BITTER MOON I:
TRIANE'S SON ASCENDING

A Novel

Amy Lane

Author of The Little Goddess series

Copyright © 2008 by Shannon T. R. McClellan

[v0.9 Scanned & Spellchecked by the_usual]
[v1.0 Proofed & Edited by the_usual]

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Part I
The Exile's Moon

12 years earlier: Casting Perfect Stones
The Death of the Childhood Moon
Wizard's Gifts and Goddess' Get
A Sliver of Safety
Under Triane's Moon
Triane's Pretty Horses
Traveling Companions
Footprints in the Snow
A Nice Warm Coat

Part II
The Haven Moon

Not Quite Home
Kin
To Be Kept Later
Callings
A Little Bit of Later
Consigned to the Cold Wet Dark

Part III
Goddess Stories Winter, Beltane …

… Samhain and song
Samhain, Winters, Four Years Sing Along
Honeysuckle and Holly

Part IV
The Learning Moon

Triane's Welcome
Trieste
Pretty Boys and Politics
Brothers
One Year More
Letters to the Dead
A Map Through a Cold Winter's Night
Blood on the Snow
Geographical Distance
Summer With Friends
Summer Stories
Beltane and Beyond
We'll Say Farewell in Summer …
Trieste Lands on Her Feet

Part V
The Healing Moon

Healers of the Goddess
Life in the Old Man Hills
Priest of the False Twin Moons
Aylan Stealth
The Healing Teeth of Justice
A Gentle Winter

Part VI
The Fractious Moon

Unexpected, that's all
Changing Times
Lion's Gate

Part VII
The Courting Moon

A Short Fall in the Spring

Part VIII
The Warring Moon

Another Turn Around the Sun
The Sacking of Triannon
A Witness to the Goddess' Vengeance
Clean

PartIX
The Leaving Moon

An Old Friend
My Beloved Waits for Summer …
… We Said Goodbye in Spring

This book is, as always, dedicated to my extraordinary, beautiful, heart-filling, exasperating, practically imperfect family. This book is also especially dedicated to my sons, because if you are going to walk like men in the world, it is important to know that the hero isn't always the guy who kills the bad guy and gets the girl in the end.

And Mate—who will never know how much he inspires. (Because if I told him, he wouldn't let me buy yarn to compensated for his imagined shortcomings. It's a dysfunctional system, but it works for us.)

Acknowledgements

Do you know how many people it takes to make a book? I mean, I used to assume that it was just the author, but now, I know better. Let's start with my editors—this time around I managed to shanghai con sucker, acquire some fantastic, marvelous, compassionate, bright, funny, supportive people to help answer my prayers. (Everybody remembers my traditional prayer, right? Holy Goddess, Merciful God, Please. Let. It. Not. Suck.) I would like to thank Eric, Roxie, Bonnie, Lore, and Ceri—all of whom worked for the promise of a free book and the price of postage alone. (And in Bonnie's case, Fed-Ex actually tried to charge her!!!) These people rock, truly, and if I could make a wish for all of the adults that I love, I would wish that people just this wonderful drop out of heaven and into their laps to help them do that which is most difficult for them. Because that's what these folks did for me.

First I'd like to acknowledge Jean Bergerot, who established herself as my Steward of Squiddoo, and the local source of all things Amy Lane. She posts things about me that sometimes I'm not aware of! While I'm at it, I'd like to thank Needletart, for the story of the seven Aunties—in this case, it was truth made into legend. And of course, I would also like to acknowledge my blogging buddies—oddly enough, most of the people on my editing list are here too, but I'd like to add Donna Lee, Em, Galad, ismarah, Halo, Sora, Ferryman, Julie, Mad Mad, Knittech, Netter, Bells, Louiz, Catie, and anyone else who has ever come in and told me to hang in there, I'd survive. The vote is still out on survival, but you all still made losing my grip a lot more fun.

Prologue

They had not met well, he brooded, crouching in the shadows of the fetid alley. He scowled—of course they hadn't met well, she wasn't even supposed to be here in this dangerous, corrupt sewer of a place. The whole reason he was here was to make the world safe for the both of them—how was he supposed to do that when she was here and he was afraid for her with every heartbeat?
And not just her! She had brought everyone he had to worry about into the fray, and a very petulant part of him was stamping its foot and screaming that it wasn't fair. He had worked hard—beyond hard, in fact—to come to a point where he could see his plan, his precious, angry, vengeful, necessary plan almost at a culmination, and here she was, sticking her little upturned nose into his plan.
The corners of his mouth turned upwards. Yes, she had the potential to bollix everything up beyond belief. Yes, she had been infuriating tonight, giving him an ultimatum that boiled down to "abandon your bloody mad idea or let me help, you wanker". Yes, he was terrified for her, and for the others, so terrified the very pores of his skin made the air between them vibrate with cold fear. Yes, to everything he had thrown at her during the bright and brittle waltz they had led, having a conversation beyond private in a venue that was beyond public, yes, yes, yes, he was absolutely right about all of it.
But … his smile turned upwards another notch, and his breath that had been fast with fear and anger was now quickened with passion and anticipation.
But … she had looked beautiful tonight, even down to her newer, (ouch!) shorter hairstyle and the dress his old lover had thrown on her in a panic so that she'd fit in.
But … there were no buts, he acknowledged with a cold exhale. There was no arguing with himself in this—if he denied it, it would put them all in that much more danger. Because Goddess, it had been so good to see her. Seeing her tonight in that roomful of enemies had been like breathing his first clear breath after months of living in the sewer. Seeing her earlier this night might be the one bright star of beauty that would get him through this terrible, dark and pitiless chore.
Torrant heard his mark before he saw him and retreated deeper into the shadows, changing with his gift as he did so.
Please, Goddess, he prayed, don't let my murderer's soul taint the one perfect thing in my life …
The mark was coming closer, his 'Goddess boy' held by the scruff of the neck, so used to being raped in alleyways that he didn't bother to protest with more than a whimper. As Torrant prepared himself to do his job, the bitter thought began to glow in him, that their families would have been appalled to know that it had ever come to this …

Part I
The Exile's Moon

12 years earlier: Casting Perfect Stones

They had looked like brothers, but were not. Torrant's mother had been a widow, come begging at the home of Ellyot's parents with her infant in tow, and they had been taken in. Torrant's father had been the local doctor and midwife, and one night he had gone out for a call, to never return. His body had been found, savaged and cold, the next morning, and Torrant's mother had, for reasons known only to her, been afraid the attack had been more than random. She left her home to seek shelter at the Moon enclave. When Torrant was a child, he remembered her apologizing for being too weak to keep them safe on her own, but if there had been weakness in her, Torrant had never seen it.
In fact, there had always been strength, and a quality to Myrla Shadow that had impressed the Moons of Clough in the extreme. She had volunteered to be a laundress and a maid, but her husband had delivered most of their children with Myrla at his side, and so she had become the enclave healer, the lead housekeeper, and a friend and equal to the family and another parent to the Moon children.
In all of Torrant's memory, he had been raised like a brother to Ellyot and his two brothers, since forever, since before Yarri, and since before the King's guard had become an overt part of the marauding force that overran the countryside. Although Torrant had a Goddess' name from birth, he didn't realize how lucky he was to be safe with the Moons.
Torrant had learned to read alongside Ellyot. He had also learned swordplay and archery, politics and poetry. Eating at the table with Myrla and the other members of the enclave, right in and among Ellyot's father and mother, and the older twins Qir and Tal, he had learned family. Yarri had been born, the youngest daughter, their precious one, and he had learned joy.
He remembered that last day.
He and Ellyot had practiced their swordsmanship hard, and ridden even harder. They had come pushing each other across the neat courtyard of the Moon hold with the rambunctiousness of fourteen-year-old boys. Ellyot, always arrogant, had swept his leg in a half circle, but Torrant had leapt above it, landing on his hands and tucking into a perfect roll, to come up twisting and catch Ellyot under the knee, bringing him down. Ellyot had laughed, then winced as he felt the bruise to his calf, but laughed again anyway. They had been wrestling, and neither of them played dirty. Torrant had won, and that was all.
Ellyot was taller than he, and had shocking blue eyes in his tanned face, whereas Torrant's eyes were a complicated hazel; but they were both handsome, chestnut haired boys. Ellyot had a cleft in one cheek, Torrant one in his chin. Ellyot had a slenderness, a grace, that spoke dancer, swordsman, and courtier. Torrant had a heaviness in the chest, a tumbler's agility, a wrestler's strength, and when he smiled, one corner of his lip curled up, and twin grooves bracketed his mouth in a way that made people want to make him smile since he was very young. Ellyot had the family divot in the ear, and, of course, the deadly-handsome dimple. But that was all. From a distance, which is all anyone not connected with the homestead really ever saw, they were identical.
That day, a tall, soldier had approached, wearing the teal and black of Rath's house on the tunic over his armor and in his horse's livery. He called Ellyot by Tal's name, and Torrant by Qir's, and the boys looked at each other, sideways, and lied easily. "Yes sir, no sir, our father is not at home sir. He paid his levies sir, he's loyal to the consort. The family is away sir." Then, when they were asked about worship services at the hold, Ellyot's eyes had narrowed, and his carefully politic answers melted like fog in spring.
"My father doesn't allow politics in his hold," he said evenly, and Torrant had to try very hard not to look sideways at the boy he loved like a brother. People listened when Ellyot spoke—there was an authority to his voice, there always had been. You didn't argue with someone who could kill you when you had that in your voice, not when you were unarmed and alone.
"I'm not talking about politics, boy!" The guard had protested, "I'm talking about religion!"
"When you're wearing a uniform of the crown and asking me about worship, sir, that's politics," Ellyot replied with the arrogance of a child who had been born and raised on the land and power he stood upon.
"All I want to know, boy, is if your father is loyal to the Consort or not!" The guard snapped then, out of patience and obviously frustrated that he was being out-conned by a youngster.
"We've been raised to love our country," Torrant said honestly, because Owen Moon was nothing if not a patriot. That didn't mean he liked what the Consort was doing to the Goddess' people, but Clough was horse country, and horses were in the Moon blood, and they all loved the open plains of the valley they lived in with something akin to fever.
"So this isn't an island of Triane's children, then, planning insurrection?" The man asked with narrowed eyes.
"You can be assured that no one here would know how to plan an insurrection," Torrant answered, and this, he knew, was the gods' honest truth.
But it was also the Goddess' truth, because while Moon's hold may not have been a hotbed of insurrection, it was a safe haven for those who didn't feel comfortable making a living in their own country anymore. Although everybody in the hold had a place in their hearts for Oueant and Dueant the twin gods, they also worshipped Triane, the Goddess, and that was what the Consort didn't like. Torrant, who was named for the Goddess and who had a wizard's gift to match, was most certainly a child of Triane, and so were Ginny and Arel, two women who lived together in one of the cottages Moon had built for the workers on his land, and so was Bren, who had conceived her son Orel during one of Triane's wildings. There were over thirty workers on the fertile Moon land, farmers, spinners, weavers, horse-breakers. Until he diced words with this man who spoke well, and stank so badly of death and lies even the non-gifted Ellyot had to suppress a retch, Torrant hadn't realized that the two things he had in common with the others on Moon lands were also the two things that put the Moons in danger. When he realized that, he had no trouble lying, none at all.
And it had gone well, right up until the man had turned away, rudely, as it seemed, and a rock had sailed out of nowhere and crashed down on his helm and he pitched out of his saddle. Torrant and Ellyot looked at each other, startled—it was not that they hadn't wanted to crack the man a good one across the skull, but that they hadn't had the opportunity. And they had known of their consequences if they had.
"Dammit!" Ellyot exploded as they ran to the still form on the ground, "Where is …" Torrant held his hand up, and shot a quick look at the fallen King's man. They had lied about the family being home, and given the strength that this man could bring to bear against them, it had been a good pretense to keep up. Ellyot caught himself. "Where did that come from?” he asked, gritting his teeth. He caught Torrant's eye, looked to the oaks that arched the road to the boundary of Moon lands where Torrant himself was looking, and scowled consequence at the unseen rock-launcher. They sat the man up, checked to see if he were sound, and put him dazedly back on his horse. Torrant closed his eyes hard, thought for a moment, and then staggered. A glazed, evil smile crept up the courtier's face, and his fine horse cantered off, bearing the man's wobbly weight with the grace of a nag with a sack of mud.
"What did you do?" Ellyot demanded, supporting his brother, frustrated and protective.
Torrant shook his head. "Made him happy he came here, that was all."
Ellyot's eyes met Torrant's, and they both shivered. "Then why," Ellyot murmured, "did that smile look so mean?" Without looking over their shoulders for the unrepentant Yarri, both boys took off running behind the homestead for the stables to tell Ellyot's father.
Moon was well and truly alarmed. Moon was a black-haired giant of a man, with a red beard and wide shoulders. His alarm was terrifying. "You told him we were gone?” he asked his son for the thousandth time. "And you made him happy he came?" He looked at Torrant, who was beginning to feel sick, and not just in the aftermath of using his gift.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, wobbling on his feet. "Triane's travels, Moon—I didn't mean to get us into trouble …" Moon gave him a grim smile, and a fortifying clasp of the shoulder.
"Go rest, boy," he said kindly. "You were trying to allay trouble, that was all, and it was a good aim. You didn't count on the evil in Consort Rath. The one thing that would make him happy in all the world is to find me guilty of treason, you understand?"
"But Dad, you're a Regent!" Ellyot was saying, just as Torrant's unusually pale face blanched green, and without ceremony he sank to his knees and vomited in the clean straw. Moon bent and held his head, then wiped his mouth with a cloth. Torrant was exceptionally gifted—as his name might imply—but gifts never came without cost. The Moon family understood that. With little protest, Torrant was ushered to a corner of the baled hay, covered with a horse blanket, and told to sleep.
"I should help," he murmured, as Ellyot tucked him in. Moon was already making plans to gather the whole family and the workers off the land by sundown—Torrant could tell by his booming orders and the hard edge of command in his voice.
Ellyot rolled his eyes. "You're no good to us now …" he grinned wickedly, his blue eyes twinkling. The dimple in his cheek deepened, and Torrant thought bemusedly that it was a good thing he'd known his brother all his life, or he might be made as foolish by that smile as girls were around Qir and boys around Tal. "Besides," Ellyot continued, "We might need to hunt, and you know that's not your thing."
"Piss off—my aim is better than yours and you know it!" Torrant yawned, and his shoulders hunched as his body prepared to protect itself in sleep.
"Yeah—it's hitting flesh and blood that balks you off, you poor sensitive thing," Ellyot teased without mercy. "It's a good thing you talk pretty, or we would have pasted the barn with you."
"Piss off…" Torrant mumbled again, and was rewarded by his brother's laughter as his dark curly head stalked off among the hay bales. He would think about that later, because they had been telling each other to 'piss off’ since they were old enough to say it without adults present. He would hope, later, that 'piss off’ had come to mean, in the language of the fourteen-year-old boy, the same thing that 'I love you' did to a full-grown man. As he drifted out he was dimly aware that the family made ready to take a hasty holiday with cousins in the north.
The sun had traveled a bit when Torrant opened his eyes, and late afternoon shadows dappled the barn. It was autumn, so the heat was not too intense, but Torrant still sweat a bit as he made to turn in his nest in the hay, and it was then that he met a somber pair of frightened brown eyes in a fair, piquant little face with a halo of gold hair, caught back in a very frazzled braid.
"'Ho, Yar …” he mumbled, fighting to keep his eyes open. Torrant's mother had been the midwife at Yarri's birth, and Torrant had helped her. His mother had placed that perfect, red, wriggling body in his arms and he had heard, far off and ringing in his heart, the sound of great bells that tolled from the soles of his feet to the soul in his chest. Every time Yarri smiled at him from that moment on, Torrant heard the far off sound of bells.
"Ellyot hollered at me," she told him now, unhappily. Yarri was six and she adored her older brothers—Torrant included—fiercely.
"You flew off the handle, Yar," Torrant told her gently. "It made things difficult."
She shook her head, brown eyes welling with tears. "I'm why we have to leave," she quavered, and he opened the horse blanket so she could come in and snuggle. Usually Yarri was petted beyond words, every tear caught and soothed before it could hit the ground. But the family was packing for a flight from a bitter enemy, and she had probably been overlooked in the chaos. Torrant felt stirrings of guilt—he should be helping, but his body, overexerted by his gift, was not going to cooperate with that imperative.
"Where are we going?” he asked.
"Father's brother, Moon in the next country," she said softly, and Torrant grimaced—that wasn't a help. Their little kingdom was an island surrounded by mountains—outside of the mountains were at least four kingdoms that could be termed "next country."
"We're going to the sea," Yarri said next. "Mama said I could see a whale." And Torrant had a better idea—they were headed northwest, to Eiran. Good, he thought, it should have been long before.
"It wasn't your fault," he told Yarri belatedly. "I'm the one who told the silly sot he was happy—your rock on the head wouldn't have done much harm if I hadn't butted my big head into it."
"Can you really do that?" Yarri sniffled. "Can you really tell someone that they're happy and they believe it?"
He knew what she was asking, but he'd known her since her first bath, and it wouldn't take his gift to help. "Yes, Littlest, I can. Would you like me to make you happy now?"
"Oh yes …" she sighed, wiggling down some more into in his big brother's embrace. "Make me happy."
Torrant began to sing of whales and travel, of autumn leaves and sweetness. Yarri's eyes closed, and happily, she fell asleep.
A few moments later, his mother came to check on him. She rolled her eyes when she saw Yarri's fair head peeping out of the blanket, and bent to kiss her son's own tousled brown hair.
"How're you feeling, sweetheart?” she asked gently. Myrla Shadow was always gentle, Torrant thought fondly. His mother was a still-pretty woman, even with the silver that shot her dark hair in other places than her temple, and the lines at her hazel eyes from her deep and quiet smile.
"I'm feeling stupid, mama," he confessed with a pained sigh, careful not to wake Yarri. "I can't think of what else I should have done though—I didn't want him to get mad at Yarri."
Myrla shook her head in mock exasperation. "The world is not all about Yarri you know."
"He would have hurt Ellyot too …"
"Or Ellyot!" she overrode, then sighed. "I can't blame you really, darling. They're your family—I'm proud of that. But someday you're going to need to see bigger than Yarri and Ellyot. We're going to Eiran, you know."
He nodded. "I heard—I'm sorry I can't help." Just raising his head made him dizzy and weak, and he was a little worried. "I've done … bigger things … with my gift—it's never made me feel like this." He had spun illusions for Yarri out of the air when he was singing, and engraved paper with those same images when he'd held the paper and sung.
"You forced your will on someone else, son. That's the biggest, hardest, most painful thing any human can do—it should have a bigger backlash, don't you think?" He nodded, and his mother went on. "Going to Eiran will be good for you—you'll see a bigger world than this hold."
Torrant, as weak as he was, was shocked. "I love my home!” he said, although he knew, he always knew, that his heartbeat had never thumped in time to the hoof beats of horses, in the way of Tal and Qir and Ellyot and their father. Clough was horse country, and Torrant loved it because his family loved it, but he'd never thought beyond that to the things that he loved himself.
"So do I, Torrant," Myrla laughed a little. "Of course we love our home. But it will be good for you to see the world beyond it, so you know what it is you love. Your father wanted the wide world for you—it will be good to see some of it." He was going to protest, but she forestalled him with a kiss on the forehead. "Now sleep, baby—you and Yarri just stay out of the way and rest. We're not leaving until dark of night, so you can get in plenty of rest in the meantime." She bent and kissed him again, and at first Torrant took the gesture for granted, as do all children who are loved, and then, feeling childish like Yarri but needing to say it just the same, he said, "I love you, mama."
"I love you too, sweetheart." She laughed then outright. "And I love you too, Yarri," she murmured, and Torrant realized that the sleeping child in his arms was giggling and not altogether asleep. Myrla gave Yarri a hug, and smoothed back the hair from her small face, then she turned and left. Yarri settled down and napped again not much after, and Torrant found it easy to fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.
When they awoke hours later, it was to the smell of smoke and the sound of screams.
Torrant knew instantly that something was wrong, and, well rested, without the muzz in his head from exhaustion, he knew enough to be still. He clapped his hand over Yarri's mouth, and peered out from the blanket that hid them both from view. Soldiers had herded the family into the barn, and they were fighting bitterly. Ellyot had an arm twisted behind his back and a knee wedged against his own knee, and Moon was on the ground with a boot on his head. Torrant's mother had a gauntleted arm around her waist, and cruel fingers gripping her breast. That alone would have made Torrant bound out of the haystack, death to the wind, but against him he could feel Yarri, small and trembling, eyes wild under the blanket. The King's guardsman was saying something to Moon, so all eyes were on the helpless, proud landowner, when Ellyot's blue eyes caught Torrant's attention. He knew what to look for, and imperceptibly nodded at the hidden Yarri. Torrant felt his heart thud in his stomach and fought the urge to weep.
Under the haystack, in the back corner of the barn, was a trap door. It was used at night, so the barn cats could come and go, and in the summer, so they could move the haystack and flush out the barn. It swung on hinges, both in and out, and was the size of a smallish man. Or a fourteen-year old boy. Yarri, the family's pride and joy, would slide out easily. Torrant, her adopted older brother, was the only one left to lead her to safety. Torrant gave Ellyot an anguished look. This was his family, in word and in deed … leave them? But he felt Yarri, trembling beneath his hand, and knew more importantly what his priority would be. But it wouldn't be easy.
Ellyot was growing tense for them. He glowered at Torrant and Torrant shot him an annoyed look—yes, every one was looking at Moon, but … he shifted, just a little, and dug the two of them deeper into the straw. Damn! A guard saw the movement, and began to wander in their direction. Ellyot shifted his stance, as though to create a diversion, but Myrla Shadow beat him to it. In the center of their frightened tableaux, of Tal and Qir straining against their own captors, of Myrla and Kles, fighting an obscene embrace of evil men, and of the King's captain, with his foot perilously near Moon's neck, a phantasm appeared.
It was ferocious and female, a wolf the size of a horse, standing upright and snarling, reaching out with a phantom paw and razored claws to rip the heart out, through metal and all, of the knight who had moved towards the corner. Blood flew everywhere, and the soldiers, dragging their victims, bolted about in confusion. Torrant saw his mother slump to the ground unconscious and took his chance to wriggle down into the straw, with the wall at his back. When he felt the latch he reached around and pushed, sliding backwards as the straw slithered with him and pulling Yarri out at the same time.
They slid out into the rear of the courtyard, and Torrant tumbled wildly for a moment to get his bearings. When he came to his feet, his head swiveled towards the source of the smoke and he felt his throat constrict with grief. His home. Their home. The Moon house, gracious, white boarded, with its two stories and graceful willow trees flanking the wings … was ablaze, and the trees were catching. He heard Yarri's outraged screech, and barely caught her before she went running across the yard to the inferno.
"Yarri, No!” he thundered in her ear, and caught the squirming body in a hard grip. She was surprisingly strong.
"But Anye …" she wailed, and he realized she was talking about the skittish calico fluff ball that sat on her bed.
"Anye's a smart cat," he told her, and to his relief she relaxed just a bit. "She'll get out … and we need to as well."
And Yarri came to her senses. "But mama … daddy …" she realized, and looked back to the barn from where they had come, then looked into his eyes, and a totally adult look of understanding passed her pointed features. "You need to save them, don't you?" And his throat caught at her faith. He was fourteen, more child than man, and she had no doubts.
"I'll try, pigeon," he told her seriously. "But you need to be safe, or they'll never forgive me for leaving you." And with that he swept her up, and, hiding in the shadows of night ventured to the west of the house, to where the road curved around. Across the road were the worker's quarters, set on public lands, where, Moon said, his people could know they were free men. He and Myrla had been the exceptions, because for the last ten years they had been family. He could see soldiers, most of them in ranks, a few sent to fire the house, and only a few others, he was sure, in the barn itself. With desperate haste, and a tensely still Yarri in his arms he ran through the orchard and across the road to the worker's quarters, sneaking in through the back where he and his mother often came with meals. As the door closed and he accustomed himself to the darkness, his knees almost buckled into the blood coating the floor.
"Oh Goddess and moons," he gasped, and pushed Yarri's head against his shoulder before using the same hand to open the door and let himself back out.
"Torrant …" Yarri mewed, aware of the shaking of his usually sturdy body.
"No one's there," he lied.
"But Ginny and Arel—they could keep me safe."
"No one's there," he lied again, keeping his face from crumpling. Oh merciful Dueant, please, let that be the truth. Let their souls be with you, if their bodies are that wreckage in the room. "We've got to find somewhere else."
"But …" And he clapped his hand over her mouth, listening. The soldiers were coming back. The center of the Moon property was near the river and thick with trees, and the servant's homes were no exception. He looked at the frightened child in his arms, and then up to the fierce tangle of oak and birch trees above him. Yam's eyes met his and she nodded. In a fluid movement he threw her in the air, catching her feet in his hands and catapulting her to the branches above. He didn't wait to see her scramble aside—they had been playing together since her birth, and they had practiced this maneuver often in the sibling skirmishes they delighted in. In a mighty leap he caught the branch Yarri had just alighted on, and swung perpendicular to it, catching the next branch up with his knees as he released from the swing. Yarri watched his swing, then scrambled into position below him, throwing her hands up, and letting him loft her to the branch above him. Her hands nearly slipped from his before she landed, and as they stilled and allowed the tree to stop shaking with the force of their acrobatics she looked unhappily at the blood that had shredded on the branches with his skin.
"Oh, Torrant, ouchie," she quavered, her lip trembling as their eyes met.
"No gloves," he shrugged silently. He didn't need to add that the backs of his knees were shredded as well. They usually practiced acrobatics in the barn, with the hay below them and the smooth metal fixtures above their heads. Suddenly the guards had moved up the hill and were under their tree.
"Torch the place?"
"Aye—but be careful of the trees and the grounds. Rath wants these grounds perfect—the better to show off the blood on the barn."
"Wonderful. Artwork!" The guard shrugged ironically. Torrant could hear the tone of his voice, and knew that this was distasteful work. He didn't like the slaughtering of innocents. In that moment, hearing the disgust in the man's voice and living with the memory of the carnage in the workers' quarters, Torrant learned to hate that most of all. There was nothing, he raged, worse than a good man who could do nothing.
And then he caught Yarri's anxious look and the full import of the man's words hit him. Whether the guards stopped the blaze before it hit the trees or sacrificed a few trees for safety, the two of them were in the line of fire.
Anxiously, Torrant looked around, but there were only the two guards. He could probably knock them out, he surmised, because he was stronger and had surprise on his side, but he couldn't risk leaving Yarri so vulnerable. With a quiet finger to his lips, he lay across the tree and began to inch his way to within hand distance of the next branch. Yarri, seeing his intent, moved into position behind him. After waiting until the armor coated guards had moved on, checking for survivors, he let his bottom fall into the darkness, holding his body on the limb with the bloody backs of his knees, and waited for Yarri's practiced jump into his hands. This time he compensated for the blood, and released her in perfect time to land in the next tree, and then after a painful backward swing, he caught the next branch of the tree and they scuttled to its heart. In this way, scrambling, tumbling, and swinging, they moved from tree to tree along to the outside of the orchard, to the borders of the Moon lands. They had seen soldiers, periodically, riding back and forth across the way that ran parallel to their own course, and finally, they saw them riding only one way—away from the homestead itself. They stopped to rest, every so often, not speaking, but nursing trembling, scratched limbs and pressing anguished faces together in comfort. As they neared their destination they saw the lightening of the sky that indicated dawn.
In the last tree they crouched, their hearts beating, and listened for soldiers, knowing that they were too exhausted to run if they saw any.
"We're safe," Torrant breathed at last, and swung Yarri down to crouch near the bole of the tree. As he stumbled to a rest beside her he caught her in a fall, and settled her down. It was an old tree, and the season was early autumn. There were enough leaves piled near the cleft in the roots to cover her trembling body and assure she would be hidden.
"Tor … where?"
"I've got to go back, Yar … I've got to see …" And he stopped at the stricken look on her face. Her next words would echo in his head until his own death and beyond, because they were spoken by a six-year old, and they were so very, very certain, and so very, very calm.
"Torrant, they're dead now—I know that. It's just you and me. Don't leave me.
He breathed in and out, concentrating, because he was afraid he would forget how in that moment. His family. Her family. But he couldn't believe it in the words of an exhausted child. He had to go see for himself.
"I need to go see, Yarri—for both of us … what if we're wrong?"
She nodded, her eyes fluttering closed with exhaustion, and fell into a shivering, miserable sleep. He looked helplessly around for something to cover her with besides leaves, and could only find his own over tunic. He used it without regret, and, dressed in an undershirt and breeches, forced his scraped, bruised limbs across the familiar, alien territory of his childhood home.

The Death of the Childhood Moon

The desolation of his homestead was worse than he had anticipated. The house had burned down—not to ground, but in a patchy, uncertain way, that left skeletons of familiar things thrusting up from the ashes and cinders. He saw the coat-rack that Moon had whittled two winters ago, untouched. He saw Kles's looking glass that Yarri had stared into for hours with a child's vanity. He saw the charred boxes of winter clothes that had been hastily packed, and, from the half-burned pantry, he smelled the oddly comforting smells of burnt wheat and cooked-ham. That last alone was enough to make him want to vomit.
The barn was worse. The family had been killed—probably immediately after Torrant and Yarri had escaped, he surmised sickly. Their bodies lay in sticky red puddles, next to the bloodless bodies of the guards killed by the illusion, their eyes open in a horrible parody of life. Torrant had no words.
He ran to his mother first, and after yanking her skirts down and fixing her shirt, he finally had the presence of mind to close her eyes gently and kiss her brow. Brave Myrla—she had worked so hard, been so content in the Moon household, so proud that her son had a good life. That final illusion had surprised him—he'd known she was gifted, but to produce an illusion that could kill was so far beyond what anyone had anticipated. The implications of his own gift would stagger him in the months to come, but for now, all he could think of was her sacrifice, and how not to make it hollow.
Moon was completely headless. Torrant steeled himself, and brought the misshapen head back to the corpse, arranging them as close as possible, and covering the body up to the chin with a horse blanket. Kles had not died soon enough, and with sorrow he pulled skirts down chastely to the feet of a woman who never said a coarse word in her life, and, although she had been truly and lustily in love with her husband, had rarely even kissed his cheek in public. Tal and Qir had died quickly, with swords in their bellies, fighting in the face of hopelessness, falling within inches of each other, who had never been parted more than a few hours in life. And for all of this, it was Ellyot who well and truly broke his heart.
Ellyot was a fierce fighter, and he had wounds on his face and on his hands, but his mortal wound was on his back. He'd been killed fighting his way to the door. Torrant had to look away. The only reason Ellyot would run from battle was to distract the guards. To save Yarri. To save him. He knelt for a moment, placing his hand on Ellyot's back. The flesh was still warm, but cooling rapidly in the dawn.
And it was too much. His mother, Moon, and Kles and Tal and Qir—all his family. And Ellyot. His friend, confidante. His brother. He loved them all, but Ellyot was his mirror, the man he would have yearned to be. Reluctantly, he felt tears prickle at his eyes. He couldn't do this, he thought. Yarri was waiting for him. He had plans to carry out, responsibilities. This entire family had sacrificed their lives so that he could save their youngest child, and by all the gods, he would not fail them. Abruptly he straightened, and that sudden movement saved his life.
The soldier had appeared dead, killed by Myrla's last, desperate illusion, but death is a tricky thing. If he had been left for long, he would have died, and never known he'd had a choice—his fellows were dead because of their own belief. But he'd heard a gasp, a sob, a rustle, and had known his heart had not been torn out, and in that knowledge, had made it pump again. And awoke, seized with zeal, to kill the enemy, crouching among his family on the bloodstained stone floor.
Torrant didn't feel the sword tip as it nicked his ear, but his adrenaline, high from his despair, kicked in, and he felt himself tumbling into the same roll he'd executed on his brother, less than 12 hours before. Instinctively his foot kicked out, felling the stunned guard, and the man's sword went clattering across the ground, bouncing among the carnage like a child's toy. Torrant seized it without a thought, his tumbler's grace made jerky by his anger and his pain, and without mercy plunged it into the back of the guard who was stumbling to his feet. The man quivered and jerked as his blood spattered warmly on the floor, and Torrant only stared at him, dazed, wiping futilely at his own blood that drizzled down his face from the divot in his ear. The same place that Ellyot had his by birth. He didn't think of that then. He didn't think of anything as he stared at the corpse of the man he had killed.
Torrant moved then—not quickly but purposefully. He posed the rest of his family in peace, and grabbing the tinder that was stashed in a back cupboard, he set fire to the hay in the barn. The soldiers hadn't burned the barn the night before—he assumed it was the better to show off the 'artwork' the guard of the previous night had spoken about. Well let them wonder, he thought dully as he watched the wood catch fire from outside. This was his family, and he would not leave them there to be food for carrion. If he had not the strength nor the time for a burial, he could at least honor their passing.
At last, when he could linger no longer, he moved to the house. The Moon family had been packing, and it was no trouble to find Ellyot's and Yarri's packs among the luggage at the back of the house, relatively untouched by fire and pillage. He and Ellyot were of a size, and Ellyot's luggage bore his initials and the family crest. That would be needed for identification. When he had pulled Ellyot's and Yarri's winter cloaks from the two trunks and shoved them into the packs with some rolled up bedding, he pulled a spare scrip from the rubble and ran gingerly into the bones of the house to the pantry. He found relatively unscathed meat and bread, and knew that, for at least the next forty miles, there would be a windfall of apples to spare. When the food was stashed, he reluctantly and systematically began to search through Kles and Moon's packs.
It felt profane, in a way. His mother's possessions he was free with. She had given him the only thing they owned of value—a small silver locket with a miniature of her and his father, painted with her trousseau when they were married, and that he carried with him. The Moon's, though—for all their generosity, and their warmth, still, it felt awkward to be pawing their possessions. But he had to, for Yarri's sake, if not for his own. Moon himself had ample coinage, both great and small in his pack, and of this Torrant took freely, secreting the coins individually in parts of his pack and in his and Yarri's clothing as quickly as he could. From Kles's pack he pulled her wedding necklace. She had worn it on special occasions, like Solstice and Beltane and Midsummer's Night … and when Yarri begged her, because she had been so very good all day long. He joined that to Moon's necklace that he had pulled from the bloody floor, the thick links of silver no safety against a sword blade, and put it all in his pocket to be sorted out later. Then, with a hint of exhaustion, he hefted the food and the two packs over his shoulders, and set out.
He had only gone a little way when he realized that he was not entirely alone. Whispering alongside him, making plaintive little sounds in the back of her throat, was Yarri's skittish calico cat. He thought about leaving her, anticipating the joys of traveling with a cat, and Yarri's heartbreak should they be separated again. But with his next step he heard the jingling in his pocket of those necklaces. His and Moon's and Kles's. Himself and that calico cat, he realized. They were all that Yarri had left of a family that had been splitting at the seams just the day before.
With a sigh, he stopped, pulled a bit of meat from his scrip and held it out to Anye. She liked Torrant, and with a dainty movement pulled it from his hand and allowed him to scoop her up. Her purring in his arms, he realized years later, was all that kept him going as he stumbled across the Moon grounds to find Yarri, still sleeping in the bole of the tree. Exhausted he stumbled next to her, and covered them both with his cloak in the chill of the dawn. The tree was turned away from the road, and a little ways back. That would have to be enough, he thought, as he pulled leaves on top of himself. Next to him, in the crook of his shoulder, he felt something small and furry. That—and the child in his arms— gave him enough warmth and comfort to sleep.

Wizard's Gifts and Goddess' Get

When he awoke, he was conscious of two things. The first was the throbbing of his injuries—his hands, the back of his knees, and his ear all pulsed with ache and ague. The second was that Yarri, with help from Anye the cat, was busy ferreting into his wallet, where they smelled food.
"Not too much, Yar," he mumbled, trying hard for consciousness, "It's got to last us until we hit the mountain village. That won't be for a week."
Yarri paused in the act of stuffing a hunk of ham into her mouth, and snatched her fingers back from the cat, who was beginning to lick them a little too aggressively in search of another morsel. "Whe’we'oin'?” she asked, chewing.
"To the Moons in Eiran," he told her, sitting up painfully, "The same place we were going yesterday, only …" He stopped, starkly, and met her gaze head on. She swallowed, hard. And swallowed again. Carefully, she brushed the crumbs off her hands, and gave Anye one last piece of meat. Then she met his gaze.
"Only," he continued, "we're going alone." She nodded, and then took his outstretched hand, heedless of the terrible scrapes and the dried blood. As soon as she had ensconced herself on his lap, and not a moment before, she dissolved into sobs in his arms. He cried with her. The grief he had clamped down so painfully as he knelt over Ellyot's corpse welled up, and he wept for all of them, for his mother, for his adopted family, and most painfully, for the sobbing child next to his heart.
Neither of them had any recollection of when the tears stopped. All they knew was that suddenly, it was very quiet, and it was no longer morning. With that realization it dawned that the terrible quiet was disturbed by the distant clatter of horses. Without thought, Torrant hauled Yarri back into the leaves and against the deep cleft of the tree. Anye didn't need warning or coercion—she huddled by Yarri, shivering, as the two humans listened carefully. Hardly daring to move, hardly daring to breathe, Torrant snuck his head around the tree and glimpsed flashes of Rath's black and teal livery flashing through the trees, heading North, towards what had only the night before been their home. Closing his eyes, breathing deeply, he thought of those colors, and opened his gift. And gasped, his eyes snapping open, his breath coming in pants. "It's Rath!” he gasped, as soon as the last horse had passed and its dust had faded into the road. "Oh, Triane, merciful goddess of gifts—it's Rath—and he saw the smoke, and is wondering who is left … and he's angry … Goddess and kin, he's black with anger … Yarri … we've got to go—wait." He grabbed her arm. "Wait … there's a follow up guard." And something else. Another gifted presence … oh Goddess … "Yarri—do me a favor, precious. Think like a tree."
"Tor…"
"Brown wood, green leaves, sap, earth… But not in words, Yar, pictures. Think like a tree. Or a root. Or a cat … hot mice, twitching tail … there's a wizard … Yar … just do it …" The pile of leaves in his lap shook its head, and he tried to resume his breathing and follow his own advice. They sat in silence for a moment, trying hard to breathe through the mouthfuls of leaves covering them, and sweating for all of the warmth of the afternoon, thinking like a tree and a cat, respectively.
The next clatter of horses coming up the drive was not nearly so loud, but the quiet was almost part of the awfulness that kept trying to push its way into Torrant's chest. Tree. Tree. Toes in earth. Slow sap, yellow leaves, green leaves, brown leaves. Slow breaths through thick, hard skin. Many, many arms, one firm leg … tree. Brown. No words. Brown. Sky. He thought it, felt it, lived it for a heartbeat, and then another, and then a third. The horses got closer; he felt them through his toes, rooted in the earth, tickled with root hairs, visited by wriggling, happy worms. Tree. The horses galloped past. Reined to a stop … holy Goddess, TREE.
With a yowl, Anye hopped from Yarri's hands and climbed up his side, then jumped to the trunk of the great oak they were sheltered by. From just up the road, Torrant could hear voices.
"See there, wizard—there's your cat and your trees …"
"I said tree, moron, not trees. And I see them—I'm telling you, I heard them thinking. One was thinking cat, and the other tree."
"Well maybe, wizard," the first voice was sounding a bit affronted, "You heard them think cat and tree because they are a cat and a tree. There's enough magic in Moon lands for that not to be an impossibility. And even if the cat was thinking cat and the tree was thinking tree, neither of them, apparently were thinking Moon, or enemy of the state, and so I suggest we go on. Rath doesn't like to be kept waiting."
"Fine …" The wizard's voice was a hiss of impatience, but still, Tree heard the creak of leather, the jangle of harness, and the clatter of hooves. When even that had died away, Tree became aware of the child sitting at his trunk, and that it was saying something.
"Torrant … Torrant … stop!!!” she said, and she sounded panicked. "Torrant, come back …"
Shaking his head at a final image of birds dropping shite in his hair, Torrant looked at her oddly.
"Yarri, I'm still here …" At the sound of her name, Yarri stifled a yelp and collapsed against him.
"Torrant, you were a tree. He was looking for us, and I thought we were dead, and I felt for your hand, and you were a tree, and I was inside you … Torrant, how did you do that …"
Sap, wood, earth, sky, leaves … Torrant shook off the feeling of his flesh congealing into tree, and looked at Yarri, puzzled, exhausted as only the gift could make him, and stood hurriedly. "I don't know, Yarri—but we've got to go now…. If we left, do you think Anye would catch up?" And at that moment Anye leapt onto his back, clawing for purchase, and they scrambled for packs and hurried away.
For the next couple of days they stuck to the orchards, eating windfall apples and raiding the occasional gardens for the last of the summer squash. When their tummies grumbled enough Torrant consented to chewing on the hardened bread in their scrip, but only enough to keep them from crouching behind a tree for most of their hurried, running days. They stopped and bathed on the first night, and not even trying to be strong for Yarri could have kept Torrant from howling at the first touch of cold water on his wounds. He had secreted some soap in their packs, and had to submit to Yarri's ministrations as she rubbed it into the backs of his knees and the soft, traumatized skin of his thighs and gams. His hands hurt so badly he had to wrap them in his shredded undershirt, and still, every night as he looked for freshwater and a place to camp, he dreaded the process of ripping the bandages off of the seeping wound. By the third day he had a fever.
And still they moved north and west—towards the tallest of the mountains, the one with the flattened top, and the jagged mountain sticking out from its side like an axe in a tree. Towards Hammer Pass.
Torrant was an educated young man, for a nameless, gifted peasant. He knew that to the east were the Old Man Hills—gentle mountains with a series of lakes between them, where peasants raised sheep and spun fine cloth. It was possible to get to Otham, Eiran's neighbor, separated by a deep channel of sea, by going across the Old Man Hills, but in order to get there, they would have to go near or through Dueance—Clough's main city. Since Rath lived in Dueance, Torrant was rightfully more afraid of the city and who might be looking for them there than he was of the elements, but that didn't mean it was an easy choice.
To the south were the Kitten Mountains—fir trees and sharp, granite claws. To the northwest was the Anvil, sheer cliffs rising to a plateau pitted with sink holes and vast glacial surfaces that had swallowed parties of travelers whole. It was the only one of the two with a road, a narrow, winding one that came halfway up the mountain and then clung to the side like skin to your hand. Between the Anvil and the Hammer—the mountain that had risen from inside the Anvil in some seismic upheaval of long ago, only sometimes accessible, when the ice didn't form an impenetrable wall, a oneness of iron and copper ore, was Hammer Pass.
If they were going to Eiran, they had to go through Hammer Pass, and they had to hurry. Winter wasn't here yet, but every morning the chill was sharper, and the stream they followed up through the orchards seemed to tingle more when they splashed it on their faces. Winter wasn't here yet, but it was rushing down through the mountains, thinking hard about snow, and blasting at them with every playful autumn breeze. Winter was coming.
He played, jollied, begged, cajoled, threatened and carried Yarri, all but running in the evenings, when his strength was lowest and his sense of urgency was at its peak. Winter was coming, and they were moving too slowly. Winter was coming, and they were unprepared.
The urgency, itself, was a blessing. They seldom spoke on the road of their family, and of all that they would miss. But Yarri wept, often without knowing it, every night as they made a nest of bedrolls and cloaks and camped, and often as not, Torrant wept with her. They would curl up together, Anye nesting between them, and Yarri would start off saying "I miss …" and it was Moon, or Kles, or Qir or Tal or Ellyot or Myrla. Torrant would respond with "I miss the way he …" or, "Remember how she …" It became a ritual—their bedtime indulgence in grief. But only at night, when the sky was bigger and the unknown deeper, when Torrant didn't have to look at Yarri's face, and plumb the gouge in her soul that measured what they'd lost. Only at night, when they were so exhausted they could weep only for moments before sleep claimed them.
Torrant had Yarri to care for—he could not afford to be crippled by grief. It wasn't until after the third day of traveling, when he realized that Yarri was chattering on about nothing for most of their walk, that he knew she felt the same about him. He didn't disabuse her of that notion—it was comforting, to have someone care for his welfare, even if she was only six. He hid his oozing wounds from her, the chills, the hot skin, the dizziness. They were so weary in the evenings that she could only be grateful for his warmth, and he told himself that it would pass … if he could make it one more step, it would pass … just one more step … just one more step … and soon he felt as though he could run forever, a brittle shell of his body like a paper wrapper, padding through their tormented journey on crinkling hope.
When seven days had passed since the morning their lives had disappeared into smoke and butchery, and all the familiar landmarks of their world had faded, Torrant at last decided to deviate from the road a bit and look for a place to stay. They made a game of it then, saying what they would buy from the inn.
"When we get to the inn, I will buy," said Yarri, "a soft pillow, soap that doesn't smell like girls, and a pretty dress."
Torrant looked at her, surprised. Yarri usually hated dresses; her mother had to practically sit on her to make her wear one. But her mother wasn't here to do that anymore, he realized, stricken for the thousandth time that hour. He looked, but said nothing.
"When we get to the in, I will buy,” he said instead, "A soft pillow, soap that doesn't smell like girls, a pretty dress and a sword."
Yarri looked at him sideways now. In spite of his many hours of sword play and practice, Torrant didn't like weapons. He preferred hand to hand wrestling, riding of horses, a peasant's staff. But she said nothing as well.
"When we get to the inn, I will buy a soft pillow, soap that doesn't smell like girls, a pretty dress, a sword, and … and a new pair of boots!" She said that last in exasperation. She was wearing what she had been that fatal afternoon—purloined hand-me-downs from one of the servant's boys, and they did not fit well. Her blisters had burst days ago, and Torrant had bathed and dressed her feet in the remains of the same tattered shirt that was wrapped around his hands, but although she did not complain after that one tearful day, he knew her feet still ached.
Torrant smiled at her—Goddess, she was tough. She was tough and wise and everything he did not expect from a six-year-old girl, but had come to expect from Yarri just the same. He decided to give her a gift, even if it was only in play.
"When we get to the inn, we will buy a soft pillow, soap that doesn't smell like girls, a pretty dress, a sword, a new pair of boots, and a horse for Yarri to ride on."
"A horse …" Yarri looked at him. "Torrant—what happened to all of our horses?"
Torrant blinked. It was a good question. The stables adjoined the barn—but there had been no horses there when he'd set fire to it. Had they been taken by the Consort's men? The homestead had claimed a good five and twenty horses— a riding horse for each member of the family, including a fat pony named Kiss, for Yarri, and Torrant's feisty, sturdy mare.
"I don't know, Yar … they weren't in the stables when I went back—I assume they were rounded up and sold …" He watched as Yarri bit her lip, unhappy. It was a small loss, he knew, among their great one, but it stung nevertheless. "It could be worse … they're valuable, and trained—we know they're still alive. Maybe Kiss will end up with another little girl who will feed him watermelon rind all summer, right?"
Yarri brightened a little at that, but then fell glumly silent. They trudged along for a bit, in silence, and Torrant felt oddly hurt, as though his gift had been thrown back in his face.
Then Yarri said, "Torrant, when we grow up, we'll make them pay, won't we? Daddy said you can't be bad, because then you get smacked. We need to smack the people who did this. And smack them. And smack them. And smack them until their hearts hurt like ours. Right Torrant? Can we do that?"
Torrant breathed deeply, looked at her. Felt the purpose that had been driving him forward with such urgency take a new shape. It had at first just been for Yarri—if he could keep Yarri safe, he would have a reason to keep going. But now Yarri wanted revenge, and if he could wreak vengeance for Yarri, he would be able to rejoice.
"All right, Yar," he said, unhurriedly. "We'll do that."
As the sun was lowering, they found themselves near the road, and after Torrant listened' for a moment, he determined all was well and they continued walking. After an hours worth of hurried darkness, with only Oueant, of the three moons, to guide them, they saw lights ahead and hurried to greet them. Moon had taken Torrant and Ellyot to this place once, two or three summers before, but it was the only foothill inn on the way towards the mountains, and he remembered that it had been busy enough then. With a little luck, he could sneak Yarri into a room with a hot bath, and bluff his way through the night.
It was an unprepossessing, low wooden structure that rambled and turned as it branched into hallways and then into rooms. There was an upstairs, and every so often could be seen a chimney and a pipe leading from a well. There could be warm baths, Torrant thought, and he told Yarri as much, gently amused by how happy this made her. There would be food as well—they had eaten the last of the meat and bread two nights before, and the last of the windfall apples that morning. The only one who was not suffering from a chronically growling tummy was Anye, although she had brought them winter-fat mice faithfully in an attempt to share a barn cat's autumn harvest. As they neared the welcoming, warm structure ahead of them, Torrant shuddered to think of how tempting those offerings might have been after a couple of more days on the road, and then kept shivering. He had grown so used to the pain from his infected hands and the backs of his knees that he had almost forgotten he was sick. Now that he was so close to shelter for the both of them, his body was washed with a weakness he had forgotten he had.
They paused in a curve in the road for a moment while he took stock of their situation. He wasn't stupid. A young boy and a little girl could be easy prey on the road—inn or no. Actually, he thought uncomfortably, especially at an inn. He looked at Yarri, at the careful braid he had maintained, every night as regular as clockwork, a soothing repetition from their previous life. And he thought of how vulnerable a young girl was on the road. He hesitated for a moment. Girls were easy prey, but then, so were boys, right? But girls more often, the voice niggled in his head. But a hair cut wouldn't disguise the piquant, elfin features of her little face, the other part almost wailed. But, if it did, if it kept one predator from looking her way, wouldn't that be worth it? Torrant swallowed, reached out his hands to touch her hair. It was the color of the season, red, brown and gold, straight like satin, but with a promise of curl as she grew older. It bleached almost yellow in the summer, and turned the color of flame in the winter, and though Yarri was only six, and deplored dresses and baths and sewing, she was and always had been inordinately vain about her hair.
"Torrant?” she asked, "What …"
He couldn't say it. He felt the strands between his dry fingers, thought of the entire family celebrating her first hair cut, lamenting the loss of her curls, rejoicing in her braid. Tal had hair the color of hers when it was yellow in the sun, and Qir had hair that was red like the flame. Both twins had gifted her with combs and ties of satin and wood—he had not a few in his pack that the twins had carved for their darling little sister. Hair grows back, he thought, almost angry. Hair grows back. Innocence doesn't. And for a moment still, he couldn't say it.
Yarri said it for him. "It's not safe, for a girl, in there, is it?"
"It's not safe for a little boy either," he replied, his voice thick with unhappiness.
"But it's safer, isn't it?"
“Yar …”
Her braid was down to her waist. Without warning, she pulled the belt knife from the sheathe at his waist and hauled it through the lower half of the braid. The hair fell to the ground unevenly, in clumps, and Torrant almost wept at it.
"There," she said, her voice low and hoarse. "Now you have to trim it."
He nodded, not trusting his own gravelly voice, and pulled out the dagger he'd been sharpening as they traveled, the one with the keen edge. Quietly and ably, he cut her hair around her face, until she looked like any other boy on the road. He couldn't look at her as he put the blade back in its hidden sheath in his boot. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed, and without warning she threw herself into his arms. She didn't cry, he thought, she didn't cry, but Lord, how she hurt.
When they had sat long enough, he scooped an unusually sedate Anye into his pack and they ventured to the inn.

A Sliver of Safety

It was loud, dark and smoky, with plain wood tables and a brick fireplace. But the food was good and hearty, and there were enough travelers of good families that two boys on the road were merely included in the lot. Torrant had put the last of the clean bandages on his hand, and washed himself and Yarri as clean as he could after Yarri's impromptu hair-cut. They received no strange looks as they sat, eating, but Torrant knew that he, at least, felt out of place. They ate their stew and brown bread as slowly as they could for being as hungry as they'd ever been in their lives, but their voracity didn't escape the notice of the matronly woman serving them.
"There ye go, lads," she said, serving them up some extra stew and bread with a wink. Yarri took the new piece of bread and dipped it in stew and offered it to Anye, who was hiding in the satchel at her waist that held her clothes. The serving woman simply raised her eyebrows and put one last piece of bread on Yarri's plate. She was a little older than Torrant's mother, with a round, plump face and lines at the corners of her eyes from smiling. Torrant remembered his only visit to the inn, the summer before, and mentally added another two coppers to what he was planning to leave on the table for the bread—and the kindness. "So—traveling this time of year—where ye headed?"
"To where I can see whales," Yarri said imprudently, and Torrant shot her a quelling glance, and then almost groaned. Rolling his eyes like that made his head pound to an entirely new and painful beat.
The serving woman was appalled. "Eiran—this time of the year!" She looked at Torrant imploringly. "Tell me the young one's daft, eh boy?"
Torrant looked away, not knowing what to say. It was not in his nature to lie, and not to someone who had been kind.
"Hammer Pass will be a nightmare in less than a month—you two came in with the packs on your backs … what …" A shout of coarse laughter interrupted the woman, and Torrant had a moment to wonder if his hands always sweat as badly as they did now, before thoughts of his pounding head and fiery throat vanished.
"Was she as sweet on 'er back as she looked, hey?" A broad shouldered, flat nosed man was asking. His face was flushed and red, as though he spent a lot of time drinking, and his body was relaxed, his face to the fire, with the other four or five men in the corner turned towards him. He was a petty peasant king, holding court in his favorite inn.
"Now, I wouldna know that, now would I?" came the annoyed reply. "The guards did that. All I did was round up the horses before the place went up in smoke."
"It seems a damned shame to burn the barn," said another voice. "The barn was nigh as sweet as the house—and damn, but no one could breed horses like Moon of Clough."
Torrant had known, from the first coarse words about Yarri's mother, who the men had been talking about. He watched Yarri carefully, as they spoke, noticed her stillness, caught her eyes and held them, until he knew her face wouldn't crumple, and that she would keep her peace.
The serving woman didn't miss a thing. Stopped in mid-tirade about the dangers of two youngsters traveling in winter, she stepped into their desperate silence. "So, you two will need a horse then, eh?"
Torrant looked at her gratefully, and raised a shaking spoonful of stew to his mouth before he spoke. "Yes, ma'am. We'll be needing a horse, and some food … and a sword."
The sword and the food were no problem. The big coarse man holding court was the black-smith; the serving woman conducted the transaction, and he never even saw their faces. More difficult was the sale of the horses.
The horse trader had seen them talking—and he'd seen Torrant's disgust and his anger, glaring out from behind the over-long brown hair. When the woman had gone up to him, after the dealing with the blacksmith to ask for a gelding, the man had looked darkly at Torrant and named a price that made everybody in the room look twice.
Torrant had shook his head at the woman and swallowed the last of his stew nervelessly. They could never afford that. Yarri looked at him then with tears in her eyes—he could almost hear her thoughts. Couldn't we at least save one of the horses? Can't we at least have the comfort of a friend on this journey?
Torrant nodded, mouthing the word ‘later' at her. She had been so tough, had asked so little. He would make this right—he swore it on his next breath.
The horse trader would be leaving in two night's time—that much they knew, so Torrant gave himself at least a night of rest while he silently weighed the loss of their money versus the time they would make up with a horse. They needed the rest—Torrant's fever from his infected wounds would not go away. Some solid food had gone a long way to fix the shaky hands and the dizziness, but Torrant knew he needed a night's sleep—a good one, in a warm place without fearing for night animals or soldiers or bandits coming upon them, might be the only way he could survive the rest of the journey. Yarri depended on him, and that meant he had to stay healthy, and the little black spots that kept coming between him and the world had to go.
Torrant had been conserving their money—they bathed last in the public tub, and the water was tepid and soapy, but after a week on the road it had felt like heaven. Yarri had gone first, and Torrant had carefully soaped her shorn hair, rinsing it in cold water and combing it softly around her small face until it dried.
"I'll look like a girl," she said tentatively.
"You'll wear your hood," he returned shortly. She didn't complain. He had debated, shortly but fiercely with himself, over where she should go while he bathed. He finally sent her behind a screen in the room, and thanked the twin gods that she was still young enough not to give a copper for his nakedness. The bath felt good—but he could have lived without the shivering that plagued him as he got out and dressed.
After they had bathed and sorted through their packs, he paid the kind serving-woman to wash their soiled clothes. He had been surprised, then, as he pulled coppers and silvers and gold pieces from hems of clothing and corners of each pack, at how much money they had been carrying across country as though it were so much cotton wool, and disheartened, as he counted it again, at how much would be devoured by the purchase of one overpriced horse.
Yarri came to stand by to stand at his elbow. "Is it enough?” she asked, the hope in her voice painful to hear.
"I'm not sure," he breathed, trying to do the math in his head and failing. Moon had taught them all their math and letters, although Torrant had always been better at figures of speech than math figures. Now it seemed that the coins in their shiny piles blurred together on the homespun cover, and an insistent pounding in his head kept distracting him from the numbers of the coins.
Yarri took his hand to get his attention and stepped back in shock. "You're sick!" she accused.
"I'm fine," he lied, and then gave in as Yarri hauled on his sore hand to get him to sit down. Her little hands fluttered around his face, and her gasp when they touched his forehead hurt his ears.
"Merciful Dueant, Torrant—you're really sick …"
"I'm just tired, Yarrow root," he reassured, blinking his eyes twice and again because she was blurring in front of them. "But my scrapes … they're sore … could you sort of not … OUCH!"
He had re-bound his hand in the last of the shirt after his bath, and Yarri had taken the bandage and ripped it off without a please or a thank you, and now she was even more panicked. "Your hands are swollen … and the skin is getting dark … Torrant, we need a healer …"
"No healer!" Oh, Goddess … the cost of a healer alone would drain them like an empty cup. And healers, he knew, gossiped—everyone knew healers gossiped. The only healer they could trust would have to be someone like Torrant—a child of Triane, the straying moon. Someone with a gift. "Triane's children—Yar, we need someone with a gift—but they're all like me … too afraid to show themselves …" That horse-trader in the common room—he had eyed them as though he knew what they were.
"I'll go get the serving woman," Yarri said decisively, and that sent him into a panic.
"Not without me …" He had kept walking this whole past week, with terrible food and little rest and he'd at least been able to function. But one good meal and the sight of a bed and his whole world went dizzy with bright fever and he couldn't seem to get a handle on the authority he'd used with Yarri her whole life. "You can't leave the room without me," he said sharply, sitting up and then collapsing on the bed with a whimper. With the way his head felt, it was a wonder his brains weren't leaking out his ears.
"Torrant!" She didn't want to leave him alone he could tell—good. That would keep her here.
"That horse-trader…" he slurred. "Dangerous … looks at you like … candy …" He couldn't hold a thought … Sweet Triane, Goddess of Joy, why couldn't he hold a thought? "Stay here, Yarri … don't leave …" he mumbled. He watched dismally as the roughhewn walls and the stolid chair by the bed and Yarri's small face turned an odd pewter color and lost their definite edges before going dark entirely.
"Stay," he whispered. "Oh, Goddess, don't leave."

Under Triane's Moon

Yarri never had been good at following orders.
She watched, frantic, as Torrant lost all coherence, dissolving in front of her eyes from her protector to a sick child and didn't wonder once what would happen to her if he died. Torrant wouldn't die—she knew that. It was as sure as the sun would rise and the sky was blue and that his hot skin scorched her hand as he clenched it. Anye curled up in the space by his neck and made worried cat sounds as she licked his ear.
But he was sick—sick and anxious and he said they couldn't find a healer and he needed somebody. Anybody. Oh, Torrant … You're the only person I know.
It was that thought at the end that had driven her out of their tiny room in the back corner of the inn and down into the common room.
The horse-trader looks at you like candy. She ran a hand through her hair, destroying Torrant's careful curls, and pulled her hood up and ventured into the hall. It was still smoky from the fire downstairs, and the rough boards that lined it were smoke-stained as well, but it was swept and there was a carefully sewn and patched runner down the middle and she suddenly had an idea of whom she could turn to.
The serving woman was still downstairs, and Yarri chose the space between the doorway and the fireplace by the kitchen to duck into, hugging the shadows to her chest like a shield.
As the woman bustled out the doorway to the kitchen she actually gasped to see the child there, almost tripping in her startlement. Yarri's desperate eyes must have spoken volumes, though, because she didn't say another word, simply turned towards the hall instead of the kitchen and waited until a bend in the hall to bend down and talk to the tousled haired little boy she saw.
"We need a healer," Yarri whispered baldly. "Not one schooled at the Dueance school." She had heard of the Dueance school—it was one of two universities in the five lands, and it only accepted boys. Her brothers had taught her to read and to write, had showed her Moon's impressive collection of books, but she knew that if she ever wanted to know everything, she'd have to go to Triannon.
The serving woman closed her eyes then, and breathed deeply. If Yarri had been older, she would have known that the woman was shoring up her backbone for rebellion. Yarri simply thought that the kind serving woman was just as worried about Torrant as she was. "Are you Triane's children then?” she asked, breathily, not even wanting the words to echo against the air.
"Torrant is," Yarri answered, and then, when the woman looked at her sharply, wished she hadn't.
"Oueant's tongue!" she swore at herself—something else she'd picked up from her brothers—and the serving woman hid a smile. "Don't tell," she said miserably, looking down at her worn and battered boots. She 'borrowed' them from Orel—the child of soft-spoken Bren, who had been lived quietly at Moon's since her parents had ousted her out for carrying a child conceived during Triane's Beltane feast. Orel was dead now, and they would never play jacks again. Bren would never serve them fresh bread to wreck their dinner, with butter and sugar spread thickly on top.
"Please," Yarri whispered now into the silence, bending down to stroke the cracked leather at the top. "Please don't tell. We're all we have."
The serving woman nodded then, her mouth quirking up. "Well, if the gods damn me, maybe Triane will give me a home," she said after a moment. "Now go back to your room, little man, and don't open until you hear my voice—my name is Stella—you go back and listen for Stella's voice, you hear me?"
Yarri looked up at her then, the hood falling from her head, and smiled brilliantly, and now the woman swore again. "By the whoring Goddess!" With hurried movements the woman had hauled the hood back over her golden-flame hair, and dropped to her haunches. "Girl, those men out there aren't nice people, you hear me?"
Yarri nodded soberly. "Torrant told me. He didn't want me to leave the room."
The woman nodded. "Your … brother is a smart young man. Now go back to your room and stay there—I'll be back."
And the woman whirled around in a rustle of homespun skirts leaving Yarri to trot back to her room. When she got there, she took one of the two wooden chairs that sat at the foot of the bed and jammed it under the door-latch. The horse-trader looks at you … like candy …
Torrant was curled up into a ball on the bed, shivering so hard his teeth chattered. Yarri grabbed the corners of the heavy, woven blanket he was on and rolled them up around him, talking to him softly, wanting him to come back.
"We're going to get a pony, right Torrant?” she asked, smoothing her hands through his hair. "You promised." She stroked a little hand across his forehead, and, oh gods, his skin was so hot!
"A pony for Yarri …" he murmured, and an almost-smile relaxed the chattering of his teeth. "A pony for Yarri … and a dress … a bath for Yarri … and a home … Yarri needs a home … I'll get a home for us, Yar … I'll get us a home …"
"It's good, Torrant …" she whispered. "You are my home … wherever you are, you are my home now, right?"
"I'll sing for you, Yarri …" he said, and suddenly they were warm and safe again, in the barn under a blanket, and he was singing the ocean song in a cracked, bleeding voice.
Yarri held his hand and sang with him, in a voice no louder than a heartbeat, and prayed. She'd prayed to Oueant the honorable, and Dueant the merciful on the night her family died, and they'd let her down. While singing children's songs with the young man who was not her brother, watching his life steam out of his body with every blazing breath, Yarri prayed to the deity of the gifted, the wanderers, the outcasts and exiles. Yarri prayed to Goddess Triane, and thought maybe, maybe, She listened.
She fell asleep singing the counting song that Tal and Qir had taught both her and Torrant, so that they could remember their numbers. Torrant sang the letters song in counterpoint, as they'd been taught, and his painful song never wavered.
A mean voice woke her up from a fitful doze, resting her chin on Torrant's chest. He was still hot, and his breath was starting to rattle a little, but Stella had just replied to the mean voice and Yarri was suddenly worried.
"I saw that boy … the little one … c'mon, Stella—he's a pretty thing … I just want to talk to him, that's all …"
"It's never just talk, you bastard," Stella hissed. "Now put that knife away and go back to the common room. I'm back here to change the sheets because some rotter lost his dinner."
"Just talk…" the man hissed, and Stella made a sound, a scary-knife-to-the-throat sound, and all Yarri could think about was that Stella was their only chance, their only link to a healer for Torrant and that the horse-trader must not hurt her.
The wooden chair folded up neatly, and she opened the door silently, and spotted the stained leggings of the horse-trader. He didn't look at her as she crept out of the room, grabbed the chair with two hands, then used all of her running force to slam it into the back horse-trader's legs.
He screamed and collapsed to the floor with Yarri on top of him, the chair clattering to the floor next to them as the serving woman scrambled out of the way. The horse-trader rolled over and grabbed her, then rolled over again, his heavy body pressing against her tiny one, his beer-rotten breath bathing her face.
"There you are, pretty little boy…" he reached down, fumbling at her clothes, and Yarri forgot about secrecy, forgot that Torrant was sick, forgot about helping the serving woman and opened her mouth and screamed as she had not screamed in her entire life.
Torrant crashed through the opened door behind them, Anye a blur at his ankles. He had his dagger in his hand and was shouting her name through a throat that couldn't make a sound. He took one bleary eyed look at Yarri, writhing under the horse-trader's body, and fell on top of them both, body pushing his belt-knife through the man's ribs at the back and into his heart.
Yarri watched the horse-trader's eyes widen, and blood pour from his mouth onto her, and opened her mouth to scream again, but Torrant was mumbling her name and trying to pull himself up, his arms giving way under his body as his face struck the floor with a smack.
If Stella hadn't been there, their lives might have ended in the chaos that would have followed.
"Gods and Goddess …" she swore, rushing over to pull Yarri up.
Yarri looked at the blood on her shirt and trembled, not sure if she should rip the shirt off, scream, or vomit and Stella took both her shoulders in her hand and shook her to get her attention. "Listen to me … boy. You go back into your room and change …"
"No … no more … you have our …"
"I'll get you clothes … just take those off and put them in the laundry bag on the door, you hear me?" Yarri nodded, her teeth chattering, and clamped her mouth shut to keep any other fractured words inside. "Now, in a minute someone's going to knock on your door, right? He'll knock twice, slow … right? Now say it after me."
"Kn … nnn … nnn … ock twwwiice … sl … sl … sl … ow."
Stella smiled slightly, tried not to looks sick, and took control of the situation again. "His name is Aldam. He's not too sharp, but I think he can help."
"Aldam … that's not a …"
"Sh …" Stella looked over her shoulder for an imaginary listener, but the common room was so rowdy by this time of night that even Yarri's screaming hadn't been heard in the back. "Not everybody advertises like this one's mother." She nodded at Torrant, who was still trying to stand. "Now go, 'boy'. Your brother and I have things to attend."
Yarri shut the door behind her and stripped off her bloodied clothing, dipping a cloth in the clean basin by the bed and using it to wash off the blood that had spattered through her shirt. She could still feel the sting at her waist, from where the horse-trader's fingers had been fighting with the drawstrings of her breeches, and when she heard the knock at the door, she was scrubbing that sting too, and scrubbing and scrubbing until it was red and raw. The knock pulled her to herself. She took the blanket from the bed and wrapped up in it, answering the door slowly, with trembling hands.
The young man who was standing patiently waiting for her was not threatening at all. He had fuzzy blonde hair that haloed over his head, and dreamy, unfocused blue eyes in a round, soft face. There was a hat on his head worked in wonderful, tiny stitches, and small figures of cats and dogs and horses paraded across the brim in stolid wool.
"I'm Aldam," he said with a slow smile. "Stella said you needed me?"
"Yes." But still she stood there, a tiny child clutching her blanket to her shoulders. They regarded each other in the hall, until Aldam blinked and reached into the bag at his side. A startled 'mrowr' came from the bag and Yarri almost cried with relief.
"Anye," she whimpered, clutching the little cat to her chest. "Come in, Aldam." She opened the door and closed it after him. "Oh Anye …" And with Anye there to help her, she could finally cry like the little girl she was. Aldam sat on the ravaged bed and picked her up in the same boneless, easy way that he'd picked up Anye, and patted her back placidly as she wept.

Triane's Pretty Horses

Torrant needed to get up and help Stella hide the body. He knew this. He used the knowledge to shore up shaking muscles and bones that had suddenly turned to jelly, to still the thundering of his heart in his ears. He couldn't be sick right now, he couldn't. He lay there for another moment, his body flooding with the urgency of the situation, and suddenly his vision grew clear and cold and the aches in his body drifted far away. Stella hauled him by the armpits until he got up under his own power.
"I'm sorry," he said, putting his hand on the wall and shaking his head. "I'm sorry. You were so kind … I've caused you trouble …" Oh Goddess, was he getting weepy? The humiliation of weeping in front of this stranger was too much. His eyes focused with that peculiar coldness again. He stood up straighter and focused his eyes and said clearly, "Where can I haul this useless piece of horse shite?"
Stella leaned against the wall, laughing a little hysterically. "Gods, boy—you and your … brother—the two of you've got more toughness than I've seen in most of my years. The woods—there's a trash heap on the north side of the inn where the animals scavenge to get fat. We'll put him there and hope he's gone before the snows come."
Torrant nodded and bent down to roll the man over before pulling the grimy, blood-spattered cloak up over his body and wrapping it tight to contain the blood. When he saw who he had actually killed, he gave a sick little laugh. "Maybe now he'll give us a break on the horses," he said dryly, and Stella laughed some more. Together they bent, Torrant at the head and the serving woman at the man's feet, and hefted up the corpse of the second man Torrant had killed in the last week.
Until he figured out what had focused his eyes with glacial clearness, he couldn't put his finger on the force that got him down the hall, out the back door, and the field-sized distance to the trash-heap. He would have said it was blind exhaustion or the deadened nerves of the soon-to-be-departed, but he could remember everything so clearly. He could recall the excruciating weight of the corpse threatening to slip out of his fingers at any time and the wrenching pains in his shoulders as he refused to let that happen. He had a crystal clear recollection of how Dueant had already gone dark and Oueant was barely peeping over the horizon, while Triane was as close to the earth as he had ever seen the Goddess moon, and how the stars were so bright they cleaved through his eyeballs with crystal shards of light.
He knew that as soon as he released the man's weight, his own weakness came crashing down on him like a torrent of smith's hammers, and that Stella had to support some of his weight over her shoulders, as much as he tried to walk on his own. He could particularly remember her anguished and tart voice saying "It's a good thing you're burning like a furnace, boy, because otherwise I'd bloody well freeze my skirts off!" But he couldn't remember what he answered.
When the two of them crashed back into the room, the only clear thought in his cloudy brain was whether Yarri would be there to say good-bye to him as he died. And then he saw the stranger, holding Yarri, and his body took on a fighting crouch he would have said he didn't have in him.
"Easy, boy," Stella said, soothingly. "He's my nephew, and he's a good boy, and he's got a little of Triane's gift for you, so you just take it easy."
Yarri looked up from the shelter of the sweet-faced young man's arms and said "He's nice. He brought Anye back."
Torrant smiled and said, "Good—you've got someone to take care of you then," and the collapsed onto the floor in a heap.
When he came to, he was on the bed again, and Yarri was smoothing water onto his face with a wet cloth.
"What're you wearing, Yar?” he slurred, looking at the pretty green shirt with the little ruffles at the sleeves. It was almost winter thick, with an extra-wide tie at the throat and he was glad, because it looked warm.
"It belongs to Stella's niece," Yarri told him. "Aldam said I could keep it."
Aldam—the young man who'd brought the cat. "You're very sick," the young man said seriously. "I can't imagine how you've managed to live so long."
Yarri made a miserable sound and Torrant glared at him through sandy eyes. "I'm fine," he said shortly. "You're making too much of it." Aldam looked puzzled until Stella smacked him upside the head and nodded at a frightened Yarri. Aldam nodded then, and tried to smile reassuringly.
"I'll take care of it," he said, his voice still calm. "Here." He bent over, his face blurring and large in front of Torrant's stressed vision. Torrant flinched and then Aldam flinched and Aldam laughed a little, like a child. "Don't worry," he said, still close enough for Torrant to smell his breath—it smelled like mint and toast. "I'm going to kiss you like a lover—but I don't love you. I don't even know you. I just want to take the sickness away, that's all. It's how I keep the animals well." He nodded towards Anye, who was curled back up in her spot by Torrant's ear.
Torrant nodded, and closed his eyes because it felt like his head was bulging out through them. Right, whatever the boy wanted to do, Torrant would let him. Yarri was fine, there was kindness here, and he could live with whatever happened to him, good or bad, if Yarri was surrounded by kindness.
He only remembered the kiss as a touching of lips and nothing more. When he woke up again, there was sun coming through the little porthole cut into the top of the room, and Yarri was curled up next to him in his arms, as they'd slept since the first night under the stars. His fever was gone, along with his headache and the fire in his throat, and he felt as limp and as clean as a newly bleached shirt. And now, in the dawn of the morning, the tears of weakness—grateful tears—came, as he thanked Triane for their good fortune.
He was weak though—too weak to leave during that first day, even though he tried to insist upon it.
"We've caused you trouble," he told Stella lowly, over Yarri's sleeping body, when she came in to check on him and feed him soup. "I'm sorry—we'll leave tonight."
"You'll do nothing of the sort," Stella told him sharply. "I didn't go to all that trouble to have you leave this one," she nodded at Yarri, "alone on Hammer Pass because you were too weak to keep going. That man …" She shuddered. "He was … notorious … for his appetites. When Aldam was a child…" She looked away then, her face working to keep composure. "We hid him, after that first time … but he was never the same."
"I'm sorry," Torrant said again, feeling inadequate and too young.
"Don't be," Stella's voice grew sharp so she could cleave through the awkwardness and leave the moment behind. "You'll leave tomorrow night—he won't be missed until the morning after that, and we hid him on the far side of the refuse heap—if the boys are as lazy as usual, we won't have a thing to worry about. And this way, you can take Aldam with you."
"With us?" Torrant tried to sit up then, but Stella pushed him back down against the bed and put the tray over him, stuffing his mouth full of soup so he'd eat and listen and not argue.
"You're gifted, boy," she said, and tugged at the lock of hair on his forehead until it fell into his eyes. It was four shades lighter than it had been a week ago, four shades lighter than the rest of his peasant brown hair. "You can already see it—and I can show you how to hide it, like I hide Aldam's wizard lock. But hide it or not, people know—Aldam's too simple to conceal his nature, like you do. And it's dangerous to be gifted here. I think you, of all people, would know that Clough is no safe place for Triane's children, gifted or not."
Torrant looked away. Moon had housed Triane's children as any other hold would house the children of the two gods. His reputation for housing children of the goddess had been what brought Torrant's mother begging at his door when Torrant was just a baby, fatherless and starving. And, Torrant knew, without a doubt now, it had been what brought the Consort's fury hammering down on the Moons of Clough like an iron rain.
"It will be dangerous," Torrant said lowly, then, looking carefully to make sure Yarri was still asleep, he said, "If it wasn't for Yarri, I'd hide here. I'd hide, and I'd wait and I'd …" His voice thickened, and Stella's hand clenched on his shoulder.
"You stay alive first, boy," she said. "Now you owe me, and you seem an honorable sort. You stay alive, you keep your girl and my nephew alive and you get them to safety, and you will live to do whatever it is you're planning, and I know folks who would help. But you're a boy now—a boy can do strong things. A man can do great things. You see the difference?"
"No," Torrant replied miserably after swallowing some more soup. Yarri said someone needed to be smacked. Triane's tears, he wanted to smack someone— but not as much as he wanted to keep Yarri safe. "But you're right—we'll keep going to Eiran … Yarri's got … we've got family."
"I'd wager Yarri's family is your family now, boy," Stella reassured, feeding him the last soup in the bowl. "Now you rest, you let your young one rest—and this time, keep her in the room, you hear? I'll be back in for dinner. My sister— she's been worried about Aldam staying in Clough for some time—that thing that happened to the Moon hold, that just clinched the matter. She and I—we'll give you more than a change of clothes and some coins to travel with."
"Thank you." Torrant was humbled by her kindness.
"Don't thank me yet," she said, ruffling his hair in a way that reminded him of his mother. "Let's wait until after we steal the horses."
They waited until the next night—after Torrant could walk down the hall without getting winded and before the horse-trader's absence was any more than remarked upon. The horse-trader's apprentice was a scrawny, abused boy who had taken what his master had doled out and let it make him mean. He wouldn't cut anybody a break without his master's approval—all in all it was easier to steal the horses and let the townsfolk blame the missing. It was too close to winter for anyone but the Goddess' desperate to follow them over Hammer Pass.
"And isn't it wonderful that the only thing that'll keep them from chasing us down with swords and pitchforks is the thing that'll probably kill us in the end," Torrant said sourly, after reviewing the maps Aldam's mother had provided. Aldam was sitting quietly in the corner, playing string-tricks with Yarri and stroking Anye the cat, who had made him her new best friend.
"I can make fire," he said mildly. "Even in deep snow. It will help." He smiled at Torrant, hoping for approval.
"Fire might just well save our lives," Torrant returned with feeling. "If you've got a bottomless wallet of food, we're set."
"I don't have one of those," Aldam sounded distressed, and Torrant smiled gently to calm him down. He needed to be careful with what he said to Aldam— the young man took things very literally
"I was joking, Aldam," he said softly. "As far as I know, only the Goddess' women have the talent to make those." And as far as he knew, that was a myth. Besides, he told himself bracingly, the women had set them up with bedrolls, more blankets, a small cooking kit and as much food as three horses could carry. It wasn't anybody's fault that it wouldn't be enough to last them.
"You can hunt, can't you boy?" Stella asked apprehensively, and Torrant grimaced and nodded, Ellyot's last words to him ringing in his head like bells.
"I can," he hoped lowly. "Dried fruit and nuts would be good—a body gets weak on just meat."
"That we can do," Stella agreed, and Torrant went back to the study of the maps.

That night, they stole horses and rode off to face the deadly winter of Hammer Pass.
The stealing of the horses was actually fun—compared to horribleness of the horse-trader's death, ghosting along the moon-frosted fields was like a game. It was good that the quiet moon-frosted flurry to the stables was fun, because Aldam had said goodbye to his mother and his aunt before they left, and watching their worry and their love as he got ready to depart had depressed everybody. Yarri had started to cry soundlessly before Stella had roughly kissed her wet cheeks and told her to stay safe. Torrant felt his face go stony and hard, his narrowed eyes glowering out from under his brow, in an effort not to dissolve from the longing of wanting the farewell from his own family that Aldam got from his.
But Stella and her sister Sahra were not strangers to a young man's pride, and they also knew that a young man was still a boy. Torrant too got a rough hug and kisses on the cheek and a stern admonition to stay safe and be good. He would never admit to anyone but Yarri, but he treasured the kisses against his cheek, and his skin tingled with longing for family again.
He let the wind chap his cheeks and kill the tingling as they ran, because he was afraid of that longing. He was afraid that longing for family would weaken him, until he was unable to find family for Yarri, and Yarri was the only family he could worry about.
Which made her pleading look as she held out her hand and clucked to Kiss, her fat and sturdy pony, even harder to refuse.
The horses had recognized them as they neared the pen—suddenly Torrant and Yarri were surrounded by huge warm bodies, the comfort-smell of animal, soft whickers and tickling whiskers in their hair and over their shoulders. They knew these horses—Torrant had helped to break some of them.
"It will be a hard journey …" He hated the hesitation in his voice. Shouldn't he be stronger with her, if he was supposed to guide her to safety?
"But she missed me …" Yarri said, and the pony was proving her words by whuffling at Yarri's neck and whickering ever so softly into her cupped hands.
"But …" But she had just had her family ripped away, and, really, how much worse would one fat pony make their odds of crossing Hammer pass in the dead of winter anyway? He thought of a thousand ways to end that sentence and then sighed instead. "Here, Aldam," he said quietly, leading a broad, fat, mottled mare with the personality of a sunny day and the constitution of a granite slab. "This is Clover."
Aldam was nervous around horses. "She's so big."
Torrant nodded and took the other boy's hand in his own, holding it to the horse's heart. "Feel that?" he murmured, smiling as the mare nosed his pocket for the carrots he'd cadged from Sahra before they left.
"It's strong," Aldam said thoughtfully.
"Strong and sweet as clover," Torrant told him. "That's why we named her— she'll be your friend and your ride, and your blanket, and all you have to do is be nice to her. That's not a problem, is it Aldam?" He slipped some carrots into Aldam's soft hand and turned it, palm flat up, and nodded, reassured as the mare took the carrots and then nosed that hand for some soft pets on a sensitive nose. Aldam smiled at his new friend, and proceeded to find the mare's favorite sweet spot between the fine brown eyes and up towards the ears, and scratched until her eyes closed in satisfaction. Good—one happy couple down, two more to decide on.
A laugh sounded loudly, from the Inn, and Torrant closed his eyes. They didn't have long.
The reminder that they needed to hurry galvanized him, and he decided on a risk he wouldn't normally have taken. Without time to think or to second-guess, he walked up to Moon's four-year old bay, and offered him a carrot.
The stallion was a behemoth—almost eighteen hands tall, with a chest as wide as an oaken barrel and a head and face so small they almost looked silly next to the stallion's immensity. He was strong, smart, well-broken, even-tempered and protective of his people. He was also an incorrigible ladies man, and even as Torrant broke him off from the herd and slipped a stolen bridle over his head, he knew that taking the stallion into the wilderness with a sweet old breeder like Clover was just asking for distractions and a late season foal the next year. Courtland-the-stallion whuffled and pranced, obviously happy to be with his family again—Torrant had helped to break him, after all.
He was strong, Torrant thought resolutely. He was strong and he was stout, and he would protect them as they slept in the tent and tried to clutch warmth to their hearts like fingers clutching water.
"Besides," Torrant muttered to himself, touching foreheads with the stallion in greeting, "He'll be able to carry us both after we eat Yarri's pony to stay alive."
They rode with saddle blankets instead of saddles, Aldam hunching over Clover's back like a collapsed sack of potatoes. Anye stuck her head out of Yarri's satchel, and gave a plaintive goodbye to the horses they had to leave behind, and Yarri, secure in the saddle since her third year, turned around and looked forlornly at the herd of horses in the star shine, stretching their heads over the fence and making depressed little whinnies at the people they missed.
"Torrant …" she murmured distressed, but Torrant's heart was pounding from the theft and from his risky choices as it was.
"They'll be fine," he muttered shortly, his voice seeming to carry unfathomably loud under the night sky. The Goddess moon had come up over the dirt trail. Unlike the moons of the twin gods that seemed to hover over the earth in a remote, detached sort of way, the Goddess moon came close in its orbit, and her face this night was personal, a vast, orange, harvest face that blazed the trail up like daylight, and threw Anvil mountain into sharp relief.
"Is that where we're going?" Aldam asked, as the lights of the inn and the only life he'd ever known disappeared behind them.
"Yeah." Long ago, the mountain had been a volcano with a plug of ash. Before the third moon had begun its wander across the sky, the volcano had blown, leaving a mountain with a top that looked like an open mouth of broken teeth. Centuries passed, and the Goddess moon began its wander, and the jagged top of the mountain wore down. Although probably not a place to walk barefoot, in silhouette the top of the mountain was flat, denting in a little on the sides like a smith's anvil, and the smaller mountain that had jutted up from its side during the same event was the Hammer. In order to make it to the other side of those mountains, they had to pick their way over that path, through a series of switchbacks that held to the smooth side of Anvil mountain like a lover, and then through the treacherous crevasse formed by the jutting of the Hammer against the Anvil. Besides steep cliffs and sheer drops, there would be severe winds, deep snow over deadly pits, and extremely irritable wildlife.
"It's a good thing the Goddess is so close to the earth tonight," Aldam said in a small voice. "I have the feeling we're going to need the help."
Torrant looked at his new responsibility with his first full-out grin in nearly two weeks—the muscles were so rusty the expression hurt his face. "I think we're going to be fine." He was surprised even as the words came out of his mouth. He was even more surprised to find that he meant them.

Traveling Companions

That burst of optimism lasted them until the first bend in the switchback trail, when the wind hit them and Yarri almost fell off her pony.
Torrant had thought he'd known fear in his life—he'd been there when the uniformed men had informed his mother that his father was dead and that it would be better for her and her son if she left their home in the dead of winter, and then left the country as well. He'd watched the beginning of the slaughter of his family, knowing he could do nothing but save himself and their most beloved member. But he truly had never had his bowels turn to water and his heart thud in a puddle at his feet until Kiss reared up and Yarri's entire body was suspended, her knees clutching the damned fat pony, over a drop of two hundred feet, with flesh-chewing rocks at the bottom.
Before his hands had even stopped shaking, he dismounted from Courtland, plucked Yarri up from Kiss's back without a word, and settled her on Courtland's back before mounting up behind her. For her part, Yarri hadn't stopped trembling since Kiss's hooves had grounded, and she burrowed into his arms, shivering, and stayed there sedately, for the next few hours.
Eventually they found a hollow at the bend of one of the switchbacks, a stocked cave, in fact, complete with firewood and food for humans and horses, and Torrant was so grateful not to have to dig into the bulk of their stores that he almost cried. The reciprocal kindness of the merchants that stocked the shelter seemed like a sign from the Goddess herself that not all the elements were out to get them. He left a small packet of dried fruit with the food stores in gratitude the next morning, but not before he gave Aldam and Yarri a bite with their breakfast.
"But what about you, Torrant?" Yarri asked plaintively.
"I'm not a big fan of dried apples," he lied gamely, and she looked at him with worried eyes until he brusquely set her to packing her bedroll and washing her face with what was left of the warmed water on the fire.
She had gone back to the privy dug into the back of the cave and Torrant was dousing the fire when Aldam said something to him.
"She cried in her sleep last night." His eyes were grave.
"I know," Torrant said shortly, squeezing the water pot into the saddle bag.
"She called out for her mama." Aldam was distressed. He didn't whine, or argue like other people, he just got more insistent, and Torrant always listened with all courtesy.
"I know." Torrant's voice dropped. "I know. I was there. I comforted her."
"I know," Aldam repeated, the distress still in his voice. "And you are all she has."
Torrant shook his head, confused. "You're not telling me anything I don't know …"
"And I can not make this journey alone—my mother knew that, that's why she sent me with you." Aldam had a little line between his brows, breaking up the serene lines of his boyish face. For the first time he wondered how old the boy was—fourteen, like Torrant? A little older? Eighteen? With a face that smooth and unlined with most worries, it would be hard to place an age.
"I won't leave you, Aldam," Torrant said, trying for reassurance. Aldam kept looking behind them, towards the privy hole with its screen of rocks, as though this were a conversation they must keep from Yarri.
"You are all we have—and you have no one to comfort you, Torrant. Don't deny yourself sweetness—any sweetness—as it comes to you. When your spirit breaks because it's grown brittle for lack of sweetness, we will have no one."
Torrant blinked his eyes, so surprised he sat down suddenly on the hard rock of the cave floor. It was his first lesson that very often, the simplest view of the world was the wisest. Without warning, his eyes began to blur with the kindness of this new responsibility, and while he was sitting there, staring at his hands and trying to pick himself up off the cave floor and be capable again, Aldam thrust half his portion of dried apples into his hands. Torrant blindly clutched them so they wouldn't fall into the dust. Abruptly, this new responsibility became as dear as the brothers he missed.
"Thank you," he said roughly, putting an apple in his mouth and smiling with the tart-sweetness of it.
"I'm happy you like it," Aldam replied sincerely, and then wandered away to talk quietly to Clover, whom he had learned to love very much the night before, as they were hugging the unforgiving side of the mountain and hoping for shelter.
"I thought you didn't like apples," Yarri murmured, coming out from behind the privy and finding the damp cloth for her hands.
"I change' my min'," Torrant said from a full mouth, and that was the end of the matter.

The switchback trail continued for three days, and at the end of each day, often stumbling with exhaustion from maintaining a pace set by adults used to traveling in the mountains, they found caves in which to seek shelter. In the last cave, they saw a rough map, scratched into the stone, showing the switchback trail, and then the pass over the mountain itself. There were several circles with the word 'pit' inside of them, that chilled Torrant almost as much as the wind that had been plastering them to the granite sides of the mountain for three days.
"You can't always see those under the snow," he said numbly, after Yarri was asleep. He was wondering if he could memorize that map, or if they'd be walking blindly, hoping to not fall into those bone-chewing fissures outlined in the dusty shale of the cave.
"Will the horses know?" Aldam asked. Aldam had great faith in the abilities of animals to know things.
"Not always." Torrant had worked with horses all his life. Sometimes, the animals' knowledge of their environment was as spooky as any Goddess' born gift. Sometimes, they were a full-out ton of panicked sinew and bone, with the destructive capacity of a hurtling meteor. He knew Tal and Qir had been able to all but read a horse's mind, and horses had responded by returning the favor. Torrant himself had been an able, but not spectacular horseman—he had been a help to Moon, and that was his only claim. Torrant took a deep breath and considered his options, then pulled the rapidly whitening forelock at his forehead. His wizard's lock—it ought to be good for something. He pulled out one of the white cloths that Stella had gifted them with as a camp-dishcloth, and pulled a charred stick out of the fire, thinking furiously.
Carefully, he made a copy of the map using the charred stick and cloth, and then tried to fix an image in his head, something lasting, that would stay forever and not get rubbed off or wrinkled or burned or washed away. Then, very carefully—not using nearly as much power as he'd used on the Consort's emissary, or to hide himself and Yarri as a cat and a tree, Torrant thought about 'map'. He thought thick paper, shiny and light brown, with heavily lined details and color keys. He'd seen maps in Moon's study—all of the children got their lessons there, not just Moon's children. Orel and Breen and Lira, quiet Ben and bright, quick Arin—for a moment his heart stuttered in pain at the thought of his playmates, his peers, whom he and Yarri had not had time to mourn, and he felt his gift ebb, so he stopped, and just concentrated on the maps. He'd been good at maps—not as good as at music and poetry and essays, but he liked maps. Maps were places he'd never traveled, people he'd never met, and that joy filled his heart a little, and his gift seeped out of his fingers, and in a breath and a shivering heartbeat, the rough cloth with its black char of lines had become smooth, shiny, thick and colorful—a piece of parchment that would wear like leather.
And it was not the same as the map on the floor.
"Torrant …" Aldam looked in confusion, from the map on the floor to the new, shiny one in Torrant's hands.
"Oh …" Torrant concentrated for a moment, shoving the faint headache from using his gift into the background. "Oh … oh no …" He paled, and fell from a squat to his backside and didn't even register the bruise until the next day.
Compared to the map in Torrant's hand, the map on the floor was a giant trap. Every path scratched onto the floor would lead to a gaping pit if left to the map in Torrant's clammy grasp, and every sound path on Torrant's map led to disaster if one went by the map on the floor.
"Which one …" Torrant asked in consternation.
"Yours is the right one," Aldam said with certainty, and Torrant looked at him in surprise. Aldam often deferred to Torrant's opinion—in fact, Torrant had gotten used to answering his questions. Is the horse well, Torrant? Should we stop here? Do we have enough water? Do you think Yarri slept well? Do we need to conserve food, Torrant? Can we eat a little more? Torrant had adjusted in the last few days to being the parent of his little impromptu family, and suddenly Aldam was having a say.
"How do you know?"
Aldam shrugged. "You used your gift—the Goddess' gifts come from us, from our hearts. I am gifted, but if I hadn't wanted to cure you when you were dying…"
"Sick!"
"I wouldn't have been able to. You wanted a safe passage, and a map. I know that is true. I don't know what the person who scratched this map into the stone wanted—but his map must be the one that's false." Aldam regarded him tranquilly, with such conviction that Torrant had no choice but to believe him. "It's a good thing you checked, Torrant—we would have been killed." And then, as though unaware of how drastic that statement sounded, Aldam toodled off to finish packing the pony. Kiss had been relegated to pack animal since she'd reared and almost dumped Yarri off a cliff, and since Yarri didn't adore her one whit less, seemed fairly placid about her change in status.
"He keeps saying that like it's no big deal!" Torrant grumbled to himself, and then looked at the map on the floor. He closed his eyes then, and put his hands on the map, and thought maps and truth, and he felt his gift pass through his hands, and then looked down at the stone.
It wasn't a rough sketch anymore—it was a fused, antiqued, smoothed and perfected version of the one in his hand. The right one. He started to shiver then, sitting on the floor, thinking about what would have happened if they'd tried to follow the false map. How many caravans had come up to this pass in winter, how many of the Goddess' refugees had fled up to these mountains, come to this cave for succor, and followed that false promise of safety to their deaths? And he and Yarri and Aldam could have been next.
"Gods …” he swore and put his face against his knees as the shivers took over his entire body. He would have caused Yarri's death. The thought was unimaginable—it was bad enough, he thought, that he hadn't been able to save their family. Torrant, you have to go back and save them. And for the first time since that horrible night, his own failure penetrated his general grief, and the fear of repeating that failure had him paralyzed, rocking back and forth on the floor of the newly redecorated cave.
Yarri's hand on his shoulder pulled him out of it. "What's wrong, Torrant?"
"Nothing," he lied roughly. "Bad moment, that's all."
She patted his back comfortingly, the small hand feeling like the beating wings of a very fragile, very trusting bird. "You should sing. You sing to us every night, and it makes me feel better. Sing, and you'll feel better." He looked up over his shoulder, and saw that little heart shaped face, with her shorn hair haloing wildly about it. Her eyes were wide and guileless, and he had no choice but to have faith in what she did. Himself.
"Sing, huh?"
"Yes … I like that song about the princess who fell asleep—the one you made mama sing you, again and again and again until you knew it perfect. And then you sang it better than mama." She was so earnest.
"No one sang better than your mama," he told her, believing it.
"You do. Let's sing as we leave the cave. It will make the bad moment better."
He wasn't sure where the smile came from—it must have been the place miracles are born. "Absolutely, poppet. Let's sing. Sweet beauty sleeps in her lover's arms, made of briars, made of thorns, sweet Beauty sleeps in her lovers arms, and they shall all protect her … "And his voice grew stronger, until it lifted him onto his feet and swung him and Yarri onto their courtly horse and it rang into the cave where perfidy had been made truth and echoed out onto the treacherous road ahead.
They reached the end of the switchbacks that afternoon, and began making their way along the rocky crevasse between the Hammer and the Anvil, picking their way with care. There were trees up here, not thick, but sturdy stands of pines and stubborn scrub that clung to rocks, and in the broad crevices of rocky hollows there were cold, brown patches of grass. Good, Torrant thought, trying to believe it. That meant deer.
As they had traveled, he'd been trying to do the math in his head, figuring out what day it was, and finally had to break down and ask Aldam. "Samhain is in three days." Aldam told him, and Torrant nodded, feeling a little better.
"I want to get as far as we can before first snow," he said, leading Courtland around a pit—true, it was only one or two hands deep, but a horse going too fast could easily break a leg. Clover was so sure-footed, she seemed to accommodate such things with a placid flick of her tail, but Courtland got peevish if the ground didn't do what he expected it to.
"That will be tomorrow," Aldam said calmly, and Torrant and Yarri exchanged surprised looks.
"You know that?" Yarri asked around Torrant's arm. They were in the lead.
"Can't you taste it?” he asked in surprise. "It's like a kitchen knife that's been left in an iced over river … it's in every breath we take."
Torrant closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and then tried not to cough. The air was brutally cold, making him glad all over again that he'd pulled Yarri off of Kiss's back and put her on the saddle in the shelter of his arms and the stallion's big back. And there, on the edge of the wind …
Torrant opened his eyes. "Yes," he said, and then frowned. "Except … Aldam … it tastes … deep and sharp …"
Aldam nodded. "It will be a very big first snow, this early in the season."
Torrant remembered that song he'd pulled from his toes, and tried to mark that place in his soul, so he could get there when he wanted to—he had a feeling he'd need to go there a lot in the following weeks.
Yarri was downcast for a different reason. "Torrant—why can't I taste the knife on the wind?” she asked in a small voice.
"You're not gifted, sweet," he told her gently. "Only the Goddess' chosen … and not all of those."
"Who does the Goddess choose?" asked Yarri, and Torrant suddenly wondered, that a child who had been raised in the heart of a land that persecuted his own people, would not know these things. It was a tribute, he thought, with a lump in his throat, to the goodness of the Moon's, whom he now suspected, had given sanctuary to the Goddess' children on purpose as a cause, a bone deep belief that they all lived under the same sun, no matter which moon they favored.
"I don't know … people with last names that are grounded, like yours— names like things and places that you can touch or see—they belong to the twin gods, Oueant and Dueane—you know that. But people with names like mine— Shadow, Nightbane, Starshine, Lightstalker—those are Goddess' names. Those people are often chosen with a gift."
"That should be a good thing." Yarri said softly. "Why isn't that a good thing?"
Torrant shook his head. "I don't know—I don't know why people like the Consort would decide it's a bad thing, just like I don't know why any of the other people—the ones who get banished to the Goddess moon—have done anything wrong."
"Who was banished?" So many things that Yarri didn't know.
"Orel's mother …"
"Bren?"
"Yes—she conceived Orel on a Goddess night, and the father was killed before they could decide whether or not to marry. She was banished to the Goddess moon. And Ginny and Arel—they … they chose each other, that was all … they were both women, and they chose each other … and that got them banished to the Goddess moon." He thought then, remembering the adults of his childhood world, the kind souls who had loved him, and all of the children in the Moon holding, and wondered what their other crimes had been. He remembered their old weaver, a grizzled, bent man who would work wondrous things with a loom and soft yarn—his wife had died in childbirth, and he'd been told the gods don't take women bearing children—or the children themselves, and so Jeb had chosen the Goddess with his heart, because he thought that maybe that way, he could see his beloved Becca when he died, since she would be with the Goddess after all. He thought of Kith, a quiet, somber youth, who had showed up one morning with a face streaked with tears, and who wouldn't tell anyone, even Moon, of his transgression, but had just asked to be given a place to stay and work.
"I like all the people under the Goddess moon." Yarri said simply. "I like them a lot more than the … the …"
"Monsters," Torrant supplied flatly.
"The monsters who killed our family." And Yarri's voice shook with tears now and Torrant wanted to join her, but instead, he found that place at the bottom of his toes, and pulled up another song.
Aldam had been right—it snowed the next day, and the next and the next and the next. Every moment under the sun became a day-mare of swimming standing up through curtains of drifting water, squinting through white flutters and hoping that the landmarks they saw were really the ones on the map. Breathing became difficult, because they never knew when they were going to snort snow up their noses, and their lungs got chilly with so much cold all the time, so they covered their mouths with scarves and tried not to talk so they didn't have to taste wet wool.
At night, as the twin blue moons grew farther and more distant and the Goddess' Harvest Moon waxed close and large and yellow, they huddled inside an oilcloth tent, over Aldam's promised fire. The horses were tethered to nearby trees, generating warmth as they stood. They cooked porridge for the first couple of nights, and then Torrant realized that the horses were going to need most of their oats for grain, since the grass had been unreachable for days and the trees were all but bare. Torrant looked at the last of the porridge in the pot with a sinking heart.
"I'm going to have to hunt tomorrow."
"You don't hunt," Yarri yawned. They were sleeping on the horse blankets and mats of fur to cover the snow—the bedding were surprisingly warm but still they were never, ever, warm enough. "Ellyot hunts. You watch him and try not to get sick." Her eyes closed. "I like that you don't hunt," she murmured, and Torrant sighed and shook his head.

"You told Stella you could hunt," Aldam said, with gentle reproof in his voice.
"I told her I knew how," Torrant defended. And it was true—he could shoot an arrow as straight as Ellyot had, and he could use a knife in leather as well as any of the boys … but killing a living animal? He looked at the porridge pot again, and reminded himself of how long the journey would be if they were starving by the end of it.
"Besides," he said firmly, "It will be easier to hunt now, full and well, than it will be when our stomachs are gnawing away at our good sense and health. And Yarri needs me. I can do anything."
"Or course you can," Aldam said in surprise, and that was the end of the matter.

Footprints in the Snow

Torrant lay on his belly, looking at the fattened deer, foraging fitfully at what was left of a stand of tall grass. There were three—a young doe and her fawn, half grown and still spotted and awkward—and an older doe, her muzzle gone almost white. The older doe was holding back on weary legs, letting the fawn eat first, and Torrant felt a burst of compassion for the poor old thing. He'd given Yarri his porridge that morning, and his stomach was making so many gurgling noises he was surprised the deer didn't bolt from the half-formed meadow.
We need the food, he told himself firmly. They had given the horses oats that morning, and some of the dried carrots. Soon there would be nothing to eat for any of them if he didn't bring home some meat for the people so the horses could have the grain. In another few days, the ground would be frozen solid, and although Aldam was taking Yarri hunting for tubers and other roots, Torrant knew it wouldn't last.
But … he raised the bow and sighted down the string, telling himself that his hands weren't shaking, they weren't, they weren't … it was no use. His hands were shaking so badly at the thought of taking a life that his left hand actually dropped the arrow point, leaving the butt of the arrow hanging from the string and his right hand like a ribbon drooping from a girl's bonnet.
Oh come, on Torrant, he whispered to himself, It's not like you haven't killed before. But he hadn't seen the soul of those men, he realized while looking at the grandmother deer, sacrificing her own comfort for the child.
We need the food.
Ellyot could have done it. Ellyot had that same thing in him that Yarri had— the thing that had made her cast that rock on the head of an evil lackey without thinking twice. The thing that made them think only of the now and not of the then. But Torrant had that thing in him that made him see the deer's soul, and the thought of killing that limpid, peaceful thing inside that delicate old body hurt.
We need the food.
He sighed in frustration. What he needed, he thought on a growl, was to be a predator. Three days ago, just as they'd left the switchback, they had come upon a snow cat, enormous—it must have weighed at least twice what he did, with thick snow-colored fur sticking up all over its body and shadowy gray stripes in a random, dappled striping along it's back. The fluffy tufts on the sides of its face were dripping in blood, and it had been snarling over the corpse of another fat deer as it had ripped the thing to shreds. The sight had been appalling—and gross—and Yarri had squealed over it and bemoaned the fate of the poor deer until even Aldam had snapped, saying "The deer was born to be food, Yarri—I'm sure she'll cycle back under the moons as something better."
The moment stuck in Torrant's mind. That cat hadn't cared about the deer's humanity—only for its potential as dinner. It hadn't felt bad for the soul of the poor old thing standing under the trees (it didn't even occur to Torrant to kill the mother and the child), the snow cat had only cared that he was fed, and maybe that his family ate too.
He wanted to be a snow cat.
He thought about it—the selfishness, the ego, the absolute surety that hurting another creature was the only way to do what needed to be done. He could do that.
He thought about the snow cat. Feral, fierce, loving the taste of blood. Feral, fierce, enjoying the hunt. Feral… snarling, warm, thank the Goddess, in that thick coat of dappled white, eager to run, eager to chase, eager to eat, to crunch elongated teeth into the deer's carotid, to lap at the hot blood as it filled the mouth …to rip and to tear and to eat, to gorge on fat raw meat…
Torrant made a sound low in his throat, and the deer looked up, noses quivering, tails twitching in alarm, and Torrant looked down at his hands holding the bow and arrow, only to find his bow and arrow in the snow, and giant, tufted white paws the size of dinner plates where his hands should be.
He growled again from the snow cat's throat, and he was no longer cold.
The deer looked at him, and his vision became icy and crystalline—and those limpid eyes were speaking silent words.
Take me. I am old. This is my purpose.
His muscles bunched, his nerves realigned, and his body flexed and powered, possessed by the certainty of the snow cat and the absolute drive to feed his family. The deer was ready, his new, powerful body was ready, and the sound that rang from his feral throat plucked his sinews like a taut bow string and he sprang, ripping out the old doe's throat and breaking her neck in less time than it took for her to take that last breath.
He let his mouth fill with hot blood as the younger doe and her child disappeared into the forest, unaware of how far they themselves had really been from danger.
He had feasted on the throat and neck when his common sense and human mind reasserted itself, and he realized that he was far from in the clear.
Oh gods …I have to dress this thing so that Yarri and Aldam can eat too, was his first lucid thought, and it was quickly followed by a sick realization. I'm using my gift. If I change, I'll be too weak to move the Goddess-forsaken deer. Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no …
He paced, growling softly to himself and using his tongue to lick the blood off of his whiskers and his chest—at least he was thinking on a full stomach. Experimentally, he extended a claw, just one, and tested it against the soft mid-section of the deer. A little more pressure … a little more … the skin parted, and, looking distinctly un-snow-cat like, he delicately ripped the belly open and awkwardly scooped the offal out onto the snow, severing it at the gullet and bowels with flicks of a razored claw.
He cleaned himself off again, sticking his barbed tongue out when he got to the parts that definitely shouldn't be eaten by snow cat or human, and rolling in snow when the taste got to be too much. Then, leaving the entrails like a bloody flag to lucky carrion, he grasped the back of the deer's neck firmly in his jaws, and began to tug on the carcass, hoping the snow would erase the blood trail so he didn't have to fight off every predator between Clough and Eiran in order to keep their food.
Three hundred man-sized strides later, he came to the conclusion that deer were much heftier animals than he'd first suspected.
Three hundred more strides, and he started painfully calculating how far from their camp he had wandered in order to hunt. The answer depressed him, so he stopped that line of thought and concentrated on the landmarks that would get him back to their little tent.
Six hundred strides after that he told himself that next time, he was going to kill himself a couple of snow-rabbits and save himself a lot of work.
A thousand strides after that, he stopped to snack a little more off of the deer's neck—it was not nearly as tasty to his snow-cat-self cold, but it did shore him up for the next half of the journey.
Two thousand man sized strides after his little snack, he smelled horses and was so happy he rolled on his back in the snow, growling happily to himself and churning his giant, useful, fuzzy-tufted paws in the air with distinctly feline glee.
Two hundred strides later, the horses smelled him and began to whinny, and he heard Aldam's voice—sounding somewhat unnerved—calming them down, and he gave a loud, triumphant yowl that got them all upset again. Silently apologizing to Aldam for terrifying, well, everybody, Torrant sat his haunches on a log in the snow—trying to think ahead, actually—and thought very carefully about who he was.
Boy. Well, not just a boy … getting close to man now. Moon had told him that manhood could be seen in his hands, wide-palmed, square-fingered, useful brownish hands that were not afraid of work. It was also stepping quickly towards him in his feet, which both his mother and Kles had told him were twice the size of ocean-ships, although Myrla Shadow had never seen an ocean ship in her life. Tal and Qir had told him that he looked just like Ellyot—they had joked a lot, about the two sets of twins in the Moon family. Two boys with straight hair, pulled back into solid queues and bound by ties, with differently colored eyes. Ellyot's had been blue and Torrant's were pure hazel, and their shape was a little different. Torrant's eyes were the shapes of wide almonds, Ellyot's had been tilted at the bottom. Torrant's chest had been wide, his shoulders stout—Ellyot had been taller, more graceful, more worthy …
Abruptly the change stalled, even as Torrant allowed that thought to sneak into his tired mind. He scowled, looking at the backs of his wrists, peeping over the leather gauntlets with fluffy white fetlocks. His clothes were still on, he noted with surprise, and wondered where they'd gone when he'd been furry, but he was grateful so he didn't care, although he felt the snow melting on the back of his cloak from where he'd rolled on the ground in giddy glee. He also wondered what changes the cat had wreaked on him that he couldn't see—and then, looking down at his lap, covered in trousers now—decided he had no wish to know.
"Well, gods' twin eyes!” he swore, hearing the animal rumble in his voice, "What am I supposed to do now?"
"Torrant?" Aldam said from surprisingly far away, and Yarri echoed him. "Torrant is that you?"
"Yarri—you're wet—stay in the tent with the blankets," Aldam admonished, and Torrant felt a moment's gratitude—whether she'd fallen in a puddle or rolled around in the snow, for once he could be grateful for Yarri's propensity to fall in whatever was the most messiest or troublesome.
"Yarri, stay inside," Torrant growled, and then, hesitantly, because he didn't want to horrify Aldam any more than he wanted to terrify Yarri, he said, "Aldam, could you come here for a moment? Please?"
Yarri came through the stand of brush first, barefoot in the snow, her bare body wrapped in a horse blanket, and Torrant groaned, the sound coming out a lot deeper in his snow cat's throat.
Without even looking at him (she was looking at her feet!) she pattered through the snow and hopped onto his lap, and when his arms tightened around her automatically, she burrowed into him for warmth with chattering teeth.
"Yarri!" Aldam protested, and then Torrant could hear him lumbering (Aldam was not very graceful) through the brush, and even Aldam's unflappable presence was brought up short by what he saw in Torrant's face. "Oh dear," he said mildly, and Torrant could only shake his head.
"Torrant …" Yarri was playing with the gloves over his hands. "Torrant— what is this fuzzy stuff on your wrists?" And with that she tugged—hard—on a waving white fetlock, and Torrant let out a snarl that echoed off the treetops. Yarri turned to him, her eyes widening at the sight of his face. Then she smiled. "Ooohhh … Torrant—look! Your face is all furry and your eyes are blue."
He made an expression that even he could tell was not very human—his upper lip curled sideways, revealing his pointy teeth. "Wonderful!” he said through his half open mouth. "Now how do I get my real face back?"
Aldam blinked. He was older—Torrant had asked, and the boyish face and simple manner hid over sixteen winters of experience. That was at least two winters of using his gift that Torrant didn't have, and Torrant had been learning as much from Aldam about magic as Aldam had learned from Torrant about horses, pitching camp, and general survival. Aldam knew how the magic worked—he understood it on a simple, soul deep level that didn't need words. The trick would be helping him find the words.
"What were you thinking when you changed?" Aldam asked.
"I was thinking that we were getting hungry and needed food," Torrant grimaced.
"What else?" He was listening intently, large, china-blue eyes wide.
Torrant sighed. "I was thinking that I didn't have the heart to kill," he said carefully, not wanting to give too much of himself out here in the snow, but not wanting to be a snow cat/human for the rest of his life either. "I was thinking that …" He shuddered, feeling as he would if he was naked, without the fur. "I was thinking that I've killed men before—two of them, but they didn't seem to have the heart of this poor old deer." He gestured to the carcass, cooling on the snow. "I was thinking that I needed to be a predator for us to survive."
Aldam nodded and beamed at him. "You're very smart," he said with wonder. "I can only heal—but that's all my heart seems to want to do. Your head and your heart—they're very busy. Your gift is busy too."
Yarri's teeth started to chatter, and Torrant wrapped his arms around her. "I'm busy letting her catch cold right now," he said unhappily. "How about we go into the tent?"
Aldam shook his head. "You taught me about horses—they're already restless because they smell predator. You need to change first. What were you thinking when you changed back?
"I was thinking about what I looked like—Ellyot and I … we looked a lot alike … I was comparing myself to him."
"You don't look anything like Ellyot!" Yarri insisted. She'd said this since she could talk—of all the family members, she was the one who hadn't enjoyed the joke of the other set of Moon twins.
"Was it working?" Aldam asked.
"Yes … right up until …" Torrant grimaced, and Aldam looked expectant and Yarri shivered, and still Torrant didn't want to finish. He suddenly had a lot more sympathy for the dead deer—his entrails felt like they were being spilled in the snow too.
"Up until what?"
If Aldam's eyes hadn't been so open and accepting, the three of them might have stayed there until night fell and they froze to death, but Aldam looked unflustered by Torrant's embarrassment, and so he felt safe to continue. "Until I thought that Ellyot would have had more sense than to kill a deer two miles from camp when he was the only one who could dress it and haul it back," he snapped at last.
"Rabbits would have been easier," Aldam agreed guilelessly.
"That occurred to me," Torrant said dryly, looking mournfully at his fetlocks.
"What else were you thinking?" Aldam asked, and Torrant looked at him sourly. He seemed harmless enough, but Torrant had learned that this simple man had a core of pure steel in him.
"I was thinking that Ellyot would have done a better job keeping us alive," he said reluctantly. "I was thinking that he was a better hunter and a better camper and a better horseman and that you and Yarri would have had a better chance. I wished that he had … he had lived instead of me," he finished, feeling like roaring into the lowering twilight.
"No," Yarri said miserably, and he wrapped the horse blanket more firmly around her shivering body. "No. That's not true. Take it back."
"Yarri …" Well done, he thought miserably. Now she was freezing to death and in tears. "The Goddess picked you!" Yarri yelled. "The Goddess picked you, and you're all I have and you're all I'm going to need and you take it back!"
“I can’t!”
"Yes … take it back! Take it back take it back take it back!" Yarri'd had tantrums as a toddler—small surprise, since most of the Moon children had been obstinate and strong willed—but Kles had always said that Yarri's tantrums had been the worst. Her face flushed—her entire body, in fact—and she mottled bright red, and her eyes scrunched, and she hollered at the top of her lungs until her voice cracked for days. Those had stopped when she was three or so, and Torrant was surprised now to see the onset of a tantrum. Oh, Goddess … no … anything but a tantrum … Just like when she'd been a toddler, and the whole family had scrambled to give her something—anything—and usually somebody else's anything at that—to stave off the impending lightning storm, Torrant struggled to give her what she needed now.
"Take it back take it back take it back …"
"Fine!” he shouted to get her attention. "Fine! I'm glad I'm alive! I'm glad I survived!" His voice broke. He was glad … he was, he was, he was, and he was so ashamed of being glad that it almost made him sick … he had to earn it … he had to make it right, that he was alive and their family was not. "I'll do a good job taking care of you," he finished brokenly, "I'll do better than anybody else in the whole world, I swear. Don't cry, Yarri … don't cry, I'm glad I'm here with you, right?"
"Promise?" she hiccupped, and he nodded, his breath shuddering out of him like breeze through a canvas sail.
"I promise," he murmured, shivering. "Are you happy now, Yarri? Can we get out of the gods-damned cold?"
She nodded, recovering in a remarkably short time and then said, in a little voice, "Look, Torrant, your fuzzies are gone."
And that was when the exhaustion swamped him, a wave of physical darkness so intense he almost fell off the log. "Gods …" he murmured. "Aldam … take her … please …"
Yarri protested—of course—but Aldam told her that Torrant would be along in a minute and that pleased her, and as soon as her weight was gone from his lap he fell on his side in the snow.
A few moments later, he was dimly aware of Aldam pulling him to his feet and half-dragging him back to the tent. "The deer … I should help with the deer …"
"I know how to dress a deer," Aldam replied serenely. "And I know how the gift feels when it leaves you. I think you should sleep instead."
"I'll help with the deer," Torrant decided, feeling surprisingly lucid, but then they were inside the little tent, and Aldam's fire was burning merrily in the middle of it, and he was falling, falling onto the pad of horse blankets, murmuring, "I'll help … I'll help with the deer …" Until there was only Yarri's little body, snuggled in next to him for warmth, and sleep.

They kept camp the next day—Yarri's clothes and her cloak had been soaked through when she'd fallen through the ice of the meadow pond—You could see the fish underneath, Torrant—I had to look! She couldn't travel without either, so they were stuck inside the tent while the fire dried them out.
It was just as well, because Torrant was exhausted from his time as the snow cat, and the most he could manage was carving up the deer into steaks and strips and cooking them or drying them by the fire. It was not a bad time, actually—the meat smelled good as it cured, and Aldam cooked the smaller bits with the withered last of their carrots as well as some tubers and herbs that he'd found the day before, and some melted snow, and made a tasty broth that they packed into their thermoses and skins for later. They talked quietly, told stories—Aldam talked about helping his mother and aunt at the inn. He knew lots of inappropriate stories about visitors who swapped beds when they weren't supposed to. The best one was about a man who tried to escape out of his lover's window just as her husband decided to empty a chamber pot, and Yarri and Torrant laughed as they had not laughed since …
Since they didn't want to talk about it.
"What happened to your family?" Aldam asked gently, when they had finished laughing and lapsed into a melancholy silence.
Torrant looked away. He didn't want to say it, because he was afraid to hurt Yarri, so Yarri took his hand and said it for them.
"They're dead," she said gruffly.
Aldam nodded. "How?"
"I didn't see," Yarri replied. "Torrant knows."
"Rath's men," Torrant told him in a flat voice, ruthlessly shutting the door to the room in his mind where this memory lurked in full-color pictures. "They … herded the family into the barn to … kill them. And we escaped out the hay door."
"I don't understand …" Aldam said quietly, looking away. "I've hid my hair since I was your age … my gift is for healing. I don't understand why the Goddess is bad."
"She's not," Torrant said, with a sudden hard conviction. "The Goddess isn't bad. Rath's bad. And the people who do what he tells them to without question are worse. I don't know what poison infected Rath, but if everyone knows he's twisted, it's their job to untwist him." His eyes narrowed. "And if it doesn't happen by the time I'm get a chance at him, it'll be my job too."
"Your job is to keep me safe," Yarri said stubbornly.
"If I kill Rath, you will be safe," Torrant replied levelly, and they regarded each other for a moment, as though aware that the seeds of an important disagreement were in this conversation here, but not sure how to root them out.
Finally, Yarri smiled, her sweetest, most winning smile. "Sing me a song, Torrant," she murmured. "Something pretty, and sad."
Torrant smiled a little, and launched into The Ballad of the Goddess' Sons, and Yarri hummed the chorus with him, and their respite continued in peace.

A Nice Warm Coat

The venison lasted them a good two weeks. That was two weeks of wading through the swirling snow, of the horses picking their way carefully through drifts that went up to their fetlocks, and two weeks of camping and never really getting warm. They stuck to Torrant's map, and never did see any of the dreaded pits and snow-covered sheerfalls that Torrant increasingly feared had devoured many of the Goddess' refugees that had tried Hammer Pass in recent years. Maybe it was paranoia, but he confided to Aldam that he suspected that this alone was the reason for the false map.
"They want us dead," Torrant said bleakly.
"I don't," Aldam replied so blandly it took a moment for Torrant to realize he was being ironic. As his mouth quirked in a smile, he felt his affection for their newfound brother grow even more.
Eventually Torrant had to go hunting again, and they made plans to camp for an extra day in a stone hollow that faced away from the wind. It wasn't quite a cave, but it was sheltered enough to not have snow on the ground, and Torrant was relieved. Yarri had been fighting a stuffed head and runny nose since her dunk in the frozen river, and Torrant was worried for her. She spent much of her time dozing in the saddle in front of him, huddling into his warmth, clutching Anye to her like a boneless rag of comfort. Aldam cured her of a fever every evening, and using his gift so frequently was exhausting him as well.
"It's not good for her, either," the young man said worriedly through bleary eyes. "It makes her body and her spirit tired to be sick for so long."
Torrant nodded, fingering the divot in his ear. It had healed in the weeks since he'd received it, but it still pained him. He worried it when he was nervous, or thoughtful, or anxious. "You two stay in camp tomorrow and sleep," he said decisively. "I know how to hunt for tubers—I'll do that first. The broth won't be as tasty," he smiled at Aldam, to praise him for his work last time, "but it will fill us just the same."
The next day he set off. He spent the morning finding roots and even recognizing the occasional herb that he brought back and set quietly by Aldam. Aldam and Yarri were curled up against the rock hollow, with the glowing coals between themselves and the elements, and for a moment Torrant had a shiver of fear at how very vulnerable they were, and then forced himself to turn away.
He didn't go quite so far this time, and he found the edge of a small clearing where he was pretty sure deer would come eventually. He hadn't brought his bow and arrow, and he knew his clothes would change with him, so it was all a matter of sitting down in the clearing, closing his eyes, gathering a great force of gift inside his heart, and thinking like a giant black and white predator. And because he knew it was coming, he had time to experience the change and think. The physical part wasn't painful as much as it was squirmy—his muscles seemed to be walking over his body in little troops of undisciplined insect ranks, and his bones were wiggling under his sinews like fish. What was most alarming was not the physical, it was the mental, and that part scared Torrant the most.
His body alone didn't become the cat's—his mind did as well. In a slow blurring of seeing the world in color to seeing it in a haze of gray and red, he lost his compassion for anything not his. Instinctively, he knew that Aldam and Yarri were his, but that didn't make his complete lack of empathy with any other creature in the snow-covered valley any less frightening. As his wide, padded paws began their soft pace on the snow, he curled his whiskers back from his nose and scented the air—rabbits … five, six, more … good. Deer … a little further away, back behind him on the snow trail of sparse trees, dug into the volcanic rock … and there … something that smelled like …
He whuffed air through his nose and licked it with the broad, pink, barbed tongue … eww. Mountain goats didn't smell any better than the domesticated kind, and as the snow cat they were even louder to his sensitive nose. And then he smelled …
His hackles went up. Oh, those were dangerous. Tasty, but dangerous—boars had razored tusks and solid bodies—they were damned near impossible to penetrate, even with claws and teeth, and Torrant was alarmed to find that smell was coming from behind him, like the goat, from the way he'd just come.
It's not like he'll go seeking them out, he tried to reassure himself, but it didn't work. His black and white ruff rose, and before he could even consider his course of action he was speeding back to camp in a graceful, full-out run.
Boars don't attack for no reason, he thought, and then, What if we stole his home? The hollow had been covered by brush—but it hadn't smelled animal. You didn’t check it out as the snow cat. Oh, Goddess, twin gods, all three together …
The smell of boar was getting stronger and stronger and they were just over that hill, past that stand of brush and …
The boar struck him from the side, tusks piercing his skin even as he was in full gallop and getting caught in his thick fur before ripping through his skin catching under his ribs, tossing him against the pile of rocks that marked the entrance of the cave with all of his momentum plus that of the boar.
Torrant didn't have time to be stunned. That monster was there in front of his family, and he would not let it get closer.
He came to his feet in an echoing merreowlll that shook some of the pebbles loose from the precipice above, and quicker than a greased piglet charged the rampaging boar. He vaulted up over the tusks first, knowing he was bleeding and not wanting to see his entrails ripped out on the snow behind him, and landed on the boar's haunch with his teeth extended, ripping down the flank and then diving away before his enemy could turn around and charge. He was a snow cat—he used that. He danced and batted and leapt and vaulted and ripped the vicious pig apart piece by piece, until finally, in a move that got his foreleg gored by the yellowing tusks, he ripped open the boar's jugular and left it, bleeding, on the snow. Before the animal's eyes had time to glaze over, Torrant turned towards the cave on a limp and staggered his way to his family.
Aldam had heard the fight, and he was sitting up, his back against the stone wall, with Yarri clutched to his chest. She was shivering, still unconscious with fever, and Aldam held his belt knife clumsily in front of her, as a last resort. He didn't look reassured at all to see the giant, bleeding snow cat that Torrant had become.
Torrant stopped on the far side of the camp fire and drew a methodic tongue over the wound in his wrist, and again and again until it stopped bleeding so much and Torrant learned that the taste of his own blood was much less pleasant than the taste of the boar's. In the meantime, he came up with a plan.
He was afraid to change immediately—Aldam was not strong and Yarri was sick and the complete change had taxed him to the point of unconsciousness when the other two needed him with all his faculties intact. The partial change, however … that had left him feeling strong and well, and although the snow cat's vision had still been his, and he'd probably looked strange and grotesque with his brownish human features covered by the white and black of the snow cat's thick fur, he'd been able to hold Yarri on his lap and talk to Aldam, and that was all that mattered. They needed him well and strong, and if he had to live the half-life as a snow cat, well then …
All he had to do was think that thought, and suddenly he was sitting on his bottom in the melting snow, his clothes damp and bloody from the fight. The wound at his wrist and the one in his side were partially closed and no longer bleeding at all, but the pain of them at the change left his vision black and his chest gasping for breath because he'd had no breath to scream. He briefly contemplated vomiting before his vision cleared a little and he got a handle on the pain that would always be changing while wounded.
Aldam relaxed his arm and breathed a sigh of relief, shifting the insensible Yarri in his arms. "I'm sorry," he said shakily. "I should have known."
"There was a boar," Torrant growled, trying to make his voice more human and failing. "I need to go dress him …"
"You were trying to hunt a boar?" Aldam asked, shocked.
"I was trying to hunt a deer!" Torrant retorted grouchily, "But since the boar is what's dead, I thought he'd be good for lunch."
They cooked and dried all parts of the boar into leathered toughness, all the better to chew for long stretches Aldam said gamely, but they both knew the most important part was the broth they made with the remnants and the tubers and herbs. When they were done, and the unused portions had been taken far away from camp for the scavengers, Aldam healed Yarri one more time, and even Torrant, who would do anything to help Yarri, could see that he couldn't do it again.
When the healing was over he sat, holding his pale face with the requisite aching head, in his hands, "The problem …" Aldam panted, his breath pluming in the evening twilight. "Is that she's not warm. She needs to get warm. Even when we're off the snow, we're so cold … so cold …" The temperature would drop even more tonight, making it hard to breathe for the cold when they emerged from the cave in the morning.
Torrant nodded, still seeing everything with the icy clarity of the snow cat. "Give her to me," he rumbled, and folded a now cool but still weak Yarri into his embrace. "Have we packed everything?” he asked, making sure he had Aldam's attention.
"Everything but tomorrow's broth and the sleep rolls," Aldam said, nodding wearily, hugging his knees for comfort and warmth.
Torrant shook his head once, decisively. "Don't be alarmed when I do this. The horses have gotten used to my smell by now, it should be all right." Yarri whimpered against him, burrowing deeper into his heat, and Torrant kissed the top of her head tenderly. She hadn't complained, she had hardly cried. Her only demand, every night, had been for a song, and no matter how hard the day, how sore their feet or lungs from breathing the thin air and picking over what felt like a river-bed of snow day after day, he had sung his heart out for her, just for her bravery and her willingness to try. He had to try this for her. He had to succeed. Without thinking about what he was doing, he pulled his tunic out of his pants with one hand, tucking her in next to his chest, her cold little hands flexing in the fine layer of his fur. He kissed the top of her head again, pressing his face against that hair of quiet flame. "Stay with me, Yar. We've gotten too far … stay with me …
"Torrant … I'm so cold …" Her voice was so raw it hurt him to hear.
"I'll keep you warm, baby," he whispered. Please Goddess … please … just let this work …
And then he changed.
And Yarri stayed with him, closely, under the fur.
It was a bizarre and frightening sensation at first, and Torrant was terrified that she couldn't breathe, but then he heard her voice, murmuring, "It's dark in here … but so warm …" And he relaxed a little and padded his way to Aldam, who was looking at the large snow cat with the burden under his fur with wide eyes. Carefully, so as not to lie on top of Yarri, he swung her to the side and stretched out next to Aldam. Aldam took the hint and covered himself with all the blankets on the bedroll and wrapped himself around Torrant, shivering against the fur until the warmth seeped into his bones.
"This is good," Aldam said dreamily, "But you can't do this forever, Torrant."
Torrant grumbled in his throat. He knew that—he was painfully aware that every moment he put off changing back into his regular form was a moment of exhaustion that would tax him to the limit when he finally did. They would rest tonight, he knew that, but the next few days would be a sprint across the rocky ground with Yarri under his skin and Aldam changing horses, hoping to reach sanctuary before their strength gave out and they were stuck, shivering in the snow, another story of lost travelers and bones for predators.
They would start at first light.
The morning that Torrant went hunting, he and Aldam had sat with the map they had of Eiran and the new map that had served them very well since Torrant had created it in the switchback cave. Together, they calculated that they had a week at the least, before they reached the city gates of Eiran.
"Five days to get to the edge of the pass." Torrant had said, tracing the line and figuring the distance based on what they'd already traveled. "And two days to get down the hill to the city gates."
At a flat out run, with Yarri nestled against Torrant's chest inside a closed pocket of fur, Torrant and Aldam made it in three days total.
Aldam learned to sleep in the saddle, holding himself up as Clover or Courtland heaved their way through the rapidly packing snow. Torrant kept pace on the top of the snow, whuffling for predators to keep himself awake. Twice he confronted another snow cat, but they were fat and happy with the winter-fat deer and they didn't bother him. Other than that, he was bigger than anything he could have met besides a bear, and the bears were all asleep. Wolves didn't eat people—they were creatures of the twin gods and everybody knew that to be true, so it was one worry off of Torrant's back.
It was probably the only one. The trees grew thicker as they neared north— the earth got softer, and therefore less difficult and more treacherous. Because his vision was so different as a snow cat than as a human, several times, Torrant had to shift forms in order to compare the landmarks around him to the map he had made in the switchback cave. Each time he shifted, Yarri grew weaker. He forced broth and water into her with every change, even when she shook her head no he fed her, because she seemed to become less substantial and more transparent with every passing minute. She burned with fever—was scorching and restless with it—but he couldn't expect Aldam to heal her and to keep up the pace they had set at the same time, especially because he had developed a barking cough and a flushed face of his own. Besides, a cold snap had settled in, and if the air had been frigid and lung-paralyzing before, it was like being burned alive by ice now. Torrant was afraid that even if they set half the trees on the mountainside to blaze, sitting down to camp would mean they would never wake up again, and so their painful sprint towards safety continued.
On the evening of the third day, they hit the descent trail, and the air became almost immediately warmer. Aldam, who had been lying almost insensible across Clover's back, revived enough to shudder and sigh; but Yarri, tucked inside Torrant's pocket of fur didn't even murmur. The trail itself was part of the older mountain—the Anvil before the eruption, and the dirt was softer, more worn and even, so that even as the snow melted, the hooves of the horses became muddy but more comfortable. Torrant could almost believe that they'd survived Hammer Pass in the beginning of a brutal winter.
As they wound their way down the sloping trail, sighting the town far below them at the mouth of an inland river as it flowed out to sea, it began to rain.
Gods, Torrant swore, and on a burst of fear (because the rain was hard and sodden and beginning to penetrate even his thick fur) he began to gallop down the hillside, Yarri jouncing painfully inside his skin. He'd made it about a half-a-league before the mud gave way under even his padded feet, and he began a four-footed skid down the mountain-side that he couldn't control, the ruff at his chest holding a bouncing Yarri. Terrified that she would hit a rock, he rolled over to his back to keep her on top of him, and howled his panic as he attempted to steer the skid near the side of the mountain and not over the side of the trail, losing chunks and tufts of fur and not a little bit of skin from his back as he went.
The long, desperate skate across mud and gravel and rain came at last to a rest at the foot of the mountain, and Torrant was picking himself up from an almost weepy daze and planning to shift forms to check on Yarri when he heard her, inside his skin, singing whee, whee, swinging from a tree, which of my friends is gonna push me … Even as he stumbled a little to four feet and shook his head, sending droplets of mud into the pounding rain, he gave a feline grin of relief. She was fine—thank the Goddess she was fine. She'd even had fun.
He had just a second to get his bearings before he heard a frantic shout of "Look ouuuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttt…." And then he had less than a heartbeat to bound off the trail, as Aldam, perched on one of the horse blankets that they'd used as a bedroll, came sailing down the trail after him, skidding to a dizzy halt in almost the same place Torrant had.
Torrant was so surprised he sat down on his haunches, his wide cat-blue eyes and stunned expression asking every sort of outraged question that his grumbling animal voice could not.
Aldam giggled weakly at Torrant as he too stumbled to his feet, exhausted, sick, and dizzy from the helter-skelter ride down the mountain, and answered Torrant's exasperated look with his usual serenity.
"Well, I'm not going to live much longer than Yarri if we don't find shelter," he said reasonably, before breaking into the cough that had plagued him for the last two days. Anye, who had been inside his shirt the whole time, and who had, from the looks of things, scratched him up pretty badly during their mad skid in the mud, mreowled grumpily from under his chin, and Aldam petted her in reassurance, while coughing fiercely. Eventually he recovered, and made a concerted effort to haul his shivering, feverish body upright. "Besides. I don't like being left alone."
Torrant gave a very human snort and looked pointedly up the mountain to where, he hoped, the horses were still walking slowly down the slope, like the sane creatures he and Aldam apparently weren't.
"They'll find their way," Aldam told him. "Now look—the town's another mile—two at the most. Let's get there before the gatekeeper retires, and we just may live." They started walking again, Torrant padding wearily and Aldam stumbling alongside him, and before their rhythm settled to the plodding, stumbling momentum they finally adopted, Torrant could clearly remember Aldam saying, "What is that pounding fuzzy sound?" But Torrant had no answer.
Torrant had thought carrying the horse-trader's body would be the longest walk he'd ever have to make. But the horse-trader had been dead already, and the only other person at risk had been himself. Tonight, Yarri was shivering and coughing inside of him, and Aldam was leaning more and more of his body weight on Torrant's broad, thickly furred shoulders, and the rain, the cursed, blighted sleeting rain would not hardly ease up enough to see the lantern lights from the wooden wall of what he'd come to think longingly as 'sanctuary'.
It was getting farther with every step, Torrant thought in despair, sure that Yarri's last breath was weaker than the one before it. That was when he realized that, to his cat's vision, his depth perception was thrown off by the rain and the light in the darkness. It was not growing father away, as he feared, it was just getting more defined. Step by bleary, fear-wrought step the light became more and more a singular object: a glass covered lantern, in a plain cut window of a log barracks, instead of just the vague and hopeful yellow light.
When they were near enough to see what it was, Torrant paused behind the nearest tree—a thick-boled redwood, one of the many that covered this misty, soft and kind side of the Anvil, and changed from a hulking, confident predator into a boy, holding the child he loved more than his own life.
With every shift he'd made over the last three, grueling days, Torrant had gotten better and better at drawing that line between his feral self and his human self—and now, in an effort to not collapse from complete exhaustion, and, he was sure, lurking illness just waiting for his human form, he held on to the true difference between the two states of being: the eyes.
Torrant Shadow, who looked so much like Ellyot Moon that they could be brothers, possessed dark hazel eyes.
The snow cat, the Goddess' chosen form for Torrant, had eyes of snow-melt blue.
To Jerin, the guard who answered Torrant's frantic knock against the town's gate, they appeared to glow silver in the night, like a cat's for just a moment. However, when he opened the gate to let in the two mud-covered young men— the taller one leaning heavily on the shorter, stockier, younger one—and their small, sick, fragile burden, the shadows covered those eyes, and the guard forgot about the moment.
He was shocked anyway—gate detail this time of year was usually an excuse to get drunk and play cards. Otherwise, why else throw away a perfectly good city-state militia-man on a job that would see no action? The boredom was often enough to send the men begging for mail duty as it was. Since things in Clough had become strange and unfathomable, there had been less and less need for that, even. They hadn't had a traveler come down from Clough through Hammer Pass after late summer in nearly three years—in fact, there were rumors that the trail was cursed, because every year families came down the hill in the late spring, asking about kin and friends who had left in early fall, and no one had seen nor heard a single whisper of them. Jerin was shocked enough to see Torrant and Aldam that he forget to even ask them their names or their business on this gods-sodden stinking late fall night.
Torrant didn't give him a chance to speak anyway. "Someplace warm," he gasped. "The little girl … she needs warmth … and to be dry … we can heal her, if we can get her warm and dry …"
"Oh gods, she's burning up …" Jerin murmured, catching Torrant's weary panic. "Here … we've got a bunk room that's warm, you can lay her there … I've got some juice and some water …" He hustled them into the bunkhouse, a warm, log walled room with thick and mismatched rugs strewn on the floor and ten double-rows of bunk-beds for the spring, when the guards slept in shifts. There they stripped Yarri down to her undershift and wrapped her in blanket after blanket, trickling some sweet juice into her mouth until she swallowed and swallowed again.
When she was situated on a couch nearest the fire, Jerin turned towards an obviously exhausted Torrant, who was helping Aldam sit down at Yarri's feet and giving him some mulled cider to drink, and asked the naked question: "What in the three hells are you people doing, coming off the Hammer this time of year?"
"I …" Torrant walked forward and he exchanged glances with Aldam over Yarri's shivering body on the divan. Nobody came into Clough with stories of mercy for the Goddess's children. "We're …" He looked at Yarri, weak with fever, terrified, alone, and at Aldam, so blindly tired he couldn't see past the mug of cider. He was all they had. "We're kin of the Moons of Eiran—you know them?” he asked hesitantly, and Jerin sucked in a breath.
"Lane Moon owns the most prosperous warehouse in the city!” he said, surprised. "You're kin?"
"Cousins," Torrant said, swallowing the lie over a throat that was suddenly coated in broken glass. He could feel his grip on the snow cat weakening, and the illness and exhaustion that the snow cat had staved off, closing in. He had to make sure Yarri was safe. "I'm Ellyot Moon," he lied with his eyes closed. "That's my sister, Yarri." He opened his eyes then, felt the last of the snow cat's strength and resolve and magic fall away, and his vision was assaulted with the reality of fear, anxiety, and desolation. The room which had seemed bright with heat and safety was now clouded with shadows, with enemies that could close in on them, soldiers that could march and rough men who could rip away innocence and … "Our family is dead," he said rationally.
Then he collapsed on the floor, unconscious, exhausted, and raging with a killing fever for the second time in less than a month.

Part II
The Haven Moon

Not Quite Home

Aldam was too exhausted to heal either of them, and it fretted him. He sat dazedly on the couch as young Jerin the guard simply put a pillow under Torrant's head. (Ellyot's head, Aldam thought wretchedly—he'd said his name was Ellyot. It was a hard thing to remember, because it seemed even an ungifted person could sense the wrongness of the dead brother's name on the live Torrant's shoulders, like a child's shirt on a man's body.)
"He'll be cold," Aldam said quietly, trying to make sense, to take charge, to take care of his people. Torrant had done that. Torrant had seen that Aldam was tired and had laid him next to Yarri and said sleep. He had warmed the food most nights, cutting down the dried meat to soak in the broth when they had been too tired to chew. He had read the map, and told them how to pack the horses and had said when they could rest. Usually he had told them they should rest, watching Aldam and Yarri like a papa hawk, to make sure they kept their strength up. Torrant had held them together, even when he'd been a snow cat, padding patrol next to the horses and facing down predators Aldam had barely seen.
"He'll be cold," Aldam said again, feeling his eyes blur with unhappy tears. His brother had worn the snow cat's form until his human self was almost dead with exhaustion—he would miss his warm fur coat.
"I know," Jerin told him gently, covering a shivering Torrant with blankets snagged from two different beds and rolling him onto blankets from a third. "I'll take care of him. I'm going to run get a healer, right? And find the Moons—they should know their family …" His voice faltered, and he looked at Aldam, hoping for some comfort when he hadn't known there would be a wound. "The Moons visited here every five years or so—I played with Tal and Qir myself, one summer, before the girl was born, when Ellyot here was just a baby. We've written since … are they really dead?" He blinked, hard, knowing he was young and unused to tragedy, but finding it hard to believe that that whole happy family had been so easily negated from existence.
"Yes," Aldam said simply, believing it because Torrant had said it was true. "Yes. T … Ellyot and Yarri are all that's left."
"But … the whole Moon holding—there must have been thirty or so workers and such there—are you all that's left?"
Aldam squinted unhappy eyes at the guard, and for the first time he realized truly what had prompted Torrant to lie. So hard to explain, so worrisome, to wonder if the world would hate you for what you didn't understand yourself. "Yes," he said again quietly, patting Yarri's knee for reassurance, "We are all that's left."
Jerin swallowed tightly, then nodded once, as though making sure the thought would stick in his head, and without another word left to go find the Eiran Moons and a healer.
Aldam watched him go with worried eyes, reaching under his hood to pull his wizard's lock in front of his eyes. He squinted at it, cross-eyed, for a moment, deciding after all that it was still colored from his aunt's quick treatment before he left. It was hard to see anyway, because his own hair was so fine and blonde that the silver of the wizard's lock just blended right in. But Torrant's hair … Torrant's hair was a plain mud brown. Even as his silver streak had begun to emerge when he was recovering at the inn, it had glinted with brilliance against that rich, earth colored hair.
He hated lying, but tucked into his cloak pocket was a packet of the color his aunt had given him to put in Torrant's hair right before they arrived at Eiran. Torrant had been the snow cat then, and Aldam had forgotten, but now, as Torrant lay, shivering with fever, he seemed to Aldam as defenseless as a white rabbit in the desert with that naked streak of silver glinting from under his hood.
With shaking hands and bleary eyes, Aldam wet the dye powder with the water dripping from his cloak and smoothed it along Torrant's hair, working it into the roots, then using his cloak to wipe up the excess. Torrant's skin was so hot, it seemed almost like an assault to put such cold water on it, but Aldam persevered, hoping he would be strong enough to heal his new brother the next day. When he was done he spread his mud-sodden cloak next to the fire's hearth to let it dry, and heaved himself back up to his place by Yarri's feet. Anye, who had been hiding inside Aldam's shirt, squirreled out at that point, and curled up in the hollow of Yarri's neck, purring with more comfort than Aldam had in his whole body.
He sat and dozed after that, soaking in the warmth and the sweetness of the cider as well as the numbing effect it had on his sore throat, and the comfort that was sanctuary after a long flight. He was not prepared for the flurry of people who suddenly descended into the barracks room, making what had felt like a vast, impersonal rack of double-layered sleep cots into a suffocating cage of strangers, and they all wanted to talk to Aldam.
They were all killed? By whom? Did anyone follow you? How did you escape? There were people—so many people. A large, self-important constable, a militia captain, the young, stunned looking mayor—all of them, all of them, gathering around him, asking questions, until Aldam found himself near weeping. He wanted his mother, or his aunt Stella, or even the sanctuary of his small room down the road from the inn, and Torrant, who needed him, was shivering with fever, and he had always been just as his mother had called him: simple. Too simple for all of this noise.
"How did you get down here from the Hammer?" The mayor was asking him again, and he wrapped his arms around himself and murmured, "I don't know I don't know I don't know …"
"STOP!!!" Torrant yelled, standing suddenly in a flurry of weighty blankets and calling the loudness to a halt. "Leave him alone! I'll answer any questions you want, but leave Aldam alone … he didn't do anything … he just …" Torrant's eyes blazed for a moment, not quite snow-cat blue, but for what it took to get him to his feet it appeared, to Aldam at least, as though he'd been fighting to channel his gift for the strength to protect his brother. But he was at the end of that strength, and the blaze faded, and suddenly a man stepped forward with a trimmed gray-shot beard and merry blue eyes, and a face that said he'd had a good life but a working one. This new man took Torrant around the shoulders and around the waist and, when Torrant's knees buckled beneath him, he lay him down easily on the mat of blankets he'd sprung up from.
"Leave them alone," the man said softly. "Let's get them warm and dry and well, and they can answer our questions then."
"But Lane …" The mayor began, "They told the guard at the gate that your family is …"
"Dead," Lane Moon replied grimly. "Do you think I didn't hear?" He pulled something out from under his own cloak—a rich leather and green colored felt affair, Aldam noted, but well used. "See this?" He unrolled what looked like an oil-painting and showed the odd assembly in the guardsmen's barracks. It showed … a family. Four boys, two around eleven or twelve—right before their hands and feet began to grow bigger in proportion to every other part of their body, and two around fourteen. The boys were grouped around three adults—a middle-aged man with a brown beard and brown hair, both shot with silver, who had blue eyes as well, and looked enough like Lane Moon to obviously be his brother. There was a slightly built woman next to him, with fair brown hair and brown eyes and a shy gentleness that peeked through even the oil on the canvas. Next to the woman was another woman, about the same age, with lush brown hair, with a rich silver streak at her temple and blue-hazel eyes. Held between the two women was a toddler of about three, with sober brown eyes, a halo of unruly hair the color of yellow-orange flame and reluctantly wearing a dress-with an oversized pair of breeches peeping out from under the skirt.
"This is my brother and his family, gentleman. That little girl there," he pointed to Yarri, "is obviously the infant in this portrait." He pulled back Torrant's hood, exposing what Aldam knew had been a wound just weeks before. "The boy here has a divot in his ear, just like all the boys in the picture, and although his eyes are closed, he's a close enough match to the boys in this picture to be Ellyot Moon."
But, Aldam wanted to say, the boy with the divot in his ear was slender and laughing and not our solid, dependable Torrant. Can't you see that? Can't you see it and spare us the deception? Can't you just take us in and care for us because we are dispossessed?
"Now I don't know who this boy is, but he's sick and exhausted, and my nephew just used up all his strength to defend him. Can't we just give him succor and let him be?" Lane Moon looked away then, and dashed away tears with the back of his hand. "My brother and his wife—they took in all the Goddess' children they could. They were good people. I don't care who this young man is, I'd take him in just for their sakes, just because he's alone."
And then Aldam started to weep for real.

Kin

Lane got up and held Aldam, calming his racking sobs until he fell asleep, and then turned to face the rest of the town-council, who, as though to acknowledge their bad behavior, had backed up and remained quiet until Aldam lay curled up, his head on the arm of the divan and his arm wrapped around a pillow.
"We'll wait until they're all healed before we ask them any more questions," he said at last, his deep voice quiet. "My wife will be here within the hour …"
"On a night like this?" The mayor broke through, sounding incredulous.
"You tell her she's too pregnant to care for our family," Lane returned dryly. The town elders all looked at each other and shook their heads, and Lane nodded, not without some wry humor. "I suspected as much. She'll be here to care for them, and I'm sure she'll bring one of the older ones to help. If we could enlist young Jerin, that would be a blessing." The constable, who doubled as the captain of the militia, nodded. They all knew it wasn't as though Jerin had anything to do anyway—nobody was coming down Hammer Pass this time of year.
"Good." Lane continued, accepting their nods as acquiescence. It was funny—Lane rarely lost his temper (unless he was at home and the kids had left something on the floor, but they knew it was all bluster and ignored him) but few people ever got in his way. He had a reputation as a reasonable man—and the only person who didn't think he was quiet was his wife, who insisted that he said more sense in a single sentence than she often heard all day. As it was now, there wasn't a man in the room who could think of any reason that what Lane said wasn't good advice.
The quiet was interrupted by a sudden gallop and a whinny from the mountain side of the barracks, and then Jerin skidded into the hall, looking bemused.
"There's three horses outside,” he said, sounding shocked. "A sweet old mare, a monster of a stallion, and a child's pony … they look like they've been through three hells and they seem to know someone here."
"Horses?" Lane said, as though in a dream. "A stallion …" Suddenly he turned white, and none of the men in the room had to say what he was thinking. The children could have lied—Lane Moon would never gainsay them, not when they needed tending, but it could have been untrue, all of it. But the horses … if those were Moon horses, then this was, indeed, the last of the Moon family. Lane steadied himself, and reached out to pat Torrant's insensible shoulder. "Good lad," he said quietly. "If that's Courtland out there in the dark, then you've saved your father's legacy—and you and your sister will have enough to live on until you're old and gray." He looked up at Jerin and pulled a smile up, probably from the same place in his toes that Torrant had pulled songs from for the entire painful journey. "Lead me to them, young man. I need to see what my brother has left."
So Lane was the one to come out the horses and to go through the saddle-bags. He found the oil miniatures of his kind brother and his gentle sister-in-law, and others of the rest of the family. He found the wedding necklaces and Yarri's combs and the coins wrapped up in a bulging coin bag, as well as the few gold coins and the food wallets that Aldam's mother and aunt had thrown in. He found everything that had been packed, and didn't find the one thing he was looking for.
Holding Yarri's dowry in his hands, he twisted his face and tried to keep the tears from falling. He had the feeling he could search the horses until he knew what their sires had eaten for breakfast the day they were conceived, but he'd never, ever know the reason for his brother's death.

Bethen Moon was a formidable woman. In height she was a scant inch or two smaller than her husband, but even when she wasn't pregnant she outweighed him by an amount she only disclosed when she'd tasted a little too much wine. When she was pregnant, she was a vast, ponderous hurricane force of pure female will, and the entire township knew to get out of the way as she lumbered by, swearing at her own ungainly body as she did so. On this night, her second oldest accompanied her, a plump, pretty girl with hair the same color as Yarri's and eyes that were her mother's deep brown. At eleven years old, Roes was nearly as tart tongued as her mother, and that intimidating force of will could be seen in her focused trot at her mother's side.
"Oy, Bethen!" The constable greeted as she blasted into the barracks in a torrent of sleet and wind, Roes at her side. "Where's Stanny tonight?" Her oldest boy was not yet fourteen and he'd already passed his father in height. He was a big-limbed, handsome young man with a slow, sweet smile and a heart that made up in greatness what his tongue lacked in sharpness. The constable wanted to recruit the boy for their annual ball-game scrimmage in the spring, and Bethen had been keeping Stanny firmly out of the recruitment process.
"Stanny's at home, tending his little brother and he's not playing for you," Bethen replied cheerfully, doffing her own felt and leather cloak. It was too small for her at this stage of her pregnancy, and her violet cotton dress was dark around her stomach, where the rain had, of course, hit first. "Boys get hurt in that game—Stanny doesn't move fast enough for your kind of play. Now point me to those children, Donis—I understand they're sick."
The constable shook his head and led Bethen down the halls to the empty barracks. "They're at death's door, Bethen," he said lowly, casting a surreptitious look at Roes to see if she was listening. She raised a sardonic eleven-year-old eyebrow at him to indicate that she knew what he was saying and she knew what it all meant and he might as well get on with it. He sighed and turned back to her mother. "All three of them are feverish and sick. We can't move them to separate rooms or even separate beds—every time we try, they get all restless. They keep crying out for someone named 'Torrant'. Except Ellyot—he keeps asking for Yarri."
"'Torrant'?" Bethen asked sharply, looking around the room for Lane. They had married nearly twenty years before, and spread their children out by chance and not by choice. Lane would know what Bethen was thinking almost before it crossed her mind.
"Do you know who that would be?" Donis asked, surprised.
"We might," Bethen said serenely, then she lumbered over to the pallet of blankets that held the three sleepers, stopping first at Yarri, who lay between the two young men, and who was coughing and weeping at the same time. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a bottle of syrup her mother had taught her to make and deftly dumped it down the girl's throat.
"Torrant?" she murmured weakly.
"Ssshhhh …" murmured Bethen, stroking the girl's hair back from her head. Gently, with a grim look at Donis who was staying as far back as possible and holding a kerchief over his mouth, she rolled Yarri to her side so she was facing the boy who looked liked Ellyot. Nestled in the crook of his shoulder was a calico cat, purring anxiously and kneading the place behind his ears with claws sheathed. Bethen raised her eyebrows at the cat and pat Yarri's back to loosen the phlegm and to give the move a reason. "There, girl," she whispered. "He's right here." And Yarri quieted in her arms.
Lane walked in, then, his hands full of lockets and wedding necklaces, and met his wife's eyes, his own swollen with grief. He looked down at Yarri, and then cast a sideways, warning look at the constable. Bethen rolled her eyes in that direction, and then nodded.
"Donis," she said brusquely, "You've been a help on this blustery night, but Lane and I will be here for a bit—I'd appreciate it if you looked in on Stanny and Cwyn, if that's fine. No recruiting, now Donis, just tell Stanny I'll be a while."
The constable made as though to protest—after all, these three strangers, no matter how young and inoffensive they looked, were the most excitement Eiran had experienced since the graduating class of Triannon had stayed at the Chestnut Inn before setting off to sea from the port. They'd gotten drunk the first day, stayed that way, and damned near burned down the Chestnut before the constable and his militia had thrown every last horse's arse of them on board their schooner, and let the captain deal with them. But, excitement or no, Bethen had a certain look of steel about her wide, freckled face, and it was too windy and too cold a night to get thrown out into it without ceremony.
"Let me know when they're better," he said after a moment. "I'd like to talk to them."
"When they're better," she stated flatly, and then smiled with all the charm that had won her husband's heart—against his will, as the town legend went— and turned her back on the constable in dismissal. The man cleared his throat and left.
As soon as he was gone, Bethen gave the bottle of syrup to Roes and told her to dose the two young men, and stood up and moved to a corner of the room where she and Lane could talk—in spite of Roes' sharp ears.
"I know," he murmured. "If you look close you can see the dye in his hair—it looks like it was put in tonight."
"But the girl …"
"Is Yarri," his voice cracked. "He gathered the wedding necklaces as they fled—all of it for her." He didn't tell her that Moon's was flecked with blood. "If he took a locket for himself, it's in his own pocket."
"Why would he …"
"Look at them, Bethie—they've been through hell—even the cat, bless them all. I don't know if he'd remember me, the few times I was there—he spent most of his time improving his horsemanship to impress Owen, and we all know that's not where I spend my days. I don't think he knows who to trust." Lane tapped a long ago memory, when he'd last seen Torrant and Ellyot—they'd been about nine, and Yarri had just been learning to walk. Torrant hadn't left the infant's side. Let's go see Courtland, Torrant, he's running now—my father says he's the best horse he's ever seen. And then, those sober, hazel eyes, looking up from Yarri's every move with the affection of a brother. No … Ellyot, Arel's too busy to watch her—we have to take care of her. Ellyot had huffed off to the corral, and Torrant had been so busy waving toys to watch Yarri walk towards them, that he had hardly noticed.
"He would have done this for Yarri," Lane said at last, feeling the memory ebb from behind his eyes. "I think he helped his mother birth her, and I don't think they've been far from each other since. He wouldn't have wanted to be parted from her."
Bethen nodded. "Well then, we'll let him keep his secret 'til he's ready to tell us," she said brusquely. A sudden thought, then, and a half smile. "Does he know his father delivered Stanny?” she asked, bemused.
Lane looked surprised, because he had almost forgotten. Myrla Shadow had been as big with Torrant as Bethie was now with their fourth, but she'd come to her husband's aid just as surely as Bethie had come to his. "I don't know …” he said, remembering their first visit to his brother's hold, and Bethie's stubborn insistence that they keep their promise to come even though they hadn't known how far along she was when they planned the trip. Torrian Shadow had been a goddess-send then—and when Stanny had come out blue and still, and any other mid-wife would have turned away in grief, he had earned Lane and Bethie's eternal gratitude by rubbing life into the still limbs and blowing a starting breath into the little chest, and Owen Moon had been as proud of Stanny as he had been of Tal and Qir and the tiny Ellyot.
"Torrian and Myrla helped with all the children," Lane said, his voice rasping, "And after Torrian died, Myrla kept on—she delivered Yarri …"
His voice threatened to break and Bethen put her hand to her husband's cheek. "I'm sorry, beloved," she murmured. "I'm sorry about your family … I'm so sorry."
Lane kept his jaw stoic, and for his sake, Bethen ignored the red eyes. "Owen made provisions for the boy, and if he hadn't, I would have. When he's better, we'll talk to him."
"Let's get them better, first, shall we?"
"Please," he said beseechingly, and she looked again at the little girl with the piquant features and fragile hold on this life: she was his brother's last memory.
She hugged her husband then, turning her body sideways so her belly didn't get in the way, and he laughed a little, as he always did when she was this big with child, but hugged her back, and they stood that way, unembarrassed in front of their daughter, until Bethen had to shift to ease her back, and a rack of coughing from the pallet called her attention.
"Did you give them that syrup, Roes?” she asked briskly, and went to do what she did best.

Torrant heard Yarri laughing first. It wasn't her usual laughter—it was subdued, and it sounded like she had been sick, but it still warmed his heart to hear it. He couldn't remember why, but it seemed like too long since he'd heard Yarri laugh.
He shifted a little in his bedding and groaned. Ellyot, what'd we do yesterday? I'm all sore! He thought, and as though summoning his brother's name in his head was a talisman, he suddenly remembered.
He was Ellyot. He had to tell Yarri that, until they knew she was safe, he was Ellyot.
"I never played with dolls at home!" Yarri was saying, with enthusiasm. "But I like this one … you made it? All by yourself?"
"Oh yes—you're too young to make one, but when you're ten, I'll show you how, like my mama showed me, and you can make one for the new baby." The new voice was young and officious—bossy in the way only a pre-adolescent girl could be, and Torrant had to smile. Yarri was not the queen bee here. Good—she would grow up to be a better person without all that spoiling. Then he remembered why she wouldn't be spoiled anymore—it slapped him in the face with its coldness, and it was all he could do not to weep into his pillow. Oh, Goddess … they were alive. Now what?
Suddenly a little body whumped against the side of the bed and tumbled over the back of his legs and over his body, landing face up, startling Anye the cat, who had been camped out on his stomach. Anye yowled, and then skittered off to the fireplace, leaving Torrant to wonder what hit him. When he got his bearings, he saw a little face that appeared to be all dimples, teeth, and big brown eyes "Ellit." He squealed. "Ellit Ellit … Ellit git up!"
"Sure," Torrant rasped, aware that his body felt thick and hollow and his skin felt fragile, but none of this was enough to prevent a smile back at those dimples. "No problem. Gitting up."
"Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" The little boy scrambled over the bed to his feet and tore out of Torrant's line of vision. "Ellit! Ellit! Ellit wake up!!!"
"What are you saying, Cwyn?” said the young woman's voice. "Gods, could you calm down?" And suddenly Yarri's voice, "Tor … oh, Aldam, wait … he's up." And Torrant felt bad because the glee that had started out in his name had gotten all knotted up as she'd realized that he was calling himself Ellyot for now. Aldam must have awakened first, he thought dizzily. How could Yarri and Aldam have woken up before him, when he was the one who had carried them into the barracks in the first place?
"Your gift," Aldam said softly, appearing over him suddenly. He was in a bunk bed, he realized, and Aldam was sitting on the side of it, holding him up and propping him with pillows. Suddenly he spoke loudly, as though hailing someone. "Bethen, here—he's awake." He looked at Torrant and lowered his voice. "The only thing keeping you going was your …" his eyes darted, "your gift. You were getting sick as the cat, but you couldn't feel it … as soon as he slipped away …"
"You almost died," Yarri accused, clambering up on the bed next to him without ceremony. "You can't do that anymore, T … Ellyot." And she glared at him, her piquant little angel's face both mutinous and pale. Torrant lifted his hand to her wan little cheek and felt better about things. He smiled into her big brown eyes and sighing, relaxed a little for the first time since he'd awakened in the almost-familiar barracks room.
"You're better," he murmured. "And you, Aldam. I'm so …" He was going to cry. "I'm glad," he finished stoically, making his face grim and grown up. He had to meet Yarri's uncle and aunt, although he seemed to recall that Lane Moon had been by the Moon holding a long time ago. However, since the little boy had called him Ellyot he was hoping to maintain the fiction that he was Ellyot, for just a little longer. Long enough to get better, to find a place working in Eiran so he could be by Yarri, could watch her grow up …
"You're looking too grim for someone who's just woken up," said a pleasant voice. Aldam looked up and smiled, one of those heart-deep smiles that had made it seem as though the sun was always shining on their journey, and Torrant closed his eyes in relief. Whoever this was, Aldam liked her, and that meant that maybe, just maybe, Yarri was safe.
Torrant didn't know how to answer that, so he was grateful that the little maniac with the dimples returned, running full force with a plump, pretty girl flying at his heels.
"Keeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwwiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnn!” she wailed, grabbing the toddler by the middle and hauling him squealing away from the bed. "I'm sorry he's bothering you, cousin Ellyot," she said on a note of exasperation. "You've been sick a long time and Cwyn's getting sick of the barracks. He's got toys at home."
"How long have I been asleep?” he asked, thinking that was as good an opening as any. Behind him was a window and he found he was trying to crane his neck to see if the seasons had changed when he was gone.
"A little less than a week," said the woman's voice, and suddenly she was sitting next to him in a swirl of cinnamon and roses and a halo of fuzzy, graying, reddish brownish hair. "And you scared us thoroughly, too. It's a good thing your friend here can heal—and that he was nowhere near as ill as you were when you dragged him down that mountain."
"Aldam … healed me?" Torrant asked cautiously, shooting a dark look at Aldam. That had been dangerous.
"We don't pay much mind to the differences between the gods' and the Goddess' here," the woman said carefully. Torrant looked at her, his eyes saying everything he wouldn't, and the woman wiped his sweaty hair back from his face with a cool washcloth. "You wouldn't know me—I'm Lane Moon's wife, Bethen. Owen was planning to bring you all over the mountains to see us."
Torrant let out a little sigh of relief, but was still not up to clearing the initial deception. Besides, he thought, feeling wretched, the girl had called him 'cousin Ellyot'—and he didn't want to hurt them anymore than they had already been hurt, not now. Not when the death of their family was so raw, and he and Yarri were all they thought they had left.
"We couldn't have made it through the mountains without Aldam," Torrant said, when his brain was too full with everything else to stay silent.
"That's not true," Aldam contradicted without heat. "And no one should believe it." Suddenly Torrant's mouth was being filled with a broth, and he didn't have to say anything. He was grateful, but Aldam wasn't through yet. "And do you know what that pounding is?"
Torrant shook his head, but even through the chaos of the family around him, through the muzziness of his head, he could hear it, it sounded like blood pounding in the ears of a giant, like the liquid heartbeat of the world.
"That's the sea," Aldam murmured reverently. "You need to see it—it's like the mountains, only in water."
From Aldam, this made sense, but the idea of mountains of water was too immense to even contemplate, so when Yarri climbed up into his arms wearing a boy's trousers and a girl's ruffled yellow shirt, he clutched her to his chest and was grateful of the distraction. Bethen kept feeding, and spoonful after spoonful of broth followed, along with Yarri's grateful, almost cheery voice, telling him about her new cousins, Stanny and Roes and little Cwyn who liked to jump on her when she was asleep, and how Bethen was going to have another baby soon and Yarri would never be the only girl again.
The broth went away long enough for Torrant to mumble, "Yes, but I bet these girls wear dresses, Yarri," before he swallowed the last mouthful and fell into a deep, healing sleep.

Lane had been kept from the sickroom for most of the week—refugees had been coming over the hill in droves since the stormy night Yarri and her protectors had arrived, and as one of the town council he'd been emptying out an old warehouse to hold them, and drumming up either work and housing, or a passage for them on one of the outgoing ships. However, he did manage to check in on the sickroom while Torrant was sleeping, and Bethen put the children in Aldam's surprisingly capable hands and went outside to talk.
"He was awake? Good." Lane had been more than worried, especially as Aldam's disjointed account (and yet so simply put—Aldam's biggest mystery was how he could lie just by leaving out big chunks of time!) had unfolded. A false map left for refugees? Snow cats that mysteriously left the three of them alone? The boy had killed a boar single handedly?
And yet … Lane had pulled the true map from Torrant's pocket, and it was beautiful, and, according to the surprising number of refugees who had followed them down the mountain, it was extremely accurate. Also, according to the refugees, there was an exact copy of the same map engraved and finished on the floor of the last switchback cave. No one knew where it had come from, but suddenly there were travelers over the Anvil when there was snow, where there had been none before. The thought of all of the innocent souls lost to that first scratching on a cave floor was enough to make Lane weep.
And yet … Yarri hadn't left Torrant's side since she'd awakened. More than once she had laid her head on his chest, saying his heartbeat made her sleep, just like a mother's heartbeat would soothe a fussy newborn.
And yet … Torrant had been the one to haul Yarri and Aldam to the barracks—the guardsman had not changed his story about that, not once, in spite of all evidence pointing to the fact that Torrant had been nearly too ill to breathe, even as he'd carried the little girl in his arms.
So many questions, and neither Yarri nor Aldam were talking, and to make matters more complicated, the refugees coming down the hill were saying that the Goddess' own folk had turned against the Moons. This rumor had been the thing that had earned the Moon's and their guests their own portion of the barracks, because the first time Yarri had heard it, barely out of her own bed to relieve herself, she had gotten into a fight with a boy almost twice her size trying to make him take it back.
To no one's surprise but the startled boy's, she had been winning that fight too.
"Did he say anything?" Lane asked his wife now, hoping for answers, hoping for some clearance so he could take Yarri and Torrant and Aldam to his home. (How could they not take in Aldam? How could anybody with a heart and a mind and sense of wonder turn Aldam away?)
"He asked to make sure Yarri was safe, and he said Aldam was the one who got them down the mountain." Bethen laughed a little and put her hand at the small of her back. "Aldam said it was a lie, and I stuffed soup in the boy's mouth before he had to answer. He almost got angry that Aldam healed him."
She frowned then, pursing her lips fiercely, shaking her head. "I think it's worse in Clough than anybody has known. Whatever happened at your brother's farm … Owen was getting ready to leave so he wouldn't get arrested, or have his lands taken away—those boys are afraid to show who they are. Aldam waited until Roes was asleep before he tried his healing bit. I saw him do it—it put him back another three days of healing himself."
"The gift does that," Lane told her, a pucker between his eyebrows. "When Owen wrote me about the boy, he told me that when Torrant was using his gift, he was fine, but afterwards, he needed a couple of hours to sleep it off."
Bethen blinked. "That's how he did it," she said, suddenly sure.
"What?"
"That's how he got them over the pass." Bethen shook her head, the motion causing her whole body to wobble, her stomach almost overbalancing the rest of her. "I don't know how he used it … what he did … but how else does a fourteen-year-old boy have a map no one else does and get two other children …"
"Aldam's nearly of age …"
"They're children, all of them … and that's how Torrant got them over. Yarri didn't die of fever because Aldam healed her, every night, until he couldn't anymore. Whatever Torrant did … he kept them safe. Aldam was covered in mud when he got here—he said, and I quote, 'We slid down the trail, and the horses followed on their own.' Yarri and Torrant didn't have any mud on them—in fact, Yarri was hardly wet. I don't know what he did—my people are peasants, we don't do money or gifts—you know that—but he used his to save their lives."
"He'd tell us!" Lane protested.
"You're not listening to the refugees," Bethen corrected. "They're all Goddess' children, Lane—in one way or another. Rath's made a law making it illegal for them to make a living, or to live as they please. I don't know how much those children know …"
"Owen didn't let politics into his hold," Lane said, bitterness creeping into his voice.
"He may not have let them talk about it, but his entire hold was a political statement—you know that as well as I do. If Rath was persecuting Goddess' children, then a hold that openly welcomed them was practically an enemy country … I'm not saying it was wrong!" because her husband was looking to protest, "I'm just saying that the refugees are talking that some rogue Goddess' children are responsible for the 'Moon Massacre'—I think that's a rumor and Rath started it, and those children know who killed their family, and it was the people in charge."
Lane swallowed, feeling suddenly nauseous. "I'd thought it was a rogue group of bandits, or of Twin-fanatics … I wouldn't think it was … Owen said it was getting dangerous … I thought he meant the climate, not …" A wave of darkness passed over his vision and only his wife's hand in his own kept him standing. "Oh, Bethie—do you think they were killed by their own king?"
"I'd lay money on it," she said grimly. "And I think it's dangerous for Torrant to keep Ellyot's name."
"But Yarri …"
"Rath doesn't care about girls," Bethen cut him off. "People like him—to demonize the Goddess is to demonize women in general—he won't believe she's a threat, and rumors that she's alive aren't going to touch him. But Ellyot … Ellyot is a young man who's capable of taking vengeance …" Her voice got thick and angry. "The longer Torrant keeps that name, the more danger he's in."
Lane swore bitterly, and at length, and eventually realized that a small smile had quirked at his wife's lips. "What?” he asked, still angry.
"Just making sure Cwyn isn't around to pick any of that up and broadcast it about the barracks," she said blandly, and to her relief saw her husband smile back at her, just a little, before his expression gentled.
"Rath would have to worry about you, wouldn't he dearest?" Lane asked wryly, touching his fierce wife's belly when he knew she would fillet anyone else who tried.
"Rath wouldn't live long enough to worry, and if I failed, Roes would finish him off," Bethen affirmed, and then without warning, burst into tears. "Those poor children … oh gods … how are they going to grow?"
Lane comforted his wife with arms around her shoulder and tears in her hair. "With us … they'll grow up with us."

To Be Kept Later

Torrant might have held on to Ellyot's name indefinitely, if it weren't for one more brush with death.
After his first awakening, he improved steadily if not quickly. He frequently told Aldam to stop hovering—he could heal fine on his own, and that was that. Aldam ignored him, and one fine morning after Samhain when the air outside was so cold it practically crackled as they breathed and Torrant's fever threatened to come back, Aldam blatantly overruled his new brother. First he leaned over and kissed Torrant on the lips and then tumbled gracelessly back over his own heels to land on the ground.
Roes was at his side in an instant. "That was a damned fool thing to do," she scolded, sounding years older than she really was, "And I hope you have a bruise on your arse." As sharp as her voice was, her touch was sure and gentle as she hauled Aldam to his feet and helped him wobble back to his own bunk, letting the much taller Aldam lean on her sturdy shoulder for support.
Torrant watched her with fondness—the Eiran Moon clan was just as warm and as comfortable as the Clough Moon clan had been, with the added color of Bethie Moon's tart tongue and strong will. He had come to secretly treasure the sight of Bethen, knitting tirelessly with her feet up in the corner, watching after him and Yarri and Aldam as they slept or talked or (blessings of blessings) read books to each other during their recovery.
Stanny—a greatly sized, handsome boy with hazel-brown eyes a lot like Torrant's and a face full of freckles just like his mother's—would come in after his chores at their house and play games. He and Aldam were kindred souls, and equally awful chess players. Stanny was constantly trying to be amusing, and hundreds of bad joke attempts later, Torrant and Aldam were starting to laugh at the slightly better ones, just to watch the slow, proud smile bloom across Stanny's face when he felt successful. And, of course, Cwyn was the apple of the family's eye. He was unmercifully spoiled, and, as Bethie called him, a two-footed terror, and Torrant never knew when the little man was going to defy the family protocol of gentleness towards the invalids and rocket off one bed and right onto Torrant. He'd taken a special liking to Torrant, actually—he never seemed to pounce on Aldam from a four foot drop when he was sound asleep.
Today, Bethie was standing by the door where the other refugee barracks sat (as of yet, no one had given him a satisfying explanation as to why he, Aldam, and Yarri were kept separately) and talking to an older woman about midwifery while kneading her lower back patiently—Torrant gathered that the only mid-wife for quite some distance had just passed away, and she seemed to be relieved that someone else with knowledge of how to deliver a baby would be there for her next one. Cwyn was lying on his stomach waging war with a platoon of wooden soldiers, a red rubber ball, and a giant stuffed monkey. The monkey was winning. Stanny was by the fire, cooking a simple dinner of eggs and potatoes. Torrant had been letting Aldam win at backgammon when a sudden bout of sweaty dizziness swamped him, and he'd practically fallen backwards into his own bed. Roes had pulled his shirt off to prepare him for a sharp-odored poultice to make him sweat, when Aldam had taken over and forced Torrant backwards in order to heal him.
Torrant watched Aldam now with exasperation as he was teetered over to his bed. The damn fool practically fell over when Roes removed her arm. He would have been fine, he told himself bitterly—he didn't want Aldam risking himself anymore on his account.
After Roes laid Aldam down, she put a cold compress over his head and hung a blanket over the top bunk so the light wouldn't hurt his eyes, and then moved back to Torrant with brisk purpose. "If you let him help you when you need it, he wouldn't keep trying to 'sneak' help to you when nobody's looking," she said sharply, and Torrant shook a bleary head.
"He needs to get well," he said grumpily, reaching to the head of the bed for his shirt and frowning even more when he couldn't find it. They kept taking his sleep things to wash, and in spite of their best efforts to make him a brother in their household, he was still self-conscious in front of the Moon family. "I told his mother and aunt I'd take care of him—he can't be getting sick for me."
"Well then, let go of whatever it is that's making you stay sick!" Roes snapped, scrunching her freckles mutinously, and 'Ellyot' stared back into his eleven year old cousin's black/brown eyes.
"What does that mean?” he asked, maintaining the lie in his frown.
"It means your heart is as sick as your body and it's keeping us all here when we need to go home—mama is getting close to due, can't you tell by the way she's all inside herself and snapping at everybody? She wants to be home—we all want to be home, Cwyn, Stanny, Daddy—but we can't go until the three of you are better, and you're the one whose sickness is looking out of your eyes!" Roes was standing—four-feet, ten inches of irritated pre-adolescent, and Torrant suddenly found himself smiling with all of his heart when he hadn't know he still could.
"My Goddess!” he swore, swinging his pajama-clad legs over the side of the bunk bed and holding back a chuckle, "You are just like Yarri. Un-square your jaw, prickly little flower, and back off—all you had to do was ask and I would have been happy to tell you all to take Yarri home with you and leave us. Aldam and I will be fine."
To his surprise, (and her mother's dismay from across the room) Roes swung her dainty little foot back and kicked him in the shin. Hard.
"You two are coming with us, 'Cousin Ellyot'!” she snapped, even as he howled with pain and wobbled to his feet. "If you think we just nursed the three of you for two weeks to desert you in a barracks wondering where you'll be turned out to next, you're dumber than I thought."
"Roes!” he hollered, stumbling after her, "Get back here! Aldam and I will be fine on our own—you can put us with the other refugees—you're right—your mother needs her rest …"
But Roes wasn't listening—instead, she was stalking around the beds—nimbly avoiding her little brother as she did so—and out the door, presumably to let her temper cool off. Torrant was right on her heels.
As he ran, barefooted into the frosty pre-noon, he skidded to a halt as soon as he opened the door. He hadn't actually seen the town by day.
Eiran was not a city—it was a mid-sized port town that depended on outlying farms and fishing cottages for its militia. Nevertheless, Torrant, who had only lived twenty miles or so north of the bustling capital of Dueance, had never seen a dwelling place bigger than the Moon's hold. He stopped, right there on the barracks porch, and caught his breath.
The militia barracks fronted a wide dirt road—growing slush-muddy in the melting frost—with shops and businesses on either side, that led down to the pier. The pier itself was larger than the town—there were three ships with more than two masts bobbing at the quay, and Torrant had never seen the like. He had just caught his breath sharply with the surprise and the wonder of it when a small hurricane brushed by his legs followed by several shouts of dismay.
"Gods!" Torrant swore, and then started after Cwyn, who had taken the opportunity of the open door to escape his imprisonment and run after his sister, right into the horse-and-wagon crowded avenue below.
Torrant was hot on his heels, scooping him up and out of the way of an approaching cart and hauling his shrieking, protesting body back to the barracks steps to hand to his breathless mother.
"'all!” he wailed, "'all!" Even while Bethen clutched him to her full-to-bursting body chastising him as she did so. "No—we're not going to get your ball, Cwyn—don't you ever go out there without someone with you again!" But Cwyn's struggles were getting epic, and Bethen was barely able to hold up her own body and her impending baby at the same time, so Stanny took the toddler from her arms so she could lean weakly against a pole.
Stanny's mind may have worked slowly, but it also worked with great shrewdness and creativity, and he was by no means stupid. "Mama … his ball. He won't stop without his ball," he pointed out, grabbing Cwyn by the ear and making him settle down before giving him back to his mother. Torrant, ignoring Bethen's distressed calls of "Boy, get back here with your bare feet in that frost!" turned back to the street to get the red rubber ball that was being ponged from wagon wheel to horse's hoof with alarming violence.
Scrambling to stay out of the way of the traffic, Torrant managed to dive behind one carriage and whirl in front of another horse in order to snag the toy at a dead run, and he looked up at the porch with a breathless look of triumph, waving the ball at Cwyn so the little boy would stop struggling to bolt into the street.
Bethen, Roes, Stanny, Yarri, and even little Cwyn were looking at him in horror, their mouths working to call out something, anything, but nobody seemed to be able to spit out what they were trying to say.
It was Yarri who broke the shock first, pointing to the runaway horse approaching him crosswise from the rest of the traffic and screaming, "Torrant!" piercingly enough to make even the passersby look up to see what the fuss was about. Torrant looked up and saw the horse just in time to be caught in the midsection by Stanny, who, unable to voice his name in time had given his body leave to knock Torrant out of the way.
Torrant went down hard on the icy ground—Stanny was taller than he was and outweighed him by a fair amount—and the last thing he remembered as his head smacked sharply off of an iced over rut in the road and then settled painfully back down, was that Yarri had said his name.

He woke up in the basement of the Moon home, which, had he known it, he had seen from the barracks porch that morning, since it only sat two streets behind the main avenue. He tried to look around him, but all he got around his aching head was a vague impression of roughly finished walls with tapestries over them, and two newer looking beds side by side, covered in a motley assortment of quilts and afghans—he was in one of them, and Aldam was in the other, snoring gently.
Lane Moon was sitting next to him, reading casually, or so it seemed until Torrant's eyes focused on him, and then his face creased into a relieved smile.
"Where am I?" Torrant asked groggily, squinting through the pain behind his temples, and Lane abruptly sobered.
"You're in what is from now on your room, in my house, which is going to be your home, do you understand that, Torrant?"
Torrant blinked and took a few moments to digest what this meant. He couldn't. "No," he said quietly. "I don't understand at all."
Lane nodded, stroking the trimmed goatee that framed his face. "You know, Stanny's going to be telling the story of how he saved your life until the sea turns to fire—you know that, right?"
Torrant smiled, slightly, wondering when his head would stop pounding. "He should," he said quietly, "It was pretty impressive."
"He wouldn't have had to do it, 'Ellyot', if you had just told us your real name in the first place." And now Torrant wanted to smile in earnest, because Lane sounded exasperated and irritable—just like Moon used to. Just like a father would. Abruptly his smile faded.
"Yarri wasn't living here yet," Torrant said after a fraught moment. "She needed to be … here. She needed to be safe before I left."
Lane's eyebrows rose, and he nodded. "Uhm … where did you think you were going?” he asked, trying to keep his face and voice straight.
Torrant tightened his face, trying to be stoic. "I don't have any family here," he said. "I … unless I go back and slaughter Rath as he sleeps, I've got nowhere to go."
Lane gasped a sudden breath through his teeth, and his expression was both shocked and compassionate. "Is that something you were thinking about?” he asked seriously.
Torrant turned his face to the wall next to his bed. It was rough hewn but thoroughly stained, and, he noted, the tapestry that hung there was not old—in fact, it was new, and featured Courtland and Kiss and Clover as the centerpieces. It had been made for him. "Somebody needs to," he said roughly.
Lane's voice from behind him was suddenly gruff. "I'll give you that, boy. Somebody does need to do it—but not you. Not today."
"What then?" Torrant whispered. "What do I do now?" Mostly to himself.
"My brother had me enroll you in Triannon," Lane said boldly, and Torrant moved his head around so quickly that he groaned at the dizziness the movement caused. "Why does that surprise you?"
"It costs a lot of money," Torrant murmured. "And Ellyot wasn't going."
Lane laughed a little sadly. "Ellyot wasn't going because he would have grieved himself heartbroken if he had to leave his father's horses. Moon wrote me—he felt the University was the best place for you to make your future. You're surprised at that?"
Torrant closed his eyes painfully. "It was something Moon would do," he said softly. "But I wasn't family."
"You were to Moon," Lane said, equally soft. "And you saved my brother's only surviving child. You're family to me now, as well."
Torrant closed his eyes tighter, wondering if he was weary from the conversation or the concussion, or just from living through the bleeding in his heart. "Thank you," he said. "I would … I would like to see Yarri grow up."
Lane laughed again, this time not sadly. "Of this I hadn't a doubt in the world."
"But what about Aldam?" Torrant murmured, having this one last thing to see to before he rested for the first time since the last night he'd spent in the Moon hold, free, happy, and innocent.
"Your brother in spirit?" Lane Moon asked with gentle humor. "He's a part of the family already. If you're going to worry about Aldam, worry about Roes's sharp tongue, filleting him alive."
Torrant chuckled, even as darkness pulled him under. "They love each other already," he said, somewhat vaguely, but Moon would remind Torrant of those words as the years passed, because they were as much of a prophecy as the Goddess' children ever made. "Aren't I too young for Triannon?” he asked almost drunkenly, in an attempt to not sleep just yet.
"You've got a good three or four years here, first, boy." Lane assured him. "Now sleep, and we'll keep that other thing until later."
For a day Moon and Bethie took turns waking Torrant every hour or so, even in the dead of night, and when they at last were sure he would awake from a deep sleep and not just continue until death, they let him be.
Torrant woke again after that feeling as though he hadn't moved in a year, and vaguely aware of voices calling for Yarri. He was more than a little surprised to discover she had clambered under the covers next to him.
"You can't do this here, little one," he said softly into her ear after he'd gotten his bearings.
"I missed you," she said. "They wouldn't let me see you after you hurt your head—they were afraid you'd say something scary."
This made Torrant blink in surprise. "I wasn't aware that I was saying much at all." But even as he spoke he realized his throat was hoarse and scratchy, as though he'd been shouting for a week.
"We could hear you upstairs," she told him grumpily. "Roes kept hauling me up to our room in the attic when you started shouting, and whatever you said made Bethen cry. That wasn't nice, Torrant."
Torrant flushed. "I'm sorry," he said truthfully. "I can't imagine what I would have been saying—I thought I was asleep."
Yarri humphed. "Well now you're better, and now I can sleep." She snuggled into him a little deeper, and he realized that his cramped body was just going to have to wait a little while before he moved again.
A few moments later, just as her breathing evened out, Bethen came puffing down the staircase that led to the room, sighing in relief when Torrant waved at her and pointed to the tousled blond/red hair next to him on the pillow. "Roes, she's here—but she's asleep," she called up the stairs, and then waddled ponderously to where Torrant was trying to maneuver his body to sitting, without waking Yarri. With a firm grip and a lot of leverage, Bethen grabbed Torrant's arm at the elbow and shoulder and pulled him up and over abruptly, leaning over behind him to smooth Yarri's hair when she murmured in her sleep.
"I'm betting you have to pee like no man in history," Bethen said bluntly, pointing to a small door between the two beds that Torrant hadn't noticed before. "Lane's a thinker—we've got indoor water, although you'll have to go upstairs for a shower, and not every day unless you like your water cold."
"Thank you." Torrant hobbled with as much urgency as he could muster towards that blessed door. He was thinking that the Moon's hold in Clough had boasted outhouses and a big copper tub in the kitchen—bath day had been twice a week, unless it was summer when everybody was expected to wash off at the family swimming hole. It had been the best sort of family time, those evenings of swimming until the moons rose.
When he came back (blessed, blessed thrice blessed relief, that), Bethen was setting up a tray of food for him next to the bed.
"Now, I know you're probably all excited about getting up and moving around," she said quietly as he returned, "But give a pregnant woman her way just this once and let me coddle you a little." She smiled winningly at him, and he wondered how many people actually crossed Bethen Moon; however, he was still tired, and a little dizzy, and he decided he didn't want to be one of the few, so he did as she asked and got back into bed, careful not to disturb Yarri.
"I made noises," he said quietly, taking a bite of the sandwich that Bethie had made.
"Hmm?" She had pulled up the same chair Lane had sat in, and was pulling out her knitting as she spoke.
"I made noises, after I got knocked out," he said again, not wanting to ask what he'd said, but not wanting the fear of what he might have said hanging over his head either.
"Yes," she murmured, settling down with a skein of thin, brightly colored yarn and four small, well-sanded wooden needles. "Yes, you did make noises, boy-o. You did indeed."
Torrant flushed, and looked at her miserably, and she winked at him, as though urging him to ask the question. He took another bite of sandwich and did just that. "What'd I say? What was I shouting that you didn't want Yarri to hear?” he asked at last, and Bethie paused over her knitting and sighed.
"You told us what you saw, Torrant," she said softly. "The night your family was killed, the morning after. You lived it all—we couldn't believe you two were the only people in the entire hold that survived, but …"
"But now you know," he said briskly.
"And you'll need to tell us again and again to make it right in your heart," she said, knitting a few stitches and then looking at him.
"They slaughtered the workers in their beds," Torrant said hoarsely. "Arel, Gin, Oren, Bryn, Kith, Jacef … old Jeb …" His voice broke and he ruthlessly tried to pull himself together, and then he found that Bethen had sat her chair right next to him and wrapped a substantial arm around his shoulders. "I wept about this with Yarri." He tried to shake off that comforting arm.
"You wept over their deaths, not the manner of them, Torrant," Bethen amended softly, pushing away the tray she'd just taken pains to set up. "Now I know why you'd want to hide that from Yarri, but it's going to take a world of weeping to wash away that sadness. You might as well start now."
Oh, he had been the grown-up for so long, so very long. "They cut off their heads," he said tightly. "Oh, Goddess … my family … mama, Kles, Moon … Oh Ellyot, and Tal and Qir, oh my brothers … I should have been with you … they stabbed them and ripped them and cut off … Oh Goddess … oh Goddess don't tell Yarri … Oh Goddess make it go away …" For now, just for now, he thought giving way to sobs and tears, he could let this big, gruff woman shelter him from the world.

Callings

He healed much more quickly after that.
A little more slowly than the healing, but still day by day, he, Yarri and Aldam made their own little niche in the busy Moon household. Even Yarri was happy to help with the family work in an effort to make the transition. Bethen told Lane secretly that she would know they were all comfortable in the house when she had to actually yell at them to get them to do their chores as opposed to finding things done before she'd even asked.
Although Torrant told Lane nearly the complete truth about how they had fled their homeland and came to be in Eiran, without speaking, he, Aldam and Yarri tacitly agreed to leave out a few things for the public version. The death of the soldier and the horse trader figured prominently on the list, as did Torrant's use of his gift in order to save Yarri's life. Not a whisper was breathed about the snow cat, and although he suspected something was being left out, Lane didn't know what questions to ask.
Eventually, when Lane was satisfied with a version he was willing to share with the public, they invited the constable and the mayor over for hot cocoa and cookies. One sleet-covered night, Constable Donis Salt and Mayor Anse Maple ventured into Lane and Bethie's comfortable, dark paneled sitting room to sit by the fire and grill Torrant like a fish.
"You can't think that Moon was killed by his own people," Torrant said in a hard voice, after the fiftieth painful repetition of the night his family had been killed. "It's not fair to Moon—it makes him look like a fool, and he wasn't."
"Your mama died too," Yarri said, a question in her voice.
"Yeah," Torrant looked away. He had avoided thinking about his own mother, even in the midst of the storytelling—it had been hard enough to grieve for Yarri's family.
"So, son," Constable Salt said in a patronizing voice that was starting to get on Torrant's nerves, "You expect us to believe that the entire Moon hold was slaughtered because they were the Goddess' children?"
"And you expect me to lie because I am one?" Torrant shot back, his temper pricked by the constable's tone, and the repetition and the weariness from recovery that snuck in at odd moments when he wasn't prepared.
"You were on death's door and you lied about your name," Donis said, and Lane, who was by Torrant's side, could see how much that rankled.
"He was trying to stay with Yarri," Lane interrupted, "And I'm trying to keep my patience."
"Lane, there's refugees filing down that mountain as fast as their horses can carry them." The mayor said, looking panicked. "We're having trouble housing all of them at the barracks …"
"Well then, they can stay in the winter warehouse," Lane responded unruffled. The warehouse lay dormant until late spring, when ships could make it through the stormy, rock laden channel between Otham and Eiran with mostly skill and only a little luck. "But that has nothing to do with whether or not Torrant and Yarri are telling the truth."
"Yarri's a child …" The constable protested, and Lane shut his eyes.
"I'm old enough to hit that bad man on the head with a rock!" Yarri snapped, and Torrant's pained expression was, had he known it, a mirror image of Lane's.
"Gods' noses, Yar …" He sighed.
"Who did she hit on the head with a rock?" The mayor asked sharply.
"Rath's guardsman," Torrant said in resignation, knowing that now they were in for a whole other round of questioning. "Ellyot and I were talking to him—he was getting angry and Yarri hit him on the head with a rock."
"He said mean stuff to Torrant," Yarri defended stoutly, and Torrant patted her shoulder in appreciation.
"Gods' bollux!" Shouted the constable, "Did your brother just let these children run wild? Thanks to this brat, we've got mouths in this town that we can't feed!"
Yarri whimpered and Lane took a deep breath through his teeth, and let it out on a roar. "A CHILD DEFENDING HER BROTHERS DID NOT CREATE THIS PROBLEM!"
Torrant, Aldam and Yarri stepped back in surprise. Lane stepped forward into the circle of the room, eyes blazing, and the constable and the mayor shrank into their seats like salted slugs.
"Lane …" Constable Salt began, in a conciliatory voice. Lane interrupted him and the constable wiped his palms on his pants as Yarri's uncle spoke.
"This persecution of the Goddess' people has been going on for years—you know it as well as I do. Willa died and Rath took over, and we've been hearing nothing but sorrow from my brother's country ever since. Moon was the last man in the Regent's house who stood for the Goddess' people, and now he's dead. What do you think is going to happen to them now? All of the old regents have fled, leaving new regents in their places. Unless the next generation has more balls than the last one did, Clough is going to become a cesspool of persecution and genocide! We have to make a choice!"
"And what choice would that be?" The mayor asked, affronted that this merchant was talking politics to him.
"What choice do you think, Anse?" Lane asked bitterly. "We can either close the borders and turn away the innocent for death, or we can give them sanctuary and become an enemy to Clough."
The mayor was so surprised he almost dropped his mug of cocoa. "We're a city-state!” he protested. "We're a trade station. The only commodity we have is fish and sheep, but the fishing goes mostly to Otham because she doesn't have so damn many rocks at the bottom of her ocean! How are we going to stand up to a country with its own resources, it's own standing army … we've got a militia— they deliver the mail, put out fires, rescue cats from trees … you know this as well as I do, Lane. You want us to build an army, you want us to become a power … I know you want revenge for your brother, but this is taking it a bit far!"
"It's not about revenge …"
"Of course it is, Lane," Bethen said calmly from the doorway, breathing deliberately as though to convince everybody else to calm down. "It's about revenge, but you're also right. The refugees are coming—we can either turn them back into Clough or we can accept them. And you're right too, Anse," she added, holding up one hand, while the other clutched the doorway for balance. "We're not equipped to wage war on Clough, but neither can we turn our backs on a suffering people."
"So what do you suggest, Bethie?" asked the constable acidly. "I'm interested in hearing if it has anything to do with knitting, talking, or changing diapers."
"If you speak to my wife like that again, it will have to do with your broken nose and two vast, empty useless buildings because I've moved my businesses across the quay, Connie," Lane threatened, and Torrant learned something about economics in that moment, because the mayor blanched, and the constable flushed, and they both muttered a hasty apology. The mood in the room settled in that instant of contrition and the mayor sat back in his chair and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers and obviously trying to get a handle on what, he had thought, was going to be a minor bit of bullying for an answer that he wanted to hear.
"Well, Bethen," he said after a moment of horrible discomfort, "do you have a suggestion."
"As a matter of fact, yes." Bethen's usually smiling mouth was thin, and there were brackets around it that Torrant hadn't seen since he'd woken up the second time, after he'd fallen apart like a baby and wept in her arms. Lane looked at his wife expectantly, and then changed the angle of his head. Torrant caught an entire unspoken conversation between them that went something like:
No. Now?
Well not right now. Soon.
Holy Triane, woman, go lie down!
This is more important, beloved. I'll be fine, I've done this before.
Torrant's eyes widened just as Bethen cast her husband one last, stern look and started to talk again. "We will simply be a neutral country—a refuge," she said deliberately. "If the refugees get here, they're safe. Clough can't risk attacking us—remember that it is a country surrounded by neighbors, and someone's going to go down those mountains and put Rath's head on a pike if he starts overreaching himself and attacking his neighbors. What he does in his own borders, well, most leaders are like the two of you—you figure that's his business. But if he swoops down on us … we'll be neutral. It will work. We read a statement to the town, we prepare Otham, Cleant, and the hills for the influx of refugees. The minute one of them builds a home and claims some land nearby, we lasso him into town council and give them all a voice. We can't go down into a country twenty times our size and take that bastard out, but we can make sure that if his victims make it here, they have made it to safety."
Her voice became grittier as her speech went on, and something about her intensity convinced the mayor, because he was standing up with wide eyes and affirmations that he'd put that plan into action, and the constable was hot on his heels. As soon as the two men had cleared the door, and the people in the modest little wood-paneled room heard their footsteps clatter on the boarded walk in the snowy bluster outside, Bethen gave a terrible, wrenching groan, grabbed the doorframe in both hands and sank into a half-crouch where she stood.
The last time Torrant had heard the words that Lane spit out right then was when Courtland had kicked Owen Moon in the shin.
"Godsdammit woman, how close did you want to cut this?” he asked, coming to her side and taking her by the waist.
"Well, I couldn't very well go into labor while you were threatening to beat up the mayor and move us all to Otham, now could I?” she retorted sharply, struggling hard to get her breathing under control. It was coming very fast, and there was a little moan in her gasps, and Torrant looked at her with some of Lane's exasperation.
"You're really close, Aunt Bethen!” he admonished, and went to her side to help Lane. "Aldam, could you take Yarri to the family room with Roes? But come right back, and have Stanny run to the barracks and get the midwife."
"I won't be long," Aldam promised, just as Lane said, "And I'll just stand here and hold Bethie's hand."
Torrant flushed at his tone. "I'm sorry, Uncle Lane," he murmured, embarrassed.
"Don't be," Lane snapped with dry humor. "You're speaking sense—just don't make ordering people around in my own home a habit." He and Torrant got on either side of Bethen, and, by unspoken accord, took her elbows and, when her breathing had relaxed, helped heave her to her feet.
"You two can just make a habit of not touching me right now!” she said with a snap and a few ineffectual slaps at their solicitous hands. "Let go … damn." And then her knees buckled a little and Torrant and Lane both gasped to keep her from dropping to the floor.
"Dammit, Bethie—you couldn't have told us this was happening before the constable and the mayor got here? We could have put this whole thing off for another evening, don't you think?"
"It's been going on for two days, Lane," she gritted. Torrant and Lane held their own breath, and when her contraction passed they both pulled on her some more to get her to her bed in time. "How did I know it was about to get serious?"
"Auntie Beth—two days and you didn't say anything?" Torrant was appalled. He had helped his mother deliver babies before—he knew that after the first baby, everything often went very quickly.
"It never got regular," Bethen panted, "It would go steady, and I'd just come in to tell you to get the midwife, and it would screech to a halt."
"Maybe this one just needed you to get good and mad to want to come out." Lane said with humor and at that moment Aldam skidded into the bedroom, red faced and flushed, as they were laying Bethen on the big, sanded sleigh-style bed in their cluttered, cheerful room.
"The midwife is dead," he said abruptly, and it was a good thing Bethen was mostly in the bed because Lane and Torrant would have dropped her.
"I beg your pardon?" Lane said, blinking hard.
"Stanny said she was found behind the barracks with her head caved in." Aldam's voice was calmer now. He had an armful of old clean linens and had started laying them out on the bed where a bemused Lane was pulling them up under his wife's hips, even as he undressed her.
"Lane …" Bethen protested, looking at the two young men with a mixture of mortification and helplessness.
"I've delivered many babies. People babies and horse babies," Aldam said calmly. "It's the only time the people in Switchback Village weren't afraid of me. I need to go boil things."
"There's a pot of water on the stove for tea," Bethen told him using her 'in-charge' voice, and then she looked at Torrant and rolled her eyes and made a protesting noise in her throat.
"I've helped my mother since Yarri was born," Torrant added shortly, spreading out one of the linens and using it with Lane to drape over Bethen's knees. "I helped with the five babies at …" His voice trailed off. With the exception of Yarri, all those children born at the Moon hold had been killed with the rest of their family. "I've delivered children before," he repeated firmly, silencing the anguished wail that threatened to break free.
"Lane …" Bethen was in the middle of another contraction, and hadn't noticed Torrant's lapse into the past. It didn't matter—she was embarrassed and in pain and her discomfort could only be conveyed mutely by the very expressive brown eyes. The contraction worsened, and even though Bethen kept her breathing even, the breaths were short and painful and her grip on Lane's hand was pretty damned excruciating, judging by Lane's bulging eyes and whimpers.
Torrant waited until the contraction was over before he spoke again. "Auntie Bethen," he said firmly, putting his hands on her knees and making sure she could see his eyes. "Auntie Bethen, I trusted you, right?" He nodded, and waited until her miserable nod to follow his. "So you need to trust me now."
"Fine …” she threatened, gearing up for yet another contraction. "You go ahead and deliver this damned baby, but when I'm not in labor you'd better still let me be the mother."
"You couldn't be anything else," Torrant soothed, and in another moment Aldam brought in a pot of hot hot water with some harsh soap and the two of them washed their hands stoically and got down to business.
The rest of it happened very quickly. Bethen's waters wouldn't burst on their own, so Torrant had Aldam boil one of Bethie's tiny steel hooks, the kind she used for lace, and used it to burst the amniotic sac without touching the baby's head.
"Just don't tell me which one it is!" Bethen panted as Torrant stepped back from the initial burst of fluids.
"I promise," he murmured, and put his hand in position to catch at the next contraction. The promised contraction never came, though, and Bethen whimpered, in a hellish limbo of crowning without the labor to finish. "Auntie Beth, can you turn over to your side? Please? You're squishing the blood supply that makes the whole thing work when you're on your back …" he instructed, and Bethen just whimpered back.
"C'mon, woman, move it!" Lane snapped, and Bethen snapped back.
"You turn a hippopotamus on its back when it's pushing out a lumber barge!" But she grabbed Lane's hands and rolled, ponderously, to her side, and with the shift of her body weight, the next contraction slammed into her like a panicked horse into a guardrail.
With a grunt and a tearing moan from mama, the baby's head was out, a bald little head with a fine and fair fuzz plastered against it, and Torrant cleaned the tiny mouth and squashed-up nose, just as he'd seen his mother do, and with the next contraction turned the head gently and allowed the shoulders to plop soundly into his waiting hands. The little mouth opened, the tiny face scrunched, the eyes crinkled into puffy creases and a squall came out that almost deafened Torrant with its beauty, if not its volume.
In spite of the blood and the whitish muck that coated the blotchy skin, Torrant clutched the little form to him, and in a flash, all of those other babies he'd helped his mother with also clutched to his breast. In a moment much like Bethen's contractions, he felt a weight of tears slamming against the back of his eyes, and a compulsion to huddle over the new life, to guard it, snarling and feral, almost overwhelmed him. This baby would be safe, this family would be safe, and no one, no one ever, would touch them with pain or fear while he lived and breathed.
"Hullo, tiny daughter," he murmured, although the baby was quite large compared to the others he'd seen. He could swear it weighed nearly three pounds more than Yarri had, but then he'd been very young when he'd helped deliver Yarri.
"Daughter?" Lane said hopefully. "Did you hear that, Bethie—a girl for Roes."
"You mean a wrestling bag for Cwyn," she murmured, her voice still weak with panting.
Aldam was reaching for the baby, and Torrant almost smacked his hands away before he came to himself and realized that Bethen would need tending and the afterbirth was coming and the cord that still bound mother and child needed to be cut. Goddess, he wasn't going to be able to watch his mother do these things! They were his tasks to do on this bizarre and stunning night.
Aldam had boiled everything in preparation. The string to bind the cord and the scissors were still hot from the boiled water, and so were the needle and thread.
"She doesn't need stitching," Aldam suggested carefully when the afterbirth had been delivered, and Torrant agreed.
"If she has another one, it will probably walk out on its own," he said with a twist to his mouth. Aldam had deftly cleaned and swaddled the infant, who had stopped squalling in an amazingly short time. He'd handed the baby to Lane who had pulled a chair next to the bed and was sitting, calming a tearful Bethen and showing her their newest child.
"No more," he said sharply, and Bethen sighed.
"Like you have anything to say about it." As Aldam and Torrant had cleaned up the blood and the fluid and the faeces she had closed her eyes, and, in her words, pretended that they weren't there.
"I'm serious, Bethie—this isn't good for you," Lane said softly. "She's beautiful, but … but I don't want to trade your life for another one."
"I'm not drinking that vile tea," Bethen humphed, "And we're too old to be fooling around with that other way." Bethen was nodding off in the exhaustion of aftermath, and her voice was slurry. "Don't try to control it, beloved, just enjoy them when they come." She yawned then, and her eyes fluttered closed, and Torrant saw Aldam looking at her intently, even as he scooped the last of the soiled linens into a basket.
"I can stop it," Aldam said, his voice apologetic. "Lane—if you want me … there's a place in a woman's body that … that delivers what will be the baby to the womb. I can … I can interrupt that place. My mother … there was a woman in our village who had too many babies with no fathers. My mother told me to stop her from conceiving and I did …" His voice trailed off, and he sounded almost frightened. "She didn't know … it felt very wrong … but if Bethen wants, if she knows, I can do it for you. But I can only do it now, when her body is ready for healing."
Lane nudged Bethen, waiting until her eyes fluttered open. "Bethie—did you hear that—Aldam can make it so there's no more babies."
"So can the Goddess," Bethen murmured.
"Well maybe that's why she gave Aldam this gift," Lane said tersely. "Please, Bethie—if the next one kills you, you're going to have to trust me to raise the rest of them …"
"Which would be a reason to live, don't you think? Enough, Lane. Boys …Enough…Let me sleep … Let me wake up and hold my daughter … have a little faith that the heavens have a plan …" And with that she slipped under, leaving her beloved to rock their daughter in the thoughtful quiet.

A Little Bit of Later

The midwife's death had repercussions throughout the barracks. The refugees were terrified that they had run from danger to disaster, and the town began muttering about whether or not the refugees were really the innocent victims they had claimed to be. The morning after little Starren's birth (Starry for short) a red-eyed Lane brought a bleary-eyed Torrant to the barracks under the strenuous objections of the mayor and constable.
"What is that boy going to do? Point his finger at anyone who looks at him funny?" The mayor wanted to know, and Lane aimed a gaze at the man that Torrant was starting to associate with Lane, protecting his family. It was the same look he'd had as he'd begged Bethen to let Aldam help her, and the same look he'd had as he'd stood up and threatened to move his warehouses across the bay. Owen Moon had possessed that look whenever Rath's guardsman rode on to his property and asked if he was hiding anyone dangerous to the government of Clough.
"He knows evil when he smells it, Anse," Lane replied mildly. "When was the last time you bathed?"
The mayor flushed and gestured the two of them grandly into the barracks where they'd had this conversation, and Lane had grunted in frustration when he was out of earshot.
"He's a good man," he murmured resignedly to Torrant, "But his mind is small—he can only think about Eiran and those he protects, and not about the world at large. That's the Goddess thinking—and there's not a thing wrong with it, but there's two gods in the sky too, and they're higher up and can see the whole plan. If you don't think with all of them, you're not really thinking."
"But …" Torrant grimaced, "What am I supposed to be doing here, Uncle Lane?"
Lane smiled just a little, and patted Torrant's shoulder. "Have I told you, boy, how proud I am that you call Bethie and me Aunt and Uncle?” he asked out of nowhere, and Torrant flushed.
"It's what Yarri calls you," he mumbled.
"But of course," Lane laughed a little. "Back to your question—you told me you could 'smell' Rath's guardsman—you knew he was lying, you knew when something was wrong as he left. It was a good instinct—I think it saved your lives."
"Not everybody's," Torrant said bitterly, and this time the hand on his shoulder squeezed gently.
"Three's a good start for a boy," Lane said dryly, "And that's not counting the people you saved with your map. No—I'll trust those instincts to hunt out the murderers, thank you very much."
"Why do you think it's somebody from the camp?" Torrant wanted to know, and he watched Lane grimace.
"For one thing, the rest of the townspeople are scared spitless—they see these people coming down the hill and they wonder what they could have done to be driven out of their homes. Rath's madness makes no more sense to them as it does to the people fleeing their own country—they wouldn't come here, even to do evil, and that's the plain truth. But the other thing is …" Lane stopped walking and drew to a shaded, chilly corner of the barracks, turning Torrant to face him so they could look eye-to-eye. "Boy—this thing I'm going to say, it can't go beyond me and you, you understand? Not your Aunt Beth, not Aldam," the hand on Torrant's shoulder tightened, "Not even Yarri, you understand me?"
Torrant nodded gravely, and Lane continued.
"The thing is, the one person from the town who had talked to that woman, and talked to her at length, was your Aunt Beth, and the one reason that would make her a target is …"
"Us," Torrant said from a harsh throat. "She was killed because it would harm us—Yarri and I."
"Exactly," Lane agreed. "But there's more—when you arrived here—somewhat spectacularly, I might add, you gave out your name as 'Ellyot Moon', and Jerin, the guardsman, he would have told a good many people that Ellyot and Yarri Moon survived. I don't know what Donis and Anse have said since, but I don't think they've done anything public to correct the impression that you're Ellyot…"
"Rath wouldn't care much about Yarri." Torrant felt numb, hardly unable to grate out the words. "She's a girl … he'd be after me …" His stomach churned and he fought the urge to cry. "I'm sorry …" He swallowed hard, tried to speak, swallowed again, "I'm sorry, Uncle Lane … I didn't mean to …"
"Of course you didn't, boy," Lane said gently. "Make no mistake about it— none of this is your doing. But we've been left this mess, and it's up to us to either survive it or fix it, right?"
Torrant nodded. "Right."
"Good lad. Now—we'll just go sniff around a bit, and with any luck, we'll figure out who the bad guys are."
"What will we do then?" Torrant watched as Lane's face became hard and angry with the thought.
"We'll do what we need to, boy-o. But I hope all we'll need to do is tell Donis to do his job."
The barracks had become clogged and crowded since the three of them had arrived, nearly a whole month before. As far as Torrant could tell, there was no rhyme or reason to the people fleeing Clough—they were old, young, men, women, and a surprising, heart-rending number of children.
"I don't understand," Torrant muttered to his uncle. "If we don't choose our altar until we're of age, how can there be so many children here?"
Lane looked at him oddly. "What do you mean, 'choose your altar'?"
"You know—choose who you worship … the gods or the Goddess. Strength, compassion, or joy?" How could a grown-up not know that?
"Why can't you worship them all?" Lane asked carefully. "Just because you favor one or the other, that doesn't mean they all can't get some respect."
"It was a law," Torrant insisted, then his voice became a little less stubborn, "But not one Moon made us follow."
Lane laughed sourly. "My brother was a smart man." He neatly dodged a pair of siblings, playing chase in the crowded confines of bunk-beds. "But why didn't you call him 'Owen'?"
Torrant looked at his new family member with puzzled eyes. "He was Moon,” he said it simply, picturing the broad man with the thick mustache and blazing blue eyes. The memory of his surrogate father hadn't dimmed any with the last weeks. Instead, it had become brighter somehow, and larger almost than life, with a sunshiny, golden halo around the edges. "He was …" He could hear that thick strong voice,  booming tolerance through their gleaming-dark-paneled school room, thundering across the dinner table that gods' people or Goddess’ people, they were all still people. Moon was the center. The belief. The father and the safety. "He was just Moon," he said at last, simply, and Lane nodded.
"Right, then. Moon he was."
Their conversation had to stop then, because the people grew, if anything, more populous and less washed, and more than once Torrant almost lost Lane in the dodge to avoid feet, toddlers, and grimy edges of thick winter skirts.
Torrant was distinctly uncomfortable as they moved. He had spent his entire life in Moon's enclosure—being caught in this press of people was almost more terrifying than seeing the streets of Eiran for the first time. He was unaware of the little animal sounds coming from his throat or the sweat breaking out on his forehead, however, until a meaty hand clamped on his shoulder and he whirled around with a snarl that echoed from the snow cat's throat.
"Whoa, little man!" The voice was patronizing and smug, and Torrant looked up (not that far—he had grown at least an inch in the past month) into the face of a monster.
He screamed, loudly, because his vision had blurred and he didn't realize that the heavy featured man with the scruff of beard and mustache and greasy dirt spots on his face was not the grotesque, twisted mass of evil intentions and foul deeds, swathed in teal and black, that his gifted vision revealed to him with that one unguarded touch.
The man shrank back, his eyes glowing in Torrant's vision, and then he took a deep breath and grabbed Torrant's shoulder with hard, cruel fingers.
"I'll show you to be afraid of a little touch, boy!” he hissed, his breath foul. "You think that horse-man had designs on your little sister, I'll bend you over and shred you …"
Torrant was stuck, helpless, gasping while the man's foulness dripped over his skin like pig-shite. With the contact between them he could see the man's intentions, and they made his insides run cold, and he could see the man's past deeds, and those visions made him want to vomit, and, even worse, he could see the little teal and black insignia pin on the inside of the man's rough sweater that identified him as a leader of Rath's army. His breath trammeled in his chest and a little animal moan leaked from his throat and still, Lane was nowhere in sight and this monster kept talking.
"And when I'm done with you, I'll take your retard buddy and your pretty little sister and bend them over and …"
The threat to Yarri and Aldam snapped Torrant out of his inaction. He yowled—the sound echoing out of the snow cat's throat, and suddenly his vision, which had been distorted by his gift for truth, grew icy, crystalline, and clear. This man was a threat to his family. This man had to die.
He met the man's lewd scowl with a sub-zero blue gaze of his own and was gratified when he watched his enemy recoil. He followed the action with a lunge and a strike of his own, sinking his teeth into a grimy hand and growling fiercely in his throat when he tasted the blood. Rath's captain screamed in pain and surprise, and with that sound Lane was at Torrant's side, pulling him away and putting himself between Torrant and his attacker.
"What have you done to him?" Lane snarled. "Get the hell back!"
Suddenly the knot of people around them had opened up into a circle, with the participants in the little drama confined to the center.
"He bit me!" The howl echoed off an unsympathetic wall of bodies. "Alls I did was touch the little punk's shoulder and he bit me!"
Torrant yowled again, and Lane looked at him in sudden panic. "Boy, your eyes!” he hissed, shaking him at the shoulder. "Fix your eyes."
A deep breath of cold fury, and another, and another, and the icy film of cold resolution faded from Torrant's vision, and he was left, feeling weak and drained, in its wake.
"He threatened to hurt me," he said through a calm throat. "And he's the …"
Lane's eyes widened, and with surprising strength he managed to haul Torrant through the inner circle and melt like snow through the crowd.
"Don't finish that thought, boy," he murmured until they got outside and found a secluded corner of the building to talk in. The corner was in shadows, with two feet of snow built up in it's crevice, and when they'd stopped to catch their breath, Torrant found his teeth chattering with cold and reaction.
"He's the one who killed the old woman?" Lane finished, when he was sure Torrant was fine, and Torrant nodded.
"He's one of Rath's guardsmen—he was sent here, supposedly, to make sure the refugees arrived in one piece."
Lane shuddered. "I think what he was really sent to do was make sure they ended up in a handy ice pit, and Goddess be glad it didn't happen. But as it stands, he's another King's man … he's got a certain amount of immunity—if we charge him and kill him, we get Rath's fury coming down on us like an anvil from heaven."
"But he's dangerous …" Torrant's ears were still ringing with the man's threats and he could have smacked his head against the wall for the wail in his voice.
"I know it." Lane rubbed the bridge of his nose. "And we know who he is, and I saw a partner back there behind him. We can tell the constable and the mayor to watch out for him. But other than that … Torrant, we're going to have to wait and see."
Torrant nodded unhappily. "We can't let anybody out of the house alone, Uncle Lane," he said at last. "He threatened Yarri … and Aldam … he'll hurt all of us."
Lane nodded. "Well, if my weather sense is right, we've got about two days of right awful snow to keep us inside while we think things through." He looked out at the iron gray sky and the wide, brittle snow slivering through the air and did his own shivering. "Let's go talk to Donis and go back to our own fires. It's time to do a little Goddess thinking of our own."
Torrant shivered for the entire walk back, abruptly feeling the weakness from his two illnesses assaulting the muscles in his legs and the stalwartness of his chin as they drew near the little two story log-house with its twinkling merry lights from the paned glass windows. He and Lane clattered up the front porch and into the equally merry chaos inside.
Torrant had just a moment to reflect on how much larger the Moon hold had been in Clough, before he was ear deep in people who wanted to be his family.
Aldam was in the kitchen, and he and Roes were contending for the official title of Master of Dinner.
"You need to steam the vegetables!" Roes was saying defiantly, dissecting an unresisting carrot as she spoke.
"Not if you stir them in the skillet with a little butter. Make them thinner, Roes, unless you want them to crunch." Aldam's voice was patient. Aldam was always patient, but Torrant noticed that his goodwill was especially apparent in the face of Yarri's prickly cousin.
"But mum, I already told dad this—why do I have to write it down?" Stanny was sitting at the kitchen table amid a pile of books. Roes attended the public schooling offered in the little house up near the barracks, but Stanny had graduated to helping his father in trade. Lane, ever progressive, was having his son decide on what the next big import into the city would be.
"Right then, smart arse," Bethen returned with a touch of asperity, "What's the next big import then?"
"Yarn," Stanny shot back smugly. "We import it from the foothills and sell it to Otham—that way, you don't have to wait until the festival in the spring, there will always be a basic stock in every store. Everyone here knits, Mum. We can't lose."
Bethen blinked, her eyes losing focus as they did so, and she adjusted the fussy baby against her shoulder as she kept up the mama-dance that was keeping her quiet. "Yarn," she said, bemusedly. "You're right, Stanny—it's a good idea. Now write up that justification for your father, and I may stop having to fill the house with a years supply every spring."
"I like the yarn," Yarri said from the living room. She and Cwyn were playing hide and seek in the multiple wicker laundry baskets that were usually stashed in the rooms about the house. There was laundry—dirty and clean—in every corner of the room. As soon as Yarri was done saying the word 'yarn', Cwyn started shrieking 'yarn yarn yarn yarn yarn …' and went tearing for another corner of the family room, where he ripped open a closet door and started throwing balls of yarn out by the score.
"Cwyn!" Bethen's voice rose in a wail, and she started for the closet so quickly she disturbed Starry on her chest, and that's when Torrant and Lane stepped in.
"Come here you little terror!" Lane commanded, scooping the boy up into a squealing bundle and nodding at Yarri to start cleaning up the yarn.
"Here, give her to me and sit down, Aunt Beth." Torrant murmured, taking the baby from her and nodding to the table.
Bethen did as she was told, looking up at the young man who had very quickly made himself indispensable to her and her family. "I bet there wasn't this kind of chaos in Owen's hold, was there?” she murmured, depressed.
"No," Torrant replied, innocently honest. "But there were workers to help. You've only got family, Aunt Beth—it's harder." The baby started to fuss and gurgle and Torrant started to coo to it, wandering off into the family room and beginning Yarri's favorite nursery song.
"That's my song!" Yarri protested, and Torrant patted her head.
"Then share with the baby a bit, and sit and listen," he told her, rocking his body unconsciously. His whole air screamed of protection, both for Yarri and the little girl in his arms.
Bethen watched him with surprised eyes.
Lane came to sit down next to her, and Cwyn stayed on his lap, sending clever little fingers into his shirt pockets looking for goodies. He found a small carved horse that Lane had picked up from the warehouse earlier that day and went scampering off to the back room to show Yarri, and Lane put a hand on his wife's knee and smiled kindly.
"You're tired—you should go sleep."
Bethen nodded, her eyes still on Torrant. "Listen to him—he's got a beautiful voice."
"That he does."
"What did you two find out?” she asked, one eye still on the little ones in the living room.
Lane sighed. "I'd hoped to wait until you had some sleep."
She smiled tiredly. "Tell me now and then I can sleep."
And so he did. When he was done she let out a little moan and set her chin on her clasped hands that were resting on the table. "Nobody leaves the house until this is resolved, right?"
"Absolutely," he reassured.
"Good." She sighed a little, and he could see her pushing it around in her head. "He's still hiding something," she said after a moment. Lane had told her about the icy-blue of his eyes.
"That he is."
"He's awfully young to hold all this in his chest," she yawned. "That's twice he's had his family snatched away from him. I think Yarri just became his three moons …" She trailed off, her eyes wandering along with her voice.
"Go nap, Bethie," he said at last, "And I'll wake you when Starry needs food."
"We need to keep them safe."
"I promise." He made the vow solemnly into her eyes, and then shooed her off to nap.

Consigned to the Cold Wet Dark

After dinner when Torrant and Stanny were doing dishes and Lane had gone down the hall to their bedroom to give Bethie a moment to feed the baby, Stanny squinted out the kitchen window and against the swirling snow out in the dark and said "Who's that on the porch?"
Before Torrant could answer, Roes had launched herself at the door with all of her self-importance and Yarri at her heels, answering the brutal knock almost before it was finished.
"Moon residence … Torrant!" Because Torrant had recognized one of the two men and pushed his way through the door, calling "Stanny, get your father— NOW!" Before confronting the two men on the porch.
"You're not welcome here," he said staunchly, his heart thundering in his ears. They had threatened him, they had threatened Aldam, they had threatened Yarri, and now they were here, their very presence a danger to the family who had taken him in without reservation or debt.
The beefy, dark-bearded man from the barracks grinned at his companion, a thin, starveling man with sparse blonde hair, pocked cheeks, and a mouthful of teeth stained with the tobacco chew that drooled into his thin beard. "That's not very friendly of you, boy. Now come along now, and grab your sister—your king's waiting back at home to give a welcome to the surviving Moons."
"I said go away," Torrant barked, feeling his face drain at the thought of Consort Rath, waiting for Yarri. "This isn't Clough, and he's no longer our ruler. You have no power here." And as he said it, he felt the world go icy and clear around him, and his eyes changed their focus. The two men stood before him, glowing the cold red of warm blood and prey.
The dark-bearded man leaned forward and grabbed Torrant's shirt, hauling him up to hiss in his face. "You're going to want to come with us boy—you've got a nice family here. You wouldn't want to go and watch another one get killed, now would you?"
"Torrant?" Roes said from the porch. "Who are they?" Her voice had taken on a quaver, and Stanny came up behind her.
"Get inside, Roes!" Torrant ordered, his voice gravelly.
"Torrant—dad's coming … he said not to …" Stanny's voice trailed off too, and he put his hand on Roes' shoulder.
"I said get inside!" Torrant's voice was getting lower and rougher, and he heard the snarl of the cat in it, but the two men were oblivious.
Yarri, not to be left out, hurtled out the door next to him, joined by Aldam with Cwyn in his arms, and Torrant was suddenly, acutely aware that every child and young person he wanted to protect was standing, cold and vulnerable, on this porch in the snow.
"Who are they?" Yarri asked, pulling at his shirt, and Torrant took his eyes off of the men in front of him long enough to risk a look at Aldam.
"Get them inside!” he rasped, and Aldam saw his eyes.
"Now, Yarri!" Aldam took one of her hands in his own, just as the dark-bearded man spoke.
"No, no, dummy—don't take that one—that one's coming with us, ain't she?" He turned to his companion, who grinned evilly back, and then reached for Yarri's other hand. Roes stepped forward, pushing Yarri behind her and the man's hardened palm and hard fingers grasped her, hard, leaving bruises she dared anybody to mention for days. With one jerk he had her sturdy, not-yet-blossoming body up against his. He gave an evil chuckle.
"We could take this one, though—she looks like a little more fun than the little one—you never know."
Several things happened then.
The first was that Roes kicked the man in the shin. The second was that Torrant grabbed the man's shirt front and shoved him back, practically pitching Roes to the side with his other hand, where she thunked heavily on her hands and knees. Rath's lieutenant growled, lunging in Roes' direction, his hand outstretched. Before the fouled, hardened hand could make contact with the girl's skin again, Torrant became the snow cat.
Aldam snatched Yarri and hauled her through the door squirming, even as Cwyn hollered from his other arm, and the giant snow cat leapt.
Torrant had become efficient during his time in the mountains—it took two movements—his teeth, ripping out the dark man's throat, and his paw, swiping at the blond man's windpipe, and both men were down, dead, and bleeding in the snow before Roes could even scream. As she opened her mouth to do just that, Stanny clapped his hand over it and pulled her, struggling, inside, just as Lane rushed past them out onto the porch, trying to avert disaster.
"Gods!” he swore, and met the eyes of the giant snow cat.
Abruptly, the snow cat dropped to its stomach, emitting a submissive whine-growl that took Lane by surprise. It inched forward, keeping up the whine, while simultaneously licking the snow in an obvious effort to get rid of the blood that had coated its muzzle and throat, and was steaming into the snow from the bodies of the men behind it.
Lane was still standing in shock, looking at the evidence of murder in front of him, when Yarri and Roes both struggled free and rushed over to Torrant, falling to their knees in the snow, throwing their arms around his neck and burying their faces in his thick fur. The whine-growl turned into a purr, and a rough, pink tongue lapped out to Yarri, making a mess out of her short, fuzzy hair.
"Tor …" Lane's voice cracked, and he cleared it, trying again. "Torrant?” he said, his voice questioning.
"That man tried to grab Roes," Yarri murmured, rubbing her face in his fur.
Lane got a little closer to the cat, and instead of zooming in on the really big, pointy teeth, focused his vision on the eyes instead.
"I recognize those eyes," he murmured softly. "Those were your eyes when you were defending yourself today. Those were the same eyes I saw when you were defending Aldam that first night here, aren't they? How long have you had those eyes, Torrant?" Lane kept his voice sweet and non-threatening as he reached out and rubbed the cat's massive head, between the tufted white ears.
"He had them when he killed the horse trader," Yarri said suddenly, clearly into the night.
"The horse trader?" This was more of the story that Lane hadn't heard. He kept the question casual, freezing there in the snow and thinking hard about what he was going to do with the two bodies in front of his home.
"He was …" Yarri's voice dropped, "bad," she finished just as Aldam said harshly, "Evil."
Lane looked behind him. "Evil?"
Aldam closed his eyes and shivered with his whole body, like a horse forced to confront a beast just like Torrant. "He was a very evil man. He tried to … to hurt Yarri … Torrant stopped him, and then he and my aunt hid the body in the trash heap outside of town."
Lane nodded. "I want to hear all of this—all of this, mind you," he looked particularly into the icy blue eyes of the snow cat, "later. Right now, Yarri, Roes, go inside and change into dry clothes. Keep Cwyn occupied and get the baby if she cries—she shouldn't. I think your mother has her down for the night. Aldam, Stanny—go get snow gear on, and bring my heavy cloak, hat, and gloves." He looked down at the snow cat, who had disengaged himself from the girls and moved to the shoulder of the largest attacker, sinking his teeth into the shoulder and pulling backwards until the body started to move in the snow. "You, stay just as you are," he instructed dryly. "I have the feeling you'll be pretty useless when you change back, and we'll need all the help we can get."
He looked around at his family, frozen to stillness in the night snow. "Move!” he barked. "I think we're going to take a lesson from Torrant, and go find Eiran's trash heap."
"But da'," Stanny muttered, "What we don't recycle or compost, we flush into the river." The river currents bore their organic waste out to the ocean, far enough away that Otham had never reported so much as a stray pig bone washed up on its shores.
"That we do, my boy," Lane agreed, his teeth starting to chatter. "And by the time these two pieces of waste find a home, they'll be bleached pebbles on a far away beach. Now I'm freezing my arse off out here, so move!"
It was as sharp as Lane ever got with the children, and within moments the girls were inside with the little ones and the young men were outside, dressing hastily in snow gear with Lane. Silently, and with purpose, the three humans and one snow cat began dragging bodies through the snow.
The river actually ran about a half a mile behind the Moon house, which was on the street farthest back from the main town road. Getting rid of the men was a matter of dragging the bodies behind the house and trekking through the deepening snow until they heard the roaring sound, then pitching them off the short cliff into the frigid, roiling waters below.
"And to think," Lane puffed, grabbing a set of feet and swinging, "I wanted to have a fence put in to keep children from wandering into the water." The body reached its sand-bag heavy arc and he and Aldam let go, grunting when they heard the splash.
"A fence is a very good idea," Aldam agreed solemnly, "But not tonight."
Lane looked at Aldam surprised, not sure if the boy had meant to be funny or not, and he caught Torrant, who had put considerable feline muscle into helping Stanny haul his victim to the outcropping's edge, whuffling into the snow in what was definitely a cat-style laugh. With another grunt, he and Aldam took victim number two by the hands and the heels, and pitched him into the rushing wet dark.
"Not tonight," he agreed grimly. "Tonight we're going back home for a pot of boiled water and a cup of cold truth."
The boiled water was to melt the bloodied snow—after a couple of pots of it, the blizzard would effectively hide the last of the diluted blood until spring, and then Lane could innocently wonder what rabbit had been killed on his front lawn.
The cup of cold truth was harder to dish out.
"Why didn't you tell us?" Lane asked, when everyone was in bed but Aldam. Yarri had begged to stay awake—pleaded in fact, in tears, until Lane had finally snapped, "What, girl, do you think I'm going to kick him out in the snow now? He's family, same as you, but if you don't let him talk to me man on man, I may just ship you off to a boarding school in Triannon, and keep him here to help."
Yarri had surprised him then with a toothy grin. "You already love us, don't you Uncle Lane?"
"Like my own, poppet," he'd replied with a bemused smile. "Now sleep— Torrant and I need to talk, that's all."
"The snow cat saved my life when I was sick—you know that right?" The worry on her piquant little face with its hard red-apple cheeks was enough to erase all of his irritation in one swoop.
"That's what we need to talk about," he said gently.
Torrant was finishing the dishes he and Stanny had been working on when the trouble had arrived at their door. Aldam was drying.
"Aldam, could you give us a moment?" Lane asked casually as he came in and sat at the battered table where the family ate.
"I would like to stay," Aldam replied in his mild way, and Lane had to shake his head.
"Torrant's not in any trouble here, Aldam," he said, holding back a laugh.
"Of course not," Aldam replied, "But I would still like to sit at the grown-ups table."
And now Lane did laugh. "You're underestimated a lot, aren't you Aldam."
"I am simple," Aldam said, and there was a wealth of sadness in his tone that wiped the smile off Lane's face in an instant.
"There is nothing simple about you, Aldam," he murmured gently, "And if Torrant is fine with your presence, you're welcome to stay."
Torrant looked at Aldam and a smile like slow water moved across his face. Lane noticed that one side of his lip curled higher when he did that, and that brackets grooved his cheeks, and between that and the dent in his chin, he wondered how long it would take the boy to discover that women were going to fall at his feet like leaves in autumn.
"He's my brother now," was all Torrant said, and Lane gave in to the inevitable.
"Well then. So now let's talk about the snow cat." A silence like plopping snow thumped into the kitchen, and surprisingly enough it was Aldam who broke it.
"He protects us," he told Lane simply. "The snow cat comes when Torrant is afraid he can't protect us."
"I can't protect you," Torrant said with surprising passion. "I couldn't protect my family, I couldn't keep Yarri safe—I can't even hunt!"
Lane fought to keep his expression bland, but inside he hurt. "You kept your family alive over the pass," he reminded.
"I couldn't have done it without the snow cat," Torrant said with certainty, then his voice dropped a little. "But I don't like … I mean I do a little, because I'm strong and I'm fast and I can do things. But …" And now his eyes dropped, and Lane held his breath. "But the world is so cold … it's all black and white and … and red … and it's cold." He said that last on a whisper, and Lane brought his average hand—not too rough and not smooth like a rich man's—out to cover the boy's shoulder. "If I can avoid the snow cat, I will," he finished, meeting Lane's gaze in that adult way that Lane had learned to expect from the boy. Stanny, gods love him, wouldn't carry himself like Torrant for a good ten years at least.
"Fair enough," Lane agreed, "Although I suggest you let him out to run when you can … you keep something like that animal in your heart too much and he'll roar his way out if you're not careful. And boy, you have to know—a gift like this—there's no way you can not go to University, you understand that? They have Goddess gifted there—you'll get training and people who understand you— you'll get things there that we can't give you here, and …" he hesitated. He didn't want to make it a condition of the boy's staying there, but it was absolutely imperative that the full weight of this gift didn't rest on Torrant's shoulders alone.
"Right." As usual, Torrant saved him from the hard decision by making it himself. "Good."
Lane could read the boy's mind. It was four years, after all—maybe in four years they would forget all about sending him away from a new home he had come to love.
"You will always be welcome in our home, Torrant," Lane told him firmly. "You and Aldam will bring your wives here, and your children, and we will gather every holiday and thank the gods and Her Highness that you both came into our lives. You're our family, boy-o."
Torrant's face worked, struggled with a heart too full and words too few. "You're good people," he said at last. "I couldn't ask for better." He swallowed again, and, an oddly passive gesture for such a stout young man, laid his arms on the table and his head on his arms.
"Can Aldam come to Triannon with me?” he asked, blinking heavily. "Will it cost too much?"
Lane laughed wryly. "Boy—you do realize that you brought your college tuition over that pass with you, clopping over the hills on dinner-plate sized hooves, don't you?"
"Courtland?" Torrant was surprised—Courtland, Clover, and the little pony, Kiss, had been stabled nearby since they'd come dragging into town on that wild, fever-drenched night. They had visited a couple of times to do their share of the stable cleaning, and the horses had been getting winter-fat and happy. Clover had overcome the shyness of being older and grayer and accepted the young stallion's attentions, and a sweet-tempered and ginormous colt was a likely event in the early summer.
Lane's face softened, and a trace of the grief of his lost family etched across his face. Torrant noticed for the first time how much Yarri's uncle's beard was shot with gray, like Bethen's red-brown hair. They hadn't asked any questions, he thought with a lump in his throat. He and Aldam had shown up on their doorstep, and just like that they were family.
"Yes, Courtland," Lane was saying, laughter and tears vibrating in his deep voice. "That horse was my brother's crowning achievement—this family could live for ten years on his stud fees alone. He'll make your tuition, and Aldam's, and Yarri's if she wants it, and set the three of you up in whatever situation you care to have when you're grown."
Torrant gave a murmuring sigh and Lane realized he was falling asleep, right there on the kitchen table. "All I wanted was to see Yarri grow up," he mumbled—his time as the snow cat and the remnants of his illness had tired him out. "When she smiles …" Torrant's voice wobbled into darkness, "I hear bells …" And then his eyes closed, and just like that, he was snoring gently in the late night kitchen.
"I'm too simple to go to University," Aldam said sadly, watching Torrant sleep with the protectiveness of a brother. "I'll have to be left behind."
Lane pat Aldam's shoulder and hefted himself to his feet. "You're smarter than you give yourself credit for, Aldam—and if this one didn't leave you behind on Hammer Pass, I'm betting he won't leave you behind when he goes off to school."
Hope glowed from Aldam's sky blue eyes as got to his feet as well. "Do you really think so?" His voice held wonder.
Lane nodded, a lump in his throat. "I'm sure of it, boy-o. Now you take one shoulder, I'll take the other, and let's get this one off to bed."
They hauled Torrant to his feet and guided him through the house. "Right then," Aldam said placidly, not even breathing hard with his brother's weight on his shoulders, "But you can get his boots. His feet smell."
Lane looked sharply at his new son, saw the faint quirk of the lips, and let out a smothered whoop of laughter. "Aldam, my boy, you'll take Triannon by storm."

Part III

Goddess Stories Winter, Beltane …

Torrant sat on the steep side of the sand dune, watching the waves roll in like a thunderous volume of cold-smelted lead. The sand was freezing—although the snowdrifts had mostly been blown inland, the wind off the water was bitter, and the day before Solstice was not a time to stare dreamily at the ocean and wish you were somebody else.
But even the cold couldn't force him to stop doing just that.
Winter had set in for truly and good, and he had come to appreciate the benefits of living near town. Torrant could remember winters in Moon hold, when even the great, stately house had seemed claustrophobic and overrun. But in Clough the drifts would come up so high that even going out to feed the horses the carefully stored hay and grain was the job for a grown man and not a young one. Here near the sea, the snow was not too deep—a foot at the most—and there were regular expeditions to the mercantile that was, coincidentally, housed by Lane's successful shipping business. There were also visits to the nearby stables to visit Courtland and Clover and Kiss, and frequent moments when Bethen simply got tired of the lot of them inside and bundled them up (Cwyn looked like a walking ball of wool) and shooed them into the yard to run themselves out.
Today, though, everyone else was inside, working secretively on their Solstice gifts, and Torrant had suddenly found it absolutely necessary to be right here, freezing his arse off and staring at the sea.
They had been making pictures.
There was really nothing else the Clough children had to give for Solstice— and when Yarri suggested drawing pictures of the family, it had seemed like a beautiful idea. Yarri hadn't thought so. They don't look real she had whispered tearfully. They're wonderful, Yar—and they had been. Yarri knew how to draw with her heart—he had always thought so, even when she had simply scribbled in colored wax. Please? And oh! He had never been able to resist her tears.
The small amount of gift he had sent through her pictures (and Aldam's as well) had made him just tired enough to be melancholy. And then he actually looked at what he had wrought, and he felt a jagged glass lump of rage and grief ripping through his chest, and without a word he had grabbed his sweater and a hat and left the house.
The stables would have been a logical place, but every other child in Eiran seemed to have the same idea—including the two partially dressed young men he'd interrupted kissing in the loft. Torrant had excused himself uncomfortably and fled to the nearby dunes.
Now he hugged his knees and shivered and watched miserably as the waves beat incessantly at the shore. He liked it here, he thought with surprise. He loved the busy, crowded, happy, noisy Moon house here in Eiran. He loved the ocean, and the sand, and the inland river and living near town, where other children visited every day and wrestled or practiced sword play with stick branches or went riding after chores were done. Torrant, who had practiced with real swords, was everybody's hero in this activity—and he enjoyed teaching the others and keeping his own skills up. He liked galloping Courtland over the sand on the beach, even when it was cold. He really liked that Yarri was happy.
And today he sat and looked out at the iron-colored ocean in the knife-metal sky and wished that he could leave. And hated that he even thought he should.
Yarri appeared from the other side of the dune, wearing a sweater that used to be Roes' and a hat with little animals on it just like Aldam's, which Bethen had finished for her while they'd been sick in the barracks. She flopped in the space next to him without warning and he looked at her in surprise. "It's too cold out here for you."
"You were sicker than I was!” she snapped back, frowning.
"You're smaller," he returned loftily, but he smiled as he said it. As awful as he felt, it was better not to be alone with the awfulness.
"Aunt Bethen says you've been out too long and you need to come in," she asserted, obviously trying another tack where the first one failed.
"In a minute," he replied mildly, putting his arm around her and pulling her next to him, because it was unthinkable that they should share the same space on this bitter, bitter day and not touch.
"I miss them too," she said then, and he had to make his face strong against the urge to crumple it up and wrap his arms around her and sob. He was at least a hundred years too old for that today.
"I should go back," he rasped roughly. "I should go back and …"
"No," she interrupted.
"And find Rath and …" His voice was starting to break.
"No!” she insisted.
"Smack him and smack him and smack him …"
"No no no no no no no no!!!!"
He was sobbing now and she was shouting and she insinuated herself into his lap and pounded her little fist on his shoulder and shouted in his face until he wrapped his arms around her and they wept together, freezing on the winter sand.
"You can't go," she hiccupped, when most of the storm had passed. "You're what I have …"
"You have a whole family!” he protested.
"But it's not whole without you in it!” she insisted, and her brown eyes were bright with tears and luminous with anger, even as she thumped his shoulder with that little balled fist.
They were quiet for a moment, their breath puffing out between their bodies in little foggy bursts, and then she spoke into his shudders.
"You still have nightmares," she accused against his chest. "We hear you."
"So do you." Once a week, sometimes twice, she would creep into the downstairs bedroom in the hush of translucent night, and he would wake up with her plastered between himself and the rough wood wall. It hadn't bothered him to have her there, until now, when he realized he may have given something away of his own, terrible, panicky, blood-fraught dreams.
"Yes," she whispered, looking down into the space between them and playing with a cable on the thick sweater—an old one of Stanny's—that he'd thrown on in absence of a cloak. Then she looked at him, smart—so smart, for a tiny girl with angel's eyes. "But I'm not always shouting 'I need to go back' in my sleep."
And now, to his embarrassment, he found he couldn't look at her. Instead, he moved her off his lap and stood up, and she stood up too, and waited, as patiently as any adult, to hear his answer.
"I couldn't help," he said at last, simply. "I was going to go back and help, but…"
"But you saved me instead of getting killed yourself … do you think they'd blame you?” she asked gently, putting a small, cold hand on his own, even as they stood, and suddenly he couldn't stand her compassion anymore.
"I blame me!” he shouted, and it felt so good to shout something into the wind that he did it again, raising his face from her tiny center of warmth and compassion to scream at the world, "I should have stayed. I should have stayed and I should have fought and I should have … OUCH!"
Because she'd kicked him in the shin and as he backed against the dune and fell flat on his backside in the wet sand it was her turn to scream. "You're stupid, you're so stupid, because you wish you could be dead with them instead of alive with me!"
"That's not true!" He turned back, so truly shocked that he stopped rubbing his shin. "That's not true …"
"Then why wish you had stayed?” she demanded, still standing, looming over him if a tiny girl could be said to loom over an almost man-sized boy.
"So they could be alive with us!" He glared at her, angry. "I want them to be alive with us—I want to watch Tal and Qir wrestle with Stanny and let Ellyot show Aldam how to ride … I want …" his breath hitched in his chest and he let it out with a shudder and finished the thought. "I want my mama to meet Bethen … wouldn't our mamas like Bethen, Yarri?" He turned a face to her that was nearly as young as her own, and she started to cry again, softly, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands, and he realized that her fingertips were turning a little bluish and for the first time thought seriously about moving off the beach.
"Torrant?” she asked seriously, the tears still streaming quietly.
"What?" His hands were cold and wet now too.
"How come I'm little, and I know that if you'd gone back you'd be dead, but you're big and you don't know that?"
He sighed, and reached out to take her hands in his, rubbing them and blowing on them to warm them up. "I'm not that big," he said after a moment. Neither in age nor in height, he thought almost wryly to himself. He was going to be of middle height and not much more, with a broad sturdy chest and powerful legs—the family could already see it in his growing.
"How come you don't know?” she insisted in a little voice, and he pulled his hand inside the cuff of his sweater and tried to wipe her face dry with the outside of the folded ribbing.
"I know it in my head," he said after a moment, opening his arms to see if she'd come in for a hug. She did, and he moved one hand in between them, and made a fist. "It's here, in my chest, that I don't know that it's true for fact," he said at last, and she cupped her hands over his.
"But you need to," she whispered. "Here, between us, it needs to all be right."
He nodded, and kissed her little cheek. "Right, Yar. I'll believe it here," he tapped his chest with his fist, "So it's right between us. I hear you."
"Good," she sniffed, and he looked over her head and found his eyes widening.
"Uhm Yar …" He started to get up, but she wanted to cling for more hug and he found he overbalanced again and fell flat on his back.
"Yar!” he hollered, but it was too late, because she was still sprawled on his chest as the freak wave, a left over of high tide, rode up the beach and hammered both of them in icy brine, and they were too breathlessly cold to even shriek with the pain of it.
He stood up, dripping and shuddering uncontrollably, grabbing her hand and pulling her after him.
"CCCccccc …"   she   tried…"Ccccaaan   …   wwww…wwweee……gogoggog hhhoomme nnnooowwww…” she chattered grimly, and he didn't even bother to try to answer her as he began the freezing trudge home.
Bethen was outraged, of course, that they would come home sopping wet and shivering, but it was Solstice night, and when they proved more than able to shower and warm themselves by the fire, she relented from her tirade and gave them some warming stew to make the last of the shivers go away. Roes snuck in after her with a shaker of spices to make up for the fact that the stew was under-seasoned and a wink so that none of them would say anything to her mother. Bethen's cooking was well-meant and always filling, but even Yarri had secretly admitted to Torrant that she missed his mother's cooking.
When they were done with their stew and the family was done with its big dinner at the table, they all gathered by the hearth and solemnly exchanged gifts, and the gifts more than made up for missing dinner. And after that, they told Goddess stories.
The children from Clough had been shocked at the blasphemy when they first heard about Goddess stories.
"You tell … lies about the gods?" Aldam's eyebrow wrinkled over his eyes.
"No …" Roes frowned and bit her lip, looking at her mother for help. Even Torrant and Yarri looked up from their gifts, which was difficult because the gifts themselves were wonderful. Lane had given Torrant his newly polished and tuned lute, Roes had given Yarri a floppy rag doll of her very own, and Bethen had, of course, gifted the entire family with new sweaters and thick socks. Everyone had given Cwyn carved wooden toys, and little Starry had a new quilt with her namesakes embroidered across the top like thread diamonds.
Lane and Bethen were, in fact, still recovering. They had both gone very quiet when they opened the sheaf of parchment and looked at each picture of the family the three of them had loved. Goddess … Owen was going gray …I hadn't realized he'd grow older too. Tal and Qir were so strong—like the twin gods themselves. Ellyot looked just like you, Torrant, and just like his brothers too. Your mother was so beautiful—I had forgotten what a pretty woman Myrla was. Is this your mother and aunt, Aldam? They have kind faces—they look just like Yarri described them. There had been watery smiles and quiet tears all around, and then Torrant had played the lute and sang until his voice went hoarse and had to stop. And that was when Roes shocked them all with the idea of Goddess stories.
"Well, they're sort of like regular stories," Bethen said thoughtfully, "Except, we all know the characters—they're Oueant and Dueant and Triane. But you never know how they're going to be related or what they're going to be doing … oh my …"
Because now they looked more confused than ever.
"Maybe if they heard a couple?" Lane suggested in his wise way, and Bethen was about to agree when Stanny interrupted.
"I've got one!” he said insistently. His eyes were narrowed, and Torrant wondered what he was thinking. On the (many) days they had gone outside to wrestle and tire out the younger children in the snow, Stanny had watched Torrant and Yarri's gymnastics with envy. Torrant had spent some time teaching him things—avoiding a tripping foot, rolling under a tackle, leaping to the side and keeping his balance, and now Stanny was more determined than ever to join the town's running ball team in the spring. The look in Stanny's eyes now was that same look of sly determination that he had when Torrant was teaching him something new. Stanny had a goal in mind, and this story was his pathway to it.
Bethen knew it too. She closed her eyes in exaggerated patience and gave a soft sigh. "Fine, Stanny. Go right ahead."
Stanny smiled. "Once there was a god who was in two parts—get it? One god, but in two parts for the two moons."
"We get it, Stanny," Lane said dryly. "Go on."
"Well he had two parts. He had the part that stayed, sat, and worked and did math and kept books for his father, and the part that played ball. But he still stayed in the sky. And that's all."
Torrant heard some smothered sounds from Bethen and Lane that made him think that maybe this wasn't exactly the way a Goddess story was supposed to be told, and then Roes spoke up indignantly.
"That's so stupid, Stanny—you can't tell Goddess stories at all!"
"Roes …” said Bethen in a pained voice, and then she took charge. "Stanny— I do get your point, and I'll think about it. Roes, do you have another story to tell?"
"Yeah." Roes nodded, as though making up her mind. "Yes, mama—I've got a good one." Her glance was also sly, but her face was thoughtful and she obviously took the Goddess stories very seriously. At her mother's nod of encouragement, Roes continued on.
"Once there were two gods, Oueant the brave and strong, and Dueant the compassionate and honorable, and they haunted their orbits like twin moons from the time that they met as children. They worshipped a young Goddess, who played like a little girl and scampered to keep up with one and then the other and learned everything that they knew—but did not know about playing with dolls. One day a hurtling meteor destroyed Oueant. Dueant's life almost went out without his brother, but he kept on because the little Goddess needed him, and together they orbited the earth, until they came upon another brother. This new Oueant moved slower, was not quite as bright as Dueant and Triane, but they loved him anyway, and they lit the places he could not see and moved slowly so as not to leave him behind. One night they made a terrible slide from orbit to the earth, and there they encountered …"
Roes blushed, and her gaze dropped, but she raised it again and fastened her earth-brown eyes on Aldam's avid face. He was hanging delightedly on her every word, and at her pause he nodded, propping his chin on his knees and hugging them to his chest as her story caught his heart.
"A rose bush," Roes rasped at last, looking away from Aldam's pure blue gaze. "A young rose bush—but …" she flushed, "But still with a sharp tongue. And she was quite dazzled by Dueant and Triane, almost a little embarrassed around them because they were so bright and dazzling and she was just a rosebush with her toes in the earth and barbs she didn't know she had ready at any moment to shed blood she hadn't wanted on her hands. But Oueant, the new Oueant … his light was gentle to her sharpness. His beauty was soft and quiet to the rose's … over-brightness." Her mouth, a little bee-stung kewpie doll bow of a rose-bud mouth, quirked up in the usual self-deprecating humor that Torrant had learned to associate with Yarri's young cousin. And then she continued the story, and Torrant forgot everything but a breathless hope for a future spelled out in the moons.
"And the rose loved that moon, that round-faced, blue-lighted moon, and she thrived under the moon like she'd never thrived under the sun, and her flowers opened and she bathed her face in the softness and the kindness of this new Oueant. And Oueant, for his part, grew brighter in the face of all that adoration, and although Dueant and Triane rose back up in the sky, Oueant, this new Oueant, never strayed far from his rose, because he knew that without his light, she would wither and shrivel, an old maid of a flower, and if that were to happen, his own light would fade into night."
She finished and the family let loose a collective shuddery breath as the story eased its grip on their lungs, and suddenly Lane spoke up, his deep voice resonant and gentle, and he continued the story to the end his daughter would not.
"And the little rosebush grew lush and brilliant and her flowers were so extraordinary that she could no longer be called a common earth rose anymore." His hand fell to his daughter's autumn leaf colored hair and he stroked it softly in the firelight. "So she became a Goddess among roses, rising into the sky to join her Oueant in a small orbit of kindness and rose petals that made the world just a little sweeter and a little sharper and a little more gracious kind of place." Lane's mouth quirked and he gave Rose's head a little push, and she pushed back, and the moment became a little lighter than it had. "The end," he finished, and she giggled and leaned her head against his legs as he sat in his favorite stuffed chair.
"Goddess, Roes," Torrant asked, shaking his head just a little to clear the web of storytelling a little faster, "Are you sure you're only eleven?"
"Shut up, Dueant," Roes returned amiably, and the family laughed a little.
"You mixed them up!" Yarri corrected with a pout. Torrant is Oueant and Aldam is Dueant."
"They're a little bit of both, dearest," Bethen said thoughtfully, looking at the two young men with stories in her eyes.
"I thought it was wonderful," Aldam said fervently, his eyes still fixed on Roes' face. Bethen took that moment to clear her throat wryly, and then she took up another story and the fire burnt low on the hearth into the night.
And the night spun on into the day and the day spun into the night and so on. Moons spinning around earths spinning around suns in the same way that seasons spin into each other, until, like a subtly dyed yarn in shades from red to brown to green to yellow, winter turned to spring.
The Moons in Clough had celebrated Beltane every year, with a beribboned pole and fierce and joyous dancing, but their hold had been only the size of a large extended family. Torrant, Yarri, and Aldam were unprepared for the pure vernal force of an entire town celebrating the rites of spring.
In spring, every girl from little Starry to the constable's wizened great-grandmother wore their finest, prettiest dresses. Bethen had put down her knitting needles for a whole month and worked with the girls on embroidery in order to make over her oldest dress for Roes, and Roes' baby dress for Starry. On Beltane morning, Bethen shoved all of the men including Cwyn outside in their best clothes—including new black woolen vests for all of them, with embroidery in bright reds, blues and yellows tripping across the borders like dancing children.
Bewildered, Torrant and Aldam, with Cwyn in tow, followed Stanny and Lane to a broad meadow far upstream from where they'd made their hushed and panicked winter's trek, under the bridge that marked the route to the Old Man Hills, and up towards where the river ran swift and fresh in a gorgette, and the green hill on the town side made a broad, flat green. There, they joined the male half of the town as they re-opened cooking pits and set up outside trestle tables and hauled out vast wooden bowls. The bowls would be filled with the last of the winter preserves and a crispy fried chip made from the corn and flour left over from the winter stores. The whole town would feast all day on what the winter had spared them, and celebrate what the summer would bring.
The excitement was as infectious as the baby's giggle.
"There will be dancing?" Aldam asked shyly.
"There was in Moon Hold," Torrant said softly. "Moon and Kles used to set the tone, and then …" He remembered his family forming couples to make the patterns. The boys would all fight to dance with Yarri, and Old Jed would always come ducking to Torrant's mother with a courtly bow and an apologetic smile. You look like her, he'd say softly, and Torrant's mother would laugh softly. You look nothing like Torrian, she'd reply with gentleness, but I've always loved to dance.
"We didn't dance at home," Aldam said now, looking away. "We had no Goddess holidays to dance for … and I wasn't invited to any other gatherings."
"Why wouldn't they invite you?" Stanny was stumped. If Aldam and Torrant were brothers, then Stanny and Aldam were best friends.
"I was simple and a freak of the Goddess." Abruptly, Aldam changed the subject. "But I'm glad I get to watch the dancing here."
"You'll get to join the dancing here," Land said gently, and Aldam's smile turned the head of every young woman in the clearing.
"I'll get to dance?" he asked loudly, his excitement crackling through the glorious spring sunshine, and suddenly all of the girls who had stopped to play or to talk with the children in front of the Moon's house during the long winter gathered around. Torrant, Aldam, and Stanny quickly found that they would not need to worry on this night about being the only one not dancing.
Torrant finally fought his way clear of the press of girls and made an observation to Lane. "None of the refugees are here."
Lane nodded. Most of the refugees had been cleared out of his warehouse and the barracks and into newly built homes on the outskirts of the town, or into ships or horse carts that would take them to kin. This was a relief for Lane because ships had been coming in for the last two months, and there would be no place now for anyone to sleep, even if the refugees hadn't seemed to feel any relief of their own. Even though the town had expanded by almost a third, those who had run from Clough had not yet relaxed into the heartbeat of their new home.
"I don't know what it is," Lane murmured now. "I know they didn't celebrate the Goddess' days in Clough … but if they're free to do so here …"
"They stopped believing in them," Torrant said glumly, remembering Moon talking about the pall of fear that had begun to take over their beloved home. "Moon said that … Consort Rath made people afraid of their faith, and then he made them ashamed of it." Torrant sighed, an adult sound for a young man. "Not everybody who came from Clough had a family to make them feel safe," he finished.
Lane swallowed a little. "Glad to do it."
Torrant flashed him a grin then, unbridled, unafraid, unashamedly grateful. "You won't be when Yarri remembers how to shirk her chores."
Lane laughed out loud then, and Torrant found himself pulled into the press of young people heading for the tree stand to the south of the Faire grounds.
The young men over fourteen and the young women who had had their first moon cycle all got to go into the forest that bordered the clearing and cut a tall sapling for the ribbon-pole. Stanny practically threw Cwyn at his father and pulled at his new cousins to join in the hunt—apparently it involved lots of chasing and flirting and occasionally kissing, and this was Stanny's first year to join in. He almost knocked Aldam over when Aldam stopped to see if Roes and the women had arrived yet.
"Roes will be angry if she misses this," he said anxiously and Stanny rolled his eyes.
"Roes can't come—she's still wearing white flowers on her dress this year. Girls don't get to come until …" his voice dropped uncomfortably and he darted his eyes left and right to make sure nobody could hear him say such a grown-up and un-masculine thing, "they bleed every month." Stanny finished speaking and an odd expression crossed Aldam's face.
"Roes is much younger than I am," he murmured, as though the idea had just hit him.
Stanny rolled his eyes again and plunged into the giggling shade that was the ribbon-pole hunt, but Torrant understood.
"She will grow," he said quietly. "Time passes, girls grow. You'll dance with Roes someday."
"Perhaps," Aldam said with quiet dignity. "But by then, she might not want to dance with me."
A cold flutter went through Torrant then, the jangle of cathedral bells out of sync and off their sound. "You heard her Goddess story," he said at last. "You just need to wait for that rose tree to grow." And with that he pushed his brother into the shaded woods, where the giggles of pretty girls were almost frightening under the glorious sun of a new future.
Stanny was sweet and handsome and his father was fairly well off. Aldam was pretty and exotic and new to the town. Torrant was (as a gaggle of girls was heard whispering) almost dreamily handsome—and his wizard's lock had turned frost white this winter and the glorious contrast between it and his dark brown hair alone was exotic enough to attract girls who had grown up in the same town together. By the time the fifteen-foot sapling was found and stripped and carried back into the square, the three boys had started huddling together for safety against the sudden, frightening push of hands against their bottoms and budding breasts crushed up against their backs or arms when they were not expecting to find any human next to them at all. When they emerged, as skittish as new stallions in a herd of musty mares, they almost ran to the safety of their family.
"What's wrong with you three?" Roes asked disgustedly as Stanny took Starry from his mother and cuddled her to his chest like a shield. Her 'reworked' dress was nothing short of brilliant, Torrant noticed. Many shades of leaf green, it was also swirling with rose and mauve and blush colored embroidery, with the occasional twinkle of yellow for brightness. Only the bright white of the ribbon-shaped roses at the hem seemed out of place, and Roes' disgust with not yet being able to sew on the red and pink flowers of the other girls' her age was a palpable thing. Yarri's dress was much like Roes'—many shades of green, but with bright pink, orange, purple and yellow flowers decorating the laced-up vest at her middle, and white ribbon roses at her hem. They were happy colors, and Torrant's anxious look eased a little just looking at Yarri in her new finery. Bethen was wearing a shirt of dark violet and swirling skirts of green, and the many shades of purple and yellow on her vest were both happy and soothing, and everything that was Bethen. Torrant noticed that Lane's soft glance fell more often on his wife than anywhere else in the colorful clearing of ladies dressed for spring.
"Nothing!" Aldam said shortly in response to Roes' question. Almost desperately he picked Cwyn up and swung him around to make him giggle. Or used him as a mace to ward off encroachers—either one.
Torrant looked back from where they'd come and saw four girls—the four who had been the most aggressive towards him and the most dismissive towards Stanny and Aldam, and then looked back at the family and suppressed a whimper. All of the babies were taken. With not a little bit of panic he grabbed Yarri's hand and said "Look, Yar—they've got one of those circle swings—the ones where you sit on a bench and twirl round and round … you want to go?"
"Please?" Yarri looked up at Bethen who nodded readily, laughing gently at the situation, and she urged Roes to go with them.
"Fine," Roes sniffed in a transparent display of irritation. "It's not like I'm going to wear myself out dancing this year, is it?"
"There is no law that says you can't dance, my darling," Bethen said with brusque sympathy.
"But not with Aldam," Roes finished, then flounced down the hill after Torrant, grabbing Yarri's hand with all of the bossy-ness she could summon under the circumstances.
Lane sighed, watching both his daughter's posture and the disappointed posture of the four girls. Each girl tossed hair in a different brilliant shade in the sun, as they saw that their new moons had hidden themselves behind clouds of children. With sighs they turned back towards the ribbon-pole, which was being erected in the center of the square and started vying to scroll the ribbons out from the center in anticipation for the first dance. Soon, he thought, soon his little girl would be one of those predatory creatures—and unlike those girls, his daughter had a clear scent for her prey.
"There's going to be no living with her until she starts riding her moon cycle," he said glumly, and Bethen, with her husband in public and free from the smallest ones for the first time in months, wrapped her arm around her beloved's waist and guffawed.
"Dueant's little toes, Lane," she chortled, "Do you think there's going to be any living with her afterwards?"
Lane groaned, and after warning the boys to be careful with her babies—as though either of them had ever been anything else—Bethen gave Lane one of the vast trays of food she had made for the picnic and together they moved down to the trestle tables to share their food and visit with their neighbors.
Torrant, Yarri, and Roes rode the circle swing until Roes groaned with dizziness, and then they walked her back up the hill to sit with Aldam and the babies. Stanny took the opportunity to go back into the crowd with his friend from town, Spence, and Torrant and Yarri left Roes with Aldam and the little ones, and went to investigate the great swing. Essentially a bench suspended by ropes between two trees on a rise, Torrant took his turn pushing the swing backwards to the top of the hill and then letting it go, listening to the shrieks of delight as the passengers felt their stomachs jump up to their throats and then down to their toes again. When his turn manning the swing was done, he and Yarri sat on it as passengers and rode until Yarri's throat was almost raw with shrieking and Torrant's face hurt with laughing.
When they spilled off the swing for the final time and reeled to the side of the hill, they sat down breathlessly and clung to each other laughing, and that's when they heard the sound of pipes, strings, drums and bells skipping up the hill and tumbling around the valley. Nearly the entire town's population was below them, dressed in their prettiest and brightest, and the excitement that thrummed up from all of those happy, dancing, chattering bodies was as palpable as the music itself.
A silence fell between the two of them then, and they gazed thoughtfully down into the valley. Torrant's eyes were drawn to the dancers. The couple's dancing had not yet started, and the ribbon-pole dancing was being saved until after supper had officially been served. The wild Beltane coupling—one of two nights a year when young men and women could stay up late and give in to the wilding that was young blood and youth lust without censure or judgment— would not be until the families had gone home. Now it was young and old, moving to rhythm with the sheer joy of being alive in the spring sunshine. To his surprise, Torrant saw the two young men he'd interrupted in the stables on Solstice morning. They hadn't been Stanny's particular friends, being a couple of years older, but they had stopped by the Moon house often enough and participated in the general roughhousing that the boys had done outside to stay sane during the winter. Torrant had seen the taller one with the elegant sweep of dark blonde hair at the stables often after Solstice, working his own horse.
The boy … what was his name? It rhymed with a horse's saddle part…. Kert—that was it. Kert had loved horses and had frequently gone riding on the snow-less sand of the shore, and the brown haired boy he was talking to so seriously now had been a little afraid of them. Aln, one of Jerin's brothers, Torrant recalled now, had spent a bit of time with Yarri, warming up to the fat, harmless Kiss in the warm barn while the snows swirled and the frigid surf pounded away outside the snug public barn.
Aln would watch his friend gallop into the snow with a look of helpless misery, the look of someone who was afraid he would always be left behind. Even from a distance, Torrant could tell he was fighting that look, fighting that hunch of his shoulders, and that Kert was doing his best to help him fight it off as well. Suddenly, in a gesture that even the distance could interpret as, "Oh, fine, if that's what you want me to do I'll do it!" Kert grabbed Aln's hand and went tearing through the crowd. With the frustrated movements of a best friend or a long time spouse, Kert hauled his friend to the circle of the ribbon-pole, and once they were alone under the gaily colored ribbons he bent down from his height and kissed his friend on the lips deeply and passionately and publicly. It was a claiming kiss, a public announcement of their relationship and a public dare to anyone to do anything about it.
Torrant's heart stalled in his chest as the two lovers lost themselves in the kiss and became the focus of the crowd. In Clough, such a kiss would be the signing of a death sentence—he remembered Moon cautioning them of that often enough … cautioning Tal often enough, and there was such sweetness and passion and love in that kiss that Torrant didn't think he could hardly stand it when the crowd turned ugly. Then the kiss ended, and Kert and Aln stood, chests heaving as though they'd run a league, with sly promising smiles on their faces, as though that kiss were only the beginning.
And the crowd applauded and cheered and the handfastings began. For the rest of the day, until the evening dancing, couples who had decided to make a life together would go under the ribbon-pole and kiss, and every kiss was greeted with cheers and best wishes and good will. Torrant found himself swallowing hard against tears and memories, and the tears stayed behind his eyes, but the memories couldn't be held at bay.
The Beltane celebrations at the Moon hold had been small contained to the hold itself, but there had still been a ribbon pole and there had still been dancing. The rule was that everybody danced with everybody else, because their little 'township' was so small that it was unthinkable that anybody get left out for want of partners. Tal and Qir had been excellent dancers, and had partnered everybody with glee and grace— even Ginny and Arel, who mostly had been content to dance with each other.
But this night they had a new member of the household, the young Kith—and he had been both shy and delighted to be dancing with the two brothers, and Torrant remembered a moment—he didn't see what had preceded it—when Qir had laughed and moved out of Kith’s reach and said, 'No—ask my brother. I only dance with other boys around the ribbon pole.' Kith had looked up to Tal then, and Torrant had felt the shy electric silence that had passed between the two of them, and had known, somehow, that Kith s silence and his quiet pain might very soon be eased.
"I saw them once, kissing," said Yarri now, very much in the present, and Torrant startled and looked at her. Her shorn hair had grown back a little over the winter, and Bethen had trimmed it as only another woman could, so it waved around her face like a spring fire in the hearth, curling up and around the crown of yellow flowers that Bethie had woven through it, as though the flowers were always there and the hair and the flowers were comfortable together. With her pale clear skin, warm brown eyes and that wonderful hair, she looked like a vision of what every mother wanted a little girl to look like when she dreamed of a daughter. Those eyes, though—there was something over-wise in Yarri's vision, and Torrant wondered if anyone else in their world could deal with that wisdom like he could.
"Who?” he asked, although he knew.
"Tal and Kith—I think they might have handfasted this year if…" Torrant made a surprised sound, and she gave him one of those gamine grins that told him she had been doing something she shouldn't have and had confessed instead of gotten caught. "Well, they were doing more than kissing," she explained and Torrant tried not to choke on his own tongue.
And then, when he thought she had rendered him completely speechless, she went and really shocked him. "You don't want to kiss any of the boys, do you?"
"Erglplkw …" He tried again. "Yarri!"
"Because those girls seemed to scare you." She was looking at him anxiously, and he wasn't sure which answer she was looking for.
"They were predatory!” he burst out. "I would have been just fine with them if I was the snow cat!"
Yarri's giggle drifted down the hill, but Torrant was so mortified by the conversation that he didn't notice. "So, about the boys …"
"No," Torrant bit out at last. "I mean no, nobody down there—boy or girl— appeals to me to kiss right now."
"Well, which one would you like if one did?" Yarri asked insistently, and she was being insistent for a reason that was important to her, so Torrant thought and gave her an honest answer.
"I don't think it would matter," he told her at last. "It would just have to be someone I like—someone I care about. I … I know that's not … usual," he finished off, flushing more, if that were possible. "Ginny and Arel told me once that they always knew they were Goddess' women, and Bryn said that boys made her blush from the time she was very small. But me … I think it's the person, and not the … gender."
"Wonderful," Yarri said, and the smile on her face was blinding, and Torrant had to know what was rocketing around that child's mind of hers.
"Why is it so important, Yar?” he asked, and unlike his own looks on the subject, which were usually blushing and to the side, Yarri's gaze was dead-on in his eyes.
"Because Roes told me that she was going to marry Aldam, and I told her that I'm going to marry you. I needed to make sure you liked girls, because I have plans to make."
He should have been speechless, but he wasn't. He'd been chewing over this dilemma since he was eight years old and had heard the far off sound of bells. "I'll be older than you for a long time before you're of age, Yarri," he said gently. "Anything can happen."
"Yes it can," she said, almost preternaturally wise. "But I don't care who you kiss in the meantime. I don't care who you go swimming naked with either … remember," she added when he was going to interrupt, "I spied on Tal and Kith and Qir and Bren all last summer and I know how things work. But when I'm of age you will marry me, Torrant Shadow, and that's a promise."
She was so serious, and he had worked so hard to keep her alive, to earn a place where he could watch her grow up, that he couldn't argue, couldn't do anything to ruin the lovely fantasy that she had wrought for her child's heart, but he could give her an out if she chose to take it.
"Let me know if that changes, right," he said softly, leaning back and pulling her to lay her head on his stomach as he did so. "I'll need to make plans too."
"It won't change," she said confidently, putting her little head on his flat stomach.
"But if it does …"
"I'll tell you first." She yawned—a short nap on the hill under the sunshine was sounding like a fine idea indeed.
"So, Tal and Qir got naked a lot last summer?” he asked idly. Tal and Qir had probably compared notes every night, he thought affectionately. They had been that close.
"Yeah." Yarri yawned. "It's funny that they never learned to look up in the trees."
"Yeah." He yawned too. "I'm glad though … not that you looked but that they got to fall in love."
"Me too," Yarri said softly. "I'm so glad they got to fall in love." And then the sound of the crowd faded and they took a brief nap in the pretty spring sun.
When they woke up the sun had just tipped towards westering, and it was feasting time, and after that it was presentation time when all of the new couples and the new babies and the new families stood up and were presented to the town. To their immense surprise, Torrant, Yarri and Aldam found themselves presented along with little Starry, and as they stood there under the ribbon pole and Lane and Bethie stood up and introduced them as foster sons and a new daughter, Torrant and Aldam met shiny eyes in the waning light and smiled slightly. The Goddess moon who had been so close to earth the night they'd fled Clough had smiled upon them warmly, and well they knew it.
After that was the dark dancing time, and when the manic energy of the young had finally been exhausted (somewhat) under the ribbon pole and only those participating in the wilding remained, the collective of the town families split up into smaller family groups around the great fire and the low mumble of Goddess stories began.
Torrant told his first Goddess story that night.
Bethen had just finished telling one in which the two gods were obviously Roes and Stanny, her courageous and her compassionate child, and the Goddess was Cwyn, bouncing around the solar system off of every fool thing that got in his way, and how he finally rolled into a giant yarn basket and covered his light part of the time and that was why the Goddess moon waxed and waned—it all depended on the state of the yarn tangle and whether or not Cwyn could sit still long enough to let his light shine through the fouled wool.
The family laughed long and hard at Bethen's story, including Cwyn who, although he didn't understand what was wrong with bouncing off of every fool thing in the solar system did very much appreciate his mother's tickling which she used to punctuate the story at the end. When the laughter had died down a little, Lane asked if anybody else had a Goddess story.
Without knowing he was going to, Torrant found himself singing.

Ode to Tal, Qir, and Ellyot

Mirror to mirror, brother to brother
One courage, one compassion, and honor the other
Four moons danced in the sky.
Two of them danced in mysterious night
Two of them danced in the fiery bright
All four of them danced in the heavenly nigh
They were joined by a Goddess, a bright bouncing moon
Who spun with a glow of brothers' love in her plume
And from day moon to night moon did she dance
Every tear did they catch, every laugh did they treasure
Their beloved small Goddess they loved beyond measure
And saved in their hearts every glance.

These moons were fine men, though terribly young,
Two were old enough barely to present their new suns
To Father Moon who was so proud
The family danced through their heavenly sphere
And rejoiced with their light that each moon was as near
As his brother, who would nurse every wound.

From the evils beyond a meteor pitched
And three of the moons from the heavens it ripped
A black plague from the evil beyond
Leaving the fourth moon, pale shadow alone
With their bright bouncing Goddess through the heavens to roam
So poor a beloved to shelter his Goddess from the hell of the evils beyond.

So how do you roam without courage or honor?
How do you live without strength or bright steel
In a land where a blight cracks the moons?
By his wits and his prayers one last moon did his best
As they fled from their home without food, without rest
And he held Goddess moon to his heart.

He found a fine brother made of healing and love
And with that sweet glowing moon and some help from above
They brought Goddess moon to her harbor
But now he stares at the sky

And dares wonder why
Their hearts were deprived of their brothers.

What was this black blight
That ripped up their fine night
What right did it have to block sun?
How dare this foul plague
Descend in full rage
And leave of the four only one.

Little Goddess will grow
She will thrive and she'll know
Her brother moons were the finest of men
And the last moon he will hound
That blight to the ground
And a price will be paid for their deaths.
Lo though it be his final debt.

There was a thoughtful silence when Torrant's voice died down. Every member of the Moon clan caught breath and swallowed, and Lane and Bethen exchanged one of their looks that spoke volumes and wondered how to address this sudden pain under the glorious spring stars.
"They wouldn't want that," Yarri said from his side, breaking the silence for them.
"They're not here to object," Torrant murmured. His knees were still drawn to his chest—he had straightened briefly to give his whole throat to his singing, but his eyes hadn't left the distant glow of the Beltane bonfire. The dancing at the ribbon pole had faded and now there were bodies writhing happily together— upright for the time being, but full of sensual promise—in front of the great fire, and occasionally Torrant's eyes would flicker as he recognized couples taking advantage of the Goddess night together, who might not ever mesh flesh again.
"I don't want that," Yarri said stubbornly, her chin set in the mutinous expression that the entire family recognized by now. Even Cwyn's eyes grew wide, as he recognized the one will in the family that was as stubborn and as volatile as his own.
Torrant moved slightly, turning his head to actually focus on her face, and his softened smile eased that set of her chin and the whole family let out a collective breath of relief. "It won't happen today, Yarri," he promised, before closing his eyes dreamily. "But you said it best—somebody has to be smacked."
Suddenly Cwyn, who only spoke real words when he felt the world was not revolving around his three-year-old self precisely enough, picked up on the one word used often enough as a threat to really upset him. "No smack!” he squealed. "NO smack—no smack, no Torrant smack, noooooooooooo smaaaaaaaacccckkkkkkk!!!!"
His outburst set the family to laughing and the tension eased like thick water thinning from humid air. As one, everybody stood and started to gather blankets, bowls, vests and flowered crowns to take back home as Bethen tried to assure Cwyn that no one was going to get smacked at all—not even Torrant.
"And since when," she added in exasperation, "has Torrant ever smacked you, you little hellion—even when you'd earned it!" But Cwyn's squeals continued until they were half way home—when he abruptly fell asleep in his mother's arms.
The family wandered home in a loosely assembled group, and Torrant took the rear with an exhausted and happy Starry in her baby sling next to his chest and a handful of wild-flower crowns from the girls who had finally convinced him to dance. Lane trailed behind, shooing Yarri up to walk with Roes as they walked, and Torrant sensed the impending 'talk' in his posture.
"No," he said as Lane drew near, and Lane's smile could be seen against his silver-shot beard in the moonlight.
"You don't even know what I was going to ask," Lane said mildly.
"You were going to ask me to forget about vengeance and concentrate on growing up well," Torrant replied, and Lane's pained look told him that he'd hit the mark precisely.
"It's not an unreasonable request," Lane pointed out with a sigh. He was carrying the blankets—they had not been folded well and armloads of heavy denim quilting kept threatening to slide from his grasp as he walked.
"Tal and Qir fell in love last summer," Torrant said, keeping his voice as even as possible. "They never got to handfast at Beltane." He swallowed then, hard, but kept his face stoic and manly in the razor light of the night. "Ellyot never even got to fall in love." His brother had barely noticed either girls or boys, Torrant thought bitterly. They had both been too wrapped up in fencing and tumbling and horses and the joy of being young and strong and happy and free. Girls would have come later for Ellyot, Torrant was sure.
"Someone owes for that," he rasped at last, aware that a silence had fallen over his uncompleted thought.
"Are you sure the gods meant for you to collect?" Lane asked quietly, knowing that Torrant's rage was too close to his own heart for him to object whole heartedly.
"If they didn't, then the Goddess most certainly did," Torrant retorted. Then, almost to himself, "Why the snow cat, if not to make somebody pay?"
Lane sighed. "You promised to go to Triannon," he said at last, unhappy about pulling that card so early in the game.
"I know," Torrant said, surprising him. "I'll go after. I need to know as much as I can about the world before I take on Rath. I won't go in unprepared."
There was a pained sound next to him—it all sounded so reasonable, even to Lane, who was supposed to be too old to believe that vengeance was a reasonable response to being wronged. "Then make me one more promise, Torrant my new son." Oh yes, he emphasized that for a purpose, and Torrant's instinctive wince told him that he didn't take his place in the Moon family lightly.
"Right." He patted Starry's back lightly as they walked, as though comforting himself while soothing the baby.
"Promise me that with all this preparing you're going to do, that you'll prepare to live when your vengeance is through."
Torrant actually stopped he was so surprised. "Of course!" He looked at Lane with shocked eyes. "Yarri would never forgive me if I went and got killed before she had a chance to reject me for someone else!"
Now it was Lane's turn to laugh in shock. "Boy-o, if you really think she'll reject you when the time comes, you haven't been watching the same girl grow."
And Torrant's reply almost broke his heart, especially because he had no good reply for it. "But it would be too perfect, wouldn't it … Yarri and me together at the end of things. I don't think the Goddess lets anybody be that happy."
"Sometimes," Lane murmured, feeling the awesome weight of fatherhood descend like the darkness had grown lead wings. Then he spied his beloved ahead, singing clearly—if a little off-key—into the night for her children. He smiled then, and put more heft into his comfort. "Truly, Torrant—sometimes the Goddess lets us have all we want and more."

… Samhain and song

Summer passed in a flurry of working the warehouse for the men and working the garden, harvesting and canning for the women. Twice Lane let the family ride across the channel to Otham in one of his mid-sized ships, to shop in small adobe rooms that smelled like spices and dine on the side of streets cobbled in rounded yellow bricks.
Yarri loved the shops—although she still wore pants, watching Roes preen with the new red flowers on her skirt made wrestling her into skirts and pretty things a little less of a chore. Mostly, Yarri liked buying colored wax for her pictures—ever since the Solstice gifts, she had been drawing up a storm, filling every scrap of parchment available with pictures of her new home and the new people in her life. Her favorite color, by far, was yellow.
There was plenty of time to play during the summer as well—there were several swimming holes in the river, and the family went nearly every evening to cool off and talk desultorily about their day. Bethen had sewn costumes for the women out of dark, close fitting linen so that the family needn't swim separately, and it was usually the best part of the evening, as was the gathering by the water's edge after the sun set, telling jokes, and of course, more Goddess stories.
With the exception of the breathless adventures to Otham, Yarri's summer had been a fractious, irritated one at best. When the three of them had first arrived, she had taken to Lane immediately, recognizing a father and a protector in his warm presence, and very possibly noting the physical resemblance between her uncle and Owen Moon as well. But as time wore on a lurking shadow cast a chill on their relationship, and although Lane and Bethen didn't seem surprised, Torrant was often shocked at Yarri's rudeness.
On the evening of the summer solstice—whose only real celebration was the same liberties taken by young people of the town that they took at Beltane, with fewer, if possible, inhibitions about waking up naked in haylofts—the family gathered by the swimming hole and took a respite from the comparatively mild heat found by the seashore.
"Gods," Torrant was laughing and shaking his head. "At home we would wake up when it was still dark, run around and do our chores and walk the horses, then get back before midday, eat, and sleep until evening, just to get out of the heat."
Bethen shuddered. "I hate the heat," she murmured. "And I know we're spoiled here by the sea, but I couldn't bear being closeted up in the valley like that … and your snows are deeper too!" Bethen was wearing her swimming costume, and Starry took that exact moment to blow a bubble on her mother's plump shoulder, then giggle and slap the bare skin with pride. Bethie giggled right back at her and blew another bubble on that sweet soft tummy before continuing, "And holding a baby in that kind of swelter—ugh … I would have loved that man anywhere, but I'm awfully glad he came to Eiran instead of making me come to Clough."
Yarri, who had been a passive listener while drawing figures in the sand at the water's edge, looked on the verge of agreement—she, of all of them in Clough had complained the most bitterly about the heat, even from the cradle. Then she heard Lane's name and sniffed delicately. "Well that was stupid," she muttered, just loud enough to be heard and with a sly glance to see if Torrant and Bethen had heard. She stood up when they didn't react and stalked away towards the river. Everyone else was in the water—including Cwyn, who ventured into the water until it was up to his armpits as he sat, and then simply sang to himself in the water, watching his toes float up to the top and touching them when he saw them. Torrant had remarked often enough that this was the only time and place that the little boy was ever completely still.
But now, at Yarri's nasty comment about her once beloved uncle, Torrant looked pained, and shot an apologetic look at Bethen.
"I don't understand," he murmured, disheartened. "She seemed to adore him when we first got here."
Bethen smiled gently, and grimaced in her niece's direction. "She still does— don't you see that's the problem?"
Torrant looked blank, and Bethen laughed a little and settled herself on a bathing mat and gazed down the hill and over the trees that shaded the swimming hole, to where the westering sun was presently turning the ocean into dancing bronze fire.
"It's one thing for you," she said compassionately. "You … your heart has known two mothers since almost before you knew how to speak, and you never even had a memory of a father to contend with … not that I'd wish them on anybody, Torrant, but your experiences of the world have made you…" She searched for the word while she put the baby down and let her sit up, the little bare back leaning against her mother's thigh. "Grateful. That's what they've done—they've made you grateful for the adults in your life—many of them, judging by your stories of Owen's holding—who have loved you unconditionally. But Yarri—her only father was Owen, and …" Bethie laughed a little. "Owen was larger than life—that he was. You might not realize it, but to this day you still call him 'Moon'—as though he were the only Moon who could bear that name."
Torrant opened his mouth and then ducked, looking ashamed.
"Don't feel bad, darling," Bethen continued. "It's not your fault—I remember when I first met him, in his lovely house with all of those people who thought that he was named Moon because he shared blood with the Twins. I'd been married to his brother for over three years, and he terrified me! But then I realized what made the difference between them."
Torrant turned his head sideways, listening avidly, every one of Lane's small kindnesses and quiet moments of wisdom from the past months filling his heart like marbles in a jar. "What?"
"Belief—sheer terrifying belief." Bethen laughed a little then, and this time there was some bitterness too. "Owen thought that he was invincible, that his little hold of Goddess' brethren would sit, not twenty miles from a man who had made all forms of Goddess worship tainted, wrong, or illegal somehow, and he didn't fear because he believed in his own rightness." Starry made a little wobble then and fell gracelessly on her face on the bathmat, and Bethen picked her up, soothing her before the baby even had time to realize she'd been wronged by the force of gravity. "Lane never had that," she murmured to the baby. "Lane's got this rock steady integrity instead, that makes him admit when he's wrong and work to be right … but he never assumes. Anyway," her voice became brisk, "Anyway, Yarri's father was larger than life—and Lane is so very easy to love. Can you see, even with the strong resemblance between the two brothers, how Yarri might feel that loving her uncle Lane is a betrayal to Owen's memory?"
Torrant laughed a little and let a handful of sand trickle between his fingers, his eyes on Yarri as she loitered at the riverbank. Her hair was pulled up into a pony-tail on the top of her head, and she was floundering in Roes' swimming costume from the year before. Lane was in the water, playing with Cwyn by letting him swim to Stanny and Roes who were very close by to help him keep his head above water. Last year, Yarri had been the one paddling awkwardly in the water from brother to brother while her mother and Kes watched modestly from the shore, and Owen called encouragement from the back of whichever horse he was working that day. Maybe it was that memory that drew her brows tight over her bright, miserable eyes, and made her lip quiver as she concentrated fiercely on the pictures in the sand in front of her. Maybe it was the last violent rays of the solstice sun.
"Yes," Torrant murmured softly. "I can see why she'd feel that way. But she's wrong."
"Of course she is." Bethen rolled her eyes. "But getting that child to admit she's wrong is like getting the river to flow up to Hammer Pass."
Torrant laughed again, but his eyes remained fixed on that lonely figure at the edge of the dark ribbon of water. Far off in the distance of his heart, he heard the jangling of off-key bells.
They told Goddess stories by a driftwood fire that night, most of them stories of how the solstice wilding had started. More intense then the simple Beltane couplings, the solstice wildings were often frightening in their intensity—many who participated woke up the next morning naked and shaken, embarrassed by their actions of the night before, and often with a person—and sometimes a gender—that they would not normally have preferred in the cold light of a normal day.
"Ick," Roes said succinctly, and Bethen and Lane had both nodded enthusiastically enough for Torrant to wonder about their own experiences with the solstice wilding.
"The good news," Lane said thoughtfully while prodding the fire, "is that it teaches you the difference between love and lust. The wilding is all about what the body wants—what you feel the next day is all about what the heart wants."
"Which is the lesson the god Oueant learned one night long ago," Bethen intoned, with an arch of her eyebrow, "when the solstice sun blocked his light from the Goddess, and he and Dueant were alone in the dark, with only the sounds of the wilding beyond …"
The family chatter died down and everybody turned their attention towards Bethen.
"They were not brothers, but friends, and the Goddess loved them both very much. One night She would lie with Oueant, the next with his beloved friend, and I had not heard who she was planning to go wilding with or even if she was planning to wild with the both of them, as sometimes happens, but on this night She got stuck on the far side of the sun, caring for the little stars that She had born, children of her heart and of her lovers' hearts too, for neither Oueant nor Dueant knew who had fathered which star, and who can love one star more or less than another star, really? So on this night, the stars were fractious—perhaps they knew the wilding was coming, who knows—and the wilding happens on the summer solstice, so the sun was out longer than she thought, and the Goddess was trapped, all alone, singing her stars to sleep and wondering what her two lovers would do without her."
"Bethie …" Lane protested weakly.
"I like this story," she said mildly, but with a wicked grin all the same. "So Oueant and Dueant were sitting, dangling their feet into the great flood of darkness that passes them by every night, and the wilding began. They could hear the drums and the laughter, and even beyond the edges of the sun, they could see lights from the bonfire and their bodies began to move, and their bodies began to shake and to sway and their bodies began to spin, as the moons will spin and …" she paused and looked around her, "and, they don't remember what happened next."
The children let out a collected groan, and she laughed and finished the story. "What they do remember, is waking up, and Oueant, who always sparkles red was now sparkling in blue, like Dueant, and Dueant, who always sparkles blue was now sparkling in red, like his brother-friend, and the Goddess, who had finally, finally made it beyond the sun, was standing over them with a smirk on her face, enjoying they way they flushed so, so brightly in the morning sunshine, and especially enjoying the way they were naked from the waist down."
"Bethie!" Lane protested again, but he knew his wife was irrepressible, and she continued on.
"Now, Oueant and Dueant were both mortified—they wanted to forget that the wilding had ever been the wilding, and that they had ever worn each other's coats, but the Goddess … the Goddess was intrigued. The Goddess thought that maybe it wasn't fair that she had to sleep apart from one lover every other night, and she wanted them both in her bed, where she could hold them and make sure they didn't wake up with nightmares or sad—the Goddess takes very good care of her lovers, she always has. And because of that wilding, the two of them agreed that some nights, nights when they were not afraid of what everyone would think of the two of them, they could all sleep together, and that is why, on the solstices, and during Beltane and Samhain, the three moons are all together, Oueant and Dueant on either side, and Triane in the middle."
The children all laughed delightedly, but Lane looked so pained that Torrant had to ask him, "Someone you know?"
Lane winced. "Our three best friends growing up—they all live out in the Old Man Hills, these days—far, far away from anyone who would care."
"Good people?" Torrant wanted to know.
"The very best," Lane agreed. He smiled. "They have four children, who look so much alike that they can not even question which child was fathered by which man. It's a good family—but not everybody's family."
"No," Torrant agreed. "Not everybody's family." A silence descended on his family then, as they watched the last flecks of red light fade from a sky the color of a dying spring iris. "But that's what my story is about—it's about a family that's not everybody else's family."
Everybody turned towards Torrant expectantly, and he smiled.
"Sing!" urged Cwyn—but even he kept his voice low, in respect to the quiet.
"No singing," Torrant said, "Just a story—c'mere, Cwyn—come sit on my lap while I tell it." He got situated with the tired little body, cool from the long time in the river, nestled into his lap in contentment.
"Sometimes," Torrant began, "Oueant and Dueant have the earth between them, and that's when we see them during different parts of the day and night. In this story, Dueant was the day moon, and Oueant was the night moon, and little Triane was the little girl Goddess that stayed by Oueant's side. Triane loved her daddy—moon. She followed him when he rode the sun and sat with him in the boat as they rode the river of dark. She tagged along with him when he went to check the stars. She tumbled with the bigger stars, her brothers, in an effort to make Oueant think she was as big and strong as they were, but Oueant always knew she was his little Goddess. One night, when Triane was taking a nap, a terrible meteor knocked Oueant out of the sky, and Triane was devastated. A helpful star helped her navigate the sky, past the meteor and his terrible trail of destruction that littered their velvet night, and he pulled her into the lightening twilight where Dueant lived."
"Dueant had a little Goddess of his own—in fact, he had two, but Dueant had a heart as big as the sky. Our first little Goddess, who was meant to be the golden Goddess of the day, with a glow the color of all the leaves in autumn, had her own place in Dueant's heart, because if Oueant was courage and strength, then Dueant was compassion and honor, and an open heart was Dueant's way. At first the little Goddess loved Dueant fiercely, because she did everything fiercely, and they were happy.
"But she missed Oueant—he had been a good daddy-moon, and because he burned in the night sky, he had seemed brighter and stronger than Dueant. It wasn't true, but that's what happens with bright and dark, and the Goddess was little, after all and couldn't always see what was glow and what was sky, so it was to be forgiven.
"The Goddess became angry and bitter, because she couldn't find words to tell Dueant that she loved him, but not in the same way as she'd loved her own daddy-moon, and the only words she could find were waspish and unkind. 'That was a stupid thing to say! You're not my real daddy-moon! Anyone could do that!' Day and night, it seemed, and when Dueant smiled upon her and understood, that only made her pain the worse. And the Goddess started to lose her glow—and even though Dueant would always love his brother's daughter, his own heart grew heavy and dim, because you can only abuse a person or a moon so much before it has to draw dark shields about itself to keep from being hurt anymore. And now the world waits, breathlessly, to see if the Goddess will grow up and forgive herself for needing another daddy-moon, or if Dueant will have to grieve some of his love away to save his bruised heart, because when the Goddess lost her daddy-moon, Dueant lost his brother-moon, and now the Goddess is all he has left."
Torrant finished speaking and an awkward silence descended on the family. It was broken, finally, by Yarri, who was dumping handfuls of warm sand on her toes by the light of the fire.
"How does that story end?” she asked roughly.
"We don't know," Torrant answered, lowly. "We're all poised at the river, looking at the sky, waiting to see what the moons do next."
"I don't want to forget my daddy." Her chin quivered with obstinacy.
"I'll make sure you never have to," Lane said softly, and Yarri nodded, that chin quiver becoming more pronounced.
"Torrant's more than a star," she muttered, daring anyone to contradict her.
"He's the sun in your sky, precious," Bethen answered softly, "We all know that."
Yarri nodded and dashed at her face with the back of her hand. She was so tough, Torrant thought with an aching heart—so tough. "I'm sorry," she murmured roughly. "I'm sorry I've been so mean … I just … I heard Uncle Lane talking to Roes one morning and I almost … almost called him … almost called him …" Her voice broke completely, and Lane couldn't stand to watch her sit there and be so tough all by herself anymore. In a moment he'd moved around to the fire and wrapped his arms around his little niece, and she sobbed into his shoulder, "I almost called you daaaaddddddddyyyyy…."
And he rocked her and murmured, "I know, I know little Yarrow, I know …" Until her sobs faded into the darkness and she was left, sniffling on her uncle's shoulder.
Later, as they were walking through the darkness of the river's edge towards home, careful not to go into any of the dark corners, where couples might be found wilding, Lane carried her limp and sleeping form and Torrant carried Cwyn, while everybody else was burdened with picnic baskets and blankets. "Thank you," Lane murmured to the boy he'd begun to love like a son.
"I just told a story." Torrant was embarrassed.
"A story is more powerful than a king, sometimes," Lane told him seriously. "A story makes our hearts move. Look what your story did to this one?" He jiggled Yarri just enough to make his point but not enough to wake her up. "You have a good voice for telling stories, Torrant, and a good hand for healing. Maybe those things will be your revenge, you ever think?"
Torrant flushed, because he hadn't, but he had thought that maybe Lane had forgotten his vow of vengeance. "If I see a way to kill Rath with a good story, I'll do it," he replied with dignity, and Lane nodded.
"Fair enough, boy-o, fair enough."
They had wandered far enough from the family to take a mistaken step into the shadows then, and only enough moonlight remained to outline lovers, wilding as they saw fit—all three of them, naked and tripling, and Torrant barely choked a strangled noise back into his throat before he and Lane managed to navigate their sleeping burdens back to the path the rest of the family had taken.
Lane laughed a little as they continued on.
"That's one story I don't know how I'd tell," Torrant muttered, and the laugh turned into a full-throated guffaw.
"I'd enjoy hearing it if you did, boy," he whooped, "But you'd better be careful how you tell that story around Bethie."
And then Torrant laughed too, and they caught up with their family in the dark of the solstice moon.

Samhain, Winters, Four Years Sing Along

Samhain came and Yarri, Torrant and Lane worked all day on letters to their honored dead, which would burn in the bonfire that night. Yarri and Torrant had never heard of the ceremony until then—it was not something practiced in Clough. Torrant had to help Yarri write hers, and when they were done, neither of them could speak. They sat in the deserted dining room, Yarri on Torrant's lap, and listened to the sounds of their own muffled sobs for a long time after that. They watched the letters burn in Samhain fires, and Yarri asked Torrant what he had written. He was not able to tell her what he said for many, many years.
Later that day, Stanny played in the running ball game, in front of the entire town, as they cheered wildly, wearing clothes the color of the separate strands of Yarri's hair. Winter solstice came with Stanny laid up and irritable with his leg in plaster from injury, but since his father had given him the honor of adding all of the shipping manifests from the firm, Stanny could hardly complain. Two Beltanes after the refugees from Clough first arrived, Stanny allowed a sweet, sly-eyed brunette to lure him away from the family during the bonfire. That solstice, Stanny had his first wilding, and Evya, the sloe-eyed girl, became a quiet fixture at the back gate and the dinner table for the next several summers and winters, and a tumultuous, confusing storm in Stanny's heart in the moments between.
Cwyn went from dimpled maniac toddler to dimpled precocious school child, bearing a fantastic load of books on his narrow back. Four days out of the week he ventured hand in hand with Yarri, as every child from the town went to the little schoolhouse to learn their letters and numbers from the young women— married and unmarried—who had time and inclination to teach. His first week at school, he got caught behind the schoolhouse after bell, kissing a little girl. His third week, he got caught behind the schoolhouse after bell because a little boy was kissing him. Bethen and Lane exchanged rolled eyes, heaving sighs, and prepared for the maelstrom that his school years would be, and were still caught flat-footed when he was discovered naked before twilight of next summer's solstice wilding, demonstrating what his naked parts did that the girls' could not.
Roes spent all winter sewing dozens of rose colored flowers over her solstice dress, only to discover that she had grown more inches around her bust than she had in height, and had to settle for a brand new dress with a scant weeks' worth of embroidery on it. All of that angst evaporated, however, when she got to dance her first dance with Aldam under the ribbon pole that Beltane. The next summer, it all came back as she insisted Aldam allow himself to be seduced into the wilding because she wanted him to know exactly where his heart was when she came of age. Aldam did as she instructed—but spent the next several years convinced that he was not clever enough to know women at all.
Starry went from happy baby to placid toddler to sweet-natured child in a transition as gentle as the purple velvet night to the gold gray of dawn. She had red hair and blue eyes and her perplexed, passionate mother would often look at her in confusion, wondering where the storm was around all this calm. One day when she was four, Starry found a group of boys torturing a kitten from Anye's sixth (!) litter. When Aldam and Torrant were done icing noses, groins, eyes, and setting one wrist—Starry's—Bethen took her youngest child in her arms and crooned at her until she slept, and then smiled admiringly at her sleeping, precious one for long after.
The Constable and Mayor read their resolution that Eiran would be neutral territory in that first spring before Beltane. Refugees continued coming over the hill and Hammer Pass for the next four years—more in the spring and the summer, until one day in fall, four years to the day after Torrant and Aldam had made their mad slide down the now-graveled hill, a group of terrified families came bearing news. The switchback path that had so terrified Torrant had been destroyed completely. Rath had utilized sulfur and salt-peter and set off an explosion of terrifying proportions, and the flood of Goddess' children was stopped— brutally.
"We weren't the last family on the trail,” said one trembling father of six. "I saw … the whole switchback was full of people … and then … the trail practically disintegrated beneath my feet …" He had dissolved into tears then, and the constable had sought Lane out that very night to apologize. "I thought your younglings had exaggerated, or misunderstood," he said, swallowing a tankard of ale at a gulp. "But it's bad in Clough—ugly in a way I'd not thought ugly could get."
The refugees found homes—many went across to the sea to Otham, and some merely went across the river to Cleant or beyond, into the Old Man Hills by Triannon. Eiran doubled in size—from two rows of houses lining both sides of the road to six rows of houses on the side farthest from the river. It didn't affect the Moon family too much—their backyard still ended with the river itself, as it had during that first winter when the one man, two boys, and a big snow cat had dumped the guardsmen's bodies into the foaming, green tumult below.
When asked why they'd fled their homes, it took many of the families months among the easy-giving tolerances of Eiran before they would admit to having a midwife in the family or losing a child or a mother during childbirth. It took some of those fleeing their homeland years before they talked of bearing a Goddess gift, and even longer before they stopped dyeing their hair to hide the tell-tale white streak that Torrant wore like a badge. Those who chose the Goddess path with their choice of lover often never admitted to their reasons for exile. There was one couple, two men, who maintained staunchly that they were unlikely looking cousins until they died, old, happy, and obviously terribly in love.
And life went on in the peaceful land of Eiran—life has a way of doing that. And if the heavy dark Clough of Rath loomed over the horizon, the friendlier side of Hammer Pass blocked its ugliness with green cedar pine and redwood trees and soft red dirt.
Aldam and Torrant continued with their studies, and Torrant tutored Aldam until his writing was up to Triannon's standards. Both of them worked as the unofficial town healers, and Aldam's gift was much more appreciated than it had been in his tiny home village. He grew taller, sprouting nearly a hand's worth of height in his first year in Eiran, after which he towered over nearly everybody, including Stanny. His shoulders grew broader and although his face never lost its even-tempered sweetness, it lost some of its roundness. His body became leaner from working hard in the warehouse, and he became much more confident that his voice would be heard. Of course, he didn't speak any more than he ever had—but when he spoke, like Lane, he knew people would listen.
Torrant and Yarri grew as well. Torrant would never be as tall as Aldam and Stanny, but his chest would be broad, and working in the warehouse and tumbling in the yard to play with the other children left him wiry and thick with muscle. His face grew leaner, and an uneven darkish stubble haunted his jaw if he was not careful (unlike Aldam, who said he only shaved so that his four chin hairs didn't get caught on anything), and he began to attract more and more sly young women who wanted some time up close and personal to fall into his unusual and shy smile.
Yarri grew lean and brown from running wild in the summers and helping with child-care and warehouse work when it was needed, and her chestnut-red-gold hair continued to streak and to wave, until it attracted the gaze of envious matrons when she brushed it out at the Beltane dances and wore it loose to her waist. She participated in her studies just enough to know that she'd rather mind children and paint than write and do math, and was just stubborn and wily enough to get out of her lessons unless she was doing just that. Torrant often said while he was reading a history book to the family and ignoring her yawns, that this focus made her world smaller than it had to be. Then she would present him with a colored illustration of the sea battle between Otham and Eiran, and he would change his mind entirely.
Unlike the shadow which had chased the two of them to Eiran and loomed terribly over the future, the thing that was looming on their horizon was neither ugly nor fearful. However, it was blocked by the eight years that spanned their births, and although it was not awkward or cumbersome yet, it was getting there.
It was certainly an uncomfortable presence the morning after Torrant's first wilding, when Yarri woke him up next to a sleeping redheaded girl by throwing his pants in his face.
"So?” she asked bluntly as he struggled into his breeches, blushing down to the parts that were being quickly hidden by the rumpled fabric.
"So what?" He knew what she wanted, but he didn't want to answer, and not for the reasons she thought.
"So, is it everything everybody acts like it is?" Yarri demanded impatiently, and Torrant fought a pained smile. She looked so innocent, her curling hair escaping from its thick braid, her face longer and bonier than it had been four years before, but no less piquant, no less sweet, than the child he had wrapped in a magic flap of skin next to his heart. She was not even (to her chagrin) that much taller. In fact, she showed every indication of being as short as—if more buxom than—her willowy mother, and although Torrant was charmed by the idea, Yarri was still furious with the body it looked like the Goddess was going to saddle her with, and nobody was mentioning the fact that Cwyn, although three years younger, was less than half a head shorter than she was.
"Is it?” she demanded, her eyes wide, and he had to turn his head so she wouldn't see his face as he answered—honestly, because that hadn't changed between them in the last four years, and he prayed it never would.
"I wouldn't know," he said miserably, and he heard rather than saw the disbelief on her features, right down to the pursing of the bee-stung mouth.
"That's unlikely!” she said shortly, not really in contradiction, but in surprise.
"Shhh." He looked at the girl in panic. They were in the floor-level hay closet in the stables, where he and Shelya had begun talking over a vain and well-exercised Courtland. She had been one of the predatory girls who had spooked him and Aldam so badly their first Beltane, and he'd discovered that she was even more single-minded in person. She had wanted him, in a blatant, mature way that honestly surprised him. He couldn't see with her eyes—his body had grown since he'd arrived in Eiran, but his chest was still broad and his mouth still had those deep brackets when he smiled with the dimples at the cheeks, and his eyes were still that arresting shade of hazel that had women talking to him about small things so they could fall into their depths. Even his hair, with its wicked streak of silver bright against the dark, lustrous brown was appealing. But Torrant was single minded about some things, and not getting a girl with child or even not getting a girl who would be around when Yarri was of age were both high on his list.
He agreed to the wilding reluctantly, on the condition that she let Aldam give her an herb that would keep her from conceiving.
But she wasn't stirring now, a thing that frightened him almost as much as if she'd wakened and looked at him, and he checked her closely, shaking her just a little, until her mouth curved up at the edges and she murmured his name. When he heard that he shrugged hurriedly into his shirt and grabbed Yarri's hand to tug her out of the building, completely ignoring an affronted Courtland.
"Torrant, you're acting weird," Yarri stated as they shivered their way home in the summer dawn. "I mean, even weirder than I thought you would be this morning. And you look like hell—did you drink wine last night?"
"No." Although his head was pounding hard enough to make his breath come in short pants. The road under his feet dipped suddenly, and his footstep went short, and without warning, he fell to his knees and lost his dinner from the night before. When he was done he passed a trembling sleeve over his mouth and took a deep, shuddery breath and tried to calm himself down. He found he was shivering uncontrollably and that pulling himself together was much, much harder than he'd imagined. It wasn't until he felt Yarri's arms around his shoulders that he could even make his breathing calm.
"What happened?” she whispered, and he closed his eyes against tears.
"The snow cat …" Behind his eyes he could see the bonfire, and Sheyla's bare, moving body, feel her hands boldly grabbing, rubbing, even exploring and entering and pinching and just as he'd wondered how often Sheyla had been a-wilding, the world had gone black and white and red, and he'd seen a pulse throbbing in her throat and …
"I need to talk to Lane!” he gasped, feeling stupid, feeling weak. Sex didn't make him a man. Lane had repeated it often enough as he and Aldam and Stanny had faced the choice of the wilding, and the whole town had believed it—he had seen the belief etched honestly in the faces of the elders, of the mothers and fathers and the young people who had both refrained and participated in the wilding. But there was the implication, the age of consent, the age of dancing at Beltane, the age when the wilding was possible …
"Right. C'mon, Torrant … stand up …" Yarri's voice was easy and sweet when she didn't have to be, soothing because he needed it. "Stand up, and we'll go find Uncle Lane—he'll know what to do. Of course he will—he can handle anything—you know that."
And soothing word by soothing word, Yarri walked him home.
First she sat him in the kitchen, around the same bare-board table that they'd been eating at for four years. She left him petting Anye, who, since Lane wasn't there to shoo her off, was curled up on the table in the sunshine from the open kitchen window. Yarri went and quietly roused Lane, who, as soon as he saw Torrant's shivering, dejected shoulders ignored the cat and shooed her out of the room instead.
"I'm just going to listen at the doorway!” she insisted, and Lane glared at her.
"If you ever want that boy to be a man, you give him a man's respect, do you hear me?” he growled, and Yarri gasped.
"Fine!" And with that she slipped away, out the front door, and into the wild summer morning, presumably to roust Aldam and Stanny and make their lives miserable to pay back the world.
"She'll hold that grudge," Torrant chattered, and Lane covered his shoulders with a throw before giving him a cup of bitter chocolate and sitting next to him in the strong morning light of the side window. He gave Anye an exasperated nudge, but she opened one gimlet eye and he retreated—Torrant seemed to be comforted by her presence anyway.
"Either that or she'll find a way to listen," Lane replied with equanimity. "That's how family works." A thick silence descended then, while Torrant shivered and drank, and ate some of the soft bread Bethen had left on the table from the night before. It helped to settle his stomach, and he ate some more. "What happened?" Lane asked, after the shivers had eased up and the thick silence had thinned a little.
"We were…" She'd been very beautiful—her mouth was full, her eyes almond shaped, her cheekbones high and razor thin, and in the orange light of the bonfire she had seemed like orange fruit, bursting and inviting and … that cold blue vision again … delicious.
Lane made a strangled sound, and a little hum of grief. "Your eyes, boy," he said softly. "I think I can guess … she's still … I mean, there's no blood …"
"Goddess … NO!" Torrant burst out, shivering some more. "But for a minute, I wanted to … which was weird, because the only people the snow cat ever wanted to … hurt … were the ones who wanted to hurt us. Other than that …" He looked beseechingly at Lane. "You've seen me hunt—you and Stanny and Aldam—I've never even thought of…" he swallowed, hard, with nausea, "eating anybody." Then he added, bleakly, "Until now. I've never thought of it until last night. And then when I realized what I was thinking … I …" he looked down in shame.
"I couldn't tell her 'no'—she just wouldn't let me. I'd tried—I'd tried for months to tell her no, and this was going to be the one time I … lost control. No promises, no children, just what she wanted and she'd maybe stop … stalking me. She wouldn't have listened this time." He was looking fully into his uncle's eyes, begging him to understand.
"So what did you do?" Lane asked, nothing but concern, and Torrant blessed him again and again in his heart.
"I made her think … I can do it. I can change people's thoughts, and their memories—but it's hard. It's really hard—it hurts, it hurts my head and my stomach and … my conscience. But I couldn't tell her 'no', and I couldn't tell her about the snow cat and I couldn't actually," he shuddered, "do it! I don't know what the snow cat would have done … and I was wrong, I know I was wrong, but what if it's worse than that … what if I can never … what if every time I try to … what if the snow cat is a part of that forever? How will I tell … what am I going to do?" He didn't wail and he didn't weep, but he did put his head in his hands and shiver and shiver until Lane's arms around his shoulders finally seeped some warmth and some tenderness into his cold, cold thoughts.
"Don't worry about it, Torrant." Lane was whispering, stroking his hair like a child. "It's not you—it was her—do you hear me?"
"How could it be her?” he muttered from the comforting circle of his uncle's arms.
Lane sighed. "Torrant—you didn't feel safe. What you were thinking about doing—there's only two things in a man that will make him take his clothes off in front of someone else with the intention of doing what you were doing. One's trust, and the other's recklessness. The wilding's all about being reckless, being foolish with your heart, your body, your dignity. Aldam was scared, Stanny was scared—I'm sure the young lady wasn't feeling as bold as she seemed to be."
Torrant snorted and there was a suspicious noise from behind the open window and Lane ignored both. "Even the boldest young lady is leery of being rejected, Torrant—that's why she had such a hard time hearing your 'no'. But the point is, you felt threatened, and then you felt on the verge of losing control— and these two things are what bring out the snow cat, and that's what got you looking out through his eyes, do you hear me?"
Torrant sniffled a little, and nodded, the last of his shivers dying. Lane watched his stillness and wondered if the boy wasn't on the verge of falling asleep with his head on the kitchen table again, as he had that winter night so long ago, but Torrant had one more question for him.
"I'm not going to have to wait eight years, am I?” he asked, his voice muffled along with his embarrassment.
"They way women are falling into your lap?" It was Lane's turn to snort. "I seriously doubt it."
"Are you sure? Because my right fore-arm is getting really strong …"
Lane felt a laugh well up in his throat and he had to press his hand against his mouth to keep it down from the rest of the family. "Go to sleep, son," he choked, "And exercise that arm some more—and you'll have a chance to give it a rest someday." Abruptly the laughter died down, with the exception of a suspicious sounding echo outside that sunny window. "Has it occurred to you that it's a good thing you're leaving, Torrant? It's going to be a long enough time for you, waiting, but with her right here it would damn near kill you."
The wave of grief that washed over the little kitchen was almost palpable. "I don't want to think about it," Torrant said, raising his tear-streaked face and looking beseechingly at Lane. "It's going to hurt bad enough to go. Thinking about leaving just makes it worse."
Lane grimaced. "Go downstairs to bed, boy. Sleep until it's too hot, go swimming, help Starren play with the kittens, chase Yarri by the swimming hole, and grow up later, right?"
One last tear snaked past a tan nose and puddled around the intriguing top-lip. "Right," he said roughly, before heaving himself up and hauling himself down the stairs.
When Lane heard him hit the landing at the bottom and fall into bed, he stuck his head out the kitchen window and looked down at a rebellious and unrepentant angel-face that glared back up at him in turn. "And as for you, Yarrow Moon—if you can think of any way to not make the next eight years miserable for him, it will make your lives together much more peaceful ever after, do you hear me?"
Yarri blinked her big brown eyes, and Lane was surprised to see them shine, fill up, and spill over. "His heart hurts, Uncle Lane—how come I make his heart hurt?"
Lane sighed, and wished to both gods and their Goddess that his wife had managed to catch this crisis instead of him. "He's grown, Yarri—all he wants is a crush and some love as a grown man—is that so hard for you to understand?"
"I'll miss him like I missed my hair," she said rawly. "Except worse, because sometimes I'd forget my hair was short, and I won't ever forget he's gone."
"You know he's only living to come back when you're grown, right?"
She nodded somberly. "That better be a promise."
"It's one of the few truths I know, little one. Now go find Aldam and Stanny and tell them Bethen left breakfast on the table—and if you love that boy, you let the world think this wilding's like any other, right?"
Yarri laughed all of the evil a precocious ten-year-old could muster. "She sighed a lot in her sleep. I think Torrant gave her a very good dream."
And before Lane could object, complain, or even laugh helplessly, she was gone, pattering barefoot down the packed town road, wearing Torrant's old knee-breeches and one of Bethen's old shirts.

Honeysuckle and Holly

One morning at the end of the last month of summer, Torrant and Aldam hitched a stout packhorse named Cannonball to the cart that Lane had bought specifically for their trips to and from the University. Then they strapped food to the saddle-bags at the back of Clover's four-year old gelding (named, appropriately, Hammer Pass, since that's where he had probably been conceived), saddled up Clover herself, and prepared to leave the Moon home in Eiran by the sea. Stanny had made noises about going with them, but he genuinely enjoyed the warehouse work, and Lane was secretly pleased that his son was following in his footsteps. He would often complain that he had built a business, not a legacy, but Stanny was as good at the business as his father, and so a legacy it became. On this day, Stanny was out with the rest of the family to tell them goodbye and to reassure them that Triannon in the heart of the Old Man Hills was only two days ride and that the boys would always have a home in Eiran, and that they would be loved and missed.
Of course, Torrant could admit to himself that it was this knowledge, and the sadness of the farewell, that gave him and Aldam the courage to leave in the first place, which is what made Yarri's absence so galling.
A teary Bethen met Torrant's eyes and sighed. "You know where she is," she said softly, and Roes grimaced.
"I'll go haul her back by the hair if you like!" It was warming that their bond of sisterhood had progressed to the point where out and out violence was not only possible, but occasional, but Torrant shook his head.
"I'll get her." He sent Aldam a look to tell him that he'd be back in a moment. Aldam nodded, and looked shyly at Roes, who looked shyly back. Roes was barely fourteen—there had been no words spoken, and no agreements, and not even any shy kisses, but Roes' single minded concentration had not lessened to any degree around Aldam, and Aldam's wide-eyed admiration of Roes had only grown. It was enough to make Bethen and Lane bang their fists against their heads—but not enough to make them glad to see Aldam go.
Torrant trotted quickly past the family, and the sweet, blushing silence of Aldam and Roes, down the side of the house and to the wide expanse behind the backyard, and towards the river. Back here, Lane fought a yearly war against blackberry bushes that he never really finished, mostly because if he left enough of the old growth in the winter to spawn new growth in the spring, he would be up to his armpits in preserves for most of the following winter. Besides the blackberry bushes, with their spicy, basil scent, there was a hedge bordering the river's shore that was made up of a stand of holly bushes and a stand of honeysuckle, so close together that they merged. At the place where the two bushes met was a space, and Yarri had trained the honeysuckle to grow in straggly tube, keeping the bright dark spiky leaves of the holly from prickling her as she huddled inside the honeysuckle tunnel.
This was Yarri's thinking place—she kept an old horse blanket on the ground there, and when the heat grew too oppressive in the summer or memories of her lost family beset her in the fall, she would hide in this little green tunnel of solitude and be ALONE. Nobody had ever intruded here—until now.
Torrant was big enough that his shoulders pushed past the honeysuckle and the holly scratched his arm on one side, causing a rip in one of the new woven shirts that Bethen had bought for him and Aldam—this one a rich green. He swore softly, but kept on until he was sitting next to the huddled figure in the center of the tunnel, her piquant nose and bee-stung mouth silhouetted against the brightness of the other end of the tunnel.
"I'm too big for this place," he grumbled as he pulled his knees to his chest.
"You weren't invited," she said shortly, and he wrapped a tender arm around her resisting shoulders.
"Of course I was. Anywhere you are, that's where I'm going to go."
"You say that now—you'll make new friends in school," she said this confidently, and he could only laugh—he was not nearly so sure that his social life at the university would be as easy and as kind as the small town of Eiran had been.
"Goddess, I hope so." He rolled his eyes. "Otherwise, it's going to be a grim four years."
"Well, go get it started then." She continued to stare at the matted leaves that made up the sides of her little green cave.
"I can't," he told her. "The person I love best in the world hasn't said goodbye to me. If she doesn't say goodbye, then I can't go. And if I can't go, she won't get a chance to grow into a young woman while I'm gone, and then I can't come back to her." He fought ridiculously against a lump in his own throat. It was stupid to get all tight with tears and sadness. "Besides," he added practically, breathing hard against an embarrassing sniffle, "I'm coming back for Samhain and winter solstice, and you're just being stupid."
"I'm just a stupid little kid, what else did you expect?" Yarri didn't have nearly as much self-control as he did, and her sniffles were not nearly as hidden. "And you're going to go off and find a lover and forget all about me."
"You're the person I love best in the world, you stupid little kid," he shot back, getting annoyed with the whole damned mass of pain that a little thing like leaving had become. "And damn it, I want you to tell me goodbye so I know you'll miss me and welcome me home."
Finally she turned a tear stained face to him. "Of course I'll miss you," she said without any grace at all. "And I don't care if you find a hundred lovers, or a thousand, you still have to come back to me, right?"
"Right!" he said, kissing her sweaty little forehead. "But today, you have to come out and say goodbye to me and find comfort in our family, is that a deal?"
She sucked in a breath and a sob at the same time. "It's going to be dumb because all we're going to do is cry and be depressed and …"
"And you'll do it together, and it's the reason we crossed that mountain in the dead of winter, right? So you would have a family to be sad with, as well as happy. C'mon, little Yarrow flower—come tell me goodbye."
"Goooooooodddddbyyyeeeeeeeee…." And she launched herself into his arms and sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed, until eventually she couldn't cry anymore and her sweaty face stuck to his once-new shirt and droplets of sweat dripped down his back between his shoulder blades and it became too stifling inside the green cave to stay. He crawled out of the holly/honeysuckle cave and helped her out, and then, surprising him, she leapt into his arms for real and wrapped her legs around his waist, burrowing her face into his neck much as she had done when she was six. She was heavier now, but he had spent a lot of time working in the warehouse and working out with his friends and he could carry her. By the time he got back to the family, her sniffles had at last died down and she was a limp, warm, sweet weight against his shoulder, murmuring things to him that he already knew, so that he wouldn't forget.
"And don't forget that I still collect dolls," she was saying as he neared Lane. "I don't play with them anymore, even if I apologize to them for not playing with them, and talk to them so they don't feel bad, but I still like to get them for my birthday—don't forget that, right?"
"I won't forget," he said through a clogged throat. "Now you need to go see Uncle Lane, right?"
She went to Lane without resistance, although he rolled his eyes a little with her weight, and Torrant was free to issue hugs all around. Cwyn's eyes were narrowed, and he hugged Torrant almost angrily, and Starry was as open and easy as Starry had always been. Today's obvious emotion was sadness, and she wore her long face comfortably, and sniffled a little into Torrant's shoulder before giving him a sloppy four-year-old kiss on his cheek and telling him "Bye bye, Towant … come back soon and play." Stanny gave him a manly thump on the arm, and Roes turned from her awkwardly static moment with Aldam to hug him fiercely. "You take care of him, 'Cousin Ellyot'!” she ordered against his chest—since that one argument in the barracks she had called him this when she'd been exasperated with him, and sometimes with Aldam, or when she was overcome with affection for her new family and didn't want the moment to get too maudlin. She rubbed her eyes against his chest and sniffed. "And you'd best be home for Samhain—I have plans for the Samhain faire and the two of you are important to them." Torrant nodded and swallowed against a lump in his throat and then looked up to see where Aldam was in his goodbyes.
By the time they were done, it was far past dawn, and the summer heat was already drenching the horses and the wagon. Lane had started urging them on, and even Bethen had, past red-eyes and sniffles and urges for them to drink lots of water on the way, told them they should move on. Yarri had freed herself from Lane for one last, quick hug with Aldam and a fierce, longer one with Torrant, and then she had hurtled through the back yard towards the river.
Torrant watched her go with pained eyes and Bethen handed him up a packet of cookies and pat his thigh as he perched on Hammer's back. Aldam, in spite of becoming more comfortable with horses in the past years, was still more comfortable driving the cart. "We'll take care of her, Torrant," Bethen said roughly. "But you remember, you're not done growing yet and you're still ours, right?"
"Absolutely," Torrant agreed, and bent down to kiss Bethen on the forehead one last time. "See you all at Samhain."
And with that they were up the road, down the path leading to the bridge that spanned the river, and up and over the bridge itself. As they crossed, Torrant heard a shout from a seemingly impossible place, and he looked in the direction of the Moon home—his home—and saw Yarri, perched in a tree almost level with the road, waving like mad. "See you at Samhain!" Torrant called.
"For the rest of your life!” she called back insistently, and he laughed and continued to wave to her until the bridge curved down and she was out of sight. He and Aldam continued in silence for a moment, until even the bridge was invisible behind the tapping hooves of Clover, who was really too good a horse to be hitched to a cart anyway.
"Roes is going to University," Aldam said unexpectedly into the wet August heat.
"So are we," Torrant replied, wondering, as always, what unexpected paths the slow and powerful river of Aldam's mind had wandered.
"She's too smart for me to marry when she's eighteen." The sadness in Aldam's voice was unmistakable.
"That's in four years. First we have to survive school—then we can worry about Roes, right?"
Aldam nodded. "Right. But it's less frightening to worry about Roes than it is to worry about us."
"Lots of people go away to school," Torrant told him soothingly. It was a conversation they had had before—just not on the way to their future.
"But are they people like us?" Aldam wondered, and this was the first time either one of them had mentioned what it would be like to be at Triannon with gifts like theirs, and for this, Torrant had no answer.

They made camp at a moon-shrine that night, after an hour of squinting into the severely westering sun. When the sun actually set, they were left blind for a few moments, and Aldam was rattled enough about being in a new situation without Lane or Bethen that he almost tearfully begged Torrant to change into the snow cat so one of them could see. Torrant talked him out of this idea by reminding him that the snow cat was a predator and would probably eat all of their dried fish stores before they got to Triannon the following night, and by the time Aldam thought of a good argument for this, the spots had cleared from their eyes and he calmed down.
The moon-shrine was well kept—every moon had an engraved and shaded stone alcove for offerings—food for Dueant's compassion, metal for Oueant's courage, flowers for Triane's joy—as well as a tree-sheltered cove for sleeping and a set of food stores. Bethen had given them more food than they could eat in a week—they left some of the dried fish and fruit at the altars and in the stores, for the next travelers.
"I like this shrine," Aldam said, when his worries about being sun-blind had faded. "Not all of them keep the Goddess this well."
Torrant nodded, not saying the obvious. In some of them, the Goddess had been removed, or ignored, or, as in one they had seen where the Old Man Hills came closest to Clough, defaced with graffiti wrought in feces. It seemed that Rath's poison could not be contained to Clough alone.
But this shrine was peaceful and safe, and camping out was pleasurable. It was freeing to stare at the deep sky and remember that they were small pebbles on what was really a large and fertile moon. Lane had taken them camping many times in the wooded areas outside of Eiran, and the family had often slept outside on the beach during the summer or early part of autumn, so there was nothing worrisome about looking up at the stars.
The next day they left early—more from nerves than from any desire to hasten the journey—and made their way along the small but established path through the pine-scented woodland. They talked quietly about family, pointing out animals that Cwyn and Starry would like, and jokes that Roes and Yarri would either make or get.
"Do you think Bethen will miss us?" Aldam said at one point, and Torrant was surprised.
"Of course!” he said. Of the many doubts he had about leaving, that Lane and Bethen Moon would miss him as much as they would one of their own had never crossed his mind. "Why?"
"I don't think my mother missed me when I left," Aldam said, and Torrant looked at him in real shock. He and Yarri spoke frequently of the family they'd left behind, and although the pain of losing his twin-in-spirit in Ellyot would never be wholly gone, Torrant had not needed to be told how fortunate he was that Aldam and then Stanny had filled some of that void. But although he remembered that frantic, sad and rough parting of Aldam's mother and aunt from the inn at the bottom of Hammer Pass, Torrant could rarely remember Aldam talking about either of them. But he did remember her look, sad, desperate, and bereft, as she'd watched her son walk away.
"I think she did," Torrant said, uncertain. "I think she must have cared for you, to let you go … it was getting bad in Clough—bad for all of us with gifts, and anyone else who could be said to follow the Goddess—it must have hurt her to let you go."
"She was embarrassed of me a lot," Aldam said thoughtfully. "It was hard on her, to hide me. My Aunt Stella protected you and Yarri—I don't think my mother would have, if it had been her shift at the inn that night."
"I …" Torrant floundered. "You've never talked about this before … Aldam, four years, and you've hardly mentioned your mother at all."
"You missed your family," Aldam said mildly. "I didn't want … it felt unfair to burden you with a family that wasn't as kind as yours."
Torrant swallowed. How like Aldam, to not think his comforting would be important. "I think your mother loved you," he said, more certainly now. "I think that Rath and the whole … air of Clough, it made her afraid to show it. I think that might be one of the saddest things about Clough, is that all that hatred of people … it makes other people afraid to love." He paused for a moment, tried to gauge the distance they'd gone since that morning. They had visited Triannon once during the summer with Lane, to make sure there would be a place for them come the fall, and Torrant remembered the way fairly accurately. "What made you think about that now?” he asked after the silence grew unusually burdensome.
"It's easier to leave this time," Aldam said, as though realizing it for the first time. "It's easier to leave if you know that someone will miss you when you're gone."
Torrant remembered that, as he did so many of Aldam's simple truths, but he didn't have time to comment, because at that moment the forest thinned abruptly, and the land dipped below them into a wide valley, and the University of Triannon lay sprawled at their feet.

Part IV
The Learning Moon

Triane's Welcome

As Torrant got older and had time to wonder about such things—and good cause to wonder about them as well—he often wondered about the architecture of Triannon. He could never seem to figure out where the ugly human things that came with all dwellings actually went. Triannon had indoor water, but he could never figure out where the pipes went in or the waste water came out. He knew that there was refuse, but he could never figure out where the refuse pit was located. All that he could see of the house of learning that he would come to love was a gorgeous wood and stucco building filling a green bowl valley in a kitty corner sort of fashion, ensuring no window ever got blinded with direct sunlight, ever.
The building was huge—the biggest Torrant and Aldam had ever seen, built like a tall rectangle, with pointed turrets in every corner and a peaked roof that housed a look-out building with glass on all sides. They had learned over the summer that the building had four levels, the first two being school levels and the second two being dormitories, and anyone was welcome to go into the look-out and simply marvel at the height and the prettiness of the building as well as the redwood hills that surrounded it.
The front—the west side of the building—had steps and two columns under a decorative stucco archway and an impressive wooden door, but Torrant and Aldam were coming from the east, so their view was a little different. There were stables on the far side of the school—the long ago architect had some sense of drama and had put them on the down-hill side, where they wouldn't impede with the view from the top of the rise—and that's where Aldam and Torrant left their horses. They had been made to understand that everybody tended their own animals, and Torrant was secretly relieved, because the horses were a note of normalcy in all of the strangeness. When they were done seeing to Clover, Hammer, and Cannonball, the students who were there tending their own horses directed them to the door on the southeast side of the building where the dorm manager and registrar resided. After gathering their baggage—and remarking again at how many clothes and other essentials Bethen had managed to jam into their duffels when they hadn't been paying attention—they walked across the quad and into that great, frightening building with a confidence neither of them felt.
It looked smaller inside.
The offices were plain areas—simple brown tiles on the floor, low ceilings, and small spaces, made even smaller by the masses of parchment that were stacked everywhere in both the registrar's office and the dorm-master's office, and great, bulky, dark-wooded furniture that matched nothing else anywhere in the school—including the walls of the room they were in.
It was that jarring note of the furniture that didn't fit which helped to put Torrant at ease, and he presented the papers that introduced himself and Aldam, as well as the headmaster's signature that said both boys had been accepted and tested and placed and all of the pesky details that went with going to any sort of higher education at all.
The woman behind the desk wore an academic's robes and had a shoulder-length tousle of blondish hair—it had possibly been dyed, because the good natured lines on the woman's face were not the marks of someone of age to have that hair, but the plain goodness in her face was enough to make the hair natural. She looked up at the boys and smiled such an infectious, welcoming smile that they both managed a shy return and a head bob. They were painfully trying not to look overwhelmed.
"Our students from Clough—so good to see you. We were wondering if you'd arrive today," she said warmly, and Torrant felt compelled to correct her.
"I'm sorry. We're from Eiran," he said roughly, the thought of being known as a native of his own home somehow repugnant to him.
"Well, I know that's where you've lived, but … Torrant—your history is fairly well known here. You were the first refugees from the situation in Clough, weren't you?" She stood—a scant height, really, a good five inches shorter than Torrant, and at least nine inches shorter than Aldam, even though he tended to slouch.
"Yes." Torrant flushed. "Clough …" He swallowed, hard. No one at home had ever forced him to say this, and it hurt coming out. "Clough is not a source of pride for either of us." He looked away then, unhappily, and the registrar blinked, as though realizing that this was a painful subject, and one not at all relevant to the business at hand.
"Right then." She summoned that brilliant smile again. "I'm Professor Nica— and I have your course schedules right here—classes start in two days, which will give you a little while to get settled in the dorms and used to how things work around here, right?"
"Right." And this time Torrant's smile felt less forced, and the uneasiness of the mention of his homeland disappeared as quickly as it had come.
"Well then—I'm going to give you Trieste as a guide then—it's too nice a day to keep her all scrunched up here over my papers anyway. Trieste?" Nica called and looked around a wooden partition, out from which peered a girl about Torrant's age with long, fine black hair pulled back into a wild braid and big blue eyes in a pleasing, narrow face. As she came out from her little office, and nodded awkwardly at the two of them before looking at her feet, Torrant got the impression of high cheekbones and an unfortunate affliction of acne—normal for their age, certainly—but he remembered how embarrassed he'd been when the spots had seemed to keep coming in spite of long bouts of scrubbing with a washcloth and soap-sand.
She's embarrassed, he thought in surprise. She's as embarrassed to talk to us as we are to be here. The knowledge put him at ease. Ducking his head a little he caught her eye and smiled as warmly as he could, unaware that his lip curled up over his teeth, just so, and the grooves that bracketed his mouth deepened and the cleft of his chin became a chasm into which heartbreak willingly leapt.
Trieste gave a little squeak and was left staring at him, wide eyed, her mouth slightly open, with an expression Torrant had only seen before on a possum who had wandered into their bonfire ring one Beltane. Torrant was surprised—usually his smile had sort of the opposite effect on people, so he bit his lip and tried again.
"We're glad to meet you," he told her sincerely, "We don't know anyone here—we … we grew rather attached to our last home. It was hard to leave and come to strangers."
It was simply said—and sincerely as well. Trieste responded to the sincerity like a closed flower responded to the sun. Her quiet smile almost sent sunspots dancing in Torrant's eyes.
"We won't be strangers for long," she murmured with a shy little bob of her head. "In a month you'll be sick of us."
Torrant swallowed dryly, and felt a weirdness in his stomach that almost reminded him of bells. When he remembered the moment later in time, he heard the sound as the flute instead.
"I doubt that," he said emphatically, and Trieste's shy smile disappeared, leaving a look of stunned pleasure in its wake.
Nica cleared her throat a little and passed two pieces of parchment with schedules and a dorm number to Aldam. "And I think that's your cue to go investigate the campus."
"Thank you, Professor." Trieste turned a grateful look towards Nica, and then in a move of uncharacteristic boldness, she seized Torrant's hand, cast a radiant smile over her shoulder at Aldam, and pulled them both out of the room.
"Here is your dorm," she said a few moments later—they had followed her bemusedly up a hall and up some stairs and up a few more stairs and then down a big right with a left at the end, until they were in almost the same corner as the registrar's office—except four floors up. "The girls dorms are downstairs, the gifted wing is on the west side, the non-gifted is on the …"
"They split them up?" Torrant asked, after walking into the small, bare room and dropping his duffels and bedding on the cot closest to the window. Aldam didn't particularly care about such things, but Torrant found that he wanted the light nearby.
"Girls and boys? Well, yes … I mean, it's not like some don't bunk each other brainless after they hit the age of consent, but it's a propriety sort of thing …" She was talking too fast—she had been since she'd grabbed his hand and started their tornado rush of the school and its environs.
Torrant laughed and she flushed. He liked watching her flush—it seemed to travel in a wonderful true-rose wave from her throat to the bridge of her nose. "I mean gifted and non-gifted—is it mandatory that they not speak or something?"
Trieste blinked. "Oh. No—no—nothing like that. In fact, it wasn't even a consideration until the uprising at Moon hold …"
"What uprising?" Torrant asked sharply, exchanging a puzzled glance with Aldam.
"You know … I mean … surely you would know …" She flushed again, and this time the look in her eyes was uncomfortable and unhappy.
"There was no uprising," Torrant said after a tense silence, and then he relented. How could he stay upset with this person—this stranger, in truth—for knowing what, apparently everyone had been told. "So—are you gifted?"
Trieste rolled her eyes, relieved at even so blunt a question. "No—I'm just rich. Dad's a consul in Otham, and he and Mum dropped me off here when I was little so I could get an education in how to be rich and powerful."
Torrant grimaced. "Did it work?"
"Oh, I can spend money with the best of them." She smiled at him with dancing eyes. "But I spend it all on books so I'm still a disappointment."
"I highly doubt that." And the admiration in his gorgeous hazel eyes was so frank that she found that suddenly the tiny dorm room was overfilled with the broad-shouldered young men. She grabbed their hands in a rush, and tore through the school to show which classroom was which and where the privies were.
"This is the dining hall,” she was saying later, after they had taken several turns, sets of stairs up and down, and bends around the corridor. She had narrated a breathless travelogue for the last hour. This here is the natural science wing, Aldam you'll be here a lot and so will you, Torrant, but you'll also be here, this is the humanity's wing and this is the government professor's room … why do you have so many classes in there? Why do you have so many classes in general—it's like you're learning to be two different people. And here's the boy's shower, and the girl's shower … no we don't take them together, there's sort of a rule about that and this here is the library…
They had actually stayed in the library for a few moments, mostly so Trieste could appreciate the look of awe on Torrant's face as he took in the vast number of books. Professor Nica ran the library as she ran the registrar with a troop of able assistants culled from her favorite students, and before they left Trieste had to promise Torrant that eventually he'd spend so much time in the library that he'd be sick of it.
And then the travelogue had started again … and here's the secondary door to outside, and the great hall leads to the front entrance, with the steps and the arches and everything. You two came in through the back, was that because you stopped at the stables? You'll have to see the front entrance because it's what you think about when you imagine the college, here, follow me, now if we go back in through here you'll see…
And so on, until the dining room, where they were now. The dining hall was like everything else inside the school—large, impressive, darkly paneled and at odds with every other decorating scheme inside the castle proper. Torrant had been going to ask why nothing seemed to match—why one room with baroque carvings in the moldings would fade into another that was all angles and why one room that was begun in white oak would be finished with ebony and one panel of maple but the dark-haired girl rushing them along the multi-colored tiles of the corridors never seemed to pause long enough in a sentence for him to ask. "We often study here if the weather's inclement. When it's nice, there are tables out on the northwest side of the building that we usually gather at …"
"Whadya mean 'we', Spotty?" asked an amused voice behind them, and Torrant turned around to confront perhaps the most beautiful young man he had ever seen. The boy's eyes were a brilliant, sparkling purple-blue, set deeply behind a pair of knife-edged cheekbones, and alone they would have arrested anybody's attention, but they paled compared to his mouth. The boy's lips were full in the center, ripe, almost as soft as a girls' and strong around the outsides like a man's. At the moment they were thinned with derision, but even the hint of cruelty at the corners made them dangerous and attractive, and not off-putting in the least.
In spite of his failed wilding, Torrant knew what attraction was about—he'd felt it for some of the young women in the village of Eiran, and the occasional young man, but he never had seen a feature on someone so obviously fashioned by the Goddess for both beauty and pleasure. His breath nearly stopped in his chest at the thought of what those lips could do to his body.
Then the boy's words sank in. Torrant looked from his daze at Trieste, just in time to see her shrink into herself and become the stammering, terrified little rabbit that had greeted him and Aldam at the registrar's office, instead of the animated, chattering friend he'd known for the last hour.
Suddenly those lips didn't look so lush anymore.
Trieste swallowed and smiled nervously—in a rabbit, it would be seen more as a whisker twitch as a smile, and Torrant had the sudden impulse to put himself between her and this obviously nasty predator. "Hullo, Aylan." Again, that twitch took over her features. "These are our new students—Torrant Shadow and Aldam …" she turned towards him, "I'm sorry—I didn't get your surname, Aldam?"
"Moonshadow." Aldam said complacently, and Torrant's eyes grew wide—he didn't recall ever knowing Aldam's surname—he hadn't realized that Aldam had adopted his family in name as well.
"Very … ni … nice …" Aylan was saying, and Torrant put his attention back on the predator, who was now eyeing him like a very tasty snack. "You'll have to bring our new friends around more, Spots … they may make you worth knowing after all." His eyes raked up and down Torrant's body again, taking in his green shirt—still torn from his conversation with Yarri the day before, and spending an especially appreciative moment on Torrant's white lock of hair.
"We've been going here since we were small," Trieste apologized, ducking her head and lowering her eyes. Torrant found he very much wanted her to stand up straight and look him square in the face again.
"We know all each other's dirty little secrets, don't we, Spots?" Aylan's insinuating smile made Torrant's stomach turn over.
"You must not know her very well at all if you can't see more to her than spots." Torrant smiled, knowing that the expression was not as pleasant as it should have been. He was fighting very hard to keep his vision clear and in full color, when a pall of black, white, and red kept threatening to veil the world.
"Oh, Spotty knows how we see her, don't you?" Again that sneer, that threat to make her life unpleasant, and Trieste furled so much into herself that Torrant was afraid she would disappear.
"Calling her names is not likely to make us your friend," he snapped, aware that he was suddenly seeing Aylan in red, and that two sorts of hungers were thrumming through his confused body. One of them pooled in his belly, the other one pooled in his thighs, and suddenly the need to be somewhere else was overwhelming. He smiled at Trieste, making sure it was a real smile, in spite of how he knew his eyes must look. "Didn't you say you were going to show us the stables next?" It was lie, of course—they knew where the stables were, and the dining room was actually the end of the tour, but for the first time since Beltane the snow cat was threatening to rear its head uninvited, and he needed to be outside.
Aylan was undeterred. "Trieste will have to bring you by my quarters then," he all but purred. "She knows how I like to introduce myself to interesting people." The smile on that full and gorgeous mouth became terrifying with its implications. "And I adore blue eyes."
And with that he sauntered off with a gait designed to show anybody watching that his back and his waist and his hips were as well formed as his mouth—but neither Torrant nor Trieste were watching.
Torrant was surprised that he could find the way out of the school to the stables, but find it he did, with Trieste and Aldam trotting to stay behind him. He came barreling out of the side door and across the clearing, making it into the forest beyond the stables before they could catch up, and when he got to the trees, he grabbed at the bole of one of the bigger redwoods, threw back his head, and roared.
He heard Trieste give a breathless little shriek and the horses whinny, and the sounds alone—now that his antagonist was not here—were enough to make the sky fade from gray to blue, and the earth from black to brown. He found himself with his head resting against the tree trunk, dragging air into his lungs like a swimmer up from the bottom of the surf.
"Who in the name of the twin gods' nadir was that?” he panted, and Trieste giggled nervously from his side.
He couldn't look at her immediately, and he turned instead to Aldam's reassuring face. Aldam checked his eyes carefully and nodded, then said: "If I could have, I would have turned into a wolf, and then ripped him apart."
Torrant shuddered. "I wish that's all the snow cat wanted," he murmured for Aldam's ears alone. Finally, he felt safe enough to turn to the pretty girl who had made him feel so welcome in this new and frightening place. "He's beautiful, but is he always such a … a … jerk?"
Trieste laughed. "He knows he's beautiful." Her voice was bitter, and nobody needed to ask why. "And he bunks the beautiful—boys or girls, if they're pretty, they all get the invite to his quarters. He's not going to be happy if you shrug him off."
"Too damned bad!" Torrant growled. "And if he ever talks to you like that again, I'll rip out his spleen."
"Aren't you attracted to him?" Trieste asked, seemingly unable to handle being defended.
"Who wouldn't be?" Torrant shuddered. "But you're as pretty as he is, and if he can't be civil to you, he's not the kind of person I want to know. Aldam, let's go unpack." He stopped long enough to bow shortly to her, a ceremony that also seemed to take her back. "We'll see you at dinner then?" His voice rose hopefully, and he didn't understand why she blushed.
"Of course,” she replied after a flustered, breathless sort of moment between the two of them. "I'd be happy to—you've got less than an hour."
"See you then." And with that, Torrant fled back to his own room to make it his own and to ignore the flooding of blood, anger, and embarrassment that seemed about to deprive him of reason.

Trieste

Trieste watched the boys flee back across the field bemusedly: first they had torn out here so Torrant (Ellyot? The whole school had heard the rumors that 'Torrant Shadow' was really Ellyot Moon) could have some air, and now, after that terrifying, terse conversation he and Aldam were as close as any brothers, trotting fiercely back. But he had said he'd see her at dinner, and he'd sounded like he was looking forward to it, and she couldn't possibly deny that every place her heart beat inside her body fluttered with joy when he turned that charming smile and those lovely hazel eyes in her direction.
Except … for a moment … as he'd been pulling his temper together at the base of the redwood tree, his eyes had seemed almost blue …
But that didn't matter. Not at all. Because he had defended her. Aylan had been there, all blinding beauty and serpentine swagger and he had smiled right into Torrant's eyes with that pull, that sensual magnet that had been beguiling people into his unholy little orbit since they'd been eight years old and had shown up on Triannon's doorstep on the same day.
"Oh," he'd said then, his eyebrows raised in derision. "You're plain."
And that had summed up their relationship from then on—she was plain and beneath his notice, and he, Aylan, was the planet around which the moons revolved.
But today, today, the charming boy, the beautiful boy with the shock of white hair in the chestnut, the grooves around his mouth and the amazing, kind hazel eyes had told Aylan—Aylan—that if he couldn't be nice to her, he wouldn't be his friend.
Trieste leaned against the same tree Torrant had and put her hand to her flibberty-gibbet heart. It wouldn't matter, she thought wistfully. It wouldn't matter if Torrant took that visit to Aylan's room, became another notch carved into his ordinarily plain wooden bed-frame, another one of the beautiful whose bodies Aylan explored for his own. If Torrant ate dinner with her, enjoyed her company, smiled at her again, if he just stayed her friend, she might be able to survive these last four years of school.
This afternoon, stuck in the fusty registrar's office because she dreaded going outside and facing Aylan and his cronies, surviving University had not been a sure thing at all.
Dinner came, and, oh fair Goddess, stalwart gods, he came down the stairs wearing a new brown shirt (the last one had been green and it had what looked to be new tears and tearstains on it) and a much more composed expression than he'd had when he left. Aldam, the round faced boy with the eyes the color of a late-summer sky and the smile that made a person want to pet a kitten or something, was right at his shoulder, whispering something into Torrant's ear that made that smile, the one with the one raised lip, appear.
Trieste thought she might collapse into jelly and then evaporate into sugary-ooze, right there on the cherry-wood floor of the dining hall.
Then he looked up and saw her and turned that smile at her, and first she thought that maybe they should register that smile as a bona fide ability. In a way, the smile was sort of like Aylan's, but without the nasty, sick-to-your-stomach side effects that she'd seen in some of the people who had allowed him access to their bodies for his pleasure. It seemed as though sleeping with Aylan rarely came without at least a year of wormwood-strength remorse. Torrant's smile promised … kindness, she thought in surprise.
He came down the stairs and both he and Aldam gave her that little courtesy bow—the one she got at her parent's court, but rarely asked for here, and at first she was going to ask who had told them who she was, and then she realized that it was just because she was a pretty girl. She flushed again, and fought the urge to turn around and run away with the same torrent of words she had heard, with amazement, issuing forth earlier that afternoon.
"Hullo—you're all dressed and everything—that's good, because we do dress for dinner, not really nicely most days, but we clean up and everything. The professors usually preside, but school hasn't really started yet so we're sort of on our own. We can sit wherever we like, but we usually split ourselves between gifted and non-gifted, the professors don't tell us to do that but in the last few years the non-gifted, the rich kids you know, they've gotten really superstitious and afraid …"
"Why?" Aldam broke in, putting a voice to the cautious look he'd exchanged with Torrant.
"Because of what happened to the Moon hold …" Trieste was surprised. "I mean, you of all people should know about that, right El … I mean Torrant? The Goddess' gifted rose up against the Moons and there was a massacre and …" Because both the boys were growing red in the face and Torrant's chest was forcing air in and out with a visible effort and she could practically smell the fury coming off of him.
"That's shite," he hissed in a low breath. "I can't … people are saying that about Moon hold? How long have they been saying that?"
There was a knife-edge of agony in his voice, a pain she wasn't sure she could ever remember having heard before. "Since it happened … what were we, fourteen?" her confusion was evident. "I mean … that's not the truth?"
"No." Torrant took another deep breath, an angry breath, and when he looked at her, this time she was sure that his eyes were blue.
Trieste blinked, her own breath catching in fear. When she looked again they were hazel, but now she was more confused than ever. "How would you know?” she asked. Drine and Alys and some other girls with high-ranking parents from the non-gifted dorm came down the stairs, brushing by the three of them with curiosity turning their heads as they passed.
Trieste blew out a burst of confusion. "Gods, let's not do this right here." And with that she seized Torrant's (Ellyot's?) hand and pulled him towards the serving table where she seized three plates and passed one to each of the young men. Their silence was numb and their movements were tense and jerky. The wait between filling their plate and sitting down seemed interminable, but eventually they were all huddled around the end of one of the long, narrow wooden banquet tables. There were eight tables like this one (well, different types of wood) in the vast, rectangular dining hall, and this one was near enough to the exiting door towards the main hall that Torrant didn't feel quite so caged. Those were his words exactly, and Trieste found herself as fascinated with him as she was, admittedly, attracted.
"Are you Ellyot Moon?” she asked as soon as they were settled, and Torrant and Aldam were both so surprised that they dropped their forks even as they were aimed for their mouths.
"Goddess no!" Torrant burst out, mindless of the meat and the gravy that splattered over his clean shirt.
Trieste could not help herself—she laughed. "Goodness-you'll not have any nice linen shirts left." She busied herself with a napkin, dipping it in her goblet of water and wiping the stains off before they set.
"I doubt that," Aldam told her mildly, cleaning his own shirt off. "Bethen packed us enough to wear for a year."
"Bethen Moon?" Trieste's motions stilled, and she looked hard at Torrant. "Oh, come on—you must explain who you are."
Torrant flushed and took the napkin from her to finish wiping the mess. Their fingers brushed, and she dropped her eyes before she could see if he'd noticed the heat she'd felt from his fingers. But then he started talking and her eyes flew to his face and her self-consciousness melted like sugar on her tongue.
"We were like brothers," he stated baldly, and she raised her eyebrows, urging him to go on. "Ellyot and I—the family used to say I was their secret twin. Because of Tal and Qir, right? They were twins and then Ellyot and I were the same age and we were inseparable and we were …" his voice faded roughly. "We were brothers," he said again, looking at Aldam with miserable eyes.
"Like we are now," Aldam clarified mildly, looking at her to make sure she understood, and Trieste had to smile. She wondered if Aldam had ever realized how much simple charm he had by being only himself.
"So …" she urged, because there had been a pause at the table, "There is no surviving heir to the Moon estate?"
Aldam and Torrant exchanged glances. "I wouldn't say that."
"Well then who is it—because the rumors said all the boys were dead. And then there were rumors that you were really Ellyot Moon, but that your name had been changed to protect you from the Goddess' get who were swarming over the mountains away from Rath's vengeance over the destruction of the hold …"
"But Rath himself destroyed the hold!" Torrant blurted, his voice rising high enough to catch everybody's attention, and Trieste shushed him automatically, and then in earnest.
"Are you sure?" Oh Goddess, she was so confused. Her parents were high ranking courtiers in Otham—this was not the story being passed around in those circles at all.
"I was there," Torrant said unhappily. "I would know, now wouldn't I?"
"Goddess …" Trieste was thinking quickly. "Look—Torrant—I don't know how much you know about politics—but this is important. You need to tell me what happened so we can put about a good story, otherwise …" she sighed, remembering half-heard conversations from her parent's room, when they discussed who was going to get himself killed by telling the truth in the wrong way. "Otherwise it's just dangerous for you—right? And dangerous to the heir to the Moon hold, whoever he is."
There was a weighty moment when Aldam and Torrant exchanged glances that spoke of four years of brotherhood.
"I can tell you some of it," he said at last, and pot roast and gravy were forgotten for a while as he gave a much-abbreviated version of that long ago night.
When Torrant was finished, Trieste gestured to his cold food. "Eat," she ordered shortly, and then she picked up her own fork and they chewed in silence for a while—the dining hall had cleared out a little, so there was only a quiet, desultory sort of hum in their background.
Of course, Trieste was chewing over more than pot-roast. When Torrant and Aldam were finished with their meal, she stood up with her tray, and quietly, still thinking, jerked a shoulder that had them following her as she placed her tray on the dish rack and then moved with purpose out towards the stables.
"Can I see your horses?” she asked distractedly, and bemused, Torrant and Aldam nodded. It was pleasant outside—the dining room had been sort of stuffy, for all it's size, and even Aldam was more comfortable in a stable than he had been in their new home.
"Oh, she's sweet." Trieste rubbed the velvet part of Clover's nose. "But that other one," she gestured at Hammer Pass, "He's a monster. Is his sire that huge?"
"Bigger," Torrant told her, taking a brush from the wall and grooming Hammer. Hammer, an unapologetic hedonist, started shivering in ecstasy.
"And just as happy to see a patsy with a brush," Aldam laughed as he took his own grooming brush and scratched Clover's favorite place on her rump.
Torrant chucked. "Courtland's a big baby—it's why his babies are so popular." He touched noses with Hammer and Trieste gasped. Torrant hadn't mentioned the name of the horse he'd stolen.
"Courtland? You mean … that Courtland? He's the most demanded stud in Eiran, Otham, and the Old Man Hills!"
Torrant smiled slyly. "His pleasure paid our tuition, that's a certain thing," he agreed, and just as suddenly, he was sober. "He was the peak of Owen Moon's career as a breeder—it was the best gift he could have given Yarri, if he knew what was going to happen."
Trieste looked at him shrewdly. "You mean the best gift you could have given her."
Torrant flushed. "I just couldn't leave the old boy to be sold to Rath, that's all." He shrugged and they all resumed their task of grooming until the grit from the horses body covered their palms and rubbed between their fingers and Trieste's hands ached from the unaccustomed grip on the grooming brush. A quiet fell into the shade of the stable, saturating the moment until even the dust-motes from the vents overhead seemed to patter as they twinkled in the sun.
"You need to keep the fact that you're not really Ellyot Moon a secret," Trieste said finally. Her voice was soft, but the silence had been so complete that even the horses flickered their ears for a moment.
"Why?" Aldam asked. He was hanging up his grooming brush after moving on from Clover to Cannonball, and Torrant was on Cannonball's other side, finishing up. Aldam hated lies of any sort.
"Because otherwise, Yarri's in danger," Trieste said baldly, and Torrant dropped his brush with a clatter.
"Why?” he demanded, putting the brush back as though he'd never dropped it and patting Cannonball's grey-spotted haunch as if in reflex.
"Did anybody come after the two of you, after you arrived in Eiran?” she asked, watching Aldam carefully. Torrant was harder to read—there had been a couple of moments in his story when she had been sure there was more to the tale, but she couldn't judge from his expression accurately enough what it might be. But Aldam—it was like reading a child's book, printed in big letters with bold colors.
Aldam looked startled and terrified in a moment, and his round, blue eyes went immediately to Torrant's. Bull's-eye thought Trieste, but not very happily. It was obviously a bad memory.
"Yes," Torrant said shortly after a brief head shake at Aldam. He put away the grooming brushes and the horse tackle.
"Well …" Trieste pushed her hair back—most of it had fallen out of her braid anyway. It was a fine dark mass that never seemed to stay in place anyway, but she was surprised at how much of it she'd allowed to escape.
"Well, what?" Torrant looked at her sideways, and she dammit! still couldn't read him!
"Well … what happened to them?"
His eyes hit Aldam's again with an inaudible thud. "They left," he smiled gently at her then, cocking his head just a little. "And that's what we're going to do with this subject, yes? We're going to leave it. Now tell us why we should let people think I'm Ellyot."
They left the stable then and although it was still early, the sun was disappearing behind the trees and the rim of hills that made the edge of the valley bowl. The evening smelled like redwoods and earth and contented horses.
Trieste sighed, and thought about saying something vague, and then felt the pull from those beautiful eyes and that lovely smile to be nothing but honest. "Because if what you told me is true, you crossed Hammer Pass in winter to keep a little girl safe, and if anything my parents have told me is true, the heir to the Moon holdings in Clough would still be in danger. If people think that's you, and they know where you are, you should be good. If people think that's her, and that she's vulnerable, she may not be."
"Mm." Torrant nodded calmly, and Trieste watched in fascination as a pulse at his neck throbbed. She suddenly could sense, through all her non-gifted pores, that he was within a breath and a half of turning back to the stable and riding over hill and dale to get to the little girl he'd told her about.
He heaved a breath, blinked at the stab of the sun in his eyes over the hills and then turned to her with a soft, helpless expression. "They'll leave her alone—you think?"
Trieste nodded. "Of course—Clough doesn't think much of women in Regent's positions anyway. But Ellyot … he would have had his father's voice in the council."
Torrant shook his head. "Owen … he never told us about those things." His lips crinkled. "I was hoping to learn these things here."
Curiosity pushed against the back of Trieste's eyes. "What will you do with them?"
Torrant shrugged, blushed, turned away. "Know why."
The words hung between them for a moment and Trieste searched for something, anything, to say to him. "I know Aldam heals—it's in his course schedule. What is your gift?"
His eyes suddenly locked with hers, and they were every bit as mesmerizing as she remembered. "I make things true." His voice was soft, and a little bit teasing, and Trieste felt something inside her stomach and between her thighs flutter.
"There is one other thing," Aldam said from surprisingly close, and Trieste actually gave a breathless little squeal, because she'd forgotten he was out there with them, in the soft summer twilight.
Torrant hadn't. He looked up and locked eyes with Aldam. "We won't talk about that."
"That's fine," Aldam said easily, and Trieste blinked. Abruptly she realized she'd been staring up at the young man from Eiran as though she were reading the future in the moons.
"I'm sorry," she said breathlessly, and she found herself backing up. "It's late, I need to bathe, get to my room, get a good night's sleep, you know—class is bright and early in two days, and you, at least have enough courses for two men."
"Good idea." Acck! That lip curl was going to be the death of her. "Trieste?"
"Hmm?" This over her shoulder, since she was trying to make a graceful exit.
"If Aylan had asked you, would you have gone to his quarters?"
She tripped on a stick and fell flat on her face and then scrambled to her feet before either of the young men could arrive to help her. "I couldn't …" She held her hands out in front of her, hoping she wasn't being rude, but thinking she couldn't possibly handle having a hand on her elbow right now. "I'm promised to the King of Otham when I graduate," she said baldly, ignoring their gasps. "They just got rid of the virginity law in Otham—I would have to feel pretty strongly about someone to risk getting my head removed because I couldn't keep my maidenhead, right?"
"Oh." Torrant's disappointed expression warmed her right to her toes.
"You'd be worth the risk."
Before she could even see what his reaction would be, she turned and fled, full skirts and scholar's robes flying behind her as she ran.

Pretty Boys and Politics

They watched her go bemusedly—it was dark enough that she blended into the cedar-scented twilight before she actually reached the door to the school.
"So—we let people believe you're Ellyot Moon?" Aldam asked, a little worry line between his eyes.
"I don't think we have to do anything about that," Torrant told him thoughtfully. "Rumors seem to be pretty well established by now."
"Did they really have virginity laws in Otham?" Aldam asked curiously as they both started for the school.
"They weren't enforced—Lane says that their current king is pretty liberal as far as those things go."
"Liberal enough for what you want to do with Trieste?" Aldam looked at him through sideways eyes.
"We're not likely to find out, now are we?" Torrant retorted, fighting off that disappointment all over again. She had smelled like parchment, redwood trees and horse. He'd liked that combination. "Besides—Yarri would kill me."
"Yarri would get over it," Aldam told him firmly. "She can't expect you to live like a gelding …"
"Ouch!"
"And I think we will find out about the king of Otham," he finished placidly. Torrant looked at him, brows lowered. "She looked very determined. You should schedule her in."
Aldam was not far off—a liaison with anyone, Trieste or otherwise, would have to be scheduled in. Most courses scheduled a break of an hour or more between, but Torrant had filled those breaks with other courses. Between the extra courses and his seminar for gifted students—one of the few classes he really enjoyed—he spent his first few weeks at Triannon in a perpetual state of feverish exertion. He found himself running from the science wing to the humanities wing so often and so quickly that his body—already honed from working the warehouse, riding horses and playing gymnastics with Yarri in his spare time, leaned even further and his sprinting time improved dramatically over the course of a few short weeks.
Trieste scolded him for it during their government class—one of two they had together.
"You're getting too skinny!" she hissed, sneaking him a handful of cookies wrapped up in a napkin. She and Aldam had smuggled them out of the kitchen that morning when they saw that he'd missed another breakfast.
"I was practicing fencing," he replied with a grimace. He had been thrilled to find that fencing was an elective—he hadn't picked up a sword against a trained opponent since he and Ellyot had sparred that long ago day. But these young men had been fencing in earnest during that four-year interim, and he had some catching up to do. It didn't help that Aylan was in his class, and any misstep Torrant made was met with a raised eyebrow and an offer for Aylan's tutoring services. Torrant had mostly been able to ignore Aylan's advances—or counter them with his swordplay, but it helped if he was able to clock in his practice hours at a different time so they didn't have to shower together. Torrant, who had spent much of his life in a public swimming hole with both genders, found that he was suddenly very uncomfortable in the showers with Aylan.
"Are you trying to get too thin for the hit?" Trieste was asking him sharply now, and he returned with a grin. She had a wicked sense of humor, and he had enjoyed her edgy banter in between (and sometimes during) their classes together. She also kept Aldam company during the meals he had missed, and he could only be grateful. Aldam told him that she and a few of the girls from her dorm had made it a point talk to him between every class. "They've made me feel very welcome," Aldam said earnestly—but Torrant had heard the girls talking in between classes, and was pretty sure Aldam didn't realize that his sweet-faced good looks had garnered him some admirers of his own.
"I'm just trying to avoid getting hit," Torrant replied. "Or hit on for that matter."
Trieste rolled her eyes in Aylan's direction. He was currently chatting up a plump little blonde who had arrived after school had started and he met her look of disgust with a smirk. "Doesn't he have enough conquests?” she hissed. "Tell him to go give himself a hearty handshake and get on with his day."
Torrant choked back a guffaw just as their government professor walked in, and the two of them broke out parchment and pens and prepared themselves to study. But today's lecture was on Clough, and Torrant found he could not just sit passively by and take notes.
Professor Kenneth had quickly become one of Torrant's favorite teachers. He was a frowzy, graying man with long bushy hair pulled up in a queue and long bushy eyebrows without quite that much discipline. His face was heavily lined, he had an impressive paunch, and he approached his subject with a grim sarcasm that often had Torrant, Trieste and Aylan laughing out loud while the rest of the class scribbled furiously, unaware of the joke.
In the past few weeks Torrant had learned that the monarchy of Otham was steadily evolving into a republic, and that this was thanks to its new and enlightened king. (But not young! Trieste had snorted in disgust, just loud enough for him to hear. Nineteen years my senior is NOT young!) He had learned that Eiran functioned on a combination of merchant oligarchy and democracy (both of which words seemed entirely too formal for the gathering of Lane and the rest of the town elders in the larger room at the barracks/town council hall). He had learned that the Old Man Hills was simply a network of valley villages, each one run by a council of elders. He had learned that the far off Jewelled lands and the slightly closer Garden lands were each run by convocations of wizards with their own condottieri. And today, he learned that the man who had ordered soldiers to kill his family had not done so with the support of the government he was supposed to be leading. In fact, it hadn't even been done with their knowledge.
"So," Torrant had raised his hand and was now, with some difficulty, keeping his calm, "You're saying that the Goddess' worshippers that Moon sheltered, treated like family, and allowed to help govern his lands, rose up and killed Owen Moon because he was kind?"
Professor Kenneth blinked. "I'm not saying it, Torrant. I'm telling you that's what Rath has been telling the council that governs Clough."
"But why would we … they do that?" Torrant tried hard, so hard, to keep the anguish out of his voice, but something was leaking out because the class was moving restively, turning their heads towards the student instead of the professor.
"I don't know—Torrant, you were there. Why would they?" The professor was frankly curious, and Torrant was upset enough to answer him honestly.
"They wouldn't! They were slaughtered in their sleep just as the Moons were slaughtered awake. Rath …"
"Torrant!" Trieste hissed, and he flushed.
Professor Kenneth was obviously both taken back and intrigued at the same time. He and Torrant stood—the only people standing in a room full of breathless students, hunkered over their desks and hoping something gossip-worthy would happen. The only exceptions were Trieste, who was grabbing at Torrant's vest and Aylan, who wouldn't even let propriety get in the way of his frank curiosity about all things Torrant.
Suddenly a thought occurred to the professor, and he narrowed his eyes and phrased his next thought very carefully. "All right, young man … let's think this through for a moment." He nodded slowly, and Torrant followed his lead. "If you were, say, a politician, and you'd just taken a very bold and brutal move to take out an enemy who supported the people you feared the most, how would you best avoid retaliation for this move from your council, many of whom liked and respected your enemy?"
Torrant blinked once, felt that pressure at the back of his eyes, in the bottom of his throat and the roiling of his stomach, and managed a hoarse whisper. "It's so obvious."
Professor Kenneth nodded, "Only if you're a sociopath bent on genocide," he cracked gently, and Torrant's chest gave out a humorless puff of air.
"They must know," was all he could think to reply. "His council—they must know—they must … how could they not know?"
The professor shrugged. "From what I can see, Torrant, in the last four years, all of the older men in the council have vacated their positions, leaving younger sons and nephews as proxies and regents for them … you can make of that what you will. Blackmail, fear, unease, a willingness to let their younger, more powerless brethren do their work for them … but it does indicate that something is amiss. Rath's wife was an elected official—she was elected from the council to the position of Queen. Rath took over during her pregnancy, and when she died, he was simply allowed to continue. What he's done with it since—well, that's a whole other story."
"Why does he hate us so much?" The pressure was breaking. Torrant was going to up and weep, here, a man, in front of all of the young men and women in his class and he didn't care, as long as he got an answer to this particular question.
But there was no answer, and therefore, no comfort. "I don't know." A profound sorrow crossed Kenneth's features. "I have no idea at all."
And with that Torrant could no longer hold his composure, could no longer hold on to anything at all. Without looking at Trieste's anxious face, steeped in compassion, he simply left the room, all curiosity about the rest of the class turned to sand.
Trieste rose to go after him, but Aylan beat her to it—and neither one of them questioned the idea that the professor would let them go.
"He doesn't need a bedmate right now," Trieste muttered as they fought for position at the door.
"My sentiments exactly, Spots," Aylan snapped back, and Trieste was so surprised she let him go through the door first and then pursued doggedly at his heels.
"Then why would you go running after him for comfort?” she demanded, grabbing his arm and whirling him around to face her.
Aylan smiled, a devastating event in itself, and Trieste felt a reluctant curl of attraction in her belly. The Goddess really had put all her gifts in one basket with this one, she thought in disgust, and then he spoke and confirmed it. "He doesn't need a bedmate—he needs an opponent. It's not you, it's not poor Aldam—it'll have to be me then."
"What do you get out of it?” she asked suspiciously. Torrant was rapidly becoming dear to her—in whatever capacity—and she refused to just abandon him to Aylan's often cruel agenda.
"They jut reinstated the virginity law in Clough—did you know that, Spots?"
Goddess! "No, but what does that …"
"And the out-of-wedlock law, and no property rights for the gifted, and the right to hang midwifes as witches …"
"Holy gods!" She was appalled—these laws were barbaric, terrifying—even Otham had banned them.
"And the faggot laws." Aylan finished viciously, his usual insouciance completely burned away in the blazing of his bluer-than-blue eyes.
"The what?" Trieste hadn't heard of that last one.
"Men who bunk other men, Spots, and women who bed other women," Aylan spelled out, too angry to have used her horrid nickname out of anything but habit. "We get crucified on the blighted gates of Dueance …" he took a controlling breath and visibly pulled back his composure, "And I rather like my beds made out of down if you don't mind."
Trieste's restraining hand dropped from Aylan's sleeve. "I don't understand … you bunk women too," she added, and was surprised at the pained and self-deprecating grin that twisted his lovely and sardonic lips.
"We both listen in doorways, Trieste," Aylan said with as much gentleness for anyone as she had ever heard in his voice. "Owen Moon—whoever he might be to Torrant—was the last man in Clough to oppose Rath, and all of the madness that has followed. Our friend there saw the execution of his family because they stood for some things that are very dear to my heart, and maybe to his. He's not going to need a lover right now, he's going to want revenge, and if we're going to keep him from riding hell-for-leather back to Clough to get himself killed, then I'm the next best thing. Can I go now, or did you really want to try your hand at getting skewered on the fencing mat?"
"One last question." Trieste was determined. "Why do you care? You never have to go to Clough in your whole life."
"Just because it's not happening to me, doesn't mean it's not happening. And it obviously happened to him," Aylan answered bleakly, and Trieste let him go, wondering with a cold stomach what friend of Aylan's had ended up dying of thirst and blood-loss, pecked to death by crows on the battlements of Dueance.
By the time Aylan caught up with Torrant, he had made it to the fencing arena and was there, by himself, sweating already by working his forms with strain in every muscle. Unnoticed, Aylan went to the lockers and retrieved his own practice sword—Torrant was using the thicker saber blade, as opposed to the thin foil—and helmets and pads for them both.
He came up behind Torrant just as he had finished his repetition and called out, "Oy—blue eyes—take a helmet and spar with me before you hurt yourself."
"My eyes aren't blue," Torrant retorted, catching a helmet and putting it on nonetheless.
"They are when you're torqued, sweet-ums." Aylan smiled wickedly, as though knowing that would make Torrant even angrier.
"Stop trying to bed me. I'm not interested!" Torrant snapped, buckling his pads as fast as his sweating hands possibly could. His muscles trembled with the need to pick up his sword and go after Aylan, to stalk him, to chase him down, to …
Abruptly he stopped fumbling with his equipment and stood up, putting cold fingers to his buckles and pulling his helmet down to disguise the eyes that were looking at a cold black and white world, with Aylan a red source of prey in its center.
"Of course you're interested." Aylan moved calmly with his own equipment, as though aware that any nervousness would just make Torrant edgier. "Everyone's interested. That's how the Goddess made my body—not all of us are gifted with magic, baby, some of us are gifted with …"
"Sex?" Torrant supplied, both curious and furious in the same breath.
Aylan's mouth twisted sardonically. "Seduction," he murmured, allowing just such a look to twist his lips before he pulled his helmet down. He wanted Torrant to remember him looking sexy and wanting—it would make the sparring more furious.
"I don't want to be seduced." Abruptly, the fight was on. Pass, attack, feint, retreat, attack, press, press, press, retreat … stalk, hit, stalk, hit … see if the prey fights back.
Of course it did. "Everyone wants to be seduced … watch it!" Torrant's last hit had gone dangerously out of the acceptable pass zone—and dangerously near parts of Aylan's body that he was particularly fond of.
"I don't," Torrant insisted, barely restraining the impulse go after something vital. He could practically see the throbbing of blood under Aylan's skin … in his chest … in his groin … Torrant almost let a pass to his chest go unblocked because he wanted to sink his teeth into the pulsing of Aylan's thigh.
"Of course you do …" Aylan used the moment of inattention and caught Torrant's saber on the side and used it to force him back against the wall—neither of them were observing mat boundaries today. Aylan was a bit taller than Torrant, and just as thick in the chest, and in sheer, raw strength it was hard to match that relentless advance of steel against steel. They stood for a moment, muscles trembling, faces so close they could see each other's eyes through the face-mask.
"I don't even like you …" Torrant hissed, struggling to force Aylan's blade back. With a heave he did so, and Aylan leapt back and out of the way before his chest could catch the wild hit. "You're mean and you're arrogant, and you use seduction like a weapon …"
"I don't use it like anything, sweetheart …" Aylan gasped, parrying a vicious overhand. "I just am … you think I'm mean to Trieste? How mean would it have been to have bedded her and left her? These other girls here—they're happy to play. Your little Spotty?" (Leap out of the way, tumble, parry, spin, leap again, lunge, attack, duck!) "She would have pined for a year …"
"So you were trying to be kind?" Gods … he was relentless. Aylan was suddenly very glad they were using their blunt, tipped swords, because he was not sure he would have survived. The onslaught of blows was furious, fast, slippery, and brutal, and Aylan spent the next few panicked moments trying to make sure the sword didn't get through his defenses, and break a bone or leave a bruise. Goddess, that one was close … Aylan abruptly wished Trieste was there to calm Torrant down.
"I didn't say that!" Aylan shouted in defense. "I just left her alone, that's all!"
"Then why don't you do me the same favor!" The gritty sound of ripping followed this flurry of attack, and they both stopped abruptly, looking in fear as Aylan's pale skin appeared beneath his pretty indigo shirt. Torrant dropped his sword with a thudded clatter and bent, hands to knees, chest hauling in and out and got a trembling grip on his emotions.
"I want you," Aylan said plainly, his words rougher than he'd intended. His emotions had been exposed along with his upper arm, when that sword had ripped through fabric. "But I'm not here because I want you."
"Then why?" Torrant tipped his head back and gulped some more air, and his voice sounded … odd. Growly. Gravelly. Odd.
Aylan took his life in both hands and moved closer, until he could put his hand on his opponent's back and feel his own glove grow damp with Torrant's sweat and revel in the heat radiating through the fabric of his shirt—the one with the neat little stitches at the arm. Torrant's warmth filled him, like wine, and he realized with a shock that he might not have wanted anybody as much in his life as he wanted this gifted peasant, right here in the fencing arena. But Aylan wasn't stupid—he knew when desire could do him harm and when it could do everybody good, and right here and now he was pretty sure it could do him harm, so he stuck to the question at hand.
"Because Rath killed your people, and he wants to kill people like me, and I thought we could share a common enemy, that's all." The bunched muscles under Torrant's back relaxed, and he ripped off his face mask and stood. Aylan kept his hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing.
"Are you saying that makes us friends?" Torrant was still panting, although his breath was back, and he turned an intense gaze to his opponent, and Aylan's breath caught. His eyes were the blazing blue of a frozen heart, with the oblong irises of a cat.
"Allies." Aylan was mesmerized, both attracted and terrified by the lovely changes in a face he'd already found beautiful. Torrant's cheekbones were raising and widening, slowly, as though he were fighting the change, and his jaw was narrowing. Sharp canine teeth were beginning to protrude from under the tan/ pink of his lips. In spite of his resolution not to get too close, Aylan found himself bending down slowly, because that up-quirk of an upper lip was screaming to his mouth and his tongue and his chest and a quivering place in the heart of his loins and he wanted … he needed …
"Allies …" Torrant's eyes closed, and in the years that followed, Aylan comforted himself with the thought that in that heartbeat of closed eyes there was longing.
"Yes …" Oh, gods, their lips were going to touch and Aylan could almost weep with the longing for that feel of skin.
"Allies don't stalk each other." Torrant jerked back from the kiss as though pulling back to himself, and then, in a fluid slick of grace and skin and bones and fur, the young man that Aylan had been about to seduce was a snow cat with haunches as high as his thighs and a heavily muscled chest.
Aylan was later proud that he didn't shriek like a girl, especially because the snow cat that was Torrant pushed its big, black-striped, white-furred head against his thigh then, like a housecat looking for affection, and before Aylan could fully comprehend that this housecat had razor claws and could eat him for lunch, he pet back, scratching behind ears and under the spiky fur at his chin. The snow cat rubbed his cheeks against Aylan's thighs then, like a cat marking territory, and after a rather personal and violating sniff at Aylan's hard-swollen crotch, the cat gave a terrific and confused "Yrooooowwwwwww" and trotted out of the open door of the fencing room and into the valley outside.
Aylan fought the temptation to sit down where he stood and cradle his disappointment like he wanted to cradle his burning groin. Instead, he gathered the fallen equipment—his dropped sword included—and put it back in the locker, then set off to find Trieste.
She was pacing in the park area, annoying the other students who were taking advantage of the late fall sunshine to study. She was so distracted looking for Torrant that she almost didn't recognize Aylan as he walked up to her.
When she did realize who he was, she almost tackled him with questions.
"Where is he? Is he well? What did you do to him?"
Aylan didn't recall ever seeing Trieste so impassioned—or standing up to him so boldly. With a tiny, amused shock, he realized that she was only a couple of inches shorter than Torrant himself. Did I do that to her? Suddenly his policy of belittling her to make her keep her distance didn't seem as brilliant as he'd thought it for the last ten years. But he really couldn't dwell on that now.
"Where's his sweet-faced brother?” he asked instead, "I think we're going to need him—I'll explain on the way."
Aldam was in the science wing, calmly debating with the slouching, middle-yeared professor of biology as to whether or not the sleeping frog in his hand really had to die in the name of Aldam's own education.
The man was being phenomenally patient. "It is important that you know how these things work, Aldam. I know you can heal it without looking inside it, but wouldn't it help to know what it was you were healing?"
"But he's not broken!" Aldam said simply, "If I had to heal him I'd open him up and see … it would be worth the risk, but right now, he's not broken … why should I hurt him to see what his insides look like?"
"But if you look at this frog, think of how many other frogs you wouldn't have to look at in order to help." Professor Austin was looking like he was on the fraying edge of his patience, but Aldam was as serene as he always had been.
"Well, I'm not going to start opening up perfectly good people in order to see what might be wrong with them!" The young man gave a sunshine-smile, and the professor rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Where's Torrant, Aldam?” he asked in desperation. "Torrant will help you with this …"
Trieste intervened. "Torrant actually injured himself fencing," she announced, with a very sincere apprehension in her voice. Her vision had gone black when Aylan told her that Torrant turned into a big predator and stalked away—if Aylan hadn't caught her, she would be in a woozy pile in the middle of the corridor. "We need Aldam to help …"
"Is it bad?" Professor Austin was suddenly all concern. "I mean, Aldam is very talented, but does he need me?"
Aylan and Trieste exchanged looks with more than a little bit of panic on Trieste's end. Aylan took over. "He's fine, professor …" he leaned in conspiratorially, "It's in a rather … sensitive … area … I think he'd be more comfortable with his brother there …"
The professor actually leapt back a step in order to distance himself from the problem, and with some honest relief, he gave Aldam a little push out the door with Trieste and Aylan in order to hurry them all on their way, and out of his classroom.
"You're lying," Aldam said sternly as they took the first turn in the corridor towards the outside. "What has happened that would make you lie to a professor?”
"Maybe we just didn't want him to know that your … brother … can grow teeth and eat people …" Aylan snapped, and Aldam stopped so abruptly Trieste actually ran into his back.
"If he had wanted to eat you, you would be dead already," he said with absolutely no irony at all, "And if both of you," he looked over at Trieste and made sure he had her absolute attention, "would stop playing cat and mouse games over him, then he might have gone all term without needing to stalk rabbits."
Aylan breathed hard through his teeth—by the twin gods of compassion and honor, how could he have gotten it all so wrong? "He's a predator," he whispered. "All this time, I thought he was neutral … a healer … an observer … a poet…" They had all enjoyed Torrant's playing during the evening hour.
"He's both," Aldam snapped, out of patience. "But unlike you, Aylan, who only stalks people for sport, when Torrant's had to stalk, it's been in deadly earnest. He doesn't let much rouse him to the snow cat—you should have stopped when his eyes turned."
"We had fencing masks on," Aylan said numbly. It wouldn't have mattered, he knew. He'd wanted to see those glacial-blue eyes. Those were the eyes that wanted him. Apparently, that was also the side of Torrant that wanted him for dinner. "What do we do?"
Aldam sighed, and ran his hands through his hair, making the blonde strands fuzz crazily. It was a gesture that suddenly made him seem much older to the other two students. "You do nothing. You said he disappeared by the fencing door? I'll go wait for him by that hillside. When he comes out of the forest, I'll be there."
"How do you know he's gone into the forest?" Trieste wanted to know.
Aldam spoke slowly and patiently, in much the same tones as Professor Austin had used with him. "Because that's where the rabbits are."

They actually hid in the shadows of the school building while Aldam sat on the hill in the sunshine. Both of them crouched down, sitting on their black scholars robes (Aylan hadn't realized he'd even put his on until he saw that he was clutching Torrant's, which had apparently fallen by the gym locker when he'd gotten his sword) and stared into the brightness in a tense silence.
Aylan wasn't used to silences. He was used to being witty, to chatting, to banter. Even when all of that had devolved into 'ooohhhs' and 'ahhhs' of appreciation, it still was not silence, and he felt compelled to break into the silence, if only to comfort himself.
"I think he prefers you," he stated baldly, making Trieste jump. Her silky dark hair tumbled forward into her face, and Aylan suppressed a sigh of regret. She would have been lovely to bed, but nothing about her made his heart pound in his chest the way it had when he'd touched Torrant's back.
"Only to you," she answered back. "I don't even know if he likes men."
Aylan remembered Torrant's labored breathing, the longing radiating from his lips before the kiss that never was. "That one's like me," he said simply. "It's not the equipment that matters; it's who's playing with it. I'm just a wanker that plays at beds, that's all."
Trieste looked at him speculatively. "You were honestly worried about him," she murmured. "I mean—I would have said you didn't worry about anybody, but he had you worried."
"I'm not a complete bastard." He felt a little injured. What—she expected him not to give a frog's fart for a boy he'd pursued for weeks? Well … he had been a bastard to her.
"Why not me?" It was as though she were reading his mind. "I've seen the girls you get naked with, Aylan—I know I'm not the only plain girl in the school, but I'm the only finch you haven't feathered."
"Yeah, but Spots …" she bristled and he rolled his eyes, "Trieste, they are playing at love. Love has always been personal to you. I don't love you and I can't lay you—why put you in a place where it will matter?"
"You could have just ignored me!” she burst out with ten years of persecuted exasperation in her hushed whisper.
Not that he didn't know what that felt like. "No." Aylan tilted his head back against the old brick of the school that had been his home for the last ten years, and closed his eyes for a moment, ignoring the pain that crossed behind them. "When was the last time your parents invited you home, Trieste?" He almost despised himself for the throbbing of empathy in his voice.
At her stubborn silence, he laughed and it was the bitterest sound she had ever heard. "Yeah … I know. But I would have paid all the money I have to have traded places with you here."
"Thanks then," she murmured, hunkering down a little closer to him—not in attraction, but in acknowledgement. "For not ignoring me."
"My pleasure." Hell. Casting ten years of bad reputation to the four winds, Aylan put a comforting arm around Trieste's shoulder. "He'll be back," he told her softly. "Even if he damns both of us, I don't think he'd ever leave Aldam behind."

Brothers

Aldam tipped his head back so his face caught the late morning sun and just sat there, patiently, breathing in the cedar and redwood smells. This time of year, late-morning sun was almost the only sun they got in the valley before the hills and the trees started casting evening shadows. Even if he was worried about Torrant, these moments in the air were much better than being in the biology room, dissecting clammy, once breathing amphibians.
But he was worried about Torrant.
Aldam was pretty convinced that Torrant could do almost anything—getting them through Hammer Pass had only been the beginning. Torrant was able and quick while working in the warehouse, and he was amazing during their studies. Of course, to Aldam, it was easy to be amazing—one simply had to remember which letters went to spell which words, and that eight sentences made up a paragraph, and the difference between fact and opinion. If a person could do all of that and master algebra, Aldam was extremely impressed, and Torrant understood advanced math as well as physics and geography and, that mystery of mystery, politics.
Humans often baffled Aldam. He could not understand why his Aunt Stella, who had no children, seemed to have loved him more than his mother, who had him. He could not understand why the horse trader had sought him out and hurt him when he was a child. He could not figure out why Aylan was so mean to Trieste and why he had hounded Torrant. He certainly was at a loss as to why Roes had pushed him into the wilding this last summer and had wept at him to come back to her soon as he'd left. The spectrum of cruelty that had forced him and Torrant and Yarri from their homes loomed like a big grey cloudy question mark in his mind, and it left him sad and gloomy, just like the rain. Except he could play in the rain as a child, and Roes seemed to enjoy walking in the rain as she grew, and so Rath's evil was much more sinister than even the worst thunderstorm. Sometimes Aldam woke up at night with the cold shakes, knowing there was that much blackness in the world.
So Aldam was frequently perplexed by humans, but he was rarely perplexed by Torrant.
Everything Torrant had ever done was straightforward to Aldam's way of thinking.
He had needed food, and he could not kill. Well, he must become something that would kill, so that Yarri and Aldam could have food.
Yarri needed a family and Torrant needed to be there for her. Well, then he must tell Yarri's new family that he was a part of Yarri's old family—it was only common sense.
He needed revenge, but he did not yet have a route to Rath. Well, then he must learn more about the world so that he might find his way to where he belonged.
He needed to learn about the world, but he must not leave his brother behind. And so, he begged, worked, cajoled, pleaded, and taught Aldam all he would need to know in order to succeed here at Triannon.
Since Torrant could do that, then Torrant could do anything. But Aldam was beginning to grow unsure about how much coursework Torrant could do in one day. Since Aldam had to wake up every morning to read, and stay up every night to study, it did not distress him that Torrant had his limitations—time was time and humans were humans after all. What distressed Aldam was that Torrant did not seem to know his limitations. He seemed to be trying to devour all of his knowledge in one gulp, but one could not live on knowledge alone, and Torrant was growing lean and leaner trying to do it all.
What will you do when you're done getting all of your knowledge, Torrant? Aldam wanted to ask. What will happen when you know all of your politics and history and sword fighting, so you can go and kill Rath? How will you use all of your science and biology and healing so that you can live afterwards? Shouldn't you plan to live first, and learn about the world as you go? But even in his head, Aldam could not make these words fit into the place where they would come out of his mouth, and so he watched the chase game of Trieste and Aylan with annoyance, because it was one last thing Torrant didn't need, and watched Torrant with concern, because soon he would be all knowledge and no flesh left with which to act upon it.
A sudden flight of birds interrupted Aldam's thoughts, and he watched a patch of shadows from inside the stand of trees resolve itself into white fur, dappled with black, and those eyes, colder than Hammer Pass and brighter blue than an early-spring sky.
Torrant was licking of the spatters of blood on his muzzle with satisfied swipes of a sand-paper tongue, and even as a snow cat he had the swagger of someone who had defeated a vicious rabbit in whisker-to-paw combat. His eyes lighted on Aldam, and the kitty equivalent of a smile crossed his features as he trotted amicably over to where Aldam sat and settled himself leisurely by, laying his massive head on Aldam's thigh.
Aldam started scratching him behind the ears without even thinking about it, and neither of them noticed Aylan's wide eyes and Trieste's muffled squeal from the shadows of the building. The sun moved a notch, and then another, and the long tree shadows crept up the hill. Aldam never really marked the moment that the tufted fur of the snow cat became Torrant's tangled brown hair, or that his brother's hazel eyes closed and he lapsed into a shallow nap. On the far side of the building, classes let out and students came outside to sit at the tables and eat or study or talk. Their noise—not loud—must have wakened Torrant because he moved restively and murmured, "Oueant and Dueant, Aldam, how long was I gone?"
"Two hours at the most." Aldam replied easily. Torrant sometimes lost time when he changed, but not this instance.
"I need to keep hold of it better." There was an ineffable despair in his voice, and Aldam couldn't bear it.
"It's a part of you. You need to admit that it's there." Aldam's hand never stopped stroking—it was, had he known it, the same response he had to Starry or Cwyn when they were in tears. It was what he had done to Yarri, when he'd first seen her, wrapped in a blanket and her own destroying fear.
"Tell that to Aylan." Self-recrimination. Aldam couldn't bear it.
"Aylan got what he deserved." Aldam's voice rarely got that hard. "And I think he learned something, so you don't worry about Aylan."
"Protecting me, Aldam? You know I can eat people." An attempt at humor. It failed.
"It's your heart in the snow cat's body, Torrant." And it needed protecting, Aldam thought miserably, probably more than Aldam himself needed protection from the big, bad world. Torrant's heart would need protection in that brutal body, the Goddess' fickle gift.
"My heart is fine," Torrant lied. Torrant lied so seldom, Aldam wondered if the lie hurt as much to say as it hurt to hear.
"You should talk to Gregor." Their gifted seminar professor. Aldam's voice was even as he changed the subject, but there was something behind it that made Torrant shift restlessly. Aldam continued his stroking of his brother's hair, and the movement stopped. "Have you told him about this gift?" The nature of the Goddess' gifted was often secretive, although most of the young people confided in their seminar professor—if nothing else than for the sheer relief of sharing what so few people understood.
"No." Torrant's voice was flat, Aldam realized. In spite of his brief nap, he was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and there was no vitality in him, not even his voice.
"I've told him everything." Aldam inserted a little bit of gloating into this statement, knowing that it would make Torrant smile.
"Your gift is perfect. There is nothing to confess." Torrant seemed to be very content to simply lie there and take his brother's solace. Something about the stillness of the moment convinced Aldam that if he were to give advice to someone, even his perfect brother, then this would the time.
"Your gifts are perfect too," Aldam murmured, and still with the stroking in the hair. "You are the meeting of truth and songs—even your poetry is truth, even when it is not. And because you are the meeting of truth and songs, when you need to defend yourself, or your family, you become truly something out of a song. The snow cat isn't bad … no more than one is in the wild. It is a fierce thing, a predator, but not bad. Even when you needed to feed us, you only took the old." Aldam looked sideways at Torrant, and tried for another smile. "And a young deer would have been so much tastier."
That worked. A laugh escaped Torrant's chest, and then another. They were soft laughs, puffs of air really, but compared to that dangerous stillness they were a welcome relief. "Yarri never complained."
"Yarri thinks you set the moon and the stars just for her."
"Which moon?"
"The moon of joy. The Lady herself, of course." Aldam was surprised that he would ask.
"Then who hung the moon of honor? Oueant should get some credit, you think? And compassion? Let's not forget Dueant." And finally the flatness was gone, replaced by a dreaminess that sometimes came when Torrant was singing or telling stories. "Rath claims that he hung Oueant's moon … but he cracks honor just by saying its name…" And now the dreaminess was sad and angry, and Aldam's stroking hand moved to Torrant's shoulder and squeezed. "Will she still think I hung the moon if I kiss Trieste? Or Aylan? Will I still hang the moon if I lose my head one day and go wilding? Rath says that the moon drops its wrath on you if you kiss the wrong person or go a-wilding or … or help women give birth or … die before first moon's blessing …" Torrant's voice choked a little. "There are so many things to be angry at him for, Aldam. I don't think I can keep peace in my heart with only my heart alone, until Yarri comes of age."
"Then choose one," Aldam murmured. "One can be a friend, and one can be a lover, and of course you'll have me—that should be enough to keep your heart centered."
"You're so wise, brother," he murmured, "So very wise …" As Torrant's voice wandered off into a second, deeper sleep, Aldam realized that his pant-leg was wet. Torrant had soaked his breeches through with quiet tears.
Aldam moved in a few moments, and as Torrant's head was laid gently in the grass, Trieste and Aylan moved out of the shade and up the hill. Aldam glared at them and held a finger to his lips, but Trieste had gone for a blanket and they both had books with them and neither of them seemed to be shouting.
"Your class just started, Aldam," Trieste whispered, "You go down and get to class. We'll stay here with him."
"No." Aldam took the blanket from her and covered Torrant, then sat so that the sun was at his back, and his shadow fell across his brother's face.
"But you'll miss class …" Aylan's protest stalled at the look of serene rebellion on Aldam's face.
"You can wait with me," Aldam replied with dignity, "But he needs his brother here."
And that was that. Aylan took off his hated scholar's robe and laid it down so that he and Trieste could sit and watch over Torrant, and sit they did. They sat until Torrant woke up around dinner time, talking of nothing and everything— Trieste's home in Otham, Aldam's home with the Moon's, what college was like compared to the younger education that Trieste and Aylan had experienced. Aldam talked a lot about Yarri, and the rarely spoken but universally acknowledged belief that she and Torrant had been destined by the moons. He barely spoke Roes' name—that wish was too painful to contemplate, in case it didn't come true.
When Torrant awakened, ravenous and disoriented, he awakened to friends.

One Year More

Torrant dropped one of his humanities classes and one of his healer classes and he and Aldam resigned themselves (gratefully on Aldam's part) to an extra year of schooling, spent (the professor assured a crest-fallen Torrant) mostly as apprentices healing in the Old Man Hills.
"What is your urgency?" Gregor, their gifted professor, asked gently. "I never would have allowed you to take this course load in the first place if I'd realized the extent of your gifts."
They'd had to tell him. When the four first-years had come down from the hillside—Aldam and Aylan had actually needed to bear most of Torrant's weight, he was so weak from making the Goddess' change on such low reserves—there had been too many questions not to answer any of them. After feeding Torrant and making sure he could walk on his own, Aylan and Trieste practically shoved him into their professor's office, with Aldam on his heels. Shamelessly, they threw themselves into the study too, taking unobtrusive places on the floor so they would not be asked to leave.
Prof. Gregor was one of the younger looking professors they had. He was clean-shaven with a deep widow's peak and a strong, narrow face that the younger students especially seemed to find handsome. His brown eyes were exceptionally kind and Torrant had once told Aldam that if Dueant didn't look like Lane Moon, he probably looked like Prof. Gregor. On that evening, as Torrant sprawled—exhausted, embarrassed, and still a bit dizzy—on the leather couch in his book-cluttered study, those eyes were even more compassionate than usual. But he still wasn't Lane Moon, and Torrant couldn't answer him.
So Aldam did instead. "He wants to kill Consort Rath."
Those kind brown eyes widened, and the two shadows at the end of the couch gasped. "Really? Any reason why?"
"I don't want to tell this story again." It was the most coherent thing he'd said—in fact, Aldam had done most of the talking about the snow cat.
"You just admitted to a conspiracy against the consort of Clough—I sort of think you have to."
"He didn't really tell this story in the first place," Trieste grumbled to Aylan, but she was shushed immediately.
Gregor sat down on the opposite end of the couch from Torrant and handed him a mug of something. Torrant sipped at first, for politeness, but then, realizing that it was broth and he was still hungry, he drank deeply until it was gone.
"I'm not Ellyot Moon." He stated it baldly, as though expecting argument.
"I'm aware of that—in fact, most of the staff here is." Gregor took the mug from him and set it down on the battered table in front of the couch—there was hardly room for it in the stack of books. Aldam heard something, stood up and came back from behind the club chair he'd been sitting in with an enormous and obliging orange cat that he sat on his lap and fondled until the monster purred loud enough to knock papers off of Gregor's desk, and Torrant looked steadily at Aldam's soothing hands until he felt ready to answer again.
"Ellyot … he was perfect," Torrant said roughly. The only person he ever talked to about Ellyot was Yarri. This was harder than it should have been. Ellyot had lived, and he had laughed, and he had been Torrant's twin in every way but blood. "He could ride a horse like he and the horse were the same wind, and if you put a sword in his hand you'd almost lose the fight just to watch him dance."
"Was he a healer?" Trieste asked bravely, risking a glare and getting none.
"No." Torrant shook his head, so lost in memories that he hardly registered Trieste's presence. "He was a fighter. He was a hunter—a true hunter. He could hit any target he wanted, and he had … no remorse. It didn't matter if the deer were old or young, it was his adversary. Ellyot's world was all black and white. His family was good, anything else was fair game. He …" Torrant laughed, a light bitterness, like basil, "He never would have survived in Triannon."
"You would have come anyway," Aldam said, touching noses with the cat.
"I would have come anyway," Torrant agreed.
"Ellyot was killed …" Prof. Gregor prompted delicately.
"With the rest of our family, Yarri's and mine," Torrant continued, nodding. This needed to be said. "He … my mother called up an illusion … one that killed … Yarri and I were napping in the back of the barn when the soldiers came in, and this big mama-wolf appeared and we … I …" His throat clogged. Bethen knew this part. Lane too, and Aldam. But it had not been told more than twice.
"You have to understand … Yarri was everything to us, and I was the one who had her safe, right?" He nodded, and everybody else nodded with him. "So I had to keep her safe. And Ellyot—he's looking at me and nodding and I … we slide out of this trap-door in the back, and Ellyot … Ellyot ran towards the front and … someone knifed him in the back and it wasn't fair. He was the strong one and the brave one and he shouldn't have had to …" Torrant gulped air, thought hard about Ellyot, and felt his vision go sharp and clear. He was only vaguely aware of his Professor's caught breath and wide eyes.
"It was unjust," he said now, in a voice as calm and cold as a frozen sea. "What happened to the Moon family was unjust. Rath's soldiers came in and slaughtered them—I went back, after Yarri was hidden and safe and …" his vision flickered, but he got it under control again. "The women had been raped and murdered and the boys had been stabbed in the heart and Moon, who was maybe the most courageous man I've ever known, was beheaded while kneeling in the straw. I picked up his wedding necklace for Yarri from between the space of his head and his neck. I was there. I saw Rath's soldiers, I heard the thoughts of the commander who was waiting for a wizard to come help track us and the voices of the men who were repeating his orders. It was Rath. He ordered our families killed, and now, he's blaming my people. And no one's doing anything to stop him."
"I believe you," muttered a wide-eyed Professor Gregor. "Torrant, your eyes are blue again, maybe we should change the subject for a moment."
Torrant nodded, and quickly focused his rapidly blurring eyes on the empty cup in his hands. Professor Gregor changed the subject by re-writing Torrant's and Aldam's schedule, and this time, when Torrant made a little sound of protest, the Professor took the mug from him and made sure that his now-hazel eyes met the Professor's own kind brown gaze.
"You will get through, Torrant. You will graduate—and this way, you and Aldam can spend some time in the Old Man Hills healing. You can build a clientele, you can get to know the people who share the border with Clough—all of the political learning in the world will not help you understand politics like watching it work on the people who live through it. And maybe, you'll decide that the people need a doctor instead of a savior. That's my hope, anyway, but," when Torrant would have protested again, "either way, you will be equipped with knowledge, with experience, and with, as your Uncle Lane told you to have, a way to live when you are done."
"Besides," Gregor added, when it looked as though Torrant's depressed silence signified agreement. "It's going to take four more years for Aldam to convince Professor Austin that he can pass biology without dissecting anything."
"They're not broken!" Aldam said emphatically from his curl on the chair with the cat.
"Absolutely, Aldam," Gregor agreed with some humor. "And I'm sure you'll turn Austin around to your way of thinking. But for now," he stood, and everybody else took their cue and stood with him. "For now, you all need to go to bed—you four have classes to make up tomorrow, and Torrant, you may need to explain yourself to your other professors. I'll back up anything you say—even a lie, although I won't like it—but you will need to think of something to tell them."
"I'll just tell them it was related to my gift," Torrant told him simply. "That usually scares people enough as it is."
Gregor nodded. "So it does," he agreed sadly. "So it does indeed."

The year progressed much more smoothly after that.
Aylan, who could usually be found chatting with a group of potential bedmates during mealtimes, began to eat with Torrant, Trieste and Aldam. First it was once or twice in a week, then it was once in a day, and then the potential bedmates had to eat with them or not be considered candidates at all. Aylan's conversation was light and fun, and once he'd stopped making scathing comments about nearly everybody (there were still a few professors who fell victim to his barbed tongue—but since they couldn't or wouldn't fall into his bed, Torrant magnanimously excused him), he was a welcome friend.
Occasionally Trieste caught him eyeing Torrant with a speculation—and a longing deeper than anything she would have suspected Aylan capable of—but he never spoke of it. Not even when she started making excuses to be alone with Torrant in the evenings to study or to sing. Not even when he rounded a corner of the dorm hallway one night—alone—and found Trieste, leaning against the wall with Torrant's arms braced on either side of her. Their bodies were not touching—not yet—and those warm, quirkily beautiful lips hadn't yet touched hers—not yet—but everything about Torrant's leaning posture and her breathless wonder as she gazed into his brown-hazel eyes shouted to the heavens that they would kiss, soon.
After raising a sardonic eyebrow and giving a little bow—both of which effectively made them separate and blush at the time—Aylan had continued on his way and gone into his own dorm-room—again, alone.
The next day he caught Trieste as she was on her way to the one class that Torrant had dropped but that he still had with her. They often sat near each other these days, and both of them were pleasantly surprised at the other's usefulness as a study partner.
"You know he and Yarri are probably moon-destined, don't you?” he asked the question seriously, and since there was no hint of censure or of anger in his tone, Trieste answered teasingly, as though he were a friend, and not the tormentor she had known for the seven years prior to Torrant's arrival.
"You know I'm engaged to marry Alec, the king of Otham, don't you?" She kept her voice light and a little sardonic, and Aylan's sympathetic head tilt and grave quiet brought tears to her eyes. She hurried through them. "Someone I choose, Aylan—is that too much to ask? I know …" she swallowed hard, looked away, "I am well aware that I don't have the charm that a Yarri Moon might—in eight or so years—possess, but for today, before I get bargained away in the greatest political coup the five smaller kingdoms have seen in a hundred years, wouldn't it be lovely if I got a lover of my own choice?"
His full lips tilted in a brief smile, and he gave the tiniest nod, and she was suddenly more candid with Aylan than she had been with Torrant the night before, as she'd hurried out of his arms in a confusion of blushes and 'see-you-tomorrows-lets-meet-in-the-quad's.
"He's kind, he's beautiful, and he seems to want me, and just for this time here, in school, I choose him." She dashed her hand across her eyes and blinked hard, but didn't fall victim to the regret already haunting her every touch of hands with the boy with the white streak in his brown hair.
Aylan nodded. "I understand, sweetheart," and the endearment sounded almost brotherly, "but remember …" Aylan shuddered a little, "just remember the kindness isn't the only part of him."
"I know it's not," Trieste nodded. "But because I'm not Yarri or Aldam—or you!—I think that's the only part he'll let me see." Torrant had been all that was gentle to her. Kind, complimentary, solicitous … she had seen passion—his breathing the night before had been very heated before Aylan had interrupted— but he hadn't ever let her see that the passion might have its own way to go. And she was quite frankly relieved. "I think that's the only part I'll ever bear to see."
Aylan nodded in turn. "Well," he said with some grim and self-deprecating humor, "I for one would be very interested in that other side of him—if he's ever letting on that it's out prowling."
Trieste laughed then, gaily and with a whole heart, suddenly liking very much that Aylan was a friend. "If he ever needs to let that part out, you can have it, you horrible flirt," she seized his arm and they walked into class together. "But for now, he's all mine."
But Torrant was not all hers immediately. Samhain came, and a week's worth of holiday with it, and Torrant and Aldam saddled up and prepared to make what was a two day trip with a cart into a one day trip at a canter. They were both itchy and excited to go home to Eiran and the Moons—Aylan had remarked privately to Trieste that if he ever actually met this family he would feel like some sort of pervert-stalker—he knew more about the bathing habits of the Moon women than he knew about his own mother. Trieste had scolded him, but in her heart she had agreed—both young men knew very clearly where their hearts lay, and it was difficult to compete with a dream.
But that didn't stop her from tackling Torrant in a hearty hug as he was standing by the horse in the thin gold light of the late autumn morning, or holding his face in both long-fingered, delicate hands before she pushed her lips to his.
Torrant was startled at first, a little laugh escaping to be muffled in her seeking mouth, and then, feeling what it was she wanted, he opened his mouth and his arms and began to enjoy the feeling of her against his body. She was thin but wiry and stronger than she looked, and he loved the power of the will beneath the delicacy of her fine bones and muscles. He returned the kiss with interest, becoming the aggressor, until she backed away, breathless, embarrassed, and so pleased with herself that her affection radiated from the sweet oval of her face.
"You'll remember me then?” she asked, trying to still the tympani of her heart.
"I'll bore Yarri with stories of you," he told her kindly. "I'll make sure every Moon knows your name."
He could not have chosen anything better to say in farewell, and after a handshake from Aylan, he and Aldam were soon cantering up over the bowl of the valley and home.

Letters to the Dead

"Was that so awful?" Aldam asked as they rode. The days were much shorter— they would have to ride hard to make it, but they had both been terribly, terribly homesick in the past weeks, which is why they had agreed to make the trip. There was no guarantee the snows would let up enough to go during winter solstice, and Torrant had hardly been able to mention Yarri's name to Trieste without feeling his throat grow tight.
"You were there," Torrant replied with amusement. "Did it look like I hated it?"
"You've been fretting," Aldam reminded him.
"Well unlike you, I have no wilding and no experience," Torrant said grumpily. "The girl looks at me like I'm the rising moons and setting sun, I'd hate to only be a man after all."
"You could have chosen Aylan," Aldam told him guilelessly. "And he would have been happy to teach you what you didn't know."
"If only he hadn't been such a wanker!" It was a new word, taught to them by Aylan, and it made Aldam laugh.
"He's not a wanker anymore," he said judiciously.
"Oh I don't know about that," Torrant laughed. "He's on his good behavior, but I'm sure he could still be a wanker if it suited him." He patted Hammer's flanks then, and felt the horse quiver with the excitement of being out of the staid little valley of Triannon. The horses were worked regularly, both by Torrant and Aldam and by obliging younger boys who envied them, but the animals were obviously bored with their regular regime. "How's Clover doing?” he asked, and Aldam knew exactly what he was asking.
"She wants to go home," Aldam replied, and without another word the young men spurred their horses just a little bit faster to try to make time.
Yarri was waiting for them, perched in the same tree from which she'd said her farewells. It was bald now, and the girl perched in it was wrapped warmly and chattering her teeth in the ocean's icy damp. It was nearing dark, and both girl and tree were dark, cold silhouettes against the darkness of the eastern sea, but Torrant saw her surely enough and called out as they were crossing the bridge.
"Yo! Yarri—get out of that damned tree and we'll give you a ride home."
She didn't reply but she did disappear as she scrambled down, and as Torrant and Aldam turned onto the road after the bridge, she was in that same mad scramble up the hill to greet them.
Torrant slid down off Hammer, partly because she was moving so fast and so frantically he didn't trust her not to just run into the horse, although she supposedly knew better, and partly because he wanted to see her so badly that longing was like a sledgehammer against his throat, stopping off the air.
She never did slow down, and it was a good thing he braced himself, because he had just enough strength to catch her and pick her up in a flurried and fierce hug, before she began to smatter his ears with questions like hard rain.
"Did you get my letters because Uncle Lane said he was sending them by militia every day, but you only sent once a week and Hammer looks fat, haven't you been exercising him? You look skinny—how can you be so skinny if Hammer doesn't get any time out, and aren't you letting Aldam sleep? Roes cried for a week after Aldam left but you're not supposed to tell him that—you didn't hear, did you Aldam? How are your classes—Auntie Bethen said it was a smart thing for your professor to make you take fewer classes and she told us she had worried about you and worried but that it was fine because you had people to look after you and …" she pattered to a halt to take a breath and Lane, who was coming up the road as they walked slowly towards home interrupted.
"Yarri—if you don't stop and take a breath you'll make yourself sick, girl. Now give the boy a break and give Aldam a hello."
"Hello Aldam!" Her smile was so enthusiastic that Aldam could take no offense.
"Hello Yarri," Aldam answered equably as he embraced Lane, "I won't tell Roes, I promise."
Lane grimaced cheerfully and embraced Torrant around Yarri. "Good to see you," he said warmly. "We were hoping you'd make it tonight."
They talked easily as they walked down towards the second block of houses by the sea, and Torrant kept squeezing his arm around Yarri's shoulder to remind himself that she was there.
"Did you miss me?” she asked under Lane's narrative about Starren's effortless mastery of her letters and Cwyn's newest offense at the school. (Climbed a tree so he could look in and watch his teacher dressing—the boy's eight, what does he think he'll do with whatever it is that he sees? Aldam had no idea.)
"Like I'd miss my next breath," he responded.
"As much as you'll miss that girl you keep writing about?” she asked sharply, and he grinned down at her, because he'd known it was coming.
"More," he told her decisively before his grin turned evil. "But not by much."
She squealed and socked him in the arm, and he thrust Hammer's reins into Lane's hands. Then he chased her breathlessly home, while leaving Lane and Aldam to follow along behind with the horses.
Later that night, as they talked and laughed (mostly laughed) over dinner, the subject of Trieste came up again—this time in concert with Aylan.
"They were relentless!" Aldam said with considerable emphasis. "Torrant had to chan … oh …" Because Torrant was glaring at him with a pained expression.
"Aldam…"
"You know I'm not good at …"
"I thought we weren't going to talk about …"
"Subterfuge …"
"This—I didn't want Ya … everybody to …"
"You would have told Lane or Bethen …"
"Know!"
"Eventually!" Aldam stopped, and now both of them were scowling, and the family was staring at them in bemusement.
"I've never seen Torrant turn into the snow cat," Starren said mildly into the silence. "Would you let me see the snow cat while you're here, Torrant?" She turned to him expectantly and smiled so sweetly that Torrant had no choice but to smile back.
"Of course, Littlest—tonight before we go to bed, I'll change for you."
Starry said a bright, smiling, "Thank you, Torrant!", and Bethen and Lane began to delicately inquire about Torrant's initial slide into the snow cat. Torrant left out the part about Aylan's attempts at seduction, and Trieste's habit of touching his arm or his shoulder or his hair, just to torment him, and the way both of them, (still!) listened to him sing after dinner with a look in their eyes as though he were something they had missed their whole lives but not known until he'd walked through the door. But he did include the part he'd already written about, when Prof. Gregor extended their stay at Triannon for a year.
"He said most of it would be as healers in the Old Man Hills," Torrant added, taking the last of the buttered bacon beans—the food at Triannon may have been more savory, but Bethen's cooking tasted like home.
"That's good!" Bethen said emphatically, "The Old Man Hills—well, a lot of that Goddess hating trash from Clough spills over there—they need some healers who won't …"
"Bethen?" Lane inquired delicately.
"Won't pack a woman's womb with ashes or circumcise the baby girls?" Roes interjected with an arch of her brows. "We all hear the same reports, Da'—we know what doctors do to women when they desecrate the Goddess."
"What?" asked Starry, and the look Lane shot his wife and daughter would have had any of his workers quailing in their boots.
"They're mean to them, sweetie," Bethen answered calmly, giving her husband an answering look of her own. "It's what happens when you forsake joy—it just makes you mean."
Starry nodded, satisfied, and Lane rolled his eyes at his wife and shook his head. Tactfully, Torrant changed the subject to how Prof. Gregor had been helping him to control his gift.
Later that night, he gave demonstrations. First he morphed smoothly into the snow cat itself and gave Starry's delighted face a lick. Then Cwyn jumped on his back and asked for a ride and he showed his next trick—changing into a furry human with a cat's face. This one made Bethen and Lane gasp.
"That is really disturbing." Stanny burst out on a shocked laugh. "Torrant, I wouldn't know you like that in broad daylight, much less in the dark."
Torrant smiled, pleased with himself, and his broad cat's tongue came out and licked the whiskers that still stuck out proudly from his muzzle.
"I'd know him," Yarri said flatly, "Because in that form he's wearing my brother's eyes."
A shocked silence fell over the family, but Torrant and Yarri, eyes locked, didn't notice. "Ellyot's not the only person in the five lands who had blue eyes," Torrant said gently. "All snow cats have them."
Yarri swallowed hard and shook her head stubbornly. "You're not Ellyot."
Abruptly Torrant was completely himself, hazel eyes and all. "No, sweets, I'm not—and I'm not trying to be him when I do this … it's just …" he shrugged, suddenly realizing that the family was listening and embarrassed about it, "It's kind of wonderful, that's all. You used to think so too."
Yarri launched herself at Torrant and locked him in a fierce hug. "You are wonderful," she whispered, violent tears scalding her face, "and you are a healer. That thing you become can kill."
"It kept you alive," Torrant whispered into her hair. "It saved your life twice. And I can't hate the part of myself that kept you alive."
"Yeah, but you only found that part by wishing you were Ellyot!"
Torrant sighed and tickled her cheek with his nose. "Your brother was a good person—wanting to be more like him isn't a crime." Yarri's hug didn't seem to be easing up, so he tried another tack. "Here—do you want to see what else I can do? Uncle Lane, do you have a piece of paper—heavy parchment would be perfect."
In a moment he was on his knees with all of the children—including Stanny and Aldam—surrounding him. "Here," he said, taking a piece of charcoal and sketching a rough building. "This is Triannon, over here, in the valley's bowl, and this," he sketched a meandering path, "this is the road there. This direction is the road to the Old Man Hills, and this direction is Eiran. Here's the shrine at the half-way point, and here's the bridge, and here's the barracks and the main street, and the rows of houses on this side and here," he added a special x to his rough scribbling—an artist he was not, "this is our house. Now watch."
He closed his eyes and focused his power, just as he'd practiced, and felt the parchment under his fingers become thicker and smoother while the edges became rougher, like one of the glossy illustrations from a very expensive book, and he heard the gasps of wonder around him. Then he opened his eyes and saw what he had wrought, and almost burst with pride.
"That's our town!" Roes stated. "It's as pretty as those paintings they sell by the shore in the summer. And it's got labels—there's the mercantile, the inns, and Daddy's warehouse and our house and … these names here … those are us! It tells where all of us are!"
Torrant grinned broadly. He'd saved much of his energy from the day for this special trick. "At any given time," he told them smugly. "When Aldam and I leave, you can watch us move up the path and know we're safe." He looked at Yarri and nodded. "All year, you'll know where I am." He took another look at the map then, and saw something that surprised him. "Hey—the warehouse is labeled 'Stanny's flat'—Stanny did you move?"
"I couldn't very well live with Ma and Da my whole life," Stanny replied, his broad, freckled smile embarrassed and pleased. "I moved about a week after you left."
"And he's here five times out of seven for dinner," Bethen said dryly, and the whole family laughed.
"Do you want me to stay home and cook?" her eldest asked innocently, and she reached from her arm chair and ruffled his hair under his hat.
"No, boy-o—you're about as independent as I can stand you right here and now."
"Hey!" Yarri exclaimed, looking at Torrant through narrowed eyes. "Your school mates are on this map too—they're not family."
Torrant looked at the map in some surprise, a smile quirking at one end of his fascinating mouth as he did so. Sure enough, there they were—their names superimposed at opposite ends of the school. "That's odd," he murmured. "I hadn't planned on that at all."
"What were you thinking?" Lane asked curiously.
"Well … I was still sort of thinking like the snow cat, right? I guess I was thinking about the people I'd …" he flushed, because it was a little arrogant, but it was true nonetheless, "People I'd protect."
Lane nodded, clapped him on the back, and took his turn examining the map's minute detail like everyone else, but Torrant could sense a 'talk' coming on—in fact, he was almost relieved.

The next night was Samhain proper—Cwyn, Starren, and Yarri dressed up in shrouds with terrible masks that they had made out of cloth, flour and water and went out into the night to face death, wearing façades and their own innocence. Roes took them from house to house, where the townspeople handed out apples and sweets to appease the restless spirits, and when they were done, the family bundled up and went to the town bonfire.
It was too cold to walk far, as they did during the Beltane Faire, so the bonfire was held in front of the barracks, on the road itself. The next day, most of the able-bodied men in the town would gather to clean up the avenue, but for tonight, the town—including the refugees who had stayed and assimilated into the sweet, easygoing populace of Eiran—was assembled raucously, the children bundled against the cold, many of them still masked against the remembered dead.
Yarri and Torrant had worked quietly that day, writing their letters to their dead. This year, unlike the previous years they had participated in this ritual in Eiran, Yarri didn't let Torrant read her letter—she told him she'd let him see hers if he'd let her see his. Torrant had never let Yarri see his letter, and he wasn't going to start now.
Instead, they stood somberly, watching their letters burn with Lane's and Bethens', in flames the color of Yarri's hair in summer.

Dear Ellyot, Torrant heard his own voice in the flames, reading his pain to his honored dead, tell my mother I love her. I am trying to earn her sacrifice for us— know that, all of you; I never forget that Yarri and I owe our lives to you. Tell my mother that I'm at the University—I'm going to be a healer and a midwife like my father. Tell Tal that I almost kissed a boy this autumn, and tell Qir that I did kiss a girl. I think I'll keep kissing the girls, thank you, but I won't close my mind to the boys—Tal swore by them, after all. Tell Kles that Bethen has taught Yarri to knit, and that this might be as close to being a lady that she'll ever get. Tell Moon that I'm keeping Courtland's legacy alive, and tell both of them that Yarri can paint like a Goddess gift, just with colors and a brush.
And you, my brother, what can I tell you?
I can tell you that when I'm angry, I look just like you do. I can tell you that you will be avenged.
I love you all. Yarri will be happy—that is my promise.
Torrant

It lacked poetry, he knew. For someone who was considered a poet, he found that when he addressed his honored dead, everything in his body became jammed and static, as though if he was not careful, he would fall to his knees and howl and howl until his throat ripped itself out of his body, leaving only his hollow shell, grieving for his family and the past.
It was only being with Yarri that kept his grief from destroying him every year. He remembered that first morning, and how he had needed to live for her. He continued to live for her, and the grief became a burden he could bear.
He stood, lost in the fire, in his communion with the dead, when he was surprised by a hand on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Lane. Lane's eyes were red and his smile was crooked as he nodded Torrant into the shadows. He looked over at Bethen who nodded, so Torrant knew that Yarri would be cared for, and together he and Lane moved from the brightness of the center to the shadows at the edge. They sat down in the same corner of the barracks where Lane had first pointed out Torrant's blue eyes, and swung their legs under the railing over the edge of the porch.
"You can cry, Torrant. You know that, right?" Lane asked quietly when the roar of the fire and the Samhain crowd had faded in their ears.
"If I cry I'll never stop." It was a statement, a truth, and Lane didn't contradict it. "I …" Torrant swallowed. "I have this lump of rage in my chest, Uncle Lane, and it grows denser and full of sharper knives with every year, and I'm afraid if I cut it loose it will just leave me empty and bleeding …" his voice choked up in his chest as he said it, and he wondered what had spawned this lump in his throat like a giant razor mushroom.
"Yarri said you looked like Ellyot," Lane said, reading his mind. "She said that, and suddenly you realized that you've lived four years without him, and four years without your mother, and four years without the family you loved, and that in the meantime you had effectively grown up and left home, and that they were not the home you left."
Torrant breathed sharply, through his nose, and that thing in his chest grew some great big metal blades that thrust out so far he touched the front of his shirt and was surprised to find the front of his hand pale and dry before his eyes.
"My mother would have been proud," was all he could manage to say.
"And Ellyot?" Lane's voice, his third father, the one he remembered best, lapped at Torrant's own fears like an eroding tide.
"Ellyot would have been furious at me for leaving." Torrant looked intently at the sky above the sea. Oueant was up on the horizon, blazing an almost summer orange, that was reflected in the dark water. Triane had reached her pinnacle before falling off in her whimsical path, and there were a thousand shards of her yellow face rolling in the distance. Dueant was not up yet, and the god of compassion was not there to ease the gouging pain of loss that had begun to shred his chest like a wolverine shreds flesh.
"And he is not here …" Lane had tried to be patient, but he could not stand to see his family in pain. "For the love of joy, Torrant, weep for them!"
"Oh, Goddess …" Torrant leaned his head against the rail of the barracks and wept silent as a man for the family that had died when he'd been a boy. The tears pattered down his shirt like blood.
When his sobs had died down, and Lane's easing hand had diplomatically moved from between his shoulder blades, Lane started to talk about other things, so that Torrant could go back to the bonfire and Yarri's expectant face and be easy.
"So—you turned this Aylan down, but kissed Trieste?” he asked, and Torrant shook his head, feeling the worn wood of the railing digging into his forehead.
"Trieste kissed me!” he defended, then, honestly, "I didn't mind much."
Lane laughed a little. "And Aylan?"
"Wanted to." Torrant sat up straight and blew out a breath, knowing he could be honest with Lane. "He's a good looking boy—sexy as the three moons, but Goddess! What a wanker!"
Lane laughed a lot then, and said, musingly, "It's good, then, that you left. You can see the world, see what other lovers would be like …"
"They won't sound the same," Torrant interrupted, surprised at himself.
"Sound … like voice?" Lane looked at him oddly, and Torrant flushed.
"Like bells," he replied shortly, and then tried to make himself clearer. "Yarri … she came into my arms like a blind wriggly puppy, and she sounded like … bells. Little chinging bells, big clanging bells, those xylophone things that you hear … bells. She sounds like bells."
"And Trieste?"
Torrant sighed and shrugged. Maybe the Goddess' gifted could be forgiven for their small madness. "Like a wooden flute—it's pretty and all, and I'll enjoy hearing it for a while, but …"
"It's not bells," Lane finished for him.
"No. Not bells."
Lane sighed and stood and stretched, and offered his hand to Torrant, who realized that his tears had dried and his eyes had cleared, and he was probably fit for a tankard of cider and a song after all so he took it. "Bells."
"It's true!" Torrant laughed as he stood.
"No, no—I believe you. In fact, if you must know, Bethen says I smell like chamomile and lavender—it's the reason she chased me through two Beltanes and a solstice wilding I'd rather forget. She says that scent was the only thing that would make the sun come out or the breeze blow warm, and that the birds wouldn't sing if it wasn't there, surrounding her. She absolutely knew the world would not sit well and easy, if she didn't have chamomile and lavender filling her home."
"A smell, really?"
"Uh-huh—and Kles told her once, that with Owen, it was that she could taste chocolate when he was near." Lane watched him carefully, to see if he would comprehend.
"A gift!" Torrant exclaimed, not disappointing him in the least.
"A small one," Lane acknowledged. "I'd be curious to know what Aldam senses when he sees Roes."
Torrant thought for a moment, and looked to the bonfire where Aldam and Roes were standing near enough to be family, but far enough to be scrupulously observing proprieties, and he sighed. "I think with Aldam, Roes is probably her own sight, smell, taste, touch and sound," he said simply, and Lane had to agree.
"I think Aldam would have known that without the Moon gift, as well." He looked at his daughter, prickly and cranky and happy as only Roes could be.
"Aldam knows a lot of things without knowing how he knows," Torrant agreed, and then he was tired of talking and close enough to the crowd at the bonfire to not want to be heard. Casting a grateful smile at Lane over his shoulder, he ran to Yarri and asked her if they'd burned the leaf-monster yet, to scare away the worst of the winter snows, and she took his hand and led him to where the other children her age were preparing him, and the rest of the night passed with all of the joy that Torrant needed to leave at the end of the week.
It was only later that night, as he lay quietly awake in bed, that he realized that the lump in his chest had grown smaller, and a little less deadly, but that, as sure as the snow cat wore Ellyot's eyes, it was still there.

A Map Through a Cold Winter's Night

Leaving at the end of the week was difficult, but not nearly as difficult as the first departure, and since their rush back to Triannon was so flurried in order to avoid the snow, Torrant and Aldam didn't have time to dwell on the leaving.
Torrant did keep the stiff card safe that Yarri had stuffed in his pocket as he and Aldam had mounted their horses that cold winter morning. It was a picture of him, singing in the family room—the focus was on his eyes, hazel, that strange mix of brown and green and gray, and shiny in the firelight.
"Remember that's how I see you." Yarri's face had been serious and sober as she'd wrapped her arms around his neck. "Remember that I'm never sorry that you're not Ellyot."
He'd smiled gently, "Yarri—I'm never sorry that I got to grow up with you."
But she hadn't been fooled. "Say it."
"I'm not fourteen anymore …"
"Say it." And her lips had pursed and her brow narrowed, and he was reminded, yet again, that she only looked like an angel.
"Yarri, it's …"
"SAY IT!” she barked, and Torrant had flushed as the rest of the family looked their way with raised eyebrows.
Goddess, he loved them all.
"Fine!” he snapped, mortified but knowing at the same time that he had lost. "I'm not sorry that I lived and Ellyot didn't—are you happy now?"
"I'll be happy when you believe it." She'd burst into tears then, and he'd held her and comforted her, stroking her curling autumn hair and whispering into her ears all of the things she'd forced him to say, just to make her stop crying, just until he could believe it.
"You won't forget?” she whispered. "It's a long time until spring." Odds were good that they wouldn't be coming back for the winter solstice—because of his heavier course load, he would still be finishing up finals, and the snows would make the trip difficult with the wagon. Lane had promised them that for next year, he would make skids for the wagon so they could use it as a sled.
Roes and Aldam embraced quickly, bodies barely touching, and then the rest of the family was caught up in hugs as well. When Roes came to hug Torrant, she stepped on his foot to get his attention.
"He'll follow you to the nadir and back, right?" She was not smiling in the least, her tanned, freckled face crunched together at the brows in anxiety. "You need to lead him back to me."
Torrant grinned. "Roes, I don't know if you've noticed, but he could no more wander away from you than the moons could leave their orbits," but to his dismay, this only made her cry.
"Don't you understand, cousin? The Goddess moon doesn't wander because she's faithless, she wanders because she follows her brothers … you're his brother, and he'll wander away from me if you don't send him back." She dashed her hand across her eyes and Torrant grimaced and hugged her close.
"Right, little rose, right. I'll send him back when we're done with our wandering, I promise. You just remember that he might want you to wander a little on your own."
Roes sniffled against his shoulder in response, and then it was Stanny's turn, and Cwyn's and Starry's and then Bethen who sniffled too. "It won't be Solstice without you two."
"We'll be back for Beltane," Torrant reassured her, and then, nodding at Lane who had already given his permission, "And we'll bring friends, right?"
"Aylan can stay with me!" Stanny said excitedly—meeting someone from out of town had sounded very exotic to Stanny.
"And Trieste can stay with me," Roes said sententiously. Bethen elbowed her and shook her head in warning, and then there were more hugs and kisses all around and then …
They were off, and Torrant was touching the card inside his cloak pocket as though it were his last link to everything he loved.
Their classes grew busier, more intense, as everybody prepared for finals after the Samhain break. The night they got back, Trieste greeted him with such a fervent kiss that he found himself closing his eyes in odd moments just to savor her taste.
They continued kissing, learning the joys of bodies pressed close in corners, of the brief touch of lips in greeting and farewell, of cold hands on warm tummies and the squealing and touching and laughter that ensued. He loved the way her eyes closed before he put his lips to hers, and the feel of her breath on his face just before that happened. He enjoyed the dark feeling of her fine hair as it spilled around his fingers, and the terrible sensitivity of his body, hard and full and aching under his clothes, as she pressed on top of him. One touch, he often thought in a delicious ecstasy of agony, one touch of her soft cool hand against his bare skin and his body would explode in a scorch of fireworks behind his eyes and in his pants and possibly even out his toes.
The anticipation was as wonderful as the smug knowledge that someday, someday soon, it would happen, it would happen between them and he would feel her skin on his without interruption or excuse and the thing, the glorious warmth between them would wash over his body like a velvet wave.
Aylan watched them with amusement, indulgence, and a certain amount of patient jealousy.
"Why don't you just do it and get it over with!" he demanded one day in exasperation. Torrant and Trieste had met as Torrant was sprinting towards their fencing class—after a brief kiss and rolled eyes to indicate that it wasn't enough, he caught up with Aylan and they walked shoulder to shoulder to the changing rooms.
"Maybe, Aylan," Torrant said smugly. "It's not just something you 'do to get over with'. Maybe it's something special."
Aylan grunted with disgust and Torrant urged them faster. The fencing practice room could only be accessed from outside the building, and the snows had come. They were gentle and forgiving snows in the Triannon valley—not even comparable to Eiran's sea-cold, and certainly nothing to Clough and Hammer Pass—but the young men were outside with nothing but scholars robes and scarves to protect the two of them from the cold.
"Besides," Torrant continued when they were inside undressing. "It has to be her decision—she's still at risk for getting her head lopped off in a public ceremony if she's wrong about Alec of Otham."
"I doubt it—Alec's a nice enough sort, if you like benevolent rulers bent on changing backwards countries." Aylan donned his fencing tights in record time, and leaned back against the wall just to enjoy watching Torrant struggle into his. Most noblemen were not as broad-shouldered as Torrant, and their chests weren't thick with the muscle gotten by wrestling and hauling crates in warehouses. Torrant may have lost a great deal of weight, as well as his self-consciousness around Aylan, but that didn't mean that looking at him wasn't still a treat.
Torrant noticed his regard and flushed, more so when his body began the stirrings of a response—something made obvious by the tight fencing clothes. "Knock it off—I thought we were over that shite."
"I'll never be over that shite," Aylan returned seriously. "If you don't want me to look, then go dress somewhere else, but don't expect me to just turn the whole works off because you're about to get a woman. My offer still stands, and probably always will—just because I'm not stalking you anymore, Triane's son, doesn't mean I'd mind if you wandered into my room one night and dropped your drawers.”
Torrant grimaced at the crassness of the offer, but looked seriously at Aylan because he respected that Aylan was very serious. He also knew, now that Aylan had become a friend, that his friend's heart was probably as engaged as his desire, and he wouldn't hurt him for all the world. "I appreciate that," he murmured, "but now is not the time." There was a quiet between the two and then Torrant came to himself to stand and pick up his mask. "What was that bit about ‘Triane’s son’?”
Aylan laughed and picked up his own gear. "You're gifted, you're a midwife and a healer, and you wouldn't mind kissing another boy. If you're not the son of the Goddess, I've got no idea who would be."
"Get stuffed!" Torrant replied amiably, and went off to beat Aylan soundly in three matches.
Finals came, and even though his schedule had calmed down, Torrant still grew so lean studying that Trieste, Aldam, and even Aylan took to bringing meat pies to their classes so they could urge him to eat. He rolled his eyes at them— "Not one of you looks like Auntie Beth!"—but he'd still eat the food. It was bad enough that Professor Nica had started giving him food in the library—the room he loved most in the school, and the one place he was not supposed to be eating. Of course, he wasn't supposed to be sleeping there either, but four nights out of five, one of the three would go fetch him from the stacks, where he was quietly sleeping in the clutter of bound parchment.
And still he passed his finals—in all classes—with marks high enough to make Aylan sigh with disgust.
"I've been working this system my whole life, I don't get marks that good!” he complained at dinner when the term had ended.
"You've been interested in other things," Trieste replied with so much dryness that he threw a roll at her. She ducked and stuck out her tongue and Aldam tried to make the peace.
"If you're going to throw food, throw some more at him—he's still too thin, and I don't think he's slept in four days." Instinctively all three of them looked over to Torrant to make sure he was eating. He wasn't—his head was pillowed in his arms and around his stew, and a gentle snoring issued from his slightly open mouth.
The three of them hung their heads and sighed. "Weren't you two planning to leave tonight?" Aylan asked, grimacing as Torrant let out a particularly loud snore.
Aldam sighed so heavily that Trieste patted his back in sympathy. The snows had come late, and for a breath they thought they might have a chance to go home, but a big storm was rolling in from the west. The hard truth was, if they didn't leave in an hour or so, they wouldn't get another chance to see home until spring.
"He can't go like this …" Aldam said fretfully. Another five months before they could return home. Another five months without seeing Roes. He swallowed hard, and Torrant suddenly jerked awake.
"Goddess, Aldam—we've got to leave!” he said clearly, focusing his eyes, and Aylan and Trieste both looked at Aldam questioningly. Aldam winked at them.
"Certainly, Torrant—is all our gear upstairs?"
Torrant had to think about this—it was clear the effort was painful. "Except for what I sent last week …" They had sent their gifts ahead of time with the militia messenger, in case the snows got there before they were allowed to leave. He nodded decisively. "I'll go upstairs and look."
He still wasn't quite awake—in fact, he stumbled just a bit and bumped his knee on the bench as he stood to leave, and Aldam turned towards Aylan and Trieste and gave them a small nod to follow. When they got to their room, Torrant bent over to get his duffel off his bed, and Aldam put his hand on the back of his neck and whispered, "Sleep" in his ear. Torrant's weight carried him all the way over, and Aylan deftly pulled the duffel bag out of his way before he hit the bed.
"I did well in my finals too," Aldam said with a certain amount of pride and Trieste and Aylan nodded in bemusement. Aldam bent and started stripping Torrant of his shoes and his sweater, so that he could sleep more comfortably.
"But Aldam …" Trieste asked softly, folding the sweater and putting it on his desk chair "Doesn't this mean you can't …"
Aldam shrugged unconvincingly and looked outside, where the dark was just beginning to fall and the snow was just beginning to dump down in great drifts. "He would have ridden tonight until he fell off Hammer, and then he would have turned into the snow cat and finished the ride."
"What are you doing?" Trieste asked Aylan sharply, and Aylan hushed her and continued to strip off Torrant's breeches.
"I can't sleep in them and I'd bet he can't either. Turn away if your maidenly modesty can't take it." The breeches came off to reveal two leanly muscled legs with a smattering of fine hair up the calves. His shirt came down to barely the tops of his thighs, teasing her eyes with what wonders lay beyond that she had never seen, and she made a little whistling sound in the place between her nose and her throat. A little slower than she'd planned, she covered him with a green and tan throw that was obviously well worn and hand-knit.
"You enjoyed that!" she accused weakly, and Aylan rolled his eyes.
"And you didn't?" With that—and a last, lingering look, he clapped Torrant's brother on the back. "Aldam, my boy, are you aware that after the younger ones have gone to bed, during the breaks the kitchen serves hard cider?"
"I've never had a drink like that," Aldam confessed shyly, and Trieste came beside him, wrapping a companionable arm around his waist.
"Well, it's time we all did, isn't it? And you know, the cider they serve pales in comparison to the store that Aylan has stashed in his room."
"You know about that?" Aylan asked, closing the door quietly behind him with a pained expression.
"Oh Aylan—even the professors know."

Later—much later—Trieste tiptoed down the hallway in the dead of the dark between midnight and dawn. Her feet were exceedingly steady—she had made sure of that. Yes, she had drunk more than usual—Aylan had, among other things, this very tasty almond liqueur that she had never had before and that packed a little bit of a kick—but she had stopped drinking as soon as the idea had possessed her.
She really liked this idea, and she didn't want to be drunk when she thought about it again.
So she sat and sipped water, and chatted idly with the blonde daughter of some Lord of Clough, and together they watched Aylan lose to Aldam on purpose through several games of backgammon and one painful game of chess. But Aldam was simple and not stupid—after the chess game he looked reprovingly at Aylan and said, "I am not drunk enough to believe that."
Aylan had apologized and proceeded to get Aldam just a little bit drunker.
When Trieste had slipped quietly out of Aylan's room, Aldam was curled up in a well-sedated ball, whispering 'Roes' to himself as he fell sadly asleep. Aylan had given her a little bow and a salute, and had smiled at the Lord's daughter who was plump, not too bright, and obviously not leaving too soon, and Trieste knew her time had come.
Apparently so did Aylan.
"Trieste?" he murmured, just as she opened the door.
"Hmm?"
"Let him lead."
She had flushed and shut the door, but she hugged that bit of advice close as she walked down the hall.
Now, before her courage could fail her, she turned her hand on the knob and whispered into his darkened room. Triane was looming large through their window, so close that She could be seen even through the sheeting snow and frosted cold that made even the bowl valley frigid. Trieste said a little prayer to her namesake. Please, Goddess, just a little joy that I've chosen for my own before the life chosen for me begins. Just a little. Just let it be joy.
The Lady was so close that Trieste could swear She actually winked and then closed sleepy silver-cream eyes. That was a sign if she'd ever seen one.
Breathing in shallow hushes, she undid the button at the neck of her simple blue wool dress and pulled it over her head, and then she pulled off her girdled stockings and her panties. She stood a moment, stark-pale in the moonlight, and looked at Torrant, who was still asleep, the sharpness of his cheekbones casting shadows against that intriguingly sculpted mouth. He looked tense and intense, even in sleep, and she wondered if she could ease a little of that, calm some of that drive, leave a little of that flame burning for later, so when Yarri came of age, he wasn't yet burned all out.
She could try.
Torrant woke up abruptly when Trieste's cold and pointed nipples brushed up against his bare (?) back. He said something witty, like "ergglapek?" and heard her soft laugh behind him just as her hands came up to his abdomen and pushed the front of his shirt up as well.
"My pants …" because her cool legs entwined his from behind and then a soft kiss was planted directly between his bare shoulder blades.
"Believe it or not, Aylan took them off," she murmured, "Right after Aldam willed you do sleep."
"Why would he do tha … at?" He finished with a squeak because, of all things, her hand was on his stomach, and then it was not, it was lower, it was under his under-garments and it was … cool … and firm … and stroking … "Goddess … Trieste … don't you have a betrothed king and a virginity law …"
"It's been repealed …" she breathed into his ear, "And right now," stroke, "right here," stroke "you need rest," stroke, "and you need to relax."
"Ahhh-ahhhh …" He was not feeling relaxed, nor like resting, and he certainly did not feel like arguing. He didn't feel like this moment ending quite as soon as Trieste was bent on ending it either. "Ah gods …" he rolled over and over her, fitting his hips between hers and rubbing up against the juncture of her thighs, getting slick with her and he smiled into her grave eyes as she "oooohhhhheed" into the night.
"I don't want to relax right now." His movements were slow and controlled, but his jaw was clenched and his teeth were gritted against the wildness that wanted to take him where they both wanted to go.
"Fine. Great. Good." She gasped, arching up against him, her body pleading for the act between them that had no words.
"But first …" And he slid down her body, kissing, tasting, and looking at her curves in the moonlight, touching softly everything that looked like it might have nerve endings, tasting everything that made her hiss or pant.
Trieste had spent a great deal of her life in the school, where sex was spoken of in hushed tones, as gossip, or in the occasional, awkward class. Torrant had spent his life among the Moons, both in Clough and in Eiran, with unapologetic girls who would discuss frankly what it was a lover should do and with gleeful older brothers who would explain in graphic detail how that should be accomplished. Although technically a virgin, by the time Torrant slid his body up along Trieste's and kissed her on the mouth, allowing her to taste herself with a wicked and sober little shiver, he had made it clear that he had studied the charts of this unfamiliar country, and that he was definitely more qualified to lead their exploration therein.
"Are you sure?” he asked, poised at Triane's gate.
"Are you mad to ask that question right now?!" She groaned, wrapping her legs around his hips and doing her best to sheathe him inside of her as he held himself steady.
"We could keep doing what we were doing …" But now he was teasing her, because he knew she was sure and because he knew she was ready and because now that he knew that it was going to happen, he could linger a moment to watch her want him in the moonlight.
"Oh gods, Torrant …" she practically sobbed, "Please …"
And then there was no more talking because he was sliding, and it was heaven, and the gates were already stretched by his fingers and tongue and they parted as though they had been oiled by their desire. And then he was in, and she was biting his shoulder and urging him with her hips and her feet wrapped over his buttocks and he was moving and moving and moving and the night spun away as they shuddered and moaned and spent.
And again.
And playing, touching fingertips to skin, murmuring, laughing softly, watching the moon set in the window, watching the window turn an opaque gray.
And again.
And sleep.

Torrant woke up with the sun glancing in through his window, feeling as though a horse were sitting on his chest. He looked sideways and Trieste was sleeping peacefully, but even as he stretched a tender finger to stroke her cheek he was fighting for a panic breath, and another, and he pulled back that tender finger to run his hands through his sweat-soaked hair and wonder what was wrong.
Instinctively he looked to Aldam's bed. The covers were pulled up neatly to the pillow, and the throw Roes had made him for their second solstice (not as polished as the one Bethen had made, but by no means no less loved) was arranged squarely at the foot.
"Aldam …" Torrant breathed and felt him, on the edge of his gift, and he was cold and he was frightened and …
"Trieste …" Torrant wrenched her name from his tortured lungs, "Where's Aldam?"
He stood up, finding his breeches and pulling them on, while Trieste sat up, pulling the covers up to her chest and pushing her dark hair out of her focusing eyes.
"Torrant …"
"Aldam!" He could hear the desperation in his voice and couldn't find words for where the desperation came from.
"Aylan's room?" She shook her head frowzily and his bare feet thudded on the hardwood floor as he pounded down the hall to Aylan's quarters and hammered on the door.
"Torrant … by Dueant's balls, brother, show a little compassion!" Aylan's eyes were bloodshot and his curly yellow hair was standing straight on end and his breath could have knocked a sparrow out of her tree from a mile away, but all Torrant could see was the color of Aldam's fear.
"Aldam?"
"He's here … he fell asleep on my floo …" Aylan looked behind him to where the blonde Lord's daughter had rolled over in his bed, her breasts covered by his pillow. She met his eyes in a furtive, half-fleeing sort of glance, and Aylan blinked, wondering what that was all about when his eyes scanned the pallet of blankets he'd laid out the night before and realized that Aldam was most certainly not on his floor. "Gods … where …"
But Torrant was sprinting back towards his room and the parchment on his table. When he got there Trieste was dressed and looking unmistakably mussed but Aylan didn't even look at her ironically when he came pattering in, bare-chested and just as mussed as she was. "Aldam's missing and you're writing him a letter?"
"Maps …" Torrant muttered. "We need a map …" With rude slashes of his pen and ink Torrant drew a big square and labeled it 'school' and then drew an x and labeled it Aldam, with another one in the school that represented himself. He closed his eyes and whispered, "Aldam … where are you?" And then stumbled a little because his worry had shot an awful lot of will through the parchment and the map he'd created was so detailed that the pictures on it raised themselves and formed actual geographical features on the paper. Trieste and Aylan gasped at the Goddess' magic but Torrant wasn't even paying attention to the miracle he'd wrought with desperation.
"Torrant … it's worked its way into the wood—it's part of the desk now …"
"Here's Aldam … gods … he's outside the bowl valley … what's he doing there? And who are these …"
But the map was still forming as they watched, and even as he saw Aldam's V turn into a tiny, pebble sized figurine of Aldam himself, he watched other pebble sized figures rise out of the map and turn into mounted horseman. They were moving east, and they must have been outfitted for snow because they were moving quickly. The one in front had a teal and black banner.
"Rath!" Torrant's voice was shaking and Aylan and Trieste stepped back because it held an unmistakable yowl and growl in it, and Torrant's shirtless back was suddenly not smooth, brown-tinted skin anymore, but mottled white and black fur.
"Torrant?" Trieste was terrified, but she risked a touch on his back. "Torrant, sweetheart, you need to calm …"
"RWOWWWWRRRRLLLLLLL" His howl shook the window and before the echoes had died down he was fully a snow cat, hurtling down the halls of Triannon.
"Goddess!!" Trieste breathed, trying to fight tears. "Aylan—what do we do?"
Before he could even answer, Aylan had wheeled around and started pounding down the hall. "Get dressed, get Prof. Gregor, and get me my clothes off the floor!” he ordered as his bare feet made panicked slapping sounds down the hall.
Trieste padded next to him, breathless because, dammit, she didn't fence like the boys did, but she did have just enough breath to ask a question. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to go let him out of the damned school before he makes some poor teacher piss himself!" Aylan answered back, disappearing down the stairwell and leaping the steps four at a time. "Now move!"
And Trieste had no choice but to obey.

Blood on the Snow

Aylan made it to the door just as Torrant raised a giant paw to knock it down— the hinges were saved, but there were four deep scores in the heart of the wood for as long as that door stood in Triannon.
Torrant went bounding into the snow in the general direction of Aldam and those teal and black specks advancing around him and Aylan found himself halfway to the stables, barefoot, bare-chested and desperate before Professor Gregor and Trieste caught up with him.
"Oueant's little blue balls, Aylan, you'll catch your death out here." Gregor scolded, and Trieste's eyes got big at the profanity before she remembered that there were other things to worry about. "Where were you headed?"
"The stables …" Aylan chattered, pulling on thick wool socks that Torrant and Aldam had given him for solstice when they still thought they had a chance to leave before the celebration the next day. "I was going to get Torrant's monster and Aldam's fat mare and follow that damned cat to the blood bath."
"Blood ba …" Trieste's voice trailed off, and she lagged behind Aylan and Gregor. Aylan was struggling into a stout sweater and cloak even as they both headed for the stables together.
"Grow up, Trieste!" Aylan barked over his shoulder. "Whose colors were those surrounding Aldam?"
"Rath…"
"Do you really think Torrant's going to let any of Rath's people live?"
And in spite of herself, in spite of the magic with the sad and handsome boy in the moonlight, Trieste found her footsteps stalling completely as Aylan and Gregor disappeared into the stables. He was going to kill those people. Her gentle poet, the sweet, laughing lover in her bed … he was going to kill with speed and prejudice and just as coldly as those glacial eyes might suggest. He was going to spill blood in the snow and spill no tears to go with it. A sudden shudder, not at all to be confused with the cold, swept over her, immobilizing her, standing in her wool stockings and riding boots in the gray pre-dawn, as she wondered if she could bear his touch on her skin again, knowing the things he would surely do on this day.
Suddenly the doors burst open and Aylan came out riding his own horse—a fine-boned, bay-colored, temperamental animal who could have used some of Courtland's genetic solidity—but leading Hammer in his wake. Gregor followed him on the school's riding horse, holding Clover's reins
Gregor looked at her, confused, but Aylan knew exactly what was crossing her mind.
"I know it's not forever, Trieste," he said with as much gentleness as he might manage as he was wheeling his prancing animal in a circle and deftly avoiding entangling the reins, "But you were planning to love him for right now. Is 'right now' consigned to last night already, darling? Because you know I'd be glad to step up and pick up the little pieces of his heart out of the bloody snow."
"Aylan …"
"You were always timid, darling," he sneered at her hesitation. "But I never figured you for a coward …" and as he wheeled the horses towards the eastern side of the valley, Trieste made a decision with her feet and her voice that she had not consciously made with her heart.
"Aylan, you arse, wait up!” she called, and although he didn't stop his own horse, he did let Hammer's reins fall so that she could swing up on the gelding's back—a terrifying height for someone who had only ridden occasionally—and catch up with the two men who were riding off to save her lover from himself.

Torrant could run as the snow cat. His massive, dinner-plate sized padded paws patted down the snow like a child's hands, and he floated up the gentle whitescape of the valley in winter to the jagged blizzard conditions of Cleant proper and the Old Man Hills.
It didn't matter. His knowledge of the map had given him Aldam's general direction, and as soon as he'd found that, the snow cat's sense of smell had told him everything—including Aldam's stark, gibbering terror. His muscles bunched and stretched cleanly under the insulating fur and he pounded in a flurry of power and fury to the source of Aldam's fear stench.
His snow cat's heart beat out a tattoo of death as he ran.

Aldam knew he was not brave. He hadn't been brave when they had made their way through Hammer Pass when he was sixteen—he had just followed Torrant's lead. As long as Torrant was there, and he took care of Torrant, Torrant would keep him safe.
He hadn't been brave when he was a child and the horse trader had been alone with him in a fetid, darkened horse stall. He had whimpered and screamed as those rough hands had pawed over his child's body, and sobbed when he'd been bent over and violated, and he had spent years after that moment startling at shadows and refusing to leave the house alone, until his mother had lost patience with him and sent him to work with his Aunt Stella so he could be of use. Torrant hadn't been there to protect him then, but Aldam was sure that if he had been, Torrant would have made sure that afternoon of madness and terror had never descended upon him.
And now, surrounded by guardsmen and tied to an unfriendly, bony nag who kept nipping at his bound leg, the only thing he was certain of as he jounced, head down across the white, ice-swirl of the mountains, was that Torrant would come save him.
It was the only thing that kept him from dissolving into a puling wail of fear and pain and terror.
That, and the thought that, if Torrant got to him, no matter what was done to him in the meantime, he would get to see Roes again.
It had been thought of Roes that had called him out of bed that morning, sad and hung-over, and still just the tiniest bit drunk. Aylan had produced a bottle of aged whiskey that he'd mixed with the lemon punch served in the dining hall, and the results had been mostly a fog in Aldam's mind after Trieste had left. He could remember the plump blonde who had kept wiggling closer and closer to Aylan and looking at Aldam as though he were something that needed to be laundered, and he could remember Aylan mostly ignoring her in an attempt to make Aldam feel at home. And he could remember missing Roes.
Solstice celebrations in Hammer village had been secret sorts of things—a few muttered prayers under a candle the color of the silver-cream moon, and small, shy and secret gifts, usually given by children who were patted on the heads by mothers, and asked "Aren't you getting a little old for this?" Torrant and Yarri celebrated the solstice as though it were special, but until Aldam had caught their infectious excitement in the Moon's house in Eiran, he had thought that nothing broke up the grimness of winter but the books and games his Aunt Stella had played with him when she wasn't working at the inn.
As he'd fallen asleep on Aylan's floor, not the least bit interested in the noises coming from Aylan's bed, one of the last things to impinge on his conscience was his mother's voice, saying, Stella, it's fine for you to come here and be the boy's hero—I have to worry about what will happen when we hear soldiers clattering up the hill to take him away.
Of course, the very last thing he remembered before he fell asleep had been his aunt's reply: Sara, don't let worrying about what will come take the joy away from what is right now. Right now he's a boy who would like to laugh.
He'd fallen asleep in an alcohol haze and had dreamt of his mother as she'd sighed that night and sat down to play a game with him and Stella. When that dream was over, he'd dreamt of Roes, as she'd been at Samhain—happy. Happy to see him, happy to dance with him in front of the bonfire, happy to play games with him, and happy to hold his hand as they'd walked by the violent and faithful salt wrath of the autumn ocean—Roes had been happy, right up until he'd hugged her goodbye.
He'd awakened with a terrible sorrow that he would not see Roes until spring.
He'd stirred a little, grunting, and had been embarrassed to find that the lord's daughter was looking at him intensely from her place in Aylan's bed.
"What's wrong?” she'd asked flatly, and he shrugged.
"Homesick." He stood then, because he was thinking he would be more comfortable in his own bed, and the girl's eyes narrowed. What was her name, he wondered suddenly? It had a 'zzz' sound in it … Zella? Zolna? Zorina? Those all seemed too dramatic for such a character-less creature. Aylan's taste had been improving lately—he usually only bedded people who were fun to talk to at dinner now, but this girl … she must have been a spur of the moment choice.
"Maybe if you went outside," she said, her look becoming sly. "You know, go outside and look towards home … it will help you feel better about home."
It sounded like a good idea. Aldam was surprised—he hadn't expected her to have a good idea. He certainly didn't expect anything nice from her when she looked like she was about to drop a kitten in a dog kennel.
"I'll do that," he told her, pleased, but the look that crossed her face as she nodded and turned back towards Aylan had been indecipherable.
He'd dressed then and gone to his room, tiptoeing in to get his cloak and warmest sweater. He'd been happy to see Trieste's dark head on Torrant's shoulder. Sweetness, Aldam had thought fondly, his brother needed sweetness before his destiny bit him on the scruff of the neck, and dragged him to face his demons. It was on that thought that he'd gone outside into the razor-breathed chill predawn. Feet crunching through snow that was fortunately too dry to wet his breeches, he'd traveled up the hill of the bowl valley, planning just to stand and watch the sunrise on this solstice day, knowing it would hit Roes first and when its light hit his face, it would have her colors in its thin gold-ness.
Seven soldiers were waiting behind the trees at the top of the rise, and their rough hands on his arms as they sprung on him and bound him was not nearly as terrifying as the ground disappearing beneath the hooves of the horse as he dangled over the saddle. Every step took him farther away from Torrant, farther away from Roes, and farther away from home and sanity.
"This isn't the one we want!"
One of the men argued, as he was being trussed, unresistingly, like a turkey. "No, but word is, Ellyot Moon has a hard-on for this'un … he'll be after 'im."
"Word from who? Who do we know in this whore-loving bitch-house?"
"No one you'd be lucky enough to screw—now get dummy there on the horse and let's go!"
Aldam jounced across the horse, feeling his ribs and abdomen getting pounded to powder, and prayed to the Goddess that Torrant wouldn't get hurt when he killed these awful men.

Torrant didn't even yowl to warn them.
He had smelled his brother's tears as he'd run, and the scent of them made his fur stand up in porcupine-stiff quills along his back, and the taut metal string that held any self-control he'd ever had in this form poing-snapped across his chest, and he barely felt it go.
He could smell the horses, smell their fear as they caught scent of a predator, and then he saw them. His muscles bunched, the pain of the coiled spring releasing with the joy of controlled destruction, and he fell on the last man in the pack, knocking his helmet off and ripping his throat out before he could even scream. The snow masked the sound of his fall, and when he was dead, the only sound he left was the blood spraying from a shredded artery onto the nearest tree, and pattering to trace bright designs in the snow.
Torrant moved on to the next two men in the column.
This time, one of them got out a shout, but he didn't get his sword out in time to give more than a warning to his fellow, and within seconds Torrant had left them bleeding their last while the horses whinnied and bolted to the front of the column. The men in front of Aldam had enough to do with calming their mounts and looking for the men attacking them that they did not see the snow cat stalking under the trees, his fur a perfect camouflage in the thin sun's cold shadows—even the fur stained crimson at his mouth and paws.
Torrant did not count in this form—he did not think Three down, four more to go. He just saw the men he wanted to kill and ranked which ones he would kill first. He could see the teal and black banner, hear the captain giving orders, smell the fear of the other prey … shadow to tree he stalked, watching as the men gathered around the captain, all of them turned towards the rear of the column, where the attack came from.
This time, when Torrant sprang from the top of a tree alongside his chief prey, he snarled, because he knew the sound would terrify his other victims, and make them easier to kill. The captain went down easily, and the others were too surprised to see what they were fighting to do more than jab ineffectually in horizontal patterns while Torrant bounded like a kitten on bedroom furniture—from the top of one horse to the branches of a nearby tree to the tops of another horse … oops … someone got a jab in, and his howl of pain and anger was punctuated with a savage rip across an exposed jugular. And another howl and another slash and a bite, satisfying with ripping of flesh and blood and screaming and writhing …
And abruptly, it was over.
Torrant stood, four feet splayed, chest heaving, and surveyed the damage. The humans who had smelled of anger and death were now dead, and all that survived was the whinnying of the panicked horses.
The horse that bore Aldam on its back had not gone far—it was mostly a pack animal, and without anyone at the reins it had run a few hundred yards and then stopped, looking around at its brethren and the stony silence of trees and snow. When Torrant had tracked closely enough as the snow cat to smell the raw nervousness of the animals, he was suddenly a blood-spattered young man, bare-footed, bare-headed, and bare-chested in the snow.
His vision wasn't right, he realized—it was still cold and clear, and the horses still smelled like dinner and not like friends, but since he wasn't shivering and he still had some ways to go before he was done, he kept his vision clear and cold, and crunched through the snow to Aldam's horse.
Aldam started sobbing as soon as he saw Torrant's feet, red and chaffed in the snow, and Torrant fought, hard, not to sink to his haunches and howl outrage into the champing, horsey quiet. His brother was hurting, his brother was scared, and if he could have, he would have yanked the dead soldiers back into life by the hair, so he could have killed them again, slower and with pain.
He won the battle inside himself, but kept his eyes cold and blue as he fought with the ropes holding Aldam trussed like a turkey. It was hard going—his fingers were stiff with the chill, and even though his gift was keeping him from feeling most of the cold, his body was still operating under its limitations, and finally, out of frustration, he looked at his hand, hard, and allowed it change into a lethal set of living blades in a dinner-plate sized paw. With one or two careful swipes, he sliced through the ropes under the horse's girth and pulled Aldam on top of him, into a snow drift, to get him free from the horse and the bonds and the helplessness.
Aldam wrapped shaking arms around Torrant's chest and wept unashamedly in relief.
"I knew you'd come," his muffled voice sounded again and again, and Torrant couldn't hardly bear it.
"I'm sorry I wasn't there," he said, trying to contain his self-directed anger, and Aldam pulled back and wiped a careless hand over his tear-stained face.
"It's not your fault, brother. I'm just glad you came for me in the end."
Torrant lifted his upper lip in the small version of his trademark grin. "I can't believe you'd doubt it."
Aldam took a deep, shuddery breath and pulled his usual serenity around him. "I can't believe you'd think I did."
His grin went from the small version to the large version, and in that moment his eyes went from blue to brown, and he suddenly contracted in upon himself in a fit of shivering.
In one smooth movement Aldam caught his brother up behind his shoulders and under his knees and swung him bare back on top of the horse before Torrant could finish his first full shudder. Then he reached into the snow and found the saddle and blanket that had come off when he had, and threw the blanket over Torrant's shoulders.
"Thh…tth…thh…"
"Don't worry about it," Aldam grinned quietly, secure in his boots and his cloak and his sweater as he swung up on another vacated horse. "You're ever welcome."
Torrant nodded and took the reins in his cold stiffened fingers. "We..we're going to hav … have to come back …" he chattered, taking some comfort from the horse's warmth and from the warmth of the itchy blanket across his shoulders. "I … I … I … need to … to … clean up …"
"I think you're going to need to sleep." Together they swung the horses past the other milling animals and along the wide swathing path that marked the way the horses had come in the first place, defiling the fresh fall of snow.
"Too many dead men." It took an act of will, but he was able to speak without chattering now. It was too bad what he had to say didn't give him any comfort.
Aldam blew out a breath. "If we let them stay where they are, the predators will leave nothing but greasy armor by the next time someone comes through here."
Torrant nodded, still troubled. "There's a drop off yonder," he said thoughtfully. "I'd feel better if I could manage to push them off of it."
Aldam looked away, ashamed. "I can't look at them again, brother."
His voice was fretful, and Torrant nodded in understanding. Aldam shouldn't have to be punished by looking at the corpses of the men who had attacked him, but Torrant was unhappy about not having one last look. He needed to see it, he thought punitively. It wasn't fair to just spatter justice on the heads of his enemies like blood in the snow and not look back to see what pattern it made—it would make delivering vengeance far to easy, if he didn't imprint the image of destruction on his heart.
After about ten minutes of riding he and Aldam rounded a stand of trees and came face to face with Aylan, Trieste and Professor Gregor, standing in the muddle of hoof prints that Torrant had spawned when the horses had first spooked at his scent, and arguing heatedly about which way to turn.
Their appearance in the middle of all that shocked a silence, and Torrant spoke to all of them carefully, keeping his eyes away from their stunned faces.
"I'm glad you're here," he murmured in a voice that sounded weak to his own ears. "Aldam …" he looked carefully at his brother, "Aldam—I need you to go with them … I need to go …" he looked behind him, and made a worried face. "Can you do that?"
"Alone?" Gregor asked, anxiously, and Torrant wondered if it had occurred to his professor exactly what it was he had to do. It had occurred to Trieste and Aylan, he was certain. He could tell by the way Trieste kept looking away from him that she knew exactly what he had been doing, and it terrified her.
"Yes." Torrant shivered. "Although … if any of you have anything I could wear …"
"I brought clothes," Trieste said lowly, "But Torrant …" again that glancing away, "You're going to need to wash first."
Torrant looked down at himself and shivered harder. The horse blanket Aldam had thrown over him was sticking to the gore of the dead soldiers, and now Torrant realized why it had been so hard for her took at him. Aylan on the other hand had been staring at him with hard, fascinated eyes.
"Yes …" he shivered hard again, and Aylan spoke angrily into the sudden snow-coated silence.
"I've got clothes and a cloth—come on, Torrant, we'll go take care of it."
Torrant looked at him gratefully but shook his head. "I'm sorry, I can't ask you to …"
"I'm not waiting for your permission, brother; now let's go before Trieste's offended senses make her head explode!" Torrant nodded and took one last look at Aldam to make sure it was all right. Aldam nodded bravely, so he wheeled his horse and cantered off behind the copse of trees. When he could no longer see Aldam's misery or Trieste's repulsion, he threw the blanket down so he'd have something to stand on and slid off his horse.
Aylan took one last glare at Trieste. "Goddess, girl—you're awfully eager to take the good and leave the bad—I pity the king whose going to have to freeze his balls off in your bed when he does the blood work ruling needs." With that, he wheeled off and rode behind the trees. This is where he found Torrant, standing woefully on the blanket, trying miserably to clean his chest with handfuls of melted snow.
"Dueant's blue balls, Torrant, wait a moment …" Aylan swore, then swung down and took the cloth from Torrant's shaking hands. Reaching under his horse's saddle, he pulled out a skin full of water that had been warmed by his horse's sweat as they labored to follow the trail of Aldam's abductors. Aylan soaked the cloth and went to work on Torrant's chest and throat while Torrant stood there and tried to channel enough of his gift to make his eyes turn blue so his teeth would stop chattering.
It didn't work. Aylan swallowed as his hands worked on Torrant's cleanly muscled chest, set his jaw and continued working stoically at the gore. With gruff, impersonal movements he set his hands on Torrant's shoulders and turned him so he could work on his less saturated back. When that was done he turned him back around, taking in the sharpened nipples and the blue tinge to the lips of a body that had lost far too much warmth, but none of it's appeal.
Aylan gave a martyred groan. Torrant may have looked like a man, but there was something very young about his friend, shivering away his willpower in the cold. With a sigh Aylan gathered his cloak around them both and pulled Torrant's unresisting body into the shelter of his arms, rocking him until the shudders eased a bit.
A darkened hollow was created between the bright-cold skin of their faces and the breath that commingled in shadowed pants between their chests. Aylan sighed and almost giggled when the chill of Torrant's nose grazed his blonde, stubbled jaw. But their torsos were still not touching, and the shroud of Aylan's arms and cloak was not enough to stop the shivering that wracked Torrant's body from the taut depths of his stomach to the blue-tinted tan of his skin.
With a tortured sigh and a muttered curse that probably offended all three gods, Aylan seized Torrant's frigid wet hands and shoved them under his shirt, clamping them under the pit of his arms with a decidedly unmanly shriek. Then he extended his forearms and pulled Torrant tight against him—so tight that he could feel the line of his abdomen muscles through sweater and shirt, and the ripple of the terrible shivers syncopated Aylan's breathing. So tight, that when he felt the bulge of Torrant's body along the crease of his thigh, and his own answering engorgement along his stomach, peeping into the cave of dark outside his breeches, he knew that neither one of them were particularly surprised.
The moment was abruptly a fraught heartbeat of intimacy, of warmth and dark inside the brutal white of the frozen world around them, and then Torrant spoke and Aylan cursed the streak of nobility he would have sworn he didn't possess.
"Trieste will probably never touch me again," Torrant mumbled into the muffled secret wool span between their bodies.
Ah, Dueant, god of compassion have mercy. "Sure she will," Aylan replied briskly, rubbing his hands up and down Torrant's muscled arms and mostly succeeding in not letting the touch of warmth become a caress of attraction.
"She was appalled," Torrant whispered miserably, and Aylan gave up trying to make his touch impersonal. His palms slunk along the hardness of Torrant's biceps and glided up to the velvet columned blades of collarbones.
"Spots won't want to move on to another lover—you took all the courage she has." His hands were kneading now, and he leaned, just so much, just enough, that he was talking with his lips against Torrant's temple, his breath stirring the fallen streak of white at Torrant's brow.
"I … I don't want anybody who's afraid of me," Torrant stammered, only now it wasn't the cold that made him stammer, and he too leaned forward, just enough, and tasted the saltiness at Aylan's neck, and Aylan's eyes drifted closed in what was the closest thing to exquisite pain he would ever want to imagine.
"Then you want a fool," he murmured with the barest touch of soft lips at the whitened temple. "Because only a fool wouldn't see that you are an extremely dangerous young man." With an effort that cost more of Aylan's heart than he'd imagined he had, Aylan lifted his arms and pulled Torrant into an embrace that was more brotherly than loverly, except that it brought the head of his erection in contact with the warm skin of Torrant's belly.
"I'm not dangerous." Hot tears plopped down Torrant's flushed face, burning through Aylan's sweater and scorching his skin.
"Of course you are, baby," Aylan murmured, closing his eyes against the awful tightness in his throat. So quickly that Torrant couldn't counter the movement, he backed away and whisked a shirt and a sweater over Torrant's now warmed body. As he helped his arms through the sleeves and looked at Torrant's stunned, awakening eyes, he could only be grateful that he'd had the clothes ready on top of the horse and that his hands had neither faltered nor fumbled.
"For instance," Aylan added, wiping a hand across his damned wet cheeks, "right now, you are in serious danger of breaking a friend's heart."
Torrant opened his mouth to say something, but Aylan jerked his head sharply—the only indication besides the wet cheeks that his emotions weren't under control. "No!” he said more gruffly than he meant to. With a deep breath he took Torrant's warmed hands in his own and placed a delicate kiss on the cold-reddened knuckles.
"No," he said again, more gently this time, handing over Torrant's boots. "Trieste will forgive you later, and now we have a job to do."
Torrant both wanted and didn't want to see Aylan's expression as he led him to the clearing where the bodies lay, but that curiosity died as soon as they entered the terribly silent space. He was not prepared to view the carnage with his own eyes.
In order to kill the armed men, he had needed to reach claws or fangs under hauberks and under helmets, ripping, gouging and tearing with force to reach jugular veins and rip out stomachs and hearts. The result was seven men, covered in the blood that had fountained spectacularly from severed throats and destroyed intestines, spread over the ground. The least horrible ones stared heavenward at what had once been their own spraying blood as their emptying bodies chilled in the snow. The most horrible ones had died writhing, churning the snow into a dark-pink mush, cradling their spilling entrails, and fighting the weight of their armor to turn protectively on their sides in order to leave the world in the same positions in which they entered. The agony twisted and scored into the muscles of the faces of these men was more awful than the effluvia that they died in.
Torrant stood and surveyed the ravages of his anger, fighting hard with his own stomach to bear this, at least, like a man. It took several silence shrouded heartbeats for him to lose that battle and fall to his knees, vomiting into the snow.
Aylan held his hair back from his face until he was done, and neither of them spoke until Torrant stood, moved to the captain who was the furthest away, and hefted him by the armpits, grunting a little as he pulled the body out of sight from the initial battle.
"Where are we going?" Aylan asked, his own grunts ringing in the brittle cold hush of the woods.
"There's a cliff over this way," Torrant panted, "with an overhang of snow. As soon as it gets even a little warmer, that overhang is going down in an avalanche—by the time anyone finds the bodies …" His words trailed off: he didn't want to voice what came next.
"They'll be mangled, frozen, decomposed and chewed on," Aylan finished for him. "No one will even guess what hit them." There was frank admiration in his voice, and Torrant shook his head violently against it.
"It's awful," he muttered, "its awful even to think that way."
"That's because you haven't been raised as a court spy," Aylan disclosed breezily, and then could have smacked himself when Torrant dropped the body he was dragging in surprise, stumbled back and fell into the dry snow with a crunchy plop.
Aylan pulled a sardonic smile from the pit of his stomach, and with a posture as armored as the dead man he was dragging, he swaggered over to his friend and offered a hand. He was surprised when Torrant took it, and used Aylan's weight to lever himself out of the snow, and even more surprised at the gentle kiss on his own knuckles, a touch that seemed to tingle the rest of the day.
"We cannot choose where the gods leave us to be raised as men, Aylan," Torrant said quietly, looking him square in his seductive lavender blue eyes. Torrant's eyes remained a steady, human hazel in this moment. "If you think I don't know the sheer, dumb luck of being orphaned twice and ending up with good men to father me both times, you're mad."
Aylan flushed deeply, and for the second time that day fought tears. He and Trieste had very carefully never once mentioned their parents or the cold, manipulative homes that only very rarely sent letters and those were usually orders. Trieste's last letter from home had been years ago—it had told her that she had a very meaningful date with Alec of Otham. His had been the year before. He had sent the rest back. So neither of them mentioned home, but both of them had fed deeply on Torrant's and Aldam's easy banter of the Moon clan. Aylan hadn't realized how pitifully transparent that love-hunger had been.
As it was now, he nodded hard, and the two of them resumed their burdens and edged the bodies as far out on the snowy overhang as they dared, and trudged back the way they came.
In all, it took eight trips. They lugged the last man between them on the fourth trip, and the last horse's saddle between them on the last. As the badly cleaned chain-studded leather clinked into the snow, Torrant stumbled in weariness and caught his foot on the body of a guard. He whirled, tripping on another body, stumbled again, and finally crashed down to all fours, face to face with a staring corpse whose eyeballs were covered in blood.
Abruptly he was surfeited of the horrors of his own consequences. His humanity slipped badly, and his vision sharpened to cold as his head threw back and an outraged, echoing YROWL poured through his throat to steam in the chill air. The ripping hole it made in his chest hurt so good that he raised his head and howled revulsion and self-disgust again and again and again until his eyes deepened back to hazel and it was Torrant only, screaming rhythmically and hoarsely while Aylan wrapped his arms around his shoulders and rocked him back and forth, whispering calming lies in his ears about everything being all right.

Geographical Distance

Trieste was waiting for them anxiously in the frosty night, shifting from foot to foot, and hoping the tray of soup and hot chocolate waiting inside the door would still be warm.
She and Gregor had cajoled Aldam back to the school, comforting tears made even more heartbreaking by his fretted refrain of having let Torrant down.
"I should have stayed and helped." He must have said it a thousand times until Trieste's own misery had snapped back at him.
"So should I, Aldam—we can't all be heroes now, can we?" She looked away then, not wanting to see Aldam's reproachful look, but before she could spur Hammer into a terrifying trot, she felt Aldam's hands, reaching across the space between the horses, to touch her leg.
"He will understand."
Trieste shook her head bitterly. "I wouldn't. I just made love to him and then totally abandoned him when he needed me. I'll be lucky if Aylan doesn't clean him up on his knees in the snow."
Prof. Gregor made a surprised and disapproving sound behind them, and Trieste looked at him contritely. "Sorry, Professor." Even though she wasn't.
"I think Aylan's a better man, and Torrant a more constant one than you give them both credit for," Gregor told her gently. "You are both young, I know, but give things a day, a week, to calm your hearts, and they'll be speaking more clearly."
"He's very wise," Aldam told her guilelessly, and Trieste's smile was less bitter this time.
"That's why he's the teacher," she said wryly, and the rest of the ride home had been far more comfortable.
But now, watching the last of the lean light fade from the silver and shadowed wood of the bowl valley, she was not so sure about any of it.
I knew he'd come. That was Aldam's other refrain, the one which haunted her the most. Torrant would come and save him—he'd not had a single misgiving. It was what had kept him sane during the abduction, and it was what kept him brave as they returned, and it was the mantra he'd sung to himself as Prof. Gregor had used his own gift to sing him to sleep.
"He had no doubts," she murmured softly as she and the professor had slid out of the young men's dorm room.
Professor Gregor had turned towards her then, his fine and warm brown eyes compassionate and challenging. "Torrant brought Aldam and a six-year old child through Hammer Pass in winter at the age of fourteen, Trieste."
"I knew that!" She shouldn't feel defensive, she thought wretchedly, she shouldn't, she shouldn't, she shouldn't. He'd been covered in blood. He had killed people. This shouldn't be her fault.
"You know that as words—have you ever thought about what that feat would take, my dear? A person would have to be so iron-steel resolved that nothing, not a soul, not a sword, not even a snowstorm, would hurt the people he cared for. Aldam saw this when he was young—he hasn't forgotten it's still inside his friend."
"Brother," Trieste supplied automatically. Not a soul, not a sword, not even a snowstorm. The words had started to vibrate in her chest, and they were calling her attention elsewhere.
Gregor had smiled. "See—even that. Aldam's Torrant's brother because he loves him like a brother—he's made them brothers to you, and even to Aylan through sheer force of will. Just think about it, sweetheart. Even if it's only a short term love, you need to truly know who it is you are loving."
Not a soul, not a sword, not even a snowstorm.
Trieste's parents had loved her like a pawn. Trieste's teachers had loved her like a student. Unless Alec of Otham turned out to be an extraordinarily sentimental fool, she was not likely to have anyone in the world ever love her for herself. Especially not with the intensity of a Torrant Shadow.
Not a soul, not a sword, not even a snowstorm.
It explained why she was standing out on the northwest side of the school, freezing to the ends of her fine dark hair as she watched the two silhouettes on horseback come down the hill in the silver twilight. She'd asked some of the younger students—the ones who had cajoled rides from Hammer and Clover on their rest days—to be in the stables when the boys arrived, so there was fresh feed and fresh water and eager hands to groom Aylan's skittish bay, and the strange gray warhorse Torrant had been riding when they'd met in the woods. It also meant that only moments after their arrival, the two figures plodded wearily from the stable to Trieste.
"You arrange the grooms?" Aylan asked, exhaustion trembling in his voice. She nodded, and nodded again at his and Torrant's weary 'Thanks'.
"There's warm food right inside." Torrant was avoiding her eyes, but she couldn't tell if that was because he was tired, or because he was embarrassed, or because he and Aylan had done more than just hide murder in the day.
"Thank you again," Torrant said quietly. His voice sounded funny—hoarse and—gruff and thready, and Trieste looked at him sharply, relieved when Aylan did the same.
As Trieste turned around, Torrant stumbled, and she rushed to his side to help him catch himself. Aylan was on his other side, his reflexes a little slower with the cold and the fatigue, but in a moment, Torrant had two arms around his waist and two anxious sets of eyes—one gray and one lavender—peering anxiously into his face. He tried to smile reassuringly, but realized there were spots swimming in his vision and he couldn't be sure what his expression actually was.
"I'm fine," he murmured, although he remembered this feeling from his trip down Hammer Pass, and it wasn't a feeling of well being.
"He's flushed!" Trieste exclaimed, looking to Aylan for reassurance. She opened the door to the hallway, and both of them got a good look at Torrant's face and Aylan swore, in detail, at length, and in a voice not much stronger than Torrant's himself.
"You idiot—you couldn't tell me you were getting sick!" Aylan exclaimed, putting a hand like a snowdrift on Torrant's blazing forehead.
"Ouch!" Torrant complained peevishly. "Trieste, make him stop touching me with hands like ice!"
"You're going upstairs and straight to bed …" Aylan's voice sounded, if he'd known it, a little like Trieste's.
"I'm going upstairs and straight to shower," he corrected. "I smell…"
"You're both eating first!" Trieste stopped at the tray and handed them both a mug of soup. It had cooled just enough for Aylan to gulp his down hungrily, but Torrant only sipped a little, making a face when it hit his throat and another when it invaded his stomach.
"Really," he murmured, eyes closing as he leaned back against the paneled wall, shivering, "I'd feel better if I washed."
Aylan shook his head, the raw day showing in the corners of his eyes and the weary lines of his mouth. "Eat," he ordered gruffly, wiping his mouth with his hand. "Eat, bathe, and then we'll put you to bed."
"I'm not a child," Torrant complained—but he did as Aylan told him, just this once.
By the time he was showered, dressed, and laying under thick covers, he was shivering in fever almost as badly as he had been shivering with cold on the mountain face in the snow. Aylan sat at his bed, waiting for Trieste to return with Gregor and Professor Austin, listening to Torrant talk to ghosts.
Ellyot, get out… get out, Ellyot, I'll take care of Yarri, just get out. Tal, you’d love it here in Eiran, the boys are so pretty you’d weep, and a lot of them would dance with you at Beltane. Qir, the ocean is just like you, it's huge and boundless and you can run the horses forever and ever and ever. Mama, I've met this girl named Trieste, she's lovely … no, Mama, she's not Yarri. I'll be there for Yarri, Mama, tell Kles not to worry. But you'd like Trieste, you'd be her friend forever, even when Yarri and I are one. Moon … Moon, Courtland's a celebrity here in Eiran. Your brother's a good man, just like you. I've met a boy who needs you, Moon. He's pretty, so pretty, but he's fair and not Tal's type. He needs a father, Moon, tell Lane he needs a someone to teach him how to be a man.
And so on. A confused jumble of the people Torrant had loved in the past and the people he loved in the present, allowed by fever to meet in his overwrought heart. Aylan was tired, mortally tired, but he stayed in that chair and clutched Torrant's hand and waited for Torrant's lover because he was afraid if he left, his friend would slide into the morass of the past, and nothing would keep him in the present, nothing, nothing at all.
When Trieste burst in with the professors in tow, Aylan was too weary to jump, but he did sit back and nod to them in respect. None of them were prepared for Torrant's reaction when Austin leaned over the bed to lay hands on his chest in what was a required touch of healing.
With a startling burst of strength, he sat forward, clutching Aylan's hand convulsively, and started to yell at the top of his already overtaxed voice.
"Get away from her, you bastard! I'll kill you I'll …" Austin jumped back in shock and as soon as his hands broke contact with Torrant's chest, Torrant fell back down in bed, murmuring, "He won't touch you again, Yar … he won't touch you again, Aldam … you're safe … you're both safe … I'll kill him again if he touches you …" His murmuring fell off and everybody in the room was left in a shocked silence.
"He needs healing, Austin," Gregor said quietly. "I don't know how you can do it, but he's exhausted and sick, and he's going to need some help."
"Move." It was Aldam's voice, quiet but firm, behind the huddle at the bed, and the four of them simply parted in surprise.
"You're supposed to be asleep," Gregor was surprised. "I must be slipping if I can't cast a simple sleep spe …"
"He needs me." Without any ceremony Aldam bent over Torrant's bed, and said words that, to Trieste and Aylan, sounded almost like a nursery rhyme between friends. "I'm going to kiss you, like a lover," he murmured, "But I'm not trying to be a lover, you don't even know me."
Abruptly Torrant's unfocused eyes sharpened, and he looked directly at Aldam with a tiny smile. "Of course I know you, you're my brother."
"Yes," Aldam nodded, touching foreheads so that Torrant did the same. "And you're my brother, and the scary men are all dead, and you kept us safe."
“Yarri …”
"Yarri too," Aldam took a breath, "Now it's time for you to be well, brother." And with that, he bent the last distance and touched lips, and Aylan and Trieste were fascinated at the soft and subtle exchange of lights around their faces as Aldam took the fever away. When he was done, he stood up with a wobble and turned back around towards his bed.
"One of you can stay and watch over him," he ordered without ordering or even raising his voice. "But the rest of you can go away now. He needs to sleep."
"I'll stay," Trieste said with such certainty Aylan looked at her, wondering at the change of heart.
"All the scary bad men are dead, now, Aylan," she said with a sardonic, self-loathing twist to her mouth that she must have learned from him. "The least I can do is make sure his dreams are sweet. Besides," her voice softened, "You're done in. You did your part, now it's my turn."
The professors, sensing their presence was no longer needed, made their apologies and gave firm instructions to come fetch them if anything changed, and then left the room. Aylan, responding to Trieste's urging, stood wearily up and stretched. He turned to Trieste and took one of her slender, fine-boned hands in his, and kissed it.
"Now I've yelled at you until your heart is raw, it's time to forgive yourself, Spots. If you can look him in the eye when he wakes up, that's all he's ever asked for."
Trieste gratified him with a true, albeit soft, laugh. "Oh gods, Aylan—how can you be such a wonderful person in the body of an insufferable ass?"
"It's almost a gift, isn't it?"
"Go—go sleep. And … and thank you. You were right out in the snow—he kept his family from the scary bad men. It's nothing to despise him for."
Aylan nodded, kissed her cheek, and left quietly, a look on his face as he closed the door that would have told her he had far to go this exhaustive night, if only she had looked.
But Trieste's eyes were focused hungrily on Torrant. Aylan had helped him dress in breeches, but he lay in his bed now shirtless, the signs in his face of strain from sickness and weariness eased by Aldam's healing. She studied that face carefully, the firm jaw, the intriguing mouth, the narrow nose and sharp cheekbones, and tried to discern the traces from the day in his face. Was he still the same boy she had looked on at the end of summer, the one who had stood up to Aylan, the one who had made her laugh, just hours ago, before he'd made her gasp and almost scream?
Not a soul, not a sword, not even a snowstorm.
He had kept a child safe as their families had been murdered. He had survived a trip over Hammer Pass with two weaker people in tow. Something had to have been inside him, something strong and large and feral, to have done that. The thought zinged into her, leaving her breath and her back a mass of cold prickles, that today would not have been the first time Torrant had killed. He would have known what it was to kill a man before now, no matter how sweet the heart she had seen in his eyes.
By itself her hand reached out and feathered a caress along his cheek, and that one corner of his mouth quirked up. She smoothed his lips with her thumb, and the tiny smile deepened a little.
"Trieste …" he murmured, "You didn't go."
Ah, Dueant, have mercy. Triane, give hope.
"I'm right here, Torrant," she murmured, and with a shift of her weight she kicked off her shoes and nudged him a little with her hip. As close to sleep as he was, he was not too tired to move over a little and raise his arm, and she fitted her slender body next to his, laying her head on his chest and breathing in the scent of her first lover, whom, she decided now, she would love as long as she could.
"You looked at me for a long time," he murmured as she settled herself. "What did you see?" His eyes had not opened yet and she wondered how deep he was reaching for the reserves to make sure she was still there.
"Nothing that wasn't there before," she told him truthfully. "I was just too blind to know it was there. Now sleep, sweetheart. I'll be here when you wake."
"Mmmm … pretty, pretty Trieste …" He smiled a little, and then he was under. It took her only a little longer to sleep, savoring the calmer, healthier warmth emanating from his body. Carefully, she traced that wonderful upper-lip with her finger again, realizing deep in her soul she had told him the absolute truth. There was nothing in his face that had not been there before; she had just chosen not to see.
She was there when he awakened in the deep morning of the next day.

Aylan did not go immediately to his room.
Instead, he took a zig in the hall when he ordinarily would have zagged, and found himself in the older girls' dormitories, pounding on the door of the plump blonde girl who had so willingly giggled her way into his bed the night before. Until he actually felt his fist hit the wood, he could have sworn he didn't know her name.
Her slightly wandering blue eyes widened in alarm when she opened her door, and before she could even squeak, "You're not supposed to be here …" he had forced his way into her room. "You. Go,” he barked at her roommate, and without even bothering with a robe the other girl (another conquest, but long, long ago) had fled.
"Why?” he asked tightly, watching her face for clues. He saw full understanding dawn instantly, but then her eyes darted to the side, and she pulled her most idiotic smile from the tips of her toes.
"Why what?" Her tongue darted out and licked her upper lip, and he came as close to striking a woman as he ever had in his life.
"Why Aldam, you traitorous bitch?" He didn't flinch with the harsh word, but she did. In fact, her eyes grew bright, and when they met his all pretense had drained away.
"It was supposed to be the other one," she answered, more intelligence in her face than he'd seen to date. "Ellyot …"
"Torrant?"
"Everybody knows he's the last Moon!” she cried impatiently. "I don't know why the professors and the future Queen of Otham bother to treat him like a simple healer!"
Aylan advanced a step, close enough to see the flaws in her skin, and the asymmetrical nature of her eyes and mouth, and breathed hard through his teeth. "Lyssia, what, exactly, makes you think he's the last Moon?"
The girl paled. "In Clough," she murmured, looking somewhere past his left shoulder, "they circulate copies of a picture Rath claims survived the fire. It shows two sets of twins—nobody knows their names. In fact, one of the younger ones was rumored to be …" her mouth twisted in disdain, "tainted by the whore's moon. They said that's why Moon never revealed his name in his list of heirs. But the other one was Ellyot Moon, and this … boy, your friend, looks more like him everyday."
Ellyot was the stronger one. Aylan actually wondered, for a moment, if it weren't true, if Torrant hadn't become deranged by the deaths of his family and his terrible flight across the mountains and become someone else, but reality came back to him with a thump.
"Was that before or after you saw him in the noble's classes, like politics and fencing, darling?” he asked with a sneer, and had the satisfaction of watching Lyssia flush.
"Why would he be taking them if he didn't plan on coming back to Clough to take his place?" she flung out desperately, and Aylan seized her shoulders and shoved her back against the wall.
"What's it to you?” he snarled. "What business is it to you if he's Torrant Shadow or Ellyot Moon or Jebeeznes of the outer Jeweled Desert—why was it worth it to you to take me to bed, and betray him, and his brother of the spirit, you miserable, lying whore?!"
"I wasn't a virgin!" Her eyes closed tight then, and real tears, the kind that made eyes red and noses swollen, leaked out, and he realized he was holding her shoulders hard enough to leave bruises. With a terrible effort he released his fingers and backed away from her, not reaching out a hand as she sank to the floor.
"I know that, darling," he drawled, affecting an insouciance he was far from feeling. "In fact, I have first hand knowledge, if you remember?"
"There are still virginity laws in Clough," she murmured on a held-back sob. "And he was … he was a Regent, and I didn't realize … I thought if he was … you know … older, had some power … I thought it would be all right. But after a week, he … he told me he'd report me …" Lyssia met his eyes with such naked desperation Aylan had to look away. "He wanted a spy here." She shook her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand—it was like sopping a running stream with a napkin. "He said I needed to tell him anything of interest—anything about the worship of the whoring moon, anything evil about the professors—who's queer, who's drunk—he just wanted information, that was all. He said when I graduated, he'd marry me to one of his sons, and then …" she started sobbing openly into her hands then, and Aylan could barely make out the words, "I didn't want him to touch me anymore … but it's not like I could stop him…."
Aylan backed away and let her cry, looking irritably around her little room for something to give her so she could wipe her face. Unlike Torrant's and Aldam's room, in which everything was simple wool or cotton, finely made but not expensive, everything in this room was brightly colored, satin, silk, and linen, and all of it was scented with enough vanilla to make his nose itch. With a grunt he found a dry towel in the washroom and he tossed it to the sobbing girl against the far wall.
"So …" he drawled when she had gotten some self-control. "Sleeping with me was …"
"At first it was punishment," she shrugged, "because Orland said you were queer and he wanted me to know how good I had it in Clough."
Ouch. "And then?” he prompted.
A puff of air that might have been a laugh escaped her, and she tipped her tear-ravaged face upwards, more naked at this moment, in a dressing robe and thick nightgown, than she had been when they'd tumbled in bed. "And then you were a benefit," she murmured with a small womanly smile of her own. "Ellyot Moon didn't go home like they thought, so they didn't get him. That was fine, though—his retard friend walked into the trap all by himself, and everybody knew the big fish would follow the stupid little one—they didn't even need me. I got to have you for free." In a terrible surge of bitterness, he was fiercely glad she'd had a small triumph as a woman, and he hoped she'd hold that moment close. It might have to last her for the rest of her life.
"For free?" He kept his voice even.
"If Orland knew how good a queer was in bed," she laughed contemptuously, "he'd probably do a few men himself."
"So you liked my bed?” he asked, kneeling down and making sure he had her complete attention.
"You were definitely the top one out of two." She tried a seductive smile and he had to fight another urge to smack her.
"Well, I may be the only one you get besides your froggy, old prince," Aylan said, still with a light, even inflection. "Especially when I tell the boy's dorm about this horrible rash."
Horror spread over her features, and he could see the implications dripping in through her own self-pity. "Please."
"Yes—that's what you said last night," his smile was reptilian, he knew, but he couldn't keep it off his face.
"Please, Aylan, no …"
He stood, and cast a thin, lizard expression down at her again, hoping she remembered this look when she tried to scrub the memory of his fingers from her skin. "I really would have that looked at," he nodded earnestly on his way out the door.
"Gods, Aylan—you know—I know you know … your family name is Stealth, you come from the Jeweled Lands, you must know what it's like …"
Aylan opened the door, keeping the same hideous grin on his face. "Lyssia, darling," he cried loudly, loud enough the whole dorm could hear. "That's awful—I hope it doesn't spread …"
"Aylan … Aylan no …" but she knew it was too late, and her arms wrapped protectively around her knees as she rocked herself for comfort. Any fool could see it was the last human contact she was going to get for a long time.
"Stay away from me and mine," his voice dropped for a moment, and he was no longer smiling. "And if you want your frog prince to let you live, I'd forget to mention this little conversation. If you do tell him, he'll think you led all of Rath's men into a trap." The smile came back, and he pitched his voice for the dorm again.
"I've never been so happy to have passed out in my life, darling. Thank the Goddess I never touched that!"
He hammered the last word so hard, heads were popping out of doors even as he walked down the hall. Lyssia's thin keening was soon drowned out by the wildfire roar of gossip which was not going to spin her way.

Summer With Friends

Aylan got another letter that spring, reminding him of his duty towards his home. He ripped it into little tiny pieces, coated it with aged brandy, and set it on fire. He didn't tell Torrant or Trieste, or Aldam, and, instead, accepted Torrant's shy, half-embarrassed invitation to stay with the Moons from Beltane to late summer, and didn't once mention he was planning to get kicked out of school.
Two weeks before Beltane, Professor Gregor knocked timidly on Torrant's door—the professors made it a point never to visit the older students. There was too much going on in the older dorms they flat out didn't want to know. As it was, Torrant's call of "Dammit, Aylan, you know you don't have to knock!" was answered with Trieste's giggles, and even though the two of them were fully dressed and had obviously been studying when Gregor walked in, he was still flushed and embarrassed when they turned to stare at him.
He stammered badly for a moment, before Torrant offered him a seat on the bed and a cup of water. Gregor sank down on the bed gratefully and smiled, shaking his head, taking in the simple hangings and home-crafted trappings of the room of the boys from Clough. He had seen them before, but now they seemed to take on new significance, and his dismay was apparent, even as he sipped his water.
"What is it, Professor?" Trieste asked gently, looking sideways at Torrant, who shrugged.
Gregor sighed, and began speaking plainly, as though to get the embarrassment over with. "Torrant—do you know who Aylan is?"
"A horse's arse, who hasn't been laid since Solstice?" Torrant answered, trying to keep things light, and Gregor gave a small smile. Aylan's temper had, indeed, been foul since Lyssia had been laughed out of school for her unfortunate … ailment.
"Besides that," he said, relaxing just a fraction. "Do you know what his family is?
A shadow passed over Torrant's face, a memory neither he nor Aylan had shared with anybody. "I know a little," he said quietly, and Gregor nodded again.
"He was supposed to go home this summer for … for education he can't get here …"
"But he's coming home with us …" Torrant was surprised, but Gregor wasn't.
"I know. I'm glad, actually, but …" and now his pained expression deepened. "But now his family is refusing to pay his tuition unless he comes home."
"Does Aylan know this?" Torrant asked seriously, and Gregor shook his head.
"I …" he flushed. "I love my students," he looked away now, embarrassed. "I really do. Aylan was a horse's arse, and thought just that much of himself, from the moment he arrived here, I think. But not now … you've been his friend, Torrant … and at first I thought … but I didn't realize …" he looked around at the simple room again, and now it was Torrant's turn to flush.
"The Moon's are simple people, Professor," he said with a shrug, "But they're not poor." His gaze darted to Trieste, darted back, and now he spoke through his own embarrassment as Gregor had spoken through his. "I … Yarri and I have money coming in from Courtland … constantly. I … I hardly use any of it, and Owen Moon had already arranged for my schooling. He … it was important to him." Torrant shrugged again. "Consider Aylan's schooling paid. I can get the money from Uncle Lane when we go back—will that be soon enough?"
Gregor nodded, relieved. "Thank you—Aylan has a good friend in you, Torrant …"
"You're not going to tell him, are you Professor?" Torrant asked, suddenly worried
"No … but it only proves my point." And with that, Gregor stood, bowed slightly, and left Torrant and Trieste in the suddenly uncomfortable silence of the spring afternoon.
Trieste had made no such promise of secrecy, however, a thing she was particularly happy about the morning they made ready to leave.
"You're sure a duffel bag is all I need?" Aylan asked anxiously. Trieste was in his room, sorting through discarded clothes and piles of gifts he had bought and decided not to take, helping him pack.
"We're staying with friends, Aylan, not packing for court," she assured him with some exasperation. "You're spending your summer helping Torrant in the warehouse—you need old clothes to wash, old clothes to wear, and something nice for dinner."
"Double that," he ordered abruptly, putting three more sets of shirts, short breeches and a nice cloak in the pile, and Trieste let out an aggrieved sigh.
"They're merchants, Aylan …"
"They're decent people!” he interrupted, his pretty lavender eyes almost hunted, and Trieste felt a surprising pang of sympathy for him.
"So are we—and you're not sleeping with their moon-destined, now are you?"
Aylan stopped and raked a hand through his tousled curls, and Trieste could have cursed just because he was still damned beautiful. If she had made that gesture, she would've had to brush her hair for an hour to get it back into a plait.
"Yarri's going to hate you and forgive you," he said frankly. "There's just no getting away from it. The dance should be very amusing, but you'll win because she can't. If you don't muck it up, you'll have a friend for life …"
"Well thank you very much, if I think that's something to worry abou …"
"But you're a good person, Spots! It's not like I'll ever have chance to meet … decent people again …" his voice sank, and he was looking carefully at his folding (which was just as atrocious when he watched himself doing it as it was when he didn't pay any attention at all). Trieste had an abrupt suspicion, and she suddenly cursed the 'manly code' of pride Torrant and Gregor had been practicing when they had decided not to tell Aylan about his tuition. But then, she thought in exasperation, Aylan would probably have understood it perfectly.
Well she didn't. And she had promised nothing.
"Don't be melodramatic, Aylan," she said with some asperity, concentrating fiercely on her own neater folding. "It's not like you're not going to be with us for another three years—we might even make a decent person out of you in that time, right?"
There was a weighty silence, and she prayed for him to take the hint, but he was male, and apparently they needed bigger hints. "I don't know, Trieste," he said, his voice almost a whisper, "I might not be here for the rest of…"
"Oh, of course you will!" With a huff, she shoved the rest of his clothes and his toiletries into the large duffel bag Torrant had pulled out of Aylan's closet and told him to fill—their small cart had been pretty full as it was, and he and Aldam were leaving many of their belongings at the school as well.
"Trieste … you don't know …"
And she couldn't stand it anymore. If she had been ten, she would have kicked his shin in frustration. "By Oueant's amazing manhood, Aylan, do you really think Torrant would let the school send you home?" She tried to pick up his duffel bag then, so she could have made a stunning exit by hauling it with her, but it was appallingly heavy and it fell to the floor with a thump. She kicked the damned bag instead of Aylan's shin and huffed her way in an embarrassed flurry out of the room. Aylan watched her go with an expression he could not free from surprise.

Once the snows were gone, the journey to the sea was an easy ride. They stopped again at the shrine at the midway point, and Aldam's little moan of dismay when they saw that Triane's stone alcove had been shattered cut straight into all of their hearts. After they had dismounted and settled the horses, without a word, the four of them set to gathering rocks, and mounting them into a little stone cairn to take the place of the carved alcove. It was heavy work, and it lasted until sunset, and when the men were done, they were grateful Trieste had thought to break in the middle, and make dinner at the little fire pit, although not as grateful as they would have been if she had known anything about cooking.
"You should have told me you couldn't cook!" Aldam admonished, adding onions and carrots into the flat-tasting potato soup she had tried her hand at.
"I'm a woman. I thought it came with the equipment," she replied sourly, and both Torrant and Aylan had laughed—a lot.
"About the only thing that comes with anybody's equipment," Aylan added dryly when they were done, "is the sensitivity of the equipment itself!"
All of them had laughed heartily at that, and the soup was salvageable, after all.
Trieste had never camped out before, and she was skittish at every sound. Torrant finally combined their bedding so she could snuggle into him, but when she fell asleep (making shushing sounds with her breaths that were too delicate to be called snores), he found he could not. He lay staring up at the stars, and at Oueant, the one moon which had yet to fall below the tree line, wondering at the black feeling in his stomach that even their laughter had not been able to discharge.
"What are you thinking?" Aylan's voice was pitched low enough that he didn't startle.
"I am thinking about Triane, Goddess of joy, and what it must take to desecrate her altar," he replied softly, finally putting words to his feeling of unease.
Aylan's bitter laugh blew through the mild night. "Is that all? Why don't you figure out how to unseat Rath and fix Clough while you're at it, brother?"
Torrant's answering chuff was just as bitter. "One problem at a time," he retorted, and then, after a thoughtful pause, he added, "But it's not like they're not connected after all."
"No," Aylan agreed painfully, "It's not like that at all."
"It's like poison, isn't it? A snake's venom … once it's in a body, it just makes all the tissue foul and dead, until the body itself dies …"
"Yes—that's what it feels like."
"It's spreading—Rath's poison is contaminating all our lands—I wonder …" It was a hard thought to voice.
"What?" Aylan's voice was getting sleepy, there in the sweet dark, and Torrant could use his rest as well.
"I wonder if that's what Gregor thinks Aldam and I will find in Old Man Hills—what hatred can do to … to everybody." He wasn't saying this right. He would have to find the words, he thought fretfully, because this needed to be said right.
"I think it makes me hate it back," Aylan said, his voice so hard and so flat Torrant turned to look at him, seeing his wide, bright eyes drinking in the moon.
"Remember you're loved too, brother," he said, feeling foolish for talking like this. He wouldn't have had the nerve to say things like this to Aylan in the bright of the sun, with his friend's sardonic smile at the ready. "Don't forget how to love back."
"I'll try, brother. For you, I'll try."

They heard the insistent pounding first, the one Aldam had first noticed that long ago winter night, and just about the time Trieste scented the air with a delighted smile, they came out of the woods and to the bridge over the river. The sea was visible below them, vast and comprehensive, as well as the little, self-important city of Eiran.
"It's small!" Aylan said in surprise, and Trieste turned to him to scold.
"What—Triannon is a metropolis?"
"No …" Aylan grimaced good naturedly, "It's just … it's started to feel as though our world revolved around it—I mean Torrant's did …" and then he realized how it sounded, and blushed the color of the sunset behind them. He was still stammering when Yarri scrambled up her usual tree look-out, gave a squeak which sounded like 'you're early!' and then scrambled down. Torrant slithered off Hammer fast enough to make a more skittish horse jump, and thrust the reins at Aldam so he could sprint across the bridge to the hill rise and greet her, and his friends subsided and watched in hushed fascination as the two of them ran towards each other. Torrant picked her up and whirled her around, holding her awkwardly large body like the child she wasn't quite, and the meld of their voices was, for a moment, the only sound in the evening. The silhouettes of the soon-to-grow girl and the near-to-grown man were vivid against the reflection of the red sunset off the sea.
Had Trieste or Aylan known it, they both made a similar sound in their throats.
Aldam looked at both of them sympathetically. "No," he said, answering the question neither of them had asked, "He was not ever really yours to begin with."
Then Lane walked up past his reunited children, reaching out to ruffle Torrant's hair as he went. The boy was so immersed in his quiet conversation with Yarri that he barely managed a distracted smile. Lane was laughing softly to himself when he got within earshot of Aldam.
"All day long she watched that damned map he made, waiting to see you two clear the trees. We pulled her away just long enough for supper, and when she got back to it and saw how close you were, she let out a word I think Bethie will have to smack her for later. Ah, gods," because Aldam had swung off of Clover and greeted Lane with a bone-crushing embrace, "It's good to see you!"
"We missed you!" Aldam exclaimed with enough earnestness to make Trieste blink guiltily. "I wanted to come back during Solstice …"
Lane nodded thoughtfully, "I know, I know—your letter said Torrant was too exhausted and you sent him to sleep when he would have traveled. I need to talk to Torrant …" he looked up and searched out Aylan in the deepening twilight, "both of you," he amended, "about that." Aylan would have been alarmed, but the welcoming smile on the bearded man's face was so warm after the pause, he could find no reason why he should be.
"You must be Aylan!" Lane smiled and offered a hand up to him on the horse, and Aylan took it with a bob of his head. "And you're Trieste!" Trieste offered a graceful version of a curtsey from the seat of the cart. "It's so good to finally meet you. The boys have been writing us about you since the beginning of school!"
"Except Aylan's no longer a wanker," Aldam said seriously, and Aylan laughed, feeling the tight line between his shoulder blades relax for real and truly.
"That's a matter of opinion," he said, sliding off his horse and taking the cart pony's reins, offering his hand so Trieste could hop down. "Just ask Trieste—I'm sure she still thinks I'm a wanker."
"I think you have a lot to pay for from your wanker years, yes," Trieste said primly, but she took Aylan's hand as she said it, and smiled her thanks.
Lane chuckled, then looked back over his shoulder and called to the two figures coming up the hill behind Torrant and Yarri. "Oy—Stanny, Roes—over here. Come take the horses down to the stables with Aldam, right Aldam?"
Aldam was stopped, wide eyed, with a smile on his face of such sweetness it lit up the gray velvet twilight. "Right, Uncle Lane," Aldam said automatically.
"Right, Da," Roes said at the same time. Aldam made a courtly little bow, and Roes ignored it and hugged him fiercely. Stanny walked by them both with a rolling of his eyes, clapping Aldam on the shoulder as he did so. Aldam smiled, and moved towards the horses to do his duty, but his eyes never really left Roes, and she smiled shyly as she continued to look directly at Aldam. Her mouth moved, she was saying something about missing him, and about dinner, but even Aylan could see the things the two were saying were not nearly as important as the contact they were making with their eyes.
Stanny shook hands with Aylan and bowed to Trieste, taking their reins and calling to his sister at the same time. He looked at Aylan with a large smile then, and Aylan found himself responding to this enormous young man with the broad smile and freckles in the same way he'd responded to Aldam—with patience and a certain amount of protectiveness he'd seen in Torrant but didn't really recognize in himself.
"You'll be rooming with me," Stanny said happily, "Along with Aldam. I hope that's fine—Mum and Da's house is full to bursting with Aldam and Torrant back. Mum's been using their old room to hold yarn—she had to shove their old beds together to make-fit."
"Do you snore?" Aylan asked, and was rewarded with his full and handsome grin.
"Like a cattle stampede—but my flat's got two rooms and a right nice couch in the front room. We figure Aldam will be back and forth between my flat and home, so he gets the couch."
"That's more than generous," Aylan said, meaning it. Hesitantly he looked at Lane. "I'm really …" the word stuck awkwardly, "grateful you're letting me …" Trieste made a sound, "us, stay with you all this summer."
"Don't be," Lane said with another welcoming smile, "You'll both be working hard for it … room and board doesn't come cheap!"
But both Aylan and Trieste had the feeling that a summer of being with family was going to be without price, as well as very dear.
"Now, come on, you two!" Lane called to Yarri and Torrant. "We're holding up dinner. Yarri—come take Trieste home, right?"
The girl's heavy sigh carried like a burst of gray through the dark. "Right, Uncle Lane." She and Torrant came towards them, and Torrant pulled his hand from hers to put it on her shoulder. It was obviously a reminder.
"Yarri—this is Aylan and Trieste—they're my friends now, you be polite." The implicit warning in the words told everybody there that part of their earnest conversation had been about Trieste—and it hadn't gone well.
Trieste gave an inward groan and tried for humor and understanding. "Oh come on, Torrant—that's a sure fire way of making her despise me on sight."
"We can barely see each other," Yarri said flatly, and Trieste was glad because the darkness hid her grimace.
"All the more reason for us to go in—come," Lane said firmly, and they all set off down the hill.
Lane, Stanny and Roes were busy catching Torrant and Aldam up on the family news, so Trieste took a few of the lighter parcels off the cart and made a determined effort to walk next to an indifferent Yarri.
"Torrant tells me you like to paint and draw," she said brightly. "I think that's wonderful."
"It's not a skill they value at Triannon," Yarri replied darkly, and Trieste had to agree.
"You need freedom to see with your heart," she said, and Yarri made an unwilling sound in her throat—it was obvious the girl didn't want to agree with anything Trieste had to say.
"Torrant can make better pictures with his gift anyway," Yarri returned after a pause, and Trieste was easy with speaking from her heart.
"Torrant can make truth—and there's very little in truth that's the color of your dreams, don't you think?"
The sound Yarri made now was a combination of impending defeat, and resolve not to surrender. Trieste wondered miserably what their final battle would be, and really hoped they'd win.
"We turn here," Yarri said flatly, "It's nothing fancy."
"No," Trieste agreed, looking at the warm and tidy two-story home with the yellow painted boards they were approaching. "But it does look like home."
"It is home," Yarri replied, her voice openly unfriendly. "It's mine and Torrant's home."
Trieste gave a little sigh and followed her rival up the porch and into her fate at the hands of the chaos within.
After they split off from the groups of family, they walked for a while through streets unfamiliar to Aylan, but that Torrant and Lane seemed to know like the sound of their own voices. They turned from the main avenue and went through a series of alleys towards the same rise and to the river they had just crossed, only farther downstream. As they walked, Aylan listened under the roaring of moon-driven water to the easy conversation between Torrant and Lane with undisguised envy. A vision of his last conversation with Lord Stealth, second vizier to King Granth of the Jeweled Lands blew through him, leaving him cold in the warm salted dark, and he lost the thread of their discussion for a moment. Then Lane called him to the present abruptly.
"Now I didn't want to upset Aldam, but I needed to talk to the two of you about Solstice."
"Aylan had nothing to do with it," Torrant said immediately, but Aylan wouldn't let him get away with that.
"Bollux," he said evenly. "I was there."
"It was nothing, Uncle Lane," Torrant looked at Aylan a little desperately, but Aylan remembered Torrant's words on the mountain top that day. If you think I don't know the sheer, dumb luck of being orphaned twice and ending up with good men to father me both times, you're mad. Here was a father, and a good one, and Aylan was having no part in interfering between the two of them.
"Why don't you let your uncle decide that? Ouch!" Because Torrant had taken advantage of the dark and gotten a sly smack in on the back of Aylan's head.
"If it was nothing, the telling shouldn't be hard," Lane said evenly. "Aldam told us he spelled you to sleep, and you spent the Solstice at school. The end. But Roes and Yarri, and even your Aunt Beth—you know where they were looking, don't you?"
"The map," Torrant said miserably.
"Uhm-hm. And what do you suppose the map showed them?"
Torrant thought for a moment. "Aldam, moving towards Clough, and then me, catching up and taking him back towards the school …"
"And then Trieste, Aylan, and another rider meeting you and taking Aldam back to the school …"
"And then Aylan and I on the trail towards Clough …"
"For several hours, before you staggered back," Lane's determined voice held more than a hint of concern and anger.
"It showed the staggering?" Aylan asked curiously, and caught an elbow in the ribs for it.
"The staggering was a guess," and Aylan could see Lane's teeth glinting against the darkness of his beard for just a moment—the twin moons had risen fully, and Triane was already a giant thumbnail on the horizon. "Do you care to fill me in?"
It wasn't really a request. "You can't tell Aunt Beth," Torrant said desperately.
"I can and I will. Now stop stalling, boy-o, and tell me what happened before I lock you and Aldam in the downstairs bedrooms for the rest of your lives in sheer panic."
"Rath sent his men." Even to Aylan, Torrant's voice was raw. "They were supposed to get me when we left, I think, but we didn't leave. Aldam went for a walk in the morning … he was missing Roes so badly … I think he just needed to think, and I was …" Torrant's voice cracked, and without thinking Aylan put his hand on his shoulder. Torrant tried to shake it off, but Aylan kept it there.
"You were having a life," he said quietly.
"Trieste came …" Torrant tried again, blushing warmth into the cooling air, and now Lane put a hand on Torrant's other shoulder.
"You get to have sweetness, Torrant," Lane said quietly, "and I get the idea."
Torrant nodded, and broke away from both of them. They were at the river now, running swiftly in the spring's thaw, and he was standing on a rise maybe fifteen feet above it. It was, had Aylan known it, the same place two of Rath's guardsman had been disposed of one chilly winter's night long ago.
"Anyway," he murmured, mastering himself, "I woke up, and Rath's men had Aldam, and I went and got him. Aylan and Trieste came to help, that was all."
"How many?" Lane asked quietly.
"The snow cat doesn't count," Torrant replied stiffly.
"Seven," said Aylan, knowing that even if the snow cat didn't count, Torrant did.
"Not bad!" Lane praised, and Aylan fought a laugh as Torrant shot him a shocked glance. "Well, boy-o, what did you expect? You protected your family— against great odds. Am I supposed to be disgusted? Angry? I told you, Goddess thinking is family thinking. If you want me to be angry, let something happen to your family when you know how to stop it."
"Dumb sot," Aylan muttered. "Did he let any of us know he was beating himself up about it? No … he just keeps soldiering on …"
"It's how he ended up here," Lane replied conversationally. "Almost died, he did, bringing Yarri and Aldam over the pass. And then when he came to, he almost died again, while we were trying to convince him he could stay."
"Would you stop talking about me like I'm not here?" Torrant's voice came out from the dark, and although it was still raw, there was humor too. "I'm fully aware I'm too stupid to live."
"Quite the opposite, boy-o," Lane said quietly, "You're too brave to die. Well, now I know the whole of it, I can talk it over with my smarter half, and we can decide if it's likely to happen again. Any odds the bodies will be traced back here?"
Aylan and Torrant met eyes through the darkness. A month after that cold day on the mountain, they had been in the middle of their government class when the whole school heard a sound like the cracking of a board, followed by a rumble which shook the floorboards and rattled the windows in their frames. The two of them had met eyes then as they were meeting eyes now, turned pale, and then turned their attention fiercely back to the professor.
"Not likely," Torrant said faintly, and Aylan nodded in agreement.
Lane looked back and forth between them, seeing their faces paling now in the moonlight, and grunted. "I'll ask another time," he said gently. "And now, one final question, and then we all go see your Aunt Bethie before she comes out here in the dark and checks you for broken bones. How's Aldam? Do I have to bother him about this, or can I leave him be?"
"I don't know …" Torrant said, at the same time Aylan said, "Leave him be."
Torrant looked at Aylan and grimaced, knowing he was going to spill Aldam's business here in the quiet dark, but also knowing that if having his own business out in the open was necessary, then it was even more so for his gentle, fragile brother. "It brought back … what that …" Torrant shivered, not wanting to even voice what he knew, "that horse trader … the one who attacked Yarri. He'd … he'd gotten to Aldam first, when Aldam was younger. It brought it all back … he's been … he hasn't been sleeping well, and …"
Torrant looked at Aylan miserably, but Aylan refused to take the hint. Pushy bastard. "And he keeps crying out in his sleep for me to save him."
Lane sucked air in through his teeth, and Aylan finally looked away.
"You did save him," Aylan said, watching as the deeper darkness of the river gorge cut a path through the moon-lit darkness to the star-shattered sea.
"But not from that," Torrant murmured. "None of us could save him from that."
"You save him every day you love him now," Lane said softly. "Now, come here boy, let me pretend to father you and give me a hug, and let's go see Bethie. I have a feeling you need some mothering, now we've gotten this over with, right?"
"Right," Torrant nodded, wiping at his face with the back of his sleeve. "Absolutely. Let's go." And Lane caught him in an embrace of strength and tenderness, and care, and Torrant returned it, and for just a moment, Aylan got to see his friend set his burdens down on someone else's shoulders. Then the moment was over, and Torrant shouldered his own pain again, but even in the dark, Aylan could see the weight was less onerous than before.

Summer Stories

Dinner at the Moon home was loud and exciting—more than once, Trieste and Aylan found themselves meeting eyes across the crowded, noisy table in an acknowledgment that they were far more out of their depth here, than Torrant and Aldam had ever been in Triannon.
Starry had taken an instant liking to Aylan. As he entered the house on Lane and Torrant's heels, she had turned her head from its place on Aldam's chest (oh, how she had missed Aldam!) and announced loudly, "He's like my music!" before squirreling down, and running to introduce herself.
Aylan looked down at the pudgy, fair child barely out of her toddler years with the fantastic head of bright orange curls, even as Torrant looked at her bemusedly and said, "How's my Littlest?"
Starren raised distracted arms and Torrant lifted her up into a hug, but her wide blue eyes didn't leave Aylan. "Have you brought me my music, Torrant?” she asked seriously, and Torrant blinked a shrug at Aylan.
"This is Aylan, my friend from school, yes?" He exchanged a puzzled look with Lane and then looked over at Bethen, who was giving a wide-eyed, shocked and pained once-over to a still oblivious Aylan.
"He's my music. He will do fine," Starry told him with a sober kiss. "I'm glad you're home, Torrant—we all missed you, thank you for bringing Aylan to me." She smiled at Aylan, whose expression went from mild bemusement to the utter stun-ation of a pole-axed ox. Starry held out arms and leaned, hard, forcing Torrant into a stumble forward, and Aylan put out automatic arms to catch her, and the result was that Starren spent the rest of her night on Aylan's lap, patting his chest every so often to assure herself he was still there. Even during dinner, when Bethen tried to make her youngest sit in a chair all by herself, Starry would shake her head and cling even tighter to Aylan's shirt. She called him her music, and that seemed to be all she expected anyone to need to know.
So Aylan and Trieste were casting alarmed glances over Starry's head, Roes and Aldam were sitting a courtly distance from each other and having painfully casual conversation, when Roes wasn't bickering with Stanny, Bethen and Lane were asking everybody questions about their schooling, Cwyn was asking everybody questions about their sex lives, and Torrant was actively defending Trieste from a hostile Yarri. The chaos didn't thin down until everybody had cleared away Bethen's filling meal, and the family gathered on chairs set out on the back porch to catch a breeze and talk.
Yarri came up from Torrant's old room holding his lute, and Torrant looked at her warily. "You only went through my things, right Yarrow root?"
"As if I would stoop so low!" Yarri sniffed, and Torrant and Trieste exchanged pained glances. Trieste was going to have to go through her things very very carefully before she wore anything that had been put in the downstairs bedroom.
"Have you written any new songs, Torrant?" Bethen asked hopefully. Since Starry had deserted her lap for Aylan's, she had her knitting out, and was working on something small and delicate and purple which wouldn't make her lap sweat in the heat.
Torrant smiled a little and flushed. "A few, Auntie Beth," he murmured, tuning the lute, accustoming himself again to the feel of the hard wood against his chest and under his arms. He had played nearly every night, except during those last few frantic weeks of studying, and he was probably better now than he had been before he'd left. And he'd practiced this song carefully—it seemed heart full, somehow—but until this moment, Aldam and Aylan were the only ones who had heard it. The words were for Trieste and Yarri, but the music … the music was intense, in minor keys, with surprising sweetness.
Aylan heard the first few notes and was suddenly arrested, breathless, trembling, and only barely aware of Starry's pudgy little hand patting his chest in comfort.
"See," she whispered, "It's our music."
Her voice distracted Aylan, but only for a moment, because Torrant's voice had already pitched itself with thrumming passion, and it soared over their heads on heart-beating wings.

Will you be there in the winter with the terrors it might bring?
Will you be there in the spring time when the Goddess starts to sing?
Will you be there in the autumn when we mourn our honored dead?
Will you say farewell in summer as I join my one beloved?

You are pretty as the winter, darkest trees and palest snow.
You're as pretty as the springtime, thinnest sun and plumpest rose
We met at the cusp of autumn when my heart did mourn my home
But we'll say farewell in summer and we'll part to walk alone.

My beloved's fair as autumn, and her heart is ever true,
She's fiercer than the summer's hottest sun in sky-so blue,
She'll be angry as the sea in brutal winters on the shore
If I know you in the springtime, I'll know her forevermore.

We'll be absent in the winter, when the snows blind us to pain
We'll be absent in the springtime when the earth shall wake again
We'll be absent in the autumn when the red leaves start to sing
I'll be there with my beloved at the summer's close of spring
And I'll think about you warmly with your beloved's golden ring

When he was done, he didn't dare look up, wondering at the hush, whether it was for admiration or for the sheer audacity of speaking about the thing they all knew was true, but which people rarely mentioned for politeness' sake.
Then he felt something plop on his knee, and he realized Trieste, who had been sitting at his feet as he'd started playing, was weeping softly, and he wanted to kick himself, then Yarri sniffled into the back of her hand, and he wanted to die.
Then the family broke into applause, and Lane clapped him on the shoulder, and Bethen put down her knitting and kissed his cheek soundly, and even Roes gave him a glowing grin and he blinked hard, looking to Aylan. Sardonic, quick witted Aylan would surely be able to find something to say to give Torrant a ground to stand on.
But Aylan was looking besottedly into the eyes of Starren, who continued to pat his cheek serenely. Torrant couldn't hear what she was saying to him, but he caught the repeated use of the phrase, "our music" and he could only wonder what it would mean.
Later that night, after he had played his fingers sore and his voice hoarse, and Stanny had taken Aldam and Aylan to his flat above the warehouse (much to Starry's dismay—her heartbroken sobs about losing 'her music' had only been stilled when they told her he'd be back in the morning), Torrant and Trieste retired to the downstairs after Yarri's fierce hug and "I'm glad you're back."
She said nothing at all to Trieste's tentative, "Good night," and after Torrant had lit the lamps of the downstairs, Trieste carefully went through her luggage. She was so prepared for the worst, that the dead mouse hardly earned a squeak from her, although Torrant had a tough time hiding his laughter.
"What?” she asked him irritably, scraping the poor dead thing onto a piece of parchment with her shoe. "What is so damned funny?"
"Nothing," Torrant answered, controlling himself. "I just …" She glared at him, and he was now one hundred percent sober. He took the parchment carefully from her, kissed her gently on the lips and said, (holding the mouse at an acceptable distance): "You need to tell me how you want me to handle this, sweetheart. I could force her to be nice to you—she would if I got angry—and she would be stiff and polite to you your entire visit. Or I could let you fight it out, and maybe you could really be friends by the end of it. I know you don't like unpleasantness—but Yarri's not afraid of it. It is up to you. I'll go however you want me to."
Trieste's glared softened a little. "Did you and Aylan rehearse this?"
He was legitimately surprised. "No—I think Aylan just knows people, that's all."
"You don't know people?” she asked curiously, as he made his way to the stairs to throw the mouse away.
"I know my people," he said thoughtfully, turning just a little. "The people that want to hurt my people, I don't know them at all."
The next morning after breakfast (which everybody attended), and after the men had gone to help take in the influx of product which the fair seas of summer inevitably brought to the little harbor, Trieste tried to ask Roes where a good place would be to wash out a nice dress which had been 'stained by the journey'.
Roes wasn't buying it. "So that's where Anye's little porch present went yesterday. Mama went to get the dustpan and it disappeared."
Trieste flushed. "I have no idea how it got there …" she lied politely, and Roes rolled her eyes and would have said something amusingly acerbic, but at that moment Yarri walked in carrying an armload of laundry from the line.
"How what got where?” she asked, her brown eyes button bright with malice.
"How this stain got on my nicest skirt." Trieste's voice was nothing if not bland and polite.
"Ooh …" Yarri nodded her head judiciously. "That's a tough stain. You know … there's this special mud out by the bend in the river, where the trees start, just before the bridge—I bet that mud could get this stain out."
Roes opened her mouth to protest, but Trieste's eyes had narrowed, and what she knew to be her 'polite court smile' had twisted her lips. "Really? How wonderful. Stain removing mud. I've never heard of it," she said flatly, knowing all her teeth were showing.
"I'll show you where it is!" Yarri said helpfully. "Just let me fold these and put them away. I'd be happy to help!"
Roes and Trieste breathed in tandem through their noses until the patter of her feet disappeared surely up the stairs, and Roes was the first to break the silence.
"You're not going to bring this nice silk thing …" her fingers caressed the smoky purple silk with covetous strokes. Her father would buy her any fabric she wanted, but Roes claimed to disdain silk and trappings like it … but, oh Goddess, would Aldam like to see her in a skirt like this, the color of yellow roses which had sat too close to a red rose bush for too many years.
"No." Trieste shook her head tightly to emphasize that she wasn't stupid. "No … if you've got an old burlap sack, I'll fill it with washrags or something …"
"But why follow her …" Roes was baffled.
"Because we're going to have this out!" Trieste had actually been planning to chicken out and have Torrant fight this battle for her, but Yarri had walked in, full of her own pride, and laid a guileless sunshine smile on her, and in a sudden flash of insight, she found she didn't just like Torrant's moon-destined—she admired her. She knew she, herself, was not strong. Maybe, just maybe, although she probably couldn't best Yarri in full womanhood on a bad day, if she could defeat young Yarri on a good day, she might survive her own trials as wife to the King of Otham.
"I'm not going to be tiptoeing around her for three whole summers," she finished now. "Torrant and I may not be moon-destined, or even just husband and wife, but he's mine, for what little amount of time we have, and I'm not going to let her ruin it."
Roes grinned. "Good for you. But remember—that girl grew up the youngest daughter, with what amounted to four brothers. She fights dirty and she fights mean." Roes nodded seriously, with a knowledge born of four years of jockeying for limited closet space in a small room. "I love her like a sister—but it would be good to see her taken down a peg or two, or she might run wild until she comes of age."
"I don't mind the running wild," Trieste mused, thinking how she envied the girl's tattered breeches and oversized shirts. "But she's not going to be running over me anymore if I can help it."
"May the Goddess be with you!" Roes said earnestly, and then they heard Yarri's steps on the stairs, and both of them pretended to talk about other things.
The trip through the meadows alongside the river to the 'magic mud' hole was, Trieste thought later, the best preparation for court life she was ever likely to have. They both smiled and made sunny conversation, but Trieste knew she was walking into a trap, and Yarri was pretty sure her rival wasn't fooled. And yet they still tried.
"So," Trieste sallied, "Do you swim often?"
"Almost every night," Yarri put her hands in the pockets of her faded red breeches and tread her bare feet carefully around a gopher hole. "The boys swim in one hole, the girls downriver … if it's the family, we wear Aunt Beth's bathing costumes and all swim together. It's a lot more fun than a bath."
"Where do you like to swim best?"
"With the family—if you look over there, you can see the family hole." Trieste looked out beyond the meadow and calculated the family swimming hole was only a little landside of what amounted to the house's backyard.
Trieste looked at the girl's hair—it was pulled back into a plait, but even so, it glowed like golden amber. It was meticulously clean, and although Yarri's clothes looked as though they had been slept in, her hair looked as though it had been brushed, extensively, daily. Ah, vanity, Trieste thought wistfully. Her own hair often escaped its plait because she just as often didn't bother to brush it—it annoyed her and she didn't want to reward it for bad behavior. But she knew her body was willowy and graceful, and her skirts were fitted and her blouses too, and she almost always wore blue or purple, which, she admitted only privately, she knew made her gray eyes look the most stunning.
"Your family has the most beautiful hair," she said now into the silence, because Roes' hair was more dark red, less gold, and Starry's hair was the color of the inside of a ripe peach.
Yarri looked at her sideways, unable, Trieste thought with an inward smile, to automatically rebuff the overture because it complimented one of the things she most liked about herself, but unable to take it gracefully because it came from a hated rival.
"Thanks," is what she said now, gruffly, and added, "I think it comes from our fathers, even though Auntie Beth has red hair … but mine had dark hair, so I don't know."
"Have you asked?" Uncertain ground, here. Torrant speaking about their dead families brought down untold deluges of pain. Perhaps it was easier if you were just a child, instead of halfway to grown.
Yarri gave her a pain-darkened glare that was not softer for all of the eight years between them, and Trieste guessed perhaps maybe nothing made it easier at all. Then she looked away, saying softly, "I should. I never thought about it."
Then they rounded a bend and came in sight of the vast fetid half an acre of 'magic mud' and all of the tentative warmth became as chill as the winter snows which fed into the river.
"It stinks," Trieste understated pleasantly, observing that there were shrubs both tall and short springing from the rich soil, and a layer of moss grew over everything, making it look like more of the meadow to the uninitiated. Of course, all of the vegetable matter made for lots of rot, and hence the indescribable stench. There were also lots of good places to hide, she surmised, planning for battle, but her sandal-shod feet were already squelching ankle deep into the sun-warmed muck and she could feel, quite literally, what she was getting into. "Do you really think I'm going to smear this all over my silk dress?"
"It's why you brought it, isn't it?" Yarri's glee trembled in her voice.
Trieste laughed a little and upended the sack, letting the most sun-and-wear faded of the family's towels and linens to fall out. "No, actually I decided your Aunt Beth might do better on the dress than … oof."
A handful of foul, stinking mud sailed out of the air and hit Trieste whap on the side of the head. Belatedly Trieste heard the patter of swifter, lighter, barer feet as they tripped over the top of the mud that Trieste knew she would only sink into, and abruptly, the fight was on.
It was guerrilla warfare and it wasn't pretty.
"Oh, you vicious little cat!" Trieste dodged another mud-clot, this one with sticks embedded in it, and decided to retreat first and get her bearings. She dodged behind the nearest shrub and scooped up her own handful of mud, waiting with a kettledrum heart to see which way Yarri would come. Trieste was taller, and she had a reach on her opponent, and she figured any pass of mud she made would have to go further than Yarri's based on sheer momentum—but surprise wouldn't hurt.
"You didn't trust me?" Yarri shrieked, making a suicide run in from around Trieste's right—clever girl—Trieste threw with that hand and it was awkward. Her mud got clogged in the trees, but Yarri's landed right square in her chest. (Trieste would later bless their terrific height difference—the only mud which made it close to her face was the first sally.) As quick as she could she bent down (ducking more when another scoop of mud hit the leaves above her head) and gathered giant heapfuls to lob at her antagonist. Yarri was already dodging away, but Trieste managed to tag her in the back—hard enough to make her stumble, and she was surprised at the sound of triumph which crowed out of her throat.
"No more than (oomph) that mouse (throw) should have (squat for more mud) trusted that (stand) mangy cat (throw again)!"
"Anye is not mangy!" Yarri whirled, indignant, and caught a mud clot on her chest, and to Trieste's horror she saw tears in the little girl's eyes. It suddenly occurred to her that here she was, an adult for all intents, and she was engaging in a ferocious battle with an eleven year old. She almost raised her hands and called it a draw right then, but Yarri had dropped to a crouch and with a surprisingly powerful arm was throwing clot after clot of mud directly at her. After getting spattered and then seriously tagged in her weak attempts to dodge, Trieste finally made a run for it, taking cover on the other side of the tree.
"That doesn't mean I want her dinner on my silk skirt!" Feeling pinned, Trieste tried a high lob over the tree. It fell short, but had a considerable splatter, and Yarri's feet made rapid splat-squelch noises as she ran for different cover.
"Well maybe if you hadn't brought your fancy silk skirt to my home, it wouldn't have gotten mouse guts on it!" Her words were still clear and ringing though, and Trieste realized sourly that the little wretch was hardly winded. She herself was panting like an August dog.
"I was invited!" Oh Goddess, where did she go? Trieste tried not to panic—it was mud, right? If she closed her eyes before she got hammered in the face with it, it would mostly just taste bad.
"But not by me!" Three deadly accurate throws came below the tree itself and hit Trieste's skirt with the sound of birds hitting a sail.
"It's not my fault he likes me right now!" Trieste wailed, spotting some more cover in front of her—and this shrub went all the way to the ground. Without looking to see where her nemesis was, she hitched up her skirts and started running.
"It's not my fault I'm too young!" Yarri screeched, and for the first time the sunshine halo of self-possession which surrounded the girl wavered, and Trieste finally heard the real hurt in her voice.
"And it's not my fault I'm betrothed to the old toady King of Otham!" Trieste grunted, struggling more in her sprint across the mud than Yarri had. Pull, stride, pull stride—there was a terrible, thigh-and-calf burning rhythm to running in the squelch, and Trieste was starting to think she'd just about mastered it, when …
Splat, she went face down into the mud, twist went her knee as she went, and suddenly rolling around on her back in the fetid swampy stink-hole didn't seem like such a bad idea after all.
"Owwwww owww owww owww owwwww!” she wailed, holding her knee and not even minding the painful tears smarting at her eyes. "What… go away!" Because suddenly little hands were all around her hands, and then Yarri was smacking at her own hands.
"Stop it, you silly moo … I'm trying to see if it's really hurt or just torqued." A particularly stinging slap to her knuckles finally got Trieste's attention and she stopped rolling and struggling. With surprisingly gentle fingers Yarri probed around her knee-cap. Trieste whimpered a little and then Yarri sat back on her haunches and sighed.
"Its fine—you need to cool it down, keep it raised for a day or two, you'll be fine," she murmured. With another sigh she rocked back onto her bottom and pulled her feet out of the muck, scraping it down her ankles with her toes in a purely experimental action. Trieste sniffled a little, wrapped her mind around the pain and found it manageable, and pulled a little bit of self-possession out of her ear to make an attempt to sit up. A silence settled between the two opponents, and Trieste could actually hear birds singing in the background, before Yarri spoke abruptly into the quiet.
"Are you really betrothed to the King of Otham? Torrant put it in his letters, I thought it was just to make me feel better."
"Why would he make up something that spectacular to make you feel better?" Trieste asked, rocking forward and feeling her knee for herself—Yarri's assessment seemed sound but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like hell.
"Why would a future Queen of Otham be interested in my Torrant?" Yarri's lower lip trembled and suddenly Trieste's diabolical little antagonist was a heartrendingly vulnerable little girl.
"Any girl would be interested in your Torrant, Yarri," Trieste said gently. "He's handsome, he's kind, he's smart and fun to be with …"
"He's fierce," Yarri muttered into her knees.
"What?" For a disorienting moment, Trieste wondered if Torrant had told her about that awful day in the snow, but then, with a painful snap of clarity, she realized Yarri was probably talking about things Torrant hadn't told her, and which she, Trieste, had elected not to know.
"He likes to think it's just Ellyot in him, that makes him fierce," Yarri said, scraping more mud off her ankle, "But he'd kill to protect me—any of us really. He's not just tame, like Anye."
"No," Trieste murmured, "He's not tame like Anye. But he doesn't like me to know that … I don't like to know that," she amended.
"Do you want some help to the swimming hole?" Yarri asked brusquely, changing the subject so abruptly that Trieste would wonder later why she wouldn't want to talk about Torrant some more. He was, after all, the reason for this little jaunt to hell's magic mud for washing clothes. But Yarri stood up and offered a hand that had been hastily wiped on the back tail of her shirt, and Trieste didn't have it in her to refuse.
"Yes please," she murmured, extending a hand, and she was impressed by the little girl's wiry strength, and again as Yarri supported much of her weight on the way to the wide, sandy bank where the river had almost no current at all.
There was nobody there but the two of them, and as Trieste was stripping to her chemise with one hand while leaning on Yarri's shoulder with another, she was dismayed to hear Aylan's voice behind her.
"Oueant's fetid droppings, girls—you smell like the fart of a thousand dogs!"
Oh gods … "Aylan …" she groaned, just as Yarri turned over her shoulder and shot back, "Or maybe the breath of one foul player!"
Aylan laughed, and the sound had a note in it, of relief, almost of tears, that made Trieste look up, and she realized his day hadn't been all peaches and ice-cream either. His eye and lip were swollen, his fists were bloodied, and his clothes—one of the three sets of work clothes he'd brought with him—were considerably shredded. Of course, the state of his clothes didn't bother her nearly as much as the fact that he was now taking them off.
"Aylan!” she objected, and he rolled his one good eye at her.
"Come off it, Spots—just to my skivvies. You're not the only one who had a dust-up today, and I couldn't find the other damned swimming hole and my eye is hurting like Dueant's …"
"Fine, fine, fine!" Trieste snapped, "Just don't finish that sentence!"
"I don't give a piece of cat barf if either of you see me in my skivvies," Yarri snapped, "let's just get in the damned water—my scalp is starting to itch!"
A few moments and a minimum of embarrassment later, and both of them were sitting chin deep in the almost-chilly water, watching as Yarri swam like a sleek, plump otter where the swimming hole got deeper.
"Should she be that far away?" Aylan wondered. "There's a little current out there—you can see it."
"With that child's luck, she'd get carried out to sea, abducted by pirates and made their damned bloody queen before anything bad happened to her," Trieste said sourly, and Aylan turned a fully brilliant and wicked grin towards her.
"Did you two dance?” he asked pleasantly.
"Do birds mate in the spring?" Trieste asked back, sardonically. "But I've got to say, I'm surprised you had a dust-up. Back at school, you would have slept with whoever it was, and things would have ended there."
"Not when they impugn the family honor," Torrant said, surprising them both from behind.
Trieste gave a little shriek, and Yarri turned, watching the conversation she couldn't hear with sober eyes. Torrant gave her a little wave, and she waved back, sadly, as though it were the last time he would ever smile at her, and continued to tread water, just watching.
"So, can I put her out of her misery, or do I need to go read her the riot act?” he asked carefully, starting to strip to his own undergarments, and Trieste sighed. The little girl had been really lovely when she'd twisted her knee—and really, did Trieste want to just run off and marry the toady King of Otham if she wasn't leaving Torrant to someone who would fight for him?
"We're fine," she said after a moment. "She really loves you, you know."
"Well, we love you too," he murmured, bending to kiss her temple, and then he stood and looked at Aylan. "Uncle Lane says you don't have to come back until tomorrow—he told the crew you're getting a paid half-day anyway …"
"Aw … dammit, Torrant …"
"No." And suddenly there was the grace of authority sitting on Torrant's shoulders as Trieste hadn't seen it before. "You protected his family—even if it was only words aimed at Aldam. He may wish you'd find another method, but he wouldn't have let Alk or any of his cronies back in his warehouse at all if he'd known how cruel they were. Family's important, Aylan—we're glad you're part of it." And with that he turned and dove out to the deeper water to splash Yarri, and play with her, and tread water near her and trade confidences, leaving his two school friends speechless and near tears.
"Do you think he has any idea what he does to us?" Trieste whispered when she could trust herself.
"If he did, I don't think I'd let him do it," Aylan graveled back. Trieste was surprised to feel his fingers under the water reach for hers and squeeze, but not too surprised to squeeze back.

Trieste's knee was better that night, but since the next night was Beltane and Torrant didn't want to 'put a strain on her dancing leg', he carried her back to the swimming hole in the bright, hot evening after supper.
Trieste was still chilled from her long soak in the water, so she was content to sit in the bathing costume Bethen had given her so she wouldn't wilt in the heavy moments before and after sunset, and watch Bethen knit in the shade.
The knitting fascinated Trieste—it seemed so very simple, two sticks and some string, but when Bethen offered to show her how it worked, she put her hands behind her back like a guilty child and shook her head.
"No. No. I'm not good at that," she said with such absolute conviction that Yarri looked up from her own knitting in curiosity. Yarri had been exceptionally quiet after her swim with Torrant, and almost frighteningly gracious as well.
"And how would you know if you're good at it or not if you've never tried it?" Bethen asked with a smile and a raised eyebrow.
Trieste flushed enough to make the swimming hole look suddenly inviting again. "I had nannies …" she said uncertainly.
"Like goats?" Yarri asked in honest surprise, and Trieste laughed, feeling better.
"Like baby-sitters who were supposed to teach me," she explained. "I couldn't go to Triannon until I was your age, so I had nannies to teach me how to dress and how to read …"
"What about your parents?" Yarri asked, so surprised she'd actually put her knitting down, and for the first time since their fight and the quiet that followed, Trieste actually felt older than her rival.
"You've been very lucky, Yarrow Moon," she said gently. "Not every lord's daughter gets her first lessons in her father's study on her mother's knee."
Yarri made an indeterminate sound in her throat and Bethen met Trieste's eyes and smiled, nodding for her to go on.
"Anyway … they kept trying to teach me things … embroidery, sewing, crocheting, tatting, spinning, weaving … I …" she tried to laugh because, after all, she had been younger than Yarri the last time an impersonal pair of hands had tried to guide her stiff fingers along unfamiliar, unwanted pathways. "I wasn't very good," she finished, wrapping her arms around her knees at the last. Wistfully, she looked out to the swimming hole—Aylan was taking turns with Cwyn and Starren, submerging himself and putting their feet on his shoulders and letting them dive off as he exploded out of the water. Aldam, Roes, Stanny and Torrant were playing monkey-in-the-middle with a hollow wooden ball, and Lane was across the river, toweling off and talking only partly seriously to the man Torrant had told her was the mayor of Eiran—they were probably discussing the Beltane celebration the next day, and whether or not there would be enough food.
A part of her wanted to be out there, with her friends and her lover and his family, but then she heard Bethen's needles click again, and she was drawn irresistibly back to the magic with the sticks and the string.
"Do you tell Goddess stories, Trieste?" Bethen asked, giving the fine lavender yarn in her hand a little tug. Bethen's graying red hair had escaped its band, and it hung in little ringlets in the humidity, and her pleasant, freckled face was set serenely. Only her brown, twinkling, lively eyes betrayed that she had anything in mind.
"I've heard Torrant and Aldam tell them," she responded, staring unabashedly now that Bethen had seemingly changed the subject.
"Well," Bethen began, peering at Trieste's rapt expression, "When Triane was young, she was sent from the brothers to learn how to be a lady, did you know that?"
"Mmm-nnn," Trieste said negatively, watching one stitch become the next, and the next one become the one after.
"Just like you, she was sent from Auntie Star to Auntie Star—she had seven in all, and each had something to teach her. One taught her to read, which she liked very much, but then she said, 'I will teach you to embroider, and it will be your duty to embroider for Oueant and Dueant, because you are the woman,' and Triane didn't like this very much at all. Her fingers became as stiff as her lip and her jaw, and her thread snarled and the colors knotted together, and soon her embroidery looked like a child's watercolor where all the colors run to brown. The first Auntie Star got angry, and huffed Triane off to the next Auntie, who taught Triane how to cook. Triane liked cooking very much, but when the same Auntie Star said, 'You will learn how to sew, because you are the woman and it is your duty to sew,' Triane's back grew ramrod straight and her brows drew in, and her shirts grew extra arms and flounces where no man should have flounces and a side of shirt where no one, god or human has ever had a side of body before. And this Auntie got impatient too, and shipped her off to the next, and the next one taught her how to sing, which she enjoyed very much, but then she brought out a loom and said, 'You will weave fine blankets, because you are the girl, and it is your duty to keep your men warm,' and … do you want to guess?" Bethen cast wicked eyes at Trieste who laughed back.
"And her wrists were suddenly limp and moving in several hundred different ways, and before she was done with the weaving loom she had managed to weave in her dress, her hair, and the tail of an unfortunate cat."
Yarri spit laughter hard enough to have to put down her knitting and hold her hand up to her mouth. "Did you really?” she asked, gasping, and Trieste found her first real smile for the girl blossoming on her face.
"My hair and my dress, yes—the cat barely escaped."
Yarri laughed some more, and then Bethen picked up the narrative thread as easily as she picked up her next stitch. "And so it went," she continued, "From Auntie Star to Auntie Star—one taught her to paint, but failed to teach her crochet, one taught her figures, but failed to teach her to tat, and so on until the seventh Auntie Star. Now by this time, poor Triane was over and done with the routine. She was tired of learning beautiful things only to be told the things that should be beautiful were her duty. She was very grumpy with this Auntie Star. 'So, what duty are you going to try to teach me now?' she asked. 'I warn you, I'm awful at everything—I'm a spiteful, disobedient girl and Oueant and Dueant will never love me.'
"Now, this seventh Auntie was very wise, and she just nodded her head and tended to her knitting and said, 'I don't want to teach you anything, my darling. Just sit at my knee while I make this cloak, and we will talk of all your days, and all the things you can do to make Honor and Compassion happy.'
"Triane was very surprised at this—in fact, she was so surprised her legs went right out from under her, and she found herself sitting at her Auntie's feet and pouring out the sadness of having fingers that were stiff and wrists that were floppy and brows that were drawn so tight against her head they hurt. And Auntie Star the seventh stroked her night and sea dark hair and continued to knit. Eventually Triane looked up and asked,"
"What are you knitting?" Trieste supplied to Bethen's nod.
"Well, I am knitting a lace shawl for someone who will look spectacular in lavender," Bethen twinkled at them, spreading the lavender fabric to show them.
"So not for me!" Yarri rolled her eyes.
"But Auntie Star was knitting the most brilliant silver-gold cloak," Bethen continued, "And she looked at Triane and said 'I am making you a gift, dear heart. Anyone who has tried so very hard as you have to make other people happy—you deserve to be loved.'
"And Triane began to cry, because she hadn't been trying very hard to make other people happy at all, but the cloak was so very pretty. It was perfect for her prettiest time, in the early summer and late spring, when her face is golden/silver on the sea. And she tried on the cloak, and it was lovely, and when her Auntie Seventh Star wasn't looking, she picked up the needles and, after watching her Auntie for so very long, she found that when she wanted to cast-on, her fingers found a way. When she wanted to knit, her wrists stayed right where they should be. And when she needed to purl, her brows relaxed after a couple of successful tries. The next day, Auntie Seventh Star came to her … no no, dear, knitting is from front to back—that's right … and said, what are you knitting, my darling? And Triane said …" Bethen, who had moved closer to Trieste as she talked so she could show her what to do with needles and yarn, looked at her new pupil to finish the story.
"And she said, 'I am making a bag for my lovely Auntie Seventh Star, so she doesn't have to put her needles in one pocket and her yarn in another when she goes to the swimming hole to teach silly young women how to knit.'"
Bethen smiled from ear to ear. "Darling, that would be a wonderful project— we can find the yarn for you when we get back to the house. Are you sure you wouldn't like to go swim with all the young people now?"
"In a minute," Trieste murmured, looking down at her hands. "After one more stitch."
Yarri stood and stretched. "Well, I'm going to swim—I'm tired of sweat running down my armpits." She bent and kissed Bethen on the cheek. "That was one of your best, Auntie Beth."
As Yarri left, Trieste looked up to where she'd sat knitting, and the dark blue tube she'd been working on, that was now decorated with bright orange/yellow gold as well. "What is she knitting?” she asked curiously.
"Fingerless mittens," Bethen said serenely. "She heard they're all the rage in courts this year."
"Really?" Trieste gave Bethen back her work gratefully—it was lace fine, and she thought maybe stouter yarn would be easier to work with. "What's that it says across the back?"
Bethen laughed. "If I'm not mistaken, it says 'Trieste'. Now go swim, my dear, I'll be with you all in a moment."

Beltane and Beyond

Otham didn't celebrate Samhain or Beltane the way Eiran did—if at all—but Trieste had heard of the Beltane celebrations—she was excited to be a part of them, from the ribbon-pole to the dancing. She had even asked Torrant coyly about the wilding, and was dismayed by the sober look that crossed his face.
"How about just a quiet moment under the stars, pretty Trieste?" he'd asked seriously, and she'd flushed because he called her pretty. He did it a lot—she could not find it in herself to believe him. He'd told her once, in the breathless quiet after making love in the dark, that the love of her life would be the man who made her believe he meant it when he said she was beautiful. She wasn't sure it was possible to love anyone more than she loved him, but that thought was best unspoken between them.
"No wilding?" She had been curious—it seemed from the moment she'd learned about the custom, it had been tailor made to satisfy the needs of young people, high on the excitement of young bodies and any emotion falling anywhere near the realm of love.
Torrant's eyes had gone distant and his cheeks had flushed hot. "The snow cat isn't that fond of wilding, Trieste," he said at last with some reluctance. "He seems to think he's being stalked."
Trieste's mouth opened wide, but she had nothing else to say on the matter. Torrant, though, had lightened the moment with, "However, I hope Aylan gets wild with half the staff at the inn—if anybody deserves to run wild, it's Aylan."
He was right—Aylan had been driving himself hard at the warehouse, until more than once, Lane had taken him aside and told him he would give more forced days off if he didn't take it easy.
"He's trying to earn his keep," she'd told him then without thinking, and with the cock of his head and the slant of his brows she had flushed. "Yes. Yes, I told him. He was making himself crazy thinking that this was the last time he'd get to see you and Aldam and 'decent people'. If you weren't going to put him out of his misery, I couldn't stand it!"
He had shaken his head and rolled his eyes and kissed her soundly, and the matter had ended.
Truly ended. She had been expecting him to lose his temper—her father or mother certainly would have—but apparently blowing a secret was not a capital offense in the mental book of Torrant Shadow. In fact, as she had watched him play with his family for the first week of summer, Trieste realized nothing seemed to be.
At school, she had accused him of trying to be two different people. Among his family she realized that both people were, in fact, Torrant. Torrant was the fun big brother who ran races with Cwyn, and swung Starry up in his arms until she squealed for more. He was the helpful mentor to the studious Roes, the 'who played winner' between Aldam and Stanny, and the child, she suspected, Lane and Bethen watched the closest, the more so because he was so able at being there for everybody else.
Torrant would defend these people with his life, and life experience had taught him it would come to that. Something in his laughter, in his tenderness, in his joy, something in the way he held himself when he was walking alongside the family, engaged in their raucous, joyous conversations, seemed to sing, seemed to scream that the snow cat was there for the express purpose of not letting any harm come to any of them.
It was never so apparent, like the head of a mace in a velvet cover, as when he was walking hand in hand with Yarri.
And unlike Trieste, who shied away from that steel, Yarri matched him, sinew for sinew.
But today, Trieste thought, dressed in her prettiest silk, with flowers Roes and Bethen had braided in her hair, and a new handmade lace shawl in the loveliest lavender fluttering around her arms in the late spring breeze, today it didn't matter, because today was Beltane, and today she was Torrant's girl.
The green of the river was so bright with spring and sunshine that it sparkled like a dream of emeralds. The girls in their whirling dresses were just as beautiful, and everybody had ribbons or flowers or even feathers in their hair, making them look like exotic, preening birds, and Trieste was flattered to be one of them.
"Be careful, Spots," Aylan said casually, breaking into her thoughts, "You're a bit exotic for all of the town birds—you don't want to make them feel plain."
Trieste snorted and rolled her eyes, and Aylan swung Starry—who was so constantly at his side when he wasn't working that she was almost an accessory, like a duffel bag or a scrip or a woman's purse—up on his shoulders before she could even ask.
"Uh-oh, pretty Trieste," Torrant said with a warm smile crinkling that upper lip of his, "Watch out—Aylan just paid you a compliment."
"He must want something," she replied primly, mostly to hear Aylan laugh. She found she liked the earnest, sober young man Aylan was for the Moons. She was impressed with the exquisite care he took of little Starry, and her baffling, fathomless attraction to him—watching him work so hard to do right by these 'decent people' as he'd called them, made Trieste realize more than ever how deeply the core of decency inside Aylan had been hidden until Torrant arrived.
"Oh but I do!" Aylan was laughing now. "I want …" he jiggled Starry on his shoulder, making her squeal, "I want to put pretty ladies on a big swing, and pull it so far back that when we let it fly, their feet touch the stars!"
"What about me?" Cwyn demanded imperiously from Aylan's other side. Cwyn didn't have Starry's infatuation for their new friend, but he had made himself a secondary fixture at Aylan's side because, Torrant suspected, he saw a lot of himself in Aylan.
"Oh you I'll let fly off—you'll get lost in the sky!" Aylan grinned, and Cwyn grinned back, all dimples and brown eyes.
"Wonderful—I'll have a bird's eye view of the wilding from up there!” he crowed, and from behind them, they could all hear Lane and Bethen groan.
"Come here, you little terror!" Bethen called. "We have to discuss some ground rules before we get there—I will not have a repeat of last year, do you hear me!
"Oh mama …" Cwyn moaned, and Lane and Bethen both said, "Now!" in unison, and Cwyn disappeared from Aylan's side.
"What could he possibly have done?" Aylan asked Torrant, and Torrant shrugged.
"I had my own problems last year," he said truthfully. "You'll have to ask Cwyn."
Aylan eyed the little recreant, who was obviously lying amiably to both of his parents about how he would not get into any trouble at all, oh, no, not he, no, and shook his head. "I'd rather not know," he decided. "Now, don't we have a shift at the swings?"
"Are we first?" Torrant hated being late. "Oh no … Yarri—will you show Trieste where we put our stuff and …"
"No, Torrant—I'm going to take her to the mud hole and ditch her on Beltane!" Yarri said with some asperity. "Go on—you two just make sure you keep your promise about our feet touching the sky!" And with that, she shooed them both to their stations at the giant swing.
Trieste laughed as she watched them run off—Stanny and Aldam were already there, because all four young men had wanted to work the same shift so they could enjoy the faire together. "Don't we want to go to the swing first?” she asked Yarri as they went to the family table and began unloading armloads of blankets, cold meats and salads.
"No," said Roes decisively, arranging things just so at the table.
"Why not?"
"Because," said Yarri, throwing a bright blue cloth over the things they didn't want the flies to get to. "If we wait just a little while longer, they'll get hot while they work."
Trieste blinked. "That's a good thing?"
"It is when they take their good shirts off so they don't get them all sweaty!" Roes explained, and Trieste had to agree. Besides, she thought happily, looking at the booths of activities and tables with different foods, at the rides and the vendors lined around for the faire, she was pretty sure they'd find something to do.
It was as wonderful as she'd thought it would be. There was music everywhere, and dancing in the center square by the ribbon pole. She watched four couples handfast in the space of five minutes and when she turned to the two young men behind her to see if they approved, they were kissing passionately, the way happy couples did at weddings, and she realized they must. Torrant had told her the vendors were a new event since his first faire, and she was as enchanted as any of the townfolk. She, Roes, and Yarri bought ribbons at one vendor, and glass vials filled with scent at another, and special wool just for Bethen at a third, and then the three of them put their money together for a set of puppets for Cwyn and Starry, and were given such enthusiastic thanks, that they had no choice but to sit for a puppet show. When it was over, they clasped hands with the children and hurried to the swing, where Torrant, Aldam, Aylan and Stanny had all, as Roes promised, doffed their good shirts, and were hauling the swing back with plenty of good will and muscled skin oiled in sweat. As Trieste settled herself primly in her seat, and held tight, breathless hands with Roes on one side and Cwyn on the other, she couldn't help but catch her breath, just to watch Torrant and Aylan heave, and the play and ripple of their young, strong bodies, tan and beautiful in the sun.
And back they pushed, and back, until the swing was poised as far back as it would go on the crest of the hill, and only their shoes and gravity gave them any indication of how high they would fly when the boys let …
Trieste's shriek was sound and healthy and full of laughter, and again as they went backwards, and again as they went forwards and again and again and again until she was sorry to see that the giant swing had played itself out, and there was no more pitching forward as high as high. She and the others laughed and babbled, and Yarri in particular took delight in the fact that Trieste squealed more than Starry, but Trieste didn't care. It had been terrifying, exhilarating, and beautiful, and it had made her feel brave and happy and free.
Torrant sang that night, his voice shining sweetly under the throbbing stars, and when he was done, Trieste seized his hand and pulled him into the dark. She was rushed and hurried for a moment grabbing at his trousers and thrusting her hands under his shirt just to feel the softness of his skin and his gasp in the night.
He slowed her down by seizing her hands and kissing them, and then seizing her mouth with hers, and the sound he made in the back of his throat was hungry and rewarded for the sweetness of her taste. In a moment, he had her back against a tree and his hands running up her legs, from the ticklish skin of her ankles to the tender skin of her thighs and with a few swipes of cloth and the delicious feeling of his hands on her bottom, parting her, readying her …
Oh, joy … he was inside her, and her legs were wrapped around his waist and she could see his face, enraptured and beautiful in the moonlight … in a moment there was another breathless kiss, and he moved, and she groaned and he moved some more, and then it became imperative that he move faster, so he fell back onto the soft grass of the hill at his back, keeping her with him. Her moan of excitement was so deep, it resonated in the core of her, against his own body, and he anchored her hips with his hands and thrust and thrust and thrust while she raked his chest with her nails and cried joyously into the night.
They were not the first ones home by any stretch, and Torrant almost moaned aloud when he saw Aylan, on the davenport, holding a sleeping Starry on his lap, while Cwyn slept, mouth parted in a little-boy snore, with his head on Aylan's thigh.
Trieste was still humming, vibrating with the excitement of their lovemaking, and Torrant was throbbing in tune with her—he knew after their hushed and flurried escape down the stairs there would be more of the starlight slick pleasure, and he was as eager as she was to dive back into the world of beautiful moans and chilled, shivery skin.
But she would wait, Torrant thought with a little sigh and a smile. He kissed her, tasted her tongue, himself on her tongue, her eagerness, and barely pulled back to stick a giggly nose into the soft haven of her neck and urge her down the stairs without him. She tripped hurriedly, and he turned to Aylan.
With a grunt, and a solid bracing of his legs under his back, he shoved his hands under Cwyn's heavy eight-year old body and lifted the little boy off to his room in the back of the house. When he came back, he offered his arms out for Starry, and was only a little surprised when Aylan shook his head.
"The night is still wilding, brother," Torrant said gently, "And you can be out in it."
Aylan's smile and the softening of his lavender eyes as he shook his head 'no' made Torrant remember it had been a near thing, his choice of Trieste as his first lover.
"No?" Torrant asked, extending his arms again. "You know, it's not like I'm counting, but I don't think you've been with … anyone since …" he frowned, "since that girl with the rash." Aylan's mouth and eyes were no longer soft, and Torrant had a sudden shrewd thought. "She didn't have a rash, did she?” he asked, certain of the answer.
"Not now, Torrant," Aylan murmured, running a big, work roughened hand down the back of Starry's bright red hair. "Just …" He looked fondly at the sleeping child in his arms. "She calls me her 'music', and when I look at her …" he shook his head, "I hear that song, that one you wrote that first night here—I didn't tell you when you were practicing it back at school because you were trying to keep it a secret, but it was the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. And I look at her, and I hear it, only … only larger, and played by a chorus of Triane's best stars … and …" He looked at Torrant helplessly and shrugged. "I can get bedmates any time, brother," he said at last, "But this …" his arms wrapped more securely around Starren, "This … music … I can only get here."
Torrant was touched, to the point that as he was walking away, he bent his head towards Aylan's and put a tender hand on his blonde stubbled cheek. Aylan leaned into the unexpected caress and was even more surprised when Torrant placed a soft kiss at his opposite temple. "I hear you, brother," he whispered, the sound sending a shiver up Aylan's spine. "I hear you." He straightened, and both of them pretended to ignore Aylan's little sound of incompletion as he walked back towards the stairs. When he got there, he turned back towards that lovely male face, soft and wanting in the lamplight.
"And Aylan?" He waited until his friend met his eyes and he knew he had his absolute attention. "I wouldn't mention the 'music' thing to Lane for a couple of years, right?"
And leaving him with a puzzled expression on his face, Torrant ran down the stairs to where Trieste's warm, willing, waiting presence was even more desired than it had been when they arrived.

We'll Say Farewell in Summer …

At the end of things, Trieste really only spent three summers with the Moon household, but it was enough to fall in love with the sea and the land of Eiran, and, of course, the Moon family. She came to love Cwyn's precociousness (but not enough to let him lift up her skirt during their second summer), and his way of making the world conform to his specifications—he had the neatest room in the Moon house. She came to adore Starry's sweetness, the easy way she had of sitting back and watching what the world would do around her before she responded, and her sudden fierceness when her family was threatened. She enjoyed Stanny's easy smile, and the way he was always at her elbow to help even when she hadn't thought she'd need any, and she often wondered how she had lived without Roes' gruff, tart-tongued friendship. And of course Lane and Bethen filled a dark, empty place in her stomach she had never known she had.
And now, the beginning of her first summer without the Moon family, that dark, empty place threatened to engulf her.
She and Aylan had made it through finals with a minimum of fuss and a little studying, and she was now an official commodity—a noble with an education and a pedigree, and her fate had been reprieved long enough.
Now, she stood in her small dorm, reflecting at how bare the room was now she had removed all traces of herself, and how odd it was that most of those traces—the throw Bethen had made her one Solstice, the cross-stitch Roes had given her the last summer, the small set of wooden figures Torrant had bought her for no reason at all during a family visit to Otham one summer because there had been ten of them. The genders had corresponded, and he had named them Bethen and Lane and Aldam and Torrant and Trieste and Roes and Starry and Cwyn and Yarri and even Aylan, with the curly hair. All of these things she loved had been given to her by her lover and his family. She thought, almost in panic that they had become her family now as well, and she might never see any of them again. On this thought, even with the bright sunshine outside streaming into her little room, she laid her head against the window pane of the room she had lived in for most of the past eleven years and mourned. What if, she thought dismally, the little basement in the crowded Moon house would always be her home?
There was a tentative knock at her door. She murmured a scant 'come in', and was surprised when Torrant entered, smiling shyly. They had said their goodbyes—in a spectacular fashion which would leave her breathless for years just thinking about—two nights earlier, after finals and before Trieste really had to pack—when they could still pretend that they had ever really belonged to each other.
"Hello, Pretty Trieste," he murmured with that still-devastating smile, and she rolled her eyes. Nearly four years they'd known each other, and he still couldn't convince her that she was beautiful. She'd remarked tartly only a few weeks before, that it didn't help that her acne scars hadn't all faded, and he'd brushed her cheeks with his thumb curiously, saying, "I haven't noticed them since that first day we met," and she'd wanted to cry, because he was telling the truth and she still wouldn't believe him.
"What are you doing here?” she asked, but not coldly—standing in her bare room, waiting to see her parents' coach pull up to take her away from everything she knew, Torrant and his unspeakably beautiful face and voice were probably the best comfort a girl could ask for.
"I haven't given you your wedding present." He smiled that smile which made the grooves at his mouth pop out and the dimple in his cheek deepen.
He had offered to save her from her fate—to elope with her to the sea and live for years in handfast until nobody had heard of her, and she could go out and choose her own life. She had refused—not because the idea wasn't tempting but because, even unspoken in the offer, was the fact that he still wouldn't give Yarri up, not even to save her from her fate with Alec of Otham. At least, she'd thought to herself at the time, Alec was her fate—Torrant obviously never had been.
Now she smiled. "I can hardly wait … gold, silver, jewels?" Gifts had been arriving at the school for months—they had just shipped them off to Otham via coach the week before. They weren't from people she knew, so she hadn't opened any of them, but then she hadn't needed to open them to know the feel of what was inside.
His smile became a little shyer, and a little more wonderful, like the boy she had gazed at four summers ago, as the sun set behind the mountain. "No, Pretty Trieste—truth." And with that, he advanced on her, putting his hands on her cheeks, brushing her elegant cheekbones with his thumbs, and pulling her mouth to his in their very, very last kiss.
It shocked her, left her gasping for breath, even as she felt the tingle across her skin, across her cheekbones, re-setting, even slightly, the shape of her face.
Torrant pulled away and looked closely at her, smiling even wider, and offered her a small mirror, made by a friend in Eiran and inlaid with a crashing wave in mother-of-pearl. He wrapped her fingers around the handle, indicating that she should keep it, and kissed her temple. "Pretty Trieste," he murmured. "It's always been the truth—now you can just see what I see. Take care, Pretty Girl."
And with that he was gone, leaving her staring at her own reflection in surprise, touching her own cheeks lightly with her fingertips, exploring a face which was pale and pure and unscarred, even by the tiniest freckle or mole. Touching the tears on her perfect cheeks, Trieste reveled in this one, last gift.

Aylan and Aldam were waiting for him in the hallway to see if he'd need help back to his dorms. He was a little wobbly, in truth—it had been a subtly great use of his gift, and when Aylan and Aldam threw arms around his shoulders and waist in a show of brotherly support he was grateful.
"So what am I going to call her," Aylan wanted to know, "now that I can't call her 'Spots'?"
Torrant looked sideways at his friend, not tempted to scold him as he would have once, because he knew something of the depth of Aylan's heart now, and it wasn't to be measured by the sharpness of his tongue. Aylan would be working for Lane again this summer—would, in fact, be spending part of his time journeying to Otham and the Old Man Hills to find new and different things to ship to Eiran, and not just for the summer, either. After Aylan's first summer with the Moons, he had continued to receive letters from home—he never shared the content of the letters with Torrant, but during his second summer, he had an embarrassed, half-angry conversation with Torrant, and then a much humbler conversation with Lane. When he returned to school in autumn, he'd gone and spoken to Professor Gregor, who thenceforth addressed all letters to 'Aylan Stealth' returned. Nobody by that name attended Triannon anymore, and the people sending the letters would not have, in a thousand years, thought to send letters to 'Aylan Moon'.
"I think," Aldam said, breaking pragmatically into Torrant's musings on his friend, "That we shall have to call her Queen Trieste of Otham. Otherwise we might not be allowed to speak."
Aylan looked sourly at Aldam, who had grown in height and breadth these last four years, but only very little in the world-weariness Aylan had needed to fight off continually when he was not with Torrant and his family. "And I think if it came down to it, she'd rather prefer 'Spots'," he said with a grimace, and Torrant nodded, trying and failing to take some of his own weight. He had forgotten how much actually changing something took out of him, even if the change was only to expose the true beauty inside.
"I think you're right," he said quietly. "But I don't think we're going to see her often enough to worry about it. Now let's get back and finish packing—remember Beltane's the day after tomorrow, so we have to make it by tomorrow evening." It had been his idea to wait—he was pretty sure Yarri would forgive him one less day before Beltane. She had become very fond of Trieste in the last four years.
"The way you're walking, that means we pack and you sleep," Aylan grunted. "I can't believe they think you're such a god of industry at the warehouse."
"And I can't believe you'd whine about it when you're the one who started calling me that in the first place!" Torrant retorted as they entered the dorm and he managed to sit on his own bed with some dignity. Or, what had been his bed for four years. He and Aldam weren't returning to the university proper. They were being sent, as Gregor had promised, to the Old Man Hills to intern as healers—or, rather, to work independently as healers while the only man who claimed to heal in the Old Man Hills tended his goats and sheep. The university tried to keep the outlying areas supplied with students, because the population of the hills tended to shy away from education, and anything that smacked of civilization. Or too many people. Or sometimes, basic hygiene.
Since Torrant and Aldam were attending for an extra year, they were actually ideal for the job—and would be as long as they chose to stay in the hills—but it didn't mean the idea of being on their own, tending to a whole new strange area with its own customs and ideas was not a little frightening.
"Yes, well, you try attending school with someone who took two whole courses of study while you barely mastered one—I swear, if we didn't have three moons already, another one would raise itself in the sky to honor your hot-burning driving ambition to be something that doesn't even have a name yet." While Aylan was complaining about Torrant's hard work, he himself was finishing with the packing, handling Torrant's clothes with the ease born of familiarity. Torrant had to smile a little at what a domestic picture his friend made, folding his breeches and his shirts as easily as Trieste had in the years earlier, if not as neatly.
"He has a name," Aldam said quietly, doing his own share of packing—it was amazing how many small things could accrete in the corners of a small room in four years time.
"Right—'Torrant', I think we've covered that!" Torrant laughed, giving his shaky legs a go and deciding to sit for a bit more.
"No—your destiny name," Aldam continued serenely, and Torrant and Aylan met eyes, wondering what he had in mind.
"And it would be …" Aylan finally prompted, when Aldam seemed content to let the matter lie.
"You said it yourself, I can't believe you don't remember—you called him Triane's Son." Aldam was mildly surprised.
"You weren't even there, were you?" Aylan tried to remember the moment.
"No—but Torrant told me later—I thought it was perfect."
"And I thought it was a crock!" Torrant laughed, and deciding this had gone far enough, he finally stood up to add some weight to his words.
"That's because you haven't figured out what Triane's Son was meant to do yet," Aldam continued, with the same irritating serenity. "It will come."
Torrant sighed and nudged Aylan out of the way so he could re-fold his knitted throws. "What will come is tomorrow, if we don't get a move on—and I don't want to let Yarri down." And for the moment, the matter was dropped.

Yarri's dress had red flowers on it for Beltane—unlike Roes, she did not wear hers with pride.
"I'm still short," she sniffed dourly, when Torrant congratulated her on her newly emerging womanhood, "And my boobs are too big and they get in the way, and bleeding like a dying chicken doesn't make me a woman."
Torrant, who had his arm looped around her shoulders as they were walking towards the Beltane Faire, had to stop and gasp for breath he was trying so hard not to laugh. "Well, it doesn't make you dinner!” he choked at last, and Yarri just shook her head in disgust.
"Are you coming home this year?” she asked sharply, and he shook his head in bemusement, because she knew as well as he did that he had another year—probably more—practicing healing in the Old Man Hills.
"No …"
"Are you coming home next year?” she asked, her eyes narrow and her chin as mutinous as he'd ever seen it.
"Yarri," he said gently, surprised they even had to talk about this, "You know I'm not coming home until … until …"
"Until I'm old enough to marry." Her narrowed brown eyes were sparking with temper and with tears, and he never could lie to her, not even when she was six and he was sure their family was dead.
"Yes, Yarrow Moon," he murmured, stepping forward and taking her two hands in his. "I'm not coming home for good until you and I are old enough to see … to see if the fact that my heart beats for you, and you alone, through time and other lovers means we are destined to be, and see that your heart will beat for me in the same rhythm, the rhythm which sets the sun in the sky, and the moons on course, and teaches the birds to flirt shamelessly in the shade of the green-budding trees."
Yarri looked at him tensely, to see if he was mocking her, making fun of her because of her youth, and then she saw his mouth, although turned up, was tense at the sides, and that his eyes, a hazel clear as a tree silhouetted by the day, were bright with the pain of waiting. And suddenly, a syncopated thunder started in her ears, and her blood rushed under her skin, flushing her until even the tip of her nose tingled with her shortened breaths and waterfall heart. Her mouth formed a little 'oh' as she remembered everything she knew about what a man and a woman did with their bodies when they were grown, and she was suddenly aware that these things were the things she was waiting to do with the man who had been her friend and her brother since she shivered her first wail in the world. Torrant was a grown man, with a grown man's body, and smooth skin over a grown man's muscles. Oh … oh gods, the thought was terrifying, and she took a step back because she was too young to want these things, and her body was afraid before she could even remember she was angry because she was too young to want this very tingling, this very throbbing thing which sat between the two of them.
Torrant nodded as she stepped back, and his eyes suddenly sparkled with wry laughter, and he swept a gallant bow, there on the main avenue to the Beltane Faire.
"Miss Yarri, would you do the honor of accompanying me to the faire?” he asked formally, and Yarri nodded slowly, picking up on his mood, his cues, and his complete willingness to allow her room to grow before the throbbing burn between them took spark and conflagrated their two hearts into one.
"It would be my pleasure," she bowed back to him and stepped into his still-brotherly arm around her shoulders. "And if we get there before Cwyn starts sticking his head up the ladies blouses, we might even get to hear Aunt Bethen tell a story or two before she carts him off."
Torrant was surprised, again, into laughter. "Triane's toes, is he doing that now? What a complete little terror!"
"Gods!" Yarri snorted. "It's funny—Starry follows him around like she's completely worshipping his horrid little self, but we figured out that what she's really doing is warning people off him and cueing in the adults when he goes completely 'round the bend. And because she's warned him first, always very matter of fact without whining or bribing, or any of that 'I'll tell' nonsense other kids do, he never holds it against her. He gets mad at the grown-ups, but never at her."
Torrant's laughter rang through the now empty little town—they had taken their time getting ready that morning, and were among the last to walk to the green. "Little maniac … he is going to be some serious trouble when gets to his teens—he's got Ellyot written all over him."
"But Ellyot wasn't a complete little pervert wastrel," Yarri corrected, and Torrant shook his head.
"No—it was never girls, or boys for that matter, but do you remember when Tal and Qir were giving him grief about his riding, and he set the beehive where they'd run into it?"
Yarri was quiet for a moment—so quiet Torrant stopped and turned his head to read her expression in the late morning light.
"You do remember … I mean you were only three, but …"
Yarri shook her head, slowly, an expression of such profound sorrow crossing her face that Torrant's breath actually stopped in his chest for a moment, as he wondered what would cause her such pain.
"I don't really," she said at last, when their quiet footsteps crunched quietly on the dirt road for a couple of patters. "They're … my memories of them, Torrant … they're getting dim … I tried to remember, the other day, the shape of my mother's eyes, to see if I got mine from her, or from Owen, and I couldn't … I had to look at those pictures we made … and then, I could only remember what she looked like in that moment we drew the picture, and …"
"Yarri, calm down …" Because her voice was becoming more and more distraught as she kept talking.
"But I can't, because they seem to live for you, you seem to look behind you or around your shoulder, and just … just see them, and I can't anymore, I can't … and I'm afraid … I'm afraid they're all we have between us and if I don't have them anymore …" she gasped, holding on so hard to the sobs that were threatening her that her breath was forced out hard, and hard again, "if I don't have them anymore …" and now Torrant was well and truly alarmed, because the morning which started off on such a gay note of happy laughter, and a rare moment between the two of them, looked as though it might devolve into the unthinkable, and which Yarri, who was as tough a person as Torrant had ever known, might actually cry before they got to the faire.
"What, my dearling?” he asked a little desperately, "What will happen if you don't …"
"If I don't have them anymore," she gasped again, "then we won't have them between us," gasp, "and then," gasp, "I won't have youuuuuuuuuu!!!!!!!" Wail, wail, wail, and suddenly Torrant was holding Yarri next to his heart and comforting her like the child he didn't think she'd ever been, until she was nothing but a spasm of hiccups and sweaty, messy hair around her face, and he was the kind older brother who would die before she hurt.
"Yarri, my dear one," he said, when she was down to some shaky breaths and rubbing futilely at her ruined, braided, glorious autumn colored hair to calm it down. Her breath wasn't calming, and she was still hiccupping, so he shook her shoulders a little to make her look at him again. "Yarri, are you listening?"
Yarri nodded soberly, and Torrant gave a sigh of relief. Anything, anything, but to see her cry. "Yarri, we are family—you are afraid right now, because, what if? Right? What if you fall in love with some wanker who's not good enough for you and not me, will you still have me? What if I had married Trieste instead of sending her off to her toady husband in Otham—and you like Trieste, so you were probably hoping for a happy ending for her that didn't involve me and couldn't think of one, right? So what if that? What if that moon-destined nonsense is really just horse patties and dirty straw, and we will never be lovers and then what? We'll just be without each other because you're not old enough now and I'll be too old then, right?"
She took a deep, shuddering breath and let it out, meeting his eyes with miserable brown eyes of her own.
"Well, dearest, it's not going to happen. If you marry some wank and I fall for Goddess-gives-a-flying-fish, it doesn't matter. We will be you and I, Yarri and Torrant, for all of our lives, you understand?" She shrugged a little, and he shook her shoulders a little, laughing in his desperation to have her believe him. "Do. You. Understand?” he asked with a little shake on each word, and the corners of her mouth turned up.
"Yes. Idiot. I. Understand,” she replied with a self-conscious sniff. "I'm not dim … or Aylan, who's so in awe of family he practically wets himself when he comes over to dinner."
Torrant sighed, and wrapped his arm more securely around her shoulders, glad that one crisis at least had passed. "You need to give Aylan the benefit of the doubt," he said after a few steps. "He knows you're loyal to family, and he knows family is in your heart—really, that's the only lesson you need."
"Yes?" Yarri asked seriously, listening to him as though his opinion were the only one that mattered.
"Yes!” he replied firmly, because for this very moment, while his opinion did matter, he wanted her to believe that, if she believed nothing else. Together, they continued their way to the faire.
When lunch was over and after his turns manning the swings, he did, indeed, get to listen to Bethen's stories—which she told with her arms wrapped firmly around her most precocious child in a display of motherly affection that fooled no one. She simply wasn't going to allow him out of her grasp long enough to get into any trouble. When she was done, Lane took over by taking Cwyn and Starry to the carnival games with the tiny trebuchets and buckets of water filled with wooden ducks. At Starry's insistence (and no one's surprise—she rarely let Aylan out of her sight during the summer) she made Aylan accompany them, which he did gratefully. Torrant knew Aylan had much to talk about with Lane, and that some details would remain secret, even at summer's end.
Yarri and Roes were surrounded by a group of girls Torrant barely recognized, all of them chattering over Yarri's reluctantly worn red flowers. Stanny and Aldam were off to help hoist the ribbon pole, although Aldam and Roes had been in the throes of intense conversation since the three young men had returned the night before. Roes was of age for her first wilding—and she wanted Aldam there. Aldam was gallantly trying to insist she participate in the wilding with someone who hadn't been gazing at her with stars in his eyes for the last six years, and Roes was maintaining stubbornly that she would wild with Aldam or no one at all.
Bethen was stoically staying out of the dispute—in spite of Roes' constant begging to her mother to make Aldam see reason—and everybody had the good sense not mention the affair in front of Lane, who was not eager to think of his daughter involved in any sort of wilding at all. So it was now, as the sunlight slid drunkenly sideways and twilight began a lazy stretch towards the other horizon, that Bethen, who had not seen her foster son the night before because she'd been out nursing a sick friend, took her moment to edge up to her Torrant and 'have a chat'.
"I like your hair," she smiled, the lines gathering at her eyes a little more firmly than they had seven years ago, when she'd first taken them under her wing. Her hair was grayer now as well, but her eyes still sparkled fiercely. She brushed the artfully ragged edges of his hair with her fingers as it framed his face, and he grinned back, a little abashed.
"Yarri complained," he murmured, and Bethen snorted an 'of course' kind of sound. "She doesn't like change."
"No—there's only one change she's really interested in," Bethen agreed, "And it's one you can't rush." She grimaced. "Just ask Roes and Aldam, who have been both rushing for that change and fighting it off with swords and sharp words." She paused for a moment, and Torrant nodded, trying hard to keep the impatience out of his own expression, and he was reassured by her warm smile that said his frustration was normal. "But it's fine to be a little impatient, darling— Yarri's adulthood will mean the rest of your life can start. One way or the other, it's all you're waiting for."
"You're very wise, Auntie Beth," he teased, just to lighten the moment, and he loved the way her smile split her wide, round face with delight. She was as beautiful as any girl he'd ever seen when his Auntie Beth smiled like that.
"You're very good at kissing up," she retorted, and then, more soberly, "We'll miss Trieste in the summers."
Torrant's expression was not sad, exactly, but it was a little nostalgic. "Trieste, I'm sure, will miss coming here during the summers," he said diplomatically.
"But you will not miss her as much as you think you should," Bethen said wisely, and smiled when his grimace proved her right.
"I loved Trieste," he said honestly, but still, looking for another word besides love because what he felt towards Trieste was a sort of quiet, muted thing compared to what he felt for his family, and for Yarri, "But … sometimes I think the one thing we had in common was that we were both going to end up with someone else."
Bethen laughed then, a giggle, like a gossiping girl. "You should speak at councils, boy-o—that was the most horrid thing, said in the most diplomatic way, so I can't believe she'll be your only lover in the next four years."
Torrant's mouth quirked up, and he took Bethen's arm to lead her towards the games, where they could watch Cwyn try to bite a rubber ball in a rain-barrel. "I don't think that's something I can plan," he said at last, and he caught Bethen's sideways look through hair which had caught fire in the westering sun.
"I had thought," she said delicately, "you and Aylan might keep each other company this summer." And now Torrant really did flush.
"He doesn't take lovers in the summer," he blurted in frustration, and watched, her several blinks and sharp intake of breath, as she put together all she'd known of Aylan in the last three years to find the same conclusion.
"Why ever not?” she asked in wonder, and Torrant almost kicked himself, because he'd managed to keep this secret from Lane for three years. "What? Why won't he take lovers here?" Bethen was asking, and Torrant finally turned to meet her nakedly curious gaze.
"Music," he said at last, simply. "He hears music with Starren … he just can't bring himself to leave that music, that's all."
Bethen's eyes grew enormous, dark brown and young. "No," she breathed, and Torrant nodded. "No?" And again, another nod. "Noooooo …"
"I'm afraid so," he finished, and Bethen's laugh/sob was comi-tragic.
"How long have you known?” she demanded, and Torrant shrugged.
"Practically from that first night Aylan visited—remember what Starry said?"
Bethen closed her eyes for a moment, and grimaced. "She said 'my music, I knew my music would come,'"
"Yes." There was nothing more to say.
But Bethen was perceptive in these matters, and she cocked her head quizzically. "You still hearing bells, sweetheart?"
Torrant grunted, and shrugged good-naturedly. Of course Lane had told her. "Jingling bells, chiming bells, xylophone music, big thundering cathedral bells— Yarri has always been bells."
Bethen grimaced—she was fully sympathetic, knowing Torrant suffered the same agonies she had, when she had been oh so much younger. "Bastards have no idea what they do to us, do they? Poor Trieste—she never had a chance."
Torrant laughed out loud then, and bent down to plant a kiss on Bethen's cheek. That's when they saw Cwyn, high up on the town's best climbing tree and defying his father's exasperated orders to come down, off in the distance. "Yes, Auntie Beth—you, me, Aldam, Aylan—we're doomed from the start, but that's fine. I think we like it. And don't worry about Trieste—I'm pretty sure she'll land on her feet."
Bethen looked at him wryly and nodded, and then both of them broke into a jog, hollering at Cwyn to come down as they went.
Later that evening, Torrant found himself, Cwyn, Starren, and Yarri, in the family room playing dice games with Aylan. When they'd turned for home, they'd last seen Stanny and Evya, the little girl with the flyaway dark who could not seem to leave Stanny be, even though he wasn't the richest, or smartest, or most handsome young man in the village, dancing comfortably near the wilding bonfire. Roes and Aldam had apparently reached … detente. They had been dancing by the bonfire, looking in each other's eyes as though dancing would not be the only thing they planned, but their wilding was by no means a certainty. After seeing that their older children had seemed to resolve their own romances with neither trauma nor heartbreak, Lane and Bethen had, with sly smiles and blushes, asked Aylan and Torrant to take the younger ones home before disappearing completely. Aylan had remarked in Torrant's hearing only that it gave him hope, watching the two of them disappear like frolicking children.
"Since you won't bunk me, maybe someone else will want to when I'm not young and pretty anymore," he'd said dryly, and Torrant had socked him solidly in the arm.
"You'll always be pretty, you wank," he'd snapped, hoping Cwyn couldn't hear him and repeat the word, "And you don't bunk anyone during the summertime anyway, so I don't know why you're whining!"
Aylan stopped walking so abruptly that Starry, who had him by the hand, actually outpaced him and yanked on his arm before she realized he'd stopped. At her look back, impatient and wry in all of her seven-year-old glory, he kept walking again, but his look to Torrant was sideways and thoughtful.
"And if I did?” he asked quietly after they'd entered the house and sent Yarri with the younger children for games.
Torrant looked up from where he was lighting the lamp, and noticed for the first time in a while how Aylan's razor cheekbones cast shadows against his cheeks, and how his full lower lip pouted, and how even in the lamplight of the summer, his eyes were so blue they were purple. "If you did what?” he replied, knowing the answer but wanting to hear Aylan say it.
"If I did bunk people in the summer … there's no Trieste, I've left no one pining for me—if I did take summer lovers, here in your family's home …"
"What?" Torrant asked, trying for all innocence, but knowing that his heart was thundering in his stomach and below.
"Would you say yes?" Aylan took a step closer to him—close enough that Torrant could smell the sweat of both of them, and the dust. Instead of being unpleasant, it was animal and compelling and he wanted it.
"Tonight, while the world is a-wilding around us?" Torrant all but whispered, suddenly wanting his friend so much his skin swelled with it.
Aylan took a step closer just as Torrant stood up, and still Torrant had to look up into his eyes, and still they were beautiful and his friend was magnetic and Torrant was iron. "Yes, Torrant, while the world is a-wilding around us," Aylan whispered roughly, his voice begging Torrant not to toy with him, "Would you say yes, if I asked you to my bed?"
The moment thudded between them, and again, and Torrant knew both of their bodies were bursting and aching with the thing they wanted but had denied themselves for four years. He took in his breath to answer, and at that very moment, when he would have leaned forward, to touch his own sensitive lips to Aylan's finely sculpted, exquisite mouth, Starry ran in and jerked Aylan's hand, oblivious to the currents around her.
"Come on, Aylan!” she pleaded, and as always, Aylan was helpless to deny her anything at all.
"Yes, Littlest," he murmured easily. "Just let me grab the berries from the cold-box, and we can snack as we play."
When he looked up again, stricken and exasperated, Torrant had moved towards the doorway, and was looking back at his friend with good natured longing and complete understanding in his eyes. "Yes, Aylan," he said softly into the cocoon of silence which still seemed to throb around the two of them, "If you took lovers in the summer time, this summer, I would be happy to fall into your bed." He smiled then, the crooked smile with the crinkled lip, and the smile tortured Aylan as much as his next words. "It's too bad that you don't take lovers in the summer."
Aylan's sigh was mighty and frustrated and relieved, because Torrant had taken the choice from his shoulders when he wasn't sure what he would have chosen, and together they went into the front room to play rounds and rounds of innocent games with children (in spite of Yarri's red flowers) and to retire, each to his own bed.

The next morning Aylan was driven out of his bed on the davenport (where he ended up sleeping, more often than not, simply because Starry complained bitterly if he tried to move to his allotted room in Stanny's flat) by what he was prepared to admit was sheer frustration. He could not count the number of times he had awakened, swung his feet over the edge of the couch, fully prepared to venture to the downstairs bedroom and show Torrant what the two of them had been missing all this time, but had, after a solid moment's hesitation, put his head back on his pillow and fallen into a fitful sleep.
He had been awakened in the dark of the night by Lane and Bethen, giggling like children as they returned late to their own bed, and then a few hours later by a sudden worry for Aldam and Roes. Only the thought that they had probably taken his room in Stanny's flat this night allowed him to go back to his fitful sleep.
When the sun poured through the kitchen window, lighting the dark and cool living room through the doorway, he could bear it no more and ventured into the kitchen to eat the thick bread and tart berries Bethen had set out when she'd returned the night before. He had thought he wouldn't be able to eat, but he was young and put in a good day's work at Lane's warehouse, and he had to concede that since Roes made the bread, it was well worth eating. He was on his second piece, slathered in butter and jam, when Bethen plumped next to him with surprising grace for a large woman, and reached over him for the bowl of blackberries, grabbing a handful and munching happily. She was wearing a cotton wrapper around what looked like one of her husband's oldest shirts, and cheerfully ignored the fact that he was sitting at her table bare-chested and in his lightly woven underwear. Her hair, a fuzzy mixture of red and gray, fell around her round, freckled face in soft waves, and he had a sudden thought that to Lane, she must look seven kinds of beautiful.
"You slept like hell," she murmured, eyeing him wisely, and he grimaced, but blunt was Bethen Moon's style. "You should have followed Torrant downstairs, and then you both would have slept better."
Aylan made a protesting sound in his throat and shoved another bite of bread and butter in his mouth. Bethen had always treated him warmly, just as she'd treated Trieste and Torrant and Aldam, and he'd tried to leave her with the impression that he was a good, respectful boy. These were decent people, he'd said that first year, and every year they had taken him into their home, with their loved ones and their livelihood without reservations and without prejudices. He never wanted that first opinion of him to change.
"Do you think I don't see you lusting after him, dear boy? We don't hold with the same twists to old fashioned lust that they do in the Jeweled Lands. It's fine to have a go at lust, if that's what you want."
Aylan swallowed the big wad of bread in his mouth and it landed in his stomach like a lead ball. "He's the best friend I've got …" He thought dismally of the name he'd burnt into a bowl of ashes during his first year of school, "And he's the closest thing to family I'll ever have."
Bethen smacked him upside the head, hard enough to put stars in his eyes and make him glad he had already swallowed his bread. "Dueant's crispy testicles, woman!" He rubbed his head gingerly and glared at the mild looking woman in shock.
Bethen's unrepentant grin took him back a notch. "Do you know, Aylan Moon, that's the first time in four years I've actually heard you swear? I've heard the new words you've taught Cwyn, but not once have you let me hear you …"
"So?"
She stood up, tightening her worn cotton wrapper around her and moved his hand from the sore spot on his head, then bent down and very gently kissed his smarting scalp through his soft gold curls with all of the mothering in her formidable soul. "So, Aylan Moon," she murmured against his ear, holding his head as though she was hugging Starry and telling her the boogie man wasn't coming, "You're one of ours now—as long as you act out of love, there's no way you can make a mistake so bad that we won't forgive you for it. If you had followed Torrant downstairs and rid yourself of a little frustration—and taught that boy a thing or two about lust I think he still needs to learn—the world would not have flipped on its axis, and the moons would still rise in the sky. And you would still have a place here, Aylan, because this here is your home. And until you make your own home somewhere, and surround yourself with a family who loves you, we will always be your home. So don't be too afraid to swear—although do try not to get Cwyn into more trouble than necessary, yes? And don't be afraid to make mistakes here. Here is where you're safe." Bethen straightened and went to the cold box, pulling out a glass pitcher of milk that had been kept low and near the chunk of ice at the bottom, and then poured a mug for both of them.
Aylan sat at the table, blinking and stunned. "I … it was just a name …" he murmured, not trying to be insulting but trying to explain that she didn't need to be like this, didn't need to mother him. His own mother hadn't said more than a handful of phrases to him since he'd left for school, not much older than Cwyn.
"Too damned bad," Bethen replied mildly, taking a deep draught of milk. She tried to wipe away the milk-mustache, but there was still some at the corners of her mouth, and Aylan tried not to grin when she turned to him. She saw it though, and laughed a little, and wiped her mouth unrepentantly on her sleeve, then took the bread that Aylan had laid on the table unheeded and took a bite out of it, then gave it back. She spoke again, staring contemplatively at her milk. "Torrant brought you home with him for a reason, you know. That boy hasn't asked for a thing from us, not once in eight years of living here as family, but he asked for the two of you to find a place here. I'll miss Trieste too—I'll miss her a lot, boy-o, don't mistake me." She drained the milk and looked at Aylan sideways to see if he had lost his stunned expression. He hadn't, so she set her ceramic mug down on the scarred wooden table with a little thump and picked fitfully at the berries, munching to make him comfortable more than to fill her stomach. "But I'd miss you more, Aylan, because you need us more. There's no promise of a kingdom and a rich old man out there to take care of you."
She looked at him full on now, and he looked back nakedly, almost in tears. She reached out a motherly hand to his cheek and cupped it, accepting the weight of his head as he leaned into her touch. "I read it in your eyes the moment you walked through my door and took charge of my youngest child, Aylan Moon—you would treat her as though she was made of glass, because you know what it feels like to shatter. Well, darling—I know you and Lane have been plotting and planning, and talking politics and things that men assume women can't manage, even the best men like my beloved. But you need to know that no matter where you fall, no matter what you do to get crushed, my boy, this family will be here to pick up the pieces. Do you hear me?"
Aylan nodded against her hand and swallowed, hard, and then summoned up his most rakish grin from the bottom of his toes. "I hear you, Bethen my darling," he said lightly through his tears. "But I wish you'd told me this last night— it'll be another year before I can talk that boy into my bed again."
Bethen laughed sweetly and patted his cheek. "Well, maybe it wasn't meant to be," she murmured. "Now I'd best get back into bed myself—the children promised to let us sleep in this morning and I'd hate for them to be deprived of their good deed." She stood and kissed the top of his head again, then padded quietly back down the hall. It wasn't until years later that Aylan realized that she had stayed up all night, just to talk to him.

Trieste Lands on Her Feet

Trieste paced nervously in the King's study, waiting for her husband to come down so they could meet the assemblage of nobles invited for their wedding feast as a couple.
It was a nice room, she thought abstractedly. The paneling was cherry-wood and the furniture pale colored leather. Tapestries hung on the wall, and although she was too abstracted to study the scenes, she saw they had a lot of blue and green in them. Blue was her favorite color—it automatically put her at ease.
The wedding had gone without a hitch, considering her parents got her to Otham precisely two hours before the ceremony, hurriedly dressed her in froth and, with a harsh admonition not to make a fool of them (coincidentally one of maybe six or eight sentences they'd said to her from the moment they picked her up), shoved her down the aisle of the Twin's Temple. She hadn't actually seen the groom for the amount of froth in her eyes, until the priest had intoned, "If you vow honor and compassion to one another, you may kiss each other in joy," and suddenly the froth in front of her eyes was lifted by two fine-boned hands and she had seen …
Well, it had been a surprise, that's for certain.
Alec of Otham was neither old nor ugly. In fact, he possessed perfectly ordinary brown eyes, with crinkles at the corners that, she had learned from watching Torrant and Lane and Bethen, indicated he liked to smile quite a lot. His face was clean featured, with a rather bold nose, but a nice square jaw to balance, and hair that had probably been blonde in his youth but was brownish now, with little streaks of silver here and there. With a shock, she realized that he was positively handsome, and the nearly twenty year age difference did nothing at all to make that go away. They hadn't had a chance to say much to each other—they'd kissed, in a friendly, impersonal way, then they'd greeted the assembly, got showered in flower petals and driven past cheering crowds in a carriage drawn by four horses obviously descended from Torrant's monster back in the Eiran stables.
When they arrived at the castle (which was made of peach colored granite with lots of turrets in the air and marble on the floor and brass fixtures that sparkled cheerily) they were ushered to their separate, if adjoined, rooms by a very nervous steward who kept insisting they only had a few moments to dress before he disappeared. (Trieste had needed help with that, but the girl they assigned to be her ladies maid had been sturdy, no-nonsense, and kind, and had reminded Trieste a lot of Roes, so she had done well with being waited on.) Alec had leaned in as the steward left, told her to meet him in his study with a voice that was surprisingly deep and decidedly pleasant, and, well, here she was.
Why not his bedroom? She wondered nervously, trying not to bite at her thumbnail. He had every right—they both knew he was going to have to use that ominous door that evening … the servants would gossip if he didn't. Why not his bedroom?
"I'm sorry …" said that same deep, pleasant voice, and she whirled, gasping, to find her groom entering diffidently into his own study. "I didn't want to presume …" he said with a shy smile and a little duck to his head—he was tall and she could tell that he fought against sloping his shoulders a lot.
"Presume?” she asked, pleased that her voice was strong.
"The bedroom thing …" he grimaced. "I know we're expected and all … and I really hope … hope we'll enjoy that … but …" He met her eyes then, that charming little grimace still in place. "I just thought I should have a conversation with a girl before insisting on my lordly rights in bed. Is that all right?"
Trieste found that she was smiling honestly, and she inclined her head with sincere gratitude. "That's wonderful," she said sincerely. "It was a very thoughtful thing to do."
Suddenly the nervous ducking stopped, and the grimace turned into an honest smile. "Thank you. That was … graciously said."
Trieste found she had a laugh, not the nervous type, ready in her belly. "Just to warn you, I'm not always … gracious. I can be all elbows and knees sometimes."
"Yes?" The smile turned into a grin, and her heart stuttered in her chest. "Me too. How are you on horseback?"
She grinned back. "Horrible—Torrant used to say it was like watching a kitten ride a fish."
He laughed, then said "Torrant?" with a gentle question, and Trieste felt a flush steal up over her entire body.
"My first …" she stammered, flushed some more, remembered a vow on a Solstice morning to be brave, and tried again. "My first lover," she said at last, and was more than surprised to see that Alec's smile hadn't dimmed.
"You've had other …"
“One …”
"You've had another lover?” he asked, without sounding angry or jealous or affronted or any of the things she had feared.
"Yes," she said quietly. "At Triannon."
"I'm so glad!" Alec said, walking towards her and looking more relaxed than he had since entering the room.
"I'm so surprised!” she replied frankly, and that grin really was starting to flutter her heart in the strongest way.
Alec shook his head and tried to explain. "My first wife died, and suddenly all my advisors were saying 'marry marry' and I just … chose the most advantageous match, that was all. And while I was waiting for you to come of age, I kept wondering about you—about how you felt about all this—you were like, what, fourteen? Fifteen? When we were betrothed?"
"Twelve," she answered softly. Right when a young girl begins to have romantic thoughts of the man she might marry.
"Right—so you see, I began to worry. I had taken this poor child, and sort of, condemned her to this life with me, and I couldn't back out of the contract—I mean, there was no reason on either side, and … it wasn't like I had fallen in love with someone else … but," he smiled, in a self-deprecating way. "But I began to hope, for your sake, that you got to have some things of your choosing in your life. And that included a lover—someone of your choice."
"Oh," Trieste murmured, truly speechless. What was there to say to a complete stranger who had just accurately read the last four years of her life?
"I hope," said Alec, looking uncertain again, "that … that he was a good man?
Trieste smiled, her eyes warming. "The best," she answered softly.
"Did you … uhm … learn from him?” he asked, and now he was flushing, because there could be no doubt that learn' had nothing to do with having met at University.
"I learned that kindness and laughter are comfortable bedmates," she said with a soft smile, and earned one from Alec in return.
"The best lesson I could ask for," he replied with a nod. Their eyes met then for a moment that stopped Trieste's heart, and she had her first, sudden, skin-tingling realization that this man would be touching her skin, and kissing (yes, he would kiss, there would be tenderness, she knew with this man) and … consciously Trieste made herself take a breath. And another. Across from her (when did he get so close?) she heard Alec do the same, and they stood, breathing in syncopation for a weighted moment, until she took a step back with a self-conscious half-breathed laugh.
With no smile at all, Alec asked, "I hope you didn't leave such an excellent young man broken hearted?"
Trieste gave a real laugh now, wry and not bitter. "Not at all," she responded, "We said our good-byes before I left—in fact, I think he was relieved. He has a moon-destined—he's just waiting for her to grow up, that's all."
"A moon-destined—I mean, those are real? How can you tell?" Alec asked, avidly curious, but also, in a flatteringly obvious way, fiercely relieved.
Trieste smiled, and a picture clear as a spring day etched itself behind her eyes, of her first lover silhouetted against a dying sun, with his arm looped around a child's shoulder as they spoke of nothings bigger than the sea.
"You can tell," she answered after a soft moment, her voice and eyes terribly sober. "Seeing them together …" she shook her head, "There is not a doubt in your mind that their hearts have beat in unison since before they both were born. It's like they were stars in the same sky, pulsing with the same light. And not just them—the whole family is riddled with moon-destined lovers, and for all of them … it feels like the world is right, just to be in the same room." She smiled dreamily. "You can't even be jealous, not even a little, because every fiber in your being tells you the world will be perfect, if only they can be together."
Alec blinked, and now Trieste felt all of her earlier self-consciousness flooding back. "It sounds like a lovely family," he said, to cover the awkward moment.
"The best," she repeated firmly, realizing that, not only was Alec of Otham not likely to have her publicly flogged for not being a virgin (a practice more and more practiced in the provinces), but that she could talk to this man. "Everything I've ever dreamed about being a sister and a daughter, I learned there."
"But you're not still in love with the young man?" Alec asked insistently.
"I'm not pining for him, if that's what you mean, Alec." Again, that thoughtful smile. "I'll always love him like family—I hope that's not a problem."
"No," Alec shook his head. "Not at all … it's just …" And now he was very uncomfortable, almost adolescent in the way he ducked the head.
"Just what?" Trieste felt comfortable enough now, with this nice man to move up to him and smile quietly into those kind brown eyes. She got a faint scent from the skin of his neck as she looked up along his black-velvet covered chest (wider than she'd thought) and into a clean-lined, pleasing countenance. He smelled like chamomile and mint, which was surprising—and welcome.
Alec swallowed, his throat bobbing as he did so—Trieste could see because she was just about eye-level. "It's just that … you're nice … you're terribly nice … and you could be the most beautiful woman I've seen in my life … and I just want to know there's a chance … a small chance … that maybe we could be something to each other …" he met her eyes, both of them riding the misty heat of a terrible blush, "That's all."
Trieste was floored, touched and bewildered all in one stammer. "Do you really think I'm beautiful?” she asked in shock.
Alec smiled again, all of his self-confidence flooding to him in a rush. "I think you're positively dazzling," he told her, his kind brown eyes absolutely sincere.
Trieste's breath caught in her throat, and she made a helpless sound and her hand came up to her mouth as she looked at him.
"What?” he asked, smiling still, and not panicked anymore, now that she was gazing at him with awe in those lovely gray ayes.
"I believe you," she whispered. "I absolutely believe you."
"I meant every word." Alec smiled, and the steward arrived at the door and Trieste found herself on the arm of her new husband, breathless and stunned. Alec of Otham wasn't toady in the least, she thought in shock. In fact, he thought she was beautiful. And she believed him.

Part V
The Healing Moon

Healers of the Goddess

Torrant's lungs were on fire and his legs were threatening to cramp, and even the snow cat's body was threatening to fail him and still he ran, because Choa of Wrinkle Creek was on horseback, and the only decent thing about Choa at all was that damned horse.
I can beat him, I can beat him, I can beat him, I can beat him—the refrain echoed in Torrant's mind as his padded feet skimmed the ground and in spite of being winded, he still howled his fear and frustration into the chill autumn air. He heard behind him a startled whinny, and although his pace didn't slacken, his desperation let off a little—Choa was behind him, and Torrant might get to Aldam before he did.
Gods damn it, he should have expected this.
Choa's wife Junie had been sixth months pregnant when she had first walked the distance from her home to the little house that the students from Triannon used when they did their stint in the Old Man Hills. As it turned out, the reason for all of the mismatched paneling in Triannon itself was a Senior tradition—the graduating classes learned a basic trade in their last year by improving the school and donating the lumber. Torrant, Aylan and Aldam had learned a lot by installing privies near the stables (their choice of project) and now that knowledge was being put to good use. Torrant and Aldam had been fixing their little cottage up steadily since the end of the previous summer, when they'd first moved in. Except for the winter months, when the snow was too deep to work on the outside and their six week break in the summer when another student came from Triannon so they could go visit their family, their energy had gone into that house. Now, a full year later, the place was almost unrecognizable as the two room hut that had so disheartened them when they'd first ridden up to their new post.
Junie's eyes had widened as she took in the paned windows (supplied by Lane) and the still open plumbing lines that Aldam had run in, as well as the framework and outside walls for the new bedrooms he'd erected. Aldam was nearly as good a carpenter as a healer, and Junie's eyebrows were nearly at her hairline as she took in the size of what would be the new Healers' house—for the folks of the Old Man Hills near the Wrinkle Creek village, it was a palatial edifice.
Junie had walked slowly, almost fainting as Torrant had seen her and come out to give her a hand. She had the four year old boy by the hand and the two year old on her shoulders, and a body that was black and blue from Choa's fists and feet. She had been afraid that this last beating might mean the end of the baby that was bulging from her now, and the thought had terrified her.
"Women who miscarry children are cursed by the Goddess," she'd whispered after he'd carried her in to the exam room. (It was now a different room than the bedroom, thanks to his and Aldam's efforts, and he and Aldam were sharing the other bedroom—whoever was off duty got the good bed, and whoever was on duty that night for emergencies got the uncomfortable cot.) "And their unborn children go to the darkness behind the stars," she continued, and Torrant's breath had stopped in his chest with the sheer cruelty of that belief.
"Who in Triane's name told you that?” he asked harshly, his temper made short by the bruising and the fear and the terrible injustice of a brute like Choa beating on a tiny, fragile woman who was obviously so terrified of the 'darkness behind the stars' that she'd go see a Goddess cursed healer (as she'd called him) to make sure she and her baby didn't die.
"The priest out of Clough," had been her guileless reply, and now he had to breathe like a woman in labor with a child to keep from snarling at her. He had heard this tripe before—from the moment they'd stepped into the tiny, backwater province of Wrinkle Creek, actually. The men used it as an excuse to beat their wives, the itinerant priests used it as an excuse to keep the men in line—he and Aldam had been fighting this ignorance for a year now, and it still made him newly angry every time he heard it. The only thing that kept his temper in check was the knowledge that the priests wandered by, at most, twice a year. There was a lot of forgetting in a six month span, and when the Healers were there to help you in the meantime, well, the priests words may have been spreading like the chickenpox, but chickenpox weren't gold.
"There is nothing shameful about bearing children," he said now, as evenly as he could, and was surprised when a small, chapped hand (with two crooked fingers from an earlier beating) rested on his arm.
"I understand, Healer," she murmured, "Women are weak and evil—if our bodies can't do what's necessary, then we have no useful purpose to the gods of pride and honor."
Torrant actually felt the earth tilt under his feet as he gazed at her and tried to put her world in sync with his. The village's itinerant priest had been by a couple of weeks ago, and obviously he had a new poison to sell.
"Compassion," he said blankly, and she just looked at him, not understanding.
"Compassion,” he repeated as flatly as he could, but he knew his voice was rising and distraught, and when she still just stared at him, her face swollen and discolored from a beating too many people had told her she deserved, he had to fight the urge to fall to his knees.
"Compassion!” he roared quietly, so as not to frighten her. "The other god is the god of compassion, not pride. Oueant is honor, Dueant is compassion, and Triane is joy …"
"We're not allowed to mention her name …" Junie had hissed, horrified and fascinated at once.
"Just because we can't mention Her doesn't mean she's not still in the sky!" Torrant cried. "Junie—being born without bollux doesn't mean you deserve to be beaten … the gods are honor and compassion and neither of those things tell us to beat a tiny woman with child until she can barely walk, and anyone who tells you that you are weak and evil because you are a woman, is evil and twisted and sick and terrible and all of the lies they have been feeding you are for shite!"
Torrant had taken a breath then, trying to get a hold of his emotions. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this tiny woman, and her belief that she was worthless because she had been told she had no god.
With a sigh, he applied some wet cloths and plaster to a wrist that was almost certainly broken, and looked outside, to where the four year old was backhanding his two year old sister with practiced ease.
"Look at them, Junie," he said quietly when he heard her little sound of dismay at the boy's behavior. "There are places in this world where you wouldn't have to be afraid of your husband, where you could teach your son that walking like a man doesn't mean beating his sister like a coward, and where your daughter doesn't have to be afraid. Wouldn't you rather be somewhere that being born a woman isn't a sin?"
"Women are weak …" she said faintly, and he whirled towards her, knowing that he was on the verge of turning snow cat out of sheer frustration.
"My mother was one of the bravest people I know!” he ground out, surprising even himself, because this memory huddled in the back corner of his mind like a frightened kitten. "She sacrificed herself to save my life, and the life of my moon-destined, and she killed men with only her thought and her desperation so that we might live … the only thing in the way of your safety is your own blighted fear!"
He closed his eyes then, mostly to feel for the pain of that resurrected memory, and he found that it ached, like an old wound, but it didn't incapacitate him with its sharpness. He opened his eyes again, and murmured gently, "I'm going to feel the baby now, Junie, and make sure she's moving, right?"
"Do you think …" Junie's voice trembled as he gently probed the hard-swollen belly under the homespun skirt.
"I think that babies are hardier than we think," he said softly, and was rewarded for his optimism by a solid knee to the palm of his hand. He smiled then, and gave her stomach a more-than-gentle pat. "She's just fine."
"Oh!" There was relief, and some happiness on that worn, once-pretty face, and then in another "Oh …" there was fear and disappointment.
"What?" He had gone to wash his hands then, because one of the first things they learned at Triannon was that if they were clean, their patients would stay healthier, and he turned in alarm to see teardrops trembling at the corners of Junie's mouth.
"A little girl … are you sure?” she asked unhappily.
"My gift is truth, Junie," he told her delicately, because the people in these parts had regarded his and Aldam's silver streaks of hair with the same fear and horror he and Aldam would have regarded someone wearing Clough's teal and black. "Part of it is knowing if it's a girl or a boy." It was a gift he'd had since he'd been small, if he'd known about it—but the gender of the infant had never been as crucial to the people around him as it seemed to be here in the Old Man Hills.
"A girl …" she whispered. "It's so hard, being a girl …" And he could almost read her thoughts. A girl to be beaten by her brother, and then by her father, and then by her husband. A girl who would see her own daughters beaten, and who would, as Junie probably would, die young, more than likely at the hands of the man who fathered her children.
"A girl to cherish," he said softly, wanting to change that awful litany. "A girl to teach to sew, a girl to teach to dance, a girl to give you grandchildren."
"Not here," Junie's voice broke. "Not here, not in Wrinkle Creek, not in the Old Man Hills, not anywhere near where those priests seem to spill from, telling the menfolk that we're nothing …"
Torrant breathed a sigh, suddenly seeing hope where he'd just moments ago seen two corpses, walking because they didn't know they were dead. "Then move …"
"Where? To Eiran where they rape the virgins at Beltane …"
Torrant couldn't help it—he laughed. "They do what?"
Junie looked at him cautiously. "They don't?"
"Not at any of the Beltanes I went to!” he replied, shaking his head. "Junie, honestly, I don't know who told you that, but the Beltane feast at Eiran has many better attractions than that…"
Junie's mouth turned reluctantly up at the corners. "I guess that was a little foolish to believe …"
"Yes," he said gently. "Just as foolish as believing you deserve to be treated like this."
She breathed in, hard, then said, "Did your mother really save your life?"
"It was the last thing she ever did," he said quietly. "And one of the bravest things I've ever seen."
She opened her mouth then, but Choa had turned up with that magnificent blonde horse attached to a cart, his brutal voice hard enough to break timber.
"Junie, Junie! Where in the six darks and the Whore's tits did you get to?" His screaming for Junie was interrupted by a child's squeal as he hauled the two year old up and threw her in the cart without ceremony—or regard for small and tender limbs—and Torrant could see the boy scrambling up the cart quickly so he wouldn't get the same treatment.
"I'll come visit next week," he said, knowing that Aylan should be stopping by then on a return trip from wherever he went to sell for Lane, and that he'd have an empty cart. Aylan was always on his way to or from somewhere. They had summered together this year, and Torrant had seen new lines and worries on his friend's face, and the questions of where Aylan spent his time seemed more and more burning as their first year in the Old Man Hills died and their second took its place. "I'll have a friend with me—he'll be on his way to Eiran."
Junie had regarded him soberly, and Choa's voice got closer as he threw open the thankfully-sturdy front door and screamed for his woman again using epithets which Lane, in his most dire moment of frustration, had not dreamed of. A tiny nod, that's all she gave, and Torrant spent a week praying he hadn't misread it. He turned towards Choa with a genial smile.
"Junie was just making sure the baby was still good after her …" his eyes moved to that terribly bruised face—he couldn't help it—and then back to Choa's coarse, bearded features. "After her little fall," he finished evenly.
"She don't need no help from no faggot witch," Choa spat—and then, literally spat, right on the clean-sanded kitchen floor that he and Aldam had spent such time on the day before. Torrant made a face and looked back at Choa.
"Nice horse," he said, taking the man aback.
"Thanks," he replied, wrapping thick fingers around Junie's slender arm.
"You take good care of it?" Torrant asked, almost casually.
"'Course I do—you don't neglect something that valuable," he replied, and Torrant followed them outside, talking determinedly to Choa's back.
"Or beat it," he added, and Choa dropped Junie so abruptly she almost fell and he turned towards Torrant with narrowed eyes.
"No, sir," he growled, "It wouldn't make no sense to beat an animal that valuable."
"You're right," Torrant agreed amicably. "Beating a horse like that makes about as much sense as beating a good woman, don't you think?"
Junie caught her breath softly, and Choa leveled a quick haymaker at Torrant's head in retaliation. Torrant had never stopped fencing, and he still ran as the snow cat every week or so, and his reflexes were frighteningly quick as he ducked that massive fist and then shot out a quick foot to the man's knee, sending him rolling on the ground and screaming in pain.
"Whatya do to me?” he howled, clutching his knee to his chest. "You godsdamned cursed witch!"
Torrant approached the man with level movements and pulled Choa's hands away from the kneecap so he could probe it himself with firm fingers. He whistled lowly as though he hadn't just done the damage himself. "Oooh … that looks nasty …" he said matter-of-factly. "That's been dislocated but good. I'll tell you what, Choa—when Aldam gets back from his rounds, how 'bout I take you out to your dad's farm, and you can recover from that. In about a week, I'll come out and put it back, what do you say?"
"You fix me now!!!!" Choa shrieked, and Torrant put some gentle pressure on the kneecap itself, not flinching when Choa screamed spittle loudly enough to spook the already skittish horse.
"Mmmm … no … I don't think so." He gave a friendly smile and motioned Junie to get into the cart. "I'll wait for a week and give your wife a chance to get over her 'little fall' before she has a chance to fall again, what do you think?" He ignored the profanities issuing from Choa's mouth and nodded judiciously. "That's what I think too."
Later, after Aldam had run inside (Choa had 'horse-trader' written all over him, he'd told Torrant once, and Torrant could see the relation) and Torrant had loaded the screaming Choa into their cart and clucked Hammer towards Choa's father's farm, Choa had hollered that he would tell everybody what Torrant was doing. Torrant looked at him sideways.
"And tell them that you got beat by a faggot witch from Triannon?” he asked innocently. "You must have bigger, better balls than I ever suspected, Choa my man—I underestimated you." The brute subsided then, and allowed himself to be meekly dropped off at his parents house, and as Torrant listened to his father—a graying copy of Choa himself—abuse Choa with his foul mouth about not having the sense the gods gave goat turds, he'd felt his one and only pang of pity for Choa. And then he had breathed a sigh of relief for Junie and her children, and their reprieve from viciousness, while he arranged with Aylan to take them away to a place where if a man beat his wife once, his neighbors wouldn't speak with him or do business with him, ever.
Aylan arrived a day early, and Torrant and Aldam welcomed him as they always did—with a glass of ale and the good bed and stories of what they had been doing since they'd seen each other last. They were good visits, but Aylan was always very cagey about what it was exactly that he did for Lane. They knew he carried goods and wares throughout the lands of the Three Moons (which, since his family came from the Jeweled Lands always seemed very funny to Torrant), but he always seemed to know things—things he shouldn't know if all he did was sell yarn and pottery and wood-working tools and such.
For example, when Torrant told him about Junie and her dire situation at home, Aylan's relaxed sprawl at their kitchen table had tensed, tightened, and he'd suddenly thrown his wide shoulders over the table itself and wrapped his arm around his beer.
"That's the priests," he said tightly. "There's a whole mess of them, straight from Clough, and all of them schooled that the Goddess is a whore, and the twins are pride and honor …"
"That's shite!" Torrant protested, looking at Aldam's unhappy face. "How are Healers supposed to ply their trade if people don't believe in what they do?"
"Oh, Rath's got an answer to that one too," Aylan said, and there was a bitter, dangerous undertone to his voice. "He's schooling his own healers … healers who heal under the twins and don't use 'witchery' or 'damned weak compassion' to heal, since those are Goddess' evils."
Torrant gasped, blinking his eyes in order assimilate this new horror, and then he leaned forward on his elbows too, the movement putting him in close proximity with Aylan, the angry heat coming off his body making Torrant flush.
"Aylan, brother," he asked carefully, "Where did you get this information?"
"Its common knowledge," Aylan said flatly, looking away, and Torrant leaned closer, close enough to smell the small amount of beer on Aylan's breath.
"It isn't," Torrant said softly, insistently, and Aylan started to turn his head and realized how very close his face would be to Torrant's if he did, so he stayed, head defiantly turned, body being graced by the touch it most craved. "Aylan, what are you doing when you travel?" Torrant continued persistently, and Aylan moved impatiently, facing Torrant with a cavalier smile that it was obvious to all of them he didn't feel.
"I ended up in some interesting beds this trip out," he said with mock-gaiety, "Would you like names?"
"I know where your heart lies, brother," Torrant bit out, anger creeping into his tone. "So you can't play that game with me. If you ended up in the bed which gave you that information you did it on purpose—and if you did it on purpose while working for Lane, the two of you are doing more than the family knows about, and that is my business."
A sigh went out of Aylan like a great cleansing wind, and he turned towards Torrant, leaning his forehead against his, and, Torrant suspected, leaning his battered heart on him, just a little, just for this moment as well.
"It's a front," he murmured, "I'm establishing contacts so we know what Rath's doing, what he's saying. Eiran, Otham, and Triannon are becoming the last places in the lands of the Three Moons where the Goddess' name can be mentioned, and Lane is afraid of invasion or aggression.
Torrant nodded, closing his eyes and swallowing, leaning into the contact of skin as well. Untold dangers, terrible visions, frightening possibilities opened up at his feet for his friend, and his bones grew cold thinking of what could befall Aylan, the wanker who had come to be a part of Torrant's family too. "Brother, you need to take very good care of yourself, you understand?"
"Brother," Aylan sighed, "you need to do the same thing. This girl you are saving, her family—it's noble, and it's like you, but we can't ship all the victims of this religious perversion to Eiran—it's only so big. And if this husband is as scary as you say …"
"He is!" Aldam broke in with, and both the men at the table backed away from their intimacy for a moment to smile tiredly at Aldam's usual truth.
"Well then, since he is," Aylan said in a slightly lighter voice, "then you need to be very, very careful—these men, raised on the shite of 'pride and honor'— they have no room in their hearts for mercy and no room in their brains for self-control, or common decency, or even the sheer dumb fact that we are all the same species, yes? He will kill you, brother, just like …"
"Just like he'll kill his wife, eventually," Torrant said evenly. "I can't ship them all to Eiran—I know that. But I can help the ones who ask for it—that's what being a Healer of the Goddess is all about, right?"
Aylan nodded and smiled grimly. "Right, then—so, tomorrow, or do I get a day's visit first?"
Torrant grinned, relieved. "A day's visit, absolutely—I told Choa I'd be back to fix his knee in a week. He can't move until then." And then he'd had to explain what was wrong with Choa's knee, and Aylan had laughed hard enough to spray ale across the table, and the meeting had been merry after all.
Torrant hadn't counted on Choa's old man being even more brutal than the son.
He and Aylan managed to move the woman and her children—and their meager possessions—out of the shack that posed as their home and into Aylan's cart easily enough. Torrant and Aldam had sacrificed a couple of blankets for Junie's comfort, although Aldam had stayed back at the Healer's house in case anyone came to call. Aylan and Torrant had shaken hands and touched foreheads and Aylan was just clucking to one of Courtland's gigantic children—this one a sweet tempered mare named Betty—when Junie said, "The horse—Healer—you must get the horse, or he'll be able to follow us!"
Torrant had sworn under his breath as he'd waved goodbye, and when the cart rounded the last corner of the road, he'd gone hurrying to the stable—which was three times as large as the house, by the by—for the monster horse that Choa would spoil while he was beating his wife senseless.
So he was thankfully behind the stable when Choa came roaring up to the front of the house, bashing in his own front door howling for his wife. He was limping, badly, because his father had put his kneecap back in with a heavy-ham hand, shredding cartilage that Torrant would have spared, but even with the hitch in his stride, Torrant knew that if the man got his hands on him, unless he was the snow cat, he would be torn apart.
He crouched against the side of the barn and sidled to the far side, where Choa couldn't see him from either the front or back of the house, and as he heard Choa bellowing out the back door, he went dashing for the woods that separated most of the properties from each other in the Old Man Hills. He had almost reached the first tree when he heard a shout of triumph behind him, and heard the clatter of horse's hooves on the rock-strewn path from the stable.
"Witch faggot!" Choa bawled, and Torrant turned towards him, muscles taut for a fight. "Where is my family, you shite infested bowel!"
"Where you'll never find them, Choa," Torrant replied evenly, his mind ripping through options as that horse would rip up the ground between them.
"Enjoy your little joke, witch-boy, because you've got just that much time to live!" Choa was struggling with the reins, and Torrant figured he must have saddled the animal so quickly that he wasn't as steady as usual. Good—if he could turn to run in the next few seconds, the man's inevitable fall would give him a few more moments to run through the woods as the snow cat.
As though reading his mind, Choa snarled, "And when I'm done with you, I'll turn to your little girlfriend with the white hair—hearing him scream like a pig is going to be a pleasure!"
Torrant's bones froze, and his blood, and his heart. There was a torturer's gleam in those murky brown eyes and Torrant knew, without a doubt, that Aldam's first assessment of Choa as 'a horse-trader' was absolutely correct. And Aldam must have stunk like ‘victim' to him.
With his next heartbeat, his vision was clear, cold, and deadly, and with his next breath, Choa smelled like game.
"If you think you can beat me home, Choa, be my guest," he said quietly, and before Choa could laugh or even fix his horse's bridle, the snow cat was running full tilt towards Aldam, and their little home in the hollow with the river behind it.
He heard Choa fall off his horse as he wheeled into the chase, but he knew it wouldn't last long so he added a burst of power to the snow cat's fearsome speed from sheer, stinking desperation.
He was in luck, because although his route was through thick underbrush and unpredictable woodland, it was the snow cat's turf, and his terrifying reflexes kept him safe when a man on horseback would have been unseated and seriously injured in the flight. However, Choa was riding that monstrous horse on flat land, and it would be a near thing.
I can make it I can make it I can make it…
He heard the hooves clattering behind him at the same time he smelled home.
He yrowlled, and again and again and again, sparing breath he didn't have in a warning to Aldam, then burst into the road with enough time to wheel and face Choa who was bearing down on him like a juggernaut. He howled with all the breath in his body, spooking the horse, and coiled his body to spring.
He saw the axe in Choa's hand as he sailed over the horse's head, and had enough time to twist his body to avoid the brunt of the blow, even as he was raking his claws over Choa's throat and knocking him to the ground.
The axe hit him in the back flank. As he turned to finish his opponent off, he knew that he needed to change form soon or he would bleed out from the wound. He howled again, this time in pain, as he approached Choa, who was trying, unsuccessfully to climb to his feet. He still had the axe in his hand, and he swung it blindly at Torrant in an effort to keep the snow cat at bay. Torrant was ready for it this time, and he danced away with grace that only the snow cat could achieve.
Choa swore and advanced, raising his arm for a mighty swing, which would surely finish Torrant, when there was a sudden shout of anger from behind him. Choa turned to see Aldam, running at him with Torrant's sword held clumsily in both hands. Torrant took the moment to jump, landing on Choa's chest with all four feet and ripping his throat out before he hit the ground.
He stood on all fours, licking the dead man's shirt to get the taste of blood out of his mouth, before he realized that his back quarter had collapsed under him. As Aldam approached, cautiously, sword still in hands, he summoned his courage, because changing while wounded hurt, and then he twisted slowly into a man again.
"Godssssssssdammit!" he swore, standing and checking the back of his thigh as he did. The wound had been too deep to close entirely, but he was no longer hemorrhaging like a Solstice pig either, so he thought he might live.
"Goddess!" Aldam swore, dropping the sword on the prone body with trembling hands. "What went wrong?"
"I think the old man fixed his knee," Torrant replied disgustedly, squatting to feel the cartilage before the body cooled. "He got back right after they were out of sight, and before I had a chance to get the damned horse out of there." Torrant looked at Aldam and shivered. The thought of Aldam, alone with Choa, trying to defend himself with the dropped sword … Goddess.
"He threatened me?" Aldam said, reading his brother's look very well.
"You said it, brother," Torrant said flatly, "He had 'horse-trader' written all over him." He stood, trying hard not to groan. "Now, how about I haul his carcass to the middle of the woods, and you get rid of the blood in the dust?"
"You're hurt," Aldam said with some reproach. "I'll get rid of the body, you get rid of the blood."
Torrant was going to argue, because he was the murderer, and he didn't want Aldam to have any more contact with this pile of pig-shite than necessary, but Aldam stopped him mid-protest. "You cleaned up last time," he said gently but firmly. "Let me have my part in getting rid of the scary, bad men …"
"You don't have to …"
"Please, brother?" Aldam asked, and Torrant felt sudden tears starting at his eyes. He would give Aldam the world, if he had it, and his thigh was starting to ache fiercely, and the blood was starting to soak through his pants.
"Fine, brother," he panted, realizing he was still winded, "Have it your way … just make sure he's closer to his home than to ours."
Aldam looked at the corpse and shuddered. "Like I'd want that in our backyard! Now hurry, and put some bandages on your wound—I'll tend it when I get home. What are we going to do with the horse?"
Torrant shrugged—the skittish beast had taken off as soon as Choa had been knocked off. "Nothing—people will assume a wild animal got him. If they find the body, it'll be confirmed—the wandering horse will just be proof."

Life in the Old Man Hills

And so it was—for the next few weeks the disappearance of Choa and Junie of Wrinkle Creek was the talk of every hardy soul who ventured to the door of the two young Healers from Triannon, and the theories were as varied as the people:
The mid-aged couple who lived up the river several clicks and who came by every few weeks for help aligning Conrad's neck, simply supposed that Junie left him to save the children, and Choa couldn't stand to be humiliated by a woman. The couple had moved from Otham some years ago, because property was not plentiful there, and they were not fond of the abuse the Goddess took in the Old Man Hills.
Grete, the very tiny, tough, extremely elderly woman who came in regularly for what she called a 'physic', and who could still remember the days when the Old Man Hills had its own Beltane Faire and Samhain fire, had salaciously supposed that Junie had finally killed the bastard, and left the Hills for fear of reprisals.
The women who snuck in without their husband's permission for help with pregnancies, their own beatings, or to have their children seen for the usual ailments, all believed that Choa had killed Junie, and had left the Hills to find another woman stupid enough to bed him.
The roughnecks who came to get their fingers and wrists set after fights, supposed that Choa had gotten killed by some cuckholded husband, and that was the theory that rankled both Torrant and Aldam the most.
"Why would another man's woman want to touch him unless she was forced?" Aldam asked guilelessly while Torrant was setting a plaster on a little man built like a tree root. While Aldam was the more proficient Healer, Torrant was usually tactful around the uneducated, superstitious people of the Hills. The only reason Aldam was in the kitchen/surgery was to get water from the pump to mix with caulking so he could finish installing pipes for a privy. They were both getting tired of running to the outhouse behind the trees in the morning.
"Shoot, boy," the man had spat, "You know them girls is all whores … they don't care who's sticking it to 'em, as long as they get some."
"Charming," Torrant muttered under his breath. He set the man's plaster slightly crooked—maybe that would keep old Mackel from breaking his wrist on his wife's jaw again.
"What I don't understand," Torrant said to Aldam after the surgery had cleared out, "is, if these men despise women so much, why do they bother to touch them at all?"
Aldam wrinkled his forehead for a moment—a sign that he was taking the question seriously. "I think it's like skirts," he said at last, and Torrant was so surprised by the analogy that he spilled the coffee he'd been drinking all over himself. Coffee had been one of the things the two boys had learned at Triannon that they had taken with them to their internship in the hills. It didn't taste as good as the chocolate the Moon's served, but it did keep them awake after those late calls, and the beans tended to grow at the riverside—they were constantly drying batches in a frame they had copied from the one at the school.
"Skirts?” he sputtered.
"Oh yes," Aldam nodded his head. "Did you ever notice that Roes has more skirts than you can ever remember her having?"
Torrant smiled benevolently. Of course—all things for Aldam came back to Roes. After their first wilding the two of them had been inseparable, to the point where Bethen had asked Torrant to make sure Roes was taking the herbs that prevented conception. Of course she had been—she'd started Triannon the year before, with the goal of becoming a Healer like her beloved, and she was taking no chances. In fact, their only argument all summer had been over Aldam's suggestion that Roes see other people while she was at school, so she would (in his words) know that there were smarter men in the world than Aldam. Torrant had iced Aldam's cheek after that, and after some pleading on Aldam's part and some huffing on Roes', the matter had never been mentioned again.
"I can't say I have," Torrant said now, bringing his attention back to the destruction of the Goddess in the Old Man Hills and skirts.
"Well, she doesn't exactly like wearing them—she thinks they hinder her ability to move," Aldam said matter-of-factly, and Torrant smiled again—this time in memory. The two of them missed the family fiercely, and Torrant could feel that intense, practical energy radiating from his little cousin just from Aldam's words.
"I am aware," he replied softly.
"Well, she despises the fact that women are expected to wear them, and she thinks they were designed to make women look foolish and she hates everything they represent …"
"So …" Torrant was unsure where Aldam was going with this.
"But she sure does like the way they look on her," he finished, and Torrant caught his breath.
"Of course," he breathed. "They're like property, these women. They make the men look good."
"Yes," Aldam agreed, wiping up the spilled coffee and pouring Torrant another mug full. "They make the men look good, and the men break their bodies and their spirits until nothing about them looks good, nothing at all."
Torrant regarded his coffee morosely, wishing for some honey and cream to go in it, but nobody had paid them in that currency for over three weeks. "That could be one the gravest insult to the act of sex I've ever heard of," he murmured. "But … but I think you and I are naïve in such things, Aldam." He looked at his brother and nodded seriously, and Aldam nodded back.
"Yes—you're right. I'm sure there's something worse."
For a month or two though, as late fall crisped and whitened to early winter, it looked as though the atmosphere of the Wrinkle Creek section of the Old Man Hills might actually improve.
Choa's frosty, well-gnawed remains were discovered about three weeks after his disappearance—he was recognizable only by the parts of his great black beard that hadn't been used to insulate a hibernating family of woodchucks. The fact that Choa was found dead, and Junie was nowhere to be found at all seemed to give heart to the battered, frightened women of Wrinkle Creek. Suddenly speculation turned from the idea that her husband had killed her, to the idea that she, of all of them, had the courage to leave. The fact that she took out her tormenter seemed only to make her flight more heroic.
Within the week, Torrant's and Aldam's practice doubled in clients—women who had formerly not dared their husbands wrath were sneaking away to have the children in their bellies checked upon, and the children at their skirts were having their limbs wrapped and their deep cuts tended and their illnesses nursed. Women were suddenly coming to them by the drove to have their own beating injuries eased of pain, and when either of the two young Healers of the Goddess spoke softly and passionately about how they did not deserve such beatings, the women were listening.
Of course, there was not a sudden migration from Wrinkle Creek—Junie had been an anomaly among the women—but there was a sudden upsurge in beatings, followed by an ominous quiet.
"I just stopped taking it," said one mousy little thing as Aldam set her broken arm. "I told him, 'You'll hit me if I'm good, you'll hit me if I'm bad, you won't tell me which is which, I'm over you. You can hit me now and get it over with, but if you touch my babies, I'll beat you in the head with a forge iron while you sleep.'"
Aldam stopped bandaging her wrist in sudden shock, his guileless eyes large and blue in surprise.
The woman had laughed humorlessly through a swollen mouth. "No, I haven't done it yet. But after he gave me this last one, he woke up in the morning hugging a forge-iron on my side of the bed. He hasn't touched me since, and has barely spoken to the children. We're all just enjoying the rest."
"Why don't you leave?" Aldam asked. It was the same question they asked all of the beaten women in Wrinkle Creek, and the answer they got was always a variation on the same theme.
"Where else would I go?” she asked wearily.
"Wherever Junie went," Aldam replied, finishing with her bandage. "Junie wasn't stronger or braver than you are—she just made the choice to leave."
"Mmmm …" the woman—her name was, of all things, Daffodil. "But why should I have to—this here's my home. Why can't the men-folk just learn not to be bastards? I'm not so young that I don't remember the Goddess. I'm not so young that I don't remember joy. I just have to remember to fight for it, that's all."
Torrant walked in then—he'd been tending another patient in what had been their old bedroom. The two new bedrooms were complete now, and he and Aldam had a comfortable breathing's worth of space, as well as a decent, stocked surgery in addition to the kitchen table. It was a good place to stop for the winter, although the two of them were still planning improvements for the place in the spring.
"That's a strong, brave thing to think," he'd agreed, washing his hands. He'd been moved by the quiet announcement of bravery. She was right—the women had grown up here. They actually outnumbered the men. It mattered when they decided not to be broken in their own homes.
"Just remember, it's harder to think strong and brave with a broken jaw or a cracked skull," Aldam added seriously, and Torrant grimaced.
"Aylan was right, brother," he said quietly. "Eiran can't hold all the world. If we cannot change the attitudes here, stop Clough's poison from spreading, our home will be an island of sanity in the midst of chaos. We need to make the world we live in here the world we want to live in."
Aldam finished wrapping Daffodil's wrist, and he met the surprisingly fierce eyes of his patient. "He's right," she said stoutly, and Aldam nodded, knowing he didn't look nearly as frightened as he felt.
"He's often right," Aldam replied mildly. "Is there anything else I need to look at?"
"No—you 'bout got it all. You fellas are real nice and all, but I hope you don't take this the wrong way if I tell you I hope I don't see you for a while." Daffodil stood up stiffly, and stretched her bruises, and Torrant turned his sudden grin on her, making her gasp and hum in her throat, both at the same time.
"Sweetest, I take that exactly in the spirit with which you meant it. You take care of yourself—make sure you never forget the Goddess, make sure you teach your children joy."
"I'll do that healer, I'll do that." The woman's starting smile—which made her surprisingly pretty—suddenly faded. "Healer…" her gaze darted from Aldam to Torrant, as though she were trying to decide which one she trusted the most. But both of them were young, both of them were male, and, probably the deciding factor, both of them sported the white streak of the Goddess at their temple and over their brow. "Healers," she tried again, "I've got five children, and a husband who needs a forge-iron in his bed to keep from beating them senseless. I … I'm tired. I can't deny him rights to my bed, but … but I don't want another one to fend off from him. I need to tend the babies I got …" her voice trailed off and Aldam and Torrant met eyes. They had offered—Goddess knew they had offered. But this was the first woman with the courage to ask.
"We've got the herbs in the surgery," Torrant said quietly. "We grow them out back. You brew up some tea, every day but during your monthlies, and you don't have to worry about another baby."
Daffodil broke into a complete smile, and a sudden vision of a young woman who had known the Goddess and remembered joy swam in front of their vision. "Thank you much … uhm … Healer … I've got me a little sister—Pansy—she been using sheep gut, but them things tend to break, and sooner or later she's going to find herself a boy who won't put it on his thing …"
"Like I said, we have plenty—you just make sure she drinks it every day or it's not always reliable, right?" In this moment, in this simple request, Torrant found himself hoping. He had done murder, and, according to the priests that had visited every so many weeks, he healed with abomination and spoke blasphemy. Even with Aldam for company, it was a lonely road to walk, mostly because when it took you down the street of the three bars and one general store that passed for the Wrinkle Creek township, it left you the only one on your side of it. But maybe, if this little, mousy woman remembered joy, remembered honor and compassion and found her strength, maybe it was worth it.

Priest of the False Twin Moons

In fact, the two young men found they weren't so alone on their side of the street anymore. Women like Daffodil started saying hello to them, telling their friends the two Healers were not bad fellas, and that they, at least, knew how to treat a body with kindness. And word of things like Choa's displaced knee-cap and Mackel's crooked wrist spread too, much to Torrant's discomfort.
"Healers shouldn't hurt people," he muttered to Aldam, the third time he heard a woman threaten her husband with 'the Healer's wrath' if he so much as grabbed her arm. They were in the tiny township, crossing in the traffic-slush towards the general store near the well. This is where the women gathered to wash clothes in the summer when the Wrinkle River ran turbid and brown, or to swap stores in the winter, in every weather but the deepest snow. Torrant often wondered if the men ever listened at all to the women talk—one trip through that washing square, and he knew which single man beat women in bed, which married man all women stayed away from, and which women learned fancy tricks in bed in order to blackmail their lovers into treating them well.
"Healers defend their patients," Aldam replied mildly, and Torrant looked at him sharply. "You kept their wives from being beaten—I'd say you defended them."
Torrant's sudden grin stopped every heart at the washing square, but he was too busy blushing and trying to avoid the women's attention to notice. "Aldam, the world spins better with you in it," he said as they ventured into the dankness of the store. Torrant couldn't help but look around at the lean, starveling offerings on the shelves and wonder what Lane could do with a store in this location. The least he would do, Torrant thought while watching spiders scuttle into dark corners over sacks of meal almost certainly weighted with rocks, would be to cut a window and add a pane, so people could see what they were getting.
Of course, in Lane's stores, people weren't getting rocks in their meal, worms in their meat, or weevil-holes in their calico.
Graene, the owner's wife, was behind the counter today, which is why they had chosen to visit. Her husband Ulin was the force behind the rock-weighted grain, and behind Graene's frequent black eyes. Today, however, Graene's muted face was clear, and her smile as it lighted on the two foreign Healers was shy but sincere.
"Don't eat the grain," she said softly, peering around her shoulder through a curtain of blonde hair as though she couldn't help but look for her husband.
"Don't worry, we won't," Torrant told her with an answering smile. (He had learned to keep his smiles soft and small around these women—for some reason they all stopped talking when he smiled too big.) The truth was that Lane, reading between the lines from the last letters that Aylan had brought home, had sent Aylan with a wagon-load of grain, cured meats, canned fruits, and (much to their delight) honey and butter to stay them through the winter. Aylan had left with an empty wagon, and more secrets in his heart and eyes than Torrant could bear just riding back to Clough, and back to danger again.
"We were looking for some of your cloth for bandages and fine thread, that's all," he told Graene now, pushing those worries aside. The previous Healers (two students who had spent one year at Wrinkle River and had fled as soon as humanly possible) had never managed to make any friends there, and had left Torrant and Aldam with almost as many supplies as they'd brought with them on their first day.
After the last month, they needed more.
Torrant knew the cloth at the store was both thin and weevil-eaten—after a good washing, it would make perfect bandages, and the pretty flowers and designs printed on most of the bolts would appeal to the women and children as well. Before he'd left, Aylan had pressed a bag of coins upon a grimacing Torrant.
"What in the name of star's dark are we supposed to do with this?” he'd asked, surprised.
Aylan had smiled grimly then. "Clough is spreading its missionaries all over— the way you and Aldam talk and defend the Goddess, you're going to need it for bribes to keep your skin whole."
Torrant had almost laughed then, but something about Aylan's haunted expression had stopped him. "I haven't heard of any priests actually living here," he said reassuringly, and Aldam said, "That's because nobody told you about him."
"There's one here to stay?" Torrant was honestly surprised—Aldam didn't like dealing with the beaten women and their violent husbands. Torrant, as the more politic, and more fluent tongued of the two of them, was the more likely to garner gossip.
"They like you—and certain things make your eyes turn color and your jaw clench. They just don't like to see you look like that, so they tell me instead. He's been living with families in the town since right before Choa went missing."
Torrant was at a loss, and he looked at Aylan feeling almost betrayed. "Well, I guess we do have to worry about priests after all!"
Aylan patted his shoulder, with a look of such worry and sadness that Torrant had given his friend a gruff embrace. "And you have no time to worry about us and foolish priests. You take care, brother. You keep worrying about us, but every time you ride down that road, all my fears are for you. You're dear to us, you know—the moons wouldn't circle right without you."
To Torrant's surprise, Aylan deepened the embrace, and Torrant felt a brief tremble against him. "It makes it worth it to me to keep us safe, just knowing that," he said as he backed away, wiping a suspicious hand across his eyes. "I'll be back for Solstice—I won't have time to make it to Eiran, if that's fine with you?"
Torrant grinned fully, and Aylan had made a playful grab towards his chest to still the pattering of his heart. "That's the best news I've heard since we arrived here," Torrant said happily, and Aylan clucked to the horses on that note. He would leave while Torrant was happy, and while he could tuck that smile next to his heart to keep him warm in the early winter. He'd told Torrant that bringing Junie and the children to Eiran had been a delay he hadn't counted on, but that Lane had told him not to worry. "Lane's exact words were, Tell that boy not to fret about our plans, his up and being noble is worth the delay," Aylan had told Torrant gravely, and Torrant had rolled his eyes and shook his head in return.
But today that visit came in handy for more than just shoring up the boys' homesickness—today, Torrant had some of the coins from that visit in his pocket, and he was planning to make Graene's day, as well as stock his surgery. They were so used to seeing the women in Wrinkle Creek sad and beaten that making one of them smile was enough to bring both young men to town.
"Graene, darling, I'm here to give you something to do in your spare time this winter … see, Aldam and I need three of your four bolts of cloth for bandages, and we figured you could spend your winter planning what to buy to replace them," Torrant winked at the young woman, and she gasped in excitement.
"Really—you're here to buy most all of it?" Her smile was anxious, as though she were used to being lied to, but Aldam had already gone and picked out two bolts full of flowers and polka dots, and one bolt with brown and blue stripes for the little boys who fell out of trees, as well as for the ones who stepped between their mothers or sisters and the men who had fathered them.
"Yes," Aldam answered simply, and Torrant looked at the price posted on the bolt, doubled it, and offered the coins to Graene.
"Will this do?” he asked, and Graene nodded mutely, until the delight on her face vanished in a wash of fear.
Aldam and Torrant looked at each other sideways, and wondered which of the men had walked in behind them. Torrant felt a thin stream of tobacco juice hit the back of his leg, and figured it to be Mackel, and he was quite comfortable kicking out behind him without even looking, aiming for the man's ankle and sweeping sideways. He allowed himself a brief expression of smug satisfaction at the clatter of noise behind him before turning to the gnarled, whip-strong man and saying solicitously, "Oh my—I'm sorry, did I trip you? So sorry … oh dear … you seem to have knocked over the grain—here, Graene—here's the money to take care of that—you do whatever you want with that sack, I know there are some families at the Creek who'll be having an awfully thin year."
Graene nodded in sheer relief, and accepted Torrant's other coins, and then, with wide eyes, she accepted two coins of silver pressed discreetly into her hands by Aldam. Silver was easier to hide, and Torrant rather hoped that Graene would use the money for herself. Although the bolts of cloth they'd purchased were languishing on the shelves, it was no secret that the dresses Graene wore were reworked versions of the cloth which had been moth-eaten over four years ago, when Ulin had been courting her.
Mackel spit again, aiming up for Torrant and only managing to get the brown stream of spittle to fall in a neat line down his own shirt. "Playing like you're high and mighty, you Whore's faggot? I see you making like the Whore's bitch, buying dresses for some women so's you can get your pickle wet …"
Torrant laughed easily and leaned against Graene's counter, with most of his back towards his enemy. He was learning from experience that it was always easier to laugh if you knew your opponent couldn't best you, and inside that easy laugh was the nagging box of trouble that would be the men of the Creek fighting back. "Naw, Mackel—I was just making a dress for Solstice—thought you'd want to spruce up real pretty and dance with me."
The little man was so appalled he scrambled to his feet and scuttled backwards like a spider. "Don't get me involved in your Whore's rites!” he screamed, a very real fear spitting brown from his thin lips. "I don't want to go to no dark … that priest said he'll send me to the gods-blighted dark, you bastard, you take that back …"
Torrant and Aldam looked at each other sideways, trying not to let their alarm show.
"Has the priest been staying with you, Mackel?" Torrant kept his voice casual, as though the man weren't scraping himself up from a puddle of cowardice on the floor, and as though he hadn't just threatened the two of them with death.
"Take it back!!!" Mackel was almost in tears, and Torrant turned towards him, finding a true Healer's gentleness in his face and his shoulders. He bent and offered a hand, knowing it was likely to be spat upon but doing it anyway.
"Mackel—I've got plenty of girls missing me at my home who would be more than happy to dance the Solstice with me," he thought longingly of Yarri then, followed by Roes and Bethen and even Starry, who would rather dance with Aylan but would always spin him a turn when he asked pretty and promised to play her 'her music' at the end of the night. "I was joking, sir, we're using the cloth for bandages."
He nodded then, and waved his fingers in a non-threatening way until Mackel, seemingly mesmerized by his soft voice, reached out a hand and Torrant hoisted him up. Mackel backed away almost as soon as he was on his feet, and glared as though Torrant had touched him without his consent, but he nodded with near civility. Torrant nodded back.
"Where is the priest staying now?” he asked softly, and Mackel nodded again, almost weeping with his fear.
"He's in Choa's old place … there's a whack of men there, fixin' the place up for him like he's royalty …" Mackel's voice dropped again, and the note of a child not picked for games crept in. "I'm too weak to work …" he muttered, and Torrant grimaced. He'd done some of that, although Mackel's bandy legs didn't hold much weight either.
Torrant kept his voice gentle, still unnerved by this sudden show of humanity—of vulnerability—from a man he could have sworn possessed neither quality. "Then we'll go, Mackel—we won't get anyone in trouble with the priest … Graene won't be telling him where she got her gold, I won't be telling him any jokes about Solstice dresses, and the only darkness you need fear is the darkness in your own heart, right?"
A sudden, profound sorrow crossed Mackel's face, and Torrant realized with a chill that in spite of his best intentions, his quiet willingness to calm this twisted soul had inadvertently triggered his gift. In this moment, at least, this violent, cowardly man whose only source of pride seemed to be how badly he could beat his woman, was suddenly cursed with insight to his own soul. It didn't look comfortable at all, but Torrant couldn't undo what harm the truth had wrought.
"I've got a lot of darkness there …" the little man wailed, and Torrant nodded, because it wasn't something he could gainsay.
"You'll be right, yes, Mackel," he murmured at last into the quiet of the store, exchanging anxious glances with Aldam and Graene. "The priest's gods may consign you to the dark of the seven stars, but my Goddess always forgives." He looked behind him, and then he and Aldam both moved quietly to leave.
"That priest … he talks awful mean about us …" Mackel was whispering to himself now, and Graene made shooing motions so Aldam shouldered the bolts of cloth and they left the dim little store, much of their joy dissipated like the steam of their breath into the snowy air.
"I hate winter anywhere but Eiran," Torrant said abruptly into the silence of the square. Everyone had seen Mackel go in, everyone had heard the ruckus, and Torrant and Aldam just strolled out of the mercantile as though nothing had happened. Torrant didn't care. He missed smelling salt in the air instead of just snow and pines. He missed the feel of icy-brine when he walked in the wind, the texture of the sweaters the people wore. Aunt Bethen had told him once that you could identify the merchants on the ships by clan, just looking at their sweaters, knitted thickly and cabled so that the fabric clung within inches of the men's chests. He had missed Eiran winters at Triannon, but he and Aldam had managed to make it home for all but the first Solstice. Even if they hadn't been able to visit, the people at Triannon, the other students, the professors, had created a comfortable township of their own—it hadn't been home, but it had been hospitable.
"The pounding of the sea always frightened me," Aldam told him, and Torrant wondered if he would ever stop being surprised by this supposedly 'simple' brother.
"It felt so much like my heartbeat," Torrant mused. "Coming down that mountain, seeing that silver gray world just waiting beyond the little town … breakers like mountains, spray like a butterfly kisses … I couldn't imagine I had ever lived in a place that didn't beat against the shore like my heart beat against my ribs. It was so natural I didn't even notice …" He looked around him. They had left the township and had come to their two horses, tied patiently under a tree where the town men wouldn't know where to find them.
Heartland was Torrant's mount now—the horse had his father's disposition, and such a pretty, fine and sturdy boned body that Lane hadn't had the heart to geld him. He had been a good choice to send up to the mountains, and before Aylan's care package had come, Heartland's gleeful servicing had been traded for food when the bartering for Healing had run thin. Sweetheart's last foal was Aldam's mount—another one of Courtland's geldings. This one had thick legs and a barrel chest—he hadn't been a good choice to breed, but he had the disposition of a happy, hay-eating tree. He and Aldam got along very well, and it made Torrant happy enough to know his brother wasn't clinging to his horse for dear life that he could forgive Albiebu (Starren's name—none of them could figure out what it meant) for moving with all of the velocity of a thoughtful glacier.
The horses were happy to see them, especially because Aldam had purchased a handful of maple sugar sweets from Graene, and they nosed the boys' hands in puffs of steam.
"I like it here," Aldam murmured into Albiebu's placid warmth before he swung himself up. Both of them were bundled in layers of sweaters, with their sheepskin jackets packed in their saddlebags for when the early evening fell like a sack of frozen sand over the hills. That was another odd thing about the hills—it was cold, damned cold, but unlike mountains around Triannon, or Hammer Pass, the cold was bearable, mostly, as long as they were inside by full, joint-freezing dark. "If the people would only …" he sighed, and shifted on Albiebu as the two of them started trotting through the crisp snow. "I can't find the words," he finished glumly. "I'm no good at words."
"You're fine with words, brother," Torrant reassured. "It's just that we're getting so used to seeing people without joy that we've forgotten how to say it."
Aldam's face lightened. "Yes—if the people could find their joy, then I would love this place."
"Mmmm …" Torrant shook his head and debated whether or not to pull his jacket from his saddlebags. "I don't think so—even the snow cat loves the sea."
"That's not very cat-like of him," Aldam observed, and Torrant chuckled.
"He's funny that way," he replied mildly. "Now let's get a move on before full dark—I want to get the spare bed ready for Aylan. He should be here in a week!"
"I hope all is well," Aldam murmured, and Torrant had to agree with that. Together they made an uneasy way home.
When they got home, Torrant had a surprise waiting in his bed.
"Pansy?" He would have been embarrassed about the squeak in his voice but the girl was a comely seventeen, with dark hair and dark eyes, and she was as naked as a Solstice maple tree.
"Come to bed, Healer," she purred, patting the yellow pillow under the bright gold and green quilt that Yarri (with some help from Bethen and Roes) had gifted him with upon his graduation from Triannon. He might have preferred green and brown, but the gold reminded him of Yarri, so he kept the quilt where it could be seen.
Still, he swallowed in the face of that pale flesh pushing out in curves under the quilt, and the suggestion of bare hip and thigh that showed in the drape of the stitched fabric. And the faint bulge of tummy on what was normally a fulsome, but slender frame. He swallowed, ordered his fully functioning working parts down, and said rationally, "I'm not a cuckoo bird, Pansy. You're not planting that baby in my house and expecting it to grow."
The girl's enticing smile wilted, and she pulled the quilt up to her shoulders. When she spoke again her voice didn't purr, it trembled. "I'd be a good wife," she murmured. "I'd keep house for you, I'd … you could bed me, if you wanted, and if you don't like … if you and the other healer … I wouldn't tell." She looked at him and shook her head sincerely, that marvelous chestnut hair falling in her limpid eyes to be brushed back with a nervous hand.
Torrant pinched the bridge of his nose and laughed without humor. "Pansy, I like a pretty girl as well as the next cock-driven rooster, but I'm not going to bed you. Why don't you and …" his brain floundered for a moment as he searched out the name of the boy she'd been bedding, "Ernst get married? You've been seeing each other since you were … I don't know … children yourselves."
And now all of Pansy's pride completely deserted her. She pulled her knees up to her chest and laid her cheek against them, letting the tears flow freely, darkening the pretty yellow and making Torrant's heart hurt for her. It must have been hard, he thought painfully, coming to a stranger's house to seduce a man she wasn't even sure liked women. She must have been desperate to have tried such a thing.
"It's not Ernst's baby," she moaned into her knees. "He doesn't even know about it. He was so nice, wore the sheep's gut and everything so I wouldn't get pregnant, so he could have time to make us a house … and his heart's as big as the world … and I didn't want him hurt, and he threatened …"
"Who threatened?" Torrant asked, confused. He had a chair in the corner by his desk, and he drew it up and straddled it, because it was the least intimate position he could think of, and hunkered down to get to the bottom of why this particular pretty girl would want to be in his bed. Aldam, who had heard the voices and seen the lamp that Torrant lit, came into the room with big eyes. Torrant rolled his eyes and mouthed 'tea', and Aldam nodded, going off to fetch some with all speed, and Torrant tried again, a little more firmly this time. Pansy's sobs were gaining force.
"Pansy, who threatened you …"
"The baby's … the baby's … the baby's …"
"Father?"
"Faaaattttthhhhheeeerrrr…." Pansy wailed, and Torrant sighed. It was going to be a long night.
Fifteen minutes later, Torrant had moved from his position on the chair to sit by Pansy on the bed and throw one of Aldam's old shirts over her (thank Oueant!) and rub her back while she drank tea. Although the back rubbing had originally been to comfort Pansy, Torrant found he was using the motion to soothe his own uncertain temper.
"This priest threatened to have Ernst … whipped?" He still couldn't believe that. A boy whipped for what he and his girl did in the privacy of their own rooms … a protective father, maybe, but this … this interloper?
"Yes," Pansy sniffed, taking another sip of the tea. "This is really good—where did you get the honey?” she asked, and Torrant grimaced and tried to focus her back on the problem at hand.
"How did you stop him?" Whipped? Would people let this man do that to one of their own?
"I … you know … did what people do, except the priest …" she began to cry again. "He wouldn't wear the sheepgut, and … I thought it wouldn't be a big deal, you know, because I'd done it before, and the priest said I was damned anyway, and my soul was going to the dark behind the stars and I might as well do it again, at least this way I wouldn't suffer more for letting my man take my punishment …"
The whole of the girl's story suddenly smacked Torrant in the face, and he felt revolted and angry and terribly, terribly naïve. "That's not fair," he murmured, almost to himself, but Pansy's body was shaking with the effort to finish, and she didn't hear him.
"But it wasn't like it was with Ernst, it was awful and cold and the priest swelled and his breath smelled and he called me horrible names the whole time and I hated it and I hated him and I couldn't let Ernst touch me because I was just so afraid it wouldn't be sweet anymore …" the tears were finally trickling to an end, and Pansy's last words all but broke Torrant's heart. "Ernst was always so sweet. And now he'll never want to touch me again," she said softly, bleakly, "And now I'm pregnant with another man's child, and I'll be thrown out of the town to become a whore in another, and Ernst will never touch me again."
Torrant sighed and closed his eyes tight, hoping this problem would be gone when he opened them. When he opened his eyes, Pansy was still there, pretty face swollen from weeping, and red eyes staring hopelessly at her hands. Aldam was across the room, looking at him expectantly, just as he had when they were crossing Hammer Pass, and just as he had when they were in school and he understood something that Aldam didn't. But I don't understand this at all, he wanted to tell Aldam. That's not what came out of his mouth.
"Pansy, you have to tell Ernst—you have to. You made this sacrifice for him, and it's only fair he knows of it, and it's only fair he knows the priest isn't to be trusted."
"But how can he love another man's baby …" her voice trailed off. "How can I love this baby?” she asked with so much candor Torrant was abruptly reminded of her older sister, and in thinking of his patients, he suddenly had an idea.
"You may not have to Pansy …"
"I'm not going to … to reach up inside myself and …"
"Goddess, no!" Torrant almost shouted, completely disgusted. Did women do that? There were ways of helping a girl's body rid itself of a child, and he knew them, and knew when they were good to use, but … the other … he paled, grabbed hold of his stomach with all of his mind, and stuck firmly to his original plan. "No … Pansy—I know a couple, nice people—they live right outside of Wrinkle Creek …"
"They'd tell…"
"They've wanted a baby so long, and with so much of their heart, Pansy. This baby—they wouldn't care, these people. You, growing up with this baby, it would hurt you every time you saw his father in his face, but them … they wouldn't know. They would just know it was a baby, and they would love it … and we'd call it a gift from Dueant or Triane and no one would know … it's winter, Pansy, you tell Ernst the truth, and we'll tell the rest of the town you're staying on to help us keep house. By the time this baby comes in the spring, you and Ernst … you'll have some time to remember that neither one of you did this, and those people … they'd have time to prepare for your gift." As solutions went, it sounded great, maybe even good enough to get the naked woman out of his bed, but as far as problems went … Aldam and Torrant locked eyes, and Torrant brought Pansy his oldest pair of summer breeches so she could have something to sleep in.
Afterwards he and Aldam set about making the low cot they used in the surgery into a much more inviting bed, and Aldam made little sucking noise through his teeth.
"Aylan will be here in a week," is what he said, shaking out the old sheets they had been saving for Aylan's bed.
"I know," Torrant sighed. "Maybe Rora and Conrad will want to take the girl in themselves. Pansy would feel better, once she got to know them, once she knew they would love her baby as she can't."
"I didn't say it wasn't a wise solution," Aldam smiled gently. "I just said there is some urgency."
Torrant made a sound in his throat between a groan and a growl. "Speaking of urgency," he murmured, "How frightening is it that this priest has only been around since summer's end, and he can already start causing this much trouble?"
"He's been spying on all the girls around the Creek," Pansy said from the doorway, and both the men startled, because they thought she was still pulling herself together. "Nobody tells you two, because they're afraid you'll put a hex on him, and nobody tells him you're here, because they're afraid he'll consign their souls to the seven darks if he finds they let you live."
"Glorious," Torrant snapped. "I would just as soon live in the darks behind the damned moons than hear this pig lecture me on why I shouldn't rape children or beat their mothers."
"Ernst is afraid he's not a man," Pansy murmured, looking at Torrant with awe in her eyes, "because he says he can't imagine hitting me."
Torrant's growl was almost too close to the real thing, and he hastily blinked to make sure his eyes hadn't turned. "If this … priest… thinks what he did to you is being a man, I hope someone bites his manhood off so he knows the difference!”
Aldam and Pansy both looked at him in shocked silence, and then burst into giggles more appropriate to the schoolroom than for the situation. Torrant watched them laughing, and reluctantly joined them. "Well, I'm sure the women of the town wouldn't mind," he said after a moment, and Pansy sobered immediately.
"I'm not the only one you know."
Torrant made that sound again—this he had guessed, and he could only shudder at what would come his way. He sighed. "Well, now he lives in Choa's old place, we can keep a better eye on him, the old pervert."
"He's not much older than you two," Pansy said with a sad smile. "I wanted to trust him … you two are so nice to us …" her voice threatened to break again, and Torrant knew she was already exhausted from weeping.
"You won't think that when I make you get our brother's bed ready in the morning," he said crisply. "You'll think we're slave drivers, and hate us both."
Pansy smiled, just a little, and for a moment she looked like a pretty young girl, just old enough to be wilding at Beltane. Torrant kept the smile on his face, and inside, wondered coldly what Aylan was facing which was so much worse than this.

Aylan Stealth

Aylan woke up in a tangle of smooth limbs and bare torsos, male and female, before wiggling his way out and disturbing as few people as possible. Another horrible night in service of the greater good, he thought with a wry grin, and tried to put a finger on what had awakened him with such urgency. It wasn't that he didn't need to wake up—he had to leave early if he was to winter with Torrant and Aldam, but there was something … something not right …
Then he heard the sound echoed and his sleepy, cat-footed walk gained purpose and surety as he made his way to the thickly paned window overlooking the lightly snow-dusted courtyard.
Essa was hurrying away, her pretty, dusky skin flushed from the cold, and her close-cropped tiny ringlets frizzing just a bit in the damp. She paused in the middle of her rush, looking furtively over her shoulder at the sleeping city house of the two children of Troy, one of the two-hundred regents of Clough. Her eyes widened guiltily when she caught sight of Aylan, and then an unpleasant, sly expression crossed her face, and he was suddenly uncomfortably reminded of Lyssia, the girl who never did develop a rash, but who had left Triannon posthaste.
Aylan turned to the tangle of bedmates on the giant, lush and velvet bed behind him. A few of them were moving gently, stroking or kissing the bare skin they came in contact with, but most of them were hardly moving after their play of the night before. Aylan felt a sudden, terrible pang of protectiveness and worry for his bedfellows—the pawns in his terrible game.
All Lane had asked of him was to get information—any information—about Rath's movements, about Clough's politics, about the danger to the outlying lands and city states so that Eiran might not be caught unaware. It had started out small at first—tat of information here, a tittle there, as Aylan marketed Lane's goods at the smaller mercantiles in the Old Man Hills. But as the past year progressed, and Aylan's tidings had been more and more disturbing, Aylan had ventured closer and closer to Clough. Finally, with a shipment of wool for the Goddess' ghettoes (as they were called in the city), Aylan ventured into the heart of enemy territory and found it foul and black, coated in the filth of a people segregated, crowded like rats into a tiny, land bound ship, dying in their own filth and their own starvation, unable even to leave the heart of their city because their very want marked them as the people Rath despised.
When Aylan first saw the ghetto, after 'selling' wool for the women to turn into the finely crocheted doilies that were the only goods the people of Clough would buy from the ghetto, he had gotten back in his wagon and wept, ignoring the stares of the guards after he'd ridden his wagon away. He had thought he'd known so much about human evil.
After that, his cover as a traveling salesman had become less and less substantial—although donations of wool continued, along with a good portion of food and dry goods hidden under the bales, since it was illegal to bring either into the ghettoes unless taxed by the king and his regents. Aylan had, with Lane's funding, set up a small apartment in the city. He had dressed the part of a rich merchant when living there, and his court skills had come flooding back. Within a month, he was the quiet new man at the best parties, and the young regents were telling him, such a good listener, about their days. And Aylan had carried the information back to the heart of Eiran, warning the people there what was to come. Lane had, in the light of Aylan's full disclosure and his own political innocence, started funding a full-fledged spy in the heart of his enemy's capitol.
When Aylan had told his friend, his only true father figure, all of the implications of what they were doing, Lane had blanched, and told Aylan to forget it, that it was over and he would get his information through his own contacts. Aylan remembered that day, a week before Beltane, because the spring sky had been so blue, and Starren had been playing some sort of tag game with Cwyn and the children from the orphanage, while Yarri had supervised. Minding children and painting them pictures were the two things Yarri did best, besides knit.
The orphanage had been a relatively new thing in Eiran—a product of people like Junie, who had, after all, died in childbirth after the hard passage north and left her three children in the hands of kind strangers who would not let her son beat his sisters. Some of the mothers were like Pansy, who left their foundlings at the doorsteps of the older people in the village, hoping this child would not be punished for being conceived under what the priests had started to call 'the Whoring moon' or the 'bastard's moon'. The number of these children, lost by the lost, became too large for the population to absorb, even after it had tripled in size from the Clough immigrants six years prior, and the city of Eiran had banded together to create a place of warmth and kindness, where the men, women, and children of Eiran volunteered their time and their surplus so that the orphans might never feel abandoned, might always feel at home.
Lane had donated his warehouse, the one which had housed the refugees, and Bethen donated time to mind the children while her own were being schooled, and yarn and knitting for their blankets. Yarri, displaced as the teacher of the local school by someone who had a full course from Triannon, spent her days teaching the littlest ones their letters and numbers, and she adored them and they loved her. Together, she and these other orphans filled the walls of the converted warehouse with beautiful pictures, and color, and joy.
Torrant had been so proud when she had showed him her work this last summer that he had glowed with it. Aylan had given him grief that he had spent much of his six weeks of leave giving his service at the orphanage, but even he had seen how well the two of them worked together. Oh, he wanted Torrant—it was possible the ache for his friend would always be there, hiding in his loins and waiting to bite him with gentle twinges—but even Aylan had to admit the world was a better place when the two Moon-destined were together.
And this day before Beltane, the lost children of Eiran were playing a game of tag where they splashed in the shallows of the river, and Aylan convinced the man who had done his best to father him though he was grown, to send him to and from a city of death, and to mingle with the people who would be his killers.
Lane had aged before his eyes, and looked sorrowfully out at the orphans, who, although cared for and never forgotten, were the victims of Rath's vitriol as surely as Torrant and Yarri had been, but with less cause to remember.
"This has to stop," he said quietly. "If a ship has a rotten board, you replace it, or the rot spreads. If a man has a wound in his flesh that will fester, you let the maggots eat the rot so the wound can heal cleanly. This man, his politics, his …" Lane spat in the mud at their feet. "His unholy priests—they're a rot. They need to be cut out … but …" He looked around. From this place on the river he could see all of Eiran, at most a large shipping village, at his feet. They still had the barracks, and their small standing militia was growing as the unease of a great wrongness filled the young of the world, but it was helpless against a country eight times it's size.
"Eiran isn't going to attack Clough any day soon," Aylan said dryly, trying to make this moment easier for Lane.
Lane wouldn't let him. "You are dear to my family, boy," Lane said fiercely. "We love you like one of our own, you hear me, Aylan Moon."
Aylan flinched. Lane had given him his name as a courtesy, he thought. For the first time Aylan felt the burden of family, and knew it might be the sweetest weight ever born. "I'll come back, Lane," he said with assurance. He had, after all, been raised to be a spy, hadn't he? He'd bedded his first girl—his first boy, for that matter—under the watchful eye of a tutor, who'd told him where to touch and what to move, just so he would know how to please. Your pretty face is a pit, boy, the man had told him in preparation. People will throw secrets into it. You'll do what your family needs.
It wasn't until he'd met Torrant that he'd realized what want was, the kind you kept just for yourself. It wasn't until he'd met Torrant's family that he realized what sacrifice was, when you did the things you most despised so the people you loved never knew what despicable was.
What he was doing with these young people in Clough was despicable.
Not because it was sex—after those distasteful moments of being 'trained' as his family requested, Aylan had pretty much resolved to enjoy sex as it came— but because the sex to the rebellious young in Clough was as loveless as his first, supervised encounters had been. This made it easy for Aylan to blend right in to the night life and the decadence that was being young and twin-blessed in Clough, but it made it hard to justify using their information, even to help Lane and Eiran.
They were just so helpless, he thought unhappily, watching as the girls found a sheet, any sheet, to hide themselves from the morning light streaming through the window pane. The boys were more arrogant—or tried to be—but he noticed no manhood standing erect as they strutted to the bathroom. They had awakened nude, their skin surrounded by the beautiful—it seemed as though something should have stood to attention.
But it wouldn't, because their bodies may have been fully engaged the night before, and their lusts were certainly all present and accounted for, but it was their hearts that were absent.
These young people—the regents of their country, many of them—had been left here by their fathers, in the hopes the young and naïve might survive the political rampages of a madman.
So Rath was off his rocker—excellent—let us all retreat into the country and leave our children to rule. They'll do what they're told, they'll do what he tells them, and when somebody (not us—no, that's too risky) finally moves this rabid boar from the throne, we'll come back and claim our places and rebuild our country.
The children were young—many of them were younger than Aylan—but they weren't stupid. They knew they were pawns. But very few people had the strength to just dismiss their entire family because they were being played.
Every day the young men went to council and agreed with what their leader said. Every night they wrote home and told their fathers they were doing the family proud. Every week they received no reply, lest one of those letters praising the regents for a good job come back and prove that the old men who should have known better were fully aware their sons were consigning innocent people to ghettos, to the gallows, to be crucified on the outer walls of the city, all in the name of approval that would never come. Aylan knew it would never come. He wondered when the young men he was bedding would figure it out.
And the rules they had to live by—no celebrations, no birthdays, no Beltanes, no Solstice, no sex. No laughing, no kindness, no children (they made a man weak), no music, no dancing, no singing, no sex. Women had it worse—they couldn't speak, they couldn't walk by themselves, they couldn't look their husbands in the eye in public. And of course, unless in the sanctity of the marriage bed, no sex. And certainly no pleasure in the sex they weren't supposed to be having.
There were many diversions in the city—there were plays praising Rath, plays praising the twins, plays showing the Goddess for a whore. There were balls, there were dinners, there were teas. And after all of the parties and the plays and the religious meetings where the young women would nod chastely at the visiting priests and the young men would look stern and forbidding and chastened, they would retire demurely and properly to their own apartments for a few moments of meditation and prayer.
And then they would slip down hallways, down hidden passageways, along back alleyways, to find their way to orgies of the exalted young, where taking their clothes off and begging for human contact was the only place they could be human, and young, and, for lack of a better word, loved.
Even though everyone in the beds of the rich was too needy, too lost, and too starved for kindness to love at all.
Aylan had tumbled in with them like a baby bunny with his littermates, and they had accepted him as their own. He had come to care for them, those in his little circle, and Jarid and his sister Brina were the ones he cared for the most.
Jarid was young—barely as old as Torrant had been when he'd first come to Triannon—with dark, curly hair, the darkest of skins, limpid black eyes, and a pale heart so overwhelmed by life in the city it almost made the rest of the boy look pink. His participation in the orgies of the younger regents was the equivalent of a little boy building a fort of blankets to hide under because he was afraid. Jarid's blankets were the willing bodies of the other young people, but it was the same thing. Every time Jarid came from a regent's meeting where some new abomination had been passed (they were threatening to tax the sewers in the Goddess ghettoes now, to make it illegal to piss down a drainpipe without giving up a copper coin or two), he would run home and throw up blood. Then he would drink some milk, invite his friends over, and try desperately to forget what it was he had just participated in, and Aylan couldn't blame him. He felt the same way after he'd bedded all of these young people to learn their secrets.
Brina—Jerid's older, discarded half-sister—was as fair as her brother was dark, but her heart was not quite as pale. Since she was a girl—and her mother had died in childbirth—she was persona non grata at home. She had followed her brother to town because he'd needed her, as simple as that. Aylan had the impression the two of them had grown up together under the tutelage of nannies and the disapproval of the family. He felt for the both of them—but he envied them each other. Until he'd been shipped off to Triannon, he hadn't known other children existed.
Brina didn't participate in the mess of insecure flesh Jerid invited to his home. She had a lover from a good family, and even Aylan could tell she was desperately afraid he would refuse to marry her because she had 'given’ herself before they were married. The desperation made her easy, malleable—vulnerable to every bullying tactic the young man tried, and Aylan despised Marik almost as much as he despised the young man's father (one of the older consuls still in the city), who publicly bullied his son as much as Marik bullied Brina.
They were defenseless, Aylan thought, looking at them now. They were pawns, they were children, they were lost—and he had not liked the look Essa had given over her shoulder, as she left the same tangle of bodies he had.
"Where's Essa going?” he asked abruptly into the yawns and stretches of the morning.
"I didn't know she'd left," Jerid said, confused. "Did she get a message? That mother of hers keeps her on a pretty tight leash."
Aylan knew it—and unlike the other young of the city, who had little experience with any family, much less the wrong side of it, he feared her for the fact. "We need to find out if she did and from whom," he said sharply, earning a surprised look from everyone in the gold-carpeted room. "I don't like the way she looked back at us when she was leaving."
"Well, maybe you should have agreed to nail her," Brina said archly, as she came calmly into the room with a tea tray and some breakfast. The nudity didn't bother her, and she did like the company—she often ate with her brother and his friends in the morning, whether or not she had been with her lover that night. Marik had been busy the night before—as far as Aylan knew, she had spent the evening in her room, with a forbidden book. Her favorite, she had told him, was a collection of Goddess stories from Eiran—it was on the Rath's burning list, but she just couldn't bring herself to sacrifice it. Aylan had to agree, once he'd read it, and had thought longingly of Bethen.
"I didn't say I wouldn't," Aylan replied, annoyed, "I just said I didn't feel like it last night." Aylan had been more observer than participant lately—the sad result of a guilty conscience. He had crawled in at the end to comfort—he wasn't sure how many of them knew they wept in their dreams.
"Well, she doesn't take kindly to that kind of thing," Brina said with the practicality of long knowledge. "You'd better be sure you don't get on the wrong side of that one—she can make your life miserable."
"Did she tell someone you had a rash?" One of the young men asked playfully, making Aylan wince.
"Worse," Brina said with a shudder, and Jerid looked at her in sympathy and shuddered too.
"She told everybody we were bedding each other," Jerid filled in when Brina didn't look like she could go on.
"Ewwwwwwwwwww." This from Olen, a plump, shrill blonde girl—another one of Aylan's least favorites in this little group. "Did you?"
"Of course not!" Brina snapped. "But coming from Essa, with her horrible mother to back her up, our father had to threaten them with land fees to get them to shut up."
There was a sudden knock on the door, and a little serving girl appeared, curtseying nervously. Brina was busy serving up breakfast and Aylan was the only one who didn't dodge behind a piece of furniture, so he was the one to wrap a casual sheet around his waist and bow politely to the girl while he took the message from her hand and indicated that she should stay for a moment in case there needed to be a reply.
"Go ahead and read it," Brina mumbled through a mouthful of toast, and Aylan opened the missive and swore.
It was from Essa's mother, Aleta, and it was bad.
"Did Essa get a message this morning?" Aylan asked the girl, trying to keep the urgency from his voice, and she shook her head no, but then added, "Her girl came, though—the one who waits on her at home. She'd been running the whole way—said Essa's mother was looking for her, and Essa could only be in the bath for a few more moments. She had to get back."
Oh no … Aylan looked up at his helpless little bunnies, all in the process of covering themselves with the most expensive skins, and said dreamily, "You people need to go home and get a story straight," he said authoritatively. "Essa's been caught."
Brina hummed in her throat, and some of the boys said, "How do you know?"
"This is from her mother—if she sent here, looking for Essa, and Essa just got home …" he trailed off meaningfully.
"Essa wouldn't rat us out!" Olen burbled. "She's one of us—she wouldn't …"
"She would if it got the heat off her," Jerid said flatly, and Brina nodded, her jaw tightening.
"She spread the rumor about us because she got caught outside after curfew— she said it was our fault, because she was covering for us as we were …" she shuddered.
Aylan looked at Jerid and said, "You let this person into your bed?"
Jerid looked away. "She's … unpleasant … if you don't include her. Her father owns much of the lands adjoining ours—we need her to be … pleasant."
Aylan shuddered, suddenly grateful for the sheet around his waist because he felt both naked and unclean after that one sad little statement. He looked around him at the other seven promiscuous children, and saw they had all lost color and were sitting where they had once stood, as they all digested with sudden clarity what their little rebellion might cost them. The girls would, at best, be shipped off to one of the horrible, 'Seminaries' where the Priests were trained, where they would be forced to wait, hand and foot, day and night on the needs of the men who would be the twins' 'exalted ones'. At worst they would be stoned to death in the courtyard outside the capitol.
The young men would be crucified, their bodies left to rot on the outside of the city gates, as a reminder to all of what happened to those who frolicked under the Whoring moon.
"Get out," he said authoritatively. "We never saw you, and you don't know where we've been. Don't go home—go straight to your family estates, all of you. I don't care where your horses are, I don't care where your carriages are—walk if you have to. Go to your places in the country and stay there, or escape the country before your parents get the letter—you know best, but you need to leave right now."
In a rush they were all dressed, even Olen, who was pushed out the door towards her fat, sturdy pony protesting. "But this is silly, Essa wouldn't hurt us …" Aylan couldn't tell by the direction her pony went whether she believed it or not.
Jerid was left in his bathrobe, looking at his sister in distress. "Father won't let us return," he said softly, and Brina nodded.
"I'll take you out," Aylan said confidently. "I want to stop at the capitol, to hear what they're saying, and I'll be back with my cart. Pack only the essentials. I'm nobody here—I'm a plaything. No one will be looking for me, half the people in the room hardly knew my name. Essa kept calling me 'Aland' all night long. You get ready and …"
"Where will we go?" Jerid asked, his voice dreamy and sad. "I'm supposed to be regent … Father trusted me to obey the king …"
"Your father used you to obey the king!" Aylan said, alarmed, swinging around to grab the boy by the shoulders. His eyes were unfocused, and his dark skin was gray and clammy. Aylan silenced an internal scream of panic, but the echo was still in his ears. Jerid was … he was so fragile, and now the friends, the people he had used to prop up his weakness, to shore up his courage, had scattered to the four winds of the three moons, and Aylan did not like the look he had at all.
"But I have nowhere to go, if I can't go home," Jerid replied, a fine edge of hysteria to his voice.
"You can go to my home!" Aylan insisted. "Do you think I live in this Goddess-forsaken piss-hole, Jerid? I know what a real home is, and a real family— come with me. I will show you two what it is like to be loved."
Brina smiled softly at her brother and took his hand. "Jerid … darling … do what Aylan says, and I'll go with him to the capitol—I want to say good-bye to Marik, after all.”
"Right," Jerid nodded, giving them both a watery grin. "You go, and I'll be ready to go. Don't worry … when you get back it will all be taken care of."
Aylan believed him, Goddess help him. He couldn't fathom a different ending.

The capitol was crowded—Aleta knew a lot of people, and her shrill voice could command people out of bed on a rest day like nobody else, male or female, who was connected to the Regents.
Aylan wore a hood, and so did Brina, and together they slunk behind the crowd. The capitol square was surrounded by three buildings, and was approached on the fourth side by a red-paved road. The buildings were tall, decorative and imposing, with columns and archways and each had a wide flight of steps up to the foyer under the archways. They hid up in the foyer, peering from behind a column and trying not to look as though they didn't want to be seen.
Aleta was a bone thin woman with the pretty dusky skin and hair that was unnaturally gold. She curled her lip and rasped her voice unpleasantly when she spoke, and right now she was in full snarl. Aylan wondered darkly if anyone's ears were bleeding.
"… in the heart of our city … this defiance of the Twins laws, this perversion … these people have even approached my own daughter, and you let them sit in your midst like they're not the Whore's own bastards, fornicating to weaken the strength of our young people and the honor of our king. Oueant and Dueant are too strong to weep so we weaker, abused women have to—we weep for the corruption of sex and the violation of the family in the heart of our own city. Weep because the people who should be leading us are leading us to the dark behind the stars …"
She went on, and Essa stood next to her, looking virtuous and upright, as though she had been chastened through a terrible ordeal and had made it through. Aylan glared at her, wanting to vomit. Would she be able to pull off this act so convincingly when the bodies of her dead friends lay at her feet? He saw a chilly little smile cross her lips, right before she burst into tears, and knew coldly that she was looking forward to it.
"… Tell them Essa!" Aleta was shaking her daughter's arm, and Essa looked demurely up, as though she hadn't been waiting—planning—for just this moment.
"… it was terrible … bodies lunging against each other … and the blonde one with the curls grabbed my arm and threatened me … he told me they'd denounce me in the square if I didn't join them in their horrible nasty orgy. There were men with their things in each others mouths and it was so nasty … and in the middle, with his thing everywhere it shouldn't be was Jerid of Troy and his nasty sister, Brina!"
Aylan felt his gorge rise, and he took Brina's arm. "We need to go," he murmured, because the crowd had been surging to begin with, but at the mention of incest, they gasped, both titillated and excited by the idea of seeing a Regent and his sister destroyed and humiliated and surrounded by their bloodlust.
"Isn't that right, Olen!" Essa cried, and Aylan looked out to see a shocked and puzzled Olen being hauled onto the front steps of the capitol. Her eyes locked with Essa's, and Essa looked arrogantly back, and Olen wasn't shocked and puzzled for long.
"Of course it was …" she began to cry, tears coursing down her cheeks, sobs heaving her padded body. "All of those people … lusting … it was so … blasphemous. … and profane … and they wanted us to do it … to put their things in our mouths and to touch them but they were revolting …" The crowd gave a roar, a thrust against the podium like a cresting wave, and then receded in the calm before another crash.
"Oh Goddess, piss on the brat!" Aylan snapped, and gave Brina's arm a harder tug, willing the girl to see her friends' perfidy and to get on with it.
"But Marik …" Brina murmured unhappily, and then her lover stepped up to steps next to Aleta, and into her worst nightmares.
"I had no idea these people profaned the gods!" Marik announced loudly to another roar, and Brina turned towards him slowly, as though swimming through blood. "I'm shamed that I ever thought of courting a Goddess' whore! I came close to shaming my whole family, and I'll be sure to be far more careful in the future!"
Essa and Aleta beamed up at him, the crowd throbbed and surged and throbbed again, and Brina made a little mewl like a tortured rabbit and almost sank to her knees.
Aylan swung her up into his arms and fled, unnoticed by the crowd that was already rising, rising, surging and screaming, shrieking and climaxing for blood.
She was on her feet eventually as they tore through the streets, using the alleyways Aylan had learned while getting to know the city, and Brina had learned while sneaking away to see the man she thought would love her forever.
They were running so fast they almost slammed into the servants fleeing from the house of Troy.
Aylan seized the arm of one in confusion, finding himself face to face with the poor little thing who had delivered Aleta's message just hours before. "What's the matter?” he asked, trying not to scare the girl. "Where are you all going?"
"Master Jerid …" she gasped. Her blondish hair was a wet mess around her head from sweat, and her eyes were a brilliant red from crying. Her voice when she spoke was trembling, thick and uneven and Aylan started to feel the sickness in his stomach spread to his other limbs. "He told us all to flee back to our families … he didn't want any of us caught when they came for him … but … but I didn't want to leave him alone …"
"Oh gods…" Brina swore, and broke free of Aylan. "Jerid … little brother …" She ran screaming into the house, and the servant girl nodded sadly, tears trembling in her reddened eyes again, and Aylan let her go, tearing after Brina as though the hells of the seven dark were closing near his heels.
He found her in the big white bathroom next to Jerid's bedroom, the one with the well used, gigantic tub. It wasn't white any longer.
Jerid floated by the edge in water the color of rubies, thick and cloudy with them, like scarlet mud. The gape of the wounds at his wrists against his black skin was as obscene as an eviscerated cat, and just as fatal.
And Aylan had no course of action for this. "Goddess!" He stood, stunned, at the door of the room, watching numbly as Brina sank to her knees in the bloody water slopping onto the floor, pulling her brother's head out of the water, and cradling it against her. Jerid's arms splayed loosely, and his body moved like a ship made of seaweed, but Brina murmured to his glassy eyes like a mother to a sweet-breathed child.
"Baby brother …" she murmured, "Oh baby brother … I'm sorry I let them hurt you … I'm so sorry … don't do this … you can't do this … I've followed you everywhere … don't you know that? I won't let them hurt you again … you can't leave me like this. You made my life sweet, little brother … no … no … don't go … don't go somewhere I can't …" She shifted on the bloody wet white tile of the floor, and Aylan heard a metallic clink, but it didn't register until he saw the glint of the razor in her hand.
"Brina," he murmured, shaken out of his stupor by panic. "Brina, we have to go."
But Brina didn't know him. The only person she knew was cradled against her chest, as still and cool as the lapping water against a porcelain tub.
"He's alone," she said, mostly to herself. "He's alone behind the dark of the stars … and he hates the dark … he's always hated the dark … it made him cry. I'm the only one who came to him when he cried … don't worry, baby brother … I'm coming … don't cry … you won't be there for long …"
"Brina …" Aylan cried desperately, and started to move towards her, but it was like moving through a dream, it was like moving through blood, it was like moving through sorrow, and his reaching, flailing hand was still a foot away as she raised her blank, tear-reddened face to him, and put the glittering blade against her pale throat.
"I'm coming, little brother, you won't need to cry anymore …" she whispered, and yanked the blade backwards, gouging a slice through her vein even as she toppled back against the floor, dragging Jerid's body on top of her.
The rip in her throat sprayed blood violently, pattering against Aylan's dark green woven cloak like bunny feet, spattering his face, tapping rapidly against the tile, and he was left, stunned as the blood was pushed from her body in a few beats of her heart. And in a moment, a breath, a shocked cry, a blackness in front of his eyes, he was standing alone in a room that was swimming in blood, the thundering of his heart the only beat of life in the vast, rich, still house.

The Healing Teeth of Justice

Torrant was trying so hard not to think as he led the horse through the cold black and white of the Solstice night, that he almost didn't recognize Aylan huddled on his porch, snow drifting against his hood. For a moment, his heart gave a lift— he'd been waiting for Aylan this evening, when he'd been called out, and he'd been happy. Then he saw Aylan's posture, the defeat, the pain which surrounded his shivering body like a shield, and his heart thudded at his feet again.
Aylan looked like Torrant felt.
Oh Dueant, god of compassion, what had happened to them both?
Torrant should have let Aldam take this one—he had been on call the night before, and had been rousted out of bed to stitch up old Ulf’s thigh because his damned cow had kicked him and sliced him up good. So it really was Aldam's night, but they weren't quite finished with the bed for Aylan, and Aldam was the better carpenter. Pansy was hard at work, fitting the sheets Bethen had sent for the straw and feather ticked mattress, because they had been a trifle small, and all in all, they were so close to making Aylan comfortable in his own room—the final addition to the house—that when Tansy's mother had come in, saying uncomfortably that Tansy was having 'woman problems' Torrant told Aldam to keep at it. Tansy was barely thirteen years old—she was probably just having her first course of monthlies, that was all.
By the time Torrant had ridden the few miles back to the two room shack that housed Tansy and her family, with her terrified mother hanging onto the back of Heartland with him, Tansy had almost bled to death.
When Torrant saw the overwhelming, clotted rush of blood on the rank mattress beneath the frightened girl, he ordered her mother and all six of her younger siblings out of the room. Her father was a titanic man, known for threatening anyone who came near his wife or daughters. Unlike many of the men, he wasn't violent towards women, but he was very protective of his women—and their immortal souls. When Torrant had asked where Clel was this cold dark night, his wife (who was such a timid thing Torrant wasn't sure if he'd ever known her name), had replied, "He's at service, with the priest, damning the Whore's demons for the darkness."
Torrant was glad the man was gone, but one look at Tansy made him wish someone had been there to protect her. Obviously brute strength and a loud voice hadn't done it.
"Tansy, I'm the Healer … do you know me?"
Tansy nodded, so lost for blood that her lips were gray, and Torrant wondered if she could really hear him or if she was answering to the last of her heartbeat.
"Tansy … Tansy … something made these wounds here, between your legs … do you know what happened?" But Torrant knew already. Just looking he knew, and Pansy's terrified voice came back to him. I won't stick something up there to get rid of it …I won't.
Tansy was a tiny, brown-haired, murky-eyed mouse of a girl. All of the children were quiet, but Tansy, the oldest, was almost terrified of strangers. For Tansy to have needed … that abomination … to be done to her … Torrant washed his hands in the bucket he'd had the girl's mother bring, and shuddered. She wouldn't have conceived a baby, not willingly. Oh, Tansy, you must have been so afraid.
Torrant spread her knees gently, and brought some of his new, clean bandages to see if he could reach inside her to pack the wound. But as soon as the blood touched his skin, his gift of truth broke his heart. He tried to staunch the bleeding anyway, to give her mother and father the time to say goodbye, and then he washed his hands again, and moved up to stroke back her hair. She had lain silently, a tiny child in a thin faded dress in the middle of winter. When he'd touched the inside of her, thin silver tears had glinted down the side of her face, and a terrible ferocity reared in Torrant's heart as he contemplated whoever had done this to her.
"Sweetheart …" he murmured gently, murmuring in her ear, "sweetheart, you have to tell me who did this to you."
"Me," she answered, and he couldn't let her die believing that.
"No, darling," he whispered, "You were alone, and afraid, and somebody gave you a baby you didn't want, that you feared to carry. Who gave you that baby— he's who did this to you."
Tansy looked at him with miserable eyes. "He said … if I told … there's worse than the star's dark …"
Torrant knew his eyes shifted to blue, so he kept them closed when he spoke his next words. "He lied, darling. There's a bright light, like the moons in summer, and you go beyond that, and there's music … have you heard music?"
"There's songs at service," the girl murmured. "Pretty."
"Well, this puts them to shame," Torrant spun from the sadness of his own heart. "And there's dancing, and laughing … my mothers are there, and the rest of my family … my brothers and my two fathers … and they will take your hands. Ellyot, my brother, will carry you on his shoulders like the little girl you are, and spin you around until you laugh. There's nothing dark about where you're going, sweet Tansy, you believe me now?"
"Is Ellyot nice?” she murmured. "Will father like him?"
"Ellyot's the best," Torrant told her. "But I'm going to get your mother now, right? You tell her not to worry. Don't you worry about any dark stars. I'll tell her the gods took you now, because they couldn't live without you, right?"
"I'd like dancing …" Tansy murmured. "I bet my gran will be there … she liked dancing too …"
Torrant looked up, aware his eyes had gone to ice blue, and the smell of blood was stirring him to a frenzy, but also deadly sure to not let that rage out here. Tansy's mother came to the bed and read Torrant's face, then bent to kiss her daughter's cheek, as Tansy murmured about music and dance into the closing night.
The murmuring paused for a moment, and Tansy's mother looked to the blood soaked bandages between her daughter's thighs and then looked away, and Torrant had a sudden, sick epiphany.
"You knew," he said in shock. "You … you told her to do it …"
The mousy woman turned her head. "Her father … he'd put her out into the snow if he knew …"
"It wasn't her fault!" Torrant protested, not wanting the last words the little girl heard to be angry ones.
"It's always our fault, Healer," the woman said, and Torrant swore viciously, then grabbed the thin arms in his, knowing his strength was escaping, knowing he'd leave bruises.
"You take that back," he growled in her face. "You bend to your daughter and you take that back. You tell her she's a good girl, and you don't let her die thinking she did this."
"But Healer …"
"Do as I say!” he growled.
"But Healer," the woman protested once again, "she's gone … my baby's already dead."
Torrant let his head fall back and his roar of rage to rattle the clapboards of the cabin. He turned to Tansy and bent to kiss her brow. "Tell Ellyot I said hello," he murmured, and then, slowly, as though swimming through blood, he turned back to the faceless, nameless, mouse of a woman who had allowed the lie that murdered her daughter. "I'll be back for my horse."
And then, without coat, without hat, he was pelting through the frozen dark, under a moonless solstice sky. And then he was the snow cat, thundering through the underbrush, jumping frozen streams, the world as icy and crystalline to his vision as the cat as it had been murky and frightening to the human.
And the snow cat knew exactly where they were going. They had been there before, but they had been running away that time.
The men of Wrinkle Creek had fixed up Choa's house—but even as Torrant changed form to open the door and charge in, he knew the walls would be no match for the strength of his rage.
He'd never seen the priest, and the thin, crooked man with the nose like a notched axe blade was a surprise. He had expected ugly, but he had expected monster ugly. This man was just little and bent, and all of his monster was on the inside with only his little-man's ugliness for show.
"Who in the seven darks are you?" The little man asked. For a frail looking man, he had a resonant voice, like a bass-clarinet, and Torrant thought it was no wonder he could sing the simple folk of Wrinkle Creek into jumping through the ice of hell.
"I'm the man who's been cleaning up your messes for the last month," Torrant growled. "Pansy the miller's daughter, Cora of Sprout Pond, Solly, Graene's sister—you remember these girls?"
The priest looked blank, and Torrant knew his hands were no longer the hands of a man, but that in the lamplight the change wouldn't be seen.
"The baby you left in their bellies makes sure they'll remember you!" he spat, and the sneer on the other man's face didn't surprise him at all.
"Harlots get what they deserve!” he replied, obviously surprised that anyone would object. "If you came to service, you'd know they're all tainted by the whoring moon anyway—it's you who's at fault here, coming into my house, attacking my good name …"
In a blur of human skin and snow cat fury, Torrant hurled across the room and slammed the priest up against the wall. The man's gasp carried spit, but he stank of fear and that was more revolting than the spit. "Tansy, priest? Are you going to tell me that quiet, mousy child asked for your attentions? Are you going to tell me she asked for a baby in her belly when she knew her father would as likely turn her in the snow for having it? Are you going to tell me she wanted you so badly she would rather stick a piece of wire between her legs to try to cut you out than tell a soul how you'd defiled her? Tell me that, priest. Tell me your last lie."
"I'm a man of the gods … I'm sanctified …" His face was white, but Torrant could smell the rancid stink of the fear-tainted blood pounding through his veins. "If you kill me, you'll go to …"
"I don't believe in your hell, priest … but you do … and you already think you're going … I'm just going to send you on your way …"
Torrant didn't remember much after that, or at least that's what he told himself. When he came to himself as a human, he could see his horse, hitched in front of Tansy's family's house, terrified and miserable in the cold. Torrant tasted something then, something wet and salty, and when he realized it was blood and it wasn't his, he fell to his knees and vomited more blood, and meat and skin, into the snow. When he was done, he just looked at it, steaming in the freezing night, and he might have stayed there until he froze to death, except Heartland nickered softly. If Owen Moon had taught him anything, he'd taught him to never neglect a good horse.
Carefully he made his way back home, only to find Aylan on his porch, covered in snow, and looking so lost and alone Torrant wondered how the two of them had managed to find each other on a night such as this.
"I need to put the horse away," he said faintly over the wind. Aylan nodded, and Torrant was back in a few moments. He'd put his sheepskin coat and gloves on during the trip back, but it hadn't done much good, and as he sat down on the cold stone of the front stoop and wrapped his arm around Aylan's shoulders, he wondered if he was going to have to carry him inside before they both froze into ice and sorrow on this joyless night.
He looked at Aylan's red-chafed, hollow-eyed face and leaned his head closer, just to warm his brother with his breath, and he noticed the even spread of dried blood patter tracing its way from the bottom of Aylan's jaw to his eyes and across his forehead.
"There's blood on your face, brother," he said quietly.
"It's innocent blood," Aylan responded hollowly, and then turned towards Torrant, really looking at him for the first time. What he saw made tears start— the first tears, had Torrant known it, that he'd shed since he'd fled the Troy home in Clough, four days before. "There's blood on your face too, brother."
"Mine's not so innocent," Torrant murmured, and then they touched foreheads, wrapped shivering arms around each other, and Aylan said, "Oh, Goddess, Torrant, the things I've done …"
And Torrant's shoulders shook, and their embrace tightened, and in a moment they were shaking, sobbing, howling their separate griefs into an indifferent black of night.

Eventually they had to come in. The warmth of the house was a shock, but it wasn't until Torrant's fingers came to life with a burst of surprising agony that he realized how close he and Aylan had come to allowing their pain to destroy them.
Aldam had left tea on the stove, and Torrant poured a mug of it and pressed it into Aylan's icy hands, and then settled down to work. He ignored Aylan's swearing and half-hearted attempts to push Torrant's hands away as he wiped the incriminating blood off Aylan's face.
"How long were you out there?” he asked quietly. Aylan's little cart and his horses were inside the stable. The horses had been quiet and comfortable, and not at all as though they had just been put in the stalls and were still warming up.
"I spent part of the time in the stable," Aylan chattered. "I … I couldn't come in and talk to Aldam … I just couldn't …"
Torrant grimaced. "He'll know soon enough, for me," he said quietly. "But I'm such a coward … I'm just that much happier I won't have to tell him."
Aylan's face went tight. "I'll have to tell Lane in the spring," he said hoarsely, as though just realizing it. "Maybe I'll have the courage to tell you then …" his voice almost broke again, and his fingers shook as they clenched the mug.
"Sshhhh … shhh…." Torrant took the mug away, and rubbed Aylan's bare red fingers, and then, with a smile, he took Aylan's hands and put them under his shirt, holding them against his chest under his sweater with a gasp, because they were still colder than the core of his body.
Aylan tried to pull his hands away, but Torrant held firm. "I'm not …" Aylan protested, and he closed his eyes tight, holding in more tears. "I'm not … I can't …" He shook his head, and his voice, hoarse from his grieving outside, became thick again, "I'm not clean, brother … I'm not … you shouldn't let me touch you …"
"I've got blood on my mouth, Aylan," Torrant whispered. "Three guesses how it got there."
Aylan pulled one hand away—only one—and took the cloth from the table. He had to lean in to wash Torrant's face, and his fingers especially shook as they outlined that upper lip.
"You've never used your body for anything but what the Goddess intended," he murmured. "I've … I've used mine so badly, I don't know if she'll ever let me use it again."
Torrant smiled under Aylan's fingers, an attempt at humor that thawed Aylan's soul out a little, just to see. "That body was made for hard use, brother," Torrant joked sadly. "Remember, we used to change together for fencing."
The memory was sweet, and Aylan closed his eyes to keep it, but when his eyes were closed, all he could see was a white room stained in scarlet. He started to shiver even more violently, and to his horror a whimper came out of his mouth. He struggled against the closeness, against contaminating a beloved friend with his own polluted flesh, but Torrant pulled him closer, almost violently.
"Let me heal you," he murmured. "Please … I was supposed to heal … not … what I did tonight. Let me heal someone. Let me heal someone I care about."
"I can't," Aylan almost sobbed. The thought of the physical act itself almost made him ill.
Torrant pulled Aylan against him and nuzzled his temple, a sympathetic laugh tickling the hairs against his brother's perfect ears. "I'm not talking about making love, Aylan," he murmured, "I'm talking about comfort. Come to bed, lie next to me, let us hold each other … the other thing, it will come or not come, but I will never be afraid of you," Aylan made a protesting sound, and Torrant's embrace grew stronger. "My beloved friend," he murmured urgently, "There is nothing you can do that will make me not want to touch you."
Aylan nodded, weakening and allowing himself to take strength where it was offered. He straightened so he could nuzzle Torrant's temple. "If I could want anyone right now, it would be you," he whispered. "And comfort sounds like more than I deserve."
"Shite…"
"Hush … and there is nothing you can do that will make me not want to touch you. Please, sleep next to me, brother. Please comfort me. I have nothing else …" He pulled his voice back under control, and Torrant pulled him into the bedroom.
"I have a bed?" Aylan said in surprise when the lamp went on and he saw the sturdy, if rough hewn, frame with the darned and newly ticked mattress, next to Torrant's own, larger bed frame. Pansy had even finished the sheets—and Aylan didn't seem to mind that they were bright gold.
"And a drawer—Aldam and I will rotate in here—whoever isn't on call gets to sleep in here with you, and whoever is on call gets to sleep in the room closer to the front room." Torrant stoked the embers in the room, and started pulling off his clothes, laying them to dry on the chair by the fire. The room was snug—he and Aldam had seen to it—and they had used the trees nearby to cut paneling and finish it.
"You two have done a lot of work on a place you don't intend to live in," Aylan murmured, looking around in new appreciation.
"I think Aldam will stay," Torrant replied, more than a little sadly. "I think he dreams of changing this place, so a woman needn't be afraid of walking in the woods by herself, and then bringing Roes here as his bride."
"And you?" Aylan asked, taking his outer clothes off and draping them on the chair in Torrant's example. The snow had caught him unawares—in Dueance, Clough's capitol, it was converted to slush in short order. He had not worn nearly enough layers, and his undergarments were soaked through. He grimaced, even as Torrant's sardonic eyebrow prompted him to strip to the skin before squirming into Torrant's bed and scooting to the wall. Torrant was still wearing his long johns which were still dry.
A smile flowed across Torrant's features, his whole body seemed lighter for a moment, and Aylan felt, for the first time since the blood had pattered across his face in the dead white house, a sense of hope. "I want to be by the sea, with Yarri," he murmured. "Every time I leave Eiran, it feels like the surf is calling to my blood." He turned thoughtful then. "Of course, if Yarri wants to live in Clough …"
"Believe me," Aylan said soberly. "No one wants to live in Clough."
Torrant's eyes rested on his face for a moment. "No, I don't imagine they do." And with that, he blew out the lamp, and crawled into bed, allowing Aylan's hands to find him and pull him close. There was a moment, when pale faces bumped in the dark, that they might have kissed, firm lips against firm lips, hot breath mingling … but they didn't, and Torrant tucked his face into the hollow in Aylan's shoulders, and they pressed together, shivering as they warmed each other's bodies, until they fell asleep.

A Gentle Winter

Pansy wakened them the next day with gentle footsteps and a snort of irritation. "Well, if I'd known you were going to share that bed," she muttered, "We could have kept the other one in the surgery—the cot is killing me."
"I'm sorry, Pansy," Torrant mumbled, rolling over and squinting at her. Aylan slept in large sprawl near the center of the bed, but since Torrant had always slept in a tight bundle at the side, it had worked out well enough. "We were cold clean through—we can work on getting you a decent bed." Conrad and Rora had been thrilled at Torrant's proposal—but their cottage was much smaller than the Healer's home, and they asked humbly if Pansy could stay with Torrant and Aldam. The young men had been warmed by their unspoken assumption that nothing untoward would happen with the young girl in their home. Perhaps they, too, assumed the two of them didn't like women, but in either case it was acceptance, and approval, and they got little enough of both.
"That's fine," Aldam had assured them at the time, but with Aylan's visit, the problem of space had come up.
For now, Aylan rolled a little and whimpered in his sleep, and Torrant looked at him in concern. They may indeed end up moving Aylan's bed back for Pansy, because he wasn't sure his friend could sleep alone anytime soon. Whatever Aylan's pain had been, it was clear it would not fade in a day.
"Why're you here?" Torrant asked now, squinting some more in the spare, dark light of the morning after Solstice. Usually, the person who had worked the night before got to sleep in the next day—it was Aldam's turn to get up, and as Pansy had been working as a sort of people's assistant since she'd come to stay with them (besides being up to use the water closet at first light, she's assured them sourly), she was usually better at running interference than this.
"There's people at the door—they're … they're the men who're usually at the priest's service, and they don't look happy … but …" Pansy made a face, "they don't have a rope or pitchforks either. Anyway, I thought you were the best choice."
Torrant nodded and scrubbed at his face with his hands, grateful that the blood, at least, was gone. And then, because the hour itself was rude, he damned decorum and marched out to greet them wearing Aunt Beth's hand-knit long woolen underwear, making sure the flap in the back and the button in the front were both securely closed.
"What did we do to you now?” he demanded crankily, playing up the sleep in his eyes as he stalked towards the door.
To his eternal shock, the men all nodded their heads—humbly—and took two steps back. To his pain and discomfort, Tansy's father was the one who stepped up to talk.
"That priest …" the man turned red then, and his eyes looked swollen from tears when Torrant had sworn no man in this Goddess-blighted pisshole could shed them. "He done my baby wrong, didn't he?" the man asked, and Torrant could no longer feign sleep.
"Of the worst sort," he murmured softly, begging Aldam and Aylan not to hear. They were both hurt so much already.
"My wife … she told me … she and Tansy tried to … tried to … to cut him out of her belly … and she died of it … and that you … it broke your heart?" And the man looked nakedly at Torrant, and Torrant had few words better.
"Yes," he murmured. Ellyot, you'd best be showing her how to dance, he begged silently.
"I went to kill that priest this morning …" Uh-oh. "But something else did it for me … and … you been telling us all along, ain't you? You been telling our women and our children … that when we don't pay no attention to the Goddess … well, then Joy don't pay no attention to us, ain't that right?" The man's face was craggy, angles, broken veins, skin like rubble, and his gruffness would scare small animals and small children alike, but his heartbreak was as real as Torrant's, as real as Lane's would be, as real as Aldam's or Yarri's or Aylan's, and Torrant couldn't begrudge him the lateness of his epiphany. It wasn't his place, not anymore, not in the face of such bare and vulnerable grief.
"That's right," he said again, quietly, because there wasn't anything else to say.
"Well, She paid attention to that priest … something of Her ripped his prick off and ate it, and ripped his heart out and left it on the floor next to him in the dark stomach of Her Solstice, and we don't want no more quarrel with Her, you hear me?" Torrant paled, but nobody standing at his door in the snow seemed to notice. "And we wanted to tell you, you feel free to treat our women now. You're the Goddess' own, and we ain't gonna stand against Her no more, you hear? You tell Her that, right?"
"We don't speak personally," Torrant muttered numbly, but it didn't matter, because he'd nodded his head somewhere in his shock, and the men took that as a definite yes. As a whole they ducked their head and turned and filed away. Torrant closed the door and waited until they were long out earshot, before he turned for the back of the house and fled for the water-closet to be violently ill.
He leaned his cheek against the polished wood of the seat and was surprised to feel a hand pulling the sweaty hair from his brow, and another one offering him a glass of water. Turning sideways, he saw Aylan was tending to his hair, and Aldam was offering the water, and he wished for a moment that he could be Ellyot, teaching sweet Tansy to dance.
"You heard?” he said uselessly.
"So did Pansy—I think she's actually dancing," murmured Aldam. "I didn't know they knew how to dance here."
"I … I don't want to think about it," Torrant groaned.
"Well, you should think about dancing!" Aylan said lightly, grabbing him under the arms and hauling him up. "Thanks to you, I think the people here will be doing a lot more of it."
"Sure, until someone sends another priest!" Torrant snapped back, surprised that Aylan, at least, couldn't see the repercussions.
"But Torrant, boy-o," Aylan replied with a fair approximation of Lane's Eiran song in his voice, "they'll have to wait at least until spring."
A small smile peeked behind Torrant's gray-faced misery. "They will, won't they?"
"Oh, yes," Aylan said, a satisfied smile on his face. "Imagine the damage we can do here before spring."
Down the hall and behind a closed door, they could hear Pansy, singing loudly to the tune of a hymn she'd learned at the priest's service, but using words it would have killed that vermin over again to hear.
"Happy Solstice," Aldam said brightly. "My gift isn't nearly as wonderful."
Torrant rubbed his eyes then, and tried a laugh. It didn't work, but with Aldam on one side and Aylan on the other, they walked him to the breakfast table and he decided that he'd have some time to make it work. And maybe Aylan's laugh would come back as well—it was, after all, what healing time was for.

Aylan didn't heal all at once—in fact, by the end of spring, Torrant wondered how much his friend had really healed at all.
They moved the extra bed into the surgery, and added some drawers, and Pansy told them once, in a quiet moment, that she'd never in her life had such luxury. She didn't say it very loudly, though, because Ernst, the stocky, terminally-shy miller who loved her, had been there, and he was working fervently, even in winter, on building them a home.
Their reunion had been a rocky one—but not nearly as rocky as it might have been before the priest's death. In fact, the entire town had taken on a spirit of forgiveness in light of that mutilated body, and Ernst was much more inclined to believe Pansy hadn't wanted the priest's advances in the first place now the miserable bastard's important parts had all but disappeared. Together, they planned every day about the new house, and since Ernst had a sleigh and could travel, he gave Conrad and Rora frequent updates on Pansy and the growing bulge at her stomach.
"Will they tell the baby I loved him?” she asked Ernst anxiously, one bitter Imbolc evening, two months into the cold new year.
"They said you could visit whenever you wanted, as long as you promised they could raise him as their own," Ernst assured her, for what must have been the thousandth time, and for the thousandth time, Pansy had clung to her lover's neck and cried.
The incidences of bruising and broken bones all but disappeared, much to Torrant's and Aldam's relief—the winter months very often brought nearly frost-bitten women trekking through the woods to have their wrists bound better after nearly cutting off their own circulation with their own efforts. In their stead were more calls to tend fevers, and more calls to tend to pregnancies, just to make sure all was well, and more tending to children who had stayed too long out in the cold.
Aylan busied himself during this time helping with the improvements. When Torrant and Aldam protested the house was big enough, Aylan said cheerfully that if Roes was as fertile as her mother, they would have children to fill it soon enough, and for a few months before she gave birth in the spring, Pansy didn't need to sleep in the surgery any more.
Every night Aylan slept in Torrant's bed, and whimpered in his sleep.
Every night Torrant held him, and whispered there was nothing he could have done that would lose him the love of his family. After the last snow of winter, when the air smelled warmer, even if the temperature didn't, and the crocuses and pinks started poking their brave, stiff little noses out of bare patches in the slush, in the dark of the night of what would have been the equinox, preparation for Beltane had they been home, Aylan whispered his terrible burden into his brother's ear.
Torrant held him harder, and wept for him.
"It wasn't your fault," he murmured again and again into that strong body, and that soft, curling yellow hair.
"I was using them …"
"You cared for them … it wasn't your fault … the actions were theirs … and it wasn't even evil … no!" When Aylan would have protested. "The evil was with the judgment and the anger, and the people who would rather condemn than love. The evil was in thinking that loving children makes them weak … if your children had been stronger … if they had known any love but the kind that was in their bed …" Torrant trailed off, and looked at Aylan's face so close to his, the white of his eyes still glistening from his tears in the moonlight. Aylan was resting his head on Torrant's shoulder—usually, because of their heights it was the other way around. For three months, they had been sharing a bed, and for three months, they had pretended the warm body next to them was just that—a warm body
"I will always love you, my friend," Torrant whispered in sudden understanding. "Whether you are a lover in my bed, or a friend when I need one, I will love you. My family loves you. As long as you need us, we will be here to love you. Family doesn't leave."
A fresh flood of silent tears fell, there in the quiet of the almost-spring, and Aylan's full lips quirked in his first real smile since Torrant had seen him on Solstice in the snow. "You know, don't you, that as soon as I'm ready to share a bed with anyone again, Yarri will probably be of age."
Torrant laughed a little, dryly and truly, and he kissed the top of Aylan's head. "Well then, we were not to be." He smiled wickedly then, in that way which made all the women of the town stop talking and look at him wide eyed. "But wanting is sometimes as much fun as having—we can just want and enjoy that."
Aylan buried his head in Torrant's chest and curled closer, like a child. "Say what you like—I still think most of the joy is in the having."
"Well, we'll never know, will we?" Torrant asked archly, and Aylan raised a tear stained face and kissed his friend less than chastely on the lips. Torrant tasted salt, and then tongue, and then Aylan, and he let Aylan kiss deeper, push closer, for just a little more.
When Aylan pulled back, they were both breathing harder, and curling up was not as comfortable as it had been, and Aylan sighed with regret, and then rolled over to his side. "Good night, brother," he murmured, and Torrant spooned him from behind and kissed his neck until Aylan's breath caught.
"Good night, brother," he replied then, and they fell into a deep and dreamless sleep—the first for either of them since Solstice.

Part VI
The Fractious Moon

Unexpected, that's all

The old woman was dying, but she was awfully cheerful about it. Torrant had sat at her bedside for the better part of a week, caring for her needs as she rambled under, over, and through the reality of the now and into the reality of her sweet and hard-lived past that was just as solid. Torrant was charmed to listen to her, even as he was sorry to see her go.
And he tried very hard not to resent the fact that old Grete of Shady Wrinkle had chosen Beltane week to fade from the land under the three moons.
The last summer, he and Aldam had sent for a replacement from Triannon, so that their corner of the Old Man Hills wouldn't be without a Healer. This summer, the only replacement Triannon had trained up had been female, and as much as matters had improved in Wrinkle Creek, a woman alone (and one who, by all accounts was timid, unsure, and barely nineteen) was in danger, if not for her own person, then of destroying all of their carefully wrought tolerances for all things female, including the Goddess and the mentioning of a woman's monthlies in public.
It had hurt, but Torrant had in the end told Aldam and Aylan to go home without him. He would stay in Wrinkle Creek until Professor Austin could relieve him for a scant two weeks at the height of midsummer. The thought of not seeing Yarri was enough to make Torrant's chest tight with resentment, but Aldam … Aldam was pining away without his Roes, and Torrant envied them their wilding and the long, sweet summer of family he had thought would be his salvation.
He needed a talk with Uncle Lane and a hug from Auntie Beth in the worst of ways, and as much as he worried about Aylan, baring his soul to Lane alone, he envied him the chance to do just that. And Yarri … her body had been maturing in the last years—he wondered, as he had wondered since his first wilding, what she would look like when she was old enough to choose her first lover. Her sharp, dry sense of humor hadn't softened any since she was eleven, but her vocabulary and her timing only got better and better. His life didn't feel quite real if he couldn't reach out and touch Yarri at least during the summer, and he'd nearly wept as he watched Aylan and Aldam trot away.
If Grete hadn't been such whimsical, captivating company, Torrant would have been miserable with self-pity, and he told her that very thing one bright morning when she was lucid and not in pain, and not mistaking him for her long lost brother, Torrellion.
"Oh, shite!" The old woman laughed, her wrinkle creases deepening with her smile. Her skin was translucently thin with age, and her eyes were rheumy with illness, but the way her face moved with a grin of delight spoke of happy years spreading goodwill and hard work, and Torrant thought sadly of his and Yarri's mothers who would have smiled just like this. But it was hard to be sad around Grete, even for a moment, even when she was sick. "I just wander in and out—I don't know why a handsome and hale young man would stay with a wild-flying old dingbat like me when there are pretty girls and boys in the sunshine!"
Torrant blushed and ducked his head, a corner of his lip curling up in a small smile. "The only one who would dance with me would be you, Grete, and you've told me you're dying, so I'll have to dance alone."
The old woman's cackle was truly delighted now. "Boy—I cannot imagine a world in which you would be allowed to dance alone—now tell me truly, do you have someone? There were thick rumors about you and that angel of a man who stayed with you—is he special to you?"
Torrant rolled his eyes. "He's special to me, sweetheart, but not in that way. He's a friend from school who's family now … and too broken to love me even if it would have worked. No—I have a moon-destined, or so everybody calls her …"
"Well, where is she boy?" And Grete looked eagerly around—everybody knew a moon-destined couple would pine if left too long from each other, and Torrant sighed.
"She's not of age, yet, Grete my girl—she's barely sixteen, and I refuse to go pounding down her door when she's still practically a child. I've seen what happens here …" he trailed off and flushed, this time uncomfortably, but Grete patted his hand with sympathy.
"When the women marry young and grow old fast? Is that what you were going to say?" Torrant nodded again, and she reached up and patted his cheek. "You're a good man, Healer—you and young Aldam, two of the best men to come near these parts in quite a bit. You've taught our men how to walk like men again in this world, and even if not one person thanks you for it, you need to know we're grateful. Now, go to my drawer over there—yes, that one, now to the bottom. That's right, boy-o. Ah, good breeding—you see it when a man doesn't want to go through a lady's things, but don't worry. This is a gift. See at the bottom, that bit of white muslin? It's wrapped …"
And sure enough, Torrant pulled out a paper-wrapped night gown, preserved carefully, and only a few shades off the white it had been the day it was stitched up and embellished, carefully, with the tiniest of yellow, red, and pink rose-buds, from the ruffle at the skirt to the ruffle at the throat. "It's very pretty," he said, meaning it. It was something that Roes or Bethen or even Yarri, now that she was almost grown, would embroider for themselves.
"Oh yes," the woman sighed, "That's it. It was supposed to be for Graene, my granddaughter—you know her?" Torrant nodded—the little wife at the mercantile, who was less black and blue, but no less frightened for all of the changing the men were doing in Wrinkle Creek. "But they had stopped the handfast pole and the Beltane fires by the time she married, and I didn't want to grace that profanity the priest said over them with a gift as fine as this. Then Ulin, that rotter, said she couldn't speak to me anymore because I was an infidel … and, well, she's spoken to me since, but, the present doesn't seem like hers anymore, ye ken?" It was an old expression, that meant 'you know', but Torrant could have understood it if she'd spoken another language altogether.
"I do understand," he murmured. "It was a gift without a home."
"You are a poet, boy—you'll have to sing to me again when I'm done with this," because he had been bringing his lute and practicing the songs he'd written over the winter for Yarri, and because she was looking very tired now, and more like she was actually dying than as though she was just laid up in bed for a spell. She rested for a moment, and then closed Torrant's hands around the paper, making it crackle in the stillness of the tiny, sunlit cottage.
"You take that gown home to your moon-destined, boy. You give it to her now, and make her want to wait for you. Give her a reason to believe you're not an empty promise, and she'll wait beyond time, beyond reason, and beyond the stars damned dark. Will you do this for me, boy? Will you give an old woman's gift to a young man's beloved? It would make me feel right sprightly, to know that gown won't rot in the bottom of my daughter's chest of drawers."
And, oh, she was so serious, and this meant so much to her. Torrant felt the last of his resentment evaporate, like the last mud-puddle of the rainy season, which had turned to clay the week before. He put the gift gently down at the foot of her bed and took old Grete's wrinkled, blue veined hands in his Healer's fine, strong ones, and kissed them.
"It's a fair gift," he murmured with a suddenly thick throat, "and I know she'll cherish it as I do."
Grete pulled her hand away and tousled his hair like a ten-year-olds. "Ah, boy—you'll make me live yet with those pretty ways of yours. Now play me a song … something sweet. I don't know how much longer I have, and my daughter's coming by soon to nag at me to sleep, and I only have so much music to listen to before all I can hear is the singing of the stars."
"I bet they sing sweeter than me, old woman," Torrant grinned gently, tuning his lute as he spoke.
"I doubt it, pretty boy. Now sing."
The next day, Torrant walked into the little mercantile, looked Ulin levelly in the eye and told him that Graene was going to see her grandmother before she died. Ulin, a blonde pasteboard imitation of a man, tried to protest, but nobody wanted to go up against Torrant anymore—besides having a high rate of success in a fight, he (and Aldam) were now the designated 'men of the Goddess'. Nobody wanted to end up with his most vulnerable bits torn to shreds and his heart next to his head.
Graene swallowed painfully, and when Torrant offered his arm to her, she took it, and allowed him to escort her up the street and down the short walking distance through the woods to her grandmother's cottage.
Grete and Graene wept soundlessly at the reunion, and Torrant left them, busying himself in the kitchen and making dough for a zucchini bread that Grete's oldest daughter, Graene's mother, would be able to pop in the wood stove that night. It was Grete's favorite, and she hadn't been eating well. A part of him laughed dryly—she was dying. She proclaimed it to everyone who visited, there was no secret zucchini bread that would make her live longer. Torrant silenced this little bit of mockery—Grete may not live longer because of his zucchini bread, but she would live happier, and that was all that mattered.
When he was done, Graene called him in—Grete had asked if he could sing her to sleep again, and he sang an old song—Yarri's favorite as a child—about a princess and a beast and about not giving up. When Grete's breaths rattled fragilely in her tiny, wasted body and her eyes closed, the last of the song died away and he stood, put the lute in the case, and offered his arm to take Graene home.
"I'll stay," she murmured, stroking the sparse white hair from her grandmother's brow. Her own hair was thick and honey-wheat blonde—Grete had said often enough that Graene was the best bit of immortality she'd have under the moons. "I missed her … it hurt, not being able to visit."
"She missed you," Torrant told her, not sure if it would make her feel better or worse.
Graene looked at him sadly. "Our little world missed a lot of things, under the men's moons, didn't it?"
"I …" Torrant swallowed. He hated this—he hated answering questions for the Goddess like some damned priest. "Women are beautiful," he said at last. "You are strong, and lovely, and your bodies do amazing things … and you bring joy. It's not good to forget that. It's never good to forget that."
Graene dashed her eyes with the back of her hand. "Gran said I could have her cottage when she was gone, and Ulin and his nasty little store could go to the dark behind the stars, since he likes talking about it so much. What do you think?"
Torrant smiled a little, looking fondly at the old woman. "I think a mercantile that didn't cheat us for flour would make a lot more money than one that did."
Graene smiled back. "She said you made marvelous zucchini bread—is there any? I haven't eaten today … I'd love to share some with you."
"You'll have to let it cook first," he replied, setting his lute down next to the paper wrapped package. When he saw it, he looked at her guiltily. It was supposed to have been …
"The cottage is more than I deserve," Graene said gently. "She gave you that because you being here, as her Healer, means something to her. You let her give you that. I'll …" And now her voice threatened to break for the first time, "I'll just stay here with her, and live in her home, and pretend I ever had her spleen." She sniffled a little, and turned towards the kitchen. "Now let me put that bread in so you can get back to the house before dark."
He let her go, not even bothering to protest that there was nobody there at the moment who'd miss him.
Four days later the old woman died, and he held up Graene at the funeral. The mountain people buried their dead and didn't burn them, although the little cemetery was not a hospitable place to dig at all. Ignoring Ulin's glare from across the township—a funeral was an event after all—he spoke his first Rite for the Dead, and as he spoke he allowed his voice to thicken and his tears to fall, because Grete had lived her life bravely. He would face his grief bravely for the little old woman who had made days by her bedside feel like sunshine.
When he was done, he was surprised to look up and find the men looking at him soberly, and the women smiling through their tears. He had been terrified he wouldn't do old Grete justice, and his relief had him smiling back at them with his whole heart. He nodded his head and turned away from the grave site, allowing the family to grieve as was only right, and did not see that the whole town was looking at him in awe and with more than a little bit of love.
Lane, Cwyn and Yarri were waiting for him at the house when he got back.
He was stunned at first, embracing Yarri nervelessly in the bright-lit kitchen, wondering if he had dreamed her up on the dreary way home in the stifling heat. Lane came to his side and clapped him on the back, and he clung to Yarri as tightly as he clung to his dignity and tried not to sob like a baby.
"You came …" he murmured in wonder, and Lane laughed dryly.
"I had no choice," he said. There was more gray in his beard this year, Torrant realized with a shock—he really looked like a town elder now, instead of like a middle-aged father of four. "The minute Yarri looked on that damned map of yours and saw that you weren't coming, well, she started packing."
"You saw them first!" Torrant asked anxiously—ah gods, Aylan …
"I talked to him," Lane said gently, a grim shadow falling over his pleasant face. "I … I fathered him … as much as I could," and Torrant could almost see the guilt sitting on Lane's shoulders like a spike-encrusted boulder. Lane sighed and rubbed his face, weariness and age descending deeper into his flesh, and Torrant was forced to wonder how many nights he'd lain awake, worrying about the young man he'd taken into his family and then sent into danger.
"Aylan wouldn't have been happy doing anything else," Torrant said gently, over Yarri's red-gold head. She was still clinging to him, making it hard for him to give an excited Cwyn the attention he seemed to feel he desperately deserved. The boy had grown—in fact, he was a year or two away from growing into his feet and passing Torrant up by a head, and his once fair hair had turned dark as wood already. And Cwyn, at thirteen, was as smart as his parents and twice as vocal about it.
"Mama told Da that if he ever sent one of her children into Clough again, he was going to need a map to her bed!” he piped up, happy to contribute to the conversation.
Lane turned purple. "Gods, boy-o—has it occurred to you we wouldn't want that conversation spread all over the lands of the three moons?"
"If you didn't want everybody to know, why did you yell at each other when you were having the conversation?" Cwyn asked, and Torrant disengaged himself from Yarri long enough to give the precocious boy a solid hug and to distract him from an obviously sensitive subject.
"Since you're here, we need to find someplace for you all to sleep—here— would you like to see what we've done with the place?" And with that he took them on a tour of the house in its entirety—pointing out the work that he and Aldam had done, and making sure they knew that most of the badly varnished boards and the paneling with nicks in it were his fault. "Aldam does carpentry with such patience," he said at one point, admiring the finely sanded boards in Aldam's room with the woven rug (Roes' work) on the floor. "It's almost a shame he's such a wonderful Healer. He and Roes got home all right as well?"
Lane chuckled, truly happy for the first time since Torrant had seen them all in his kitchen. "Aldam and Roes are so lost in each other—I don't know how he's going to make it the next two years while she finishes her schooling."
"It can't be a picnic for Roes either!" Yarri snapped, yanking Torrant's attention back to her, and Torrant looked at her and smiled gently.
"Waiting is difficult for everyone, Yarrow root," he murmured softly. "Aldam does it with more grace than most." He grinned wickedly and showed them the hand-carved commode. "In fact, he channels it all into carpentry."
Lane and Yarri laughed long at that, and Cwyn eyed them all disgustedly. "The house is really nice, cousin," he said with an obviously sincere attempt at politeness, "Can I go out in the woods and explore now?"
Torrant caught his breath and whistled slowly on the exhale. "I guess that would be fine, young man," he said carefully. "But …" he looked at Lane, who grimaced and shrugged. Torrant had no idea how much of his and Aldam's letters home Uncle Lane had shared with his younger children. "Don't kiss anybody, Cwyn," he said at last, running his hand through his trimmed hair and making it stand out all over his head like a hedgehog. "Especially not boys. Trying to kiss a boy out here in the hills will get you killed. Dead. Like the rabbit you probably ate for lunch—do you hear me, sir?"
Cwyn wrinkled his nose, trying to assimilate the warning. "Why on earth would somebody kill me for that?” he asked finally.
Torrant shook his head and shrugged, at a complete loss for words. "I have no idea," he said at last. "But believe me when I say it to be true, right?"
And with uncharacteristic solemnity, Cwyn nodded his head and agreed. "I hear you, Torrant—but you've got to know that you live in a wanking cesspool of a place, right?"
Torrant laughed, a true laugh but one that made his chest tighten and his eyes bright. "Truer words were never spoken, boy-o—but it's where we are now, and you need to play by those rules. Be back by sundown—I have zucchini bread and watermelon for supper."
"Wonderful!" And with that, the boy was through the front door so fast it blurred as it slammed shut behind him.
Torrant opened it anyway—it got warmer here in the hills than it did at the sea, and it was more pleasant in the house if he opened the front door and the door through the surgery and the windows in all the bedrooms as well. He and Aldam had installed a cold box with a compartment that burrowed into the earth, where they placed the ice that they had chopped from the creek that winter. There was a little room burrowed under Aldam's room for that purpose, with a dark set of stairs that went underground. Aldam's room and the surgery which was right next to it were both the better for it in the summertime, and Torrant told Lane that he could sleep there.
"You can stay in the surgery," Torrant told Yarri, who was standing next to him, close enough to touch. He found he couldn't get enough of the smell of her hair … there was something pleasant and floral (probably the soap she used on it—women were good at finding smells for things like that) but also something musky and animal and appealing about it. The smell of her hair soothed the aching place inside his chest like nothing had done since the bitter and dark solstice midnight of winter.
"Whose bed is in there now?" Yarri asked curiously, and Torrant had to smile.
"Well, we started out building it for Aylan, but…" Torrant trailed off, unwilling to talk too much about Aylan's troubles, but too entrenched in family not to. He swallowed, looked Lane in the eye and finished. "Aylan had trouble sleeping this winter," he murmured, and Lane nodded his head sadly.
"Starry heard him, his first night home—she crawled in with him, and he quieted, and so I think that's the way it will be all summer."
"Good," Torrant murmured. "Good—because all I could do was hold him until he was done. I'm glad something can take that away." He mustered up a smile. "Anyway, Aylan couldn't sleep alone, and Pansy was staying here until she had her baby …"
"Wait a minute—who was having whose baby?" Yarri asked anxiously, and then hung on his every word until he was done with the story.
"I was going to visit Conrad and Rora tomorrow—we want to make sure he's growing well, with the goat's milk and the boiled grain and all. You can see him then."
"What did she name him?” she asked, entranced—Yarri was drawn to babies in any room, Torrant thought fondly, remembering his visit the year before. Bethen had written him often about Yarri's happy place, teaching the orphans of Eiran, and how very much they all adored her. Of course she would want to hear more about the little changeling child he had delivered from a cold home into a warm one.
But Torrant blushed to answer this question just the same. "Conrad and Rora named him," he murmured, looking determinedly at the cold box and wondering about wrapping some of that extra bandage material in the seams of it so the ice would melt a little more slowly.
"But what did they name him?" Yarri insisted, and Torrant shrugged.
"Well, they wanted to name him after me, since it was my idea, and I was there with Aldam the night Pansy brought him into the world, but I told them I'd rather they name him Tal … because, you probably don't remember, but Tal had this way of wrinkling his nose when he was thinking hard, and this little boy came out and cried a little bit and then just gave us all that nose-wrinkled look like he was trying to decide if the whole trip were worth the results … so, I told them it would be a real honor to me if they named him after my brother, and they were good with that."
Yarri's eyes had gone terribly bright. "It's a good name," she said thickly. "But you're wrong—I do remember that look of his. I haven't forgotten everything, Torrant, honestly I haven't."
Torrant looked at her quizzically, and recalled their conversation from two Beltanes ago. He took her hand in his and kissed it, and then used his thumb to wipe away the tears. "I know you haven't, Yar—I just don't want to assume." Yarri nodded, dashed her eyes with the back of her hand, and they continued to visit until it was time to fix dinner.
That was when Lane sent her to find Cwyn. (Yarri rolled her eyes at this obvious tactic—"As though that child has ever missed a meal!"—and then left, so that the men could talk about "grown-up, manly things.")
"Do you think she's still out there?" Torrant asked wryly.
"She is, and Cwyn'll be with her," Lane affirmed, and Torrant gave an exasperated laugh.
"Why do we bother?" he wondered, and Lane clapped his back and reached for the zucchini to mash—Torrant had left it in the steamer while he started the fire in the little oven, so it was soft and squishy. Torrant gave him the shelled nuts to chop fine as well as he pulled out the soft white flour and the hefty jar of honey, and started to measure out everything else into the bowl.
"The lie gives us comfort," Lane said soberly. "We like to pretend that if they don't know about the pain, we can protect them from their own. Besides," he stopped his chopping and made sure he had Torrant's absolute attention, "I think you and Yarri will have this conversation twice—you always have."
Torrant flushed. Lane was right. He had always confessed to Lane as a parent, but Yarri had always found out from his own lips, the worst of his offenses in the world. "She does the same," Torrant murmured, and Lane smiled, because it was true.
"Good—so we know you'll tell her—now what do you want to tell me?"
Torrant closed his eyes, the memory of blood vomited on snow clouding his vision behind them, and proceeded to tell Lane about bodies left in the woods and the demise of an evil little man who called himself a priest.
When he finished, he turned to Lane for his usual comfort and was surprised to see Lane had his own eyes closed, the story itself etching lines into his face that Torrant had never seen before.
"Dueant's eyes, boy," Lane muttered, "You and Aylan … in a thousand years I hadn't dreamed you'd grow into a world with this much awfulness." He shook himself fiercely, and squinted at Torrant, frustration and anger clear in his grimace. "We need this to end," he murmured. "I'm not sure how—I … my thinking is more Goddess thinking than gods thinking, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I'm afraid for my family—that's you boys, and Aldam, and Roes … she thinks she's going to come out here with Aldam when she's done with her schooling—I think I'd rather tie her to her little girl's bed than let her stay in this defenseless house when the tide of this rocky little ocean of people can turn so suddenly savage. Aldam would give his life for her—but he's a target too, and besides!" Lane made a sudden deep cut into his handful of nuts and had to pull the knife out of the new gouge in the cutting board, "He shouldn't have to. You know what Aylan's been doing—I'm sure he's told you by now?"
Torrant nodded, still working, knowing exactly where this was going and grateful for it—fiercely grateful that he was going to be called into the fray.
"I can't ask him to go back there again, not alone," Lane continued, not meeting Torrant's eyes. "I can't—and he'll volunteer when he's ready but it won't be soon enough. If it was just the information, I could let it stand … but Rath has the Goddess' folks shoved in ghettos with seven different taxes every time they take a shite, and no way to earn a living and no way to move out of the city. Stanny thought of the idea of giving them wool—yarn the guardsmen tax, but wool, they haven't legislated that yet. They spin the nicest wool in those ghettoes—they card it and spin it and make it into lace that the women in that Goddess blighted city will pay a fortune for, and from what Aylan's been telling me, it's been saving families from starvation. He trades the things I give him for bales of wool at the foot of the hills, where they grow sheep like bushes, and then he drives right into Dueance and gives Rath's hated stepchildren the way to make a living. That's what I need you to do, boy-o—I know you're burning at the bit to do more …"
"I can do what Aylan was …"
"You can't and you won't!" Lane turned to him fiercely. "Do you not understand, boy?" Lane asked, his usually open face suddenly hard. "You're a set of blue eyes away from being Clough's most fearsome corpse. Rath would give anything to have you and Yarri pushing up horse food—and believe me, just because he failed a few years ago doesn't mean he isn't looking for you now. It's one of the reasons I was all for you and Aldam working here in this little backwater— he's not going after Yarri snug and safe in Eiran, and he's got no idea where Wrinkle Creek is. It's a good situation—I want to keep it that way. If Stanny weren't working on something just as important …"
"What's Stanny doing?" Torrant wanted to know, but Lane held up his hand, a pained smile crossing his face.
"I … boy-o, if I told you what that son of mine cooked up, and what I gave my permission to let him try, you'd have to tell your Aunt Bethen, and she'd smack me on the head with a cook-pot and tie me to my chair in the study as a mad-man."
Torrant found himself laughing at the image, in spite of his curiosity, and even Lane's face lost some of its grimness.
"Don't say it boy …" Lane threatened, a smile working to crease itself across his features, making him young again.
"I wasn't going to …" Torrant smirked.
"Don't say it …" And the laugh was just almost at the surface now.
"I hadn't even thought it …" But they were both too far gone to a thought that needed completing. Lane started nodding, and the seriousness of the moment was shattered and Torrant finished what both of them were thinking. "But it would be the kindest thing she's done with a cook pot …"
"Since she used it to catch the drips from our first roof," Lane finished, and the laughter took hold of the both of them. Lane would give Torrant specifics later—dates, people to talk to, directions, and a guide who knew the city, but when Yarri and Cwyn walked back into the house, it was to see the both of them laughing heartily as the smell of zucchini bread began to rise in the already heated afternoon.
That night, after quiet talk on the porch and Torrant's lute in the dark of the tree-shadows and stars, Torrant lay in bed and quietly counted the heartbeats of the family who had come to him. He was lying in a shirt and under-clothes, and his embarrassment when Yarri crept into his room, her own shirt-clothed body lit from moonlight streaming in his open window, was acute.
He made a strangled sound in his throat and pulled his covers over his bare legs in spite of the lingering heat of the day, and Yarri laughed throatily as she crawled next to him, putting her own legs under the thin sheet he had on in the summer. With a sigh, she curled on her side to face him.
"Relax, oh mighty moon-destined," she murmured dryly, "I'm not here to work my womanly wiles on you," they both smirked at the phrasing—and the idea, "I'm just here to talk."
Torrant rolled over on his side, peering at his sun and moon and stars. The moonlight glowed round about her jaw and the bright darkness of her deep brown eyes. She had kept that soberness in her expression from when she was a child, but she had also kept the ability to laugh, and it showed in the way her full lips tilted at the corners, and the wicked quirk finishing off her smile. Soon, a little part of him thought, very soon and she wouldn't have to work anything at all, her womanhood alone would beguile him beyond redemption. "Mmm …" he murmured into the quiet, knowing that she'd been looking at him too, remembering his face, remembering who he was, as he'd been doing for her. He hoped she remembered good things. "What are we talking about?" But he already knew.
"Aylan isn't … it will take him a long time to recover," she said softly. "I didn't even hear it all … but I can see that something terrible has scarred his heart … and yours. Do you have to take over for him? Do you have to go to Clough?"
He breathed out, a little puff of air that he wished would blow away her words. "I wish you'd come to talk about pesky village boys," he stalled after a moment. "Ones who've tried to kiss you that I ought to come out and beat up for you."
Yarri snorted humorously. "I can fend for myself," she protested, then, reluctantly, "And the miller's boy will too walk right one day …"
Torrant was almost veered off by his own red-herring then. "What did he try?” he asked, finding that he was more than a little upset by the idea.
"He tried a hand on my arse, and I tried a knee where no knee belongs—don't worry about it, Torrant …"
“But …”
"Torrant Shadow, would you have stopped loving me if I'd given in and let him throw my skirts over my head and pound me like a dirt-packer?” she asked sharply, and he replied just as sharply, "No!" and then shushed himself back to the quiet of the night.
"No!” he repeated in a furious whisper, "But I don't like the thought of a man trying something with you when you say no …"
Yarri took a breath and shook her head, still a little young to realize that there was more going on in his head than jealousy. "I can take care of myself, Torrant … please … don't let this distract us. Do you really need to go to Clough?"
Torrant sighed, and looked away from the avidness of her eyes. "Yes," he murmured after a moment. "I really have to go." A thousand reasons passed through his mind, but he settled on the most immediate one. "Yarri—you haven't seen the way the men act here … it's why you're so certain you can take care of the miller's boy, whatever his name is. But here, Yar … they're horrible. The priests have come by and taken the Goddess out of their hearts, and with her, any idea that a woman is a person, just like they are. I … there has to be a way to stop it, Yarri …"
"But it's not like that in Eiran …"
"But Eiran isn't all the world!” he exclaimed harshly in the hushed, whispered voice they had used before. "This place—it's getting better. The women are starting to believe in themselves, and the men … they're starting to respect their women again … but … it took terrible things for that to happen. Terrible threats, terrible …"
"I heard you talking to Uncle Lane," she murmured, taking his hands and stroking them gently. "You don't have to hide the terrible things from me … really."
Torrant closed his eyes and shook his head. "You didn't used to think so kindly of the snow cat."
"I was a child then—now I mind a passel of children who have been beaten by men just like you describe … I'm not so naïve as you think I am …"
"Then you know why I need to go to Clough."
A silence then. A heartbeat … a few, actually, because their blood was up as they argued in the silver hush of the night.
"There are plenty of bastards for the snow cat to eat here, or at home—he'll glut himself in Clough!" Yarri finally exploded, and Torrant surprised himself by laughing softly. It was so typical of her—of the Moons, actually—to not mind the blood of their enemies, as long as it was shed protecting their own.
"Your family, Yarri—you should have been the damned snow cat—the lot of you have more blood-lust than my whole bloodline put together." Abruptly her body relaxed, as though maybe the argument would end in this small moment of humor.
"We just think very simply, that's all. Lane calls it 'Goddess thinking'—Auntie Beth and I just think it's common sense." Her hand appeared out of the dark and patted his cheek smugly, and then, when he smiled, it curved around his face.
When she spoke next, her voice was husky and shy. "So, Aylan spent the winter in this bed." It wasn't quite a question.
"Our long johns remained on the whole time, I promise," he grinned, thinking to reassure her. He didn't.
"That's too bad," she murmured, troubled. "In a year or two, I think it would really bother me if they were to come off … I wish you two would get it out of your systems before then."
Torrant swallowed. "Aylan was too hurt for anything but holding," he said rawly. "It hurt me just to see him like that … he's always been all confidence … to see it gone …"
"Do you think it didn't hurt him to be with you?” she asked, disbelieving. "Do you think he's the only one who was wounded this winter?"
"I … Yarri, you don't need to worry about that …"
"You mean I don't need to worry about you?” she asked bitterly, and the blood rush in their ears began again. "So, it's all well and good if you walk into the heart of the country which killed off our families, because I don't need to worry about you, right?"
"I'm not without ways to take care of myself," he said with a small attempt at humor that earned him a sock in the arm. "Ouch!"
"It's one lousy snow cat to an entire army! People kill them all the time for fur, and you seem to go want to donate a brand new rug to some fat regent in a country beyond redemption!” she hissed, the tears in her throat making her voice husky and loud.
“Yarri …”
"No … no 'Yarri, I'll be careful', no, 'Yarri, you worry too much'—none of that. It's shite and I won't let you lie to either of us."
"What would you have me say?” he burst out before she could go on, suddenly wondering at the ridiculousness of their hushed voices when this was perhaps the most intense argument they had ever had.
"I'd have you not go, you lackwit!" And now her voice did rise, and he hushed her and she glared at him and he glared back.
"I can't do that!" And abruptly he could no longer have this conversation curled on his side, looking at her quiet in the dark. He scrambled to his knees, mussing the covers, and Yarri was right up in front of him, their faces close in the dark and their expressions fierce and mutinous.
"Why not?” she demanded, and she was so close to him and his blood was so fierce that he was the one who broke the whisper taboo.
"Because it will never leave us be!” he yelled. "Because this evil keeps spreading—it's not just Clough, it's not just the Desert Lands to the south—it's Wrinkle Creek, and the Old Man Hills, and a shrine between Triannon and home. Look at you—you spend your days teaching orphans who were made orphans because of this evil, and you can't tell me it doesn't break your heart to think of mothers leaving their children at doorsteps because they are too afraid the child will get labeled Goddess' bastards if they keep them. You may not remember Orel, or Bren, but I know you remember growing up with those Goddess' 'bastards' and I know it makes your blood boil that everything your father ever loved is getting ground under bloody soil on horses which couldn't kiss Courtland's fat self-satisfied ass!"
"But why does it have to be you?” she shouted back, and Torrant opened his mouth to answer, when Lane's booming baritone cut through what had been a silent little house.
"Yarri, you leave him alone about this until tomorrow—I swear by Oueant if you don't shut up and let a man get some sleep, I'm taking you home tomorrow …"
"But …" she tried to call across the three rooms.
"And if you shut up NOW, I'm prepared to pretend you haven't snuck into a grown man's room in your nightshirt two years before you come of age, do you understand?"
"Yes, Uncle Lane!” she called back, and the only sound in the house for a moment was the sound of Cwyn choking on a snore from what used to be Pansy's room. Yarri and Torrant subsided and sat back on their heels in the deep feather mattress, the moonlight softening the disgruntled glares they were trying to cast each other. Torrant gave in first, as he often did, and with a snort of self-deprecating laughter he threw himself back on the bed and held out his arms.
"Truce, Yarrow root?” he asked softly. "Two weeks is an awfully short time …"
"You're coming to visit after that?” she asked, her voice only a little tremulous.
"Professor Austin promised me two weeks," he confirmed, "And one for travel." She nodded and threw herself into his arms, where he cradled her against his chest and took heady breaths of the oddly familiar mystery scent that rose from her hair.
"Yarrow, rose, and chamomile," she said softly against him.
"Hm?” he asked, trying to still the trembling in his muscles as he fought the urge to crush her to him so nothing, never, not even he, could ever ever hurt her in any way.
"My hair—the yarrow grows near the sea—it's strong stuff … I can't use much … but it smells like Eiran …"
That's why it was familiar—he and Aldam harvested the yarrow as a blood-clotter to stop wounds. "It smells like home," he murmured.
"I don't want to live anywhere else," she confessed softly, and he chuckled, because if they really weren't moon destined then they ought to be.
"Me neither."
"Please don't go," she tried one last time.
"Please don't ask," he said at last, and for the moment, this one moment when crickets and a lone owl could be heard in chorus outside the window, and the gods of honor and compassion were shining their way in, she nodded and let the matter be.

Changing Times

The next day though, she took it up again, and this time she didn't stop, not for the next two weeks under the sun-soaked cedar trees, and not during the two weeks afterwards in the letters she had left for him which seemed to mock him at every read, and not for a week after that, at the gray and briny sea. It was to the point where he could read her expression when she opened her mouth, and in the moment between when she thought about what she was going to say and then said what she wanted to say, he could do an about-face and beat a hasty retreat to the warehouse or the stables. Often, he even went to the orphanage where he took over for Aldam or Roes in doing examinations and administering rose-hips and other preventatives to the childhood diseases that often ran rampant in such places. He and Aylan did a lot of fishing off the abandoned pier by the stables in that first week of his visit, until the day she finally called a truce.
He had been sneaking into the kitchen to grab bread and some cheese from the bread box, when he saw her, and that glint in her eye. "No!” he said, just for form, before turning around with his lunch in his arms and heading purposefully for the door. His hand had just closed the wrought iron knob behind him and he had one leg off the porch when he heard the thump of the laundry basket behind the door. He made it to the road in front of the house when she cleared the door herself, crying out, "If I promise to drop the subject do you promise to take Aylan or Stanny with you when you go!"
It was as close as she'd come to admitting defeat in five weeks, and Torrant closed his eyes and sighed before turning towards her. "I promise to ask," he said after a fraught moment under a sky threatening gray rain. She looked at him, troubled, and he relaxed his expression a little, trying not to seem like a stubborn grown-up to a bright and fractious child. "I won't ask Aylan to do anything he can't … Yar … the man's my friend—my brother of the heart. There's too many torn, bleeding places inside of him to just rip off the bandage because you love me." Aylan, in fact, had been offering—nagging was more like it—but even Bethen had told him, in the quiet of his first morning there, that his friend was far from ready. Giving in to the both of them felt wrong, but at this point he couldn't see any way out of it.
"And you and I both know Stanny has other obligations," he continued. Whatever Stanny was doing, it seemed to take a lot of his time—and it also seemed to involve dirt. Stanny was, in addition to other savvy mercantile pursuits, making a fortune selling every type of soil from gravel to potting soil by the cubit. Torrant had asked where it came from, at one point that week, but Stanny had simply smiled a cat-cream smile and mumbled something about holes and old maps. As it was, he'd been gone half the week of Torrant's visit, and Torrant missed his sweet-natured cousin. And he certainly didn't think Stanny had time to take up Aylan's post in Clough.
"I'll ask if it's possible," he told Yarri now, "But I won't insist if it's not." And you're going to have to be happy with that. He didn't say it, but she could hear it in his voice.
"Fine," she nodded, conceding at last. "Right. So if I accept that, will you go walking on the beach with me tonight?" A lone tear escaped and tracked its way down her cheek. "You only have a week left, and I'd hate to waste it."
And now that she had conceded, he felt his own eyes grow bright. "Damned stubborn child," he growled, opening his arms. "You know Aunt Bethen was about to gag you during dinnertime, don't you?"
Yarri nodded from the comfort of his body. "She told me the only reason she didn't is that it would mean I'd stop cooking."
Torrant laughed softly. "So that's why it's been so good!” he praised—but it was honest praise—he'd been thinking all week that Bethen's cooking had gotten better with age. Apparently it was Yarri's age that had done the trick.
"It's still cooked with love!" Yarri said hopefully, and his clear hazel eyes smiled into her deep brown ones, even as she raised a playful hand to tug at his silver lock of hair.
"I never doubted it," he murmured, and Yarri kissed him on the cheek and ran back to the porch with her wet load of laundry on its way to the drying line in back.
He watched her go, feeling the lines in his face and neck relax, and when he looked up, Aylan had just walked up the road and was standing at his side.
"She gave in, didn't she?” he asked needlessly.
"Yes," Torrant replied. "Thank the Goddess!"
"I'm not thanking that lying Bitch yet!" Aylan replied, fierce enough even without the blasphemy to have Torrant turning to him in surprise.
"That girl was my last hope," Aylan responded, the fear on his face so naked that Torrant wanted to embrace him too.
"Aylan, my brother," Torrant murmured softly, throwing a companionable arm over his shoulders—always a reach for Torrant, "If I promise to take you with me, do you promise to let me have a godsdamned vacation?"
Aylan brightened then, suddenly blessing Yarri because the request must have been her doing. Nobody in Clough would likely recognize him—especially if he traveled the Goddess' merchant circles instead those of the Regents and their playthings. Yarri may not have been able to talk him out of going completely, but she had taught the stubborn wanker to see sense and let Aylan help him out. "How 'bout a Goddess' blessed one?” he asked suggestively, and Torrant rolled his eyes.
"You wish, boy-o," he replied dryly. "The two of us are just going to have to suffer in silence this year."
"Every year, brother," Aylan said mournfully, and together they walked to the dock.

After dinner, the family went out onto the back porch and sat, watching the mist rising out of the glassy dark of the ocean, feeling the breeze on their faces and talking quietly. Torrant closed his eyes for a moment and pinpointed the scent of the white and pink yarrow flowers growing on the sandy hillsides by the beach.
Yarri was inside, getting a cloak for their walk, and Bethen came up beside him and put a plump, work-rough hand on his shoulder. "I was actually rooting for Yarri to win," she said quietly, and Torrant grimaced. "I mean, I wanted to stay out of it and all, especially after the row Lane and I had when Aylan came home with his shredded heart in his hands … I've spent the better part of a month stitching that heart back into something that can pump blood—you know I'm right, don't you?"
"If you think it didn't hurt me too …" he started, exasperated, but the hand on his shoulder tightened, and he subsided.
"And then you come, and your heart's been shredded too, and you and Yarri are at odds and the world is a stormy, unpleasant place to be when that happens—you tell me how I want this to come out in the end."
Using his shoulder as leverage, Bethen lowered herself down next to him and sat, her head on her knees, watching high tide invade the mist-brightened beach. "Lane and I grew up in Clough, you know," she murmured, and Torrant looked at her in surprise.
"Oh yes—we never told you?"
He shook his head. He was sure there were things about his parents that he never knew either—only now he never would.
"Owen was set to inherit—he was the older by an hour, and their father passed away when they were about your age … and Lane was restless. He had nothing to do, nothing to aspire to … and he liked horses and all, but he didn't love them in his bones like Owen did. He would wander the ocean of grass that is Clough at its finest, and wonder if there wasn't another place in the world that would stir his blood."
"And then he found you?" Torrant asked, and Bethen shook her head.
"No … and then he followed a wagon train up Hammer Pass, and came down the other side. I had moved with my parents when I was very small—but I still watched the trains coming down the mountain. I was curious, at who was coming from my homeland and why they'd been restless enough to move. And then he came down, on the back of a horse he surely did know how to ride, and right then, I thought 'this man is what wildings are all about' …" she laughed. "It just took me two years to convince him of that."
"What happened to your parents?” he asked, thinking of Grete.
"Ah, they went down in a boat when Stanny was a baby," Bethen said softly. Torrant had known, somehow, that they hadn't been alive. Bethen, with her love of family, would surely have been in touch. "I do know loss …" she murmured, "but I don't know what it feels like to be Aylan right now. And I don't know what it feels like to be you, or even Yarri. But I know that this thing … this rot from my homeland, it's threatening the people I love, and it has to be stopped." She turned her head slightly on her knees and wiped her cheeks on her skirt. "And I'm old enough to know that if you want to do a big job, you have to get your hands dirty."
She sighed, a weighty enough sound to make Torrant put his arm around her shoulders, and she looked at him sideways, eyes growing bright in the starlight. "I just wish it was my hands, and not my children's hands, boy-o," she murmured. "If I was that girl again, watching my moon-destined come down that mountain, I think we could have gone right back across Hammer pass and done what needs doing. But I'm not, and people look to me here, and the orphanage needs me, and my own children need me, but sending you and Aylan into harm's way was never, ever a thing I thought I'd see as the lesser of two evils …"
"Shh …" Lane was sitting next to her now, his own arm thrown over her shoulders. He looked at Torrant, and Torrant felt a hand descending on his shoulder. He looked up to Yarri, and remembered his promise of a walk on the beach. Slowly he stood, while Lane rocked his beloved, and then took Yarri's hand and walked away.
"Take off your boots," she murmured after a few steps, and then she crouched, her skirt brushing the sand as she did so, to help him with the laces on the soft leather calf-high boots. It struck him that she didn't wear skirts—even when she went to 'play with the little-uns' at the orphanage, she wore well-tended breeches.
"Is the skirt for me?” he asked in mild surprise.
She gave a grunt and pulled at his shoe, and he used her shoulder to balance as he pulled his foot out. "Not if you're going to make huge steaming mound of something out of it," she huffed, and went to work on the other one.
"I wouldn't dream of it," he returned mildly, pulling his foot from the other boot with a little more ease. "Here, let me get the socks …" but she was still fiddling, even though he was getting uncomfortable with the thought of her at his feet. It was too much like the men of the Old Man Hills, that idea that a woman should crouch down there and serve.
"I've got them," she almost crowed, pushing up from her squat, and then she stuffed the socks in the boots and set them up on the bald, sandy spot of the scrub-covered hill next to them. Only winter tides came up that high, so the boots would be safe until they came back.
"Thank you," he murmured. "You don't need to wait on me."
"I know it," she smiled, taking his hand. A breeze had kicked up, and it yanked some of her hair from its neat plait. The loose hair softened her face a little, even when tucked absently behind a small ear. "Auntie Beth serves Uncle Lane—have you noticed that? He comes home, and she's been busy all day, but she drops everything for just a moment to dish up some glop from the pot, and he sits down and she brings it to him … and he says …"
"'You don't have to do that …'" Torrant smiled. It was an old tradition, and he wasn't even sure Lane and Bethen were aware they'd kept it for years.
"Yes," Yarri murmured, running to his other side and kicking at the waves as they crept in. "And I don't think it's a 'the Goddess serves the gods' kind of thing … I just think it's what people do when they care for each other."
"Like the way your father swept the floor for your mother when he came in," Torrant mused, "whether he'd brought mud on his boots or not."
"I don't remember that," Yarri said softly. "But then, that's part of the reason you're going into Clough, isn't it?"
"We have a right to be angry," he said simply, looking across the ocean to where Oueant and Dueant were heading towards their apex, and Triane was just cresting the horizon. She was very red in the summer haze, and the beach glowed in the twilight with the light of the three moons.
"Will you be less angry, if you do this?” she asked.
"I will be less angry when this evil is stopped," he told her seriously, stopping at the fizzy surf and letting the tide touch his toes, and then the bottoms of his feet. "And I'd be angry my whole life if I didn't do anything to stop it—even if it's something as small as bringing wool to people who will use it for food money … watch that wave, Yarri … Yarri …" because she had her back to the ocean as she tried to think of something to say, and did not see the enormous breaker heading their way. With a heave and a grunt he took two steps forward, picked her up around the waist and skittered backwards up the beach until he felt loose dry sand under his feet, with Yarri shrieking in protest the whole time. Then the breaker hit the shore in a mighty leviathan's heave, and she gasped again as the water came up past the packed sand left from the last high tide to lap at their feet even as they stood where they should have been safe.
They stood, laughing and gasping with the surf foaming around their ankles until the wave finally subsided, and then Yarri realized that Torrant had not yet let go of her, and that his chest was wide and broad under her hands and his clean-shaven chin was just level with her eyes. His hands were secure and warm around her waist, and his smell … she leaned forward, just so much, to take in the scent of warm feline and cedar that had become his smell only in recent years. The smell of the cedar trees was the one thing she liked about his new home. She closed her eyes a little and leaned again, until her nose touched his jaw line, and inhaled, and it wasn't until she heard a strangled, "Yarri!" from his throat that she realized that the shape of his body was changing against her stomach.
She fought the urge to jump back in alarm, and instead stood steady, leaning back and looking soberly into his eyes. He swallowed, hard, his throat working, and his breath coming quickly again after his mad dash up the beach. His glorious hazel eyes went dark in the moonlight. She smiled a little, the corners of her mouth curving up, and when he realized her intent he stopped, all of him, even his breath, even his heartbeat she thought, and he swallowed again …
And shook his head no and took a step back, grimacing at the keening sound she made as their bodies broke contact. "Two Beltanes," he rasped, breathing as though he'd taken her in his arms and run the length of the beach. But …
"Two Beltanes … and if you still want me then …"
"You'll kiss me?” she asked, hurt.
"Then I'll take you … I'll ravish you, I'll make love to you all through the wilding night, Yarrow Moon. But I'll handfast you first." His jaw was set, a muscle ticking in its side, and she knew that he was more serious about this matter than he ever had been. A sudden smile bloomed across her face, playful and predatory at the same time.
"And next Beltane?” she asked impishly, relieved when a grin broke through the grim self-control on his face.
"Next Beltane, maybe then I'll kiss you!" He flushed and laughed at the same time, and she smiled into his eyes. Someday, he was going to kiss her … it was all she'd ever wanted, and she could live with that promise.
"You'll have to catch me first!” she squealed, breaking the moment, and running down the beach. Torrant caught her, tickling her as though she were a child again until she threatened to wet her panties if he kept it up. They calmed down and walked home, hand in hand, talking quietly.
When they got back, he took her downstairs and gave her Grete's gift. Yarri was speechless.
"Why did she give this to you?” she asked, running the pretty embroidered eyelets through her hands. Yarri had done needlework—she knew the time that this had taken, and the love that had gone into it.
Torrant shrugged, his sudden flush filling his and Aldam's old bedroom. Aldam and Roes were staying at Stanny's flat tonight—Stanny and Evya were on a trip to Otham for business—or so they said. As Lane had become more and more entangled in the politics of the little town, Stanny had more and more assumed his father's place in the business. Stanny did so well, the family hardly even blinked at the changeover, and the workers loved and respected Stanny as much as they had his father—but that didn't mean that Yarri's open, wide-faced cousin hadn't been as secretive in this last visit as he had ever been able to be in all the time they'd known him.
"She made it for her granddaughter …" Torrant murmured through his flush. "But the girl married a total bastard, and it didn't get given …"
"So why you?" Yarri held it up to her and twirled, making a very fetching moue of irritation when she realized that, true to their masculine make-up, the only mirror in Torrant and Aldam's old room was a small shaving mirror in the water closet.
"I was … I was her Healer when she died …" he swallowed. "It's an old practice, and I followed it, and she was … she was great company. I told her I had a moon-destined, and she wanted me to give it to you. She told me …" he swallowed again, and waited for his body to boil into a puddle of embarrassment or unfulfilled want. "She told me …" he tried once more …
"What?" Yarri was obviously already looking at the empire waist and the full skirt and the demure little sleeves and imagining herself in the gown.
"If I gave my moon-destined a gift, she said you'd wait for me," he blurted, and Yarri stopped preening, looking up at him through lowered lashes and smiling as shyly as he'd ever seen her do anything.
"Does that mean I have to tell the miller to stop trying to feel me up?” she teased breathlessly.
Torrant scowled. He'd been looking for the boy during the last week, and though he'd seen the occasional skulking shadow from the corner of his eye, he hadn't been able to catch the boy doing anything untoward. The whole thing reeked of cowardice—the type of cowardice he'd faced for two years at Wrinkle Creek. It was the dangerous type, the kind of sneaky, weaselly fear that had put Aylan in danger this winter and had ripped his heart out on Solstice night.
"Be careful, Yar," he warned, and she laughed up at him, still shy, but so delighted by the gift, by the implications that she couldn't be bothered with trifles.
"Two Beltanes, Torrant—that's a promise!” she said anxiously.
Torrant caught his breath then, unhappy at the thought of a promise for something so far away. A foreboding? Perhaps. Perhaps it was just that his gift was truth, and he couldn't promise to anything that might not be the truth.
"You won't promise me?" And there was nothing but naked hurt on her face. He smiled, and rubbed her arms then, willing himself a way to bring back her earlier joy.
"I promise it would take something fearsome and terrible to keep me away," he said at last, and after a moment, the hurt slipped away, replaced by a troubled happiness.
"The world's in that sort of state, isn't it?” she asked at last.
He smiled, and took her hands in his, tucking them next to his heart and bending his head to kiss them as they nestled there. "Not here," he murmured. "Here, in this space between us, the world is just right."
And if the trouble didn't leave her heart, it did leave her smile, and she beamed up at him gloriously, thrilled with the promise, with the beauty of his smile and his body, and the wonder that might be the two of them together.

Lion's Gate

Aylan's cold sweat had started as the countryside changed from cedar trees of the Hills to the rolling sheep country of the foothills into Clough. He had been making efforts to control his breathing as the gates became clear across the green plains of Eastern Clough, but as they neared the shepherd's hut where the raw wool would be stored, Torrant finally stopped the cart, put his arm around his friend's shoulders, and cupped a hand in front of his mouth, allowing him to breathe the calm, warm air inside until he calmed down.
"You don't have to do this."
"Yes I do." Aylan's reply was still muffled by the long-fingered hand cupped around his mouth. There were lute calluses on the fingers, Aylan noticed, and on a thought he started humming that one song, the one Torrant had written for Yarri and Trieste back when they were in school. It worked, because his chest stopped heaving, and he had a brief vision of Starren, as he'd last seen her, red hair in a wild halo behind her, as she chased Kewyn with a wooden brush and a bottle of paste from the orphanage supplies. He'd spent an hour when the episode was over (and Cwyn was icing his eye!) untangling her hair with some lanolin and a clean comb Yarri had given him. Starren had sung this song to him then, and others, just to please him because he had kept her from doing real harm to her unrepentant brother. He remembered the peace, that absolute, undemanding moment of quiet in his life, and the last of his panic eased.
"Will you at least tell me what is it about those walls that has you so terrified?" Torrant asked when the panic was over—he worked hard to veil the thin edge of exasperation in his voice, and Aylan's next words wiped it out completely.
"The bodies spiked to the top of them."
Torrant turned horrified eyes to his friend, who shrugged. "Buggerers, faggots, Goddess boys … they've got a lot of names for cold-blood murder sanctioned by the Consort…."
Torrant nodded and swallowed, hoping to find the right thing to say. "What we do in bed doesn't show on our faces, Aylan—if no one knows who you are, you aren't going to just walk into town and have a big pink arrow plopped on your cloak, telling everybody that sometimes you have a bloke in your bed."
"That's easy for you to say," Aylan shot back, fighting a smile. "It's not like the arrow would paint itself on you!"
Torrant squared his jaw because the wanker was deliberately missing the point. "We could always pop right into that shepherds hut and I could bend over and we could take care of it, couldn't we mate!"
Now it was Aylan's turn to give his friend an outraged stare. "You … you … you wanking git arse!"
Torrant grinned. "It's something to think about besides fear and guilt, isn't it?"
Aylan covered his own grin with a scowl, and was still sputtering in outrage when they pulled outside the little hut, hopped out of the wagon, and then checked inside to begin loading. The bales were both heavier than they felt and lighter than they looked, and the two made short work of throwing them into the cart until they were piled one bale higher than their own heads. The two young men took a moment to lean against the cart and stare moodily across the plains to the gated city of Dueant before them.
"Oy, Aylan—where's all the sheep?"
"Eh?" Aylan squinted at him, still not sure whether to forgive him or thank him for the image of a quick taste of heaven in the dank, greasy little hut.
"We have an obscene amount of sheep fur—where are the animals that grow it?"
"I think he moves them over that rise and into the valley for winter," Aylan said thoughtfully. "He's got pens … they get together, do that thing that sheep do, make more Midsummer dinners … those crevices in the hills are deeper than they look when it's all waving and green like this.
Torrant nodded, digesting, not thinking of much at all, because any thought deeper than 'where's the sheep' was painful.
"Oy, wanker," Aylan said in kind, "Where's your old digs? I thought you grew up not thirty leagues from this city …"
Torrant nodded. "Mmm … other side of the city … after the first twenty leagues the land starts getting wooded … one of the two rivers that joins in Dueance runs down from Hammer Pass and makes a little valley right before the Hammer foothills start—that was Moon Hold." He frowned thoughtfully. "Probably still is if I'm thinking right—if rumors about Ellyot Moon and Yarri are still causing such a rush, it's got to be because no one's claimed the land … I'd bet Owen's regent position is still opened."
That got Aylan's attention. "Yarri's a regent?"
Torrant shook his head and rolled his eyes. "She doesn't have the right equipment—you really didn't pay attention in your political science classes, did you?"
Aylan flushed. "I was too busy watching you, you wank!"
Torrant arched an eyebrow, only that, with the quirk of his off center lip, and Aylan sighed and gave an honest answer.
"I was … I was busy planning how I was never going to do anything political again. I was raised to be a political animal …" he looked away, spending his next few sentences talking to the vast grassland foothills to his right. "I … the first woman I ever had was a courtesan, and my … I guess he was my school master … looked in and gave me instructions." Aylan's voice took on a mocking mimicry of their driest professor. "A little to the right, sir. To the left. Touch her there … no, not there … lower. Good. Keep doing that. Now, take that one part … yes, it's bigger now, and put it where it looks logical …"
"Nasty!" Torrant muttered, torn between disgust and his urge to laugh at Aylan's flawless comic delivery.
"Well, it was just as fun with my first boy … and right about then, I decided I was done with politics. If I had to use my body that way …" Aylan shivered, and then he turned and met Torrant's disturbingly perceptive gaze.
"You think you've become your worst nightmare, don't you?” he asked quietly, and Aylan looked away again. "If that were true, brother, your stomach wouldn't be tearing itself inside out at what happened this winter. You cared for those people—you did something that comes naturally to you, but you cared for the people you were with. You were trying to get them out."
Aylan's eyes went to the walls surrounding the enormous city, and he did nothing to disguise his fear, his mourning, or his unhappiness at where they were going. "It doesn't look like it's the center of everything, does it?” he asked needlessly. "How is it that those children didn't realize everything they needed to be happy was right outside those walls."
Torrant took his friend's hand in his and raised it to his lips, seeing by Aylan's closed eyes that the small caress was a balm to his open wounds. "You just keep remembering that," he murmured. "You remember the seashore, and Starry's wild hair, and Aunt Bethen's horrible cooking, and you remember home. And then what we're about to do will seem worth it."
Aylan laughed a little. "Thank Dueant that Yarri's cooking now."
Torrant rolled his eyes. "I don't have to—Aldam's cooking is spot on." He sighed then. Aldam had not been happy at being left in Wrinkle Creek for two weeks while Torrant ventured into the danger that was Clough, but Torrant had been adamant. His absolute terror for his simple, gentle brother was eclipsed only by his certainty that Aldam had no subterfuge. It would take more than hair dye to hide the fact that he was very, very special indeed. Torrant's own hair had taken to the dye as though he were meant to look like Ellyot Moon.
"Good—I plan to crash for a week at your place when we're done here," Aylan was saying. When he saw Torrant's mind had wandered elsewhere, he sobered and took the hand that was still pressed warmly around his palm, to his own lips and kissed it in turn before letting go and hopping in the cart. "If I want to see who makes it worth it, brother, I just have to look next to me. This is for your honored dead, right?"
"Absolutely!" Torrant hopped up next to his friend and faced resolutely forward. No one knew who they were, he thought firmly, trying to take his own advice. No one knew how much they hated the Consort. No one knew a wagon full of wool was treason. No one knew the person closest to Torrant's heart was the person who could prove that Rath destroyed his own people for his own insane ends. No one knew. It was not as comforting as it might have been, but feeling tinier than sheep on the vast sweep of foothill plain, it did the job.
Together they sat in the gray wooden wagon as the offspring of Owen Moon's dream pulled them inexorably towards his destroyer. The gates grew larger, a more opaque force of beige implacability, with every turn of the wheel.
The bodies were not so high up that the stench didn't reach them down at the gates as they passed. Two of the Consort's guardsman stood up at the top of the gates, looking both bored and a little green around the gills, and Torrant muttered to Aylan that he wondered what rule you had to violate in order to get that sentry post.
Aylan tried not to laugh and confessed he'd never thought of it before.
"You should, mate," Torrant told him soberly. "Knowing who's looking watch on those gates can save you or slay you."
Aylan swallowed, and then looked at Torrant with a new realization in his eyes. "What made you think of that?” he asked, glad of a reason not to look at the bodies, the flesh drooping from their bones, their faces obliterated by predators, standing gruesome sentinel over the city Aylan had started to think of as "The Capital of Don'ts" instead of 'Dueance'.
"The men who were sent to raze Moon hold and slaughter the family—they didn't want to be there. It was crap detail for them—something they'd earned because they'd spoken up for the wrong kind of people in front of the wrong kind of friends. Those are the people who might catch you a break. Not often—I wasn't going to risk Yarri on it—not when I could barely hold a sword—but those are the people you can make think, 'Is it worth my life? Is it worth my conscience?' Those people know what the truth is—they just haven't had anyone speak it back to them in so long, they can hardly recognize it." Torrant was quiet for a moment, thinking of Mackel, who, by all reports, hadn't laid a hand on wife nor child since their run-in at the mercantile. "Some people just need the truth spoken back, that's all."
Aylan felt his face grow cold, and then his heart, and then his stomach. "You have a knack for thinking like this," he murmured as they passed under the worn yellow archway that had faded to a greasy tan in the years.
Torrant turned icy blue eyes towards his oldest friend and smiled a razor smile. "It comes and goes," he admitted, and Aylan's heart stopped in his chest and a burly, sleepy-eyed guard with greasy hair and a teal and black livery stretched too tautly over a middle-aged gut stepped up and gave the standard list of questions.
Aylan barely breathed as Torrant answered questions easily about bringing wool to the rich matrons of Dueance, and yes sir, they knew the penalty for going to the Goddess ghetto, and no sir, they had no intention of straying off of the nice, even red-brick path laid throughout the shining (beige) golden city of holy Dueant. Thank you sir—it's good to know that the path to the ghetto was paved with uneven stones that would break the wheels and axles of the little wagon. Yes, it was a shame the people couldn't take care of themselves. Were they free to go? Strength in battle to you too, officer …
And then they were clear and Aylan wondered if his lips were blue from holding his breath.
"Torrant …" he wheezed, and his friend turned those same aloof, alien eyes to him, and Aylan swallowed and reached out to touch his hand to make sure the flesh was still human. Abruptly he remembered where they were, and that a touch on his friend's wrist could swing him from his palms until his bones cracked and the crows stripped the flesh from his cheek-bones and gobbled his eyeballs, and he pulled his hand back to his lap so abruptly the horses skittered.
"What?" Torrant asked neutrally.
"Your eyes …" Aylan choked out, not wanting to be frightened by this sudden change, but not able to help himself.
Torrant nodded calmly. "I thought they'd gone funny—it happens, when I get too nervous—you've seen it …"
"Aren't you nervous that someone will figure out what you're doing?" Channeling his magic, illicit, death-bringing gift?
"Not when I see through these eyes."
And with that, Torrant guided the horses as surely as though he'd been the one who had ridden the city streets for a year. Aylan had drawn him a detailed map—and it really wasn't difficult to figure out. Rath had legislated a boycott of the usual masons and bricklayers against the Goddess' children in the city—so anyone who had been herded to the ghettoes at the beginning of Rath's rise to power was forced to live in the mud—and without bricks and small concrete trenches to funnel the water to the river, the mud became a sewage swamp, complete with the stench of the chamber pots being dumped into the streets. Consequently, with no paved roads there were no trenches for indoor plumbing, and with no indoor plumbing, no water closets, and all of the disease and filth and sickness this entailed.
Since Lane had started smuggling wool to the Goddess ghettoes, the people had been able to afford their own materials (and of course a few of Aylan's wool bales had been a sight heavier than they should have been), so the roads had gradually been laid in the last two years—they were uneven and unprofessionally done, and in many places they had already started to crack, but sewage trenches had been dug, and pipes had been laid, and after nearly three years of quiet Moon intervention, the twelve by twelve square block area marking the dispossessed trapped inside Dueance gates was no longer roped off for a cholera outbreak once a year. And Rath could no longer claim the disease which had ravaged the area was a sign of vindictive and angry gods, striking down the Whore's bastards.
Finding one's way to the Goddess ghettoes was as easy as turning right at the first street by the gates and following the newly, amateurishly paved roads to the ghetto square, where the well had recently been rebuilt as a small, crude fountain, since most of the houses now had water.
"Down that street," Aylan muttered, trying hard not to look around to see if anybody recognized him. Doing that would make sure he stuck in people's memory. Torrant was as calm as a summer sea, and his very lack of tension was making Aylan break into a cold sweat.
"And to the left, and then down the back alley … I told you, brother, I could do this myself—in my sleep."
"Silly me, I didn't listen …" Holy Dueant, was it his sweat he smelled? Torrant thumped his back reassuringly, and Aylan felt his shirt stick to his skin. Yes, yes it was. He had seen those eyes before, Aylan reminded himself. He had never minded the snow cat in the past—he had always admired its fierceness, and of course that damned sexy beauty. But the thought of what the guards would do to Torrant, in either form, if they knew what those blue eyes meant, was enough to make Aylan's teeth chatter.
"Calm down, brother," Torrant murmured. "If I worry too much about you, my eyes will go back, and then you'll have to worry about me falling asleep as we do business, so take a deep breath and we'll be fine."
And Torrant's chilly calm seemed to work, because Aylan felt his own heart rate slow, and the ocean sound of pounding blood receded in his ears. Just in time, too, because there they were, turning the corner and in a small, shaded alley between two older brick buildings. This alley hadn't been paved, but it appeared to be raked regularly, and towards the middle, there was even a tiny, thriving garden. Aylan knew the owner of this particular stone home had a white lock of hair, and grew so many herbs for healing and eating that the building overflowed with red clay pots and sprouting green plants. It was a useful gift when stranded in an unfriendly city, and the people who lived nearby had missed out on much of the disease besetting the rest of the Goddess' ghettoes. This was why, Aylan had always supposed, the owner and his family had possessed the strength to lead the underground movements accepting help and distributing the small amounts of good fortune which came their way.
As they pulled up to the back of the house behind the alley, a door opened and two children, a boy and a girl only a little younger than Starry and Cwyn popped out. They were crawling over Aylan like kittens on a yarn basket before Torrant could even ask them who they were.
"Did you bring us something … sweets? Did you bring us sweets, Aylan?"
Aylan grinned, for a moment forgetting he was sitting next to a lethal wish of the three moons, and reached into a pocket in his cloak which was, thank heavens, not sweat stained. He pulled out a packet of the sweets he'd had Aldam make before they'd left Wrinkle Creek. "Here Arue—and Aldam made them, so they're the best you've ever tasted!"
The little girl took them and the two children, both with brownish hair and brownish skin and brownish eyes popped a sweet in their mouth and the young men got to watch those charming dark eyes grow to the size of Courtland's hooves. Torrant smiled—not his usual, stomach dropping grin, but Aylan thought if he actually had to see the true expression on his friend's face while those eyes were staring out at him, he might throw up.
"Didn't Auntie Beth give us something else?" Torrant asked, and Aylan rummaged through his pack under the seat.
A pained expression crossed the older boy's face. "Not cookies …" he trailed off as though afraid he was being rude.
"No … not cookies," Torrant reassured with a wink at Aylan that Aylan could actually return.
"Winter is coming, younglings," Aylan said with a more relaxed smile. "And Torrant's Auntie Bethen can knit much better than she can cook!" And with that he produced matching hats and mittens—all three connected by a long cord that would run under a full coat or cloak, holding the three pieces together. The boy's set was a solid, gorgeous purple with gold moons and stars around the brim, and the girl's was a delicate, flowery pink.
Where more privileged children might have been polite in their thanks, these children were not privileged. Most of the wool coming their way was carded, spun, crocheted and knitted for the very rich, and come winter, their small fingers were used to being stiff and achy from the cold. And the colors … bright colors cost a bright amount of money, and the taste and skill Bethen put into the children's garments was enough to make the two children who had to eke out their living in the backstreets of a forced ghetto enclosure, moue their little mouths in joy.
"Tell Auntie Beth thank you," the little boy said gravely. "Tell her we'll meet her someday, and then we can make her cookies to say thank you!"
"Absolutely, Ian," Aylan replied, and then he grinned at them so that they could go and celebrate their gifts in peace. "Now go get your father—we have something for him."
Torrell, Ian's father, had the same brownish colors, with the exception of the damning streak of white from his brow. Once the Goddess' children had been rounded up and enclosed in this tiny space, not even allowed to leave the city of their birth for a better life, Torrell had cut the brown part of his hair to within an inch of his head and braided the silver streak that had condemned him and his children to imprisonment. "If my children are going to be punished for my gift," he'd said, "then we will make this gift important." And he had been providing his people with fresh vegetables and herbs for the last five years, since the ghetto laws had been passed.
The hardest part of unloading the wool bales was maneuvering the bales through the tiny doors and through the even tinier home that Torrell's family had built with the stones from older buildings that had fallen apart in this area of the city. Torrell was a fair craftsman—the pavement in front of his home was the smoothest in the ghetto.
When they were done, the wool bales had been distributed in every room in the house and covered with cloths like small tables where they would stay. After Aylan and Torrant left, the wool would be given to the most skilled women in the ghetto to earn money for the community as a whole. Afterwards, Torrell asked Aylan and Torrant to a customary cup of tea.
"It's good to see you, Aylan," he said with a smile as they sat at the small table in the front room/dining room/kitchen facing the door that opened onto the street. There were no windows opening into the room, but the shadows under the door were long and twilight colored as they sipped their tea, and evening was obviously setting in. "We haven't heard from you in …" Torrell frowned, trying to place a date. "Right before last solstice, was it? Stanny came with the last three bales …"
"I didn't know Stanny had been here!" Torrant looked reprovingly at Aylan, and Aylan shrugged. Stanny had been part of the family conspiracy to keep Torrant out of Clough—nobody had felt it necessary to tell him. Torrant's eyes blazed even brighter blue at the thought of his open-faced, cheerful cousin in the sort of danger they were in now.
"He did fine," Torrell said with a small smile. "But he didn't tell us why Aylan had stopped coming."
"My cover in the city was blown," Aylan said baldly, and he shrugged. The only news that filtered in to the ghetto was the kind telling them another law limiting their humanity had been passed.
Torrell looked at him carefully, as though putting something together. "No," he murmured, "Not your cover identity—your contacts in the city were exposed … but not for spying …" Suddenly the brown man smiled grimly. "You needn't look so surprised—a regent's two children commit suicide and ten others flee the country and you think we're not going to hear about it? Besides—it spawned another round of priests coming to screech in the ghetto square about how we were evil and our influence made good young people fornicate." Torrell raised his eyebrows a couple of times, a small bit of humor from a man who had lost his wife, his freedom, and his youth in a terribly short span of years. "Because, you know, young people have never fornicated before the moons rose in the sky!"
Torrant laughed then, a lower, grimmer version of his usually somber laugh, and Torrell looked at him closely for the first time since they sat down to share fellowship. "There is something … Goddess about you …" he said softly, and Torrant's blue stare was all challenge.
"More than you know," he murmured. "I'm Torrant Shadow—I'm not sure if Aylan talked about me …"
Torrell's eyes grew as large as his children's when presented with sweets. "You're Torrant? Your father was Torian Shadow?"
"You knew him?" Torrant asked curiously—he had no memories of his father—he'd been very content with the two surrogate's that Dueant had thrown his way.
Torrell's answer was interrupted by a terrible thumping at the door, and, as though this were a drill they had rehearsed many times, he looked at the children and they darted for the back bedrooms, squirreling away into places in the closet where most men wouldn't know to look. Torrant and Aylan stood, as though to leave out the back door, but Torrell just shook his head. "They've seen your cart … just sit and be silent and you," he pointed to Torrant, "keep those Goddess blue eyes to yourself, you hear me?"
Torrant nodded, and he and Aylan stayed put. The guards burst through the door so quickly the slightly built Torrell was thrown back against the wall. He slid down to the floor, stunned and trying to orient himself to the sudden violence.
"Where are they?" The first guard, a tall, burly, muscle-bound giant of a man demanded, and to Torrant and Aylan's surprise he looked right past the two strangers at the table and started peering in one of the tiny bedrooms, throwing open one of the closet doors with such a crash that, for a moment, the men were afraid the children had been discovered.
"We're sitting right here," Torrant said mildly, hoping to draw attention to himself and Aylan, rather than the children.
"Yeah, but you're full grown, aren't ya?" The smaller guard grunted. "We can't get money for you from the high folks—so just stay put and you'll keep your right to breathe …"
Torrant stood up to reply, to object, to stop them when he heard a screaming from the other room. The little girl…
"Goddess…" he breathed, and Torrell struggled to his feet calling out "Arue …"
"Brother," Aylan said quietly under the commotion, making contact with those freezing, queasy blue eyes, "Neither of us are armed."
"Brother," Torrant replied with a truly terrifying smile, watching with hooded, fierce eyes as the bigger guard dragged the girl in by her hair into the claustrophobic, darkened room, "I'm always armed."
Torrell had stood and was lunging across the guards to pull his screaming child from their cruel hard fingers, when the smaller guard, the one not holding the hysterical little girl, caught him across the face with the hilt of his sword, throwing him to the ground in a spitting seizure of blood and desperate cries. Abruptly, Torrant was two-hundred pounds of strong, sharp teeth and claws as long as knives, and the little guard screamed and went down in a silent, gurgling heap with a torn throat.
The bigger guard dropped the still-shrieking girl and dashed out the door, screaming bloody murder as he did so. The snow cat made an almost canine whine in the direction of the dead body, the tension in his muscles and his darting eyes indicating that he wanted badly to go after his prey, but that he didn't want to leave Aylan holding the corpse.
"Go!" Aylan urged. "Stop him before he brings the whole King's guard down here … I'll hide this one until you get back."
Torrant gave an exultant growl and disappeared out the door in a bound, his body moving so fast, Aylan wasn't sure the speed wasn't as magic as the cat body.
Torrell groaned from the floor, and Aylan suppressed his own sigh. It wasn't fair—the person who had spent much of his life planning to be a Healer was gamboling down the street, anticipating murder, while the person who had spent his entire life trying not to be a spy and becoming one anyway, was stuck in this tiny room, trying to sew the torn edges of this nice family's life back together.
But of course, Aylan thought, as he ran to dampen a clean cloth for Arue to hold to her father's damaged face and gather her brother to help him hide a body in an old horse blanket so they could stash it in the cart, all of their choices boiled down to the same question for both of them. What would Lane Moon do?

Torrant suppressed a triumphant "Mrowwwlllll!!!!" as he spotted his quarry, charging down the street like a runaway cart horse. Damned man—he was making so much commotion Torrant was afraid to just run him to ground—too many people watching, too many people more afraid of wild animals than they were of corrupt humans who could kill them with a thought and a lie. As he ran he spotted a pile of wooden crates against a wall, and a roof without an overhang, and that gave him an idea.
With a fluid, graceful leap he was on top of the crates, and another leap, and another (oops, that one wasn't so graceful—he could hear the crates toppling in the alley behind him … damn … was that glass? Had he just wrecked some poor ghetto dweller's hard earned product? He'd have to pay for that later.) and a third he was trotting across the rooftops, up to the peak and down to the leap between the buildings, still so swift compared to the clumsy guard that eventually he was tracking parallel to the man, waiting for the right building, with the right alleyway … nope, not yet.
But that was fine, thought Torrant, lifting his nose to scent the air. All three moons were out, and Triane was close to earth this early in the night, so close that when he lifted his face to her, he could almost feel her glow, like a silver-orange sun, and since he wasn't running for his life, his whiskers came up and his mouth opened a little, so that he could pant and taste the wind. His breath puffed in the shivery air, and Oh! it was a moon-flavored wind, and such a good night to hunt like a shadow on the rooftops of this unholy place.
Ah … there it was, the next house, the overhangs were especially deep, and with a careful jump …
He could hear the guard below him, wheezing, sucking in air like a sewage pump, too winded to keep up the caterwauling they had feared so badly when he had first bolted. Nobody had ventured out to help the man then, and, pad, and pad, and pad, and …
… leap … crunch, slash, gurgle, gurgle, wheeze and die …
No one was going to witness the death of walking shite in the darkness now.
Goddess, that had been easy … Torrant loosed a mighty snow-cat roar among the ghetto alleyways, and another, and he sank his teeth into the man's shoulder and pulled him back deeper down the alley. They couldn't afford for the man's body to be found anywhere near the Goddess' ghetto—that would bring a swift and bitter retribution down upon the heads of the residents—but while he'd been prowling the rooftops, he had seen the unmistakable moon-glitter of a canal, winding its way along the middle-class part of town. Aylan had told him there were shallow spots, where children splashed in the summers, but the middle of it ran very, very deep, and very, very fast, and it had been re-routed so it formed a mighty waterfall on the Eastern side of the city, near the gates. Anything lost in that river was lost for good, chewed to bits at the bottom of the waterfall, food for fishes as it ran its twisty way towards Hammer Pass, and then underground towards Eiran. It wasn't as close as he would have liked, but it wasn't too far either, and if he could haul this piece of shite there, and come back undetected, it wouldn't be too much of a bother to do it one more time, for a body about a third of this man's size.
Aylan met him in the cart on his way back.
Torrant had changed partially—he had hands, and walked upright, but he was aware of the thick, fine layer of white and black fur that covered all of his body. Actually, he'd thought often as he'd been hauling that body over his shoulders like a sack full of bony water, it wasn't too uncomfortable going this long partially changed. It would be easier if he were naked, because his clothes kept catching and pulling on his fur, but all in all, he was grateful for the times Professor Gregor had run him through drills like this in school. It was never a skill he'd thought he'd use, but he was grateful he had it.
"How is the family?” he growled as he reached into the cart and grabbed the body, which was wrapped in the lanolin saturated horse blanket they'd used to cover the bottom of the cart.
"The family is fine," Aylan sighed, rubbing his face with his hands and barely raising an eyebrow at Torrant's halfling state. Aylan himself was exhausted. Torrant would probably not change fully back to himself until there was absolutely no need for him to be useful to anybody. "However …" he continued.
"They'd like very much for us to go away until the next time we have a delivery," Torrant supplied dryly. It didn't sound grateful, but they couldn't blame the little family—too much gratitude could find another round of guards knocking at the door, threatening their lives or their bodies, or to haul the children into slavery of the worst sort, the kind that destroyed dreams and innocence and humanity until there wasn't even the soil of these things left to sprout hope again.
"Torrell's exact words, almost," Aylan tried to laugh, but Torrant was shouldering that body as though it were the horse blanket alone, and not the blanket wrapped around a body, and the sight gave Aylan the shivers.
"Stay here, brother," Torrant murmured. "I'll be back before Triane moves more than a degree on the horizon, yes?" And then he was gone, bounding into the silvered shadows, leaving Aylan in the dark of somebody's home, watching his breath steam and trying to hide his heartbeat from the family behind the walls.
Torrant was good to his word. Some instinct made Aylan look up to the rooftops, where he saw the cat, all near-two-hundred pounds of muscle, fur, and teeth, gliding under the moon in a symphony of fierceness and bunched muscles. His enormous, tufted paws made no sound on the red shale roofs, and only a faint, cat-like plop sounded when he landed.
Every gathered muscle, every fluid leap, every twitch of whisker, every happy puff of heated breath to taste the frosty air, felt like terrible, ferocious, innocent joy.
In a bound, Torrant poured out of the air above, landing in the cart with a distinctly feline growl that was, without a doubt, a laugh.
Aylan looked at the laughing feline of death drolly. His heart was still thundering from seeing Torrant as free from worries and self-doubt and crushing responsibility to himself or his family or his gift as he ever had been, but he didn't let Torrant know.
"You think it's funny? We can't leave until daylight, you know. It's late autumn, and you just dumped our spare blanket into the river. Any ideas, oh furry one?"
In answer, the snow cat leaned practically into Aylan's lap, his thick coat and recent activity throwing off heat like a glass blower's forge, and Aylan had to admit, he'd be pretty comfortable snuggled next to all of that.
"Yeah, yeah—you're just suggesting this to try to get out of the whole bending-over-in-the-wool-bale-hut idea," he grumbled, unrolling the one bedroll from beneath the seat into the back of the cart. Aylan knew (although Torrant probably didn't), that they were very close to the merchant's quarters here. It was hard for human eyes to see in the moonlight, but many of the alleyways here were stacked with crates filled with wares—everything from glass tumblers to late season squash would be available in the market the next morning, and the market ran perpendicular to the street they were on about two blocks up. It was not unheard of for merchants to sleep in their carts after delivering their goods, since the city gates had first started locking up at night—in fact, before he'd established his cover with the regent's circle, Aylan had spent more than a few nights here. It was far enough away from the ghetto not to be suspect, and no one noticed one more cart in the morning.
He lay down on the bedroll, covering himself up with the one blanket and wadding his cloak up under his head. He remembered their last campfire mournfully, and hoped the cat was really as warm as he'd promised he'd be. Then Torrant flowed over the seat of the cart and stretched out full length, rolling slightly, so a massive fore and aft leg draped over Aylan's body, and all of the silky, tufted hair in the loose skin between legs and stomach came with them.
Aylan's mouth made a little moue as the cold was simply gone, and a heavenly, protective warmth surrounded him. And now, if he rolled to his side, just like that, with his backside against the cat, and his knees tucked up to keep his middle warm …
"Ooooooooohhhh" he shuddered, burrowing even further unto the warmth, and he could swear the cat chuckled in his ear. Then it licked him, thoroughly, from nape to ear to jaw until Aylan laughingly told him to stop, he was taking away skin, and there was a feline chuckle again. He was terrifying, Aylan thought, and he could leave a bloody mess in his wake like most cats, only proportionately larger, but as a friend, the snow cat could be surprisingly nice to have around. It was a comforting thought, made even more comforting by the soothing rumble from Torrant's narrow, fur covered chest, and it made sleep shockingly easy to find.
He awoke once, before dawn, and remembered being cold, but the heat came back quickly and he slept for another hour. When he awoke again to the sun peeping from the East down the alleyway, there was a loaf of bread and two strips of bacon at the foot of the cart. He turned towards the snow cat and saw the pink tongue the size of a dinner napkin cleaning thick whiskers in a self-satisfied way.
"I take it there was more bacon than that?” he chattered, sitting up and reaching for the two strips. They would probably have been offered dinner at Torrell's if the guards hadn't intruded, and his stomach was rumbling just looking at the thick-cut and fried slices.
The snow cat yawned, showing teeth as long as Aylan's thumb, and he realized that he had been covered some time during the night by another cloak. Forrest green, with an improbable bright yellow lining (Yarri had made it, after all), it was unmistakably Torrant's. The cat must have changed back, at least partially, to take the cloak off and cover his friend with it, and Aylan was grateful for the thoughtfulness. He remembered the moment he'd seen him on the rooftops then, and was a little sad. Absolute, responsibility-free joy didn't last long, did it?
"So, back to Wrinkle Creek, to hole up for the winter?” he asked the snow cat.
In response, Torrant bounded up to the cart seat and changed back in the same motion, leaving Aylan gasping for breath at the fluidness of the magic, and Torrant gasping in the cold.
"Can I have my cloak back, brother?” he asked through chattering teeth, but when he looked back over his shoulder, Aylan saw that his eyes were still that shocking, black-rimmed Goddess blue.
Numbly Aylan nodded, trying hard not to stare, and pulled his own cloak around him while handing Torrant his. Grabbing the purloined bread to set between them, he scrambled up to the seat of the cart and was a little surprised when Torrant gave him the reins. Torrant had always been the better horseman—even when dealing with placid, slow-thinking beasts tied to a giant wooden matchbox with a bed.
"I don't know how much longer I can stay halfway," Torrant said lowly, trying to keep his voice light through the chatter. "And when it goes, it's going to go fast and bad …"
Aylan nodded, understanding more, perhaps, than Torrant himself suspected. As free from conscience as the snow cat had been the night before, the man who held the conscience in both bodies was bound by his morals always. Torrant wouldn't just be exhausted—he would be appalled.
As they made their way down the cobbled streets, Aylan could once again feel his anxiety grow. He always felt like this when facing the guards under the walls of lover's crucifixion, but now, with Torrant sitting next to him, the blood of two king's man murders lying under his frigid blue eyes, the fear once again pressed his heart against his chest with massive weighty paws.
The fear wasn't made any better when they had to pass through the town square, with the avenue leading to the regent's apartment building, the convocation hall, and the palace to their left as they clattered with the rest of humanity through the corrupt town. Aylan could hardly believe how free and happy people seemed to be, walking with baskets in their hands to a market one eighth of the city wasn't allowed to attend freely, past buildings which threw away lives and dealt deaths as easily as the children trotting through the streets would deal cards for a game of Jack. In this part of town—and it was so close, so unfairly close to the tiny, coarsely lined, painfully neat ghettoes eking out their cleanliness with terrible sacrifices of children and bread—the women wore dresses that could feed a family like Torrell's for a month.
"Easy, brother, you're growling," Torrant warned mildly, with a touch in his voice he remembered not to actually apply to Aylan's hand.
"Well, I guess this place brings out the animal in all of us, doesn't it?" Aylan asked bitterly, but they had passed the square by now, and were nearing the guard's station by the main gate, and it was time to turn those terrifying eyes to another burly man who would rather ignore the magic in them, than chase down another body for the battlements.
When the gates to the city were a speck on the horizon behind them, Aylan breathed what felt like his first real air in over twenty hours, and Torrant fell asleep so abruptly he would have toppled off the cart if Aylan hadn't grabbed his arm and hauled him back onto his lap.
Torrant mumbled something that sounded like, "Sorry!" and Aylan pulled the horses to a stop and tucked his friend into the back of the cart, his forest green cloak with the improbable yellow lining tucked securely around him.
He slept soundly until they reached their campsite from two nights before. A hollow in the foothills right at the tree line, it provided shade and cover if they wanted it, but gave them a full view of the plains of Clough. It was then, as Aylan was preparing a fire and cursing that he'd had to leave Torrell's in such a rush, because the bread was all gone, when he heard the snow cat's almost silent 'plop' out of the wagon, and wondered why Torrant hadn't stayed human. In less than a half an hour, the snow cat returned with two rabbits in his mouth, and Aylan thought he knew the answer.
The cat flopped down by the fire, staring moodily into the flames, if a cat could be accused of doing such a thing, and Aylan dressed the rabbits and set them to the spit to cook. Torrant just lay there, twitching his tail, until the rabbits were done and the spit moved to a nearby flat rock, and Aylan was uncertain what to do. If Torrant had wanted to eat a rabbit as the snow cat, he most certainly would have eaten the poor thing raw. The snow cat put his head on his paws, and for a moment, Aylan thought his eyes were that brilliant, dark-clear hazel he loved so much …
And then Torrant sat, a man, his hair tousled, his hat askew, and his face tucked into his knees as he sobbed and shook like a child.
And now Aylan knew exactly what to do, because he had done this before. He moved to his friend's side and pulled Torrant's head into his lap and waited until he'd wept himself to sleep.

Part VII
The Courting Moon

A Short Fall in the Spring

"They're coming, aren't they?" Yarri demanded fitfully as she paced back and forth at the end of the bridge. Torrant and Aldam had swung by Triannon to pick up Roes on their way home this summer, and the three dots on Torrant's magic map had stayed at the University for a surprisingly long time. They hadn't left until late the afternoon before Beltane, and even though they had been moving steadily most of the night, (Yarri had only actually gone upstairs to the bedroom she no longer shared with Roes when she saw that they had stopped for rest themselves) it was the morning of the faire, and the entire village was gathering, and Torrant was not there yet.
"He promised, didn't he?" Aylan answered patiently for the billionth time. He himself had carried Torrant's last letter home, after their last job in Clough. This one had gone more smoothly than the first, and not as smoothly as some of the others they had run since the snows melted. The body count was the same as their first trip, but this time Torrant and Aylan had actually been asked to intervene between the newer, more brutal guards who were trolling the ghettos for Goddess boys and 'serving' girls. This allowed the murders to be planned and executed in the quiet suburbs of the city instead of where the denizens were desperately trying to stay alive in peace. The 'job' had gone off without a hitch, thanks to Torrant's furry alter-ego, but Aylan was actually starting to wonder if he would ever wet his own knife. It had occurred to him that Torrant was doing everything he could to make sure that Aylan never had to kill, and the idea was both sweet and frustrating. He had signed up for this little underground, and he shouldn't have to be protected the way he had always thought he was protecting Torrant.
Especially because the aftermath was still the same.
"Yes," Yarri murmured now, "he promised." As much as that man ever promised, Torrant had promised to be there for this Beltane. Of course, it wasn't the Beltane, but his finding urgent business elsewhere this year wasn't giving her much confidence in the lush, romantic dreams of the night she was finally handfasted to her beloved. What could have been so important that they'd stay at Triannon for so long?
Aylan sighed, pretty much able to guess what had been going through her head by now. He had spent the winter making himself useful at the orphanage, and his respect for Yarri's formidable will had grown. There was not a child in the orphanage who wouldn't stop whatever mischief he (or she) was up to, and contritely start to make better of the mess, with only a clearing of Yarri's throat and a purposeful lift of her red-gold eyebrows. Because of Yarri, all the children in the orphanage had new spring/summer clothes this year. Of course, Aylan had accompanied her as she walked through the snow to every house in Eiran to ask for money, cloth, or sewing time from the residents, but the force of will it had taken to wheedle old Constable Donis's wife into picking up her needle for the village orphans had left Aylan speechless. Of course, Lane had donated a couple of pedal-operated sewing machines for just this purpose, and the older children had delighted in doing the cutting, the pinning, and even the embroidery, as long as they had a chance to push the pedal and guide the cloth through the feeder.
Torrant, and his determination to stop the goings-on in Clough, were the two things in the world Yarri knew for certain she could not change by blind stubbornness and force of will alone.
Aylan wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a brotherly kiss on the top of a coif of curls that started at her crown and dripped like honey down her back. "I'll wait for them and guide them, sweetheart," he said quietly. "You go take the children to the faire. We'll be there before they've finished their first dance, right?"
"Right," Yarri murmured, her little face fighting disappointment, and Aylan fought his own surge of irritation towards Torrant—it had to have been important, whatever it was.
But whatever it was, it was not what was on Torrant's mind as he came galloping across the bridge scarcely ten minutes after Yarri left so reluctantly to do right by her students.
"Is she at the faire?” he asked without preamble, slowing Heartland down so abruptly the poor beast almost skidded on the well-worn boards of the bridge. "Am I too late to see her dance?"
"No—they haven't even started yet!" He looked so miserable at his lateness that Aylan couldn't be angry at him even a little. "You have time to clean up and dress if you hurry—here, pull me up and I'll take Heartland to the stables …" and before he could finish the thought, Torrant had given him a hand. With a creak of his foot in the stirrup, Aylan was sitting behind him, legs straddled, squashed intimately against his friend by the saddle. Torrant smelled of horse-sweat and morning in the woods. Cedar had seeped into his clothes, and as he urged Heartland to his fastest trot (they were, after all, going through town and there were people walking up the road towards the river) Aylan felt an unprovoked, unmistakable physical reaction to another human being for the first time in more than a year. For a moment in time, Yarri ceased to exist. He wrapped his arms around Torrant's waist, buried his nose in the crook between his shoulder, and simply breathed in his sweat and his electricity and his person, filling his soul with the man who had come to be the center of so many worlds.
The ride was over too quickly, and Aylan let go so Torrant could slide down and grab the saddlebag that held his best clothes. But Torrant surprised him then, as he often did by being thoughtful, and even as he slung the bag over his shoulder he took Aylan's hand as it held the reins and kissed the back of it, sighing playfully.
"It's a shame we were not to be, brother," he said, the heartbeat of 'run' still throbbing in his voice, "because it would have been particularly sweet." And with that he clattered into the house to a chorus of "you're late!" and Aylan resumed his ride to the stables, shifting his seat every so often and smiling to himself and shaking his head. He certainly hoped his brother got there in time to see his beloved dance.

Torrant explained their lateness to Lane, as the family trotted up the hill and past the bridge to the faire, and the news made Lane purse his lips and brood, even as he stopped to wait for Roes and Aldam to come through the woods and across the bridge at a more sedate pace than Torrant had used.
It was not the best of news.
Rath had trained up another cadre of priests, and these were coming not just towards the Old Man Hills and the Desert Lands as they had been—no, many of these were aimed directly towards Eiran.
They had asked for purchase at Triannon. And been denied.
Professor Gregor had taken over as a very young headmaster in the last couple of years, but he had not looked young at all when he'd pulled Torrant into his office to talk as Aldam had helped Roes load her things into the wagon. (Since this hadn't taken nearly as long as Torrant's talk, Torrant could only roll his eyes and speculate at what they had done to occupy themselves in the meantime.)
"That Priest came to my school without even a letter of introduction, sat himself in my office, and proceeded to tell me Triannon needed some of the gods' speakers there, because otherwise the students would not be getting a 'spiritually beneficial' education!" Gregor shuddered, and Torrant realized that the man was talking to him not only as an equal, but possibly as a confidante—these were revelations he would not have wanted to make to the rest of his staff, whom, he said, he was trying to keep calm as it was, since every report emerging from Clough seemed to be threatening their lives or their professions in ways both immediate and ominous.
"The whole time he was looking at me as though he wanted to jump on me and shave my head!" Gregor's silver streak of hair was particularly vivid against his black sweep of a widow's peak and Torrant could well imagine the sight would be insufferable to someone who thought the Goddess' mark was a demon's kiss. But Gregor had shaken off his own revulsion and continued with the meat of what Torrant had told Lane. "I told him no—we didn't want his brand of education at Triannon, and I was certainly not going to turn over or burn any of the books in the library on his list." Another shudder. "That list was terrifyingly long, by the way. But what I really needed to tell you was this—your family's name came up. I gather the consort actually knew little about the family—Moon didn't keep any pictures of them in his city residence, and he never brought them into Dueance proper. They're pretty sure a boy and a girl survived, but they're not sure about the ages. And they think Yarri's at Triannon."
Torrant's eyes had widened and he'd had to fight the urge to go interrupt whatever Aldam and Roes were up to, and do exactly what Lane had threatened to do the year before—tie Yarri's prickly cousin up in her little girl's bed back safe and sound in Eiran until this madness had worn itself out.
"Yes," Gregor had read his mind. "I think Roes is in danger—not while she stays here, but she's training in the same area you are. She's ready to go out into the field and intern, just as you and Aldam did, and I don't want to let her go."
Torrant had spent the next several hours discussing alternatives for Roes' education, and ways to keep his little cousin safe, as well as what Triannon could do against the incursion of the priests, and how Eiran would deal with them as well. Torrant had suggested a portion of Eiran's militia might be housed at the school, and since attendance had fallen off (more and more young men were being pushed into the university at Dueance) there would probably be enough room for them. Gregor had proposed this year's crop of Seniors be asked to build barracks at the top of the bowl valley—and told Torrant they'd be ready at the end of summer if Eiran would agree to send them. The very idea made Torrant suck in air through his teeth and grab the edge of Gregor's desk hard enough to leave marks on his hands.
The militia, which had been so thinly staffed when Torrant had slid down a mountain to safety, had grown significantly in the past eleven years. Of course, mail service had never been better, but that did not mean their duties weren't proportionately more important as well. A population did not simply triple with refugees without the need for a regular force policing the dissatisfied and the despondent, and the militia had been organizing itself along those lines very well indeed. Supplying soldiers to man Triannon would not be a problem—but the idea that it was necessary … Torrant almost cracked the ledge off the professor's desk, before Gregor had gently warned him about his strength.
When their discussion was done, and Roes and Aldam had finally tapped impatiently at the door, Torrant had looked at Roes, sturdy and scowling and lovely, and wondered what force on earth was going to keep her under Triannon's roof for her last year at school.

He hadn't even broached the subject to her as they'd ridden through the brightly lit night (all three moons were full this Beltane, and it was almost too light to sleep).
So on this even more brightly lit morning, when all of the colors were tangy with spring and all of the leaf edges a sharper green for the blinding blue of the sky, Torrant was forced to brief Lane about fear and anxiety, even as he trotted on light feet to keep his promise to Yarri.
He got there just in time, and as he sat breathlessly on the same hillside he and Yarri had occupied years before at their first Beltane faire, he thought he would have ridden for weeks without sleep to arrive in time to see her dance.
She was leading the children from the orphanage through their dance figures as much of the village looked on and applauded. Torrant smiled and waved and marveled at how some of them had grown from the year before, but really, he only had eyes for Yarrow Moon.
Her dress was new, and he noticed this only because the gold and green and rich harvest purple were striking and beautiful, and the curls spilling from the pins at the top of her head were so red-gold against her green vest that she looked like one of her own oil paintings. Her face was as it had always been—round at the cheeks and pointed at the chin, with a little red bow of a mouth and brown eyes so real and so direct that they scanned his every thought. Her cheeks were flushed with the heat and the dancing, and she had a sweet little smile on the bee-sting of a mouth which made the children taking her hands and swinging into their figures smile back, and the pain of completing memorized figures for school vanished into the joy of dancing in the sunshine with friends.
Then she saw him, sitting on the hill in his best clothes, his hair (which had grown out this winter, and swept back from his face in soft waves, with his silver forelock falling a little over his eyes) was wet combed, and he had a smile quirking over his playful mouth that truly was only for her.
She smiled back, such a full and glorious expression that his breath came to a stuttering halt, a little whimper the last thing to clear his throat. His eyes focused on her, alone, a shining, splendid presence in the middle of joy, and the rest of the world faded into whispers and shadows, and Yarri was his only sun.
The dance figures took her away in a swirl of red-gold hair, and an exuberant laugh and a hop and a bounce that he knew was for him and him alone.
In one moment of sunshine and red-gold hair, one beat of flute and snare drum, one chime and toll of bells, Torrant Shadow went from loving Yarri Moon with all his soul to being in love with her with all his heart as well. It was as simple and easy as crossing the threshold of home.
The dance ended, and the town applauded, and Aylan arrived with lunch packets wrapped in colorful kerchiefs for the children, along with (Torrant's donation, via Courtland's still impressive stamina) a small packet of coins in each kerchief, so they could go into the faire with allowance in their pockets like every other child of Eiran.
After Yarri bid them to go off and enjoy themselves she turned to Torrant with a shyer, more reserved smile than the one she had offered across the field, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Torrant's heart was already beating with the throb of her pulse.
"You're late …" she murmured, trying not to accuse, and he rubbed his thumb across her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
"Something came up," he murmured. "But I'm here—I promised."
Her lips quirked up then, and she managed to meet his eyes. "You always keep your promises, don't you?"
"If the three moons let me, yes," he told her softly, still breathless from her nearness, her warmth, her smell … she looked up and caught the electricity in his eyes, and in an uncharacteristic show of nervousness, her little white teeth came out to nibble on her lower lip.
"Do I want to know what kept you?” she murmured, aware to the fine hairs on the back of her arms that the rest of the world had ceased to be.
"Later," he said softly. "Right now …" he swallowed, suddenly so nervous that he could barely speak, "Right now, I have another promise to keep …"
Her lips were so soft, he thought randomly, when her tongue was so often sharp and tart. And then she was soft and sweet and warm and she smelled like yarrow and rose and chamomile and home … her mouth parted for him, without hesitation, without warning, and there were no more thoughts, there was only Yarri the woman, kissing him. Her taste was wild and sharp and sweet and home.
The kiss lasted forever, it was the focus of the universe, the axis around which the planets revolved, the center of the sun. Ending it was like separating him from the only half of himself he'd ever wanted to know. They stood together, his arms around her, her head pressed against his chest, gulping air for another five-hundred years, before Yarri released a shuddering breath and pulled her bones back into her body to take her own weight.
"That was a good promise," she breathed. "You wouldn't consider breaking one this summer, would you?"
Torrant stood up straighter, and his arm around her shoulder became less like her own skin and more like a companion's arm. "No," he said shakily, and then summoned a grin from the depths of his soul. "No."
"That's fine," she murmured, assuming a direction and guiding him towards the Moon's family table. "But don't think I won't try to break you. I've got two months, now, don't I?"
A throaty rumble sounded in his chest, one that told her that it would be the sweetest, most excruciating two months he had ever known.

Aylan sat at the picnic table with Starren and watched the two of them share their first kiss, and wondered why they didn't rise to the heavens and just glow there like a second sun, their coming together seemed so right.
He was unaware of the depths of his sigh until Starren patted his knee in sympathy. "He woul' ha' bee' 'pectacular ib beb," she garbled through a mouthful of potato salad, and Aylan choked on his own mouthful and then checked his ears to make sure she'd said what he thought she did.
"How would you even know to say a thing like that?” he asked, wiping his mouth and trying to regain his composure. Suddenly he wished his self-imposed ban on taking lovers in the summer was not so well established—he really wanted a woman, or a man, or someone to hold and to touch him and to tell him he was beautiful and desirable and would not be alone in the silence of his own heart for the rest of his life.
Starry swallowed, then took a sip of water from a bottle at her belt. "I've been following Cwyn all my life—and unlike adults, he's not afraid of corrupting my sweet little ears with talk about sex."
"Cwyn doesn't know as much as he thinks he does," Aylan grumbled, and Starren grinned unrepentantly.
"That doesn't mean he's not happy to find out!"
Aylan laughed, then, and looked sadly at his constant companion, the one person he could talk with as openly as he did with Torrant. "We just weren't meant to be, that's all," he said philosophically, and could have sworn loudly when his eyes grew bright.
Starren finished her potato salad and wiped off her hands and face, then stood (she was going to be taller than both Yarri and Roes, but not as tall as Bethen) and moved behind Aylan, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and leaning her cheek against his in a gesture he remembered from that first moment she had ever launched herself at him and declared Aylan her 'music'. "You and I will be better, if you can wait," she murmured, and Aylan almost choked on his own tongue.
"I will be old and ugly by the time you come of age—there will be prettier young men by the dozens, Littlest," he said lightly when he could speak, and that soft cheek moved next to his negatively.
"You will never be anything but beautiful, Aylan Moon," the little girl murmured, "and those dozens of men will never be my music. Now come and buy me a new toy before I completely terrify you, and your heart will start to mend."
Aylan allowed himself to be led bemusedly into the merchant's tents and found that his pockets were full of gold that he had saved just for this very purpose, and he wondered the whole time who was going to tell Starry that she just didn't get to pick who she would marry when she was a child, and have that plan work out when she was a full grown woman. She smiled at him, her pale, freckled face as open as her mother's, and her blue eyes fathomless and bright. He touched her nose and felt like a coward because whoever told her she couldn't marry her music, it was certainly not going to be him.

Torrant and Yarri danced that Beltane. They danced through the figures like otters frolicking through rivers, and they held each other and danced when the music was slow like honey, and when it was Torrant's turn to take the lute he sang a song to his beloved that brought tears to every eye in the town but Yarri's, because it was her song, and she would not weep for it, no matter how much it moved her.
And when the children and families had gone home, and the wilding began, they slipped away to the shore, where the brightness of the moons precluded any wilding on the beach. They sat and talked and kissed and talked, and watched the silvered black of the ocean move like cold molten metal and then crash into lace on the sand. They kissed and whispered until the moons faded, and the sun slid slyly through the trees to turn the river to a ribbon of gold.
When Yarri saw the dawn she said a succinct word and hopped off Torrant's lap so quickly he overbalanced into the sand. "I need to make sure the children are in their beds!” she called as she went tearing down the beach. "Go tell Auntie Beth I'll be home in a breath …"
And Torrant stood and stretched and laughed into the wave-crashing stillness of the dawn.
When he got home, he was a little dismayed—but not surprised—to see a sleepy Aunt Bethen sitting at the table and eating some of the bread she'd set out the night before. She was taking a few bites of bread and then doing a few stitches on a bright sun-gold stocking as though the knitting were there only to keep her awake, and Torrant walked up and kissed her cheek, taking her knitting from her and setting it down gently on the table as he sat down.
"Are we the last in?” he asked quietly.
"Mmmmnnn…" she yawned. "Is Yarri checking the orphanage?"
"Yes," he murmured, "If I'd realized she had to do that, I would have walked her up earlier … dawn sort of took us by surprise." He sat and cut himself a thick slice of bread. He couldn't tell who made it—bread was one of the things that Auntie Beth could do well sometimes. She always said this was because there was a recipe to bread, but everything else had to be guessed at.
"She isn't drinking that tea," Beth said through a yawn, "I hope you two were careful …"
Torrant choked out breadcrumbs all over the table. "But we didn't …" he protested, and Bethen blinked rapidly, coming awake at last. "We're not going to …" He tried again, and now her eyebrows really did hit the line of rusty gray curls at her forehead, and he cleared his throat and tried one more time. "I'm going to wait until next Beltane if it kills me!” he said at last succinctly, and Bethen shook her head as though she hadn't heard right.
"By Triane's white shirt, boy, why?"
Torrant looked away, flushing.
"We saw that kiss—boy, the entire town saw that kiss. I think there were babies conceived this night because of that kiss in the full view of the world in the center of town on Beltane morning … by Oueant's stiff spine and Dueant's blue balls, Torrant Shadow, why would you not bed that girl this summer and handfast her later?"
"She's seventeen, Aunt Beth!" Torrant burst out, frustrated that he was the only one who seemed to see this. "She's seventeen, and she deserves a full year of courting—but do you know what she deserves more?" He stood and turned, hoping if anyone understood about a woman needing to make her own way, it would be Bethen Moon.
"A man who would die for her?" Bethen asked ironically, and Torrant practically growled with his frustration.
"Any woman can have that—but a young one deserves more. She deserves a choice. She deserves to know I am not the only moon in the sky. I …" a moment from the night before crossed his vision, Yarri on his lap, her lush hair around her shoulders, her eyes closed and her mouth open for another kiss. Her vest had been unlaced and her breasts—full and lush like the rest of her—had been sweet and soft and pillowy, and he'd wanted to sink into her, because he had never touched anything quite like this softness and yielding womanhood and he wanted it—he wanted her in a way leaving any wanting, any desire for anybody else in his life as pale and blurred as a charcoal drawing of a moon in a tarnished mirror.
With a groan he sank back to the table and put his face in his hands, scraping his hair back and peering out from a window of fingers like a fugitive from his own conflicting desires. "Oh, Goddess, Aunt Bethen … it's the right thing to do, this wait—I know it is. I know it's right and it's noble and it's the mark of being a good man that I want to give her this last year to try her womanhood out on the world … but Dueant's soft little mouth, Aunt Bethen, how am I going to do it?"
"What do you want, boy?" Bethen asked with a little amusement and some concern. It was not in her nature, it had never been in her nature, to push her desires to the back and think this made the world a better place to be.
"I want her … " he groaned wretchedly into the table. "But …"
He hadn't confessed to Lane yet. The first botched delivery he and Aylan had made, Lane had heard about. But Aylan had returned just last week, and they were going to tell Lane together about the new set of guards who were 'testing the purity' of the children in the Goddess ghettoes, and how Torrell had held his weeping, bleeding daughter, whom Torrant had just stitched in places that only lovers and midwifes should see after she was out of diapers, and begged the two of them to please, for the sake of the Goddess, take care of these brutal 'caretakers' over the citizens with no voice at all.
Aylan had helped plan, because he knew the city and knew where the guards could be accosted without the Goddess' people coming to be blamed, and he'd been nearby with the cart. Torrant had been the one who had dropped from the sky and murdered the men with a swipe of a razor claw.
The two of them had gone from being spies and smugglers to commissioned assassins, and telling their father figure was going to hurt, more so because they weren't sure he could tell them they had been wrong.
And he could tell by Bethen's peace at the moment she was ignorant of the threats to Roes at Triannon.
"But what?” she asked gently, a little alarmed by the quality of his silence.
"The world is a frightening place, Aunt Bethen," he said at last, resting his chin on his fists as he had when he'd been a child at this same battered table. "I'm starting to think I've trained my whole life to help make it sane. How do I take her now … make love to her, stake my claim, when I may have things to do that are bigger than us? And I certainly can't ask her to make that choice now … have you seen what happens to women, when they marry too young, and have babies too soon, and they have no men to help them and the world just keeps hammering away at them until the lines in their faces deepen, and suddenly they're no older than me, but they look older than grandmothers I've tended, great-grandmothers if it comes to that!" Ah, Grete—her heart had always been twenty, at best! But then, Grete had never had a Mackle or an Ulin with a hard fist and a heart twisted by lies. He grunted, suddenly tired. "I can't do it to her—I just can t.
He looked sideways at Bethen, and had he known it, he would have seen that for all his twenty-five years, he looked to her eyes to be still fourteen, and terrified and grief stricken, with eyes as old as the stars. "I brought her here so she could grow up safe, Auntie Beth. When she's grown, she can choose, and if she doesn't choose me I'll wither and die and she can live and be free. And if she does choose me, I can at least comfort myself with the fact that she wasn't a child when she did. It will be cold comfort, for all I might do in the world, but it will be all I have."
Bethen found that she was dashing tears away. Oh, this was not how she saw this morning playing out. She'd been so focused on the joy of the two of them, as they'd kissed in the sunshine. But even Bethen knew the sunshine had been a gift, a break, and a lie. Clough was casting shadows enough to cover her beloved little family, even as she looked through the clouds for blue sky.
"You two will make love out of this war, boy … if anyone under the moons can do it, it's the two of you." And then she kissed his cheek and took herself to bed, where she would cuddle into her sleeping husband and weep silently until she too fell asleep. He was right—dammit, the boy was right about the world, but this wasn't the world she'd planned on her children growing up in, and it wasn't the world she wanted to see in their plans.
Torrant stayed at the table until he heard the screen slam shut, and he turned his head and smiled at Yarri as she bustled in smelling like sunshine and ocean and Yarri. She swung about the kitchen, cutting bread for herself and asking Torrant if he wanted some milk and pulling out berries from the cold box and generally bursting with so much optimism and joy and with the secret touches and smiles of lovers or lovers-to-be that Torrant found some peace within himself. It was suddenly easy to answer her questions without pain or passion, and to break bread as though his talk with Bethen had been only the ordinary mothering she gave to all of them the morning after the wilding. It was suddenly easy to pretend their happy ending was already written, and it was only a year of waiting that stood in their way.

Part VIII
The Warring Moon

Another Turn Around the Sun

"They should be here by now," Torrant murmured to Aldam, and Aldam nodded for once not serene at all in the face of Torrant's mounting tension. Professor Austin and his protégé were supposed to be coming to Wrinkle Creek to relieve the two of them for the summer—they had sent letters and confirmed everything, including the fact that Torrant and Aldam would be picking Roes up again this year from Triannon on their way home.
Providing she would speak to the two of them since they had been the loudest voices in the family that had advocated her final year of healing education be done on the grounds of Triannon, and not out in the world to remote places in the other lands of the three moons, as Torrant and Aldam had done.
But they had won—as had Lane and Aylan and finally, even Yarri and Bethen, because in the face of her entire family begging her to not put herself in danger without one of them nearby, even Roes had relented. But she swore she wouldn't be speaking to Aldam, not even in letters, until he came back to claim her for handfast at Beltane.
Her number of letters to Torrant had quadrupled, and the phrase 'and you can just tell Aldam …' appeared so often that Torrant had taken to underlining it so Aldam could count the number of times she had most determinedly NOT spoken to him. Of course, mail service at Triannon had gotten better since the militia had begun serving shifts at the University, and the entire family breathed much easier, just knowing they had built two barracks on either side of the bowl valley, so the soldiers could alert the students to anything untoward, anything at all
Aylan and Torrant had made six more trips to Dueance in the last year—and Torrant had killed at least once every time.
"The guards they are sending are brutal," Torrell had said wearily, "But it's more than that … the priests are doing their work well. A little girl was caught within a half a block of the ghetto because she got lost—she was beaten to death for defying the curfew by a group of school boys, while the priest who taught them shouted encouragement because she was a spawn of the dark." Torrell's breath caught, and he stroked his own daughter's shorn hair. She'd cut it herself, in a moment of anger, of hatred for herself, and for what had been done to her, and he mourned the loss of the shiny brown curls as he mourned his baby's lost innocence. "She was only four," he said at last, closing his eyes, and Torrant and Aylan had met eyes over his head.
"Feeling hungry, brother?" Aylan had asked lightly.
"Absolutely," Torrant replied, his eyes bleeding to blue slowly, as though he'd been savoring the bloodlust chilling his heart and warming his belly. "I think I'm going to go eat myself some priest!"
And so he had—just as he'd done in Wrinkle Creek, only this time, he knew exactly what he was doing.
And so it had gone—for every delivery of wool, there had been a man or two who was very much worth killing. They stopped hiding the bodies, if they could help it, and the words Triane's son began to make their way around the ghetto, and still it wasn't enough. Torrant would prowl among the rooftops of the Goddess ghetto, smelling hunger, disease and want just around the corner with every breath, and know it wasn't enough, and wonder what else he could do.
Aylan would journey back to Eiran and tell Lane of their exploits, and Lane would age before his eyes, and even as he gripped arms with the man he considered his son, Lane would murmur to himself that he didn't know what else they could do. And Aylan would hold Torrant's head after every mission, as he wept and vomited and howled, and would murmur in his ears that they were doing all that they could—there wasn't anything else they could do.
And Torrant found he had an idea, a way for Triane's son to be more effective, a way to effect change among the whole city—and he hesitated. He hesitated because he had nearly made a promise to the woman he had loved since she'd drawn her first breath, and because she was waiting for him, soft and sweet, and powerful and willing, to hold his hand in the Beltane sun and claim him for her own, and he wanted to keep this promise with everything in his being, and he was tired of waking up with despair in his heart and the taste of blood in his mouth. Goddess thinking, Lane would say, but then, weren't the people in the ghettoes calling him Triane's son? How else should he think?
But being 'Triane's son' was not what was on his mind at the moment. Professor Austin and the student he was training up were late—more than a day late. Not wanting a repeat of last year's near miss, they had offered to come back to Wrinkle Creek a week early, if only their relief could arrive a few days earlier, and their last letter had said this would be fine.
"Your people are late!" Pansy said from the porch as Torrant and Aldam paced the front yard like jungle cats. Torrant leapt in the air, coming down in a crouch because he hadn't heard her there and she'd startled him. Aldam tripped on his own feet, but his startlement was not quite as spectacular.
"I know," Torrant said, coming slowly up from his crouch. "It's not right … Austin would never be this late." Professor Austin had always been early for class, and downright militant when it came to his students arriving on time. There was something very wrong in the air today, and Torrant longed to change into the snow cat and sniff the currents of wind to see if they would reveal the source of that ominous wrongness. Instead, he gave Pansy a thin smile. "Is there any more iced tea inside?” he asked, to give her something to do.
Ernst had built her a snug little house, and he worked long hours farming his own land to keep them happy and prosperous. Pansy kept their home neat, and their two cows and seven chickens fed and happy, but Ernst was gone from dawn until dusk. She'd enjoyed helping at the surgery—and after four years, Torrant and Aldam's reputation as being trustworthy was impeccable. Ernst was as comfortable letting her go to the healer's house a couple of times a week, as Torrant and Aldam were having her there on the days when the surgery was open. She had helped last summer as well, and the locals were more inclined to trust their replacements when Pansy was there to introduce everybody like friends. Of course, it did help that Rora and her husband visited often, little Tal in tow. Pansy's smile when they came in would have been worth it, even without her help.
But Professor Austin hadn't arrived the day before, and now the dusty wind through the trees was hot with sunshine, cedar, and the oppressive air of tight expectation. Pansy with her tart tongue and iced tea were about the only things tethering Torrant and Aldam to crust of the world on this edgy, fidgety day.
Torrant heard his heartbeat, hard enough to rumble the ground, then he realized it wasn't his heart, but the gallop of horses, and he barely pulled Aldam, with all of his bulk, out of the way before the slope-shouldered sway-backed graying gelding burst into the clearing, stopping short enough that his momentum almost sent him over on a weak shoulder, taking the professor with him. Torrant and Aldam rushed to steady the trembling animal and pull the exhausted professor off his unaccustomed saddle and onto the ground. Torrant took the reins as Aldam bore up the tall, gangly professor's weight, and Pansy, hearing the ruckus from outside came to take the horse from Torrant. "I'll walk the animal, you see to your friend …" and he didn't have breath to argue with her.
There was an arrow protruding from his professor's shoulder.
Aldam all but carried Austin into the surgery, and was ripping his shirt away from his arm even as Torrant washed up and brought the sanitizer and the instruments in. Torrant looked at the thing and shuddered—it had hit the man in the back and stopped at the shoulder blade—there would be no pushing it through, and ripping it out would leave enough shredded flesh to keep him busy for an hour … and something was happening … something bad was happening, and it was happening at Triannon and Roes was there … and …
And Torrant had a patient that needed tending, and a promise he'd made in the names of Oueant, Dueant, and Triane, and Aldam's hands were rock steady as he gave their old mentor the bitter tasting tea which would put him to sleep for the procedure, although his eyes as they met Torrant's were anguished. Roes. There was danger in the direction of Roes … and then Austin was asleep and Torrant was feeling for the arrowhead so he could cut the flesh instead of ripping it … first skin and then muscle parted under his finely honed knife, and then the arrow came and he was placing delicate little stitches among the layers, washing the wound with alcohol to prevent infection and then packing it with powdered yarrow to control bleeding. Professor Austin's breathing remained the breathing of deep sleeper throughout the entire procedure.
At last they were done, and Aldam met Torrant's glance, his buried anxiety suddenly burning in his open blue eyes.
"Wash up and pack our saddlebags with food and medical supplies," Torrant said tersely. "Get the horses ready to go. As soon as he wakes up and we know what to look for, we're on the road."
Aldam nodded wordlessly, and turned to go do what he'd been burning to do since Austin fell off his horse in their front yard.
"And Aldam?" Torrant's voice was dark as his brother turned towards him. "Strap my sword to my saddle."
"My saddle," Aldam said, and when Torrant blinked in surprise, he added, "If we need a sword, you won't be human. Yarri's not the only one who listens at windows when you confess to Lane, Torrant—I know what you do in the city."
Torrant was left staring at Aldam in shock, followed by a profound sense of sadness.
"He shouldn't have to know …" he murmured to himself. He and Aylan barely spoke of what they did when they went to Clough.
"He's always known," Professor Austin said from the table weakly, "You have always been dangerous, my boy—Aldam and Aylan just loved you anyway." Torrant was once again surprised.
"You are supposed to be asleep," he said stupidly, pulling an old clean shirt from a drawer in the back, where they kept a supply of clothes for just such emergencies.
"I was—Aldam dosed me very well," Austin slurred, "But I had to wake up to …" his eyes drifted shut again, and Torrant slid the shirt over his head, hoping that he wouldn't have to do anything else to wake the poor man up. His face was deeply lined, and his usually unkempt silver/brown hair was a sweaty mess—he had been riding, Torrant suspected, fast and hard and wounded, for many hours. As Torrant moved the shirt over Austin's affected arm, the professor startled like a sleeping baby, crying out, "Soldiers … Emory no!" Before his eyes popped open, a bleary green, and Torrant forgot his imperative to let his patient sleep and pressed him with questions.
"Soldiers … Professor Austin, where were they?"
"About three hours east …" he murmured. "We were almost here yesterday, and then we heard the mass movement. We could see Clough's colors through the trees, and hear them talking, so we stopped and walked the horses, trying to get a sense of where they were going … we could do it while they were moving, but then we tried to slip away this morning …" his voice wandered, and then with a cry of "Torrant!" Austin was suddenly awake and lucid and terrified. "They're heading for Triannon … and they have orders to kill someone named Moon…"
"Goddess!" Torrant hissed, every nightmare for his cousin crashing down on his chest in one blow.
"They saw us … saw Emory's white lock of hair and … I heard them, even as our horses took us away. They were shooting at him to kill, and …" Austin's voice broke. "He was my student since he was a boy …" Tears rolled from blurry eyes, and suddenly Pansy was there with a clean cloth and some more tea.
Torrant looked uncertainly at his old professor, his old friend. "Pansy …" he said, his voice shaking, "Pansy … I've got to go … its Roes … and Aldam won't live without her … and it's …"
"Its kin, Healer—go!" Pansy urged, and Torrant remembered nothing after that but the sound of Heartland's hooves, with Albiebu lumbering far behind.
They rode until the horses were winded and whimpering for lack of breath, and then they dismounted and walked until they couldn't see their feet in front of them and Aldam stumbled and fell to his knees. The awful keening groan he gave was the thing that finally brought Torrant to his senses.
"Three hours east," he puffed, turning towards Aldam and giving him a hand up. "Austin said they were three hours east yesterday, and they've been heading towards Triannon since this morning, right?"
Aldam nodded, his eyes hungry on Torrant's face, finding some hope to devour and sustain him.
"Triannon is a three day ride for us, alone, going at a fair clip, right? So they still have two and a half, three days to get there—and they're a big mass, and they're not moving as quickly as we are, right?"
Aldam blinked and nodded again, and Torrant nodded too, feeling better than he had since he'd pelted out of the house, bellowing Aldam's name. "It will be close," he said, patting Heartland's shuddering withers and rooting in his saddlebag for a wire brush so he could lean against the animal and soothe him after such a rough ride. "It will be close," he said again, his breath coming easier this time. "But better we rest now, since it's 'bout full dark and the horses are spent, than kill ourselves before we get there. No …" he put a hand on Aldam's shoulder as Aldam reached for the brush, "I'll tend the horses, I see some grass by that tree, we can let them graze—did you bring some oat cake?" Aldam nodded, and Torrant went into the saddlebag again and pulled it out, giving one lump to each horse in gratitude, and together they made a brief camp, rolling themselves up in their cloaks near the horses, and sleeping hard until the sun played coy with the horizon the next day.
They measured themselves the next day and the horses were better for it. As they camped that night they had a tight breath to spare for a plan, in case they ran across the soldiers on their way.
"How many, do you think?" Aldam asked while handing Torrant a bowl full of soup.
Torrant closed his eyes and tried to remember what he'd learned about military hierarchy in his politics class. "The priest who visited last year wouldn't have known about the militia—that's new. But that doesn't mean they don't have spies … let's assume they know. They were big enough to mask the sound of two horses and two men making camp—they didn't spot Austin and his helper …" Emory—a tiny boy with big eyes, he had been Roes' age. Torrant had been thinking of the boy all day as they'd fled. A Healer of the Goddess, dead for the white lock of his hair. "Until the morning—I'm sure it was the fact that they weren't in livery that gave them away." Torrant thought for a moment. They had been seeing signs that a big group of men had passed this way all day. Neither one of them were woodsmen or trackers, but it wasn't hard to spot a freshly used privy ditch or a flattened spot from fifty? A hundred? More?
Torrant sighed, and made the hard guess. "A company, I'd say—that's about a hundred and twenty, hundred and fifty men." He sighed, looked away, thought, looked back. "My guess is we'll catch up with them tomorrow about mid-day— we'll hear them if we're not riding like we've just been loosed from stars' dark."
"What do we do then?" Aldam asked, alarmed, and Torrant nodded, glad his earlier panic had faded to some common sense.
"We pretend we're a rock and a tree and we wait until they camp for the night. Then we pass them up, ride like hell, and evacuate the school on the west while the militia stops them on the east side."
"Can they?" Aldam asked, surprised, hopeful. "Can they stop them?"
Torrant's heart sank—he felt it—to his diaphragm, stopping his breath, and then when he made himself take a breath it was up in his throat, dragging pain out with the wind. "No," he murmured, truthfully. The mismatched paneling in the halls, the terrifying number of books he'd never had time to read, the dining hall that had felt like home … all of it, at the mercy of Rath's soldiers from Clough. "No. The most they can do is buy us time to clear out the students. And every minute will be dearly paid for."
Oh, Goddess, let us get there in time.
He couldn't dwell on it—he couldn't. And they were not ready to sleep. Torrant thought about the things he might be called on to do, and remembered one skill that had never come up in Triannon, but that might be called on when trying to flee from soldiers into the woods. "Aldam—did I ever tell you how Yarri and I got away from the wizard tracker in Clough?"
Aldam shook his head no, and Torrant spent the next hour practicing with his brother how best to be a rock and a tree.
The practice was good, but what they ended up being were two rider-less horses instead.
They caught up with the company of soldiers early the next day—so early, in fact, that they almost rode up into the midst of the cooks/stewards/pack-animals that accompany an army, even a single company. As soon as Torrant drew Heartland to a reckless halt only partially hidden by the last stand of trees, he saw the men in the wagon drawing up the rear turn their heads towards him, and instantly became an empty place on the saddle.
Aldam did the same as Albiebu skittered to a halt next to him and together, the two spare horses assumed the pace of the rest of the army, a little to the side. Aldam, caught under the blanket of the illusion that Torrant had whispered over them caught Torrant's eyes and sucked in a breath—those eyes were snow-cat blue.
They had to be, Torrant thought irritably, looking out at the world filled with predators who were weak enough to be prey. He had to be the snow cat—he wasn't going to make it for the rest of the day if he wasn't.
Torrant didn't let the façade of empty saddles fade until they were a good bowshot in front of the army and as it was he had a pounding headache by the time night fell. But when the troops stopped moving, he and Aldam slipped quietly away—as easy as that. Letting the truth-bending fade was like breathing for the first time in a year. He slumped in the saddle for a moment and then realized Aldam had made a distressed sound behind him. Of course—if he failed, Aldam would have to leave him behind. He straightened, cast Aldam a strained sort of reassuring smile over his shoulder, and nodded. They picked their way carefully along the narrow path they had ridden so many times before, until the last moon set and they had no more light to go by. They slid off the horses and into a dreamless sleep.
They felt the sun on their faces at about the same time they heard the vanguard riders in the distance behind them. They were on their horses at a gallop before they had even opened their eyes.
Someone unfamiliar with the two new militia outposts would have missed the place where the trail split, and as it was, Torrant and Aldam reined in to a skidding halt. They had already agreed on what they would do—Aldam would go around the bowl valley to the outpost on the east side and get the twenty or so men there to help with the school evacuation. Torrant would go straight to the nearer outpost here on the west end of the valley and rouse them, then go into the school and herd the students out the back. Judging by how close the vanguard riders had sounded, they didn't have much time.
"Aldam …" Torrant started, wishing he could grip his brother's arm from the back of the horse. Aldam looked back at him, his fuzzy blonde hair full of twigs and leaves, his open blue eyes anxious. This was Aldam, his brother—they'd worked side by side in perfect communion for over three years, and Torrant had not once taken it for granted that his brother would be at his back if he needed him. Now it was time to make sure no harm came to him.
"Aldam …" Torrant said again, and he swallowed and knew they had no time. "Be careful, Aldam, that's all," he said at last. "We'll get her home safe, right?"
Aldam smiled gamely and swallowed, hard. "Get you home safe too, brother," he said tightly. "Don't think I don't know what you'll be doing while we clear out the school."
Torrant hadn't been sure that Aldam would put it together when he'd proposed the plan—but Aldam was only a little slow. Torrant should have known he would eventually end up at the right place.
He smiled, his best smile, so Aldam would go off into his own danger with a good heart. "It's not a problem, brother," he said, not knowing that his eyes were bleeding blue, "I'll just be hunting."

If Torrant had time to think about it as he thundered up to the barracks, he would have reflected that all barracks look the same—this one was a squat building with a kitchen in the center, but Torrant wasn't interested in the building— he was more concerned with the three bored guards outside, sitting sentry in the dusty sun, looking at him in surprise.
One of them stood up—a familiar one, and Torrant breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn't have to introduce himself to Captain Jerin.
"Soldiers," he shouted, swinging off Heartland as though he were already the snow cat. "Rath's men—there's a whole company of them coming this way. Aldam's gone round to warn the other barracks and get the students out that way."
Jerin simply stood and stared, opening and closing his mouth in surprise he had no time for, and Torrant found his years of commanding people to hold a bandage or to leave a husband had trained him to command more than housewives and Aldam.
"To arms!" he called over Jerin's head. "Enemy approaching, to arms to arms to arms!!!" And as the men came flooding out, putting their swords in their scabbard and throwing on light chain-mail as they moved, Jerin recovered himself and started asking intelligent questions.
"How many? How far away?” he asked, after catching his scabbarded sword from his lieutenant.
"An hour, maybe less," Torrant told him breathlessly. "And a whole company.” The world tilted for a moment, now that he was off the horse, and the ground beneath his feet rode galloping waves, and then his vision shifted cold and blue and he pulled himself upright and prepared to stand with the militia. Jerin had other plans.
"You said Aldam went to the other barracks so they could start evacuating?" At Torrant's nod, Jerin thought quickly. "Right—then we need you to go down the front entrance and herd everybody east …"
"But …" It wasn't until he heard the plaintive note in his voice that he realized how badly he wanted to hunt that invading army, how much he had been looking forward to swiping and clawing and ripping their soft, sweet flesh, and crunching on their bones.
"But nothing, Torrant!" Jerin barked, accustomed to hearing his orders followed. He saw the mutiny building in the face of the boy he'd opened the door to, all those years ago, and his expression softened. "Look—I know why you'd want in on the battle—but my men are trained and I …" suddenly Jerin's expression turned furtive. He'd married one of the refugees, some years back, and Torrant had a sudden, sick sensation in the pit of his stomach.
"My wife has kin, still in the ghettoes," Jerin said, his eyes hard and bright. "And when you were a boy, I used to sneak out into the woods just to watch you hunt. I know what you do when you go trade in the city, and don't think we're not grateful."
"But that's all the more reason for me to …"
"Live!" Jerin interrupted, and then swallowed thickly. "As me and the boys I grew up with won't, odds are. No, Triane's son—you are too important to die with us today. Now go!"
Torrant's mouth twisted in anguish, and Jerin locked his wrists with him, and then released him, thumping him on the shoulders to urge him to his horse. Torrant threw himself on Heartland and turned to the men from his village he would never see again, recognizing them from the stables or the warehouse or from rough-housing in front of the Moon home when they were boys, and called out "Good hunting to you all!" before spurring his horse past the barracks and down the hill with bitter force.
Heartland was so tired that Torrant just dropped his reins before he crashed into the grand west entrance bellowing for Professor Gregor. In a heartbeat he was surrounded by worried professors and upset older students—including a group of fifteen or so young men who reminded him achingly of himself in his first years at Triannon. One young man had golden curls and blue eyes, and the thought of Aylan almost wore through his urgency and made him weep at the approaching horror. Then Gregor appeared, stunned, and as Torrant told him of the approaching army, angrier by the second.
"Why … Torrant—why would they be coming this way?"
Torrant swallowed. "Professor Austin heard them talking, before they attacked him—they're after 'the girl Moon'. But they killed Emory, just for having a white streak in his hair, Professor—none of you are safe. Aldam's rousing …"
"Aldam?" Roes appeared instantly, fighting her way through a slough of taller professors to do so, and looking at her cousin with wide, anxious eyes.
"He's riding to the north, getting the militia to escort you out," Torrant paused and then raised his voice for everybody listening. "Everyone should grab provisions and a cloak and go out the small north entrance and up towards the militia barracks … don't stop for things—they can be replaced."
Gregor met his eyes in sorrow. "What of the militia at the west?” he asked quietly.
Torrant thought of Jerin and his eyes grew grim. "If this army means to do what I think it does, Jerin'll be able to buy us time—but not much."
Gregor nodded and took a deep breath, calling out to the crowd of students gathered, "Do as he says, people—take food, because we'll be making it to Eiran on foot, and a cloak as well, but don't burden yourself with trifles. Older students, mind the younger ones—younger students, listen to your elders. Go—run through the dining hall for the food, go grab your cloaks, and head for the east entrance! Go! Now!"
And that last word mobilized them, and the crowd dispersed to the tremendous sound of running feet. Professor Nica came up to Torrant, her frowzy dyed-blonde hair grayer than it had been the first day Torrant had come to Triannon, but her eyes just as wickedly bright. "Come with me, boy," she murmured. "There's something we can do for the school even if we have to leave it…"
And with that, Torrant followed her to the library—the great hall of books, bound in leather with their heavy yellow parchment magic in the center.
"The poetry's in the back," Nica murmured, "And those volumes are smaller …"
"But Professor …" Torrant remembered the histories, the battles, the kings, and the forces that spawned countries and cities and towns. "The historical books …"
Nica looked at him sorrowfully, her bird-dark eyes bright. "My boy, what's more important—the moments of the past or the lessons we took from them? If every student carries a small volume with them … well, it's enough to say we have lived."
Torrant nodded dumbly, and the fragile looking professor handed him a crate full of small, beloved volumes of poetry, of Goddess stories, of tales of adventure and of love. Torrant practically ran down the hallway to the east door, and was met there by Roes.
"Good," she said practically, "Here, I'll hand these out while you go get another box."
Torrant looked at her, her dark red hair in a practical—and escaping—bun and her fierce brown eyes screwed in behind a freckled scowl, and he felt a sudden terrible affection for his prickly little cousin. After he dropped the crate with a thump at her feet he gave her a stout, crushing hug. "I'll do no such thing, briar Roes," he murmured. "You go up and find Aldam before he goes out of his mind with worry."
"We'll find him together," she murmured into his shoulder, wiping her eyes on his shirt when she thought he couldn't tell. "And this is the right thing to do." She stood up and sniffled a little, offering him a brave smile. "After all, you know there's a volume of all the songs you wrote when you were here, don't you?" She laughed a little at his shock. "I think Gregor wrote them down as you sang them. It would be a bloody shame to lose it—now go!"
The north door was open to the bright spring sunshine, and very distantly to the south they could hear the horrible shouts of men. Torrant didn't need to be told twice.
As the last stream of students went running out the door and up the path of the bowl valley, a small book tucked into the folds of every cloak, Aldam came thundering down the hill on Albiebu, a trio of militia men at his back. He almost leapt off his horse while it was still running when he saw his beloved. Roes was dragging two of the youngest students by the hands, followed by Torrant with the tiniest in his arms. "They're here," Aldam shouted breathlessly. "You can see them at the top of the west side coming down—Torrant, we need to ride out now!
"Where's Nica?" Roes asked even as Aldam was shoving her inelegantly up on Albiebu.
"She's still in there …"
"We don't have time for this!" One of the militia men pleaded. "She'll have to come on her own—now where's your horse?"
Torrant gasped, "Heartland!" Because his faithful companion of six years was still in front, resting, while an invading army roared down upon him. With little ceremony he threw the girl in his arms to one of the militia men and saw that every horse had two riders. "Go—I'll go get Heartland—that horse can outrun anyone coming for us, now that he's had a breath of rest and some grazing—now go! Get to Eiran! Don't stop and wait for me for anything!"
And with a quick clasp of hands with his brother and a kiss on the back of Roes' tanned wrist, he turned and ran straight into the heart of the battle.
Aldam stared after him in a panic of indecision, and Roes ripped the reins from her beloved's hands and jerked them sideways, making the ponderous animal actually dance. "The little ones need us, Aldam—he'll be fine!” she barked authoritatively, and wheeled towards the retreating line of students and away from the invading army. But even as Albie started an unlikely, staggering gallop, Aldam was looking forlornly behind his shoulder to where his brother had disappeared, and Roes was wiping her tears on her shoulder. In a moment they were up the hill, and Triannon was out of their sight.

The Sacking of Triannon

He should have known, Torrant thought with a breathless groan as he rounded the corner. He should have remembered what it was like to be young and to want revenge on the world for the things that have wronged you.
The group of young men that he spotted when he'd burst into the great hall of the school were in front of the red brick pillars, wearing their fencing armor with their actual swords in their hands. Professor Gregor and the fencing master were with them, and even as Torrant spotted Heartland, who was starting to whicker at the battle shrieks that were growing louder, he could see Gregor had an old sword.
Goddess! He swore to himself and ran up to the group of young men who were arguing earnestly with their professors. When he got to the top step, he turned and tried not to let his vision darken as he realized at least a hundred men were pouring down the slope of the bowl valley, less than half a mile away.
"They'll kill you!” he shouted, trying to get the mob to see sense, and realized that his years must have given him some authority because suddenly the twenty or so people on the entry slab were turned towards him with open eyes. "This is not the place to fight them—don't you see—they'll slaughter you, and there will be no one to witness what they've done to this place."
"We're not afraid to die!" shouted the youngling who looked like Aylan and Torrant shook his head.
"Of course you're not—none of you are afraid to die. But your lives are not well spent here …"
"Then where?" called another boy, this one with dark hair and a ruddy, sweet face.
"In a place of our choosing—where we can win!" Torrant commanded, and thought that he had them—Gregor was looking relieved because he had won and they'd seen sense and these young men needn't die after all, and an arrow came from that slope ahead of them and pierced the sweet-faced young man in the throat, and then the shoulder, the shaft forming a horrible red-dripping bridge between the two body parts, even as the young man gurgled blood and sank to the ground, drowning in his own gore as it poured down his throat.
The boys with the swords turned as one to the twenty man avaunt that was now only hundreds of yards away, and screamed vengeance as they charged headlong to their deaths.
Oh Goddess … Torrant wasn't sure if he said it aloud or not, but Professor Gregor watched in shock as his students, his beloved children, ran straight to the reddened weapons even as he and the fencing master ran shrieking to stop the red tide of soldiers.
Professor Gregor was one of his, Torrant thought coldly, and then his heart went icy and his vision went sharp, and he didn't think at all.
The snow cat leapt in front of the professor and felled the man coming at them with the raised saber even as the rest of the enemy began to lay casual waste to the young lives who had offered their soft bellies to the slaughter. And then another enemy died, and another, even as Gregor turned his back and began to fight—surprisingly well—with the man who had snuck around and tried to attack him behind.
For a brief, blinding moment, Torrant thought the professor would live, and then the first horseman came charging down. Later, he would realize the cavalry had stayed to the back because the company had not expected any resistance at all, but now his heart sank, and in a staggering bound he dug his claws into the animal's flanks and pulled the surprised rider into the melee to be trampled by his own men.
The snow cat had fought a battle like this once, on a long ago snowy mountain, and he remembered. He remembered how to leap from horse to horse, ripping and pulling and destroying without being touched—the problem with swords is that they are unweildy with anything inside their reach. Gregor fought gamely on with his one opponent, his efforts flagging, his determination fading with the lives of his students as they died around him and the giant snow cat destroyed every commanding officer in the company, surrounding them both with surprised milling horses.
But it wasn't until the acrid smell of varnished wood beneath the torch washed through the valley that Gregor looked up and saw the flames roaring out of the doorway of his beloved school, and caught a sword underneath his ribcage, ripping upwards as he fell.
Torrant saw them both—the death of Triannon and it's headmaster—and let out a roar of anguish that ripped through the valley, and even, had he known it, reached the ears of the fleeing students who had barely escaped being locked inside their beloved school and burned along with it.
That terrible roar caused a panic with the remaining soldiers. They had lost two men for every one of the tough, passionate little militia-men who had met them at the bottleneck of the trail, and they hadn't expected it. They had written the students off as easy kills, and even though many of them had no stomach for cold-blooded murder, the task of locking a group of children in a building and setting it on fire should not have been hard. But the building had been emptied, with no trace of the students, and enough soldiers had trampled the area when looking for them to not see the tracks they'd left. To top it off the older students had swords they knew how to use, and in the midst of this confusion there was suddenly a terrible fury of silver fur which annihilated their leadership, and the roar of anguish sounded a lot like triumph to those who were left.
The snow cat leapt to his professor's side and guarded the body, as what was left of the company of men took to their heels and ran back the way they had come. Torrant sniffed Professor Gregor's face and smelled the blood in his rattling breaths, and gave a disconsolate whimpering growl. Gregor opened his eyes then and raised a hand, burying it in the pretty silver-white fur at Torrant's neck, not mindful of the blood spattered there.
"It's soft …" he rasped, spattering scarlet with his words. "I didn't know it would be so soft …" A sudden crackle sounded, and then a roar as timbers gave in the great hallway, and part of the roof collapsed with the sound of red thunder. Gregor's kind eyes lost a little more of his focus, and his lips curved in his last try at a smile. "You'll have to build the new one, my boy …" he murmured. "Maybe this time, the walls will match …"
And then the blood-spatter of his tortured breaths just stopped.
Torrant stood, stiff legged like a puzzled cub, at the body of his professor for several deep, panting breaths. He had been riding for days, and had just used an enormous amount of power and strength to kill the men littering the stretch of lawn in front of the flaming remains of his old school and for several moments his body fought—hard—to return to a man's form so he could grieve like a man.
His anguish and his rage won, and with a roar drowning out even the roar of the inferno, Torrant left his puzzled horse to fend for itself and tore off into the blood-soaked morning to rip vengeance from the fleeing soldiers.

A Witness to the Goddess' Vengeance

Aylan hadn't told Yarri, but he had been worried from the moment they'd first seen the two little spots on Torrant's most recent map move from Wrinkle Creek towards Triannon.
"They're making good time!" Yarri had said happily, and Aylan had to agree. They were making excellent time. In fact, they were making panicky, fleeing-for-your-life time. When the words 'soldiers' had suddenly appeared on the map, and the two small figures of Torrant and Aldam had renamed themselves 'empty saddles', both of them had called Lane.
"Those soldiers are moving towards Triannon," Lane said, watching in fascinated horror with both of them. His eyes met Aylan's then in dawning realization, and Aylan said, "I'll go!" He was halfway to the militia barracks before the screen door slammed behind him, and he and Stanny were charging down the path to Triannon on Courtland's children an hour before the militia was ready to move out.
They were halfway there when they met the first of the bedraggled students, walking grimly forward, several girls and boys about Cwyn's age with strained, angry faces. Stanny and Aylan dismounted and shared food, and asked what happened.
"A man with a white streak came pounding in and said soldiers were coming—the professors all forced us out." He reached into his cloak pocket bemusedly. "They gave us books of poetry as we left," he said, as though still trying to decide why they had done that. Stanny and Aylan mounted up as soon as he'd mentioned the man with the white streak.
"There are soldiers about an hour behind us," Stanny said comfortingly. "They're the good kind, but they're going to be riding fast, so stay to the side of the road. Some of them should start taking you back to Eiran."
So they went, forced to slow down because the road was littered with puzzled, frightened youngsters and professors and staff trying to control them and make some sense out of their world.
"You know they're going to be last," Aylan said, trying to comfort them both as the shadows lengthened into late afternoon. "If they were helping to evacuate the school, she wouldn't let them do that alone … you know Roes—she's got to have a say in everything."
Stanny nodded, the furrows in his freckled brow never easing. "And Torrant wouldn't want to leave until everybody's gone—he does play the hero when he can.”
"Right," Aylan said nodding, because it sounded good and it gave him something to do besides weep at the sight of another group of students who were not the people they loved. "And Aldam wouldn't want to leave them behind."
"Right," Stanny agreed, disappointment making his voice break. "They'll be at the end. They have to be."
And so they were, just as the westering sun reaped the shadows from the trees they saw the last of the militia with the smallest children on their horses and Roes and Aldam in their midst. But not Torrant. After Stanny practically dragged his fully grown little sister off her horse to hug her, and Aldam slid down to get thumped on the back by Aylan, they both asked the obvious question.
"His horse was around the front of the school—he was just going to get it," Aldam said confidently, but Aylan caught Roes' nervous look sideways.
"What?” he demanded.
"We're the last in line," she said, looking apologetically at her beloved. "We shouldn't be—all the young men my age, and the headmaster—they should be behind us, but I've been listening … and Professor Gregor would have started to round us up anyway. He would have made people wait and kept us in groups."
Aldam processed this for a moment and Aylan fought for breath as he wondered if he could be on his horse and down the road before Aldam realized that he'd left his brother behind.
Aylan managed to hit Triannon right as the last of the sunlight faded and the third moon rose. The smoke trapped in the valley threatened to choke him, and the heat thrown off the hulking black ember that had been his home for twelve years made him sweat inside his cloak. Ashes fell like rain, turning his cloak and his face white in the moonlight. But even the smoke and ashes could not obscure the horror of what Triannon had become. When he was a student, he had seen his old university by moonlight, when the grounds and the school were silver-lit and lovely. Tonight there was not enough moonlight in the world to beautify the smoking hulk of wood and mortar which had been Triannon, much less the corpses thick on the lawn.
Aylan made a sound, grief, terror, anger, he wasn't sure, but he heard a soft whicker and looked up to see Heartland, approaching him quietly from the grove of trees to the left of what had been the west entrance of the school. For a moment, he thought clouds had blocked the moons. For another, he thought he'd been caught by an arrow in the chest. And then his diaphragm forced his lungs in and out, and made oxygen fill his body, and when he breathed his vision cleared and his heart started beating again.
Heartland wouldn't leave him, he thought, his first clear, rational idea from the moment he'd torn off into the dusty spring evening, looking for his brother of the heart. The thought steadied him, calmed him enough to wipe his suddenly clammy palms on his breeches and canter his horse to Heartland. For his part, Torrant's horse was so damned happy to have a familiar hand and voice nearby that he lifted his head and took a few steps forward, giving Aylan access to the reins.
"Right, boy," Aylan muttered, just to hear something but the utter silence of death and the occasional shifting of debris, in what had once been the closest thing he'd had to a home. "Shall we go find him?"
Aylan had seen what the snow cat could do, up close and personal, and he recognized the semi-circle of bodies littered a pace away from the crumpled figure in the professor's robes as Torrant's handiwork. He crouched by Gregor's body and made a soft sound of grief, then reached up and touched the cold flesh to close the eyes that had once been filled with kindness. "Sweet Dueant, greet him," he murmured, and looked wretchedly around the moonlit clearing, spotting the bodies of the young students, the fencing master, and those they had killed. It was easy to guess what had happened, but as to where to look now? There was no body on the grim field which could be Torrant's—either the feline or the human. There was no way to track him in the moonlight either.
Aylan's frantic thoughts were interrupted by a rustling in the woods. He pulled his sword, sat himself firmly on the horse and called out with more confidence than he felt. "You there—in the bushes, come out!"
A man emerged, dressed in the teal and black of Rath's regiment, but obviously unarmed. "Is … is it gone yet?” he asked, hesitantly, and Aylan looked at his livery and felt disinclined to put his weapon away.
"Is what gone?” he asked shortly, although he had a pretty good idea.
"The She-bitch's demon …" The man's wail was soft, but Aylan still held his sword out. "It was an ill-omened day and then that … white thing from the star's dark came and destroyed my captains … they were such good men …"
"Yes," spat Aylan disgustedly. "They were so good that they were going to burn a school full of children."
"It was orders," the soldier said, shocked. "How could they disobey orders?"
"How could they obey them?" Aylan keened at him. "You come to a school and kill boys with toy swords on the front lawn, and plan to lock children in their school and burn it to the ground, and you don't expect retribution? You commit atrocities, and you don't expect vengeance?" A thought passed through him, of murdering this man in the quiet dark. Simply running his sword through his innards, and leaving him there to die, screaming, for the sins of his people. With a great deal of delicacy, Aylan placed his sword in his scabbard.
"They were the She-bitch's whelps!" the man protested, "And we were met by a militia—don't tell me those men didn't know what sins they were committing!"
Aylan just shook his head. "They were children, you fool," he said softly. "And that militia was full of boys I grew up with, who signed on to deliver the mail and see the lands. They were here because you people threatened Yarri Moon, did you know that?"
The man shook his head. "She was killed by the She-bitch's …"
"By Rath's men." Aylan interrupted, hoping that if he hurled enough truth into the void, something in this man's mind would raise up. "They were killed by Rath's men, and I know this is true because she escaped and told me." On another day, Aylan would have relished the shocked gasp. "So before you start cursing the name of Joy again, you need to think about what you were willing to do to profane Her name, you miserable, brainless ass. And then go back to your shit-hole of a city and be a witness to what the Goddess' people will do to defend their helpless ones. But first, tell me which way that demon went—he's a friend of mine, and he might need some help."
The soldier hesitated, drawn up short, apparently, by the sudden realization that a perfectly ordinary man would not agree that what had been done this terrible day was holy and worthy and good. Wretchedly, he pointed towards the south entrance of the bowl valley. "The men … they ran away when they realized the school was empty and the captains were dead—after losing so many to the militia, it just seemed … it seemed like bad luck."
"It was bad luck," Aylan snarled. "Bad luck that your cook didn't poison you on the way here." His fingers still itched to pull his sword and become the murderer that Torrant had saved him from becoming, but Torrant was out there, as the snow cat or the man, and eventually he would realize what his vengeance had done. And it was the one time in their lives Aylan knew, knew beyond doubt, that Torrant needed him and no one else.

Clean

Once he got over the rim of the bowl valley, it was easy to follow Torrant's trail—even in the dark. All he had to do was follow the bodies.
The first ten or so were the most viciously mauled—often their throats were ripped out, leaving larynxes like broken branches jutting from blackening flesh. After that, Aylan could read the weary pattern of an exhausted man, finishing a job—a simple swipe to the jugular, a quick nip at an unguarded wrist, and the soldiers crawled a few paces in their own blood and then simply lay and let the world go dark to their dying vision. And still the snow cat killed.
As the final moon readied to set, Aylan realized the bodies had left the path back towards Clough and were veering to the west—toward the great river which would eventually run through Eiran. When there were no more bodies to mark the trail, he continued to the river, knowing maybe in the back of his mind, what he would find there.
The river was wide and low at this juncture—the snow cat would have known that. They all would have known, they had made the journey so often. In the moonlight it was a light-struck ribbon of diamond velvet, molten and sharp, and it was easy to miss the huddled man, crouched in the rushing shallows of the run-off of a still-snowy mountain, hugging his knees to his chest.
"Dueant …" Aylan swore softly, but Torrant didn't hear him over the river or the howling of his own demons.
"Torrant!" Aylan called more loudly, but still pitching his voice low so as not to disturb the night. "Torrant, brother, you need to get out of there!"
The face Torrant turned towards him was so pale and blue it shined like great Triane herself. "I'm nnnnnnnnnott cl cl cl clean," he chattered. "I n n n n need to be clllll cl clean!"
Goddess! Aylan nodded then, and reasonably certain the only people within five miles of the two of them were sleeping with the stars this night, he set about building a bright fire and then stripping to his underclothes.
Wading into the river was like jumping into a snow bank, and the rocks under his feet were like knives. Aylan was pretty sure he'd covered all of Dueant's body parts as he cursed his way to where Torrant sat, and reached down into the river to haul his brother up by his armpits. Torrant almost drowned them both by refusing to go, but Aylan had only been riding for a day. Torrant had been on a hard road for three days before he had pulled every power the Goddess gave him and killed and killed and killed. Besides, Aylan thought as he forced Torrant's half-dead limbs to move over the uneven riverbed, Torrant was shorter than he was by nearly a head, even if he was thicker in the chest and thighs.
The night air, which had seemed only mildly chilly before he'd gone in, was suddenly frigid as they emerged, and Aylan lost no time stripping Torrant down to his bare skin and wrapping his own cloak around his shoulders, while he hung up the sodden clothes. Torrant, for his part, was possessed of the dangerous stillness Aylan had come to associate with his brother trying to forgive himself for things he had done in his other form. Aylan remembered the string of fleeing bodies—many of them slashed from behind, and shuddered. I can't remember, Torrant had said once. I don't want to remember.
Aylan prayed on this night, at least, Torrant wouldn't be able to recall a damned blessed thing.
When he was done hanging Torrant's things on the low branches of the poplar trees growing near the river, Aylan danced around a little in the chill spring breeze, and then swore by Oueant's enormous manhood and stripped off his underthings, threw them on the nearest branch and wriggled in under his own cloak next to Torrant's chill, naked body. For a moment, Torrant sat unresisting as the two of them began to grow a little warmer, and suddenly he whimpered, and started to struggle out of the cloak.
"Don't touch me, brother," he rasped, standing pale and naked in the firelight. "I'm nnnn nottttttt…." because it was cold, outside of the cloak, "Ccc ccc ccclean," he finished, shivering wretchedly. "I'mmm notttt …"
"Bollux!" Aylan shouted, standing up and wrestling the cloak around them both. This one protest must have been the last, because Torrant allowed himself to be quietly wrangled back to sitting by the fire, and Aylan was too busy yelling at him to get a word in edgewise. "Bollux, bollux, and shite!" Aylan continued, furious. "They were cowards, damned bloody arsed cowards and they got what they deserved …" Aylan found he was weeping as he shouted, and he couldn't seem to help it. He wrapped his arms around Torrant's bare shoulder and pulled his head into his chest, dripping tears into the chestnut colored hair as he rubbed it against his cheek. "You fought for us, that's all … they came to hunt innocent children and teachers and …"
"And earnest young men who could hold a sword …" Torrant's voice fractured into grief. "Ah, gods, Aylan—they were so young … so damned young, and they looked like you and like Aldam and Stanny and they died … they all died … and I killed so many men, and those young men … they're still dead … oh, Goddess, Aylan, the things I've done …"
"Ssssshhhhh …" but it was hard to comfort him when Aylan was sobbing too.
"Dueant's tears, my brother, I pollute you with my breath …" Torrant was still not too weary and heartsick to try and pull away.
"You bless us all, Torrant," Aylan wept, keeping his brother firmly tucked in his embrace, unmindful of his manhood or his pride. The vision of the vast, crackling ember that had been the beautiful school abused him again. Professor Nica had been nowhere to be seen, and thoughts of the gentle librarian burnt alive in the middle of her beloved books and of Torrant's kind mentor, lying dead next to the students he'd tried to protect, laid siege to Aylan's breath in a suffocating rain. As the surging rage choked him he knew then, deep in his stomach, in his groin, the fury that had sent the snow cat running for vengeance. He sobbed a final time and clutched Torrant closer. "You do what we wish to—you fight back."
"It's awful," Torrant whispered, sounding terribly young. "It's awful, to know I've done this, to know that I've killed and I can do it again …" his voice trailed off, and Aylan knew that he must be beyond exhausted. "I don't know how you can even bear to touch me …"
"Shhhhh …" Aylan wrapped the cloak around them tighter and leaned back against the bedroll he'd found in Heartland's saddlebags. "There's nothing you can do that would make me afraid to touch you …"
"Someday," Torrant muttered bleakly, "there might be."
Aylan shhhd some more into his hair, and in the crackling quiet of the fire by the river he was suddenly aware they were two naked people, wrapped in a cloak alone at night. And then he was aware that Torrant was snoring abruptly on his shoulder. In spite of himself, of the tragedies of the day he felt a wry smile twist at his mouth. "Oh, my friend," he murmured into the silence. "Why is it we're only alone and naked together when we're coming out of the cold?"

Torrant jerked awake like a frightened child when the sky was barely gray, and Aylan choked on a snore and then fell back asleep. Torrant whimpered and snuggled back into Aylan's arms, and then he, too, realized they were both pressing smooth, bare skin against smooth bare skin. And Aylan's body was definitely responding to his presence. He was suddenly tempted.
Wouldn't it be wonderful, to run his hands down Aylan's ribcage, feel the muscles of his stomach, touch the mysteries of his arousal? Wouldn't it be lovely and beautiful to forget the horrors he had wrought the day before, in the perfection of this gray pre-dawn on what was going to be a lovely spring day?
Oh Goddess. A groan broke his throat and the temptation disappeared. Aylan choked on another snore, his warm body rippling under Torrant's head and his breath rasping in Torrant's ear. Abruptly Aylan sat up, taking Torrant with him until Torrant's head slid down making embarrassing contact with his groin and Torrant fought the cloak to scramble up to his knees so he could look Aylan in the face.
"Shite!" Aylan swore blearily, rubbing at his eyes. "What's wrong … you made a sound … what's wrong?" Blond stubble covered Aylan's chin and cheeks, and his yellow curls had escaped their habitual queue and were wrapping around his face. His pouty, soft mouth was slack with sleep, and suddenly Torrant's friend was so much more dear than his swelling heart could hold.
"I love you, brother," Torrant said, holding his hand to Aylan's face. "I love you, and I love you forever … and tomorrow is Beltane." He grimaced and swallowed tightly, still feeling the cloudiness in his head and his eyes from his indulgence in grief the night before. "Tomorrow I was going to handfast Yarri, in front of our family and the town who took us in, at the Beltane faire."
Aylan closed his eyes and trapped Torrant's hand with his own. "Ah," he said in acknowledgement. "So, what are you going to do instead?"
Torrant looked out at the river. He couldn't remember when his animal had stalked away, leaving the man huddled in the water, but he'd been soaking in the frigid ice floe for at least an hour, and the blood was as much a part of his soul now as it had been then. His sins could never be washed away. He was a weapon—the Goddess had made him so. It was time he aimed himself at the target he most wanted to bleed.
"Well, you're going home," Torrant said firmly.
"Like hell," Aylan replied in the same tone of voice, but Torrant ignored him.
"And while you go home, I'm going to visit an old friend," he continued quietly, "And ask her to forge papers for a dead man."
Aylan squinted, scowled, sat suddenly cross-legged, and wrapped the cloak snugly around himself, offering Torrant half so he could sit in it too. Torrant declined and hotfooted it across the sharp river rocks to his damp clothes, hanging from the trees. Shivering violently, he started pulling them on, made uneasy by Aylan's scowling silence.
"What are we going to do after that?" Aylan asked stonily.
"You're going home first …" Torrant insisted.
"I said like hell, now tell me the rest of the plan."
"When I get home," Torrant said stubbornly, "I'm going to ask my beloved to …" and suddenly the dispute with Aylan was forgotten, and he was left shivering some more when the sodden hem of his shirt thwacked against his thighs.
"To what?" Aylan asked, his voice gentling.
"To let me use her dead brother's name," Torrant answered, and the face he turned towards Aylan was as naked and cold as his bare feet on the stones of the shore.
"I'm coming with you, so don't be an arse and argue with me," Aylan sighed, standing up and stretching under the cloak. "Now, take off that damned shirt and come get the things from your saddlebag. If we're going to make the ferry to Otham in the next two days, we'd better leave soon and have breakfast first."
"That's a wonderful idea," Torrant snapped back miserably, doing as Aylan said because the shirt was freezing and clammy. He moved towards Aylan and his bags, suddenly awkward in his nakedness when he hadn't been before. "You wouldn't happen to have a fishing pole, would you? Because Aldam and I ran out of food our last night."
Aylan stood to give him room, and wrapped the cloak securely around his own shoulders, even while eyeing Torrant's blue-pale shivering body mournfully. At Torrant's words, he smiled. It was a tired, heartsick smile, but the expression did as much to lighten the painful morning as the sudden golden shivering of river under the cheerful onslaught of the sun. Doing the same hotfoot dance across the river stones as Torrant, he hopped to where his horse stood placidly and started rooting through his saddlebags.
"Actually, brother, I have several sandwiches still stuffed in my saddlebags— Bethen wouldn't let us leave without them."
Torrant let out a laugh that was awfully close to a sob. "Did Bethen make the bread?"
"It's Yarri's," Aylan said, pulling the food from the saddlebags.
"Well then, surely we should survive the trip to Otham," Torrant said, his voice wobbly but standing. "And would you believe I forgot to pack underwear?” he asked as he rooted through his saddlebags. Actually Aldam had packed for him, but he wouldn't throw that stone for the world. "I'll be chafing like mad by the time I get there."
"Well," Aylan added through a full mouth, "that's such a romantic picture, I think it's a good idea we were never meant to be."
Torrant took a sandwich from his friend's extended hand and met Aylan's eyes for the first time in some moments. "I don't," he said soberly, and there didn't seem to be anything to say after that.
Torrant was quiet and broody that day. The next day, Beltane, he was almost saturnine with suppressed grief. But the day after, they stood on the deck of ferry to Otham and leaned against the rails, the horses comfortably and blindly tucked into the hold of the ship.
Torrant held his face to the wind and let the sun soak into his hair and smiled. His under-things had dried out the day before so he was no longer chafing, but that wasn't the reason for the sudden lightening of the heart, Aylan was sure.
"There's a weight that comes off," Torrant said out of the blue. They were his first unsolicited words in two days and Aylan almost choked on the butter pastry he'd bought from the ferry cook.
"Mmmmmmm?"
Torrant looked at him with sympathy and smiled. "Did you get any of that for me?” he asked, and Aylan held out the extra one in surprise. Torrant hadn't eaten much either.
"I'm sorry I've been so quiet," he said at last. "It's just …" his face clouded again. "I had such plans of riding up to my beloved and … and being her hero, just for the day. It hurt, when that day was here and I was not in it, ye ken?" The old expression from Grete, but Torrant liked it, and thought he'd use it more often.
"I 'ken'," Aylan agreed. "Do you think Yarri will forgive you?"
And now there was more grief, when for a moment there had only been handsome young man in the sun. "No," he said. "She will forgive me even less when she finds out what I have planned."
"What do you have planned?" asked Aylan shortly. Torrant hadn't elaborated, and his mood had been so snarly that Aylan had dreaded asking.
"I shouldn't tell you," he said now. "You'll think it means you can come."
"I am coming," Aylan argued back. He was pretty sure he'd won, but he wasn't taking chances.
"It's dangerous, brother," Torrant said, his clear hazel eyes boring into Aylan's of pretty purple-blue. "I do love you—don't doubt it. I don't want you anywhere near where I'm going. You are one of the people who needs to stay alive in this world for me to stay sane."
"And you're not as smart as you think you are," Aylan retorted. "Because if you think I'm letting you go to Clough without me, you'd better think twice and spit in the wind. You are my family, more than those dumb-ass shite beggars in the Jeweled lands who were trying to breed a pretty puppet, and your family is my family, and we all depend on you living, and it's my job to make sure that keeps happening. So tell me what you're going to do as Ellyot Moon …"
"SSSshhhhh!!!" Torrant squashed, exasperated.
"…and I'll stop terrifying you with my ignorance," Aylan finished up shortly, and Torrant had to laugh.
"Gods," he said at last, turning his face to the brine. The sea was a merry-deep blue today, and it really was hard to keep hold of your fear when the fathomless deep seemed to smile. "Oueant's happy lance, Aylan—you'll have to live in the ghettoes, you know that, right? Somewhere they won't see you."
"Well, yes …" Aylan said doubtfully. "Yes—I'd have to. But where will you be living?"
Torrant grinned without any humor at all. "Oh, I'll be living under Rath's very roof. I plan to be a regent of Clough."
Aylan choked on his last bite of butter pastry and had to be thumped on the back several times before settling down to listen. When he was done listening, he swore long and loudly and more creatively than Torrant ever could.

PartIX
The Leaving Moon

An Old Friend

Torrant had forgotten how pretty the capital city of Otham was. The walls and cobblestones were built with a light brown stone which bleached a cheerful yellow in the sea-thinned sun, and the white awnings keeping the sun off the windows and walls opened the light to the city, even in the shadows, and made it easy to feel the breezes that swept in over the walls and through the streets. The people dressed lightly—white tunics, white blouses, with bright yellow or green vests and sky-blue skirts or breeches. Torrant remembered trips the family used to make, before the Beltane faire grew larger and the Otham vendors came to Eiran, for scented oils and cleanly sanded toys and bolts of sumptuous cloth—even though Bethen and the girls had been made to hide their faces under veils and walk behind the men, the friendliness of the people had been enough to forgive them this one painful custom.
On this day, walking through the streets after seeing where such customs could lead a people, Torrant wasn't sure if he'd be so forgiving.
But then, he noticed, now that Alec of Otham had been ruling for more than five years, many of the women seemed to be walking bare-headed and equal with their husbands, and he had a sudden hope for this next step in his plan.
Still, the giant wooden doors of the castle at Otham were very intimidating in the peach-colored marble. Torrant tried very 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 which was part of the larger set—it was so very exactly 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 draught 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 or 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 blonde 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, watching their arrival with avid eyes. Trieste's own 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 met eyes. "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 towards her surprised. "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 this 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.
"I must." Goddess, he sounded weak.
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 bollux 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 that 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."
"Ohhh …" Trieste swayed on her feet, and Alec of Otham 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 because Aylan really was charming and she didn't want to laugh.
"Please, don't go," she begged.
"I have to," he said quietly.
"But Yarri …"
"Won't be safe unless this is over." Oh, Goddess, he hoped this 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 simply sat down in the middle of the grand ballroom and looked up at all of 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 would 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 he 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, scrubbing furiously at her cheeks. There was a silence then, 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 he 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 towards 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 that 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 they 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 then. "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 murmured. "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 actually 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 which 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 he felt would need the most 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 murmured. "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 snow cat," 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 murmured, 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."
Aylan nodded again, but this time without the laugh. He couldn't laugh at his panic at seeing the little girl hurt. "There she was, sitting on the kitchen chair while Torrant bandaged her knee, naked as the day she was born, and bleeding …" He took a breath, and let that last word sink in. Then he met Trieste's eyes. "He's that naked, after the snow cat, and a thousand times more hurt. And … and touching him then would be just wrong."
"Ah," she murmured, and there was the tiniest bit of regret in her eyes. Of course, he thought—she'd never seen Torrant that naked. She'd never believed she had the strength. "I think I understand."
There was a silence between them then, as they both contemplated their friend, their gift from the Goddess, curled up in a ball of self-defense, as vulnerable as a downy bird in a nest. Trieste broke the silence first, but her voice was still respectful of it.
"Well, your papers will be drawn up by tonight, and we'll be eating dinner late, because we have some sort of state function—I'd like you two to eat with us, we've got a little room in our apartments. Could you?"
"Absolutely," Aylan said, nodding appreciatively. His eyes met hers, but his hand never stopped its stroking. "It would be our pleasure."
Trieste stood up and kissed him on the cheek, saying, "And don't get mad and don't let him get mad, but we've put together some clothes for him—besides the ones they'll be dropping off for you both tonight. It's something to make him look like a regent's son, not that I think the Moons ever put much stock in that sort of thing. It will help him fit in, and he never notices his clothes anyway, unless Yarri makes them."
Aylan smiled because it was true, and inclined his head. "Again, thank you. You've really done us up well," he hesitated, and then grinned so she knew that he meant it in all affection, "Spots." Next to him, he felt a shift in Torrant's weight, and his hand finally stilled.
She laughed and he was grateful, and she moved towards the door. When she got there she turned around, and avoided his gaze, running her fingers across the chair back in front of her instead. "Uhm, Aylan?” she murmured, and listened for his "Mmm?" in response. "Uhm …" she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was looking at him full-on. "You have a day now, a whole day, before he goes to his beloved and when he's recovered from his demons … it's more than some lovers who actually were meant to be ever get. You may want to use it, yes?"
The door closed behind her, and he was left blinking in shock. Then he felt long, poet's fingers wrapping around his calf, and he looked in surprise into Torrant's clear hazel eyes.
"I'm not naked now," he said softly, and with a suddenly sweating hand, Aylan pushed back the hair at his temple one more time.
"Do you want to be?” he rasped, in a terrible attempt at casual. Torrant captured his hand and held it to his cheek, and then turned his head and kissed the side of Aylan's calf. Aylan gasped and slid down in the bed, his knee bending just a little, and his shirt riding up to reveal some very dangerous territory.
"Have you ever doubted it?" Torrant asked, rolling so his head was now between Aylan's thighs, and his breath stirred the fine hairs of the pale, muscular flesh.
"I've never wanted to take advantage of you," Aylan whimpered. Torrant had turned his head to kiss that soft, soft, barely hair-covered skin. When he turned his head again to look up Aylan's body with limpid, predatory eyes, his mouth was within inches of Aylan's groin, and the nearness was … excruciating.
"I am taking advantage of you, brother," Torrant said seriously. "Don't you ever doubt it. I am still …" he grimaced, "soiled by what I've done. You—you are the most honorable man I know. If you still want to touch me after seeing what I am …" he dropped his head, in shame, probably, but it put his lips directly on … directly around …
"Then what?" Aylan managed breathlessly. He wanted everything said between them so that there was no talking left.
"Then I'm not so profane that I'll soil Yarri with my touch," Torrant whispered, ashamed, truly, of using his friend so terribly, even more so because Aylan had been begging him to do it for years. "Your touch will cleanse my body, cleanse my sins, brother—can you live with that?" He placed a delicate kiss then, on top of the swollen flesh lying at his mercy.
Could he live with it? Aylan wanted to laugh, but it would have come out as a sob. "I'd die for it!” he groaned, and he grabbed Torrant's hair and pushed at his friend until he was engulfed, swallowed, warm and safe and dying under the exquisite wonder of Torrant's mouth.
He could have died there and been reborn again, but as sweet as that mouth felt where he was turgid and achy, he had dreamed for too long about how it would taste pressed against his own. He was strong—he loaded crates and sat a saddle for a living—and it gratified him to haul that broad chest and lean body up against his own by main strength. When Torrant was even with him, breathless, a glaze around his swollen lips, Aylan wrapped his legs around those lean hips and felt the sleep shirt ride up under his heels. That backside was as taut as he'd ever imagined.
"This is one night," Aylan rasped, panting with want. "One night, and we are not to be. But this is important. You hear me?" He didn't wait for a reply before crushing Torrant to him, feeling that quirky, playful, serious mouth under his own, and tasting him, all of him, strength and compassion, honor and joy. A banquet for the soul, this taste would need to last him for the rest of his life, and as the kiss deepened, became torrid and desperate and beautiful, he thought it just might make it that long.
One led. One followed. One showed the other how. The other showed one why.
And again.
When they were done, laughing, groaning, beyond tired, needing a nap before they bathed again and went to meet Trieste, Torrant rested his head on Aylan's shoulder, as he often had when they'd been rooming together in Wrinkle Creek.
"It was good?" Aylan asked tentatively, pulling his friend's hair back from his face. For a moment, that upper lip quirked, and those eyes softened, and under Aylan's hand Torrant looked young, and carefree, perhaps as he should have if his life had been different after all.
"It was wonderful!” he said enthusiastically, and Aylan had to laugh.
"You sound hard up, brother—it's not like you look like the rough side of a shoe!"
Torrant turned a little, so he could see Aylan's eyes. "And it's not as if you haven't been to see the tavern girl two villages over for the last year either."
Aylan grimaced. "Ouch!"
"You make my second lover, Aylan. I only plan for there to be three—if you haven't guessed, you're special."
Aylan felt the absurd urge to weep, and he had to turn away so he wasn't imprisoned in those clear hazel eyes.
"What?" Torrant demanded gently, turning fully so that their bodies were aligned, delicious, salty skin to delicious, salty skin. "It's nothing," Aylan shrugged. "We're going to be late, that's all." And there was a clock on the mantle that proved him right, so Torrant hopped up and Aylan didn't have to answer him, but Aylan knew in his heart what his reply should have been. He'd waited eight years to hear the person he cared most about in the world say that one thing, and it turned out that not only had he known it all along, but they hadn't needed to be in bed for him to believe it after all.

Dining with the Queen and King of Otham in their private quarters turned out to be delightful. After a week of horrors, sitting at the table and chatting with old friends could have been desperately unreal, but Trieste kept it simple. She talked longingly of home.
"Bethen has been writing me, but it's not like being there. Do you all still meet at the swimming hole in the summer?"
Torrant and Aylan said yes, and were happy to entertain her with stories of Cwyn and Starry, of Roes and Stanny, until both she and Alec were laughing with full hearts. They finished one story of how Cwyn got kicked out of school, again, and they finally just sent him to the orphanage so Yarri could teach him his basic letters and numbers and he could get it over with, when she stopped them and frowned.
"Now this I don't understand—if the people of Eiran aren't deserting these children, where do they come from?"
"The Old Man Hills, mostly, since Clough has closed her borders." Torrant answered sipping gingerly at his wine. He and Aldam had been lucky enough for tea or cocoa to drink—he wasn't used to wine. He wanted to keep his head. "Things are getting progressively better, but for a time, the priests from Clough were haunting the land, and if a woman wanted to make a better life for her children, it was Eiran, or Otham or Cleant to the east …"
"It's your fault you know," Aylan said, only partly in jest. "You and Aldam came to the hills and spoke so glowingly of a place where women didn't have to be beaten into a powder that they started migrating to Eiran in droves. Whatever happened to that behemoth with the tiny wife and child I took home with me, anyway?"
Torrant flushed. Where did all these scars come from, brother? I don't remember you bleeding so much when we go 'hunting'. He heard Aylan's voice in his head from just hours ago as he traced that long ago crescent-shaped wound from Choa's axe.
The wounds heal more quickly when I change form—but it hurts like hell, and they don't go away completely.
Torrant realized that the company was watching him just sitting there, blushing, and he blushed some more. "He left a few scars," he said after a moment, not daring to look at Aylan, "but he, uhm, was eventually found in the woods, giving something back to the land from which he came." He tried an ingenuous smile then, and it worked because Trieste and Alec laughed, and the conversation moved on.
As the evening wound to a close, Alec asked Torrant to look over his letters of introduction, leaving Aylan and Trieste alone.
"I'm glad to see you made good use of your time," she said sweetly, and he smiled back in kind.
"I try never to refuse a lady's request," he smirked, and she laughed.
"So," she said after a moment, casting a surreptitious glance to where her husband stood at his desk, explaining the letters and their destinations. "Scars?"
Aylan tried to control his glare in Torrant's direction. All of those wounds Aylan had never seen—Choa's axe had been the oldest of them. "When he goes 'hunting'," he told her grimly. "He gets hurt—a lot. He never lets us see. This afternoon …" He flushed and tried again. "This afternoon I saw a lot of near misses—swords that landed on his shoulder instead of his heart, an axe blade buried in his flank and not his groin …" Aylan shuddered. "Goddess, Trieste—it almost made me glad he's going as Ellyot Moon. He won't be 'hunting' if he's arguing for politics in the Regent's Hall."
"Where has he been hunting that he gets injured so much?" Trieste asked astutely, and Aylan inwardly cursed himself. He would have to learn not to speak so candidly—it didn't used to be a problem, before he met the Moons.
Aylan gave her his blandest smile and lied so obviously she would have no choice but to back down. "Nowhere. Nowhere at all."
Her sun-kissed face turned shock white. "He's already been to Clough!"
"SSshhhhh!!!" But Torrant hadn't even looked up. "Oh, gods, I must really be getting bad at this," he muttered. "Yes, we've been to Clough—Dueance, if you must know the truth, and how you made that jump I'll never know."
"Does Bethen know?" Trieste asked sharply, her color coming back in patches. In the back of his mind Aylan wondered if he'd realized how much he and Torrant had actually meant to Trieste. But then, she'd been the first little sister he'd ever known.
"She knows some of it," Aylan replied briefly. Lane had always been their confessor—and he had always shared with his wife. But as their missions to Clough had grown more and more perilous, Aylan was pretty sure the most dangerous secrets—and the ones which would hurt her the most—had been kept from Lane's beloved Bethie.
Trieste was shaking her head in disbelief, and suddenly she turned wide eyes towards Aylan. "Aylan—who exactly were you hunting in Dueance?"
And enough was enough. The face Aylan turned towards his friend was as empty as a snow-covered meadow. "Trieste, darling, your husband is the King of Otham," he said conversationally, "and he must look the diplomats from Clough in the eye and tell them as truthfully as possible that he is a friend to their state. He must—Otham is very nearly an island, and Clough has enough land and people to overrun it in a very short amount of time. I would rather not toss around information to get me hanged if you don't mind."
Trieste gasped at first, her face flushing with anger, and then she lowered her eyes in acknowledgment. "You're right," she murmured. "I … Alec and I …" her eyes made a sideways journey, to where her distinguished husband stood, talking to her ex-lover with kind eyes. "Do you know how we used to look at Bethie and Lane, and think—or at least I did—we could never have that? That sort of thing was just not in the cards for us?"
Aylan looked at Torrant now, and realized that the surge of grief he felt was older than he'd imagined. "Yes," he murmured, clear-eyed.
Trieste's tiny smile was appreciated. "I have it," she said with quiet pride. "I have it—and with it comes power—the sort of power we used to learn about in school. And you know the way Lane and Bethie used to run the town—not in a bad way, but in that way saying, 'We all live here, we need to make it a good place ?
Aylan nodded, and she went on.
"We've been doing it. I know you're trying to protect me—and he," Torrant, "would probably have told me even less. But Alec and I—we're in a position to help. Don't hesitate to ask for it if you need it." She nodded soberly, and Aylan had a sudden memory.
"You know, Yarri and I spent a lot of time together this winter—we talked about him a lot," he started, and Trieste's smile was larger now.
"She told me the story about how they met Aldam—have you heard it?"
She shook her head 'no', suddenly very intrigued.
Aylan sighed, took a sip of his wine, and settled back into his cushion in a savoring way—they would be on the road again in the morning, after all. "It seems our boy there was suffering from a killing fever—when she was old enough, Aldam told her he wouldn't have made it more than four days on the road. But there was a rough group of men at the inn—and she was practically a baby—and he insisted she stay right there in the room. He kept saying he'd be up in a minute, or an hour, but it was a miracle he'd gotten there at all, and still he made her swear she wouldn't leave. Made her promise, you know?"
She gave another sober nod, her gray eyes avid. She could see where this was going.
"If Yarri hadn't been the little hell-raiser we know and love, he would have died in that room, rather than ask for help."
Trieste made a soft gasp just as Torrant and Alec walked up, their very footsteps speaking of mutual accord and respect. "What is Aylan telling you that has you so serious?” he asked lightly, tucking his packet of papers in a fold of his cloak.
Trieste swallowed, and looked up at him with speaking eyes. "He was telling me to worry about you, Torrant," she said roughly. "And I was listening."

Later that night, Torrant was draped partly over the bed and partly over Aylan with his chin on Aylan's bare stomach, gazing up with limpid eyes. Aylan was trying to still the beating of his own heart—their touch was electrifying, and their time in bed, aerobic. "What did you tell her?” he asked, out of the blue of his mind and into the violet of the dark.
"What?" Of all the things Aylan had been thinking about, his conversation with Trieste had not been on the list.
"What did you say to Trieste to make her worry?" Torrant's eyes were suddenly sharper than crystals, and Aylan had to fight to keep from squirming like a guilty child.
Instead he played with Torrant's hair, separating the white forelock from the even chestnut around it and pulling the strands between his fingers until they were like satin. He knew Torrant was waiting for his answer.
"I told her what she already knew," he said at last. "I told her who you were."
Torrant grunted, the sound making Aylan's stomach vibrate. "Do me a favor, brother, would you?"
"Mmmm?"
"Don't remind Yarri of whatever you told Trieste, yes?"
Aylan looked down, his lips curving into a smile. He realized, in spite of all they'd done this day, he wasn't ready for it to be over yet. "It's not polite to talk of other lovers in bed," he reproved mildly, and then set about making sure that for this one night in thousands, Torrant was his and his alone.

Their goodbyes were short the next day, but Trieste's face had taken on the drawn, disapproving look they recognized from school, before finals, when Torrant was not eating and not sleeping.
"Don't worry, I'll look after him," Aylan said kindly.
But she only shook her head, rejecting his comfort with her worry. "Look after yourself," she said quietly. "Keep in touch with the family—you'll be able to, when he won't. Write me when you're safe."
While they were talking, Torrant was shaking Alec's hand, sincerely impressed by the man's kindness, his humor, and most especially by the fact that he seemed to adore his pretty wife, and then he embraced Trieste, kissing her platonically on the cheek.
"Don't worry, Tri," he murmured, and gave her the benefit of his full on smile, quirking that upper lip and wrinkling the corners of his eyes. "I'm off to make the world a better place—aren't you glad I'm not doing it with a sword in my hand?"
She waited until he had swung up on Heartland's saddle to murmur, "I'm not sure you're not," to herself, aware that Alec was looking at her sideways, waiting for the horses to disappear down the cobbled roads of the city so they could talk.
"I know you're worried, beloved," Alec said quietly to her when the clip-clop had faded beyond earshot. "I just wish I knew what you were thinking."
"I'm thinking …" Trieste sighed, not sure if she could put it into words— especially because Torrant's secret was the one thing she had never shared with her husband. "I'm thinking …" she crossed her arms and gnawed her lower lip, her eyes still gazing sightlessly to where the men she thought of as brothers had disappeared.
"I'm thinking," she finally said, snapping her gaze to Alec's patient observation, "I need to go write their Auntie Bethen, that's what I'm thinking."
Alec raised his eyebrows. It had never occurred to him that women might have things to say to each other that men might not understand. "You go do that," he said dryly. "I'm going to go write some letters of my own."
He had spies in Dueance, she knew, and she smiled up at him, some of her worry falling away like shadows from sunshine. "I love you very much, my husband," she said blandly, and his lips curved into a smile as he kissed her in the brightness of the courtyard.

My Beloved Waits for Summer …

The map Torrant had made for the Moon family during his first year at school had been augmented through the years. It had started showing the trip from Triannon to Eiran. When Trieste had married Alec, Otham had appeared on the map in a pretty burst of sunshine colored ink, and Yarri had marked the map every time she wrote to the woman who started out as her rival and ended up as her friend. When Torrant and Aldam had moved to Wrinkle Creek, ink lined hills had appeared, rolling in red earth and with green trees. When Aylan had started his missions to Dueance, moving through Clough, what had appeared to be black smudges in the center of a brown tainted field appeared, and they would watch Aylan—and then both Aylan and Torrant—move through that dark place.
When Triannon was torched, a bright flare of orange and black ink marked what had been a stately, if eclectic, and beloved building. Yarri had never been to Triannon, but Torrant had called it home.
The day Aylan and Stanny had gone pounding across the bridge to the rest of the world, Yarri had spent an hour glued to the map, watching as Torrant and Aldam arrived in Triannon, as Aylan and Stanny slowed their pace, as Roes and Aldam wandered, in a slow and hoof-sore way towards home. Bethen had called her anxiously away for meals, but Evya, Stanny's beloved—they were going to handfast this Beltane—took over for her at the orphanage. Stanny's name had met Roes and Aldam's name, and they were moving home.
When the refugees from Triannon arrived, Yarri was one of the first in line, greeting them with blankets and food, listening to their stories, trying to keep her breathing easy in her chest when it felt as though Courtland were sitting his large, graying haunches on her ribcage.
It was fortunate that Lane, Bethen, Starren and Cwyn arrived with the other town members to help guide the children to the orphanage or the inn, depending on their ages. When Roes, Stanny and Aldam showed up looking weary and worried at the very end of the column, the Moon family had been out at the entrance to the bridge working relief for hours. When she realized they were alone, with neither Torant nor Aylan to be seen, Yarri started dragging breath through her chest fast and hard enough to leave stars in her eyes. When she came to, Lane had her by the waist and she was trying to wrest the reins of Aldam's horse from him.
Her voice was hoarse from screaming Torrant's name.
Aldam, his round face wrapped in sorrow, put his hands around her jaw, cradling the back of her head and touching his forehead to his. "It's my fault," he murmured, "I went with Roes and left him."
Yarri whimpered, because even now, even as distraught as she was, she could not find it in her to fault Aldam, when he'd been protecting Roes. "It wasn't your fault," she said roughly, and then realized what Aldam was truly doing, and she didn't worry about his feelings at all as she called him a name that made Cwyn look at her from across the bridge in appreciation.
When she woke up, it was Beltane, and Torrant and Aylan were on the move.
They were going towards Otham.
"Why Otham?” she asked Bethen at least fifty times. She asked as she'd run around the house with Starren and Cwyn, gathering their extra blankets and other comforts to put in Starren's old toy wagon to haul to the students. (They always had some around the house for the orphanage—they spent all of their spare wool on them.) Bethen didn't lose her patience once as she replied a distracted, "Oh, Goddess, darling, I have no idea," throughout the rest of the day.
"Why Otham?” she asked Roes as the two of them wearily recorded children's names and family names so the militia could send letters out, assuring frantic parents of their child's safety.
Roes had only looked at her, anxiously. Roes blamed herself for Torrant's disappearance. She had no idea why he and Aylan would be heading for Otham. Her only reply was a whispered, "I'm sure he'll tell us."
"Why Otham?” she asked Lane as, at the end of the day, they trudged home, exhausted from their efforts at picking up the pieces war left behind. Lane had wrapped his arm around her and given her the first good reply she'd had all day.
"Because he knows the Queen, my dear," he said quietly. "I imagine he wants to ask her a favor."
Her question changed the next day, and the day after, to "What could he have to ask Trieste?"
The children were eventually settled and the entire town took a rest day. They had been preparing food for Beltane—this was brought out and much was shared with the orphanage and the inn provided its own, and instead of one public gathering of joy there were many private gatherings of relief.
The next day the two little dots which were Torrant and Aylan approached Eiran—not at a leisurely pace, but not as though being chased by a company of soldiers, either.
This was the first year Yarri was too tired to climb the cypress tree overlooking the bridge. Instead, she sat on the large boulder marking the last post at the edge of the embankment, and wrapped her oldest shawl around her shoulders, the first one Bethen had made her. It had once been a sunny yellow with a simple lace pattern in it, but time had worn it a gold/brown and washed it soft and she pet it as she had petted a thin and aging Anye the cat the entire previous day.
She blocked the setting sun's sideways light with her hand and looked across the bridge and waited. By the time she could see them, silhouetted against the blinding post-Solstice sun, she had heard their hoof beats for what seemed like a year. Heartland had barely stopped galloping before Torrant slid from the saddle with an incredible disregard for grace. Then his feet were pounding across the boards and when he touched her, the relief at feeling his hands on her skin, his breath at her neck, his broken voice telling her he was alive and well and he hadn't meant to worry her, made her heart weak. It seemed not to be strong enough to yell at him for worrying her, or to demand to know where he had gone when he'd made the detour to the river. For a moment, feeling his cool cheek next to her own and his hot hands holding her waist, she even forgot to ask him what he'd needed from Trieste.
Oh, Goddess … oh Goddess … she didn't ever want to let him go again. And she didn't know why, but she was reasonably sure he was about to break her heart.
"Did Roes and Aldam make it back?” he was asking, looking down into her eyes. The sun caught the hazel color, making them clear for a moment, so that it was impossible to tell if they were dark or light. Yarri made an unconscious sound as she realized they had become lighter in the last year—or maybe it was just the last week.
"Yes," she murmured, troubled. "They said you should have been right behind them … you just disappeared."
And she saw it, the bleakness that passed his eyes, the way his jaw tightened, the way his eyebrows lowered. He opened his mouth to explain, but he didn't need to—not really. She would hear the details later—the hunted soldiers, bleeding out from expertly inflicted wounds even as they ran, the trail of bodies leading to the river where Torrant had tried to cleanse himself of his sins. She would even hear about Torrant's and Aylan's night at Trieste's—not that it mattered to her, not really. Now, as the sun set orange over the ocean and her beloved's face was silhouetted in pain across from her, all she needed to know was that for a brief time, he had been too angry to be human.
"You were the snow cat," she guessed, touching the side of his face.
"I was vengeance," he stated simply, and she nodded, leaning her own cheek into his palm.
"Are you going to tell me, then?" Her voice was stronger than she would have given herself credit for.
"What's to tell?" He tried for a casualness neither of them felt, and she was too weary to let him get away with it.
"Why every touch," and now her voice trembled, quivered, broke. "Why every touch," she repeated, squeezing her eyes shut, "and every word, and every look on your face feels like goodbye."
He groaned, softly, a peculiarly masculine sound, and crushed her to his chest, stroking her hair and not commenting on the soft tears soaking his unusually fine brown shirt. She would learn why it was, later, they both looked like Lord's sons instead of a healer and a merchant, which was all either one of them ever wanted to be. Right now, she knew the hardest thing she had ever done was to pull away and listen to his answer.
"I need to ask you and your family a favor," he said bitterly. "And it isn't your hand in marriage."
She closed her eyes, and the damned hot tears kept trickling from the corners of her eyes. "Was it going to be?” she asked, feeling silly and weak.
"Oh Yarri," Torrant said thickly, wiping her tears back with his thumbs, "It was all I ever wanted from my life, ever."
Aylan quietly took the horses to the stables behind them, and Yarri clung to her Torrant like the child she'd never been, weeping quietly and angrily as the sky turned purple and the three moons rose above the sea.
The family was waiting for them when they finally walked through the door. Aylan had already been greeted and fussed over by Bethen and Starren. When Lane had looked at him meaningfully, Aylan had put him off. "When we're both here," he said, and Lane nodded, accepting. And then Lane embraced Aylan like a son, and Cwyn smacked him on the back with surprising strength and told him he and Stanny had been total wankers for riding off without him, and Roes had hurled herself in his arms and thudded him on the chest, telling him Aldam hadn't eaten in almost four days, he'd been so worried about the two of them.
Aylan looked up to where Aldam, a pale and drawn version of himself, stood miserable by the fireplace, removing himself from the family greeting in what seemed to be shame.
"Aldam, brother!" Aylan called, making him look up. "Aldam—there was nothing you could do."
"I left him," Aldam said quietly, and Aylan moved to where Torrant's round faced, fragile brother stood and clasped his forearm in greeting and absolution.
"You saved your beloved," Aylan said softly. "Really, Aldam, even if you had abandoned him, he would have forgiven you for it. But he ran around front to get his horse, and got caught up in something else. He never would have forgiven himself if you and Roes had gotten hurt because of it."
But Aldam was too lost in his own self-recrimination to do more than cast him a bitter look, and so Aylan told him a bitter truth in return.
"Aldam," he said at last, softly, aware that the family was watching him carefully and he was not the one who should explain what he and Torrant were going to do. "Torrant is going to have to leave this place, and this family, and you and Yarri behind him. You need to get over your decision, and do it now, so he doesn't have your unhappiness hanging over his head."
Aldam's pinched expression grew slack with shock. "But … why …"
"After dinner," Aylan said resignedly. They had all heard. He could tell by the sudden, unnatural and terrible silence that had fallen over the people he loved best in the world. "We'll tell you after dinner."
Yarri and Torrant walked in shortly after that, and Torrant was greeted with the same amount of fussing that had greeted Aylan. As they sat down to dinner around the big, battered table in the kitchen, Lane took Bethen's hand next to him, and Roes' hand on the other side, and both the women looked at the head of their table and at his nod and Bethen took Cwyn's hand and Roes, Aldam's, and so on around the table, until the family was quietly joined in a circle.
"I just wanted to …" Lane closed his eyes fiercely, and then powered through the obvious tightness in his throat, and the hot tears that threatened. "This family needs to thank Dueant, because somebody decided to help keep us together," he said after a moment, "And Oueant, because every member of this house has served his and her fellow humans well, this last hard, hard week. And we need to give thanks to Joy. It may not seem like it, because the world feels bleak today, and we all know the troubles aren't over. But this family is my joy—it is my reason for showing mercy and behaving honorably, and I thank all the powers that be you are all here tonight by my side."
"Thank Triane," said Bethen next to him, wiping her cheeks with the hand that still held her husband's tight in its grasp.
"Thank Triane," said the Moon family quietly. Aylan squeezed Starren's hand on the one side, and Torrant's on the other, and Torrant squeezed his friend's hand on the one side and his beloved's on his other. Their own hands were shaking and sweaty with the discussion to come.
Neither of them could later say what they had eaten. Roes and Bethen had cooked—it would not have been nearly as good as what they had eaten at Otham castle. But it had been made by Bethen and Roes, and it filled them in places they had forgotten about in the last painful week, and they felt their hearts grow stronger just from being there to share food with family.
At last, the dinner plates were cleaned—Stanny and his pretty brown-haired Evya did the dishes, and then Stanny asked Evya if she could wait for him at his flat. The family had gathered in the front room, but Torrant, who had been wrapping some of the leftovers to put in his and Aylan's saddlebags the next day, heard part of the conversation.
"There are some secrets my cousins have that it's better you don't know," he told her quietly, as she hovered near the back door looking hurt. She and Stanny had been on-again off-again almost since Stanny's first wilding, and now she had stayed by his side for over two years, the hurt was understandable. "Evya—with the world the way it is now, do you really want to be the one keeping secrets for this family?" Stanny asked at last. "I know you think of leaving me—you wonder what else is out there in the world, and you can't understand why you'd stay with me, a big, clumsy merchant's son in a small town. These secrets are for people who think this family is something to strive for."
Evya swallowed, and Torrant thought she seemed to be stung a little by his words, but eventually she nodded and gave Stanny a reluctant kiss on the cheek. "I don't think of leaving you anymore, Stanny," she said at last. "You can keep your secrets—but please don't worry about that anymore. I waited for you when you left. I don't ever want to worry like that again."
A slow smile bloomed across Stanny's face and Torrant quietly exited to the front room to wait for him, glad that Stanny, at least, had found some peace in his love life.
In spite of the chilly, late spring evening, the family had been too weary to start a fire, so sitting on the raised brick hearth was a comfortable place for Torrant and Aylan to be. Stanny wandered in, looking pleased and distracted for a moment, but as he took his place in one of the stuffed chairs, his attention sharpened. Torrant and Aylan met eyes, and the entire family took a breath, waiting.
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 murmured, "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 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 way was terrifying.
"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 now, 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 which 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 back-up 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—that he would be sublimely handsome to the rest of the world. And right now, his brow was clenched forward, and his eyes were bright and anxious and his entire body was vibrating with hesitation in doing the one thing that 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 murmured, 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 Goodbye 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 may come back or they may 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 just 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 that 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 murmured, 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 far off—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, and 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 asked in the tones of the conspirator, "Was it everything you thought it would be?"
Aylan didn't even 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 now it was his cheek that she patted. "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 that 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 now, 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 and her smile when she turned to him was more genuine than she had expected it to be.
"You changed," she murmured, running 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. And he was wearing the clothes meant for a regent's debut for her.
"I bathed," he added gratefully, and she had to laugh. "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 that 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 just 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 semi-hysterical 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 too 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 towards the beach.
"Where are we going again?” he asked with good humor—he had been seriously 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 have known 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 that 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 of the top shutters were opened, 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'd 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 re-fouling 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 it's breath.
"When we saw you'd be arriving today," she murmured back. "I didn't know …" she turned her head and looked out the window, closing her eyes and letting 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 a little, 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 a little, trying not to laugh at the irony. "Aylan …" he started, only to be stopped by the irony in 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 murmured. "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 murmur, thinking that 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 of her tears gone in this moment, 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 murmured, 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.
"I think that's a hard bargain," she said archly, and he moaned, took her hand and placed it in his lap even as he knelt. She made a taut little sound of surprise.
"I'd say you're right," he replied, and then her little hands busied themselves at the waist of his breeches, and he was done with real words for a bit of time.
He remembered kissing her. The summer before had been filled with the taste of her, the sweetness of her skin against his palms, the scent of her breath, the little sounds she made when his hands stroked her breasts or her thighs through her clothing.
This was different—it was the difference between a star-painted ceiling and the summer sky at night, because every touch and breath and moan was filled with possibility and for once in his life he wanted to indulge in that, to spread his arms wide and embrace the sky.
Every flash of bare skin was a revelation.
His palms could not find enough of her flesh—the neckline of the pretty white nightgown was untied and pushed off her shoulders, and then lower, and then she sat in a pool of moonlight, bared to the waist, looking at him in a combination of shyness and wryness that wrung his heart. He sat back and memorized every line of her skin, playing with her nipples which had pebbled in the cold.
"I wish I could see colors better in this light," he murmured, kissing her collarbone and moving behind her, kissing the back of her neck, reaching in front of her and tracing delicate lines down the slopes of her breasts to the sensitive ends. "I want to know what color your skin is …" he tweaked a nipple and felt her squeal all the way down in his groin.
"It's lizard-belly blue," she gasped, "and I'm freezing …" but he could hear the lie in her voice. She was more embarrassed than cold.
"Here …" He took her fallen shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders and then reached for the brush. "If this is what I'm going to carry with me, I get to see your hair down."
"Are men always this picky?” she asked, but she was too breathless, too enchanted to be truly irritable. "I just want to know, so I can plan for the future."
He ruthlessly squashed the sound in his throat and began to shake that long, thick braid out, running his fingers through it. He loved her responses, the lines of her body, the way her shoulders sloped and her head tipped back as she responded to the brush at her scalp the way a kitten would respond to a thorough stroking.
"I heard that," she murmured.
"Mmm?” he asked innocently, and she opened one sensually hooded eye and peered at him as he loomed behind her.
"I meant the future with you, genius," she snapped—or tried to. She was too contented, far too relaxed to really sharpen her tongue.
"That's not fa-ir," he sang softly, loving the way her hair felt like satin around his hands.
"The love of my life is about to bunk me and leave me," she said dryly, closing her eyes again. "Nothing is fair. My life won't be in danger if I refuse a man."
He didn't want to talk about this any more. He kissed her neck again, under the fall of hair, and when she turned her head around to greet him, he kissed her and kissed her, and fondled her bare breasts until she gave a helpless moan and fell back onto the pallet of quilts. Her breath harshened and her hips arched at him until he bunched the pretty gown at her waist and pushed downward, draping it on a nearby hay bale. When he was done he turned to her, bare, pillowy body and wide trusting eyes waiting for him in the moonlight. He smiled a wicked smile as he positioned his head at the apex of her thighs.
"You're still mostly dressed," she panted, and he grinned up at her, guessing that the hair at the junction of her thighs was probably cinnamon in the sunlight.
"Woman, I've done this before, let me work," he ordered softly, and then he parted her knees and worked very diligently indeed.
Eventually, he was no longer dressed at all, and as he lay full length alongside her and felt the line of their bodies before their flesh was merged, he closed his eyes and tried to memorize every curve of her softness as it molded itself to the leanness of his hips and the broadness of his chest. He wanted this place in his mind to be just for her; he wanted the feel of his beloved as distinct and as magical as a snowflake, incomparable and unmistakable for the feel of any other lover. He opened his eyes and saw hers, gleaming in the moonlight as he fitted himself against her, murmuring "Open for me, love … I promise, it won't hurt for long." She ran her fingertips along his face and gazed into his eyes as though she were doing the same thing in her mind he was about to do in her body: forging a place just for this moment, and him.
"It's going to hurt forever," she murmured, and she wasn't talking about the little gate of flesh already partially opened for him. They both knew this.
"I'll come back to you," he said, feeling his eyes burning for the same reason she was crying again. He thrust a little, and she made a little grunting sound and then arched her hips and took him all the way inside Triane's gate, and they both groaned, relieved and aggravated by his perfect berth in the cradle of her body.
"You won't be the same," she murmured, wiggling enough to make him bury his face in her neck and sound his own frustrated grunt.
"Sweet Goddess, Yarri Moon, you're killing me …" he panted, and then he held her face in his hands and wiped her tears with his thumbs and kissed her softly, passionately, until he was thrusting his hips without thinking about it and she was moving her own to meet him. She moaned again and he stilled his movements, slowing down, because, dammit, he did not want this to be over, not now, not when it had just begun.
"I'll come back," he murmured, keeping his movements slow and long. He loved the way her fingers clutched the muscles in his arms and her knees wrapped up around his narrow hips. "I'll come back …" he groaned now, because she was not letting him be slow about this, and his wits and his good intentions were about to fly out the window and dance on Triane's moonbeam. "I'll come back, I swear, I promise …" and the rest was lost because she ran her palms across his chest and her clever fingers found his own nipples and then he was moving, lunging, thrusting, and she was crying out beneath him and begging him, pleading with him, until she finally gave a full-blooded shriek of completion and he collapsed in his own moment, shuddering into her, burying his face in the scented warm hollow of her shoulder.
He stayed there for quite some time, both of them catching their breath, and when he thought he could he pushed himself up again, kneeling before her, still inside her as he kissed the sad smile at the corners of her mouth.
"I'll come back, Yarrow Moon, I promise I will," he said, heart-full.
"Of course you will," she accepted, reaching up and pushing the white lock of hair from his eyes. "Of course you'll come back, Torrant Shadow. But you won't be the same."
He had nothing to say to that, so he kissed her.
Oueant rose. Their bodies continued to move in the dance of 'I love you, goodbye,' and the night spun on until the knife-metal gray of dawn sliced through the shutters and flayed their closed eyes open.
"You didn't get any sleep," she murmured from her place nestled against his shoulder.
"I'll sleep on horseback," he said with a smile and he heard her smirk next to him. "We have to stop at the shrine anyway—it's been destroyed again. I think some of the students tried to fix it, but Aylan and I have a knack of keeping it up." They'd been doing it for years.
"It was the stinking priest …" Yarri yawned. "They keep sending them here, and we keep laughing them out of town. This last one kept trying to tell us that handfastings weren't real unless a priest of the twin gods blessed them …" she gave a soft giggle. "It was a tough sell … I don't think he enjoyed being tied to last year's Beltane ribbon-pole and stuck out in the fairgrounds for a day or two."
Torrant laughed, but his heart was troubled. Priests again, he thought, but this time he was abandoning his lover and his family to them. "There will be more, now that Triannon is gone," he warned softly.
"They killed our sons and brothers torching it," Yarri replied, the sleep softness pushed out of her voice by the edge of vengeance. She sat up, clutching the quilt to her breasts, pushing back at her heavy hair, and flinging the hay that had attached itself during the night. "Don't worry about us, Torrant. You'll have enough on your mind."
"You're why I'm doing this, Yarri," he said back so she'd never doubt it. "All of you. Don't tell me not to worry—if I wasn't worried, I wouldn't be going." There was a tenseness between them, an argument brewing made of the pain of leaving and the loss of each other so quickly after the lovely deadly dawn. They glared for a moment, and, as usual, it was Torrant who smiled first. "And I'll still worry about you if we quarrel, so how about we just skip that part, right?"
Yarri's plump little mouth thinned at the sides and turned up. "I'm going to be a wreck when you leave—consider it skipped."
He leaned over and kissed her, and in spite of their sleepless night they might very well have waited until the sun was fully up before emerging from the stables, but the horses below them whickered and snorted, reminding the lovers that very often the horses were fed early.
"It will be hard enough as it is," Yarri sniffed with a clogged voice. "I'd hate to sacrifice my dignity too."
"Absolutely," Torrant whispered, kissing her temple and breathing in that combination of soap and yarrow and her, wondering if he filled his lungs with her, could he still smell her above the stench of the bodies and the sewage in the Goddess ghetto in Clough.
Silently they dressed then, and folded up the quilts and climbed down out of the loft. They fed Courtland and an aging Kiss their apple cores and left-over bread crusts on the way out of the barn.

The family was preparing for breakfast when they arrived—it seemed nobody had been able to sleep well. When Lane finally kicked Bethen out of bed because she was making him crazy, Roes' feet had hit the floor next and within minutes Aldam and Roes were cooking while Bethen packed blankets and trinkets and stationery from home to go with the two young men she loved like sons.
"Bethie …" Lane huffed in exasperation as he saw her stuff Yarri's first doll in the pack.
"Don't start," she told him shortly, her voice thick. "I still blame you for this, you know."
"I know," he murmured, wrapping his arms around her thick waist and putting his cheek next to hers. "Do you know that thirty years ago, I would have been riding with them?"
"Lane Moon," she said with some asperity, "I know full well the only thing keeping you here is the fact that Eiran would fall apart without you." And that was nothing but the truth.
"Ah, Goddess thinking," he murmured wryly.
"Well anything else just wouldn't be sensible," she sniffed, and firmly tucked the doll in the bottom of the bag.

Aldam was making corn pancakes.
"Smells great!" Torrant said with forced brightness as the batter spattered in the bacon grease on the griddle.
Aldam just looked at him with reproving eyes.
"They'd kill you for the streak in your hair," Torrant sighed finally, accepting Aldam was not going to easily forgive this desertion.
"And you?" Aldam looked pointedly at Torrant's white streak, and Torrant grimaced.
Then he closed his eyes and thought of Ellyot Moon. All of Ellyot Moon. He'd been the best dancer of all of them, and the best hunter, and with the exception of Yarri, the whole family had listened to Ellyot first and foremost when he spoke. Torrant remembered those blue-gray eyes, urging him to save their youngest, most vulnerable member, and the easy way of commanding he possessed which had, in the end, sent the two of them scrambling through the hay door.
He thought of Ellyot, face down in bloody straw with a knife in his back, when by every god and the Goddess, he should have had the honor of dying bravely, with blood on his own sword.
And then he thought, "I am Ellyot Moon today."
And his white streak disappeared.
Torrant had practiced keeping a hold of himself when he made this transformation, so his eyes were not Ellyot's blue-hazel eyes, or the glacial winter-sky color of the snow cat's—both of which took more power and gave him a headache almost immediately—they were his own hazel color. Still, Aldam almost sobbed.
"How will you remember?” he asked, in tears. "It will be like school, where there is not enough of you to stretch until your task is done …"
Torrant's mouth quirked up and he let out what felt like his first full breath in a while and his hair darkened to the ends again. "I'll remember because I have twelve years of all of you to keep me 'me', right?"
Aldam shook his head in sorrow. "This will hurt your heart, Torrant … I can feel it … how will you recover?"
Torrant swallowed. Aldam would know … Aldam knew what hurt. It was part of his gift. "Sometimes we have to hurt, my brother," he said at last. "Someone must. And it can't be the Goddess' people anymore, so it's just going to have to be me."
Behind him where Roes was cutting fruit into a big wooden bowl, he heard a suspicious sniff. And another.
"Roes?"
And without warning she dropped the knife and turned and hugged him fiercely. "You saved my life. I never thanked you for that … you and Aldam riding like the world was crashing at your heels, and you did it for me," she whispered, and he kissed the top of his cousin's head.
"Time well spent," he said lightly, and she shook her head.
"You need to come back." She looked up at him, her eyes red and her face blotchy—none of Yarri's family cried prettily. "You need to come back and be safe, because nothing here will be right if you don't come back. Not Yarri, not this family, and not my beloved … just come back."
"Right, little cousin," he murmured. "Believe it or not, I've already made that promise."
"Make it again," she wailed, the sound muffled against his chest.
"I promise to come back."
Roes sniffed again and made to brusquely turn away. "And you'd better bring Aylan back with you, too," she ordered, and then finished cutting the fruit as Torrant took his cue to leave.
For all of that, breakfast was almost cheerful. Starren sat firmly on Aylan's lap, in spite of her nearly thirteen years, and Torrant and Yarri held quiet hands under the table, and no one was scolded for being out of place. Other than that they spoke of everyday things and laughed and needled each other good-naturedly. Cwyn tried to outrage everybody, Starry tried to make peace, and Roes ordered them both to settle down, and all in all, it could have been any summer morning, before the family moved into the rhythms of usefulness and activity which made them happy.
Torrant and Aylan washed up afterward, and Lane and Stanny brushed and fetched the horses, loading them with significantly heavier saddlebags than the ones they'd been wearing when the boys arrived.
And it was like any other parting—that was the most surprising thing of all. There were hugs all around. Bethen teared up—even more so than usual, but they ignored that because they had to. Lane shook their hands soberly, and gave them some final parting advice.
"Come home if you have to," he murmured. "Don't worry about letting us down, or our people down—we can change things from here if we have to, or emigrate to other lands or …"
"Or we could stand up and change things where they're bad," Torrant finished softly, and Lane looked away.
"Just come home," he said, and hugged Torrant fiercely, and then Aylan.
Yarri stepped forward and kissed him goodbye, the grown-up Yarri of his dreams, the woman he'd waited his entire life for. He could have glutted himself on the saltwater of her tears, and on a few of his own. His hands came up to frame her face, and he kissed the tears from her cheeks before he pulled her head against his chest.
"You promised," she muffled, and he almost laughed at how many people had been asking him to promise the one thing he could not guarantee.
"I promised," he agreed. "Now smile for me, Yarrow root, because I need to remember your smile before I go, right?"
"Right," and she did. It was like sunshine. Like mead. Like love.
Aylan swung himself up on Gracey Gray, another one of Courtland's brood named by Starren, and a better ride than the poor thing he'd dragged halfway to Cleant and then all the way to Otham and back. Bethen captured Starry as she'd tried to follow Aylan up on the horse, and was holding her daughter against her shoulder as silent sobs shook the girl's body. Cwyn grabbed his sister behind the waist and leaned his cheek on her lovely sunrise colored hair, making shushing noises to soothe her. Aldam and Roes stood clutching each other's hands until their knuckles turned white.
"A year," Torrant shrugged, and releasing Yarri hurt worse than changing form with a wound, a thousand times worse, but he smiled just for his family and gave a little bow before swinging up on Heartland's back. "A year—it shouldn't take longer. We'll send word when we can." He looked at Aylan, and his friend's face was no better off for tears and pain than his own.
"We love you all," he said, and then he and Aylan urged on the horses and took off at their fastest canter, disappearing around the corner towards the bridge almost before the family realized they were gone.
This time, Yarri didn't go running to climb the tree by the bridge, because seeing him again would have hurt them all even more.
Stanny took a shuddering breath and sniffed stoically. "We have things to do," he said, nodding meaningfully at his father.
"We do indeed," Lane agreed.
And still the family stayed out in the front of their home, with their back to the sea, and watched the empty road ahead of them.

Dear Fans—
Thank you for buying my books. Seriously, it can't get any simpler than that. These books are self-published—this means that I pay the company to put out the highly priced, weirdly sized book, and they distribute it for me. The fact that my books continue to sell online is a tribute to you, the customer who is willing to take a chance with your money and your time.
On occasion I have been asked when I plan to get picked up by a regular press. My answer is usually a wistful "Ah, if only …" because agents and the regular presses seem to feel that I'm still dining at the kiddies table, and only some sort of bizarre miracle of sales will convince them that I'm for real.
I plan to do my damnedest to accomplish just that.
What can you do to help, you ask? (Okay, so no one actually asked that, but, well, you would have if you'd thought of it, I know you would have!)
The answer is simple—do what you have been doing. Put me on your amazon.com book lists, talk me up with your friends and online, blog about me, discuss me in the book forums, ask your local booksellers to stock me—make me sound like the world's next cult-indie hit that the cutting-edge reader wants to be in on. (Only you and I have to know that I'm a timid, middle-aged mother who wouldn't know avant-garde if it bit me on the hinie, right? Thanks for that—I like to keep my mystique when I can.) And, if you are feeling too timid or uncomfortable doing any of that, but you still think the books are good, by all means contact me and tell me so. I'm a fairly superstitious person—if I'm having a crap day and I'm about ready to chuck the whole teacher/mother/writer gig and run away with my kids to join the circus, an e-mail from a fan can keep me writing one more day, and then one more, and then I can finish the next book! (You want that—I know you do—there are SO many interesting things waiting in Part II, I promise!!!!)
Anyway, if you'd like to drop in and say hullo, you can find me at www.greenshill.com. If you'd like to read more about me than you ever thought you'd be comfortable with, I totally lose my mind, my marbles, and my grip on reality at writerslane.blogspot.com—but I warn you. My editing on the blog is even worse than the editing in Vulnerable, and that's saying something. You may also learn more about knitting than you ever wished to—and find yourself liking it!

Either way, I look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,
Amy Lane
About the Author

Amy Lane teaches high school, mothers four children, and writes the occasional book. She, her brood, and her beloved mate, Mack, live in a crumbling mortgage in Citrus Heights, California, which is riddled with spiders, cats, and more than its share of fancy and weirdness. Feel free to visit her at www.greenshill.com or www.writerslane.blogspot.com, where she will ride the buzz of receiving your e-mail until her head swells and she can no longer leave the house.