Chapter 15
XV.
Baró only announced his return by the offerings left on the kitchen table — more feathers, more mushrooms, two cleaned snakeskins and a strange posy of pinecones with their bottoms stripped bare, the bare cores replicating stems with the remaining top scales fanning out like rose petals.
She hated the way her treacherous heart leaped at the sight.
She despaired that her loneliness made her grateful for his return, or at least she blamed it on loneliness.
Her reason demanded that she remain hardened against him.
Her arms remembered the furred hide she had taken to curling up with at night.
She sighed at the presents as she would at naughty children, still wanted but so distressing.
Presents did not change things, but though she had not mentioned it to him, these sweet gestures resembled a Rivan courtship.
For a wandering people who carried all that they possessed with them, gifts held great significance.
Although people with multiple partners had to declare their intentions, anything given from one unwed person to another was considered, at least in the eyes of the Rivani, a gesture of non-platonic desire.
Baró provided out of a sense of obligation, not out of passion, and if he understood the significance, he might stop due to embarrassment. She would just privately enjoy it.
She requested his return, but now that he had obeyed, she hesitated on how to talk to him.
He expected her decision about leaving, after all.
His revelations changed things between them and though she did not now, with some perspective, condemn him as harshly as he had condemned himself, their interactions would still be different.
She understood now why he absented himself during her ovulation and why he took such pains to ensure that she did not feel threatened by him.
If anything, understanding his diligence in protecting her had only made her feel more confident in his growth and improvement.
Suffering may have been deserved, but some people never self-reflected and asked to be better.
She undid the scarf, re-braided her hair, and then tied it back up.
She straightened her skirts. She stuck the feathers into the folds of the scarf.
It was charming, even though he meant nothing by it, that he gave her both the pretty and the practical.
She set off to find him and deliver the decision she had made in her time alone.
He could smell her as she came from the great hall.
He could hear her too, although to most it would have been silent and imperceptible.
She came to tell him that she wanted to leave.
He had no question of her decision. She had touched him and tended him and called him “her Baró.” But that was before.
He had never wanted to deceive her, but he longed for the days when she had desired his company, when her casual touches had been priceless gifts of acceptance and appreciation.
“Have you come to tell me of your departure?” He did not turn around to look at her. He deserved her look of disgust but was too cowardly to bear it.
“How long has it been since you did all that you recounted?”
“Does it matter? I did them.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “but you give me no opportunity to put them in perspective. You have been punished, are being punished for them, and have spent so many years alone repenting for them. How many?”
He had not given her a precise number before, not wishing to partner himself with a timeline of human history outside of here lest she guess. But she was going to leave anyway. What matter if he made one more confession?
“Just over three hundred years.”
“Oh, Baró, you realize, no one is alive who still remembers any of those people.”
“But the Rivani still suffer because I stood passively by and condoned in silence the heartless destruction of your culture. I followed the orders of my king and family and promoted centuries of damage to your race.” He put his face in his hands.
“And I remember. I lost everything because of it. I do not deserve the company, counsel, or comfort of mankind if I had willingly put myself so far beyond it. My one true consolation is that when I happen to see myself in some reflective surface, I see what I am and anyone else who encounters me does too. There is no pretty deception anymore.”
“Maybe,” she countered, “three centuries ago your form reflected your deeds. Such is said of the Fir’Darl.
But the opportunity to reform is rarely a pleasure and if your appearance still matched your spirit, you would have further degraded with punishment, not used it instead as a means towards improvement. ”
“Rivani, people do not change. We are born complete, like balls of clay. You can mold it, shape it, split it in two, turn it inside out, but it is still the same clay that you started with.”
“People are not balls of clay. We are seeds. You grew in bad soil, in twisted ways, until you were pruned and replanted elsewhere. Rather than giving in to the inclinations of your first planting, you took to the tending, even without the support you needed. That says something to me.” She moved towards him, putting her hands on the back of the chaise where he sat.
“Believe me, Baró, I am not deceived. I want to hate you and condemn you. I have done both in your absence. I do not hold you blameless, but I know the power of familial obligation and the powerlessness of watching others make your decisions and needing to abide by them. I have had to weigh my horror of a story over three hundred years old against what I have come to know. You have been good to me.”
“Please,” he asked, bowing his head. “Curse me or banish me or tell me that you wish me dead. Tell me that you wish to leave and I will make it happen. I deserve a punishment greater than being left to myself, but I cannot think of a worse one.”
“Walk with me outside?”
“That is a pleasure, not a punishment.”
“I do not mean to punish you, Baró. Come.” She gestured towards the door. “We will go out through the bailey today.”
He rose in haste to follow, eager and attentive, remaining behind her when he caught up.
He opened the door, followed her out, and braced himself for vehement recriminations that did not come.
Still, she would tell him of her desire to leave, using the walk as a means to soften the delivery of her decision.
Aren’t you being a good little pet, came the whisper in his ear as he followed Rivani through the bailey.
Y am trying, he answered. Prithee, not now.
“Did you say something?”
He halted, hoping he did not speak aloud, and shook his head.
“Do you expect to be punished by me?” She asked.
Baró bowed his head to avoid her direct gaze, staring at his hooves and wishing idly that they were paws again so that he could feel the ground beneath his feet.
“When behavior requires modification, punishment is customary.”
“And you would have me do it by withdrawing myself from your company?”
“I am ashamed of my past,” he offered, “but I am left with little other means to rectify it.” He felt like a child again, reciting his catechism for the Great Holy.
“If I behave in a way unsuitable for company, no one should suffer my ill-manners and I should instead be isolated until I can behave more in accordance with civility.”
“Speaking of the Baró I know, you have been civil, and at times, a little too good. Save for our first encounter where you were furious and I was terrified, I do not have a single complaint about your behavior. In hindsight, your intimidation was likely not as intentional as I imagined since you kept to the shadows and did not try to approach me until I agreed to it. You said it yourself,” she added, “you have no way to rectify what was done, so if you can feel your aloneness again, then you can feel punished and assuage that guilt.”
“Being offered the blessing that is your company only to lose it is, at least, befitting to my situation.”
“And is to the detriment of your well-being, I think.” She regarded him a moment longer and then stretched her hand out to him. “I have seen the fine folk walk arm-in-arm, and though I have no experience of it, I suspect that you might.”
He hesitated.
“Does that not meet with your approval? True, I am without a chaperone, but I did not think that mattered with someone previously married. Was I mistaken?”
“Not mistaken.” He moved forward, offering his arm to her.
She took the proffered arm and led them forward.
“How did you come to be the way you are now? ‘Gifts?’”
“From a Rivan sorceress.” He thought about telling her of being taken from his horse, bound and beaten by his captors, and subsequently tortured for three days before the sorceress decreed his fate. He didn’t, not wishing to garner sympathy.
“And you’ve been in complete isolation ever since?”
“Not as complete as you might imagine,” he corrected. “There have been several people who have stayed here.”
“With the same bargain I was given?”
“Variations on a theme.”
“Why go through all that trouble?”
“I need the company.” He lowered his voice.
“Those years where I’ve had nothing, I lose myself.
And maybe,” he postulated, his voice growing stronger, “that has saved me, that has kept me sane enough to be recalled, but with each reawakening of my human sensibilities, I become aware of all that is no longer accessible to me. I am fortunate to have still retained one of many languages before you taught me Rivanic. Being unable to read curtailed any solitary pursuits and prevented escapism. Until I started coercing people to stay with me, I could not remember how to walk on my hind legs.”
Rivani started.