by J. M. Frey
“Your face,” Bevel says from somewhere beside me, and I don’t know how long he’s been sitting there, for me to have forgotten him entirely. His voice sounds close to my ear.
The warm touch of Bevel’s fingers on my cheek startles me back to myself. Now that he has called my attention to it, it hurts like an absolute son of a bitch. My skin is freezing, and I seem to have been sitting beside the fire without properly wrapping up. I have lost the thread of myself in my desperate attempt to just not think, not think, not think.
Not think about Pip. Not think about what this means for my feelings for her. Not think about how horrible and scared and furious she feels. Not think about the fact that I have just killed a human being. Not think about the possibility that it might not be the last time I do so on this adventure. Not think about the fact that we have now completed five Stations, with Kintyre and his knife here, and that that means we are one step closer to sending Pip home. Not thinking about a life without Pip.
“It’s sort of rakish, Forssy,” Bevel says, and then there is something thick and wet and tingling against my skin. He caps the jar of healing ointment and returns it to his pack. “Or it will be rakish, when it heals up. Especially with this.” He taps the hilt of my sword, making it rattle against the scabbard.
For a moment, I am caught in that liminal place between being Forsyth Turn and being the Shadow Hand. My face smells of thyme, lemon, menthol. A mixture that only Mother Mouth uses. Where he managed to get a jar of Mother Mouth’s ointment, I don’t know. Maybe Kintyre is on better terms with her than I thought. I let my gaze fall to my frigid fingers. Smoke is at my hip still.
I am both Turn and Hand, Forsyth and Shadow, and for the first time in my life, the dichotomy doesn’t feel as though it is about to tear me in two.
“Thank you . . . Bevel,” I say, making free of his first name without having been invited to do so. Bevel Dom has been calling me by my brother’s nickname since he was a squeakling squire hard on Kintyre’s heels, and I feel that perhaps I have finally earned the right to address him so. That he doesn’t correct me confirms it.
I look around. We are back on the portico of King Chailin’s tomb, the door still wide open and the fire, somehow, burning much higher than I managed to make it climb before. At some point, someone wandered back to fetch my Shadow chest. It seems foolish to haul the chest around now, when two of the four things it was meant to keep hidden are currently in use. I stand slowly, my knees popping in protest at the cold and the workout I just recently put my body through. I go to the chest and put the mask into the inner pocket of my travel robe, snugged up close against my heartbeat. There. Dauntless’s cloak and tack can remain behind.
Bevel watches closely, his dark blue eyes narrowed, flicking over the Shadow’s Mask, where it lies hidden against my ribs.
“Well, if that don’t just beat all,” he says. “Forsyth Turn, the Shadow Hand.”
“Surprise,” I say glumly. Bevel knows, and Kintyre knows, which means I’ve violated one of the few direct edicts the king has given me. Well, Pip has, at any rate. Which amounts to the same thing.
“It sure was,” Bevel says. “Seems to be the moon for them.”
“Agreed. And, speaking of surprises . . . you and Kintyre are still traveling together?”
Bevel looks down, focuses on putting away his healing kit. “It wasn’t easy,” Bevel says softly. “But . . . there was too much to throw away, you know? Too much . . . history.” I realize, tellingly, that Bevel’s usual Dom-amethyst short-robe has been traded in for a Turn-russet jerkin.
“I see.” And I do. They have been good, close companions for so long. Surely, this one change in their relationship couldn’t be the death of all that. “And where is my brother? More to the point, where is his knife?”
Bevel snorts and hunkers down by the fire, clearly happy that my question has closed the previous topic of conversation. I feel strangely compelled to threaten to break his legs if he hurts my brother, but it is a moot point after seventeen years. And, of course, if Bevel hurts my brother, Kintyre can very well break his legs without my help. Bevel pokes at something with a stick, and I realize that there are four leaf-wrapped parcels charring on the embers along the outer edge of the fire. Bevel and my brother providing dinner? Enough for all of us? That is surprising.
“Burying Bootknife,” Bevel says. “Doing it all proper-like, too. Kin, that is, not the knife. Though that’d be a sight.”
“Kintyre is burying Bootknife?” I don’t know why the thought of my brother offering his slain enemies repose surprises me, but it does.
“What else are we meant to do?” Bevel asks, head cocked quizzically in that way that makes him look like the gimlet-eyed rodent I always compare him to in my head. “Leave him to rot? No, that’s what makes zombies and tempts necromancers. Besides, the people who fight Kin and lose . . . they’ve got balls, yeah? So, they deserve a bit of a good rest. They’ve earned it, taking on Kintyre Turn.”
“And Bevel Dom,” I add, voice hushed.
He blushes slightly, almost fetchingly, and I am stunned again that Bevel is the sort of man who flushes when complimented. Or perhaps it is just that my brother doesn’t do it often enough for me to have ever seen it happen. Though, I am as much to blame as Kintyre for that. I don’t think I’ve ever complimented Bevel to his face before now.
“And where’s Pip?” I add, because Bevel doesn’t seem to want to talk about his joyful new ties to Kintyre, and because, coming to understand the depth of my own misery when I compare his luck to my own, I don’t want to hear it.
“Miss Piper,” he starts, and then stops. Instead, he jerks his head back toward the tomb. “The king is keeping her company. And he’s the more jovial of the two.”
“Have some consideration,” I hiss at him. “She’s been through a greater trauma than anything any of us has ever had to suffer. Be kind to her Bevel Dom, or I swear to the Great Writer that you will—”
He holds up a hand. “No need for threats, Shadow Hand. I can see how wrecked she is just as well as you. We’ll tread carefully. I’ve no desire to be torn to ribbons by her tongue again.”
Satisfied, I turn my back on the campfire and make my way to the end of the mausoleum. Pip is still balled up in the farthest corner of King Chailin’s tomb. She has jammed herself there, covering every bit of herself with my cloak, a pile of black and gray cloth radiating misery.
“Pip?” I say softly. “May I sit?”
She makes no response. I dither for a moment, wondering if I should repeat the request and risk her denying it, or ignore her non-answer and sit away. Which would make her feel more comfortable? Which would make her feel less like I was writing my own desires over hers? Augh! I am overthinking this. I think. Maybe?
I sit slowly, giving her the chance to tell me to go, but she remains silent. I lean back against the sarcophagus, noting absently that someone has shoved the cover-stone back into place, giving Chailin his seclusion and us a respite from the reek of his rotting flesh.
It is cold in here, and I still haven’t wrapped up. I’m not about to get up and abandon Pip to fetch a cloak, though, nor am I going to ask Bevel to bring me one and let him invade our privacy. So I sit and shiver in as much silence as I can force from my clenched jaw.
The silence stretches on, heavy and damp. Eventually, I gather the courage to say, “Pip. Pip, it’s cold. Please. Look at me.”
She shifts in her cloak, but only to pull it farther over her head.
“Tell me what to do,” I say. “Tell me how I can help.”
“There’s nothing,” she says, and her voice is raw and small and dry sounding. “This isn’t something you can just fix.”
“But it can be fixed?”
“I’m not broken,” she protests. “I’m still whole.”
“But you are hurting.”
“Don’t I have a right to?”
“I don’t want you to.”
“You don’t get to dictate th
at!” she flares. She throws back the hood to glower at me.
“But I want to know. The things he said. That he taunted you with—”
“Were meant for me! You don’t have to know everything about me, Forsyth. I’m allowed to have secrets! I don’t exist just for you!”
“Not about this,” I plead, hoping to import the gravitas of what I am feeling, the desperation. “Please. Not about this.”
Pip’s entire face narrows and shutters. Closes off. Closes up. “Fuck you,” she says, and buries herself in the cloak again.
Her invective echoes around the marble, and I let it die off, stinging from the rebuke. I am an ass for pushing. Now is not the time. It will perhaps never be the time, and Pip is correct. I have no right to demand she relieve my curiosity. But it is also dangerous to be uninformed.
She sighs wetly and shifts again under the cloth.
“I’m sorry,” I say gently. “I just despise seeing you suffer. At least come back to the campfire with me. Get warm. Eat something. We can . . . we can figure this out. Please.”
“Figure it out?” she snarls, sitting up, righteous indignation painted across every line of her body, her expression. “What else is there to say? What’s left? I have given so, so fucking much of my goddamned life to this . . . this stupid, undeserving, shallow world of yours, and I can’t, Forsyth! I can’t give it any more. It’s taken everything. You all have. And I just . . . I just can’t.”
“No one is asking you to be cheerful or untouched tonight,” I say softly. “No one is denying your right to be in pain. Just . . . do-don’t ha-harm your-yourself fu-fu-further. P-p-please.”
Carefully, in case she pulls away again, I raise my hand and wrap it around her wrist.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s not your fault,” she replies, and slouches down. Defeated.
My body vibrates in what I realize is a slow, long shiver, the kind that comes from being dangerously close to hypothermia. Pip slides close to me and swings part of the cloak over my shoulders, tugging it into my lap. She presses close against me, her arm and leg a brand against my own. I curve into her body heat, but stop just shy of resting my head on her shoulder. It is too intimate.
“I am still sorry,” I say. “And I don’t say it to beg forgiveness for my part in it. What a horrendous thing to suffer.”
“It was,” she agrees softly. “And I defy anyone who uses something like this as back story to survive it better.” Pip shutters her expression, eyes cast down at my clumsy hand, which has somehow wrapped itself around hers. She untangles her fingers and looks away.
“You know the worst part of it?”
I make a noncommittal noise, certain that if I interrupt or answer either way, I may inadvertently derail her confession.
She buries her hands in her hair. “I hate that you fell for it. I hate that they dangled me, sex with me, like bait on a lure. I hate more that the way Elgar Reed wrote this world means that it was always going to work on you, too. But what I hate most is that I needed you to get me off the hook. It’s that I didn’t even get to save myself. After all of that, I still needed a man to save me. Men, plural. God.”
Now I do rest my head on her shoulder, pushing my face against her neck. Not for sex, not for intimacy, but because it is the only close comfort I can offer her. Because she is warm, and I am sorry, and I don’t know how to say it in any way besides the safe curve of my body around hers, guarding her from the world, shielding her from the hurt. She turns her own face to my neck, in turn, the fabric of the cloak settled around us like a cloud, and though she does not do it demonstratively, she cries. Hot saltwater prickles against my neck and the ointment on my cheek rubs against her ear, and it is horrible, the way her nails dig into my back and hold on.
Because I must be the last body in the world she wants to hold, to smell, to taste. My body is the one that was used to rape her. But mine is also the only one she knows she can trust.
I find myself in the midst of a very real conflict. My newfound enlightenment dictates that I must obey Pip’s wishes in her recovery in every way. And yet I feel insecure, desperate to ensure that I do not lose her. I struggle with the noble desire to let her be whoever she wants to be, to do as she needs to do to heal herself, versus the fear of being left. And it is absurd, because what is the endpoint of this quest, but her departure?
“I’m sorry,” I say again, apologizing for what, I’m not sure. For what happened to her? For what she suffered? For the way my creator wrote me? Wrote us? Wrote this whole, unfair world?
“I know,” she sobs back. “I know.”
When she stops crying, when her limbs are loose with misery and exhaustion and the wet patch on the skin of my neck has dried, she lets me help her to her feet. I detangle myself from the Shadow’s Cloak and tug her gently toward the fire outside. It is less sheltered from the cool breeze, but the fire has grown high and inviting in our absence.
Bevel throws my heaviest cloak at me as soon as we’re in the open air, and I swing it around my shoulders, grateful. There is also a scarf somewhere in my pack, and I before I can break off to go rummaging for it, I see that he’s laid it by the fire to warm up. I sit down beside it and happily wind it around my neck. I can see why Kintyre appreciates traveling with Bevel so much. I can only wonder how considerate my brother is to Bevel in return.
Kintyre is sitting on the opposite side of Bevel, eyes intent on whatever it was in the leafy package, chewing. His other hand is dangerously high on Bevel’s thigh, possessive and sweet in a way that I never expected from him. He too is wearing a modest jerkin in Turn-russet, rather than his usual ostentatious Sheil-purple one. He greets our entrance with a flick of the eyes and little else. Boor.
Pip sits on the other side of me, as far away from Bevel as the fire allows. The cloak settles around her like a storm cloud, and she pulls up the hood again to cover her face.
“Kintyre,” I say, and his hand jumps away from Bevel’s leg. The flash of hurt in the smaller man’s eyes is brief, but sharp. “I need your knife, please,” I say, holding out my hand.
“What for?” he challenges, puffing up, ready for another go-round with me. Writer, why is everything a bloody competition with him? Why can’t he ever just do as he is told?
“We need it for our quest,” Pip says softly. “It’s one of the objects we need to collect.”
I point to the mosaic just visible inside the tomb, the gold leaf on the wall reflecting our firelight. “The Blade that Never Fails,” I say.
Kintyre hesitates.
“I’ll give it back,” I promise. “Though, I think you really ought to return it to King Chailin when this quest is through. Just to be on the safe side.”
Kintyre balks. “It was stolen from a dead man?”
I find myself frowning. “You didn’t take it from the sarcophagus?”
“I took it off Bootknife,” Kintyre says. “After he carved up . . . um.” He trails off, staring at me, remembering suddenly that I still have Smoke on my hip, jutting out behind me on the marble.
“The previous Shadow Hand,” I supply. Every tendon and muscle in my body seems to be frozen with this horrible revelation. I shrug, trying to loosen up again, and make light of it: “I see. Well, Bootknife would be the sort of fellow who would want the best tool for his job. I suppose the world ought to thank you for relieving him of it.”
“Dammit, Forssy, this isn’t a joke!” Kintyre erupts. “I can’t believe you let the king bully you into it! It’s a blasted dangerous job!”
“Nobody bullied me!” I lob back. “The last Shadow Hand offered it to me—to me, you understand—and I accepted! He had faith in me! And I’m quite capable of taking care of myself. Have done so for the last seventeen years, while you’ve been off swanning around the world!”
“I wasn’t swanning!” Kintyre snarled back, his pride challenged and his chest puffing up like a partridge. “I was doing a valuable service to the king!”
�
�Which anyone else could have done!” My fists curl on my thighs, and I want to hit him, Writer, how I want to hit the smug, self-important asshole! “Any farm boy or squire could have taken on those tasks, could have found your sword, could have become a hero! You had no right leaving Lysse! You had a responsibility to your Chipping!”
“Father had it in hand!”
“Father was a drunken idiot who spent more time slapping me around than with his books!” I bellow. Kintyre reels back as if I actually did strike him, eyes wide and all the color draining from his face. I should stop now, but I am feeling cruel and badly used, and I want him to understand, finally. “And you left Mother and me to that. Although, I suppose I should thank you—I wouldn’t have been half the Shadow Hand I am today if I hadn’t learned how to watch his body language, learned how to walk without making a sound, to defend myself without looking like I was.”
“I . . . I didn’t know . . .” Kintyre says.
“Would it have changed anything?” I sneer, resentful and hurt. He isn’t supposed to feel sorry for me. I don’t need his pity. I don’t want it!
Just as Kintyre takes another breath to wind back up, Bevel reaches out and takes Kintyre’s hand, and Kintyre deflates mulishly. I wish I could ground myself in the touch of Pip’s hand. Instead, I flex my fingers across my knees, breathing deeply, trying to build a wall of calm in the face of my brother’s ignorance.
Quietly, almost apologetically, Kintyre says: “I’m proud of you.”
I scoff. Dishonesty sits uncomfortably in his voice.
“Forssy, I’m serious. No, you’ve been Shadow Hand for years, and I never knew. So, I’m proud of you, and the good you and your Men have done. And I . . . I wish I had known about Father.” It’s not an apology. But with Kintyre, it might be the closest thing I ever get.
“And you’ve done a really good job with the Chipping, too,” Bevel adds. He scratches the back of his neck. “The school—that’s fantastic. The people, they really like you, you know? Pointe, too. He’s got so much respect for you. Doesn’t let Kin get away with anything in Turnshire, you know?”
