She cut the word short before she could start to beg. “Yes.”
“Good.” He closed the distance between them and held her as she got control of herself, cupping her head against his shoulder. “Doesn’t mean you’re not strong. Don’t make me quote Lundran scripture at you, all right? Or that stuff about interconnectedness from the Divine Balance.”
Agna laughed into his shirt. “Somebody was paying attention.”
“Always.” Keifon squeezed her tighter and let her go. “Can we talk about this tomorrow? How we can work together?”
“Yeah.” Agna rubbed her face and took some deep breaths. “Are you going out in the morning?”
“Yeah. Probably, um…” He looked up at the ceiling as he gathered his thoughts. His eyes were red-rimmed. “Probably try the bakery again, ‘cause of their apprentice, and then the greengrocer the next street over. Best to do them every other day.”
“Mind if I come?”
“I’d love that. Thank you.” He stepped into the hallway. “Good night, then.”
“Good night. Sorry for the tough love.”
He shook his head. “I have a thick skull.”
“Me too. Must be why we get along so well.” She could make him smile one more time before he went. As long as she could do that, she hadn’t broken things too badly. When he’d retreated into his room, leaving the door open to get some air, she crossed her room to blow out her lamp and stretched out on the cooled sheets.
If she could convince Keifon, maybe she would believe it deep down, too. She could convince herself to her core that it could be their home, for good and all, and not just an argument she held onto until someone made her stop. The gallery was still a set of dusty, empty rooms, and Keifon’s future family was just a letter to a matchmaker. But someday it could be true. They’d convince one another until they made it true.
Come home, the most recent letter from her father had said. We need to talk.
I am home, she’d answered. I’ll think about it.
Keifon: Father Tufari
The matchmaker’s office displayed a plaster statue of Lundra on an oak side table in its entryway. The statue’s feet were heaped with paper flowers and folded prayer slips. Keifon breathed more easily. It wasn’t home, and he didn’t have parents to speak for him, but he understood this much. The negotiations of an arranged marriage made sense to him. Every factor was defined and accounted for.
He paused in front of the statue and folded his hands. With respect for Your power and love for all Your people, in the Lady’s name. He touched his forehead and the statue’s worn hands.
“Thought I heard the bell. You’re Keifon, then?” The matchmaker wore the deep blue robes of a Lundran priest, and his eyes crinkled at the edges.
“Yes, sir.”
“Father Tufari,” the priest said, waving formally. “Yes, I know.” The wry tone in his voice spoke to the seeming irony in his name — a Lundran priest named after Tufar.
Keifon shrugged. “Even if you weren’t named after the Lady, She chose you anyway.”
“Just so. — Through here, please.”
Keifon followed through a curtained door into a cozy reception room. A fireplace nursed a bank of embers; a trio of upholstered chairs faced one another across a low table. On the table, the matchmaker had stacked folders and notebooks. Keifon’s heart kicked. Each one was a possibility. Each one was a potential failure. And soon he would have to lay out the bald, sordid facts of his life for scrutiny in one of those notebooks.
“Have a seat.” The priest waved at the assemblage of chairs. “Tea?”
“Mmn, yes, please.”
“Milk or honey?”
“No, thank you.”
The tea was ready to pour; the priest set it in front of him before Keifon could settle into his seat. As the priest poured a second cup for himself, Keifon pulled his eyes off the dossiers on the table and up to the walls. There was a small prayer niche in one corner, but otherwise this room tipped from spirituality to business: framed certificates, testimonial letters, children’s drawings. Of course, the latter could be either personal or business. Either Aren’t my grandchildren brilliant? or Successful outcomes guaranteed. He was being cynical. There was no escaping his nervousness. He just had to persevere through it.
“So.” The priest eased into the seat across from Keifon, bearing his own teacup. “How long have you been in Kavera?”
The answer came easily. “About two and a half years. I traveled with the Golden Caravan as my first Benevolent Union assignment. We came to Wildern this spring.”
“We?”
“My friend and me. Agna Despana. She’s working on opening an art gallery.”
“Ah yes. With Jaeti Essry, the historian.”
“That’s right.”
The priest took up his pen and uncorked the inkwell. “You understand that I’m going to ask you things that the rumor mill has already deposited on my doorstep. As a Lundran I ignore gossip, but as a Wildernian, well, it’s in the air. So yes, I know of the art gallery, and the Young Yanweian Doctor.”
The humor in his voice drove the shame out of Keifon’s reaction, leaving only chagrin. What was the point of a matchmaker, then, if everyone knew who he was?
Father Tufari made a note in small, neat handwriting. “However, asking questions to which everyone knows the answers still serves a function or two. It breaks the ice… and it shows me how you respond. I’m not trying to trick you, understand. Only to get past the surface.”
“I see.”
“All right then. Basics first.”
As Keifon waited for his tea to cool, he answered the first round of questions — easy ones at first. Male. Twenty-nine years old. Divorced. One seven-year-old daughter in Yanwei. No preference between men and women. Aiming to get married, have a few more children, and settle down.
“In Wildern?” Father Tufari annotated the previous question.
Keifon took a sip of tea. “I’d assumed so. It’s placed well for me to visit my daughter, and there are opportunities to study and practice medicine.” He kept the rest of it silent: the specter of his other past love, and the tides that pulled him toward his old life when he found himself in the places where it had played out. Kavera had been a fresh start, and he intended to keep it that way.
“Ah.” The quill bobbled as the priest finished his notation. “You may have noticed by now that Wildern has a few factors at work. As does any place, of course — but we have two distinct populations at this phase in our development. Some say it’s locals and Benevolents, but I prefer to see it as those who are passing through and those who intend to stay.”
“Well… I intend to stay.”
The priest smiled, blotted the page, and turned to a fresh page. “A bit harder, now. History. You said you’d been divorced.”
Keifon put his teacup down. A twig in the fireplace cracked. “Yes. I married when I came of age. It was a love match. We divorced a year and a half later.” And he’d worn her marriage torque for half a decade after that, unable or unwilling to let go. Keifon cleared his throat.
“So soon,” Father Tufari said, in sympathy, not in censure. Not that it mattered. This would kill his chances anyway.
“I’d already—” Keifon closed his hands over the temptation to spill everything, to lay out the broken pieces of his life and leave this well-intentioned man gawking. “I know I have no chance. I understand that. I promised Agna I wouldn’t move out yet, anyway. I don’t know why I’m even here. To see what happens, I guess.”
“I figured you’re here because you want a match made,” the priest said, his voice tinged with gentle humor. “If you’re looking to have a cabinet built, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Keifon let his breath go in a huff, and his body itched to move. The priest waved a hand. Keifon burst from his seat to pace across the deep red woven carpet. “The other thing is… I — I had a drinking problem. Back then, when I was married. She knew, I thought I coul
d stop it, I thought the ranch and the baby would give me enough reason to stop, but they didn’t. So I know nobody’s—” His throat spasmed over the rest. Nobody’s going to want me. “Nobody’s that desperate,” he grated out, “and if they are, I don’t want to torment them further.”
Father Tufari drew a quiet sigh. “Then we can address this first.”
“It’s-it’s addressed. After—after my wife left, I was picked up by the Daranites. I backslid a couple of times, but not since I came to Kavera.” He stopped his pacing, clenched his hands into the Daranite prayer position, and waited for the flood of calm to mute his nerves. The priest was quiet, waiting, it seemed, for him to be ready to continue. Keifon held onto the prayer and closed his eyes to this cozy room where families were forged. The priest was right; the first step was to address what made him unmarriageable — unlovable. Perhaps there was still time. He counted three more breaths, lowered his hands, and returned to his seat.
“We don’t know one another very well yet,” Father Tufari began, “but there are already a few things that recommend you. You care how your actions affect other people. You’re a man of the gods. And you have a stable career. What makes you think I can’t find you a match?”
Keifon stared at the corner between the wall and the ceiling, over the priest’s gray head. “My marriage lasted a year and a half. My next relationship was two years, and he sent me off to Kavera to get me out of the way of his career.” The bitterness in his voice curdled in his stomach, and his gaze dropped. “My first girlfriend might’ve stayed with me longer, but she had to go away for an apprenticeship. And my last… my last relationship was a little over a year, but it wasn’t very healthy. I’ve been alone since then, for a year.”
“You’re listing these durations to me; what are you trying to say with them? What do those time frames mean to you?”
“That I can’t do it. That I… that I kill everything I love.”
His words died in the quiet. The priest poured himself another cup of tea and floated some hot water into Keifon’s cooling cup. “Tell me about the people you love now.”
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be all names and occupations and life goals. How many children do you want to have, who would you choose as your surrogates if you needed them, what would you do if you fell into hard financial straits. He’d pulled them so far off track with his broken soul. Keifon chewed his lip, gathering his thoughts. The people he loved. “My daughter. Nachi. She lives with her mother and her mother’s parents. Agna. My roommate. My best friend.” His voice wavered, and he took a sip of tea to let his throat unclench. Those were the easy ones, the obvious ones. But they weren’t the end. “My brother — I haven’t seen him since I came south, but I worry about him. And… I don’t know that I love them, but some of the people here are important to me. I care about them. My mentor at the hospital. Our friends from the caravan. Some other people I’ve met in Wildern. And… well, my ex-wife, though that’s more like respect now, not love.”
“And you haven’t killed them.”
“Yet.” He regretted the word even as he bit it off. He shouldn’t say that, even in bitter jest.
“That’s a good list of people. I won’t make light of the contradiction. I know you may not be able to see it yet.” As the priest sipped his tea, Keifon sat back helplessly in the overstuffed chair. This was a place for happy people to make happy futures. It had been a mistake to come here, and he should have seen that.
“I’m sorry to have wasted your time, sir. What do I owe you?”
The priest waved his hands over the table. “For the match that you don’t seem ready to make, nothing. If you’d like some advice, it’s free.”
“…Fine.”
“You told me nobody is that desperate, to be matched with you. You believe that, for some reason. You should know that I would not make a match out of desperation. I mean to defend my professional pride right now, you understand.”
The gathering ice shifted, and Keifon’s mouth twitched where a smile might have been. “I see. I apologize for the slight.”
Father Tufari gave him a gracious nod. “What I suggest, if one is not ready to accept a match, is that they take some time getting ready. Understanding why they feel that way. I would like to offer my counsel, if you want it.”
A tangle of thoughts snarled in Keifon’s mind. This match. Eri. Edann. Kazi. His failures in the past. His failures now. Nachi. Agna. His parents. “There’s… there’s a lot,” he said at last, his voice weak in his ears. “A lot to address.”
“A counselor who takes only easy cases is not much of a counselor.”
A soundless laugh escaped his chest. “Well… then… all right.”
The priest slipped Keifon’s unfinished dossier into a folder and tapped the top of the stack. “Then this goes away for a while. Not because you are a hopeless case, you understand. We will get to it when the time is right.”
It still felt like giving up, but it also felt like the opposite. Like picking up a fallen fencepost that had begun to rot in the grass, and finally setting it to rights. “I understand, sir.”
Father Tufari carried the stack of papers and folders to a drawer and shut it away. He brought back a notebook, leaving it closed on his table next to the inkwell and the teacup. “One thing I’d like to ask about,” he said, settling into his chair. “You said in your letter that you’d promised your friend — Agna? — that you’d come here, is that right?”
“Yes. I’d been putting it off since we got to Wildern.”
“Are you having problems as roommates? Tired of one another underfoot?”
“Oh — no, no, no. It’s—it’s wonderful.” His throat squeezed, wobbling his voice. “Ever since I came to Wildern — apprenticing, living with Agna — it’s been—”
Everything I wanted. The thought shot through him like a falling star.
“We argue sometimes, yeah — stupid things, mostly. We’re working long hours, and Agna has to work on the gallery afterward. Meeting people, making plans. We get too tired and argue over nothing. Sometimes it turns into a fight, and we’ve had to figure out a way to give each other space if it’s been a bad day.”
“How does that work out for you?”
“All right. If it’s both of us at once then it can be messy, sometimes. Because she likes to be alone and rest, and when that happens I can take over her chores for the day and take the pressure off her. But when I’ve had a rough day I need to — to be with her. Just to, I don’t know, sit with her and eat dinner and read or something. I don’t want to be alone. So if it’s both of us at the same time, I get on her nerves, and if she escapes I get worse.” He felt himself blushing in the warm air of this private room. “She figured out what to do to get me out of it, though, so it’s started to get better.”
“You work through your problems,” the priest remarked. “That’s a good sign.”
“Mmn. Kind of. It’s childish, though. Not hers. Mine.” He crossed one knee over the other and locked his fingers around it.
“Your…”
“My way out.” And he was picturing it now, to make things worse. Talking about it brought back a trace of heartsickness, and even though the priest was kind and understanding, he wanted Agna here. He wanted the sound of her voice and her hand on his arm; he wanted her presence. Childish, indeed. “She-she hugs me. For a minute. And it’s easier to go on.” He cleared his throat. “Centers me, kind of. I just feel better. I don’t know how to explain it.”
The priest’s shaggy brows drew together. “That doesn’t sound so childish. What makes you say that?”
Keifon shrugged. “Needing her to comfort me. She’s not my mother. I don’t want to treat her like she is.”
“Do you think adults never comfort one another? Friends?”
“Well…” Keifon pulled his thoughts away from Kazi, from Edann. He’d used their attentions to salve his discontent, and they knew it; they knew full well that he was b
urying himself in them. They each used him, too, in their way. That was all he deserved.
The unit, then, instead. They had a raucous atmosphere of bravado most of the time, but when Ling’s father had died, Sanfei had held his hand for hours, sitting on a bunk, as the rest of the unit kept vigil with them. Kazi had held Keifon as they stood in the crowd, violating Kazi’s own rule against showing too much affection in the barracks.
And — Keifon wrenched away from Kazi again — Nelle. Nelle, with Agna, more so than with him; he and Nelle had drawn careful boundaries with one another. But she had comforted Agna after that business with Agna’s school friend, when they’d been angry at one another and her feelings had been hurt. Keifon had sat by the fire pit outside the tent, trying to forget the sound of Agna crying, trying to calm the panic raging through him. He’d wanted to punch her precious, thoughtless Rone in the face for hurting her. He’d envied Nelle’s ability to give Agna what she needed without losing control of her own reactions. He’d been thankful to Nelle for that, for talking to Agna and taking her out to dinner — it was such a simple thing, and it had made Agna feel better.
“…Yeah. All right. It isn’t necessarily childish. I just… I don’t want to exploit her goodwill.” The force under it was too formless and primal, too ravenous, too terrifying. “I feel like I need her in my life. And…” He chased after a hundred strands, all connected to that “and.” And I still worry that she doesn’t need me. And it isn’t fair of me to want that. And I don’t want to keep her from her own life, but I’m scared of losing her.
The last thought caught him in the chest. “I’m… scared of needing her too much. Chasing her away.”
Father Tufari laced his fingers together over his deep blue robes. “Do you think those two things are connected?”
“I… I don’t know. I just—that’s how it works. Suffocating her. Disgusting her.”
“Has she said she feels suffocated? Disgusted?”
Keifon bent over his knees, propping his head on his fists. “Nnn… no. I—but how could she not be? I can’t…” He wrung the back of his neck, still bent over double. “I plan to get married, and even then I can’t let go of her. I want… I want too much,” he muttered. His head reverberated with the future he’d minted months ago, the colors too bright, the sounds too clear: the front yard, the delighted laughter of her daughters and his sons as they played tag, the curve of Agna’s smile as they watched from the porch. Some nights that dream still sang him to sleep. He didn’t deserve one love so beautiful in his life, let alone two. Three. Four. He’d lost track.
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