$il[T]he sun presses down hot as a hearthstone on the back of Trenon's neck. After a morning's climb the damp weight of his braid straggles down at his temples and behind his ears. His stomach tightens with hunger after a breakfast of creek water.
Dismounting, Trenon leads Cyr across a rocky ford. He fills his water skin in the stream, then squints up at the sun while Cyr drinks deep. On the weather side of the mountain he climbed through gusts of chill rain, but spring breaks early in the valleys north of Asaresta pass. The tips of pine branches are already bright green with new growth. Chickadees squabble cheerfully with the nuthatches and finches. In this still heat, farmers will be taking their levers to last year's field cairns, impatient to set the new boundaries and start planting. They'll need Trenon to sing the year's field contracts, if he can get to them before another journeyman advocat. But he won't get far if he doesn't eat.
A fallen log supplies a seat. Trenon spreads his quilted overtunic and pulls a packet of pine nuts and dried bearberries from his saddlebag. Cyr, with better luck, sets about cropping the fresh spring grass.
Trenon's usual route includes six villages-next, but he'll extend this trip to nine if the weather holds. Spring offers the best fees: negotiating land claims, contracting the season's labourers, and performing any marriages or coming of age rites delayed by winter weather. In high summer he returns to mediate water disputes as the wells run low; when the leaves turn, he hears claims of broken contracts and dissolve holdings that can't stand the thought of being snowed in together for a season. Journeymen advocats on snowshoes might manage a winter trip, but snow plugs the Asaresta pass too deeply, so Trenon's holding survives on spring profit and summer scrapings.
Cyr raises his head and whinnies a greeting. A moment later, Trenon hears hoofbeats on the trail. He tosses a hazelnut shell to a persistent jay, and waits to see who else is taking advantage of the travelling weather. A high-stepping horse rounds the corner, tall enough that the rider doesn't bother dismounting to splash across the ford. "Trenon, of irthu?" she asks.
The rider is dressed richly in long leather riding trousers and a tunic with herringbones. Stones and silver shine at her belt. She leads a string of packmules, flanked by outriders on mountain ponies, who immediately set about watering their mounts. A master trader, climbing over the pass to avoid the bottleneck of Asaresta market. Traders--especially downmountain traders--bring more excitement than most inland villagers see in a season. Trenon's well-used saddlepacks and Cyr's worn tack make a poor show in comparison. Yet Trenon can hear his father's sneer. Itinerant city traders may be rich in goods, but they can't carry pride of place with them upmountain.
But then, Ralon conjures place for himself like a jongleur tugging scarves from an empty fist. Trenon finds juggling place a bore. As a journeyman, younger than the trader by nineyears, Trenon should give place to the master. But he is an advocat, and even in this mountain clearing, the master is his visitor, so she should offer it. Trenon prefers to cut through the bother.
(if: (random: 0,2) is 0)[He bows his head solemnly, as though accepting a humble trader's petition for guesting rights. After all, as his father growls, silver has nothing to do with place, no matter what some upstart holdings think. He waves towards his log, offering to host her in his modest patch of woods.](else:)["Trenon, journeyman advocat," he says, in answer to her question. Rising and smiling, he offers his fist for the trader to cover with her hands. The sign of a bargain struck between equals.]
The trader's sardonic glance takes in his display as the insincere offering it is. Instead of taking insult, she bows pointedly low from the saddle. "Zayelik, of irzelu, sung to irdanu," she says. In city fashion, Zayelik claims both her own holding and her patronage tie. She lets her hands rest on her saddlehorn, a mocking smile belying her formality. "Do mountain farmers set their cairns so late in the season that a journeyman advocat still has reason to travel?"
City traders enjoy such play, commenting in persistent astonishment year after year that mountain fields have barely begun to sprout while downmountain farmers are scything their first hay. Trenon smiles thinly. "Did you follow me all this way to argue a land claim?"
Zayelik hesitates for a candle's flicker, then sits back in her saddle. To Trenon's eye, she barely restrains herself from glancing at her outriders to see how close they've wandered. She laughs, too late. "Hardly. Your mother sent a message by me in Asaresta. She asks your duty."
Trenon's mouth twists. Zayelik overplayed her joke. A city trader interested in a mountain claim is an unusual sight, but she won't pursue it now.
(if: (random: 0,2) is 0)["How fares my much beloved betrothed?" he asks.](else:)[His contracted betrothed, Larik, was ill when he left Asaresta. "Dead, or dying?" he asks.] His mother sent him on this tour hungry for spring cash. The only reason to recall him is if she might lose out on a greater sum--such as the price of his impending marriage.
Zayelik laughs. "So even advocats get trapped in contract marriages?"
That hits the mark a little too closely. (if: (random: 0,2) is 0)["Mothers negotiate their sons' marriages," Trenon says, with bitter fidelity.](else:)["If he's a good advocat, at least he can bait the trap well," Trenon says.]
Berin will get good silver out of the match if Larik lives. She will tuck Trenon safely away, out of her holding. If Larik dies, another season will pass while Berin's place and silver erode. She won't quickly find another holding willing to take Trenon, let alone pay good silver for the pleasure. She might marry him overmountain, third or fourth husband in an established marriage.
Zayelik stretches, wide and spine-popping, as if to demonstrate that Trenon's rudeness can't provoke more than wry amusement. "I've always thought city arrangements are kinder," she says. "Well, a first marriage opens to love spouses eventually. You'll find it's worth it then!"
Oh, yes, they do things differently downmountain. So very broad-minded. Everyone a love spouse from the moment the marriage vows are sung. Trenon hears that trader's tale often enough. The fact is that Zayelik can't sneeze without permission from her patrons. Any master trader upmountain has more freedom, if less silver. "Consider my mother's message delivered," Trenon says.
"But not her son." With a shrug, Zayelik reins her horse around, back across the stream. With a round-up gesture to her outriders, she sets the pack string in motion. "Well, dragging you home would cost more silver than your mother could offer."
"She'd recoup it if you hired me to sing a land claim," Trenon says, floating his bait like a fly above a trout's hide.
"Good journeying, advocat," Zayelik says coldly.
"And you, trader," Trenon returns cheerfully. No trader wants to raise field cairns. A solid deepstone with capacious outbuildings, on the other hand--barns with good storage, undercrofts and root cellars where goods can await collection--Zayelik may be interested in shifting her base up from Sareya. Trenon will keep the possibility in mind.
Soon the last of Zayelik's mules passes out of sight on the track to Asarvinya. Trenon wraps up the remains of his lunch. He can reach Asarotha by late afternoon if he pushes. Turning his back on spring fees to rush home, and camping in the rain for his trouble, makes no sense.
Duty and place should send him scurrying home--so Berin would say. If he misses his chance to sing the marriage vows with Larik before her illness worsens, then her family will probably demand the contract-breaking price from him. Trenon can't earn enough in a single night to cover that ridiculous ransom. Larik's mothers named the contract-breaking price during the betrothal negotiations--enough silverweights to cripple Trenon's family. Whether they meant to catch Trenon in a rabbit-snare marriage or they hoped their indifference to the sum would prick Berin's pride, they got what they wanted. Berin accepted without a flicker of hesitation, hoisting place over prudence. Not for the first time.
[[ϒ Trenon yanks Cyr's girth two notches tighter. The choice should be simple; balancing stones against silver won't erase his debts.->pass]]
[[ϒ Yet obedience grates on him. A day's delay won't matter, and Zayelik might easily have missed him in the mountains, her message undelivered.->pique]] { (if: $allowHints)[
(click-replace: "last year's field cairns")[last year's land claims]
(click-replace: "patronage tie")[patronage tie, the overholding to whom she owes her duty and a ninth of her profits]
(click-replace: "permission from her patrons.")[permission from her patrons. Zayelik's overholding wouldn't have promoted her to master without guaranteeing their right to veto her every trade, from suppliers to buyers.]
] }$il[N]ight is deepest: that slow and torpid season when middlenight dies into dawn. Larik sleeps shallowly in the loft of iryu deepstone. Her breathing comes rough and wet, and she shivers under the pile of down-stuffed quilts.
The wind sighing through the thatch fades. After a brief quiet, rain begins: soft, trickling, insistent. The candle sputters low, a blue flame creeping along a wick of twisted moss. Sharp smoke rises from the singed pine needles in the candle bowl. In time with the dancing shadows, Nilos sings vigil.
At nightfall, he began the song with fierce determination. The lulling murmur should carry meaning and strength, but after so long, the vigil sounds hollow. Nilos cups Larik's hand in his and presses deep into her lifepoints. His careful touch echoes the song's tide. He traces Larik's palm with his fingertips, urging her breath to deepen. The pine smoke rises in slow curls. Song for the breath, herbs for the ghost, touch for the body. Nilos braids the strands into healing.
But Larik's fever rises. Nilos's eyes ache red from the smoke. His feet prickle and itch, numb from sitting on his heels. Sleep breaks over him like storm winds through the aspens, swaying him farther with each gust.
A clay mug, full of steaming tea, sits on the floorboard at Larik's head. Nilos brewed it earlier, carefully selecting the herbs from his healer's satchel. He should be focused on the vigil, but he can't push away the certain knowledge that vigils are sung from mercy, not from hope. He stares into the dark tea, breathing in the mint, and the sharper hint of willow bark.
//Maybe the tea will help her//.
Even in his own mind, Nilos can't fool himself. The tea //will// help her--if he dares to give it to her. Tereos, his master, told him to sing the vigil song instead of attempting another round of treatments. "You need to learn acceptance, Nilos," he said. "Give your friend her peace."
Even if Tereos still believed there was hope, he would never allow Nilos to brew this tea. Nilos mixed the herbs from a nine of songs. The tea he steeped can't be called a healer's brew, by any stretch. No healing song involves a tea alone, without melody, without touch. But Nilos knows every plant he chose, in seed and shoot and flower. He knows their properties, their effects. If Larik is dying--and the vigil song, with its call to gentle rest, suggests nothing less--then Nilos has no reason to hold back.
His voice seems to come from very far away. Larik's family understands what the vigil means. A last hope, but still a hope. Like water to a parched field, they offer their breath to the vigil. Nilos's song provides the channel into Larik. If strength alone can save her, then tonight, her family will give what they have.
"You conduct the flow," Tereos told him. "Vigils are demanding, even for master healers. You will be tempted to give your own breath to fill the gaps. Remember that Larik needs her family's touch at the last. Give that to her. It will be enough."
Since moonset Larik's breath has come slower, her fever risen hotter. Her ghost is plucking at its tethers to her body, thread by taut unwinding thread. Vigils //can// bring people back from the brink. Once, Tereos hovered over a child with spot fever for a full day and night, and the child's fever broke at dawn. People can live, after vigils. Nilos digs deeper and pushes his own breath into the song.
And if the vigil can't save Larik, then what difference can Nilos's cooling tea make? His hands shook when he poured boiling water over the herbs. The tea is not a true song. An apprentice's fabrication. He would be lucky if it doesn't make Larik worse. Tereos would never have suggested the vigil if any other herb could promise more.
A cough breaks from Larik's throat, rumbling and heavy. She rolls to her side, coughing hard, unable to bring up phlegm. Nilos urges her up, supporting her to sit so that she can lean forward. With strong, even blows, he thumps his closed fist against her back, first at the bottom of her ribcage, then between her shoulder blades, right side, left side. Larik spasms with the coughs, one interrupted by the next in choking waves. Nilos holds up a scrap of linen to catch the sputum. The spatter of blood shows dark on the pale kerchief. His vigil chant forgotten, Nilos breathes with Larik, rubbing her back.
Another cough starts. Larik points to the tea, unable to speak. Nilos freezes. She weakens with every fresh fit. She needs something to calm, to soothe--
She needs a healer. Not an apprentice with pretensions.
(link: "ϒ The ewer beside the tea holds water.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)(goto: "prudence")]
(link: "ϒ But it won't do anything for her cough, for her hot restless fever. Water and vigils won't save Larik tonight.")[(set: $healthier to true)(set: $selfish to it + 1)(goto: "recourse")]{
(if: $allowHints)[
(click-replace: "Vigils //can// bring people back from the brink.")[Once, Tereos hovered over a child with spot fever for a full day and night, and the child's fever broke at dawn. People can live, after $il[vigils].]
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} <div class="footer">//Figuera// | hko | (print: (passage: )'s name)</div>
<hr>{
(set: $allowHints to true)
(set: $il to (css: "font-size: 16px") )
}{<style>
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<!-- Variables are set with their initial values within the New Game link. -->
<div class="title">Figuera</div>}
//<div class="author"> by hko</div>//
<center><div class="menu">(link: "New Game")[(set: $nyls to false, $decoy to false, $healthier to false, $responsible to 0, $selfish to 0, $pragmatic to false, $freedom to false, $fromAsarotha to false, $fromAngry to false, $fromMorose to false, $fromBerin to false)[(goto: "begin")] ]
{(if: (saved-games:) contains "FileA")[(link: "Load Saved Game")[(load-game: "FileA")] ]
(else:)[No Saved Games]}
[[Credits->Credits]]
[[CC License->License]]</div></center><center><div class="menu">Acknowledgements</div></center>
$il[T]hank you for exploring //Figuera//.
This creative dissertation was written in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing from the Department of English at the University of Calgary. The project consists of an interactive fiction game and a critical exegesis.
My supervisor, Stefania Forlini, has been invaluable in her unfailing support and thoughtful, thorough critiques. My committee members, Larissa Lai and Anthony Camara, have been enthusiastic, interested, and critical readers with excellent feedback. I thank Robert Majzels for his support of my candidature.
A huge thank you to the Grad Writing Group: Tom Miller, Nicole Edge, Dawn Bryan, Emily Chin, and Steven Peters, for their critiques of my early drafts, and to Diana Huang, for her support with coding and gameplay.
This project was supported by a Doctoral Fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
//Figuera// was composed in Twine 2.0.11 (with the Harlowe 1.2.4 story format), Scrivener 2.8.1, and LibreOffice 5.2.2.2.</div></center>
<center><div class="menu">Return to [[Main Menu->Front Credits]]</div></center><center><div class="menu">Abstract</div></center>
//$il[F]iguera//, a fantasy interactive fiction game, uses the digital authoring system Twine to build a multilinear narrative. This work emerges from a tradition of feminist and queer authors, including New Wave science fiction writers Samuel Delany and Ursula K. Le Guin, and Twine digital game creators Anna Anthropy and Porpentine. //Figuera// acts as a critical fiction by joining what bell hooks terms a community of resistance: the Twine revolution, a school of queer and trans digital game creators who express their lived experiences of marginalization through digital games. Playfully transgressing the connection between the material body and gender identity/expression, I work to decenter dominant narratives by disrupting default novel-reading strategies.
My game depicts a secondary fantasy world in which families assign their children's gender at age fifteen, a world inspired by Judith Butler's theories of gender performativity. Three narrative strands follow young people whose queered gender expression clashes with their families' wishes. In contrast with the non-linearity of postmodern hypertext fiction, //Figuera// uses digital constraints to maintain continuity and promote narrative closure. Unlike traditional interactive fiction, Figuera guides readers with links rather than text input.
The work's visual design echoes the aesthetic of the Twine revolution, while my invitation to readers to intervene creatively with the text matches the Twine revolution's goals of accessibility and open expression. Readers may perform multiple traversals of the text; the different narrative strands act as motifs for the work's themes. The text offers the reader meaningful choices: the reader can navigate to discrete endings. Each narrative line contains deliberate gaps, such that multiple readings are required for a richer understanding of the characters and the world; the game's structure rewards playful, explorative, and repeated readings. In form and content, //Figuera// expresses a feminist and queer politics through creative intervention.
<center><div class="menu">
<a href="http://figuera.ca/Figuera_exegesis.pdf" target="_tab">Read the exegesis [PDF]</a>
Return to [[Main Menu->Front Credits]]</div></center><center><div class="menu">Works Cited</div></center>
$il[T]he digital images cited here are licensed Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 2.0 Generic Licenses. This license allows users to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially). The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the license terms are followed. Further details of the license can be found <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">here</a>.
All other images are copyright Heather Osborne, August 2016.
Dmitry. "White Texture." //Toptal.com//, Toptal Designers, 31 July 2011, https://www.toptal.com/designers/subtlepatterns/white-texture/.
iLias, Irfan. "Symphony." //Toptal.com//, Toptal Designers, 25 November 2014, https://www.toptal.com/designers/subtlepatterns/symphony/.
Infographiste. "Greyzz." //Toptal.com//, Toptal Designers, 6 August 2013, https://www.toptal.com/designers/subtlepatterns/greyzz/.
Jay, Robin. "fig." //Flikr.com//, 26 April 2011, www.flickr.com/photos/learnscope/5659291926/.
Osborne, Heather. //Suite: Grandpa's Kitchen, 1-62//. //Imgur.com//, 24 October 2017, https://hkfto.imgur.com/all/.
Viahorizon. "Subtle White Feathers." //Toptal.com//, Toptal Designers, 2 March 2013, https://www.toptal.com/designers/subtlepatterns/subtle-white-feathers/.
<center><div class="menu">Return to [[Main Menu->Front Credits]]</div></center><div class="author"><em>Figuera</em></span> by <span xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" property="cc:attributionName">Heather Osborne</span> is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>.</div>
<center><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br /><span xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" property="dct:title"></center>
$il[Y]ou are free to:
<ul><li>Share, copy, and redistribute the material in any medium or format;</li>
<li>Adapt, remix, transform, and build upon the material.</li></ul>
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms:
<ul><li>Attribution: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.</li>
<li>NonCommercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes.</li>
<li>No additional restrictions: You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.</li></ul>
Notice: You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation. No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
<center><div class="menu">Return to [[Main Menu->Front Credits]]</div></center>{
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<div class="footer"> (if: $allowHints is true)[(link-replace: "Gameplay hints are on.")[(link-replace: "Click a hint link for more information. The hint disappears when clicked again.")[(link-replace: "Click 'Turn Off Hints' in the footer to stop displaying gameplay hints.")[ ] ] ] ]
</div>
}$il[A]saresta's cloven mountain smells of pine and stone. The village deepstones crouch shoulder to shoulder under the grey rain scudding in from the south. Wind moans around the curling clamber of Asaresta's streets. Fog gusts and hurries, thick near the cascading dash of the river, thin as ghosts near the treeline.
Beyond the village, cairns edge last year's fields. Brown pools spread fingerling rills over the terraces, following cantilevered spillways that drip down the mortared retaining walls. Westwards, tangles of aspen shade the switchbacks climbing to the chamois pastures. Rocky outcrops shield stray deepstones from the restless wind.
High on the western edge of the mountain's cleave, iryu deepstone lies quiet: a hare scenting a fox. A scatter of puddles marks the empty dooryard. Behind the deepstone's shutters, a candle flickers, even after dawn.
Inside, Larik thrashes in fever.
(if: (random: 1,6) is 1)[(link-replace: "ϒ her sibling
")[(display: "kell")
](link-replace: "ϒ her friend
")[(display: "nilos")
](link-replace: "ϒ her betrothed
")[(display: "trenon")
] ](else-if: (random: 1,6) is 2)[(link-replace: "ϒ her sibling
")[(display: "kell")
](link-replace: "ϒ her betrothed
")[(display: "trenon")
](link-replace: "ϒ her friend
")[(display: "nilos")
] ](else-if: (random: 1,6) is 3)[(link-replace: "ϒ her betrothed
")[(display: "trenon")
](link-replace: "ϒ her sibling
")[(display: "kell")
](link-replace: "ϒ her friend
")[(display: "nilos")
] ](else-if: (random: 1,6) is 4)[(link-replace: "ϒ her betrothed
")[(display: "trenon")
] (link-replace: "ϒ her friend
")[(display: "nilos")
](link-replace: "ϒ her sibling
")[(display: "kell")
] ](else-if: (random: 1,6) is 5)[(link-replace: "ϒ her friend
")[(display: "nilos")
](link-replace: "ϒ her sibling
")[(display: "kell")
](link-replace: "ϒ her betrothed
")[(display: "trenon")
] ](else:)[(link-replace: "ϒ her friend
")[(display: "nilos")
](link-replace: "ϒ her betrothed
")[(display: "trenon")
](link-replace: "ϒ her sibling
")[(display: "kell")
] ]
{ (if: $allowHints is true)[
(click-replace: "village deepstones")[village deepstones, sprawling, many-winged fieldstone buildings with dripping thatch,]
(click-replace: "Cairns edge last year's fields.")[ Cairns edge last year's fields. This year's fields will be claimed once the rains pass.]
(click-replace: "dooryard.")[dooryard. In better weather, greylags scratch in the open space among the outbuildings, and iryu lays its feast trestles on the thin grass before the guest door.]
(click-replace: "Larik thrashes in fever.")[ $il[Larik] thrashes in fever. She spent the winter coughing, chest rumbling with phlegm she couldn't bring up. Some ninedays she kept to her bed, with healers' songs and leather-wrapped hearthstones keeping her shivers away. Other days she worked at her loom, nearly as fast as before. As the spring rains climbed up from the valleys and damp crept into the deepstone, Larik faded, until the only song the healers could offer was a dirge.] ] }$il[K]ell runs a curry brush over Tyn's flank. The barn smells cleanly of horse, cut hay and shovelled dung; leather in the tack room, rich oats in the barrels. Kell draws out each firm stroke. The old mare foaled most of the other ponies in the barn and stands on his dignity because of it. Once he lowers his nose to snuffle at his manger, the others settle to peaceable chewing. Soon Tyn drowses under Kell's brush. Floating clots of winter under-wool drift in the dim air.
Kell's eyes close. Larik may die, and all fathers can think about is sending Kell out to chores. Water the ponies. Milk the goats. Gather eggs. Kell is fourteen. Almost fifteen. If only Kell could go to Larik's giving--if they give her. If only Kell could see her.
Mothers would never allow it. Have a thought, ono! For the healer, if not for your sister! Almost old enough, yet Kell has never felt younger, with horsehair and straw ground into an unbelted child's tunic. Nilos has been chanting since middlenight, and Kell feels nothing. No tug or tighten, no clenched fist in place of a pumping heart. Kell's throat aches. Breath flows like water between the twin banks of body and ghost. In sickness the breath ebbs. Even the faintest trickle offers hope, but when the last breath dies, the banks sunder. Kell pushes, imagines every exhale a deep cup of well water touched to Larik's cracked lips. Once the ghost struggles free, the body remains, an empty moult.
Kell pours out air until, with a gasp, it rushes back. Spots flicker behind Kell's closed eyes. No vigil song will touch a child.
[[ϒ Mothers and fathers have been muttering, where they think Kell can't hear.->chores]]
[[ϒ If Kell doesn't see Larik now, it may be too late.->begging]] {
(if: $allowHints is true)[
(click-replace: "fifteen.")[ $il[fifteen]. Once Kell comes of age, fathers won't be able to flick their fingers and expect obedience. Kell will have dignity then, place. At fourteen Kell might as well be a suckling infant: loved, patted, and ignored.]
(click-replace: "ono")[ $il[little one]]
(click-replace: "No vigil song will touch a child.")[Through chants and brews, healers channel strength into the dying. They won't risk draining a child's ghost--nor trust one, Kell thinks.] ] } Kell tramps around the deepstone, boots splashing, to the hearthside door. The hearthside is mothers' domain. Kell eases the latch. The vigil drones louder--Nilos, in the loft over the hearthroom. Kell's not stupid. Vigils are for the dying. Even Nilos has exhausted his hope.
Grey light sneaks through cracks in the wooden shutters. The puncheon floor stays bare and swept. Curtained nooks hold a crammed jumble of barrels and sacks. Dried ducks, bills glistening with fat, hang from the rafters, alongside dried bunches of madder, woad, and weld.
When Kell was little, mothers never minded when Kell ran through, or snuggled near the hearth for stories and tev. This winter, with Larik's growing illness, mothers have both grown snappish about Kell giving courtesy before entering. They broom Kell out like a dirty clump of gnarled wool. Mothers tolerate children underfoot, not young people who should know better. No man but a healer spends long on the hearthside. With Larik's decline, mothers set a pallet in the loft rather than have Nilos invade their sleeping room.
Mothers' worry clutters the hearthside. The pots bubbling on the iron range hold healers' brews instead of dyes. The sideboard holds snuffed candles in dried spills of tallow. Bowls of last night's tev litter the trestle table, once stark and scrubbed to a splinterless smooth. Bluebottles buzz over the congealed broth. In the center of the hearthroom, the trap to the undercroft is closed, its planks shining lighter than the rest of the floor. It stays open so often that mothers and sisters dance easily around the dark hole, sliding down the stair ladder and puffing up with wrapped bales on their shoulders. Shayin heaved it shut last night, with a thump that shook the deepstone, after the healer's apprentice nearly fell in. With careful tact, mothers and sisters left it closed, as if ignoring the change will ward off greater disaster.
Kell swings the hearthside door closed, shutting out the rain. For once, the hearthroom is empty. The hallway door stands open, showing a fire kindled in the family room hearth beyond. Everyone sits in miserable tension, staring into the flames. Peris expects guests, however unwelcome. Warming the family room is more than the bone-pickers deserve. Peris probably lit wax candles in the guest hall as well. A waste of good downmountain trading. Cloak flung on a fireside hook, Kell pushes back wet hair, and starts for the ladder up to the loft.
Peris appears at the hallway door. "Boots, Kell."
Disappointment thickens Kell's throat. "But, mother..."
"Boots." Peris moves to the hearth and pokes the banked embers to life. The heavy, wet smell of medicine rises with the smoke. The healer's songs and herbs and compresses are like bad patches of thatch--the rain comes through anyway, and makes everything damp with frustrated hope.
Kell digs heels against the boot-scraper. Peels of black earth come off the leather soles. Larik is dying and mothers care about the state of the puncheon floor.
"That's half your fathers' kitchen garden to be swept out again." With one thin, corded arm, Peris works the bellows lever, the other wielding the poker. A burst of flames rises up from the coals. Peris grunts and pushes a tev pot over the hottest part of the fire. She ladles several scoops of barley into the old broth and reaches overhead for a duck. Good fat mingles with the bubbling grain to freshen the tev.
Kell's mouth waters. No breakfast this morning, and nothing but a skimp of trencher crusts last night. Peris would never waste duck on the family's morning tev. Kell slumps back against the whitewashed wall. "Who's guesting? Is it Ralon again?"
"You'll learn when it's your business."
"What will fathers say to him?" It would serve Ralon right if fathers denied him guesting. He has no standing in this holding. His son is betrothed to Larik but they aren't married yet. "Duck, mother? Are you feeding him, or his holding's good name?" Ralon's son doesn't care about Larik. The betrothal is a contract, not a love bond.
Peris ignores Kell's black look. "Kell, ono! Have a thought."
"Ralon's a raven," Kell says, bridling at the child's pronoun. If Larik dies, Ralon gains silver instead of a wife for his son. "He wants to be the first to peck at Larik's empty shell."
Peris raps a stack of pewter bowls down on a tray and adds a pot of wintergreen liquor. "I need to see to the hosting."
Stamping off the last of the dooryard mud, Kell reaches for a scorched pot holder. "I can take the kettle up to the healer." The medicine smell settles in the back of the throat: spruce strong enough to gag, horsetail fern stinging the nostrils.
"You'll leave the healer in peace!"
It would be so easy to shove over the kettle, send the healer's stinking brew flooding the spotless floor. Not that Peris would abandon her hosting for a mere spill. Ralon's name is too good, his holding too well placed. "You don't care if Larik spends her last breath singing vows to Ralon's son," Kell says.
Peris stops, her shoulders sharp. "Go milk the goats," she says at last, voice flat.
What a shock mothers will have when Kell comes of age and they'll finally owe more consideration than flicking their fingers at unfinished chores. "I did," Kell says, cold with dignity.
Peris doesn't answer. She lifts the tray to her shoulder as easily as a woolsack and sweeps out of the hearthroom.
Leaving the ladder to the loft unguarded. The droning healer's apprentice doesn't have the place to block Kell's way.
But Ralon's voice rises as Peris enters the family room: "You will have no daughters left to marry my son--"
And, tightly, a father's answer: "I have an unmarried child."
He means Kell.
[[ϒ Fathers would sacrifice Kell to save a silverweight, a sop to Ralon's scavenging.->eavesdrop]]
[[ϒ No proper haggle will reach a price before middleday. This might be Kell's last chance to see Larik.->the sickroom]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "not young people who should know better.")[not young people who should know better. A daughter--if Kell comes of age a daughter--will have free run of the hearthside. Sons, and fathers, must give courtesy every time.]
]}Chores were easier before Larik became a woman. Lark loved feeding Tyn oats and blowing breath into his warm velvet nose. Kell stole rides, scrambling up on the mare's patient back, circling around the paddock or up the switchback path to the chamois pastures and sheepfolds, trying all the while to convince Tyn into a choppy trot. Lark laughed when Kell spilled off the side, landing hard enough to shake bones. Tyn whuffled curiously over her fallen rider.
Larik came of age two years ago. She deserted the children's room on the homeside with fathers and joined mothers on the hearthside. The rope-net bed felt chillier without her, though she wasn't there to steal the quilts. Kell pulled on a few of Larik's handmedown robes and straight-woven trousers with braces. The fit was better but they were still a child's clothes.
Larik apprenticed under mothers, learning to weave. Kell wormed into the weavers' hut and watched her, the first lumpy yarn on her spinning wheel easing into perfect skeins. Kell leaned against her shoulder, nudging against her spinning arm like a puppy, until Larik shrugged free. "Go play! Find Trais or somone, ono, I'm busy," she said.
It was the first time she used the child's pronoun on Kell, like she meant it. She wove until her hands cracked red. Most weavers apprentice for years, but mothers paid the advocat to sing Larik's journeyman's rite after five seasons.
Over two years the children's room stops feeling enormous and empty and begins to seem like Kell's due, though everyone else's pallets are tucked in tight rows in their sleeping rooms, with barely a candle nook for each person to call their own. The only other room with a rope-net bed is the pleasure room. For two years, brothers and sisters rush about, apprenticing and marrying and seeing to the holding's place.
Kell can ride any of the holding's ponies, up to the pastures or down to the village, though the old paths pall without anyone to race against. Sometimes fathers, usually Amoz or Grenor, help with the milking, feeding, and mucking out. Once Kell comes of age, fathers and brothers can see to the chores among themselves. Kell will be a daughter like Larik. But not a weaver--a trader. This spring's first traders are already on the move, but there's no one left for Kell to daydream with, no one to tell.
Splashing footsteps outside the barn break the hissing steadiness of the rain. Tyn's head comes up and he snorts, nostrils widening. Kell scowls. No one but a raven would come guesting on a day like this.
"We'll see how sick the girl is!"
Kell knows that voice--Ralon, from irthu holding. He strides through the dooryard like he has a claim to it. He's probably brought Trenon, his snotty son, too. Ralon makes a joke of guesting. He doesn't deserve to grieve with Kell's family. Yes, Larik sang betrothal vows to Trenon, with a fat price to be paid if either side breaks the contract--Kell understands that much! But they aren't married yet. Can't, unless Larik lives. So Ralon hopes to collect. Lip curling, Kell brushes Tyn harder. Ralon's worse than a raven.
[[ϒ Wouldn't it be nice to see Ralon off before he bothers mothers!->confront]]
[[ϒ Or--Kell's brush pauses on Tyn's withers--if mothers twine themselves into knots over the hosting, that means the hearthside will be empty. No one to guard the way up to Larik's pallet in the loft.->begging]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "a trader.")[a trader. A traveller, leading mule strings from village to village, and even as far as the city. Each spring when the rains stop, Asaresta market fills with traders' hawking cries and the clink of silverweights. ]
(click-replace: "became a woman")[became a weaver]
(click-replace: "a child's clothes")[a child's clothes, undyed and dull]
(click-replace: "ono.")[you baby.]
(click-replace: "the child's pronoun")[ono]
(click-replace: "pleasure room")[pleasure room, and spouses rarely claimed that luxury for more than one night in a row]
(click-replace: "raven")[ghost-eater]
(click-replace: "collect")[ see Larik die, and fill his pouch with her family's silver]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "confront")[ $il[K]ell glares down at mud-spattered boots. Peris pets Ralon's ego as she guides him to the family room. All gracious well-wishes and concern for Ralon's wet clothes. Won't you sit closer to the fire... The very sort of place-giving Ralon demands. Peris gifts blood to spring ticks. Kell's treatment of choice includes shoving burning splinters up the nethers.
Kicking through puddles, Kell circles the deepstone to the homeside door. The lulling murmur of Nilos's vigil hums through the thick walls from the hearthside, where mothers have shoved together a hasty sickroom in the loft. Even if Kell's breath doesn't count, there are so many in the holding to draw breath from. Larik can't be dying. Songs make people better. Even vigils--they're meant to ease a ghost's passing, but for someone strong enough, they can help. Not all vigils end in death! Before the rains end, Larik will sing wedding vows with Trenon. The worst Kell needs to dread is a new marriage-brother on the homeside. Shucking wet clothes, Kell heads for the children's room and the clothes press.
Ralon's voice rises loud as Kell pulls on dry trousers: "You will have no daughters left to marry my son--"
And, tightly, a father's answer: "I have an unmarried child."](if: (history:)'s last is "confront")[ Maron](else:)[ $il[M]aron] always rises to Ralon's bait. His words cut cold. He can't mean to marry Kell off to Trenon in Larik's place. A child can't sing a contract.
But Kell comes of age at the turn of the season. Fathers and mothers could name Kell a daughter to give to Trenon. They'd save the contract silver and stop Ralon's sneering short. Even if some fathers wouldn't agree, Maron might force their hands. Every parent has a voice but Peris will speak with Maron, and they've only to convince Grenor to sway the vote.
(if: (history:)'s last is "begging")[Kell spares a glance for the ladder up to the loft. Nilos's singing voice is fine and full, a lulling murmur. With so many in the holding to draw breath from, Larik can't be dying. Not yet. Songs make people //better//. Eventually. Kell sneaks across the guest hall to the homeside.
]The back wall of the homeside sleeping room joins the family room. Brothers complain endlessly about the draught there, from the family room's leaky flues. Kell darts back to brothers' sleeping room and curls up at the chink. Ralon's voice comes through, slightly muffled.
"I grieve with iryu," he says, in plummy, measured tones. "But how will the contract be filled? A child is hardly a substitute for a young woman, a journeyman weaver..."
"We're good for the contract-breaking price," Maron snaps back, with a hint of vicious pride. Ralon's holding certainly can't make the same boast, for all his airs.
Ralon pounces. "So it's a contract broken, then?"
Grenor snorts. "You hover like a raven."
"Does iryu holding claim place?" A pause. Kell imagines Ralon nodding importantly at Trenon. Kell hears chairs creak, and a cough, but if Ralon expects Trenon to jump in to defend their holding's honour, he is disappointed. After a moment, Ralon continues, "Do you hold up your heads while you cheat your betters?"
Stiffly, Maron answers: "As I said. Iryu holding offers a child."
"But no daughter."
"Kell will be fifteen in the spring. If that's not soon enough for you, then don't let it be said that //iryu// holding broke a promised contract."
Kell feels a rough triumph that Maron silenced Ralon, but a sinking stomach takes over. Marry Trenon! Marry anyone, before having the chance to choose: man or woman, daughter or son.
Fathers and mothers cornered Larik. She chose to become a woman, and to weave. They forced Trenon on her, in a bid to claim Ralon's name for iryu holding's grandchildren.
Kell holds a breath until it burns, waiting for fathers to say more. Silence fills the deepstone. Cold air whispers from the crack. The low rhythm of Nilos's healing chant falters, and snags. Breath gone. Body and ghost sundered. Larik is dead.
[[ϒ Kell scrambles up and runs for the loft. They can't wrap Larik before Kell says goodbye.->wrapping]]
[[ϒ Fathers can offer comfort, but mothers will decide if Kell attends the giving.->cusp]] {
(if: $allowHints is true)[
(click-replace: "Peris pets Ralon's ego")[Peris crumples before irthu holding's reputation, grateful for Ralon's condescension]
(click-replace: "place-giving")[deference to his name that]
(click-replace: "Kell's breath doesn't count")[a child can't give strength to the healers' vigil]
(click-replace: "They'd save the contract silver")[They wouldn't have to pay irthu holding for breaking the betrothal contract,]
(click-replace: "a child")[a sibling ono]
(click-replace: "Does iryu holding claim place")[Does iryu holding have honour]
] }{(if: (history:)'s last is "chores")[ $il[M]others and fathers don't need to be hosting on top of everything. Kell slaps Tyn's rump and maneuvers out of the stall.](if: (history:)'s last is "ravens")[ $il[S]plashing footsteps outside the barn break the hissing steadiness of the rain. Kell scowls. No one but a raven would come guesting on a day like this.
"We'll see how sick the girl is!"
Kell knows that voice--Ralon, from irthu holding in Asaresta. He strides through the dooryard like he has a claim to it. He probably brought Trenon, his snotty son, too. Ralon makes a joke of guesting. He doesn't deserve to grieve with them. Yes, Larik sang betrothal vows to Trenon, with a fat contract-breaking price--Kell knows that much! But they aren't married yet. Can't, unless Larik lives. So Ralon hopes to collect. Lip curling, Kell brushes Tyn harder. Ralon's worse than a raven.] Dropping the curry brush in its bucket, Kell slaps horsehair from hands to thighs and pushes the barn door open.}
"We'll have good silver from them if they break this betrothal." Ralon, tall and spare, surveys the dooryard like he plans to build a spring cairn and claim it as his. Mud spatters the hem of his guesting robe, an expensive and well-worked garment--the same one he's worn every morning this nineday. Satisfied anger edges his tenor voice.
His son, Trenon, gazes blandly at the deepstone, as though he expected something subtly better, but has the place not to say so. Like his father, Trenon wears good quality clothes that have been worn to the bone. Ralon's robes may be a haughty reminder of his holding's place, but at least he dresses properly. Trenon's leather trousers and oilcloth cloak make him look like he slid down from the saddle this morning. Clean, perhaps, but patched and stained. He must think his father's place excuses him, or else he intends the insult.
Ralon takes a grip on Trenon's collar, dragging at his attention like a herd dog. "You'll not suffer this humiliation, do you understand?"
Trenon turns from his scornful study of the deepstone. He shrugs lightly, dislodging Ralon's hand. "I'm not as easily embarrassed as you think."
Trenon's flat comment mocks Ralon's place-consciousness, but his condescension grates the same. Trenon sang the betrothal contract with Larik late last summer, with plans for a spring marriage. Since then, Kell could count Trenon's visits on a closed fist. For place alone he should have come courting. Everyone expects a contract marriage. Love spouses come later. But at least most people show themselves willing to try, out of respect for their betrothed. Trenon doesn't care a silverwhit for Larik and doesn't care that it shows. If Larik dies today, Trenon won't grieve. Kell snorts.
Trenon turns at the sound. The hint of scorn in his stare sharpens slightly. Children don't merit respect, having no place to offend.
So Kell takes a breath and says, "Welcome to iryu holding."
Ralon's eyes snap to Kell's face. Greeted by a child, in the dooryard, before he rings the guest chimes--it's a wonderful insult, because he can't retaliate. The youngest in the holding, Kell can use childhood as a weapon. Technically, a child can't know better. Not even a child just shy of fifteen.
Trenon smirks, a sign of approbation that Kell could do without. The insult was meant for him too. They should both leave, denying the holding their so-august presence because of Kell's incivility. Instead, Ralon splashes past Kell to the guest door without a word.
At least Ralon hasn't decided that Trenon's betrothal contract gives him a father's right to enter through the homeside door. Ralon strikes the guest chimes, properly if peremptorily. The pause before anyone answers the door offers him another pointed hint. But Ralon has already long outstayed his welcome. In the jingle of the guest chimes, he hears silver in his pocket--the price he'll collect if Larik dies with the marriage vows unsung.
Kell glares, but neither Ralon nor Trenon notices. Peris, when she ceremoniously opens the guest door, ignores her youngest child just as thoroughly. Peris's only concern is the hosting; even Larik draws the short straw when guests of Ralon's standing come calling. If Kell catches a fever from getting soaked through, mothers and fathers probably won't even notice.
(link: "ϒ Trenon's disdain veils the dooryard in a greyer wash than the rain.")[(goto: "ravens")]
[[ϒ Ralon may demand the silver he's owed while Larik's ghost still clings to her body.->eavesdrop]]
[[ϒ Kell seizes the moment, and sneaks into the deepstone through the hearthside door.->the sickroom]] {
(if: $allowHints is true)[(click-replace: "Love spouses ")[A complete marriage develops over time, wives and husbands married at decent intervals, and those negotiations ]
(click-replace: "raven ")[breath-drinker ]
(click-replace: "Kell knows that much!")[Kell knows that much! Ralon won't rest until he sees his son married to Larik, or else Larik's last breath given. Silver will tumble into his open hands if they marry; more if they don't, through any fault of Larik's.]
(click-replace: "build a spring cairn")[demand land rights]
] }$il[I]t doesn't matter what Ralon wants. Nilos's voice will give out before the vigil chant saves Larik. He must have another song in mind, for when Lariks survives the night. The steaming kettle on the hearth provides the excuse. Kell takes the pot-holder, an old leather rag, and heaves the kettle off the range. Cast iron hisses when it brushes Kell's wet clothes. Kell lugs it up the loft ladder, arms straining not to spill the healer's brew.
Cramped and dark at the best of times, filled with stacks of dye pots and drained kegs, the loft furnishes a poor sickroom. Stout pine beams run the length of the deepstone, lowering the already close roof. The gloomy hosting in the family room keeps most fathers busy, but Amoz's broad shoulders hunch under a knot-stippled rafter, his arms crossed across his chest. Shayin sits on her heels beside Larik's pallet and clings to her thin hand. Despite the rain, Kell's brothers and sisters ought to be in the fields, speculatively jabbing at last year's cairns and plotting the haggle for this year's markers. Instead, they squeeze into the loft, offering breath in vigil.
Larik's breathing is worse. She lets out a bubbling gasp, pauses, then takes another wet draw of air. Kell swallows hard, eyes stinging from the tallow candlesmoke.
Nilos, the healer's apprentice, looks up long enough to see Kell carrying the kettle. He nods to the low tev platform without breaking his song. The hot press of bodies shifts enough for Kell to squirm closer and set the kettle down with a heavy clink. No one moves to nudge Kell back down the ladder.
Larik looks so thin. Her eyes flutter open. She sees Kell and gropes forward with one sallow hand. Kell grasps it and tries to chafe warmth into Larik's icy fingers. Larik's face flushes red, sweat-damp at the temples, but her lips are blue.
The healer's song isn't working. No one says anything, but they must know. Nilos doesn't falter. With damp eyes, he sings clear and low. Larik moves restlessly, coughing deeper, wetter. A healer's song needs more than voice alone. The brew calls the ghost, and a healer's hands work on the body. Nilos hasn't reached for the kettle Kell hauled up from the hearthroom. But then, no healer's brew will help if Larik can't swallow. Nilos should choose another song, a stronger one. He should have called his master when Larik began to fail.
Larik rolls to her side. Her back curls. She can't pull in the air she needs. One rattling gasp, and another. Another. Kell waits for the next, squeezing Larik's hand.
It doesn't come. Everyone else's breath sounds louder in its absence. Tears seep down Shayin's face, and Amoz is crying too. The others shift their feet, and sigh, like they've woken from a dream.
Nilos's voice fades, and draws his song to death's ending. His eyes close. "I will wrap her," he says. His voice shakes, hoarse.
One by one, reluctantly, brothers and sisters start down the stairladder. Shayin shows no signs of moving.
"Kell," Amoz says. "Come. We must prepare for the giving."
Kell tenses, still clasping Larik's hand. "I have nothing to prepare." Children don't attend givings. Amoz wouldn't mock, or say it to be cruel. He simply tends to see Kell as grown already. He hasn't called Kell ono for a season or more. Still, Kell won't go with him if he only means to hand out more chores.
Amoz sighs, and squeezes a heavy hand on Kell's shoulder. "Stay, then. If the healer will have you."
Larik's shell, ghostless, lies slack on the thin pallet. The thought of watching the wrapping twists uncomfortably in Kell's stomach.
Nilos clears his throat, a dry, cracked sound. "You can help if you want," he says, laying a brown hand on Kell's arm.
[[ϒ Without the giving, the wrapping stands in for Kell's farewell.->wrapping]]
[[ϒ Unless mothers can be convinced not to count a mere three ninedays against Kell.->cusp]] {
(if: $allowHints is true)[(click-replace: "vigil chant")[healing song]
(click-replace: "song")[brew]
(click-replace: "brew")[song]
(click-replace: "cairns")[field boundaries]
(click-replace: "offering breath")[lending their strength]
(click-replace: "The healer's song isn't working")[The healer's touch isn't working]
(click-replace: "for the giving")[to give Larik to the ravens]
(click-replace: "ghostless")[her body discarded by its breath]
] }$il[K]ell finds Peris in the hearthroom, already pulling on her good grey cloak. She must be a raven, to have it so close at hand. Kell's sisters, too, are tugging hoods into place and pinning clasps. Their holding is known for its weaving--for Larik's weaving, these past seasons--but that reputation began with Peris's dyeing. Though the cloaks are all grey, sisters each wear a different hue: rock under ice, sun through cloud, water-weathered pine. Giving cloaks, like children's clothes, close at the throat instead of by right-knotted belts, so that Kell's sisters barely even look like women. They're spectral, unadorned, nearly shells themselves.
"Mother." Kell's voice cracks on tears. "I would--I want to go with you to the giving."
Peris's fingers move restlessly, tugging her cloak to the right and then picking at the nap before letting it fall. "You'll stay here. See to any visitors. If the healers want for anything, help them."
Are chores all anyone can think of to give a child to do? Kell swallows and tries again. "Larik was my sister." And more desperately: "I know the giving songs."
Peris meets Kell's eyes then. She reaches out and grips Kell's shoulder, her hand a tight weight. "I know you loved her, Kell. I know you grieve her, as we will all grieve her for many seasons. But think. A child has no place. Which part would you sing?"
"I don't have to sing," Kell tries, fighting down skin-hot anger. Peris would leave a child to oversee the hosting, but can't stand to be seen to include a child in the giving procession.
"Kell." Peris's stillness reminds Kell of the moment before she steps into the family room to greet guests; the pinched mouth that precedes a hosting smile. "You are a child. We can't take you to the giving. Don't make everyone feel worse when we leave."
Kell's words burst out like the thaw when the icebridges break. "It's three ninedays! I can't say goodbye to Larik because she died today instead of summer? Mother, you'll all--get to sing her giving--and I'll be alone." They'll keep Kell from Larik, and then demand that Kell take her place in the marriage contract? They aren't two silverwhits, standard weight and interchangeable. "You want me to stay in the empty holding with the healers who let her die."
Peris's grey eyes empty out like a pitcher spilling well-water. "How you ever expect to be treated as an equal when you insist on these tantrums--"
"But I'm not treated like an equal." Even at fourteen Peris still calls Kell ono. Some days Peris acts surprised to discover she still has a child living on the homeside. "I'm not even allowed in the family room. I'll host your guests after the season turns, if that's so important."
"Fine," Peris snaps, showing teeth like a marten. "This holding has place to maintain, and Larik's death makes it no easier. If you think so little of your holding, you can embarrass yourself elsewhere."
She marches out the hearthside door. Sisters follow her quietly. (either: "Varin's pained look accuses Kell of sparking the fight. Larik's giving offers her the excuse to act like iryu's highest-placed daughter again.","Katir probably didn't even register Kell's plea; she sees through mere siblings like place-ghosts. Larik thought so, before she came of age.","Belim sends Kell a sympathetic look. Her hand squeezes Kell's on her way past. She, at least, never resented Larik for her talent.")
Kell trails after them, anger chilling. Fathers and brothers shuffle out the homeside door, and everyone congregates in the dooryard like a collection of motherless grouse chicks. Amoz sees to the harnessing of Brys, a sturdy gelding. Varin and Katir lift Larik's wrapped ghost-shell to the pony's back. They tie her in place like so many trade goods.
Ralon stands with the men, his dark guesting robe a slash of biting colour among the holdings' greys. His distant, dignified sorrow makes a worse giving mask than the embroidered robe. Yet he lingers next to Maron as though he might join the giving procession without the family noticing. Grenor blocks him, a bluff, polite herd dog. Terse hosting smiles see Ralon set on the road back to Asaresta. Did Kell look no better than that placeless snob, asking to go to the giving? Kell bites down on a lip and fades back under the deepstone eaves. Passing gusts blow little showers from the overhanging branches, down Kell's collar. From there, Kell catches a glimpse of Trenon--not waiting for his father, and not heading back to the village either. He strides around the deepstone to the path that winds among the pines up to the byres. There's nothing up there but trees and sheep and chamois and rocks and ice. Probably still more comfortable than his father's deepstone.
Sun trickles through the thinning rain, illuminating the giving procession like a scrap of fallen clouds. They leave in a squelching pull of hooves. Kell's married brothers will join them in Asaresta proper, called out from their deepstones. The procession will take the east road out of the village and climb towards the giving place, a high crag near the pass that leads to Asarvinya, the village-next.
When they sing the giving, Larik's ghost becomes wind. Her shell tumbles from the steep edge. Sharp-eyed ravens circle to the feast.
The family won't be back until after dark, carrying wax-candle lanterns, exhausted, wet, and cold. If Peris has her way, Kell will be stuck with the cooking and fire-tending on hearthside and homeside both, and the family room as well, for guests' comfort. With a chance to display the holding's place, Maron won't stint the firewood or the candles.
[[ϒ Kell can't leave, if a good hosting ensures Larik's name stays known in Asaresta.->guilt]]
[[ϒ But there's an outcropping above the deepstone, opposite the eastern crag. Kell can scramble there in a candlemark's time, and watch the giving's end.->woods]] {
(if: $allowHints is true)[
(click-replace: "be a raven")[ have felt Larik's death at the vigil's end]
(click-replace: "Their holding")[ Iryu holding, rich and growing richer as place follows silver, ]
(click-replace: "a child")[a sibling ono]
(click-replace: "still calls Kell ono")[still calls Kell a child]
(click-replace: "This holding has place")[This holding has a reputation]
(click-replace: "ghost-shell")[breathless body]
(click-replace: "the giving?")[Larik's final flight?]
] }$il[B]are moments after Larik's ghost parts from her body, fever dims from her cheeks. Sallow shadows sink under her eyes, and in the hollow of her throat.
Kell slumps beside the pallet. Although sisters and brothers keep their voices to murmurs, and move carefully around the loft, the deepstone spills over with sudden noise. On their way to the loft ladder, they jostle the old pots and find sharp creaks in the floorboards. Below the loft, the family room fills with the clink of the wintergreen wine against mug rims. Only Kell and Shayin stay for the wrapping. The rest will have the giving, after all.
Shayin takes Larik's quilts and folds them one by one, neatly, pointlessly. They won't be strewn with fleabane and stored in a clothes press until winter. Nilos's master told them from the beginning that all Larik's things must be burned, and cleansing songs brewed to banish fever from the loft.
Nilos loosens Larik's garments and slides them from her body, so that she lies naked on the pallet. He calmly brings out the linens, and Kell's stomach twinges. The pattern of threads, in fog greys and slate greys, is Larik's work. The idea of wrapping Larik in her own weaving is faintly horrifying, as though she's smothering herself with her own hands.
Nilos pours the steaming brew from the kettle to a small ewer. Dipping a clump of soft chamois under-wool into the liquid, Nilos begins to wash Larik, tenderly as a father with a new baby.
Sickness threatens to rise up Kell's throat. The kettle held a cleansing song, not a healing brew. Nilos asked the family to offer their breath in vigil because he'd already given up. He had nothing to give, at the end. The cleansing song's astringent smell cuts through the thick air in the loft--all the heat from the hearthroom, all the damp from their clothes and the rain-saturated thatch. Kell cuts off a choked sound, and asks, "You knew she was going to die."
Nilos sits back, his strong brown hands loose in his lap. Kell sees the tightness around his eyes, the flattening of his lips. He's angry. At Kell?
"No," he says. His voice scratches, dry as a summer streambed. "Healers can't know. But we knew she was weakening."
That was why they'd offered the vigil last night. Larik's ghost wasn't listening to any other songs. But Nilos still shouldn't have acted like the vigil itself was hopeless! "You have the wrappings," Kell accuses. "And the wash--"
Nilos sighs, the deliberate exhale pushing tension from his shoulders. Kell takes it like a stab. He sits back on his heels and glances at Shayin. Her brown face is calm and open but tears course down her cheeks. Larik once said that Shayin wasn't only her second mother, but her borne mother too. If Nilos hopes for some sign from Shayin, she offers none, but waits limply for him to proceed, salt dripping from her chin.
"A healer always carries wrappings," Nilos says at last.
Kell tries to call forth an even, accepting expression like Shayin's, but a blush of embarrassed anger rises up through it. //Must we interrupt our mourning for a child's questions?// Nilos's calming words sound like a lie. He knew.
"Because the body must be wrapped before it becomes stiff," Nilos continues. "And I brewed the cleansing song not because we knew Larik would die, but because when someone is fever-ill, everything must be cleaned. Otherwise the fever lingers in a room, and can spread through the holding."
Kell nods miserably, throat sore and tight. The moment Nilos sang the first note of the vigil song, they all must have realized, and no one admitted anything to Kell.
"Kell," Nilos says--he sounds tender, despite his song-broken voice. Kell hates his gentleness even as it soothes. "This is our last time with Larik. Help me hold her."
Moving forward is like walking upriver against a torrent. Larik's limbs splay loose and awkward. Nilos strains to lift her, although Kell can see the gauntness in her cheeks and collarbones. Larik coughed through most of the past season, chest rumbling with phlegm she couldn't bring up. Some ninedays she kept to her bed, with healers' songs and leather-wrapped hearthstones keeping her shivers away. Other days she worked at her loom, nearly as fast as before. Peris and Shayin kept the weaving hut's cast iron stove well-stoked, though Maron grunted over how fast the firewood went. Nilos visited often--more than Trenon bothered to!--to offer songs, and brews, and company. Ralon only stirred himself to come sniffing around as Larik's ghost resisted the healing brews, deaf to Nilos's songs.
Nilos directs Kell to hold Larik from behind. He washes her in long, firm strokes, outwards from her lungs, down along her arms to her fingertips, then from hips to toes. Her shell looks so empty without clothes. Kell hasn't seen Larik's body uncovered for a year or more. When they were children, they swam together in the rocky pools where the stream widened above the holding. Lark was all breath, all laughter, slender and limber. Her shell is nothing without breath and ghost. Kell feels tears falling, bound up in the sharp smell of the wash. Nilos's hoarse voice sounds again, a song for cleansing, for dying, for giving.
Larik's body cools under Kell's touch. Shayin folds Larik's limbs so that Nilos can make his first passes with the wrappings. Knees to chest, arms around knees, head bent forward. Kell finger-combs Larik's black hair into a loose queue. No braids or plaiting sticks, in death. And then, more wrappings. The grey linen strips cross back and forth until Larik disappears like the valley in a fog.
[[ϒ Shayin's placid weeping gives Kell hope. Mothers might be open, after all, to Kell joining the giving procession.->cusp]]
[[ϒ Kell knows every marmot den and bird's nest in the pastures above iryu. Forbidden or not, Kell might yet watch the giving.->woods]]
(link-goto: "ϒ Despite Nilos's calm during the wrapping, his anger lingers.","comfort") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "her borne mother too.")[her borne mother too. Skeptical, Kell asked what difference it made which of fathers and mothers bore her. Whichever parent bore Kell has never stepped forward to say so. They try not to make meaningless divisions among the holding's children. Larik said it wasn't different from not knowing, except she understood Shayin better.]
]}$il[I]n a fit of pride, Kell rushes to shovel ashes and lay new fires in every hearth in the deepstone. With the flues open and quick-burning pine, Kell kindles fires that will spread to logs of downmountain hardwood. Warmth spreads through the deepstone, pushing flickering shadows to the corners.
Kell sets out wax candles in silver holders in the guest hall and family room, tallow and brass on hearthside and homeside. Fathers and mothers think they can buy place with wealth. Well, they're not wrong. They negotiated Larik's betrothal contract the same way, dangling silver in front of Ralon to tempt his name's pride.
Kell clears dishes from the family room sideboard, throws old tev into the goats' bucket, scrubs shine into the good pewter plate. Fetching dandelion wine and a small keg of barley beer to flavour tev, takes less than a moment in the undercroft. Still the deepstone echoes empty. Family or guest, no one will be back for ages. And there's the path upmountain, still--
Cloak and boots push themselves into Kell's hands. A climb will burn out restlessness. Head down, Kell pushes into the rain like a plough mule into the traces. The cold wet air tastes fresher with every breath. Kell scrambles up above the holding, hiking steadily for the overlook.
[[ϒ A murmurring voice breaks through the falling rain.->tableau]] {
(if: $allowHints is true)[
(click-replace: "wax candles")[bright-burning candles, bought from downmountain traders,]
(click-replace: "tallow and brass")[and flickery, dim ones in green-rubbed sconces]
(click-replace: "place")[their neighbours' esteem]
(click-replace: "tev")[barley porridge with juniper berries]
] }$il[K]ell ducks into the homeside as soon as Brys's swishing tail disappears around the first bend in the trail. Once, Kell shared the children's room with enough siblings to argue over place with, scattering whittled puzzles and stitched dolls on the room's three splintery shelves. But they became sisters and brothers, so Kell stretches out alone each night on feathers and pineboughs, and arranges every shelf just so.
Kell shoves through a small pile of work clothes, and one good outfit. Nothing belted or laced in patterns, yet. Kell chooses a quilted tunic, and hooks braces to clean canvas trousers. Kell tugs on the clothes, smoky and warm from their pegs near the chimney. A dry pair of boots eases ice from Kell's toes. Children don't wear grey, but long use has worn Kell's short cloak of undyed wool to a dusky, mousy shadow. It will do.
Kell pushes out the homeside door and takes the duckboard path around the deepstone. Past the well, a narrow path scales the pines' roots like a ladder. Mud slurries down the steep track. Kell places each foot carefully, breath a steady pull with the effort of climbing. Twisting an ankle or breaking into a childish bout of tears helps nothing.
The underbrush fades as the pines overspread the path. Mud disappears under a pad of orange needles. Wind creaks and sways in the higher branches.
There's a voice! Kell looks up to see the root-and-earth tangle at the base of a downed tree. Kell hasn't reached the treeline yet. After the pastures open out, chamois huddle in the hollows, and the sheep mutter in flocks, careful to keep open ground around them. Shepherds wait out the rain in their open-sided huts, grumbling over fires and billy cans of tev. No travellers from villages-next would scrape over the sheer western side of Asaresta's cleave. Kell saw Trenon come this way. A second voice joins the first, speaking low, muffled by the soft earth. They haven't moved. What would Trenon be doing up in the chamois pastures, in the wet? And who's with him?
Kell came for solitude, and silence, not Trenon's jeers. If Kell leaves the path and cuts through the trees, soon the pastures will open out, above the pines. Kell can avoid him and whoever he's talking to.
[[ϒ But what could Trenon be doing?->tableau]]$il[T]he trail curves around the head-high span of a fallen tree's unearthed roots. Kell pauses, then inches around to see.
Past the switchback, a jut of lichened stone wrapped in pine roots offers a level resting spot. Nilos leans back against the dead fir's trunk, probably getting sap in his cloak. Trenon stands in front of him, chest pushing into Nilos's. Their breath mists damply together; the murmur Kell heard was a kiss.
[[ϒ Kell eases back before being seen.->child's play]]
[[ϒ Furious, Kell strides forward.->betrayal]]$il[K]ell shoves a hand through tangled hair. Grown men acting like children. Sneaking out to kiss in the woods--children of thirteen, fourteen, lark around playing those games. Mothers and fathers smile and shake their heads, or murmur that they remember being ono. But fifteen-year-olds know better. Kell's best friend Trais--Trayis, a woman for four ninedays already--she and Kell haven't kissed since she came of age.
Nilos is Larik's age, seventeen. Trenon passed his coming of age three years ago. Not to mention he's a journeyman advocat! He's supposed to uphold the honour of the contract songs he crafts. So he was Nilos's sweetheart, once. Pleasure is no excuse.
Small wonder Trenon never courted Larik. He'd rather pretend he's still a child. He doesn't have to work hard to convince Kell! And Nilos lets him. Kell doesn't know whether to stomp away in contempt or tell them off for such placeless nonsense.
[[ϒ The morning after Trayis came of age, Kell learned that lesson.->outpaced]]
[[ϒ Kell refuses to waste time challenging Trenon.->giving]]
[[ϒ Nilos, though, deserves to hear how much he's disrespecting Larik's name.->betrayal]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "she and Kell haven't kissed since she came of age.")[she and Kell haven't kissed since she came of age. Their parents will arrange their marriages, first to a husband, and someday, to love spouses. They'll never find each other in the woods as they once did.]
]}$il[T]renon draws back from the kiss, and he says something, a murmur. Nilos actually laughs, soft and raspy. He laughs, while Kell's family prepares to tip Larik's ghost shell into Asaresta ravine. His shoulders relax against the pine and he tilts his head back, his pale grey eyes distant and dreamy. Then he sees Kell coming, a bull elk shouldering through the branches. With a jerky shove, he steps away from Trenon. His full lips set in a thin line.
Trenon twists around, and glares when he sees Kell. "It's the child bride," he says. The ugly phrase stitches a child's ono inflection to the feminine bride.
"//Your// father forced the contract," Kell snaps back. Anyone with place would have let the contract lapse gracefully.
Trenon raises his eyebrows, counting a point scored. "Shouldn't you be seeing to your holding's famed hosting?"
Kell's fists knot. "There's nothing wrong with iryu's hosting that fewer leeches wouldn't cure." Ralon drinks their best downmountain fruit wine and eats bowl after bowl of rich tev, expecting the entire holding to wait on him. Fathers grind their teeth, scrambling after Ralon's dropped place-crumbs, while sisters and brothers sweat to keep up with the holding's work and care for Larik too.
Trenon's smirk doesn't budge. "Tallow candles in the loft and homeside, beeswax in the family room? Your holding buys place with boasts."
The insult doesn't sting as much as knowing Trenon means it to. He wants to bully Kell to silence. If he wanted, he could use his advocat's place to force Kell's obedience, by threatening to withhold contract songs. Kell wouldn't put it past Trenon to impugn place for no better reason than to hide his invertism. And fathers propose a marriage between them! Kell would rather come of age a boy. Let the contract shatter. "You don't even care that Larik is dead," Kell says, with a level stare at Trenon, and a cold voice intended for Nilos.
"It's not like that." Nilos steps around Trenon and comes forward, open pity on his face. "I miss her more than you know."
"Do you think you can comfort me?" Kell asks. Larik claimed Nilos as her friend, once, and this is how he mourns her. "I should tell your holding you play invert in the forest."
[[ϒ The blood drains from Nilos's face.->snare]]
[[ϒ Trenon grips Nilos's arm to steady him. "You'll do no such thing, you little rattlesnake!"->snarl]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "by threatening to withhold contract songs.")[by threatening to withhold contract songs. Advocats can shun contract-breakers, refusing them marriages, apprenticeships, or wages from a season's labour.]
]}$il[T]he morning after Trayis comes of age, Kell wakes to fathers stirring in the sleeping room next door. Kell creeps out into the morning chill and crunches frost down to Asaresta. Clumps of earth froze to the track overnight. Kell shivers under linens, wool, and oilcloth. During her rite, Trayis shivered, naked, when the master advocat stripped off a drab child's robe, and replaced it with Trayis's first belted tunic. Kell kicks at the ruts. For someone raised among dye pots, with mothers and sisters splashed woad and ochre, wearing children's clothes feels worse than sombre; it's so purposely unnecessary. Trayis's robe yesterday at the rite was gorgeous. Summer-sky blue and a deep, lovely purple, all in right-flowing lines. Kell's breath caught, seeing Trayis tug her belt into place at waist and chest. A proclamation. Here is a miner, like her sisters!
Trayis hugged Kell, after, but said nothing about Kell's tears. She pranced off, spry as a new kid.
Kell couldn't sleep all night. Owls called; raccoons scrabbled through the deepstone's compost. This morning, Trayis's mothers won't let her loose after chores. She'll hike up to the mine and spend the day underground, eating in the gleam of candle lanterns, coming home too weary to play.
Kell steals through the grey cold and stops in the shadow of a field cairn, not daring to ring irvu deepstone's guest chimes. Trayis lives with her sisters on the hearthside. The door cracks open and Trayis's sisters step out, stamping booted feet against the cold. Trayis peeks out after them, her hands lost in the sleeves of her long woman's coat.
Kell hesitates a moment longer, then calls, "Trayis?"
Trayis smiles like sunrise. Before her mothers call her back, she darts to Kell's side. They fall into a hug. Kell's dull clothes feel like twilight next to Trayis's midday, but Trayis's breath is warm on Kell's neck, her hands hot against Kell's ice.
"Kell," she whispers. "I've missed you already. Isn't that stupid?"
Kell wrings Trayis's hands, stepping back to a careful distance. "You braided your hair." Someone--probably Trayis's oldest sister Ganil--tied her brass curls down tight, except around her ears, and at the lovely hint of her nape. "You look so grown up." You, child-inflected. Kell flushes hot. "You look beautiful." But that's worse, the sound of the feminine //you//, singing like a man's compliment.
"I can't stay," Trayis says. "Oh, Kell--"
They both flinch at the sound of Kell's childname.
"Trayis," Kell answers, but the delicious tingle that name held once falls flat.
The sun's first piercing red rolls up over the eastern range. Trayis's mothers lift bucket lunches to their shoulders. Ganil leaves the gathering, walks the ten sharp steps across to them. She takes Trayis by the hand to draw her away.
"Come on, Trayis," she says. But Kell hears her as they turn away: "You can't play with children any more."
[[ϒ Neither Trenon nor Nilos are children. They can't pretend their stupid game is innocent.->betrayal]]
[[ϒ Why can other people break the rules, but never Kell? Disobeying Peris feels necessary, an assertion of place.->giving]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Here is a miner, like her sisters!")[Here is irvu's newest daughter!]
(click-replace: "childname")[childname. Trayis uses another name, when they're alone in the woods, when they play at being grown, when they daydream about finding lost gold mines or trading in the city]
]}$il[R]avens nest in the bare valleys east of the Asaresta ravine. Clatters of rock pile at the base of the gully below the giving place. Flash floods burst down its center when the ice melts in early summer, uncovering jumbles of white bone. Ravens snatch at the splinters, fly with heavy wingbeats to the heights, then drop them on the stones to crack them for their marrow. Over time, sand and wind rub the dry bones smooth.
The rain returns by the time Kell reaches the western overlook. Mist dims the far side of the ravine. Ravens swoop overhead, following the grey procession. Many of them, hunched and raucous, have grown tame, or perhaps only greedy.
Kell braces boots against the tip of the overlook's false peak, straining to see more than smudged figures. A spark--Maron must have lighted the taper to burn Larik's fever clothes. The fire struggles, slow to catch in the rain. A few smoky shapes pass in front of it. Someone pours an ewer of oil over the pallet, and orange flames flare.
Then the wide-winged soar of a raven turns into a stoop. A second follows it, and the rest dive to catch up. Larik's shell is given.
Kell knows the giving song's harmonies, though no sound reaches the overlook through the distance and the rain. Fathers and brothers sing the acceptance of death. Mothers' and sisters' voices rise with them, singing the remembrance that keeps Larik's name in the holding. //May she be known//. Kell's mouth opens, but the song catches and sticks. Throat closed, Kell tastes tears that fall warmer than rain.
[[ϒ Peris is right; in Larik's giving, no part is Kell's to sing.->insight]]
(link-goto: "ϒ The rain worsens as Kell descends. Old dead firs stay dry in downpours. Kell trusts a fire more than the treacherous path.","conciliation") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Larik's shell is given.")[Larik's shell is given. Ravens can fight off the fewer but larger bustards, as well as the thieving jays and magpies. They'll peck and tug open the wrappings. Then Larik's ghost will join them in flight.]
]}$il[K]ell's mouth snaps shut, body wired with tension. The threat came out without a plan, without Kell meaning to tell anyone. If Larik had lived, Kell would tell her without hesitation. Larik deserved to know Trenon's an invert, and with Nilos--her so-called friend.
A season ago, Kell might have whispered the secret to Trayis, but since Trayis became a woman she doesn't have time for Kell. She couldn't keep quiet, anyway. She'd accuse Kell of making up stories, a bad joke to provoke gags and groans. And Kell doesn't have the place to tell Trenon's master, Dalor. Dalor might side with Trenon, anyway, and then what? Seek out a travelling advocat to judge them both?
Perhaps Kell ought to have backed away instead of barging out of the woods, and brought the news back to fathers and mothers, quietly. Whether or not Kell's family cares that Trenon's an invert, they'd happily use it against his holding if it meant gaining a place advantage. Shayin hides the holding's full wealth when traders visit, hedges amounts and values, hesitates before naming a final price. Trenon might lose his journeyman status if his master finds out. If Kell wants to stay free of him, it only requires spreading a word.
If Kell chooses to dangle a kiss like a bargaining chip. A kiss they didn't mean for Kell to see.
Trenon sets his jaw, his angular face sharpening. He must see Kell's hesitation. "You'll have a hard time poisoning my holding against me any more than they are already," he says. "Why do you think they're so eager to be rid of me in the first place?"
"For silver," Kell snaps back. Now that fathers voiced the threat--they may marry Kell to this man--giving in on any particular will mean losing the bargain. Trenon's four years older and a journeyman. Kell needs other levers to stake place with him. "If they could trade you at market for more, they would."
Trenon's anger melts into a crooked grin. He looks so...friendly. Handsome, even, when he ducks his head and chuckles. Kell blinks at Nilos, who watches Trenon with a tense, tight mouth, but tenderness in his eyes. So Trenon can laugh at himself. Bitterness edges his voice when he says, "The only person you'd hurt is Nilos, if that's what you want."
Kell's a worm on that hook. Tearing down Trenon's place holds its appeal. Ripping Nilos out of his apprenticeship feel crueler. Kell resents his stifling compassion but Larik always held him dear. He spent so many nights with her, not charging silver for the brews he brought her, singing out his strength for her.
Kell nods to Trenon, without making any promise. A trader doesn't fill her pouch by letting silverwhits slip away.
Trenon lays a gentle hand on Nilos's arm, strokes up to cup the back of Nilos's neck. Kell looks away.
"You're going to the giving, aren't you?" he asks.
He must know the path well, and the overlook. Kell says, "They wouldn't let me go with the procession."
Nilos smiles. "Sometimes we do what we shouldn't." He reaches up to grip Trenon's hand, before slowly shrugging away from his touch.
Trenon drops his hand, without rancor, and smiles again, that surprising curve of lips. "Not such a child after all."
Kell feels a tug of warmth for him, despite his prickliness. He's right about one thing: neither of them wants to marry. And Kell won't be a child long.
(link-goto: "ϒ Trenon starts back down the path, but Nilos settles on the rock, as though he means to stay under the dead fir branches until the rain washes him away.","conciliation")
[[ϒ Releasing anger, Kell squares shoulders and heads up towards the overlook.->giving]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Trenon might lose his journeyman status if his master finds out.")[Trenon might lose his journeyman status if his master finds out. He might lose the place to sing any contracts at all--ownership, labour, marriage.]
]}$il["I]'ll tell your father, too," Kell says, willing Trenon to wilt before the threat. Was there ever such a childish phrase? Kell reaches for a stronger weapon. If Trenon breathes a hint of song-refusal, Kell will go to his master. Dalor shows favouritism but he wouldn't abide Trenon's coercion--Kell has to believe that. "Don't expect me to marry you to save your reputation."
Unlike his father, Trenon condescends to argue with a placeless child. He stands higher than Kell on the ledge, and steps in to loom closer, vicious. "If you think I ever wanted to marry a little snip like you--or your sister--you are sadly mistaken."
Larik deserved better than him. "I hope the contract silver warms your pleasure room, because I won't." Matching Trenon's spite, after mothers' and fathers' dismissals, gives Kell a hot thrill.
"My parents sell me for silver; yours pant after nothing but my name and my place. Your little tales won't stop their lust."
"Trenon," Nilos says mildly, before Kell hurls another barb. He regained his colour, but he looks sad as a mountain. "Is this helping?"
"You can't set a child straight with kindness," Trenon says, one shoulder twisting as though to brush off a mosquito. "They don't have the place."
The barrier crashes down again. Trenon's a man, Kell's a child. Well, if fathers and mothers force a marriage, that won't last. Trenon will come to Kell's holding; he can't plead his father's place then.
Nilos nudges Trenon behind him and says to Kell, "We'd all be better off in dry clothes. Come back with us?"
Kell hears the scratchy catch in his quiet voice. He spent an entire night singing vigil for Larik. He poured as much of his breath into the song as Kell's family did, even though he knew it wouldn't save her. His pale eyes shine earnest, and he holds out a closed fist, offering a trader's bargain. Isn't he going to ask Kell not to tell? Or does he think his birch-sap compassion will convince Kell to keep his secret?
Kell ignores Nilos's hand. He might have been Larik's friend once, but she died and he met Trenon in the woods. He mocks her giving, playing sweethearts with her betrothed. "I'm going to the giving," Kell says.
Trenon laughs. He looks up the path, and clearly remembers the overlook at its far end, the sharp view over the ravine. "Good for you," he says. He offers Kell a grin, a sudden conspiracy. "You're her family too. You should be there."
Kell nods, struck by his approval, his abrupt genuine warmth. For all his prickliness and place-insults, it feels like Trenon sees Kell as a person, not just a child.
If Kell tells his father what he and Nilos have been up to, Trenon might even be pleased. Nilos fears rumours, but Trenon looks like he'd welcome them. He still thinks Kell can't touch his place.
To prove it, Trenon takes Nilos's hand. "Let's get down," he says, with brusque tenderness. Nilos squeezes his hand and shakes his head, drawing back and sinking into himself. Trenon sighs, but he accepts more easily than Kell thought he would. He leaves, without looking back.
[[ϒ Kell squares shoulders and heads up towards the overlook.->giving]]
(link-goto: "ϒ Nilos settles on the rock, as though he means to stay under the dead fir branches until the rain washes him away.","conciliation") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Trenon looks like he'd welcome them.")[Trenon looks like he'd welcome them. He'd throw out his chest to prove how much he doesn't care. Walk head-high through the village as cruel whispers follow him. ]
]}$il[L]eading the returning procession, Grenor opens the guest door after moonrise. Representatives from every Asaresta holding gather in the family room. Wet, steaming cloaks drape the hooks in the guest hallway. Varin and Belim drag stools from the loft, fetch another keg from the undercroft. Katir disappears into the hearthroom and fills a tev cauldron with barley flour to hide the thin broth. They've learned at Peris's knee to prize the importance of place. Amoz hands out mugs and then a variety of bowls and plate. Grenor circles with a flask and adds heat for those who ask.
Seeing the rooms lit and warm, Peris tucks Kell into a tight hug. Kell stiffens in her arms, fighting down the urge to lash out. Peris settled every guest and accepted every condolence before she sought Kell. But her eyes look large in their sockets, her grey eyes dark, skin thin over pointed collarbones. Kell gives courtesy, and slips away.
Peris settles into a leather hammock chair and accepts the mug Amoz presses into her hands. She catches his hand and presses it to her hollow cheek, her eyelashes damp against her cheekbones. Amoz leans down to kiss the top of her head. Peris has hosted Ralon this past nineday. But the first spring traders are due with the last of the rains, and she has been working herself to candlestubs to finish as many bales of piece-dyed wool as she can. Shayin watched over Larik, but Peris watched over Shayin.
Kell hangs back, outside the family room door. Kell used to creep into the family room and curl in the dim corners to listen. Three ninedays from fifteen, fathers' and mothers' frowns would chase Kell from the gathering with the guests' mutters following after. Kell may not have place, but guests' offended mutters don't distinguish.
Kell lost a shield with Larik's death. Everyone begrudges a child underfoot when they've lost a daughter. What do they want, anyway? What do they expect?
They want Kell to be a child.
Kell pulls up straight and takes a step back from the door. They don't want Kell, not because they don't want Kell, but because givings aren't for children. Maybe they wish Kell could have said farewell. Maybe they want that more than anything. But it wouldn't have been right, and there's no way to say so. Peris, snappish and distant, can't gift any thanks that wouldn't feel like a pat on the head and a piece of birch sugar candy.
Kell leaves the guest hallway and moves through the empty hearthside. Up the ladder, the loft is more disorganized than ever after Belim's search for chairs. The low roar of conversation seeps up from below, fading occasionally to strained silence. Heat radiates from the family room's two chimneys. Kell sits back against the hot stone and watches the ebb and flow of candlelight through a chink in the floorboards.
Remnants of Larik's ghost crowd the loft's corners. She kept pieces of herself under the cluttered storage. Kell touches thread-ends and handwork abandoned halfway through, and opens a pressing book of dried flowers that Larik studied for her weaving patterns. The small scrimshaw that she loved, a tiny loom with a shuttle that moved, lies on its side between two stained dye pots.
[[ϒ Just when Kell thought sadness had wrung itself out, tears come again.->afterwards]]
[[ϒ Bunching the child's cloak makes a pillow; Kell lays it on the floor, and curls in the empty spot where Larik's pallet should be.->visitant]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Peris watched over Shayin.")[Peris watched over Shayin, bringing her tev and tea and drawing her softly to mothers' sleeping room. Shayin came in with the others but wandered into the hearthroom and sat down in her soaked clothes, pale as pinewood, until Katir guided her into the sleeping room. A second wife usually shoulders the weight of the hosting, but not today.]
]}$il[B]oots on the ladder wake Kell the next morning. Amoz, shaggy head damp from a quick scrub, tiptoes through the mess. "Have you been up here all night?" he asks, not ungently. "You're like to get the fever."
"What if I did?" Kell challenges. Would it inconvenience Maron's pony-trading with Ralon? The thought sounds like something Trenon would say. Kell tucks it behind teeth.
Amoz drops down beside Kell, his big arms wrapped around his knees. "It would be quite a mourning to lose a child so soon after a daughter."
Stiff from a night on the floor, Kell bristles at Amoz's notions of teasing. "I'm not going to catch fever from the floor."
"Ah, as the healers have it, you can catch it from the very air." Amoz waves at Larik's bits and pieces, arranged into a careful pile near Kell's bunched cloak. "That's to burn."
[[ϒ Kell nudges the tiny woodwork loom with a toe. Amoz would have to say no, so Kell won't bother to beg.->whittled]]
[[ϒ Kell runs a fingertip over a patch of silkweave to feel its softness. "We can't burn it."->patches]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Amoz drops down beside Kell, his big arms wrapped around his knees.")[Amoz drops down beside Kell, his big arms wrapped around his knees. As iryu's youngest husband he watches over Kell, and Larik before she came of age.]
]}$il[K]ell slides down the loft ladder to the hearthroom. The hearth sulks under a sweep of ash. Dishes crowd the sideboards. It feels peculiar to start the day after the giving like any other, but the goats need milking, and Kell must pick eggs before the greylags get broody.
The day dawned fine and clear, and promises hot in the afternoon. Shoots of green stipple the dooryard, unfurling out of yesterday's churned muck. Crocuses poke out purple heads in the sheltered corners. Kell sets about the chores, fuelled by resentful pride. Shayin let the fire go out, and sisters haven't touched a scrub pad. Kell hauls water until the cistern brims.
A whinny sounds from the track and Kell pauses, panting, the last bucket half-slopped into the ponies' trough. Kell squints into the sun, listening for the creak of tack and the "Hup!" of outriders. Then the horse, a great bay, appears through the trees.
The first spring trader! Zayelik! With a full nine of mules in her string and six outriders on ponies. No mountain trader can load so many mules. Zayelik must be down from Asaresta pass this morning. She trades overmountain first and passes through Asaresta on her way back to the city.
Zayelik reins her horse into the dooryard. The outriders circle the string, checking for stragglers or loose cinches and then settle into their saddles with the easy sway of hammocks. Zayelik jumps down, landing lightly, with a trader's easy swagger.
Kell clings to the empty bucket. Last spring, like a child, Kell rushed up to greet Zayelik. This year, so close to coming of age, such rudeness won't earn a chuckle and a playful swat with Zayelik's long leather gloves. Kell sidles back and once out of sight, races for the well.
Shayin usually trades on the holding's account, cagey and competent, but when Kell returns with the dripping bucket, Varin has cupped Zayelik's fist in her hands. They each touch their fingertips to their lips in courtesy. Soon Grenor appears at the homeside door with several brothers. After a word from Varin, they head for the undercroft. Kell inches closer, setting the bucket carefully near the hitching rail. Varin must love this chance to assert her place, now that Larik is gone. When Zayelik glances about for someone to take her horse, Kell holds out a hand for the halter rope.
Zayelik claps a hand on Kell's shoulder. "Water him for me, would you?"
"Yes, master." Kell touches the gelding's withers, then strokes his neck, waiting for him to remember Kell's scent. He's no mountain pony. He has a good deep chest, and his legs are long and light. Not as sturdy as Brys, Kell thinks loyally. But think how he must go on the flat! Somewhere he can stretch out, that muscled neck reaching with each extension. Kell leads him to the bucket. The gelding pushes his soft nose deep into the water.
Brothers return from the undercroft, each carrying a bolt of oil-cloth wrapped cloth. Grenor wrestles up a pair of alum casks. Varin spreads out the holding's winter work under Zayelik's hooded stare: good wool and chamois cloth, dyed and patterned, and kegs of mordant.
"How many bales of the chamois cloth?" Zayelik asks. "How much alum?"
"We've ten more of wool, another three of chamois," Varin says, with blithe authority. "Seven casks of alum."
Kell frowns around the gelding at Varin. She gave the real numbers. Varin hooks her hands in her belt, mirroring Zayelik's hipshot stance, and then she notices the echo and crosses her arms across her chest instead.
Shayin still hasn't appeared from the deepstone. Is she really going to let Varin trade on iryu's behalf? No one has even thought to offer Zayelik a tev mug or a camp chair at least. Zayelik came to iryu holding first, before she even set up a market stall in Asaresta. That warrants an air of disinterest, but not total placelessness! Few city traders push as far upmountain as Asaresta. Their wagons get mired in the willows and swamps south of the village. But the traders who come can load a marvel of goods into a mule's manties. Zayelik has traded upmountain for a nineyear, first as a journeyman and later as a master.
Kell watches the traders come and go all summer long with silver in their pockets and tales on their tongues. Zayelik not only arrives early every spring, but she scouts the villages beyond Asaresta too. Even if other holdings' cloth pales in comparison to iryu's, Varin can't spread out iryu's goods like nightsoil on the garden and expect Zayelik to deduce its merits.
"That's more than I can carry, this trip," Zayelik says. "I'll take four casks of alum and all the chamois cloth."
"The wool is very fine." Varin unties one of the bales and shows it. "The dyeing is even; look how bright it is."
Zayelik shrugs. "There's not much call for wool downmountain. They want their cloth lighter."
"They have winters there."
"And it is now spring."
Blazes of colour high on Varin's cheeks deepen the pallor around her eyes. The overnight vigil and yesterday's giving shows on all of them, in frowns and tight jaws. The last guest didn't leave the deepstone until middlenight. Zayelik shouldn't push so hard on the morning after a giving. But then, why shouldn't she come when the holding will be dull with with grief and long uncertainty? Shayin would hesitate, stumble, shift the placelessness to Zayelik, wonder aloud if iryu can sell under the circumstances--accept Zayelik's raised offer in response--
Iryu needs a trader. Varin, however fine her weaving, hasn't mastered even Shayin's rudiments. Kell spends more time in Asaresta market listening to traders' talk than anyone in the holding. Kell loops the gelding's halter rope around the hitching rail, and then hesitates.
[[ϒ Traders swear by the proper mix of discretion and audacity.->display]]
[[ϒ Yet if Kell impresses Zayelik, the betrothal slipknot draws tighter.->acumen]] {
(if: $allowHints)[ (click-replace: "No mountain trader can load so many mules.")[No mountain trader can load so many mules. Zayelik has the power of a city holding behind her, patrons who stake her trading journeys in exchange for a ninth of her profits.]
(click-replace: "tales on their tongues.")[tales on their tongues. More than a few shake their head over Zayelik's good fortune. As a child, Zayelik fostered with one of the greatest overholdings in the city, irdanu, even though her own holding's name was all but placeless. She became a master and brought place to her name. Though she still names irdanu in her patronage tie, Zayelik earned independence as a trader. The reason is clear.]
] }$il[L]arik created tapestries on the scrimshaw loom, stealing the ends of fine threads snipped from more important work. She wove patches no bigger than a thumbnail: a sundog, a raindrop, a white aster peeking through green grass. But it was Amoz who whittled the toy, a gift to Larik--Lark then--when he married into the holding, their youngest father. What did he bring Kell? A bridle and bit, yes, but more than that: his grinning encouragement and linked hands, boosting Kell up to Brys's saddle. He laughed at Grenor and Maron's tooth-sucking worry.
With a fever death, the holding can't risk keeping Larik's clothes, no matter how deftly worked, how beautiful. A piece of kindling won't move their pity. Kell could never make art so detailed. Kell can ride, and saddle, and set up tents in a gale, but botches finework. Peris shoved knitting needles into Kell's hands once, trying to find a use for her stock of lumpy yarn. Kell's scarf bunched tight at the end and then loosened into wide stitches, knits swinging widdershins into purls. Larik cupped Kell's head and said the scarf looked warm, at least...while three silverweights of guesting robes flowered under her hands.
Larik was so good, daughter and weaver. Do Kell's older sisters feel overshadowed by her ghost, as Kell does? When they see Larik's clothes and cloaks, is it memory or envy they feel?
Kell leans against Amoz's side. "I wish I could leave Asaresta."
Amoz nods, not agreement, but listening. "You've been waiting to come of age all this past season."
A season ago Kell had nothing else to whine about than the wait. Mothers' and fathers' plans mapped well onto Kell's ambitions. Some families don't know from one day to the next whether their children will grow to be daughters or sons; Kell knew from the moment a city trader trotted into their dooryard with six mules in tow. No trader could endure being given as a prize to a man who hasn't earned her. "What if the hearthside isn't right for me?"
Amoz frowns and looks around, as though he's seeing the loft for the first time. The women's dyes and bales, the scent of cooking tev rising from the hearthroom. "You're too old for the children's room, truly," he says. "The holding could use a trader, that's not in doubt. You don't need to worry."
"No," Kell agrees.
"You don't want to live with your old fathers forever, do you?"
Kell should answer, "//You're// not old--not like the rest of them," and accept Amoz's generosity, coaxing rather than demanding good humour. The hearthside is no better or worse than living with fathers. Yet the air feels different here. Larik died here.
Amoz frowns up at the roof beams. "Kell, you've talked of apprenticing to a trader for years."
Kell swallows a cold wash of anxiety. Larik's ghost bears down on Kell's shoulders. Fathers and mothers intend to make Kell the daughter they've counted on all along. Kell mutters into knees, "Maron thinks Larik's betrothal will fit me like her child's clothes."
Amoz sits back with a sigh. "You heard that?"
Kell shrugs, and pulls in tighter.
"Talk to Peris," Amoz says, with a squeeze of Kell's shoulder. "She'll breathe you through the vows. They're more generous than you might think."
For all Amoz married into the holding a three-year past, he does love Kell. But that doesn't mean he understands.
[[ϒ In Larik's space, even a breath won't be Kell's own.->haunted]]
[[ϒ Generous contracts leave a sting; fathers and mothers don't know what Kell saw in the forest.->visitant]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "The hearthside is no better or worse than living with fathers.")[The hearthside is no better or worse than living with fathers. Kell won't lose them, moving across the deepstone; after coming of age, place will separate them more than distance. It means losing the privacy of the children's room to crowd a pallet in next to sisters rather than brothers, the same cramped society either way.]
]}$il[S]mall as it is, the silkweave patch is beautiful. Larik matched it to a woman's garment in spring greens, with embroidered foxes chasing nose-to-tail around the hem. Any weaver could conceal a stain or rip with a plain patch. Larik created art.
Amoz breathes in. Kell leans against his solid shoulder. "Only what she touched is to be burned. You'll see folk wearing what was hers for many seasons."
Seeing a flash of Larik's weaving on someone who cares nothing for the weaver, but bought it for coin or kind, will be no comfort. "Is that what people will remember? Larik's work?"
"We'll remember Larik's name."
Kell sighs. Larik's name already fills the deepstone and overspills. If Kell takes on Larik's betrothal contract, it will be like breathing for someone else's lungs. "Will anyone remember me?" The childish question whines in Kell's throat, but they are alone, and Kell can shelter against Amoz's warm bulk.
"Hmm," Amoz says comfortably. "Traders I've known, I mostly remember because they got the better of me!"
Fathers and mothers know Kell wants to be a trader. Any other day, Amoz's tease would be reassuring. Today, Kell prickles against the reminder. "What if I don't become a trader? If I chose to apprentice to a teacher instead? Or a healer?" If Kell comes of age as a man, then the threat of marriage could fade for a three-year or longer. Mothers and fathers might agree to open negotiations with a woman of Kell's choice.
"Teachers are well-loved," Amoz says, "and wise. But it would be long years before you grew into wisdom, I think, Kell."
So fathers and mothers intend to go through with the contract substitution. If they didn't, Amoz wouldn't need to stumble so carefully around Kell's question. "That doesn't help."
"Honesty doesn't, always." Amoz's clear amber eyes fill with sympathy. "We don't love Larik any less for losing what was hers. We don't love you any less for making choices that are right for you."
[[ϒ But Amoz's answer offers once chance: as a son, Kell can't inherit any expectations Larik's ghost left behind.->visitant]]
[[ϒ Amoz can offer support, but he only has one vote in the family room.->haunted]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Kell leans against his solid shoulder.")[Kell leans against his solid shoulder. Perhaps because he married into the holding a three-year ago, Kell finds him the most restful of fathers. Steady and thoughtful, where Grenor and Maron tend to arbitrary.]
(click-replace: "a woman of Kell's choice.")[Trayis's holding.]
]}$il[P]eris climbs briskly up the ladder. "Amoz, have you started yet? The cleansing song is boiling."
"You act like we're mucking out the barn," Kell mutters, loud enough to be heard.
Peris's lips tighten when she sees Kell past Amoz's mass. "You have chores."
Caught snuggling with Amoz like a baby needing a father's comfort after a nightmare, Kell sinks into pure childish spite. "Will you forget her better once you've burned her things?"
Amoz wraps a hand over the back of Kell's neck and squeezes. "Show place."
The words spilled out like an ice wash. Kell's face burns. Peris ignores Kell's offered courtesy--her right. She hoists up the cauldron of astringent horsetail fern without another sign she has a child. She picks a rag out of the steaming liquid and wrings it like a duck's neck. She scrubs viciously at the walls, back to the corner where Larik's pallet lay.
Kell watches the jerkiness of her movements, the stiff set of her mouth and shoulders. "Can I help?"
"Get these dye pots sorted." Peris speaks the words to the smoke-stained rafter, a command that includes anyone who hears it.
Kell shifts a few empty kegs, clearing a spot where they can stack the pots after they've been cleansed. They can't replace the thatch but they'll burn the sachets of camphor tucked in the corners of the room. Once Peris is absorbed in her scouring, Amoz starts the low cleansing song, matching the scrape of his broom.
The harsh sour song strips out Larik's scent: the strong odour of the night bucket, sweat worked into clothes worn too long without brushing, but also the careful accumulation of dried flowers and herbs, mint and birch sugar from Nilos's brews. Wiping down every pot--marking a few for caulking--and stacking the rest by size and function leaves more space than Kell's ever seen. Peris stands back at last, staring purse-lipped at the empty space. The musty collection of boxes and mothy wool looked familiar, at least; now the loft stares back at them.
"Varin and Hiron's baby will need the children's room soon," Peris says. She directs her words to Amoz, intending the pronouncement for Kell. "Hiron's certain the birth will come in the first summer nineday."
Kell looks down at the bare holystoned floorboards, drying from dark to grey. Not just Varin, but every married sister, will soon fill the homeside with cousins. Before Peris's grandchildren arrive, she wants to be well sorted of Kell. Kell needs to give her a reason to reconsider, a reason to think of //Kell//, not her flotsam child, swept up by spring floods against a tangle of broken contracts.
Kell breathes in, then says clearly, "I'd like to live homeside when I come of age, Mother."
Peris drops her rag, black-smeared from the smoke that had grimed the beams, into the pot of cold horsetail fern wash. For all her offended indifference, she takes Kell's words at their value, with studied clarity. "There are enough sons in this holding. Your fathers don't need another shepherd."
For an outlandish moment, Kell considers asking to live homeside as a daughter, but Peris won't take anything seriously if Kell starts acting foolish. "I could apprentice to Brelok, and teach." Teaching seems the least painful option. Kell knows the basic courtesies and contract songs already. It can't be too painful to pass them on to other children. Teachers travel, sometimes. After they finish their apprenticeships. A master teacher would bring place to the holding.
"This is a discussion for the family room," Amoz warns. He stands at Kell's side, but can't push Peris more than that.
"I'm too young to marry." Kell sees little point in hiding the fact of overhearing fathers' offer to Ralon, when the thought of marriage clutches like a snare. "Trenon's so much older. Let me marry Trayis--at least I know her!"
"And pay the contract-breaking price!" Peris says.
"You sound like Maron," Amoz says mildly.
Peris shoots him a swift glance, but she obviously finds the comparison telling. "In a year you can take new spouses, Kell. It isn't Trenon only, forever. Make an offer to Trayis when the marriage opens, if you love her!"
"It's not about Trenon." First-marriages aren't perfect. Larik wanted more spouses than Trenon, too. A year to wait. But to take Larik's place. To be her, as though being Kell means nothing. Peris offers a cage lined with Kell's childish hopes.
"I'm not Larik," Kell says.
Peris's face darkens, pain masked in harshness. "Who says you are?"
Kell tamps down the slice of hurt. Peris is already being so generous. She actually considered Kell's offer; she didn't shut down the discussion. Kell gropes for reasons Peris will understand. "You can take the contract-breaking price from me, half of my earnings until it's repaid."
"Place can't be repaid. And debt lasts longer than a first-marriage." Peris studies Kell, her face more puzzled than angry. "You'd rather be a son...?"
The choice is so stark, and so bizarrely off-balance. Kell dreams of travelling. Learning the truth behind the traders' tales; stumbling on unclaimed land, and raising cairns to hold it. This isn't about duty to iryu. It isn't about place at all.
[[ϒ If Kell accepts Trenon, the world widens, at the price of wearing Larik's place like a chain.->advocacy]]
[[ϒ A son's freedom means mothers and father see more than trade goods when they look at Kell.->bereaved]]
[[ϒ Larik accepted her betrothal on her terms; Kell wants nothing more.->altruism]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "will soon fill the homeside with cousins.")[will soon fill the homeside with cousins. Babies bring place, and then requests for more husbands to tend them. Varin probably hopes to have the place for a second husband before winter. ]
]}$il[T]he holding takes the midday meal in common. Sisters set trestles in the dooryard to take advantage of the far-seeing day. Kell loves iryu's position on the high western side of Asaresta. Wind pushes chill under Kell's clothes, but when the gusts settle, the sun is hot as a firm hearthstone pressed to the back. Outwards from the village, scrub willow marks the marshy valley, fir the heights. An occasional soft-needled larch clings wind-twisted to the lea crannies. Kell sits back with trencher bread filled with a savoury barley tev topped with soft-fried eggs and sweet onion.
(if: (history:)'s last is "haunted")[Varin stands after Belim finishes serving, and announces the arrival of the first spring mule string that morning. Kell stops eating with spoon halfway to mouth. The first trader! The puddled track down to Asaresta stays empty, no hint in the ruts how many mules, how many outriders. "Was it Zayelik?"
Varin leans white-knuckled fists on the table. Kell guessed right, and worse, Varin led the trading rather than Shayin. She has the most place after Larik, and with Shayin grieving, the only one with trading experience. Kell can't ask if Zayelik asked after iryu's youngest child, but the question must show, because Varin mutters that the holding took a modest profit (meaning none at all, Kell suspects), and then says, "The master trader offered an apprenticeship to iryu holding, if we have a daughter when she returns from the city."
Kell's heart sets pounding. An apprenticeship offer! So Zayelik remembered Kell from seasons past. For a city trader to choose a mountain apprentice must prove Kell's worth. She chose Kell!
But how can fathers and mothers consider any possibility but a woman, now that Zayelik has weighted the scales? Kell begged Peris to choose a son instead. A swift glance at Peris's face shows she caught Kell's intentness. Kell feels clear as still water, every stone visible.](if: (history:) contains "visitant")[Varin stands after Belim finishes serving, and announces Zayelik's arrival and the bargain struck. Kell sits straight, shoulders back. Given a choice between boldness and prudence, Kell acted as seemed best in the moment.
Kell hunches down, feeling as miserable as Varin looks. Varin took the chance to enhance her place in the wake of Larik's death, and missed her throw. It could have been worse, but Zayelik did leave with every bale of the holding's best chamois cloth, and left behind much of the heavier, bulkier sheep wool that will be harder to pass on to other traders as the summer advances.
Yet Zayelik's apprenticeship offer still dangles like bait. Kell thought Zayelik arrived the day after Larik's giving to take advantage of Varin, but now the question remains: did Zayelik hope to influence iryu holding into choosing a daughter?]
After a moment of token grumbling--if Varin had traded the stars out of the sky, there would be grumbling--Grenor and Maron settle back to their meals. Kell hooks elbows around knees, leaving the tev mostly untouched. Peris, sitting across from Maron and Grenor, eyes Kell, taking into account childish ears, before she says, "Ralon will be back today. No doubt dragging Dalor on a leash."
As master advocat, Dalor ought to be impartial, but everybody knows he favours Ralon's irthu holding. Not least when he took Trenon as his apprentice, or raised him to journeyman a mere threeyear later. With Trenon as the wronged party, and Ralon to bring the complaint, Dalor will listen to iryu holding as well as patchy thatch listens to the wind.
"If we do take that son of Ralon's into the holding, we'll have an advocat of our own," Grenor says.
Maron agrees around a mouthful. "Think of the silver we'll save when we don't need to pay for contract songs, or rites for that matter," he says. "All the better if he takes over Dalor's mastery one of these days. Asaresta could do better."
Better that the master advocat favour the proper holding. Kell curls a lip over the tev. Maron won't jess Trenon like a falcon for his holding's benefit simply because Dalor whines at Ralon's heels.
"Trenon's only a journeyman," Peris says. She smoothes her thumbpad over a knot in the trestletop, worrying at splinters. "Still, if he'd contract us a better set of fields when it comes time to set the spring cairns--extend our rights with the water watchers, in case midsummer comes on dry..."
Grenor works a piece of gristle out from his teeth. "If's a strong word, with that boy. I don't trust him."
"But you'd have him in the deepstone?" Peris asks.
Maron raises a hand to cut short argument. "Three ninedays out of four, he travels, finding work. And we're all working men. No time to sit around and bicker."
Kell, after years of dinners listening to Grenor and Maron argue a year's weather based on a day's clouds, holds back a snort. But Grenor complains for the sake of sounding off. Since Amoz married into the holding, Grenor's given him most of the day-to-day managing of sons and children. Trenon won't be Grenor's problem: Amoz will see to that, whether he wants to or not.
"And irthu's name won't come to us unless they can give children, or marry spouses who can," Peris says. "That could take years. And by then iryu's place might well be the greater."
Grenor nods. "Irthu's in decline."
Yet iryu still hopes to contract for their name. Kell bites back scorn. In her harried way, Peris is arguing on Kell's behalf. Interrupting might mean losing that goodwill.
Maron shakes his head like an irritated bobcat. He and Peris, after many years and three love spouses, usually bring decisions to the family room when they expect firm agreement. "We won't break a contracted promise as long as we have a daughter to fulfill the terms!"
"Maron," Peris says, covering his hand with hers. "We don't have a daughter."
"Kell?" Maron peers at Kell, hunched over a full trencher. Kell takes up space like a badly tangled bootlace, but Maron has a habit of disregarding the placeless.
Kell straightens and meets Maron's eyes. "I don't want to marry Trenon."
"The contract terms are generous," Maron said, with calm, if uncomprehending, patience. "Nothing's changed since Larik sang them, and she pushed irthu holding hard." As if Kell's feeling can only arise from the value of the vows, and not from Trenon himself. Maron thinks Kell can step into vows customized to Larik's needs without changing a note--doesn't he see the insult in that? "If you want a trading apprenticeship, what happiness could you find as a son?"
"I could teach," Kell mutters. No better man's trade suggests itself. Brelok, the master teacher, has an apprentice already but might be tempted by another if mothers subsidize Kell's learning. And teachers do travel, sometimes.
"Iryu weaves and raises wool," Grenor points out. "What's teaching to do with that? We need a trader."
Maron frowns, slow and deliberate. "You hardly loved the songs set to you as a child." Kell's attitude to Brelok's lessons was that riding was better, and hanging around Asaresta market listening to tales was best of all. "We'd thought to make you happy in all ways. Sing you to a trader, start you in the holding."
"Give me myself instead, father," Kell says. "I'll pay well for it, I promise."
Maron's gaze slides past Kell, to Peris, and then to Grenor. Kell feels him thinking: he wants to do well, but what he understands as well and what Kell wants don't fall into place for him. At last, he says, "Leave us, then. You'll know iryu's will soon enough."
[[ϒ Some children learn early what their holdings require of them; others discover their future when they see the robe gifted to them at their coming of age rite.->decision]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "on the high western side of Asaresta.")[on the high western side of Asaresta. From the deepstone, the mountains break southwards in tilted thrusts. Blue-gray as fine flint, the rock plunges in slope after downward-running slope, until it disappears under the purple furze of heather and lichen. Where the stone dives under earth, the land is squared and levelled in terraced fields, under the crisscross of cantilevered water-pipes.]
(click-replace: "For a city trader to choose a mountain apprentice must prove Kell's worth.")[For a city trader to choose a mountain apprentice must prove Kell's worth. Whatever obligations Zayelik has to her city patrons, she hasn't taken one of their daughters for her apprentice.]
(click-replace: "sometimes.")[sometimes. If a village-next loses their teacher, to death or marriage, a journeyman might be offered silver for a season.]
]}$il[T]he holding takes the midday meal in common. Sisters set trestles in the dooryard to take advantage of the far-seeing day. Kell loves iryu's position on the high western side of Asaresta. From the deepstone, the mountains break southwards in tilted thrusts. Blue-gray as fine flint, the rock plunges in slope after downward-running slope, until it disappears under the purple furze of heather and lichen. Where the stone dives under earth, the land is squared and levelled in terraced fields, under the crisscross of cantilevered water-pipes. Wind pushes chill under Kell's clothes, but when the gusts settle, the sun is hot as a firm hearthstone pressed to the back. Kell sits back with trencher bread filled with a savoury barley tev topped with soft-fried eggs and sweet onion.
(if: (history:)'s last is "haunted")[Varin stands after Belim finishes serving, and announces the arrival of the first spring mule string that morning. Kell stops eating with spoon halfway to mouth. The first trader! The puddled track down to Asaresta stays empty, no hint in the ruts how many mules, how many outriders. "Was it Zayelik?"
Varin leans white-knuckled fists on the table. Kell guessed right, and worse, Varin led the trading rather than Shayin. She has the most place after Larik, and with Shayin grieving, the only one with trading experience. Kell can't ask if Zayelik asked after iryu's youngest child, but the question must show, because Varin mutters that the holding took a modest profit (meaning none at all, Kell suspects), and then says, "The master trader offered an apprenticeship to iryu holding, if we have a daughter when she returns from the city."
Kell's heart sets pounding. An apprenticeship offer! So Zayelik remembered Kell from seasons past. For a city trader to choose a mountain apprentice must prove Kell's worth. She chose Kell!
But Zayelik's interest weights the scales even further in fathers' and mother's minds. They can't consider any possibility for Kell but becoming a woman, with a good apprenticeship awaiting.
Kell begged Peris to choose a son. A swift glance at Peris's face shows she caught Kell's intentness. Kell feels clear as still water, every stone visible. Kell hooks elbows around knees, leaving the stew mostly untouched.](if: (history:) contains "visitant")[Varin stands after Belim finishes serving, and announces Zayelik's arrival and the bargain struck. Kell sits straight, shoulders back. Given a choice between boldness and prudence, Kell acted as seemed best in the moment.
Kell hunches down, feeling as miserable as Varin looks. Varin took the chance to enhance her place in the wake of Larik's death, and missed her throw. It could have been worse, but Zayelik did leave with every bale of the holding's best chamois cloth, and left behind much of the heavier, bulkier sheep wool that will be harder to pass on to other traders as the summer advances.
Yet Zayelik's apprenticeship offer still dangles like bait. Kell thought Zayelik arrived the day after Larik's giving to take advantage of Varin, but now the question remains: did Zayelik hope to influence iryu holding into choosing a daughter?]
Shayin bows over her untouched trencher. Varin took the thin end of the haggle without her. Amoz pulls her into one of his enveloping hugs, poor enough comfort for the lost profit.
Shayin cups Amoz's cheek and kisses him absently. Amoz grips her thigh and smiles, gesturing to her tev. Shayin blinks, and reaches for her spoon. Varin's account of the trading should have sparked a muttered rant, not a brief surfacing from her lethargy. Shayin eats in silence, shredding crumbs from the crust of her trencher between spoonfuls. Amoz scrubs a hand down his chin and says, "Perhaps we're due for a son, around iryu."
Kell curls over the stew, face hot.
Shayin's eyes refocus slowly. Her glance takes in Kell, clearly listening, and then shifts to Amoz. "Trenon would be living with you," she says. Maybe she's trying to be oblique, but if so, the question isn't lost on Kell. Amoz might argue in favour of breaking the betrothal contract and eating the price, simply so that he and fathers don't have to endure Trenon's arrogance on the homeside.
Amoz shakes his head, and takes another bite, chewing thoroughly. "Trenon's three or four years older than our Kell," he says eventually. "Not much of a difference in an established marriage, I'll grant, but for first spouses it's quite a bit."
Shayin hums acknowledgement and then sits, pinch-mouthed, blank-eyed, long enough that Kell's skin itches. At last she replies, as though doubting Amoz's calculation, "Well, a man grown. That's good in a marriage."
"Ah, but he's a journeyman. If Kell apprentices to Zayelik, they'll have an empty deepstone much of the summer."
Shayin sighs and gives Kell another searching look. As if Kell, body and breath, conceals the ghost given yesterday. "What does Zayelik want with a mountain apprentice, anyway?" Shayin asks. "Her city patrons have a say in who she apprentices, surely?"
Amoz shakes his head, gently leading Shayin back to his point. "And the betrothal contract specifies that the first marriage can declare themselves independent at their discretion," he points out. That was Larik's stipulation, which Shayin argued against almost as strenuously as Trenon's parents. But Larik insisted, calmly, obdurately. Shayin gave in at last, probably believing Larik would never go so far as to actually sever her ties with iryu.
"They don't need to start their own holding," Shayin says, dismissive. "Kell's too young."
"Too young to tend the hearthside, but old enough to marry?" Amoz leans forward, one thick blunt finger tapping the table. "Old enough to bear or seed a babe? The betrothal vows specify fertility, before we gain Trenon's name."
Shayin shifts in her seat, impatient with Amoz's insistence. Shayin ignored Zayelik's arrival. If she treats the betrothal as lightly, iryu will lose more than they gain at the trader's table. Shayin pushes her trencher aside. "Irthu's name isn't worth pushing them into the pleasure room so soon. Let the name wait."
Amoz snorts. "Yet our holding demands his name. It's in the vows. Why do we covet place so much?"
Place and name have never been Shayin's weakness. Maron and Peris thirst at that well. But Amoz keeps pushing, even when Shayin can barely track the fact that her absence from this morning's trading cost iryu good silver.
"What do you want, then?" Shayin snaps at Kell, caustic as alum.
Kell meets Shayin's eyes, stone grey and thoughtful: the same shade as Larik's. Like Kell, she must feel that Larik can't be so easily replaced.
"Only to wait before marriage," Kell says, as meekly as possible. The great jumble of need presses at Kell's tongue like an unloosed avalanche, but Amoz has said as much as Shayin will hear.
Another sigh, a shrugging //hmm//. Shayin's attention fades back to the cloud-softened distance.
[[ϒ Kell leans against Amoz's side, in thanks for his trader's gift: the lever to shift an ally.->decision]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "the sun is hot as a firm hearthstone pressed to the back.")[the sun is hot as a firm hearthstone pressed to the back. Outwards from the village, scrub willow marks the marshy valley, fir the heights. An occasional soft-needled larch clings wind-twisted to the lea crannies.]
(click-replace: "For a city trader to choose a mountain apprentice must prove Kell's worth.")[For a city trader to choose a mountain apprentice must prove Kell's worth. Whatever obligations Zayelik has to her city patrons, she hasn't taken one of their daughters for her apprentice.]
(click-replace: "sometimes.")[sometimes. If a village-next loses their teacher, to death or marriage, a journeyman might be offered silver for a season.]
(click-replace: "the same shade as Larik's.")[. Shayin's borne child died yesterday, her daughter.]
]}$il[B]y the time iryu holding announces Larik's betrothal to Trenon, the strangeness of being an only child has mostly worn off. Summer lingers late, still hot after the larches turn. Kell sneaks into sisters' sleeping room and finds Larik embroidering. The hoop holds a few stitches, a lovely woad blue against the creamy fabric. Kell sprawls on Larik's pallet to watch, though Larik doesn't lift the hoop to display her design. She only likes sharing finished work. "Do you think you'll start your own holding?" Kell asks. "Or stay here with us?"
Larik laughs. "Which father are you avoiding this time?"
"Grenor," Kell admits. Larik won't tell. "It's too hot to weed! The potatoes are ready, we should dig them up, but it's too hot for that too. If it's a new holding, can I visit?"
"It takes silver to start a holding," Larik says primly. "As long as I'm the only wife, we'd have to hire builders. Who would clear land, or farm it? We'll probably stay here."
Kell makes a face. Fathers have been arguing details of harmony and rhythm over dinner for what feels like a season. Kell isn't //stupid//. Larik won't admit it, but she can start a new holding with Trenon any time she likes--it's in the vows. Staying in iryu deepstone sounds less exciting, but it's probably better Larik will be staying close. "What's Trenon like, really?"
Larik pins Kell with a look. "You met him at the vow singing."
Where Trenon sang his vows beautifully, intensely--no one can deny he has an advocat's impressive voice--and spent the rest of the gathering in surly silence. "Not like that. I mean, when it's--two people--" The idea of a first marriage prickles Kell as claustrophobic, at once too much contact and too little.
"We'll share pleasure nights, yes," Larik says. She holds her face grave but her grey eyes tease.
Kell thinks of Trais. They've done a lot of things, but maybe in a proper pleasure room, things are different. "Have you ever--?"
"Mm-hmm. Not with Trenon, though."
"What's it like?" Kell picks at a thread on Larik's coverlet. Before Larik can answer, Kell changes paths, a mountain goat leaping to steadier ground. "I mean, do you //want// to make an independent holding with Trenon? If you had silver," Kell insists. "Just the two of you?"
"I think what you're asking is if I love him."
Larik wants to avoid the question. Kell understands pleasure. And contracts: the silver and goats and sheep a woman's holding offers when the man joins her family. The man brings his name, and his willingness to raise children. "First spouses aren't really love spouses," Kell offers doubtfully: overheard from Peris, who must know if anyone does.
Larik takes up her needle again and shifts the embroidery hoop into the best light. "I want to weave more than anything else."
Kell pulls a face. "Weaving's boring."
Larik shakes her head, smiling over the cloth. "If I stay with iryu, I can use Peris and Shayin's dyeing, and they can sell my cloth. We all benefit."
If Larik becomes a master, then she could probably support an independent holding. When Trenon reaches his mastery too, they'd have a real shot, even if they are only a first marriage. Maybe Peris will hold her back, as some masters do with journeymen, to keep them close. "And it's all right for fathers, because Trenon travels so much."
"Where'd you hear that?"
"Grenor was saying--"
"You were listening in the family room. Kell, you don't belong there yet."
Kell rolls back. Golden dust motes float through the summer-sun air under the thatch. "//Do// you love him?"
"Haven't you ever wanted to make someone else happy? More than you cared about your own happiness?"
Kell folds arms under chin. Larik isn't talking about Trenon. "Maron? Because he wants irthu's name?"
"No," Larik says. "But it's like that, yes."
"Why?"
Larik smiles softly. "What would you do for Trais?"
Kell burrows face-first into the coverlet. It's uncomfortable, thinking about Larik feeling things like that, with...somebody. Sitting up, Kell insists, "Trais and I won't be like that once we grow up."
"Sometimes I wonder about that." Larik sighs, her hands falling into her lap. "Kell, I want to finish this. Grenor's right, the garden needs weeding."
(link: "ϒ Kell wheedles, but Larik only admits she doesn't expect much of Trenon, except his most basic cooperation.")[(goto: "goods")]
(link: "ϒ She refuses to say whose happiness means more to her than her own.")[(goto: "envy")]
[[ϒ Larik's professed generosity feels boundless, shaming, when Kell wants more than mothers can give.->bereaved]]
[[ϒ When Kell marries, it will be to satisfy duty to the holding. Still Kell hopes mothers scheme for happiness as well as place.->advocacy]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "it's in the vows.")[it's in the vows. Not all first marriages find it so easy to declare independence. Holdings benefit from having more than one marriage to pool silver and assert bigger land claims. Kell has an idea that Larik pushed for the independence verse, though Larik hasn't said why.]
]}$il[K]ell glares at the earth and scuffs up beside Varin. Varin forfeited Shayin's usual tactic of fluttery forgetfulness by scattering the holding's goods all over the dooryard. Cockiness would compound the error.
Zayelik smiles at Kell from the side of her mouth. "How's my horse?"
Kell shrugs, playing up the sullen child. "All right. Stands back on his hocks a bit, doesn't he?"
Belim's eyes widen. She opens her mouth opening to explode at Kell's rudeness, then swallows her rebukes with a frown. Zayelik settles her weight back on her heels and hooks her thumbs into the wide, garnet-worked leather belt that ties her tunic rightwards. Even Varin recognizes the sign of a master settling in for a good haggle. The resentment Varin always reserved for Larik descends on Kell's tight shoulders.
"You're a judge of horseflesh?" Zayelik looks around, as though she may have missed another horse anywhere on the mountain. Asaresta, and the villages-next, depend on their mountain ponies and sturdy pack mules.
Kell ignores this sally. The accusation wasn't true, as Zayelik clearly knows. "Three of your mule string have empty manties."
"You're my first customers this morning."
Kell squints up at her. No trader would climb halfway up the west side of the mountain without a reason. Zayelik meant to take advantage of Larik's death, the confusion that follows a giving. Kell tamps down anger and forces indifference. "So you're eager for what we can sell."
"Not so eager that I'd weigh down my poor beasts with what //won't// sell."
"The wool will sell. The patterns will be fresh in the city after a season without mountain trade." Zayelik would be lucky to have Larik's tapestries on display in her city stall. "Take three wool for every chamois."
"When all my profit's to be on the chamois?"
Kell's mouth twists at Zayelik's bland smile. "//Because// all your profit's to be on the chamois. We won't sell it to you else."
"And let it rot in your undercroft?"
"Spring brings other traders."
"None so early."
"Or so stingy."
Zayelik laughs. "One wool for every chamois; and since you're right my mules are light on their feet yet, another cask of alum."
"Two wool," Kell says, "and all the alum." And, with an eye on the fine red stones in Zayelik's belt: "Then we'll hear your bid on a three-weight of turquoise. You won't find many selling that downmountain."
Zayelik lets out a breath of air, //hah//. She turns to Varin, instantly dismissing Kell and the grin she wore during the negotiations. "Has iryu looked to an apprenticeship for this child?"
An apprenticeship! Varin, thankfully, lost her gape watching the by-play. "Kell is fourteen," she says, as only a higher-placed sister can.
Zayelik's gaze sweeps Kell up and down, the same look she'd give an underweight woolsack. "For how much longer?"
"Three ninedays," Kell puts in, before Varin can demur. Kell always intended to apprentice to a trader, but at best, believed a mountain master might sing the contract. City traders have obligations to their patrons--they aren't free to choose just any apprentice! Yet clearly Zayelik has the place to do just that.
Zayelik shrugs. "I'll be back from the season's first trip in twice that. If you have a sister then, I'll take her on."
Kell turns to Varin, eyes wide to catch the least flicker of her expression. For once Varin wears a trader's face, polite but blank. "Who's to say? That's for the holding to decide."
"The holding and irthu holding's place-threat," Zayelik says. At Varin's sharp look, Zayelik spreads her hands in an easy, open gesture. Traders collect gossip, as valuable as silver. Larik's broken betrothal is no secret. "I'll accept the apprentice contract after the marriage to that irthu boy."
Marrying Trenon. Kell's throat tightens. As a daughter, Kell won't escape the betrothal contract. But apprenticing to a city trader means travelling. Escape.
"There's no love lost in a contract marriage, so neither will feel the sting of separation," Zayelik says briskly. She grips Kell's shoulder again, a master's possessive claim. Kell hesitates between pride and uneasiness. "Six ninedays, or seven, is enough to settle it. I'll come back then."
With the help of Zayelik's outriders, Grenor and brothers load the wool--two bales for every bolt of chamois--into the mules' manties. The casks of alum follow, and then Varin, with a sigh of exasperation, brings out the pouch of turquoise that Maron hoards like a magpie. Zayelik grunts approval and brings out a delicate hand-scale to insure the pouch holds a full six-weight. Price decided, she wraps her big hands around Varin's offered fist. She mounts up and leads the mule string out of sight, down the track to Asaresta.
[[ϒ Zayelik's apprentice will travel to the city at her side--Kell needn't endure Trenon or Asaresta.->advocacy]]
[[ϒ Kell can't scorn Varin's trading. Kell may have swapped a journey to the city for a lifetime with Trenon.->bereaved]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Kell hesitates between pride and uneasiness.")[Kell hesitates between pride and uneasiness. Zayelik's eagerness sounds a false note. She acts like the deal is struck, and negotiating the apprenticeship contract is no more than a formality. If Varin acts as iryu's trader, Zayelik's confidence may be justified.]
]}$il[K]ell strokes the gelding's bristly nose. Taking a palmful of barley from a pocket, Kell offers them, to feel the gelding's soft lipping. If Varin fails, she pays in her place and the holding's silver. Zayelik can see Kell wincing at each misstep. Jumping in unwanted will make Kell look stupid. Kell haggles well, enough to earn laughing praise in Asaresta market. But a child, not even apprenticed, will get the better of a master trader like Zayelik the day the master chooses to allow it.
And Kell has a greater trade in mind than the spring's first bales. Zayelik has been trading upmountain for a nineyear. What if she's finally ready to take on an apprentice? Surely if Zayelik had wanted a city apprentice, she would have chosen one long since. Zayelik needs a greater connection with mountain holdings, an apprentice who can judge what mountain holdings will pay for.
But if Zayelik indulges Kell's ambitions, fathers and mothers will see the apprenticeship sung the moment Kell comes of age. And marriage to Trenon would follow the moment after.
Hiron calls, "Grown any muscles lately, ono?" He presses one hand into his tight, round stomach, pushing back against the baby's stretching elbows. Nilos forbade him from heavy work last season.
"A few." Still, Kell pauses before joining brothers' hauling, and runs a hand up, way up, to the gelding's shoulders. His conformation's good, his hooves well-shod and neatly trimmed. They'll be sparred and chipped before Zayelik arrives downmountain--three ninedays on rocky trails. Behind closed eyes Kell imagines Sareya, the stone roads, the deepstones higher than a barn.
Riding all day, sleeping rough every night. Listening to stories, boasts, secrets, and the sap bursting into rising sparks from the greenwood fire. Watching the high meadows retreat into a fur of forest. Exploring every bale the pack mules carry: cloth and ingots and stones. Judging every item's value, learning where to sell, how to see honesty in a trader's eyes, how to trick a trickster; how to haggle and wrangle and walk away.
"Have a thought for the trader," Varin says sharply. She's angry with the bargaining, Zayelik's indifference and steep prices. Kell has no doubt that Zayelik pushed her train fast so that she could be here the morning after Larik's giving. Shayin always leads the trading. Since last night she's lain sleepless on her pallet, staring at the ceiling, as though Larik still coughs in the loft above. Varin makes a poor substitute. Zayelik's profit will prove it. Kell ought to be furious, but admiration sneaks through. Zayelik came here now, today, because she wants something more than a few manties' worth of chamois wool.
Kell mouths Varin's words to the gelding. //Have a thought, ono!// Well, Kell does. Boasting earns no prizes.
For now, Kell hauls bales like a son, and gives nothing away, like a trader. When Zayelik calls for her horse, Kell runs to untie the gelding. Zayelik gives a sharp nod, and Kell jumps to follow her. Kell walks at her side, down the first stretch of the path towards Asaresta.
"So they're using you to soothe irthu holding's place-threat," Zayelik says, when the mule string pushes out of sight of the deepstone. Zayelik walks slowly, but with big, careless strides. The outriders on their ponies trot ahead of them, out of hearing. "I am sorry, Kell."
The gossip must be all over the market. Larik died, and broke the betrothal contract. Ralon crows worse than he hovers. Kell's family will owe place and silver both in this broken bargain, where once they stood to gain.
Zayelik glances back up the trail. The gelding whuffles softly and nudges her shoulder. "I told your mother Shayin last season," she says, "that I'd take you on as apprentice."
Stuttering, Kell doesn't know whether to thank her, or apologize for Varin's placeless treatment of her. Zayelik must have obligations to her patrons in the city, yet she wants Kell as her apprentice.
"I am a trader," Zayelik continues, ignoring Kell's confusion. "But I'll tell you this for free: you may make much of that boy Trenon, or nothing."
Zayelik has no reason to care about Kell's marriage, even if Kell becomes her apprentice. Kell bristles uneasily. If she once faced her holding's pressure to marry against her will, then maybe she's simply more sympathetic than her trader's facade suggests.
Zayelik tugs on her leather gloves. "Do you know the vows you'll sing?"
Kell keeps teeth clamped down on a response. The vows must be the same that Larik and Trenon already sang. If iryu holding demands to reopen the betrothal negotiations, it's tantamount to admitting the contract is broken. They have to abide by the contract as it exists. Zayelik speaks like she's already learned that song.
Zayelik raises her eyebrows, like a shrug. "I see you're keeping your breath close, so I hope I haven't spoken out of place."
Kell shrugs. Zayelik wants more than an apprentice. She wants to use the vows Trenon crafted--somehow. Like the rest of them, she doesn't see Kell at all. Only a replacement for Larik.
"Trenon will give you a good fight. Some holdings are stronger for that. And some break." Zayelik squints up into the bright sky, sun-lines crinkling around her eyes. "That's my sense, though words aren't silver."
Kell brushes the gelding's nose one last time. The horse's soft lips and bristly whiskers are the same, but the pleasure of the touch has been leeched away. Zayelik takes the halter rope and swings easily up to the saddle.
[[ϒ She urges her horse down the path, following the disappearing mule string. Three ninedays to the city, each night rolled in scratchy wool under the cold stars.->advocacy]]
[[ϒ Zayelik's warning rings true--marrying to gain Trenon's name won't make for an easy happiness.->bereaved]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "ono?")[child?]
(click-replace: "Kell bristles uneasily.")[Kell bristles uneasily. Zayelik's consideration towards a child offers too much place.]
]}$il[S]pring stretches twilight. Kell and Amoz milk the two goats together, then amble through grey gloaming to collect the ponies from pasture to bed them down in the barn.
Despite the talk at midday, Kell hardly expects mothers and fathers to come to any decision before Kell comes of age. But when Amoz fastens the barn door, Kell finds the holding gathering in the dooryard.
Peris, wearing her guesting robes, takes up the striker hanging next to the guest door chimes, and taps them lightly, three times. Maron opens the door and bows her inside. Mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, meet in procession, enter the deepstone at the guest door and head for the family room.
Kell trembles, ashamed of grubby work clothes, though no one but Peris and Maron have changed into formal robes. Brothers arrived from an afternoon checking on the sheep and chamois pastures. Colours fleck sisters' hands and arms from their work bent over the dye pots. If they're excited, or proud, or happy for Kell, they don't show it.
Two years ago, Kell wriggled excitedly when Shayin nodded to Maron after dinner one evening, in a wetter spring. Maron cleared his throat and smiled at Lark. They--the adults--marched back to the family room, the door shutting with a definitive thunk. Kell listened unashamedly at the crack in brothers' room. A candlemark later Larik emerged, her brilliant smile belying her downcast eyes.
Today no one jokes, or nudges Kell for having a cold-trout gape. Instead of squirming happiness or clear cool pride, Kell feels a sudden full bladder and knotted stomach. Kell follows the others down the flagged hallway--no rushes here, but mortared slate in ordered tesselations, and bright candle-sconces on the walls, unlit without guests to place them. The holding's best tapestries line the walls like a trader's stall display. Kell remembers Trenon's place-insinuations. He knew.
The family room sits at the rear of the deepstone, Peris's practicality bound to Maron's place-urge. Peris wouldn't waste the good south light and windows on a room they rarely use. Though children shouldn't hang about in the family room, Kell has been there many times: playing games of chase-and-find, escaping chores to lie on the cool flags on a hot day, sent in to dig out the two hearths and lay fresh fires. The room's two chimneys connect homeside to hearthside, with candle lanterns adding their light to the fires'.
The flagged floor, like the two chimneys, twine men's and women's patterns together. Maron paired blue-grey mountain slate with ochre rock, the two colours bursting out in shards from the room's center. Shayin traded downmountain for the ochre stones. For all the silver buried in it, the room smells of must and mushrooms. Kell doesn't know whether to be proud of iryu, or conscious again of Trenon's place-judgement. Trenon's holding, from what Larik saw once, presses a tiny homeside room into service for guests. More like a cellar than a sitting space, Larik said.
Everyone takes their chairs, handmade as gifts for each child's coming of age. Maron and Peris had already married Shayin when they decided to build this deepstone. They must have sat here to discuss the marriage to Grenor, and later Amoz. Each child was named here, and as they began to come of age, their apprenticeships and marriages and trades were sung here.
The flags cool Kell's feet, but the two fires warm everyone's faces to ruddy-brown, shiny with the comfortable sweat of people who can afford firewood in spring. Varin circles the room, taking flint and tinder to each of the sconced candles. Peris cleares her throat, and what little talk there is falls silent. Shoulders tensing, Kell moves to the circle's center.
"We have a child coming of age," Maron says. "There's a decision before iryu. There is also a promised marriage to fulfill."
Chairs scrape on the flags. There are a few mutters, and someone lets out a short, stiff, laugh.
"And an offer of apprenticeship," Shayin adds, looking up from her thin hands. "The trader Zayelik offers place."
More shufflings, but this time the tone is happier, impressed. A city trader choosing their child to apprentice. Kell's eyes burn, throat constricting. Standing here before the family like reluctant buyers at a horse meet was humiliating. Kell holds on, tall and straight. Every brother and sister went through this silversmith's appraisal.
Maron waves for silence. Strong and slumped, he looks more at home in good work leathers than his pouchy robe. He has a ferocious pride, but a quiet one. Only the best for iryu, and an ostentatious best at that. Maron would die before pointing it out, but he'd die as swiftly if no one noticed. "Kell, ono, you're very near to being placed. Tell us what you want."
Kell can guess how the vote will trend. Maron has worked too long to bind their holding to Ralon's irthu. Three seasons at least, probably longer. A child's request carries little water against that torrent. Kell might as well ask to live on the homeside as a daughter. Kell recoils from the image, before circling around to it again. Why not, then, the truth, simple and ridiculous as it will sound?
"I want to be a trader. And not to marry, not yet. If that--" The words come out too loud, but clearer than Kell hoped, past a knotted throat. "If that is too much for iryu to grant, then let me be your son."
To their credit, no one laughs. Or maybe Kell bewildered them with nerve. Grenor shrugs; a small frown knits Peris's brows. Shayin gazes into the fire, far from them. Amoz holds himself bland as a trader. Maron nods, and says, "We have a child coming of age, iryu. Who speaks for a son, and who for a daughter?"
(link: "ϒ Iryu speaks for a son.")[(goto: "son") ]
(link: "ϒ Iryu speaks for a daughter.")[(goto: "daughter") ] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "the family room.")[the family room.
Breath, body, and ghost. A deepstone's ghost, that spark that holds homeside and hearthside together, dwells in the family room. Plenty of holdings don't keep aside a specific room for the purpose. Trayis's deepstone doesn't. Her holding is rich, but her mothers built the deepstone small and modest, spending more on outbuildings and tools than on grand spaces. It doesn't matter. When the holding's first spouses, mother and father, formally meet at the guest door, the family room appears.]
(click-replace: "Shayin traded downmountain for the ochre stones.")[Shayin traded downmountain for the ochre stones. Imagine a mule dragging a skid loaded with rock to make up a flagged floor, when most deepstones make do with puncheon, if not swept clay.]
]}$il[I]n late summer, after a season of delegations, gifts, and afternoon hostings over tev, Berin drags Trenon with her to iryu for the engagement negotiations. Trenon walks a half-step behind her, examining the dust on his boots and the clouds pushing gently northwards against the peaks. He might as well be a carcass hanging from the butcher's rafters, pinched and examined for fat.
Shayin answers the guest door the moment Berin touches the chimes. She and Berin both give courtesy, well-wishes tumbling between them like falling leaves. Berin steers Shayin away from her deepstone with comments about the bright sun and fine clear day, good tidings for the harvest. Shayin takes both the hint and the compliment easily, and leads them to the weaver's hut that takes up most of the open prospect at the bottom of the dooryard.
The hut opens to the south sun, with window shutters broad as barn doors propped to let the light pour in. The hut holds three large looms and two spinning wheels, all occupied with busy women and clacking work. The darker back half of the hut holds work tables and herb racks, casks of dye and sacks of mordants. Spools and bolts fill every corner, a jumbled rainbow of women's greens, purples, and dark blues; men's reds, oranges, dusky ochres; and, in softening contrast, the softer creams and sandy tans of undyed children's fabrics, or the occasional mournful ghost-shell grey.
Peris hurries forward from the oven, wiping her hands on a rag. Woad stains her arms blue to the elbow, and madder streaks the thighs of her trousers. Larik and her sisters all apprenticed to their mothers, as dyers and weavers. Larik's shuttles dance through the weft on her loom, creating brown-orange chevrons for autumn leaves. The clever face of a lynx is just beginning to emerge from the gathering threads.
Trenon glances at the next loom, where Larik's sister tugs threads through a square hearthrug. Her work shows competence but no grace. Trenon wonders how she took Larik's elevation to journeyman. Once fifteen, each person's place is their own to cultivate, but Larik's mothers haven't paraded her sisters in front of Berin. They'll gift Larik--if gift is the right word--with Trenon's name, and wonder why her sisters fume.
Shayin pauses behind Larik and smiles at Berin. "Larik, why don't you host Trenon while we talk?"
[[ϒ Larik glances at him with all the interest she'd show to a short-weight sack of alum. This betrothal clearly wasn't her idea.->his betrothed]]
[[ϒ If Trenon's doomed to be Shayin's son and live on her homeside, he doesn't want her to have any illusions about how welcome he intends to feel. "I'll stay," he says.->barter]]$il["D]o you remember the day you came of age?" Nilos asks. They passed that rite a season apart. Larik in late spring two years past, and Nilos that year as summer faded. "You got everything you wanted that day."
The day Larik came of age--Lark, still, before the rite--Nils runs breathless up to iryu and bursts in at the homeside door. Lark's brothers swarm like workers in a hive, beating tapestries, waxing flagstones, laying fires, and setting fresh candles in the sconces. Nils pushes past them to the children's room. Lark's younger sibling Kell is the only occupant. Lark is gone already, and Kell sulkily points Nils to the hearthroom.
Dishes cover every handspan of the sideboards. Chamois roast basted in savoury drippings, great cauldrons of tev, birch sugar sweets, loaves of chewy oat bread. Lark's mothers stir, taste, spice, shout. Fresh food is hard to come by with the spring cairns not yet laid and snow still crusting the shadowy corners under the retaining walls, but bowls of tiny mountain strawberries sit beside crocks of goats' cream. Peeled thistle, clover roots, and juicy cress brighten the dandelion salad. Lark's sisters shoo at Nils, rolling their eyes at Nils's nervous courtesy. Voices echo from the sleeping room beyond the hearthroom. Nils slips in, sneaky as a barn squirrel.
Lark sits on a stool at the center of the room, surrounded by three fathers. They washed her black hair with soaproot, and Amoz tugs at the drying strands with an oiled brush and plaiting sticks. Maron repeats the details of the rite, telling Lark, //now don't forget, don't forget--don't worry!// Grenor takes a last measurement at shoulders and hips--Lark sprouted over winter, gaining a handspan and shooting past Nils's height. The new robe needs to fit just so.
Lark's fathers finally finish and disappear back to their side of the deepstone. Lark laughs and makes a face behind their backs, the sun parting a thunderstorm.
Nils can't stop staring--for this last childhood morning, Lark's fathers dressed her in plainwoven clothes, but the intricate braid trailing to Lark's mid-back is a woman's. It's lovely, so perfect for Lark. Nils wants to reach out and stroke it. More than that, wants to feel its tight weight tugging at the scalp, as if Nils' curls could hold the plaiting sticks in the same design.
Lark stands up and twirls. Nils grew over the winter, too, and they shared miserable confessions about new hair and aching bones. But Lark, with the woman's braid, already //looks// grown up. The shapeless child's clothes, too short at ankle and wrist, drape over Lark like a half-shedded skin. Lark will be--//is// a woman. Larik--//she//--says, "Do you want to see my robe?"
Nils nods. Larik shimmers, sunlight dancing on choppy water. Nils will have to summon such earnest excitement when the time comes, instead of this coiling anxiety. What if the choice goes wrong and the rite leaves Nils naked, neither man nor woman, a child always?
Larik opens her press and draws out the fabric. Her mothers chose the finest chamois fleece, warm and incredibly soft, and yarn-dyed it with a woman's greens, spring and deep forest, weaving them together in an elegant feminine herringbone. The sharp, clever noses of shrews peer out from the hem and cuffs. Curious voles scurry along the neckline. When Larik shakes the robe out, the line of belt-loops falls perfectly from high on the waist at the left side, to low on the right hip.
"It's beautiful," Nils says, voice suddenly husky. If Larik's mothers weren't weavers, the guests might sniff at such extravagance. Nils's siblings have a choice of two robes, one in dim woad for a daughter, the other in faded madder for a son. Each smells of camphor and stretches at odd places where a generation of hunched shoulders and rough elbows struggled to fit. Nils's own half-hearted efforts at weaving never managed more than a straggling scarf. "Can I touch it?"
Larik swirls the robe like a cape, letting it fall gently over Nils's undyed tunic. Nils's breath catches, eyes closing. If mothers could let such a gossamer robe fall down across Nils's shoulders, ending childhood, giving Nils the freedom of the hearthside and sisters' laughing friendship.... The hem brushes the floor--Larik's head tops Nils' by a span--and the robe's weight embraces Nils like a handclasp.
"You look good, Nils--//Nilis//," Larik says, laughing.
Nils forces out a half-hearted chuckle at Larik's use of a woman's name.
Larik's laugh fades and her face grows still. "It was just a joke--"
Nils' hands spasm shut in the fine material, creasing it.
"--you want to be a healer. Don't you?"
Nils slips the robe off, pushing it back to Larik. Childish infatuations end with coming of age. Silver matters more, especially in a working holding like Nils's. Mothers need a daughter earning wages more than they want to boast of a boy apprenticed to the healer. If Nils comes of age as a daughter, then marriage to Trenon becomes possible; but mothers can't spare the silver it would take to seal a betrothal with Trenon's well-placed family. Nils may choose, and yet come no closer to a true desire than the brief touch of Larik's robe. "I came to wish you good luck."
Larik grips Nils' shoulder and holds steady, hard. "Nils...you really like it."
"It's fine work. Some of your mothers' best, Lark--Larik." Nils straightens, shaking off Larik's touch. "You'll be beautiful in it--" The feminine //you//, a woman's pronoun.
[[Larik stays quiet, solemn, and she replies with the same pronoun: "So would you."->choice]] {
(if: $allowHints)[
(click-replace: "use of a woman's name.")[use of a woman's name. Trenon sometimes whispers //Nilis// in Nils's ear when they meet in the forest, when his voice roughens with need. Nils shouldn't join Trenon in their glade anymore. Children can be sweethearts together, but Trenon is a man grown. Knowing better, Nils goes anyway, and shivers at Trenon's teasing.]
(Click-replace: "Childish infatuations end with coming of age.")[Childish infatuations end with coming of age. So do silly dreams, like a right-knot at Nils's hip and the glacier-green of a robe like Larik's.]
]}$il[K]elol comes of age on a cool, dewy morning. He stares at the ceiling in the children's room and tries to imagine sleeping anywhere else.
Amoz pauses on the threshold as if fathers commonly give courtesy on their own homeside. "Good morning, Kelol," he says, the first to use his adult name. "Not nervous, are you?"
Kelol sits up. They gave Larik three ninedays ago, and today, because of a rite, Amoz can grin like a summer bear in a berry patch. Anger itches under Kelol's skin. But he's not nervous. "No."
Amoz pushes into the room. He sits on the edge of the bed, reaching out to rumple Kelol's hair. "There, last time I can do that before you have place."
Kelol tries to laugh and can't. Amoz sighs. "Let's get you cleaned up. I'll braid your hair."
After that, everything blurs. Kelol takes a bath in the big cask. Varin brings him a bowl of mutton tev. He bolts it down while Amoz mutters over his lank hair, which snarls and refuses to hold a plaiting stick. Grenor brushes out the best child's robe. The plainwoven wool should be long enough to cover even Kelol's recent growth. Maron frowns over the preparations, questions Kelol on his first vowsong, then mutters about checking on the hearthside as an excuse to duck out of the room.
"Did I disappoint father?" Kelol asks. Amoz's tugs at his scalp feel like sharp tastes of the greater punishment he deserves.
Grenor clears his throat, phlegm rumbling. "Maron intended to please you," he says. "Make you a trader like you wanted."
Kelol nods, trying not to pull his hair out. "I'm sorry."
"Kelol," Grenor says firmly. Kelol hears an echo of the child's //ono// that he cuts short. "You're not responsible for Maron's hopes. The only voice he controls in the family room is his."
Amoz ties off the last ribbon at the end of Kelol's braid. "There, handsome." He gentles the child's robe over Kelol's head. When Kelol stands, Amoz tweaks his chin. "We love you, lad," he says. "We know you'll do well as our son." Kelol leans against his bulk, and slithers into a hug he shouldn't need. Grenor claps his shoulder from behind. Kelol stands between them, a child still, accepting comfort without breaking place. Amoz squeezes him back, ignoring the damp spot Kelol leaves on his robe.
In the dooryard, red banners ripple on fenceposts and wide window lattices. Chimes flash at every eave, silent in the still air. Mothers and fathers invited everyone whose place entitles them to consideration. No one else. Dalor leads the songs. Mothers and fathers cracked open their silver store to hire him.
Kelol leaves the deepstone by the guest door and climbs onto the low dais beside Dalor, a laughably short procession. Holding his head high, he lifts his arms to shoulder height and fixes his eyes above all the staring faces. Dalor's voice throbs, deep and rich with sound that should be joyful. Kelol works spit into his mouth.
His voice squeaks on his entrance. People usually smile, or even laugh, at a fifteen-year-old breaking mid-song. Between a child's nerves and recent growth, guests anticipate it. Some children break on purpose, to show they can shrug past tension. But everyone stares up at Kelol solemnly, unmoved. They think he's stupid for choosing to become a man. They mourn Larik more than they'll ever celebrate him.
He gets the words right, and nearly all the notes. Dalor steps behind him and lifts the child's robe from his shoulders. The air chills him, tightening his nipples. He resists the urge to cross his legs. Maron tugs his first man's robe past his ears.
The robe isn't iryu work. Peris bought it in the market. The red cloth should buoy him after fifteen years of dull children's clothes, but Kelol grew up with dyers; a simple madder wash doesn't impress him. Worse, he can't ignore the patches where the threads run thin. The robe flaunts die-stamped birds flying along the hem, cursory approximations of cardinals. Larik could embroider animals so that they lived in the cloth. Kelol swiftly ties his first left-knot, to hide the mismatched seams more than to show off his deftness. The guests join in Dalor's last chords. In the silence that follows, Maron introduces him as "Iryu's son, Kelol!" and even manages to sound hearty. Kelol steps down into a crowd of hugs, pats, and congratulations. He can't meet anyone's eyes to check if their smiles reach past their lips.
His sisters serve the midday meal on silver-chased plate. Kelol picks over roast vegetables, spring mutton, and two flavours of tev: a stout if ordinary offering. There were spices and birch-sugar candy at Larik's rite. If Peris or Maron admit they stinted, they'll claim consideration of Kelol's debt.
The guests leave a candlemark after the last cauldron scrapes empty. Kelol saddles Brys and rides up to the chamois pastures. Brys is built for hauling mine-carts and clambering up narrow ravines after dull-witted sheep, not for racing. The steep folds of the mountain prevent any sort of real gallop, anyway. Wind haunts the heights, moaning and hissing through the low grasses. Kelol rides to the overlook and stares at the ravine wall opposite. Kestrels wheel and call overhead. Larik's shell vanished long ago.
[[ϒ Iryu did him honour, to give him what he asked.->sweetheart]]
[[ϒ He can't wrench free of bonds he tied himself.->price]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "whose place entitles them to consideration.")[whose place entitles them to consideration, those with family or holding ties to iryu]
(click-replace: "Mothers and fathers cracked open their silver store to hire him.")[Mothers and fathers cracked open their silver store to hire him. Hiring Trenon, Dalor's journeyman, would save more than a few silverwhits, but Trenon left on his spring travels the day after Larik died and no one resents his absence. Enduring Ralon's public place-crowing takes enough pride as it is.]
(click-replace: "they'll claim consideration of Kelol's debt.")[they'll claim consideration of Kelol's debt; like the cost of the broken betrothal, this meal will be tallied to Kelol's account.]
]}$il[K]elil bows her head. Maron would rather pay the dowry that brings him a name, than the contract price for a son who is his own man. Kelil feels more placeless than a child, nothing more than a silverweight on the scales of Maron's pride.
"We'll set the marriage for summer." Maron pushes up from his chair, the family room business concluded.
"She's young," Amoz murmurs. "If she could wait a season..."
Maron frowns heavily. "She'll be apprenticed then, maybe travelling," he says. "Ralon will haul me in front of his pet advocat, or worse, his son, for unsettled debts."
"No," Kelil says. Her first chance to speak in the family room, and she must use it to hasten her unwelcome marriage. A season won't make her fall in love with Trenon. He never cared for Larik in all the winter they were betrothed. "I want this contract settled."
Amoz turns to her in surprise, but Grenor nods, with a deep sigh. "Well said, Kelil," he says. He rises, and clasps both her shoulders. "Daughter," he murmurs, waiting until she meets his eyes and returns his smile. The others pass with hugs and handclasps, giving place.
Peris tucks Kelil under her arm and guides her to the hearthside. "You'll live here. Katir, stuff a new pallet for your sister. Belim, we'll need quilts from the undercroft. Varin--" Varin opens her mouth to protest, looking over her shoulder. Hiron stands in the hall with the heel of his hand pressed against the baby's sharp kicks. Peris pauses, and then abandons orders. The baby will be born within ninedays and Peris is ready to heap place on Hiron and Varin for its sake. "I'm sure Hiron could do with another raspberry leaf tea."
Peris leads Kelil to the women's sleeping room. The space is as wide as the deepstone, divided by tapestries into her sisters' spaces. The empty space is Larik's. Her pegs stand empty and song-cleansed.
Peris crosses to Larik's small press, running her hands over its carven lid. Her mountain-grey eyes are steady, her mouth thin and flat. Kelil, closest to Larik in size, can wear every gorgeous garment her sister wove. She'll disappear, taking on Larik's shell as a cloak. "You'll make it your own," Peris says. "And soon you'll be travelling, apprenticed."
"I want the homeside," Kelil says. She closes her eyes and tips her head back. She meant to curb the words. It's as senseless as saying, //I want her back//.
Taking two brisk steps, Peris folds her in a hug. Kelil gasps, and the tears start in earnest. She shakes her head, but Peris holds her tighter. "I know," she says. "My daughter, I know."
[[ϒ She'll take on Larik's life, and Larik's debts; for mothers' and fathers' sake, she'll be iryu's daughter.->coming of age]]
[[ϒ This morning's child is given.->suit]] $il[T]he world burns no brighter because Kelol comes of age. He gives courtesy entering his mothers' hearthside; he receives it from strangers passing in the street. And he feels no better, no happier. Nothing has changed.
At first his clothes snare him awkwardly. He fiddles with his belt or his boots, fingering the pleats of the fabric. And then, he forgets. He pulls clothes out of the press in the morning, or brushes them clean and folds them in the evening, and the shape and colour of them don't matter. He claims them; they fit; he can move and work and ride in them. A man's belt holds trousers up as well as child's braces do.
He slides into his new place like an otter into a familiar stream. He looks up when fathers use the masculine, and ignore them when they slip and call him ono.
The name //Kelol// once tingled on his skin, delightful and forbidden. Trayis called him that before the name was his. Thinking of her, Kelol rises early and dresses in his finest linen shirt, dyed a deep warm ochre, woven in subtle chevrons. He presses the folds smooth and re-knots his belt three times. Trayis's holding ranges their cairns on the far east side of Asaresta, where the track climbs towards the pass. Kelol means to walk there while air is cool, so he won't sweat patches at his armpits, but the sun rises hot before he arrives. A trickle sneaks down his spine. He must be red-faced under his tan.
He nearly heads for the hearthside door before he remembers he should ring the guest chimes. He's a man now, he can't skulk around a strange hearthside like a child avoiding chores. He squares his shoulders and makes the best of it, circling the garden to the guest door.
He brushes his fingers against the chimes, face burning. A greylag eyes him sidelong, spreading his wings and threatening to hiss. The methodical //chunk, tock, chunk//, of someone chopping wood at a well-measured pace emphasizes the sudden gallop of his heart.
Trayis's oldest sister, Ganil, opens the door. The day after Trayis came of age, Ganil scowled and scattered him; Trayis was a woman and he'd been a child, a pest. Kelol tenses, waiting for her to sweep him from the dooryard.
But this time Ganil gives courtesy and says, "Welcome to irvu."
He didn't mean to ask for guesting rights. Kelol hesitates, but returns her courtesy. The thrill of her welcome only reminds him to stay indignant on behalf of the child he once was. Nothing's changed, really. He least of all.
"Kell--!" Trayis appears behind her sister, and adds belatedly, "Kelol." She smiles at him, sunlight on swift water.
Kelol clears his throat, and can't quite put together a greeting. "I'm, er. Would you like to..." Well, one thing has changed. He can't ask Trayis to sneak away from chores with him.
Trayis brushes past her sister. Ganil warns her with a look, and they scuffle in a whispered fight that lasts no longer than two exchanges, Ganil hissing like the greylag and Trayis retorting, "--it's my rest day--" She grabs Kelol's hand and tugs him after her. They wend down to Asaresta's main road, hand in warm smooth hand.
Embarrassment seethes in Kelol's stomach. Last summer, they were children playing together; two ninedays ago, he was an annoyance at best. Today, whether he intended it or not, he called on her as a suitor.
But then Trayis grins at him, a flash of the Trais he remembers. They duck off the path in tandem and run uphill like they always have, lungs pumping, thighs straining. The path narrows and Trayis gets ahead of him, shouldering him into a backward slip, so that he drops three steps behind her. She flings herself down on the path's grassy verge. Kelol lets himself fall beside her. Smoke from Asaresta's woodfires and the sharper, iron smoke from irvu's forge hangs in the hazy air. But with Trayis, Kelol smells crushed grass, damp moss, and the nearby trickle of water. Above them twirling aspen leaves cut the sun into spangles.
"I don't feel any different," Kelol says finally, when their breathing slows.
"I told you!" Trayis flings a handful of ripped grass at his chest. "You didn't believe me."
Kelol brushes off his shirt, feeling suddenly prickly. "I thought it would be different if it was...what you wanted."
Trayis lays back, hands under her head. "What do you mean?"
"I wanted to be a trader. And I was good..."
"Who ever has a chance to want?" Trayis gives a one-shouldered shrug. "My holding's almost all on the hearthside. What else was there for me to be?"
"But irvu claims mines."
"Your holding raises wool. Does Maron want a shepherd?"
"I'm not very good with sheep," Kelol says, looking up at his hands. His fingers are as brown and slender as ever before. There's a crisscross of white scratches from a day's berry picking still fading.
Trayis sits up, wraps her arms around her knees. Kelol eyes her sideways, wondering if his doubt offends her. "What?"
"I thought you asked for this."
"Who says that?"
"Everyone. The village. Why would iryu have let you out of Larik's betrothal contract if you hadn't asked?"
"I asked, but this isn't what I--" He stops, and rolls to sitting. She thought he'd asked for her. "Trayis..."
Her eyes waver, grey as polished flint, as she searches his face. "Last summer you loved me."
"We were children." Kelol fumbles the words. Larik was so ill, and after the giving he didn't want to see anyone. He reaches for Trayis's hand and circles her palm with his thumb. Calluses roughen her fingerpads. She cuts her nails quick-short. "I thought your family didn't want you seeing me anymore."
"They didn't want me distracted by a child when I had work to do. It's different now." Trayis shifts to her knees in front of him. She leans close, one hand still warm in his, the other light on his shoulder. She kisses him.
She tastes warm, comfortable as sunshine. Kelol tips his head back, accepting. He tries to smile when she pulls back.
Trayis sighs. "Well, it's nice to kiss you without feeling like a cradle robber."
"What, you wanted me when I was still in straight robes?" Kelol smirks up at her.
"You were appealing--mildly." Trayis traces the leftline of his tunic with her fingertips. "But this is better."
He kisses her again, until she sinks with him down to the soft turf. Trayis twines her legs with his. They've avoided each other in the ninedays since she came of age. But he's of age now, permitted, forgiven. He runs his hand down her back, squeezing where the muscles knot. At last, Trayis draws back and props her head on her elbow. She picks a blade of grass from his hair. "So you plan to apprentice to Brelok, as a teacher?"
It sounds like a chore, but it's better than herding sheep. "And travel, eventually." He remembers their daydreams of prospecting together, finding lost treasure, returning to Asaresta too rich to give place to anyone.
"But not marry?"
Kelol could tell her the price he owes for avoiding Trenon. He wouldn't fault Trayis's holding for balking if asked to take on his debt. How can he explain that his parents wanted him to swallow Larik's ghost at the cost of his own? "Just because I want to travel doesn't mean I won't marry, eventually," he says. "But if you want a husband homeside all the year round, then I'm just not--"
Trayis sticks out her tongue at him. "Not in love enough."
As a child, he would have said he loved Trayis more than anything. He fought for his freedom--would he fight that hard for her?
Trayis touches her forefinger to his lips. She smiles, quiet and tender. "It's all right if you're not ready."
Kell kisses her fingertip solemnly. "So you'll tell your sister I'm not courting you?"
"Oh, that I can't promise," Trayis says. "Anyway, I still plan to claim a gold mine with you."
"I love you too," he says, and leans back on his elbows with a grin.
The summer light burnishes the green-gold aspens. The grass has already stained Kelol's best shirt.
Being a man hasn't changed pleasure, either.
[[ϒ He and Trayis could pass their marriage's first year during his apprenticeship. By the time his master raises him to journeyman, they could both be free to travel.->sediment]]
[[ϒ If he joins irvu as Trayis's husband, he won't feel like he's living under the glacier weight of his holding's expectations. But is that a reason to marry?->resolve]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "He can't ask Trayis to sneak away from chores with him.")[He can't ask Trayis to sneak away from chores with him.As children they slipped out of sight, taking a deerpath that angled out of the village. Place gets in the way of such scampering.]
]}$il[A] nineday later, Peris calls Kelol into the hearthroom. "Bring me that rawhide case, Kelol, would you?"
The leather was cured, but not tanned, and shaped into a shallow box before it dried. Inside, the fine grain of the hide shows, but the outside displays a bright painted mosaic of cardinals, bluejays, and yellow seersuckers, all signs of a young man's good fortune. Kelol sets it on the bench at Peris's side and turns to leave, but in a brittle voice, she says, "You'll want to watch this."
She takes out Shayin's trader's scales. With deft movements, she loads one side with weights. Kelol's stomach sinks along with the filling pan. That amount in straight cash could fill the manties on a whole string of mules. With edged indifference, Peris pours silver--weights and whits--into the opposite pan. When the two pans balance, she lets the silver clink to the sideboard, and tidies away the scales and weights. "That's iryu's gift to you. Count it as you load the case."
Kelol squares his chin. "Thank you," he answers, with simple directness: with place. He knows the terms of repayment. If he sings an apprenticeship, his wages belong to his master until he becomes a journeyman. After that they'll belong to iryu holding until he can balance the scales. If he sings a labouring contract, he'll start paying sooner, but not as quickly. A marriage contract could dent the amount, but what holding will want him for their daughter when he carries that weight with him?
Peris takes the case from him. Kelol refuses to look away when she, along with the rest of mothers and fathers, leave to relinquish the contract-breaking price to irthu. Still, watching them go, he feels slimier than fish guts, ripped and scattered under a hawk's talons.
His parents timed their procession for middle morning, when marketers fill Asaresta's streets. They wear guesting robes rich with fancywork and they go with heads high, chatting and laughing among themselves. Grenor rings irthu's guest chimes. When Trenon's mother, Berin, answers the guest door, she matches their loud gladness. By pointed coincidence, Berin invited Dalor, the master advocat, to visit that same day. He sings the contract's dissolution. It takes a full morning's hosting, with tev and tea and hot birch wine, and forceful claims of goodwill on both sides. Grief for iryu, and regret for irthu, both of them smiling under their shadowed place.
By mid-afternoon, they finish, but for the whispers that follow them home.
No one expected Kelol to go join the shaming. Yes, iryu has a young son, but everyone trumpets the irrelevance of Kelol's existence to the contract. Iryu holding lost its only unmarried daughter, and its hope of a trader.
[[ϒ Kelol fully intends to abandon ambition.->sweetheart]]
[[ϒ He counted out the debt, and he intends to shoulder it.->place debt]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "the whispers that follow them home.")[the whispers that follow them home.
"That Kelol's a handsome boy, but it's still a shame."
"You're right! Iryu could certainly do with a real trader."
"Did iryu holding mean all along to snub Ralon?"
"Maybe the poor boy thought better of marrying Trenon."
"Why? I've heard Trenon //likes// boys..."
"Oh, hush. He was betrothed."
"And now he isn't--what does that tell you?"]
]}$il[S]pring promises mild, and delivers hot. Brothers and fathers shear the last of the ewes. Mothers and sisters work dawn to dusk to comb and card and spin. The first wave of traders sets out with mules braying under full manties, leaving Asaresta market scattered and empty; then the next wave ascends.
After Kelol finishes his chores, he slips down to the common barn at the center of Asaresta. He tends the ponies for an occasional silverwhit, and listens to passing outriders' tales. He gathers a full outfit of the outriders' leavings: work gloves, riding chaps, a pair of boots that only need a new pair of laces.
On Trayis's rest days, Kelol saddles Brys and rides to irvu. With each visit, he rings the chimes louder, and accepts guest rights more easily. Amoz catches him one day as he's jumping into the saddle and gives him a basket of fresh duck eggs for a host-gift. In Maron or Grenor, Kelol might suspect a mercenary interest in his courting, but Amoz's smile and hand clapped on Brys's flank speaks only of teasing encouragement. Whatever their holdings may think, he and Trayis have agreed that they don't intend to sing a betrothal contract any time soon. Still, it feels good to catch her eye through her sisters' squabbling conversation, and share a grin.
When Maron announces that iryu has reached accord with Brelok, the teaching master, Kelol startles. He'll sing an apprenticeship after all. The days slipped away in threes and nines. Grenor bent willow withes into a family room chair for him; Katir volunteered an eider pillow to cover it. Kelol sleeps each night on his homeside pallet and wakes to the regular rhythm of Hiron's baby crying for the breast. One day, Kelol realizes his height outstrips Maron's, and promises to match Peris's. His once-new clothes settle into their folds; his belt shows wear at the knot-point.
Amoz traipses up and down the village, inviting people to the apprenticeship singing. Grenor sends a spring lamb to the butcher. Peris spends more than she ought on downmountain foods: dried cherries and melons, salted pork, wheat-flour for hearth breads and birch-sugar cakes.
Kelol dresses in his best robe and braids his hair. It's grown longer and heavier, enough to hold two plaiting sticks in a simple but sturdy knot. He takes a deep breath before stepping out of the deepstone into the magpie jabber in the dooryard. Trayis greets him first, taking his fist in both her hands. She kisses him soundly, laughing as she pulls back. "Good luck, Kelol," she says, squeezing before letting him go. Kelol returns her smile, and moves into the crowd with greater confidence. Everyone wants to offer him a courtesy. He made his promises to iryu. Now he'll sing them to Brelok. Iryu gave him their trust and he'll return it, name, silver, and place.
Flushed with wine, he ducks out of the crowd. He edges under the deepstone eaves where he can watch without being whirled about. When he turns, he realizes Nilos is standing beside him. Nilos offers him a quiet smile. "Congratulations," he says. "Larik would be proud."
Nilos spent more time with Larik than anyone. Tending her, singing strength. He could guess Larik's mind, if anyone would. Yet his good wishes sound pat. Kelol remembers Nilos's impatience, his serious honesty, with a child who could hardly bear to wrap a given sister. Sentiment comes awkward from his tongue.
"Proud?" Kelol asks. Larik wanted a sister, a trader. Not as Maron wants a trader, for the holding's profit. Larik supported her sibling's ambitions for their own sake. Kelol abandoned those hopes. "I've thrown this entire holding on end. I'll never be a trader..."
Nilos wears wistfulness like a strange robe. "Yes. Because you didn't want to live in her place shadow. I think she'd be proud."
Kelol ducks his head to hide a bitter laugh. He can't seek Larik's approval any more than a raven's. She's given and he can't live up to her wishes, let alone his holding's. "Have you--" Kelol stops, knowing he shows himself in the question and yet compelled to ask. "Have you ever gone against what everyone wants, even what you want yourself, for--for maybe nothing, in the end?"
"Not yet," Nilos says. He looks past Kelol's shoulder. "I think Trenon's ready for you."
"Trenon?" Kelol says, dust in his mouth. Trenon stands next to the advocat's dais with Brelok, who looks indifferent enough to the singing of his new apprentice. Kelol hasn't seen Trenon since he left on another journeyman's tour of the villages-next. He thought Maron and Peris would at least have the understanding to hire Dalor for today's rite, even if it means throwing good silver after bad. Trenon is the last person Kelol wants to see.
Kelol strides towards him. He sacrificed everything, but Trenon escaped the contract without a whisper.
Trenon blithely ignores the churlish fury that must show on Kelol's face. He looks tired, drawn, and yet a hint of roundness softens his once-sharp cheeks. He steps a little wider, a little slower than he once did, as he leads Kelol and Brelok to the dais.
Kelol swallows every insult. He'll sing his promises and endure. He knots his shoulders and sets himself to listen to Trenon's voice, opening the contract.
One hand on Kelol's shoulder, one hand on Brelok's, Trenon bows his head and sings. After a moment of blind anger, Kelol tilts his head, holding his breath. Trenon changed the vows. Kelol hears the standard apprenticeship song often enough--Larik's vows to Shayin followed the same pattern. But Trenon sings of a teacher's duty to his students, a master's duty to his apprentice. The litany of promises begins, and, to Kelol's astonishment, each one binds Brelok.
Heart pounding, Kelol peeks out at the audience. More than one face is wide-eyed, listening. No wonder it took a season and silver to secure Brelok's agreement! Brelok will be understanding, and generous. He'll teach to Kelol's ability, and never hold him back from advancement; treat him well, understand him, let him marry, journey, form a holding. Brelok will never stint, never dismiss, never undermine. Kelol's voice breaks when his turn comes. He promises to learn, to teach well, and to honour his trade as his place sees fit. As his place sees fit! That could mean anything! Kelol's integrity is the only stricture.
Kelol never thought he'd hear a thank you from Trenon for freeing him from an unwanted marriage. But this apprenticeship song--and however Trenon convinced Brelok to agree to every note-perfect verse--gives thanks and apology in one.
When Kelol lifts his head, he catches Nilos looking up towards the dais. At first he thinks that Nilos is watching him. But no--his smile is for Trenon, all tender affection. Like that day in the woods. Whatever lies between them hasn't ended.
Kelol's knees shake when he steps down from the dais. Trayis wraps him in a full hug, her sunshine eyes bright with happiness. Kelol wraps his arms around her, laughing. He'll be a teacher. He'll travel. Brelok can't keep him an apprentice forever, delaying his journeying and his independence, not if Kelol demonstrates he deserves it.
He can't trade; swindlers target men in a market. He won't reach the city, downmountain, nor keep the promises he took from tales. But Trenon's song offers true opportunity. Kelol puts his arm around Trayis's waist and leads iryu to the laden trestles.
A slow unfolding spring, grief and givings, has ended. He's a man, sung into his trade. Kelol has come of age.
(link-goto: "ϒ Return.","begin") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Trenon escaped the contract without a whisper.")[Trenon escaped the contract without a whisper. Silver and self, all of it went to Trenon and irthu holding! Pride rings hollow when Trenon will gloat over singing Kelol into his second-choice apprenticeship.]
]}$il[Z]ayelik promised to return to iryu holding after completing her city trading. Six ninedays, maybe seven. She'll arrive in the dooryard at the head of her rich string and expect to take iryu's daughter as her apprentice.
Every time that fantasy unfurls, Kelol clamps it down. The traders in Asaresta market have started stonewalling him, offering fixed prices no matter how much he sweet-talks. Shayin may not be a trader born, but she gets the honour of an offer other than the final price. Shayin barely notices.
Apprenticing to Zayelik was all Kelol's imagining once, even when apprenticing to a mountain trader was the height of ambition. Zayelik has such a weight to her! A room-filling heft. Kelol may never haggle like her, but he wants to take up space like she does: capable, measured, and glad. She may never teach him a trader's tricks, but he can listen, and learn.
Five ninedays after the giving, Kelol starts rising earlier, tiptoeing through a maze of his brothers' pallets at the first peek of dawn. He saddles Brys and rides into Asaresta, then takes the downmountain road, haunting the cool path that slips from open fields into the dark forest.
He promised to make good on his debt, but he needs to pay in his own way. Peris can't corner Brelok into an agreement for Kelol's perfunctory teaching apprenticeship. Shayin hardly notices her loom in front of her, let alone Kelol's need for a mother to negotiate on his behalf. Fathers might keep him hoeing the garden like an unsung labourer for years. Mothers might marry him off overmountain for whatever silver they can stack against his debt. Kelol won't have leverage to refuse, next time.
Brys's snort mists in the chill air. The sun, rising above the eastern peak, touches Brys's coat and brightens it to glossy bronze. Kell stands in his stirrups, peering southwards.
Coming upmountain, Zayelik unloads the heaviest of her city goods in Asaresta market. Anything she thinks she can get a better price for directly, she takes overmountain herself, by-passing Asaresta's role as lynch-pin. She calculates fodder and rations to a nicety, so that she can visit the biggest of the villages-next while maximizing profit. She picks up ingots and stones, some seasonings and herbs for songs and dyes, then returns to Asaresta to load her mules with the bulky goods too heavy to bother with among the passes.
But first she has to climb through the south willow swamps. Kelol wheels Brys around when he hears the huffing breath of working mules, winding up through the straight-shadowed trees.
Zayelik appears first, scouting ahead of her train, alert and comfortable on her horse's broad back.
Kelol swallows his nerves and shouts, "Welcome to Asaresta, master trader!" With his knees, he quiets Brys, who has grown resigned to being pulled from his stall for these jaunts, but who rarely appreciates loud voices.
As a child, Kelol waited for Zayelik's recognition like a birch-sugar candy dropped in the mud. As an adult, Kelol can't offer guesting rights on behalf of all Asaresta, but he has the place to expect a response.
Zayelik rides up to him easily. Her lovely gelding towers over Brys. "What news?" she asks. From the mild look she gives him, the only surprise he managed was to appear in a left-knotted tunic.
"All's well in Asaresta," he says. Her mules look tired, mud caking their legs and spattering their bellies. Uphill, through the willow swamps, heavily burdened--Zayelik will need to stable them for a day or two before climbing over the pass. "Your outriders can hire fresh ponies in our stables."
Zayelik looks over her outriders and gives a judicious nod. "They're a good crew, but tired," she agrees.
Kelol wants to corner them and ask each one for his tales. They've been to the city, after all. But they don't look much impressed. They joined her as contract labourers for wages, not for the sights. "I've come to ask place," Kelol says. "I want to sing on as an outrider on your next tour."
"I said they're tired, not dead." Zayelik rides around him. Kelol wheels Brys and reins in beside her. "I'm full up and in no mood to train a boy."
He's not a trader, but Zayelik flattered him once, as a child desperate to bargain. "You'll lose half your men before you reach Asarvinya," he says, naming the closest village-next. Outriders boast of breaking contract once they reach the mountains and their own holdings. "You'll go downmountain shorthanded."
Zayelik tosses him a look, but doesn't answer.
"It's close to midsummer," Kelol insists. "These men will sing better contracts as field hands during the harvest. Hire me and I'll join you on your way back to the city."
"You'll work for training and your keep," Zayelik says.
The first offer is never the last. "I'll go with you for my training, my keep, and a silverweight for three ninedays' work." Once he has experience, he can demand twice that amount.
"Still the trader, aren't you?" Zayelik asks. "You'd fit in well in the city."
Kelol's heart stops for a clear moment before he dismisses Zayelik's implications. He wants to travel; he wants silver. If he starts thinking further than that, imagining a man can bargain in the city, he'll lose his nerve. "In two ninedays you'll be coming back," he says. "I'll be ready then." He knows her schedule. He doesn't need as much training as she thinks.
Zayelik shrugs. They pass the first deepstones of Asaresta. The gelding quickens his pace, remembering the traders' common barn not far ahead. "I'll sing that promise if you hire the advocat," she says. "Good day, Kelol. I would've enjoyed you as an apprentice. Maybe you'll surprise me yet."
[[ϒ Kelol needs an advocat--and Trenon owes him.->stableboy]]
[[ϒ He has two ninedays to make peace with iryu.->accountable]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "peering southwards.")[peering southwards.
Asaresta was built to host a traders' road from the city, before the road sank in the willow swamps. What remains of that track curls up the eastern shoulder of the mountain, passes through the village holdings to the mine adits, and then climbs over the pass to the villages-next.]
]}$il[S]ummer heat creeps upmountain, stalking catfoot after the retreating rains. Peris guests with the teaching master, Brelok, but he already has an apprentice and needs convincing to take on another. Kelol, like the rest of iryu, knows that silver can be very convincing indeed, but fathers and mothers grow snappish on the subject of contract prices. Brelok delays the apprenticeship song, and delays again.
Spring empties the deepstone: fathers and brothers must comb the chamois and then shear the sheep. The lambs drop first, then the kids. Amoz, left behind to tend the garden, sets his jaw when Kelol slumps into his presence.
Before Larik died, Grenor and Shayin discussed expanding the holding's land claims, pushing their field cairns east to land that has already been terraced. Varin tries, she truly does, coaxing and flattering and paying Dalor good silver for his contract songs, but at the cairn-raising iryu loses ground to the neighbouring holdings. Despite asking for more buckets per nineday at the open wells, due to a strong lambing season, Varin barely clings to the same water-rights they held the year before. Varin is shrewd enough in her way, and far better than Peris, but in the end, she's too practical and hardminded to enjoy the give-and-take of a good haggle. Still, she works harder than any, and barely sleeps, helping Hiron with the new baby. The price of place.
As the season wears on, more trader trains make their way up to iryu. Kelol slinks from the deepstone when they come calling. Shayin watches them come from the weavers' hut but refuses to rise and greet them. Varin hosts them happily enough. Between the trading and her own work she doesn't have the time to set up a stall in Asaresta market. She can't or won't see that she pays more for it. The traders love her because she takes their disdain as insult instead of as an opening maneuver. She bristles and grudges instead of waxing sweet and vicious as an adder. She's generous when she should be stingy, tight-fisted when she should be ensuring future consideration. Kelol can't watch, so he goes riding instead.
He rides east to the mine adits on the far side of Asaresta gorge; south to the willow swamps that block the trail downmountain. Midday he rests Brys at the notch of the pass, looking north to Asarvinya, where he's never been. He hasn't even apprenticed yet and already the bounds of Asaresta cage him.
He tastes his name, Kelol, bitter as a chokecherry. Larik finished her apprenticeship by seventeen. Look at Trenon--nothing stops him. He vanished the day after Larik's giving to sing the spring contracts in every village-next. He probably visits nine villages with every escape. Kelol won't cover a route like that until he becomes a journeyman, and Peris hasn't even secured his apprenticeship.
And travelling means more than plodding the same endless circuit. Kelol wants to arrive somewhere new for the first time and breathe it in. When he was a child, he could run down to Asaresta market, pretending to play and staying to listen. He loved the traders' chatter and their tales. He learned the rhythm of their backhand insults, their compliments sly enough to sting. Most traders tramp in from villages-next, but one or two, like Zayelik, bring entire worlds when they come. They have stories of path washouts and foundered packmules. He half-thinks they exaggerate the danger to keep the lucrative city route to themselves, but most of it sounds like the best kind of tale, burnished truth. Kell heard camp stories, travelling stories, bargain stories, letting the traders wink over his head and act like they were yarning to each other.
Now, if Kelol eases into the market and slips along the stalls fingering splendid cloth and rich furs, sniffing spices, tracing the pottery patterns, they watch him and give courtesy. "Anything catch your eye, young sir?"
[[ϒ Cool smiles, shuttered stares. Place, not respect.->discounted]]
[[ϒ He never knew there was a difference.->outrider]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "He tastes his name, Kelol, bitter as a chokecherry.")[He tastes his name, Kelol, bitter as a chokecherry. Unmarried! Unpromised! His own man.]
]}$il[T]racking Trenon down proves a challenge. Every summer he leaves Asaresta to tour the villages-next, seeking advocat's work: crafting labour contracts, ajudicating land claims, and instructing water-watchers. Normally, Kelol would listen to traders' talk for news of travellers. Now the traders' best stories dart away like minnows when Kelol approaches a market stall. A child might listen, but a man isn't welcome.
Before he can discover Trenon's whereabouts, fathers send him up to the pastures. Grenor and his brothers herd the milling, bleating ewes with their lambs into a series of makeshift pens. Kelol stokes the fire and heats the irons.
He doesn't enjoy the branding and gelding, the charcoal smell of flesh; but he laughs, using his new weight to hold down frantic lambs, getting bruised and wrenched for his trouble. Grenor separates out the biggest rams. Maron curls the knife and makes bewildered wethers of the rest.
It takes two ninedays, working from one pasture to the next. At night the stars hang close enough to touch. Kelol yawns by the fire, nosetip frozen and running. He eases aches with his brothers' laughter, low song, and dandelion wine.
Rough work satisfies in its way, but Kelol groans, mounting Brys for his return to the deepstone. He fills the bathcask with nine trips to the well and shivers through a thorough scrub. His pallet beckons. Kelol sinks down into his straw tick with a grunt of relief. Outriders sleep in thin blanket rolls and traders would never spare room in their mules' manties to carry pallets. Kelol buries his face in the deepstone's comforts rather than worry about the delights of travel.
He lifts his head briefly when Amoz sticks his head into the sleeping room. "Varin wants you to take the new mules to the common barn."
Kelol rolls his face into his pillow. Varin thinks her place gives her the ordering of iryu. "Did I sing a labour contract in my sleep?" he asks, muffled.
"Varin bought them to contract out to traders. They're in the paddock but we've no stalls for them."
A stupid purchase. Varin should focus on consolidation and water contracts, not diversifying to livestock. Kelol groans to his feet. "Traders aren't due yet."
"And the mules need to be used to that barn before they get here. We won't get much if they're twitching at their stalls." Amoz gives his shoulder a quick squeeze. "You're the best hand we have."
If Amoz means it to be reassuring, he misses by a mile. Kelol frowns. "Fine," he says slowly. The best hand with mules--maybe. But why him? Because he's the youngest? Because he finished his bath first?
Kelol skins back into his sweat-crusted outriders' castoffs. The mules show no interest in leaving their forage. They set their feet against his tugging persuasion. When they finally, in their abrupt stubborn way, agree to go, Kelol gets a bitten thumb putting on a headstall. Candle lanterns burn behind deepstone lattices before he arrives at Asaresta's common barn. Kelol pays for four stalls, with feed laid on. The stable men gossiping over scrimshaw glare when Kelol chooses to settle his own beasts rather than spreading silver to see it done. Kelol stables the first mule and is forking fresh straw for the next when it hits him that they're right.
Fathers and mothers are using him. He's nothing but an unsung labourer to them. The teaching apprenticeship that hasn't materialized--mothers won't rush to negotiate a contract that will see silver trickle //out// of iryu. Fathers won't give up a boy who can herd and pack and groom, for nothing more than the food he'd eat anyway.
Mechanically, Kelol shuts the stall door on the last of the mules. He fumbles for candle and flint, then leaves them in his pocket. He sits on a stack of upturned buckets and feels every bone-deep bruise, while twilight deepens to owl-dark outside.
[[ϒ There's no reason for him to honour his debt if iryu doesn't intend to let him pay it.->accountable]] $il[K]elol bends over, digging muck from a hinny's shoe, looking for the stone that must be pressing into the soft frog. A pair of unlaced boots step into his view before he finds it. Something in him blackens at the prospect of a guest. He has the hinny's forefoot bent up and caught between his knees, his knife ready to pry out the stone, and now he has to leave off and host. Kelol grunts an acknowledgement that might pass for a guesting offer and keeps scraping the hoof clear. The boots don't move. The brown trousers look like they belong somewhere other than a horse paddock. He should go bother the hearthside. Women host better than mud-smeared stableboys.
A moment later Kelol catches sight of the stone, and levers it out. The hinny brays when he inspects the frog. She's a bit tender but Kelol caught the limp early. Kelol drops his leg and stands aside, one hand on the hinny's withers. She blinks long, sad lashes at Kelol and nudges him for a bite of apple core that he has tucked in his pocket. She'll be all right, then.
Only then does Kelol turn to the visitor. He squints to see Nilos. "Welcome to iryu," he says, feeling sullen but trying to keep it out of his voice. He doesn't have much use for healers, and less for Nilos, who spent Larik's giving playing pleasure games in the forest. In spurts of effort, Kelol tries to convince himself that Nilos did his best, did his duty, that no one could have tended Larik better. Then he finds himself furious all over again at Nilos for failing her. But a healer has place.
Kelol goes to the rain barrel and washes his hands, then cools his face with a double handful of water. Nilos follows him; Kelol watches over his shoulder. Nilos's formal left-belted robe makes an offbeat contrast to his open boots. They haven't seen each other for half a season, except passing in Asaresta market. Kelol, moved by some ghost, sticks out his mudstreaked fist, offering a trader's greeting at odds with his stableboy's clothing.
Nilos doesn't hesitate to cover Kelol's fist with both hands. He stands back, apparently at a loss for words. Maybe his holding's hinnies don't go lame. More likely, healers reserve themselves for boiling water for their stinking brews, and aren't asked to muck about with horses of any stripe.
Kelol squints up at the sun, checking the afternoon's progress. He finished most of the chores but the undercroft's been in terrible shape since the last group of Asarotha traders went through it with a gleeful will and Varin only sniffed in annoyance at the mess they left. "Did someone call for a song?" he asks, starting for the deepstone. Hiron hasn't been shy about asking the healers to check over his perfectly healthy baby. More than once. It makes sense that Nilos's master would send him instead of coming himself, probably with instructions not to rush.
"No," Nilos says. Then, with sad-lipped seriousness, "You're sung as a stablehand?"
Kelol frowns. "That's a placeless question," he says, meeting tactless with bluntness. In truth he hasn't sung any contract at all, labour or otherwise.
"I thought you were going to apprentice to Brelok."
And so he would, if Peris could corner the teaching master into a set price for his apprenticeship. In the meantime, his fathers get more use out of him as a groom and jack-of-all-trades. Unlike his fathers' contracted shepherds, he doesn't have set duties, nor wages either.
Kelol bangs open the trap door and steps down into the dim undercroft. Nilos's boots hesitate on the ladder, but he follows, and watches quietly as Kelol starts shoving boxes and bales back onto their proper shelves. Kelol doesn't feel like explaining that he owes iryu his work until he can earn silver, and his silver until his debt is paid.
"I wanted to see how you were doing, after Larik," Nilos says, when Kelol doesn't speak.
Kelol pauses. Nilos is silhouetted by the light streaming down from the door, his face in shadow. "Could you help me if I said I wasn't?" Nilos's mouth opens, and Kelol grunts. "Right."
"I'd try," Nilos says, with earnest heat. "I'd listen."
Kelol stares at the holding's wealth--all these oilcloth-wrapped bolts. Once he would have been counting them in silver. Now he spends his days shuttling them about, loading or unloading. All his brothers work with the flocks, and work as hard as he does, but at least they have contract songs--apprenticed to Maron or Grenor. "I'm working like a stableboy because I shouldn't be a son," he says, and the words close his throat until he has to shake his head.
To his surprise, Nilos doesn't question such nonsense. He moves closer in the musty dimness and says, "You feel guilty for breaking the contract."
Fathers and mothers would never be so placeless as to treat him like a field labourer. The work falls to Kelol because he's the youngest son, and not apprenticed yet, that's all. No one offered him a contract song because he's not a field hand, he's a son of iryu. Doing his duty. And he deserves it. Maron doesn't really want to be repaid in silver. Kelol will redeem mothers' and fathers' placeless march down to irthu holding with songless scut.
"Kelol, they made you their son," Nilos says. "What happens after that--the least you deserve is place."
Kelol forced the choice. He starts shoving again, tamping lids down, rewrapping packages. In less than a nineday Zayelik will return, and Kelol doesn't plan to play field hand forever. (unless: (history:) contains "Seek Kelol")["As an outrider, I might go downmountain for a season."
"The city?" Nilos hesitates, and Kelol pauses to watch him. "Will you take me with you?"
Kelol wrinkles his nose. Nilos has a good apprenticeship, a solid place in Asaresta. But since Trenon won't be married, Nilos may feel exposed. He needs distance to outpace the market whispers about him. Pratically, though: "You'd slow a trader down."
"That's why I need you," Nilos says. "All I want is the loan of a riding pony, and your promise that I'll be included in the trader train."
Kelol doubts Zayelik will be easily persuaded, but he nods. "When Zayelik comes down from the villages-next, this threeday," he says. "I'll have a pony for you when we leave."]
(link: "ϒ No, he'll be an outrider next. Iryu's worthy son.")[(goto: "dismissal")]
(link: "ϒ He just wishes--he wishes Nilos weren't here to see it.")[(goto: "crow")] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "But a healer has place.")[But a healer has place, more place than an unsung boy, and Kelol won't insult it. Which isn't to say he plans to humour it.]
(click-replace: "offering a trader's greeting.")[offering a trader's greeting at odds with his stableboy's clothing.]
]}$il[K]elol tucked away a cloak of Larik's, the one bright with spring foxes, and saved it from the burning. Though healers claim fevers can haunt a deepstone along with the ghosts of the given, Larik never touched this cloak after her sickness set in. Kelol can't wear it, all its rightward lines and smiling vixens. He might fetch good silver for it in the market, but he keeps it folded under his pallet-clothes. At night, when he's falling asleep, he thumbs its chamois softness and remembers her.
But Larik's last work was still on her workbench on the day of her giving. Larik intended it for a young woman's coming of age. More than once, Kell slipped into the weavers' hut to run fingers over the meticulous stitches. Peris bleached the wool, then dyed it with chalk to a white as deep as goats' milk. Larik's deep blue peregrines soaring around the hem stood out in sharp relief. Larik laced her hopes for her sibling into every knot and thread: the falcons, each barred feather hand-stitched, meant wide travel and downmountain riches. Kelol's man's robe had been a poor substitute. The scarlet colour washed him out, and the flaws in the seams proved its hasty purchase. The inked cardinals had been stamped from a block, each an echo of the others. Larik's falcons were a wild cast, all different.
When Kelol sees Peris leaving the weaving hut one afternoon, her hands scrubbed of dye, with a package under her arm, he follows. Varin makes a poor enough replacement for Shayin's trading, but Peris?
Kelol might reconcile himself if Peris intends to sell the robe to a downmountain trader. Larik's finework rivals any city weaving. But the last city trader left Asaresta a nineday earlier, and Peris chooses the small stall of an Asarvinya trader with no hint that she considered the alternatives. Kelol can't help himself; he darts forward to stand beside her.
Peris's face turns grim when she sees him at her elbow, but she continues her place-talk with the trader. Kelol simmers beside her. His presence might unsettle any bargaining skill Peris has, but he can't leave. He wants to demand that Peris gift him the robe right under the trader's nose--Larik meant it for him, for the person he might have been.
Peris soon grows impatient with the trader's talk of the spring cairns and the sprouting fields, and says, "I've these two robes to sell."
Kelol hides his wince. Even Varin shows more skill than Peris. Peris drops her trade into a conversation like a lump of iron into a river pool. She unwraps her package. It holds the robe that Larik hand-stitched as well as Kelol's market-bought coming of age robe. With a twinge of guilt, Kelol realizes Peris wouldn't sell Larik's work, if the holding didn't need to rebuild its store of cash silver.
"Hm," the trader says, lifting the scarlet boy's robe first, its bright colour catching her eye. "A bit threadbare. And the dye looks like it will run."
One truth, one lie. The trader baits an easy trap. Peris immediately concedes the trader's complaint about the weaving by defending the dyes. Peris was raised with her hands in a dye pot, so she's sarcastic, detailed, and entirely correct. At last, the trader nods warily, as though Peris convinced her. Then she tugs the hem of the robe and shakes her head as five stitches pop loose.
"No good," she says, pushing both robes back at Peris.
Peris opens her mouth to protest, but she already spent her authority.
"Check the other," Kelol demands.
The trader shoots him a quelling look, but she lifts Larik's work with avid hands. "A matched set. I could offer three whits for each."
Fury boils up Kelol's throat. He knows he has no place here, he knows, but Larik deserves better than this trader's dismissal. "No," he snaps. "The intricacy of the pattern, and the use of a nine or more of different blues..."
Peris hesitates, but the trader pulls her back in. "They're both coming of age robes. The dye work on each is comparable..."
"But the quality of the wool is better in the woman's," Kelol insists.
The trader starts to get huffy, not certain if Kelol is playing games, or if Peris's hesitation masks a genuine tactic. "I think I know what will sell overmountain--"
Overmountain! When they both know she'll flip the robes to a city trader the second Peris turns her back.
"Kelol, you really must give this up," Peris says. "We don't need the robes any longer."
The trader's smile grows solicitous. "Ah, no more children in the holding?" she asks. "This young man must have raised the wool, to be so knowledgeable!"
Relieved to take the focus off Kelol's attempts to bargain, Peris says, "He's to be apprenticed to the teacher, once we have the price."
Kelol deflates. So that's why Peris is selling. Iryu needs the silver to apprentice him. A gift for him, and he doesn't want it. He'd rather sing a contract labour song, and keep Larik's work, if he can't use his real talents to help the holding. "We'll sell the boy's robe for six whits, and the girl's for nine," he tries, his last attempt, and a poor one. Peris cut the price too far to ever get the upper hand. Traders don't listen to men. "You'd easily profit downmountain--"
"Ah, but I don't trade downmountain." A trader's truth: she'll offer the robes to a downmountain middleman who'll give her a tidy profit. "It's possible I'll have customers for them. I'll give you nine whits for both," she says, extending her fist.
Peris stands back on her heels, impressed at the increased offer. She encloses the trader's fist in both hands before Kelol's protest can rise to more than a whine in his throat.
"Done!" the trader says. She fills one pan of her scale with an iron weight, and balances it with silverwhits on the other. She scoops the silver into a pouch for Peris. She hooks the boy's robe over her goods-table to join a pile of other robes. Then, with a gleam in her eye, she picks up the girl's robe and shakes it out. She folds it carefully, cushioning the layers with soft, undyed linen. The package is tied and tucked away, out of sight.
If Peris notices the different treatment, she doesn't say a word. Kelol tags after her, fuming. "She'll sell Larik's robe to someone like Zayelik for a twice what she paid!" he says.
Peris stops, blocking his path until he meets her eyes. "I'll thank you to be grateful when iryu is working to finance your apprenticeship."
Kelol squirms. "Yes, Mother." He pauses, and dredges up suitable courtesy. "I'm looking forward to teaching. I appreciate your kindness. But the robe's value--"
Peris sighs. "Iryu focuses on quality, and we sell well."
"Not if that's your usual profit!" Kelol doubts Peris knows more about iryu's profit than that Shayin keeps the silver chest full.
"We want people to wear our clothes, to give place to iryu when they buy them."
"They'll give place by what they pay." Kelol shoves past her and starts towards the bridge.
Peris catches up and takes his arm, pushing him to one side of the road. Her voice lowers to a tight whisper. "Stop this. Stop trying to be a trader. You had that chance!"
Kelol opens his mouth to protest, and Peris cuts him short. "You act like iryu gave you nothing. We gave you place when you were a child. We //lost// place on your behalf. We trusted you with an open debt--a sizeable debt!"
Kelol doesn't want to think about iryu's lost place, so he accuses, "You grieve for your lost silver."
"I am trying," Peris says, the words grinding in her throat, "to place you as an apprentice. I am trying to get to know my son, a son I never expected..." She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes, and when she opens them they are damp. "Kelol, when a weaver makes such a robe as Larik did, she believes it will be used by the person it's meant for. Larik made that one for the sister she expected." Peris cups his face in both hands. "You're not alone in missing her. But I've lost both a daughter and a child this spring, and that robe was never yours."
She lets him go, then. Kelol stares at his boots as they walk back to iryu in silence. He thought he could handle a debt in silver. He was meant to be a trader; he thought he knew the value of the place he bargained for. He never saw the hidden price: this guilt, these demands. Mothers and fathers are right but he will drown this way, tumbled under an avalanche of obligations.
[[ϒ If the debt was silver alone, he'd set himself to working it off and be glad of the chance.->sweetheart]]
[[ϒ But how can he live for years in iryu, where everyone has a claim on his pride?->resolve]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Kelol's market-bought coming of age robe.")[Kelol's market-bought coming of age robe. The oldest child in the holding is Varin and Hiron's newborn, the two of them greatly pleased with the place the baby brought them. These robes will be moth-eaten before there's any call for them. ]
]}$il[A]saresta market twists on itself, a garter snake climbing a narrow cliff. Kelol once loved standing on the edge of the top tier, stalls spilling downhill like bright stones shaken from a blanket. After the traders start snubbing him, he skulks at the base of the market street instead, leaning against the cool shade of the common barn. When the traders' outriders finish unloading, they water their mules at the open well, under the close eye of the water-watchers. Then the outriders let their beasts loose into the steep-pitched paddock behind the common barn. Holdings with few animals, or traders with their ponies and mules, take advantage of the common barn's stalls. Irnu holding charges for fodder and mucking out, leaving the rest to the ponies' owners. Above the stalls, in the loft, a double-nine of hammocks sway next to the baled hay. Traders' outriders claim a bed for a night or a three-day, all part of the trader's overhead for putting up a market stall.
If the traders won't have him, Kelol knows another route to their tales. When a wagon rumbles up the street fresh from the first haying, Kelol joins the men heaving bales to the loft. Kelol has his height--though he hopes for more--but not his muscle yet. Still he pitches above his weight. The dust chokes and hay scratches even through leather work gloves. The men around him don't take a pair of willing hands for granted.
Grenor always said Kelol wouldn't make a shepherd. He falls asleep watching the flocks and wakes up sunburnt with every sheep out of sight. A chamois once kicked him blue for snagging his comb in her fleece. Kelol can wrestle a lamb still enough for the branding but he could never press the iron against her flank himself.
Ponies are different. Kelol will break his back pitching hay if he gets to feed them afterwards, murmuring to each one and offering a handful of barley on his palm. The water-watchers shrug and grin when Kelol hauls their buckets for them, filling not only the ponies' troughs but the barn's cistern too. When he finishes and still comes back for more, Sirol, an outrider who hiked in from Asarvinya seeking work, lends Kelol a curry brush while the rest of the men mend tack.
When the outriders gather for their evening tev, Sirol waves Kelol over. One of the men fills a mug for him, then thins the tev with clear, sharp liquor from a flask. Even though he means to be cautious, Kelol chokes when he takes his first sip.
Sirol laughs. "Never had potato wine before?"
Kelol takes another taste. The liquored tev leaves a wonderful burn down his throat. He's had beer, often. Dandelion wine, and the bright spark of anise liquor; but this potato wine is new, heating him through when it hits his stomach.
"You're good with the ponies, lad," Sirol says. "Can you pack a mule?"
"Sawbuck or manty?" Kelol asks.
One of the other men, Jiron, laughs. "Sounds like he can pack."
Kelol grins and takes a deeper swallow of his tev. After the day's work his stomach clamours for more, but he won't overdo it, feeling the power of the wine. Kelol prefers panniers when he packs his holding's ponies for trail work. Paired top packs, tied with a diamond hitch, don't get in the way on mountain trails where the slope gets steep. Traders generally favour manties for their stability and greater capacity. Either way, packing a mule is about distributing the weight equally, and making sure that breakables don't. As long as the mules don't spook, Kelol doesn't find it troublesome.
Sirol passes his flask around the circle. "You should sing on with a trader," he says. "I'm waiting for a city trader to come through looking for hands. Then I'm off."
Kelol rests his elbows on his knees. "I'll be apprenticed soon," he says. Sirol's praise warms him, but he didn't come to be the center of attention. He hopes someone starts a story soon.
"Apprenticing." Jiron sniffs. "You get more place than pride doing that."
Kelol shrugs uncomfortably. Fathers can't stop him from singing a labour contract as a field hand or outrider. Fathers and mothers simply expect Kelol to apprentice, though it will delay him from repaying his debt. Outriders tend a trader's mules and never concern themselves with business, except to count their silverweights at the end of a haul. But they travel.
Sirol buffets Kelol's shoulder. "Think on it. You do a tour, and still get back on time to be apprenticed for winter."
Kelol nods into his mug. The wine glows in his chest. The outriders' talk turns to which village they'll visit next, what the load will be like, the trail conditions. Kelol curls up on a bale and half-listens. Wages. Labourer's wages, not much, but Sirol's right. If Kelol sings on as an outrider he'll earn silver, not like an apprentice whose wages belong to the master. And he could still sing to the master teacher when he gets back...
Zayelik said she'd take him on as her apprentice if he became iryu's daughter. She might take him now, as an outrider instead. Zayelik doesn't shuttle back and forth between villages-next. She scouts trails through the willow swamps to the south, the paths through the brambly forest downmountain. Kelol could see the city.
[[ϒ An outrider who sings a labour contract lives provisionally, more transient than a season's field hand.->resolve]]
[[ϒ Kelol can't leave on a whim. Even more than silver, he owes place to his holding. A teacher, even an apprentice teacher, has place.->sediment]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "the water-watchers.")[the water-watchers. In the dry season, the price of a bucket can climb as high as a silverwhit.]
(click-replace: "Fathers can't stop him from singing a labour contract as a field hand or outrider.")[Fathers can't stop him from singing a labour contract as a field hand or outrider. More people sing labour contracts after coming of age than take apprenticeships. Miners and builders need young women for heavy work, and farmers and shepherds take men to weed and wrangle.]
]}$il[F]or three ninedays, fathers and mothers bury Kelil under an avalanche of preparations. Maron invites most Asaresta holdings to the rite and leaves the rest to turn up anyway. He'll feed them and send them home with copper bangles and wheat cakes, and expect to hear his good hosting praised for the rest of the season. Ralon, balding bustard that he is, will have silver either way; but Maron will have place.
From Kelil's first breath in the mornings, mothers call on her to help with the baking or brewing. Belim descends on her with cooking lessons. Varin drapes her in fabric to fit her with women's clothes. She takes in Larik's tunics and trousers to match Kelil's height. Katir threads them with new belts and ties, like polished chimes on a ghost-haunted deepstone. All of them do their ungentle best to twist and shove until Kelil is lodged on the hearthside like a wedge in a split log. Only Shayin can see the gapes and draws where Kelil can't fill the hole Larik left.
The morning of her coming of age dawns clear and fresh. Dew beads the columbines blooming in the shadowed corners of the deepstone. Kelil has nothing to do but be washed and wrapped; she feels hollow as a shell. She practices stillness while Amoz plaits her hair.
The procession takes every switchback down to Asaresta market square singing: the hearthside in dusky greens, the homeside in solemn browns. Kelil walks behind them all in her child's robe, the least of iryu holding.
Ralon and Berin stand below the advocat's dais. Kelil keeps her chin high and her stare cool as she meets their eyes. Trenon, that coward, hasn't returned to Asaresta since Larik's giving. Kelil wouldn't be surprised if his parents ordered his disappearance, to block as much of Maron's triumph as they can without offering genuine insult.
Trenon's master, Dalor, sings the rite. Kelil lifts her arms as he draws off her child's robe. The soft air warms her skin. She draws her last unpromised breath, and then Peris lets the woman's robe slide over her head. Kelil bites down hard on her lower lip.
Chamois fleece, softer than sheep's wool, bleached and dyed creamy white. At the hem, swift falcons soar; each barred feather stands out in blue relief. They aren't dye stamps: the fine, meticulous embroidery picks out a wild cast, all different, hand-stitched flight feathers flowing. Larik laced her hopes for Kelil into every knot and thread. Wide travel and downmountain riches. Kelil barely listens to the first line of the betrothal song, hoping the brisk wind in her unblinking eyes explains her tears.
But she hears the vows before she sings them. The song binds iryu's youngest daughter, a line so open as to be meaningless. If Kelil refuses the song, and Hiron's newborn becomes a woman in fifteen years' time, she might be just as trapped. Trenon crafted these vows on his holding's behalf--he was sloppy. Dalor should have vetoed them. But Kelil can hardly accuse Trenon of anticipating Larik's fever. They'll both hang by his loophole.
The rest of the promises, by contrast, free Larik--Kelil--far more than she knew. For the first time, she listens to the song in earnest. Trenon will be as answerable in the marriage as she. They can demand an independent holding the morning after their marriage and iryu can't balk. Kelil wonders how much of that was Trenon's intention. Did he create generous vows for his own advantage, or did he shape them in recompense to Larik?
Kelil doesn't miss the provision for love spouses. The betrothal specifies a year's closed marriage, but then both partners can bring in as many love spouses as they wish. Kelil doubts that Larik demanded that promise, but she remembers the strange tenderness between Trenon and Nilos and wonders.
Kelil sings the promises, the melody oddly remote without the blend of Trenon's part. Every child of the marriage, not just the first, will have Trenon's name. Kelil wonders if Shayin recognized the significance of that provision in combination with their independence verse. Between those two stipulations, they can found their holding //and// keep the place of a good name. Did Larik ask for that? Did she hope to steal the place Maron bargained for? Or is was it Trenon, selfishly pursuing his own interest?
[[ϒ Kelil's voice rises lonely as a coyote's call. Which of these vows will work in her favour?->grandchildren]]
[[ϒ Can she sing Larik's betrothal, and devise her freedom in the song's flight?->sovereignty]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Dalor should have vetoed them.")[Dalor should have vetoed them, a master's prerogative.]
(Click-replace: "They can demand an independent holding the morning after their marriage and iryu can't balk.")[They can demand an independent holding the morning after their marriage and iryu can't balk. The moment they invoke independence, they'll be on their own--no support--but Trenon's name and Kelil's trading profits will belong to them alone.]
(Click-replace: "Between those two stipulations, they can found their holding //and// keep the place of a good name.")[Between those two stipulations, they can found their holding //and// keep the place of a good name. They can take their children and Trenon's name with them, by no more than a declaration!]
]}$il[B]y any sense of place, Trenon should court Kelil. He should approach the holding as a supplicant, ask for guesting rights, and spend time with her. Since he did none of that for Larik, Kelil hardly expects he'll start now. At least he and Larik knew each other. They were closer in age, and they both spent time with Nilos. But Trenon is four years older than Kelil and has been a journeyman for the past two. Advocats don't seek out children, even those in their betrothed's holding.
Kelil doesn't intend to wait for him. Some women expect wooing, a host-gift, a touch, a glance; she expects a fair bargain and a tidy profit. Larik shrugged off Trenon's limp pursuit. His disinterest didn't touch her. Fathers and mothers would never say so, but Larik failed in the hunt they set her. She demurred, and she died betrothed. Kelil has no illusions about Trenon's eagerness. If he won't come to her, she'll go to him.
She takes comfort from the fact that he may fear exactly that. She saw him with Nilos. She hasn't told anyone--yet. For all his smirks and pointed comments, Trenon knows she holds that over his head.
Grimly, Kelil brushes out Tyn's patchy spring coat, currying her until he shines. She oils her saddle and harness. She bathes, sputtering, in a snowmelt stream, then gives what plait she can to her lank hair. She banishes tears and shakes out one of Larik's guesting robes--green as aspen leaves, with clever vixens grinning their way around its hem. All this, in memory of Ralon's whiskeyjack eyes, avid on iryu's deepstone as Larik died. Ralon stoops to pluck anything shiny from the mud, whether silver or gilt. Kelil will offer him respect, but never place.
Asaresta village sits astride a deep river gorge. Downmountain timber spans the gap, heavy and sure, connecting the road to the eastern mine with the chamois and sheep pastures on the west. Below the village, farmers till terraced fields along a broader, shallow shelf in the mountainside. The market road braids fieldstone stairs and stretches of tilted cobble, climbing up from the main thoroughfare. The common barn, where the traders' ponies drowse, sits below a steep paddock more comfortable for chamois than mules. Kelil knows every stall in the market, not the mountain-shaded side streets where the oldest deepstones crouch.
She nearly misses irthu holding's narrow deepstone, half grey clapboard and half weathered stone. The nearby deepstones might once have been irthu's outbuildings, sketching a decent dooryard, but they've turned their shoulders, ceded to other holdings on either side. The dooryard barely has room for a garden. Kelil doubts Ralon would stoop over herbs and onions if there was. Once, his fathers held extensive fields. They pressed outwards, clearing land and building retaining walls, but they also pressed into their neighbours' holdings, arguing and cajoling, negotiating generous gains each time they raised their spring cairns. But fields last only as long as a farmer can plant and reap them. Ralon bleeds silver to hire seasonal hands.
No wonder Trenon sang a betrothal he doesn't want. It means escaping his parents' holding. A bigger family would pop the deepstone's seams. But Trenon only has two parents, one mother and one father. He and Berin had poor luck with spouses: fevers, and childbed. Only Trenon, of their children, lived. It stands to reason they'd have nothing but a den for a deepstone.
Kelil finds a patch of thin grass next to an old hitching rail for Tyn, then she squares her shoulders and rings the guest chimes. A moment passes, not long enough for place-insult, but calculated to make a young girl feel small.
Trenon's mother, Berin, opens the door. Kelil resists stepping back. Trenon must get his height from Berin; hers is emphasized by the crowning braid of curly chestnut hair well mixed with grey. She wears a guesting robe in foamy lichen-green, as though she sits in her hearthroom waiting for visitors. A silver buckle, in the shape of a mountain lion's broad head with turquoise eyes, clasps her belt right.
Kelil slips into her practiced bow. "Honour to irthu from your promised daughter," she says, forcing her voice into what sincerity she can muster.
"Irthu welcomes you, daughter." Berin's gaze lingers on Kelil's robe, the drape from her left shoulder confirmed by the belt-knot on Kelil's right hip. Rather than jewelry and decoration, Kelil's robe relies on its plain herringbone pattern to speak of strong dyes and excellent cloth. Larik only ever wore the best.
"Come in, please, and refresh yourself." Berin leads the way to a room immediately left of the guest door. Kelil offers a gracious smile. Irthu has no family room--Larik told her that. When Ralon married Berin, they sheared away from Berin's family, using credit and Ralon's name to establish an independent holding. There was little silver to pay builders.
Ralon unfolds himself from a chair to give a hosting bow when they enter his sitting room. He's shorter than his wife, dark as ripe hazelnut. He puts Kelil in mind of a well-proportioned pony: small, but with good strength. Kelil returns his courtesy and takes an offered seat, finding it sturdy, and comfortable; but by the dust pattern of the room, nothing has moved a thumbsbreadth for years. The furniture probably came with Ralon's betrothal contract. He brought his name and his fathers' fields to Berin, adding land-use wealth to her interest in silver veins.
A tureen of tev sits next to three fine ceramic bowls. Berin pours elegant cups of huckleberry tea. A silver plate holds pine-nut hearthbread next to a birch sugar spread. The bowls suggest they expected her, but when did Berin have time to prepare the hosting? The long wait on the stoop suddenly becomes less a calculated insult, and more pitiable: irthu's first wife scrambling to look good for the girl who robbed them of a much-needed contract-breaking price. Berin mined her silver veins to dross. Trenon travels to find work--maybe the only admirable thing about him. His journeyman's earnings keep irthu in cash silver, rarely more than solvent.
Kelil asks for nothing and accepts everything. The tev is rich but gamy with mutton--no lamb nor even hogget here. The tea sours on the tongue. Kelil adds a spoon of birch sugar, and eats her bread unsweetened. Trader-bland, she relays her parents' opinions on the crops. Ralon struggled to extend his land-claims this spring.
Finally, when Berin's smile grows stretched, Kelil asks, "And may I ask after my betrothed?"
"He's overmountain," Ralon says, as if his explanation covers Trenon's rudeness.
"He travels extensively," Berin says, with a pained, sharp decorum. "He's dedicated to the holdings he sings for; they'll wait a season through to have him direct the rites."
Kelil wonders how desperate holdings have to be to put off their contracts until Trenon arrives. Berin doesn't mention Trenon's fees but she defends them like a pine weasel. Ralon could have brought Trenon up a farmer, saving what was left of irthu holding. Instead Trenon sang his apprenticeship to the master advocat. Ralon and Berin lost two years of cash silver before Trenon finished his apprenticeship and started bringing wages home. Berin expects a trader to be mercenary--for Kelil to ask after Trenon's usual fees, or to mention how much she looks forward to having a husband who can earn his keep. So Kelil brings out the small pouch she brought as a host-gift. "I'm sorry to miss him. I brought this token for him."
Berin takes the shabby leather pouch with satisfaction. So soon after she gained her place, a girl is unlikely to have much in the way of riches. The moment Berin feels the pouch's weight, she sets the bag down on the table.
Kelil doesn't care if she opens it. Berin's a silversmith and will know the worth of the stones when she sees them. Garnet, amethyst, jaspar, and one lovely opal. Kelil locks her hands in her lap where her white knuckles won't show. She sold her coming of age robe, Larik's robe, to get them. Larik would never offer insult, no matter how subtle, but Kelil likes to think Larik would laugh in Berin's face in this moment. The stones are perfect for Berin's trade, but Kelil specified the gift was for Trenon. He can keep them or not, as he pleases. And some other girl, downmountain or in a village-next, will wear Larik's work at her coming of age.
"I hope you'll tell Trenon I stopped by," she says, and reaches for her tev.
[[ϒ She's not Larik, who bends accepting.->sovereignty]]
[[ϒ Larik laid the trap. Kelil caged herself. And Trenon won't find it easy to break free.->grandchildren]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Ralon struggled to extend his land-claims this spring.")[Ralon struggled to extend his land-claims this spring. One man can contract as many field hands as he likes; once he lets his fields lie fallow, his neighbours, with sons and brothers needing work and with children to feed, will push his cairns back in the spring.]
]}$il[K]elil dreams she snares a foot in a melting cornice. Her boot punches through the weathered crust, into heavy powder as high as her thighs. Above her, she sees the silent, puffing fall of snow bridges. The ice crackles. Under the thinning edge of winter, glacier melt waits breathless. A shattering crack splits the ice underfoot. She falls, drowning in an emerald flood.
Kell wakes on a gasp to see Shayin kneeling beside her pallet. Night's end warms the eastern air; the sun rises behind the eastern peaks.
"Kelil," Shayin says.
Kelil licks dry lips. Shayin hasn't named Kelil as an adult since the holding made her a daughter. Shayin studies her as if she can see through her shell to her ghost; as Shayin sees nothing but ghosts. "Come," she says.
She doesn't wait for Kelil to sort out her unfamiliar belt and boot ties. She disappears from the sleeping room like her own thin and furtive shadow. Kell stumbles into linens and a heavy sweater, her dream chill on her skin. She follows Shayin through the hearthroom and into the dooryard. Shayin heads down the wide path to the weavers' hut, where one broad window is already open. A yellow candle lights the worktables.
Before Larik's giving people called Shayin a striking woman, if not a beautiful one. She had an ample laugh; her smile suits her square jaw and sun-creased eyes. But these past ninedays, she slumps like an airy rock face cracked into scree. Larik's features find their echo in her face, fading into disappointment.
When Kelil vaults the low sill into the weavers' hut, Shayin waves her to a seat in front of an open sack of teased wool. "Until you're apprenticed, you can make yourself useful." She sits down at her spinning wheel and, with a practiced flick of her foot, sets the treadle in motion.
Kelil picks up the carding brushes. Carding takes practice, but less skill than spinning--where Kelil always fouls her thread. Kelil hates the coarseness of raw wool. A day's carding roughens her skin to redness. Larik always told her all she needs is a nineyear's practice and her hands won't notice the texture, except to judge quality with a touch. And this season of the year mothers and sisters can barely keep up with the men's shearing. Before Kelil formally sings to Zayelik or any trader, she owes her work to iryu.
But the seat Shayin chose for her was Larik's seat, set under the hooks of Larik's empty loom; the dead shuttle nudges Kelil's foot. Maybe Shayin eases her grief by remembering what a poor substitute Kelil makes for her sister.
Kelil caught Peris in silent tears in the hearth room, alone, tears that Peris hid when Kelil came in. Varin sits with Hiron in the family room, some evenings, the two of them cuddled close around a sleeping Birn, the very picture of parental place. They would rather love Birn than miss Larik, but at least Kelil understands their mourning. But Shayin only drifts.
Larik wouldn't complain that Shayin roused her from her bed. Even if Larik wasn't a weaver, even if she found wool and nine hundred discussions concerning it dull as compost, she'd do as Shayin asked. All during the long hosting visits between iryu and irthu holdings last summer, she showed no sign that she wanted Trenon, yet also none that she resented him. A still pool mirroring the weather winds, graceful in acceptance.
But where Larik bowed, Kelil chafes. Shayin's trap, because she set a hunter's net whether or not she meant it as such, presumes that Kelil gives her best work in the weaving hut. Kelil's potential lies elsewhere. Shayin won't be able to use her as a doll after Kelil proves herself. If Shayin keeps up such tactics, Kelil will declare independence and take her place and her profits with her. With her inherited marriage she'll raise iryu's place higher than Larik could before she died. When she apprentices, she'll fill the holding to the brim with city goods, more beautiful even than Larik's weaving. "I am not Larik."
At the giving, Shayin sang Larik's name in remembrance: may she be known. She returned Larik's breath and ghost to the holding. Not that she shows it; she acts as though Larik's ghost is utterly forgotten, yet completely present. She placed Kelil behind her, on Larik's stool, as if their shared breath could conjure the missing sound of shared work.
"No. You're not." Shayin's eyes are pale blue-gray, rain falling in sunlight. Empty of understanding, of fault.
She raised cairns around heartache, accepting no interlopers. Kelil stands up, her hands hot and shaky. If nothing else she has the right to insist on place. "I may not be your borne daughter but I am your daughter," she says. She may be as much Shayin's borne daughter as Larik was, but that thought, that Shayin would show such favouritism, hurts worse. "I am a trader," she says. "I'm needed in the market." She sets down the carding brushes and walks out.
[[ϒ Mothers and fathers told her that place came from taking up burdens, but there's more to it than that.->birch sugar candy]]
[[ϒ What Kelil owes doesn't match what Shayin demands, and so, she's sure, she's right to turn away.->riposte]](if: (history:)'s last is "birch sugar candy")[ $il[T]he new mare is wonderful. Kelil can't resist the chance to saddle her and take her on an exploratory trip upmountain. Flyn is deft, steady, and she crosses bridges, water, and mud with only an ear flicker to be sure of Kelil's encouragement. Kelil goes to Asaresta common barn and puts Flyn in the paddock with her two mules. After half a day, Flyn has taken charge of them, establishing herself as boss horse. When Kelil puts all three on a line, their gaits match--none of them will be put off-foot over a long day's travel. Luck or skill, Maron has put together an amazing pack string. Kelil breathes a song of thanks, although her shoulders sink under the weight of the price he won't openly expect in return. Her wedding vows will snarl her like a bird caught in a hunter's net.
The](else:)[ $il[T]he] next day, Kelil dresses in the simplest of Larik's remade clothes. She enjoys the longer, hip-length sway of women's tunics, but she finds Larik's clothes too fragile for any work more strenuous than sitting at a loom. She wants good leather trousers and oilskin cloaks; she wants well-fitted linens for hot days and felt-lined, quilted tunics for mountain nights. But today she plans to beard Peris in the hearthroom. Larik's clothes serve as a reminder that Kelil took on a duty for the holding, and deserves consideration in return.
She waits until her sisters have left the table after the midday meal. Peris pounds down her rising dough for trencher bread. Kelil sets to scrubbing the trestles and scraping plates into the goats' bucket. She may have place, but chores fall to the youngest. The only difference is silent, rather than exasperated, expectation.
"Why did Trenon craft the betrothal song?" she asks, when they've worked in silence for a moment.
Peris pauses over her warming pan and uses the back of her wrist to push away a strand of hair that's crept from her braid. The question doesn't surprise her, but her answer is plainer than Kelil expected. "Do you think we could have hired Dalor to sing against Trenon's interests?"
"Dalor owes his work to the holding that hires him," Kelil says. When holdings have a dispute over well access, or spouses wrangle over a dissolution song, advocats may be hired by all sides. Advocats insist they stay bound by the fees paid them. Some people don't trust advocats not to conspire with each other to favour one side or the other. Trenon would never conspire with anyone: he guards his integrity too obnoxiously.
"Dalor wouldn't favour Trenon, necessarily," Peris says. "He'd be certain to favour irthu, though. He's an old crony of Ralon's. Why do you think Dalor took Trenon on as apprentice at all, or let him become a journeyman so quickly, when it meant he'd lose all Trenon's fees?"
Kelil wrings out her rag and clips it to the drying line above the hearth. A nineday ago Peris would never have gifted her with such candor. Now, Kelil raises her voice in the family room. She claims the holding's business as much as Peris does. "So you trusted Trenon instead?" she asks. The tactic seems likely to backfire--but the generous vows speak for themselves.
Peris scoffs at the notion of trust. "I'd have hired a journeyman from overmountain, if one had been available! Larik spoke in Trenon's favour. It was her betrothal."
"We can open the marriage to as many spouses as we want--"
"As many as you can afford," Peris corrects, raising a repressive finger. "Don't suppose iryu will buy you more husbands--we paid enough for this one."
Kelil shakes her head, her cheeks heating. "That's not what I meant. Why would Larik ask for that?"
"With Trenon as her first husband, why wouldn't she?"
Kelil watches Peris slap barley flour onto her hands and start shaping loaves for the second rising. Who did Larik dream of marrying? Nilos was her best friend but that was hardly the same thing. Kelil loved Trayis, had shared pleasure with her when they were children, but now that they were both women she didn't feel they needed to marry in order to stay friends. Not like Trenon and Nilos. Both men for years, but still--like that. Inverts. Kelil frowns down at her hands. Larik didn't accept that vow for herself. Or for Trenon. She did it for Nilos--so that //he// could marry Trenon.
Peris covers the loaves with clean linen and leaves them to rise. She sits down across from Kelil. "You don't need to worry about Trenon," she says. "In a holding as big as ours, with both of you in travelling trades, you'll barely have to see him."
"I know." Kelil can't say no if Trenon wants to marry Nilos, as long as Trenon gathers a price that Nilos's holding will accept. She doesn't want Trenon for herself, so she can't raise an objection to having Nilos as her second husband. And yet, a marriage should be equal among all the spouses. Not a mask worn by inverts.
Peris pats her hand, and waits for Kelil to look up. "Children are stipulated."
Marry Nilos too. Another promise Larik has left her with. Confused, she shakes her head. "Larik and Trenon's child?" she says. "Were they fertile together?"
"I'm sure I don't know!" Peris says, pulling back. "Really, Kelil."
"Sorry," Kelil mumbles. But if she's right, then Larik and Trenon never planned to share the pleasure room. First marriages rarely produce children in the closed year. After all, children need three parents at least. Hiron and Varin have a newborn after barely more than a year, and look at them--if fathers didn't help with the baby's feedings, Hiron would collapse from sleeplessness and worry. The little mite doesn't sleep longer than a candlemark at a time. Less than that at night. Grenor told Kelil once he'd never raise a child with fewer than four spouses; it was simply foolish to try.
Peris sighs. "Don't fret so. Larik insisted that every child should have Trenon's name. Not only the first, or first three. We were happy to agree."
Yes, that fits. Larik had no intention of having children with Trenon alone. Fertility wasn't the problem: love was. Larik didn't care about Trenon's name as such, or about iryu holding's place ambitions. She cared about Nilos's children.
And Trenon might well demand the same of Kelil. They'll share the pleasure room on the day they sing the marriage. Beyond that, Trenon must hope she'll be as accommodating as Larik was willing to be.
Kelil's stomach twists with an odd, nervous disappointment. She hasn't shared pleasure with anyone since Trayis came of age. She satisfies herself easily, but she misses having a friend to share with. And the pleasure room offers privacy, an occasional night away from her sisters' snores. Trenon won't want it. Her. Not that she cares about his pleasures, perverse as they are. She misses love-making, not Trenon. She feels suddenly lonely, for Trayis, but more than that, for somebody. Marriages should have that. Maybe not with the first spouse, but eventually. Somehow she assumed Trenon wouldn't balk at marriage's perks.
Peris watches every thought cross Kelil's face and laughs, as only the mother of nine children can. She takes Kelil's disappointment for some kind of resignation to the marriage, even anticipation. "Take pleasure in each other all you like. I'd be happy to see some joy between you."
As long as they aren't put to breeding and bearing like chamois. But Kelil swallows that coarseness. She can do without the pleasure room, if Trenon holds its key.
[[ϒ She doesn't want children yet, not before she has a chance to apprentice and travel.->vow song]]
(unless: (history:) contains "riposte")[(link: "ϒ But what if she comes home in a year's time and finds Trenon and Nilos installed in her deepstone, both of them happy, complete without her?")(goto: "riposte")] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Her wedding vows will snarl her like a bird caught in a hunter's net.")[She finds herself guiltily thinking of declaring an independent holding, simply to take Maron's gift and walk away clear.]
(Click-replace: "First marriages rarely produce children in the closed year." )[First marriages rarely produce children in the closed year. After the marriage opens and more spouses marry in, children follow.]
]}$il[K]elil opens her eyes on the morning of her marriage and pushes off her pallet, like kicking off a lakebed while roped to a stone. Contract marriages unite holdings, ensure names, transfer wealth. Most first spouses must share her sense of tepid resignation. She doubts Trenon feels any more enthusiastic than she.
For all that mothers and fathers hobbled her with a woman's vows, Kelil savours them. She discarded the simpler clothes of childhood without a backwards glance. Her fingers soon mastered the right-knot of bootlaces and belt. Her hair has grown long enough to tame in a tight braid. Once, before dipping the morning kettle into the rain barrel, she caught sight of her reflection. A bonier, browner face stared back at her, strong and feminine. A woman, old enough to speak in the family room, old enough to earn silver, old enough to apprentice.
All too young to marry. Larik apprenticed for over two years and worked as a journeyman for most of another before iryu spoke of her betrothal. Trenon came of age four years ago and already boasts two years as a journeyman. Kelil won't sing to a master until after her marriage.
Trenon crafts contracts with skill. He admires challenges; Kelil sparked his interest when she defied his place. But sparks don't ignite love. They burn hot and die cold; they certainly don't provide the low, lasting heat of measured respect that most contract marriages build on. Trenon may have the capacity for tenderness, even compassion--but not for Kelil. He doesn't want her, and doesn't care to try. He'll deign to notice her as long as she fights, tooth and claw, for her rights and her place.
Is that what holdings are built on?
Kelil dresses in Larik's marriage clothes, sewn last winter in anticipation of her wedding. They fit tight at the hips and across the chest, but the sleeves trail loose and the neckline gapes. The colour of the tunic, a deep forest green, would show off the glow of Larik's skin; Kelil, a shade paler, fades sallow in it. Peris dyed the matching trousers a darker shade, like trees in shadows. They cut close at the waist but needed hemming at the ankles. Larik commissioned the cordwainer from Asarotha to make the boots in a dark green leather, polished and shining. Kelil stuffs the toes with wool and laces them tight to prevent rubs.
Mostly, she waits. Trenon's procession begins in his holding's dooryard and climbs to iryu holding, where she'll invite him into the deepstone as iryu's newest member. Her brothers lead Trenon up the path with the music of xylophones and bells. A reed pipe and a flute accompany the vows, marking the two-voiced first marriage song. Once the marriage opens in a year's time, every new spouse deepens the harmony, each adding breath to the song.
While she fidgets, Kelil schools herself to be charitable. Trenon acted as advocat for this vowsong; he knows better than anyone how his parents grasped for any contract price his place might bring. Kelil's holding sacrificed her for place but they'll find ways to make amends. She keeps the comfort of her family and gains the freedom of her trade, while Trenon loses his parents and his tiny, quiet deepstone.
Hiron and Amoz come into sight at the switchback, and Trenon appears behind them. He walks with the long-legged, slow-paced stride of a traveller. Kelil steps out to meet him on wooden feet. They don't touch. Trenon fixes his eyes on some point past her shoulder. His belligerence has failed him, and he looks, simply, lost. When he extends his clasped hands for her to cup in her palms, he moves like a dreamwalker. He sings clear and sure, and their voices blend well, but she can hear reluctance in their duet.
Kelil bows to Berin and Ralon. Trenon negotiates the more complex dance of third, second, and then first spouses that make up iryu holding: Amoz, Grenor, Shayin, Maron, Peris. Trenon gives courtesy with a precisely calculated correctness.
The singing rises to its height as Kelil and Trenon step together, joining hands again. The wedding guests add their whistles to the melody, high and piping, like swallows swooping through a barn door. The song rings joyful but Kelil can't see past her sweating palms and the embarrassed burn in her cheeks and armpits. Trenon must wish Larik were here instead of her. Kelil wishes it too. Trenon musters grace long enough to complete the song, more than she might have credited him with.
Kelil stares at their linked hands as the solemn beat of the vows washes past. The song ends; she forgets, suddenly, what they're meant to do next. She hears a few scattered whistles and stompings, wry cheers and snickering encouragement. Trenon lowers his hands slowly. He doesn't meet Kelil's eyes.
Remembering Peris's instructions feels like falling off a cliff. They must share the pleasure room. Right now, while everyone feasts. They'll be teased when they come out, whether a candlemark or a half-day later.
Trenon's hand cups her elbow. Kelil lets her breath out and reads the weather in his features. A hint of wistfulness tugs at the corner of his mouth, but he raises one eyebrow, asking ironic permission. She leads him in the guest door for the last time. From this point forward he has the freedom of the holding. Trenon closes the door behind them, shutting out a roar of approval. By rote, Kelil leads the way to the pleasure room, tucked away on a hearthside corner, with doors leading to both sides of the deepstone.
Hiron swept out the room and unshuttered the small window. The faint tinkle of chimes and the laughing shout of voices pours in, along with fresh air and a patch of golden sunlight that warms the quilts on the rope-net bed.
Out of sight of the holding's guests and their ribaldry, Kelil catches hold of her voice and makes it work. "What do you want to do?" she asks.
Trenon crosses the room and claps the shutters closed. Someone--Katir?--left a small pot of rendered fat on the low shelf beside the bed. Trenon dips his finger in and smells it, before rubbing the slippery grease between thumb and forefinger. He laughs shortly. "Very considerate. No lambskins?"
"Not if we're meant to prove fertility." Kelil lets herself fall into a leather-backed chair and unlaces her boots. Despite the extra padding she used, a blister swells on the side of her ankle.
Trenon watches her with a narrow look.
Kelil returns it with a pointed stare, then returns to wrestling with the stiff boots. His scandalized suspicion makes him almost appealing. With his usual frown wiped away, he might even be handsome. She intended to stretch her feet, not to push him into pleasure, but once she has the upper hand, she finds she likes it. "You're not shy?"
Trenon's scowl rushes back. He wipes his greasy hand on his guesting robe.
"That'll stain." Kelil rubs her bare feet and stretches out her legs. She wants to pace, but she's not about to show Trenon any trace of her nerves. "We don't have to stay long." The guests mean their taunts good-naturedly. If Kelil and Trenon don't go through with--anything--this time, they've at least done their duty.
Trenon grunts and sits on the bed. Tension drains out of Kelil's chest. She wants to laugh. Not at him, just--in relief. He is shy. She's shared pleasure with Trayis before, and played with one or two others. She's always been easy and proud in pleasure, giving and receiving. She feared Trenon's mockery, but she rather likes his sudden reserve.
She picks at a perfect seam on her--Larik's--wedding tunic. "Would Nilos mind?"
That moves him out of his black silence. "He'd encourage me."
"Really?"
A sullen shrug. "I'm a married man."
Kelil rests her elbows on the chair arms and sinks down. So Nilos decided to end things with Trenon. The day Kelil caught them in the woods, she couldn't see through her pain to realize the kiss she interrupted meant more than pleasure along. Looking back, she can see Trenon offered Nilos comfort, to meet his grieving need.
She never thought she'd feel sorry for Trenon, or want to comfort him. The silence spins out between them. Kelil watches dust motes in the bars of light from the shuttered window. Trenon doesn't move, and yet Kelil can feel him curling up, a stranded earthworm waiting for the robins. Kelil's heart thrums in her chest. Nerves. And, well, curiosity. What would he do if she actually touched him?
With a deep breath, she says, "We should try."
Trenon's scowl deepens and he crosses his arms. Kelil stands up as matter-of-factly as she can and strips off her tunic. Part of her freezes like a shrew, nostrils wide and scenting danger; but part of her is the fox, quivering and clever. Her belt next. She steps out of her trousers and stands in front of him wearing only her linens. With Trayis, they kissed first, long before they tried working their way into each other's clothes-- Forget Trayis. Did Trenon think Kelil would never push him, never make demands? She needs to close the trade deficit: his age, his experience. If she can do it by insisting on this, she will. Not to hurt him, but to show him he can't box her in with expectations. (if: $decoy is true)[Or call it revenge, for tainting Zayelik's apprenticeship offer.]
She moves until she's standing in front of him, her knees bracketing his. She's taller when he sits on the bed. She remembers halter-training Brys as a recalcitrant yearling and smiles. Trenon needs more give than push. She takes his hand, studying his long, slender fingers. "Nothing you don't want," she says. She places his hand on her stomach, under her linen shift. Should she enjoy the warmth of his touch this much? He doesn't move on his own, but he doesn't resist.
It has been over a season. Sharing a sleeping room with so many sisters rather curtailed her solitary pleasures. Shivers raise gooseflesh on her skin, more from the act of guiding him than from his touch alone. She shifts his hand, this time in a much more exciting direction. "Really," she says, "I'll settle for what I want."
She expects him to pull back. But her boldness forestalls him, because his frown holds more interest than refusal. Maybe, like her, he's only been with one person--and he's had more time to get set in his ways. Kelil lets go of his hand, leaving him to explore--or not. His fingers flutter, then his palm spreads out, adding pressure of his own. He respects her more when she challenges him.
Kelil doesn't love him. Dislikes him all the more for pointing out that iryu will use her if they can. But she married him, when Nilos pushed him away. His parents unmoored him from irthu holding. Kelil can't offer him much, but she's willing to give him an ally. And so she leans in and kisses him: a light and fluttering test.
(link-goto: "ϒ She's a woman grown, with place to prove.","no pleasure")
(link-goto: "It will take a slipperier advocat than Trenon to dissolve what they've sung.","city ways") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "They'll be teased when they come out, whether a candlemark or a half-day later.")[They'll be teased when they come out, whether a candlemark or a half-day later.
(either: "//You hardly had time to touch him!
Hadn't you better try again, a little longer this time?//","//Well, it's good to see two young people so dedicated!
Now don't let us interrupt, if you're as busy as that!//")]
(click-replace: "they've at least done their duty.")[they've at least done their duty. If their marriage proves infertile after a year, then this public assurance that they've shared the pleasure room at least once becomes plausible deniability.]
]}{ (set: $decoy to true) $il[T]renon left Asaresta as soon as he decently could after Larik's giving. Sooner, most would say. He didn't return for Kelil's coming of age and she supposes that if he could, he would stay away on their marriage day too. Kelil doesn't care if he wants to avoid her. She will speak with him before they sing marriage, and learn what he was thinking when he crafted the vows.}
Kelil keeps her ear out for breath of Trenon among the traders packing in from villages-next. A threeday before they sing vows, an Asarvinya trader reports seeing him near her village the day before. With a good start, Trenon should crest the pass by mid-morning the next day. Kelil wakes early, saddles Brys, and takes the eastern mine road towards the col.
Above the treeline, the switchbacks cut clearly into the mountainside. Where the windworn talus meets the cliff, chamois scamper up the sheer wall, with one stripe-faced guard dipping his horns to watch travellers pass. Kelil doesn't intend to push Brys that far. She waters Brys at a narrow alpine stream, then lets him graze. She plans to catch Trenon before he sees her. Even if he wants to break place, he can't outrun her--not his loaded, footsore pony against Brys.
He takes longer than she anticipated, but Kelil keeps her watch, sitting on a lichened stone for her midday meal. After brushing crumbs from her trousers, Kelil glances up to see Trenon leading his pony down the rocky trail above her. Crossing her arms, she sets her feet in the middle of the trail, and waits.
Trenon's stride doesn't alter as he picks his way down to the wider path on the meadow. He stops two paces from her, his eyes flicking over her right-wrapped tunic. "So you went through with it," he says, as if they last spoke yesterday, instead of half a season ago.
Kelil draws up her shoulders, pulling together her accusations. "The contract--"
"Larik's contract," he cuts in evenly. "A boy wouldn't have been bound by it."
Kelil clenches her hands in her belt to stop herself from punching him in his serpent's mouth. She fought to be named iryu's son. To avoid him! "You crafted that song," she says coldly. "If you wanted out of your vows, you should have broken them yourself. This is not my fault."
"No, it isn't." He squints past her into the southern sun, checking for oncoming rain. As though Kelil barely registers above the nuisance child he met in the woods.
She can't believe his nerve, to disappear for ninedays and then to accuse her of inconveniencing him. "You're blaming me for something you admit isn't my fault?"
"Anything you do should be your fault," Trenon says, like a teacher with a particularly dull pupil. "Your intention."
Such muleshit! If he didn't want this marriage he had the vocation to dispute it. Oh, but isn't it so much simpler to play the wounded innocent!--as though anyone would believe that of Trenon. "Was this your intention? To marry a--what did you call me? Child bride?" The name tastes of vinegar and she spits it at him.
For all his biting words, Trenon doesn't sound angry. Grey disappointment cloaks him, leeching his face of expression. "What I want isn't possible."
If he'd like her to feel sorry for him because he and Nilos both came of age as men, he'll need a sadder story. "So a placeless child should //intend// not to inherit a contract, while a journeyman grown can play invert in the woods and then run away, but he's excused because--"
Trenon's blue eyes pin her and for the first time she feels like she hooked his full attention. "You stepped into your sister's life because you'd rather live as a ghost than stand up to your holding."
Kelil can feel the blood draining from her face, like a cold and pulsing faint. "I am not Larik's ghost."
"No insult was meant," he says, with cruel calm, "to Larik."
He has a wolverine's tenacious instinct for the worst possible thing to say. Maybe that works with his parents, but he forgets that she has less to lose than he does. She showed herself willing to make this marriage. He should be conciliatory, not her! "You are a coward," she says. Intention! Aiming an arrow doesn't bring down a grouse on the wing. Mountain ranges rise up between desire and satisfaction. "Is all this because you love Nilos?" she asks, with a savage twist on love. "I don't see you fighting for him. I don't see you even telling anyone. Did you court him? Did you take him to the city--"
"Don't talk to me about what's possible in the city!"
"Traders say--"
"Traders will say a lot of things," he snaps. "Your master trader, Zayelik? She promised to take you as her apprentice, didn't she?"
"In three ninedays," Kelil says, surprised into a truthful answer. The ceremony is set for the day after Zayelik returns from her trading rounds in the villages-next. Maron's already slavering over the profit he'll make without a trader's fee between him and his profits.
Trenon nods. "She wants to move upmountain," he says. "I think. Maybe some conflict with her city patrons. Or she thinks the profits will be better up here."
Kelil's fist tightens around Brys's halter, the rough rope biting into her fingers. "How do you know?"
"I'm an advocat," Trenon says, as if his trade can substitute for proof. "She never took a city apprentice. She wants you because you know the mountain trade; you're familiar with the stalls in the market."
Uneasily, Kelil remembers Zayelik's probing questions the morning after Larik's giving.
Trenon gives her a sharp blue stare. "Take whatever apprenticeship you want. Just don't fool yourself that traders, or the city, hold their place closer than the rest of us."
"I'll learn--and I'll bring profit to iryu--" Kelil imagined bringing more silver than Larik ever earned, given time. But if Zayelik gives up city trading, Kelil will just be one more market apprentice, more stevedore than place-broker.
"Of course you will," Trenon says with a sneer. "You've already shown how much you'll bow to their place pretensions."
"What does that mean?"
"Your parents didn't even separate your coming of age from your betrothal vows to me. They had you skinned and sold before you stepped off the dais."
The cold thought that he's right slows Kelil's answer, but she gives it. "Every member contributes to the holding."
"Yes, I expect my fees will fall into that well, too," Trenon says. He sighs, and shakes himself. It's a strange pause, before he frowns at her, eyes narrow. He barely noted the wrap of her tunic when they met, except to categorize her as a failure to his standards. Yet Kelil has the feeling that he suddenly decided she counts as an adult, worth his consideration. "You actually listened to the song."
"Yes," she says, feeling sullen, yet wanting to prove herself. "Larik gave you the love-spouse stipulation, didn't she? For Nilos."
He nods, but abstractedly, not in answer. "Three ninedays...You've actually thought about it." He nods his chin at Brys and says, "Let's walk."
Kelil gives the sharp whistle she trained Brys to answer. He trots to her, ears forward, expecting apple cores from Kelil's pocket. Trenon lets out a huff of breath, and Kelil rounds on him, thinking he's laughing at her. Instead she catches the impressed tilt of his mouth. Kelil holds out her hand for Trenon's lead rope. He gives it to her like a test. With a few quick knots, she tucks his pony's halter out of the way, and takes a line of light twine from her saddlepack to tie a short string between the pony and Brys. The pony whuffles, but he's old enough and tired enough to accept Brys's lead. Kelil holds Brys's halter rope: he may come when called, but he won't follow Kelil long without a rope when there's spring grass on both sides of the path. Trenon nods and settles his pace to hers. After a few minutes, they pass under the trees. The path smooths, but Trenon still watches his feet. For a seasoned traveller, he certainly distrusts his balance. She prepares to prod the conversation forward when he finally speaks.
"I gave Larik my word that we'd declare an independent holding as soon as we could," he says. "Yes, for Nilos, but not like you're thinking." He holds up his hand before she can ask. "Can you accept we were trying to do the right thing for him?"
Kelil nods, although his plan sounds foolish. Trenon wanting to marry Nilos for love, for lust, whatever's between them: that she understands. She can understand Larik going along for her friend's sake, as long as she was bound to marry Trenon anyway. But that has nothing to do with starting a new holding. Why were they both so worried for Nilos?
"I made the song for Larik. As much as I could, and still have our holdings approve." Trenon keeps his eyes on the path, not bothering to check if she believes him. "But in the end the promises are empty."
Kelil bristles just as much at Trenon's condescending explanation as his cheap, sniping insults. But his words sink in, and she hums a few bars of the song under her breath. Everything's there. As many spouses as they want; the freedom to start an independent holding; name and place passed on to any and all children. She searches her memory for restrictions when it hits her. "No silver," she says.
Trenon nods. "Aren't you the trader. Larik didn't see it. She thought she'd have your holding's support. Those loving parents of yours. I knew we'd get nothing from my holding but I thought..." He laughs, bitterly. "Well, men don't trade. Maron--yes, and Peris--want to build iryu's wealth, not distribute it. The others go along. They're happy to sell your brothers into wealthy matches, but how many spouses do you see in your sisters' marriages? Not many. Iryu doesn't want the outlay. For my name, we might be allowed a third spouse if we're not fertile, but we'll be expected to prove it."
Kelil's mind leaps ahead, adding to Trenon's conclusions. True, her sisters only have one husband each, and there's more room on the homeside than that. And, more: Kelil's marriage-brothers are all shepherds, plucked from fieldwork to join the holding. Another expense tightened. Many holdings diversify naturally, with some spouses working different trades while others offer contract labour. Iryu benefits if the holding consolidates. The men raise fleece and wool, the women weave. "If we don't produce children, they'll marry us to a weaver," she realizes. A wife won't expect her holding to receive a betrothal price. If she's skilled enough she can take Larik's place in the weavers' hut. Fathers and mothers aren't interested in having Nilos join iryu, even if Kelil suddenly professed her undying love for him. An advocat gives the holding place and saves them in spring fees when they raise their field cairns. Why bother with a healer, too?
Trenon stops and finally looks at her, raising his eyebrows. She impressed him, and can't bring herself to care. She should be loyal to iryu's interests. She doesn't want to marry Nilos! If she meets the right weaver, if she falls in love, then a second wife could very well be a good thing. Let Trenon have a taste of the isolation he wanted to unload on her. Iryu doesn't need to harbour inverts.
And she'd be working against what Larik wanted. Chin down, Kelil takes the next switchback slowly. Larik never asked Kelil to give up anything for her. Promises needn't carry on after death. Maybe Larik would want Kelil to have her own life.
At her side, Trenon speaks as gently as she's ever heard him. "Ask Maron, Kelil. Ask him how much of your profit is to be the holding's, how much your own. You'll have my name but you won't be independent. I'll have your silver but I won't have Nilos. What I want isn't possible."
[[ϒ Not here, maybe. But the traders say they live differently downmountain.->vow song]]
[[ϒ The city might be the one place Kelil can go, where no one expects anything but her success on her terms.->birch sugar candy]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "and there's more room on the homeside than that.")[ and there's more room on the homeside than that. Varin complains about it, how her baby doesn't have as many fathers as a growing child needs. She thinks the baby gives her the place to ask for a second husband, and she's not wrong.]
]}{(if: (history:)'s last is "riposte")[ $il[K]elil wraps her fury tightly on the road home to iryu. Brys senses some of it and keeps an ear on her as she insists on the mare's best speed through Asaresta and up the far slope. Trenon's interpretation of the vow song rings uncomfortably true. Larik let the holding use her for their gain, slipping her independence into the vows so quietly that no one noticed. A willow that knots roots deeper in the swamp with every storm. Trenon's hints about Zayelik worm deeper, like a splinter too deep to pull free. Masters ought to elevate their apprentices, not use them. Kelil beds Flyn down without thinking, her mind still on the argument--on Trenon's stony vulnerability, at the end.
The](else-if: (history:)'s last is "Shayin")[ $il[F]rom the moment Kelil takes on the marketing--the simple act of bartering for greens and tev-barley, milk and meat--she feels steadier in her place. Peris offers her silverwhits to do the shopping, but Kelil would much rather pay in mutton, in fulled cloth, in a three-day's pasturage for a passing trader's packmules. When she can't get what she wants, she takes favours instead: padded women's working clothes from irvu, the first barrel of winter beer from irlu, a promise of a shoeing from the blacksmith journeyman the next time he passes through.
The]}(else:)[ $il[T]he] next morning, Maron calls Kelil out to the barn. Glumly, she follows him, expecting a list of chores that will keep her from the market.
Maron stops in front of the barn door "I've something to show you," he says, a grin splitting his sandstone face.
Kelil gives a skeptical grimace, before looking over her shoulder back to the deepstone. Spring scatters fathers and brothers--Grenor and Amoz all but live in the pastures for the lambing. The weavers' hut, downslope, hums with the well-oiled rush of spinning wheels. Maron's surprise is his own.
He opens the door and leads the way. The stall nearest the door, once storage for the withes Grenor bends into chairs and snowshoes, has been cleared out. A chestnut pony watches them, head well up, ears pricked.
Kelil stares at Maron, who says, "She's all yours, lass."
Kelil lets out a breath and forces herself to relax her muscles. She carefully cuts her eyes to the side, and approaches the pony with steady, confident steps. She touches the mare's shoulder, then strokes her firmly. The pony's nostrils flare, getting her scent. She stands patiently and offers a curious blow. After a moment, Kelil lets the mare dip her nose into her palm. She has a lovely conformation, the sturdy feet and pronounced withers of a packhorse. Three white socks match his blaze. She's mature, perhaps eight or nine, old enough to have learned steadiness. Kelil resists the temptation to check her teeth. "What's her name?" she murmurs, stroking the mare's velvet nose.
"Flyn," Maron says, passing her the oat bucket so that Kelil can offer the mare a handful of grain to munch. "And there's two mules in the common barn to go with her."
"What?" Kelil can't help her loud astonishment. Flyn's head comes up, before she shakes her mane and gently whuffles into Kelil's shirt.
Maron dusts chaff from his hands and laughs. "And panniers, and tack. How else will you go trading? We'll load you up with cloth and dyes. Set a fair price with your mother; the profit's to be yours."
A cold shot of dread spikes to Kelil's wrists and armpits, bringing sweat. Maron's never this generous without a reason. Maybe he wants to apologize for trapping her in marriage. She must deserve that much. Maybe he only wants the silver she can earn, the way he loved Larik's tapestries for the prices they commanded.(if: $decoy is true)[In that case, he'll resent giving such a gift if Zayelik plans to become a mountain trader.] Kelil wraps her arms around Flyn's neck, smelling the sweaty, sunned-hay scent of her hide. She can out-trade Shayin, but for this gift, she'd let silver slide through her fingers. "Thank you," she says. "Father..." She gives him place with deep courtesy.
Maron gives courtesy in return, lips quirking through his seriousness. "Do well by the holding, Kelil," he says, "and your life will be a good one."
If she does well by iryu... Kelil impressed Maron with her trading--impressed fathers and mothers both. To have her skills recognized, appreciated, means more than the mare.
But the appreciation feels false. When mothers and fathers caught their breath at Larik's skill, it was the colours, the intricacy they praised. Kelil's bargaining saves the holding silver but offers little to touch. Varin, even Shayin, don't see how Kelil scrapes profit from the village traders where they fumble. They know the value of a good bargain and they both understand the give and take of a haggle. But they both put place first, and they believe that silver and place are the same thing. Kelil wants to return from the city bearing gifts that they'll hold as dear as Larik's weaving.
Anyone can buy with silver. Kelil gives traders place by knowing their stock. She studies them, their stalls and their needs. For the most part they'd rather have goods than silver. The ability to buy and buy and buy--Maron and Peris don't know that place isn't given for good fortune. (if: $decoy is true)[Yet knowing that Zayelik wants her only for skills she's already mastered makes Kelil defensive. She needs a broader horizon than a mountain village can encompass.]
Maron plays the game as well as he can. Better, perhaps, than Peris could--not that Kelil will ever insult both of them by saying her father trades better than a woman. Maron only sees that Kelil will bring Trenon's name into the holding, so in exchange, he sets her a stake to trade overmountain. It's a good price, but it is a price.
Trenon's right. Maron's self-interest will never extend to letting them establish a holding, or marry who they please. Trenon saw Maron's extravagance the moment he stepped into iryu dooryard.
[[ϒ Maron would deny it if she asked. If she's to have any chance at independence, she needs to appreciate his gift, not question it.->vow song]]
(unless: (history:) contains "grandchildren")[(link: "ϒ Maron favour the children of her marriage over Hiron and Varin's baby, for their name.")[(goto: "grandchildren")] ]$il[K]elil's lips brush the corner of Trenon's slack mouth, and then he ducks away. She draws back, keeping one hand on his shoulder to steady herself. He turns to watch the closed window shutters, as though he can see through them to the view beyond. Kelil sits beside him on the bed. Their combined weight dips the netting and their shoulders push together, but Trenon gives no sign that he notices the touch.
"You really love him," she says. Humiliation prickles sweat under her arms.
She feels his abortive shrug, a defiant gesture, as if casting away a cloak. "If we were two husbands in an established marriage you wouldn't even notice," he says.
When Kelil tries to reconcile a full, happy marriage with Trenon's sneaking tactics, discomfort niggles deeper. Trenon sounds logical on the face of the matter but his answer feels facile. "Traders say it's different in the city," she says. Spots of high colour heat her cheeks, but she can ignore the kiss if he can. (if: $decoy is true)[She doesn't care if Zayelik does plan to leave the city for upmountain trading; even Trenon can't deny that city marriages have room for love spouses from the beginning.] "That love matters more than contracted betrothals."
Trenon grunts and at first Kelil thinks he won't answer. He could have scraped together the silver to hire a trader as a guide for the three ninedays' travel. Larik, as a journeyman, had the independence to join him. Leaving would be harder for Nilos, since he'd have to break his apprenticeship, but together they might manage it. With so many people living in the city, looking to establish holdings and contracts, it makes no sense to delay a marriage's growth by holding it closed. Village-style first marriages yoke spouses together like plough mules. "City marriages...they marry in threes, sometimes more, Zayelik says," she prods him. "Larik would have agreed to go."
"Traders lie," Trenon says shortly. "They think it adds spice to any tasteless tev they want to sell."
"Just because they're tales, doesn't mean they aren't true," Kelil says. Traders draw in buyers with exaggerations. If they say what a buyer wants to hear, that only proves that traders know what the buyer needs to hear. "It's different downmountain. It has to be."
"I know it's different." Trenon's frown etches deeper between his eyebrows. "I've learned enough contract song variations."
Kelil wonders if Trenon realizes how comfortable he's become with her. He sits beside her in her linens and she can feel the warmth of his body, but as soon as she stopped trying to kiss him he forgot about their near-intimacy. He's all ghost and breath, and so she pushes him there, where he'll feel it. "So you've travelled there? You've seen their holdings?" She edges her tone with mockery. Trenon may be a journeyman but he's never travelled further than his comfortable circuit of villages-next.
Trenon glares at her. "Three or more spouses in a first marriage, yes, how very open and accepting." He shakes his head, standing up, pacing. "Husbands or wives, they don't care. But without patronage the marriage is nothing. Advocat, healer, weaver--what kind of rag-rug patchwork would our holding be in the city? So no, I haven't gone there, and when you do you'd best be wary because they don't play nice with gullible village traders who've been raised on tales!" He swivels to stare at her, his eyes blue as glaciers.
Kelil feels more naked under his anger than she did enticing him to pleasure. She raises her chin. He wants to claim place. She will not go easy under his attempts to stampede her.
[[ϒ "That's not the real reason," she says.->inkling]]
[[ϒ "Prove it," she says. "Come with me when I go."->proof]]$il[N]ilos pushes the tea mug aside before Larik can reach for it. He pours water into an empty pewter cup and holds Larik as he offers it. Larik closes her fingers over Nilos's hand. He can count each bone under her thin flesh; she whose hands were once knotted with muscle, rough with calluses. She drinks, coughs again. Massages her throat. But the cough keeps returning, short barks like a marmot's yelp. She can't bring up the mucous that clogs her breath, and the cough rattles on until her eyes stream. When she finally breathes calmly, Nilos can still hear the bubble in her lungs.
"I dreamed I was drowning." Larik picks up a crumpled square of stiff linen and wipes at her eyes, then blows her nose. She tips her head back against the wall and takes a careful, deeper breath. "Caught in the spring flood. Hitting every rock."
Nilos wishes it were the candlelight, brightening her eyes. But the fever rising through her flesh carries her ghost with it, flushing her yellowed skin and glazing her stare. In this state she might drink his tea by accident, while groping for water. Nilos pushes off his knees and slops the tea into the night bucket.
Larik watches him as he sits beside her on the pallet, their backs to the fieldstone chimney. The heat radiating from the stones draws out sweat at Larik's temples. "What was that?"
Nilos wraps his arms around his knees. "Nothing."
Larik leans her shoulder against his, a familiar pressure, but her long illness has left her much lighter than she once was. "You wouldn't let me drink it."
"The songs...the vigil song for long illness, for strength..." Nilos swallows. For a season Tereos had been prescribing cleanses, massages, and sheep's blood for nourishment, but none of his songs could soften Larik's cough. Larik's eyes go wide and white when a fit catches her, and her lips turn blue. In deep winter, Nilos still truly believed that Tereos could cure her. But in the past nineday, he's had to beg Tereos to try one more song, and another, until Tereos finally set him to sing vigil last night. Vigils offer comfort to grieving families, not a remedy. "The vigil song isn't enough."
Larik's laughter sounds at first like the first rising bubble when tev boils, //a-ha//, //a-ha//, and then it grows hoarser and threatens to become a cough again. Nilos finds his lips curving in an incredulous smile. "What?"
"Nilos..." Larik pulls him against her and lies down on her pallet, bringing him with her. In his arms, she feels slight as a pika. "I know I'm dying," she whispers.
Nilos's throat aches. Even in her restless sleep, Larik's ghost must have understood the implications when Tereos admitted the time for the vigil song had come. The vigil siphons strength from those who hear it and pours their breath into the widening split between Larik's body and her ghost. Nilos knows it must be better, the peaceful flight once the ghost sunders from the body, but he can't help the hot pressure behind his eyes. "I don't want to lose you."
Tears seep over the bridge of Larik's nose. "Then why wouldn't you give me that song?"
Nilos takes a deep breath. He never would have brewed that tea if he thought Tereos held any hope. "It wasn't a true song."
Larik coughs again, breath ripped from her body. Fever runs like fire under her skin. Nilos holds her tighter and searches for the words to explain. The first morning of his apprenticeship, he settled in the chimney corner of Tereos's herbary and closed his eyes to let Tereos's lesson wash over him.
But the ghost can be appeased, can be begged to stay. Each song has its herb, and its sequence of lifepoint touches. But when two illnesses are alike, and one song falters, what if the second offers hope? What if the herbs could be mixed, and melded, and suited to the song they serve? Like jumping into a high green lake in summer, the idea chilled Nilos through, and left behind something pure, like joy.
[[ϒ What if he could change the songs?->schism]]
[[ϒ Larik's eyes blur as her fever rises. She'll hear any explanation like a voice in a groping dream.->envy]] {
(if: $allowHints)[
(click-replace: "the widening split between Larik's body and her ghost.")[the widening split between Larik's body and her ghost. Instead of breaking apart like a frozen branch cracking under a load of wet snow, the ghost slips away catfoot, slow and silent.]
(click-replace: "Tereos's lesson wash over him.")[Tereos's lesson wash over him, in deep rhythm. //The body needs nourishment, requires water to drink. But the ghost tastes; the ghost takes pleasure in slaking thirst. So the body and ghost together breathe. Song speaks to the breath and breath carries the song. But no song heals without addressing each alone and all together.//]
(click-replace: "that song")[that brew]
] }$il[L]arik coughs again, and Nilos's heart constricts. Everyone in iryu deepstone is sleeping, accustomed after a long winter to Larik's jagged coughing fits. Master Tereos left Nilos with strict instructions at sunset. "Let her fade in her own time. No other song can comfort her now. She needs the strength to choose peacefully."
Strength in the body means nothing if the ghost is determined to fly. The vigil song assures Larik's ghost that all is well. Nilos's brew will urge action, struggle, hope.
Nilos takes the mug and gently cups Larik's hands around its remaining warmth. Larik dips her lips to the brew and takes a shallow mouthful. Her swallow resounds in Nilos's ears. //She drank it herself--// An empty excuse. Who wouldn't drink the brew a healer places in their hands?
Larik sips again, then drinks more deeply. The fading echo of the vigil song buzzes in the back of Nilos's mind. When Larik coughs again, it sounds deeper, thicker. She takes another drink to swallow down phlegm.
And then: her breath begins to clear.
"What is it?" she asks in a hoarse whisper.
"Mullein, willow bark, borage, and mint for flavour," Nilos murmurs. From the beginning, he loved learning the herbs, taking long rambles with Tereos while his master murmured their songs. Each song includes its own herb, burned for smoke, crushed for scent, steeped for washes, but no healer would call a song complete without touch traced on lifepoints and chants to strengthen the breath. Master Tereos's teachings. But Tereos was certain Larik couldn't improve. Nilos tucks Larik against his side and closes his eyes, waiting for her to ask about the rest of the song.
Larik lets out an amused breath. "What healer cares about flavour?" She sips, and a smile crosses her face. "And birch sugar, too. I'm sure I never tasted anything so good from Master Tereos."
Nilos straightens, listening. Larik's mothers cleared out the loft above the hearthroom after Tereos declared that Larik's fever might spread unless she slept apart. Her pallet lies under the sharp angle of the eaves, against the heat radiating from the fieldstone chimney. A hanging tapestry isolates a small corner of the loft to cut down on drafts. Nilos would have heard anyone climbing up the loft ladder. Within the small reach of candleglow, they are alone. "There are healing songs that call for birch sugar," he says, hedging. The vigil chant calls only for pine needles smouldered to smoke.
Larik squeezes his hand. "My throat feels like a scree slope. The sweetness helps."
Nilos pulls away to straighten the down quilts that pad her straw pallet. "You should sleep."
Larik's mouth twists in sourness. "Would Tereos punish you for sweetening a healing song with birch sugar?"
If Tereos knew of the tea Nilos offered, the wild assortment of herbs, he would dismiss him from his apprenticeship. "He'd correct me."
Larik sets the mug back on the floor. A frown gathers between her eyebrows. "You mean--it's not a true song?"
Nilos shakes his head, neither yes nor no.
[[ϒ How did any healing song begin, unless a healer invented a new harmony, a different pattern of touch?->lie]]
[[ϒ Yet breaking trust with Larik when she's already so weak may do worse than giving her the brew.->truth]]{
(if: $allowHints)[
(click-replace: "iryu deepstone")[(either: "Larik's family","the holding")]
(click-replace: "Who wouldn't drink the brew a healer places in their hands?")[Twisting a song is contract-breaking. Nilos could lose more than his apprenticeship. An advocat could refuse to craft any contract for him, leaving him without service and without song.]
]}$il[T]he weight of the night, and Nilos's exhaustion, pulls a ragged breath from him. Larik's breath is coming easier. When she coughs, the fevered mucous loosens in her chest. "The vigil song only gives you strength," he says, working to find that careful, low tone that Tereos uses to reach even the most anxious or angry of patients. He has to trust his own choices. His tea has already bolstered the ties between Larik's body and ghost. He doesn't need to defend himself when the tea's effects speaks for him. The vigil might offer strength but it won't convince her ghost to stay.
"Thank you, then." Larik cups the mug close, warming her hands on its heat, and sniffs the rising steam. "I haven't had this one before."
Nilos kneels to trim the candlewick. They need less pine smoke, more light. He plucks the near-empty mug from Larik's hands. "That's enough."
"Usually I can't stop you from describing every herb in a song." Larik speaks lightly, but her eyes watching him are sharp.
The thatch sighs and scratches above them. The wind picks up, blowing the rain against the deepstone in gusts. "Are you cold?" Nilos asks. "I have stones warming in the hearth."
Larik sits back against the wall, wrapped in the heaviest of her quilts, and watches him. The only herb in the vigil song is pinesmoke, no brews at all. Healers must be able to sing vigil even for those patients who are beyond swallowing. Larik isn't ignorant. She knows the tea must come from a different song.
Nilos tips the mug this way and that, watching the lees swirl in the last of the liquid. Master Tereos will know by the smell what he brewed.
Larik looks pale, and weary, and awake. Hardly cured, but so entirely herself that Nilos's chest feels empty from missing her. "How do you feel?" he asks.
Larik settles the quilts closer around her shoulders. "You don't trust me."
She never asked for an accounting before, when he spent the night beside her pallet. She would wake to ask for water, then doze off into fever-wanderings. Nilos reaches out to catch her wrist between his fingers. Her skin no longer pulses with tight fever heat, and her heart throbs stronger.
Larik hooks a finger in his sleeve and pulls his arm away. "Haven't I always kept your secrets?"
Nilos tries to smile, feeling the unnatural pull in his lips and the corners of his eyes. No rationalizations now. If Larik tells Tereos about the tea Nilos gave her, Tereos could dismiss him from his apprenticeship. Whether the tea works or not, Nilos broke trust by making it. Nilos raises the mug to his mouth and drains the last bitter mouthful. "I don't want you to have to keep this one," he says.
Larik starts to answer sharply, and then stops. "What was in that tea?" she asks, her voice catching on sudden worry.
"Nothing harmful," Nilos says, running his thumb over the mug's rim. The tea was never a part of a healer's song, but every herb he chose was one he has brewed nine hundred times before. He looks up, and meets Larik's eyes. "I mixed the songs in your tea, to give you the strength of all of them," he says. Willow bark for pain, and borage for fever. Mullein for the cough. Mint and birch sugar, to soothe her throat. "Do you trust me?"
[[ϒ His lightness lies thin over the truth. No one gives their faith to a liar, a charlatan in healers' robes.->sense]]
[[ϒ Larik smiles sadly, and reaches out to him. Nilos presses his face against her palm when she cups it to his cheek.->sensibility]] {
(If: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Master Tereos will know by the smell what he brewed.")[Master Tereos will know by the smell what he brewed.
Well, why shouldn't he? If Tereos arrives in the morning to see Larik's fever broken--why shouldn't Nilos give every detail of how he made the tea?]
(Click-replace: "Nilos broke trust by making it.")[Nilos broke trust by making it. He gave it to Larik without her understanding. He made it against Tereos's direct orders to sing only the vigil.]
(Click-replace: "every herb he chose was one he has brewed nine hundred times before.")[every herb he chose was one he has brewed nine hundred times before. Nilos spent seasons watching Tereos's patients for true improvements, not simply the ease that follows calm belief in the songs' power. He tasted every tea and searched for their effects in himself.]
]}$il[N]ilos tugs Larik close against him. "Families rest better during the vigil, not just because they're giving breath, but because they believe they're helping," he says. "But for you--the vigil doesn't make you //better//. It's meant as a comfort." Often, Tereos's patients are already sinking by the time he admits the vigil is the last song left to give, hardly aware of the songs floating over them. Nilos's heart quickens like a hare's in his throat. "My brew...my tea was different. I made it to help you."
Larik presses her fist to the center of her chest, and lets out two short, rumbling coughs. This time, the fit doesn't overwhelm her. Something has changed. "What does that mean?"
Nilos holds back from reaching for her hand to test the heat of her skin. Has the fever subsided? Larik's cheeks have turned sallow, no longer flushed and lucent. He trembles on the brink of confession, his voice like swallowed ice. But she is sharp, curious, interested--//better//. "I mixed the herbs myself. I chose them."
"You chose...herbs without songs?" Larik curls deeper on herself. "I don't understand."
"Willow bark for pain, and borage for fever. Mullein for the cough." Nilos's feeble recitation won't turn a tea into a healer's song. But Larik hasn't spoken so easily in days. Her hand holding the blanket tight at her throat doesn't tremble. Nilos tucks the quilts closer around her shoulders.
Larik tenses, like she might shatter under his touch. "How could you mix songs like that?"
Nilos gropes for his reasons, which felt so clear at middlenight while the deepstone lay quiet around him. "We give willow bark with songs for headaches. Borage for children with spot fever. You know Serl, whose breath gets bad after running hard, or when something upsetting happens? The mullein is from that song." Icy cold settles under Nilos's ribs. Serl always emerges from his blue-lipped gasping with song and mullein. Larik hasn't improved nearly as abruptly. But she had farther to come; Serl's attacks rarely last long. "Larik...I didn't want to lose--"
"No." Larik cuts him off. "Nothing gives you the right to play games with my songs."
Nilos's throat tightens, as it threatened to do through the vigil chant. "But what if Tereos's songs are the wrong ones?"
"And you know better!"
"But what if I did?" Some songs do work by their breath. Nilos has seen it. Master Tereos can calm a sick person and all their holding with his voice. "If I could follow the songs, but watch...and see...which herbs help. Which herbs the ghost listens to. I could use the right ones."
"As you used me."
"No--" Everything made so much sense when he steeped the tea, how each herb would work with each, how Larik's cough would finally subside...which it did. He can't say he didn't mean to. Each step in the tea's brewing was a deliberate choice. He could have stopped Larik from drinking it, if he'd wanted to. "I wanted to help."
Larik turns on her pallet, lying so that she faces the warm chimney stones. She wouldn't have drunk the tea willingly if she'd known what it was. No one in Asaresta would drink a strange tea that an apprentice claimed was as good as a healer's song. She can't blame him for a lie, if that lie saves her life. But it was a lie.
Larik's breathing evens out, and Nilos wonders if she has fallen asleep. And then, quietly, she says, "You're supposed to be my friend. And my healer."
Their shadows flicker on thatch and chinked-log wall. The rain patters harder against the thatch. A trickling leak down the chimney hisses and dries as it meets the rising heat. Nilos wraps his arms around his knees, squeezing his hands into fists until his muscles knot. He sang his apprenticeship dreaming of singing vigils that tempted ghosts back to their bodies. Tereos warned him against hope, but Nilos didn't listen. He brewed a slanted tea and cheated Larik of the vigil's true breath. He used her trust to trick her.
"I'm sorry," he mutters, leeching as much defensiveness from his voice as he can. "I should have asked you."
He did it //for// her. Nilos clamps his jaw tight to swallow the excuses. He strokes the brittle strands of Larik's hair back from her forehead, seeking the lifepoints at her temples. He can feel the crust of dried sweat there, the hint of the fever broken. The tea //worked//. If she understood that--
But there is no reason she should. If Larik only trusts the vigil song, then only the vigil song will help her. Tereos taught him that. Nilos's tea might draw her back from the cliff's edge, but not if her ghost already believes in her death.
Nilos rises from Larik's pallet and bends forward, his toes curling under him. He forces his chant-roughened voice to find the first note of the vigil song. He can't sink into its rhythm; the music grates in his throat.
After a long moment, Larik says, "Nilos?"
Nilos drops into silence. "Yes?"
"Did you really think that tea would do anything?"
"I thought it would be worth it, if you got better." Nilos wants to catch his anger in a slipknot snare and choke it into submission, but at last it wrestles free: at Tereos, at the healer's unchanging songs; at Larik for trusting them over him. At himself, because Larik would be right not to trust him. He tricked her into a slanted song.
[[ϒ "But your fever has come down, hasn't it?" he asks. "Can't you trust how you feel?"->sensibility]]
[[ϒ How can Larik trust herself, body or breath, after ninedays of fever?->sense]] {
(If: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Master Tereos can calm a sick person and all their holding with his voice.")[Massaging the lifepoints can ease pain and encourage congested breath to flow through the body. But a song's herbs, meant to propitiate the ghost, work so randomly. Sometimes a poultice or a tea helps amazingly. Sometimes it does little, or nothing. //The ghost is capricious//, Tereos says. Or else, Nilos thinks, the herbs are wrong.]
]}$il["D]o you remember two summers ago, when you fell down the scree slope?" Nilos asks.
It was early in the season, only a few ninedays after Larik came of age. For the first time since Larik pulled on her woman's robes, it seemed that they wouldn't spend the day bumping through a thousand awkward apologies. Every time Nils glances at her, it's like looking into a clear running creek, and seeing a reflection distorted by hope. Larik's place still sits gawkily on her. For the first ninedays she asserted it, calling Nilos--Nils then--nothing but a child, and placeless. But after they scramble over the heights above Asaresta, searching out plants for Larik's mothers' dye pots, they find their fit again. Larik might be an adult already, but they both came into their growth over the winter, sniggering awkwardly together over new hair and spotty faces. Larik is a finger's breadth taller, but Nilos is wider through the chest, and stronger.
After loading her carrying basket with woad, Larik dawdles, picking a few of the shyer wildflowers for her pressing block. The afternoon opens out, heavy and still. A lazy hum of wood bees tumbling from clover to buttercup fills the air.
Nils kneels to drink at a mossy trickle. The icy water tastes wonderfully green.
Larik squats, arms on knees, and gazes at a clump of pink blooms. "What are asters used for?" she asks.
Nils sprawls beside her, enjoying the slide of sweat under plainwoven clothes. "What do you mean?"
"In the healing songs."
Behind closed eyelids, Nils watches the warm red dance of dappled sun. Larik shouldn't ask placeless questions, knowing a child can't put her off. Half a season stretches out before Nils comes of age. Master Tereos may not even want an apprentice when the time comes. "My family hasn't arranged an apprenticeship contract for me yet."
Larik shrugs off her carrying basket and strokes a few of the asters before choosing one, and plucking it. "You always say that."
"Mothers may need another forester." Then Nils will come of age as a woman. The comfort of the right-knotted belt feels nearly real already. All Nils's siblings became sisters and joined mothers in logging and carpentry. Nils never cared one way or another about construction, but Asaresta is growing. Plenty of holdings in the village want to expand their deepstones. Added sleeping quarters, or a bigger family room. Nils's mothers need another carpenter on their worksites more than they can afford to lose a child into an apprenticeship.
A squirrel bursts out chattering in a tree overhead. Larik squints up with a smile. "And you can marry //Trenon//," she says, nudging Nils's shoulder.
Nils fights a silly grin, and loses. Trenon wants to meet later this afternoon, in their glade. Excitement heats Nils's skin. Only Larik knows that they've kept meeting after Trenon came of age. Trenon's too old to be playing pleasure games in the woods with a child, even though Nils is less than a year younger than him. But then, even knowing better, Nils hasn't refused Trenon's invitations.
"Or my fathers may want another field hand," Nils says, to be fair. Nils's fathers don't have the silver or the place to claim large fields themselves. They barely manage to keep their cairns up around their deepstone's garden. Instead, they and Nils's marriage brothers contract their labour to other holdings. Nils tries to picture working in the fields day after day for wages, growing dark and gnarled as fathers, bent as a scrub pine.
Lark laughs. "They'd be wasting you. If your fathers need field hands, they'd be better off if you came of age a daughter and enticed some upmountain farmer's son to marry you."
The clouds cluster white and grey against the mountain peaks, like great clumps of sheep's wool in a comb. Sons have very little say in marriages, first marriages especially. Trenon's parents have far too much place to agree to a betrothal contract with a carpenter's daughter. If Nils becomes a daughter, mothers could never raise the silver to satisfy Trenon's family. Yet that fantasy, standing on at Trenon's guest door in a woman's robe, and solemnly begging hosting of Trenon's parents--a sneaky thrill follows that thought, sparking like pleasure, but centering deeper.
No other woman has come courting Trenon yet, no matter how tempting the bait of his family's name. Trenon's parents may lower their price some day. Trenon says it like a boast. //I'm no catch, Nils. I'll still be here when you're ready//.
Nils' coming of age rite looms at the end of summer like thunderheads sweeping upmountain from the south. Nils frowns and rolls to his stomach, plucks a stalk of brome grass, and pinches off its seed heads. Those thunderheads will break, and strike, and wash Nils away no matter what the rite's outcome. Sometimes it seems Trenon //expects// Nils to become a woman, simply so that they can marry, and it feels like there would be no room for //Nils// in that marriage. If Nils becomes a son, there will be no hope at all of a first marriage with Trenon, but they could wait, and marry later. Trenon acts like //waiting// is beyond his imagining, or else a personal insult. And perhaps he's right. Nils has no desire to become a son. If Nils could apprentice to the healer, it might be worth enduring manhood. But mothers can't afford to lose Nils's income to Tereos. They'd never approve of the apprenticeship. So Nils will be a woman, and marry Trenon after all. Perhaps Larik might teach Nils to weave.
Nils pushes off the turf. "Let's go higher."
"All right." Larik slings the carrying basket up to her shoulders.
The sun presses hot against their backs as they climb up from the treeline. The path becomes a thread-narrow chamois trail across a boulder slope, and soon pitches steeply down on their right. The moisture left behind after the snowpack retreated sustains the plants pushing up through the cracks in the rocks: sheep sorrel, saxifrage, and great broad-leaved burdock. The near-silent seep of water on stone cools the air. Hidden ice melts under the rocks, loosening the scree.
A small rockfall gives way with a sudden clatter. They both twist to look uphill, checking the direction of the fall, and a stone tips under Larik's foot. She shouts, and falls, scrabbling for purchase. Gravel and pebbles slide out from under her, raising dust. Larik manages to get her boots under her, splays her hands, and pulls up short, sprawled in a tangle of bushes where the slope peters out.
Nils jumps off the path after her. The scree is small and loose enough that he's able to control his descent, bent knees balanced over the tumble of stones. Some skitter and bounce down the slope, but most slide beneath Nils's feet, until he's reached Larik's side.
"Are you hurt?"
She bites her lip. "My leg." She struggles to her feet, and then draws in a sharp hiss. The gravel tore her loose linen trousers all down her left side, and skinned her leg bloody from thigh to shin. Bits of stone and dirt speckle the wounds. Dust dims the seep of blood. Larik holds her weight on her right foot, gripping Nils's shoulder with her other hand.
"Do you have your canteen?"
"In my basket."
Nils guides Larik to sit on the nearest boulder, and pulls out both their water skins, refilled at their last stop under the trees. Strips torn from Larik's ruined trousers make rough rags that Nils uses to clean Larik up, though the cloth soon grows red. The blood from the shallower scratches slows, but flows freely from the deepest cuts.
"Tereos will want to give you a geranium root wash," Nils says.
Larik grimaces at the mention of the stinging liquid. "I'll go to him for the song when we get back."
"And walk all that way bleeding?" Nils presses a damp cloth to Larik's skin as gently as possible. "You'll have every horsefly in the mountains on you. Here, wait--" The green, sappy scent of crushed burdock surrounds them. "I know--"
Nils plucks a palm-sized leaf from the nearest plant. Tereos uses fresh crushed burdock on scalds and to soothe sun-redness. Burns that heal clean--why not cuts? Nils shreds a double handful of leaves and lays them against Larik's thigh. She hisses again, but shakes her head when Nils looks up at her, checking if the sting is too much. Another handful on her knee and down her shin. In a few spots, Nils ties strips of cloth around her leg to hold small damp dressings over the worst of the scrapes. Once they get back to the stream, Larik can have a proper wash. Nils swallows down the hum that rises like instinct: the melody Tereos sings for burns. Nils brushes hands against shirt hem, though the stick of dried blood remains between fingers.
"That--actually feels better." Larik stands slowly, stretching her leg. Her boots, thick padded leather with right-knotted laces, suffered scuffs but no holes. "You //do// know the songs. Nilos the healer!"
Nils tries to laugh at Larik using a man's name, but it comes out a self-conscious chuckle. "Burdock's for burns..." But Larik has turned to study the dark grooves they left in the scree, plotting their scramble back to the path.
Plenty of people give what care they can after accidents. Tereos can't be everywhere in the village. But Nils went further than that, twisted a song askew. Nils spoke to Larik's ghost with the wrong herb. For a healer, that would be not just unseemly, but dangerous. A child, though, has no place at all. Nils can't be blamed for being wrong.
But Nilos deliberately offered Larik a songless brew for her fever. He breathes out slowly, trying to find rhythm with Larik's fevered body. He takes her hands in his and presses open her breathlines. She smoulders under his hands, an impatient, irritable heat. She coughs again and Nilos works to brace her, squeezing his eyes closed against tears. He was wrong that day, and Larik didn't care. Didn't notice. Because she already thought of him as a healer, a man. Or because the simple, physical relief from pain created its own truth? Whether he was an apprentice or not, man or not, the effect of his song had been real. Her wounds healed cleanly.
"Larik..." He brushes damp hair from her forehead, wishing he could take her fever into himself. "Do you want the tea? Even if it's not a true song?"
[[ϒ Perhaps she hadn't consider his actions //healing// at all. Her friend washed her scrapes, the least anyone might do before fetching a real healer.->sense]]
[[ϒ That she felt better meant little. Not a serious accident, and so not a serious response; she saw Nils as only a child, playing games.->sensibility]]{ (if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "forester")[daughter]
(click-replace: "plainwoven")[child's]
(click-replace: "nothing but a child")[ono]
(click-replace: "Nils's mothers need another carpenter on their worksites more than they can afford to lose a child into an apprenticeship.")[ Nils's mothers need another carpenter on their worksites more than they can afford to lose a child into an apprenticeship. If Nils apprentices to a master, the master benefits from any silver earned. Irlu is a working holding. A daughter is one more woman on the logging crew, replacing a contract labourer working for cash wages. Apprentices need support until the master deems them worthy of their journeymanship.]
(click-replace: "knowing a child can't put her off.")[knowing a child can't put her off. Children have no place to offend by prying.]
]}{(set: $pragmatic to false) $il[L]arik (if: $healthier is true)[reaches for the ewer and pours water for herself into the empty mug](else:)[licks her cracked lips. She watches him wanly]. Her shadow flickers on thatch and the chinked-log wall. Nilos dips his head and stares into the candle between them. He refuses to press an answer when he asked for so much. He can't promise that his tea won't harm her, (if: $healthier is true)[even if she seems well for the moment](else:)[even though he desperately wants to demand that Larik get better]. }
Larik tangled her bedclothes and scattered her sweated quilts. If nothing else, Nilos can make her comfortable. He shakes out the rumpled linens and tucks them around the pallet's scratchy straw. Press-lipped, he guides her to lie down. Rest gives its own song. Dampening a kerchief with fresh water from the ewer, Nilos bathes the sweat from Larik's face and throat.
Larik allows it, (if: $healthier is true)[her improvement too slight to allow herself the effort of settling her own quilts](else:)[though it makes her shiver]. "Healer," she accuses, gently.
"Hmm." Nilos takes her hand and massages the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. His fear for Larik spurred him to brew the tea, but he trusts the vigil song's touch. Lifepoint massage relieves pain, while the tendrils of pine needle smoke cajole Larik's ghost to imbue her body. The song's melody channels the strength of every person listening as they wander in dreams. Nilos provides the conduit, and pours strength into Larik's breath. (if: $healthier is false)[Nilos can't believe the taut heat in her hands, the thready flutter of her lifepoints.](else:)[ ]
"Nilis," Larik says.
Nilos meets Larik's eyes sharply, but sees only patience there. "You deserve to claim that name. It's the one you always wanted."
Nilos drops his eyes, then asks roughly, "Both?"
"Yes. Nilis." Larik's smile softens the strong lines of her face, sharper now since her illness. "I believe you."
Nilos tries to laugh, and gulps down a burning breath instead. Larik was a guest on the day Nilos came of age. After the rite, Nilos's robe sat so tightly on his shoulders that he was sure he couldn't breathe. Larik dragged him away from the guests, behind the deepstone, while he whispered, "I made a mistake," over and over again. The ceremony was over; the song had faded. Nilos had given up childhood's clothes for this faded red man's robe. His father had draped the thin linen over his head and cut off his air. Even after he tugged it clear of his mouth, he couldn't breathe. His family and every guest had echoed the song, calling him //Nilos//. A man's name, inescapable. "I'm a woman," he insisted, against Larik's shoulder. "I should be a woman."
Larik clicked her tongue at him. With deft fingers, she loosened the stitches under his arms, where the gaps wouldn't show. The seam gave way and Nilos gulped for air. "You never should have chosen to be a son just to snub Trenon," Larik snapped, but her grey eyes were gentle.
Nilos could hardly hide from Larik all the times he and Trenon had snuck away in the woods together. (if: $healthier is false)[As children they were sweethearts. They met on the bank of a stutter-stepped creek, in the undercut where a giant pine fell across the water. The clearing with its pine needle carpet belonged to other children once. Nils and Trenn claimed it as a holding claims its fields, theirs for a season or a year, as long as love and childhood last. Early on, they only fumbled, a playacting thrill. Over the seasons they learned each other's bodies, the nooks and hollows that bring pleasure to the surface.
](else:)[ ]They should have stopped when they came of age. One unmarried man can't court another.
But Nilos inhales Trenon's needy affection like breath. That he and Trenon are both men now matters little to their pleasures or their meetings.
As a woman, Nilis might have courted Trenon. And as a woman he would have courted in vain. Trenon's family would hardly care to see a carpenter's daughter at their guest door.
]Nilos clutched at Larik's arms and held her tight. This knot pressing on his sternum wasn't about Trenon. "I was wrong," he said. "I can't--"
"You want to be a healer," Larik insisted.
Trenon hadn't shown up for the rite. Nilos's parents hadn't invited him. But then, Trenon would have presumed on his family's place to attend if he'd wanted to.
Nilos nods convulsively. Becoming a daughter, a carpenter like mothers, held little appeal, but Nils' conviction lay deeper than the greens and blues of a woman's robe. Nils had even toyed with asking Larik if her mothers needed another weaving apprentice. She had taught Nils enough to be competent at the loom, able to follow instruction, able to improve. But in the end, the opportunity offered by a healing apprenticeship, with the wages he might earn once he gained his journeymanship, convinced mothers to accept Tereos's terms. Nils had agreed, because healing held every promise that courting Trenon didn't.
Nilos whispers, "What if I was wrong?"
Larik grips his hands in both of hers. "You're a man now. You //will// be a healer."
She ought to have denounced his songs as slanted and false. When she grew ill that winter, she should have asked to see his master, never him. For Larik to call him Nilis //and// healer, as if he could be both the sky and the mountain--he wants that more than breath.
"Have I ever told Tereos, or anyone?" Larik asks. "Have I ever turned you away, or your songs?"
"No. No," he says. He feels like a child again, placeless, displaced, and yet euphoric.
Larik eases deeper on the pallet. "I believe in your vigil song, Nilos. (if: $healthier is true)[I feel stronger.](else:)[I know it's the only thing that can help, now.]"
Nilos swallows, suddenly chilled. "What?"
(if: $healthier is true)["I can feel your strength in the vigil. I know you can channel it." She gifts him with the feminine //you//. Her smile softens in growing peace.
"But the tea--"
Larik murmurs denial. "It's all right. I'm not upset."](else:)[Larik strays into a fever dream, her voice fading to a murmur. "I didn't want it to hurt at the end. I don't want to be weak. I can feel your breath. You've given me that. Channelled so much strength for me." She uses the feminine you, even in her wandering.
"You could still take the tea--"
Larik shakes her head. Her eyelids droop. "I only want the real song, tonight."]
Nilos fights down a wave of desperation. He wants to argue, but how can he insist that (if: $healthier is true)[the strength she feels comes from his brew,](else:)[his brew could give her more strength than the vigil ever could,] when he doesn't even know that himself? She offered him place. Permission to be both woman and healer. But his heart closes on that distinction: she allows it, accepts one despite the other. She forgives him himself.
"It's so easy for you," Nilos whispers, to Larik, to the fevered air. Trenon's parents wouldn't have looked kindly on a carpenter's daughter. For Larik, from the richest holding in Asaresta, Trenon's parents would look past place itself. Trenon and Larik were betrothed before the first snows packed the passes.
Nilos didn't intend to snub Trenon by choosing to become a man, but to staunch his own wounds. He couldn't want what he couldn't have. Better to be a healer than a woman whose lover chose another. "You took what you wanted at your coming of age. Without meaning to. Without wanting to, or trying."
Larik shakes her head. Chills raise gooseflesh on her arms and she huddles deeper under her quilts and blankets. "I never wanted Trenon," she says. "I promise you."
Nilos laughs, helpless. Trenon didn't want Larik either, but they both sang the contract, in the end. "I know."
(if: $healthier is true)[Larik opens her eyes slowly, sleep heavy in their corners.](else:)[Larik's eyes fly open suddenly, a brief clear window.] "What will you do, when I'm gone?"
Nilos can't help the bitterness that edges his voice when he answers: "What will I do if you stay?"
"If I married Trenon..." Larik smiles. "I would have you, too. Our second husband. His love spouse."
She's hinted before, with a look, with a soft touch, but this time she said the words. Nilos can't hold back the jerking shake of his head. "When your marriage opens. In a year."
"We'd wait, for you," Larik whispers. "Our own family, the three of us--"
Nilos squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn't care about the wait, or about taking on the lesser place of a second husband. No one will bat an eye at Trenon taking Nilos for his husband within an established marriage. It may comfort Larik to hear Nilos accept her proposal. He should simply say the words. But Nilos doesn't play a woman's part for Trenon's sake; they fell in love before either of them came of age, before place mattered. Larik's solution relegates Nilos to the role of husband, where he can only ache to call himself a wife. He tries to laugh, hurting all through his chest. "You'd marry Trenon, for me. And then you'd marry me, for him! When do you get--anything?"
Larik's lips twist wryly. "You love him," she says. "You don't need to hide, not with us." She reaches out, and tugs at the knot that holds his tunic left-belted.
Nilos catches her hand before she can loosen it, but already he feels naked in front of her. "Don't." His hands absently twists the fabric of his tunic the other way across his chest. Larik has caught him, often. Mornings, after his brothers leave the homeside for the fields--he stands alone in his sleeping room and holds his tunic rightwards, breathing in and tasting air like ice shards in his lungs.
Larik works to swallow. "I want you to be all right."
"I'm fine." But his voice breaks when he speaks.
Larik brings his fingertips to her lips. "Do something. For yourself. Whether Trenon agrees or not."
Nilos clasps her hand tight, and feels his smile soften. "He wants me to tell everyone. Throw it in their faces--two men in a first marriage."
Laughing lightly, Larik shakes her head. "Don't do it for him. For //you//." The feminine again. She's talking to the woman he might have been. "Promise me."
(link: "ϒ Nilos dips his head, his lips parting around the words //I will//.")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)[(goto: "lingers")] ]
(link: "ϒ He swallows sand; the promise dies in his throat.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)[(goto: "lingers")] ]
{ (if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "No one will bat an eye at Trenon taking Nilos for his husband within an established marriage.")[No one will bat an eye at Trenon taking Nilos for his husband within an established marriage. A threeyear in the future, who will remember or care about a child's love? A second husband won't seem like an indulgence if the marriage proves barren.]
(click-replace: "An unmarried man can't court another.")[An unmarried man can't court another. An established marriage can seek out love spouses, but they do it in concert. A husband can't overrule his wife's desires to bring his lover into his marriage.]
] }{(set: $pragmatic to false) $il[L]arik (if: $healthier is true)[reaches for the ewer and pours water for herself into the empty mug](else:)[licks her cracked lips. She watches him wanly]. Her shadow flickers on thatch and the chinked-log wall. Nilos dips his head and stares into the candle between them. He refuses to press an answer when he asked for so much. He can't promise that his tea won't harm her, (if: $healthier is true)[even if she seems well for the moment](else:)[even though he desperately wants to demand that Larik get better].}
Larik tangled her bedclothes and scattered her sweated quilts. If nothing else, Nilos can make her comfortable. He shakes out the rumpled linens and tucks them around the pallet's scratchy straw. Press-lipped, he guides her to lie down. Rest gives its own song. Dampening a kerchief with fresh water from the ewer, Nilos bathes the sweat from Larik's face and throat.
Larik allows it, (if: $healthier is true)[her improvement too slight to allow herself the effort of settling her own quilts](else:)[though it makes her shiver]. "Healer," she accuses, gently.
"Hmm." Nilos takes her hand and massages the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. His fear for Larik spurred him to brew the tea, but he trusts the vigil song's touch. Lifepoint massage relieves pain, while the tendrils of pine needle smoke cajole Larik's ghost to imbue her body. The song's melody channels the strength of every person listening as they wander in dreams. Nilos provides the conduit, and pours strength into Larik's breath. (if: $healthier is false)[Nilos can't believe the taut heat in her hands, the thready flutter of her lifepoints.]
"Nilis," Larik says.
Nilos meets Larik's eyes sharply, but sees only patience there. "You deserve to claim that name. It's the one you always wanted."
Nilos drops his eyes, then asks roughly, "Both?"
"Yes. Nilis." Larik's smile softens the strong lines of her face, sharper now since her illness. "I believe you."
Nilos tries to laugh, and gulps down a burning breath instead. Larik was a guest on the day Nilos came of age. After the rite, Nilos's robe sat so tightly on his shoulders that he was sure he couldn't breathe. Larik dragged him away from the guests, behind the deepstone, while he whispered, "I made a mistake," over and over again. The ceremony was over; the song had faded. Nilos had given up childhood's clothes for this faded red man's robe. His father had draped the thin linen over his head and cut off his air. Even after he tugged it clear of his mouth, he couldn't breathe. His family and every guest had echoed the song, calling him //Nilos//. A man's name, inescapable. "I'm a woman," he insisted, against Larik's shoulder. "I should be a woman."
Larik clicked her tongue at him. With deft fingers, she loosened the stitches under his arms, where the gaps wouldn't show. The seam gave way and Nilos gulped for air. "You never should have chosen to be a son just to snub Trenon," Larik snapped, but her grey eyes were gentle.
Nilos could hardly hide from Larik all the times he and Trenon had snuck away in the woods together. (if: $healthier is false)[As children they were sweethearts. They met on the bank of a stutter-stepped creek, in the undercut where a giant pine fell across the water. The clearing with its pine needle carpet belonged to other children once. Nils and Trenn claimed it as a holding claims its fields, theirs for a season or a year, as long as love and childhood last. Early on, they only fumbled, a playacting thrill. Over the seasons they learned each other's bodies, the nooks and hollows that bring pleasure to the surface.
]They should have stopped when they came of age. One unmarried man can't court another.
But Nilos inhales Trenon's needy affection like breath. That he and Trenon are both men now matters little to their pleasures or their meetings.
As a woman, Nilis might have courted Trenon. And as a woman he would have courted in vain. Trenon's family would hardly care to see a carpenter's daughter at their guest door.
]Nilos clutched at Larik's arms and held her tight. This knot pressing on his sternum wasn't about Trenon. "I was wrong," he said. "I can't--"
"You want to be a healer," Larik insisted.
Trenon hadn't shown up for the rite. Nilos's parents hadn't invited him. But then, Trenon would have presumed on his family's place to attend if he'd wanted to.
Nilos nods convulsively. Becoming a daughter, a carpenter like mothers, held little appeal, but Nils' conviction lay deeper than the greens and blues of a woman's robe. Nils had even toyed with asking Larik if her mothers needed another weaving apprentice. She had taught Nils enough to be competent at the loom, able to follow instruction, able to improve. But in the end, the opportunity offered by a healing apprenticeship, with the wages he might earn once he gained his journeymanship, convinced mothers to accept Tereos's terms. Nils had agreed, because healing held every promise that courting Trenon didn't.
Nilos whispers, "What if I was wrong?"
Larik grips his hands in both of hers. "You're a man now. You //will// be a healer."
She ought to have denounced his songs as slanted and false. When she grew ill that winter, she should have asked to see his master, never him. For Larik to call him Nilis //and// healer, as if he could be both the sky and the mountain--he wants that more than breath.
"Have I ever told Tereos, or anyone?" Larik asks. "Have I ever turned you away, or your songs?"
"No. No," he says. He feels like a child again, placeless, displaced, and yet euphoric.
Larik eases deeper on the pallet. "I believe in your vigil song, Nilos. (if: $healthier is true)[I feel stronger.](else:)[I know it's the only thing that can help, now.]"
Nilos swallows, suddenly chilled. "What?"
(if: $healthier is true)["I can feel your strength in the vigil. I know you can channel it." She gifts him with the feminine //you//. Her smile softens in growing peace.
"But the tea--"
Larik murmurs denial. "It's all right. I'm not upset."](else:)[Larik strays into a fever dream, her voice fading to a murmur. "I didn't want it to hurt at the end. I don't want to be weak. I can feel your breath. You've given me that, the vigil...channelled so much strength for me." She uses the feminine you, even in her wandering.
"You could still take the tea--"
Larik shakes her head. Her eyelids droop. "I only want the real song, tonight."]
Nilos fights down a wave of desperation. He wants to argue, but how can he insist that (if: $healthier is true)[the strength she feels comes from his brew,](else:)[his brew could give her more strength than the vigil ever could,] when he doesn't even know that himself? She offered him place. Permission to be both woman and healer. But his heart closes on that distinction: she allows it, accepts one despite the other. She forgives him himself.
"It's so easy for you," Nilos whispers, to Larik, to the fevered air. Trenon's parents wouldn't have looked kindly on a carpenter's daughter. For Larik, from the richest holding in Asaresta, Trenon's parents would look past place itself. Trenon and Larik were betrothed before the first snows packed the passes.
Nilos didn't intend to snub Trenon by choosing to become a man, but to staunch his own wounds. He couldn't want what he couldn't have. Better to be a healer than a woman whose lover chose another. "You took what you wanted at your coming of age. Without meaning to. Without wanting to, or trying."
Larik shakes her head. Chills raise gooseflesh on her arms and she huddles deeper under her quilts and blankets. "I never wanted Trenon," she says. "I promise you."
Nilos laughs, helpless. Trenon didn't want Larik either, but they both sang the contract, in the end. "I know."
(if: $healthier is true)[Larik opens her eyes slowly, sleep heavy in their corners.](else:)[Larik's eyes fly open suddenly, a brief clear window.] "What will you do, when I'm gone?"
Nilos can't help the bitterness that edges his voice when he answers: "What will I do if you stay?"
"If I married Trenon..." Larik smiles. "I would have you, too. Our second husband. His love spouse."
She's hinted before, with a look, with a soft touch, but this time she said the words. Nilos can't hold back the jerking shake of his head. "When your marriage opens. In a year."
"We'd wait, for you," Larik whispers. "Our own family, the three of us..."
Nilos squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn't care about the wait, or about taking on the lesser place of a second husband. No one will bat an eye at Trenon taking Nilos for his husband within an established marriage. It may comfort Larik to hear Nilos accept her proposal. He should simply say the words. But Nilos doesn't play a woman's part for Trenon's sake; they fell in love before either of them came of age, before place mattered. Larik's solution relegates Nilos to the role of husband, where he can only ache to call himself a wife. He tries to laugh, hurting all through his chest. "You'd marry Trenon, for me. And then you'd marry me, for him! When do you get--anything?"
Larik's lips twist wryly. "You love him," she says. "You don't need to hide, not with us." She reaches out, and tugs at the knot that holds his tunic left-belted.
Nilos catches her hand before she can loosen it, but already he feels naked in front of her. "Don't." His hands absently twists the fabric of his tunic the other way across his chest. Larik has caught him, often. Mornings, after his brothers leave the homeside for the fields--he stands alone in his sleeping room and holds his tunic rightwards, breathing in and tasting air like ice shards in his lungs.
Larik works to swallow. "I want you to be all right."
"I'm fine." But his voice breaks when he speaks.
Larik brings his fingertips to her lips. "Do something. For yourself. Whether Trenon agrees or not."
Nilos clasps her hand tight, and feels his smile soften. "He wants me to tell everyone. Throw it in their faces--two men in a first marriage."
Laughing lightly, Larik shakes her head. "Don't do it for him. For //you//." The feminine again. She's talking to the woman he might have been. "Promise me."
(link: "ϒ Nilos dips his head, his lips parting around the words //I will//.")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)[(goto: "lingers")] ]
(link: "ϒ He swallows sand; the promise dies in his throat.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)[(goto: "lingers")] ]{ (if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "No one will bat an eye at Trenon taking Nilos for his husband within an established marriage.")[ No one will bat an eye at Trenon taking Nilos for his husband within an established marriage. A threeyear in the future, who will remember or care about a child's love? A second husband won't seem like an indulgence if the marriage proves barren.]
(click-replace: "An unmarried man can't court another.")[An unmarried man can't court another. An established marriage can seek out love spouses, but they do it in concert. A husband can't overrule his wife's desires to bring his lover into his marriage.]
]}{<style>
tw-sidebar {
display: none !important;
footer {
display: none !important;
header {
display: none !important;
</style>
(set: $counter to 25)
(live: 1s)[
(set: $counter to it - 1)
(if: $counter is 0)[(goto: "vigil")]
(replace: ?amount)[$counter]
]
$il[L]arik sleeps quickly, after that.}
===><=
<div class="fade-in one">Drifts.</div>
=><==
<div class="fade-in two">Nilos centers himself to resume the vigil, pushing aside the coil of guilt at straining (if: $healthier is true)[Larik's momentary burst of strength](else:)[what strength Larik had left].</div>
==>
<div class="fade-in three">He sings in a grey doze. Larik's ghost dances in the fog ahead.</div>
=><=
<div class="fade-in four">A spire of smoke rises<br>from the mosswick candle.</div>$il[N]ilos lowers his eyes from his master's steady gaze. He'll have other chances to guide a family's grieving. He can't do it this once, not when they'll drop Larik's ghost shell from the ravens' cliff. Tereos sighs, and makes his creaking way down the ladder.
Nilos opens his satchel to bring out the long linen wrappings. Most of Larik's family left the loft to prepare for her giving. Nilos tries to swallow his shame at not offering the comfort they need.
Shayin, despite silent tears, moves to strip the bedclothes from Larik's pallet. Kell watches Nilos with a stern, miserable expression as he unrolls the wrappings. Really, a child shouldn't be involved in a giving. But Shayin doesn't send Kell away, so Nilos won't claim the place. Kell's nearly fifteen, thin wrists protruding from shirtcuffs.
Gathering himself, Nilos reaches for the opening notes of the cleansing song. After all, Kell and Shayin need a healer too. They can help wash Larik's shell, each stroke freeing any remnants of her ghost from the moult left behind. Nilos's throat feels raw from the night's vigil, but he holds his note, and nods to Shayin to bring the cloths and the horsetail fern wash.
They've barely begun when voices rise from the deepstone's family room, directly below the loft. Nilos stiffens when he hears Trenon's among them, answering a courtesy with terse place. He tries to close his mind to Trenon's presence, to the guilty desire to see him instead of lingering in the loft.
When Trenon's parents went looking for a worthy wife for him, they didn't look much further than Larik's family's expanding sheep pastures and cloth-filled undercrofts. Her parents, for their part, all but upended their silver coffers at the thought of claiming Trenon's name and his place. Trenon and Larik sang the betrothal contract late last summer, before Larik's illness.
With Larik's death, the contract can't be fulfilled. Trenon's father probably battered down the deepstone door the moment he heard the vigil song falter, to complain about his son's lost prospects. He'll demand a price in silver for the broken contract. Nilos can't bear to comfort Larik's family if it means watching them ply Trenon with guesting rights. They once relished treating him like a marriage-son in all but name. Today they'll eye him avidly, the trout that broke the lure.
Trenon is free. Nilos struggles to keep his voice steady, his hands gentle on their tasks Larik's empty shell lies in front of him, not washed yet or given, and he wants to spend himself on fantasies. Trenon's betrothal hardly opened the chasm between them. Nilos can't marry Trenon without the insulation of an established marriage. That was true before his betrothal and it's true now. Two men, living on their deepstone's homeside together, would be like brothers. Unless one of them made a pretense of living on the hearthside, a false wife like the brew Nilos gave Larik was false. A marriage built on bones.
What if they make Kell marry Trenon instead?
Nilos's stomach sinks. He attended the betrothal rite last summer. He listened to every word of Trenon's betrothal contract, as though it was a giving song. The contract didn't name Larik--only the daughter of iryu. But with Larik's death, her parents could slap down Kell in her place, spring plaster over a winter draught. Kell comes of age in the spring, and already adult in body. If Larik's parents choose a daughter by fiat, then the contract won't break after all. Kell will simply step into Larik's place, shoved into the life Nilos can't even venture to covet.
Kell asks him a question about the wrapping. Nilos forces himself to unclench his jaw and answer. Kell's grey eyes remind him of Larik's, shaded dark with anger. A child, perhaps, but old enough to overhear and understand. Larik didn't want Trenon; she didn't want to hurt Nilos. Her family struck the bargain. They have no reason not to do the same to their youngest child, as soon as Kell is old enough to sing a contract.
If Nilos feels this unmoored, how badly must Kell be taking Larik's death?
Be a healer. Be with Larik, at the last.
(link-goto: "ϒ Nilos shows Kell how to hold her, how to cleanse her cooling flesh.","wrapping")
[[ϒ Tenderly, Nilos wraps her shell for the giving. But all he can think about is Trenon.->comfort]]
[[ϒ He doesn't know if he can face him, when he may lose him all over again.->breathing]]
(link-goto: "ϒ Did Trenon understand the implications when he sang the betrothal contract?","wrangle") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Kell's nearly fifteen, thin wrists protruding from shirtcuffs.")[All children are placeless, but Kell's old enough to deserve consideration. Before Larik grew too ill to weave, the last piece she worked on was a coming of age robe for her sibling. Kell must be as old as Nilos was when he was agonizing over Tereos's offer of apprenticeship. He hopes the child has it easier.]
]}$il[M]aster Tereos refuses to voice disappointment; instead, with impartial courtesy, he accepts Nilos's choices. Under that goad Nilos bows his head and leaves Larik's shell behind to tend her family's grieving. (if: (history:)'s last is "vigil")[He takes the ladder first and waits at the bottom to help Tereos off the last rung, then follows him into the deepstone's family room.](else:)[He takes the ladder slowly, then slips into the deepstone's family room.]
Tereos taught him the songs that ease sorrow with the same deliberate concern he pours into bonesetting or spot fever washes. Nilos knows the harmonies, and has practiced the lifepoint touch on himself and Tereos. But he flinches at offering comfort as a song, exchanged for silver. Tereos's consolation rings true; it comes from the very breath of him. Nilos struggles to match him. He can offer the songs, the touches, but he simply can't feel solace, not for everyone.
Like Maron, weathered as sandstone. Even preparing for his daughter's giving, he stands with a self-important edge. Like his deepstone, he looms large, proud and deftly opulent. This family room! It takes up the whole breadth of the deepstone, every inch of the floor tiled in tessellated stone. Not one chimney, but two, joined together above head-height. They epitomize the joining of hearthside and homeside into a complete deepstone, but at the same time, that much mortar, that many fieldstones raised with pulleys and levers! Every hosting in Maron's family room becomes a jongleur's performance.
Trenon, too. He sprawls long-legged in a chair beside his father, Ralon. Ralon's embroidered dress robes equal Maron's hardwood fires for extravagance. Ralon keeps his brown hands folded in his lap and his grey head bent, but triumph radiates from him nevertheless. Nilos's eyes flick over Trenon and then return, iron to hematite. He hasn't seen Trenon since before the rains started. Trenon's patched travel clothes, heavy leather trousers and a quilted left-belted tunic, match the weather if not the occasion. He must have arrived back in Asaresta after his journeyman's circuit of the nearby villages, seeking work. He looks worn down. Nilos's heart flutters, and he hates the blush that heats his face. But he can't pretend Trenon or his father have any use for a healer's grief songs. With their untouched mugs of liquored tev on the small table in front of them, they look like place-grasping guests, not mourners.
Tereos takes a handful of pine needles from his satchel to throw on the hearths. Most of Larik's family have gathered, except those few needed elsewhere--her first mother, arranging the giving; Shayin and Kell in the loft, tending to Larik's shell. Varin, Larik's oldest sister, steps forward, and Tereos grips her shoulder. Nilos takes his cue and echoes the pose with Varin's husband Hiron. The shoulder muscle overlays a deep lifepoint. Nilos seeks the correct placement of thumb and fingers to open the flow of breath. Tereos can release feelings so gently that Varin shudders and sighs. Nilos's touch isn't so practiced, and Hiron, due to bear a child within the season, breaks down sobbing. Nilos tries to hide his wince, and moves on to the next person. After listening to the vigil song the night through, most of Larik's family have emptied themselves of whatever breath they could spare. Nilos concentrates on opening the lifepoint in a seep, not a flood, picturing the careful tilt of cantilevered irrigation pipes over a stepped field. The task grows easier when Tereos begins to sing: his deep voice rumbles indistinctly, but the words matter less than their slow heartbeat.
When Tereos moves to Maron, the last to receive the touch, Nilos steps back. Trenon glances at him, and then looks down into his lap, his fingers curling tighter. They can't speak, can't touch. Trenon is a guest and Nilos a contracted healer. But Nilos can watch the long, clean line of his jaw, the softness of curls escaping his braid at temple and nape.
Ralon stands up, watching Tereos expectantly. Ralon's not a member of the holding and shouldn't expect the healer's touch. Ralon won't let silver slip from his fists for a healer's song that he doesn't need, but apparently he thinks his place entitles him to claim his share of Tereos's song. Trenon, not nearly as shameless as his father, stays in his deep chair, brooding over his tev.
If Tereos showed the least sign of complying with Ralon's effrontery, Nilos would leap at the chance to match him at Trenon's side. His palm itches to find Trenon's shoulder, to feel his strength there, to take in breath instead of expending it. That grip that sustains.
But Tereos ignores Ralon's ploy, and Ralon pretends he meant nothing by it than to leave a mourning family in peace.
(link: "ϒ Nilos needs to maintain his place as Tereos's apprentice. No matter what he's done, brewing false songs, Tereos is still his master.")[(set: $comfort to true)[(goto: "herbary")] ]
(link: "ϒ He can't have Trenon. He needs to remember that.")[(set: $comfort to true)[(goto: "breathing")] ]
(link: "ϒ At least, not here--only in the hidden spaces left behind by Larik's death.")[(set: $comfort to true)[(goto: "uphill")] ]{
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "exchanged for silver")[exchanged for silver. Trenon thinks families pay better when Tereos fosters that drained ease that follows mourning. Nilos hates that the same doubt niggles at him. He wants to offer the song sincerely, but he first has to bury a slinking embarrassment.]
]}$il[N]ilos climbs down the loft ladder feeling older than the mountain. Larik's family won't want him lingering on the hearthside. Master Tereos will offer songs for grieving, and accept his fee in silver, in the family room. To be honoured after a death--the healer's due--makes Nilos's stomach turn. Even if Trenon has joined Larik's holding in the family room, Nilos can't speak to him. Trenon accepted a guest's rights, but as an apprentice Nilos barely rates place.
Easier to slip away. Outside, Nilos lifts his face to the fog-blown sky. The rising sun breaks through the patchy rain clouds, chasing them north. The world feels brighter and yet more distant after a night's vigil, as though his grasp can't match his reach. The air tastes soft and chill. Nilos pushes out the scent of fever-sweat and night-buckets, of tallow candles and the pine needle smoke of the vigil song. He raises his arms above his head and stretches until his back cracks.
Behind closed eyes, he sees Larik's hands, blithe and powerful at her loom. Tereos's hands, blunt and thick, soft in giving the songs. Nilos's hands, tending the lifepoints of the body, as farmer's hands work the soil.
He dreams of hands he never had.
Nilos aches. Sleep gathers behind his eyes. He scrubs at his face, trying to tamp down the sucking blur. Too many nights awake. Yet he'd feel guilty going home to rest.
(link: "ϒ He ought to return to the herbary with Tereos, in a bid to pretend today can be a normal day.")[(set: $responsibility to it + 1)[(goto: "herbary")] ]
(link: "ϒ But a trail climbs west above iryu deepstone, the same he used to hike with Larik in better days. Trenon met him there before, and might seek him there today.")[set: $selfish to it + 1)[(goto: "uphill")] ] {
(If: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "He dreams of hands he never had.")[Three sisters before him joined their mothers, building deepstones and cutting timber. They freed fieldstones, mixed mortar, planned extensions for growing families. Always with a flashing laugh, a quick joke sister-shared. Their hands toughen early, until by twenty his sisters' knuckles grow brown and pitchy as the pine trees they fell. Nilos would fade and falter at their work, but the twist of envy he allows himself when he watches them is the same he pushed away when Larik tried to find him a place in her marriage with Trenon. Trenon would say Larik offered out of pity. Pity that missed its mark, an arrow that wounded instead of killing cleanly. Larik thought it would be so easy for Nilos to wait a year and take the second husbandry. She couldn't imagine that what he wanted was her place, as first wife.]
]}$il[N]ilos submerges in the vigil's rhythm. Larik is ready; he feels that now. Grey dawnlight slinks around the edges of the window shutters. The chant's eddies catch Larik's family like driftwood on a bank. One by one, they climb up the loft ladder and kneel by Larik's pallet. They press her hands, her shoulders, touch her cheeks or her hair. Even Larik's sibling Kell, too young to offer breath through the song, sneaks in and clasps Larik's hands, before the end. The poor child looks as exhausted as the adults, eyes smudged dark in a narrow face that retains little trace of childhood's roundness.
Tereos arrives not long after sunrise. He hitches slowly up the ladder, his bad knees clicking in the spring damp. Larik's family makes room for him as he crosses the loft. One of her sisters takes Tereos's rain-beaded oilskin cloak. He settles his satchel, ochre-yellow and faded to dun at the seams and strap, near the pallet. Taking Larik's wrist lifepoint between two firm fingers, Tereos waits for a long count.
At last, he sits back on his heels, and tilts his head up, as though he can see through the rafters and thatch. "I grieve with iryu," he says. He taps Nilos's knee and signs for him to bring the vigil song to a close.
Nilos closes his eyes and moves into the vigil's conclusion. The final note withers in his hoarse voice. The clink of pottery from the hearthroom below sounds louder in the absence of the song. He can hear the rustle and slither of mice and garter snakes in the thatch, roused by the fading rain. He can't follow Larik any further, nor urge her back.
Tereos pulls him away from Larik's pallet while her family says their first farewells.
"She was better in the night," Nilos murmurs. He clears his throat, surprised to hear his voice grating like a gravel streambed.
Tereos nods. "The vigil song could draw more strength at night. If she roused, you sang it well."
Asleep, their ghosts loosened from their shells by dreams, the family's breath was open to Nilos. (if: $healthier is true)[Larik's rally might have been no more than that. No--she breathed easier after drinking his brew. The vigil may have been enough to wake her, but the rest was his work. Or his error.](else:)[Larik's rally might have been no more than that. If she had taken his brew, Nilos might have discovered what his ideas were worth. Instead, he threw away his last chance to save her, along with the tea.]
"She is your friend," Tereos says. "And so you were the best to lead the vigil and ease her passing. A healer must learn when the ghost is ready, as Larik's was."
Nilos presses his lips together. "Master, I..." Tereos trusted him to learn a healer's lesson, and he spent himself in denial and rebellion instead. "I'm not ready."
"I know." Tereos lays a hand on the back of Nilos's neck: a gentle, heavy touch, warm against his nape. His thumb easily finds the lifepoint. Nilos takes in a breath and it slips out of him, shaky. Tereos is returning in small measure the strength Nilos pushed into Larik during the night. "But it's more difficult than that," Tereos says, "because the healer must help the family to recognize, too, when it's time."
Nilos can't comfort Larik's family by the simple expedient of veiling his failure in the proper time. "Let me lead the wrapping instead," he says.
Tereos frowns, brows heavy over his wide nose. His glance falls on Larik's young sibling, weeping at Larik's side. "You think too much in terms of this one and that one," he says. "Our duty is to the family, the whole."
(link: "ϒ As a healer, Nilos's mourning holds no place. He should push himself, learn what Tereos is trying to teach him.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)[(goto: "comfort")] ]
(link: "ϒ But he covets the last moment he'll have with Larik. Besides, after last night, he shouldn't be so quick to count himself a healer.")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)[(goto: "empty shell")] ] {
(If: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Nilos takes in a breath and it slips out of him, shaky.")[Nilos takes in a breath and it slips out of him, shaky. The insistence of sleep falls away. In its place, he feels a push towards clarity and calm, and a faded acceptance.]
]}$il[T]renon's fists curl when Kelil presumes to tell him what he's feeling. "Not the real reason," he repeats flatly.
Kelil sits in the chair to tug her boots back on. Once she knots her laces, she leans back in the chair, and watches him with hooded eyes. "You'd be placeless in the city?" she asks.
Traders love to lay such traps. Circle the truth from three directions before twitching the lure. "That's what I said."
Kelil shrugs and looks away, a cat's indifference. "Then you're using Nilos as an excuse not to go."
She has no idea what passed between Nilos and him; what he gave up for Nilos's sake. Trenon wants to plough through all of iryu's self-satisfied guests and go home, except this is his home. His parents' deepstone is out of reach, and with it the narrow bounds of his privacy.
Kelil's curled smirk tests the last of his patience. "Up here you have a name. Down there you're nothing. You're just like Berin, clinging to your place--"
The brazen irony of a trumped-up iryu trader claiming that //Trenon// is some desperate place-grubber is so blatant that his tension breaks in a scoff. "Unlike your holding, I don't play place games."
"And yet you're an advocat, instead of the farmer your holding needs." Kelil swings her legs over the arm of the chair, lounging, enjoying his fury. "Why did you agree to this betrothal at all? You didn't love Larik, let alone me. To shore up your parents' holding--"
A trader never misses a chance to mock poverty. (if: (history:) contains "suit")[She brought Berin gems in a mouldering sack and called it a courting gift. Everything his mother needs, dressed in oblique mockery. ]It suits her gloating to have Trenon admit it. "For silver," he grates.
For the first time a hint of anger shows on Kelil's features, a tightness around her mouth an eyes. "Place and silver but not Nilos--"
Trenon agreed to the betrothal to shelter Nilos. Berin arranged the rest, the price paid and the name bought by it. Kelil loved her sister well enough, but she doesn't know Larik's part in crafting the wedding vows, the concessions //she// demanded with no regard for Nilos. Kelil's concern rings as false. She wants to use his love against him, using it to bait her snares.
"You claim to love the truth, but you won't admit that Asaresta is not the problem. Nilos isn't the problem. Even place isn't the problem!" Kelil throws her legs down and pushes off the chair, then stretches extravagantly. Her voice cools as she says, "You won't go because it might be better there after all. You wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you were actually content--if you couldn't be righteous."
Trenon doesn't believe her loose stretch for a moment. He studies Kelil's feigned ease, the vibrating intensity of her anger. Did he injure her pride by refusing her touch? No, or she'd place her prods differently, accuse him of invertism to defend her desireability. Instead she lashes out at his place as an advocat, calling him coward because he won't plunge downmountain like a river in spate. "Worried you won't be such a big fish once you reach the ocean?" he asks.
Kelil stops her sham-casual pacing and glares at him.
"Your holding paid well to get a pet advocat," Trenon muses, returning her needling measure for measure. He'll offer honesty the day she proves herself ready to listen. "I'll be crafting your apprenticeship song--to Master Zayelik, isn't it? Maybe I should include myself in your vows, and go with you to hold your hand, in case you can't handle yourself." Though the words come out sharply, Trenon frowns to himself. He has no hope of convincing Nilos to join him, so a facetious offer to accompany Kelil to the city edges uncomfortably close to confirming her accusations about his motivations.
Kelil crosses her arms, closing herself off. "And have you ruin my apprenticeship? Cower upmountain all you like. You won't be any problem of mine."
[[ϒ She stalks out of the pleasure room, far too soon for anyone to believe they've fulfilled their duty.->restitution]]
[[ϒ But first marriages are as much about plausible deniability as fertility, and Trenon has no desire to call her back.->ragged]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "with no regard for Nilos.")[with no regard for Nilos. Did Larik want an independent holding so that Nilos could skulk in their shared deepstone playing second wife? Or did she want it so that //Larik's// name would be foremost among mountain weavers?]
(Click-replace: "to Master Zayelik, isn't it?")[to Master Zayelik, isn't it? Who needs //you//, a mountain apprentice, purely for your overwhelming skill and talent, not because she has designs on a mountain claim.]
]}$il[T]he moment Kelil asks Trenon to travel with her, she wonders why she ever let the words leave her mouth. She accepted this marriage for Larik's sake, not for Trenon's benefit. In a nineday she'll be on the road with Zayelik. She won't need to think about Trenon for a season. Let Amoz and the others corral him on the homeside.
The invitation hangs between them. Trenon peers at her with a curious, testing air. "You don't want me to go."
No mark should see through a trader so easily. Kelil shrugs and reaches for her tunic. Knowing Trenon, the best way to get him off the hook is to grab him by the gills and knock his head with a rock. "What good are you to the holding at midsummer?" she asks, pulling on her trousers. "All our labourers have their contract songs. Besides, you must have grubbed for every rite on the mountain this spring, to feed your parents once you left."
Trenon's eyes narrow. He can stand disconcertingly still when he chooses. The longer he keeps his mouth shut, the more he proves how ridiculous Kelil's challenge was, and the more she can't help goading him.
"Besides, I don't suppose you're eager to scratch for fees that will fill iryu's coffers," she says. "Mothers and fathers forced the marriage to get an advocat to sing their field-hand contracts." That truth escapes a little too viciously, and Kelil realizes she's frowning. The marriage was an uncertain bargain. Fathers and mothers demanded place from Trenon's holding during its decline, and an advocat's wages after a summer wedding. Well, once she takes over as iryu's trader, she'll make up for such lapses.
"Maybe I'm loyal to my master," Trenon says.
Kelil laughs, more in relief than humour. "And maybe I'm loyal to a badger." If anyone would break vows for his own good, it would be Trenon.
Trenon crosses his arms and leans back against the wall. Kelil doesn't trust the glint in his eye but he hasn't called her bluff yet. "You don't like me."
"No, I don't like you!" Kelil prods his chest with one finger. "You think you're better than me--than all Asaresta! You think you deserve better than the vows you craft. You admit the city's different, but you haven't tried to go there." It feels good, calling Trenon a coward. Fathers and mothers used her. Sold her. Tried to buy her with the promise of an apprenticeship that should have been hers anyway. Kelil's tired of blaming them--tired of mourning Larik because she lost her freedom, rather than mourning losing the sister she loved. Let Trenon hear the truth, for once. Let him slink out of the pleasure room, let him wonder what everyone thinks of him. The contract marriage binds them and they owe the holding an attempt at pleasure, but only Kelil tried. She offered. Trenon turned her away, because his feelings matter more than the vows he sang.
Trenon sets his jaw, lower lip full enough to be called a pout. "Did you need to drag me along as an audience?" he asks. "Because the city will notice you about as much as a gnat."
"I'm not like you. I'm not ashamed of Asaresta."
"Just an upmountain rustic," Trenon simpers, ignoring her. "Needing someone from home to notice her. To be impressed."
"If that was the case I'd never take //you//."
"Then you shouldn't have asked." Trenon moves to the rope-net bed, falling back onto the eider tick, for all the world like he plans to occupy the pleasure room for the rest of the day, leaving Kelil to face their marriage guests alone. (if: $decoy is false)[(set: $decoy to true)["You think Zayelik wants //you//, Kelil of iryu holding? She wants an upmountain apprentice so that she can ease into the village markets. You're a decoy."
He gives her a stare, eyebrows raised, while Kelil stands frozen at the foot of the bed. "Oh, my courtesy, didn't you realize?" he says.] ] "Don't worry. I'll give you an excellent apprentice song. At no cost to iryu, as they've bought me already."
[[ϒ After hearing Trenon's surprisingly generous marriage vows, Kelil takes him at his word. Given the chance to craft Kelil's apprenticeship song, Trenon will give iryu holding all the benefit of his wit.->restitution]]
[[ϒ Trenon takes bluffs like a buffalo: he charges straight ahead.->ragged]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "that will fill iryu's coffers")[that you share with the holding]
]}$il[K]elil leaves the pleasure room feeling hot through, rumpled and flushed. With her hair slipping out of its plaits and her open-throated tunic, she must look the exact picture of an embarrassed newlywed.(if: $decoy is true)[Fury masks the fact that she and Trenon never touched.] She steels herself against the guests' laughter, their nudges--the lovely lie that she never tasted pleasure before today, that pleasure softens a contract marriage. As long as fathers and mothers don't suspect Trenon rejected her, Kelil can avoid repeating such an embarrassing display. She doesn't love Trenon and she never flings herself into pleasure with each new friend. Yet to her shame, (if: (history:)'s last is "ghostless")[when he turned her down ]his arrow struck deeper than perhaps he meant to aim.
"It's been a good year," Maron says as Kelil emerges from the deepstone. "We'll set up a market stall for a few ninedays, to sell the excess wool--or perhaps contract felters--" He smiles when he sees her and waves her over to join him on the wicker seat under the eaves. Varin sets a full tankard of barley beer beside her, resenting Kelil all the while for usurping Larik's place when it ought to have fallen to Varin. Maron hugs Kelil briefly, tugging her against the curve of his comfortable round barrel. "The woman of the moment. You'll sell our wool in the city, won't you?"
Kelil wishes she were anywhere else. (if: $decoy is true)[Zayelik wants a mountain apprentice as her dupe. Kelil should have guessed. Zayelik wanted a city apprentice and her patrons overruled her. ](if: (history:)'s last is "ghostless")[She'd rather tend her bruised ego than take on a double share of the hosting, while Trenon lies abed. ]The correct answer to Maron's question is a resounding //None better//! Instead she musters a waspish, "I'd get the best price for it." She meant to sound hearty but the comment digs at Varin and Shayin. Well, Varin can't expect place to drop from the sky; Kelil is willing to wrestle for her share.
Amoz sits forward to smooth over the gaffe. "Zayelik arrives within the threeday. We'll be losing Kelil too soon." He claps a hand onto Kelil's knee, comfort shading into restraint.
"Perhaps she should stay the season," Grenor says, slow and rumbling in thought. "A marriage's first year..."
If Kelil has to listen to one more person go on about how a closed marriage cements the respect between first spouses, she'll crack like a summer ice-dam. Grenor speaks about first spouses as though he's not a second husband himself! A year won't change Trenon, and Kelil won't change for him. If she doesn't leave Asaresta this spring, the time will never come. "I'll learn more if I'm travelling," she says, forcing herself to sound dutiful. "Why pay for fodder for a mule string that's not earning profit?"
Maron grunts emphatically at that. "I've more than a few bales to send to the city," he reminds Grenor. "We need someone to get a direct price, none of this paying carters and go-betweens."
Grenor nods, frowning. "After all, Trenon's an experienced traveller."
Amoz squeezes Kelil's knee, warning her not to blurt questions. "We thought he might go with you on this trip," he says carefully. "You'd have a chance to get to know him. Advocats don't have much work in summer; you'd be back before he's needed to sing any harvesting contracts."
In other words, fathers don't want Trenon hanging around on the homeside.
"If Zayelik won't demand silver to feed him," Maron puts in. "And if you'd have him," he adds, trying to assess Kelil's reaction.
Kelil stares at fathers, a molten knot in her throat. Rough concern surrounds her, uneasy and aimless, like a flock without a bellwether. At last, too late, they feel bad for rushing her into marriage. They want to fix it, and they think that sticking her with Trenon will be a solution.
Wearily, Kelil takes a deep pull on her beer. Trading should be her reward for doing what her holding asked and needed of her. Not a further punishment. She can't say no directly, but she is the holding's best trader.
[[ϒ Spending a single candlemark with Trenon in the pleasure room won't reconcile them.->ragged]]
[[ϒ "Trenon has no reason to go to the city," she says. "Iryu gains silver if he keeps on with his work here."->unexpected]]$il[L]ong after Kelil leaves the pleasure room, Trenon sits on her abandoned chair and leans his elbows on his knees. When he invited Nilos downmountain, they both new it meant going alone and unsanctioned, without a guide. If Nilos broke his apprenticeship contract, he'd depend utterly on Trenon to provide for him. For his part, Trenon suspects he won't find much work in the city unless he sings a patronage contract to a more powerful holding. He'd lose any semblance of autonomy.
He meant his offer to Kelil as a taunt. She doesn't want him tagging along on her first trading journey. But as member of Zayelik's outfit, Trenon could scout the city without gambling his independence. He'd have a chance, too, to discover Zayelik's true intentions. The songs suggest that city holdings guard their monopolies. Did Zayelik run afoul of her patrons, or her contracted obligations? Trenon won't know if he doesn't travel there.
And if he doesn't travel downmountain, he'll be caught in iryu holding like a crayfish in a trap.
The guests will find it placeless that he and Kelil didn't leave the pleasure room together. Trenon can't bring himself to care. The empty pleasure room provides the last privacy he can claim for the foreseeable future. He doesn't want anyone's birch sugar congratulations, sweet at first before fading to dark smoke. With his marriage, Trenon drew on respectability like an enveloping cloak. The invert transformed. They tamed him; and it tastes bitter as alum on his tongue.
Hunger spurs him outside eventually. A long yellow sunset peers beneath the low clouds. The wedding banners snap wetly in a thin, cold rain. Trenon scoops a slice of roast mutton between slices of hearthbread. He eats on the lea of the deepstone while the goats stare sideways at him from their pen. The rain passes as the stiff downmountain breeze breaks the clouds on the north peaks. Trenon glances around the side of the deepstone to the dooryard. If he wants to make any impression at all, he should pitch in with the cleanup. Place depends on more than birth and arrogance. No need to make his life in iryu holding worse than it has to be.
He ends up carrying trestle tables back to the undercroft with Amoz. Kelil's youngest father isn't much older than Trenon himself. Amoz looks him over sharply before wordlessly agreeing to do the chore as Trenon prefers: in silence. When they finish, Amoz leads him into the homeside, and shrugs towards a corner pallet in the men's sleeping room--one right next to the baby bassinet.
A true test of Trenon's commitment. Larik's older sister, Varin, married Hiron straight out of the shepherds' byres. More proof, if any was needed, that iryu holding makes marriages that reduce their silver outlay. Whether or not he loved Varin when the betrothal was arranged, they successfully proved fertility. Hiron's baby was born two ninedays ago, not long after Larik's death. The baby gives them both place to boast of.
The baby's querellous wails reach the sleeping room before Hiron does. He moves stiffly, like one of his sheep kicked him in the stomach. Hiron maneuvers down onto his pallet, cradling the baby's head close. Trenon never knew how penetrating a baby's cries could be. Most children grow accustomed to their siblings' needs. Boys in larger holdings help raise their younger siblings. But Trenon was a baby himself when his siblings died of the spot fever. He never had to learn. Hiron gives him a puffy-eyed smile, which Trenon returns with more wince than sympathy.
"Here." Grenor unfolds to his feet like a bull elk, and reaches for the baby. "The poor ono's hungry. I'll fetch some goats' milk." He rocks the child to a temporary silence, before fresh cries break out. But by then Grenor has the baby's sling tugged left across his wide shoulders. He disappears out the sleeping room door, taking the rising shrieks with him. Hiron stares after him, bereft and relieved in equal measure.
Amoz enters next, carrying a steaming kettle and a wash basin. He frowns at Trenon, a reminder not to interfere with any sleep Hiron manages to snatch from the baby's insistent needs. He sets the basin in front of Hiron and pours hot water over a handful of dried woodsage. At his urging, Hiron dips a chamois cloth into the steaming water and begins a slow, thorough wash.
"You'll need another change of rags," Amoz says. "I'll get you new wool. The bleeding's like to go on for another four or five ninedays."
Trenon wants to stuff waxed linen in his ears and get a good night's sleep, but he won't find a better way to poison his life in a new holding than by ignoring the only baby the men have to dote over. Trenon digs into the small pack he brought from his parents' holding. "Here," he says, pulling out his stained, but well-washed, rags and wool. "Softer than new."
"You won't be needing them?" Amoz asks, with a flat look at Trenon's unexpected kindness.
Trenon slants him a peeved glance. An afternoon's dalliance in the pleasure room, if proves fruitful, won't tell by evening. Not that Kelil will thank him for delaying suspicion. "Not for a few ninedays," he lies evenly.
[[ϒ In fact, he hasn't needed his rags since Larik's giving, six ninedays since.->begetter]]
[[ϒ When the sleeping room quiets, Trenon slides a hand down his stomach, flat and soft below his navel.->unexpected]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "he'd depend utterly on Trenon to provide for him.")[he'd depend utterly on Trenon to provide for him. An apprentice can't sell his services independently, and a song-broken apprentice wouldn't soon find a new master.]
(Click-replace: "reduce their silver outlay.")[reduce their silver outlay. Hiron was a contract labourer, herding sheep for pay; now he claims his food, his clothes, and his pallet, and accepts place where he once earned wages.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "restitution")[ $il[A]t Peris's request, Kelil buys space at a stall in the middle tier of Asaresta market. The spring fulfilled its hot, clear promise, and brothers baled more wool than five weavers can use in a year. They store the highest quality--the chamois fleece, and the best of the sheep's wool--in the undercroft, to be turned into tapestries, rugs, garments. Most of the rest, Peris wants sold to small-holding weavers and felters. The last few bales--enough to pack two mules--Kelil will take with her to the city, her portion of the trading under Zayelik's guidance.
Zayelik's promised absence expires within the threeday. When she returns, she'll find Kelil more than ready to sing her apprenticeship. (if: $decoy is true)[With time to cool down, Kelil realizes Trenon's spite was its own decoy. Zayelik may well have a place dispute with her city patrons, but that can be said of most people at one time or another. She wants an apprentice that isn't thrust on her by her overholding, one she chooses herself. And she chose Kelil.] Trenon accepted the commission from Peris to craft the apprenticeship vow. If he resents the fact that the holding will claim his fee as their due he restricts himself to a mild sneer. Kelil finds it an ominous promise, but if she starts worrrying she won't sleep once before the rite.
The evening Kelil finishes off-loading the last of the wool, she serves dinner to the men of the homeside. She sets up the sideboard with a mutton roast and two savoury tefs, and uncorks a small cask of dandelion wine. With such a dinner to occupy them, fathers won't call for nine hundred refills before Kelil finishes her meal. Before she can escape, though, Trenon looks up from his hearth-corner chair. His expression makes a strange mix of conspiracy and constipation. Meeting her eyes, not acknowledging the others, he says, "I'd like to share the pleasure room tonight, Kelil."
Though he speaks softly, his advocat's voice carries when he wants it to. Brothers and fathers don't say anything but Kelil can feel the smug glow of people wallowing in being right. //All contract marriages need is time//.
](if: (history:)'s last is "restitution")[Kelil](else:)[ $il[K]elil] can't refuse Trenon's invitation in front of the homeside. She has no desire to humiliate herself again against the stone wall of Trenon's rejection. He doesn't want pleasure. He wants a full night's sleep away from the homeside, without Hiron's baby waking him! Not only that--the more often Trenon tries this tactic, the more believable he'll sound in a year's time when he regrets they haven't proven fertile together. Then he can ask for Nilos.
Kelil accepts with a sarcastic smile, imagining the day she can call out his selfishness. She plans to enjoy the privacy as much as he does. Other than defending herself from Trenon's picky blanket-stealing, she won't say a word that night.
She sneaks away from the hearthroom once she finishes mending a bridle, and arrives at the pleasure room door with the itchy feeling between her shoulderblades that far too many people are interested in her evening's outcome. No one would be so placeless as to listen in but they expect Kelil to dance like a jongleur, playing at pleased anticipation.
Kelil hates that it shows, but she's embarrassed despite herself, furiously embarrassed. Trenon will ignore her like he did last time. His little ploy doesn't impress her.
He arrived first, and lit the candle on the low shelf beside the bed. Night air, still warm after a sun-scorch day, drifts in at the open window. A few moths flutter around the candle. Soon enough they'll have to shutter the window and blow out the light, or they'll be slapping mosquitoes all night. For the moment, though, the slight breeze offers a relief from the heat lingering in the hearthroom.
Trenon stands in the middle of the room, arms crossed. The idle chatter of brothers and sisters, lingering over beer in the dooryard, wafts in. He forced this little tete-a-tete, so Kelil's quite sure he can't be angry at //her//. She sits in the chair and kicks off her boots, peels off trousers, an unexpected mirror of their marriage day. In this heat she'd prefer to sleep naked, but she won't prick Trenon's sensibilities, so linens it is. Unlike last time, Trenon watches her, suddenly finding her body unaccountably fascinating.
The weight of his stare makes it that much more difficult to feign blindness, as though she's alone. "What?" she snaps.
Trenon presses his lips into a thin line. So his scheme includes passing some secret message, not simply a night's sleep on a down tick.
Trenon's eyes cut away when he speaks at last. "I'm bearing," he says.
At first Kelil doesn't react, because his mutter means nothing to her, unless he created this elaborate set-up as the punchline for a childish joke. Then she realizes what he means, not that he //can// bear but that he is currently //with child//, and the implications cascade: it has been some time, longer than their threeday marriage. The only person he's been with must be Nilos. She can't help but wonder what effect Nilos's parentage will have on the poor child's place. And if Trenon chose to tell her, then he wants something: probably her cooperation in lying to the holding. Kelil can claim the baby whether they've touched each other or not. If Trenon's not far along then she supposes the lie will stick...if she cooperates.
"How many ninedays?" she asks. They may not even be fertile together. Are two trips to the pleasure room enough? Will they have to continue pretending, in order for Trenon to hide the baby's origins?
"Six," he says.
That's too long. Three ninedays they might hide--some babies are born that early. But six? She counts the ninedays, a trader totting silver, and arrives at Trenon's departure from Asaresta--the day of Larik's giving. Did Nilos strip his linens to wrap Larik's shell? "Everyone will find out," she says.
"Not if I go to the city with you."
Kelil's heart sinks. She leaves in less than a nineday--so no one would need to know that Trenon's bearing. But what then? By the time Zayelik returns upmountain for the season's last trip, Trenon will be too far along to hike far, and certainly not ride. Stay in the city, until the baby's born? Stay over winter? Once they hide the baby's birth season, no one will have reason to count the ninedays too closely.
She will have to spend all that time with Trenon. Two spouses, alone, without a holding around them. Two parents can't raise a baby, even if Kelil took on a father's duties. In a strange city, without lodging--when will they sleep? Where will they stay? Zayelik will certainly learn the truth. Traders' secrets are silver, they say. "A baby needs more than two parents!" she blurts out.
Trenon's mouth pinches at her ignorance. "I don't want to go to have the baby," he says.
Mouth agape, Kelil shakes her head. He shared pleasure with Nilos when Larik's body was barely cool of her ghost, got bearing, and now he wants to be rid of it. "Then ask Nilos for a brew--!" she starts, and then-- "Have you told Nilos?"
"No," he says shortly. "He's no part of this."
"No part except--"
"Yes, thank you, I realize," Trenon snaps. "Nilos turned me out. He avoids me. I doubt he'd meet me any longer, even if we were both free."
"Tell him," Kelil snaps. She never intended to sacrifice herself to Nilos and Trenon's love, even if that was what Larik hoped. But she also doesn't want to steal Nilos's child from him. "He deserves to know. Especially if you want a healer's brew--"
Trenon's face draws taut, false indifference over a boil of hurt. "Nilos wouldn't give me a song if he knew."
Coward! "You're lying to him for your own convenience," Kelil says, "and yet every time I turn around you claim to love him."
"He doesn't love me! He doesn't want me. And he //doesn't// want to be a father."
"By rights," Kelil says slowly, "this is iryu's child." Sooner than expected and by no act of hers. But Maron wanted the marriage in the first place in the hopes Trenon would bring them a child. He and Kelil will have fulfilled their duty, and Trenon's name will come to the holding. Maron will dote on the baby, proof of his holding's place. There's nothing he wouldn't do for Trenon--including ignore a few inconvenient ninedays. Asaresta wouldn't care. Probably. Kelil will be lucky if they're not sent to the city to hide the birth, with the full support and knowledge of all mothers and fathers. She meets Trenon's eyes. "My child. And you want to be rid of it."
Trenon's long jaw sets. "It's mine, mine to deal with."
"It's vow-breaking." Kelil grabs him by the wrist, gripping hard. If Trenon breaks his song, he could lose his place as journeyman. Dalor could refuse him advocacy, deny him songs. He'd be useless, unable to work, unable to marry--and Kelil would be trapped with him. The entire holding would. Trenon couldn't even get a dissolution. "You promised a baby to iryu."
"I promised that //our// baby, //if// we had one, would be iryu's," he says coldly.
Kelil shakes her head. Such an advocat, cleaving to the vow's breath, ignoring its ghost to suit himself. "If you want me to lie for you," she says, "to conceal this, when you know what we owe this holding, then--" She pauses, but there's no demand big enough, nothing he wouldn't owe her in exchange.
"So it's about what a baby is worth to you, silver and place, little trader?" Trenon croons the words, dark scorn accusing her of hypocrisy; of having a line duty won't carry her past.
"Don't call me that!" Kelil's voice rasps like a cougar's, stopping her shout in case their voices carry. A mosquito whines by her ear and she moves to slam the shutters, then paces around the pleasure room, hating its comforts, its privacy. The candleflame flutters, low. Trenon stands in the room's center, hunched, knotted. If he were anyone else, she'd call the shadows on his face fear. If he were anyone else, he could admit how he felt instead of trying to make insults stick on someone else. "I wanted a contract marriage, Trenon," she says. "I accepted that. But I thought that meant we would both try." She sits on the bed, feeling the dip and tilt of the rope-net mattress, under the sinking comfort of eider quilts. No matter what mothers think, Kelil will not spend the night with him. She refuses. "Give me one reason why I should lie for you, Trenon, and don't insult me by offering it in silver."
[[ϒ His breath hitches. Kelil can see him unravelling but she will not pretend to offer comfort.->apprentice]]
[[ϒ "Don't force me," he says, his voice low and steady, with an advocat's tight control.->benediction]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "If he resents the fact that the holding will claim his fee as their due he restricts himself to a mild sneer.")[If he resents the fact that the holding will claim his fee as their due--in effect, not paying him at all--he restricts himself to a mild sneer.]
(click-replace: "No one would be so placeless as to listen in but they expect Kelil to dance like a jongleur, playing at pleased anticipation.")[No one would be so placeless as to listen in--Kelil can remember some embarrassing moments of curiosity when she was younger, wondering what exactly about the pleasure room was so special and so coveted--but they expect Kelil to dance like a jongleur, playing at pleased anticipation.]
(click-replace: "The only person he's been with must be Nilos.")[The only person he's been with must be Nilos--she's never heard of a baby being borne by inverts but she supposes it must happen.]
]}$il[Z]ayelik is a trader in truth. From the moment she arrives, guiding her big gelding with her heels, she gauges the dooryard, the deepstone, and the group gathered to host her. By the time she dismounts, the watchful look has disappeared from her face. She offers genial courtesy to every member of the holding. Needing no hint, she proceeds from the least placed, Kelil spirited as a puppy, to the most--Peris and Maron, ranged before the guest door in sober robes that show off the quality of iryu's weaving. Zayelik offers her fist to Trenon, rather than giving courtesy. Trenon raises a sardonic eyebrow as he covers her fist with his hands. Zayelik flashes him a hint of a hungry smile. They understand each other.
Maron guides Zayelik to the family room, where the twin hearths have been shovelled clear of the last hint of ash, and the stones white-washed for summer. Zayelik settles in a chair, taking up twice the space that her frame suggests. Trenon slips past Maron and sits next to her. He invites Kelil with a gesture to take the chair on Zayelik's far side. The best chairs thus claimed by those most interested in the song's crafting, Trenon leaves Maron, Peris, and the others to seat themselves. Zayelik smoothes their ruffled feathers with a ridiculous story about punching a bear. She soon has the room gasping with laughter.
Traders' tales. Zayelik won't be honest, but Trenon needs nothing honest from her. He can draw out the negotiations, pretend to add any vows she demands to the song he already crafted. If Zayelik doesn't agree to his provisions, Trenon plans to insert them anyway--on the dais, during the rite, if necessary. Traders enjoy being undermined. They laugh as heartily over bargains gone wrong as over their triumphs. Zayelik may assume that Kelil asked Trenon to alter the contract. Let Kelil suffer the consequences--or reap the benefits, if Zayelik admires audacity. A trader's apprentice enjoys more leeway to show impertinence. Trenon doesn't intend to give them much choice.
Besides, it makes it easy to craft a song.
He's not stupid: he won't risk either party rejecting the song during the singing. The advocat's art balances birch sugar against sharp wintergreen. Traders, especially, must feel they wrestled their contracts from the advocat they hired. Trenon drags his heels and hedges. Kelil's hopefulness turns crestfallen as the morning passes in pointless quibbles. Zayelik leans back, giving shorter and shorter answers. Eventually, Trenon regretfully informs them they should reconvene after the midday meal. He retires to the homeside while Peris and Varin serve tev and roast vegetables in the family room.
Zayelik finds him in the guest hallway as he returns.
Trenon pauses, glad enough of the new advocat's robes Belim fitted him with. Journeyman though he is, his trade gives him place.
"You want to come to the city," Zayelik says.
Trenon lifts his chin, his pulse fluttering faster in his throat. "What do you mean?"
Zayelik laughs. "You agreed to limit Kelil to two packmules but included a second riding pony? Why send more ponies instead of more goods?"
"What makes you think that //I//--"
"And you barely fought my stipulation that I have veto over her trades."
"Otherwise she'll buy dross," Trenon says. "Any mountain apprentice would be overwhelmed with city wares." He's not surprised Zayelik pushed for veto. Most masters would. He //is// surprised she'd mention a point she's already won.
"You're cautious," Zayelik agrees, "but I think you want to assess the city markets yourself. You gave me veto so that you can make any suggestion you want and study what I reject--you couldn't rely on Kelil's report after the fact."
"I don't care about your trading, or Kelil's."
"She's your wife. Her profits determine when you can declare independence from iryu holding." Zayelik tilts her head. "You //do// have an independence clause in your marriage contract, don't you?"
Trenon nods slowly. If he'd married Larik, she was determined that they'd declare independence the moment she became a master weaver and had some means of support away from her parents. Kelil is younger and more impetuous, but she knows better than to declare independence as a whitless apprentice. Zayelik's focus on that clause, though, makes Trenon suspect that he might have read her wrong. She had an idea of making a mountain claim, of that he's certain, but maybe apprenticing Kelil offers her a different path to the same end. She's a slippery fish. Traders blaze two routes and then lead their overeager competition into swamps.
Zayelik stares at him dark-eyed as a falcon. "I remember meeting you upmountain," she says. "I believe we discussed the freedom that city marriages enjoy."
Trenon twists his mouth wryly. "I'm reformed, can't you tell?" he asks. Zayelik wouldn't remember a chance encounter a season ago unless she's been brooding over what she let slip. She suspects or knows he's an invert--she's not deaf to market gossip. Does she want to entice him to the city with child's dreams? But that supposes she wants to entice him to the city.
"Reformed? No," Zayelik says. "That's not why you want to go."
Trenon hasn't exactly sold his performance of a young husband's desire to grow closer to his contracted wife. Nor will Trenon tap Zayelik's summer-dry well of compassion if he admits he seeks a miscarriage song.
Zayelik shakes her head--he took too long to come up with an excuse. "I don't feed useless hangers-on," she says. Her flat appraisal takes him in, from braid to boots. She might be the first person to truly see him since he returned to Asaresta. Trenon clamps his teeth together. He's always been thin-faced, but a polished bronze plate shows a softness under his jaw. The bags under his eyes might be due to baby Birn's constant wakings, rather than to the vague sickness that still plagues him. "Your reason's a personal one," Zayelik says. "Do I guess too close?"
"Guess as close as you like," he says. Zayelik won't sell him out before she gets the apprentice she wants. And she does want Kelil, or a mountain apprentice, specifically--otherwise she would have taken on a city apprentice, long ago.
Zayelik nods. "I told you once, didn't I, that they do things differently in the city?"
"I don't need your obscure warnings." But there's nothing obscure about Zayelik's hints. She must have some dispute with her city patrons. She thinks she's discovered a weak point in their advocat's net and plans to gnaw her way free. She'd gain from having an advocat of her own, indebted to her for his meals and shelter.
"And I don't need your intransigence," she says with a slice of her hand. "You may not find what you're looking for there; but I'll take you, if you make these negotiations worth my while. Don't--" She steps closer; her height matches his. Her flinty scowl is a trader's pose, as much as the hearty joker she displayed earlier. "Don't change a song on me, advocat, not by a note or a word. And we'll do fine."
[[ϒ Trenon bristles. He doesn't need her condescension to get what he wants out of this journey.->dissemble]]
[[ϒ Zayelik stares at him until he sets his mouth. An honest song holds fewer risks.->responsibility]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Trenon raises a sardonic eyebrow as he covers her fist with his hands.")[Trenon raises a sardonic eyebrow as he covers her fist with his hands. The honour marks him as a craftsman and her equal, though he is journeyman to her master; but at the same time, she avoids naming him as her host and therefore her better.]
(Click-replace: "he might have read her wrong.")[he might have read her wrong. He's certain she was exploring the idea of making a mountain claim. Then, apprenticing Kelil to ease her transition into village markets made sense.]
(Click-replace: "a young husband's desire to grow closer to his contracted wife.")[a young husband's desire to grow closer to his contracted wife. Traders don't respect the truth, but neither do they accept lies too easily disproven.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "unexpected")[ $il[K]elil leaves Trenon alone in the pleasure room and slips under her pallet's wool quilts, shrugging off Belim's whispered concern. For the next threeday, ](if: (history:)'s last is "after")[she](else:)[ $il[F]or the next threeday, Kelil] keeps her head down and finishes the last arrangements to pack the last odds and ends of a long trip--more water skins, a second tinder box, a new skein of rope. Trenon makes no move to catch her alone again or plead his case.
The longer he avoids her, the more suspicious Kelil grows. Zayelik arrives early, riding her gelding quietly up from Asaresta. She carries herself with the heft of a larger person, and tells tales that soon have the holding gathering around her. Kelil joins fathers and mothers in the family room, along with Trenon, sour and solemn in his advocat's robes, to negotiate the apprenticeship.
Larik's apprenticeship was shaped in a candlemark. Shayin outlined the common vows, and Larik agreed to nearly all of them, only insisting that she be allowed to rise to journeyman as soon as her skill proved her ready. Everyone anticipates longer--a morning, a day--for Kelil's song. Zayelik has as many apprenticeship variations at her fingertips as Trenon does, and picks at every word and every note. Kelil mustn't contract to Zayelik's holding, but to Zayelik personally; Kelil must specify that any mules she brings to the city are her responsibility, to be fed, watered, and replaced as necessary at her cost; Zayelik takes a commission on Kelil's goods, and Zayelik has veto over Kelil's purchases. Kelil pushes back where she can, but she doesn't know the songs well enough to suggest alternatives. Trenon hums Zayelik's suggested notes desultorily and shrugs when Kelil prods him to uphold iryu's side of the contract.
They break for the midday meal. Kelil grabs Trenon by his ruff--or close enough, on his lanky height--and drags him bodily into the pleasure room. "What do you think you're doing? Giving her veto over how I spend my silver?"
Trenon twists away from her hand, rounding on her. "I want to go to the city. I need a guide."
And permission, and a plausible cover story. Kelil wonders if Trenon pitched the idea of the two of them travelling together, 'getting to know each other' in the advocat's slow season. He primed Maron and Peris, and especially Grenor, the holding's swing vote, to agree. "So if you're included in the vows, you'll actually exert yourself in your craft?" She'd ask him if he usually treats paying customers so shabbily, but Trenon has a ready-shaped retort--he won't touch silver for any song he sings in iryu holding. Appeals to his loyalty or his profits won't help. "And if I don't agree?"
His eyes flash. Kelil laughs shortly. "You'd sneak it in anyway. You'd stand on the dais, a sworn advocat, and change the song."
Trenon shrugs, angry and silent. Dalor, Trenon's master, first offered him an apprenticeship as a sinecure for his parents' sake. But Trenon proved his promise. He tempers his tenor voice to draw in listeners. With a sure sense of weightiness, he brings their breath into the rite, leading them along a song's familiar path. But this plan of his is stupid, deeply stupid.
"You'd risk me and Zayelik both refusing the song," she says. Trenon's ruse depends on both of them accepting any changes on the fly, perhaps out of place-consciousness, perhaps because he'd throw in a few sweeteners for each of them. He underestimates Zayelik. Traders don't brook changed songs. If Zayelik suspects that Kelil went behind her back and used her husband to craft vows against her master, she'll drop them both without regret. Trenon's concessions can't appeal to her enough that she'd disregard the reasons for them.
Traders don't take well to broken contracts. If Zayelik turned down the song, news would travel. No one will hire a rogue advocat, who plays fast and loose with a vow. Trenon could make himself useless to iryu holding in an instant. Worse, he could lose his journeymanship. Dalor could repudiate him, and refuse him any songs at all--even a marriage dissolution. Trenon would trap himself, with Kelil, with the unwanted baby. The punishment to match his proffered carrot.
She should have known place wouldn't stop him, if he was desperate. She crosses her arms. "If you don't do your best by my apprenticeship, I'll tell Maron and Nilos you're bearing."
Trenon scrubs his face, pale under his tan. He sits on the bed, slow and heavy.
Kelil hardens herself against him using bearing sickness for sympathy. He wants to destroy her life to hide his indiscretions. He deserves worse than a few ninedays' illness.
When he looks up, his blue eyes fade near to grey. "That's your right," he says.
For once Kelil can't find gloating or anger in his haggard face. He watches her with clear understanding, inviting her to turn him in. He saw his chance to get to the city. If Kelil won't conspire with him, who knows what he might try next.
"Tell Nilos," she says. "Do that. If he won't brew you a song, then--"
Trenon shrugs, his hands twitching helpless on his lap. "He won't. I can't."
Kelil promised herself, when they married, she wouldn't force Trenon. She meant it in the pleasure room, knowing him raw from losing Nilos. Now that promise haunts her. She hates him, his arrogance, his insistence on arranging the world to suit himself. He needs her and he can't bring himself to say those words, to ask instead of extort. He doesn't care if he destroys his own advocacy work, the only thing he brought with any pride to iryu holding. He stares down at his hands like dead spiders, and waits for her to save him.
[[ϒ If she forces him to keep a baby that isn't hers, she would catch him like a rabbit in a noose snare; Trenon will struggle himself ghostless.->responsibility]]
[[ϒ If she takes him to the city, she has three ninedays to convince him to try fatherhood, for Nilos's sake. If she doesn't, he may choose a worse method than a healer's brew.->dissemble]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "she'll drop them both without regret.")[she'll drop them both without regret. Even if Zayelik only thinks that Kelil can't bear to leave her husband, that she's so besotted she won't travel without him, then Zayelik can only answer with contempt.]
]}$il[O]nly family attends the apprenticeship rite. Three rites in a season taxes even iryu's silver store. For this day, Kelil wears not a single scrap of Larik's handmedowns. Black leather riding trousers, and a light linen shirt in woad blue, tied at her right hip. Her boots show how recently she walked through the barn; she's glad to see that Zayelik's boots display the same signs. Trenon calls Kelil and Zayelik up on his makeshift dais. One hand on each of their shoulders, he takes a breath to start his song--and flicks Kelil a wink. Kelil freezes, but before she can do more than open her mouth, he sings.
It is the song the holding agreed on, Zayelik's courtesy given with a laconic nod.
Bold faced, staring Trenon down, Kelil sings her promises. Zayelik calmly echoes her. When the song ends, Zayelik crooks her mouth at Kelil. "Apprentice," she says, a pike's smile curving her lips.
Kelil swallows sudden nerves. Zayelik took her on, but what city trader travels half a season upmountain to find an apprentice? Kelil tries to convince herself that (if: $decoy is true)[Zayelik meant to choose //Kelil//; ]Zayelik saw a clever child who promised well. But at the same time, Kelil has the sinking feeling that Zayelik doesn't want, need, or appreciate cleverness. (if: $decoy is true)[She sees apprentice can be a game piece in her place dispute.]
"I only stopped in Asaresta on your behalf, so I hope you're ready to leave," Zayelik says, after a silent hike to Asaresta.
Kelil tempers her eagerness. She doesn't quite believe Zayelik--no matter how full her mules' manties are, a trader won't stop anywhere for a mere apprentice. A few last trades, tucking valuables into spare corners, and the chance for fresh food aren't to be missed. "My wool sales--"
"Are your responsibility." Zayelik opens the main door to Asaresta common barn. "Ready?" she asks her head outrider.
The man, shorter and thick, shrugs and points a thumb towards a box stall.
Zayelik says, "This is Sirol. He knows more than you do." Then she wraps one strong arm around Kelil's shoulders and bodily moves her to the stall, so that she can see over the boards. Instead of straw, or a neat pile of tack and packboxes, there is...to call it a mess would be charitable. Ingots, bales, loose clothing, sacks of tev barley, water skins, all jumbled in with bridles, coils of twine and leather, blanket rolls, and cookpots. Everything needed for a packtrip, and probably a few things extra.
Zayelik exchanges nods with Sirol. Then she waves at the steep fenced field beyond the barn. "Mules in the paddock. My horse. Riding ponies for you and your dear husband. And six outriders makes nine. I like the number. I want to be on the trail by midday."
"You want me to catch nine mules--" Nine strange mules in a comfortable paddock with good hay laid on. They're probably placid enough by nature; Zayelik couldn't lead such a long string if they weren't. But catching even one mule she hasn't met will be a challenge.
"Here's the gear," Zayelik said, with an eyelid's flicker of amusement. "I'll be taking deliveries and payments. You'll see to the pack-up."
"The outriders--"
Sirol grins savagely. Kelil stops short of saying, //Outriders do the pack-up//.
"They'll take care of their own mounts." Zayelik doesn't hide her wolf's laughter any longer. "They're contracted to me. They'll listen, but they won't do anything stupid." She pauses, considers. "Although, they might."
Sirol's eyes gleam. Kelil can see the plan. They'll do every stupid thing they can think of, and probably a few more by accident. They'll suggest putting the boss mule at the front of the line, the two dearest enemies within biting distance of each other, and leave the slacker afraid of his shadow to bring up the rear. They certainly won't mention anything she forgets. If they make it to the city and Zayelik calls for the one item Kelil missed--
"So don't give stupid orders," Zayelik says.
This is payback for Trenon finally buckling down to craft a proper vow song. He'll show up at trail time on his saddled pony. The rest is up to her. Mules can sense anger, tension, fear: Kelil takes a breath and refuses it. She doesn't need his help, nor Zayelik's idea of a test. "Midday," she says, and opens the box stall.
[[ϒ Trenon will find that following a trader's pack string isn't as simple as his journeyman's wanderings.->dissemble]]
[[ϒ Let Zayelik's outriders point and laugh. Kelil can do this.->patronage]] (unless: (history:) contains "responsibility")[ $il[T]he holding gathers in the dooryard to hear Trenon officiate the apprenticeship. Kelil sings her promises boldy, her eyes burning into Trenon's. Zayelik calmly echoes her.
](unless: (history:) contains "responsbility")[They](else:)[ $il[T]hey] leave for the city the day after the apprenticeship rite. Trenon saddles Brys, a lively bronze bay, and misses Cyr's quiet steadiness. Riding down from iryu holding, he joins Zayelik's hired outriders at Asaresta common barn. When they leave, the outriders flank the pack mules--nine of Zayelik's, plus two of Kelil's, gifted by her parents to carry the goods they hope to bring to market without a go-between. Kelil drives her poor mare to distraction, constantly doubling back to check the lie of her mules' loads.
The south road out of Asaresta begins wide enough for two mules abreast, but once they enter the softer, piney air under the trees, the track narrows to a deer path that winds along the mountain's contours. The trail loses itself from time to time in open stretches of swamps and stream crossings. The mules and the outriders' ponies plod indifferently through sucking mud and willow thickets, but Brys flicks his ears every time Trenon urges him into moving water. He gets his hocks under him and continually shakes his head, trying to get the bit between his teeth. Trenon settles into stubborn misery, fighting Brys for every step.
Zayelik scouts ahead, chasing down the blazes she left ninedays ago. (unless: (history:) contains "connive")[Traders insist on concealing their routes, so even someone as experienced as Zayelik can lose her trail, though all these valleys trend southwards and merge together eventually. Trenon hopes she's happy with the result: they stumble into a narrow, high-sided valley that sinks into a mosquito-ridden mire. ](else:)[Trader trails shift over time to take advantage of the best terrain. Summer offers the best travelling, and they end up camping in a narrow, high-sided valley that sinks into a mosquito-ridden mire.]
Sunset lingers long, and the twilight longer. Trenon sits with his back against a tree after pitching camp, using a sprig of willow to switch away blackflies, and watches Kelil make a hash of earning the outriders' trust. They, on the other hand, carry on a marvellous job of playing dumb. As an apprentice Kelil outranks them, but they don't appreciate taking orders from a fifteen-year-old. Well, every apprentice should flounder at first.
Zayelik hires hard labourers, those who sing whatever contract strikes their fancy for a season. Trenon keeps out of their way, making sure to saddle Brys every morning, and currying him as best he can at every camp. The outriders spend their evenings needling Kelil, shouting for lost cookpots and mislaid work gloves, and wondering aloud how much gear Kelil left behind at the morning's packup. Zayelik cooks and leaves Kelil to do the serving. Trenon eats as much as he can and folds himself in his bedroll long before the stars show. His bearing sickness fades, but in its place sheer exhaustion grows on him like strangleweed. He wrangles Brys from mounting until midday, and again through the scorching afternoons. Trenon may be an experienced traveller, but when he worked as a journeyman, the village-next was rarely more than a threeday distant--not nineday on endless nineday.
One evening, he nods over his scoop of tev when Jiron, one of the younger outriders, settles beside him. Jiron rests his elbows loosely on his bent knees. "I've a bet with Ferok," he says, "if you'll settle it for us."
Trenon studies Jiron's sly smile from the corner of his eye. Kelil crouches at the stream edge, scrubbing the tev pot with handfuls of moss. Zayelik consults with Sirol, the outriders' leader, over a mule that picked up a stone in his shoe. Ferok huddles with the other outriders on the far side of the fire, all of them deep into a skin of potato wine, jostling and swallowing laughter. Trenon licks his spoon and shrugs.
"Why are you going to the city?" Jiron asks. He can't help exchanging a glance with his confederates.
"For a song," Trenon says, meeting Jiron's smirk with a cold stare.
"Must be a tough one, if an advocat needs to go and fetch it himself."
Trenon scrapes his bowl bare, then sets it aside. He and Kelil make no secret of their ghostless marriage. They may lay their bedrolls in the same tent, but they don't exchange more than nine words a day. Trenon can imagine the kind of stories a pair of outriders would spin from that. "What's the bet?"
"//I// think you're in trouble," Jiron says. "Ferok says you're an invert."
Trenon snorts. "You have silver riding on that?"
"A whit," Jiron says. "You think outriders haven't gotten in trouble before? No one wants a baby they can't trace back to a proper contract. So you go to the city, see a healer." He leans in, his grin widening. "I know a few good ones."
And he'll name them if Trenon wins his bet for him. Trenon tongues a piece of gristle between his teeth thoughtfully. Jiron could be telling the truth. He may have the name of a sympathetic healer, one Trenon couldn't find on his own. "It's worth a whit to you?"
Jiron nods. Across the fire, Ferok stops pretending to ignore them as Jiron's triumph grows.
If the merest hint of a deliberate miscarriage reaches iryu holding, they'll claim Trenon broke his contract. They could drag him in front of Dalor and demand that Trenon's parents repay the marriage price--silver long spent. Dalor might abjure him entirely, strip him of any song. No one will pay a fee to a contract-breaker. And any city healer should be amenable, if the price is right.
Trenon meets Jiron's lean halfway. "Actually," he says, and places a hand on Jiron's thigh. "I think there's probably something better you can show me." He raises his eyebrows. "You didn't take this outrider contract for the silver, did you? You and Ferok--you know what I'm looking for."
Jiron licks his lips, before his glance darts back to Ferok. He pushes away, clambering to his feet. Circling the fire, he shoves Ferok, who laughs uproariously. "Take your whit," he says, throwing the silver piece at Ferok's chest.
[[ϒ Trenon turns his back on their jeers.->patronage]]
[[ϒ He doesn't need an outrider's help to find a healer.->rebuff]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "meeting Jiron's smirk with a cold stare.")[meeting Jiron's smirk with a cold stare. Place demands Jiron drop the question there.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "patronage")[ $il[T]he mountain's plunging slopes broaden into rolling hills a full nineday before they reach the city. Mixed softwoods give way to deliberate ranks of hardwood, maples and oaks pushing up from hoary-kneed roots. Streams weave together into a broad river, which dips and curls around wide islands.
Wheel ruts begin to show through the trackless grass. Wide stone barns dot the fields, larger than a village deepstone. For most of a day they skirt huge expanses of hay, oats, and downmountain wheat. Trenon doesn't see a single field cairn. The sun sets before they pass one holding's land claim. Either the river provides a natural boundary, or the city uses other means to separate holdings.
Sareya emerges as a grey smudge that grows into a brown smear across the horizon. What once appeared to be the brushline of the river resolves into an accretion of deepstones. On the outskirts of the city, deepstones hold to the village pattern, though on a larger scale. Rough-hewn squares with a central guest door stretch upwards three or four storeys. Massive bronze fittings hinge the oak doors. Each deepstone's major chimney stands on the right hand, marking the hearthside; smaller chimneys, often tin or wattle rather than brick and stone, lift from the homeside fireplace. As Zayelik leads them deeper into the city, the deepstones push closer together. Dooryards disappear behind stone facades. The single building elongates into two wings, pierced by a narrow passage in from the street, with no homeside or hearthside door to speak of. Wagons, pushcarts, and mules shove the foot traffic down into the stream of muck at the center of the cobblestone streets.
The grand deepstones disappear when Zayelik leads her train southwards, across a three-arched stone bridge. Trenon watches stonework give way to timber, slate roofs to thatch. The cobbles under Brys's hooves are buried in a deeper glut of waste. Zayelik doesn't have the place, then, to claim a rich, north-side deepstone. They pass through several small markets, each one no more than a widening of the street where tev sellers, cobblers, or hawkers with baskets of early berries and fresh game congregate. And--a healer's deepstone. Trenon marks the spot, and counts the turns before they reach Zayelik's holding.
Zayelik reins in her horse in front of a building that resembles a warehouse more than a deepstone. Strong stone walls, but thatch a nineyear past when it ought to have been replaced. Beside the low, dirty buildings around it, the facade and locked courtyard gate look imposing enough. Zayelik must have fought like a mountain lion to claim it.
The outriders drop from their saddles and pull the wide doors open, then lead the ponies and mules through a brief tunnel. They emerge in a courtyard enclosed on either side by the homeside and hearthside wings, and at the back by a wide stable. Zayelik delegates Kelil to lead the unloading. She shows Trenon to a bare, dusty homeside parlour, and leaves him there.
Trenon falls into a hard-backed chair. ](if: (history:)'s last is "patronage")[Some](else:)[ $il[S]ome] bearers miscarry from hard riding alone, but after three ninedays in the saddle (if: (history:)'s last is "patronage")[Trenon](else:)[he] hasn't even spotted. He feels like turf worn away to bare rock. There must be a sleeping room(if: (history:)'s last is "patronage")[ in Zayelik's deepstone] where he can lay a pallet, instead of unrolling his bedroll in a swamp.
He doesn't have time to rest. He can count ten ninedays since Larik's giving. Or eleven? The healer has to come first.
Kelil and Zayelik won't see him from across the courtyard. The men are busy settling their mounts in the stable. Trenon ignores his throbbing feet and slips out of the homeside. He passes through the tunnel to the street, swallowing against the stink of refuse and nightsoil. Candle lanterns hang at intervals, but the murky air dims the stars. Loose cobblestones catch Trenon's boot-toes and he stumbles more than once. He keeps close to the deepstones to avoid the slimy trail trickling down the center of the street. When he reaches the confluence of streets where he saw the market stalls, many of the trestle tables have been dismantled for the night. But a healer's apprentice pushes a horsehair broom, swabbing muck away from a deepstone door. Trenon tells him, "I need a song."
The boy gives courtesy and takes him inside. The deepstone cramps tighter than Zayelik's cavernous warehouse. Instead of a tunnel, they enter a long guest hallway. The first door on the homeside leads into the healer's herbary.
The master climbs to his feet when his apprentice ushers Trenon in. "Jeramol, of irkayu, sung to irdanu," he says, claiming both a holding and a patronage tie. Trenon recognizes the name--it's the same overholding that Zayelik claims as her patron.
"What brings a mountaineer to the city for a song?" Jeramol asks. Hewaves the boy out to fetch tea and tev from the hearthside. Trenon wants to refuse the hosting, but the smell of the pork tev the boy brings makes his stomach ache with hunger. He still has the wits to pretend disinterest. He shuffles his way through a guest's thanks before digging in.
"I'm bearing," Trenon says, the admission grating. Jeramol looks exactly as Trenon pictured a smug city-dweller. Middle-aged, broad-waisted, hands heavy and knurled with early joint swelling. Grey touches the frizzy hair at his temples, but most of it is black and braided close to his head before descending in many-beaded lines.
Jeramol nods, unsurprised. "I have good songs for that, and brews you can take home."
Trenon won't play place games to sweeten his request. "I only want one song, for miscarriage."
"By the look of you, you've known for some ninedays."
"A few."
Jeramol takes a deep breath. "Then this isn't a matter of a simple brew and an opening of your breathlines. You haven't felt the baby move?"
"It's too soon for that."
"Good. Once I have your holding's permission we can proceed."
"Permission!" Tension coils in Trenon's chest. He was willing to foreswear himself to get a miscarriage song, but he never expected a healer to tell him no. "My holding is upmountain." Jeramol can't expect him to go traipsing back to Asaresta. Even if there was time, no message he could bring to Jeramol should satisfied him better than an advocat's word.
"I won't help you miscarry a contracted child," Jeramol says.
"You get that often, do you?" Master though he is, Jeramol isn't independent. He can't risk giving a song that might broach a contract another holding made with the same patrons.
Jiron's taunts suggested there would be plenty of city healers willing to help. In hindsight, Trenon understands the kind of 'healer' Jiron meant: dismissed apprentices or forsworn journeymen, scrabbling for silver on the margins of the market, plying their trade for those desperate enough to appeal to the songless. Not the kind of healer who sits comfortably in a deepstone with an apprentice to fetch his tev.
"I'm an advocat," Trenon tries. "I travelled here on business."
"Fine." Jeramol closes the distance between them, and, with a glance at Trenon for permission, lays a splayed hand across Trenon's belly. "I give you two ninedays, three at the outside, before the song will become too dangerous."
Trenon stands sharply and gives courtesy. "What do I owe you for the tev?" he asks.
Jeramol rises with him. "I don't charge for consultations. The song will cost silver, with your holding's approval.”
[[ϒ Zayelik warned him; Jiron did too, had Trenon listened.->admonition]]
[[ϒ He might ask permission, but he can't wheedle for charity where none exists.->lessons]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Zayelik claims as her patron.")[Zayelik claims as her patron. This irdanu probably has claims across half the city. Trenon doubts they squat in south-side squalor like their master trader does.]
(Click-replace: "Jeramol says.")["You're a mountaineer so you may not understand. Patrons have more place than silver, here."]
(Click-replace: "Jeramol isn't independent.")[Jeramol isn't independent. He owes his loyalty first to his holding, and then to his patrons.]
(Click-replace: "broach a contract another holding made with the same patrons.")[broach a contract another holding made with the same patrons. Contravening his patrons' interest would risk his place as a healer and his own vows.]
]}$il[T]he journey to the city aches in Kelil's bones. As a child, she rode every day, but never before has she ridden all day, nineday upon nineday. After dropping from the saddle in late afternoon, Kelil chops kindling, boils salted trout with tev oats, jumps for ladle or waterskin whenever Zayelik waves her empty mug. Soon she smells thoroughly of horse and unwashed leathers--they all do, but Kelil never loses her sense of her own stink. Evenings, Zayelik nudges her with sharp questions about every bale and pack in the mules' manties: the value of cloth and ingots and stones. When Kelil stumbles over her answers, Zayelik dismisses her with a shrug and a wave.
After two ninedays, the dark pine forest fades into poplar and beech, their warm green leaves trembling endlessly overhead. Another threeday, and the mixed softwoods give way to deliberate ranks of hardwood, maples and oaks pushing up from hoary-kneed roots. The ground gentles; the faltering deerpath widens into a wheel-rutted road. And then, from behind a long carve of hills, the city leaps out to meet them: Sareya, on the banks of a wide, braided river.
For most of a day they skirt huge expanses of hay, and oats, and downmountain wheat, without seeing a single field cairn. The sun sets and they're still wandering on a single holding's land claim. The cracked, dusty road, with its patches of beaten yellow grass, sinks under cobbles when they reach Sareya proper. The streets slant down to an open mire at the center, which runs with a slurry of nightsoil and horseshit. People rush everywhere, shoving and shouting, filling the wide streets to their brim, occasionally leaping the sewer in the middle--and occasionally missing. Zayelik leads the way across a high arched bridge. The mules' hooves clomp hollowly on filthy oak planks that would cost a year's silver upmountain.
Kelil reins Flyn in with a sigh of disappointment when Zayelik waves them to a halt in front of a wide, stone-faced building. On the north side of the river, the deepstones were as big as barns, many with facades of dressed stone and roofs of slate. Since they crossed the river, everything has dwindled and the muck crept deeper around Flyn's hooves.
Sirol and Jiron unlock the thick chain and drag the doors open to show a narrow tunnel leading to an arch of sunlight at the end. The tunnel pierces the building through, ending in a square dooryard. The building's two wings, homeside and hearthside, form two sides of the square. A barn finishes the back wall, while the frontage provides storerooms and undercrofts. It looks more like a dusty warehouse than a deepstone.
The moment Kelil dismounts, Sirol shoves a bale into her arms and says, "Inside."
"I didn't contract as a porter," Kelil mutters, but she sets to the unpacking with the same will she brought to the trail chores. She and the outriders see to the mules and mounts, check the tack, and fill the deepstone's thirsty cistern. Kelil heaves on a long metal lever attached to a rusty pump. Her arm aches before a gurgle of brown water runs cold into the first of many buckets. Kelil hopes the pipe opens somewhere well upstream of wherever the streets' muck joins the river.
She waits until Sirol gives her permission before she limps towards the deepstone's hearthside. There must be a sleeping room where she can lay a pallet--not a bedroll on a rubble scarp. Inside, swaths of undyed linen drape the furniture. Kelil pulls one shroud off a willow withe chair, sending up a cloud of dank-smelling dust. She drops into the chair, her head throbbing.
"An upmountain apprentice?"
The voice--overbland and skeptical--comes from deeper in the hearthside. Kelil groans to herself, then pushes up to defend her place.
"And I'm a mountain trader."
Kelil follows Zayelik's voice to the door of the hearthroom. Zayelik sits enthroned on a leather chair that looks built for her, while two women face her perched on ladderback chairs, avoiding the dust that coats them.
"You could do much better, Zayelik, if you'd commit more fully to your overholding," the first woman says. "You only use this deepstone half the year but irdanu has warded off several counterclaims on your behalf." She's about Zayelik's age, perhaps five nineyears, her stoutness a mixture of strength and comfort.
Zayelik shrugs as though this threat to her deepstone claim can't possibly affect her. "I enjoy travel."
"And I'm sure the villagers are grateful..."
Kelil bristles; the woman's voice trails off before she actually says the words //the poor dears//.
Zayelik looks up to see her hovering in the doorway. "Kelil, come in."
Kelil tamps down fury at the woman's condescension. This is her moment. Zayelik will introduce her, and she'll finally meet other city traders--the ones she'll match wits with in the market in the coming days. She holds herself straight, ignoring saddle-sores and bowed knees. And Zayelik does introduce her: "Kyrazil, Volanik, my apprentice, Kelil." Then, with a wave at the kettle, she adds, "Fill the hearthroom cistern. We'll take tea and tev."
Kelil fetches a bucket for the traders' tea, boiling the brown water thoroughly and dosing the mint tea with wintergreen liquor. She dusts out the pewter mugs she finds on a peg board in the hearthroom and returns with them.
"Oh, you'll come to irdanu holding for dinner, won't you?" Kyrazil asks. "Really, Zayelik, if you're not going to keep up your deepstone while you're away, you'll never do justice to your hosting."
"I'll contract a few hearthgirls tomorrow. And some boys, to see to the cleaning."
Volanik continues what must be a long-standing debate. "Street brats who cost you more silver than they're worth, and who suck down more tev than reaches your table. You should have Hezibor sing contracts with some irdanu youngsters."
"Irdanu youngsters have too much place to whitewash my deepstone." Zayelik waves off the argument. Kelil takes comfort in the fact that she dismisses her equals with the same carelessness as her apprentice. "I'll have the honour of hosting you before I leave. For tonight, I'll guest with you, and my thanks."
"Give your apprentice a chance to settle in, eh?" Volanik's voice suggests Kelil will settle in by raiding Zayelik's silver box and drinking a keg of wine.
Again, Zayelik ignores the sally. "Let me see to my apprentice," she says, rising. She crowds Kelil out of the hearthroom and into a sleeping room with a narrow rope-net bed.
"This is yours," Zayelik says, looking around with a frown. Then, "Kelil."
Kelil expects to get instructions regarding the outriders--not that Sirol would listen to her if she tried to tell him his job.
"I want you to see to Trenon."
"Trenon?" Kelil hasn't seen him since he dismounted with an audible oof when they arrived in Zayelik's dooryard. He snuck off after unsaddling poor Tyn and left Kelil to wrap the old mare's knees.
Zayelik nods heavily. "He's bearing."
Kelil gapes like a trout, then blushes furiously. "I know," she says. On the trail she barely had time to chew jerky to calm her stomach's clamour--and none left to tend to Trenon's miserable ego or his bearing sickness.
"Hmm." Zayelik thumbs dirt from the mattress frame and shakes her head.
"I'm not involved with Trenon's bearing," Kelil says, taking a stab at self-defence. Trenon's a man grown and a competent journeyman, so she doesn't see why Zayelik ordered her to check on him. He doesn't need Kelil hovering over him like a new father over a baby's cradle.
The revelation doesn't faze Zayelik. "As long as you apprentice to me, you can consider yourself involved."
Kelil wants to burst out with every betrayal, every hurt Trenon dealt her. Zayelik can't order compassion, and her comparison is worse than flawed. Place, and pride, depend on deference to a contracted superior. Showing kindness to Trenon is like throwing silver into Asaresta gorge. Kelil deserves better than him, and he deserves nothing from her at all; he came into their contract already a liar.
Zayelik pins her with a stern stare. "You see I can't claim an independent holding."
Zayelik certainly acts like master, sure and laconic, filling the dusty ends of this disused deepstone with her presence. But her patrons' pitying insistence shows she has little choice in joining their holding for dinner. The deepstone shows no sign of spouses or children. Kelil studies her boot toes. Zayelik did seem inordinately curious about the independence clause in her marriage contract to Trenon. In Sareya, webbed by patronage, independent holdings are thin on the ground.
"I chose to contract to my patrons, instead of marrying into their holding," Zayelik says. "So I give courtesy to irdanu, whether I agree with them or not. In return I pay them one ninth of my profits instead of nine."
The lesson Zayelik hopes to teach is clear. Kelil closes her mouth and gives courtesy.
"That's more like it," Zayelik says, and gives her pike's grin. "You may learn yet." She leads the way back to the hearthroom, speaking over her shoulder for her guests' benefit. "You'll have charge of the outriders. See that everything's done."
[[ϒ On orders, Kelil crosses the dooryard in search of Trenon.->lessons]]
[[ϒ If he left the deepstone, Kelil can guess what he went to find.->rebuff]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Zayelik shrugs as though this threat to her deepstone claim can't possibly affect her.")[Zayelik shrugs as though this threat to her deepstone claim can't possibly affect her. Every claim, from field to water rights, depends on need and use. If Zayelik can't fill her deepstone for half a year, then she's at risk of losing her city claim entirely. (if: $decoy)[Trenon was right--Zayelik must be considering a move upmountain.] ]
(click-replace: "Zayelik waves off the argument.")[Zayelik waves off the argument, as if refusing her patrons' advocat and their labourers doesn't blacken her place.]
]}(if: $comfort is true)[ $il[N]ilos sways on his feet as Tereos completes the grieving songs. He endures while Tereos accepts a pouch of silverwhits from Larik's first mother. She and Tereos offer each other scrupulous place, both pretending that balancing silver against song is only formality. Finally, Tereos leads Nilos out of the deepstone by the guest door, and says, "Go home. Sleep today."
Nilos meant to make his weary way to his deepstone and fall onto his pallet. But in the sickroom, Tereos opened Nilos's breath. His master's lifepoint touch fills Nilos with the green taste of rain and leaves him restless. The world at once looms too near and wavers too distant.
After Tereos leaves, Nilos](else:)[ $il[N]ilos] turns away from the main road that switchbacks gently down among the terraced fields to the river gorge and Asaresta village. Few farmers have completed their spring land claims. The stones that made last summer's field cairns lie scattered among the empty furrows. East of the bridge, the slope above the village climbs more steeply. The rutted track up to the mine requires yearly shoring.
On the west side of the ravine, the deepstones spread out, isolated enough that few families find their holdings bumping against a neighbour's. They rarely bring their annual field claims in front of an advocat. Larik's family claims all the land westwards above the treeline, and no deepstone lies farther west to hinder them. Each year iryu holding pastures more sheep and chamois, raises shearing sheds, and contracts seasonal shepherds. Early in spring before the field hands sing their contracts, the byres will be empty. Above, away, Nilos can find quiet and cool air. And, perhaps, Trenon will find him.
A laugh bubbles up when Nilos realizes he hasn't stopped hoping. He stops long enough at the deepstone's well to drink deeply. With the recent rains, iryu hasn't posted a water-watcher to charge him a silverwhit for his thirst. The icy water, straight from the mossy bucket, makes his teeth ache, but soothes his raw throat. He cups handfuls of water over his face and rubs his eyes. The chill brings him shivering awake, alert enough to face the climb.
Runnels of rainwater churn the path muddy under his boots. Nilos stops often to pinch twists of leaves between his fingers: dogwood, strawberry runners, mugwort. Why does boiling the cambium bark of a willow brew a pain-ease tea? Why do crushed hops soothe burns, or comfrey compress stop bleeding? How can a simple touch against a lifepoint bring deep grief surfacing? Nilos smells his fingertips, recognizing the herbs' scents in their crushed stems. He looks up and dizzies himself watching the sway of pine boughs moving in the sighing wind.
After a candlemark's hike, the path cuts a sharp corner around a head-high gnarl of roots. Above the switchback, a boulder juts out of the mountainside, overlooking a steep drop back into the valley. (if: $comfort is false)[A pine tree grows from its underside before curving upwards. Trenon sits at its base, leaning back against the bark, shoulders loose and arms draped over his bent knees. Nilos smiles--Trenon rarely looks so unguarded except when he chooses to affect relaxation. Trenon heard him coming, despite the soft crush of pine needles under Nilos's boots. When Trenon raises his eyebrows, then opens his eyes, Nilos chuckles quietly, and climbs to meet him.](else:)[Past the boulder, the path continues up to the byres, but Nilos steps from the path to sit against the pine. Old man's beard clings in wisps to the tree's coarse trunk. Nilos settles elbows on knees, and waits. Trenon's boots barely make a sound on the orange carpet of pine needles, but Nilos sees him coming, the familiar trace of head and shoulders through the trees.]
"Your father wants Larik's family to pay you the price of a broken betrothal," Nilos greets him. Focusing on his vigil, he blocked out much of the commotion below the loft in the family room, but that much leaked through. While Trenon's father is within his rights to call the betrothal contract broken, and has the place to enforce his views, Nilos can't imagine a more placeless demand.
Trenon (if: $comfort is false)[tilts his head back farther, resting against the pine behind him](else:)[takes slow, deliberate steps up to Nilos's perch], and doesn't deny it. "Looking for comfort?" he asks.
"From you?" Nilos laces his words with sarcasm to match Trenon's stiff offer. Trenon has no reason to mourn Larik. He spent the past two seasons running from the betrothal contract he sang. Nilos might as well ask softness from a river stone. But Trenon's question shows a cat's comfort, tender if rough-tongued.
A smile tugs Trenon's lips out of their easy frown. "If you'll have it," he says, then looks away, like a puma disdaining meager prey. (if: $comfort is false)[Nilos climbs off the path and sits beside him, tucking his shoulder firmly against Trenon's.](else:)[He climbs off the path and sits beside Nilos, tucking their shoulders firmly together.] (if: $comfort is false)[He](else:)[Nilos] wants to lean his head against Trenon's, temple to warm temple, but if he does he'll soon fall asleep. Curling up against Trenon's body, letting the long night's vigil slip away--temptation draws a tired hum from his throat. His eyes grit with every blink. He doesn't realize he closed them until Trenon speaks gruffly, softly, near his ear: "I'm sorry."
Damp seeps through Nilos's trousers from the needle mould on the boulder. He hugs his arms around his knees. "We knew she was failing," he says. A healer's words, like a skim of ice holding back deep water. He can't be guilty of Larik's death when it was Tereos who relinquished her to the vigil. "Tereos would have ordered the vigil a nineday ago if I hadn't begged."
Trenon kisses Nilos's temple, and sighs.
Rousing, Nilos shifts away from Trenon's shoulder, far enough to frown at him. "You thought so too."
"I knew she was dying at midwinter." Trenon meets Nilos's look with level candour, his blue eyes shading grey.
"Then who are you sorry for?" Nilos snaps, sharper than he meant. Trenon pretends to care, but Larik's death gains him silver and freedom. "Larik? Me? Yourself, since Maron plans to replace Larik with his youngest child rather than breaking your marriage contract?"
Trenon shrugs. "I'm sorry you lost her."
The brutal unfairness of Trenon's compassion makes Nilos's shoulders bunch. He and Tereos act as though Larik's death was inevitable, and there was nothing to be done. No one considered that a different song might have saved her. No one suggested Nilos abandon hope--not until last night, when Tereos told him the time for the vigil had come. (if: $healthier is true)[If Nilos had made his brew sooner--](else:)[If Nilos had given Larik his brew after all--]
[[ϒ He reaches for words to shatter Trenon's calm.->use]]
[[ϒ "Would you and Larik have married me, after your marriage opened?"->flight]] {
(If: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Larik's family claims")[Iryu holding claims]
(Click-replace: "wants Larik's family to pay")[wants iryu holding to pay]
]}$il["I] gave Larik a false song."
Trenon's eyes narrow at once. "What do you mean?"
"I tried something different." Trenon's sharp interest, his immediate approval, soothes Nilos's middlenight doubts. "Tereos wanted me to sing the vigil. He was giving up. So I brewed her a tea of my own." Nilos shakes off Tereos's rebuke, that he needs to learn when to let go. (if: (history:) contains "deception")[Tereos hinted that Nilos's tea //would// harm Larik, forcing her to live against her will. But Larik had no ghost wish before her illness. The problem was that the](if: (history:) contains "rebuke")[Tereos himself admitted that there were herbs he didn't try, songs he might have brewed. He simply believed that Larik's time to die had come. The] vigil song strengthened Larik's breath, but the pine needle smoke wouldn't touch her cough or her fever. The herbs Nilos chose tethered her ghost to her body far more surely than the holding's breath.
Trenon frowns. "You think she died because you gave her the wrong song? What were you singing, a ghost wish?"
"No!" Nilos digs his fingers into his belt, picking fitfully at the left-knot. "(if: $healthier is true)[I brought her fever down.](if: $healthier is false)[I didn't give it to her.]"
Trenon's blue eyes darken. Nilos pushes to his feet and steps to the end of the boulder. He can feel Trenon growing angry, a winter stormcloud. Good. Nilos needs someone to hate him in this moment. (if: (history:) contains "deception")[Tereos's disappointment squeezes the breath of him. He couldn't tell his master about the herbs he used, but he deserves to bear someone's fury.](if: (history:) contains "rebuke")[He can't bear to hate Tereos for giving up too soon; he'd rather hate himself.] Trenon's anger lands a clean blow, stinging but brief. Nilos stands straight-shouldered over Trenon's careful sprawl.
"You think you killed her." Flat. Disgusted.
Nilos shakes his head, no. He did nothing wrong. The herbs were harmless on their own, outside a healer's song. (if: (history:) contains "deception")[There must be more to songs than rituals that can be committed to memory and never questioned. Nilos wanted to //discover// a song.](if: (history:) contains "rebuke")[Tereos admitted as much! If Nilos knew herbs as well as his master, he could have invented a better song.] Larik's death must be his fault.
"Or did she convince you that you //meant// to hurt her?"
"No, she--" Nilos bites his lip. Larik was angry at first, but she accepted his reasons before the end. The same way she approached her marriage contract to Trenon--as if acceptance was easy. Like a birch tree bending in storm. "I broke my contract as a healer."
"In order to help her." Sarcasm edges Trenon's voice.
"I don't know (if: $healthier is true)[if I helped](if: $healthier is false)[if it would have helped]." That feels like a lie, too, but Nilos spits it out stubbornly. Tereos is his master. He must understand better than Nilos when it was time to stop wrestling the ghost and let it fly.
Trenon snorts. The bitterness Nilos looked for is sharpening in his voice. "I think you do."
"What do you mean?" Nilos asks, opening himself up to any blow Trenon cares to deal out. Trenon can't be angry with Nilos for Larik's death, not like her sibling was. Trenon never courted her, never cared. He's angry at Nilos--as he should be. It feels cleansing.
Trenon stands and moves towards him like a bobcat stalking a rabbit. "I think you know exactly what you did--you changed the song. There's no point in pretending you're confused about what the effects would be. You're a healer, and a better one than Tereos. He knows songs. //You// know herbs."
Nilos stands his ground. He's broader, more solid than Trenon. And Trenon hates it when Nilos backs off--when anyone lets an argument crumple before he can destroy it. "Do you think it's a coincidence she died this morning?" he presses. (if: $healthier is true)[The false song must have soured. Nilos burned through whatever strength Larik gained from the vigil.](else:)[If he'd dedicated himself to the vigil instead of spending his attention elsewhere, Larik might still be alive. Vigils don't always end in death]. He'll use Trenon like a blacksmith's fire: burn out his doubts, leaving him purer from the tempering.
"You're making excuses," Trenon snaps. Nilos can't help how Trenon's sharp voice reassures him, makes him feel secure in Trenon's regard. Trenon doesn't bother if he doesn't care. He offers honesty because he trusts Nilos to take it. "You did it at middlenight, when you were alone, when Tereos was gone."
"I tampered with her song and didn't even ask her." Tereos wants him to resign himself to his apprenticeship, to learning properly. If Master Tereos wanted to, he could haul Nilos before the master advocat and have him foresworn, denied any contract songs at all. Nilos wants to use Trenon's disgust to reinforce his better instincts. "I never should have tried it."
"You should have done it the moment you thought of it, instead of waiting for the vigil," Trenon says. "If you thought you could cure her, you should have denounced Tereos to all of iryu holding! Instead you waited until she was dying in order to help her. You didn't help. You killed her by pretending you had the time to waste."
"I'm still an apprentice," Nilos shoots back. He can't take healing contracts on his own. He doesn't have the place to approach Larik's parents.
"Just like the rest of Asaresta," Trenon sneers. "One blindfolded master heading for the ravine, a few journeymen sent away for sounding the warning, and a village full of following apprentices. Maybe if an apprentice stood up for once, we wouldn't live in a village of hypocrites!"
"What if the song (if: $healthier is true)[harmed her](else:)[had harmed her]?"
"If you thought for an instant that song would have harmed her, you never even would have brewed it. You know (if: $healthier is true)[it didn't](else:)[it wouldn't have]."
The exhausted shiver in Nilos's limbs threatens to tremble. Excitement, bright as fire sparks, fills him. Trenon believes in him. Without proof, without evidence, he has faith--if Nilos had the insight, the determination, to brew the song, then it must be true. Even Larik's acceptance came with doubts. No one has faith in his healing like Trenon does. "Tereos says any change was due to the vigil, strengthening her," he argues.
"And you know better." Trenon's voice lowers. "Your song (if: $healthier is true)[worked](else:)[would have worked], and you'll only tell me, because you're afraid of Tereos."
"I'm not afraid of him." (if: (history:) contains "deception")[Nilos respects Tereos deeply. He never suspected him of being small-minded. Discovering his master's limitation--if it is a limitation, and not a simple truth--feels like a betrayal of Tereos's vow to teach him. ](if: (history:) contains "rebuke")[Tereos's correction of his wayward tea hit him like a slap of ice water. Nilos's eyes burn with unshed tears. Tereos might have done more, and didn't. Nilos isn't afraid of him. He despises Tereos's betrayal.]
"Then shout it from the mountaintop. You've sung a new song! You can treat fevers in ways Tereos won't--or can't. You could heal people, but you'll let them die for your master's place."
"Or I might hurt someone." Nilos speaks slowly, the words coming from some unimaginable distance. "Thinking I'm helping. I can't pretend to be a master."
[[ϒ "You already know more than he does," Trenon says.->downmountain]]
[[ϒ "I know less than I did before," Nilos answers, but when he meets Trenon's eyes, he sees heat there, and fierce belief.->a kiss]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "all of iryu holding")[Larik's family]
]}$il[T]renon's eyes widen. "What do you mean?"
Nilos enjoys Trenon's sudden stillness with a familiar mixture of irritation and affection. Trenon loves to break others' cages while he stays comfortable in his own. He sang his betrothal vows to Larik as his mother demanded. Nilos doesn't blame him for that--mothers have the disposing of their sons. But he won't let Trenon assume he's in control, that he can imagine what Nilos wants. "Larik told me she would have taken me as second husband, in a year's time when your marriage opened," he says.
"We spoke of it," Trenon says, his eye sliding away.
"And you didn't think to mention it?" Why hasn't Trenon shared //this// dream, however imperfect? He pretends to be a realist, but when he dreams, he cracks the world open like an egg.
The whole affair feels like a songless contract that Trenon and Larik cooked up between them, their mercy for poor Nilos, draggled as a kitten left out in the rain. They never told--even Larik, as her breath was fading--and Nilos never thought that Trenon and Larik would agree on anything. Intending to keep hope safe for him, they thieved it instead.
Or they themselves couldn't face the fantasy they'd tried to weave. Nilos wanted to be a wife; they could never give him that, even if Larik had lived. They hadn't told him because they believed he'd reject their plan. When Nilos wanted to spend himself on futility, he imagined managing the hearthside with Larik, as easily as otters cutting through cold water. Not hiding on the homeside, needing to give courtesy to cross the hall and see her.
"Is that what you want?" Trenon keeps his voice empty, but Nilos can hear his contempt for the sham. "To wait a year, after I find a wife? I'd sing the vows if I knew you'd join us. You on the homeside..."
The bait and the hook. First marriages don't have the silver or the place to build deepstones of their own. Trenon's betrothal to Larik specified moving into her parents' deepstone, joining her holding. Even if Nilos married them as they planned, both of them sopping their consciences with kind-hearted pity, Nilos would live with Trenon on iryu's homeside. He'd fit in with iryu's men like a joiner's shim, an artless afterthought. Trenon's simultaneous understanding and his derision for pretense of any kind would only compound Nilos's ghostless attempt to act like a husband. He loves Trenon, but living with him, he'd feel like his brother, or worse, his sibling.
He wants to hate himself for his fantasies, but he's cold, damp; his head throbs from the tears he shed in the night. If he doesn't move he'll fall asleep on this rock. Nilos pushes to his feet. "You want to sing me songs of what I can't have," he says.
"We can't have either, in case you hadn't noticed," Trenon says. "Unless you want to drag that sibling of Larik's into this farce."
Kell deserves better than being forced into Larik's leftover betrothal. Nilos takes one step to the edge of the stone, then back. Why can he imagine others deserving better, and not himself?
Trenon stands and tries to stop Nilos's pacing. Nilos shoulders away from his embrace. Trenon throws up his arms and says, "Then marry me!"
"Two men in a first marriage." Nilos shakes his head. They've been over this, too many times. He pushes out from between Trenon and the pine trunk, his fists cocked on his hips, glaring into the forest. As long as they're dreamwalking, then Nilos can imagine Trenon, returning from his journeyman's travels, sharp and eager, stormy with smirking pride as Nilos leads him to the pleasure room... "While all Asaresta gossips at our expense."
"You're putting place ahead of what you want!"
Nilos can hear what Trenon doesn't say--//ahead of me//. He shakes his head like a sheep dog shedding water. "Better place than pride! Than thinking only of yourself--"
"I'm not asking you for my pride--"
"It's for nothing else, as far as I can see. You'd make a holding without a wife? Push a husband into her place? Push me there, like my songs means nothing?"
"I know you're a healer! I sang your apprenticeship contract for you, didn't I? What does that have to do with becoming--" Trenon stops short, lips compressed, and looks away.
"Your wife," Nilos says shortly. "You might as well say it."
With a hard swallow, Trenon shrugs. "Yes. My wife."
"Women aren't healers."
"Because this village prefers illusions to what you really are--"
"Why don't you become //my// wife, if it's so simple?"
"This isn't about some revolution," Trenon insists. "I'm not asking the women to leave off mining and farm!"
"That's worse." Nilos lets his head hang low, a blown horse. "You're not fighting the songs because they're unfair. You only want to fight because they're unfair to you."
"I want //you//!" Trenon flings a hand back towards Asaresta, erasing the village in a gesture. "I don't want to be married off at my mother's will, for my father's profit!"
Nilos lets out a bitter breath. "And you don't know which is more important. Or am I only useful as long as I provide an excuse for you to defy your holding?"
Trenon's fists twist in a fury of impatience. He shutters himself again, that wall, that veil. Stiffly, he says, "Do you think I'd stop meeting you if they approved?"
"No," Nilos says briefly, though he can't be sure. Trenon contracted to marry Larik to please his parents, and nothing made him hate her more than the vow he gave her. "The only reason you'd stop is if I asked."
He must mistake the glimmer under Trenon's eyelashes. Before he can look again, Trenon turns back to the path. "It's different downmountain," he says, thickly. "We could..."
"Abandon our lives."
"Leave. Try." Trenon swallows. "Both of us."
Nilos licks his lips. A vow to Trenon won't mean anything if he abandons his apprenticeship. If they break their contracts and leave Asaresta, they can't come back. Advocats don't accept fees from song-breakers. They might fool an advocat in the city long enough to contract as labourers, but then-- And he can't go anywhere, the day Larik died, and pretend he's acting rationally. But Trenon may never ask again.
(link: "ϒ He wants to go with Trenon more than he wants to fold himself into this life.")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)[(goto: "a kiss")] ]
(link: "ϒ Trenon's question feels like the wind offering wings, but if he leaps at Trenon's beck, he can't know if he leaped for himself.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)[(goto: "a kiss")] ] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "his sibling")[a child ono]
]}$il["N]o one will pay silver for false songs," Nilos says, cutting Trenon off before he gets started. Trenon gives advice based on the world as he wishes it was. Throw place to the wind! Strike out from his master, keep his whits instead of playing Tereos a master's due. Even as Nilos stops Trenon speaking, though, he wraps his arms around him in thanks. Trenon gives him what no one else in Asaresta can, a stormy faith.
The wind picks up overhead, soughing through the pine branches. If the rain starts again, they won't be able to stay here long. Nilos squirms closer to Trenon's lanky body.
"You need a master who accepts you," Trenon murmurs.
"Hm?" Nilos asks. He nuzzles deeper into Trenon's neck.
"It's different downmountain." A pause, and then an ironic, "They say."
"What is?" Nilos doesn't really want to hear it. The night is catching up with him. Larik was given.
"Everything. The song variations." Trenon cards his fingers through Nilos's hair, catching just the right side of painful in his curls. "You could go there."
Nilos shakes his head. "Advocacy, maybe. Contracts. Not healing. No one wants a woman healer."
"Two men can make a first marriage, in the city."
"Traders' tales," Nilos says.
"You'll never know," Trenon says, "if you don't go."
Nilos laughs softly. "And leave you?" Trenon has never been so unselfish in his life.
"You chose healing over me once before."
Nilos shakes his head and runs his thumb over the arch of Trenon's cheekbone. Trenon wants to bait him to gain the upper hand, and force freedom on Nilos when he won't choose it for himself. His pact with Larik for the three of them to marry was more of the same. "Oh, your parents would have accepted a betrothal suit from a whitless carpenter?" he asks, mocking. Trenon complains about his place-conscious parents more than anyone. Nilos shouldn't have to be the realist. "You want me to run away with you for //you//," he says. "You think I'd be yours if I broke faith with Tereos and my holding. But I wouldn't be. I'd just be myself, downmountain."
"That's all I've ever wanted." Trenon kisses him; Nilos tastes rainwater on his lips. "You."
Nilos sinks into the kiss, dizzied with exhaustion. He promised himself for the nine thousandth time he wouldn't do this, but the gentle curve of Trenon's lips tempted him. Trenon's kiss heats him past the possibility of chill and wet. If Trenon truly meant to run away with him downmountain, he would go. But sleeplessness whispers such promises. Trenon thinks breaking walls down is simpler than finding a hidden door.
"We could travel together," Trenon murmurs. "Advocat and healer..."
"Hmm..." Why point out the holes in that plan when he can kiss Trenon into silence? An apprentice can't even lay claim to the silver he earns. Even if a downmountain healer would be willing to take him as an apprentice--even if some city healer accepts him as a woman--no advocat would sing the contract song after he abandoned Tereos. Find a new master. So simple.
But it feels simple, with the pleasure hot and sweet between them. And for once, Trenon truly asked him, instead of pushing.
[[ϒ Until Nilos hears the scrape of boot on rock behind them.->seen]]
(link-goto: "ϒ When the sound comes, Trenon turns first.","child bride") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "a stormy faith.")[a stormy faith. When Trenon says Nilos knows more than his master, he means it. Trenon's belief buoys him, even when Nilos struggles to credit it. Where Larik would sway like a birch in a gale, Nilos would crack like a poplar. But Trenon might as well be the mountain itself, adamant and immovable.]
(Click-replace: " Nilos says.")[ Nilos says. They marry in threes in the city, the traders say. They also owe their profits and their place to their overholdings.]
]}$il[N]ilos can't find an adequate reply, so he kisses Trenon instead. If Trenon feels the ache in it, he doesn't let it show. His nose is cold, the tip damp, when he buries it against Nilos's neck.
Nilos listens to the rasp of his own breath. Trenon's lips linger against his jaw, then slip back to his mouth. When he and Trenon were children, these moments held as much thrill as pleasure. Nils's dreams of become a healer intermingled with dreams of being a weaver like Larik. At least Nils's parents would indulge a woman's interludes in the forest with Trenon, tease cheerfully rather than offer stony evasion.
Trenon's thumb finds the corner of Nilos's mouth, and Nilos dips his head to kiss it. Trenon's hands hold so much heat. His lips taste of wintergreen; his clothes smell faintly of wet horse. Nilos can't get carried away when they're standing three steps from the path. Even in this weather, too early for lambing or fawning, some lonely shepherd might still find them. The tilted boulder strewn with pine needles hardly makes an inviting pallet. Pine boughs cushion children's foolery, but they are--they have to be--too old for playful games. Still Nilos doesn't draw back. When was the last time Trenon held him like this? Not since he left for his spring tour of the villages-next, searching for work. His kiss tastes sweeter for the wait. Warm, and close, and undemanding; better comfort than his words.
[[ϒ Until Nilos hears the scrape of boot on rock behind them.->seen]]
(link-goto: "ϒ When the sound comes, Trenon turns first.","child bride") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "dreams of being a weaver like Larik.")[dreams of being a weaver like Larik. Nils could crochet a warm, serviceable quilt, and never envied Larik for the art glowing in her tapestries. There might be an emptiness in a weaver's life, but it was a familiar loneliness, one that already shadowed Nils's childhood. Both choices would be wrong, so it didn't matter which desire ended up tucked away, like a summer robe in a musty press.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "downmountain")[Nilos startles at the sudden scrape of boot on rock behind them.] A gangly child stands on the path below them. Trenon twists on his toe when Nilos stiffens. Cold air rushes between them, bleeding out the moment's warmth. Nilos can't help shooting Trenon an exasperated stare. //Let's tell all of Asaresta//, in one breath; and //Don't--they'll see us//, in the next. Nilos finally recognizes Kell--Larik's younger sibling.
How much did Kell see? A foolish, thoughtless kiss. Nilos reached out, and Trenon answered. But even alone, they never should have touched. Kell's wide stare, shifting into wincing disgust, gives answer enough.
Before Larik's illness, Nilos would have dismissed Kell out of hand as a placeless nuisance, but (if: (history:) contains "empty shell")[Kell helped him wrap Larik for her giving.](else:)[Kell haunted the sickroom during Larik's illness.] Losing a sister leaves behind traces of something deeper than place. The youngest child in iryu holding has grown, these past ninedays.
Trenon notices Kell's contemptuous sneer. With hot anger, he spits, "The bride ono."
"Trenon!" Nilos snaps. Kell doesn't deserve the ugly name. A child can't consent, and a woman should know better. //Child bride// implies that Kell strong-armed Trenon into a trap, as though Kell weren't just as coerced by parents and contract.
Trenon lashed out because Kell caught him and Nilos acting like children. Grown men don't sneak into the woods for pleasure.
Kell's ashen face sets stubbornly. Children can't retaliate against place-insults, having no place to offend; but that doesn't stop Kell from saying, with level scorn, "You don't care that Larik is dead."
Larik's absence looms suddenly larger than the mountain. Tereos was right. A healer owes his comfort to the holding after a vigil. Instead Nilos indulged his self-pity, seeking out comfort for himself. Kell didn't just lose a sister today, but freedom as well. After Larik's giving, her holding would start wrangling in earnest not to lose the chance at Trenon's name. Anything not to pointlessly pay the betrothal's contract-breaking price, even use Kell as the balance-weight in their scales. As soon as Kell comes of age, Trenon will be offered a replacement betrothed. Kell's a spring lamb dragged to the butcher.
Shame ices Nilos's heart. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'll miss her. More than you know."
Kell's defiant stare doesn't soften. Trenon won't find it easy to pierce that stubbornness. "So you play invert in the forest rather than mourn her."
Nilos puts a hand on Trenon's arm, gripping tightly. Trenon's defence will only make things worse. Kell is too young to attend Larik's giving. The rest of the family left Kell behind after Larik's shell was wrapped. Kell must be defying parental orders to climb up to the overlook above the chamois pastures, where the giving cliff can be seen across the ravine.
"You're going to watch," Nilos says.
Kell's mouth tightens grimly.
Trenon laughs shortly, appreciating Kell's audacity. "Well, if you're that feisty, we might yet make the most of a ghostless marriage," he says.
"I won't marry you," Kell snaps. "No matter what they say."
Trenon smiles gently. "I'd love to see you try."
(link: "ϒ Kell has no reason to take Trenon's sincerity as anything other than mocking. With a twist of boot heel, Kell pushes past them, upwards.")[(if: (random: 1,2) is 1)[(goto: "snarl")](else:)[(goto: "snare")] ]
(link: "ϒ Nilos feels emptier than ever, wrung dry of words. He's not ready to slink home, but where else is there to go?")[(if: (history:) contains "herbary")[(goto: "going home again")](else:)[(goto: "herbary")]
[[ϒ "I'll stay a bit," he says. Kell may find his comfort warmer after watching the ravens stoop to Larik's shell.->conciliation]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "the ugly name.")[the ugly name. //Ono// refers to children, who can't sing contracts, while //bride// carries the feminine inflection. Together they imply a sordid seduction.]
(click-replace: "bride ono")[ $il[child bride] ]
(click-replace: "Child bride")[ $il[Bride ono] ]
] }$il[N]ilos draws his cloak close against the sharpening wind. If he settles the fabric rightwards, no one is here to notice. He closes his eyes and leans back against a pine trunk, but soon he's shivering too convulsively to sleep. With trembling fingers, he sweeps the mulch from the boulder and builds a small fire of old man's beard and smallwood, lighting it with his flint striker. The first wisp of flame grows to a crackling fire. Nilos leans over it, close enough to smell the singe of cloth as it dries him. He bathes in the sharp smoke, eyes watering.
Eventually, Kell returns.
Nilos says nothing, although Kell slants an irritated look in his direction. After a wary moment, Kell steps off the path and settles next to him, shoulder to shoulder as he sat next to Trenon earlier. Bog mud coats Kell's boots from crashing through the willow thickets below the sheep fields. Rain soaks the short, faded child's cloak.
"I thought you were Larik's friend," Kell mutters at last.
"I loved her." Nilos meets Kell's eyes, stormy grey defiance in a thin, brown face. "But not as spouses love each other. Not as children love."
Kell sneers. "I know what love is." Picking up a twig, Kell holds its tip in the edge of the fire, until the needles smoke. "She was promised to Trenon, but your //love// didn't stop you from playing games behind her back." Venom there, shoulders bunching. "Fathers and mothers may want me to marry him, but I won't."
Nilos stares into the white wisps of ash blowing from his fire. "Mothers and fathers don't always listen, when you're coming of age."
"They can't make me be Larik."
"It's not about taking her place," Nilos says. The betrothal contract demands a substitute, either silver or child. Kell's family has silver aplenty, but they may find it easier to sacrifice a child.
Kell ignores his lie. "I plan to apprentice to a trader."
"Ah," Nilos says, wondering how much his wistfulness shows. "A woman."
Kell rolls eyes at his repetition. "That's what I said. I understand Larik's betrothal has a high contract-breaking price. But mothers--Peris wants me to be Larik. And I won't."
If Kell already intended to come of age as a woman, then perhaps a match with Trenon won't be such a burden. Nilos frowns at the child, and knows he's lying again. Kell can set soft lips as stubbornly; holds the possibility of anger as summer-storm harsh as Trenon's. If they marry they might as well strike flint in a coal-gas mine.
"I won't try to prove fertility with him," Kell says, tossing the smouldering twig into the fire, and dismissing the betrothal vows with the same finality. "As soon as I apprentice, I'm travelling downmountain."
"They say it's different there," Nilos says. Trenon tells stories of the cities downmountain sometimes, but he always ends with a wry twist on //they say//. "What if you meet a man to trade with?"
Kell snorts, then seeing his serious face, stares at him like he's grown another head. "What do you mean?"
"Traders meet strange things."
"I'd rather trade with a man than stay in Asaresta all my life." Kell probably imagines wringing riches from a man's trading.
Nilos nods distantly. His small fire fades to ashes and smoke. Damp chill sneaks under his rumpled cloak.
After a moment, Kell nudges his shoulder. "Are you really an invert?"
Nilos laughs at the frank evaluation on Kell's face. Larik's sibling has grown up. "No," he says, with perfect truth. A woman who loves a man can't be called an invert. Trenon accepts the invert label, takes pride in it. Nilos allows it, since he has no hope of recognizing himself outside it.
Kell favours him with a skeptical look. "My friend Trayis came of age first. We haven't done anything since then."
So Kell has--or had--a sweetheart ono. If the two of them had any dreams of marrying, Kell coming of age as a woman will end them. Or perhaps, unlike him, Kell's Trayis will be willing to wait a year until Kell's marriage opens to love spouses. "And if you become a woman, too," Nilos asks, "will you forget her?"
"We won't stop being friends just because we aren't lovers." Kell's insistence mixes disgust with an odd wistfulness.
"I haven't forgotten Trenon," Nilos says, "yet." Coming of age means negotiating place with people who have never judged you before. Friendships may survive, but suddenly the surfaces skim over with ice, like winter ponds.
"Listen," Kell says, shrugging away the topic. "I don't plan to speak up, about you being an invert. I'd tell on Trenon," Kell adds, with flat sincerity, "if it would end the betrothal. But that wouldn't be fair to you. And I won't weight the scale for later. I wanted you to know."
Trenon used to boast about getting caught. Defiant, goading, he insisted his parents wouldn't dare disown him; Dalor needed him too badly to censure him. Sometimes it seemed that Trenon believed that if their relationship was revealed, they'd simply stand forward while all Asaresta gave them place and admitted they'd been wrong. The reality struck him harder than he anticipated. If standing up means losing everything... "Thank you," he says to Kell, after too much time has passed.
Kell shrugs off his courtesy. "I saw them give Larik--her shell."
Nilos's throat aches.
"I wish..." Kell scowls at him. "I thought you could save her."
"I did everything I could," Nilos says tiredly. Kell's hope strikes a childish note, the first one since Larik's death, but if hope is childish then he's no better. He pours dirt over the scattered ashes and stirs to smother the last of the fire. The deepening grey under the pines holds more of night than rainclouds. The thought of his deep-downed pallet, spread with one of Larik's wool blankets, makes Nilos close his eyes for a long second.
Kell stands and jumps down from the boulder, boots skidding easily in the mud. "Healers need new songs, instead of only offering a vigil." Kell's a shadow on the path ahead. "Would you do something differently, next time?"
Nilos swallows an empty laugh. "Let's go back," he says, and presumes on his place to add, "You need dry clothes." He doesn't answer aloud, but he knows.
{(link: "ϒ He sang his obedience to Tereos.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)
(if: $responsible > $selfish)[(goto: "homeside")]
] }
{(link: "ϒ Larik asked his promise to live for himself.")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)
(if: $responsible =< $selfish)[
(goto: "hearthside")] ] } {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "a man's trading")[a man's trading--watchword for snatching a deal]
] }$il[S]ixty years ago Nilos's holding claimed land for their deepstone in a rocky dip on the east side of Asaresta. Nilos's grandmothers built the deepstone of well-mortared fieldstone. Over the nineyears, the thatch took on a charcoal patina. Wind runs up against the walls and whistles past the eaves, but inside, the deepstone stays snug. When the holding can scrape together extra silver at the end of the summer season, it goes towards new outbuildings, with cool undercrofts and barrel vaults above, to hold food and season lumber.
A wide path jaunts up from Asaresta to the ever-open guest door, but Nilos traces the quieter deer path that creeps around the village's contours to arrive here, at the hearthside door. He kneels at the edge of the dooryard and unlaces his boots, tugging the thongs out of the left row of eyelets. He stands up and unbelts his tunic beneath his cloak, letting it flap open. The wind pierces to his armpits and chills sweat on his skin.
Nilos closes his eyes, swallows. And pulls his tunic rightwards.
He ties the new knot looser. His palms tingle bright and cold. The weight of the knot falls to his right hip; he can feel it against his right wrist when he lets his arm hang free. Yet he can't stop his fingers from fiddling with it, touching the new dip and tug of the belt as he moves. His feet feel slack inside his boots' sheepskin linings, but poised, ready, gripping mountain crags like a chamois.
Nilos watches the flicker of shadows through the hearthside shutters--bodies passing between the candles and windows. On the hearthside, his mothers will give him a guest's welcome: cordial, puzzled, and polite. The thought of walking in the homeside door and taking his place among his fathers and marriage-brothers pierces his skin like icy needles. The deer path circles around irlu deepstone, past the ploughshares that Dayon promises will be cleaned of rust and sharpened before spring. The homeside is just as bright, just as warm. At least there Nilos has place.
With a sharp tug, Nilos yanks the knot on his tunic open. Leaving it gaping, he strides to the deepstone.
(link: "ϒ Heels lifting in his unlaced boots, he veers towards the hearthside door.")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)[(goto: "hearthside")] ]
(link: "ϒ Taking a deep breath, he presses his thumb down on the homeside latch, and opens the door.")[(set: $responsibility to it +1)[(goto: "homeside")] ] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "the left row of eyelets")[their man's knot]
(Click-replace: "rightwards")[to the woman's side]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "patronage")[ $il[K]elil gives courtesy when Sirol opens the homeside door. In a proper deepstone, rarely more than a step separates homeside and hearthside. Here, standing in the dark dooryard, the candles behind Sirol throw his face into shadow, so that Kelil can't read him when she asks after Trenon. "He mentioned going for a healers's song," Sirol says.
Sirol--all the outriders--must know that Trenon wanted a brew to speed a miscarriage.
"Thank you," Kelil mutters, dredging up the civility. Zayelik's rebuke stings sharper, accusing her of indifference, or worse, a placeless grudge against her husband. Kelil's not the baby's mother. Anyone can look at Trenon and count the ninedays. She shouldn't have to care about a baby that isn't hers, certainly not to soothe Zayelik's sensibilities.
Why](else:)[ $il[W]hy] couldn't Trenon be sensible about his situation instead of running off on his own? Kelil shoves through the deepstone's postern gate. If Zayelik hadn't run Kelil off her feet every waking moment the past few ninedays, she might have supported him better. She could have persuaded him to bring his baby into iryu holding. Reminded him that once he fulfils their marriage contract, they can proceed to ignore each other for the rest of their lives without reproach. Forget future love spouses, or any kind of meeting of the minds. With their vows met, they could live in the same deepstone and never speak.
None of the city's grandness shows after sundown. The stink of the street slaps Kelil in the face. Buildings loom along the road, so crowded and closed that she can't tell where one deepstone ends and another begins. She can barely see the stars overhead.
She asks directions at every corner, resentment compounding with every snide glance at her mountaineer's clothes. She makes her way to the nearest banlieue market, a desultory huddle of stalls. People gather around a tev maker's cauldron resting on a small brazier. For a silverwhit, the tev maker mixes bowls of plain wheat tev with the buyer's choice of meats, spices, and sauces. Kelil asks after healers, and the tev maker tells her that the nearest one is in a different banlieue, a considerable distance downriver. The tev-maker, kindly enough, tells her morning would be a better time to seek him out.
Kelil trudges back to the echoing deepstone, getting worse slop on her boots than any barn ever left. If Trenon ends his bearing with a healer's brew, it only shows what a poor father he'd make. Kelil can remember Grenor's firm hands, stroking her back after a nightmare; she remembers Maron's comforting roundness, holding her gently after a bad fall from Tyn's back, reminding her to breathe. Her child deserves better than Trenon.
Slipping into the hearthside, cold and dark, Kelil stumbles and cracks a shin on her rope-net bed. Moths have chewed the blankets and in the moment, Kelil can't remember where Sirol stored the camping bedrolls. She goes to bed in her unbrushed leathers, feet swollen and aching. She falls into sleep like a rock pitching from a height into a deep mountain lake.
In the morning, Zayelik raps on the door frame and tells her she has a candlemark to be prepare before they head for the market. Sleep didn't touch Kelil's exhaustion and somehow her feet hurt more than they did the night before. She stuffs them, throbbing, back into her boots. She arrives in the hearthroom to a cold grate. Zayelik waves impatiently at a sack of uncooked tev oats, then goes out to consult with Sirol in the barn. Everyone--Zayelik, her outriders, her city friends--expects Kelil to pitch in like a porter, and yet to cook and host like a second wife.
Kelil boils the oats to soupy mush. Well, who knew wheat was any different from barley? Zayelik calls the outriders in to eat on the hearthside, and Trenon drags in after them. Kelil studies him, taking in his softening jawline, his sun-pinked nose. She couldn't find him last night, but if he drank a miscarriage brew, he wouldn't be well enough to add a second scoop of pork broth to his tev. She knows enough about bearing to know that.
It should have been Larik's baby, not Kelil's. Larik would love a child, even Trenon's. Larik wanted to throw herself into the breach of Trenon and Nilos's invertism. All Kelil wants is to provide fathers and mothers with the grandchild they bargained for. Maron will raise the baby, if Trenon won't.
They mount up and ride through the endless brown city, stone block on stone block, dusty, shit-crusted, seething with so many people that poor Flyn keeps starting and rolling her eyes. Zayelik points out landmarks that slip from Kelil's mind the moment after, leading the way to the traders' market. The street opens into a square bigger than a barley field. Instead of the climbing twist of Asaresta market, or the clutter of stalls in the banelieue market, the city traders lay out their stalls in rows. Rippling awnings touch overhead, creating shaded, suffocating avenues. Sheds and worktops line the narrow aisles with more goods than Kelil has ever seen in one place. Bright, fragrant spices; a barrel of salt; preserves made from early sweet berries and last summer's apples; tools and clothes and seed. She should be excited, craning to look, but instead she grips Flyn's reins tighter and stares at Zayelik's back.
Zayelik chooses--or was assigned to it by her patrons, not that she cares to enlighten Kelil about the market's organization--an open space between a coppersmith and a knife seller. Sirol sticks Kelil in place of a ridgepole, holding the awning, while he and the others set up the stall. Kelil seethes. She's meant to be a trader's apprentice, and she has yet to touch either silver or scales. Zayelik wants to humble her instead of teaching her.
They lay out the mountain goods to their best advantage. Sirol dismisses the men to their leisure, leaving Kelil to guard the stall. By the time Zayelik returns, trailing Trenon, Kelil's stomach grumbles for her missed midday meal. Still, she sits up straight. Finally, Zayelik will begin trading, for the first time in what feels like a season. Kelil all but holds her breath. Zayelik ducks under the worktop to enter the stall, and promptly proceeds to settle on a camp chair for a nap.
Trenon, standing in the aisle, laughs in Kelil's face. "It's too hot for trading," he says.
"Then why didn't we trade in the morning?" Kelil demands, frustrated.
Zayelik cracks open an eye. "It's time to look," she says. "Wander. Observe. Don't show too much interest. Trading happens in the evening."
Kelil sighs. If her stomach weren't so empty, she'd envy Zayelik her nap, but permission to wander appeals more than guarding the bales. She dips out of the stall and starts down the aisle.
Trenon follows at her heels.
She drags her feet, and Trenon keeps her pace. "What do you want?"
Trenon shrugs. Sweat slips down Kelil's back. Vaguely hungry, she looks for a tev maker, though what she really wants is to throw herself naked in a glacier-melt slough.
"A weaver," Trenon says, with a flick of an eyebrow to Kelil's right.
The woman drowsing behind the stall's wide worktop must be the trader, but the others with her: Kelil knows them by their callused fingers, their dye-touched cuffs. But here, the colours. She's seen them all before, but never so bright. Kelil reaches out to touch before she remembers Zayelik's admonition not to show interest. Eyes glued to her feet, she keeps her heat-dampened pace as she moves past.
"Did you see that fabric?" she demands. Who cares why Trenon followed her--she'd ask a mouse, if one were near.
Trenon grunts. "Cotton," he says.
"It was so thin! Softer than linen," she says. She saw a length of undyed children's fabric so gossamer it must stay cool even in these muggy city summeers. "And that blue, on the woman's robe? Woad doesn't come close to that." What wouldn't Peris give to learn from those dyers! And Varin--she'd not only touch the cloth, she'd bury her face in it. "Even Larik couldn't weave anything so fine," she says. A twinge of longing tightens her chest.
Trenon nods. Not that he cares about cloth, or dye. Or Larik.
Kelil takes her waterskin from her belt and takes a lukewarm mouthful. Trenon never stays quiet so long. This morning at breakfast, he ate abstractedly, staring through walls. Maybe he doesn't have the price to pay the healer for the brew he wants. Kelil doesn't plan to lend him the silver, but remembering Zayelik's injunction, she reaches for compassion. She wants more than anything to share the city with Larik. On some level, Trenon must feel the same. "Do you miss Nilos?"
Trenon curls around a frown, the corners of his mouth crimping down. Kelil braces herself for the lash of his sarcasm. "Do you think I could have kept bearing a secret, up there?" he asks.
His quiet answer sets her on the back foot. "No," she says. Belatedly, she offers him her waterskin, and he takes it as grudgingly. "I thought you only came for yourself," she says, in pinched concession.
Trenon scoffs. He deep pull on the waterskin, then caps it and hands it back. "It would only be a matter of time. Then whose fault would it be when Nilos's master refused him promotion? Or if people simply stopped asking him for brews?"
Kelil rubs the sting of sweat out of her eyes. No one in Asaresta spoke directly about Trenon and Nilos, and as a child Kelil was certainly ignorant, but Asaresta must have known. After all, Larik planned to marry Trenon in order to protect Nilos from rumours. But a baby, an early baby, would thaw that reserve faster than spring sun eating through a snowbridge. No one would say a word, but everyone would know. Trenon left Asaresta to avoid implicating Nilos, as well as save his own place.
Shame squirms low in Kelil's stomach. She tucks her thumbs in her belt and keeps walking. "Cotton," she says, easing back onto stable ground. "Why don't traders bring it upmountain?" She tenses, expecting mockery from him for changing the subject, but Trenon strides beside her, paying no attention to the stalls around them.
"You could load your mules with it," he says.
"Zayelik wouldn't let me," Kelil says. "No one brings cloth upmountain."
Trenon shrugs, his careless, pointed shrug. "Your holding would profit by selling it on, wouldn't they?"
He refuses to claim iryu holding for himself, but Kelil lets the insult slide. "It must be too expensive, or too bulky." Zayelik is a master trader. She wouldn't miss an opportunity if it was feasible.
The dent between Trenon's eyebrows softens into thoughtfulness. "She carries heavier things, by commission. Rocks, on sledges--was there profit in that?"
Trenon means the mosaic floor in iryu's family room. Zayelik transported the sandstone blocks that mothers interspersed with mountain slate tiles. Ordinarily Kelil would think he was pushing his usual line--that her holding place-grubs by buying ridiculous luxuries. But he answered honestly when she spoke of Nilos, and followed her lead when she backed away from the topic. He hopes to ease something out of her with his semblance of respect.
"Peris is a master dyer," Trenon continues. "That blue dye--they call it indigo. A small cask wouldn't be heavy."
"Zayelik has veto over my trading," Kelil says. As Trenon knows very well--he offered it to her in exchange for his presence in her pack train.
Trenon shrugs. "Ask her. See what she says. Learn something, apprentice."
Kelil was waiting for his place-mask to slip, but Trenon aims his insults better than a birding arrow, so that the hurt comes as a surprise. He can see Zayelik's lackluster teaching. He knows the outriders treated Kelil like a junior labourer on the trip. His support is so obnoxious that Kelil feels strangely comforted--even if he came to the city for Nilos's sake, he hasn't really changed.
[[ϒ If she confronts Zayelik with the trade she wants, the answer will be more lecture than lesson.->no profit]]
[[ϒ Trenon will support her against Zayelik, for a price.->admonition]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "know that Trenon wanted a brew to speed a miscarriage.")[know that Trenon wanted a brew to speed a miscarriage. Why else would Trenon sneak downmountain with a wife he apparently hates?]
(click-replace: "he offered it to her in exchange for his presence in her pack train.")[he offered it to her in exchange for his presence in her pack train. Kelil knows masters often ask for veto, to rein in impetuous apprentices, but she resents Trenon anyway. He has place as Zayelik's //guest//, while Kelil drudges like an outrider.]
]}$il[Z]ayelik takes one look at the weavers' stall as she and Kelil pass it on the way to the tev seller's for a late afternoon lunch. "No," she says.
She buys Kelil's patience with a bowl of tev. Kelil takes a cautious mouthful of the richer, milder meat of downmountain stock: pork and bison, not as stringy as chamois. The tev doesn't really taste like tev, flavoured with sour buttermilk instead of creamy goats' milk, and peppers rather than juniper berries.
Cooler air eases through the market aisles as the sun descends. Kelil eats slowly, hoping that Zayelik's blunt refusal has a better reason than slapping down her apprentice. Maybe she wants to cool the weavers' expectations about how much they're willing to pay.
Outriders latch candle lanterns to the awning rafters as they return to Zayelik's stall. The air tastes of dust and smoke. Two women in intricate cotton robes stop by, and Zayelik blandly sells them scrimshaw puzzles as "upmountain curiosities." She pockets a full silverweight for a few pieces of whittled driftwood. Another woman, with a younger man on her arm, fingers a flawed, cloudy turquoise; Zayelik weights her silver scales so heavily that Kelil could shake the buyer for a fool.
After clasping hands with the last buyer, Zayelik sits back on her camp chair. "You're supposed to be a trader. Why won't I load your mules with cotton?"
Kelil slumps against the worktop. Zayelik's lessons involve cutting Kelil down at the knees. "Weavers already have more than enough cloth upmountain." Between sheep and chamois, weavers export more than they keep.
Zayelik nods approval.
"Cotton is softer, though," Kelil insists. "Lighter than the chamois fleece we brought downmountain."
"It's expensive," Zayelik says. "Even here in Sareya it's expensive. It comes from another city, much further south. How many people on the streets here do you see wearing it?"
"Not many." Kelil frowns, remembering the two women in great flowing shawls of the stuff. Their boots shine, despite the city's muck; they let silver fall from their pouches like a smallholder might serve tev to her guests--as though the ladle could never scrape bottom. Not the usual run of city dweller, those in short linen vests and pants cut ragged at the knee, wearing rope-twist shoes rather than full boots.
"I trade in chamois fleece because it is light enough, and warm enough, that there's a market for it, both woven and and as thread," Zayelik says. "But if I brought cotton upmountain, I'd have to convince your holding to pay nine times the price of a linen shirt."
Kelil's stomach sinks. Nine times? "Iryu holding would love it," she insists.
Zayelik snorts. "Would they love the competition from a cloth importer?"
"No," Kelil says slowly. (if: $decoy is true)[Is Zayelik hoping to fill that gap in the market herself when she moves upmountain?] Peris mutters imprecations against overmountain traders who flood Asaresta market with thin wool. She'd froth if someone--a city someone--improved so thoroughly on the market's available quality. She'd snicker to hear the price.
Zayelik hands across her empty bowl for Kelil to return to the tev-maker, closing the conversation. They return to Zayelik's deepstone, leaving one of Sirol's men to guard the stall. Once again, Zayelik guests with her city friends--well, city patrons. She dresses for dinner in a linen guesting robe with a fine, delicate lawn, as good as any Larik could weave. Some downmountain master dyed it. The glorious spring green must have taken several washes, first in blue, then in an iron mordant to overlay yellow. But it's not cotton, not as light, not as lively. Seeing Zayelik dressed for guesting makes Kelil more determined to at least try bringing cotton cloth upmountain.
[[ϒ Larik would have wanted her to.->offer]]
[[ϒ There must be something that will change Zayelik's mind.->test]] $il[T]renon sleeps, not on a pallet, but deep in a rope-net bed. The down tick sinks so softly that he doesn't care he only has his smoke-scented bedroll to cover him. When he wakes, he checks with Sirol, who acts as Zayelik's water keeper, then draws a cask of silty water from the well in the courtyard. He scrubs until his sunburn peels off in sheets.
For the first time in ninedays, he finds his appetite hearty in the morning. He spoons extra pork fat over his morning tev, to cover the pasty texture of downmountain wheat. Around him, the outriders laugh and jostle over their bowls. Their work ends once Zayelik's market stall opens and Sirol gives them their leisure. They keep Kelil jumping, teasing her for her cooking, and ignoring her attempts to rally with them.
Eventually, Zayelik dismisses them, and waves Sirol off with Kelil in tow to claim her space in the market square. She lingers over tea, nursing, Trenon suspects, a lovely hangover from her patrons' welcome last night. Unlike Ralon, who rarely speaks before he empties his mug, Zayelik gestures Trenon to take the seat across from her. "I heard you went out last night."
Trenon grunts and turns over his mug, tapping out the lees on the trestle. "I don't recall that I'm contracted to you."
"No, you're my guest," Zayelik says, with an amused twist on the word. Trenon probably crafted the first apprenticeship song to include hosting duties. "But I don't suppose you want to worry your wife."
"I doubt she noticed."
Zayelik smiles an acknowledgement. "I noticed on her behalf. She was rather frazzled by the time you got back."
Kelil came of age less than a season ago. The idea that Trenon might ask her for permission--for anything--rankles like a burr. She needn't worry about a man grown, and Trenon won't ring down the hearthside chimes to announce his every coming and going.
Zayelik offers him a box of dried leaves--mint, with a whiff of lavender. "So you discovered you can't act alone in the city."
Trenon looks up sharply. "What do you mean?"
"We take our holding obligations quite seriously here," Zayelik says. "Who did you see? Jeramol?"
From her calm smile, she anticipates his explosion. Trenon clenches his jaw rather than ask how she knows. She guessed he was bearing before they left Asaresta. Three ninedays in close company confirmed her suspicions. The brew he sought was no secret from her.
While he stews, she moves to the sink, a deep enamelled basin with a lead pipe leading to the street's open sewer. She works the pump lever until the gushing water loses its brown tint, then fills the kettle and sets it on the hottest part of the stove. "You see a patronage tie and you assume a braid," she says. "Upmountain that works because each holding has space enough to claim the land they need. But city holdings gather in webs, and only one holding can be the spider."
"They do things differently downmountain?" Trenon suggests, throwing her words back at her.
"Look at it from Jeramol's point of view," Zayelik says. "He's a smallholding healer. He deals with local concerns mostly. But the holding he's contracted to stretches its breathlines throughout the city."
Trenon guessed as much already. Anyone might owe a baby to their holding, by contract or by fosterage. Or the opposite: a labourer might owe their body's work, unrestricted by bearing. Jeramol would risk his patrons' censure if he gave any song without assurances. Trenon shrugs resentfully. "I could drag anyone in dressed in a mountaineer's clothes, and pay them silver to vouch for me."
When the kettle whistles, Zayelik pours for him, ignoring his stupidity. Anyone can lie, and anyone can be discovered. No advocat will sing contracts for a proven song-breaker. Trenon took the risk because he planned to return upmountain. Outriders stay ahead of their pasts that way, contracting for one-way journeys. "It's my baby," he says. "I'll bear, or not, how I like."
"You act like Kelil isn't here to ask," Zayelik says.
Trenon wraps long fingers around his mug, letting the heat sink into his hands. "She won't help me." She made that more than clear when he first told her he was bearing.
Zayelik nods in infuriating agreement.
"You don't care if I bear this baby," Trenon snaps. "What's your interest, trader?"
"I don't care whether you bear or not," she says. "Declare yourselves an independent holding. Then Kelil can honestly give permission for the song."
Zayelik has abandoned subtlety, apparently. Trenon squeezes down on his mug until his palms burn. He should have seen that solution. He pushes the tea away, letting it slop over the edges. Ask for help--as if it's that simple."You've wanted us to declare independence ever since you took Kelil as your apprentice. Why?"
Zayelik watches without flinching, then, considerately, pushes the maple sugar across the trestle to him. "You're a good advocat, Trenon," she says, "but you can't sing a chorus alone."
[[ϒ There is no harmony Kelil can offer that Trenon couldn't sing better alone.->offer]]
[[ϒ He swallows his venom and spoons himself curl of sugar. "If you need a contract from an independent advocat," he mocks, "you'd do better to ask."->test]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Trenon probably crafted the first apprenticeship song to include hosting duties.")[Trenon probably crafted the first apprenticeship song to include hosting duties. As Zayelik's guest, he doesn't owe her place, nor does she have to offer him protection.]
(Click-replace: "As if it's that simple.")[As if it's that simple. If they declare independence for a single song, they'll be left vulnerable afterwards to any patron willing to feed them. Kelil won't agree to that.]
]}$il[A]fter Zayelik leaves on horseback for her hosts' deepstone, Kelil crosses the dooryard carrying her excuse, the evening tea tray. Bringing food, the hearthside's purview, she needn't ask for permission to enter. She bangs down the kettle in the men's sitting room.
"Trenon," she starts, and answers the outriders' grins with a frown.
"Need directions to the pleasure room?" Jiron asks, with a smirk that plays at innocent.
"We're married, not rabbits," Trenon says. He looks as irritated as Kelil feels, which helps, strangely.
Jiron laughs, a sharp taunt. "Well, I know what I come to the city for, and it's not the summer heat," he says.
Kelil says to the air, "You could join me. On the hearthside." The request wouldn't sound unusual if everyone didn't already know that their marriage is ghostless.
Trenon follows her, his walk carrying a hint of a roll, as if he just dropped from the saddle. Kelil finds the hearthside parlour dark, with no fire laid. She forgot to ask the hearthgirl Zayelik hired to do it. Peris took care of the family room back home. Kelil's a first wife herself now, even if she's a member of iryu holding. The hearthside is her responsibility. Wrinkling her nose, Kelil tells Trenon to sit while she fetches flint and kindling. Trenon falls into a chair with a grunt.
With quick hands Kelil slivers a firestarter and sparks the flint. Bent over the grate, between puffs from the bellows to brighten the glowing wood, she says, "I want to bring some of that cotton home."
"And Zayelik said no."
Kelil tightens her lips. The fire catches, and she stands up, prowling around the dark room. She sparks the flint, lighting a few tapers in their intricate, green-tarnished holders. "I told her iryu would buy it from her."
"You've been an apprentice for less than a season and Zayelik's been trading upmountain for nineyears," Trenon says. "She wants you for something, and it's not to load your mules with cloth that won't sell."
"So I need to convince her," Kelil says, ignoring his irony.
Trenon sighs. "Who are you doing this for?"
"For iryu!" Kell says, turning to him, surprised. "Peris--the dyes--" She waves a hand, and finishes, "Can you imagine Varin opening one of those bales and seeing the cloth?"
"Larik's dead," Trenon says, staring blue at her in the flickering light.
"I know that." Kelil sets the striker down on the mantle, resisting the urge to throw it in his face. She sits down across from him, anger prickling in her palms. Trenon wants to gaff her like a sturgeon. She meets his eyes. "If I promise her a monopoly, she has to agree. Iryu would buy the cotton at her price. We'd be the ones who market it. As a luxury. Iryu takes on the risk!"
Trenon spreads his knees and slips a hand beneath his left-knotted belt. For a moment, Kelil believes there might be some ghost in their marriage after all--some sense that they could share goals, work to each other's benefit. He shatters that illusion when he speaks. "You don't want cotton for profit, for your sisters, for their colours. You're not doing this for Larik. You imagine your parents will love you, if you bring them cloth more beautiful than she could weave."
The fire heats the room too fast, and the city's heavy air hangs low in Kelil's lungs. When she imagines Varin opening the bale, is it pleasure or pride of place she feels? "That's not true," she grits out.
"Do you //want// to lose silver, against Zayelik's advice? Who is master?"
"She wants to play it safe!"
"And you want your ignorance to forgive you when you lose silver." Trenon sighs and shifts in his seat. "Why do you think I gave Zayelik veto over your trading? To hobble you? Or to rein in your arrogance?"
"You didn't favour me with a single note in that song that I didn't drag out of you!"
"Yes, you used my bearing against me wonderfully--"
"My apprenticeship isn't about you!"
"You have two mules and two riding ponies. You have the use of the silver Zayelik gets from your holding's wool, though that won't be much--sending wool downmountain midsummer--"
Kelil gropes for excuses. The load wasn't her choice. "Peris--"
"And you have to decide!" Trenon snaps. "Are you a trader, or are you iryu's go-between?"
"What's the difference?" Kelil asks sullenly.
"Profit for yourself, or transportation of a single holding's goods."
"I could be both," Kelil says stubbornly. "I owe iryu."
"They used you. Dumping their profits on cloth that won't sell--show some place!" Trenon cuts her off with a gesture. "If you're determined to do this, you need to offer Zayelik something that's worth her letting you load up with deadweight."
"Like what?"
"If you'd been paying attention, you'd know what she needs, trader."
Kelil grips the chair's arms until she feels the bright pain of blisters splitting. Trenon talks like Zayelik's needs are obvious--as though Zayelik hasn't shown Kelil her blandest trader face since the moment they left Asaresta. Except the morning she spoke of her holding obligations. "She's not independent," Kelil says grudgingly. The way Trenon calls her trader, like an insult, spurs her on. "It's more than a hosting debt. She owes place to her patrons. They're holding her back. She wanted a mountain apprentice--for what? Because I have no city ties?"
Trenon tilts his head, surprised acknowledgement that she saw that much. "So how can we use that? You know she thinks with her scales."
Kelil stutters over Trenon's casual //we//. "The deepstone was empty when we arrived."
Trenon frowns thoughtfully. His hand spreads over his stomach, and he looks down. "We could shore up her deepstone claim," he says. "If we decide to declare independence."
Kelil feels very young, and very inexperienced. "Even Larik wouldn't have done that before she was a master," she says. "Iryu wouldn't take us back."
"We don't need them if we have a city patron," he says. "We contract to Zayelik. We occupy her deepstone, she repays us from the silver you earn in your trades."
If she and Trenon break from iryu, Kelil will have as much place as Peris, who counts six nineyears and nine--eight--children. "Would you keep the baby?" she asks.
"It's not about that," he says, but his face shutters immediately; his hand creeps to his belt.
"It is to me," she says. "If we're a holding--well, are we even fertile together?"
Trenon grimaces. "This would be a business arrangement."
Kelil stares at him flatly. "We'll take more spouses, then. You can't do this pretending that Nilos is going to come downmountain one day, and that's the day you can give up on our holding."
He gives a slow dip of his chin. "All right."
She's not sure that he really agrees, but he stays solemn, so she goes on. "We choose spouses together. It can't be just you fall in love and roll right over me."
Trenon seems remote and cold, but that's better than flatly sarcastic. "If we're an independent holding," he says, and stops. He meets her eyes, and struggles not to retreat any farther. "A city healer won't help me miscarry without my holding's approval."
Kelil sits back. This is what Trenon has been waiting to reveal. "All this, so you can get your brew," she says flatly.
"Could you raise this child?" Trenon asks.
"I'm not a father," Kelil says uncomfortably.
"Neither am I. Not to this child."
"That doesn't make sense!"
Trenon leans forward, his eyes pale and intense in the firelight. "We might get something out of this, profit or place. We may convince Zayelik. I promise you, I will do everything an advocat can to make it stick. If we name ourselves a holding then in the future, yes, I will try. But not this time. Whether you understand or not."
Skepticism ices Kelil. Trenon's willing to break his vow to deliver a child to iryu holding. He doesn't care what it takes, even if it means turning Kelil against her parents. He's right in the particulars--their marriage allows them to declare independence; Maron promised her the profit from the wool sales; once they break away from iryu holding, //their// holding contracted for no baby. It's all true, yet Kelil feels used. Trenon is playing her game against her, using her desires to back her into a corner. There's no guarantee that their holding will succeed. No silver, and just the two of them! Upmountain no one would consider starting a holding without silver to hire field hands or women to build a deepstone. And all so that Trenon can subborn her word for his own good.
"No," she says. "I can't."
[[ϒ Maybe she's not much of a trader, if she can't find terms she can agree to.->postulant]]
[[ϒ Trenon asked her openly, and in all sincerity, for what he needed. Without it, he'll bear a child he doesn't want; one she's just as responsible for.->intercepted]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "The deepstone was empty when we arrived.")[The deepstone was empty when we arrived--she can't maintain a claim if she's not using it or can't prove she needs it.]
(click-replace: "I have no city ties")[I don't have any city patrons]
(click-replace: "and very inexperienced.")[and very inexperienced. People as young as her usually join established marriages, or stay within their parents' holding for years longer.]
(click-replace: "she repays us from the silver you earn in your trades.")[she doesn't claim her profit from your trades. We help her anticipate her market. In return, she acts as our patron, providing shelter, mules, a trading stake.]
]}$il[E]ven after a night's sleep, the journey to the city aches in Trenon's bones. Zayelik leaves the hearthroom without demanding that he take his malingering to the homeside. Trenon intends to crawl back onto his mattress and sleep through the thick hot day, but a candlemark finds him still staring into his untouched tea. He starts when Zayelik enters again, with a few dirt-smudged children lined up behind her. "I need some contracts," she says. "Something open-ended, renewable by the nineday on my approval. Hearthgirls to do the cooking, the boys to clean and see to the mules."
"Your patrons don't provide an advocat?" Trenon asks, less out of reluctance than cynicism. Zayelik's patrons would be happy to sing contracts to get her deepstone cleaned; they'd be less happy with her choice of labourers, a bedraggled collection of urchins she must have whistled off a street corner.
Zayelik gives her hawk's smile. "As my guest, will you indulge me?"
She leans heavily on the word guest. Her patrons must not only //provide// an advocat for these occasional contracts, they insist on one. Zayelik wouldn't easily find an advocat in the city willing to step on her patrons' toes. From advocat right on down to kitchen helper, she can't hire outside her overholding. But a guesting advocat isn't bound by patronage to any city holding. Trenon, unlike the hapless Jeramol, is free to act.
It seems Zayelik arranged this procedure to test Trenon's willingness to insist on his own independence. "What fee?" he asks. As Zayelik's //guest//, he is entitled to compensation.
Zayelik stares at him evenly. Perhaps she hoped to owe him favours rather than silver. "A whit per song."
Upmountain that would be an adequate payment for a standard contract, one which involved no innovation on the advocat's part. Given city prices, Trenon suspects Zayelik of underpaying him. But he needs the silver, and he has enough pride to bristle at her implication that he can't be trusted with any song more complicated than hiring a nineday labourer. "Fine," he says. "Who's first?"
Trenon took Zayelik's candidates for children, with their plainwoven clothes and hair too short for braids. But their tunics are tugged right or left by frayed twine, and they've tied their rope-twist shoes to match. Short hair itches less, he supposes, from nits or heat. A girl, not long past fifteen, steps forward.
Trenon places one hand on her bony shoulder, the other on Zayelik's. The song Zayelik wants is insultingly simple. If she is testing to see how willing a dupe Trenon will be to take the place of her patrons' advocat, a few filips will soon show her that his journeymanship is not for sale. Trenon explicitly gives the girl permission to eat two meals a day out of Zayelik's tev pot, and watches her eyes widen. Zayelik accepted her patrons' hosting last night, staying out until middlenight. She'll need to host them in return, and she won't want to scramble for cooks when she does. Trenon promises the girl an extra whit to stay late on an evening a threeday hence. He gives her freedom to buy food where she likes, contingent on a holding member setting the budget and approving the quality. Let the girl throw a few whits to her family if they can bring fresh supplies. If Zayelik wanted thoughtless obedience, she shouldn't have asked her guest to provide.
The girl's shoulder trembles under Trenon's before he finishes. The boys and the other girl Zayelik found begin to whisper with each other. Trenon raises his head and meets Zayelik's gimlet stare. Zayelik warned him once not to change a song on her. But she is cornered, and Trenon knows it, even if the details elude him. Most masters approve labour contracts as long as they feel assured the advocat is on their side. Zayelik feels assured of no such thing.
But if she wants urchins, then at least generous vows will buy her honest urchins. Cooks "taste" the tev whether their songs allow it or not. In Trenon's experience, more contract dissolutions are brought by masters than by labourers, and usually because the contract forced the labourers to sneak in the first place. If they're hungry they'll steal, and hungry contracts make for hungry work.
The girl all but swallows her promises in her haste, then holds her breath when Zayelik opens her mouth. With a glimmer of irony, Zayelik sings sour though she has good pitch. She agrees to the song's terms, and agrees again when Trenon repeats the contract for the other three. She dispatches the boys to beat tapestries and scrub floors, and the girls to a nearby banlieue market for provisions.
"Ready to see something of the city?" she asks Trenon.
Trenon swallows a groan. Zayelik showed far too much good humour over the songs for him to beg off, and as host she has the place to insist. She chooses to walk, a faint mercy. A fair distance upriver from her deepstone, two great thoroughfares--one that paces the river, and one that crosses it--pile together in a profusion of hawkers and traders. Zayelik strides through a maze of awning-lined aisles to her stall, where Kelil jumps up to greet them. A paltry scatter of knickknacks decorates Zayelik's worktop. Trenon raises an eyebrow at the sub-par jewelry, although it rests very prettily on a linen cloth: amethysts, a few dull garnets, and some wooden scrimshaw. Berin would spurn any trader who wanted to include her work in such a display.
Trenon glances at the nearest stalls. They show none of the sturdy, practical wares of the banlieue market. Decorative, yes; the full output of ninety holdings' work, hardly. No master would spend a day haggling over bits and bobs. The aisles barely allow room for a single mule, let alone two to pass with loaded manties. This whole busy square is a front.
With a villager's eagerness, Kelil holds her breath to see the great master at work. But Zayelik dismisses her to her leisure whether she wants it or not. Kelil ducks out of the stall like a kicked puppy. Curious, Trenon trails Kelil around the market, confirming his guesses. The square gives traders the place for introductions. The trading, and loading, must happen elsewhere. Kelil's black frustration shows she recognizes the legerdemain, though perhaps not how the trick is played.
Zayelik brought him, deliberately, to see the market. She ensured he understood city patronage ties, to the extent of trampling on his advocat's place to explain. And she throws him into Kelil's company, as if she, like iryu holding, believes they might gain a ghost to their marriage if given time enough.
A single advocat can't sing a chorus. But no matter how many voices a contract requires, an advocat guides it. An advocat must be sympathetic to a patron without undercutting the vows for the other party. Zayelik wants his sympathy, and his independence.
Midday, the market drowses under the city's breathless heat. Trenon returns to the deepstone and settles in the homeside parlour. He stares into the black hearth while the outriders clean and mend their gear around him. At sunset, the girl serves dinner. She gives Trenon courtesy so often that Jiron asks if he came to the city to prospect for love spouses.
The homeside chimes ring, and Sirol rises to open the door to Zayelik, and behind her, a guest. She gives Sirol courtesy and asks permisison to enter. Sirol, no fool, waves her in. The man who follows her is a master advocat, by his guesting robes. The vaunted patron, showing himself at last. By the time Sirol lights the parlour's candles, the other outriders have remembered chores, gone in search of lost items, or were already on the verge of calling it a night. The girl arrives a moment later, carrying three mugs and a kettle on a tray.
"Trenon, journeyman advocat, of iryu holding," Zayelik introduces him. Trenon masks a wince at hearing Kelil's holding announced as his own. "Hezibor, master advocat, of irdanu holding."
Irdanu--the holding that Jeramol's smallholding is obliged to, and Zayelik as well. Irdanu holding sits at the center of at least one city web. Trenon gives Hezibor courtesy and then sits back while Zayelik conducts the hosting niceties, pouring tea and urging Hezibor to accept her poor tev.
Upmountain, Zayelik would lose place if she hosted in the homeside parlour rather than a dedicated family room. But her deepstone, extensive though it is, matches Trenon's first impression: a warehouse. Her ingots of copper and iron, the casks of alum, even the wool Kelil brought downmountain as her portion, have disappeared into storage. Zayelik manages three or four trips upmountain per year. She can afford to stockpile goods in this empty deepstone until she finds an interested buyer. She never mentions wives or husbands, but someone must backstop her trading. Trenon needn't look any farther than Hezibor.
Hezibor draws out a small-bellied kalimba and flicks its tines with his thumbs. The melody sounds like a holding contract, overlain with a wedding harmony. Hezibor plays with the intervals, trying different chords in one tricky spot: the obligations of the holder to the holding. If Trenon knew more about city songs--no thanks to Dalor--he'd be able to tell how Hezibor wants to shape the unsung vow.
After a time, Hezibor lays the instrument aside. "How long are you going to keep insisting on these mountain trips?"
Zayelik shrugs and sips her tea. "Aren't I fulfilling my vows?"
Trenon wonders why they want to have this conversation in front of him. Zayelik chose where to host, but Hezibor raised the subject. They each have reasons for wanting an audience.
"An empty deepstone serves no one," Hezibor says. "Half the year you leave irdanu responsible for keeping the riffraff out; the other half, you hire the riffraff instead of our own people."
Zayelik shrugs, but doesn't defend her labour contracts. "What changes would you suggest?" she says.
The patron-threat that Zayelik has been dancing around becomes clear in an instant. Hezibor wants to push a claim on Zayelik's deepstone. Holdings must prove to an advocat that their needs justify their claims. Upmountain that means moving field cairns each spring as holdings grow or decrease. Zayelik must claim this deepstone by the same principle. Her travelling leaves her open to a counterclaim, especially by a larger, more powerful holding. Trenon frowns, remembering Hezibor's fiddling with the lap piano. "Sounds to me like he'd like have you marry into irdanu, and snare your profits directly."
"I trade independently," Zayelik says mildly, but she's more concerned than she'd like to let on. She thought about moving upmountain in the case that her deepstone claim failed. Now she thinks Trenon's untested autonomy can save her.
"So far," Trenon says.
"Your village advocat's quite good," Hezibor says. "But wrong. Irdanu wants to see your holding increase. We won't challenge your claim on the deepstone if you keep it occupied."
With a host's smile, Zayelik turns the conversation. Trenon settles deeper into his chair and frowns into his mug. Hezibor's assurance rings hollow. Zayelik won't easily find someone to stay in the deepstone while she travels, shoring up her claim. And she can't work against her patrons' interest openly or directly. By design, that extends to anyone who joins her holding.
[[ϒ But someone independent, someone without city patronage ties, might strike a bargain with her outside the confines of her songs.->offer]]
[[ϒ So Zayelik works within her contracts' breath, and hopes to break their ghost.->intercepted]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "she can't hire outside her overholding.")[she can't hire outside her overholding. And yet she was free to choose her own apprentice. Trenon wonders, suddenly, what loophole Zayelik dragged him through without his knowledge.]
(Click-replace: "but doesn't defend her labour contracts.")[but doesn't defend her labour contracts. Hezibor would have provided labourers if Zayelik had asked; instead she paid Trenon to hire street waifs.]
]}$il[T]he second day in the market passes as tediously as the first. Kelil stays with the goods while Zayelik wanders from stall to stall, drinking tea, spooning tev. Kelil catches a few glances from passersby, but nothing she could name as interest. What is the point of being a trader if there's no haggling? No silver changing hands? In Asaresta, if buyers approach a stall, they have at least a passing desire to hear a price and counter it. Here, Kelil feels as much like a mountain curiosity as the bits and bobs laid out on Zayelik's worktop.
Yesterday Kelil determined to do her best, but she feels sick from the close, stifling heat. In Asaresta, gusts of icy wind burst through the market even at midsummer. There are none of these awnings that suck the sun in and hold it close. Kelil stays polite, interested, serves tev and tea, and sells nothing.
Zayelik returns for the middday meal and her lazing, dozing nap. Despite the heat Kelil doesn't feel the least bit sleepy. Sitting around all day waving flies off her master is a child's duty, not a woman's. She should have stayed upmountain. She didn't need an apprenticeship to be her holding's wool trader. She did it well, and enjoyed it. She thought she'd actually learn something in the city. But now it seems that everything she learned was useless.
Zayelik opens her eyes after a few moments, disturbed by Kelil's increasingly restless boredom. "You can return to the deepstone if you want," she says. "Return with dinner."
Leaving would be even more ignomious. Kelil fights down the suspicion that Zayelik hopes to drive her out long enough to complete a trade behind her back. "What are we bringing upmountain?" she asks, trying not to sound plaintive.
"I've already settled that," Zayelik says.
"Oh." Kelil melts down on her camp chair, brought today in hopeful imitation of Zayelik. When did she have time to arrange the load? At dinner with her patrons, probably. Or this morning when she went on a round of the other market stalls, leaving Kelil behind.
Zayelik links her fingers over her belt, her eyes drifting closed. "What do I usually bring on the late summer trip?" she asks.
Another test. Kelil runs through last year's trading in her mind, and sighs. "Wheat flour. Corn flour. Dried fruit. Tools. Glass panes for irbu holding overmountain." She thinks through other city traders' usual offerings. Downmountain food, including wines and beers. Little luxury items, like beads, buckles, knives and awls and needles. Nails? Sometimes a bulky load: hardwood boards, like oak, for flooring or for carving. Spices, especially salt.
Zayelik nods. "Without a commission, I take a risk," she says. "Especially in the spring. I winter in the city, and I don't know what people are lacking for."
Kelil offers the most charitable explanation she can find for her exclusion. "You haven't been trading because you have a commission?"
"I have been trading," Zayelik says. "You'll see our load at pack-up. And when you do, I'll want you to think exactly about how and when I made the deals. You're a strong village trader. But in the city style you're weak."
Kelil presses her lips together, feeling the sting behind her nose.
"Which is why you're here," Zayelik continues with some irritation. "Don't sniffle at me! Stop thinking I'm treating you badly and start realizing that you are here to learn new ways."
Kelil stays quiet until she's sure she can speak without a waver in her voice. "I don't think I like the city," she mutters. "It stinks."
"Worse than a rotting skunk," Zayelik agrees.
Kelil blinks. "You can smell it too?"
"Yes, when I'm here a nineday at a time. Over winter, it improves. Once the shit freezes."
Kelil never thought she could be so homesick for the holding she longed to leave all spring. There's so much space around iryu deepstone, great firred scarps run through with tumbling streams. "In Asaresta we throw all our slops in the canyon."
"And here it's rare someone even makes it to the river. I know."
Asaresta market was the perfect training ground for a child, who could listen in on every deal struck, learn the traders' rhythm. Kelil thought it would be the same here, but instead of listening all she sees is endless hot waiting. "I thought you'd show me how to trade in the city."
Zayelik sits up. She stretches, showing sweat damp in her armpits, and scratches briskly under the weight of her chestnut braid. "Kelil, you are fifteen," she says, slapping her hands on her knees and staring. "You have been here a threeday. Right now I would like you to learn to be an apprentice."
Kelil would like nothing better than to curl up like a poked pillbug. "What if I'm a bad city trader?" she asks, leaning stubbornly into the spur marks Zayelik's leaving on her flanks.
Zayelik sighs. "Did you ever think to ask about the first time I tried to trade upmountain?"
Kelil clamps her mouth shut, waiting the trick. "What happened?"
Zayelik eyes her. "I went. I spent all morning setting up my stall, while people kept dropping by to chat." She raises an eyebrow. "They were all touching my goods, asking me to set prices in silver."
Despite herself, Kelil begins to smile. "You thought they were placeless."
"I thought they were thieves! Who touches the goods before the stall is ready?" For the first time since spring, Zayelik sounds like the city trader Kelil remembers. She could hold a knot of traders captive with her stories--have them roaring with laughter, or gaping at her for surviving. Zayelik once had all Asaresta market in the palm of her hand, playing three parts while she described punching a bear in the snout through the fabric of her tent, thinking it was her horse.
"Then what?" Kelil asks, resenting Zayelik for cajoling her out of her mood, and still letting it happen.
"Then I took a nap."
Kelil snorts with laughter. "Really?"
"You wouldn't believe the stares I got when I woke up," Zayelik says. Even a nineyear can't quite erase her chagrined wince at the memory. "No one came by that afternoon, but I didn't notice. I made dinner, then I settled myself in my stall. I was ready to accept bids."
"But they'd all gone home," Kelil guesses.
"The market was deserted! Not even a candle! I had to find my way back to my tent in the pitch dark." Zayelik spreads her hands, miming her incredulity.
Kelil feels the sniffle growing in her throat again, though less from Zayelik's rejection than her sudden transparent care. Maybe both sides are a trader's ploy. "How old were you?"
"Twenty-one, and two years a journeyman," Zayelik says. "I thought I knew better than my master, who told me I'd lose a season in travelling and get nothing for it. You know what I brought back?"
Kelil takes her turn to wince, remembering her mules' bales, selected by Maron and Peris--all the cloth they thought they could ditch in the city at a profit. "Wool at midsummer."
"Heavy, raw wool. I never saw it in the city markets. I thought that meant they'd be desperate for it." Zayelik levels a stare at Kelil, then shrugs.
Kelil dips her chin. Zayelik's rejection comes softer this time, but just as firmly.
"You're not wrong that your holding would enjoy cotton," Zayelik says gently. "You're thinking about what's needed and what will sell, and that's a good instinct. But you can't bring what's new and expect people to want it. Can you tell quality cotton from leftover rags that traders want to offload?"
Kelil grimaces. For all Larik's talent as a weaver, she listened when Peris and Shayin discussed the fleece, its texture, its strength. She never assumed she knew better than them, when it came to the cloth. So how could Kelil begin to guess? "So you won't let me bring it."
"I won't load your mules with it. But we may be able to reach an accommodation."
[[ϒ Zayelik's offer, echoing Trenon's, leaves Kelil feeling restless and uneasy.->amends]]
[[ϒ She believed, once, that city trading would be a grander, higher-stakes version of Asaresta market, where she'd proved herself. Zayelik's story makes the city feel more lonely, more foreign, more impenetrable.->realization]]$il[T]he sun sets red as a coal, heat pressing down on the city's cobbles until they shimmer like the air above a forge. Trenon strips down to a sleeveless vest and light linen trousers. Ferok and Jiron have gathered the other outriders to explore the seamier amusements of the city: lodgestones where the servers dress askew, men or women as pleasure takes them, and where rooms can be claimed by the candlemark. Trenon swallows a laugh that Jiron sounds so enthused by such entertainment, considering his disgust when Trenon suggested Jiron give him a tour of exactly such city pursuits. He shakes his head when Ferok, amiably enough, invites him along.
He should call Jiron back, and offer him silver for the names of the healers he knows. He should follow them, to the rowdier banlieues, where he might be able to find his own song.
Or lose his pouch for his trouble.
Trenon picks up a flint striker from the sideboard and strokes the stone against the rough steel, watching the spark jump. He should light a taper, or call the cleaning boy in to tidy the parlour and do it for him. Instead, he builds a small fire in the hearth, despite the broiling heat. He takes his belt knife and whittles a branch of kindling into a featherstick, then holds it above the flames until each curled shaving catches fire. He hefts a birch log--hardwood would never be wasted on fires, upmountain--and sets it in the hearth, over the growing fire. At home he stares into the flickering fire through the long evenings, listening to vow songs in his mind and crafting variations. Here he works to think of nothing.
He hears the scuff of boots in the hallway, too hesitant to be Zayelik and too early for the returning outriders. Kelil, then. Trenon watches the door open, and Kelil slump into the parlour, without so much as a tea tray to give her entrance an excuse. Zayelik has been riding her hard. She put Kelil in charge of pack up and striking camp every day on their journey. Once they reached the city, Kelil worked with Sirol to set up the market stall. She spends her days alone at the stall, waiting for the moment Zayelik might deign to teach her. But Zayelik hasn't so much as brought Kelil with her on her guesting nights with her patrons. What kind of independence does Zayelik envision for //her//?
Kelil drops into a chair and winces at the hot, sticky leather. Zayelik advised him more than once to ask for Kelil help, but Kelil has no reason to help him. She resents him for the apprenticeship song he crafted. No wonder she all but laughed in his face when he told her he wanted a miscarriage song.
Sap boils and pops in the fire. Kelil follows his gaze into its blue heart. Sweat darkens her lank hair. Sunburn peels on her bony bird-wing arms. A streak of soot shadows one cheekbone like a bruise.
Trenon sang a better contract for Larazil the kitchen girl than he did for the woman he married.
All those clever clauses he inserted. Trenon appealed to Zayelik's sensibilities to prove himself a trader's equal. And meanwhile Kelil expected him to act as her holding's advocat. He //was// her holding's advocat! She had every reason to believe he'd use his skill on her behalf. Instead he used her, so that he could struggle downmountain on this painful, pointless journey.
Impress the master, ignore the apprentice. Too many advocats think like that. As far as Trenon can see, the whole city is built on that thought.
"I wanted to come to the city without telling you why," he says.
Kelil lifts her head slightly. Her eyes look smoke-reddened. "To lose the baby. I know."
Trenon nods. Sweat slides along his ribs. The fire's heat beats against his skin. "I wanted to act alone. But I sang a vow. I should have treated you like my holding."
Kelil drops her gaze to her hands, clasped loosely in her lap.
"I should have supported your apprenticeship better." Trenon shakes his head. "Zayelik wanted //you//, for a reason. I should have leveraged that against her."
Kelil glances sideways at him. "You don't know?"
Trenon frowns sharply. When did Kelil have time to work out Zayelik's machinations? "What?"
"I contracted to her directly," Kelil says, as if he might have forgotten the vow he crafted. "So I'm not bound to her patrons. Zayelik trades in goods from her patrons' suppliers. But I'm technically independent and can buy from their competitors."
And Trenon gave Zayelik veto over Kelil's trades. Zayelik can use that to force Kelil to carry what she herself hopes to sell, then price the goods to undercut other city traders among the villages. "And you're her apprentice, so she gets the profit." He pushes up in his chair, dizzy with heat. "And you knew?"
Kelil gives Trenon a cutting look. "I'm a good trader, Trenon, when I'm not hamstrung."
An incredulous laugh dies in Trenon's chest. He hesitates, then gives her courtesy.
Kelil snorts at the place gesture. "Not that it matters now."
"If we declare independence…" Trenon squeezes the chair arms. He hates following Zayelik's advice. He didn't want to admit she was a step ahead of him at the negotiating table. But she knew she had him cornered, as neatly as Hezibor had cornered her. Zayelik's maneuvering isn't entirely one-sided. As Kelil's master, Zayelik must feed and shelter her, and Trenon as well, as her //guest//. If they declare independence, they won't be destitute. And Zayelik can use the apprenticeship to block Kelil from seeking out a different overholding. "Zayelik wants me to represent her in her deepstone claim. She'd owe me a fee. I could stipulate your profits."
"She'd never agree."
"She might. For the deepstone. It's more than a land claim, it's her access to city markets." Trenon frowns. "She might be reduced to banlieue markets. But for upmountain copper? Tin? Her patrons are obligated too. They can't refuse to buy from her."
And if they declare independence, then Kelil can give permission to the healer for his miscarriage song.Trenon owes a contracted baby to iryu holding. Not to a holding he forms with Kelil alone.
Kelil studies his face. She knows the vows as well as he does. "I shouldn't have asked you to be a father alone," she says slowly, "when I never said I'd be willing to be a mother."
Trenon extends his fist, the trader's seal. Kelil cups both hands around his. The last time they touched like this, hands clasped in hands, was when they sang their marriage vows. Trenon takes a breath that shudders in his throat. "Kelil, will you hold with me?"
[[ϒ She laughs. "You'd better craft a good song to explain this to Zayelik."->acceptance]]
[[ϒ Trenon lets a smile form. "I think I already know what she wants to hear."->partnership]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "claimed by the candlemark")[rented, along with a pleasure-worker to fill the bed.]
]}$il[A]n upmountain apprentice.
The words ring in Kelil's ears although for the moment. Zayelik's patron spoke the words. A bland voice, hinting anger under heavy skepticism. They resent Zayelik for taking advantage of a loophole in her patronage contract. And, Kelil thinks, no matter how hard she works, these city patrons think she'll never match a city trader. She can rush to finish every chore, host like Zayelik's second wife, endure the outriders' jibes, and nothing will change.
Zayelik gives her leisure in late afternoon. Head down, shoulders rounded, Kelil trudges out of the market. She knows her way back to Zayelik's deepstone, and its dubious, dusty comforts. She can curl up on her bed, hidden behind the stone-and-mortar frontage like a rabbit in a warren. Or--because Zayelik strews her path with lessons like a trader leaving blazes--she can move deeper into the city. //Wander. Observe//. Kelil has to trace the signs, decipher them, and follow one to the next.
Sareya's north-south avenue gathers a nine of farmers' wagon paths into a single broad street. The cobbled road climbs up and over the three-arched stone bridge across the river, connecting the two sides of the city. On the north, the streets are wide and measured, with stone-faced deepstones. Upriver, on the north side, breezes have a chance to wind through open-latticed windows. Zayelik's customers and her patrons, the women in their cotton robes, lie at their ease through the hot noons. Contracted hearthgirls fetch them clear water, not brown from a pump, while boys scrub their mosaic floors and tend their gardens.
Even after sunset heat radiates off the dirty-yellow sandstone buildings. Kelil turns south, and downriver. The cobbles disappear first. Maybe they could be unearthed, by a dedicated woman with a shovel; maybe they never existed at all. Kelil watches the city's scum creep up past her boot laces. Little banlieue markets--a weaver darning sweaters, a butcher with a brace of mallards quacking in a wicker cage, a gardener with a barrow of yams--cluster in the mouths of alleys, or in the open doors of narrow deepstones. No lines of stalls here, no buckets and bales and baskets over-brimming with goods.
A city as big as Sareya needs more than a single market square. Even in the market square, Kelil never saw the shimmering clatter of silverwhits in a scale, the way she dreamed when she was upmountain. Half the stalls set up near Zayelik's displayed goods and sold nothing, inviting buyers to join them in their deepstones to bargain over a comfortable glass of wine. The farther south she pushes, the more she sees people fumble in their pouches for a single silverwhit. Zayelik's market trades in gossip; who she shares tef with, and which stalls she presumes to call on as a guest.
Those weavers' cotton cloth probably does represent their rags and leftovers. After all, Zayelik spent most of her time condescending to sell bangles and trinkets and cloudy, flawed stones--not the full copper ingots and casks of alum she brought from upmountain. The real trades happen over hosting, among her city patrons.
An upmountain apprentice. Zayelik's patron said it, silky with unspoken anger. She wasn't mocking Kelil for her rustic looks. She meant to rebuke Zayelik. Why did Zayelik, a master trader with a rich city stall, never contract an apprentice in the nineyears she's been trading to Asaresta? Zayelik emphasized that Kelil must sing her vows directly to Zayelik, not to her holding. Kelil thought it was because Zayelik was unmarried, and didn't have a holding of her own. But now that she's seen Zayelik prepare to guest with her patrons, she knows better. If Kelil had sung her apprenticeship to Zayelik's holding, she'd owe her loyalty to this irdanu, whose first spouses she's never even met, not to Zayelik herself.
At the next banlieue market, Kelil stops at the tef seller. The old woman's iron pot shows the crusted layers of oats from many previous batches. Kelil doesn't ask the provenance of the water she used to boil her oats. She digs for a silverwhit and buys a bowl. Wheat tef, still strange on her tongue, flavoured with onions and peppers. It's hot on her tongue and hearty, but tastes dull without bright wintergreen and savoury lamb.
Nearby, a jongleur taps a melody on a xylophone strapped to her chest. A metal striking ring tips each of her fingers, so that she can play several notes at once, and long, trilling arpeggios. Her hat, a butter yellow cap, sits upright in front of her, with a hopeful silverwhit gleaming in the bottom--the woman's own contribution, Kelil supposes. Kelil stares at the hat, listening to the woman's chiming music echo off the stone walls. Then she frowns, and takes her next bite slowly, studying the jongleur. Yellow, for a woman? For the most part she looks no different than any journeyman jongleur travelling through Asaresta. Her clothes are shabby but a perfectly presentable woad-blue, tied with a proper knot on her right hip. But she has a kerchief, yellow to match her cap, tucked into her belt.
Kelil scrapes the bottom of the clay bowl. She returns it to the tef seller, who wipes it with a linen rag and returns it to her stack of empties. The jongleur looks up hopefully as Kelil passes. Kelil finds a whit and drops it in the hat--the man's hat, the same colour as Nilos's healer's satchel.
The jongleur gives her courtesy, touching her fingers to her lips.
Uncomfortable with the place the woman offers, Kelil hunches her shoulders. She's only an apprentice. She moves on, further south. Her working clothes, leather riding trousers and a green tunic, show her as placed, no matter how lowly. After she gave silver to the jongleur, children swarm her, barefoot and filthy. Kelil keeps her hand on her pouch, even though between the tef and the music, she emptied it. At least in Asaresta, every child has a holding. These urchins look like they haven't seen a pallet in a nineday, or a half-cask in all their lives. Some, wearing twist-rope shoes, look old enough to have come of age. They wear undyed children's clothes dragged left, or right, by a clip or a twine belt.
If Trenon bears in the city--
The walls narrow like a canyon and Kelil feels the air growing heavier. In the mountains a flash flood could swamp a notch like this at any moment. A glimpse of pink-tinged clouds, through an alley opening, makes her twist sideways and escape, back to a wider street. She asks directions at the next corner. Stone and wood, everywhere. All imposing facades, no inviting dooryards. A few crushed grass stems, but not a single tree. She realizes she hasn't gone to see Flyn or Brys in days. What if they're colicky or foundering, without a chance to get to pasture? In Asaresta she rode every day, anywhere on the mountain. Even as a child.
Trenon will bear in this city. Iryu's grandchild. Unless Kelil grants him the permission he wants. If they declare their marriage independent of iryu holding, then the baby will be theirs alone. Or nobody's--as Trenon wishes. If Kelil proclaims herself a first wife, then she can sing contracts with Zayelik as an equal, not an apprentice.
An upmountain apprentice. Free of city ties.
Traders find loopholes; she has a feeling that Zayelik found one, in her.
[[ϒ Kelil needs to give ghost to her marriage.->humbled]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "she'd owe her loyalty to this irdanu")[she'd owe her loyalty to Zayelik's patrons]
]}$il[S]weat cools in the small of Kelil's back by the time she reaches Zayelik's deepstone. Her bootsteps echo in the narrow tunnel, heading back to the paved court that passes for a dooryard. The outriders pass her in a shoving, beery gaggle--heading for a bordel, by the sound of their blunt jokes. Kelil crosses to the homeside and peers in through the leaded pane. One lantern flickers in the sitting room, illuminating Trenon's long nose and peaked lips as he sits staring into the coals.
Kelil hooks her thumbs in her belt. She didn't bring food, or tea. If she enters without giving courtesy, Trenon's in his rights to take insult.
But Trenon doesn't care about that kind of place, the place of proper words and gestures. No trader should dither when it's not expedient, and as schemes go, faltering uncertainty fit Shayin better than Kelil. She pushes into the deepstone, too hot by half. A fire in midsummer turns the sitting room into a sweat bath, heavy air dizzying her lungs. Kelil eases into the chair beside Trenon. She doesn't suggest dousing the coals, though her bare shoulders stick to the chair. Instantly, her hair flattens, damp tendrils limp across her temples, in the curve of her throat. Trenon slumps low in his chair, legs spread, arms akimbo. Frizzy chestnut curls halo around his head. He breathes slowly. Sweat darkens his tight linen wraparound vest. For what feels like a candlemark, they sit in the smokebath, slapping at whining mosquitos.
If not for the muggy heat, this room might be at home in an upmountain deepstone. Scuffs and scars mark the motley collection of leather-back chairs. The sideboards and a clothes press in one corner, worked in soft pine, might be a journeyman joiner's work, who hid the uneven edges behind shims and pine-yellow resin. The room's wide walls, and a few shallow dishes of vinegar set out by the hired boys, deaden the city's smells to nothing worse than a skunk burrow under the floorboards. But the city encircles them like a weight. No wind rushing through thatch, nor owls calling from the trees.
The first time Trenon saw her after she came of age, he accused her of taking on Larik's mantle because she had no will of her own. Like a woodchip caught in an irrigation race, battered about, aimless. When Trenon asked her to speak to the healer on his behalf, and claim his child free of any contract, Kelil turned him down thinking of her parents--never once thinking of the baby. Larik would have said no. For the vows they sang, and the place they promised. And, perhaps, for Nilos.
She is not Larik. She is not Nilos's friend, or his protector. And while Trenon's bearing is not her fault, she owes him her intention. If she doesn't speak to the healer, then Trenon will raise his child--their child--in the city, in all this airless, lousy congestion. And Trenon will discover that she honours the breath of a contract before its ghost, or body: the words alone, not the meaning behind them, nor the person who joined his voice with hers.
"I was wrong," she says. She could explain every step of her reasoning, how she recognized that Zayelik wanted her to trade with her patrons' competitors on her behalf, and evade her songs without breaking them, but this confession is for him, not for her.
Trenon meets her eyes with a derisive stare.
Kelil drops her gaze to her hands, clasped loosely in her lap. When she realized the loophole Zayelik was exploiting, excitement drove her to the homeside to tell him. The few times she impressed Trenon was by seeing the relationships beneath the contract songs--the ghost below the breath. They both assumed that Zayelik wanted them to declare independence so that she could net Kelil's profits under the terms of her apprenticeship. But if Kelil is independent, then apprenticeship or not, she'll meet Zayelik on an equal's terms. Technically, her place will be the greater because her holding is larger: she and Trenon outnumber Zayelik. Under those terms, Trenon can strike a bargain. For his holding's sake, he won't stint. "I want to declare independence," she says.
Trenon doesn't say anything but Kelil doesn't kid herself that she's struck him dumb. He's probably angry at her for drawing this out.
"I wanted you to bring the baby into our holding," she says. "Into iryu. But if we do this--declare independence--you're my holding first." She doesn't love him. Most days she doesn't even like him. But she can thread the needle and find, on the other side, that Trenon's sharp honesty holds something like place. He will be an advocat first, and he will push her to be a better trader. Kelil takes a deep breath, frowning. "What I mean is, I want to hold with you." The risk, to break away from her parents, is so new that it flutters behind her breastbone like a trapped bird. But Kelil needs more than living in the city as Zayelik's apprentice; she needs a taste of freedom that the mountains give. As first wife, she doesn't have to give Zayelik courtesy, but she still wants to learn from her. "I'll give permission to the healer for the song you want," she says. "You're right, I can't ask you to be a father alone, when I never said I'd be willing to be a mother."
Trenon nods, sharply, as though he wants to agree but he's struggling for words. Finally, suspicious to the end, he extends his fist, the trader's seal. Kelil cups both hands around his. The last time they touched like this, hands wrapped in hands, was when they sang their marriage vows. This time, mouth pressed thin, Trenon blinks and looks away. Kelil slips from her chair, keeping his hands in hers. She kneels in front of him and says, "You are my holding, Trenon. We'll make it work."
[[ϒ As a mountain trader, Kelil can trade independently with Zayelik. Zayelik can use the profits to squeeze her patrons as they've tried to squeeze her.->partnership]]
[[ϒ No one should have a child with only two parents, let alone one.->acceptance]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Like a woodchip caught in an irrigation race, battered about, aimless.")[Like a woodchip caught in an irrigation race, battered about, aimless. Now inheriting Larik's vows unchanged seems like a stroke of luck.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "humbled")[ $il[W]ith Zayelik as witness, they sing their independence. Kelil accompanies Trenon to his chosen healer and watches over him while he drifts on songs, and the baby is given. Kelil slings a litter between two of Zayelik's sturdiest mules to bring Trenon back to the deepstone. She checks his bleeding as the healer instructed, and leaves him with skins of water and tev-broth, to sleep away the hurt.
Then](if: (history:)'s last is "humbled")[ Kelil](else:)[ $il[K]elil] brushes the wrinkles from her best robe. The robe fit loose and flowing when she wore it last, upmountain; now the cloth stretches tight through the shoulders and the hem rises a handsbreadth higher than Kelil remembers. She resolves to buy proper guesting attire before she and Zayelik return to Asaresta. It wouldn't do to face iryu holding and declare herself their equal, dressed in their given daughter's clothes.
At the family room door, she gives a deep courtesy. Zayelik gestures acceptance from where she spreads out in her deep armchair. She looks every inch the master, her leather belt chased in silver and agates, her fine linen robe picking out the crafty slink of vixens in snow-shadowed blue. Upmountain weavers wind foxes through so many women's garments that a nineday ago, Kelil never would have remarked on the design, but she remembers Volanik and Kyrazil, Zayelik's patrons. Their robes danced with sharp-faced martens; their belts hung with the animals' long, thick-furred tails. Zayelik chooses to wear mountain trappings. There is room for such freedom, in the city.
Kelil keeps her shoulders back and strides into the room to stand before her. "Master Zayelik, I wondered if you would advise me on how best to spend my silver--to take a stake upmountain." Her profits on iryu's wool were modest, but enough to lade two mules heavy enough for the climbing trek.
Zayelik smiles. "Doorknobs."
"Doorknobs?" Kelil asks. Zayelik's obscurity sits better than her sudden, wolfish interest.
"Most deepstones upmountain latch their doors with looped leather, Kelil. Doorknobs. They're brass, they won't break on the journey. Guest chimes. Hinges. Shutter clasps. Nails. And salt."
"You don't bring salt," Kelil points out, with a flare of suspicion, although she knows that salt runs dear at the end of a long winter, and some holdings go hungry when they can't put up enough jerky and dried fish.
"I thought you understood why I'm making this partnership," Zayelik says. She stands up and steers Kelil out of the deepstone, then to the street. "I know a banlieue market nearby. My patrons...//prefer// that I buy from sellers they claim as smallholdings, and that I leave commodities to others. No salt for me. You, however, are independent--correct?"
Kelil follows on Zayelik's heels. As Zayelik's apprentice, she owes her a cut of her profits. As an independent trader, Zayelik's equal, she can compete with Zayelik, and carry goods that Zayelik's patrons don't control. Zayelik benefits both ways, to break her patrons' monopoly and to gain silver doing it, without slicing through her city web of wealthy traders. They walk downriver, through several knotted streets, then farther south until it seems they'll end up in a wheat field before they reach the market Zayelik spoke of. When they finally arrive, the 'market' is no more than a tev stall beside a brownsmith's forge. The smith sees them coming, but he looks desperately eager to deal with a trader of Zayelik's quality.
"And," Zayelik says, as they approach the stall bright with chimes and chased metal, "indigo."
Kelil twitches to look at her. "What?"
"Cotton won't travel. But indigo--yes, sell it back to your parents' holding. They'll love it."
With a laugh, Kelil pictures Peris's face, the first time she plucks a skein of yarn from an indigo wash, and sees how deep the colour runs. "Yes," she says, and then schools her expression while Zayelik pretends to the smith that she hates hinges and everything they stand for.
They amass a clanking pile of hardware that the smith promises to wrap and deliver to Zayelik's deepstone for a silverwhit more; Zayelik tosses him two, to hurry him.
At pack-up, Kelil works with Sirol to fit Zayelik's mules with sledges. She has a commission for hardwood, along with smaller packets of everything that sells well, spices and wines and small leaded window panes. When Zayelik asks, Kelil can rattle off everything they've packed, down to the last cookpot. Four of the mules even like her.
When she mounts up, she finds Trenon holding Flyn's halter. He looks pale under his peeling tan, and he walks slowly, but the tight clamp of his lips has softened since the healing song. "Good journey," he says.
Zayelik comes over from where she was checking her gelding's girths. "You'll keep the deepstone while we're gone?"
"You won't keep your claim with it empty," Trenon says. "An advocat needs a deepstone in the city to look halfway placed. Once that's done, the contracts sell themselves."
Zayelik nods. "My thanks, advocat."
Trenon shrugs. "I'll craft a better claim song when you return."
"You'd better." Zayelik claps his shoulder, and returns to tell off Jiron for being hungover on pack-up day.
(if: (history:)'s last is "humbled")[Trenon looks up at Kelil. "You'll return?"
Kelil offers her fist, solemn.
"Well, don't make a song of it." But Trenon cups her fist in both hands, a smile curling at the corner of his mouth. "I'll expect you for winter."](else:)[Trenon looks up at Kelil. "Will you tell Nilos?" he asks.
Kelil squints up at the sun, judging the weather. Trenon was adamant that Nilos would never offer him a miscarriage brew. He saw how Nilos hemmed himself in to be a healer. What safety Nilos found as an invert upmountain depended on living by his contracts' breath. Discounting Trenon's marriage vows, for Trenon's sake or his own, would undermine the protection he took from his vows. "He already knows, doesn't he?"
Trenon's mouth twists wryly. "He may have heard the bearing sickness song Tereos brewed for me."
Camouflage for both of them. Nilos can pretend not to know; Tereos will allow it, to save Nilos's place and his apprenticeship. "I'll tell as much as he asks," Kelil promises.
Trenon already knows the limits of Nilos's curiosity. "Thank you," he says.]
With the mules fractious after a nineday's rest, it takes some circling by the outriders before they're settled, and they move out one by one through the deepstone's facade. Kelil guides Flyn with her heels, and the mare responds ardently, tossing her head at the city's noise and bustle, stretching her neck and dancing on her hooves when they reach the wide fields beyond.
By mid-morning they reach the wide river road, heading towards the high blue mountains. Kelil rides point with Zayelik, studying her as she scouts. After long silence, Zayelik says, "Do you think I fit in the city?"
Kelil sits up straighter on Flyn and tries to see the test in the words. "Yes," she says. "You were born there. You understand city trading." Zayelik may not enjoy being contracted to her patrons, but she moves in the city like a trout among well-known rapids.
"Understand, yes. Fit in--well. I rejected down more than one holding's offer of marriage."
"You like Asaresta better." Kelil feels a deep yearning herself for the cool heights, the terraces spreading out among the irrigation pipes, the clusters of field cairns.
But Zayelik sighs. "No, not really."
Kelil glances across at her. "No?"
"I'm a trader. I belong on the road." And truly, Zayelik looks entirely at her ease on the big gelding's back, loose and happier than she acts in her deepstone's walls. "Don't worry whether you prefer the city or the mountain, Kelil. You're fifteen. When you're three times that age, then maybe you can worry about settling!"
Kelil laughs. She nudges Flyn out of line and jogs down to the end of the pack string, then back up to the front with Zayelik. The sun shines warm, sparkling on the river's braid, but cleaner than the sweltering heat that collects in the city. The leaves whisper between themselves, a darker green than spring; the sky is bluer, too, depthless. Three ninedays to Asaresta. She'll have to explain to her parents, then, that she's iryu no longer. She and Trenon hold together.
But that is then, a chasm to bridge. For now she's on the road in the high sun, with her first trades ahead. She pulls Flyn in beside Zayelik's gelding and asks, "How long until your apprentice merits a horse?"
Zayelik's bellow of laughter startles Flyn into a high-stepping trot. Zayelik urges her gelding to match her, and they move together, beyond the city.
(link-goto: "ϒ Return.","begin") $il[T]renon dresses carefully before joining Kelil in the courtyard. Advocat's robes might let him feel comfortable in his place, but make little sense when taking songs from a healer. He settles on riding trousers and a loose tunic with long tails, tied at his left hip. Kelil must have thought along the same lines, because she wears a sober right-belted vest, over linen trousers and her usual stable-encrusted boots. They don't speak as Trenon leads the way to the healer's deepstone.
When Jeramol sees them walk in together, he understands. Kelil vouches for Trenon as his first wife. They offer to bring Zayelik as witness, if he needs further proof, but Jeramol shakes his head. He leads Trenon to a small bare room with a pallet and a stool for Kelil.
The song requires a sequence of brews. Jeramol prepares them over a charcoal brazier, chanting as he empties sachets of herbs into different mugs. The first is a light tincture of thornapple; Trenon swallows it at a gulp, only to see the world waver around him. Jeramol opens his breathlines to encourage a slack, dreamy relaxation. Whatever Jeramol serves him next has an acrid taste that nearly chokes him. Once he drinks enough to satisfy Jeramol, he drifts. There is pain, a deep and aching pressure, as Jeramol uses a slippery-elm stick to break his waters. Jeramol's apprentice kneads Trenon's abdomen in time with the resulting spasms. The slippery, disquieting feeling of loss makes Trenon try to twist away. But Kelil is there, kneeling beside his pallet. She takes his hand, and his mind focuses on that touch. The rest of his body seems far away. His mind follows the lilt and lift of Jeramol's song. Breath and ghost, he wanders, wondering why the song sounds so familiar. He remembers Larik, that last morning, and Nilos's voice growing hoarse; he remembers Kell, a child then, climbing high up above Asaresta to watch Larik's ghost shell tumble to the ravens.
A giving song. Jeramol and his apprentice are both singing the acceptance, the first part of the giving song. They give ghost and body only, for a baby long from breath. The first Trenon feels of his tears is when Kelil leans close, and takes the woman's part, that no one else here can sing: the remembrance. //May this child be given. May this child be known//.
Trenon was angry at Nilos, so angry. But Nilos made a choice too, the choice to turn away. Nilos knew he couldn't raise this child. He never wanted fatherhood. He wants to heal. Trenon loves him, loved him once. He hears in the giving song Nilos's freedom, too.
[[ϒ Trenon clings to Jeramol's voice, singing acceptance, acceptance.->independence]]
[[ϒ And Kelil's hand grips his, anchoring him long after he slips into dreams.->partnership]]$il[N]o one hears Nilos step into the hearthroom over the racket of conversation until the door thumps shut behind him. Cayir looks up first, but her expectant smile falters when she sees him. Nilos quickly gives courtesy, touching two fingers to his lips. Cayir rarely insists on her place as first wife, perhaps because Selis spends most of her time at irlu's logging claim. Still, Cayir has no reason to receive wayward sons who worm into the hearthside with hangdog courtesy. Sons shouldn't make demands at this time of night, when the last tea has been served. Cayir accepts Nilos's request with a nod, more out of hosting duty than welcome.
"Tirin!" Renik shouts, "Have you finally done with the pleasure room, then? When do the rest of us get a turn--" Turning, she sees Nilos scraping his boots and edging inside, and laughs. "Oh, it's Nilos. We'll have to keep waiting."
"There are three pleasure rooms," Janis says, with a mild look over her mug of mulled tev. "You're simply too deep in your cups to take advantage of them."
Tirin, along with her first two husbands, sang marriage with their newest spouse a few ninedays past. The four of them have been taking advantage of the privacy ever since. Nilos blushes, glad his sisters' raucous conversation covers the sound of pleasure.
"No, I simply don't have Tirin's success contracting husbands," Renik shoots back at Janis easily. "Any advantage-taking would require one of those."
"What, you didn't get your share of the bonus when we finished irvu deepstone? You could have spent it on //six// husbands--"
"Eventually! I'll start with one or two first. And some wives; no sense in being overwhelmed by the homeside..."
Janis raises her mug to that, and then frowns lightly at Nilos. "Dayon could've sent Hayn if the homeside needed more dinner." Daughters may serve, but it's placeless for their brothers to come looking.
Cayir waves off the suggestion. She takes Nilos by his elbow and draws him into the room. "Here, sit. Sit, sit. Renik, a bowl." She tugs at Nilos's untied belt, trying to tuck it back into its left-belted folds. Nilos catches her wrists, turning his shoulder to her to ward her away.
Her mouth tightens. "Your boots..."
Nilos crosses to the trestle table and perches on one of the long storage-boxes that serve as benches, hiding his open laces.
"You look like you're about to fall over," Janis says, with a sympathetic buffet on his arm. If she cares about his unknotted tunic, she's willing to give him exhaustion as an excuse. Place flows easily between Janis and Renik, both journeyman builders under Cayir. In the comfort of the hearthside, they have little reason to temper their jokes. Nilos, though, is an invader, a goad to formality.
Renik frowns. "How goes Larik's vigil?"
Nilos stares down into his bowl. "Iryu grieves," he says, after forcing a swallow. "Larik was given this morning."
"We grieve with iryu," Cayir says, touching Nilos's hand. He looks up, and sees his mother's concern, not his host's. Her water-grey eyes match his, though hers are set deeper. Guilt snares him like a slipknot. Nilos wrapped his best friend's shell this morning, then lost himself in Trenon, like a child.
Renik slaps a trencher of crusty oat bread into a clay bowl and starts spooning tev overtop, adding too much gravy to the porridge, as usual. "Don't ask me to be a man," she says. "I couldn't stand vigil like a healer." She shrugs, a rough apology for Nilos's loss. He has more place than her, enough to entitle him to her sympathy, but neither she nor Janis knew Larik as he did.
Janis clears her throat, clearly casting about for a topic. "Sabir came calling for a song again. I think she likes you better than Master Tereos."
Renik plunks the tev bowl in front of him, a pewter spoon clattering after. She sits again, across from Janis, but neither go back to their mugs. All the jostling goose-squabble fades out of the room. Nilos's first bite, slurped to cool the gravy, sounds very loud.
When he doesn't speak, Janis and Renik turn to each other, probably with every good intention of respecting his grief and letting him finish his dinner. A mutter of details: will irnu settle for puncheon, or pay for slate for their floor? And what might irlu holding charge, either way? Cayir starts shaving potatoes for the next day's bread, adding sweet beet mash and yesterday's starter to rise in the cast iron pan.
Nilos curls around his bowl. They fulfilled their duty to coo over him, to feed him. Men shouldn't linger on the hearthside. It's not a restday or a rite. They aren't hosting guests. Why would a son ooze into the hearthroom and his sisters' talk?
When Nilos's bowl shows three bites shy of empty, Renik glances at it. "Well," she says, lifting her hands to loosen her shoulders. She stretches her big arms, weighty with muscle, spreading wide. "We've a ways to hike to irnu's new deepstone tomorrow."
Another spoonful, and his sisters can stand without insulting their apprentice brother's place. Feeling stubborn, Nilos toys with his last bite, chasing the trencher-sop around the bottom of the bowl.
Cayir sighs. "Tell Tirin to get to bed then. Her husband needs his sleep, too."
Janis grins. "Well. It's not every nineday you have a new spouse to entertain."
They leave with proper courtesy to Nilos. Before the door to the sleeping room closes behind them, the loud jibes and laughter start again.
"Larik's betrothal contract's broken, then?" Cayir asks.
Nilos drops his hands into his lap. Larik's face comes back to him. Not her shell as he had last seen it, but hot and bright-eyed with the fever. Cayir pulls the bowl away from him and scrapes the dregs into the goats' bucket, then scrubs it briskly with a pad of coarse wool. "So irthu's son is free."
She worries about Trenon. Whether he'll marry safely or not--meaning, safely away from Nilos.
Nilos doesn't deserve her doubt. He shrugs and picks at the nap of his tunic under the table.
"You spoke to him." Cayir speaks tightly, her back held square. "That's still going on."
Nilos crosses his arms to hide his open tunic. Trenon's kisses must still show on his skin, like a brand. He left the giving to iryu holding, instead of joining the giving to say farewell.
As a child, Nilos ran to Dayon or Firinol with his small hurts. Dayon hovered over him when he was hot and frantic with the spot-fever, a nineyear ago. But he feels more than love for his mothers; affection twists sharply with a longing that makes his throat close. He's not a child any longer, to endure her rebukes, nor a daughter who owes Cayir place both as mother and master. Just an intrusive, awkward son.
Cayir shakes her head. "Come with me." Without looking to see if he will follow, she strides into the hallway and raps on the homeside door and calls for Dayon. Nilos eases himself off the bench.
[[ϒ He forces himself to cinch his belt left, restoring decency, if not dignity.->family room]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: " The four of them have been taking advantage of the privacy ever since.")[ The four of them have been taking advantage of the privacy ever since. With Nilos's sisters expanding their marriages by leaps and bounds, and his parents all hale and with good appetite, his sisters finally demanded that the pleasure room be divided into three. They did the work in a single innuendo-laden day. They partitioned the room with seasoned timber, adding doors with brass latches. A few tapestries too moth-eaten for the family room walls dampened the echoes. Each tiny space holds a soft-glowing lantern and a down tick over a rope-net mattress.]
]}$il[B]odies crowd the homeside sitting room. Every shade from buff to darker than Nilos's chestnut brown. Tall, short, but all stoop-shouldered from days bent over hoes and ploughshares. Nilos's marriage brothers look absurdly alike. Either Nilos's sisters all dreamed of such men, or they are evidence of Dayon's mule-stubborn search for the perfect farm hand.
Nilos feels like a solitaire among swallows: slower, quieter, clinging fast to the juniper-blanketed crags. This is not his holding. The bleak thought rings too familiar to bite. Often Nilos escapes to the sleeping room with only a rushlight to spend his evenings memorizing harmonies for Tereos, a lonely study; but when he seeks out his brothers' company, he grows lonelier still.
"Nilos!" Hayn and Tilm, his younger siblings, pounce like bobkittens when he enters by the homeside door. Despite his tiredness, Nilos wraps Hayn in a hug, and swings Tilm up to his hip. His siblings have no place and can't offend his, so they still treat him like a brother instead of a guesting advocat.
"How was the vigil, Nilos?" Hayn asks, a small impatient host asking for a guesting gift.
Nilos scrubs Hayn's close curls. His sibling is too young yet to know what fathers and brothers must have guessed last night--that Nilos's vigil would guide Larik's ghost free of her shell. Nilos sang over Hayn when the child had the spot-fever, soothed the rash with tev-washes and gentled the headaches with lifepoint touch at Hayn's temples. Hayn expects to hear that Larik woke cheerful and demanded sweetened tea for breakfast, as Hayn did once the spot-fever broke. Nilos lives for those moments when his patients wake, eager and demanding, under the touch of his songs.
"Not well," Nilos says. He passes Tilm over to Firinol.
Hayn's excitement scatters. "What happened?"
"Iryu holding grieves," Nilos says, through a thick throat. If Hayn were to ask what that means, he's quite certain he couldn't speak.
"Hayn, tell your mothers to fetch Nilos his meal," Dayon says, cupping the back of Hayn's head and nudging towards the hallway. He wraps an arm around Nilos, and draws him close, enveloping him in a familiar scent of leather and black soil. Tilm reaches over from Firinol's arms and pats Nilos's face solemnly, a two-year-old's comfort.
"You're soaked," Firinol says. "This weather..."
Nilos shakes his head, hoping to head off his fathers' usual grumbles about unseasonable rain. Dayon reaches for Nilos's cloak, but Nilos, remembering his tunic unbelted underneath, grabs it back. Dayon frowns, but lets him go, waving him towards a chair. Nilos's brothers gather around him, asking //how long, when, did Tereos say...?//
Their questions hit Nilos like coming out of a blizzard to a roaring hearth. Intending to warm, they blast him with heat and light. "Larik was given this morning," Nilos manages, and then subsides into silence as they begin talking over him, forgetting his place for once. Nilos sags deeper into his wet clothes.
Hayn brings him a clay bowl of tev, the barley porridge thickened with fried offal and flavoured with spring onions. Hayn sits on the arm of Nilos's chair and leans against his side while he eats. The simple touch provides a welcome cloak against loneliness. Nilos doesn't forget Trenon when they're not together, but the possibility of him fades like fog. The taste of Trenon's kiss lingered until Nilos entered the deepstone. Now all he can smell is woodsmoke and pine.
He eats without thinking, surprised when he scrapes the bowl clean. Hayn runs for another helping.
"How are Ralon and irthu holding taking the loss?"
Dayon's sudden question yanks Nilos out of a near-doze, like standing in a stream and feeling the gravel bed shift underfoot. Nilos's holding dwarfs Trenon's for size, and though Nilos's family isn't rich they aren't indebted either. But for sheer place, Trenon's holding can handily snub the rest of Asaresta and expect to be given courtesy afterwards.
"Irthu may ask for the contract-breaking price," Nilos says, cautious. Ralon was hardly subtle about his demands. It feels like market gossip, though, not his to repeat. Nilos didn't listen to the full argument.
"The marriage won't go through," Firinol says, with the confidence of place. His marriage-sons won't contradict him, whatever they may believe. "Even iryu won't throw a child into a contract breach."
Dayon grunts. "Did you speak with Trenon?" he asks Nilos.
With sudden shame, Nilos catches on to what Dayon wants to know. If Trenon and Larik managed to sing their wedding vows, Nilos would gain a cloak of respectability for his meetings with Trenon. A man might spend a year easing towards a love-spouse arrangement. The marriage would shield them from rumours.
Instead, Nilos hadn't simply seen Trenon. He sought him out, kissed him--was caught.
Dayon has no reason to trust him. Still, Nilos resents his obvious suspicion. He smoothes his face into a child's hangdog look. Instead of answering his father's question, Nilos says, "Larik's family may offer their youngest to fill the contract instead. An advocat would have to accept the trade, if iryu pushes."
Firinol shakes his head. "That poor child," he says repressively. He can't assert his argument in the face of Nilos's contradiction. Nilos tries not to squirm. A son, even a healer, shouldn't be able to so easily out-place his father.
His brothers take the opening, and the conversation turns. "The child has no choice now in becoming a daughter."
"Nothing's truly changed--Shayin always wanted the youngest to become a trader."
"Well, children must be dutiful."
"But not daughters!" --this, with a laugh.
"Placeless," Dayon pronounces. "On both their parts." He regards Nilos steadily, and then stands. "We should tell your mothers."
[[ϒ Nilos opens his mouth to protest, but the look on Dayon's face stops his words.->family room]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Dayon's mule-stubborn search for the perfect farm hand.")[Dayon's mule-stubborn search for the perfect farm hand. Irlu holding couldn't offer much of a contract price for the men who married in. Most of them were younger sons from even poorer holdings, easy to place in established marriages in exchange for the promise of regular meals and a life slightly steadier than contract labourer.]
(Click-replace: "Trenon's holding can handily snub the rest of Asaresta and expect to be given courtesy afterwards.")[Trenon's holding can handily snub the rest of Asaresta and expect to be given courtesy afterwards.
Trenon only has two parents, Berin and Ralon. His holding had poor luck with spouses: fevers, and childbed. Once, Ralon's fathers held extensive fields. They pressed outwards, clearing land and laying irrigation pipes, but they also pressed into their neighbours' holdings, arguing and cajoling, negotiating generous gains each time they built their spring cairns. But fields last only as long as a farmer can plant and reap them. Only Trenon, of the holding's children, lived, and he apprenticed to the master advocat. So Ralon bleeds silver to hire seasonal hands. Dayon appreciates the work, but not the uncertain wages. If Larik's parents pay the price for breaking her betrothal to Trenon, Dayon is more likely to see whits instead of promises in his coffers come winter.] ]}$il[E]very holding keeps a family room, though not every deepstone is large enough to accommodate one. Larik's family boasts of a wide, empty expanse of tiled floor, ostentatiously heated with paired hearths. When Nilos's holding outgrew the narrow deepstone his grandmothers built, they connected an old barn to the main deepstone with a covered walkway. They still use it as a workroom far more often than as a family room. Half-finished handwork crowds the corners: harnesses that need repair, tools to be sharpened, whittled carvings for lintels and newels. Shelves and work tables line the walls. When guests take the chairs, the family stands. Mothers argue deepstone design with their commissioners, while their neighbours prop up the walls drinking mulled tev.
A dim glow of banked coals lights the room. Cayir pushes the door open and strikes her flint over a taper to light the candle lanterns.(if: (history:)'s last is "homeside")[Cayir and Nilos's height, and her pointed chin with its cleft matches his. Her eyes are grey like his, though foggy instead of water-clear.] Dayon stirs up the coals in the hearth, then adds kindling and another log. (if: (history:)'s last is "hearthside")[Like most of irlu holding's farmers, Dayon is stooped and sun-browned. ]
Nilos waits, shivering in the chill. Three years ago, he and Trenon were children. Fathers and mothers chuckled over the two of them--the innocent charm of ono playacting love games. When Trenon came of age and kept meeting Nilos, Nilos's parents became irritable but directed their frowns at Trenon and his holding. It was Trenon's fault, an adult keeping after a child, though no one truly believed a fifteen-year-old could do a child less than a year younger any real harm. Beyond restless grumbling, Nils' parents didn't block Nils' freedom or forbid Trenon's visits. They couldn't understand that Nils //wanted// Trenon, and chose to see him. All they saw was Trenon's own placeless actions, his insolent imposition on a child of their holding.
But when Nilos came of age... He should have stopped. Instead he dithered, waiting for a reason. Some deliberate action or sign beyond himself that would force them to give each other up. Maybe mothers and fathers believed Trenon's betrothal, or his marriage, would sound that note. With Larik gone, that reassurance disappears.
Cayir trims the candle wicks, then begins tucking away tools and brushing wood shavings into the kindling box. Dayon pulls a chair closer, waving at Nilos to find his own, and then stares into the growing flames, adjusting the logs with a poker.
Nilos says nothing while Cayir and Dayon struggle for the words to tell him that they haven't been blind to his meetings with Trenon. In order to admit it, they'll have to deliberately impugn his place. And their own, for silently condoning it.
So, let them. If they do, Nilos can ask for all fathers and mothers to hear his position. Dayon, grumbling or not, would recall Firinol from the downmountain fields and Selis from the logging claim. Nilos won't ask. No need to force the family to vote on what a disappointment Nilos is.
"The iryu girl," Dayon starts heavily, before he looks to Cayir. She frowns at his clumsy opening.
Nilos's sense of disconnection deepens. He can feel Larik's loss like the emptiness of the vigil chant, when he conducts a holding's breath, allowing strength to flow through him without touching him.
Cayir shakes her head. "We grieve with iryu. But, perhaps now, you'll be less busy...?" She plows on before Nilos can answer. "Irlu should look to your marriage."
Even if Trenon marries Kell instead of Larik, Cayir will find reason to fret. If Nilos stops carrying on with Trenon, she worries he'll move on to another boy. Or worse, a child. Nilos might disgrace her twice. He won't have deniability the second time.
"He's still an apprentice," Dayon says, clearly not following Cayir's new tack. Until Master Tereos raises Nilos to journeyman, he keeps any silver Nilos earns. Nilos's holding hasn't seen any profit from his apprenticeship yet. If he marries, irlu holding may gain a good contract price, but they'll lose Nilos's future fees to his new holding. Nilos's fathers and his second mother share an earthy practicality. Cayir may not carry the vote.
"Tereos may promote him soon," Cayir says. "He's a natural, so natural after all."
Nilos's shoulders tighten to hear her trying to reassure herself. Her son can play the man he ought to be. He can be a healer. Nilos can't think anything more shameful than to be promoted at his parents' request.
"And have him leave just when he's become useful?" Dayon's expression is one of cud-chewing perplexity.
Nilos feels a ridiculous surge of love for his father. All Dayon sees is his boy, the child he raised. Dayon still slips sometimes, and calls Nilos ono instead of lad, as though Nilos hasn't passed his rite. Too young for responsibility. Yes, give him the chance at an apprenticeship that he clearly loves, but in terms of marriage, he's obviously naive, still playing love-games like a child. Give him a few years, he'll settle. With a journeyman's steadiness, and wages, he'll find a good Asaresta girl for a first marriage. Perhaps join an established marriage looking for a younger husband. Then let love spouses come when they may.
Nilos offers his father a weak smile. Dayon returns it with a reassuring grin, giving Nilos's shoulder a brief grip and shake. "Well, can't have you leaving us yet."
Ravens' feet tighten around Cayir's eyes, but she stops sorting through the mess on the work table. Nilos hates her fretting hands on his unbelted tunic and her careful hosting during his moping visits to the hearthside. She wants to protect him from whatever market gossip makes light of his place. The name //invert// has probably dropped from more than a few tongues there. Once Nilos marries, he'll be safe, in Cayir's eyes. He can marry a nine of love-husbands, if his first marriage stays placed and proper. Cayir was the first to argue in favour of Nilos becoming a healer, looking ahead to the journeyman's wages he'd bring home. Now she hopes to rush his promotion and lose all that silver, along with Nilos's free services to irlu holding. All to give him plausibility, a hunter's blind.
She trusts him that little. But she loves him that much.
The soft crackle of the fire fills Nilos's ears. Deep shivers shake him; his toes and fingers are like ice. If he'd taken Larik up on her offer, to join her marriage with Trenon, would that escape have been any better than this trap?
"Nilos?" Cayir asks. "You'll speak to Tereos, to speed the promotion?"
(link: "ϒ The journeymanship offers powerful bait, if he wants to make his songs away from Tereos's direct supervision.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)[(goto: "reciprocal")] ]
(link: "ϒ But marriage, to some girl overmountain or an old holding looking for a new toy?")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)[(goto: "reciprocal")] ] {
(if: $allowHints is true)[ (click-replace: "He won't ask.")[He won't ask. Of his parents, Cayir and Dayon are likely to be the most sympathetic, and as second spouses Selis and Firinol follow more often than lead. ] ]}$il[W]hen they return to the deepstone, Nilos follows Dayon to the homeside. Eyes on his unlaced boots, he pushes through the sitting room and his brothers' concern, to the men's sleeping room. Nilos strips out of his red-brown tunic and throws his belt aside with determined un-thought.
Despite his dizzy exhaustion, he has a hot-eyed feeling that he won't be able to sleep. The melody of the giving song murmurs in his head: //May her name be known//. With wretched gratefulness he feels himself sinking under moments after his head touches the down pillow.
He wakes with a stealthy sense of ease. The air holds a softness that wasn't there yesterday, or a week ago. The rains have passed.
Mid-morning sun warms his brothers' empty pallets. They let him sleep when they left to clear last year's cairns.
Tea and tev await Nilos in the homeside sitting room. Tereos's orders or Dayon's care? Nilos won't have to risk conversation with the hearthside, and he can't decide if he's disappointed.
Nilos eats slowly. The vigil left him cloud-headed. Grief tugs at him, blued out like hazy peaks. Tereos opened him to ease with his lifepoint touch yesterday when he restored Nilos's energy. Whether Nilos wanted ease or not. Nilos thinks, remotely, about growing angry, and finds a moment later that he's forgotten.
He feels good. Full of breath. Spring quiet on his skin. Even the lefthand drape of his tunic doesn't pierce his restless peace.
He takes the road into Asaresta as if he plans to join Tereos at the herbary, then goes to irthu deepstone instead.
He wants touch. He wants anger. Trenon will give him both. Nilos rings the guest chimes, though by the deepstone's smokeless chimney he guesses that Ralon and Berin have left.
The chimes die away while Nilos waits. He wore his healer's satchel against curiosity from passersby who might see him standing on the stoop. When the guest door finally opens, Trenon scowls out, wearing only linens above his left-waisted trousers.
Nilos licks his lips, and says, "I can't keep doing this."
Trenon's scowl vanishes. His eyes shift past Nilos to the empty street, then over his shoulder to the cool deepstone. Nilos has never come here like this, trespassing on irthu. He wants to say, //Yesterday was the last time we'll meet in the forest//; he wants to explain, //She's gone and you're a promised man.//
Master Tereos dampened Nilos's sorrow, and opened his acceptance. Nilos needs comfort and he chooses to take it on his terms: this once, this last. He moves past Trenon into the narrow guest hall. He doesn't glance at the deepstone's pleasure room, where Berin and Ralon's breath tarries. Trenon's sleeping room lies at the back of the deepstone, where the day's rising heat barely touches it.
They've never come together on the yielding surface of a pallet, the blankets rumpled around them. Trenon follows him, eyes intent with a yearning curiosity. He slips from his trousers and linens and stands, bared, long and lithe. Playfully, before Nilos can shed his tunic, Trenon tugs his belt to the right. The name //Nilis// unspoken between them.
Sometimes Trenon's love exhausts him. Nilos will burn up like bright pinewood and disappear into ash. But other times, like now, Nilos feels infinitely stronger. He will give Trenon this moment. He traces the familiar lines of Trenon's lifepoints. With clear calm he kisses Trenon's stomach, his thighs; thorough, generous, he teases Trenon's need. They surge together on the deep pallet. Through his own bold need, Nilos stays slow and controlled. They're joined when Nilos feels Trenon's release, and he follows it with his own. Afterwards, their breath scrapes loud in the silent room.
(link: "ϒ Nilos can't marry Trenon or give him the holding he wants. Not if he hopes to be the healer Asaresta needs.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)[(if: $responsible > $selfish)[(goto: "resolution")] ] ]
(link: "ϒ He meant this moment as a giving, and he doesn't know which way he'll fall if he lets go.")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)[(if: $responsible =< $selfish)[(goto: "bones")] ] ] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "clear last year's cairns.")[clear last year's cairns. They'll meet at the fields' edges with men from other holdings, and start the long discussion of spring land claims--whose cairns will move outwards, and whose will retreat. The master advocat will sing the final borders before the spring cairns go up.]
(click-replace: "She's gone and you're a promised man")[//I can't pretend any longer that I'll get what I need//]
(click-replace: "with determined un-thought.")[with determined unthought. When he sang his apprenticeship contract, Dayon moved his son's pallet into a corner, giving him two walls instead of neighbours, and a small shelf to supplement the men's common clothes press. A wool hanging takes the chill off the stone. Nilos could barely speak for embarrassment when he saw it; as the healer's apprentice, his place ranks higher than his fathers'.]
] }$il[N]ilos slips from Trenon's arms like a ghost lifting from body and breath. He fumbles for his clothes, flung off in heat and frenzy, chill from the clay floor.
A snore resounds through the thin wall. Ralon or Berin, in the pleasure room next door. Perhaps Nilos and Trenon left no trace in the guest hall and the gasp and press of their pleasure left no sound; or else Trenon's parents chose not to hear. If they noticed Nilos's intrusion, the loud clamour as they shoved him out the guest door would reflect more on Trenon's place than Nilos's. An excellent reason not to know.
Nilos's satchel offers his excuses to the milkers rubbing their eyes as they tug the rope latches from the goat pens. Small clots of miners cough and mutter before beginning their hike to the adit. Lanterns glow in the tev-brewer's cookhouse. The rest of Asaresta's deepstones recede like shadows in the grey light. Aspens whisper overhead as Nilos skirts the main road to irlu deepstone. A yearling whitetail headed for his day nest gives Nilos a mild stare and bounds deeper into the woods.
The spring rains softened the thick earth. All the farming holdings will reap their common crop of stones as they wrangle over the year's field boundaries. Labourers who can't find work on their holdings' claims trudge from one village to the next, seeking better contract terms and better views. A journeyman advocat like Trenon will find plenty of fees lying in the fields: any field cairn shifted by so much as a handsbreadth must be negotiated and consecrated in song. Trenon's holding needs every silverwhit he can scavenge. He'll leave this morning; by midday he'll be overmountain. Nilos can picture him exactly: his long, determined stride, his fist wound in his old pony's lead rope, his eyes fixed on the ground ahead.
Nilos, not Trenon, offered a kiss with the word //last// on his lips. Yet he already feels abandoned. Trenon may scrape his memory clean without Nilos dallying on his pallet.
When Nilos reaches irlu deepstone, his brothers are rising for the day. They wave him back to the empty homeside sleeping room. Nilos closes the door behind himself, and skins out of his rumpled clothes. The press of Trenon's hands on his skin lingers. Nilos draws his fingertips across his lips, down his throat; the line of Trenon's kisses.
Nilos scatters a handful of dried woodsage in a kettle of steaming water. He dips a linen rag and wrings it out, studying his hands as the water gathers on his fingers and runs dripping back into the kettle. Man's hands.
Trenon's lips crook in a smile when he calls the two of them inverts. Though Trenon despises deceit, Nilos knows he's wrong. Nilos isn't. Can't be. Strength comes to Nilos' hands from endless grinding with mortar and pestle. Sureness from ease of long practice, first following his master's low instructions over wounds and fevers, later learning the prick and draw of stitches, the herbal heat of compresses. His hands comfort: fingers slipping beneath the weak swollen knuckles of the old, squeezing down hard on the rocky shoulders of silent mourners, finding lifepoints and easing the flow of strength. His hands know their work and their duty, as his voice knows the songs.
Nilos brushes old sweat and smoke out his tunic and trousers and pulls them back on slowly. He loves the songs, their power over breath and body. Healing requires his devotion, his awe. Tereos balms the ghost with nothing more than smoke and steeped herbs. Nilos owes his reverence and his obedience to his master. If he changes the herbs then the songs mean nothing. If he changes the songs then the herbs mean nothing.
Nilos loved Larik and Trenon, each fiercely, and yet not enough--they both said--to accept a compromise. Take on the second husbandry. And then: spend the rest of his life pretending.
Trenon and Larik kept Nilos's secrets without honouring them. They never imagined that Nilos truly wanted to be their wife. They both presumed Nilos's bed and his life lay on the homeside. Larik wanted to save him; //from himself// lingered in her compassion. Trenon wants Nilos for himself, without guilt and with a passionate defiance. Trenon's desires swamp Nilos's needs so easily.
Why can't he accept what they offered? Such secret covenants must bind other marriages, no matter how staid they appear on the surface. The fact, Trenon says, that the songs never mention inverts--or whatever name Nilos chooses to claim--is proof enough that the songs are finite, where the world is infinite. Trenon craves those infinities, searches for them.
Nilos wants them too, but he's afraid to look for them, afraid of what he might find.
He shouldn't have to live by Trenon and Larik's discretion. Why should only his position in the marriage be undefined, tenuous? Not husband, not wife. If the possibility exists--if he admits to infinities--then what's possible isn't wrong.
And different herbs might change the songs.
Nilos swallowed his role and place on the condition that he would learn to heal. If he the songs he loves are flawed songs then the world's wisdom failed him. Not his master, or his lover, or his own holding. The songs themselves. And if there's no one to blame--as Trenon longs to lay blame--then there's no one to turn to for redress.
At his coming of age, Nilos stood on a windswept peak with trembling heart and open eyes. Every day, Nilos walks a mountain ridge in a windstorm. He keeps to the narrow path by allowing neither despair, nor the exhausting insistence of Trenon's need, tug him over the edge. He is a healer. His hands are healer's hands. His toes cling to the rock. The wind ruffles his fledgling feathers. To tumble from the rock and soar--if that choice exists still, someone else must take the leap. Let Trenon call his choice betrayal; Nilos can only call it duty.
(link-goto: "ϒ Return.","begin")$il[O]nce, on a solitary hike below Asaresta, Nils found the fox-gnawed remains of a blue hare.
A single bluebottle buzzed around the scattered tufts of fur. The bones were brown with weathered blood, not yet sun-bleached. Sinew connected several vertebrae, the pelvis, and one strong leg bone. Nils squatted and traced the slip of the hip joint in its socket. A low path through the canebrake showed the fox's trail. Trailing sedges and the small blue eyes of forget-me-nots trembled at the edges of the clearing. The hare's tentative feeding ended in a twisting, kicking flight.
Years later, a season after his coming of age, Nilos sprinted at his master's side, climbing breathless to irvu deepstone. Kirn sat shaking on the chopping block, hand wrapped in a red-soaked rag. The bloody hatchet, and the spurt of drops in the dust, told the story--Kirn buried the blade between thumb and forefinger, down to the knuckle. Deep in the wound, before the blood pooled again, Nilos could see the white flash of bone. Tereos closed the gap with swift sutures, needle and sinew.
Kirn shook like an aspen leaf and stared wide-eyed at every movement of Tereos's fine city-wrought needle and boiled sheepgut thread. The poor kid didn't faint until Tereos tugged the last knot tight.
Later, Nilos tried to explain to Trenon how he felt in that moment. He realized that the same bones and gristle that the butcher strips from a sheep's carcass are at work in every body he treats. The ghost imbues the body and creates the breath. Animals have body alone. But there is no life without the body, and that body is the same: meat and skin and blood.
Nilos fumbles through his explanation. Trenon stops him with a grip on his shoulder. "All right," he says. "Kirn turned out fine, a crooked thumb at worst."
Nilos shakes his head. Trenon doesn't see what he means. "I'll never understand," he says, feeling greedy as a raven stooping above the giving place.
He'll never see a person's bones whole and entire. Tereos expects him to heal without that knowledge. Nilos might as well ask Larik to weave with weft alone, or Trenon to craft a voiceless vow.
He can't blame Trenon for pulling him into a hug for the wrong reasons.
Master Tereos expects Nilos to learn all a healer's skills: to set broken bones in casts of wet birchbark, to press and stretch farmers' bent backs to straightness, to feel the grip and catch of a bonesaw's kerning, and calm the unconscious flinch of patients dreaming thornapple dreams. Amputation saves lives--as when a rocky slope gave way beneath Aron's walking stick and a rolling boulder crushed his foot. In the moment, Nilos feels sharp and calm, even as his stomach knots with distant horror.
A raven without wings. Nilos can't leap to the chalky bottom of the giving cliff and tear open a ghost shell for his curiosity's sake. Master Tereos can't teach him what he needs to know.
The night Nilos follows Trenon to irthu deepstone, Trenon falls asleep cradled in Nilos's arms. Nilos watches the moon move by the shadows on the deepstone wall. After moonset, Nilos picks his way home along the dew-cool deerpath. Fir trees spread black branches on the lucent sky. The hush of an owl's wings sweep over his head. Irlu deepstone's bulk waits for him. He slips in through the homeside door, and between his brothers' hunched forms to his empty pallet. The murmured pulse of sleepers' breath enfolds him until he sinks down into a thick sleep.
Nilos wakes slowly the next morning, drowsy and heatsick under his down tick. Blood throbs red through his eyelids. Larik is given, given and gone.
A quick slap of cold water from the brothers' basin rinses away the heavy heat in his eyes. He dresses carefully: linens, stockings, trousers, boots. He reaches for a sleeveless vest and lifts its lush softness to his lips. Irlu holding doesn't trade in chamois fleece and an apprentice earns no silver of his own. Larik gifted him this vest after he came of age. She wove it short-waisted, as close as possible to a child's design. The muted brown colour could be mistaken for a child's undyed cloth. Nilos slips it over his shoulders. The fleece brushes warm as a touch against his skin. Nilos draws the two long tails through his hands, a velvety rush across his palms. Slowly, he closes his eyes. Wraps one tail over the other. And fastens them, with a knot at his hip.
He surfaces, sleek as an otter. The knot rests on his right hip, with the left tail tucked underneath. Nilos dips his head. His lips part; he shivers.
His cloak, left-knotted, goes over all. Nothing shows.
For two years he wore a healer's clothes, a man's. He made that choice at his coming of age and believed he'd put it behind him. But he chooses every day.
[[ϒ He pours his breath into the gap between body and ghost, and nothing returns.->invitation]]
[[ϒ No one sings vigil for the woman he should have been.->procession]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "his right hip")[the woman's hip]
]}$il[F]or three ninedays, Nilos wears Larik's gift under his overtunic. Spring creeps up the mountain, bright with chill sun. Despite the cool air, Nilos's face flushes hot. Sweat slides down his ribs. His stomach swoops like a peregrine, and he feels as light, as hollow-boned.
His fingers skid beneath his overtunic to touch the knot resting on his right hip when he passes people on the market street. Nilos fidgets, waiting to catch the first frowning face, the first look of confusion bleeding into disgust. He keeps his overtunic on even in the close air of Tereos's herbary. One morning, Tereos will demand that he strip, see the right-knotted vest, and dismiss Nilos from his apprenticeship.
If anything, though, Tereos's thoughtful mien grows more quiet and deliberate. Nilos jitters between defeat and defiance. He wants to rip off his overtunic and demand Tereos' judgement--beg for forgiveness, or throw Tereos's mercy in his face. Tereos's lessons slide through him like water. Perhaps a woman can't learn what Tereos has to teach. Nilos's voice wavers and breaks on the songs, as it hasn't since he came into his growth. Tereos rests a palm on his back, drawing him back into a chant's slow rhythm. Nilos settles, and yet wonders whether Tereos wants to protect Nilos or himself from a betrayal they both foresee.
One morning, the herbary guest chimes jangle impatiently as the two of them bend over the distilling pot. Steam puffs and billows from its long copper coil.
Tereos goes to the door and opens it to Maron. Maron gives a perfunctory courtesy and enters the herbary like a prowling bear. "Didn't mean to interrupt," he says. He smacks his lips. "Phew, how many cleansing songs got loose in here?" Tereos smiles and offers Maron his armchair. Maron falls into it heavily. "No rush, go on with your brewing."
"Nilos can finish," Tereos says.
Maron frowns at Nilos, a //hrm// rumbling in his chest. (if: (history:) contains "empty shell")[Since Nilos wrapped Larik for her giving,](else:)[Since Nilos sang Larik's last vigil,] he's been invisible to Maron's eye, and to the rest of iryu holding by extension. Tereos gives every holding space after a death, allowing time to blunt anger and loss, before he returns with songs of comfort. Nilos struggles to accept iryu's distance as mourning. But being the object of Maron's fresh scrutiny is hardly an improvement.
Maron straightens in his chair and deliberately looks away, to Tereos. "I want you to know iryu holds no grudges," he says.
"Thank you," Tereos says, and offers his fist. Maron closes his two hands around it with an air of careless generosity. Nilos clenches his teeth at the implicit accusation. When the vigil failed, Nilos didn't suggest Larik's family neglected their offering of breath! If Tereos wants to appease Maron's place, let him. Nilos loses nothing by it.
"Our youngest comes of age this threeday," Maron says. "A daughter, you know."
Maron stacks children like firewood, replacing one daughter with the next. Nilos bends lower over the hearth, catching the drip of distilled wine from the coiled pipe. Tereos offers Maron grave congratulations for both of them.
"Master Dalor will be singing the rite," Maron continues. The chair creaks under him as he stretches satisfaction.
Iryu spreads silver like farmers hoeing compost. Nilos pumps the bellows until the hearthcoals glow, sweat dripping from his temples. May Maron choke on the song's steam.
Tereos raises his eyebrows. "Ah, the master advocat will lead the rite? Not the young man? His journeyman?"
Trenon won't be singing anyone's coming of age in Asaresta. He left after Larik's giving to travel overmountain, to find work in those villages without their own advocats. Master Tereos knows that as well as any, but the question deflates Maron's boast. Iryu hired the master for lack of choice, not extravagance.
Still, Maron chuckles. "The boy can't sing his own betrothal, can he?" he says. "We hope to see you there, master. Your apprentice too, if he wishes."
So Larik's family will fulfill her betrothal contract with Trenon the only way left to them. Nilos expected it, but to hear Maron's comfortable confirmation freezes him, even as his head spins from the fire's burning heat. Trenon would hardly stay unwed. Larik's death never meant that Nilos would suddenly have a chance. He deserves to hear the news like this, from Maron's contented bombast.
"Thank you," Tereos says. "Everyone praises iryu's hosting, here and overmountain."
Maron grunts. "Enough of them come to it, invited or not," he says, flattering his holding with complaints.
"When do you expect the marriage?"
Iryu can't plan the wedding before Trenon returns. Nilos doubts they know when to expect him. Trenon left without warning and his parents wouldn't ask him to return quickly. Any silver he earns before he marries belongs to them, not his new holding.
Maron waves off the question. "If I don't watch out, I'll soon feel old," he says. "By season's end, I'll have my first grandchild, and all my children will be apprenticed and married."
Or dead. Maron forgets Larik's name so easily. At best he robes his grief with place.
"Iryu must be proud," Tereos says. "I'll certainly be there."
His errand finished, Maron lingers to discuss the weather and the lambing, both excellent, to his holding's benefit. Tereos answers easily, knowledgeably, about Maron's prospects and the traders' price for spring wool.
Nilos works at the hearth until the distilling pot hisses empty and his throat burns from the song's vinegar bite. He and Trenon haven't touched since the night of Larik's giving. They haven't spoken. Nilos can't blame Trenon for leaving Asaresta without a word. Yet here he is, jealous of Larik's soon-to-be sister. Kell must hate the proposed marriage as much as Nilos does. Who would want Trenon for a husband? He's tactless, overbearing, no prize. A child's romance, not anyone to build a holding with.
Nilos banks the coals and sets about putting away Tereos's tools and ingredients. His fuss finally shifts Maron--Nilos reaches above his head to replace a dripping pot on its hook, without apology--and routs him from Tereos's chair. Tereos bows Maron to the door and then sits to watch Nilos tidy.
"A child coming of age is no insult to you," he says.
Trenon doesn't want to marry the child--the girl, as she'll be in a few days' time. Kelil. It's a contract marriage, ghostless.
But Trenon accepted the contract. He crafted the vows himself. For all his sneering words about breaking free, Trenon falters in the face of tradition.
[[ϒ "Will you go?" Tereos asks him.->variance]]
[[ϒ Nilos drops his eyes; he can't pretend not to care.->denied]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Our youngest")[Kell]
(Click-replace: "the only way left to them.")[the only way left to them. They'll insist Kell come of age as a woman, and replace Larik in the marriage.]
(Click-replace: "not anyone to build a holding with.")[not anyone to build a holding with.
Nilos knows all Trenon's flaws, and has different names for them. Intense. Relentless. Focused, to an all too smug extent, on pleasing those he thinks well of.]
]}$il[T]he last of the rains left with Larik's giving. No sooner do the ravens settle on her shell than the sun pours out hot and fine. Nilos's family disappears to the holding's claims, field and forest. Everyone in Asaresta scatters into spring, obnoxiously healthy. For the first time that Nilos can remember, his feet drag on the path to Tereos's herbary.
He eases in the door with Larik's gift hidden beneath his overtunic. Tereos greets him, but his eyes drop immediately to Nilos's right hip. Nilos's fingers have crept up to the hidden right-knot. His face burns as if Tereos slapped him with a bridle strap. He forces his hand down slowly.
Tereos frowns. "You'll have to wait on any callers," he says. "I need to gather herbs."
In years past Tereos insisted that Nilos do the gathering, or they did it together, when Nilos was first learning to identify plants before they flowered. Tereos's knees don't allow him to hike far from the deepstone these days. But perhaps spring coming on warm lightens him, too. "Yes, master," Nilos says, and sets out to prove himself useful. He shovels old ashes from the herbary hearth and takes them to Tereos's wives for making soap. He scrubs smoke from the walls, and wets and sweeps the herbary's clay floor.
Day on day, though, as summer heat pervades the mountain and Nilos fails to set his overtunic aside, Tereos grows gruffer. One morning, four ninedays after Larik's giving, he prepares his satchel and leaves to conduct Virinir's restday breathwork.
"I can do it," Nilos says, trailing Tereos when he leaves. Virinir won't expect Tereos, and she startles badly sometimes to see someone she can't remember from night to noon. Tereos shrugs, so Nilos falls in beside him, the silence grating between them.
They hike down to Asaresta's main street among a press of mules and barrows, Tereos leaning heavily on his stick. The sound of forced, hearty laughter makes Nilos stop. He's not the only one--the people around him raise eyebrows and watch. Larik's parents, dressed in their finest guesting robes, stroll down the road's center, chatting amongst themselves. Making a spectacle of themselves and pretending they aren't. Iryu wants to wallow, to claim place by making a great show of their dishonour. They are bound to pay Trenon's parents a lofty sum for breaking the betrothal contract. Their air of forced gaiety pretends that they intended this outcome all along.
"So iryu pays the price," he hears--a miner from irvu, speaking to Tereos.
Tereos nods. "They honour their debt," he says.
The woman, Ganil, laughs. "They honour their holding and nothing else. Did they break contract simply to prove they can waste an adit's worth of silver?"
"To insult irthu, more like," a farmer on Ganil's far side suggests. "//And// show they can waste an adit's worth of silver."
"They lost their daughter," Tereos says mildly. "We can allow them their grief, whatever form it takes."
Ganil raises her eyebrows. The farmer colours slightly. They shuffle away from Tereos with a shared grimace. Nilos can't blame them for their gossip. Iryu chose to make this performance, for the sake of their holding's place. The whole marriage sweeps past Nilos in their matching robes. Painted birds decorate the rawhide case Peris carries--signs of a young man's good fortune. A laugh twists Nilos's mouth. Trenon hates such cheerful omens.
"I think you'll find your friend's brother is the reason for this, though iryu never says so," Tereos says.
Nilos blinks. All of Larik's brothers married into overmountain holdings years ago. Then he realizes--Larik's sibling, Kell, reached fifteen this spring. And iryu chose a son. "Kelol? He came of age already?" Kelol, who dreamed of trading, who struck bargains with Larik over chores, who could ride any pony, even those who believed themselves chamois.
"A nineday ago," Tereos says.
Nilos's mouth opens, then he hesitates. Iryu's procession means more than a holding pointedly rising above their daughter's death. They are publically embracing their new son by gladly paying debts he could have prevented. Still, Kelol must hate that they are making such a festival in his name. "Without a feast?" he asks quietly.
"What did iryu have to celebrate?" Tereos watches Nilos keenly.
Nilos's fingers twitch. He forms a fist rather than stroke the knot at his hip. "Larik said her sibling was to be a trader."
"No longer," Tereos says. "They'll have to find a different trade for him--he'll need it, to pay off that debt."
[[ϒ Kelol came of age a man.->cage]]
[[ϒ Does his left-knotted belt make his freedom or his cage?->mettle]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "who dreamed of trading")[who always planned to be a woman]
(click-replace: "her sibling was to be a trader")[her sibling was to be a woman]
(click-replace: "to pay off that debt.")[to pay off that debt." Kelol's holding must assign the shame of a broken contract to someone. The youngest son, with the least place, is an easy target. Just as iryu holding might have sacrificed a daughter to uphold Larik's contract with Trenon, they plan to sacrifice their son to repay the silver they'll lose from breaking their bond.
Nilos swallows. "Poor boy."
Tereos nods. "He's a man, now.]
(click-replace: "Virinir's restday breathwork")[Virinir's restday breathwork. Once a nineday, Nilos spends an afternoon sitting in the sun with the old woman. Her hand lies soft and trusting between his. The breathwork song calls for foxglove tea, with as much birch sugar as Virinir wants; and she never stints. Her ghost strengthens with the reminder of sweetness. She wanders in years, and Nilos smiles over her stories of her first husband and second wife, who he never met.]
] }$il[L]arik's brothers cordon off Asaresta market square the morning of Kell's coming of age with ribbons woven of blues, greens, and purples. An aisle marked by a fence of bent willow withes leads to Master Dalor's dais. Larik's sisters raise a bowered roof over the platform and twine flowers through it: asters, dryads, chickweed, and primrose, spring flowers pale as childhood. Nilos remembers holding a sprig of rosehips in the muddy dooryard for his rite, and Cayir's face tightening as she paid the advocat's fee.
Maron's guests arrive early in case the holding's cauldrons run dry. If they find the well-watered tev worthy of complaint, Maron's sons make up for it with generous splashes of barley beer, and soon the square fills with approving chatter. Nilos slinks in wearing his best ochre robe and accepts an offered mug, though he can't imagine swallowing. He tries to blend into the shifting crowd. He might as well be one of the freeloading guests Maron dismissed so lightly.
The sound of silver fifes and xylophones makes everyone turn towards the square's entrance. Maron and Peris lead the procession, followed by the rest of their spouses. All five wear robes whose richness is all the more apparent from the sombre colours: deep brown for the husbands, and forest green for the wives. To make so many matching robes must have taken many dyeing attempts, and much cloth, an affordance few holdings can make.
The music brightens when Kell appears behind iryu's marriage. In a soft, simple robe, Kell looks every inch the mulish, solemn child: long legs with foal's knees, hands too wide for slender arms, and a narrow, brown face. The crowd adds their whistles to the instruments, matching the sprightly chords.
Nilos's lips are too dry to whistle. His ears fill with a pika's heartbeat, thready-quick. If Kell feels the same dizzy wash of panic Nilos remembers from his coming of age, two years past, it doesn't show. Nilos takes a deep swallow from his tev mug, then another, holding the sour taste of barley beer on his tongue. Kell climbs up on the dais beside Dalor and faces the crowd.
Kell's eyes cross Nilos's. Despite the childish clothes and gawkish stance, Kell holds Nilos's gaze with a burning directness. Nilos squeezes his mug tighter, lumps in the cheap pottery digging into his palms. He wants to escape Kell's stare, but Kell doesn't look away until Dalor grips Kell's shoulder and begins the coming of age song. The guests hum or whistle along; the opening notes of a woman's song surprise no one, with every scrap of ribbon around the square declaring the rite's outcome. Dalor removes the child's robe. Plenty of children shrink away from the forest of faces and the exposure, but Kell doesn't flinch.
Peris releases the woman's robe to float down around Kelil's shoulders. The crowd murmurs appreciatively. The robe is white, not the pale beige of undyed wool children wear, but bleached a cleaner white than chalk. Deep blue herringbones pattern the robe's cuffs and the neckline. The hem is alive with peregrines, soaring in a right-turning line that matches the new knot Kelil ties with quick, sure hands.
That robe is Larik's work. She expected Kelil's life would range wider than the mountain villages. Nilos sat with her on long winter nights while she created falcons stitch by stitch. Larik smiled over the work, coughing more and more often, drinking Nilos's songs of feverfew and willowbark mostly to please him. She didn't live to see her sister, but she crafted dreams for her sibling's future.
And Kelil is a woman, grey eyes proud as a wolf's. Her narrow face and pointed chin echo Larik's, all the more now that plaiting sticks hold her hair back. She and Larik have the same complexion, clear and brown as buckwheat, and straight black hair. Does Kelil know how Larik's ghost haunts her? She's reaped plenty from her sister's sowing.
The crowd shifts when the coming of age song ends. They hope to fill their mugs at least once more and escape, offering congratulations but not place to iryu holding. But Dalor shifts his tone and begins the betrothal song. Nilos catches a few fleeting frowns and surprised looks on the faces around him before the crowd settles back to wait with more or less patience. They grudge their time, not iryu's right to promise their youngest daughter the moment she turns fifteen. The surprise in Kelil's betrothal isn't its speed, but the fact that Trenon, her presumptive husband, isn't here to sing his part. A few guests look around, as though they expect him to pop up and fill his place on the dais. But he sang his part in this song with Larik last fall. Not many in Asaresta have been waiting since then to hear the same vows sung again.
If Maron or Peris or anyone from iryu holding notice their guests' awkward coughs and shufflings, they make no sign. Kelil's voice squeaks on her entrance but she sings with sweet clear strength. Her face is intent, as though hearing the vows for the first time as she sings them. The song hasn't changed since Larik sang it. Trenon will marry iryu's youngest daughter. He crafted these promises. Apparently, it doesn't matter to him what fish he catches with that hook.
(link-goto: "ϒ No one deserves a secondhand song.","vow song")
(link-goto: "ϒ Yet Kelil breathes air stolen from Larik; Nilos grudges even her grief.","ceremony") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "the moment she turns fifteen.")[the moment she turns fifteen. Girls and boys usually spend a few years as contract labour or apprentices before settling on marriages. They might spend the time in flirtations and outright courting with more established couples who are looking for third and fourth spouses, for love or children. ]
]}$il[N]ilos slips from the deepstone and latches the homeside door. He hesitates in the dooryard like a roe deer seeking the forest's protection, then forces himself to take the rain-rutted road, even if it means getting tangled in conversations. He passes the turn to the herbary and crosses the bridge, climbing the path to iryu holding.
He shouldn't visit so soon after spurning Maron's invitation to Kelil's coming of age. Perhaps he shouldn't go at all, and risk looking like an impudent trader who's been shorted a silverwhit. But a threeday ago, he saw Larik's ghost in Asaresta market.
No--he saw Kelil, a woman now, a placed adult. She leaned hipshot against the cobbler's table, one hand raised to finger a pair of riding boots. Nilos saw her smile and lean in, until her right-knotted tunic gaped at her collarbone. From a distance--
There's no reason he should mistake them. Larik was broader through the chest but Kelil holds herself squarer. Nilos recognizes Maron's swollen pride in her stance, even if Kelil manages to carve it down to poise and challenge. Larik had a willow's strength, knotty and tenacious. Kelil stands straight as a pine, and as seeking.
But Kelil's bones are Larik's. They have the same long black hair; Kelil's flyaway and finer than Larik's thicker lustre. Nilos caught himself staring. For an instant, he'd forgotten Larik's face, may her name be known.
Since Larik's passing iryu has been closed to him. Kelil is iryu's youngest daughter now. Kelil is Trenon's betrothed. Nilos wonders if any of them remember Larik as he does. Does her giving song echo in their ears?
As he climbs, the lea wind shoves a steep bank of dark clouds southwards, turning the day hot and fine. Peris hooked open the weaving hut's wide shutters to taken in the sun. She moves among the dye vats, dipping a multi-coloured finger into their steaming surfaces to check temperature and strength.
A proper guest would ignore the weaving hut and go to the deepstone to ring the guesting chimes. Nilos could measure iryu's esteem by the time Peris takes leaving her work to answer the guest door, but he doesn't intend to wait long enough to be snubbed; he steps into the weaving shed and says, "My greetings to iryu."
Peris glances at him and reaches for a stained rag to dry her hands. Only then does she nod a chilly welcome. Varin, Belim, and Katir bend round-shouldered over wheel and shuttle. No one offers tev or tea.
Nilos fights down the urge to mutter apologies and sidle away. The persistent weight of the knot at Nilos's right hip, Larik's gift hidden under his cloak, insulates him from iryu's reception. He steps past Peris's casks and around a half-empty woolsack, to Larik's loom.
No one has touched it in ninedays. Shayin sits on the stool, her hands slack in her lap, her back to the unfinished tapestry. She stares south through the open louvres, her gaze following the fall of the slate-sloped mountain.
Small wonder Larik's sisters work so grimly, so silently. Shayin's despondency buffets them like the looming winds before a thunderhead. They clearly want to be left in peace to endure Shayin's mourning, the placeless insistence of it.
Nilos's skin heats, but he can't stop now that he's come this far. He sets himself against a flood and steps forward to Larik's loom. The top half of the tapestry teems with flowering fields, tall crops, dancing children. Shuttles, like knucklebones, hang from different colours of thread where the intricate design disappears into the unwoven edge. The empty warp stands out like white bones.
"What will you do with it?" he asks. He reaches out to run his hand down the back side of the tapestry, where the pattern disappears into a riot of knots.
Peris's mouth tightens. "The thread is still strong. We can frog it back."
Pride, or greed, to destroy Larik's art for the value of the thread? Nilos wishes he could ask for the tapestry as it stands, but his holding could never raise the silver for half of such a work. The cardinal red puts the thread alone beyond an apprentice's means.
"I'll finish it," Shayin says, with barren conviction.
Shayin seems unlikely to finish anything in her current state. Besides, the join where she takes over Larik's work will be too apparent. She might as well yoke a pack mule to a sprightly horse. But Peris says nothing. Shayin has taken all iryu's misery as her own. She wears it like an extravagant, untouchable cloak. The rest of the holding clings to what scraps they can, with nothing left to share with visitors.
"What do you want?" Peris asks him sharply. "Tereos had good iryu silver for your vigil."
[[ϒ The petty stab of her question catches Nilos off-guard.->restraint]]
[[ϒ Honesty suddenly seems worth its price.->indulgence]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "may her name be known.")[may her name be known.
All last winter Nilos haunted iryu holding. Every rest day--and Tereos was generous with his apprentice's time--Nilos ducked into the weavers' hut below iryu deepstone to find Larik at her loom. Even when barking coughs shook her body, she wanted to weave. Knot by knot she drew worlds on her loom. Nilos kept her well-wrapped in shawls and brewed songs to soothe her chest. Often enough Larik left her mug to cool as she danced her shuttles through the warp. Peris gave her skeins of scarlet thread, brighter than madder and deeper than ochre. Half a sun stood out in the center of Larik's loom before Tereos ordered her to her pallet for the last time. After that, Nilos only approached iryu as Tereos's shadow. He gave courtesy before entering the deepstone, and was suffered on the hearthside just long enough to give his songs.]
]}{(set: $freedom to true)The next time Nilos sees Kelol, he's holding hands with one of Ganil's younger sisters. Kelol wears a wide grin. Ganil's sister ruffles a teasing hand through his fine hair, loosening his braid. He answers her with a kiss.}
Nilos was never once allowed to share such a touch with Trenon in public, once Trenon came of age. Nilos has never been courted; never gone courting. Perhaps Kelol chose to become a son for this girl, who gets her place from irvu holding's growing mining claims. Kelol's family may get a strong marriage contract out of him yet.
Kelol catches sight of Nilos and strides over. As a child he had already mastered the direct approach and the steady gaze, but with place has come a new measure of confidence. Kelol offers his fist and says, "I wanted to apologize."
Nilos covers Kelol's fist with his two hands, not commenting on the boy's trader-style greeting. "For what?"
"I blamed you at Larik's giving. You did your best." Kelol's eyes darken and his thin mouth is set. He may not believe the words, but he delivers them well, with haughty forgiveness.
Nilos swallows his breath.
Kelol frowns thoughtfully. "When I saw you with Trenon--" He lifts one hand in explanation, as if Nilos might have forgotten that wide-eyed child staring at them in the woods. "I thought it meant you couldn't be a true healer."
Nilos bridles, but Kelol doesn't notice.
"But all that time," he says, "I was planning to be a trader." He seeks Nilos's eyes. He must have grown in the ninedays since Nilos saw him last, because he matches Nilos's height. "If I love Trayis now, I might've--loved her the other way too, like you love Trenon," he says. "I'm not saying it's the same. But I understand a little better, now that I have place."
Nilos resists telling Kelol all the ways he hasn't discovered the least thing about place yet. His lungs hurt, deep down, like he fell from a bolting mule.
"I'm bound to my debt," Kelol says. "So I'm sorry."
Nilos gropes for an answer. "All this, to avoid the marriage?"
"It wasn't mine," Kelol says fiercely. "I wish I could have helped you, as she wanted--for her ghost's sake. But not like that." He nods. "Be well, Nilos."
Nilos wants to laugh, yet at the same time he feels drawn to Kelol's vehement integrity. He recognizes Kelol's apology: the boy wants to prove to himself that he can be a proper man. His affection for his childhood sweetheart doesn't mean he's like Nilos. If Nilos can claim to be a healer despite his obvious urges, then Kelol, no invert, will prosper as a man, and soon forget he ever intended to become a trader.
[[ϒ The boy's intensity, the confident set of his shoulders in his left-wrapped tunic, quickens Nilos's longing to become his parents' suitable son.->tentative]]
[[ϒ Nilos can't offer Kelol a place model. He isn't what Kelol wants him to be.->appeal]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "one of Ganil's younger sisters")[Trayis of irvu holding]
(Click-replace: "Ganil's sister")[Trayis]
]}{(set: $freedom to false)The next time Nilos sees Kelol, he's trailing behind his sister Belim at the market. Belim frowns over a barrel of last fall's wrinkle-skinned apples. They ought to have been boiled a month since. As it stands they'll be good for little but goat feed. But Belim seems undecided enough that the woman behind the worktop distracts Belim with a taste of sweet mountain strawberry. She hands Belim the clay dish, holding no more than a handful, each one smaller than a fingertip, but white with thick cream. The moment Belim pops the first strawberry into her mouth, the trader names a price on the apples. Belim nods and cups the trader's fist in her hands, then laughingly lifts a finger to scoop a drip of cream from her chin. Kelol stands behind her, glowering at the trader, who ignores him completely.}
Varin waves Kelol to load the apples into their barrow. Kelol hoists the apples, his arms brown with sun and rounding with new muscle. From further down the market street, Nilos feels a curious twinge. Kelol's gruff disgust, his thin face softened by a few soft wisps of hair escaping from his braid--he reminds Nilos of a younger Trenon. Yet his anger at the trader reflects Nilos's anger when Tereos surrendered to Larik's fever. Nilos swallowed that same bitterness when Tereos and ordered him to sing vigil instead of trying a different brew.
When Kelol kicks his way down the dusty street, Nilos realizes he watched too long. Kelol heads straight for him, with the same fierce directness he showed as a child. He lifts his chin in stern challenge. "I turned Trenon down," he says, with defiant pride.
Kelol didn't simply turn Trenon down. He destroyed his own life--place and profit and hopes--to do it. His parents turned his personal dislike of Trenon into a spiteful knife-thrust from one holding to another. //We'd rather lose silver than keep a contract with you//.
"Trenon didn't deserve the place insult," Nilos says, though ninedays have passed since he felt any urge to defend Trenon. Trenon will have trouble finding another first marriage with this stain on his place, rejected by his betrothed's holding. He may end up as a second husband, accepted into an established marriage. "Your parents pushed his betrothal to Larik in the first place."
"He didn't care about Larik."
For that, apparently, Trenon deserves any suffering. Nilos shakes his head. Kelol is fifteen, and despite his recent growth and his confidence, it shows. "Will you love whomever your parents pick for you?" Kelol might gain some sympathy for Trenon's position when he understands his holding will sell him, like irthu did Trenon, to the highest bidder. Trenon acts placeless but he finds honour in his songs. Once Trenon sang the betrothal, he considered himself bound. If Kelol was honourable, he would have saved both holdings' good names by becoming a daughter and resigning himself to the marriage. But no, not Kelol, a rich holding's spoiled youngest.
Kelol frowns uncomfortably. "My debt's too new for me to marry."
"So you gave up your dream of trading because Trenon was worse than no trade at all," Nilos says. He means to make a gentle point, but the words taste faintly acid.
"I'm to be a teacher," Kelol says. His lips thin, showing off the strong line of his jaw. "I'll do it well."
Nilos had the choice, once, to give up healing or Trenon. Kelol built a different cage than he did, but his reasons were similar. Still-- "You chose //against// Trenon," he says, "instead of //for// teaching." He sounds tired, and such advice, given against place, only earns him Kelol's disregard.
"Maybe I chose not to lie down and accept misery as the price for place," Kelol spits, with a burning stare. Then, with a sharp twist, he stalks away.
Nilos doesn't know whether to follow him, or to admit Kelol's right. Nilos accepts too much misery--and not Larik's pragmatic, charlatan acceptance, that favoured her in the end.
Nilos doesn't need to prove himself to Kelol. He's not Larik. Nilos owes him no debt and no place. The ferocity of Kelol's determination, to hurt himself for freedom's sake, tugs at Nilos. He wonders how differently he might have become himself, if he'd pushed for more.
[[For healing. For himself.->tentative]]
[[For Trenon.->appeal]] {
(if: $allowHints)[
(click-replace: "your dream of trading")[your plan to become a woman]
(click-replace: "instead of for teaching.")[instead of //for// becoming a son."]
(Click-replace: "Will you love whomever your parents pick for you?")[Will you love whomever your parents pick for you? A stranger from overmountain, or an old marriage looking for something new?]
] }$il[W]ith hot-eyed boldness, Nilos meets Peris's tight-lipped stare. "For iryu's famed hospitality," he says, Trenon's irony sharp in his mouth. His face burns, but he doesn't look away from Peris's affronted surprise.
"Kelil can see to your comfort," she says, and waves to the deepstone.
Peris, iryu's first wife, offers her holding's youngest daughter as his host. A healer deserves more respect. She overstepped--the ravens' feet around her eyes tighten. Not that she'll apologize to an apprentice. And Nilos isn't Trenon, to stand around trading stings over place, even if snide jabs crowd behind his lips.
He bows his head and leaves the weavers' hut without a word. It was placeless of him to come. Did he expect to share remembrances of Larik, or to accuse iryu of ignoring his pain? He acted like Trenon, assuming the world directs its injustice at him personally.
[[ϒ Like Shayin, Nilos has eaten more sorrow than his portion.->ceremony]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "even if snide jabs crowd behind his lips.")[even if snide jabs crowd behind his lips--//May iryu's name be as honoured as its host//.]
]}$il["T]o offer grief songs to those who need them," Nilos says. He means it sincerely and yet he can hear the false piety in his tone.
Peris eyes him like a peddlar with suspect wares. "We're well enough here."
Nilos glances at Shayin, who has lapsed back into silence. If Peris had the least compassion, she would ask comfort for Shayin's sake, even if she feels nothing herself.
Peris pushes in front of him, blocking him from Larik's tapestry and, in the crowded space of the weavers' hut, obliging him to step back. "If we need your master we'll be certain to call on him."
She thinks an apprentice can't offer what Shayin needs. No--//Nilos// can't offer what Shayin needs. He saw Kelil in the market, a smirk on her face as she bargained with the cobbler. She has all the time and silver in the world. Nilos endured Maron's pompous invitation to Kelil's coming of age, rich as a festival, only ninedays after Larik's passing. All iryu ignores him--
"My apologies," he says. He gives stiff courtesy and turns away. Peris's place-insult strikes deep, acid as a reed cut. Nilos can brew teas and pack poultices to entice the ghost, but in body and breath his songs are weak. He's not a true healer, yet.
[[ϒ May Kelil have all the joy of Larik's place.->vow song]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "All iryu ignores him--")[All iryu ignores him--
Or he ignores them. Nilos wanted to prove his pain is proper, worthy; to show his anguish is real. Shayin's limp misery threatens him. He thought he could come here and sip breath from iryu's punctured pride. They were forced to scramble to keep a contract. ]
]}$il[T]he summer heat compels Nilos to fold away Larik's gift at last. As Nilos strews the vest with cedar and woodsage and carefully tucks it into his clothes press, he thinks about the work clothes Kelol wore in the market. Old riding trousers, patched in the knees and seat, and a sleeveless linen tunic that wrapped twice left around his torso--handmedowns from a larger man. Rougher cloth than any iryu man should wear. And Kelol moved easily in them, with none of the skin-tight discomfort that Nilos feels even in his looser robes. Larik seemed so certain her sibling would become a trader. She invested time, effort, and good wool into the coming of age robe. She must have had her parents' approval for the outlay. Kell, too, carried that expectation. But Kelol has grown into a lithe, assured man, nonetheless. Maybe he hides disappointment better than Nilos can. Or maybe the switch came easily to him, as it ought. Perhaps Nilos himself hides better than he knows, and no one can see past his healer's robes to his restless skin.
Nilos pulls on a light, straight-draped tunic and leaves for the herbary. The wood-framed building stands in the shadow of a high scarp. Without a fire, the room stays cool through the hot middleday. Tereos left on his rounds before Nilos arrives, so Nilos sits under the lintel and chews a handful of pine nuts, watching the clouds soar south.
He looks up at the sound of bootsteps climbing the path from Tereos's deepstone, around the edge of the scarp. Trenon stops when he sees Nilos sitting on the threshhold, and gives him a pugnacious look. He shrugs past Nilos, into the herbary, like a cat plastered in rain after an undignified mousing expedition.
"When did you get back?" Nilos asks, belatedly standing to follow Trenon inside. Without a wedding to return to, Trenon spent the early summer overmountain, negotiating water rights and land claims in other villages. His holding needs whatever fees he can wrangle.
Trenon pokes around on Nilos's worktop, testing the weight of a granite pestle. "My apologies for not hiring a jongleur to announce my arrival," he says, his usual sarcasm sounds blunted. He lets the pestle clunk back into its mortar.
Nilos starts, "Just a word to your friends--"
"Like you?" Trenon says. "Do friends sneak out of friends' sleeping rooms in the middlenight for fear they'll be discovered with their invert lovers...?"
That was ninedays ago. And //Nilos// didn’t run away overmountain the next morning. "I'm not an invert."
"No," Trenon agrees, with a sour grimace. "I know. Get that looked at, will you?"
Nilos stands back on his heels and frowns. Trenon tries to trample him with an advocat's dispute over exact terms, not this pretense of humour. Nilos won't argue with him where Tereos’s family might overhear. His apprenticeship rests on thin enough ice as it stands. "You can't be here when Master Tereos comes back," he says.
Trenon dips his chin, then glances sideways at Nilos--a look Nilos associates with one of Trenon's abrupt challenges. Still, Trenon looks more troubled than irked. But all he says is, "I'm not here for you. I need a song."
Trenon knows more than anyone about Nilos's doubts. For Trenon to ask for a healer's brew, as if in full faith, galls him. Doesn't Trenon //listen//? When he mocks Nilos for not claiming the word invert, he does the same thing; ignores Nilos's doubts to assert his own definition.
Though, perhaps, Trenon came when Tereos was away specifically to ask for a song only Nilos can give. Nilos softens into his healer's guise despite himself. "What for?"
Trenon sits in the patient's chair with an air of defensive relief. "I'm sick," he says, and when Nilos blows like an impatient pony, he snaps, "To my stomach. And tired, all the time."
"You just got back from six ninedays' travel," Nilos points out. Anyone would be exhausted.
Trenon only shrugs.
Nilos would happily believe that Trenon's irritable, uncommunicative attitude is a sign of his illness, except that he acts no differently when he's well. "Any vomiting?"
"No, but that might be better," Trenon says. "Then I wouldn't feel like I have a boulder stuck in my craw."
Nilos sighs. Something is wrong, or Trenon would have dropped the pretense by now. "Lean back," he says, soothingly despite himself. Trenon stiffens and crosses his arms. "Or I'll put you there," Nilos threatens, and this time Trenon shows a smile's ghost and obeys.
Nilos unknots Trenon's belt and presses his finger tips against his abdomen. Trenon's stomach doesn't feel hard or distended. Nilos can tell Trenon's trying not to flinch when Nilos hit his ticklish spot, just inside his hipbone. He forces himself to ignore the fact that he can drive Trenon mad by kissing, just there. Trenon looks well-tanned, if a bit sallow. That might be the tiredness he complains of. Nilos can't find anything that points to a cause. "Rest," he orders. "You needn't travel at high summer anyway, so stay on your pallet until you feel better. Drink your water well-boiled. You can have anise tea with birch sugar. Plain tev, with water, not goats' milk."
"And my song?" Trenon asks plaintively.
Nilos sighs and settles beside him. "Are you really ill?"
"This is not my idea of a pleasure game," Trenon answers, pulling his belt left.
Nilos hands Trenon a piece of liquorice root to chew, then takes Trenon's hand and begins his chant, closing his eyes to focus on the melody. He traces Trenon's familiar calluses to find his lifepoints. With a deep press, Nilos opens Trenon's breath, which is indeed clogged between heart and stomach. The flow remains stubbornly blocked for longer than Nilos expects, but soon he has Trenon's breath coursing lighter. Trenon lets out a sigh of relief as the song takes effect. He relaxes back in his chair under the song's breath until he dozes. Frowning, Nilos fetches him a sachet of anise tea.
He hesitates, then touches Trenon's shoulder. Trenon startles upright and glares at Nilos. "Go home," Nilos says, honestly concerned. "Sleep."
[[ϒ Trenon hesitates, watching Nilos with clear blue eyes, but then he grumbles to his feet. "Thanks for the song. I trust you more than Tereos, you know."->disclaim]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "His holding needs whatever fees he can wrangle.")[His holding needs whatever fees he can wrangle. Ralon's fields shrank again this year. Their neighbours eat away at the holding's place each time they shift their cairns.]
]}$il[W]hen Trenon leaves, Nilos leaves the flakes of liquorice root unswept and slumps on his stool. Trenon has a habit of delivering obscure challenges and expecting Nilos to follow the millrace of his thoughts. Did Trenon expect his visit to rekindle their relationship? Did he invent his symptoms, or exploit a real illness to manipulate Nilos? Nilos refuses to guess, when Trenon's rewards for figuring out his motives are insubstantial as spring fogs.
As a healer, Nilos can't treat Trenon differently because they were sweethearts once. He can't avoid him. He felt a lifepoint obstruction easing under his song, so Trenon earned his claim of nausea and tiredness. Trenon will probably assume Nilos will treat him gladly every time. The last thing Nilos wants is to have Trenon drop by the herbary on a whim, find Nilos alone, and press whatever suit he has in mind.
Nilos finds himself thinking of Kelol again. He acts easy in his strength even though he doesn't have an apprenticeship lined up. Nilos has better place, and yet Nilos can't imagine carrying himself with Kelol's determination.
[[ϒ Nilos can't avoid Trenon in a small village like Asaresta.->tentative]]
(link-goto: "ϒ He finds he prefers Kelol's straightforward anger.","accountable") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "thinking of Kelol again.")[thinking of Kelol again--Kelol sliding into a man's clothes as though they fit without thought]
]}$il[N]ilos takes the path up from Asaresta bridge towards iryu holding. He hasn't taken this path since Larik's giving. Nilos looks automatically to the weavers' hut as he turns the last switchback towards iryu's dooryard. But he needn't intrude there; he can look beyond.
As Larik's friend, he rang chimes at the hearthside door. As Tereos's apprentice, he gave courtesy at the guest door. Now he follows the path from the barn towards the wide kitchen garden, to the homeside.
He pauses by kitchen garden cairn. Iryu holding's claim extends farther from the homeside door than it did last year, and farther yet from the year before. Iryu expands their land-claims in the mountain pastures just as ambitiously. With all his brothers working for wages, Nilos can't remember the last time his family managed to move their garden cairn.
Iryu's kitchen garden is ploughed in neat furrows, lines of beans curled on stakes next to lines of squash, and in a sunny corner, a great straggle of raspberry bushes creeps up over a lichened boulder. Beyond the garden's cairn, grasses sway yellow-green and high enough to be scythed for fresh sleeping pallets. Last summer, Larik was well enough to hike above Asaresta for herbs; this year, her shell joins the soil.
Kelol stands in the middle of the garden, chopping at the black earth with a hoe, rooting out weeds from the base of the beets. The weeds vanquished, he takes a shovel of manure-rich compost from a barrow, and packs it around the plants' stems. Before Kelol came of age, he scampered down to Asaresta often enough that Nilos saw him regularly. Kell loved running traders' errands for whits of silver. Slender, fine hair flyaway, dressed in plainweaving, the child wasn't much different from rest of the puppy pack of youngsters underfoot. (unless: (history:)'s last is "stableboy")[Since his coming of age, Nilos has only seen him once, Kelol's brief (if: $freedom is true)[apology](else:)[challenge].]
It seems to Nilos as though Kelol ought to look like his sister. But where Larik kept to the weaving hut, Kelol grows with the mountain. He wears leather boots, heavy trousers, and a wraparound vest that shows off the deep, speckled tan of his shoulders. Escaping black tendrils tangle his braid, and sweat burnishes his temples. He doesn't match Larik's height, but he's longer in leg and arm than she was, put together with lean ropy muscle, a coyote to her wolf. He's still soft in the face, despite the sharp point of his chin. His eyes aren't Larik's eyes. The child's ghost more than the sister's shows in Kelol's face.
After finishing a row of compost, Kelol pitches his shovel into the barrow. He scrubs one wrist across his forehead, and squints when he sees Nilos. He looks back to his work before realizing that Nilos hasn't sought hosting from iryu deepstone. "Welcome to iryu, healer," he says, picking up his hoe. "Share a dipper of water with me?"
Kelol's mothers might take him to task for not offering tev or tea, but water suits Nilos. He didn't want to go to the guest door. Larik died under his care and the holding has no reason to welcome him.
Kelol makes his way out of the garden and towards the mountain path behind the deepstone. The well-house is moss-grown, the bucket sitting beside a watering yoke. Kelol tosses the bucket down the well and then heaves it up again. He offers Nilos a wooden cup, scrimshaw carved from a gnarl.
Kelol takes a deep drink, then pours a second dipperfull over his head, shuddering enjoyment at the cold. He blinks droplets from his eyelashes.
The water tastes like deep earth on Nilos's tongue. Kelol leans his hip against the well house and watches him steadily. After Kelol's (if: $freedom is true)[earnest understanding](if: $freedom is false)[angry claim of independence] a threeday ago in the market street, Nilos came to ask for his forgiveness(if $freedom is true)[ in turn].
Larik hoped to save Nilos from the village's rumours. She thought she could marry Trenon first, and Nilos later, like an afterthought; by then, few would care that Trenon and Nilos had been sweethearts as children. Trenon colluded with her, weaving their vows to help themselves, never wondering what might happen if they netted someone else in their strands. None of it is Nilos's fault, yet he is the reason for it. He's the reason Kelol was shunted into a role he never expected, and Nilos pities him for it.
(if: $freedom is true)["Do you plan to marry that girl from irvu holding?" Nilos asks gently.
Kelol pauses, and puts the dipper down. "Maybe," he says. He squints upwards through the pine branches, thoughtful.
Nilos reads reluctance in his posture. Any time Kelol has a conversation with his sweetheart, Asaresta will be match-making them. A young couple, both from rich families. If Kelol had come of age a woman, everyone would have expected him to break off the friendship, or at least keep it within proper guesting boundaries. Instead they put wag their tongues, whistle wedding songs. Like many children gaining place, Kelol might just now be realizing that a sweetheart doesn't make a lover, nor a lover a spouse.
Kelol shakes his head. "It's not that I don't love her," he says, as though guessing Nilos's doubts. "But I can't join her holding still owing my parents for the contract-breaking price."
"Your parents can't ask that of you," Nilos says. "That debt will last years. You're fifteen, not even apprenticed yet."](else:)["You were right," Nilos says. "I'm unhappy here, and I haven't done anything about it."
A new bitterness twists Kelol's lips. Nilos doesn't want to see him go down Trenon's path, believing everyone in the world is wrong but him.
"And the same is true of you," he says, feeling old as the mountain. "Do you really want to apprentice to the teaching master? Do you really think you can repay your parents the place they lost by sacrificing yourself?"
"Being a teacher isn't a sacrifice," Kelol defends himself. His face darkens, shoulders falling. "There's nothing wrong with it," he mutters.
Nilos nods. "Except it's not what you love."]
"So you think I should walk away from my debts, my songs," Kelol challenges. "What kind of life would that be? If I break a song, no advocat will ever breathe a contract for me again."
"You haven't sung anything yet. Don't (if: $freedom is true)[marry](else:)[apprentice] for your holding's sake, or you'll betray your own place. Don't let your coming of age be for nothing."
Kelol snorts. "What do you know of it?"
Kelol already doubts Nilos's ability to heal. Nilos can't risk losing Kelol's help by confessing too much. "There must be something else you can do while you think through your future. Take a labourer contract for the season."
Kelol favours him with a deep, assessing stare, but it comes without Trenon's habitual sneer. "Who'd pay the advocat fee for my contract?"
"Your parents--"
"They'll pay for a teaching apprenticeship, maybe. I'd have good place as an apprentice." Kelol looks down the path to where the sun lies heavy on the kitchen garden. "They won't pay for a labourer contract, not when they can have me take on the homeside work for them." He nudges the watering yoke with his foot.
Nilos looks over his shoulder. Iryu deepstone is too far from the stream for cantilever irrigation. They're lucky to have water on their own land-claim, saving them silver in water-watcher fees. The kitchen garden's extent is limited mostly by the willingness of the men to carry water--Maron's willingness to order Kelol to do it. "They aren't paying you wages?"
"I disgraced them. I'm working it off."
Anger tastes bitter on the back of Nilos's tongue. Kelol surrenders his own place by working without a contract song. "There are other ways that don't involve compromising yourself." How dare Kelol's parents treat him worse than their contracted field hands? They hoped to use him and he refused--and this is how they repay his courage?
Kelol kicks the yoke aside. "Don't pity me for turning down an apprenticeship. I knew what I was doing."
"I made that choice once--" //When I was a child, and I didn't know what it would cost//. But shame stops Nilos's mouth.
Kelol tilts his head, considers him. "Aren't you grateful I didn't marry Trenon? He's yours, and welcome to him."
With some dignity, Nilos says stiffly, "We've ended it."
A grunt. "I saved him from marrying into this holding. If //he's// grateful, he might sing me a free contract, since my parents won't pay an advocat for me."
Nilos nods cautiously. In the market, Kelol (if: $freedom is true)[repeated Larik's promise to help Nilos if he could. For place if nothing else, Nilos feels obligated to return the favour.](if: $freedom is false)[rejected Larik's promise to help Nilos, and Nilos can't blame him. But he can help Kelol in return.] "I can ask him."
"Traders need labourers." Kelol crosses his arms across his chest, daring Nilos to comment on the propriety of taking a contract against his holding's wishes. It's easy enough to tie the knots. Kelol lost the chance to be a trader himself, but he still wants to travel, and see what might have been.
Nilos holds out the well-cup to Kelol. "Will you take me with you?" he asks.
Kelol eyes Nilos suspiciously. "You want to leave Asaresta?"
Trenon used to promise Nilos the city. //They do things differently downmountain.// They'd accept an invert; they'd take in a woman healer. Then Trenon would turn around and accuse the traders of spreading false tales. He tore down his own hopes out of the fear they might come true.
Nilos is tired of Trenon's sneers, his refusal to accept Nilos's feelings.(if: $herbary is true)[Whatever games Trenon was playing by coming to the herbary, Nilos wants no part of them. ](if: $freedom is false)[Kelol accused Nilos of accepting his misery without fighting for what he wanted. ](if: $pragmatic is true)[Larik urged Nilos to work for his own happiness, not for Trenon's benefit. ]Neither Trenon nor Larik cared that his left-knotted belt weighs on him every day like a chain. If the only thing he can find in Sareya is a space to breathe, then that will be reason enough to go. He doesn't answer Kelol, but proffers the cup again.
Kelol takes it with a shrug and sets it on the rim of the well. "You'd slow a trader down."
"I'll convince Trenon to waive your contract-fee if you sing an outrider contract," he tells Kelol. Trenon can sing a simple vow in exchange for his freedom. "All I want is the loan of a riding pony, and your promise that you'll include my passage in the vows." For the sake of Larik's friendship, Kelol will see Nilos downmountain. After that, Nilos will be on his own.
Kelol wrinkles his nose skeptically. "Trenon won't agree to that if he learns you're coming with me."
Nilos doesn't plan to stay in Asaresta long enough for Trenon to wear him down. Trenon shows no sign of following through on his dreams of rebellion. If everyone in Asaresta is a hypocrite, then Trenon should be counted in that number. He claims to hate tradition, but he bows to the songs before he'll break them. "Trenon's path is his own."
Kelol snorts, unconvinced, but he shrugs agreement. "When Zayelik comes down from the villages-next, this threeday," he says. "I'll have a pony for you when we leave."
(link-goto: "ϒ He has a threeday to claim Tereos's permission and leave his apprenticeship.","dismissal")
(link-goto: "ϒ Nilos covers Kelol's mudstreaked fist with both hands, striking a trader's bargain.","crow") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "He hasn't taken this path since Larik's giving.")[He hasn't taken this path since Larik's giving. All winter a glacier-weight of guilt rested on his shoulders as he passed this way. After she died, his grief swelled like the mountain creeks in the first spate of spring rains. Every stream overruns its banks, spreading brown and grey across the stepped fields and washing away their walls. But, as in most springs, once the rains stop, the creeks recede. The water carves new hollows that will fill in only gradually. As a holding raises its field cairns each year and repairs its dikes, so Nilos holds to his sorrow: channeled, not dammed.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "accountable")[ $il["T]renon will sing your outrider contract without a fee, if I ask him," Nilos says, watching Kelol shut up the undercroft and tap the door-wedges into place. "If you ask yourself he'll probably turn you down."
Kelol draws his shoulders back straight, stretching against the cramped strain of the undercroft's low ceiling. "He should be glad I don't ask //him// for a fee. He didn't want to marry me--I saved him!"
"His pride won't want to hear that." Nilos shrugs and crosses his arms. "Put it this way. You're asking him for a gift on top of rejecting him. Let me persuade him."
Kelol rolls his eyes over what methods of //persuasion// Nilos might use, but doesn't argue. He needs the best contract song Zayelik will agree to. Whatever Trenon's faults, Zayelik can't match him as an advocat.
](if: (history:)'s last is "accountable")[In](else:)[ $il[I]n] the afternoon, Kelol packs his work gear and checks over the tack he needs. He plans to take Brys for himself. The gelding's liveliness will suit an outrider's needs, and Brys is a smart mountain pony, though he needs managing when crossing water. Kelol will bring Tyn, too. He wouldn't claim a working pony from his holding, but Tyn is older now and too slow for herding. She can travel all day with a rider, though not with a load. Kelol feeds her a warm mash and places her in the box stall to rest overnight.
He stuffs himself at dinner, preparing for a hard day's ride. He tucks three hardboiled greylag eggs into his pack for a morning meal. The patter of rain on the thatch wakes him in the night, but by dawn, he can hear chickadees calling happily in the brush, and wispy pink clouds streak a clear sky. Brys and Tyn prick their ears when he enters the barn. Kelol tries to stay calm while he saddles them, but Brys whinnies and Tyn swishes her tail, both of them sensing his nerves. He walks them down to Asaresta with some slack in their girths, letting them get used to the idea of a long trip.
He arrives at Asaresta common barn before the sun crests the eastern mountains. Orange light outlines the peaks, but candle lanterns still flicker in the shadow of the barn. Zayelik's outriders work piling gear and goods, and leading mules in from the paddock to be fitted with their harness.
Zayelik steps out of the barn with Trenon beside her. Trenon argues, and Zayelik shakes her head. Trenon shrugs and accepts her denial. Kelol squeezes Tyn's halter rope in his hand. Labourers rarely get a say in a contract's crafting, beyond setting a price for their services, which a master can reject. Kelol has no reason to believe Trenon has his interests at heart, especially since he won't receive a fee for the song. Trenon glances across the barn's dooryard, and, seeing Kelol, tips him a wink. Sure, some joke. Sing the son of iryu into a labour contract, when he once had the chance of a placed apprenticeship.
Kelol can't blame Trenon for that. Iryu holding should have taken his place more seriously. They're the ones so concerned with it. Kelol came of age; he can choose his contracts. As long as Kelol has any hope of repaying his debt, they won't speak against his songs.
Kelol hitches Tyn and Brys outside the barn and squares his shoulders before crossing to meet Trenon and Zayelik. This should be a flag-snapping day, a feast thrown open to all Asaresta. Instead, Trenon waves him into a bran-smelling tack room in the common barn. Zayelik listens over the contract once, tapping along in time with Trenon's soft singing. She grunts softly when she hears the price Kelol set for his labour. The price is not unreasonable, but higher than several of her outriders who have more experience. Kelol named it in the hopes that Zayelik would negotiate. That she'd open herself to bargaining with a man. She simply shrugs and demurs.
Trenon waves for Kelol to approach, puts one hand on his shoulder and the other on Zayelik's, and sings the vow in a low drone. A three nineday contract, renewable on the same terms if Zayelik hires Kelol for her return upmountain. Kelol owns his ponies any anything they carry. Zayelik claims his work and any silver that might result from it. Kelol answers in his part, and Zayelik in hers. Before the last note fades, she strides out of the barn, calling for Sirol and issuing orders.
She doesn't care that Kelol stayed loyal to her promise. But he's not the apprentice she wanted. Just an outrider, easier to replace than a trail mule. He's Sirol's problem, not hers.
"I'd be happy to carry the news to iryu for you," Trenon says.
Kelol sets his jaw. Trenon sang an honest song. He didn't betray Kelol's interest. Nevertheless, he wants to deliver the news because he'll enjoy shocking iryu holding. Kelol pushes down a pang of contrition for leaving the deepstone without word. Well, so be it. Let them hear from Trenon the consequences of treating their son like a field hand.
[[ϒ "Thank you," he says, and gives a reluctant courtesy.->caution]]
[[ϒ Trenon will see the tables turned when he learns that Nilos is leaving too.->tenacity]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "he can choose his contracts.")[he can choose his contracts. If his fathers and mothers wanted a teacher, they should have arranged it, instead of hemming and hawing and working him thin in the meantime.]
]}$il[A] threeday doesn't afford much time to prepare. Never a traveller, Nilos owns little in the way of camping gear, though he has enough of his own supplies to fill a rucksack. More importantly, he wants to bring the ingredients for all the common healing songs. Some herbs take years to prepare, and others may not be available downmountain.
Nilos clears out his sturdy satchel, empties every wax-stoppered vial, and refills them with fresh unguents. He sniffs his sachets of herbs, assuring himself of their contents and potency. His hands shake as he forces himself to go about his arrangements openly, making free with Tereos's collected supplies. Nilos gathered and dried most of them, and his apprenticeship song guarantees him access to any requirements of his trade.
When Tereos comes in, phials and funnels litter Nilos's worktop. Tereos raises his eyebrows, but he settles in his armchair without a question. Nilos bends over his scatter of clay bottles holding oils and scents. He wore an overtunic again today, though sweat drenches his chamois vest underneath. He wrapped the vest tight enough to stop his breath, as though the right-wrapping could contain his body, squeeze his skin into a woman's shape. The only way he can travel to the city is with Tereos's permission..
Nilos turns around to face Tereos. He forces his hands to move to the knot of his overtunic. He opens its ties, unwrapping the belt-ends from around his waist. Tereos sees the pull of the vest's fabric underneath before the right-knot shows. He waits until Nilos drops his overtunic from his shoulders. Tereos bends forward in his chair and looks down at his clasped hands for a long moment. When he looks up, his deep eyes are wet. "Why would you show me this?"
A nineyear ago, Dayon hired Tereos when it seemed Nilos might burn to ashes with the spot-fever. Itchy, restless, muttering a ghost's talk, Nilos yearned with all his breath for the cool touch of song. Tereos's hands, his voice, guided Nilos through the fever. Every song Nilos sings, he heard first in Tereos's deep and steady voice. His master holds steadier than the mountain, a wind-twisted pine that can break stones with its roots.
If Nilos stifles himself for the rest of his life, Tereos will continue to accept him, and gladly. Or, Nilos can let go. "This is who I am," he says. "I'm--" //A woman//, but his words falter. "I'm not who you thought."
Tereos shakes his head. He picks up Nilos's overtunic from the floor and hands it back to him. "You've dressed correctly, acted correctly," he says. "Why drag this out as if I couldn't see you?"
Nilos is shivering, sweat gone chill on his skin. He's known nothing but kindness under Tereos's guidance. Kindness, and forebearance. Tereos's patience has always seemed both infinite and necessary, as though Tereos was merely enduring Nilos's foibles until Nilos finally realized he needed to give them up.
"If I asked you to pretend you weren't a healer," Nilos says, his voice cracking, "could you go on with your life?"
The weight of Tereos's sympathy cloys like tar, like contempt. "Do you think you're the first invert in the world, Nilos? All you need to do is get married. I can speak to your holding about arranging it. An established marriage would be good for you--several husbands--to stop this pining over a boy you can't have. You'll settle. You'll see."
Like Cayir, Tereos cares deeply for Nilos; cares enough to conceal what he's seen. A child's infatuation, or a boy's first love. Nilos's throat knots as he realizes Tereos isn't alone. Everyone in the village has given Nilos and Trenon a kindly facade.
"I'm not an invert," Nilos says. He hates repeating himself. Trenon calls him an invert too, as if it's a love name. Trenon won't listen when Nilos denies it. His sympathy feels no better than Tereos's disgust, because it proves he doesn't understand. "I'm--I don't care, about husbands. I want the hearthside."
Tereos spreads his hands, the fingers outstretched, as if Nilos will offer his fist for Tereos to clasp in promise. "I thought I could let it pass, as long as you were a healer," he says. "But I see you've wasted my years, and your own."
"I want to heal! I can do both! Master--"
Tereos shakes his head. He pushes the overtunic into Nilos's arms. "I can't have you pretending any more. It's dangerous enough that I let it go on this long."
Nilos meant to leave, but a sudden panic grips him. He wants to beg to stay, but his voice is stopped with wax.
[[ϒ "It's my fault. I'll have Dalor sing the dissolution," Tereos says. "You're no longer my apprentice."->tenacity]]
[[ϒ Nilos's throat knots, eyes prickling hot. He wishes he could hate Tereos, who uses acceptance as rebuke.->caution]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "he has enough of his own supplies to fill a rucksack.")[he has enough of his own supplies to fill a rucksack--flint striker, billy can, and water skins, along with his best healer's robes and a change of sturdier riding clothes.]
(Click-replace: "with Tereos's permission.")[with Tereos's permission. Or, breaking song, without it.]
(Click-replace: "a kindly facade.")[They held up a veil with a wincing smile, looking away rather than stripping two promising young men of their place by admitting that they'd seen. They //want// Trenon and Nilos to find marriages where their invertism can be carefully buried behind the marriage's wives.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "tenacity")[ $il[E]ach morning, Kelol saddles Tyn and brings a stump to help Nilos mount. Cairns mark their second and third camps, but then the trail disappears into deer paths, and they camp wherever Zayelik finds a potable stream. Jiron waves Nilos into the outriders' semi-circle around the campfire in the evenings, but usually exhaustion pushes him to sleep instead. Zayelik sits apart on the hearthside of the fire. She frowns repressively when Kelol tries to draw her into telling traders' stories.
](if: (history:)'s last is "tenacity")[After](else:)[ $il[A]fter] two ninedays, the steep ground and evergreen thickets ease into rolling hills. They follow clear-running tributaries towards larger courses. Beech and elm trees appear, and then ranked rows of oak. Nilos recognizes a holding's forestry claim, though he sees no cairns and no blazes. They splash across several streams, the fords deepening each time until the last reaches Nilos's dangling boots. Tyn huffs in resignation and makes her careful, steady way across.
Midday, they arrive at a river worthy of the name. Spring floods hurried trees and bones among the braided channels, planting gnarls of roots in muddy bars. Zayelik slides off her horse and paces along the bank, upstream, then down. Sirol joins her, and they cross their arms and mutter to each other. Sirol waves at one path, calmer but deeper.
Zayelik nods. "Break up the string. Take the boy yourself," she says. "Watch for deep spots." She leads the first mule, a hard worker but reluctant in moving water, herself. She crosses slowly, eyes on the rocky bottom in search of holes.
Sirol barks instructions to the outriders, then crosses second, guiding another pair of mules and Nilos on Tyn. Nilos's heart pounds as the water climbs to Tyn's belly, but Sirol keeps up a steady stream of reassurances, spoken to Tyn but meant for Nilos. When they reach the far side, Sirol waves Nilos out of the saddle while they wait for the others. Kelol and Ferok bring two mules each, and Jiron prepares to follow them with two more.
Despite a brief, whinnying scramble, Jiron's pony enters the water gamely enough. His mules' eyes roll white as they reach the deepest point of the ford. The last mule slips in the current, steps into a hole that the others missed, and drops deep for a second. He lunges back to his feet underneath an old snarl of tree roots. The string snaps, and in plunging bounds, Jiron and the first mule climb up the bank. They hardly set foot out of the river before Jiron dives back, half splashing, half swimming to the trapped mule. Jiron grabs for the rope with one hand, sawing it loose from the drag with his belt knife before the mule can panic further and start bucking in earnest, probably injuring himself on the drag in the process. The mule sidles and yanks, skin shivering, while Jiron mutters to him and works his knife across the rope. Then the mule jerks back, pulling Jiron off his feet. The knife slices through the last strand. The rope snaps, and the knife slices across Jiron's hand, cutting deep into the ball of his thumb.
The mule, freed of the encumbrance, struggles up the bank. Ferok grabs the mule's cheek strap before he can bolt. Jiron finds his feet and comes up sputtering. He gets pressure on the wound, stumbling out of the water with his injured hand clamped against his chest. Sirol runs to him and wraps a belt tight around his upper arm. "Healer!" he roars, but Nilos is already there.
"Sit him down. Kelol, boil water. Ferok, fetch whatever potato wine you have left. He'll need stitches." Nilos yanks off his overtunic, wanting range of motion, and no sleeves dangling. He scrubs with a sliver of lye soap from his satchel up to his bare elbows. Without a fire he doesn't have time to boil his needle, but simply tosses it in a bowl full of strong potato wine. For good measure he runs the sheepgut through it as well. "Can you move your hand?" he asks Jiron as he threads the needle, remembering the child Kirn's crooked, but functional, thumb.
Jiron grips his left hand with his right, staring at Nilos. White under his tan, shuddering from the cold water--he'll need to be dried, warmed, given songs to ward off shock. Nilos reaches for his wrist and Jiron pulls back. "Just a moment," Nilos tells him. "Let me see."
"Just a bandage," Jiron says.
"It needs stitches, or your thumb--"
"No!" Jiron cradles his hand to his bloody tunic.
A sudden quiet falls, and Nilos looks up. Everyone, outriders and Zayelik, surround him, staring. Nilos feels like he's receeded an enormous distance. "What--?"
"Your tunic," Sirol says, gravelly. "It's awry, lad. Did you want to fix it?"
Sirol tries to catch the others' eyes when he says it, and his tone falls heavy on //lad//. No one answers him. Nilos realizes, with a burning flush, that his undertunic's tied right. He grew used to it, that comfort against his skin. He never removes his overtunic; he undresses, carefully, in the dark. "He needs stitches," he says, as steadily as he can. "A bandage will stop the bleeding, but not the damage--"
"Your stitches would rot my arm off," Jiron spits.
"You don't know he's ono," Sirol says. "Lad--"
"I've seen it happen," Ferok agrees. "Man's arm turned black, starting at the stitches. A master had to saw the arm off."
Jiron curls up tighter. "No one ono can give a healing song."
Nilos doesn't know what's going on. //Ono// means //a child//; it makes no sense coming from Jiron. Nilos shakes his head, but the mute evidence of his undertunic stops his mouth.
"Well?" Jiron says, shaking, yet staring furiously at Nilos. "Which way's your linen tied?" Several of the outriders laugh uncomfortably. Kelol looks sick and pale.
Nilos forces down the lump in his throat. "I want to help."
"You can't," Jiron says.
"Don't be dense," Sirol says. "If he's right, you'll be thumbless. Then what work will you get?"
"I'll see a real healer in Sareya."
"The damage could be permanent by then!" Nilos says.
Jiron turns his back. "Sirol, you bandage it."
Sirol shrugs, and takes out a long roll of linen. He winds a bandage around Jiron's hand, from wrist to fingertip. He fashions a sling, keeping the hand high. He folds Jiron's thumb inside the bandage.
Ferok says, "Waste of potato wine." He bumps Nilos, passing him. "You may find work in a bordel, ono, but don't pretend you can heal."
[[ϒ "Put your tunic back on," Sirol says. "No one needs to see that."->residuum]]
[[ϒ Nilos clamps his mouth shut. Jiron will be lucky if the tendons reattach at all, let alone correctly.->exaction]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "tied right")[in woman's fashion]
]}$il[T]he outriders circle tightly around the campfire. Jiron downs the last of the potato wine for his pain, and grows increasingly acidic until Sirol snaps at him to sleep it off. "You'll be useless enough without being hungover //and// crippled," he says. "You're lucky we've no more crossings. Get to bed."
Nilos finishes his tev and scrapes his bowl, then leaves the men to their fire. The thin leather of the tent doesn't stop the sound of Kelol chivvying Ferok to switch tents with him. "I don't sleep with ono," Ferok says, "at least, never longer than a candlemark!"
A roar of laughter, and, "Your wages won't stretch far if you start that a nineday early!"
Kelol says, "Then where am I to sleep?"
"Find a bramble patch," Ferok says. "At least if you wake up pricked in your sleep you'll know why."
The tent stays empty long after moonrise. When Nilos shivers miserably awake, he peers out to see Kelol poking the fire and yawning mutinously. From the quiet rustle of crickets, Nilos assumes the others are asleep, or past caring, in Jiron's case.
Nilos drags on his cloak and creeps to the fire. Its heat seeps into him immediately. He didn't know how cold the nights were until he didn't have Kelol to share them.
Kelol's mouth thins when he sees Nilos. He hunches deeper into his cloak, its colour dim enough to make him look like the child who caught Nilos kissing Trenon, the day of his sister's giving. Kelol makes a strong outrider. He herded chamois half his life, and lived in the stable the rest of the time. But in place, he's still a boy, not much past fifteen.
Kelol prods his charred stick around the edges of the fire, nudging the logs into its heart. "What's ono?" he asks in a tight voice. He wants to think what the outriders think, he wants to be one of them, but their sharp disgust at Nilos rose up faster than he could follow.
Nilos's stomach sinks. "I don't know."
"You're not a child, so why did Jiron call you ono like--"
"I know what he called me." Nilos doesn't want to talk about it, but nor does he want to beg Kelol to come to the tent--in case he refuses. "It sounds like a city word. For someone who feels like me."
Kelol glares down at his charred poker. "What do you //feel// like?"
"A woman." Even the fire can't ward off this chill. Nilos has said the words before. Larik stroked his hair and schemed to save him. And Trenon--Trenon would tug his tunic rightwards, eyes gleaming, before he leaned in for a kiss. But Master Tereos dismissed Nilos from his apprenticeship, and Jiron sneered, as if Nilos is as twisted as his belt. Nilos wants to believe Kelol will take his words with the same care that Larik did, but the boy has no reason to trust him.
"You're a woman?" Kelol scrapes the blackened end of his stick against a stone, drawing soot lines on the rock.
"Yes," Nilos says. Cold doubt sinks into his chest. He yearns for the comfort of clothes that fit, of the hearthside around him. But each year, holdings shift their field cairns, stake new claims that stretch into lands that once fell under another holding's rights. Nilos wants to become a woman, but Jiron called him //ono// like he knew better. As if Nilos's desire might only lasts for a season. He might abandon his claim and shift his cairns back to a familiar territory, returning to his man's apprenticeship in the end. He can't know that he is a woman, only that it feels more true than anything else.
Woodsmoke reddens Kelol's eyes. An ashy streak marks one cheekbone, like a bruise. Nilos wishes he was free to wash it away with a touch. "Jiron's right," Kelol says. "You're no healer."
Nilos stares down at his spread his fingers. Kelol has the place to lash out. Larik died under Nilos's care. Whether he killed her, Nilos can't say. (if: $healthier is true)[His tea didn't cure her, but she was never likely to survive the vigil.](else:)[He interrupted the vigil to brew a slanted tea, but he shied from giving it to her.] In the end, Nilos gave every push of his breath to Larik's ghost before it slipped away.
He looked for anger from Tereos and received only disappointment. Trenon was angry with him, as Nilos hoped, but he wanted Nilos to speak up and claim the right to slant his songs as he saw fit. His anger was at Nilos's lack of confidence, not at a choice which may have harmed Larik rather than helped.
"Larik died," Kelol says, and his voice breaks high. "You shouldn't have pretended you could sing vigil for her. You're the reason she died. I knew you were an invert, but--" He shoves the burnt end of his stick deep into the coals and stands up. "I don't want to see you in my tent."
He disappears into the darkness beyond the fire.
Nilos bends his head down to his knees and swallows a sob. Relief floods him, so powerful that his body shakes with it. Larik's death hurt Kelol most of all. Nilos betrayed him twice, first by allowing Larik's death, and second by asking Kelol's help to get downmountain without telling him why. Kelol's fury pours through him and Nilos revels in it. He was wrong. He was wrong.
Kelol thinks the colour of Nilos's robes, the side of his knot, caused Larik's death. He's wrong. Nilos being a woman didn't cause Larik's death. But Kelol is right that Larik died, and Nilos couldn't save her. Perhaps Larik died because (if: $healthier is true)[of Nilos's brew](else:)[Nilos felt so bound to a healer's duty, he couldn't let her drink his brew]. But what matters is that Nilos tried a slanted song when he shouldn't; not just Larik, but her whole family, needed the vigil.
Wisps of cloud slip past the moon's crescent. Nilos dozes by the dying fire, chin to chest. Stars fade into a pale sky. Dim grey outlines become trees, filled with birdsong. When he starts awake, dew stands silver on the grass. The ponies stand head to tail, tails swishing. Nilos reaches down, reassured to find his satchel at his side. Ferok and the others didn't snatch it away in their anger, scatter his sachets, spill out his songs. There must be those in the city who need a healer's touch. Without silver, Nilos's satchel is his only security.
A low grunt sounds near the tents, and a shadow moves stealthily towards the firepit. A bear? Nilos prods the coals to flames, revealing Jiron's hunched form. Nilos starts to retreat, not wanting to face more of the man's accusations, but Jiron's voice hisses low. "Nilos--wait."
"What?"
"My hand..." Jiron looks around. The low tents are silent. A thrush trills in the brush beyond camp. "I won't be able to get work if my hand doesn't work."
Nilos nods warily. Even if he stitches Jiron's tendons properly, the wound may not heal clean.
"I have such a head," Jiron says. "You could at least offer me willowbark."
Jiron's uncomfortable plea makes anger rush hot through Nilos's veins. "Boil it yourself."
Jiron looks down at the bandage holding his arm bent at the elbow. His fingers wriggle. His thumb--Nilos can't tell in the low light. The white fear in Jiron's eyes tells him what he suspects.
"No one's up yet," Jiron says hoarsely. "Can you stitch me up? I can't lose my hand."
Nilos stares at Jiron with a colder eye than yesterday. Jiron's ugly scorn weighs on him, but his fear is closer, hotter, real. Nilos could refuse--but he won't refuse. In a distant voice, he says, "It will cost you a silverweight."
Jiron's eyes widen. "That's half my wages!"
Nilos shrugs. "Then I'll wake Ferok and tell him you asked for my help."
Jiron looks like he might punch him, if he had the use of his fist. "All you ono are alike!" he growls. "All you care about is silver."
Calmly, Nilos opens his satchel. He draws out his needle and tests its gleaming point. A woman can heal, as long as he doesn't lie about who he is. Jiron knows who he's asking. Nilos won't slant a song behind his back.
He adds wood to the fire and pushes a billy can of water closer to the coals. "Leave it another day and you'll lose the thumb. Give me the weight and I'll stitch you right now. No one needs to know."
Jiron glances towards the tents, then back at Nilos. Desperate fury tightens his face. "Do it," he says.
[[ϒ Women can heal in the city, if they sing under the cover of night.->hope]]
[[ϒ If only Kelol knew.->residuum]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "needed the vigil.")[needed the vigil. Nilos broke their trust. Broke with his healer's vow.]
]}$il[A]fter the river crossing, no one speaks to Nilos beyond the necessities. By the time they reach the plains, by dint of sheer endurance, Nilos has developed into a decent beginner on horseback. Still, each morning Sirol strings Tyn behind the mules. Nilos practices his seat and pretends that the outriders simply have no business near him. Kelol sits sullen on his pony. He barely speaks.
In the mornings, Jiron scratches on the leather of Nilos's tent, before the others wake. Humming songs against infection, Nilos checks the warm pink of Jiron's thumb pad, and guides him to move it this way and that while Nilos tests the flow of breath through his hand. "Don't push yourself," he says. "Leave it bandaged for another nineday, with daily exercise. Go to a healer as soon as you reach the city."
Jiron doesn't answer, but Nilos doesn't expect him to.
A nineday past the river, a grey smudge grows across the horizon. Nilos takes it at first for the brushline of a larger river, but as they approach, he sees walls of stone under a smear of chimney smoke. Deepstones--entire lines of connected deepstones, twice the height of any dwelling upmountain. Rutted wagon roads collect into a single cobbled street. The deepstones' gloomy facades shadow a clamouring rush of people. The only clear space is the runnel of muck down the center of the street. No cheerful dooryards or inviting gardens here. A narrow passage pierces each deepstone wall, large enough for a rider on a laden horse, or a small cart, to pass through. Nilos catches a glimpse of one such doorway with its gates open. Sunlight at the far end of the passage hints at an inner dooryard. Looking up, Nilos counts the chimneys, two by two: hearthside and homeside, rank on rank. Not so different, after all.
Sirol leaves the back of the string and rides up next to Zayelik. The two of them open space for the rest of the riders, parting the crowds and wagons. Blankly, Nilos watches the buildings pass, feeling more or less like the baggage he's been for ninedays. When the call came for a healer, he couldn't help any more than one of Zayelik's copper ingots.
Sirol reins in his pony and watches keenly as the outriders pass him, waving for Kelol to ride ahead. As Nilos's pony draws level with him, Sirol jumps down from his saddle and unties Tyn's lead. He tugs both ponies towards a narrow alley, crowding his pony against Tyn until she's cornered beside a stone wall.
Nilos wakes from a dream. "What are you doing?"
"Listen, ono," Sirol says gruffly. The word in his mouth betrays nothing of Jiron's or Ferok's ugliness. He calls Nilos //ono// like he called him //lad// before the river crossing. "On the south side of the bridge, downriver a ways, you'll find a lodgestone."
Nilos stares around them, suddenly aware of the looming deepstones. Not a single one shows guest chimes. Even if there were, Nilos doesn't have the place to ask guesting rights. Cobbled alleys twist in all directions. Nilos will be lost the moment Sirol leaves him. "I paid Kelol to guide me," he says.
"Kelol told me your bargain. Use of a riding pony and transport to the city." Sirol shrugs--the terms have been fulfilled. "Zayelik can't have you in her deepstone."
Nilos gropes for a lie. "I came here to learn the city style of healing--"
"If you go looking for trouble," Sirol says heavily, "it'll find you. Don't try to find a healer or a master before you've lodgings--only where I said, mind. Downriver, past the tanners, it stinks but it's safer for those like you."
"Like me?" Nilos wants to laugh. He doesn't know himself well enough to know what //like him// means. "Apparently those like me won't be hosted by those like you!"
Sirol nods, glad that Nilos grasps the obvious. "Now, mind, Jiron doesn't hate people ono. He just hates being beholden."
As if Jiron's hate, or lack of it, can comfort him. Nilos slides clumsily down from Tyn's saddle. "I don't know my way. Can't you--"
"I'll bring the pony back to Kelol." Sirol begins unlacing Nilos's rucksack and satchel from behind Tyn's saddle. "Good luck."
Nilos accepts his bags as though Sirol handed him a boulder. He watches, frozen, as Sirol ties Tyn to his own mount like he roped her to the mules every morning for the past ninedays. Tyn follows easily, leaving Nilos behind without a glance. Kelol rode on with the same indifference, leaving Nilos behind. He chose Jiron's part after all, hating Nilos for the knot on his belt.
Nilos stumbles into a numb walk, holding his bundles in his arms. He barely has the wherewithal to remember Sirol's directions: south, downriver. All the city streets angle towards the wide-arched stone bridge. Like the bridge that leaps across Asaresta's ravine, it binds the two sides of the city together, as breath binds body and ghost. Nilos's boots scrape hollowly on the oak planks of the bridge deck. Every village upmountain has a similar knot at its center, where the two sides join, but in the city it makes for horrendous traffic. Rushing people jostle past him. One woman yanks him out of the way of a heavy wagon pulled by blowing mules, and snaps, "Watch where you're going, mountaineer!"
Nilos ducks into the mouth of an alley once he's off the bridge. Like the street where Sirol abandoned him, the alley is stiff with the stench of emptied night buckets. Nilos finally takes the time to check the contents of his rucksack and satchel. He moves his pouch, filled to jingling with Jiron's silverwhits, into an inner pocket of his satchel. The sharp stink of ammonia and the rotting bloat of spilled intestines clogs the air. He must be close to the tanneries Sirol mentioned. Downriver. Nilos has no idea what signs to look for, but the farther he goes, the shabbier the deepstones around him become--wood, not stone, thatched roofs instead of timber. The first time Nilos catches sight of a door with guest chimes, he forgets place altogether and rings them. A girl opens the door and wrinkles her nose at him. She doesn't offer guesting rights.
"A--a lodgestone?" Nilos asks. He suddenly worries that he forgot himself and dressed to the right this morning. But the girl grimaces and gives directions. After a few more wrong turns, Nilos finds himself in front of a wide stone building, with an open passage leading to the dooryard.
The lodgestone echoes a deepstone's outline, but on a grander scale. Four storeys, in a square plan, cradle the dooryard in the center. Homeside and hearthside wings make up the two sides of the square, with a large family room at the front, and stables completing the square at the rear.
Nilos has no idea what to expect for the lodging fee. Jiron paid him a silverweight in whits. Nilos counted the full eighty-one before tucking them in his pouch. Whether that will stand up to city prices--whether he can find a master who'll take him on after Tereos dissolved their apprenticeship--Nilos focuses on the moment at hand, and asks for the lodgestone keeper.
An older woman, thin with care, gathers him up and seats him in a small sitting room that opens into the bang and clatter of clay bowls on the family room trestles. "Welcome," she says. "I'm Lethinil, of irunu, sung to irdanu."
"Your holding is sung to..." Nilos wonders if he should ask, but the words are out.
"My overholding," Lethinil says. "They claim the lodgestone; my holding provides the hosting. With meals included, it's a whit per day."
Burning with relief, Nilos digs into his pouch for the whits. A woman would haggle, but the price sounds so reasonable that Nilos has no qualms about looking like an incompetent trader--a man. In a dry year, water keepers upmountain demand a whit for a single bucket. Here a whit covers a full day's lodging and his meals. Nilos draws out a handful of silver. "A nineday, please." By then, either he'll have found his feet, or he'll need every last whit to return to Asaresta.
Lethinil sweeps up his silver with a freckle-spotted hand. "Careful how you fling that about, or people will think you have a store of it up your sleeves."
Nilos gives brief courtesy, fingers to lips. If he accepts her advice, hopefully she won't wonder if he's hiding a miser's hoard.
Gently, Lethinil extends her cupped hands, reminding Nilos to offer his fist. He quickly extends his closed hand, and Lethinil covers it, sealing the bargain. Her amused smile reminds Nilos of Tereos's first wife, always plying him with tev in hopes of growing him a few spans more. "Have you a side, brother?" she asks gently.
Nilos stares at her blankly. She can't possibly be giving him a choice. Acting like she doesn't know his side cuts his place to the core. Yet Lethinil gave the choice freely, not with a snub's finality. "Homeside," he says, like a question.
"Plenty of room," Lethinil answers, lips quirking.
Nilos gets the distinct impression that she would have answered the same if he'd named the hearthside instead. He wants to take back his choice, but Lethinil has already called a girl to lead him to the men's sleeping room.
The girl who comes at Lethinil's call is quietly cheerful, her robe rising right-swept over the swell of her stomach, heavy with bearing. She shows him to a space in the men's dormitory. All the pallets are raised off the floor on low platforms with two drawers, one which doubles as a clothes press, the other holding the night bucket. She hands him a water bowl and a taper. "You're allowed two buckets a day from the well in the courtyard. Speak with our water keeper before drawing them. Meals are taken in the common room. I'm Kerajin if you need anything." She smiles at him and sways off, slipping easily between the pallets despite her wide hips.
A few men lounge in the dormitory, chatting or working on handwork. Nilos puts his rucksack into the drawer under his pallet, then thinks better of it and holds it on his lap. Two buckets, and meals, and lodging, for a whit? He thought prices would be higher in the city, but perhaps with the great river rolling by day after day, they don't have to worry that their wells will run dry. Yet they still have water keeper counting the bucket-draws.
Unsettled, Nilos soon returns to the family room--what Kerajin called the common room. The clank and bellow of midday has eased. An older man dozes near the hearth, and a six of women are absorbed in their dicing at a far table. Nilos takes a seat at the end of a trestle table, his back to the wall. Kerajin moves in and out of the room several times, bringing pale wheat beer to the women or new candles to the sconces. Nilos has nothing to do, no one to see, but he can't force himself to leave the lodgestone in search of a new master.
[[ϒ Perhaps tomorrow, after a meal and a night's sleep on a pallet instead of broken ground.->affirm]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "He calls Nilos //ono// like he called him //lad// before the river crossing.")[He calls Nilos //child// like he called him //boy// before the river crossing.]
(Click-replace: "They claim the lodgestone; my holding provides the hosting.")[They claim the lodgestone; my holding provides the hosting." Nilos tries to hide his sudden understanding. Lethinil's family belongs to a smallholding. She owes a ninth of her profits and loyalty to her patrons. "]
]}$il[R]ythel comes by Lethinil's lodgestone each morning, (unless: (history:)'s last is "affirm")[greets Nyls by his new-claimed name, and eats with him. When they finish, Rythel](else:)[eats with Nyls, and then] guides him to different banlieue markets nearby. Each banlieue market centers on a tev-seller, with perhaps three other stalls nearby, selling secondhand clothing or much-mended tools. Rythel finds a nook in a wall near the junction of two alleys and leans back against the stone. "Watch," he says.
Nyls tries not to be obvious by peering around. Awkwardly, he adopts Rythel's casual cross-armed pose. Rythel finds the market fascinating, though Nyls only sees a few women buying poor cloth and worse tools. After half a candlemark, a pretty young jongleur arrives in the square. Her yellow cap marks her as ono. She sets out her cap to catch her listeners' silverwhits, and plays a few airs on a xylophone strapped across her chest, using metal striking rings on her fingers. Eventually, the journeyman trader in the small-goods stall comes out to speak to her, gesturing to the alley she emerged from. The girl shrugs, picks up her empty cap, and leaves. Nyls sighs. Without the music, standing around on hard cobbles loses its appeal even more quickly.
"What did you see?" Rythel asks him.
Nyls frowns sharply. "What?"
"At least three major bargains were struck under your nose and you missed them," Rythel says. "A boy took on a shipping commission; a mastersmith agreed to teach an apprentice ono; and two holdings agreed on a marriage price for their children."
"I saw the jongleur--" When the jongleur left, Nyls regretted not tossing one of his whits into the her cap for the music.
Rythel grins. "Ah, well. That's her job." He strides off, and Nyls hurries at his heels. "Advocats won't craft contracts for people ono. But people are people--they'll make promises if they can't sing vows. We just do it more quietly." He leads the way back to Lethinil's, and calls to Kerajin for tev as they enter the common room. Kerajin sways over to them, one hand on her round stomach, the tray lifted high in her other hand.
"How's the bearing?" Nyls asks Kerajin tentatively as she slides their bowls in front of them. Nothing in Kerajin's dress or manner suggests she might feel ono. She belongs to Lethinil's holding, so an advocat must have sung her labour contract. Whatever her feelings, Kerajin is a woman. Nyls doesn't want to press the question of Kerajin's bearing in case she feels as Jiron does about a healer ono. Kerajin treats Rythel's friends with easy familiarity, but she might not appreciate Nyls's interest.
She smiles and kneads a spot under her ribs. "My little ono kicks like a mule."
Nyls smiles to hear her use ono as he knew the word upmountain, a love-word for a child. "Three more ninedays?" he guesses.
"About that, a nineday more or less." Kerajin sighs. "Soon enough." The corners of her mouth turn down, and she returns to the hearthroom with a frown tugging at her brow.
Uncertain at the change in Kerajin's demeanour, Nyls settles back on the bench. He takes his tev bowl when Rythel starts spooning his. Dowmountain tev tastes sour, with shreds of meat in it that Nyls can't identify. More tender than mutton or goat, yet less flavourful. Rythel offers him a bowl of dried, slivered peppers, which enliven the tef's taste without making it any less strange. Hunger makes a familiar sauce, though, and Nyls empties the bowl before setting it aside.
"The quiet market is where you'll go to heal," Rythel says. "Those little corners near the banlieue markets. People will try to catch your eye--be open to them."
"How will they know who I am?"
Rythel scoops far too many peppers and mixes them in with his creamy tev. "Your satchel is sign enough. Don't bargain in the open. Follow them. At first, they won't pay you. You have to earn their trust. Then they'll start bringing gifts. Less than you expect, perhaps. But enough." He grins and takes a full bite of peppers, apparently inured to the burn on his tongue. "Then we'll see about getting you free of Lethinil. She'd keep all her lost ono if she could."
His words prove true. On the fourth morning, Rythel fails to show up in the common room, and Nyls eats alone. Self-conscious, he tucks his ochre leather satchel under his green cloak, and sets out for the nearest banelieue market. As he walks, he lets the satchel show in flashes, but when he settles on a borrowed camp stool in the mouth of an alley behind a tev-seller's brazier and waits for Rythel's words to prove true. Hardly half a candlemark passes before a man sidles up beside Nyls, both of them jumpy enough that they give courtesy at the same time, neither certain of the other's place. "Do you know izelu deepstone?" the man asks.
"I'm sorry, I can't give you directions," Nyls answers.
"Excuse me, then." The man hurries down the alley away from the market, but looks back over his shoulder.
Nyls waits a moment longer, sweat starting in his armpits, and then folds up his camp chair to follow.
The man takes a winding path, keeping to the alleys, paved in a mix of stable leavings and emptied nightbuckets. He leads the way to the postern gate of a deepstone small enough to have no courtyard at all, only two homeside rooms and two hearthside, and no family room. On the homeside, a young person shivers under a mass of ratty quilts. A red scatter of pustules runs hot on all the skin Nyls can see.
"Have you had a healer in?" Nyls asks.
The man shakes his head. "One came when I claimed my second wife was ill," he says. "He wouldn't give Zylen a song. He said it was spot fever."
Nyls knees at Zylen's side, and brushes back sweat-curled bangs. The sour smell of vomit mixes with pungent sweat, deeper than the unwashed bodies of most city dwellers. "It's late for the spot fever."
"All our children had it in their first nineyear," the father says. "But Zylen missed it."
Nyls nods. "We'll need water for songs," he says.
[[ϒ He settles at Zylen's side, taking a hot hand in his.->rout]]
[[ϒ Then, finding Zylen's lifepoint, he takes a breath, and sings.->his own]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "She'd keep all her lost ono if she could")[She's not above using the quiet market, at a remove. Remember, in any dispute, she has place, and you don't]
(Click-replace: "Advocats won't craft contracts for people ono.")[Advocats won't craft contracts for people ono. They say it disrupts the harmonies, though if you ask me, the overholdings like to keep smallholdings in line by showing there's somewhere to fall.]
(Click-replace: "a young person")[a young person--too old not to have come of age, but wearing unplaited hair like a child--]
]}$il[E]ach day after Rythel shows him the quiet market, Nyls makes his way through the south side warren, learning the maze. Where the streets wind together into junctions, a banlieue market springs up, sometimes for a threeday, sometimes longer than the traders remember. If Nyls settles onto his camp chair in an alley's mouth nearby, sooner or later someone finds him, and leads him to a shabby holding or an undiscriminating lodgestone. Mostly, his patients are people ono who go without brews or breathwork as they survive without songs. But some are simply poor, unable to rouse the pity of their overholdings.
Nyls can't claim more silver in his pouch since the day Sirol left him, but nor has he less. Kelol may have turned his back on Nyls, but he honoured his song, and guided him downmountain. He reaches for his clothes each morning knowing they will sit right on his skin. He eats his buttermilk tev with only a mild yearning for Asaresta's stronger tastes. He was right to come.
Summer heat thickens the air. Nyls's nose grows indifferent to the filth oozing down the center dip in the streets. The worst of the muck, encouraged by rainstorms, eventually joins the turgid brown flow of the river. City dwellers can claim as many buckets from the river as they want, if they don't mind drinking runoff from their betters upstream. Tanneries and breweries add their effluent, and few people think much of tossing their leavings into the flow. Though Nyls doesn't demand payment from his patients, he begs them to pay the water keepers for buckets drawn from clean wells, not trusting a song brewed in river water.
When his nineday at Lethinil's lodgestone expires, Nyls finds welcome in a bordel where he treated three sheepish pleasure-workers' itch with mouldy-bread poultices. Most of the rooms in the bordel's extensive deepstone hold a narrow rope-net bed and a notched candle to mark a customer's time. Chiasin, the bordel keeper, shows Nyls to a tiny suite above the common room instead. The sitting room holds two chairs, a brazier, and a scanty sideboard. Two doors lead into equally cramped sleeping rooms: hearthside and homeside in miniature. Chiasin, tall and imposing in her flowing green tunic, a man's red kerchief tucked into her belt, smiles at Nyls and leaves him to choose which room he'll claim. She charges a higher lodging fee than Lethinil, and expects him to tend her holding's pleasure-workers without compensation, but now that Nyls has a better sense of city prices, the transaction feels more honest. He passes on his patients' gifts to Chiasin, and stretches out in his own rooms as he never could in a homeside dormitory. "We ono," Rythel says in approval, "need more space than most."
Midsummer, Nyls enters the bordel through the postern gate. Stables and storage line the back wall of the courtyard. The common room, where travellers, outriders, and high-place revellers from upriver flirt with Chiasin's servers, stretches the width of the building's frontage. The homeside and the hearthside wings, which in a lodgestone consist of dormitories and a few small sitting rooms, here show the flicker of candlelight through the shutters, even during the day. Like the city's odours, Nyls barely notices the voices--gasps, laughter, moans--any longer. He nods to Chiasin as he heads towards the stairs. "Someone's looking for you," she says, pointing to the common room.
Nyls goes in, expecting Rythel. Instead, the first person he lays eyes on, sitting at a corner table, is Kelol.
The last time Nyls saw Kelol, he rode away without a word and let Sirol abandon him on the street. As if he could sweep his arm across a sandbar and erase any traces of history there.
Kelol stares down at the scarred trestle and spoons tev into his mouth. He looks well, sun-darkened, wearing his man's riding clothes with the same easy grace Nyls remembers from the journey. Servers and pleasure workers thread through the tables like shuttles through a warp, many of them dressed thoroughly ono, but Kelol barely glances at their slanted knots. Plenty of outriders like Jiron appear in the common room for a night or a threeday, loud with crude jokes, playfully tugging at the servers' sashes. They pay Chiasin good silver and slink back to a narrow room with a server ono for a candlemark. Kelol shows no interest, but no disgust either. How could he name Nyls Larik's killer, turn his back over a single belt-knot, then appear in a bordel like Chiasin's like he doesn't see the people ono around him?
Nyls hesitates, looking over his shoulder to the shadowed staircase. Before he can leave, Kelol half-stands from his bench. "Nilos...?"
"Nyls," he corrects. Setting his mouth, he pushes past a loud gaggle of beer-breathed traders, and slides into the seat across from Kelol. "You were looking for me?"
Kelol stares at Nyls' attire, then ducks his head, before his gaze sneaks back. "I was, before. After Sirol told me what happened to you. I didn't know they were going to do that. He and Zayelik--"
Nyls doesn't let Kelol's shame-faced attitude soften him. "That was ninedays ago."
"I got kicked out and I couldn't find you. I'm sorry, Nilos."
"Call me Nyls."
"Nyls." Kelol fumbles his name again, and a hot flush climbs his cheeks.
Nyls sighs. "Zayelik broke song with you? You could have an advocat on her for that."
Kelol shakes his head. "She didn't break song, she just didn't renew my contract. I--" He shifts uncomfortably on his bench before muttering, "I talked too much about trading."
And, already under suspicion from his association with Nyls, the other outriders showed no mercy in calling him ono, too. Nyls swallows an ugly desire to gloat. He of all people can't shame Kelol for acting ono. "Are you all right?" he asks. "Silver? Lodging?"
Kelol presses his lips together. "I live here," he says shortly.
Nyls raises an eyebrow. Chiasin, like Lethinil, has a habit of collecting young ono--though Chiasin has a different end in mind for them, when their silver runs low.
"I'm fine," Kelol says, with a burning stare. He speaks more curtly, angrier than he was when they left Asaresta, but he is graver, too. Humbled, Nyls supposes, by Zayelik's indifference. "I still have Brys and Tyn," he says. "I covered the stabling fee, and my meals, with my wages. Past that..." He frowns. "I think I could find my way back upmountain. When I heard you were here..." Kelol shrugs, defensive, but driven to fairness. "If you want to come with me-- I didn't mean to leave you."
Kelol's forthrightness drew Nyls to him, in Asaresta. He doesn't hide his anger, but he cleaves to his own sense of integrity. He feels responsible for bringing Nyls to the city. Nyls quells the urge to brush back Kelol's fine hair. "No," he says quietly. "I'm a healer, here."
A mulish look crosses Kelol's face. "They aren't afraid--"
Larik's ghost breathes, between them.
Nyls looks around. The crowd at Chiasin's grows rowdy after sunset, and tonight is no exception, the crowd waxing louder and the servers exchanging garments in a growing free-for-all. All around them, women, men, and ono mingle, dancing, to the notes of a chiming xylophone. "You weren't wrong to be angry with me," he says. "Here, they want my songs."
Just then, Rythel strides in, and comes up beside Nyls. He grins at Kelol. "Ah, and here I thought you said you weren't renting a pleasure room," he says.
Kelol's anger comes hot into his face, erasing any kindness Nyls's admission raised. Nyls reaches out and lays a hand on his arm. "Who's ill?" he asks.
"Thyla," Rythel says.
Nyls grabs up his satchel. "I'm sorry, Kelol. I'll say farewell when you leave--I have to go."
[[ϒ Where the city freed Nyls, it snared Kelol.->breathwork]]
[[ϒ Zayelik shattered Kelol's illusions about jaunting into a master trader's place, despite his rite.->atonement]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "when their silver runs low.")[when their silver runs low. Kelol won't find it easy to sing a new outrider contract if he hopes to return upmountain. His ambition to repay his debt to his holding with labourer's wages must be suffering under the need to stay fed and housed in the city. Nyls hopes he hasn't taken on the kind of debt Chiasin would offer.]
]}$il[N]yls brews feverfew for Thyla, then Rythel takes him to offer breathwork to a young couple's child, and again to sing vigil for an old man, blind enough to accept a song from an ono he can't see. Nyls sprinkles dried pine needles over a taper, and washes the smoke's breath over the old man. Rythel stays, to give what breath he can to the song.
Nyls sings the vigil note for note as Tereos taught him. He hasn't changed a single song since arriving in the city. Without any chance to gather the herbs he needs, his satchets have run low. Whenever Nyls considers a substitution, though, he remembers Jiron's revulsion. Did his thumb ever heal? Nyls should have asked Kelol when he saw him, but he fears the answer. If Jiron lost the use of his thumb then maybe Kelol's misgivings carry weight, and Nyls fools himself every day, betraying his patients' trust with an ono's songs. Maybe Larik died because of him.
The old man lets out a gasp when his ghost escapes his body at the last. His shell crumples back on his thin blanket. All that remains of his life are the few possessions scattered under the south arch of Sareya's main bridge. Giving song or not, the ravens will find him still.
They return to Chiasin's through the grey dark. Nyls looks for Kelol in the common room, but he must have retired long since.
He sees him at breakfast, and again, across the common room, bent over his dinner. Then Kelol disappears for a threeday. Over the next ninedays, they run into each other often--Kelol leading his ponies out of the stables to take for pasturage beyond the city, or blinking over a last cup of tea once Chiasin's rowdier customers claim rooms for the night.
One night, Kelol limps in from the stable, favouring his right foot. Nyls stands up when he sees him. "Are you all right?"
"Brys spooked," Kelol says. "Threw me." He grimaces, more in embarrassment than pain. "It'll be fine tomorrow."
Kelol may live in an ono's bordel, but as far as Nyls can see, he's an outrider straight through. "If you don't rest, you'll worsen it," Nyls tells him. "Come up to my rooms--I'll wrap it for you."
"I'll rest, I promise," Kelol says, and promptly stumbles.
Nyls shakes his head and slips his shoulder under Kelol's armpit. "Still afraid of an ono's bandages?" he asks.
Kelol grunts, but lets his weight rest on Nyls. "It's not that bad--"
"Then you can climb a few stairs." Cajoling, Nyls urges Kelol up to his sitting room. Opening the door, he desposits Kelol like a sack of wheat-flour into the sturdier of his two ladder-back chairs. He goes to the hearthside sleeping room for his satchel, and comes out with a long roll of linen. He kneels at Kelol's feet and unties his left-knotted boot. When he looks up to see how bad the pain is, Kelol is staring at him, his eyes shining strangely. "What?"
"You, ah. Sleep hearthside now?" Kelol asks, red staining his cheeks.
Nyls glances over his shoulder, caught out again. The first night he claimed these rooms, he tentatively slept in the homeside room, as though someone was watching him. That was ninedays past, and since then all his things have accumulated in the hearthside press, and the pallet there holds all the room's quilts. But they are not hunched over an injured outrider on the bank of a river any longer. That scared boy is gone; Nyls won't apologize for how he lives in his own skin. "Yes," he says calmly, easing the boot from Kelol's foot. He holds Kelol's heel steady. A great yellow-green swath of bruises blooms over Kelol's instep. Nyls finds the lifepoint in Kelol's foot, and moves his ankle this way and that, then presses his palm against the ball of Kelol's foot, until Kelol grunts in pain. "Just a sprain," he murmurs. Taking his roll of bandages, he begins winding them around Kelol's foot, murmuring a mending song. Afterwards, he'll mix crushed arnica in a salve, to work into Kelol's skin. Hot water in a water skin would help, too, but a fire at midsummer makes Nyls sweat just thinking about it, and he's already taken his day's buckets from Chiasin's well.
Nyls draws his song to a close and sits back on his haunches. He keeps Kelol's foot cradled in his hand. With his thumb, he traces Kelol's lifepoint as gently as he can. Kelol's breath comes quick and light through his parted lips. "I could add peppers to your arnica rub," he offers.
Kelol licks his lips. "Peppers?"
Nyls nods. "The ones they use in their tev here--"
"Scorch your tongue off, I know." Kelol frowns, tension growing in his shoulders. "What do you mean, add?"
"The heat would feel good on the bruises," Nyls says. "The arnica song eases pain, but the heat--"
Kelol pulls his foot back, wincing as it jostles his ankle. "A twisted song?"
Nyls gazes up at him steadily. "Call it a song aslant," he suggests.
Kelol shakes his head. "No--sorry," he says. "No." He pushes his foot slowly back into his boot and stands carefully. "The wrapping's enough--it really does feel better." He steps to the door, favouring his foot.
"You don't need to run," Nyls says, from the floor. "A man needn't come to a healer ono if he doesn't want."
Kelol grabs the door frame and turns back. "I don't mind," he says. "Really, Nyls, I don't. Thank you. I--I could give you a whit--"
Nyls pushes to his feet. "Keep it," he says, swallowing bitterness. "You need it." He can't imagine how Kelol affords Chiasin's fees in the first place. He turns, surveying the dusty sitting room, and the empty chair that only Rythel has sat in before. Nyls scrabbles every day to find enough people willing to take his songs; he shouldn't endanger his own business, or his place here, by suggesting slanted songs to anyone, let alone Kelol. Mischief got the better of him. Kelol blames him for his sister's death but he accepted Nyls's touch and his breath in song. It felt good to touch him.
Kelol hovers in the doorway, an apology or an explanation on his lips. Nyls doesn't want to hear either, and so he faces Kelol directly and says, "You could stay here."
Blinking, Kelol grabs harder at the doorframe. "What?"
"If you're interested in paying me back. We'd both save in lodging fees." Like the slanted song, Nyls intends his offer seriously, but also as a challenge to Kelol's trust. "I only use the hearthside," he says, a curl of mockery in his voice. If Kelol can take a song from him while he's dressed in ono's motley; if Kelol can live among Chiasin's pleasure workers, and not bat an eye; if Nyls can touch him, without needing to hide--a roil of something like longing, like homesickness, churns in his stomach. Nyls works to find a laugh, to dismiss the suggestion before Kelol can.
[[ϒ "Oh," Kelol says. "Well, I'll be homeside for you." His eyes widen and he clamps his mouth shut."I mean, uh--"->passage]]
[[ϒ Nyls smiles. "I have the room. You can share it."->holding]]{
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Giving song or not, the ravens will find him still.")[Nyls sits back on his heels, tipping his head back. "This is why I became a healer," he says. Filth streaks the bridge deck above them. The rattle of horseshoes and cartwheels makes it impossible to hear the chuckle of the summer-low river.
"To watch old men die?" Rythel gently tugs a muddy cloak over the man's blank eyes, in lieu of the ghost-shell wrappings they can't afford.
"To help free the ghost, yes," Nyls says. Maybe this is the lesson Tereos intended for him a season ago, that Nyls wasn't ready to learn. "Because no one should have to breathe alone at the end."
No one will come to see the old man's giving. There is no one to sing the farewell. Nyls takes the woman's part, the remembrance, and leaves the acceptance to Rythel. People ono hold givings for many bodies. They know what it is to be forgotten. "May he be known," Nyls says.
Rythel shakes his head, and draws Nyls away. Giving song or not, the ravens will find him still.]
] }(if: (history:)'s last is "bearable")[ $il[K]elol came in while Rythel and Nyls both supported her to walk around the tiny sitting room. Kelol's eyes widened, and he disappeared faster than he arrived.
But he came back. Nyls scrubs a hand across his face before remembering the stickiness of dried blood between his fingers. Kelol must have bribed the water keepers with a silverweight, for the number of buckets he drew and carried up to heat over the fire he kindled. Even after the baby was born, Kelol kept bringing water, the circles under his eyes as dark as anyone's. Nyls fumbles for his lye soap, already worn down to a sliver, and washes his hands in the water that remains in a clay bowl. He scours his face with a rough linen kerchief. He wants to fall into his pallet and sleep for a nineday, except he gave his hearthside room to Kerajin and her new child. He sinks instead into the armchair pushed back against the wall, under the narrow window.
He startles out of a daze when the door opens. Kelol steps in, stripped down to his linens and a rough-patched pair of trousers. He crosses the room to Nyls and kneels in front of him. "Are you all right?"
Nyls gropes for words. "She's fine, the baby too--"
Kelol squeezes his knee. "You're--you didn't overgive your breath, did you?"
Kerajin pushed from nightfall to moonset. The baby would advance, then retreat between contractions. Kerajin lost a lot of blood, then. Finally Nyls had to reach up, and push the child back, turning the poor thing before Kerajin could push properly. He opened his breath to her then. Rythel, too, must have given everything of his strength. Nyls shakes his head slowly. "If she'd died--if the baby--"
Kelol takes his hands. He shakes his head. "You saved her. Nyls. You--you're a healer," he says, and swallows hard.
The name doesn't register at first. Nyls stares at Kelol, his solemn grey eyes, the loose fall of dark hair around his face. Nyls reaches up and touches his thumb to Kelol's lower lip. Healer, he said, with the feminine inflection. Nyls licks his dry lips, but his throat closes before he can speak.
Kelol drops his eyes. "Larik...was sick for a season," he whispers. "Coughing blood-- She just kept getting weaker. It wasn't your fault. You're not the reason she died." His hands clench in Nyls's lap. "If I could have given breath to her vigil--"
Nyls shakes his head, and lifts a hand to brush at his eyes. "You were too young."
"I open my breath now," Kelol says. "Every vigil."
"I know," Nyls says. He swallows, then strokes a strand of hair back from Kelol's face. Kelol's dark hair is so fine under his fingers, though sweated through. Nyls cards his fingers deeper, finding the lifepoints at Kelol's temples, tugging tangles free.
Kelol shudders in his lap, and breathes deep, before he looks up again. "No," he says. "You need sleep. But first--" He climbs to his feet and opens the door to his homeside sleeping room. Though Nyls gave his pallet to Kerajin, his stomach still twists at the thought of sleeping on the homeside, even for a day. But Kelol doesn't point to his pallet. Chiasin's oak cask, half-full of clear water, sits in the center of the floor, the only place it fits. "I thought you might rather sleep in the sitting room," Kelol says. "But a bath, first--" He half-shrugs, and pushes his unbound hair out of his face. "Don't get in the cask yet. I'll fetch hot water."
"You can't," Nyls protests. "Your bucket draws--"
"One of the water keepers owes me," Kelol says, with a grin. He draws Nyls close, and guides him down to the pallet. The quilt smells like Kelol. Nyls blinks into half a dream, wondering when Chiasin gave Kelol permission to boil water in her hearthroom, or reserve one of her cauldrons--or her half-cask, for that matter--for Nyls's bathwater.
The bath, when it comes--he falls asleep in it. When he wakes, Kelol grins faintly at his reflexive start, sending bathwater over the edges of the cask. "You should eat," he says gently.
The water has gone cold around Nyls's shoulders and his calves where they fall outside the cramped cask. Kelol takes him back to his pallet, muttering about getting him dry and warm. Outside, the sun rolls westward; a day since Rythel found Nyls in the common room. Nyls rolls onto Kelol's quilts and buries his face in a down pillow. Kelol laughs low, somewhere above him.
"Stay," Nyls says. His eyes close. "You need sleep too." He feels Kelol's smile at his temple, and then the press of his weight, his heat, against Nyls's bare back.
When Nyls](else:)[ $il[W]hen Nyls] wakes, Kelol lies next to him, watching him, in curiosity and warmth.
For the first time in what feels like many ninedays, Nyls thinks of Trenon. Trenon, who believed in the homeside and the hearthside, but who so often forgot the family room between them. He thinks Trenon would have demanded, long ago--//what are you, Nilos? Woman or man?//
Kelol's anger when Nyls showed him his slanted knot never touched on whether Nyls claimed to be a man or a woman. He cared that Nyls might not be a healer. He cared that Nyls deceived his patient, and endangered Larik.
No matter what herbs Nyls brewed the night of Larik's death, he believes it was a true song. He gave her every breath he could. Since Kelol's ankle healed, he goes out of his way to bring Nyls what herbs he knows, and others he trusts Nyls to know. It feels like forgiveness.
In Asaresta, Nyls thought he couldn't be happy without Trenon. But he thinks, even now, Trenon would call him invert, or allow him his pretensions, and call him woman.
Kelol calls him ono, and spends his silver on filling Nyls's bath.
Nyls says, "Thank you." He touches Kelol's cheek, to bring him close, and kisses him.
Kelol leans into the kiss, and then presses, softly, for more. Nyls tries to taste Trenon in his body, Larik in his ghost; but he finds only Kelol, his hand seeking Nyls's hip, his body canting forward to press them together.
When he pulls back, Kelol smiles and says, "I've never shared pleasure with someone ono."
Nyls doesn't want to break the song they've spun between them, but he ventures, "Neither have I."
Kelol would have taken place insult, once. Today, he laughs. "Traders are good lovers, they say."
"Who say?" Traders, Nyls supposes. They would.
[[ϒ But Kelol only answers, "Will you let me try?"->make good]]
[[ϒ Nyls says, "Yes."->homecoming]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Healer, he said, with the feminine inflection.")[Healer, he said, with the feminine inflection. A healer, and a woman. It almost doesn't sound like a word at all.]
]}$il[K]elol returns from a meandering trader's trip bearing a bright profusion of flowers and roots. Nyls sorts through them for the useful herbs, setting the others in a tall clay vase.
"Do you miss the mountains?" Kelol asks Nyls from his yawning lounge in the armchair. He still has half a stable on his boots, stretched out towards the unlit brazier. The smell of horse and warm leather wafted into the room with him.
"No," Nyls says. Kelol grows restless, trapped in the stone streets for longer than a nineday. He accepts the quiet market's meagre commissions so that he can ride Brys in wide arcs to the farming deepstones and breathe the green air. The city holds a stink unto itself, but Nyls barely notices. He moves through the south side streets like a minnow in a river, breathing water.
Kelol frowns, before asking, "Do you miss Trenon?"
Nyls looks up from his worktop. Kelol built it for him and wedged it into the corner. A woman's skill, carpentry; where Kelol picks up such ideas, Nyls doesn't know. He stretches his back, then stalks towards Kelol in the armchair and, seizing his moment, sits on him--his back cradled against Kelol's front. Kelol fixed the leg once after the chair dumped them out. From the creak of wood, Nyls rather suspects they might go tumbling again. Yet they keep finding themselves in the same chair, sometimes Kelol draped over Nyls' knees, sometimes Nyls' head on Kelol's chest.
"Yes," he says, picking up Kelol's hand. Over the summer Kelol grew a handspan, matching Nyls's height; he may have another fingerwidth in him before he finishes. "Trenon knew I was lonely. He's the only one who told me I deserved better than hiding behind Tereos's robes." His fingerpads press soft against Kelol's rougher calluses. "I miss him, for what he might have been."
Kelol sighs. "I think I need to go back."
Nyls turns his head, listening to Kelol's thumping heart. "Your parents' holding has no power down here. You don't need to carry their place-ambitions any more."
Kelol tightens beneath him. "I owe them Larik's contract breaking price."
Nyls could ask a question in his turn: does Kelol miss the woman he might have been? If Kelol had come of age a woman, and married Trenon, he'd have saved his holding a place debt. He would have come to the city as a trader's apprentice, a more enticing prospect than living songless with a healer ono. But Kelol will carry the debt with him always, if he doesn't try to pay it. "I know," Nyls says.
"I have to give them something," Kelol says. His arms tighten around Nyls, and he brushes his lips against the side of Nyls's mouth.
"When you come home," Nyls says, turning into Kelol's kiss, "it will be winter."
And his hearthside will be waiting for him.
(link-goto: "ϒ Return","begin") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "living songless with a healer ono.")[living songless with a healer ono. Kelol's parents have probably replaced that silver and their child by now. They'd stack daughters like cordwood if they could. They can entice love-spouse wives into their older daughters' marriages, if they want to replace Larik. They'll never know the son they had instead.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "dismissal")[ $il[K]elol hitches Tyn and Brys outside the common barn. He squares his shoulders before crossing the dooryard to meet Trenon and Zayelik. This should be a flag-snapping day, a feast thrown open to all Asaresta. Instead, Trenon waves him into a bran-smelling tack room. Zayelik listens over the contract once, tapping along in time with Trenon's soft singing. She grunts softly when she hears the price Kelol set for his labour. The price is not unreasonable, but higher than several of her outriders who have more experience. Kelol named it in the hopes that Zayelik would negotiate. That she'd open herself to bargaining with a man. She simply shrugs and demurs.
Afterwards, Sirol](else:)[ $il[S]irol] sets Kelol to work catching mules in the paddock. He watches carefully while Kelol gentles the first mule, then he nods and leaves Kelol to follow the other outriders' lead. Asaresta traders, overmountain traders, random holdings, all have contributed to the mess of sacks, casks, and bundles that Zayelik will trade downmountain. Kelol manages to peek inside one rawhide-wrapped bale. He snorts. Chamois fleece--thin and patchy, combed too early in the season. Jiron strides up and nudges him. "Stop dragging," he says.
"What're those boxes? Copper bars?"
Jiron shrugs. "Could be rocks. Get the next mule."
"But what if it's fragile?"
Jiron knocks his shoulder again, sending him stumbling towards the paddock. "Then the master would've said."
"It could be worth silverweights! Aren't you interested--?"
"We leave by midday, that's my interest." Jiron leaves him at the fence and crosses the paddock to catch his own mule.
Kelol murmurs sweet talk to a hinny until he can get close enough to grab her halter. He gets her harness settled, then starts filling the manties. The boxes are too light to hold metal ingots. Cloth would be wrapped in bolts, not boxes. From the rattle, it could be pewter--tableware?
Sirol stops beside him. "The load's not centered."
"What's in it?" Kelol asks. Then, at Sirol's scoff, he says, "It might help me if I knew what it was--"
"It's unbalanced." Sirol moves down the line, checking the next mule.
Kelol opens the buckles to resettle the load. Maybe when they camp he'll have a chance to ask questions. Zayelik must know value of every package. How much she paid for each item, and what she return she expects in a city market. Sirol and Jiron only joined her train in Asaresta; they know as little as Kelol.
Between loading mules, Kelol fills his saddlebags with his share of the camp gear, including a low leather tent, a few water skins, and a sack of tev barley. Just as he slaps the rump of the last mule, Nilos sidles into the dooryard, keeping close to the barn wall to avoid the braying confusion. Kelol ducks under Brys's neck, and waves him over.
Nilos weaves nervously among the mules. More than one twists his ears suspiciously, and one raises a back hoof. Kelol meets him halfway before he can get himself kicked. "You can't go around them like that."
"Like what?"
Kelol sighs. "Like you're sneaking up on them. Always let a horse know where you are--be confident."
Nilos nods. "Can you help me up?" He adjusts a rucksack on his shoulder, and settles his healing satchel tighter under his arm. Neither bag will be easy to attach to Tyn's saddle.
Kelol strokes Tyn's neck in preemptive apology. "I thought you said you'd ridden before."
"I have," Nilos says defiantly.
"What, plough mules?"
Nilos shrugs in angry acquiescence.
Kelol fetches a mounting block and, by main force, gets Nilos up into the saddle. His legs dangle like guest chimes. Tyn lets out a long, resigned sigh.
Once the mules are loaded, Sirol comes past again, checking every knot.
"She's fine," Kelol says, cupping his hinny's bristly nose.
Sirol grunts and heads past him. Kelol smiles to the hinny, enjoying a moment's smugness--Sirol has //some// trust in his packing. But Sirol crosses to Tyn. With quick fingers he shortens Nilos's stirrups by two notches, while Nilos gets his boots in the way and nearly kicks Tyn in the jaw. Kelol steps forward to help, but Sirol's practiced hands finish the work before he can offer.
"Why didn't you ask me to shorten them?" he hisses at Nilos.
"I thought they were fine," Nilos says.
"Let me do it next time!"
"I didn't know it was wrong."
Kelol fumes silently. He wanted to present Nilos to Zayelik as a matter of fact, a clever twist on his contract song. He owns whatever his two ponies carry, including his very own apprentice healer. Nilos's obvious discomfort only makes Kelol look foolish. When Zayelik approaches, Kelol swings up into the saddle, trying to show off his easy, days-in-the-saddle slouch, only to have her ride past him on her tall gelding and ignore him completely.
"Good trading, master?" he calls, trying to show the deference that Sirol and Jiron give without thought. "Is that copper from Asarotha? Are there many coppersmiths in the city?"
Zayelik swings her horse around and frowns at him like she can't remember his name.
Sirol appears behind her leading a strong roan mare. "Back of the line, with me," he says. "Your friend gets roped to the train." He takes Tyn's lead and starts to bring her to the middle of the line.
Kelol can't help trying again. "Tyn's the best trail pony you'll ever see," he says. "She can take up the rear."
Sirol gives him a bristly stare, but moves Tyn to the back. "If she ditches her load, I'll leave the repacking to you," he says, as though he's talking about Tyn scattering camp gear instead of breaking Nilos's collarbone.
They manage to leave by midday. Kelol twists in his saddle as they leave the barn's dooryard. Amoz, or any of his fathers, had plenty of time to rush down from iryu holding and stop him. None did.
Their first stretch that afternoon ploughs straight through the stickiest bog Kelol has ever had the misfortune to cross. The ponies shoulder through thickets of willow, hooves sinking into the mire underneath. The mule train follows the driest route, but the sucking mud takes a toll on all of them. Kelol stands in his stirrups, trying to see the front of the train. Zayelik's horse stands shoulders above the mountain ponies and the mules. "Doesn't she use scouts?" he asks Sirol.
"She is the scout, lad. Be glad she is--you won't anger her by riding us all into a bog."
"One of the horses will probably gouge their hocks trampling through this willow." Tyn hasn't stumbled yet, but this heavy work can't be good for her. "Doesn't she have blazes to follow?"
"And lead other traders to the best route?" Sirol asks.
Kelol sighs and tightens his knees around Brys's barrel. The gelding is lively and dependable, but he needs a strong hand, especially when Kelol keeps insisting he ford moving water. Not that Zayelik knows or cares how well Kelol controls his mount.
Mud cakes every mule up to their bellies before Sirol grunts in relief. They slither down a steep, sodden bank. Nilos clings to his saddlehorn with one hand, while the other clutches the reins in a goose-winged grip that gives Tyn far too much of her head. He looks like he's in agony, bent well forward, making the slope harder on poor Tyn. Well, he chose to come without thinking what three ninedays' riding meant. He deserves every saddle rub.
At the bottom of the hill, they clatter across a shallow ford. The ground firms up under the mules' hooves, and soon they move under the trees on a clearer trail. As the sun sinks behind the western summits, Zayelik leads them into a well-trampled clearing.
Jiron and Ferok build a fire and set up the low tents. Sirol sends Kelol to rub down every mule and every pony, hobble them, and check their knees for any sign of strain. Despite the long summer twilight, dark settles before Kelol finishes his work. When he checks the tents, he finds his bedroll laid next to Nilos's. Zayelik and Sirol each merit tents of their own.
Zayelik serves plain tev on hearthbread trenchers, crunchy and burnt at the edges, chewy at the center. The men nod thanks to Zayelik for cooking and settle into their own talk. Weather, weather, and more weather. Scratch an outrider and find a claimless farmer.
Kelol sits across the fire from Zayelik, who seems to be watching the clouds, or the stars. "What do they use our copper for in the city?"
Zayelik frowns absently at him. "Tools."
"So it must fetch a good price, then." Or she wouldn't carry something so bulky and so heavy. "Do you trade in zinc too?"
Another dull pause, as if Zayelik can't remember the contents of her mule train, and then, "Yes."
Kelol glances to the outriders. Sirol stares at him steadily. The others are drinking potato wine. They don't look at him, but they've stopped talking. Nilos, sitting apart and easing his galls with some kind of stinky healer brew, stays studiously quiet.
Zayelik once let him listen as she topped the other traders' tales with great long lies of her own. This is the marketplace all over again, the laughter that runs from him.
"What, don't you care where your wages come from?" Kelol challenges Jiron, whose mouth twists when Kelol meets his eyes.
Sirol says, "Kelol, you'll have second watch, so you'd best sleep."
Sirol is ordering him away, after he sat down last, after he did the dirtiest, sweatiest work. Kelol studiously finishes his dinner, thanks Zayelik for her hosting, and stalks away from the fire.
At the stream, Kelol strips and scrubs himself. Shivering, he pulls on dry clothes from his saddlebag.
Sirol finds him scraping mud from his riding trousers. "Listen, boy. We're not in the city yet."
Kelol has no idea what Sirol means, unless Zayelik spoke the truth, and men can be traders in the city. In the city, but not on the trail. Kelol shoves his trousers into a sack to use as a pillow. "I've talked trading with Zayelik before."
"And now you've come of age."
"Can't a man be curious?"
"You're acting ono."
"I'm not a child!"
Sirol hesitates, a dark bulk of shadow between Kelol and the light from the camp fire. "Ono is city talk," Sirol says finally. "For when a man acts like a woman."
Kelol frowns in the darkness. Sirol sounds kindly enough, and he was the one who encouraged Kelol to contract as an outrider. "But in the city it's all right?"
"In some parts. Not in banlieues the master will ever visit."
"There's no need for Jiron to look at me like I swallowed a worm."
Sirol grunts. "Ah, he's worst of all, because he likes them, you know."
"Likes who?"
Sirol sighs. "Lad, has no one ever told you the way of the world? He likes people ono in the pleasure room."
Kelol opens his mouth and closes it again. Mosquitoes have found the camp, and whine past his ears. "He...what?"
"Why do you think men like Jiron like being outriders?"
Kelol remembers all his longings, to escape the tiny confines of Asaresta. "To travel? To see the city?"
"Backbreaking work, poor pay, away from your holding for a season..."
Kelol ducks his head and listens to the trickle of the stream. The brilliant spread of stars above them is all he ever wanted from his vow to Zayelik. If he gave a thought to Jiron's reasons, it was to suppose that Jiron couldn't maintain a steady contract as a field hand.
"And no one cares what you find, when you're away. Like your friend there."
"Nilos?" Kelol asks. Sirol can't possibly suspect that Nilos is an invert. Sirol only arrived in Asaresta looking for work a nineday ago.
"Why would an apprentice, a boy with good place, leave his home?"
Kelol shrugs uncomfortably. Nilos hasn't acted like a woman. He's not a child, either, or ono. He's a healer.
Sirol settles his cloak tighter, a vague movement in the darkness. "You might have a word with him. Or the men will get anxious. And don't continue such talk yourself."
Kelol doesn't understand what Sirol wants him to speak with Nilos about. He'll look more foolish if he asks. "You don't seem to mind," he ventures.
"I'm telling you, lad, because if you disrupt my outrider gang, I can't keep you on."
"But--"
"The same goes if you annoy the master. You'll need silver in the city. Don't ruin your chances."
[[ϒ "All right," he says, resentfully. He can't warn Nilos about something he doesn't understand himself.->entangled]]
[[ϒ Besides, the last thing Kelol wants is to return upmountain. He can't face his holding with nothing to show for a season's labour.->exposure]] $il[K]elol says nothing to Nilos when he crawls into their shared tent. He settles with a huff, and listens to Nilos roll over with a wincing gasp. He agreed to take Nilos downmountain, not to be his keeper. Sirol's warning (if: (history:)'s last is "tenacity")[that Nilos should be careful around the outriders ]makes no sense, anyway. Without seeing Nilos with Trenon, Sirol has no reason to think that Nilos is anything less than what he appears, an apprentice looking for a new master.
Over the next few days, despite Nilos's obvious stiffness and hobbling exhaustion, he pitches in when they strike camp. He sets up the tent they share, and he forages near each campsite for herbs to boil into brews. He shares out willowbark and arnica to those who want it, earning a whit here and there for his efforts. Kelol frowns at him a time or two, but Nilos acts no differently than he did in Asaresta. Sirol judged him too early.
When the two of them bundle together in the low, narrow tent, Nilos falls asleep first. Some nights he's all awkward elbows, or struggles in a dream. But usually, Kelol falls asleep to the soft sound of his breathing. One morning, Kelol wakes early to grey light and the soaring call of starlings. Frost from their breath rimes the leather fabric above him. He eases out of Nilos's hold and turns to find him frowning in his sleep, a worried dent between his eyebrows. His knit sleeping hat and his plainwoven linens are dyed a soft brown, dull as a child's clothing. Is that what Sirol meant by calling him ono, that Nilos dresses childishly? Nilos may be an invert, yes. But still a healer, a man. He has to be.
Outside the tent, Zayelik bangs a spoon against the tev pot. Grumbling and snuffling start up in the other tents. Kelol nudges Nilos awake by rolling away from him. He dresses quickly--two can't dress in the tent at the same time, and Kelol needs to feed the mules before he sits down for his morning tev.
The first day's travel, and most of the second, they spent alternately struggling through swamps and clambering down scarps steep enough to make the staidest mule roll his eyes. On the third day, Zayelik finds her own blazes along deer paths. Her trail comes and goes, but they continue south and downwards, keeping to the contours of the hills. Yesterday, at the end of the second nineday, they emerged from a sighing aspen wood and saw their first city cairn. They camped on the thorny bank of a tributary to the river that flows through Sareya. Crossing the broad, braided streams with loaded mules won't be easy. Spring rains undercut trees and washed them downstream, creating tangles that snag under the surface. The current, rushing under and around the snarls, dug holes in the middle of the channel, difficult to see from the low bank.
Zayelik, scouting, crosses first. She returns, making sure of the path, and then takes two mules with her on her next crossing. "Watch the deep spots," she tells Sirol. Sirol guides two mules and Nilos on Tyn. Ferok chooses two of the calmer mules for Kelol to lead. Brys, as usual, balks at moving water, and Kelol has to twist and kick to get him started. Once Brys enters the water, he splashes across quickly, steadier than his nerves suggest. Ferok arrives behind him without trouble.
Jiron's gelding gives a shrill, whinnying complaint the moment Jiron heads him towards the water with the last two mules. Jiron has to circle around, easing the gelding, while the mules toss their heads and shiver. Jiron tries again, but this time his gelding rushes into the water faster than the mules are comfortable. Both mules set their feet, pulling back against their leads. The current rises fast around their hocks. Sirol and Zayelik canter downstream, preparing for the worst. Kelol tries to turn Brys back, but one crossing was enough for him, and he threatens to buck before Kelol can get him back under control.
Kelol barely sees what happens next. One of the mules sees freedom on the far side of the river and plunges across, climbing the steep bank in a powerful lunge. Ferok manages to catch his rope but has to let go when the mule wrenches his arm. The second mule, though, feels the stream tugging his load. His eyes roll white as the current catches him. Sidling, he plunges deep into a hole the others missed, before coming up under a snarl of tree roots. Jiron dives back into the river before the mule can panic completely, and grabs for the rope. With belt knife he saws the mule loose. Kelol lets out his breath when the mule escapes and lurches for the bank. Jiron, soaked but steady, comes after the mule, holding one hand clamped to his chest. Blood spurts from a deep cut across his palm. The mule must have yanked just as Jiron was cutting the rope.
Kelol never saw blood like that. The world greys, recedes. Red gushes over Jiron's linen shirt, running pale pink and dripping with river water down his arms and pants. That much blood--
Nilos doesn't wait for breath. He leaps to Jiron's side, his healing satchel in his hand, barking orders. Kelol barely hears his name, and it takes him a slow stupid moment before he realizes Nilos wants him to fetch water. He fills two billy cans, splashing and spilling as he runs over, only to gape at what the rest of them have seen by then.
Nilos stripped off his cloak to free his hands. Underneath, his tunic is knotted right.
A woman's knot.
Kelol's heart stutters in his chest. He gulps for breath and can't use the air he swallows. Nilos dresses crooked? Ferok meets his eyes with a confirming sneer on his face. Kelol lived in the same tent as Nilos for two ninedays never saw how he tied his tunic. Kelol wants to curl up like a porcupine, quills braced against attack. They'll all think he knew.
Jiron twists away from Nilos's touch. The whole circle widens, empty space growing around Nilos's sallow, bewildered face. Jiron hugs his hand tighter and the bloodstain deepens across his chest. Ferok kicks Nilos's satchel aside, spilling out the vials and herbs he uses in his songs. Slanted songs.
Sirol knew. He told Kelol to "have a word with" Nilos. A word! While all this time Nilos has been a woman, concealing himself, offering them brews and songs like a healer. Just a threeday back he offered to open Kelol's breathlines after he wrenched a shoulder. A woman, pretending he can heal.
"No one ono can give a healing song," Ferok says. Jiron allows Sirol to bandage his wound. Nilos retreats, shouldered away by the outriders.
No one ono?
No woman, he means. Nilos isn't a healer at all. And he sang vigil for Larik.
Kelol closes his eyes against the sight of Jiron's hand gaping open and red like a butchered lamb. When he opens them, Nilos watches him mutely.
[[ϒ Nilos sang vigil for Larik, and she died.->exaction]]
[[ϒ Kelol walks away.->residuum]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Sareya")[the city]
]}$il[T]he next day, Sirol gruffly orders Kelol to ride ahead with Ferok, in Jiron's place. Jiron, his arm bound to his chest to keep his hand clean and out of his way, rides at the rear where Sirol can keep an eye on him. They'll contract a real healer when they reach the city. Nilos protests that Jiron may lose the use of his thumb if he doesn't get stitches. A squirm of anxiety worms through Kelol's belly, but Jiron refuses to have Nilos touch him. After a day, Nilos subsides into shamed silence, where everyone, from Zayelik on down, seems content to leave him.
Ferok makes jokes, calling across the mule line to Kelol. Men who grow crooked as hunchbacks after sleeping with people ono. Fingers that blacken like frostbite from the merest touch of an ono's brew. Jiron snarls like a wounded lynx while Ferok laughs. Kelol bows down under Ferok's jokes but he can't force himself to respond, either with laughter or defence. He finally understands what Sirol warned him about. Ferok might take Kelol's trader talk as proof that he's as slanted as Nilos.
A threeday after the crossing, Jiron's fingertips peeking out of Sirol's ragged linen dressing still look pink and healthy. No threatening red lines worm up his arm. Maybe Jiron was right to refuse help. Or maybe, if his wound //did// sicken, he would relent and take a brew from Nilos.
Larik died under Nilos's songs.
For a day, Kelol tries to go without using his thumb, but between saddling, packing, and pitching camp, he can't. If Nilos is right about Jiron's tendons, Jiron might lose his contract and have to pay out of his wages for enough food to return upmountain. Most holdings have their choice of field hands. They won't contract a man who can't do the work.
Kelol sneaks looks at Jiron's bound hand, and even catches Jiron fisting his fingers when he thinks no one is watching. Maybe his thumb works fine and Nilos's threat about the stitches was a lie as much as his apprenticeship. Kelol ignores Ferok as best he can and goes about his work in sullen silence.
By the end of the nineday, the city rises before them like a sandstone bluff. Every building looms larger than in Asaresta, three or even four storeys, more like barns than deepstones. Asaresta curls around a knife of rock that was claimed and cleared in tiered rows. Cairns mark the end of one holding's claim and the beginning of another's. The long rolling land around the city stretches away in spans Kelol can't even fathom, without a single cairn in sight. Kelol wants more than ever to see the city market Zayelik boasted of so often, but hot knotted shame keeps him from asking. He stares at Brys's mane while the skirling crowds part for Zayelik's horse. After a candlemark, they reach a wide doorway through a stone wall. Once through the gate, Kelol sees what the city deepstones must be hiding: a wide courtyard, with a stable at the back, and behind that, a narrow alley that doubles as an open sewer. The homeside and hearthside form wings off the deepstone's frontage. The outriders dismount, and begin unloading the mules.
Kelol slips down from his saddle, and looks automatically for Nilos. Sirol leads Tyn--saddled, but without Nilos's rucksack--towards the stables. Kelol hurries after him. "Where's Nilos?"
Sirol glances over his shoulder. "You promised him transport to the city."
And Sirol chose to count that contract fulfilled. "It's because of Ferok, isn't it?" Kelol says. Ferok already bundled Jiron off to the nearest healer. They'll both blame Nilos if Jiron loses the use of his thumb, but neither would give him credit if he'd managed to save it.
Sirol shrugs. "I need hands when we return upmountain. They're contracted; your friend wasn't."
Kelol takes his hint and hurries back to help with the unloading. Nilos claimed he wanted to learn downmountain healing songs. Kelol took it for a place-saving excuse at the time, though now he can see the deeper lie within it. If Nilos wants to find other inverts, maybe now he has the freedom to do so. Sirol must have pointed him in the right direction.
One by one the outriders lead the mules to the stable. The pile of casks and bundles grows as the mules are unloaded, then shrinks as the outriders tuck them away in whatever undercroft or storage space Zayelik keeps. Sirol delegates Kelol to care for the ponies, drawing water from the courtyard well and laying feed in their mangers. Kelol spends the most time on Zayelik's gelding, but also sees to Tyn, who lies tiredly in the box stall. She weathered the trip well, but he wouldn't want to see her pushed hard any time soon. By the time he reaches the deepstone, all the bundles have disappeared. Kelol fights down disappointment. He missed another opportunity to judge Zayelik's goods, to estimate what profit Zayelik can expect.
He trails towards the homeside. All he wants is a bath cask, even if he has to draw and heat the water for it himself. Before he can reach the door, Zayelik appears in the hearthside door. "Kelol," she calls, and beckons him across the courtyard.
She hasn't addressed him directly since she sang the vow as his master. Kelol follows her into the hearthroom, where the dust-dull leaded windows let in a dim, smoky light. Sirol sits at the table, thick arms resting on the trestle.
Zayelik nods to him, and he hands Kelol a pouch of silverwhits. "Your wages," Zayelik says.
Kelol's breath stops. "But I haven't seen the market yet," he says, and too late, snaps his mouth shut.
Sirol barks, "You're not a trader," like a blow to the chest.
Zayelik crosses her arms. "Did you think I took you on as some kind of secret apprentice?"
Kelol can't swallow. Maybe not, but she made a promise, once. "I thought the city was different," he mutters. Zayelik encouraged him. Warned him away from Trenon. She said she'd take him on--
//--as a daughter of iryu.//
Zayelik sighs, exchanges glances with Sirol. "They might have been better off together."
"Did I fail you as an outrider?" Kelol demands. "I'm a man!"
Sirol tosses the pouch, clinking, in front of him. 'I'm afraid your friend shadowed your place. And you didn't help yourself."
Should Kelol have ground Nilos into dust, laughed at Ferok's jokes? "If it's different in the city, you should be able to take on any apprentice you want," he tells Zayelik. There has to be an advocat somewhere who would be willing to sing that contract.
Zayelik shakes her head. "I'm master here, but I answer to my patrons. My profit goes to them, much as yours goes to your holding."
"As an apprentice, my profits would be yours--"
"And there would be none, because you are a boy. No one would look twice at you in the market."
"We don't care if you're ono, lad," Sirol says. "As you say, it's different here and better, perhaps, if you're looking for that. But I won't have you in my crew until you've learned your place."
They think he's like Nilos. They're no better than Ferok and Jiron. "You broke song with me," Kelol tells Zayelik. "I should have an advocat on you." Not that labourers have the place or the silver to hire an advocat to challenge a master.
Zayelik shakes her head. "Our contract was for three ninedays, renewal upon agreement. I didn't stint you."
"You made promises--"
"Don't suggest I broke song." Zayelik turns to Sirol. "You'll finish up here?"
He nods heavily. Zayelik disappears through the door, deeper into the hearthside.
"It's none of my business, lad," Sirol says. "I'm not one who cares. Go softly."
Kelol's hands feel numb, dangling at his sides. A pouch of silverwhits won't last him long with no contract, and no dinner in his belly. "Go--where?"
"The south side, downriver from the bridge," Sirol says. "You can probably find your friend."
Nilos was never his friend. Kelol won't seek out a liar just to show how low they've both fallen. He slouches back to the homeside long enough to pick up his saddlebags under Sirol's watchful eye. Brys whuffles disapproval when Kelol saddles him. Tyn groans deep to be led away from her manger.
[[ϒ Kelol leads them through Zayelik's gates, into the sandstone canyons of the city.->grey]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "No threatening red lines worm up his arm.")[No threatening red lines worm up his arm--no sign of blood poisoning.]
(click-replace: "without a single cairn in sight.")[without a single cairn in sight, as though even ninety holdings can't claim all the great tillable expanse that surrounds them.]
(click-replace: "I'm not one who cares.")[I'm not one who cares. But the city's not as different as all that, and you won't find a master who takes on outriders as easily as Zayelik does.]
]}$il[T]he smartest thing to do might well be to contract as an outrider to the first trader Kelol can find travelling to Asaresta. He didn't break song. Traders who compete for good mountain trails might appreciate his knowledge of Zayelik's route.
It won't be easy to find a trader headed upmountain in the churning morass of the city. Ask enough people, visit enough markets, and he might find one--but at every step, he'll be fighting to slip his head back into a snare he just escaped. This is Sareya! The whole grimy maze of it surrounds him. He can't tuck his tail between his legs and run home.
Besides, Tyn needs rest. Nilos's weight didn't tax her strength as much as the steep pitches and especially the bad trails when they first left Asaresta, a strain compounded by the long journey. Kelol rides Brys, south as Sirol suggested. Tyn plods behind them, her head hanging low. She doesn't pick up her feet like she should. Her knees were warm to the touch when Kelol stabled her. He barely got her settled in Zayelik's box stall before she lay down.
Both ponies need stabling and feeding, and Kelol can't think of a better way to run through his silver faster than he'd like. Starting upmountain immediately means demanding more rough work from them after little rest. Worse, if a trader hires him, he may need to promise one or both of the ponies as pack animals.
He spends longer than he'd like wandering around the city's south side, not willing to look for Nilos, and yet without any other direction to follow. The ponies grind old horseshit into the cobbles with every step. The stone facades disappear, but the timber deepstones that replace them look no more inviting. Soot tarnishes every surface, and pigeon droppings streak white down the walls until the dust of dried guano fills the air. Kelol takes corners at random, hoping to find some opening wide enough to let a clear breeze push through the warm, close stink. If Brys and Tyn weren't so tired, they'd spook every time a filthy child darts between them, or a wagon lurches in front of them, claiming right of way. Eventually, Kelol turns from a narrow street into a small square, where several streets join together. The space isn't large by city standards, but a field as large in Asaresta would have holdings squabbling to raise their cairns around it.
A six of market stalls cluster around a low common well, where a water keeper naps on a camp chair. Hitching posts line the curve of one deepstone wall. This market must be a far cry from the huge square Zayelik always spoke of. Kelol slides down and ties Brys to a hitching post. Tyn nuzzles in next to him. Kelol pays a whit to draw three buckets from the well. The ponies share the first two, greedily. With the third Kelol slakes his own thirst. He ignores the sand that grits brown in the bucket and fills his water skins. Using the ponies as a screen, he dips a rag in the bucket and gives himself a reviving wash. He tugs his vest back left, then sits with his back to the sun-warmed wall, and watches the market through drooping eyes.
The breathless air and echoing walls carry voices, so Kelol sets himself to learn how city traders bargain. The ones he can see are journeymen, and a few ragged apprentices hand-cranking fans to cool their betters. Their masters, like Zayelik, probably keep themselves to more comfortable stalls in richer banlieues.
The traders talk among themselves, ignoring their reluctant, despondent customers. If a trader deigns to haggle, they name a price, then either shake their head or grunt acceptance of the buyer's counter-offer. Some customers accept the trader's price. Others fight back like fish struggling on a line; they flop uselessly, and die anyway. No one buys much. A day's tev oats. An arm-span of poor cloth.
But the traders' stalls don't tell the market's whole story. A quieter market exists in the same space. Kelol keeps his sleepy expression, lays his hands limp on his knees, and watches. A man sits on his haunches in the alley mouth opposite, plucking pigeons. He packs the feathers into a mesh bag, then dresses the birds--the meat could add flavour to a tev pot, or the birds could be baked whole with a tev stuffing. Another man carries a brace of hares, probably snared outside the city. A woman dangles a few trinkets on a twine necklace, but Kelol also catches sight of the gleam of metal when she opens her cloak. An array of eating knives, scissors, awls, and needles hide in her pockets. Her tools show better quality than any of the traders' wares.
In Asaresta, smallholding hawkers mingle with the traders, laying out their goods on a cloth if they can't maintain full stalls. Here, they wander--around the edge of the square, in and out of the streets around it. A woman enters the market from the street behind Kelol, carrying a basket lined with straw and filled with duck eggs. When a man pauses next to her, Kelol hears her mutter a price. The man keeps walking and the woman tucks the basket back over her arm, but Kelol sees the same two meet on the far side of the square. Then, a third time, they step together into a deepstone. When they reappear, the man carries the basket. The seller stays in the market, nudging the goods in the stalls, chatting with the water keeper, before wandering off with forgotten purpose. Kelol suspects her pouch jingles heavier when she goes.
They aren't traders--just people, with goods. In Asaresta, everyone in the village knows which holding to visit to get what they need, and what favours they can offer in return. Traders deal in bulk and transport among the villages. Here, the hawkers act wary, as though the traders might wade in at any moment and disrupt their small exchanges.
A shadow falls across him. Kelol squints up to see a woman standing above him. "How much?" she asks. She leans against the wall next to him, as though stopping to pass the time with an old friend.
She means Brys and Tyn. She saw Kelol lingering in the square, his ponies on display, and assumed they were for sale. Kelol doesn't want to lose them. Aside from the fact that they're his transport back home, he won't abandon them to overwork or the tev pot. "Message or goods?" he asks. "Six whits for a full load and a day's journey."
The woman shrugs and walks away. Kelol doesn't call after her or try to entice her. Zayelik taught one lesson well. Kelol isn't a trader. He can set a price but he can't negotiate--no one will take him seriously. But where there's a quiet market, there must be goods that need to be delivered, without access to outriders.
He falls into a true doze before a second woman sits beside him. He starts awake when she leans close.
"You know irjanasu, up towards the second tributary?" she asks.
Kelol doesn't, but directions are the least of his concerns. He takes out his water skin and offers it to the new stranger. She must work with the first woman, the two of them alternating contacts to reduce suspicion. Kelol's price was acceptable after all. He gloats darkly to himself. He may not be a trader, but he made a sale, however unwitting, in the quiet market.
"I've a cousin in irjanasu holding who needs shoe iron," the woman says.
Nine thousand questions--why doesn't her cousin have his own shoe iron? Couldn't he come into town to have his ponies shod? Does the city have no journeyman farriers travelling among the outlying holdings? No sanctioned trader would arrange delivery through an intermediary. Kelol risks a push--he needs to learn the quiet market's rules more than he needs silver for his first sale. "My price is for delivery. I'll need three whits more for expenses, or else hosting at irjanasu."
The woman thanks him for sharing his water. She hands back the skin, stands, and meanders across the square before ducking into a deepstone. Kelol wonders if he overshot his mark. Traders sometimes push too hard and lose a sale--
He's not a trader.
If he wants people think he's in business for himself, he should follow the other hawkers' example. Considering their surreptitious behaviour, he shouldn't stay in the same place overlong. Kelol climbs to his feet and checks his drowsing ponies. He can't afford to discard the possibility of other delivery fees. He'll want a lodgestone after all. He ropes Tyn behind Brys and trails out of the square, leading both ponies. Just as he enters the next street, the first woman appears beside him.
"Hosting," she says, and offers a fist, carefully screened between Brys and the wall. Kelol wraps his hands around her fist, sealing the bargain. The woman opens her hand and Kelol feels the skin-warm metal: two whits. "At Chiason's," she says. "ask for the farthest stall. Irjanasu holding will expect you tomorrow."
A trader never reveals her ignorance, but counts silver. "The other whits?"
"Two at irjanasu. Two when you return."
Kelol could accept. So far, he counted on confidence and the fact that, at this moment, he doesn't need the commission. He can still plead ignorance, if consequences come. But the woman accepted his price too easily, meaning it was low. Kelol accepted her timeline too easily, suggesting his hunger. Travelling to a holding he never heard of, on tired ponies, might take longer than a day. This woman, and her associate, must realize Kelol's new to this sort of work, by his upmountain clothing if nothing else. She split the payment to spread the risk. If Kelol intends to do more work in this line, he has to establish a position of strength. He shakes his head. "Two whits when I leave tomorrow," he says. "The last two at irjanasu on delivery. My return I'll manage on my own."
Kelol meet her gaze. Offers his fist. The woman, with a grimace, claps her hands around it.
[[ϒ Kelol's going to need to find out where irjanasu is. And Chiason's, for that matter.->askew]]
[[ϒ If Nilos has any sense, he'll trade his services the same way, without betraying those who expect a song to bind.->quiet market]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "He didn't break song.")[His contract simply wasn't renewed.]
(click-replace: "Sareya!")[The city!]
(click-replace: "Zayelik always spoke of.")[Zayelik always spoke of--when Kelol was a child, and she still spoke to him of city markets.]
]}$il[T]he common room door sweeps open on a burst of wind, and a laughing crowd billows in. Nilos looks down, hoping they won't ask him for his seat, but they take up the center of the room, not noticing anything beyond their severe shortage of wheat beer. When Nilos regains the power to look, his eyes widen.
They're dressed like him.
No, more. They don't wear a single knot aslant as a hidden comfort. They dress like an entire holding's clothes presses were upended in a windstorm. Belts askew, colours clashing--here a man's plait and a woman's cloak, there a right-knotted tunic over brown herringbone trousers. Kerajin bustles through and leans in to laugh with them, before fetching a tray full of tankards.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nilos notices someone gesturing towards him. He sees Lethinil nodding in his direction, speaking low to one of the men who came in with the new group. If he is a man.
He wears fawn-brown worker's clothes, tied woman's fashion with a red sash. He knots his boots like a man, but his plaiting sticks pull his hair softly into a woman's braid. He stalks over and sits across from Nilos. His eyes are a mild blue that remind Nilos of Trenon. "Welcome, brother," he says.
Lethinil gave Nilos the same greeting, not quite an offer of guesting rights.
Nilos returns a brief courtesy. "Nilos, of irlu holding," he says.
"Those here call me Rythel." He doesn't offer a holding name or courtesy in return. When Kerajin comes back, she approaches them and sets two tankards and two bowls of tev in front of them. "You're new here," Rythel says. Nodding to the food, he adds, "They ask me to host, when I can."
Nilos looks around. Neither the women squabbling over their dice game nor the jostling crowd dressed askew care about Rythel or Nilos. //Those here, they//-- "Why do they need a host?"
"Because it's not easy being unholded, even less when you're ono."
Nilos flinches at yet another person calling him //ono//. Upmountain it would be a place-insult for anyone to call Nilos a child. But in the city, //ono// refers to something else altogether. Rythel says ono as Sirol did. A name, not a curse. Nilos knows he covered his undertunic well before coming to the common room. "What makes you think I'm ono?" he mutters in half-hearted defence.
"If you're not," Rythel says, "you have better places to be." He looks meaningfully at Nilos's tight-clasped cloak. "This far downriver, on your own, wearing a mounaineer's get-up--we see your kind now and then. Did you apprentice once? Or labour?"
"Are you an advocat?" Nilos returns. Only an advocat would care about Nilos's contracts, in the hopes of selling him a new vow. Some advocats connect needy masters with deserving apprentices, and take their fee from crafting the song.
Rythel shakes his head. "People ono can't sing contracts."
Nilos takes a swallow of his foamy beer, which tastes smokey, not rich and full like barley beer upmountain. If people like him end up in this lodgestone often enough (the girl who gave him directions must have seen through him after all), then Rythel's right--they do need hosting.
Coming to the city didn't change his options. Either Nilos can dress as he likes, and never find a master willing to take him on, or he can remake the same apprenticeship he had upmountain--learning on suffrance, and hiding his self. "I'm not unholded," he says. His parents didn't exile him. "Nor have I broken song."
"But your master dissolved your apprenticeship?"
Jiron's white, queasy face, the way he recoiled when Nilos tried to help him-- Tereos was right to rid himself of such an encumbrance. "No one will accept healing songs from a woman," he says, with some rancor, watching Rythel for his reaction.
Rythel's eyes widen, but not with the outriders' revulsion. "A healer?"
"An apprentice," Nilos cautions, wary suddenly as Rythel's face lights with interest. Nilos's fault in making a brew for Larik was doing it without her knowledge. He wants to heal openly, honestly. He won't make himself out to be more skilled than he is.
Rythel catches Lethinil's eye, where she stands watching them from the doorway of her sitting room. When Rythel turns back, he looks Nilos over again, keenly. "A whit a day is very reasonable, don't you think?" he asks.
Nilos opens his mouth and doesn't answer at first. Rythel wants him to admit a place debt. "I agreed to a price," he says, wondering how much of his silver they want out of him.
Rythel leans forward. "Lethinil hosts lost ono, Nilos. She's very kind. But her overholding expects certain profits from the lodgestone."
Nilos sets his mouth. He gave his fist and Lethinil covered it. "I'll stay as long as my claim, then. Lethinil can find other customers who she tells her true price to."
"Nothing against your place, Nilos, but your fist means little when you're ono. An advocat won't take your part."
Nilos starts to stand, pushing away the bowl of cooling tev and the beer he wishes he hadn't touched. Rythel stands with him, catching Nilos with the wall at his back. "By the same token there are those who need a healer's help, and can't hire one," he says. "And some people," he adds, with a shrug towards his rowdy friends, "simply feel more comfortable with a healer ono."
Nilos bunches his fists, gathering himself to push past Rythel. Yet the idea that a healer might be wanted, needed, gives him pause. If people ono can't sing contracts, he'll need to be his own trader, before agreeing to any proposal Rythel makes. "What does that have to do with my lodging fee?"
"Nothing, for my part," Rythel says. "I'm simply warning you. Lethinil hopes you might find yourself grateful eventually."
He gives Nilos a look he can't interpret. Less than a day in the city; Nilos doesn't know the currents. But Tereos says that healing must come before place. "Which of them needs a song?" Nilos asks.
Rythel breaks into a smile and claps Nilos on the shoulder. "Lethinil!" he calls. All his slanted friends look up from their tankards, most with expectant grins on their faces. Cheeks hot, Nilos tries to sink down on his bench, but Rythel's hand on his shoulder grips tighter and urges him forward. When Lethinil emerges from her sitting room, Rythel drags Nilos in front of her. "Nilos is ono," he says.
A shout goes up from the center table. Several of them break into whistles, a bright bird's harmony echoing a child's coming of age, the liquid notes melding a boy's rite with a girl's.
Lethinil takes Nilos's hands in hers, a soft squeeze rather than a trader's clasp. "There's a blue tunic in the winter press," she says.
"I have a kerchief," someone says, waving its bright green flag.
Another adds, "I'll see if I can find a belt," and starts tugging at a neighbour's knot. The group dissolves into laughter, everyone snatching at each other's women's tokens to offer to Nilos. Their wild motley suddenly makes sense, if this is how they welcome newcomers.
The sudden shift from Rythel's place-threats to his friends' joking acceptance makes Nilos shake. "I can't pay--"
"They want to host you," Rythel assures him. "Nothing of silver, or place."
Since Larik died, Nilos kept his belt-knot hidden on his right hip. Watching a nine of people all fighting to give him their best women's clothes stops his throat. Tears prickle behind his eyes. If he accepts, then has he given in to Rythel's offer to heal those ono in exchange for his lodging? If he takes freedom with one hand, what does he give up with the other?
If he won't take freedom when it's offered, why did he come?
"I--I already wear this," he says, tugging open his overtunic and showing the right knot underneath.
Rythel buffets his shoulder. "Good for you. But you'll feel all the better for a splash of woman's colour." More seriously, he adds, "You needn't hide in Lethinil's lodgestone. Upriver, go quietly."
Clasping donations from Lethinil and Rythel's friends, all of whom raise a tankard to him, Nilos lets his overtunic fall, then pulls off his linen vest. His fingers tremble too hard to tie the knot on the beautiful tunic Lethinil handed him, deeper blue than any he's seen. Holding his belt in his hand, he laughs shakily, and then says, "Does anyone need--?"
Before he can finish the question, his man's belt is yanked from his hands, passed around, and finally accepted with another cheer. When someone brings Nilos a light woman's cloak with only a few patches, he thinks of all the ninedays he turtled under his overtunic, and throws it to the crowd without thought, without regret. The new green against his skin reminds him of pine boughs, and the mountains. Asaresta, high and blue behind him. "Those here," he says, swallowing the quiver in his voice, "can call me Nyls."
(if: (random: 0,1) is 0)[(link: "ϒ Rythel gives Nyls courtesy, and his friends follow suit.")[(goto: "quiet market")]
(link: "ϒ He takes his first unbound breath since coming of age.")[(goto: "askew")] ](else:)[(set: $nyls to true)[(link: "Rythel gives Nyls courtesy, and his friends follow suit.")[(goto: "quiet")]
(link: "ϒ She takes her first unbound breath since coming of age.")[(goto: "reparation")] ] ]{
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "His parents didn't exile him.")[His parents didn't exile him. Cayir, at least, must have known what he went seeking. Without her drive, it's unlikely the other three pushed for a vote to have Nilos unholded in his absence.]
]}$il[R]ythel finds Nyls in the common room one morning not long after midsummer and hurries to him, leaning in to clap his shoulder. "It's time," he says.
"Time for what?" Nyls asks, stirring maple sugar into his mint tea. He long ago gave up wondering whether Rythel considers himself trader or advocat. He hosts and negotiates for the same fee Nyls asks: gratitude, and gifts.
"To get rid of your place debt to Lethinil."
Nyls takes a sip of tea and frowns. "You said she wouldn't come after me for silver." He left Lethinil's lodgestone once he learned the true rates she charges for room and board. She never asked him for more silver than they negotiated the first night, though she mourned like a father losing a child to the hearthside when Nyls said he couldn't stay.
"Nor will she," Rythel says. "But debt's not always silver, and Lethinil's not ono. You can hope your gratefulness suits her, or you can repay her."
"She doesn't need my songs." Nor would Lethinil take them if Nyls offered. She owes place to her overholding, and wouldn't contradict them even if they demanded she pay a silverweight for a bowl of willowbark tea.
"But Kerajin does," Rythel says.
Nyls counts the ninedays since he met Lethinil's serving girl, round with bearing even then. "Her time's near?"
Rythel nods. "It's on her. She wants to talk to you. I took the liberty of bringing her up to your rooms." He gets to his feet and nudges Nyls to finish his tea.
Kerajin meets them halfway up the stairs and turns to follow them up to Nyls's room. "Climbing--speeds the birth," she huffs. At the top of the flight, she pauses, head bent, hand clutching white against the wall. Nyls touches his own pulse and counts the beats; it takes thirty before Kerajin can move again. Nyls leads her into the sitting room. He settles her in a deep armchair Kelol scrounged, and raises her swollen feet on a stool.
"Welcome to irlu holding," Nyls says, to both of them, still uneasy claiming his first mother's hosting rights, but needing to offer something. The coals in the brazier are black and dead. They'll need charcoal if they can get it, and more buckets of water than Nyls is comfortable drawing on credit. Rythel gives courtesy, and Kerajin, still catching her breath, squeezes Nyls's hand.
"You're a member of Lethinil's holding," Nyls says gently. Kerajin must be obligated by the same contracts that bind Lethinil. She can't accept a song from Nyls without contravening that contract. "She'll get you a healer."
"I wasn't contracted to have this child," Kerajin says. She grunts and presses a hand to her stomach. "I thought I had another nineday..."
Nyls shakes his head, confused. City healers follow their holdings' loyalties, and therefore uphold their overholdings' wishes. But surely no healer would turn down a patient, even the poorest, at a birth. Tereos attended every birth in Asaresta. "Upmountain, children are contracted during betrothals as part of fertility guarantees," he says. "To inherit names."
"Betrothals!" Kerajin says, with a twist of her mouth. "Marry, and spend my life beholden to an overholding?"
Seeing Nyls's blank look, Rythel says, "Lethinil, and irdanu above her, want Kerajin to sing a fosterage contract for this baby. Give it to an infertile marriage with better place."
"And I won't!" Kerajin repeats. "I want to raise the poor mite. No one buys their way out of fosterage debt--I haven't."
Rythel takes Kerajin's hand. "They'd find you a master healer and three journeymen if you just sang the fosterage."
"And add it to the baby's debt...!" With a great shudder, Kerajin's muscles contract, her belly turning hard as stone in great rippling waves.
Nyls slips into a bearing chant, counting her through her breaths. When she recovers, he moves closer. "May I look?"
She unties her sash, opening her robe. "My third mother and my brother both needed healers at the birth."
Nyls places his hands on Kerajin's hard, round stomach. "The child's not turned," he says, tracing the outline of the baby's head under Kerajin's ribs, just to the right of true. He swallows hard and meets Kerajin's dark eyes. "I've birthed babies, but never on my own. I'm an apprentice. And I'm ono..." It shouldn't matter, but to Kerajin--and to Nyls' confidence--it might.
"You're the only healer who'll see me at all without an advocat standing by." She grabs for his hand again and squeezes. "I wasn't born to irunu but Lethinil's a fourth mother to me," she says. "She begged me for a season to accept the fosterage. She worries."
Cayir tried to save Nilos from his invertism by marrying him off to the first open marriage that would take him. Because Lethinil loves Kerajin as a daughter, she will contract her grandchild off to strangers to give Kerajin a better chance in a breach birth. "I understand," he says. "This won't be easy, Kerajin."
"It will be fine," Kerajin says, relaxing into a deep breath. "You have the songs."
She uses the woman's //you//, and Nyls closes his eyes under Kerajin's hope.
[[ϒ Dawn rises, and midday after it, before Nyls delivers Kerajin of a breach child.->sufficient]]
[[ϒ Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows Kelol arrived home in the midst of Kerajin's bearing.->cleansing]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "trader or advocat")[woman or man. He plays both roles, finding those who need songs, and those who have them to give, and matches them together.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "grey")[ $il[C]hiason keeps a bordel. Chiason himself is a tall, broad man, with a peek of woman's green at his belt: a kerchief. Kelol glares at it.](if: (history:)'s last is "grey")[ Sirol](else:)[ $il[S]irol] directed (if: (history:)'s last is "grey")[him](else:)[Kelol] to the city's south side following Nilos, implying that Kelol was too much a trader to be a man. But (if: (history:)'s last is "grey")[it's not just Chiason.](else:)[when he finds Chiason's, he quickly grasps what sort of banlieue he entered.] Every server in Chiason's bordel dress aslant, more than Nilos ever did: belts knotted askew, wearing a motley of colours. The clientele in the common room dress more properly, but more than a few keep a kerchief like Chiason's tucked in their belts. The servers fawn over them like patrons, and, Kelol realizes after some of them leave the common room in pairs and threes, that's what they are. Chiason didn't hire servers, but pleasure workers, who offer a candlemark of their time for silver. (if: (history:)'s last is "affirm")[Chiason keeps a bordel, not a lodgestone.]
Lodgestones look much like Zayelik's city deepstone, though larger. The homeside and hearthside wings outline a central courtyard, and the common room stretches the length of the building's frontage. But instead of dormitories lined with pallets, Chiason offers Kelol a narrow, private room with a rope-net bed, and a marked candle on the sideboard. He grins, but spares Kelol the embarrassment of suggesting a companion. "Two silverwhits for a night," he says, "and a third to stable your ponies."
That price cuts into the profit Kelol hoped for from his delivery, but it comes with two meals and a bucket of somewhat cleaner water than he drew from the public well this afternoon. Next time he'll ask more for a delivery. Chiason's stableboys bed down Brys and Tyn in the two stalls farthest from the stable door. Under a few canvass tarps, Kelol finds the bars of shoe-iron. He'll load Brys with the metal, and ride Tyn, giving her rest by walking as much as he can. He stays with her a long time, currying her, watching her munch her oats, and wrapping cold-water compresses around her knees.
Kelol sleeps uneasily. The sound of pleasure rises in awkward rhythm from the rooms on either side of his--starting, then stopping, then beginning anew with the next candlemark. Kelol wakes early to load Brys. A stableboy brings him a bowl of plain tev, and with it, two whits. Kelol asks, "Which way to irjanasu?" and has to hope the boy's directions are good.
The trip takes him upriver. Once Kelol strikes the second tributary, the land gentles into firm turf that Tyn handles easily. He frowns at the lack of cairns among the wide fields. All this land must be claimed by a single holding. Yet he passes several deepstones, each of them with gardens, suggesting individual holdings. He doesn't go out of his way to greet anyone, but travels slowly, walking to save Tyn the effort.
Irjanasu is, as described, quite close to the stream, tucked in a small dell among a tangle of windbreaking poplars. Kelol leaves the ponies to tackle a tuft of green grass and strikes the guest chimes.
A woman opens the door and he gives courtesy. "Welcome to irjanasu, sung to irlansu," she says. "I'm Velanil." She takes him to the barn, and they unload together.
Kelol asks, "Where's your farrier?"
"I know some smithing," Velanil says. She eyes him sideways, half wary, half proud.
Kelol can't see a slanted knot or man's kerchief tucked into her clothes. Velanil looks so proper, and yet she speaks of learning smithing like a man. Maybe she hides a skewed belt under her clothes, like Nilos. Should Kelol worry about her mules' hooves, as he worried about Jiron's knife wound under Nilos's treatment?
When he doesn't say anything, Velanil shrugs. "Two mules lost shoes this season and nearly went lame. We needed them pulling the plough. But our overholding didn't contract for a journeyman farrier this season--"
Kelol finds his voice. "That's foolish."
Velanil smiles and leads Tyn into the barn, while he brings Brys. "You're a mountain boy, aren't you?"
He nods cautiously.
"The overholding will send a farrier in a few ninedays. They don't ignore us--"
"But you pay for the shoe iron yourself?" And the delivery. Kelol fingers the whits in his pocket.
"It's for the mules," she says, stroking Tyn's nose.
Kelol frowns as he stables Brys. Perhaps Velanil's overholding is right, and the mules ought to have been worked more carefully, so they wouldn't lose shoes; but truly, mules need shoeing every three or four ninedays at most. Not twice a season. No journeyman farrier would turn down a season's contract for this holding, and the others Kelol passed today on his way here. One journeyman, following a circuit, would save all these holdings so much in silver and time and worry.
Kelol rubs the sting of sunburn on the back of his neck. Velanil saves her overholding more trouble than they know by taking on the farrier's duties.
Velanil closes the barn door after they fill the ponies' mangers. "There's a pallet for you in the homeside," she says, "or the barn if you're not comfortable homeside."
"The homeside," Kelol snaps. He's not ono. He doesn't need to sleep in the barn just to avoid the men's side. He sounds defensive, so he gives courtesy and grates, "Thank you for the hosting." It's not her fault she needs her mules shod. Kelol became complicit when he delivered the shoe iron, but he knew when he accepted the commission that he was delivering a load a contracted outrider wouldn't touch.
He lies on his pallet with silence in his ears and can't help hearing the echo of last night's pleasure customers, how they marvelled over their partners' clothes, their mannerisms. Restless, he tries to cool his face on the flagstones beside his pallet.
He acted the trader, taking this commission. He's a trader as much as Velanil is a farrier. As much as Nilos wanted to act as a healer, if Jiron had let him.
(if: $nyls is true)[ [[ϒ Why else a quiet market, if not dealing in goods the overholdings don't care to provide?->surmount]]
[[ϒ He wonders where Nilos is; whether he found a place like Chiason's, where the candlemarks measure pleasure given, received, and paid for.->quiet market]] ](else:)[ [[ϒ Why else a quiet market, if not dealing in goods the overholdings don't care to provide?->surmount]]
[[ϒ He wonders where Nilos is; whether he found a place like Chiason's, where the candlemarks measure pleasure given, received, and paid for.->quiet]] ] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Kelol was too much of a trader to be a man.")[Kelol was too much of a trader to be a man. Kelol didn't want to believe that Sirol was calling him ono, sending him among those ono.]
(click-replace: "a candlemark of their time")[pleasure]
(click-replace: "Velanil saves her overholding more trouble than they know by taking on the farrier's duties.")[Velanil saves her overholding more trouble than they know by taking on the farrier's duties. If she didn't act ono, her overholding would lose mules and probably blame Velanil's holding for their neglect.]
]}$il[K]elol arrives at Nyls's door in the morning carrying his saddlebags, just as Nyls is double-checking his satchel, muttering over the lack of greenery in the city. He's running low on willowbark, not to mention half a dozen other herbs. Kelol gives courtesy, which stops Nyls in his tracks. His pulse thrums in his wrists. Offering Kelol guesting rights is a first wife's prerogative. Nyls never thought Kelol would consider him as host. Stammering, he offers courtesy in return. Should he welcome Kelol to irlu holding, these three rooms an extension of his parents' deepstone upmountain? Cold thrills through him. He says, "Welcome," stumbles, and finally reaches out to Kelol to pull him over the threshold.
Kelol peeks into the homeside sleeping room, sees the bare pallet and the tiny press. He raises his eyebrows but doesn't question, simply dropping his saddlebags on the floor.
Nyls wants to hover, watch how Kelol settles into the space, but a holding asked him yesterday to check on a child who can't keep food down, and he can't leave them waiting. "Welcome," he says again, and then nods to the door, to explain his quick absence.
Nyls returns after sunset, anxiety squeezing his chest. It took less than a nineday for Nyls to grow accustomed to slipping into his rooms' privacy, to drift from sitting room to homeside, to spread himself wide. The sitting room barely holds one person, let alone two. What if Kelol thinks fit to fill it with his outrider friends, or simply crowd it with his breath and his ghost?
When Nyls enters, twilight gloaming gleams through narrow window. Kelol scrubbed smoke from the watery panes. Thick and leaded though they are, they let in the light now. Kelol acquired a beeswax candle, with a tarnished sconce, from somewhere; reflections glimmer in the panes, brighter than Nyls thought possible.
Kelol comes out of his homeside room and pulls up when he sees Nyls. "Welcome back," he says, gesturing inadequately at the room.
Nyls never imagined a homeside man taking care of him. Flushing, he realizes that food is the hearthside's responsibility. After Kelol's efforts, inviting him to share the common room's peppery tev feels inadequate. Nyls reaches into his satchel and pulls out a tiny pouch of fresh raspberries that he was given as part of his fee. Even in the dusty, stony city, raspberry canes can't be contained; they grow up unchecked on the sun-side walls. Nyls spills out the bright berries into his palm. Kelol grins. His fingers whisper across Nyls's palm, choosing one. The raspberries taste bright and tart. Red-lipped, Kelol laughs at him. "The homeside might need more than that to sustain them..."
Nyls presses his lips together to hold back his smile. "You're lucky the hearthside was in a sharing mood."
They go to dinner together, choosing Kelol's usual table, away from the bustle.
The second day, Kelol sweeps cobwebs from the sooty rafters and beats the dust from a thin rag-knot rug he scrounged up somewhere. He charms fresh straw out of Chiasin and re-stuffs the pallets. Tiny as they are, the rooms feel like a deepstone when Nyls returns. The next day, Kelol rides out of the city to bring back "weeds and things" as he says--young shoots of willow, cress, new dandelion leaves. Few of them are the herbs Nyls needs most, but he makes a clover-root salad with boiled goose eggs. That night they eat in the sitting room.
Then Kelol disappears for a threeday on one of his riding jaunts out of the city. Waking in the night, Nyls stares out the newly clean window in his sleeping room, missing the touch of his ghost.
Before Kelol joined him, Nyls often retreated to his rooms in the evenings to claim them as his. Now, with the faith that the rooms will be there when he returns, he lingers more often in the common room, listening to the jongleurs. Most nights, Kelol joins him, repairing a harness like an outrider one night, darning clothes like a weaver the next.
"Where does all this come from?" Nyls asks. "You're not running through your silver, are you?" He may be able to keep up with the lodging fees on his own, but he feels safer with a few whits to rub together.
"I'm a trader," Kelol says, with perfect unself-consciousness. "I take loads between farm deepstones, or run messages. Nothing that needs a song, just a few whits here and there."
Nyls narrows his eyes but doesn't challenge the explanation.
[[ϒ If Kelol calls himself a trader, is he ono too?->cleansing]]
[[ϒ Does it matter?->bearable]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "like an outrider")[like a man]
(Click-replace: "like a weaver")[like a woman]
]}$il[T]renon crests the pass to Asaresta valley and takes a slap of wind and wet to the face. In fine weather, he sometimes catches a glint of distant river from the col. The city nestles there, the lines of its streets and great buildings like a shadow of order on the far forest. In the city, they say, a man can earn place without a name. Traders love to spread such tales.
Trenon grips Cyr's halter tighter and studies the placement of his boots as he starts down from the height. Sullen patches of snow huddle between the larger boulders. Mud adds to the slickness underfoot. (if: $fromAsarotha is true)[If those traders' tales are true, Harin never should have allowed Finoc to sing apprenticeship to a village teacher. Her son's eyes turn to boys--to men. Send him to the city! Test the truth of all those fables. Sing him to a trader train as an outrider, then let him make his own life.
But she'd rather keep Finoc close, and bribe Trenon with a facade of respectable place in Asarotha. If Trenon turns her down, well--he's a journeyman, unlikely to spread gossip or hang about reminding her of her failure.](else:)[The city gleams like turquoise from three ninedays' distance. Trenon doesn't need to travel downmountain to see the shining river running with nine hundred deepstones' slops. Wealth rests on waste and place on patronage.]
After the first slippery stretch, Cyr shakes the water from his mane and settles into a resigned walk. Trenon leads him through the sheep and chamois pastures under a silvery patter of rain. Water from the sodden ground soaks through Trenon's boots, though he worked the thick leather with fat before travelling. The steep slope makes his thighs ache. A rumble of hunger adds its complaint.
Nilos's family lives on this side of Asaresta. Their low, rambling deepstone sits just off the path as it enters the village. Nilos's fathers enjoy hosting every farmer and field hand from here to Sareya. Guests overrun their family room so often that Nilos's mothers built a separate building, reached by a covered walkway, perched on a small rise behind the deepstone. His family hosts more by plenty than by place, opening their tev pots to any straggling labourer. They keep their family room fire laid, and usually roaring hotly while half the village stops in to groan about the state of the weather, the fields, the flocks.
Trenon closes his eyes. He hasn't seen Nilos in ninedays. (if: $fromAsaresta is false)[He left Asaresta in search of work as soon as the snow cleared from the passes. Even then, Nilos was wrapped up in worry about Larik. Some coughing sickness, a fever. Nilos's master kept him busy grinding herbs and boiling up teas for her.
Larik's illness must have worsened. Berin wouldn't send messages with master traders otherwise. Trenon stretches out his shoulders, easing knots. ]If Larik has died, Nilos might be home now. Curled in a chimney nook, watching dreams rise with the fire's sparks. His family offering rough comfort, but not really understanding what Larik meant to him. He won't be able to slip out unnoticed, but Trenon might be able to give his condolences, and arrange another meeting. (if: $fromAsarotha is true)[Seeing Nilos might cleanse him of the entire disappointing trip.](else:)[It might be their last chance. Trenon's parents will have him wrapped in a wedding robe soon enough.]
Cyr, impatient for a rubdown and a filled manger, steps forward and nudges Trenon sharply in the shoulder. (if: $fromAsarotha is true)[If Larik still lives, Nilos will be crouched at her side, keeping vigil. A healer must give what breath he can to his dying patients, but Trenon doesn't need more reminders that he comes a distant third in Nilos's heart, after Larik and well after healing.
Trenon wipes water from his face and heads for Asaresta's common barn. Trenon's parents don't have the silver to maintain their own stable. Brays and whinnies greet Cyr when they enter the common barn, but the stableboys are nowhere to be seen. Trenon finds the horse blankets and hay. Cyr settles at his manger, munching contentedly, while Trenon curries him, adding the stink of wet pony to his collection of mud, sweat, and woodsmoke. He drapes his saddlepack over his shoulder for the last stretch to his deepstone, a quick winding climb up from Asaresta's main street.
His family's deepstone stoops back from its nearest neighbours, its pine logs grey and close as the weather. If more than Trenon and his parents lived there, it would burst at its unsturdy seams. Once his holding's claims encompassed the next closest deepstones, and most of this stretch of hill above the street. The common barn was once theirs. Great days. All past.
Trenon has the choice of homeside or guest door: his father's clutches or his mother's. Wryly, Trenon twists his lips.
[[ϒ Better to scald himself with tev pot or tea bowl?->mother]]
[[ϒ At least he'll be out of the rain and mud.->father]]
](else:)[Trenon turns off the main road. Nilos's mothers keep the path to their family room wide and well-graded. Rain runs in the grassy culverts to either side of the path. The deepstone shows few signs of life, but light gleams through the shutters of the family room. Trenon hears a burst of laughter as he approaches, and he steels himself to ring the guest chimes.
The family room door opens with a blast of stuffy air. Trenon is tugged into the crowd before anyone recognizes their newest guest. His cloak is taken, shaken out, and thrown onto a laden peg. He has a mug of tev in his hands by the time Nilos's parents see him. Trenon shoulders through the push of bodies and breath. Someone liquored the thin tev with hot potato wine; he drinks it off, grimacing at the blistering heat.
The loud talk centers on how badly the rain will erode the irrigation spillways, and whether it will alter how much land each holding claims when they can finally set their spring cairns. No whisper of Larik's death, so Trenon doesn't bother peering into corners for Nilos. Trenon was stupid to hope. Even if Larik had died, Nilos would never hang about discussing field cairns and planting with his brothers. He'd rather treat everyone in Asaresta for the sniffles than be trapped here.
As Trenon is, sinking into a willow-bog of slow-minded village talk.
"How are the trading roads? Dry over the pass, I suppose?"
"They plant their fields before we can plough--the day I settled on the weather side of these mountains--!"
"Better city access."
"Better chance to be taken in by traders, you mean..."
"I saw that Zaylelik climbing the pass with a full pack string, and it's not even spring solstice."
As quickly as they throw questions at him, they move past the possibility of answers. They'd rather grumble over the perfect weather they envision in other villages than hear his news.
Trenon watches from the corner of his eye as Nilos's parents hold a silent conference, in stares and shrugs, the kind that seems to come so easily to established marriages. Clearly Nilos's second father has no intention of leaving his well-stuffed chair by the fire, and he enjoys his immunity. Nilos's mothers simply pretend they haven't seen him.
Finally, Dayon heaves out of his chair and heads for Trenon. A glower tugs down the corners of his wide mouth. Unwanted guests are a first husband's responsibility. Dayon stops short of taking Trenon by the elbow and leading him right back towards the door. He can't deny Trenon hosting in front of his guests. "My thanks for coming," he says. Blunt and, apparently, candid. "I'm looking for better labour contracts for my sons this year." He nods for Cayir to join them at a work table at the side of the room. Seeing business afoot, the rest of the guests close their circle of chairs.
Trenon pulls a wry smile at Dayon's maneuvering. Trenon loses his guesting rights, but gains a fee. Dayon isn't usually the type to play place games. He's like the mountain: big, sloping, and thick. Cayir is no waif, but next to her husband she looks slender, supple, and precise. Selis and Firinol hang back and leave the negotiations to their first spouses. Irlu holding is a working holding, foresters and field hands. Firinol and Selis have more to recommend them as muscle than as management--that's why Dayon and Cayir married them. No love spouses in pragmatic irlu.
Trenon might have been their marriage-son if Nilos had chosen to come of age as a woman. Instead, Nilos chose to be a man, and kept seeing Trenon anyway, showing a spark of stubborn independence that Trenon can't help but love. He lets Dayon herd him aside, feeling the full weight of their concern with a melancholic twist.
[[ϒ Cayir and Dayon's worry is //about// him when it might have been //for// him.->placeless]]
[[ϒ They have kindness in them, even as they dismiss him. It galls him because they're right; he shouldn't have come.->benighted]] ]
{(if: $allowHints is true)[ (click-replace: "and he enjoys his immunity.")[and he enjoys his immunity. A marriage's first husband and wife generally--though not always--have the ordering of their holdings, though they can be formally outvoted by their spouses in the family room. The first husband can delegate the worst of a holding's chores, but he can't evade a host's duty to dislodge unwanted guests.]
(click-replace: "a man can earn place without a name.")[a man can earn place without a name. Can marry without regard for his holding or his trade.]
(click-replace: "Nilos's parents see him.")[Nilos's parents--two fathers in great chairs by the hearth, and two mothers circling through the crowd and keeping mugs full--see him.]
]}{(set: $fromAsarotha to true)$il[A]sarotha valley runs west from the pass, the floodplain stretching wide and then narrowing into a sharp V where the mountains crowd together, their silhouettes piercing the sun as it sinks. Trenon lets Cyr amble at a steady pace while he studies the contours of the hills and the loose soil that marks spring runoff. Short stretches of piled rock show that the farmers have already been at work with picks and mattocks. Despite the delay, Trenon reins Cyr in each time he passes contentious points, near wells and stream access. Several gangs of farmers and field hands lever the stones with branches until the cairns topple, trying to shift their claims by feigned chance.}
Trenon finds a holding's first husband and gives him courtesy. Before he can offer Trenon guesting rights, his two counterparts push into the conversation--first husbands from the neighbouring holdings, both hoping to expand their land claims. Trenon impassively asks how many husbands and wives each man has, how many sons and daughters and children. Where the boundaries lay last year. How they expect the rain to fall this summer. Trenon promises to return on the morrow with a crafted song to present to them. Trenon preempts three hosting offers by asking directions to the village, as if he couldn't follow the wind of wheel ruts the rest of the way.
When he arrives in Asarotha market, he finds a dusty square lined with storehouses. Most traders have shuttered their stalls for the evening. The few who are left cluster around a woman selling hot tev from a cauldron, each bowl garnished with brazier-grilled strips of rabbit or goose. Though the meat must be lean and dry this early in spring, Trenon's stomach growls.
He'll eat when he finds work. He unhooks his camp chair from Cyr's back and throws his advocat's robe over his travelling clothes, glad to cover up as the mosquitoes start to whine. He doesn't wait long to catch the local traders' attention. The first few who approach try to hire him for his night's keep--ignoring their hosting duty to any journeyman they hire. He gives them each courtesy, names his fees, and lets them stew.
The first rush of traders came to test his impatience. The second wave will take their time and let him feel a threat in the air's nip. Trenon fills Cyr's feedbag with oats, ignoring the rich scent of tev from the woman's stall.
A boy watches him.
Trenon settles in his camp chair with a handful of dried fruit. The boy loiters in the shadow thrown by a nearby coppersmith's storehouse, far enough to Trenon's right that he would have to turn his head to study the boy's features. But he can see the boy's clothes glowing like leaf-fall, a subtle blend of browns and oranges. Someone pressed the sharp leftward folds of that sleeveless tunic with a stove-hot iron.
Nilos used to hang around the master healer's herbary the same way, shy and yearning. This boy wears his hair longer than Nilos does, his dreadlocks glinting with beads. He hasn't had his growth yet. His shoulders are thin and narrow; his head probably wouldn't reach Trenon's shoulder. He doesn't have Nilos's eyes. That, Trenon can tell, even as the boy hides in the shadows. Nilos's eyes are a clear water-grey. The boy's are a milky glacier-green.
Trenon hasn't seen Nilos in ninedays. Even then, Nilos was wrapped up in worry about Larik. Some coughing sickness, a fever. Nilos's master kept him busy grinding herbs and boiling up teas for her. Larik's illness must have worsened. Berin wouldn't send messages with passing traders, otherwise. Trenon stretches out his shoulders, easing knots. So she's worse. Maybe dying. Maybe once her ghost parts from its shell Nilos might actually have time for Trenon. He's more interested in Berin's messenger, Zayelik; what tempts a trader up from her city claim?
That boy has no place. His stare itches on Trenon's back. If the boy wants an advocat, he can pay silver and hire one. Otherwise--
"Journeyman?" A woman's voice. She caught him twisting around to stare after the boy.
Trenon straightens, annoyance rising at the woman's cool politeness. She's one of the boy's mothers, or Trenon is blind. So the boy has a reason to watch him. Trenon climbs to his feet to give courtesy. He needs work. This woman clearly has means: glints of copper wire coil around her tight black braids. Lilacs and crocuses follow the right-flowing drape of her chamois wool robe.
"Harin," she says, "master miner, and first wife of irbu holding. If you've time this evening to sing vows for my family, we will be grateful."
Her son must need an apprenticeship. Or a perhaps a betrothal contract--Trenon saw a hint in the boy's bashful interest. But Harin wants something else, as well. Her holding must include a trader or two, a wife or a daughter, and yet she barged forward with a suspiciously generous offer for his services.
[[ϒ She might dangle her silver-pouch in front of him less brazenly.->layers]]
[[ϒ But her reasons are her own, and her silver will be his.->penurious]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "with a crafted song to present to them.")[with a crafted song to present to them. If they accept his contract, they'll pool their silver to pay his fee, sing the vows, and set their cairns. If they don't, they'll need to present a better case to the next travelling advocat before they can start planting.]
(click-replace: "tempts")[drives]
]}$il[O]nce Trenon earns his mastery, he can settle in a growing village and make his choice of ceremonies and contracts to sing. Rites and rights, the advocat's tev and tea. Journeymen wrangle over slimmer pickings. Turning anyone down--especially someone suspiciously disposed to overpay--won't feed Trenon's family next winter. "My thanks, Master Harin," he says, giving her place. He accepts Harin's directions to her family's deepstone, a candlemark's walk outside the village proper, closer to the copper mine her family claims.
His mother's summons was ill-timed. Trenon travelled despite the rain beating against the southern face of the mountains so that he could arbitrate tussles over seed grain and well placement. Now Berin wants him back, as though journeymen advocats from other villages might simply bow to Trenon's place and forego the fees he left scattered behind him in his hurry.
Berin only sees Larik's illness. Another betrothal contract soured, like so many of Berin's choices. She lost her wife, Trenon's second mother, at his birth. Two husbands died in accidents, and both Trenon's siblings succumbed in infacy to a raging fever. Berin traces her slow slide into silver-debt to their deaths. But Berin can't, with place, insist that Trenon marry Larik while she mumbles in her fever. Berin would look like a raven anxious for a feast.
Trenon repacks Cyr and leads him up the path Harin indicated, a sudden sharp climb at the east end of the valley, where the cliffs close in. When he reaches the clearing at the end of the path, he knows at once that Harin and her family are new to their wealth. A split-log cabin dominates the approach, its pine pilings weathered to grey. The cabin doesn't have an undercroft, let alone a stone foundation. Ells and additions patch it like leather knees on worn trousers. Together with the outbuildings it encloses a dooryard of thin grass and tramped dust. But towards the back of the clearing, where the grass grows long around deep tree-stump holes, a crew of hired builders sing as they lay mortared stone walls. A new deepstone, built with dressed stone. Perhaps silver runs so freely through Harin's fingers that Trenon shouldn't doubt her motives, only her wisdom.
Harin's younger children, shrieking and laughing, chase after greylags toddling spread-winged over honking goslings. Two of their older siblings slop water from the well-bucket into the deepstone's cisterns. Another rakes composted manure into the long rows of the vegetable garden. No one greets Trenon or offers him guesting rights. So Harin's offer was, if not spontaneous, at least unanticipated. If she has the silver to throw at builders, she could have planned her son's apprenticeship more carefully, instead of making a slap-dash grab for the first advocat to ride into town.
Trenon ties Cyr to a hitching post. The children's work stops while he heads past their stares to the old deepstone's guest door. Harin stayed in the village market to finish her business--or 'business', if her real concern was not making the hike at his side. Trenon rings the guest chimes, wondering who Harin expects to take up her hosting duties.
A woman, older than Trenon by a nineyear, opens the door. She wears clean clothes, though they are work gear and hardly match Harin's rich robes. A recent, if perfunctory, wash pushed the gritted dirt of a miner's work back to her temples and neck. Trenon makes a quick guess between Harin's younger wife or older daughter, and chooses daughter.
She glances at Trenon's dusty advocat's robe and her mouth crimps. "Eril, journeyman miner," she says. Hardly a host's greeting. She doesn't ask his name, but jerks her head over her shoulder to wave Trenon to the family room.
Trenon stands back on his heels. They've never met, yet Eril disliked him on sight, more than an unexpected hosting warrants.
[[ϒ "Is it the trade of advocat that angers you, Eril, or should I take it personally?" he asks.->misapprehension]]
[[ϒ "Does your first mother find it as difficult as you do, to offer place to guests?"->casuistry]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "and chooses daughter.")[and chooses daughter--else she'd have more fondness and less exasperation for the crowd of children around the guest door. ]
]}$il[T]renon turns his back on Harin and faces the dusty alley. The boy shies back when Trenon pins him with a look. "Your hosting offer is admirable," he says. "I've met some on my travels who forget they owe guesting rights to journeymen."
Berin never taught her son to bargain as she would have taught a daughter, but Trenon sells his services in remote villages without a trader to back him up. He knows how their minds work. Harin didn't try to beat his price down before opening their haggling session. Every other trader in Asarotha wanted to pay him in kind. Harin didn't, and that pricks Trenon's suspicion.
Harin accepts his flattery without a flicker of impatience, or a hint that she noticed Trenon's interest in the boy who looks so like her. "Naturally some holdings feel they can't extend themselves to both a journeyman's fee and his guesting," she says, with a small, pleased moue.
Meaning, naturally, that she is rich enough to let place take care of itself. The trader in her family will try to take the price of Trenon's dinner out of his fee when they sing terms tonight. "I've only tonight in Asarotha," he says. "It's been a long journey, and my mother expects me home." Long negotiations over an elaborate marriage contract won't be possible, much as Trenon regrets the loss, considering how lavish Harin is apparently willing to be.
"The pleasures of one's own deepstone are incalculable," Harin offers, deliberately amiable.
Trenon wonders for a sharp instant if Harin intended the second edge on that wry phrase. She knows too much about him, sight unseen. He makes his advocat's rounds in Asarotha several times a year, though he hasn't crafted contracts for Harin's holding before. Has she heard that his family's holding in Asaresta village is small and growing smaller? Why is Harin flaunting her wealth? Why is that boy in the shadows dressed in what must be his newest and best? Sharp folds, unfaded dyes; a man's belt on what must so recently have been a child's hips.
Trenon makes a guess and gives it blandly: (if: (random: 0,2) is 0)["For a holding's first son, I will do my best."](else:)["They say the right apprenticeship makes the man."]
Harin's eyes widen fractionally. Her gaze flickers past Trenon's shoulder to her son. "Good," she says. "I'll see that he's ready. We'll welcome you in our family room for refreshment."
Trenon smiles his journeyman's smile. If Harin wanted him to craft nothing more complicated than an apprenticeship contract, she would have sent a trader to offer him dinner for his trouble. But she came herself with an invitation to dinner, refreshments, a night's guesting--//and// a fee. Like Zayelik on the trail, Harin saw a man and forgot that advocats can match traders.
[[ϒ Trenon won't risk Harin's fee by indulging his curiosity.->penurious]]
[[ϒ Yet he might wring answers out of the boy by nothing more than asking.->artless]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "small and growing smaller?")[small and growing smaller? He has only two parents living, and neither siblings nor brother and sisters. A laughably small marriage, and an unsustainable holding. ]
(click-replace: "advocats can match traders.")[advocats can match traders. Whatever wrangle a trader bargains for, in the end, an advocat crafts the vow.
] ]}$il[H]arin starts to leave, a move calculated to herd Trenon with her. Trenon keeps his smile and settles into his camp chair. "I have other work, but I'll join your family by sunset." Harin doubtless takes Trenon's hint of need as comparable with admitting incompetence. But it allows Trenon to show he won't simply follow her lead, and it softens her for negotiations. Mostly, though, he plans to get the boy alone. "Your son can guide me to your deepstone."
Harin glances in the boy's direction. She may not like it, but he's an adult, and she can't order him home. At last, she nods, makes murmurs about finishing her own business, and leaves.
Immediately, the boy eases closer. Cyr's stomp and whuffle nearly send him skittering back again, but Trenon waves him over. The boy gives Trenon courtesy, acknowledging his place. "Finoc," he introduces himself. For all his sidling, he speaks clearly, and he meets Trenon's eyes directly now that his mother paved the way for them to speak. "I invite you to my holding's deepstone."
"Trenon," Trenon says, dryly, without offering position or ties. He stands slowly, stiff from the day's ride. He lifts the camp chair back onto Cyr's back and jerks the knots on the saddlebags tighter. He takes Cyr's halter rope and gestures for Finoc to lead the way. "So you've only sisters?"
Finoc doesn't sense a trap, or anything other than Trenon's honest interest, in the question. He strides too far for his height, strutting a step ahead of Trenon. "Eight of them," he says.
Trenon lifts his eyebrows. Harin bypassed the chance to make a full nine when Finoc came of age. "How many siblings?" he asks.
"Three so far. My other mothers are younger."
Trenon lets that pass without comment. This Finoc must be Harin's own youngest. Finoc's eight sisters must be miners like their mothers, and perhaps the next three will be daughters too. Trenon doubts any of them had much choice. Finoc, though, was given the option. Trenon doubts Finoc feels guilty for taking up all of his mother's consideration. Harin fill him with so many notions about his place that he accepts freedom as his due. Trenon studies the boy's shining face. Close up, Finoc looks less like Nilos. Nilos is quieter, diffident, where this boy is impatiently hopeful, eager as a puppy. He keeps up his chatter as they take a path out of Asarotha proper. He glances from time to time at Trenon's face to check for his approval, his interest.
Nilos had the choice, too. His mothers are foresters and carpenters, his fathers are farmers, but they allowed Nilos to sing an apprenticeship contract with the master healer. Nilos used the gift like it was one of his healing songs; medicine both harsh and necessary. He could have chosen to come of age as a woman, and marry Trenon. He didn't.
They hike for a candlemark, climbing up into the twist of mountains at the east end of Asarotha valley. Once the trees conceal them from the village, Finoc pauses and comes closer, stroking Cyr's cheek as his excuse. He smiles up at Trenon. The blush doesn't show on his cheeks, but his eyes brighten with it. "I've seen you before," he says. "You've been here singing contracts for the mine labourers."
Trenon nods without listening. He starts walking again, and Finoc matches him. "So your mother hired me to sing your apprenticeship vows. What for? Who's to be your master?"
"I'll be apprenticed to Varazon, the teacher," Finoc says. "He's from the city but he likes it here. It's respectable, mother says."
He speaks so carelessly that Trenon draws back. As a child, Nilos longed to be a healer. "You want to teach?"
Finoc shrugs lightly.
Trenon's stomach clamours for the dinner Harin promised, but Finoc's indifference plucks his curiosity like a string. He stops. "How long have you been a man grown?" he asks.
"Since winter solstice."
"Who sang it?"
"We had a journeyman advocat from farther up the mountains--Asumiya. Have you travelled that far?"
"No," Trenon says sharply. "Does he come often?"
"Every few ninedays in the winter, when snow bridges the crevasses."
"But you waited a season before choosing an apprenticeship?"
"I was waiting--"
Trenon nods, cutting Finoc off before he can say //for you//. The last of the glaring sun sinks beneath the peaks behind them, extinguishing the orange light around them. They approach a clearing in grey twilight. On one side, barns and storage sheds outline a dooryard in front of a shabby deepstone. Farther back, an open foundation hole gapes next to a pile of dressed stone. Harin's family will soon have mortared walls, not draughts through chinked logs.
As freely as Harin spends silver, she didn't hire Trenon out of generosity. She left him with Finoc despite her unease. An apprenticeship song? No. Rather, an opportunity for Finoc to set his lures. The boy's an invert--and somehow, Harin knows Trenon's inclinations; suspected he might be amenable. Trenon's stomach squirms with embarrassment. A boy who wants a man. Finoc's not so blameless, then. Not so young.
Finoc doesn't care about teaching, any more than he cares about whether his sisters enjoy their work in the mine. Finoc waited for Trenon, based on the merest glimpse of him over the years. Finoc is young enough, spoiled enough, to think that a single desiring sight can stand in for a marriage's foundation. And enough to know that his mother will indulge him. Anger closes Trenon's throat. Finoc gets what he wants--to be a son, to sing a carefully crafted apprenticeship, to have Trenon. After all, he has his mother's love, and her silver.
[[ϒ If Trenon stays willfully oblivious, he can sing the boy into his apprenticeship, and pad his fee without guilt.->eyes open]]
[[ϒ He has an excuse to hand if he needs it. If he announces his betrothal to Larik, he can leave without being used.->refusal]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "This Finoc must be Harin's own youngest.")[This Finoc must be Harin's own youngest. It shouldn't matter who bore him, yet clearly it does.]
]}$il[E]ril, already stepping inside, spins back to face him. They've never met, but she disliked him on sight, more than an unexpected hosting warrants. "If you stand by the vows you sing, then you'll do well by me."
Trenon smiles to hear her belligerence. Whatever Harin plans, Eril resents it. Harin hinted at a price high enough to be either underhanded or desperate. Trenon won't lose this job by prodding her daughter. (if: (random: 0,2) is 0)["I'm hired to do well by your brother," he says. Harin hired him, so Trenon will hardly profit by favouring the boy's future master in the apprenticeship contract.](else:)["Did an advocat snare you in a crooked song?" Some people accuse advocats of twisting contracts in their patrons' favour. Trenon should point out that's exactly what patrons pay for. ]
Eril stalks back towards him, eyes blazing in the gloom. She can't match Trenon's height, but she doesn't hesitate to push into his space. "My brother is fifteen," she says. "Old enough, my mother thinks. Don't pretend you're not as willing as she is to indulge him." Hardly more than a breezeway separates hearthside from homeside, and Eril's shoulders brush both white-washed walls.
If Trenon allows Eril to herd him into the family room, her fathers will ply him with food, drink, and platitudes. He'll lose his chance to discover what her anger means. (if: (random: 0,2) is 0)["Indulge him--in a trade?" he scoffs. Most people, when they come of age, take labour contracts to build up the price of an apprenticeship, but contracting to a master at fifteen is hardly an eccentric extravagance.](else:)["You don't care about your mother's indulgence," he says, cooly certain.] "Your brother's apprenticeship won't reflect on your place."
Eril laughs. "That's it exactly, isn't it."
She acts like her mother hired Trenon to sing the boy's wedding vows to an established marriage with six elderly spouses looking for a pleasure toy. Trenon can skirt the edge of propriety, but out and out demanding the reason for her disdain will make him look foolish.
[[ϒ Trenon scuffs the packed-clay floor with one boot toe, and glances around the shabby deepstone with studied skepticism. Without the facts he won't craft a song worth its price.->slant]]
[[ϒ Eril will enjoy telling him the truth, as a lovely piece of spite, but she refuses to damage her place by raising the subject.->casuistry]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Trenon should point out that's exactly what patrons pay for. ")[Trenon should point out that's exactly what patrons pay for. A simple harmony shift can alter a whole contract song. If someone doesn't like the vows, they should hire their own advocat.]
]}$il[E]ril doesn't bother with a host's niceties. "Consider Harin your host, not me," she snaps. She stalks down the narrow breezeway that separates homeside from hearthside. Trenon follows her, ducking to avoid the lintel. So Harin's hopes offend Eril's place. Trenon can afford to watch and wait; he won't craft a contract song before he understands what about him Eril resents.
Harin's family room barely deserves the name. A rough-sawn hole in the log wall leads into an addition scarcely larger than a shed. A clay chimney smokes in one corner. Eril opens the single window's shutter, letting in the evening breeze and a flutter of moths. Trenon sits in the room's best chair, leather cushions padded with straw, when Eril leaves to fetch tev and tea. Any moment, Harin's husbands will arrive to begin the placid, cud-chewing guesting. Later, Harin and her wives will join them for dinner. Trenon will be lucky to escape to his guest's pallet before the moon rises.
But when the door swings open on leather hinges, only one man steps through. Trenon cranes his neck to look behind him. The man turns as though to follow his gaze, and chuckles. "That's right, just me," he says, with a mild nod, as though he's used to people's stares, but doesn't quite understand the fuss. He sits down and sets his feet on a stool, boots dangling inches from the hearth's embers. "Janos, the holding's first husband."
Trenon sits back, his eyebrows rising. Janos keeps his straw-coloured hair tied back in a thin braid, leaving the top of his head bare, spotted with brown freckles. Trenon pegs him at six nineyears, older than Harin, who still has the firm muscles of a woman in her prime. Despite himself, Trenon feels the urge to turn to the door again, as though more men will appear if he looks long enough. "I saw three children outside," he begins, wondering if Janos will take offense. He and Harin must have several younger wives to have such a brood, but who raised them?
Janos smiles. "You'll meet them all, at dinner. Eight daughters, a son, and three children."
A single father alone with so many children can't have been good for them. "My father shouldn't complain, then," Trenon says. "He only had me to bring up."
"The homeside's always been full of children," Janos agrees. He settles deeper in his chair, resting crossed fingers on a soft stomach. His oblivious ease seems so different from Harin's tight, careful posture, yet Janos complements her. Harin chose him well. Janos seems to understand that Trenon's question requires more response, because he nods again and says, "Finoc has been a help these past months since he came of age. And when the girls marry we men will have more company."
No wonder Janos didn't name a trade when he introduced himself. He wouldn't have had the time. Janos didn't object to his first question, so Trenon gives free rein to his curiosity. "I'm surprised one husband can satisfy so many wives."
"Oh, well, let the hearthside tend to their own, I say," Janos says. "The four of them get on well enough. To tell you the truth, I'm mostly past that sort of thing these days!" He pats his stomach again, and gives a rolling shrug.
Trenon sinks slowly into his chair, feeling as though he's been kicked by Cyr.
Harin is an invert. She married Janos in a proper first marriage, and then--whether by agreement, or because Janos is complacent enough to be her dupe--filled her hearthside with wives. To Asarotha village, it probably seems understandable, if unusual, to have so many miners in one holding. Harin needs as many wives and daughters as possible, to maintain her holding's claim on a profitable copper vein.
When Finoc asked to become her son, she must have recognized herself in him. Market gossip travels even over the passes. Harin must at least suspect. She let Finoc come of age as her son, so she must accept the boy's infatuation with Trenon. She sees a mark: a journeyman advocat, obviously poor, yet with the potential to earn high place and a good income.
Suddenly Eril's anger makes sense. No matter how indulgent Harin wants to be, she can't allow Finoc to marry Trenon. Two men--they'd lose their place in an instant, and any hope of ever singing another contract. Harin wants Trenon to marry Eril. For Finoc's sake, Harin will give Trenon whatever he might ask for. Place, a mastery. And in return, Trenon will live on the homeside with Finoc and give him 'brotherly guidance'--though without recourse to the pleasure room. If Finoc tires of his infatuation, he won't be tainted. He can still marry. And Harin will fob off Eril with the dubious sop of future love spouses.
This is what awaits Trenon at home, if he lets it. His parents arranged his betrothal to Larik because her parents padded the betrothal contract with silverweights. Larik and Trenon will endure each other for a year, and then, only then, will it finally be acceptable to marry Nilos. To love him openly.
Not that openly means //gladly//. People will joke about how many children Larik hopes for, to justify two husbands so soon. Behind their backs, those same people will relish darker mutters about how they saw it coming, the way Trenon and Nilos gadded about. But on the face of it, the village will accept them. Nilos will have place as their second husband. Larik knows that as well as Trenon does--she loves Nilos too.
Hypocrites, all of them. Marriages add husbands and wives for nine thousand reasons: for children, for land, for silver, as a concession to a spouse within the marriage, or simply because everyone's tired of each other and think they can avoid dissolving the holding if they find a new bed partner. Then they turn around and tell people like Trenon--like Harin, like Finoc--to hide themselves inside a larger marriage, and never admit who they truly love.
[[ϒ Trenon crafts marriage songs. He sees the stream's current where others watch the surface ripple. Harin's bid is nothing new.->eyes open]]
[[ϒ Yet while Trenon plays guest to Janos's hosting, he lets Harin pretend she hasn't sacrificed her daughter in her son's name.->refusal]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "she must have recognized herself in him.")[she must have recognized herself in him. They're both inverts--like Trenon.]
]}$il["I]f you have wisdom, I invite you to share it," Trenon says stiffly. Much as he despises maneuvering for place, throwing it away itches him like nettles.
Eril smirks, but hesitates before speaking. Whatever scheme Harin devised for her son, Eril won't profit by disrupting it. She depends on her mothers' good will to marry and set up an independent holding of her own. For now, the family's best interests match hers. But Eril's place belongs to her alone, and she clearly believes Harin's arrangement will cross it.
"For your brother's sake, be clear," Trenon says sharply. He won't leave his ignorance hanging like an untied belt in front of Harin.
"Finoc is a good boy," Eril says. "I'm sure he'll be a fine teacher, but it's not what he wants." She lets her eyes wander over Trenon's tall, spare frame.
Trenon freezes, then laughs incredulously. "The boy's barely seen me!" Trenon travels to Asarotha perhaps twice or three times a year, since he became a journeyman a threeyear ago. Plenty of people have called Trenon honest to a fault, but he doesn't spare himself that honesty: whatever Finoc sees in him isn't beauty. His jaw and nose jut like crags. His brown hair curls coarsely if he doesn't bridle it with plaiting sticks. Nilos compliments his eyes, calls them intense, but a lover's words won't pass for advocat's testimony. They are blue and plain, common as cairns.
"Yet I'm sure he's had time to notice the knot of your belt," Eril snaps.
(if: (random: 0,2) is 0)["If Finoc noticed, I'm certain your mother did as well, and yet she hired me." Eril won't cut him by implying he likes boys. Trenon didn't invite her brother's interest, nor is he ashamed of who he loves.](else:)["I generally take my belt //off// in the pleasure room," Trenon says. Crude, but if Eril hopes to shock him by implying he likes boys, he'll return the favour by confirming it.] No matter how indulgent Harin is, she can't demand that Trenon marry her son with no wife to balance them. No master would take Finoc as his apprentice then, and Trenon would soon find himself without a trade.
Eril's temper rises sharply, but Trenon catches the shadow of desperation underneath, like a fish seen through spring ice. She shares much of her brother and mother's features--the same satiny skin, and long, tightly curled black hair. Harin's get as well, but not nearly so favoured. "So you're like him," she says. "Why don't you join a marriage with husbands, instead of ruining a boy's life?"
As far as Trenon can see, the boy in question chose to ruin his own life. Does he have some fantasy that Trenon would jump at the chance? Love at first sight is a child's imagining, not a young man's hope. "If Finoc had delusions of marrying me, why didn't he become your mother's daughter?"
"Oh, Finoc could have been my sister, a miner like me, but you see he panics underground...and he is lovely, isn't he?" Eril's gaze flickers over him, her disdain tempering anger to something smoother and more cruel. "A master advocat in our holding would be just as lovely."
So Harin plans to lure him with bait softer than silver. She must have heard whispers from overmountain, that Trenon showed a preference for men. She hoped to tempt him with her son, then enhance her holding by adding Trenon's place to her wealth. "Just because I'm an invert," he says, letting the word fall like a rock in a still pool, "doesn't mean I lust after every boy I see. Your mother has more designs on me than I have on your brother."
[[ϒ For the first time since singing betrothal vows to Larik, Trenon will happily announce his impending marriage.->eyes open]]
[[ϒ Harin allowed Finoc such hopes in the first place.->casuistry]]
[[ϒ An advocat sells his songs, his breath; not his body, and never his ghost.->refusal]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "throwing it away itches him like nettles.")[throwing it away itches him like nettles. He should have pushed Harin for answers before agreeing to craft her son's song.]
(click-replace: "and set up an independent holding of her own.")[and set up an independent holding of her own. If she sang her journeyman's vows to Harin, her mother can delay her promotion to master. Harin can snare Eril in her holding.]
(click-replace: "No matter how indulgent Harin is, she can't demand that Trenon marry her son with no wife to balance them.")[No matter how indulgent Harin is, she can't demand that Trenon marry her son with no wife to balance them. They'd be labelled inverts within a day.]
]}$il[H]arin's wives and daughters arrive at the deepstone in the dark, their path paved by candle lanterns. The children have been drawing buckets and heating cauldrons of water, which the women use for hasty baths before dressing in good robes. The night continues mild, despite the slip of clouds overhead. Copper chimes jangle in the breeze, and brass lanterns sway along the eaves of every building. Harin and her spouses--five wives and a single husband--preside over the long trestle tables. The holding's daughters, led by Eril, lay out the food in gleaming copper pots: tev thick with mutton and vegetables, or rich with birch sugar and wintergreen; roast greylag; potatoes cooked in their steaming skins; crusty breads and seed cakes, sweetened with downmountain fruit. There are tiny, crystal glasses of mulled wine, another downmountain expense, and beer that flows much freer.
The honoured guest for this largesse is Asarotha's master teacher, Varazon. For a downmountain man, he seems happy enough with his place in this mountain village. He wears a left-belted linen robe. The cloth is fine and the red dye deep and even, but Trenon notices the pattern at the cuffs is several years out of fashion--and village fashion, at that. Varazon sits, smiling genially, next to Harin's odd, solitary husband. What brings a city man upmountain? He must have a true calling for teaching. Rather more than his prospective apprentice.
Finoc struts proud as a jay in his man's finery. He sits next to Trenon and speaks more to him than to the man he chose--or his mother chose--as his master. The responsibilities of oldest sibling were stripped from him along with his child's robe, over a season ago. Now he is simply the youngest brother, technically the lowest-placed in his family. An apprenticeship will at least give him something to call his own.
Compared to Nilos at that age, Finoc's attitude rings thin. At fifteen, Nilos burned hot as wildfire; he wanted to heal so badly he might have chopped off a limb, had his master named that price. The choice he made was nearly as stark.
Trenon eats determinedly, with all the vigour of a long journey and a sparse lunch. Eril sits on his right but he stares at his plate and chews. Harin's machinations, Finoc's desires, don't matter, but crafting a vow song does. Harin hired him, so he adds a few cautious provisions to the apprenticeship contract, to guard the boy's training and livelihood.
The harmonies sound simple enough, when the time comes. Finoc sings a fine alto, rich and throbbing. At least he has a teacher's voice. He sets his teeth in his full lower lip as he listens to Trenon's song. His shoulder trembles under Trenon's hand as they bow their heads over the contract promises. With his face hidden, he offers a lovely, if faint, echo of Nilos's reverence when he sang apprenticeship, two years past.
Nilos's shoulder felt warm and alive under Trenon's hand that night. Berin demanded that Trenon sing the contract, and for once, the advocat fee he might earn hadn't been foremost in her mind. //Sing that boy into his trade, and then give him up! He's a man--as you are said to be. Well past time you forgot him.//
Berin hoped to corral him, but she also gave him the chance to sing the best for Nilos. Every whisper of harmony, every promise, was in Nilos's favour. Trenon crafted it for him, knowing as he sang that he couldn't break the chain he forged.
Harin looks to Finoc's happiness, yet the boy asked to be a falcon and Harin gave him the gift of jesses. He's a good boy. A good son. Who loves too quickly, and wrongly, for whatever that crime is worth.
After the dinner and the vow songs, Harin hosts Trenon admirably. A rope-net bed; an entire room to himself on the homeside. Trenon can only be relieved that Finoc doesn't try his privacy or his patience with a solemn-lipped seduction.
He doesn't sleep. Finoc doesn't tempt him, nor does the place of a master advocat. But Harin's offer, and her clear-piercing sight, sicken him with a churning mix of pride and defiance. He feels exposed, like a spadeful of earth turned to show the worms and beetles underneath, squirming for the safety of a deeper soil. If Harin knows about Trenon, then how far has the story travelled? Is Trenon the subject of traders' chuckling nods as they travel from village to village? When Trenon sings contracts, do his listeners give him place only for his family's sake?
Berin wants Trenon to sever himself from Nilos as though he can set a sharp knife to a single strand. Harin wants to knot him in secrets and backhanded place. A choice that is no choice.
[[ϒ In the morning, Trenon hefts a pouch heavy with silver. He gives careful place to Harin, but leaves without telling Finoc goodbye.->pass]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "What brings a city man upmountain?")[Trenon thinks of Zayelik's shifty denial that she was considering a mountain land claim. Varazon has none of the city trader's shrewd ambition.]
]}$il[H]arin finds Trenon in the dooryard, slipping Cyr's bit behind his teeth and the stall over his ears. "Are you leaving, then, advocat?"
Brass lanterns hang above the doors of the barns and the deepstone, silhouetting Harin's solid form. The scent of tev thick with mutton makes Trenon's stomach clench on emptiness.
Trenon bows stiffly from the shoulders. "I received a message from my holding." No matter that he received it well before arriving in Asarotha. "My mother expects my return." Trenon has a feeling that Harin thinks well of sons respecting their mothers' wishes.
Harin lifts her face to the sky. Wisps of cloud hide the early stars, racing northward before a dry wind. "I'm afraid you'll find rain before you reach home."
Trenon's jaw stiffens with the rote. Of course there will be rain beyond the pass. Fog pushing inland bunches up against the first rank of mountains, piling higher and colder as it climbs through the low crooked forests and up the sheer walls. Spring stays wet and grey in Asaresta long after other villages' field cairns are set and their seed sown. Trenon points to his saddlepacks, well-swathed in oilskin, and forces a tight smile. "The title of journeyman isn't exactly a sinecure."
Harin nods, then half-turns back to her deepstone, inviting Trenon to share her leisurely consideration of its comforts. She doesn't know what he learned of its strictures.
Finoc slips out of the deepstone's homeside. Chest lifted, chin sharp, he watches them. He might be old enough to sing a contract, but a child's exuberance lingers in his eyes. Whatever of his appeal Harin wants to sell leaves Trenon cold. He'll accept hosting instead of silver for his work, and sleep in Asarotha village.
"I apologize, Harin," Trenon says, though she doesn't deserve it. She would throw a daughter to the ravens for the boy's sake. She has enough of them, he supposes. "I never explained my place. My mother has already negotiated my marriage." And Trenon grit his teeth and sang the betrothal vows.
"I see," Harin says, voice tight. She thought she recognized something in him--a willingness to sell himself, or simply the inversion that Finoc shares. She guessed his inclination, but Trenon is more than the sum of his appetites.
"My duty, Harin," Trenon says. He gives courtesy, then he checks the straps on the pack secured behind Cyr's saddle.
She can do nothing but offer him farewell in return. The words haven't been spoken, the offer never made. In theory they can both walk away with their place untouched. That he loves a man might be a rumour here, but the fact that he //loves// is invisible to those who think they have his measure.
[[ϒ Only once Trenon mounts and turns Cyr's head back to the path does he look back to Finoc. But the boy has disappeared.->pass]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "No matter that he received it well before arriving in Asarotha.")[No matter that he received it well before arriving in Asarotha. Zayelik won't tell tales, after she let slip that she might be considering a move up from the city. ]
(click-replace: "And Trenon grit his teeth and sang the betrothal vows.")[A ghostless marriage, to balance his family's debts.]
]}$il[T]renon wants to needle them, but Cayir and Dayon have done nothing to harm him. When Nils was still a child and Trenon had already come of age, they had every right to approach his master or his parents to rebuke him. Trenon was an adult, interfering with a child, though hardly a year separated them. Once or twice, Firinol puffed up like a porcupine when he saw Trenon approaching. Dayon held his husband back. He had good reasons not to accuse Trenon. For sheer place, Trenon's holding could snub the rest of Asaresta and still expect to be given courtesy when they come calling.
Once, Trenon's fathers held extensive fields--when he still had a reasonable number of fathers, instead of Ralon alone. They pressed outwards, clearing land and laying irrigation pipes, but they also pressed into their neighbours' holdings, arguing and cajoling, negotiating generous gains each time they built their spring cairns. But fields last only as long as a farmer can plant and reap them. After Trenon's other fathers died, Ralon scrabbled to maintain the holding's claims. He throws silver at seasonal labourers, and Dayon benefits from the contracts that Trenon sings.
Or perhaps Cayir was the one who held back. Perhaps she hoped that Nils would choose to become a woman. Maybe even a higher placed woman than herself--Larik would gladly have taken Nils as a weaving apprentice. Trenon's parents might have condescended to accept Cayir's marriage suit on her daughter's behalf, if Trenon fought hard enough against their pride. Cayir may have dreamed of bringing Trenon's name into her holding. Her own marriages were practical affairs, with spouses from poorer holdings looking for a stepping stone, and Cayir hoping to expand. She may have seen Nils's love and thought to twist it to her advantage.
It hardly matters. By their own standards, by Asaresta's obdurate traditions, they were wrong not to stop him. The fact that Nils sought him out as much as the reverse was no defence for a placed adult. Yet Trenon despises them for not acting.
"I suppose I'm still betrothed," he says. The liquored burn in his stomach spreads warm to his skin, bringing blitheness. "You'll excuse my asking. I've been away or I might know better if I should be airing out my wedding robe."
Dayon's nostrils flare like an offended pony's. Cayir only stares. Her grey eyes are Nilos's eyes, but where his are water, hers are flint. She says, "Your marriage hardly concerns us."
"Truly?" Trenon feels reckless. Nilos must be agonizing at Larik's side, singing vigil for her strength, pretending that vigils hold more hope than a peaceful death. "Because I thought you'd be the first to sing praise at my wedding." With Trenon safely married to Larik, Nilos's parents won't have to worry about their son dallying with an invert.
Cayir shows no sign of shame or silence, for all that her guests might overhear. "If you make your marriage with the same good intentions as your coming of age, we're more likely to sing acceptance of Larik's call for dissolution."
Stung, Trenon snaps his mouth shut. He keeps his promises, melody and counterpoint. But he won't defend himself to Cayir. She thinks all children shed their first loves like snakes their skin. If Trenon courts Nilos after marrying Larik, whether as his second husband or his ninth, there will always be whispers. //They seem respectable, but they were inverts once.// "You'd rather see Nilos join some strangers' marriage than wait for me," he says.
"If I thought you'd wait, I wouldn't care," Cayir says. "Do you think this is the city, where people marry in threes and nines before they stop to think?"
"Is that how they do it?" Trenon asks. Another trader's gem, much polished, more shine than substance. An advocat knows better. City marriages don't count spouses, just chain them with patronage vows, making a sham of their freedom. "I've always thought the city sounded civilized."
"First marriages need time to settle," Dayon protests heavily. "City marriages are unstable."
Trenon smiles emptily. "Sounds perfect." He needn't worry about Dayon, slow as a plough mule. Cayir, though, all but admitted that she plans to betrothe Nilos the moment she can, to keep him out of Trenon and Larik's marriage. Trenon suspects Cayir often carries the vote in irlu's family room by sheer force of will.
A great weariness slides over him. The ache of ninedays' travel weighs him down, though Trenon refuses to sag. "I would take him to the city if he'd let me."
[[If Cayir loves Nilos, she should be able to love him in the village, as he is.->home]]
[[She wants to hogtie Nilos in a man's left-handed knots. At least Larik wants Nilos to be happy--but Larik will die before she gets the chance.->tradition]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Yet Trenon despises them for not acting.")[Yet Trenon despises them for not hurting him sooner.]
]}$il[T]renon sets himself like a bighorn sheep awaiting a crash of horns. Dayon thinks he can deflect Trenon with business, but where Dayon spent his only arrow, Trenon keeps a quiver. "I came to ask a song of your son," he says. Most people who need a healer visit the herbary in search of the master, but more than a few have started seeking out Nilos at home for smaller ailments.
Dayon's jaw works, once. "Are you ill?" he asks, unconvinced.
Trenon smiles with blithe stubbornness. "I'll speak to the healer about my concerns." Much as he would enjoy the chance to have Nilos examine him, he only needs a delay at the moment. Nilos must be singing vigil at Larik's side, beating back her wildfire fever, hoping against hope that he sings more than her death song. Trenon dismisses a quick pang of remorse. Larik's illness dogged her all winter. Trenon never sang her a ghost-wish; he simply can't bring himself to care whether she lives.
Dayon shifts his weight back. His careful willingness to pretend Trenon might act better suffocates like an avalanche. "Why do you interfere in his apprenticeship?" he asks heavily.
Trenon bristles. "I've never interfered," he says. Nilos chose to become a healer, so Trenon dedicated himself to giving him every advantage. He crafted Nilos's apprenticeship contract, insisted on Nilos's freedom to advance as quickly as his learning permitted. Too many masters rein in their apprentices and refuse to advance them for spurious reasons, retaining control of their apprentices' fees and preventing competition from independent journeymen. Trenon urged Nilos's master to sing a more generous harmony. He was an apprentice then, though. He knows now he could have pushed harder.
"Trenon," Dayon says, and Trenon blinks to hear his name. Unless they both waive place, Dayon should call him advocat, or journeyman. Dayon nods, including all his spouses in his pronouncement. "We know you love him."
The family room feels like a sweat bath. The smell of woodsmoke and wet cloaks chokes the air. And Dayon chooses to acknowledge Trenon's interest when any of his guests, if they bend an ear, might listen. The time for Nilos's parents to object to their relationship was the moment Nilos came of age as a man, not two years later. Dayon, whose weddings were all more functional than ardent, speaks of love as if it matters. Trenon sang a betrothal contract. Nilos has his apprenticeship. Love doesn't change that, and nothing will come of Dayon's ponderous meddling.
But Dayon sweeps place aside as he would broom cobwebs from the rafters. "But he needs time. Time to be a man."
Cayir lifts her head and glances at Dayon. Her mouth opens, but she presses her lips together before speaking. Second spouses might hesitate to contradict a first, but Cayir wouldn't. She's holding herself back. Trenon stares at her, until she meets his gaze. Her grey eyes, only a shade darker than her son's, are bright as the glitter on water.
Nilos chose to become her son, true. But only because Tereos could never contract him as a healing apprentice otherwise. Nilos became a man, a lie, in order to meet his calling. Cayir must know. She hasn't told Selis and Firinol, let alone Dayon. She can see that Trenon knows, as well. Yet they both must keep the secret, for Nilos's good place.
"Time to settle. You're a journeyman, but you're young yet too." Dayon frowns in reluctance over the words as he works through some set speech.
"You want me to marry him?" Trenon knows he sounds incredulous, but Nilos's parents could have offered some hint of this plan before he vowed himself to Larik.
Dayon stares at him, jolted out of his lecture. "When he's a journeyman," he says, gently, as though Trenon needs the explanation. "In a year you'll have proved your marriage--"
"My marriage to Larik," Trenon says dryly. Dayon must have more confidence in Larik's resilience than her healers do. Nilos has been keeping her alive with brews and breath for months. The question is whether Larik will live to marry, not whether she'll last the full year before they can accept love spouses.
A frown starts between Dayon's heavy brows. "Now, we've nothing against your family, you see."
He doesn't intend to snub Trenon, yet Trenon twitches with impulsive, instinctive affront. //Irlu// holding has nothing against irthu? How very kind! Trenon's name is the oldest in the village! But those are his father's words, not his. Cayir smirks at Trenon while Dayon plods on, unheeding.
"Once you have children, that's the best time to bring in more husbands." Relieved to get back on track, Dayon bulls ahead like a blind, determined moose. "But until then, you need to stay away, give him space." Lecture duly delivered, he expects Trenon's stubbornness to melt before his scrupulous generosity.
The bleakness that wells up, knotting under his ribs, takes Trenon by surprise. Dayon wants to see Nilos settled--as Trenon's husband. Raising children. Dayon loves his son, truly, but he can't guess what Cayir already knows. Nilos will never be happy as a husband. "He's a man grown," Trenon snaps. He lets the emphasis fall with a trace of scorn on //man//, and Cayir inhales sharply. "In case you've forgotten, his place and his choices are his own."
For the first time, anger heats Dayon's features. "You influenced my child and now that he's come of age you talk about choices! I didn't say anything then--"
"Instead you speak now, instead of when you had the place!"
"I speak now because Larik may die."
The vigil song promises that much. Dayon thought Trenon would be safely married by the spring solstice. So he hides his place threat behind fatherly advice. "I won't grieve a betrothal that never came to a wedding," Trenon says. He won't give up Nilos, while Nilos wants him still.
"Contract marriages need time to settle," Dayon says. "New spouses come after you've proved yourselves. If Larik dies, your wait might be longer, but you //will// wait. My son deserves that."
[[ϒ Trenon's despair rises up, thick and hot. Dayon, ox though he is, can't be blamed for believing that because Nilos is a healer, he is his son.->home]]
[[ϒ Let Cayir deliver the truth to her spouses; Trenon won't blunt himself on Dayon's refusal to see the child he raised.->tradition]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "to have Nilos examine him,")[to have Nilos examine him, open his breathlines with careful touches, murmur songs over him and brew him sweet teas,]
(click-replace: "But only because Tereos could never contract him as a healing apprentice otherwise.")[But only because Tereos could never contract him as a healing apprentice otherwise. Women cannot heal.]
]}{(set: $fromBerin to true)(if: $fromAngry is true)[ $il[T]renon bangs the guest door open and drops the saddlebags heavily on the flags. He digs his boot soles on the scraper, but leaves the growing puddle under him unwiped.](else:)[ $il[T]he guest entrance is marginally less narrow and dim than the homeside, and the flagged floor easier to sweep clean. Trenon drops the saddlepacks and reaches for the boot jack.]}
"Trenon?" Berin calls from the hearthroom.
Trenon's sigh of relief dies in his throat. He grimaces as he wriggles his toes against the icy flags. "Yes, Mother?"
"There's hot water on the hearthside. Come and wash up."
Trenon can't resist the temptation of a steaming kettle. He pads barefoot--toes pale and wrinkled from damp boot leather--to the hearthroom. The flags at the guest door give way to pine floorboards, slippery with slivers, knots standing up to stub unwary feet. Light filters in from from the rooms on either side, sitting room and hearthroom. Two passing in the guest hallway brush shoulders with the walls, at which height the whitewash has rubbed grey. The guest hall dead-ends at the pleasure room, while a single sleeping room abuts it on the left, both of them dark and windowless. Neither sleepers nor lovers need candles. Ralon and Berin claim the right as the holding's first marriage to sleep in the pleasure room, which is bigger and has a net-mattress bed rather than a pallet. Trenon doubts the pleasure room has seen its intended use in a nineyear.
Their holding barely distinguishes between hearthside and homeside. Ralon dozes on a chair in front of the hearthroom fire as easily as Berin peers at her patchwork in the better light of the sitting room. With no family room, they receive guests in the sitting room, while everyone smiles politely behind their tev mugs, accepting the fiction.
Trenon gives courtesy at the hearthroom door, requesting entrance. Berin, in soft trousers and a leather jerkin, and wearing scorched leather gloves, works over a small brazier, foot working the bellows treadle. The glow of coals shadows the chasmed lines from her nose to mouth and across her brow. Large-framed, but spare, Berin's clothes hang on her like cloth on a loom, even when well-fitted. Deftly, she pours molten silver into a prepared mold, then plugs the crucible's funnel to prevent waste. Only once she sets down her tools does she step away. She waves to the hearth where the large cast-iron kettle is hissing gently.
The deliberate pause would insult any guest. There was a time when Trenon knotted his fists, waiting for Berin to acknowledge him when she herself had called him in. But as their holding shrinks, so too does Berin's power; as Ralon loses fields, Berin's claim encompasses no more than the hearthroom. She has no daughters, no wives since Trenon's borne mother died in his bearing. Without cairns to defend her enclave, only Trenon's condescension allows her its borders.
Trenon strips off his cloak and sheepskin vest, then his long tunic and linens, hanging them from the rafters to add their steam to the thick air. With a scrap of leather wrapped round his hands, he takes the kettle and pours out hot water into a basin. He adds a handful of dried woodsage from his waist pouch. Nilos gave it to him, a song to cut through sweat and smell. Trenon claps the kettle back on the hearth and starts to scrub himself down with a sponge of sheep's wool.
[[ϒ Berin paid good silver to have a message delivered to him, but she might easily ignore him until he moves to leave, then accuse him of rudeness.->duty]]
[[ϒ If he provokes her to speak by his silence, she'll imply that he doesn't care to ask after her.->cost]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Nilos gave it to him, a song to cut through sweat and smell.")[Nilos gave it to him, a song to cut through sweat and smell. Nilos chuckled once, after burying his nose in Trenon's skin, and tasting the herb on him--//Is it the song you trust, or my sensibilities you hope to please?//]
]}$il[T]renon lifts the latch and leans his shoulder against the homeside door, which swells stubbornly shut in the rain. Leather hinges can't creak, and Trenon keeps his hand over the latch to mute the shoving scrape of the oak bar in its mismatched slot. He strips down in the small vestibule, then squirms, shivering, into linens, trousers, and a chunky knit sweater from his saddlepack. Carrying his soaked boots and cloak away from his body, he steps into the sitting room, bringing a gust of chill air with him.
Coals bloom red in the grate. Ralon dozes on the deep couch, the low flicker glowing rosy-golden in his sallow cheeks. His breath rasps gently in his throat. Trenon drapes his wet gear over the rack above the fire. He fetches a kettle of water from the thankfully rain-full cistern, and sets it on the grate with a clang.
Ralon snorts awake, mouth working. He watches Trenon moving around the sitting room, gathering mugs and sachets of dried herbs. Rain gusts against the deepstone and whistles through the cracks in the chinking. The logs need to be mortared again, when the weather promises hot and fine--by which time the deepstone will be summer-hot and stifling. Trenon hovers over the grate, adding smallwood and old man's beard, until flames flare up under his hands. The kettle hisses, water droplets dancing against the copper. Trenon prepares two mugs of mint and lemongrass. When he passes one to Ralon, his father nods, whether in thanks or over his own thoughts, Trenon doesn't ask. Steady rain will confine them to the deepstone. The later any conversation begins, the better.
Ralon, throat grumbling with phlegm, pushes to his feet and leaves the room. Trenon sinks his chin to his chest, hoping Ralon hasn't gone to fetch Berin, though she ought to be serving them. But instead, Ralon returns with two burnt trenchers, filled with plain tev and scattered with flaxseed. He passes one to Trenon, along with a pewter sppon. Trenon takes a bite and raises his eyebrows in appreciation--Ralon must have snuck a pinch of Berin's well-guarded salt. They chew in mutually tolerable silence.
In other deepstones, children would be banging from homeside to hearthside and back again, screeching for their dinners. Fathers would be corralling them, scooping out trenchers of tev, dispensing hugs and lists of chores. Trenon has watched Nilos's fathers bellowing for peace, each with a clinging, messy creature hanging from them like millweights. Trenon remembers Ralon plunking his bowl of tev in front of him, or sending him back to the clothes press for a better-mended tunic, but never wrestling or tickling or indeed breaking his silence before tea. Trenon caught the habit of gruff silence, and spends meals listening to the ghost of contract songs, tapping a foot over potential variations. When other families host him overmountain, they expect news and entertainment from his conversation. They should hire jongleurs if they want that, not an advocat. Trenon mutters formalities, resenting their noise and his broken routine.
Their steaming tea sipped down to the lees, Ralon looks up at last. "You'll call on Larik with me."
Trenon sets his jaw. Ralon, thin-shanked and pot-bellied, can hardly drag Trenon up the village street by one pinched shoulder, delivering him like a recalcitrant sheep to a shearing. He can't avoid his wedding forever. He crafted the vows himself, and knows exactly how much leeway he can afford. "Since I'm home, they can't claim I delayed the rite," he says. "If Larik dies, she breaks the betrothal, not me." And her family will be place-bound to pay the contract's abrogation price. Berin and Larik's mother, Shayin, drove the price higher with every round of negotiations, Berin hiding her fury at Shayin's impudence behind a lofty disdain for mere silver, and Shayin with a grim ambition to secure Trenon's name for her family.
Ralon smiles. "Best they know that, then."
Ralon's gratification explains his enthusiasm to hike to Larik's deepstone in this miserable weather. Shayin, on Larik's behalf, didn't simply approach Asaresta's oldest family with an offer of marriage. She goaded like a trader, countering Berin's every offer, interrogating every phrase Trenon appended to the vows. Now Shayin's daughter lies dying, and Ralon won't simply accept the contract-breaking price.
[[ϒ He wants to watch Shayin suffer for pushing the price so high in the first place.->reluctant]]
[[ϒ Trenon sneers behind the rim of his mug, both hands wrapped around the fading heat. Place and lies. "Worried that iryu will try to pass off a ghost shell as my bride?" he asks.->emptiness]] {(set: $fromAngry to true) $il[H]ow dare Dayon presume to know what Trenon and Nilos want! And Cayir's careful silence reeks of rot. Nilos longs to be a woman and his first mother pretends he can simply join a marriage as a husband without aching. Cayir, like every hypocrite around her, doesn't truly care if homeside and hearthside are content in themselves and the pleasure room goes empty. But strip place from anyone who dares say so out loud!
Cayir ought to have taken it to a vote in the family room and laid the facts before her spouses. Selis and Firinol might have tipped the balance and given Nilos his chance on a woman's path. Nilos isn't an invert, a boy turning his eyes to men. He's a woman who believed she could wear an endless mask, and learn to heal.}
Children fall in love--no scandal. Even a child making calf's eyes at a friend who came of age takes advantage of parents' clucking tolerance. But let the same two lovers reach adulthood--a season later or a nineday--and everyone around them recoils because their feelings haven't changed! And the whispers start. //Placeless. Invert.//
What about faithful? Loyal?
Contract songs work on breath and ghost, and bind the body to promises. Trenon's an advocat--he knows that! But no vow sung will change how he feels.
Nilos came of age full of doubt and need. So he chose to become a healer and a man! He still loved Trenon, or he would have put an end to their meetings. Trenon has to believe that. Nilos gave himself to Trenon, eager and willing, with his place in his hands.
[[ϒ If Larik lives, Trenon will marry her. He keeps his contracts to the note.->mother]]
[[ϒ But until then, he refuses to live as though he broke song.->father]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "doesn't truly care if homeside and hearthside are content in themselves and the pleasure room goes empty.")[doesn't truly care if homeside and hearthside are content in themselves and the pleasure room goes empty. Husbands may breed and bear without a care for wives; they may raise children they had no part in getting. ]
]}{(set: $fromMorose to true) $il[T]renon throws on his damp cloak and stalks outside, into a chill drizzle. Cyr, mane and coat draggled, gives him a long-suffering whuffle, his breath misting white. Dew beads against Trenon's cheeks and on his fumbling fingers as he unties Cyr from the hitching post. Water trickles under the collar of his cloak and soaks his trousers to the knee as he splashes across the dooryard to the Asaresta path.}
A dream drew him here. Nilos, curled alone next to the slow stealing warmth of a fire of red coals. Trenon, entering unexpected, and kissing him: rainwater cool on his lips, Nilos's mouth hot against his. Nilos's mild amusement: //Do all journeymen enjoy travelling in such weather?// Trenon, smirking, answering, //Only those with a healer to come home to//.
Trenon lied to himself. That bites deeper than dismissal by Nilos's parents. He wipes water from his face and heads for Asaresta's common barn. Trenon pays good silver to keep Cyr's stall, but the stableboy is nowhere to be seen. Trenon forks hay and rubs Cyr down with saddle blankets, then throws his saddlepacks over his shoulder. Mud drags at his feet as he climbs the twisted path up from Asaresta main road.
In comparison with Nilos's deepstone, Trenon's family lives in a cramped, leaky, broken-down hovel. The oldest building in Asaresta, his father claims, taking pride in rotting thatch and a floor that sags underfoot. Even if they had the silver to spend, Trenon suspects his father wouldn't want to hire common builders like Nilos's mothers. Not if it means they'd see, and judge, the garter snakes in the undercroft and the mice scratching in the walls.
During Trenon's first year as a journeyman, he held out hope that he might find a village where holdings didn't play place games. Now that he knows better, he takes his sour pride in the deepstone. Trenon's name holds more place than anyone in Asaresta can hope to claim, and his family's deepstone proves his name's worth.
[[ϒ Trenon wants a change of clothes, a hot meal, and his pallet. At least his father's disappointment is a quiet weight.->father]]
[[ϒ Avoiding his mother won't make her any easier to face tomorrow.->mother]]$il[R]alon sets his empty mug down on a side table and pins Trenon with an even stare. "Until the healer wraps that girl, you'll guest there."
"Play the raven, in other words." Ralon must have worn his welcome thin indeed. "Do you want a mourner or a silver-counter?"
Ralon presses his fingertips together and stares into the empty air. Where Berin bristles at Trenon's coarseness, Ralon lets it pass. "Iryu needs support in their grief," he says, tasting generous sorrow in his words.
Sanctimonious muleshit. Trenon jabs again. "And someone to keep an eye on their silver stores, until Berin can come counting." Ralon enjoys the role of a large-holding farmer, but he can't claim the fields to back it up. Berin's silver keeps and cloaks him. To the rest of Asaresta, Ralon's poor crops and worse contracts are eccentricities, excusable only in a man with place.
As long as Larik has breath in her body, Ralon can demand that she and Trenon sing their marriage--as long as Ralon doesn't mind looking like a raccoon scrabbling through compost. But Ralon leans back comfortably on the couch. He uses his calm irony to point out Trenon's flaws, not to hide his own. "Are you so mercenary, Trenon?" he asks, his voice too smooth for anger. "Is this the son I raised?"
Ralon's oily smugness prickles at Trenon's nerves. "What happens when iryu has no daughter to marry?" The contract-breaking price is extravagant, but it won't keep them in silver forever. Berin will need to scramble to find a second holding willing to take Trenon as their marriage-son. The prospect of selling Trenon twice must appeal to Ralon, but there aren't many holdings in Asaresta who care that much for Trenon or his name.
Ralon waves off the question. "Wash before you dress. Be ready in a candlemark." He pushes to his feet and leaves the sitting room. Trenon listens to the creak of floorboards, tracing Ralon's route to the ill-named pleasure room. Trenon doubts it's seen its intended purpose in years. Berin and Ralon claim it as a sleeping room, leaving Trenon to sleep alone on the homeside. He sleeps against the wall shared with the hearthroom chimney, pressing against what warmth he can find.
Who ever heard of a marriage with a mere two spouses, with a single child? Ralon's true problem lies there. Holdings rarely claim fewer than ten children. Often more, if a spouse joins a marriage years after it opens. Meanwhile, Berin and Ralon wear away their name and their satisfaction with each other, grumbling like rocks tumbled in a strong current. They grind on, year after year, losing spouses and children, until only Trenon remains; and now they want to push him away as well.
Trenon stares into the fire until his eyes dazzle from following the flames. Protest won't work. Deliberately dragging his feet gets Berin and Ralon's backs up and stiffens their already stiff necks. The rational truth--reminding them that they'll miss his journeyman's fees if they sell him into marriage--they take as place insult. When Trenon dreams of Nilos, he conjures a slow, welcome drift of afternoons; the quiet fulfillment of two bodies, two breaths, their ghosts mingling between them.
[[ϒ If Ralon and Berin had that once, it faded long ago to this deepstone's vacance, dimness.->arranged]]
[[ϒ What changed with his second mother's death?->another]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Ralon must have worn his welcome thin indeed.")[Ralon must have worn his welcome thin indeed. As the soon-to-be bereaved betrothed, Trenon has place where his father doesn't.]
(click-replace: "but he can't claim the fields to back it up.")[he can't claim the fields to back it up. He wears a rich man's robes but his trouser knees haven't touched the dirt in a nineyear.]
]}$il[T]renon can picture the scene. Ralon wants to appear on Larik's doorstep with Trenon a respectful pace behind him. The two of them fine as cardinals, robes rich with dye and woven with stones. Ralon wants to ring the chimes, to be received with courtesy, to be plied with tea and tev in iryu's family room. Ralon wants to extend every condolence while keeping his place to himself.
Trenon chooses travel clothes instead: a quilted tunic, leather trousers, and a plain oilskin cloak. He picks the clothes from his small press for their threadbare honesty. Larik vowed to marry a journeyman, like herself, and few journeyman can boast of silver beyond their holdings' means. Trenon has no love for her, but he knows she's clear-eyed enough to see Ralon for what he is beneath the guesting robes. Ralon acts like his field cairns are somehow as immovable as the walls of his deepstone, as though fields can be bought at market. He fights to stave off more deserving holdings' claims, and pretends that digging under years of clover crops is for the soil's benefit.
If Trenon's frankness shames Ralon when they meet at the homeside door, Ralon ignores the sting. They slip down their lane to the market street, then turn towards the bridge over the deep crack that splits Asaresta in two. The short, sturdy bridge was built at great expense with hardwood sledged from the city downmountain. Far below, the river runs in spring spate, green with glacier melt, scouring away Asaresta's winter slops. To the east, the cleared land slopes gently, requiring fewer retaining walls and terraces. The street narrows to a path that banks sharply to circle the stepped fields, marked here and there by cairns. Once they start up into forest again, they see the occasional path to a barn or a half-hidden deepstone. Larik's family claims the highest holding on this side of Asaresta. The inconvenience is a sort of cawing boast. The farther guests have to climb, the more iryu holding must be worth visiting.
The rain slows to a gusting wind and a light mist, no worse than damp under the trees. Trenon expects Ralon to spend the hike brooding over imagined insults and proper profits--//Iryu's nothing but a collection of magpies, they give courtesy to silver instead of place//. Trenon jerks his head up when Ralon pauses and straightens his shoulders.
"Your second mother was a lovely woman." Ralon frowns, considering this statement and finding it overly sentimental. "A strong miner."
Trenon licks his lips and tastes green rain. He can't remember the last time Ralon volunteered a word about Tethin. Ralon has a bad habit of leaving information dangling, like an angler with a lure, ready to set his hook when Trenon gulps for more. Still, it surprises Trenon not at all that Ralon's considered praise, two nineyears after his second wife died in childbirth, is that Tethin mined good silver.
[[ϒ When Trenon doesn't speak, Ralon hitches up the next step on the path.->arranged]]
[[ϒ Yet Ralon must have, however grudgingly, picked this hike for his revelations.->another]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "what he is beneath the guesting robes.")[what he is beneath the guesting robes. A gentleman farmer who hasn't touched soil in a nineyear.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "emptiness")[ $il[T]renon wants to say, "Father, I love Nilos," but his mind empties when he tries to picture Ralon's response. Ralon refuses to look beyond his own dooryard. When whispers fly about Trenon and Nilos, Ralon can comfortably maintain a studied ignorance.
Besides, the time for such confessions ended when Nilos came of age. Healing sucked Nilos under like a mountain torrent in flood, and Nilos stepped into its tow with his eyes alight. A happy choice. Child becoming boy, and a boy delivered into a promising trade at that. Trenon forced the apprenticeship song through numb lips, swallowing hard against his own heart, while his parents watched.
Trenon washes brusquely, scouring face and armpits with a clump of wool dipped in steeped woodsage. He dresses carefully, if mutinously, in his best set of travelling clothes: leather trousers, sturdy boots, and a long woolen tunic that drapes left and falls to mid-thigh. Under a plain oilskin cloak, he looks like what he is, a journeyman from a poor family. Let place fall where it may.
He strides behind Ralon when they leave irthu, pushing his boots into the mud. If he won't claim Nilos then he has no right to complain.](if: (history:)'s last is "reluctant")[ $il[I]f](else:)[ If] Larik lives when they reach her deepstone, Trenon's freedom to speak may last as long as this hike. "Do you expect me to be as happy in my marriage as you are in yours?" The volley comes easily, though he didn't mean to attack.
Ralon's face closes, brown and rough as sandstone. "In a year's time, your first marriage opens to other spouses."
"If he doesn't marry first!" Trenon presses his lips together, too late. "If my wife and her family agree to a second husband so soon." The vows, as Trenon crafted them, allow them to make offers for more husbands from the moment the marriage opens, but Trenon has no illusions about whether Larik's family will front the silver for a placeless mouth. More promising is the chance for he and Larik to declare their marriage an independent holding, and break free of iryu.
Besides, taking Nilos as second husband isn't the point. They shouldn't have to wait. And no marriage should take love-spouses like slapping more coats of mortar over cracked stonework. With every hard frost, the spidery fractures show again.
"If you drag our family's name down, it will be for your own spite," Ralon says. "You have a chance for a good marriage, as we did, if you can bear to accept it."
Trenon stares at the mud that splatters the hem of Ralon's best guesting robes and doesn't answer.
"Do you think I regret my marriage?"
Trenon shrugs. Ralon's children, his husbands, a wife, all dead. His son an invert. Ralon has far more to regret than a breathless marriage. Trenon should have kept his mouth shut.
Another switchback brings them to Larik's deepstone. Ralon stops at the edge of the clearing and turns to Trenon. "Perfection is a child's imagining," he snaps. "Stop pretending you deserve it." With a shake of his head, he strides across the dooryard to ring the guest chimes. "Now," he says. "We'll see how sick the girl is."
[[ϒ On Trenon's first visit to Larik's holding, Berin led him like a yearling foal to a horse meet.->goods]]
[[ϒ This time, he trails his father like a raven to a giving.->ravens]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "placeless mouth")[second husband]
(Click-replace: "break free of iryu.")[break free of iryu. That verse was Larik's suggestion. She wanted the freedom to take her talents elsewhere, or else use the threat of leaving to hold greater place in her parents' holding. A weaver and an advocat might not seem like the best pair to make their own holding, but once they both had their mastery it would become, if not painless, then at least possible.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "emptiness")[ $il[T]renon waits until they've left the deepstone to speak. Ralon leads the way through Asaresta, nodding to the few people they pass, holding his hems carefully above the muck. Trenon strides behind him, shoulders rounded. Ralon brought place and name to the holding when he and Berin founded it. Ralon solidified his land claims by marrying two farmers, one of them already bearing before the wedding. When the four of them married Tethin, a silver miner who'd caught Berin's eye, they had all the ingredients to prosper and increase. Yet they diminished instead.](if: (history:)'s last is "reluctant")[ $il[A]fter](else:)[ After] Tethin's death, Trenon imagines, the entire marriage was labelled bad luck. It wouldn't be easy to find more spouses willing to join them. And when they raised a child with only two parents, the usual whispers began--selfish, unhealthy, monogamous.
"You never married again," Trenon says, jabbing Ralon with an advocat's tricks. The unspoken obvious makes the best prod. Tethin bore Trenn hardly a year after joining the marriage. What artifacts might have been hers passed into general clutter or hearthside background long enough ago that Trenon never knew of anything that was considered hers. Certainly Ralon keeps nothing of hers with the tenderness of a ghost shrine. Trenon's other fathers' died in fever and their things were burned. He has only vague memories of his fathers. A hand smoothing his hair. A soft shoulder to lay his head on. But he knew his fathers. He never knew Tethin.
Ralon's loose robes hide any tension in his back and shoulders. The hiss of his breath disguises any catch or grunt. "Your mother was grieved," he says, in the careful space between steps. When he turns the switchback above Trenon, sourness pinches his face. Biting down on dead secrets obviously doesn't agree with him.
Trenon's breath flows easier than Ralon's, but his heartbeat quickens. "Grieved, for two nineyears?" Ralon's account rings false. Berin wouldn't give up the chance of more children who could have worked in Ralon's fields or learned silverwork. Trenon never knew Berin to grieve any longer than her advantage called for.
"Tethin was a love spouse." Ralon pauses as if the path confounds him. Not that they have anywhere to go but up.
Tethin //was//--and, by implication, Ralon was not. Ralon thinks he can soothe Trenon into marriage with his story. Trenon thinks of Berin, alone and silent on her wifeless hearthside.
Families work with advocats to arrange most first marriages. By closing a marriage for its first year, they encourage a wife and husband to build patterns of respect and accommodation. Adding a love spouse means a detailed discussion of several seasons. A second husband, or a wife? What contract-price might be paid or accepted? Land could be sung into a holding, or flocks. But Trenon imagined--in some childish corner of his mind, perhaps--that when they found Tethin, Ralon and Berin fell in love.
So he was half-right. "Mother fell in love?"
"She and I are barren together." The words out, Ralon turns back to the climb at a more bruising pace.
Trenon lets himself fall behind, unmoved by Ralon's jarring stride. He smirks at the memory of Ralon taking him--still a child then--to watch a stallion covering a mare, explaining between awkward pauses about bearing and breeding. As with that stilted account, Ralon's story comes as much from what he doesn't say--such as, perhaps, that Trenon's other fathers didn't look outside themselves for a marriage's benefits.
So Berin fell in love. The word feels flat and incomplete. Love, among spouses, means a strong holding, a warm regard, the touch of a hand, a smile shared over a small child's head. Pleasure offers more than that, perhaps, if shared more narrowly. But Ralon means something more. Otherwise why the nineyears' silence?
Ralon loved Tethin, too. Ralon's hair would have been black then, his skin less creased with sun-lines. The pouches around his amber eyes, the disappointed pout at the corner of his lips, not yet carved so deeply by time, if they were there at all. Trenon can only picture Tethin in relation to his own features. His blue eyes must have come from her, and his nut-brown hair; his height perhaps. But Trenon can't picture who she was, that his parents fell in love with her. Who she'd been that she accepted them.
//We were barren together//--Ralon was turning his tricks around on him. The obvious unsaid. Whatever pleasure Berin and Ralon took in each other over the years, if any, they never conceived. But which of them had been his breeding parent?
Berin loved Tethin. She never speaks of her at all, not even these miserly crumbs Ralon offers. She acts as first mother to Trenon. When Tethin's grey and bloodless ghost-shell was given, Berin let her name slip away.
Half the time Trenon wants to thank his second mother for dying and leaving him to Ralon and Berin, sparing him the raucous place-chivying of most holdings. The other half, he resents Tethin for leaving him in their clutches, without siblings to help shoulder the weight of irthu's so-respected name. An absent feeling, like empty as hating the sky for a day's bad weather. He never knew her.
But he imagines Tethin: eyes blue as pebbles, slight and strong and too narrow. She tore during the bearing, as ewes do sometimes when the lambs are large. Trenon places her in the cluttered hearthroom--half hers, then; all theirs--sees her turn laughing to Berin, one callused miner's palm to Berin's then-taut cheek, pale as birch. Leaning in to whisper in her ear, warm with ghost and breath. Guiding Berin along the dark back hall to the net-mattress in the pleasure room, all while Ralon sits staring into the homeside fire grate and pretends not to hear.
[[ϒBerin negotiated Trenon's betrothal a season after Nilos came of age, blithely accepting his limp harmonies as acquiescence. Anything to keep him away from Nilos; to keep him from having what Berin did once, and lost.->goods]]
[[ϒ If Larik dies, Berin will find another marriage for him if she has to search the entire mountain. Trenon could almost hope that Larik lives.->ravens]] { (if: $allowHints)[
(click-replace: "Love, among spouses,")[Love, among spouses, was never a sure thing. Holdings dissolved when a marriage's spouses could no longer balance their spouses' wants, needs, and small petty grievances. But Ralon would never admit as much. Love]
(click-replace: "Ralon loved Tethin, too.")[Ralon loved Tethin, too. Or he believed that he did. Trenon holds brutal honestly tight to his heart. Just as likely, Ralon wanted to claim Tethin the way he claims his fields, as //his own//, whether fruitful or not. ]
] }$il[T]renon learned his tendency to score conversations, a good advocat's skill, from his mother. She hopes to prod his curiosity, or else she has some twisted dream that he transformed into a dutiful son during his absence. As he washes, Trenon tries to guess what she wants from that son she never had. He could give a deeper courtesy or a more gormless attention to her news. Perhaps she wants a boy who will trample his place to ask her for advice. Trenon glances at the empty chair by the hearth and asks, "Where's Father?"
Berin leans back against her workbench and studies him. He never sees disappointment on her face, only evaluation. She reminds him of a short-horned lizard on a warm rock, waiting for crickets. "Larik's holding thinks to break your betrothal contract."
He asked the wrong question, gave Berin the opening she wanted to sprinkle information out like hoarded silver, whit by whit. Trenon squeezes one last ragful of cooling water over his head and shakes out his hair. Droplets hiss as they strike the hearthstones. Streaks of water and mud run from his shoulders down to his riding trousers.
"Ralon went to stiffen their spines for me," Berin says. "I suppose you're pleased?"
"That they'd be placeless enough to break a contract?" Trenon refuses to stoop like a raven over Larik's sickbed. "Since you've schemed to give our name to them, and me with it, I don't see why that would be good news."
Berin's grey eyes darken, protuberant in her thin face. "This holding deserves your respect!"
"Meaning you require it." Trenon wonders what Berin would make of Zayelik's near-admission on the trail. If Berin knew that a city trader planned to move upmountain, she might make some early claims that would pay off in place and profit in the long run.
But Berin has never dealt well with the long run. Trenon opens the press, pulling out dry clothes, smelling of must and camphor. They're like the rest of the deepstone: the best quality fabrics, patched now and worn. Berin and Ralon dress as if fading seams give them more place, not less. He tugs his tunic left and settles the belt.
The slant of Berin's mouth sharpens. "There is little enough left of our place without you undermining it."
[[ϒ Berin's bluster shows her desperation.->promissory]]
[[ϒ Trenon doesn't bother to remind her that she gave away her holding's name for the price of his marriage, haggling over him like substandard goods.->goods]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Trenon refuses to stoop like a raven over Larik's sickbed.")[Trenon refuses to stoop like a raven over Larik's sickbed. Larik's family doesn't intend to break the contract. They'll argue that Larik's death dissolves the betrothal without breaking it. But compassion has never been Berin's weakness.]
]}$il[T]renon ignores Berin's sharp movements at her workbench as he dresses himself. Clean linens from the small press in the corner, a soft woolen shirt belted left, loose trousers, and felt-lined moccasins. With the heat from the brazier and the hearth, the dry clothes finish warming him. He lifts the lid from a fire-blackened pot and finds a thin tev, with a few shreds of mutton.
The moment he reaches for a clay bowl and spoon, Berin straightens her shoulders and sniffs. "The girl is ill. So her holding says."
Trenon spoons a generous portion into his bowl. The girl. Larik, his betrothed. The word twists sourly. She's as in love with Trenon as he is with Cyr, but she's either more resigned or more indifferent. She can afford to be--she'll lose nothing in the marriage. She keeps her family, her holding, and her trade. Their children will have the advantage of Trenon's name, if it still means anything then. Larik even demanded an independence verse be added to the vows. Her mothers only agreed because they believed Larik wanted to use that verse as leverage. They can't imagine Larik would ever leave them. Trenon suspects Larik would have surprised them, if she hadn't fallen sick.
But Larik has been ill on and off all winter, so Berin means //dying//. Trenon keeps his eyes on his meal, spooning quick bites, focusing on the heat and ignoring the bland taste. He crafted vows that allow either of them to seek love spouses from the moment their marriage opens. Trenon won't balk if Larik takes a spouse, wife or husband, as she well knows.
Berin gives up any pretense of work and watches him eat. Trenon should distract her, talk about his journey, the fees he gathered. Instead, he lifts his eyes to meet hers. He knows Nilos is written in his blank face, his taut containment.
"Your //sweetheart//--" The word, with its implication of childish love, sounds almost tender in Berin's mouth. "--sings vigil to keep her strong, and so I'm sure you are the last holdout for this match."
Trenon swallows too fast and burns his tongue. Her implication, that Nilos is keeping Larik alive to marry Trenon and rid himself of a troublesome suitor, is so pointlessly false that he feels more baffled than furious. Healers sing vigil to ease the dying, and to comfort of the patient's family. Nilos can't drag Larik back from this brink.
Berin smiles at his silence. "I've concealed your unhealthy obsession with that healer boy long enough. Let Larik take that shame when she takes you."
//There is nothing to conceal!// The objection rises in Trenon's throat and then sticks there. If that were true, he'd sing his love like a lark. Berin knows he meets Nilos in the woods when they can slip away, as if they're still children playing at pleasure. What she knows, she might tell. Once rumours become acknowledged truth, Trenon's master will end his journeymanship. Berin doesn't care if she loses her source of silver. She simply prefers to be clear. If Trenon admits to being an invert, she will disown him rather than take on the taint of his lost place.
If Larik lives, Trenon escapes. He sang the betrothal promises not for love, not to spite Nilos's new place, but because marriage means moving to his wife's deepstone. He'll take his name with him, for its worth. Larik's holding is a large one. Three fathers and a handful of brothers living homeside, most of them cut from the same sandstone as Asaresta's mountains. Trenon met them when Berin dragged him visiting during the contract negotiations. He sat in their family room as a guest, and itched under their bluff goodwill. But he can endure them. If Larik lives.
[[ϒ Berin has done no more than remind him of the truth. She has given him so much, over the years; most of all this, to love what hurts.->promissory]]
[[ϒ He didn't miss the gleam of acquisitiveness in Larik's parents' eyes--they were buying him as much as Berin was selling.->goods]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Larik even demanded an independence verse be added to the vows.")[Larik even demanded an independence verse be added to the vows. She and Trenon can declare themselves a holding proper whenever they want, and her parents won't be able to stop them from taking their name and their profits with them.]
(Click-replace: "Trenon's master will end his journeymanship.")[Trenon's master will end his journeymanship. No advocat will sing for him, whether marriage or a season's labour contract.]
]}{ (if: (history:)'s last is "duty")[ $il["I] take responsibility for not putting a death clause in the betrothal," Trenon says, "though I'm sure Shayin would have considered it a ghost-wish on her daughter if I had." He speaks evenly, prodding Berin to admit she accepted the song he crafted, even knowing Larik was sickly. It costs him nothing to accept the blame. As long as he brings more silver home than Berin does from her empty adit, she won't tar his work with her dissatisfaction. Especially not while her debts weigh heavy on her. With that in mind,](if: (history:)'s last is "duty")[ Trenon](else:)[ $il[T]renon unties his belt pouch, steps across to Berin's bench, and lets the leather clink as he drops it beside her. ]}
Tight lines draw Berin's brows down. (if: (history:)'s last is "cost")[Berin throws Nilos in his face; he answers with silver. Trenon's work pays her debts and underwrites her trade as silversmith. He earns more in fees than Berin can claim from her old, worked-out mine. ]She opens the drawstring and spreads out the silver--mostly whits, but one full weight he earned setting spring cairns at the intersection of three holdings' field claims. When he met traders who claimed to be cash-poor, Trenon accepted payment in semi-precious stones as well: garnet, jasper, and turquoise. Berin fingers the best of them, a thumbnail-sized piece of clear red amber. It will fetch a good price, more if Berin sets it as a pendant. She sweeps it back into the pouch with the others. "How many villages did you visit?"
"Five or six." Trenon returns Berin's welcoming barb with ambiguity.
"And the work?" Berin fastens clamps around the clay molds and sets them aside, away from the brazier's heat.
"Nine contracts." The two coming of age ceremonies paid well enough. An apprenticeship, and several labour contracts. One marriage earned him less, since he formalized a betrothal already negotiated. Another was more generous: he wedded two spouses into an established marriage, and the harmonies were more complex.
Berin's lips twist. "You left late. There must have been another advocat in those villages before you. Or a better one."
Or a cheaper one, or one more easily bullied by the holdings' traders. Berin doesn't care that Trenon sleeps out more often than he accepts the humbler offers of a night's guesting or food enough to carry him to the village-next. Trenon lets the silence draw out while he knots his boots left. "What price would you have me set for my services?" he asks. "I've been reminded often enough that I fail our holding as a trader, but perhaps with your wisdom--"
Throwing truth in Berin's face never satisfies. She sniffs, a shallow, clipped breath. "Don't be vulgar."
Trenon lets out a bark of laughter. He hates how she takes refuge in her place. Fades, like fog; becomes no more than the chill walls of the deepstone itself. She doesn't want to hear that Trenon has to //haggle// over his fees, that he //bargains//. Women are traders. Every trader in every holding Trenon visits expects to get the better of a journeyman advocat. He surprises them sometimes with his demands, but he can't afford to alienate them with an effeminate mimicry of their traders' tactics. He needs every fee too badly, and it shows. Berin's trader instincts demand better, but if Trenon stoops to barter she'd have worse names for him than invert.
Not to mention, no holding's livelihood should rely on a journeyman's earnings. The entire point of a holding is to pool the resources of a marriage and its daughters and sons. No holding can extend claims without demonstrated need, and three people huddling in a rotting deepstone show more loftiness than lack. "Tell me, Mother," Trenon says, "do you plan to release a field this year rather than hire the hands to work it? How many years does our holding have left on such commons?"
"This holding's business--"
"You sell every asset to hand, then wonder why our name dimishes." (unless: (history:)'s last is "cost")[Trenon bangs a bowl down on the sideboard, and slops tev into it. A few slivers of mutton do little to add taste to the bland barley porridge; last year's potatoes make up most of its bulk. A meal bought with debt. ]City traders admire Berin's silverwork, but she can't produce much of it these days. The silver vein she claimed in years past thinned to dross and rubble, and no mining holding has any reason to reduce their claims on her behalf. Berin negotiated Trenon's marriage contract as the latest in a long line of short-term solutions. His wages belong to her until he marries; once he and his work leave the holding, she and Ralon will have nothing left to sell. "Do my fees disappoint you, or are you simply afraid of the day you trade away your holding's last claim?"
Berin shrugs, like a belayer releasing her rope and stepping away. The argument dissipates.
[[ϒ Trenon is used to such tactics, the sudden withdrawal that leaves Berin's opponent gaping. It worked well on Shayin, during the betrothal talks.->barter]]
[[ϒ Berin acts like she can trade Trenon away in marriage, and he'll still return to her, like a cairn reclaimed in a better spring.->his betrothed]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "He needs every fee too badly, and it shows.")[He needs every fee too badly, and it shows. They offer guesting in place of silver, and force him to decide whether to work for the hosting he should be entitled to, in hopes of building trust over time.]
]}$il[T]renon holds Shayin's gaze for a long, direct second, until her smile strains at the corners. Although Shayin has been the one handling the contract negotiations, she doesn't seem either enthusiastic or impressed. She acts as her holding's trader, but negotiating this marriage wasn't her idea. Nor did Larik ask for him. When he refuses her hosting, she shows neither insult nor disappointment, but turns back to her work.
With a quiet //hmm//, Berin touches Trenon's elbow, a tight warning not to interrupt and lower his own value. She brought him here to listen, using his place a betrothed to get a head start on the vows he'll craft. Trenon hums under his breath, rehearsing the promises made, while his body and ghost slump, stifled, hot, and endlessly bored.
Shayin rests her hand on Larik's shoulder, showing off her wares. "Larik hopes to sing for journeyman before winter. She's only been apprenticed for a year."
"Lovely work," Berin says, with a nod that gives nothing away but the compliment.
"A woman's art," Shayin says, matching Berin's tone. Larik, the sack of goods under consideration, frowns, but her fingers keep up their swift flight from knot to knot.
"Mm, yes," Berin turns to look around the shed, as if faintly puzzled by the weaving process. Trenon suspects that, though Berin buys the finest clothes, demanding the highest standards in dye, weaving, cut, and sewing, she can blithely ignore the art of making of them. "But traders and field hands expect to be paid in silver."
If Shayin knows the thinness of Berin's mine claim, she's politic enough not to mention it. "We trade downmountain, as well as in the villages overmountain." Larik slips out from her mother's hand, using the pretense of fetching another spool of thread. Shayin drops her hand and keeps up her spiel. "My husbands claim more chamois and sheep pasturage every spring. We have three sons in the byres as well."
"Only shepherds among your men?" Berin asks, as if she doesn't know. "An advocat would be a great advantage to your holding."
"But a wife has little comfort from a journeyman husband who travels five ninedays in six," Shayin counters, soft as her chamois fleece.
"Trenon might support a small holding on his earnings," Berin says. Trenon holds himself blank and stiff. When did he earn such praise? Berin never admitted as much to him, though they both know it.
Shayin's irritation rises to the surface like a trout to a lure. "Ours is hardly a small holding."
"No," Berin agrees. She touches a green swath of cloth, then rubs her fingertips together, as if its roughness pains her. "It's quite...populous."
"We have room on the homeside for another son, until they wish to start their own holding."
"Trenon has no need of his own holding or more marriages yet." Berin's laugh crackles. Trenon's marriage won't serve its purpose unless it severs any tie he has to Nilos.
"Larik will want more husbands soon enough," Shayin says. "To tend the children, and to see to the homeside, if Trenon will be travelling."
"Yes, but we have //this// marriage to arrange yet. Love spouses and children are easier to dream than to contract for."
Shayin takes a breath and finds her smile. She trades well, for someone who trained first as a weaver, but she can't match Berin's chill, pointed indifference. Listening to the two of them is like watching two field hands leaning on either side of a rail fence, spitting as they watch the rams cover the ewes. And after they hammer out the vows' framework, their husbands will move in with their hearty, bluff charm, their little place-dances, their endless obsequities. Tradition.
[[ϒ The only thing they didn't anticipate was Larik falling ill.->ravens]]
[[ϒ When Trenon sees Larik slip out of the weavers' hut on her specious errand, he follows her.->his betrothed]] { (if: $allowHints is true)[
(click-replace: "Trenon's marriage won't serve its purpose unless it severs any tie he has to Nilos.")[ Trenon's marriage won't serve its purpose unless Berin can use it to squash any rumours about Trenon and Nilos. //Her// son is no invert; //her// son sang a first marriage's vows, and will seek no husband until after the proper year. ]
] }$il[L]arik stalks out of the weavers' hut without a glance at Trenon. Trenon goes after her silently, preferring to escape the splintery dig of Berin's place-insults. Larik heads around the deepstone, past the holding's well, and starts up a trail heading north to the chamois pastures. The path sharpens not far from the deepstone, slipping between trees, too narrow for ponies with packboxes. Larik scales the pines' roots like a ladder. Trenon could fall back and let her go, and perhaps she wishes he would--which is why he follows.
After a quick, steep stretch, Larik reaches a cairn that separates the deepstone's land claim from a wilder slope choked with scrub pine. Trenon leans his shoulder against the cairn, finding it sturdy enough to support his careful push. Larik's holding must have mortarted the stones in place, which would be rank arrogance if it marked the edge of an arable field. No one would dispute this high, lonely claim. There are enough rocks to put off a mountain goat.
The heat of the late summer sun soaks into Trenon's shoulders, though the breeze is crisp. He squints uphill at Larik, who stares back the way they came. She's even-featured, square-shouldered, with ropy muscles in her hands and forearms from the loom work. In the sunlight, her eyes glint like stones under green water. She braids her straight dark hair simply, without plaiting sticks, and she wears rougher clothes than Trenon expected, considering his visit was expected. When Larik comes down to Asaresta market, she usually wears her own work, to good effect. Dark, rich blues highlighted with lighter, crocusy purples, the strength and deepness of the dyes testifying to her holding's wealth. Does she choose such finery for her holding's sake? Or for herself, to glory in her art?
She catches his eyes and tilts her head. Trenon stares back mildly, unembarrassed to be caught looking, or to be standing below her on the slope.
"Your mother's stipulations--is that the marriage you want?" she asks.
"This marriage was never my choice." His complaints haven't slowed the negotiations, let alone stopped them. If Larik objected, she had about the same success.
She pins him with a withering look. "Do you want to live on my holding's homeside for the rest of your life?"
Sharing the barn-booted stinks and exhalations of at least seven other men--more, if Larik's youngest sibling becomes a brother--after the quiet he enjoys at home. Her deepstone has only one pleasure room. Some holdings might regiment its use, but Trenon rather thinks this holding is too crass to care about such proprieties. Coupling will spill out of its bounds--as Berin says, it's a //populous// place. Every night someone will be rutting in one of the pallets next to his. The only escape will be to sleep with Larik, with all the holding nudging and wistfully wondering--never directly--if they're fertile together. Trenon tries to imagine sharing the pleasure room with her, a not unpleasant thought, though it stirs no urges in him.
And then there will be Larik herself, either her desire and disappointment, or else her warm, smooth, pitying acceptance of his disinterest. Soon enough the homeside will be swarming with children, Trenon's new brothers either bearing themselves or fretting over their bearing wives...
Larik guesses his answer before he gives it. "Maybe it's different in a small holding," she says. "I've wondered what it would be like to be only two, and no real divide between homeside and hearthside."
Trenon tenses at her tentative offer. "It takes silver to start an independent holding," he says, hearing Berin's words in his mouth and tasting vinegar. He would rather ignore the fact that Larik wonders what it would be like to live alone //with him//. Probably like building a deepstone in an avalanche chute, waiting for the rocks to slip.
An independent holding is a child's dream at this point. Trenon's a journeyman who claims a single aging pony, not even a horse or a pack mule. His earnings can't support a holding, let alone contract women to build a deepstone or men to farm any field they could claim.
Larik laughs. "You look like our hinny when she's thrown a rider and doesn't understand why he's on the ground."
Trenon's hackles rise at her banter. "I don't love you," he snaps, a pointless jab. He can hardly fool himself that Larik nurses some secret affection for him.
"No," Larik says gently. "Nilos is wonderful, of course."
[[ϒ Trenon freezes. He probably looks exactly like the gaping, rolling-eyed hinny she described.->outed]]
[[ϒ Larik offers him an arch smile. Shame twines with his sudden, unwilling respect.->pact]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "An independent holding is a child's dream at this point.")[An independent holding is a child's dream at this point. They'd need to make a land claim in front of an advocat, and that means insisting that their need is greater than other holdings' who currently have cairns raised. A first marriage of two people whose current holding doesn't want to lose them has little leverage to claim anything, let alone enough land to be profitable.]
]}$il["W]hat are you talking about?" Trenon mutters, for form's sake. Asaresta gossips but Larik knows about Trenon and Nilos--she's Nilos's best friend, a fact Trenon tries not to resent even as it feels like Larik has no problem resenting him. He didn't expect her to slap him with the truth, and he should have.
Larik raises an eyebrow, and goes back to watching the view, or the path. Trenon bristles under her silence. He chafes under the village's mealy-mouthed idea of discretion. Getting caught is half the point, when the village's outrage is so smug. Refusing to squirm under her feather-soft condemnation, he takes the straightest route back to control: blunt placeless vulgarity. "Are you bearing or breeding?"
"Don't be crude," Larik says, but flatly, without offense.
Trenon suspects she knows. She might even know about Nilos, or about himself, if Nilos told her. "It's a valid question," he argues. "Berin won't give up my name for a marriage contract alone. She'll stipulate fertility. At least one child."
"Which only makes a difference if you don't intend to bring love spouses into our marriage."
Larik speaks as if she intends to sing vows to him, no matter what the contract. Trenon rolls his eyes. "How many husbands do you want to saddle me with?"
"One, if it's enough." Larik's eyes are hard as jasper. "And in return, any wives I might wish."
Trenon bites back the accusation that wants to burst from his lips. //So you're like us//. A wife sneaking pleasure among her wives. (if: $fromAsarotha is true)[Like Harin. ]He straightens his shoulders and runs a thumb over an orange patch of lichen on the cairn.
"There are marriages where it works. Holdings that understand these things." Larik crosses her arms. She wants to put a good face on the dirty stories children tell. Fourteen-year-olds sniggering in disgust, flinging taunts over bearing and breeding, picturing all the combinations of a marriage twined together in the pleasure room bed. Yet they don't joke about people who dress askew. At fourteen, the choice of becoming a woman or a man is too close.
Larik would walk open-eyed into an invert's marriage. But she may not know the truth about Nilos. "He doesn't want to be my husband," Trenon says, studying her to see if she understands.
Larik nods slightly. "I'd take him as my wife if I could," she says.
Trenon swallows. Nilos longs to live on the hearthside. The closest he'll ever come to that dream would be to stay a healer and pretend, with them, that he is second wife to Larik. Will the farce please him or shame him? Trenon and Larik will accept him where no one else will. They can marry him, in love and mercy and pity, but none of them will be able to live openly. Not only Nilos's apprenticeship, but any contracts they make, will hang over their heads as the price they might end up paying for their lofty large-mindedness. One slip, and an advocat would deny them any song, no matter what fee they offered. No contracts; no marriages; not even a holding dissolution. Trenon presses his lips together. "Is that why you asked for me?" he asks. Only Larik could instigate these betrothal negotiations. She doesn't care about Trenon. But she'll marry him, to make Nilos happy.
"You craft the vows," Larik says. "Make sure you leave them open enough to include him as love-spouse when our marriage opens. I'll sing that promise. It's up to you if you can offer him the same."
If Larik can sacrifice a year to a closed marriage for Nilos's sake, then Trenon can do no less. The harvest ripens before Berin and Shayin complete the negotiations, and the leaves fall while Trenon struggles with the harmonies. If anyone notices the song's odd ommisions, they must attribute it to a journeyman's unpolished work. Trenon's shoulder tenses under his master's hand when he actually sings the betrothal; his palms slip in Larik's hot grip. [Nilos will thank them]Nilos knows Larik and Trenon's hopes for him, for his happiness.
(link-goto: "ϒ Trenon's song threads a needle, promoting both holdings' interests while keeping Larik's demand at the forefront.","altruism")
[[ϒ He leaves Nilos free to accept them as love spouses, or not, when the marriage opens.->escape]]
[[ϒ Larik sings her vows bright-eyed, cheeks flushed, through a voice hoarse from coughing.->ravens]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "then Trenon can do no less.")[then Trenon can do no less. And if Trenon and Larik manage to wrest an independent holding out of the vows, they'll claim a deepstone of their own. Away from prying eyes, Nilos can live on the hearthside if he wishes.]
]}$il[T]renon glowers at Larik's satisfaction. That she knows about him and Nilos doesn't surprise him, but that she'll say the words, baldly lay out his perversity in front of him, sets him back on his heels. "I'm sure Nilos would love to live on the hearthside with you, in this ghost holding of yours."
Larik sweeps the tip of her tongue over her lower lip and glances down the path, checking to see if they've been followed. "I don't think you should say such things," she says, but mildly, without offense.
Trenon's mouth quirks. "Why? Because they're true? Those seem like the only forbidden topics." Larik doesn't care who hears him, but she'll demand discretion for Nilos's sake. He likes that about her.
"He'd lose his apprenticeship, if you went around spreading that."
"He'd be lucky to only lose his apprenticeship. If an advocat denied him, he'd never sing another contract," Trenon says.
Larik's green eyes widen, stormy. "He loves healing!"
Trenon relaxes, satisfied. Neither he nor Larik have breathed a word about what Nilos truly wants, but he's satisfied Larik understands him. Nilos wants to be a healer, and yet live on the hearthside, a wife and sister and no man at all. Since he coudn't do both, he made his best choice, and in deciding to become a man he decreed that what was //best// did not include Trenon. "I want him to be able to be himself."
"You want him thrown out? Why, so that you can comfort yourself that he meets your standards for honesty?"
"Tereos needs him. Asaresta needs a healer."
"Name one person who'd ask a healing song of a woman, one! You might as well send a man to trade."
"Tereos won't find anyone as good as Nilos," Trenon insists. Nilos's hands--his touch turns song to strength. He has the skill, the gentleness.
"But he'd have to, if you tell," Larik's lips are white.
"Stop accusing me of what I haven't done."
"Then start showing sense!" Impatient, she bumps her shoulder into his. She's never touched him before, and Trenon stumbles, off-balance. "Listen, for once in your life. You and I marry, for our holdings. And in a year's time, we marry for love. Or do you doubt that I love Nilos?"
Trenon doesn't doubt her affection for Nilos, only its outcome. "You want him to hide. You want him to be happy--to a point. Within the deepstone, never setting foot outside." Larik isn't so different from the rest of the village. She holds place dear enough, when it suits.
"I would have him for a wife if I could. In an independent holding, no one needs to know which side he claims!"
"And what do you get out of this?" Trenon asks, feeling sullen as a kenneled dog.
"An independent holding. My wealth. Your name. Children."
"The same crooked foundation as every other holding on this mountain."
Larik laughs. "Oh yes, poor Trenon, burdened with so much integrity." Her mouth twists as she mocks him. "Our mothers will make this marriage. What do you want to build with it?"
Nothing. He wants to marry Nilos. Not through subterfuge but with a blue jay's pride. He wants to shout from the mountain top that an advocat can marry a healer, and make a holding. They are not the immature, ill-mannered children that this village takes them for.
He hates Larik's generosity. She doesn't love him, but she's willing to marry him in good faith, in the hopes that they can, together, help Nilos. She thought through the advantages she can gain from it, and is willing to wait for them.
(link-goto: "ϒ She can't have told Nilos what she intends. If her gift is meant as some kind of happy surprise, Nilos may surprise her in turn.","altruism")
[[ϒ The months between betrothal and marriage widen like crevasses in spring.->ravens]]
[[ϒ They can't simply make Nilos's choice for him; the one he already made is the one they have to honour.->escape]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "I would have him for a wife if I could.")[I would have him for a wife if I could. If you two live on the homeside, and never invite me to the pleasure room, wouldn't that be better for him than to be thrown out of his apprenticeship?]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "pact")[$il[A] season later, Trenon and Larik sing the betrothal. He barely sees her afterwards, busy with a journeyman's summer travels.
](if: $fromBerin is true)[ $il[T]renon barely sees Larik after they sing the betrothal. ]By midwinter Larik retreats to her pallet. Trenon guesses how she fares from Nilos's hollow-eyed worry. His parents sting like a cloud of midges, trying to drive him to court her. But Trenon and Larik have their understanding, and he stays away. As spring advances, promising warm weather beyond the mountain's rain-shadow, Trenon frets under the restless itch to pack up Cyr and //go//. Nilos spends every day playing the healer, constantly anxious at Larik's side. Well, Nilos isn't the only one who can let his trade run his life. And the overmountain fees are good, until Berin recalls him. By the morning after his return, Trenon finds himself behind his father, climbing up towards iryu holding for his long-delayed courtship visit.
When they reach the holding, Ralon picks through the dooryard mud, trying to spare his spattered guesting robes. They circle the long-sided weaving hut, its shutters closed against the rain, and Ralon strides towards the guest door. "Now," he says. "We'll see how sick the girl is."](if: (history:)'s last is "another")[When they reach the holding, Ralon picks through the dooryard mud, trying to spare his spattered guesting robes. They circle the long-sided weaving hut, its shutters closed against the rain, and Ralon strides towards the guest door. "Now," he says. "We'll see how sick the girl is."]
(if: $fromBerin is true)[Iryu](else:)[ $il[I]ryu] holding is obscenely comfortable. Since the main building was completed a nine-year ago, a long homeside annex has been added, giving the building a somewhat lopsided, tail-trailing appearance. Close enough to, though, the approach remains commanding: the main frontage takes twice the space of any village deepstone. The wide windows make Trenon think about the cost of heating a drafty deepstone with downmountain peat, or worse, hardwood; of the ache in his shoulders after chopping and stacking a cord of mealy pinewood. In the winter, with the windows muffled by felted curtains, the deepstone must get light from candles--wax, no doubt, and clear-flaming.
In the summer, light and air flood the front rooms through the hooked-open shutters. The window sills are wide and low enough to sit on, with a mug of wintergreen tev or an embroidery hoop. The front of the house looks south and west, down over the river gorge and the deepstones of Asaresta proper. Evenings, the sunset's glow spreads out before the holding, orange upon pink, up the steep-folded slopes to the peaks opposite.
Ralon strikes the chimes at the guest door, leaving Trenon to trail after him, his gaze wandering over the dooryard. Despite the mud, the dooryard has an air of order, of tidiness. The kitchen garden is fenced, staked, and rowed with early greens. There's a shed for goats in addition to a large stable that matches Asaresta common barn. Greylags stalk around the coop to see if the rain left grass seeds amidst the mud. One gander eyes Trenon with beady dislike. They must lose more than their share of goslings to the hawks, letting them wander like that. Incompetence, or extravagance? Trenon supposes if iryu holding can afford either, the distinction hardly matters.
As he studies the outbuildings, the stable door opens and a child peers out. Trenon vaguely recognizes Larik's younger sibling. At fourteen, the poor kid's wrists poke out from the cuffs of a straight-woven tunic. Trenon can sympathize with an only child. Children can't contribute to healing songs, and they aren't taken to givings. Trenon rubs a thumb over the frown lines that draw at his brows.
(link-goto: "ϒ The wind shifts, and Trenon forgets the child.","confront")
[[ϒ From within the deepstone, a chant rises and falls, rough as a tugging wind. Nilos, singing vigil, holds the last shreds of Larik's ghost to her body. ->vigil song]]
[[ϒ He tends Larik so closely he'll probably fall ill himself when this is done.->wrangle]] { (if: $allowHints is true)[
(click-replace: "His parents sting like a cloud of midges, trying to drive him to court her.")[His parents sting like a cloud of midges, trying to drive him to court her.
"You have a responsibility to this holding's name," Ralon says.
"Advocats are known for their contracts, not their conduct," Berin sniffs, with cold-blooded disdain. "You won't goad him with place."
//You can't claim what you don't use//, Trenon translates to himself. Berin and Ralon can wrap their fears in place as much as they like. ]
] }$il[T]renon strides out of the over-heated family room. A glance into the hearthroom as he passes shows the holding's daughters and sons gathered in an uncertain cluster, while the faint sound of Nilos's voice rough on the wrapping chants drifts down from the loft above.
Tight-breathed, Trenon steps outside, willing the weight of the deepstone to lift from his shoulders. The rainclouds have dissolved into the washed-grey roof of the world. Eaves drip into caulked barrels. Footprints churn the mud from deepstone to stable, and down to the empty weaving shed. Trenon sees no sign of the youngest iryu child--his new //betrothed//. What a farce. In four years as an advocat, Trenon never heard of such a travesty. Children can't enter contracts! But the marriage wasn't planned to occur until summer, by which time the unlucky child will have come of age. Iryu will spend the next few ninedays twisting arms, guaranteeing cooperation.
Trenon's eyes sweep out over the downmountain view, and then he looks to the narrow path that continues up past iryu holding. Larik took him that way last summer, the better to detail his every failing to him. The trail can't go much further than shepherds' byres above the pines. No village-next claims land in that direction. Only emptiness, openness. Trenon inhales sharply, a sense of freedom and desire fluttering in his chest: the memory of childish escapes.
[[ϒ Four years after coming of age, he still feels a twinge of hope and flushed excitement when he sneaks into the forest.->once]]
(link-goto: "ϒ As he knows Nilos, body, breath, and ghost, he knows Nilos will look for him there.","uphill")
[[ϒ Let Ralon explain his failure to Berin. Trenon turns to the well path, and above it, the damp orange corridor under the pines.->headlong]]$il[P]eris, iryu's first wife, opens the guest door at Ralon's imperious chiming. Trenon cranes his neck to peer past her into the guest hall. The low, level beat of the vigil song encourages all who hear it to send out strength, to push their breath through the healer to the patient. Larik must be faltering. Healers sing vigils in hope, but not in expectation.
Fretting, Trenon mutters a guest's formalities. He gives Peris courtesy and mumbles, "I'll pay my respects to my betrothed..."
Ralon and Peris will only break their place illusions if they accuse him of false concern.
Trenon ducks into the women's hearthroom, following the sound of Nilos's voice. A ladder tucked against the back wall outlines a corner used as a pantry. Above, in the loft, the healers established a fever-room, away from the women's usual sleeping room. Trenon climbs up into the dim space and nearly cracks his skull on a low rafter beam. Ducking past it, he finds them: not Nilos and Larik alone, but several of Larik's sisters and brothers, all silent, intent, offering their breath to the vigil song. None will want to feel that it was the lack of their breath that caused the song to fail, though they must know that a healer's vigil is a last resort.
Nilos sang through the night, ever since his master laid the task on him and went home to his comforts. The longer a vigil song continues, the less its listeners have left to offer. Trenon has no doubt that Nilos gave every scrap of himself to make up the lack. More than an apprentice should. More than any healer should. Healers must be the well, not the water it draws.
Nilos's voice wavers in the song--he must be exhausted. But he traces Larik's breathlines with sure ease. He pauses, and massages her lifepoints, reminding her ghost of the comforts of the body. A moss-twist candle adds its smoke to the air, begging her ghost to remain. Larik's breath thickens, failing, and with it, her ghost's tether to her body. Her cheeks are sunken, pale, moist. Yet Nilos still sings, weaving her ghost and shell together with a yarn like shreds of cloud.
Trenon wants to rush forward and yank Nilos back into himself. Larik's ghost will pull free, raven-taken, with Nilos caught in her talons if he doesn't watch himself. He gives more than he ought, sacrifices himself without stopping to think how //pointless// it might be.
Except in the choice to become a healer. He thought of no one else, then.
That sibling of Larik's from the dooryard shoves past Trenon, and Trenon bites back a sharp rebuke. Children grieve as much as adults, though they don't have the place to attend givings. But Trenon can't stop a surge of jealousy as Nilos accepts the child's hand and joins it with Larik's. Children can't give breath in vigils, but Nilos pities Larik's sibling, instead of giving a rebuke for interfering in the song.
Nilos will make time for children, but he didn't bother to notice Trenon's arrival. He probably hasn't spared a thought for Trenon from the moment he travelled overmountain ninedays ago. Nilos has no time for Trenon as long as Larik's ghost haunts the sickroom.
[[ϒ Trenon never breathed a ghost-wish for Larik. He refuses to stay in iryu deepstone a moment longer, in case he does.->escape]]
[[ϒ Nilos loves nothing more than healing. And loving him means accepting that.->wrangle]]
(link-goto: "ϒ Nilos's eyes empty like a blind man's when he's healing.","vigil") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Healers sing vigils in hope, but not in expectation.")[Healers sing vigils in hope, but not in expectation. Nilos has no restraint, and too often gives his own breath to a song, instead of channelling it. As long as Larik lives, he'll drain himself, no matter how far gone she is.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "ravens")[ $il[R]alon barely taps hammer to chimes before the guest door opens with an impatient yank. From the threshold, Peris smiles stiffly at Ralon. They give courtesy, each to a calculated nicety, each aware of the other's calculations and finding them acceptable. Trenon feels wet as a winter sheep, and for the moment wants nothing more than to push past this foolishness and throw himself into a fire-warmed hearth chair. Nilos's voice continues in intermittent low tones, and Trenon winces at its gravel-hoarse tone. He pushes strength into the song, as it all but demands. //For you, not her.//
At last, Peris leads them to the family room--no candleless cave at the back of the deepstone.](if: (history:)'s last is "vigil song")[ $il[T]renon slumps down the ladder from the loft. Before any of Larik's family catches him unaccompanied on the hearthside, he ducks back into the guest hall. He makes his way to the family room. Though it sits at the back of the deepstone, with no windows staring out at the lowering clouds, the room stays bright, offensively cheerful.] Two hearths, each with a stone chimney, fill the room with heat and light. Large, padded chairs, each a work of comfort and craft, range in front of the hardwood fires. Maron, Grenor, and Amoz, the holding's husbands, stand when Peris announces Ralon. Ralon gives them each courtesy and introduces Trenon, as though they never met him during the betrothal rites.
Fortunately, Ralon needn't give courtesy to every marriage-son present. Trenon wonders what kind of addition he'll make to the collection. Rich but placeless holdings, like iryu, tend to choose daughters over sons when their children come of age. Names can be married and contract prices can fill in for place, when both sides are eager.
Maron waves Amoz out to fetch a fresh pot of tev. Amoz is no more than twenty and softly handsome. Trenon suspects the first four iryu spouses chose him for his skill in the pleasure room, more than for any wealth he brought to the holding. He ladles tev into ceramic mugs, and the bright scent of wintergreen fills the room. He sets out a bowl of birch sugar, a warm reminder of last summer, to stir into the tev with clinking taps of polished spoons.
After a short space for appreciative sips, Maron sets his mug down and slaps his hands on his armrests. "So!" he says. Husbands and sons alike nod, as if this is some sort of deep pronouncement. "We welcome irthu holding."
Trenon cuts his eyes over to Ralon. Maron sounds as welcoming as a spring bear. Strain tells on iryu's faces. The men sleep in that long annex on the homeside. Out of hearing of the vigil, little of their breath has been taken by Nilos's song. Nevertheless, they have dark eyes, drooping lips, stifled yawns in the heat blasting from the twin hearths. They've nursed Larik or taken up her duties, or, like her sibling skulking in the dooryard, been sent to chores while the adults sit down to tev and talk.
Ralon smiles blandly. "We came to share our breath in the vigil," he says.
Very admirable, if entirely false.
Maron shares a glance with Grenor. Grenor shakes his head, and places a gentle hand on Maron's wrist. Lips tighten into smiles, but no one openly praises Ralon for such generosity.
Grenor opens his mouth to launch into a host's general chit-chat. But Ralon's bright-eyed as a grey jay, hungry to swoop in for a tidbit. "And the contract?" he asks, dripping sympathy. "I'd hate to see it lost, in this delicate time."
Meaning, when Larik dies. The marriage-sons stir and mutter. Trenon stares into the purple-blue heart of the nearest hearth, his chin falling to his chest.
"We're good for the contract-breaking price," Maron says, with stiff pride. Obviously, Ralon can't say the same.
"So you break your promise, then?" Triumph edges Ralon's apparent vexation. A lovely performance. Ralon plans to drag iryu holding's place through the mud, then take their silver. Berin will boil his head in her crucible.
"You hover like a raven," Grenor says, low but entirely audible.
Ralon's eyes widen, but he speaks to Maron, ignoring the host-breach. "Does iryu hold up their heads?"
Silence falls. Trenon looks up from iryu's hearth, fire-dazzle blinding him. Ralon and all iryu's husbands are still. The wood in the hearths snaps and hisses.
Nilos's song ended. The vigil is over.
"Our holding mourns," Maron says tightly.
Ralon pounces, like the beater that starts the deer before the hunter's bow is strung. "You have no daughters left to marry my son--"
Maron replies stiffly. "I have an unmarried child."
"No //daughter//," Ralon insists. Silver must fill his mind's eye, shining brightly enough to blind him to his placeless talk.
"Kell will be fifteen in three ninedays' time. If that's not soon enough for you, then don't let it be said that //iryu// broke a promised contract."
Trenon's heart squeezes down, stopping the blood in his chest. Larik's sibling? That dooryard //child//? The look on Maron's face promises that his holding will never let the contract die, not after Ralon's display of greed. It's not about Trenon, or the name he brings. Maron will spite the man who came crawling after wealth while their daughter lay dying. Irthu's name, whatever it once was, means nothing now. Only a sound, a memory, a placeless pride.
[[ϒ Larik is dead, and her promises with her.->release]]
[[ϒ Trenon stands without courtesy and leaves the deepstone.->escape]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Very admirable, if entirely false.")[Very admirable, if entirely false. Ralon might as well announce they had a wager on the exact moment Larik's ghost slips free of her shell.]
(Click-replace: "Does iryu hold up their heads?")[Does iryu hold up their heads? Do they pretend at place while they cheat their betters?]
]}$il[T]ereos, the healing master, brings the final news with a bowed head. He steps into the family room and grips each person's shoulder, starting with the youngest daughter. Trenon stays brooding over his tev, although he lets cynicism touch the corner of his mouth as he watches Tereos make his rounds. Tereos's grip, high, near the base of the neck, conveys more than simple sympathy. Nilos explained it once: a lifepoint pulses there, under the shoulder muscle. In a moment's touch, Tereos can open the breathlines and start the flow of grief. After a full night listening to the vigil, most of iryu holding has been emptied of breath and will. The press of Tereos's fingers will ease them into a peaceful mourning. His deep voice rumbles indistinctly, but the song's words matter less than their slow throb. His murmurs fill the room like the scent of fog: soft, encompassing, veiling sharp edges. One by one, Larik's family leaves for the hearthside, to see Larik's ghost shell washed and wrapped. The holding will give her to the ravens today.
Tereos goes to Amoz, then Grenor, and finishes before Maron. He doesn't acknowledge Ralon or Trenon with so much as a glance, but then, they haven't paid him silver for his frugal condolences. When a healer's songs fail, he does well to use his tricks to sidestep the anger that comes with sorrow. Let the holding snarl over his name when the memory of his touch fades--as long as they pay first.
Ralon stands near Maron, as if he sees himself as one of the holding. Sympathy paints his face like cheap kohl. Trenon pushes to his feet and sets his tev mug on the sideboard. Betrothed or not, he has no business offering Larik to the ravens. He doesn't need the release of the giving. Her death stopped Ralon's clumsy negotiations short--for now. Trenon has no intention of lending them any further legitimacy with his presence.
[[ϒ Without a word to his hosts, Trenon slips into the dooryard.->escape]]$il[A]t fourteen, Trenn finds an untouched glade, a forest without footprints. At least it feels so. All of Asaresta's children have done the same, leaving behind chores and teaching songs to creep into hidden thorny glades or damp windfall caves. Trenn has played with other children before, but invites Nils more cautiously, wearing casual ease like a mask--so proud, so poised! More like hot-faced and prickle-skinned, awaiting rejection.
But on the bank of a stutter-stepped creek, Nils receives Trenn like a high-place host answering the chimes, lofty and distantly pleased. All grey eyes, wide and bright; palms cool and damp when Trenn laces their fingers together. Nils shivers when Trenn brushes a thumb up the long vein on the inner side of Nils' wrist, tracing a flutter of heartbeat. The clearing with its pine needle carpet becomes theirs for a season, just as it must have been other children's once.
The summer after Trenon apprentices as an advocat, he makes his way to the same clearing, mulishly tamping down hope, expecting nothing. But Nils waits there, a child still. Trenon puffs his chest and struts until Nils laughs, and pulls him down. "I'll apprentice to a weaver," Nils murmurs. "And then I'll court you."
An apprentice courting a journeyman must have place ambitions, or silver. Nils's family has neither. Carpenters and field hands. Berin would think her place insulted if Nils' mothers came asking guesting rights on their daughter's behalf. "If you weave tapestries as well as you weave dreams," Trenon returns. Nils snorts with laughter, then rolls on top of Trenon, and they leave words behind.
But then Nilos apprentices to Tereos, the healing master. When they walk out of Asaresta side by side, two young men with too much place to sneak or scamper. If Nilos's holding watches them leave, Trenon doesn't catch them, but their imagined eyes itch between his shoulder blades all the same.
Trenon stoops to the stream's rocky bank and picks up an oval stone. He flicks it over the rippled surface and watches it skip six before sinking. Nilos sits on a fallen log under the shadow of a gnarled fir tree, its blue-green needles tipped with the sticky brown caps of new growth. He doesn't suggest climbing higher or seeking out their clearing. Trenon digs another skipping rock from the shore muck, flicking mud from his fingertips.
"Your holding wants what's best for you," Nilos says. "Dalor honours you, asking you to advance to journeyman so soon."
Trenon's forefinger finds the stone's leading edge. He mimes his throw, without releasing the stone.
"Your parents want to see you settled," Nilos insists.
"They want me out of the deepstone." A journeyman travels overmountain more than he stays home.
"That too." Nilos shrugs, until it becomes a stretch, and he yawns cat-wide at the dappled sun. Trenon's fist tighens around the stone. Nilos came early into his growth and nearly matches Trenon's height, but where Trenon grew slender and spare like Berin, Nilos promises to fill out with a broad strength.
They haven't touched since Nilos apprenticed to Tereos. Trenon tries to keep his back turned, but he keeps sneaking glances. Nilos came of age a season ago, but Trenon loves catching sight of his left-belted tunic, and the soft browns and muted reds that make his snow-shadow eyes stand out.
"Your father might want to keep you in the holding, so he doesn't have to pay for advocat songs," Nilos suggests next.
That would actually make sense. Trenon shakes his head. "Ralon wants peace--Berin's peace, you'll notice, not mine."
Nilos drags a toe through the mulch around his boots. "Ralon and Berin never married again after your other parents died."
And they expect him, their only son, to carry the holding. Trenon whips the stone hard at the stream. It cracks off a submerged rock and thumps into the dirt of the opposite bank.
"They must love each other very much," Nilos says.
"Ralon loves his name. And Berin's silver mine."
"And you."
Trenon turns to Nilos with a scoff. "Ah, so they're scheming to marry me off for my happiness."
"You sang apprenticeship as an advocat."
"And you're full of obvious observations."
"Even Master Dalor couldn't have crafted a better solution to irvu's mine claim."
So Ralon likes to boast. Dalor probably regrets ever saying so. "That's the problem," Trenon mutters. His parents' hints about becoming a journeyman are edged in careful, unspoken desperation. As soon as Trenon's apprenticeship ends, his fees will be his own instead of Dalor's. Berin and Ralon will send him to beg work in every village-next that Cyr can reach without collapsing on his hocks.
Nilos tips his head back, staring empty-eyed into the sky. Trenon resolutely ignores the line of his throat, and the slightly paler line of skin that shows at the collar of his confounded left-belted tunic. They meet on Nilos's sufferance. If Trenon pushes, Nilos might waken to his place and his responsibilities and tell him no.
"Ralon never asked you to plough his fields," Nilos muses, "and he needs men there."
Trenon curls his lip. Falling into a bear trap beats over springing the jaws of a wolf trap--for everyone but the bear. "I wouldn't sing a labour contract at the wages he pays."
"Or //maybe//," Nilos says, as if Trenon's too slow to have realized, "your parents want you to be your own man."
Trenon stoops at the stream's edge, searching for the perfect stone. He can't shrug off Nilos's warm approval the way he can evade his parents' appeal to duty.
And if Trenon sings for journeyman, and leaves Asaresta to find work, won't that be perfectly convenient? Journeymen travel for more than work. They may catch the eye of some marriage prospect overmountain. So they don't have to pass the person they love--loved--every day on the market street.
Well, Nilos can try his soft-hearted guilt on someone else. Trenon won't put a mountain range between them to make his parents' lives easier. He abandons his search for skipping rocks and stretches, popping his shoulder joints. He brushes his hands halfway clean on his trousers and heads for Nilos. "I don't think your apprenticeship changed you as much as you think."
"Oh, really?" Nilos crosses his arms, his full lips curving into a smile.
Trenon hasn't forgotten that invitation. He steps close and plants a hand in the center of Nilos's chest, pushing him off-balance on the fallen log. Half-kneeling over him, his legs bracketing Nilos's, he nudges in until their bodies touch. "Remember when we were children?"
"A season ago, you mean?" Nilos leans back, but Trenon catches his shoulders and eases him closer. "I have place now."
"Mm." Trenon works his fingers into Nilos's curls, tugging his head back, until his mouth opens and the pink of his tongue darts across his lips. "Has that changed you?"
Nilos doesn't answer, but his body softens under Trenon's. Trenon bends down and kisses him. Nilos closes his eyes and tilts back, trusting Trenon's grip. His hand curls into Trenon's tunic for support, then slips underneath. "We can't."
"Tell me no, then."
"We can't marry." Nilos kisses him back, sun-warm.
Trenon hums an easy denial. He slips back into their childish fantasies too easily--the dream that they might share a pleasure room someday. Trenon feels warmed through, with Nilos's eagerness rising to meet him. "I'll sing the vows. You on the hearthside..."
Nilos turns his face away, breaking their mingled breaths. "Don't sing me songs of what I can't have."
"If we had our own deepstone, an independent holding--" More than once Nilos shuddered under Trenon's mouth as he whispered //Nilis...//
"I'm a healer. I can't live on the hearthside." Nilos stands sharply, stronger than he has any right to be. "Don't pretend I can."
"You chose healing over being who you wanted, and you think that //isn't// pretending?"
Nilos let out a bark of laughter, short and sharp. "Who's being obvious now?"
A sudden sharp ache stops Trenon's breath. "I sang your apprenticeship for you, didn't I?"
Nilos's eyes are as empty as winter. "I don't want to lose you. But I've made my choice."
"You still want me," Trenon insists.
Nilos licks his lips. He turns back to the village path, and disappears downmountain.
(if: (random: 0,1) is 0)[(link-goto: "ϒ They don't meet in the forest again until the morning Larik is given.","advocat")](else:)[(link-goto: "ϒ They don't meet in the forest again until the morning Larik is given.","healer")] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "won't that be perfectly convenient?")[won't that be perfectly convenient? His parents can sit back while he earns silver. Nilos can forget him, as childhood sweethearts are supposed to do. Trenon snorts.]
]}$il[T]renon hauls himself up the mud-slick path that leads upmountain behind iryu holding. His thighs burn with each reaching step, and his knees still ache from the climb down from Asaresta pass, but he ignores the tremble in his muscles. He grabs at trailing, knotty roots and low branches to pull himself up faster. Breath rasps in his throat. A stitch stabs under his ribs. At last, gasping, he throws himself down on a jutting boulder beside the path. The rain has stopped. Pine branches wave above him, closer than the spinning sky.
Perhaps half a candlemark passes before he hears footsteps on the path. Trenon closes his eyes and swallows dryness. He hoped Nilos would follow him. He wants to grab Nilos the moment he comes close enough and pull him into a powerful kiss. Instead, his fingers twitch on his knees as he forces himself to stillness. He needs more than anything for Nilos to have come for him, seeking him out, not simply escaping Larik's death.
He hears the footsteps pause on the path. After a moment, Nilos says, "She's given."
Trenon's fists twist; it almost hurts, being right. He leans his head back against the tree behind him to feign relaxation. If he could have everything he wants, everything he aches for, he'd still be jealous of Nilos's healing. If he and Larik had married, and he learned to love her, he'd still have been jealous when Nilos joined them both.
He counts breaths as Nilos climbs the last few feet up to the boulder. The brush of fabric on fabric, the sense of weight settling. And then, Nilos's firm shoulder next to his. Trenon's fingernails bite into his palms. He wants to say //I'm sorry//--for Larik's loss, for Nilos's failed vigil song--but the words won't come. Nilos must have known even as he sang that there was no hope.
[[ϒ Instead he tucks Nilos's head against his shoulder and says, "I'd give you my breath if I could."->advocat]]
[[ϒ Nilos's hand finds his and Trenon takes it, tracing Nilos's fingers. "You did everything you could."->healer]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "he'd still have been jealous when Nilos joined them both.")[he'd still have been jealous when Nilos joined them both. //Monogamous. Invert.// Wretched words to hook himself on.]
]}$il[W]ith a sharp breath, Nilos buries his face in Trenon's neck. Trenon wraps his arm around Nilos's shoulders. Nilos shudders in his hold. Trenon digs the ball of his thumb into the knotted muscle under Nilos's shoulderblade, easing and soothing. (if: (history:) contains "release")[If only he was a healer, he could find that lifepoint that offers release.] He squeezes his eyes shut and breathes. After a long moment, Nilos's inhalations begin to match his. His body droops against Trenon's. His breathing deepens. Bundled in his tunic and cloak, Nilos feels over-warm. Trenon sighs. Nilos gives a small, unconscious twitch; his lips move in an echo of a swallow, against Trenon's collarbone.
Trenon leans back against the trunk behind him, and settles Nilos more securely against his chest. "You gave too much."
He thought Nilos had fallen asleep, but Nilos stirs, and shakes his head slightly. "Just tired."
Trenon's fingers tighten slightly on Nilos's shoulder. "Did Tereos notice how you've drained yourself?"
"Hm." The sleepy murmur is a denial and a defence of Tereos. "He's the master."
"I should have put more protections in your apprenticeship song." Trenon had been an apprentice himself when he sang Nilos into his trade. Arrogant enough to think he knew what he was doing, angry enough to push the negotiations too hard, too obviously. As it stands, Tereos can demand that Nilos sing all the vigils in this village and the next, and Nilos can't say no. (if: $fromAsarotha is true)[Trenon thinks of Finoc. That song should have been Nilos's. Trenon bound that Asarotha teaching master with chains of iron. If the master learns of Finoc's invertism, he won't find it easy to slough Finoc off and throw him out of his apprenticeship. If only Nilos could claim the same rights.]
"You were note-perfect." A smile lifts the corner of Nilos's mouth, though he doesn't open his eyes.
"Dalor demands that much," Trenon says. Each melody, and all its variations: a boy's coming of age or a girl's; a marriage's third spouse or its fifth. Trenon knows which modulations to offer, and which he can accept in negotiation. A good advocat commands his fee not simply for crafting a song in his patron's best interest, but for performing a singable composition with depth and vigour.
Trenon learned the songs like a butcher learns to cut meat, with a honed knife. He flensed meaning from every note until Dalor complained he'd stripped the breath from them. Trenon could have told him that the advocat //is// the breath of the song he crafts. He binds together the contract's parties, body and ghost. If Trenon has a talent for the work, it's to distinguish what's right from what's fair and what's true. They aren't the same, and knowledge of the songs alone won't make them so.
He gave Nilos the best apprenticeship song he knew, but not the one he needed. "The songs are just words," he says. If he'd stoppped to think, he could have given Nilos more than just security from overwork. He could have demanded that Tereos teach everything Nilos asked, not just the songs he knew. Tereos can point to Trenon's song to excuse any laxness in his teaching, while Nilos can't do the same to defend his learning. "Even Dalor doesn't know when I twist them."
Nilos stiffens. "You change the songs?"
Trenon shifts to look at him, surprised. "When I see a need." (if: $fromAsarotha is true)[He starts to explain about Harin--how she'd wanted to use place and silver to bully him--but Nilos cuts across him.]
"You're supposed to be honest with the holdings you deal with!"
"Changing the songs //is// honest. What could they rely on otherwise? Tradition?"
Nilos struggles free of Trenon's grasp. He scratches both hands through his hair and scrubs at his face. Trenon stares at him. He never meant to upset Nilos. He'd wanted to apologize, if anything. "The songs aren't always right," he starts.
Nilos pushes to his feet and stalks to the end of the boulder, then twists back.
Trenon pushes to his feet, trying to catch Nilos's gaze. "So I make them what they need to be. Nilos!" He catches Nilos's elbows and pulls him in. Nilos's eyes look bruised with a night's missed sleep. He tugs half-heartedly against Trenon's hold. "What is it?"
Nilos bites his lip. "Why are you telling me this?"
Trenon lets his arms drop in a shrug. His holding's place meant that Ralon could go to Dalor and foist an apprentice on him. Other holdings prudently choose trades for their children that match their resources and their needs. Not Ralon, no. He felt entitled to decide that his son was suited to take on an advocat's place. One more extravagance in a string of extravagant decisions. And now by Ralon's interference, Larik's parents want to shift Trenon's betrothal to a //child//. An abomination to the songs--all so that his holding, this village, this entire forsaken mountain can pretend that Trenon's not an invert. "Why did you have to become a man to heal, Nilos? Because it's traditional..." He stops, swallows. He can't cut Nilos with that argument all over again. "Larik's given. The contract's broken, no matter what Ralon says."
"They want you to marry Kell." Nilos's voice cracks. "It's your song. You're betrothed to iryu's youngest daughter."
Trenon feels like he stepped backwards off the boulder, into empty space. "Larik's //sibling// is not their daughter!" He closes his eyes and runs through the vows. He left them open on purpose, leaving leeway where he could, at Larik's urging. Trenon shakes his head, takes two jerky steps, and stops at the edge of the scarp. He couldn't have made that mistake. No, not a mistake--a loophole. Maron never would have exploited it, if Ralon hadn't hovered like a raven. If Larik's sibling comes of age as a woman, then Trenon will be just as bound to her as he ever was by the promises he sang to Larik herself.
Trenon thinks of Zayelik, the trader who brought him word of Larik's illness. How easily she spoke of downmountain marriages; their openness, their capacity for freedom. Trenon would wager every whit he's earned that Zayelik's patrons have pressured her to marry. "It's different downmountain," Trenon mutters. Different, but no better. City marriages don't distinguish among a first marriage's spouses, they marry in threes and fours at a time, but their contracts choke tighter for all that.
Larik promised to help Nilos as soon as the marriage opened. Her sibling never made any such promises and has no reason to. Whatever bound Trenon to the betrothal he sang with Larik is over. Let her holding take every whit of irthu's silver. Trenon's place is his own.
Trenon takes Nilos's hands. Nilos meets his eyes, mouth soft and serious. Trenon says, with all the breath of an advocat's vow: "If I can't marry you, I want to go downmountain with you. If you won't take my breath I'll give you body and ghost."
Nilos's eyes widen. Trenon sinks his hands into Nilos's hair and pulls him close, and kisses him like a song.
[[ϒ And hears a gasp behind him.->child bride]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "You gave too much.")[You shouldn't give your breath in vigils.]
(Click-replace: "at Larik's urging.")[at Larik's urging. She, favoured daughter of her holding, had better luck convincing her parents that the contract was solid. She snuck the independence clause in, and Trenon's certain Shayin never would have allowed that if she'd believed Larik was serious.]
(Click-replace: "Trenon would wager every whit he's earned that Zayelik's patrons have pressured her to marry.")[Trenon would wager every whit he's earned that Zayelik's patrons have pressured her to marry. Zayelik's marriage contract will include a clause to bring her into her patrons' holding. Suddenly her patrons' share of her profits increases from one ninth to nine.
Could that be why Zayelik wants to shift her operations upmountain? Oh, certainly, it's because she loves city freedom so much.]
]}$il[N]ilos lets out a huff of breath, eloquently resentful. Trenon ignores it, focusing on the slender length of Nilos's fingers. Nilos hates himself in the aftermath of a vigil. He refuses to acknowledge that vigils end in death far more often than they can hold shell and ghost togther. Nilos craves reassurance so that he can deny it, and pile guilt on top of grief. Slowly Trenon traces Nilos's pale palm, the dusty skin of his knuckles. He refuses the confrontation while Nilos grows stiffer in his arms, more resentful.
"You're angry at Larik for needing me," Nilos says at last, his shoulders rocky with tension.
Nilos's accusation has the benefit of being true, but this moment is about Nilos, not Trenon. If Nilos's master didn't say anything then Trenon will. Nilos's fatigue is his own fault. He gave every scrap of his strength to Larik. "I'm angry at you for not being careful," Trenon shoots back.
Trenon's admission deflates Nilos somewhat. "No. I was too careful. Too cautious."
Nilos wants to be miserable. Not just sad, but deliberately, self-punishingly wretched. He's doing his utmost to shut down and wall himself off. He feels responsible, and he'd rather wallow in his pain than admit the real cause.
Trenon allows himself a scoff. "The truth is you did everything right, and it wasn't enough." Nilos draws away but Trenon leans hard against him, insisting on contact, on warmth. He refuses to make a scapegoat of Nilos. "The songs are nothing but words."
Nilos's lower lip sets mulishly. Trenon watches it, and licks his own. "And a person's nothing but body," he says, caustic.
Nilos saw Larik last. He washed her ungiven shell before wrapping it. Master Tereos forced that on him too. Trenon squeezes down on Nilos's hand. "Nilos," he says, waiting until Nilos fixes red-rimmed eyes on him. "Tereos told you to sing the vigil. You're the apprentice. You only have his tools."
Nilos shakes loose of him, mouth crimped. "That's not true." He opens his mouth, then clamps it shut and glares at his boots.
"What do you mean?" Trenon searches past the peakiness at Nilos's eyes and mouth. This stoniness goes beyond Nilos's usual insistence on blame. "What did you do?"
"I--I brewed a different song. The song I thought she needed." He spits the last word like acid, and stares at Trenon with a hint of defiance, expecting shock. Demanding it.
Trenon sits back slightly, but he can't help the smile's ghost that rises to his lips. "Good for you."
Nilos glares at him. "I broke faith! With her, and with Tereos. And she still died."
"And which of those burns worst?" Trenon says. Nilos breached his apprenticeship vows and Larik wasn't even grateful enough to live.
"It worked," Nilos mutters into his hands, squeezing at the bridge of his nose. "It worked. It nearly did."
"Until it didn't," Trenon says. Nilos is honourable, but everyone's honourable until they're not. With Larik, he finally reached the point where expediency mattered more. "She's been dying for ninedays. If you'd tried it sooner you might have had a chance."
"So you admit I'm responsible." Nilos pushes to his feet. "That's what you mean, isn't it? I had a responsibility do what I thought best, no matter what other people told me, my master included?"
"Tereos is master healer //here//." Trenon loves the burning stubbornness in Nilos's eyes, that angry, thwarted need to be right. It took Larik's death to break the chains of Nilos's reliance on note-perfect songs. Trenon thinks she'd be proud.
Nilos needed healing more than anything else. More than love, more than feeling comfortable in his own skin. Trenon could never ask him to leave his master, not until this moment, when Nilos took the first step himself. Trenon's heart jumps in his throat. "They heal differently downmountain."
"I know." Nilos's quiet voice belies the tension in his body.
"You--"
"They use different songs, different combinations. They have access to more plants, even from the sea. I know!"
"If I'd been a better advocat, I would've stipulated that Tereos teach you anything you asked," Trenon says evenly. Two years later he can see how he might have tweaked the harmony, altered a phrase; bound Tereos more closely to Nilos's benefit. He climbs to his feet and plants himself in Nilos's path, interrupting his pacing.
Nilos stops, one hand squeezing the back of his neck. Gravel edges his voice. "He can't teach me what he doesn't know."
Trenon resists pointing out that Tereos probably knows more than he's taught so far. A long apprenticeship profits the master. "But if he's any good as a master, he'll send you where you can learn."
"Downmountain." It sounds like defeat.
Trenon nods. "You can't go back, so go forward."
"I can't. I can't leave."
"Not today." Trenon doesn't want to plead; it catches in his throat, though he's certain it shows through. "But if you don't know whether your song worked--if you helped Larik, or didn't--then you have a responsibility to learn. If you want to load yourself with guilt then at least do something with it."
Nilos shakes his head, silent. Trenon cups the back of Nilos's head and draws him close, their breaths mingling. Forehead to forehead, he closes his eyes. He won't beg, but maybe, at last, he can ask. "Downmountain. With me." He kisses Nilos's forehead, his temple, the corner of his lips. Not pleasure, but solace; a slow lingering warmth that eases Nilos closer.
[[ϒ And hears a gasp behind him.->child bride]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "A long apprenticeship profits the master.")[A long apprenticeship profits the master. Tereos shouldn't let Nilos's progress lag to justify claiming the fees Nilos earns, but silver is silver.]
]}$il[T]renon twists on his heel and catches sight of someone on the path, dressed in mousy dun and near-grey. Larik's sibling, that ungainly child. Stubborn-jawed, long-limbed, with the fawn's awkwardness that comes at fourteen. Trenon forgets the kid's name. A placeless snip hanging around iryu holding.
Trenon turns away from Nilos, as if none of the heat between them is his. Trenon has dreamed of standing up before his parents and his village to proclaim his love, but he never considered what he'd do if he and Nilos were simply caught. The kid will probably spread the news like a blue jay.
Trenon laughs, then snaps his mouth shut on the sound. "Nilos, may I introduce my betrothed?" //Betrothed// carries the masculine or the feminine, but Trenon contorts his mouth to give it a childish turn.
Nilos's face tightens, lips thinning. He moves away from Trenon in two definite, jarring steps. "I'm so sorry, Kell."
Kell--the juvenile name underscores how outrageous this marriage will be. Jumbled shame and pride push him to keep going. "I certainly hope you don't mind marrying an invert."
Kell's eyes widen momentarily, but then surprise disappears in the belligerent set of shoulders. "I'd marry //nine// inverts if they weren't //ravens//!"
Trenon lets out a bark of surprised laughter. "Quite a holding," he says, with a hint of feral grin. He takes in Kell's muddy boots in a swift glance. The path from iryu deepstone continues past the boulder. Iryu holding claims pastures for their sheep and chamois above the treeline. But a grieving holding wouldn't send a child out in the rain to check the flocks. With the cloud-dulled sun to point direction, Trenon realizes: they're on the east side of Asaresta river gorge. The giving place is opposite, to the west. There must be some clear point where Kell will be able to watch Larik's shell being thrown to the ravens. Children are barred from givings, but Kell doesn't care. Why wouldn't a fourteen-year-old, or any child, grieve a sister?
"Don't let them force you," he says, dropping into weary seriousness. "A child can't sing a contract, and an adult can't be forced against their place."
Kell gives him an odd stare, as if he changed out of all recognition. He supposes he has; he feels spent. He can give advice to a placeless child, but the terms of his song name //iryu's youngest daughter//, whether a woman grown or a filly who was a foal the day before. The mistake galls him, but at this point Kell can fight the marriage more than he can--he sang his promises; Kell hasn't, yet.
"All you care about is the marriage," Kell says in a slow, dead voice.
Trenon opens his mouth to answer, but Nilos grips his arm. Kell wears a half-length child's cloak, not true mourning grey, but the faded unbleached wool comes the closest to grey that a child might wear. Kell even braided a lank, unpracticed giving queue.
Trenon draws in a deep breath through his nose. The path above them is steep and wet and cold, and Kell will climb it for Larik's sake. "You're right," he says. At a giving, women sing the acceptance of death, while men have the the duty to call back the shell's name, to keep them close. A child has no part. Nothing to offer. For Kell's sake more than Larik's, Trenon says, "May she be known."
"Breath, body, and ghost," Nilos murmurs.
Without a word, Kell pushes past them, on past the steep corner above. Whether Kell will expose them or not, clearly the betrothal contract has another challenger.
Nilos watches Kell go. "You don't make it easy, do you?"
"I'm a promised man, Nilos. I'll fight it if you will. Otherwise, what's the point?" If their parents force the marriage, Trenon will at least offer Kell the respect of seeing what he's really like. "Are you coming down?"
"One of us should wait for Kell."
"Not me. I won't be much consolation." Trenon sighs, running a hand over his forehead. Nilos will get soaked through, the night after giving all his breath in a vigil. "You can't save everyone."
[[ϒ The smile that quirks Nilos's lips makes Trenon's heart squeeze sharply. Softly, Nilos says, "Not even myself."->conciliation]]
[[ϒ Trenon asked, and that was hard enough. He turns back to the path, but Nilos catches his hand and says, "Take me home."->entwine]]
(link-goto: "ϒ The rain rushes up the mountain, pattering from branches overhead into the dead needles around them.","giving") $il[T]renon takes Nilos at his word and leads him to irthu deepstone. For their place, Ralon and Berin must have joined Larik's giving procession. With the rain and the steep climb ahead, with a laden pony and the mud, they could be gone until nightfall. Trenon doesn't pause to kindle the ashy coals in the sitting room grate. He takes a flint and striker, lights a rush candle, and leads the way to his sleeping room. Without tapestries to muffle drafts, the room stays spare and chill. Trenon keeps a herb-strewn clothes press in one corner, and a wide set of shelves for his travelling gear against one wall. The candle sputters warm light over his pallet, a leather-wrapped straw tick cushioned by down quilts. Nilos hesitates, standing in the dim doorway.
Trenon ignores Nilos's opportunity to escape. He tugs free of his boots and sheds his clothes. His fingers whisper over Nilos's belt, the left-knotted shackle. His tunic next, slipped open and skimmed from his shoulders, so that Nilos's skin shows flame-burnished. The lines of him are familiar, dark nipples and a narrow waist, but they've never done this with four walls around them, with the luxury of time. Trenon inhales and moves closer to touch.
Nilos clings to him when Trenon holds him. Skin to skin, Trenon can finally give back the breath that Nilos so badly needs. With one palm, Trenon marks the dip of Nilos's spine, the curve of shoulder into nape, and pulls him into a kiss.
Nilos has chosen this way of singing remembrance for what they had together as children. He shoves Nilos back on his pallet and, with ferocious heat, sets about drawing out Nilos's peak, until Nilos is rough and gasping with need.
"Is this what you want?" Trenon demands, lifting his damp mouth and abandoning Nilos on some far precipice. He wants Nilos to need him, he wants Nilos to beg for what Trenon's all too willing to give him.
Nilos lifts up on his elbow and cups Trenon's jaw with one hand. "I can live without pleasure," he says. His clearwater eyes are dark as deep pools. He rolls Trenon over to take command, with lips and tongue, readying him. They join together, Trenon's back arching, Nilos straining to meet him.
(if: (random: 1,2) is 1)[(link-goto: "ϒ Trenon ignores the unspoken. Kell may choose to be iryu's son, and free him.","son")](else:)[(link-goto: "ϒ Trenon ignores the unspoken. Kell may choose to be iryu's daughter, and bind him.","daughter")]
[[ϒ They finish, aching, too soon.->after]]$il[T]renon wakes when the warm press of Nilos's chest against his back disappears. Cool air slides under the quilts. Trenon holds his breath as if Nilos is a spring bear sniffing around his tent. He listens to the whisper of clothes on skin. The door scrapes on the uneven floor.
Long after Nilos's warmth leached from the blankets, Trenon lies awake. Pleasure echoes in his breathlines. Nilos laughs and says a healer would never open the breath for love alone, but Trenon wonders. He tastes Nilos's ghost as much as his body and breath when they're together.
The wind rises with the sun, shredding the clouds. Soon every holding claiming nine paces of flat land clamours to sing contracts with field hands. Labourers wander into Asaresta and proceed to dither over terms. Trenon would have a full season's work, but Dalor is his master and takes his pick. Trenon needs to snag what fees he can overmountain, but his early spring trip for the cairn-setting left Cyr footsore. Trenon boils his clothes and mends his gear to give Cyr a threeday's rest, and sings a minor rite in exchange for a full sack of bran.
The morning of his departure, he and Ralon are sharing silence over tev when Berin shoves open the sitting room door and chunks a steaming kettle of tea down on the sideboard. Ralon grunts a mild objection, which Berin ignores. She sweeps up their mugs and pours. Peppermint, hot enough to scald. Once they've sipped, Berin enthrones herself in a straight-backed oak chair. "Iryu holding refuses to confirm whether they'll celebrate a daughter."
Ralon's mouth curls in disapproval. "Unfortunate."
"Unfortunate you counted Larik's silver before her siblings," Trenon points out. Whatever iryu holding finally decides, Ralon won't soon forget the sting of being outmaneuvered.
Berin offers him a flat stare. "Unfortunate for the child," she suggests, and delicately looks away.
Trenon pushes his mug aside. Berin steeps tea too long; only guests merit birch sugar.
Ralon tugs at his lip. "It will look placeless to harry them for a decision. Besides, Dalor needs Trenon overmountain."
Ralon loves to act as Dalor's patron, ignoring Dalor's condescension in taking Trenon as his apprentice. If Ralon had hired Trenon to sing his field hand contracts these past two years, then they might still claim those fields instead of whittling them away year after year. But Ralon will have Dalor, because Dalor defers to Ralon's place. Dalor sings a standard contract for a standard fee, with no regard for Ralon's cash flow or his retreating field cairns. Well, once Trenon marries, it won't be his concern. If he marries. "When does the child come of age?" he asks.
"Three ninedays," Berin says. Ice rimes her manner--Ralon shouldn't raise the subject of silver, her domain. "If iryu names a son, we'll know they break the contract to insult us."
And Berin will count their scorn in silverweights. If iryu holding chooses a son, it shows they'd rather pay than take Trenon's name--and that name will suffer by the refusal. If iryu holding chooses a daughter, Berin loses the contract-breaking price and Trenon's future fees, but her name will stand clear. Her tight anger balances her eager need and her pride. She can't control iryu's choice and that rankles most of all.
Trenon doubts Larik's family has better use for the silver than his does. They'll buy downmountain hardwood to warm Maron's toes. But for Berin and Ralon it could mean the difference between freezing, or not, come winter. Either way, his parents need full coffers before iryu holding announces their decision.
[[ϒ Trenon closes his eyes. Three nights since, with Nilos, he had a chance--a choice.->summer]]
[[ϒ Berin is not fond of Trenon suggesting his duty to irthu is a choice. Trenon takes up his mug of harsh mint. "I'll travel to Asarvinya today."->break]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "which Berin ignores.")[which Berin ignores. She loves to breach the homeside's boundary on a pretext, and bringing food is her prerogative.]
]}$il[A]s promised, Trenon reaches Asarvinya as the sun slips into the notch between two peaks. He spends a threeday singing labour contracts, then leaves for the village-next. That night and the next he spreads his bedroll under the stars and watches the sky wheel overhead. He needs to offer Nilos more than rebellious words; more than grand, placeless gestures.
Pouch full of silverwhits, Trenon plods down to Asaresta at the end of six ninedays. Cyr needs stabling and Trenon needs to wash the travel grime from face and armpits. He might find the strength to face a marriage to iryu's youngest daughter, if he knew there was a steaming bath cask at the end of it. Instead, Ralon grunts and offers him a bowl of cold tev. Shoulders hunching into an anticipatory flinch, Trenon asks, "The wedding?"
"In a threeday," Ralon says. "Kelil will meet you at iryu."
Trenon pushes away the lumpy, congealed tev. "May she have the joy of me," he mutters, and retreats to his pallet.
Sulking doesn't stop the sun from rising on his wedding day. Trenon squeezes himself to stillness through wash, dressing, and braiding. He feels like layers of spring snow on a south slope. An ice-melt trickle here, a widening crack there, until all at once he breaks free, scrambling and tumbling and unstoppable.
He finds himself in front of irlu deepstone with no intention of arriving there. The path leads to the guest door. Trenon strides through the dew-silvered grass to tap on the shutter of the children's room instead. Nilos's younger sibling flings it open. "What're you doing here?"
Trenon sets his lips. Anything he says will throw his place to the ravens. But if place doesn't matter then he shouldn't care that he looks ridiculous, dressed in his wedding robes and begging guesting rights of a child. "Will you fetch Nilos for me?"
The child gives him a skeptical stare with familiar grey eyes, then grins gap-toothed. Apparently deciding that this is a game, the kid says, "Welcome to irlu," a cheerful place-insult coming from a child.
A moment later, Trenon hears low voices from the corridor. Irlu's youngest, just tall enough to peer over the sill, stares at him while sucking thoughtfully on one wrist. Beyond the children's door, bootsteps tap and hinges squeak. Nilos circles around the deepstone through the grass and drags Trenon away from the window by his elbow. "You're away ninedays with no word and this is how you return?"
The toddler watches them solemnly through the window. The other kid is probably listening, too, and that one's old enough to repeat a conversation.
Trenon came to proclaim himself to anyone who will listen. No matter if Nilos's siblings can hear. He meets Nilos's burning eyes squarely. "Tell me not to go through with it."
"It's your wedding day," Nilos says, clipped and harsh. He shoves Trenon away from the deepstone into the shadows of a half-hidden deerpath past the garden. "Kelil came of age a woman so that this marriage could happen."
Trenon yanks his arm out of Nilos's grip. He left for a journeyman's tour, as Nilos knows very well. Nilos once marked his homecomings with warm-eyed anticipation. Trenon spins around to stop Nilos from prodding him further from irlu. "She's fifteen, Nilos. She's a child."
Nilos's eyes snap at the place-insult. "//She// came of age," he says, emphasizing the feminine. "She can enter contracts--"
"Four years' difference--" Trenon bites down on the argument. All the reasons he shouldn't marry crowd his tongue. He and Kell--Kelil as she is now--have nothing in common. Nothing to found a holding on, let alone a marriage. She hates him for Larik's death, and he can't blame her. Her holding used her as a contractual stop-gap; his parents sneeringly accepted. And none of that matters! The betrothal was sung and sealed two seasons past. Trenon came to Nilos for tenderness, not accusations.
Trenon searches Nilos's face for a sign that his arrival means anything to him. He circles Nilos's hands with his and tries to draw him close. "I'm not getting married," he says. "I'd pay the contract-breaking price first."
Nilos swallows. "Don't."
"I can take on the debt--" He ignores the details--//debt to whom?// No one in Asaresta is likely to lend him a silverweight.
"Don't ask me, Trenon."
Trenon tightens his grip. "Come with me," he says, the words bare as autumn branches.
Nilos slips his hand from Trenon's grip. "I thought you understood--"
Nilos declared them finished six ninedays ago, his farewell spoken in shared pleasure. How lovely for him, how uncomplicated, how //cowardly//--
"--I'm an apprentice. I can't leave Tereos."
"But you want to. You can find a city healer who'll teach you properly." Trenon knows that look of sick yearning on Nilos's face.
Nilos doesn't look at him that way.
He scrubs one hand over his face, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "I love you, but I can't live with you dreaming up these fantasies."
Healers love to rip off the dressing before the stitches grow entwined with the skin. Trenon can't help digging at the wound. "It's not a fantasy, it's a choice." //If you love me--// Trenon reins himself.
"We were too young when we fell in love. We couldn't know." Nilos's voice is dull but his eyes are earnest.
"I knew," Trenon says. He wants Nilos to see his desperation, his need; Nilos surrenders to need like he's giving in to pleasure. "I //knew//. I thought you did too."
Nilos should reach for him, reassure him. Instead, he steps back. "You fell irrevocably in love at fourteen, but you call your betrothed a child."
Trenon rolls his eyes and allows Kelil her adulthood: "//She//'s not the point. This is about you and me."
Nilos's eyes are grey as ice on an autumn pond. "Was Larik so irrelevant to you?"
Trenon shuts his mouth. Nilos tried to save his friend and couldn't, so now he believes he'll kill every patient if he doesn't imitate his master's every breath. "No," he says. Truth first. "But she's given. You couldn't heal her. That has nothing to do with whether you were right to try!"
Sallow with shaking anger, Nilos says, "Larik was my friend, and she loved Kelil. May she be known, Trenon. You want to hurt me because I've told you what you already know--you'll be married today."
"Not if you'd--"
Nilos chops him short with one curt hand. "You'd make me complicit."
"Kelil doesn't want to marry me. Her holding's using her--"
"She's honouring Larik--"
"Let her! //I'll// break place, so she doesn't have to. The contract-breaking price would go a long way to setting her up in her trade. There--am I still so awful?"
Nilos presses his lips together. "No," he says shortly.
"Truly?" Trenon asks, testing Nilos's admission. "You admit that sometimes a person might have a valid reason to break a contract? Like when they're being ripped apart from trying to be something that they're not." If Tereos had demanded Nilos amputate an arm to become his apprentice, Nilos would have, and that wound might have healed sooner than demanding Nilos remain a man. "Come with me."
Nilos's voice softens. "You change your advocacy songs on a whim--"
"If there's reason," Trenon corrects. He spent four years learning melody variations. Clearly the songs can change. Healers should be free, too, to invent their own methods, to use what works.
Nilos laughs softly, and wipes damp from his eyes. "That's fine, Trenon. But I wonder--why is it //your// reasons are the only ones that are ever good enough?"
Trenon stops short. Nilos loves him. Nilos wants to go downmountain. He wants to be free, as much as Trenon ever has. So why won't he //go//?
[[ϒ "If it's so much better downmountain, you can travel there yourself," Nilos says.->ceremony]]
[[ϒ "If I ever go to the city, it won't be to live up to what you call love."->tentative]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "You'd make me complicit.")[You'd break a contract to a person who never hurt you, whose only offense is marrying you to save your place.]
]}$il[T]he sun burns like a coppersmith's forge. The hammering heat throbs in Trenon's head, a roiling counterpart to his churning stomach. The stream ahead begins at a seeping spring, and may still hold more than a dead puddle among dust-grey rocks. He should have reached it already, but even with the promise of water, Cyr won't willingly move out of his indifferent, rolling walk. He's protesting, with equine stubbornness, Trenon's weight added to his usual packs and gear. Trenon should dismount and walk as they climb up towards Asaresta pass. Not least because riding makes the nausea worse. But the thought of pushing uphill on his own feet makes him want to collapse on the side of the trail, bury his face between his knees, and sleep. Hungry, thirsty, sick, but most of all dead tired of travelling. Six ninedays--seven, by the time he reaches Asaresta, at this swaying pace.
Stubborn or not, Cyr raises his head when he scents water, and moves forward with more will if not more speed. As soon as he reaches the stream, he yanks on the reins and buries his nose in the water, not bothering to wait for Trenon's shaky dismount. He'll need to haul Cyr back and walk him cool before he sucks down so much water he gives himself colic. For the moment, Trenon joins him, carefully upstream, cupping his hands and splashing water over his face. His stomach heaves, and Trenon kneels closer over the stream, eyes closed. One palm steadies the pit of his stomach. With the other he props himself up, wrist-deep in a rocky pool.
Heatstruck, that's all. The back of his neck is tender with sunburn. He emptied his waterskin and didn't want to waste a silverwhit on a bucket draw from an Asarvinya well. His stomach won't let him touch the elk jerky he took in kind at the last holding he visited. Trenon leans down, soaking his head in the shallow stream. Nilos would tell him to drink, slowly. Cool his feet and his burnt neck. Sit down in the shade--but if he does that, he'll probably wake up with the daylight disappearing and a resentful, belly-heavy pony.
Shaky, Trenon pushes to his feet. He walks Cyr upstream, ignoring his attempts to plunge his head and escape. Cyr's hide is damp under his saddle blanket. Trenon refuses to spend another night out on this mountain tending to his pony as well as himself. The trail follows the stream for long enough for them both to get their fill without overdoing it. Trenon makes for the lunch spot he should have reached at midday. More trees there, more shade. Logs to sit on. He can hobble Cyr and let him drink and graze.
The stream dries to a trickle at the usual ford. Off the path, a small grassy clearing will give Cyr plenty of reason to stay put. Trenon unties his small pack, food and essentials, and sits heavily. The nausea has faded but he gags at the thought of the jerky. He grimly cracks and chews a handful of hazelnuts until his stomach starts to settle. He wants huckleberry tea--with lots of birch sugar--or wintergreen tev mixed with goats' milk; but he has neither, and has to settle for streamwater.
He tugs a clean linen vest out of the pack, lighter than his current tunic. A bundle of rags and wool padding comes with it. Trenon shoves them back in the pack. He didn't need them this trip. He strips to the waist and squats at the stream, using the tunic as a cloth to scrub sweat from his armpits and lower back. Six ninedays. Nearer seven. Mouth set, Trenon pulls on the sleeveless vest and knots it loosely. The tunic gets a quick wash and wring. He can hang it from Cyr's saddle to dry for tomorrow.
He was still a child when he first needed rags and by now he can set the moon by them. Five villages-next, and back to Asaresta. Seven ninedays.
Trenon tips his head back and closes his eyes. The sun runs red behind his eyelids. //Heatstruck//, he thinks.
He's bearing.
[[ϒ Trenon opens his eyes to the burning dazzle, and lets out a breath that should be a laugh.->broken]]
[[ϒ He could bring a baby to his marriage before setting foot in the pleasure room.->ceremony]]$il[A] threeday later, Trenon rides into Asaresta. He stables Cyr in the common barn and soaks his head in the pony's bucket rather than paying a whit for his own. His clothes dry before he finishes trudging up the cluttered road to irthu deepstone. Children, shoving and laughing, swarm the dooryards around him, but irthu is shut up like an empty adit, looking smaller and meaner than ever.
They shouldn't have raised a single child in an empty holding. Trenon grew up without even the wits to know if he was lonely. He lost the fathers he should have run to crying, the mother who would have fed him up, the siblings who would have grown to brothers and sisters around him. When Tethin died in his bearing, Ralon and Berin should have married again, rather than letting time cement their ruthless loneliness.
Trenon pushes in the homeside door. His marriage looms within a threeday, but he doesn't have the energy to spend on begrudging it. So he'll bring a baby to his marriage. Iryu holding will be happy to get their contract's worth sooner rather than later. At least Trenon won't have to play pleasure games with the child they're pawning off in Larik's place. He's his own proof of fertility.
Hunger leaves a sick knot in his stomach. He balks at asking Berin for food, or waiting for her to cook it if he does. He takes a dry stick of deer jerky from his pack and chews on it while he unpacks.
After ninedays on the road, his own pallet beckons. He doesn't make it that far. He meant to shed the worst of his weariness when he settles in the sitting room's deepest chair, but a moment becomes three, and his eyes close.
When he opens them, Ralon is stooping over him, a worried frown on his face. Trenon ducks away from Ralon's hand, but he's already pressing his palm firmly to Trenon's clammy forehead.
"You're ill," Ralon says, his voice wavering between accusation and concern.
"I don't have a fever," Trenon bites out. He doesn't want to ask for help, and yet in a panicky surge he knows he //wants// help. He resents the queasy roil that won't go away and that refuses to resolve into actual vomiting. "It was a long trip. I'm tired. And thirsty," he admits, self-pity taking over abruptly.
Ralon grunts in disbelief and leaves the room. Trenon slumps down, feeling sorry for himself. With Ralon for an example, Trenon won't make much of a father. Nilos would be better at it than him, and Nilos doesn't even want to be a man! But he's gentle, and patient, where Trenon is rough-edged and awkward. He'd be honest as a bear, and children must want reassurance from fathers. Uncomfortably, Trenon realizes he doesn't know what he wanted differently from his father. Just...to have more than one. To be normal. But the baby will have that in iryu holding. Plenty of uncles and grandfathers, though their love is name-love only.
Trenon takes a sharp, short breath to get himself in hand. Ralon clearly expects Trenon to get up himself and go fetch water if he's so thirsty. But as he thinks it, Ralon comes back in with a mug of steaming tea. Lemongrass and anise. Trenon sips on it. The mug's heat in his hands is welcome. His stomach begins to settle, so that hunger wins over nausea. Trenon feels the sudden prickle of tears. Nothing's actually wrong, and yet he feels stupid and angry.
"When's the wedding?" he asks, forcing his voice dark instead of cracking.
Ralon sits across from him with a grunt. "It's off," he says. "Iryu chose a boy."
Trenon can hardly take in the words. Iryu holding broke the contract when they had irthu in their bow sights and every reason to take the trophy. "A boy?"
"Kelol, as he is now. Came of age three ninedays ago." Ralon's frown deepens. "You look green. You should rest."
Trenon sets his mug down, feeling torpid as a winter fish. His hunger takes a backseat to the realization of his new freedom. When he left on this past tour, he didn't have the least thought of coming home to an iryu son and a broken contract.
His heart thuds against his ribs. At least the marriage pointed to a future. He disdained it, with a haughty, luxurious scorn, but he had planned on it. He'd have the comfort of blaming Ralon and Berin for what his life became. Just as they could blame Tethin, in her dying, for the slow sour fall of irthu holding.
[[ϒ This may be his chance to make his own future, before his parents use him as wedding bait once more.->windfall]]
[[ϒ Will they hesitate if he admits he's bearing?->spite]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "his new freedom.")[his new freedom. Much as he's fought it, he's been expecting the wedding for a year. Berin opened the negotiations last summer. He and Larik were betrothed in fall. ]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "resolution")[ $il[T]renon trudges down from Asaresta pass less than a threeday before his wedding. He hikes through an ague; every muscle aches. He wants to resent his parents for sending him on one last trip for their benefit before he joins a different holding, but although he feels mangled as spring laundry, the journey was a reprieve more than a punishment. He plied his trade and avoided wedding preparations. When he arrives at irthu deepstone, he collapses onto his well-stuffed pallet and falls into a ridiculous midday sleep.
Fortunately, silver weighs heavy enough in his pouch to avoid Berin's criticism. He spends his last free day enduring Ralon fitting him to his guesting robes and conducting a one-sided debate about which 'heirlooms'--clothes and travelling gear--Trenon will take with him to iryu deepstone. The next morning, the sun rises hot enough to make Trenon's head swim. The dew burns away, and the cool green morning turns to sere yellow noon.
](if: (history:)'s last is "resolution")[From](else:)[ $il[F]rom] the outside, Trenon supposes his wedding looks as proper as any betrothal contract fulfilled. Between iryu's constant place-grubbing and irthu's insistence on propriety, the rite manages an air approaching celebratory. (if: (history:)'s last is "break")[Trenon's eyes feel dry enough to burn, and the dew seeped through his boots to chafe his feet. Ralon sets his jaw when he sees the grass clinging to Trenon's hem and says nothing; no one else notices, or cares.] Berin and Ralon will accompany Trenon from his own dooryard to iryu's(if: (history:)'s last is "break")[ and wash their hands of him.]. (if: (history:)'s last is "summer")[They don't know about the baby. Berin will be happier with that ignorance. She has less than a year before Trenon's name passes to iryu.]
Snapping red banners line the route. Iryu's brothers lead the way, weaving marriage harmonies on whistles, xylophones, bells, and pipes. In honour of the spectacle and the promised feast, anyone in Asaresta with a tie to iryu holding cheers on the ghostless parade.
Kelil waits for the procession in iryu dooryard. She has grown a handwidth since Trenon last saw her. With her narrow shoulders and long arms, Kelil's hands look larger than their grasp; instead of slender, she looks gangly as a coyote pup. A child, dressing in her older sister's clothes--sleeves and hems taken in, no waist to speak of. Strands of hair slip from her braids; one catches in her dark eyelashes, but she doesn't move to brush it away. She watches him with surprisingly dark eyes, like stormclouds gathering rain. She reminds him of a spirited pony, wary, alert, with a hint of humour: the kind to ditch a rider and prance free with a shrug. A fence-jumper.
There is nothing wrong with her. Nothing five years' growth and a well-sung apprenticeship won't cure. She became a woman chained to Larik's promises. She did it, he thinks, to reach a higher goal than him. Trenon felt the lightning clap of her anger when she caught him with Nilos, all snap and hiss and dazzling dark. With a twinge, he can admit he likes it.
But she is not Nilos.
If Nilos were here instead--Trenon swallows.(if: (history:)'s last is "break")[ Deceiving himself makes for a sour pleasure.] Nilos, in deep umber--no, give him the honour no one else will: robes in a woman's full, crocusy blue, draping rightwards from shoulder to hip and down again to brush the dais. Trenon's hands tremble, cupping Kelil's cool fist. His voice might have blended with Nilos's, their song echoing pleasure. Nilos, his smile a warm curve, laughter creasing his cloud-bright eyes. No precise and detailed advocat's harmony with him, rights and restrictions and remittances. Promises instead, promises only. //I will. I always.//
A fool's fantasy. Trenon finishes his duet with Kelil. The guests whistle, well-pleased. Trenon hardly registers their bawdy excitement Kelil's eyes widen: an instinct for the trap. The guests don't care that they've been invited to a contract marriage. They all want to watch the two of them make their embarrassed way to the pleasure room together.
[[ϒ Trenon reaches for Kelil's elbow--he can at least do her the service of getting them both out of sight.->retaliation]]
(link-goto: "ϒ He enters iryu deepstone a married man, a member of iryu homeside, with his child bride on his arm.","ghostless") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "and wash their hands of him.")[and wash their hands of him. If Trenon's last bid for Nilos's attention becomes known, any dishonour will belong to his new holding]
]}$il[K]elil guides him to the deepstone's pleasure room, her skin warm with embarrassment. She waves vaguely at the rope-net bed, the small sideboard. Maybe she's had sweethearts and maybe not; Trenon doubts any of them have meant much to her. With any sort of forethought she'd have a contract betrothal in place that would have superceded any inheritance of Larik's. Trenon forces a bored, distant look onto his face, half-expecting Kelil to mumble a question about exactly what they're meant to do.
The marriage vows stipulate fertility. Iryu holding gains Trenon's name with the birth of the marriage's first child, not before. (if: (history:) contains "summer")[Kelil won't have to work for that. ]For most newlyweds, especially younger ones, //fertility// calls to mind images of elk in lek. Bearing and breeding have more in common with duty than with pleasure. Kelil may not know much about either.
But instead, Kelil no sooner crosses the rag rug than she drops into the chair and starts digging free of her boots. With a grunt, she strips off her stockings, and grimaces at her feet as she extends them. With a final wriggle of toes, she stands and turns to him. "All right, then."
The situation takes on a strange sheen, like looking through a wavy pane of city glass. Trenon sits heavily on the edge of the rope-net bed; it gives so softly under him he nearly falls backwards into the down tick. Kelil sheds her clothes easier than snakeskin, down to linens that are washed thin and fit so easily that they must be hers, not Larik's. Trenon finds himself stealing glances rather than watching outright, and forces himself to appraise her honestly. Her comfort and confidence entice him, like a veil flicked back to show the person behind the place. She advances, poised on the balls of her feet, her eyes intent. Between the two of them, Trenon shouldn't be the one acting like a landed fish! But then Nilos never approached him as Kelil does, like a stalking cat.
Kelil traps his knees between hers. Her hand drops to his shoulder. Humour lifts one corner of her narrow, thin-lipped mouth. Her eyes held blank apprehension during the rite, but now she looks alight, interested. Trenon reads anger in the tension of her shoulders. Well, why shouldn't she be angry? Why shouldn't he?
He coils tighter, a bristling barncat. If she assumes she'll be able to //please// him--
Kelil tilts her head, her smile fading a bit as she leans in. "I am sorry," she says.
Then she retreats, the slight weight of her hand, the press of her knees. Like clouds boiling to thunderheads that fade into rainless heat.
Trenon lets out a breath and reminds himself of the child he saw outside. Lanky, with a promise of strength to come. Shorter than he is by a hand or more. Fine hair falling out of its plaits. Kelil's too young to even be fitted for her own formal clothes--or did she //intend// to offer place-insult by wearing Larik's fever-tainted hand-me-downs to the wedding?
"You should have gone to the city," she says, slumping back down into the chair and rubbing at her bare feet.
The worldly trader! Not apprenticed yet, never left Asaresta. A //child//. Presuming to tell him what he already knows. What does she think, that he married her as a //first// resort? That she can possibly know more than he does about the city?
"Downmountain freedom," he jeers. Sweat chills his armpits, at the small of his back. "Traders love to peddle that along with the rest of their wares. Don't tell me you believe those stories?"
Kelil reaches for her tunic. "I'm apprenticing to Zayelik. She's taking me there. I'll believe what I see."
"So you don't believe me. You think she'll be a city trader forever. You've fallen in love with a trader's tale: Kelil masters the city." Trenon crosses his arms. She shouldn't have touched him! "Let me tell you, little trader, about city freedom. Zayelik owes more than a ninth of her profits to her patrons. She has place-debt to pay just like you. So enjoy your travels. Sing yourself into bondage for all I care."
"They can have my silver, if they earn it," Kelil says. She gives her belt a quick right-twist and knots it. "They won't have any right to my place."
Trenon shakes his head. "Your place doesn't matter there. My name, that your holding married you for, it's placeless down there."
Kelil pulls on her trousers, then checks the fall of light through the window. Trenon follows her glance. The sun dropped a handsbreadth while they //dallied//. Long enough for ceremonial purposes. When Kelil stares at him again, her face is shuttered, angular. Narrower than Nilos's broad cheekbones, his wide-spaced eyes.
"You could have gone with Nilos instead," Kelil says. "If you weren't afraid."
Trenon glares, a black sulk descending. Nilos discarded him like a childhood toy.
There's nothing left to hurt her with except the knife he used on himself. With barbed dignity, he says, "He turned me down."
[[ϒ Kelil raises an eyebrow. "That's not the real reason," she says.->inkling]]
[[ϒ She shrugs past Nilos's betrayal. "If you're not afraid, then prove it. Come with me when I go."->proof]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "about city freedom.")[about city freedom. Their holdings are bigger--more children, more spouses. But it's not one labourer, or three, singing contract to a holding with work to offer. Full holdings sing to other holdings, and not just for a season, but for years, for lifetimes. Not because they choose to! No, for debt: place or silver.]
]}$il[T]renon resists the urge to duck when he crosses the threshold, though the lintel leaves plenty of head room. He keeps his shoulders square as he enters iryu deepstone for the first time as a member of the holding. The guest hallway, with its walls lined in ornamental tapestries and its parquet floor glowing in the summer sun, feels as vulgar as ever. Trenon lets go of Kelil's elbow and follows her to the back of the deepstone. She opens a heavy oak door with brass hinges--more downmountain trading. Does iryu holding skip silverwhits into the river to watch them glint like fish scales? Kelil shrugs him into the pleasure room. Here, at least, iryu hasn't wasted itself on gaudy trappings. The rope-net bed holds a down tick, and soft chamois quilts, but the only other pieces of furniture are a small sideboard and a plain ladderback chair.
A burst of laughter from the guests drifts in through the open window. Trenon crosses the room and claps the shutters closed. Restless, he paces the perimeter of the room, approving of the plain stone floor, the leather hinges on the shutters, the simple ceramic basin tucked under the bed. He stops at the sideboard and picks up a small clay pot. Tallow. Trenon dips his finger in and rubs the slippery grease between thumb and forefinger. Well, someone in iryu holding was thinking about the practicalities. He should thank what luck he has left that Maron didn't present him with the pot as wedding gift.
Kelil toes off her boots. Trenon scowls as she strips methodically, shedding her wedding clothes and folding them to place on the seat of the chair. She turns back to him wearing her linens. "We're meant to prove fertility," she reminds him.
Trenon wipes his fingers off on his guesting robes. As a member of iryu holding, he can probably demand a set of formal clothes simply by pointing to the grease stain. "I had no idea you were so dutiful."
Kelil shrugs. "You're not afraid, are you?" She sounds wonderfully unimpressed by him.
Trenon jerks open his belt. "We aren't elk in lek," he points out. Kelil probably has all the finesse of a mallard drake, if she has any idea what she's doing at all--which he doubts. Grimacing, he shrugs off his guesting robe and drops it on the floor, then stalks forward. He pulls Kelil into a harsh kiss, using his height to press into her space. She tenses under his touch, tightening her mouth. Trenon prepares to back off, his point proven. But then Kelil's hands push under the waist of his linens. A bright, wary excitement shoots along his nerves. Kelil pushes him backwards, kissing him firmly. Trenon shoves at her last knot until his palms find skin. The bed catches him behind his knees. Trenon stumbles, falls onto the soft quilts, and props himself up on his elbows. Kelil's lips look red, her eyes dark as thunderheads. He won't deny the appeal of her confidence, her insistence. "All right," he mutters. "Maybe I was wrong."
Kelil rolls her eyes at his crassness, but she doesn't deny the point. Maron paid for a stallion, not a gelding.
Kelil joins him on the bed and tugs off the last of his clothes. Trenon licks his lips and, frowning, matches her explorations with his own. He can probably wring some pleasure out of Kelil's artless enthusiasm. He may even learn to live in iryu deepstone without chewing off a limb to free him from the snare. He could have used place and sheer stubbornness to delay the inevitable--but why bother? He went to Nilos this morning and begged him for a reprieve. He would have settled for a sign. //Wait for me//. Instead Nilos threw him into Kelil's arms. At least Berin and Ralon sold him for cash silver. Nilos abandoned him to shore up the bars of his cage. He saved himself to lead a life he hates, and Trenon won't fight for him, not anymore.
[[ϒ He is iryu's, son and husband.->ragged]]
(link-goto: "ϒ If Trenon and Kelil produce the baby iryu holding demands, then Nilos will know Trenon took him at his word.","restitution")$il[A]fter a lunch of sweet onion tev with roast mutton, Trenon escapes Ralon's scrutiny and naps all afternoon, in the cool, familiar dark of his sleeping room.
Waking, he feels himself again. The aches of the past few days' riding and hiking dwindle to the usual satisfying soreness that marks the end of a trip. He could eat a shank of lamb himself if given a chance.
Before donning his linens, Trenon rubs his fingertips over his stomach, below his navel. The familiar lines of his body haven't changed, not enough to adjust his belt-knot. And yet--
There should be more to feel than skin and muscle. He should be able to discern some flutter or gurgle not his own. Instead he barely remembers Nilos's touch, six ninedays since, that left him bearing. Trenon frowns, calculating. That leaves some twenty-four ninedays, perhaps one or two more, until the baby is born. The child will arrive with new winter.
Anyone with sense would join a holding by then. Trenon won't be able to ride or travel or offer his services overmountain in the fall--and won't that please Berin. Anything he does, he must choose while he can still act.
Trenon twists his hair into a quick braid and leaves his sleeping room. At the hearthside door, he gives courtesy and asks permission to join Ralon at the trestle table.
"Trenon." Berin reaches out with one hand to cup his cheek. "So good to have you return."
She guides him to the table as though bestowing guesting rights, and Trenon follows her like a dog to a whipping. She serves pulls out the bench for Trenon, and serves like a girl at a festival, light-footed and laughing. The scent of stewing mushrooms in mutton gravy fills the hearthroom. Berin carves a roast rabbit, adding the meat to a tev creamy with soft goat's cheese. Bright vinegar and sunflower oil dress the salad of cress and dandelion leaves. Trenon tries to catch Ralon's eye, but Ralon smiles indulgently at Berin and piles his plate high.
Everything tastes wonderful. Trenon bites back a cynical compliment. Ralon doesn't have any reservations-- "You've outdone yourself. You're a true cook," he says, which actually makes Berin //flutter//. "A woman's place is the hearthroom," she replies, with a moue of satisfaction.
Trenon lets a bite of the tender rabbit all but dissolve on his tongue, the rich gaminess paired perfectly with the full, earthy mushrooms and the tart cheese. Asaresta hasn't seen rain since spring! What business does Berin have with //mushrooms//, or downmountain dressings?
Trenon can't help his hunger, which Berin takes as its own compliment, saving him from effusive gestures. But the more he looks around, the more he sees signs of it. New gems on Berin's work table. Her wrap, a soft chamois stole. Ralon's hard black leather boots--Trenon should have noticed those the moment he saw them.
Trenon puts his plate down with a click. Ralon could have contracted field hands to break up his fallow fields with the silver from the contract breaking price. If he leaves them to clover for another year, Trenon won't be able to argue in favour of him maintaining the land claim. But no, they bought rich food, and clothes they didn't have to haggle for, and the pride of hosting iryu holding's humiliation.
Trenon pushes his chair back with a screech. They look up at him. A brittle irritation shows in Berin's eyes. The contents of the silver coffer, like these lovely summer dinners, will fade with fall. She expects Trenon to accuse them, and Trenon wants to. But Berin has a way of shifting silver arguments like gossamer, and Trenon has a better weapon.
"I'm bearing," he says. He sits stiffly as they stare at him, slowly coming out of their wax-candle dreams.
Berin's slow smile fills with a mink's satisfaction. "And iryu's son can never bring them our name."
Trenon keeps his fists close in his lap. When iryu holding chose a son, they couldn't have made a blunter place-insult. They didn't simply break a betrothal contract, or flaunt their wealth. They repudiated irthu holding's name. When Trenon bears, they'll see how easily they might have had it.
Ralon grasps Trenon's shoulder in one heavy hand. He smiles mildly, more concerned. "A baby needs at least three parents," he says. He shares a look with Berin. "We should have given you that, Trenon. But we can still give it to the baby. All of us."
Trenon forces himself not to squirm under Ralon's hearty hand. His declaration feels more like a cage than an apology.
"You can bear in irthu," Berin agrees, complacent as cream.
Trenon wants to believe them, but if he speaks Nilos's name, the promise will vanish. On the other hand, the fact that Berin doesn't inquire after the baby's parentage offers acceptance of a different sort, a more resigned and honest assessment. Berin must suspect Trenon visited Nilos, but she can ignore that for the sake of Trenon's prescience in bringing her a grandchild when her place needs it most.
Can Trenon afford to believe that Berin and Ralon will be sensible about the baby?
On this evening, of roasted rabbit?
No, he doesn't think so. The first flush of malicious pride will pass when they hear the market rumours. If it was anyone but Nilos--if Trenon had dallied with Larik before she died, and they proved fertile together--then bearing a grandchild in his own holding would be the honourable choice. No one would gossip then, unless about irthu's insular desire to keep their name to themselves. But Asaresta's not blind to the fact that Trenon and Nilos love each other, whatever sordid names they choose to put on it. Speculation will stain the baby's place.
[[ϒ Nevertheless Berin and Ralon will keep Trenon. They'll use his baby to snub iryu; they'll use his trade for silver.->conceal]]
[[ϒ And, in some fallow season, Trenon still represents a resource, to be married away for a price.->reveal]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "And iryu's son can never bring them our name.")[And iryu holding won't be able to claim the baby," she marvels slowly. "Our name stays in irthu holding.]
]}$il[W]hen Trenon finishes his tea, Ralon brings him a quick lunch of sweet onion tev with roast mutton, served in a trencher of new hearthbread. Trenon tears through it at first, barely tasting, but a frown grows as he chews. Light and crusty, the bread must have been baked with wheat flour. The mutton is beautifully tender--hardly the butcher's last leavings. And the onions--Ralon didn't stir the garden from its torpor and plant those himself.
Trenon eats far more than he thought he would. When he finishes, he takes the tray back to the hearthside. He pauses at the door to give courtesy to Berin, but his eyes stray to the corners of the hearthroom where the changes tell. A wild duck hangs beak-down from the rafters. Berin's open saltbox is full, not dusty with a precious last pinch. Wax-sealed crocks stamped with overmountain designs speak of preserves and pickles.
Berin takes his tray and sets it aside, before cupping Trenon's face with one hand and peering into his eyes. "Ralon said you weren't well," she says. "You work too hard."
Trenon holds back a disbelieving grunt. Who sent him on this last trip? Who hoped to fill her coffers one last time before his marriage?
"He told you we cut ties with iryu?" Berin smiles as though the contract breaking was a secret scheme. Silver heals all wounds.
She probably expects Trenon's gratitude for saving him from an unwanted marriage. He puts her off by reaching for the pouch string on his belt. Berin waves it aside. "Yours," she says, squeezing his hand over the pouch.
The contract breaking price was considerable, but Berin can't expect to serve fresh game and wheat-flour bread for the rest of her life. Trenon squeezes the leather pouch in his hand. Silver buys comforts, but Berin would much rather buy place.
She doesn't know about the field hands he sang for irlu, or how he pushed himself overmountain to seven villages-next, not his usual six. He pushed his bargaining, too, to the disgruntlement of several holdings' traders. He burned bridges, expecting it wouldn't matter once he owed his fees to iryu holding instead of his parents. And those bridges burned merrily; it might be more than a season before those holdings want him back.
He raked in enough stones and silver to keep irthu holding for a season. For him alone...the possibilities open up.
Berin turns away with a disappointed frown. "Now you needn't keep those ratty travelling clothes much longer."
Trenon sits back with a laugh. "Yes, Mother." In a time of plenty Berin may be lavish at table but her altruism doesn't extend to his clothes. She sacrificed his profits to her benevolence, so he can outfit himself. "I'd do better with a new pony," he says, as a test. He can't afford a pony. He might manage to buy an untrained yearling, but he's no horse breaker, and irthu can't pay for pasturage and stabling. Cyr has grown grey around the muzzle, but Trenon's not prepared to lose him yet.
Berin waves this away. "One thing at a time." Equipment and gear and mounts matter little; appearances more.
[[ϒ Trenon has better uses in mind for that silver than new clothes.->reveal]]
(link-goto: "ϒ If Berin notices his irony, she makes no sign.", "stableboy") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Berin would much rather buy place.")[Berin would much rather buy place. Her generosity won't provide for him, but it shows she has plenty, too much in fact. She can refuse Trenon's small offering without hurt.]
]}$il[T]he next morning Trenon wakes up feeling miserable. Ralon feeds him plain tev and sends him to Tereos for a song to settle his stomach. Trenon starts for the healer's herbary with cold sweat tingling on his palms.
He hasn't seen Nilos since the night of Larik's giving, when Nilos joined him in irthu deepstone. After that farewell, Nilos won't think much of Trenon showing up at the herbary door, for a song or otherwise. But he made that choice before either of them could guess that Trenon would bear a child. Resentful, reluctant as he is, Trenon wants Nilos to know.
He steels himself to ring the herbary's guest chimes. Nilos opens the door with an expression that mimics Tereos's solemn healer's mien: gentle, concerned, generous. When Nilos sees Trenon, he ducks his chin defensively, his brows lowering.
Trenon feels too sick to tease him for losing his mask. He gives Nilos a pugnacious glare and says, "You needn't worry. I'm here for a song."
"Oh." Nilos's face doesn't show a blush, but he fumbles his host's offer of guesting rights. Trenon stalks inside, and takes the ladderback chair that Nilos waves at. He clearly can't decide whether to sit on his usual stool at the work table, or take Tereos's deep armchair across from Trenon. "The master's out--"
"I'm sick, I'm not an idiot," Trenon says. "I saw him going to irnu for Virinir's breathwork." From what Trenon can tell, Tereos has taken over the regular healing songs entirely, in the past ninedays. Trenon raises a hand to stop Nilos's uncomfortable shifting. "And no, that doesn't mean I'm going to try anything improper."
Nilos reaches out, a half-stalled gesture. "Are you all right?" he asks, with more worry than he ought to show to the invert lover he discarded.
Trenon feels viciously satisfied to be able to say, "It's bearing sickness."
Nilos may not show a flush, but he pales nicely. His skin turns sallow, and his winter-sky eyes darken. "That's not--"
"Funny," Trenon finishes. "No, it's not. I thought I would be sick, mornings, not this--" He waves at himself. "Like I have a rock stuck in my crop."
Nilos reaches for the caulked jars on the shelf over the herbary worktable. "How long?"
"Six ninedays, if you can't count."
Nilos's chin dips, and he licks his lips.
"I don't tumble from one pallet to another," Trenon says, unnecessarily. Nilos hasn't, and wouldn't, accuse him of that.
Nilos nods absently. He unties a bundle of herbs. He takes out a thin brown stick, which he places in his stone mortar, and starts grinding. The sweet, dark smell of liquorice root rises. "Take this in a tea when you feel ill," he says, clearly going through one of Tereos's songs by rote. "Scramble eggs into your tev in the morning; no herbs. A pinch of salt is all right, if you have any. Otherwise coltsfoot. Pine needle tea is also good for you, but no more than one mug a day. Smaller snacks, hazelnuts and goats' cheese are good, throughout the day. More berries, fruit if you have any. Carry a waterskin with you and drink more..." He pauses and gives Trenon a cautious look, as though expecting him to reject the advice.
Trenon raises his eyebrows and waits for Nilos to finish. He wanted to be a healer. So let him.
After a moment, Nilos clears his throat and begins to sing. His voice reaches thinly at first, but at the first words, Trenon feels his shoulders unknotting. He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He shouldn't be tired so quickly in the morning but he drifts on the song, letting it speak strength and breath to his body. Nilos takes his hand to massage his palm and the ball of his thumb. Trenon can feel Nilos's forced disinterest as he opens Trenon's breathlines. Trenon cracks his eyelids open to watch Nilos bend over him. Nilos tamed his tight curls with rowed braids, a bead wound in the tip of each. His lips, murmuring song, look soft. As he digs in with his thumbs, his touch sure and strong, Trenon's nausea begins to fade.
A true song eases the ghost. Nilos would be good with a baby. Trenon pictures him washing the birth curds away, holding the baby until the first breath links body and ghost.
Nilos draws away and dusts the ground liquorice into a pottery vial, waxing the lid carefully. Trenon straightens in his chair, anger working its way to the surface. Nilos doesn't plan to say a word. Trenon never meant to hurt him, but he was hardly alone that night in his sleeping room.
"My thanks, apprentice," he says, stiff with place.
[[ϒ If Nilos wants to deny him for healing's sake then Trenon will deny him for bearing's sake.->kairos]]
(link-goto: "ϒ He digs in his pouch and clicks a silverwhit down on the work table, then leaves the herbary.","tentative") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "From what Trenon can tell, Tereos has taken over the regular healing songs entirely, in the past ninedays.")[From what Trenon can tell, Tereos has taken over the regular healing songs entirely, in the past ninedays. Nilos's apprenticeship might as well be a spring snowbridge.]
]}$il[T]he next morning Trenon wakes up feeling miserable. Ralon feeds him plain tev and sends him to Tereos for a song to settle his stomach.
Even through his wretchedness, Trenon has a sinking desire not to meet Nilos in Tereos's herbary. He hasn't seen Nilos since he left Asaresta the morning after Larik's giving, accepting Nilos's limits on their relationship. Nilos's message was clear--//it's over//, not //come to me if you're bearing//.
If Trenon could lurk on the path below the herbary until Nilos leaves, he would, but Nilos might arrive after him, and catch him skulking. A waste of time, and more opportunity to show off his misery to every passing villager.
Part of him wants to tell Nilos. To act penitent and contrite, presenting his bearing as a fault in himself. Some marriages struggle for years to have children, and here he is, proof that inverts are as fertile as anyone. No matter how he couches it, Nilos will hear him demanding that Nilos be a father to his child. And that implication--fatherhood--would hurt him.
It shouldn't. Nilos chose healing, chose to be a man. His parents will arrange his marriage someday, and he'll raise children on the homeside. His children will see a father in him.
Trenon drags himself to the herbary door and rings the guest chimes. He holds his head high when Nilos opens the door. In the dimness of the herbary workroom, Nilos's eyes gleam brighter than usual.
Trenon goes directly to the patient's seat, cold sweat tingling on his palms. Nilos watches him warily, expecting Trenon to make some desperate play for his affections. Not likely. Trenon didn't misread Nilos's early-morning slither from his pallet. Trenon glares down at his hands and mutters some story of stomach upset. He shrugs his way through Nilos's probing questions.
Trenon taps his fingers on his knees, waiting. In reproachful silence, Nilos brews his song, anise tea with a taste of birch sugar. He tells Trenon to eat plain tev until he feels better; to come back if anything worsens. Then he begins to sing. Trenon sips at the mug and tries to accept Nilos's breath. He can't sink into the song as he should. The brief warmth of Nilos's touch is elegantly impersonal. He sings with low calm confidence, but Trenon doubts the herbs he chose will speak to Trenon's ghost without a proper understanding of what's bothering him. Trenon droops in the chair, feeling better but not //well//.
"Is there anything else?" Nilos asks, clearly struggling between stiffness and concern. He hands Trenon a sachet of ginger and lemongrass to take with him.
Trenon shakes his head. He hasn't done more today than climb up Asaresta street to the herbary. He feels sick and he is tired of feeling sick. He meets Nilos's cool, worried stare and wonders who he fell in love with.
(link-goto: "ϒ Trenon would love Nilos as a woman, if Nilos would take the lead, and live openly.","tentative")
[[ϒ Whatever decision Trenon makes about bearing, he'll make it without fathoming how Nilos will act when someone--anyone--asks him to be a father to a child.->kairos]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "proof that inverts are as fertile as anyone.")[proof that inverts are as fertile as anyone. The tale of inverts' infertility gets spread around like compost because, if inverts could bear, it would cover them with an indulgent and reckless normality. And for that reason, he can't tell.]
]}(If: (history:)'s last is "reveal")[ $il[B]earing sickness fades, Nilos says. Trenon nods drearily, and pretends to believe him. Bearers seem content as cats most of the time. He never knew one who showed what he's feeling, sick and tired and sick of being tired and tired of being sick. A vague feeling that the bearing sickness could last a full season is in itself enough to daunt him. If he had more parents, he'd have someone to ask. But no one has borne in irthu holding since Tethin died.
Trenon](unless (history:)'s last is "reveal")[ $il[T]renon] keeps to his pallet, picking at plain tev and liquorice tea, for a threeday. There's no point going through this without Nilos. If the baby gains Trenon's name, rather than Nilos's then there's no point in bearing at all. They live in the same village but the whispers start the moment Trenon stops to talk with Nilos in the street. The truth will out if the baby shows any tendency towards Nilos's nose, or his black curls.
Trenon could ask Tereos for a miscarriage song. A song, a cramp, a slippery spill of blood, and he could put this entire season behind him. A reprisal on everyone who laid him out clutching his night bucket, holding down his morning tev. But Trenon won't make a ghost wish for the baby because of a few days' sickness. He prides himself on taking revenge of a different sort.
At the end of the threeday, Trenon has a plan. He dresses carefully in his full advocat's robes, and paces slowly up to Dalor's holding. Dalor has always been a good master. His knowledge is broad and deep, but he is complacent in it. When Trenon first apprenticed to him, he kept diving into Dalor's still waters, to see what lurked beneath.
When Trenon arrives in Dalor's deepstone, Dalor stands at the window of his small work room, off the men's sitting room. He loves to watch the weather, finding new beauty in every storm, but he's not curious. He journeyed as a young man, but his father was master advocat in Asaresta before him. Dalor saw no reason to move further than the next holding when he married. Dalor thinks palpably and overlong, and he's a deep-voiced and powerful singer. He listens to his patrons not simply with respect but with a sure and certain faith that Trenon can never replicate.
"Ah, Trenon, you're on the mend," Dalor greets him when his first wife leads Trenon into the work room. He lets Trenon settle on his usual chair, while Dalor reaches for his xylophone, made of downmountain wood, lower and more mellow in tone than the sharper sounds of a metal xylophone. Dalor's wife carves each striker to fit the hands and wraps the ends in soft leather. Dalor strikes a note and says, "Now this variation..."
Trenon has never been good at pretense. Though he planned it, he feels grumpy and awkward admitting, "I'm bearing."
Dalor, from the comfort of Ralon's place-shadow, asks, "Your parents?"
Trenon forces himself to dig deep for gratefulness, and gives truth instead: "They've invited me to bear in irthu holding."
Dalor breaks out into a wide smile. "Best breath!" he says. "To you and your holding!"
"Thank you. Master, I--" Trenon glances at Dalor, but he's never been one to suspect, and what Trenon's asking isn't so obscure. "I'd like the baby to have my name, if you'd do me the honour of singing it--"
"Of course, of course." Dalor offers Trenon his fist, horny with calluses, and Trenon wraps his hands around it briefly. "Your parents must be so happy."
They are happy for the moment; happy and fat on iryu's silver. Berin has never traded well for silver, though her silverwork depends on it. But place, oh, for place they'll accept the songs Trenon proposes. Anything to crow at iryu holding while Trenon's name slips further from them. "I've the silver to hire you," Trenon says.
"Nonsense, you're my journeyman. I'll do it for the baby."
As he hoped. Trenon gives courtesy, and continues, "My father has two fallow claims this year. We'll lose them if we don't work them soon. I'd like to hire hands, in the baby's name."
Dalor nods. "For the baby," he repeats, delighted. "Of course I'll sing that."
With the silver Berin gifted him, Trenon will buy a season's labour on land claimed on the baby's behalf. The profit will still be irthu holding's as a whole, so Ralon and Berin won't fuss. But Trenon, as the baby's father, will control the labour contracts and the field cairns, and he won't hesitate to put profit and expansion ahead of place. Next spring, while the baby is at the breast, he'll pick Dalor clean of every song. Then Ralon can take the child while Trenon travels his usual route, for silver. He will ensure the baby has name, place, and claims.
Trenon won't leave Asaresta. He won't let them discount him. They won't be able to discount him, not while Dalor considers Trenon his successor. (if: $fromAsarotha is true)[Harin taught him this. ]A holding can be built on expectations and people's desire to whisper rather than confront. Trenon never cared for place, but as an advocat he knows how to use it. If Nilos won't have him, then no one can demand that Dalor reject him. They'll have to ask an unmarried father and an invert to craft their contracts. And then, perhaps, some day, he'll marry: by his own choice, and his own song.
Trenon hates giving up and he's tired of hiding. If he only has the baby left, then Trenon will make the most of it, on his terms, and never Asaresta's. He'll smile and sing the contracts they deserve.
(link-goto: "ϒ Return.","begin") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "If the baby gains Trenon's name, rather than Nilos's then there's no point in bearing at all")[If the baby gains Trenon's name, rather than Nilos's--if Trenon has to deny Nilos to ensure the baby's place--then there's no point in bearing at all]
]}$il[K]elil makes no promises, not even to stay the night in the pleasure room. Trenon could sleep in the wide quiet bed without her, but in the end he slinks back to his pallet on the homeside. He ruins his game if he admits his real motivation for cornering her.
He lies awake long enough that he hears Birn's first hiccupping complaint. He brings the baby to Hiron, who puts the baby to his breast without waking fully. Trenon watches Birn's small sucking swallows in the gleaming light of a taper. A possessive anger burns in his chest. Kelil thinks Nilos's baby belongs to iryu. To //her//. By denying the baby Nilos's name, she maintains Asaresta's pretense that inverts can't bear. Well, if inverts are infertile, then Trenon carries no baby at all. A miscarriage song won't challenge a single note of his marriage vows.
He rises after a sleepless night and skips his morning tev to hike to Dalor's deepstone. Dalor married fourth into a large farmers' holding, one of the few in Asaresta where Ralon condescends to socialize. The holding's name is old enough, and Dalor's gravitas great enough, that Ralon feels comfortable playing the gentleman farmer with them. Trenon wonders if Ralon and Dalor were closer as children, but in truth he suspects that they were then as they are now: each other's reliable and reactionary stalwarts. The thread of their mutual complaints finds a worthy listener in the other. Dalor accepted Trenon's apprenticeship out of respect for Ralon, more than for the silver he earns for his teaching.
Trenon supposes he ought to love Dalor as Nilos loves his master. Many people, most perhaps, apprentice to their fathers or mothers if they don't work as contract labourers. But Nilos honoured Tereos's every move long before he came of age, his eyes cherishing Tereos as the dispenser of song itself. Trenon endures Dalor, his complacent judgements, his calculating pauses. Dalor would never so much as shift a field cairn if it meant uncovering something new.
"Ah, Trenon." Dalor reaches for his xylophone when Trenon gives courtesy at the door of his work room. His wife Rethim carves his instruments, mellow-toned, pine-yellow, gleaming with linseed oil. Dalor absently strikes a note and says, "To take up where we left off--this variation..."
"Have you taught me all the city variations?" Trenon interrupts, taking his usual seat. Dalor's contract demands that he //answer unstinting// and Trenon accepts nothing less.
Dalor strikes another note on the xylophone, apparently in pure appreciation of its tone, a smile on his face that has nothing to do with Trenon's question. "Is there need?"
The city songs Trenon knows, at their most basic, sound like they could be variations on mountain contracts. But singing vows is the least part of an advocat's trade. Trenon needs to know what questions to ask in order to craft a song--what traps he can lay, what bait he can use. Building a city song out of mountain variations involves assuming a river's course long after it twists out of view. Trenon doesn't intend to take that risk with Kelil's apprenticeship song. "I want to go downmountain," he says.
Dalor exchanges his striker for padded finger-rings, and taps out a soft melody as he considers. "You've found plenty of work overmountain this year."
Through sheer dogged effort. The five nearby villages are sick of Trenon, and he of them. One village can't sustain an advocat, unless that advocat has eight spouses to support him. Dalor lives on his holding's income, picks and chooses the rites he sings, then sends Trenon to grub for remains. This year Trenon pushed hard. Anyone a day shy of fifteen came of age early. Marriages were hustled, holdings tipped into dissolution. He has nothing left to sing this season--and by the time the leaves turn, he won't be in any shape to travel, if his plan fails.
"And you're young, newly married," Dalor continues. "Your marriage will be closed for a year. You need to concentrate your energies there."
In other words, give place to his new holding until they deign to accept him. But Trenon knows iryu's type. They committed to support Trenon, even if he never sings another contract in his life. They'll feed him, clothe him, give him place. The moment they're assured of his bearing, Trenon will find himself bound in stronger ropes than a simple marriage song.
"You hate the necessity of travel," Dalor points out.
"The necessity," Trenon agrees. Sleeping out on hard ground, giving courtesy to each holding's traders. He never resented the chance to challenge himself, to learn. A city song might hold the key to his independence.
"Asaresta provides well for me, and my father before me."
"To your holding's credit," Trenon mutters. An easy enough life for a fourth husband, if he wants nothing else. In Dalor's eyes, Trenon's parents have provided for him. He married into a holding that can sustain his trade. He'll never have to grub again. Travel will be an occasional duty, not a hectic scramble, one that Trenon can give up once Dalor grants him his mastery. But his silver will be iryu's, and every song he sings will be a mountain song.
"As to the city songs," Dalor says, in his infuriating way of recognizing Trenon's question after he forgot asking it. "There are variations you haven't learned yet, but you're years yet from your mastery, and there's time. Now, what if two holdings want to combine their claims? The contract begins much like a wedding song, but..."
Dalor always has another song to pluck from memory. His teaching spreads out like a jumble of talus instead of laid level like a line of masonry, one variation reminding him of another. Each song should be a tool, each variation a technique; but Dalor lets tradition guide him rather than sense. "Kelil will be going downmountain in a threeday," Trenon interrupts.
Dalor's smile is pure congratulatory pleasure. "Settling in, are you?"
"Something like that," Trenon says. He rubs the grit of sleep from the corners of his eyes. "Well, if you'll be back for the winter," Dalor says. "I'll be comfortable until then."
Comfortable napping. Comfortable with place. If Trenon admitted he was bearing, Dalor would spread the news like a jay, and Trenon wouldn't escape iryu holding so easily. A knot twists in his stomach. Dalor's sentimentality frustrates him more than it should, considering the leverage it provides. He can beguile Dalor's consent more easily than he can ask for it.
[[ϒ If Dalor won't teach him what he needs, he'll alter Kelil's apprenticeship song himself.->principle]]
[[ϒ He can craft vows Kelil won't resist, and which Zayelik will countenance.->apprentice]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Trenon doesn't intend to take that risk with Kelil's apprenticeship song.")[Trenon doesn't intend to take that risk with Kelil's apprenticeship song. He needs some city trick to trap Zayelik into revealing her intentions, then use that leverage to get himself invited on the journey to the city.]
]}$il[T]renon wakes too nauseous to swallow the plain tev he usually eats for breakfast, let alone the mutton-rich wintergreen tev that Kelil plunks in front of him for his first meal as part of the homeside. Trenon sits confined between Hiron and Frelok at the table, holds his gorge, and takes enough bites to be seen eating. When Kelil finally clears the men's trenchers, Trenon makes the loud and irrefutable announcement that Dalor will want him for lessons. A journeyman has the place to avoid chores--for a time. Trenon's new fathers will set him to mucking out the ponies or weeding the garden soon enough. He doubts they'll trust him to herd sheep, thankfully. He feels too sick to ride a swayback pony.
He sets off after the sun burns off the night's damp, but instead of hiking to Dalor's deepstone, he takes the north twist off Asaresta's main street, and climbs to Master Tereos's herbary. The small outbuilding rests in the shadowed lea of a steep wall, the path smoothed by many feet, while the great plunge of Asaresta gorge falls away on the east. Trenon rings the guest chimes, cranky at the thought of Nilos opening the door, fretful that he might not. But the master himself answers the chimes, letting out the sagebrush scent of drying herbs. Trenon's stomach rebels. "I need a song," he mutters.
Tereos takes one look at him and says, "Stomach? Come in."
Trenon stops short when he sees Nilos hunched over the work table, grinding herbs in a mortar. Nilos glances over his shoulder, meets Trenon's eyes, then turns mulishly back to his work.
"I've been feeling sick for the past nineday," Trenon says to Nilos's back as he settles in the chair across from Tereos. Nilos claims healing like his due. He pours his breath into every patient. The recitation of Trenon's symptoms won't be lost on him.
Tereos asks a few questions, to which Trenon gives honest, if incomplete, answers. The words bearing sickness are never spoken. Trenon watches Nilos's back as he methodically fills sachets of herbs. Tereos brews aniseed tea with a sharp dash of ginger, and presses Trenon's hands around the mug when he begins his chant. He massages Trenon's lifepoints, smoothing tension from his neck and shoulders.
Tears gather under Trenon's eyelids as Tereos opens his breathlines. He refuses them; he refuses the breath of the song Tereos offers. He begged Nilos to come to the city with him. If Nilos had said yes, it would be so easy to say //I'm bearing//. But Nilos shouldn't need a baby in order to follow Trenon downmountain. Trenon inhales the dark, sweet-hot scent of the tea. His queasiness settles, but the knot in his throat tightens. If Nilos would come for a baby, and not for him, then Trenon couldn't abide him coming at all.
"You'll need to rest more, the afternoon of each day as long as the nausea lasts," Tereos says, sitting back with a sigh. "Eat tev plain with unspiced mutton, small meals throughout the day."
Nilos can't claim ignorance of the song, or why Tereos might offer it. Wrung dry, Trenon accepts the sachet of aniseed that Tereos offers, and gives desultory courtesy. Let the song go to iryu holding's account.
[[ϒ Trenon leaves the herbary, only to linger in the dooryard; but Nilos doesn't follow.->connive]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: " honest, if incomplete, answers.")[Yes, the nausea is worst early in the day. Yes, he's noticed some tenderness lately. Yes, he feels easily tired. Trenon stares at the smoke-stained ceiling and thinks about the questions Tereos might ask if Nilos's listening ears weren't so close. //Did you //intend// to destroy my apprentice's place? Do you think your antics would have no consequences? Do you mean to stay in Asaresta until Nilos's shame drives him away?// Those questions have more honest answers, but Trenon wants a song for his stomach, not for his guilt.]
]}$il[T]renon retires to his pallet on Tereos's orders. Across from him, Hiron sleeps with his baby curled on his chest, rising and falling with his breaths. A light linen blanket covers them, skin on warm skin, wafting in the warm summer air.
Nilos's baby might have his black curls, his warm skin. A baby, all bright winter eyes and warm milk-scent, peering out from a close-cradled wrap on Trenon's chest. A baby carrying Trenon's place and name.
Iryu holding might weave their snare wires from less. They'll happily accept Trenon's baby as Kelil's child. And, with perfect freedom, they'll hesitate to give Nilos courtesy; they'll turn to Tereos for their healing songs. Whispers spread overmountain like the rising spring. Nilos's master could delay his journeymanship and claim a question of judgement. Nothing proveable. Nothing against his vow to teach. Holdings will encourage their daughters to look elsewhere for betrothal contracts. Simply a matter of place.
Trenon needs to solve the problem himself, before anyone, least of all iryu holding, suspects. A healer's song, a cramp, a slippery spill of blood, and Trenon can put this season behind both of them. He can't ask Tereos for that brew while his marriage vow includes a fertility guarantee. A city healer will weigh his silver and leave Trenon's vows to his own accounting.
The travel will be hard. Every valley leads southwards eventually, but Trenon has neither the time nor the provisions to find his way. Besides, he can't leave without permission from iryu holding. He'll need Dalor's approval as well if he wants his journeymanship available when he returns.
Trenon joked about hitching himself to Kelil's apprenticeship song, like besotted newlyweds unwilling to be parted. Iryu holding will enjoy that excuse. Dalor, too, rarely resists an appeal to sentiment.
All it takes is a word dropped here and there, topped with a sullen silence. Trenon mopes about the homeside in the evenings. He lets hints fall as subtly as a spring avalanche. "Kelil hasn't spoken to me since the rite," he says, affecting not to see Amoz's assessing frown. When Kelil rushes in and out of the homeside serving the men their dinner, Trenon mutters to the air, "She doesn't say anything except to offer me seconds." When Grenor mentions that Kelil's prospective master, Zayelik, will arrive within the threeday, Trenon sighs and asks, "So soon?"
Hiron leans over, Birn cradled in one arm, and taps Trenon's knee. "You should invite Kelil to the pleasure room."
Trenon scowls, more honestly than his guise requires. Hiron takes it as encouragement.
"Varin and I took a season to really meet each other," he says. "It's not easy, on different sides of the deepstone. That's what the pleasure room is for."
Trenon lets himself sulk over his evening's tev. Hiron's advice is as much about asserting his place as helping his marriage-brother. Only one of them has proved fertile so far. Still, Trenon could laugh when Hiron widens his eyes meaningfully when Kelil returns to collect their platters. "Kelil," Trenon says, in a low, carrying voice. "Would you join me in the pleasure room this evening?"
She rolls her eyes, but she can't resist the hope on all her brothers' faces. They want to believe that contract marriages will gain a ghost if they try hard enough. "Fine," she says.
Trenon pretends to hide a hopeful smile. He'll use the opportunity to rope Kelil into his plan. She won't be eager to claim Nilos's baby; she'll hustle him to the city all the quicker once she learns the truth.
[[ϒ And if not, Trenon can snare her in the apprenticeship song she needs if she hopes to travel at all.->unexpected]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "The travel will be hard.")[The travel will be hard. City traders mark their routes with blazes, but each trader obscures their best path, to obstruct their rivals.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "test")[ $il[A]fter a candlemark of pleasantries, Hezibor gives Trenon courtesy and asks Zayelik to guest with his holding for a late dinner. She accepts--she must--and leaves Trenon to piece together what he can about city songs from the few notes Hezibor played. Zayelik hoped to judge his loyalties and his skill, and used Hezibor's opinion to confirm her own.
Trenon snuffs the candles and retreats to his room. Zayelik wants his help, so her counsel to declare himself independent is tainted. Trenon undresses, shoving down trousers that once fit loose. New weight settles at his hips. The healer gave him no more than a nineday to get his holding's permission for the miscarriage song. He probably suspected the truth, that Trenon wouldn't return.
](if: (history:)'s last is "test")[A ](else:)[ $il[A] ]child needs three parents at least. One stubborn, solitary father isn't enough. Trenon longed so often for some father beyond Ralon, to soften his edges or blunt his black silences. Kelil claims the baby like a farmer raising a field cairn, not like a mother.
(if: (history:)'s last is "offer")[Trenon snuffs the candles and retreats to his room. He](else:)[Trenon] resents the quiet he longed for when they first arrived. Besides the extensive storage rooms, the homeside consists of the parlour, the outriders' dormitory, and Trenon's small room. Zayelik and Sirol must have conspired to let Trenon claim the only private space on the homeside. Whether the tiny room usually stands in as Sirol's perk or an extra pleasure room for the men, they sacrificed it to Trenon's bearing. He sinks into the rope-net mattress like a mule struggling in quicksand. Zayelik tells him to ask for help--as if help is ever forthcoming, when he asks.
He sleeps late, and the parlour sits empty when he rises. Trenon crosses the courtyard, kicking up a cloud of dry dust that scuffs the cobbles. In the hearthroom, he finds the girl he contracted(if: (history:)'s last is "offer")[ as a kitchen labourer for Zayelik] sweating through her vest as she bakes wheat bread for trenchers. Trenon scoops himself some tev from the morning's pot. Sitting half the day hasn't improved its texture. He leans back against the trestle, and watches the girl's strong arms as she beats down the dough before leaving it to rise again. Berin demands courtesy for the least entrance into her hearthroom, even if Trenon only means to forage for himself. A few ninedays among iryu holding didn't accustom him to a large holding. "What's your name?" he asks, wondering how unusual his contract really was for her.
"Larazil," she answers.
She offers no holding, let alone a patronage tie. "What holding?"
"My parents weren't contracted to bear me," she says, with a flat simplicity.
Trenon grunts. The heaviness in his abdomen has grown, changing the roll of his walk, demanding food throughout the day. But at least his baby will have place, if he bears. Larazil enduress on nineday contracts, and by her sharp wrists, not many of those.
Larazil says, with a mixture of kindness and scorn, "If I had a holding, do you think I'd wait around for a mountaineer to craft my vows? My overholding would send an advocat."
The city overholdings cornered the market on contract songs, and after that, they refused to give their journeymen independence without singing loyalty first. "Of course," Trenon says. Larazil shows no gratitude for the rich song he crafted. But why should she? She won't see the likes of it again. Trenon stares down at his empty tev bowl, then hands it to her with a courtesy he doesn't owe.
He returns to his room, only to find himself pacing the small space. He cups the curve of his stomach--and there is a curve. He wants to be shed of this encumbrance! And he thought no further than that, when he decided to come to the city. Or he simply believed that he would find enough journeyman's work to sustain him comfortably. The city holds nine times as many people, with all their petty disputes and intricate claims, as every upmountain village put together. A journeyman should find plenty of work, especially if he scrambles, as Trenon was prepared to do.
He should have seen it the moment Jeramol refused him a song. It's not only labourers who face restrictions. An advocat won't find work outside patronage. Trenon can't simply sit in a banlieue market and expect customers to find him. He could set his fee lower than any other advocat in the city, but they blocked him from competing before he could begin. He might circle the margins, singing minor songs for holdless people, but he won't fill a silver pouch crafting vows for the destitute.
He never wanted place and name, but both have always been within his reach. He could claim comfort, if never the freedom he craved. Larazil's freedom, the freedom of a woman to dress in children's rags. The freedom of the forsworn, to survive, or not, beyond the reach of the spiders that weave the city together.
When Trenon returns upmountain, there will come a day when he passes Nilos on the street. Or when they must call on each other, for some fiddly, pointless song. The thought of finding refuge in place to scrape through a conversation chills him. Larik offered, once, to take Nilos as their second husband, but Nilos wouldn't accept the cover she offered. Now Trenon understands why. Nilos knew the secrecy, the resentment, would tell. Trenon already resents bearing. He doesn't want to resent his child.
Zayelik finds him loosening his belt when she returns from her day in the market. She leans against the door frame and watches. Trenon unknots the leather belt, then picks up an awl from the sideboard. Using a leather thimble, he pushes the awl's point against the belt, twisting and pushing until the awl punches through. Trenon tugs the belt through its longer course, and automatically settles the knot on his left hip.
"(if: (history:)'s last is "offer")[My patrons sent me with an offer," Zayelik says when he finishes. "Their advocat, Hezibor, will take you on as his apprentice, if you're interested."](else:)[Hezibor sent me with an offer," Zayelik says when he finishes. "He'll take you on as his apprentice, if you're interested."]
Pride rises quick and hot under Trenon's skin, and he snaps, "I'm a journeyman."
"Not by his standards." Zayelik shrugs. "I will carry word to Dalor, if you wish."
(if: (history:)'s last is "test")[Hezibor played his kalimba as a test. He wanted to discover what Trenon understood of the city variations, and, recklessly, Trenon showed off the extent--and limits--of his knowledge. He can assume Hezibor had Zayelik's urchin labourers repeat their vows so he could judge them. They wouldn't, and couldn't, deny a master. ]"I won't sing to a master without learning the vows," he says.
"And you won't learn the vows without a teacher," Zayelik returns. She probably enjoys watching him twitch like a trout in a weir. "I told you, didn't I, the first time we met?"
"Told me what?"
"It's different, in the city. I'm not interested in marriage--for what that independence is worth--but I still have obligations to my patrons. Does that make me placeless?"
Trenon presses his lips shut on a retort. Forget place. He prides himself on his honesty. He couldn't escape a contract marriage but at least he never pretended to love Kelil. But Kelil, like the rest of them, doesn't see the hypocrisy. She wants him to bear the child as if that act will balance her trader's scale, silver to weight; a hand clasped, a deal struck. The baby, the child they might raise, means nothing to her.
[[ϒ "You act like you'll lose your ghost by accepting a patron," Zayelik says. "You don't have to love Kelil to hold with her."->postulant]]
[[ϒ She claps a hand on his shoulder, and tries to meet his eyes. "You spend your life crafting songs but you're afraid to sing one."->amends]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "with a flat simplicity.")[with a flat simplicity. Her parents might have given her a better start in life if they'd fostered her into a richer but infertile marriage. Fosterage contracts are built to support uncontracted children, in return for a debt they're unlikely to repay.]
(Click-replace: "She won't see the likes of it again.")[She won't see the likes of it again. Poor contracts through an overholding advocat mean more if they last a lifetime.]
(Click-replace: "they refused to give their journeymen independence without singing loyalty first.")[they refused to give their journeymen independence without singing loyalty first. That's probably how they became overholdings in the first place.]
(Click-replace: "An advocat won't find work outside patronage.")[An advocat won't find work outside patronage. Holdings must honour their patronage ties--they must hire advocats who already represent their holdings.]
]}$il["Y]ou were right. Zayelik's patrons were trying to rein her in," Kelil says, leaning her chair back on two legs and propping her bare feet on Trenon's bed. "Did you know their advocat wouldn't sing an apprenticeship contract for her as long as she stalled on marrying into their holding? But she's a master, so they couldn't exactly //deny// her an apprentice, either."
Trenon grunts and scoops up Kelil's feet to deposit them back on the floor. Kelil's chair slams forward, and she wrinkles her nose at him. "Which is where you come in," he prompts. Zayelik got much of what she wanted. Yet Trenon can't find it in himself to resent her--yet. He'll wait and see what their independence means when Kelil is ready to advance to her journeymanship. She'll have a true advocat at her side, then.
A threeday after the miscarriage song, he still needs to change his rags by the candlemark, and his stomach hurts as though someone shoved a slippery elm stick up where no slippery elm stick should go. Jeramol's apprentice visits every morning, and hasn't yet given permission for Trenon to walk further than the night bucket, but Trenon can stay awake long enough to grow increasingly bored.
Kelil passes over the bowl of pork broth Jeramol approves for convalescent patients. Trenon takes a spoonful. "They didn't expect her to go behind their backs and pick an upmountain apprentice," she says. "Zayelik used you too. You never asked if her patrons had given permission for the song."
Because upmountain holdings rarely have patronage ties to complicate their vows. "If I'd known the city variations--" Put that down to Dalor's eclectic teaching.
"Zayelik listened to the village songs--she contracted enough upmountain labourers. She suspected you wouldn't ask. Even if you did, technically she hadn't been //forbidden//..."
Dalor trained him to ferret out those who followed a song's breath while ignoring its ghost. Trenon mistrusted Zayelik's apparent motives--she was a trader, after all--but he never suspected her desperation. He should have known that even masters from the city felt their songs pinch. "So what do you want to do?"
Kelil looks at him sharply. Trenon tries to keep his expression open. Most marriages don't break away from their parents' holding for years. Two spouses can't make it on their own. They took a risk. Kelil took a risk, for him. Trenon means to honour that--his question is sincere. After a moment, Kelil says, "I want to give this marriage its proper first year. But I plan to travel."
And Trenon is long from sitting astride a horse. He agreed to shore up Zayelik's deepstone claim. He plans to use the space to compete with the city advocats. It seems they could use the reminder that holdings aren't meant to grow across entire cities.
Larazil's shoulder trembled under Trenon's hand when he dared to craft a nineday labour vow that included her meals. The other urchins Zayelik plucked off the street corner watched round-eyed, their breath catching, hardly believing their luck. They want to be honest labourers. They want holdings of their own. They can't be blamed because their parents got into trouble--as Jiron would say--and bore uncontracted children. Many of those children were sung into debt-fosterage, but others slipped between the cobblestone cracks. City advocats notice them as little as nightsoil on their boots. Trenon can't save them with a mountain song, but he can give them proper rites; he can see them for who they are. He frowns, and nods slowly. "No love spouses?" he asks.
Kelil thumps her feet back onto the bed. "I've a first husband I need to tame first," she says. "In the meantime, I'll go with Zayelik for the last mountain tour."
Trenon realizes, with some surprise, that he'll miss her. "You'll return?"
"We'll be back before winter." Kelil offers her fist, solemn.
"Well, don't make a song of it." But Trenon cups her fist in both hands, and feels a smile curling at the corner of his mouth. They'll hold together when the snows come.
(link-goto: "ϒ Return.","begin")$il[W]hen Kelol returns to Chiason's, he discovers the big bordel keeper dressed in a woman's robe, her knots carefully tucked right, her hair plaited like a matron's. Everyone calls her Chiasin as she mops the sweat from her brow with a man's red kerchief that she tucks in her sash. She leads Kelol back to his private room, and accepts another three whits from him for the night.
Kelol could find another banlieue market, and with trust earned, he could probably pick up another delivery or even line up several. But the fact hasn't changed that the ponies need rest, and so does he. He sleeps late. The bordel's business doesn't end with daylight, but it does slow. The patrons linger in the common room and conduct long langorous flirtations that eventually wend their way to a private room and the lighting of the marked candle. Kelol checks on the ponies after his morning tev, and breathes a sigh of relief over Tyn's much-improved knees. All she needs is gentle exercise and good food. The stableboy agrees to move her to an empty box stall, so Kelol leaves her in good hands and goes wandering--north, across the bridge and upriver.
He finds the market. Not a twist of moribund stalls in a banlieue square, but the market that Zayelik described in her tales. A village in itself, each stall a deepstone, every narrow aisle a street. Bolts of cloth line the worktops, or baskets of spices. Yearling foals parade through a dirt-swept courtyard.
Dressed like the outriders loading and unloading mules and wagons, Kelol looks like a message-runner, a nobody. Traders shoo him from their stalls like they'd brush wasps from their tev.
Kelol could have come here as Zayelik's apprentice if he'd agreed to marry Trenon. He doesn't see Zayelik, nor does he wish to, but he sees a whole stall devoted to a sheer light cloth he's never seen before. Larik would be thrilled with such material.
In the shambling market on the south side, Kelol met women who found him worthy of bargaining with over a holding's livelihood. Here, when he asks the price of a shirt in the soft new material, he gets a glance and a price: "Six whits."
Six whits for a shirt. Ridiculous. Kelol keeps wandering, fingering goods because the traders hate it. Overholdings bargain here. In a threeyear Kelol might have earned his trader's journeymanship. In a nineyear? He'd be a master, dozing under an apprentice's fan and guiding the current of passing customers. He'd never lodge in a downriver bordel amidst the stink of tanneries. He'd give courtesy to overholdings, host them with crystal cups of maple wine.
He can't buy anything in this market without throwing silver around like Maron proving place. But women traders might not see a boy coming. He once laughed at the idea that a man might get the better of him in trade.
Kelol circles the market again, softly as beaten buyer in the quiet market. He looks sidelong at the goods, wistful, listless. When he sees the weaving trader snapping out a yellow and green shirt, he sidles closer. Weavers don't mix men's colours with women's. The trader won't easily find a buyer, not even for that amazing light cloth Kelol never saw upmountain.
Kelol trails past the stall, fingers brushing along the worktop, riling up the trader. She crumples the shirt and stuffs it into a burlap sack. "Any rags?" Kelol asks.
The trader curls her lip.
"For my sister," Kelol says. "She unravels them for the thread."
"This could use some unravelling," the trader mutters--forgetting the shirt's beauty, its material.
Kelol nods--a despondent errand-boy. "Anything moth-eaten," he says, "or past mending. For the thread."
All traders have shoddy stock that takes up space. She shrugs. "A whit," she says.
Kelol looks up at her mournfully. Digs in his pouch, slowly. "A whit?" he whines.
"They're my rags to burn," the trader says, impatient.
"All right," Kelol says. He hands over the silver.
The trader tosses the sack to him. "The sack's free," she says. "A gift to your sister." Casting aspersions on her imaginary weaving.
Kelol allows himself to look sullen as he slouches away, sack in hand.
Most of its contents are useless, poor enough for a knotted rag-rug, but even crumpled, the shirt is gorgeous. It must have been woven askew on purpose. Plainwoven like a child's garment: anyone could choose their belt to go with it. Golden apples dangle from green tree branches. Larik would have loved weaving plants, the intricate curl of ferns. Her eyes would glow to see this soft thread, lighter than linen.
(if: $nyls is true)[ [[ϒ Kelol didn't buy the shirt for himself, but for the challenge, and perhaps for Larik; but when he spreads it out and smooths the wrinkles, he thinks of Nilos.->her own]]
[[That was trading, wasn't it? Wits against whits. So what is he?->retreat]] ](else:)[ [[ϒ Kelol didn't buy the shirt for himself, but for the challenge, and perhaps for Larik; but when he spreads it out and smooths the wrinkles, he thinks of Nilos.->his own]]
[[ϒ That was trading, wasn't it? Wits against whits. So what is he?->rout]] ] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "lighting of the marked candle")[the beginning of the server's bargained time]
(click-replace: "Golden apples dangle from green tree branches.")[Golden apples dangle from green tree branches. Most clothing uses animal motifs to suggest the wearer's identity. Apples have no such connotations.]
]}$il[K]elol breathes freer a threeday later when he arranges to deliver a grindstone to a mill downriver. He takes both ponies, walking himself to spell them from the stone's weight. When he arrives, the holding's first wife mutters thanks. Her overholding wouldn't be pleased to hear about two broken grindstones in a threeyear. Her story, and her defensive guilt, have grown familiar to Kelol. He does his best to suggest that if overholdings want profit from their smallholdings, they shouldn't cut corners, and he gives his most sincere courtesy for the woman's hosting.
Kelol takes advantage of the weather to slow his pace and sleep out an extra night. The last morning, he cuts uphill from the churned mud of the main trail, which follows every twist of the river. He keeps the sun behind his right shoulder and climbs a gentle hill, meandering among balsam poplars and white spruce. At the top, he can see through the thinning trees where the valley spreads out to the north. The land runs in gold coulees back to the shining line of the river. Aspen and willow grow in the hollows. Wheat ripples in green waves around erratics and copses. Beyond a line of old field cairns, a sea of clover replaces the wheat. Blue shadows on the misty horizon mark the city's walls.
Kelol hobbles Brys and Tyn and lets them graze. Standing head-to-tail, whisking flies from each other's faces, they crop the tussocks of timothy. Kelol settles in a shadowed nook on the hill's north side for his lunch. The damp rocks show seepage from an underground spring, too faint to fill his water skin, but enough choke the hollow with matted greenery. Chickweed, dandelions, and purslane twine among the stones. Kelol picks a few leaves of sheep's sorrel and chews them, enjoying the spurt of saliva at their sour taste. The tev served in Chiason's common room never fails to fill his belly, but he misses the sharper taste of mountain meals: juniper berries to season his tev, pine needle tea sipped in the evenings, savoury birch sugar. Peris would slow-roast a lamb with sprigs of nettle and mint, filling the deepstone with the rich steam, and serve it with crip cress and tender potatoes. Kelol runs a hand through the damp grass. He picks a white-puffed dandelion and splits open the stem with his thumbnail. The thin milk smells green and fresh, so different from the heavy scent of sandstone and waste in the city.
He can't go back to Asaresta. He can't face his holding without the silver to pay his debt, and he can't earn enough silver in the city to keep himself ahead of his expenses. Worse, if he goes back, he loses his stolen place, his chance to trade.
Nyls plans to stay. But Nyls has a skill to offer that won't fade with the season. Healing doesn't depend on good roads. Kelol brushes the dandelion's sticky sap from his fingers. The yellow blossoms surround him, more than enough to make an evening's meal, along with cress and plantain. He twists around, and starts plucking leaves. Some of the plants grow larger, but he recognizes many from upmountain. Most of them from his mothers' soups and tefs, but there are others that healers grind into their brews.
All these plants--Nyls must want for some of them. He can't travel far enough to replenish his store of brewing herbs without a mount of his own. He doesn't need to be a healer to steep willow bark for pain, or to drink pine needle tea to help with loose teeth in winter. As for the rest, Kelol may be his holding's son but he knows a few things about cooking. He could sell fresh plants in the quiet market, to make his return trips worthwhile. He can offer to bring Nyls out to find what he needs, or simply bring home a few staples.
Kelol rolls to his knees and loosens the dirt around the chickweed roots. He already helps so many people ono, with his deliveries. He foreswears his own coming of age every time he plays the trader. What line is left to cross, in bringing herbs to Nyls? Nyls's patients pay his fee in full knowledge of how he wears his knots. Kelol can't warn them clearer than Nyls's claimed name does. Kelol can't decide with certainty if they need a warning at all; maybe Nyls's songs hold as much healing as any man's.
Kelol gathers bunches of as many plants as he knows, and a few he doesn't. He keeps some soil around the roots, and wraps the bundles in strips of linen dampened with water from his skin. Tyn looks interested as he packs the bundle on her back, but she has better manners than Brys and won't try to eat her load. Kelol ties her behind Brys and keeps his hand on Brys's halter rope, so that Brys won't get any ideas.
Kelol drenches the roots again when he returns to the river. Nothing wilts too badly by the time he returns to Chiason's, which is where he realizes he has nowhere to keep a wet armful of drooping leaves. He needs a drying rack, like Master Tereos has in his herbary upmountain. A rack used for drying linens will do as well, and Kelol exchanges his evening's dandelion salad to Thyla for one. The problem then is where to set it up. His own room holds nothing more than a bed and a tiny sideboard, and when he brings in his two saddles he has no floor space left at all. Grappling with his haul, he asks Thyla where Nyls sleeps. With a smirk, Thyla points him upstairs, above the common room.
Like the homeside wing, the hall above the common room is lined with closed doors, though more widely spaced. Only one has a touch of homeyness about it: a single guest chime and a striker, both carved from wood instead of metal that might not linger long in a bordel. Kelol drops the rack to the floor, and the thump, probably more than the chime's hollow tone, brings Nyls to his door. He steps back when he sees Kelol, and then he gives a quick, bobbing courtesy.
Kelol's cheeks heat. Nyls's tentative courtesy lacks the confidence of a holding's wife offering guesting rights, but it is a woman's greeting, a host's greeting. His gawkish, sweaty presence feels out of place accepting hosting from anyone, let alone Nyls. "I, I brought you--" Nyls must think he has some gall to offer the gift of an armful of herbs, after Kelol all but accused him of having a ghost wish for every patient he sings aslant to.
"Is that chickweed?" Nyls asks.
Kelol looks down at his weed-festooned arms stupidly. "Yes. And snowberry..." And a nine of others, only some of which he can put names to.
Nyls hesitates, then opens his door wide. Kelol ducks unnecessarily under the lintel. The room holds two ladderback chairs and a small brazier with a scuttle of charcoal beside it. Two doors lead into sleeping rooms, each as narrow as Kelol's. Both doors stand ajar, but only the right-hand room shows signs of life. A mess of wool quilts covers the pallet, and a taper stands on the narrow sideboard, which is a mis-matched cousin to the one in Kelol's room. Kelol lets his eyes slide away, so that Nyls won't see him noticing that he clearly lives on the hearthside, leaving the homeside to the spiders. Nyls must pay for his rooms in feeless songs for every server in the holding.
Nyls brings the rack in from the hallway. "Where did you find this?" he asks, excitement lighting his voice. With quick hands he sets up the rack, then starts plucking damp greenery from Kelol's arms and arranging it meticulously over the rack's dowels.
"Downriver, half a day or so," Kelol says. He assumes Nyls means the plants, none of which would brave the dust between the city's cobbles.
But Nyls runs his hands over the wooden joints of the rack. "You didn't waste silver on it, did you?"
Nyls must recognize a linen-rack when he sees one. Chiason's servers claim enough clothing for twice their number. Swapping a wine-jar's worth of dandelion blossoms for an extra rack was far easier than coming to a price in silver. "No, I traded--" He blushes hot again, but Nyls barely notices.
"So many people in the city need breathwork. It's the rusty air, and the smoke. I needed chickweed, and the purslane will come in handy, too, for bowel problems--" Nyls's rush of excitement stalls, like a trader yanking the drawstring tight on a silver pouch. Nyls straightens from his careful bend over the plants, his mouth tight. "I'm afraid--I mean, I don't have the silver to pay you."
Kelol shrugs miserably. He picked the plants with some idea of apology, a motive any trader would scoff at. For Nyls not to recognize Kelol's intention raises the stilted place-struggle between them. Kelol doesn't want Nyls's silver, and he doesn't want to admit he's not comfortable accepting a price in kind. He brought Nyls the tools of his trade, and yet he'd balk at any healer's song Nyls brewed with them. But to confess he doesn't want anything in return feels makes him feel peeled raw.
Kelol looks around, searching for a graceful price he could accept. The bare pallet and dusty lead-paned window on the homeside catch his eye. "What about that room?" he asks. "I could live homeside to you."
Nyls's mouth opens. His grey eyes darken like thunderheads, and Kelol hears the catch in his breath.
Kelol nearly bites his tongue in half to cover his implication. "If you're interested in paying me back," he blurts. His skin feels too tight, his heartbeat quick as a pika's. "We'd both save on lodging fees. I could fetch the plants you need, if you tell me what to look for."
Nyls stares at the homeside room, as though he forgot it existed.
"I mean, you can have the plants," Kelol says finally. "I don't need to--but you have the room--"
"No," Nyls says faintly, and then stronger. "No. You're right. I'd like that."
[[ϒ A smile curves his mouth, and Kelol swallows unaccountably.->passage]]
[[ϒ "Welcome to irlu holding," Nyls says, and gives his holding's name like first wife hosting.->holding]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "makes him feel peeled raw.")[makes him feel peeled raw.
Nyls shines when he heals. When he brews a song, his pestle chunks to its rhythm, his full lips move on the edge of sound. Kelol can barely call him out of his distraction, especially now that Nyls has more patients to think of. Watching Nyls conduct breathwork on a harried patient, soothing them until they shudder calm, is worth more than silver.]
]}$il[T]he next morning, Kelol transfers his few things--mostly tack he doesn't trust to keep in Chiasin's stables--into Nyls's homeside room. He quickly learns what it means to live with a healer. Nyls rushes out with his satchel every morning and rarely returns before evening. Nyls has a friend, Rythel, who acts as a trader on his behalf, finding those willing to accept songs from a healer ono, and negotiating prices for him. If Rythel left Nyls to his own devices, Nyls would probably give his brews away, out of pity for the songless.
Kelol planned a day's rest, but he can't settle on his pallet. He spends the morning pacing the bare floorboards of Nyls's room. He frowns at the dingy windows and the smoke-grimed walls above the brazier on its stone stand. The room has no proper hearth, but a small metal hood suspended over the brazier leads to a pipe which pierces the ceiling and acts as a flue.
Kelol climbs on one of the creaky chairs and scrapes a fingernail through the soot before to identify the metal as bronze, chased with images of vines and leaves. In sudden decision, Kelol goes looking for Chiasin. With the promise to spend a day's labour on as many rooms as he can manage, Kelol cadges flour and salt and vinegar from her, and a few free buckets drawn from the courtyard well. Working the ingredients into a paste, he scrubs the flue-hood until the bronze gleams. The brazier gets the same treatment, revealing matching designs of wind-blown trees. Kelol attacks the windows next, scattering spiders, letting light into the sleeping rooms. Dutiful, he repeats the same work in the other rooms along the hall, and appropriates a dusty rag-knot rug in passing from one unoccupied suite. By the time he finishes, half the bordel's soot has transferred to his skin and clothes, so that Chiasin laughs and offers the use of her cask and cake of lye soap, if he promises to continue his efforts the next day. Kelol washes as grimly as he cleaned, but afterwards he smells of lavender, and he has time to comb the nits from his hair before Nyls returns.
Nyls comes in, still talking to Rythel over his shoulder about a young person ono with a bad case of spot fever. When he turns, he stops in confusion. Rythel steps in and nods approval. "Ah, I knew there was a reason to keep a man on the homeside," she says, and winks at Kelol.
Nyls sputters between denying that he //keeps// Kelol, and trying to give his earnest thanks. Kelol crosses his arms and glares at Rythel. Rythel laughs at him, and says, "Good thing we aren't all ono here, or there'd be no one to tend the deepstone."
She buffets Nyls's shoulder and leaves. Nyls looks around again, and dips his chin. He nudges the rag-knot rug with one toe. After a thorough beating, a faint pattern of mauve and madder stripes emerged. The rug softens the space between the two rickety chairs, and defines a sitting area near the brazier, like a parlour in miniature. "It really does look like a deepstone," Nyls says. He reaches into his satchel and takes out a folded linen cloth. He opens it to reveal a handful of raspberries. With a gleam of humour in his eyes, he offers them to Kelol.
As a man cares for the deepstone, so a woman provides. Kelol steps forward and plucks a single deep-red berry from Nyls's palm. The fruit is ripe enough to be tender on his tongue, with the faintest rasp of seeds. The flesh dissolves into sweetness and warmth. Kelol swallows, and runs his tongue over his teeth. Nyls watches him, a slow smile rising in his eyes.
[[ϒ With a sidelong glance, he invites Kelol to join him for dinner in the common room.->bearable]]
[[ϒ They sit up late in the common room's dim corner, listening to the flirtations of Chiasin's servers around them.->cleansing]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "or there'd be no one to tend the deepstone")[or there'd be no men to clean the deepstone]
]}$il[E]ven in high summer, the rising sun doesn't reach through Kelol's window before late morning. He wakes slowly, lifting his head to listen for the brief squall of a baby. Nyls lies beside him in the shared confusion of quilts, one arm flung aside to show the curled hair in his armpit. Kelol resists the impulse to lay his hand on Nyls's chest, and assure himself of the breath on his lips, the worn ghost in his heart. They slept in the same tent for ninedays when they travelled downmountain, but he never saw Nyls naked then. A hint of purple shadows Nyls's eyes, but he sleeps deeply, his face relaxed from its usual cares.
Kelol shifts the quilts enough to untangle his legs from Nyls's. He uses the night bucket, and when he comes back, Nyls blinks sleepily up at him. "You're here," he says.
Kelol answers his smile with a lazy one of his own. "You're here, more like," he says.
Nyls looks around, recognizing the homeside room, but he doesn't coil up or withdraw. Beyond the open door, the cask still rests in the sitting room, with cold soap scumming the surface. Kelol never washed himself, and the room smells of his sweat, and the blood dried on Nyls's clothes.
"You'll need something to wear," Kelol says. Nyls wears an assortment of men's and women's clothes, and Kelol has nothing to share except his own rough gear. Still, in the season since leaving Asaresta, Kelol has grown a handspan, and matches Nyls's height. Fit shouldn't be a problem. "I'm sorry about the trousers," he says, handing over his much-patched pair.
Nyls pulls on his linens, then the brown riding trousers. Kelol can't help watching avidly as Nyls, without hesitating, ties the belt rightwards. His complete ease catches like a gaff in Kelol's chest, and tugs. Kelol looks to his tiny press, wedged under the window. The tunic he bought from the weaving trader... He wanted to see the twine of men's yellow and women's green against Nyls's skin. Opening the press, Kelol pulls it out and holds it up. The airy material--cotton, Kelol knows now--falls in a straight drape. Nyls hasn't bought himself a single woman's garment, contenting himself with tying his man's ties right, and accepting here and there a gift from friends ono, or passed on through Rythel.
Nyls's eyes widen. Kelol says, "It's not mine," too sharply, so that Nyls frowns at him. "I mean. I bought it--" For a lark, to prove he could? Don't lie, trader. "I saw it and thought of you."
"It's beautiful." Nyls traces his fingertips along the threads. The tunic is light enough to wear as an undershirt, but in the city's midsummer heat, won't require any outer wear at all. "Larik would have loved it."
Kelol sits heavily on the lid of the press.
Nyls clutches at the tunic's hem, then forces his fingers away from the material. "I'm sorry."
He apologized once before, when Kelol was too much a child to hear him. Nyls gave him place at Larik's wrapping. No one else thought of Kelol, or if they did, it was to deny him Larik's giving. He forces himself to speak. "Larik was ill for a season."
Nyls, cautious, nods.
Kelol presses his palms against his thighs. "You saved Kerajin," he says. "The baby too."
"I'll need to keep an eye on her. As long as the baby nurses, I think they'll be all right." Nyls steps closer, frowning lightly. "And you--?"
Kelol shakes his head. "You're a healer." He lets the inflection fall feminine on the word.
He hears Nyls's intake of breath. A healer, and a woman. Far more than the tunic, the word is a gift. Kelol denied Nyls his place for so long, refused his skill and his song, for Larik's sake. But she had been coughing blood long before Nyls led her final vigil. If Nyls can bring Kerajin through a breach birth, then his songs, however slanted, aren't what killed Larik. Kelol needed someone to blame, needed a reason. There was none.
"I promise you, Kelol, I did everything I could for her," Nyls says.
"I know," he says. "I know. I'm sorry." His grief has grown old through the summer, a pain that stabs sharply, and fades as soon. Kelol stands, meaning to escape memory, the room's still heat.
But Nyls catches his wrists, hard at first, then he releases Kelol and twines their fingers together. "Thank you," he says. He lifts one hand to cup Kelol's cheek. The cotton tunic, a hint short at the waist, rises to show the woman's right-knot on Kelol's trousers.
Kelol can't help the heat that rises to his face. He presses a kiss to Nyls's palm. "I've heard," he murmurs, "they do things differently, in the city."
[[ϒ Nyls laughs softly. "Traders will say anything," he says.->homecoming]]
[[ϒ Kelol smiles. He finds Nyls's mouth with his, and sets out to prove the traders' tales true.->make good]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Nyls gave him place at Larik's wrapping.")[Nyls gave him place at Larik's wrapping. No one else thought of Kelol, or if they did, it was to deny him Larik's giving. ]
]}$il[T]he wheat kindles golden, shoulder height to Brys, when Kelol returns from his latest delivery. He enters the sitting room and finds Nyls dozing in an armchair, which Kelol scrounged from an overholding's boy charged with getting rid of it. The horsehide has rubbed thin and shiny over the straw stuffing, and Kelol's makeshift repair to one broken leg already failed once, but it stands up better than the ladderbacks to the strain of holding two people instead of one.
With a kiss and a lingering touch, Kelol wakes Nyls before putting his few things away. Rain taps on the window, a soft and thorough soaking that will delay the second haying. The air actually approached cool when Kelol woke this morning. He may need more than a bedroll the next time he travels.
Nyls stretches and yawns, then stands and goes to the covered pot on the sideboard.
Kelol's stomach rumbles. "How was the vigil?"
"Long. But he's given," Nyls says. He spoons out some tev from pot and hands Kelol a bowlful, along with a spoon. Kelol takes a seat and tries a bite of Nyls's tev. Plain wheat, boiled creamy, with the barest salty hint of pork fat. "It's...good," he says.
Nyls makes a face. "It's edible."
"It's, well. Bland."
"Better than burning your mouth out with peppers."
Kelol laughs, remembering last time. "You're a healer, how can you be so bad with herbs?"
Nyls shoves his shoulder as he finds his seat. Kelol laughs and takes another bite. Plain tev satisfies after a long day's ride, and it's a sign of how well the quiet market has treated them. Nyls's patients trust him--his discretion most of all--and for that, they pay in silver as often as they can. Nyls can learn to cook on downmountain wheat because they can afford the lesson. "Did you find any interesting plants?" Nyls asks.
"Some nasturtiums, and chrysanthemums for tea." Kelol lets his spoon fall with a sigh. The good travelling weather won't last many more ninedays. The season turns earlier upmountain. Coming home, even if home means three rooms in a city bordel, feels deceptively comfortable. "I need to go back to Asaresta," he says.
"What do you mean?"
"I owe my holding my duty." Kelol scrubs a hand through his hair and frowns. "It's late summer, harvest soon. I want to get there and back before the snow."
Nyls stills in the armchair. "Why?"
"I need to repay my debt." He owes his family a portion of the silver he earned as a contracted labourer, but more than that, he owes them news of his whereabouts. If they choose to dismiss him from the holding then, they can at least do it honestly.
Nyls's shoulders draw back, tight. "Your parents were placeless to put that debt on you."
Kelol sets his bowl on the sideboard. His parents wanted someone to blame. They put so much hope in Larik's betrothal to Trenon. Nyls is right that if Kelol had been a season older and already come of age as a boy, they couldn't have held him responsible for the contract breaking price. But as it was, Kelol stole himself from them. He was never apprenticed as a trader, but he works as one anyway; the trade he made was his freedom from Trenon, in exchange for all the silverweights his holding chose to demand. He steps across to Nyls and, with a gentle shove, pushes into the chair next to him. The legs creak under them as Nyls worms into a comfortable position, leaning back against Kelol's front. "I got far more from that bargain than I ever thought I would," he says, pressing his chin into Nyls's shoulder. "If silver is the price, I want to pay it."
Nyls lets out a brief laugh. "My trader," he says, tucking Kelol's hand against his chest. "Even ono, you won't break song."
Kelol wrinkles his nose at Nyls's teasing. He doesn't dress aslant or change his colours; he hasn't claimed an ono's name. But Nyls isn't wrong about him, his nature, perhaps. "I'll tell Shayin and Varin about the city market," he says. "Dyes they have here, and cloth no trader takes upmountain. If they're smart they'll use it well when city traders try to underpay." In late summer and early spring, a single traveller can arrive upmountain long before a trader's laden string. It's not silver, but it's a debt paid.
Nyls sighs. "Six ninedays?"
"Or seven." Kelol's arms tighten around Nyls, and he brushes his lips against the side of Nyls's mouth.
"When you come home," Nyls says, turning into Kelol's kiss, "it will be winter."
And his hearthside will be waiting for him.
(link-goto: "ϒ Return","begin") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Kelol stole himself from them.")[Kelol stole himself from them. He was never apprenticed as a trader, but he works as one anyway; the trade he made was his freedom from Trenon, in exchange for all the silverweights his holding chose to demand.]
]}$il[N]ilos stares red-eyed at the ceiling in the homeside sleeping room, listening to his brothers' breath. With the first grey of dawn he gives courtesy to Cayir and Selis at the hearthside. He forces himself to swallow his tev, scrambled with duck eggs. He returns his pottery bowl with a bow. His mothers don't know yet that he's leaving. Nilos will be gone before they hear the advocat's announcement that Nilos's apprenticeship has been dissolved.
The rising sun threads through the clouds like veins of mica. Hitching his satchel over his shoulder, Nilos scuffs through the dew to Asaresta's common barn, where traders and smallholders without barns stable their mounts and pack animals. Zayelik's outriders move between the barn and paddock, catching mules, adjusting harnesses, and loading the manties. Kelol scrambles among them, following orders with a good will, though he looks like a puppy invited on a chamois roundup--wriggling underfoot and jumping up in excitement.
Nilos ducks away from the tumult. He wants to find a quiet corner, but if he erases himself entirely he might be left behind. He catches Kelol by the arm as he darts past. "Where do I go?" he asks.
Kelol nods towards an old brown mare hitched to the paddock fence and dozing with one leg cocked. "Pack up your gear," he says.
Nilos bites his lip. He wanted to conceal the fact that he's hardly ridden a plough mule the length of a barley field. He shrugs under the strap of his satchel and rucksack. "I can wear these," he suggests uneasily.
Kelol takes one look at the bundles looped over Nilos's shoulder and twists his mouth in exasperation. "Come on." He plucks Nilos's bags away from him and crosses the busy dooryard to the mare. "Like this," Kelol says. "You walk firmly, but not too fast. Pet her here," he says, giving the mare's shoulder a firm stroke. "Then let her smell you."
Nilos finds his hands full of warm, soft nose. The bristles around the mare's mouth are grizzled white. Her eyes are soft and dark. She lips at Nilos's hands, then draws back with a snort.
"Tyn!" Kelol says, giving her a slap on the rump. "Move over." He circles the mare and settles Nilos's gear among the pony's saddlebags. "Get on, we're nearly ready to go."
Nilos knows how to mount, but Tyn sidles when he gets his foot in the stirrup. She walks forward, just fast enough that he has to hop after her or be pulled off his feet.
"All right?" An older man ambles across to them, grabbing a mounting block on his way. "I'm Sirol, lad. I hear you're joining us." He keeps Tyn steady by some magic while Nilos scrambles into the saddle from the block. Kelol glares at Nilos for demonstrating his incompetence in front of Zayelik's outriders.
"Lift your foot out of the stirrup," Sirol says. "Put it forward, by her chin--she won't mind." Sirol goes to work on the straps under the stirrup, sliding them through buckles and rings with quick tugs.
Kelol immediately mirrors the older outrider, shortening the stirrup on Nilos's other side. Sirol gives the mare a few good strokes along the withers, then calls for the rest of the outriders to check the pack mules.
Zayelik emerges from the common barn and walks along the train. She eyes Nilos with the same attention she gives to a bolt of cloth. Returning to the front, she takes her horse's halter rope from one of the other outriders--Jiron, Sirol called him, a tall young man in his third nineyear. Zayelik mounts with fluid energy, then circles her arm to set them off. Sirol leads Nilos's pony to the rear of the pack string, tying the mare behind the last mule. Tyn settles into an easy walk, with no inclination to stray from the tail in front of her nose. She shows no indignation at being roped to a mule while all the other ponies have their heads. The same can't be said of Kelol. He urges his bay pony into a trot, and frowns at Nilos as he passes, for being so obviously incompetent.
Sirol calls Kelol to the back of the train, while the other men flank the mules. Zayelik takes point on her horse. At first, Nilos enjoys the view on either side of the train as they leave Asaresta by the south road. Tiers of barley rise up in steps around them. By the time the sun clears the clouds, though, Nilos's knees burn, and he shifts awkwardly to ease his muscles. Grimacing, he alternates between holding Tyn's useless reins, or grabbing at the saddlehorn as he tries to adjust his seat.
Lost in his discomfort, Nilos doesn't notice Kelol as edges his pony up beside Tyn, until he hears Sirol call, "Pay attention to your work, lad."
Kelol stands in his stirrups, looking for the road ahead, or perhaps trying to see how Zayelik judges their route. Brush and copses of pine surround them. Kelol was a scrappy, eager rider as a child, and now seems eager to show off the languid ease of his seat. He turns his pony with his knees and returns to the rear, still watching over his shoulder, as if he expects Zayelik to invite him to lead the way. Sirol snaps, "You're not the string boss yet. Stay put."
Kelol's restless impatience must be catching. By midday, the only thing Nilos can think about is the end of the trail. The ponies are hock-deep in sucking willow swamps. Nilos grabs unabashedly at the saddlehorn, bending forward to ease the galls raised on his inner thighs by Tyn's rolling gait. His head throbs from the jolting. He watches the sun travel its arc from his left to his right, silently begging it to set. The outriders show no sign that they've noticed the day passing, or that their saddles have worn through their trousers to scrape away their skin. Surely they can't continue after nightfall.
Finally, Zayelik slows, casting about, until the whole string jogs to the left, into a clearing where a cairn points to a cache of chopped firewood, and a trough waits near a line of hitching posts. Camp.
Sirol reaches Nilos's side and helps him fall out of the saddle with some dignity. "Sit," he orders, pointing to a semi-circle of tree stumps around an ashy firepit. Nilos pushes through the agony of those few steps, then sprawls full-length on the sward. Around him, the outriders set up low tents, unload the mules, lay a fire, and carry yoke after yoke of water from the stream. When they finish, the men sit on the stumps while Zayelik cooks. Jiron, kindly enough, nudges Nilos with his boot. "I think the healer needs a song," he says.
Nilos pushes up on his elbows. Without being asked, Jiron hands over his satchel, and offers him a billy can of water, warmed to steaming above the fire. "Have you willowbark in there?"
"Thanks," Nilos manages. "Yes." He'd rather brew thornapple and sleep through the pain, but the willowbark tea, bitter on the tongue, revives him enough to murmur a low chant against blisters. He takes off his boots and massages the lifepoints in the ball of his foot until his breath begins to flow again, ease working up through his knees and thighs. Jiron slaps him on the back, like Kelol patting Tyn's withers. "You'll feel better in a few ninedays," he promises.
"We'll reach Sareya before then," his friend, Ferok, snorts.
"As I said," Jiron answers with a laugh. "He'll feel much better."
Ferok grins. "Don't tell him about tomorrow," he says, in a loud, conspiratorial whisper.
"Wouldn't dream of it," Jiron mutters back, and then, aloud, "Lad, you'll want to be dead tomorrow. Don't think about it."
Nilos smiles weakly. "I won't." Maybe he should take the thornapple after all.
Ferok tosses him a water skin, but instead of water, Nilos chokes on twice-distilled potato wine. He takes another, more careful, swallow. The potato wine heats Nilos's stomach and blurs the pain's bite.
"That'll take the edge off," Ferok laughs.
"For tonight," Jiron says solemnly. "But tomorrow..."
Zayelik clangs a ladle against the pot that was cached with the other camp gear. The scent of mutton tev fills the clearing. Kelol jumps up, offering to serve. Jiron rolls his eyes behind Kelol's back and Ferok smirks. Nilos watches uneasily. Women cook and serve--Kelol should save his cooperation for the manly art of scouring the pots. Nilos stays put until Zayelik brings him a bowl.
[[ϒ Kelol grabs his empty bowl from him and waves him to their shared tent.->exposure]]
[[ϒ Nilos doesn't know if there's freedom to be found in the city, but by the looks on Jiron and Ferok's faces, there's none on the trail among mountain outriders.->entangled]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "the same attention she gives to a bolt of cloth")[the same attention she gives to a bolt of cloth, a cool glance that counts up his flaws and subtracts them from his worth]
(Click-replace: "Brush and copses of pine surround them.")[Brush and copses of pine surround them. The drained, terraced land disappeared some time ago. They've put Asaresta, and the most southerly holding's land claims, behind them.]
] }$il[F]or a few ninedays, Kelol sleeps outside the city as often as in it, travelling among farming smallholdings delivering messages, spices, cloth, and tools. When the load is small enough, he leaves one pony behind in Chiason's stable, until both are well-rested and eager for new trips.
But Kelol's initial luck fades as his contacts exhaust their resources but not their need, and start suggesting payment in kind rather than silver. Kelol accepts food, but he can't store the odds and ends his customers offer him. Chiason laughs when Kelol tries to pass the goods to him in return for lodging.
Chiason's inroads into his silver pouch make Kelol start looking harder for a lodgestone that caters to more than a night's convenience. But every lodgestone keeper he asks charges as much or more for accommodations as Chiason does for lodging and stabling combined. Chiason can afford to charge less for nightly rooms because he takes most of his profit from the rooms he lets by the candlemark. Even so, Kelol has to scramble to negotiate more deliveries, to cover his costs.
He dips into Zayelik's wages once to cover his bill, then again. As midsummer approaches, he realizes he needs to make a choice--to return to Asaresta before winter closes the trails, or to keep scrabbling in the city with no guarantee his quiet market work will last through the deep snows.
If Kelol finds himself pressed for silver in the city, then Nilos may be worse off still. No city master will take an apprentice ono. Kelol should have searched harder for him when he first came to the city's south side, and all the more once he saw what it meant to be ono in the city. Kelol barely notices a slanted knot these days. He'd never ask of Chiason's servers which way they tie their linens. On that riverbank, Nilos wanted to help Jiron, and save him the use of his thumb. Maybe Jiron was right, and people ono can't heal. But Nilos deserved better than Kelol's contempt.
Kelol checks with a few of his quiet market contacts if they've met a healer's apprentice named Nilos, and gets shrugs in return. Chiason's server Thyla, on the other hand, sniggers when he asks and refuses a straight answer. "A healer came a threeday back and plastered mouldy bread between my legs, for the itch," Thyla tells him. "But we don't remember ghost names here."
Kelol sighs in exasperation. Thyla's ono as they come, and protective besides. "So you do know him, by a different name?" he asks. "Can you tell him I'm looking for him?"
Thyla shrugs. "I don't know //him//, but I'll see what I can do."
Nilos appears in Chiason's common room a nineday later. Kelol sits at the back of the room, away from the servers' patrons, and sees him first.
Nilos is--ono. Kelol never looks twice at Chiason's servers, yet he can't keep his eyes off the rightwards tug of Nilos's cloak. A warm glow floods his stomach. Flushing, he stares down at the trestle in front of him. A moment later, Nilos sits down across from him. A blue tunic peeks out from his old dun cloak. Without thinking, Kelol takes a bite of tev, and finds he can't swallow. He puts down his spoon. "Nilos, I've been looking for you."
The apology he planned crowds his throat, but before he can continue, Nilos snaps, "Nyls."
Kelol spends half his nights listening to Chiason's patrons calling out such ono names, in amazed desperation, in languid gratification. He blushes miserably. "Nyls," he manages. "I'm--I wondered if you wanted to go back to Asaresta. With me." Instead of reasoned argument, the bald invitation tumbles out. Kelol hoped to save Nilos--Nyls--from the city, but all too clearly Nyls doesn't need his heroics.
"I won't go back." Nyls's water-grey gaze is disconcertingly direct. He doesn't seem angry, but clear and firm, not nearly as self-effacing as he was during their trip downmountain.
"Where are you staying?" Kelol asks.
"Here." The challenge rings clear as chimes.
Kelol wonders what Nyls would look like in green and yellow.
Nyls takes his blank stare as objection, and says, "I've been healing. Brews for food, sometimes silver."
People without wages can't pay a healer, and people in smallholdings have to rely on their overholdings to include a healer's services in their patronage contracts. Kelol has been surviving by the same equation, yet he can't dismiss his misgivings. Lives depend on Nilos's songs in a way they don't on the work Kelol does. Like a confession, he says, "I've been working in the quiet market. Deliveries. No contracts. Handclasps are the best of it." He fumbles again for the apology he intended. "If you and I can do it, if everyone who breaks a song or lives ono can do it..." His words drift off when he realizes he's offering forgiveness instead of asking it. "I mean, it's not fair, is it, to deny someone the songs they need because of who they are?"
Nyls shrugs. Like a cloud passing in front of the sun, the bright grey of his eyes dims.
Kelol picks at a flaw on the trestle, feeling the bite of splinters against the pad of his thumb. He wanted to believe he'd forgiven Nyls for Larik's death. He wanted to believe he never blamed Nyls in the first place. But his words ring in his ears, proving how similar they are. He can't excuse himself, and call Nyls a killer, in the same breath. Kelol traps his restless fingers under the table. "I've been trading," he says, and winces. Nyls watches him quietly. "I don't think I'm ono, Nyls. I really don't."
"No one says you have to be." Nyls pushes back from the table and stands. "I won't be returning to Asaresta. I live here now. Thanks for your offer, but I don't need your help."
(if: $nyls is true)[(link: "ϒ Nyls slides easily between tables and servers. She disappears from the common room.")[(goto: "ghostwork")]
(link: "ϒ Kelol stays behind, breath caught closed in his chest.")[(goto: "reparation")] ](else:)[(if: (random: 0,1) is 0)[(set: $nyls to true)
(link: "ϒ Nyls slides easily between tables and servers. She disappears from the common room.")[(goto: "ghostwork")]
(link: "ϒ Kelol stays behind, breath caught closed in his chest.")[(goto: "reparation")] ](else:)[(link: "ϒ Nyls slides easily between tables and servers. He disappears from the common room.")[(goto: "breathwork")]
(link: "ϒ Kelol stays behind, breath caught closed in his chest.")[(goto: "atonement")] ] ] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "he lets by the candlemark")[he rents out nine times a day, with a server to grace the bed. There aren't many who look for lodgings in an ono's bordel.]
]}(unless: (history:)'s last is "bearable")[ $il[K]elol keeps his ear to the ground for deliveries and commissions, but between trips, Chiason begins paying him haphazardly for his services. In that manner, Kelol acquires enough linseed oil to polish the floors, and fresh hay to stuff the pallets. Though upmountain he was considered an indifferent knitter, the servers come to him with whits and their mending baskets. With his lodging fee reduced to half, and the new income from wild greens and vegetables, Kelol breathes easier about surviving winter when the roads close.
](unless: (history:)'s last is "bearable")[One](else:)[ $il[O]ne] evening, climbing the stairs up to their rooms, Kelol hears a moan coming from the suite. He stutters to a stop at the top of the flight. Could Nyls be accepting payment in kind from one of Chiason's servers? Kelol's heart squeezes as he listens.
The moan comes again, but this time, Kelol hears the note of pain. He rushes to open the door and finds Nyls and Rythel supporting a woman between them, clearly in the later stages of bearing. They pace the room in tandem. Every few moments, the woman stops, panting, her eyes fluttering closed. She groans, deep, one hand clutching her tight round stomach.
Kelol backs out of the room. Nyls has never brought a patient home before, and he may want privacy. Bearing can take days. He retreats to the common room, where the noise of Chiason's custom and a tankard of wheat beer muffles any sounds coming from above. Kelol didn't realize Nyls treated anyone who wasn't ono, but the woman shows no sign of dressing askew. Yet Kelol has seen the signs of Nyls's success. He finds work every day, enough to keep him out long after the candle lanterns are lit. The woman Nyls is helping dresses with place. She must have a holding, people to care for her. Yet she came to a healer ono, with no more training than an apprentice.
Kelol orders a trencher of tev and another beer, then ignores both. Nyls isn't necessarily endangering the woman by acting as midbearer. People bear all the time. Some don't even contract a healer. Kelol's sister Varin wanted Master Tereos crouched over her husband's pallet every candlemark of his bearing, but Master Tereos came, looked, and said he'd return the next day if Hiron was still in travail. By then, though, Birn was born with a hearty wail. Hiron slept easily with the baby at his breast.
Nyls wouldn't demand silver from a woman who had no need of a healer. Rythel wouldn't help, either, if the woman's holding alone could support her through the birth. Kelol lets a sharp laugh escape. //Endangering//--and who does Kelol //endanger// when he acts as a trader?
Overholdings denying shoe iron or replacement grindstones to their smallholdings is one thing. But to deny a bearer a healer! Why would the woman's overholding do that? They may have their knots set properly, but they're the ones risking her life, not Nyls.
The healer's song has three parts: the chant that works the breath, the brew that speaks to the ghost, and the touch that eases the body. The colour of Nyls's tunic has nothing to do with that. His claimed name won't change his song. Why does Kelol keep insisting that it must?
Kelol pushes his trencher aside uneaten. Nyls probably needs water. Bearing takes a lot. He slips out to the courtyard, and, after paying the water keeper, starts drawing buckets. He fills a cauldron and sets it to boil on Chiason's hearthroom stove. Chiason sticks his head into the hearthroom and frowns at him, but he doesn't kick Kelol out of a room he has no business in. Kelol doubts Chiason would confuse a bearer's straining grunts with the usual sounds of his bordel's trade. Chiason points to the cask. "See that it's cleaned when you're done."
Kelol wrestles the cask up the narrow stairs. Nyls and Rythel have already pushed the two chairs and the rug to one side to make room for the woman's pacing. Kelol leaves the cask, then returns with the first steaming kettle. On his third trip, Rythel emerges from the hearthside room. Behind him, Nyls murmurs to the woman, who squats over the pallet--Kelol will need to find new straw again--urging her, reassuring her. There's blood on his hands. Kelol remembers Jiron's gouged hand, the gouting blood. He swallows. "I've brought water for the bearing."
Rythel grips his shoulder. "Kerajin is doing well, but the bearing will be slow," she says. "Nyls says the baby hasn't turned."
Kelol swallows again, closes his eyes against dizziness. Ewes die often, when the lamb is breach. He runs down to the hearthroom, nearly slipping on the wet stairs. He pumps another bucket from the well, adds it to the boiling cauldron, and carries a full steaming kettle upstairs. Each time he returns, Rythel pours the boiling water into the cask, then sends him back for more. Nyls doesn't notice, except to call for new linens, and more hot water skins to ease Kerajin's pains. Each time, Kelol sees more blood, linens sopping in it. He can't watch, but he can carry water. All night, if need be.
Night fades to dawn, then to midday, before Nyls delivers Kerajin of her breach child. Kelol arrives in the room to find Rythel bathing the infant. Nyls kneels between Kerajin's legs, working with a needle and a length of boiled sheep's gut. The stitches Jiron refused. Kerajin's cheeks look sunken, pale. After Nyls sews her tear, he bathes Kerajin with a horsetail fern wash, then packs a compress of woodsage and comfrey between her legs. He pushes to his feet, and stumbles. "She needs broth--meat--Kelol, can you--"
Kelol rushes away once more. He returns with pork broth and more water. Kerajin smiles at him when he gives her a bowl to drink from. Tears and sweat darken the hair at her temples. Her fresh-swaddled baby makes a sound like a wood dove, a liquid coo, and nuzzles close to her warmth.
Nyls reels when he comes out to the sitting room. Rythel gives him courtesy, and squeezes first his shoulder, then Kelol's. "I'll leave you now. To sleep, mind," she says.
Nyls nods, but once Rythel leaves, he returns to Kerajin's side to wrap the afterbirth and fuss over the baby's swaddle. Kelol finally drags him out of the hearthside room so that Kerajin can sleep.
"You're filthy," he says. He reaches for the knot of Nyls's wrapped linen vest. How many people have shed their clothing in this room to beat the candle's measure? Nyls's vest wraps right, and his trouser belt is knotted right too. Kelol pushes the clothes off him. He kept aside a bowl of Nyls's woodsage song. It smells sharp, but cuts through sweat and blood. He urges Nyls to stand in a shallow pan, and runs a cloth over Nyls's shiver-pricked skin. The warm wash eases him, like a curry brush over a fretting pony's flank. Nyls stands naked, bewildered, and lets Kelol touch him. After Kelol scrubs him with the wash, and rinses him with the last kettle of water, Nyls holds Kelol's shoulder as he steps, shuddering, into the half-full cask. He sits down, letting his arms and legs slide out akimbo, and sinks down to his chin. His eyes drift shut; his fingers loosen on the cask's rim.
Kelol doesn't want him to drown, but sleep tugs at him, so he sits on one of the chairs pushed into the corner. His head falls to one side, against the wall--just for a moment.
Sunset paints the room orange when Nyls wakes him. Kerajin sleeps in Nyls's hearthside room, so Kelol tugs Nyls to his homeside pallet.
[[ϒ They slide under the rough wool quilt, Kelol in trousers and linens, Nilos shivering naked.->sufficient]]
[[ϒ The two of them tangle together in the fading daylight in the single, narrow, bordel-room bed.->awakening]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "He thought only the unholded and the songless would come to Nyls.")[He thought only the unholded and the songless would come to Nyls--those people denied a true healer because of their broken vows.]
]}{
<!-- The footer of each passage allows the player to turn Hints (extended descriptions which give further context to the story's fantasy elements) on or off. Each time the switch is toggled, the passage will refresh, which causes any in-passage commands to re-run.
The footer also has the save-game link. Saved games can be reopened from the main menu and will retain the player's history of visited passages and the state of any set variables. --> }
<hr> { <div class="footer">
(if: $allowHints is true)[(link: "Turn Hints Off")[(set: $allowHints to false)(goto: (passage: )'s name)] ]
(else:)[(link: "Turn Hints On")[(set: $allowHints to true)(goto: (passage: )'s name)] ]
|
(link: "Save Game")[ (if: (save-game: "FileA") )[(print: "Game saved!")]
(else:)[Sorry, I couldn't save your game.] ]
|
(link-goto: "Main Menu","Front Credits")
</div> }In the barn, $il[Kell] forks hay into the ponies' mangers. The ponies shift from hoof to hoof in uneasy time with the healers' vigil song. The tap of raindrops blurs the words but it doesn't matter. The vigil means death is very close. Kell is a child, too young to add breath to the song. Three ninedays too young, so nearly an adult. Too old to run to fathers for comfort. Too old to cry. [[Kell hugs the old mare's withers and hides tears in her coarse mane.->her sibling]]
The loft above the hearth offers a cramped sickroom away from Larik's sisters and mothers. $il[Nilos], the healer's apprentice, kneels beside her. His voice rolls in the rough waves of the vigil chant. When Larik's flesh heats, he bathes her with cool bandages damp with well-water; when she shivers, he wraps hot hearthstones in leather and tucks them next to her under the quilts. [[With songs Nilos binds her ghost to the thinning shell of her body.->her friend]]
{(if: $allowHints is true)[(click-replace: "the vigil chant")[the vigil chant, a song for the dying] ]
}Far from Asaresta, on the mountain's lea, $il[Trenon] knows little and cares less for Larik's illness. When he hears that she is burning, he shrugs, finishes his meal, and sleeps easily. His mother negotiated the betrothal. If Larik dies, Trenon will be free a season or two longer. When his parents choose the next prospect to sell him to, he'll sing the vows they ask of him, and return to the road. [[Trenon hones indifference like a blade.->her betrothed]]
{ <!-- open allowHints -->
(if: $allowHints)[
(replace: "homeside ")[(link-replace: "homeside ")[men's side ] ]
(replace: "hearthside ")[(link-replace: "hearthside ")[women's side ] ]
(replace: "iryu holding ")[(link-replace: "iryu holding ")[(either: "Peris and Maron's holding ","a weaving holding ","Maron and Peris's holding ")] ]
(replace: "irthu holding ")[(link-replace: "irthu holding ")[(either: "Berin and Ralon's holding ","a silverworking holding ","Ralon and Berin's holding ")] ]
(replace: "irlu holding ")[(link-replace: "irlu holding ")[(either: "Dayon and Cayir's holding ","a farming holding ","Cayir and Dayon's holding ")] ]
(replace: "irvu ")[(link-replace: "irvu ")[a mining holding ] ]
(replace: "irdanu holding")[(link-replace: "irdanu holding")[an overholding] ]
(replace: "sung to irdanu ")[(link-replace: "sung to irdanu ")[contracted to irdanu overholding ] ]
(replace: "irunu")[(link-replace: "irunu")[a smallholding] ]
(replace: "irkayu")[(link-replace: "irkayu")[a smallholding] ]
(replace: "ghostless")[(link-replace: "ghostless")[(either: "loveless","contract")] ]
(replace: "ghost shell")[(link-replace: "ghost shell")[(either: "breathless body","empty body","hollow remains","vacant flesh")] ]
(replace: "Lethinil ")[(link-replace: "Lethinil ")[(either: "Lethinil, lodgestone keeper, ","Lethinil, a smallholder, ","Lethinil, contracted to an overholding, ")] ]
(replace: "Chiason ")[(link-replace: "Chiason ")[(either: "Chiasin, bordel keeper, ","Chiasin, a woman's kerchief tucked into a man's belt, ")] ]
(replace: "Chiasin ")[(link-replace: "Chiasin ")[(either: "Chiason, bordel keeper, ","Chiason, a man's kerchief tucked into a woman's belt, ")] ]
(replace: "Belim ")[(link-replace: "Belim ")[Belim, iryu's daughter, ] ]
(replace: "Katir ")[(link-replace: "Katir ")[Katir, iryu's daughter, ] ]
(replace: "Firinol ")[(link-replace: "Firinol ")[(either: "Firinol, iryu's second husband, ","Firinol, Nilos's father, ")] ]
(replace: "Janis ")[(link-replace: "Janis ")[either: "Janis, Nilos's sister, ","Janis, journeyman carpenter, ")] ]
(replace: "Renik ")[(link-replace: "Renik ")[(either: "Renik, irlu's daughter, ","Renik, journeyman forester, ")] ]
(replace: "Hayn ")[(link-replace: "Hayn ")[(either: "Hayn, irlu's child, ","Hayn, Nilos's sibling")] ]
(replace: "Tilm ")[(link-replace: "Tilm ")[either: "Tilm, irlu's child, ","Tilm, Nilos's youngest sibling, ")] ]
(replace: "Ferok ")[(link-replace: "Ferok ")[(either: "Ferok, an outrider, ","Ferok, with his harsh joking, ")] ]
(replace: "Jiron ")[(link-replace: "Jiron ")[(either: "Jiron, an outrider, ","Jiron, defensive and shifty, ")] ]
(replace: "Sirol ")[(link-replace: "Sirol ")[(either: "Sirol, head outrider, ","Sirol, Zayelik's second on the trail, ","Sirol, an old mountain hand, ")] ]
(replace: "Birn ")[(link-replace: "Birn ")[(either: "Birn, the baby, ","Birn, Varin and Hiron's baby, ","Birn, iryu's first grandchild, ")] ]
(if: ( (passage: )'s tags contains "povtrenon") and ( (passage: )'s tags contains "child") )[(replace: "Peris ")[(link-replace: "Peris ")[(either: "Peris, Larik's first mother, ","Peris, iryu's first wife, ","Peris, the master dyer, ",)] ]
(replace: "Maron ")[(link-replace: "Maron ")[(either: "Maron, Larik's first father, ","Maron, Kell's first father, ","Maron, chamois shepherd, ","Maron, iryu's first husband, ","Maron, a magpie in his gaudy nest, ")] ]
(replace: "Grenor ")[(link-replace: "Grenor ")[(either: "Grenor, Larik's second father, ","Grenor, Kell's second father, ","Grenor, herdsman and gardener, ","Grenor, tall and square, ")] ]
(replace: "Shayin ")[(link-replace: "Shayin ")[(either: "Shayin, Larik's second mother, ","Shayin, Kelol's second mother, ","Shayin, iryu's sometime trader, ","Shayin, bound to her daughter's bedside, ")] ]
(replace: "Amoz ")[(link-replace: "Amoz ")[(either: "Amoz, Larik's third father, ","Amoz, Kell's third father, ","Amoz, iryu's young husband, ","Amoz, iryu's love-spouse, ","Amoz, with his hair plaited softly back from his handsome face, " )] ]
(replace: "Varin ")[(link-replace: "Varin ")[(either: "Varin, Larik's oldest sister, ","Varin, Kell's oldest sister, ","Varin, iryu's oldest daughter, ","Varin, iryu's apprentice weaver, ","Varin, Hiron's wife, ")] ]
(replace: "Hiron")[(link-replace: "Hiron")[Hiron, Varin's husband, ] ]
(replace: "Berin ")[(link-replace: "Berin ")[(either: "Berin, Trenon's mother, ","Berin, master silversmith, ","Berin, irthu's first wife, ","Berin, large-framed but spare, ","Berin, who trades her holding's name for silver's sake, ")] ]
(replace: "Ralon ")[(link-replace: "Ralon ")[(either: "Ralon, Trenon's father, ","Ralon, Berin's first husband, ","Ralon, who makes land claims without raising a cairn, ","Ralon, who lives by Berin's silver, ","Ralon, gentleman farmer, ")] ]
(replace: "Tereos ")[(link-replace: "Tereos ")[(either: "Tereos, Nilos's master, ","Tereos, the master healer, ","Tereos, who can't hear a new song, ","Tereos, whose gentle dismissals hurt Nilos more than he knows, ")] ]
(replace: "Tethin ")[(link-replace: "Tethin ")[(either: "Tethin, irthu's second wife, ","Tethin, Trenon's borne mother, ","Tethin, whom he never knew, ","Tethin, Berin's love spouse, ")] ]
(replace: "Cayir ")[(link-replace: "Cayir ")[(either: "Cayir, irlu's first wife, ","Cayir, Nilos's mother, ","Cayir, a better negotiator than irlu deserves, ","Cayir, canny enough to cage her son, ")] ]
(replace: "Dayon ")[(link-replace: "Dayon ")[(either: "Dayon, irlu's first husband, ","Dayon, Ralon's farm labourer, ","Dayon, blunt and stubborn, ","Dayon, Nilos's father, ")] ]
(replace: "Dalor ")[(link-replace: "Dalor ")[(either: "Dalor, master advocat, ", "Dalor, Trenon's master, ","Dalor, complacent in his mastery, ")] ]
(replace: "Trayis ")[(link-replace: "Trayis ")[(either: "Trayis, apprentice miner, ")] ]
(replace: "Rythel ")[(link-replace: "Rythel ")[(either: "Rythel, ono, ","Rythel, a slanted advocat, ")] ]
(replace: "Zayelik ")[(link-replace: "Zayelik ")[(either: "Zayelik, master trader, ","Zayelik, wearing her face like a mask, ","Zayelik, a shrewd trader, ")] ]
] <!-- close Trenon + child -->
(if: ( (passage: )'s tags contains "povtrenon") and ( (passage: )'s tags contains "son") )[(replace: "Peris ")[(link-replace: "Peris ")[(either: "Peris, Larik's first mother, ","Peris, Kelol's first mother, ","Peris, iryu's master dyer, ","Peris, iryu's first wife, ","Peris, lean as a spring coyote, ")] ]
(replace: "Maron ")[(link-replace: "Maron ")[(either: "Maron, Larik's first father, ","Maron, Kelol's first father, ","Maron, chamois shepherd, ","Maron, iryu's first husband, ","Maron, weathered as a sandstone boulder, ")] ]
(replace: "Grenor ")[(link-replace: "Grenor ")[(either: "Grenor, Larik's second father, ","Grenor, Kelol's second father, ","Grenor, herdsman and gardener, ","Grenor, iryu's second husband, ","Grenor, quietly disdainful, ")] ]
(replace: "Shayin ")[(link-replace: "Shayin ")[(either: "Shayin, Larik's second mother, ","Shayin, Kelol's second mother, ","Shayin, iryu's sometime trader, ","Shayin, iryu's second wife, ","Shayin, remote as the snowline, ")] ]
(replace: "Amoz ")[(link-replace: "Amoz ")[(either: "Amoz, Larik's third father, ","Amoz, Kelol's third father, ","Amoz, iryu's young husband, ","Amoz, iryu's love-spouse, ","Amoz, with his hair plaited softly back from his handsome face, " )] ]
(replace: "Varin ")[(link-replace: "Varin ")[(either: "Varin, Larik's oldest sister, ","Varin, Kelol's oldest sister, ","Varin, iryu's oldest daughter, ","Varin, iryu's apprentice weaver, ")] ]
(replace: "Hiron")[(link-replace: "Hiron")[Hiron, Varin's husband, ] ]
(replace: "Berin ")[(link-replace: "Berin ")[(either: "Berin, Trenon's mother, ","Berin, master silversmith, ","Berin, irthu's first wife, ","Berin, large-framed but spare, ","Berin, who clings to place as a chamois clings to the cliff's edge, ")] ]
(replace: "Ralon ")[(link-replace: "Ralon ")[(either: "Ralon, Trenon's father, ","Ralon, Berin's first husband, ","Ralon, who makes land claims without raising a cairn, ","Ralon, who lives by Berin's silver, ","Ralon, gentleman farmer, ")] ]
(replace: "Tereos ")[(link-replace: "Tereos ")[(either: "Tereos, Nilos's master, ","Tereos, the master healer, ","Tereos, who can't hear a new song, ","Tereos, whose gentle dismissals hurt Nilos more than he knows, ")] ]
(replace: "Tethin ")[(link-replace: "Tethin ")[(either: "Tethin, irthu's second wife, ","Tethin, Trenon's borne mother, ","Tethin, whom he never knew, ","Tethin, Berin's love spouse, ")] ]
(replace: "Cayir ")[(link-replace: "Cayir ")[(either: "Cayir, irlu's first wife, ","Cayir, Nilos's mother, ","Cayir, a better negotiator than irlu deserves, ","Cayir, canny enough to cage her son, ")] ]
(replace: "Dayon ")[(link-replace: "Dayon ")[(either: "Dayon, irlu's first husband, ","Dayon, Ralon's farm labourer, ","Dayon, blunt and stubborn, ","Dayon, Nilos's father, ")] ]
(replace: "Dalor ")[(link-replace: "Dalor ")[(either: "Dalor, master advocat, ", "Dalor, Trenon's master, ","Dalor, complacent in his mastery, ")] ]
(replace: "Zayelik ")[(link-replace: "Zayelik ")[(either: "Zayelik, master trader, ")] ]
(replace: "Harin ")[(link-replace: "Harin ")[(either: "Harin, master miner, ","Harin, Finoc's mother, ")] ]
] <!-- close Trenon + son -->
(if: ( (passage: )'s tags contains "povtrenon") and ( (passage: )'s tags contains "daughter") )[(replace: "Peris ")[(link-replace: "Peris ")[(either: "Peris, Larik's first mother, ","Peris, Kelil's first mother ","Peris, iryu's master dyer, ","Peris, iryu's first wife, ")] ]
(replace: "Maron ")[(link-replace: "Maron ")[(either: "Maron, Larik's first father, ","Maron, Kelil's first father, ","Maron, chamois shepherd, ","Maron, iryu's first husband, ","Maron, sun-browned and complacent, ")] ]
(replace: "Grenor ")[(link-replace: "Grenor ")[(either: "Grenor, Larik's second father, ","Grenor, Kelil's second father, ","Grenor, herdsman and gardener, ","Grenor, iryu's second husband, ","Grenor, Maron's love-spouse, ","Grenor, roughly kind, ")] ]
(replace: "Shayin ")[(link-replace: "Shayin ")[(either: "Shayin, Larik's second mother, ","Shayin, Kelil's second mother, ","Shayin, iryu's sometime trader, ","Shayin, iryu's second wife, ","Shayin, remote as the cold stars, ")] ]
(replace: "Amoz ")[(link-replace: "Amoz ")[(either: "Amoz, Larik's third father, ","Amoz, Kelil's third father, ","Amoz, iryu's young husband, ","Amoz, iryu's love-spouse, ","Amoz, barely old enough to sing a marriage, " )] ]
(replace: "Varin ")[(link-replace: "Varin ")[(either: "Varin, Kelil's oldest sister, ","Varin, iryu's oldest daughter, ","Varin, iryu's apprentice weaver, ","Varin, Hiron's wife, ", "Varin, who gave iryu its first grandchild, ")] ]
(replace: "Hiron")[(link-replace: "Hiron")[(either: "Hiron, Varin's husband, ","Hiron, father to iryu's first grandchild, ")] ]
(replace: "Berin ")[(link-replace: "Berin ")[(either: "Berin, Trenon's mother, ","Berin, master silversmith, ","Berin, irthu's first wife, ","Berin, large-framed but spare, ","Berin, who sold Trenon to iryu holding, ")] ]
(replace: "Ralon ")[(link-replace: "Ralon ")[(either: "Ralon, Trenon's father, ","Ralon, Berin's first husband, ","Ralon, who makes land claims without raising a cairn, ","Ralon, who lives by Berin's silver, ","Ralon, a raven stooping over place, ")] ]
(replace: "Tereos ")[(link-replace: "Tereos ")[(either: "Tereos, Nilos's master, ","Tereos, the master healer, ","Tereos, who can't hear a new song, ","Tereos, whose gentle dismissals hurt Nilos more than he knows, ")] ]
(replace: "Cayir ")[(link-replace: "Cayir ")[(either: "Cayir, irlu's first wife, ","Cayir, Nilos's mother, ","Cayir, a better negotiator than irlu deserves, ","Cayir, canny enough to cage her son, ")] ]
(replace: "Dayon ")[(link-replace: "Dayon ")[(either: "Dayon, irlu's first husband, ","Dayon, Ralon's farm labourer, ","Dayon, blunt and stubborn, ","Dayon, Nilos's father, ")] ]
(replace: "Dalor ")[(link-replace: "Dalor ")[(either: "Dalor, master advocat, ", "Dalor, Trenon's master, ","Dalor, complacent in his mastery, ")] ]
(replace: "Trayis ")[(link-replace: "Trayis ")[(either: "Trayis, apprentice miner, ")] ]
(replace: "Rythel ")[(link-replace: "Rythel ")[(either: "Rythel, ono, ")] ]
(replace: "Zayelik ")[(link-replace: "Zayelik ")[(either: "Zayelik, master trader, ","Zayelik, wearing her face like a mask, ","Zayelik, trader enough to be ruthless, ")] ]
(replace: "Hezibor ")[(link-replace: "Hezibor ")[(either: "Hezibor, master advocat, ","Hezibor, Zayelik's patron, ","Hezibor, advocat for irdanu holding, ")] ]
(replace: "Jeramol ")[(link-replace: "Jeramol ")[(either: "Jeramol, journeyman healer, ", "Jeramol, a smallholding healer, ","Jeramol, honourable and humourless, ")] ]
] <!-- close Trenon + daughter -->
(if: ( (passage: )'s tags contains "povnilos") and ( (passage: )'s tags contains "child") )[(replace: "Peris ")[(link-replace: "Peris ")[(either: "Peris, Larik's mother, ","Peris, iryu's first wife, ","Peris, the master dyer, ", "Peris, Kell's mother, ")] ]
(replace: "Maron ")[(link-replace: "Maron ")[(either: "Maron, Larik's first father, ","Maron, Kell's first father, ","Maron, chamois shepherd, ","Maron, iryu's first husband, ","Maron, pride eroded by Larik's death, ")] ]
(replace: "Grenor ")[(link-replace: "Grenor ")[(either: "Grenor, Larik's second father, ","Grenor, Kell's second father, ","Grenor, herdsman and gardener, ","Grenor, slumped and close-mouthed, ")] ]
(replace: "Shayin ")[(link-replace: "Shayin ")[(either: "Shayin, Larik's mother, ","Shayin, Larik's borne mother, ","Shayin, Kelol's mother, ","Shayin, who trades for iryu holding, ","Shayin, iryu's second wife, ","Shayin, eyes like a rabbit's when the hawk strikes, ")] ]
(replace: "Amoz ")[(link-replace: "Amoz ")[(either: "Amoz, Larik's father, ","Amoz, Kell's father, ","Amoz, who keeps iryu deepstone, ","Amoz, who married into iryu for love, ")] ]
(replace: "Varin ")[(link-replace: "Varin ")[(either: "Varin, Larik's oldest sister, ","Varin, Kell's oldest sister, ","Varin, iryu's oldest daughter, ", "Varin, the elder but unable to match Larik at weaving, ","Varin, resentful of Larik's talent, ")] ]
(replace: "Hiron")[(link-replace: "Hiron")[(either: "Hiron, Varin's husband, ","Hiron, Kell's marriage-brother, ")] ]
(replace: "Berin ")[(link-replace: "Berin ")[(either: "Berin, Trenon's mother, ","Berin, master silversmith, ","Berin, irthu's only wife, ","Berin, who traded Trenon for silver, ","Berin, place-proud and distant, ")] ]
(replace: "Ralon ")[(link-replace: "Ralon ")[(either: "Ralon, Trenon's father, ","Ralon, irthu's only husband, ","Ralon, who hires Nilos's parents to farm his claimed fields, ","Ralon, who lives by Berin's silver, ","Ralon, gentleman farmer, ")] ]
(replace: "Tereos ")[(link-replace: "Tereos ")[(either: "Tereos, Nilos's master, ","Tereos, low-voiced and firm, ","Tereos, who sees Nilos's grief without bowing to it, ","Tereos, with his finger on a lifepoint, ")] ]
(replace: "Tethin ")[(link-replace: "Tethin ")[(either: "Tethin, Trenon's mother, ")] ]
(replace: "Cayir ")[(link-replace: "Cayir ")[(either: "Cayir, Nilos's mother, ","Cayir, master carpenter, ","Cayir, first mother of irlu holding, ","Cayir, who bargains for her daughters, ")] ]
(replace: "Dayon ")[(link-replace: "Dayon ")[(either: "Dayon, Nilos's father, ","Dayon, sturdy and warm, ","Dayon, careworn and thoughtful, ")] ]
(replace: "Dalor ")[(link-replace: "Dalor ")[(either: "Dalor, master advocat, ","Dalor, Trenon's master, ")] ]
(replace: "Trayis ")[(link-replace: "Trayis ")[(either: "Trayis, apprentice miner, ","Trayis, Ganil's sister, ","Trayis, Kell's sweetheart, ")] ]
(replace: "Rythel ")[(link-replace: "Rythel ")[(either: "Rythel, ono, ")] ]
(replace: "Zayelik ")[(link-replace: "Zayelik ")[(either: "Zayelik, master trader, ")] ]
] <!-- close Nilos + child -->
(if: ( (passage: )'s tags contains "povnilos") and ( (passage: )'s tags contains "son") )[(replace: "Peris ")[(link-replace: "Peris ")[(either: "Peris, Larik's mother, ","Peris, Kelol's mother, ","Peris, the master dyer, ","Peris, iryu's first wife, ","Peris, spare and strong, ")] ]
(replace: "Maron ")[(link-replace: "Maron ")[(either: "Maron, Larik's father, ","Maron, Kelol's father, ","Maron, chamois shepherd, ","Maron, iryu's first husband, ","Maron, broad and brown, ")] ]
(replace: "Grenor ")[(link-replace: "Grenor ")[(either: "Grenor, Larik's father, ","Grenor, Kelol's father, ","Grenor, herdsman and gardener, ","Grenor, resigned and quiet, ")] ]
(replace: "Shayin ")[(link-replace: "Shayin ")[(either: "Shayin, Larik's mother, ","Shayin, Larik's borne mother, ","Shayin, Kelol's mother, ","Shayin, who trades for iryu holding, ","Shayin, iryu's second wife, ","Shayin, her ghost heavy, ")] ]
(replace: "Amoz ")[(link-replace: "Amoz ")[(either: "Amoz, Larik's father, ","Amoz, Kelol's father, ","Amoz, who keeps iryu deepstone, ","Amoz, who married into iryu for love, ","Amoz, broad-shouldered and softly handsome, ")] ]
(replace: "Varin ")[(link-replace: "Varin ")[(either: "Varin, Larik's oldest sister, ","Varin, Kelol's oldest sister, ","Varin, iryu's oldest daughter, ", "Varin, the elder but unable to match Larik at weaving, ","Varin, resentful of Larik's talent, ")] ]
(replace: "Hiron")[(link-replace: "Hiron")[(either: "Hiron, Varin's husband, ","Hiron, Kelol's marriage-brother, ","Hiron, baby Birn's father, ")] ]
(replace: "Berin ")[(link-replace: "Berin ")[(either: "Berin, Trenon's mother, ","Berin, master silversmith, ","Berin, irthu's only wife, ","Berin, who traded Trenon for silver, ","Berin, brittle as ice, ")] ]
(replace: "Ralon ")[(link-replace: "Ralon ")[(either: "Ralon, Trenon's father, ","Ralon, irthu's first husband, ","Ralon, who hires Nilos's parents to farm his claimed fields, ","Ralon, who lives by Berin's silver, ","Ralon, gentleman farmer, ")] ]
(replace: "Tereos ")[(link-replace: "Tereos ")[(either: "Tereos, Nilos's master, ","Tereos, gentle and firm, ","Tereos, who can't see truth in Nilos's songs, ","Tereos, whose gentle dismissals hurt Nilos more than he knows, ")] ]
(replace: "Tethin ")[(link-replace: "Tethin ")[(either: "Tethin, Trenon's mother, ")] ]
(replace: "Cayir ")[(link-replace: "Cayir ")[(either: "Cayir, Nilos's mother, ","Cayir, master carpenter, ","Cayir, first mother of irlu holding, ","Cayir, who bargains for her daughters, ")] ]
(replace: "Dayon ")[(link-replace: "Dayon ")[(either: "Dayon, Nilos's father, ","Dayon, sturdy and warm, ","Dayon, careworn and thoughtful, ")] ]
(replace: "Dalor ")[(link-replace: "Dalor ")[(either: "Dalor, master advocat, ","Dalor, Trenon's master, ")] ]
(replace: "Trayis ")[(link-replace: "Trayis ")[(either: "Trayis, apprentice miner, ","Trayis, Ganil's sister, ","Trayis, Kell's sweetheart, ")] ]
(replace: "Rythel ")[(link-replace: "Rythel ")[(either: "Rythel, ono, ","Rythel, trader aslant, ","Rythel, advocat askew, ")] ]
(replace: "Zayelik ")[(link-replace: "Zayelik ")[(either: "Zayelik, master trader, ","Zayelik, a stern master, ","Zayelik, who contracted Kelol, ")] ]
(replace: "Kerajin ")[(link-replace: "Kerajin ")[(either: "Kerajin, lodgestone server, ","Kerajin, Lethinil's foster-daughter, ","Kerajin, trapped in her fosterage debt, ","Kerajin, round with bearing, ","Kerajin, with her sweet smile, ")] ]
] <!-- close Nilos + son -->
(if: ( (passage: )'s tags contains "povnilos") and ( (passage: )'s tags contains "daughter") )[(replace: "Peris ")[(link-replace: "Peris ")[(either: "Peris, Larik's mother, ","Peris, Kelil's mother ","Peris, the master dyer, ","Peris, iryu's first wife, ")] ]
(replace: "Maron ")[(link-replace: "Maron ")[(either: "Maron, Larik's first father, ","Maron, Kelil's first father, ","Maron, chamois shepherd, ","Maron, iryu's first husband, ","Maron, complacent as a summer grizzly, ")] ]
(replace: "Grenor ")[(link-replace: "Grenor ")[(either: "Grenor, Larik's second father, ","Grenor, Kelil's second father, ","Grenor, herdsman and gardener, ","Grenor, warm-eyed and content, ")] ]
(replace: "Shayin ")[(link-replace: "Shayin ")[(either: "Shayin, Larik's mother, ","Shayin, Larik's borne mother, ","Shayin, Kelol's mother, ","Shayin, who trades for iryu holding, ","Shayin, iryu's second wife, ","Shayin, sorrow limned in bright anger, ")] ]
(replace: "Amoz ")[(link-replace: "Amoz ")[(either: "Amoz, Larik's father, ","Amoz, Kelil's father, ","Amoz, who keeps iryu deepstone, ","Amoz, who married into iryu for love, ")] ]
(replace: "Varin ")[(link-replace: "Varin ")[(either: "Varin, Larik's oldest sister, ","Varin, Kelil's oldest sister, ","Varin, iryu's oldest daughter, ", "Varin, the elder but unable to match Larik at weaving, ","Varin, resentful of Larik's talent, ")] ]
(replace: "Hiron")[(link-replace: "Hiron")[(either: "Hiron, Varin's husband, ","Hiron, Kelil's marriage-brother, ","Hiron, baby Birn's father, ")] ]
(replace: "Berin ")[(link-replace: "Berin ")[(either: "Berin, Trenon's mother, ","Berin, master silversmith, ","Berin, irthu's only wife, ","Berin, who traded Trenon for silver, ","Berin, place-proud and distant, ")] ]
(replace: "Ralon ")[(link-replace: "Ralon ")[(either: "Ralon, Trenon's father, ","Ralon, irthu's first husband, ","Ralon, who hires Nilos's parents to farm his claimed fields, ","Ralon, who lives by Berin's silver, ","Ralon, gentleman farmer, ")] ]
(replace: "Tereos ")[(link-replace: "Tereos ")[(either: "Tereos, Nilos's master, ","Tereos, tender and inexorable, ","Tereos, who gave Nilos his love of healing, ","Tereos, who teaches with kindness, ")] ]
(replace: "Cayir ")[(link-replace: "Cayir ")[(either: "Cayir, Nilos's mother, ","Cayir, master carpenter, ","Cayir, first mother of irlu holding, ","Cayir, who bargains for her daughters, ")] ]
(replace: "Dayon ")[(link-replace: "Dayon ")[(either: "Dayon, Nilos's father, ","Dayon, sturdy and warm, ","Dayon, careworn and thoughtful, ")] ]
(replace: "Dalor ")[(link-replace: "Dalor ")[(either: "Dalor, master advocat, ","Dalor, Trenon's master, ")] ]
(replace: "Trayis ")[(link-replace: "Trayis ")[(either: "Trayis, apprentice miner, ","Trayis, Ganil's sister, ","Trayis, Kell's sweetheart, ")] ]
(replace: "Zayelik ")[(link-replace: "Zayelik ")[(either: "Zayelik, master trader, ")] ]
] <!-- close Nilos + daughter -->
(if: ( (passage: )'s tags contains "povkell") and ( (passage: )'s tags contains "child") )[(replace: "Peris ")[(link-replace: "Peris ")[(either: "Peris, Kell's mother, ","Peris, who left Larik's care to Shayin, ","Peris, who honours place like a magpie gathers mica, ", "Peris, who orders iryu holding to her liking, ")] ]
(replace: "Maron ")[(link-replace: "Maron ")[(either: "Maron, Kell's father, ","Maron, who claims the most chamois pastures in Asaresta, ","Maron, irritable and morose, ","Maron, who leads iryu holding with Peris, ")] ]
(replace: "Grenor ")[(link-replace: "Grenor ")[(either: "Grenor, Kell's father, ","Grenor, whose close hugs soothe, ",)] ]
(replace: "Shayin ")[(link-replace: "Shayin ")[(either: "Shayin, Kell's mother, ","Shayin, still fretting over Larik, ","Shayin, hands wringing together, ","Shayin, who lived by Larik's pallet during her illness, ")] ]
(replace: "Amoz ")[(link-replace: "Amoz ")[(either: "Amoz, Kell's father, ","Amoz, who keeps the deepstone, ","Amoz, the only parent who listens to Kell, " )] ]
(replace: "Varin ")[(link-replace: "Varin ")[(either: "Varin, Kelil's oldest sister, ","Varin, who gave iryu the holding's first grandchild, ","Varin, who was always jealous of Larik's talent, ","Varin, who sought place while Larik earned it, ")] ]
(replace: "Hiron")[(link-replace: "Hiron")[(either: "Hiron, Varin's husband, ","Hiron, Kell's marriage-brother, ")] ]
(replace: "Berin ")[(link-replace: "Berin ")[(either: "Berin, Trenon's only mother, ","Berin, master silversmith, ","Berin, irthu's only wife, ", "Berin, who the traders call monogamist behind her back, ")] ]
(replace: "Ralon ")[(link-replace: "Ralon ")[(either: "Ralon, Trenon's only father, ","Ralon, irthu's only husband, ","Ralon, a field-claimer but hardly a farmer, ","Ralon, a raven for place, ")] ]
(replace: "Tereos ")[(link-replace: "Tereos ")[(either: "Tereos, Nilos's master, ","Tereos, the healing master, ","Tereos, whose songs never touched Larik's illness, ")] ]
(replace: "Tethin ")[(link-replace: "Tethin ")[(either: "Tethin, Trenon's mother, ")] ]
(replace: "Cayir ")[(link-replace: "Cayir ")[(either: "Cayir, irlu's first wife, ")] ]
(replace: "Dayon ")[(link-replace: "Dayon ")[(either: "Dayon, irlu's first husband, ")] ]
(replace: "Dalor ")[(link-replace: "Dalor ")[(either: "Dalor, master advocat, ","Dalor, Ralon's crony, ","Dalor, Trenon's master, ")] ]
(replace: "Trayis ")[(link-replace: "Trayis ")[(either: "Trayis, who became a daughter, ","Trayis, an apprentice miner, ")] ]
(replace: "Zayelik ")[(link-replace: "Zayelik ")[(either: "Zayelik, master trader, ","Zayelik, whose train has more mules than any, ","Zayelik, who trades to the city, ","Zayelik, who fills the market with her tales, ")] ]
] <!-- close Kell + child -->
(if: ( (passage: )'s tags contains "povkell") and ( (passage: )'s tags contains "son") )[(replace: "Peris ")[(link-replace: "Peris ")[(either: "Peris, Kelol's mother, ","Peris, the best dyer on the mountain, ","Peris, who guides iryu holding with a steady hand, ", "Peris, who grieves Larik's broken contract more than Larik herself, ")] ]
(replace: "Maron ")[(link-replace: "Maron ")[(either: "Maron, Kelol's father, ","Maron, who claims the most chamois pastures in Asaresta, ","Maron, impatient as a spring bear, ","Maron, who takes pride in iryu holding's wealth, ")] ]
(replace: "Grenor ")[(link-replace: "Grenor ")[(either: "Grenor, Kelol's second father, ","Grenor, with broad, gentle hands, ","Grenor, who tends the garden with silent care, ","Grenor, tall and square, ")] ]
(replace: "Shayin ")[(link-replace: "Shayin ")[(either: "Shayin, Kelol's mother, ","Shayin, Larik's borne mother, ","Shayin, who trades for iryu holding despite having little inclination for it, ","Shayin, thinner since the winter, ","Shayin, whose eyes rest on distant peaks, ")] ]
(replace: "Amoz ")[(link-replace: "Amoz ")[(either: "Amoz, Kelol's youngest father, ","Amoz, who keeps the deepstone, ","Amoz, Shayin's chosen husband, ","Amoz, who was never chivvied into a contract he didn't want, " )] ]
(replace: "Varin ")[(link-replace: "Varin ")[(either: "Varin, Kelol's oldest sister, ","Varin, who gave iryu the holding's first grandchild, ","Varin, who was always jealous of Larik's talent, ","Varin, who sought place while Larik earned it, ")] ]
(replace: "Hiron")[(link-replace: "Hiron")[(either: "Hiron, Varin's husband, ","Hiron, Kelol's marriage-brother, ")] ]
(replace: "Berin ")[(link-replace: "Berin ")[(either: "Berin, Trenon's only mother, ","Berin, master silversmith, ","Berin, irthu's only wife, ","Berin, who tried to trade Trenon for silver, ","Berin, who the traders call monogamist behind her back, ")] ]
(replace: "Ralon ")[(link-replace: "Ralon ")[(either: "Ralon, Trenon's only father, ","Ralon, irthu's only husband, ","Ralon, a field-claimer but hardly a farmer, ","Ralon, who lives by Berin's silver, ","Ralon, a raven for place, ")] ]
(replace: "Tereos ")[(link-replace: "Tereos ")[(either: "Tereos, Nilos's master, ","Tereos, the healing master, ","Tereos, whose apprentice saw beyond him, ")] ]
(replace: "Tethin ")[(link-replace: "Tethin ")[(either: "Tethin, Trenon's mother, ")] ]
(replace: "Cayir ")[(link-replace: "Cayir ")[(either: "Cayir, irlu's first wife, ")] ]
(replace: "Dayon ")[(link-replace: "Dayon ")[(either: "Dayon, irlu's first husband, ")] ]
(replace: "Dalor ")[(link-replace: "Dalor ")[(either: "Dalor, master advocat, ","Dalor, who lives in Ralon's pocket, ","Dalor, Trenon's master, ")] ]
(replace: "Trayis ")[(link-replace: "Trayis ")[(either: "Trayis, bright in the sun, ","Trayis, a daughter of irlu, ","Trayis, an apprentice miner, ")] ]
(replace: "Rythel ")[(link-replace: "Rythel ")[(either: "Rythel, ono, ", "Rythel, a trader askew, ","Rythel, advocat aslant, ")] ]
(replace: "Zayelik ")[(link-replace: "Zayelik ")[(either: "Zayelik, master trader, ","Zayelik, who contracts outriders, ","Zayelik, who leaves Kelol beneath her notice, ")] ]
(replace: "Kerajin ")[(link-replace: "Kerajin ")[(either: "Kerajin, lodgestone server, ","Kerajin, round with bearing, ","Kerajin, bound to a fosterage contract, ")] ]
] <!-- close Kell + son -->
(if: ( (passage: )'s tags contains "povkell") and ( (passage: )'s tags contains "daughter") )[(replace: "Peris ")[(link-replace: "Peris ")[(either: "Peris, Kelil's mother, ","Peris, the best dyer in Asaresta, ","Peris, who leads iryu holding with Maron, ","Peris, clinging to Larik's betrothal contract, ")] ]
(replace: "Maron ")[(link-replace: "Maron ")[(either: "Maron, Kelil's father, ","Maron, who claims the most chamois pastures in Asaresta, ","Maron, steady and satisfied, ","Maron, who sees his place growing with his land claims, ")] ]
(replace: "Grenor ")[(link-replace: "Grenor ")[(either: "Grenor, Kell's father, ","Grenor, a quiet, steady presence, ")] ]
(replace: "Shayin ")[(link-replace: "Shayin ")[(either: "Shayin, Kell's mother, ","Shayin, Larik's borne mother, ","Shayin, paler despite the rising summer, ","Shayin, eyes turned empty and inward, ")] ]
(replace: "Amoz ")[(link-replace: "Amoz ")[(either: "Amoz, Kelil's youngest father, ","Amoz, who keeps the deepstone, ","Amoz, Shayin's chosen husband, ","Amoz, who listens, but cannot understand, " )] ]
(replace: "Varin ")[(link-replace: "Varin ")[(either: "Varin, Kelil's oldest sister, ","Varin, who gave iryu the holding's first grandchild, ","Varin, who was always jealous of Larik's talent, ","Varin, who sought place while Larik earned it, ")] ]
(replace: "Hiron")[(link-replace: "Hiron")[(either: "Hiron, Varin's husband, ","Hiron, Kelil's marriage-brother, ")] ]
(replace: "Berin ")[(link-replace: "Berin ")[(either: "Berin, Trenon's only mother, ","Berin, master silversmith, ","Berin, irthu's only wife, ","Berin, soon to be Kelil's marriage-mother, ","Berin, who the traders call monogamist behind her back, ")] ]
(replace: "Ralon ")[(link-replace: "Ralon ")[(either: "Ralon, Trenon's only father, ","Ralon, irthu's only husband, ","Ralon, a field-claimer but hardly a farmer, ","Ralon, who lives by Berin's silver, ","Ralon, a raven for place, ")] ]
(replace: "Tereos ")[(link-replace: "Tereos ")[(either: "Tereos, Nilos's master, ","Tereos, the healing master, ")] ]
(replace: "Tethin ")[(link-replace: "Tethin ")[(either: "Tethin, Trenon's mother, ")] ]
(replace: "Cayir ")[(link-replace: "Cayir ")[(either: "Cayir, irlu's first wife, ")] ]
(replace: "Dayon ")[(link-replace: "Dayon ")[(either: "Dayon, irlu's first husband, ")] ]
(replace: "Dalor ")[(link-replace: "Dalor ")[(either: "Dalor, master advocat, ","Dalor, Trenon's master, ","Dalor, who favours irthu holding, ")] ]
(replace: "Trayis ")[(link-replace: "Trayis ")[(either: "Trayis, apprentice miner, ","Trayis, a woman now, ","Trayis, a friend only, ")] ]
(replace: "Zayelik ")[(link-replace: "Zayelik ")[(either: "Zayelik, master trader, ","Zayelik, bound to her patrons, ","Zayelik, close-mouthed, ")] ]
(replace: "Hezibor ")[(link-replace: "Hezibor ")[(either: "Hezibor, master advocat, ","Hezibor, Zayelik's patron, ","Hezibor, advocat for irdanu holding, ")] ]
(replace: "Jeramol ")[(link-replace: "Jeramol ")[(either: "Jeramol, journeyman healer, ", "Jeramol, a smallholding healer, ","Jeramol, honourable and humourless, ")] ]
] <!-- close Kell + daughter -->
] <!-- close allowHints -->
}$il[N]ilos lets hope live for half a season longer, tramping through the summer mountains with Larik in search of herbs for dyeing, just as they did when they were children together.
As often as expeditions with Larik, Nils slips upmountain of Asaresta to find Trenon in the forest. (unless: (history:) contains "once")[They meet on the bank of a stutter-stepped creek, in the undercut where a giant pine fell across the water. The clearing with its pine needle carpet was other children's once. Nils and Trenn claimed it as a holding claims its fields, theirs for a season or a year, as long as love and childhood last.
]Trenon touches his fingertips to Nils's lips when they meet, giving his courtesy to Nils's body. Nils closes eyes and shivers. Trenon's touch always cajoles Nils's ghost higher. Trenon moves his hand to cup Nils's jaw. His thumb rests on the flutter of Nils's heartbeat. Nils kisses him, mouth finding the hollow behind Trenon's ear, the strong line of Trenon's jaw. Nils's desire quickens in breath and body.
Early on, they only fumbled, a playacting thrill, but now they know each other's bodies, the nooks and hollows that bring pleasure to the surface. Nils can't imagine giving Trenon up. Healing has its own fascination, but Nils can endure carpentry if it means keeping this vital surge that overwhelms them both. A carpenter saves no one; a carpenter learns little and thinks less. That seems a commonplace emptiness, endurable for Trenon's sake.
Endurable, until Nils's parents begin stomping about like restless ewes in a byre, chewing over Nils's coming of age. To Nils's surprise, it seems mothers might want to make an apprentice of their child after all.
"Something with place," Selis suggests. "We've enough foresters contracted. A weaver?"
"Tereos speaks highly of him," Cayir says. "He believes Nils may have the touch a healer needs to open the breath."
Firinol, seated before the summer-empty hearth, sighs heavily. He gnaws over any time lost in the fields. "A master claims an apprentice's wages."
"But think of the silver a journeyman earns. Asaresta is growing. Soon we'll need another healer anyway." Cayir paces, a blue heron stalking a trout. "Perhaps this holding could do with some place."
"An apprentice won't raise the holding's place," Dayon protests.
"A healing apprentice would--enough to help the girls' marriage contracts." Cayir rubs pine pitch from her knuckles thoughtfully. She isn't thinking of Nils's place, but then, a child has none. Her daughters, working women saving silver for their first marriage contracts, need her consideration more. "They'll bring in better husbands, and pay less for them, if our holding claims more place than contract labourers."
Dayon grunts. He's worked other holdings' field claims all his life, and lived on it well enough to support a marriage of four, in comfort if not luxury; but he lets the slight pass. "What do you think, ono?" he asks Nils. "Do you want to be a healer?"
Nils watches the swept-clay floor. Selis and Firinol look to the holding's first spouses. Cayir and Dayon tot up the choice like a trader's counting weights. Healing can't be added and subtracted like silver, or judged like place. Master Tereos sees Nils more clearly than mothers and fathers do.
A nineyear ago, Nils lay on a pallet, itchy and restless with the spot-fever, charged with mothers' fear and the anxious stomp of fathers' boots. After a nineday with no improvement, they called Tereos. He had washed Nils's rash with warm water softened with hops, but it was his deep voice that Nils followed. A throbbing chant to follow through dreams. Nils woke to bleary heat, with the spots faded. Another nineday, Tereos said, before the child would be well. Dayon kept Nils close for a nineday longer than that, leaving the deepstone duties to his husband. He fed Nils mashes and tidbits of dried fruit from the winter store. When at last fathers swept Nils out into the dusty summer dooryard, Tereos's songs still hummed deep inside. Knowing little of the words and less of the meaning, Nils kept the songs close. They soothed, when siblings ran and shoved, when Nils wanted quiet to walk and think and breathe the green smell under the pines.
Tereos's healing songs carried his certainty, his conviction, deep into Nils's breath. That insistent pull couldn't be denied. An apprentice could learn that faith. To coax wandering ghosts home; to open the breath and pour strength into the sick. Tereos is right--Nils has the touch. All that's lacking is the skill.
Nils puts off Dayon's question for a nineday, and then another. In the woods, with eyes closed, Nils traces Trenon's body. Breathlines run deep under skin and muscle. Nils can nearly reach them. Becoming a healer, a man, means waiting--not ending. After one or both of them finishes a marriage's first year, they can join together again.
As husbands. Nils will lose the hearthside. Dreams of being Trenon's wife will have to be set aside. Waiting a year or longer, trapped in the uncomfortable press of the homeside walls, will be the price a son pays. But place always has its price.
Nils's coming of age is set for late summer. Dayon sharpens his scythe for the second haying, and Nils keeps slipping away to the glade with Trenon. Gold creeps along the ash trees' leaves, and Nils has not said no or yes to Tereos's offer of apprenticeship.
The morning of the first, brilliant frost, Larik rings the guest chimes and asks Nils to join her. Nils follows her tall, uncompromising figure up towards Asaresta pass. Larik doesn't have her carrying basket, and the frozen ruts of the mine road are no place to gather herbs in any case. They tromp together for half a candlemark. Nils's feet slip in loose children's shoes. Nils darts envious glances at the leather right-laces on Larik's boots.
Larik stops and blows out a cloud of mist into the crisp air. "My mothers are betrothing me." She keeps her shoulders straight, but her grey eyes darken as she stares at Nils.
Nils nods. Another rite that will stand between them. "Congratulations."
"He hasn't told you, has he?"
"Who?" But, meeting Larik's stare, Nils knows. "Trenon?"
Larik nods sharply. "My holding--they want his name." She crosses her arms and shakes her head. Larik has little fondness for Trenon, but only irritated resignation at her mothers' matchmaking. "He doesn't want to marry me. But it makes sense for both holdings."
Nils presses lips tight. "You think he wouldn't have told me?"
"I wasn't going to wait until he decided he was ready to do the right thing." Larik raises her eyebrows at Nils.
In other words, Trenon ought to have stopped meeting Nils in the forest as if they're both children still. That Nils hasn't pulled back on the reins doesn't concern her. Larik won't blame a placeless child, even if confronted directly for denying Nils's responsibility. Even if every meeting is Nils's idea, each one is Trenon's fault.
"I knew his parents wanted him to marry." Heaviness presses down on Nils's stomach. Trenon knows as well as Nils does that his parents never would have accepted Nils's suit. As a daughter of a labouring holding, Nilis couldn't bring the kind of silver to the trader's scales that Larik's parents flick away on summer firewood.
Children don't need a coming of age rite. A change of robes, a public acknowledgement--place comes at fifteen without those trappings. Plenty of children grow up in families too poor to pay an advocat for the official rite. Yet there comes a moment when place weighs more heavily than freedom, and choices narrow; and the child, choosing, becomes an adult. It would be placeless for Nils to beg Larik to slow down and //wait//. Nils will come of age soon enough. Marry, soon enough. What Larik wants Nils to know is that Trenon may not be worth the delay.
Nils planned to see Trenon that afternoon. Nils climbs the deer path under the creak of rimed branches, and circles the fallen tree that edges their glade. Trenon stands with his back to a lodgepole pine, his head tilted back to show the long line of his throat. His cheeks and the tip of his nose are ruddy in the cold. Nils's mouth dries at the sight. Trenon's body, the long line of him, stirs Nils's desire as hotly as ever. But Larik is right. Trenon never planned to tell him about his betrothal. He would pretend, and keep on pretending, until he'd sung a contract with Larik. And then?
Nils waits until Trenon crosses the clearing, and meets his kiss with cold-rough lips. Nils takes Trenon's hand. The lifepoint is there, in his palm. Nils draws a finger along the long line that curves past Trenon's thumb. "My parents plan to apprentice me to Tereos, after I come of age," Nils says quietly. The decision seems clear as soon as the words are spoken.
Trenon's fingers twitch in Nils's gentle grip. His skin is soft and dry. "They don't want a daughter?"
Nils understands: //You won't become a daughter, for me?// "Son or daughter, I'd have a long wait for you."
Defensiveness draws Trenon's mouth tight. Larik broke his secret. He wanted to pretend his betrothal wasn't happening, just as they'd both been pretending Trenon never came of age. If it were anyone else, Trenon would rage against their pretense, castigate them for hypocrisy. But for himself, for his own desire, Trenon would lie.
"Mothers negotiate their sons' marriages," Trenon says, with bitter fidelity. "It's not my fault."
Nils's stomach coils, burning. "I know." Trenon came of age first, but Nils must take responsibility, though all Asaresta would refuse it to a child.
Trenon pulls his hand away. His chin dips, before he darts a glance to Nils's face. His eyes are clear blue, deep as a frost-morning sky. "I'm not betrothed yet," he says. The hint of a frown between his eyebrows; another quick, testing glance. "I'll wait for you, but-- We can meet until then, can't we?"
Nils shouldn't. A child has no place to lose, but a son does. A child can meet a sweetheart in the woods, and earn nothing worse than frowns. A man betrays himself every time.
Trenon's shoulders hunch with the defeat he expects. The last time they met, Trenon tugged Nils's plainwoven shirt rightwards. He whispered //Nilis// as he drew them together. Their bodies joined, their breath panting in harsh unison, Nils imagined their ghosts meeting.
Healing can give Nils so much, but never that. Tereos wouldn't sing the apprenticeship contract if he knew how Nils yearns for the hearthside.
Nils licks his lips, and nods. A woman, if in seeming only, for a few ninedays longer. "I'd like that." Husky voice breaking high, as it hasn't for months.
The day of the coming of age rite, Nils removes childhood's clothes and stands naked. Dayon, as first father, settles a man's faded robe over his shoulders. Nils fumbles with the belt-loops before finally tying them left, face burning--how many noticed his awkward fingers drawing instinctively rightwards? How can one voice shout both //no// and //yes//?
By then his name has set like mortar. //Nilos//, his family murmurs, as his robe falls into place, the cuffs a shade long at his wrists. Not his hands. Man's hands, as healing is a man's work.
[[A nineday after Nilos's rite, Larik is betrothed to Trenon.->sense]]
[[Nilos closes his eyes and sings himself into apprenticeship with Master Tereos.->sensibility]]{
(if: $allowHints)[
(click-replace: "But it makes sense for both holdings.")[But it makes sense for both holdings. My parents want place, even if it's silver-bought.]
(click-replace: "each one is Trenon's fault.")[each one is Trenon's fault. Trenon has place, and he sullies it when they meet.] ]
(Click-replace: "need her consideration more.")[need her consideration more. She will guide the negotiations for their husbands. She needs the leverage.]
]}{(if: (history:)'s last is "breathing")[ $il[S]tretching in the clear air is just enough to remind Nilos of how tired he is, but when Tereos comes out the deepstone's guest door, Nilos quickly moves to his side. Larik's parents give Tereos generous place, in addition to his fee in silver. Nilos waits until the last guesting phrases are spoken.](if: (history:)'s last is "comfort")[ $il[T]here's no chance to speak to Trenon, even to arrange a meeting, before Nilos and Tereos leave the deepstone. Larik's parents give Tereos generous place, in addition to his fee in silver. Nilos waits until the last guesting phrases are spoken.](if: (history:)'s last is "seen")[ $il[N]ilos stumbles downhill. Tereos's herbary sits on the weather side of Asaresta's river, where the air is always cool with the memory of rain and river spray. A short, winding path climbs up from Tereos's deepstone, then disappears into an abrupt edge of stone above the river. By the time he ripples the herbary guest chimes, he can't remember the steps that brought him here.
"Come, sit," Tereos says. He shakes his head when Nilos makes for his usual stool, and points him to the willow-withe chair, softened with pillows and a wool blanket. Nilos crocheted that blanket when he was still a child, hooking the yarn into that simple pattern. Lark held the skein, both of them pretending to be women grown, weavers in their own right.
Tereos bends over the room's small stove, one brown hand stirring the kettle of broth there. With calm care, he prepares tev: the mutton broth, thickened with oatmeal, flavoured with pinches of sage, thyme, coltsfoot, and a generous slosh of liquor. He hums over the kettle, wreathed in steam. Humming still, he herds Nilos into the chair and hands him a large mug. Nilos's palms cup the heat like he can draw breath from the glazed clay. ] }
Tereos's song echoes in his mind: deep slow notes, occasionally rising to a hoarse voiced rhythm, meant to be heard within and through a mourner's daze.
"I don't deserve it," Nilos says, voice dull. After the night's vigil, he badly needs to restore himself. (if: (history:) contains "seen")[Eating the tev is no more than common sense, and yet he feels as if Tereos is pitying him for his failure.](else:)[He hasn't eaten since midday yesterday, and he feels dizzy and light-headed. Tereos guides him to a bench of woven willow withes, damp from the rain. Nilos's knees shake as he sinks onto it. Sunlight winks in the muddy water sheeting the dooryard. The first of the holding's greylags has emerged from its coop to scratch hopefully for worms.]
"The healer is the well, not the water," Tereos says. "You drew too deep, last night."
His rebuke is so gentle that it feels like being flayed by butterflies. Tereos's face, traced in wrinkles and soft thin skin, is so clear, so open. His hair is long, full, and streaked white like snow on brown stone. He hums a moment or two more, and then it fades, without remark that Nilos needed it. The master ministering to his apprentice. What good is Nilos, when Tereos can do as much, and better, and then take on Nilos's sullen despair as well?
(if: (history:) contains "seen")[He will eat the tev because Tereos has been kind, and because misguided ](else:)[He should go home, and sleep. Misguided ]self-denial is more selfish than even his tears. (if: (history:) contains "seen")[Taking the spoon, he forces himself to appreciate the full, savoury taste.]
What if he told Tereos: //I mixed songs for Larik. I let the vigil lapse. But she improved before the end.//
That thought forces Nilos back to himself. What if leaving off the vigil was what allowed Larik's ghost to slip away? But then, what if the song he fumbled together out of scraps turns out to be of real use, and Nilos keeps it to himself out of fear of his master?
//Coward//, Trenon says conversationally, in his mind. Always Trenon's voice, when he denies himself.
Could he do it? Tell Tereos? (if: (history:) contains "seen")[Nilos lowers his eyes to the mug. He collects the last grains from the bottom on his spoon, and eats them like dust. ](else:)[Nilos lowers his eyes to his mud-streaked boots. ]What if Tereos disavows his apprenticeship?
(link: "ϒ What worth is there in an apprenticeship if he won't ask for the answers he needs?")[(set: $responsibility to it + 1)[(goto: "rebuke")]]
(link: "ϒ He'll stay silent; any answers Tereos gives won't bring Larik back.")[(set: $selfish to it +1)[(goto: "deception")]]{
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "he forces himself to appreciate the full, savoury taste.")[//Each swallow to be savoured with thankfulness, each act in healing to be deliberate, compassionate, full of deep intent.//]
]}$il[N]ilos's voice is low and dull when he speaks. If this is bravery, it doesn't feel like it. "Master, I brewed a tea for Larik. I didn't maintain the vigil song. Because--" Because he thought he knew better. An insult to Tereos's mastery. "Because I've seen those herbs work for other people, and I wanted to give Larik's ghost every reason to remain." He should be afraid. Of what Tereos will say, or do. But instead he stares into the empty (if: (history:) contains "seen")[tev mug ](else:)[dooryard ]and waits as though he's expecting a benediction.
(if: (history:) contains "seen")[Tereos doesn't even pause as he ladles a mug of tev for himself and draws up his chair next to the stove. ](else:)[Tereos doesn't even glance at the deepstone to see if Larik's family might emerge, carrying her wrapped shell. ]"Hmm." The sound isn't even disapproval, just an acknowledgement.
Nilos looks up, waiting for the delayed censure, but Tereos only nods at him to continue. "It was a mixture," Nilos says. "Willow bark, you use that for all sorts of pain..." He describes every ingredient in his wayward tea, (if: $healthier is true)[and Larik's response, ]feeling tense as electrum wire.
Tereos thoughtfully (if: (history:) contains "seen")[spoons tev into his mouth](else:)[rubs a hand above his arthritic knee], and says, "Did you think to use meadowsweet instead of willow?"
Nilos clutches (if: (history:) contains "seen")[his empty mug tighter. ](else:)[the rough arms of the willow-withe chair. ]"What?"
"Willow can cause stomachaches, even bleeding," Tereos says. Then, with a hint of a smile, "And meadowsweet tastes better in a tea."
Nilos reaches for a response and finds his lungs empty. Tereos (if: (history:) contains "seen")[takes his mug from his unresponsive hands and returns to the stove. Back turned, washing the mug in a a pot of water steaming on the cool edge of the stove, he says, ](else:)[Tereos squints up at the rising sun, judging the weather. Rain still lies heavy in the air, despite the break in the clouds. With a faint smile behind his beard, Tereos says, ]"Some herbs tax the body and breath, even as they reach the ghost. You might have tried yarrow, too, because it brings on sweat, which might help loosen mucous at the same time..."
Nilos pushes up from the chair, finds himself tangled in (if: (history:) contains "seen")[the blanket](else:)[his own boots], and nearly sits again. "You only told me to sing the vigil. You knew there were herbs that could help--"
Tereos shakes his head. "I didn't say they would help."
"(if: $healthier is true)[But they did! I saw--Larik's cough--](if: $healthier is false)[If I'd known, I would have given her the tea! She might have--]"
"Improved. So you said." (if: (history:) contains "seen")[Tereos hooks the cleaned mugs by their handles onto pegs above the stove and turns back to Nilos. ](else:)[Tereos tosses his healer's satchel onto the seat beside Nilos. The leather is worn, even frayed in spots. Nilos can't imagine him going to the leatherworker for a new one. ]"Do you trust me that little?"
Nilos can't reply. He's bone-cold, and dizzy with it. Tereos has thrown him into the winter river, left him to swim the rapids where the water churns too fast to freeze.
"Breathe," Tereos says, and moves to grip Nilos's shoulder.
Nilos tenses but allows the touch. Tereos lifts his eyebrows before he presses against the lifepoint. When he does, Nilos lets out his breath. His lungs return to him, and his heartbeat. The touch warps and Nilos shrugs tightly.
As soon as he moves, Tereos lets go. "A master knows the herbs," he says. "But he also knows the songs. Knows lifepoint touch. He uses them all."
//Body, breath, and ghost//. The endless mantra. But Nilos has been so long alone in the herbary, bent over fine-grained tea mixtures and using sealing wax to close salves into clay pots. Healing should be so pure: all ghost, no body: breath stilled, the mind alone. "But the herbs (if: $healthier is true)[ //worked//](if: $healthier is false)[might have //worked//]--"
Tereos (if: (history:) contains "seen")[moves back to his chair, his hands loose and easy on his knees. ](else:)[shakes his head. ]Not angry, but earnest with thirty years' belief, thirty years' mastery. His beard, like his hair, is streaked white, the brindle of a sun wolf. He's dressed in the robes he wears when he attends a patient's death, all in left-belted yellow. He looks so much like a healer. "Nilos, how can you claim that healing the ghost is enough, when this holding is giving your friend's shell today?"
"Because you gave up before you tried!" Nilos says. How long has he nursed this anger, this need? So often he tamps it down instead of letting it flare. "Larik was sick for ninedays. We could have treated her sooner, given her meadowsweet or yarrow or elecampane, whatever you knew was best--"
Tereos sighs. "This herb or that, like a trader weighing coins on a scale." Nilos winces at the comparison. //Trader// carries the feminine--is that what Tereos means, that Nilos's failure is a womanly one? But Tereos never would have accepted Nilos's apprenticeship if he'd suspected that Nilos believed himself a woman. "We have the songs because healing herb by herb is like emptying the river with a bucket. The ghost alone is a raven."
Black wings against the empty sky. (if: (history:) contains "seen")[As Larik's is, after they gave her shell to its last flight.](else:)[As Larik will be, when they give her shell to its last flight.] "Some herbs do work, though," Nilos insists.
"They do," Tereos says. "But when Serl's breath is bad, when does the child improve? When we burn the mullein, or when we arrive, singing?"
For years, irnu holding has been calling on Tereos for Serl's breath. Sometimes as often as every nineday, or as rarely as once a season. It's always the same. When Tereos and Nilos arrive at irnu deepstone, Serl is sitting bent over on a bench or pallet, a high, whistling wheeze emerging from the thin, bellows-pumping chest. The first time Nilos saw Serl struggling for air, eyes rolling, his palms grew cold, and a tingle of nerves tightened his scalp. He struggled to maintain Tereos's deliberate pace.
For his part, Tereos seems not to notice Serl at all. He acts as though each moment was the only one. His song grows, and Nilos joins in counterpart, softly. Serl must hear the rhythm of the irnu fathers' breathing through the song. Nilos opens Tereos's bag and brings out a small bronze chafing dish. He lights the small stub of candle in its holder underneath. Tereos kneels before Serl, hand on hands, pressing the lifepoint at thumb and wrist, while his song twines through the room. Relief begins to edge through Serl's wide, panicked stare. In a ragged gasp, Serl breathes in, and then takes air more deeply, slower. Irnu holding breathes with Serl, working towards the space and time the song fills. Nilos empties a small sachet of dried mullein leaves into his palm and sprinkles it in the chafing dish. Smoke curls up from the gently glowing fragments. By then, Serl is already calmer. The wheeze fades as the mullein smoke rises. Nilos closes his eyes. He loves the ease a song can bring to a patient. He knows himself how powerfully a chant's low rhythms can soothe. He'd never treat Serl with mullein alone. Tereos is right--the song comes first.
"(if: $healthier is true)[I am glad if you eased your friend's ghost](else:)[You might have eased your friend's ghost; you wouldn't have harmed her]," Tereos says. "But trust me, Nilos. I'm not so heartless. Nor so blind."
Nilos stares into Tereos's face and sees his master there, and the man who sang over him when he had the spot fever as a child; but he seems now all slick surface, a reflection within a glacier. Nilos ought to believe him--if not Tereos's experience, then his compassion--but he feels broken and drowned. What was he clinging to when he brewed Larik's tea? His faith in his own ability, or hope that there was another way?
"Let me teach you," Tereos says. "Become a master and then you may find fault with me, and my courtesy for it."
Nilos can learn the songs. Tereos's voice sounds in his ears when he collects the plants and echos the chants and learns the throb of lifepoints on himself and others. He may move into a healer's trance, long enough to keep a vigil or apply a poultice, but afterwards his questions always return, driving away his peace. And when he leaves the herbary, Asaresta looms around him, and he does not fit.
(link: "He has to give up his childishness, and trust where trust is due.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)[(if: (history:) contains "seen")[(goto: "going home again")](else:)[(goto: "uphill")] ] ]
(link: "For all the ways he loves Tereos, he can't abandon a foundering trail that might still lead to the mountain's peak.")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)[(if: (history:) contains "seen")[(goto: "going home again")](else:)[(goto: "uphill")] ] ] { (if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "The touch warps and Nilos shrugs tightly.")[The touch warps and Nilos shrugs tightly. Tereos is using Nilos's breathlines against him, insulating himself from Nilos's anger.]
] }$il["M]aster, I..." The words tangle in his mouth. "I'm sorry. I failed her. And you."
Tereos shakes his head, slow as a ram under curling horns. "If you think that, then you haven't understood the vigil lesson."
A strange thread of resentment tightens around Nilos's heart. He tries to convince himself it's no more than a manifestation of Larik's death, her ghost's passing. He comes as close as he can to the truth: "I must have done the vigil wrong, for her to die." He wants responsibility. Needs it. Even if he isn't telling the full truth.
(if: (history:) contains "seen")[Tereos pulls up his own chair, high and hardbacked. ](else:)[Tereos glances around the dooryard. Larik's family hasn't emerged yet for the giving, though her second father has gone to the barn to saddle a pony. They'll load her ghost shell for the long hike up to the eastern cliffs. ]"You told me Larik woke, and spoke to you. Did she know she was dying?"
"Yes." Fever brought a strange delicacy to Larik. Her ghost rose higher, brightening her eyes and flushing her cheeks; a tired beauty that accepts.
"Did she ask you for anything, at the last?"
"She told me--" Nilos isn't ready to share the promise Larik demanded. (if: $pragmatic is false)[She wanted him to open the cage door he's built for himself, and let free the woman he sees in himself.](if: $pragmatic is true)[She wanted him to stay safe, hidden. That ice is thin underneath him already, and cracking.]
Tereos nods, and doesn't press. "That is what the vigil is for. That moment."
It's one thing for the world to be unfair--Nilos doesn't need any lessons there. But what Tereos is suggesting is actively cruel. "She woke, so that I would think I was saving her when I wasn't?"
"To give the strength to die well," Tereos says. "To hear her last words, without pain or fog."
Nilos has always loved Tereos's face; expressive as a mountain slough under a changing sky. (unless: (history:) contains "sense")[The first ninedays of his apprenticeship, Nilos was in awe of Tereos's knowledge, of his endless nuance of tone and rhythm to match any symptom, any patient. Nilos ached to be able to respond so unhesitatingly, to know without knowledge which herbs and teas to brew. Tereos laughed and said he only knew as much as thirty years' study would teach anyone. Nilos couldn't believe him, not quite. There had to be more to it than that, more than rote and and empathy. ]Tereos's steadiness offers a sense of life, of completion, that always hovers out of Nilos's reach. Tereos navigates by stars Nilos can't see.
At first, it seemed that solitary study was the way to achieve certainty. Nilos wanted to believe that Tereos was always alone in the herbary, or out gathering plants. But Nilos can see the lies he tells himself. He's watched Tereos laughing comfortably while he and his wife bargained with the traders for spices and salves from downmountain. In the evenings, Nilos banks the herbary hearth while Tereos blows out t he candles. They walk together down to Tereos's deepstone, and Nilos watches as Tereos catches his husband in a deep and swift kiss, ruffle his child's hair as they turn, arm in arm, to the homeside door. Nilos can only turn away, because it's easier, because Nilos doesn't deserve to have any of that for himself.
And so it is Trenon's voice, Trenon's objections, that Nilos finally gives voice to. "Why shouldn't we seek to cure, even at the end, instead of offering the vigil only?"
(if: (history:) contains "seen")[Tereos links his fingers together and relaxes into his chair: ](else:)[Tereos hooks his thumbs into his belt and raises his eyebrows: ]Nilos's teacher. "How?"
Too much of a coward to explain himself, Nilos tempers. "When someone has a broken leg, the songs' melodies don't heal them," he says. "A broken leg can't be helped through the breath. We put on splints. And we give them thornapple tea. Thornapple doesn't help the ghost--people often have nightmares. We give them thornapple because it reduces pain."
Tereos reaches for Nilos's hands, contemplating them, his thumb and forefinger tracing Nilos's breathlines. "You imagine the ghost alone," Tereos says, to Nilos's palms. "The body is a shell, and the breath is the movement and animation of that shell. You have faith in the ghost, because it thinks, and loves. And so you think of the herbs, which speak to the ghost, as cures."
"The herbs are part of the songs, and the songs cure," Nilos says. Some part of him feels frantic, like a mouse trapped in a feed bucket. There's nothing solid to stand on, no way to scramble out to the place they stood before, as master and apprentice.
Tereos doesn't answer immediately, and when he does, he's as solemn as Nilos has ever seen him. "Understand, I'm not saying it's wrong, your thinking. You can be a healer, with these questions and thoughts, and I will always teach you. But as long as you feel this division between the ghost, and the body and breath, you won't give wholeness to those under your care."
Nilos's palms tingle with anxious sweat. "If the herbs don't cure, then we can't--we could never //improve// the songs. We can only guess."
Tereos shakes his heavy head. "I never guess, Nilos. I place myself fully within my songs. Your vigil was meant to teach you that." He clasps Nilos's hands together between his. "No healer can //guess// at an herb, hoping to force the ghost to stay. We only offer. We only ask."
"I never meant to force..." But his mouth dries before Nilos can finish the admission. Larik's ghost slipped away peacefully. Nilos's tea couldn't hurt her body, but it might have caged her ghost against her will.
"Nothing has changed, Nilos," Tereos says. "Come to the herbary tomorrow. Rest today."
(link: "It was the songs Nilos followed to his apprenticeship, to Tereos. He can't simply abandon them.")[(set: $responsible to it + 1)[(if: (history:) contains "seen")[(goto: "going home again")](else:)[(goto: "uphill")] ] ]
(link: "Nilos lifts his chin, feeling the air clear around him for the first time. Tereos is right. He can't guess--he must know.")[(set: $selfish to it + 1)[(if: (history:) contains "seen")[(goto: "going home again")](else:)[(goto: "uphill") ] ] ]{ (if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Nilos's tea couldn't hurt her body, but it might have caged her ghost against her will.")[Nilos's tea couldn't hurt her body, but it might have caged her ghost against her will.
If Tereos is right. If the songs offer only memorized petitions to the ghosts.] ] }$il[R]ythel comes by Lethinil's lodgestone each morning, (unless: (history:)'s last is "affirm")[greets Nyls by her new-claimed name, and eats with her. When they finish, Rythel](else:)[eats with Nyls, and then] guides her to different banlieue markets nearby. Each banlieue market centers on a tev-seller, with perhaps three other stalls nearby, selling secondhand clothing or much-mended tools. Rythel finds a nook in a wall near the junction of two alleys and leans back against the stone. "Watch," he says.
Nyls tries not to be obvious by peering around. Awkwardly, she adopts Rythel's casual cross-armed pose. Rythel finds the market fascinating, though Nyls only sees a few women buying poor cloth and worse tools. After half a candlemark, a pretty young jongleur arrives in the square. Her yellow cap marks her as ono. She sets out her cap to catch her listeners' silverwhits, and plays a few airs on a xylophone strapped across her chest, using metal striking rings on her fingers. Eventually, the journeyman trader in the small-goods stall comes out to speak to her, gesturing to the alley she emerged from. The girl shrugs, picks up her empty cap, and leaves. Nyls sighs. Without the music, standing around on hard cobbles loses its appeal even more quickly.
"What did you see?" Rythel asks her.
Nyls frowns sharply. "What?"
"At least three major bargains were struck under your nose and you missed them," Rythel says. "A boy took on a shipping commission; a mastersmith agreed to teach an apprentice ono; and two holdings agreed on a marriage price for their children."
"I saw the jongleur--" When she left, Nyls regretted not tossing one of her whits into the jongleur's cap for the music.
Rythel grins. "Ah, well. That's her job." He strides off, and Nyls hurries at his heels. "Advocats won't craft contracts for people ono. They say it disrupts the harmonies, though if you ask me, the overholdings like to keep smallholdings in line by showing there's somewhere to fall. But people are people--they'll make promises if they can't sing vows. We just do it more quietly." He leads the way back to Lethinil's, and calls to Kerajin for tev as they enter the common room. Kerajin sways over to them, one hand on her round stomach, the tray lifted high in her other hand.
"How's the bearing?" Nyls asks Kerajin tentatively as she slides their bowls in front of them. Nothing in Kerajin's dress or manner suggests she might feel ono. She belongs to Lethinil's holding, so an advocat must have sung her labour contract. Whatever her feelings, Kerajin is a woman. Nyls doesn't want to press the question of Kerajin's bearing in case she feels as Jiron does about a healer ono. Kerajin treats Rythel's friends with easy familiarity, but she might not appreciate Nyls's interest.
She smiles and kneads a spot under her ribs. "My little ono kicks like a mule."
Nyls smiles to hear her use ono as he knew the word upmountain, a love-word for a child. "Three more ninedays?" she guesses.
"About that, a nineday more or less." Kerajin sighs. "Soon enough." The corners of her mouth turn down, and she returns to the hearthroom with a frown tugging at her brow.
Uncertain at the change in Kerajin's demeanour, Nyls settles back on the bench. She takes her tev bowl when Rythel starts spooning his. Dowmountain tev tastes sour, with shreds of meat in it that Nyls can't identify. More tender than mutton or goat, yet less flavourful. Rythel offers her a bowl of dried, slivered peppers, which enliven the tef's taste without making it any less strange. Hunger makes a familiar sauce, though, and Nyls empties the bowl before setting it aside.
"The quiet market is where you'll go to heal," Rythel says. "Those little corners near the banlieue markets. People will try to catch your eye--be open to them."
"How will they know who I am?"
Rythel scoops far too many peppers and mixes them in with his creamy tev. "Your satchel is sign enough. Don't bargain in the open. Follow them. At first, they won't pay you. You have to earn their trust. Then they'll start bringing gifts. Less than you expect, perhaps. But enough." He grins and takes a full bite of peppers, apparently inured to the burn on his tongue. "Then we'll see about getting you free of Lethinil. She'd keep all her lost ono if she could."
On the fourth morning, Rythel fails to show up in the common room, and Nyls eats alone. Self-conscious, she tucks her ochre leather satchel under her green cloak, and sets out for the nearest banelieue market. As she walks, she lets the satchel show in flashes. She settles on a borrowed camp stool in the mouth of an alley behind a tev-seller's brazier and waits for Rythel's words to prove true. Hardly half a candlemark passes before a man sidles up beside her, both of them jumpy enough that they give courtesy at the same time, neither certain of the other's place. "Do you know izelu deepstone?" the man asks.
"I'm sorry, I can't give you directions," Nyls answers.
"Excuse me, then." The man hurries down the alley away from the market, but looks back over his shoulder.
Nyls waits a moment longer, sweat starting in her armpits, and then folds up her camp chair to follow.
The man takes a winding path, keeping to the alleys, paved in a mix of stable leavings and emptied nightbuckets. He leads the way to the postern gate of a deepstone small enough to have no courtyard at all, only two homeside rooms and two hearthside, and no family room. On the homeside, a young person--too old not to have come of age, but wearing unplaited hair like a child--shivers under a mass of ratty quilts. A red scatter of pustules runs hot on all the skin Nyls can see.
"Have you had a healer in?" Nyls asks.
The man shakes his head. "One came when I claimed my second wife was ill," he says. "He wouldn't give Zylen a song. He said it was spot fever."
Nyls knees at Zylen's side, and brushes back sweat-curled bangs. The sour smell of vomit mixes with pungent sweat, deeper than the unwashed bodies of most city dwellers. "It's late for the spot fever."
"All our children had it in their first nineyear," the father says. "But Zylen missed it."
Nyls nods. "We'll need water for songs," she says.
[[ϒ She settles at Zylen's side, taking a hot hand in hers.->rout]]
[[ϒ Then, finding Zylen's lifepoint, she takes a breath, and sings her first healing song as a woman.->her own]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "She'd keep all her lost ono if she could")[She's not above using the quiet market, at a remove. Remember, in any dispute, she has place, and you don't]
(Click-replace: "Advocats won't craft contracts for people ono.")[Advocats won't craft contracts for people ono. They say it disrupts the harmonies, though if you ask me, the overholdings like to keep smallholdings in line by showing there's somewhere to fall.]
(Click-replace: "a young person")[a young person--too old not to have come of age, but wearing unplaited hair like a child--]
]}$il[E]ach day after Rythel shows her the quiet market, Nyls makes her way through the south side warren, learning the maze. Where the streets wind together into junctions, a banlieue market springs up, sometimes for a threeday, sometimes longer than the traders remember. If Nyls settles onto her camp chair in an alley's mouth nearby, sooner or later someone finds her, and leads her to a shabby holding or an undiscriminating lodgestone. Mostly, her patients are people ono who go without brews or breathwork as they survive without songs. But some are simply poor, unable to rouse the pity of their overholdings.
Nyls can't claim more silver in her pouch since the day Sirol left her, but nor has she less. Kelol may have turned his back on Nyls, but he honoured his song, and guided him downmountain. Each morning Nyls reaches for clothes that sit right on her skin. She eats her buttermilk tev with a mild yearning for Asaresta's stronger tastes. She was right to come.
Summer heat thickens the air. Nyls's nose grows indifferent to the filth oozing down the center dip in the streets. The worst of the muck, encouraged by rainstorms, eventually joins the turgid brown flow of the river. City dwellers can claim as many buckets from the river as they want, if they don't mind drinking runoff from their betters upstream. Tanneries and breweries add their effluent, and few people think much of tossing their leavings into the flow. Though Nyls doesn't demand payment from her patients, she requires them to pay the water keepers for buckets drawn from clean wells, not trusting a song brewed in river water.
When her nineday at Lethinil's lodgestone expires, Nyls finds welcome in a bordel where she treated three sheepish pleasure-workers' itch with mouldy-bread poultices. Most of the rooms in the bordel's extensive deepstone hold a narrow rope-net bed and a notched candle to mark a customer's time. Chiasin, the bordel keeper, shows Nyls to a tiny suite above the common room instead. The sitting room holds two chairs, a brazier, and a scanty sideboard. Two doors lead into equally cramped sleeping rooms: hearthside and homeside in miniature.
Chiasin, tall and imposing in her flowing green tunic, a man's red kerchief tucked into her belt, smiles at Nyls and leaves her to choose which room she'll claim. Chiasin charges a higher lodging fee than Lethinil, and expects Nyls to tend her holding's pleasure-workers without compensation, but now that Nyls has a better sense of city prices, the transaction feels more honest. She passes on her patients' gifts to Chiasin, and stretches out in her rooms as she never could in a homeside dormitory. "We ono," Rythel says in approval, "need more space than most."
Midsummer, Nyls enters the bordel through the postern gate. Stables and storage line the back wall of the courtyard. The common room, where travellers, outriders, and high-place revellers from upriver flirt with Chiasin's servers, stretches the width of the building's frontage. The homeside and the hearthside wings, which in a lodgestone consist of dormitories and a few small sitting rooms, here show the flicker of candlelight through the shutters. Like the city's odours, Nyls barely notices the voices any longer--gasps, laughter, and moans. She nods to Chiasin as she heads towards the stairs. "Someone's looking for you," Chiasin says, pointing to the common room.
Nyls goes in, expecting Rythel. Instead, the first person she lays eyes on, sitting at a corner table, is Kelol.
The last time Nyls saw Kelol, he rode away without a word and let Sirol abandon him on the street. As if he could sweep his arm across a sandbar and erase any traces of history there.
Kelol stares down at the scarred trestle and spoons tev into his mouth. He looks well, sun-darkened, wearing his man's riding clothes with the same easy grace Nyls once envied. Servers and pleasure workers thread through the tables like shuttles through a warp, many of them dressed thoroughly ono, but Kelol barely glances at their slanted knots. Plenty of outriders like Jiron appear in the common room for a night or a threeday, loud with crude jokes, playfully tugging at the servers' sashes. They pay Chiasin good silver and slink back to a narrow room with a server ono for a candlemark. Kelol shows no interest, but no disgust either. How could he name Nyls Larik's killer over a single belt-knot, then appear in a bordel like Chiasin's like he doesn't see the people ono around him?
Nyls hesitates, looking over her shoulder to the shadowed staircase. Before she can leave, Kelol half-stands from his bench. "Nilos...?"
"Nyls," she corrects. Setting her mouth, she pushes past a loud gaggle of beer-breathed traders, and slides into the seat across from Kelol. "You were looking for me?"
Kelol stares at Nyls' attire, then ducks his head, before his gaze sneaks back. "I was, before. After Sirol told me what happened to you. I didn't know they were going to do that. He and Zayelik--"
Nyls doesn't let Kelol's shame-faced attitude soften her. "That was ninedays ago."
"I got kicked out and I couldn't find you. I'm sorry, Nilos."
"Call me Nyls." The man's pronoun bothers Nyls less, but she won't accept it much longer if Kelol persists.
"Nyls." Kelol fumbles her name again, and a hot flush climbs his cheeks.
Nyls sighs. "Zayelik broke song with you? You could have an advocat on her for that."
Kelol shakes his head. "She didn't break song, she just didn't renew my contract. I--" He shifts uncomfortably on his bench before muttering, "I talked too much about trading."
And, already under suspicion from his association with Nyls, the other outriders showed no mercy in calling him ono, too. Nyls swallows an ugly desire to gloat. She of all people can't shame Kelol for acting ono. "Are you all right?" she asks. "Silver? Lodging?"
Kelol presses his lips together. "I live here," he says shortly.
Nyls raises an eyebrow. Chiasin, like Lethinil, has a habit of collecting young ono--though Chiasin has a different end in mind for them, when their silver runs low.
"I'm fine," Kelol says, with a burning stare. He speaks more curtly, angrier than he was when they left Asaresta, but he is graver, too. Humbled, Nyls supposes, by Zayelik's indifference. "I still have Brys and Tyn," he says. "I covered the stabling fee, and my meals, with my wages. Past that..." He frowns. "I think I could find my way back upmountain. When I heard you were here..." Kelol shrugs, defensive, but driven to fairness. "If you want to come with me-- I didn't mean to leave you."
Kelol's forthrightness drew Nyls to him, in Asaresta. He doesn't hide his anger, but he cleaves to his own sense of integrity. He feels responsible for bringing Nyls to the city. Nyls quells the urge to brush back Kelol's fine hair. "No," she says quietly. "I'm a healer, here."
A mulish look crosses Kelol's face. "They aren't afraid--"
Larik's ghost breathes, between them.
Nyls looks around. The crowd at Chiasin's grows rowdy after sunset, and tonight is no exception, the crowd waxing louder and the servers exchanging garments in a growing free-for-all. All around them, women, men, and ono mingle, dancing, to the notes of a chiming xylophone. "You weren't wrong to be angry with me," she says. She won't confess to more than that. "And here, they want my songs."
Just then, Rythel strides in, and comes up beside Nyls. He grins at Kelol. "Ah, and here I thought you said you weren't renting a pleasure room," he says.
Kelol's anger comes hot into his face, erasing any kindness Nyls's admission raised. Nyls reaches out and lays a hand on his arm. "Who's ill?" she asks.
"Thyla," Rythel says.
Nyls grabs up her satchel. "I'm sorry, Kelol. I'll say farewell when you leave--I have to go."
[[ϒ Where the city freed Nyls, it snared Kelol.->ghostwork]]
[[ϒ Zayelik shattered Kelol's illusions about jaunting into a master trader's place, despite his rite.->reparation]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "when their silver runs low.")[when their silver runs low. Kelol won't find it easy to sing a new outrider contract if he hopes to return upmountain. His ambition to repay his debt to his holding with labourer's wages must be suffering under the need to stay fed and housed in the city. Nyls hopes he hasn't taken on the kind of debt Chiasin would offer.]
]}$il[N]yls brews feverfew for Thyla, then Rythel takes her to offer breathwork to a young couple's child, and again to sing vigil for an old man, blind enough to accept a song from an ono he can't see. Nyls sprinkles dried pine needles over a taper, and washes the smoke's breath over the old man. Rythel stays, to give what breath he can to the song.
Nyls sings the vigil note for note as Tereos taught her. Even she can see the old man is long past any other treatment. Nilos hasn't changed a single song since arriving in the city. Without any chance to gather the herbs she needs, her satchets have run low. Whenever Nyls considers a substitution, though, she remembers Jiron's revulsion. Did his thumb ever heal? Nyls should have asked Kelol when she saw him, but she fears the answer. If Jiron lost the use of his thumb then maybe Kelol's misgivings carry weight, and Nyls fools herself every day, betraying her patients' trust with an ono's songs. Maybe healing openly as a woman isn't good enough.
The old man lets out a gasp when his ghost escapes his body at the last. His shell crumples back on his thin blanket. All that remains of his life are the few possessions scattered under the south arch of Sareya's main bridge. Giving song or not, the ravens will find him still.
They return to Chiasin's through the grey dark. Nyls looks for Kelol in the common room, but he must have retired long since.
She sees him at breakfast, and again at dinner, bent over his trencher across the common room. Then Kelol disappears for a threeday. Over the next ninedays, they run into each other often--Kelol leading his ponies out of the stables to take for pasturage beyond the city, or blinking over a last cup of tea once Chiasin's rowdier customers claim rooms for the night.
One night, Kelol limps in from the stable, favouring his right foot. Nyls stands up when she sees him. "Are you all right?"
"Brys spooked," Kelol says. "Threw me." He grimaces, more in embarrassment than pain. "It'll be fine tomorrow."
Kelol may live in an ono's bordel, but as far as Nyls can see, he's an outrider straight through. "If you don't rest, you'll worsen it," Nyls tells him. "Come up to my rooms--I'll wrap it for you."
"I'll rest, I promise," Kelol says, and promptly stumbles.
Nyls shakes her head and slips her shoulder under Kelol's armpit. "Still afraid of an ono's bandages?" she asks.
Kelol grunts, but lets his weight rest on Nyls. "It's not that bad--"
"Then you can climb a few stairs." Cajoling, Nyls urges Kelol up to her sitting room. Opening the door, she desposits Kelol like a sack of wheat-flour into the sturdier of her two ladder-back chairs. She goes to the hearthside sleeping room for her satchel, and comes out with a long roll of linen. She kneels at Kelol's feet and unties his left-knotted boot. When she looks up to see how bad the pain is, Kelol is staring at her, his eyes shining. "What?"
"You, ah. Sleep hearthside now?" Kelol asks, red staining his cheeks.
Nyls glances over her shoulder, caught out again. The first night she claimed these rooms, she tentatively slept in the homeside room, as though someone was watching her. That was ninedays past, and since then all her things have accumulated in the hearthside press, and the pallet there holds all the room's quilts.
They are not hunched over an injured outrider on the bank of a river any longer. That scared healer-boy is gone. Nyls won't apologize for how she lives in her skin. "Yes," she says calmly, easing the boot from Kelol's foot. She holds Kelol's heel steady. A great yellow-green swath of bruises blooms over Kelol's instep. Nyls finds the lifepoint in Kelol's foot, and moves his ankle this way and that, then presses her palm against the ball of Kelol's foot, until Kelol grunts in pain. "Just a sprain," she murmurs. Taking her roll of bandages, she begins winding them around Kelol's foot, murmuring a mending song. Afterwards, she'll mix crushed arnica in a salve, to work into Kelol's skin. Hot water in a water skin would help, too, but a fire at midsummer makes Nyls sweat just thinking about it, and she's already taken her day's buckets from Chiasin's well.
Nyls draws her song to a close and sits back on her haunches. She keeps Kelol's foot cradled in her hand. With her thumb, she traces Kelol's lifepoint as gently as she can. Kelol's breath comes quick and light through his parted lips. "I could add peppers to your arnica rub," Nyls offers.
Kelol licks his lips. "Peppers?"
Nyls nods. "The ones they use in their tev here--"
"Scorch your tongue off, I know." Kelol frowns, tension growing in his shoulders. "What do you mean, add?"
"The heat would feel good on the bruises," Nyls says. "The arnica song eases pain, but the heat--"
Kelol pulls his foot back, wincing as it jostles his ankle. "A twisted song?"
Nyls gazes up at him steadily. "Call it a song aslant," she suggests.
Kelol shakes his head. "No--sorry," he says. "No." He pushes his foot slowly back into his boot and stands carefully. "The wrapping's enough--it really does feel better." He steps to the door, favouring his foot.
"You don't need to run," Nyls says, from the floor. "A man needn't come to a healer ono if he doesn't want."
Kelol grabs the door frame. "I don't mind," he says. "Really, Nyls, I don't. Thank you. I--I could give you a whit--"
//Thank you//--and the woman's pronoun. Nyls pushes to her feet, her blood running warm. "Keep it," she says. "You need it." Kelol won't find it easy to pay Chiasin's fees. He surveys the dusty sitting room, and the empty chair that only Rythel has sat in before. Nyls scrabbles every day to find enough people willing to take her songs; she shouldn't endanger her business, or her home here, by suggesting slanted songs to anyone, let alone Kelol. Mischief got the better of her. Kelol blames her for his sister's death but he accepted Nyls's touch and her breath in song. It felt good to touch him.
Kelol hovers in the doorway, an apology or an explanation on his lips. Nyls doesn't want to hear either, and so she faces Kelol directly and says, "You could stay here."
Kelol grabs harder at the doorframe. "What?"
"If you're interested in paying me back. We'd both save in lodging fees." Like the slanted song, Nyls intends her offer seriously, but also as a challenge to Kelol's trust. "I only use the hearthside," she says, a curl of mockery in her voice. If Kelol can take a song from her while she's dressed in ono's motley; if Kelol can live among Chiasin's pleasure workers, and not bat an eye; if Nyls can touch him, without needing to hide--a roil of longing, like homesickness, churns in her stomach. Nyls works to find a laugh, to dismiss the suggestion before Kelol can.
[[ϒ "Oh," Kelol says. "Well, I'll be homeside for you." His eyes widen and he clamps his mouth shut."I mean, uh--"->penance]]
[[ϒ Nyls smiles. "I have the room. You can share it."->joining]]{
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Giving song or not, the ravens will find him still.")[Nyls sits back on her heels, tipping her head back. "This is why I became a healer," she says. Filth streaks the bridge deck above them. The rattle of horseshoes and cartwheels makes it impossible to hear the chuckle of the summer-low river.
"To watch old men die?" Rythel gently tugs a muddy cloak over the man's blank eyes, in lieu of the wrappings they can't afford.
"To help free the ghost, yes," Nyls says. Maybe this is the lesson Tereos intended for her a season ago, that Nyls wasn't ready to learn. "Because no one should have to breathe alone at the end."
No one will come to see the old man's giving. There is no one to sing the farewell. Nyls takes the woman's part, the remembrance, and leaves the acceptance to Rythel. People ono hold givings for many bodies. They know what it is to be forgotten. "May he be known," Nyls says.
Rythel shakes his head, and draws Nyls away. Giving song or not, the ravens will find him still.]
] }$il[K]elol arrives at Nyls's door in the morning carrying his saddlebags, just as Nyls is double-checking her satchel, muttering over the lack of greenery in the city. She's running low on willowbark, not to mention nine other herbs. Kelol gives courtesy, which stops Nyls in her tracks. Her pulse thrums in her wrists. Offering Kelol guesting rights is a first wife's prerogative. Nyls never thought Kelol would consider her as host. Stammering, she dips her lips to her fingertips, courtesy in return. Should she welcome Kelol to irlu holding, these three rooms an extension of her parents' deepstone upmountain? Cold thrills through her. She says, "Welcome," stumbles, and finally reaches out to Kelol to pull him over the threshold.
Kelol peeks into the homeside sleeping room, sees the bare pallet and the tiny press. He raises his eyebrows but doesn't question, simply dropping his saddlebags on the floor.
Nyls wants to hover, watch how Kelol settles into the space, but a holding asked her yesterday to check on a child who can't keep food down, and she can't leave them waiting. "Welcome," she says again, and then nods to the door, to explain her quick absence.
Nyls returns after sunset, anxiety squeezing her chest. It took less than a nineday for Nyls to grow accustomed to slipping into her rooms' privacy, to drift from sitting room to homeside, to spread herself wide. The sitting room barely holds one person, let alone two. What if Kelol thinks fit to fill it with his outrider friends, or simply crowd it with his breath and his ghost?
When Nyls enters, sunset gleams through the narrow window. Kelol has scrubbed smoke from the watery panes. Wavery and leaded though they are, they let in the light. Kelol acquired a beeswax candle, with a tarnished sconce, from somewhere; reflections glimmer in the panes, brighter than Nyls thought possible.
Kelol comes out of his homeside room and pulls up when he sees Nyls. "Welcome back," he says, gesturing inadequately at the room.
Nyls never imagined a homeside man taking care of her. Flushing, she realizes that food is the hearthside's responsibility. After Kelol's efforts, inviting him to share the common room's peppery tev feels inadequate. Nyls reaches into her satchel and pulls out a tiny pouch of fresh raspberries that she was given as part of her fee. Even in the dusty, stony city, raspberry canes can't be contained; they grow up unchecked on the sun-side walls. Nyls spills out the bright berries into her palm. Kelol grins. His fingers whisper across Nyls's palm, choosing one. The raspberries taste bright and tart. Red-lipped, Kelol laughs at her. "The homeside might need more than that to sustain them..."
Nyls presses her lips together to hold back her smile. "You're lucky the hearthside was in a sharing mood."
They go to dinner together, choosing Kelol's usual table, away from the bustle.
The second day, Kelol sweeps cobwebs from the sooty rafters and beats the dust from a thin rag-knot rug he scrounged up. He charms fresh straw out of Chiasin and re-stuffs the pallets. Tiny as they are, the rooms feel like a deepstone when Nyls returns. The next day, Kelol rides out of the city to bring back "weeds and things" as he says--young shoots of willow, cress, new dandelion leaves. Few of them are the herbs Nyls needs most, but she makes a clover-root salad with boiled goose eggs. That night they eat in the sitting room.
Then Kelol disappears for a threeday on one of his riding jaunts out of the city. Waking in the night, Nyls stares out the newly clean window in her sleeping room, missing the touch of his ghost.
Before Kelol joined her, Nyls often retreated to her rooms in the evenings to claim them as hers. Now, with the faith that the rooms will be there when she returns, she lingers more often in the common room, listening to the jongleurs. Most nights, Kelol joins her, repairing a harness like an outrider one night, darning clothes like a weaver the next.
"Where does all this come from?" Nyls asks. "You're not running through your silver, are you?" She may be able to keep up with the lodging fees, but she feels safer with a few whits to rub together.
"I'm a trader," Kelol says, with perfect unself-consciousness. "I take loads between farm deepstones, or run messages. Nothing that needs a song, just a few whits here and there."
[[ϒ If Kelol calls himself a trader, is he ono too?->redemption]]
[[ϒ Nyls narrows her eyes but doesn't challenge the explanation.->bearing]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "like an outrider")[like a man]
(Click-replace: "like a weaver")[like a woman]
]}$il[R]ythel finds Nyls in the common room one morning not long after midsummer and hurries to her, leaning in to clap her shoulder. "It's time," he says.
"Time for what?" Nyls asks, stirring maple sugar into her mint tea. She long ago gave up wondering whether Rythel considers himself trader or advocat. He plays both roles, finding those who need songs, and those who have them to give, and matches them together. He hosts and negotiates for the same fee Nyls asks: gratitude, and gifts.
"To get rid of your place debt to Lethinil."
Nyls takes a sip of tea and frowns. "I thought you said she wouldn't come after me for silver." She left Lethinil's lodgestone once she learned the true rates Lethinil charges for room and board. Lethinil never asked her for more than they negotiated the first night, though she mourned like a father losing a child to the hearthside when Nyls said she couldn't stay.
"Nor will she," Rythel says. "But debt's not always silver, and Lethinil's not ono. You can hope your gratefulness suits her, or you can pay her."
"She doesn't need my songs." And Nyls suspects Lethinil wouldn't take them if she offered. Lethinil owes place to her overholding, and wouldn't contradict them even if they demanded she pay a silverweight for a bowl of willowbark tea.
"But Kerajin does," Rythel says.
Nilos counts the ninedays since she met Lethinil's serving girl, round with bearing. "Her time's near?"
Rythel nods. "It's on her. She wants to talk to you. I took the liberty of bringing her up to your rooms." He gets to his feet and nudges Nyls to finish her tea.
Kerajin meets them halfway up the stairs and turns to follow them up to Nyls's room. "Climbing--speeds the birth," she huffs. At the top of the flight, she pauses, head bent, hand clutching white against the wall. Nyls touches her own pulse and counts the beats; it takes thirty before Kerajin can move again. Nyls leads her into the sitting room. She settles Kerajin in a deep armchair Kelol scrounged, and raises her swollen feet on a stool.
"Welcome to irlu holding," Nyls says, to both of them, still uneasy claiming her first mother's hosting rights, but needing to offer something. The coals in the brazier are black and dead. They'll need charcoal if they can get it, and more buckets of water than Nyls is comfortable drawing on credit. Rythel gives courtesy, and Kerajin, still catching her breath, squeezes Nyls's hand.
"You're a member of Lethinil's holding," Nyls says gently. Kerajin must be obligated by the same contracts that bind Lethinil. She can't accept a song from Nyls without contravening that contract. "She'll get you a healer."
"I wasn't contracted to have this child," Kerajin says. She grunts and presses a hand to her stomach. "I thought I had another nineday..."
Nilos shakes her head, confused. City healers follow their holdings' loyalties, and therefore uphold their overholdings' wishes. But surely no healer would turn down a patient, even the poorest, at a birth. Tereos attended every birth in Asaresta. "Upmountain, children are contracted during betrothals as part of fertility guarantees," she says. "To inherit names."
"Betrothals!" Kerajin says, with a twist of her mouth. "I won't spend my life beholden to an overholding."
Seeing Nyls's blank look, Rythel says, "Lethinil, and irdanu above her, want Kerajin to sing a fosterage contract for this baby. Give it to an infertile marriage with better place."
"And I won't!" Kerajin repeats. "I want to raise the poor mite. No one buys their way out of fosterage debt--I haven't."
Rythel takes Kerajin's hand. "They'd find you a master healer and three journeymen if only you sang the fosterage."
"And add it to the baby's debt...!" With a great shudder, Kerajin's muscles contract, her belly growing hard as stone in great rippling waves.
Nyls slips into a bearing chant, counting her through her breaths. When Kerajin recovers, Nyls moves closer. "May I look?"
She unties her sash, opening her robe. "My third mother and my brother both needed healers at the birth."
Nyls places her hands on Kerajin's hard, round stomach. "The child's not turned," she says, tracing the outline of the baby's head under Kerajin's ribs, just to the right of true. She swallows hard and meets Kerajin's dark eyes. "I've birthed babies, but never by myself. I'm an apprentice. And I'm ono..." It shouldn't matter, but to Kerajin--and to Nyls' confidence--it might.
"You're the first healer who'll see me at all without an advocat standing by." She grabs for Nyls's hand again and squeezes. "I wasn't born to irunu but Lethinil's a fourth mother to me," she says. "She begged me for a season to accept the fosterage. She worries."
Cayir tried to save her from her invertism by marrying her off to the first open marriage that would take her. Lethinil loves Kerajin as a daughter, and so will contract her grandchild off to strangers to give Kerajin a better chance in a breach birth. "I understand," she says. "This won't be easy, Kerajin."
"It will be fine," Kerajin says, relaxing into a deep breath. "You have the songs."
She uses the woman's //you//, and Nyls closes her eyes under Kerajin's hope.
[[ϒ Dawn rises, and midday after it, before Nyls delivers Kerajin of a breach child.->ample]]
[[ϒ Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows Kelol arrived home in the midst of Kerajin's bearing.->dawn]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "trader or advocat")[woman or man. He plays both roles, finding those who need songs, and those who have them to give, and matches them together.]
]}(if: (history:)'s last is "bearing")[ $il[K]elol came in while Rythel and Nyls both supported Kerajin to walk around the tiny sitting room. Kelol's eyes widened, and he disappeared faster than he arrived.
But he came back. Nyls scrubs a hand across her face before remembering the stickiness of dried blood between her fingers. Kelol must have bribed the water keepers with a silverweight, for the number of buckets he drew and carried up to heat over the fire he kindled. Even after the baby was born, Kelol kept bringing water, the circles under his eyes as dark as anyone's. Nyls fumbles for her lye soap, already worn down to a sliver, and washes her hands in the water that remains in a clay bowl. She scours her face with a linen kerchief. She wants to fall into her pallet and sleep for a nineday, except she gave her hearthside room to Kerajin and the new child. She sinks instead into the armchair pushed back against the wall, under the narrow window.
She startles out of a daze when the door opens. Kelol steps in, stripped down to his linens and a patched pair of trousers. He crosses the room to Nyls and kneels in front of her. "Are you all right?"
Nyls gropes for words. "She's fine, the baby too--"
Kelol squeezes her knee. "You're--you didn't overgive your breath, did you?"
Kerajin pushed from nightfall to moonset. The baby would advance, then retreat between contractions. Kerajin lost a lot of blood, then. Finally Nyls had to reach up, and push the child back, turning the poor thing before Kerajin could push properly. She opened her breath to Kerajin then. Rythel, too, must have given everything of his strength. Nyls shakes her head slowly. "If she'd died--if the baby--"
Kelol takes her hands. He shakes his head. "You saved her. Nyls. You--you're a healer," she says, and swallows hard.
The word doesn't register at first. Nyls stares at Kelol, his solemn grey eyes, the loose fall of dark hair around his face. Nyls reaches up and touches her thumb to Kelol's lower lip. //Healer//, he said, with the feminine inflection. Kelol accepted Nyls's name, and her pronoun, but the word //healer// doesn't slant easily. At first it doesn't sound like a word at all. Nyls licks her dry lips, but her throat closes before she can speak.
Kelol drops his eyes. "Larik...was sick for a season," he whispers. "Coughing blood-- She kept getting weaker. It wasn't your fault. You're not the reason she died." His hands clench in Nyls's lap. "If I could have given breath to her vigil--"
Nyls shakes her head, and lifts a hand to brush at his eyes. "You were too young."
"I open my breath," Kelol says. "Every vigil."
"I know," Nyls says. She strokes a strand of hair back from Kelol's face. Kelol's dark hair is so fine under her fingers, though sweated through. Nyls cards her fingers deeper, finding the lifepoints at Kelol's temples, tugging tangles free.
Kelol shudders in her lap, and breathes deep, before he looks up again. "No," he says. "You need sleep. But first--" He climbs to his feet and opens the door to his homeside sleeping room. Though Nyls gave her pallet to Kerajin, her stomach still twists at the thought of sleeping on the homeside. But Kelol doesn't point to his pallet. Chiasin's oak cask, half-full of clear water, sits in the center of the floor, the only place it fits. "I thought you might rather sleep in the sitting room," Kelol says. "But a bath, first--" He half-shrugs, and pushes his unbound hair out of his face. "Don't get in the cask yet. I'll fetch hot water."
"You can't," Nyls protests. "Your bucket draws--"
"One of the water-keepers owes me," Kelol says, with a grin. He draws Nyls close, and guides her down to the pallet. The quilt smells like Kelol. Nyls blinks into half a dream, wondering when Chiasin gave Kelol permission to boil water in her hearthroom, or reserve one of her cauldrons--or her half-cask, for that matter--for Nyls's bathwater.
The bath, when it comes--she falls asleep in it. When she wakes, Kelol grins faintly at her reflexive start, sending bathwater over the edges of the cask. "You should eat," he says gently.
The water has gone cold around Nyls's shoulders and her calves where they fall outside the cramped cask. Kelol takes her back to his pallet, muttering about getting her dry and warm. Outside, the sun rolls westward; a day since Rythel found Nyls in the common room. Nyls rolls onto Kelol's quilts and buries her face in a down pillow. Kelol laughs low, somewhere above her.
"Stay," Nyls says. Her eyes close. "You need sleep too." She feels Kelol's smile at her temple, and then the press of his weight, his heat, against Nyls's bare back.
When Nyls](else:)[ $il[W]hen Nyls] wakes, Kelol lies next to her, watching her, in curiosity and warmth.
For the first time in what feels like many ninedays, Nyls thinks of Trenon. Trenon, who believed in the homeside and the hearthside, but who so often forgot the family room between them. She thinks Trenon would have demanded, long ago--//what are you, Nilos? Woman or man?//
Kelol's anger when Nyls showed him her slanted knot never touched on whether Nyls claimed to be a man or a woman. He cared that Nyls might not be a healer. He cared that Nyls deceived her patient, and endangered Larik.
No matter what herbs Nyls brewed the night of Larik's death, she believes it was a true song. She gave Larik every breath she could. After Kelol's ankle healed, he went out of his way to bring Nyls what herbs he knows, and others he trusts Nyls to know. It feels like forgiveness.
In Asaresta, Nyls thought she couldn't be happy without Trenon. But she thinks, even now, Trenon would call her invert, or allow Nyls her pretensions, and call her ono.
Kelol calls him ono, and spends his silver on filling Nyls's bath.
Nyls says, "Thank you." She touches Kelol's cheek, to bring him close, and kisses him.
Kelol leans into the kiss, and then presses, softly, for more. Nyls tries to taste Trenon in his body, Larik in his ghost; but she finds only Kelol, his hand seeking Nyls's hip, his body canting forward to press them together.
When Nyls pulls back, Kelol smiles and says, "I've never shared pleasure with someone ono."
Nyls doesn't want to break the song they've spun between them, but she ventures, "Neither have I."
Kelol would have taken place insult, once. Today, he laughs. "Traders are good lovers, they say."
"Who say?" Traders, Nyls supposes. They would.
[[ϒ But Kelol only answers, "Will you let me try?"->and then]]
[[ϒ Nyls says, "Yes."->deepstone]] $il[K]elol returns from a meandering trader's trip bearing a bright profusion of flowers and roots. Nyls sorts through them for the useful herbs, setting the others in a tall clay vase.
"Do you miss the mountains?" Kelol asks Nyls from his yawning lounge in the armchair. He still has half a stable on his boots, stretched out towards the unlit brazier. The smell of horse and warm leather wafted into the room with him.
"No," Nyls says. Kelol grows restless, trapped in the stone streets for longer than a nineday. He accepts the quiet market's meagre commissions so that he can ride Brys in wide arcs to the farming deepstones and breathe the green air. The city holds a stink unto itself, but Nyls barely notices. She doesn't see its bustle. She moves through the south side streets like a minnow in a river, breathing water.
Kelol frowns, before asking, "Do you miss Trenon?"
Nyls looks up from her worktop. Kelol built it for her and wedged it into the corner. A woman's skill, carpentry; where Kelol picks up such ideas, Nyls doesn't know. She stretches her back, then stalks towards Kelol in the armchair and, seizing her moment, sits on him--her back cradled against Kelol's front. Kelol fixed the leg once after the chair dumped them out. From the creak of wood, Nyls rather suspects they might go tumbling again. Yet they keep finding themselves in the same chair, sometimes Kelol draped over Nyls' knees, sometimes Nyls' head on Kelol's chest.
"Yes," she says, picking up Kelol's hand. Over the summer Kelol grew a handspan, matching Nyls's height; he may have another fingerwidth in him before he finishes. "Trenon knew I was lonely. He's the one who told me I deserved better than hiding behind Tereos's robes." Her fingerpads press soft against Kelol's calluses. "I miss him, for what he might have been."
Kelol sighs. "I think I need to go back."
Nyls listens to Kelol's thumping heart. "Your parents' holding has no power down here. You don't need to carry their place-ambitions any more."
Kelol tightens beneath her. "I owe them Larik's contract breaking price."
Nyls could ask a question in her turn: does Kelol miss the woman he might have been? If Kelol had come of age a woman, and married Trenon, he'd have saved his holding a place debt. As a woman, Kelil would have come to the city as a trader's apprentice, a more enticing prospect than living songless with a healer ono. But Kelol will carry the debt with him if he doesn't try to pay it. "I know," Nyls says.
"I have to give them something," Kelol says. His arms tighten around Nyls, and he brushes his lips against the side of Nyls's mouth.
"When you come home," Nyls says, moving into Kelol's kiss, "it will be winter."
And his hearthside will be waiting for him.
(link-goto: "ϒ Return","begin") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "living songless with a healer ono.")[living songless with a healer ono. Kelol's parents have probably replaced that silver and their child by now. They'd stack daughters like cordwood if they could. They can entice love-spouse wives into their older daughters' marriages, if they want to replace Larik. They'll never know the son they had instead.]
]}$il[K]elol breathes freer a threeday later when he arranges to deliver a grindstone to a mill downriver. He takes both ponies, walking himself to spell them from the stone's weight. When he arrives, the holding's first wife mutters thanks. Her overholding wouldn't be pleased to hear about two broken grindstones in a threeyear. Her story, and her defensive guilt, have grown familiar to Kelol. He does his best to suggest that if overholdings want profit from their smallholdings, they shouldn't cut corners, and he gives his most sincere courtesy for the woman's hosting.
Kelol takes advantage of the weather to slow his pace and sleep out an extra night. The last morning, he cuts uphill from the churned mud of the main trail, which follows every twist of the river. He keeps the sun behind his right shoulder and climbs a gentle hill, meandering among balsam poplars and white spruce. At the top, he can see through the thinning trees where the valley spreads out to the north. The land runs in gold coulees back to the shining line of the river. Aspen and willow grow in the hollows. Wheat ripples in green waves around erratics and copses. Beyond a line of old field cairns, a sea of clover replaces the wheat. Blue shadows on the misty horizon mark the city's walls.
Kelol hobbles Brys and Tyn and lets them graze. Standing head-to-tail, whisking flies from each other's faces, they crop the tussocks of timothy. Kelol settles in a shadowed nook on the hill's north side for his lunch. The damp rocks show seepage from an underground spring, too faint to fill his water skin, but enough choke the hollow with matted greenery. Chickweed, dandelions, and purslane twine among the stones. Kelol picks a few leaves of sheep's sorrel and chews them, enjoying the spurt of saliva at their sour taste. The tev served in Chiason's common room never fails to fill his belly, but he misses the sharper taste of mountain meals: juniper berries to season his tev, pine needle tea sipped in the evenings, savoury birch sugar. Peris would slow-roast a lamb with sprigs of nettle and mint, filling the deepstone with the rich steam, and serve it with crip cress and tender potatoes. Kelol runs a hand through the damp grass. He picks a white-puffed dandelion and splits open the stem with his thumbnail. The thin milk smells green and fresh, so different from the heavy scent of sandstone and waste in the city.
He can't go back to Asaresta. He can't face his holding without the silver to pay his debt, and he can't earn enough silver in the city to keep himself ahead of his expenses. Worse, if he goes back, he loses his stolen place, his chance to trade.
Nyls plans to stay. But Nyls has a skill to offer that won't fade with the season. Healing doesn't depend on good roads. Kelol brushes the dandelion's sticky sap from his fingers. The yellow blossoms surround him, more than enough to make an evening's meal, along with cress and plantain. He twists around, and starts plucking leaves. Some of the plants grow larger, but he recognizes many from upmountain. Most of them from his mothers' soups and tefs, but there are others that healers grind into their brews.
All these plants--Nyls must want for some of them. She can't travel far enough to replenish her store of brewing herbs without a mount of her own. She doesn't need to be a healer to steep willow bark for pain, or to drink pine needle tea to help with loose teeth in winter. As for the rest, Kelol may be his holding's son but he knows a few things about cooking. He could sell fresh plants in the quiet market, to make his return trips worthwhile. He can offer to bring Nyls out to find what she needs, or simply bring home a few staples.
Kelol rolls to his knees and loosens the dirt around the chickweed roots. He already helps so many people ono with his deliveries. He foreswears his own coming of age every time he plays the trader. What line is left to cross, in bringing herbs to Nyls? Nyls's patients pay her fee in full knowledge of how she wears her knots. Kelol can't warn them clearer than Nyls's claimed name does. Kelol can't decide with certainty if they need a warning at all. Maybe Nyls's songs hold as much healing as any man's.
Kelol gathers bunches of as many plants as he knows, and a few he doesn't. He keeps some soil around the roots, and wraps the bundles in strips of linen dampened with water from his skin. Tyn looks interested as he packs the bundle on her back, but she has better manners than Brys and won't try to eat her load. Kelol ties her behind Brys and keeps his hand on Brys's halter rope, so that Brys won't get any ideas.
He drenches the roots again when he returns to the river. Nothing wilts too badly by the time he returns to Chiason's, which is where he realizes he has nowhere to keep a wet armful of drooping leaves. He needs a drying rack, like Master Tereos has in his herbary upmountain. A rack used for drying linens will do as well, and Kelol exchanges his evening's dandelion salad to Thyla for one. The problem then is where to set it up. His own room holds nothing more than a bed and a tiny sideboard, and when he brings in his two saddles he has no floor space left at all. Grappling with his haul, he asks Thyla where Nyls sleeps. With a smirk, Thyla points him upstairs, above the common room.
Like the homeside wing, the hall above the common room is lined with closed doors, though more widely spaced. Only one has a touch of homeyness about it: a single guest chime and a striker, both carved from wood instead of metal that might not linger long in a bordel. Kelol drops the rack to the floor, and the thump, probably more than the chime's hollow tone, brings Nyls to her door. She steps back when she sees Kelol, and then she gives a quick, bobbing courtesy.
Kelol's cheeks heat. Nyls's tentative courtesy lacks the confidence of a holding's wife offering guesting rights, but it is a woman's greeting, a host's greeting. His gawkish, sweaty presence feels out of place accepting hosting from anyone, let alone Nyls. "I, I brought you--" Nyls must think he has some gall to offer the gift of an armful of herbs, after Kelol all but accused her of having a ghost wish for every patient she sings aslant to.
"Is that chickweed?" Nyls asks.
Kelol looks down at his weed-festooned arms stupidly. "Yes. And snowberry..." And a nine of others, only some of which he can put names to.
Nyls hesitates, then opens her door wide. Kelol ducks unnecessarily under the lintel. The room holds two ladderback chairs and a small brazier with a scuttle of charcoal beside it. Two doors lead into sleeping rooms, each as narrow as Kelol's. Both doors stand ajar, but only the right-hand room shows signs of life. A mess of wool quilts covers the pallet, and a taper stands on the narrow sideboard, which is a mis-matched cousin to the one in Kelol's room. Kelol lets his eyes slide away, so that Nyls won't see him noticing that she clearly lives on the hearthside, leaving the homeside to the spiders. Nyls must pay for her rooms in feeless songs for every server in the holding.
Nyls brings the rack in from the hallway. "Where did you find this?" she asks, excitement lighting her voice. With quick hands she sets up the rack, then starts plucking damp greenery from Kelol's arms and arranging it meticulously over the rack's dowels.
"Downriver, half a day or so," Kelol says. He assumes Nyls means the plants, none of which would brave the dust between the city's cobbles.
But Nyls runs her hands over the wooden joints of the rack. "You didn't waste silver on it, did you?"
Nyls must recognize a linen-rack when she sees one. Chiason's servers claim enough clothing for twice their number. Swapping a wine-jar's worth of dandelion blossoms for an extra rack was far easier than coming to a price in silver. "No, I traded--" He blushes hot again, but Nyls barely notices.
"So many people in the city need breathwork. It's the rusty air, and the smoke. I needed chickweed, and the purslane will come in handy, too, for bowel problems--" Nyls straightens from her careful bend over the plants, her mouth tight. "I'm afraid--I mean, I don't have the silver to pay you."
Kelol shrugs miserably. He picked the plants with some idea of apology, a motive any trader would scoff at. For Nyls not to recognize Kelol's intention raises the stilted place-struggle between them. Kelol doesn't want Nyls's silver, and he doesn't want to admit he's not comfortable accepting a price in kind. He brought Nyls the tools of her trade, and yet he'd balk at any healer's song Nyls brewed with them. But to confess he doesn't want anything in return feels makes him feel peeled raw.
He looks around, searching for a graceful price he could accept. The bare pallet and dusty lead-paned window on the homeside catch his eye. "What about that room?" he asks. "I could live homeside to you."
Nyls's mouth opens. Her grey eyes darken like thunderheads, and Kelol hears the catch in her breath.
Kelol nearly bites his tongue in half to cover his implication. "If you're interested in paying me back," he blurts. His skin feels too tight, his heartbeat quick as a pika's. "We'd both save on lodging fees. I could fetch the plants you need, if you tell me what to look for."
Nyls stares at the homeside room, as though she forgot it existed.
"I mean, you can have the plants," Kelol says finally. "I don't need to--but you have the room--"
"No," Nyls says faintly, and then stronger. "No. You're right. I'd like that."
[[ϒ A smile curves her mouth, and Kelol swallows unaccountably.->penance]]
[[ϒ "Welcome to irlu holding," Nyls says, and gives her holding's name like first wife hosting.->joining]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "the right-hand room")[the woman's room]
(click-replace: "makes him feel peeled raw.")[makes him feel peeled raw.
Nyls shines when she heals. When she brews a song, her pestle chunking to its rhythm, her full lips move on the edge of sound. Kelol can barely call her out of her distraction, especially now that Nyls has more patients to think of. Watching Nyls conduct breathwork on a harried patient, soothing them until they shudder calm, is worth more than silver.]
]}$il[T]he next morning, Kelol transfers his few things--mostly tack he doesn't trust to keep in Chiasin's stables--into Nyls's homeside room. He quickly learns what it means to live with a healer. Nyls rushes out with her satchel every morning and rarely returns before evening. Nyls has a friend, Rythel, who acts as a trader on her behalf, finding those willing to accept songs from a healer ono, and negotiating prices for her. If Rythel left Nyls to her own devices, Nyls would probably give her brews away, out of pity for the songless.
Kelol planned a day's rest, but he can't settle on his pallet. He spends the morning pacing the bare floorboards of Nyls's room. He frowns at the dingy windows and the smoke-grimed walls above the brazier on its stone stand. The room has no proper hearth, but a small metal hood suspended over the brazier leads to a pipe which pierces the ceiling and acts as a flue.
Kelol climbs on one of the creaky chairs and scrapes a fingernail through the soot before to identify the metal as bronze, chased with images of vines and leaves. In sudden decision, Kelol goes looking for Chiasin. With the promise to spend a day's labour on as many rooms as he can manage, Kelol cadges wheat flour and salt and vinegar from her, and a few free buckets drawn from the courtyard well. Working the ingredients into a paste, he scrubs the flue-hood until the bronze gleams. The brazier gets the same treatment, revealing matching designs of wind-blown trees. Kelol attacks the windows next, scattering spiders, letting light into the sleeping rooms. Dutiful, he repeats the same work in the other rooms along the hall, and appropriates a dusty rag-knot rug in passing from one unoccupied suite. By the time he finishes, half the bordel's soot has transferred to his skin and clothes, so that Chiasin laughs and offers the use of her cask and cake of lye soap, if he promises to continue his efforts the next day. Kelol washes as grimly as he cleaned, but afterwards he smells of lavender, and he has time to comb the nits from his hair before Nyls returns.
Nyls comes in, still talking to Rythel over her shoulder about a child with a bad case of spot fever. When she turns, she stops in confusion. Rythel steps in and nods approval. "Ah, I knew there was a reason to keep a man on the homeside," she says, and winks at Kelol.
Nyls sputters between denying that she //keeps// Kelol, and trying to give her earnest thanks. Kelol crosses his arms and glares at Rythel. Rythel laughs at him, and says, "Good thing we aren't all ono here, or there'd be no one to tend the deepstone."
She buffets Nyls's shoulder and leaves. Nyls looks around again, and dips her chin. She nudges the rag-knot rug with one toe. After a thorough beating, a faint pattern of mauve and madder stripes emerged. The rug softens the space between the two rickety chairs, and defines a sitting area near the brazier, like a parlour in miniature. "It really does look like a deepstone," Nyls says. She reaches into her satchel and takes out a folded linen cloth. She opens it to reveal a handful of raspberries. With a gleam of humour in her eyes, she offers them to Kelol.
As a man cares for the deepstone, so a woman provides. Kelol steps forward and plucks a single deep-red berry from Nyls's palm. The fruit is ripe enough to be tender on his tongue, with the faintest rasp of seeds. The flesh dissolves into sweetness and warmth. Kelol swallows, and runs his tongue over his teeth. Nyls watches him, a slow smile rising in her eyes.
[[ϒ With a sidelong glance, she invites Kelol to join him for dinner in the common room.->bearing]]
[[ϒ They sit up late in the common room's dim corner, listening to the flirtations of Chiasin's servers around them.->redemption]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "or there'd be no one to tend the deepstone")[or there'd be no men to clean the deepstone]
]}(unless: (history:)'s last is "bearable")[ $il[K]elol keeps his ear to the ground for deliveries and commissions, but between trips, Chiason begins paying him haphazardly for his services. In that manner, Kelol acquires enough linseed oil to polish the floors, and fresh hay to stuff the pallets. Though upmountain he was considered an indifferent knitter, the servers come to him with whits and their mending baskets. With his lodging fee reduced to half, and the new income from wild greens and vegetables, Kelol breathes easier about surviving winter when the roads close.
](unless: (history:)'s last is "bearable")[One](else:)[ $il[O]ne] evening, climbing the stairs up to their rooms, Kelol hears a moan coming from the suite. He stutters to a stop at the top of the flight. Could Nyls be accepting payment in kind from one of Chiason's servers? Kelol's heart squeezes as he listens.
The moan comes again, but this time, Kelol hears the note of pain. He rushes to open the door and finds Nyls and Rythel supporting a woman between them, clearly in the later stages of bearing. They pace the room in tandem. Every few moments, the woman stops, panting, her eyes fluttering closed. She groans, deep, one hand clutching her tight round stomach.
Kelol backs out of the room. Nyls has never brought a patient home before, and she may want privacy. Bearing can take days. He retreats to the common room, where the noise of Chiason's custom and a tankard of wheat beer muffles any sounds coming from above. Kelol didn't realize Nyls treated anyone who wasn't ono, but the woman shows no sign of dressing askew. He thought only the unholded and the songless would come to Nyls. Yet Kelol has seen the signs of Nyls's success. She finds work every day, enough to keep her out long after the candle lanterns are lit. The woman Nyls is helping dresses with place. She must have a holding, people to care for her. Yet she came to a healer ono with no more training than an apprentice.
Kelol orders a trencher of tev and another beer, then ignores both. Nyls isn't necessarily endangering the woman by acting as midbearer. People bear all the time. Some don't even contract a healer. Kelol's sister Varin wanted Master Tereos crouched over her husband's pallet every candlemark of his bearing, but Master Tereos came, looked, and said he'd return the next day if Hiron was still in travail. By then, though, Birn was born with a hearty wail. Hiron slept easily with the baby at his breast.
Nyls wouldn't demand silver from a woman who had no need of a healer. Rythel wouldn't help, either, if the woman's holding alone could support her through the birth. Kelol lets a sharp laugh escape. //Endangering//--and who does Kelol //endanger// when he acts as a trader?
Overholdings denying shoe iron or replacement grindstones to their smallholdings is one thing. But to deny a bearer a healer! Why would the woman's overholding do that? They may have their knots set properly, but they're the ones risking her life, not Nyls.
The healer's song has three parts: the chant that works the breath, the brew that speaks to the ghost, and the touch that eases the body. The colour of Nyls's tunic has nothing to do with that. Her claimed name won't change her song. Why does Kelol keep insisting that it must?
Kelol pushes his trencher aside uneaten. Nyls probably needs water. Bearing takes a lot. He slips out to the courtyard, and, after paying the water keeper, starts drawing buckets. He fills a cauldron and sets it to boil on Chiason's hearthroom stove. Chiason sticks his head into the hearthroom and frowns at him, but he doesn't kick Kelol out of a room he has no business in. Kelol doubts Chiason would confuse a bearer's straining grunts with the usual sounds of his bordel's trade. Chiason points to a half-cask in a corner. "See that it's cleaned when you're done."
Kelol wrestles the cask up the narrow stairs. Nyls and Rythel have already pushed the two chairs and the rug to one side to make room for the woman's pacing. Kelol leaves the cask, then returns with the first steaming kettle. On his third trip, Rythel emerges from the hearthside room. Behind him, Nyls murmurs to the woman, who squats over the pallet--Kelol will need to find new straw again--urging her, reassuring her. There's blood on Nyls's hands. Kelol remembers Jiron's gouged hand, the gouting blood. He swallows. "I've brought water for the bearing."
Rythel grips his shoulder. "Kerajin is doing well, but the bearing will be slow," she says. "Nyls says the baby hasn't turned."
Kelol gulps again. Closes his eyes against dizziness. Ewes die often, when the lamb is breach. He runs down to the hearthroom, nearly slipping on the wet stairs. He pumps another bucket from the well, adds it to the boiling cauldron, and carries a full steaming kettle upstairs. Each time he returns, Rythel pours the boiling water into the cask, then sends him back for more. Nyls doesn't notice, except to call for new linens, and more hot water skins to ease Kerajin's pains. Each time, Kelol sees more blood, linens sopping in it. He can't watch, but he can carry water.
Night fades to dawn, then to midday, before Nyls delivers Kerajin of her breach child. Kelol arrives in the room to find Rythel bathing the infant. Nyls kneels between Kerajin's legs, working with a needle and a length of boiled sheep's gut. The stitches Jiron refused. Kerajin's cheeks look sunken, pale. After Nyls sews Kerajin's tear, she bathes her with a horsetail fern wash, then packs a compress of woodsage and comfrey between her legs. Nyls pushes to her feet, and stumbles. "She needs broth--meat--Kelol, can you--"
Kelol rushes away once more. He returns with pork broth and more water. Kerajin smiles wanly at him when he gives her a bowl to drink from. Tears and sweat darken the hair at her temples. Her fresh-swaddled baby makes a sound like a wood dove, a liquid coo, and nuzzles close to her warmth.
Nyls reels when she comes out to the sitting room. Rythel gives her courtesy, and squeezes first her shoulder, then Kelol's. "I'll leave you now. To sleep, mind," she says.
Nyls nods, but once Rythel leaves, she returns to Kerajin's side to wrap the afterbirth and fuss over the baby's swaddle. Kelol finally drags her out of the hearthside room so that Kerajin can sleep.
"You're filthy," he says. He reaches for the knot of Nyls's wrapped linen vest. How many people have shed their clothing in this room to beat the candle's measure? Nyls's vest wraps right, and her trouser belt is knotted right too. Kelol pushes the clothes off her. He kept aside a bowl of Nyls's woodsage song. It smells sharp, but cuts through sweat and blood. He urges Nyls to stand in a shallow pan, and runs a cloth over Nyls's shiver-pricked skin. The warm wash eases her, like a curry brush over a fretting pony's flank. Nyls stands naked, bewildered, and lets Kelol touch her. Kelol scrubs her with the wash, and rinses her with the last kettle of water. Nyls holds Kelol's shoulder as she steps, shuddering, into the half-full cask. She sits down, letting her arms and legs slide out akimbo, and sinks down to her chin. Her eyes drift shut; her fingers loosen on the cask's rim.
Kelol doesn't want her to drown, but sleep tugs at him, so he sits on one of the chairs pushed into the corner. His head falls to one side, against the wall--just for a moment.
Sunset paints the room orange when Nyls wakes him. Kerajin sleeps in Nyls's hearthside room, so Kelol tugs Nyls to his homeside pallet.
[[ϒ They slide under the rough wool quilt, Kelol in trousers and linens, Nyls shivering naked.->ample]]
[[ϒ The two of them tangle together in the fading daylight in the single, narrow, bordel-room bed.->dawn]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "He thought only the unholded and the songless would come to Nyls.")[He thought only the unholded and the songless would come to Nyls--those people denied a true healer because of their broken vows.]
]}$il[E]ven in high summer, the rising sun doesn't reach through Kelol's window before late morning. He wakes slowly, lifting his head to listen for the brief squall of a baby. Nyls lies beside him in the shared confusion of quilts, one arm flung aside to show the curled hair in her armpit. Kelol resists the impulse to lay his hand on Nyls's chest, and assure himself of the breath on her lips, the worn ghost in her heart. They slept in the same tent for ninedays when they travelled downmountain, and he never saw Nyls naked. A hint of purple shadows Nyls's eyes, but she sleeps deeply, her face relaxed from its usual cares.
Kelol shifts the quilts enough to untangle his legs from Nyls's. He uses the night bucket, and when he comes back, Nyls blinks sleepily up at him. "You're here," she says.
Kelol answers her smile with a lazy one of his own. "You're here, more like," he says.
Nyls looks around, recognizing the homeside room, but she doesn't coil up or withdraw. Beyond the open door, the cask still rests in the sitting room, with cold soap scumming the surface. Kelol never washed himself. The room smells of his sweat, and the blood dried on Nyls's clothes.
"You'll need something to wear," Kelol says. Nyls wears an assortment of men's and women's clothes, and Kelol has nothing to share except his own rough gear. Still, in the season since leaving Asaresta, Kelol has grown a handspan, and matches Nyls's height. Fit shouldn't be a problem. "I'm sorry about the trousers," he says, handing over his much-patched pair.
Nyls pulls on her linens, then the brown riding trousers. Kelol watches avidly as Nyls, without hesitating, ties the belt rightwards. Her complete ease catches like a gaff in Kelol's chest, and tugs. Kelol looks to his tiny press, wedged under the window. The tunic he bought from the weaving trader... He wants to see the twine of men's yellow and women's green against Nyls's skin. Opening the press, Kelol pulls the tunic out and holds it up. The airy material--cotton, Kelol knows now--falls in a straight drape. Nyls hasn't bought herself a single woman's garment, contenting herself with tying her belt right, and accepting here and there a gift from friends ono, or passed on through Rythel.
Nyls's eyes widen. Kelol says, "It's not mine," too sharply, so that Nyls frowns at him. "I mean. I bought it--" For a lark, to prove he could? Don't lie, trader. "I saw it and thought of you."
"It's beautiful." Nyls traces her fingertips along the threads. The tunic is light enough to wear as an undershirt, but in the city's midsummer heat, won't require any outer wear at all. "Larik would have loved it."
Kelol sits heavily on the lid of the press.
Nyls clutches at the tunic's hem, then forces his fingers away from the material. "I'm sorry."
She apologized once before, when Kelol was too much a child to hear her. Nyls gave him place at Larik's wrapping. Kelol forces himself to speak. "Larik was ill for a season."
Nyls, cautious, nods.
Kelol presses his palms against his thighs. "You saved Kerajin," he says. "The baby too."
"I'll need to keep an eye on her. As long as the baby nurses, I think they'll be all right." Nyls steps closer, frowning lightly. "And you--?"
Kelol shakes his head. "You're a healer." He lets the inflection fall feminine on the word.
He hears Nyls's intake of breath. A healer, and a woman. Far more than the tunic, the word is a gift. Kelol denied Nyls her place for so long, refused her skill and her song, for Larik's sake. But she was coughing blood long before Nyls led her final vigil. If Nyls can bring Kerajin through a breach birth, then her songs, however slanted, aren't what killed Larik. Kelol needed someone to blame, needed a reason. There was none.
"I promise you, Kelol, I did everything I could for her," Nyls says.
"I know," he says. "I know. I'm sorry." His grief has grown old through the summer, a pain that stabs sharply, and fades as soon. Kelol stands, meaning to escape memory, the room's still heat.
But Nyls catches his wrists, hard at first, then she releases Kelol and twines their fingers together. "Thank you," she says. She lifts one hand to cup Kelol's cheek. The cotton tunic, a hint short at the waist, rises to show the woman's right-knot on Kelol's trousers.
Kelol can't help the heat that rises to his face. He presses a kiss to Nyls's palm. "I've heard," he murmurs, "they do things differently, in the city."
[[ϒ Nyls laughs softly. "Traders will say anything," she says.->deepstone]]
[[ϒ Kelol smiles. He finds Nyls's mouth with his, and sets out to prove the traders' tales true.->and then]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Nyls gave him place at Larik's wrapping.")[Nyls gave him place at Larik's wrapping. No one else thought of Kelol, or if they did, it was to deny him Larik's giving. ]
]}$il[T]he wheat kindles golden, shoulder height to Brys, when Kelol returns from his latest delivery. He enters the sitting room and finds Nyls dozing in an armchair, which Kelol scrounged from an overholding's boy charged with getting rid of it. The horsehide has rubbed thin and shiny over the straw stuffing, and Kelol's makeshift repair to one broken leg already failed once, but it stands up better than the ladderbacks to the strain of holding two people instead of one.
With a kiss and a lingering touch, Kelol wakes Nyls before putting his few things away. Rain taps on the window, a soft and thorough soaking that will delay the second haying. The air actually approached cool when Kelol woke this morning. He may need more than a bedroll the next time he travels.
Nyls stretches and yawns, then stands and goes to the covered pot on the sideboard.
Kelol's stomach rumbles. "How was the vigil?"
"Long. But he's given," Nyls says. She spoons out some tev from pot and hands Kelol a bowlful, along with a spoon. Kelol takes a seat and tries a bite. Plain wheat, boiled creamy, with the barest salty hint of pork fat. "It's...good," he says.
Nyls makes a face. "It's edible."
"It's, well. Bland."
"Better than burning your mouth out with peppers."
Kelol laughs, remembering last time. "You're a healer, how can you be so bad with herbs?"
Nyls shoves his shoulder as she finds her seat. Kelol laughs and takes another bite. Plain tev satisfies after a long day's ride, and it's a sign of how well the quiet market has treated them. Nyls's patients trust her--her discretion most of all--and for that, they pay in silver as often as they can. Nyls can learn to cook on downmountain wheat because they can afford the lesson. "Did you find any interesting plants?" Nyls asks.
"Some nasturtiums, and chrysanthemums for tea." Kelol lets his spoon fall with a sigh. The good travelling weather won't last many more ninedays. The season turns earlier upmountain. Coming home, even if home means three rooms in a city bordel, feels deceptively comfortable. "I need to go back to Asaresta," he says.
"What do you mean?"
"I owe my holding my duty." Kelol scrubs a hand through his hair and frowns. "It's late summer, harvest soon. I want to get there and back before the snow."
Nyls stills in the armchair. "Why?"
"I need to repay my debt." He owes his family a portion of the silver he earned as a contracted labourer, but more than that, he owes them news of his whereabouts. If they choose to dismiss him from the holding then, they can at least do it honestly.
Nyls's shoulders draw back, tight. "Your parents were placeless to put that debt on you."
Kelol sets his bowl on the sideboard. His parents wanted someone to blame. They put so much hope in Larik's betrothal to Trenon. If Kelol had been a season older and already come of age as a boy, they couldn't have held him responsible for the contract breaking price. But as it was, Kelol stole himself from them. He steps across to Nyls and, with a gentle shove, pushes into the chair next to her. The legs creak under them as Nyls worms into a comfortable position, leaning back against Kelol's front. "I got far more from that bargain than I ever thought I would," he says, pressing his chin into Nyls's shoulder. "If silver is the price, I want to pay it."
Nyls lets out a brief laugh. "My trader," she says, tucking Kelol's hand against her chest. "Even ono, you won't break song."
Kelol wrinkles his nose at Nyls's teasing. He doesn't dress aslant or change his colours; he hasn't claimed an ono's name. But Nyls isn't wrong about him, his nature, perhaps. "I'll tell Shayin and Varin about the city market," he says. "Dyes they have here, and cloth no trader takes upmountain. If they're smart they'll use it well when city traders try to underpay." In late summer and early spring, a single traveller can arrive upmountain long before a trader's laden string. It's not silver, but it's a debt paid.
Nyls sighs. "Six ninedays?"
"Or seven." Kelol's arms tighten around Nyls, and he brushes his lips against the side of Nyls's mouth.
"When you come home," Nyls says, turning into Kelol's kiss, "it will be winter."
And his hearthside will be waiting for him.
(link-goto: "ϒ Return","begin") {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "Kelol stole himself from them.")[Kelol stole himself from them. He was never apprenticed as a trader, but he works as one anyway; the trade he made was his freedom from Trenon, in exchange for all the silverweights his holding chose to demand.]
]}$il[F]or a few ninedays, Kelol sleeps outside the city as often as in it, travelling among farming smallholdings delivering messages, spices, cloth, and tools. When the load is small enough, he leaves one pony behind in Chiason's stable, until both are well-rested and eager for new trips.
But Kelol's initial luck fades as his contacts exhaust their resources but not their need, and start suggesting payment in kind rather than silver. Kelol accepts food, but he can't store the odds and ends his customers offer him. Chiason laughs when Kelol tries to pass the goods to him in return for lodging.
Chiason's inroads into his silver pouch make Kelol start looking harder for a lodgestone that caters to more than a night's convenience. But every lodgestone keeper he asks charges as much or more for accommodations as Chiason does for lodging and stabling combined. Chiason can afford to charge less for nightly rooms because he takes most of his profit from the rooms he lets by the candlemark. Even so, Kelol has to scramble to negotiate more deliveries, to cover his costs.
He dips into Zayelik's wages once to cover his bill, then again. As midsummer approaches, he realizes he needs to make a choice--to return to Asaresta before winter closes the trails, or to keep scrabbling in the city with no guarantee his quiet market work will last through the deep snows.
If Kelol finds himself pressed for silver in the city, then Nilos may be worse off still. No city master will take an apprentice ono. Kelol should have searched harder for him when he first came to the city's south side, and all the more once he saw what it meant to be ono in the city. Kelol barely notices a slanted knot these days. He'd never ask of Chiason's servers which way they tie their linens. On that riverbank, Nilos wanted to help Jiron, and save him the use of his thumb. Maybe Jiron was right, and people ono can't heal. But Nilos deserved better than Kelol's contempt.
Kelol checks with a few of his quiet market contacts if they've met a healer's apprentice named Nilos, and gets shrugs in return. Chiason's server Thyla, on the other hand, sniggers when he asks and refuses a straight answer. "A healer came a threeday back and plastered mouldy bread between my legs, for the itch," Thyla tells him. "But we don't remember ghost names here."
Kelol sighs in exasperation. Thyla's ono as they come, and protective besides. "So you do know him, by a different name?" he asks. "Can you tell him I'm looking for him?"
Thyla shrugs. "I don't know //him//, but I'll see what I can do."
Nilos appears in Chiason's common room a nineday later. Kelol sits at the back of the room, away from the servers' patrons, and sees him first.
Nilos is--ono. Kelol never looks twice at Chiason's servers, yet he can't keep his eyes off the rightwards tug of Nilos's cloak. A warm glow floods his stomach. Flushing, he stares down at the trestle in front of him. A moment later, Nilos sits down across from him. A blue tunic peeks out from his old dun cloak. Without thinking, Kelol takes a bite of tev, and finds he can't swallow. He puts down his spoon. "Nilos, I've been looking for you."
The apology he planned crowds his throat, but before he can continue, Nilos snaps, "Nyls."
Kelol spends half his nights listening to Chiason's patrons calling out such ono names, in amazed desperation, in languid gratification. He blushes miserably. "Nyls," he manages. "I'm--I wondered if you wanted to go back to Asaresta. With me." Instead of reasoned argument, the bald invitation tumbles out. Kelol hoped to save Nilos--Nyls--from the city, but all too clearly Nyls doesn't need his heroics.
"I won't go back." Nyls's water-grey gaze is disconcertingly direct. She doesn't seem angry, but clear and firm, not nearly as self-effacing as she was during their trip downmountain.
"Where are you staying?" Kelol asks.
"Here." The challenge rings clear as chimes.
Kelol wonders what Nyls would look like in green and yellow.
Nyls takes his blank stare as objection, and says, "I've been healing. Brews for food, sometimes silver."
Kelol has been surviving by the same equation, yet he can't dismiss his misgivings. Lives depend on Nilos's songs in a way they don't on the work Kelol does. Like a confession, he says, "I've been working in the quiet market. Deliveries. No contracts. Handclasps are the best of it." He fumbles again for the apology he intended. "If you and I can do it, if everyone who breaks a song or lives ono can do it..." His words drift off when he realizes he's offering forgiveness instead of asking it. "I mean, it's not fair, is it, to deny someone the songs they need because of who they are?"
Nyls shrugs. Like a cloud passing in front of the sun, the bright grey of her eyes dims.
Kelol picks at a flaw on the trestle, feeling the bite of splinters against the pad of his thumb. He wanted to believe he'd forgiven Nyls for Larik's death. He wanted to believe he never blamed Nyls in the first place. But his words ring in his ears, proving how similar they are. He can't excuse himself, and call Nyls a killer, in the same breath. Kelol traps his restless fingers under the table. "I've been trading," he says, and winces. Nyls watches him quietly. "I don't think I'm ono, Nyls. I really don't."
"No one says you have to be." Nyls pushes back from the table and stands. "I won't be returning to Asaresta. I live here now. Thanks for your offer, but I don't need your help."
[[ϒ Nyls slides easily between tables and servers. She disappears from the common room.->ghostwork]]
[[ϒ Kelol stays behind, breath caught closed in his chest.->reparation]] {
(if: $allowHints)[(click-replace: "he lets by the candlemark")[he rents out nine times a day, with a server to grace the bed. There aren't many who look for lodgings in an ono's bordel.]
(click-replace: "Lives depend on Nilos's songs in a way they don't on the work Kelol does.")[Lives depend on Nilos's songs in a way they don't on the work Kelol does. People without wages can't pay a healer, and people in smallholdings have to rely on their overholdings to include a healer's services in their patronage contracts.]
]}<center><div class="menu">Code</div></center>
Sample code is included in the critical exegesis as appendices. To view the complete version of these samples, click on the appropriate link below.
<a href="http://figuera.ca/Figuera_css.txt">Cascading Style Sheet</a>
<a href="http://figuera.ca/Figuera_header1.txt">Header 1</a>
<a href="http://figuera.ca/Figuera_header2.txt">Header 2</a>
<a href="http://figuera.ca/Figuera_footer.txt">Footer</a>
<a href="http://figuera.ca/Figuera_startup.txt">Startup Passage</a>
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