by C A Nicks
Might as well cash in on the inevitable. She wiped her clay-softened hands and then reached for her sketch-book and pencil. Dreams of a large reward from Fabian’s family were crumbling before her eyes. The pencil flew over the paper. A man, dropping from the heavens. Herself, the unlikely saviour.
Around the rim, she inscribed – Plate one. The warrior who fell from the sky.
What she really wanted to write was – and they lived happily ever after. Damn the man for getting under her skin so fast. But she had no idea how this story would end. Only that in victory or defeat, Fabian’s story was shaping up to be nothing less than a tragedy.
* * * *
Time confused him. Stuck in the house to avoid Tig’s sharp reprimand every time he poked his nose past the door, he found it moved with the speed of a man wading through wet sand. On the occasions when he had sneaked out and ventured further afield, to the barns, the fields and the desert beyond, it moved swifter than an arrow from the strongest bow.
After ten days of hiding and healing, and planning his glorious return, Fabian stood at Tig’s kitchen window and noticed that trees, which had been bare on his arrival, were now bursting with buds and blossom. The light of the sun lingered longer into the evenings and Tig no longer asked him to lay a fire to ward off the chill.
“My arm is healed,” he announced. “You may remove the splint.”
Tig continued with her knitting, giving no indication she’d heard him other than a slight twitch of her mouth. The game amused her, so he played along. And not because he felt a strange pang of affection as he glanced at the woman fate had destined to be his saviour. He blinked it away and sighed dramatically.
“Please?”
Tig dropped her knitting into a basket and hopped out of the chair.
“Sit at the table.”
Tig’s smile widened, but he caught, always, the underlying hint of concern behind the flippancy. In her own way, she was teaching him to survive this new world. Humility was the best disguise and drew the least attention. Coupled with the unimaginative artisan clothes and less than stellar hygiene forced on him by these rough conditions, he might pass for a bondsman or migrant worker when he ventured forth into the world.
He sat dutifully on the kitchen chair and laid the splinted arm onto the rough wooden table.
“Once this is off, you can start shaving yourself.” Tig laid the back of her hand against his bristled cheek, moving it before he could trap it there. Since that first, awkward joining, she’d avoided any talk of repeating the experience. Embarrassment or regret? Disappointment, even. He still didn’t know why she’d capitulated so easily and then decided that having sex without strings with him was a bad idea after all.
With a large pair of shears, she snipped at the bindings holding the two wooden splints against his forearm. It was good to be free of the restraints and he knew his body well enough that the bone had knit straight and true.
“Thank you,” he said. It earned him another smile. He was counting those smiles, he realised. Watching and waiting for them, then storing them away to relive at some future time when Tig would no longer fill his life.
“Flex your fingers. Pick something up and see how it feels.”
In response, he rose from the chair, hooked his newly-healed arm about her waist and hoisted her from her own seat. Eye to eye, he adjusted his stance to stop her slipping and tightened his grip when she struggled, momentarily. The friction of her body, flush with his, did nothing to help his resolve to focus on escape rather than spending energy worrying about his manhood.
Eyes dark as a stormy sky stared, challenging, into his. A recklessly brave woman, he would leave to an uncertain future in this barbaric land. One day, she would lean back on her luck and find only empty space. She clung to her independence by the merest tips of her fingers.
“I used to watch trees grow from seed to trunks big enough to span the beam of a ship. To me, it was the blink of an eye. Now I’m ageing faster than the trees out there.”
“That’s life.” Tig hung limp in his embrace, waiting for him to let her go. “Fabian, I need to go feed Cafino.”
“I come a poor second to your horse?”
“A close second,” she said after a moment’s pause. “You could peel a few potatoes, while I’m out. Now that both your hands are in operation.”
“I can think of better things to do with my hands.” He released her, letting her slide down his body over his rapidly-hardening erection. The blush forming on her skin told him she wasn’t as immune to his seduction as she made out.
“You have the cheesiest lines,” she said, straightening out her shirt. Casually, she fastened the button which had popped open to reveal the silky bodices she wore instead of bindings for her breasts. He considered going outside for a little manual relief, but that would mean leaving her when she was all flushed and rumpled and almost begging him to seduce her.
She arched her brows when she caught him staring with such unashamed intent. Perceptive. She knew exactly what he was thinking. But she seemed, for now, content to torture him with promises rather than risk becoming too attached to a man who would leave her in a heartbeat when the time came.
“You know why,” she said, anticipating the question he’d asked more than once since that first time. “I’m getting used to having you around, and that’s not a good thing. Look how quickly you’ve healed, regained your strength. When you go, I need to be able to resume the life I had before. The best way to do that is not to get involved.”
“I’m asking for sex, not love.”
His blunt words had lost their effect. Possibly because Tig had heard them once too often. She crossed the kitchen. Reached for her coat from the hook by the door. “I’m starting to care for you, Fabian. Arrogant, macho-man that you are. I worry about you. And when you’ve gone I’ll miss you and all your irritating little ways.” She pulled on the coat. Opened the door and scanned the yard before stepping over the threshold onto the wooden porch, practical as ever, even when baring her soul. “I know my place, and you know yours. I thought I could do the sex without ties thing. I was wrong.”
That she cared for him was no surprise. He’d enjoyed her attention these past days and noticed the way she stared at him when she thought he wasn’t looking. Lust, yes, however much she denied it, but there was a growing fondness in her gaze. The sexual banter, the playfulness was a surface manifestation of deeper feelings she tried so hard to hide.
Fabian blinked and turned away from the rather forlorn figure standing in the doorway. Suddenly, Anxur, the memory of which he’d nursed with a passion since his exile, seemed impossibly distant. A distance not only measured in time and space but from his heart, too. In the history of Anxur, had anyone ever returned from the rift? He knew they had not and had been determined to be the first. To do so, he must leave Tig.
“You’ve been very kind,” he said because she seemed to be waiting for him to say something. “I’m starting to care for you, also. But that is inevitable, is it not? Turn around, Tig. I cannot have a conversation with your back.”
She did. Her eyes were wise beyond her years. “That’s quite a compliment coming from a man who’s had women kill for the honour of bathing him.”
“Once, it would have been.”
She bowed graciously. “As always, you honour me. Don’t care for me, Fabian. I might enjoy it too much. I’m good, really I am.” She pointed to the yard. “You’ll find the potato sack in the barn. Don’t stay outside for too long.”
They’d complicated the sex with feelings? Is that what she was trying to tell him? Feelings that could well be false and forced on them by circumstance?
Leaning against the door-frame, he watched Tig cross the dusty yard, a scruffy waif in her oversized coat and work-boots, pale hair hanging to her knees. Thin as a reed, but with a supple strength that straightened her spine and marked her as a survivor not a victim.
In the barn, he located the potato sack and sorted thro
ugh the oddly-shaped tubers for something edible-looking. Most were shrivelled and green. He’d known fashionably-thin women who starved their bodies to appear more attractive. Tig was thin because she lived on a precarious bread-line that apparently included doing favours for Hal, in return for food. He threw down the potatoes in disgust. Animal-food, nothing more.
The potatoes scattered across the barn, chased by the excited dogs who’d spotted him and come to investigate. One of them picked up a potato and ran back to him, dropping it at his feet and whining excitedly. Fabian threw it and wished Hal were here now so he could remove the man from this world permanently. The dog leapt and caught the potato in mid-air, crunching it in its jaws.
“No,” Fabian ordered when it went for another. “That’s dinner. Leave!”
The dog dropped to the floor, cowering in submission. The other, too, followed its brother’s lead and slithered towards Fabian on its belly, whining in homage.
My new subjects, Fabian thought as he gathered the precious potatoes. He bared his teeth and growled at the hounds, whose parentage could have been anything from a wolf-hound to a sleek racing-dog. They cowered further while he rummaged behind a cobwebbed box covered in sacking for the last of the rogue vegetables. Beside the potato, he saw a smaller, metal box, much cleaner, as if it were in regular use.
He sniffed. Weapon oil; a smell he recognised. Pulling out the box, he opened it and found the projectiles that made the gun such a deadly weapon. The bullets Tig had so stubbornly refused to show him. Not as effective as magic, but the rifle was a weapon more powerful than a throwing knife or a long sword. Perhaps even more so than a crossbow. He had just as stubbornly refused to promise Tig he would ignore the gun. The rifle had predictably disappeared from the attic, but with its distinctive smell, it wouldn’t take long to find.
Fabian replaced the box and sprinkled it with dust to cover his fingerprints. Sniffed to imprint the scent of weapon oil in his mind and then straightened and looked around for likely hiding places for the gun. When he left, it was going with him.
One of the dogs barked.
“Lost something?” Tig wandered into the barn. She bent and peered with a frown into the potato sack. “Damn, nearly empty. I’ll ride over to Hal’s farm tomorrow. See if he can loan me a sack-full until I sell my next batch of pottery. What are you doing over there?”
“Recovering a rogue potato.” At times like these, Fabian regretted his vow to tell her only the truth. Tig immediately picked up the challenge.
“Which what? Just happened to roll over there and behind that box? Rather convenient, don’t you think?”
“Very.” Assuming an air of innocence would do no good since Tig knew full-well what he’d found. “Where is the rifle, Tig? I must have it.”
“Hidden.”
Fabian crossed the barn, tossing the potato into the sack as he passed. “Then I will find it.”
“And do what?” Tig hastily gathered up the potatoes and then followed him, running to keep up as he stalked back to the house. “Fabian, wait. Think this through. Think of what it will do to me.”
He turned, slowly. Tig stood her ground, but he felt her discomfort as he stepped deliberately close and used his unfair height advantage to intimidate her. Unworthy of him after all her kindness. Necessary, though, to make his point. The strong took what they wanted. The weak had no option but to defer.
No, he would not call her weak. Vulnerable, yes, and there lay his dilemma. Even without the sex, she had become a complication. Before him stood the price of his return home. A sacrifice he would have once made willingly. Now, he found himself beset by unwanted guilt and unable to look into her dark, pleading eyes for fear of capitulation. He would forget her soon enough once back on Anxur.
“Don’t make me regret saving you,” she said. “Perhaps if I can get you away from here, to a place where you can start a new life?”
“You wish me to leave?” The wind lifted her magnificent hair, brushing it against his thigh like a caress. Her expression held a bleak hopelessness, a sad contrast to her usual throwaway humour. She clutched the half-rotten potatoes to her chest as if they were armour.
For ten days they’d skirted and dodged the many conversations they should have had. But things could not remain unsaid forever.
Tig lowered her head and when she spoke, he heard the slight choke in her voice.
“It would be for the best, I suppose.”
Avoiding old habits was hard. When he wanted something, he took it. And what he wanted now was an honest answer. With one large hand on each of her cheeks, he lifted her face, forcing her to look him in the eye, and repeated his question.
“Do you wish me to leave?”
“No.”
He heard anger now. Accusation.
“I don’t want you to leave, okay? But then you must already know that. You talk so blithely of going home. Regaining your former glory with no thought that I have to remain here and live this life of mine.”
She shook her head free of his restraining grasp, regarding him with such anguish his heart squeezed tight in his chest.
“You’re a stubborn, irritating, arrogant man. And I’m going to miss you.”
The words, the tears he saw shining in her eyes, honoured him. Reflected what he felt deep inside but didn’t dare let show. How many women like Tig had eluded him during his long life? All because he’d never taken the trouble to linger and spend time finding out who they were. Of all the women in the universe, how had he managed to choose the most vacuous and empty, for his life-mates?
Tig, with her insolent smile and sharp tongue and her ability to see beyond his façade, was worth all of them.
The thousand-year Fall had taught him remorse. Tig had taught him how to live again.
Rain-clouds darkened the sky. At his side, one of the dogs licked timidly at his fingers. Around them, the light was fading; another of his limited supply of days ending. They lingered together in the dusk, each of them aware they stood on a threshold. A time of decision. The moment carried a weight almost beyond bearing.
That he was even considering his options, showed how far he had fallen.
A return home would risk everything, Tig included. She would not survive the aftermath of his leadership challenge unless he remained to protect her. She patted his arm and, with a rueful smile, left him and entered the house.
A sage once told him to store treasure in his heart, not in barns and wagons and chests. Fabian had laughed at him, then had the man’s tongue cut out for his impudence. He ducked under the low-beamed doorway and entered the rustic kitchen, fragrant with apple-wood smoke and the succulent smell of the hen he’d killed earlier and prepared for roasting in the wood-burning stove.
Tig was picking disconsolately over the few feathers which had fluttered to the table. A tear tracked swiftly over her cheek to splash onto the scrubbed wood. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and reassure her. Tell her he would win the challenge and make her his queen. That they would live happily for however many years the gods decreed them.
He wanted too much. A life of contentment here with Tig seemed almost more impossible a dream than returning home to Anxur.
“It wouldn’t work. If I stayed, how long would it be before someone found out? Before they came for me and forced me into a confrontation? You’re right. Now my arm is healed, it’s best that I go. I will challenge Warrington from another front. Or perhaps find an easier target to start my ascent to greatness. No one need ever know you were involved. We will forget each other soon enough.”
The potatoes clattered into the stone sink. Tig attacked the pump-handle, working it as if her very life depended on every drop of water gushing from its spout.
“Now do you understand why us having sex was such a bad idea?” she said. “How quickly it can stop being just sex?”
He’d imagined the danger was out there, in the wastelands between the settlements, where warlords fought for their all too brief moments of glory. Fo
ol. Without realising it, Tig had laid siege to his heart and he was trapped, unable to think clearly, unable to act. Caught in a limbo of indecision, where every option led to the same place. Her.
“A powerful mage might get me home. But even if I could take you with me, my people would never accept you. My wives would never tolerate you. You would not fit into my world.”
“As you don’t fit into mine.” Tig waved him away. “The fewer memories of you I have, the easier you’ll be to forget. Wash. Dinner will be ready soon.”
He didn’t offer to peel the potatoes. It was, after all, women’s work. Servant’s work. The most high-lord of the seven plateaus did not demean himself with the work of lesser mortals.
Fabian straightened his back and remembered who he was. Almost a god to these simple folk. A man driven by ambition, not by these bewildering feelings which tore at his heart and guts.
“You may serve me when ready,” he said and walked from the kitchen to clean off the day’s grime in the wash-house. The gun couldn’t be far. Tig hadn’t left the farm since he’d arrived. The rifle was the nearest thing to magic he could hope for right now.
The ice-cold water made him shiver. He drew another bucket and poured it over his head. Let it drench him in the hope it would cool the heat in his brain.
Tig had achieved more than the strongest of mages. She’d given him back his heart and made him feel. He doused himself again, but no matter how cold he became, the flame she’d ignited burned defiantly deep in his chest. Leaving her, and even worse, betraying her, would tear him in two unless he got a serious grip on himself. And fast.
Chapter 6
For a heart-stopping moment, Tig thought he’d found the gun. The loose floorboard had been pulled up and replaced haphazardly. The wardrobe door left ajar. Two muddy footprints stained the rug by her bed. Fabian hadn’t even tried to hide the fact he’d been through her room.
Did he think she’d be stupid enough to hide it in here? She kicked off her shoes and reached for her riding boots. Take the thing over to Sunas and get her to hide it. No, it would be impossible to keep from Hal. Very little got past his acute senses.
