Keifon sat on the crate, facing Edann across the wagon bed. “I’m asking you what you want. That’s all.”
“Why?” Edann retorted, arms folded.
“Because I care,” Keifon spat, and reined his temper in. “Because I’m thinking. About my future. And I want to know about yours.”
Edann shifted his hips to sit on top of the crate, on Keifon’s level, before refolding his defensive posture. “And your future is what, now? House in the country, packed full of kids? Church in town, wedding chains, all of that?”
“Yeah. Actually.”
Edann’s eyes narrowed. “It’s a lie, and you’re an idiot.”
Insult balanced against empathy, and Keifon waited for the insult to wane. Edann had never respected the things that were most important to him – his faith, his family, his attempts to better himself. That was what kept him at his own arm’s reach, even as Edann pushed him away. He had hoped, vainly, that someday Edann would wear down, that he would see that the world wasn’t out to stab him in the back. But Keifon couldn’t wait that long. The thought settled in him like a cold stone.
He was ready, or would be soon, for Wildern, for the house, for a family. Edann wasn’t. He had been hurt deeply, and he had refused to heal, despite Keifon’s efforts. Keifon couldn’t force him. Edann had to come of his own will or not at all.
The wagon bed was narrow enough that Keifon could lean forward and take Edann’s hands without leaving his seat. His thumbs found the faint dents around each middle finger. He knew what they meant now, and his heart ached.
“Whoever hurt you… I’m sorry.”
Edann yanked his hands away. “Fuck you and your condescension.”
“I’m not—” Keifon sighed. It wouldn’t do any good to argue. Offering Edann empathy was like trying to feed a wild animal; he would just keep snapping.
Edann stood and paced the two steps between Keifon and the back of the wagon. His slight frame hummed with tension, as though he might snap in half at any moment. “I should have known this would happen. I kept you on too long. It’s – you’re – you’re good at what you do, but I should have seen that you’d get – attached. Damn it.”
Keifon lowered his head to his hands, waiting for the tirade to stop. Edann’s dismissal fit so neatly into the spaces inside him that he accepted it out of hand. Of course it was pointless for Edann to get mixed up with him. He had destroyed everything he’d ever loved. Being rejected now only made sense. – And yet some part of him felt… relief. He already missed Edann’s wit and incisive commentary and encyclopedic knowledge of what exactly would drive him over the brink in the most deliriously efficient fashion. He did not miss the sense of throwing himself at the gates of a city that would never open.
I know you’re in there. I want in. I want you to trust me. But I can’t make you, and I can’t wait anymore.
Edann had stopped talking and stood staring at the curtain. Keifon licked his lips. “This isn’t – this isn’t what I want anymore,” he said, and gave up trying to guess what was going to come out of his stupid mouth. Edann wouldn’t have him back anyway. He may as well be honest and have done with it. “This. Us. It was – it – it’s been good for what it is. Was. I don’t know anymore.” He dragged in a breath. Edann waited, motionless. “But I need more. I need someone I can talk to, and trust.”
Edann half turned, not looking at him. “Your Nessinian girl,” he said quietly.
Keifon felt an angry flush start up his neck. Edann was baiting him again. He knew exactly what would set Keifon off, and pulled his strings like a master puppeteer. He wouldn’t take the bait. “Well… someone I can trust the way I trust her,” he allowed. “Like that. Yes.”
Edann gagged. “Yeah. You go and bury yourself in that. You’ll be begging me to take you back.”
Keifon closed his fists, counted to six, and opened them. Strings. Pulling. His voice came out dry. “If you were ready to be honest with me, then I would. You’re – you’re smarter than anyone I know, and you make me laugh, and I used to think that I couldn’t be attracted to foreigners, but – well – you proved me wrong. Over and over.” He caught his breath, thinking about all of those nights, wasted. Not wasted. True to what they were, at the time. “If you would stop shutting me out, I’d be thrilled to be with you. But not like this. I can’t – I can’t take this anymore.”
It lay between them, like a dead thing that Keifon had heaved onto the floor. Edann’s eyes were distant. The muscles of his jaw flexed. He was thinking about what Keifon had said, though; Keifon read it in the subtle signs he’d learned from a year of never talking about anything that mattered. In the spaces between their words he had learned how to read this person who wouldn’t allow him close enough to love, and in that code he read: I hear you. I can’t ever admit it. My pride won’t allow it. But I hear you.
Perhaps someday he would be ready. He wasn’t ready now.
“You’ve gone soft,” Edann muttered at last.
Keifon stood and crossed the endless distance between them. “Yeah. I guess I have.” He kissed Edann’s temple as Edann turned away, and his mouth as he turned back. Edann tasted like wine. “The ground has to be soft for things to grow,” Keifon murmured in his ear. He found Edann’s hand, hanging empty by his side, gave it one more squeeze, and dropped away. “Thank you. For everything.”
The silence pushed him out of the wagon, away from the campsite, and into the empty fields beyond. The sliver of moon kept him hidden for as long as he needed.
Agna: Love and Money
Food for the week, drawing paper, postage, a little aside in case she found a villager who would trim her hair, her share of the lamp oil, laundry and bathhouse fees… Agna drew a decisive line under the list and calculated a quick sum. – Enough. Despite the unexpected shift in her gift-giving timetable, she would have enough. She set down her pen confidently.
She looked over the columns, adding up the weeks and averaging them out. She made enough at the clinic to cover expenses and to pay the Benevolent Union their share when the time came. If she kept all the same clothes through this year instead of buying new ones and borrowed books instead of buying them, she might have a little left over when she – possibly, she hedged – relocated to Wildern. Not enough, however, to open a gallery, or anything of the sort. It occurred to her that she would first need to buy a house, or rent a room, as Lina was doing now. The thought seemed vaguely wicked. More to the point, such an investment would take some capital. Despite the swiftly mending bridges between herself and the Despana empire, she would not beg her parents for money.
Agna resisted picking up her pen, leaving the figures exactly as they were. She would find a way. She could even continue to work for the Benevolent Union, in their new base. She could get over the lurking mystery of what Rone had to do with it and whether she might just be following him once again. It was a matter of expediency, no more. A healer could draw a reasonable salary in their hospital, she was sure. She made a note at the bottom of her ledger: Write BU, hosp salary??
Abandoning her pen, she escaped the stuffy tent to see a man about some unseasonable wool.
Agna returned from her errand to find Keifon sprawled on a blanket, studying the Nessinian book. It seemed like an improvement, an observation Agna kept to herself. She was at a loss what to say to him, and her continued silence grew more frustrating every day. He had been so helpful, giving her the space she needed after – after Deeproot Valley. She wasn’t sure whether space was what he needed now. She didn’t know why his relationship with Edann had collapsed, and so she couldn’t decide between commiseration or forgiveness or a sense of fraternity against the cruel vagaries of chance. Studying grammar, however, was comprehensible.
Keifon looked up and squinted against the sun as she approached. “Hey.”
“Hi. Don’t you want some shade? It’s beastly out here.” The talk of wool and yardage had not cooled her, either.
He waved a hand lazily. “Ennh. It’s
worse inside, I think.”
Agna ducked through the open door to find, as predicted, a box of damp and stagnant air. The humidity by the canal counteracted the benefits of shade. “Ugh.”
“Told you.”
“Bleah. I don’t want to sleep in this!”
Keifon turned and propped his body on one elbow. “We could camp outside. More outside, I mean.”
Agna plopped to the tent floor to stew. Plenty of the other merchants had taken to sleeping bags or bedrolls outside their tents, or on top of the larger wagons. The guards made jokes about stepping carefully at night. But outside, where anyone could see you? All night? Agna ran her hands up her arms at the imaginary chill. “I’ll… think about it.”
“Mmn.” He returned to the book, and after a proper sulking interval, Agna located her Yanweian book and joined him next to the fire pit. She propped the book open on her lap and craned to read his book upside-down.
Keifon’s fingers steepled under a line. “Ente… le. Alaste? I don’t know that I really understand this. The difference.”
Agna closed her book gladly. She struggled to understand Yanweian words, able to distinguish only two of the six tones. She had secretly decided to tell sing from love from the first half of violet based on context. It was ten times harder than learning Kaveran. The line between frustrating and challenging shifted every day.
“I guess Yanweian lumps them all together, then, like Kaveran does.”
“I… guess so.” He chewed his lip.
“Well, in Kaveran you say ‘I love you’ the same way to your kids, and your spouse, and your friends, and your gods, and everything. It’s all the same word.”
Keifon rolled aside to prop his head on his hand. “Yeah, but they have synonyms. You wouldn’t tell your friends that – well, that you adore them, or something. Maybe you would, but it wouldn’t be serious.”
“True, but there’s one word that covers everything. We just don’t have that. It’s always different. I guess we think about them differently because of it.”
“And so you always know what you’re talking about.”
“Well. They overlap. And you can use them metaphorically, or ironically, like anything else. Or, you know, not admit to how you feel. But you know where you are to start with. You just…know. You learn it when you learn the language. Like you know your tones. Though really little kids sometimes say alaste everything, because that’s what their parents say to them, and so it’s what they know.”
“Alaste…”
“Familial love. Nicolina alaste la. And-and good friends. The kind you’d trust with your life. – Esirel is alaste to me,” she said hurriedly, by way of explanation, or deflection. “Devotion, I guess, in Kaveran. Or loyalty.”
“Hmm. Alaste… alaste Nachi.”
“-Le,” she corrected. “And reverse it.”
“Yes, right. Nachi alaste le.” His accent was the same in Nessinian as in Kaveran, bending the new words in the same directions. It seemed like the strangest thing, somehow. She had heard Yanweians speak the language before, though not often. His voice threw her back to those few isolated students in the Academy, though simultaneously it seemed like something that belonged only to him. It was nice to hear him say these things. She liked to hear him try.
“Ente is just… like?” he guessed in Kaveran. “I like… things.”
“Yeah. Things and people. Ente is for… your friends, your pets, books, abstract concepts, peach pie, sunsets. It’s the most common.”
Her list made him crack a smile. “I like you as much as peach pie? Touching.”
“Well. You have to start somewhere.”
He turned a page. “Amane I think I get,” he muttered. “Now that you explain the others.”
Agna looked away, letting him gloss over it. Amane was for Eri and Kazi and Edann, and for everything that hurt him in the end. It was for the way she had loved Laris and still failed. It was a bad time for amane. He did not practice it.
“And – inire is something religious?” he guessed, drawing Agna back from her thoughts. “I think I don’t get that one.”
She took a deep breath, grateful for the digression. “I guess it helps to go to the Church of the Balance on that one. It’s the word they use for the love of humanity. Compassion, I guess. The respect you feel for someone as a fellow part of Creation. Though the Church of the Four uses it all the time, too. They use it for the gods’ love for mortals and vice versa. Not really worship, not really respect – a little bit of both.”
“Hm. …Darano inire le, then?”
“I guess so, yeah.” Her smile was apologetic. “I’m not the one to ask. But I think you’re right. – And, say, Golden Caravan inire la, as…” She drew a circle in the air. “As a group. Because you’d say Murio inire la – or I would, I mean – so it would work for this too. Meaning the city, or the group, as a whole. That’s…” She tapered off, registering confusion in his eyes. “That’s more like the love of humanity thing.”
“Hmm. I think I see that.”
“So does that help?”
“It does. Thank you.”
She set the Yanweian book aside and stretched out on her back to watch the sky. She did not know which of the words fit him, and she did not try to make them fit. She did not trust her assessment anymore. She had been wrong with Laris – or she had been right, and things had gone wrong. She had been wrong with Rone, lavishing a god’s worship on a mortal boy. And-and more, she thought, her cheeks warming at the thought. Half a country away from Vertal and a year and a half removed from the Academy, she could almost admit to it. She had been stupid in so many ways.
She was not the one to ask on the topic.
Keifon squeezed her shoulder. He had left off reading. “You looked… unhappy.”
She shrugged against the ground. “What else is new, nowadays.”
He thought for a moment, his chin resting on his stacked fists. “Want to go into town? Just to look around? Something to do.”
Agna sighed. “Suppose so. – Though… Nelle told me that there was an artist in this village I should talk to. If that’s not too boring for you.”
He was already gaining his feet. “Not at all.”
Agna did not attempt even a half-hearted You don’t have to go.
***
Nelle had described the artist’s house: built of stone with blue shutters and window boxes, guarded by an enormous dog. The village was small enough that wandering up and down the roads seemed like a reasonable way of navigating. The angle of the sun cast a shadow from a hedgerow over one side of one of the roads, so Agna and Keifon walked in the shade for as long as they could. Agna even stopped fanning herself. Keifon watched the clear sky as they walked, and slowed his pace enough that Agna was tempted to push him along.
She caught him smiling when he thought she wasn’t looking. Maybe this village reminded him of home. Maybe getting away from the camp took Edann off his mind. Whatever the reason, Agna was glad of it, and she realized that the shade and the fresh air and the chance to meet a new artist had lifted her spirits as well. Some part of her wished that Laris were there, holding her hand as they rambled and telling the story behind every cow and pasture wall. But he was happy out there somewhere, and on an afternoon like this, she could believe that she could be happy, too.
The artist’s house appeared just as expected, surrounded by a dense flower garden. The air swam with lazy bees. Agna shifted her grip on her notebook and pulled the metal bell handle mounted on the gatepost. A rumbling bark answered the jingle, followed by a mass of fur that galloped around the corner. It reared up and planted its paws on the gate, bringing its head well over the top rail. Agna backed up a step while Keifon held out a hand for the dog to sniff. He clucked at it under his breath in Yanweian, with words that Agna couldn’t quite catch. The dog allowed him to scratch its ear and lolled out its tongue in approval. Uneasy that the owner had not yet appeared, Agna jingled the bell again.
“Go find
your person, huh?” Keifon ruffled the dog’s head. Its collar clanked. Agna reached out and got in a couple of ear scratches before the creak of the front door sent the dog whirling away.
“Visitors, Bear?” The dog romped at the feet of the woman who appeared in the doorway. She was tall and wiry, dressed in a beaded vest and loose trousers, her white hair rolled into a knot at the back of her neck.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Agna called. “My name is Agna Despana. I’d heard about your artwork from a friend, and I wondered if you might have a moment to talk.”
“About the art? Oh yes, any time.” She’d reached the gate, and surveyed the two of them. Keifon bowed his head. “You’ve come a long way,” she observed.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m from Murio, in Nessiny. I’m traveling with the Golden Caravan as a healer. I heard about your work from Nelle, the summer caravan’s herbalist. This is my friend, Keifon the Medic. He’s also with the caravan.”
“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Keifon chimed in.
“Dara Nesh. And you’re – art connoisseurs?” A trace of wryness twisted her voice.
“Well – yes,” Agna replied. The artist swung the gate open; Agna and Keifon stepped through as Bear the dog bumped against their legs. “Actually, I come from a family of art dealers. And my mother is a painter. I’m not in business yet, but I’d like to learn as much about Kaveran art as I can.”
“Is that so. You’ve been to the museum in Prisa, then?”
“Not yet. I have been to the two in Vertal.”
“Eh.” Dara shrugged and ushered them into the house. Agna remembered to take off her shoes in the entryway. “Historical, of course. They have all of our wartime painters and the old masters. But Prisa has everything new.”
“I see. I’ll be sure to visit.” Agna scribbled a note, Prisa museum – new, hoping that it would be legible; she was still sun-blinded.
“Water, either of you? Tea?”
“Water, please,” Agna replied.
“The same, please,” Keifon echoed.
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