Kedor's Match

s Match

  by: Mette Ivie Harrison

  She was not beautiful as Princess Issa was. There was no kindness in her eyes, no grace in her mannerisms, no shyness in her meeting of his eyes. She was thin and wiry, yet every movement betrayed the expectation of betrayal. She was like a wild animal trapped in a cage, her eyes quick and wide, taking in everything, including Kedor himself.

  She saw him and dismissed him in that one glance. Who was he to her? Who were any of them? They were all refugees here in the underground courtyard below the castle of the Weirese King Jaap. Whoever they had been, they were nothing and no one now. He was a duke’s brother, if anyone still believed him alive.

  And she? Who had she been, before she had given up her identity for life itself?

  Kedor could not help but stare at her whenever she was nearby, and look for her when he thought he smelled a hint of her musky scent or heard the sound of her firm footsteps.

  She had hair the color of copper coins, but there was so little light to make it glint and shine. And it was cut short as a boy’s, presumably the price of her escape to Weirland from Rurik, where she had lived for some time as a boy to disguise the fact that she was ekhono, that she had the male magic rather than the female.

  The hair had grown longer over the last three weeks that she had been with them, so that it was just starting to curl over her ears, and she pushed it back constantly, as if annoyed, because she was not used to her hair like this.

  “You there!” she called to Kedor one day.

  He had been trying not to openly stare at her. He expected she would tell him to stop, that she deserved privacy and respect.

  Instead, she motioned him to her side. “Your neweyr,” she said. “Use it for me. This hibiscus plant is about to die and I need it for a poultice.”

  “A poultice?” echoed Kedor.

  “I said already, for a poultice. Are you deaf?” She spoke this last far more loudly, and it made Kedor’s ears ring.

  “No, I’m not deaf. Merely surprised,” said Kedor.

  “Idiot boy,” said the golden-haired woman. “Obviously I cannot use the neweyr. I am ekhono, as you are. If not, I would still be in Rurik, where all civilized people are. Instead, here I am, waiting for some stupid boy to help me with the plant that will ease the pain of a woman with a cough.”

  Kedor flushed. “I was surprised not that you cannot do neweyr,” he said. “I was surprised that you were making a poultice.”

  “Because you think I must be so thrilled with the chance to use my taweyr here at last that I would spend all my time wrestling or pretending to battles with a sword?” she nodded at the three women in the underground courtyard who were doing precisely that.

  They had a chance to be open about their magic here, so Kedor did not begrudge them their loud battles, their grunting, and the smell of blood that permeated the underground courtyard, even through the smell of the herbs that were around this woman.

  “Because I would have thought you had not been trained in the healing arts,” said Kedor.

  “Why not? My mother trained me and my sister from when we were very small,” she said.

  “But you—you were dressed as a boy. I thought your parents made you live as a boy.”

  “And boys cannot know the healing arts?”

  “Boys who have come into their taweyr already generally have no use for healing, in my experience,” said Kedor.

  “But what do you know about boys coming into their taweyr? You who have none at all,” she said cruelly.

  Kedor felt the flush leave his cheeks, and cold rush into them instead. “I know very well,” he said. “I was the last of all my boyhood friends. I spent long hours with them in those weeks and months before I could no longer hide the truth. I watched them all come into the power that would never be mine. I wanted to pretend, to join in their battles, but every time I did, they slapped me back and made me regret it.”

  He did not often remember those days willingly. He had been in a constant terror, unable to tell his father or his brother the truth. He had waited day by day for it to be discovered, had known that it would mean his death. He was more afraid of Kellin’s look of disappointment than anything else. He had always wanted to be exactly like his older brother Kellin.

  “Of course they did,” she said. “You know, you should forgive them that. It is difficult to control the taweyr at first. Or perhaps I shouldn’t say control. It is difficult to tell the difference between what the taweyr is and what is yourself. What the taweyr wants and what you want,” she said.

  Kedor had been here in the underground courtyard in Weirland for four years now, and he had never had such an honest conversation with another ekhono. Mostly, they were quiet and kept to themselves. They talked, but never about the magic. It was as if King Haikor and his hatred of the ekhono had been so burned into them that they could never escape, no matter how far they were. They were always ashamed of their magic.

  “You spent long hours with boys, then, I presume?” said Kedor. He did not know that he was jealous until he heard his own voice.

  “You could have grown your hair out and pretended to be a girl,” she suggested.

  “And how long would that have lasted, after my chin began to grow hair and my voice deepened?” Kedor threw back at her. He wanted to get away from her. He had no interest in a conversation with her anymore, not now that he had a taste of her real personality. He should have known. Those women who had taweyr were often more pushy than any man.

  “Wait! I meant that as a joke,” she said.

  Kedor turned back to her. He stared at her face. “You did not,” he said, daring her to contradict him. Just because he had the neweyr did not mean that he was not a man. He had his pride, and he was not about to let a woman tell him a lie and meekly acceded to it.

  “Fine. It was not a joke. It came out. It happens sometimes. The taweyr comes out, and then I regret it.”

  “Is that your way of offering an apology?” asked Kedor. “Because if it is, I think you have some work to do on it.”

  “And are you offering to teach me?” she said.

  “I suspect I have more practice at it than you do,” said Kedor.

  She looked down at her clenched fists and slowly uncurled them. She nodded, then looked back up. “I suppose you do,” she said. Then she offered her hand. “My name is Jerta.”

  “Jerta. I am Kedor,” he said.

  “I know who you are. You are the one the princess comes to visit.” She smirked at him.

  Kedor’s face flamed again. “She is a friend,” he said. “Nothing more.”

  “A friend of the princess. Nothing more,” she echoed him, mocking. “I don’t have such friends. Not here, anyway.”

  And why was that? Did she think it was the fault of the other ekhono?

  “It is lonely,” said Kedor.

  “Even with the princess’s company?”

  Kedor let out a breath like a laugh. “She doesn’t come to see me that often. Once every few months, no more than that.”

  “Perhaps because she knows you would be teased unmercifully if she came more than that,” said Jerta.

  “There is nothing between us.” Kedor could not tell her anything about his brother and the princess, that Issa only came because he reminded her of Kellin. Duke Kellin could not be here, in Weirland. He could not be known as a sympathizer with the ekhono, not with his position in King Haikor’s court. And he certainly could not be known to have an ekhono brother or to have a certain—fondness—for the princess who was betrothed to Prince Edik of Rurik.

  “That is what all men say when they are truly in love. They do not want to admit that they have been struck ill by love of a woman. It is all their pride.”

  Kedor did not
know what to say to this. “And do you have no pride, with the taweyr that comes to most men?” he asked.

  “Pride, yes. Stupid pride that interferes in me admitting the truth of my feelings for another, no,” she said.

  “So you are always truthful?” asked Kedor.

  “There is no more reason for me to lie, now that I am here in Weirland, is there?” asked Jerta.

  Kedor nodded to that. And he watched as she strode off. She had taken some of the hibiscus plant with her, and he noticed that she brought a poultice to one of the women who had been wounded in a taweyr battle the day before.

  The next day, Kedor saw that she brought tea to a man who had a wracking cough.

  And the third day, she was wrapping a bandage around the broken ankle of a boy who had just arrived from Rurik.

  Kedor approached her again as she was finishing up.

  She stared up at him. “Do you need something?” she asked.

  “I have a rash,” said Kedor, grinning at her. “I hoped you could look at it and give me a cure for it.”

  She had been gathering her supplies and so had not seen his expression. “A rash. Where is it?” she asked. “Does it itch? Does it spread if you touch it? Is it bumpy or hot to the touch?” She looked up.

  “I could show you, but I’m embarrassed as to its location,” said Kedor, gesturing to his groin.

  Jerta stared. Then when Kedor began to laugh, she clenched her fists. “You have no rash, do you?” said Jerta.

  Kedor shook his head. “But if I did, you can be assured that you would be the first person I would go to for a cure. You