“Thank you.” She cradled the hot saucer and stirred, watching the white swirl dissipate into the coffee. Marco squeezed two lemon slices into his own cup, then added a spoonful of sugar. He set aside the covers on the platters, revealing a spread of flatbread and fresh cheese and bean spread, and dealt out a serving plate and a fork to each of them.
“Whatever you’re comfortable eating, please help yourself.”
“Thanks.” She breathed in the coffee’s scent, waiting for it to cool, as Marco filled his plate from the common platters. It was strange, in a way, to be in the same room as this near-stranger, seeing glimmers of someone she knew. His gestures and the serious set of his mouth were unfamiliar, but his words fit the agent and cousin-in-law she knew. It was like watching an actor play the part of her friend.
He glanced up sidelong from his plate, and she dropped her eyes to her cup. “Sorry.”
“For what?”
Agna shook her head. She didn’t have the words for it. “It’s strange, that’s all. I feel like I know you. I mean, I do. But not really.”
He finished chewing and took a sip of his lemon coffee. “Makes sense. It is odd. I’ve probably heard more about you than you have about me, though, through Lina and Ms. Despana. Naire, I mean, not Alfia.”
She decided to blame her flush on the heat of the coffee. “Hm. I suppose so.” It still didn’t seem fair. She reminded herself that the trap she’d walked into had been built by her father and her aunt, not by Marco. He was better informed than she was, but that didn’t make him culpable.
“So,” he said. “If there’s anything you would like to know, off the record…”
There were two questions in her mind, neither of which was particularly diplomatic. She tasted her coffee — still too hot to drink — and set it on the table, to keep herself from fidgeting with it any more. “Why did you ask me to meet you this morning?”
His mouth twisted. “Well. We worked out the details the other day, and yes, it’s a business arrangement, but it still seemed wrong to go through with it without meeting you in private. At least once. I wanted to make sure you’re really on board.”
“I’m on board. I don’t see any better alternatives.”
Marco sighed. “Fair enough, though that’s not quite the same thing.”
“It’s nothing personal.” In fact, this entire enterprise was the opposite of personal; that was what made it so irksome. It depended upon accidents of birth, nothing more. “Please understand, my protests have nothing to do with you. I’m only looking for a way out of this situation so that everyone can get what they want. I’m sorry that this is being done to you and Letta.” She clenched and opened her hands in her lap. There was her other question. “Are you and she going to be all right?”
Marco shrugged, with a smile she couldn’t read. “Thank you for your concern. But we’ve spoken about it. Coming from a family like mine, I’ve been prepared for the eventuality for a long time. Every few years there were rumblings about having me set up, until they finally gave up on me. And, well, now it doesn’t matter much. The Pircis won’t last another generation.”
Any of their members who married from now on would shed the name, until the rest died out. It had happened to countless noble clans over the years. Agna studied his unfamiliar face. He didn’t seem bothered, only thoughtful.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve been trying to catch up on the situation, since I’ve been in town. Will you be safe?”
Marco wrapped a marble of cheese in a wedge of flatbread. “I will be after today. A marriage of convenience is a better option than fleeing the country.”
Agna ran her fingers over the rich fabric of the chair’s upholstery. “Well. I’m doing both.”
His smile made him look younger. It was easy to forget that he was a year younger than she was. “I’ll keep that option in mind. Particularly if you need a second in command.”
Her hands shook as she forked some bread and cheese onto her plate. The coffee again. Of course. She scrambled for some reply. “I, errr, I may have room for you and Letta, but then Lina would want to come, and you know how she is with change.”
“Hah. True enough.” He dipped a chunk of flatbread into the bean spread. “In all seriousness. It might be in our best interest to visit a few times over the five years. It doesn’t matter so much for your end, I imagine, but I should appear to make an effort. Will you be all right with that?”
She froze with a mouthful of food, hurriedly chewed and swallowed. “With — visiting? I guess so. If you think it will help. I’d like to visit Murio again in a few years. Once my gallery is up and running. Uh — make an effort?”
Marco took a swallow of coffee and refilled his cup. “It’s a fine balance between setting up a marriage of convenience and actively flaunting it as one. If I don’t at least pretend, someone in my family may contest it. Letta and I will keep things quiet for a while.”
“I’m so sorry.” She’d known it, she’d known ever since Keifon first brought up the unthinkable possibility. Letta would be caught in the middle of these machinations, and if she were hurt, it would be Agna’s own fault. “We don’t have to go through with this. I don’t want this to get between you two.”
“Oh, not at all. We’ll keep it quiet, not stop seeing one another. As I said, I’ve known for a long time that this might be a possibility. It’s fine. It’s a bit of a challenge, actually.”
Agna continued her breakfast in silence. When the four of them had gone out to dinner, she’d watched Letta and Marco as though they had stepped through a door from another world. And in a way, they had. Nobles had their own rules, as the old saying went. Marco seemed to regard hiding his relationship with Letta as a lark, a game they played to make life more interesting.
“Letta and I will be fine,” he said again. “All I need is a plausible facade. We’ve met a few times, enough to support a story, should we need to concoct one. Letters would help, too, once you’re back in Kavera.”
“Letters?”
“The same as we have been writing. Nearly. Maybe a little more embellished.”
Agna snapped her mouth shut before she could echo Embellished? like a voiceless nymph in a fairy tale. “Like — love letters, you mean?”
Marco’s profile was impassive, angled toward the fireplace and the painting over it. “If need be. I don’t look forward to pretending. It’s crass and unfair. But if challenges come up, I’ll need a record that this might be genuine.”
“But that’s absurd. If anyone knows the first thing about me — or Letta — they’ll know it isn’t. Besides, we just met this week.”
“After a year of close correspondence.” His eyebrows quirked. “Lina told me you were like this. I feel privileged to see it in person at last.”
“I’m like what?” Lina wouldn’t say unfair things behind her back, some part of her piped up.
“Amane-allergic.” Allergic to romance. “It’s kind of charming, truth be told.”
Agna rolled her eyes before she could remember to be dignified. “I hate it when people say that. I don’t choose to be this way. I wouldn’t choose for an arranged marriage to be my only option. No offense.”
“None taken. But I doubt it’s your only option in the relationship field. I understand that’s a matter of perspective.”
She drank half of her remaining coffee. “We’ll agree to disagree.”
Marco chuckled. “See, it’s turning into a real relationship after all.” He raised his cup, and she lifted her own to meet it. Marco set his cup down precisely on his saucer. “I did want to say, thank you for all you’re going through. This isn’t easy for anyone, but I think it will help all of us in the end. I’m glad to finally meet you, and I couldn’t choose a better conspiracy partner.”
Despite the swamp of resentment and misgiving in her chest, Agna cracked a smile. She’d always thought she and Marco would make good business partners. “Thank you. Likewise.”
* * *
> As they repeated the vows, standing side by side before the magistrate, Marco slipped his hand into hers and squeezed it. She was glad she’d managed not to cry.
Keifon: The Dark Winter
Keifon heaved another body onto a bed. “Got it,” he said to Firdi, who carried the patient’s left side. She nodded and pushed the gurney away. No time to lose. As his fingers grew chilled by the snow that had settled into the folds of the man’s clothes, he set about stripping off what was no longer needed in the heated hospital air: scarves, gloves, tattered coat. The patient was unconscious, having collapsed after stumbling into the waiting room. Keifon was used to breathing through a mask, after weeks of one outbreak after another; the slow, bubbling rasp in this patient’s lungs did not make him nervous.
When enough skin was exposed to assess the patient’s condition, he made notes in pencil on a blank chart. Name, address, occupation remained blank. Severe frostbite on two fingers — the healers would have to grow them back. Feverish ague, probably the same one a third of their patients had these days, unless a new one had popped up to bedevil them. He added “probable malnutrition,” though it almost went without saying. He did not write down the fact that he did not recognize this patient from Keiva’s camp. Perhaps he hadn’t been homeless before the siege began.
As he pulled a blanket up to the patient’s chest, Dr. Rushu found him. “I’m headed out.”
“All right. Good. Safe trip home.”
She watched him as he hung the chart on the wall. “Double tonight?”
“I don’t know. If I can. Good night, Dr. Rushu. Please stay well.” He pushed the patient’s box of effects under the bed.
As he attempted to brush past her, she grabbed his arm. “Kei.”
He turned to meet her eyes over her mask, and looked away.
“You’re pulling too many doubles lately. Don’t run yourself into the ground. There are enough of us to carry the load.”
He would rather be here, sucking in bad energy, than be alone in that house. Bargi and the others argued late into the night as he lay awake, listening to the rumble of their voices under the floor. The lodgers’ money and his extra income from double shifts had kept his mortgage payments flowing, but no coins yet minted could make more food appear in the barren markets. The Army’s supply lines, intended to feed the pass workers through the winter, had been cut off since Kazi’s declaration. Some of the workers had moved on, but the Army and most of the others had stayed, launching protests in the streets and slowly devouring the city’s food stores.
“Let me put this another way,” Dr. Rushu said, leaning in. He knew he smelled like disinfectant and panic. There was nothing to be done for it. “Don’t worry about what’s going on out there. We need to depend on one another, and right now that means attending to what’s here, right now. Not what might happen. You’re no good to yourself or to us if you work yourself to death.” Her hand loosened, but he did not move. “They say the police are coming. Scouts have seen them over the mountains. One way or another, this won’t last forever. Spring will come. All right?”
The fatigue of the last six weeks rushed into his bones at once. He shifted his weight to keep from falling. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Make it a single today, and get some rest. Do you have enough food at home?”
He nodded and tried to force the lump out of his throat. “I’ve been stocking up since summer. We’re all right.” He cracked a smile, realizing what he’d said. “Me and our cats, I mean.”
Dr. Rushu chuckled. “Good. Let ‘em keep you warm. Mirie’s the best canner in the city, and our garden is still going under all her glass and such. So let me know if you ever need anything. I’m not going to let my apprentices starve.”
The upswelling rush of gratitude made him blink back tears. When the temperature had dropped, she’d given him a quilt she and her wife had made — as a gift, she’d said, though Lundrala was long past. The offer to feed him as well struck too many old chords. Part of him wanted to follow her home, to fall asleep by her fireside like a toddler. “Thank you, ma’am. …I think I might go home, too.”
“There’s my boy.” She patted his shoulder and turned toward the door, leaning on her cane. “See you in the morning.”
“See you.” With a backwards glance at his patient, he followed his mentor.
* * *
He breathed through the mask on the way home, pulling his collar up. So many of the other doctors did the same now that it did not attract attention. The scaffolding around the rising bulk of the Tufarian church swarmed with workers, and Keifon watched them lifting its high glass windows into place as he passed by. Bargi would be somewhere among them. She had been grudgingly drawn back to the site of her summer accident after Aines Shora’s fliers showed up, papered over the calls for revolution: work for builders, paying in food and coin, guaranteed by the Benevolent Union.
Agent Shora had sent some of the workers to the Tufarians’ church and some to the edge of town, laying in new drainage pipes. No one could figure out how he’d procured the food the work sites served, but dozens of the strikers had survived this far with his coin in their pockets and his food in their bellies. A few others from the construction gang had left town, and a few of Wildern’s residents had joined them, pushing south along the great western road toward farm country, despite the snow.
Keifon took a turn to the right after the unfinished church, avoiding one of the squares where the strikers picketed. He knew some of them would come back to his own building to sleep when they were done. But his resolve wore too thin to face them directly. The new path took him past a market stall selling newspapers, so he bought one and turned toward home.
He let himself in through the gate in the yard, avoiding the street. The apartment was dark now that the sun had set. Keifon lit a candle — lamp oil was dearer these days — and built a small fire in the stove before heeding the cats’ demands and refilling their bowls. Squatting on the kitchen floor, he watched them eat as the fire licked at the wood in the stove. They were slender but sleek, thickly furred for the winter. As long as he could take care of them, all had not been lost.
Tempted to nod off in front of the fire, he made himself gather the ingredients for his own supper, leaving the newspaper folded on the table.
While the pan heated, he lowered his body into one of the kitchen chairs and folded his hands into Darano’s prayer sign, then Tufar’s, then Eytra’s, then Lundra’s. He hardly had words anymore, but it was important to remember that the gods were watching their people and cared for them. They would not give their believers more than they could bear. He prayed to Darano to bring Kazi to his senses, to Tufar to keep the hospital workers strong and healthy, to Eytra to watch over those who were without shelter, to Lundra to bring Agna home safely.
He didn’t know how Agna was faring in Nessiny. He had not heard anything, all along. Mail from Yanwei had been cut off by the blockade, but it still arrived from the rest of Kavera. If she had visited for only a week or two, which seemed unlikely, she might arrive before winter lifted from the city.
Part of him hoped she would stay there, where he’d read that it was warm and sunny all year, where her family and her old friends would always be with her. At least then she would be safe and cared for. He had to put his own needs aside, and pray that she would not come home yet.
Doing so tightened a lump in his throat. All of this, the constant half-hunger, the cold, the worry, would be easier if he had her with him. They would have made plans together, commiserated over dinner or cards, huddled up on the couch and read in the evening. He wouldn’t be alone if she came home. Alone meant something else this winter, something cold, something that threatened to become permanent.
It was selfish, though, to hope that she would come home now. She could still be spared all of this. And so, fighting the sinking regret in his empty stomach, he prayed that she’d stay far away until Kazi’s strikers gave up and lifted the blockade.
Keifo
n left off his prayers to tend to the stove. Then he pulled the candle to the center of the table and unfolded the newspaper. All of the news was about the strike, in one way or another. Houses for sale, offers of shelter from the church of Eytra, recent deaths. A few births, badly timed. Someone had decided to run a serial story on the back page, something about a scrappy orphan holding out against calamity. It sold more papers than the news did.
The main story was this. Three days ago, a police force from Yanwei had marched down the ravine, raised a ramp out of the earth with their earthbreakers, splintering the snow-covered remains of the old bridge, and climbed onto the new road. They were now engaged in hacking through the strikers’ barricades. Some said the police were bringing food, and others said it was likely to be poisoned. Kazi hadn’t appeared in public since.
The Kaverans who had written about the police’s arrival did not understand why the Yanweian police might come after a member of the Army, what that meant, or why they were not under the same authority. They did not understand why the other members of the unit had not turned Kazi in, except to call it loyalty.
They reported on the police force’s demands to produce the leader of this “disturbance,” so that he might be arraigned in the capital. It was an arraignment by a government court, Keifon noted, and not a court-martial. The Army’s central command and the Daranite church had kept silent on the matter. He doubted Kazi would make his move without support from both. He’d worked too long for his revolution to make any rash decisions.
The police also brought the official word from Nijin, from a meeting of patricians who had never seen Kavera in their lives. Every one of Kazi’s demands were denied. The paper ran the patricians’ statement, clumsily translated: accepting the demands would mean jeopardizing thousands of years of stability, robbing established tradespeople of their livelihood, and throwing open the doors for any charlatan to claim expertise they did not have. All things he knew, all things he’d once believed. Keifon fed the newspaper to the stove.
The Healers' Home Page 37