uncoiled off the wall in one long lunge and spat, “You bastard!” and slapped my face.
A year passed in a heartbeat’s amber-drop. Time to feel the blow’s weight and have muscles plunge for recoil and check at impotence’s rage and still find space to think before the sting began. Before the impact recoiled on him.
He had jerked his hand back. Shrunk back, the eyes enormous. All the rage was gone.
My nose stung. My fists dug nails through my flesh. My brain was one white glare that lit his waiting like a qherrique flame.
We both knew I could not fight with hands: that the blow’s real shame was his. And he knew I could strike back, three times harder. With my tongue.
So he was waiting. To make expiation. To be hurt.
To dissolve his guilt.
I shoved the bucket toward him and said, “Feed your horse.”
When Hafas House blew up its mine, the hillside fell like that. Slowly, irretrievably, crumbling, a House, a world collapsing, before my eyes.
Mother pity me, I am far crueler than I ever guessed.
Because I let it go another twenty heartbeats, before I took the bucket in one hand and the man in the other and kicked open the byre door.
Inside it was still dusk. Left-hand, the bulk of bullock-pens, topped by flicking horns, ears, heads; right-hand, the horse’s stall. Slatted dark of rails, liquid eye. He sagged against the stall-side, head bowed in the good arm. A fighter, a soldier wounded mortally.
The bullocks shifted, smelling feed, the horse stretched and slobbered and blew on me. I tipped oats in the manger. Then I touched his shoulder, and said, “Come home, before you freeze.”
I thought he would refuse. But then he gathered himself. Pivoted drunkenly against the rail. It came hoarsely, no more than a whisper.
“Why?”
Why come home? But he knew that. He had not left. It was, by default, surrender. Admission was only a matter of time.
The kindness?
And the cruelty. Both from the same source.
I said, “I learnt in a different school.”
Half-frozen, and shaking, and wracked by hurts and hatred as a crippled scorpion, he kept his wits. I saw him work it out, as I had. A shared skill. A different school. Fighting. With tongue or sword. So what I had said—each thing I said—had not been kindness, but a blow. Deliberate.
He lifted his face, an effort deliberate as mine. He was trembling so hard his very lips shook. But he met my eyes.
* * *
Settling. Week 5.
Meditations. Alkhes-Assandar
I could have borne it, if he’d flayed me. Everything would have cancelled out. But to have him kind . . .
Gods, give thanks I’m married to him. What would he be as an enemy?
I was so cold my gut shook, and the feelings—the first sensation, after a bad wound. The madness. Like a crippled scorpion. But in the end, I understood.
That his school was the harder. No honor, no surrender, no mercy. Even when you win.
I managed to look up at him. At the very worst, I’ve looked losing in the eye.
He’s so beautiful. Curse that word, but it’s the only one. In a dirty stable-coat and his hair tangled everywhere. He deserves her. That perfect face, those honey-gold lion’s eyes. Looking down at me, like some sad, stern, incorruptible hanging judge.
Then he grabbed me by both shoulders and burst out, “Ah, don’t, Alkhes!”
As if I was hurting him.
Somehow, to have him touch me this time didn’t matter. “Don’t what?” I said. Be hung, I think I was almost in tears.
“Don’t . . .” He let go. Pushed his hair back. The light was better. Damn him too. Beautiful. And so tired.
“Alkhes. Could you try to—explain?”
Explain. When everything that made you a man—command, war, unarmed combat—is gone. When the one thing left is a woman. And then you fall apart with her.
“Did I jar your arm?”
He had hold of me again. As if I was an eggshell. Yet his hands felt strong. And I had the weirdest—the maddest—urge to lean on him, to let him hold me . . . As if I was a baby. A mewling woman. Gods . . .
Does he hold her like that?
You can lean, if you’re a woman. And hold, I saw Iatha do it, with Tellurith. Have seen Tellurith do it, with Zariah, when her daughter slipped and the cutter sliced her arm. Why not men?
“It’s understood, in the Tower. That women may want—expect—to share.” He took a little breath. “Just as it’s understood that—there’s more than coupling to sex.”
He was doing it again. Explaining himself to understand me. And perhaps it was in kindness this time, but when you prick a lamed horse, he kicks.
I said, “Like they understood sons?”
How could I have said that? When I knew, I knew about his children. I did do the grabbing that time. “Damn,” I said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forget that, I’m sorry, Sarth . . .”
I had a handful of coat. He looked down, I let go in a hurry. For a moment he looked . . . I don’t know. I did know what I had to do.
I said, “For men out here—coupling is sex. And sex—” it was like a bone in the throat “—winning—succeeding—doing sex properly is . . . If you fail—you’re not a man.”
I read it plain this time. Bewilderment. Absolute disbelief.
“Being a man. The whole of being a man—depends on that?”
Curse that face of his. How do you resent pity from a god?
“But . . .” He gave his head a jerk. “You’re trained troublecrew. You have war-skills and River lore; you had the courage to come here, you can change and learn and—” he turned his face away. I could barely hear.
“And you have wits.”
And he was a bed-toy, good for nothing but sex.
I don’t think I ever saw our blindnesses so clear. Both of us thinking, in our own ways, that what we were, all we were, was sex. Both of us thinking she valued the other for what we weren’t. Both of us—in that case—wrong.
It costs—it hurts—to shuck out of a life. I thought resigning a command was hard. Leaving Amberlight. This will mean rebuilding myself. Tearing up what you build on, without ever having to think what it is.
But I had a place to start.
I took a handful of coat. He twitched.
“You learnt in a different school.” It surprises me that it came out so clear. “But you did learn.”
The first time I had managed his code. There was surprise. And then the grayness lightened in his face.
Not just that I had said, You are a man too. You are as good as me. You think yourself stupid, but you’re not. But also: I’ve heard what you said. I’ll come back. I’ll try.
I got a step away from the stall. My legs were like water. I saw him put a hand out. Pull it back. Then he put the whole arm round me. And said—said . . .
The bastard. I swear he uses witchery.
“In my school,” he said, “men can lean.”
* * *
Settling. Week 5.
Tellurith’s Diary
Mother,