Page 38 of The Second Marriage

The worst of his black emotions had ebbed. He wouldn’t actually abandon the expedition and return to Merek. That wasn’t the action of a grown man; that wasn’t what Jaysha would do. He would stay with Taral and try to help Taral in his mission in whatever way he could. He would close his heart and protect himself from hurt. That was what a man would do.

CHAPTER17

They departed Barun in the morning. Jaysha came with them, as Sejun had known, with a bleak sense of inevitability, that he would. He rode at the head of the ever-expanding procession, and Taral fussed around with his horse’s halter until by the time they mounted they found themselves far at the rear. That was how it would be, then: Taral would keep his distance and pretend not to notice Jaysha at all, and meanwhile shout his true feelings through the bond all the time, so that Sejun had no hope of ignoring them.

That day they followed the road over the pass into Ripuk and spent the night at a farmstead in the valley, camped in the meadow outside the white house, bedded down in the long grass like deer. The night was cool, and Sejun was grateful to curl up with Taral beneath their blankets and put his cold toes on Taral’s shins to make him whimper. By mid-morning they arrived at Ripuk fortress, where Queen Feba waited for them on the road and joined them without ceremony, all her people and those from other kingdoms who had come to Ripuk already: a vast company larger than Sejun had imagined, easily two hundred people. Nightfall found them at the foot of the pass that led out of Ripuk and into the wild mountains where no roads passed. With good weather, they would cross into Chedi in a handful of days.

Past the border, the landscape changed. Although the forests around Tadasho had always seemed untouched, Sejun could see now, by comparison, how they were marked by human activity. Even on the high slopes of the ridges that divided one kingdom from another, people ventured to cut down trees for construction, gather firewood, herd livestock, and forage for mushrooms and fiddleheads.

Beyond Ripuk’s borders, no one traveled save for animals and the few adventurous merchants who made the journey from the coast. The trees were larger and the underbrush denser. The slopes were steeper, and there were no broad river valleys as there were to the south. The convoy’s progress slowed as they rode along the course of a river through the green, misty peaks. The track crossed the river again and again as they traveled northwest, following the narrow bank as it shifted from one side of the river to the other. At times the path abandoned the valley and climbed into the hills to course along the ridge for a while before descending again.

“I can see why no one lives here,” Taral said as they stopped to water the horses before fording the shallows. “Where would you even build a house? It would slide directly down the mountainside and fall into the river.”

“You would have to build a nest in the trees, like a bird,” Sejun said.

Taral smiled. “That sounds more pleasant than sleeping on the slopes, as I imagine we’re going to have to do. We’ll wake in the mornings with all the blood in our bodies pooled in our feet.”

Sejun slapped at a biting fly that had landed on his neck. “I suppose that’s true.”

Taral watched him for a moment, his smile fading. Sejun braced himself for Taral to make some inquiry, but Taral only patted his horse’s neck and looked away.

The days passed. The weather was fair and fine, and on the fourth day after they left Ripuk they came to the high escarpment that divided the mountains from the lower hills of Chedi, and made their way downward along a path cut by a stream that became a river as they went. At the foot of the escarpment Sejun looked back at the mountains behind him. He had never thought of leaving Tadasho, and here he was in an entirely different country.

Chedi was noticeably greener, wetter, and more populated than the Mountain Kingdoms. The first town they came to was a farming village, and the people living on the outskirts came out of their square houses to stare and point at the horses going by. Although Sejun spoke Chedai decently well, as any educated person did, his ears weren’t sharp enough to catch what was said. He could read their facial expressions well enough, though, and they were bewildered by this sudden appearance of a huge host of mountain people. Sejun wondered what they had heard of the war and its end.

The convoy slowed and stopped. Far ahead, Sejun saw Feba dismount and speak to a few people who had come out from the village. The afternoon sun warmed his face and hands. Birds flew and called in the trees, some familiar from home and others entirely new. Sejun watched the gathered Chedai with interest. Merchants from Chedi came to Merek at times, so these people’s manner of dress and arranging their hair wasn’t entirely unfamiliar to him, but they were still foreign enough to pique his curiosity. Some of the women wore red veils that covered their faces entirely, with only narrow mesh screens in front of their eyes to let them see.

The horses snorted and flicked their tails. After some interminable amount of time, the caravan began to move again, and Sejun gladly took up the reins and followed Taral’s horse through the small village and onto the road beyond, heading northwest toward the heart of the country.

They rode until sunset, then stopped and made camp for the night in a glade alongside the road. Sejun was glad to have some flat land to sleep on, and fresh fish to eat that some of the steaders from Tadasho caught in the river. He and Taral sat beside their small campfire as the moons rose and the direction of the wind changed to blow a cool breeze off the water. Peace covered Sejun’s heart like a blanket, warming him and weighing him down.

“Sejun,” Taral said, and Sejun looked away from his contemplation of the trees waving in the night wind. Firelight lit the planes of Taral’s face, making him look like an ancient, primitive god from a spectacle. “I wish you would tell me what’s troubling you.”

Sejun glanced around. The glade was full of fellow travelers, but everyone was talking with their own companions or focused on eating, or in some cases already lying down to sleep. Still, this was a conversation he wanted privacy for, and there wasn’t much to be found here.

Taral shifted closer, so that he was sitting right at Sejun’s side with their knees pressed together. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said quietly.

They walked along the river until the noise of the camp faded behind them. The night air was cool and the sky was scattered with the same familiar stars he saw in Tadasho, only shifted slightly against the horizon. Taral stopped by a tree with branches that draped toward the water and turned to face Sejun.

“It’s Jaysha, isn’t it,” he said.

Sejun cringed. “Taral—”

“I told you I wouldn’t behave inappropriately. And I haven’t. I haven’t spoken to him once. And I don’t intend to. But you’re still—” Taral gestured toward Sejun with the same sharp frustration Sejun could feel through the bond. “Still upset with me, it seems, for daring to have had a life before I met you.”

This conversation was not taking the direction Sejun had thought it would. He folded his arms across his chest in a defensive posture. “You’ll have to forgive me. It’s a challenge to set aside my inconvenient emotions when all you can think of is how much you still love Jaysha and wish you had managed to marry him instead of me.”

Taral’s irritation evaporated, replaced by raw shock. “Excuse me?”

“Not to mention how you lied to me about all of it for weeks. Do you think I’m blind to your feelings as you pretend to be to mine? I wish I could be.” Sejun rubbed at his eyes. “I know you’ll behave honorably. That isn’t my concern.”

“As blind to my—Sejun!” Taral seized at Sejun’s arm. “How can you think your feelings are of no concern to me? I’ve thought of nothing else in these past days.”

“But you don’t—you ignore me, sometimes, when I feel that I’m raw as a seeping wound, and you carry on with our conversation as though nothing is out of the ordinary. I don’t know if you’re trying to be respectful or you simply don’t care, but—”

“Stop.” Taral’s hand gripped Sejun’s wrist, his fingers digging into the bones. “Stop there. What misunderstanding is afoot? I know of your feelings only what you tell me, or what I can guess from your face, which is less open to me than it once was.”

Sejun exhaled a shaky breath. He had suspected as much. Still, he was relieved to hear Taral state outright that he couldn’t read Sejun’s emotions the way Sejun could read his, like words off the page of a favorite book. It wasn’t that Taral didn’t care.