Ten Arrows of Iron, page 40
He stared at me, then glanced down at the bottle. “I mean, it would if I were a lot more drunk, I bet.”
“Fuck you.” The curse came on laughter I hadn’t intended to give him. “Maybe, sometimes… it’s just nice to be with someone who hurts the same way you do.”
Jero had nothing to say to that. Just as well—I couldn’t hear anything. The longer I stared into the fire, the more the shadows it cast began to look like someone I knew. The longer I listened to its quiet chuckle, the more it began to sound like words. Like a voice I once knew.
“You make me feel like a fucking idiot, you know?” she said. “Knowing all of this, I’d still stay. I’d still be with you. If you just told me that someday this would stop.”
That’s how it sounded inside my head.
“Sal.”
As cold and clear as the day she’d said them.
“Please.”
Keen as any scar.
“Fuck me.” I shook my head, glanced back at Jero. “Why’d you make this fire so hot?”
He shot me a casual look before glancing back to the fire. “Your scars hurt when it’s cold, right?” He must have seen the ire crossing my face. “You’ve been scratching them since you got here. You didn’t have to tell me.” He smiled softly into the fire. “Mine do, too.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. And that bothered me.
“It’s your turn,” he said.
I leaned back again, pointedly not scratching my scar, a long moment passing as I tried to think up something to say. Normally, I’d have been quicker, but whiskey addled my thoughts, made it hard to focus on anything but the warmth creeping out of the fire and into my cheeks, hard to think about anything but how long it’d been since I’d felt like this.
Still, my reputation was on the line. I wasn’t about to have it said that Sal the Cacophony let some Revolutionary shit beat her in a drinking game.
Why, they’d laugh at me.
“Got it.” I shot him a wry smirk. “I’ve never eaten Saludi curry.”
He stared back at me, the bottle hanging limp in his hands as he blinked. I squinted.
“Why aren’t you drinking?” I growled.
“Because you only drink if you have done it?” He shrugged. “I’ve never had Saludi curry, either.”
“Birdshit you haven’t.”
He chuckled, glanced into the fire. “You take this game very seriously, don’t you?”
“I take curry very seriously because it’s delicious, you dumb fuck. The Revolution occupied Saluda for ten years. You said you were stationed there, right?”
He nodded. “Spent two years of my service there. What of it?”
“They give you a bowl the size of an infant for two pieces of copper is what of it. How the fuck did you manage to spend that long in Saluda and not have any of it?”
“I don’t know, I just… didn’t.” He shrugged. “They put garlic in everything over there.”
“So ask for less garlic.”
“Oh, wow, what a great idea. If only I, the guy who figured out how to put together a fucking airship heist, had thought of it.” He snorted. “I don’t eat garlic. At all.”
I’d originally gone on this trip with the firm belief that I might end up murdering him out of anger. I’d since discarded that belief, but now I was strongly considering a mercy killing. Still, I thought I might as well ask first.
“Why the fuck not?” I chuckled. “Does it make you shit yourself? Because they make an alchemic that’ll clear that right—”
“Jandi loved garlic.”
My laughter died in my throat. The warmth bled out of me. No matter how hot the fire burned, I couldn’t help but feel cold.
“When we were little, when our father left us alone…” Jero wasn’t looking at me. He muttered so low he might as well have forgotten I was even there. Maybe he had. “We had to steal to eat. We’d always work together. He’d distract the farmers, I’d lift their food.”
A faint smile dawned across his face like the coldest, darkest morning in the dead of winter.
“One day,” he said, “we saw a farmer toting a gigantic sack and figured he must have something amazing inside it. So we didn’t even bother distracting him, we just ran up, cut it off his back, and ran off with it. He must have chased us for miles, but we lost him. When we opened up the sack, there was nothing but garlic bulbs in it.”
He wasn’t staring into the fire anymore. He wasn’t even here anymore. Behind those eyes, there was nothing but a dark place, far away and lightless, that he’d disappeared into.
I knew that look.
I knew that place.
“But winter was coming and we had nothing else to eat, so for four months, we…” He shook his head. “I hated the stuff since the first bite, but Jandi came to love the taste. He’d buy garlic wherever we went, trade his rations for it, thank the Great General every time he’d get some. Everyone in our cadre complained about the smell. They’d cover their noses when they spoke to him.” He laughed, bitter and hollow. “And he reeked of the shit, but he’d always say it was the smell of Revolutionary fervor coming off him. He always had some stupid answer like that. He’d smile like that, and every time after that I smelled garlic, I’d…”
His voice trailed off. His eyes darkened. Wherever he went, whatever dark place inside his head he crawled into, it wasn’t a place for laughter, for words. It wasn’t a place I could follow.
Places like that, everyone has to go through on their own.
So I said nothing. I sat beside him. And I stared into the fire. And I let him have that dark.
“Sorry.” He blinked, cleared his throat, like he was awakening from some kind of dream. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get all…” He made some vague gesture around his eyes. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
And I meant it.
I’d wondered who Jero was since the moment I met him—a dashing rogue right out of an opera, a callow thug who simpered and whined for wine, a murderous stain who lied and killed as easy as he breathed. Maybe he was all of those things. But under all of it, there was just this.
Just a broken person sitting next to another broken person.
I glanced up toward the sky. The trees rustled with a howl of wind. The snow went from pleasant, falling sheets to twisting shades of darkness. Congeniality and Jero’s bird had curled up next to each other, sleeping off the carrion they’d just devoured, unperturbed by the snow.
“For the best, I suppose.” I eased myself up, wincing as the cold seeped back into my scars. “We need to be at the meeting spot by tomorrow evening, right? I won’t have it said that Sal the Cacophony didn’t show up because she was busy puking out a hangover.”
Not after last time, anyway.
I’d pulled the tent flap back before I realized he wasn’t behind me. I glanced over at the fire, saw him still there. Feeling my stare, he looked up. The emptiness in his eyes vanished, replaced by a sort of awkward nervousness that I found, despite myself, rather charming.
Or I would have, had it not been so fucking cold.
“You coming?” I asked.
“Oh, uh…” He cleared his throat. “It’s just that… the tent is small and I thought that you might still be… I mean, since the incident back at the manor, I thought you might prefer if I slept out… you know, instead of—”
“I’ll make you a deal,” I interrupted. “I’ll share this tent with you if you stop fucking talking.” I glanced at his hands. “And if you bring the whiskey.”
He smiled at me. And he nodded. And he walked to me and whispered, “Thank you.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
And I meant it.
THIRTY-THREE
THE VALLEY
Most nights, I do okay.
I find a small space in the Scar that isn’t teeming with outlaws, beasts, or inclement weather—sometimes it’s a bed, sometimes it’s not. I make sure I’m not going to wake up to something stabbing, shooting, or gnawing on me—I’ve only ever been wrong four times. I fall into a sleep, occasionally assisted by drugs, alcohol, or exhaustion—if I’m lucky, I don’t dream.
Most nights, I do okay.
But some nights I don’t.
My body ached, my skin prickled with cold beneath the blanket, my scars begged for me to close my eyes and let them rest for a little bit. Still I couldn’t sleep. The whiskey hadn’t done anything to dull my thoughts and the warmth it had given me had worn off about an hour ago.
I lay there, under a scratchy blanket, as the wind murmured and mused outside and the cold seeped in.
He lay behind me.
I knew Jero was still awake. I knew what people sleeping breathed like and I knew he was only faking. Up until that night, I thought I’d known who he was.
A criminal. A killer. Some asshole with a blade and a need, like any of the countless bandits, warlords, and Vagrants I’d put in the ground before. He was ostensibly on my side, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t scum.
Or at least, that’s what he was up until that night.
It wasn’t like you’re thinking. This wasn’t some cheap opera—he wasn’t a brooding hero who dared not be vulnerable for fear of what might hurt and I sure as shit wasn’t some swooning maiden who collapsed weeping in a pile of skirts when a man opened up to me. Opera, especially the cheap opera, is exciting, fun, and satisfying.
This was not.
We were still scum, him and I. Still criminals. Still killers. Neither of us were good people. Hell, neither of us were even decent people.
And neither of us could let go.
We both wore scars that went deeper than our skin. We both carried a dark place behind our eyes.
We both were broken.
“How did he die?”
I half whispered it, half hoped he hadn’t heard me. A long silence drew out as he lay there. And when he spoke, it was on a soft, weak voice.
“He charged the enemy.” Jero waited a long moment to continue. When he spoke again, his voice shuddered. “Imperials. Outnumbered us five to one. He just took up his weapon, screamed, ran toward them, and… died.”
I stared at the tent wall. “To protect you?”
“I sometimes wonder that.”
“And?”
“And I don’t think he did.”
I didn’t ask. I didn’t sleep. I listened in the dark as he rolled toward me and whispered, “Did you ever love the Imperium?”
“Huh?” I asked.
“Was it your home?”
“I was born there.”
“But was it your home?”
I considered.
“No.”
“Would you die for it?” he asked.
I had.
“No.”
“What would you die for?” he asked.
I knew.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The silence that fell over us wasn’t like before. It wasn’t the silence of nothing to say, but the silence of trying to not say something. Something I knew. Something he knew.
Like I said, this wasn’t cheap opera. This wasn’t even good opera. This wasn’t going to have a happy ending. We wouldn’t know what to do with one if we had it—we weren’t heroes, he and I. We were just two people.
Broken.
I knew—in my scars, I knew—the road this led down. The same way I know which dark places not to go into and when someone’s going to try to put a knife in me. It’s a moment that draws out, when everything is a little darker and quieter, and when it ends you’ll either walk away or do something stupid.
And just as I knew it wasn’t going to end well, I knew what I was going to do.
The wind seeped in through the tent. I twitched under my blanket. I heard him shift, roll over toward me.
“Do your injuries hurt?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“You’re lying,” he replied.
“I am.”
“The Vechine doesn’t always flush out like it should. If there are traces left behind, they can cause infection.”
His hand went to the edge of my blanket. I felt him hesitate, his fingers hovering over the thin fabric.
“May I?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. I nodded.
He peeled back the blanket. The chill that had been gnawing at me sank its teeth all the way in as he reached for the edge of my coat. He hooked a pair of fingers beneath it, paused. I felt his eyes on the back of my head, waiting for me.
I nodded again.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He pulled the coat up. My skin tensed under the sudden cold. I felt the muscles of my belly bunch up, my breath catch behind my lips. I clutched the edge of the blanket to keep from shivering.
His hand found my side. His palm ran across the injury. His fingers ghosted across my skin, gooseflesh rising as they trailed across my body, over the wound, down to my hip.
He was warm. So warm.
His hand lingered there for a moment.
“You’re okay,” he said. “You’re fine.”
He began to pull his hand away.
And mine reached out to stop him.
I held his hand, there on my skin, not willing to let go of that warmth, that touch, that… feeling.
Of not being broken. For a little while, anyway.
I rolled over on the sheets, the coarse fabric scratching at the skin of my back as I looked up at him. The shadows rested comfortably on his face, painted him like a dream that lingers for a few minutes after you wake before disappearing. In the dark, I couldn’t see the wrinkles from the faked laughter or the cunning smiles.
I only saw the contour of his cheek and felt the way he bit back a flinch as I touched him. I only saw the outline of his lips and felt his breath as my thumb glided across his lips. I only saw his eyes.
And the way he looked at me.
“Sal,” he whispered. “About what happened… I’m sorry.”
I smiled at him. I didn’t know if he could see it.
“If that’s not enough, don’t feel like—”
I took him by the cheek, pulled him down to meet me. I pressed my brow against his and felt his warmth on mine.
“No talking,” I told him, “for once.”
I pulled him onto me, his lips against mine, and held him there in my hands, feeling his warmth. His hands found my body, palms sliding beneath my coat, fingers brushing against each one of my ribs, thumbs tracing the edges of my scar down across my belly until he took me by the hips and pressed me down.
His fingers hooked into my trousers, pulled my belt free. The cold swept across my legs, the skin prickling as I felt the leathers come free. I curled my legs around him, pulled his warmth into me as I reached for his belt, tore the buckle loose, started tugging his trousers down.
“Ah!”
I saw the wince across his face. I stopped, looked at him. He smiled, shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “My leg. Old injury.”
I nodded. “Should I…”
“Yeah.” He looked away, the smile fading. “Just… let’s go slow, okay?”
“Okay.”
I slid him free of the garment. My hands found his back, the curve of his spine and the contour of his muscles, as I pulled him down toward me. His lips found my neck, tasting each inch of me until his teeth found the spot just between my earlobe and my jaw that made my breath catch.
I felt him pressing against me, the warmth of his legs against mine as I wrapped them around him, the warmth of his hands on the naked skin of my back as he pulled me up onto his lap, onto him.
And we started, slowly.
I could feel him only in moments, in fleeting sensations of his coat scratching against the skin of my belly, of the tangle of his hair as I seized it in my fingers and twisted, of the growl in his throat as I pulled his lips back against my neck. My eyes were only for the shadows of us, my nose was only for the scent of him pressed against me, my ears only for the breath that came slow and hot and the sound of us biting back our pain for this.
Everything else in me was for that warmth.
It flooded me. Each time I rocked against his hips. Each time his mouth found that spot. Each time we found a spot on each other—a scar, a scratch, an old wound from an old life in an old dream—and felt all the things that made us who we were beneath our fingertips.
Sometimes they hurt, those old wounds.
But I didn’t stop. We didn’t. Couldn’t. He needed this, like I needed this, like I wanted this. It wouldn’t make us less broken, it wouldn’t take back what we’d done, and it wouldn’t make anything stop hurting.
But sometimes…
Sometimes, it was real nice just being with someone who hurt like you did.
I hadn’t felt that way since…
Since Liette.
The thought came unbidden. My eyes didn’t want to open. But they did.
And I saw her. Her shadow was outside the tent, painted on the walls by the moonlight. Beside her was Darrish the Flint and Cassa the Sorrow and Yugol the Omen and all the ghosts that followed me. They crowded around the tent in a dark halo, staring at me, expecting an answer.
I didn’t give them one.
I closed my eyes. I pulled Jero closer to me. I let the warmth wash over me again as he rocked beneath me, as I breathed in the scent of him, as he traced my scars under his fingertips.
As the shadows disappeared.
Slowly.
Until all that was left was the dark.
And us.
THIRTY-FOUR
LITTLEBARROW
Meret didn’t recall much of his life before he became an apothecary.
Not for trauma or regret or anything nearly so impressive, rather there simply hadn’t been much to tell. He had been born to a mother and father who had struggled to provide for him and his siblings. He’d worked hard and eventually became accepted as a student to a master and, years later, here he was.
But he remembered his uncle.
Or, specifically, his uncle’s stories. Not that the man had been a bard—though he had been a drunk, so he wasn’t too far off—but he’d traveled, seen villages beyond his own, met people who looked nothing like him, had conversations he never thought he would.
“Fuck you.” The curse came on laughter I hadn’t intended to give him. “Maybe, sometimes… it’s just nice to be with someone who hurts the same way you do.”
Jero had nothing to say to that. Just as well—I couldn’t hear anything. The longer I stared into the fire, the more the shadows it cast began to look like someone I knew. The longer I listened to its quiet chuckle, the more it began to sound like words. Like a voice I once knew.
“You make me feel like a fucking idiot, you know?” she said. “Knowing all of this, I’d still stay. I’d still be with you. If you just told me that someday this would stop.”
That’s how it sounded inside my head.
“Sal.”
As cold and clear as the day she’d said them.
“Please.”
Keen as any scar.
“Fuck me.” I shook my head, glanced back at Jero. “Why’d you make this fire so hot?”
He shot me a casual look before glancing back to the fire. “Your scars hurt when it’s cold, right?” He must have seen the ire crossing my face. “You’ve been scratching them since you got here. You didn’t have to tell me.” He smiled softly into the fire. “Mine do, too.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. And that bothered me.
“It’s your turn,” he said.
I leaned back again, pointedly not scratching my scar, a long moment passing as I tried to think up something to say. Normally, I’d have been quicker, but whiskey addled my thoughts, made it hard to focus on anything but the warmth creeping out of the fire and into my cheeks, hard to think about anything but how long it’d been since I’d felt like this.
Still, my reputation was on the line. I wasn’t about to have it said that Sal the Cacophony let some Revolutionary shit beat her in a drinking game.
Why, they’d laugh at me.
“Got it.” I shot him a wry smirk. “I’ve never eaten Saludi curry.”
He stared back at me, the bottle hanging limp in his hands as he blinked. I squinted.
“Why aren’t you drinking?” I growled.
“Because you only drink if you have done it?” He shrugged. “I’ve never had Saludi curry, either.”
“Birdshit you haven’t.”
He chuckled, glanced into the fire. “You take this game very seriously, don’t you?”
“I take curry very seriously because it’s delicious, you dumb fuck. The Revolution occupied Saluda for ten years. You said you were stationed there, right?”
He nodded. “Spent two years of my service there. What of it?”
“They give you a bowl the size of an infant for two pieces of copper is what of it. How the fuck did you manage to spend that long in Saluda and not have any of it?”
“I don’t know, I just… didn’t.” He shrugged. “They put garlic in everything over there.”
“So ask for less garlic.”
“Oh, wow, what a great idea. If only I, the guy who figured out how to put together a fucking airship heist, had thought of it.” He snorted. “I don’t eat garlic. At all.”
I’d originally gone on this trip with the firm belief that I might end up murdering him out of anger. I’d since discarded that belief, but now I was strongly considering a mercy killing. Still, I thought I might as well ask first.
“Why the fuck not?” I chuckled. “Does it make you shit yourself? Because they make an alchemic that’ll clear that right—”
“Jandi loved garlic.”
My laughter died in my throat. The warmth bled out of me. No matter how hot the fire burned, I couldn’t help but feel cold.
“When we were little, when our father left us alone…” Jero wasn’t looking at me. He muttered so low he might as well have forgotten I was even there. Maybe he had. “We had to steal to eat. We’d always work together. He’d distract the farmers, I’d lift their food.”
A faint smile dawned across his face like the coldest, darkest morning in the dead of winter.
“One day,” he said, “we saw a farmer toting a gigantic sack and figured he must have something amazing inside it. So we didn’t even bother distracting him, we just ran up, cut it off his back, and ran off with it. He must have chased us for miles, but we lost him. When we opened up the sack, there was nothing but garlic bulbs in it.”
He wasn’t staring into the fire anymore. He wasn’t even here anymore. Behind those eyes, there was nothing but a dark place, far away and lightless, that he’d disappeared into.
I knew that look.
I knew that place.
“But winter was coming and we had nothing else to eat, so for four months, we…” He shook his head. “I hated the stuff since the first bite, but Jandi came to love the taste. He’d buy garlic wherever we went, trade his rations for it, thank the Great General every time he’d get some. Everyone in our cadre complained about the smell. They’d cover their noses when they spoke to him.” He laughed, bitter and hollow. “And he reeked of the shit, but he’d always say it was the smell of Revolutionary fervor coming off him. He always had some stupid answer like that. He’d smile like that, and every time after that I smelled garlic, I’d…”
His voice trailed off. His eyes darkened. Wherever he went, whatever dark place inside his head he crawled into, it wasn’t a place for laughter, for words. It wasn’t a place I could follow.
Places like that, everyone has to go through on their own.
So I said nothing. I sat beside him. And I stared into the fire. And I let him have that dark.
“Sorry.” He blinked, cleared his throat, like he was awakening from some kind of dream. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get all…” He made some vague gesture around his eyes. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
And I meant it.
I’d wondered who Jero was since the moment I met him—a dashing rogue right out of an opera, a callow thug who simpered and whined for wine, a murderous stain who lied and killed as easy as he breathed. Maybe he was all of those things. But under all of it, there was just this.
Just a broken person sitting next to another broken person.
I glanced up toward the sky. The trees rustled with a howl of wind. The snow went from pleasant, falling sheets to twisting shades of darkness. Congeniality and Jero’s bird had curled up next to each other, sleeping off the carrion they’d just devoured, unperturbed by the snow.
“For the best, I suppose.” I eased myself up, wincing as the cold seeped back into my scars. “We need to be at the meeting spot by tomorrow evening, right? I won’t have it said that Sal the Cacophony didn’t show up because she was busy puking out a hangover.”
Not after last time, anyway.
I’d pulled the tent flap back before I realized he wasn’t behind me. I glanced over at the fire, saw him still there. Feeling my stare, he looked up. The emptiness in his eyes vanished, replaced by a sort of awkward nervousness that I found, despite myself, rather charming.
Or I would have, had it not been so fucking cold.
“You coming?” I asked.
“Oh, uh…” He cleared his throat. “It’s just that… the tent is small and I thought that you might still be… I mean, since the incident back at the manor, I thought you might prefer if I slept out… you know, instead of—”
“I’ll make you a deal,” I interrupted. “I’ll share this tent with you if you stop fucking talking.” I glanced at his hands. “And if you bring the whiskey.”
He smiled at me. And he nodded. And he walked to me and whispered, “Thank you.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
And I meant it.
THIRTY-THREE
THE VALLEY
Most nights, I do okay.
I find a small space in the Scar that isn’t teeming with outlaws, beasts, or inclement weather—sometimes it’s a bed, sometimes it’s not. I make sure I’m not going to wake up to something stabbing, shooting, or gnawing on me—I’ve only ever been wrong four times. I fall into a sleep, occasionally assisted by drugs, alcohol, or exhaustion—if I’m lucky, I don’t dream.
Most nights, I do okay.
But some nights I don’t.
My body ached, my skin prickled with cold beneath the blanket, my scars begged for me to close my eyes and let them rest for a little bit. Still I couldn’t sleep. The whiskey hadn’t done anything to dull my thoughts and the warmth it had given me had worn off about an hour ago.
I lay there, under a scratchy blanket, as the wind murmured and mused outside and the cold seeped in.
He lay behind me.
I knew Jero was still awake. I knew what people sleeping breathed like and I knew he was only faking. Up until that night, I thought I’d known who he was.
A criminal. A killer. Some asshole with a blade and a need, like any of the countless bandits, warlords, and Vagrants I’d put in the ground before. He was ostensibly on my side, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t scum.
Or at least, that’s what he was up until that night.
It wasn’t like you’re thinking. This wasn’t some cheap opera—he wasn’t a brooding hero who dared not be vulnerable for fear of what might hurt and I sure as shit wasn’t some swooning maiden who collapsed weeping in a pile of skirts when a man opened up to me. Opera, especially the cheap opera, is exciting, fun, and satisfying.
This was not.
We were still scum, him and I. Still criminals. Still killers. Neither of us were good people. Hell, neither of us were even decent people.
And neither of us could let go.
We both wore scars that went deeper than our skin. We both carried a dark place behind our eyes.
We both were broken.
“How did he die?”
I half whispered it, half hoped he hadn’t heard me. A long silence drew out as he lay there. And when he spoke, it was on a soft, weak voice.
“He charged the enemy.” Jero waited a long moment to continue. When he spoke again, his voice shuddered. “Imperials. Outnumbered us five to one. He just took up his weapon, screamed, ran toward them, and… died.”
I stared at the tent wall. “To protect you?”
“I sometimes wonder that.”
“And?”
“And I don’t think he did.”
I didn’t ask. I didn’t sleep. I listened in the dark as he rolled toward me and whispered, “Did you ever love the Imperium?”
“Huh?” I asked.
“Was it your home?”
“I was born there.”
“But was it your home?”
I considered.
“No.”
“Would you die for it?” he asked.
I had.
“No.”
“What would you die for?” he asked.
I knew.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The silence that fell over us wasn’t like before. It wasn’t the silence of nothing to say, but the silence of trying to not say something. Something I knew. Something he knew.
Like I said, this wasn’t cheap opera. This wasn’t even good opera. This wasn’t going to have a happy ending. We wouldn’t know what to do with one if we had it—we weren’t heroes, he and I. We were just two people.
Broken.
I knew—in my scars, I knew—the road this led down. The same way I know which dark places not to go into and when someone’s going to try to put a knife in me. It’s a moment that draws out, when everything is a little darker and quieter, and when it ends you’ll either walk away or do something stupid.
And just as I knew it wasn’t going to end well, I knew what I was going to do.
The wind seeped in through the tent. I twitched under my blanket. I heard him shift, roll over toward me.
“Do your injuries hurt?” he asked.
“No,” I said.
“You’re lying,” he replied.
“I am.”
“The Vechine doesn’t always flush out like it should. If there are traces left behind, they can cause infection.”
His hand went to the edge of my blanket. I felt him hesitate, his fingers hovering over the thin fabric.
“May I?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. I nodded.
He peeled back the blanket. The chill that had been gnawing at me sank its teeth all the way in as he reached for the edge of my coat. He hooked a pair of fingers beneath it, paused. I felt his eyes on the back of my head, waiting for me.
I nodded again.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He pulled the coat up. My skin tensed under the sudden cold. I felt the muscles of my belly bunch up, my breath catch behind my lips. I clutched the edge of the blanket to keep from shivering.
His hand found my side. His palm ran across the injury. His fingers ghosted across my skin, gooseflesh rising as they trailed across my body, over the wound, down to my hip.
He was warm. So warm.
His hand lingered there for a moment.
“You’re okay,” he said. “You’re fine.”
He began to pull his hand away.
And mine reached out to stop him.
I held his hand, there on my skin, not willing to let go of that warmth, that touch, that… feeling.
Of not being broken. For a little while, anyway.
I rolled over on the sheets, the coarse fabric scratching at the skin of my back as I looked up at him. The shadows rested comfortably on his face, painted him like a dream that lingers for a few minutes after you wake before disappearing. In the dark, I couldn’t see the wrinkles from the faked laughter or the cunning smiles.
I only saw the contour of his cheek and felt the way he bit back a flinch as I touched him. I only saw the outline of his lips and felt his breath as my thumb glided across his lips. I only saw his eyes.
And the way he looked at me.
“Sal,” he whispered. “About what happened… I’m sorry.”
I smiled at him. I didn’t know if he could see it.
“If that’s not enough, don’t feel like—”
I took him by the cheek, pulled him down to meet me. I pressed my brow against his and felt his warmth on mine.
“No talking,” I told him, “for once.”
I pulled him onto me, his lips against mine, and held him there in my hands, feeling his warmth. His hands found my body, palms sliding beneath my coat, fingers brushing against each one of my ribs, thumbs tracing the edges of my scar down across my belly until he took me by the hips and pressed me down.
His fingers hooked into my trousers, pulled my belt free. The cold swept across my legs, the skin prickling as I felt the leathers come free. I curled my legs around him, pulled his warmth into me as I reached for his belt, tore the buckle loose, started tugging his trousers down.
“Ah!”
I saw the wince across his face. I stopped, looked at him. He smiled, shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said. “My leg. Old injury.”
I nodded. “Should I…”
“Yeah.” He looked away, the smile fading. “Just… let’s go slow, okay?”
“Okay.”
I slid him free of the garment. My hands found his back, the curve of his spine and the contour of his muscles, as I pulled him down toward me. His lips found my neck, tasting each inch of me until his teeth found the spot just between my earlobe and my jaw that made my breath catch.
I felt him pressing against me, the warmth of his legs against mine as I wrapped them around him, the warmth of his hands on the naked skin of my back as he pulled me up onto his lap, onto him.
And we started, slowly.
I could feel him only in moments, in fleeting sensations of his coat scratching against the skin of my belly, of the tangle of his hair as I seized it in my fingers and twisted, of the growl in his throat as I pulled his lips back against my neck. My eyes were only for the shadows of us, my nose was only for the scent of him pressed against me, my ears only for the breath that came slow and hot and the sound of us biting back our pain for this.
Everything else in me was for that warmth.
It flooded me. Each time I rocked against his hips. Each time his mouth found that spot. Each time we found a spot on each other—a scar, a scratch, an old wound from an old life in an old dream—and felt all the things that made us who we were beneath our fingertips.
Sometimes they hurt, those old wounds.
But I didn’t stop. We didn’t. Couldn’t. He needed this, like I needed this, like I wanted this. It wouldn’t make us less broken, it wouldn’t take back what we’d done, and it wouldn’t make anything stop hurting.
But sometimes…
Sometimes, it was real nice just being with someone who hurt like you did.
I hadn’t felt that way since…
Since Liette.
The thought came unbidden. My eyes didn’t want to open. But they did.
And I saw her. Her shadow was outside the tent, painted on the walls by the moonlight. Beside her was Darrish the Flint and Cassa the Sorrow and Yugol the Omen and all the ghosts that followed me. They crowded around the tent in a dark halo, staring at me, expecting an answer.
I didn’t give them one.
I closed my eyes. I pulled Jero closer to me. I let the warmth wash over me again as he rocked beneath me, as I breathed in the scent of him, as he traced my scars under his fingertips.
As the shadows disappeared.
Slowly.
Until all that was left was the dark.
And us.
THIRTY-FOUR
LITTLEBARROW
Meret didn’t recall much of his life before he became an apothecary.
Not for trauma or regret or anything nearly so impressive, rather there simply hadn’t been much to tell. He had been born to a mother and father who had struggled to provide for him and his siblings. He’d worked hard and eventually became accepted as a student to a master and, years later, here he was.
But he remembered his uncle.
Or, specifically, his uncle’s stories. Not that the man had been a bard—though he had been a drunk, so he wasn’t too far off—but he’d traveled, seen villages beyond his own, met people who looked nothing like him, had conversations he never thought he would.
