by J. M. Frey
“I bet I can, bao bei,” she counters.
“Bet you can’t!” the raven challenges. It ruffles itself up like a porcupine, indignant and fluffy with rage.
“Raven,” Pip says, posture and voice suddenly formal. “Please show us the way to the head of the staircase that will take us down the waterfall.”
“Why should I, I says, I says?” the raven cackles. “Why shou—”
Pip doesn’t let it finish, rolling over its protest: “Please show us the way to the head of the staircase that will take us down the waterfall. Please show us the way to the head of the staircase that will take us down the waterfall.”
The raven pauses, stunned, and deflates miserably.
“Follow me, please do, please do,” it caws unhappily.
Pip leans over to kiss me on the cheek, and I can’t help but feel that it is slightly smug. She mounts Karl and holds out a hand for me. I take the hint and swing myself into the saddle, tucking up tight behind her, rearranging the lay of our swords so they don’t jab at us. I am reminded of that first morning, when I was showing her how to roll her hips to compensate for a horse’s gait, and realize of a sudden what had made her so amorous before. I blush hotly, and bury my face at the back of her neck, kissing the leaf scar to hide my embarrassment from the raven.
“Ugh, love,” it caws, and then takes to the air.
Pip jerks at Karl’s reins, throwing us into a gallop after the bird. It seems to be punishing us for forcing it to tell, taking the most convoluted route through the forest, squeezing us between trees and through briers, but Karl seems just as determined as we are to not let the bird out of his sight, and, eventually, we emerge into the daylight.
The cliff here is even more sheer, and I force my paranoia quiet when Pip detangles herself from the saddle and peers over the edge, directly beneath where the raven is circling.
“Here it is, it is, it is!” the raven caws. “I told you so, I did. I says I did!”
“It looks like a straight drop,” Pip accuses. She gets down on her belly and hangs her head and shoulders over the side to be sure, and I crouch beside her, one hand on her belt, just in case.
“Sideways, sideways, I says!” the raven caws.
Pip wriggles herself out over the cliff more, and I tighten my grip but don’t comment, fear pulling at my throat. She turns her head to the side and exhales a chuckle. “Well, I’ll be damned. Wide enough for the horses, too. Hell of a trompe l’oiel.”
“A what?”
“Eye trick. Look.” She wriggles back, and I lay down in her place. When I’m in position, I can see it, a staircase cut into the side of the cliff. “Wide enough, but we’ll have to go slow. There’s no rail,” I comment.
“Wouldn’t care if you fell, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t!” the raven cackles. It drops a shit over the side in demonstration.
“Well, thank you for showing us, all the same,” Pip says, more polite than I think the damned bird deserves. “We appreciate your help.”
“Rude humans!” the bird screeches, but turns its beak into the wind and flaps away. “Rude, cheating humans! Rude, rude, rude!”
I stand and brush the gray chalk off the front of my robe. “We’ll have to go back and fetch Dauntless and our supplies, but I think we can be down the staircase in a day.”
“We can camp there, then,” Pip says, and points vaguely to the tree line. “It’ll be dark by the time you go back for him and get here.”
“I’ll get lost alone in the forest, without the raven.”
“Walk along the tree line—the waterfall is that way.” She points west, eyes still on the shrinking black speck in the sky.
“You won’t go down without me?” I ask.
She turns now, to assess my expression.
“Do you think I would?”
“No.”
Her muddy eyes widen. “You do. You’re scared.”
“I’m not,” I say. “I trust you.”
“Do you?” she asks. She rises on her tiptoes and presses another one of those just-this-side-of-chaste kisses to my lips. Hungry, but not heated enough to start anything more insistent than a low spark of lust in my gut.
I cup her hips in my hands and bend my neck for a second kiss, amused by the way my lank, travel-dirty hair flops across her forehead. She reaches up and brushes it back with her fingers.
“How did you do that, with the raven?” I ask as we part a second time. I am tempted to steal a third kiss, but the day is getting on, and I need to fetch my horse and our supplies if we’re going to attempt the stairs in the morning. “I’ve never seen a riddling raven bested so swiftly, or so easily.”
“It works in threes,” Pip said. “You did notice that, didn’t you? With anything in these stories, all you have to do is ask them three times. And then they tell you what you want to know. But it only works so many times during a journey, and never on the villain, more’s the pity.”
I am too perturbed at my apparent blindness to the rules of my own world to answer. And yes, perhaps I am sulking, just a little bit, too.
“No, I didn’t notice,” I finally manage to mutter. “I bet Kintyre knows, though.”
“He doesn’t.”
“He’s a hero; he should. I’m just—”
“No, we’re not having the old and fat conversation again, Forsyth,” Pip snaps. “You’re not being fair. I’ve studied your world, okay? I’ve made my whole academic career about knowing these things. You can’t be expected to know as much as I do.”
It’s true.
But it doesn’t mean I have to like it.
✍
“Ugh,” Pip says as she returns from the trees, cinching her belt. In the darkness around the campfire, it looks as if she has just materialized from the blackness, like a living shadow.
It reminds me uncomfortably of Melinda, the woman whom I’d loved, who had been seduced by a barrow wraith and subsequently by Kintyre after he rescued her from suffocating to death in a wraith circle. I open my arms to Pip, and my thighs, and she returns to help me drown those memories in the scent of her hair. She leans back against me, as if we are back in a saddle, and I rest against the tree at my back and rewrap the blanket around us, snug.
“Ugh?” I ask.
“Just . . . that’s the one thing they never talk about in the books, is it? The unexpected aches, and the dirty realities of . . . questing. I mean, nobody talks about needing to take a crap in the woods, and the smell of dirty hair, and days’ old breath.” Pip holds up a sprig of mint she apparently found while she was communing with nature, as it were. I take the hint—and the offer—and chew on it. Pip is doing the same. “I would give anything for some hand sanitizer and a massive Jacuzzi tub with bubbles.”
More words I don’t understand, but the gist is clear enough. I’m pretty ready for a hot bath and a real bed myself. Bevel’s preoccupation with fresh-baked bread and feather mattresses suddenly becomes far more sympathetic.
Thinking of Bevel reminds me of the last time I saw the poor man. He was miserable and terrified of what Pip had forced Kintyre to confront, angry and hateful and so in love with my brother that it hurt to watch.
“Where do you suppose Bevel and Kintyre are now?” I ask. “Have you read this?”
“I think we’re past what I’ve read,” Pip admits. “I don’t know what adventure they might be on. There were so many that Reed just never wrote down. He alluded to them, but he only focused on the big quests. Like the dragon.”
“Poor creature,” I murmur against her head.
“Yes! I thought so, too!” Pip says. “I didn’t think anyone else from this world would agree.”
“She was just protecting her clutch,” I say. “I wish Bevel had tried to get Kintyre to talk to her more.”
“She might have moved on peacefully,” Pip agrees. “At least the dragonets are well cared for, in that reserve.”
“They would be better cared for if they had their mother.”
“True.”
We fall into a thoughtful, comfortable silence, and I take the opportunity to run my lips across the bruise on her neck. It is dark enough that I didn’t feel the need to refresh it, and a possessive swell of pride fills me as I feel the roughness of the suckled skin around it. I like this, having this here, proof that Pip is mine, that she has chosen me, that she has let me in, let me have her, when she hadn’t allowed anyone else.
I am just considering whether it would be excessive to put a matching bruise on the other side of her throat when Pip speaks.
“Do you think they’re okay, Bevel and Kintyre?”
“Why do you care?” I ask, determined not to let her ruin my swiftly growing amorous mood.
“Because I outed Bevel in front of your entire Chipping. It was sort of an asshole move on my part. I feel guilty.”
“You shouldn’t. He deserved it.”
“Nobody deserves getting their heart broken,” Pip protests. “Especially not publicly.”
I let that sink in for a moment, running my hands up and down her arms. She shivers, and I am uncertain if it’s from the cold, from arousal, or in self chastisement, but regardless, I encourage her to burrow even more deeply into my embrace, her lovely bottom against my groin, and she complies. She takes one of my hands between both of hers and runs the tips of her fingers along each of the lines in my palm, nails scratching so lightly it is practically a tickle.
“How did you even know about them?” I ask. “Save for Kintyre, I should like to think I know Sir Dom best, and I didn’t know.”
“You’re not his friend.”
“No, but I have many reports from the Shadow’s Men.”
“Why?”
“Because he is my brother’s companion. Whether my brother and I are on good terms with one another or not, he is still my brother. I protect what is mine.”
“Am I yours?”
“If you want to be,” I say, and kiss the leaf on her neck.
She says nothing in response to that, and I try very hard not to be disappointed. This is probably where a bolder man would propose marriage, but I can’t stand the thought of being rejected, not so soon after I’ve managed to strengthen our ties as far as I have. If she turned me away, I might die. I couldn’t stand it. So I will be patient. Instead, I say: “You haven’t answered. How did you know about Sir Dom’s love?”
Pip sighs. “Honestly, it was sort of a guess. It’s just that, in the traditional hero Quest Narratives, there’s always some sidekick or cousin or something that comes along and records the quest. There’s usually a huge amount of hero worship involved, genuine admiration from a younger person to an older.”
Yes, I remember that feeling. The little brother of a hero, so proud of his accomplishments, his strength, wanting so badly to have his approval that I practically quivered with it when he looked at me. Kintyre has quite effectively killed that admiration, however.
“There’s always sort of been this . . . homosexual undertone to a relationship like that. I mean, in the ancient Greek stories, it’s real. They really were lovers—Achilles and Patroclus, Heracles and Iolaus. Some of the samurai stories. In my culture, lots of gods slept with humans, or gods, or even animals of the same gender. Ha! They even say the great Imperial dragons had a bit of a kink for mature human men.”
She cuts a sly glance at me.
“I’m not certain I’d be any dragon’s type,” I say, and it comes out slightly strangled. I am torn between fascination and curiosity, warring with being flattered at the thought that a ruler of any sort would find interest in me, and horror that it might be a creature so large and . . . armored as a dragon. “But if these stories exist, why would Reed . . . ?”
“Mostly, the tales come out of cultures where homosexuality is accepted and the norm. But those stories influenced the way we tell stories in our culture, and homosexuality is . . . still not accepted as much as it should be. Especially in older generations, like Elgar Reed’s. So that hero worship I mentioned gets jammed down into a platonic kind of intimacy, but the affection in it still bleeds through. You get these great bromances that are totally straight, like Sherlock Holmes and John Watson—er, a famous crime-fighting duo like Kintyre and Bevel—but there’s such strength of affection there that it reads with homosexual subtext, and people latch on to that.”
“Why?”
“Because sex sells. Or maybe because, sometimes, people think that the only expression of such a passionate and deep friendship has to be sex. Maybe because the actors have great chemistry. Maybe because it’s fun to imagine two hot guys doing it.”
I shudder.
“Well, I guess you wouldn’t,” Pip laughs. “Especially if it’s your brother. But you fantasize about two women, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I admit.
“Hmm,” Pip says and turns in my embrace, still ensconced under the blanket. Her eyes spark green in the firelight. She rises to her knees and runs her hands down my chest. “I’ll tell you my threesome fantasy if you tell me yours, bao bei,” she whispers against my mouth, and then takes my bottom lip between her teeth.
I smile, stretching the skin in her grip, relishing the little ache of it.
Thirteen
“One of the greatest pleasures of spending the night, you know, is getting to cook in the morning,” Pip says from the other side of the campfire, where she is rolling up our sleeping accoutrements and packing our things in our saddlebags while I get clean. “I miss it.”
“The campfire is right there,” I say, as I pour a bit of our precious drinking water over my head. I am crouched on the other side of our little clearing, bent over to spare my clothing, though I suspect I will be damp enough from the plumes of mist when we reach the bottom of the waterfall. But Pip is right, the smell of dirty hair is off-putting. As soon as we have this cup, I’m putting us on the road to the nearest town large enough to have an inn, and I don’t care how many days out of our way it makes us. “You could warm up some of that travel stew.”
“I miss actual cooking,” Pip corrects. “With an oven, and a microwave, and a dishwasher. Bacon and eggs and fried tomatoes. Or, yeah, wai po’s Nigbo Tang Yuan. Yummers.”
“You do realize that when you speak like that, I don’t actually understand the things to which you are referring, don’t you?”
Pip laughs. “And what do you miss?”
“Home,” I say simply, and the word is nearly too small to encompass all that I feel. “I do not regret the privacy of traveling just with you, the intimacy of your being the only other human with which to interact and converse—”
“Oh, you old romantic, you.”
“—for whom to care,” I amend. “But I miss Sheriff Pointe and his terrible footwork, and worse jokes. I miss his wife’s seed-cakes and his son’s unreluctant giggles. I miss the usefulness of Velshi and Cook’s terrible attempts to get me to eat more vegetables, and how Keriens has no ability at all to retain a professional distance and teases me. I miss walking into town and being known to everyone, knowing everyone. I even miss the Shadow’s Men, always hanging about underfoot after providing their reports, telling lovely lies about being travelers passing through or farmers coming by to pay their tithes, flattering Cook into giving up some of her famous rabbit pies. But not half so much as I would miss you, if you were to—” I stop myself before I can continue because it hits me, right then, like an ogre’s club to the side of the head, that I am going to miss Pip.
Because she is going to leave.
The whole point of this little adventure of ours is that she is going to leave. That is the endgame.
“Oh,” I say, feeling too dazed by the realization to say much more, and sit on the ground.
Pip appears beside me, kneeling on the deadfall to meet my eyes. “Forsyth,” she says, a low tone of urgency on her lips. “Forsyth, you did know.”
“I did,” I admit. “I just . . . forgot. I suppose.” I grope for her hand, and she lets me take it. I squeeze as hard as I dar
e, as if I could fuse our flesh together, prevent her from vanishing. “I wish I could keep you.”
“I’m not a thing to be kept,” she scolds, but it is soft, and sad, and kind.
“I know,” I say. “You know what I mean. I don’t have the right words.”
Pip sighs and wraps herself around my shoulders, head against my ear, chest flush to mine. “I know what you mean. English seems woefully inadequate. Maybe the Germans would have a word. They always have good long words for complex feelings.”
“Still, I wish,” I say. “I wish I could take you back to Turn Hall with me. Make you its mistress.”
Pip laughs against my ear. “Are you proposing to me, Forsyth Turn?”
A blush crawls up my face, and I feel the bottom of my stomach drop out, because I hadn’t meant it like that. Except that I did. I actually do want Pip to marry me, stay with me, be my wife, my companion, perhaps even the mother of our children. A grandmother. I could pass the Shadow Hand on to our eldest child, if he or she proved to be adept at spying, and we could spend the rest of our days managing Lysse Chipping together—going to harvest festivals together, presiding over court cases together, sleeping late on winter days together.
“M-m-maybe I-I-I a-am,” I admit.
Pip pulls back, and the pity in her eyes is suddenly infuriating.
“Do-don’t lo-lo-look at me l-li-like that,” I snap. “I-I-I kn-know the dif-difference between fa-fan-fantasy and-d-d re-re-reality. I-I just w-wi-wish, th-tha-that’s a-a-all.”
“You don’t like it, but you do what should be done,” Pip says and sits back, sighing. “No wonder you’re the Shadow Hand. You’re so damned good.”
“I ha-ha-have to be. Some-somebody in this bla-blasted kingdom ha-has to b-b-be!”
Pip takes my hand again, tangling our fingers together, and her touch is hot, so hot, igniting so much under my skin and under my ribs that the enormity of it steals my very breath away. I am drowning. I am suffocating in my love for Pip, and it will kill me; surely, it will kill me, because I do not know if I can live without her. Without everything she has given me: belief in myself, the truth of my brother, a purpose, a meaning, and the knowledge that I am desirable, that I am wanted, body and heart, by another person. That I am not just a dirty great brain that the king exploits and the people of my Chipping rely upon. That I am a whole person, and that whole person is wanted.
