CHAPTER 12
“WELL,” SAID brENNER, in a voice that could have etched glass, “isn’t this cozy.”
Slate pried her eyelids open. They felt dry and itchy. She was in somebody’s arms, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Brenner’s? It’d been his voice, and it wouldn’t be the first time, but she didn’t recall him being so sarcastic afterwards. Usually he just wanted to get breakfast.
It appeared to be early evening, and the rain had passed off. The world swam into focus, revealing pine needles, dirt, someone’s arm, Brenner, the Learned Edmund, two horses and three mules, in that order.
Brenner looked furious, and wasn’t hiding it well. Learned Edmund looked appalled. The horses looked like horses, and the mules looked bored.
By process of elimination, therefore, the arm I am using as a pillow belongs to…
Ah. Yes.
She sat up. Former Knight-Champion etc. Caliban lifted his arm politely to release her and got to his feet, scrubbing at his eyes.
Okay. We’ve both got all our clothes on. I didn’t do anything stupid.
Not for lack of wanting.
Still, it’s good. It’s a good thing. The last thing I need is Brenner getting jealous, or any more complications on this bloody death march anyway.
It might be too late on the first count. Brenner was watching Caliban with death in his eyes, possibly wondering if he could get a knife into the knight before anyone moved.
Learned Edmund was also watching Caliban with something like pity. Had his bowels turned to water and his genitals withered already? Was it a gradual process?
Slate stood up, slapping bark dust off her clothes. She felt cold. The paladin’s body had been very warm, with the cloak over them both like a blanket.
This was a line of thought that did not bear pursuing. “How did you find us?” she asked.
“The horses,” said Learned Edmund, not meeting her eyes rather more obviously than usual. “When we got close, they whinnied to each other. We just followed them.”
“Ah. Didn’t hear it. Must have been more tired than I thought.”
Learned Edmund stared at the ground. Brenner’s stare grew even more lethal. Slate replayed the last statement in her head and winced internally.
Still, there were bigger concerns than the priest’s assumptions or Brenner’s petty jealousies. One big, serious, pressing concern.
“So!” said Slate. “What’s for dinner?”
Learned Edmund was setting up camp. Brenner was starting a fire. Slate went to go help unload the horses, grabbed a pack, turned around, and found herself nose to nose with Knight-Champion Caliban.
They looked at each other. It became uncomfortable very quickly. He dropped his eyes first.
Slate felt her face get hot. She was blushing hard enough that not even her dark complexion could save her.
What am I embarrassed about? Crying? That’s nothing, lots of people cry.
That I offered, and he didn’t want anything I had to offer?
No. I didn’t say anything. Nothing that’d stand up in court.
Caliban cleared his throat.
But you know. And he knows. And you both know that the other one knows.
“Madam—” he began.
Slate raised a hand, opened her mouth, found absolutely nothing to say, and closed it again.
He looked up at her finally, saw that she was burning scarlet, and his eyes widened.
“Ma—Slate—there’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”
It’s an interesting conundrum, Slate thought, as blood pounded in her ears. I am more embarrassed because I have nothing to be embarrassed about than I would be if I’d actually managed to do something embarrassing.
“I haven’t thanked you,” she said, not looking at him. “You saved my life.”
“You don’t need to thank me.”
“I’m not sure what else I can do.” Since any other offers I might have made seem to be of little interest to you.
“I…”
“I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said.
“Offended?” He actually looked up at that. “What? Oh! No. No, of course not. Not with—no. But you—when people are frightened—”
She didn’t know what her face looked like but apparently it was not kind, because his eyes slid away from hers.
Unfortunately, he also kept talking.
“I took an oath,” he said, staring back at the ground again. “The strong should not take advantage of the weak.”
Slate parsed this mentally and came to a conclusion so outrageous that it took her several tries to get the words out. When they came, they were so calm they seemed to belong to someone else, a totally different Slate, who was not nearly dizzy with outrage.
“Did you just call me weak?”
“We’re all weak sometimes,” he said gently. “It’s nothing to be—”
“Ah.”
She packed enough acid into that syllable to stop him cold.
Sonofabitch is patronizing me. Sonofabitch thinks I’m weak. Even Learned-bloody-Edmund is at least scared I’ll fry his genitals off.
I suppose he thinks that I need to be protected from him.
I pulled you out of a stinking cell where you flinched every time someone moved. I led you blind because you were afraid of the sky. And you dare—you dare—to call me weak?
She did not say these things. They crashed in her head like stones, and if she tried to get them out, they’d all fall out together like an avalanche, and god help her, she’d start crying again, because she always cried when she was really furious, and god damn if she was going to give him the satisfaction.
“I just wanted to keep you from doing anything you’d regret,” Caliban said, a man who had dug six feet down and decided to keep on going.
“You arrogant jackass,” said Slate, her voice clipped and calm and almost pleasant.
He took a step back involuntarily. Slate felt a stab of triumph.
If Brenner had appeared behind him at that moment, and laid a knife across his throat, Slate wouldn’t have sworn that she wouldn’t have nodded. But the assassin was off collecting wood and missed his chance.
“Slate—”
“Don’t talk to me,” she growled, and turned on her heel and stalked back to camp.
Learned Edmund looked up, saw her approach, and retreated to a safe distance.
It was probably because she was on such a ragged edge, but his alarm was almost soothing. At least here was someone who was afraid of her, and not for her.
Slate barked a laugh, reached out, and caught at the air a foot from Edmund’s face. He stared at her in alarm.
“Learned Edmund?”
“Yes?” he said warily.
“Thank you.”
One eyebrow went up. He made half a gesture, possibly part of a benediction, thought better of it, and said “Uh…you’re welcome?”
Slate pulled her hands through her hair. “Do you need anything?”
“I could use some water, if you want to go down to the river.”
She looked around for the bucket. Caliban, who had been walking back into camp, reached down, picked it up, and walked off again, without speaking.
Slate gritted her teeth at his back.
I should have left him in the cell.
Well. Excellent job, Caliban congratulated himself. The only way you could have made more of a hash of that was to accidentally run her through with your sword.
I did what I had to do.
The empty bucket knocked against his leg. He stepped cautiously down the pine-needle encrusted slope to the river.
He’d had some kind of thought, when he started talking, of saying, “I wasn’t sure if that was what you really wanted, but if you’re sure…” Of seeing if she was actually interested, not merely high on adrenaline and the body’s animal need not to die.
And then what?
He snorted. And then I would have told Learned Edmund to watch the horses and taken her the minute we were out of sight. Up against a tree if I had to.
Repeatedly.
She had been growing in his mind for weeks.
Her anger and her stubbornness and the way she would grin suddenly when she worked out a problem in her mind.
He wanted her to grin like that at him. He wanted to take her in his arms and feel the weight of her breasts in his hands and say things that made her laugh out loud and do things that made her cry out his name.
He knew better. He should have known better, anyway. He’d resigned himself to physical loneliness. The demon in his head would be an unwelcome third in any bed. But somehow his body didn’t know that and it seemed to be dragging his heart along in its wake.
He had been wanting to say something for days now, but there was never a chance—not with Brenner like a jealous shadow at her heels.
And then he’d had a chance…and somehow the words had gotten tangled up and what had come out had been so painfully awkward that he was probably lucky she hadn’t stabbed him on the spot.
I did the right thing. She would have regretted it. Who wants to bed a possessed murderer?
Apparently for a moment last night, Slate had. He could still half-feel the path her fingertips had taken across his skin.
Perhaps he should dump some freezing water over his head.
The strong do not take advantage of the weak.
So why do I feel like such an idiot?
Caliban dipped his bucket in the stream, straightened up, and felt steel lying in a cold kiss across the back of his neck.
In a way, it was a relief. He’d known it was going to happen, and at least they could get it over with sooner rather than later.
“Hello, Brenner,” he said.
“I think I’d like to have a worrrrd with you,” drawled the assassin.
“I’m sure you would.” He set the bucket down. “You’re not planning on killing me or you’d have done it already, so perhaps you could move the knife?”
“Mmmm.” The knife pressed a little harder, the point creasing the skin just under his left ear, then moved away.
Caliban turned around, letting his hand drop to the hilt of his sword.
“Getting a bit comfortable with our Slate, are we?”
Dreaming God’s bones. We’re on a suicide mission, we’ve got carnivorous tattoos, we’re supposed to stop monsters that are like nothing I’ve ever seen…and now we’re going to have a fight because we’re both interested in the same woman.
On the one hand, it probably said something inspiring about the human spirit that it could rise above such things in pursuit of love.
On the other hand, it was pure bleeding idiocy.