Glimpses (12 page)

“What’s this supposed to be?” he yelled.
“‘All I have in Rhíminee is yours now’? What is this?”

Seregil struggled to his feet and pulled
free, not meeting Alec’s eye. “After everything that’s happened—”
He paused, took a deep breath. “After all that, I decided it would
be better for everyone if I just went away.”

“You decided. You decided?” Furious, Alec
grabbed Seregil with both hands and shook him. The wrinkled
parchment drifted across the pool, hung a moment against a stone,
and spun away unnoticed down the stream. “I followed you over half
the earth to Rhíminee for no other reason than you asked me to! I
saved your damn life twice before we even got there and how many
times since? I stood with you against Mardus and all the rest. But
now, after moping around all summer, you decide you’re better off
without me?”

Color flared in Seregil’s gaunt face. “I
never meant for you to take it that way. Bilairy’s Balls, Alec, you
saw what happened at the Cockerel. That was my fault. Mine! And it
was only thanks to Ashnazai’s twisted vanity that you didn’t end up
dead with them. Micum’s crippled for life, in case you didn’t
notice, lucky to be alive. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve
almost gotten him killed before? And Nysander—Let’s not forget what
I did for him!”

“Nysander sent me!”

Seregil went ashen. “What?”

“Nysander sent me after you,” Alec told him.
“I don’t know if it was a dream or a ghost or what, but he woke me
and told me to go after you. Illior’s Hands, Seregil, when are you
going to forgive yourself for just doing what he asked you to?”

He paused as another thought dawned on him.
“When are you going to forgive Nysander?”

Seregil glared at him wordlessly, then pushed
Alec’s hands away. Sloshing up to the bank, he sank down on a log
overlooking the pond. Alec followed, settling on a rock beside
him.

Seregil hung his head and let out an unsteady
breath. After a moment he said, “He knew. He should have told
me.”

“You would have tried to stop him.”

“Damn right I would have!” Seregil flared,
clenching his fists on his knees. Angry tears spilled down his
cheeks, the first Alec had ever seen him shed.

“If you’d done that, we’d have failed,” Alec
said, moving to sit beside him on the log. “Everything Nysander
worked for would’ve been lost. The Helm would have taken him over
and he’d have ended up as their Vatharna.”

For an instant Alec thought he felt the
wizard’s touch against his hand again. “I think he must be grateful
to you.”

Seregil covered his face, giving way at last
to silent sobs. Alec wrapped an arm around him, holding him
tightly. “You were the only one who loved him enough not to
hesitate when the time came. He knew that. In the end you saved him
the only way you could. Why can’t you let yourself see that?”

“All these weeks—” Seregil shrugged
helplessly. “You’re right, right about everything. But why can’t I
feel it? I can’t feel anything anymore! I’m floundering around in a
black fog. I look at the rest of you, see you healing, going on. I
want to, but I can’t!”

“Just like I couldn’t make myself jump that
time at Kassarie’s keep?”

Seregil let out a small, choked laugh. “I
guess so.”

“So let me help you, the way you helped me
then,” Alec persisted.

Seregil wiped his nose on his sodden sleeve.
“As I recall, I threw you off the roof into a gorge.”

“Fine, if that’s what it takes to show you
that I’m not about to let you slink away like some old dog going
off to die.”

The guilty look that crossed his friend’s
face told Alec his worst fears had been correct. “I’m not letting
you go,” he said again, gripping Seregil’s sleeve for emphasis.

Seregil shook his head miserably. “I can’t
stay here.”

“All right, but you’re not leaving me.”

“I thought you’d be happy at Watermead.”

“I love everyone there like my own family,
but not—” Alec broke off, feeling his face go warm.

“But not what?” Seregil turned and brushed a
clump of damp hair back from Alec’s face, studying his
expression.

Alec forced himself to meet Seregil’s
questioning gaze squarely. “Not as much as I love you.”

Seregil looked at him for a moment, grey eyes
still sad. “I love you, too. More than I’ve loved anyone for a long
time. But you’re so young and—” He spread his hands and sighed. “It
just didn’t seem right.”

“I’m not that young,” Alec countered wryly,
thinking of all they’d been through together. “But I am half faie,
so I’ve got a lot of years ahead of me. Besides, I’ve only just
begun to understand Aurënfaie, I still don’t know one style of
snail fork from another, and I can’t jigger a Triple Crow lock. Who
else is going to teach me all that?”

Seregil looked out over the pond again.
“Father, brother, friend, and lover.”

“What?” A coldness passed over Alec’s heart;
Mardus had spoken almost those same words when asking about his
relationship to Seregil.

“Something else the Oracle of Illior said
that night I asked about you,” Seregil answered, watching an otter
slip into the water. “I kept thinking I had it all sorted out and
settled, but I don’t. I’ve been the first three to you and swore
that was enough, but if you stay on with me—”

“I know.” Catching Seregil off guard, Alec
leaned forward and pressed his lips to Seregil’s with the same mix
of awkwardness and determination he’d felt the first time. But when
he felt Seregil’s arms slip around him in a welcoming embrace, the
confusion that had haunted him through the winter cleared like fog
before a changing wind.

Take what the gods send, Seregil had told him
more than once.

He would, and thankfully.

Seregil drew back a little, and there was
something like wonder in his grey eyes as he touched Alec’s cheek.
“Anything we do, tali, we do with honor. Before all else, I’m your
friend and always will be, even if you take a hundred wives or
lovers later on.”

Alec started to protest but Seregil smiled
and pressed a finger across his lips. “As long as I have a place in
your heart, I’m satisfied.”

“You always have to have the last word, don’t
you?” Alec growled, then kissed him again. The feel of Seregil’s
lean body pressing against his own suddenly felt as natural and
easy as one stream flowing into another. His last remaining worry
was that he had very little idea about how to proceed from
here.

***

It was almost like an ordinary day at
Watermead after that, the same as any other visit. Only it wasn’t.
Even after their admission by the otter pool, Alec could sense the
lingering sadness that still clung to Seregil. It was too much to
hope, he supposed, that all that had happened this morning was
enough to heal the wounds his friend carried. When Seregil noticed
Alec watching him, he always brightened and smiled, but when he
thought no one was looking the light faded a little. So Alec kept
an eye on him and kept his own council. He caught Seregil watching
him, too, looking a little worried. He wondered if he was beginning
to regret his words that morning.

Anything we do, tali, we do with honor.

Things had changed between them, at the otter
pool.

They might have changed in a worse direction
if Alec hadn’t gotten there in time. The thought of Seregil trying
to leave him behind still hurt.

Seregil seemed determined to keep them busy
around the farm, carrying in water and firewood for Kari, helping
Micum tend a horse with a sore on its leg, and driving a wagon to a
field where the hired men were haying. As they rode back with a
load, Alec seized the opportunity.

“Were you going off to die this morning?”

Seregil was quiet for a moment, staring down
the track ahead of them, reins slack in his hands. “I don’t know,”
he said at last. “Maybe. I’m sorry I scared you.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t.” Seregil turned to him, his
expression solemn. “You have my word, Alec. Rei phöril—”

Alec clasped his shoulder. “Don’t. I don’t
need any oaths from you. You said you’d never lie to me, and I
believe you.”

“Thank you.” Seregil smiled—a real smile—and
kissed him.

Alec’s breath caught in his throat; it was
the first time that Seregil had initiated a kiss between them. He
had questions of a different nature, too, but he couldn’t seem to
find the words, out here in daylight.

Anything we do—

He couldn’t help thinking of the night he’d
found Seregil lounging in that green light brothel in the Street of
Lights and the first stirring of attraction he’d felt then—for now
Alec understood what that had been. The highly detailed murals on
the walls there had left him with no doubt as to the sort of
pleasures men found with each other. Some of it wasn’t all that
different from what he’d done with Ylinestra and Myrhichia,
only—who did what to who when it was both men? Despite occasional
good natured teasing, Seregil had never touched directly on the
subject in any detail, and Alec was left with nothing but a vague
mix of anticipation and unease, and concern for Seregil. This
morning he’d been ready to go off and die. Maybe Alec was expecting
too much?

By supper time he was willing the sun to sink
faster, so that they could finally be alone to sort things out. As
he sat with Seregil and the Cavishes by the hearth afterwards,
holding little Gherin for Kari so she could knit, he began to feel
increasingly nervous and awkward. Seregil was yawning, obviously
worn out.

***

Alec grew more and more quiet, the closer
they got to the end of the evening, and Seregil was aware of the
way Alec’s gaze fixed on him when he thought Seregil wasn’t
looking. It was more than ale or the hearth fire that kept that
persistent pink flush in his friend’s smooth cheeks. It deepened to
an outright blush when old Arna asked Alec if he felt all
right.

The certainty Seregil had felt that morning
was slipping. It’s too soon. I have no right.

But his traitor memory played the words of
the Oracle over and over again: Father, brother, friend, and lover.
Alec’s poignantly innocent kisses on that Plenimaran beach and
today left him with no doubt that they were no longer merely
friends, much less master and apprentice. They’d forged a bond
built on shared trust and hardship. They owed each other their
lives. Seregil wasn’t exactly sure when he’d fallen in love with
Alec; it had taken him this long to admit it.

Friend. Lover?

Seregil remembered his first hesitant
embraces with Ilar, the mix of fear and thrill and muddled desire.
As much as he’d later come to hate the lying son of a bitch, he had
to admit that Ilar had been the perfect first lover: gentle,
patient, and asking for so little. There hadn’t been much
opportunity for privacy at that summer encampment. They’d never
even been naked with each other. All the same, Seregil had loved
him and lived for his caresses until Ilar broke his heart and
changed his life forever.

It hadn’t really prepared him for his first
night in Prince Korathan’s bed, less than a year later. It wasn’t
love that put him there, but desperate loneliness. The young prince
had been kind, too, but less patient and far less restrained than
Ilar. Only then did Seregil realize that his love making with Ilar
had been little more than foreplay. Korathan expected—and got—a lot
more than that from Seregil, right from the start. Seregil had
hardly been able to get out of bed the first few mornings.
Fortunately Korathan had been as careful to give pleasure as he was
determined to receive it. Seregil hadn’t loved him, but was
grateful for the sense of peace he’d found for a little while in
the young man’s strong arms. And that had ended abruptly and
painfully, too, when Phoria caught them together one night.

He meant to do better than that by Alec.

Seregil wanted more than that.

He hardly realized how far his mind had
strayed until Kari set her knitting aside and took Gherin from
Alec’s arms. “Seregil, Alec’s about to go to sleep in his chair
after the long day you gave him. Go to bed, both of you.”

She smiled as she said it, but it felt like
she’d read his thoughts. Was it his guilty imagination, or did her
look hold a warning?

Micum stood and stretched, then scooped up
Luthas, who’d been playing with a horn spoon at his feet. “Good
night! And remember; I want a sword match with you tomorrow,
Alec!”

“I’ll be ready. I still have a few patches of
skin that aren’t bruised.”

Finally alone, Seregil and Alec sat staring
into the fire in silence. Knowing they’d probably spend the rest of
the night like that if he didn’t do something, Seregil stood and
held out a hand. Pulling Alec to his feet, Seregil took him in a
loose embrace.