Bitter Moon Saga Read online

  Torrant chuckled even as darkness pulled him under. “They love each other already,” he said, somewhat vaguely, but Moon would remind Torrant of those words as the years passed, because they were as much of a prophecy as the Goddess’s children ever made. “Aren’t I too young for Triannon?” he asked almost drunkenly, in an attempt to not sleep just yet.

  “You’ve got a good three or four years here, first, boy,” Lane assured him. “Now sleep, and we’ll keep that other thing until later.”

  For a day Moon and Bethie took turns waking Torrant every hour or so, even in the dead of night, and when they at last were sure he would awake from a deep sleep and not just continue until death, they let him be.

  Torrant woke again feeling as though he hadn’t moved in a year and vaguely aware of voices calling for Yarri. He was more than a little surprised to discover she had clambered under the covers next to him.

  “You can’t do this here, little one,” he said softly into her ear after he’d gotten his bearings.

  “I missed you,” she said. “They wouldn’t let me see you after you hurt your head—they were afraid you’d say something scary.”

  This made Torrant blink in surprise. “I wasn’t aware that I was saying much at all.” But even as he spoke he realized his throat was hoarse and scratchy, as though he’d been shouting for a week.

  “We could hear you upstairs,” she told him grumpily. “Roes kept hauling me up to our room in the attic when you started shouting, and whatever you said made Bethen cry. That wasn’t nice, Torrant.”

  Torrant flushed. “I’m sorry,” he said truthfully. “I can’t imagine what I would have been saying. I thought I was asleep.”

  Yarri humphed. “Well now you’re better, and now I can sleep.” She snuggled into him a little deeper, and he realized that his cramped body was just going to have to wait a while before he moved again.

  A few moments later, just as her breathing evened out, Bethen came puffing down the staircase that led to the room, sighing in relief when Torrant waved at her and pointed to the tousled blonde-red hair next to him on the pillow. “Roes, she’s here—but she’s asleep,” she called up the stairs and then waddled ponderously to where Torrant was trying to maneuver his body to sitting without waking Yarri. With a firm grip and a lot of leverage, Bethen grabbed Torrant’s arm at the elbow and shoulder and pulled him up and over abruptly, leaning behind him to smooth Yarri’s hair when she murmured in her sleep.

  “I’m betting you have to pee like no man in history,” Bethen said bluntly, pointing to a small door between the two beds that Torrant hadn’t noticed before. “Lane’s a thinker; we’ve got indoor water, although you’ll have to go upstairs for a shower, and not every day unless you like your water cold.”

  “Thank you.” Torrant hobbled with as much urgency as he could muster toward the blessed door. He was thinking that the Moons’ hold in Clough had boasted outhouses and a big copper tub in the kitchen—bath day had been twice a week, unless it was summer when everybody was expected to wash off at the family swimming hole. It had been the best sort of family time, those evenings of swimming until the moons rose.

  When he came back (blessed, blessed thrice blessed relief, that), Bethen was setting up a tray of food for him next to the bed.

  “Now, I know you’re probably all excited about getting up and moving around,” she said quietly as he returned, “but give a pregnant woman her way just this once and let me coddle you a little.” She smiled winningly at him, and he wondered how many people actually crossed Bethen Moon; however, he was still tired, and a little dizzy, and he decided he didn’t want to be one of the few, so he did as she asked and got back into bed, careful not to disturb Yarri.

  “I made noises,” he said quietly, taking a bite of the sandwich Bethie had made.

  “Hmm?” She had pulled up the same chair Lane had sat in and was pulling out her knitting as she spoke.

  “I made noises, after I got knocked out,” he said again, not wanting to ask what he’d said, but not wanting the fear of what he might have said hanging over his head either.

  “Yes,” she murmured, settling down with a skein of thin, brightly colored yarn and four small, well-sanded wooden needles. “Yes, you did make noises, boyo. You did indeed.”

  Torrant flushed and looked at her miserably, and she winked at him, as though urging him to ask the question. He took another bite of sandwich and did just that. “What’d I say? What was I shouting that you didn’t want Yarri to hear?” he asked at last, and Bethie paused over her knitting and sighed.

  “You told us what you saw, Torrant,” she said, not pulling the punch. “The night your family was killed, the morning after. You lived it all—we couldn’t believe you two were the only people in the entire hold that survived, but….”

  “But now you know,” he said briskly.

  “And you’ll need to tell us again and again to make it right in your heart,” she said, knitting a few stitches and then looking at him.

  “They slaughtered the workers in their beds,” Torrant said hoarsely. “Arel, Gin, Oren, Bryn, Kith, Jacef… old Jeb….” His voice broke, and he ruthlessly tried to pull himself together, and then he found that Bethen had sat her chair next to him and wrapped a substantial arm around his shoulders. “I wept about this with Yarri.” He tried to shake off that comforting arm.

  “You wept over their deaths, not the manner of them, Torrant,” Bethen amended softly, pushing away the tray she’d just taken pains to set up. “Now I know why you’d want to hide that from Yarri, but it’s going to take a world of weeping to wash away that sadness. You might as well start now.”

  Oh, he had been the grown-up for so long, so very long. “They cut off their heads,” he said tightly. “Oh Goddess… my family… Mama, Kes, Moon…. Oh, Ellyot, and Tal and Qir, oh, my brothers…. I should have been with you…. They stabbed them and ripped them and cut off…. Oh Goddess… oh Goddess, don’t tell Yarri…. Oh Goddess, make it go away….” For now, just for now, he thought, giving way to sobs and tears, he could let this big, gruff woman shelter him from the world.

  Callings

  HE HEALED much more quickly after that.

  A little more slowly than the healing, but still day by day, he, Yarri, and Aldam made their own little niche in the busy Moon household. Even Yarri was happy to help with the family work in an effort to make the transition. Bethen told Lane that she would know they were all comfortable in the house when she had to actually yell at them to get them to do their chores as opposed to finding things done before she’d even asked.

  Although Torrant had told Lane nearly the complete truth about how they had fled their homeland and came to be in Eiran, without speaking, he, Aldam, and Yarri tacitly agreed to leave out a few things for the public version. The death of the soldier and the horse trader figured prominently on the list, as did Torrant’s use of his gift in order to save Yarri’s life. Not a whisper was breathed about the snowcat, and although he seemed to suspect something was being left out, Lane clearly didn’t know what questions to ask.

  Eventually, when Lane was satisfied with a version he was willing to share with the public, they invited the constable and the mayor over for hot cocoa and cookies. One sleet-covered night, Constable Donis Salt and Mayor Anse Maple ventured into Lane and Bethie’s comfortable, dark-paneled sitting room to sit by the fire and grill Torrant like a fish.

  “You can’t think that Moon was killed by his own people,” Torrant said in a hard voice, after the fiftieth painful repetition of the night his family had been killed. “It’s not fair to Moon. It makes him look like a fool, and he wasn’t.”

  “Your mama died too,” Yarri said, a question in her voice.

  “Yeah.” Torrant looked away. He had avoided thinking about his own mother, even in the midst of the storytelling. It had been hard enough to grieve for Yarri’s family.

  “So, son,” Constable Salt said in a patronizing voice that was starting to get on Torrant’s ner
ves, “you expect us to believe that the entire Moon hold was slaughtered because they were the Goddess’s children?”

  “And you expect me to lie because I am one?” Torrant shot back, his temper pricked by the constable’s tone and the repetition and the weariness from recovery that snuck in at odd moments when he wasn’t prepared.

  “You were on death’s door, and you lied about your name,” Donis said, and Torrant bristled, because they held that against him still.

  “He was trying to stay with Yarri,” Lane interrupted, bristling, “and I’m trying to keep my patience.”

  “Lane, there’s refugees filing down that mountain as fast as their horses can carry them,” the mayor said, looking panicked. “We’re having trouble housing all of them at the barracks.”

  “Well, then, they can stay in the winter warehouse,” Lane responded, unruffled. The warehouse lay dormant until late spring, when ships could make it through the stormy, rock-laden channel between Otham and Eiran with mostly skill and a little luck. “But that has nothing to do with whether or not Torrant and Yarri are telling the truth.”

  “Yarri’s a child,” the constable protested, and Lane shut his eyes.

  “I’m old enough to hit that bad man on the head with a rock!” Yarri snapped, and Torrant’s pained expression was a mirror image of Lane’s.

  “Gods’s noses, Yar….” He sighed.

  “Who did she hit on the head with a rock?” the mayor asked sharply.

  “Rath’s guardsman,” Torrant said in resignation, knowing they were in for a whole other round of questioning. “Ellyot and I were talking to him. He was getting angry, and Yarri hit him on the head with a rock.”

  “He said mean stuff to Torrant,” Yarri defended stoutly, and Torrant patted her shoulder in appreciation.

  “Gods’s bollocks!” shouted the constable. “Did your brother just let these children run wild? Thanks to this brat, we’ve got mouths in this town that we can’t feed!”

  Yarri whimpered, and Lane took a deep breath through his teeth and let it out on a roar. “A child defending her family did not cause this problem!”

  Torrant, Aldam, and Yarri stepped back in surprise. Lane stepped forward into the circle of the room, eyes blazing, and the constable and the mayor shrank into their seats like salted slugs.

  “Lane,” Constable Salt began in a conciliatory voice. Lane interrupted him, and the constable wiped his palms on his pants as Yarri’s uncle spoke.

  “This persecution of the Goddess’s people has been going on for years—you know it as well as I do. Willa died, and Rath took over, and we’ve been hearing nothing but sorrow from my brother’s country ever since. Moon was the last man in the Regent’s house who stood for the Goddess’s people, and now he’s dead. What do you think is going to happen to them now? All of the old regents have fled, leaving their children and weaker men in their places. Unless the next generation has more balls than the last one did, Clough is going to become a cesspool of persecution and genocide! We have to make a choice!”

  “And what choice would that be?” the mayor asked, clearly affronted that this merchant was talking politics to him.

  “What choice do you think, Anse?” Lane asked bitterly. “We can either close the borders and turn away the innocent to death, or we can give them sanctuary and become an enemy to Clough.”

  The mayor almost dropped his mug of cocoa. “We’re a city-state!” he protested. “We’re a trade station. The only commodity we have is fish and sheep, but the fishing goes mostly to Otham because she doesn’t have so damn many rocks at the bottom of her ocean! How are we going to stand up to a country with its own resources, its own standing army? We’ve got a militia—they deliver the mail, put out fires, rescue cats from trees—you know this as well as I do, Lane. You want us to build an army. You want us to become a power…. I know you want revenge for your brother, but this is taking it a bit far!”

  “It’s not about revenge.”

  “Of course it is, Lane,” Bethen said calmly from the doorway, breathing deliberately as though to convince everybody else to calm down. “It’s about revenge, but you’re also right. The refugees are coming. We can either turn them back into Clough or we can accept them. And you’re right too, Anse,” she added, holding up one hand while the other clutched the doorway for balance. “We’re not equipped to wage war on Clough, but neither can we turn our backs on a suffering people.”

  “So what do you suggest, Bethie?” asked the constable acidly. “I’m interested in hearing if it has anything to do with knitting, talking, or changing diapers.”

  “If you speak to my wife like that again, it will have to do with your broken nose and two vast, empty, useless buildings because I’ve moved my businesses across the quay, Connie,” Lane threatened. Torrant learned something about economics in that moment, because the mayor blanched, the constable flushed, and they both muttered hasty apologies. The mood in the room settled in that instant of contrition, and the mayor sat back in his chair and sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers and obviously trying to get a handle on what he had thought was going to be a minor bit of bullying for an answer that he wanted to hear.

  “Well, Bethen,” he said after a moment of horrible discomfort, “do you have a suggestion?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” Bethen’s usually smiling mouth was thin, and there were brackets around it that Torrant hadn’t seen since he’d woken up the second time, after he’d fallen apart like a baby and wept in her arms. Lane looked at his wife expectantly and then changed the angle of his head. Torrant caught an entire unspoken conversation between them that went something like:

  No. Now?

  Well, not right now. Soon.

  Holy Triane, woman, go lie down!

  This is more important, beloved. I’ll be fine. I’ve done this before.

  Torrant’s eyes widened just as Bethen cast her husband one last, stern look and started to talk again. “We will simply be a neutral country—a refuge,” she said deliberately. “If the refugees get here, they’re safe. Clough can’t risk attacking us—remember that it is a country surrounded by neighbors, and someone’s going to go down those mountains and put Rath’s head on a pike if he starts overreaching himself and attacking his neighbors. What he does in his own borders, well, most leaders are like the two of you—you figure that’s his business. But if he swoops down on us, we’ll be neutral. It will work. We read a statement to the town; we prepare Otham, Cleant, and the hills for the influx of refugees. The minute one of them builds a home and claims some land nearby, we lasso him into town council and give them all a voice. We can’t go down into a country twenty times our size and take that bastard out, but we can make sure that if his victims make it here, they have made it to safety.”

  Her voice became grittier as her speech went on, and something about her intensity must have convinced the mayor. He stood with wide eyes and affirmations that he’d put that plan into action, then left, the constable hot on his heels. As soon as the two men had cleared the door, and the people in the modest, little, wood-paneled room heard their footsteps clatter on the boarded walk in the snowy bluster outside, Bethen gave a terrible, wrenching groan, grabbed the doorframe in both hands, and sank into a half crouch where she stood.

  The last time Torrant had heard the words Lane spit out right then was when Courtland had kicked Owen Moon in the shin.

  “Godsdammit, woman, how close did you want to cut this?” he asked, coming to her side and taking her by the waist.

  “Well, I couldn’t very well go into labor while you were threatening to beat up the mayor and move us all to Otham, now could I?” she retorted sharply, struggling to get her breathing under control. It was coming very fast, and there was a little moan in her gasps, and Torrant looked at her with some of Lane’s exasperation.

  “You’re really close, Aunt Bethen!” he admonished and went to her side to help Lane. “Aldam, could you take Yarri to the family room with Roes
? But come right back and have Stanny run to the barracks and get the midwife.”

  “I won’t be long,” Aldam promised, just as Lane said, “And I’ll just stand here and hold Bethie’s hand.”

  Torrant flushed at his tone. “I’m sorry, Uncle Lane,” he murmured, embarrassed.

  “Don’t be,” Lane snapped with dry humor. “You’re speaking sense—just don’t make ordering people around in my own home a habit.” He and Torrant got on either side of Bethen, and, by unspoken accord, took her elbows and, when her breathing had relaxed, helped heave her to her feet.

  “You two can just make a habit of not touching me right now!” she said with a snap and a few ineffectual slaps at their solicitous hands. “Let go… damn.” And then her knees buckled a little, and Torrant and Lane both gasped to keep her from dropping to the floor.

  “Dammit, Bethie—you couldn’t have told us this was happening before the constable and the mayor got here? We could have put this whole thing off for another evening, don’t you think?”

  “It’s been going on for two days, Lane,” she gritted. Torrant and Lane held their breath, and when her contraction passed, they both pulled on her some more to get her to her bed in time. “How did I know it was about to get serious?”

  “Auntie Beth! Two days and you didn’t say anything?” Torrant was appalled. He had helped his mother deliver babies before. He knew that after the first baby, everything often went quickly.

  “It never got regular,” Bethen panted. “It would go steady, and I’d just come in to tell you to get the midwife, and it would screech to a halt.”

  “Maybe this one just needed you to get good and mad to want to come out,” Lane said with humor. At that moment Aldam skidded into the bedroom, red-faced and flushed, as they were laying Bethen on the big, sanded sleigh bed in their cluttered, cheerful room.

  “The midwife is dead,” he said abruptly, and it was a good thing Bethen was mostly in the bed because Lane and Torrant would have dropped her.