Wing & Nien

by Shytei Corellian

  Necassa wasn’t fooled. “What is it?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m sorry.” Brushing his hands over the soft skin of her back, he brought his hands up and pressed his palms to his eyes.

  Pushing herself up, Necassa sat back on her heels. “But I, I thought...”

  “It’s my fault,” Nien forced.

  “Your fault?” she said, and then her face paled. “Oh…” she muttered.

  “No, I...”

  With a short cry of embarrassment, Necassa scrambled to her feet, grabbing up her clothes.

  “Necassa, no, wait. Let me explain.”

  She paused.

  “It’s not that I don’t care for you, it’s not that.”

  She slipped her shirt over her head and looked at him. “Then what?”

  Nien couldn’t find the words he was looking for.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Necassa said. “I understand. You like me, but not like that.”

  “Trust me, that’s not it,” Nien said. “It’s just…”

  “ — What?”

  Nien pushed himself to his feet. Grabbing a sheet, he wrapped and tucked it about his waist. “I...”

  Yosha! he swore silently, beginning to prowl the small apartment.

  Necassa watched him, her eyes swimming with confusion.

  With one hand gripping the sheet about his waist in a hold that could have snapped a Mesko branch, Nien said, “It’s what you said in the restaurant.”

  “What I said in the restaurant?”

  “About people coming here to reinvent themselves, to start over.”

  Necassa nodded.

  “Well,” Nien continued, his voice uncentered, searching, “it made me think. I mean, I thought I came here to learn, to gain knowledge to take back to Rieeve. But…” He paused, as if summoning the courage to speak the thought. “What if I really came here to escape?”

  Wing said it, he thought. He said I was running away.

  “I find myself here, now, like this — standing naked in a room, trying to decide who I am, who I want to be.” He turned and looked at his mostly naked body in the tall, scratched mirror that leaned against the nearby wall. “You said people from other valleys leave their traditions, their religions, even their native clothing behind when they come here.” Nien gazed into his mirror image. “I didn’t mean to, Necassa, but is that what I have done?”

  Necassa looked at him from where she stood near the bed. “Would that be such a bad thing?” she asked.

  “Maybe not. But if I have, then where do I go from here?”

  Necassa’s gaze traveled over his body before she reached toward the foot of the bed to retrieve a shirt that lay there. It was a shirt she had purchased for him in Cao City and one that he wore often.

  “You might start with the clothes you’d put back on,” she said, holding the shirt out to him.

  Nien’s eyes rested upon the shirt. Suddenly it was not the same one he’d worn nearly every day since she had given it to him. Suddenly it meant much more. A great decision now hinged upon that shirt.

  If he took it, would there be no going back? Would he no longer be Nien Cawutt? Would he no longer be Rieevan?

  Rieevan.

  The word denoted his religion as much as his race.

  But was he truly Rieevan — in race or in creed?

  He stared at the shirt.

  What am I?

  The question clanged around in his brain.

  Heavy, silent moments passed.

  It was with conscious effort that Nien finally pulled his eyes from the shirt and looked at Necassa’s face. Drawing a breath, he stepped across the room and, taking Necassa’s hand in his, sat back down on the bed.

  Necassa sat beside him, his shirt in her lap.

  “What does this mean?” Nien asked.

  His question only served to deepen the confusion on Necassa’s face.

  “What if I go back? What if I decide not to stay?”

  Necassa flinched. Tears glimmered in her eyes. “But I thought you had decided…” She didn’t finish her sentence.

  Nien looked into her eyes. “To stay?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I mean, what about my life — my life back home? My family. What about everything I believe in?”

  — Or thought I did? And what if the rumours are true? What if the Ka’ull have taken Tou as well? Am I just going to stay here? Weather the storm in Quieness, the greatest valley on the continent, while Rieeve...

  Nien came back to the moment and the young woman on the bed next to him. Reaching out, he touched Necassa’s cheek. “And what about this?”

  “What about it? We’re here, now. You and I.”

  “But if I go? Then what? Is the time we’ve spent together enough for you?”

  Conflicting emotions swam in her eyes. “I…Why do you have to decide all this right now?”

  Nien rubbed the shirt between his fingers. “Upon leaving Rieeve I’d planned on returning when the snows broke.”

  A short sound stopped in Necassa’s throat. Her thin, pale hand tightened its grip upon the shirt.

  “Why can’t you leave it behind?” she asked. Her voice so soft it felt frail. “I can’t count the times you’ve said how frustrating Rieeve was for you, how intolerant and oppressive. Stay here, Nien. You can study and learn. You could even teach here — teach people who want to learn. No one would judge you here for what you teach.”

  Everything she said was true, but there was more to Rieeve than his complaints about it and he wondered if he’d ever told her how beautiful the valley was, how much he loved his people and his family.

  “You’ve come so far,” Necassa said. “Don’t turn back now.”

  “But what if they were right?” Nien said.

  “What if who was right?” Necassa asked.

  “My people, they believe that anyone who leaves Rieeve will be corrupted, broken.”

  Is that what’s happened to me? he thought. Has it happened exactly as they said it would?

  Necassa squinted her eyes at him. “So, this is a religious thing?”

  Nien paused…Was it?

  “Would it hold such a bitter taste for you if it was?” he asked.

  “So, it is?”

  Nien’s mind spun. “It might be.”

  Necassa snorted in disgust.

  Nien’s fingers loosened upon the shirt. “‘I’m walking the path of strangers. My feet turning left and right, straying from…’ ”

  “Straying from what?”

  Nien looked at her. The quote from the Ancient Writings finished with: ‘straying from the way of the prophets,’ but Nien couldn’t say it. Even though it felt wrong, the idea frightened him.

  Necassa leaned close to him. “Don’t listen to them,” she said softly. “Do you know how hard it was for the Quienans in the beginning? To make a cohesive society out of so many different races and systems of belief?” Nien looked at her. There was the fire of desperation in her eyes. “The bias,” she continued, “disguised as religion and passed on like an illness from parents to children. One person’s point of view taught as the only true way of a one true God. If the Quienans hadn’t fought to break that cycle we’d still be at war with the Grangh and Honj, the Jayakans and Majg would never have come here, and our borders would be as closed as Rieeve’s.”

  Nien’s head lowered. Her words rang a painful and familiar chord with him. Those same thoughts and more he’d secretly entertained, the worst of them being: Was the Rieevan way something he believed himself or something he’d simply accepted?

  “What can I say? I’ve felt the same way. You know I have. I…I hate it.” He paused. “But I have a truth in my own heart, and the thought of doing this and then leaving just feels…wrong. It may be a religious thing, it may be a life thing, maybe they’re the same thing. Nevertheless…”

  “Nevertheless nothing,” Necassa bit back. “It comes down to the way you were brought up, to Rieevan dogma.”

  �
�That’s what parents do, Necassa,” Nien said. “They teach their children.” And even as the words left his lips, Nien acknowledged how much he loved and hated the Ancient Writings and how he’d spent most of his life trying to reconcile those conflicting emotions.

  “ — for right or wrong?”

  Nien blinked and looked up at her. “What?”

  “What if you were born in Legran and your family held a Preak family as slaves, and you were raised with the belief that it was all right ⎯ something natural and normal? What if that was a truth you grew up with?”

  The golden colour of Nien’s eyes deepened. He rarely thought of himself as Preak. The race of his body was a distant, almost unfathomable reality. He was Nien. Himself. Beyond that he was Rieevan. But Necassa had just used it to jolt him. A strange ache set its finger upon him. “I, too, have fought, Necassa, as you Quienans have, but not against everything. I owe more than I could ever repay to my mother and fa — for their love, their teachings, their wisdom.”

  “What you call love I call indoctrination.” She held the shirt out to him. “Who would you be if your parents had left you free to decide — like mine did.”

  Like mine did…

  Nien realized suddenly that this conversation had less to do with him and more to do with Necassa, and her parents. “Your parents didn’t leave you free, Necassa. They just left you.”

  Nien thought he’d simply been reminding her of the obvious, but the sudden shocked and then broken look on her face told Nien he’d just made a huge mistake.

  “Necassa,” he said quickly. He reached out to touch her but she jerked away, her eyes welling with tears and anger. A painful mix of sadness and comprehension filled Nien. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think.”

  The look on Necassa’s face pierced him through and he understood. The void her parents had left her with she’d tried to fill with books, with learning, and with him. For the first time, Nien saw Necassa’s place in the conversation, why she was fighting with him over Rieeve, what the look on her face had meant when he’d said that he needed the books more because he had a limited time to read them.

  For the first time Nien realized how deeply his going back to Rieeve would affect her.

  Silence filled the room like an entity. Necassa was still, her arms wrapped about her body.

  Nien almost reached out to her again. He wanted to take her into his arms. He wanted to erase what he’d said. But as she raised her face and looked at him, Nien knew he’d gone too far. The hurt he’d rendered was too deep.

  Necassa got up and, pulling on the rest of her clothes, stepped toward the door.

  “Are you coming to the library tomorrow?” she asked, not looking back at him.

  “Probably,” Nien replied, his voice strained. He got to his feet but could not make them move to her. So, he stood in silence, watching as she opened the door and disappeared down the rickety wooden stairs and out into the streets below.

  Nien shivered as the door shut, staring briefly at the bronze, oddly shaped door handle before falling back onto his bed. Bringing his arms up to cover his face he found the scent of her hair and his shirt still on his hands. His throat tightened. He shouldn’t have told her what troubled him. He’d never intended for the night to end like this, and now this night was possibly the end of their friendship as well.

  Behind his closed eyes he saw her face.

  Getting up, he looked out the small window over his bed. On the street far below, he caught sight of her, arms still wrapped tightly around herself. He followed her with his eyes until she vanished into the maze of businesses and tall standing apartments on the edge of Cao City. Lifting his gaze, it was to the distant domes of SiQQiy’s palaces that they came, the long cold-hard road that led there from the heart of Cao glowing like a brilliant silver thread. With heavy heart, he watched the silken pink rays of morning creep inch by shimmering inch up and over the brightly coloured domes and gardens of the Palatial City.

  He suddenly felt so lost. Necassa had been his guide in this strange new land. She had been his only friend in Quieness. He had made fair acquaintances in a few people but had not taken time from his study to get to know any of them on a personal level except for her. Glancing down at his bed, Nien took in the few books still there, pushed to the edges and up against the wall, as the words of the Prophet-Poet Eneefa (Wing’s favourite writer) came to his mind in a flood:

  Abandoned to note

  And line

  And word

  Thrown down from higher worlds

  Scratching like a thief

  Just a beggar at the door...

  For a moment, he wished Rieeve didn’t exist at all, then there would be no conflict in him. If Rieeve were not, if it weren’t for his family, for the Cant, for Commander Lant…

  And Wing, he thought.

  He ground his teeth upon their names.

  If not for them, he could stay in Quieness, study, learn, be, and experience everything he’d ever wanted to but been denied while in Rieeve. He could even pass through an entire war in this valley and hardly even know anything had happened at all in Lou or Tou. The name “Ka’ull” could pass as no more than a brief recounting of history in a book for him.

  But the palaces blurred in his vision and he knew: Rieeve was indelibly in him. Upon leaving it had felt like a sore. During his first few turns it had felt like an ache that he would never be able to shake. But the news from Mshavka tonight, that the Ka’ull were on the move again, had pushed through any feelings of resentment and reawakened his connection with Rieeve.

  Nien shifted his gaze to the opposite side of the valley, to the great mountains that stood between Quieness and Rieeve. In only a few more turns the mountains would be passable.

  He turned away from the window.

  Whether he decided to stay or not, and as uncomfortable as it would prove to be between him and Necassa, he still had much reading to do. Tomorrow, he would be returning to the library.

  Chapter 31

  Old Friends

  “N etaia!”

  “Mont.”

  The two men grasped each other. Their embrace was strong, proud, full. The revolutions had been kind to them, Kate thought as they came into the dining room together all smiles, back slaps, and hearty laughter. Handsome men, they still made a striking team. Kate had often teased her husband that she was the second great love of his life — when her husband and netaia Lant were together they had eyes for no one else.

  “So, how was the trip? I’m surprised you didn’t wait a little longer for the passes to clear.”

  Lant shivered a little as if the cold from the trip had settled in his bones. “I know. But this is the quietest time with the Cant and the Council. And time is pressing.”

  “You look famished.”

  “I am. I made a stop before coming here.”

  “The Old Man?”

  Lant nodded.

  “How is he?”

  “Same.”

  Monteray chuckled.

  “By the way,” Lant said, “it was good to see Jason — Pree K is always happy to see him, too. Thank you for sending me word on Tou.”

  The two men locked gazes. “It’s coming,” Monteray said, speaking both their minds.

  “I’m considering drawing up a plan to present to the other valleys.”

  “A plan?”

  “To organize a united force. As the valleys are now, only Quieness stands a chance against the Ka’ull. Jayak — possibly. But we both know, no matter how well trained the Jayakans are, they do not have the sheer numbers the Ka’ull have.”

  Monteray exhaled slowly. What Lant proposed was an idea so large, so unprecedented in their time that Monteray could hardly imagine how it might be accomplished.

  “Always thinking small,” Monteray quipped.

  Lant’s eyes squinted at his friend in a very familiar gesture. “I could use your help.”

  Monteray laughed incredulously. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin
!”

  “Details,” Lant answered with a wave of his hand. “What I have in mind right now is just a rough sketch. I’m thinking of beginning with Legran, Jayak, Preak, and Quieness. Eventually, I’d like to include all the valleys.”

  “Netaia, you know what I know about the valleys.”

  “No, I don’t. You grew up knowing Jayak intimately. In Quieness you were the one that spent time in the Royal Palaces. And Preak — your knowledge of the valley and its people far outweighs my own.” Lant’s eyes fell and Monteray could feel the weight on his friend’s shoulders as if it were his own. “Perhaps in the years since our return we have talked too much about the past, letting the present slip and everything we could be — should be — doing about it.” Lant looked up and the two studied one another’s eyes. “No one in either of our valleys knows more about the Ka’ull than you and I do.”

  But it’s the other side of that coin that worries us the most, Monteray thought, knowing Lant was thinking the exact same thing: That what the Ka’ull knew about the central valleys was because of the two of them — a regret they had carried with them in secret ever since they’d returned to Legran and Rieeve all those revolutions ago.

  “What about Rieeve?” Monteray asked. “How are things going with the Council and the Cant?”

  “The Cant is coming along much better than I’d hoped. Nevertheless, it’s much too small to be of any effect without the aide of the other valleys.”

  “Like Legran.”

  Lant nodded. “But I’ve got good leaders — one that I’ve told you about before.”

  “Nien Cawutt?”

  “Yes. He’s someone you’d appreciate.”

  “A bit like you, if I remember correctly.”

  Lant’s smile was small, but genuine. “He does not have my failings.”

  Monteray turned an appraising eye on his friend. “I wonder if your people can take another Lant Ce’Mandu in the form of this Nien Cawutt?”

  Silently appreciating Monteray’s suggestion, Lant continued, “And there’s his brother.”

  “The one your people believe is the Leader referred to in the Ancient Writings.”