by J. M. Frey
“Never mind,” Pip says. “I thought I saw . . . but it wasn’t.” Her eyes, when she looks back up, are brilliantly green with unshed tears. “I’m sorry. Ignore me.”
“Never,” I soothe. “Who did you think you saw?”
“Boot—” she begins, but succumbs to a second round of coughing, like she is gagging on his name.
I am torn between wanting to rub her back, to soothe and comfort her, and leaping to my feet and chasing the villain down. I stand, but Pip shakes her head again, sucking hard on the air, and chokes out: “No, leave it. It wasn’t him.”
She implores me with a verdant, sparkling gaze, and I conceed. I sit.
She shuffles and squirms, getting her air back. Finally, after a long, tense moment of wondering if Pip will break down completely, if I will have to hustle her from the taverna and up to our rooms, she looks up.
“I’m fine,” she lies, and swigs her remaining scrumpy to clear her throat. I run my hand down her arm to take her hand, and she allows me to twine my fingers through her own.
“What brought this on?” I ask softly.
“I’m just tired,” Pip says, her free hand touching her neck again, as if someone has just been pressing their hands against it and she can’t quite believe that she has been released and can breathe again. “I didn’t sleep well on the ground last night, and the running and the sneaking . . . I’m just tired, okay?”
“Pip.”
“I’m fine!” The more she says it, the less I believe her. “It’s just . . . this place. It’s . . . exactly the sort of place that Kintyre would love, exactly the sort of place where Bevel would have a massive audience. You know what I mean, right? Enchanted children with round, adoring eyes sitting all around his feet. Swooning maidens fanning themselves with lace hankies. The whole shebang. I’ve imagined myself in places like this for years, wanted to be here, wanted to hear the stories and laugh and clap along, but I . . . there’s no place for me, because I’m not a white face, because I’m a woman, because of the kind of world that Elgar Reed wrote.”
The sorrow in her voice is genuine, but it’s her certainty that she doesn’t belong here that grips my heart so hard between cruel fingers that I actually feel it as a physical pain.
“Oh, no, Pip, no. Of course there is a place for you here.” With me, I want to add, but can’t. Instead, I hold her hand more tightly, pray that she understands what I cannot say with words. “You are so clever, so kind.”
“You don’t really know me,” Pip says, but squeezes back. “This me, here, this isn’t really me. I’m saying things that I wouldn’t normally—” She gasps again, free hand going to her chest, and takes a deep breath, forcing air back into her lungs. She drinks, and I watch the level of her cup carefully. I’m not certain she should have more. Then, after a long moment, she mutters: “I don’t want to talk about who I am anymore.”
“Very well,” I say. “Very well. It is fine. Let’s talk about something else.”
“Let’s talk about him,” Pip says, jerking her chin at man at the bar who must be of dryad blood. His hair is tangled through with hawthorn and holly, his skin cracked and brown like bark. “Why are the only people who are non-white also non-human?”
“There are humans with darker skin, down south,” I say.
“Ah, yes; pirates and savages, harems and harlots,” Pip mutters bitterly. “Spice merchants with pet sandworms. All exotic others, and never the hero, eh?”
She is not incorrect, so I do not know how to respond. Instead, I sip my wine.
Pip runs her palms over her face again, scrubbing at her mouth with the back of her knuckles.
“Never mind me,” she says at length. “I’m just tired and cranky.”
“Shall we retire, then?”
“Yeah. Christ, I’m done,” Pip says. “Let’s just go. I’m drunk-ish. I just wanna . . . go to bed.” She does not say with you, or make any further amorous advances, so I take her words at face value. And she does look exhausted. Between the riding and the fighting, and the less than successful sneaking, I feel quite worn out myself.
Besides, I still need to investigate the quill we acquired, and I am hesitant to do so while we are on the open road. I release her hands, reluctantly. I summon the proprietress with a look, and she packs up our meal for us. I pass her a coin under the table for her discretion.
Together, we make our weary way toward the stairs.
It doesn’t occur to either of us, so full of wine and scrumpy, victory and the glow of mutual understanding, that, in order to achieve our rented room, we will have to pass the group of rough men who are blocking the stairs. I push past first, daring any of them to comment, and none do. It seems as if their rowdy geniality has found other outlets. Until Pip has her foot on the first stair.
She yelps suddenly, and whips around on her heel, smacking at the hand of the man closest to her.
I pause and turn, dinner under one arm and a hand on the hilt of my sword. “My lady?” I ask her, deliberately formal, but my eyes are on the hooting, howling pack of unwashed miscreants.
“Some scumbag just pinched my ass,” she snarls.
“How unfortunate,” I growl, my fingers wiggling on the hilt of my sword to attract the blackguard’s attention to my threat. It is not Smoke, but it is still sharp. “Care to point out which one?”
There is a moment where the hooting ebbs, the men now watching warily to see if Pip will single one of them out. I can tell they are wondering if there will be a brawl. And, by the looks on some of their faces, if there will be an opportunity for more intimate groping in the crush.
Pip scowls, and the howling laughter resumes. The man who pinched her, emboldened by our lack of response, reaches up—this time toward her breast. Pip cracks her hand across his wrist and he just laughs harder.
“Don’t touch me,” she snarls.
“C’mon, princess,” the man slurs. “Lookatchu, all airs and graces. You liked it.”
“No, I did not like it, in point of fact,” Pip says. “Now go away. You’re drunk.”
“I’d still be a better roll than that twiggy little lordling shite,” he says, and, even from the step above Pip, I am doused with the fumes from the beer he’s consumed. “They all have tiny little quill dicks.”
I bristle at this affront to my virility, as any man might. Before I can draw my sword, though, before I can decide if Pip might want me to stand up for her, Pip waves me down. I desperately want to defend her virtue, but she is already speaking.
“Don’t do this,” Pip says. “We’re leaving. Just forget us.”
She turns around again, scowling and muttering something about “Schrödinger’s Rapists.” And then she yelps again, eyes wide. The drunk is pulling back his hand, and I can tell that he has pinched her somewhere far more intimate than her bottom. It fills me with absolute rage that he would take such liberties, not just with Pip but with any other person.
My ability to be calmly detached evaporates in the heat of my anger.
“Enough,” I snarl, putting on my best Shadow Hand voice and almost wishing I had the mask to go with it, just to scare this useless sack of flesh sober.
Pip turns back around to face the drunk, hand on the hilt of her own sword and her jaw so tight that her words are a hiss between her teeth. “Touch me with that hand again, and you will be drawing back a bloody stump. Do I make myself clear?” she snarls.
I viciously stomp down the urge to applaud.
“It’s not my fault you’re pretty,” the man mutters, as if he is blaming her for exactly that.
“Oh, you’re hella charming,” Pip says, voice rife with sarcasm. In case the man in discussion misses it, she adds a very blatant eye roll. “Your mother must be so proud.”
“Silence, hussy.”
“Oh, from princess to hussy? Just because I said no? Even more charming. You sweet-talker, you.”
“Shut your cunt!”
“Holy fuck!” Pip laughs, the expletive startled out of her by the dr
unk’s words like a bird from a bush by a hound. “Oh my god. When was the last time that worked for you? Seriously? Has that ever got you laid? And let me be clear, by ‘laid,’ I mean consensually.”
Now I tense. Pip is starting to take the condescension too far. Slowly, I draw my sword. The Schrödingers put down their various cups and mugs and all turn to face us. The taverna goes suddenly, unnaturally silent.
The spokesman straightens. “I dunno what ‘consensually’ means—”
“Clearly!” Pip snorts.
“—but someone needs a lesson in manners and to learn their place,” he snarls, spittle catching on his tobacco-stained beard, his cheeks turning puce.
“Yes,” Pip agrees. “But as I don’t like teaching drunken idiots, I’m going to spare myself the headache, and you the jargon.” Without looking around, she says to me: “We’re leaving, my lord.”
She takes a step back, crowding against my front and forcing me up the stairs behind her, one riser at a time. We both keep our eyes on the crowd below us, our hands on our swords, and the drunk man seems to decide we’re not worth the trouble. He spits demonstratively on the bottom step, wipes his nose, hitches up his trousers in a move that is clearly meant to be obscene but only looks ridiculous against his generous gut, and turns away.
I sheathe my sword as soon as we are around the corner, out of sight of the crowd. Only then do Pip and I turn our backs to the staircase. I am not too proud to admit that we hike down the hall at a fair clip.
When we reach our cramped garret room, Pip is so nervous and tense that her hands shake as she shuts and locks the door behind us. “That’s too easy to break down,” Pip murmurs, and so, together, we shove the sturdy clothing cupboard in front of the entrance, to act as a further barrier should the Schrödinger and his friends change their minds.
When it is in place, and the windows locked and shuttered tightly, Pip drops down onto one of the two narrow rope beds. She chooses the furthest from both entrances and puts her face in her hands. In the light of the fire the landlord left banked in the hearth at Pip’s back, the room looks almost decent. The cracks in the thickly applied plaster melt into shadow, and the floor appears even. At least the room is clean. It smells pleasantly of lavender and fresh straw—that must be the mattresses.
The meager light is enough for me to see Pip by, as well. Her shoulders are shaking and, for a moment, I fear she is crying, disturbed and frightened by the fight we almost had. It makes my heart seize to think that she has just strategically placed herself in the most tactically advantageous position in the room. That she has sat herself in the place where she will be able to see her assailants coming if they do choose to break down our door and rape her. How terrified she must be.
But when I take a step toward her, it is not crying I hear, but giggles.
She is laughing!
“Oh my god!” she says, throwing back her head and meeting my gaze. “That was insane!”
I cannot help the smile that crawls across my mouth, and so do not fight it. Her mirth is infectious, and soon, I find myself giggling alongside her.
“I thought we were going to get pummeled,” she says, and it is with glee, entirely absent of the kind of fear that most people have in the face of a physical beating. It occurs to me that Pip might be the kind of woman who seeks out thrill and adventure, who is addicted to that surge of aliveness that being in danger offers, and it makes a curl of lust snake through my gut.
Her face is flush with excitement and laughter, her eyes bright and her grin wide, and I cannot help it, I cannot help myself anymore. I swoop down and mash my lips against hers, inelegant and desperate, almost more of a bite than a kiss.
Pip’s hands are in my lapels immediately, pushing me away, a muffled sort of yelp escaping from between our mouths.
“Sorry, sorry,” I say, following the commands of her hands, shame pulling at my insides. Oh, what have I done? To attack her with my affections is utterly base, and no better than the drunks on the stairs!
I try to take a step back, but Pip’s hands tighten on the plackets of my traveling robe and she grabs my knees with her legs, pulling me off balance and back against her. Her lips are swollen and pink, wet and stretched into a grin of poetic proportion.
“I’m not opposed,” she says.
“I should have asked.”
“Then ask,” she says, cheeks pink with mirth.
“May I kiss you?”
“Yes,” Pip says, and this time, she meets me halfway. Her mouth tastes like apples and laughter, and she slows the kiss, touches the tip of her tongue against my bottom lip, sweet and gentle, showing me what she likes. I mimic the movement, lick the seam of her mouth, and she lets me in. She is all heat and slickness, and I tighten my arms around her neck, draw her closer because this is everything I have yearned for, everything I want, and I have waited so long, been so patient, and it is wonderful—
“Whoa, whoa, I’m right here,” Pip says softly, pushing me away gently and wiping her chin with the back of her hand. “Slow down. There’s no need to go caveman on me.”
I blink at Pip owlishly.
“Possessive,” she explains. “I’m not going anywhere. Shhhh.”
Admonished, I stretch my neck and peck a chaste kiss to Pip’s lips. She pulls us both backward, and I settle down on the bed beside her. She leans into me, curling against my side like she was written to fit there.
I wrap my arms around her tentatively and ask, “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Because those men—”
“Forsyth, I’m okay. Really. Don’t think I’m going to let them make me feel ashamed,” Pip scoffs. “They’re just troglodyte assholes with hands that shouldn’t be going places they are.”
“True,” I allow slowly. “And it is quite common in a taverna setting, and the men probably—”
“Whoa,” Pip says, hand outstretched and palm in my direction. “Stop right there before I lose all respect for you. Just because it’s ‘quite common’ doesn’t make it right.”
Her admonishment strikes me between the eyes, stilling my rushing thoughts for a moment. Well, then. Of course.
I nod, slowly. “Just as slaying dragons to steal their hordes under the guise of rescuing maidens was common, but wrong, and was eventually outlawed.”
“Exactly,” she says, and awards me with a stunningly lovely smile that makes my toes curl in my boots and my lips tingle with the memory of her kiss. “God, your world is slowly driving me bonkers, Forsyth. I love it, but the ingrained sexism is astounding. When I first got here, I—” She interrupts herself with a hiss of pain. She had lifted her arm to push her hair back off her face.
“What bruise is this?” I ask, catching her hand before she lowers it. “This is new.”
And it is—there is a rough, red welt around her wrist, fresh enough that it can’t have happened more than a few hours ago. I slide my palm carefully down around the marks, and, yes, it is the exact shape of a man’s hand. Pip flinches and tugs her arm out of my grip, cradling the hurt against her breast.
“Ouch,” she says in reproach.
“Did Gyre do this?” I ask.
Pip shakes her head, slowly, looking up at me again with eyes darkened brown in the low light of our room, imploring me to understand . . . something. But what that something is, I do not know.
“It’s . . . from downstairs.”
“The drunk? The . . . what did you call him, the Schrödinger?”
Pip snorts a laugh. “You heard that?”
“Heard it, yes, but did not understand it.” I kiss the welt and lay her hand down carefully on her stomach.
“Oh, you know, ‘a no is just a yes you haven’t made her say yet.’ Guys who act entitled, like of course every woman they see exists solely to give them something sweet for the eyes or somewhere to wet their dick. No, there’s no human being under there; women aren’t people, so you don’t owe them respect or consideration, and you certainly don�
��t have to take no for an answer. I especially can’t stand the ones who get angry at me when I tell them to fuck off. Like I’m breaking some law by policing my own body.”
She tries to raise her injured wrist again, but I catch it, keep it down by twining my fingers through hers. Her grip on my hand tightens to near pain, but I don’t let go. I won’t abandon her while she is this lost and angry.
“I . . . I never thought of it like that,” I admit.
Pip rolls her eyes. “Well, of course you wouldn’t, you’re a man.”
That stings quite a bit more than I thought it would. I turn my face away, unsure of how to reply. Pip makes an exasperated sound. I let her turn my face back, let her touch the side of cheek with her palm, and try not to wonder if she knows what even such a gentle touch does to my insides.
“No, no, I didn’t mean it like that,” she says softly. “It’s just, you’ve been taught that the world and everyone in it belongs to you, only exists for you, because you’re a man with power. Finding out that the rest of us disagree with you is tough.”
“But how can the attention be so unwelcome? You are beautiful. Don’t you deserve the adoration? Don’t you enjoy it? It is not your right, as a woman?”
“I do enjoy it,” Pip admits. “From people who are genuine. But forcing me to engage when I just want to walk by isn’t awesome. It’s all . . . invasive and . . . yuck. It feels like grime on my skin, you know? Instead of a real compliment, which feels like . . . silk.”
I am reminded, suddenly, of being a very gawky fifteen-year-old, desperate for the approval of a brother who had just returned from his first quest with a new friend, a new sword, and a title bestowed upon him by the king himself. I was growing into my body then, uncertain, self-conscious, ashamed of my height and my new skinniness, and covered with spots and bruises from falling all over my newly enlarged feet. And my brother, sure and broad and comfortable in his own skin, his own muscles, his own confidence and virility, chided and heckled me from the side of the paddock as I tried to saddle Dauntless. His commentary was invasive, hateful, humiliating. The words were those of encouragement, but the tone . . . it made me feel like a monster, inhuman, the barest scrap of nothing.