Vassal

by Sterling D'Este

  Alphonse sighed. “Shall I prepare dinner?”

  Delyth was blushing slightly, her eyes soft and fixed on Alphonse. She reached up and plucked a few fallen petals from the smaller woman’s dress.

  Tristan snorted, passing by. “The latrines aren’t going to dig themselves.”

  The priestess didn’t seem to notice. She gestured a little clumsily to the shovel in her hands. “I’ll help you in just a moment.”

  Alphonse smirked. “Take your time, I’m not going anywhere,” she said in a lightly teasing tone of voice. Still, she watched as Delyth headed into the trees. Maybe her eyes slipped down the priestess’s backside for a moment too long…

  It was hard not to look! Delyth was very well muscled and shapely. And she wore breeches, so everything was on display.

  Shaking her head to try and clear it, Alphonse set about getting supper ready. Root vegetable soup.

  Again.

  She was immersed in her work when Delyth came to stand beside her at the fire, grinning with playfulness. “Do you mind if I cook with you?” she was saying, her voice sly. “I know a bit about spice.”

  A blush was rising up Alphonse’s cheeks, nearly painful. Delyth was flirting with her! Surely she should flirt back? But how? Alphonse had never flirted with anyone in her life. Had never wanted to. Alphonse handed over the large wooden spoon to Delyth and turned to gather some herbs from her satchel. “Thyme?” she asked, mortified at how her words fumbled in her mouth. Delyth was suave and confident; the way she looked at Alphonse made the healer feel warm and tense in all the right ways. And all she could say was ‘thyme’?!

  Gods.

  Delyth snorted playfully and let her shoulder brush against the healer’s as she went to stir the stew. “Why not? You know I like the taste,” she grinned wickedly and let the last word drawl.

  The healer gasped and dropped the packet of thyme. She snatched it up off the ground and handed it to Delyth with wide eyes and cheeks so warm the sun might have been rising in them.

  “I—I like the taste too,” she mumbled and then remembered they had company. Hastily, Alphonse took the water bucket to the stream so they could have something to drink with their meal. She splashed cold water over her eyes and brow and down her neck.

  ✶

  Etienne watched Alphonse walk away, astounded, having reached the fire in time to hear their banter. Delyth provided no more answers when he turned her way. She was following Alphonse with her eyes as well, lips still coiled upward. He was reminded for a moment of the two women teasing him about his cooking weeks prior, but it seemed to have taken on some new meaning between the two of them—an inside joke between close friends.

  Etienne winced as he sat before the fire and dropped his head. When had he and Alphonse stopped joking?

  And yet, why should any of them be so light-hearted in a time like this? Just yesterday, Alphonse had torn apart a man’s rib cage. The priestess had killed easily a dozen or more.

  And here they were. Teasing.

  Alphonse should have known better. Should have known what was at stake. But he alone seemed to keep enough of his sanity to realize just how dire their situation truly was.

  Gods, he was so tired.

  Tristan sat down at Etienne’s left, and the mage subconsciously made himself smaller. “Quit your moping. Dinner’s almost ready.”

  ❀

  Dinner was well spiced and delicious. Alphonse didn’t try for much conversation, instead enjoying the feeling of Delyth’s leg pressed against her own as they sat side by side, eating in companionable silence.

  She had seen Tristan’s sneer a few times but didn’t let it bother her. And Etienne seemed stressed. Alphonse nearly asked him on three different occasions what was wrong but…

  It seemed like bad timing to do so in front of the others. She made her mind up to speak to him after dinner, in private. She hoped he could tell that was her plan by the subtle looks she tossed his way.

  Despite the chill in the air, the night was nice with the fire crackling merrily at their feet. Homey almost. Alphonse craned her head back to gaze at the stars peeking through the clouds overhead. It startled her to see late summer constellations. She and Etienne had started this journey in spring.

  So much time had passed.

  “Look, there is the Bear.” She pointed with her spoon up at the gap in the clouds. “And the buck, and the hare. I wonder who named the stars.” Had it been the Gods? Had Enyo named the sky?

  Delyth didn’t follow Alphonse’s gaze, instead tracing the planes of the healer’s upturned face until she blushed. “Perhaps they were people like you, who looked up and wondered.”

  Across the fire, Tristan snorted, rolling his eyes in habitual disgust. “Of course, it wasn’t. Don’t you have followers of Dyl in Ingola? Supposedly, he named the stars to guide sailors.” He took another spoonful of soup. “Not that knowing the name of something makes it any easier to follow. Bloody dreamer.”

  Oh. Of course. They did have followers of Dyl. In fact, Brande had been one. She should have known.

  Feeling a bit embarrassed, Alphonse looked back down from the constellations and to her nearly empty soup bowl. She finished it in two more bites and then set it aside. She was starting to feel quite tired, her lids heavy. “Even the Gods are dreamers sometimes. I think that’s nice.”

  ✶

  Etienne looked up sharply at that, his shoulders tense.

  What was that supposed to mean? There was nothing nice about the Gods! Especially Enyo. Was she changing her mind?

  It seemed impossible. Alphonse was living with a parasite slowly sucking away her life force, leaving her weaker and weaker as they struggled up towards the mountains. How could she possibly see the Gods as anything but the vicious, conniving creatures they were?

  Unless Delyth had poisoned her mind. It had to be. It wasn’t as though even Alphonse would take to listening to Tristan. The priestess’s displays of friendship would be a far more attractive trap for the too-trusting healer.

  Beside him, Tristan just shook his head. “Only the useless ones.”

  Of course, he was more interested in Enyo, bloodthirsty, and unpredictable.

  “Well,” Alphonse murmured, too tired and too happy to argue. She yawned and slipped onto her side, and then her back, using Delyth’s lap as a pillow, her amber eyes once more fixed upon the heavens above. She didn’t seem to have a care at all. Etienne scowled.

  “I think it’s nice, and being grouchy about it won’t change my opinion, Tristan,” she said.

  ༄

  In the shadows of the night, the healer’s hand on the opposite side of the fire, hidden from view, slipped to brush over Delyth’s braced against the ground.

  Delyth looked down at Alphonse and smiled, sliding her hand closer so that their fingers could entwine. “It is nice.”

  And she supposed the thing about the Gods was too.

  When she looked up, Etienne was brooding into the fire, and Tristan was rolling his eyes. Fairly typical evening behavior.

  “How do you know so much about the different Gods?” she asked. Tristan had proven himself knowledgeable in the ways of the old world more than once on their journey. Was it the mysterious master he had mentioned to Enyo?

  The fighter just shrugged. “I’ve done a bit of traveling.”

  Etienne shot him a dark look. “So enlightening…”

  “You learn a bit from the world and the people you meet.” Tristan leaned back. “A lot more than books can teach you, clearly.”

  Delyth sighed. That had the sound of a new argument just starting. With the two men distracted, she ran her thumb over Alphonse’s, where their fingers pressed together and brushed a stray lock of hair away from her face. It was such a simple thing to sit with her like this. Simple and perfect.

  ❀

  Amber eyes, heavy with fatigue, drifted away from the stars and into Delyth’s own icy blue ones. Alphonse smiled and nuzzled her cheek against Delyth’s leg,
even daring to lay a kiss on it with her face turned away from the light and the onlookers.

  She didn’t think she could say those three simple, devastating words aloud now, with their audience, but she did hope that Delyth somehow knew she was thinking them.

  I love you.

  I love you.

  I love you.

  Slowly she blinked, warm and fuzzy, and so very comfortable. The fire’s crackling was soothing, and Etienne and Tristan’s snarling just background noise. No more important than the roaring of a river. Easy to let go…

  Alphonse yawned. She should get up. Talk with Etienne. Though not quite yet. Perhaps in a minute. For now, she could just… close her eyes. Rest. Enjoy the feel of Delyth’s fingers through her hair.

  ✶

  Etienne broke off mid-sentence, halfway through arguing that Tristan was being insufferable on purpose and that he should just admit where he had learned so much about the Gods. Through traveling. Hells. They’d been traveling for moons without learning anything except for just how horrible Enyo could be.

  Only, Tristan wasn’t paying any attention anymore. He was watching Delyth and Alphonse across the fire.

  Alphonse had fallen asleep, it seemed. Delyth was gathering the healer into her arms with slow care, letting sleep-loose limbs curl over her forearm and bronzed curls press into her shoulder. She stood and turned, pausing a minute before completely leaving the light of the fire. Her face was half-illuminated, turned towards Alphonse with an expression more soft and open than Etienne had ever seen on the warrior’s usually stoic countenance.

  Then, she slipped into the dark of their tent, vanishing from sight.

  “A bloody waste, isn’t it?” Tristan’s eyes were on Etienne again, his cruel half-smile in place.

  “What is?” Etienne sounded defensive even to himself. Anger and revulsion boiled within him before he was even sure of the cause, quick as Enyo’s blizzard.

  “Two perfectly fine women in love with each other.”

  What?

  Etienne found himself jerking back into the direction Delyth had gone.

  They couldn’t be…

  In love?

  Since when? How?!

  He knew they had been getting closer but had it really gone that far? And without Alphonse telling him? Had she really given up enough on their quest to get rid of Enyo that she would let herself get involved with someone working against them?

  “Damn shame.” Tristan’s words cut through Etienne’s thoughts. The other man was standing, shaking his head in the direction of the girls’ tent. Then he too left to sleep, leaving the mage alone by the fire.

  ⥣ ⥣ ⥣

  * * *

  Etienne did not sleep that night. When the fire went out, he rose more out of a desire to move than to head to his tent.

  His mind was full of the images of the last few days:

  Alphonse stood over the body of a thin, dirty farmer, his chest bloody and gaping where she had reached in past bone and sinew to pull out his hot, beating heart. She’d looked at it like the finest delicacy at a nobleman’s table. Licked her lips. Squeezed till the blood ran down her arm.

  Maybe that had been Enyo.

  But when she and Delyth had rejoined them, she’d been herself. She’d been happy. As though she had not just killed a man, while Etienne stumbled, his mouth still acidic with bile and his eyes full of broken bodies.

  He supposed it made sense now.

  She cared more for the halfbreed than her own humanity.

  That very day had started out with her lapping up his blood and ended with Delyth and Alphonse laughing, cooking together.

  Etienne pulled at his hair through clenched fists. Alphonse had been good and gentle. A healer. The death of that man should have torn her apart.

  But that Alphonse was dead.

  It could not be clearer. The Goddess had already won. Had broken apart his dearest friend until only echoes remained.

  She was dead.

  And he had killed her just as surely as Enyo had. His pride, his fucking hubris, had invited a disease into Alphonse’s gentle soul, and it had destroyed her from the inside. Even her body, emaciated and weak, was proof of her illness. Now, all that was left was for the echoes to disappear as well, for the foul creature inside to become even more powerful.

  There was nothing he could do to stop it. Because Tristan was right.

  He was useless. Cowardly.

  And he couldn’t bear to watch it, couldn’t bear to see the last scraps of Alphonse fed to an ancient evil by her lover and a filthy thug.

  So he wouldn’t.

  With shaking hands, Etienne tore down his tent and left before the sun ever neared the horizon.

  Chapter XXIV

  Eighth Moon, Waxing Crescent : Thloegr

  Alphonse giggled as she tried to pull away from Delyth’s warm embrace, instead falling in for more kisses.

  “I have to start breakfast,” she murmured, reminding the warrior even as her hands slipped down Delyth’s body, still bare from the night before. So perfect to touch… She yanked her hands away, realizing she was falling into the same trap she had been prey to before the sun rose.

  “Beast,” she murmured, her tone so far from insulting it was ludicrous. “You’re an absolute vixen.” Swallowing down her arousal, Alphonse kissed Delyth once more and straightened up, fixing her clothes.

  Breakfast. It called to her.

  Delyth sighed, letting her head fall back against her arm, dramatic but smiling. “If you absolutely have to.” She stretched out, trying to look particularly vixen-ish as though to get Alphonse to spend a few more minutes in the tent with her. “Chief Alphonse,” she murmured playfully, “off to prepare the troops.”

  The healer shook her head at how silly Delyth was being and ducked out from the tent flap. It was a shame that Delyth didn’t feel she could show that tender, silly, playful, loving side in public.

  Of course, Alphonse understood why. Delyth was a warrior priestess. She wasn’t supposed to be cracking jokes and winking and smiling. Her stoic nature protected her as much as it served as a perfect mask for her role as guardian of the temple.

  Then again, she liked that Delyth only shared that special piece of herself with Alphonse. A little treasure just for the healer.

  Smiling, Alphonse stirred up the coals to the fire and then took up her bucket to head towards the stream they’d been following for days now to get fresh water. Some to boil for tea and some to—

  The bucket rattled to the ground as Alphonse dropped it.

  She stood staring at the campsite like a frightened deer. Startled by hunters and too horrified to try and flee.

  There was her and Delyth’s tent, then to the right Tristan’s, and then to the right of that…

  Nothing.

  No tent.

  No Etienne.

  Alphonse scrambled over to the spot as if getting closer to Etienne’s humble little shelter would make it suddenly appear. With him in it.

  But standing where it had been pitched, she turned in a small circle, looking at the ground. She could see where the stakes had been pulled up in a hurry, the earth crumbling in small piles. It looked as if he hadn’t even slept, no indentations in the grass…

  “Delyth!!” she screamed, running back to her tent and yanking the flap open. Birds shot to the sky in a flurry of wings, startled by her shriek of terror. “Etienne is gone! He’s missing! Someone—someone must have kidnapped him or— Did—did—” She gasped and turned to look where his tent had been. “Did I leave the tent last night!?!” What if Enyo had done something to get rid of Etienne?

  With trembling hands Alphonse gripped her head, trying to think. Who would have taken him? Where would they have gone?!

  ༄

  Delyth scrambled out of the pallet where she’d still been laying, too comfortable to rush into clothes and cold air. Alphonse was the color of bleached bone, her eyes wide and her words tumbling over each other in a race to escape h
er throat.

  For a moment, the priestess just stared, trying to catch up.

  Then she started to fling her clothes on.

  “You didn’t leave the tent last night.”

  Did she? Delyth didn’t remember marking a sigil. Her arms had been full at the time with Alphonse’s sleeping body. But no, it was impossible. She’d slept with the healer wrapped in her arms, both of them covered with a wing. There was no way she could have left and returned without Delyth waking.

  So it hadn’t been Enyo, but neither of the other two options that came to mind seemed much better.

  “Stay here.” She was pulling her boots on, Calamity already belted to her back. “I’ll go look for him.”

  Delyth flung herself from the tent and into the air, ignoring Tristan’s still sleep-slowed countenance.

  On one hand, this wasn’t a particularly safe area. Predators ran rampant through these mountains, and the few bands of people living here would not balk at theft or kidnapping. It might even be reasonable to assume that any bandit would consider Etienne the easiest target, as he slept alone and without weapons, but there had been no sounds of a struggle the night before. And bears did not typically make off with tents.

  The only other option Delyth could think of was that Etienne had left of his own accord, though she shuddered at what that might do to Alphonse. If he had, he couldn’t have much of a head start. She’d find him and drag him back if necessary.

  ❀

  Alphonse couldn’t settle.

  She paced the clearing, looking at Etienne’s empty camping spot repeatedly. Then the road. Then the sky, hoping Delyth would come back with Etienne in tow.

  If she had been better at summoning spells, if she knew how to scry… But she’d never even been taught those types of magic. Besides, she didn’t have anything of his to fixate on. How would she find him?!

  Was he hurt?

  She didn’t see a sign of a struggle. No blood, no drag marks in the dirt.Wringing her hands together, Alphonse worried and worried and worried. Breakfast was long forgotten.