Laret laughed and heard the nervousness there. “You offered to show me where your people start.”
Maeve chuckled in the back of her throat, making Laret tense all over. “Like this.” She buried her hands in Laret’s hair and kissed her neck wildly.
Laret gave herself over to the feelings Maeve inspired in her, and they lay down among the ferns, discovering each other in the deepening night.
*
Laret was an inexhaustible ball of energy, and Maeve began to wonder how she’d kept it contained. Or maybe it was always seething just below the surface. After their passionate beginning in the forest, they’d stumbled back to the house. Laret seemed happy to give pleasure, but she was so shy with her body. Maeve wanted to say that she didn’t care what parts Laret possessed because they were all Laret, but she knew words wouldn’t work. Only deeds. So Maeve started at the top again, kissing and caressing and driving Laret mad until she accepted pleasure at last. When Maeve crawled on top of her, she writhed, shifting her hips, and it was up to Maeve to set the pace. She minded not one bit.
When the first rays of the sun grew around the door, Maeve sighed at the feel of Laret beside her. She’d fallen asleep when her energy had finally run out, but Maeve couldn’t sleep, could only remember all they’d done and smile. Laret had been as warm as expected, but Maeve hadn’t pictured the scars that streaked her lithe body. The price of blood magic, Maeve supposed, though she didn’t want to press unless Laret offered.
“It’s rude to stare,” Laret said, her eyes just slits in the dim light.
Maeve shrugged. “Then I’ll have to live with being rude.”
Laret smiled softly. The blanket had slipped down, revealing her small breasts. Maeve had been startled when she’d taken off the false breasts the night before, but she’d tried to keep her reaction in check. Now, as Laret pulled the blanket up to cover herself, Maeve resisted the urge to tug it back down again, wanting Laret to be comfortable. Instead, she leaned in for a kiss.
“We should be up soon,” Maeve said.
“I understand if you’re too tired to stay in bed with me.”
Maeve nibbled her ears. “Don’t challenge me, witch. I showed plenty of fortitude last night.”
“I cannot disagree.” She toyed with one of Maeve’s braids a moment. “What does this mean for us, Maeve, among your people?”
Maeve sighed. Laret had said that her people usually had one lover at a time, bonding to the same one for years even if they no longer cared for each other. “I’ve told you. Bondmates do not keep only to each other. We can all three live here together for as long as you like.”
Laret laughed and rolled her eyes. “Maybe I’ll go find us another lover, and then when Aesa comes back, you can prove to her that having two at once does indeed work.”
“And then she joins in? I don’t know if this bed is big enough. Besides, why do you get to pick the other lover? Don’t think I could find one?”
“That’s not what I—”
“Just because your hair is better looking than mine…”
Laret sputtered a laugh. “Fine. Get your own, and I’ll get my own, and we really will have to have a bigger bed.”
Maeve tickled her. “And I suppose yours will be achingly beautiful?”
“Oh yes, far better than your scabby choices.”
“Ugh! Why are mine covered in scabs?”
“No teeth and missing fingers.”
Maeve laughed, threw a leg over her, and sat across her hips. “Do you know what being a bondmate means?”
“Living together?”
Maeve shook her head. “It’s sharing a life. Many people can live together, but few really share one another’s lives. Aesa had three parents, and they were all bondmates to one another. People who share your home can come and go.” She put her hands together. “Bondmates take a path together, and when the paths diverge, they are bondmates no longer.” She held her hands up, separate.
Laret closed her fingers over Maeve’s. “And your path and Aesa’s? And yours and mine?”
Maeve smiled softly. “We can work something out.” She cocked her head. “What I’m worried about are my scabby, toothless lovers. Will you share their path?”
“You forgot the missing fingers.” She bucked, knocking Maeve forward and pressing their lips together.
Maeve returned her kisses for several long moments. “We should get up. We need to air out this house.”
Laret laughed and released her. As they dressed, Laret wrapped her scarf around her neck and dressed in all her layers.
“What are you doing?” Maeve asked.
“We’re going outside, yes?”
“But you don’t need all that anymore.”
“We might meet someone.”
“But, Laret…”
Laret sighed. “I told you once that what people think doesn’t matter, and I must confess I only use that thought when it’s convenient. I live as the woman I truly am, but for that to be reality, I need all this. I need people who see me to think my body matches my soul.”
Maeve gripped her hand tightly. “But if everyone comes to know you as I do—”
Laret barked a laugh. “Not in the exact same way, I think.” She laid a finger on Maeve’s lips. “I put on these trappings for myself before I do so for anyone else. It’s about how they make me feel as much as it is about other people. And when someone calls me she, her, sera, or even, ‘Hey, woman!’ it adds a drop to this well of confidence inside me. I feel so…normal.”
Maeve kissed her cheek. “You are normal, just in your own way. I think normal is different for everyone.”
“If that were true, they’d call it by another name, wouldn’t they?” She turned Maeve’s hands over and kissed the palms. “It’s hard not to covet normal, to not be thrilled when you can pass for it. And it took me a lot of time to be able to say, ‘I’m not like most people, and I’m fine with that.’ In my secret heart, I feel that way, but I still can’t reveal myself to everyone, and not just because I’d often be risking my safety. I’m a woman, and I wish to live as one, and having others assume I am is part of what makes me happy.”
“You make me happy,” Maeve said. “And I think I understand. You have my promise that I’ll never share anything you’ve revealed to me without your permission.”
Laret kissed her deeply. “How is it you don’t have twelve bondmates already?”
“I don’t know that many people who are missing at least one finger.”
When Laret kissed her again, Maeve couldn’t keep her hands from wandering. As they broke apart, they both breathed hard. “I thought we had to be up?” Laret asked.
“The goats can wait a little longer.” She’d just started undressing Laret again when the door banged open, framing Aesa in the brightness outside.
Chapter Thirteen
Looking at Maeve’s face, Aesa didn’t think a person’s eyes could get any wider. Then she saw Laret. Their expressions told a story, one that was continued by Maeve’s hands inside Laret’s tunic.
Maeve let her arms fall to her sides. “Aesa.”
Aesa had known this would happen from the first time she saw Maeve and Laret together. A third person had joined their bed before, but they’d always been together when it happened. For some reason, Aesa thought of Ell’s touch creeping up her thighs.
“Aesa.” Laret this time.
She knew her own name. What did they expect her to do?
“Wel…welcome home,” Maeve said.
Aesa tilted her head, wondering if they’d lie to her now, claim they’d been talking or helping each other dress. She thought she should have been saying that aloud, but what came out was, “I’m not here for long.”
“Oh.” Maeve’s face was carefully pleasant, giving no clue as to whether the idea pleased her or not. Laret still looked like a frightened horse.
Aesa was surprised by how much she didn’t feel. Maybe some of the calm of Ell’s people had washed on to her, or
maybe she had too many other things to think about.
The journey back to Skellis had been full of thoughts, keeping Aesa separate from the easy camaraderie of her shipmates. Hilfey had watched her as if privy to her thoughts, but Aesa kept her teeth closed on them. Her second raid with her first crew, and she couldn’t focus on the shifting waves or the piles of loot or even the call to glory. She kept seeing Ell in every direction she turned, kept seeing the pool and the blissful, thoughtless fini faces. She’d grinned into the teeth of fate, but when her back was turned, it had bitten her.
When they’d reached Skellis a few hours before sundown, Aesa had grabbed her gear and hurried off the ship, but not before Hilfey sprinted past her toward a man with loose thrall’s hair and several children. She’d lifted the smallest into her arms and kissed the man deeply.
Aesa had sighed, then, thinking she should have been rejoicing at the chance to see Maeve again, but Ell stood in her thoughts instead, her people behind her, stuck being thralls for all eternity.
“Aesa,” Hilfey had called, “come meet my family.”
They’d greeted her warmly, but she hurried past their introductions. “I’ll see you when the call goes out, Hilfey.”
Hilfey had caught her arm, looking deep into her eyes. “Stay the night.”
Aesa had shaken her head. “I can’t.”
With a sigh, Hilfey had let her go. “Bring your Maeve next time. We’ll all have a drink together.”
Aesa had nodded, but that wouldn’t happen unless Gilka allowed thralls on the next raid. But then, maybe Laret had found Maeve a wyrd, and she wouldn’t need to go as a thrall. Who knew what blood magic could do besides curse people?
The thought had stopped Aesa in the middle of the street, making others swear as they ran into each other behind her. Laret was a curse breaker, and what were Ell’s people if not cursed? Aesa bet that blood magic could take another person’s will and crush it.
Clarity had surrounded her, then, making the slick, muddy streets, the harsh cries of gulls, and the stench of fish stand out in stark relief. If Maeve and Laret came to Fernagher, they could free the fini, and that would break the hold that Ell had cast on Aesa’s thoughts. Then she could raid and sail and plunder without these awful ponderings swirling in her mind.
But she’d have to break Gilka’s orders in order to tell anyone about the fini. Well, she didn’t have to mention Fernagher itself, nor where it was or how it was found. Still, anyone could use her carelessness to take her place on Gilka’s ship. Why should she give them the chance?
Because Ell and her plight meant more than Gilka?
Aesa had growled at the thought and made her feet start moving again. Nothing meant more than Gilka, than the raid, than her name echoing among her people for all time.
Nothing but a woman of ethereal beauty who’d had her life stolen from her. Nothing but an entire race of people forced to be thralls, robbed of the possibility of anything greater.
It had been a very long walk home, taking all night. Several times, she’d regretted her decision not to stay with Hilfey, but then, she might have missed the looks on Maeve’s and Laret’s faces now.
Even knowing exactly what she’d interrupted, Aesa knew what to say next, knew what was more important than any wandering of Maeve’s. “I have a tale for you both. Someone needs your help.”
They sat and listened quietly, Maeve with a look of alarm that bordered on horror, and Laret staring into space with a thoughtful expression.
When she’d finished, they digested the information before anyone spoke. “The fini went into this pool willingly?” Laret asked.
Aesa nodded. “The crew calls them sheep for good reason. When I kept Ell from the pool, she seemed different, more emotional.”
Maeve covered her mouth as if she might be sick. “Maybe they only have to force them once.”
“Can you describe the pool?” Laret asked.
“A hole in the ground with water in it.”
Laret gave her half a smile. “Anything else?”
“I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
“Was anyone chanting?”
“No,” Aesa said, trying to remember. “I didn’t stay long. I wanted to get away from it.” Maeve covered her hands, and Aesa resisted the urge to pull away. “I’m fine, Maeve. I wasn’t wounded.”
“Did any of these guards use magic?”
Aesa told them about the staff that killed witches. Maeve’s mouth turned down in distaste, but Laret leaned forward, absorbing the knowledge. “Do you know where they’re keeping this staff?” Laret asked. “If I can study it, I may be able to determine if it’s blood magic.”
“Do you think you can break the pool?” Aesa asked. “Free Ell’s people?”
Laret shrugged. “Are you certain they want to be free?”
Aesa’s mouth worked for a moment before she could speak. “Who wouldn’t want to be free?”
“They should have the option,” Maeve said.
Laret glared at them. “So, you’re going to kill all the people that take care of them and leave them to starve?”
“We don’t know that the guards care for them,” Aesa said. “There are these people who wear gray. They do…” She searched her memory. “Well, I know they fetch water.”
Laret lifted her arms and then dropped them. “You said this woman Ell seemed angry when you kept her from the pool. What if she needs the magic to live?”
“She seemed fine.”
“Like you said, you didn’t stay long enough to see what happened.”
Aesa slammed her fists down. “I did what I could!” And she almost reached across the table to grab Laret, flashing back to Maeve’s hands on Laret’s body, but that still didn’t make her as angry as the thought of someone forced into being a thrall.
Maeve leaned between them. “We should go see for ourselves.”
Aesa took a deep breath. “Runa spoke about bringing some witches who didn’t have wyrds or wylds.”
“To free the thralls?” Maeve asked.
“To break the guards’ magic.”
“In order to kill them,” Laret said.
Aesa ground her teeth. “You wouldn’t have to. We could sneak away—”
Laret barked a laugh. “And then how would we get home? Return to the ship and pretend we’d been with them the entire time?”
Aesa’s face grew tight as she tried to keep her temper in check, to keep her thoughts on Ell. “If you’re so smart, you think of something.”
Laret seemed as if she might retort, but Maeve laid a hand over hers. Aesa took the opportunity to stare at the wall.
“Laret,” Maeve said, “you have to help these people. It’s what you do!”
“You don’t know that they’re cursed.”
“And you don’t know that they aren’t,” Maeve said. “Even if some of them wish to stay thralls, some may want to change.”
“And if I do free them, it’s to be what? Subjugated by Gilka and her ilk?”
Aesa stood slowly. “We didn’t harm them.”
“You didn’t,” Laret said, pointing at her. “What of the others?”
Aesa had to look away, remembering. “They should have a chance to be more than they are.”
“More than thralls, you mean.” Laret sat back with a sigh. “What is it with your people’s obsession with being warriors?”
“It’s more than that,” Maeve said.
“You’re saying that being an ordinary person, a farmer or healer or fisherman, isn’t enough.”
Aesa began to pace. “It’s about striving, knowing that anyone, despite being the child of farmers or healers or fisherman, can be worthy of epic tales.”
“I think ordinary people are quite worthy of their own tales,” Laret said.
Aesa smirked. “That’s easy to say when you’re a curse breaker with a wyrd.”
“And another thing entirely when you’re a healer of little importance,” Maeve said, staring at nothing.
Aesa crossed around the table and hesitated only a moment before she touched Maeve’s shoulder, feeling the weight of all their time together and wondering if any simple event could erase it. “You are more than that. You always will be. You’ve been my hero more than once.”
Maeve laughed and hugged her, fitting comfortably to Aesa’s side. “Well, I know I still have chores to do. And we all have plans to make.”
Laret cleared her throat. “I’ll, um, I’ll be in the garden.” She hurried out the door.
“Aesa.” Maeve laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m glad you’re all right.”
Aesa rubbed her temples. She wanted a nap and badly, but one glance at the tousled bed coverings, and her stomach turned.
Maeve said something else, but Aesa had stopped listening. She waited until Maeve went outside and then swung up into the bed near the ceiling.
*
Laret dug in the dirt, pulling weeds, one of her favorite forms of release, but it couldn’t rid her of her anger. She kept picturing Aesa’s face in that doorway. Guilt had eaten her to the core, and that set off the spark of anger within her, and then angry words had just kept tumbling out.
She tried to push past it, to picture an entire island full of people under the sway of a curse. It didn’t sound possible. She supposed Aesa could be wrong, and that these fini had simply chosen to be…
What? Slaves? Aesa had seen no collars or brands. She’d said they were submissive to the point where they wouldn’t run from danger and tried to comfort their attackers. Who would do such a thing? And what of the pool? If it wasn’t mystical, it could be dosed with some plant or mineral.
Laret yanked another weed from the ground. Aesa didn’t have enough information. Like many of her people, she’d just acted, just changed someone’s life without thinking of the ramifications.
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