by Sharon Green
“Please, enough,” Lorand interrupted, holding up a hand.
“Your points are well taken, but that doesn’t change the fact that the whole idea of courtesans is … immoral. Just because everyone else might be doing wrong, that doesn’t make what they do right.”
“Weren’t you ever taught that morality is a purely local thing?” she now asked, studying him with a curiosity that suggested he was some odd and foreign artifact. “Our school made a point of teaching us that, because so many different parts of the empire are represented in this city. They explained that if any group in a small place wants or doesn’t want a particular thing, they announce it as moral or immoral. Very few people have the nerve to stand up and speak against something ‘moral’ or for something ‘immoral,’ so the group gets its way without having to come forward with reasonable or logical arguments for or against the thing. Isn’t that what your people did, calling courtesans bad and immoral without listing any real reasons for believing that?”
Lorand almost stated the reasons he’d been given, but then he remembered they’d already discussed and dismissed them. Scoundrels would be scoundrels with or without courtesans, no man turns his back on true love, and some women drive their husbands to other arms than theirs. It was something else entirely bothering Lorand, and he was finally forced to admit it.
“All right, it isn’t some nebulous objection about her profession,” he blurted, saying it fast before he lost his nerve. “It’s the fact that she shared herself with other men, and intends to keep on doing it. How am I supposed to live with that? I really love her, and I don’t want to share her with anyone. If that’s being selfish then I’m selfish, and I don’t want to get past the feeling. It’s too important to me, too…”
“Personal” Tamrissa finished with a sigh when his words simply trailed off. “Again, I don’t have any idea how that feels but I’d like to understand it. Do you mean that if Jovvi had been married and widowed seven or eight times, you’d still feel the same? I met a woman once who was betrothed to six brothers, one after the other, and none of them lived more than a year. There was something in their blood that was killing them off one after the other, but the two merchant families were determined to have an alliance. There were ten brothers all together, and the last I heard, number seven was lasting longer than any of the others. But that gets away from my question. If that were Jovvi and the last brother died and ended the chance of alliance, would you refuse to marry her even though you loved her?”
“Why, I don’t know,” Lorand admitted, considering the question with surprise. There had been a family like that on a farm near Widdertown, where every one of their boy children suffered from uncontrollable bleeding. The smallest scratch had turned fatal for three of them, and the family physician had said the others would probably go the same way. The family had put themselves into debt to travel to Gan Garee and consult a High practitioner in Earth magic, but the man hadn’t been able to find anything in the way of a germ that didn’t belong. They might as well have stayed with their family physician who, like many other physicians, was an ordinary practitioner of Earth magic.
“Actually I do know, and the answer is no, I wouldn’t refuse to marry her,” Lorand corrected himself after thinking for a moment. “But that’s just the point. I want to marry her, but she wants a – a—permanent liaison while she continues to be a courtesan. That’s the part I’m really having trouble with.”
“So it isn’t what she did, but what she intends to do,” Tamrissa said with a nod after sipping her tea. “I feel silly asking this, but I’m really trying to understand… If Jovvi was a cook in a fashionable dining parlor, would it bother you to eat the meals she prepared at home because she also cooked elsewhere? Would you want her to stop cooking for everyone but you?”
“That is a silly question,” Lorand responded with a small laugh. “Of course I wouldn’t want her to stop cooking for others. But there’s a big difference between cooking and doing what she does, don’t you think? It simply isn’t the same thing.”
“Why not?” Tamrissa asked, her head to the side again. “What does that big difference consist of?”
“You must be joking,” Lorand said with a different laugh, one of disbelief. “There’s a big difference between cooking and – and—lying with other men. There’s nothing intimate about cooking, nothing … personal and direct. And what about children? How could I know that any child she had would be mine?”
“You would find it impossible to love a child of hers even if you weren’t its father?” she asked, brows raised high, then gestured a dismissal of the question. “No, never mind, that question isn’t relevant. What is relevant is the fact that women have known how to keep from conceiving for some time now. The preparation called closum is made from two of those minerals I forget the names of, but it’s available from every streetcorner practitioner of Earth magic even if your family physician won’t hear of giving it to you. I looked into the matter before I found out that Gimmis was sterile, and I’m surprised that you don’t know about it. Or do you?”
Lorand did, and had even produced some closum once for a girl at school who’d been a close friend. She’d fallen in love with one of the older boys, but hadn’t wanted to limit her options by becoming pregnant… Lorand nodded reluctantly in answer to her question, but couldn’t find any words.
“So if there were any children you’d know who their father was,” Tamrissa said once it was clear he had nothing to add. “That leaves the rest of your objection, which comes down to sharing intimacy. I hate to keep asking, but could you explain that? I know what the word means to me, but not how others look at it.”
“Intimacy means sharing your bodies in pleasure,” Lorand said, disturbance over what Tamrissa’s life must have been like breaking through his self-absorption. The girl was downright solemn when she admitted not knowing about certain things, and Lorand ached for her. If her husband had still been alive… “And it’s supposed to be pleasurable, Tamrissa, for both of the people involved. It’s a sharing of love, of the deepest feelings two people can have for each other, and it means everything if you do it with the right person. If you do it just for coin, or for passing pleasure, the real thing is somehow—tarnished.”
“I think that’s the best way I’ve ever heard it described,” she said with a shy smile that illuminated the beauty of her face. “Thank you for telling me that, Lorand, it was very kind of you. What did Jovvi say when you told her the same thing? Doesn’t she see it like that?”
“I don’t know, because I haven’t told her,” Lorand said, the words coming out like a revelation. “I just let the whole thing bother me, and never tried to discuss it with her. But if I’d tried sooner, I would have gotten bogged down in all sorts of things that don’t really matter—like right versus wrong, and moral versus immoral. It’s how she and I feel about things that really matters, and I owe it all to you that I’ve finally realized it. Tamrissa, you do a mighty fine job for someone who’s never given advice before.”
“But that wasn’t advice,” she protested with a laugh as her cheeks colored. “Advice is when you tell people what to do, not when you cause them to make up their own minds— isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is, but in that case what you do is better,” Lorand assured her with a grin. “At least I like it better, so it’s settled. Now, what else can we talk about until dinner is ready? How about the weather?”
She really laughed at that, and Lorand joined her with pleasure. Tamrissa could be sharp-tongued at times, but less of the time than most women and she was really sweet. If he hadn’t met Jovvi first… But he had met Jovvi first, and now he could hardly wait to get her alone to talk to her. How they both felt made a very big difference…
If anything made a difference with the threat of death or worse skulking around in the shadows. And if he somehow managed to get around his other personal problem before he ran out of time…
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
&nb
sp; Rion was dressed again in his new clothing when he went downstairs for the meal. Rather than use the second outfit which was meant for the next day, he’d soaked the worn shirt and trousers in his bedchamber’s wash basin, gently squeezed them out, and then used Air magic to dry them. Everyone had responded to the clothing so well that he meant to wear it as often as possible until he was able to replace it with more of the same style but in better fabrics.
He was definitely hungry again when he went downstairs, but this time he wasn’t the first to show up at the table. As he reached the bottom of the stairs just behind Vallant Ro, Lorand Coll and Tamrissa Domon came out of the library together, laughing. All four of them ended up walking into the dining room as a loose group, where Pagin Holter and Beldara Lant were already seated. Then Jovvi Hafford arrived, followed a moment later by Eskin Drowd, and dinner was underway.
There was a small amount of conversation during the meal, principally among Tamrissa, Jovvi, and Coll. Rion was included from time to time as well, and he felt that his responses were a good deal more satisfactory than the ones made by Ro. It was as if Ro had other things on his mind besides idle conversation, but Rion couldn’t imagine what that might be.
At meal’s end, Tamrissa invited everyone to join her for a short while in the library, where a lovely brandy was waiting to be sampled. Holter refused politely and left the room, while Beldara Lant simply walked out without the least response. The others ignored those two and left the dining room amid companionable chatter, and Rion was about to join them when Drowd put a hand to his arm to gain his attention.
“I see you haven’t yet managed to find a way to protect your own interests,” Drowd drawled insultingly with a smirk. “Coll continues to take most of the attention of the lovely Jovvi, leaving you no more than crumbs outside the window. It was rather unlikely that you were man enough to repay Coll for thrusting you out of his path to the lady, but I did think you at least had it in you to try.”
“Did you really,” Rion said, studying the man thoughtfully. “You expected me to do something to Coll, and because I didn’t I’m unfit to be called a man by you. Is that because you’re so very deeply concerned over my welfare, or because Coll outperformed you today—as you suspected he would. Come, come, Drowd, don’t be shy about telling the truth. You might find it a fascinating experience for once.”
“Coll did not outperform me,” Drowd growled, his face now dark with anger. “He simply got the hang of the exercise sooner, but he clearly reached his limit. Tomorrow I will be the one to do better, and the following days will see the same. The bucolic hayseed doesn’t live who can outdo Eskin Drowd.”
“And to be sure of that, you’d like me to do away with Coll for you,” Rion said, taking pains to show his disbelief clearly. “I certainly do hate to disappoint you, but I’m afraid my interest in the delightful Jovvi isn’t quite as deep as you believed. There are other lovely women in the world, and I may have found one. But the others are waiting, so if you will excuse me…”
Rion’s bow was pure sarcasm, a fact Drowd saw quite clearly as Rion walked away from him. The man obviously fought against becoming livid, so Rion happily left him to it in private. The others greeted his appearance in the library with smiles, a glass was pressed into his hand, and his opinion on the vintage was actually sought. Rion tasted the brandy then declared it the best he’d ever had, but that wasn’t the vintner’s doing. The warmth of the group that actually welcomed his presence meant enormously more, but he kept that part to himself to save everyone concerned the embarrassment.
They had only been together for a short time, when a servant appeared to say there was a visitor at the door. Both Tamrissa and Coll immediately lost their amusement for some reason, but it wasn’t either of them the servant turned to. It was Rion the man clearly meant to address, but before he was able to add details to the first of his message, the visitor brushed past him into the room. For one heart-stopping moment Rion had hoped it might be his lovely, dark-haired Naran Whist, but instead it turned out to be—
“Clarion, my poor darling, I’m appalled!” Mother announced in ringing tones as she swept past the helpless servant. “To think that you’ve been forced to live in such squalor these past days! And what have they done with your lovely clothes after giving you those rags? This entire situation is completely intolerable, and I’m taking you home with me at once!”
Rion’s mind skidded to a halt in shock and mortification. It was hardly the first time Mother had burst in on him when he was with people who might have become friends, but at those other times he’d barely begun to know the people involved. When they’d drawn back from him in offense or ridicule, he’d been able to tell himself they were simply not worth knowing. That wasn’t the case with the people he now stood among, but he was helpless to stop what was happening.
“And see the outrage they’ve committed with that ridiculous sign!” Mother went on, pointing to his chest. “They’ve written your name wrong, as though you were just anybody and of no consequence whatsoever! Well, we’ll see about that soon enough. You are my darling Clarion, and before I’m done every one of them will know it!”
Rion winced, knowing she wasn’t joking. She would show up at the sessions building and make such a row that everyone in the building would hear about it. She would force them to replace his identification card just to silence her, and he didn’t want it replaced. His new name meant too much to him, and the threat of its loss was enough to help him find his voice again.
“No, Mother, the name isn’t a mistake,” he said almost at once, his insides twisting with the realization that he was attempting to disagree with her. “I told them to change it to this, and I – I—mean to keep it. I’ve decided that it suits me better.”
“Suits you better than the name I chose for you?” Mother said, her eyes beginning to widen in a way Rion was much too familiar with. Whenever he found something to get stubborn about, Mother had never argued. She’d merely shown her frailty and utter dismay and Rion had always ended up giving in.
“But my darling, Clarion is the name I chose for you,” she said, appearing close to tears. “I spent all the months I carried you in my body, searching for the perfect name, and at last I found it. I can’t begin to tell you how joyous I felt, but if my joy and happiness mean nothing to you, by all means, pervert the name as you wish. I’ve always loved you too much to deny you anything…”
Her words trailed off as tragedy peered out of her eyes, and Rion knew he was lost. He’d never been able to stand up to the suggestion that he was harming her, and probably never would. Even if he knew, deep inside, that she wasn’t being harmed at all. He parted his lips to admit defeat, but a small, gentle hand placed suddenly on his left arm kept the words from being spoken.
“You can’t mean it took you that long to find the most ridiculous and demeaning name possible,” Jovvi said to her with a smile. “Surely a woman of your talent and ability was able to accomplish the thing much sooner than that.”
Mother actually began to preen at what seemed to be a compliment, but then she actually heard everything Jovvi had said and immediately went stiff.
“Clarion, who is this person?” she demanded looking daggers at Jovvi. “Tell her to remove her hand from your arm at once, and to apologize to me immediately! Even though you stand about while I’m being abused, I refuse to accept such treatment from a commoner!”
“Is she a commoner because she won’t let you get away with treating a grown man like a half-wit boy?” another voice put in, and then Tamrissa stood beside him to his right. “And if you think she abused you, that’s only because you haven’t dealt with me yet. I never thought I’d meet anyone worse than my own mother, but you’ve surpassed her. To come bursting in here and embarrass your son nearly to death, and then to claim to love him? It’s yourself that you love, and at least my mother never made any attempt to deny that.”
“How dare you!” Mother whispered in a fury, her skin going pale a
nd then red and then pale again. “Have you absolutely no idea who I am, that you would dare to even think such things in my presence? Clarion, fetch your possessions at once! You’re leaving with me this instant!”
“You seem to have difficulty with your hearing,” Jovvi said, causing Mother’s head—and glare—to snap around in her direction. “His name is now Rion, not something designed to make everyone snicker at him behind their hands. It did the job of keeping him completely under your thumb because he had no one else to turn to, but now he’s finally broken free of you. Why don’t you accept that gracefully instead of trying to make a scene?”
“And you can forget about his going with you,” Tamrissa added as Mother’s face turned an even deeper red. “The law insists that he stay right here, and I’d guess that you’ve lost to the law once already. If you hadn’t, he never would have come here in the first place. If you had even the least amount of ordinary manners I’d invite you to join us for a while, but as you were so obviously raised in a barn, you can flounce out just the way you came in.”
“Ohhh!” Mother exclaimed, obviously completely mortified. No one had ever dared to say such things to her before, although Rion had sometimes had the impression her friends would have enjoyed doing exactly that. Her social position was such that no one could afford to offend her by failing to invite her to a party or gathering, but many of them had seemed to wish they could.
“Clarion, I insist that you say something!” Mother ordered in a strangled voice, so livid that it was a wonder she didn’t burst. “Tell these harlots that you haven’t a copper of your own, and then let me hear that you mean to accompany me! I refuse to stay in this disgusting place one moment longer than necessary!”
Rion had been feeling painful guilt over what Jovvi and Tamrissa had said to the mother he’d been so close to for so long, but her last speech changed that. Suggesting that the only reason the two women had defended him was because they thought he had money hurt, the sort of pain she’d always given unthinkingly. For her he was only there to jump to her beck and call; he wasn’t someone she truly cared about, and it was time he admitted that to himself.