Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  The man had run away, genuinely frightened of the threat, and Trieste had been laughing so hard she’d almost missed the bucket.

  But she had also been incredibly grateful. Eljean seemed such a private man, and he might have worn his heart on his sleeve, but he tried so hard to cradle that sleeve against his chest and keep it from any taint or stain that threatened.

  That he’d had the courage to love Triane’s Son seemed to have been the one truly brave act in his entire life.

  Trieste could identify with that. If she hadn’t had the courage to love Torrant Shadow, at least for a moment in her life, she never would have known her love for Alec—so much bigger, in the way of a woman and a man—was real.

  The guard was still there, still sneering, and Eljean looked at him mildly. “Oh lucky you”—he rolled his eyes, and Trieste took her cue and arched her brows in response—“you got a bribe. Go spend that in the ruins your king has left of the marketplace, why don’t you? Maybe you can even do it with your skin intact!”

  The little man shuffled away in his soiled black-and-teal livery, and Trieste looked at Eljean, who shrugged.

  “I have an idea,” he said in response to her tacit question, “but if it is who I think it is, we’re no better off than we were before.”

  He didn’t have a chance to finish, because their visitor entered.

  “Triane’s purple tits,” Eljean swore, his eyebrows arched with a complete lack of surprise, “look who’s come to tell me I’ve failed him yet again.”

  The tall man under the cloaked hood gave a smile that Trieste could only describe as “forced.” “You exaggerate, Eljean” came the smooth reply, and the hood was swept back. Trieste had to blink, because even among the Moons, such a family resemblance was shocking. If there was a trace of Eljean’s mother in his narrow, plain features, you couldn’t see it by Eljean’s father.

  Except, Trieste thought unhappily, she hadn’t thought of Eljean as being plain and unlovely, ever. Eljean had a thoughtfulness about the eyes and an inclination to smile that obviously never touched this older man’s face.

  “Absolutely,” Eljean agreed, his voice as bored as possible. “It’s all my fault, even when it isn’t. Isn’t that right?”

  The man pursed his grim mouth. “I’m not here to argue with you. You know they’re going to torture you tomorrow, don’t you?”

  Eljean blanched. “The thought had crossed my mind,” he said with a faint smile and admirable insouciance.

  “Then what are you doing here?” His father’s voice was harsh, Trieste thought, and she shrank against Eljean, putting her arm around his waist while being careful of the untreated flesh wound at his stomach.

  “Haven’t you heard? I’m Triane’s Son.” Eljean’s smile widened, as though the delirious idea of him being the infamous Triane’s Son was too good not to share.

  “Don’t be stupid—everyone knows that Ellyot Moon is Triane’s Son. All you have to do is tell us that, and tell us where he is….”

  An indefinable emotion crossed Eljean’s face, and he bent for a moment and kissed Trieste’s brow, then gently disengaged himself from her and stood up to move toward the rusty bars of their cell.

  He winced as he moved—the wound at his stomach was mildly infected, and the puffy edges of it tended to catch on the blood-stiffened fabric of Torrant’s old shirt. Trieste had recognized it their second day in prison. It was one of the lot she’d had made up for Torrant when she’d realized he and Aylan couldn’t be talked out of the mad enterprise of going to Clough.

  “Ellyot Moon,” Eljean said now, “is a kind, valiant man. He has done nothing but help the sick and the hungry and try to convince Clough of her terrible folly. If you want to torture someone, if you need a scapegoat for your precious burning city, you’re better off torturing me. It’s not like I’m an asset to you anyway, is it, Father?”

  The senior member of the House of Grace blinked, and Trieste recognized that assessing, calculating look. It was a look Alec had often when dealing with a diplomat or a fractious landowner. It was a look Lane or Bethen Moon would be ashamed to turn upon their own child.

  “I’m sorry, Eljean,” said his father. “I didn’t mean to try to force you to do anything you didn’t want. It’s just that—” He made a noxious attempt at a winning smile that didn’t fit the contours of the narrow face. “—I know how much you don’t like pain.”

  Eljean’s lips twisted. “Yes, Farrar”—he savored the taste of his father’s given name like wormwood—“everyone knows how much I don’t like pain.”

  With a care that the savaged fabric didn’t seem to warrant, he separated the torn edges and showed off his puffy, red wound. “I’m surprised I haven’t broken into a puling, whimpering traitor already.”

  Farrar Grace stepped back in surprise. “I-I wasn’t aware that you’d already been wounded…,” he stammered. “They-they assured me that you hadn’t, that you wouldn’t have….”

  Eljean just shook his head. “There was a time,” he began conversationally, “when I would have done anything to please you, you know. I tried to ride horses, but I really think I hate the beasts. I learned how to hunt—even though it nauseated me. I followed you and Quent to the ends of the lands of the three moons. And you turned your back on me for a kiss.”

  Now it was Eljean’s father who blanched. “You can’t hold that against me,” he murmured. “Eljean… it was the stableboy….”

  “He was killed by Rath’s men in the massacre at Moon Hold. Did you know that?” Eljean’s tone never altered, but the underlying import of his words made the nonchalance the more horrible. “Yes—he was probably going to handfast to Tal Moon in the spring. If either of them had lived. You must be so proud, Father—two faggots in one mighty swing of your king. And now you’ll be rid of a third. By all means, go and tell the other cowards who hide in the hills and let their country be turned into a charnel house for the insane. What a patriotic citizen you are, getting rid of the Goddess’s children one man at a time!”

  Eljean’s voice had risen to a snarl at the end, and Trieste was surprised—and a little relieved—to see the elder Grace flinch and step backward.

  “I wasn’t trying to get rid of you, Eljean,” he muttered, shaken.

  “You weren’t trying to father me, either.”

  Eljean turned his back and slid down the bars of the cell, then put his arms out for Trieste to come and sit with him. She did, without question, because for the last three days that quiet, human contact had been the thing that kept them both sane.

  But Farrar Grace wasn’t through with his son yet. He sank to a crouch so his lips were even with his son’s ear. “Eljean—I can’t save you from the torture if you don’t talk… I can’t. But here.” He found Eljean’s hand as it rested at his side and pressed something into it. “These will take away most of the pain, my son. You don’t have to suffer needlessly—not for this villain who has come and poisoned this city against its king.”

  Eljean picked up the little paper packet and looked sadly inside. “May I ask you something, Father?”

  “If you wish.”

  Trieste risked a glance over her shoulder and saw that the tall man with Eljean’s features and gray in his hair had already stood and moved toward the dim stone hallway.

  “That morning behind the stables, if one person—even one person—had whispered to you that being born on the path of the Goddess was not such a bad thing after all, that it didn’t make me less of a person or less of a man or—hell—even less of a political pawn, would you still have loved me like a son?”

  Trieste saw a raw emotion—the first moment of sincerity in the entire meeting—cross Farrar Grace’s face.

  “Perhaps,” he said softly.

  “Good,” Eljean replied, still not looking behind him. “It will make the pain worth it.”

  With that, he crumpled the little paper packet in his fist and pitched it into the privy bucket with a sickening “plop.”

&nbs
p; Trieste waited until his father disappeared down the hallway to turn to Eljean in a panic. “Eljean, that was…. If they’re going to hurt you tomorrow, you want….”

  Eljean kissed her forehead absently, his gaze still on a distant, long-ago day under a translucent green canopy of trees. The boy who wanted to be his first lover looked at him with such intensity, such purity in his dark eyes, and the whole world seemed to stop for the soft touch of their lips.

  “The night before my father caught me kissing my first crush,” Eljean said, his voice in that other still and perfect place, “my father gave me my first taste of red wine. Wine—alcohol, anything that numbs the senses—makes me talk the moons to shame. Did you know that?”

  “No,” Trieste replied, her heart in her throat. “I didn’t.”

  “I told him about Kith’s dark eyes and how beautiful they were. And the next morning, Farrar just happened to be there, by the muck pile, his boots touching that spot on his property for probably the first time in his life, when Kith touched his lips to mine.”

  “Oh Goddess, Eljean….”

  “He wasn’t trying to spare me, Pretty Girl.” Eljean smiled a little, using Torrant’s nickname. It felt right, he thought, because her heart was as pure and as pretty as her elegant, oval-shaped face. “He was just trying to get me to talk. I’m a coward, sweetheart, but I’ve decided that there are some things even I won’t do.”

  Trieste wrapped her arms gingerly around his middle and wept soundlessly on his chest. “Eljean, my friend, I think you are many things. A coward is not among them.”

  They sat like that, quietly comforting each other, until they dropped off to sleep on the cold stone floor.

  But Eljean’s father was not their last visitor that long night.

  A furtive sound behind them woke Trieste. Eljean had lapsed into a fever dream, his wound troubling him more than he cared to admit. She imagined he must have picked that little personality quirk up from Torrant, and the thought made her heart hurt. Oh, Torrant, you must survive.

  Stretching enormously, she stood and turned and found herself face to face with her husband.

  “Oh Goddess!” She threw herself at the bars. Alec was there, and for a moment they worked at touching hands to shoulders and lips to cheeks between the narrow metal, their movements too hungry for words.

  “What in the stars’ dark are you doing here?” she demanded after a frantic kiss. “Oh gods, beloved—I’ve missed you!”

  “What am I doing here?” he asked, the laughter in his voice edged with anger and hysteria at once. “What are you doing here, Trieste? Aylan told me you wouldn’t leave. They were saddling your mare and everything, and you wouldn’t leave. How could you….”

  “Shhh,” she murmured, her hand dropping to Eljean’s head. Eljean jerked under her touch, and he shook himself and turned, standing as he did so.

  He didn’t have to be as perceptive as Triane’s Son to gauge the way Trieste was touching the man through the bars and know he was her husband. He took a few steps back and bowed awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.

  “Don’t be,” Trieste interposed. “Alec, meet Eljean. He… he bought time for Aylan and Torrant to get away. Torrant….” Oh gods….

  “He was alive when I saw him last,” Alec confirmed, “and he was probably happier than Aylan.”

  “He took Starren to Eiran, yes?” Please, Aylan, please, for once in your miserable wanking life put someone’s heart above your own honor….

  “Yes,” Alec affirmed, and Trieste’s smile on that score did something to ease the ache in his chest. “Good,” he said with some relief. “If everybody’s accounted for, then I’m going to get you out of here.”

  “Both of us, right?” Trieste looked behind her to Eljean, their faces lighting up. When she looked back at Alec, he was not nearly so happy. “Both of us, beloved, right?”

  “I can get you, Pretty Girl,” he said with an apologetic grimace at Eljean. “Rath hardly knows you’re here. But he’s obsessed with this one.” He nodded in Eljean’s direction. “Seems to feel that he’s the key to identifying Ellyot Moon as Triane’s Son. I’m sorry, Eljean—if I pulled you out, there would be a bloodbath, and my men aren’t in position to stop it.”

  “I understand,” Eljean said tonelessly, and Trieste’s sharp look in his direction was met with a cavalier shrug. Trieste wasn’t buying it.

  “But why?” Trieste looked at Eljean’s face again, so carefully schooled to be happy for her when she deserted him. “They must know by now that Eljean didn’t kill those men in the square. Aylan looks nothing like him, and Ellyot Moon looks nothing like Aylan!”

  Alec shook his head. “Aylan? How is it that possible? I thought it must be T—Ellyot,” Alec ground out with a meaningful roll of the eyes.

  “The cloak,” Eljean said politely, and Trieste shook her head in purely feminine anger.

  “Triane’s Son,” she said deliberately, “made sure he received all of Aylan’s wounds.”

  “Oh gods.” Alec blanched and actually sat down. “Oh gods, no wonder….” His eyes fell on Eljean’s self-inflicted wound. “All of you, a lot of damned martyrs, all vying for some sort of award for pigheaded selflessness…. Trieste, let me call the guard, and we can leave all of this behind.”

  Trieste took one more look at Eljean’s expressionless face and thought of the treacherous little tablets, dissolving in a bucket of piss. “I can’t,” she choked and shook her head. “Oh Goddess, I just can’t.”

  Alec swore. “Don’t be silly, Trieste—your friend—he understands. The things they might do to you…. Rath’s mad. You know that, right? He doesn’t even acknowledge that his city is burning. He… he’ll have you hurt because you know Ellyot Moon. He’ll have you hurt because you were foolish enough to stay.” He wanted to roar. He wanted to weep. Oh Triane bugger herself, he wanted to break down the door of that terrible cell, throw her over his shoulder, and haul her to safety.

  She regarded him miserably, her entire face a study of agonized refusal.

  “Please, Trieste?” He should have been ashamed at the humility in his voice to try to cajole one small woman to his will. Oh Oueant’s flaming piss, he was the king of bloody Otham, and he was on his knees begging in a filthy prison cell where he’d come to claim his wife.

  “No,” she said gently, crouching down to take his hands in hers. “No, beloved. I can’t leave him. It wouldn’t be right….”

  “Trieste!” Eljean finally protested, at the same time her husband said, “Beloved!”

  “No,” she said again, this time with a little bit of kind laughter in her voice. “No.” She shook her head at both of them. “You men, you think that this ‘brothers-in-arms’ thing is just for you, don’t you? Well, you’re wrong.” She sniffed daintily into her sleeve. “All winter, Alec, all winter I tended their wounds. I watched them go out on the streets and risk their lives—yes, Eljean, even you, although you deny it. Rath had his guards out for three days running once. Three days, Torrant and Aylan fought on the streets with no rest, no food. We had to sneak their mattress over the patio and destroy it, because it was soaked through with blood when the two of them finally returned.”

  Her fine-boned, delicate woman’s hands gripped the dank iron bars in front of her as her memory made them tight. “The regents—Eljean and his friends? They stood up, and they joined that fight. It was insanity, Alec—it was seven men to an army, and the deepest wounds they suffered were the people they couldn’t save. Yarri and I, we went to teas and we played politics and we worried, every day and every night, that they wouldn’t be there for dinner, and I tell you, beloved, that I may not love them like I love you, but I love them.”

  She looked behind her at Eljean, and his small smile almost made it worth it. It mattered, this gesture of loyalty. It was, perhaps, the only moment of family Eljean had enjoyed in his entire life.

  She continued on with increasing conviction. “I love them all, and I may not be a man with a sword
, but I won’t desert them, just like they wouldn’t desert each other. I’m sorry, beloved. I’m so sorry….” Her voice broke in earnest, and she huddled on the floor, sobbing into her husband’s hands.

  Eljean looked permission at Alec, who shrugged helplessly, his face locked in a painful, bitter scowl. With a nod, Eljean came behind her to comfort her as she told her husband in woman’s words, that she, too, had discovered that maybe she wasn’t such a coward after all.

  Her sobbing stilled, and Alec looked at Eljean with frustration and an unbearable impotence in the matter of his strong, brave, and lovely wife.

  “Is that why you’re here, Eljean?” he asked bitterly, stroking her fine, dark hair through the bars. “Are you here for brotherhood?”

  Eljean smiled through his tears, a vestige of his customary insouciance making him seven shades of beautiful that he would never see. “No, sir,” he said smartly. “I’m just here for unrequited love.”

  “Of course you are,” Alec barked harshly, leaning his face against the rusty iron simply so he could smell her unwashed hair. “There’s not another reason in the world. I’ll fight for you, beloved,” he promised at last, quietly. “I can promise to raze the city for you. But I can’t promise you that they’ll leave you alone come the dawn. Please come with me… for the love of the moons and the stars in the sky, baby. Please?”

  “All you have to promise me, Alec,” Trieste said thickly against the back of his hand, “is that you’ll forgive us both if you fail.”

  Alec closed his eyes so tightly he saw stars. Dawn was coming, and he’d promised the regents one more day of trying to get the two out without bloodshed should he fail. He wanted to break his word. For the rest of his life, he would wonder at the cost of keeping it, but ultimately he knew it came down to a simple answer. He couldn’t shame his wife’s courage with his own cowardice. She loved a man of honor, and he couldn’t disgrace her now.

  “I’ll forgive you anything but death. Do you hear me?”