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She had rescued him and then he had rescued her, and it should have worked out somehow, but instead he’d opened his damn mouth and started babbling nonsense about the strong protecting the weak.
(Anuket City was nominally a representative democracy, in much the same way that Slate was nominally a taxpayer.)
“This is a poor idea, gentlemen,” said Caliban. “You should leave.” The footpads did not look impressed. “We are capable of defending ourselves,” he added. If possible, they looked even less impressed. Brenner snickered.
Slate would have given her ears to know how he did it. One minute he was Caliban, who always looked as if he were beating himself up internally for something, and who always carried a handkerchief. The next minute he was about an inch taller and seemed to be standing in a brighter light than everything else around him. Even his shoulders looked broader. Slate was quite sure that he was still wearing rather battered armor and a disgracefully grubby cloak, but he seemed to be…shining?
Slate was used to, “Can we help you?” translating as, “If you make me get up, I will have you drawn and quartered.” She’d never heard it mean, “I will throw myself off a building if it will make your day better, sir.”
“Indexes,” he said determinedly, “are essential to the proper functioning of a civilized society.”
“It’s me! Slate!” “Yes, I know.” The only visible bits of her scowled. “Damn. So much for my disguise.” I would know you anywhere. I would recognize you at the bottom of a mineshaft on a moonless light, if I were deaf and blind.
“Damn. No one ever tells me I’ve got a tidy mind.” “It’s tidier than mine,” said Brenner. “Yes, but yours is full of spiders.” The assassin looked absurdly flattered by this.
“Did you find anything about your lost scholar?” asked Slate. Learned Edmund paused in his raptures. “Mistress Magnus said that she’ll look into it. No one’s heard from him in some time, but that happens fairly frequently with scholars.” “He probably tripped and fell into an index,” whispered Caliban. Slate made a strangled noise.
“You want my socks?” Caliban would have laid down his life for Slate, probably with a sense of relief, but a man’s socks…that was asking a lot.
“Look, a man with an endless supply of clean handkerchiefs has got to have extra socks. If I don’t pad these boots, I’m going to have a permanent limp by the end of the week.”
“That was my last pair that didn’t have holes in them,” said Caliban mournfully. Brenner slapped him on the back. “Chivalry sucks, huh?”
“I don’t think you can murder your way out of this for me,” said Slate. “Darlin’, you’d be amazed what I can murder my way out of.”
“Prayer is for the one who prays. It would be a monstrous arrogance to think that my prayers might sway the heart of a god.”
Am I being petty? It’s possible I’m being petty. Serve him right for…for looking at me like that! And then stomping off to go brood somewhere. Goddamn paladins. She wouldn’t have been half so annoyed if he hadn’t had a valid point about the risks.
“He was confessing his sins, if you must know.” “For paladins, that’s practically foreplay.” Slate didn’t want to laugh, but she did anyway, and immediately felt unkind. Brenner looked more smug than usual.
“Look,” said Brenner, “that bit doesn’t matter, does it? We can’t very well choke off their supply of corpses.” “Can we?” asked Caliban. The assassin gave him a sidelong look. “My job is making more corpses. The only way I could make less is if I retired early.”
“Are knights allowed to do this?” he asked, daring to step closer and put his arm around her so that the cloak covered them both. Slate stood very still. Caliban could feel the tension in her shoulders. He had a sense of everything balancing on edge. One moment. I will wait one moment, and if she steps away, so will I. Then she sighed and leaned against him. “Only one of them,” she said.
“We’re living with decisions made by people so long dead we can’t even piss on their bones.”
Slate’s allergies were legendary. Foremost among them was an allergy to pain. Sorry, guys. Sorry, Caliban. We’re not all tragic heroes. Some of us are just tragic.
“I am going to hurt you. Then I’m going to ask you a question. If you don’t answer it, I’m going to hurt you again.” “You know, I’m pretty sure I’m going to tell you everything I know, so we could just skip to that part and avoid the hurting altogether.” He cracked her upside the head with the silver thing. Slate yelped. Well, that was actually sort of anticlimactic, even if it did hurt. “Ow! Goddamnit, I said I was going to talk!”
Slate did a brief mental calculation of whether annoying one’s torturer was a bad idea, or whether you were going to get tortured anyway and you might as well go out on a defiant note, and decided to err on the side of caution.
The torturer folded his arms and frowned down his nose at her. “Was someone in here before me to soften you up?” “No, I’m very soft to begin with.” She considered. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance I could seduce you out of this? I mean, not to be insulting, I’m sure you’re a man of principle, just figured I’d ask, in case you were a lonely man of principle—” “I’m married.”
“Is there a back entrance?” asked Brenner. “Probably,” said Caliban, unsheathing his sword and walking into the open. “Aaaaand you’re an idiot,” said Brenner. Caliban broke into a run. “He’s an idiot,” said Brenner to Learned Edmund, sighting down his crossbow.
“You’re insane,” said Brenner. “Just—just—gahh!” He waved his arms in the air a few times, shaking his head. “There were archers!” “Yes, and you shot them.” “They could have shot you first!” “I had faith in you.”
“Do you ever miss?” asked Caliban. “All the time. I missed that last guy.” “You put a dagger in his eye.” “Yes, but I was aiming for the other eye.”
He fainted. Caliban dropped him. “You gonna kill that?” “No,” said Caliban. “He’s a paid thug and he’s not in my way any more.” He began to lope down the corridor, sword out. “Paladins,” muttered Brenner bitterly, and followed.
Caliban stepped over the prone assassin. “Caliban? What are you doing h—?” He didn’t think. He hadn’t planned to do it. He hadn’t planned anything at all. So it was a complete surprise to both of them when he took another step forward, caught her up, and pulled her so close that neither of them could breathe. “Wha—” she began, and he locked his mouth over hers.
“I’ll kill them.” He sounded very matter-of-fact about it. The sky was blue, the night was dark, he was going to kill them. It was an alarming sort of voice, but Slate approved wholeheartedly of the sentiment.
“But I don’t want to be the sensible one,” said the assassin plaintively. “I want to be the one who kills people and gets paid a lot of money.”
Being carried by a man in armor, even one who had kissed you like you were his last hope of heaven, was not a terribly comfortable experience.
“We haven’t met,” said Slate, “but I have a strong desire to be your friend.”
He had been strong all his life. He had been strong until the demon had come, and strength no longer mattered, and then when he was broken, he had kept on trying to be strong because he didn’t know what else to do. Perhaps he’d come at last to a place where strength no longer availed him. Perhaps it was time to try something else. The pine owls boggled at him. He lifted a hand to the door. Slate yanked it open and clenched her fist in his tabard. “I think,” he said hoarsely, “that I’ve had enough of being strong.” “Good enough,” she said, and pulled him inside.
She turned and took his face in both hands and kissed him, with a great deal of pent-up passion and no small amount of pent-up rage.
Goddamn, he was pretty. It was practically offensive.
He wrapped his arms around her and she felt him sigh against her hair. “Mmm?” “I had planned to take my time,” he said, almost plaintively. “Tomorrow,” she said. “When I’m not half-dead and stinking of onion salve.”
His hand was still cradled between her breasts and he could feel her heartbeat against his palm.
Alive. Unharmed…or, well. Bloodied but unbowed. Which was Slate all over.
“It’s just a dream,” he said in her ear. “I’ve got you.” And it worked. She sighed and the tension went out of her body. Caliban held her and thought, There is a person in this world who feels safe in my arms. It felt like grace.
As if the thought had summoned him, the door banged open, and the assassin stood framed in the doorway. “Wakey wake—” He stopped. His eyes moved from the paladin’s face to Slate’s, down the length of their bodies. Caliban couldn’t help himself. He slid his hand down possessively over Slate’s hip and stared the other man full in the face.
It was an entirely primitive response and Slate would undoubtedly have said something sarcastic and he regretted none of it. Mine.
“Rejecting a man who slits throats for a living is always a problem,” said Slate dryly. “But I dumped him and we’ve worked together fine since, so I’m not that worried.” “Is he in love with you?” She snorted. “Love’s not in his vocabulary. We’re friends, by which he means he respects my talents and nobody’s paid him money to kill me.”
“Honestly, sitting in that damn cage for half the night was much worse. I’m going to have a crick in my neck for the next week.” Caliban cleared his throat. “I could rub that for you?” “See, now that wasn’t stupid. Say more things like that.” “I’ll do my best….my liege.” “Gahhh!”
“You are a woman after my own heart, Mistress Magnus. And I hear you appreciate indexes, as well.” Ashes looped her arm through Slate’s and whispered something to her that made the forger laugh out loud.
Caliban looked at Brenner. Brenner looked at Caliban. “Lead the way,” said Caliban, gesturing. “You just don’t want me to have a clear shot at your back,” said the assassin, as he followed after the others. “You are correct,” said the paladin, and brought up the rear.
“Did you write this all down in case we die?” “Oh yes. I think other people probably know this, some of them. Surely someone’s talked to the gnoles before this!” “People don’t even talk to other people much,” said Caliban.
I regret enormously that I did not meet Ashes Magnus before we were going to go off and die in a wonder-engine. I wonder if she teaches classes in how to be unimpressed?
My lady. That’s a new one. Do I like that or is that getting too close to ‘my liege’ territory? Brenner raised a derisive eyebrow at her. Slate decided it was worth it, just to spite him.
“Let me know you,” he said, running his hands over her skin. “Let me see all of you.” “Not much to see,” she said, feeling awkward in the face of so much sincerity. “You’re wrong,” he said. “Also, beautiful. But wrong.” “But—” He kissed her. When a ridiculously handsome man decides he thinks you’re beautiful, maybe you should just shut up and enjoy it instead of trying to talk him out of it.
“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, that’ll work.” He started laughing almost soundlessly, which she felt all along her ribcage. “What? I’m not good at pillow talk!” “Never change,” he said, kissing her forehead.
