Distant tales of the Dichotomy

The balcony was on the third floor, and it was not so much built as persuaded.

Veyra led him to it by a back stair, past the kitchen and the linen cupboard and a door marked in chalk NOT A DOOR, and out through a pair of crooked shutters into the night. The planks creaked once under their weight and then settled, with the air of a thing that had held far worse. A rail of twisted iron ran along the edge. Below it, the Cinder Walk wound away between the old smelting houses, dark and silent, with a single lantern burning at the far corner. Behind them, through the wall, the party roared on, muffled and golden, like a fire in another room.

Neither of them spoke.

The air was cold and clean and smelled faintly of coal smoke and frost. Above the sloping rooftops of the Hearthmoot, the sky stood open, wider than Fel had seen it since the clouds. He had forgotten how much sky there could be. The mountain walls fell away on either side, and in the gap between them, three moons hung in the dark.

There was the great one, pale silver and heavy as a coin, with grey seas drawn across its face. There was the middle one, a clear cold green that seemed to float a little nearer, and the smallest, a coppery little thing, bright as a pin, riding low and fast near the horizon. Their lights fell together on the roofs below and turned the whole sleeping city to something silver and green and strange, as though the Hearthmoot had been dipped in glass.

Veyra went to the rail and rested her forearms on it. After a moment, Fel did the same. Then, because the planks were cold and the old boards had a convenient bench beneath the window, they sat. They sat close, with their shoulders an inch apart, looking up.

He did not know how long it was. A minute. Ten. A bell rang somewhere far below, a single slow note, and faded. The lights of the lanterns went on and on down the terraces, one after another, until they blurred into the dark. He had never felt so quiet in his life. It was not an empty quiet. It was the quiet of a held breath, a thing waiting to be said, and he found that he did not mind waiting.

“Are you having fun?” said Veyra at last.

Her voice was very soft.

“Yes,” he said. And then, because it was true, and because he could not tell her anything else tonight: “Yes. A lot. It’s the best birthday I’ve ever had.”

“That is not a high bar, I think.”

“It’s not a bar at all. Historia gave me a date, and I’ve never done anything with it.” He turned the empty mug of water in his hands. “I think I’d have been happy with a cake and one candle. This is…” He lifted a hand toward the wall, the music, the whole warm roaring house. “This is too much. In a good way.”

“Good.”

“Although,” he said, after a moment, “I should tell you something.”

“Mm?”

“I don’t really like drinking.” It came out in a rush. “The cider. All of it. I took two sips to be polite, and I didn’t want any more, and I felt stupid holding it all night. Everybody was so happy, and I thought, if I say it, I’ll spoil it.”

Veyra turned her head.

She looked at him for a long moment, her violet eyes catching the green moon, and then, to his astonishment, she began to smile. It started at one corner of her mouth and spread slowly outward, the way light spreads over water.

“I noticed,” she said. “I took the cup from you, remember?”

“I thought you were being kind.”

“I was being kind. I was also being selfish.” She leaned back against the wall. “I do not drink either.”

“You don’t?”

“Not once. Not a drop.” She said it lightly, but there was something under the lightness, something old and careful. “There is a feeling I do not like. When the edges go soft. When the world stops quite holding still.” She looked down at her hands. “I have had a great many reasons, in my life, to want to know exactly where I am at all times. So I have kept my head.”

“I get that,” Fel said slowly. “I think I get that.”

“I thought you might.”

“So you took the water for yourself, too.”

“I have been holding the same cup of water since the cake.” She lifted it, and showed him, and the two of them looked at it, and then at each other, and then they both started laughing at once, quietly, helplessly, like two thieves. It went on for a while. When it faded, there was something warmer in the air than before, a small steady glow, a thing shared between two people who had each, in a roomful of happy strangers, been secretly doing the same thing.

“It is good,” said Veyra, “not to be the only one.”

“It is,” Fel said.

The party swelled behind the wall and faded. A hundred feet below, a cat crossed the Cinder Walk and vanished. The copper moon slipped a little lower. Fel set down his cup. His arm ached where he had fought the smith, the deep clean ache of a day well spent, and the cold wind off the mountain felt wonderful on his face.

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“I woke up so afraid,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“I really thought…” He stopped, and began again. “When I found the rooms empty, I thought it had happened again. That I’d gone to sleep, and when I woke, everyone would be gone. Like Veilrest.”

“It was my idea,” said Veyra. “The party. I am sorry. I did not think.”

“No. Don’t be. It was…” He shook his head. “It was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. I only wanted you to know. That’s what I’m afraid of. Not the king, not the forge. Just that.”

She did not say anything. After a moment, her hand moved on the plank between them, and her little finger came to rest against his. It lay there, light as a leaf. Neither of them looked at it.

“I will not go anywhere,” she said.

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.” He breathed in. “That’s the part that helps.”

They sat in the silence a little longer. Then Veyra drew her knees up, wrapped her arms around them, and spoke in a different voice, a lower one, looking out over the roofs.

“I keep thinking about the house today.”

“The Lantern House?”

“The children.” She rested her chin on her knees. “Wren, in particular. When she held the doll up to the light. When she asked whether Pim was afraid.” Her voice caught, very slightly. “I did not tell you. I was not sure how. But the first time I saw her sitting in the wagon, with her hair stuck out and her little frown, I thought…”

She stopped.

“I saw Pim,” she said. “In all of them. In Wren’s stubbornness. In the way Brek tries to stand like a soldier. Even the twins, with their lists. They were all so small, and so angry at the world, and so sure that if they only held on hard enough, nothing could take them.” She drew a breath. “I kept looking at them and seeing her face. I could not stop.”

“I saw it too,” said Fel.

“Did you?”

“Every day.” His throat was tight. “I think that’s why I couldn’t just leave them in Dunwick’s cage. It wasn’t a plan. I couldn’t leave them any more than I could have left her.”

“I know.” Her eyes were bright now, and wet, and shining in the moonlight like polished glass. She wiped them with the heel of her hand, impatiently, the way a child would. “I wanted you to know that I am glad. That we did it. That whatever happens at the forge, at the end, we did one thing today that was right.”

“We did,” he said. “Pim would have liked it.”

“She would have bossed them all around.”

“Constantly.”

“And thrown a spoon at Brek.”

“At least once.” He was smiling now, though his own eyes stung. “Right at the back of the head.”

She laughed, a small wet laugh, and shook her head. Then she went still. Her hand, which had been resting against his, tightened very slightly.

“Fel,” she said. “May I tell you a thing I have never told anyone?”

“Of course.”

“When I have a daughter,” said Veyra, “someday, I do not know when, if I am lucky, and if there is anything left of the world by then…” She swallowed. “I am going to name her Pim.”

The wind stopped.

It was a strange thing. It seemed to Fel that the whole night paused, all at once, to listen. The mountain, the roofs, the three moons hung in the dark above them, even the music from the room behind. Nothing moved. He could hear his own heartbeat, steady and enormous in his ears.

“In her honor,” Veyra said, almost in a whisper. “So that the name goes on. So that somewhere, in some small house, there is a little girl called Pim who is loved very much, and who never has to be brave unless she wants to.”

He could not speak.

He tried. He opened his mouth, and found nothing, and closed it again. When it finally came, his voice was rough and quiet, hardly more than a breath.

“She’ll be so beautiful,” he said.

“Who?”

“Your daughter.” He swallowed. “She’ll look just like you. She’ll have your eyes, and she’ll be stubborn and fierce and impossible, and she’ll be exactly as beautiful as her mother.” He turned to look at her. The moonlight lay along her cheek and her braid and the curve of her horn, silver on green, and he found he could not look away. “Pim will be more honored than anyone can say. And her father…”

“Yes?” said Veyra. She had stopped breathing, he thought.

“Her father will be extremely proud,” Fel said. “He’ll have the most beautiful of daughters. And the most beautiful wife.”

For a long time she said nothing.

Her lips parted. Her eyes widened, then softened, and then something moved behind them, something quiet and enormous, like a lantern being lit in a distant window. She did not look away. She did not blush, or laugh, or turn her face. She only looked at him, steadily, with the three moons burning in her eyes, and slowly, very slowly, she began to smile.

It was not a smile he had seen before. It was warm and a little shy and entirely unguarded, as though a door had opened somewhere inside her and she had decided, for once, to stand in the doorway and not close it.

She leaned toward him.

He did not move. He was not sure he could. The world had narrowed to a space no wider than a hand: the cold air, the scent of woodsmoke and rain in her hair, the silver edge of the moon along her cheek. Her hand came up, light as a bird, and rested against his face. And then she closed her eyes, and kissed him.

It was brief. It was soft. It was the gentlest thing that had ever happened to him, a warm quiet pressure that lasted no longer than a breath, and it went through him like a bell struck in a great dark hall, ringing out and out and out. The stars seemed to lean closer. Somewhere far below, the Hearthmoot slept on beneath its lanterns. He did not hear it. He heard only the sound of his own heart, and hers, and the soft rushing hush of the wind coming back.

She drew away.

Her face was a hand’s width from his. Her eyes were still half closed, and her cheeks were bright, and she was smiling, with a terrible, tender, trembling joy. For a moment, neither of them said a word.

Then Veyra rose.

She smoothed her sleeves, a little unsteadily, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her horn. She took one step toward the shutters, and stopped, and glanced back over her shoulder, with the moonlight in her hair and a smile that she was plainly not trying to hide.

“He sure is,” she said.

And she was gone, through the shutters and down the crooked stair, her footsteps light and quick on the old boards, until they faded into the music below.

Fel sat very still.

The wind had come back. It stirred the edge of his collar. Far below, the single lantern at the corner of the Cinder Walk flickered and burned on. Above him, the three moons rode on across the dark, silver and green and copper, serene and enormous and entirely unconcerned.

He sure is.

He turned it over once, slowly, as he might have turned a coin. He turned it again. And on the third time, the meaning of it arrived, all at once, like a door swinging open on bright morning, and his whole face went hot, and he put both hands over it and fell back against the wall.

“Oh,” said Fel, to nobody. “Oh, no.”

From somewhere inside, muffled by the wall, came the sound of a bellows wheezing in what could only be called delight.

He stayed on the balcony a long time after that. He did not want to go in. He sat in the cold with his hand lifted slowly to his mouth, and the ring in his palm burned warm and steady, and the music went on without him, and he looked up at the three moons, and for the first time since the clouds, he did not feel like a boy who had fallen.

He felt like a boy who had landed.