Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Ky is baking.
Ethram hesitates in the kitchen doorway, damp hair dripping down his collar, and watches as Ky shapes dark honey-brown dough into ovals with a deft, practised hand.
“How was your bath?” Ky asks, not looking up.
“Not as fine as when you stoke the fires. I can’t get the water as hot on my own.”
Ky makes a hum of a sound and focuses on his work again. He is skilful—each biscuit is exactly the same size and shape as the last.
“I didn’t know we had honey.” He drops into a chair by the kitchen table.
“We didn’t.” Ky sets another biscuit on the chipped platter that Ethram usually uses for sliced fruit. “I pruned back Mara’s almond trees. She gave me the honey.”
It takes Ethram a long moment to remember Mara is his closest neighbour, a woman in her middle years with a child in Esk and a husband gone down the dark river some years past. “Ah,” he says. “I suppose you didn’t even need a ladder.”
Ky’s laughter is soft. “I did not, no.”
“Well, all of that height is good for something after all.”
“It was also good for mending your gutters, if I recall.”
“Mm,” Ethram says, as he finds the jar of honey and steals a spoonful. It’s a rich, thick honey from last season, flavoured with the waxy, fragrant flowers from the mountain silkwood trees. “So it was. These were funeral biscuits once, did you know?”
“I did.” Ky shapes another set of biscuits. After a while he says, “And what are they now?”
“Festival food, celebration fare. They can be bought from any bakery at any time of year, though.”
“As long as they are still eaten,” he says. “That is all that matters.”
Even after Ethram eats a plate of the almond-and-honey biscuits, still warm from the hearth, the conversation lingers in his thoughts. Ky eats a single biscuit, then lies by the parlour hearth and closes his eyes.
Ethram wonders what he is remembering, if he is remembering anything at all. He doesn’t ask, though. He’s starting to fear the answers.
He wakes in the night. It is dark, that same silent, heavy darkness that always makes him tense.
He takes a measured breath and reminds himself that it is not entirely dark.
There is soft moonlight skating across the ceiling, bringing shadows from the oak trees on the street.
A shine from his robes, hanging in the open closet. And he is not alone.
“Ky,” he says, soft. It’s barely a sigh in the night.
“Yes?”
Ky does not sound sleepy. Ethram wonders if he’s been lying awake sleepless over something, too.
“Do you remember anything before the archives?”
“Before?”
“Before we met. Before what you did to me.”
There is quiet for so long, he wonders if Ky has fallen asleep after all. But then the bed shifts, Ky’s weight moving. He’s lying on his back now, Ethram guesses.
“Some things, yes. But they come from long before. Like dreams, fading away. I think I was sleeping for an age.”
Ethram swallows back dryness. “Is that so?”
“Some days I remember more than others. Some days I remember nothing at all, and all I know is that which has happened since I woke up in the streets of Esk, naked and cold and wondering how I got there.”
“Ky,” says Ethram again. Soft again, just a breath brushing against his lips. “Is there anything I can do?”
There is, and they both know it. He can figure out how to remember Ky’s damned full name and give him his history back. Even if it means losing him to the dark and the night once more. It is no less than Ethram’s duty as a historian. As a scholar.
“You might remember the artemisia seeds from the market before pests destroy all our suppers. You’ve forgotten it twice now.
” There is another shift, and Ky’s warmth is draped all along Ethram’s back.
Ky folds him under his chin and wraps an arm around him, tugging him in.
“And,” he says, low, “you might stop saying my name in such a way, if you do not wish to know what else I might do to you.”
Ky has never reached for him in bed. Ethram can’t help but tense, but nothing more comes. Just the warmth of Ky’s body, and the even rise-and-fall of his breathing against Ethram’s back. Slowly, Ethram relaxes.
It is almost summer. It’s too warm to be smothered like this. And yet Ethram has never slept better.