Chapter Fifteen. An Impasse.
Fifteen
An Impasse.
The smell of copper brings my attention to my hand, and I become aware that my palm is stinging.
I’m bleeding there, but I can’t assess the depth of the wound in the darkness.
It was probably from the wall, and my unhelpful brain kicks out a suggestion that I wash it and rub talrow root on the abrasion to keep it from getting infected.
As I lower my arm, I’m back at Mare’s bedside again. If she’d had my youth and health, she would have run. She would have … heard the crowd banging on her door and gotten out through the trapdoor under her bed.
Or maybe she wouldn’t have, but I would have, had I been the two of us combined.
And as much as it galls me, Merc is right. There’s only one thing I need to do now.
With my uninjured hand out to the side for navigation, I know I have to get moving not because of what he said to me, but because I imagine my old dear friend in that bed, so helpless as the men set upon her.
I imagine their murderous faces, their knives, the rank stink of their sweat.
The echo of the horror she must have felt surges through my suffocation and panic, and I take a step forward. And another.
And another.
Her gold is on my body, in a pouch in my pocket. I mark my progress by the way its weight slaps against my thigh.
After I make the turn, another decline dips beneath the soft soles of my slippers, and I can feel it, the sensation in my feet returning.
Right after that, as if in reward for my bravery, the glow of the torch flares in the void up ahead.
As it gets brighter and brighter, I realize that Merc’s waited for me.
I exhale in relief. He’s giving me time to catch up to him, and if I didn’t, he clearly would have come back for me.
Evidently, there was a fourth option—
Oh. He hasn’t waited for me. Voluntarily, that is.
Merc’s crouched down at the edge of a pond’s worth of water, moving the torch around as if assessing the depth of the pool as well as where the far edge of it intersects the slope of the tunnel ceiling.
The firelight sparkles over the black water, making it look like oil, and all I want to do is tell him to get back before something leaps out at him.
“You better know how to swim,” he says grimly.
Rising to his feet, he shoves the torch at me, and I take the grip that’s been warmed by his hold and squeeze my hands around it. After he sheathes his broadsword at his hip, rather than his back, he starts to unbuckle the heavy weapons belt at his waist.
My eyes lock on his scarred hands yanking at the leather strapping, right over the laces of his britches. Right over … the seat of his sex.
A flush roars to my face and I drop my eyes.
“What are you doing?” Even though it’s obvious—and how far is he going to go?
“I’m going to see if there’s a way through. I suspect the tunnel’s collapsed somewhere up ahead and this is moat water.”
“Wait! There are balas in the—”
“I know. But there’s no going back, remember.”
Dropping his pack, he shucks all of the holsters on his torso, then removes his leather overcoating and the chained breastplate, revealing a long-sleeved black sheath that stretches over his muscled chest, shoulders, and arms. Dimly, I wonder where all of his other clothes are—they must be in that pack—and then he bends over and starts to undo the buckles on his heavy boots.
I have to turn away as it looks like he’s indeed about to drop his pants.
Crescent moon, he probably is going to take his leather pants off. And fates protect me … I want to see. All of it.
All of him.
Closing my eyes, the sounds of the shifting of clothes, of his breath, of the creak of what covers his lower body, are too intimate to bear, and for a moment, I am back at the Gauntlet on the second floor, listening to Sallae Mae and her ilk do their business.
When I hear a splash, I whip back around. Merc’s already wading into the fetid flood—
Okay, he’s kept on the black sheath, and it’s long enough so that it covers down to his mid-thigh. I can’t decide whether I’m relieved or disappointed. What’s clear is that given our circumstances, his nakedness or the lack thereof should be the very last thing on my mind.
“Where’s your weapon?” I blurt out.
Merc glances over his shoulder, and I jerk to the side just in time to miss his eyes. “I’m coming back for them. And you.”
With a messy fumble, I get out my little knife and offer it to him, even though the stumpy blade is pathetic compared to what he normally carries. “Take this. If that is moat water, the balas will scent you through the currents, and at least you can swim with this easily in your hand.”
When he just stares at what I’m holding out, I turn the blade around so the hilt is facing him. “It’s better than nothing.”
In the firelight, his half smile is a beacon all its own. “You have that with you always?”
“Even a mouse needs to bite if threatened.”
Merc steps out of the water and takes the blade. Then he gently unfurls my fingers and lays it back in my grip properly.
“You keep this.”
“What if you don’t come back?” I blurt as he turns away again.
“Then you’ll either try the water yourself or you’ll starve to death here.” He glances back at me. “Don’t worry, though, I won’t be gone but a bit. I have to live long enough for you to show me what’s under that hood of yours, yes?”
For a split second, he stares at me with his head tilted to one side, and I wonder if he’s trying various hair and eye colors on me. Then he chuckles and turns to the oily black water.
Bending down, he wades in as far as he can, which is not all that much because of his bulk and the way the tunnel’s ceiling angles sharply into the pool. Then he starts huffing and puffing, blowing air in and out of his lungs. Finally, he draws in a long, slow inhale that seems to go on forever—
He goes into the murky depths like he’s been sucked down.
The disturbance on the surface doesn’t last long.
And I know what’s coming, if I’m lucky: He’s going to reappear and tell me I have to follow him through that water.
Panic immediately returns.
I cannot swim.
I’ve tried before, in lazy streams and still-watered lakes. In ponds, too. I sink like a stone, and have all the coordination of a seizure.
Glancing around, I find a fissure in the wall that’s big enough to shove the handle of the torch into. It takes a couple of tries to get the stalk to stay put, but finally, it holds. Then I sluice the pack off my shoulder, and bring my hands up to my hood.
I have to breathe deeply once or twice, just to convince my brain I’m not already drowning. Right before I drop the folds back, I glance at the pool. Then I wrench the hood off my head—
Oh, the air is good. Even as musty as it is here, just the ability to draw in freely as well as the temperature drop on my face calms me a little.
Releasing the cloak from my body helps, too.
The weight off my torso and arms makes me feel like I’m floating and a chill tickles away the oppressive warmth that’s had me locked in a vise.
Underneath, I have two layers, an outer linen tunic that falls from my collarbones to my ankles, and beneath that, there are my intimates, such as they are.
As opposed to the corsets and thigh-high silken leggings of the working women, I just have shirting and a pair of loose men’s bloomers.
Quick as my shaky hands will let me, I take off my sheath, tie a knot in the top to close the neck hole, and pull it back over myself, seating the length on the crown of my head.
As the folds of thin material settle around me, they are a veil that doesn’t compromise my vision, but still hides my face.
Then I go back to the cloak. Fishing around the folds, I take out Mare’s heavy bag of gold and wonder where I can stash it.
There’s a button pocket on the backside of the bloomers and I shove what my friend wanted me to have in there and refasten things.
To cure the drag on the waistband, I tighten the leather slip I have to wear to keep them on my hips in the first place.
After which, I just stand there and stare at the pool.
The surface is so still, it’s a mirror of the rough stone walling and the arching ceiling above.
Time spools out into eternity, and my heart beats faster as I imagine the burning in Merc’s lungs as he holds his breath and uses those broad, callused palms to propel himself through a cold darkness that surely must feel infinite to him, too.
My thoughts begin to cannibalize my consciousness. I picture him turned around in the weightless void, unable to find his way back.
I glance at the torch. Hopefully the light will be his guide? Assuming the glow even carries through the soup.
I wait.
And wait some more.
As I sense myself spiraling again, my mind escapes to folktales I’ve overheard in the pub for as long as I have memories.
If Anathos still had its magic? If that invisible power, the sacred energy given to everyone and everything when our continent was created, remained in the air and the soil and the water?
I maybe could have marshaled it and provided him a sufficient homing signal.
Or perhaps I could have gone with him, suspended in a protective bubble that I could drive like a ship—
We could have both been in my magical underwater vessel.
Yes, a bubble under the surface. With a lighting glow and confines that were great enough to withstand even the teeth of the biggest balas in the moat—
My racing thoughts slam into the barn side of reality: In the ancient times, there wouldn’t have been the Fulcrum to claim those boys. So we would not be here at all.
And in that scenario, Merc could have summoned the granthe himself and visualized the safest escape.
“Merc…” I cup my hands to my mouth. “Merc! Come back!”
Trying not to panic, my eyes shift to the pack, and I blame all of this on the stupid story Mr. Lewis laid out—even though the real problem was the angry crowd.
Hide, that old familiar voice commands me.
And then it follows up with something new:
Seek out the warrior queen who sees no one and return what is hers. Your salvation is there.
Staring at the still water, I shake my head bitterly. “I’m just going to get out of Greensward and survive somewhere. That will be quite hard enough, thank you very much.”