Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  But Aldam had ripped the seam, and then the intact shirt—which he didn’t even question. When he saw the extent of the damage, he turned back to his brother, his anger filling his chest. “And if I had been with you, this would not be nearly so hard as it is right now!”

  And with that, he put his hands gently and firmly on the ravaged skin—the profanity of organs seeing the light of day, the gore and the fascia, and the horrifying mess of what had once been a perfect body—and glowed.

  The whole world stopped breathing to watch Aldam glow, to watch as the silver-gold-violet luminescence took over his hands and then his body, playing wildfire havoc with his fuzzy hair. They gaped as the light spread down to engulf Torrant. The glow stuttered for a moment, around the flesh and disaster of the stomach, but Aldam cried out, fighting as only Dueant could, and the glow took over, strong, sure, and glorious, boiling from both of them until Yarri cried out from the pain of looking at it.

  With her shout, it began to fade, and soon there was only Aldam, on his knees next to his brother, weeping a little with weakness and worry. Torrant’s wound was not completely healed, but the things that had fallen out were now back inside, and the jagged, ripped edges were now cleaner and would heal together with less trouble.

  Torrant gazed at his brother with wide eyes, filled with awe. “I’d forgotten how wonderful you are, Aldam,” he murmured, his breath easier than it had been in hours. “How could I have forgotten that?”

  “It’s your own damned fault,” Aldam snapped. “It’s what you get for leaving me behind.”

  There was a silence interrupted only by the whickering of tired horses under the arching oak trees. Usually, Yarri thought with a muzzy, wandering mind, Torrant would be issuing orders, organizing things to make them work. “We should get him inside,” she said, trying to make her voice strong, “and get the people situated. Alec said he won’t be able to protect us, and by tomorrow, there will be fighting outside the city. Anyone who gets through will be coming here, and they won’t be friendly.”

  She looked at Torrant, feeling the comforting weight of his head in her lap, and realized that for all her brave words, she might not, at the moment, have the strength to stand.

  “I can feel them,” he murmured, snuggling against her as Aldam fussed with his wound some more, getting him ready for transport.

  “Mmm?” He would live, she thought, the surge of relief battering at the insulated shell of peace she had built for herself over the terrible journey.

  “The babies…. I couldn’t feel them in your stomach before… but now—” He smiled. “—now I can hear their heartbeats.” Torrant closed his eyes again on this thought, fading into sleep, and Aldam caught Yarri’s darkening vision with his own tear-shot face.

  “He still might die,” Aldam said seriously, “but not just yet.”

  “Right,” Yarri nodded, the relief receding and leaving her naked. “But he might still live too, right? We can’t lose him, Aldam—you know that. Not and lose….” Bethen too. The family’s joys, the both of them, their celebration of all that was good. But she couldn’t say it. Could barely think it. And what was worse, as Zhane, Fredy, and Torrell hefted Torrant onto a piece of sailcloth to gurney him inside, she didn’t think she could stand and follow on her own two feet. How could she do this, how could she have the strength to be a vessel for his children when she didn’t have the strength to think about a future without him?

  “Don’t worry, Yarri,” Aldam murmured, scooping her up and scooting her out of the wagon in Torrant’s wake. “I have you. I’ll put you next to him—you two could never sleep right when you were apart, not even when you were children.”

  “Torrant’s right,” Yarri mumbled. “You really are amazing. How could we forget how amazing you are?”

  “I just hope I’m amazing enough,” Aldam wished mournfully, and then Yarri, too, was fast asleep.

  BOTH CLANS were absolutely silent for the part of the ballad when Triane’s Son was in eclipse. Through the years, Torrant’s and Aylan’s children had taken to noticing the terrible, skin-thrumming tension between the two men during this part. It had been their first lesson that some wounds never healed.

  Eljean’s companion was the only exception to the general silence. He turned in Eljean’s arms and looked in awe at the older man.

  “That’s who you were named for?” he asked with avid eyes. “You were named for the man who stayed behind in your father’s place?”

  Eljean shrugged, embarrassed. “So was Ellyot,” he said. “It’s not particularly noteworthy.”

  “Oh no,” said the boy. “You were named for someone special. You don’t understand—that’s everything.”

  Eljean’s twist of the lips reminded his father of his namesake. “It’s a hard thing to live up to,” he muttered in a moment of unexpected vulnerability.

  He looked across the sea of Moons and saw his father looking at his son with compassion and understanding, while his mother looked only at her husband. Torrant had always known the names had been a burden, but, as he’d told his sons on many occasions, it was important to remember who had made their existence possible.

  Eljean looked at his father with the same compassion and understanding as Torrant began the riff starting the last refrain of the ballad. His father never spoke of his own burdens, Eljean thought achingly. He would praise Aylan, Yarri, Aldam, and all the young regents, but he never spoke of the terrible scars on his body, or the fact that he never went without his shirt at the swimming hole. The ripping shrieks that would rend the house during the dark of the morning for the weeks following this song at Solstice were never mentioned, and neither was the fact that Aylan, sleeping peacefully at his father’s side, was the only presence that could calm him.

  By example and compassion, Triane’s Son had created a generation of pain-locked heroes. Eljean might resent it sometimes, but he never regretted knowing whose name he bore.

  Torrant looked at his son again and smiled kindly, and Eljean smiled back, tightening his embrace on his young companion. The music picked up, the bridge began, and the moons and the stars spun their dance through the melody again.

  Part XXII—Moons in Eclipse

  The Heart of the Stars’ Dark

  YAHNSTONE RATH could choose one of three window views from his rooms above the palace.

  The north window, the window in his bedroom, faced the mountains. That view made him shudder. They were so much bigger than he was and so brutal, so awesome. He hated that he couldn’t subdue them to his will, so he blocked that view with heavy curtains.

  The east-facing window looked out partially over the Regents’ Hall, but mostly over the town. He could see the Goddess ghettoes to his right, when he looked out that window, and sometimes, when he was making his plans to purge his beautiful, perfect city of that one last pestilence, he would stare out that window and will the scurrying vermin within to conform to his wishes. That was his planning window, but it wasn’t his favorite.

  The view he preferred looked out over the square. He could see the regents’ flats, the Regents’ Hall, the lawn in the center where his people gathered for announcements, and the stone canopy from which the unfortunate whore had bounced before landing on the steps of his palace.

  He hadn’t been able to shake that image, and as he stood now, studying the lights in the regents’ flats and trying to figure out who was home and who was out, he couldn’t come up with a satisfying answer as to why the thought of that bouncing body should trouble him. She had been a whore—and worse than that, she had been the whore who had contaminated his son.

  That was how he’d thought of Djali—contaminated—since Rath had seen the abomination of poetry Ellyot Moon had handed him. Djali had been contaminated by the filth of the ghettoes and the soil spewed by Ellyot Moon. His death was immaterial. From the moment Djali first touched Ellyot Moon’s hand in friendship, he had been contaminated, and that’s all there was to it.

  And now, that contaminat
ion had spread to Rath’s country.

  Oh, Rath had been sure that getting them out of his city was good enough. Dueance was the heart of learning, the shining jewel on his crown, showing the world that he had created a perfect place. Building the immolatorium for the Great Whore’s grunion should have erased them, removed their taint from his beautiful city like a spot from a shirt.

  But Triane’s Son, whoever Triane’s Son was, really, had changed all that.

  The secretary general entered behind Rath.

  The man had another name once—a real name, a name you would call a friend or at least an ally. Before Djali’s contamination, Rath might have remembered him. It was always useful to remember the ambitious and the ruthless.

  And the man had been useful—he had done what had needed to be done.

  But he had failed Rath in the matter of Djali, and Rath was not good at forgiveness. It was too late to remove the man from office, but Rath found it hard to speak to the man, to confide in him, and thus his name had simply faded from memory.

  But Rath was used to talking to people… someone… anyone in his apartments.

  He’d found himself calling for Ulvane this winter and had been relieved when none of the servants seemed to have heard him.

  He had formed a useful association with Dimitri, the young man who had been alienated from the young regents that summer. For a moment he contemplated having the secretary general call for him, and then he remembered the young man was dead.

  The secretary general cleared his throat discreetly. Oh yes—what to do about the perverted wastrel who had killed Dimitri. Rath remembered now.

  “His visitor is ready?” Rath pulled that bit of business from far away. He didn’t like thinking about visitors—especially the real regents, the ones who had let their weaker sons come in and pretend to the station—in his special apartments under the palace. In this particular case, it had been unavoidable.

  “Yes, King Consort,” replied the secretary general. “Are you sure we want to do this?”

  “The man claims to have killed another regent—”

  “And everybody says he was wounded first.”

  “Don’t interrupt me!” Rath snarled, startling even himself. He’d lost his composure. How odd. He swallowed, realigned his features for serenity, and tried to complete his thought. “I know he didn’t kill the two men in the square,” he said evenly. “The man is a flaming Whore’s pervert—everybody knows those people don’t have the stomach for killing. He’s a wailing girl, a faggot. It is not him I want. What I do care about is that he must know who did. And whoever killed those two, so quickly and so coolly, is either Triane’s Son or knows where the rebel is hiding.”

  The secretary general nodded, seeming to concede the point, and Rath had a moment to wonder at the rabbit fear on the man’s face. What did have the man so skittered? “I am aware of what we want from him,” said the sec/gen (as Dimitri had called him—oh, how that young man had been everything Rath had wanted in a protégé!), “but I am not sure if you realize how determined the regents are that he be freed. They are threatening an impeachment. In fact, they are threatening to hand your crown over to Alec of Otham within the week if you don’t release the young regent and Alec’s wife.”

  “I’ve heard.” Rath had heard, but he wasn’t sure he had heard right. The fact was, every time someone mentioned it—and it had been more than mentioned on the floor—his mind seemed to be elsewhere. Suddenly he was thinking about Ulvane and the smile on his face as they’d found him dead. Or the way that girl’s body had bounced off the stone canopy, and the shocking spray of crimson it had taken weeks to scrub off. Or the bloodstains on the song his son had written.

  He had no son.

  “Yes,” Rath said, because it seemed incumbent upon him to make some response, “I don’t think that will happen.”

  “But, sir….”

  Rath didn’t lose his temper this time. He simply smiled, a benign, munificent smile that radiated peace and complete satisfaction with the way the country was being run. “You don’t understand….” Rishard. That was the man’s name. How odd—they’d been working as a team for the last twenty years. “Rishard—you don’t understand. It won’t happen, because it can’t. Because I’ve been working on this project my whole life. The country won’t be taken from me now. It’s simply an impossibility.”

  Rath smiled again, and the secretary general—Rishard—began to back away slowly. “Alec of Otham’s men have the city surrounded,” Rishard said, his colorless eyes awash in his iron gray brows and his iron gray hair. “There are rumors that they are fighting in the streets of the ghettoes with the brigands there. Sir, there’s rioting in the streets. It’s all we can do to contain it.”

  “Why would there be rioting in the streets?” Rath frowned. “They’re the Whore’s mewling babies. They don’t fight back!”

  “The thing is, sir—I think they’re gone.”

  “Gone,” repeated Rath blankly.

  “Yes,” replied the secretary general fearfully. “The only people in the ghettoes now are the criminals we were hoping would kill off the rest of the populace. We’re not sure where they’ve gone, but only the brigands remain.”

  “Good,” responded Rath absently, although it was not good at all. It was just that… when he looked out the window just so, he could still see the way her jaw caught the concrete, her neck snapped, and the bones of her arm buckled and thrust through her skin.

  The giant snowcat that followed her down hadn’t been half as awful as watching her skull cave in.

  “Good,” Rath repeated. “They’re gone, all gone. All we have to do now….” He turned that unpleasant, vacant serenity on the secretary general—what was the man’s name again?—once more. “All that’s left to do is find out about Triane’s Son, have someone just say that he’s Ellyot Moon. Just once. And we’ll be perfect.”

  “Yes, sir.” The secretary general literally shrank out of his presence. Rath continued to gaze serenely out the south-facing window, into the darkness of the lawn and the brightness of the lights where the regents, his regents, awaited their king’s next order. There used to be a snowcat’s skin on the floor of this room. He’d had it removed—he couldn’t remember why.

  To his left, in the east, there was an orange glow shattered by the facets of the thickly paned glass. To the left, in the east, his city was burning.

  Rath maintained his serene vigil into the regents’ square.

  Brothers-In-Arms

  TRIESTE SAT, shivering, on the cool, dry stone floor, several stories under Rath as he contemplated his mockery of utopia. Her arms were wrapped so tightly around her knees that she almost couldn’t feel her fingers.

  She wished desperately for her knitting.

  She might have remembered to bring it, actually, but they had… they had… they had….

  Eljean was sitting next to her, and his arm came around her shoulders in comfort. She leaned into him, as she often had in the past few days, and he kissed her hair like an older brother.

  “I’m sorry about Suse,” he said for the thousandth time, and for the thousandth time she nodded and closed her eyes so tightly her head hurt. The little bit of bread she’d eaten gnawed like a rat in her stomach.

  Oh Goddess. They’d killed him. All he’d done was open the door, trying to preserve the civility and the innocence—oh, they were innocent. They had all been innocent, in their quest to keep the people safe, to keep Torrant safe. And Suse, in all that innocence, had opened the door….

  And been struck in the heart with a sword while the guard laughed at how easily he was killed.

  She’d been numb then, as she and Eljean had been taken.

  Torrant’s fate had been so tenuous, so in question, that she couldn’t bear to think about it.

  Alec’s presence had been so near and yet so far—a taunting shadow on the outside of her consciousness.

  Aylan and Starren—oh, there, she had hope. Hope that they’
d make it home in time to see the only mother she’d ever known die, but it had been hope all the same, because they carried her heart with them.

  But Suse… plain, practical Suse, who had dealt with everything from moving her possessions to scheduling her appointments…. Oh sweet Dueant, what would she tell the man’s children? He had volunteered because his family loved her and loved Alec, and she hadn’t thought, no one had thought….

  Oh Goddess, if they could kill her Suse, her friend… then anybody she cared about could die.

  Eljean started talking to her, as he had for the past three days, and she listened because he was funny and dry and because he cared for her and she for him. Plain old uncomplicated brotherly love, right there. It was gorgeous, she thought fuzzily, after the terrible undercurrents between Torrant and… well, anybody who loved him.

  It was hard to love Torrant Shadow and not get caught up in the blinding tangle that was the sweet boy she’d loved at university and the grim, magnetic general who had so successfully undermined a government. The way his body and his smile seemed to attract everyone…. Eljean’s complete physical indifference to her was a soothing relief, she thought now, leaning into his simple, animal comfort.

  And Eljean loved her like a sister, and that was nice too.

  There was a scraping and a disturbance from the stone hallway in front of their cell, and they both looked warily up.

  “You’ve got a visitor.” The guard sneered. “Triane’s Son.”

  Eljean wrinkled his nose at the man—he was a short, thin, pox-ridden runt who had delighted in mashing their bread between his dirty hands as he’d served it to them and had stayed in the room blatantly to watch Trieste relieve herself in the overflowing bucket in the corner. Eljean had started standing in front of her as a shield, and once, in a fit of supreme impatience, had dropped his own trousers and waved his manhood around, saying, “Here—watch me take a piss, why don’t you! Oh, I forgot—that’ll get you crucified!”