I stare at him, and a sudden wave of sadness steals over my body. The kind of sadness that comes from loneliness, from a lack of fulfillment. “We’re never going to love each other, are we?”
He looks deeply uncomfortable at my words. “Love doesn’t come into this.”
“I know. It’s just – I always thought that when I got married, I’d be in love with my husband. I didn’t think I’d have to step around like a timid mouse for the rest of my life.”
He’s still, processing the words. He licks his lips, and my eyes follow the movement. “I can’t divorce you. But I can make things easier for you. I’ll try.”
“Even with your friends talking it up about you sleeping with a Hartson slut?”
“Even with that,” he says, though his tone is flat. “And with a person responsible for destroying a sacred relic of ours.”
Oh, I think. So he knows. I’d hoped maybe we could chalk it up to someone else, but I suppose I would be the obvious perpetrator. “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“It was a foolish, childish thing to do,” he says, though there’s no hate in the tone, when I would expect it from him. “But I’ve done equally foolish things for pride before, too. Why the building, anyway? Did you know what it meant to us?”
I flush, but figure it best to stick to the truth. “Not really. I didn’t want to kill anyone.”
“Your actions caused death. My people raided yours.” He twists his mouth into a frown. “I was a part of that raiding party. I went mostly to keep a leash on my father and brother.”
“Like you wouldn’t have found an excuse anyway.” I bare my teeth in a snarl. “And you wonder why we call you murderers?”
He takes a deep, distinctive breath. “Yes. We would have found another excuse. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” He stares at me, and it feels like he’s looking into my soul. Like everything that makes up me is up for scrutiny with those black holes he has for eyes. “Wounds like ours don’t heal. The blood’s washed over us from birth.”
His words stab hard, with that awful epiphany of truth. Of cold, bottomless realization that he’s right.
Who started the feud? I think, for the first time. Dangerous thoughts. Treacherous thoughts. And at this point, does it even matter, anymore? Because we’re born into this. Born and raised with selective truths or lies. Sent out into the world hating. He’s killed, and his people love him for it. My father has killed, and mine love him for it. Desmond’s side has to be the wrong side, because if they’re not, then my side’s wrong.
We can’t be wrong.
In that moment, for the first time in my entire life – I wish I wasn’t a Hartson.
7
Desmond
I creep along the bushes, flanked by my brother and Bobby, and a handful of other men. Hunters. Warriors. The leaves have a sickly green color to them, and the land ahead is a boggy, stinking collection of vines and flies. But we have to be here. A recent Bonecleaver raid decimated a small homestead on the edges. A family murdered, a woman tortured and stolen. We will take no slights. It has always been our way.
“How many bullets do you have again?” Bobby hisses. He hates the swamp, and shuffles uncomfortably as he moves through the thick brush. Rayse clicks the safety off his own gun, already aiming.
“Twelve,” I say. Rayse has a bigger ammo clip than me, since he wields a type of sub-machine gun, whereas I have a rifle. “Which should be more than enough for four raiders. Rayse will punch a few holes in them.”
My brother grins savagely in response. He always seems to come most alive when we hunt. As if he’s dead when we’re sitting around at home, no prospect of imminent violence available. The sides of his head are slick with sweat, from the tension in his body. My legs ache from crouching, and from the six-hour ride it took with our horses to reach here. The horses are tied up in a clearing, guarded by vassals, along with our supplies and sleeping bags, in case our mission extends into the night.
“Wish I was important enough to have a gun,” Bobby grumbles, hand stroking along his dagger. It’s a sharp, wicked thing, only a few inches shorter than my belted sword. Some people think the small knives depicted upon old pictures of assassins are daggers. They’re not.
“One day,” I say, clapping him on the back. Gnawing in my mind, however, is the more recent things that have happened with my wife. Since our fake consummation, I’ve had to deal with my fair share of mutterings, too. And every night when I slip into bed, I wait until she’s asleep, and take a few moments just to look at her. Trying to acclimatize to the idea that we’re bound together. That one day, she’s to bear my children, and those children will be something people thought impossible. Claymore and Hartson blood. My mother’s just about desperate enough to want me to produce a child, even if it means being with a Hartson. She’s impatient for the “golden age” of her life. Sometimes in the dark, my thoughts chase one another, and my body wants release. So when it gets too much, I quietly masturbate to the side, or in the bathroom. I can’t do anything about the arousal, the attraction. It rises up in me like some hungry beast, in the dark, attracted by scents and sounds and haunted by visuals. But I can take the edge off, so that she doesn’t wake up to the monster she thinks I am, taking her without consent.
Seeing what she did for me at the banquet, though, standing up in all that hostility to defend me, I couldn’t help but feel pride for her in that moment. Pride that she was my wife. How could I not feel that? Seeing her take on my sneering brother like prey standing its ground against a predator. Since if my brother had his way, Pearl would be in torment for every second of every day for several centuries worth of strife that her people have caused. He’s the wolf, she’s the lamb, and yet so brave.
I’ll need to be cautious to make sure my brother doesn’t try anything.
Talking to her in bed left nothing but questions. The kind of questions with complicated answers, that bring all that shimmering conviction of personal goodness to a halt. She’s not killed anyone directly, but she did cause millions in property damage. I, however, have killed. Hartsons and bandits have been shot and stabbed by my hand. I believed myself to be justified at the time, but it’s strange, hearing her say the same things I live my life by.
You’re the monsters. The world would be better off if all of you were gone.
I hate the conflict, so something like a hunt is nice. Easy. I have a goal, a clear path to it, and the means to complete it. Wife issues can wait. “If the woman still lives, we’ll have to take her to our estates,” I say, and Bobby nods in agreement.
“She might want to go back to her home, though.”
“I sincerely doubt it.” People in general dislike going back to the scene of their worst nightmare. Especially the more delicate women, the ones not raised with grit in their souls.
We continue to advance through the overgrowth, taking care not to get stuck in the morass or in any traps. The air cloys around us with a noxious, manure-like odor, and the swamp is muggy with heat and grime. Mud-churned water seeps into our boots, and it feels as if the place is slowly drowning us. Our guide, an ex-Bonecleaver man in his forties, leads the way. His mother was a victim of the Bonecleavers, and though raised in the culture, he found reason to escape to his mother’s relatives. Now he leads us home.
“If I become clan leader,” Rayse says, happily ignoring the implications behind that, in which I’d need to abdicate or die, along with our shared father, “I’d make many changes around this place. I’d secure our borders better than what the Graves have been doing. I’ll flush out the Bonecleavers and claim these lands as ours. We’ll own half the mountain ranges then. The prize, of course, is the Hartson lands. Cattle raids. Crop burning. Choke their economy, and choke them. Even if they have more people than us, we can win against them. We have better fighters. We have righteousness and god on our side.” He’s deep in the throes of imagined glory, and I can’t help but feel sick.
And what about the Graves? I don’t say
it. He already knows. He likes to daydream about what he’d do with power. Likes to think that somehow he’ll be better than all the people who came before.
“You realize that we can no longer fight the Hartsons?” Bobby asks, glaring at my brother. It’s not a particularly fearsome look, since Bobby at the best of times resembles an overgrown teddy bear. Not the first thing you’d think of as a hunter and warrior. Still someone to have by my side, whatever happens. “That’s the whole point of your brother’s marriage.”
Rayse glares back. His eyes are beetle black, obscured by messy dark spikes of hair. He looks to me in that moment like a Hobgoblin from our lores. Gnarly, bitter creatures prone to mischief, dwelling in the depths of the forest. “We all know that marriage won’t last. No decent Claymore would stand for it. We’d have to prepare for the Graves. But they can’t best us in our own territory.” His eyes shine with a fervor that I want to punch out of him.
“Here,” the former Bonecleaver grunts. “Just beyond those mangroves.” He jabs towards the faintest glimpse of a building beyond the brackish water and trees, wooden palisades and gangways covered in moss and sludge. We spread out, planning to flank it, and I get close enough to see a balcony and table covered with bowls and tankards.
A bar turned brothel, with women stolen from other places. Red mists over my vision when I hear laughter mixed with screaming and wailing, along with broken whimpers. Boots thumping on rickety wooden floors. A coppery scent tinges the air, mixing with everything else to produce a rotting stink.
“Steady,” Bobby whispers, seeing the tension in my muscles, the murder in my expression. “We don’t want to hurt the wrong targets.”
I clutch my rifle tighter, shivering through my anger. Pearl launches herself into my mind at that precise moment. Her anger at me. My people raiding her lands. My father grinning maliciously as his warriors tear through a village, condoning the rape I tried to stop. As if somehow I can redeem myself by stopping a couple of rapes, when the whole place is being burned, husbands, wives and children killed.
Nausea hits when the Bonecleaver hisses the order to close in, and I barely scrape myself to the inn’s walls, splashing through murky, toe deep water.
No. They did the same to us. They hurt our children, took our women, slaughtered our men. They stole. They destroyed. My soul isn’t so black. I’m only – I’m only going where I’m pointed, after they did something first. I’m not at fault.
Pearl’s face remains accusing in my mind anyway.
“What’s the matter with you?” Bobby says.
My brother smirks. “Cracking under pressure.”
I can’t possibly explain it to them, so I gather the threads of my conflict and bundle it away. Compartmentalizing for later. The mission is first. Saving the women is paramount.
Now is the time for slaughter.
8
Pearl
I watch as Desmond flops onto a chair in the suite. He’s streaked with sweat, slime, and blood, and I swallow down a small impulse of panic to examine him.
“Hunt was successful,” he grunts, attempting to wave off my inspection, like I saw him wave off the other attempts. “We saved ‘em.”
“Yes, that’s just great. Now I need to make sure you don’t die.”
“M’fine,” he says, his dark eyes cloudy in all the grime covering his face. He also smells as if he’s dipped into a sewer. Not his most attractive side, I must say. To be honest, his injuries don’t look deep – I think I recognize a bullet graze along his side, and feel up his shirt for what must be bruised ribs, nothing broken. But the grime needs to be washed before I can do anything further.
“Right, let’s get you into a tub,” I say, rolling up my sleeves, stepping into the side chamber of our suite to activate the taps for our bathtub. We have everything we need in our suite except for an adequate kitchen. The servants are meant to bring us all the food, though there is a section reserved for hot drinks, and a small cupboard in the lounge area where we store additional snacks. There’s a trail from the entrance hallway to the bedroom that I know a servant is going to have a screaming nightmare with later, and a small stab of satisfaction goes through me at the thought of Ethel on her knees, scrubbing and puffing like a pig.
“I’ll do this myself,” Desmond calls, but I ignore him. I’m so driven by intent that even the thought of taking off his clothes doesn’t daunt me. After all, this is making sure the idiot doesn’t get a damn infection and dies. I’ve seen enough of stubborn men in my own clan halls to know their death rates would drop if they stopped acting so damn tough.
I’m not quite sure what the terms of our arrangement will be like if the husband drops dead. Maybe they’d blame me and kill everyone. Maybe I’d have to marry the next head of house.
Rayse. I shake that horrific thought out of mind, knowing exactly how he views me, and test the temperature of the bath, adjusting as needed. When it’s ready, I help Desmond out of his clothes, and plop him in the warm waters. I try not to stare too much, and too obviously, since he hisses in pain, and I have to sponge him down. His feeble attempts to bat me away are rebuffed.
“Let me do this for you,” I say. “I want to feel useful for once.” He instantly stops, and his hands splash in the water, which rapidly turns unclean. “You helped that girl who was taken, then?” It’s hard to completely keep the resentment out of my voice, because I’m thinking about all the good women of the Hartson lands lost. Taken by him. Or not him specifically, but by his people. At the same time, I don’t want to stomp on any good impulses my husband might have. I kneel by the claw-footed bathtub to sponge his back.
“Yeah. We rescued four of them,” he says, wide chest swelling in pride. Something else is swelling, too, and I’m trying my hardest to ignore it. “Not much we can do for their minds, but...”
“It’s something. I’m glad you did that. No one should be allowed to suffer like it.”
The triumphant smile on his face wilts, and a strange, faraway look enters his eyes. Concussion? I ask him if he’s suffered any blows to the head, and he shakes his head.
“No. It’s just – nothing.”
“Tell me,” I coax, the water sloshing as I continue to wash his body, ever so gentle when I brush over his ribs. He still flinches from it. “What’s bothering you?” A wife’s supposed to engage her husband, right? Ask about his day. No matter what she’s feeling. Look, mother. I’m doing my duty.
He grumbles something about it being girly to share feelings, and I wag the sponge at him. “Just as well I’m a woman, then. Your girly feelings are safe with me.”
“Mm.” His eyes turn from glazed to focused, like chips of onyx. I reach to dab at a smudge of dirt on his cheek, and watch the water trails run down his body. That impressive body. It’s annoying how the scars on him just enhance everything he has. Like the one just under his right ribcage, which looks suspiciously as if someone tried to take out his lung with a small knife. “I don’t really know how to express it,” he says.
“Try.”
He snorts, but is silent a moment, collecting his thoughts together. “Okay. Um, I didn’t feel… qualified to help those women.”
A pause. I wait for him to add something, but he doesn’t. “Why not?” I prompt.
“Because my hands aren’t exactly clean,” he says. “I froze in the middle of the mission. Started thinking about what… what you said.”
“Oh.” I don’t know how to answer that.
“Yeah.” His face scrunches up in what I recognize now as a sign of annoyance, wrinkling the skin between his eyes. “Everything was fine until you came along.”
I get the impression this is about as much as I can expect from him. He’s already shying away from revealing that much. “Do you regret meeting me?”
Those eyes lock me in place once more, and I hold my breath. “I’m not sure,” he confesses.
“Me either,” I admit.
It’s all that needs to be said. There’s too much bet
ween us. Too much blood and death to untangle. Too much for me and him to do alone. He’s trying, though. He doesn’t hold any disgust in his expression for my touch now. He doesn’t seem to hate in the same way I saw when he first found out who I was. I continue to mop him up, though I’m firm with letting him finish off the cleaning. After he steps out, and I fight to maintain my composure, I finish with daubing at the wounds, and fixing up the side with just four stitches.
“You should probably tend to the other Claymores after this,” he says, admiring my handiwork. He hadn’t made a single grimace of pain, though I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant. “You have some healing knowledge?”
“Some. I was trained by a Rosewind healer. I know the basics. Nothing complex.”
“That’s more than some. You could help a lot of people this way.”
“Ha. And you think they’ll allow a Hartson near them with a needle and gut?”
Desmond sneers. “They’ll have to. You’re my wife.”
Something rushes through me at his forceful use of wife. Like he’s no longer ashamed to call me such. Like he finally believes the union between us is real, even though we started it on a lie. Even though we haven’t consummated. “I’ll look into it. Maybe it will help them to deal with me better.” And hopefully none of them will think about harming me.
Still, I’m a little light headed, smiling inwardly when he stretches, testing himself, letting those muscles ripple underneath his fresh white tunic. “Great job,” he mutters, smiling. For a moment, I can forget who he is. Who I am. It’s just me and him in this space, with nothing else interceding. I think about kissing him. Drowning in him. Having him when sober, rather than drunk and confused and conflicted. I want the heat, the dance, not to lie curled up on the side of the bed, afraid of the morning.
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