by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 45
Ilahe knocked open the door, arms trembling. Ly did not shift in her arms. The cam-ad pieces felt like fire inside Ilahe, so hot that at times they were cold, and so close to her heart. Her speed and strength had failed her at the end of the street, like drawing a shade over a lamp, and walking the last block had set the wound in her shoulder afire.
Men and women scrambled up from the sofas and divans of the front room, staring at her and Ly. Ilahe did not spare them a second glance. With a few painful steps, she reached the nearest divan and set Ly down. The pregnant woman’s chest still rose and fell; Ilahe breathed a sigh of relief. Shouts started up, men and women clamoring for help, but Ilahe let it wash over her like so much noise. The heat inside her chest threatened to burn her to ash.
“What’s this?” Cu’s voice penetrated the clamor. “What’s going on here?”
The tall, copper-haired woman stood at the top of the stairs. Her pale green eyes widened when she saw the pregnant woman.
“Ly,” she cried. Cu stumbled down the steps, tripping over her gown in her haste. “Father take you fools, call for a surgeon. Ly, Ly, what happened?”
“Street harvest,” Ilahe said. She pressed one hand against her chest, as though she could suffocate the fire inside her.
A short, older man drew close. “Where’s she hurt?” he asked.
Cu moved to one side as he began to examine Ly, shaking her graying copper hair as she did. “Fool girl,” Cu said. “We told her not to leave the shrine alone. Tair bless me . . .” She trailed off.
Ilahe got to her feet somehow, in spite of the pain. She heard people murmuring, “Cenarbasi,” around her, but she did not care. She hated this city, hated the people here. Hated the god that would take so much. Hated all gods—and men. She turned to leave; she could be far from the city before dawn came. Back on her way to Osmir.
A hand, soft but firm, gripped her good arm. “Come with me,” Hash said, his ocean blue eyes meeting hers for a heartbeat. Still holding her arm, he led her out of the whorehouse, into the darkness. Everything was diffuse, soft, dissolving now. It seemed unreal around Ilahe after the clarity of the cam-ad. The muscled lines of Hash’s shoulder and neck, his firm jaw underneath that unruly blond hair—those seemed real, solid. Ilahe found her eyes locked on him, grateful for something to hold onto for a few moments.
He did not take her far—around the block, then through one of the back entrances of the whorehouse, up the stairs to a small bedroom. Charcoal drawings covered the walls, smudged and soft in some places, but harsh in others. Dark pits, rock walls, faces half-illuminated by some unseen source. The bed and side table seemed impossibly out of place with the drawings.
Before Ilahe realized it, Hash made her sit on the bed, then pulled a chair from the corner to sit next to her.
“Take off your shirt,” he said.
Ilahe stared at him. “Those people downstairs saw me,” she said.
“They saw a woman covered in blood who left through the front door,” Hash said. “We came in the back. No one knows you’re still here. Now take off your shirt.” As he spoke, he pulled a basket full of cloth and needles, with a few stoppered ceramic jars, from under the bed.
Ilahe stared at him, too tired and disappointed and hurt to do anything. She had lost everything. The job was over—or had been a ruse in the first place. She had lost a cam-ad to escape the ambush. She had nothing—no money, few possessions, and no friends. No home.
When she did not move, Hash grabbed her shirt and, with a small pair of scissors, started cutting it away. Ilahe growled and slammed his arm away from her.
“What in the blackness do you think you’re doing?” she said.
“Looking at the wound that’s keeping you from moving that shoulder,” Hash said. “Along with any others that might be hidden under all that blood.”
“Why are you helping me?” Ilahe asked in a whisper. He was so beautiful, so perfect; how could he want anything to do with her?
Hash held up the scissors and cocked his head. After a moment, Ilahe nodded, though her cheeks heated as the soiled cloth fell away to reveal her muscled, and scarred, torso and breasts. Hash simply went to his work, probing the wound in her shoulder with gentle fingers, then wiping it clean with a cloth. He mixed a solution from the jars, wetted another cloth, and packed it against the wound with a bandage. In heartbeats, the pain in Ilahe’s shoulder dwindled, although the inferno at her chest continued to rage.
He moved quickly, cleaning away the blood, checking her for other wounds. She felt nothing but the gentle trace of his fingers across flesh and muscle, around skin hot with pain. Time disappeared as he worked, and Ilahe found herself studying his face, tracing his lips, his eyes, against the numbness within her. All of a sudden, Hash had finished; a few bandages over smaller cuts completed the process, and he leaned away. With a start, Ilahe grabbed for the torn shirt and held it against her chest.
Hash gave her that same tight-lipped smile. “I’ve seen breasts before,” he said.
The words struck deeper than the arrow had; Ilahe got to her feet, cheeks burning, and the room spun around her. Her head felt as though it were packed with clouds. She wavered on her feet.
“Tair bless me,” Hash said, standing up as well and grabbing her arm. Ilahe tried to push him away, but she almost fell; only his grip kept her from falling. “What is wrong with you? I’ve not done a thing to you.”
“You mock me with your eyes, with your smile,” Ilahe said, unable to stop the words. The drug he had used clouded her mind; with distant surprise, she realized the fire in her chest had vanished. “Like every other man.”
Hash set his jaw and shook his head. “I see someone who has overcome a pain that would have broken other people. Someone strong enough to take a terrible loss and turn it into a strength. You remind me of Naja in many ways. Of a man I knew, if only for a little while.” His hand came up to rest on her cheek, white and soft as almond blossoms when the spring rains came, his thumb grazing the corner of her mouth. “I wish I were like you.”
Ilahe’s breath came fast and shallow, the room tilting with each gasp. He stood so close that each word brushed her lips. The smell of him washed over her, bright and deep and warm as summer, and underneath it, something masculine and sharp. For a moment, Ilahe thought he would kiss her; the space between their lips, between their hips, was nothing—a span of ice melting in the heat of the foreign sun.
And then, he was pushing her gently onto the bed, his hand gone from her face. “You need to rest,” he said. “Sleep. Tair knows what you’ve been through tonight.” Steps, then the sound of the door.
Disappointment, sharp as a knife, cut Ilahe, but relief as well. For a moment, she had thought he would force himself upon her. To be with a man again—inside the Iris, it meant a quickening, the end of everything. Here, in this land of the gods-made-flesh, well—Ilahe was not sure. Perhaps quickening. Perhaps nothing. She turned toward the wall to hide the tears in her eyes, but Ilahe did not know if she cried for the past or the present.