by J M D Reid
“It’s my fault Chames died,” she whispered. His admission placed a weight upon her. The only way to set down the burden was to confess her own guilt. She’d never told anyone.
His dark eyes found hers. No condemnation, only questions. They were sharing truths.
“I begged him to take me out there. After we shared our Red,” she said, “the squall came upon us fast, sweeping over the lake. In moments, the icy shower drenched us. He threw his coat over me to protect me. His shirt was soaked. His hair plastered to his face. He was shaking before we got halfway back. The spring fever fell upon him.”
Emotion overwhelmed her. The way he’d hacked and coughed, the watery sound of his breathing like he drowned with every breath. She’d waited outside Dualayn’s lab as he’d worked to save his son.
“Dualayn tried,” she croaked. “He emerged after two days from his lab crushed. Chames had perished. Despite the new topaz healers. Despite Dualayn’s knowledge, the spring fever claimed Chames.” She stared at Ōbhin with reddened, raw eyes.
She looked down to her tankard.
“He sounded noble,” Ōbhin said. “Valiant.”
“I tried to convince myself it wasn’t my fault,” she said, the guilt squeezing about her heart. “That I hadn’t pestered and begged and cajoled him to take me out.” Avena finished off her ale. The warmth felt nice, hugging her. A comfort she didn’t deserve. “People die around me.”
Evane’s face swam through Avena’s mind. Her other half swallowed by the white. Beside Evane’s features, Chames’s danced.
*
“It’s a weight you can’t put down, right?” Ōbhin asked, seeing the pain in Avena’s eyes. “It clings to you. Drags you down. Makes living harder.”
She nodded, slow, eyes watering.
Ōbhin could feel the plunge of his dagger into Taim’s chest, the look of shock on the young man’s face. Ōbhin knew even as he’d done it that Foonauri wasn’t worth it, but he had loved her so long. Worshiped her. He couldn’t give her up without a fight.
Only, it had destroyed him. After, he couldn’t keep up his adoration for her. Everything was tarnished. He might as well have died with Taim in the mines. Or he should have let the prince live. He didn’t have to make the worst mistake of his life.
Ōbhin poured them both fresh tankards. In silence, they drank, the dark shades of their past pressing in on them. Time drifted. The beer spilled over his tongue. He didn’t taste the sour any longer. His tongue felt numb to sensation, his body tingling with a fuzzy dullness, blunting the world. Farmers slipped out, heading to their beds while barmaids bustled around, collecting crockery.
Finally, the plump barmaid sauntered up, eyes hot, and purred, “Do you need help to your room, Ōbhin?”
He couldn’t remember if he’d learned her name, everything floating in a brown haze. He blinked at her words and glanced across the table at Avena. She looked slumped over, her head swaying. Her braid of brown hair fell over her shoulder, the strands bound in mauve.
The same colors adorning Foonauri’s mask when she’d arrived at court. Do they mean the same to Avena? wondered Ōbhin. Is she forever promised to a shade? Or does she just like the color?
“I’ll help her to her room,” Ōbhin said. A flicker of emotion flashed across the barmaid’s face. “Aliiva’s Nurturing Tone sings thanks.”
Her face scrunched up, then she flounced off, muttering, “Tethyrians.”
Ōbhin grimaced. To Lothonians, everyone from the east was Tethyrians. Those lowlanders cultivated vice and hedonism into virtues. He knew Tethyrian women were proud of their many lovers and men who enjoyed the thrill of a different woman in their bed. All indulged in their opiates and intoxicants. In the Vobreth Mountains, Qothians had learned discipline. While they weren’t as puritanical as the followers of Elohm, fidelity was seen as a virtue, the stable foundation of a family.
“Avena,” Ōbhin said with a gentle whisper. He took her forearm and gave a simple tug.
Her head lifted, eyes blurry, cheeks flushed. “Hmm?”
“It’s time to find our beds.”
“Oh,” she said. She rose and staggered into him. Her body’s warmth rippled through his jerkin. He smelled an herbal scent rising from her hair. She then swayed away from him and groaned, “Oh, dear, please ask Hajitha to set right her establishment.”
He chuckled, feeling the heady rush of the beer through him. “It’s a little crooked, isn’t it?”
“Mmm, like the darkling caves,” she said.
Lothonians believed in many superstitions, from a singular god to black creatures lurking in caves and grottoes. Qoth had similar stories of bent and gnarled niszeeths prowling the mines, and grumliicho who stole the faces of men lost in blizzards.
“Everything is crooked and off-kilter,” she said. “No Boan Sword-Arm to set things right.”
“Nope,” he said, smiling as she clung to his arm, her fingers wrapped tight.
He did his best to stagger across the room, leaving behind their murky conversation. The beer’s warmth filled him again, lightening his body even as it smothered his mind. They crossed the common room, only bumping against a few of the rough-made tables. Avena burst into giggles as a chair fell over with a loud boom.
“It tripped,” she whispered loudly, a bright smile on her lips.
The stairs proved tricky. They were narrow and swayed like the writhing back of an emerald mountain snake caught in a farmer’s snare. The runners creaked. The tight confines pressed Avena tight against him. An herbal scent—is it licorice? wondered Ōbhin—filled his nose. That heat gathered as she clung to him. Aches he hadn’t felt in years swelled through his nethers. Her giggles burst before him as they reached the top.
“I think . . . I think this is mine,” she said, pointing at the second door down, passing one with the clear shine of a diamond lamp bleeding through the gap between the door and wooden floor.
He escorted her to the door, only slightly crooked in its frame. She opened it onto a dark hole, a gaping maw. A cold wind stirred out of it. Her smile died as she stared into there. For a moment, Ōbhin thought he saw plump and bumbling Taim waiting, a look of shock on his fleshy face as he stared down at the dagger’s hilt blossoming from his chest.
Avena turned around, her eyes swimming. She grabbed the front of his jerkin as she swayed. He stared down at her, the naked need in her eyes beckoning. That heat swelled. She didn’t want to face the darkness alone. The emptiness scared her as much as him.
The drink pumped heat through his veins.
He leaned down, drawn to the plump pink of her lips. Maiden’s mauve. His lips came nearer and nearer. Her hands tightened on his leather jerkin for a moment. The drumming of his heart pounded blood in his ears. He couldn’t hear anything but the intensity of his ardor.
To be needed again . . .
To worship again . . .
Her right hand left his jerkin as his lips neared hers. He felt her breath and—
She put her hand against his lips and shook her head.
“What?” he asked.
“I’m promised,” she whispered, something sad in her tone.
“He’s dead.”
“Not to Chames. Miguil.” She pushed away from him. “I’m sorry, I was thinking of the past too much. I forgot myself. Miguil is Dualayn’s groom. A sweet man.”
“Right,” he said, his blood pounding hot through him. He wanted to march into the room and kiss her. This Miguil wasn’t here, and he saw the look in her eyes, but . . .
Avena would hate him if he pressed. He’d seen her devotion to her religion, knew enough of its teachings about passion. He shook his head, the drink heavy on him. He grabbed her doorknob, noticing the sable of his gloves.
A reminder that he only destroyed what he touched.
“Blessed night,” she said as he closed the door.
“May your hearth burn strong through the night,” he said and closed her door.
He stumbled down to his door
and opened it. Carstin rested on the only bed, covered by a blanket. Ōbhin slumped down into a rickety chair and stared at the man. His friend. Ōbhin drifted into sleep thinking about roads.
Chapter Eight
Twenty-Fifth Day of Compassion, 755 EU
Embarrassment found Avena when she woke up the next day. She’d almost kissed Ōbhin and broken her promise to Miguil.
She had only vague memories of their near kiss, her mind fuzzy with drink. For a moment, it was like Chames had held her. He always had driven back that void Evane’s death had left in her soul, that messy gouge that had almost scraped out all her essence. Amid the embarrassment was guilt for hardly thinking of her gentle groom in the excitement of the last week, but now she focused on how much she loved him.
His countenance often swam in her thoughts. Jovial and young, with broad shoulders and a face that verged on beautiful, he always stirred her passions. All the maids and cooks mooned over him, and she’d won him. He was strong yet gentle as he cared for Dualayn’s horses. He had the same touch with them she had with her patients.
Whenever her eyes drifted to Ōbhin as he drove the wagon farther and farther east towards Kash, she reminded herself of Miguil’s laugh. His flashing eyes and bright smile, his skin a beige tan, darkened by working outdoors. For the last year, she had gone on walks with him during the evening, opening her heart to the safety of his embrace. He wasn’t like some of the other men in and around the manor house. Not eager Bran, a boy who hungered for his first time with a woman, or the gardener Dynoth with his too-friendly eyes. Even Fingers watched her, and he was married.
Not that he had a nice word to say about his wife, a woman Avena had never met.
A few days after leaving the Branglin, excitement to be home swelled as they passed Reed Bend, the last village on the outskirts of Kash. It lay along the Reedy River which meandered northeast to the larger Ustern River. At the rate the capital grew, in five years the hamlet would be another neighborhood, a slum overrun with canneries, slaughterhouses, bakeries, and factories. New industries driven by the burgeoning revolution the discovery of jewelchines had fueled over the last half-century. A yellowish smoke hung like a pall over Kash, staining the horizon.
She thumbed back Carstin’s eye. Whatever the White Lady had done still sustained him. It’s like he’s in a trance, she thought. How could she use truth to sustain a man? Dualayn claimed it wasn’t magic, but diamonds couldn’t heal. Topazes did.
She glanced at Dualayn. He stared at the book he’d been given, his cipher. He looked wan, pale. She wondered how much he’d slept. He devoured the book as they rode, only putting it away if the weather turned wet. Rain was common this time of year. The last fields before Kash swelled with spring planting, saffron flowers to fuel the oil, dye, and perfume industries bringing in money from across the Glowing Sea.
“Take the lane ahead,” she said to Ōbhin as the first slum neared. Called the Slops, it was a ramshackle affair crowded with abattoirs churning out salted pork. She didn’t know the name of the village swallowed by hungry Kash. Original buildings stood amid the lesser quality tenements constructed of cheap mud-fired bricks. She pointed to the lake to the south, the waters sparkling blue. “The manor’s on the southern shore.”
The pastoral lands where Dualayn had built his home was slowly being encroached upon by the city. A number of their neighbors, various lords and merchants, had filed grievances with Parliament and the king to little avail. The slums marched on. Lately, Dualayn’s few guards had to watch for slinking thieves and burglars raiding their house.
“How’s Carstin?” Ōbhin said without looking back, his dark hair ruffled by the breeze spilling off the lake. The reins creaked as he turned the horses onto the lane.
“Same,” she said.
“It’s not natural,” said Ōbhin. “He hasn’t changed at all.”
“No,” she said. She checked the bandage around Carstin’s severed leg. The infection still had not spread but hadn’t retreated, either. It wasn’t responding to her meager medicine nor was it advancing. She’d expected the flesh to start to die, but the scent of moldy cheese didn’t fill the air, nor did any pus suppurate from the wound. “I am at a loss to explain it. Father?”
“Hmm,” Dualayn asked, turning a page in the cipher.
“Do you understand what the White Lady did to Carstin?”
“Not yet,” he said. He glanced at the cloth-covered Recorder. “I feel the answers lie in here, though. Some sort of harmonic resonance, I suspect. I wish I had seen her jewelchine, but she kept her back to me. I just saw the light and heard . . . a harmony.”
“Like she resonated with Raleth’s Tone?” asked Ōbhin.
“Mmm, indeed, like a tale out of the Forbidden Kingdom,” Dualayn said. He blinked. “Oh, my, are we this close already?”
“Yes, Father,” Avena said, adjusting Carstin’s bandage. “A half-hour, and we shall be home.” Suddenly, Ni’mod’s missing presence was an abscess dimpling the world, drawing her attention to Ōbhin sitting in his spot.
She couldn’t maintain her grief. Ni’mod’s remoteness had kept her from ever forming a true attachment to him. At times, he’d seemed more like living furniture. A terrible thought, and it disturbed her how easily he could be replaced.
Will Ōbhin be as easily replaced if he’s killed? she wondered.
The empty gouge in her yawned wide. She turned to Carstin and stroked his hand. “We’ll get you back on your feet . . . Foot.” She felt foolish for feeling embarrassment at her careless words to the unconscious man. “You’ll see. Maybe you can work here, too. You can’t be too bad of a man.” Not if Ōbhin faced down so many men to keep you alive.
Familiar landscapes passed by the wagon. Servants and guards of the neighbors waved greetings as they passed the sculpted landscape of various estates. They belonged to lesser lords or merchants who’d found riches in the growing industries swelling Kash, transforming the capital in ways that left Avena bewildered at times. She smiled at the familiar cherry tree, pink blossoms adorning spreading branches, on Dynash’s estate. He’d made his fortune creating canned ham. He’d adopted the assembly line, a miracle of industrialization and organization brought about by jewelchines.
She idly gripped Carstin’s clammy hand as she peered down the road, her insides squirming with her mounting excitement. The wrought iron gates to Dualayn’s estate lay ahead. They rode past the brick wall—topped by a fence of wrought iron and topped with sharp, flower-like trefoils—surrounding her home. She knew every imperfection in the red bricks and their gray mortar. The small chip caused by the collision with a rolling wagon, the iron crenellation bent by a would-be thief who’d almost bled to death from the laceration the tip had caused to his groin, the vines of cream-hued ivy working up the sides in patches.
Smiles lounged at the gate, the guard hardly perking up at the sight of them. She waved at the familiar man dressed in his quilted gambeson, a coat of heavy wool, and a steel cap hiding his light brown hair.
“Why, if that ain’t Avena I see peekin’ over the back of the wagon,” he said, the sound of Kash’s streets lingering in his words. “You don’t need to be shy of me, lass.”
“Why would I be shy?” she called, her grin spreading. She climbed over the seat and settled down beside Ōbhin, smoothing her dark traveling skirts to keep her stocking-clad ankles covered.
“Why, ‘cause of my fearsome cout’nance,” he said, a smile growing. “Frighten all the maids, I do.”
“Is that what you tell your wife to keep her from getting jealous of the other maids?”
He chuckled. “It’s the truth. Ain’t that why you ran off to them bloody woods to never see me again? Poor Miguil spendin’ all his time with his horse and . . .” The guard’s voice trailed off as he noticed. Smiles glanced at the easterner, puzzlement flashing across his face as he stepped aside for the wagon to pass through the yawning main gate. “Ni’mod?”
Ōbhin had the good grace to look down
as Avena’s smile died. “He’s dead.”
“Oh,” Smiles said, the mirth falling from his expression. “I see. Well . . . Elohm’s bright Colours, I didn’t think nothin’ could kill him.”
“Luck counts more than skill sometimes,” said Ōbhin.
Once Smiles opened the gate, Ōbhin flicked the reins. The wagon trundled through into the grounds. The lawn, kept shorn short by a small flock of sheep under the gardeners’ watch, held the vibrancy of spring. It clad the hill the manor house perched upon. It was an impressive sight, made of white marble veined with red and blue quarried from the Homphrey Hills in the north. The central house rose three stories, the front door flanked by a pair of columns holding up the porch’s roof. Two wings thrust from the sides, smoke rising from the kitchen fires in the east wing. A stable lay at the hill’s base to the right, along with a carriage house. Rhododendron bushes, just blossoming, dotted the lawn with mauve and white.
Avena’s heart quickened its beat as Miguil stepped out of the stables, a tall man a year her junior, broad of shoulders with a smile gathering on his thin lips. A wicked flutter rippled through her as she squirmed on the wooden seat. His dark hair marked him with Onderian blood, along with his delicate cheekbones and square jaw. He raised his arm in a wave, his rumpled shirt half-unbuttoned to show off the curly thatch of chest hair.
“Miguil,” she cried in greeting, eager to see him as he jogged to meet them at the front of the house.
“My beautiful apple blossom,” Miguil said, his voice a rich tenor, not a manly bass but also not a boyish soprano. “I worried so much in your absence.”
Ōbhin drew up the wagon before the house. Miguil moved around to her side and held out his arms. He seized her waist and helped her down, his strong hands supporting her. She lifted her head to receive his kiss. His head ducked down and his lips brushed her cheek in that shy way they always did.
A sour bit of disappointment oozed through her. He could kiss her lips. They were promised.
“You look tired,” he said, studying her eyes. “And you return with a new man? No Ni’mod?”