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I slipped into Thara’s bedroom, keenly aware of the presence of that handsome guardsman as I did so. What would the Captain think, seeing a man slip into the Othala’s chamber at night like this? I didn’t mind if the Captain thought I was here for a tryst, but Thara was an intensely private man, and doubtless would not feel equally unmoved by the prospect of his private associations being known in such a way. But there was nothing for it; he would neglect himself until the end of time if no one intervened.
"Art thou well?" I asked the dark lump I could just about see in the bed via the light filtering in from underneath the door.
"I... I don't know," Thara said.
From him, this was as extreme a declaration of distress as one could imagine. "What has happened?" I asked, seating myself on the edge of the mattress. It rolled his body down against my hip. The contact felt good.
"Nothing important," Thara answered, and that was entirely typical of him.
"I beg to differ," I told him tartly. Something had clearly happened, maybe even a second assassination attempt. But I softened my tone, reminding myself to whom I was speaking, and continued, "Whatever this is, it is important. Wilt thou tell me?"
There was a small pause, in which I as good as heard him calculating how little he could get away with telling me.
"Osmer Rohethar had questions about the revethavar," he admitted finally.
Ah. Well, not so bad as another would-be murderer, but certainly distressing enough.
"And thou didst answer them?" I said.
"They were not harmful questions," he said irritably. Gods, but he was a ridiculous man.
"And yet thou seemst harmed," I said, keeping my voice soft and low. I wanted to reassure rather than embarrass him, but they might be one and the same as far as he was concerned.
"Folly," Thara snapped, and the bed jostled and shifted as he rolled over onto his back. This meant that now his skinny thigh and hip were jammed against my side and buttock. I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him glaring up at me.
I smiled a little, absurdly fond of him, though he couldn’t see it. "Thara," I said. The fondness was perfectly clear in my voice.
"It's destroyed," Thara said, and his voice cracked into a hoarse whisper on the second half of ‘destroyed.’ I was getting through to him! Miracle of miracles.
"It nearly destroyed thee," I countered. As always, Thara’s reflexive resistance to my tenderness only inflamed me to push harder. "I don't think there's anything wrong with not wanting to talk about it just to satisfy Osmer Rohethar's curiosity."
"It wasn't like that," Thara said, because of course he did. "He didn't know."
I had once spent a day making the acquaintance of a moggy that slunk around the side-streets near my apartment, creeping along on its belly and clearly afraid people. Likely someone had thrown stones at it. I had brought it food, and watched it be terrified of me for some time, before finally holding my hand out. It had taken a full fifteen minutes of the cat crawling towards me, and then hissing, and then running away, and then creeping towards me again and hissing again before it rubbed its face briefly upon my hand and allowed itself to be pet. Then it had run away and hissed at me again.
The moggy had no idea I thought of it so often these days. But with the advent of Thara into my life, I found I could think of little else. It was that same desperation for care combined with self-protective outrage that anyone should dare to try.
"No, but that still doesn't mean that thou hast to answer his questions,” I told him. It was the verbal equivalent of holding out my hand while he hissed at me.
"I could hardly run shrieking from the room," he grumped.
"Is that what thou didst want to do?"
I had caught him. He said nothing. But I decided to let him back away from what clearly felt like too much to him.
"I do not wish to harangue thee," I said in a conciliatory way. "I came only to ask if thou wouldst dine with me—it's an off-night for the Opera."
"I am not terribly hungry," he said, sitting up. This meant his shoulder pressed to mine and he was half-leaning against me, because of what my greater weight did to the mattress.
I understood that. Certainly when I was distressed I lost my appetite too. But with Thara, distress was a near-daily occurrence, and I felt that if one allowed distress that frequent to be an excuse not to eat... well it was no wonder that he was so thin and haggard.
"That does not mean that thou shouldst fast,” I said. “Come to the Torivontaram, and my mother will make thee brev."
"What is brev?"
I told him, then added, “It's what she used to make for me when I was sick.” I thought again of the way that feral moggy had stared at me while eating the food I brought it, both needful and afraid. “I still find it comforting."
But I felt Thara stiffen against me as I said this, leaning away with his weight on his distant arm.
"What dost thou want from me?" he demanded suddenly, and he sounded angry now.
"I beg thy pardon?" I could hear the defensiveness in my tone, but I could not help it—when someone grew angry with me, I grew angry in return. A small voice in my mind told me this was not a good tone to take with him, but—
"This!" he said with some sort of sharp gesture of his arm. I felt rather than saw him move because of where his knee leaned against my ribs. "Thou com'st and worriest about whether I eat, thou givest me a place to hide, thou brokest into Osmin Temin's school with me! And I do not know what thou wantst."
I was surprised he would mention our extralegal exploits so carelessly with the Captain in the other room. I was surprised he would mention any of this in such a context—not that he was a loud speaker, his voice was so gravelly that it did not carry well. But even so I spared a thought to worry that Thara would regret his words later, not for my sake but for his own.
Mostly, though, I was so shocked that for a moment I forgot my cautious approach, and, still nettled, I admitted outright, "I thought it was obvious."
"Art thou marnis?" he demanded.
"No," I said. "I enjoy sex with women, too. But, if thy true inquiry is whether I desire thee, then yes, I do."
Silence fell. I wondered if, despite how obvious I had been about it, he had still managed to doubt his own appeal so completely that he had not believed I meant anything by my attentions. That would be of a piece with his general character. He thought so little of himself that he could not imagine anyone else thinking better of him.
"I promise I have no desire to pressure thee into anything thou dost not wish," I said into the silence, anxious now. “Despite how I may make it seem, I am a man capable of great patience in this regard. I knew, from the first moment I realized that I had formed an attachment to thee, that I would need to be patient with thee, and that thou mightst not be ready or willing for a long time, if ever.”
“Dost thou have sex with others, though?” he asked, finally.
That was not the question I had expected.
It was simple enough to answer, though. “Yes of course! People enjoy having sex with me. It gives me friends among the opera singers and the demimonde. One is always popular if one either has money, or a tolerably appealing face and a willingness to give others pleasure," I laughed. Oh, that probably sounded like bragging, didn’t it. I hadn’t meant it that way. Would he find that amusing, or offensive?
"That young woman, Hetheno?" he asked.
I was flattered to know he had been watching me so closely that he had picked up on that without me saying anything. "A faro dealer. A friend. We had an affair two years ago."
“It is over now?”
“Yes,” I answered. “She fell in love with another woman. Men have always been just dalliances for her. I'm not seeing anyone now, if that's what thou wantst to know.”
Another silence.
"Ask," I told him uneasily. He clearly had something on his mind.
The silence stretched a few seconds longer before finally he said, in a very low, vulnerable voice, "Dost thou love me?"
Ah. So that was it. He did not want a tumble with a friend, he wanted love, and thought my interest a mere fancy.
"I do love thee,” I told him, with all the feeling I could give the words. “Dost thou love me?”
“I—” he began, and then cut off.
My chest felt tight, my hands clammy as I waited in suspense. I expected to be let down—I was so different from him! But I had prepared myself for this rejection for a long time. While a refusal would be difficult, I would weather it, and I told myself that yet again.
“I do not think my love is a good thing to have,” he said finally, and I blinked at him in the darkness. “I do not think it is a thing I should wish upon a friend as dear as thee.”
“Let me decide that,” I told him firmly. “I ask thee again: dost thou love me?”
“Yes,” he breathed, sounding defeated. “I am sorry.”
“Sorry!” I crowed. I found his arm and felt my way down it to take his hand and hold it in both of mine. “Sorry indeed! Thara, may the goddesses of mercy grant me patience, thou needest not apologize for returning my feelings!”
“I think I must,” he said. “For while thee and I might both feel it, that does not mean that I am…ready.” He squeezed my hand, gripping it for a moment, before the tension went soft again and he merely allowed his hand to be held.
“Ready?” I said.
“The grief,” he answered, and I understood at once what he was about to tell me. “The grief of my first love is still so—so present. Some days, even now, it is all I can feel. It is as though the world is made of grief and I am walking through it as though I am underwater, and I am breathing it, and my lungs are clogged with it. When that is how I feel, it is difficult—perhaps impossible—to know how to love another. Thou deservest better than that.”
“Let me decide that,” I repeated.
“It is not just that,” Thara went on. “I am, still, the target of immense scrutiny by the Clenverada Mining Company, and likely to remain so for some time. It is contained, for now, I hope, but that may change. What if I have to leave Amalo because of it? And even were all that not true, I am already under guard. We could not—” He cut himself off and sputtered into silence.
“I see thou hast thought of every way this may not work,” I said. “Has thou bothered, in all thy doomsaying, to imagine ways this could work?”
“Beg pardon?” he said, sounding genuinely baffled.
“Just because a thing is difficult does not make it impossible, as thou knowst well from thy calling,” I said to him. “And to be clear, this is not me saying that I believe myself entitled to thy time or attentions, as if thou must begin some relationship with me just because we both have an interest. But I was willing to break into a murderer’s office with thee—dost thou not think I might also be willing to wait for thee, or write letters to thee, or even visit thee somewhere, if I had to?”
From the silence that followed this, it was clear that he had not considered this. Of course he had not.
“Well, then it must be my mission to demonstrate my willingness to thee,” I said. “It grieves me greatly to see thee hurt from any source, and especially from the belief that thou art not worth effort. And, to tell thee the truth, it worries me more than a little that thou findst this so unfathomable. Do thy other friends not love thee?"
"I have very few close friends," he admitted. "I suppose I don't know how the thing is done."
I couldn’t stop myself from laughing at him, just a little. "Dost wish a guidebook?"
"Thou hast no idea how much," he said with great earnestness, but I could hear that he was laughing a little now too.
For a moment we sat, just enjoying the pleasure of laughing together again after the tension of the conversation before. But without my say-so, my mind had gone back over our conversation, and I realized something had been missed.
"And thou?" I said. "What dost thou want from me?"
I heard a minute, barely-audible gulping noise, as if he had swallowed. I allowed him a moment to think, and then another, before I began to think that he might not know, or might even think he was now allowed to want.
"Dost desire sex?” I offered to him. I suspected the answer was at least ‘sometimes,’ as I had caught him admiring other men, and even admiring me, though he tried to hide it. “Thou couldst have sex with me, if thou wished."
"I don’t know," he answered, and I felt a pang of rejection which I quickly quashed with good sense, which told me that this had always been the likely response from him. One could not expect a feral cat to take easily to being picked up and cosseted. “Or, that is, I do want it, and sometimes I want it very much, but I suspect—” He sighed. “No, I know, that it would be very difficult not to remember—him, in such an act.”
“Is he the only one thou hast slept with?” I asked. I had wondered sometimes if Thara was untouched, until he had told me of his dead lover, and even then I had wondered if perhaps they had never gotten to that point, or been unable to act upon their feelings.
“No,” he answered. “There was another man before him." Two was not nearly so many as he seemed to think. "And I—well, most people seem to find it very significant, that they be given sex, and allowed access to sex, in a way that I have often found baffling. To me, I have—certainly the sex can be—very enjoyable,” he said, embarrassed by having to put voice to something he likely never discussed in relation to himself. “But to me the—the love, is much more important. I could live without sex forever, I think, if I could be certain of the love.”
"That thou hast from me and need not fear for," I told him, with great feeling. “But would it not be better to have both, if it is on offer? Why settle for less, when thou couldst have more?”
He hesitated, an unreadable shadow in the darkness. That silence pressed down upon me, full of judgemental possibilities, until finally I sagged, my grip on him loosening.
"Am I too much? I know I am…"
"Intense," he suggested, as if he had been thinking about it. That stung too, that he might find me too much. The opera was my world, and what might have originally been a characterological variance in me toward feeling things more strongly than others, had in the decades since become an entire way of life. In a way, though I no longer performed, I moved through the world as if I was always on a stage, needing my feelings to project and be heard and seen even by the back rows. It made me good at stage direction, because I was just like that, all the time, but some people needed things quiet and small and understated, and I was none of those things.
"Yes, that is a good word,” I agreed, trying to keep my feelings out of my voice. “I am intense even in my friendships, and even just in casual sex, and some people find it more than they wish for."
"I do not find thee too intense," he said, in a quiet, earnest tone. "Thy friendship warms something in me that had been cold for a very long time."
I felt warmed, too, hearing that. I squeezed his hand with both of mine.
“I am afraid,” he said, “of disappointing thee if I cannot meet thy intensity with an equal show of my own. I am—private, and often uncertain, and very unskilled. I may not know how to respond correctly, or give outward shows of regard, as thou dost, and I fear that if this moves to something other than friendship, that I will be nothing more than a series of increasing disappointments to thee, and that will end in losing the friendship altogether.”
“Dost intend to tell me thou thinkst but little of my mind, and are merely using me for sex?” I asked.
“What? No,” he said, clearly incensed at the idea.
“Dost intend to tell me that I must be less of what I am, to suit thee?”
“That would be a fool’s errand,” he said, as if this were obvious to all.
“Hah!” I crowed. “Well, dost mean to keep me in suspense, ever uncertain of thy regard, toying with my feelings as a cat would a mouse?”
“Certainly not,” he said. “Is that what thou thinkst of me? That I am capable of that?”
“No,” I said. “But that is what I fear. Not that thou art reserved, or inexperienced, or in a state of grief that is entirely understandable. What I asked are things which have happened to me before, and not just once, but a great variety of times. I have no wish to repeat them, but thou art very different from anyone else I have ever loved before, and indeed, from anyone else I have ever even known. I am willing to experience entirely new troubles with thee,” I said with a laugh, trying to make light of it, “so long as they are not the same old troubles as I have had before. One grows bored, after a time, of repeating the same thing always.”
This got a little croak of a laugh out of him. “Well, perhaps by that low standard, I may hope to excel.”
“Wonderful,” I said, dazed with contentment and relief. "But thou didst never tell me if thou desirest sex, and believe me, it has been on my mind for some time."
He snorted. "I am sorry to make thee wait. I was...cowardly, and afraid to say anything, until tonight."
"That applies to me too, just as much, for all that I was trying to make it obvious. What changed?"
"I almost died. Again. And I'm just tired, I suppose, of not knowing." He sighed. "I dislike having to ask for more patience, on top of all the time thou hast already had to wait, but... I do not feel ready to touch anyone again, yet. Not like this," he said, and found my hand and squeezed it again. "This, I like very much. But—the sex, I mean. One mayst want a thing and not be prepared to have it."
"Of course," I said. "And if I sleep with someone else, in the meantime, as I have been? Wilt upset thee?"
"No," he said. I wished I could see his face, but I suspected that not having to be witnessed in this was the only thing that had allowed him to finally speak.
"Art sure?" I asked. "I would wait, for thee."
"Why would I demand thou havest less when thou couldst have more?" he said, which was pure irony coming from him. If self-effacement had a name, its name would be Thara Celehar.
Quietly I decided I would wait. If someone particularly tempting came my way, I could discuss it with him then. But as the years passed, I found myself less desperate for it than I had been in my youth.
"A generous offer. Now come to dinner," I told him, rising from the edge of his bed and releasing his hand at last. "I will do all the talking so thou need'st not."
"Captain Olgarezh must come with us," he reminded me, likely to forestall the belief that we would be able to continue this conversation. If, indeed, the Captain had not already overheard everything that had been said. If it had been me, I would have crept over and stood with my ear pressed to the door.
Thara rose too, moving through the dark to apply his lighter to the sconce. The sight of his pale, haggard face, with the bruises still stark on his hands and neck, dragged a new pang of deep affection and worry from me.
"I do not think the Clenverada will find thee in the Torivontaram,” I told him, and hoped that it was true, “but I also do not begrudge Captain Olgarezh his dinner. And I certainly do not mind having two handsome men to dine with me instead of one."
This got a derisive snort from him, I thought mostly at the notion that Thara himself might be handsome.
“He is very lovely, isn’t he,” he admitted, in a very low murmur this time, which I almost didn’t catch.
“Thara Celehar,” I said in mock outrage. “Thou hast eyes for other men? Already?”
A moment of real panic crossed his features before he realized that I was joking.
“Nay, do not fret,” I said, and reached out to grip his shoulders with my hands. It reminded me, yet again, of how thin and small he was, underfed and overworked. “If thou likest other men, that is as naught to me. I am not so greedy as to believe I must have every scrap of thee to think that what I do have matters. Indeed, I would care not if thou slept with other men, so long as thou toldst me about it afterward. But if thou tellest me who else thou likest, we may compare tastes, and that can be amusing.”
“It does not happen often,” he admitted. “In all my life, there has been only one man before Evru, Evru himself, thou, and now—” he waved his hand at the door, and presumably at Captain Olgarezh beyond it.
“Goodness,” I said, genuinely moved. “I had no idea I had been admitted to such an exclusive club. And thou toldst me to expect little flattery from thee!”
“I did not mean—” he began to say, and then stopped, looking thoughtful. “Well. I did not intend it as empty flattery, as it is simply the truth. But if the truth pleases thee, I suppose that is a happy conclusion.”
“It is indeed,” I agreed, and guided him out of the door.