Willfully Incorrect

Wilfully Incorrect

Temenos Mistral had led his companions with silence, severity, and a small smile out of Stormhail and past the great, crumbling wall which guarded it, down slopes of frostbitten hills and through the bands of goblins and trolls which attempted to thwart their path. It was not until they were nearing the warmer hills of the country around Montwise that he lifted his arm to indicate they would rest for the night; still, he did not speak a word.

Throné looked at Castti; Castti looked at Throné. Throné had noticed the danger that Temenos had been swiftly and steadily guiding them away from; Castti had noticed the misery which hung upon him like a pall. This was not the safest countryside, and this was not usually how the travelers made the decision to halt and make camp. Throné glanced back at Agnea, who was nearly asleep on her feet, and was clearly feeling worried with the last part of her that wasn’t asleep; she nodded at Castti.

The ’travelers,’ as they had come to call themselves, were a loosely connected band of some eight or ten people who each had individual reasons to be wandering around the continents, and who came to each other’s aid on the long journeys. But because of urgent errands or premonitions they often had to split ways into groups, or strike out alone, and meet again by chance or by design in another town, another country, and decide whether or not to travel again. Castti, who hadn’t had the nerve to set out on her own again after her terrible discoveries at Healeaks, found herself much missing Hikari’s quiet solidity as she struggled to delve tent-posts into the cold ground. Throné, whose wounds still hurt as terribly as her heart at the death of her father, missed Osvald’s grumbling, comforting gruffness (and magical fire) as she labored over setting a campfire. Agnea, who was sorely nervous about the high task of winning an international competition which she had set for herself, flopped onto the ground and desperately missed Ochette as her stomach grumbled.

That everyone missed Partitio’s bottomless purse and bottomless patience went without saying. Who Temenos missed, looking with terrible vacancy into the starting huffs of smoke from Throné’s fire, also went without saying.

They took dinner still in silence. It was a vigil, after all.

Throné shuffled through their supplies, organizing, distributing. She had become somewhat compulsive about making sure everyone had an equal, fair share of the supplies. Castti wrote, slowly, hesitating, in her way-journal; Terrible events this morning, which omens from the night before could have suggested had we heeded them; my regret is that I slept through Temenos’ departure from the inn when I had felt and ignored a quiet urge to follow him… Agnea had curled up in her quilt, the quilt her father had made her and which she had taken to most every corner of the realm, and was half-asleep when she blearily asked Temenos, in a voice that sounded nearly like a child’s, “Tem? How’d you know that man?”

Throné could see the tightening of Temenos’s fist around his staff; Castti could see the tension of pain under his eyes. Agnea was listening with her still gold-dusted eyelids shut.

“Crick?” he clarified. His voice reminded Castti of a rusted door-hinge. It reminded Throné of a sword pulling out of a sheathe. It reminded Agnea of her dad, a little.

“Mm-hmm,” she said. “It looked like you were close. I’m real sorry.”

She meant it sincerely. Temenos could clearly hear that. He drooped forward, arms on his knees, hand clutching the staff of his office barely above the ground. “Well,” he said. “Well. Not all so well. I had not known him very long. Not as long as I’d like. Not as well as I’d like.”

His response might have been even more sorrowful than Agnea expected. Her eyes opened; she pulled herself up so that she was clutching her knees. “Were you his teacher? Er, mentor? Boss?”

Temenos smiled softly. “Dear Agnea. It is for you that the Gods’ grace to the ignorant is extended.”

“…Hey,” Agnea said, but it took her a few seconds. “I’m not stupid! I just don’t know too much about church.”

“It is to such a person that that grace is extended. Pardon me; you were asking in earnest and I answered with teasing.” He looked down again, curled forward again.

“That’s okay. It makes you feel better.”

“Being a little rude is my favorite,” Temenos agreed hollowly.

“Can I have the real answer, though?” Agnea asked.

“Yes,” Temenos said, and then he was quiet for another minute.

Just like she said, Agnea wasn’t stupid. She could tell he was thinking about what to say. Throné lowered her eyes to her work again; Castti quietly closed her journal.

“I am… a certain kind of man,” Temenos began with false lightness. “A kind of man that many would call a degenerate, or, if they were being polite, unusual; or, in my world, sinful.”

“What’s ‘sinful’ again?” Agnea asked.

“Willfully incorrect.”

“That doesn’t sound like Inquisitor Temenos Mistral.”

Temenos smiled at her. His eyes dropped like a stone again; he couldn’t keep eye contact with any of them for long. Throné felt she already knew what he was about to say; Castti wasn’t sure, but wanted to listen attentively, since this was clearly so serious to Temenos. Agnea was listening to the sadness in his voice. “Everyone, of course, enjoys some sort of willful incorrectness,” he continued. “Some enjoy pursuits like gambling or expensive collecting, which hurts their families. Some enjoy marital cheating despite knowing what it does to their spouses. Some enjoy being cruel to their inferiors because they know they will not have to endure real consequences.”

“Some people kill people,” Throné added.

“Now, Throné,” he responded. It was barely a reprimand. “For me, I occasionally enjoy—and often regret—a personal sin, which I don’t believe I will ever quite be able to escape. I think there are slightly different terms for it everywhere. In the church, we quite euphemistically refer to it as ‘inversion.’ You may know a ruder term for it. But to speak plainly, I seek the love of other men. Only men.”

He took a deep, careful breath. After a moment, “It may be a surprise to some of you. Though I believe Throné is aware already.”

“Knew it the day I met you,” she responded without looking up.

“You didn’t,” he replied crossly.

“Suspected it,” she allowed. “I was sure in a few days, though.”

She did not clarify how she knew, exactly. She simply had a familiarity with men like Temenos. Such men often sought their lovers under the cover of the night, in the same shaded places that the Snakes frequented. In fact, some had fallen into the nest partially because of their illicit tastes. She had simply known enough of them to recognize a few tells… like the ones she had in herself, and had so far kept as yet another of her secrets. She had often thought Temenos had recognized this sin in her, too, but he had never said a word.

“That was why I started changing clothes around you,” she continued casually. “I wanted to be sure, and in short order, I was.”

A look of annoyance crossed Temenos’ face. “Yes, that was a rather risky test.”

Throné smiled. Poor Temenos had been quite shocked, and had immediately lectured her about being cautious about such things. He was obviously, absurdly unflustered, though, because he had continued lecturing, all the while looking her in the eyes, as she took her brassiere off. Adorable. “It would have become risky for you if you had failed.”

“I hadn’t suspected this about you, Temenos, but I am not bothered by it,” Castti took the conversation firmly away from that and to herself. “I don’t see why that would be a problem. It’s not even that uncommon when you have a small group that travels often.” She wondered how she knew that, but that wasn’t the most important thing right now.

“Male dancers are all like that,” Agnea said sleepily. “Mama told me.”

Temenos blinked. “Your mother told you what?”

“She said that all the guy dancers are Sealtige’s Favorites, so I shouldn’t bother. And I asked her what that meant, and she said that Sealtige was the only woman they would ever love.”

“That is such a fascinating term,” Temenos said, a thread of his typical mischief sneaking into his tone. “All male dancers, you say?”

“That’s what she said.”

“I know where we won’t be taking you,” Throné commented.

He screwed up his nose at her. Castti took the conversation into her hands again. “Temenos,” she asked softly, “was Crick your lover?”

Temenos’s hands gripped his staff very tightly. His lungs, similarly, gripped the air inside. “No,” he replied, “No, and I doubt he would ever be. I… I… I do the same thing, over, and over. I get very… attached to men that I admire. I become nearly compelled. I want to be close to them, but, because I admire them, I truly want to keep myself away from them. That would… I really hardly ever have lovers, Castti. In the church, it’s… it’s not a neutral thing. We are supposed to keep ourselves away from compulsion, even more from unusual urges. While I have made my own peace with having this stain on me, I have not made any peace with spreading it to others. Especially to such admirable men.”

Castti thought that he had clearly not made any such peace, not judging by the way he spoke about it. Agnea thought that sounded very sad. Throné, of course, thought that it was reasonable; the person you admire the most is surely the person you want to protect the most. Nor was his conception of sex as a stain foreign to her. She frankly wished that more men felt a moment of hesitation before they started dripping.

“But you cannot be the only man among Aelfric’s followers who feels that way,” Castti responded. She kept her tone purposefully light, conversational.

Temenos snorted. “No, and I think I’ve met the rest of them. I… well, with my respects to Agnea, the rest of you know quite well that there is a difference between finding a person with compatible tastes who wants to indulge them, and having a real relationship.”

Yes, Throné was aware of the difference, though she had only experienced one of the two things. Castti lowered her eyes. Agnea felt a little annoyed, because she was perfectly aware of the difference between those two things too, even if she didn’t have any personal experience.

“What I mean to say is that I had no such relationship with Crick, not of either of those kinds, but that I admired him,” Temenos continued. “And that I intended to do no more than admire him. Perhaps fluster him a little but again, I said it’s willful incorrectness.”

“You dog,” Throné said sarcastically.

“I assure you that the rush of thinking about perhaps sinning a little while in the general proximity of a man makes me terribly contrite,” Temenos responded with equal sarcasm. “I have… I mean it when I say I did not intend to derail him, or cause him to stray from the path, though I… though it must sound hypocritical, I know, or simple like a lie, since it was my actions that… as I was trying to compel him to see that the church wasn’t… isn’t always right. I did intend to cause him to doubt. I did intent to… to weaken his faith. It must sound like it was all for my own designs. It wasn’t. I…”

“Temenos,” Castti said gently. But she did not dissuade him from what he was struggling to say.

“I wouldn’t believe me if I heard myself, and I’m not sure I do believe myself,” he confessed. “When I was actively engaged in causing him to doubt the church, in encouraging him to stray from its stated precepts, driving a wedge between him and his superiors, I also harbored a secret, and—and—personal interest in him. I would believe I had a sinister design myself. I. I would doubt such a man. I do. In fact I doubt myself terribly now, and I think I had better not trust myself. Because this is not the first time this has happened, not nearly. I have chosen sinfully, stupidly, to get close to a man again, a man for which I knew I did not have pure feelings. And just like it has happened almost every time, my proximity, my hands on him, has ended in his death.

“I don’t know why this has happened to me. I was taught that sin was its own punishment, and I assumed it was I who would be punished. But over again, and over again, my sin has caused the men I admire to be punished, and punished to the greatest possible extent. I… I… I didn’t even intend to do anything. I wasn’t going to. I wasn’t even going to tell him. And he’s gone. Like my wretched feelings themselves reached out to snap his neck. Is that all it takes? Is it so foul that I can’t even be near them? Why would this still happen when I did everything I could to not stain him? Why is that fair? None of them did anything wrong.”

Castti waited through the ensuing silence, her hands clasped on her knees. She considered deeply, but she could not see how to heal this thing inside Temenos. She thought, with heavy sadness, that she would have referred him to a cleric if he had come to her for healing.

Agnea had a bright line of tears in the bottom of her eyes.

“…Fuck, man, we’ll take you to the dancers if you’re going to be that way,” Throné replied.

Temenos leaned forward and began hacking like he was going to vomit. Castti startled. After a few heaves, though, his coughs began to slowly transform into shocked, gasping laughter. He covered his mouth with his hands; his staff thumped onto the ground. Throné smiled, pleased with herself. Castti, who had stood up, ready to administer aid, slowly settled back down. Agnea laughed too.

“I have never met a man so fucking pathetic,” Throné continued. “We’ll go find you one of Sealtige’s Faggots, okay? Please calm down.”

“Throné,” said Temenos through his laughter, “I have to take you with me everywhere now. I can’t leave you behind. I will be lost.”

“You are doing just about a piss-poor job of handling yourself,” she agreed. “I’d be scared to leave you somewhere. I don’t know how the hell you get through the day.”

“Well, I can’t express this as colorfully as Throné,” Castti continued, smiling, “But I promise to not leave you behind either. You’ve clearly been through so much, and have been handling it on your own. I’ll be there to help if you need me. …Perhaps not to wherever you’re going to see dancers, though.”

“I’m going to the Grand Gala,” Agnea cheerfully reminded them.

“Oh, thank you for reminding us, Agnea,” Temenos said, wiping a tear out of his eye. “We will have to accompany you.”

“I recognize that the beliefs of your religious order are very important to you,” interrupted Castti, hoping to get Temenos to recognize her point one last time. “Nor do I want to devalue them. But I don’t like that attitude you described about men like you. I don’t see why it should be any different about how they handle any other relationship. It should be more convenient, even, since there’s no concern about childcare.”

Temenos smiled briefly, sadly at her. “Thank goodness for that,” he said, “I can’t imagine what I’d do with a child. Leave it to some nice nuns, I suppose.”

That was as close as he would come to acknowledging the grace Castti was trying so hard to extend, her conviction, immediate but certain, that there wasn’t anything wrong with Temenos, or with what he did. Temenos wasn’t ready to hear it.

Agnea, who trusted Castti completely, and knew better than to trust Temenos too much, decided that Castti must have the right way of it immediately.

Throné, whose hands were still buried in bags and packs, heard every word, grasped them, and hid them jealously in her heart, like an especially precious, dangerous theft. She would keep them there for a very, very long time, as a precious possession; like all her most precious possessions, it was not intended for her, but it was hers all the same.

They all retired not long after that, once Agnea had cheered everyone up and emotions had mellowed. Still, it was obvious that Temenos was not well yet when he laid down, nor would he be for some time. There was nothing to be done about that. But he laid down closer to the others than he previously had. He had been leaving the women more space, but the four of them slept close that night, within arm’s reach of each other, Agnea drifting away almost as soon as they were all settled in, Castti dwelling silently on what she had heard until her thoughts slowly began to ebb away like a low tide, and Throné, after some time feelings the coals grow dim and her breath slow, opening her eyes a slit to see Temenos looking at her, and smiling slightly at him, and him smiling slightly in return, until everything and everyone sank gently into a long winter night.