Riversend: An Amberlight Novel. Sylvia Kelso

him in his tracks. She came upright, furs cascading, all chemise and naked breast, the merest hiss, but the voice of a Head.

      “I said we’d change things. I meant this as well.”

      He managed three steps before she spoke again.

      “Caissyl,” it was so quiet, and it froze my backbone. “If you walk out now, you walk out for good.”

      The moon-shadow sketched his pale, quivering shape. Her hand trembled on my hair, my own heart was in my teeth. No, I wanted to cry, do anything but this with him. Don’t push him in a corner. Don’t make his pride the price of your bluff.

      “Alkhes?”

      Who but a Head could juggle that intonation, a knife-edge between command, plea, threat? Who but a Head would have the timing, at the precise moment before one of them broke?

      He spun on his heel. His breath flew, a sharp white gust. “Gods damn it, Tel!”

      * * *

      “Caissyl, truly, it’s not difficult.” She had him in her arms, coaxing. I could feel his outrage clean through the bed. “I want you both. Is that so very bad?” A thread of laughter now. “Your imagination’s never failed me before . . .”

      “Tel.” He was still shaking, but it had a frail, steely quiet. “I can sleep like this. I can cope with—wanting you and not—with—missing out. I can’t,” it started rising, “make love to you with an audience like a g-goddamn whore!”

      Her silence should have been a slap in the face. I did feel him twist.

      All three of us breathed. The moon laid its silver path across the boards.

      Very softly, she said, “Caissyl—”

      “Oh, Tel . . . No . . .”

      In a moment they would be severed past recovery. Already it was beyond words. I rolled in behind her, laid my lips against her neck, through the storm of copper-brown hair. Slid my arms around her, and prayed to the Mother as I cupped her breasts.

      She curved back against me, memories of that movement waking like a burn. Then she caught his head and pulled him to her, and before she kissed him, whispered, “ . . . just like this.”

      Even then, it might have been all right. Had he not, as he calls it, failed.

      * * *

      When he plunged from the bed she let him go. The door slammed to shake the king-stones, she just sat up. A stir all down the passageway, snap of crossed challenges with troublecrew, the outer door’s diminished Bang! She flung the covers back and for the first time in my life I baulked a woman’s will.

      “No.” I caught her wrist at the limits of a snatch. “Let him go.”

      Her breath went in and my backbone quailed. After everything, she is a Head.

      So at such a moment, she remembers difference. Policy. Change.

      “Can you tell me,” level, more dangerous, “why?”

      But not abuse, denial, a wrench away. Mother knows, grandmother Zhee would have . . . I could only say, stupidly, “Tellurith—he’s not like us.”

      Silence. The words in process. Not like us, Amberlight, men in Amberlight, she and I? Therefore I did not, she did not understand him? So I could give orders, could not give orders? Could, could not explain?

      “I can’t—say if it’s right. Why it’s right. I just feel—let it be.”

      Still breathing. Weighing all that, my possible truth, my possible interest, the shape of my intuition. Not, after all, an answer from the qherrique.

      Then stiffening, disengaging, a quick, “Wait,” as she went to the door. Summons to Desis, the night’s sentry, soft words. An endless pause.

      I could not bear it. I was behind her when Desis came back, cat-foot, breathing from the darkness, “They saw him go into the byre.”

      Where we keep three bullock teams; and his horse.

      I felt her stiffen, the jerk of breath. The long, long hesitation before its release.

      “If he comes out . . . Let me know at once.”

      She swung around, clutching for my wrist, a shadow in the moonlight, with undone rivers of hair and great shadow pools for eyes. “Oh, Sarth.” Pressed against me, head on my chest, her whole weight in the embrace. Breasts heaving, choking, with the force of smothered sobs.

      “If I could just be sure—of what I’m doing!”

      I held her with one arm, and smoothed the other hand over her hair. I did not say, How many of us ever had such surety? I did not babble easy comfort, that he would understand, come back, change his mind. Who was I to know that? I drew her close, and held her; and foresaw another night that would end with her comfort, and my body aching, as so often in the Tower. And remembered those were the good times, and did not complain.

      * * *

      And in the gray first light I said, “Let me go to him.”

      She stared at me, gummy-lashed, red-eyed. Weighing it again, like a general. A Head.

      Then with a funny jerk of the mouth, reached for the belt-purse hung at the bed-head. Shook out a silver darrin, flipped it in the air and said, “Ship, you go. Face, me.”

      Reduced to such unreasoned, such sheer chance decision. She lifted her hand. And the ship-shape badge of Cataract glittered on the fur.

      Outside it was weirdly still. With no work for the day, all the teams were home abed, and the stock-tenders had dallied too. In the great curve of hillside Iskarda slept, faded paint, grainy brown timbers pure-etched in the icy mountain dawn. Below me, the fallow-brown patchwork of River plain was just gilded, here and there, with unhindered light. Cocks crowed. Bouncing down the stony path, the feed bucket banged my leg.

      He flung back the byre door almost in my face, I grabbed by reflex and he jumped the same way, clear into the wall.

      “Get away from me!”

      Probably I was lucky not to get killed. He froze there, the broken arm shielded behind the good. He has the rib bandages off now; the crouch was ready to strike. The face was something else.

      Inch by inch, I eased the bucket down. Think, I swore at myself, what you’re doing. This is not a boy in a Tower in Amberlight.

      I said, “Is your arm all right?”

      The eyes focused. Black as space, but no longer lost.

      “Did you shick her instead?”

      River-word. Meaning, to mate with beasts.

      “If you were good for anything else—”

      Once in a life, perhaps, the Mother gives such vision, without the qherrique. But I had it, in the second he pushed himself off the wall. Such loathing, such hatred. Such a violence of bitterness. But not aimed at me.

      I said, “That happened my first night.”

      And despite it all, he was listening too. His mouth came open. His foot landed short.

      “With Tellurith. Telluir House Head. My first time with a woman. My first wife.”

      The pose fixed. Not so much stunned as thunderstruck.

      “You were raised a soldier. To give orders. To fight. I was bred to tend, to please a woman. It was my whole life.”

      The eyes were glazed, black as midwinter ice. How thick, I did not have time to wonder, was its shell?

      “She said, It doesn’t matter. We can try again.”

      “So goddamn kind.”

      The flick of a whip-cut. He is not one to forgive mistakes.

      Nor am I one to avoid them. I glanced