8. To Share a Fire #2
“Not listening. We'll have to do something about that.” Teeth glimmered. It was a human face. I should feel something, looking into that face, but I didn’t.
Maybe I really was cold. “I offered you a deal, to repay us for being rescued. What do you think? Do you think you can take care of us three lost souls?” The dark-haired one snorted.
I should feel something. Maybe I was a monster.
I watched his face. His smile faded, turning ugly, predictable, his brows resolved into a frown as he reached up to his mouth to touch the corner where drool oozed down his chin.
“Are you alright?” I rasped. “You look odd.”
To my other side, the fast one, the one who’d hit him first, fell over, the convulsions starting as Bogdana’s powder kicked in.
Ronnel’s fingers came back from his mouth pink with blood. His eyes widened, horror. “You crazy bitch,” he bellowed. “She poisoned…she didn’t eat—" That was all that was understandable before the words cut off in bubbles, in foam. At least he fell away from the fire.
I should feel something, shouldn’t I? If I was selling my soul, and I should feel something, and I didn’t.
A fist gripped my collar. “What is this?” The bearded one was screaming. The third one. The largest. “What did you do to them, witch? Fix it! Fix it now!” He gripped my throat, and squeezed.
He was the largest. He’d eaten last. How long?
Bogdana would promise him an antidote. Bogdana would grind up acorns and dandelion roots and say comforting words.
People lived and died on hope. They especially died on it.
But I couldn’t get air to speak. There was a little fleck of foam on his beard.
I just had to say it, please. Please. And then I remembered that I didn’t.
I pulled the knife back and jammed it deep under his ribs.
His eyes bulged, and I kept pressing, as my hand went wet and hot, my wrist, down the front of my dress. I twisted.
He fell off of me, taking my knife with him.
My hand was sticky. I should clean it before I untied Vrathgar. No, I didn’t want to get more blood on this dress. I walked to the quick one, the one who’d fallen first, and wiped it on the back of his tunic. The red stuck under my nails, in the folds of my knuckles and the lines of my palm.
The talkative one had a knife in his belt. I wouldn’t have to retrieve mine from the gut of his compatriot. He grabbed my wrist while I was taking it, eyes wide, pleading. I shook him off. There was no saving either of us.
When I reached my husband’s side, he was lying still, his eyes open. He was alive, his gaze fixed past me, on the last death throes of the interlopers.
“You poisoned them,” he said.
“Yes.” I cut the rope on his wrists, glanced back at our cauldron. “I used up the onions.”
He sat up, wincing.
He’d already been injured. How much worse was this now?
“I won’t forget this,” he said.
My thoughts were a jumble, the residue of the poison I’d need to wash out of the cauldron, our things I’d need to pack. We couldn’t camp here, with the soon-dead, and I wasn’t wasting strength to bury them. He’d spoken to me, he’d said… “You won’t forget…” I managed, “that I’m a poisoner?”
He locked his gaze on me. His brow furrowed. “That you saved my life.”
I’d saved his life.
There was blood under my nails.
“Right,” I said.
I turned away, and I vomited.
I was bent over my knees, heaving up water and foam, and he was quiet, behind me, letting me finish. When I was done I tried to wipe my mouth, found more blood on the back of my hand.
“It’s normal to be shaken,” he said. “No one likes taking a life.”
I shook my head. “You’re the better wager,” I grated out.
“I'm safe, as long as I give you what you want.” My hands were shaking. I clenched them in my skirts. “I could have given them anything, and they’d still slit my throat.” The scarlet was still wet on my bodice, on my skirt, like I was the one who’d been stabbed.
He was quiet. That made sense. He was married to a murderer.
“Sorry,” I said. I was being too slow. “I’ll get the pack.” I weaved a moment, and he reached towards my arm, like he’d steady me, pulled back. “...I’ll get the pack,” I repeated, and I did.
None of our would-be murderers had much of worth on them. I kept the one knife and a purse with a few copper, the smiling one’s cloak. An almost-empty waterskin.
We walked for an hour, him taking frequent stops against trees, against rocks, me wishing there was enough light to forage for something to keep the blood-sickness back, wishing I had stronger eyes.
The sun was long down when we reached another hollow between tree-banks, and he slid down to sit, his head lolling on his chest.
“I should check your wounds,” I said, but there was no point. I could barely see.
“Leave them,” he said. “I’ll still be a good wager in the morning.”
I unrolled the blanket from our bedroll and draped it over him. He didn’t respond. I knew we hadn’t eaten, but I didn’t feel I could keep even the crumbly travel bread down. I detached our water skin, drank some and held it to his lips. When he’d finished, I went to tie it to the frame again.
“Tell me, wife,” he said, speaking to the dark. “What do you want from me?”
“Why are you asking me this?” I tugged the ties tighter. Maybe he was fevered. What would I do if he was fevered?
“Humor me,” he said, and there was no humor in his voice, only pain. “What did you want, when you agreed to marry me?”
He needed distraction. I had talked to people in pain before. I had chatted with Old Tom Tailor, when he got the gangrene and Bogdana had to cut off three of his toes. “What anyone wants, I suppose.” Nothing I said mattered. “A warm hearth. A safe place to sleep.” It sounded weak, even to me.
“You saw an orc in a jail and thought, ‘That’s where I’ll be the safest?’” Some of that dry edge came back into his voice. “Is there something I should know about that village?”
It was a rhetorical question, and I knew it, stayed quiet.
“What were you running from? …you don’t have to tell me.”
My arm where the creature’s talon had grazed it was still tender.
And I knew too well that truth was a weapon that could be turned on me, but there was so much blood on my body and his.
Maybe I needed to pretend there was someplace safe.
“The Overseer’s son.” I shrugged, as if the night would ever stop weighing on my shoulders.
“He wanted me to crawl into his bed in return for stopping me marrying you.”
“So you volunteered.” His shape was still in shadow. “Was there no one to stand up for you? A cousin, friends?”