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cherryThis is a much belated Yuletide post! I thought I made one earlier, but apparently that was something that I imagined.
I received two most fabulous gift-fics: Mumbly, in which Olive Snook, at her very best, finds out. The narrative voice could have been ripped from an episode that should have been. I also received Steady as She Goes, which is 1) Power Play -- the only piece of Power Play fic to ever exist, and it is 2) an absolutely perfect Colleen piece.
As for myself, I wrote P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
teaotter.
Read it at the archive, here, after the cut.
Warnings: Mention of canon abuse.
Thanks to:sprat, for awesome beta and talking me down from my stabby-place.
Eyes Closed as to See
bycherryice
Dark halls spill forth before him; dim light casts from the edges of his shadow as it races before him, leaving him no choice but to follow after it. The floor is warm beneath his bare feet, fine-grained leather that cradles the impact of his heels, a trail of blue-grey bruises marking record of his passage. His shadow runs and he hurtles after it, breath heavy in his chest. Walls fall behind, stacked high with tomes and parchment that pass with only the suggestion of shape.
The air in his lungs is no longer heavy but instead insubstantial, and he can feel himself slow. His shadow tugs on again, pulling him forward. He curses his own frailty. He knows not what surges in the darkness that follows after, implacable and incontrovertible, what sets his shadow afoot, only that he is grateful to be spared the knowledge of what gains ground. He can see now that the walls are not shelved deep with books but built of them, ageing leather and interleaved parchment, their spines writ with runes of power he blanks his mind against. Eyes closed now, he hurtles on, but he still reads the runes as they pass by him, an avalanche of meaning and intent.
It is madness that chases him, he knows now as the runs, rune-shape and power burning in his throat and against his tongue, crying to be let loose. Speak, he knows that he must speak the words soon, and that is when the darkness will rush in, madness screaming in through his open mouth crying Knorth, Knorth. He stumbles on forward into the black, outreaching hands trailing across cracked leather and runes clinging to his skin, throat burning. He bites his tongue to keep silent but the rush of blood only wakens them further, words of power waiting for their purpose, rushing to escape, when his lips start to part and he –
A crash, a rumble. The smell of parchment and age. Muffled cursing and a hoarse laugh. Bright light cast through a curtain of white that parts as Kindrie slowly raises his head, thick with sleep and eyes full of sand. The scene swims slowly into focus: Ashe stands at the door, leaning heavily on her staff, chuffing, haunt's-face contorted in a rictus grin. There's heavy dust drifting in the morning sun, a pile of books shifting and swearing behind him. A dark-clad figure finally wrenches itself free from beneath the volumes that have tumbled from the towering shelves, black braid unravelling and thoroughly nonplussed. "That was uncalled for," Jame says.
"At least there wasn't an anvil," Kindrie offers mildly. His heart is racing and his throat burns.
Jame snorts, acquiesces. "Although," she says, as she starts to gather books, "I was attempting to wake you, not wander into your soulscape."
"Taken," Kindrie says as he kneels beside his cousin to start collecting loose pieces of parchment. They flutter in his hands like the wings of ghostly jewel-jaws. He is glad she woke him from this dream rather than another, one where he wakes with old wounds reopened and clothes sticky with blood.
A black-gloved hand closes around one of his, trembling and white. They both stop, frozen, dust motes drifting around them. Her hands are dainty, delicate, no sign visible of their lethal power. His are not much larger, fingers longer, uncalloused and soft, scrapes healed over before they have chance to bleed. "Come with me to Gothregor," she says. When he looks up from their joined hands, she is studying his face with a mortal seriousness. Her grey eyes catch silver, and she turns away as he meets them.
Gothregor, which by all rights he should call home. "The Major Harvest will be starting soon," she says. Their fingers are still entangled; he begins to feel the warm of her skin through the leather gloves. Torisen will be working the field with his Kendar, strong back bowed beneath the down-beating sun. He will greet his sister with restraint, confusion and deeply concealed joy, Kindrie with respect and uncertain, shallowly-buried prejudice. (Prejudice is not based in reason, A voice inside him whispers. If not for the Shanir, if not for Gerridon's greed his twin Jamethiel's deceit, Perimal Darkling would not stalk so close through this world. He dreams with increasing frequency of the stars going out, one by one.)
"I have much work to do here," Kindrie says, untangling Jame's hand from his and rising. "We have a harvest as well." He feels her eyes on him as he descends the stairs, Ashe's eyes on him long after Jame has turned away. The derived warmth of Jame's touch stays with him, a handprint written across his skin.
*
He moves through the ruins of the old forts that litter Mount Alban, sits on rocky ledges with his feet dangling over the Silver rushing below. From this height its movement looks almost sluggish, eddies and whorls rather than rushing currents. He gathers feverfew and goldenseal and herbs for the kitchen, returns weary under the midday sun, pale skin a solid and heated red that begins to heal as soon as he has stepped into the cool shade of the trees that surround the fort. As he crests the hill that hides the road, he is unsurprised to find his decision has been overturned. A riding party is gathered, waiting; one of the stable mares is tethered, mouthing gently at the drying grass, saddlebags full, while a graceful white horse prances eagerly beside her. Jame sits atop a crumbling wall across from Kirien. Ashe hollers a greeting as Kindrie comes into view, Jame slithering down and Kirien following less easily after.
He knows he has been selfish. Tentir, from which Jame must have ridden, lies even now between them and Gothregor.
"You're all ready to go," Kirien says. Jaran lordon, she can ask him to leave or forbid him to return.
"You have no need of me?" Kindrie asks stiffly.
Ashe unties the mare, which startles back from the death-smell the haunt caries. "Stupid... question."
Something crashes into him, a bundle of gangly limbs and dark hair that reaches only to his waist. Sularia, upturned face concerned. "Hush," he tells the child. "I'll be back within a fortnight." She nods solemnly as he kneels to embrace her, raises her arms to his neck and kisses the tip of his nose.
"Of course we do," Kirien says. "There will be much to do when you return."
Kindrie feels Jame watching him. He does not meet her gaze.
*
Jame watches Mount Alban falls away behind them. Kindrie does not look back, his gentle mare leading the way down the river's edge. Jame does: Ashe silhouetted against the sky, the child clinging close to her side, watching as they disappear down the cliff.
"The girl?" she asks, finally, when they are around the bend, river spray rising up to meet them.
"Shanir," he replies. "Orphaned. Bound for the priesthood."
The ground beneath their horses' hooves is starting to break up, the mares stepping uneasily. Then the river is upon them, swallowing a conversation she does not wish to have.
*
Fire crackles within a circle of stones. The night is not unpleasant, the fire for light more than warmth. Nearby the river still thunders. The horses rubbed down, bedrolls are spread. Kindrie hands her provisions, hard tack and jerky, a piece of fruit. Their hands do not touch.
"The priesthood," she says. It has been gnawing at her all day. She still cannot forgive Kindrie for his times with them, though neither was his choice and both he fled.
He undoes his boots by the fire, crawls into his bedroll still clothed. "I could not permit it," he says.
There is more to the story than that – she thinks for a wild moment that should could press him, that she could make him speak – but the moment passes.
She stays awake, banking the fire to a blistering warmth, watching his breathing slow. Behind Jame's eyes, her mother plummets into the abyss, dancing even as she falls. Gerridon's hand reaches for her, wreathed in ribbons tattered with decay.
She observes Kindrie in the light of the flames. Easy to forget that he is but a year older than she: his face just now coming to its adult lines, Knorth features emerging as if worn from rock. The muscle he was developing has waned, his face gaunt and drawn. She thinks of what the Arrin-ken told her on Midsummer's Eve. The contract, yes, of that she could tell him, strip from him his bastard's shame, but she does not know if he is prepared for all it implies. (Too injured, Kinzi said, and Torisen cannot even accept that his dreams bring truth.) Kindrie has never known a kind hand, not even hers – she had Tori, at least, Winter, the Kencyr. Dally, Canden, Cleppety, Penari. Mark. He had none of this.
A night breeze caries fine mist through the trees, moves fine strands of white hair across his jaw as small muscles clench and release. She fears she is destined to destroy him, no matter the choice she makes.
(If he is Argentiel, if he is to become Argentiel – Argentiel, preserver – he may be the one person she cannot destroy.)
*
Kindrie wakes at dawn to find a figure sitting cross-legged at his side, watching him keenly. He flinches back instinctively, shoulders hunched, unsure where or when he is. It is Jame of course, though backlit by the leaf-dappled sun. She cannot have missed his reaction, but she does not react. Silver eyes peer from her shadow. She does not speak. Sometime during the night, Jorin has joined them, the big cat stretched out long by the fire.
Eventually, she offers him a hand and they both stand. Kindrie's hair, as he quickly plaits it, glows orange in the rising sun.
She stands across the clearing from him, wrists crossed. "Water flowing," she says, moving into graceful patterns he awkwardly follows.
Their journey southward is slow, progress marked and held by the Senethar patterns Kindrie stumbles through with increasing confidence, Jame's excruciating horsemanship and his gentle corrections.
*
Torisen dreams: Jame, clad not in ivory but in black ribbon, dancing. Kindrie, pale neck arced in pain, snakes circling. He dreams the keep, his father's voice (unclean, unclean), Perereden laughing from beneath a shroud of mere.
Torisen dreams the wire net is around his hands again, burning, burning, only his hands are free of scars. The pain is – elsewhere, everywhere, healing and emerging – and his hands are bound. A face leans in, its features changing. "Haven't learned your lesson yet?" while somewhere there comes the slithering release of a belt buckle and there is fear yes, but also –
Torisen wakes.
*
Jame's sleep has been broken: a hand descending (bastard, unclean, matricide, fratricide, lack-wit, faithless), the blow jolting her down steps that have formed from the shadows (sometimes they are the stairs of the Keep, of the Women's World, of the Master's House where Terandys curses her name or draws her and Kindrie through the patterns of the Senethar.)
When she wakes it is usually to find Kindrie's face creased and breathing rapid. He does not cry out. She remembers how his hand felt in hers at Mount Alban, but cannot bring herself to reach for him. She does not question if this is for his sake or hers.
"I have more reason to hate the priests than you," he tells her.
*
"It's the resignation that follows me," Torisen tells Burr. Four nights since he's slept and he can still feel nails against his shoulders, hot breath against his ear, ribs upon which bruises should rise. Nausea and self-loathing eat at him. He knows what's coming, what will return to him when he sleeps; what bothers him most is the lack of surprise, the resignation he dreams, the changing faces. He stares out over the darkened keep without seeing.
Two figures emerge from the night – one dark atop a white mount, the other bone-pale. "A Knorth!" the guard cries, because who else would emerge as wraiths from the mist, ghosts from beyond than his sister and cousin (unclean, unclean).
He recalls the march to the cataracts. The face in his dream that flickers. He sees one of its visages again now, mouth curled in a sneer, sees it again as jewel-jaws flicker away beneath Kindrie's hand.
(Friends?
No. But none of them deserved this.)
Bad enough his sister stalks him through his dreams, her presence in his head, but his priestling cousin as well? (They make you weak, his father whispers. 'They,' he whispers now.)
He does not sleep that night either.
*
At the Major Harvest feast, Torisen seats Jame at his right and Kindrie at his table. As the night progresses and tongues loosen, people mingle. There are the usual courtesans who trail fingers up his forearm or whisper promises in his ear, he shakes them off and sinks deeper into the shadows of the hall. Jame is dressed completely inappropriately and few will look straight at her bare face; she presses their embarrassment to her advantage before dancing back to whisper in Kindrie's ear.
"Sire?" one of his Kencyr asks, and it is only then he realizes his goblet of wine has broken in his gloved fist.
*
In the courtyard of the old Knorth keep, Jame and Kindrie play at the Sene. The switch from Senetha to Senethar, dance to fight, is rough – not just because Kindrie is clearly a novice. There is no flute, only children clapping, laughing. Even the Senethar is more dance than fight. Torisen watches them from his rooms, their faces brushing so near as to almost touch, lines of jaw and cheek identical. White hair flashes against black, strands mingling as water flowing passes fire leaping.
Something curls low in his stomach, and his scarred hands tightening involuntarily on the empty window frame. He turns away.
Across the courtyard, from her marble balcony, the blind matriarch also stands, silently watching.
*
The next morning, word of Caldane, Lord Caineron's party only hours from the keep. The messenger will give no indication of their goal, only that the Lord Caineron demands audience with the Lord Knorth.
Burr paces. Kindrie, pale face gone white as salt, stares out the barred glass window. Jame watches him. The door bursts open, the Wolver Grimly staggering inside. "Torisen is gone," he gasps. "Alone. He left on a hunting trip last night. Storm is gone from the stables."
Burr curses and leaves to summon a guard. Kindrie gives no indication he has heard.
A knock then, at the door. Lyra, her face flushed beneath the demure half-mask. "The Jaran matriarch has a message from Kirien." Jame starts forward but it is Kindrie to whom Lyra speaks, who follows her out as if a ghost.
*
Adiraina, the Ardeth matriarch turns her head at the sound of the opening door; by touch, she stitches a letter. There is a rustle of skirts as her visitor settles across from her, the smell of parchment and ink.
"Your house owes a debt to the Shanir Kindrie," Trishien says.
"Would you care for a cup of tea?" Blind since birth, Adiraina has always wondered if the Jaran matriarch has a face to match her low, sharp voice and steady cadence. "No such debt exists."
"Adric took him into his service." Trishien's elaborate skirts do not move. "And when he exhausted himself healing the wounded at the Cataracts, your lord forgot him."
"He was not bound." The tea remains unpoured. "It was regrettable, but you must recall the losses our forces took in the battle."
"They took him to the priests." Trishien's voice would be steady to any other ear. "He had already left the priesthood once. They took him to the Randir matriarch, who already hated him."
"He was not bound," Adiraina repeats.
"Kinzi's grandson. Tieri's son."
"The Knorth bastard."
Trishien clicks her tongue. "Your sister-kin's grandson, Adiraina."
"You have no idea what you are asking me," Adiraina says.
Trishien gathers her skirts to rise. Her lingering gaze is a physical weight. She does not speak as she leaves.
Adiraina thinks of Tieri haunting the ghost walks. Kinzi.
The needle slips. She feels it draw blood.
*
"I demand recompense," Caldane says. He is dressed in richly appointed fabrics, road dust worn into the intricate stitching, forehead streaked with sweat. His retinue is twice the size of the one Jame has gathered, and Kindrie saw his former master's eyes spark with barely contained and vicious glee when he saw it was Jame who faced him rather than Tori, lordon rather than lord, heir-presumptuous rather than liege.
Kindrie stands, wrists crossed, behind Jame, and tries to remember to breath. His back raises in welts; he can feel a trickle of blood begin to drip from the corrector's scourge reappearing on his back. Jorin's blind head snaps towards him. Jame does not shift, does not extend her nails to work at the wood of the table before her. Whatever Caldane wants, she is hobbled by lack of experience, hamstrung by the inability to make decisions in her brother's place that would compromise his relationship with another house, his position as high lord. "Explain," she says, short, cutting through the tangle of formalities and protocol that would ensnare her.
Caldane bristles – Kindrie hopes she has made him angry enough to make mistakes, though not to turn him vicious. Caldane snaps his fingers, and the guards part to let another one of their members through, a child cradled in his arms.
Sularia.
*
The child from Mount Albon, Jame notes. She thinks of her arms around Kindrie's neck. Graykin. Oh, Kindrie, no.
"What is the meaning of this?" she asks, voice steady. The girl's face is dirty and smudged with tears, but she appears unharmed.
Caldane smiles. "The meaning," he says, drawing back an arm, "is thus." He strikes the girl across the face hard enough to lift her from the ground.
Behind Jame, Kindrie cries out raggedly in pain.
Oh, Kindrie, no. (I have more reason to hate the priests than you, he told her. She thinks of his dreams breaking over her, crack of head to stone or wrists bound in the dark.)
The girl sobs. Caldane grins, a slow baring of teeth. "My people heard tell that the child had not arrived at her destination."
"You broke with her," Jame says. Where is her brother?
Caldane lifts his hands in supplication. "You must forgive us. Our house is large," his eyes sweep the minimal contingent that she has gathered,"and mistakes happen, but we set to rectify this one immediately. Worried for her safety, of course, we came to reclaim her and take her home. Only," he says, voice silky, "to find that she'd already been bound."
The girl, on her knees on the floor, continues to wail. Jame snakes her hand out to catch Kindrie's, catching the delicate bones of his wrist. Do not move. "You lost your claim when you broke with a child." Her voice is even but her heart races, a sick cold rising up through her blood.
Caldane's frippery whirls out around him as he paces."Bad enough to lose our soldiers to service to the Knorth lord." He picks up speed, volume. "But to a bastard half-Knorth cousin, not even sworn to this house?" His frantic motion stops and he stands in the middle of the hall. "I demand you return what is ours." His eyes track not only the child but Kindrie as well. Forehead wet, cheeks flushed, his eyes are like ice. "And recompense, hoyett, recompense."
*
Air escapes Kindrie's lungs. The white knife before being returned to Caldane's service. The white knife before an hour in Caldane's hands.
"No," Jame says. Her hand tightens again around his wrist.
Stupid, stupid. "No blood fued," Kindrie says, voice low. "Not over me. I'm sorry." He brushes aside the hand on his wrist and steps down the stairs towards Caldane.
"No" Jame says again.
Caldane laughs. He cuts a sidelong glance at Kindrie, but his eyes are for Jame. "Listen to the Shanir bastard. Your brother won't take kindly to you embroiling your house in a feud over this cur."
"No," Jame says again, voice echoing, and everyone stops. Her voice has changed, echoing deeper; threat unrolling in it like unsheathed claws. "No." She rises, and walks down the stairs to the antechamber to stand beside Kindrie. "If there is a blood feud, it will be you who had started it. You cast aside a child. I bound your half-Southron son – will you call for war?"
Caldane's eyes flicker. He steps backward as she prowls.
"Will you call for war?"
Caldane regains his balance, steps forward again. "No," he says, as if with great effort. "But that is not the situation of which we speak. That bastard Knorth—"
"No," Jame says again. Kindrie's heart beats heavily in his chest. A home, yes, that's what he has always dreamed of, but at what cost?
Jame will not look at him. "Not bastard, not half. Blood. There was a contract."
"How can you know? That's im—"
The room seems to darken, the air around Jame growing close and dark. "Midsummer's even, one of the Arrin-ken spoke to me." Kindrie can see her nails extended through the tips of her gloves. "Think carefully of your next words, before you impugn not only my honour but that of the third people, that of our judges."
The wind, tapping against the glass, calls counterpoint to the child's cries.
Caldane whirls. The flush has extended from his cheeks to cross his brow, the bridge of his nose. Kindrie can almost see his mind turning, the options and outs, the channels and honours. His own mind is blank. Still. Months, he calculates she has known. She will not look at him.
Caldane stops. His smile is soft, calming, vicious. His voice is placating, as if to address a Highborn who has started the rapid slide into senility. "The Arrin-ken withdrew two millennia ago," he purrs.
"Softly, Lord Caineron," a voice says. "The boy is full Knorth." Kindrie, spinning, sees the Ardeth matriarch, blind eyes closed behind her mask. "Sister-kin, parent shared."
The wind howls. The child whimpers.
Kindrie breathes. Blood trickles down his back.
"Will you call for war?" Jame asks. Her voice is steel sheathed in velvet, eyes dark. Caldane, mouth set, sketches a rude gesture of acceptance. His eyes promise recompense. The soldiers withdraw.
Jame will not look at him.
*
The hall is empty, save for the two of them. A hearth. Kin. What he had never dared dream about. He is tired and cold. His hands shake.
"Ganth was not my father," Kindrie says. It is not a question. His mother is known, as is her father. Parent-shared: only then her mother, his father. Father and mother twins, blood of blood, they are more than cousins and less than kind.
"Who named you Jamethiel?" he asks. "Who would name you for her?"
"My mother." A single answer. A whisper torn from her lungs that leaves her throat more raw than any rune, her body weaker than any word of power.
Kindrie leaves.
*
His horse is gone in the morning. Jorin turns his blind eyes to her once, then turns tail and dashes out the gaits. She follows after.
She finds him less than an hour's ride from the Keep. Smoke in his eyes, he stares blindly at the sky. "I didn't have anywhere else to go," he says, voice choked. She is still shattered, barely together.
"I'm sorry," she says, "I'm sorry." She is Regonereth. Destroyer. She collapses at his side. "Kindrie, I am sorry."
"It's not your doing," he says, raising a hand to cup her face. His skin brushes hers and she collapses forward, both of them falling into each other, all broken pieces and unknown grief. He cries, and she strokes his hair, she breaks and he holds her close.
*
The messengers do not find Torisen, he hears the news only as he rides into the keep. (But you knew, boy, Ganth's voice whispers. How did you know?)
Trees fly by him as he rides. He does not know where he's going, only that the direction seems right. (They're Shanir, the voice whispers. Let them wander. Let them burn.) He rides, Storm breathing heavily.
There's a fire, long since turned to ash. Black hair twined with white. Two chests breathing as one. The strength goes out of him. (The voice again: She makes you weak. They make you weak. – he ignores it.)
*
Kindrie opens dry eyes. Jame, her forehead pressed to his, meets his gaze.
'What about Torisen?' his eyes ask.
'In time,' hers reply. 'When he's ready.'
He is beside them now, breathing heavy, pulling them upright. Brushes shoulders and jaws without recoil.
In time.
I received two most fabulous gift-fics: Mumbly, in which Olive Snook, at her very best, finds out. The narrative voice could have been ripped from an episode that should have been. I also received Steady as She Goes, which is 1) Power Play -- the only piece of Power Play fic to ever exist, and it is 2) an absolutely perfect Colleen piece.
As for myself, I wrote P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath for
teaotter.Read it at the archive, here, after the cut.
Warnings: Mention of canon abuse.
Thanks to:
sprat, for awesome beta and talking me down from my stabby-place.by
cherryiceDark halls spill forth before him; dim light casts from the edges of his shadow as it races before him, leaving him no choice but to follow after it. The floor is warm beneath his bare feet, fine-grained leather that cradles the impact of his heels, a trail of blue-grey bruises marking record of his passage. His shadow runs and he hurtles after it, breath heavy in his chest. Walls fall behind, stacked high with tomes and parchment that pass with only the suggestion of shape.
The air in his lungs is no longer heavy but instead insubstantial, and he can feel himself slow. His shadow tugs on again, pulling him forward. He curses his own frailty. He knows not what surges in the darkness that follows after, implacable and incontrovertible, what sets his shadow afoot, only that he is grateful to be spared the knowledge of what gains ground. He can see now that the walls are not shelved deep with books but built of them, ageing leather and interleaved parchment, their spines writ with runes of power he blanks his mind against. Eyes closed now, he hurtles on, but he still reads the runes as they pass by him, an avalanche of meaning and intent.
It is madness that chases him, he knows now as the runs, rune-shape and power burning in his throat and against his tongue, crying to be let loose. Speak, he knows that he must speak the words soon, and that is when the darkness will rush in, madness screaming in through his open mouth crying Knorth, Knorth. He stumbles on forward into the black, outreaching hands trailing across cracked leather and runes clinging to his skin, throat burning. He bites his tongue to keep silent but the rush of blood only wakens them further, words of power waiting for their purpose, rushing to escape, when his lips start to part and he –
A crash, a rumble. The smell of parchment and age. Muffled cursing and a hoarse laugh. Bright light cast through a curtain of white that parts as Kindrie slowly raises his head, thick with sleep and eyes full of sand. The scene swims slowly into focus: Ashe stands at the door, leaning heavily on her staff, chuffing, haunt's-face contorted in a rictus grin. There's heavy dust drifting in the morning sun, a pile of books shifting and swearing behind him. A dark-clad figure finally wrenches itself free from beneath the volumes that have tumbled from the towering shelves, black braid unravelling and thoroughly nonplussed. "That was uncalled for," Jame says.
"At least there wasn't an anvil," Kindrie offers mildly. His heart is racing and his throat burns.
Jame snorts, acquiesces. "Although," she says, as she starts to gather books, "I was attempting to wake you, not wander into your soulscape."
"Taken," Kindrie says as he kneels beside his cousin to start collecting loose pieces of parchment. They flutter in his hands like the wings of ghostly jewel-jaws. He is glad she woke him from this dream rather than another, one where he wakes with old wounds reopened and clothes sticky with blood.
A black-gloved hand closes around one of his, trembling and white. They both stop, frozen, dust motes drifting around them. Her hands are dainty, delicate, no sign visible of their lethal power. His are not much larger, fingers longer, uncalloused and soft, scrapes healed over before they have chance to bleed. "Come with me to Gothregor," she says. When he looks up from their joined hands, she is studying his face with a mortal seriousness. Her grey eyes catch silver, and she turns away as he meets them.
Gothregor, which by all rights he should call home. "The Major Harvest will be starting soon," she says. Their fingers are still entangled; he begins to feel the warm of her skin through the leather gloves. Torisen will be working the field with his Kendar, strong back bowed beneath the down-beating sun. He will greet his sister with restraint, confusion and deeply concealed joy, Kindrie with respect and uncertain, shallowly-buried prejudice. (Prejudice is not based in reason, A voice inside him whispers. If not for the Shanir, if not for Gerridon's greed his twin Jamethiel's deceit, Perimal Darkling would not stalk so close through this world. He dreams with increasing frequency of the stars going out, one by one.)
"I have much work to do here," Kindrie says, untangling Jame's hand from his and rising. "We have a harvest as well." He feels her eyes on him as he descends the stairs, Ashe's eyes on him long after Jame has turned away. The derived warmth of Jame's touch stays with him, a handprint written across his skin.
*
He moves through the ruins of the old forts that litter Mount Alban, sits on rocky ledges with his feet dangling over the Silver rushing below. From this height its movement looks almost sluggish, eddies and whorls rather than rushing currents. He gathers feverfew and goldenseal and herbs for the kitchen, returns weary under the midday sun, pale skin a solid and heated red that begins to heal as soon as he has stepped into the cool shade of the trees that surround the fort. As he crests the hill that hides the road, he is unsurprised to find his decision has been overturned. A riding party is gathered, waiting; one of the stable mares is tethered, mouthing gently at the drying grass, saddlebags full, while a graceful white horse prances eagerly beside her. Jame sits atop a crumbling wall across from Kirien. Ashe hollers a greeting as Kindrie comes into view, Jame slithering down and Kirien following less easily after.
He knows he has been selfish. Tentir, from which Jame must have ridden, lies even now between them and Gothregor.
"You're all ready to go," Kirien says. Jaran lordon, she can ask him to leave or forbid him to return.
"You have no need of me?" Kindrie asks stiffly.
Ashe unties the mare, which startles back from the death-smell the haunt caries. "Stupid... question."
Something crashes into him, a bundle of gangly limbs and dark hair that reaches only to his waist. Sularia, upturned face concerned. "Hush," he tells the child. "I'll be back within a fortnight." She nods solemnly as he kneels to embrace her, raises her arms to his neck and kisses the tip of his nose.
"Of course we do," Kirien says. "There will be much to do when you return."
Kindrie feels Jame watching him. He does not meet her gaze.
*
Jame watches Mount Alban falls away behind them. Kindrie does not look back, his gentle mare leading the way down the river's edge. Jame does: Ashe silhouetted against the sky, the child clinging close to her side, watching as they disappear down the cliff.
"The girl?" she asks, finally, when they are around the bend, river spray rising up to meet them.
"Shanir," he replies. "Orphaned. Bound for the priesthood."
The ground beneath their horses' hooves is starting to break up, the mares stepping uneasily. Then the river is upon them, swallowing a conversation she does not wish to have.
*
Fire crackles within a circle of stones. The night is not unpleasant, the fire for light more than warmth. Nearby the river still thunders. The horses rubbed down, bedrolls are spread. Kindrie hands her provisions, hard tack and jerky, a piece of fruit. Their hands do not touch.
"The priesthood," she says. It has been gnawing at her all day. She still cannot forgive Kindrie for his times with them, though neither was his choice and both he fled.
He undoes his boots by the fire, crawls into his bedroll still clothed. "I could not permit it," he says.
There is more to the story than that – she thinks for a wild moment that should could press him, that she could make him speak – but the moment passes.
She stays awake, banking the fire to a blistering warmth, watching his breathing slow. Behind Jame's eyes, her mother plummets into the abyss, dancing even as she falls. Gerridon's hand reaches for her, wreathed in ribbons tattered with decay.
She observes Kindrie in the light of the flames. Easy to forget that he is but a year older than she: his face just now coming to its adult lines, Knorth features emerging as if worn from rock. The muscle he was developing has waned, his face gaunt and drawn. She thinks of what the Arrin-ken told her on Midsummer's Eve. The contract, yes, of that she could tell him, strip from him his bastard's shame, but she does not know if he is prepared for all it implies. (Too injured, Kinzi said, and Torisen cannot even accept that his dreams bring truth.) Kindrie has never known a kind hand, not even hers – she had Tori, at least, Winter, the Kencyr. Dally, Canden, Cleppety, Penari. Mark. He had none of this.
A night breeze caries fine mist through the trees, moves fine strands of white hair across his jaw as small muscles clench and release. She fears she is destined to destroy him, no matter the choice she makes.
(If he is Argentiel, if he is to become Argentiel – Argentiel, preserver – he may be the one person she cannot destroy.)
*
Kindrie wakes at dawn to find a figure sitting cross-legged at his side, watching him keenly. He flinches back instinctively, shoulders hunched, unsure where or when he is. It is Jame of course, though backlit by the leaf-dappled sun. She cannot have missed his reaction, but she does not react. Silver eyes peer from her shadow. She does not speak. Sometime during the night, Jorin has joined them, the big cat stretched out long by the fire.
Eventually, she offers him a hand and they both stand. Kindrie's hair, as he quickly plaits it, glows orange in the rising sun.
She stands across the clearing from him, wrists crossed. "Water flowing," she says, moving into graceful patterns he awkwardly follows.
Their journey southward is slow, progress marked and held by the Senethar patterns Kindrie stumbles through with increasing confidence, Jame's excruciating horsemanship and his gentle corrections.
*
Torisen dreams: Jame, clad not in ivory but in black ribbon, dancing. Kindrie, pale neck arced in pain, snakes circling. He dreams the keep, his father's voice (unclean, unclean), Perereden laughing from beneath a shroud of mere.
Torisen dreams the wire net is around his hands again, burning, burning, only his hands are free of scars. The pain is – elsewhere, everywhere, healing and emerging – and his hands are bound. A face leans in, its features changing. "Haven't learned your lesson yet?" while somewhere there comes the slithering release of a belt buckle and there is fear yes, but also –
Torisen wakes.
*
Jame's sleep has been broken: a hand descending (bastard, unclean, matricide, fratricide, lack-wit, faithless), the blow jolting her down steps that have formed from the shadows (sometimes they are the stairs of the Keep, of the Women's World, of the Master's House where Terandys curses her name or draws her and Kindrie through the patterns of the Senethar.)
When she wakes it is usually to find Kindrie's face creased and breathing rapid. He does not cry out. She remembers how his hand felt in hers at Mount Alban, but cannot bring herself to reach for him. She does not question if this is for his sake or hers.
"I have more reason to hate the priests than you," he tells her.
*
"It's the resignation that follows me," Torisen tells Burr. Four nights since he's slept and he can still feel nails against his shoulders, hot breath against his ear, ribs upon which bruises should rise. Nausea and self-loathing eat at him. He knows what's coming, what will return to him when he sleeps; what bothers him most is the lack of surprise, the resignation he dreams, the changing faces. He stares out over the darkened keep without seeing.
Two figures emerge from the night – one dark atop a white mount, the other bone-pale. "A Knorth!" the guard cries, because who else would emerge as wraiths from the mist, ghosts from beyond than his sister and cousin (unclean, unclean).
He recalls the march to the cataracts. The face in his dream that flickers. He sees one of its visages again now, mouth curled in a sneer, sees it again as jewel-jaws flicker away beneath Kindrie's hand.
(Friends?
No. But none of them deserved this.)
Bad enough his sister stalks him through his dreams, her presence in his head, but his priestling cousin as well? (They make you weak, his father whispers. 'They,' he whispers now.)
He does not sleep that night either.
*
At the Major Harvest feast, Torisen seats Jame at his right and Kindrie at his table. As the night progresses and tongues loosen, people mingle. There are the usual courtesans who trail fingers up his forearm or whisper promises in his ear, he shakes them off and sinks deeper into the shadows of the hall. Jame is dressed completely inappropriately and few will look straight at her bare face; she presses their embarrassment to her advantage before dancing back to whisper in Kindrie's ear.
"Sire?" one of his Kencyr asks, and it is only then he realizes his goblet of wine has broken in his gloved fist.
*
In the courtyard of the old Knorth keep, Jame and Kindrie play at the Sene. The switch from Senetha to Senethar, dance to fight, is rough – not just because Kindrie is clearly a novice. There is no flute, only children clapping, laughing. Even the Senethar is more dance than fight. Torisen watches them from his rooms, their faces brushing so near as to almost touch, lines of jaw and cheek identical. White hair flashes against black, strands mingling as water flowing passes fire leaping.
Something curls low in his stomach, and his scarred hands tightening involuntarily on the empty window frame. He turns away.
Across the courtyard, from her marble balcony, the blind matriarch also stands, silently watching.
*
The next morning, word of Caldane, Lord Caineron's party only hours from the keep. The messenger will give no indication of their goal, only that the Lord Caineron demands audience with the Lord Knorth.
Burr paces. Kindrie, pale face gone white as salt, stares out the barred glass window. Jame watches him. The door bursts open, the Wolver Grimly staggering inside. "Torisen is gone," he gasps. "Alone. He left on a hunting trip last night. Storm is gone from the stables."
Burr curses and leaves to summon a guard. Kindrie gives no indication he has heard.
A knock then, at the door. Lyra, her face flushed beneath the demure half-mask. "The Jaran matriarch has a message from Kirien." Jame starts forward but it is Kindrie to whom Lyra speaks, who follows her out as if a ghost.
*
Adiraina, the Ardeth matriarch turns her head at the sound of the opening door; by touch, she stitches a letter. There is a rustle of skirts as her visitor settles across from her, the smell of parchment and ink.
"Your house owes a debt to the Shanir Kindrie," Trishien says.
"Would you care for a cup of tea?" Blind since birth, Adiraina has always wondered if the Jaran matriarch has a face to match her low, sharp voice and steady cadence. "No such debt exists."
"Adric took him into his service." Trishien's elaborate skirts do not move. "And when he exhausted himself healing the wounded at the Cataracts, your lord forgot him."
"He was not bound." The tea remains unpoured. "It was regrettable, but you must recall the losses our forces took in the battle."
"They took him to the priests." Trishien's voice would be steady to any other ear. "He had already left the priesthood once. They took him to the Randir matriarch, who already hated him."
"He was not bound," Adiraina repeats.
"Kinzi's grandson. Tieri's son."
"The Knorth bastard."
Trishien clicks her tongue. "Your sister-kin's grandson, Adiraina."
"You have no idea what you are asking me," Adiraina says.
Trishien gathers her skirts to rise. Her lingering gaze is a physical weight. She does not speak as she leaves.
Adiraina thinks of Tieri haunting the ghost walks. Kinzi.
The needle slips. She feels it draw blood.
*
"I demand recompense," Caldane says. He is dressed in richly appointed fabrics, road dust worn into the intricate stitching, forehead streaked with sweat. His retinue is twice the size of the one Jame has gathered, and Kindrie saw his former master's eyes spark with barely contained and vicious glee when he saw it was Jame who faced him rather than Tori, lordon rather than lord, heir-presumptuous rather than liege.
Kindrie stands, wrists crossed, behind Jame, and tries to remember to breath. His back raises in welts; he can feel a trickle of blood begin to drip from the corrector's scourge reappearing on his back. Jorin's blind head snaps towards him. Jame does not shift, does not extend her nails to work at the wood of the table before her. Whatever Caldane wants, she is hobbled by lack of experience, hamstrung by the inability to make decisions in her brother's place that would compromise his relationship with another house, his position as high lord. "Explain," she says, short, cutting through the tangle of formalities and protocol that would ensnare her.
Caldane bristles – Kindrie hopes she has made him angry enough to make mistakes, though not to turn him vicious. Caldane snaps his fingers, and the guards part to let another one of their members through, a child cradled in his arms.
Sularia.
*
The child from Mount Albon, Jame notes. She thinks of her arms around Kindrie's neck. Graykin. Oh, Kindrie, no.
"What is the meaning of this?" she asks, voice steady. The girl's face is dirty and smudged with tears, but she appears unharmed.
Caldane smiles. "The meaning," he says, drawing back an arm, "is thus." He strikes the girl across the face hard enough to lift her from the ground.
Behind Jame, Kindrie cries out raggedly in pain.
Oh, Kindrie, no. (I have more reason to hate the priests than you, he told her. She thinks of his dreams breaking over her, crack of head to stone or wrists bound in the dark.)
The girl sobs. Caldane grins, a slow baring of teeth. "My people heard tell that the child had not arrived at her destination."
"You broke with her," Jame says. Where is her brother?
Caldane lifts his hands in supplication. "You must forgive us. Our house is large," his eyes sweep the minimal contingent that she has gathered,"and mistakes happen, but we set to rectify this one immediately. Worried for her safety, of course, we came to reclaim her and take her home. Only," he says, voice silky, "to find that she'd already been bound."
The girl, on her knees on the floor, continues to wail. Jame snakes her hand out to catch Kindrie's, catching the delicate bones of his wrist. Do not move. "You lost your claim when you broke with a child." Her voice is even but her heart races, a sick cold rising up through her blood.
Caldane's frippery whirls out around him as he paces."Bad enough to lose our soldiers to service to the Knorth lord." He picks up speed, volume. "But to a bastard half-Knorth cousin, not even sworn to this house?" His frantic motion stops and he stands in the middle of the hall. "I demand you return what is ours." His eyes track not only the child but Kindrie as well. Forehead wet, cheeks flushed, his eyes are like ice. "And recompense, hoyett, recompense."
*
Air escapes Kindrie's lungs. The white knife before being returned to Caldane's service. The white knife before an hour in Caldane's hands.
"No," Jame says. Her hand tightens again around his wrist.
Stupid, stupid. "No blood fued," Kindrie says, voice low. "Not over me. I'm sorry." He brushes aside the hand on his wrist and steps down the stairs towards Caldane.
"No" Jame says again.
Caldane laughs. He cuts a sidelong glance at Kindrie, but his eyes are for Jame. "Listen to the Shanir bastard. Your brother won't take kindly to you embroiling your house in a feud over this cur."
"No," Jame says again, voice echoing, and everyone stops. Her voice has changed, echoing deeper; threat unrolling in it like unsheathed claws. "No." She rises, and walks down the stairs to the antechamber to stand beside Kindrie. "If there is a blood feud, it will be you who had started it. You cast aside a child. I bound your half-Southron son – will you call for war?"
Caldane's eyes flicker. He steps backward as she prowls.
"Will you call for war?"
Caldane regains his balance, steps forward again. "No," he says, as if with great effort. "But that is not the situation of which we speak. That bastard Knorth—"
"No," Jame says again. Kindrie's heart beats heavily in his chest. A home, yes, that's what he has always dreamed of, but at what cost?
Jame will not look at him. "Not bastard, not half. Blood. There was a contract."
"How can you know? That's im—"
The room seems to darken, the air around Jame growing close and dark. "Midsummer's even, one of the Arrin-ken spoke to me." Kindrie can see her nails extended through the tips of her gloves. "Think carefully of your next words, before you impugn not only my honour but that of the third people, that of our judges."
The wind, tapping against the glass, calls counterpoint to the child's cries.
Caldane whirls. The flush has extended from his cheeks to cross his brow, the bridge of his nose. Kindrie can almost see his mind turning, the options and outs, the channels and honours. His own mind is blank. Still. Months, he calculates she has known. She will not look at him.
Caldane stops. His smile is soft, calming, vicious. His voice is placating, as if to address a Highborn who has started the rapid slide into senility. "The Arrin-ken withdrew two millennia ago," he purrs.
"Softly, Lord Caineron," a voice says. "The boy is full Knorth." Kindrie, spinning, sees the Ardeth matriarch, blind eyes closed behind her mask. "Sister-kin, parent shared."
The wind howls. The child whimpers.
Kindrie breathes. Blood trickles down his back.
"Will you call for war?" Jame asks. Her voice is steel sheathed in velvet, eyes dark. Caldane, mouth set, sketches a rude gesture of acceptance. His eyes promise recompense. The soldiers withdraw.
Jame will not look at him.
*
The hall is empty, save for the two of them. A hearth. Kin. What he had never dared dream about. He is tired and cold. His hands shake.
"Ganth was not my father," Kindrie says. It is not a question. His mother is known, as is her father. Parent-shared: only then her mother, his father. Father and mother twins, blood of blood, they are more than cousins and less than kind.
"Who named you Jamethiel?" he asks. "Who would name you for her?"
"My mother." A single answer. A whisper torn from her lungs that leaves her throat more raw than any rune, her body weaker than any word of power.
Kindrie leaves.
*
His horse is gone in the morning. Jorin turns his blind eyes to her once, then turns tail and dashes out the gaits. She follows after.
She finds him less than an hour's ride from the Keep. Smoke in his eyes, he stares blindly at the sky. "I didn't have anywhere else to go," he says, voice choked. She is still shattered, barely together.
"I'm sorry," she says, "I'm sorry." She is Regonereth. Destroyer. She collapses at his side. "Kindrie, I am sorry."
"It's not your doing," he says, raising a hand to cup her face. His skin brushes hers and she collapses forward, both of them falling into each other, all broken pieces and unknown grief. He cries, and she strokes his hair, she breaks and he holds her close.
*
The messengers do not find Torisen, he hears the news only as he rides into the keep. (But you knew, boy, Ganth's voice whispers. How did you know?)
Trees fly by him as he rides. He does not know where he's going, only that the direction seems right. (They're Shanir, the voice whispers. Let them wander. Let them burn.) He rides, Storm breathing heavily.
There's a fire, long since turned to ash. Black hair twined with white. Two chests breathing as one. The strength goes out of him. (The voice again: She makes you weak. They make you weak. – he ignores it.)
*
Kindrie opens dry eyes. Jame, her forehead pressed to his, meets his gaze.
'What about Torisen?' his eyes ask.
'In time,' hers reply. 'When he's ready.'
He is beside them now, breathing heavy, pulling them upright. Brushes shoulders and jaws without recoil.
In time.