Fic: Unorthodox Liaisons
YOU GUYS, YOU GUYS, I wrote Tortall fic! I have only been in this fandom for...literally half my life. Finally writing fic for it gives me a deep satisfaction.
Fic: Unorthodox Liaisons
Fandom: Protector of the Small - Tamora Pierce
Pairing: Kel/Neal, Neal/Yuki, mentions of various others
Rating: PG
Beta: carmarthen
Disclaimer: still not mine
Prompt: trope_bingo, in vino veritas/drunkfic
Summary: Kel and Neal confess to Yuki about their drunken Midwinter kiss. But Yuki doesn't react as they expect.
A.k.a: polyamory fic!
Also at AO3: Unorthodox Liaisons
“The snow falls like…like…” Neal mumbled, as he and Kel wended through the streets of Corus back to Mindelan House through a light drifting snowfall. “Like snow?”
Kel started laughing. That last cup of mulled wine was a mistake, she thought, listening to herself giggle. “That’sh - that’s a good start,” she said. “Snow falls like….like…” Her brow wrinkled in concentration.
So intent was Kel on counting syllables that she didn’t notice the patch of ice until she stepped onto it. She skidded and fell, her teeth rattling with the impact and her sword knocking awkwardly against her leg. Yes, definitely a mistake.
“The snow falls like Kel!” Neal said triumphantly. He helped her back to her feet.
His hand seemed to tingle against hers. Kel let go hastily. “I wish I fell like snow,” she sighed, rubbing her knee.
“I guesh - I guess it isn’t a very good comparison,” Neal admitted, as doleful as he had been triumphant a moment earlier.
“It’s easier in Yamani,” Kel reassured him. Neal groaned, and Kel grinned. “Besides, your haiku are already better than your Eastern poems ever were.”
“Base cristicsm - criti - slander!” Neal said. “It only shows that you lack a lofty and, and, and a lofty mind - ”
Kel tossed a snowball at him.
The falling snow glittered in the light of the lanterns that flanked Mindelan House’s carven front doors. It settled in Neal’s hair, white and light as the flower petals they had tossed on his wedding day. Kel had the unreasonable urge to brush it away.
Normally she would have pushed such a thought aside easily, but now she found herself brushing the snow out of Neal’s hair before her drink-slowed brain even suggested that she ought to think better of it. She stopped, laughing awkwardly. Neal laughed too, his green eyes bright in the lantern light. A lock of hair fell on his forehead.
“I’d better go inside,” Kel said, and fumbled for her key. “Midwinter luck!”
“I’ll need it,” Neal said fervently. “Meeting my mother-in-law this spring…” he shuddered.
He sounded so morose that Kel had to laugh again. She felt a little light-headed from all the mulled wine. “Give me a midwinter kiss for luck,” she suggested. “If Yuki won’t mind?”
“She won’t mind me kissing you on the cheek. As a friend.”
“Yes, friends,” Kel agreed. A lump rose in her throat as she tried to guide her key into the lock. What was wrong with her? She thought she had gotten over Neal when she was fourteen!
“Friends,” Neal echoed. “Just friends.”
Her key finally caught the tumblers in the lock. “When do you leave?” she asked, turning to look at him - just as he leaned in to kiss her cheek. Neal’s mouth caught on the corner of Kel’s lips.
Oh. Kel turned a little more, opening her mouth against his. Her head spun, but this was better, warmer than the wine: and her hands rose to his sides, even as his rose to her short hair. She pulled him closer, and they stumbled against the doorframe. A cold dollop of snow plopped onto her neck. She gasped, and drew away, and remembered -
Yuki -
Kel broke away from Neal, gasping. They stared at each other, their faces shadowy in the flickering lantern light. Neal pressed a shaking hand to his lips. “I’m sorry,” Kel said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Neal said. He touched her arm. Kel jerked back, stumbling on the slippery steps and almost falling. Neal reached out to steady her, then jerked back himself, and they stared at each other helplessly again. His eyes are so green, Kel thought stupidly, clinging to the stair rail to keep herself upright. No, no, no!
“Kel,” Neal said.
Kel, who had faced down spidrens and bandits and Baylor’s Needle and Blayce, panicked. “Midwinter luck!” she cried, and she wrenched open the great front door of Mindelan House, and slammed it shut behind her. She sunk down in the hall, her back to the door. Oh, this was so stupid: she had gotten over Neal when she was fourteen!
And he was married. To Yuki! Yuki, with whom she practiced glaive; who teased her and encouraged her in equal measure about her sad attempts to write Yamani poetry, and wrote one of Kel’s better haiku in calligraphy on the shukusen that she had given Kel for Midwinter. Yuki, who was one of her best friends!
Her lips still tingled from Neal’s kiss.
Kel pressed her face against her knees and groaned.
***
“I have to tell Yuki,” Neal said, his hair falling in his eyes as he stared at the carpet of the Mindelan House parlor.
For once Kel had no desire to brush his hair off his forehead. She stared past Neal at the street beyond the window. The passing carts had pounded yesterday’s clean white snow to brown and gray slush. “Yes,” she agreed.
“I know we were drunk, but it’s no excuse,” Neal said, still staring at the rose on the rug beneath his feet.
“I know,” Kel said. She took a bite of her plum cake and chewed, and kept chewing, because she couldn’t seem to swallow it. Was there a polite way to spit something out?
“She deserves to know,” Neal said. “We’re always honest with each other, and we can’t go to the Yamani Isles with a secret like this between - ”
“I know,” interrupted Kel, her usual attempt at Yamani calm cracking. “I agree. You have to…no, we have to tell her.”
Neal finally looked at her. “We?” he asked. “You don’t have to come, Kel; you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yes, I did,” Kel said. “She’s my friend. I have to apologize.”
A little silence came between them. Neal inspected at the carpet again. Kel watched a cart laden with basket cages of chickens creak past. She probably ought to give Yuki the shukusen back - that beautiful Midwinter shukusen.
“We should go now,” Kel said, standing.
“Yes,” Neal said, standing too.
Their walk to the palace was the opposite of last night’s walk to Mindelan House. Then, they had ambled through the quiet snowing streets, talking and laughing; now, they hurried silently across the trampled snow, weaving around shouting hawkers, tired shoppers, and a gaggle of geese squawking in their baskets at the butchers. They sounded so frantic that Kel wanted to overturn the baskets and free the poor trapped geese.
She was shamefully conscious of Neal at her side as they walked. After this foolishness, they would never be able to be together like this: they clearly weren’t trustworthy for anything closer than friendly acquaintanceship. And of course Yuki would never want to see Kel again. Kel’s throat ached at the thought of losing two of her best friends. Why had she drunk so much mulled wine?
All too quickly, they reached the Queenscove apartments. Yuki knelt at a low table, holding a brush above a bowl of ink and staring contemplatively at her half-finished painting. Kel’s stomach lurched with guilt.
Yuki rose when Kel and Neal entered. “Kel! Why were you not at practice this morning? Did you have a headache like Neal?” she asked, with a wicked smile. Yuki had drunk just as much mulled wine as anyone last night, but she had borne it much more gracefully than Kel.
“No…I mean, yes, but…”
Kel heard the wretchedness in her own voice. Yuki’s brow wrinkled. She clapped her hands. “Tea,” she said. “You will feel better after tea.”
It would be so easy just to let Yuki’s good manners and warm kindness sweep them along, but Kel knew that if they didn’t tell her today, and tell her now, they probably never would. And how could Kel be worthy of her shield if she wasn’t even honest?
Yuki had started toward the next room, so they could have their tea at an Eastern-style table with chairs. But Kel and Neal remained rooted in the doorway, and Yuki looked back at them, questioning. Kel and Neal looked at each other. Why hadn’t they planned what to say?
“Yuki, we - ” Kel began.
But Neal burst in, “Yuki, yesterday after I walked Kel home I kissed her on the front steps of Mindelan House, and we were both drunk and we didn’t do it on purpose and it was only a kiss but that’s really no excuse, and it was entirely my fault so please don’t blame Kel, and I hope you don’t blame me too much either even though I deserve it because I love you and - ”
Neal ran out of air. He stopped to take a breath, apparently realized what he had just said, blushed, and fell silent.
“Ah,” said Yuki. She tapped her closed fan against her lower lip, thinking, her Yamani mask unreadable.
“I should go,” Kel said. “I am so sorry - ”
“No, no!” Yuki said. “No, please. I am not angry. We must have tea, the three of us. We have much to discuss.”
A gently steaming teapot awaited them on a small table, accompanied by a plate of thin almond cookies and a beautiful Midwinter cake, bursting with nuts and cherries, that smelled delectably of vanilla and sweet wine. Kel felt a little sick at the generosity. She almost offered to leave again, but it would be cowardly to leave when Yuki wanted to talk to her.
Yuki poured them all tea: the black Eastern kind, not Yamani green. “Please, sit,” she said. “I see you don’t believe me, but truly I am not angry. People love more than one person sometimes. It’s all right; it happens. Only you have to be honest about it, and you have been. So what do you mean to do next?”
There was a long silence. Yuki sipped her tea, not merely serene but cheerful. Kel marveled. Either Yuki had the best Yamani mask Kel had ever seen, or Yuki truly did not mind. How could she not mind? Kel couldn’t seem to grasp it. Could Yuki truly forgive Kel and remain her friend?
Neal seemed astonished too. “Is this a Yamani thing?” he asked. “This - loving more than one person thing?”
Yuki took up an almond cookie and offered the plate to Kel and Neal. They each took a cookie automatically. “No,” she said. “Is it not an Eastern thing? The queen explained to Shinko - so Shinko would not be worried if she found out about Thayet and Buri.”
It seemed that Yuki thought this was an explanation, but Kel only felt more confused. Yuki couldn’t mean - “Buri is cheating on Raoul?” Kel asked, disbelieving. “Buri? But she’s so honorable!”
“That’s what worries you?” Neal said, and his green eyes looked a little wild. “People have fought wars over unfaithful queens!”
Kel felt ill at the thought. Thayet didn’t have the weight of Sarain at her back, but she had the Queen’s Riders, and if it came to it, Kel had no doubt they would all remain loyal to Thayet. It could mean civil war.
“No, no, you misunderstand!” Yuki said, spreading her hands, palms up. “The king knows, of course the king knows. That’s why the queen told Shinko, so that if she found out she would not worry, as you’re worrying. And Raoul knows too: do you think Buri would ever break faith with anyone?”
No, Buri would never break faith with anyone. Suddenly Kel felt lighter. If Buri could have two lovers, then it must be possible to do it without tarnishing one’s honor. Maybe Yuki really did believe that Kel and Neal hadn’t disgraced themselves - maybe Kel and Neal still could be friends!
Or more, some treacherous part of her mind whispered, but Kel wasn’t ready to think about that. It was too wonderful to think that she was not going to lose either of the friendships she had been certain she had destroyed.
“Indeed, I have my own confession to make,” Yuki said, and suddenly she seemed unsure. Her Yamani mask didn’t slip, but her fingers tightened around her teacup. “We have so far merely been moon-gazing, and I thought to leave it always there, but as the subject has come up - perhaps we can discuss it?”
Neal’s brow wrinkled. “But you’ve only been moon gazing with Haname.”
“Indeed,” said Yuki.
It took Neal half a cup of tea to understand. Then he choked on his tea and started coughing. “Oh,” he gasped, and his eyes widened, and Yuki pounded on his back to help him breathe. “You and - uh - well, Haname is a very lovely lady,” he said, and coughed some more. “It’s, uh, I guess it’s fine if...”
He couldn’t quite get it out. Yuki put her hand over his. “We don’t have to decide anything now,” she said. “In fact, we shouldn’t decide anything: I don’t want you to say yes to me, because you feel you need to atone for kissing Kel.”
“It’s not like that,” Neal protested, turning his hand to squeeze her fingers. “I want you to be happy.”
“And I want you to be happy,” Yuki said.
They gazed at each other. Kel shifted uncomfortably, wishing she were elsewhere, and cleared her throat.
Neal released Yuki’s hand. “It’s not as simple as that,” he told Yuki. “We’re knights of the realm. We can’t just think about what will make us happy, not if it might disgrace the crown. The conservatives would go wild. ”
Kel hadn’t even thought of that. How could she forget?
“We can’t live our whole lives worrying about what people will say,” Yuki objected. “And you wouldn’t be the first to make the conservatives go wild with your, how do you say, unorthodox liaison.” She grinned mischievously. “What about Raoul and Gareth of Naxen?”
Neal choked on his tea again. “What? That’s just the same stupid slander they’ve been spreading for years. It’s ridiculous. Who told you that, Yuki?”
“Buri,” Yuki said.
Neal’s mouth hung open. Yuki leaned across the table and closed it with a peck on the lips. “You did not seem so shocked that I’ve grown fond of Haname,” she said.
“But that’s different! You’re Yamani, and he’s, well, no, they’re both knights of the realm!” Neal sputtered. Then he smacked himself in the forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m being awfully Eastern about this, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” said Yuki. She grinned at Kel, hiding the smile behind her teacup. “Among the emperor’s warriors it is considered a great thing for the warriors to love each other in all ways.”
“Right,” said Neal. “Right. Of course.” He took an almond cookie and crumbled it. “Well, why not? After all, the histories always dance around Jonathan II’s relationship with his seneschal, and he beat back the Third Scanran Invasion.” He took another cookie. This one, he ate. “Sometimes Owen of Jesslaw looks strangely attractive.”
“Oh, hush!” Yuki said, laughing.
“And there were days when Cleon looked pretty fetching,” said Neal. “And Joren, oddly enough, loathsome as he was. In fact, occasionally Lord Wyldon - ”
Kel and Yuki looked at each other. Then, as one, they snatched pillows off the windowseat and attacked Neal with them. There were still lines that should not be crossed, and Lord Wyldon was one of them.
***
Yuki had to leave to attend Shinkokami, leaving Kel and Neal to eat the last slivers of cake. Their conversation trailed off after she left; Kel began to feel awkward again, and from Neal’s furtive glances he felt the same way.
If Buri and the queen were lovers, then it must be honorable and all right for them. But that didn’t mean Kel felt quite all right about her kiss with Neal. Or about the idea of kissing him again.
She dragged her mind away from that thought. “I’d better go,” she said.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Neal said. “I know this has been an awkward visit, but I don’t want you to remember that and never visit again. It won’t be awkward. Or maybe it will be, but even if it is, you’re always welcome here.”
“As welcome as Owen of Jesslaw?” Kel teased.
Neal groaned. “Can you blame me for noticing that he’s grown into a handsome fellow?” he said. Then his face grew serious. “So…what do we want to do about…” He waved a hand.
“About what?” Kel asked, although she knew. She didn’t want to discuss it. But that was cowardly, she realized. They had to discuss it, or else they could not help but be awkward, and that would spoil the welcome. “About us, you mean,” she said.
“Yes.”
Part of her - a large part - wanted to go back to being friends, as they had been before. It seemed simpler that way, and Kel liked the simplicity of the warrior’s road, where the line between honor and dishonor was clear and straight.
But part of her…part of her remembered the fizz in her veins at Neal’s kiss.
It was terribly disorienting to come to a fork in a road that was supposed to be one clear path all the way through.
“We don’t have to decide anything now,” Neal said. “In fact, maybe we shouldn’t. I leave for the Yamani Islands in the spring.”
Kel was relieved. “I’m going back to New Hope as soon as Midwinter is over,” she said. “So we can discuss this…when we return?”
“Yes,” said Neal.
He seemed relieved too. But the tension still hung in the air, and they could not quite look at each other.
Kel hesitated. Then she leaned across the table and kissed Neal’s cheek. “Midwinter luck,” she said.
He kissed her hand. “Midwinter luck, Kel.”.
They looked at each other. Neal’s green eyes were bright in the sunlight. Then Kel bowed, Yamani-style, as she did when she was distracted; and left, the taste of Neal’s skin still on her lips.
She would have a lot of thinking to do at New Hope.
Fic: Unorthodox Liaisons
Fandom: Protector of the Small - Tamora Pierce
Pairing: Kel/Neal, Neal/Yuki, mentions of various others
Rating: PG
Beta: carmarthen
Disclaimer: still not mine
Prompt: trope_bingo, in vino veritas/drunkfic
Summary: Kel and Neal confess to Yuki about their drunken Midwinter kiss. But Yuki doesn't react as they expect.
A.k.a: polyamory fic!
Also at AO3: Unorthodox Liaisons
“The snow falls like…like…” Neal mumbled, as he and Kel wended through the streets of Corus back to Mindelan House through a light drifting snowfall. “Like snow?”
Kel started laughing. That last cup of mulled wine was a mistake, she thought, listening to herself giggle. “That’sh - that’s a good start,” she said. “Snow falls like….like…” Her brow wrinkled in concentration.
So intent was Kel on counting syllables that she didn’t notice the patch of ice until she stepped onto it. She skidded and fell, her teeth rattling with the impact and her sword knocking awkwardly against her leg. Yes, definitely a mistake.
“The snow falls like Kel!” Neal said triumphantly. He helped her back to her feet.
His hand seemed to tingle against hers. Kel let go hastily. “I wish I fell like snow,” she sighed, rubbing her knee.
“I guesh - I guess it isn’t a very good comparison,” Neal admitted, as doleful as he had been triumphant a moment earlier.
“It’s easier in Yamani,” Kel reassured him. Neal groaned, and Kel grinned. “Besides, your haiku are already better than your Eastern poems ever were.”
“Base cristicsm - criti - slander!” Neal said. “It only shows that you lack a lofty and, and, and a lofty mind - ”
Kel tossed a snowball at him.
The falling snow glittered in the light of the lanterns that flanked Mindelan House’s carven front doors. It settled in Neal’s hair, white and light as the flower petals they had tossed on his wedding day. Kel had the unreasonable urge to brush it away.
Normally she would have pushed such a thought aside easily, but now she found herself brushing the snow out of Neal’s hair before her drink-slowed brain even suggested that she ought to think better of it. She stopped, laughing awkwardly. Neal laughed too, his green eyes bright in the lantern light. A lock of hair fell on his forehead.
“I’d better go inside,” Kel said, and fumbled for her key. “Midwinter luck!”
“I’ll need it,” Neal said fervently. “Meeting my mother-in-law this spring…” he shuddered.
He sounded so morose that Kel had to laugh again. She felt a little light-headed from all the mulled wine. “Give me a midwinter kiss for luck,” she suggested. “If Yuki won’t mind?”
“She won’t mind me kissing you on the cheek. As a friend.”
“Yes, friends,” Kel agreed. A lump rose in her throat as she tried to guide her key into the lock. What was wrong with her? She thought she had gotten over Neal when she was fourteen!
“Friends,” Neal echoed. “Just friends.”
Her key finally caught the tumblers in the lock. “When do you leave?” she asked, turning to look at him - just as he leaned in to kiss her cheek. Neal’s mouth caught on the corner of Kel’s lips.
Oh. Kel turned a little more, opening her mouth against his. Her head spun, but this was better, warmer than the wine: and her hands rose to his sides, even as his rose to her short hair. She pulled him closer, and they stumbled against the doorframe. A cold dollop of snow plopped onto her neck. She gasped, and drew away, and remembered -
Yuki -
Kel broke away from Neal, gasping. They stared at each other, their faces shadowy in the flickering lantern light. Neal pressed a shaking hand to his lips. “I’m sorry,” Kel said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Neal said. He touched her arm. Kel jerked back, stumbling on the slippery steps and almost falling. Neal reached out to steady her, then jerked back himself, and they stared at each other helplessly again. His eyes are so green, Kel thought stupidly, clinging to the stair rail to keep herself upright. No, no, no!
“Kel,” Neal said.
Kel, who had faced down spidrens and bandits and Baylor’s Needle and Blayce, panicked. “Midwinter luck!” she cried, and she wrenched open the great front door of Mindelan House, and slammed it shut behind her. She sunk down in the hall, her back to the door. Oh, this was so stupid: she had gotten over Neal when she was fourteen!
And he was married. To Yuki! Yuki, with whom she practiced glaive; who teased her and encouraged her in equal measure about her sad attempts to write Yamani poetry, and wrote one of Kel’s better haiku in calligraphy on the shukusen that she had given Kel for Midwinter. Yuki, who was one of her best friends!
Her lips still tingled from Neal’s kiss.
Kel pressed her face against her knees and groaned.
***
“I have to tell Yuki,” Neal said, his hair falling in his eyes as he stared at the carpet of the Mindelan House parlor.
For once Kel had no desire to brush his hair off his forehead. She stared past Neal at the street beyond the window. The passing carts had pounded yesterday’s clean white snow to brown and gray slush. “Yes,” she agreed.
“I know we were drunk, but it’s no excuse,” Neal said, still staring at the rose on the rug beneath his feet.
“I know,” Kel said. She took a bite of her plum cake and chewed, and kept chewing, because she couldn’t seem to swallow it. Was there a polite way to spit something out?
“She deserves to know,” Neal said. “We’re always honest with each other, and we can’t go to the Yamani Isles with a secret like this between - ”
“I know,” interrupted Kel, her usual attempt at Yamani calm cracking. “I agree. You have to…no, we have to tell her.”
Neal finally looked at her. “We?” he asked. “You don’t have to come, Kel; you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Yes, I did,” Kel said. “She’s my friend. I have to apologize.”
A little silence came between them. Neal inspected at the carpet again. Kel watched a cart laden with basket cages of chickens creak past. She probably ought to give Yuki the shukusen back - that beautiful Midwinter shukusen.
“We should go now,” Kel said, standing.
“Yes,” Neal said, standing too.
Their walk to the palace was the opposite of last night’s walk to Mindelan House. Then, they had ambled through the quiet snowing streets, talking and laughing; now, they hurried silently across the trampled snow, weaving around shouting hawkers, tired shoppers, and a gaggle of geese squawking in their baskets at the butchers. They sounded so frantic that Kel wanted to overturn the baskets and free the poor trapped geese.
She was shamefully conscious of Neal at her side as they walked. After this foolishness, they would never be able to be together like this: they clearly weren’t trustworthy for anything closer than friendly acquaintanceship. And of course Yuki would never want to see Kel again. Kel’s throat ached at the thought of losing two of her best friends. Why had she drunk so much mulled wine?
All too quickly, they reached the Queenscove apartments. Yuki knelt at a low table, holding a brush above a bowl of ink and staring contemplatively at her half-finished painting. Kel’s stomach lurched with guilt.
Yuki rose when Kel and Neal entered. “Kel! Why were you not at practice this morning? Did you have a headache like Neal?” she asked, with a wicked smile. Yuki had drunk just as much mulled wine as anyone last night, but she had borne it much more gracefully than Kel.
“No…I mean, yes, but…”
Kel heard the wretchedness in her own voice. Yuki’s brow wrinkled. She clapped her hands. “Tea,” she said. “You will feel better after tea.”
It would be so easy just to let Yuki’s good manners and warm kindness sweep them along, but Kel knew that if they didn’t tell her today, and tell her now, they probably never would. And how could Kel be worthy of her shield if she wasn’t even honest?
Yuki had started toward the next room, so they could have their tea at an Eastern-style table with chairs. But Kel and Neal remained rooted in the doorway, and Yuki looked back at them, questioning. Kel and Neal looked at each other. Why hadn’t they planned what to say?
“Yuki, we - ” Kel began.
But Neal burst in, “Yuki, yesterday after I walked Kel home I kissed her on the front steps of Mindelan House, and we were both drunk and we didn’t do it on purpose and it was only a kiss but that’s really no excuse, and it was entirely my fault so please don’t blame Kel, and I hope you don’t blame me too much either even though I deserve it because I love you and - ”
Neal ran out of air. He stopped to take a breath, apparently realized what he had just said, blushed, and fell silent.
“Ah,” said Yuki. She tapped her closed fan against her lower lip, thinking, her Yamani mask unreadable.
“I should go,” Kel said. “I am so sorry - ”
“No, no!” Yuki said. “No, please. I am not angry. We must have tea, the three of us. We have much to discuss.”
A gently steaming teapot awaited them on a small table, accompanied by a plate of thin almond cookies and a beautiful Midwinter cake, bursting with nuts and cherries, that smelled delectably of vanilla and sweet wine. Kel felt a little sick at the generosity. She almost offered to leave again, but it would be cowardly to leave when Yuki wanted to talk to her.
Yuki poured them all tea: the black Eastern kind, not Yamani green. “Please, sit,” she said. “I see you don’t believe me, but truly I am not angry. People love more than one person sometimes. It’s all right; it happens. Only you have to be honest about it, and you have been. So what do you mean to do next?”
There was a long silence. Yuki sipped her tea, not merely serene but cheerful. Kel marveled. Either Yuki had the best Yamani mask Kel had ever seen, or Yuki truly did not mind. How could she not mind? Kel couldn’t seem to grasp it. Could Yuki truly forgive Kel and remain her friend?
Neal seemed astonished too. “Is this a Yamani thing?” he asked. “This - loving more than one person thing?”
Yuki took up an almond cookie and offered the plate to Kel and Neal. They each took a cookie automatically. “No,” she said. “Is it not an Eastern thing? The queen explained to Shinko - so Shinko would not be worried if she found out about Thayet and Buri.”
It seemed that Yuki thought this was an explanation, but Kel only felt more confused. Yuki couldn’t mean - “Buri is cheating on Raoul?” Kel asked, disbelieving. “Buri? But she’s so honorable!”
“That’s what worries you?” Neal said, and his green eyes looked a little wild. “People have fought wars over unfaithful queens!”
Kel felt ill at the thought. Thayet didn’t have the weight of Sarain at her back, but she had the Queen’s Riders, and if it came to it, Kel had no doubt they would all remain loyal to Thayet. It could mean civil war.
“No, no, you misunderstand!” Yuki said, spreading her hands, palms up. “The king knows, of course the king knows. That’s why the queen told Shinko, so that if she found out she would not worry, as you’re worrying. And Raoul knows too: do you think Buri would ever break faith with anyone?”
No, Buri would never break faith with anyone. Suddenly Kel felt lighter. If Buri could have two lovers, then it must be possible to do it without tarnishing one’s honor. Maybe Yuki really did believe that Kel and Neal hadn’t disgraced themselves - maybe Kel and Neal still could be friends!
Or more, some treacherous part of her mind whispered, but Kel wasn’t ready to think about that. It was too wonderful to think that she was not going to lose either of the friendships she had been certain she had destroyed.
“Indeed, I have my own confession to make,” Yuki said, and suddenly she seemed unsure. Her Yamani mask didn’t slip, but her fingers tightened around her teacup. “We have so far merely been moon-gazing, and I thought to leave it always there, but as the subject has come up - perhaps we can discuss it?”
Neal’s brow wrinkled. “But you’ve only been moon gazing with Haname.”
“Indeed,” said Yuki.
It took Neal half a cup of tea to understand. Then he choked on his tea and started coughing. “Oh,” he gasped, and his eyes widened, and Yuki pounded on his back to help him breathe. “You and - uh - well, Haname is a very lovely lady,” he said, and coughed some more. “It’s, uh, I guess it’s fine if...”
He couldn’t quite get it out. Yuki put her hand over his. “We don’t have to decide anything now,” she said. “In fact, we shouldn’t decide anything: I don’t want you to say yes to me, because you feel you need to atone for kissing Kel.”
“It’s not like that,” Neal protested, turning his hand to squeeze her fingers. “I want you to be happy.”
“And I want you to be happy,” Yuki said.
They gazed at each other. Kel shifted uncomfortably, wishing she were elsewhere, and cleared her throat.
Neal released Yuki’s hand. “It’s not as simple as that,” he told Yuki. “We’re knights of the realm. We can’t just think about what will make us happy, not if it might disgrace the crown. The conservatives would go wild. ”
Kel hadn’t even thought of that. How could she forget?
“We can’t live our whole lives worrying about what people will say,” Yuki objected. “And you wouldn’t be the first to make the conservatives go wild with your, how do you say, unorthodox liaison.” She grinned mischievously. “What about Raoul and Gareth of Naxen?”
Neal choked on his tea again. “What? That’s just the same stupid slander they’ve been spreading for years. It’s ridiculous. Who told you that, Yuki?”
“Buri,” Yuki said.
Neal’s mouth hung open. Yuki leaned across the table and closed it with a peck on the lips. “You did not seem so shocked that I’ve grown fond of Haname,” she said.
“But that’s different! You’re Yamani, and he’s, well, no, they’re both knights of the realm!” Neal sputtered. Then he smacked himself in the forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m being awfully Eastern about this, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” said Yuki. She grinned at Kel, hiding the smile behind her teacup. “Among the emperor’s warriors it is considered a great thing for the warriors to love each other in all ways.”
“Right,” said Neal. “Right. Of course.” He took an almond cookie and crumbled it. “Well, why not? After all, the histories always dance around Jonathan II’s relationship with his seneschal, and he beat back the Third Scanran Invasion.” He took another cookie. This one, he ate. “Sometimes Owen of Jesslaw looks strangely attractive.”
“Oh, hush!” Yuki said, laughing.
“And there were days when Cleon looked pretty fetching,” said Neal. “And Joren, oddly enough, loathsome as he was. In fact, occasionally Lord Wyldon - ”
Kel and Yuki looked at each other. Then, as one, they snatched pillows off the windowseat and attacked Neal with them. There were still lines that should not be crossed, and Lord Wyldon was one of them.
***
Yuki had to leave to attend Shinkokami, leaving Kel and Neal to eat the last slivers of cake. Their conversation trailed off after she left; Kel began to feel awkward again, and from Neal’s furtive glances he felt the same way.
If Buri and the queen were lovers, then it must be honorable and all right for them. But that didn’t mean Kel felt quite all right about her kiss with Neal. Or about the idea of kissing him again.
She dragged her mind away from that thought. “I’d better go,” she said.
“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Neal said. “I know this has been an awkward visit, but I don’t want you to remember that and never visit again. It won’t be awkward. Or maybe it will be, but even if it is, you’re always welcome here.”
“As welcome as Owen of Jesslaw?” Kel teased.
Neal groaned. “Can you blame me for noticing that he’s grown into a handsome fellow?” he said. Then his face grew serious. “So…what do we want to do about…” He waved a hand.
“About what?” Kel asked, although she knew. She didn’t want to discuss it. But that was cowardly, she realized. They had to discuss it, or else they could not help but be awkward, and that would spoil the welcome. “About us, you mean,” she said.
“Yes.”
Part of her - a large part - wanted to go back to being friends, as they had been before. It seemed simpler that way, and Kel liked the simplicity of the warrior’s road, where the line between honor and dishonor was clear and straight.
But part of her…part of her remembered the fizz in her veins at Neal’s kiss.
It was terribly disorienting to come to a fork in a road that was supposed to be one clear path all the way through.
“We don’t have to decide anything now,” Neal said. “In fact, maybe we shouldn’t. I leave for the Yamani Islands in the spring.”
Kel was relieved. “I’m going back to New Hope as soon as Midwinter is over,” she said. “So we can discuss this…when we return?”
“Yes,” said Neal.
He seemed relieved too. But the tension still hung in the air, and they could not quite look at each other.
Kel hesitated. Then she leaned across the table and kissed Neal’s cheek. “Midwinter luck,” she said.
He kissed her hand. “Midwinter luck, Kel.”.
They looked at each other. Neal’s green eyes were bright in the sunlight. Then Kel bowed, Yamani-style, as she did when she was distracted; and left, the taste of Neal’s skin still on her lips.
She would have a lot of thinking to do at New Hope.