by Parker Foye
"I can dress myself."
"And yet you stand there doing nothing."
Quinn's lips quirked on one side as he turned around. He delicately threaded one arm through the proffered sleeve. Briar rearranged shirt and scarf to ensure Quinn was covered, then helped Quinn into the other sleeve. He fastened each button with care, trying not to feel like he was buttoning Quinn back into an ill-fitting skin. Like Quinn wouldn't prefer to step out into the sea again and leave fiddly buttons and carefully ironed-in creases behind.
He'd had plenty of opportunity, Briar told himself, and yet Quinn hadn't gone anywhere. That had to mean something. And for Briar to worry about losing Quinn, now, when he'd let himself be lost for near on a decade—that was selfishness in its basest form. Expecting the world to stand still until Briar was ready for it to turn.
Briar fastened the last of Quinn's buttons and looked up, ready for whatever came next.
Quinn grabbed Briar's collar and dragged him into a kiss that smarted like the first spray of too-hot water before transforming into a delicious heat. Briar could taste those pennies, and the secrets Quinn held, as they pressed together in a feverish embrace. Quinn's hold never let up as Briar kissed him more deeply, seeking out his taste, but only gave back in kind. Briar took hold of Quinn's waist, keeping them firmly together, while Quinn's other hand crept around under Briar's jacket. His nails pressed through the thin fabric of Briar's shirt. Briar wanted them to scar.
Quinn nipped Briar's lip, making him start, then clacked his teeth together in a laugh when Briar pulled away.
"You got skittish while you've been away," Quinn murmured.
"That a challenge?"
"Always."
Briar licked away blood from his grin, then kissed his taste into Quinn's mouth. Quinn groaned thickly and ran his tongue around Briar's teeth. He rested their foreheads together, his hair dripping over Briar's face, his features a blur. They breathed for each other for long minutes. The water lapped around their feet, seeping into Briar's boots.
"The mines, then," Briar said, finally. With reluctance, he stepped away from Quinn and considered the horizon, the distance they'd trekked from the lighthouse, his memory of where the mines were located. "We should get started, if we're to make it before dark."
Quinn circled around him, adjusting the fall of his shirt as he did. "Need some things from home. Then we can go."
Adrienne's deadline weighed in Briar's mind, but he nodded. He didn't know Lastings as Quinn did, and he'd rather not have his lack of knowledge underscored by claws less friendly than Quinn's. If Quinn said they needed to return to the lighthouse first, they would.
Stepping close, Quinn brushed Briar's hair back from his face, a look in his eyes like he saw beyond the two of them at Lasting's crooked shore. It could've been the light of fever, but something in Quinn's expression made him seem the soberest man Briar had ever seen. Like he'd come out the other side of madness and learned himself utterly.
"I love you, Briar Augustin," Quinn said, and pressed a kiss to Briar's temple. To the corner of his eye. To his cheekbone. "I loved you since I walked out of the sea. I loved you when we were stars."
Briar's chest twisted, each word a bullet finding home. He clung to the damp hem of Quinn's shirt like a child. He'd never thought dying would be sweet.
"Like that, is it?" he said, throat clicking.
"Like that."
"Then I don't know as how I can say any different."
Delight broke over Quinn's face, crinkling his eyes. Briar ached with the pain of Quinn's doubt. He tugged Quinn into a crushing embrace, trying to press his love into every cell of Quinn. He laced their hands together, fingers weaving with webbed fingers, and bumped their shoulders as they started to walk. Briar's heart ached with fullness, with the perfection of a connection restored. Waves crashed alongside their path as the sunset smouldered across the water.
TWELVE
The last day of harvest was a feast day. Long tables were laden with bounty, from land and from sea, until the wood near buckled beneath the weight. Children ran to and fro across the marketplace, pigtails streaming behind them like sails, and old folks creaked in their chairs near the fire. Always a fire, no matter how high the sun climbed or how much sweat stained best shirts. Candles were set in the windows at the dark of the moon, horseshoes nailed by the door, and a fire burned to guide the lost home.
"Ain't that what the lighthouse is for?" someone asked. Not Briar or Quinn, who had discussed the great sightless eye on the rocks often enough to know nothing would be guided to Lastings by its gaze. "Why should we melt in this heat?"
Briar had eaten three fistfuls of strawberries by then. His hands were sticky and red. He could've cleaned them, but there were other berries to eat, and he didn't see the point. He could have been ten, or twelve, or fourteen, and he wouldn't've been sick of eating berries. The only sweeter thing he'd ever tasted were Quinn's kisses, and he couldn't have those in the marketplace. They'd agreed. Or they would.
Before Briar could go looking, Quinn sidled up to him with a small plate, piled high with berries. Briar went to take it, thanks on his lips, but the plate became half an oyster shell, the berries an enormous pearl. Someone said the city had tried dredging oysters in Lastings once and found nothing but bones, and that's why they packed up.
Quinn said merfolk wore heavy strings of pearls, and had lost more jewels than any city could ever find. Like marbles, Quinn said.
The pearl on Quinn's plate turned around and blinked at Briar.
"Ain't that what the sea is for?" Quinn asked.
THIRTEEN
Banging on the door woke Briar and he fell out the wrong side of bed, expecting a wall where there was none. Expecting a fellow sleeper where there was none. He fumbled free of sheets insistent on tangling around his ankles like seaweed, and yanked up his underwear before stumbling down the twisty lighthouse stairs. Pale dawn colours spilled across the wooden flooring from the windows, making dust swirl in peach and lilac. He grabbed his gun from the side table, but lowered it when he recognised the voice. Lena.
"You best not be in there, Ranger Augustin!" Lena yelled, still banging. "You best be out—"
Briar yanked open the door with one hand and deflected Lena's fist with the other. "I'm here."
A vision in purple, they looked him up and down. Their familiar, sitting between their feet and licking a paw, gave Briar a more cutting look.
"Well, that ain't good," Lena said.
"Agreed."
Briar stepped back into the lighthouse, leaving the door open, and tried to recall where he'd left the rest of his clothes.
The night prior, after they'd returned, Quinn had bustled about the lighthouse gathering what they needed for the mines. He'd made some food—for the journey, he'd said—and it had been hot, so Briar said it would be rude to let it chill. They ate together, spooning pasta from the pan over the stove. Briar had kissed tomato sauce from Quinn's lips and thought about the mer. Thought about meals and kisses missed and how hungry he'd been for both.
Their appetites had turned to longer and slower kisses, and relearning the shape of each other. Briar had traced his fingers along Quinn's scars, the ones he already loved and the ones he wanted to know, while Quinn proved he'd remembered how to be gentle with those more breakable than him—until gentleness became unwanted. They'd crashed into each other like a ship on the rocks. But Quinn had left Briar to pick among the pieces alone.
Briar redressed in his rumpled clothes as Lena waited in the doorway, humming lowly. Their familiar hopped onto the side table and sprawled alongside Briar's gun like old friends.
"He's gone, then?" Lena asked as Briar tied his boot laces.
"He has."
Another hum. "And will you be chasing him? Or will you be looking for Dupont like you claim you came here for?"
"I had a plan, I did, but it's been three days. I don't— The others are coming to Lastings. They can find Dupont." A muscle flexed in Bria
r's jaw. "I have to find Quinn."
"Can you call it finding when you know where he is, I wonder."
Briar got to his feet and stomped to check his boots were on right. He grabbed his coat from the hook—his coat was in the right place, at least—and swilled his mouth with a gulp of stale water from the glass Quinn had left on the table. He thought about spitting it out, but Lena raised their eyebrows and he swallowed instead. Manners. Lastly, he plucked his gun from the table, careful of the watchful familiar, and strapped it away, checking the safety as he did.
"Might you be needing your gun, do you think?" Lena asked.
Briar adjusted the fall of his coat. "What brought you here, Lena?"
Instead of answering, they stepped out of the lighthouse and looked toward the sea. Their familiar leapt up and followed them, allowing Briar to tug the lighthouse door closed. There wasn't a key to lock it, but he figured that to be Quinn's problem, seeing as he left Briar to wake in a bed gone cold from his absence.
"I went by the beach, this morning," Lena said, when Briar had figured they were about done answering questions. Wind didn't move their hair. "I spoke with the fisher folk—you've been to see them too, I reckon. Anyhow, they have the best stories. Oldest and newest, from the sea and the shore."
"Quinn always liked their stories," Briar allowed.
"He would. He's one of them, your ghost."
"A story? He always has been. That's Quinn's way. Not this thing, nor that either."
Lena nodded. Then they grinned, a quick spark, like a green flash on the horizon. "They're saying Lastings has two ghosts, now."
FOURTEEN
The mines were a way outside of Lastings town, but still within sight of the sea. There'd been a train that had puttered back and forth to the site for a time, until the mines were closed and the tracks eaten up by the scrub. Some mayor or other had talked about repurposing the rails, but they'd run from the middle of nowhere to the end, and no one had seen worth in the venture. That mayor had lasted even less time than the others. Briar remembered her children standing on the cliffs with their doll, the long curls of red woven into the straw.
Leaving Lena at the lighthouse, Briar took the cliff road to the mines. By foot, it offered the most direct route, and skirted the borders of town, where old houses bowed together as the ground crumbled ever closer to the sea. Slates had slid from the roofs and fragments studded the pavement. Piles of fishbones guarded the few houses with intact windows, and Briar averted his eyes from those as he passed. He scratched the back of his hand.
Briar had almost left Lastings behind, at least as well as he ever could, when a runner waylaid him at the border, a winged badge hanging around their neck. Rain had begun to spit and the messenger had their hood pulled up against it, casting their face in shadow. Briar had popped his collar, for all the good it did.
"You the Ranger?" the runner asked.
The message could be from Adrienne. The train would be due soon, but Noah could have left on a horse. Briar hesitated, and too late he saw the knife-edged smirk he'd once memorised from a wanted poster.
Gods-damned Dupont.
"Thought so," Dupont said, and leapt.
Briar had the weight advantage, but Dupont had initiative and at least two knives. She cut his cheek with one in a hot kiss as he twisted to dodge the other while fumbling his gun from its holster. One bullet would solve a multitude of sins but Dupont didn't stand still for more than a heartbeat. She flowed like fire, and Briar the log she danced death into.
Seeking an opening for a shot without shooting his own damn self, Briar found no luck. His gun became more problem than solution and he snapped it back into his holster in time to take a knee to the gut. Pushing himself to move quickly, Briar snatched Dupont's leg before she could recover, keeping hold, then countered her swinging elbow by hooking his other arm awkwardly around her joint. He wouldn't die by Dupont's hand. He refused.
They panted at one another, assessing, neither able to move without giving an opening. Briar couldn't hold Dupont indefinitely. And he couldn't reach his gun, either.
"Should've risked it and shot you in the face," he said.
Dupont flicked her damp hair away from her eyes. "They teach you that charm in Ranger school? Or did you learn it here? Quaint little place. The stories I've heard—"
Briar tightened his grip. "Shut your mouth—"
"That's why I came out here, didn't you wonder? I heard about what grows this way, what they hide away from city folk like you and me." Her grin glinted. "I saw your little monster, Ranger Augustin, and I know what he is. I know what he's worth. I heard you boys mined out this way."
Briar would clear that smirk from Dupont's face.
Thought became action. Briar dropped Dupont's leg and twisted his arm in the same movement, moving to the side as he did. The snap of bone sang in his blood, chased by the high of Dupont's wail. A clean sound. A good sound. It made Briar warm to hear it.
"My arm! You broke my fucking arm!" she cried.
Dupont's arm hung at a sickening angle. Briar's breath rasped in his throat and sweat or rain dripped from his brow. He ran a shaking hand down his face, and, lightheaded, fumbled for his handcuffs before realising they were back in his hotel room. A world away. As he patted down his pockets for an idea, Dupont yelled and swung around, her boot raised in her good hand, aimed toe-first for Briar's face. The concealed straight razor glinted like lightning before it struck. Briar knew she would blind him.
He'd never find Quinn.
A shot rang out. Briar froze. When no thorns matched the hot bloom of blood flowering on his chest, he dared a glance down. Dupont had dropped her boot to grab her—abruptly much worse—arm, where she'd been shot in the shoulder. Her eyes were alive with pain. Briar grabbed Dupont just before she swooned and helped ease her to the ground. Rain washed her blood away but it was an insistent tide. Briar used the boot razor to saw a scrap of fabric from the bottom of Dupont's coat. He wadded it up and pressed it to her newest wound. Her eyes fluttered as she came around, but her gaze remained unseeing.
Footsteps thundered behind him, following the trajectory of the shot. Briar recognised the snap of gum before anyone spoke. Tension eased from his shoulders.
"Adrienne," he said. It must have been Noah who made the shot. A sniper, decorated and scarred by old wars.
"Augustin," Adrienne responded. "I didn't expect to get to this shithole and watch you lose a fight, you know."
Dupont coughed. She focused on him. "Trickier than you thought, am I?"
A pair of brown hands reached down to take over from Briar in applying pressure to Dupont's shoulder. Briar rocked back to his heels as Sheriff Mara expertly took over the scene.
"Best you hush up, now," Mara said to Dupont, her eyes and mouth tight. She nodded back toward Adrienne. "That one was itching to take your head."
Adrienne's smile was as sly as Dupont's. She rested her hands on the twin pistols at her hips as Noah came up behind her, gun case in his hand.
"But you're worth more alive," Adrienne said.
"Especially with that cash she's stashed in town," Briar added, remembering Quinn's information.
Dupont slumped back, defeated. Briar watched her a moment, not believing she could be done, but then Adrienne tapped him on the shoulder and he got to his feet, following her a little way from the others. Noah stayed with Mara and Dupont behind, watching. Always watching.
The rain hadn't let up, becoming a drizzle fit to soak a man to the bone if he let it. Seagulls called overhead, impatient. Briar raked his sodden hair back from his face and squinted through the drops at Adrienne. A fine mist bounced around her curls like it was afraid to settle. She studied him in turn, the way she had when they'd first met, like she was weighing up the price of him.
"Time to go home?" Briar asked, when Adrienne kept evaluating.
"That's the long and short of it. Got what you came here for, didn't you?" The question wasn't as flippant as it could have been.
Perhaps Adrienne knew something of Lastings after all.
Briar wondered. What had he come to Lastings for? Dupont lay on the ground, caught. Her capture meant Quinn's whatever it was remained safe in the dry dark, in Lastings' empty heart.
He glanced at the waves, far below, then at Adrienne. "There's something I have to do. I'll follow you back. You'll want to find out where she hid her money. Town's not big enough for many hiding places."
"Is this 'something' your Quinn Lawrence?" Adrienne asked, ignoring the pertinent part entirely.
A loud snort answered before Briar could. "You mean the Ranger's pet monster? Weren't three hearts enough, or is it after a fourth? There's a contract, if you've caught it. Could be worth something."
Dupont's unwelcome voice made Briar snarl and he whipped around, ready to— He didn't find out what, since Mara had hauled Dupont up, at some point cuffing her good arm to Mara's belt. Dupont's other arm was bound in an improvised sling. Mara studied Briar's face, as intently as Adrienne had, then started Dupont moving. She'd switched their shoes, leaving Dupont in unlaced boots and Mara laced twice over into Dupont's weaponised footwear.
"He's not a monster," Briar said, nearing the two of them. Anger flowed hot in him. Dupont called Quinn "it". It.
"Semantics, Ranger. Only semant—"
"Best if you close your mouth," Mara said, speaking over the top of Dupont. Meeting Briar's eyes, Mara sighed. "You're talking about Quinn Lawrence, I take it. I've been meaning to look into that contract some. A misunderstanding, I think."
"A misunderstanding?" Briar said, before Dupont could run her mouth. Again. He hoped Mara's boots pinched something terrible.
"Incomers don't always know our ways, Ranger Augustin. They don't ask about witches. They don't know about mines— Stop wriggling, snake-woman!" Mara jostled Dupont in place more gently than she deserved, then levelled a look at Briar. "You and me might talk about how we can clear some things up, going forward. For a monster, I seen worse. I heard someone loved him once."
