Salute the Dark

‘No. It is not.’ He swallowed. I want to feel your golden skin, to taste the sweat on it, to bury myself in your grace and poise. No matter how he tried, the thoughts would not stay away from him.

Abruptly his arms had swept her into his grasp and, with the same instinct that guided his blade faster than thought could take it, he had kissed her. For a moment she was stiff with shock, but then her arms gripped him, nails digging into his back, across pale skin sparsely signed with old scars and newer burns. Her thumb-claws inscribed fresh writing on him in shallow blood.

He pushed her into the room, the door swinging shut behind them. He lifted her shift over her head, and his breath ran ragged with the sight of the lithe economy of her body.

* * *

A hand abruptly closed on Che’s, startling her out of half-sleep. For a moment she could not work out what had happened, and then she looked at him – and Achaeos’ eyes were slightly open, a line of white showing beneath each lid. Her heart shook, for joy, for worry. Was he even conscious? Could he speak? ‘Achaeos?’ she whispered. Around her, the other casualties slept on, turned restlessly, some murmured to themselves.

She saw his lips move, moved her head closer to hear him, but there was no sound.

‘Achaeos, can you hear me?’

‘Che…’ Little more than a breath, but it was her name he spoke, her name on his breath. He still looked pale and hollow-cheeked, as though he should be dead. His featureless eyes might be focusing on her or staring into the abyss. He had said her name, though, and that was all that now mattered.

‘I’ll go and get a doctor…’ she started but his hand twitched on hers.

‘Che, wait,’ he breathed again. The interval before his next laboured words was agonizing. ‘I need… healers. No doctors. No physicians… I cannot stay here. I cannot heal here… This Apt city is killing me… This is not medicine.’ That much effort exhausted him and she clung to his hand as though he was drowning, being dragged into the dark water, and she was his only hope of rescue.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, and then, ‘This is… Your medicine is different. But that is because we are Apt here, and we do things differently. I remember…’ She recalled his own medicines of herbs and poultices at their first meeting, while she stitched his wound. How was it that he had such a habit of getting injured?

‘Che… the box… Is it…?’

She did not want to tell him. She did not know if he could stand the news. Still, if she lied now then she would always have lied to him, whatever her reasons for it. Besides, he would inevitably read it in her eyes. She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.’

He shuddered. All that for nothing, he must surely be thinking. ‘Che,’ he said again, ‘help me.’

‘I love you, Achaeos. I’ll do anything for you. Just say it.’

A fragile smile touched his lips, and she bent closer to hear him speak.

Ten minutes later Cheerwell Maker paused on the man’s threshold, seeing a strip of lamplight beneath the door. A late night for him, then, and what would Major Thalric be doing up past midnight?

She knew she should knock straight away, but, standing here, she ran her mind through the road the pair of them had travelled together. Herself as his prisoner, under threat of rape, under threat of torture; a pawn in his political games. She owed him no courtesy, she decided.

She was about to throw open the door but changed her mind. She was here to beg, for all that it sickened her. She could not see any other way this could be done.

Che raised her hand to knock, and his voice came from within: ‘Whoever is out there, what do you want?’

She stood, frozen, feeling guilty and already hating him.

‘Open the door, clumsy assassin,’ suggested Thalric’s voice, and helplessly she did, pushing the heavy wooden door open and letting the lamplight stream out to narrow her eyes. Some had wanted him locked up still, but Stenwold had ruled against it. Perhaps, Che thought, my uncle hopes that he will overplay his hand, somehow, and reveal himself as a traitor. As a traitor yet again, she supposed, since he had already betrayed his own people.

Thalric was sitting at a desk as if interrupted in the act of writing. He had an open palm raised towards the door. After a thoughtful pause, he lowered it and sat regarding her without expression.

‘Mistress Maker,’ he said. ‘Not a visitor I’d expected.’

In the absence of either dismissal or invitation, she stepped into the room, closing the door behind her.

‘What are you writing so late?’ she asked him.