Liar's Moon

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

And then he saw me, and the shadows lifted, partly, from his face, and his step hastened, and before I could prepare myself, his arms were around me and he was breathing into my hair. I let my face rest against the hollow of his throat, and for the longest moment I didn’t even think of pulling away.

  Finally we parted, just enough to allow the other to breathe.

  “We held the funeral,” he said, and just then it seemed the only possible thing to say.

  “I know.” Hidden on a neighboring rooftop, I had watched the procession of Lord Ragn’s body from Charicaux, draped in white, his son at his shoulder. Durrel still wore his white mourning doublet, but tonight it hung open in the hot air, as if he was half afraid the Bargewater residents might recognize him for a nob. Koya had been at the funeral too, although there was no official call for her presence; she had stood beside Lady Amalle, her glittering eyes staring into the distance, as Amalle clutched her white-clad arm with thin hands like claws.

  “You didn’t come.” There was no accusation there, just wonder.

  “I —” I faltered, looked away for a moment, and told the truth. A funeral, even for a nobleman like Ragn Decath, was a family affair, not a public spectacle. “I don’t know where I would have stood.”

  The way Durrel’s fingers sought mine gave his answer to that, and I felt a surge of grief I didn’t quite understand.

  “I’m leaving for Favom tomorrow,” he said after a long moment. “I need to settle the affairs at the farm. I want to ask you to come, but I know you’ll say no. You’ll tell me I have to do this on my own, and you’ll be right.”

  “How long will you be gone?” I asked.

  “It will take time,” he said. “A month, maybe more? But I’ll come back. Don’t think I won’t.”

  I wanted to say, Don’t go. Or maybe, Don’t come back, stay there in Favom with the horses and the orchards and Morva and all those beautiful gardens, where everything is safe and easy, but I couldn’t find my voice.

  “Why didn’t he tell me, Celyn?”

  “I don’t know.” It was one bit of the puzzle I still couldn’t figure out. Why hadn’t Lord Ragn included his son in his rescue operations? I couldn’t imagine anyone better suited for such a job than Durrel Decath, yet his own father had either overlooked him or deliberately excluded him, neither of which made sense.

  “I think —” I took a breath and looked out over the water, as if I could somehow see the spectre of Lord Ragn hovering there, judging what we said of him now. “He was trying to protect you. He risked everything to save those people — his money, his House and rank, his life. But he wasn’t willing to risk you.” I promised myself I would never put my son in harm’s way again. “You were everything he had, the only thing that mattered, in the end.”

  He looked at me helplessly, his shoulders slumped. “I never had a chance to — I don’t know.”

  But I did. I pulled him closer, feeling his heartbeat near my face. “He knew what kind of man you are.” I thought of his actions aboard the Belprisa, how Lord Ragn had looked on in pride as he fought beside his son. “I know he did.”

  Durrel held fast to me, in the heat and the setting sun, and I wondered how I could ever have imagined any part of the world thought this man didn’t matter. He was anything but inconsequential. I bent his face to mine and held his cheeks, softly coated with new-grown beard, as our foreheads touched, and then our lips.

  The next few weeks were so upside down, there was hardly time to feel his absence. The royal army had suffered mass desertions since the riots, and a hysterical Astilan had struck back at his own forces with all the violence at his disposal, ordering the heads of executed traitors set on display along the city walls and thoroughfares. It only served to further enrage the remaining troops, until — as Cwalo and Berdal and Lord Hobin had predicted, not so long, yet forever ago — the city was for all purposes undefended.

  In this climate, Wierolf’s army arrived, crouching just outside the western wall and offering terms for peace. He would not sack the city and burn Hanivard to the ground, if Bardolph would abdicate and Astilan surrender absolutely. The ranks of troops at his back — more cheerful, certainly, though hardly better fed than Astilan’s own — were like a surging wave threatening the city, and for a few tense days Hanivard Palace sat cryptic and silent, as Prince Wierolf prowled outside Gerse and waited.

  As the tension in the city tightened into a knot choking all of us, a messenger finally sent a flag of truce to Wierolf’s camp, and the slow process of negotiations began. A few regiments of Sarist troops made tentative inroads in Gerse, setting up hospitals and breadlines for hungry citizens and soldiers alike; but the prince himself would not set foot inside the city until the peace was finalized, he announced. It could take weeks, months, but Wierolf was adamant. Not until Bardolph was gone and Hanivard empty of all the old king’s men would he return to the city from which he’d been banished as a boy.

  In the rocky, uneasy peace that followed, we all tried to get back to normal, but no one remembered what that was. Grea’s bakery did its familiar thriving business, with a whole new clientele — Raffin, fully restored to his Guard duties, brought his fellow Greenmen to dine, this time without the threats of violence or seizure.

  I was still not sure how I felt about him, about them. The fate of Werne and the Inquisition was one of the sticking points of the peace talks; the Celystra was not technically under the authority of the king, so there was confusion on both sides about what could or should be done about them. But Raffin told me things that filled me with disquiet — and they were not all dark secrets buried at the Greenmen’s feet, not all blood and torture and fearmongering. He’d been assigned to the division releasing Inquisition prisoners as a gesture of goodwill; holy sisters went to the front to pray for the dead, and sent alms to the widows of soldiers on each side. It both did and did not accord with what I knew of Werne, and left me unsettled for reasons I could not explain.

  Lord Ragn’s words burned in my memory — Do not judge too harshly actions taken out of love — until ultimately I put my hand to one last document. Five words, set on plain, coarse paper and sent back with Raffin: I will speak with you.

  Maybe people deserved a chance to explain themselves.

  I saw much of Koya too, passing along news of the refugees, now safely settled in distant lands, or with Wierolf’s troops, with Meri and Reynart. I had wondered about the boy at Cartouche, and his mother and sister, and Koya assured me they had made it to family in Brionry. “And Jos!” she told me. “You won’t believe it. He’s gone to Reynart to be a soldier. Or a student, at least. He wants to learn, thanks to you. They all do.”

  That was not all. Two of the Sarists we’d rescued had declined Koya’s help and disappeared into the city, including Vorges, the man with the tattooed palm. Koya didn’t know what had become of them, and I was relieved. He’d saved my life, but the Greenman he’d injured with magic had not recovered, and that was one offense even peacetime couldn’t smooth over. As for Barris, there was ultimately nothing to charge him with, but his involvement with Ferrymen and the murder of his mother had sullied his reputation, at least temporarily.

  “So he’s sulking in Tratua,” Koya said. She was as bright and ebullient as ever reporting this, but somehow it saddened me, like a shadow of her old mask again. With Lord Ragn’s death and the end of the war, Koya had lost her purpose and direction. What did she have, now that there was no one for her to save?

  One steamy afternoon, Raffin strolled into the bakery as Koya breezed out, and they paused briefly in the doorway together. I couldn’t help but notice the way Raffin’s eyes followed her as she slipped away toward her lovely boat.

  “How is she?” he asked, and I knew he was remembering that night at Cartouche, and probably others, when he’d escorted her home. Even if her debauchery hadn’t been entirely real, I knew her gratitude for Raffin’s kindness was.

  “You should go after her,” I suggested. He turned to me, surprised.r />
  “I — no. You think? She won’t remember me.”

  “She might surprise you. You might take the chance to surprise her.” I eyed him sideways. “I think she’s still hoping to find a candidate to replace Durrel.”

  He looked startled, and I thought his face colored. “You don’t mean —”

  I couldn’t help grinning. “It would make your father crazy.”

  The startled look turned sly, and Raffin laughed. “You might be onto something, peach. Maybe I should get to know Mistress Koyuz a little better.” He kissed my hand, bowing low. “Good day, little sister.” Raffin Taradyce, disreputable nob and Greenman, set off after Koya’s boat. I watched him wave it down, and drop inside with all the easy grace he possessed.

  More weeks went by, until one afternoon somebody slid a note across the bakery’s threshold. At Grea’s shout, I scooped it up, milk white paper with an amber core, Celyn Contrare inked out in a carefully anonymous hand. Inside was nothing but an address.

  I threw open the door, but there was no one outside but the chattering neighbors. I felt a tug near my breastbone, like the call of magic, sweet and urgent.

  I flagged down a boat, but the riverways were crowded with the renewed commercial traffic and giddy citizenry out celebrating on the water. After a few blocks I gave it up and scrambled off onto the shore. The feeling in my chest was like a knot loosening, and I wanted to run, impatient to get — wherever. Revelers had lit a string of firefly lanterns and strung them across the Oss, where they glowed like full moons against the hot afternoon sky. In the road below the Celystra, I pushed through a crowd of Greenmen trying their confused best to organize a crowd that had become an impromptu festival. Nobody was paying them the slightest mind. One fat merchant cheerfully grabbed his nearest Greenman and thrust a tankard of ale into his hand.

  Finally, finally I reached the address on the slip of paper, a grand yellow town house not far from the Spiral, with an open gallery along the top floor and square towers fitted out with ridiculous stone frippery at every corner. I stood in the shadow of one of those towers and peered up, and saw a figure in gray perched easily in an open stone arch, a hand lifted casually in a wave.

  Durrel met me at the mouth of the staircase, just inside the rooftop gallery. He grabbed me bodily and spun me round, like we were silly townspeople in the festival below. And I let him. I kind of liked it.

  Finally breathless, he let me go. “What do you think?” he said, gesturing toward the empty gallery, with its mosaic tile floor and fretwork ceiling.

  “What is it?” I asked, and I didn’t care about the architecture. I wanted him to take my hands like he had in the Keep, and let his warm voice wash over me, telling me every detail of his weeks at Favom Court, down to the scratches in the kitchen tables and the muck in the stables.

  “I’ve rented it.” He sounded enormously proud, and I stepped back, eyeing the space.

  “For what?”

  “To live in. I’m not ready to stay in the country full-time. King Wierolf will need his loyal nobility close at hand for a while.”

  King Wierolf. We’d been hearing it for weeks now, but from Durrel’s lips it gave me a funny little thrill in the pit of my stomach. “But what about Charicaux?”

  Durrel grew sober. “I sold it,” he said. “To cover some of Father’s debts. Don’t look so sad — Lady Amalle’s father was happy to take it off my hands. She’ll be able to stay there. It’s her home.”

  “And Favom Court?” I asked.

  “We’re down a few thousand acres and a couple dozen horses, but we’ll survive.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He gave a half smile, and his hand was still wrapped tightly around mine. “All in a good cause,” he said. “I’ll make a fresh start for the House of Decath in Gerse.” I heard the unsaid words: a fresh start for myself.

  “By renting an empty attic,” I said lightly. “Or did you take the whole building?”

  He laughed at the hope in my voice. “No, just this floor. What do you think?”

  I looked around. It was lovely on a day like this, with cross breezes tempering the afternoon heat — but it would be ghastly the rest of the year. Durrel led me out to the open gallery overlooking the streets and the river. One side of the building dropped down on the roof next door. “I thought I’d make it easy for my friends to come and go,” he said.

  “Your friends?” I said. “How many are there?”

  “Just one that matters.” And he curved one hand around the back of my head and bent his face to mine, and all my objections were swallowed in the heat of our kiss.

  It was long and low and gentle, and we spent the waning afternoon in each other’s arms, curled into the gallery window, as Durrel told me all about his days at Favom Court. It turned out I was wrong about what I wanted; I thought I would die of impatience. Finally I could stand it no more, and I stopped his mouth. My lips on his, my fingers sought out the clasps on his doublet, and he shrugged it off, bumping me up against a pillar. I helped his hands find the laces to my bodice, but he pulled away, gasping for breath.

  “Wait,” he said. “Are you sure?”

  I paused in my search for the points to his breeches and tilted my head upward. “Only if you are.”

  And he answered that by scooping me up and carrying me bodily across the gallery, to where a nest of cushions and coverlets made a makeshift bed.

  Afterward, we lay there together until it was full dark, the moons rising up over the water and throwing their light through the open gallery arches. Durrel traced patterns on my back with his finger, as if memorizing my shape by touch.

  “You should get some furniture,” I said, watching the moonslight track a wide beam across the tile floor, like a shaft of magic.

  “I don’t know; I’ve always thought furniture was overrated.” His voice was cool and dreamy, his eyes half closed.

  “I like it,” I said firmly, and then a treacherous thought squirmed its way upward and turned into a giggle.

  “What’s funny?” Durrel asked, propping himself on his elbow.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Except that your friend Raffin is prescient. He told me I’d be sharing your bed eventually.”

  “Well, I hate to gainsay a figure as honorable as Raffin Taradyce,” he said solemnly, and gestured to the heap of blankets. “But strictly speaking, this is not a bed.”

  That giggle turned into a full-fledged laugh that echoed off the open stone walls. Finally I peeled myself away from Durrel and fumbled for my smock.

  “You’re not leaving?” he said.

  I smiled. “I have to. Grea’s going to be swamped tonight. But I’ll come back tomorrow, unless you’re busy.”

  “Doing what?” he asked, but tugged me backward to kiss me again.

  I almost flew home, after that. It was later than I’d thought; nearly midnight and the roads finally clearing of festival traffic, but I noticed none of it. There was a sweet taste still on my tongue, and I was loath to breathe it away so soon. Back at the bakery I could smell the yeast of the rising loaves, and felt a twinge of guilt for not helping. Tomorrow, I told myself. I danced up the dark stairs, my head still lost and buzzing somewhere near the Spiral, thinking about moonslight on bare skin, glinting against a soft beard. Rat was at Hobin’s, so the room was dark; he’d pulled the shutters closed before he left.

  I entered into a pool of shadow and clicked the door shut behind me — and realized, a breath too late, that I wasn’t alone.

  A hand came out of the darkness and caught me by the throat, a thin, cool line of steel pressing into my neck. I froze, breath and heart with me, as a low voice murmured, inches from my ear, “Hello again, Mouse.”

  The chill of the knife at my neck went straight to my bones, but my heart was thumping wildly. I knew that voice, that hand, even in darkness, even after all this time.

  “Tegen?”

  LEXICON

  Acolyte Guard: The Celystra’s honor guard; once ceremonial, no
w King Bardolph’s de facto secret police. Universally feared and hated. Called “Greenmen,” in slang for their entirely green uniforms.

  Astilan of Hanival: Prince of the realm. Commander of Royalist forces. King Bardolph’s nephew; cousin to Prince Wierolf.

  Bal Marse: Residence of Talth Ceid and Durrel Decath.

  Bardolph of Hanival: King of Llyvraneth.

  Belprisa: Ship belonging to the Ceid.

  Berdal: Sarist soldier. Friend of Digger from Bryn Shaer.

  Big Silver river: Llyd Tsairn in Llyvrin. One of two major rivers flowing through Gerse.

  Briddja Nul: One of the three provinces that make up the nation of Llyvraneth. Briddja Nul occupies much of the northwest, and is home to the port city of Yeris Volbann.

  Bryn Shaer: Mountain fortress in northern Llyvraneth. Home to the House of Nemair. See StarCrossed.

  Cartouche: Private club and theater in Gerse.

  Ceid, Barris: Gersin businessman. Son of Talth Ceid; brother of Koya.

  Ceid, House of: Powerful gentry-class family in Gerse.

  Ceid, Talth: Gersin businesswoman. Wife of Durrel Decath; mother of Barris and Koya. Deceased.

  Celys: The great Mother Goddess, goddess of life and the harvest. Her symbols are the ash tree and the full moon.

  Celystra: Temple complex in Gerse devoted to Celys. Seat of Celyst worship and power.

  Charicaux: Decath family home in Gerse. Residence of Lord Ragn.

  Claas: Gersin gentleman. Lover of Stantin Koyuz.

  Confessor: An investigator for the Inquisition, trained in the arts of torture.

  Contrare, Celyn: Digger’s alias.

  Corlesanne: Nation to Llyvraneth’s east. Allied with the Sarists.

  Cwalo, Eptin: Merchant from Yeris Volbann who keeps a home and business in Gerse. Friend and confidant of Digger.

  Cwalo, Mirelle: Wife of Eptin.

  Decath, Durrel: Young nobleman from Gerse who once saved Digger from Greenmen. Husband of Talth Ceid.

  Decath, Lord Ragn: Durrel’s father.

  Digger: Thief from Gerse.