Wing & Nien

by Shytei Corellian

  “You had a long time waiting to say that, didn’t you?” Wing offered with the raise of an eyebrow.

  Pree K shrugged. “Not completely. I left a little room for you to win.”

  Wing chuckled and shook his head. The children had won, and though that decision had worried him profoundly, it had proven to be the right one now that they’d been joined by SiQQiy and her forces. The relief was like the high Kive sun after a very rough winter.

  All around him, people bustled here and there. The children were thrilled to have so many new, exciting people around to bother, and even En’t and Jhock appeared to be enamoured of SiQQiy and her Guards.

  It wasn’t until after dinner that evening that the initial jolt of excitement finally settled and what had become a small tent village outside fell still as a gentle flurry of a storm tiptoed through the valley, layering Rieeve in a bed of snowy ice crystals and sending most of the travel-weary into warm places where they drifted off to sleep.

  Nien and SiQQiy, too filled with each other and the relating of their time apart to sleep, had gratefully accepted Wing’s offer to take first watch.

  Standing next to his old bed in the back room of the house, Wing gazed out over the starlit valley glistening beneath the sweep of nightly effervescent light. Filled with the sight, he tried to remember how they had gotten from the night the Ka’ull had invaded their valley and murdered their race, to now, finding that if he didn’t concentrate on individual moments it all faded into a kaleidoscope of colour and feeling.

  “Wing?”

  Wing turned to find Carly’s soft, tired eyes.

  “Hello,” she whispered.

  “Hi.”

  “You all right?”

  “E’te.”

  Carly touched his face, tracing his cheekbone down to his neck. “Wish I could get inside there, sometimes.”

  Wing smiled at her. “No, you don’t. Too many spider webs.”

  Carly chuckled and, wrapping her arms around his waist, hugged him.

  Wing leaned into her, touched by a familiar rise of desire at being near her. “You’re not the best help for guard duty.”

  She squeezed him and sighed. “Don’t worry, I’m done in. I’m going to bed.”

  Wing bent down and pressed a kiss against her neck. “Good night,” he whispered, and watched her disappear into the faint light of the main room.

  Turning back, all was quiet outside the window at which he stood — his window, the one he had spent countless nights by as a youth, watching the lights of the Village homes glittering in the distance.

  There had been a majestic silence in those fields beneath the soft glow of stars and moon; the same silence he felt now, calling from a higher province, speaking in its own particular language.

  Wing pressed his forehead against the cool side of the window and sighed a little. It helped soothe the myriad thoughts churning through his mind.

  And then a silver glimmer caught his eye.

  Tensing, Wing straightened, hand sliding to the sword at his side. Heart hammering, breath held, he squinted out into the dark. An instant later, the glimmer materialized into a sleek black form against the white layer of ice covering the valley floor.

  Wing released the hilt of his sword and blew out a breath.

  Readjusting the sword at his hip, he stepped out the back door and shook his head as Lucin trotted up to him.

  “E’te,” he said. “You about had me setting off the whole camp.” Lucin pushed his head against Wing’s hand. “Still, happy to see you, my friend.” Lucin moved around him, thumping Wing’s leg with his tail. “Come down out of your lair to check out the new goings-on?”

  Lucin made another pass by Wing’s leg, purring low and murmuring.

  “Wing?”

  Wing glanced over his shoulder to see Nien coming up behind him. “Is it your watch already?”

  Nien nodded. “What are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”

  “Saw a flash of movement,” Wing said. “Turned out to be this guy.” He gave Lucin a brisk pat on the head.

  “Ah,” Nien said.

  Lucin flicked his whiskers and bumped his head into Wing’s hand again.

  “How’s SiQQiy?” Wing asked, his boots crunching in a patch of ice-covered grass.

  “She’s good. Sleeping now. Eck’theney, Wing. It’s good to have her here. I just can’t believe she came.”

  Wing blew a long breath into the cold air, watching it briefly frost the night in front of him. “As she probably can’t believe we stayed here.”

  “E’te,” Nien replied. “I just thought SiQQiy would have more...”

  “Sense?”

  “Yes.”

  Wing laughed. “Well, I suppose what makes sense to the mind and what makes sense to the heart are often two different things.”

  “Indeed.”

  Side by side, the brothers took in the long reach of dark valley before them. Keeping lanterns and fires to a minimum, the landscape before them was dark until it reached the far end of the valley. There, he could just make out faint glimmers of firelight. It was beautiful, unless Wing thought about the where that firelight was coming from.

  The quick storm that had come through earlier had cleared out completely, leaving the sky clear and cold, the moons causing the skiff of frozen crystals to twinkle from mountainside to mountainside across the valley.

  “Do you remember the night we spent trying to catch that barn owl?” Nien asked quietly so as not to disturb the glistening stillness.

  “Of course. You scared old Jhei so bad she wouldn’t give milk for two days.”

  Nien laughed. “Ah, yes.” He grinned. “I miss those times.”

  The brothers stood for a time, feeling their breath upon the air. The jagged peaks of the Ti and Uki alpine ranges stood straight into the night sky — their silhouettes darker than the night around them.

  “Thank you,” Wing said, his eyes traveling over those mighty peaks and up toward the stars.

  “Thank you? For what?”

  “For going with me into the Mesko Forest. For trusting me.”

  “Oh,” Nien said. “Well, trusting you is easy. Understanding what it all means is another.”

  “But you try,” Wing said.

  “There were times growing up that I felt I knew you better than you knew yourself,” Nien said quietly. “And then there was the rest of the time when it was as if I’d been sharing my whole life with a stranger.”

  “I am sorry about that, Nien.”

  Nien shook his head. “It’s not your fault. I guess I couldn’t have known how right and completely wrong I was.”

  Wing saw a flash of Nien’s smile as he bumped Wing in the ribs with an elbow.

  Wing grinned. “Somebody’s got to keep you humble now that you’re sleeping with an Empress.”

  Nien snorted and laughed out loud.

  Lucin complained over the disturbance by growling.

  “Well, when you put it that way…” Nien sniffed and glanced up at the sky.

  Wing looked at him. “I’m happy for you.”

  “Me, too,” Nien replied. “Thanks.” He shivered then and said, “Come on, it’s really is cold out here. What’s wrong with the two of you?”

  “Something,” Wing said. He chucked Lucin on the shoulder. “What’s wrong with you? It’s cold out here.”

  The brothers turned and headed back for the house. Wing had just started to open the door when Lucin bolted ahead, worming his way in-between them, to get inside first.

  “By all means,” Nien said, grunting as the big cat nearly knocked him over.

  Wing sighed and shut the door behind them.

  Curious what the big cat might do, the brothers watched as Lucin made a short reconnaissance of the house and all of its new inhabitants. Wing hoped the men would not wake — could cause quite a racket were one of them to wake to find a full grown shy’teh sniffing at their face.

  It didn’t take Lucin long, however, to take up
a position away from the crowd and back at Wing’s feet at the Mesko wood table where Wing brought out a ledger he’d started writing in shortly after their return to Rieeve. Wing felt Nien glance at him as he poured himself some water, no doubt wondering what Wing was doing, before returning to take up watch in the back room. Truth was, Wing wondered himself. He’d found the ledger in their mother and fa’s room one evening shortly after they’d brought the kids down out of the caves. Apparently, Joash had put it together — soft leather, new Mesko paper — and then had never gotten around to using it. So, Wing had begun to jot down some notes, and not about what he or the rest of them had been through, but the revelations that had come out of it. He wrote down what he’d experienced on the bank of the river in Legran and again with Nien in the Mesko Forest, drawing the parallels between those events and the other mysterious aspects of his life and, just maybe of life itself. It was easy to do that now. What had once been so dark, so obscured in prophecy and legend was now quite apparent. It offered some validation as to why he’d always felt strange and yet had never been convinced how that strangeness added up to his being Merehr. It was good to write it down, seeing how it all came together, the perfect pattern in the chaos. It was so obvious now that it nearly brought tears to his eyes. And there was Nien, too. It was no accident that Nien’s mother, whomever she had been, had brought him to Rieeve and left him here. The note she’d left in Nien’s small coat pocket had indicated that she had loved him. So, what was her story? What had driven her to go so far to leave her son in a strange land not knowing who would find him?

  The threads of life, Wing thought. Because he and Nien had agreed before either of them had been born to meet again, to be brothers, and to work together. And there were the threads of so many others that had agreed to this as well, each for reasons of their own: Nien’s mother to abandon him, Wing to be born to the only two people in Rieeve who would live at the far end of the valley, away from their people, in order to give Wing the chance to discover and come to know who he was. It was so clear now how Nien would be the one to see all of it through. He had the blood of the Preak, the life of a Rieevan, and now the love of the most powerful Quienan. None of it was incidental. None of it was coincidental. It was certainly not accidental. That Wing, Nien, and Carly had all made their way to Legran after Rieeve had been taken. That, so long ago, a young Commander Lant had defied their people and left Rieeve only to meet Master Monteray, forging a bond that would come into play for the whole of their continent so many revolutions later.

  Wing could see all of it and the grace, the beauty, the perfection of it stole his heart. If he believed what he’d told Lily, if he believed that the soul blended with and retired bodies as a snake does its skin, then it was the experience of the soul that was paramount. Wing had seen and remembered glimpses of other worlds when he’d left his body on the bank of the river in Legran. He’d seen their virtual infinity, the myriad beings that lived upon them, and knew that he’d been one of them at one time and would be again.

  Have some faith, Hagen had said. Though it was easy to lose it, to forget what he knew, in moments when he was alone and quiet, he remembered. Where knowledge failed, faith stepped in. And in moments like this, writing in the ledger, the lantern light causing the brush’s tiny shadow to dance across the pages in front of itself, Wing could see how all of the segments and moments fit together as a whole, hundreds and thousands of lives coming together to make a world move in this direction or that. He could see how those human lives played in with the larger life of the planet upon which they lived, and how that planet played in with the other worlds, each of them a note in a chorus, echoing the call of their beautiful blue sun.

  To whom did that star answer, Wing wondered, imagining that the conversation between the great planetary beings of the universe went on forever.

  Wing looked down. He’d filled six pages. The ink jar was very nearly empty.

  He raised his head and arched his back. Lucin rose and moved into the back room. He heard Nien give a start and mutter, “Good thing everyone thinks you’re special, a legend and all that. Otherwise, I’d make a nice black rug out of you for always lurking about.” Wing imagined Lucin ignoring this comment and, closing the ledger and setting the writing brush aside, stood up and went into the back room.

  Clapping Nien on the back he winked at Lucin. “Black rug, eh?”

  “Keep my toes warm,” Nien replied.

  Wing laughed.

  Just then Netalf, SiQQiy’s Lead Guard, came in. “Yit shaaa,” he hissed, drawing up short.

  Lucin dropped down beside Wing, ears pressed flat.

  Wing put out a quick hand. “Easy, Luc,” he said. “Lead Netalf. This is Lucin.”

  Netalf kept his eyes on Lucin. “Is that a shy’teh?”

  Wing nodded.

  Nien snorted. “I prefer to call it Black Rug.”

  Netalf’s eyes flicked from Lucin to Nien.

  “He’d good for a watch,” Wing said.

  “Uh huh,” Netalf said.

  “Unless he lays down on your feet,” Nien said.

  “He’ll lay on my feet?” Netalf asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Well, probably not your first night together,” Nien admitted helpfully.

  Wing cuffed the big cat under the chin. Lucin took his eyes from Netalf and thrummed, hitting his head against Wing’s leg. Offering Lucin a vigorous, though brief back rub, Wing straightened with a wince.

  “Enough, big guy. I’m going to bed.” He nodded to Nien and Netalf. “Good night. Just let Lucin out whenever he wants.”

  It appeared Netalf was about to say something about that, but Wing continued on his way, knowing they’d figure it out. Despite Nien’s joking around, Lucin was good company, he hadn’t tried to eat anyone yet, and his senses were far keener than any of their own, especially for night watches.

  Finding Carly’s sleeping head amongst the many bedrolls filling the main room, Wing knelt down, lifted the edge of the blanket, and wormed his way in beside her. Closing his eyes, he heard Nien bid Netalf good night as he climbed the stairs up to their parents’ old bedroom where SiQQiy was sleeping. Nien had barely crested the top of the stairs when Wing heard another door open at the back — Netalf, no doubt, opening the door to let Lucin out. Wing smiled. He hadn’t expected the shy’teh to stay long. There were far too many strangers in the house for his liking. Still, he hoped the shy’teh would come to accept the new men and not stray too far, they could use every advantage at their disposal until the rest of SiQQiy’s men arrived.

  Chapter 89

  A Moment

  C arly, along with Wing and Nien, had a chance the next day to get to know a few of SiQQiy’s men as they began work on a corral to hold the fair herd of horses that would be arriving with SiQQiy’s Granj units.

  They worked all day and into the evening and Wing was shocked at how much work so many hands were able to accomplish in such a short time.

  As the rumble in their bellies finally forced them to set aside wood, nail, and hammer, Carly retired with Wing, Nien, SiQQiy, and her small retinue into the house. The help not only with the construction projects but with Guard Duty bled over into help with the children as well; it seemed the men were nearly as impressed with the kids, what they’d been through and survived, as the kids had been with them.

  Sitting quietly at the table with Wing, Carly watched the proceedings, the many small conversations dancing in and out of the crackle of the fire. Beside her, Wing picked up a writing brush and checked to see how much ink was left in his jar.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Carly said.

  Wing glanced up. “No I don’t what?”

  “No more of that. We’re going to bed. Together, for once.”

  “Ah,” he said, and looked back down at the ink jar forlornly.

  “What are you doing anyway? You’ve been at it a lot.”

  “Just taking a few thoughts for a walk.”

  “Well, come on. You need re
st tonight and so do they.”

  Wing’s eyes met hers and then moved across the room. “My thoughts or SiQQiy’s men?”

  Carly chuckled. “Both. Come to bed.”

  Wing sighed. “All right.”

  Setting the ink jar and brush aside, he pushed himself to his feet, took her hand, and led her up the stairs. Smiling to herself, she saw Wing notice and he squeezed her hand.

  She felt a little bad interrupting his writing, whatever it was, but having some time alone together was too rare a gift to pass up.

  At the top of the stairs, Carly opened the door to the bedroom that used to be Joash and Reean’s. Wing stepped in behind her and Carly wondered if it was still hard for him to be in his parents’ room. But Wing strolled over and removed his sword-belt and boots and threw himself on the bed with abandon, propping his head up against the headboard.

  Carly took up one of Reean’s brushes and hoped she could undo what the past few days of valley wind had done to her hair.

  “You’re beautiful,” Wing said.

  Carly looked back at him in Reean’s mirror. “You’re crazy.”

  “Let me have a go,” he said thrusting his hand out for the brush.

  Sighing, Carly got up and, kneeling on the edge of the bed, crawled across to him. Thumping the brush into his hand, she ran her eyes over his black hair. He’d cut it short and though she thought she’d mourn the loss of his long hair, the short cut was actually quite fetching.

  Scooting about, Carly settled in between his knees. “Maybe I’ll have you cut my hair short, too.”

  “Whatever you want, but I promise nothing.”

  “You didn’t do such a bad job with yours.”

  “Yes, well…why don’t we wait and see how the brushing goes?”