jcm
"Mira," Father spoke gently, his voice carried to her ear by a whisper of power, still kissed by the music in his voice. "Come, my little one."
She rose, and without troubling to don her sandals, she slipped into the hall of the healer's dormatories, followed the whisper of Father's voice.
"You will know where to find me. I have need of you, Mira."
And she knew, for the breeze told her. Father was standing outside a room. The smell of blood was in the air, a flat, metallic taste. Yet she did not question, nor yet turn to look for the source. He was hard to read, dear Father, his beautiful eyes always cool as jade, his lips neither smiling nor frowning, but his voice sang his love, and so she loved him fierce, as fiercely as any daughter might love a father. And, for love of him, she could not fear anything when he was there.
Father's dark clothes, green like the leaves Above, black like the Below without the blessings of light they worked, were damp, were touched heavy with blood smell. Smell mixing in a nauseating way with his own sweet green scent, his father-scent. He smiled, though, as she stood before him, and tenderly brushed her cheek with gloved hand, the suede soft as his whisper and cool.
"Mira, do you love me?" he asked gently.
"Of course, Father," she replied.
"Do you trust me?"
"With all I am, Father."
His smile warmed, though his eyes remained as cool and shining as polished stone. His hand trailed down through her pale hair to grip her shoulder gently, and she smiled up at him. "Good. Mira, I mean to give you a gift."
"Oh?" She asked softly, watching his dear face.
"Mh. You are grown, now, my little one, and grown beautiful. You will want for a husband, I am sure...and if you attend me, I shall have for you one who will be wholly yours, more yours than any man you might choose."
She attended him, mildly puzzled. Grown? A husband? But she did not WANT a husband. She wanted to always be close to Father, safe, wise, gentle Father, good Father. Yet he spoke, and she would not speak against him, for Father knew so, so much. So instead she continued to listen, sand pale eyes fixed upon him.
"You will do a great thing, Miradasuelle. Your husband will need you, and need you greatly. The poor man is one poisoned by the gods, you see."
She gave a start, despite herself. A hand flitted in a warding gesture, but he stopped it, cupped it between his own.
"However. I have liberated him. But they so rarely florish, especially his kind, when severed. Yet if you can redeem him. If you can attend me and make him yours, Mira, he shall be more yours than any other man, and beyond...you will have done a great service to all men. You will have helped one of those unfortunate puppets become human again. Will you attend me, my daughter? Will you save him, serve him, give yourself to him, for me?"
His voice sang tender and sweet in her heart, and without thinking on what she promised, she let herself rise to the allure in Father's honey tones. "Anything, Father. It shall be as you say."
Father smiled, softly kissed her hair. A dizzy thrill slipped through her. He only truly touched her so rarely. And so softly, like this, but it always came with strength and a sweetness brighter than the Sun as it slipped through the growing grates in the grand chambers where Warren grew some of her crops.
"Attend me, then, and attend what I tell you to do. Do not be troubled at what you see. He shall live. And you, my dearest, my sweetest gift, will help him live, and he shall give you fine grandchildren for me."
What could she do, but beam with pride at Father's own pleasure, at the glow of his touch in her, as they mingled?
With a whisper, Davindahl let the room beyond open. It was bright, all full with stone-light, warm with the scent of clean crystal tuned to brilliance. A man lay as though forgotten on the stone floor, blood besmirching his fair skin. Not fair as the Otherborn were fair, but fair as a man who rarely saw sun, the color of coffee with too much cream. Blood pooled around him, thick and sticky, but Mira was a good child and did not cry out.
Davindahl knelt before the man, and Mira's eyes drifted to where she could feel the Watcher. A little bit of living earth, a ripple in the stone, which flowed a moment in reaction to what she refused to show Father, then settled. They turned back to Father as he tenderly turned the man onto his back, settled the man's hands over his chest. Long, blue-black hair whispered as he was adjusted, a great mass, a mane that the mythic Marukai might have been proud of, even longer than Mira's and glossy. His face was drained of color, his lips still, his breathing shallow, but his features were fine, and beautiful.
This stranger, this...husband Mira had been promised, was all delicacy. He wore long blue robes patterned with delicate silver embroidery, the signs of a Len. A devotee of the Night. Father slipped off his gloves, then motioned for Mira to kneel with him beside the man. He took out a knife, took up one of the man's beautiful hands, then serenely sawed off the last two fingers. Before the blood could flow, he cupped the broken flesh in his palm.
Father's heavy greening smell was richer, now, heady, and he whispered a something. The stained crystal blade grew ruddy with heat, and he slipped his hand away from the stubs a moment, pressed it tight to sear the wounds closed, then held the hand and fetched out a roll of bandages, tossed it to her.
She began wrapping the wound automatically. He began to loosen the man's stained robes, ran his bare hands across the wide tear in white undertunic, played them over the great wounds in his stomach, the burns. Here, he began to sing, and if Father's voice was song, his SONG was what the Gods should have been. Sweet and rich and pure.
Burns melted away, ills stitched and faded. Slowly, gradually. Mira finished tying off the hand, looked from Father to the fingers.
"He will not be free if I leave him whole. The scars will not do," Father explained gently. "But still..." This, as he trailed his hand up to brush the man's pretty face, smeared it with clotted blood, "he will be yours, and more yours than any other."
He patted the man's cheek, then wiped his hand on the robe and produced a small bottle.
"Sip from this. Do not swallow, but hold it in your mouth. He will begin to wake soon. When his eyelids stir, press your lips to his and be sure he swallows."
Mira did not dare question.
"Then. Speak with him. Tell him he is free, and you are his protector. The old language, my flower. Tell him you will stay with him and you will care for him. Things will be brought for both of you. Your duties will be seen to."
"Yes, Father."
He smiled, his warm and beautiful smile, then patted her shoulder and left them, the Watcher still stirring faintly in the corner.
Pain.
Pain, oblivion...and new pain, and then, as the ache of light and a strange giddiness filled him, Lesava began to open his eyes. The world shifted. The sick mixture of blood, perfume, warm stone became a heady awarness of perfume over all, and he found lips pressed to his, a hand massaging his throat, and some strange, sicky sweet something trickled down as he swallowed whether he would or no. Lips lingered a moment, then lifted away, and his eyes opened to the sight of a sand-pale, exquisite girl, soft gloss on her mouth, a little blood on her skin. The room blurred. The world grew hazier, and he felt strange, distanced from himself.
Her voice was sweet and sad, like the ripple of a distant stream. "My love," she spoke in the old tongue, in the God's tongue, "you are free, and I your guide shall be. My own, I am yours, and I shall protect you until you are ready."
Her...love? He tried to protest, but his tongue was wooden and his throat ached. Her own?
No. No no.
Something was wrong. Everything was wrong. Nightmare. He was not...
And then, the world hazed further, and her sweet, sorrowing chatter sunk into his senses, and her nonesense words were all there was, words and faint blur and strange sweet rise, a strength that tingled to the very fingertips, yet left him quite unable to move.
His heavy tongue shaped a sound, and the sweet, sad patter turned sweeter and more sorrowing. Meaning slipped through, here and there.
Trea.
Gone. All is gone. The world is washed new, my own.
Nh. Trea. I.
No one, and nothing. There is nothing but us, my own.
Nuh. Nuh...Varuu....Varuule...
A nothing. A no one. It has left you. The poison is drained, my love, the taint washed away, and you are no puppet, but a man.
And there was no voice, as he clumsily formed that name again, Varuu, Varuu, a croon, a heavy tongued and half felt sob, nothing and no one but her, this sand golden creature who spoke on and on of how he was free, of how the old poison was sapped away, of how he was...hers.
There was no voice.
No voice but hers.
The world would slowly start to clear. She would fall silent now and then, though her scent was always near, but when the world started to clear, and the pain began to sing...there were her lips again, and the world was an empty dream again.
The world was golden, girl of sand, voice of water, light unchanging.
The world was soft. Was tingling.
The world...was empty, and the world was washed of shadow.
She was so far away. So very far away. The face that had come in the midst of his lonely vigil, the face that became Trealya's, the face that blurred and ran into this light, as even he was so far away, and so, so empty.
Empty, but for the girl of sand and the water-voice. Pain, save for the strange oblivion her lips brought.
Dreams were heavy, and broken, and full with emptiness.
Waking was heavy, and broken, and full with her voice.
He would sink into nothing, and rise to find her tenderly washing his flesh, though he could not feel. He would sink into nothing, then rise to find her lips pressed to his again, and the sickly sweet oblivion trickling into him. Sink, then rise to her cradling his head and spooning this or that without flavor into him, sink, then rise into her voice flowing through tender promises of how she would be his, he would be well and strong again, he was free, and he was hers, and oh, oh how she loved him.
He would try to complain, but all he could manage, weakly, was...
Trea.
Varuu.
They mingled in, one with the other, lost shadow, lost strength, lost wife. They mingled, the beauty of the dry and gentle shades that had once held him and the wonder of Trea's sweet hair as it flowed over him when they lay together, and both were a great emptiness, a grand absence, a vast hollow filled only with tingle and dream of pain and the golden girl with the watery voice.
There came a time when the world was born, and she was not hovering over him. Yet still her voice filled the air like water, sweet and flowing and somehow all sorrowing, flowing through an old, old melody. She was turned away from him, her simple robe loosed around her waist, her sandy gold skin bared, and damp.
Some father's whisper, some distant sensibility, told him he should not see this thing, yet his body was not his, his body was the sickly sweet kiss's possession, and he could not turn away, nor yet recall to close his eyes.
She washed herself as she sang, vague scents of floral soap, of damp stone, of damp flesh, and yet as he watched, unable to really do much else, all he could think on was how he wanted to wake and find Trea there. Some time when the children were away and...and it would be her scent, and it would be...
His body moved a little, then, and she turned to look on him. Shameless before him, making no move to cover pert breast. She...it was a little clearer, now, and she could not be so much older than his daughter. Maybe fifteen, not much more than that.
My love, she crooned, you wake.
Nuh, he managed woodenly. Lesava. Not yours.
More than he had said in...in he hardly knew how long.
A troubled look passed over her features, and he could not place why it should sting, why he should be troubled at his childish nightmare's pretty wrong of a face. But it filtered through the emptiness, where She, the Lady of Night, should be.
It passed.
Lesava.
Her voice gave his name a lyric quality.
Lesava is a beautiful name. I am Miradasuelle.
White petals, he murmured, the words thick. White petals wet with sky-tear. Not yours. Not yours. Varuu...Trea...
For one was the other and both were the same, in this strange, drugged existence. The Goddess and his wife. The shadows and his love.
Poisons, white dew-kissed petal told him. Miradasuelle. White dew-kissed petal.
Everything broke down in this haze, to its simplest meaning. Save THEIR names. Varuu. Trealya. The simplest things.
Mine, he replied heavily, and then somehow remembered how to close his eyes, and closed them against this girl nearly as young as his daughter, this thing he should not see, and he said no more, even as her water-sorrow voice flowed through how he would learn, he would understand, he had been puppet, prisoner, plaything, that life was false and that life was gone, it had rejected him and would never have him back.
And the world flowed through darkness without shadow, darkness he could not lift hands to pulll from beneath his eyelids, to too much light, from numbness to ache to oblivion kiss. And the world was unnumbered, her words were unnumbered, and the only warmth came of her soft skin against his, and that nepenthe that trickled between their lips, and the only scents were stone, himself, her, water, whatever...something she skillfully made him swallow to keep him from finding the Voice again.
Precious voice. Dry voice. Secret and tender and wonderous voice.
Varuu. Trea.
Names that blent and blurred more as darkness he could not hold was traded for empty light again.
Light. Dark. Dark he could not hold. Dark that would not speak, would not speak, would NOT speak...
The wrong of a stranger the only warmth, the scent of her the nearest thing, the only human thing...
Light and dark and kiss and edge of pain, it repeated and it echoed and it moved...
And then, one day, he woke and the pain bloomed and the kiss did not come. The world was cotton silence. Not even her breath. The world was light, too much light, light without shadows, and there was nothing.
Nothing but himself, alone.
Slowly, his hands were his own. His feet. His legs. His head. Or was it? For surely this was but another dream, another arm of this spreading nightmare. For now...now there was not even her voice. Not even Oblivion's kiss.
There was throb, and ache, and bandage. There was some unfamiliar loose robe...and nothing more.
Her scent was there, but she was not. He could not rise, but he could crawl, and he dragged himself to seek any door, any exit, but the stone was smooth as baked clay beneath his fingers, and there was no scent but the hearth warmed stone one and the lingering hint of her that clung to his limbs. There was no sound but his respiration, his frantic heartbeat.
He spoke his mantra, heavily, even as he tugged at the bandages, the bandages tied so strangely, the...
His sound hand was a clumsy thing. The cloth fluttered away at last, and it was not...it was not to find aching fingers doubled over or pinned.
He knew before he found his own flesh beneath, but still he had to see.
Thumb. Forefinger. Middle.
And no more. Two smooth, singed stumps. Two emptinesses.
Imperfect. Broken.
Bled of the poison, some echo of white-dewy-petal's voice said. Taken from them. Reborn, remade, and you will be...
You will be...
He wailed, and in his wailing were the two sacred names. Nothing more, than the two sacred names.
Varuu.
Trealya.
Goddess.
Wife.
One face for two, one form for two, one wild and horrible ache beyond the strangeness of his own body for two.
He screamed and he wept and he stared.
There was nowhere to go. There was no reprieve. He tried to sink into oblivion. He tried to silence himself.
He could not say, how long he was alone. How long, before at last exhaustion and hunger, for he was given nothing, he saw no one, in this time, led him to blessed unconsciousness.
It flowed like this a while. Oblivion he could not hold, then horror, and...and flimsy cloth would not end it, and then...
Then he woke to soft lips and welcome sweetness, and the world faded again. He was vaguely aware of being cleaned, of being rocked, of that sweet, sorrowing voice singing once again. And he was helpless. A babe in Miradasuelle's arms.
Oh, Lesava...my own. My love. Can you not see? Do you not understand? They are gone. They are gone, and they shall never return. They will never have you now. They would call you broken. They would call you imperfect. But you are whole at last. Wholly human. Wholly a man. Wholly your own. And I, I shall love you no matter. I shall love you, and I am yours. Even now. Even now, when you whisper their names.
A wrong and a wrong. A poison and a poison.
Nh...he managed. Trea...no petals. Trea. WIFE, he managed then, and this word meant everything. Hers. Nh yours. Lesava. Trea's. Nh yours.
She would not have you. She is poisoned. The world is poisoned, but we know. We see. And we will hold you, we will fill you, we will keep you safe...
New oblivions came, as darkness and light slipped and ran together. Ones that left him with an empty giddiness. Ones that left him with a hollow sweetness. Ones that left him deaf and dumb. Sweet things, born of her lips. Of her touch.
And then...emptiness, loneliness, silence. Horrible silence, and nothing, nothing but himself to strike at.
She would tend the bruises with cool salves when she returned. Gently doctor the scrapes, the wrongs. She would brush his no longer shining hair, then cut it short at last, so he could no longer get purchase to tear at it.
It will grow back twice as fine, she assured him, mourning as she cut away all that fine, thick hair, black as night. He was indifferent. He was blind to it.
Yet as the dark and light moved and ran and blurred, desperation came more when this strange girl was gone than there. Even when the oblivions became weaker. And the pain, the physical pain, began to fade.
There came a time when words would come no more. There came a time, between the darkness and light, where it did not matter if sand-golden Miradasuelle was a young thing. Was not one of the sacred Two. When the two blent so that her voice began to become the dry whisper, and her touch...
He should have been angry. Ashamed. Something.
He should have felt something at all.
But the oblivions in her kiss silenced sense, and slowly, in the end, this...this strange girl with the name born of a thousand thousand sad songs, of a thousand of the most mournful poems, became another part of the oblivion, made herself, in between darkness and light, one of the drugs.
He could not say what time had passed. His hair had grown back in some. He no longer tore at it, in the alone time. Instead, he waited for her. She would go more, when he whispered for the Two.
She would stay longer, when he would say her name. She would stay longer, when he would let her call him those mad things. And in time, he himself was a little confused as to what a Trealya was, anyhow, what dream had birthed some quiet eyed son and clever daughter.
For...this...this dream. It was no longer a dream. And that dream. It never came for him. And...and then, he woke in a different room. There was a bed. There were no sharp edges, but there was a bed, there was a soft rug...there were shadows.
But the shadows, he could not hold them. Could not touch them.
There was no door at first. And still, the only one he saw was the sand-golden girl who called herself his wife. There were no other voices. The shadows were not his. The shadows were silent. There was no world but this. He felt small, and lost without her, and the patter of her voice was a small comfort in emptiness, and the blurr of her kiss was a different blurr, no longer robbed his limbs of their strength, but still it softened the edges of his mind.
And then, in time...there was a door.
It should have been strange. He should have felt...something. Something, other than the vague sense that if he left, she mightn't come back, and he would be alone again.
It was not so long.
Or perhaps it was. There was no night, no day. Merely sleep and waking. Mira, and no Mira.
But it did not SEEM so long, before at last there were others. They ghosted. He was numb to them as he was numb to Mira, for their shadows did not whisper, and he could not feel their life.
Had he ever felt their life?
They would speak, and he would nod, or watch in a strange bemusement, like a lost bird, and Mira would chatter for him. My HUSBAND, she would say proudly. And he felt a little stupid, when he was actually surprised...or as near surprised as he could touch...when Mira, who had sounded all the prouder of her claim, had sat on his knee and snatched up his hand, pressed it to the swell of her belly, and informed him that if it was a son she would call it Hedaska, for any son of theirs MUST be beautiful, and if it was a daughter, she would call it Kereyali, for with father so fair she would have to be as bright as all the sun poured down Above.
He could not quite understand, in those days, why they would speak of Above around him. Why there was no night, no day.
There was guilt. There were vague murmurs of 'Aron,' and 'Alyssa,' and 'Trea,' and then he would not see the petal-girl, and though there were others now, they bore nothing but the emptiness that filled him when she was gone, and he would say it less and less as she grew larger with child.
Their child. Somehow.
Somewhere in there, between oblivions, he had...Trea would never forgive him. Proud, beautiful...dream. Dream. Sweet and distant and proud dream...unless this was the dream...
Unless the Jeranites were in the right after all, and this were their Otherland...and this strange golden-sand girl with the sad-poem name and the sorrow-song voice was a punishment...
But then she would come, if he kept silence, and there was...something.
She was gone...longer for a while. Longer, and then she put a blanket wrapped bundle in his arms. Dark hair. Wrinkled and small.
"Aron," he breathed, and she actually smacked him.
"No. That is a STUPID name. I told you. Hedaska. Is he not? Beautiful. Beautiful, like MY Lesava. My husband." And her swat was traded for a kiss, and a pride in her eyes.
Lesava was silent, as he looked down at this child, this child with his own blue-black hair, black as a raven's wing.
"Father will send us on to the village, when Hedaska has his first year. So he will grow well and swift. It is only eyes. We can mask eyes. So beautiful. Our son is so beautiful. You will come with me, my husband."
As though this child made him a husband, when he already had a wife.
Somewhere.
Unless he'd dreamt her.
As the child grew, Lesava grew more determined to somehow find a way through the weakening fogs to find his own family. Slowly, he began to understand this place better. Warren.
A myth. A whisper.
A place, full of Otherborn men and women, and a few sympathisers, too. Full with some children who had never seen the sun, save through slats in the carefully kept underground gardens. The rumors had suggested some hidden mountain village or three. They had never quite dreamed...well.
This.
A sprawling underground metropolis, much of it as exquisitely worked as any palace or temple. Numerous fonts where fresh water might be fetched from. Mad magical and mechanical contrivances for sanitation, heat, light. No beggars, though there was some kind of arcane class system here, for some bore longer, finer, more fanciful clothing, and some wore the simplest to be managed. Light fabrics, unless they ventured into less heated areas, though it was rather comfortable a temperature, usually. Decency was decidedly a different matter, grown women wearing dresses that would have been indecent for any above nine in Twe'lan, and some even going quite shoeless, brazenly barefoot. Mind, others wore the veils of the North, or modifications of robe.
It would have been fascinating, if every little boy dashing after this or that, or sweeping out a hall, hadn't reminded him of Aron, and every pretty little girl hadn't made him wonder after Alyssa, and any glimpse of long blue black hair, long as his had been, long like hers, made him think on Trealya with longing.
Mira seemed to feel he was quite secured by whatever proof she saw in the result of some grief-mad, drug-filled moment of passion that had led him to the folly of concieving a child with her, and so her little tricks were eased back, and he had many clear days. He did not let on his mind was as clear as it was, however, and he held close his continued longing to see Trealya again. Little Aron. Sweet Alyssa. His friends among the little ones, even.
But above all, Trealya.
As he found himself eventually pressed into helping with the gardens, or sorting this or that, or cleaning, or watching over little ones with his son in his lap, he had plenty of time to think on Mira's words. That he would be forsaken. That anyone from his past life would not so much as look on him, now that he was imperfect. Mind, he could grip a hoe just fine, he could manage a rake, he could even diaper Hedaska. A good mite better than he had Alyssa, but between her and Aron, and how poorly birthing had treated his wife both times...
Well! A man could learn, and the lack of two fingers was not the lack of everything.
He only smiled blankly when women would coo and laugh and tell Mira that she'd a grand find in a man who would help with baby, and she would puff with pride and shoo them away, informing them proudly that he was hers. He came to understand they had a rather nice, in the way of Warren, cluster of two rooms in the married district saved for craftsmen and healers. Herbwives. Bonesets. They did not have priestcraft here, for priestcraft was a dirty word among them. What he had been, Mira never said to them. He was given a band of bronze to protect him from the others' pet fae. The boy, mind, had a village's worth of the stuff about him.
"Father says," Mira informed him proudly, "he shall be even stronger than I. A fine blood, even if his mark is mild."
Father, again. It marked Mira at all that she spoke of a father. She spoke a good deal, for he spoke little, disinclined to give her reason to steal his memories again. She admitted she had not been born here, but like many, had been rescued, slipped here as a child. Yet she never quite said who "Father" was, never spoke of introducing this claimed husband of hers to him. But though she seemed to have some herb lore, or...something to that effect, it seemed their position had more to do with her "Father" than her gifts. This, little things they had to add to meals apart from what was commonly shared, certain finer materials.
Paper.
She learned he liked to draw. He had been quite good at scribing, illuminating, binding. The lost fingers made some things tricksome, but it was his off hand, so he could still work a pen prettily, and he had once, while Hedaska was sleeping and his tasks were done, forgotten how dull he was playing and started elaborating a precious scrap of the stuff with a design of stylized blooms, then written the first few lines of one of his favorite poems.
Mira caught him at it, gave a squeal of delight, and then he found himself with strange work indeed from her precious 'Father' after she'd managed to beg and scrimp and get for him a few precious leaves of middling paper, and some pots of colored inks. All manner of scraps of illumination. Some done while half watching Hedaska and some of the other small small children, more done with a crowd of wondering older ones, and some of the nursemaids, too, watching over his shoulder in their cluster's courtyard.
If you could call it a courtyard, as the lot was enclosed, but you could feel the faint cool from the cluster's font, and so it had a...pretense of outside.
Paper, it seemed, was more precious than gold. Near as precious as bronze, which was far more necessarry here with the little ones than even out in the world, for it kept the young Otherborn from influencing the many, many fae who dwelt here among the Warrenites...such, they called themselves, and their home Warren. Otherwise, with so many, there would have forever been trouble with fussing children making the spirits overreact and wreck all this...
It was a wonder. It truly was. This entire place. It made him think of the old old stories, where the Otherborn and common men had lived together. The days of wonder, the ruins and the finer temples that still stood strong after over a millenia.
But with paper being so rare, not only was it important Lesava's hand not slip....very few had ever watched anyone simply draw stylized birds and flowers, vines and fanciful beasts that never were to elaborate pages waiting for text. Sometimes he was given the texts, too, pressed in thin clay tablets, scratched in stone, written on slate in chalk. And he would dream of home as he put down every letter.
There was less joy to be had in the children's quiet wonder and the women's admiration and the vague curiousity of the men at his art, or his own curiousity at their gifts at shaping stone like clay and pulling crystal like taffy, when he recalled he could not tell Trealya or his children. Little Aron would have been all wonder and more. Alyssa would make him draw it all for her. They would...
But no. He had Mira. Mira, to come back from whatever it was she did in the 'day,' or their 'day'...different clusters measured it differently, so all the world was not, in fact, awake at once. Mira, to drape over his shoulders, and coo about how fine a hand her husband had, and nuzzle his neck, and insist Hedaska looked more like him by the day, and speak all merry of how soon, soon she would be right enough that they could do more than lie beside each other.
He dreaded that. He honestly could not remember much of what...ah. Intimacy she had come to expect, and the clearer his head was, the more ashamed he felt. She was pretty in her way. Might have been considered a beauty, if she weren't being constantly compared to his memories of Trealya. The alien curiousity of a girl with sand gold hair and sand gold eyes could not stand before his longing for his beautiful wife with her shining black hair and her rich dark eyes, her little wry smile, her soft and natural voice. No waters. No waves. No strange whispers, like so many here.
A Northern accented voice, neat tones, tones that hinted and suggested and played before the children without them ever catching it. Anyhow. Mira was but a girl, even with her breasts swollen with milk and her fool pride at...at this boy, while Trealya was a woman grown, bloomed fine over their years together. And, well! Trea had never drugged him, obviously. However, to show his revulsion and shame would, he was sure, only win him kisses full of oblivion again, and he needed his wits if this promised move in a year's time was to get him any chance at all to find his way back to Twe'lan.
As vast as Warren was, he was wise enough to realize he would not be finding his way out alone, and he feared what it would mean to them to seek ally. What of your little boy? Your...wife? he was sure they would ask. And...well.
Perhaps the child was growing on him a little.
It would take a heart of stone to not smile at Hedaska. Even with a fool name like that. He might have unnaturally blue eyes, but as he grew stouter and braver, and began to roll, or crawl, or balance on his a'da's foot and squeal at being bounced a little as Lesava attended his work, he was a dear thing. Lively. Curious.
He reminded him a good deal of Alyssa, really. Though at least he had a good deal less hair for this babe to tug. Trealya would fuss to no end, to see him with hair barely to his shoulders now. Many had joked you could not tell wife from husband from behind, if you did not attend the heigth, for his own glossy hair had fallen near as long as hers, and they had held a certain pride for each other's.
His smile would fade a moment, as he ruffled Hedaska's fine hair and wonder if Trea had cropped hers for him.
He hoped not. He hoped she held out some hope.
Little Hedaska was managing his first toddling steps, when Mira came all full of smiles and informed him that they had best gather his inks, for they would NOT merely be in a small village. She would get to play lady, she told him proudly, and he would get his own little storefront, for he was to be set up as a scrivener for order, as would do marriage writs for lordlings and the like, pretty work, and they would do great work for Warren in Eldran.
Eldran, he knew. On the Northern cliffs. A city of normal men. He had a contact there, if one who had once brought him word of the North in return for setain. If only he could hope to find the trader, he could...
He smiled sweetly and dully, as he had made it his practice to. "Daska should like the sea air," he spoke.
"Sea! He will SEE it. When we might show him. I can mask him. But it is great work. We will keep him within. I shall be a veiled lady, you shall tell them all I was highborn, yes?"
He bowed his head obediently.
"You CAN speak Northern?"
"Passing well?" he replied in that tongue, formal tones, and she seemed pleased.
"And write it, too?"
He nodded once.
"Good. We leave in five days. We will be sure to get you...as near as we can, the proper garb. You may look a little outdated."
A scrivener, he wanted to say, cares little save that the marks of his inks do not show bold. But instead, he gave that fool's sweet smile and a nod.
For a man who rarely spoke and only smiled vapidly, maybe shared his food now and then with a child or scratched some bit of pretty on a bit of clay or old cloth for one of his little admirers, maybe read off a sample piece now and then, he was surprised to find how many saw him off along with Mira. They seemed rather tense, but...
Well.
Mira was meant for the burning-circles, outside this place, and so was little sweet Hedaska. And not all of them were sure that he himself was untainted.
Mind, in THIS place, they wore their taint like a mark of pride, displaying glittering skins and mad hair and curious eyes, some even exaggerating the oddities in voice that they had.
If Trea ever forgave him little Hedaska, he...he would tell her. Of course he would. And he would...if he could get message. If there was anywhere to return to. He would make sure the boy would be all right.
...And Mira, he supposed. There was an odd comfort in her. Even if he had to try to pretend he was asleep rather often once she'd been better, even if he'd found himself fussed at by all her dear friends for not being properly attentive now and then, even...
Agh.
Better not to think about it. Trealya probably would NOT understand this damned game he had to play, for fear of what that troubled girl might do to him, and...and there was still a great vast emptiness, and...
Sometimes, still, she still passed her nepenthe kisses if he seemed too distant, and...he could not be sure what had happened.
He would owe Trea a thousand apologies. Hah. He would never have right to shirk a duty or forget a time to try to manage dinner again. If she would have him after all this madness. If she hadn't given him up for dead and found another already.
They were given all manner of odd gifts, good luck tokens, pretty rugs, fanciful carvings. And then it was the maddest of moving, he and his...ah. Wife, and the little one hurried into a carriage that was traded for another, that was switched for another, he in the most fanciful scrivener's costume he had ever seen...the Warrenites made up for their lack of flowers by dreaming them on every surface. He felt like he was in bad festival garb. At least it meant Mira got her dream of looking a noble, for she seemed all dressed for spring festival, and they were given all manner of gold and semiprecious stone to carefully pass through and trade for the far more precious, in Warren, fruits, vegetables, dry goods. Flax and wool. Dried meats.
They were but one step in many, and but one place to pass whispers and rumors to another, to help fund the safehouses hidden in places of ill repute, and all manner of thing. His...ah. Wife had a rather important task to manage in her veils, and he found it rather hard to play innocently stupid.
And stunning, really, that he was trusted with so many potential lives on the word of this mad girl and whatever influence her "father" had.
He worked his work. He slipped out to try to trace through tavern rumors the ones who went to the South only after Mira slept.
After all...he was a father again. And this child. So SMALL. So...so helpless. He could not leave the boy without any protection, without any word, if he did not...did not know, you see?
It was irritating, how often he had to placate Mira to be sure he COULD slip out. He found himself plying the blasted woman with things like wine more than he liked, so SHE could try a taste of not being certain of what had NOT happened, in the place of what he had not known for certain of what had. But at last, he found a man.
He was unrecognized. He'd gained color. Was missing fingers. Had his hair cropped, and one lock had come in starkly white, as though the shock of it all had to manifest somewhere, and perhaps Mira's butchery of his hair and his own ravages of himself must needs leave it so. His walk had a slight hitch it hadn't before...not all his wounds had healed clean.
He'd gotten the uncertain gaze of one thinking themself perhaps before a distant cousin, but not the look of one who knew him for sure at all. He had promises made, and dropped hints, and two traders would be seeking news. Would come by for a drink and to let him know, and of course have certain trinkets promised them for true news.
Hedaska was toddling about more surely, and could even manage to spell out not only his own name, but his mother's, and the shortened form his father went by, and even the little dog Lesava had found him for companion, a small surprise that had decided it fancied Mira more than the boy.
He was rather well received, this Lehs with his southern accent, but his pretty and steady hand, and had plenty of actual, honest work to keep them while Mira handled the more important matters. So, he was carefully working at a marriage writ when the first of the traders came to claim his wine. He was glad Mira had seen to the child's eyes before she was off, for Hedaska was playing with the dog near his work table when the trader came in.
The child was noted with a faint eyebrow raise.
"Why keep a woman," Lesava spoke lightly, "When he keeps himself? Daska be a clever one. Better to save the coin to fetch him a little horse when he is a bit bigger, ei?"
"Hah! Little as ye be, Leva, 'ell be riding th' dog!" the trader replied.
"Please. Enjoy seat. A moment more, work before pleasure, and Daska, even with Katra, too little to reach the cupboards."
"And whair be th' wife? Aren' t it..."
"Mira," Lesava replied lightly, "is at the shopping. I supposing I could leave it to her, to carry basket and boy, but this only to end in broken eggs and little one learning to weep for sweets. I prefer dinner," he added as he finished out the last florish and set the thing to dry before adding the colors, "before dark. Daska? T'skai neha."
The little one rose. "A'da? Who is this?"
"A friend, Daska. Come. A'da to fetch you a little milk, you sit with the men, ne?"
The child clambered up to sit with his father, as Lesava poured out milk for the child, wine for himself and the trader.
"The trade go well?"
"Aye. Even if it was a little one come to meet me. Plenty o' setain, though no so many to sell it."
Lesava considered him over his cup. "Little one? They use children for traders, now?"
"In Twe'lan, it seem. Little lad...thought it was a girl, a' first, pretty, tiny thing wi' a babe on 'is back. Tol' me tha' the 'erb was pure, and th' fevers 'ad passed, but..." There was a slow shake of the head. "Oh, right polite thing. Said 'is name was...Ahron? Aron. Tha's it. When I asked after 'is mither an' father, he said they'd a both passed on, maer's the pity. They got 'it right 'ard, but I aren't sae scared of a fever tae skip m' best trade."
"Not such a little boy? If he was carrying a babe," Lesava added hurriedly.
"Nae old enou fer it tae be 'is, unless 'e were right precocious," the trader replied. "Maybe thirteen? Fourteen? Th' babe was a wee thin, though, an' right pretty."
"Well. Did you at least have a good price?"
"No so well as ye'd expect from a wee lad with a baybeh on his back," the trader laughed. "Lad drove a hard bargain. Fair, but hard."
"Ah." Lesava refilled the man's cup. Hedaska watched them over his milk, not following more than one in five words. They spoke Low Devanarii in the house, more often than not, when it was not a matter of business. The boy knew 'dog,' and 'food' and 'sweets,' a few simple things of the sort, but he was terribly young to know much more.
They spoke of little nothings, after that. Lesava paid the promised price, and then bought some of the man's setain for twice what it was worth to show his gratitude, even as his heart sank.
His little Aron...not so little now, HAD it been that long? He supposed it had. His little Aron tending someone else's babe...or maybe a younger brother or sister. Maybe his mother had been lost to childbed to another man... and wasn't Hedaska a little more than two now? Hadn't he been gone three years already? She would have been within her rights...
His heart hurt. No word of Alyssa, either. Aly should have been a fine young woman, now...old enough to start considering writs of her own.
He would wait a little longer, before he gave up all hope.
Mira was home, when the second trader came to call. She seemed in a huff, keeping her veil on instead of magicking her appearance, doing her best to show that her husband had not been considerate enough to warn her of guest.
This one, however, was paid the more, and simply slipped him a paper while Mira was distracted by Hedaska and the dog.
He patted Lesava's bad hand, gave him a solemn look, shook his head once, then left.
"Mira," Lesava scolded as he hid the note away in his sleeve. "He knew Devanarii. I merely wished another to speak with."
"You hardly talk!" she scolded. "Speak with ME. Speak with Daska! Speak at ALL! You should realize how dangerous guests unannounced are! What if I had not charmed Daska's eyes? What if I had come in without my veil? Do you hate us so?" she wept. "Do you hate me so? Do not think," she added angrily, and the little...creature she kept with her made the floor to stir, "I do not hear when you whisper that WOMAN'S name in bed. OUR bed. You are MINE. And if you get me killed, Father will NOT have mercy on you. No matter how I loved you, how I love you still, no matter your folly." She then snatched up the startled looking child and marched off up the stairs to their private quarters above.
Lesava watched her go, then sighed and took out the note. Of course he hadn't been trying to get the fool woman and the child killed. Agh.
It was a simple note.
"Lesava. You were mourned a year before your wife. She died well, a martyr to the Jeranites. Alyssa passed on only a few months ago. Aron is acting Len, and seems a good, level headed child. He has been caring for your daughter's child, a little girl called Bina. Many of the elders are gone, but the village perseveres and the records are kept.
I knew you when I saw him. The boy is your picture.
H'ska."
Lesava bowed his head, crumpled the note in his bad hand. He threw it in the fire, then fell to sorting his inks as he choked back tears.
Trea was gone. For certain. And his little Alyssa, too. And Aron...did well? Watched...his grandchild. A grandfather. Hah. Fool woman had herself a GRANDFATHER for a husband, and...
And Aron did well for himself. Was...
He wanted to see the boy, but...but like this? After all that? After he had lost his mother, and his sister too? He wanted to convince himself there would be any joy at all in Aron's solemn eyes, but...after this? To know that when his mother and sister suffered and died, when he, little thing that he was, had to handle the village on his own, his father had lived some fool comfortable life...oh, forget how Mira had claimed him, forget the beginning, he had to admit that his time with the Warrenites themselves, and his time here in Evran was hardly suffering...useless to him now, he had to lose all that, and...
What joy was there in...
It had been a long time, since Lesava had felt the absence so acutely.
When a contrite Mira had crept down at last, guilty at her fit, she had found Lesava sobbing into his half hand. He hardly would say why and she supposed it was her fussing, for she hardly ever shouted at the simple seeming man. She draped over him, kissed his tears, promised she would be a better wife, told him over and over he might have any guest he liked, well, as long as it was not a woman, and oh, she was so sorry, and...
Her watery voice was not stiffened and masked, and it held still a lingering charm from all those drug-dazed untold days. It made the sobs die away, even if he was not quite sure why. She settled him, fussed over him, made him what she had decided was his favorite...he really wasn't one to fuss much over food, so it hardly rankled him for her to name any dish his favorite, every bit the attentive...
Wife.
Not Trea.
There would never be a Trea again.
Damned Jeranites. Killed by damned JERANITES. When he should have been there, when if he had...Damn it all. But he hid his tears and played at being placated, then watched Hedaska sleep that night and wondered if he was more important to the boy nearly grown who thought him dead, or the boy still growing, born of lie.
Both who would be hunted by the wrong kinds. But...Aron was clever and wise, and knew the world. And Aron knew what his father had been, and would know shame to see him broken in any way. Imperfect. All those sussurant things that had sorrowfully burbled in Mira's voice through his consciousness came now. While Daska...
Daska was so little. So innocent. It was not...
It was...
He would never be content with himself at his choice. H'ska was paid yearly to bring him news of Aron. Never did he tell a soul, what Lehs the scribe had once been. Never did Lesava tell H'ska what he was now. Slowly, he had begun to show he was no dullard after all. Even if Mira had been...some mad thing he could not even quite understand, her friends in Warren were...well. People.
Even if he had been...
Even if his life was stolen from him, he only had to look at Hedaska to know that there were so many lives this work would protect. He...he hated Davindahl for what had happened. But Mira's work was not FOR Davindahl. Not really.
It was for those who had to hide. And if he could not be there for Aron, and if he was not what Twe'lan needed...he could do something, for someone. And...one day, after he'd notice that Bina had not made the summer, but Aron did well, and Twe'lan was recovering nicely...well. He never would love Mira.
But he would accept her work, and he had...he had...
Hedaska looked more like him by the day, the eyes aside. It would be a shameful lie to pretend he didn't.
He hardly understood the ways of marriage in Warren, but still, he slipped out early one day, bought white and yellow flowers... gentleness and friendship...and wove a clumsy wreath to leave beside Mira's bed, with a prettily scribed poem about the wedding flowers.
She called herself his wife anyhow. This was no grand sanctification. It was no forgiveness on him. But...
The damned fool girl no longer poisoned him, and...she made him dinner, and...
And he had no one to go back to.
In time, Hedaska had a little sister to keep him company.
You are not my Alyssa, Lesava thought, as he looked into her great, dark eyes. She...she did not show her taint at all, little Kereyali. Pretty thing. Clever thing. Sweet as honey. Tame, not at ALL like his bold Alyssa had been.
She was not so far past nursing herself, when Hedaska started making light trouble despite his wealth of bronze. Lesava was sorry to see him sent back to Warren. Mira's promises that her father would watch over their boy were small comfort, as little as she ever explained of him, but she herself contrived to visit often, and so it was often Lesava and Kereyali to themselves in the shop, Mira somewhere in between.
News still came of Aron, now and then. He confessed at last, when Mira came to fetch himself and Kereyali to visit the boy in Warren, and the letter spoke of some little girl.
"I am a grandfather again, I think."
"You had a son?"
"And a daughter. But she was lost."
"You have a son, and a daughter," Mira informed him, snatching the letter and throwing it in the fire. "That never happened. The puppet is gone, and you are yourself now."
Lesava nodded quietly, and merely thought his thoughts as he made sure the shop would not come to trouble, and focused on how merry Hedaska always was when he could visit. He had put together another book for the boy in his spare time. One like he had made for Aron, what felt a life ago, with a hollow, hidden compartment.
Because every boy should have somewhere to keep his secrets.
Daska grew, and Kereyali was taking far more interest in the scrivener's art than any of his other children. He was beginning to teach her how to illuminate, when the trader had patted his hand once again, shook his head slowly, and left without waiting for coin or wine.
"No sign of Aron. No attendant Len. Met by a woman called Ena who spoke the man warned he might not return. I will check again next year, but do not hold out hope."
He had spoilt Kereyali's practice page with tears, leaving her all wide eyed and confounded, then thrown it in the fire with the note and closed the shop, taken her to go see the market. To do anything but be quietly with that news.
He had kept meaning to send a letter with the trader. To...to somehow let Aron know he wasn't alone in the world. But always, the horrible thought of the young man knowing his crippled father had been useless and shamed and being only hurt at the missive had stayed his hand.
And now, it...
Shadows take it all. Aron...Aron had been a good boy. Quiet like Trealya, but a good boy, and he'd loved him dearly, and...
Damn it all.
