by Amy Lane
Torrant swallowed once, opened his mouth, closed his eyes, opened his eyes again, and tried once more. “I need to ask you all if I can use Ellyot’s name,” he said at last, baldly.
Cwyn and Starren met eyes—the glance of younger children who knew they were out of the loop. Everybody else’s gaze turned speculative and inward, and it was Bethen who broke the silence.
“No,” she said—but not in answer to the question.
“Bethie—” Lane murmured, his voice pained, and she looked at him, pleading.
“No. Please, Lane—tell him no!” she begged, and her eyes—tired and red from the stress of the week—began to overfill.
“I can’t,” Lane told her at last, broken.
“Lane Moon, if you don’t tell that boy to forget this idea right now, you’re going to need a map to my bed for the next year!” Her voice rose hysterically, and while the younger children watched their mother melt down with utter fascination, Roes and Aldam gripped hands and closed eyes, and Stanny patted his mother’s knee.
Lane reached around his wife and kissed her temple. “Start drawing that map, sweetheart,” he replied quietly. “Because I’ll find my way there one way or another.”
“No,” she said again in denial.
“He can do it,” Lane told her, looking at Torrant with worry and pride. “He’s been training how to do it his whole life. He’s probably better qualified to go into Clough and be Ellyot Moon than Ellyot himself would have been.”
“Why?” This was from Starren, whose eyes were glued to Aylan. Aylan was looking at Torrant with a terrible light in his eyes, a following light, and the idea that her music might follow someone else far away seemed to terrify her.
“I’m going to take Ellyot’s place at the Regent’s hall, Littlest.” Torrant smiled reassuringly at her. He liked the way she and Cwyn weren’t behaving as though he was already lying in a back alley in Clough with his throat torn open. “I don’t think the other regents—the younger ones—have any real idea of what it is they’re doing.” Aylan had shown him the regents at the market place, loitering in unthrifty groups of cavalier youth. They had seemed like nice enough young men from a distance—laughing, elbowing each other, making sly jokes about sex and the shortcomings of those in their select group. They had not known, he’d realized. They did not seem to be the sort of people who would sanction the raping of children in the alleys next to their own homes or condemning a population to cholera by limiting their water intake to a polluted well.
“I’m going to tell them what kind of world they’re creating and hope maybe they’ll want a better one,” Torrant said, praying to Oueant that he was right.
“And if they don’t?” Leave it to Cwyn to ask the hard question.
Torrant and Aylan exchanged another one of those speaking glances, the kind that came with long hours on the road, talking about the plan in general and finalizing details they ordinarily wouldn’t want to think about.
“We have a backup plan,” Torrant said with such a mild voice that he felt Yarri’s hand, which was resting on his thigh, clench. Apparently, she could read the language in the unspoken conversation as well.
So could Bethen. “No,” Bethen said again, a denial against sanctioning assassination more than anything else. She turned to Yarri in desperation. “You’re not saying anything. Why aren’t you saying anything?” she begged. “Yarri, of all people in this room, you are the one voice that could be heard in your beloved’s heart!”
YARRI CLOSED her eyes and stood slowly, as though she might shatter into sand if her bones and sinews disturbed her tenuous hold on her emotions.
“We’ve lost, Bethen,” she said, not daring to look at anyone else in the room. “Can’t you see we’ve already lost? We lost when the first flame touched Triannon—before then, even!” She shook her head, interrupted herself, and met Torrant’s eyes at last, unable to hide the naked misery in her own. “No, Auntie Beth, we lost this argument the first time he asked to go to Clough.” She swallowed hard and wiped her face with the inside of her blouse like a child. She needed to leave the room and pull herself together, and she needed to do it now, because if she didn’t, she would never have the resolve to do what she planned next.
She looked at her beloved, and for the first time it occurred to her that twelve years had passed since he had first brought her here, to safety, to a beloved family to replace the one they had lost. He was watching her with a tightened jaw, with the razor stubble of travel on his face. His hair was almost long enough to pull back in a queue, but not quite, and the white streak of it hung over his brow. It dawned on her, in a faintly shocking way, that although she had always found him beautiful—almost too beautiful for words, in fact—he would be sublimely handsome to the rest of the world. And right now, his brow was clenched forward, his eyes were bright and anxious, and his entire body was vibrating with hesitation at doing the one thing he truly knew was right.
And that terrible hesitation was just for her.
He wasn’t a boy who had saved a little girl anymore. He was a man who was trying to save their people. She breathed softly through her nose, and the beginnings of a fierce sunshine smile started at the corners of her mouth.
“I’ll be out back, beloved,” she told him, bending forward to kiss his cheek. “Come get me when you’re done.”
She put a hand on Bethen’s shoulder and squeezed—hard—on her way out.
We Said Good-bye in Spring
ROES FINALLY got Starren and Cwyn to go to bed, and then she and Aldam went gravely into the room she usually shared with Yarri. “Yarri won’t be there,” she said softly, and Aldam nodded.
Stanny offered to keep Aylan up at his flat, but Aylan rightly guessed that Stanny would need time with his Evya this night and declined, saying he’d sleep on the couch.
“You could probably sleep in with Torrant in his old room,” Starren said unthinkingly on her way up the stairs to her room.
“No,” Aylan replied gravely. He may have been the only one who had seen Yarri slip out the back door while they’d still been talking things like expense and cover stories and please, oh Goddess, please, do you really have to go? They might come back or they might not—but if they did, odds were good they wouldn’t want Aylan in their bed.
“We’ll be back in the morning,” Stanny said on his way out.
“Not too early!” Aylan cautioned. Leaving the next day had seemed logical. They had fresh clothing in the saddlebags, and the idea of prolonging their farewell had been too painful to contemplate. But it felt as though they’d been on the road for a month instead of a week, and dammit, Aylan wanted a shower and a shave before he got back up on the Goddess-blighted horse.
Bethen and Lane were sitting quietly, holding hands and not talking, not really, not anymore. Finally, she got up and got her knitting from the basket by the hearth, and Aylan knew the world might be all right after all. But before she settled down to her knitting, and Aylan settled down to the book he’d found, Bethen came to sit next to him.
“It was bad?” she asked. “By the river… the dead soldiers?”
Aylan flinched because he and Torrant had said very little about what had happened to the people who destroyed Triannon. But Bethen would understand. “Yes,” he replied, nodding simply. “It was bad.”
“I hate for either of you to go.” Her fingers fretted needlessly with the bright-red wool in her basket. A sweater for Starry, if Aylan wasn’t mistaken—that child loved the deep reds of cherries and strawberries, and Bethen spoiled her unmercifully. “I’m glad you’re going with him,” she said at last. “He trusts you, and you’d die before you let him down.”
Aylan shuddered. “I’m terrified I’ll do just that,” he said truthfully. “Let him down, I mean.”
Bethen patted his knee.
“Not possible,” she said softly. Then a tiny, wicked gleam so much like the Bethen he had come to love like a mother entered her puffy, wearied brown eyes. “So,” she ask
ed in the tones of a conspirator. “Was it everything you thought it would be?”
Aylan didn’t pretend not to know what she was talking about. “Bethie,” he said with a gentle grin, “the stars wept, and the heavens sang.”
“I thought they might,” she managed archly and patted his cheek. “I’m glad you got it out of your blood, both of you. You have dangerous business at hand.”
Aylan nodded, his eyes darting wryly to the back door, where Torrant had just exited. “And he’s not mine to have anymore anyway,” he added.
Bethen’s expression sobered, and she kissed his cheek fiercely. “He never really was.”
YARRI TRIED not to pace on the back porch. The wind had picked up from the sea, and she wrapped her favorite shawl around her arms and stared out to where the waves continued their rolling dance.
Her ankles were cold, and she wished she were a princess like Trieste, or one of the girls who always walked through town gossiping about their lovers or their hair or the lotions they used on their faces. One of them would know what the appropriate footwear would be for this situation.
Was there an appropriate anything for this situation?
He was going. She couldn’t stop him. All her life he had moved stars and clouds to make her not cry, but not tonight, as they talked through the sunset. Tonight, he had merely wept with her.
She had reached up on tiptoes to kiss one of the tears that ran down his stubbled cheek and found it tasted of dust and sweat and sorrow.
“Does it have anything to do with Aylan?” she’d asked, needing reassurance. Aylan had always wanted him—may even have had him, judging by the way Torrant had looked after his friend’s silhouette when Aylan had gone to house the horses.
“No.”
And she’d believed him. Torrant didn’t lie. Not to her. Not to anybody, if she were to think clearly, but especially not to her.
She moved restlessly, resisting the urge to pace. What was taking him so long?
And then she smelled soap and new cloth and realized why he was late. Her smile when she turned to him was more genuine than she had expected it to be.
“You changed,” she exclaimed. She ran her hands down the lapel of the new brown shirt. It went well with his coloring, and she thought Trieste must have given it to him. He’d said she’d given him a whole wardrobe to start off with. He was wearing the clothes meant for a regent’s debut for her.
“I bathed,” he added gratefully, and she laughed. “And you changed too.” His voice was husky and questioning, and suddenly she was as vulnerable as a newborn kitten in the middle of a freshly made bed.
Yarri smiled hesitantly into her beloved’s eyes, backing up and holding her arms out so the shawl didn’t obstruct his view of her in the off-white, eyelet nightgown with the pretty little embroidered flowers scattered over it like rain. She swallowed as he stood there, a wash of emotions rushing over his face like a deep river, and wondered desperately if he was pleased. She had just opened her mouth to say “Do you like it?” when he spoke hoarsely, with a gratifying tremble in his voice.
“You’re more beautiful than stars, Yarri Moon,” he graveled. “Are you sure you want to wear that gown for me?”
She closed her eyes tightly and fought a semihysterical laugh. “You moron, who else would I wear it for?” she asked, smacking his arm with an open palm, and he captured her hand and brought it to his lips.
“I don’t know,” Torrant replied wickedly over her knuckles. “But whoever he is, he can’t have you tonight.” And then he pulled her into his arms and lowered his mouth to her, and the world tasted like salt water and moonlight as the ground whirled and dipped beneath them.
A FEW minutes later, he was following her, hand in hand, somewhere toward the beach.
“Where are we going again?” he asked with good humor. He had been thinking about sneaking her down to his old room so that they could resume that kiss, and it was not as though the family hadn’t seen this coming for twelve years anyhow.
“The stables,” she replied. “I… uhm… asked Cwyn to set something up.”
“Dueant have mercy!” he groaned. Of course, of all the Moons, the fifteen-year-old recreant would know how to arrange a tryst.
The inside of the stable was a familiar, dark, warm, horse-scented softness. It was a cooperative stable—everybody who kept horses there kept it clean, and the Moons spent their share of time keeping Courtland and his brood in comfort and style. The two lovers were easy in the large building, not needing even the light of Triane and Dueant to find the ladder to the sizeable loft.
Yarri went first, and Torrant almost fell off the ladder when he realized all she wore underneath her sweet little gown was Triane’s favorite prayer.
“Are you all right?” Her face was a morning glory in the darkness, and he had to clear his throat to answer, because he knew she wouldn’t be able to see his nod.
“Wonderful,” he croaked. “I’m dandy!”
Her returning laugh was low and womanly, and in that sound he gave up any last hope of refusing her this moment of joy before he left. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t give her one last chance to refuse him.
“Oh my,” he said when they reached the top. Cwyn apparently really did have some experience tumbling lovers in the hayloft. All the top shutters were open, so the light coming in off the restless water and the still sky suffused the loft, and all colors were silver and softly glowing. The bed itself was simple: a couple of quilts on top of the straw to keep it from scratching and to keep them warm. There was some food set aside—some apples, some bread, a skin of water, and, of all things, a brush and a washcloth.
The air coming in from the sea was cool enough to relieve the stuffiness of the space, so even though Torrant could stand to his full height with only a few inches to spare, when he knelt on the double layer of quilts that were spread out on the straw, his impression was of openness and freedom and safety, all in one. Vaguely, he remembered the last time he’d ended up with a pretty girl in this stable—behind the bales of hay on the floor, not too far from Courtland and his infamously refouling stall. In all, he’d have to say he preferred this place, where he could see the rolling ocean and the vast sky and hear the hushed roar of home.
Yarri plopped down next to him with a practical earthiness that made him smile. No seductresses moves for Yarri—but she did, he had to admit, know how to dress for the occasion.
“When did Cwyn do all this?” he asked idly, wanting to hear her talk a little, wanting the moment of beginning to stop holding its breath.
“When we saw you’d be arriving today,” she replied. “I didn’t know….” She turned her head and looked out the window, then closed her eyes and let the breeze blow over her face. “I didn’t know it would be your only night home.”
He reached out a hand, intending to stroke her neck to her shoulder, and for a moment, although the hand remained his own, it was covered in the blood of his enemies, dripping in gore. He gasped and shook his head to clear it of the vision, and incredibly, thought of those stolen moments with Aylan.
Aylan thought he was clean enough to touch, he realized with desperate wonder. If Aylan could bear to touch him, perhaps, just perhaps, he wouldn’t soil his beloved with the sharing of skin on skin.
His hand was suddenly silver in the moonlight, and the satin of her throat and shoulder under his fingers made him gasp in a whole other way.
“Mmm…,” she moaned, tipping her head back and letting him slide her gown off her shoulder a little. “What were you thinking about, just then?”
He breathed out, trying not to laugh at the irony. “Aylan—” he started, only to be stopped by her arched brow.
She took his hand in hers and held it between her not-yet-bared breasts, the movement making her shift close enough to him that he could feel the heat from her body. “I thought of you together, as we waited,” she said tartly. “And you know what?” She opened his palm and kissed it, her lips unbelievably soft.
“I didn’t care. I don’t care what you’ve done with Aylan or with anyone for that matter.” Her voice grew intense for a moment, and he pulled his hand from her grasp to wrap his arm around her shoulder and draw her in to her most comfortable place against his chest.
“I waited for you”—she kept her voice tight, suppressing a sob—“and all I could think about was how happy I was that you were alive. And suddenly, other lovers ceased to matter, you understand me?”
“I promise—” he started to say, thinking a girl would want such a promise when her lover was leaving.
“Don’t,” she choked, looking at him with brightened eyes in the moonlight. A slow tear traveled down her nose and pooled at the corner of her mouth. He bent to kiss it off, and she whispered, “Don’t promise. Don’t make promises it will hurt you to keep, right?”
“Right,” he whispered, kissing another tear off her chin, wanting all her tears gone in this moment. He was willing to promise or not promise anything as long as, for this one night in the soft summer dark, she could be happy and thinking only of him and their bodies and what they would soon do.
“I mean it,” she moaned softly as he tipped her chin back and kissed a line down her throat. “It’s one of the promises they would make,” she said softly, pulling away and meeting his eyes so he’d know she was serious and not to be beguiled from this point. “And I’d rather have you, alive, than all of those kinds of promises in the world. And you’ll be alone… so alone. What if you need a friend, a body, an escape from the world to keep your soul intact, and this promise wouldn’t let—”
He sighed and sat back unhappily, wishing only to give her this night, this memory, and not wanting to taint it with thoughts of danger or pain.
“Please, beloved,” she whispered. “Please, for me, don’t promise to be faithful, when the only thing I want is for you to be safe.”
He laughed, a soft puff of irony in the hush. “Yarri, sweetheart, the darling of my heart, the only lover I’ve ever wanted, if I promise I won’t try too hard to be faithful, will you promise to let me love you tonight?” he asked finally and was gratified when she laughed back.