Diverus faced each other like mirror images, almost identical in stance, in shape. But, she thought, nothing like the coin. It couldn’t be that obvious and simple—the coin wasn’t pointing the way to them. In any case, they had tried to show Diverus the Pons Asinorum and failed. They wanted to help but had admitted that they didn’t know how. They knew only the stories that everyone else had heard. Yet viewed another way, perhaps they hadn’t failed at all—not at their true task, which had been hidden even from them.
She sprang up the steps and then led the way to Diverus’s room. The two men placed him upon his pallet. Leodora held up the lamp and showed them the coin. “Have you ever seen this?” she asked. They shook their heads with looks of apology. “It’s all right, don’t apologize. Now you go on, I’ll attend to him.”
Bois crossed his arms over his chest and looked farcically affectionate.
“You’re wrong,” she insisted. “It’s nothing like that.”
Glaise rolled his eyes as if to say he didn’t believe her, either, and followed Bois out.
“I’m simply going to wait here,” she said to no one.
She stood over him, the lamp held waist-high. Her hand holding the coin shadowed his face, and she lowered it. He winced as if the brighter light penetrated his sleep, but she didn’t move to shield him again. His black hair was tousled and matted, his face shiny with sweat. Drink made him look feverish. Shortly, he began to snore.
She knelt to brush back his hair, and her hand touched his cheek. He needed to shave soon, or else grow out the hair on his jaw and chin. He couldn’t remain in this median state between boy and man anymore. The paidika had cultivated the child in him, but that life was behind him forever. No one owned him any longer. His shirt, unlaced, showed his naked breastbone, the hollow of his belly almost to his navel, the rhythm of his breathing. He was, she thought, very like the puppet of the little thief who stole the Druid’s Egg and defeated the wizard. And won the princess.
A sharpness cut within her, and her nostrils flared. She knew what that tender sensation meant. Her heart suddenly had an edge. Each beat tore it loose. Each scored her. She put her hand to her throat. It slid down and grasped the pendant. Where was the counseling for this?
She could not remain here beside him or the pain would swell until it drove her to action. Looking at him in that moment, all she wanted was to lie beside him, with him.
She got up and backed away from her desire.
At the doorway, she pressed to the wall. Would there ever be a time when they could express such feelings, either of them? What sort of troupe would they be, then? She didn’t know, only knew that now wasn’t that time. Both of them were confused. Confusion had driven Diverus to drink. If only he had said . . . but the kiss had said it, hadn’t it? He’d lost his words but had still expressed what he felt.
Realizing that, she suddenly understood him better. He was afraid of rejection, afraid that his were the only feelings in play, and so to avoid that pain he’d drowned his sensibility with drink. “Oh, Diverus,” she whispered. He didn’t stir. She fled the room.
In the hall she stood against the wall awhile, eyes closed, hand over the sleeping pendant. In all the time she had lived on Bouyan, she’d never felt anything like this for Tastion, although he’d wanted her to, and maybe he had felt thus himself.
Finally she slid down into a sitting position with her heels tucked close. The lamp rattled against the floor as she set it down, and she stared at it as if unable to recall what it was doing there. What she was doing there.
She must have dozed, because she came awake at the sound of a floorboard creaking in front of her, opened her eyes to see two legs that sprang past even as she raised her head. It was Diverus running.
“Wait!” she called and hobbled after him. Her left leg had fallen asleep and she pounded on her thigh to make the blood surge as she half stumbled down the stairs behind him. “Diverus!” she yelled, fearing as she did that she would awaken the whole of the Terrestre and the street outside as well; but when