But that morning as I lay sprawled on my belly watching him, a very unpleasant suspicion crept into my mind. Despite his reassurances of the previous night—because of them, I suppose, as it was not like him to say such specific things about the soldiers and possession of his body—I had an immediate and horrible suspicion that he had indeed met someone in the colony, only did not know how to break this news to me. He was reviewing the paths of his life once more, because his had now taken a new direction—one he had not the heart or the words to tell to me.
I rose and went out into the crisp autumn morning naked, explaining this by saying I was going for a swim to wake up, which was not that unusual for me. It gave me time to think as I padded across the frosty ground to the unpleasantly cold water.
All the signs had been there, after all. His visits to the town had become more and more frequent and now stretched up to two weeks at a time. He talked incessantly about one officer or another, relaying activities they enjoyed, his favorites changing daily.
Aleksey and I had met at opposite ends of a journey for men like us. He had been right at the beginning of his, with all his experiences—good and bad—ahead of him. I had been through more experiences (and men, come to that) than I needed or wanted. I had been his first man. I intended him to be my final one. How could I blame him, therefore, for wanting to explore all there was to find on this journey? And what a discovery it could be: the glance, the knowing, theneed. I had passed a man in a street once in a small town in England and had known by the tiny glance he had given me that I could take him there and then to an inn and fuck him. Such power makes a man heady, and I had been as one drunk for many years when I had first arrived back in the land of my birth.
So I think he had tried to tell me. I have to give him that—Aleksey did not lie, so this betrayal must be hitting him very hard. I had tied him down and cut off his access to air and sunlight just as he was beginning to taste their delights.
I swam until I was too cold to think more and then made my way back to the cabin. Aleksey had warmed my clothes by the fire, and there was no sign of the jewels. As I dressed, I glanced at him. He was eating some smoked fish strips, his brow wrinkled as he decided whether he liked the taste. The freckles on his nose had increased over the summer. His hair was shiny and rumpled, his eyes the color of the emeralds he had been so recently handling, as if their bright beauty had leapt into his orbs and stayed there, even as they were buried back into the earth. No, I could not blame him. He was as a god, and all must fall at his feet. What deity could deny himself worship when it was so willingly given?
“What are you thinking? You are very solemn this morning.” He did not look up. I did not think he had noticed me watching him.
“I said I would take you to see the salmon leap. This would be a good morning for it. I was thinking of that.”
“No, you weren’t. But you will not tell me what is on your mind until it suits you to do so.”
Why didn’t I ask him there and then? God help me for being so weak, but I wanted a few hours more of not knowing. A few more hours of thinking he was mine.
“Are you ready, then? Can we go?”
I nodded. “Faelan must stay here. You will see why when we get there.”
Aleksey folded his arms in protest at this, but as Faelan was stretched out in the warm spot I had vacated, on his back with his legs spread and not going anywhere this frosty morning, he eventually gave a rueful quirk of his beautiful lips and left him.
WERODEin silence, which was unusual for us, as normally I was treated to his endless chatter. It was ominous now, therefore, that he was mute. Clearly he had decided to tell me the real news he had returned from the colony with but had yet to find a kind way to break it to me. Aleksey did not have a cruel bone in his body and could not abide suffering. I actually felt sorry for him, having to be the cause of what he must know would be acute misery to me.
I had brought a new bow I had recently fashioned, but my pleasure in it was ruined, and I could hardly be bothered to test it on a duck that flew up from the far lakeshore as we trotted through the shallows and up into the forest. When he saw the bird pass out of sight unharmed, he glanced across at me. “Is it not good?”
“Huh?”
He frowned and nodded at the weapon. “Does it not work? Why did you not shoot it?”
I shrugged and took Xavier a little ahead of Boudica so Aleksey could not see my face. The ground was very uneven, and it was hard going through the forest, so nothing was particularly strange in this. Aleksey came back to my side, though, when we emerged to follow along the course of a small tributary of the larger river we were heading toward. “You were very restless last night. You should not read Johan’s letters if they remind you of Hesse-Davia so much. Let me read them, and I will filter the news for you.”
“I was not dreaming of Hesse-Davia.”
He glanced over, then said, exasperated, “Surely you were not back on that stupid ship again?”
“I do not remember the ship being particularly stupid, but you may be right.”
“So you were? Dreaming of—”
“No, I was dreaming of what we had been talking about, the missing outpost, that is all.”
“Oh.” He fell very silent at this, and I could sense guilt and loss sweeping off him like early-morning mist clearing the lake. It was tangible. He was thinking about his new love in the colony. I moved Xavier ahead once more. My face would have given away my pain to a man far less observant than Aleksey.
After another hour conducted mainly in silence on both our parts, we arrived at the edge of the forest where I wanted to be. I had been planning this trip for us for weeks, waiting for the right time, but now my pleasure in it was wholly gone.
I dismounted and tied Xavier very securely to a tree and bid Aleksey to do likewise with his horse. I would not leave them out of sight, given what we had come to witness. I told Aleksey to get low to the ground, which he did with some amazed looks, but he was so wholly himself now, so excited and intrigued, that my heart wept for what I was losing—and began to grow angry for what another had won from me. Nevertheless, I wriggled to the edge of the small ridge and beckoned him to lie alongside me.
His gasp of wonder was infectious, and I smiled despite the pain in my heart. The escarpment fell away to a river to give us a perfect view of the point where it plunged ten feet or so over a small falls. It was full salmon season, and their glinting forms were leaping desperately, thoughtlessly, against the flow of the water. But it was not this that had elicited the gasp of surprise and pleasure from Aleksey. The valley was packed with bears catching the fish—gorging, grumbling, playing. Dead and dying salmon were scattered on the banks, flapping, flipping, gasping their last breath. Bears lumbered in the water, their great, clumsy, deadly paws missing but catching, tossing, and recatching with lethal claws, fur streaming with glistening water, sunlight sparkling around them. And in the shallows and on the banks, the cubs clustered, watching, copying, failing, learning, and growing bored and playing, tumbling and wrestling and fighting, mouthing harmlessly into fellow cubs and rolling with pure glee at being what they were and where they were in that glorious place.
It was utterly captivating to watch.
Lying there on my belly next to Aleksey, I could not help but remember the first time I had seen this spectacle as a very young boy neither one thing nor the other—not European child anymore, not Powponi. I was not quite captive, not quite slave, not quite adopted son. Had I watched the cubs, safe with their mothers, secure in what they were, and envied them? I think perhaps I had.
“What’s wrong, Niko? Will you not tell me? I have been patient since you awoke in such a bad mood, but I am worried now. It is not funny anymore.”
