Eventually we settled on simply rolling ourselves into the blanket and trying to keep our heads covered with it. As romantic as that sounds, it wasn’t. With the cloth over our heads, I began to feel as though I was being smothered. Not to mention that caused my feet to stick out the other end. Whether the mosquitos knew that or not, my imagination made me think they were all over my toes.
At some point, our insect oppressors found somewhere else to be, and our little world grew peaceful. The stars were brilliant overhead, and the ocean filled the air with a constant noise that soothed my nerves. The air was cool enough that we weren’t sweating. Rose made a pillow out of my arm and we slept.
We awoke some hours later, before dawn, when I discovered that someone had amputated my arm during the night. After sitting up, it became apparent that my arm was still there, but it was completely nonresponsive. As an additional bonus, I was covered in small bites. Are there fleas on the beach, or did the mosquitos sneak into the blanket with us? I wondered.
While I waited on my arm to return to active service, I realized my aythar had partially recovered. I wasn’t entirely back to normal, but I didn’t need to worry about conserving energy as much now. Generally, my natural rate of replenishment is faster than what I use in all but the most stressful of situations.
I was also hungry.
Rose sat close by, swaddled in the blanket. I turned to her and asked, “Are you hungry?”
She nodded. “Unless you’re referring to those moldy biscuits.”
Glancing around, I decided the ocean was probably the easiest and safest route. Standing up, I unbuckled my belt, and then, before dropping my makeshift skirt, I warned Rose, “You might want to look away.”
True to form, she simply smirked, keeping her eyes on my back. Women, I thought. If I did that, they’d call me a pervert. I didn’t really mind though. Dropping the dress, I gave her a quick shake and then ran toward the water.
I was a passable swimmer, but not great. I quickly discovered that flying and swimming are not too dissimilar. Slipping beneath the waves, I created a shield around myself and using my aythar to grip the brine closest to me, I shot forward through the water. It was a marvelously refreshing experience. I felt as though I had been reborn as a fish.
I had to surface regularly to breathe, but my speed was such that I could cover long distances between breaths, and my magesight was easily able to pick up a wide variety of life around me. Not having lived near a seaside, there were a lot of things that I wasn’t sure if we could eat, so I decided to stick to fish.
There were small sharks and large rays, but I didn’t know much about eating those. There were also numerous small fish, but I didn’t want to have to spend time cleaning more than one, so I took my time and finally located a large silvery fellow that was too beautiful to not be edible.
My prey was over two feet long and showed no fear as I glided up beside him. He was probably surprised when I sent a precise bolt of force through him and pulled him to me. Fish in hand, I shot upward, and we emerged from the water. Then I flew back to Rose and proudly displayed my catch. “Dinner is served, madam!”
She smiled, then smirked, and I remembered I was naked. I dropped the fish and hastily redressed myself. Heh, redressed, I thought, then wondered if women made that pun mentally to themselves whenever they put clothes on. Probably not, I decided, making a mental note to ask Penny later. She hated puns, so I saved them up to torment her.
The thought brought another stab of pain, but I did my best to ignore it and set about cleaning the fish I had caught. I quickly learned that enchanted blades are awful for scaling a fish. They’re simply too sharp. My knife kept slicing through the skin rather than scraping the scales off. Eventually I was forced to use the back of the knife instead, which wasn’t ideal, but worked.
Focused on my task, I lost track of what Rose was doing. Realizing she was gone, I felt a moment of panic before I spotted her with my magesight. She was already returning, a load of deadwood in her arms.
“Don’t wander off,” I told her, my tone perhaps a bit too harsh.
“I didn’t go far…”
“This place is dangerous, Rose. There could be all sorts of predators hiding nearby,” I said, reprimanding her.
She lifted one brow. “You’d have noticed them with your magical senses. The wood was just over there, near the tree line.”
“We didn’t need wood. I can cook it without,” I insisted. “Some of the predators here are very hard for me to spot. There’s burrowing spiders that look almost like rocks. I missed them last time, when Penny…”
Her face softened. “Her arm?”
“No, that was bears,” I said at last, but I realized my fears were all mixed together. Angry and confused simultaneously, I just glared at Rose.
The indomitable Rose Thornbear studied me for a moment, then conceded, “I’ll be more careful in the future.”
I began arranging the wood in a small pile. In spite of my fears, I had to admit it was a good idea. The smoke would make the fish taste better than if I simply heated the flesh to cook it. “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” I apologized.
There was a strange smile on her face when she replied, “It’s alright. I would have done the same if you wandered away. I can’t hold you to a higher standard than myself, so fair’s fair.”
Using my magic to set the wood aflame, I soon had a blaze going, though I would still have to wait a while for it to burn down a little before I put the fish over it. I made myself busy trimming one of the spindly limbs into a spit. “We make an odd pair,” I said as I worked.
“People are strange overall,” said Rose. “We aren’t that different from everyone else,” she opined, then got to her feet and walked toward the surf. “I’m covered in sand. I think I’ll take a quick dip while you cook.” Then she removed the top of what had once been her dress and began pulling the linen shift over her head. “Feel free to watch.”
My cheeks grew hot and I looked away, causing her to laugh. “Fair’s fair,” added Rose, before she began a long, languorous stroll into the water. I knew this not purely because of my magesight, but because I turned to watch her, once I knew she was no longer looking at me. Even with permission, I felt rather wicked for doing so, as though I was a boy trying to steal a pie, instead of a man of well over forty years.
Some things never change.
Later, after she had dried off and we were eating our fish, she brought up something that had been much on my mind. “You haven’t asked me about Tyrion,” she said.
My face didn’t change. “It’s none of my business.”
Her expression turned to one of curiosity, as though she had found something interesting to study. “Really?”
“Really,” I affirmed. “I don’t have the right to judge you, Rose. If anything, I should be thanking you. You stuck with me despite everything.” My words were true on one level, and I certainly knew I owed her a debt, but deeper down, thinking about the things she had been forced to do made my stomach churn.
“Such a noble sentiment,” observed Rose. “I’ve always admired that about you. Most men would tie themselves in knots with jealousy.”
As a matter of fact, my stomach was already in knots, and her words weren’t helping. “Let’s not talk about it,” I responded. “I admire your tenacity. We can leave it there.”
She sighed. “Very well. Let’s talk about something else. Was it this easy for you to be noble after Dorian and Penny were freed from captivity?”
Many years before, Penny and Dorian had been captured by the shiggreth and used as leverage against me. They were kept for some time, chained up, naked, and probably very cold. Afterward I had told Penny that whatever had happened, I didn’t blame her. People are people after all, and desperate situations make everyone long for comfort, but inwardly it had secretly bothered me. Rose’s tone was innoc
ent, but the topic was a sensitive one for me, something she had to know if she was bringing it up now.
I had never mentioned it to Rose, and Penny and I had never discussed it after my blanket statement of forgiveness. Dorian told her, I was sure. He was always too honest to keep a secret, even if it hurt someone to tell it. “I never blamed Penny,” I answered at last. “Human beings are frail, and they were alone, thinking they might be killed at any moment.”
“But it bothered you anyway, didn’t it?” Rose probed.
I glanced at her, then back at the fire. “A little, but I put it aside. What they suffered was far worse. They didn’t deserve to return to pettiness on my end.”
Rose nodded. “That’s good to hear. That’s what I told Penny as well.”
My head jerked up. “What? You talked to her about it?”
“Mm hmm,” answered Rose. “A few months afterward. Dorian confessed as soon as we were alone, in great detail. He never had much sense in that regard. I think I would have rather he left it unsaid, as Penny did. I waited to talk to Penny, to give her some time to recover.”
Astonished, I gaped at her. “So, you talked about it with Dorian, and with Penny? I was the only one left out of the conversation?”
“I always thought you were the smartest one of us all, at least in that instance. I forgave Dorian, but I eventually felt the need to clear the air between Penny and myself,” said Rose. “I think she felt relieved, but despite me telling her that all was forgiven, it took me some time to truly get past it.”
I laughed at the irony. “If only Dorian had been able to keep his mouth shut. He could have saved you that bit of anxiety. Still, it wasn’t that bad, was it?”
Rose grimaced. “My husband was painfully honest.” Then she held up three fingers.
Until that moment, I had never been certain. I hadn’t known for sure that anything really happened, and I had carefully buried my questions on the matter. “Three times?” I blurted out.
She nodded. “If she hadn’t already been pregnant, you might have wound up raising Gram’s half-brother.”
For a moment, I was stunned, but then I let the feeling slide away. It didn’t change anything. I still didn’t blame either of them, and it was in the distant past anyway. But one of the principals involved was sitting right across from me. “Why did you talk to everyone else, except me?”
“That’s simple, Mordecai. Think about it. For me to talk about it with Dorian, or Penny, that’s one thing, but discussing it with you was never an option.”
I frowned, still not understanding.
Rose went on, “If the two spouses meet and discuss the perceived wrongs against them, what does that lead to?”
“Ahhh,” I said. “Now I see your point.”
“I was angry, but I wasn’t ready to ruin my marriage,” said Rose.
“For some reason, I always thought you’d deal with it better than I did,” I admitted. “You’ve always had such composure.”
Rose laughed lightly. “You didn’t have Dorian apologizing to you every day for weeks on end, or admitting to his deeds in great, unnecessary detail. It’s a miracle I didn’t kill him.”
I winced. “Ouch. He really was a little dense.” We didn’t talk for a few minutes, enjoying the sound of the waves. For some reason our strange conversation made me feel as though a small weight had been lifted from me. “I wish we could have them back, though,” I said finally.
“Me too,” Rose replied wistfully.
“That day, when I was in the dungeon. You told me I wasn’t ready.”
Rose nodded.
“How will I know? How long did it take you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said Rose honestly. “Even after all these years I’m still not sure. I think I might be now, but I’ve never tested the waters.”
Confused, I looked over at her. “But what about…?”
“So it does bother you. Not so noble after all, are you?” she said with a malicious grin.
I frowned. “It does bother me a little, but as I said before, I can’t judge. Whatever you did, with Tyrion, or the jailor, or that other fellow—you did it for me. If anything, I’m ashamed for putting myself in such a situation. If I had been in your place, I would have done anything necessary to help you, or any of my other family. It’s noble really, if you think—”
She held up one hand. “Wait. What other fellow? You didn’t have a chance to talk to Karen.”
So it was true. “The man in your room that day, when I came by to talk.” Actually, now that I think about it, that was before I was locked up. Had he been an actual lover, rather than someone she had had to…?
Rose began to laugh, not her usual lady-like laugh either. It was a deep belly laugh, punctuated by odd, high-pitched nasal sounds. Eventually, she managed to reply, “You honestly thought I slept with Manfred? And the jailor? You must really think poorly of my taste in men!”
Off-balance and confused, I resorted to humor. “Well, you seem to fancy me, so you’re obviously not all there.”
That only earned me one of her polite laughs, then she grew serious. “I didn’t sleep with any of them. I managed to find other solutions, though honestly, if it had been necessary to save you, I would have.”
A sense of relief washed over me, followed by a feeling of guilt. It shouldn’t have mattered to me, either way. Sometimes being noble is hard work. There was still one nagging doubt, though. “Not even Tyrion?”
Rose’s eyes glittered fiercely. “Oh, there was no sleeping where that man was concerned. He was far too primal, too animalistic, to be easily satisfied. He kept me fully engaged. I don’t regret him at all. In fact, it’s something of a shame you killed him.”
“A simple ‘yes’ would have been enough,” I said, jealous and angry. “If you liked him so much, you didn’t need to bother saving me.”
She moved over to where I sat, then patted my cheek, answering with absolute sincerity, “Oh, a brute is handy for satisfying the passions of the flesh, Mordecai, but you’re nicer.” It was several seconds before her façade crumbled and she began to laugh again.
It was then that I realized she had been putting me on. “That was mean,” I said, feeling foolish.
“Would you like to know what really happened?” she asked.
At that point, I wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. Do I? Think about Dorian before you decide.”
She smiled. “You definitely want to know.” Then she began describing what she had been through over the past week, leaving nothing to spare.
Some of it made me angry, particularly with Tyrion, but when I learned how she had tricked him, I couldn’t help but feel both glad and a little sorry for him. He had felt genuinely betrayed at the end. I would have still blown him up, though. Overall, I felt terrible about the stress she had been under and amazed at how she had dealt with it all. Manfred’s murder was a shock, and I could tell that out of all of it, that had been what bothered her the most.
The wind was blowing hard by the time she finished, and the sky over the ocean was dark with heavy, ominous clouds. A storm was coming. Leaning back on my elbows, I looked over at her. “And here we are. Outlaws. I’m wanted for murder, and half my friends want to arrest me, while the other half have become accomplices to keep me free. I almost wish we could just stay here. The seaside is a lot nicer than the real world.”
Rose was studying the horizon. “I don’t know. I think we’re about to get wet.”
“Let me show you some magic,” I offered, then I stretched out fully. Opening my mind, I stretched, expanding my sense of self to encompass the sand beneath and around me. Unlike normal wizardry, this cost me no aythar, just a little of my humanity, which hopefully would return. The sand boiled around me, then began to rise, climbing upward to form thick walls that supported a thin roof of fused silica. I left the structure ope
n in the front and back, so the wind would be able to pass through it, but it would keep the rain off.
Finished with my project, I began to contract once more. And as my mind became more human again, I thought of Penny. She would have loved this. Then the world went black.
Chapter 41
Dawn found Elaine cold, stiff, and generally displeased with life. After they had finished drying off and getting warm the day before, they had started hiking. Chad had thought it unlikely that Gareth would pick up their trail by then, so they had stayed in the forest, which was good, since none of them had the energy left to face the cold water again.
They had walked far into the night, using a veil to hide them from magesight. The trees already protected them pretty well from aerial view if a certain dragon happened to be searching for them from the air.
Since there were three of them and only one blanket, Chad had insisted they spread it out and sleep on top of it. His reasoning had been that the ground would sap their body heat faster than the modestly cool breeze. Whether that was true or not, Elaine couldn’t tell, but her body felt bruised from her continual shivering during the night.
The two men had slept back to back, but she had refused to participate. Their pungent time while drying after the river had been more than enough bonding for her tastes.
She regretted it now, though. Keeping a veil up while sleeping was impossible, so she hadn’t been able to use magic to warm herself either.
It was a new day, though one with no breakfast. A fact Chad felt no shame in reminding her of at every opportunity.
“Can’t you just catch something?” she asked him at last, tired of his complaining.
“Not without fuckin’ arrows, I can’t!” he swore.
“We could set snares,” suggested Cyhan peaceably.
“An’ sit on our asses for a day waitin’,” replied the hunter. “No thanks. The sooner we’re gone from here, the better.” Then he looked at Elaine. “Since you think it’s safe to use a little magic now, just kill the first thing you see. Rabbit, squirrel, I don’t care.”
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