by Sylvia Kelso
At Therkon’s expression I thought he would demand we turn and try to fight, whatever the odds. His hand did go to Hvestang, conspicuous at his shoulder blade. When he discovered the pirate was probably Dhasdeini—“the coast boats’ll do it, ’specially out of Quetzistan—” I feared the long-threatened explosion would
finally break. Culminating outrage of a journey replete with
insults to his imperial rank, that the last and most ignominious threat should come in his home waters, from a source his galleys must have worked and suffered to control. From within Dhasdein, and from folk of his own blood.
We managed to dive into a channel among the spatter of reedy islets, and I hoped a turn on the sweeps would calm him in weariness, if not relief. But once the pirate turned away, and we crept with sweep, pole and sounding-lead to something with a few trees, a clutter of reed-thatched huts, and an actual timber landing stage, his expression at the news that we had to stay overnight made me literally shiver in my boots.
“T’is not so very bad, sir.” Escaping the pirate had left the shipmaster almost placatory with relief. “There’s an inn of sorts, if ye’d rather sleep ashore. Ye’ll eat well, they bake the marsh ducks hereabouts in mud. Very tasty. We’ve been to Grinsey two-three times before.” He became a little too casual. Smuggling, I thought suddenly. “An’ we’ve freight for the inn, if ye’d wish to sample it. A special order, our own yard’s wine.”
Smuggling, I thought, for a certainty. Therkon’s glare had all but combusted. Driven, the master actually dared pat him on the arm. “An’ the morn, ye’ll not even need to work out to sea with us. There’s a ferry ashore. Rise betimes, ye’ll see the night in Riversend!”
A ferry. And then, doubtless, flea-bitten hired horses to get the Crown Prince and his gear and his embarrassing encumbrance into the Imperial capital. Like a peddler, arriving rough and dusty at the gate.
I thought Therkon might actually choke. The man I remembered in the Isles would have summoned, at the very least, a few words of thanks. This one glowered like a perfect Skall boor.
Before he almost snarled, “Fetch our gear,” and stamped off up the landing stage.
* * * *
I followed, feeling lower than ever in my life, except under the Brettabreck cliff. I had seen Therkon stressed, distressed to incoherency, grieving, affronted to freezing point. I had never expected someone so basically even-tempered, at the very least someone with the crown prince’s monumental composure, to fray like this.
He was quieter, if no less dour, by the time we ate. The ducks were excellent. The inn’s single storey was mostly wattle and daub and reed-thatch, but the two sleeping rooms were clean, the inn-keeper, thoroughly intimidated by a princely tantrum, swore to me that they never had fleas, and the wine was all Wave Island reds are claimed to be.
Perhaps I drank more than I thought. Perhaps the wine was stronger than I knew. Or perhaps it was simply the catalyst for long weeks of diminished friendship, and now bewilderment, and guilt, and misery. Whatever it was, when Therkon walked me to my door, the one routine no amount of ill humor ever broke, I set the candlestick inside, and turned with something more like pain than reluctance, to attempt a formal goodnight.
In the half-light past my elbow his jawbone showed the
stubble of days at sea. Strands of hair hung from their tie, the circles under his eyes had returned, and deep brackets showed around his mouth. He looked as tired and dispirited and wretched as I felt, and suddenly I could bear no more.
Before I had time to reconsider I took the two steps in armslength, wrapped both arms round him, went on tiptoe to reach his cheek and said impulsively, “Goodnight, my—goodnight, Therkon.”
At least, I meant to kiss his cheek. He flinched or pulled his head somehow, and my lips landed squarely on his.
He jerked as if it had been an arrowhead. I tried to spring back in an anguish of embarrassment. He made one hoarse wordless sound, threw his own candle on the floor and grabbed for me.
A grown trained man in an access of—something I took for rage. He was too fast even for Two. Arms like steel pythons punched out my breath and almost bent my ribs, one hand came up and caught my chin in a blacksmith’s vice. Then he was kissing me.
I had never kissed in passion. Two had seven hundred years’ vicarious experience. Therkon had been a lover more than half his life, and every fraction of that knowledge he used. But skill was a mere egg-shell on the torrent of feeling that impelled it, a convulsion too long pent, and now impossible to control.
He lifted his mouth at last. I was bruised and breathless, he was breathless too. I never had time to ask questions either. He made another too clearly despairing noise and tried to push me away.
“No,” I said through my teeth and locked both fists in his coat. If I was neither a man nor full-grown, I had strength enough, and I was maddened too. “First explain this.”
“Explain what?” It cracked in his throat. “Gods, was that not clear—!”
“Not this, blight and blast it!” Now I had my breath back that kiss seemed to have fired the wine in my veins. Anger jetted like true fire in the wake of a sudden vast relief.
“Not that! This other thing, this whole—ever since Hringstenn! You were my friend! My companion, my shield-man—you were warm! But after Hringstenn you went polite, and kind, and you shut me out as if polite was something you had to do. Now you’re so angry you won’t talk at all. Just tell me, what is it? What have I done?”
The pause went so deep I heard his breathing, irregular and fast as my own. Puffin’s crew chattering in the taproom sounded loud as drums. Then he made another noise in his throat and tore both hands through his hair.
“Chaeris—I have a trust. I made a promise. I swore to ward you from harm. With my life.”
“And you did! You have! So why are you behaving like this?”
“Oh, gods above!” He actually stamped on the beaten earth of the passageway. “Because I have failed! Because I cannot do it any more!”
The fallen candle flared between us. Automatically, he tamped it out with the toe of a boot.
“Because,” he went on, almost coldly, “Segil said, I would never debauch you. And that is not—I cannot—” his voice wave
red. “That is no longer true.”
I reached for my own candle. The guilt had evaporated. The bewilderment was gone. We could See, and what we Saw set my heart fluttering like the wrens above Hringstenn, freed into spring.
“You love us,” we said.
He made another inarticulate noise and swung half away. I caught his coat and pulled him back.
“You love me.” The wrens were flying now, upward in a great singing cloud. “It isn’t Dhasdein that’s upset you, it’s me. You started by liking me, I know you did, and you swore to look after me, and the journey, the road, all the trouble made us friends, and then more than friends. And now you love me.” And with love had come desire. Strong as my own, but strangled in honor and obligation, so while I had longed to stop time he had been frantic to hurry it, because our proximity had become a rack on which every delay added another turn of the screw. “So you can’t go on being a holy virtuous guardian and pretending I’m just a parcel or a gem to ward. Nothing’s my fault, it’s nothing I’ve done. You want me.” Light and sound rained down from heaven. “Nothing’s wrong at all.”
“Oh, gods—!”
I hung onto his coat. “You want me. And I want you.”
He went absolutely still. Then he turned round, and his face said anything but joy.
“Chaeris.” It was pure pain. “No.”
“What do you mean, No? You swore to protect me. You did it. We’re almost back to Riversend. I’m safe. And since when did ‘protect’ include ‘not debauch’? If it’s my choice, especially?”
“Chaeris.” It came with a grunt as if I had put a knife-hilt in his ri
bs.
“What?” I shifted my grip to his coat front. “You don’t want me at all?”
He hissed and grabbed my hand so hard it hurt. “You can think that now?”
Two still had not offered a spark. I looked up in his eyes, so tired and pained and angry, but not angry as they had been the last few days, and I almost drowned in the contradictory joy.
“What, then? Your honor? Your mother—?”
“No, your mother. Your family! Gods, Chaeris, have you lost all your wits? Let be the shame, if I were to—when they trusted me—if I—your father would murder me!”
Two showed me which father he meant. And good cause to mean it literally.
“Dhasdein.” I put the candle on a handy wall-niche. I was
having to breathe for calm myself. “You think it matters what my family, my menfolk, my fathers say? I am not one of your Outland chattels, to trade about like a cow. I am a woman of Iskarda. I am of age. My body is mine. I will bestow it where I choose, and I choose you.”
We stared at each other in the flickering candleglow. Joy was a light under my breastbone. He just looked haggard and
distraught and unhappier than ever. My one hope was that he did not walk away.
“Well?” I braved it out. “What now?”
He shoved a hand back through his hair. The tie had almost given up, and locks hung disheveled everywhere. He looked this way and that, up the tiny colonnade.
“Chaeris. I am thirty-five years old. I have—I have—you know my reputation. Every word of it is true.”
The Dragonfly Lover to half the great ladies of the Empire: I could hear Tanekhet warning me. A superlative lover who would break your heart in the end, because of the headlong generosity with which he gave his own. Before he walked away.
I did not say, What do I care for great ladies, let alone the past? Nor did I retort, If you’re older, if you’re so experienced, from my view, so much the better for me.
What I did say was, “And so?”
He gave a snort like a baited bull. I stared and waited. He looked back to me. Clenched his jaw. Looked away, as if his nerve had failed, and said it brusquely, to the kitchen door.
“You are too young.”
Only troublecrew reflexes stopped me slapping his face. I did grab his coat again, two-handed, and manage to shake him where he stood.
“Too young? In human time, I’m twelve, yes. Thirteen!” Summer would be my year-turn. “What does human time have to do with me? I’m almost as tall as you: when we met, you thought I was sixteen or seventeen, and I’ve grown since. I’m of age. I have my Craft, tried and proved. I’ve trained as troublecrew. I’ve
traveled the Isles alone. I’ve fought for you. I’ve killed for you!” Hringstenn’s stones rose before my inner eye. “I’ve met gods—I’ve been a god! How much more grown do I have to be?”
He was shaking his head to and fro, a man beset by words as by a swarm of bees. I pulled him toward me, suddenly as furious as he had been in the last weeks, recalling troublecrew hand-to-hand moves and Zuri, who had once beaten a young husband to the point of suicide.
“Chaeris—Chaeris—stop.”
“You stop! You want me, you can’t even deny that, you just bent me almost in two! Your stupid honor’s no use to you and it means nothing to me. Tell me then why you can’t do this. Why we can’t do this. Here and now. The last chance we’ll have,
before we’re back in Dhasdein and everybody knows us and we can’t ever,” suddenly the joy had all melted and the anger was collapsing into tears. “If that Riversrun daughter has to get you, I’m going to have you first!”
“What? What daughter? Why Riversrun . . . What are you talking about?”
“Tanekhet said it.” I was past caring what else this might
reveal. “You’re betrothed to Dhasdein, you said, and you are, even without the ring. And Tanekhet said, you have to marry, for the throne. And it will be some Riversrun lord’s daughter—” the tears were beginning to run—“because you’d never marry outside the Empire, and I—and I—”
I could not go on, any more than I had with Tanekhet. But his face said he more than understood.
“Chaeris. Chaeris. Dhe behold me, can you possibly think I would, would—without marrying you?”
Dhasdeini customs, Dhasdeini thought: that a woman’s body was not her own possession, or her honor kept anywhere but
between her legs, and only marriage could sanctify a use of that body for herself.
We had traveled half a year together, and he had learnt to tolerate but never to comprehend. However he tried, his idea of honor, and treating me with honor, would diametrically oppose mine.
I blinked the tears away. He had forgotten to back off. He was all but nose to nose with me, his face almost as pale as after he killed Rathi.
“Chaeris, you cannot think that of me?”
He did not see both sides, and I did. He could not understand, but he would try to honor me, and put that honor before happiness, even if he loved me, perhaps more because he loved me, and honor behoved me to be understanding and accept his scruples, and doom us both to loss.
But I had Two, and Two cared nothing for Dhasdeini honor. Two gave me truth to use, however brutal it might be.
“But you can’t marry me, can you?”
I heard my own heart beat. A whiff of wind brought food smells from the inn, twenty feet, a continent away.
And after an aeon he averted his face and let silence reply.
It should have been the final body blow. But Two had a stake in this struggle. Two wanted him as much as I did, always had done, and had shown it even more blatantly. Two filled my mind with the past of Amberlight, other women who had met this stick-fork, and the choices that our customs, our thinking, offered them.
I lifted my chin, and used those memories to shore the resolution that backed my choice.
“You can’t marry me, no. But I can have you, all the same. It’s no stain on me. Not in Iskarda. Even if it’s just this one night. Two will remember. So I’ll always have that.” I could not quite control my voice’s wobble. “I’ll have the memories.”
He leant his forehead against the door-post and stood quite, quite still. His shoulders had rounded, like a man weighed down under a heavier and heavier load, yet wholly unable to break free.
I took in one sip of breath. Then I spoke, deliberately keeping the tone cool.
“So?”
He drew breath in turn, a deep breath; then he lifted his head. Tears glittered faintly, in the candlelight, on his cheeks, but he took my hand with all the ceremony of a courtier, bowing over it with perfect grace. Then he straightened and brought it to his lips with passion displacing courtesy, and met my eyes. Though he sounded husky, the words were perfectly clear.
“My lady. Chaeris. My dearest lady. I—am honored beyond—I—” He drew a single steadying breath. “Yes.”
* * * *
“Chaeris.” Someone was murmuring, whispering, in my ear. “Chaeris . . . my sweet oracle. My darling troublecrew. My heart’s helm. The gulls are waking. I have to leave.”
My head was on something warmer, firmer than a pillow, yet with an unchancy fall and swell. Hair was tangled all over my shoulder, my face. My lips felt swollen. My nipples were almost sore, far more tender than before a course began, and there was a definite bruise at the top of my right breast. My belly felt chafed, so did my inner thighs, and elsewhere . . .
Elsewhere my body spoke with a proper function’s satisfaction. With the aftermath of exertion that had been more than pleasure. That had been release, and comfort. And joy.
I shifted my cheek on my lover’s chest and let my fingers
explore. Nipples that flinched a little under my touch. They were tender too. A lovebite—I could feel the teeth-marks—at the base of his neck. I slid the hand downward, over hi
s chest, over that satin belly skin, to velvety softness beneath. Flaccid now, but still bringing a murmur as I touched him, provoking fierce satisfaction as Two retrieved for us how he had groaned and arched into my fingers the first time I took him in hand. Familiar now, like every inch of him. Mine, I thought with fierce satisfaction. All of you, touched, known, possessed.
I turned my face a little against his jaw. Stubble, that had chafed my cheek like my belly skin. I opened my lips and licked, slowly, savoring, along the line of the bone.
“Stop that.”
Husky, the merest whisper. Sleepy to the point of languor. Drained of tension and anger and all stress until it sounded
faintly indulgent. Very nearly amused.
I drew my thigh a little higher over his. Found the outside of a knee, and stroked it with my toes. His breath caught. I hugged him till he gasped and whispered in his ear.
“You’d be in a tower, if this was Amberlight. I’d keep you in an upstairs room. All alone. I’d feed you on gold, and house you in furs, and dress you in silk and velvet and jewels, and then make you take it all off. While I watched.” He tried to move. I pinned him down. Clenched him to me, letting bone and muscle repeat fiercely, Mine. Forget the Empire, the Riversrun daughter. Mine.
“I’d make up your eyes, and put your hair in lovelocks.” Our hair was mingled in wild disorder, but I found a strand at his temple and drew my fingers through it, silky despite the accumulated sweat and dirt. “And keep you, secret, where no-one could find you. A prince in a tower. For the rest of your life.”
His breath had quickened. His heart beat harder under my cheek. The words came soft and thick.
“And I would wait for you. Dress in silk and velvet, and make up my face, and wait, every evening. Until you came.”
I held him so tightly neither of us could move. But in the
silence, the gulls still called.
The sound of morning, the sound of time. Repeating, inexorably, But this is not a tower in Amberlight. Time cannot turn back. Time cannot stop. The dawn is coming. The time when we must leave this bubble of happiness, and you must become the Seer of Iskarda. And he will be a crown prince again.