Chapter Nineteen #2
“Everything except eating.”
“You’ll get used to them. Well, you would get used to them, if you ate them more. But I guess you won’t, once you’re back in Elkat.” He frowned. “Strange to think of that. You not being around anymore.”
“It’s a little strange for me too.”
Andros went back to his demonstration of the washing process, and showed how Finnvid would have to wring the clothes almost dry before hanging them because the cold air wouldn’t absorb much of their moisture, and Finnvid saw that this was one more skill he’d never have the chance to use again.
Not that he really wanted to be a launderer, but he’d learned some tricks from scrubbing Theos’s clothes at Windthorn, and now he was learning new ways, and soon none of it would matter.
“Are we allowed to be in here?” he asked suddenly. “No one else has come in. Are they all still out in the cold?”
“It’s not that bad, behind the windbreak and by the fires. And they’re all waiting for their shares of venison. We’ve got some time.”
Things were so calm and easy with Andros. Finnvid wondered what it would have been like if Andros had been the one to buy him. There’d have been less anger, certainly. Less frustration. Everything would have been easier.
He frowned at Andros and tried to imagine doing what he’d done in the forest with him.
Despite all he’d seen of Andros and Xeno, and even Andros and Theos, he just couldn’t picture Andros and himself.
Theos’s frustration was strong enough to match his own, his passion powerful enough to override Finnvid’s hesitations.
And Theos was . . . he was Theos. All the things that made him so difficult made time with him that much sweeter when he finally relaxed and let himself be easy.
“Thank you for helping,” Finnvid said quietly.
“You’re too much like him,” Andros said as if he had a pretty good idea what had triggered Finnvid’s feverish cleaning. “You both take things too seriously.”
“He hates me.” Finnvid felt like a child as he said it, and even more ridiculous when he realized how much he wanted Andros to contradict him.
Andros just smiled. “He doesn’t. But he’s definitely angry with you. Very angry.”
“He kept me as a slave. I was a prisoner, and treated as the enemy. I was duty-bound to try to escape.”
“Aye.”
“So did I do anything wrong?”
Andros shrugged. “Wrong? I don’t know. It’s not about being right or wrong, I don’t think.
It’s just . . . things got muddled. What you did was fine if you’re the enemy, but him hating you is fine if you’re the enemy, too.
So neither one of you did anything wrong.
Of course, if you’re not the enemy, when did that happen?
Did you both know it was happening? Did it happen for both of you at the same time?
” He shook his head, then grinned. “I’m glad those are questions for you and not for me, because my brain would hurt if I tried to answer them.
” With a slap on Finnvid’s shoulder he added, “You look tired. I think the Elkati are sleeping at the far end of the mounds, the last two in the line, so you can either crawl all the way through the tunnels or you can walk through the snow. But you should go and get some sleep, I’d say. ”
“What if I didn’t sleep with them?” Finnvid hadn’t known he was going to ask the question. He saw Andros’s expression, and tried, “I could sleep here, couldn’t I? Or with—you know—if he wasn’t still angry . . .”
Andros raised an eyebrow. “And how would your men feel about that? Who would they tell when you get home? What would happen if people at home knew?”
Finnvid felt his gut clench and churn, his body freeze at that inconceivable outcome. People at home couldn’t know. Not ever. “Of course,” he whispered. “I was being stupid.”
“You were dreaming,” Andros said. “It’s not the same as being stupid, as long as you remember not to act on it.”
Finnvid nodded slowly, then crammed his gear into his pack and crouched to crawl through the tunnel to the Elkati snow mounds.
When Andros spoke, it was so quiet that Finnvid had to strain to hear.
“I do love him. Not just as a brother, but the way you mean.” Andros sounded .
. . not sad, but resigned. “But it’d be impossible.
He’s too . . . too much. Too intense about everything.
I love Xeno just as well, and we make a lot more sense together. ”
Finnvid wasn’t sure what to say.
Andros shrugged and busied himself with emptying the buckets. “Just thought you might like to know. You’re not the only one.” He looked speculatively out in the general direction of the campfire, and his usual grin returned. “And we’re probably not the only two.”
“Maybe not,” Finnvid replied, and then started crawling again.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about Andros’s confession.
Yes, it was nice to know he wasn’t alone, but at the same time he liked to think he and Theos had something .
. . well, something unique, if not special.
Maybe that was completely one-sided. The very first night Finnvid had been with the Torians, Andros had given Theos the same relief Finnvid had just given, and that had seemed to be . . . not nothing, yet close to it.
The next snow mound was empty, and Finnvid didn’t bother standing up; he just kept crawling, dragging his pack behind him, suddenly realizing just how exhausted he was.
The snow mound after that housed two Torians, both naked, both engaged in something much more interesting than a crawling Elkati, and Finnvid kept his gaze on the snow and continued.
The next snow mound had more fat lanterns, clearly there for light as much as for heat, because there were quite a few men scattered around, stripped down to their underclothes, playing a Torian dice game; Torians and Elkati together, Finnvid noticed, and hoped that the gambling led to comradeship rather than hostility.
At least there was no alcohol to fan the flames of any rivalries.
He wondered if he should stay in case mediation was necessary, but he was too tired, so he crawled on.
Theos was in the next mound. He was alone, still wearing his old clothes, although he’d taken off his outer jacket and was sitting on one of the snow benches with the jacket between him and the snow wall. Theos was just . . . sitting there. Waiting? For Finnvid?
Too damn bad. Finnvid kept crawling.
“You didn’t get any venison,” Theos said quietly.
Finnvid didn’t respond. He was all the way across the floor of the mound, ready to enter the next tunnel, when Theos said, “Stop.”
And Finnvid did, damn it.
But he didn’t back out, keeping his head inside the tunnel so Theos couldn’t see his face. Then he realized the position he was in and dropped his ass as low as it would go, trying not to look like he was issuing any sort of invitation. He heard Theos huff out a breath, maybe in amusement.
Then a strong hand landed on Finnvid’s ankle, and tugged. Not hard enough to force him out, not dragging him. But still somehow irresistible.
So Finnvid shuffled backward, slowly, and Theos kept his hand where it was, with a looser grip. When Finnvid was free of the tunnel, he jerked his ankle loose and spun around to stare at Theos, both of them on their knees so their faces were at the same level.
“What?” he spat.
Theos was examining his face as if trying to read a book written in a language he’d never learned.
“You’re angry,” Theos finally said. He paused and stared a little more. “Really angry, or just acting like it?”
“Why would I act angry if I wasn’t?”
“Why do you do any of the things you do?”
Finnvid snorted in disgust and turned, heading for the tunnel. Theos’s hand caught him on the shoulder. Again, there was no real force, yet Finnvid was unable to make himself pull away.
But this time at least he didn’t look at Theos. “What do you want?” he demanded, staring into the cool darkness of the tunnel.
“What do you want?” The question was soft but intense.
There were too many words inside him, and Finnvid didn’t trust any of them. So he kept them to himself. “I want sleep,” he said firmly, even though he no longer felt all that tired.
Theos slowly released his grip, and Finnvid resisted the urge to catch his hand, to return it to his shoulder or find it an even better home elsewhere on his body.
This was for the best. When the storm was over they’d be heading back to Elkat and Finnvid would have to start forgetting about Theos; the fewer memories he had, the easier it would be.
As soon as he emerged into the last snow mound, cold and empty, Finnvid wanted to go back. There was only one lamp burning, and despite the space, the mound felt more like a grave than the dens Finnvid had slept in so far. And he knew why.
He slumped against the frozen wall and yanked his mitts off, throwing them in frustration.
He was killing a part of himself. Not Theos, nothing to do with Theos, really.
It was Finnvid who was returning to a life where he had to pretend to be someone he wasn’t, even to himself.
For all Theos’s savagery and anger, he was free, and Finnvid, for all his rank, was still a slave.
But his choice was made. He spread his blankets on the bench carved out of the snow and lay down, closed his eyes, and willed sleep to come.
It did, to some extent, and he dozed as other Elkati came in and found their own spots in the mound, and woke occasionally to hear the grunts and farts and snoring of the men all around him, and to hear or imagine the different, more intriguing noises coming from the Torian mounds.
Finnvid was in the wrong place, with the wrong people. And there was nothing he could do to change it.