Agna’s voice quickened a little. “I guess we could do something. That might be nice. Nothing fancy. There isn’t much in this town, I don’t think. Unless you’d want to go to their town… singing… thing. Caroling?”
“No, we can skip that.”
“Hm.” She twirled her pen in her fingers, the feather’s tip blurring in the heavy air. “I know you’re not much for wine,” she remarked absently. “How about a nice dinner? Pick out things that we both like. It isn’t much, but I’d like that.”
Part of him heard her. A small part, a single scout over a distant hill. That small part kept track of her musings while the rest of him sank.
You’re not much for wine. As though it weren’t important. As though it were a simple preference. You don’t like sweets, or songs in reduced eighth key, or wine. That’s all. As though he didn’t wake up some nights with the imaginary taste of bile and cheap liquor in the back of his throat.
He’d never told her. He’d forgotten, sometimes, that he had never told her. She never asked, and sometimes he told himself that she had figured it out and didn’t mind. He told himself that he didn’t have to go through with telling her after all.
“Are you all right?”
Keifon surfaced from his thoughts. “Mmn. Sorry.”
She studied him, and he saw her decide not to pursue. Not yet. She would catch up with him later. “All right. What do you think, though? A nice dinner? And maybe go to the bonfire for a little bit. It’s been a while.”
“All right,” he said, able to echo her words, but not much more.
“Are you all right? Is it something I said?”
“No – well – not now. I need to think.”
Agna’s lips thinned. “Do you ever stop?”
His mouth twitched, the closest he could get to a smile. Agna let the subject drop, and the two of them waited.
***
Flowers and money. He had counted out the latter, folded the coins in paper, and enclosed them in an envelope. Thinking about courting and weddings and funerals, he knocked on Nelle’s open doorframe. A sharp green smell drifted from the interior of her wagon.
“Hey there.” Nelle turned, tucking a stray curl into the mass tied at the back of her neck. “What’s the occasion?”
“Midsummer,” Keifon replied. “Agna’s – in Nessiny she said they give people flowers for their birthdays, and hers is on Midsummer. Kind of. What kind should I give her, do you think? I thought you might know.” He gestured vaguely at the bundles of herbs and the cooking concoction inside.
“Well, I’m not a florist.” Nelle paced barefoot to the door and sat on the stoop.
“Yeah, but – I thought she might like something medicinal instead. Or cooking herbs. Something – you know, something pretty and useful.”
A grin exposed Nelle’s eyeteeth. “Pretty and useful, huh?”
“I just thought she’d like that.” He didn’t like the level of defensiveness in his voice, but he didn’t have the energy to spar with her. Flowers and money wouldn’t make up for what he was about to tell Agna. They were the only ideas he had.
“Hmm.” Nelle gazed toward the tree line beyond the campsite. “Yeah, give me a minute and come along. Can gather some nice things. Won’t be far.”
“Thank you.” He sank onto her steps as she climbed back in to clatter some pots on her stove.
It wouldn’t be enough. But it mattered as a final gesture, if nothing else. He could sleep on the wagon easily enough; many of the temporary passengers did. And Edann would let him stay over some of the time. Agna would be professional enough to continue their working relationship in some form, although of course she would never trust him again. Keifon’s stomach clenched, and he leaned against Nelle’s doorframe. It had been good, in the end. Going to the Resurrection festival with her was still the best day he’d had since he came to Kavera. He could remember that, and be grateful.
“You all right?” Nelle prodded his thigh with a sandaled foot.
“Mmgh.” Keifon unfolded from the steps. Nelle gave him a look, but turned without comment and led him across the campsite.
Keifon followed her over the edge of the rise that delineated this campsite. Among the long grasses the air seemed to move a little more freely, and Keifon let his steps lengthen. Nelle parted the whippy branches at the edge of the wood until he could catch them. The two of them burrowed through a wall of broad-leaved undergrowth and emerged under the trees, wading in feathery ferns up to their shins.
He caught his breath, uneasy in this terrain, as Nelle looked around to orient herself. They were alone. At most, he could spot a few birds and a squirrel. No one was going to leap at them.
“So. What’s the problem?”
“Huh?” Keifon snapped back from thoughts of knives and blood.
“You fighting or something?” Nelle hiked northeast through the ferns.
“No – well.”
She laid her hand on a sapling as they passed. “Not yet?”
“Maybe.” He sighed. It was cooler in the shade, which counteracted his urge to run back to camp. Besides, he would have to face Agna there.
Nelle let him keep his peace. She stooped to pick a sprig of frothy blue flowers and handed it over to Keifon. “That’s not all,” Nelle commented. “Got ideas. Just hang on and we’ll put it together.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Keifon murmured, and accepted the fern fronds that she passed him. She stalked off through the brush, and Keifon followed, cradling their finds. She added three or four more plants to their growing bouquet; he recognized two of them from the preparations he’d bought for the clinic. It looked nice, he thought. Agna would appreciate the gesture.
They crossed a rill, stepping bank to bank. Nelle turned to follow it downstream. Watching her back as they walked, Keifon wondered whether Nelle knew how Agna would react. He wondered whether it would accomplish anything to ask. She would offer her opinion of any camp gossip that came her way – loudly – but she wouldn’t repeat anything said to her in confidence. Not that it would matter for much longer. He just didn’t want Agna to find out before he could tell her.
“I, uh. I have to talk to Agna about something.”
“Just be a minute.” Nelle waved a hand at him.
“No, I mean – that’s what’s wrong. It’s-it’s something I’ve been hiding from her.”
Nelle turned. Her dark eyes regarded him levelly. He knew where her loyalties lay, if he ever dared drive a wedge between them.
Keifon’s fingers tightened around the bundle of flowers and herbs. “I shouldn’t have. I know. And my conscience is catching up with me. So I’m going to tell her.” There was no wind to move the leaves over their heads. “It’s bad,” he said at last, giving up. “It’s really bad. I think this is it for us.”
Nelle let go a long, slow breath. She spread her hands. “Kill somebody?”
“—What?” The back of his brain, already primed to disaster, felt the strange knife in his hands and the blood sheeting his neck. They had been trying to kill him and Agna. And it was never clear whether he’d struck a death blow to any of them. “No, that—”
“Rapist?”
His hands dropped to his sides. She was guessing his secret, facetiously. “Gods, no.”
“Does Menon need to watch his goats?”
He set his jaw. “Now you’re just being an ass.”
“Yep.” She stretched her arms over her head. “And everyone knows you’re with Lord Crankypants. That’s hardly a secret.”
The blood rushed to his face, though he could not name it either anger or shame. I’m not “with” him. He wouldn’t have it. He wouldn’t have me. I don’t know. I’m not sure I care anymore. “That’s not it, anyway.”
“Well then. Whatever it is, be honest with her. She’ll get over it.” Nelle turned to follow the stream. “She respects honesty. You know that.”
Keifon’s legs would not let him follow. It was all they could do to keep him upright. The di
stance stretched, eight, a dozen paces. “I… I was a drunkard, back home.”
Nelle turned.
His fingers found the torque, cooling in the shade, merely as warm as his skin. “That’s why my wife left. I was – I was a waste.”
“You and everyone’s uncle, farm boy,” Nelle said softly. She looked up into the canopy of leaves. “Must have it managed, then.”
“I’m trying.”
Keifon’s stomach churned, waiting for the sentence, waiting for the truth. Nelle gave a little philosophical shrug. “What should I do? Faint?”
He swallowed hard. Yes. Or denounce me. Something. Something I deserve. The absence of what he expected hurt like a pulled tooth. Nelle only smiled – not the wicked grin that bothered him for reasons he didn’t want to examine, but something clear and kind. “Talk to her. It’ll be all right. Matters that you’re trying now. Not so much what happened then.”
He closed his eyes for a breath, switched the flowers to his other hand, and sighed. “Yeah.”
He could follow her now, and she led him back to the edge of the meadow. Keifon looked down at the bundle in his hand. Nelle fished in her pocket for a string, and he held it up so that she could bind it together.
“It’s nice,” he said. “Thank you.”
Nelle sketched a bow. “Maybe I’m in the wrong business after all.”
***
Agna licked honey from her fingers, and Keifon stared over the peaked tents and scrolled wagon roofs. He felt heavy and sleepy, full of Masa’s rice casserole and ripe peaches. Agna had followed that with a little oat cake soaked in honey, and now they lounged by the fire pit, too lazy to move.
They had been able to chat amiably all through dinner. They had talked about the towns they’d passed lately, the traveling musicians who were visiting the camp, and the last novel that Keifon had read and then passed to Agna. She didn’t seem to notice that he was playacting everything, that he was counting down to the end. Keifon noticed that she wasn’t entirely herself, either. Her melancholy over Laris could not be erased with one evening of companionship.
His news would not make her happy, and neither would his paltry gift. But it was all he had. Keifon cleared his throat. “I have something for you.”
“What? No!” Agna’s sadness was dashed away by panic. “I don’t – well… ugh! This is too sudden.”
“It’s not much. Really. Don’t worry about it.” Escaping her confusing reaction, he fetched the flowers and envelope from where he’d stashed them behind the tent. The stems, soaked in his water glass, dripped on her skirt as she took them.
Agna pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, and he saw her eyes water. His heart sank. The wrong thing? The wrong time? “I – you – you said flowers and money. I’m sorry.”
She dropped the envelope into her lap and fumbled in her belt pouch for a handkerchief. “No, I’m sorry. I guess I’m getting homesick, all of a sudden. This is so sweet of you.”
“Um… Nelle helped me pick them,” he said, realizing that he was overstating the case. Nelle had picked them, and he had carried them. “They’re all medicinal, or edible. We thought you’d like that.” We. He was digging himself deeper, not that it mattered.
She carefully set the bouquet aside, then lifted the clinking envelope and shook it. A half-smile ghosted across her face.
“I didn’t know how much was customary,” Keifon forced past his dry throat. Agna tapped the coins into her hand. Keifon blushed, suddenly embarrassed by the paucity and sentimentality of his choice. “It’s, um. Fifteen head. Which is, you know, not much of anything, but uh…” He saw her forehead crease, working out the meaning of the number. He swallowed. “For the last fifteen months. That’s all.” The reckoning included the first few months, but even that had been part of their travels together.
“Fifteen…oh.” She closed the copper coins in her hand. “…Oh.” Her smile turned strange, and Keifon nearly lunged to take the money back and apologize. But she shook it off. “Thank you. That’s lovely.”
Keifon bit his tongue over more babbling apologies. She liked the gift. He had made her homesick, but that was a sweet kind of hurt.
“I guess – I have something for you,” Agna said, setting the envelope next to the flowers. “I was saving it for Lundrala, but – it’d be nice to have more time. Hang on.” She disappeared into the tent. Keifon drank some more water, which did little for the dryness of his throat, and waited.
She emerged with two books, cradling them nervously against her body. “It’s better for a Lundrala gift, really. And maybe it’s a stupid idea, but–”
Keifon frowned, trying to work out some inkling of what she meant, until she held out one of the books to him. He accepted it. It was a heavy leather-bound volume, as thick as a dictionary. He turned it to read the spine, and his breath stopped. Introductory Nessinian, written out in his own language. His fingers traced the embossed title.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Agna was saying. Keifon opened the book to an early page. Greetings and Conversation, part 2.
His throat closed as he realized what the book’s mate might be. Agna held it up in reply to his questioning look. The Eastern script on the cover looked much the same as Kaveran writing. He didn’t know one word, but the other looked like Yanweian, the way it was spelled in Kaveran. Nessinian to Yanweian, the other way around. He closed the book and pressed his fingers against his eyes, willing his breathing to even out.
She wanted to learn. She wanted to communicate with him. She wanted them to keep learning about one another’s lives, even though they had less than a year left. Keifon imagined writing her letters that she could read and getting letters from her that came right from her heart, without translation. She wanted to keep in touch with him even after she had gone.
He remembered Nelle’s smile, dappled with shadow. What matters is what you do now, not what you did then. He could believe it, if only for an instant. He could believe it long enough to tell Agna what she deserved to hear, and know that she would be with him afterward.
He forced himself out of his spiral. Agna stood uneasily, her arms crossed over the Introductory Yanweian book, held like a breastplate over her chest. Keifon swallowed and lifted his head. “I’m sorry. It’s – I love it. Thank you so much.”
Agna’s relief washed off her like the first light of morning. “Oh, good.” She sat next to him. “I’d like to read them together, if you don’t mind. I looked at mine and didn’t understand the pronunciation at all.”
“Yeah, they say it’s hard if you’re a for—if you’re learning it as an adult. It might help to hear it out loud.”
They leafed through the books as Keifon gathered his courage. At least Nessinian script was similar to Kaveran – the same, as far as he could tell, except for a number of little extra marks that differed from one to the other. Teaching Agna how to read Yanweian script might take as long as everything else put together. Maybe they should focus on spoken words first.
Thinking about this, vaulting over the roadblock that lay directly ahead, evened out his fear. He didn’t want to spoil their Midsummer, but the longer he waited, the more he risked losing his nerve. It didn’t have to ruin everything. He had to believe that.
“Agna?”
“Hm?” She looked up from her page, and slowly closed the book as he went on.
“I wanted to talk to you about something. Something you said earlier – you didn’t do anything wrong, but you reminded me of something I have to talk to you about.” He set his book aside, frustrated that he’d made a complete circle. “Some bad things. In the past. But not only in the past. That’s the important thing. I know I – I dwell, and I’m trying not to.”
Agna nodded. “Go on.”
He took a deep breath, stopped himself from touching the torque, and watched the ground. “You said I don’t like wine. I don’t, now. I’m trying not to drink it now because I used to drink too much, back home.” He found that he
could breathe, and though he didn’t look up, Agna hadn’t stormed away yet. “Far too much. I couldn’t control it. It was why – why Eri left. And why I lost the ranch. I couldn’t keep it together.” His voice wavered. He cleared his throat, and in that silence Agna spoke.
“I’m so sorry,” she murmured. “Sometimes I wondered, the way you kind of tense up when – anyway, it doesn’t matter. Can I give you a hug?”
He was shaking a little. It was embarrassing. But he nodded, and she came to him. Her arms were solid and warm around him, and he hugged her back fiercely. His breath shuddered in his chest.
Of course she wouldn’t leave. It was only his own fear, his own decision that he didn’t deserve for her to stay, that told him she would. Faced with Agna now, with the living weight of her body and the smell of her skin, he couldn’t imagine her casting aspersions on him and bolting. It didn’t make sense. That wasn’t something she would do.
“I’m so sorry you went through that. I can’t stand to think of you suffering.” Her hand moved in slow, soothing circles on his back. Keifon closed his eyes and held on. “But I know you’re doing your best. Was that in the Army, when you stopped? Like you told me at the Resurrection festival?”
He nodded against her shoulder. His voice was tight and wavering. “Before. The Church got me off the street. Helped me quit. Then got me into the Army.”
Agna squeezed him tighter. “I’m proud of you.”
His breath let go in something between a laugh and a sob. He pulled away before he lost it completely, and Agna dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief.
“Thank you,” he said. It was all he could think of.
“Thank you, for trusting me with that.”
Keifon’s hand landed on the Nessinian book, and he opened it and leafed through the first few pages for what he needed. “E-emelo la. – Le? Emelo le.” Thank you.
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