by Amy Lane
Still, the giant wooden doors of the castle at Otham were very intimidating in the peach-colored marble. Torrant tried hard not let his eyes get too big as he stood in front of doors that were tall enough to form Triannon’s first level. He had seen the castle before, from a distance, but this was the first time he had ever gone up and knocked.
“Are we sure there’s not a servant’s entrance?” he asked Aylan with raised eyebrows.
Aylan smirked. “Are you kidding? We know the Lady of the House—we get the grand entrance!”
“Well”—Torrant tried not to feel gauche—“I just didn’t expect the entrance to be quite this, erm, grand!”
“Relax, country boy.” Aylan moved to a smaller door that was part of the larger set—it was so much a part of the larger doors, right down to the grain of the wood, that Torrant hadn’t noticed it. “We don’t need to order the draft horses out just yet.” And with that, he seized the heavy, tarnished brass ring at the front of the larger doors and slammed it against the matching plate, then moved to the smaller door and waited.
It wasn’t long. The door was flung open by a laughing woman with flyaway dark hair and dancing gray eyes who was admonishing someone behind her. “Now you two had better stop chasing each other into the ballroom, or your mothers won’t let me watch you anymore—”
“They have to let you watch us” came an indignant voice. “You’re our queen!”
For an ephemeral, lovely moment, their grim errand disappeared and Torrant and Aylan met eyes and laughed. “Goddess, Trieste!” Torrant chuckled. “What a way to abuse your station!”
Trieste’s squeal of joy could be heard halfway to Eiran. Even Aylan got hugged at least twice, and the men’s gentle smiles were unclouded by fear, anger, or anxiety about the future.
“You look wonderful, Pretty Girl!” Torrant exclaimed when the squeals of joy died down. “You’ve finally found him, haven’t you?”
“Found who?” she answered, but she looked down and sideways to where a tall man with silvered brown hair was striding across the blond-streaked marble of the grand ballroom entryway. He was richly dressed in fine blue linen, and he carried his shoulders as though he owned the place. Fortunately, he did.
Torrant met the eyes of Alec of Otham and inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Found the man who made you believe you were beautiful,” he finished, and the King of Otham flashed a smile alight with shy and quiet pride.
“I try to tell her at least twice a day,” he said warmly. “It’s finally sinking in.”
Trieste pattered across the floor, her sky-blue skirts swishing around her bare ankles. She still wore blue, Torrant thought nostalgically, but it was a happier blue now. “Alec, these are my friends from school—Torrant Shadow and Aylan, uhm….” She remembered he had changed his name, but it didn’t just fly off her tongue the way “Stealth” had.
“Aylan Moon,” Aylan supplied, bowing as Torrant did. “We were just telling your lovely bride that she is more beautiful than ever.”
“Which is beside the point,” Trieste said, her eyes suddenly sharpening on details she had missed before. “Since the two of you look like hell. What happened to you?”
Torrant looked over to where the two small, tow-headed boys Trieste had been chasing were still standing and watching their arrival with avid eyes. Trieste’s eyes widened, and she turned to them and asked them nicely, as their queen, to find their parents, to which they nodded soberly and ran off. “They’re the steward’s family,” she explained when she turned back to her guests. “They remind me an awful lot of Cwyn when I met him.”
“Are they pervert wastrels too?” Aylan asked, fascinated.
“With that as an exception!” Trieste laughed, and then she sobered. “Now why did I send them away?”
Torrant and Aylan exchanged glances. “I need you to lie for me, Pretty Girl,” Torrant said boldly, and when Trieste and Alec both widened their eyes, he elaborated. “I need a royal letter of introduction for Ellyot Moon from the king and queen of Otham.”
Trieste gasped, and Torrant could see her do the rapid calculations in her head. “No,” she said, flatly, and Alec turned toward her in surprise.
“Trieste….”
“No!” she almost shouted. “Alec, you know what they’re going to do with them—”
“No, but I’d like to!”
“I won’t let you go. I’m surprised Yarri even let you—” She saw Torrant’s involuntary cringe. “She doesn’t know, does she?”
“I need to ask her.”
“Do you know how old she is, Torrant?”
“I could hardly not,” he answered tightly.
“Are you sure?” Oh Goddess—could he do this? “Do you really know? She’s eighteen. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do.” He closed his eyes, trying to fight the pain of having the fact shouted in his face.
“You’ve waited your whole life for the spring she was eighteen—don’t tell me you haven’t—and you’re going to present her with this?” Her voice rose, and Alec watched her, fascinated, as though he’d never seen her this angry before.
“I have to.” Oh Goddess, he thought, did she have to make this so bloody difficult?
“You have to kill yourself?” And now there were almost tears in her voice, dammit, and he couldn’t stand it if she cried.
“If I must.”
Trieste wrung her hands, practically jumping up and down in her agitation. How could he? His whole life he had waited, and now? Her voice rose even higher, trilling in agitation. “Why?” she demanded, and then didn’t wait for an answer. “Goddess, Torrant—why in the name of Oueant’s bollocks would you have to walk into that city and offer up your life like a bloodied goat?”
“They burnt down Triannon!” he burst out, and Trieste, who had been advancing on him until she was nearly in his face, gasped as though stabbed, grabbed her midriff, and took two steps back.
“They did what?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“They burnt down Triannon,” Torrant enunciated, unable to back down now that he saw his own grief written on her face. “Four days ago. They sent an entire company of soldiers with orders to burn down the school with the students in it.”
“Oh Goddess.” Trieste covered her mouth with her hand, and Alec’s hands came up to her shoulders automatically. “All those children?”
“No.” Torrant shook his head. “The company ran into a twenty-five-man militia—half of a team supposed to protect a woman named Moon.”
“Yarri?” Trieste shook her head, even as she said it. “No, no, it wouldn’t be Yarri. Oh Goddess—Roes?”
“She’s fine,” Aylan said, knowing Torrant needed to hear it again. “Most of the students are fine.”
“Except for a handful of young men who thought they could meet trained soldiers with swords,” Torrant added bitterly.
“And the professors?” Trieste asked, closing her eyes on the image of young men who looked like Aylan and Torrant rushing into the massacre.
“Professor Gregor, the fencing master—they were killed with the students.” Torrant could no longer pretend he was only angry about these things. He tried, bitterly, to behave as though the tears in his voice weren’t forcing their way past his eyes.
“Professor Nica?” she asked, afraid of the answer.
Torrant and Aylan met eyes. “We think she was still in the library, trying to find books to rescue, when they torched the building.”
“Oh….” Trieste swayed on her feet, and Alec caught her. “Oh Goddess. Oh sweet gods….” She turned a tear-mottled face to her two school friends. “The soldiers. They didn’t get to Eiran, did they?”
Torrant’s face went hard and cold. He heard Alec’s breath catch in his throat and knew his eyes must have bled blue. “No,” he said with some finality.
“Oh.” She met his glacial eyes, and her own face grew hard. “Good. I’m glad.” She kept her voice resolved and took her own weight on her two
feet. “But that doesn’t mean you should go to Clough alone to commit suicide!”
“I’ll be going with him,” Aylan said mildly, hoping to calm her down.
“Am I supposed to feel better if both of you are going off to get killed?” she snapped.
“Goddess, I hope not,” he answered, and she closed her eyes as if Aylan really was charming, and she didn’t want to laugh.
“Please, don’t go,” she begged.
“I have to,” Torrant said quietly.
“But Yarri—”
“Won’t be safe unless this is over.” Oh Goddess, he hoped that was true. He hoped with all his soul that he and Yarri would have the life he’d always planned for them, if only this were over.
With a whimper, Trieste sat down in the middle of the grand ballroom and looked up at all the men with grim faces who were seemingly bent on breaking her heart. “What if I say no?” she asked at last, plaintively. “What if I refuse your letters?”
“Then I’ll write them, sweetheart,” Alec said softly, and she turned horrified eyes to him.
“You wouldn’t!”
“It’s perfect, Tria,” he murmured, dropping to his haunches to talk to her seriously. “I’ve told you before, an armed conflict would cost too many lives. What we have to hope for is for the young regents to realize what Rath is doing. What better way than if the symbol Rath’s been using to rally public sentiment against the Goddess came back home and told the world Rath was wrong?”
“They’ll kill him,” she murmured.
“They’ll try,” Torrant agreed. He too dropped to his haunches, and after looking at Alec for permission, he put his hands on hers. “You and I both know, Trieste, that killing me will be harder than it sounds.”
“Oh gods!” Trieste pulled her hands away and buried her face in them, then scrubbed furiously at her cheeks. There was a silence while they all waited for the inevitable to catch up with her.
Suddenly, she looked up in a flash of denial. “Aylan—why can’t you go? Why can’t you be Ellyot Moon?”
Torrant shook his head and squeezed her hands. She knew, he thought. She knew why it had to be him. “Aylan’s taking a big enough risk coming into the city with me” is what Torrant said. “The circles I’ll be running in will recognize him. They’ll be happy to execute him, actually. It took him three days to talk me into his going at all.”
“And don’t think he’s not planning to ditch me at the last moment!’ Aylan supplied cheerfully.
“I would, but you’re like a growth on my arse,” Torrant shot back. The affection in his voice was obvious. He turned toward Trieste again. “Pretty Girl, it sure would help if you could write that letter of introduction. We went to school together—you of all people there would know who I am. But I’ll take Alec’s, if it will get me in.”
“Yarri will never forgive you, you know.”
Torrant closed his eyes and raised his face to the vast filigreed ceiling, almost big enough to be sky. “As long as she’s alive to hate me, that’s all I want to know.”
Trieste sighed, so heavily and so long it was a wonder spots didn’t appear before her eyes. Alec waited until she was done, then looked up at Torrant and nodded. “It will take some time to draw up those documents,” he said at last. “You two look like you could use a rest and some food.”
“And a bath!” Aylan added.
Torrant nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes—that would be perfect!”
“We have a couple of rooms,” Alec began offering, only to be interrupted.
“The same room,” Trieste murmured. “They’ll want the same room.”
Alec looked at them, a little confused, but Torrant was standing up and talking to Aylan about the horses and hadn’t heard. He looked back at his wife, and she smiled slightly. “They need each other. If they’re really going to do this, they’ll need to talk.”
Alec turned to Torrant. “If your friend is going to get the horses, I can take you to your room.”
Torrant looked down and offered Trieste a hand up from the floor. “Thank you,” he said politely. “I can’t thank you enough.”
“Thank me when you live,” she answered sourly, taking his hand and rising like a much older woman. “I’ll show Aylan to the bath when you’re done.”
AYLAN SAT on the large bed, pulling a little at the hem of the sleep shirt left for him when he emerged from the adjoining bathroom. Torrant had been given one too, and he had apparently pulled it on and fallen immediately asleep, because he had been curled up on his side in his habitual self-protective position when Aylan emerged from the bath. Aylan had spent enough nights under the covers with Torrant to know he only really relaxed when he was coming out of sleep. He slept as if he was readying to do battle. But it was good he was sleeping. Aylan might join him in a moment. As it was, he felt clean and tired, and extremely grateful for the luncheon that had been left on the bedside table. He was also irritated that Torrant hadn’t eaten at all.
Their clothes had been taken to be cleaned, he was pretty sure, and all he had was this sleep shirt. Torrant’s had rucked up to the top of his thighs as he slept, and as Aylan dangled his leg off the bed he finally gave up all pretense of propriety and let the hem fall where it may. The shirt was a nice gesture, but really, he was thinking he’d be less naked in a towel.
Idly, he looked around the room—it was a pretty place, with billowy white curtains opened up to the spring sunshine and cream-colored accoutrements against yellow stucco walls. Yes, a pretty place, but it was not interesting enough to distract him from his purpose.
With a sigh, he adjusted the book of Otham law on his knee, repositioned the parchment he’d found in the end table, and licked the end of his fountain pen. He was trying to write a letter.
Dear Starry… No. He crossed it out. Just the greeting alone sounded like a love letter, and she was only twelve years old. Of all the people in his adopted family who would need an explanation of why he might not ever come home again, he thought Starren would be the one, but he didn’t want to encourage her crush on him. It wasn’t healthy, he thought unhappily. At the same time, the thought of leaving the fierce, laughing child he’d watched grow for the last seven years was beginning to ache, right under his ribs. He sighed and tried again.
Littlest, (there—that was better)
Please don’t miss me. I don’t want to go and leave you without your music, but I must. I need for you to grow up in a world that is safe. I need for you to grow up in a world that will give you a voice. I need for you to grow up in a world where you have options like education, and the freedom to tell a man you don’t want to shag him if he asks speak your opinion if you need to. I want to come back—you have no idea how much you and your family mean to me. I don’t like the thought of the trouble you and Cwyn will get in without me. But if I don’t come back….
What? What could he say that wouldn’t terrify a twelve-year-old girl? How could he put into words that her family was his, and her happiness was his, and watching her grow up had become his only dream?
He couldn’t say it. It was impossible.
He put his hand over the handsome parchment and was about to scrap the entire idea when there was a knock on the door, and Trieste tentatively poked her head in.
“Good,” she murmured, “I’m not interrupting anything.”
“What would you interrupt?” he asked her, puzzled.
Trieste rolled her eyes. “You mean it hasn’t happened yet?” she asked, genuinely shocked.
Aylan was surprised by the dark flush that spread over his cheeks. “Never a good time,” he muttered. “And now there won’t be. I’m pretty sure Yarri would have forgiven him for it, right up until the moment he proposes.”
“It’s hard to believe there’s never been a good time for the two of you, not in the last four years,” Trieste persisted, and Aylan wondered if she had always been this dogged, or only about Torrant’s mental health. He amended that. From what he’d seen when they’d
arrived, she’d probably be a pit bull with a bone if it involved Alec. There had been some true affection there.
But now, Aylan was too weary to evade her questions. “He only ever… lets go of himself enough after he’s been the snowcat,” he said at last.
She sat on one of the chairs at the little end table, crossed her legs under her skirts, leaned her elbow on her knee, and put her chin in her hand. It was an intimate pose—a pose you would only assume if you were truly interested in what a friend was saying. “So?” she asked intently.
“So….” He groaned and stretched and checked to make sure his shirt was still down around his thighs while he wracked his brain for an analogy to help her understand. Without thinking about it, he put his pen and the parchment on the end table and reached out a hand to stroke Torrant’s hair back from his sleeping face. It was coarser on the man than it was on the giant cat. In fact, the only thing on the man resembling the cat at all was the snow-colored stripe at his temple. Torrant’s body relaxed, just a fraction, and Aylan found that while he was looking at his brother’s face, he could remember exactly the moment he wanted to share with Trieste.
“Remember that first summer, when Starry was not more than a baby, she used to swim naked?” he asked.
A small smile quirked Trieste’s lips, and for the first time, Aylan could see the womanliness which had overtaken her in the last four years. It was the affectionate, maternal smile of a woman ready to look at her own children in such a way, and Aylan wondered if she would be starting a family soon. He hoped so—he thought she would be very good at it. “Yes,” she said softly, as happy in the memory as he was. “That chubby little bottom, with the little dimples!”
Aylan laughed a little. “Yes—exactly. Remember when she fell, and Torrant carried her home?”
“And you danced behind him, hysterical, because she’d cut her knee and there was a little tiny bit of blood? Of course I remember. I’ve never seen you so undone.”