The Healers' Home

  He leaned back a fraction. “So you… you married your friend Marco.”

  “On paper. Yeah.”

  Keifon stared at the rings. “On paper?”

  “It’s legal in Nessiny as long as it stands for five years. He can inherit the Despana Agency through me, and my aunt’s agency as an employee. They might restructure, merge them together. Maybe not. But I don’t have to take over for my father. I get to come back here. I’m free.” She pulled the rings loose and closed them in her fist. “I thought you were all for it. You thought of it before I did.” The river they’d swum in that day seemed impossibly distant, although it had been only a week’s ride from Wildern. Closer than Murio, by far.

  “I thought it would be something your family might want to arrange. It seemed like it would serve their interests. But you don’t seem… I mean… are you going back to Murio, then?”

  “What? No, that was the whole point. So I didn’t have to stay in Nessiny and work for my father.”

  He blinked. She wanted him to understand; she wanted that familiar empathy to break through those confused, dark eyes. But he remained strangely brittle, strangely hopeful. “So — is he coming to live here?”

  “Heart of the world, no. That’d just put us right where we started, with no heir in Murio.” She slipped the chain over her head, leaving the rings free against her bodice.

  “I-I don’t understand.”

  She shrugged and shoved her hair behind her ear. “It’s just a formality. Like an arranged marriage. I’m not — I don’t love him, he seems nice, but that has nothing to do with it. Anyway, I don’t see how it’s any different from all the stuff you do in Yanwei. Isn’t that pretty common there? Setting up the family businesses through marriages?”

  Keifon covered his mouth with his hands, breathing hollowly through them. “It doesn’t sound like the same thing. I don’t think you understand how it works.” He lunged off the couch to stand with his arm braced on the mantel, as if he wanted to pace but lacked the space. “I know it’s not your fault. You weren’t brought up with it. But that’s not what my parents’ marriage was like. Or my grandparents’. That’s not what I was looking to do, when I went to Father Tufari.” He kneaded his temples, still facing the mantel and its statues of his gods.

  “What were you trying to do, then?” Other than escape? Other than make his life fit the pattern he thought it needed to fit, and please his long-dead parents?

  “I’ve been trying to understand that, ever since. I’ve thought about it a lot. And I don’t fully understand it myself. But… you know what I expected out of an arranged marriage?” Keifon spread his hands and dropped them, and as he turned to face her, his exasperated gesture took in the hearth, the room, the apartment. “This. All of this. Setting up a home. Learning to work together. Making my decisions based on how they’ll affect you as well as me.” He ruffled his hair, his shoulders tense. “It’s not the same. I know that. But it’s the same foundation. That’s the part that matters to me, about having a marriage arranged. Not the contract. Not marrying a stranger. The fact that they don’t stay a stranger forever. I wouldn’t just sign the papers and leave.”

  It was hard to to resist the urge to jump up and throw his statue of Lundra into the fire. How dare he question what she’d had to do? It had been her only choice. And now he was telling her she didn’t understand. The one connection she’d thought she could draw between them had turned into a wall. She’d had it wrong all along.

  Instead of approaching the fireplace, she cast off the quilt and stumbled around to the other side of the couch, needing room and a large item of furniture between them. That wasn’t the only upsetting thing he’d said. She couldn’t tell him how much she’d hoped he would understand, how he could help her grasp what it was that she’d done. She felt fragile enough already.

  It was easier to contradict the rest of what he’d said, those impossible and beautiful things about the temporary life they’d made. “What do you mean, all of this? Here? Us? This is nothing like—” Like a partnership. Like a home. Like something that mattered. It was a stopgap, the best she could hope for, but the same was not true for him. “—like that. Not remotely.”

  “Maybe not to you.” His rhythms shifted, bending toward Yanweian, as his voice took on an old, familiar edge. The flip of his hand felt dismissive. Disappointed. “Evidently not to you.”

  “Not to anyone. Do you have any idea what a relationship even is?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Do you?”

  She felt her jaw clench. “No, in fact, I don’t, because I’m unlovable. But I know it’s not this. I’m not an idiot.”

  “If you admit you don’t know what you’re talking about, why don’t you take my word for it?”

  A months-old bruise twinged inside her, and her eyes stung. “You’re the one going off to matchmakers. You’re the one marrying someone you don’t even know to get away from me.”

  “Did you marry your Marco to get away from me?” It was only a Yanweian construction slipping into his Kaveran, but your Marco made her want to scream. Marco wasn’t hers. No one was. No one ever chose her.

  She shoved the tears out of the corners of her eyes with her sleeves. “I signed the contract because I had to. Because otherwise I’d have to stay in Murio, and lose the gallery. And lose you. If you care.”

  He wasn’t looking at her, gripping the mantel as if it would keep him upright. “You did what you had to, to get what you wanted. To get what you needed. Which is why I went to the matchmaker.”

  Agna spun on him. “Then why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you leave?”

  “Because I didn’t want it anymore!”

  She stared, silent but for the blood roaring in her ears. The shaking was not from cold; her body felt as though it radiated heat like the absent sun. Keifon stood by the fireplace and opened his clenched hands to rub his face. Agna waited for him to finish the silent countdown he used to dissipate his anger. Anything she said would be wrong. She was tired of being wrong. She wanted his friendship back, and she didn’t know how to win it anymore.

  “When I came to town, I had two options in front of me,” he said. His voice had calmed, quieted, slowed. He sounded like her friend again, exhausted and discouraged, but still trying. “I thought the matchmaker could help me get everything I’ve always wanted. A family. A home. A future with someone I love. Work that makes me feel useful. And on the other hand, I had this, the life I already have. And I started to realize what I already had. Work that makes me feel useful. A home. A future with someone I love. A family.” The sweep of his arm encompassed her and the warily drowsing cats. “It’s not what I thought I wanted. It isn’t the same. I know there are things I’m missing. And I still want them. I still want to tuck my children in at night. I still want to wake up next to my partner in the morning. But most of what I’ve always wanted… I already have.”

  She folded her arms across her stomach and willed herself not to crumple to the floor. Every living particle of her wanted it to be true. She wanted to believe that he felt the same warm satisfaction she did when she sat in their kitchen and watched the dust motes dance in the sunlight. She wanted to believe that she wasn’t just making do, that she didn’t feel this way because she wasn’t fit for anything better. She wanted this to be his home, as much as it was hers. She wanted to be his family, as much as he was her family: not by default, but by choice.

  You could have so much more, she wanted to yell. Don’t give up on yourself. She felt as though she had to believe that any alternative was better than this, that this couldn’t possibly be enough. Because it never was. Everyone left eventually. Everyone had someone who mattered more. She couldn’t depend on him, because it would tear her in half when he left.

  “Agna?”

  She dropped her head. “Everyone… everyone leaves, if they find something better. They…” Her tightening throat had choked out the words, and she started over. “Whenever I found a friend, they’d fall in
love with someone, and that would be that. No time for anything else. Or if we do bother talking, it’s all ‘did you hear the brilliant thing he said,’ ‘I can’t wait to see her again.’ That’s all anyone cares about. That’s what matters.”

  He sighed. “When was this, sweetheart?”

  The soft pet name brought a new rush of tears. “Everywhere! It doesn’t matter. That’s just how people are.”

  Keifon rounded the corner of the couch. Agna wanted to fight him, to refuse the offer she knew was coming. She wanted to convince him, to be right, to bury this idea that she could trust him. Because otherwise she would come to trust him only to be proved wrong later, and she would be shown up as foolish as well as being alone.

  He held his arms out as though he wanted her to approach him, to choose this for herself. Agna took a step forward, her eyes fixed to the floor. She was too weak to resist and too tired to care. Let him try to convince her that everything would be all right, that he wouldn’t disappear the first time someone newer and prettier caught his attention.

  He merely rested his hands on her arms, running gently up and down her sleeves. “I never went to the Academy. I don’t know your friends. But I believe that people grow up eventually. Most of them. And yeah, back when we were apprentices, we got stupid about those things, too. I almost lost my apprenticeship once, after I started dating my first girlfriend. All we wanted to do was get drunk and mess around and not sleep. I was late all the time. Pure stupidity.” His uneven smile squeezed something in her chest. “But I learned, and I settled down, and I grew up. Eventually.”

  “You’ll find someone else someday.” Her mumble sounded sullen, adolescent. She was better than this, but she couldn’t climb out of it. There had been too many hours, too many times healing other people, too many hopes dashed. She needed rest and peace and for everything to go back the way it used to be. But that was impossible. The man sleeping in her spare room proved that. The rings around her neck proved that.

  Keifon shrugged. “Maybe. I kind of hope I will find someone, when I’m ready. I hope you will, too.”

  “Can’t.”

  “You don’t know that. No one does.”

  “I do.” She hooked her thumb into the chain and jingled the rings.

  “Hmmn. Even so. Maybe something will grow between you and Marco. Maybe something will happen with someone else. Even after the time’s up — five years, you said?”

  “Yeah. Doesn’t matter, though. Didn’t happen before, won’t happen after.”

  Keifon’s mouth twisted. “Come on, now. Laris? Tai?”

  She hated the flush that leapt to her cheeks. “Tai? What does he have to do with anything?”

  “If you would stop throwing me at him for two seconds, you’d notice that he keeps trying to talk to you. He asked about you when I ran across him in town.”

  That’s a lie, she wanted to snap. That wasn’t how things worked. Sure, maybe he wasn’t interested in men; maybe trying to set him up with Keifon was a waste of time. But that didn’t automatically mean she was next in line. “That’s absurd. There are hundreds of women in town.”

  “Yes, well, you’re one of them.” His eyes softened, and his half-smile slipped. “You don’t want to believe it, I think. I can’t make you. All I can tell you is what I’ve seen. I ran into Tai in the caravan market, before the strike. He asked after you, I said you’d gone to Nessiny to visit your family. He asked if you were coming back.” He paused as she closed her eyes, as she shut out the scene. It would have been late summer or fall, the markets full of the harvest that had not yet run out. She would rather think of the two of them talking without her. It was easier that way.

  It wasn’t going to work out like that, though. She’d have to face it, to form an opinion, to risk making a fool of herself someday. She watched Keifon’s shirt front as her agitation slowly collapsed. If it were true — and that was a stretch — then another unfamiliar road lay ahead of her.

  He squeezed her arm, his thumb rubbing in light circles. “I know you mean well. But he sees me as your roommate. And as Dr. Rushu’s apprentice; he’s known her all his life. Maybe he and I can be friends. I’ve… accepted he doesn’t have old-country views on nameless people. And he said when you get home, we should get together for some cards or something. You and me, and him and Whalen.” He shook his head, seeming to redirect his thoughts. “But that’s all I’m looking for. Just a friend. And if you want to get to know him, please don’t do it through me. Do it for yourself.”

  That wouldn’t happen. It never did. There had been hundreds of students in the Academy. Hundreds, and those who weren’t going to pieces over grades or rankings had been bent on sneaking into one another’s beds or showing off on the quad. She had been invisible to all of them. Why should this be any different?

  People grow up eventually.

  She thought about the other Nessinians at the hospital. Sure, she’d seen flirting notes between some of them on the note boards, but after working alongside them on the floor, she wasn’t convinced that the notes were meant literally. On the floor, the other healers were only interested in taking care of the next patient and getting off shift. And not so long ago, they’d all been at the Academy, too. She could imagine Lorenzo flaunting a different date on the quad every week, but here all he did was complain about the remaining years on his contract and try to convince the other Nessinians to start a recreational rugieri team. Did they even care about pairing up anymore?

  Even Keifon, who had come to Wildern to get married and settle down, had foregone the matchmaker to seek counseling, made motions toward joining the Daranite church, and found a personal mission in helping the street people of Wildern. He’d spent more time finding furniture for their apartment than he had looking for a spouse.

  Agna felt a weight on her heart dissolve. She’d been wrong, yes. She’d been unfair to all of them. They’d changed, over time. They’d discovered new passions in life. Had she done the same, in the end? Had she changed enough? She shook off those thoughts. All she could do was to get out in the world and find out whether she’d grown beyond the Academy too.

  She shifted in the frame of Keifon’s arms to hug him. With a soft humming sound in his throat, he closed his arms around her. He wanted to be here, Agna thought, reciting it to herself as though memorizing irregular Kaveran verbs. He had other options, but he chose to stay here. She’d say it to herself until she believed it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “There are things I still don’t understand. And sometimes… sometimes I’m scared. I’m not half the person I pretend to be. I want you to like me, but it’s a lie.”

  He chuckled softly and rested his forehead against hers. “I never thought you were perfect. Just one of the strongest people I know. And admitting that… I think that only proves it.”

  “Oh, be quiet,” she muttered without conviction.

  Keifon tucked his chin over her shoulder, but she suspected he was smiling.

  Keifon: The Fugitive

  Keifon woke before the light hit his face, pulled out of sleep by the scent of baking bread and a spicy, earthy smell he couldn’t quite place. He could hear a murmur of voices somewhere in the apartment, downstairs or down the hall. He threw off his layers of blankets and reached for the robe draped over the chair. The light in his window was gray but strong — an overcast day, well past dawn.

  His head was clearing now, between the cold and worrying about the source of the voices. Agna was home. Early. Yes. Long before spring. But she was home safe. And if those voices were coming from down the hall, either she’d invited someone over — which would doom them all — or…

  “…individual worth,” Kazi said somewhere in the distance as Keifon opened his bedroom door. It was Kazi’s debating voice, a voice that said trust me, I have the answers.

  “I understand,” said a woman’s voice, a foreigner’s, with flat diction and awkward Yanweian phrasing. It was the sweetest sound Keifon had heard in months. “In Nessi
ny we believe in individual worth, also. What you call patricians are just their own world. They are thought to be — hmm — lucky. But not better than everyone else.”

  “Well then, why don’t you demand your share? What makes them deserving of what they have?”

  Keifon stepped into the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. His former lover and his dearest friend looked up from opposite sides of the kitchen table. Agna wore her dressing gown over her nightgown, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders; Kazi had already dressed in Keifon’s borrowed clothes.

  Rubbing his eyes, Keifon turned aside into the bathroom. The air was warm and humid, and smelled like Agna’s soap. Her old traveling case of toiletries sat on the side table. The bathmat had been dragged over the floor drain, suggesting that the floor under it was still damp.

  “—we don’t want the things they have,” she said, as he emerged. They were both still there, both real. She turned. “Morning, Kei. You’re up early.”

  “Morning. You’re up early, too.” It was pointless to ask what they were doing, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know why. She was home safe, and she didn’t seem to hate him for harboring Kazi. That was what mattered.

  Agna merely shrugged. “Breakfast’s in half an hour or so.”

  “Mmph. Thanks.” He shuffled around the table toward the stove.

  “What do you mean, you don’t want what they have?” Kazi asked behind him.

  “Well, the patrician families have a chance to rule, one of them, every thirty, forty, sixty years. And they give political favors to each other. It makes their lives easier, yes.”

  On the stove, one of their cooking pots sat on the back burner, behind the teakettle. Keifon lifted the lid to find it half-full of inky liquid.

  “Coffee,” Agna said. “Brought some home with me.”

  “Ah.” He’d tried the stuff at New Year’s, in Prisa. It had tasted like medicinal bark tea that someone had left to steep for a month. Tea it was, then. He retrieved the box and a teacup and saucer from the cabinet.