He caught her hand and forced himself to smile at her. “Yes—but only if you stop worrying about General Arman being here and agree to be wed tomorrow.”
That surprised a laugh from her. “No, I
can’t
! I haven’t even made a headpiece!”
He grinned and grabbed the tail of her braid so he could wind it around her head like a crown. “That’s the only headpiece you need with your beauty. Don’t tell me between you with your clever fingers and Sira and Pijli, you can’t make yourself look respectable, woman, because I’ll call you a liar.”
“But Banji—”
“Won’t even look at your hair, Mychichi, because he’ll be staring into your big eyes. I really am happy for you two—you truly love each other?”
“Yes, we truly do,” she said, her emotions flooding with affectionate pride and happiness at the thought of her pledge mate. “He wasn’t sure for the longest time, but while we were in Darshek, he was so good with everyone, and I think it helped get over Ban’s death and sort a few things out in his head. I really love him. It’s weird because I’ve known him all this time and he was right under my nose.”
So they’d both been confused by the same thing. “Sometimes you can’t see for looking, I guess. Will you let Fedor wed you tomorrow? You can have a celebration later, but I don’t want to be the cause of you two delaying setting up house. Will you live here?”
She bit her lip and looked up hopefully. “Would you mind?”
“My sister and my best friend living in my house? Mind? Are you kidding?” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Please, Myka.”
“Oh, don’t give me those eyes—no, you know I’m helpless when you do that...stop it,” she giggled as he tickled her. “No, no! All right, all right, you win!”
He set her free. “Good. Then you go tell Banji and Fedor and make your preparations. I’ll come back here tomorrow.”
“Kei?”
“Yes, Mychichi?” Now what was it?
“Um. This general—you say he’s really a friend?”
“Yes,” Kei said firmly. “Someone I’m truly proud to know.”
“Oh.” She looked down and he sensed her confusion. “But he’s so cruel. They’re all cruel.”
“Yes, that’s true, but it’s also not as simple as that. The main thing is that he won’t interfere with your wedding and you should just enjoy yourself. Forget about him.”
“All right.” She pulled him down for a kiss. “Let me give you the food I laid in for his arrival and then you can get back to him.”
“Thank you. I already told you—but you know I love you, I hope.”
“And I love you. I’m sorry for being such a harridan.”
“It doesn’t matter. I was expecting it...ow!” She’d yanked his braid. “Well, I was,” he said, rubbing his scalp.
“Charming.” She went to the kitchen and assembled a sack of food, bread, vegetables and cheese. “I’ve not made anything hot because I wasn’t sure when you would arrive or what you would want, but Meis can give you something if he needs it. I’ve drawn you some beer—I thought you’d be missing that.”
“Like you would
not
believe, sister mine. I’ve honestly not had a decent mug of proper dark ale since I left the village.”
“Then enjoy this and we’ll have more tomorrow, when we’re one family, you, me and Banji. I wish Reji was here. He’ll be cross.” She handed him the sack of food and a corked jug.
“He’ll survive.” He kissed her cheek, relieved and pleased she was over her temper. It was much easier to keep control of his gift now she wasn’t stabbing at it with her always strongly expressed emotions. Kei had always admired Myka’s fiery passion—it was just a rather two-edged sword in the circumstances. Still, all things considered, their reunion had gone a lot better than he’d feared.
~~~~~~~~
Arman was tired, but there was no way he could sleep until he saw Kei again. He lay in the dark on his own for a good hour, but then he heard Kei’s voice and that of another man—Teki?—in the front of the house. Shortly after, Kei came in with a lamp and set it on the table. “You should be sleeping,” he said severely.
Arman ignored the reprimand, long used to Kei’s fussing. “What happened? Are they very angry, or have they convinced you to stay?”
Kei seemed calm—rather tired and perhaps a little stressed, but nothing like Arman had feared he would be. “Not that. They were angry but not as much as they might have been.” Kei sat down on the bed and took Arman’s hand—not even making a pretence of feeling his pulse as he did so. “The main difficulty, apart from them being rather surprised, is that my sister’s pledged to my friend and I’m interfering with her wedding plans. I’ve talked her into having a ceremony tomorrow so at least I won’t be standing in the way of her and Banji starting their life together. They need each other and they make each other happy.”
“You don’t think their plan might be best for all concerned? You know as well as I do that this new healer could look after me.”
Kei gave him a fierce look. “I reached the age of majority over two years ago, and have been our clan’s healer for nearly as long. Just because I got dragged off to Kuprij didn’t suddenly make me a child. I’m perfectly capable of making decisions about my life and my patients, and I would like everyone—including you—to remember that.”
“I always remember that,” Arman said calmly. “I’m just wondering why that particular decision.”
“Because...you know I need to go to Darshek. Nothing’s changed. And....” His hand on Arman’s tightened a little. “I feel some responsibility for you, what you’re planning to do. To walk away from you when you’ve made such an important choice and are giving up so much...it would be wrong. It wouldn’t be the act of a friend.”
Arman felt ridiculously warmed by Kei’s simple statement. “Then I accept your decision—thank you.” Kei gave him a sweet smile, which warmed him even more. “Does this mean you’re going to be away all day tomorrow arranging a wedding?”
Kei laughed. “Gods, I hope not. No, Myka will line up people far more qualified than me to help, and we men folk will be hiding away from enraged women and trying not to breathe funny in case they notice us and make us do something ridiculous. Also, drinking beer, which reminds me—my sister is one of the best brewers in our village, if not in north Darshian. She’s given me some to bring back here. Fancy a mug?”
“I’d be delighted. Can I get up? I don’t really feel like sleeping just yet, and eating in bed seems indulgent.”
Kei helped him stand—it was now easier and easier to be moved around, although his ribs and his leg still ached a good deal—and to hop out into the front room, to be seated at the table in the kitchen. “Your lover won’t mind us taking over his house?”
“Don’t think so,” Kei said, setting a mug of beer down in front of Arman. “He’s away about half the year anyway, and provided I don’t have sex with someone else in his bed, he won’t care.”
That frank statement made Arman flush with embarrassment, which he covered by taking a sip of the beer. It was good—heavier and less sweet than the stuff they drank in the south, but with a pleasing warmth to it. “Please give my compliments to your sister. This is a fine brew.”
“Yes, it is,” Kei said, sitting down with his own mug and taking a long appreciative slurp. “Gods, I missed this.”
“You must have missed it all. It’s a shame I’ll see so little of your home—I wasn’t in a mind to care last time I ‘visited’,” he said, giving Kei a wry smile. “I suppose they really hate me here.”
“I think they do. I’m sorry. I tried to explain to Myka but...she’s young,” he said kindly. “She sees things in black and white, no shades to her thinking.”
Arman had to smile at Kei, all of twenty, twenty-one, looking down on his sister with the wisdom of his advanced age. “My friend, you’re not a great one for shades of grey either.”
Kei acknowledged that with a nod. “But...I’ve changed a lot. It was only when I came back here that I really saw it. Things were simple before—and now they’re not. Were you like Myka once?”
“I don’t know her to judge, but yes, I thought in absolutes, as all children do. Karus taught me to see things in a more rounded way—but my greatest, wisest teacher was a young healer from a little place called Ai-Albon. I owe him a good deal and will always do so.”
Kei flushed and looked down at the table. “I could say the same about you. I tried to tell her that being a hostage was horrible, but there were some good things about it...she thought I was insane. Maybe I
am
insane. But I also see things more clearly, I think.” He lifted his head. “Can one be insane and also wiser?”
“You’re asking the wrong person.” Kei shrugged—he hadn’t really expected an answer, Arman supposed. “I’m starving—do you have to fetch food from somewhere?”
Kei stood and went over a shelf, removing a sack. “No, we have bread and cheese and potted vegetables. She’s given me some gren nuts—you might not have had those before because they’re pretty local, but they’re good. If you want a hot meal, my friends can provide it.”
“Bread and cheese and more of this beer will be fine.”
“Good—I don’t know that I feel up to facing any more people this evening.”
He fetched plates and implements with the ease of someone who knew exactly where everything was kept, but then he’d known Reji for ten years, so that was hardly surprising.
“And your gift?” Arman asked diffidently. “Has it been as difficult as you feared?”
Kei shook his head as he continued laying the food out. “Not as much, no. I used to have such good control,” he muttered. “Now I feel I have to always watch who I meet, how they will react. And this is even when I’ve been spending all my time with you, with you acting as a buffer. I wondered about how you do that. Maybe you have a gift too.”
Arman hadn’t expected that suggestion. “Me? I’ve never heard of any Prij who could speak with their thoughts, or feel emotions the way you do.”
“Nor I, but at the same time, if we can do it, then surely someone in your race can too. The Andonese have gifted people, or so I’ve been told. Not as many, I think.” He sat down and Arman slice some cheese for himself as Kei dished out the potted vegetables.
“So, you have soul-touchers and mind-speakers. Is that it?”
Kei shot him a look. “Why? What else could there be?”
“Oh...I just hear rumours, myths.... I heard one of my men talking about the Darshianese being able to speak without moving their mouths which I dismissed at the time as pure nonsense. Since it turned out
not
to be, I wondered how much of what else he said was true.”
Kei was still giving him the oddest of looks. Then he picked up a small sack of nuts and pulled one out. “Put out your hand.” Puzzled, Arman obeyed. “Now watch.”
Wondering if Kei had actually lost his mind, Arman looked at the little brown nut. As he did so, it rose gently about an inch from his hand. “Gods!” he shouted, pulling his hand away—but the nut stayed where it was, suspended above the table. “Are you doing that?”
Kei snatched the nut out of the air and clenched his fist around it. “Yes. I’m what they call a mind-mover. Apparently it’s very unusual to have two gifts, but I didn’t know that until Jena told me.”
Arman stared at him in amazement. “So, what else can you do? Move boulders and the like?”
“No, that’s about the limit of it. I can’t move anything heavy, or very far. It’s not much use except in my healing because it helps me stop bleeding and find fragments in the body. It’s useful in setting bones too, sometimes.”
“My headaches—it wasn’t just a massage that time, was it?”
Kei shrugged. “It was, mostly—but I was also using my gift to work on the blood vessels causing the pain. I didn’t mean to deceive you, but I would be in terrible trouble with Tiko for telling you this much.”
Arman could imagine why. What other secrets did they have? “So you could kill a man by stopping his heart or choking him?”
Kei slapped his hand on the table, gave Arman a dirty look, and got up to get the stone jar of beer again. “You still don’t understand me at all, do you?”
“I didn’t mean you personally or at all. Just in theory. Someone less scrupulous than you, I meant,” Arman added, a touch irritably. Of course Kei wouldn’t kill—but if he had this power and hadn’t used it on that bastard Mykis, his restraint was the real wonder, not his gift.
“No gifted person would ever use their power offensively or to kill,” Kei said emphatically. “To do so would invite fear and persecution—it’s only common sense.”
“Yes, I can see that. But if this isn’t a myth...what other gifts are there?”
“Reji can produce fire,” Kei admitted reluctantly. “Just little balls of flame, and before you ask, no, he doesn’t use them to hurt people either. He mainly uses it to amuse the children and to light his stove in the winter.”
Arman sat back, feeling stunned. “You mean to tell me you can manipulate objects with your mind, your lover can make fire—and this isn’t remarkable among your people?”
“Well, they’re not very useful gifts for the main part, or particularly unusual—every village has at least one or two people with some kind of gift. Mind-speaking is the most common, soul-touching is the most rare, but it’s completely random. No family is more prone to produce gifted children than any other, and there’s no way of predicting which gift will turn up where. It comes at a price, since it means we’re infertile and, as you’ve seen, my soul-touching gift makes me vulnerable. The mind-moving is useful sometimes. The soul-touching I would gladly give away.”