The Stormbringer

by Isabel Cooper

  “Had the Threadcutter’s martial servants chosen a different name for themselves, your order might have been Blades.”

  “Best not to compete with them, though. Brr.”

  “A fine assessment, though from a woman who spends her life with a disembodied spirit.”

  “Gerant’s mortal. Obviously. Death changes your outlook, but I don’t think it gives you a god’s perspective. Not that I’d know, but… Well, you’ve met the Blades.”

  Tinival’s followers were knights-errant. The Sentinels were hunters and, at need, guardians. Letar’s Blades were another matter entirely: few and far between, plucked from the trainees for the more common priests, they’d all been grim and silent in Darya’s experience, stripped of anything except their goddess and their mission. If the Sentinels were weapons, the Blades were vessels, and the goddess of death and vengeance was a terrifying thing to contain, even just a little bit.

  Amris prodded the cut on his leg experimentally, then looked back along the path they’d traveled. “Perhaps we should see to our own welfare. Is there water ahead?”

  “A spring, not so far off,” Darya said, relieved when her memory brought it forth. The claw marks on her chest were indeed beginning to sting, and though cleaning them wouldn’t do much for that, it would keep her from adding worry to irritation. “And we’ll have to wash if we’re to get anywhere near the horses.”

  She wasn’t at all sure she wanted to, having seen the “horses” in question—but they had four legs and they’d go faster than she and Amris would afoot. If she’d ever had a chance to be finicky about her mount, this wasn’t it.

  * * *

  Amris muttered an apology to Poram as they approached the spring. Twistedman blood had an acrid, burnt stink and an unpleasant pallor. Given the choice, he’d have introduced no such thing to any innocent body of water, but given the choice, he’d have also not introduced it to his skin, or the world at large. He’d put enough of it into the soil in his day, gods knew, and would likely do so again before much time had passed, given what he assumed was happening somewhere in the north.

  “We’ve delayed them again,” Darya said, and for an unsettling moment he wondered if the spell had her reading his thoughts too—but no, he’d been looking off in the direction that had sent them Thyran’s forces in the past, and from where they’d surely come again. “A little more expensively than with the bridge, though. Next time we’ll lose limbs at this rate.”

  “I’ll make no jokes about things costing an arm and a leg, if you were setting me on a course for that.”

  She laughed. “Wish I had been. Too tired.”

  Perching on a rock near the water, she shrugged her pack off and removed her boots. Amris did likewise, unstrapped himself from his armor, and then hesitated.

  The knife wound was across the back of his leg, below his knee. Rolling up his trousers would be sufficient, save that the fight had gotten blood all over his clothing. With his troops in the field, that would have been cause enough to strip and swim, using only a little of the time they’d purchased by eliminating the scouts.

  A good many of the soldiers he’d led, or fought beside, had been female. Modesty didn’t enter into it.

  Yet Darya sat there on the rock, eyes like the light shining through the leaves and body as supple as one of the saplings nearby. With the heat of battle still in his blood, Amris saw every strand of her hair, every graceful inch of her long legs. Even guilt couldn’t stifle his awareness much, or for long—and with her presence searing into him, the thought of being naked together made him feel as dizzy as looking down over the bridge had done.

  “You go first,” she said, with an abrupt, rough clearing of her throat. “One of us should stay armed and on watch. In case.”

  “Ah. Yes. Wise.”

  Amris turned his back to her and began to undress, quickly and far more clumsily than usual. As he lowered his trousers, he asked, by way of distraction, “Was there much danger out here before?”

  “Nothing too horrible.” Darya cleared her throat again. “That’s to say, mostly natural. Bears and wolves, though they usually have better prey. Greycats do think we’re tasty, and they’re around every so often.”

  Water closed around Amris’s legs and up to his waist, blessedly cold. The scratches he’d received without knowing stung from the contact, while the cut on his leg sent a sharp pain all up and down the outside of his thigh. He muttered an oath.

  “Chilly?”

  “That as well.” Holding his clothing in a bundle, he ducked under the water, stayed as long as breath and temperature would allow, and then shot back to the surface. Even that brief submersion, without soap or sand, felt thoroughly cleansing: Poram’s pure water counteracting Gizath’s filth, perhaps, or perhaps simply the joy that came with ridding himself of three days’ sweat.

  It reminded him of the cold that had destroyed the scout, and he turned back toward Darya. She was still on the rock, looking off in the other direction. “Keeping watch” was the most practical interpretation, but Amris suspected not the only one, and not only out of his own vanity. She, too, had fought recently, and nobody had suggested the Sentinels had become celibate.

  Well, his question was far from lascivious. “Is the lethal blessing always cold?”

  “For me. Or for Gerant, really.” The line of her neck stiffened, and she added, in a more brittle, preemptive voice, “It was Poram’s power long before the storms.”

  “So it was.” Amris tried to sound calm but not patronizing. “Indeed, I know not if Thyran had intended the cold specifically, or if he even knew entirely what he was about. Not, that is, that I had opportunity to ask him.”

  “Didn’t exactly seem like a tea party you were having,” Darya said, reverting back to herself. “Sorry. You get enough warding signs when they think you’re not looking, you start…trying to get out ahead of it, you know?”

  * * *

  On the other hand, Darya had thought she’d gotten used to the sidelong glances and the awkward questions. Any of the Sentinels dealt with a certain number of those. The ones with powers that governed cold or flesh took a greater share. Normally she was only glad she’d avoided the rare powers that read, or influenced, minds and hearts. This time, she’d bristled as soon as Amris had mentioned the cold.

  It had been a long few days. Gods knew she had plenty to be on edge about. And if she wanted him to like her—this competent man that her partner had loved and loved still—that was reasonable.

  She went on, not looking over her shoulder to see how the water clung to his bare chest, beads catching in the dark hair trailing down the center, or the muscles of his back flexing as he turned to rinse his clothing again.

  Not looking more than once or twice, at least. She wasn’t made of stone. That was a different blessing, and another one she was usually glad she’d avoided.

  “The lethal gifts are really gifts for the sword-spirits, not for us. Gerant says I stabilize him, and that gives more force—like pushing off the ground when you jump—but he’s the one who actually sees how to do it and reaches for the power. Mortals…our flesh is an obstacle, as I understand it. And so the swords generally go to Sentinels who get their major blessing from the same god, but sometimes you get differences. There was a man I trained with, blessed by Tinival, who carries a blade bound to Sitha. He can cause earthquakes and then leap clear out of the way.”

  Behind her, Amris wrung his clothing out and spread it on the rocks. Darya heard the run of the water, then the thick slap of cloth against stone. She watched the forest. You never knew what might come out of the trees, inclined to find bathers tasty.

  “Everything look all right?” she asked, realized how that could sound, and added, “I’ve got a little more of the lignath, and we can heat up a knife if we need to, but we’re within a day, day and a half of Oakford unless we have more mishaps. When I
left, they had a Mourner, though a junior one, and a couple herbalist healers.”

  “Likely I’ll be fine without magic or hot steel, but the lignath would be a useful precaution, if you’ve enough to use on yourself.”

  “Plenty. I won’t need much for these.”

  She didn’t turn around at the footsteps. She knew what they meant. That was Amris getting out of the water. The rustling was him rummaging through her pack. Then came a popping sound, and a splash, and then he hissed.

  Darya chuckled. “Can feel it doing you good, hmm?”

  “On second thought, I’m not certain cautery would have been less pleasant. Still—” He replaced cork and bottle. “No point in regrets.”

  “There are bandages in there too.”

  “You prepare well.”

  “I have to. It’s generally just me out here.”

  “With nobody to stand guard while you bathe?”

  “I’m not generally long enough in the wilderness. Or in need of catching horses.”

  “Or engaged in pulling down bridges and fighting monsters, I suppose. Not in the same day.”

  “I generally leave the stonework alone. It’s never done anything to me.” She remembered the falling wall in Klaishil, and added, “Mostly. And it’s usually not its fault, when it does.”

  Amris chuckled, but gave no other answer, just the sounds of dressing and then his footsteps as he came around the rock.

  With that warning, Darya did prepare herself. She didn’t flush like a girl. She didn’t stare at Amris’s bare chest, nor the way his damp trousers outlined the smooth firmness of his thighs. She was fairly sure she sounded casual when she asked, “My turn?”

  “Just so. I think I can ward off anything natural without plate—gods know I managed it when I was a boy with a sling.”

  “I’m not sure I enjoy being compared to a cow,” she said, heading toward the water.

  “Pig. They’re smarter, if that’s a comfort.”

  “Some.”

  The water was cold, which helped Darya in one sense, and also made her bath speedy: duck herself and the clothes, scrub until both were as clean as mere friction could make them, wring the clothes out and lay them on rocks, then pour water over the cuts on her chest a few times. They were already starting to close up and healing clean—almost all Sentinels’ wounds did, though intentional poison would trouble anyone but her.

  Still, she touched the last of the lignath to them when she got out of the water—and then made a face, not only at the sting but because certain logistics had just announced themselves. Namely: bandaging her wounds would be a good idea, both for their healing and so that she’d smell less like blood to anything around, but doing that would go better with another pair of hands.

  She sighed. “I’m going to have to ask a favor.”

  Chapter 21

  Half-naked, from behind, Darya brought to mind birch trees—the same straight slenderness, the same pallor crossed by scars—if a man was trying to keep his mind vaguely elevated. Amris was doing his best.

  He unwound a strip of bandage across her back and passed it under one raised arm so she could take it with her free hand, the one not holding the other pad of cloth against her cuts. The inevitable moments in the process when the back of his hand brushed against the side of her breast were moments he fought hard to ignore, as he was fighting hard to ignore the curve of her neck up toward her jaw and the firm roundness of her backside in wet trousers, so close that he needed only to shift his weight forward to make contact.

  Hard was both an appropriate and an unfortunate word.

  The years had taught Amris discipline. War had taught him to bear with physical discomfort. His first lover had been many years ago; a woman’s body was no less familiar to him than a man’s. He tried to let his experience make him jaded and to concentrate on the process: wrap close to the body, keep the bandage flat, hand off promptly, take it again without hesitation, and finally tie a good, solid knot in the back.

  Then he tucked the ends of the bandage into the top. His fingers brushed over a long scar, a jagged dip surrounded by smooth skin, and he heard Darya’s breath catch.

  “Not too tight, I hope,” he said, because it seemed vitally important just then to say something, as though words would be a shield.

  She shook her head, and a strand of her hair fell against his withdrawing hand.

  The soft contact froze Amris where he stood. Not knowing that, Darya turned.

  Facts burned themselves into his mind very quickly. He knew that her face was full of high color, and her lips parted. He knew that her breasts rose uncovered below the bandage: small, soft, and curving upward, with nipples the color of cherries against her pale skin. He knew that she began to speak, and stopped before she could get more than a syllable out of her mouth. And he knew that no more than a hand’s breadth divided her bare skin from his.

  He didn’t know which of them closed the distance.

  * * *

  Desire swept all thought out from under her.

  Darya forgot what she’d been going to say. It might have been a joke, a reminder about the need to get back on the road, or just a word of thanks. It had washed completely out of her mind, and she didn’t care.

  Amris’s hands bracketed her waist, low enough that his smallest fingers skimmed the top of her arse. The calluses rubbed against her skin with every slight movement, sending shivers of sensation in all directions: down through her arse and legs and up to where her hard nipples grazed the thick hair on Amris’s chest, where one expanding spiral of feeling met another and fed into it.

  The ground was rocky under her bare feet, and the pressure of her chest against Amris’s made her cuts ache in a not-so-pleasant way, but those small pains were distant. Darya could ignore them. She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—ignore the hoarse sounds from Amris’s throat, or the hard muscle of his shoulder, tense beneath one of her palms as she wound her other hand through his hair and brought his mouth harder against hers.

  His hands tightened, pulling her closer, and the truly impressive length of his cock did more than nudge against her thigh: it strained toward her through Amris’s wet trousers, rubbing tantalizingly close to her aching sex. Starting to rock her hips in response was as natural and as inevitable as the tides.

  Everything felt more instinctive than Darya remembered from past lovers. It wasn’t just that Amris gave and took with equal adeptness, kissing her with the same deft force she remembered from seeing him fight but responding eagerly when she took the lead. He seemed to sense just the time to slide his hands downward and cup her bottom, just as she knew that dragging her nails down the back of his neck would make him groan and shudder, and the precise force to use.

  It was the rush of new energy that came with an unfamiliar lover, but the expertise in one person’s preferences that even the most skilled courtesan couldn’t manage without knowing their partner well. It was feeling a shadow of Amris’s pleasure when she touched him, and knowing what he most wanted next because an echo in her body wanted it too.

  It was the spell.

  Gerant.

  Shit.

  The spell didn’t extend to mind reading, but they could both draw conclusions. Even as Darya swore silently, Amris dropped his hands and stumbled backward, shaking his head.

  “I—” he began, and then stopped, breathing hard.

  “Yeah,” said Darya, looking at her feet so that she wouldn’t notice the flush on his face, or the bulge in his trousers. “I’d better get my shirt.”

  * * *

  While Darya dressed, Amris stared at the pool. He could have retrieved his own shirt then, but their clothing was laid out close together, and it was best not to take any chances, best to stare at the spring, each rivulet and rock imprinting itself into his vision, until his lust and the throbbing manifestation of it subsided.
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  “That’s me done,” Darya said, finally and awkwardly. “I’ll, um, keep watch while you finish dressing. Unless you need a hand with your armor.”

  “No. Thank you.”

  He could have used one, but it wasn’t absolutely necessary—and the kiss had taught him that it was better not to take risks. A drunkard could resolve to stay at one glass, a gambler to only wager a few pence, and all such vows would be for naught in the moment. Best to avoid temptation altogether, or as much as he could manage given the circumstances. Besides, the clammy shirt and the clumsy process of rebuckling his own armor were useful distractions.

  The neckpiece was too badly crushed to be useful. He wondered that he’d been able to get it off, and touched his neck lightly, then winced. There’d be black bruises there, if there weren’t already, and he could feel the line of a cut closing.

  An hour back, he would have asked Darya to inspect it.

  At last he turned to face her, unable to put it off any longer. She sat on the rock once more, dressed and armored, hands folded in her lap and face grave.

  “I’m sorry,” said Amris.

  “My fault as much as yours.”

  The memory of her enthusiasm made that impossible to deny, and was still, even with his guilt, far too pleasant. “You have no pledged lover, you said, and certainly none only a night’s rest away.”

  Her eyes flashed. “I have a partner. And a friend. That’s as much of a tie—more, really.”

  Again, he couldn’t say anything in the way of denial, not even to assuage her guilt. “Will he know?”

  “Not from the spell. And not from our bond.” Darya sighed. Her hair was in a neat braid again, but she made as if to push it back nonetheless. “You can tell him if you want.”

  “Will you?”

  She shook her head. “It was an impulse. After a fight. We stopped. In a day and a half, less if we get horses, we’ll be at Oakford, and we won’t be alone together after battles, so this won’t happen again. Telling him would just make him worry over nothing.” Darya paused, and her mouth twisted sideways into a rueful smile. “And I realize how much of a hypocrite I am right now, yes.”