by Megan Hart
The house was more a hovel than anything, two tiny rooms with an arch between them and outdoor plumbing in the yard behind. No wonder Calvis looked so rough. Cassian sat, careful not to snag the hem of his tunic on the wood sticking out from the seat.
“Look at you.” Calvis lit the bowl and waved the fragrant smoke forth before breathing deep. “Land Above, I can’t get used to it.”
Cassian ran a hand over his newly bald head, still smooth. “It does feel strange.”
“Cold?”
“Yes. That.” More than that. Watching the dark strands pile up at his feet while the priest ran the razor over his skull, Cassian had felt distanced. Aloof. Only after, staring in the looking glass at his strange reflection, had he understood for the first time how it felt to be different than his brother.
“Nobody could mistake us for each other now,” Calvis told him. He quaffed from the jug of worm and handed Cassian the bowl.
Cassian held it in his palms and breathed, knowing his brother would expect him to put it aside. Smoke coated his throat, his lungs, and he held it in until his head buzzed. Calvis stared.
“Nobody,” Calvis said again. “By the Arrow, Cassian, you’ve done that before.”
Cassian had, in fact, partaken of both herb and worm many times, just never with his brother, who couldn’t be trusted to keep himself together when he was indulging. It had always seemed more important to be sure one of them remained sober than for Cassian to participate in his brother’s vices.
He returned the bowl. “Yes.”
Calvis snorted low laughter and pulled up a chair across from his brother. “You have unplumbed depths and secrets from me?”
“No secrets.”
Calvis shook his head, watching his brother with grave eyes. “Would you tell me of the rituals of the priesthood?”
“You know I can’t.”
“Then, my brother, you have secrets.”
“Would you tell me who’s hired you to kill for them?”
Calvis lifted a finger. “If I tell you the names of those who pay for my skills, you might be called to testify against me. I can’t have that.”
“So you have secrets, too.”
“A thousand of them, brother, and more. Which I’ve never denied. Drink up.”
They both drank, then smoked. Calvis brought out a platter of stale bread and hard cheese, but flavored with intoxication, the food was delicious. They laughed and joked, much like they’d done as boys. It was the closest Cassian had felt to his brother for a very long time.
Later, both of them so tired as to have thrown themselves across Calvis’s bed, Calvis ran a hand over Cassian’s head. The sensation of his fingers rasping over stubble still invisible sent a chill down Cassian’s spine, and he drew away. Calvis rolled onto his back.
“No mistaking one for the other,” he said again.
“No. But those who know us wouldn’t confuse us, anyway.” Cassian yawned, thinking of how he should return home, how Bertricia would be waiting for him to visit her upon the morrow, and how he had duties to fulfill at the temple. He tried rolling onto his side to get up, but fell back with a laugh.
“Stay here,” Calvis said with a glance. “You can’t possibly walk the distance tonight.”
“No.” Cassian yawned again, eyes closing. “Though I fear the journey might be even worse in the morning, with daylight splitting my head.”
Calvis laughed. The bed shifted. Cassian felt the weight of his brother’s gaze and turned onto his side to face him. Head to head, foot to foot, with a handspan between them. This, too, they hadn’t done since they’d been boys.
“I’ve missed you,” Calvis said.
“You went away, brother.”
“I came back,” Calvis pointed out. “I was never gone for long. I could never be gone for long.”
Cassian didn’t say that Calvis had gone away and come back, true, but it hadn’t ever been the same once he’d left. “Nothing stays the same, you know.”
“Ah, but once we shared everything. A womb, a room. Clothes. Once we ate from the same plate, drank from the same cup. Wore the same face.” Calvis’s palm passed over Cassian’s head again, then pulled away. “I thought we’d always have that, at least.”
Cassian yawned again, jaw-cracking. “You’ll ever be my brother. You know that.”
“Ever and always?” Calvis asked.
“Of course.”
The bed shifted as Calvis turned once more onto his back. “Cassian, would you love me no matter what I did?”
It was too late and Cassian too drunk for this sort of conversation, but he struggled up onto one elbow anyway. “I do love you. Of course. And I suspect you’ve done much.”
Calvis looked at him. “Becoming a priest doesn’t mean you condemn me for what a brother would forgive?”
“No. Of course not. Well”—Cassian paused, struggling to think around the fog of herb and worm—“I suppose I should say no, that now I’m a priest I should urge you toward redemption. That I should send up supplication for the saving of your soul.”
“You don’t think my soul worth saving?” Calvis sounded amused but looked sad.
“I don’t think you’ve done anything that would endanger your immortal soul.”
“Ah. The taking of coin in exchange for taking of life isn’t enough?”
That was a tricky question, one Cassian should’ve known the answer to and would have, had the asker been any other but Calvis. “Were the men you killed villains?”
Calvis shrugged. “To those who wanted them dead, yes. I’d imagine so.”
Cassian chewed on his answer in an attempt at speaking coherently. “Murder is wrong.”
“I know that,” Calvis said, annoyed. “Sinder’s Balls, Cassian. I do know that.”
“I can’t condone it, but I can’t condemn you for it. Because you are my brother, and yes. I love you, no matter what you do.”
Calvis rolled onto his side again to stare. “You’d not say such a thing if you knew all that I’d done.”
“Worse than murder?” Cassian looked dubious.
“Yes.”
“What’s worse than killing?”
Calvis shook his head, and the sheets beneath his head rumpled. He yawned, eyes closing, and Cassian thought perhaps his brother was feigning sleep to avoid the question. Which might not be a bad idea, his weary mind thought as his eyes closed, too. Whatever could be worse than killing was naught he wished to learn of his brother.
When the knock came at the door, Cassian didn’t get out of his brother’s bed to open it, but when the soft scent of perfume wafted over him, and a low, throaty feminine laugh tickled his ear, he sat straight up. Too late. The woman in the bed had her hand on his crotch, her mouth on his ear. Her tongue traced a delicious pattern on his skin, down his throat, which she nipped. She laughed when he pushed her away.
She looked at Calvis. “He doesn’t look so much like you.”
“Believe me, he’s not very much like me at all.” Calvis stripped off his shirt and joined them on the bed. “But you won’t care about that, sweetheart. Will you?”
“I daresay I shall not,” she purred, and reached again for Cassian.
Head heavy and drunk, Cassian was slow moving but managed to hold off her grasping hands. “What’s this?”
“Consider it a gift, little brother.” Calvis had stripped out of his trousers, too, and lay back against the shabby wooden headboard, idly stroking his cock.
It was far from the first time Cassian had seen his brother naked, and not the first he’d seen him with a woman. If he hadn’t been so intoxicated, he might’ve tried harder to push her away again when she slipped into the space between him and Calvis and nudged at Cassian’s jaw with her chin so that she might again press her lips to his flesh. Her hand found his thigh, moved higher.
He was a man, after all.
“You didn’t lie, love. You and him are not a thing alike.” The woman said this afterwards, from across
the room as she pulled on her shift and slipped into her shoes.
Cassian could still taste and smell her. Had been the last to have her, while his brother watched. It was not his finest moment. Calvis didn’t seem to care, and he padded across the room on bare feet to put a clinking bag into the woman’s palm. He even kissed her, murmuring in her ear until she giggled.
When she’d gone and Calvis had closed the door behind her, he came back to the bed where Cassian had pulled on his clothes but couldn’t move beyond that. Calvis pulled on a pair of trousers and climbed into the bed. Cassian turned his face to the wall and waited for his brother to explain, to brag, to apologize, but Calvis did none of those things.
In the morning, Calvis woke him with a bucket of cold water to the face and laughed at him when Cassian stumbled to the yard to heave and choke. He could well remember why he’d so rarely indulged in worm, and with aching head and roiling stomach he waved aside his brother’s offer of a stroll into town to break their fast.
“I have to get home, Cal.”
Calvis snorted, looking as fresh as a flower, wet hair slicked back from his face and showing no signs at all of how intoxicated he’d been the night before. “To your lady love.”
“She’ll be expecting me.”
“You might wish to bathe first. Wash your mouth. You’d not wish to kiss her tasting of vomit. Or another woman.”
Cassian shuddered, holding back another round of heaves. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why?”
“It’s been my experience women don’t care for that sort of thing, that’s all.” Calvis feigned surprise, brows arching, mouth quirked.
“No. Why the woman?” A long drink of cool water settled his stomach. Barely. Cassian took another, willing his guts to cease their churning.
“I thought it might be good for you. Before.”
“Before what?” Cassian scowled. “Before I wed the woman I love?”
Calvis shrugged. “Yes.”
Cassian ran his hand over his wet head, still missing the touch and tickle of his hair. “If you loved me, as you say, you’d not have encouraged such a thing.”
Calvis looked up, then. “I didn’t tie you down and force you to fuck her.”
This was the truth, but didn’t make Cassian feel any better. “You brought her there apurpose to—”
“To what?”
“To test me,” Cassian said.
Calvis shook his head. “No, Cassian. Not to test you. I told you. To give you a taste of somewhat different before you go off and shackle yourself—”
“I have to go.” Cassian shrugged away his brother’s half-hearted grasp. “You needn’t think you’ll be invited to the wedding, since it’s clear you’ve no love for the bride or me.”
He stalked out of the hovel and through the yard, only to be stopped by Calvis’s voice before he hit the street.
“It’s not that I don’t love enough,” Calvis told him, “but that I love overwell. Don’t walk away from me, Cassian.”
But Cassian, head still swimming and stomach sick, had walked away. Things might’ve been different if he hadn’t. He’d never know.
Today, remembering, his stomach was sick again, though not from overindulgence. He finished the final position, his feet unsteady enough they scuffed the dirt instead of planting firmly. He almost fell, but didn’t.
“I say,” came an unfamiliar voice, male, which caused it to stand out all the more. “I’m here to visit someone. Perhaps you might direct me?”
Cassian knew without having to ask that the man in front of him was Annalise’s betrothed. For one wild moment it occurred to him he’d sent enough travelers on their way in the wrong direction, and how simple it would be to do the same for this man. It would do him no good, though. He’d find his way, eventually.
“She’s in the house, most likely.”
The man who had to be Jacquin turned toward the Motherhouse, then glanced back at Cassian. He had an open, friendly, and overhandsome face Cassian longed to punch square in the nose.
“That’s a broad description, sir. That house looks to have any number of rooms.”
“Go to the front door and you’ll be let in to see the Mother-in-Service who decides to see you. She’ll tell you where to find Annalise, if they determine you’re fit to step inside the doors.” This was an overexaggeration—unless they had reason to believe Jacquin would harm Annalise, as some men who’d come seeking the women who’d left them behind had done, none of the Mothers or Sisters-in-Service would keep Jacquin from her.
Jacquin held out his hand. “Many thanks.”
Cassian could’ve broken that hand. In reality, he knew he could’ve done more than that. He understood his brother better than he ever had in that moment. He didn’t take Jacquin’s hand.
Jacquin blinked, frowning.
“In there,” Cassian told him. “Go.”
Chapter 19
It’s been overlong,” Jacquin told Annalise as he took both her hands. “You look . . . well.”
He moved to kiss her mouth, and she turned so his lips grazed her cheek instead. The action surprised her as much as it did him, but Annalise hid hers rather better. Training had done that, she thought as she looked at her former and possibly soon-again, betrothed. Made her calm.
“Is there a place where we can go?” Jacquin kept hold of her hands a moment longer, squeezing her fingers gently before letting go. “To talk?”
“Of course.”
“You’re left unrestricted?” Jacquin looked over his shoulder as Annalise led him from Deliberata’s office, where he’d been waiting, and into the hall beyond.
“I’m not a prisoner, Jacquin.”
“Even so . . .” He had to take a double step to catch up to her, his hand snagging her sleeve at the elbow. “You needn’t explain yourself to anyone? Be granted permission?”
“To entertain a guest? Certainly not!” Annalise plucked his hand from her elbow and settled it into the crook of her arm, her other hand atop it.
They earned a few curious looks from some of the novitiates, but Jacquin was the one straining his eyes to stare at everything. He went so far as to stop for a look in the open door of one of the classrooms, so that Annalise had to tug him firmly to move him. Even then he dragged his feet like a child, goggle-gazed at all they passed.
“Jacquin, you act the part of a copperfish trying for a crumb. Close your mouth and mind your manners,” Annalise chastised.
He focused on her. “It’s nothing like I expected.”
She took him through a glass door and to a small courtyard, then along a stone path and through the scrolled metal gate toward the pond. “Allow me to guess what you expected. Near-naked women servicing the pleasures of men all over the place? Collared and bound, perhaps, or at the very least on their knees?”
Jacquin’s boots crunched on the gravel as he again caught up to her swift and unhesitating step. “Well . . . yes.”
Halfway up the hill, Annalise stopped and turned to tease him. “We only do that four days of the seven. You arrived on one of the wrong four days.”
Jacquin had ever known her humor and shared it, but this time his jaw gaped again and his eyes bulged. Annalise sighed and patted his arm.
“Love, I jest. You’ll find none of that in the Motherhouse. It’s our haven, after all, not the place for our patrons.”
He followed her again when she moved toward the pond and the gazebo beyond. “But . . . surely you must . . . I mean, everyone knows . . .”
“Everyone knows what? Rumors and stories, Jacquin.” Annalise glanced over her shoulder, watching his unsteady progress. Perhaps the shock had unsettled him, or more likely it was the heels of his fashionable boots unsuited for heavy trekking.
“Fair enough. But you can’t blame me for the thought. Tell me you believed differently when you arrived. Tell me how relieved you were to find it not so.”
“I was, of course. Ah, here. Sit with me.” She took a place on t
he stone bench in the gazebo and spread her skirts. She patted the spot next to her. “But it’s always possible I shall have to learn such skills.”
Jacquin drew forth a fine-woven handkerchief from his pocket to mop his brow and upper lip. When had he grown so foppish, so ill-equipped at the physical? Annalise thought she should’ve brought a jug of cider.
“Why?” He put away the hanky and turned toward her on the bench. “By the Void, Annalise, sure you can’t be serious about this. Your time here was never meant for permanence!”
They might have been any courting couple, though the fashion of her gown didn’t match the elaborate outfit Jacquin had chosen. Sky blue jacket with a matching waistcoat, shirt of pale blue gray linen, dark gray trousers, dusty now but of fine material. He looked every inch the dandy gentleman, complete with lace at his throat and cuffs.
Had it been only a few short months ago she’d found him so lovely to look upon? And now everything about him seemed overblown. Priggish.
“Things change, Jacquin.”
She’d spoken calmly. She might well have shouted, for the reaction he gave her, one hand on his heart and the other briefly at his brow. When he looked at her again, he’d gone a little pale.
“You can’t mean you intend to go through with this. Become a Handmaiden?” Jacquin slid closer to take her hands, and Annalise, taken aback, allowed him.
“That is the reason I’m here.” She said it more gently than she would have before her time here, and that, too, she recognized.
He thrust her hands back in her lap and stood to pace the gazebo’s wooden planks. “No. No, you’re not truly here to take your vows and enter the Order of Solace. That was only a ploy. A distraction. It was never meant to be real!”
“Much like our betrothal, you mean?” The words came out more cruelly than she’d thought. So much for training. She still had a long, long way to go.
He whirled to face her, the hem of his jacket swinging. “It was never meant to be such.”
She softened, reaching a hand he didn’t take. “It would have been. And you know it.”
