SIX
Gideon
After breaking their fast in the common room of the inn, Gideon tasked the stable boy with bringing Ruteger around, and they set off down the road.
He and Hara hadn’t spoken much as they ate their porridge, but she had greeted him with a leve.
“good morning”.
Perhaps he was in her good graces again.
Not that it should matter.
But it did make the journey easier when he didn’t feel as though he had to tread carefully around her.
He’d stared at her as she ate, watching her over his cup.
He tried to goad her last night, as he often did towards soft-hearted fools who felt they held some high moral position over him.
The problem was that Hara was not easy to ruffle.
Her temper never betrayed her and she could walk away with an even tone.
He did not know what he expected last night when he went up to her room to apologize, but a soft smile and a gently closed door in his face was not it.
He was accustomed to strong reactions from women, good and bad, but Hara turned him away as though she did not share the burgeoning obsession that seethed in his chest.
There were no tears or annoyed huffs or even a slap.
She was so damned composed, as though she was the mature adult and he the petulant boy.
She was unshakeable, immune.
Just once, he wanted to see her give a hint that he had affected her somehow. Everyone had their weak spot, so what was hers?
He found the idea strangely addicting, but it was unwise to needle her.
She was the one he depended upon for his healing unguents.
He had to be cautious and not perturb her or say something unforgivable, lest he find himself retching and helpless on the forest floor again.
When they stopped by a stream to take their midday meal, he limped towards a boulder while Hara brought out some food for the cat.
He watched as it munched on some dried fish, its little fangs protruding with each bite.
It looked rather ordinary, if not a little plump.
“Can she do anything?”
he asked, gesturing with a bit of bread in his hand.
“‘Do’ anything?”
said Hara.
“Magic.”
“She’s very obedient.”
“That isn’t magical.”
“It is for a cat.”
He shifted on the boulder and winced as he accidentally put weight on his heel. It had been bothering him since the morning, but he thought it wasn’t worth delaying their start.
“Painful?”
she said. He nodded once.
Angharad went to one of the saddlebags and returned with her mortar and pestle. She crouched before him and slipped his boot from his foot, unwinding the bandages gently. Some brown blood had stained them, and he winced when she peeled the fabric away to reveal sticky reopened wounds.
“Looks worse than it feels,”
he said, letting out a gasp as she applied something cold and stinging to the cuts.
“Can’t you make painless ointments with all your spells?”
“Yes,”
she said, a corner of her mouth lifting.
He glowered.
“Then why am I subjected to this torture?”
“Because you don’t like magic. So you get the stinging, mundane medicine.”
He pursed his lips.
“You used the magic stuff on me before.”
“And you complained the whole time.”
“I didn’t say a word,”
he said, indignant. He had made sure to hold his tongue after the first time she’d accused him of whingeing.
“You sat there with your arms crossed, rolling your eyes and sighing if a spell took too long. So I’d prefer not to waste my power if that’s how it’s met.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
She glanced up at him.
“Then say it.”
“Say what?”
“Say you want me to use magic on you.”
After hearing her point of view, he felt a bare touch of remorse for how he had behaved. He knew it was thanks to her selfless care that he was alive and whole at all. And so, with only a slight discomfort squirming in his stomach, he nodded in resignation.
“Please. I want you to use your magic on me whenever you see fit.”
“No more complaining about my spells taking too long, or smelling off, or looking unsightly? That includes pulling faces.”
“Let’s not go too far,”
he said, but at the raised eyebrow she gave him, he grumbled.
“Fine. Yes. I’ll take my medicine like a good boy.”
She blessed him with a smile then, and a curious fluttering in his belly threatened to disturb his stony expression. She swirled her fingers over the salve in the mortar, whispering something. When she began to apply it again, all he felt was the soothing coolness of the ointment, and as she worked it into the cuts, the pain of his injury seemed to melt away. He relaxed, thinking that shutting his mouth was a small price to pay for such immediate relief.
“Thank you,”
he said. The words came forth unexpectedly, and he felt uncomfortable as she turned surprised eyes to him. He might as well do the thing properly.
“Really, for everything. You’ve been . . . kind, when I didn’t deserve it. Taking me into your home, keeping me clean and fed and caring for my injuries. I haven’t been the most grateful patient, so—thank you.”
For a moment he thought she might roll her eyes and make a jest; clearly he had made a fool of himself with his sappy nonsense. But she held his gaze, and said.
“You’re welcome, Gideon.”
As she bundled up her things, she asked.
“Where are we headed next?”
“A town called Burnwood. We should get there a little after sundown.”
When the bandages were back in place and the cat was bundled into Hara’s satchel, they mounted Ruteger again and set off. Just as he had said, they arrived in the quaint village of Burnwood as the shadows began to deepen from pink to purple. He was glad to see that the internal map he had been relying on was accurate thus far. There was only one inn in the tiny hamlet, and Gideon had to tether Ruteger in the stableyard himself before they entered the smoky common room.
There were fewer people here than in Morgantown; a few locals sat at the cramped tables drinking ale, and a young woman stood from where she was having supper at the counter.
“What can I get for you?”
she asked, her accent harsh and rustic.
“Two rooms, and dinner for us both,”
he said. The girl nodded, her round eyes studying them before she went into the back. They found seats at the counter, which looked somewhat cleaner than the tables, and the girl came out with two bowls of something steaming.
“And here’s your keys, milord,”
she said, handing him two keys.
“That’s twenty silver marks.”
“Baths, too. I’m feeling rather dusty. I don’t know about you,”
he said, turning to Hara. A look of supreme relief passed over her face as she nodded.
“A gold mark then,”
said the girl, and he fished it from his pouch. The girl’s eyes widened as she took it.
“Say there, I saw you had a whole heap of bags saddled to your mount. What sort of business are you in?”
Gideon opened his mouth to tell her to leave them be, but before he could stop her, Hara spoke up.
“I’m a hedgewitch, and I need my herbs while we travel.”
“A hedgewitch?”
said the girl, her jaw hanging slack.
“Might you . . . might you be able to tell fortunes, Mistress?”
“Well, I suppose. But I’m afraid I do not have future Sight.”
“Well, it isn’t the future so much as the past,”
said the girl, settling in the seat next to them and resting her elbow on the counter. Gideon stifled a groan; all he wanted was to eat his dinner in peace.
“You see, I was promised to marry my neighbor about three years back, but one day, he went off to battle and he never returned,”
said the wench.
“I just want to know what happened to him.”
“All right,”
said Hara, holding out her hands.
“Don’t you need his name?”
said the girl.
Hara shook her head.
“Your connection to him will be enough.”
Hara took both of the girl’s hands in her own and leaned forward slightly. The girl leaned forward as well until their brows touched.
A month ago, Gideon would have scoffed at this display, but now, he knew only too well what Angharad could do with her skills of divination and memory. Instead, he concentrated on his stew, which was a bit too salty, but hearty enough for his growling stomach. As he neared the bottom of the bowl, Angharad sat up with a gasp.
“What? What did you see?”
said the girl.
Hara opened her eyes slowly and gave the girl a sad smile.
“It is as you expected. He went to battle against the Lenwen forces, but he fell in his first skirmish. Cannonfire. I sensed a letter—he was planning to write to you before he died.”
The girl’s eyes were shining, her lips quivering between a smile and a sob.
“He was so brave, I knew he would run right into the thick of battle, the idiot. But I hoped . . . nevermind.”
She sniffed and rubbed her sleeve under her nose.
“Now I know he’s gone for good, and I can say goodbye. Thank you, Mistress. Your stay is on the house tonight.”
“Oh, no need, we’ve already paid,”
said Hara.
“I insist, please. Here.”
She dug in her pocket and brought forth some coins, pressing them into Hara’s palm.
“I’ve needed to hear that for a long time, and now I know. He wanted it that way—he knew the risk. But at least he planned to come back to me.”
With that, she slid from her chair and brought her apron to her eyes, wiping them as she went into the back.
“Here you are,”
said Hara, dropping the coins onto the counter.
“It’s your money after all.”
“Keep it. It seems you earned it,”
said Gideon, quietly impressed.
After they had eaten, they carried themselves upstairs to see a scullery maid leaving Hara’s room with empty buckets. She smiled shyly as she scurried past them and down the hall.
“Thank you for ordering the bath. I’m sticky and dusty all at once.”
She opened the door and Gideon peered inside. A steaming tub was waiting in the center of the room. Before she went in, he touched her arm.
“Hara,”
he said.
“That was a good thing you did. That girl was obviously glad to hear it.”
Hara sighed sadly.
“What I told her was better than the truth.”
Confused, he said.
“What do you mean?”
Hara leaned against the doorframe, her voice low.
“He didn’t die in battle. He left to be a soldier, but halfway to the castle, he got cold feet and abandoned the army. He was too ashamed to go home, so he met a girl and stayed in her family’s hayloft. She became pregnant with his child, and her brother killed him in a brawl when he wouldn’t marry her. He died in the street, drunk and penniless.”
Gideon felt the tip of her finger under his chin, and realized his mouth had fallen open slightly.
“But why did you lie to her?”
Hara took a moment to think before answering.
“I could have told her the truth and broken her heart, letting her think ill of the dead and stew in her anger. Or I could have told her what she wished for. Either way, he is dead. So, I chose to give her the ending she wanted.”
Gideon thought of the girl’s face shining with happy, grateful tears at the memory of this worthless coward.
“Instead of letting her know the truth, you’re protecting his legacy. She’s going to go around telling everyone that he’s a war hero,”
he said, throwing his hand in the direction of the common room.
“And you have the nerve to lecture me about what’s right and wrong? This makes you no better than a charlatan, except I know that your power is real.”
“I suppose you have to consider what is more important: happiness for the living or condemnation of the dead,”
she said, her eyes sad.
“Truth!”
he said.
“Truth is what’s important. You have to tell her the truth.”
“To what purpose?” she said.
He threw his hands up in exasperation. How could one explain that truth was important? It was like trying to convince someone that water was wet. He thought of what recompense they could give the girl, and he remembered the fistful of coins.
“She shouldn’t have given you a free night’s stay.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t want to accept it,”
said Hara, digging in her pocket and holding out the coins. He took them from her.
“I’m going to tell her what you just told me.”
Hara grasped his arm as he turned. Her voice was low and urgent.
“If you do that, you’ll needlessly break her heart.”
“She asked for the truth and she got a lie,”
he said, yanking his arm back and making his way down the stairs.
“This is why magic-folk aren’t trusted in the north. This kind of trickery gives you all a bad name.”
“Gideon!”
he heard her hiss, but he was already at the landing. As he rounded the corner and entered the back kitchen, he caught a snatch of the girl’s voice.
“ . . . We was childhood sweethearts, thick as thieves. I knew something must have befallen him, but at least now I know I was in his heart until the very end. He always meant to come back to me. He was true,”
she was saying to the old cook.
“Makes you believe true love really does live on after death,”
said the cook, patting the girl’s arm.
“I’m glad for you.”
Gideon halted, the self-righteous determination that pounded through him a moment ago fading. If he barged in there now, not only would he break her heart, he would make her seem a fool. As much as he wished for the cowardly bastard to be known for what he was, perhaps what was most important now was to show some mercy to the living. The man had gotten his just end.
Gideon looked to the left and saw the inn’s strongbox lying on a shelf under the counter. He placed the handful of coins atop it. That, at least, he could remedy.
When he turned, he saw Angharad standing behind him. Her eyes flicked from the strongbox to him, and relief touched her features. He did not say a word as he brushed past her, making his way up the stairs and to his room.
He unlocked his door and stepped into the room, locking it behind him again. He hated how Hara always seemed to come out on top of their little spats. Either he was apologizing, which he rarely did on principle, or he had an uncharacteristic change of heart that appeased her. It seemed unbalanced for him to keep having to fit himself to accommodate what she wanted in some inexplicable need to please her. It made him feel desperate and pathetic to be beholden to anyone, much less a hedgewitch.
The bath was waiting for him, and he stripped out of the hideous clothing of his disguise and climbed into the cramped tub. He sluiced tepid water over his chest and face, sorely wishing for the modern amenities of the palace in Perule. As he began washing his hair with a block of soap, he heard a soft splashing, and he froze in his actions.
On the other side of the thin wall, Hara was bathing, too. He paused in his own washing to listen, and before he could stop himself he was imagining her hair tumbling down her back as she loosened it. The water splashing over her shoulders and breasts, her skin glistening with flickering warmth in the light of the fire . . .
As soon as he realized what he was doing, he furiously dunked his head in the tub and began to scrub out the soap. Is this what he had been reduced to? Listening to an unsuspecting woman taking a bath like he was some slavering lecher? The only way he could be more pathetic would be if he pressed his ear to the wall.
Gideon stood from the bath and took up the length of linen the maid had left. He toweled himself dry, then cleaned his teeth with powder and went to the bed. In all that time, the semi-hard tension in his groin had not abated. As he lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, the wet sounds from her room made a seductive backdrop to the softly crackling fire in the grate. Despite the long day in the saddle, he couldn’t remember being less tired.
Finally, he heard her give a soft sigh as she rose from the bath, the loud splashing fading into quiet. He imagined her rising from the water like a goddess, the long legs he had glimpsed through her shift filling in the blanks of his imagination.
He closed his eyes as his hand drifted below the sheets, grasping himself. If he was a lecher for listening, he may as well do the thing properly. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was relief. And the relief was splendid and intoxicating as the scent of her hair and the feel of her arse rocking against him in the saddle for hours each day worked their way to the surface of his mind.
He hated the sway she had over him. Hated her messy braids and woolen homespun. Hated the way she held him when he told her of his lost men. Hated how she was always right and unshakeable. Hated that another man made her laugh and warmed her bed.
Gideon imagined her beneath the fair-haired man, her catlike eyes desperate and needy as her lover fucked her—on her back, bent over, in his lap. A hundred images flitted through his mind until it was he who gripped her thighs and made her back arch, he who made her keen with pleasure.
Fury fed his strokes, and in almost no time he was loosing his release, weeks of frustrated longing spilling forth at last. He bit his lip to fight the groan that accompanied the copious mess on his stomach, physical evidence of the yearning he tried so hard to deny. It was all for her and she would never know, sequestered on the other side of the wall.
If it was shameful, he didn’t care. That night, he slept hard and deep.
Angharad
The next morning, Gideon was in a quiet but cheerful mood, smiling warmly at her and helping her into the saddle with a good natured.
“Steady? Comfortable? Good,”
before climbing into the saddle himself.
Having grown accustomed to his haughty and ill-tempered demeanor, she was somewhat disarmed by the flash of his smile and the pleasant swoop in her stomach that followed. If he made an effort to be pleasant, he could almost be mistaken for a gentleman.
As they journeyed farther north, the hilly green lands of Norwen became misty spruce forests. The distant mountains she had seen from her cottage towered all around them now. She craned her neck trying to see the tops of the trees and peaks disappearing into the clouds. Occasionally, there would be a break in the mist and she would catch glimpses of the snow-capped peaks to the north. Montag lay somewhere tucked between them.
The underbrush was different as well, and Hara was itching to dismount and study the feathery ferns and tender spring seedlings. Then something caught her eye.
“Stop!”
she shouted, causing Gideon to jerk the reins in surprise.
“What the devil? Don’t go shouting like that!”
he said in a cross voice as Hara slipped from the back of the stilled horse. She paid him no mind as she went to the delicately curled shoots that sprung from fern leaves. The fern bracken was very young and tender, and she took out her small paring knife to eagerly gather the vegetable.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s fern bracken. I haven’t tasted this since I was a child,”
she said, snipping more shoots.
“It’s poisonous raw, but if I soak it in salt water and blanch it, it’s delicious.”
“You nearly put my heart out for a vegetable?”
he said, placing his fists on his hips.
Hara wasn’t paying attention, for she had noticed an odd, wavy fleshed mushroom. A leap of joy went up in her stomach.
“Look, morels!”
“More edible poison?”
“Have you never tasted morels?”
she asked, turning to him. He shook his head, stony faced.
“Oh, Gideon. You’ve lived a life devoid of pleasure.”
His lips twitched in a smile at that.
“That’s a high compliment to some mushrooms.”
“Just wait. When we stop at an inn, I’ll ask the cook to fry them with some butter for you.”
She turned back to the undergrowth and pushed aside leaves, hoping to find more.
“How long will you be?”
he asked, but he did not sound impatient.
“Not very long. Just long enough to gather a meal’s worth. There, Seraphine,”
she said, letting the squirming cat out of her satchel. It made more room for her newfound treasure. Seraphine sniffed at some leaves before her tail slinked into the underbrush, and Hara crouched onto her hands and knees. Then a pair of strong hands were beside hers and wide shoulders nudged against her.
“Show me what they look like,”
said Gideon. A flutter of pleasure rippled through her stomach, and she pulled a morel from her satchel to show him the distinctive grooves.
“Look under the fallen tree here—they tend to grow near them. This area must get good, warm sunshine in the mornings,”
she said, noticing that the sun had crested the peak of the mountain already and they were cast in shadow. They must be on the east side of the mountain.
“They usually do not grow this early in the year.”
“There’s some here,”
he said, pulling a plant aside. He grinned at her in triumph, and she returned it. She remembered how triumphant she had felt as a child when she found mushrooms, learning about the difference between delicacy and death. A bittersweet feeling stole through her as Gideon plucked up the mushrooms and Hara held open her satchel.
They crawled along in this way, and he asked.
“How did you learn about this? Finding food, I mean.”
“My mother,”
she said softly.
“She’d take me out to the woods in the spring and she’d let me find whatever it was we were hunting. Then we’d go through my haul together and she’d show me the ones that were dangerous. We ate well when we stayed in the forest.”
“The forest?”
he said.
“You mean, when . . . ”
“It was feast or famine for us when we were on the run.”
Those were uncertain days, filled with silence and whispers, always alert for signs that Corvus’ men were closing in.
But she and her mother shared a closeness that Hara had not yet found in her adult life, in neither friend nor lover.
Gideon seemed to sense the sadness that touched her.
“What was her name? I never asked,”
he murmured.
“Desideria. Desideria Arlook,” she said.
“We’ll find her,”
he said, tucking a stray curl back from her face.
Hara closed her eyes at the feel of his warm fingertips, a curious sensation of shivery heat following their trail along her cheekbone.
Their faces were close, and the only sounds were their soft breaths and the distant flutings of the forest birds.
His eyes traveled down to her mouth, and hers followed suit, caressing the curve of his lower lip.
Yesterday, when he had returned the coins and kept the truth of the girl’s love to himself, she felt herself melt towards him against her will.
His hasty response had roiled her anger, and she rushed after him ready for a confrontation.
But he surprised her with his moment of hesitancy.
When he turned and saw her, his brows knit together in a surly expression as he stomped past her.
Later that night, she had soaked in the heated bath, her belly full and a comfortable bed waiting, all luxuries that he had paid for.
She reflected that while she could pay her own way on this journey by using her Sight or her alchemy, what she did with the girl at the inn was little more than trickery, as he had accused.
Was she no better than a swindler, contributing to the negative perception of witches?
The conundrum had needled her until she had fallen asleep, and it resurfaced again as she watched his lips part slightly, inviting hers.
If she was honest with herself, it felt good to be so desired.
To give in and return his attention when she wasn’t sure it could go anywhere would only be another form of trickery.
She remembered the resolution they had made, and it would be far less complicated if they honored it.
He seemed to sense the refusal in her eyes as he turned from her, gaining his feet.
“Come. We should reach Mortimer in two hours. It’s the closest border town to Montag.”