by B N Miles
"Hm?" He blinked and peered up blearily at Rosin. Was it already time to switch? It didn't feel like long at all.
"How long were you asleep?" Rosin asked, hovering above him and looking as tall as the tree.
"Not long." He was pretty sure. He forced his eyes wide open and sat up straight before he moved to climb to his feet.
"I thought it was Mattie's shift tonight?"
Rosin put her hand on his shoulder and nudged him back down. "It is. Her shift is about twenty minutes from now. I just came out here to check on you."
"Oh." He slumped against the tree trunk with a yawn. "Okay, but I'll warn you that I'm not the best conversationist right now."
Wordlessly, Rosin lowered herself to the ground and sat in front of him, folding her legs and sitting so close that their knees touched. She blinked at him expectantly, staring at him, really.
"Uh, hi?"
"Hello." She smiled and tilted her head. "You look very tired."
"I guess I am." He scrubbed at the back of his head. He'd dedicated all of his nights to Apelles and studying. He may have gotten four hours of sleep each day since this started, but he wasn't going to complain. The girls weren't getting much more sleep than him, and yet they were all functioning fine.
Unfortunately, it meant he didn't get to spend time with Mattie or Drina, either.
"Something on your mind?" He asked, folding his arms and leaning his head back against the tree.
"Yeah. I wanted to..." Rosin looked down and bit her lip, and Sam was prepared to just sit there and wait for her to collect her words as she often needed to do.
But then she surged forward. He flinched, but it was subtle, and before his mind could catch up, her warm lips were pressed against his. Sam didn't move, half of him wanting to push her away and half of him wanting to pull her on his lap.
Rosin made the decision for him. She slid between his legs and pressed her mouth tighter against his, brushing her tongue along his bottom lip and holding his face between her hands. He shouldn't, he knew, but all his body needed was the tiny spark of desire and it latched on, plowing through every wall of resistance he possessed.
He opened his mouth the tiniest bit, his stomach flooding with equal amounts of hot guilt and want. Rosin was beautiful. He tried not to notice, but it was a bit difficult. She was slim like Mattie and short like Drina. Delicate, sweet, and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't wondered how she might look bucking on his lap, her silver hair loose and plastered to her face.
Rosin's little tongue darted out to flick shyly against his, and his resolve completely vanished as if it were never there to begin with. He kissed her deeply, holding her tight to him and swallowing the little sounds she made when he played with her hair.
It didn't last long. As soon as her lips left his, he wanted them back, but his mind roped in any stupid animal urges he had and forced him to think past the quickly growing haze. Oh fuck. What did he just do?
Rosin kneeled in front of him and pressed her fingers to her lips, smiling softly. When she noticed his expression, her smile dropped, and she rushed to clasp his larger hands in her own.
"I'm sorry, Sam! I just...I got so nervous, I didn't tell you, and I know I should have from the start, but Mattie said that I should just do it when I feel nervous, so I did, and now..."
Sam swallowed and she fluttered her hands at him, making a frustrated little sound. "I'm sorry, let me start over! Mattie and Drina told me that I should kiss you."
What?
"Are you..." Why on earth would they do that? Sure, Drina seemed the type to not care as long as she could participate, but Mattie? Drina had been a special case, but now Mattie was going and telling other girls to kiss him? Not that he was complaining, but by the spirits, what was he supposed to think about this? She wouldn't set him up and test him, he was pretty sure. She did that to other people, but never to him. He would be so hurt if she did that, almost as embarrassed that he failed the test.
"No, really." She squeezed his hands, "Mattie asked me if I liked you and I'm such a terrible liar, so she found out. And I was afraid she was going to be upset but she told me it was okay. That you were hard not to like, and that I should just...tell you how I feel. And, and, well, I've only kissed a couple of boys before, and I wasn't sure I would do it right, so Mattie and Drina showed me how to do it and...and..."
He liked to think he knew the woman he loved well enough to say, with confidence, that she would never play a cruel trick on him like testing his loyalty. Maybe she really was okay with it, but he couldn't figure out why or how. If he thought of Mattie being with another man, his stomach turned and he had to forcefully banish the thought before his blood started to boil.
"Rosin." Sam smiled and chose his next words carefully. The last thing he wanted to do was upset her. "How about we talk about this more tomorrow, yeah? I'm about five minutes away from curling up underneath this tree. I promise I'll be better company in the morning."
Rosin's shoulders sagged, but she held her answering smile well. "Of course," she said. It didn't sound sincere. Sam wasn't doing well with this situation. He really didn't want to scare off his new crewmember, nor did he want to make any move without figuring out what, exactly, Mattie was trying to do here.
There was a tense, awkward moment and Sam almost offered to walk her back to her room, almost left his post just to banish the tense silence between them, but something caught his peripherals and his head snapped to the side.
A dark figure was casually strolling behind the buildings. Frustration and dread made Sam's face flush because it was bloody Apelles, walking as if he didn’t have a care in the world, to his house. Which meant that he left his house and despite Sam sitting in his spot for hours, he didn't catch the bastard.
Simply watching his house was clearly not going to work.
17
"My, you slept late." Drina smirked and shoved her fork in her mouth as Sam sat down at their usual breakfast table. She was right; Sam was usually up with the dawn like the rest of them, but last night he'd been so exhausted and frustrated that when he passed out, there was no way he was going to be waking up with less than six hours of rest.
"Sorry." Sam flattened his hair. He barely had time to make himself look presentable this morning, so he did what he could before dashing out of his room; the prospect of missing breakfast was much more worrisome than looking like he'd just rolled out of bed.
"Don't be." Drina put her silverware down and clasped her hands, resting her chin on her knuckles. Sam narrowed his eyes at her but didn't stop shoving food in his face as fast as he could.
"So, how late did the two of you stay up?" She asked, her eyes wandering to Rosin.
Sam stopped chewing, his eyes darting from Drina's smirk to Rosin's downcast eyes to Mattie's quirked and knowing half-smile. To hells with it. He swallowed his food and wiped his mouth before clearing his throat and looking dead at Mattie.
"Rosin and I kissed last night," he said, watching Mattie's expression. It didn't shift away from mild amusement.
"Oh?"
"She said you put her up to it."
Mattie cocked her head and studied his face. Sam held his breath. After a moment, she shrugged and went back to eating. "Yeah. She likes you."
Sam chewed over his next words, not wanting to say something as stupid as, 'why does it matter' or something equally as damning.
"Oh, don't look at me like that, Sam." Mattie huffed, glancing up. "You know better than anyone how easy it is to die. Personally, I've lived in this world for far too long without the sort of love that everybody takes for granted. If I feel attracted to more than one person, then damnit, I'm going to act on it. And I love you, Sam. I want to feel that with you. To share it."
"Very sweet, Mattie." Drina grasped Rosin's chair and pulled it close, making the blonde squeak. "I like sharing."
Without warning, Drina leaned in and captured Rosin's lips. The blonde stiffened for a moment before her body went lax and she
returned the kiss, though it was quick and she was blushing madly. Sam could only sit back in astonishment. He really had no reply except shocked silence. How was it that he, a gutter rat and a thief, had somehow roped a girlfriend who wanted him to be with more people than just herself? He'd done nothing to earn this sort of consideration, and yet these three beautiful, incredible women—who could have taken any man to bed—wanted to be with him. And none of them minded sharing him, or each other.
The rest of breakfast was relatively quiet because, for once, Sam had nothing to say outside of 'spirits, thank you, but why?' He was just Sam. Nothing special or extraordinary, just...him.
Throughout the day, Sam's focus was split between the three girls. It was never said aloud, exactly, but Mattie all but declared the four of them were in an arrangement of some sort. It didn't have a name, maybe it wasn't even an 'it,' so much as it was simply them. He could feel their eyes on him in outdoors training, during combat class, and even during meditation. Whenever he looked up, they would hurriedly look away and giggle. Well, Drina and Mattie would giggle, and Rosin would blush. The two bolder girls kept taking Rosin aside throughout the day, whispering to her under their breath so he couldn't hear.
They must have been encouraging her to be more assertive, because around mid-morning, she was able to look at him without turning red. By lunch, she was speaking to him as if everything was back to normal.
The four of them, along with Fletch, were on their way to the mess hall for lunch when they passed Apelles. He appeared to be in a hurry, not sparing them a single glance as he strode down the corridors with long, brisk strides.
Sam hadn't forgotten seeing the spymaster walking to his home in the dead of the night, he'd just been a bit sidetracked by the girls, playing breakfast over and over in his head because he still wasn't entirely convinced any of it was real.
Once the spymaster had disappeared around the corner, Sam's thoughts sharpened and settled on the actual danger afoot.
"We're going to be a little late to lunch," he said, taking a sharp left down a different corridor without waiting for an answer.
"Have fun!" Fletch chirped at his back.
Drina groaned but the three girls followed without questioning why. Sam wasn't going to risk talking about this in the open, so he led them all the way back to the dormitories and into his room.
When they got there, he bolted the door and spoke in hushed tones. "Watching Apelles like we've been doing isn't going to work anymore," Sam said. "He snuck out on me last night. I didn't realize until I saw him go home. We need to catch him in the act and restrain him. Thing is, I'm pretty sure he knows we've been watching him, so we can't exactly get close, and even if we did, he's a Varin spymaster. I don't think a dozen of us could take him down."
He was pacing again. He had a bad habit of that. The guys used to hate it; said it made them nervous.
"We could wear disguises and maybe lure him somewhere?" Rosin offered. It was a bit of a naïve idea, but at least she had an idea. Sam was fresh out.
"No," Mattie said, "I'm pretty sure his talent has something to do with seeing into people's minds. He'd know it was one of us. We could trap him, though? Set up a tripwire or two in the admin building. Of course, we'd have to get in there after hours to begin with, and that's a feat on its own."
Sam shook his head and stared at the ground. Think, think, think. There had to be something. There was always a solution to any problem.
"Oh!"
Sam's eyes snapped to Drina, who had a huge smile on her face. "Poison dart. I filched one from combat class on our first day. We can use the rest of the paralysis poison you stole from Franklin."
Yes. Brilliant. Except he'd spilled the lot of it into Delcan's drink. Sam's sudden smile dimmed.
"I used all of it, remember? We'd have to make more."
"Shit."
"You won the competition, the brew was perfect, can't you just make some?"
"Well, I don't remember the bloody recipe, do I? We'd have to steal the brew card from Franklin too."
She was right. They had textbooks for class, but the book only had information on ingredients, not the recipes to make them. That was probably in the fifth-year textbook, but first years couldn't be trusted walking around with diagrams of the deadliest poisons known to man. So Franklin just handed out recipe cards during class. He also collected them afterward.
"Uh, I remember it," Rosin said quietly, raising her hand.
Relief blew through Sam like a soft gale. Perfect memory. Right. She just proved how valuable a crewmember she was.
"Then we have a plan," Sam said. "Mattie and I will get the ingredients. Drina, Rosin, you two set up a brew station and wait on us to get back. We'll do it tonight."
"Sure, yeah," Drina stood up and walked to the door. "Great plan, captain. Now can we go eat? I'm about to get grumpy from hunger. You don't want to see me grumpy."
Sam smiled at the back of her head and gestured for Rosin and Mattie to follow the brunette. It was settled. They'd do it before Apelles had a chance to do any more damage.
18
Getting into a classroom after hours turned out to be rather easy. The patrols had lessened considerably, and locks had stopped being challenging for the two of them by the time Sam hit puberty.
It took ten minutes to get from the dorm and into the poison master's storeroom. The most difficult aspect of the mission was trying to find everything Rosin had written down for them. On top of the actual brewing ingredients, they also needed tools to brew with, and those were difficult to find among the jars and packaged plants, powders, and liquids. It took them the better part of half an hour to find everything and shove it in Mattie's satchel.
They brought a tiny sliver of a candle for light, just enough to make out Franklin's elegant scrawl across each label. Sam browsed the shelf in front of him, not looking for anything in particular while Mattie crouched a few feet away, gathering the last ingredient and tucking it away.
His eye snagged on a small jar stuffed with shriveled grey matter. It was labeled 'Visier Bellot.' So that's what it looked like.
His attention was drawn away from the shelf when Mattie stood up with a satisfied smile. They were done here; Rosin and Drina would be tapping their feet by now. Well, Drina would. Rosin would probably be wringing her hands.
The deep shadows from the candlelight filled the hollows of Mattie's cheeks and the ridge of her brow, casting her bright blue eyes into the darkness. Sometimes, in rare moments of quiet, Sam would look at her and remember how breathtaking she was. Like now. She caught him staring and gave a rare, shy smile, tucking her auburn locks behind her ear.
This was the first time they'd been truly alone since they got here. Even when they weren't surrounded by the other students, Drina was always around, and if Drina wasn't around, Fletch was lurking nearby. And now Rosin would be too.
He didn't mind it. He liked being surrounded by people he gave a shit about and who cared about him in return, but it meant the days of just him and Mattie were essentially gone. This may be the last chance he got to talk about what was going on within the crew—at least in private—for a while.
He didn't know what was going through Mattie's mind on the subject of Drina and Rosin. Mattie's behavior was abnormal, their crew dynamics were abnormal, and everything Mattie had done thus far in regard to Drina and Rosin was unexpected, shocking, and without context.
Maybe she welcomed the other girls into their relationship because she had some misguided notion that he would be unhappy without them. Maybe she did it for fear of losing him. He'd never, never given her any indication that he would want an arrangement like this. It wasn't that he minded it, quite the opposite, but he'd never even considered something like this before. Likewise, Mattie had never given any indication that it was something she had ever considered.
Mattie was always good at hiding the things she felt and thought, buried behind veneers of smug smirks and casual shrugs, but they'd been p
artners since they were children, and Sam learned long ago how to find the things she tried to conceal. They knew everything about one another; their pasts, likes, dislikes. The way they thought, the way they worked, the things that made them smile, the things that made them cry.
He should be able to guess her mind as he usually could, but in this, Mattie was a stranger.
Mattie's shy smile turned confused and inquisitive. He was staring at her, searching her face, trying to decipher what she was thinking. Her eyes bounced from his nose to his eyes to his chin, probably trying to do the same.
Something nameless and formless passed between them. Something that made the air in the storeroom thin and cold. A great distance had stretched between them, shoving each of them to opposing edges of a vast canyon, uncertainty and hesitation yawning below them, between them.
He was unsure of where to start. How did one ask whether somebody else was afraid of losing them? How did one ask what this was? This intangible and emotional sensation, this thing that filled his stomach with air and ran up his spine.
"Sam?" Mattie whispered, her voice a little higher than usual.
"What are we doing?" He said, simply blurting the only words he could grab onto.
She knew what he meant. He could tell by the way her eyes widened and her mouth thinned before she looked at the floor, scuffing her shoe. He didn't interrupt her thoughts nor did he elaborate. He just watched her.
"Are you angry?" She asked. "Because if you are, you need to tell me. I'm sorry if you are, I didn't think you would be."
She was turning this around on him. She usually did this to people when she didn't want to answer a question. It was one of her many conversational tricks, turning the attention away from herself and onto the person who was questioning her, making them supply an answer she didn't want to give.
"Oh no," Sam said crossing his arms. "You're not getting out of this one. This wasn't my idea. You're the one that encouraged Rosin to kiss me. Why? Was it a test? Do we not belong to each other now?"