PART III | Chapter XXII
3:22 | There Was a Woman Involved
Kedean, from the moment Baisyl met him, had struck him as a man with an all but unshakeable air of calm that he carried about him like a wall or a shield, an impression only strengthened by their time together. He couldn’t remember Kedean ever seeming tense around any of those he’d interacted with in their travels—strangers or otherwise—and Baisyl had trouble imaging any sort of rational person with whom Kedean could not hold an at least passably relaxed conversation.
When Jerith and Kedean stepped into a room together, the tension around the two of them could have been gathered into a ball and thrown at someone hard enough to hurt had it been any more tangible. The fact that it was a large room—perhaps the underground version of a cutthroat’s pub—inhabited by a number of other people scattered throughout, did little to dispel that sense of strain.
“Jerith,” Kedean greeted.
“And you,” Jerith returned, amiably enough except that his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Said eyes flit a moment later to Baisyl, dried and back under the effect of the curse. “I see the fates have been treating you well, as usual.”
If not for the direction of his gaze, Baisyl might have taken that as a testament to Kedean’s apparent good health, but despite the brevity of his glance and the way he returned his full attention to Kedean a moment later, something in the edge to his tone made Baisyl wonder what all had passed between the two of them that he wasn’t aware of.
“Well enough,” Kedean agreed, the subtle, buried defensiveness in his tone solidifying Baisyl’s suspicions. “Some things might have gone better…but I am alive and cannot yet complain.”
“Alive indeed,” Jerith observed. “We’d heard you’d drowned.”
“Is that what happened?”
“Apparently not, but yes…it’s how the story went, in any case. Lost to the great sea herself after your ship was raided…” He trailed off, taking in Kedean’s brief surprise with another flick of a glance and then saying, as if nothing had passed, “Where are my manners? Have a seat. Don’t stand for my sake…”
He motioned to the nearest empty table, and Baisyl took the time to note, as Kedean pulled out a chair for him and he sat, that the place really did look like a bar—bustling with activity, mostly grizzled men, the lot of which Baisyl wouldn’t trust to guard a clod of dirt, let alone anything breakable or valuable. The only thing it lacked was a serving counter and shelves of ale and whiskey, but he had a strong suspicion that the set of stairs in the far corner lead up to a place that had both.
“So…what finally brings you back to us?” Jerith asked. “I’d been long convinced you’d run away for good…”
Baisyl might have imagined a miniscule stress and pause on the words ‘run away,’ but he didn’t think so.
“My story is…long and unimportant at the moment,” Kedean said. “I was hoping you could tell me from whom you and others heard that I had died and…I am also looking for someone.”
“Well, isn’t that a coincidence,” Jerith remarked. “There’s someone here looking for you, as well…the very same one who recently gave up and pronounced you dead, if I’m not mistaken…”
“Oh?”
“Some pirate sent a messenger down through the rumor trade trying to pick out your whereabouts…” Observing the combination of Kedean’s and Baisyl’s expressions, he said, “I take it you’ve crossed swords with this sea thief before.”
“We’ve…encountered one another,” Kedean said, “…if it’s the same one. What was the message and what do you know about the sender?”
Jerith gave him a curious, unreadable look, and then shrugged, saying simply, “She’s captain of a large number of men, a fairy if our sources are correct. Says she has something you want and you have something she wants…and that you’d know what each of those things are and she wants to meet with you to strike a bargain…”
Fingers itching to clench, Baisyl restrained himself, the only outward sign of his tension the subtle straightening of his back and tightening in his jaw. It was far too obvious what the fairy captain meant, and if it came down to Kedean choosing between Baisyl and his little brother, Baisyl didn’t even pretend to wonder who the man would trade for whom. There was no contest.
“That doesn’t explain how you came to think I’d died,” Kedean said, so calm again that it all but infuriated Baisyl. Could he not
feign at least a little concern? Regret perhaps?
“Oh, something one of ours overheard…apparently there are a number of her men who say she’s on a fool’s mission, that you and her prize ran off and got yourselves drowned and there was no hope she’d be finding you…” Jerith shrugged. “Clearly, they underestimated your innate skill at…escaping situations not in your favor.”
Kedean’s tension returned like lightning. “Jerith-”
“Is this the captain’s runaway prize, then?” Jerith asked, sliding his attention to Baisyl and this time taking the time to really look at him.
To Baisyl’s surprise, he didn’t make a show of raking his eyes over the whole of his body like a market trinket on sale as too many did, only taking in the necessary details and then meeting Baisyl’s gaze dead on. He had fierce, storm grey eyes, sharp as an assassin’s blade and riddled with a curious, unreadable expression.
“Pretty…” he said after a long moment, “…if you’re into that sort of glass-rose delicacy.” Baisyl didn’t know whether to be offended out of principle or relieved. Jerith returned his attention to Kedean before he decided. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Baisyl Merseille,” Baisyl said shortly, settling with mild irritation, “…firstborn of my father, Lord Merseille. I would hope that you do not require any more elaborate of an introduction than that.” Jerith blinked, visibly taken aback.
“Jerith Pandrigen, my lady,” he returned after a pause, “…and what an honour it is to make your acquaintance…”
“I’m sure.”
“Baisyl and I traveled by carriage and horseback from somewhere along the coast of Serpent’s Channel,” Kedean said, cutting directly to the point. “Our ship was bound for Brittaney before it was overrun by pirates…and Zyric was taken prisoner.”
For a moment, all of Jerith’s hostility evaporated. “Zyric? What was he doing on board in the first place?” he asked, equal parts surprised and concerned. “You’ve never taken him with you before…”
“He snuck onto the ship,” Kedean defended himself. “Alroy helped him before we left port-”
“By the gods, Kedean,” Jerith swore, looking very ready to drop his face in his hands, “…I truly do not understand why you insist on associating yourself with untrustworthy, snake-in-the-grass trickster-”
“He’s not-” Kedean started to defend when a third voice, cool but undoubtedly feminine, cut in from behind their table.
“Jerith?”
Kedean and Jerith stilled like a single unit, and Baisyl’s first thought, on turning to look, was that the speaker was
tall. His second was that she was dark—not so dark as Kedean, but close—and yet, despite her height, she carried herself with a fierce, natural grace that, much like Kedean’s, spoke of a lifetime of physical combat. She kept her arrow-straight, ink black hair drawn tightly back from her face in a high tail, and the instant her eyes landed on Kedean, she froze as surely as the other two had.
In the following seconds, Baisyl found himself stumbling to keep up with the convoluted stream of interactions.
Jerith was the first to move, frowning almost guiltily and clearing his throat before opening his mouth. Then Kedean stood, turning to the woman, and apparently Jerith decided against whatever he planned on saying. The woman’s eyes flit, indecisive, from Kedean—who was a picture of tension and guilt with what looked like a thousand unspoken apologies on his tongue—to Jerith who now refused to meet her gaze.
“Kedean,” she said, and the single word somehow managed to be all at once breathless, riddled with confusion, and fragile as a bird’s wing, “…I…” Finally, she looked away, blinking twice, rapidly and then putting her lips together once before saying very quietly, “Excuse me…” and turning on her heel to leave as quick as she’d come.
As soon as the door shut behind her, Kedean whirled back on Jerith, slamming his hands to the table hard enough to shake it. “You didn’t tell me she was here-”
“You didn’t
ask!” Jerith snarled back.
“But you decided to have her conveniently ‘show up’ while we were-”
“She deserved to know you were alive!”
“And you couldn’t have
told her that?” Kedean growled. “Because it didn’t look to me like she knew-”
“It’s not my story to tell, and you know it,” Jerith said lowly. “At the very least
speak with her, the gods know she deserves that courtesy…” He spat the last word like an insult and Baisyl’s attention tracked the almost grinding tension in Kedean’s jaw, the ripcord taut muscles from his fingers to his shoulders, and the way his eyes followed the path the woman had taken with anxiety and a tempest of other conflicting emotions. Then, his eyes turned unexpectedly to Baisyl, meeting his dead on.
Baisyl wondered if he imagined the briefest softening around the edges of his expression, and decided that he probably did.
“I am sorry you had to witness this,” he said, not harsh or angry but sincerely regretful. “I’ll be…back.” And with that, he left, following in the woman’s footsteps and leaving Baisyl alone at the table with only the mercenary leader.
Silence stretched between them for some long moments. Then, unable to keep his peace any longer, Baisyl said, “I take it they are not siblings?” And he tried, valiantly, to crush the foolish hope that Jerith would correct him, even if only to humor him.
“Lovers,” Jerith said, and the cold knot in Baisyl’s stomach solidified. He threw walls around it, insisting to himself that it didn’t matter, far too late, and swallowed as a result. “Or were…” Jerith self-corrected. “He…they haven’t seen each other for quite some time.”
Baisyl debated, wanting to ask but wondering if it was even remotely his place to know. Eventually he decided he didn’t give a damn whether it was or not. “What happened?”
After expecting some long, tangled tale, Jerith’s quick shrug and simple answer caught Baisyl off-guard. “He left.” Baisyl’s expression must have betrayed his surprise. “Theirs isn’t my business to tell, and…my version of the tale would likely be more bitter and unfair to him than rightly deserved.”
“You know her well,” Baisyl said, an observation more than a question, but Jerith nodded anyway.
“I knew him well, as well, but…yes,” he said. “Natara has been my…good friend,” He hesitated a moment too long there for Baisyl to let it go unnoticed, “…since far before I ever met Kedean.”
As quickly as that, a piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“You care for her.”
Jerith looked sharply up, a new, guarded quality to his expression. “We’ve known each other since we were children,” he said. “She thinks of me as a brother.”
But you don’t think of her that way. The words needed no voice to be heard, and hung in the air unspoken until Jerith shifted uncomfortably, as if oppressed by the weight of them.
“Next you see him,” he said finally, snapping the silence with an abrupt, businesslike air, “…tell him I’ll be sending someone out to make contact again with the pirate captain and inform her of his willingness to speak with her about striking a bargain.” He pushed to a stand, hesitated, and then said, “I…also hope, for your sake, that you do not care for him. He is a good man in many, many ways…but I pity any woman foolish enough to give him her heart.”
As Jerith left, Baisyl weighed the costs and benefits of finding out how to get the strongest, most awful tasting alcoholic beverage available delivered to his table.
Some ways away, Kedean was fairing little better.
After questioning a few persons on his way to keep on her trail, Kedean ended up on ground level, in the wide, open room neighboring the stables that served as a training area for weapons and sparring practice. It was raining harder than earlier that morning, the sound of it thick and rushing, and there was no mistaking the owner of the dark silhouette leaned up against the far doorframe when he stepped inside. She kept her back to him as he approached.
“I promised myself that I would not miss you,” she said quietly, as soon as he stepped within earshot of a level voice. “When Jerith came to me…came to tell me that there had been news of your death…” She shook her head, “…there was no part of me that could be convinced you had left the world so easily and so soon…but there was one, tiny moment…when I knew what it felt like to truly believe you would never step through our doors again.”
She turned, coming to face Kedean as he moved up beside her, and he held still under her eyes as they searched him. After a long, dragging moment, she dropped them again, the corner of her lip lifting into a tiny, shadow of a smile.
“You look exactly as I last saw you.”
“I didn’t know you were here,” Kedean said as quietly as she. “If I had-”
“You wouldn’t have come.”
“-I would have told you myself,” Kedean corrected. “I-” At her look, any tension he’d built up from her response withered out in the form of a heavy sigh, and his eyes skirted out from under her gaze. “I didn’t mean to startle you, or…hurt you…I wasn’t told-”
“When have you ever meant to hurt me?” The question held no malice, only bare honesty and confusion. “When have you ever meant to hurt anyone?” Natara shook her head. “Nothing that happened between us is any fault of yours…a blind fool could see that, and yet you don’t.”
“Jerith doesn’t.”
“Jerith loves me,” Natara said immediately. “It pains him to see me hurt as it pains me to see you suffer for blaming yourself.”
“But I…should have…” Kedean hovered on the rest of that sentence, struggling to find the right words to fill it in. Eventually he gave it up. “You deserved…more.”
“And so does Jerith…but I can no more give him that than you can give it to me, no matter how much either of us might want to.” When he looked, she met his gaze, her eyes steady and serious, and loving and sad. “You cannot make a choice to love someone because it is logical or convenient, Keda…just as you cannot stop loving someone because it is foolish…or painful.” Her eyes flit down and out, to the rain. “You will learn that one day…when you finally look at someone only to realize you’ve given your heart away and cannot so much as recall when it left you.”
“Natara…”
“I am glad that you are well…this world is a better place with you in it.” With that, she pushed up off the doorframe. “Oh,” A step away, she paused, glancing back, “…I meant to ask how long you intend to stay this time?”
“I’m…not sure yet,” Kedean answered, and considered re-explaining the reasons for his arrival in the first place, but reasoned that Jerith would likely recap things for her. And he didn’t feel much like talking anymore in any case. Thus, after a brief nod on her part, he watched her leave in silence, and this time, he didn’t follow.
It was some time before another presence joined his again. When it did, Baisyl, too, kept his silence, only the soft creak of the door opening and shutting behind him and the quiet approach of steady footsteps betraying his arrival. Some halfway or so into the room, Baisyl took a detour—examining the array of weapons if Kedean had to guess, though he didn’t look—and sure enough, seconds later there came a metallic clink and swish.
“It should relieve you to note,” Baisyl said, “…that after serious consideration, I eventually opted against the use of copious amounts of alcohol to drown out the various concerns arisen by our most recent encounter with your…acquaintances.” Another clink. Returning the weapons to their place, perhaps? “I take it, though,” Here, his footsteps started over again towards Kedean, “…given the utter lack of change in your demeanor and nearly
radiating I-just-slaughtered-a-bunch-of-infant-forest-animals guilt coming from your general direction…the exchange with your female friend went something a trifle short of fantastic. How am I doing so far?”
“You’re irritated,” Kedean observed.
Baisyl stepped past him, through the doorway and into the rain. Kedean watched, ever-fascinated by the way Baisyl’s body took shape like some exaggerated form of metamorphosis, growing into his clothes in a matter of seconds. His hands were empty, but fisted, and he kept his eyes and mouth shut and turned to the sky long after his body assumed its natural form.
“I’m not with her.”
“I gathered that, amazingly enough,” Baisyl responded tartly, and Kedean grit his teeth.
“Then why-”
“You still care about her.”
“Of
course I still care about her,” Kedean snapped. “We were together for…years…I can’t just-”
“Years?” Baisyl rounded on him. “And yet you left.”
“I had to-”
“Why?” Baisyl shook his head, angry but not comprehending. “If you loved her and still do, then
why-”
“No, you don’t under-” Kedean cut himself off, and shut his eyes, drawing a breath, begging for patience. “It’s not like that,” he said finally. “I don’t…I never…loved her.”
Baisyl blinked. “You…what?” Clearly, that hadn’t been what he was expecting. “You just finished telling me-”
“I told you,” Kedean repeated, “that I care about her, which I do. I trust her, value her opinion, and admire many of her characteristics, but…she’s not…” He struggled to find the words to describe it. “I’ve never…felt…as though she were an irreplaceable part of my life. There was never a time when I couldn’t walk out and leave if I so chose…and at first that was what we agreed to,” he said. “It wasn’t a problem for some time, but…at some point things…changed…for her.”
“She fell in love with you.”
Even with his eyes to the ground, the turmoil in Kedean’s features was as obvious as if etched in stone. “Eventually, knowing that I could not return her feelings to the degree that she felt them caused her too much of a burden…so I left.”
A bitter laugh was not what Kedean expected, and he looked sharply up. “Well,” Baisyl responded dryly, “I suppose if nothing else, that sheds some light on Jerith’s opinion of the situation…”
Kedean frowned, and hesitated before asking, “What do you mean?”
“Oh, correct me if I’m wrong, but as far as I can tell you, first…” Baisyl started counting off on his fingers, “…befriended and shortly after frivolously slept with the woman he probably already cared deeply about-”
“He never told me he felt-”
“-second, stole her heart effortlessly—
accidentally, better yet—a feat he apparently could never accomplish despite knowing her all his life, third…
broke her heart bit by bit once you got a hold of it-”
“Baisyl,
shut-”
“-thereby scarring the woman he loved slowly over the course of a few years right before his eyes, and
then, finally, to top everything off, when you ran away, you took all the little brittle, shattered pieces with you and kept them to yourself for however long you’ve been gone because, clearly…” Baisyl shook his head, “…she still cares about you. Is that about right?”
“I
wanted to love her,” Kedean snarled. “Can you understand that? I
tried to…make her the most important thing in my life, I just-” He shook, and he wasn’t sure whether it was the guilt still or anger. “I’ve never…
been somewhere I couldn’t leave anytime I wanted, never…met
anyone that I wouldn’t feel complete without, not once in my life, and…maybe that’s your ideal. Maybe you could live with sleeping with someone new every other day because you ‘felt’ like it, but I…want…more than that…and she deserved more than that…”
“So…” Baisyl trailed on that word for a moment, thoughtful, “…you have been…raking yourself back and forth over metaphorical coals for years because you couldn’t…
make yourself fall in love with this woman on command?”
Kedean’s glower probably would have killed if such things were possible.
“You know, I think that might be among the stupidest things I’ve heard in a long…long time,” Baisyl remarked, undeterred, “…and,” he added as an afterthought, “…if you have any intention of hitting me, I’d respectfully request that you do it now while I’m halfway prepared.”
“If—what?” Kedean’s anger bubbled under, melting with aghast confusion. “I’m not going to
hit y-”
“And why not, precisely?” Baisyl quipped back before he finished. “I’ve more or less been blatantly asking for it since I stepped out here, I’m fairly certain you can take any hit I’m capable of dishing out, and I haven’t been in a decent fight since…well, since I last fought you, come to think of it…or don’t you fight
men either?”
“You…want me…to fight you,” Kedean repeated, his anger a shadow now in the face of disbelief, but he stepped out even as he said it, approaching Baisyl. The rain soaked his clothes in seconds. Baisyl said nothing, meeting his stare. “You really are insane.”
“I’m…tempted to say you’ve come to that conclusion before.”
Kedean gave up. Sliding into a fighting stance, he growled, “You better duck…”
And Baisyl needn’t be told twice.
Under ideal circumstances, fighting was merely a step up from practice routines: an emotionless, adaptable set of motions that changed to anticipate and react to the actions of one’s opponent. The ease with which Baisyl shattered those rules—dragging Kedean’s emotions to the forefront no matter how he protested and delving under his skin like he belonged there—unnerved Kedean like little else, and this case was no different.
Kedean meant to fight Baisyl like he fought his brother: patiently, carefully, and methodically, taking the time to test his boundaries and uncover his weaknesses without exploiting them. Instead, he found himself fighting him like he fought no one else. Not without reservations, but closer to it than he felt comfortable doing, ever set off-balance by Baisyl’s efforts to push him into holding less back.
Evidently, Baisyl wasn’t so versed in hand to hand combat as he was with weapons, making him more defensive and keener to deflect and retreat than he had been on the ship’s deck, but he was a woman then and a man now, and, more accustomed to his female body, Kedean found himself constantly surprised by Baisyl’s strength. He made full use of his greater reach as well, fighting with much the same tight, disciplined style he showed with his kattas, simply without the extra bit of wood, and soon, they fell into an unspoken rhythm.
Bit by bit, the reasons behind the tangled pulse of emotions in Kedean’s gut faded, as well as the muddy grass at their feet and the building behind them and the tunnels beneath. Eventually, only the pricks of cool rain, the step and go of their makeshift martial dance, and the sleek slip and slide and strike and catch of Baisyl’s skin—wrists, arms, fingers, and palms—against his own, were left. As Kedean’s body grew ever more comfortable with Baisyl’s patterns and other concerns drifted out of focus, his freed up attention started taking in finer details of another sort:
Black tendrils of soaked hair where it clung to Baisyl’s forehead and neck, stark as ink on his fair skin and just as wet. The vivid splash of color that exertion painted on his cheeks and the darker, deeper tint that the chill of the rain gave to his lips. Even the fierce, concentrated glint that his eyes held as they darted about, taking in each new movement and cataloguing it just in time to react—at least, until they caught Kedean looking. Then, the corner of his mouth curling up smug as a tomcat, Baisyl
winked at him, and Kedean immediately decided that that, at the very least, earned him a lesson in humility.
Seconds later, Baisyl’s back hit the wet grass.
Unfortunately, thanks to some combination of an unexpected twist and catch on Baisyl’s part and an uncooperative patch of mud to displace Kedean’s footing, his own knees followed suit a half-second after that, sinking into the turf on either side of Baisyl’s hips. Acting on instinct, he made the most of it, swinging his hands around to capture—after a startled, futile struggle on Baisyl’s part—his charge’s wrists and manually wrestling them behind the man’s back. There, with their chests together and faces close enough that Kedean
felt the heat of Baisyl’s huff on his lips when he made it, they arrived at a standstill.
“…so…” Baisyl said after an elongated pause, “…I take this to mean you’d like to peacefully negotiate your surrender?”
Kedean adjusted them, just enough to put a bit of space between their chests without relinquishing control of Baisyl’s arms, and he took a moment to scan his eyes over his charge’s trapped figure once more before repeating, “
My surrender?”
“Mm.” Baisyl gave a confirmatory nod.
Carefully, with his eyes on Baisyl’s face, Kedean started to shift his grip, turning the man’s locked wrists gradually more and more until-
“Ah!” Baisyl’s body arched sharply as he cried out, teeth gritting and a tumble of swears falling forth. “Gods, alright, you win! I forfeit…” He groaned as Kedean let up, going lax under him and sinking into the grass. “Now, you’ve…successfully asserted your dominance, so…get…” He pushed ineffectually at Kedean’s chest, “…off. You’re…” As he trailed off, Kedean eyed him, waiting.
“I’m what?”
Baisyl pursed his lips, a cover up for something else entirely as he diverted his gaze. “You’re getting…mud in my hair,” he sulked, and a short, chopped laugh escaped Kedean before he could stifle it. Unable to resist, he shifted his weight, freeing up an arm and pressing a thumb into the dirt. Then, much to Baisyl’s chagrin and befuddlement, he drew a quick brown stripe across his bare cheek.
“There,” Kedean said, countering Baisyl’s startled, pink-cheeked glower with a look of peaceful satisfaction. “The mud looks good on you.”
Baisyl opened his mouth, but moments before whatever he intended to say made it out, his eyes flicked—quickly, but not so quickly as to escape Kedean’s notice—to Kedean’s lips, and Baisyl shut them a second later with a deflated groan. “If-”
A soft grunt replaced the end of that sentence, and Kedean savored the feel of Baisyl’s shiver as cool, rain-splattered lips parted under his kiss.
A/N: Mmm...yup. K: "You...want me to fight you." B: "I'm pissed, you're pissed; why the hell not?" And then mud wrestling in the grass and...wet make-up kisses. I see nothing wrong with this picture. At all. HOPEfully it read as smoothly as it looked in my head, because...I know abrupt emotional transitions like that can come off a lot clunkier on paper if not handled right, but...I tried.
Oh, and sex next chapter, yes. There was almost sex this chapter, actually, but then it got just a little too long and it's been a while since I updated so I figured you guys wouldn't mind having this to tide you over with my promise that real porn is finally on its way. At least this chapter answered a lot of personal plot questions, yes? (Such as who Natara actually is - asked waaay back in chapter ten - and why Kedean feels he doesn't 'deserve' to have a deeper relationship with Baisyl [he's pretty much convinced at this point that he's incapable of falling in love with anyone and that it would therefore be unfair].)
Now, to (finally!) answer some of
Althydia's questions! I've been meaning to do this for some time, but keep forgetting when it comes time to post. ANYWAY...
First: yes, Baisyl's mother would be able to locate him pretty quickly (she probably actually knows where he is even now), but there's more going on there than what she can 'rescue' him from. She's a protective mother when it comes to other people hurting her children, but a lot of his troubles are actually directly related to her (but HOW...I cannot tell you yet because that will be revealed later on...=]). Second (I've been meaning to say this for a looong while), you can breathe easy when it comes to worrying about Zyric and Rhyan's lives...for at least a while. I can't promise they'll be safe forever, but we have a LOT of ground to cover before either of them are in any real danger (especially as far as the prophecy is concerned) so you don't have to fret about me killing them off in the next few chapters or anything like that.
Finally, I wanted to mention to everyone that commented on this that I'm very, very happy to hear that you feel about the same way about Kedean/fem!Baisyl as I do. I promise it won't dominate the story, but I was very relieved that you won't be objecting to it in the parts when it comes around. :)
I also apologize ahead of time because sex tends to take me forever to write. Just sayin'.
