“Perhaps they’re just very fond of you?” Kei said, not entirely convinced himself.
Neither was Jena, who shot him a dirty look. “Oh yes, they’re very affectionate. People change villages all the time. I don’t know why they’re making such a big thing of it. It’s not like they haven’t got such a wonderful bargain in pretty little Mara, her big eyes and her fertile body.”
“Fertile?” Arman said. “Why do you...oh.” He touched her hand. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t care. If Aldik wants to be a father again at forty-five, good luck to him. His wife was such a nice woman too, and his children are lovely as well. I think he’s lost his mind, but it’s none of my business.” But she gave a little sob, and Reji pulled her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” she said in a muffled voice. “I’m trying not to care, but it hurts.”
“Of course it does,” Reji said gently, rocking her a little.
“I take it you haven’t changed your mind about leaving,” Kei asked.
“I wish I could go
now
,” she said, pulling out her handkerchief and blowing her nose. “I feel like I never knew these people at all.”
“It’s the war,” Arman murmured. “It’s changed people, altered relationships forever. I’m truly sorry, Jena. This is my fault as much as anyone’s.”
“Yes, it is,” she said. But then she gave him a watery smile. “But I forgive you.”
He bowed his head. “Thank you. I’ll try to make it up to you, I swear.”
“Don’t think I won’t hold you to that. I need to pack, not that I’ll take much...we have room in the wagons, don’t we? I know you weren’t planning on me, but we haven’t packed things that tightly.”
Reji hugged her again. “You leave that to me. It’s my job to worry about, not yours. You look after your son.”
“Son...oh.... I was going to have adoption papers drawn up here, but damned if I want Gyek’s permission for this,” she said. “Kei, will Fedor...?”
“Of course he will.” She nodded, and then more tears fell. “Darling Jena, don’t cry,” he said, taking her hand. “We’ll make the finest home you could want for you and Karik, if we have to build it for scratch. If anyone gives you a moment’s grief, I’ll personally stitch their lips together.”
That make her chuckle a little. “Not very ethical.”
“I’ll do it in the night, so they won’t know which one of us to blame.”
“That’s my Kei, a sneaky little bastard,” Jena said. She heaved a great sigh. “All this hate is very tiring, isn’t it?”
“Very. You realise most of this is guilt,” Arman said. “Guilt at losing you in the first place, over Aldik, over what they said last night...it will probably change over time. Gonji and the others will argue your case, if you did want to stay.”
She glared at him. “No! You don’t get to keep Kei all to yourself, you greedy bastard.”
“What am I, a sweet cake?” Kei asked, stroking her face and wiping away a stray tear.
“Hmmm, very sweet. But with a hell of a bite,” Reji said, which made her grin and Arman arch an eyebrow at him. “Shall we go back? I need to help you pack and there’s the stores to get in. Kei, you’ll help?”
“We all will,” Arman said, but two pairs of healer’s eyes looked at him in disapproval. “What? I’m walking fine.”
“Yes, and I can just see you lifting a sack wrong and twisting that leg,” Kei said, glaring at the offending limb.
“I’m not made of pastry.”
“You can see to Vikis and Kesa,” Jena said. “And if you would mind Karik for me...or does that pain you?”
“I’ll survive,” Arman murmured dryly. “But we’d best be going. I wish we were leaving today.”
“So do I,” Reji agreed, “But we’d gain nothing, and we’d already planned not to make this too arduous for the passengers. Wagon travel’s not very pleasant if you’re not used to it.”
“You don’t say.” Kei patted Arman’s leg in sympathy at that remark. “But we should get moving. If that lot erupts again, I don’t promise to retain my temper.”
“You mean that was you being restrained?” Reji asked in some amazement.
“Oh, yes,” Kei said fondly. “You don’t want to get him really mad. Then he gets mean.” Arman saluted him ironically for that. “But I say it with love, of course.”
“Of course. You’re such a brat,” he replied, getting to his feet. Kei was still rather concerned about him—the limp was better, but still there.
“You tell me that a least a dozen times a day.”
“That’s because you are, Keichichi,” Reji said, pulling Jena to her feet.
“Yes, he is,” she agreed.
Kei pouted at her. “You mean I’m inviting you back to my home just so you and Reji and Arman can pick on me?”
“Yes, of course,” she said cheerfully, then made a run for it as he made to chase her. He let her go and Reji went after her instead. He watched him catch up with her, and take her hand. She rested her head briefly on Reji’s shoulder and then they walked back more sedately towards the village.
“I’m going to have to go into hiding when I get home. Once Myka gets through scolding me for not coming back when I promised, in about a
year
, I’ll have all of you after me.”
“Poor Kei,” Arman said with a complete lack of sympathy, putting his arm around Kei’s waist. “Something I’ve been meaning to ask you—why does Reji call you ‘Keichichi’? No one else does.”
He showed nothing of it in his voice, but Kei sensed the slight jealousy. “It’s a childish name—Myka uses it, just as I call her Mychichi. Reji uses it because he’s my big brother, not because we were lovers, so stop frowning.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.” Kei kissed the proof of it. “I only let him and Myka and Banji and Mis call me that, so don’t you start.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. So,” Arman asked as they walked on, “what would you have called me as a child?”
“Um. That’s hard to say. Your name’s not very Darshianese.”
“Should I change it?”
Kei made him stop. “No, Arman. You can go too far, you know. It’s not like it’s a hard name to say, not like the Andonese ones.” He kissed Arman’s cheek again—carefully shaved that very morning as requested. “We won’t forget where you were born, you know. But you can make people not care. That’s all you need.”
“Hmmm.”
Kei sighed. Arman needed to get over this self-consciousness, but it was hard in the face of the irrationality on display that morning. If Vikis did mean to stay in Ai-Albon—and Reji was becoming more and more enthusiastic about the idea—that would help, as would Jena’s presence.
He would be glad to get home. He realised with some surprise how much he’d been dreading it up until Jena had made her decision. Now it was something he was eager to do. He was eager to settle her in, and get Arman established in a useful role. And Reji would have someone of his own too, so Kei didn’t even have to feel too guilty over him, although he told himself that was certainly not the reason he wanted his two friends to form a relationship. His parents’ death had shattered his family, but now he was re-mending it, reweaving it with new, bright threads.
“Well, you look cheerful all of a sudden,” Arman said.
“I feel it. I really love you, you know that?”
“For any particular reason just now?”
“Not really.” He kissed Arman again. “I want to go home.”
“So do I. Come on, we’re wasting the day.”
~~~~~~~~
Jena didn’t have a lot of belongings, but it still took time for her to decide what to take and what to leave, and to have the more fragile and precious things stowed. Arman brought Vikis and Kesa over, as they’d insisted on helping, but he was relegated to a chair, much to his disgust, and made to hold Karik while the others worked.
That was until Jena had a series of visitors trying to change her mind, and after two yelling matches which left Kesa looking terrified and Karik screaming his tiny lungs out, Arman and Vikis suddenly became guards, sitting outside the front door. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone, least of all Jena. “You realise this will make people angrier? Two Prij guarding a former hostage, and both of them involved in the hostage taking?”
“At least you can count on them not losing their temper the way Reji and I would,” Kei said, hefting yet another set of books—Jena had as many as Kei’s late father did—“and if they do, they know which bones to break.”
“You have an unsuspected sadistic streak,” Reji said, cocking his head. “Did I have a lucky escape?”
“Maybe from the stove into the boiling water,” he said, looking at Jena as he grinned. “I keep trying to tell myself they’re not bad people. They’re not, but it’s hard.”
Jena rubbed some dust from her nose. “They’re not, really. But I don’t belong here any more.”
That statement worried Kei. Not for his own sake, but because he had to wonder how the other hostages in the other villages were going to find it. Over the campfires on the trail, there’d been a lot of homesickness, but under that, a lot of anxiety too. Many had formed friendships, even romances, and there would be more than one family who would have a son or daughter announce they were moving to another village. Three families would have daughters bearing children of an enemy—and at least one of those had struck up a relationship with a man from the other end of Darshian, so they would be dealt a double blow if she followed him home. The north would be years healing from the scars of these changes, even before the changes in the hostages themselves were taken into account. Look at Jena. She was far more volatile, more easily upset, more in need of comfort than she had been when Kei first met her—and she’d been one of the luckiest ones in that her master had been the kindest person possible.
At least Ai-Albon looked like it would keep all its souls and gain a few. Peit and Urki had shyly announced they were pledged just the night before they arrived in Ai-Rutej, so they wouldn’t be leaving. Most of the others had every intention of returning to pledge mates or lovers, although how many would discover the kind of thing that Jena had done, Kei didn’t know. In some ways, he had got off extremely lightly from his experiences.
Once her things were placed in the wagons, Jena announced she would stay with Reji and the others that night. Reji immediately told her she could have his bed so she could look after Karik. “Don’t be stupid, Reji, I can sleep on a bedroll as easily as anyone else, I’ve done it enough.” But Reji wouldn’t hear of it, arguing she needed her rest if she was going to keep getting up with Karik. “Then we can share, I’ve done that before.”
Reji went bright red. Kei poked him in the side. “Taking it slow, huh?”
Reji slapped his hand away. “Shut up or I’ll share the bed with you and Arman instead.”
Kei batted his eyelashes at his former lover. “For myself, I don’t mind, but Arman has this injured side, and I don’t know if he’s up to a three-in-a-bed just yet.”
Arman, listening to this exchange with a perfectly calm expression, told him to behave. “Stop teasing, you meddling boy. Jena, if Reji shares with you, you’ll wake him all night with the child.”
“True. All right, Reji, you escape for now.”
Kei nearly laughed at Reji’s mixture of relief and disappointment. He did think they should take it carefully, though. Jena was still very raw and that, with adjusting to motherhood, would make the situation difficult.
He said as much as he helped Reji load the stores into the wagons later, when Gonji and Vikis had gone to fetch some more lem flour.
Reji scowled. “Do you not think I know that? I wasn’t expecting any of this—I’m still reeling, half expecting her to change her mind.”
“Did you tell her how you felt?”
Reji rested against the wagon for a moment—they were both pretty tired. “I told her that...I admired her, and would like to get to know her better. More than that, I felt wasn’t fair, and possibly not even true. It’s all happening a bit fast for a simple boy from the villages,” he said wryly.
“That it is. How that bastard could give Jena up for another, I have no idea. If I were free, I’d pursue her myself.”
“Yes, that’s all you need—someone else in love with you,” Reji said, cuffing his shoulder. “I suppose Aldik got lonely and Mara was there. With the baby on the way, his course is pretty much set now. I can understand loneliness, even if I can’t understand him setting Jena aside.”
“His loss, your gain. I hope, anyway. You’d take on a child, though? You always said you wanted no ties.”
Reji looked at him seriously, then hefted a sack up into the back of the wagon. “People change. Things change them, as they have you. Perhaps the lack of ties didn’t seem so attractive once the choice was ripped away from me.”
“You’re not just reacting to me, I hope. Reji, that’s not fair on her.”
“Oh, hush, little brother, what do you take me for? If it weren’t for you, I might have had her in my bed on the ship. It wouldn’t have taken much—she was lonely too. I’d have asked, anyway. It’s because I’m still...confused...that I want to take it slow.” He put his hands on his hips and glared at Kei. “You’re a little young to be giving your elders and betters love advice, aren’t you?”
“I’ll grant you ‘elder’ at least,” Kei said, ducking the swat. “Anyway, some days I feel like I’m seventy, not twenty-one. I’ve seen and done more now than a lot in our village have.”