by Julia Knight
It came again, a white flash in front of her eyes, a strident pain in her heart. She sagged to her knees and only barely made it back to her feet. Her whole body quivered and Ilfayne’s voice sounded dully in her head. She couldn’t seem to think. Something was wrong, very wrong. Creeping dread swarmed around her, suffused the steam she breathed, poured through her in torrents, and still she couldn’t say what it was. She only knew it twisted her stomach and cramped her muscles till she wanted to scream with it.
A strong brown arm slid round her and steadied her shaking. “Hilde, what is it?”
Her breath hitched in her throat as she tried to answer. “I don’t know. Just something wrong. That’s all. Something wrong.”
“I know where there’s an inn we might reach before dark.” His warm arm slid round her back, and that was all she needed. She was safe. She was with Ilfayne.
***
Hilde splashed back, exquisitely out of breath. All the muscles in her legs twitched and his seed mingled with the sweat on her thighs before she slipped under what was left of the bathwater. Ilfayne slid down beside her and kissed her again, his salty sweat on her lips. Half the bathwater had slopped out onto the layers of rugs that covered the floor but there was still enough to cover them. The bath was the biggest Hilde had ever seen, which had given them the idea. Something to take her mind away, Ilfayne had said. Well, it had worked.
She pulled herself up and sat astride him with her wet hair dripping onto his chest. “Water’s cold.”
“Soon fix that.” He sat up with a grin and slid his arms around her, dangled his one hand in the water and murmured a few words. Tendrils of steam wafted around and between them until she gasped with the heat. “Warm enough?”
“Oh yes.” She ran her hands up his back and felt at the scar that marred it and the nail marks she’d just made. “We could stay here for a while. It’d be nice to stay somewhere for more than a few days. Be nice to have a home.” She was vaguely envious of the girls who had shown them to the room and filled the bath, of their normal lives, a home, families, children.
Ilfayne’s lips moved in a smile against her neck. “We have a home.”
“And when was the last time we were there?”
He shifted round so that her back lay against his chest and poured two glasses of wine from a bottle on the little table beside the bath. “It’s been a while, I’ll admit.”
“Five years. That’s not a home, it’s a memory. And I know you said kyrbodans take longer to have children but—”
“Drink up. It’s good to have wine again.” He handed her a glass. “I’ve never seen you as the maternal type.”
“Well, I’m not exactly.” But she knew how much he missed being a father. He couldn’t hide it from her and she wanted only to give him that, and to have a family of her own. Something she’d never really had. And she was just that tiny bit jealous that his long-dead wife had given him something she herself had yet to.
“I told you it’ll take longer, decades maybe. You’re not thinking like an immortal. We’ve got all the time in the world. Besides, what would you have done with a baby today? Strapped it on your back? How about we make the most of it just being us? I should be more than enough for you to cope with.” He leant over her shoulder and waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Don’t be so impatient.”
“Patience isn’t one of my virtues.”
He smiled wryly. “I’ve noticed. Drink your wine.”
She settled herself more comfortably against him. There was something shifty in his heart, something she’d been feeling a lot lately from him and it bothered her. “What are you hiding?”
His hand stopped with the glass halfway to his lips. “Me? Nothing. I am as an open book to your kyrbodan senses. As if I could hide anything from you.”
“Oh yes, you are. Out with it.”
“You’re imagining it. Now drink your wine.”
She tipped the contents of the glass into the water. “Sod the wine!”
“Secret,” he said, and sounded quite smug about it. “You shouldn’t ask so many questions this close to your nameday. Spoil the surprise.”
She crossed her arms and pouted. She never had liked to be thwarted, which was probably why he enjoyed doing it so much. “I’m staying here while you go and see them.”
“You can’t. We’ve an appointment.”
“I’m not going.” Kyrbodans. That was what was making her so grumpy. Just the thought of them made her shudder, even if she was half one herself. And of course that was the problem. She was only half one of them, a dangerous mix of blood who should not be allowed to live.
She wanted to wait here; anything rather than feel their hatred of her. Wanted some time to herself. It had been five years and hardly an hour when Ilfayne hadn’t been there in her heart. She didn’t know any longer which was her heart and which was his. Those brief times she was without him were not enough to tell and lately they had begun to come as a relief. Ilfayne loved her, she knew that well enough, and she loved him; his black and twisted heart, the tender part that was just for her. But still, a day to herself would be welcome.
“Oh no, you’d be in trouble in five minutes flat. You’re coming too.”
She turned in his lap and scowled at him. He didn’t trust her to look after herself, treated her at times like a wilful child, and it drove her crazy. It was ridiculous. She was a grown woman, well able now to use her mace to protect herself if need be. “I’ll be fine. What could happen? I might bathe myself to death?”
She loved him, felt nothing but sorrow for what he’d lost, but that had turned somehow, with his overprotectiveness, into a vague jealousy of his wife. She never had to stick with Ilfayne at all times because he didn’t trust her. She could walk down the street and look in the stalls on market day without a grumbling shadow behind her. Ilfayne had trusted her. But not Hilde, not to look after herself. And he still called Devanna’s name at night sometimes. Hilde hated herself for being even the smallest bit jealous of a dead woman. She loved Ilfayne precisely because he’d loved his wife so much, that he’d spent so long mourning her. But when would he stop?
Did he only love her because she was the first woman since then who could stand him? Could bear to be in the same room? Hilde could never be sure. She knew what he felt, knew that he loved her, but not why he felt it. And whenever she felt unsure of herself, like now, he always knew how to bring her out of herself.
He put down his wine, slid his hand down over her shoulders and ran his thumb over her nipple. “I heard about this woman, way down south, had so many baths she wrinkled up like an old apple and popped. Oh look. You’ve got a mucky bit, right there. And here’s me with the soap.”
She laughed in spite of herself and slapped at his shoulder. “Be serious.”
“I am being serious. I might have to scrub at it quite a bit.” He sighed at her mock glare. “All right. You’re coming with me. No arguments. I know you, if I leave you here you’ll be in that marketplace in gods-know-what trouble before I’m two miles down the road.”
“Well, I might—”
“Absolutely not.”
She grinned at him, slid her hands up his legs under the water and wriggled on his lap.
“Oh no, you aren’t getting your own way like that.”
“Why not? It’s worked before.” She trickled her hand up his chest and round the back of his neck. Her other hand slid downwards.
“Because I know you. I’m not having you get into trouble, minx that you are. But you can keep on doing that if you like. You never know, I might crumble.”
She sat back and looked at him. “I’ll be perfectly safe here.”
He reached out to stroke her face. “I took all the risk I ever needed to, to be with you. No more risks.”
Her shoulders sagged. Put like that…
“I love it when you pout like that, you little she-demon. I can make you forget all about it.” He sat up and kissed her, soft and slow.
; She tried to pull away, tried to say something more, but every time she opened her mouth he kissed her, more insistent every time. Damn the man. She never could stay angry with him for long. With a playful shove that sent his bangles rattling, she pushed him back into the water. Maybe they could get the rest of it on the rugs.
Ilfayne laughed and pulled her down on top of him. She kissed him, slid her hand through his hair and then it came rushing back. The wrongness. White flickered behind her eyelids, every muscle in her body seemed to cramp, and she was no longer lying in an inn’s bath with Ilfayne, she was somewhere, somewhen else. For a moment she heard Ilfayne’s panicky voice calling her name and then that too vanished.
She was no longer her, no longer here. She stood wherever blood and bone told her to be. The white ran through her brain, too strong to be ignored this time. Only now she could see it clearly. A white wolf.
Hunter. The feel of him hammered into her heart. Like her dreams, insubstantial but more real than the world she knew. The dreams that left her drained and useless, empty as though her heart had been cut from her chest. Yet she was awake, or had been.
The wolf sat, dejected and deathly tired, its head hanging down and tongue lolling disconsolately. It stared at her with brown eyes as though trying to tell her something. Another came to join it. Bigger, more robust, with glossy fur that was black as night. Hunter and Regin. But Regin was dead.
They didn’t do anything, only sat and stared at her. Something rose up behind them, an outstretched grasping hand and another that held Regin’s sword. She tried to cry out a warning as the blade swept down, but the muscles in her throat were twisted and nothing came out. The sword bit into Hunter’s chest, slid through and on into Regin. Their pain exploded in her chest and the sword withdrew.
The hand pointed it at her and words reverberated in her head. “You too.” Then it faded away and she could see herself and Ilfayne against a backdrop of white buildings, black streets and the smell of the sea. Tears ran down his cheeks as he lifted his flaming hand towards her neck. She tried to scream but all she managed was a strangled gasp.
Then Ilfayne was bent over her, shaking her and calling her name. She lay twitching on the bed; her muscles were not hers to direct and they spasmed indiscriminately. The ones that controlled her breathing wouldn’t let her draw in any air, and for a panicked moment she thought she might die from the lack, then all her muscles loosened. She drew in great, grateful breaths and Ilfayne scooped her up from the bed and held her tight in shaking arms.
“Kyr’s mercy! What in the gods’ names was that?”
She rested her head on his shoulder and touched her hand to his chest to reassure herself he was really there. “A dream. One of the bad ones.”
“A dream? But you weren’t asleep. At least I hope you don’t sleep when I’m kissing you like that.”
“No, I wasn’t asleep. We have to go.”
He held her away from him and looked in her eyes. “Where? Why?”
“Hunter’s in trouble.”
He stroked her hair, ran his fingers through the tangles for a moment before he answered. “Ganberg?”
“No, it was somewhere I’ve never been. White walls, black streets, the sea.”
“Ah, that makes sense. Mimirin. Hunter’s duke now, his father passed last year.”
“We have to go, now.” She pulled away from him and stared earnestly into his dark eyes.
“Hilde, you know what we have to do. Mithotyn’s servants, that’s what we’re sworn to destroy. There is nothing of our charge there. Not any more.”
“Hunter and Regin both.”
His fingers tightened in her hair. “Regin’s dead.”
She shrugged and looked up at him. “I know. But Hunter’s in trouble, and through him Regin is too.”
There was nothing, no change in his face or heart at that. “Men die, Hilde. We live.”
“I have to go, for Hunter,” she said. “Won’t you come, for Regin?”
He looked at her for long moments before he tried a twitchy little smile. “All right.” He held her tighter and kissed her softly, the kind of kiss that always made her tingle. “I’m not sure we’ll be welcome.”
“Are we ever?”
The Elephant and Turnip
Erna, Ganheim
Sunset two days from Ganberg found Hunter and the rest of the entourage riding into Erna on their way to the port of Mimirin. By sea was the quickest way to Kadara, the Reethan capital, and Erna stood almost halfway to Hunter’s home. He’d lived in Ganberg for far too long. He missed the smell of the sea, the white walls and black streets of Mimirin, his brothers. Half a year since his last visit—more, since his father died and left him the dukedom. All he wanted was to go there, to rest. But duty had said otherwise, until now.
The quiet of the countryside unnerved him. In late summer the fields should have been full of people harvesting. Instead nothing but silence and straw met Hunter’s gaze.
A melancholy cavalcade rode into the dusty yard behind the Elephant and Turnip inn. A series of lads came to see to their horses and to help the soldiers make up their billets in the back field. Hunter, Aran and Valguard, along with the few lesser nobles they had brought, made their way into the inn, to the small but clean rooms set aside for them. Hunter lay on his bed and tried to relax his taut muscles but the weight of his armour pressed on him. Even here he couldn’t go without; it was unthinkable for a man of Ganheim to go armour-less unless at work in the fields, and for a man of Hunter’s rank it was doubly important. Even nigh on twenty years of use couldn’t lessen the weight though, or the pressure on his bad arm.
The pain had grown steadily worse while they travelled until there had been moments when Hunter could barely sit his horse for the twisted ache that left him sweating and shaking. He stared at his pack on the dresser and could almost hear the duria call to him through the leather. He set his teeth against the call and sat up. This was no way to be. Amma was right. He needed company, ale and maybe some fun.
He left his room and Regin’s sword with one of his guards outside and made his way down to the bar, to where the soldiers gathered to drink and gamble and try to talk the girls into bed. The single nobles were no better, though the married ones, if they thought about chasing the girls, were not so foolish as to do so in public. Valguard kept himself apart, listening with apparent raptness to an aged bard in the corner telling a tale of dragons.
Hunter found himself a place close by the fire, where the heat could unravel the knots in his arm, and lost himself in watching some of the younger soldiers making idiots of themselves over the bargirls. One of the girls brought him ale and a plate of stew with a wink and a smile. No bread, there was no grain for it.
Aran, of course, was the centre of the girls’ attention. And why not? Hunter could think of at least one king who had married his favourite innkeeper’s daughter. But they soon shied away when the news of Aran’s impending betrothal broke, and the girls turned to the single nobles and soldiers. No one would be willing to break the Court-bound promise, preliminary though it might be. Aran was half-drunk already and came perilously close to causing outrage when he tried to kiss one of the girls. But she ducked away from him with a smile and whispered in his ear. Maybe she had more presence of mind than he did, or maybe she was more aware of the reputation she would gain if she should kiss a man in public. She swiftly turned her attentions elsewhere. It didn’t surprise Hunter in the least when one of the younger nobles staggered up the stairs and the girl followed soon after. Single men and women, in private—well, nothing wrong with that.
As the sun finally set, the inn began to fill with people, those who had finished their day’s work and needed to lay the dust, girls come to flirt with the soldiers, and hollow-eyed farmers hoping to lose themselves in their beer. None of them looked like they’d seen a decent meal for weeks, and the normally robust Gan figures were slack in their clothes. But the arrival of the king and his escort brought them all out.
>
Near where Hunter sat, right up against the large hearth where they could bake their bones, the old folk congregated and he contented himself listening to them talk. Mostly they gossiped about the mildew, the lack of grain and the lack of beer that would soon be apparent, once the current stores were depleted.
“Probably that bugger Ilfayne,” one man said. “Lord Hunter went off with him before, and Ilfayne caused him no end of trouble.”
“I heard he melted some man’s eyes in Ganberg the last time he were here.”
“Magic-free we was always supposed to be. No magic, not in the whole of the history of this land. Excepting him.”
“Aye, good riddance to the bugger. Wouldn’t mind seeing Regin back again though, and more’s the pity we won’t.”
“He does us more good where he is, mark my words. Up there with the gods keeping an eye on us all.”
Two more people came to the table, an old woman whose every movement took an age and a sprier man in a felt hat that shaded his eyes in the firelight. The others shuffled up to make room for them, and it seemed they were the most respected of the bunch.
“You do talk a load of nonsense.” The woman’s voice held none of her obvious age in it. Soft and soothing, even when she was berating them. “Ilfayne sets fire to things, he don’t make things go mouldy. How long do you think the beer will hold out?”
“Won’t be long with this lot in,” said the man in the hat. “Mind you, heard tell they’s going to the Reethan. Going to get an alliance, and some grain. Selling that young Aran for food. It’s a shame, but that’s the price of royal blood, eh?”
“Shh, you old goat.” The woman looked older than time, with the sort of sagging face that had seen the drag of many years, but her eyes were sharp and clear enough. “Look who’s behind you before you shoot your mouth off. Beg pardon, my lord, this silly sot don’t know when to keep his trap shut.” She cuffed the old man lightly around the back of the head. “Old fool.”
She turned back to Hunter and pierced him with a penetrating gaze. Her eyes were a very deep brown and made him think of how beautiful she must have looked when she was young. “True, is it?”
