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Life in Roa was bleak. Between the threat of the Medes, the absence of Costis, and the paranoia towards people who had been my friends and colleagues—people who seemed unbothered at the idea of a Mede army marching through their territory—I was on edge all the time. In the first few days after Costis’s departure, I made plans of my own so that I was prepared to run at any moment.
First, I slaughtered the chickens. That had never been one of my tasks in our household and I hated to do it—I burst into tears after the first one, as silly as that may sound—but I could not stand the thought of selling them to someone who might turn around and sell them to the Medes. I ate like a king, and what I couldn’t eat I gave to bemused neighbors. Then I went from room to room, deciding what to keep and what to discard. I had a satchel that would fit a change of clothes, some supplies, and a few precious personal items, and I kept that on me at all times. Making the decision about what to leave behind was more painful than I expected—more painful than when I had left Mede, where I hadn’t had a choice.
I kept the scroll of Enoclitus that the king had had copied before I left Attolia, an iridescent pigeon feather that Pheris had tucked into one of Relius’s letters, a fibula pin from the queen. With great regret, I burned my letters from Relius. If the worst were to happen, and Mede soldiers got their hands on my things, I could not expect letters from the former Attolian secretary of the archives to be safe, no matter how fond I was of the writer. I reread them first, lingering over a few passages, before consigning them to the flame.
I went through Costis’s things, too, in case there was anything he had left that he would miss. He had been working on his carving skills lately, and I found a leather wallet with his tools and a bag of flat stones and rough wooden circles, some of which he had already carved. I smiled to see the Hand of Sesmegah, replicated half a dozen times with varying skill, and resolved to let him keep his secret when we met again. I left the house and rented a room in the city instead, where I could live with some anonymity, and be closer to the docks.
And then I went about my days as usual, lugging all my earthly possessions behind me wherever I went. Nine days passed. Costis must have reached the court, and the Little Peninsula was preparing for war. I watched the seas anxiously, sure that my Attolian would disembark from every ship that came into port. Yet he did not come. Fear gnawed at my ankles every day. Fear for myself—what if the Medes were coming here, and I risked my life every time I went between the temple and my little room?—and fear for Costis—what if a raiding party had caught up with him on the way to or from Attolia? What if I had been wrong? What if the net was drawing tighter and tighter, and we were the little fish squirming in the center of the school, oblivious to our imminent death?
These thoughts were swarming in my head one evening when I left the temple. The temple complex was large, and while there were some who lived in the priests’ dormitory, there was always a large crowd of people who left at the end of the day—married priests, priestesses and altar girls who slept at a nearby boarding house, visiting scholars, sightseers and pilgrims, and the vendors who set up in the courtyard to sell food to the workers and trinkets to the visitors. I was not alone as I walked, but I was solitary in my thoughts.
“Spare a kind word, good sir?” a voice croaked, and I looked down to see a man dressed in well-worn clothing, with bandages on his head and hands, sitting by the gate.
“I am a scholar, not a priest,” I said, taking him for one of the poor unfortunates who could not scrape up the coin for a sacrifice, and so begged the priests for a blessing instead.
“A scholar?” he said. “You must work in the library.”
“Yes.”
It was early summer, and the days were beginning to lengthen, but evening was fast approaching and I didn’t trust my eyes to spot danger in the low light. I ducked my head in a farewell and moved to leave, when suddenly the beggar reached out and grabbed my wrist. His hand was like a vice, and my heart leapt to my throat. I wanted to look around, back at the departing crowd to see if there was someone I knew, someone who might help me—but instead I paused. The beggar peered up at me with an iron gaze, and he looked familiar to me. I could not place him, with his dirty clothes and the bandages and the hooded cloak pulled up around his face, but I thought that I had definitely seen him before.
“That is a blessing of itself,” the beggar said. “To work in such a place! I am jealous, good sir, very jealous.”
He did not speak like a man who lived in the gutters, and he had the physique of one unaccustomed to missing meals.
“If I had a place allowed to me in this temple, I don’t think I could ever bring myself to leave. Not for a single moment of the day.”
One of his eyes was obscured by the bandages. The other was locked on mine.
“So?” I asked in an undertone.
“So.”
“No doubt that is good advice, but I am going to meet a friend, and I worry he might be waiting for me.”
“He can just as easily find you here, can’t he?” The beggar released my arm. “Take my advice, good sir, and wait in the temple. You will find peace there, and the gods will not lead you astray.”
“Your words are wise,” I said with a deep bow. “Thank you.”
The beggar smiled. I turned around and walked right back into the temple complex, ducking my head and rifling through my bag as if I had forgotten something. Instead of going up to the library, though, I went first to the main temple, the one dedicated to Reyatimus. The people of Roa and Magyar had shared a pantheon with the Hephestian Peninsula before they, too, had been conquered by the invaders of the Greater Peninsula. While the Little Peninsula drew a strict line between what they called the old gods and the new, the Roans had been more accommodating. They had renamed their gods, and tweaked some of their myths—but like an old statue with a new coat of paint, sometimes the colors wore through. Reyatimus, according to the invaders’ customs, was king over the gods and guardian over mortal kings (and husband to the Earth, like the Sky God of the Eddisians).
I made an offering of incense to Reyatimus, and then went to the temple directly next door, said to house Miras, patron of soldiers. I had two knives with me. One was the short knife I had stolen from the slavers, all those months ago; the other was a gift from Costis, determined that I should have a means of defending myself. It was by far the nicer of the two, but I gave the old one to the god, because it was the only one I had ever used, when I stabbed the miller. The Mede god of soldiers was said to prefer blood as a sacrifice—which in these modern, civilized times, was taken figuratively, so that Prokip’s altar was awash with bolts of red cloth and red spices and rubies. The Mede gods were totally unalike the gods of Roa or Attolia or Eddis, and even after so long working at the temple, it was not clear to me how they differed in their aspects. I lingered at the altar with my forehead pressed against the cold stone and listed off Costis’s martial accomplishments as well as my own meager list, and begged Miras to accept my offering in the spirit with which it was intended.
And then, finally, to the small, modest temple that housed the goddess of mercy. I prayed to Philia by name, praising her, entreating her to carry my words to her sister-goddess, if the gods of this continent are on speaking terms with the gods of the Medes. If indeed there are many sets of gods, and Philia is not Shesmegah wearing a different veil. I prayed to Shesmegah, reminding her how I had fulfilled all my promises even when I was a poor slave, swearing even-greater offerings for the remainder of my life, if only Costis could be safe, if only I could be reunited with him. And if not that, I begged her mercy that my death would be swift.
The night fell. I did not move from my spot. My offered candle burned down to nothing, and I slept there on the altar. It has been three days. The Medes have not come. Neither has Costis.
****
I do not have much paper and ink here in the hills of Roa, and so I have not bothered to record Costis’s return, our flight from the soldiers, or the interminable wait. I do not want to waste our supplies—and besides, in order to tell a story properly, one needs to know how it will end.
But I take up my pen today, to make note of the most terrible fight we have had thus far—greater than our argument about my deception in the Mede Empire, or Costis’s refusal to leave me behind on his rush to Attolia. I know that Costis resents sitting in the mountains like a coward instead of fighting for his king, and part of me has expected an argument to burst forth. I was not expecting the catalyst to be a bath.
In many ways, we are much better equipped at the shepherd’s hut than when we had fled Ianna-Ir. We cannot resupply from nearby villages, and there is nothing to be done about my poor clothes, which were torn when we fled the city—but Costis had ensured that the hut would be ready for us. There is a cook pot, an ax, plenty of firewood, traps for hunting, and a small, wild garden with herbs and vegetables. There is also a water cache. It rains often in the mountains, especially in summer, and the cache has never run too low. But as the days stretch into weeks into months, and the rainy season comes to an end, we have become more cautious.
Costis was the one to decide that we could not use our water for frivolities like washing. Whoever cooks meals might use a cupful to wash his hands of dirt before handling the food, but for anything more extensive, we go to a small stream that empties into a little mountain lake, a mile down the path.
Yesterday, Costis insisted that he had seen a Mede soldier riding south and east past the mountain, and got it into his head that this was the beginning of a retreat. I was more skeptical. An army of seventy thousand could not be rebuffed so easily, I thought, and in any case it was only one soldier. More likely a deserter—even an army as well-trained as the Medes’ had its deserters. I saw no reason why I should not go to the mountain pool for a bath. It had been a few days, it was summer, and I was wearing a heavy tunic fashioned out of a blanket. A bath seemed entirely warranted.
I will not write the exact back-and-forth here, because I do not think the exact words matter and because (I admit) they bring me pain. Costis accused me of playing reckless with my own life, and enumerated all that he had ever done to keep me safe. I accused him of paranoia, of hating me for keeping him from the glory of battle, and of being an overbearing ass who could never let me make a single decision on my own. Months of tension came to a head, and we shouted at each other until the shack rattled.
“I would not even be here were it not for you!” I said finally, my anger stoked beyond reason. “I would be in a very comfortable tent in the Mede camp, with water and soap and better leftovers than this slop—”
“And a lovely silk shift and a gold chain,” Costis interrupted. “Yes, you would be comfortable.”
I was not so blind with rage as to say I would prefer that life to this, but the specter of the idea lingered. We glared at each other, and then I stomped towards the door and flung it open.
“Do not follow me,” I ordered. Costis threw up his hands.
“Fine! Go! Gods forbid you should put up with my concern for your life a moment longer than you should like!”
I slammed the door behind me. Slamming doors is a luxury new to me; it is not as satisfying as it looks, I am sad to report. It did nothing to dissipate my anger, which carried me three-quarters of the way to the pool. At that point, it occurred to me that my words had been hyperbolic, and a warm flush spread across my face. But Costis had been stupid too, I argued with myself, and I went back and forth until the trees began to thin. I could see the sparkle of sunlight on the water, and I hurried forth eagerly.
And then my heart stopped. Someone was already there.
A tall man, I could tell, well-built. Armed? Possibly. Had he seen me? I thought not. There was time yet to back away, to return to my soldier as quickly and quietly as I could manage. But then a songbird whistled in the branches above me, and the stranger turned his head and whistled in response. I saw his face for the first time and stepped forward out of the trees.
“It’s you.”
It was the Southern gentleman I had last seen in Zaboar. He had no camel, but there was a spear in his lap, the kind used by the nomads beyond the isthmus. Then, he had worn a coat with long bell sleeves—I spotted it draped over a large stone—and now he wore only his long, sleeveless shift. His arms were corded with muscle and littered with scars. I saw several groupings of four jagged lines, like the claws of a monstrous beast, and quickly raised my gaze to his face, to his black eyes dancing with laughter.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It’s me.”
“This a long way from your home.”
“And yours, little wanderer.”
“I—” I stumbled. “I don’t think I have a home anymore.”
“Don’t you?”
I did not know how to respond. The gentleman looked away, scanning the perimeter of the clearing and the trees beyond it. I looked at the pool. It was not especially deep, perhaps coming only to my shoulders, and I could tell this because the water was beautifully clear. Even with my eyesight, I could count the rocks lining the bottom, if I wished. The soft music of the stream and the steady drip of water on the other side made a pleasant melody in the air.
“Is this a sacred place?” I asked. “If I go too near, will I be entranced by something in the water—if I bathe in it, will I be turned into a frog for my impertinence?”
“Has that happened on your previous visits?”
“No. But I may have only recently overstepped some god or spirit’s tolerance.”
“You may have—I don’t know. As you say, I am as much a stranger in this land as you. Won’t you find out?”
“Why are you here, then?”
I felt rude, but I could not quite bring myself to call him by name. Even now I cannot. He looked at me and raised his bushy eyebrows, and the dancing light in his eyes became still as the stars.
“Did you mean to leave us behind, Kamet?”
I shook my head mutely.
“Then that is why I am here.”
He gestured at the water. I knelt by the edge of the pool and put my hand in. It was cool and clean. I scooped up a handful and drank it, and when I did not turn into a frog or keel over on the spot, I undressed and waded into the water. It was lovely—heavenly—to be able to dunk my head, run my hands through my hair, and feel days’ worth of grime sluiced away. I had stormed off without thinking to take a bar of soap, so I was not truly clean and would not leave the water smelling like summer-fresh lavender, but it was good enough. I was self-conscious in front of my companion, at first, and kept glancing at him, but he only sat on a fallen tree and scanned the clearing. Keeping lookout.
I took my makeshift tunic into the pool, too, and wrung it out. The clear water became cloudy. I drifted closer to the shore and laid the tunic on a rock in the sunlight, squeezing as much water from the wool as possible. It would still be wet when I put it on again, but I intended to remain in the pool for enough time to let it dry a little. Unexpectedly, the gentleman stood and held out his bell-sleeved coat. I hesitated for only a moment, but one does not refuse the gifts of kind strangers who appear in unusual circumstances and give good advice.
The Southern gentleman was taller than Costis, if not quite as broad in the shoulder, and the coat engulfed me completely. The material was very soft, a burnished orange with patterns stamped in yellow, and I was grateful for it when goosebumps rose on my wet skin. I wrapped it around myself and sat in the path of the sunlight. The scents of sandalwood and smoke had soaked into the collar.
Perhaps this gesture made me bold, because I stared shamelessly as the gentleman continued to observe the woods around us, and did not duck my head or apologize when he caught me. Instead I said, “None of the stories say you are a god.”
I realized, belatedly, that this was one of the rudest things one could say to a god. The gentleman threw back his head and laughed.
“No, I suppose they wouldn’t.”
“Are you a god?”
“What measure is a god, anyway?” he asked, waving his hand as if the question were immaterial.
“I don’t know.”
He looked at me, and his eyes softened.
“But you would like to, wouldn’t you?” I nodded. “Yes. You are very like my friend, you know.”
I shook my head, thinking of the one-eyed wine merchant with his soldier’s scars. I was willing to extend my belief so far—far enough to believe that my love for old poems might attract the appreciation of their subjects, far enough to see echoes of Costis in the hero renowned for his strength and bravery. But I could not see myself in a king. Even I was not so arrogant.
The Southern gentleman actually wagged his finger at me.
“Now, now,” he said. “Who would know better, you or I?”
“You,” I had to admit.
“That’s right. He asked a thousand questions, in the beginning, and was cross when we got no answers. The gods are often opaque, even amongst themselves.” He shrugged. “We are not immortals. We are men who have never died.”
“I see,” I said, although I did not, quite. I too, was a man who had never died, but after some twenty-odd years of life, this was not surprising the way it would be after several centuries. Suddenly a jolt of alarm straightened my spine. “Does that mean—you are still vulnerable to death?”
“You mean, if a Mede soldier popped out of the bushes and spitted me on his sword, would that be the end of me?” he asked cheerfully. “I don’t know. I hope not to find out. Sit,” he said when I leapt to my feet. “There is time yet.”
“But—”
“There is time.”
I sat down again. I cannot say how much time passed as we sat and the gentleman sang with the birds. The wind tickled my hair, and the sun was warm.
“May I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“How did he get the bottle of oil from Death?”
There was a pause. When he spoke again, he sounded abashed.
“To tell you truly, Kamet… I never asked.”
I sighed. It just as well, I suppose. I could claim to be the first to solve a thousands-year-old mystery, but without textual proof, no one would believe me, and to make the claim baselessly would damage my scholarly reputation. Assuming I am ever to have a scholarly reputation. My Mede translations of the Ensur myths were left behind in the royal library in Ianna-Ir, under the name Kamet of Nahuseresh. I put my Attolian translations to parchment while I was in Roa and filed them in the Sacred Library, under the name Kay the Scribe. I sent my account of our flight from the Mede Empire to Relius, under the name Kamet e dai Annux (my name—under my name), but I do not know if he received it. I don’t know if any of them will survive. Nahuseresh might have purged my presence from Ianna-Ir already, and if the Medes truly conquer Attolia, I do not expect Roa to retain its independence very long.
It is a depressing thought.
“Is your—tunic—dry?”
“No,” I said, but I stood and walked over to the rock.
To my surprise, the wool was perfectly dry, warm to the touch, and smelled pleasantly of sunlight rather than the months-long accumulation of dirt and sweat. I looked at the Southern gentleman, who smiled serenely. I changed back into the tunic and handed him the bell-sleeved coat. He stood to his full height and said something I did not, at first, understand. After a moment, I realized it was old Ensur—an invocation of the gods for a safe journey—which I had never heard spoken with the ease and accent of a native. It startled a laugh out of me, and I bowed.
“I will be guided by my wise elder,” I said, or tried to say, and the gentleman smiled indulgently.
He looked up as we walked, at the chartreuse leaves that broke the sky into little pieces like stained glass.
“He will be angry with me,” he mused.
“Why?”
“He thinks it best that people don’t recognize us. He worries that to appear like this veers too close to obstructing the will of the gods. That is why he lies whenever he comes.”
“And no one has ever seen through such lies?” I asked, thinking about the wine merchant’s obvious fumblings. I had been out of my mind with worry when we met, but even I had noticed something strange. The gentleman laughed.
“Ah, well. We do not have such adventures very often—he was out of practice.”
It was true, I had not recognized the beggar so quickly. There was a fond smile on the gentleman’s face that made my heart ache, although I did not want to articulate why. Before I could avert my gaze, he looked right at me, and the smile was replaced by a look of concern.
“What is it, Kamet?”
I bit my lip.
“I am wondering… if adventures do more harm or more good, in love. If a life of adventures… if such an environment, of excitement as well as danger, if it might stir… passions… that cannot be sustained when life returns to its ordinary routines. Or— or perhaps I am asking the wrong questions, and it is not the lack of adventure that introduces conflict, but the overabundance of them. Perhaps a life of adventures trains one to be constantly looking over one’s shoulder, and it may not be possible to make a home under such conditions.”
“Little wanderer,” the gentleman said with a kind, pitying smile, such as one might give to a child. “Your problem is not too many adventures or too few. It is being trapped in a shepherd’s hut for months on end, with all the fear and uncertainty that an adventure brings and none of the satisfaction of action. But a few months in the course of your life cannot be misstaken for the whole of it.”
“I suppose.”
He flung an arm around my shoulders.
“I know. Trust me, Kamet. Love is always terrifying when it is new. But it will sweeten with time and you will grow more accustomed to it, like good wine.”
“Not all love lasts so long.”
“No, only the extraordinary kind. The kind that defies death, inspires legends, and attracts the attention of the gods. And perhaps the not-gods, too.”
I had no response to this. I ducked my head in embarrassment, and the gentleman shook my shoulders before releasing me. We walked in a companionable silence.
For the most part, the path from the shepherd’s hut to the pool was straightforward, but the topography of a mountain always poses challenges. There was one particular spot where the path curved dramatically, bringing us close to a cliffside that looked down over the valley. We were about to step onto the most exposed section of the path, where there were no trees at all, when the Southern gentleman flung out his arm.
“Wait,” he said curtly. I looked around but saw nothing. I squinted down at the valley before us and thought I saw a glint of light—but that may have been my imagination. “An army,” the Southern gentleman said, and my heart dropped to my stomach. “A very battered army… that is the command cohort, but they ought to be flying a general’s flag, and one for a member of the imperial family, eh? There is none.”
My heart began to pound, and I almost grabbed his arm.
“None—you are sure?”
“There is no flag at all except the colors of the empire.”
The army always flew a banner if a blood relative of the emperor was marching with it. If there were no flag, then Nahuseresh was dead. I stared down at the valley until my eyes hurt, not trusting another’s evidence, but I saw nothing.
We remained hidden in the brush for several minutes, and then the Southern gentleman began to lead me through the heavy growth, back towards the shepherd’s hut. If I had taken the main path, anyone with a good glass could have spotted me from the valley below. Probably they would have ignored me—but a retreating army is not always sure of supplies, and there was a chance they would have sent up a raiding party to deprive me of whatever food and riches I had. My coloring would have betrayed me as a non-Roan, and my poverty would have shown that I was not one of the very few free Setrans whose wealth allows them the privilege of unrestricted travel within and beyond the empire. Nahuseresh still had a price on my head.
It was not the closest brush with death I ever had, but it was too close for comfort, and I was quiet on the way back. I began to think of Costis, and how I felt when I thought him dead back in Zaboar. As if my heart had ceased to beat, leaving my insides hollow and slowly rotting, while my limbs fulfilled their duties merely out of habit. I had not felt like a living thing myself. And that, before I had kissed him. Before I had ever woken to hear the soft thump of his heartbeat in my ear as his chest rose and fell with breath beneath my cheek. I thought of the agony on his face when he left me and the relief when we were reunited, despite the fact that he had left the safety of the Attolian palace for the path of an advancing army.
All this, I thought of, and I began to feel ashamed of myself.
“Kamet.”
I looked up. The Southern gentleman was stopped. He gestured, and I realized we had almost reached the door of the shepherd’s hut. He ground the butt of his spear into the dirt and leaned on it like a cane.
“This has been a good excursion, has it not, little wanderer?” he asked, eyes twinkling, as if I had planned an outing for his amusement, rather than endangered my life for a bath.
“Yes,” I said regardless. I bowed. “Thank you for joining me.”
For protecting me, on Costis’s behalf.
“Thank you. There is precious little for us to do otherwise, you know. And a little absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
He winked and struck off through the trees in a different direction. A bird chirped nearby and he whistled a response. They were having a spirited back-and-forth exchange when he passed out of my sight, and then I turned to face the door of the hut. I took a deep breath and pushed it open.
Costis was sitting at the window. He looked up when I opened the door, and then he stood.
“Costis,” I said, feeling meek. “I’m sorry. I—”
Before another word could pass my lips, I was being swept into his arms. I buried my face in his chest, and for a long time we were quiet and still. Costis was the first to draw back, cupping my face in his hands and looking me over, making sure I was all right. Later, he would admit how terrified he had been the moment the door shut behind me and how badly he had wanted to follow, even though he had respected my foolish demand for solitude. He would apologize for allowing anger to overcome his self-sworn obligation to protect me, and I would apologize for letting pride overcome my good sense. In that moment, we did not speak.
I once exchanged letters with the king’s magus of Sounis in which we discussed the nature of the gods. He told me that his king had once had an encounter he found strange and unsettling, and the advice he received from a wise woman was this: write down what he saw, so that he might consign it to the page and let it fade from his thoughts entirely. No doubt it was fitting advice for him, but I do not write these words to forget. I write them to remember.
Today I met a man whose love for another overflows a thousand verses, outlasts empires, crosses inviolable borders. And the look on his face was the look on my lover’s face when he gazes at me. I will not forget. I will not forget. If I die tomorrow or sixty years from now or if we are carried on Anet’s chariot out of Death’s reach forever—I will not forget.