Kazi’s chair pushed back. “Do you mind if I have some more?”
Agna’s laugh sounded half nervous, half embarrassed. “Yes, no, have more. I can’t drink all of it.”
“Thanks.” Kazi stood, stretched, and joined Keifon at the stove as he poured water over his tea. A soft nudge against Keifon’s arm drew his attention. Still facing the stove and pouring coffee into his cup, Kazi gave him a flicker of a smile. Not a smirk, not a declaration of victory; Keifon knew that look all too well. Agna seemed a little on edge, but Kazi was enjoying this.
Keifon leaned in, leaned up, as far as he dared. “My decision stands.”
“I know, I know. Even so.” His gaze broke from Keifon’s. “I think she’d be good for you.”
She wouldn’t miss his sudden flush, even if she couldn’t decipher their schoolboy whispering. “She is. And she isn’t one of your followers.”
“Certainly not.” Kazi’s sincerity didn’t seem feigned, though Keifon wasn’t certain he could tell anymore. He wanted to tell himself it didn’t matter, because Kazi would be gone soon enough. Another part of him wanted to push Kazi out of the door and slam it with a ferocity he hadn’t felt in weeks. He didn’t want the two of them stalking around the house like angry panthers, but he was bothered more than he liked by the sight of them chatting over breakfast.
It was too early for this. Cradling his cup and saucer, he took a seat between them at the table.
“I was saying.” Agna hitched up the blanket. Her hair was still damp, curling down the back of her neck. She hadn’t cut it since she left, Keifon thought. “Patricians and the rest of us. They have easier lives in some ways. But we don’t do what Yanwei does, where you are locked out of the professions. Most people just want to make a living and raise a family. A few protest the—” She looked to Keifon, tapping her foot on the rung of her chair. “Monarchy,” she said in Kaveran. “Help.”
He set down the tea he’d been blowing on and translated for her.
“Thanks. — Mon-archy. And say it’s holding back our progress. There are some who look to — what is the Kaveran style of government called in Yanweian?”
“Democracy,” Keifon said. “After a fashion.”
“Don’t start,” Kazi said. “It’s a form of democracy as much as Yanwei’s is. Purer, in fact, considering all their citizens can vote.”
“Democracy,” Agna repeated, wresting the conversation from them. “That’s what our protesters call for, for the people to vote. It isn’t illegal to protest in most of the country, without threatening anyone. Only in the capital. And that’s only because our king right now is… um…” She rattled off in Kaveran, “paranoid.”
Keifon grudgingly translated, and Kazi smirked. As he and Agna discussed the public acceptance of the Nessinian monarchy, Keifon ignored them, sipping his tea and dragging himself into the present when Agna needed a word beyond her vocabulary.
He should have found time to practice with her. She comprehended Kazi’s speech most of the time, but she seemed frustrated, hampered by her own lack of fluency. She so hated to look unskilled. But she kept on anyway, too interested in the subject, it seemed, to give up just yet.
They went on talking as Agna got up to turn the bread in the oven, shedding her blanket cocoon. Kazi’s gaze flicked over to Keifon, who did not react. He had to be an adult about this, and stop snubbing Kazi because of how Agna acted toward him. She wasn’t getting suckered in by Kazi’s usual tactics. In fact, Kazi wasn’t even employing them. They were merely two political enthusiasts who had happened to cross one another’s paths. If they didn’t occupy such strange spaces in his life, it would hardly bear commenting upon.
When his first cup of tea was done, Keifon wandered restlessly around the kitchen, checking the cats’ bowls and peeking through the heavy winter drapes at the looming sky. He’d meant to do laundry today and check the markets for food, as usual. No reason not to, even now.
“Tell me,” Agna said, loudly enough to catch Keifon’s attention. “Your revolution. Your demands. Are you really asking for a society like Nessiny’s? No restrictions on professions or family names?”
“Absolutely. The old system has held down the people for long enough. In a pure meritocracy, those who are dedicated and skilled will be rewarded.”
“Pure mer-meritocracy, though. In practice, there are few pure systems. Families and friends will still give favors to one another. Economics. Demand. Place — location. Lots of things are part of the system.”
“He’s heard all of this before.” Keifon dropped the curtain, turning to the two of them.
Agna’s mouth quirked. “It’s all right, I like debating. You and I have agreed to disagree about everything by now. Besides, I already don’t like him, so it doesn’t matter if I get mad at him.”
Turning in his seat, Kazi looked to Keifon as if waiting for a translation, but Keifon ignored him. “Your choice. Just—” He let the rest of the breath go. None of his thoughts were fair. Don’t get sucked into his grand schemes. Don’t trust him. Don’t side with him against me. It was his own fault that the two of them had met in the first place.
Agna relented, leaning her chin on her hand as Keifon returned to the stove to pour another cup of tea. She switched to Yanweian. “I wonder what you’ll do if this all is true. Is happening the way Kazi wants it. That’s what’s important to me, about everything.”
Keifon turned, setting the teakettle on the stove. “What I’ll do?”
Agna traced the grain of the table with a fingertip. “Yes. If you can go home and be a doctor there. If Kazi will let you back into the country.”
“‘Let’ him back in,” Kazi grumbled. Keifon stifled the urge to elbow him in the head as he returned to his seat.
“He takes your—” She smacked the table in frustration. “His request, Kei.”
“Your request,” Keifon translated quietly. If only she’d stop trying to push him out. In front of Kazi, no less.
“Kei takes your request seriously, Kazi. It keeps him away from his daughter, and if he won’t argue for himself, I will.”
“Please don’t.”
“I don’t think you understand the situation,” Kazi said, over Keifon’s mumbled protest.
“You asked him to stay out of Yanwei.”
Kazi drank the coffee she’d brought. “I did. Associating with me in such a capacity is dangerous. My people are legion — hundreds, more every day — and they are still hounded by the patricians’ dogs. Nijin can’t imprison them all, and so they can’t stop us. But none of them are singled out, raised above the rest. If the law had an easy target, someone who stood out, they’d be at risk.”
And so would you, Keifon thought, a warm, prickly notion lodged in the bottom of his ribcage. But that didn’t matter now.
“But you’re in his house right now,” Agna said. “That makes him a target, too.”
“I’m here secretly. And not for long.” The pointed tone in his voice slid off Keifon again.
“My point is,” Agna said, and broke into Kaveran as she turned to Keifon. “What’s keeping you out other than his say-so? If he manages to lift the ban, you can go home and build your life there.”
She didn’t understand anything. Keifon folded his arms and answered her in his own language, unsure why he needed to do so, hoping she’d understand. “I thought I was home. What did we talk about last night?”
“But if you could,” she said.
“I’ll leave you two to it,” Kazi muttered, gathering his coffee cup as he stood to go.
Keifon rose and caught his arm. “Wait. I think — I think there are some things we need to clarify. I think you can help her understand, because she isn’t listening to me.”
Agna scoffed. “Now, look.”
“No, just wait. Listen.” He dropped his grip on Kazi, who lingered by the stove with his cup. Keifon ran his hands through his hair, which was already unruly and slept-in. “I know Kazi’s plan would benefit people like me.
But it would also hurt a lot of people who depend on the stability of things as they are now. And besides, yes, I would be closer to Nachi, but I’d also be closer to the places where I spent the worst years of my life. It’s better for me to be here. It’s better for me to keep my new life. I love my new life.” He saw her look away, saw Kazi watching him silently. Keifon swallowed, trying to keep his voice steady. “And I hate the person I am now a lot less than the person I was.”
The half-joke got through to them, though their chuckles were weak. That was enough for now. “Yes, my life would be easier in Kazi’s Yanwei than under the old ways. But Yanwei isn’t my place anymore. This is. With you.” He pressed his fingers into the corners of his eyes. It didn’t matter if he cried in front of Kazi, he told himself, unconvincingly. And in the end, he couldn’t make Agna understand. He could only keep trying.
“We, ah.” Kazi’s voice was quiet in the still kitchen. “We talked about this, he and I. I think you should listen to him.”
Keifon’s stomach tightened as he watched her chew her lip. She’d listen to Kazi, but not to him. She’d listen to Kazi, whom she knew had ripped him apart. She’d only met Kazi this morning. Did she care about him that little? That couldn’t be the reason. He felt scraped and ragged after last night, not only from his panicked dash into the snow but from the discussion afterward. He kept telling her and telling her that he wanted to be here. Yet she insisted he was the one ready to run, ready to trade her in for something better. It was maddening.
“You know what I said last night,” Keifon said. He raised his hands, leaving it without further comment.
“A lot of…” Her fists closed at her sides. “Things you will wish you did not say. I won’t hold you to them.”
“God’s blood, girl,” Kazi grumbled. “When I got here, he made it very clear to me that you were his priority, and that he wouldn’t tolerate anything that put you at risk. If you don’t see that, you’re just as bullheaded as he said you were.”
Agna turned on Keifon. “You said what?”
“I didn’t say bullheaded. That’s not the point. Stop changing the subject.” He glared at Kazi, but that was only a distraction. He leaned on the back of his chair, wanting something to anchor himself. “You know what I told you last night. And I’m tired of you not believing me. I know what I know. I know what I feel. You can’t decide that for me.” Long ago, before they really knew one another, they’d walked together and talked about Lundra’s scriptures, the books that had laid down those ideas. Agna had just met Laris, a boy who’d dropped by their clinic, and found herself swept up in something she couldn’t fathom. Keifon remembered his past self telling her something she already knew: she couldn’t unmake Laris’s infatuation with her. She could only decide for herself what she wanted and what she’d do.
“I thought…” She shook her head and switched to Kaveran. “I thought you’d regret that in the morning. Come to your senses.”
“I hadn’t lost my senses,” he said.
Her mouth twitched. She went on so that Kazi would understand, her face lifted toward him. “I saw you at the groundbreaking. And the only thing I could think was, this man, this stranger, means more to him than me.”
“Not anymore,” Kazi said.
“It’s not something that can be compared,” Keifon said. “And I was a different person then.”
“Well. The other thing is. It mattered to me. I wanted to be more important. And that scared me.” She laughed at herself, wrapping her arms around her body. “Scared me so much I ran to Nessiny. I needed to go, anyway. But it helped to push me along.”
Keifon’s heart pounding in his ears drowned out the fire, the wagons rolling past outside, everything but her voice. “It’s not a matter of more or less important,” he said. “It’s a matter of what’s important now. I was there then. I’m here now.”
She loosed her arms and ran her thumb along the edge of her cup. “And you don’t want to go back?”
In the last three-quarters of a year, he’d come to learn many things: about medicine, about cooking, about the care and feeding of cats. And he’d learned one other thing. Keifon took a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “I don’t want to go back. Even if I could. This is where I want to be.”
He watched her as she took in his words. Finally she nodded and looked up. Meeting his eyes at last, she gave him a trace of a smile. “Me, too.”
She believed him, at long last. Keifon pulled out his chair and sat. He propped his forehead on his hands. They would be all right, despite the best efforts of Kazi na Furujia and the feather army and his own worst impulses. He reached out across the table for her hand.
* * *
For two days, his old lover and his best friend cheerfully argued about politics. Agna’s vocabulary in Yanweian grew, laden with economic terms. She resumed her old day shifts, and began to sign up for doubles as she grew re-accustomed to the hospital. Kazi passed Keifon his notes to his confederates; Keifon addressed them in Kaveran and took them to the post office on his way to the market. There were only three, over the first two days.
Agna read the letters that had arrived in her absence, staying up so late to answer them all that Keifon found her still awake when he came home. On her days off, she sparred with Kazi while unpacking the crates that continued to parade up to their doorstep. Some of the crates disappeared into her room, some piled up in the writing nook, and the rest formed a wall along one side of her studio. Straw spilled onto the floor, and the cats batted wisps of it into every corner of the house. Shadow took a liking to eating it, and found new and challenging places to throw up as a result. Taking pity on Kazi, Keifon cleaned up that category of mess, but left the major to sweep the floor of dust and packing material.
In the writing nook, their shelves filled up with Nessinian volumes. Keifon put in an order at Wei Cabinetry for another bookcase. Day by day, the space refilled with Agna’s presence.
Stretching the contents of their pantry to include another person left them perpetually hungry. Agna was able to go to market, unlike Kazi, and she and Keifon scavenged what they could. She waved off the expense, although prices continued to rise.
When the next letter from the bank came, she pulled it from his stack of mail. “Don’t worry about this,” she said, as he looked up from a half-finished letter to Nelle.
“Welcome home. But what? Why?”
“Just don’t.” She folded the letter from the bank, her eyes distant. “Thank you for taking care of things. You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”
“Agna, what are you talking about?” He set down his pen and turned to follow as she paced across the living room, still dressed in her healer’s robes. “Is there something wrong with the terms? They didn’t say anything about—”
“I have it,” she said. “Look. It’s something I can do. I can’t buy us food if nobody’s selling it, but I can at least pay for the house. They’ll still take my money for that.” She shrugged uncomfortably. “I transferred my balance from my old account in Murio. It’s enough to cover payments for six months, at least. I’ll get us caught up and restructure what’s left.”
He sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
Her footsteps crossed the floor behind him. He stared at the unfinished letter, not seeing what he’d written. Something about Agna being home, something about waiting for the spring. So many things hung in the air between them, and Kazi still slept in a cot in their spare room, his letters unanswered.
“It’s so frustrating,” she said. “I have money, but nobody has the things we need to buy. I still have to get out to see the backers and give them what I bought for them in Nessiny, but it seems insulting to carry on like this isn’t happening. How am I going to open the gallery when people are living in it, anyway? And I don’t want to kick them out,” she added. “Just — I want this to be over. I wish he’d just turn himself in.”
Keifon ran his thumb along the edge o
f the writing paper. “He won’t. This deal is everything he’s ever wanted. It’s… it’s even more important to him than your gallery is to you. It’s everything he’s ever cared about.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” she said, and he turned. She waved her hands as though she hadn’t meant to say it. “I don’t know him that well. Not — well, not as well as you. But I think he cares about you, in a weird way. Anyway, that’s none of my business. So he won’t turn himself in, is the point.”
“No. Never.”
Agna shifted her weight. “I’m not going to turn him in, either. For your sake, as long as you don’t get guilty about it. Still, I can’t just do nothing. It’s driving me crazy.”
“Just starting at the hospital again is helping so much. Just being here.” He broke off, not wanting to gush too much. It made her uncomfortable.
“Yeah, yeah, but I mean with this, with the strike. How to get Yanwei to listen. How to get them here so that they can reach a compromise.”
“Hm. Do you know anyone who can help? I don’t have the mayor’s home address, how about you?”
She spun to face him. Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully.
“…What?”
“I don’t know the mayor’s home address,” she said. “But I have an idea.”
Agna: The Wildern Summit
“Ah, Agna. Good to see you. You had a pleasant visit home, I trust?”
“It was — a safe trip, and productive. Thank you.” She leaned the wrapped paintings against one of the upholstered chairs facing Agent Shora’s desk. “I came across some pieces I thought you might enjoy, if you’re interested.”
His smirk sent a traitorous rush of warmth to her face that she could easily blame on new-dealer jitters. “How lovely. Thank you, Agent Despana.” He accepted the gift and carefully loosed the wrapping, laying out the frames across his desk. Agna gave him a summary of each painting’s provenance. As he stood back and studied them, she studied his reaction — he was the hardest read in her slate of buyers. But she was ready for the smile that broke out, when it came. “Beautiful choices, both of them. Has someone been telling tales about my collection at home?”
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