Sonata Form

by Carole Cummings

  “Bring them home,” was all she said.

  Ellis gave her a nod, short and sharp, leaned in to crush her in a hasty one-armed hug, then turned to Dilys.

  “Let’s go.”

  THE CAPTAIN of the cutter was too young, if anyone wanted Ellis’s opinion. But he didn’t suppose he could complain much—with the good fortune of a brisk wind at their backs, the captain put the spinnaker to good use, and then they were flying across the Goshor. Kymbrygh was but a small shadow behind them. According to the petty officer assigned to the delivery of the stores they carried, they should make it around Preidyn and to a safe berth in the Gulf of White Sands by early next morning. From there it would be a three-day train ride through Alliance-occupied Taraverde, down through Ostlich-Sztym—also occupied—and then into liberated Colorat.

  Ellis couldn’t keep still. Dilys was ready to strangle him.

  He decided to avoid her and spent his hours on deck, bundled in a thick coat and watching the sun spark on the water then burnish its frothed peaks into laced gold. He had to keep himself from chuckling too often—it always seemed that the larger, more dangerous-looking the person, the more time that person spent hanging over the side of the ship. Several times Ellis had received embarrassed glances as some soldier turned six different shades of green, fought with his or her stomach for a few useless moments before giving up, taking hold of the jackline and heaving. Ellis always tactfully looked away and mentally gave thanksgiving for growing up in a place lousy with rivers. And if he ever snickered into his sleeve, it was only because he was feeling cautiously giddy.

  Alive. Hurt badly. Sick with fever now, last Ellis heard. But alive.

  Only now did he realize he hadn’t dared hope, not really, not so he’d admit it to himself. Perhaps he’d thought the grief would be easier to bear if it was expected, he really couldn’t say for sure. But now hope flared bright and warm, and he willingly gave himself over to it.

  Other than that, he thought of little besides the sensations pouring over his skin—the fine mist of briny spray, the cold wind howling at his ears, hair grown too long and shaggy whipping his cheeks. The constant aches—arm, leg, chest—sometimes clamored for attention, and more so when he’d accidentally bump against the railing. Ellis resolutely pushed it all away. Nothing but gratitude and good thoughts were allowed.

  The sun finally fell, a last gush of brilliant gilt-cardinal across a stratum of cloud gone azure-gray, but Ellis barely marked the change. Only kept watch as the sea foamed against the hull and the wind buffeted, bringing him ever closer. Someone brought him a camp chair and someone else brought him food twice, but he had no idea what he’d eaten and neither did he care. Soldiers and sailors alike, spirits high with a war just won, tried to engage him in conversation, but he couldn’t remember whether whatever he’d answered back had been polite or had made any sense at all. Their warm smiles and the occasional careful clasp of his shoulder told him they understood, at least, and that he wasn’t making a name for people of Wellech or Kymbrygh in general as being dim-witted or rude.

  The stars disappeared quickly, it seemed: one moment they were there, wheeling across the plum-dark sky, and the next they’d already given way to a burst of violets and corals. It was when the main sheets were reefed and the lines readied that Ellis realized they were reaching port. His heart picked up pace. Injured, his mind kept telling him, and then his heart would answer back: Alive.

  The cutter churned to life with the routine of docking, all hands taking up their duties with assured efficiency, and those not involved in the mechanics of it all taking great pains to stay out of the way. Ellis watched it all with the same soft smile he’d been surprised to find on his face quite often over the past two days, though his patience was sorely tested with each passing minute. Finally, it was done. Ellis rushed off to hunt Dilys down, found her below deck in the middle of a card game—winning, of course—and hauled her up and out. It was the work of minutes to find their cabin, collect their scant things, and head back up to join the push toward the gangway.

  One leg of the journey done, one to go.

  If it hadn’t been for Dilys, the train ride would’ve been unbearable.

  The passing landscape was only interesting for a little while. Lush countryside only now going gold with autumn, seemingly limitless until the train rolled through a stretch broken by wavering lines of trenches like worm trails in churned mud. Cities with skylines of arches and spires and bell towers on one side, shelled-out hulls like broken teeth on the other.

  Their Pennaeth would be busy for a while, Ellis supposed. Or whatever they called them here. If they were still alive.

  It was funny, though. Two years ago, the job of Wellech’s Pennaeth had been one of the most important things Ellis thought he would ever do. Yet he’d left it all behind—every survey that needed arranging; every assessment of damage; every estimate of repair. Every citizen who’d lost a loved one and deserved a personal condolence visit from their Pennaeth. Ellis hadn’t even thought of any of it. He’d stopped in Reescartref long enough to tell Petra she was in charge, and he’d left.

  Milo had called Ellis Wellech’s favored son once or twice. Ellis wasn’t feeling very favored. He was barely feeling like a son. He hadn’t even asked after Folant. For all Ellis knew—

  “Every goddess have mercy, have you tried these things?”

  Nearly moaning, Dilys thrust some sort of puff pastry with sugar powder all over the top at Ellis’s mouth, giving him no choice but to open up or have custard smeared all over his chin. Or, no, wait, it was jam.

  Dilys didn’t even wait for him to chew before gushing, “Right? Have you ever had anything like it?”

  Ellis hadn’t. And it really was quite good. Dilys stuffed him with three more before she decided it was time to see how uncomfortable the beds in the sleeping berths were, and chivvied Ellis along.

  “I’m not six, Dillie, and you’re not my mam.”

  “Uh-huh,” was all Dilys said, then shoved him into his sleeping car and slid the door shut.

  Ellis stood there for a moment, blinking at the door, before yelling, “I’m only doing it because the lounge car is closed for the night!”

  “Uh-huh,” came Dilys’s muffled voice from across the corridor before Ellis heard the sound of her door sliding closed.

  That was more or less the entire trip—Dilys stuffing Ellis full of every decadent tidbit on the dining car’s menu; Dilys chattering at him; Dilys pushing him into his cabin for a kip; Dilys reading bits of the broadsheets at him as though he couldn’t read them himself; Dilys demanding card games; Dilys annoying him; Dilys distracting him.

  Ellis didn’t think he’d ever loved her more.

  He also didn’t think he’d ever been more grateful for the end of a trip when the train finally rattled into Werszewa, Colorat’s capitol city, and chugged to a slow stop when it reached the station. Three days on a train had not done good things for Ellis’s still healing injuries. He was sore, he was cranky, and teeth-gnashingly impatient to see Milo.

  “C’mon, then, y’ great child.” Dilys took charge of both their travel cases and led the way down the aisle toward the doors. “Smile pretty now. We’re liberating heroes here.”

  Ellis rolled his eyes and followed, accidentally-on-purpose smacking the back of her heel with his cane. “Maybe you are.”

  Dilys grinned over her shoulder, eyes wide in feigned surprise. “I totally am, aren’t I?” She waggled her eyebrows, sly. “I’ll get Milo to make me dragonkin yet, see if I don’t.”

  Ellis couldn’t help grinning back.

  Ceri was waiting for them on the platform when they finally disembarked. Brittle-looking and pale with exhaustion, and more hardworn than she’d been last time Ellis had seen her. Freshly scarred across her furrowed brow, a blotchy burn mark that smeared down one side of her throat, starting at her jawbone and disappearing beneath her collar. She didn’t smile when she spotted them, but her shoulders relaxed a bit and she a
llowed Dilys to hug her.

  “He’s all right?” Ellis couldn’t help blurting in place of a greeting. “We’ve only heard ‘alive but injured’ and not much more. How is he?”

  “Well, haia to you too, Ellis.” It was fond and accompanied by a wry smirk. Ceri gestured to a car waiting on the street. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  WERSZEWA HAD barely been touched. Banners hung from nearly every building, shouting out words Ellis couldn’t read, but they were bright and gay, so he assumed they were celebrating Colorat’s liberation. The sanitorium was on the outskirts of the city, set amid green lawns and gardens riotous with autumn-blooming flowers.

  Two dragons circled overhead, gliding calm and slow in a sky like slate. The stone had been growing warmer in Ellis’s pocket for the past five minutes. He’d had the romantic notion that it was because he was getting nearer to Milo, though he’d known the thought for absurd even as he’d thought it. Still. It was weirdly disappointing to have it proven otherwise.

  He wondered absently what those dragons would do, now that Colorat’s preserve had been proven unsafe for them and its dragonkin—its true dragonkin—had fled and made his way all the way to Whitpool. Reaping was almost upon them, after all. Did they sense Milo down there somehow? Was that why they were hovering about the city?

  With everything that had gone on with kin and stones and Dreaming, Ellis wouldn’t be surprised.

  “I wasn’t best pleased about moving him,” Ceri said as she led them from the car and up the stairs of the long gray building. “But it’s safer here just now than it is in Taraverde. It’s where Alton wanted him until he’s well enough to be moved to Llundaintref, and it’s where they’ve been sending the brass, so.” She shrugged as she gestured them through the double doors and into the sanitorium’s lobby.

  “But he is recovering.” Ellis couldn’t help the way it came out hard and demanding.

  Ceri’s attempt at a smile was nothing more than a crimp of lips. “As well as can be expected. Considering.”

  Considering.

  Considering that they hadn’t dragged him from that muddy field to save his life but to prolong his suffering. The prison surgeons had deigned to remove the bullets that had been pumped into him, but had done it without ether. Had taken his leg—mangled by a burst of machine gunfire, Ellis had watched it—at the knee the same way. Milo had been awake and aware through all of it. And they’d watched him, recorded it all in laboratory notes, as though Milo were some kind of experiment. They had known he was Dewin, just as Ellis had feared, because whatever glamour Milo had been using to hide the hole in his ear where his earring belonged had dropped when he’d gone down. So when he hadn’t died of shock or blood loss, when he’d started to recover, they’d started methodically breaking the bones of his hands.

  It was still too surreal for Ellis. Milo—his Milo—had been tortured. Had actually been tortured.

  They waited for Ceri to check in with the attendant behind the lobby desk. Nervous, for some odd reason, Dilys and Ellis both. Dilys’s short, sharp glances were speaking a language Ellis didn’t understand, and frankly didn’t have the patience or wits to try to interpret just now.

  Finally, the attendant gave Ceri a smile and a nod and sent her on her way. Considerate, Ceri set a slower pace than she probably normally would have, making allowances for Ellis and his cane tapping on the marble floor as he and Dilys followed her to Milo’s ward.

  When they reached a door halfway down the corridor, Ceri turned with a smile that came nowhere near her eyes. “Dillie, darling, they have a lovely tearoom here, and you won’t believe some of the pastries. Why don’t you and I go and have a nibble? We’ll bring a treat back for the boys.”

  Clearly surprised, Dilys opened her mouth, no doubt to object, but in a rare moment of tact, caught herself.

  Ellis wanted to tell her it was fine, don’t leave, stay with me, because this, this moment right here, this was all he’d been able to think about for bloody weeks, and now that he was here, he was somehow scared down to his boots. He hadn’t seen Milo in nearly two years. People could change a lot in two years. And the things they’d both done, the things they’d seen, the things they’d been through…

  How did one greet the love of one’s life when the last real thing between them had been a broken contract?

  Dilys cleared her throat, said, “Right,” shooting glances between Ellis and Ceri as though looking for the right thing to say. Eventually, she seemed to give up, slumped her shoulders, and said, “That would be lovely,” to Ceri, though she was clearly trying to telegraph something at Ellis with her eyebrows as Ceri led her away.

  Ellis had no idea what.

  “Right,” he echoed, turning back to the door, and… staring, abruptly finding it difficult to swallow. He clutched the cane, shifted on his feet, wincing when he put his weight on his bad leg. Lifted his hand to knock. Dropped it. Shifted again. Winced again. Rolled his eyes at himself, and said, “Right,” again, then, “This is ridiculous,” and gave the door a brisk knock with his knuckles before pushing it open.

  Thin was the first thing Ellis thought. Far, far too thin, and pale, and sunken-eyed, and someone must’ve given him a shave at some point, because his beard wasn’t that lush, full black growth Ellis had last seen in Dreams, but a three-day or more scruff that only made him look more pallid. Bandages was the next thing. Everywhere. Old bruises gone yellow-green. A great scabbed-over gash from temple to cheekbone. An unbalanced dip of sheets, a blank spot on the bed where the bottom half of his left leg ought to be. And it was only now, seeing Milo’s hands swathed in gauze and tape, that Ellis made the connection, remembered crooked fingers skimming his cheek when he thought he was dying.

  I need you to be all right, Elly.

  “It was you.” Ellis took an unsteady step forward, pulled almost, like Milo was a magnet and Ellis a powerless iron filing. “You were there. It was real.”

  Milo hadn’t said a word yet. Only sat propped in the bed, staring at Ellis, blue eyes too bright and brimful. His chin wobbled and he clenched his teeth. Said, “You came,” all hoarse and cracked, and his eyes spilled over. “You’re here.”

  And that… that…

  It would be all right. Four words, that was all, but that was all Ellis needed. Milo was in there, Ellis’s Milo, behind those hollow eyes and that face that had aged ten years in two.

  There was no choice. Ellis had to cross the rest of the distance. Had to drop the damned cane because it was about to be very much in the way. Had to crawl onto the bed and slide up alongside Milo, pull him in as carefully as he could, and lay his head to Milo’s shoulder.

  “Of course I’m here, you nit.” Ellis shut his eyes tight but the tears squeezed out the corners anyway. “You’re my home. Where else would I be?”

  IT WASN’T quite The End, and it certainly wasn’t And They Lived Happily Ever After. Real stories didn’t work that way.

  It was getting used to a Milo who was quiet, contemplative. A Milo with secrets behind his eyes. Ellis had been so used to Ceri’s standoffish nature, her restrained reserve that, in retrospect, screamed spy! spy! spy! that it took him a while to recognize the resemblance to the way Milo was now. Understandable when it came to national secrets, but when it came to How are you feeling today? it was just… wrong.

  It was watching Milo in pain and being unable to do anything about it besides be there while he gritted his teeth through it.

  It was thanking every goddess for Dilys, who had an uncanny ability to be bright and amusing and irreverent, all at the same time, without once tripping over something that shouldn’t be said.

  “Will you get a peg leg, Milo?” Dilys’s grin was wicked while Ellis only gaped at her, and Ceri looked ready to take Ellis’s cane to Dilys’s head. “Ellis has got all sorts of dodgy connections, y’know. It’d be a doddle for him to scare you up a pirate ship, and he’d look proper stunning with an eyepatch.”

  Milo, head sunk deep in the fluffy cushi
on—not sanitorium-issue but a special purchase by Ceri, as was the thick down quilt—blinked up at the ceiling for a moment, during which Ellis all but writhed in discomfort, until Milo… snorted. He lifted his head, shot a grin at Dilys then Ellis, that pensive look that seemed like his new normal all at once gone.

  “Don’t think I don’t know you’re only angling for first mate.” Milo relaxed back into the cushion, still smiling. “Pirate life isn’t only rum and dirty pub songs, y’know.”

  “O’ course not.” Dilys poked Milo gently through the bulky quilt. “There’s tropical holidays and buried treasure too.”

  It was eventually understanding that Dilys had become a buffer between Ellis and Milo, pushing into a stilted conversation and taking it over, smoothing over barbs Ellis didn’t even know were hidden in what he thought were innocuous statements or questions. So when late autumn wandered in with cold winds and gray skies, when Dilys reluctantly made arrangements to go home, Ellis… panicked.

  “You can’t go, not yet!”

  “Sure I can. Because I’m a grownup and you’re not the boss of me.”

  “But!” Ellis took the bundle of clothes Dilys was packing out of her hands. “He’s not recovered yet.”

  “He won’t be well enough to move until after Highwinter. I can’t stay here that long. I’m surprised you can.”

  Ellis wasn’t, not really. Most of the problems with running Wellech had come from Folant. According to Petra’s regular reports disguised as letters, that was no longer an issue. Folant had retreated to Oed Tyddyn and only emerged to occasionally ask Petra if she’d heard from Ellis, and if the parish’s coffers could do with a boost. Ellis had honestly thought Folant had gambled away most of his wealth, but according to Petra he was being very generous with his purse when it came to rebuilding Wellech.

  “Dilys.” Ellis snapped Dilys’s travel case shut. He only just kept himself from sitting on it to prevent her from continuing to pack it. “You don’t understand. You’re the only who can make him smile!”