Chapter 6 #2
“I’m not your friend today,” I said. “Today I’m your intimidating military escort. Use me accordingly.”
She grinned. “Noted. Intimidating military escort, follow me and look threatening. I’ll handle the talking.”
We found the lumber merchant in the eastern quadrant, a harpy whose stall was piled with cut timber in various grades.
Where angels were all grace and softness, harpies were sharpness incarnate.
Her wings were larger, more angular, the feathers a deep charcoal gray edged with copper that caught the light when she moved.
Her face had the distinctive avian cast of her kind, high cheekbones, a narrow jaw, eyes that were too bright and too knowing, set slightly wider than a human’s.
Her fingers ended in dark, curved talons that she used to tap impatiently on the counter as we approached, and when she smiled, it was the smile of someone who had been driving hard bargains since before I was born and had no intention of stopping now.
“Well,” she said, her voice carrying that harpy lilt, melodic and sharp at once. “If it isn’t the Queen’s Falcon, shopping for lumber this morning. The war heroes are diversifying. I respect it.”
I blinked. “You know who I am?”
She laughed, the sound like glass wind chimes in a strong breeze.
“Everyone knows who you are, sweetheart. The man who shot an arrow through a rebel officer’s eye at three hundred yards.
The legend. The myth. The very attractive man currently standing in my lumber stall looking confused about why people might recognize him.
” Her eyes moved to Gabriella, and something in her expression changed, a calculation being performed behind those bright eyes. “And you … you’re with him, right?”
“Uhm, yeah.” Gabriella went very still. I could feel the heat coming off her beside me, the warmth of someone who hadn’t expected to be seen that way.
“So, what do you two need?”
“We need cedar posts,” Gabriella said, her voice doing that thing where it tried very hard to sound professional and mostly succeeded. “Twenty of them. Six feet, treated. And nails. Galvanized, three-inch.”
The harpy’s smile widened. “Twenty posts. Galvanized nails. For the famous war hero and his very pretty… companion.” The pause was deliberate, weighted, her eyes moving between us with the delighted mischief of someone who had just discovered a game she very much wanted to play.
“You two make a lovely couple, by the way. The strong silent type and the brilliant one who does all the talking. Classic pairing. I’ve seen it a thousand times. ”
Gabriella’s face went through several expressions in rapid succession, settling finally on a blush so vivid it looked painted on. “We’re not … he’s my … that’s not—”
The harpy laughed again, delighted. “Oh, sweetheart. The denial is adorable, truly. It adds layers.” She turned to me, her head tilting. “You could do worse. Much worse. I’ve met her type. All brains and fire and the kind of loyalty that doesn’t come with wings attached. Rare commodity.”
I found myself laughing, partly because the situation was absurd, partly because Gabriella’s embarrassment was the most genuine thing I’d seen all morning, and partly because something in the harpy’s assessment had landed in a place I wasn’t ready to examine.
“We’ll take the posts,” I said. “And the nails. And whatever discount you’re willing to offer the Queen’s Falcon and his very pretty companion.”
The bargaining commenced. The harpy drove hard, Gabriella drove harder, and by the time we settled on a price I was fairly certain both of them had enjoyed every second of the combat.
We added fencing wire, tools, and arranged for the delivery of six breeding ewes from a livestock merchant two stalls down, the harpy promising everything would reach our farm by midday, “because I like you, war hero, and because watching your companion turn that shade of red was worth at least ten percent off the asking price.”
We mounted Valen for the return journey, Gabriella still pink around the edges, her hands gripping the pommel with more force than the situation required.
“She thought we were together,” she said, once we were airborne and the market had shrunk to a colorful smudge behind us.
“She did.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
She went quiet. I felt it in the set of her shoulders, the careful way she held herself, like someone navigating a conversation that had suddenly developed drop-offs on both sides.
“Would it be so ridiculous?” I asked. The question left my mouth before my brain had fully approved its departure, and once it was in the air between us, there was no calling it back.
Gabriella didn’t turn around. Her voice, when it came, was quiet, carried back to me on the wind. “Do you think it would be? A good couple, I mean.”
I looked at the back of her head, at the dark blonde hair coming loose from its knot, at the straight line of her shoulders where wings should have been and weren’t, and I thought about the harpy’s words. All brains and fire and the kind of loyalty that doesn’t come with wings attached.
“Of course I do,” I said.
She went very still. I felt it in the way her breathing changed, the small hitch, the careful controlled inhale of someone working very hard at not making a sound. Then her hands found mine where they crossed her waist, and she squeezed, once, quickly, and didn’t let go.
We flew the rest of the way home in a silence that felt like its own kind of conversation, and I tried very hard not to think about how right her body felt against mine or how the curve of her neck caught the sunlight or how the word “couple” had just entered the space between us and showed no signs of leaving.
Some words, once spoken, had a habit of making themselves comfortable. This one was already unpacking its bags.
* * *
The lumber arrived in time. The harpy had been true to her word: twenty cedar posts stacked neatly beside the barn, along with coils of galvanized wire, sacks of nails, and the promised sheep being herded into the temporary pen by a harpy courier who nodded to us once before taking to the sky again, his wings beating hard against the midday heat.
“Efficient,” I said.
“Terrifying,” Gabriella replied. “But efficient. I’ll take it.”
We changed into work clothes: me into an old shirt with the sleeves rolled past my elbows, her into a dress she’d tied at the knees to keep the hem out of the mud, and got to work.
The eastern fence was the priority. We wasted no time tearing out the rotten ones.
The old wire came down in long rusted coils, the kind that snapped if you looked at it too hard.
By the time we’d set the first new post, the farm already looked different.
I dug. Gabriella handed me tools. I set posts.
Gabriella held them steady while I packed the earth around their bases.
I strung wire. Gabriella tensioned it, her hands sure on the stretcher, her body leaning into the pull with a strength that belied her narrow frame.
We fell into a rhythm, the kind that happens when two people know how to move around each other’s spaces without talking about it, and the morning slid into afternoon, and the fence began to take shape, post by post, a straight clean line where before there had been sagging wire and makeshift repairs.
“You’re good at this,” I said, driving another nail into a crossbrace.
“I’m adequate at best. You’re the one doing the actual work. I’m just the assistant.”
“Assistants who know which end of a nail goes into the wood are worth their weight in gold. Trust me. I’ve commanded units where half the men couldn’t tell a hammer from a horseshoe.”
She laughed, and the sound carried across the pasture. “Military standards are famously low. I’m setting the bar at ‘basic competence’ and you’re acting like I’ve discovered fire.”
“I’m acting like I’m impressed by you, which is my right after knowing you this long and also objectively correct.”
She rolled her eyes, but I caught the pleased flush creeping up her neck, the way her mouth fought a smile and lost. She reached for the water jug, poured a cup, and instead of handing it to me, she tipped it.
The water hit my chest in a cold arc, soaking through my shirt. I yelped. Gabriella cackled, the sound delighted and entirely unrepentant, and she was already backing away, the empty cup held defensively in front of her like a shield.
“That,” she said, “was for the ‘objectively correct’ comment. Which was objectively smug.”
I set down the hammer very carefully. “You realize there are consequences.”
“I’m counting on them. I’ve developed strategies.”
“Your strategies involve running. My strategies involve catching you.”
“Your strategies have a fundamental flaw, which is that I’m faster than you and also—” She yelped as I lunged, dropping the cup and bolting across the pasture, her boots kicking up divots of soft earth, her laughter trailing behind her like something she’d spilled and had no intention of cleaning up.
I caught her at the tool shed because she tripped over a stray coil of wire and went down with a shriek that turned into laughter before she hit the grass.
I was on her in seconds, my hands finding her ribs, my fingers finding the ticklish spots I’d discovered when she was young and apparently still remembered perfectly.
She exploded. The sound she made was somewhere between a scream and a laugh, her body buckling under my hands, her arms flailing, her legs kicking in the desperate rhythm of someone whose nervous system had just declared unconditional surrender.
“Stop, Gabriel, I yield, I yield completely—”
“Do you? Because it sounds like you’re still talking, which suggests your surrender terms are negotiable, and mine are not.”