3. Crocodile
Chapter three
Crocodile
“We require this room. It would be best if you clear it.” Rerdas lifted a hand to inspect his nails as he spoke. It was a move he’d stolen from Hassindra, and it made much less sense when there was nothing really to inspect.
After Rerdas had blurted out everything they had learned at Navona, Etiana sent them to the only place Imalroc could test his swimming. The battleboxer was less than thrilled by the prospect, but Rerdas had finally managed to cajole him out of the courtyard and away from the sword.
They stood barefoot just inside the misted doors of the inn’s bathing hall. Steam purled up from the broad, mosaic-lined pools of heated water. An appalled bath hall overseer blocked his way further in. Rerdas needed this ploy to work if Imalroc was going to get any practice in water.
He swiped his thumb across his nails and looked past the overseer.
“Sir,” the overseer began plaintively, “the baths are for guests of Manolia—”
“We are guests at Manolia. We took rooms earlier today.”
“Very good, very good. But... sir, I cannot ask all our guests to—”
“Fine.” Rerdas sighed, dropping his hand. “If your other patrons are content with my fighter getting in the water, I have no objection.” He made as if to step past the overseer, whose face turned grey as gristle.
“You—Sir, I’m sorry, but... You mean to allow a battleboxer into the baths?”
“I require my fighter have access, you refused my first idea, and so this is the option left to us. If it displeases you to have a battleboxer in the water with your guests, then get everyone out of the room.”
“We can draw a bath in your own washroom, sir. If you will allow me to—”
“No,” Rerdas growled. “That won’t suffice.” He fixed the overseer with a glare.
The man opened his mouth and then recoiled. Rerdas did not need to turn around to guess who had just emerged from the shadows at his back.
The bath hall overseer scurried away to address the room. “Honored guests...” The overseer’s voice quavered through the bathhouse, bouncing off the tiled walls. “I fear we must close the baths now, for... for cleaning purposes. We hope you have enjoyed your time.”
There was some grumbling, but the baths had few patrons so late in the evening, and they soon wrapped themselves in linens and squelched toward their own quarters.
Imalroc lingered just behind the door Rerdas held open, hidden from the patrons’ view, standing with his arms crossed tightly over his chest.
The overseer returned. “I can heat the water again, sir, and bring more servants?”
“That won’t be necessary. Take the servants and leave us. With my thanks,” Rerdas tacked on.
The overseer bowed. He led the remaining servants out in a whispering pack.
Rerdas stepped inside and waited until the only sound was the hiss of a few torches and the steady drip of water into the waiting pool. “Well.” He clapped his hands. The noise ricocheted off the ornate pillars and walls of the empty space. “That worked.”
“You’re very good at the spoiled prince routine,” Imalroc drawled behind him.
Rerdas bristled. “It worked, which is the point.”
Before Imalroc could reply, the door heaved open again and Etiana barreled through, her heavy traveling cloak swinging from her shoulders.
“You emptied it! Excellent. Listen, Master Manolia told me of a respectable hall I can visit for a late dinner. It’s probably our best hope of getting more information about this Vativa. Do you want to come with me?”
Rerdas glanced back to where Imalroc stood staring into the glassy water. “I think I’d better stay here.”
Etiana arched an eyebrow. “Don’t coddle,” she said under her breath.
“We can’t leave him here alone. If a servant comes back and finds him unguarded, we’ll be thrown right out of our rooms.”
“I suppose that’s true. Alright. I’ll bring some food back. Good luck.” She galloped out again, doors banging shut in her wake. Rerdas tore a hand through his hair and turned back to Imalroc.
He stood poised at the edge of the long pool of water that formed the centerpiece of the baths. Methodically, he wove his hair back into a loose braid. Although his gaze was still trained on the water, Rerdas thought his pale blue eyes looked eerily unfocused.
“Can you swim?” Rerdas asked. He bit the inside of his lip. Please gods, let him be able to swim.
Imalroc did not look up. “Yes.”
Rerdas attempted a shaky smile. “That’s good to hear.”
“But I haven’t been swimming in a very long time.” His voice sounded strange. There was a glint of fear beneath the stoic mask he cultivated.
Rerdas moved without a second thought and reached for Imalroc’s hand, half expecting the man to rip away from him. But Imalroc only frowned. And still allowed Rerdas to curl tentative fingers around his calloused palm.
Gently, he tugged the battleboxer down to sit at the water’s edge. His pulse picked up at the feel of Imalroc’s hand in his, his throat sticking. Earthbound gods, he was too old to feel like a shy, silly boy again, offering himself up to be crushed.
Their feet slipped into the water, ripples skittering across the clear surface.
He clasped the warm weight of Imalroc’s hand in both of his, running a thumb gently across the ridges of Imalroc’s knuckles, tracing the jagged path of a scar over the back of his hand.
“I don’t know how to make this better. Easier.
If you think we should, I can convince Etiana to back out of the fight. ”
“Don’t do that.” Imalroc jerked his hand out of Rerdas’s.
“You don’t want me to ask her—”
“No, don’t pretend this fight is my choice. If it’s not Navona, it’ll be some other city, some other battlebox, and they all have their own horrors. You’re asking me to go bleed for you. Don’t pretend to be magnanimous about it.”
Rerdas flinched. “If there were another way to get that much onyx—”
“I’m aware. I’m doing this so I can be free.”
“You will be,” Rerdas murmured. His heart felt heavy as he said it, and he cursed every painful beat. He wanted Imalroc to be free. And happy. Once they had enough for an Eastern feld estate, it would be done. They’d take the cheapest heap he could find, if it meant Imalroc could go free sooner.
Imalroc leaned forward and slid off the ledge and into the water so gracefully he hardly made a sound. Rerdas watched his form recede beneath the waving surface, loose strands of white hair escaping the braid and forming an unearthly halo.
He came up for air, eyes still tightly shut.
The thin cotton of his shirt was soaked through, and Rerdas nearly whimpered at the sight of him rising slick-skinned from the pool.
Water cascaded over his broad shoulders, down the thick columns of his back, right where Rerdas wanted to run his hands.
Or his tongue. Gods, but he was beautiful.
Imalroc twisted around and opened his eyes.
Rerdas cleared his throat desperately and tilted his head back to look at the ceiling.
“You ought to take that off,” he said, and then winced as his own words echoed off the walls.
Very nice, suggesting Imalroc remove his clothing.
The man had all but outright told him to stay away, and yet here he sat, sounding like a lecher.
Imalroc shook his head violently, sending a spray of water in Rerdas’s direction. “Got to get used to swimming in it. My fighting jerkin is far heavier.”
“You’re planning to wear your fighting jerkin in water?” That was a sufficiently bad idea to distract from the translucent fabric.
“Why not?” Imalroc bobbed toward the middle of the pool, tilting his head back to stay above water.
“It’s practically armor. You can’t swim in it!”
“Then we’ll have to figure something else out. I’m not charging in there wearing smallclothes and a sword.”
A wet fighting jerkin might as well be a stone around Imalroc’s neck.
Before Rerdas could argue that point, the battleboxer was underwater again.
He unfurled and cut toward the far side of the bath.
It took him only a short while to find his rhythm, and then he propelled himself forward with powerful strokes.
Rerdas rolled his trousers up to let his legs dangle further in the water. It was a deep bath, deep enough that the water could close over his head if he went to the floor of it. The walls of the battlebox had been much taller than anything here. But watching Imalroc in the water was reassuring.
The problem was, sitting at the lip of the bath in a quiet room, studying Imalroc, made it impossible not to think about what he shouldn’t be thinking about.
He wanted too much. Imalroc couldn’t know how true that felt. If they could just talk about it properly—but there hadn’t been time in the whirlwind of leaving Kirinoll for Lakara, and there was no privacy on the journey into the Northern feld lands.
Imalroc had been icy most of the time, but every so often Rerdas thought he glimpsed cracks in the battleboxer’s mask. For a short, precious while, he’d seen that mask laid aside. It had been so good between them in Draal.
Guilty heat stained his cheeks. Remembering Imalroc’s taste, the demanding grasp of his hands, the faint sounds he made when Rerdas pleased him. The heat in his face moved down his throat, changed texture into something intoxicating, winding down his torso.
It ought to be embarrassing, being caught up so quickly like this, panting like a love-struck boy. But it felt like being made new again.
For so long, only Lokano had drawn this kind of response from him. He’d entrusted his desire and his heart to the wrong person, and there had been nights he thought it had broken him beyond repair.
That didn’t seem so true anymore.
Rerdas stirred the water with his feet and watched Imalroc. It was tempting to slide off the edge, into the cooling water. He wanted to let Imalroc catch him and tow him close until they floated completely entangled.