“About…” He left it hanging, a noncommittal, neutral prompt. Everything but his voice was busy screaming Shut up and get inside, you stupid, beautiful beast. He had wanted this alien cipher for every moment of the last four months, and here he was, delivered on a platter. It was a bad idea. This one was smarter than the others. He would see Edann for what he was.
“Well.” The tilt of the Yanweian’s head was artful, but his voice stuttered. The little move he made to bite his lip was somewhere in between. “I, ah… I wondered whether you were busy.”
Edann breathed. He could still do that.
“Later, maybe,” the Yanweian went on. “I should get cleaned up.”
Edann opened his mouth first, but it took a moment for his voice to vault over his better judgment. “No. …Stay.” The Yanweian blushed, which only goaded Edann’s impulsive nature. Edann nodded toward the back of the wagon, enclosed in its canopy. “Care to step inside?”
The Yanweian was speechless, staring at the campfire at his feet and groping for words. Edann stared him down. He would not rescind the offer, like a stammering youth. He needed a bottle of wine. The Yanweian had blindsided him. But he had gone over the line, and he would not go back.
The Yanweian rubbed his neck and stretched his spine. “…Yeah. Privacy is good.”
Edann smirked and motioned for his guest to go first. The Yanweian passed by him, flashing him a tiny smile, and mounted the ladder to the wagon bed. Edann watched him climb over the edge. The Yanweian’s body was all planes and lines, not much mass – not his usual type. He wasn’t attractive, not really. His features were too strange, too Yanweian, the contours of his face unmistakably foreign. And yet. A little shiver of anticipation shuddered through Edann’s insides, tempered with self-loathing. He couldn’t outrun his weakness for the strange and the stupid, even though this one was smarter than the usual guards and shepherds. Edann knew this abstractly – the Yanweian was somewhere on the road to being a doctor, after all – but he didn’t like to be reminded of it.
He suspected that before long, the Yanweian would begin to talk too much. The more he talked, the more dangerous he could be. Especially since Edann had to see him in passing every day. Especially since – his mind shied away from this, from the thought that he saw an echo of himself there, twisted and remote. Abstainer, worshipper, foreigner; Keifon was nothing like him. Nothing.
He dropped the back curtain. In the enclosed space the smell of the Yanweian’s overworked body was intoxicating. Edann leaned in and nuzzled under his ear, where his hair lay damp against his neck. The Yanweian let out a yelping noise and scrambled backward, toward the center of the wagon, scooting onto the bed accidentally.
Edann chuckled under his breath, and sat back against his trunk of clothes. “Too forward?”
“Nn – I – s-sudden, that’s all. I didn’t expect...”
Edann allowed himself an open eye roll. “Then I apparently wasn’t flirting hard enough.” It was irritating to drag this out. Edann wondered whether the Yanweian would bolt if he opened the wine.
“Well… I mean… I wondered if you were interested, but I…” He gathered his knees toward his chest, restlessly. Edann had rattled him, it seemed. “I thought we would talk for a while,” the Yanweian finished.
Edann leaned his head back against the lid of the trunk, rolling his neck. “I’m not in the market for a boyfriend, so I don’t really see the point.”
“I… I see.” He hesitated, and then sat on his heels at the foot of the mattress. “I’m all right with that. It’s-it’s good to be honest about it.”
“Right.”
Edann knelt next to him and leaned in. Just a kiss or three, slow, measured, proper. – Well, as properly as one could kiss a foreign stranger after two minutes of conversation. The Yanweian – Keifon, Edann reminded himself that the medic had a name – froze for one or two kisses before responding hungrily. His hands were quick and restless, finding Edann’s face and his back and finally resting on his waist. Edann’s glasses dug into the bruised cheekbone, and Keifon shied away. He lifted the glasses carefully from Edann’s face and looked around as if scouting for a safe place to put them. Edann plucked them away, folded them one-handed, and returned them to the box next to the bed. It didn’t matter if he could see, now. The canopies reduced the light to nearly nothing, and he didn’t intend to move any further away.
Agna: Nemesis
What happened to your arm?
Can’t you, y’know, fix it?
So what happened?
Guess I shouldn’t let you try to heal me, look what might happen, heh heh.
Why’s your arm in a cast?
Doesn’t your healing work?
Is it going to backfire on me?
Guess the country was too much for a fancy Eastern girl.
What got hold of you, huh?
Why don’t you smile?
Hey, what’s going on with the other guy?
What did he do to Nita? ‘Cause we won’t stand for that.
Is it true? I mean, your guy and the Achusan?
They didn’t listen. The patients, the merchants, and the guards stared at her with dumb smiles, or clucked their tongues without offering real help, or slid away without speaking. They did not understand her pinched explanations about energy connections and the impossibility of healing oneself. They did not understand why she batted away questions about the dratted Yanweian, her own personal millstone.
In the clinic, their only words were directed at the patients. At the camp there were no words at all. Agna visited Nelle when she wasn’t feeling too peevish, where she could at least get a little company. There she hung around, staring into nowhere while Nelle tied up bundles of herbs or cooked new mixtures. The medicine she’d bought from the Achusan apothecary made Agna logy, but it dulled the pain in her shoulder, and it had cost too much of her remaining funds to throw away. This realization had lodged queasily in her belly. If she needed another kind of medicine, she could get it only if she did not buy food. The patients in the clinic continued to pay their tiny fees, but her savings were not enough. She felt as though she were suffocating every time she opened her money pouch.
The Yanweian disappeared more often than not, which suited her just fine. He came back late, prayed through his cycle of gods, and went to sleep. His timeframe shifted later and later, until he slipped in after she was asleep. After the first few startled awakenings, she was able to throttle her panic reaction. She lay motionless and opened one eye a slit, her heart galloping without her permission, until she was able to identify him.
One morning she’d passed by Edann’s stall, said hello, and received the chilliest greeting she’d ever heard as a reply. He had never been particularly outgoing, true, but after a few such interactions she began to suspect that the gossips were on the right track. The medic was spending the evenings at the apothecary’s camp.
It was none of her business, of course. But everyone could see his marriage torque. It wasn’t as though the Yanweian hid it, like a villain in an opera who wore gloves to hide his wedding rings. He was right out in the open as a cheating cad. Which, she supposed, made the apothecary partly at fault; he wasn’t being tricked. Still, the burden of responsibility fell on the married person. The Church of Lundra had the same view on that as the Church of the Balance. She had read that in school herself. And the Yanweian was supposed to be a man of faith! He was such a hypocrite.
Perhaps he had an arrangement with his spouse, while he was out of the country – but Agna brushed that thought aside. He was untrustworthy and dishonest, and it was easy enough to believe that he had no such permission. Besides, his spouse was not here to speak up. He was a near-stranger, but Agna could not stand by and watch him violate his sacred vow. It simply wasn’t right.
She had been in the sling for four weeks when she woke one morning to find the tent empty. The camp outside was lively with the jingle of tack and the heave and crash of equipment being loaded onto wagons. She sat up and ca
st around. Everything was as the Yanweian had left it last night; his bedroll was lashed to his backpack. She scrambled to stand, her head reeling, and began to pack. He would be back in time to take down the tent, wouldn’t he? At least the clinic tent was already packed. What difference did it make? She couldn’t dismantle this thing single-handed.
Agna was dressed and packed in record time, and carried the other luggage to the passenger wagon one at a time, even the stupid Yanweian’s stupid backpack. She returned to the campsite, where only the tent remained. She pulled the spikes from the support ropes and levered the poles out from the corners of the tent. It collapsed on itself. She stared at it and tossed the poles aside.
She knew the process; it was second nature by now. It was not second nature to complete it alone with one nearly-broken arm. She could not afford to hire anyone to help. She could ask Nelle, and Nelle would help. But she felt a lump press against her throat even thinking about it. If she ran to Nelle crying for help, she would lose her nerve. Everything would come rushing out, the money and the brain-fogging medicine and her aching shoulder and her regret at ever having come here. And then she would have to go and bludgeon the Yanweian with these tent poles, and the Captain would lecture her.
Agna forced herself to breathe evenly. She coiled the ropes into awkward skeins. She dragged the corners of the tent into sloppy folds. She rolled up the canvas and pinned it with her right elbow, panting with the resultant pain, until she could tie it up. It was good enough to get it onto the wagon. She knelt next to the bundle for a little while, pressing the tears from her eyes and waiting for that morning’s dose of painkiller to take effect.
She would do it in spite of him. She would get through this and show all of them.
When she could scrape her composure together, she slung the tent over her good shoulder and headed for the wagon. Halfway there, her path crossed with the Yanweian’s. She noticed a few things through the bright red fury. Unshaven, red-eyed, half-asleep. She hoped he was suffering.
He stammered something half-formed and reached for the tent. She spun aside. “I got it. Happy?”
“I – I just overslept.”
“Yeah. Under Edann. Everyone knows. Cheater.”
She registered horror on his face. Good. Agna shouldered past him toward the wagon.
“I’m not cheating, not that it’s any of your business,” he called behind her. He was following. She increased her speed. He caught up with a few loping strides – damn him for being taller, too – and touched her shoulder. “Look, I’m—”
“Get your hands off me.”
He let go immediately and backed off a step. They had reached the foot of the wagon, and Agna slung the tent onto the deck. “I don’t want to hear excuses from you. You got what you wanted. I had to carry everything by myself. It was hard. It hurt. A lot. Sorry you missed watching it.”
He fell back another step, the horror on his face closing off into something harder. “That wasn’t my intention. How dare you even suggest that.”
Agna ignored him and mounted the ladder to the wagon deck. She left the tent in the last row and strode down the aisle to the first row. His footsteps followed her, and she heard him slide into the seat behind her. His voice was low and clenched in her ear, his accent bending the words nearly beyond comprehension. “It was an honest mistake. I overslept. You know I don’t sleep well.”
“I’m sure you’re sleeping much better now. And with such a clear conscience.”
The bell rang out for the caravan to move, and the wagon’s floorboards vibrated with the steps of the rest of the passengers.
She did not turn to face him – she would not give him the satisfaction – but she glanced sideways to see his hand gripping the back of the bench. “What do you know about my conscience? You – thoughtless child.” He flung himself back in his seat, muttering, “What do you know, anyway.”
“Thoughtless?” Agna snapped, not sure she’d heard correctly. She’d thought a good sight more than he had.
“Godless,” the Yanweian growled. “You think you can tell me I’m wrong, when you turn your back on the source of rightness itself. You know nothing about me, or my life, or morality.”
“Is that the morality that condones running off to cheat on your spouse while you leave an injured person to carry your luggage?”
The Yanweian flung himself to his feet. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything.” He stomped across the wagon to take a seat at the back. Agna imagined the acid burn of his glare on the back of her head, and stoked her own fury.
The wagon lurched into motion with the habitual round of applause. Agna braced herself on the seat, feeling the jolt of every rut and puddle in her shoulder. The medicine’s effects had begun to fog her head, luring her toward a sleep she would never be able to find. She had to put up with this for the better part of a year. She’d begun to feel safe enough at night, jumping at unexpected sounds much less often. She’d taken for granted that if someone else were there, she wouldn’t be murdered in her sleep. But who even knew if that were true? His supposed sense of ethics was a lie. What else would she have to witness?
Some part of her wondered whether she were being unreasonable, which only soured her mood further. She could not stop feeling angry, which was more irritating yet. She did not want to be driven to lose her composure by this silver-tongued liar. Everyone in the camp liked him more than they liked her, after all. They were all fooling themselves, or maybe they were just as bad as he.
This was where she had to stay for the better part of a year.
Godless child.
She didn’t care to argue with godless; it only proved his narrow-mindedness. Child was more difficult. She wasn’t sure she could argue with that.
Agna: The Feast of Darano
Agna knocked on the door of the wagon. “Nelle?”
“Just a minute,” Nelle called from inside. Agna turned to lean against the wall, crossing her arms because she could. She rolled her shoulder and kneaded it with what she still thought of as her good hand. She had never been in peak physical form in the first place, but her right arm felt wobbly and underpowered compared to the left, and it ached sometimes. But at least she could write and cook and do her own laundry, and didn’t have to depend on Nelle for everything. And Nelle had asked her to go to the festival today. Agna wouldn’t question her good fortune right now.
“All right!” Nelle bounded from the door and twirled around to lock it. She tucked the key into one of the pouches at her belt. “Ready. Ready?”
“Uh...” Agna felt a trace of a flush across her cheekbones. She was woefully underdressed. Nelle’s hair had been pinned up here and there with ribbons, and her dress flamed a deep coral-crimson. She grabbed Agna’s good arm to hurry her along with a rush of excited chatter about the fun they’d have at the festival.
Agna had dressed in what she wore on her days off: one of her remaining dresses, which was serviceable enough, though it was several months old and probably out of fashion back home. She could lace her corset and bodice properly now, at least, so she didn’t have to traipse through the festival half-dressed. But she still looked like Nelle’s governess.
“Was I supposed to dress up?”
“Huh? If you want to, that’s all.”
Agna let the worry slide off as Nelle propelled her along the road from the camp toward the fairground. From what she had gathered from Nelle and the other merchants, the Feast of the Resurrection of Darano was the Church of the Four’s version of Midsummer – a bit earlier, but similarly light-hearted and given to outdoor merrymaking. It was a strange development for what her studies had painted as a somber sect. Darano was the god of war, after all, and the feast marked his return from the dead. Hardly merrymaking subject matter. But in the end, she supposed that the common folk would take any opportunity to throw a party.
The noise of the fairground reached her first – clashing music, laughing and cheering, the metallic clunk of some carnival
game. The air smelled of sawdust and mud, fried dough, perfume, spilled beer, and a whiff of barnyard. The fairground was arranged like any fairground back home, or the Golden Caravan market stalls – tents and tables set up in aisles, with the revelers milling around in all directions.
Nelle turned to Agna, her eyes bright. “How about a look around first before we pick a spot?”
Agna shrugged her assent at this plan, and Nelle started them on a loop around the fairground. The stalls featured food and drink, quaint local handicrafts for sale, and games of chance. Not much of this appealed to Agna, but at least she would have company. Wandering around and talking with a friend was a pleasant enough way to spend a day off, no matter what the backdrop might be. Agna kept mostly silent, absorbing the sights. Nelle waved to the caravan merchants that they passed, as well as some people that Agna didn’t recognize.
They completed their path through the festival, and Nelle began on a second round. “Anything looking good to you?” she asked Agna.
“Eh, not particularly. Anything is fine.”
“All right, then. That one about halfway down this side, I think... yes!” She turned aside into an open-sided tent full of tables, her skirt whirling. Agna followed. She wasn’t hungry yet, but a rest would give them a chance to talk.
Nelle picked a spot near the corner of the tent, next to a table full of young men. Agna sank into a seat across from her. Her back tightened as a few of the young men turned around, and Nelle leaned back in her chair to greet them. Looking over her shoulder, they would have quite an impressive view indeed. Agna hung onto the edge of the table. Nelle wasn’t listening right now. It would be rude to break into their conversation and try to get her attention. Nelle laughed at something that one of the young men had said. One of them had begun to lean on the back of her chair.
A host approached, hefting a tray full of beer mugs and copper coins. “Two, ladies?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Nelle chirped, depositing some coins on the tray.
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