Troubled Waters
Page 44
“Talk of additional things that matter a great deal,” he amended. “Things important only to you and me.”
“There can only be one or two subjects with such a narrow focus,” she said.
Now he was on the move again while she stood still, but this time he was narrowing the distance between them. He came very close, he was near enough to lift a hand and lay his palm against her cheek. She felt the unyielding bones wrapped in the calloused flesh of his hand; she felt her own wayward blood leap in response to his touch.
“One subject, in fact,” he said. “The affection that lies between us—the fascination that holds us both in thrall.”
“There is nothing but heartache for a coru woman and a hunti man,” she said, deliberately contrary. “He cannot control her and she cannot change him.”
“He never fails her and she always moves him,” Darien corrected. “She can trust his strength, and he can be lifted by her joy.”
“I have been forced to move on from too many things,” Zoe said. “I would be happy to flow from shallow rapids into deep, still waters.”
“I have had to stand so firm,” he said. “I have had to be unbreakable for so long, immobile in darkness and silence. I look forward to bending just a little—to moving into sunlight—to remembering what it is like to unclench my hands and give in to emotion.”
She laughed at him. “This is a most peculiar proposal—if that’s what it is.”
He laughed back, moving closer, wrapping his arms loosely around her waist. She felt sheltered but not trapped, protected but not oppressed. “The first time I met you,” he said, “during that long trek to Chialto, I fell in love with you. I told you I was bringing you to my king so that you would marry him, but I wanted you as my own bride.”
“That time? That trip?” she said derisively. “I scarcely spoke! I scarcely knew who I was! You could not have learned me well enough to fall in love with me then!”
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me,” he said. Keeping one hand at her waist, he used the other to rummage in a pocket of his long tunic. When he pulled out a scroll, he presented it to her, shifting his body away just enough so that she could hold it in her hands. “Note the seal,” he said.
An irregular circle of wax had been imprinted with the glyph for certainty, the official motto of the hunti family that ran the booth of promises in the Plaza of Men. “Most impressive.”
“Note the date.”
It was a day from Quinncoru of the previous year. “This is just about when we arrived in Chialto,” she admitted.
“If you open it, you will see,” Darien said. “I made my way to the Plaza of Men shortly after you disappeared. I went to the promise booth and recorded my vow that I would find you, and I would marry you. A copy of this oath is permanently written in their books.”
She looked doubtfully from the scroll to his face. “Open it,” he urged.
Carefully, to avoid splitting the wax, she slipped her finger under the seal and unrolled the parchment. The words were printed in a professional scribe’s clean lettering: I, Darien Serlast, do vow and attest that I will marry Zoe Ardelay or I will marry no one. In this I shall not alter. It was signed with a messy scrawl in which only the D, the S, and a boldly crossed t could be discerned, though the word Hunti was very legible beneath the name.
Darien had crowded closer to read it along with her; he still had one arm around her waist. “You see—this was before you had taken your grandmother’s name,” he said, tapping the scroll. “It was before everything had happened. But I still knew.”
She could not resist leaning into him just a little, just to feel his reassuring strength against her shoulder. “But that is my point exactly,” she said. “Who I am now and who I seemed to be then are two very different people.”
“Not so different that I cannot recognize you,” he said. “No matter how much you change, you will always be familiar to me.”
She let the scroll flutter to the floor and drew him closer with her own urgent embrace. “And I will change,” she said, peering up at him anxiously. “But not so much that I will ever forget how secure I feel when you are beside me, tethering me to the world. In all the madness of this past year, you are the only thing I have relied on, the only thing I believed in, the only thing I trusted to keep me safe.” She stretched up to press her mouth against his. “The only one I loved.”
His arms tightened around her, and he kissed her. For a moment, she was air and fire, breathless and passionate; she was earth, tingling along every inch of flesh. She was water, she was wood; she was herself and her lover both. She understood the weighted balance of the world, the completed elemental circle. She was whole.
“I love you,” she whispered against his mouth. “No matter what changes, that will always be true. Spoken from the heart of a coru woman.”
“I love you,” he answered. “And that will not change though the rest of the world is made over. Word of a hunti man.”
QUINTILES & CHANGEDAYS
The calendar of Welce is divided into five quintiles. A quintile consists of eight “weeks,” each nine days long. Most shops and other businesses are closed on the firstday of each nineday.
The first quintile of the year, Quinnelay, stretches from early to deep winter. It is followed by Quinncoru, which encompasses late winter to midspring; Quinnahunti, late spring to midsummer; Quinnatorz, late summer to fall; and Quinnasweela, fall to early winter.
The quintiles are separated by changedays, generally celebrated as holidays. Quinnelay changeday is the first day of every new year. Since there are five changedays, and five seventy-two-day quintiles, the Welce year is 365 days long.
MONEY
5 quint-coppers make one copper (5 cents → 25 cents)
8 coppers make one quint-silver ($2)
5 quint-silvers make one silver ($10)
8 silvers make one quint-gold ($80)
5 quint-golds make one gold ($400)