by C Z Edwards
“I never asked for your celibacy,” I said quietly.
She said nothing for a long moment. She had told me her continence wasn’t the same as mine, so now it was time for her to explain why. And so far, she didn’t seem to have an answer.
“It wouldn’t have been adultery,” she said carefully, “but it would have been a betrayal.”
“Cheating,” I said. “Yes, precisely.”
“Not cheating,” she retorted, almost gleefully, as if the argument itself was the fun part. “You cannot cheat what has no established rules.”
“That’s some bloody legalist hair-splitting,” I said mildly, and changed the subject. “You’re blocking the scrub stone, so if you’re gonna use it, now’s the time. I need time with it, too.” Also, kneeling in Hazel Spring means kneeling on stone. My knees felt a bit bruised. I’d like to get this done.
Laundry shouldn’t be arousing. But thing is, you lay the soapy cloth over the ridges, and you rub your palms up and down the length. If you happen to be a muscular woman with rosy nipples, your breasts bounce. Your hips flex and stretch. Your back grows lean and long, then arches upwards and round, ending in two round, full halves of an arse. And then you hurl the garment out into the pool for the current to rinse the soap away, and you start over with something else. See? Lascivious, at least when the launderer is naked and frustrated and trying her damnedest to be patient —
“Fine,” she snarled at the scrubbing stone. “Yes, indeed, you are right, you get to win this one. Yes, I refused every offer because I didn’t want to hurt you or damage us when we didn’t have a way to talk about it. And yes, you’re absolutely right that we should spend these hours talking first, because we’ve got a greater potential now to hurt each other, and in ways we probably can’t fix as easily. And yes, for your third correct reasoning, we likely shall establish patterns for you, whether you want them to be patterns or not, so we should try to ensure they’re good patterns for both of us.”
She looked up, and looked me hard in the face. “However, don’t let being right make you arrogant. You won’t always win.”
“Oi, I think this is probably a fluke,” I said honestly. “You’re smarter than I am. I expect you’ll win most of the time.”
“Good attitude.” She put her eyes back on her work. “I’ve already been gone from the girls for a quarter-year. I’ve never missed a birthing or name day. Those are all in Glacilis. I’d like to have finished the rite before then. Before spring. Would... autumn or winter be better for the binding?”
“Here? Probably winter, assuming we can get everyone to agree to let use either Salt Spring or Death Spring, instead of climbing.”
“Death Spring?” she asked.
“The water at the head and the top pool is almost boiling,” I said. “It’ll cook you alive. But the cave stays warm.”
“And you’d like more time rather than less to ensure we’re not making a mistake?” she asked.
“No,” I said with a little chuckle. “If we’re making a mistake, our ingeniae made it for us, a long time ago. We’re not getting out of it. So we have to make this work. Autumn is when we’re busiest. Everything I have now or can earn is our starting money, dove. And if we’re not going to starve by this coming spring, there’s a lot of harvest. We need all the hands free. And nobody very distracted.”
“Dove,” she said skeptically. “That’s your pet name for me? For me? A Wisdomian? The most violent of my people?”
“It’s aspirational,” I said cheerfully. “It’s who you want to be, if the world would just stop being cruel and petty.” We had shared our mind for a long time.
She laid a slightly soapy hand on my face, a gesture of pure affection, and it almost broke my heart with how easy it felt. I think she even got a bit of a watery eye. So I’d done something well.
“Cedri, you never have to tell anyone else, but I should know. What’s the name your father took from you, and what’s the one he forced onto you?”
“Staorev,” I said simply, the first time I’d said it in at least fifteen years. “I’m pretty sure that a few generations back, some grandfather was a half-acknowledged Dastorian bastard. That’s common for Patronae in the Wine District. Not a patronym, not a recognizable given name, but near the big family’s original name. D’Astori. If you conjugate it through Ancient Porsiran, of D’Astori becomes Dastorian, but with or by D’Astori becomes Dastoriev. Which eroded into Staorev. Dad... chafed. He had... He always thought he was grander than where and what he was born into. He changed it to Pious Dust. Also grandiose. Prideful, that name.”
I tried to make it sound light, but I think I achieved acrid.
Kya winced. “Do you want mine? I can give you mer Kya. It’s unconventional, but it’s not unknown for men to take their wives’ names.”
I shook my head. “I’m flattered, really. Thanks. But I think I need to name myself. To establish that I belong to myself first. I’ve just never needed it, so never got ‘round to it.”
She handed me the soap. “When you’re ready, then. But you don’t have much time left to procrastinate. We Archilians are fiends for documentation.”
I nodded, and made much quicker work of my one change of clothing than she’d made of several. We were both done rinsing and wringing at the same time, so we walked, together, barefoot and naked, into our drying field of knee-high grass. We had fine, clear, still weather, with a long, descending sunset making ridiculous shadows. They go boingy-boingy-boingy when you walk with an erected staff.
“Hungry?” I asked, as a distraction.
“Yes, please,” she said. I had pack rations with me, and we keep a box of the same pack rations in the back of the cave against emergencies.
I gave Kya the options. “Dry noodles with that gods-fucked shit again, or dry noodles with oil and badly mangled bits of dry, hard cheese?
“What exactly is that gods-fucked shit again?” she asked, amused.
“Daval makes it. You start with way too much salt, spices, shredded dried vegetables and meat, minced dried mushrooms and onions. It’s all bound together in lumps of sticky paste that started life as venison bone broth before it got boiled down to sludge, then it all gets left to dry in deep cold. If you don’t eat it too often, it’s tasty. But we got heavily snowed in shortly after the first time he made it. It earned its name.”
“I’ll risk mangling the cheese,” she said.
I built a fire just large enough to boil water for noodles, and dug out the box of junk we kept here. Were I alone, I’d do this in one of my tin water bottles, but I’d also probably not do the extra cheese and oil step, when a lump of that gods-fucked shit again could just go in the bottle, too. But we had an old pot that stopped being a practical size when we stopped being two people trying not to starve in a cave, and an iron grate for it, and a tin basket that fits in the pot.
I handed Kya the lump of hard, dry sheep’s cheese to mangle to her preference; she had her own knife. And sometime in the mundanity of feeding ourselves, my body gave up on the prospect of an immediate tumble and went back to sleep. Thank the stupid gods for their broken designs.
We were more clean after our splashing in the laundry pool. I did want an actual scrub and soak, but not more than I wanted food. I also knew we both needed to drink. Today had been hot. I had eight empty quart bottles in my pack, and I found four more in the junk box, though three were missing corks, so nothing that needed vigorous shaking in those. Kya had three. I’d have to get her in the habit of carrying more water. Everything dried faster here than it did down south, or even in Celestan. Including us.
I filled the beat-to-hells kettle Quin and I brought from Gorthania, and set up four bottles for fondal, filled four more with plain water, and considered the last four. We didn’t keep wine or ale over here; the cave wasn’t big enough for barrels. But we did keep a bottle of Daval’s brandy marmalade, or marmalade brandy, depe
nding on how much liquid remained at any time. It started as a quart of white brandy and a pot of marmalade. It was sticky sweet and potent, and I needed that type of drink, too. Daval insisted that its summer application was poured over crushed glacier ice, but Daval was a food snob who grew up in an excellent, expensive brothel. I found it mixed very well with chilled water from the crock.
We were in luck. This batch was still the deep russet of a summer sundown, so it would still have most of the sweetness of the jam, but it was also nearly full of liquid, so whoever had been out here hadn’t used much.
I didn’t want to be drunk. I just wanted a little cushioning to make the world a bit slower. Because finally meeting the love of your life and realizing there was no escape, and it wasn’t exactly your choice, and the only alternatives were death or nearly death.... Overwhelming.
Two marriage daughters. That would be good.
She’d made fine little crumbles of the dry, hard, salted cheese into the second bowl from the junk box. “Did I mangle it correctly?” she asked.
“Better than me,” I said. I strained the boiled noodles from the pot, got about half into the other bowl, poured oil over it, and dumped half the cheese from her bowl. I gave her that one, then made my own. Glorious, that food, when you’re starving and you didn’t realize it. Didn’t matter that it usually had the taste and texture of salted wood chips.
When you’re hungry, you just eat, you don’t have to talk, or look at each other and consider what it means to be naked together on a warm summer night, two and a half milliae from anyone who would distract you. A second brick of noodles followed the first down our throats, though I think we both chewed that one more. Only then did it seem like a good idea to have marmalade brandy. Hungry drinking is always a bad idea.
I filled my tin bottle with cold water, took three long swallows, then topped it up with the fragrant orange and lemon brandy. Kya watched me, and I handed her both a full bottle of plain water, and the brandy. She could decide for herself. As I’d made mine.
She pulled the cork and sniffed, then poured a tiny drop into her spoon to taste. “Oi, this is wonderful,” she said. “You grow oranges this far north? You’re now my father’s best friend, you know.”
“It’s marmalade,” I confessed. “What does your father do?”
“Plants,” she said. “Actually, mushrooms, which aren’t technically plants or animals, and he can tell you exactly why.” She followed my lead of three mouthfuls of brandy to a quart bottle, and sipped. “Still,” she said, corking the brandy bottle and toasting me with her water bottle. “This is exactly what’s needed, even if you haven’t managed miracles.”
It’s a pleasant drink in the quiet of the long summer sunset. I made sure the fire was safe and unlikely to throw a spark, filled the fondal bottles from the kettle so they’d be well steeped and either warm later or cold in the morning. “Bath?” I suggested.
“Yes, please. And join me. I have never felt this grubby.”
She stood, claimed her adulterated water, and pulled her braid over her shoulder while we walked back down the slope to the second pool. She began working her hair out of the plait, and by the time she was done, it fell most of the way to her waist, in deep rippling curves.
Mine’s longer, but never curled, at all. I kept it braided, too; it was just easier.
The middle pool was shallower than the bottom, just over my ankles instead of nearly to my knees. It was warmer, and it flowed faster than the bottom one. We re-built the falls into one steep fall to sit under for a good scrub and deluge, and a wide, shallow staircase fall, so once we’re done in the bathing pool, it’s easy to get into the warmest, lounging pool. That was one of the few good things about that drought summer when Hazel spring dried up. Quin and Bran and I spent way too much of our time playing with its rocks while it barely trickled. That was also the summer we decided to start the treehouse, and started the work on our spring, because our spring comes with a pair of reliable water sources.
And it was the summer they became lovers. Or a near substitute.
Twenty year old me spent a good part of that summer trying to convince myself to be jealous that my first real best friend and my second real best friend were spending more time than they realized sneaking off to swallow each other’s prongs and make each other shatter. That was before Fanik joined us, so well before I’d met and forgotten Kya. I admit I envied the touching. But the moment I worked my mind around the idea that I could touch them safely, and not be beaten to death for it, it was fine. The three of us cuddled each other most nights, and come the evenings when it wasn’t storming, and we weren’t exhasted, we would pole together and be still for a couple hours under the stars. Bran’s head on Quin’s chest, Quin’s head on mine, Bran massaging complex viol chords into my calf. Or some other way round, but together, safe, loved.
I also knew that if I’d given any encouragement, one of them probably would have swallowed my staff, or at least offered. But that is the last of my interests. They’re my friends, I love them, and I find wasp nests more erotic. Intellectually, I knew that a warm mouth would feel the same whether it was attached to my best friends, or the woman in my dreams, or a Courtesan, but I just was not interested. And in those early years, I was still sorting what I felt and thought from what I’d been taught.
I never had supreme control of myself, I’m nearly certain. I just... needed time to learn to be who I am, because I couldn’t trust any of the stories told to me about me. We rebuilt each other from shards up. Bran was terrified of all men — all people — when we found him. It took four tendays before he could bear to be near us for more than a couple hours, though he was three-quarters starved and couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a stretch. Quin usually tottered on the edge of white hot rage or black despair. Everything in me was broken somehow, because nothing I’d learned since I was ten years old was reliable.
“These pools are old memories for you,” Kya said, half to herself. “It’s always complicated here.”
I nodded. “But complicated doesn’t mean bad. Just... ornate.” And I needed to think of something else now. “You had an older sister. Anyone else?”
“Nan. Anna, formally, but she prefers Nan. Two years younger than me. She’s not a Wisdomian, for which my parents give thanks. She’s maths, in the ways that none of the rest of us are. Maths theory, the mechanics of gravity, I believe. Imparter. I’m a dunce compared to her.” She stepped into the pool, then just got as close to flat as she could. Kya exhaled pure pleasure pleasure.
I followed her in, but gave her space. The pools are only about ten feet in diameter. She pointed her feet at the center, so I took the opposite side of the circle. That way we could see each other without having to crowd each other, and I could actually see her clearly.
“Justin is my baby brother. Very baby. He’s four tendays older than Gwen, and my parents had him as an act of donation, to replace Justia.”
“Obviously named for her,” I said.
She nodded. “The advantage of raising our children like a big puppy pile is there’s always someone who has what any little one needs at that moment. For us oblates especially, it’s more usual that our grandparents and their siblings raise us than our parents. The idea is that we share our vitality when we have the most, but that the most secure and settled adults do the raising. My grandparents are all still alive, though getting frail. All four at Archilavast. My Dad and Mam are... far more settled parents now to a seven year old than they were when we were nine, seven, and five. If for no other reason than Mam now knows when she should go on research expeditions.”
“What’s your mother’s focus?” I asked.
“Earthquakes, volcanoes, calderae, hot springs and the associated rocks. Which my Gwen adores. Justin isn’t as enthusiastic, so he and Dad and Peri usually have some surprise for when everyone come home alive from Granna’s big pit of fire.”
“Jemi? Newly arrived and... I don’t think he’ll stay Archilian. He’s thirteen, and he’s been in Cimenarum at the Sancta Sophia since he was three. He lives with Darav’s eldest sister Palla and her youngest son. Micah. Jemi and Micah are the same age, within two tendays I think. They’re inseparable. When Justia left for Spagna the first time, Darav was overwhelmed, so Palla fostered Jemi. She manages the bindery. The boys are engineering apprentices. Constructors, in our parlance. We closed the Sancta almost a year ago — when we thought Rien died — to get everyone out of Cimenarum. We brought everyone to Celestan. Jemi finds it all... awkward.”
She shrugged. “He’s years older than his own uncle Justin, and his half sisters are also his cousins. A mostly new set of grandparents. And he and Darav... rub each other wrong. They’re so alike. It can’t help being awkward.” She looked at me. “You?”
“Middle of five sisters, two older, three younger. One baby brother who didn’t survive. You may know a bit more about them than I do.” But that wasn’t the extent of my family. “There’s Quin, we met in Gorthania. I was begging for work or food, and fire watch is about the worst work they have. Crushing tedium or fatal terror, no middle ground. Quin got me hired on and we shared a firewatch platform for a year. He’s the Optimus’ only son. Bran, we found here. Another temple escapee. Teandrians. He’s turnabout. Fanik used to be one of Linzara Silvalt’s crew bosses, and they’re all but married. Her horrible brother nearly killed Fanik in 1132. Archilavast got him on the mend, then we spent most of the rest of the year helping him heal. He’s our money mind, and he’s why I have a chance of supporting us, or this war will have enough money, but probably not both. Daval came the next year. Runaway from down south. We’ve just finished raising him to a point where I’m willing to inflict him unsupervised on the greater world. That wasn’t a given four years ago. Fanik and Lin have a son, Nik. He’s my nephew except for pedigree.”
Having let the grime soak out of my pores, scrubbing off felt like getting wrapped in new skin. Growing up, I always had short hair, because that’s what the other kids had. And the Lethians believe hair is a vanity. But once I was in the Gorthanian forest, I don’t want to spend half a day’s wages and half of one of my rare mornings off the platform waiting for a barber. So I just stopped, and learned how to keep it long. My sisters kept theirs longer, and Mam insisted I know how to braid Gilane’s and Lieve’s hair when they were toddlers, so I just used their rules. Soap is for skin, not hair, so you wash your scalp and rinse your hair. Finger comb your tangles and don’t let loose hair float in the common bath, because it will snarl beyond repair. At least loose braid it once you’ve rinsed the dust and soap from your scalp.