wanting to become a part of the family but who made Eljean feel old—tugged on his hand and looked carefully into his face.
“That was you?” the boy asked, and Eljean nodded. “Your father just called you a miracle!”
Eljean smiled, a complete, incorruptible smile, the kind that had brought girls and boys falling into his bed since he was first old enough to wild. In fact, since he was a little younger, if the truth be known. He looked at his father in all affection and wrapped his arm around his young companion, suddenly infused by the magic of the song as he had never been before.
“He’s always told us that,” he reassured. “All of his children are the children of joy.”
The young man grimaced, the remnants o
f an unhappy childhood in his sour expression. “We were always told we were the children of someone else.”
With a gentle laugh and a surge of passion and affection for his companion, Eljean wrapped his arm firmly around the young man’s shoulders and pulled him against his chest, then leaned down to nuzzle his ear. “Listen, then, mate—we’ll learn about miracles, right?”
“Right,” the young man said dreamily. “Absolutely….”
Eljean caught his mother watching him affectionately, hopefully, and he smiled at her, suddenly seeing her as a young girl making a desperate, foolhardy decision with hope and courage and not much else.
He gathered young Jan to his heart even closer and wondered that he hadn’t seen the resemblance between his young lover and his mother as a girl sooner. Jan snuggled backward, and Eljean watched his father with his mother’s brown eyes and felt a kinship for his parents he thought had skipped him over.
Mistakes—they had made mistakes and learned to live with them and love them more than life itself.
Eljean closed his eyes against the sweetness of the epiphany and listened to his father’s song with a wondering heart as it continued on.
Part XXI—The Moons in Spring
The Snow-Melt Convergence
TRIESTE STARED at the letter in her hand and wondered distantly if the winter snows had really returned or if her face had just gone cold.
“Trieste?” Yarri tapped her shoulder hesitantly. “Trieste—what’s wrong? It’s from Alec—it should be good news, right?”
The winter had been long and bleak. The successful delivery of Alec’s letter had been the first good thing the Goddess fighters—as Aerk had called them in an uncharacteristically serious moment—had seen since Torrant and Yarri’s reconciliation at Solstice.
Or so Yarri had thought, until Trieste had blanched snowflower pale and sat down abruptly as she read.
“They’re here.” Trieste brought a shaking hand to her mouth.
