by Amy Lane
And then the girl moved in Aylan’s embrace, and she murmured his name, turning toward his chest. “Take me home, Music,” she said, her eyes half open.
“Right, Littlest,” Aylan responded automatically, dropping a kiss into her hair. He looked over his shoulder and met Torrant’s eyes. Then he touched the hand in Starren’s hair with his own. It was that look again, the one Eljean couldn’t define. The one that spoke not of sex, but of intimacy, of a brotherhood that had nothing to do with blood.
Eljean’s eyes were caught by the damned ugly slaughterhouse cloak on Aylan’s shoulders, and he shuddered horribly.
Then again, maybe blood had everything to do with it.
Aylan took a deep, choking breath. “I need to go move those last families,” he said with an apologetic smile at Eljean. “How about I go do that now and gather the last of my stuff and come spend the night here.”
“Good,” Torrant agreed. “Rest up.” He looked at Aerk and Keon, both of whom looked like years instead of miles of bad road. “If I’m not mistaken, it’s my turn on the streets tonight. Am I right?”
They sighed wearily. “Not really,” Aerk muttered, “but you’ll go anyway. Marv and Jino should be out in an hour. Meet at the tailor’s, right?”
Coryal, the friendly tailor, had left earlier that month with his lover, the two of them miserable at leaving their homes but clasping hands joyfully, even as they were swallowed up by the blackness of the tunnel behind them. His empty shop had been a convenient place for meetings—near the market street, not far from the ghettoes, but back off the main thoroughfare and away from prying eyes.
Torrant sighed, one hand still touching Aylan’s in Starren’s hair, one hand still locked with Yarri’s. “I’ll be there. Should I bring dinner?”
Keon shook his shaggy head—an anomaly, since although he didn’t like to groom, he also didn’t like his hair long either. “With Marv? Bring food. Always bring food. Now is anybody going to tell us what Stanny’s little sister is doing here, or do we get to hear that on our way through the tunnels tomorrow?” Keon and Aerk met eyes and shuddered. Of all the parts of the plan that had been difficult to carry out, they were looking forward to that part the least. But for today, Yarri smiled and relinquished Torrant’s hand, moving toward them with a gait not yet hampered by the weight she’d put on her hips.
“Not much to tell,” she said with a dry look at Torrant. “Just the Moon family madness taking over at the most inopportune times.”
Trieste, who had remained quiet at the end of the table, watched the interaction between Torrant and Aylan with an indefinable melancholy. Torrant caught her eyes in question, and she smiled a little. “Spend much more time with us, and you too will be throwing rocks out of trees to peg the unwary soldier!” Her voice was animated, but Torrant caught her eyes again, and again, that terrible, tragic look.
“You’re too sensible for that, Pretty Girl,” he said gently, and her return smile was bitter.
“If I’m so sensible, Torrant Shadow, what am I doing in this city, at this time, hoping my beloved doesn’t kill us all?” She shook off any attempt he could have made to reply and started ladling stew from the tureen at the table before putting it on a tray for the boys. She wanted to feed the regents in the sitting room this evening because all of them—even Eljean—were looking so tired that she was pretty sure they would fall asleep where they sat when they were done with their food. Her heart was so full of worry and care for this new, war-forged family, that she wasn’t sure how she would have answered him anyway.
The Ghost in the Blade
WHEN STARREN grew older, she and Aylan would spend years debating who was to blame for what happened next. Aylan would reassure her—again and again—that he had been long overdue to run into a ghost from his past in the shitehole that was Dueance, and he would partly be right.
But Starren, who would never forgive herself for deserting her family when they needed her most, would insist that it was her fault as well. If he hadn’t been hurried, fretting over her and the dire decision to leave Torrant behind, she would say calmly, it never would have happened. If he hadn’t been so terribly rattled by the sudden change in circumstances, he would have remembered all the cautions Torrant had nagged him into using to keep himself safe.
He at least would have been wearing a hat or kerchief over his bright gold hair as he walked through the regents’ side of town, so that Merrick, the man who’d betrayed his own lover to suicide, wouldn’t have recognized Aylan as he walked by.
Merrick had been married to Essa for the past two years. As he came staggering out of the tavern, he was coarsely bloated and red-faced from too much drink, too quickly, from the time the woman he’d truly loved had been found clutching her dead brother, lifeless in a pool of their combined blood. Rumor had it that Merrick didn’t go home unless he was so drunk that dark-skinned, pretty Essa looked like pale, plain Brina, but a question about Brina was likely to land a person a ham-sized fist in the face, so mostly that was just rumor.
But Merrick knew Aylan—at least, he had known him during the time Aylan spent in Dueance. Merrick had always been vaguely suspicious of him—Aylan was beautiful, although it was a fact about himself he frequently forgot—but Brina had never looked Aylan’s way. Maybe it had been because Aylan had been sleeping with most of the young landholders at the time—usually in groups—or maybe it had been because, foolish girl that she was, she had honestly loved the man who had denounced her in public on the arm of his present wife. Either way, Brina had been Aylan’s friend, and he’d treasured her and had loathed Merrick proportionately, so the two men had never gotten to be friends.
But as Merrick came staggering out of the pub with his arm slung around Dimitri, of all people, he most certainly recognized Aylan when they ran into each other. Aylan literally tripped on his shoes.
“Brina…,” Merrick muttered dimly as he and Dimitri emerged. “Brina left me… left me for….”
Aylan’s pansy blue eyes met Merrick’s murky, bloodshot eyes, and suddenly Merrick had an answer to that sentence.
He jerked himself out of Dimitri’s hold and came plowing after Aylan like a lumbering rhinoceros—only Aylan didn’t realize he was horned.
About the time Dimitri said, “Dammit, Merrick, put the knife down!” Aylan heard the leather of his cloak rip and felt the equivalent of a cat scratch across his belly. He lunged backward and looked at Merrick with his mouth open, as Merrick held up a knife dripping with borrowed gore.
Everybody around the tavern—passersby, Dimitri, Merrick—all looked incredulously at the shallow scratch on Aylan’s pale stomach, and Aylan felt shock freeze his veins.
Torrant.
Dimitri blinked at the dripping blade again, and far off on the other end of the marketplace, Aylan thought he heard the howl of a wild animal, attacked by an enemy he could not see.
Oh gods…. Torrant.
He didn’t realize his own knife was out until he’d slashed Merrick’s throat, and while Dimitri was still gasping in bemusement, Aylan slashed his throat as well. And then he was running too fast toward Trieste’s to see their wounds bloom and spurt blood. He had cleared the next block and disappeared into the alleyways before the two dead men fell spasming on the ground.
In less time than it took the rumor wind to cross the city, a contingent of guards came howling from the consort’s palace, swarming the alleyways by the tavern, banging doors, swearing, searching. Aylan ran, hunted by enemies who didn’t know his face, until he came crashing through Trieste’s front door. He slammed the big oaken double door shut behind him and looked around wildly, hardly seeing Yarri or Trieste or even Starren as they gathered around him.
“Where is he?” he demanded, his eyes rolling wildly around the entryway. “Where is he?”
There could be no question as to whom Aylan was asking for.
“Aylan….” Yarri ventured forward and tried to take his hands. “Aylan—you know where he is. What happened? Why are you so…. O
h… oh gods… oh Goddess…. Torrant!”
Yarri and Aylan sank slowly to their knees as he held out his cloak in front of him, the rent in it wide enough to fit two hand spans, front to back.
The inside edges of the torn leather were pouring a relentless river of blood onto the cream-colored wood at their feet.
TORRANT’S YOWL had not been in Aylan’s head after all.
Jino and Marv heard it while walking through the marketplace, right after Jino told Marv that he was sleeping with Marv’s sister.
The two of them had grown up on adjoining farms and had both come to the city together—voluntarily. They believed that stepping into the world of the regents would be a powerful, heroic sort of thing to do, and after watching the viciousness and cowardice of the politicians their fathers dealt with, they had wanted a plan for how to grow into strong men.
Marv was his best friend, his brother of the heart. After meeting Aldam this fall and spring and watching how he and Torrant, even from a distance, had worried about the other’s good opinion, Jino had learned firsthand how fierce a love that had not a thing to do with lovers and everything to do with family could truly be. Marv was his brother, and Jino didn’t want to betray him. In short, he had been worried.
But not even Marv’s bad opinion could have kept him away from Kerree.
After that tumultuous dance and Trieste and Yarri’s subsequent rise in the social scene of Dueance, Jino and Kerree had run into each other more and more often. The fifth or so time they’d met in Trieste’s parlor, Jino finally faced the tigress in the den, so to speak, and asked her when she would ever forgive him for their one shared kiss in a shaded alcove behind a crowded dance floor.
He never would have had the nerve to do it, if he hadn’t watched Torrant come down to Solstice breakfast with Yarri on his arm. If they could make up, could love each other so completely after what seemed such a betrayal of her faith, couldn’t he ask the woman who had fascinated him since their shared childhood why she seemed to loathe the sight of him?
Kerree’s answer had been more surprising and more terrifying than he had ever dared to dream.
I’ll forgive you, Jino, when you repeat it instead of wandering into the night to bed a pretty body with a forgettable mind.
They had slipped away then and kissed underneath Trieste’s stairs—and behind the townhouse, and in the stables, and everywhere there was a friendly shadow and conspiratorial darkness to house them. And then they had done more than kiss.
More often than not, when Jino ran late to the Regents’ Hall, or to walk the streets with Marv, he was coming from Kerree’s bed, lost in her strong, open smile, the wildness of her springy hair, and the depth and breadth of her sharp, intelligent heart.
Every time he left her, she would kiss him fiercely, tell him to be careful, and tell him to please, for the sake of all the gods and the Goddess, take care of himself and of her goofy, beloved brother. Kerree had seen, even from the dance, that anyone whirled in the frenzy that swept around Ellyot Moon in gale force would need protection.
At that moment, Jino felt like Kerree’s good opinion and love were protection enough. On this slushy, grim, early-spring day, surrounded by ruined businesses, vacant buildings lining the marketplace, and frightened citizens who had none of the arrogance they’d shown in the innocent summer, Jino also felt foolish and naïve to say a thing like that to his dearest friend.
What he did say was “Uhm… you know, your sister and I are… sort of… you know….”
Marv looked at him to answer and barely got out of the way of a cart and horse without getting run over. He batted at Jino’s hands as his brother-of-the-heart pulled him to safety. “I know what?” he sputtered with a final slap for good measure. “What are you trying to tell me?”
Jino started to speak with his hands, not sure what they were saying but hoping it was more intelligent than what was coming out of his mouth. “Your sister and I!” Jino’s small, pretty features scrunched up, his apple cheeks for once not popping their customary dimple. He took off his leather wide-brimmed hat and ran his hand over the once-curly hair he had skull-trimmed over the long, brutal winter. Then he took a deep breath and tried again.
“We’re… you know!” His fingertips meshed and separated and he prayed that this time, just once, Marv would get what he was trying to say without a diagram.
“Holding hands?” Marv asked blankly. His own hair had grown out this winter, the tight, wavy curls becoming longer and fuzzier over his head and under his hat. He hated it long, but like Keon, had lost the time to give to even minimal grooming. Unlike Jino, since his own beloved was many farms away, he really had no incentive to even keep it short.
Jino shrugged with a sigh and spread his hands a little wider. “Unnhh…,” he said unintelligibly, and then…. Well, it wasn’t exactly a smile. His teeth were together and his lips were back, but his expression was definitely not a smile.
“Well, I know you’re holding hands at least…,” Marv reasoned, nodding in time to his friend’s encouraging expression.
“Yes.” Jino kept nodding, and Marv grinned slyly.
“And I know you’re holding hands because you usually hold hands before you go at it like rabbits under Triane’s skirts!”
Jino dropped his hands. “What?” he demanded. “You made me go through all of that when….”
“Did you think I didn’t know?” Marv laughed. “I’m not that dim! Kerree, right?” he asked, his brown, handsome face skeptical.
“Yes, Kerree!” Jino shot back, disgruntled. “I’m not that much of a man whore!”
Marv laughed—a welcome sound, one that hadn’t changed at all from that bright summer day when they’d had the new regent to coffee. “Well, you’re welcome to her—as long as you don’t break her heart!” His grin showed off his slightly crooked front teeth.
Jino shook his head and scrubbed his face. “I’m not planning to,” he murmured as he stepped carefully around a deep pothole filled with melted snow and horse dung. Marv was not so lucky—he fell immediately into it, soaking his foot to his ankle, and Jino almost bent double laughing.
“Laugh all you want, you wank,” Marv grumbled. “If we stay at Trieste’s tonight, you know you’re going to have to share a room with these trousers as they dry.”
“Actually,” Jino ventured thoughtfully, “I was sort of hoping…. I mean, now that you know and we don’t have to hide it—from you, anyway….”
“Oh sweet Triane’s dancing shoes!” Marv swore, shaking his head. “You are so hamstrung—and by my sister! I mean, Kerree is my favorite sister and all, but… but we grew up together! You’ve got your pick of every girl in the city—and you’ve picked quite a lot of them….” Marv was hopping on his toes, as he tended to do when he spoke with any sort of passion, even through a squelching boot.
Jino, who had a knack of sitting back in stillness and space, stood on the side of the marketplace street and looked at his friend until he grew still as well.
“And the only girl I really want, and I think it’s for forever, is her, mate. Your father can go stuff himself—but I need to know we have your blessing on this one.”
Marv grinned that crooked-toothed grin again and socked Jino in the arm, taking a cuff in return. The two of them mock sparred, right there in the city street, for all the earth as though they hadn’t killed to exhaustion that winter, as though the world they’d grown up in hadn’t grown blackness like a mold that they’d been bleaching out with blood for months.
“If you have any babies, you’ll have to name them for me, right?” Marv chortled, ducking Jino’s next punch.
“Only the girl ones!” Jino returned, and he caught Marv squarely in the shoulder, he was laughing so hard.
And that was when the snowcat’s scream echoed off the crumbling brick-and-wood buildings and walls surrounding the city. Women gave muffled shrieks, children stilled their crying, and men began to hustle their families along in an attempt to get home in
the waning light. The city had heard that sound too many times this winter to not know that it boded ill for someone.
Marv and Jino dropped their playing and went tearing off down the marketplace, looking for Coryal’s vacant store.
That’s where they found him, in cat form, whimpering in the corner of the alleyway behind the tailor’s boarded-up store where they had assumed he would meet them, even though it wasn’t his night to patrol.
He saw them and snarled, curling further around himself, and Jino fought the urge to vomit as he saw the cat’s entrails mixing in the rancid spring mud of the alleyway, leaving surprisingly little blood in their wake.
The high-pitched, resonating yrowl sounded again, bouncing off the brick walls around them, and the two young men looked at each other, their options playing across their faces.
If they didn’t get Torrant to change, and do it soon, either the wounded snowcat would kill them, or the consort’s guards would find them and finish the job, just for being with a creature so obviously magical.
Jino swallowed and swallowed again, ran his fingers through his skull-trimmed hair, and dropped to a crouch in front of the side of Ellyot Moon he knew the least.
“You remember me, Torrant?” he murmured. “You remember? You’ve changed in front of me before. I’ve seen you—I’ve seen you a couple of times. You scared the piss out of me the first time you changed only partway. Did I ever tell you that? It was easier to see you as one or the other—but seeing you as both, in the same body… and your eyes change. Can you look at me now, brother? Can you smell that I’m your friend? We’ve killed together and wept together. Come on, brother. Let me see your eyes….”
The intelligent, panicked gaze that turned toward Jino’s light brown eyes was a terrifyingly bright Goddess blue.
Torrant saw the fear in the young regent’s fine-boned, handsome face and fought back the urge to slash out at him just because he was breathing. He’d heard the word “smell” and trusted, for a moment, the soft, fearful voice coming from the prey in front of him. He curled back his whiskers and breathed, over the stench of his own blood and intestines, over the gagging perfume of his own animal fear and then… there it was.
