Triane's Son Reigning E-Book

Amy Lane

• Herausgeber: Harmony Ink Press
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 534

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Sequel to Triane's Son Fighting Bitter Moon Saga: Book Four From the moment Torrant Shadow realized Consort Rath murdered his family, he's lived a dual identity: a healer and poet by nature, a predator out of necessity. It's not just exhausting, it's perilous. In the deadly city of Dueance, Torrant must succeed in both lives, because while the predator may save the Goddess's folk from Rath's brutal policies, it is the poet who will sway the minds of the people to revolt against the oppressive government. As his cause falters, Torrant finds his worst nightmares come to pass as the people he loves most—his family from Eiran, his former lovers, and his moon-destined, Yarri—all come to his aid, despite the danger. They must succeed—there is no other option. If they fail, Rath will eliminate joy from the heart of the lands of the three moons, and all that Torrant and his family cherish will be lost. But success could exact devastating cost, one Triane's Son was never prepared to pay.

Leseprobe

Readers Love Amy Lane’s

Bitter Moon Saga

Triane’s Son Rising

“This first book in a young adult story has magic, shifting, friendship, tragedy, and coming of age all wrapped up in a well written fantasy saga divided between the “gifted” and “non-gifted”.”

—World of Diversity Fiction Reviews

“For me this book was perfect and I can’t wait for the next one. Recommended? Not only that, I think it’s a must read and ought to be on everyone’s to-read list.”

—MM Good Book Reviews

Triane’s Son Learning

“…maybe I’m biased, but I can’t recommend this book enough.”

—MM Good Book Reviews

“…I truly look forward to the next part with great anticipation, having been treated to an exhilarating ride thus far.”

—Greedy Bug Book Reviews

Triane’s Son Fighting

“This book left me too raw and the anticipation it generated nearly unbearable, but one thing is for sure; I absolutely loved it and it felt like yet another brick was put into that wall of worship I have for this author. Her brilliant writing always makes my day.”

—MM Good Book Reviews

COPYRIGHT

Published by

Harmony Ink Press

5032 Capital Circle SW

Suite 2, PMB# 279

Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

USA

[email protected]

http://harmonyinkpress.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Triane’s Son Reigning

© 2014 Amy Lane.

Cover Art

© 2014 Nathie.

creationwarrior.net

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only

and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Harmony Ink Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or [email protected].

ISBN: 978-1-62798-343-3

Library ISBN: 978-1-62798-345-7

Digital ISBN: 978-1-62798-344-0

Printed in the United States of America

Second Edition

March 2014

First Edition published as Bitter Moon II: Triane’s Son Reigning by iUniverse, 2009

Library Edition

June 2014

To the students I left and the ones who left me—you’re important,and I miss you.

To my family, whom I leave sometimes too—you’re important,and I rejoice in you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ITWASa risk, taking a quiet, unacknowledged set of books and putting time and effort into rereleasing them. I cannot thank Dreamspinner Press and Harmony Ink and their amazing team of professionals enough for making this series new again. This last book is Marv and Jino’s, but it’s also Elizabeth’s and Nessa’s. Bless you all.

PART XVIII—THE CHANGING MOON

TRIANE’S SON WAITING

TRAGEDY—TRIANA the innocent, falling from the sky in a crash of blood and bone; her lover, Djali, heir to Clough, eviscerating himself in the river, defiling his own corpse, precluding burial.

Torrant, baring his soul and his name to the regents who followed him—

And who followed him still.

Tragedy, loss….

Rebuilding.

Torrant and Aylan, swearing the vows of friends turned lovers, that they would not desert their task.

And Torrant’s dream that his beloved was coming, coming to aid him, coming to bear him up when his own heart failed.

And Torrant agreeing to let her come.

Tragedy.

Rebuilding.

Faith….

A WEEK after he dreamt that Yarri was coming, Torrant patrolled under a single, chilling moon and thought a little yearningly of Aylan, asleep in Torrant’s bed. He wished he could insist Aylan sleep in his tiny, crumbling flat with the sprung couch—he knew he should. But no one had noticed yet, or if the maids who came in periodically and cleaned the bathroom and swept the rug had noticed, they certainly hadn’t reported that another man was living in the same room as Ellyot Moon, the newest almost-regent.

He told the other regents he didn’t think it necessary to push for a majority vote. “For the moment, they’re listening. Rath’s milking the sympathy for everything it’s worth, but….”

He hadn’t needed to finish that sentence—the evidence that something was amiss in the consort’s house had been all too damning, bleeding on the courthouse steps. Not even Rath attempted to maintain the fiction that Djali was still alive.

So it wasn’t necessary for “Ellyot Moon” to officially become a regent, and although nobody said it, he could tell they were all relieved they wouldn’t have to force their fellow regents to believe a lie.

That was fine—they were making progress. He and Aylan still patrolled at night, but the guards had thinned out enough that they were able to split up the work, and the five young regents had taken turns working in pairs in the early parts of the night to simply patrol the area. Some of the others on the floor who had been sympathetic in their voting had started to come along. A sudden influx of blankets and food had found its way into the clinic the last rest day, and Torrant, at least, was encouraged.

But the giant structure on the hill above the city continued to grow like a stone wart, and they still hadn’t found a solution to the problem of guarding the people they were smuggling out to the secretly reestablished Moon Hold. He hadn’t discovered where Rath was keeping the Goddess’s gifted who kept trying (at unexpected times) to force his hand on the floor, and as of yet, he could get no other regent to publicly accuse Rath of abducting Triana. These complications were not encouraging.

In fact, they were downright frustrating, and as Torrant was visited with dream after dream of Yarri’s progress toward him, he could only marvel that she seemed to be able to accomplish anything, while he was stuck on just these two problems.

“Do you know who’s coming now? Bethen’s big ‘surprise’ at Wrinkle Creek?”

Torrant woke Aylan out of a sound sleep in the wee hours after this dream had visited him. He’d enjoyed the dream at first—had, in fact, been taking an inordinate amount of pleasure in the dream from just looking at Yarri. She was so beautiful. Her brown eyes sparkled, and her lovely autumn-colored hair rippled past her full hips. Her yellow dress all but sang of the brightness in her soul, and her body was so lush…. Was it because he had been surrounded by nothing but regents or sick people for the past months, or was it just her? He didn’t know, but he knew that as the true dreams continued and she started to get closer to him, he had begun fixating on her body or her face in total enchantment.

Breasts. His beloved had soft, pillowy, sweet breasts. When was the last time he had looked at a woman for that feature when it hadn’t been purely functional? The answer was easy—it had been the last time, the one time, he’d been in her arms.

When Trieste entered the dream, dressed simply and fine in a dress of dark blue linen, he hadn’t noticed her breasts at all. She made an unlikely, gracious presence in the red-dusted cedar woods of Wrinkle Creek. In the background of the dream, he could see the house he had roomed in with Aldam for nearly four years as they’d served the people in the hills. Aldam had been upset, he could tell, because there was an added room over the center of the house—the part with the best foundation and sturdiest walls. Aldam always did his best carpentry when he was unhappy.

Yarri, Trieste, Roes, and Aldam were packing four wagons for the lot of them. Trieste even had a retinue of servants, including a sturdy, practical steward who was discussing with Roes how to pack so that when Roes and Aldam swung south to head for Moon Hold, they didn’t have to split up belongings. Aldam had been calmly taking direction from Trieste in the easiest way to cover his white streak, which was nearly unnecessary since his hair was almost white-blond on its own. When he’d pointed that out, a look of pain crossed Trieste’s features, and she and Yarri had met eyes in a clear plea on behalf of the Queen of Otham to see if Yarri could keep her beloved friend out of danger.

Yarri had shaken her head firmly, saying, “No. It’s not going to happen. Not for Torrant, and not for you.”

And that was when Torrant had sat up in bed and awakened Aylan.

“Aldam and Roes? And Trieste? It will be quite the reunion!” Aylan was grinning, his white teeth flashing in the moonlight from the patio window, and therefore he was not anticipating Torrant’s smack on the back of his head. “What was that for?”

“All of them? Damned bloody all?”

“Well, not all of them here. Aldam’s not stupid, you know. He’s heading for Moon Hold, using, I might add, the same deduction you used to establish the new colony there.”

Torrant had blown out a breath and thrown himself back against the pillows, goose bumps rising around the scars on his bare chest. “Oueant’s tears, what in the name of the stars’ dark are they thinking?” he asked the air in general.

Aylan frowned, not caring for the way Torrant shivered outside of the blankets as he pulled the comforter up under his friend’s chin. Torrant scowled at him, and Aylan shrugged, completely unrepentant at his fussing. “Perhaps they’re thinking what the regents and I have already figured out, brother. You may be the one man who can save the world, but it’s going to take a bunch of us to save you.”

Torrant snorted then and curled up on his side, burrowing into Aylan’s smooth-skinned comfort. Their legs tangled under the blankets, and Aylan’s arms came around Torrant’s shoulders, his palms skimming the ridges of the scars that had so appalled Eljean.

“So,” Aylan murmured against Torrant’s shorter hair, “how did she look?”

Torrant didn’t have to guess which woman Aylan was referring to. “Lovely,” he replied, falling back asleep even as he answered. “She has the most amazing breasts.”

THREENIGHTSlater, in the dank recesses of the rough-cobbled alley between crumbling red and yellow brick walls, Torrant could hear the warmth of Aylan’s chuckle in his memory, and it kept him still. He wondered, then, at his hubris, that he thought he could come to this city all alone and make a difference, when in truth he could hardly do it even with the help of all his friends.

He heard a sound then and shrank back farther into the shadows, waiting to see who it was. He could smell the sweat on metal and hear the clink—had, in fact, scented the guard coming for some minutes now. But he wanted a glimpse of him, to see if it was the guard he had been thinking of.

Soundlessly, he reached above him and hauled himself up onto the roof of the building next to him. He crept above on the shingles, thankful for once that all three moons were down. It was hard to be quiet on the roofs of the ghetto—most of the buildings were falling apart. The roofs were in disrepair, and the shingles slid out from under his feet if he trod even a little wrong. But he and Aylan had been moving quietly in the ghetto for months, and he was good at it now. In silence and shadows he trailed the man from the rooftops, wanting to see where he was going.

The guard suddenly stopped, looked behind him and around him, and then made an abrupt turn. Apparently he was going into a dead-end alley.

Torrant crept along the edge, waiting for the man to come out.

The guard started talking to the crumbling mortar instead. “Hullo… whoever you are?”

Torrant fought the urge to yelp, and the man kept talking, as though fully aware he had an audience.

“The man who has been knocking me on the head for months? I know you’re out there. I don’t know how—but I can tell by now.” The guard looked around, tried looking above but couldn’t; his helmet impeded his vision. It had made things very simple for Torrant and Aylan these past months, but for right now, the lack of visibility didn’t matter. He continued to talk to the dark night chill.

“I know which nights I’m going to be belted on the head, whether I have a partner or not. My partner’s drunk, you know—I left him several alleyways back, weeping in the shadows. If he gets one more whack on the skull, the local leech said he may never wake up. Not that he’s a good man, but I thought you’d like to know. It’s nice of you not to kill us when you have the chance, but it is taking its toll.”

Torrant took a deep breath and for a moment felt the weight of all the deaths on his soul. Poor mad Ulvane, fragile Djali, innocent Triana, gallant old Jem… the nameless, faceless men who hadn’t been so lucky as to merely get knocked on the head.

Without knowing who he would be when he stood, he leapt….

And landed, his face alone partially changed as a disguise as he poured out of the shadows behind the guard.

“Well then, what would you suggest?” he growled. He was unprepared for the guard to jump, run, trip, and land on his right shoulder with his hand scrabbling on his left hip for his sword. With exaggerated gentleness, Torrant brought his sword tip down on the man’s hand, stopping the scrabbling. He kept his sword within touching distance as the guard swept off his dignity and stood up, chuffing a little from his spectacular crash.

“What was the question again?” the poor man asked from behind the face guard on his helmet. He was obviously miserably embarrassed.

Torrant tried to keep from laughing, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “I asked what you would suggest. It’s not like you wear signs. ‘This guard rapes children.’ ‘This guard does not rape children, but he does rape the men in the boys’ brothel.’ ‘This guard rapes no one, but he’ll steal anyone who is hot on the black market for child servants right now,’ or, my favorite, ‘This guard looks for excuses to kill anyone in the ghetto because he’s a sadistic bastard who—’”

“Enough!” There was a furtive swipe of a hand below the nose guard of the helmet. “Do you think I’m proud? Do you think I watch children run from me and I dance a jig?”

“I think you wear a uniform, and it’s been disgraced so often that you have to get what comes with the uniform.” Torrant was aware that his voice was angry and bitter, and he questioned the wisdom of starting this conversation. It seemed like the compassionate thing to do at the time, but now… his voice was growling in his chest, and he started to doubt his ability to let this man live.

“I wear a uniform? Would you be interested in seeing what’s underneath that uniform?” Defiance, hurt.

Torrant sighed. “Why not? Just once I’d love to be proved wrong about what a cesspool this place is.”

The guard reached under his chin and unbuckled the strap, then swept the helmet from his head. Torrant looked at the back of his head curiously, then he saw a faint shimmer around the guard’s face. Oh… oh Goddess.

“Turn around,” he commanded roughly. The guard turned around—he was about Torrant’s age, with swarthy skin and bluish black hair cut short around his head. At the top of his short-cut hair was a spot of white against the darkness. Torrant reached out and stroked the buzz of hair, feeling the tingle of magic that made it real. At once, the weight of his terrible deception seemed to triple, as he imagined years—ten or fifteen years—of the same deception he endured, only worse, a thousand times worse, because instead of showing his gift at night, or in the privacy of his friends’ company, this man went onto the streets and persecuted his own people to hide who he was.

“You haven’t changed my opinion of this shitehole of a town,” Torrant said roughly. “What is your talent?”

The guard flashed a humorless quirk of a strained mouth. “Children. I’m a protector of children.”

Dueant’s tears. “Do you have any?”

“Two boys. My oldest is six—I figure he’s got about six years before I have to teach him how to hide who he is.”

“Would you like to get the hell out of here?”

He looked at Torrant with bright and burning eyes and didn’t flinch at the furry distortion of his face. “For the sake of sweet Triane, please?”

“I can’t just trust you, you know that?”

Those burning eyes—maybe brown, in the light?—didn’t flinch. “Anything. I’ll do anything you ask. I’ll leave my wife; I’ll kill my silly drunken partner in the next alley—anything, but don’t sentence my boys to this.”

Torrant sucked air in through his teeth. “All I really need, sir, is a handshake.” He extended a hand, covered in a light sheen of fur, and shook the trembling hand across from him. “There. Now tell me truly, do you mean to betray us? Because if you do and you lie about it, I wish you all of the agonies I bear in my flesh at the moment, in truth and for real.”

The man blinked, probably because he too felt the shimmer, the tingle of magic as it crossed his palm and burned into his body. “I will not betray you,” he said and shivered again as the tingle passed through him.

“Good. Will your wife?”

“She may. I wasn’t planning to tell her.”

“Are you the kind of man who would just leave a woman, then?”

“No… ouuuu….” His knees buckled a little. “Fine. Yes, I am. She would probably turn me over to the consort, and our children too when they come of age. I thought I could look past her blindness of the Goddess’s children. I was young and stupid, but I won’t abandon my babies to her. I won’t.”

“Good.” Torrant nodded. At the very least, the spell was working.

“Tell me something.” The guard panted, leaning his weight a little on the crumbling wall next to him.

“If I can, when I’m finished. It turns out I need someone like you—military training, a stout heart. But you’re going to be in charge of families: women, children, half-starved men. I won’t give them to you if I think you’re a danger to them.”

“They’re my people….” He whined then. It was not a full-out lie, but a truth he didn’t believe. “Right—they should be my people. But my father made me hide myself—he knew what was coming.”

“So, would you kill one of your mates? Your fellow guards, the men you diced with, confided in, your brothers? Could you kill someone if he came at you while you were defending these people you don’t know are yours?”

He sucked in a breath. “If I was protecting my children, even somebody else’s children, I could kill anybody—maybe even you…. Ah, sweet Dueant, I was kidding!” That last groan made Torrant smile. Good. He had a stout heart and a healthy fear of Triane’s Son—all in all, one of the first fortunate things to happen since a stolen sunlit hour at Moon Hold.

“Right, then. Can you meet someone, first rest day, at the smaller western gate? Have your sons, important things—winter clothes, as much food as you can carry, maybe small items of comfort. Don’t tell them they’re going forever, but make sure they kiss their mother good-bye.” Behind his matter-of-fact growl, he was trying not to do a victory dance. Finally… finally an answer to one of the problems he and Aylan had been chewing over in the last few weeks. If nothing else, he’d like to tell Yarri that Roes and Aldam would be safer than naked in the abandoned home of their family.

There was a terrible pause, and for a moment, Torrant wondered if he had misjudged the man. Then he realized—this had been a gamble. The man had been speaking the truth in theory, but he had to come to grips with the reality of saying good-bye.

“What’s your name, sir?” Torrant asked after a terrible, fraught moment, when the guard’s wide cheekbones and shadowed eyes glimmered in what was left of the starlight.

“Fredy.”

“Fredy, I’m offering you a way out. It may or may not be more successful than what you’ve been doing so far, and I’m not going to lie to you—there’s going to be danger. But you know what Rath’s doing on the hills above Dueance, don’t you?”

Fredy shook his head. Apparently this was not common knowledge.

“A giant oven, Fredy. A kiln, to cook our brethren into ashes and memories. And since Rath’s killed off our poets and forbidden us to read and write, only a few songs will survive us. Are you ready to go now?”

“Oh Goddess….”

“Are you ready?”

“Triane’s sweet breath… yes. Get my sons out of here. Let me protect them like a man and not a coward….”

“Good, then. There will be someone to meet you, first rest day, right?”

“Right….” There was a hesitation in the man’s voice, a “one more thing.”

“Fredy,” Torrant asked with a light heart, “was there something you wanted to ask me?”

“Triane’s Son, you inflicted me with all your pain. For a minute. For a lie I didn’t know I told. It hurt so bad I wet myself, you know that?”

Torrant did, although the smell had blended in to the stench of the alleyway.

“How do you bear it? I bore it for a moment. How do you bear it, night after night?”

Ah… ah Dueant’s breath. “One cut at a time, brother. One cut at a time. Now, should I dent your helmet again, or will your partner buy it if you just wander to another quarter of the ghetto and take a nap?”

“How’s ’bout you dent it when it’s not on my head, yes? Enough of us have been bashed enough times, no one will check for a bruise—but it sure would be nice not to get one tonight.”

Torrant almost laughed and complied with the request. “Now stay there, and I’ll bring your friend. You can wake up together and forego the rest of your night’s walk.”

He made to swing himself up to the rooftop when Fredy stopped him. “You promise, right? I get my children up on rest day, and they tell their mother good-bye, and you’ll get us out of here?”

Torrant turned his Goddess-blue eyes toward his new defender of Moon Hold and extended his hand. “Truly, Fredy, if your intentions are true, then you have all the protection I can extend, although most of it is on your shoulders.” A tingle passed along their nerve endings, and Fredy’s eyes widened. It was the truth, and no one could doubt it.

And with that, he swung himself onto the rooftop above his head and set about to fetch the guard weeping drunkenly to himself about three blocks over.

HOLDING BREATH

WHEN TORRANT had visited the consort’s palace for that one disastrous dinner, he had been escorted into the entryway and conducted up a set of stairs to Rath’s personal apartments. The great blond doors to the ballroom, more than four times the height of a tall man, had been closed, and Torrant hadn’t bothered to peer inside. On this night they hung open, and he stood in the shadows of the door and the stairs, trying to get a glimpse into the glittering white ballroom, its chandeliers lit with a thousand candles, and the women dressed in their great swooshing dresses inside the room itself.

Yarri was in there.

“So, are you going to go in?” said Aylan at his elbow, and Torrant turned to him in a panic.

“Oueant’s bloody eyeballs, are you mad? What if somebody sees you?” Oh Goddess, all the precautions they had taken to make sure nobody from Aylan’s crowd of three years ago had seen him, and here he was, in full view of Rath and the fickle gods. Had the man no sense?

“I flirted with—” There was a pause while Aylan fought the urge to spit on the white marble. “—Essa’s maid. Her entire party is planning on coming late. You and I will be long gone by then.”

Torrant shook his head. The discreet orgies Aylan had attended three years before had ceased. Most of the people involved had either run away to their family estates in the country or renounced all their friends and claimed they’d been coerced.

Essa, the vindictive bitch who had started the public outcry against them, had gotten everything she wanted. She became one of the twin gods’ chosen, the poor victim of the Great Whore’s turpitude; she kept all the friends who sided with her anyway and had a chance to publicly disparage the ones who hadn’t licked her pretty toes; and she had married the betrothed of the girl she had driven to suicide, while the body of Brina’s brother cooled beside her. Aylan had been in the room, a step away from the blade Brina sank into her own throat.

In spite of his original plans, Torrant had no time to spare for the socializing that was supposed to come with his station—he had attended no parties, seen no shows, danced at no balls. He did not regret these things; they had never appealed to him anyway. But if he had ever been tempted, even the least little bit, all it would have taken was one thought of running into the twisted excuse for humanity that had wrought so much terrible havoc in Aylan’s heart.

He wasn’t sure what he would say to the woman. The more time he spent as the snowcat, hiding from the anguish of his heart as a human, the less he was certain he could live with what he would do to her.

And now Aylan was standing there, next to him, putting himself at risk of recognition.

Torrant shook his head, tempted to grab the man by his curly hair and drag him back to his flat in the ghettoes, where no one could touch him. “You need to get out of here. I told you we would meet later for the job.”

They had followed Dimitri one night, figuring that as Rath’s new favorite foot washer, he might have a line on the wizard who had been pushing at the regents during the last month and a half on the floor. They hadn’t seen the gifted one, but they had heard his name dropped by a scornful Dimitri to an indifferent guard. Torrant had asked a distraught and tearful Olek and had the rumor confirmed.

It was Duan, brother to the dead girl, and he had volunteered.

He was apparently moved on a nightly basis, but they knew which guards fed him—and, thanks to the gratefully relocated Fredy, they knew that two of them would be in the ghettoes tonight. Two guards, alone, on their turf—they would have Duan’s location by the time the night was out.

They planned to have taken care of Duan, one way or another, before the Regents’ Hall reconvened.

“Do you think I’m leaving you until I’ve seen Yarri’s hand on your arm?” Aylan was saying now, shaking him a little bit at the shoulder. “If you were shouting at her from across a crowded ballroom, you might—just might, mind you—still keep up the madness that she should go back home. But the moment she touches you, it’s over. Either she’s here to stay, or you’re on the next wagon out, but either way, I don’t have to watch you kill yourself with your own damned heroism, and hey, hello! I can sleep again.”

Aylan had a self-satisfied smile on his face, and Torrant glared and fought the urge to kick him in the shin like a child.

“What are you two arguing about?” Eljean asked, sauntering up indolently wearing a slickly cut black huntsman’s vest over a black tunic and very tight black breeches. Although their brief interlude had faded like moonlight on a shadowed river, even Torrant (hell, even Aylan) had to admit he looked good.

“Aylan—whose presence here puts his life in danger, I might add—is trying to give me away like a girl’s father at a handfasting,” Torrant replied sourly, and Eljean’s immediate laugh was silenced by Aylan’s grim look.

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I would really like to see the two of us ride out of this shitehole alive, if you don’t mind, and I think Yarri improves our chances dramatically.”

“Oh,” Aerk said, walking up to the three of them with Keon at his elbow. They were both dressed in their best huntsmen and breeches, but Aerk’s shaggy hair was too long to go without a queue and too short to stay in it. Keon had combed his own dark, wiry hair, but the cowlick in the back remained the same.

“Yarri’s here.” Keon finished Aerk’s thought. “That’s why you’re attending tonight!”

Torrant looked at both of them in confusion. “But I thought you two weren’t.”

“Well, we are if you are!” Keon responded with a grin, and Torrant shook his head and went back to studying the crowd for signs of Yarri and Trieste.

“Are you going to just stand there?” Jino asked, Marv on his heels. Torrant felt a vague ache at his temples.

“Has it occurred to you all that maybe I didn’t want you here?” he asked a little desperately.

“Not really,” Marv responded, fidgeting with the lace at his collar. Jino stopped him with a frustrated tap on the shoulder and pulled a hunk of it out of his huntsman and fluffed it, ignoring Marv’s slapping hands. “Why wouldn’t you want us here?”

Torrant flashed a faint smile at their byplay and was about to answer when: “Oh Goddess….”

He’d seen her.

Unlike many of the other women, who were wearing great full skirts fluffled with satin and lace, Yarri was wearing a rather simple dress in a sumptuous autumn color. The waist started right below her full breasts and skimmed her hips and thighs, and suddenly all he could think of was the way her mouth had tasted and her eyes had glinted and her skin had swaddled his body in radiance one early summer night.

“Ellyot,” Aylan prompted. “Ellyot…. Torrant!”

Torrant expelled a harsh breath and dragged another one through his burning lungs. “What?”

“Breathe, dammit!”

“Oh.” Torrant nodded. Yes. Breathing was a superlative idea. Couldn’t beat breathing for keeping a person alive. Oh gods, oh Triane, she was looking his way! On his next breath, he dodged behind the great doors again, flattening himself against the wall.

“What’s the matter with him?” Marv asked Aerk, who rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“I think he’s nervous. Would you quit bouncing? You’re making me nervous now!”

“I look like hell,” Torrant said desperately.

“You look all right,” Aerk said, shrugging at the other young men. “That’s a nice color….”

In fact the autumn orange-and-green huntsman made his eyes look almost like hearts of topaz, and his shorn hair was just long enough to look carefree and a little bit shaped. As he had been getting ready, Aylan had given him a full-out, mouth-to-mouth, tongue-to-tongue, body-to-body good-bye kiss that had rushed the blood to everyplace but his head and told him he looked amazing.

Right now, looking at her across the crowded ballroom, seeing her stand out like an autumn-colored lighthouse on a dismal gray pier, he couldn’t think of why Aylan would have thought he was presentable at all.

“Which one’s Yarri?” Keon asked, and Marv looked in and pointed.

“That one—the short, chesty one with too much red hair?”

“I think she cut it,” Torrant said randomly. It certainly looked shorter, and although he shouldn’t complain, the idea that, once again, she had to cut her hair to survive this place hurt him like he hadn’t imagined.

“Who is she standing next to?” Jino asked suspiciously. “I know her—she was introduced in the Regents’ Hall this afternoon, right after you left. Wait, isn’t she Princess… no, Queen Tri….”

“Queen Trieste of Otham,” Torrant and Aylan said absentmindedly.

“She’s looking good, isn’t she?” Aylan asked encouragingly, and Torrant nodded a little, still pale.

“You know Trieste—she could make sackcloth look good.”

“You look fine,” Aylan reassured when it looked as though Torrant was just going to stand there, pale and clammy, clinging to the shadows like a baby to a blanket.

“I’m thin, Aylan. I have scars all over my body. I lost my mind and butchered my hair. She’s going to take one look at me, decide I’m not worth the trouble, and go riding off into the hills.”

“Impossible!” Aylan laughed, at exactly the same time Aerk and Jino looked at the both of them and said, “You two know the Queen of Otham?”

“Some of us better than others,” Aylan replied, rolling his eyes in Torrant’s direction, but Torrant didn’t hear him. He was too busy panicking.

“Maybe it would be better if she rides back to Wrinkle Creek,” he muttered to himself. “She really needs to not be here. It’s dangerous here. I know it’s dangerous here….”

“What’s wrong with you?” Eljean asked in bemusement, but when Torrant met Eljean’s green eyes to answer, his own hazel eyes got wider, his face got paler, and for a moment, all the young men wondered if they were going to have to catch him as he fell to his knees.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he denied, an unreadable, twisting expression on his face as he looked at his greatest mistake. “In five minutes, every person I’ve ever slept with is going to be in that ballroom, but there’s nothing wrong with me. Not a blessed thing.”

Eljean flushed terrifically, and Aylan burst out laughing. “You know,” Aylan said philosophically, sneaking a flask of something stronger than cider out of his cloak pocket and giving it to Torrant to sputter over, “I don’t know if a ballroom would be big enough to hold all the people I’ve ever slept with.”

Torrant shook his head, a little fortified by the drink and a little more fortified by Aylan’s amused calm. “You have no idea,” he said on a puff of air, and in spite of Eljean’s discomfiture, the young men all laughed. A little color returned to Torrant’s face, and he squared his shoulders and moved away from the wall.

“What are you going to do?” Aerk asked kindly.

Torrant smiled then, and it was brilliant enough to make even Keon and Marv stumble. “My girl’s here for a dance—I’d better ask her, you think?”

With a burst of confidence and joy, he strode through the giant doors into the brilliantly lit room. The sound of string instruments warming up drifted in after him.

“Wait a minute,” Aerk said, in sudden realization, “he’s going to ask her to dance? But they’re supposed to be brother and sister!”

Aylan blinked at him. “So?”

“So I don’t know what you people do in the country, but in the city, that’s unheard of!” Aerk squinted up at Aylan in a confusion of panic and exasperation.

Aylan frowned. “It’s just figure dancing, right? Not a waltz? It should be all right?”

Aerk blew out a frustrated breath, and even more shaggy hair escaped its queue. “Have you been paying attention to where you live, mate? That’s not how it works here.”

“Well, you’re not going to stop him!” Aylan’s chest hurt. No, not now, not when they were so close to an actual touch on the arm, a connection, a chance for the world to be made right again.

Aerk looked at him curiously, and then squinted his eyes and frowned, his fine brain working busily. After a second, during which they all watched as “Ellyot Moon” made his way across the crowded ballroom, he turned to his friends. “Marv—didn’t you say your sisters are here?”

“They’re right over there—like a pack of rabid housecats. Why?” Marv pointed to a group of nicely dressed young women with wildly different features and hair colors, all born within a few years of each other.

“Good grief, man!” Aylan exclaimed. “How busy was your father?”

Marv shook his head in a long-suffering gesture. “I don’t want to talk about it. Why are we walking toward my sis….” It took Marv a moment sometimes, but he wasn’t stupid. “No. No. No!”

“Please no?” threw in Jino, looking with a pained expression at one of the taller girls who had a wealth of cocoa-colored ringlets spiraling around her shoulders from the crown of her head. Absently he ran a hand through his perfectly coifed, curly hair, making it stand out in stunning disarray.

Aerk and Keon looked over to where “Ellyot Moon” was making his way to his sister, and together they caught their breath. The tide had less pull from the moons.

“Not a chance,” Keon said decisively. “We need to grab our partners and gather round them—maybe we can shock the assembly with a new trend or something, but they have got to have some cover.” Suddenly, a painfully insincere smile graced Keon’s lean and angular features. “Lyssee, sweetheart, are you feeling like a dance?”

“What do you want?” Lyssee was one of the two taller girls, with straight dark hair and dreamy, almond-shaped eyes, but her gaze honed in on the obviously hurried and flustered young men coming her way.

“Marv—are you going to answer her?” asked the girl with the cocoa-colored curls.

Marv winced. “Look,” he said to all of them, doing everything with his body but digging a hole in the marble floor with his toe, “I really, really need your help. I know we delight in making each other miserable, but this is bigger than the lot of us, and if I could explain it I would—but for now, would you dance with us?”

“No-oh!” gasped one of the smaller girls, a redhead with startling green eyes. “What? Is it ‘dance with your sister’ day?”

“Yes,” said Jino uncompromisingly. He looked over Kerree’s shoulder to Ellyot and the short, plumpish girl with the overabundance of autumn-colored hair. “Please—whatever—” He cringed, looking at Kerree again. “—whatever history we may have, is there any way you could simply give us this for our friend?”

Suddenly, everyone—regents, sisters, even Aylan—became unaccountably sober. “Ellyot” was a new friend, but everybody remembered the sweet, awkward young man who wasn’t at the ball this time, but who had shadowed the young regents for the last few years. The hole Djali had left never gaped so very large.

Kerree met her sisters’ glance. “Of course,” she said after a moment. “Ladies, pick your partners.” With that, she seized Jino’s arm and hauled him toward the floor, where the musicians were just a few more tuning notes from breaking into song.

Aerk ended up with Kylee, the sweet, round blonde, and because she had an edgy smile and a caustic sense of humor, he enjoyed himself. Keon and Lyssee squared off almost like adversaries. Keon spent the rest of the evening flushing as Lyssee rolled her eyes at his halfhearted attempts at conversation. Marv bent his arm to escort Meggee—perhaps his mildest sister, although she suffered no lack of intelligence. It was probably for the best, he decided with a sigh, as his dark-haired, blue-eyed sister took his arm and smiled gently. Meggee would be less inclined to chide him as they danced.

Jessee eyed both Aylan and Eljean speculatively—they were both tall, and she was by far the shortest of the five girls. Before she could make a choice, Aylan bowed apologetically.

“I’m afraid that aside from Yarri and her cousin Roes, the Lady Trieste is the closest thing I’ve had to a sister—while you all square off, I’ll go ask her to dance—” He took Jessee’s hand then and kissed the back of it. “—but it will pain me exquisitely to leave such charming company. I do have a weakness for redheads.” With that parting remark, Aylan sent a meaningful look at the rest of the party to move toward Torrant and Yarri before the dance started. Then he set off to the pretty, dark-haired woman who was eyeing the reunion of “Ellyot Moon” and his “sister” with a certain long-suffering bemusement.

Jessee watched him go with star-spangled eyes, barely noticing as Eljean bowed awkwardly and took her arm.

“Is he always that… that… that beautiful?” she asked somewhat breathlessly.

“No,” Eljean replied sourly, mentally rehearsing every dance he knew and hoping that whatever the musicians played, it would be one of them. “Usually he’s an out-and-out surly prat who would as soon spit on you as say ‘hullo.’ What he just did there was like watching a rabid dog dress himself.”

Jessee looked up at Eljean, who was busy looking across the room at Ellyot Moon and the short girl in the plain dress. “You don’t like women even at all, do you?” she asked musingly.

Eljean glared at her. “Would you like to get closer to the consort to say that?”

“Don’t worry—I’m very discreet. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of my suitors feel the same way about women. I make a good friend for that sort of suitor.”

Eljean looked at her—wholesome smile, green eyes, and all—and felt his eyes go wide. “Well, where in the stars’ dark were you when I first came to this Goddess-blighted city?” he asked crossly, and she laughed.

“Here—when we start dancing, if you focus on my hands when they’re up, it will help you not stoop so much as we move, you think?”

Eljean couldn’t help but grin back at her, and as the grin lit up his face, Jessee sighed. “It would figure,” she said philosophically, but her smile never dimmed.

Jino’s conversation was far less pleasant.

“So, are you going to tell me why we’re trying to distract attention from your friend and his lover?”

Jino tripped, swore, and eyed the as yet empty dance floor in despair. “She’s his sister,” he hissed, glaring at the girl who, of all of Marv’s sisters, had caused him more aggravation than any other female of his acquaintance. Although he tended to groom extensively, he found himself wondering at the cut of his huntsman—was it too loose? Too tight? Something felt off about it, and he hauled at his collar to make sure he could breathe.

Kerree eyed the two people in question with sharp amusement. Ellyot was standing, just standing, near the girl, his face sober and polite as they made what appeared to be civil conversation. The strain of the two of them not touching was enough to make her breath constrict in her chest, even from this distance. They had to touch. It was imperative. The wrongness of their skin being apart was like the wrongness of snow falling upward—it could not be allowed to happen.

“And I’m Triane, Goddess of Joy, so pleased to meet you!” Kerree chortled in disbelief, and Jino forgot his embarrassment and put his face close to hers in order to hush her.

“Regardless of what you think, that girl is Yarrow Moon, Owen Moon’s daughter, so just keep your sarcasm to yourself!”

Kerree was a little stunned—it had always been so easy to needle Jino. She hadn’t truly comprehended how serious he and Marv had been. “Wait a minute….” Kerree was also extremely bright. “If she’s Yarrow Moon….” She looked at Jino in shock. “You follow him! You… you and my brother and your friends—you’ve been following this man. Did Djali even know?”

“Djali wouldn’t have cared,” Jino said somberly. “Djali would have followed him regardless. He’s been as open as he can with us, and now you know enough to crucify us all. Are you happy with that much power?”

Kerree’s troubled expression was answer enough. “Your friends are—” she began, but then she gasped. All of Ellyot’s friends gasped, because they all saw it. The torches burned brighter, the chandeliers glowed, and that refractory C string on the viola was suddenly gloriously in tune.

“Dueant’s temper—we need to get over there!” she exclaimed.

“Dueant is the god of compassion,” Jino replied calmly. “Swear by him rightly, and I’ll have faith that we make it.”

As a party, they gathered around Ellyot Moon, who had just taken his sister’s hand.

OXYGEN

AS TORRANT drew nearer to where Yarri stood looking anxiously out at the assembly from Trieste’s side, the light, the noise, the myriad colors, the high and low voices, the discordant strings, the frantic efforts of his friends, all these things ceased to be.

Triane’s blessed kiss, how could he have ever left her?

He moved closer, remembering all the times he had returned to Eiran after spending time at school or his internship at Wrinkle Creek. He had lived to watch her shriek and scramble out of a tree and into his arms, and even when she was still a child, even when Trieste had been with him as his lover, they had still slung arms about each other and not parted for hours.

Not running to her and swinging her up into his embrace was an effort that made his jaw clench and his teeth grind.

Then she saw him, her piquant, round-cheeked face swinging unerringly toward him, eyes searching him out through the crowd, and he heard the clamor and roar of cathedral bells, drowning all thoughts in the spaces between the beats of his heart.

They both kept moving, walking toward each other, and when they were close enough to feel the heat off the other’s bodies, they stopped, their eyes locked, a misery of things they could not say flashing between them.

“You’re looking well,” he murmured inanely, his gift for courtly speech doing him no justice for the moment.

“You look….” She shook her head. “You look magnificent and like hell, both at the same time, do you know that?”

A small smile twisted his lips. “I am aware that I’ve looked better.”

She glanced away for a moment, saw something that brought her back to herself, and turned back. “Trieste said we mustn’t touch,” she told him unhappily, a discordant xylophone of sound. “I think if I don’t feel your skin under my hand I might scream, but she says….”

“I was going to ask you to dance,” he interrupted, and the smile that graced her features made his heart start beating again—except it was pounding in his stomach, and that was somehow wrong.

“That’s good.” She beamed at him. Then her expression grew thoughtful. “You don’t seem surprised to see us.” She realized. “I thought at least you’d be surprised.”

“I dreamed about you.” His voice was rough, gravelly with the agonizing relief of those small glimpses of her. “I saw you coming. I couldn’t….” And now he had to look away, because it was almost a lie. “I tried to make Aylan ride out, to tell you to go back. To tell you it was too dangerous, and I was fine.”

“You don’t look fine!” she hissed, staring hard at him.

He swallowed. “I’m alive,” he replied with as much dignity as he could muster, “and it is still more dangerous for all of us to have you two in the city than outside of it!”

“You’re alive?” Her voice raised a notch, and with a quick look around, she ground it down relentlessly. “You’re alive—do you think that qualifies as fine? If I found you bleeding in a ditch, would you have told me that you didn’t need my help because you were ‘alive’?”

He fought and lost the urge to grin. “If I were bleeding in a ditch, I would have to concede that I wasn’t ‘fine,’” he said, his eyes sparkling, his best smile urging her to smile too. He was alarmed when she didn’t—his smile was his best defensive weapon against her fearsome will.

“You are too thin,” she said, her voice near tears. “You are too thin, and you have butchered your hair, and I can see from here that your eyes have not matched your smile in a very long time. If I can see that, how bad are the things that I cannot see, ‘brother’? What is there under the surface that you have let nobody heal?”

He swallowed and took a step back. “I have not needed a babysitter in a very long time, ‘sister,’” he replied coolly, but she didn’t miss the way his face flushed or the heat rising off his body as he stepped back.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice suddenly gentle.

“You cut your hair too,” he said through a closed throat, and she flushed.

“Trieste’s maid insisted. She kept trying to put it up, and it was too heavy to stay.” There was a miserable pucker at her eyes, and Torrant had a moment to wonder at the argument that would have precipitated the newer, shorter hairstyle, which allowed the complicated coif that tumbled from her crown to her neck. It would not have been pleasant or easy.

“So I cut it,” she said at last, almost defiantly. “What is your excuse?”

She took a step forward, inviting confidence, certain that he wouldn’t back away from her again, not willingly, and was appalled when he stepped back a second time.

“Sweet Dueant’s tears… what on earth would make you afraid to be near me?”

He looked away and saw Aylan kissing Trieste’s hand. The eyes of both his friends were fixed on him and Yarri. “Oh Goddess, Yar,” he whispered, not sure if she could hear him, “the things I have done.”

He looked back at her, and she was close enough to hug now, but he dare not. The vibration around them started at his toes and worked its way up. He had no idea what would happen if he took her into his arms, but he knew it would have nothing to do with the touch of a brother for a much-loved sister.

She knew it too, because her touch on his bare wrist was full of more self-restraint than he would have fathomed from her. Her fingers felt a little clammy, but warm, as though she’d been clenching her hand, and her skin was soft, so soft, sanded to sweetness by the constant coarseness of yarn through her fingers.

He felt air, sweet, true air fill his lungs above the stench of the city for the first time in months.

She came a little closer to him, and her other hand was cupped around the invisible mystery between them that they had both kept sacred since they were young.

“This,” she said softly, holding that cupped hand between their chests, “this is all that matters. In this space, you told me, everything is good. That hasn’t changed—” For the first time, he heard her choke on the sound of his name, dammed up behind her tongue.

“No,” he answered, cupping his other hand on top of hers in comfort, “you’re right, of course. That is the one thing that can never change.”

AYLANAND Trieste let out a long breath when Torrant’s and Yarri’s cupped hands met, and then the two friends met eyes and laughed.

“It is sooo not funny how their well-being controls the entire lot of us!” Trieste exclaimed, and Aylan gave her a weary smile.

“Of course not,” he replied. “It’s the most deadly serious thing in the world.”

Trieste looked at him with deep compassion. “It has been very hard on you, watching him here?” Not really a question, the phrase still invited confidence.

Aylan swallowed and looked away, tucking Trieste’s hand in his arm as they headed toward the dance floor. The other regents had gathered around the oblivious “brother and sister” and were, by numbers and presence, maneuvering them both onto the dance floor.

“I have no words,” he said at last. “There are so many painful things that need to be done, and he’s taken it upon himself to do them all. We’ve gotten help”—he nodded at the regents—“but the cost. Oh, Trieste, the price of what we’ve done….”

Aylan found he couldn’t continue. He watched as Torrant and Yarri faced off on the dance floor and the others assumed their positions in the double facing line that began the figure. Trieste looked at his hardened, lean profile and touched his shoulder gently, with all the sisterly affection in her soul.

“Here, Aylan,” she said, troubled. “Let’s dance and pretend for a moment that we’re back at school and that your worst worry is your next bed partner.”

Aylan flashed her a grin, the remnants of that callow boy gone completely, even in his best, brightest smile. “Tell me that I can sleep in your stable or your servants’ quarters instead of the ghettoes tonight, and it’s a deal!”

“Tell me you haven’t been sleeping in the ghettoes!” She gasped, appalled.

Aylan raised his eyebrows. “Well, mostly I’ve been sleeping in Ellyot’s flat—but I have the feeling I might be out on my ear tonight.”

Trieste shook her head. Already, she could foresee a long, taut period of stealth and subterfuge—things she and Torrant had never been good at. “If it will keep you out of some poor girl’s bed tonight, of course,” she said with gentle mockery and a hand on his arm. He put a hand on top of hers, and they progressed to the dance floor.

“You know, Spots, if I’d known you were going to turn out so wonderfully, I might have been nicer to you in school.”

Trieste grinned back, the gentleness still there, and faced him and curtseyed. “Never you mind, you horrible boy—I’ll find a way to exact revenge later.”

Aylan tilted his head back and guffawed, his teeth glinting and his smile and charm suddenly in full force in his booming laughter. The younger regents were so shocked hearing that sound from him that with the exception of Torrant, they missed the cue to the first step, and the rest of the world almost got to see the moment when Torrant wrapped his arm around Yarri’s waist and held her hand with the chiming of bells that weren’t there.

Almost.

“You still need to get out of this city within the week,” Torrant murmured to Yarri as they moved through the figure. His hand lingered at her waist. Her thumb rubbed the back of his wrist before release.

“Only if you come with me, brother,” she said sweetly after they parted, moved around the next people in line, and reconnected.

“You know why that can’t happen!” They held crossed arms before them, and two steps in and two steps back, and two steps in….

“Because you’re stubborn enough to get yourself killed before you leave this task to someone else?” she snapped, and they whirled away from each other and into the next figure. For a moment, Torrant was bewildered to find himself face to face with Trieste.

“I see your customary grace has deserted you?” she asked kindly as he blinked at her with stupid eyes, his feet completing the steps on their own.

“She’s being obstinate,” he muttered, and she shook her head.

“If you could see yourself from her eyes, you’d know who was being willful.”

“I have a goal, here, Trieste, and it’s of sizeable importance!”

They whirled, his palm passed Yarri’s in allemande as they exchanged glares, and then he was back talking to Trieste. “Oh please!” she continued. “I’ve heard nothing but the greater good since we set out. Cwyn was insufferable about it all the way here!”

“Where is he, by the way?” Torrant asked, not daring to look around the room as they moved down the line.

“At my townhome. We were able to lease a place for the winter.”

“Well, good. Make sure he stays there as often as possible!”

They whirled into allemande again, and when Torrant found himself across from a partner, he was facing Yarri again.

The music would soon pick up speed, and the figures would be performed with increasing rapidity until the music’s crescendo, when all the dancers would be breathless and laughing. For Torrant and Yarri, the tempo of the music only served to underscore the passion of their argument.

“Trieste agrees with me!” Yarri said triumphantly as they clasped hands and whirled front, then back, then front again.

“Well, Trieste is unaware of the danger!” Torrant snapped, coming face to face with her as her hair tumbled forward. Unconsciously, his hand came up to her face to push it back, and even as she glared at him, she moved her cheek into his touch.

“You can’t go around calling all the women in your life foolish because they disagree with you!”

“I’m not calling you foolish,” he protested, and the music picked up the tempo a little. “I’m saying your thinking is all Triane and no Oueant.”

“You mean Rath’s Oueant, or our Oueant?” she asked quickly, whirling into his arms and then away, her skirts whipping around her ankles and her hair lashing the air around her head.

The dance swung her back into his arms, and she had a personal and up-close view of his misery. “If you think I’m proud of what I’ve done here, you haven’t been paying attention,” he said, his bleak voice causing the rest of the dancers in their party to shiver.

“Then why stay?” she demanded, angry at the pain in his voice, angry at the terrible struggle against defeat in the set of his shoulders, angry that he should stay here where his beautiful spirit was in danger of being crushed.

“For us!” he cried, as they clasped hands in an allemande and then traveled around their circle, allemanding with other dancers they barely saw. The music was rushing now, and other sets of dancers were tripping, laughing, falling into gay heaps of giggles and lightness. The regents and their coerced partners were keeping up with the music desperately, holding the weight of this private conversation in their frantically tripping feet.

“For all of us,” he continued as they met again. They spun from the allemande into another side-by-side figure, their feet blurring, their chests heaving, and their faces flushed. “I cannot keep our family safe until I make the world safer for us to live in.”

“We will survive without this,” she gasped. “What good is our freedom if you are not there to share it with us?”

He looked at her and almost stopped dancing. “What good is being together when our children will live in fear?”

“Fear isn’t death!” They stepped out and regarded each other for two beats before the musicians took a breath and started the final roundel. The music resumed furiously.

“Tell that to the two wankers Cwyn felled in a back alley, Yarri,” he hissed, and this time she did stumble, and his hand was at her elbow to haul her up.