Chapter 11
Chapter
Eleven
Medical equipment is sexy
Walking into Valrim Village on Maive’s arm, with her gift tucked under my other one, I had the unsettling sensation of being on the wrong side of something.
Word had traveled ahead of us, and as we reached the square, people turned and smiled and pressed their fists to their chests.
Several called out things I couldn’t catch over the growing noise.
For a former mercenary, respect had come with a knife at someone’s throat. That I understood. This I did not. This felt unearned.
Stop it, I thought. You gave a child some water and a seaweed cake. You were not awarded a medal of valor.
The festival had begun before we arrived, just paused for the search of Aila.
But now that all was well, the festivities commenced in earnest. The smells found me first. My belly rumbled at the scent of roasted meat and something sweet, fried things I didn’t recognize, and warm bread with herbs.
Music started up ahead: a bright, quick-fingered instrument I hadn’t heard before, with a variety of expert percussion.
Threaded through the notes was a singer with a fine voice.
It cut through the noise and added a merry tone to the air.
The Runams had decorated. Every surface that could hold something, held something.
Strings of shells that connected building to building and doorway to doorway clicked softly in the sea breeze.
Garlands of thick leaves, threaded with dried flowers and berries, looped from every eave.
Near the harbor, between two stone columns, someone had strung a line and hung from it what appeared to be fat red flowers and several pairs of blue socks.
I stared at them. I had no framework for this.
Perhaps it was ceremonial. Perhaps the socks just needed to dry.
The villagers were dressed in their finest, wearing colors I hadn’t seen on them before.
They laughed and moved in clusters, and some of them were already dancing near the dock in a loose, informal way that suggested the dancing would get less informal as the evening approached.
Aila held court with the village children, who were clustered around her.
They stared in awe at Silli, who sat in her arms like a little prince.
True to her word, Aila held her fellow younglings back from handling Silli with the same commanding tone as her grandmother.
And it was just as effective. She allowed them to respectfully pet him one at a time.
Assured that Silli was in good hands, I turned my attention to the woman beside me.
Maive walked with her head high and a gentle smile curving her lips.
People called to her and she responded with nods and brief words.
She was accustomed to being the center of everything, to holding it all in balance for the people who relied on her.
She turned slightly toward me and said, quietly, “How are you holding up?”
“Fine,” I said, though my voice was tight.
“You are a poor liar.”
“Sorry,” I muttered. “I’ll work on that.”
She laughed. “Please don’t.”
I sighed. I had returned a child who had followed a bird into the woods.
That did not make me a hero. I was a man who had spent his adult life getting paid to be something close to the opposite.
The distance between those two things was not something a basket of food and the gift of a functioning field medic unit could close.
But I wasn’t going to say that here, with the music playing and the shells clicking and everyone looking so pleased about my existence.
We reached the end of the square and I caught the smell of something they were roasting on a giant spit near the dock. Sweet fleck, I wanted to try whatever that was.
“This way,” Maive said, and steered us—gently, firmly, the way she did everything—toward the large stone building that fronted the square.
The doors stood open. Inside, it was cool and dim and quiet.
No Tregen, no Pasek wringing his hands, no exhausted healer.
Just a wide, empty room that smelled of stone and old woodsmoke, with the noise of the festival softened to something manageable.
Maive turned to face me. She had her hands clasped in front of her, which I had noticed was what she did when she had thought about something in advance and intended to say it.
“I owe you an apology,” she said.
“You don’t,” I replied.
“I do.” She paused, ensuring she wouldn’t be interrupted. “I decided what you were before I knew you.”
“You were protecting your village.” I shifted the box under my arm. “That’s not an error in judgment. That’s your job.”
“Perhaps.” She tilted her chin up—habitual. “But I was wrong about you specifically. And I’m glad you didn’t leave when I told you to.”
“You may have made me leave eventually,” I said, and maybe it was true. “You’re very stubborn.”
Her eyes sparked. “I’m stubborn?”
“Extremely.”
She pressed her lips together. The corner of her mouth gave her away anyway. “I’m glad you chose that spot on the cliff,” she said, quieter. “My people needed someone like you here. I was too afraid to see it.”
I looked away from her, out one of the narrow windows, where I could see a strip of ocean going dark and bright in the late light.
“Your people did just fine before I arrived,” I said, turning back to her. “They’re strong and…pleasant enough.”
“I know,” she said. “And we also find you…pleasant enough.”
She was standing close enough to make it difficult to think. My body was acutely aware of the distance between us, which I found both excessive and insufficient. She smelled of the sea and of baked bread, which were two of my favorite things. I suspected she tasted just as good.
“Well.” I cleared my throat. “Thank you. For saying so.”
“You’re welcome.” Her eyes held mine with an open steadiness that I was beginning to think was just how she looked at everything. “Gilrox, you look like you’re in pain.”
“No.” I raised one brow. “This is just my face.”
“I’ve seen your face plenty of times,” she countered. “You don’t always look like you want to bolt out the door.”
“I don’t.” The problem was that I had no idea what came next.
In the field, there was always a next step, a clear objective, a plan already forming.
Here, in a cool stone room with Maive standing a pace away and the festival carrying on without us outside, I had nothing.
Gilrox Ban-Ver-Mos, Rank V, Level Ten Mercenary, retired, should have had a solid reaction to any given situation.
But standing in a room with a woman who completely hijacked my senses, and who had just told me she was glad I had moved in next door, rendered me as useless as a green mercenary on his first mission.
Her gaze slid to the box under my arm. “What is that?”
I thrust it toward her with absolutely zero grace, looking like someone who had never given a gift in their life. Both things were accurate. “For you.”
Her eyes widened as she accepted it with both hands. She glanced up at me once, then lifted the lid. The device sat in formed gray foam cut to its exact shape. This model was smaller than the unit I’d used on Tregen, but the technology was the same.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A portable healing device for treating injuries in the field,” I said.
“Similar to what I used on Tregen. Adequate for wounds, infection, most of what your people are likely to encounter.” I crossed my arms. Uncrossed them.
Set my hands at my sides. “I can train someone in your village to use it. In case there’s an accident and I’m unavailable. ”
She said nothing.
She looked at the device in its foam casing, and she kept looking, and the silence ran past the point I was comfortable with, and then past that. Through the stone walls, the festival continued: drums, voices, that pretty instrument playing a new, but no less merry, tune. In here, nothing moved.
My gut held a meeting about this.
I thought about Pasek. Something purple, he’d said.
Any shade. You’ll be fine. I cursed myself for not picking something she could wear and feel uncomplicated about.
Instead, I had purchased medical equipment as a gift for the most compelling person I’d spoken to in years, and now she was silent and I was standing here in new clothes I didn’t quite know how to stand in, with my hands doing nothing useful, and no plan of any kind.
I shifted my weight.
“I can find you something else,” I said. “The Durbok has other things. Jewelry, that would suit you. Pasek mentioned you like purple—”
“No,” she said, cutting me off.
I stopped. “Okay.”
Her thumb moved across the edge of the foam casing, before she set the box on the table beside her. She turned and stepped toward me, and I went very still.
I had no name for the churn of feelings that beat through me in time with the drums outside.
I had no reference for this odd, relentless pull toward her that, honestly, nothing short of a fiery explosion could have torn me from.
But in the center of my chest, in a place I was generally unaccustomed to feeling things, I ached. It didn’t feel bad, exactly.
“Gilrox.” Her voice was low. “This is the most perfect gift you could have given me.”
It was? “Ah,” I said. “Good.” It was the only word I could find.
Her hand came up. Her fingers touched the back of my neck, and gently pulled.
What was happening? My senses went into disarray.
Did she wish to whisper something? Was this another strange Runam ritual?
I had no choice but to go with it. I briefly thought—with alarm—that this woman had far too much power over me.
She could knock me over with a flip of her elegant fingers.
She could talk me into doing an awful lot of things I would never ordinarily do. Like attending a flecking festival.
She drew my head lower, and then, she kissed me.
Soft. Unhurried. I had no preparation for the gentleness of it.
My hand found her waist, mostly because I needed to ground myself from this unexpected assault.
The party outside was suddenly very far away.
All I could process was her smell, sea salt and warm bread; the cool of the room against the warmth of her hand; the realization that she did taste as good as she smelled.
Her fingers slid up into my hair. The festival kept going without us, indifferent, and in here everything had narrowed down to the two of us in this dim room and nothing else.
I had been shot, stabbed, burned, and left for dead on various occasions. I had survived conditions that should not have been survivable. I had never once lost my footing.
This, I was sure, was not survivable. I’d met my match in the form of a small Runam woman. To think, I had once considered her an inconvenience.
She eased back before I could do anything I’d need to think carefully about afterward.
She gazed up at me with heavy, languid eyes, and an expression that was warm and open and softly pleased.
I was becoming aware that I would do any number of questionable things to keep seeing that look on her face.
“We should return to the festival,” she said.