Falling From the Tree (Darshian Tales #2)

by Ann Somerville

  She urged him to lay his head on her shoulder, then stroked his hair carefully. “It’s partly because we’re afraid, son. You’re the most precious thing in our lives and we don’t want to lose you, have you run off because you think these mythical parents might be better than us. It’s a silly thing, I know, and you have to do what’s best for you, but.... We love you so much. Neither of us ever expected to be able to raise a child and though it was hard in the early days, you were such a joy to us. You still are.”

  “I wouldn’t leave you, Ma! I promise I won’t.” He looked up and saw tears in her eyes, one even slipping down her cheek. He’d only seen her crying a couple of times in his life and both times had been when a patient of hers had died. “D-don’t cry, Ma. I wuh-won’t leave.”

  “Thank you, Ka-chi. You’re such a good boy.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed hard. “Why don’t you come back to the house? Reji’s talking to Gyo and Misek. We can tell you more about the war, not that there’s a lot to tell. We weren’t really hiding it from you. It’s just we all put it behind us. Arman’s not proud of how he was then, although he’s a bit too hard on himself, I think.”

  “Was he a bad man, Ma? Did he hurt you or Kei?”

  “No, he didn’t hurt us, and he’s not a bad man, not at all. But he was a soldier and he was fighting our people. He just wanted a fresh start when he came back with Kei. You know he loves Kei, don’t you?” Karik nodded. People made gentle fun of his uncle even to his face about the fact he and Arman were still so affectionate after all their years together, and one was never really completely happy unless the other was there. “Well, there you go. Kei’s a good man, so if he loves Arman, Arman must be good too, don’t you think?”

  “I guess so. Ma, will Arman tell me the truth when I ask him?”

  “I don’t honestly know, dear. Like I said last night, he might find it all too painful to talk about.” She looked at him earnestly. “Can you accept not knowing?”

  “I’d try to accept it. I’ll try to understand, Ma, I really will.”

  “Thank you, dear.” She stood up. “Come back now. Your father’s not angry, I promise you. He’s just worried. It’ll be all right, wait and see.”

  She held his hand as they walked back to the village, just as she had when he was smaller, but he got the feeling this time it was for her comfort, not his. He hadn’t realised his parents might be afraid he would leave them. He only wanted to know who his original father and mother were, but if they hadn’t wanted him sixteen years ago, he didn’t want to leave his home and live with strangers. “I l-love you, Ma,” he said quietly as they walked.

  “And I love you, my darling son,” she said, her hand tightening around his, and her eyes full of tenderness that made him feel warm and happy to see. “You’ve been a blessing on our lives since we first took you in.”

  Now a lot calmer, if feeling rather stupid for being such a baby about things, Karik followed Ma back into their house. His father held out his arm as he saw Karik, and as Karik came to him, Pa pulled him into a careful hug on his Pa’s good side. “I’m sorry, son. We should have explained things better. I didn’t want to lie to you.”

  “It’s al-all right, Pa. M...Ma exp-plained.” Gyo sat close by his father, and gave Karik a rather shaky looking smile. “S-sorry, Gyo.” His friend, for all his huge size, was actually a sensitive soul who hated strife and arguments. Karik should have remembered that.

  “We understand, lad,” Misek said kindly. “You boys are in an awkward situation, we all know that.” He ruffled the back of his son’s head. “Not boys. Young men.”

  “Fine young men,” Pa agreed. “Jena, let’s have some tea. Karik, sit by me.”

  The agitation in Karik’s heart died a silent death as the three adults talked over mugs of tea, Pa’s hand resting lightly on Karik’s shoulder, and Ma on his other side. Even though Pa must have known there were more harvest loads coming in, he made no attempt to call the conversation to a halt and send Karik to help Risa. Instead, he and Misek described events that had happened sixteen years before, how the word had come of the Prijian invasion and how Fedor had had the painful task of telling some of his people to leave for their own safety, and of having to let his own adopted son be taken away, possibly never to be seen again.

  “You can imagine how he felt when Kei waltzed back in with Arman the first time, let alone the second,” Misek said, chuckling slightly. “My Ma nearly had a stroke—she was terrified of the soldiers, and didn’t want any of us to have anything to do with Arman when he was here as a prisoner. When Pa heard that Kei had actually got Arman invited to Myka’s wedding....”

  Karik’s father grinned. “You know, I only heard about it after the fact and I still couldn’t believe the size of his balls for trying it. He claimed it was Myka’s fault, but you know it had to be Kei.”

  “I know it was,” Misek agreed. “And then of course, Kei had to top that by bringing him back as a lover and calmly announcing Arman was going to live here or Kei would leave. If it hadn’t been Kei, I don’t think he’d have got away with it. But then we got to know Arman, and he really did his best to fit in.”

  “Yes, I have to give him that,” Pa said. “Anything anyone asked him to do, he did it, and he never argued back if someone was rude to him. It took the steam out of them when he did that, of course.”

  “He had plenty of practice arguing with me,” Ma said, setting the freshened pot of tea down, and a plate of small cakes for their guests. “I really hated him for a while, but it’s hard to hate someone trying so hard to make up for his sins.”

  “Kei makes the difference,” Misek said. “I know he won Ma over, and Fedor. People in Ai-Tuek couldn’t believe that our healer fell in love with a Prij though. That was all they wanted to talk about when I moved there. But it never comes up now. Funny, when you think about it,” he mused, sipping his tea.

  “People have moved on,” Ma said. “Pia and I think about it more than you would, but we have our own reasons.”

  Karik looked at his mother’s sad expression. “M-Ma, if no one h-hurt you, wuh-why is it hard to t-talk about it?”

  She stroked his arm gently. “I never said no one hurt me, son. Only that Karus didn’t. There was a lot of cruelty around at that time. Not all of it from the Prij, either.” She exchanged a look with Pa, who took her hand.

  Karik didn’t want to hurt her by pushing. He was just glad the secrecy was over and even though he had to wait until he got to Darshek to ask the really burning question, at least he now had his parents’ blessing to ask it.

  Now the three adults had begun to reminisce, it was like a dam had been unblocked, and they talked for hours about their shared past. In fact, they were so long at it that Risa came looking for Karik, and grumbled when he found not one but three potential labourers sitting on their backsides, drinking tea. “All right for some,” he muttered, but accepted a cup of tea anyway. “Mis, Ma is nearly ready to set supper.”

  “Well, I suppose we’d better be going. It’s not like we won’t have plenty of time to talk on the trail. Jena, I need to send a message to Ai-Tuek to let Pia’s brother know what’s happening. Can I do that now?”

  “Of course,” Ma said, moving to his side and taking his arm.

  Passing the message to the other village’s mind-speaker took only a minute, and then Misek told Gyo they had to go. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ka-chi,” Gyo said, looking a lot happier than when Karik had returned to the house.

  Karik waved goodbye to him, and then his mother set Reji and him to shelling beans and cleaning root vegetables while she fetched some dried meat from their cool store. “Do you really forgive me, Karik?” Pa asked in a low voice as Jena left the room.

  “Y-yes. I’m sorry I yelled.”

  “It’s all right. I think in your position I’d have yelled a bit too.” Karik smiled a little. “You know, son, for your sake, I wish I looked more like Arman. But I never wished you looked more like me.” He took Karik’s wrist
in his hand. “If I could have chosen a son specially, I’d still want him to be just like you.”

  “Pa, I wuh-won’t ever leave you or M-Ma.”

  “Well, you might one day, son. We both hope you’ll get married or at least find a lover the way Kei did. You might move from the village for that, or find work somewhere else, and we’d understand. Just so long as you don’t leave us here,” he said, tapping Karik’s forehead.

  “I won’t. I p-promise.”

  Pa smiled and tugged his braid gently. “That’s definitely the best thing I’ve heard all day. Now, we better hurry up or your Ma will tear the hide off me for distracting you.”

  Voyaging: 4

  There were days when Arman felt every bit of his forty-one years, and today was one of them. It made him yearn for when he was younger and could spend weeks under canvas, out of cities, away from bureaucrats and politicians. He didn’t miss the soldiering as such—but he missed the sense of being his own master. The fact that, strictly speaking, he was his own master since he worked purely on a voluntary basis, didn’t really alter the sense of being harried by petty annoyances that were likely to wear him to a bloody stump through their sheer volume.

  When he was stressed, he had two ways of dealing with it—solitary exercise, or finding Kei and letting his lover take the reins. It was too late in the afternoon to go for much of a walk, and too cold on this damp, cloudy day for a swim in the harbour, so he settled for going to the academy to see if he could cajole Kei into leaving early. However, he was out of luck, being told Kei had left early—but that he’d gone to the House of the Gifted.

  So Arman had a choice of walking a half mile to their house, or half a mile to the House of the Gifted and then a mile home. Easy choice really, when he knew who waited for him.

  He was claimed as he walked in, as he always was.

  “Arman!”

  He was smiling before he turned. “Hello, Meda.”

  He took her hand and bent so she could kiss her cheek. “I hoped you might drop over this week,” she said.

  “Oh? Any reason?”

  “No, just missing you both. Kei’s here, but I suppose you know that.”

  “Yes, I heard. Where is he?”

  “In the indoor garden. Come on,” she said, taking him along by the hand.

  The ‘indoor garden’ as they liked to call it, was really more of a greenhouse built inside a large atrium on the south wing. It housed plants from all over Darshian, Andon, and now Kuprij, and was one of the most elegant and well-constructed edifices in Darshek. Glass and metal chimes tinkled softly as small birds—not pets, but ones who had made their home in this inviting space—hopped among the leaves and branches of the thickly clustered plants. Clever metal tracery decorated door and window edges, and the floor was inlaid with perfect, detailed mosaics. At its heart was a clear area with cushions and chairs, where many of the residents loved to spend bright mornings, or cold, dull days when the trapped heat of what little sun there had been made it a warm and welcoming place. In the summer, the windows were thrown open to the garden, but now, they provided shelter against the renewing drizzle softly spattering the glass. A few fire sprites hung in the air, relieving the gloom.

  Arman felt tension slipping out of him just smelling the scents of the hanging blossoms, some of which reminded him of happier times with Karus in his garden, and in that of his parents when his mother had still been alive.

  Of course, the thing that really lifted his mood was the smile on Kei’s face. “Oh, hello. I didn’t expect you to come all the way here.” Kei held out his hand and tugged him down onto the seat. “You look more like you have a headache,” he said, laying his hand on the back of Arman’s neck. After all these years, it produced an automatic response, and he lowered his head for the expected and welcome neck rub. “Are they all being tiresome again?”

  “Very. Very, very, very. It’s days like this when I really miss Lady Jilki. She’d have stopped this nonsense in five minutes.”

  “We all miss Jil,” Meda said quietly. “I know Nera does, a lot.”

  “Yes, I know.” The death of the formidable Ruler from a stroke two months ago at the relatively young age of sixty, had been felt keenly by friends and colleagues alike. Since her death, Arman had never been busier, or more appreciative of how much the woman had done for her country. The Rulers—and those who served them as Arman did—struggled to fill a very large hole. “Anyway, I think we might have made a breakthrough, but I said that last week, so I don’t want to be too hopeful.” Kei’s warm hand on his skin was bliss. He needed this—this touch, this warmth. It fed a never fully satisfied hunger in him and gave him peace.

  In that, he wasn’t so different from the three Gifted lounging in front of him. Meda had been drawn down to the cushions with her two lovers, and Reis petted her, stroking her stomach, while her cheek rested against Neris’s neck. “Where’s Jera?”

  “Oh, he and Wyma are talking to Seiki,” Reis said. “She’s feeling sad—she misses her mother.”

  “Poor child,” Kei said. “You’ll like her, Arman, she’s so sweet. I wonder if it goes with being a mind-speaker, you know. If it were me, hearing everyone’s thoughts and keeping their secrets would make me horribly bad-tempered.”

  Arman gave him a gentle poke. “Then it’s as well you’re not one, because a bad-tempered Kei is a dreadful sight.” Meda grinned at him for that.

  Reis spoke up. “Arman, why don’t you and Kei stay for supper? The weather is so dull.”

  He looked at Kei. “That’s kind, Reis, but Pira is expecting us, and I don’t like to leave her on her own without warning.”

  “Arman’s right.” Kei said. “It wouldn’t be kind to not turn up this late in the day. But how about we come to you tomorrow, or you could come to us?”

  “Oh, come to us,” Meda said eagerly. “I know Wyma would like that, and you can help cheer Seiki up, Arman.”

  “Me? I’m more likely to depress her.”

  She only laughed. “Oh, you’re so funny sometimes.”

  Arman shook his head. Meda saw him as a far more genial and amusing person than he knew himself to be. “Are you working on anything now?”

  “Yes, I started on Wyma’s portrait just today. Want to see?”

  Arman did, very much, and although her companions grumbled at being disturbed, they followed her uncomplainingly up to the first floor where she shared a large studio with several other of the Gifted who also painted or sculpted. Wyma’s portrait was little more than a sketch, but already she had caught the kind, slightly otherworldly look of the venerable soul-toucher’s eyes. At eighty, Wyma was the patriarch of this odd little clan, easily the oldest one of them all. Several portraits of him at different ages hung around the House, and although one might think this could be the last because of his great age, it was not inconceivable he might live a few years more. One of the many oddities about the Gifted was their longevity and general good health. The oldest had lived to be ninety-five, an incredible age for Arman to contemplate. Even though Wyma was now frail, he was still very sharp, and reminded Arman not a little of Karus.

  Wyma’s was not the only portrait. A half-completed one of Lady Jilki stood on an easel to one side, a posthumous tribute to a much-loved friend and supporter. There were others in progress as well.

  “Oh, when did you persuade him to sit still enough for this?” Kei said, wandering over to where the sharp features of Lord Meki had been roughly laid out on a gesso-covered board.

  Meda smiled. “I didn’t—you must be joking. I had to get Neka’s help to give me the images from other people’s minds. He’d be cross if he saw it. He doesn’t want any fuss made.”

  “I can understand,” Arman said thoughtfully. “But, gods, the man has served almost longer than any other Ruler in over a hundred years—that has to mean something.”

  “That’s why he won’t retire,” Kei said with a chuckle. “He wants to break the record.”

  “I think it’
s that he just doesn’t know how to stop,” Arman said.

  Reis sighed, touching the picture. “I thought when his great-granddaughter was born, he might. But he doesn’t seem to be interested in spending time with children.”

  A view with which Arman had some sympathy, preferring, as his elderly patron did, to spend time with people who could actually talk intelligently to him. But as he thought of how the Ruler’s life had lost almost all meaning when his soul-mate died, he shivered, wondering if he could ever survive without Kei if the worst happened.

  Kei, of course, noticed his sadness and moved quietly to his side, putting his arm around him. “Shall we go?” he murmured. “Being late is almost as rude as not turning up at all.”

  “Yes, of course. Meda, I can’t wait to see the pictures finished. I can tell already they’ll be worthy of their subjects.”

  She smiled shyly at that—honest praise of her art always reduced her to tongue-tied pleasure. She gestured for him to lean down so she could kiss his cheek. “I’ll make you a copy of Meki’s,” she whispered. “Our secret.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Kei, who’d been close enough to hear the exchange, squeezed Arman a little around the waist. “Come on, we’ll need to borrow a lamp as it is.”

  “Do you want to borrow our carriage too, Arman?” Neris asked. “Or maybe Reis—”

  “No, thank you,” Arman said hastily. “I’d like the walk. Kei?”

  Kei nodded. “We’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  They were waved goodbye and made their own way out of the house. The drizzle had stopped, and a little light came from the houses and the watch stations every few hundred yards, but they were mostly dependent on the oil lamp Kei held on a pole above and in front of them. The streets were emptying, people going back to their homes for supper, one or two carriages drawn by jesigs clipping along the rain slicked streets to the houses of their owners. Arman was glad they hadn’t accepted the invitation to dinner. He wasn’t in a companionable mood, although Pira and Kei would place no demands on his short temper.