Chapter 23
Reilly
By daylight the south pasture looked like a story someone had written in ash.
Not just burned strips. A body at the far fence that was not one of ours and not dressed quite right.
Free-company coat, too new, clasp missing.
Another smear of blood on a post with no trail leading out.
Arranged. I stood in the black grass with Gareth upwind and Marshall downwind and Owen on the line like a man who had already put metal in my hand in the dark.
Idony wanted Hillsford protection by nightfall.
She said it in the hall with dirt still on my boots. Pell agreed before she finished. Gareth sat in my father’s chair without asking and listened like a man hearing a prayer he had written.
“You had a rogue fire on your south line,” Gareth said. “You have a Tillson company on your cut. You have two missing scouts in a storm and a cabin that smells like a bed. My men can hold your south tonight. You only have to say yes.”
“No,” I said.
Pell spread his hands. “Reilly. The lower houses watched the sky burn. They will take his coats.”
I put the clasp on the table.
Hillsford metal. Blackened. The one Melanie had pulled from the ash and Owen had put in my palm at the gate. It sat next to Gareth’s clean cuff and made a small sound.
“Your fire,” I said. “Your clasp. Left sloppy. The body on the far fence is dressed like a company wolf and cut like a prop. We are not taking your protection for a problem you lit.”
The hall went quiet. Edward on the wall. Marshall at my shoulder. Gareth looked at the clasp for a long time, then at me, then at the door as if Owen might be standing in it. He was not. I had left him on the south line on purpose.
“That’s an accusation,” Gareth said.
“It’s a piece of metal from your house in my pasture.”
“Anyone can drop a clasp.”
“Anyone can,” Idony said, and her voice had gone careful. “You brought twelve men and a wedding date. Then the south burned in strips that did not take the hall. Convenient.”
Gareth smiled without his mouth. “I’ll need to speak to my father.”
“Speak to him from your guest line,” I said. “You’re done in that chair.”
He stood. He looked at my throat. He looked at my mouth. He could still smell the pine on me if he wanted. He had smelled it last night in the trees. He did not use it. He had a clasp on the table now and a room full of people who had seen it.
“This isn’t finished,” he said.
“Get out of the chair.”
He got out. His men took him to the yard. Not off the ground. Not yet. Nightfall was still a threat in Pell’s face.
I sent the council out. I told Marshall to move the staged body off the fence before the lower houses made a saint or a villain out of it. I told Edward to stay off the south road. I took the clasp, wrapped it, and put it in my coat.
“Tillson,” Marshall said.
“I’m going to the line.”
“Take me.”
“No. Hold the hall. If Gareth comes back through that door, you are the door.”
I went south.
Owen was in the black at the far fence where the body had been. Melanie saw me and peeled off with two wolves toward the shed ruin. The field was still warm under the boot.
“They want his coats on the south by dark,” I said.
“I heard.”
“The clasp is on record. He didn’t confess. He didn’t leave.”
Owen looked at my mouth. The pine was still between us. The dawn kiss. The swallowed words. Smoke in my hair.
We did not make it to the hall with the rest of the talk.
The empty barn sat on the inner edge of the south pasture, scorched at one corner, stalls intact. I walked in to see if anything living had been left to scream. He followed. The door sagged. No one in the stalls.
We did not pretend.
He had me against the stall boards from behind, coat shoved up, pants dragged to my thighs.
His hand on my throat, not tight enough to mark, tight enough to remind me what I would not let him do with his teeth.
His other hand opened his belt. He pushed into me in one line, all the way, and I was wet from the walk and from the table and from him.
He fucked me into the wood. The stall rattled.
His palm sat on my throat and his mouth sat on my shoulder, not the neck, and I reached back and held his hip and took it.
“The clasp should have killed this,” I said, rough.
“It didn’t.”
He rubbed my clit with the hand that was not on my throat and I came on his cock with my forehead on my own fist against the board.
He kept thrusting. The knot started. I said don’t and he said I know and he pulled out and came on the backs of my thighs, hot, pulsing, his hand still on my throat while he shook.
He turned me. He dropped to his knees in the ash-dust and put his mouth on me, pants still at my thighs, and licked his own mess and my slick until I came again, pulling his hair, the barn empty, the field black outside.
He stood. I got my hand on him and stroked what was left until he twitched and pushed my hand off.
We pulled clothes into place. His palm had not bruised my throat. It had only promised.
Melanie coughed outside on purpose. We stepped out like we had been counting stalls. She looked at my mouth and his knees and did not comment. She said the shed was empty and Gareth’s men were on the guest line, not the road out.
I went back to the hall.
Idony had Pell in a corner. Edward looked at my coat like he could see the clasp and the barn both. I set the wrapped metal in the lockbox in Idony’s office and turned the key.
“He’ll try the lower houses,” Idony said.
“I know.”
“He’ll try Edward.”
“Edward stays in the hall.”
“And Tillson.”
“Tillson stays on the line I paid for.”
Idony looked at my throat anyway. “You went to the barn.”
“I went to the south.”
“Reilly.”
I did not argue the smell. I went to my rooms and washed my thighs and washed my hands and sat on the bed with the field still in my nose.
The proof had not killed the heat. I put my hand between my legs over the clean pants and I was swollen from the stall and from his mouth after.
I rubbed once and stopped because if I started I was going to go back down to the black grass.
Marshall opened the door without knocking, then saw my face and stayed on the threshold.
“Gareth sent a runner toward Hillsford,” he said. “Not all his men went with the runner. Eight still here. He is not leaving tonight.”
“Then we don’t sleep like he left.”
“The lower houses want someone on the south fence they trust. They do not trust Tillson. They trust Hillsford coats more than a burned pasture. You need to walk the houses before Pell does it for Gareth.”
I walked the houses.
I talked about the clasp without opening the lockbox. I talked about staged fire. I did not talk about the pine or the barn. A widow who was not the Tillson widow held her child and asked if the wedding would stop the burning. I said there was no wedding. She looked at me like I had stolen food.
Edward caught up at the last stoop. “Let me walk with you.”
“No. You’re the thing he takes if this goes to the next kind of fire.”
“I’m not a sack of grain.”
“You are to him.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “Hall. Until I say.”
He went, angry. I stood in the path and felt Owen on the south line, ash on him, my smell on his mouth. The bond wanted the barn again. I gave it the walk back to the hall instead.
Night came down on black fields and eight Hillsford wolves in my yard and a clasp in a box and a date Gareth had not gotten.
I did not go to the cabin.
I lay in my clothes and stared at the ceiling and felt his hand on my throat where there was no mark, and I thought about nightfall protection I had refused, and I thought about the body on the fence dressed like Owen’s people, and I did not come, on purpose, like that was a kind of discipline, until the discipline broke and I shoved my hand down and rubbed my clit with two fingers thinking about the stall and his palm and the knot he had not put in, and I came into my own wrist with the south pasture still burning behind my eyes.
Proof on the table.
Heat still there.
Gareth still on my ground. The houses still hungry. Owen still on the line I would not claim.
I washed my hand and did not sleep.