Chapter 23
Bafflingly, for Shiro and Chaska, the walk back to the Bower after their visit to Satin and Silk turned out to be a far more awkward experience than expected.
For Shiro, the silent walk was somehow more awkward than anything that had happened down there which had gone smoothly, sensually, the literal opposite of this.
The silence wasn't exactly silence, more of a nightly bustle that had grown increasingly loud lately with the ongoing unrest over the lockdown, but that was just background noise.
"You wanna hold hands?"
Shiro's impromptu question earned him a glare from Chaska. "Where's that coming from?"
"I felt the silence was awkward, so I said the first thing that came to mind."
"Which is holding hands?"
"Something wrong with that?"
"No. There'd be nothing wrong with it. For someone in love with the person they wanted to hold hands with that is."
"Come on, I already told you I'm not. I just want to hold—to make things less awkward. Unless that's more awkward to you than this oppressive silence, which would suggest you're embarrassed by the idea of holding hands with me."
She scoffed at that, grabbing his hand. "Why would I be embarrassed by that?"
"Yeah. Why would you?" Shiro conceded, with a chuckle. Fingers laced, they wound through several twisting alleys that no reasonable person should be strolling through casually, though they walked it with more than reasonable confidence. They had guns.
Halfway there, Chaska asked, her tone a little awkward, matching the question itself, "You hard yet?"
"What?"
"You said, back in the Satin & Silk, that holding hands makes it hard. So… is it, now?"
"No," he clarified, a little confused whether that was good news or bad. "Did you hold my hand thinking you'd trigger that?"
"You're a pervert, you said so yourself."
"I'll let you sit with what that says about someone who wrongly assumed that was my intent and entertained it anyway," Shiro shot back, then burst out laughing.
"I have to say, I didn't expect us to end up like this when I broke your collarbone.
Even with all the time we've spent together since, I really didn't see this coming, mostly because of how that first meeting went, if I'm honest."
She conceded that with a nod.
"I do regret not mentioning my ailment to you sooner. Though if you'd told me about your past sooner, I might've opened up sooner too."
"Do you think I just go around telling people I've shared intimate moments with my line sisters?"
"Fair enough," he conceded, then added, "Tell me more, though. I want to know about your order. You never really elaborated on your sisterhood."
Despite some reservations, Chaska went on to tell him more about the sisterhood she'd been raised in, carefully avoiding, he noticed, the exact part that intrigued him most: the dynamic between the girls within the order itself.
Since she'd called herself a priestess, he'd logically assumed her order was some kind of cult.
Instead, it functioned more like a historical preservation society than a traditional religion.
Most religions sought converts, but her order had no such ambition, at least not among anyone born outside the Andoe people.
She hadn't called herself a priestess for nothing, though. Like priests of any faith, the members of her order still revered a higher figure: the Andoe Matriarch, founder and former ruler of the land whose history they preserved.
After explaining what her order, which she simply called the Sanctuary, actually did, and how it had become a pillar of what remained of their society—the fundamentalist remnants of an old and once-prosperous civilization, she explained she'd essentially been born into the order, destined from birth to become a Sanctuary Keeper.
"That makes sense," Shiro nodded, noting they were getting close to the Bower now.
"One thing, though. You've told me a lot about what your order does, but nothing in there explains why you're here, or why you're looking for Nazim," he asked, deliberately not mentioning the skull that had to be at the center of it all. "It’s connected, right?"
She confirmed that with a nod, then went quiet.
"You're not going to tell me?"
Her expression suggested she'd almost considered it, but her actual answer, as she let go of his hand, was a firm "No."
"Fair enough. We're all entitled to a secret or two."
The two of them soon reached the Bower, where Shiro had, that very morning, paid for another five days. First thing they did on arriving was order dinner, waiting for them by the time they came out of their baths.
As always on a night without the bard, something that happened every five days, Headbird had said, tonight had an average crowd.
Mostly familiar faces, fellow guests or regular restaurant patrons in for a drink or a meal, and their conversation, loud enough to carry, gravitated toward one subject, unsurprising given the stakes: the blockade, which had officially hit its tenth day.
"This shit is starting to get on my nerves," Shiro overheard someone complain, an Arad by the quick glance of it.
"Only starting now? Lucky you. I hit my limit six days ago," answered the man across from him. "Right now I'm past fed up. Fed up enough I might actually join Dan in his stupid plan to kick off a—"
"Careful there, buddy," a nearby patron warned, glass and bottle in hand. "The ducal guard's got eyes and ears in every establishment lately. They might not catch the bastard they're after, but they'll happily catch you talking against the ducal lords."
At that, the first man, someone Shiro had picked up bits about over his ten days at the Bower, an architect who'd been invited into the city by one of the ducal princes for an event that had since been cancelled, nodded in agreement.
"He's right," Headbird said, walking up to their table to swap out the water carafe. "If you're planning anything problematic, even as a joke, I'd appreciate you take it elsewhere."
"Understood," the pair nodded, changing the subject immediately, only for the conversation to drift right back to the blockade by the time Shiro finished his meal, the man who'd issued the warning now joining in himself.
"Heard the ducal prince doubled the watch at the inner wall this evening."
"They know what's coming," one replied, gripping the stem of his goblet, done eating now, moving on to drinking. "Ten days. People can stomach a week of silence from them, but not this. Keep it up, and people will march beyond the inner wall. Nothing's going to stop that."
"Eh, there's an argument to be made there. Still, don't write off the ducal guard just yet. They might suck at their job, sure, but they can fight, the elder prince made sure of that."
"You think they can stop everyone marching there?"
"Depends how many this everyone you speak of is, I'd say. My point is it'll take a real big, real angry mob to overwhelm them."
"I'm curious to see how good they actually are, but honestly, no. Not like this. Just hope those bastards lift the blockade soon."
"Three more days, man. That's all the patience this city's got left. After that, the streets run red, guaranteed."
After bidding Headbird and Sarah, on her night shift, goodnight, the two of them made their way up to the second floor and their rooms. "What do you think about all this?" Shiro asked Chaska.
"I don't care. All I care about is them finally letting people out of this city," she said, with indifference. "If they don't soon, I'll join the mob against the lord myself."
Shiro chuckled at that, until he realized she wasn't joking. He didn't say anything, just hoped it wouldn't come to that. He hated nobility plenty, but not enough to want to get dragged into a civil war.
"Good night, Chaska," he said simply, as she reached her room.
She looked like she was about to say something more, but what came out was just, "Good night," before she shut the door.
Well, what did I expect, Shiro thought, heading into his own room, setting the Vanguard aside before throwing himself onto the bed.
He replayed the day in his head. It had been a good day.
He hadn't found a cure for his ailment, hadn't managed to keep himself hard long enough for it to count for much, but it had still been a good day.
Just thinking about it lifted his mood, and even his, eh, never mind, that went back down, but the mood stayed up.
He was halfway under the sheets, looking forward to tomorrow, when his eyes landed on the Vanguard, resting beside him in bed as always.
The sight reminded him of something he'd noticed days ago now, ten, actually, but never brought up.
Should I do it now? He mulled it over for a couple of seconds then settled on a “yes” as his answer. Grabbing the gun, he left his room and knocked on the next door, Chaska's, which opened so fast it nearly startled him.
"What?" she asked immediately.
"I've been thinking," he began, "about something I wanted to bring up but hadn't yet. But then I figured, since we don't know what tomorrow holds, and given what a good day we just had, maybe it was best to—"
"Wanna to do it again?" she asked, cutting straight through.
"Yes." Not a shred of hesitation in the answer. It came out reflexively, instant, like a dog spotting a dropped steak.
Chaska let out a delighted little half-snort, but before she could say anything else, he was already through the door, his free hand, the one not holding the Vanguard, sliding around her waist and pulling her in, lips meeting hers in one fluid motion.
Ah, I missed this, he thought.
The truth was, the reason he'd actually come to her had nothing to do with this.
He'd wanted to ask about something he'd suspected ever since hearing he'd shot two people while drunk.
His first thought had been that it didn't sound like him, but the more he thought about it, that wasn't even the strangest part of the whole supposed shootout.
If he really had shot those men, presumably with the Vanguard, the odds of them surviving were slim to none.
Even the weakest round in his arsenal could tear a chunk out of someone's gut.
The best-case outcome would've been a severed limb, and yet he'd never heard anything about the two men suffering that kind of damage.
On top of that, his bullet count hadn't changed at all from before he'd taken that potion. Once he put those two things together, he'd started to suspect he hadn't been the one who shot them at all. Who then? Well, who else but her.
He didn't particularly mind that she'd let him believe otherwise. She probably had her reasons. But he was curious about the rest of that night. The gap in his memory bothered him, and now that he had the chance, he wanted to ask her about it.
Was it important enough to knock on her door after already saying goodnight? Yes. Was it important enough to take priority over what she was currently offering him? Absolutely not.
Out of breath after a long, steamy kiss, she walked to the foot of the bed, stripped off her underwear, and looked at him. "Eat me. Again."
He didn't hesitate. Step by step, he closed the remaining distance until the heat radiating off her skin was undeniable. Dropping to one knee on the hardwood, his eyes stayed locked on hers, refusing to let her look away.
His hands slid up warm along the backs of her calves, fingers anchoring behind her knees. In one smooth, deliberate motion, he lifted her leg, shifting her weight onto his shoulder. The sudden change in balance made her gasp, her fingers instantly tangling into his hair for support.
His mouth was an inch from meeting her when he froze. Something about the view tugged at a part of his brain he'd learned to expect little consistency from, one that handed him knowledge or withheld it entirely at random, usually on its own schedule.
The angle of the light. The exact weight of her hands in his hair. The precise way she leaned back against the mattress. It collided all at once into a sudden, crushing wave of déjà vu. Something about this exact layout, this exact sequence of movement, felt fiercely, terrifyingly familiar.
He pulled back abruptly, dropping his hands from her thighs, letting her leg slide off his shoulder until her foot found the carpet again.
The sudden loss of his warmth left her shivering in the cool air of the room. She blinked down at him. "Why did you stop?" she asked, her voice cracking with something raw and distressed.
He stayed down on one knee, hands resting flat against his own thighs, shoulders rigid. "I think I just unlocked something about that night," he said. "I remember what happened at the tavern now. I remember why I beat those men. And I remember the girl."
"What girl?"
"There was a girl. She recognized me, attacked me for who I was. She called me Hiro."