Sonata Form

by Carole Cummings

  Anyway, it was first-rate wine.

  GOOD FOOD, both bottles of wine, and some excellent distraction later, “See?” Milo mumbled into Ellis’s ear. “You do always want sex.”

  If Ellis could have moved, he would have thumped him.

  “WELL.” MILO shrugged, eyeing Ellis with a weirdly timid set to his gaze. He swept his arm out in front of him with a small smile. “This is it.”

  Ellis stepped up beside Milo onto the rocky outcrop, and directed his gaze below. And made a concerted effort not to frown. This is what? was on the tip of his tongue, but he held it back.

  Milo had woken with a headache—no real surprise, because wine—full of apologies for the day before, but grinning wide any time the night before came up. Ellis’s propensity for waking before dawn worked in their favor this time, as they were able to get their gear together and be gone from the barn before anyone came to tend the cows.

  Still, even with their good luck, the clear skies this morning, and the memory of last night, Milo was even more pensive today. If Ellis didn’t know better, he’d think Milo was silently panicking. Having second thoughts about having planned… whatever it was, maybe, nervous about how Ellis would react when he finally found out what it was; Ellis didn’t know, but he’d resolved that, whatever it turned out to be, he was going to react with smiles and enthusiasm.

  Except, now that they were here and he was actually being presented with whatever it was, he still had no idea what it was. Now Ellis was starting to panic a little. He peered about, looking for some kind of sign that would tell him exactly what he was supposed to be seeing.

  They were just outside of Godwick Vale. Once they’d left the barn and got back on the road, Ellis found himself assessing the lay of the land out of habit and had grown more dubious despite himself, because there was nothing out here. The current view didn’t disabuse him of that notion.

  It was nice enough, rolling green and rocky hillside almost as far as the eye could see, a great swath of tall grass. Wildflowers dotted the landscape, spring blossoms still laden with the morning dew, swaying indolent and ponderous in the soft, warm breeze. The sky was gorgeous this morning, indigo-amethyst shot through with traces of crimson, and still heavy, like it was dipping down to touch the skin of the world.

  Ellis’s smile was sincere when he turned it on Milo. He breathed in deeply, thankful there wasn’t a cow to be found amidst the clean scent of morning.

  “Very pretty.”

  Milo peered at him sideways, a rueful smirk curling up one corner of his mouth beneath his beard. “It’s mine.”

  Ellis blinked. “Yours.”

  “I’ve been wanting it for some time now, but Steffan, with Terrwyn’s rather reluctant backing, only just yesterday agreed to sell it to me.”

  Ellis looked again, his frown deepening. “But…” He shook his head, bit his lip. He really didn’t want to ruin whatever this was for Milo—investment, maybe?—but, “Milo, there’s nothing here.” He turned around, eyeing the landscape in every direction. “There’s no water inlet, and with all this rock, I don’t think you’d be able to get a well dug. The only thing you might use it for is grazing for livestock, but it’s too far away from any farmsteads to lease it out for that. This is the middle of nowhere!”

  “You sound just like Steffan.” Milo’s smirk turned to something softer, lighter. “And Nia, actually, when Steffan told her what I was haranguing him about.”

  “Well, I should hope so!” Ellis was edging near outrage. “What were they thinking selling this to you? You can’t do anything with it, and you’ll never be able to sell it again. What did you pay for this?”

  “Far less than what it’s worth to me.” Milo leaned in, smiling, and planted a firm kiss to Ellis’s mouth.

  All right, now Ellis was really confused. “Milo—”

  “I paid exactly 2p for the land because they wouldn’t take anything more. They finally agreed to sell it to me because Steffan’s too soft for his own good, and at least Terrwyn grew weary of telling me how worthless it is. I was, apparently, quite annoying.” Milo grinned, waggish and proud. “He finally ended up bunging a berry tart at me at breakfast the other day and told Steffan I was old enough to choose how I threw away my own money.” He shrugged, still smiling but more thoughtful now as he looked out over the land. “I don’t care about water rights or wells or leasing or livestock, because I don’t intend to do anything with it, and I don’t intend to sell it, either. This wasn’t an investment. I just… I wanted it. And once I had it, I wanted you to see it.”

  Ellis couldn’t help it this time. “Why?”

  Milo ducked his head, a light flush creeping up his high-boned cheeks. “Because when I saw this place, it was at sunset. It’s much prettier at sunset, you understand. I’d meant for us to arrive just before, but you know—the rain.” He sighed. “Anyway, Dillie brought me out here last autumn. That camping trip for the boys—you got held up in Wellech sorting that boat full of refugees and couldn’t make it, remember?” When Ellis nodded, still frowning, Milo grinned. “Noisy little creadurs, those two, bloody endless questions and just not listening about running ahead or shoving each other off boulders, and I just needed a moment, you know?

  “So I climbed up to this very spot, right here on this bit of a cliff, and looked out over it and… well, the first thing I thought of was how”—Milo’s voice dipped down low, and his cheeks brightened—“how I wished you were here with me.” A deep, long breath, like he was looking for courage; Milo looked Ellis in the eye. “At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to kiss you, right here on this spot.” His gaze slipped down to his feet and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “And once I had the land, I wanted… well, I wanted to…” Milo rocked on his heels, kicked a small stone and sent it clacking down over the cliff. “Anyway, things didn’t really go to plan, did they?”

  Ellis’s jaw had come unhinged about three halting sentences back. The trip and the hamper and the wine and the odd secretive mood. The truth of what Milo was saying without saying it burst in Ellis’s head like a firecracker.

  Milo must have misinterpreted Ellis’s no doubt gobsmacked expression, because he rolled his eyes and chuffed a growling sigh. “I know, all right? I’m sorry, it was… I mean, I didn’t—”

  “No.” Ellis took a small step closer. “Don’t… don’t take it back.”

  “I’m not. I couldn’t if I wanted to. Elly. Bloody—” Milo stepped in so fast it startled Ellis, though there was no time to react before Milo’s arms were strapped around Ellis’s ribs, and Milo’s face was tucked into Ellis’s neck, and Milo’s breath was bleeding warm down Ellis’s collar as he said, “Elly. Elly. I’ve so much I need to tell you, and I’m just… I’m not brave enough. I can’t stand the thought of you not knowing, of you not understanding why I… and yet I can’t just say—” He squeezed tighter. “I miss you. You know that, right? Every second we’re not together, I miss you, and I’ll never stop, not ever. Duty or no, you have to know that. Never doubt it, no matter what.”

  “What—?” Ellis held Milo tight. “I do. Of course I—”

  “You have to know it, Elly. Always. All right?” Urgent. Quavering.

  “Yeah.” Ellis squeezed harder. “Yeah, Milo. Me too. Always.”

  And it was odd, and it was strangely dramatic, out here on this peaceful spot of worthless land that had just been made priceless, but it was also… all right. The blister had well and truly burst, and Ellis didn’t need to understand everything that poured out of it. Everything was going to be all right.

  The gesture itself was profoundly touching, but the relief at being the subject of it, at Milo’s clear sincerity in offering it, was beyond precious.

  Ellis had learned a lot of things about Milo over the years—some things more slowly than others—but one of the more recent things he’d understood was that, of all the many things of which Milo was capable and at which he was skilled, romance was not one of them. Not in the sentimen
tal, heart-on-the-sleeve sense of the word, at any rate. He wasn’t opposed to the idea of it, but had never seemed terribly interested in mastering the practice. Milo couldn’t say the sorts of things people said to each other in penny romances; his tongue would tangle and his cheeks would flame. Milo thought it made him a coward, not brave. Ellis thought otherwise.

  Because Milo did say those things, only not in words. He said them by dragging a gigantic hamper halfway across Tirryderch. By buying a useless parcel of land because he thought it looked beautiful at sunset. By letting Ellis get annoyed with him, complain all the way here, because Milo had once thought it would be nice to kiss him here.

  Ellis’s eyes were stinging and his chest was hurting from lack of air. “I may have, ehm…” He pulled back, had to blink several times, then swallow until his throat didn’t feel so tight. “I think I’ve come over a bit sentimental.” He gripped Milo’s arms. There were so many things he could say, so many things he wanted to say, but only one seemed like it fit: “D’you want to wait ’til sunset? Because I’m not sure I can go the whole day without kissing you until I make you understand how breathtaking you are.”

  Milo’s eyes were overbright, gaze churning with emotion, searching. Whatever he was looking for, he must have found it, because he gave Ellis a wobbly smile, small and poignant.

  He leaned in, scrutinized Ellis like he could see right through to his soul, then… well, pretty much snogged the life out of him.

  Chapter 14—Modulation

  : the process of changing from one musical key to another

  “Petra.” Ellis frowned down at the map spread across two hay bales in the main barn he used as a field office on the western edge of the Croft’s boundary. Fingertip planted to the basin where the Afon Wisgi fed into the Aled, he slanted a narrow look up at Petra, took in her resigned expression, and knew the answer before he asked, “Why are the Ffrwythlon fields still marked for drainage?”

  Petra pursed her lips. “Because they need draining?” Clearly noting Ellis’s glare, she held up her hands. “Look, you can’t keep Folant’s boyos on as managers and expect them to listen to me over him. They won’t—”

  “I expect my second to speak for me while I’m not here to do it. If you can’t manage a couple of obstinate—”

  “I can manage them just fine. What I can’t manage is your tad sliding in behind me and changing orders on your supposed say-so.”

  Petra’s round face had gone the color of new brick and her voice had risen with each syllable. Tall and dark and broad as an oak, silt-brown hair wild as a crown of leaves, she was whip-smart and sweet-natured unless you got her riled, and then she turned mean. Which was why Ellis had hired her three years ago as farm manager for the Croft, and why he’d since made her his second in Pennaeth matters when he wasn’t around. But if she couldn’t be counted on to help Ellis keep Folant in line…

  Ellis clenched his jaw, took in a long, deep breath. “So what you’re telling me is the Ffrwythlon fields still need draining because the mole subsoiling never got done.”

  “Because Folant—”

  “Yes, Petra, because we’ve established countless times already that Folant thinks he can ignore orders from the bloody Queen herself, let alone you and me, which is why it’s our job to make sure he doesn’t!” Furious, Ellis swept the map off the bales, though it wasn’t terribly satisfying—no startling crash, nothing broken. “We can’t—”

  “No, you can’t. Your job.” Petra wasn’t shouting anymore, but her tone was just as effective. She shook her head, stern though not entirely unkind. “I ken the pressure you’re under, Ellis. I ken how hard it is to do what you do to keep Wellech running—sometimes doing it three or four times because your tad’s gone and undone it as soon as you walked away.” She sighed, weary. “But I’m not you. I’m not Pennaeth in all but name. He is. He’s Pennaeth, Ellis. And when your Pennaeth tells you to just ignore what ‘my upstart know-it-all sprog’ told you to do, you do it.” She waved out the barn door. “Or at least they do. And when Folant’s ‘upstart-know-it-all sprog’ is off again on one of his trips…”

  She let it hang there, not quite condemning because Petra never balked at taking over when Ellis wasn’t in Wellech or out on patrol with the Wardens. But she did balk at being held accountable for limitations that weren’t her own.

  Ellis set his teeth and looked away. She wasn’t wrong. Which really didn’t help.

  “Have they finished planting, at least?”

  Petra crossed her thick arms over her chest. “The fields have been leased to Baughan from the weir side.”

  Baughan raised sheep. A lot of sheep.

  Ellis shut his eyes. His fists clenched. So did his jaw.

  Nia hadn’t been wrong when she’d pointed out that Tirryderch was the granary for the Preidynīg Isles. The problem was, over the past fifteen years or so, that had come to include Wellech as well. Once equally productive, a good chunk of Wellech’s yield followed its magical folk to less oppressive parishes, and now Wellech received most of their grains from Tirryderch like the rest of the country. One of the few smart things Folant had done in the past two decades—or ever, as far as Ellis knew—was to change gears and focus on mining and, more importantly, raising livestock instead. It kept Wellech prosperous and competitive. It also limited the available growing spaces for food crops, since mine works and livestock were taking up a great deal of the useable fields.

  Which wouldn’t be a problem, had the order not come down from Parliament’s Agricultural Executive Committee that Wellech, among other parishes across the Isles, was to increase its yield of barley, wheat, and three kinds of beans by nearly sixty percent by Reaping, and it was under no circumstances to decrease its ore output. The boffins on the Committee, of course, had lots of advice on how to accomplish all that, but none of it based on applied experience or even reality. Ostensibly, the increased yield was meant as benevolent relief for those countries in Central Màstira under siege, and others accepting refugees; practically, it was all but confirmation that war was inevitable. Because Preidyn would need to feed its troops somehow, and one couldn’t ship livestock to a battlefield.

  All of which meant Wellech needed to convert grazing fields to growing fields. They also needed better drainage systems to deep-cultivate the heavy lands where water sat atop a layer of clay beneath the wild grasses. The subsoiling for those particular fields had been started when Ellis left for Whitpool at the end of Sowing—it should have been well underway while he’d been busy praying Milo didn’t die, and completed when Howell shipped the moles and brackets two weeks ago. The plowing and planting were to have been done right after. And now there were apparently flocks of sheep grazing the acres and acres where barley should already be growing.

  “Well, there’s lovely, yeah?” Ellis sucked in a calming breath. “Right, then.” He straightened and turned to Petra. “I want the sheep moved across the river to Corstir.”

  “But…” Petra frowned. “The Corstir fields are more bog than not.”

  “Then Baughan will just have to make sure his herders are worth their contracts, won’t he?” Ellis cut off Petra’s inevitable protests. “Lambing’s done, and there’s plenty of grazing, as long as someone’s watching and pulling the odd laggard out of the mud now and then. We’ll reduce the terms by ten percent for the trouble, but I didn’t sign that lease, which makes it not worth the paper it was forged on, and Baughan bloody well knew it. If he doesn’t fancy getting spanked in front of the council, he’ll move his bloody flocks, keep his lip pinned, and never cross me again.

  “Now.” Ellis bent and retrieved the map, spreading it back over the bales. “Draining now will cost us enough time we’ll never get a second harvest out of Ffrwythlon. But if we plant beans instead of barley…” He trailed off, tracing the available spaces on the map and collating the information with the land characteristics in his head. He tapped at the southern end of Wellech. “I wanted to rest the Hollywell fields until next
Sowing, but I’ve little choice now if we’re going to make the quota. Get them planting barley in those fields, and we’ll use the Ffrwythlon space for beans—they’ll do well enough in the clay soil, and the tile drainage system that’s already there will keep everything just dry enough.”

  Petra tilted her head, eyebrows raised. “Unless we get a wet season.”

  “In which case, I’ve got two Dewin mages from the last batch of refugees who said they’re willing if I need them. I’ve already been holding Nia off about scooping them up for Tirryderch, and they’ve family here in Wellech—they’re looking for a reason to stay.”

  “Folant’s not going to like that.” Petra didn’t look like she disapproved, though—she looked like she was hoping it became necessary. And that she had a good view of the inevitable clash when it did.

  “Folant,” said Ellis, rolling up the map and trying to keep his jaw from tightening again, “is not going to like a lot of things that are coming his way. And sooner than he’d like.”

  Petra’s eyebrows shot up. “Are you—?”

  “It’s come to the point, finally, yeah?”

  “And not through anyone’s doing but his own.”

  Ellis had to admit it at once warmed him and broke his heart a little. It wasn’t as though what he intended to do was something he actually wanted. He’d never wanted it. Except he’d somehow always known it was unavoidable.

  He should talk to all the farm managers. The union heads. The growers and the miners and the tenants and the crofters and the inspectors and the livestock handlers.

  He should talk to his mam.

  …To Folant.

  He wasn’t going to.