19. Business in Drida
Chapter nineteen
Business in Drida
Imalroc watched moonlight crack the rain clouds and thread through the little porthole windows. Rerdas had put out the lantern after they’d cleaned up as best they could, and the room was dark but for the pale pools from the windows.
His huntmaster still lay in his bed, warm body snug against him. He ran his fingers through coppery curls, tugging gently at Rerdas’s nape. Having him there was like a drug. Too good to give up. But as soon as that thought sighed through him, it met the steel of his spine and turned him cold.
He couldn’t see his way forward. Even in the worst situation, he’d always known the goal, if not the path to it. Rerdas had him in a dense and intoxicating cloud, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to stumble out of it. The world beyond it might be clearer, but empty.
With a contented sound, Rerdas shifted to face him. He cupped Imalroc’s jaw, fingertips slipping over skin Imalroc hadn’t realized ached to be touched.
Rerdas drew closer, his beautiful face filling Imalroc’s vision. His touch scattered all thought. The huntmaster had him perfectly trapped.
Rerdas kissed him softly. Imalroc returned it. His hands slid up Rerdas’s back of their own accord, traversing smooth swells of muscle above his shoulder blades, dragging him in. He should be completely sated after what they’d just done, but his body didn’t seem to agree.
He pinioned Rerdas close, rubbed the nape of the man’s neck just to see his eyelids tremble shut with pleasure.
But at least he wasn’t immediately diving back into another kiss.
He had a feeling there were only so many of those he could allow before he resurfaced after one and didn’t recognize himself at all.
Rerdas opened his eyes fractionally, nuzzling against his cheek. “Stay with me,” he murmured.
Imalroc arched an eyebrow. “Think I’m going to wander off somewhere else in this place?”
“No, I meant…” Rerdas slid an arm beneath Imalroc’s. “After. When you have your contract. Stay with me. Be with me.”
For a moment, longing filled him to the brim, and he had to seal his lips against an agonized sound. He risked speaking once he’d forced the sound to retreat to the pit of his stomach. “I don’t… How would that even work?”
“We can go far north on the eastern border. So far away no one will care to find us.”
“And your cousin? Your aunt?”
“Aunt Uralta needs a place to recover, far out of sight from danger.”
“You want to hide.” Imalroc disentangled slightly, shifting back to look at Rerdas.
A faint line creased between the huntmaster’s brows. “I want us all to be safe.”
They wouldn’t be. Kuraya would never let Uralta simply vanish, unless she was sure her enemy was dead.
But maybe the cousins could fake a convincing end and steal away.
Uralta could heal in the cold northern forests.
Etiana would be insufferable, but Rerdas would be there.
It could be like Lakara, all sunlight and trees and no one else for leagues upon leagues.
He could have Rerdas all day and all night. Even the thought put a piercing ache beneath his ribs.
But if anyone ever came looking, if Umber sniffed his way onto the Toriems trail and found them, Imalroc would again stand at the outskirts. The cousins would lie. His part in it would be to lower his eyes, to bow, to crawl on his knees.
And if Umber tired of Rerdas—which he couldn’t imagine anyone really doing—and the duke finally left them alone, would they ever be able to walk through a market together?
Would people see him and accept that he was free and one of them?
Did he even want to be one of them? They knew him for only one thing. He’d be a battleboxer still.
There were a hundred ways the Easterners could punish a handler for crossing forbidden lines with a battleboxer, even a former one. If they skirted arrest, they would still not be accepted.
Such a long time clinging to the hope that he would be free, and now he nearly had it, and he couldn’t stop wanting something else.
Questions crowded his mind, but he didn’t ask any. Rerdas was caught in the dream, and too willing to stay in it. He had no actual plans to offer.
“I don’t know… what safety looks like for me,” Imalroc said at last. A halting, incomplete attempt that barely scratched the surface. It was all he could do for the moment.
Rerdas let out a gentle sigh, warmth gusting over Imalroc’s chest. “We’ll find it. I swear.”
He didn’t respond, just let the quiet close over them.
He didn’t realize he’d drifted into sleep until a sound woke him.
Imalroc sat up, Rerdas slipping off his shoulder with a mumble.
There was nothing in the room but moonlight, brighter than before.
It made the shadows in every corner darker.
Rerdas sleeping steadily beside him calmed him for a moment until he heard a distant jangle.
It came from the courtyard. He stood and refastened his trousers. Crossing to crouch beside one of the porthole windows, he peered out.
The stones were awash with moonlight, and he could easily see a hooded figure trying to calm a startled horse. There were three other animals behind the first, lead lines knotted to each other. The hooded rider patted the spooked horse’s neck, and then leaned back and made some swift signal.
Imalroc narrowed his eyes. The street was so bright and clean that he missed them at first. Mounted figures waited in the deep shadows across the road. More horses, more riders.
Another sound eased through the dark room. Imalroc spun toward the door.
Someone crept up the stairs.
He bolted across the room, scooping the abandoned bedpost from where he’d flung it. Rerdas lay still, undisturbed. The huntmaster had unlocked the door to get in. It would still be unlocked.
There was a hiss of barely detectable words exchanged from the landing. Imalroc approached on his toes. Whoever stood in the hall, they were not getting into this fucking room. He rested one hand on the door handle and heard another telltale squeak of old wood.
“Rerdas,” he hissed, trying to wake the huntmaster.
There was a frozen silence on the other side of the door, as if the intruders were listening. Rerdas did not wake, and Imalroc was out of time. He wrenched the door open and barreled out swinging.
The post clipped a small, startled man right in the chest. He let out a cry and tumbled backward, caught by another figure on the stairs. Imalroc braced himself on the landing.
“Well,” said a peevish, strangely familiar voice. “Told you it wasn’t a good idea to sneak up on him.”
He couldn’t properly make out the speaker in the shadowy stairway, a woman who was propping up her groaning compatriot.
“You’ve broken my ribs,” the small man whimpered, prodding at himself. “We’re here to help you!”
The intruder wouldn’t be able to damn well poke himself that much if his ribs really were broken, and Imalroc didn’t trust the second part of the man’s claim any more than he believed the first.
“Get the light, Almatra,” the little man said.
A dry rasp, and then light swelled from an oil lamp gripped by a lean, black-clad woman. Imalroc lifted the bedpost and stared. She grinned at him, her face all sharp angles and long shadows. Her silvery hair was pulled up in a sleek topknot.
“Hello, champion,” she said.
It took him another beat, but he remembered red sand and a dark cell. “You’re the battleboxer from the Arble. And from the Vandro.”
“Almatra. And I’m not a battleboxer anymore.”
The bedpost almost slipped out of his fingers. He looked down at the bruised little man, who scowled back at him.
Almatra snickered. “The beetlebrain you just bumped was very excited to meet you. I tried to warn him not to tiptoe into your chamber.”
“How else were we supposed to fetch him?” the man asked indignantly.
“What the fuck is going on?” Imalroc demanded.
“Get your boots on and come down.” Almatra turned, placing her feet carefully where each stair met the wall to keep her steps noiseless. “They’re waiting for you in the scullery.”
Imalroc hesitated before ducking back into the room for his boots. Rerdas lay curled on the mattress, safe and asleep.
It might be unwise to wake him. Almatra knew Rerdas only as a handler, and she would see him as a threat. Imalroc slipped back into the hall alone and pulled the door carefully shut. He kept the bedpost tucked under his arm.
Almatra and the little man scurried on ahead, but it was simple enough to follow the edges of their light.
They kept mostly to narrow stairs and passageways that Imalroc had not seen before, a maze of hidden back ways for the inn’s staff.
Only a few times did they cross onto the luxurious carpets of the main halls.
Dim light shone from under one door. He held his breath as they silently stole past it.
They led him to a door that opened into a clean, cold room.
Imalroc stopped on the threshold, glancing around.
Sturdy tables crowded the center of the space, and the walls gleamed with rows of pans and utensils, some of them sharp enough to be used as weapons.
There were two other doorways, one open into what looked to be another kitchen, and one with a fogged glass window that must lead outside.
A petite, cloaked figure stood in front of the windowed door. Almatra placed the lantern on the nearest table, and she and the man flanked the waiting stranger.
The stranger pushed the hood they wore back. She looked like a woodcut image from a children’s story. Her cheeks were round as apples in the heart-shaped frame of her face, and her eyes fairly twinkled at him. No one who looked so obviously kind could be trusted not to use it.
“Imalroc,” she said, glancing at the bedpost he clutched. “It is good to meet you at last. I’ve heard such intriguing things.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Feldlady Honna Arleth. I’m here on behalf of the Advocate.”
“What?” he croaked.
“I do not know how much you are aware of the politics of our kingdom,” Feldlady Arleth began.