Best Served Cold

“Good.” Shenkt pressed five scales into his scabby palm. “This is for you.” He closed the man’s fist around the money then held it with his own. “Never come back here.” He leaned closer, squeezed harder. “Not ever.”

He slipped across the cobbled street, over the wall before the house. His heart was beating unusually fast, sweat prickling his scalp. He crept across the overgrown front garden, old boots finding the silent spaces between the weeds, and to the lighted window. Reluctant, almost afraid, he peered through. Three children sat on a worn red carpet beside a small fire. Two girls and a boy, all with the same orange hair. They were playing with a brightly painted wooden horse on wheels. Clambering onto it, pushing each other around on it, pushing each other off it, to faint squeals of amusement. He squatted there, fascinated, and watched them.

Innocent. Unformed. Full of possibilities. Before they began to make their choices, or had their choices made for them. Before the doors began to close, and sent them down the only remaining path. Before they knelt. Now, for this briefest spell, they could be anything.

“Well, well. What have we here?”

She was crouching above him on the low roof of the shed, her head on one side, a line of light from a window across the way cutting hard down her face, strip of spiky red hair, red eyebrow, narrowed eye, freckled skin, corner of a frowning mouth. A chain hung gleaming down from one fist, cross of sharpened metal swinging gently on the end of it.

Shenkt sighed. “It seems you have the better of me.”

She slid from the wall, dropped to the dirt and thumped smoothly down on her haunches, chain rattling. She stood, tall and lean, and took a step towards him, raising her hand.

He breathed in, slow, slow.

He saw every detail of her face: lines, freckles, faint hairs on her top lip, sandy eyelashes crawling down as she blinked.

He could hear her heart beating, heavy as a ram at a gate.

Thump… thump… thump…

She slid her hand around his head, and they kissed. He wrapped his arms about her, pressed her thin body tight against him, she tangled her fingers in his hair, chain brushing against his shoulders, dangling metal knocking lightly against the backs of his legs. A long, gentle, lingering kiss that made his body tingle from his lips to his toes.

She broke away. “It’s been a while, Cas.”

“I know.”

“Too long.”

“I know.”

She nodded towards the window. “They miss you.”

“Can I…”

“You know you can.”

She led him to the door, into the narrow hallway, unbuckling the chain from her wrist and slinging it over a hook, cross-shaped knife dangling. The oldest girl dashed out from the room, stopped dead when she saw him.

“It’s me.” He edged slowly towards her, his voice strangled. “It’s me.” The other two children came out from the room, peering around their sister. Shenkt feared no man, but before these children, he was a coward. “I have something for you.” He reached into his coat with trembling fingers.

“Cas.” He held out the carved dog, and the little boy with his name snatched it from his hand, grinning. “Kande.” He put the bird in the cupped hands of the littlest girl, and she stared dumbly at it. “For you, Tee,” and he offered the cat to the oldest girl.

She took it. “No one calls me that anymore.”

“I’m sorry it’s been so long.” He touched the girl’s hair and she flinched away, he jerked his hand back, awkward. He felt the weight of the butcher’s sickle in his coat as he moved, and he stood sharply, took a step back. The three of them stared up at him, carved animals clutched in their hands.

“To bed now,” said Shylo. “He’ll still be here tomorrow.” Her eyes were on him, hard lines across the freckled bridge of her nose. “Won’t you, Cas?”

“Yes.”

She brushed their complaints away, pointed to the stairs. “To bed.” They filed up slowly, step by step, the boy yawning, the younger girl hanging her head, the other complaining that she wasn’t tired. “I’ll come sing to you later. If you’re quiet until then, maybe your father will even hum the low parts.” The youngest of the two girls smiled at him, between the banisters at the top of the stairs, until Shylo pushed him into the living room and shut the door.

“They got so big,” he muttered.

“That’s what they do. Why are you here?”

“Can’t I just-”

“You know you can, and you know you haven’t. Why are you…” She saw the ruby on his forefinger and frowned. “That’s Murcatto’s ring.”

“She lost it in Puranti. I nearly caught her there.”

“Caught her? Why?”

He paused. “She has become involved… in my revenge.”

“You and your revenge. Did you ever think you might be happier forgetting it?”

“A rock might be happier if it was a bird, and could fly from the earth and be free. A rock is not a bird. Were you working for Murcatto?”

“Yes. So?”

“Where is she?”

“You came here for that?”

“That.” He looked towards the ceiling. “And them.” He looked her in the eye. “And you.”