Aella had found the item in question, and she jiggled it at me. “It’s honey whiskey.”
“It’s cold!” I squeaked. Someone snorted, and Aella shushed me.
“Come in here out of the bluster for a second then, if it’s so bad. These things are so small, they actually retain heat pretty well, especially if there’s more than one body in them.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” I muttered, but I crawled in after her anyway. There was, in fact, a noticeable difference between the night air and the temperature inside the tent. The constant wind dropped away, and I found that I could feel my cheeks again. I plopped next to her on her bed roll.
“So, did you want this?” My eyes adjusted to the comparable darkness of the tent and I saw she was offering me the flask with an innocent smile. I snatched it from her and took a generous swig. I gasped as the sweet liquid burned my throat and curled its way heavily into my gut. I clapped a hand over my mouth as my stomach instantly rebelled. “Do not get sick in my tent,” Aella warned, taking the flask back from me.
I closed my eyes, and shook my head. “I’m not going to. It took me by surprise, is all. I’ve barely eaten yet today.” There was a beat. “Oh, gods above and below. Aella I can’t stay out here much longer. I’ve a meal on the table, and my parents are going to be wondering where I am. We can drink this on the way back like you said.”
Aella put a restraining hand on top of my right one. It was as calloused as mine was from labor. “Aren’t you all going to be staying there until late, hearing stories drunkenly told by my friends?”
“Yes…” I hedged, “But…” Her fingers were wrapped all the way around my own, and I could feel them through my skirt. They were warm, and they made it hard to focus on what I was saying. I took back the flask and had smaller sip of the whiskey, trying to think of a good reason to head back in a hurry. I passed her back the flask.
“Do your parents truly think you could get into any trouble? I bet there isn’t even a town drunk in Nophgrin.”
I inclined my head. “Sometimes Daniel gets a little belligerent on feast days, but no, not as such.” She passed me back the flask, and I sipped, then returned it.
“And do greater gryphons swoop into town at night and lift off maidens?”
“No,” I drew the word out, “but I am hungry.”
“Yeah, I’m a little peckish myself.” Aella’s dark eyes were on my lips.
It was then that I became aware of how close Aella and I were to one another. We were touching from legs to shoulders; she hadn’t removed her hand and I could smell the one drink she’d had of the whiskey on her breath. The way she was looking at me … I flinched back, pulling my hand out from under hers. “You’re making a move on me!”
She let her head fall backward, and silent laughs wracked her body. “Gods, I thought you’d never catch on.”
“You like women?”
Aella cocked her head to the side. “I like people, but in my line of work, women tend to be a bit safer. My mother will be the first to tell you how unpleasant it is to get stuck in one town long enough for a babe to grow up. Have I completely misread you? You and Nai never…?”
“No!” I had to remind myself to keep my voice down.
“What a pity. I suppose it’s just as well she was working tonight.” When I didn’t laugh, she rolled her eyes. “You’ve never wondered what her lips felt like?” She overplayed a sultry voice, clearly trying for a laugh.
My heart thudded painfully against my ribs. “No.”
The tent felt uncomfortably small, but somehow, I didn’t feel like leaving yet. I yanked the flask back from her, reveling in the coldness that slid down my throat as I took a drink to match my first one. My stomach didn’t roil as badly this time, much to my relief. Instead, the whiskey brought up a valid thought.
“So that talk about your mother thinking I have a spark, was that just to get me back to your tent?”
“Well, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned it if you weren’t cute, but no, she did seem interested with you at supper.”
“Do you do this with a lot of people?”
“I don’t take someone back to my tent every time I come upon a new town, if that’s what you’re asking.” Aella drew away from me. “I’m sorry— have I really upset you?”
“I’m not upset,” I said, my voice still a little strident. As I went to take another drink, she took the flask back.
“Enough of that. This stuff is strong, and I saw how much you drank at the table. I’ll go ahead and assume you don’t have a lot of practice in the art of drinking yourself under the table. There’s no need to start on my account.”
My head felt a little airy. In Nophgrin, the healer had a husband, and they were both nice men. Other couples of the kind had traveled through, looking to start new lives in new towns. I knew it was an option. I’d just always thought of that sort of relationship as an indulgence for those who could afford to be without children to take care of them and their land when they were too old to work. Certainly, it was not something I’d ever considered for more than a fleeting moment. Not even when I had complained to Michael about not liking anyone in town.
“What even made you think you had a shot?”
“Besides cockiness?” she asked, and I nodded. “You sounded like me, a couple of years ago. That dress metaphor is how I explained it to myself, back then. Me preferring girls. I sort of thought you were trying to tell me that.”
“But I was talking about traveling versus staying at home,” I pointed out.
She squinted at me, and I jutted my chin out stubbornly. “All right, so maybe I was doing a little bit of hopeful projecting.” She shrugged. “Is that so bad?”
I studied my hands, and shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter either way.”
“No, I suppose not,” she agreed.
I thought about the times I had spent in the field, picturing my future. Had there ever been a man in it? There was a home, and children, but my partner was always a shapeless blur. Did that mean I was meant to have a woman in my future?
I waited as long as I could manage before I asked, “So I’ve done an awful lot of sharing with a stranger. It’s your turn, I think. When did you realize that you liked girls?”
She gazed at the tent wall in front of us, eyes unseeing, remembering. “I was something like twelve? It wasn’t a big deal to my mother. A couple of the women and men who are in, or have been in, our merry band have been the same way. Da though, he was from a pretty fanatical town out by the western sea.”
“I thought you didn’t know your father,” I said, tilting my head.
“I said I don’t have a father,” she said, harshly. “But I knew him, well enough. The place I grew up. The people there mostly worship a sun god. Artuos, The Burning One.” I bobbed my head again. The Burning One was an extension of our own sun god, Hearth Father—the violent part. It was said by some that King Richard had been a chosen hand of The Burning One. Aella continued, “They think sex is for making babies and that women ought to stay in their place, which is right under their husband’s or father’s boot. Tending to the hearth fire.”
I winced. I had heard of such places. For the most part, here in Nophgrin it was about who was most qualified, not what was under a person’s clothes that determined who was in charge. However, though the kingdom officially took stances against the behavior she was talking about, the capital and its laws were a long ways away from the outskirts of the kingdom. There was no rule against a guard returning to their home city and working there, turning a blind eye to “old ways.” Guardsmen could be and often were bribed to allow local custom to reign above the law of the land. I knew that Beth and her mother had come to our town seeking refuge from such a place. Their bruises had told stories I’d never dared ask about.
“I can’t imagine your mother living with someone like that.”
“You don’t know her. She was a different woman back in those days. She was a mercenary for a while, but
she says she had taken a break from it before she got pregnant. She was working at an inn, trying to save enough money to go north. Then I came along and trapped her.” Aella took a drink from her flask before she spoke again. “She didn’t have enough money to leave yet, and then she couldn’t work whilst she was pregnant or lugging around a babe.”
“Why not ask for help from those who raised her?”
Aella shook her head. “She said she burned that bridge when she first left to be a mercenary. I’ve never even met those people. I asked her why she didn’t take an herbal remedy when she realized she was pregnant, and she said she hadn’t felt like it. A real thinker, my mother.”
I imagined a lot more thought went into Aedith’s decision than her daughter gave her credit for, but I held my tongue on that thought. It wasn’t my place to tell her so. “If the town you grew up in was so harsh, what possessed you to tell your father that you liked women?”
“He was arranging these dinners with terrible boys who I had grown up with. All of them shared my da’s warped opinions, which my ma had worked her hardest to keep from rooting in my own head. I knew my father was setting me up to marry one of them.”
“Twelve seems so young to start the marriage process,” I mused. “Though I know it’s common here too. In the mountains, so many boys and girls still believe their best chance at a full family is to start young.”
“For places like my home, it was to keep children under thumb as thoroughly as possible. I thought I’d save him the trouble of having marriage negotiations fail. I guess, honestly I panicked. I thought,” she inhaled and laughed shakily, “I could see my life narrowing down to my home and my hearth, and after hearing stories of my mother out in the world fighting, I couldn’t bear it. I thought I was his daughter, and that that would matter more than his ideologies.”
“But it didn’t.” It didn’t come out as a question and she nodded.
“He slapped me across the face so hard I hit the ground before I knew what had happened.” She rubbed her chin lightly, as if remembering the feeling. “He’d never done that before. Sure, he had been scary and he had loomed and glowered, said if I didn’t shape up and act proper then the fires would get me, but he had never hit me. I couldn’t believe it.”
“What did your mother do?”
“She didn’t know I was going to tell him. Maybe she would have stopped me. By the time I got my feet under me again, she had come into the room and seen what happened. She got right in his face. Which, you don’t know him, but nobody did that. She was yelling at him too. I remember being scared, because he would hit her, and I didn’t want him to hurt her. Then he got tired of being yelled at, and he went to strike her, and I swear Taryn, I saw her eyes go cold. I’ve only seen that expression one time since that day. All the stories she had told me about being trained to fight, they weren’t stories anymore.”
I motioned for her to pass the whiskey back. She obliged without looking at me. This time I took a more moderated sip. The tent smelled of wet canvas and earth; I was warm now. “What happened then?”
“We left that evening—took every piece of coin he had. Then we holed up in the next town over, and Ma paid an old hedge witch a hefty sum to scry for her old guild. They were in Port Orion, another sea town, celebrating from a stint of work in Threece that had taken most of the previous season. The job had been settling a dispute between two families.”
I made a noise of understanding. Threece was a small country, and what little land it had was divided amongst… I wanted to say, five families, though I couldn’t quite remember at the moment. Each spring as soon as the fields thawed, one family or other was bound and certain to declare that their neighbor had encroached upon their borders and declare a feud.
Aella chuckled. “That was the first time I saw Kaleb. I guess when the witch scried for him, our faces turned up in his drink and he swore and spilled it. We had to have the her work the magic again. That time we appeared in the ale left on the table. It was then he told us that the second in command from when Ma was traveling with them had become the commander. That was good news for us because they had been mates. We met them halfway between Port Orion and Threece, and I immediately began training to be of use to them, and to be one of them. The rest is history.”
“Gods,” I murmured. “You’re not putting me on, right?”
“Nope. That’s my life. Some bits and pieces left out, sure, but that’s the gist. So, you see,” she said, her tone teasing once more, “if you do harbor same-sex tendencies, you don’t have half so much of a reason to be afraid to explore them as I did.”
I groaned and shoved her. “I’m not afraid. But you’re right, Nophgrin doesn’t care about that sort of thing. Two men, Andrew and his partner David hand-fasted in front of half the town not two years ago. I just never thought of myself in that way.”
“Well, I won’t push you then.” Aella rolled to her knees and crawled around me to the door flap. “It’s hardly my place.” She climbed out into the night and hissed. “Man alive, I’d forgotten how chilly it was.”
I followed the trail of cold air streaming into the tent, somewhat reluctantly. “I’ll admit I’ve never said a lot of the things I told you.”
“Strangers are like confession booths.” Aella tugged her jerkin straight and smoothed loose strands of hair, only to have them blow back where they’d come from. “We roll into town, you unload your sins, and then we leave. We’re safe.”
We began walking back the way we had come, passing the flask between us. “So, I guess each town you come through is a lot like that. How many times have you unloaded your past onto a girl in your tent?” Was that jealousy that I felt burning in my gut, or the whisky?
Aella licked her lips, catching the lower one between her teeth and gnawing a piece of chapped skin free. “I don’t tell my story to everyone. I’m sure you can imagine how we are otherwise occupied. Tonight, you asked so I told. If it had been your friend, I might not have.”
“Yeah, you might have gotten farther with Nai than with me.” I said, punting a rock a few feet. “She likes guys, as far as I know, but who’s to say? She’s way more adventurous than I am.”
“Nah, I’m glad it was you I brought back to my tent— if we did do any talking she wouldn’t have let me get a word in edgewise, I think.”
“Is that why?” I laughed, and she nodded fervently.
“Don’t get me wrong, she’s pretty,” I took another drink, nodding as I did so, “but you’re interesting, Taryn of the sheep.”
“Nai is interesting too,” I said stoutly.
Aella took the flask back. “Take a compliment.”
“It’s not nice to imply that my closest friend isn’t as interesting as I am. Especially when she is.” My words slurred together slightly as I spoke, and I scowled at them.
“Gods you are a peevish girl, has anyone told you?”
I put my arms out and spun in place, then paused as I waited for my vision to refocus. When I did speak, I did so slowly, enunciating carefully. “I am peevish, but you like me.” I spun again, enjoying the way my skirt rose and fanned out above my knees, not minding the cold air that hit my tights as my feet stumbled across each other.
Aella caught me by the right arm and pulled me to her, chest to chest. With my hands pressed between us I could feel how solidly she was put together. I worked hard every day, and my body still had a little jiggle to it. Aella was like a rock.
The hand she had on my arm slipped down to take my own hand, and the other one rested lightly on the small of my back. My free fingers creeped up to grip her shoulder for support. She grinned down at me, and without a word she proceeded to dance us lightly in a circle. Our clasped hands were out like a tea kettle spout; we dipped backward and forward as we swirled, and the movement and wind caused my skirt to wrap around and between her legs.
I laughed in surprise, and clung to her to stay upright. She twirled me out so that our arms were fully extended. My other arm was
flung back behind me for balance. She spun me back in towards her, and I let the momentum take me with little care for how my feet kept up.
“I do like you.” I tilted my head back, surprised by the admission. She lowered her head so that her lips were inches from my own, and I felt a magnetic pull between us. I let my heavy lids drift shut, expecting her to close the gap, but then the warmth of her breath left my face, and we were dancing again. “Sadly, canoodling with drunk farm girls is a sure way for a mercenary to gain a bad reputation.”
My eyes flew open. “I’m not drunk.”
“You’re hardly sober. You’ve let me dance you around without once mentioning the fact that you need to get back to the inn to get your supper.”
I dug my heels in, halting us on a turn, and my eyes darted to the faint blaze of light at the end of the street where The Black Gryphon sat. At this distance, I couldn’t even hear the noise from within. “Horse dung.”
Aella snickered. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Why’d you let me prance around like a lackwit?” I demanded, tugging her by our joined hands in the direction of the inn. She let herself be dragged without resisting.
“It was fun, and it didn’t take that much time.” She let her boredom at my concern ring clearly through her dry voice.
The row of houses we were on had only one torch, a few feet down the street from us. It was because of that low light that I almost stumbled right past Michael, who was in a narrow alley to the left. When my mind registered him crouched there, I jerked myself backward, opening my mouth to say hello. A shriek left my open lips as my brain registered Beth’s prone form beside him and the dark pool of liquid by her skull. Michael’s head swung up, fear in his eyes, even after he recognized us.
“It’s Beth,” he said, his voice high and hurried. “Quickly. Get help— she’s been bludgeoned!”
Of Gryphons and Other Monsters (Taryn's Journey Book 1) Page 16
