Page 59 of Something Human

“That’s why you came up here so quickly after getting our tribute.”

“No, I came up here so quickly because I wanted to see where you lived—because my heart has been broken since last autumn, and I’ve never felt like this before, so bereft for so long, and I haven’t been able to tell anyone for fear it would get back to your people and dishonour your name.” He paused, drew a breath. “I wanted to come up here and remember you. If I’d known you were alive, I’d have come quicker.”

“I’m not sure that’s actually possible—given the terrain.”

Adares frowned at him. “Do you have no poetry in your soul at all?”

“I do. I do. It is all about honour and horses.”

“And none of them have—I don’t know—wings made of love?”

“No, they don’t.”

“Tch.”

It was such a Luth noise to make. Rus flashed him a delighted look. Adares stood there on the edge of the mountain meadow, his cloak thrown back from one shoulder, moonlight silvering the planes of his face. He had said, “I've never felt like this before,” and “wings made of love,” and though Rus had known, of course he had known, still it meant something to hear it. It meant so much. Rus moved toward him, caught himself, raked his eyes over the dark landscape.

“No one sees us here but the horses and your men. Do you … ” He couldn’t finish the sentence, felt himself rather breathless.

Adares reached for him, one hand tangling in his hair, the other catching his waist, and drew him in and kissed him, not gently as that first time in the temple doorway, but with a hunger that told its own story about how the last seven months had been for him. It must have been quite a sight for the watching Phemians.

Rus had thought he was tired, but at the touch of Adares’s hands and lips he went up like a lightning-struck tree, body and soul, and it was Adares who broke the kiss, turned it into a tight, possessive embrace. And after all, there were watchers.

“You’re alive. You’re alive.”

“Yes, I have been the whole time. Ah, Adares. I am sorry I made you suffer.”

“You’ve done nothing that you need be sorry for, Rus. Well, not as far as I know. You were willing to die, but you didn’t have to. Were you badly hurt?”

“No, but I was a long time recovering. I was very … unhappy.”

“Yeah.”

They stood a moment longer in each other’s arms, then Adares stepped back a little, keeping one arm around Rus, and beckoned to the other Phemians. They had been pretending they weren’t watching, so it took them a moment to shuffle sheepishly forward. Their eyes were wide.

“I believe you can guess who this is,” Adares said.

“I did guess!” Kagieros was indignant. “He’s the Luth who saved your life after the battle! I knew it!”

“Yes, but you were going to talk about it in Gunthanaruth’s hall, where there were men who understand Pseuchaian perfectly well. And you must not breathe a word of it. We are allies of the Luth now, but we were their enemies at the time, and the siege would have gone very differently if Rus had taken me prisoner when he had the chance. I mean”—he shifted his arm around Rus, drawing him a little closer—“other than metaphorically, of course.”

It was like being in another world. The Phemians laughed and groaned and grinned at Rus, and then the older, warrior-looking man turned grave again and shook Rus’s hand—and all of this while Adares had his arm around him, and after they had seen Adares kiss him.

Then Adares said, “I don’t think I’m going to come back to the hall with you lot,” and the Phemians all laughed again and said no, of course he wasn’t.

“We’ll make your excuses for you, lord archon,” said Kagieros.

“Thank you, Kagieros,” said Adares, “and I hope you won’t have to, but if you do, you’ll remember, won’t you, that these people have a fantastically strict taboo against this sort of thing?” He gestured between himself and Rus. “This is strictly illicit?”

“Oh,” said Kagieros, eyes widening again. “Right. Of course. Gosh.” And he gave Rus a parting up-and-down look of surprised respect.

CHAPTER XX

THEY STOOD FOR a few moments watching the other Phemians return up the hill and around the side of the paddock. Then they turned together, without speaking, and began to walk further down into the valley. Adares’s hand found Rus’s, and their fingers slid together.

The hillside was steep here, and it was slow going; they picked their way carefully in the moonlight. Adares lost his footing a couple of times, and Rus caught him, and they both laughed.

Finally they stopped, close to the floor of the narrow valley, the fences and buildings of the village lost to sight above them, hidden by the incline of the hill, though they were not really so far away. A stream filled the bottom of the valley, noisy with winter run-off, and the opposite slope was bare and rocky. Adares looked up. Rus followed his gaze. Only a few stars were visible above them in a patch of dark sky. Gaunt, grey, snow-streaked peaks blocked all the rest.