by Cherry Potts
‘You’ll be careful of the other,’ Brede said,.‘He’s difficult.’
The child nodded, recognising the accent, not listening to the words. As soon as she got a good look at Macsen, she grinned; the meaning behind the voice becoming clear. She nodded again.
‘I’ll mind,’ she answered, accepting the coppers Brede held out.
Sorcha gripped Brede’s hand. She was so used to the weight of keeping Grainne free of pain that she had almost forgotten what it was to not be holding her up. She hadn’t been as free as this since the horse market – since she first heard Brede’s voice. She considered her companion: what was it about her voice?
The Innkeeper was not unduly interested in them. Festivals often brought strangers in search of a room for an hour or two, to sleep off a hangover, to strike a deal in private, more often a meeting of bodies than minds. He scarcely glanced at them.
And at last there was a barred door between them and the world, and the whole city between them and anyone who might need them. A moment to be treasured then, a moment to linger over.
They stood a little apart, listening to the noise outside the shuttered window, tasting the rather foetid air of the closed room. Sorcha could not speak; any word of hers might appear to be witchery and, indeed, might be so.
Brede glanced about the room checking the security, and stopped; there was no danger here, but still. ‘This doesn’t feel right.’
‘How can it not be right?’ Sorcha protested. ‘Isn’t this what you and I have been wanting for weeks?’
‘Yes.’ Brede’s word exploded in the quiet. ‘Goddess, yes; with every bone in my body, but I wanted to – find our time, not be given permission.’
She pulled the sword belt roughly over her head, and rested the blade against the door – unconsciously barring it.
‘What then?’ Sorcha asked. ‘Would you rather –’
‘No.’ Again, explosive near-anger. Sorcha withdrew a step, listening with every hair, every pore of her body, trying to get past Brede’s words, trying to hear what it was she wanted.
Splashes of sunlight lit the darkness where the shutters had rotted. Sorcha watched Brede unlace her mail shirt and stepped forward to help her out of it. The weight of the metal on her hands felt strange, every muscle in Brede’s body screamed with restrained violence, but yes, as Brede said, every bone whispered desire. The splash of sunlight moved across Brede’s face as she turned. Brede’s hands guided Sorcha’s metal coat over her head, taking care not to catch her hair in any of the rings; tender. So close then, almost touching. Sorcha worked her hands free of the metal, acutely aware of the dull slithering thud as the mail hit the floor.
And still there was that reserve in Brede; that caution. Sorcha stood back.
‘Would you rather it was Tegan here with you?’ she asked. Brede’s startled glance met hers and turned back to a frown.
‘No,’ she said shortly, then, catching Sorcha’s expression, she hesitated. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘If Tegan and I had truly wanted –’ She couldn’t finish, suddenly unsure if what she had been about to say was true. ‘Tegan and I would always have been fighting each other. But you – I would fight for you.’
Sorcha laughed, puzzled. She let her eyes fall, away from Brede’s anxious expression, to the taut line of her neck. Almost without thinking, she raised her hand, laying her fingers against the pulse in Brede’s throat. Muscles jumped at her touch, and the rough sound of Brede’s breathing filled her.
‘Forget why we are able to be here,’ Sorcha said quietly, running her fingers up the ridge of tendon to Brede’s jaw, then on to her ear. Her lips followed the same journey, kissing from base of throat to lobe of ear. She could feel the heat of her own breath plume back off Brede’s skin. Brede bent her head and sighed, and the tension in her body was abruptly changed.
‘It seems I don’t need to fight for you,’ Brede said reaching to enclose Sorcha in her arms. Sorcha’s arms folded about Brede, pulling her closer, protective. She buried her face in Brede’s hair, breathing in the warmth of her.
‘Now,’ Sorcha said quietly.
Brede stroked her hair thoughtfully.
‘Now what?’ she asked.
‘Just now. Not soon, not later, not when we can; but now.’
Desire quickened, and Brede smiled uncertainly, not sure what to do with that infinite spread of now. Sorcha had no such doubts; she buried her fingers in Brede’s hair, revelling in the warmth of her scalp. She clasped her hands about Brede’s head, holding her possessively, shaken by a molten rage of longing.
Slowly, she told herself, placing her lips very gently on Brede’s brow. Brede blinked, surprised at the lightness of that touch, so at odds with the pent energy in the hands against her head. She shifted, and the grip relaxed. Encouraged, she snaked her arms about Sorcha, reaching under her shirt for warm flesh. As her fingers touched Sorcha’s ribs, Brede felt her flinch suddenly, and she laughed, pulling her towards the bed.
‘I never thought we’d get this far,’ Sorcha admitted.
‘No?’ Brede asked, exploring the warmth beneath Sorcha’s shirt.
‘No, I thought –’ Sorcha’s thoughts trailed into incoherence as she listened to the new messages flowing through Brede’s bone, sinew, flesh – and her own.
Coherence returned with her immediate needs satisfied, and a more leisurely exploration of Brede’s body. Under her seeking hands and lips Brede relaxed into happy anticipation, then that relaxation melted into a waiting stillness of such intensity that Sorcha was disconcerted, feeling that Brede was no longer with her, that somewhere in her mind, Brede was far away. She drew away slightly, and Brede’s heavy-limbed immobility stirred and she opened her eyes, and remembered to breathe. Her breath was ragged, and her puzzled, seeking eyes were half-blind, as she turned to Sorcha, a protest half-voiced. The protest died, and Brede turned her face away.
‘Don’t hide from me,’ Sorcha whispered.
Brede shook her head, and laughed, but the laugh caught, and became a sigh, and then a deep shaky breath. And then, another gasping breath, and another. The waiting stillness dissolved into shuddering, and the gasps into sobs. Brede wound shaking limbs tightly about Sorcha, hiding tears, muffling confused laughter.
Sorcha held her; waiting for the shaking to still, for the leaping pulse beneath her lips to steady.
At last Brede pulled loose of their tangled limbs, her lips seeking Sorcha’s, still too caught up in emotion for words. There was still an urgency to those kisses that overwhelmed Sorcha.
She pulled away once more, and gazed at Brede’s face.
Brede’s expression was filled with fear and hope and laughter. Such openness, such vulnerability, that Sorcha ached for her, wanting to assuage all that need. Here, at last, was the face that matched the gentle richness of Brede’s voice.
‘How long –’ she asked divining part of Brede’s response.
Brede blinked and said without the slightest hesitation, ‘Nine years, three hundred and sixty-two days, and about seventeen hours.’
Sorcha laughed, not believing her.
‘As precise as that?’ Then the calculation bit. ‘Midsummer Gather, year five, on the banks of the Muirghael River?’
Brede flinched, beginning to build her defences once more.
‘No,’ Sorcha said quickly. ‘Stop hiding from me.’ Brede turned back, but her expression was guarded. ‘Please?’ Sorcha softened her anguished command. Brede shifted silently then sighed.
‘Her name was Devnet, and I do not want to talk about her.’ She untangled her arms from Sorcha and worked her fingers into her hair, pulling gently, raising the hair away from her scalp, letting the sweat cool and dry.
‘So Tegan –’
Brede laughed in protest. ‘I’ve told you twice already. Why do you find it so hard to believe?’
‘You look at her as though she had been your lover, as though there was something unfinished between you. She looks at you as if she regrets you.’
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‘Does she?’ Brede asked, concerned more at the tone of Sorcha’s voice than whether what she said might be true. ‘I’m not going to trawl through my entire life story to reassure you that you are the most significant –’ Sorcha stopped her words with a long, deep kiss. Brede pulled away, ‘– significant lover in my life so far,’ she continued. ‘Because you must know that you are, and I do not want to prompt comparisons from you as to where I am on a scale of the doubtless hundred lives you have graced.’
‘You don’t really think that do you?’ Sorcha asked.
‘I don’t know what I think.’
‘Brede –’
‘Not now. This is our – our now. I don’t want to think about any before, nor what follows. I want to think about how to make sure you never forget this now. I want you to be able to say in ten years, should anyone ask you, Midsummer festival, year fourteen, Westgate Inn.’
‘And who do you think would be asking?’ Sorcha asked, but Brede did not reply, caught up in making sure of the now.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sorcha strayed from sleep, woken by hunger, thirst, and a need to relieve herself. She lay, revelling in the ordinariness of the urgency of her body, finding great pleasure in being woken by her own needs, rather than by Grainne’s. She looked down at Brede’s motionless sleeping huddle, so deeply lost in her dreams that she could scarcely hear her breathing.
She scrambled into clothes and pulled a knife from the muddled pile beside the bed, and went in search of the privy, and then the kitchen. The inn was busy with the festival, there were sleeping bodies laid about the floors as ready tripping hazards to the unwary, but Sorcha was careful.
The kitchen was a low, dark room; and at this hour of the early morning, was unattended, save by a sleeping bondservant, a restless cat, and rows of unbaked loaves, left to rise overnight. Soon, someone would be up to place the first consignment into the waiting oven, but that wasn’t Sorcha’s concern. She hoped for some bread already baked.
The bondservant stirred, woken by the slight change in temperature as the kitchen door opened. She sat up, and saw what appeared to be an armed warrior standing in the doorway. The cat, observing movement, made an enquiring noise.
‘I suppose you’d know where they keep leftovers?’ Sorcha asked the cat.
‘She does,’ the bondservant answered, ‘but she can’t open the cupboard.’
‘Well then,’ Sorcha suggested, ‘perhaps you’ll oblige me?’
‘You’ll have to pay,’ the girl warned.
Sorcha merely nodded, and waited. The girl opened a heavy door, and hauled out half a loaf and a corner of cheese.
‘Is that all there is?’
‘All there is that I can get at without keys.’
‘Any water? Anything sweet?’
The girl nodded, waved a hand in the direction of the water pail, and climbed up to the high shelf where the stone jar of honey was kept. As she handed the heavy jar down, the bondservant got a better look at her visitor.
‘You’re with the Plains woman?’
Sorcha nodded cautiously, dipping the mug for a second time.
‘Ask where she got her horse. It’s stolen. So’s yours, but you wouldn’t know; she does. I’ve seen the mark. Tell her that.’
Brede pulled the blanket about her shoulders and leant against the wall, as she settled beside her.
‘Food,’ Sorcha said, ‘how long have you been awake?’
‘A while. What did you manage to find?’
‘Not a great deal, there’s no one but the stable-hand in the kitchen at this time of night. Enough.’
‘What time is it?’ Brede asked uncertainly.
‘A couple of hours ‘til dawn.’
Sorcha edged onto the bed, careful not to spill the water. Brede sighed in appreciation as Sorcha handed her the mug. The water was warm, slightly bitter – but exactly what she needed. Her thirst slaked, Brede brought her attention to the slightly dry bread, rich cheese, and the small portion of honeycomb. Sorcha licked honey off her fingers with great concentration.
‘You’d best not leave any crumbs, you’ll attract the rats into bed with us,’ Brede said.
Sorcha gave her a considering look. ‘What crumbs?
Brede picked a morsel of bread from the lacing of Sorcha’s shirt, collecting crumbs with the tip of a honey-coated finger. Sorcha loosened the shirt and threw it into a far corner, crumbs and all.
Brede glanced from Sorcha to her own honey-covered fingers. Sorcha followed the glance, and made a grab for Brede’s hand.
Brede evaded her.
‘This is my share of the honey, and I’m having every last taste of it, thank you.’ She set to licking her hands clean.
Sorcha soon discovered that Brede had not been successful in removing all the honey from her fingers, setting her body alight with a feeling so intolerably precious that she feared to let Brede out of her arms. The reality of the world outside the room became uncertain, and all that mattered was the now, Brede, warm and lithe beneath her hands, and the sensations that Brede coaxed from her body.
Brede dozed in Sorcha’s arms, not sure whether it was still the same day, not much caring; almost content to lie in the warmth and ease of slaked desire, to relish the nearness of her lover, and forget the world, but it was not so simple. She rubbed her face, trying to banish the unease.
Sorcha’s lips against her shoulder traced the lines of her scars, and idled against her neck in gentle anticipation of rekindling passion. The quiet space about them no longer seemed infinite, and Brede was no longer listening to that comforting silence.
The roar of the market had subsided somewhat, settling into individual noises: an argument between two drunks, grumbling against the wall of the inn, the grate and thump of a stall being dismantled, horses stamping in the stables immediately below the shuttered window.
Those lips on her shoulder, the scar beneath Sorcha’s questing mouth told her what it was that disturbed her peace.
Sorcha felt restlessness of the wrong kind quiver through Brede and ended the journey her mouth had been taking along the contours of Brede’s body.
‘What is it?’ she protested.
The sun had moved round to once more force its ragged way into the inn’s smallest bedroom. The patches of light from the rotted shutter lay across them, lighting Brede’s shoulder, Sorcha’s breast. Brede raised herself on one elbow, casting about the room, looking for her sword, her clothes.
‘We should not be here,’ she said impatiently.
‘What is there for us to do?’ Sorcha moved to prevent Brede from rising, wanting to recreate the sense of timelessness and ease that had held them safe for so brief a while.
A sudden, sharp cry from the stable below stilled her motion.
Brede froze, trying to identify the sound. Stamping and shouting, cursing, a young voice raised in protest. Were it not for their quiet, perhaps she would not have heard; no one else seemed to have remarked the disturbance. A voice cried out in pain and fury. Brede couldn’t ignore it. She leapt up, groping for her abandoned sword.
Sorcha scrambled after, throwing clothes on, but wary of interfering.
Brede tried to place what it was that cut through the threads of her desire.
Again the voice cried out, and she knew it. The child in the stable called her, screaming for help in a language she was no longer glad to hear in this city.
Brede forced the shutters free and flung them wide. Sorcha blinked in the unexpectedly bright sun and wordlessly handed Brede clothes.
They could hear, now, the stamping and snorting of horses, a general cacophony of distress in the stables.
Brede couldn’t see the stables for the roof under the window, which covered the outermost stalls. She thrust her arms into sleeves, scrambled into her breeches. She glanced at Sorcha, and almost laughed, so rumpled and dishevelled a pair they made.
‘I may need you,’ she said as she climbed awkwardly from the window to the slopin
g roof, hoping it would take her weight.
Sorcha grabbed her own sword and climbed out, sliding down the roof to land in an undignified heap in the yard. She looked around, and cursed.
Brede crouched over a still figure, one outstretched hand touching the man, her expression hidden by her loose hair. Sorcha reached her in two strides, and turned the body over.
‘What did you do to him?’ she asked, disquieted at the bloody mess.
Brede shook her head.
‘Not me.’ She looked about, seeking the cause of the man’s brutal death. ‘Your horse, I think.’
Sorcha stared up at the great bulk of Macsen, standing apparently docile but for the set of his ears, and the blood and brains spattered up his legs.
‘Be easy,’ Sorcha suggested.
He stamped his blood-splashed hooves: a threat. Sorcha backed away, disturbed by this challenge from a beast she thought she controlled.
‘Macsen,’ she sang, and his head drooped toward her. ‘Am I the enemy, great one?’
The horse shuddered, acknowledging her. She stepped forward, raising her hand to his neck, waiting for permission before she touched.
‘So, what is it then?’ she asked, gentling his twitching. She stepped closer, running her hand along his side, feeling the sweat on his skin. He backed, flinging up his head once more, and she slapped him impatiently and spelled him to stillness, no longer prepared to be polite. She glanced around the stable.
‘Is this the one who called you?’ she called to Brede, indicating the huddled child, crushed into the corner of the stall.
Brede pushed past her and knelt beside the child.