“Finally reached the point of trying to drown yourself?” There was a quiet voice nearby, and he looked up to see her watching him, squatting near his armor.
“No,” he said, ignoring the levity in her voice. “Just trying to remove the accumulation of weeks of sweat and sick smell.”
“Not a bad plan, as such plans go.” Her clothing hung loose, no cloak or armor visible from where he sat. She was down to the barest essentials, the daggers on her hips staring at him like they had eyes of their own. Her curves were smooth, and the shirt she wore had enough of a gap at the top that he was left not needing to imagine the breasts he had seen so many times of late. “Did you have any reason for it besides just the feeling of uncleanliness?”
“Yes.” He nodded slowly.
“Must I inquire why?”
He stared back at her, waiting, with her head cocked, her slightly pointed incisors hanging out of her deep blue lips. “Must I say it?”
She squatted there, and he wondered if she was visible to Martaina, as low as her profile was, with the grass swaying and almost touching her cheeks. “Before, I’ve been content to let it pass. But now, yes. I want to hear you say it.”
“Because I want you,” Cyrus said. “Because I crave you and the relief you bring.”
“Relief?” She unknotted the strings at the front of her shirt and shrugged out of it there in front of him, let her dark blue skin show to the world. She stepped out of a boot with a half-step, not ever leaving the ground but coming to her hands and knees. The other boot came off with ease, as she crawled toward the bank of the stream on all fours, naked to the waist. Her cloth breeches came unlaced with only a minimal effort from her, and slid off just as her hand reached the rocky edge of the water.
He waited for her, felt the rising tide within him, and when he felt her first kiss, it was as though the call within him were answered, the raging tide rising was dismissed. They were there for quite some time, the splashing of the water around them the evidence of a particularly noisy bath. Cyrus neither knew nor cared whether Martaina saw; she doubtless knew anyway. It matters not, he thought in the midst of it. But in truth, he knew otherwise.
They lay on the grassy bank for a while afterward, her head on his shoulder, not speaking. “Why?” Cyrus asked, into the silence of the setting sun.
“Why what?” Aisling’s voice came back to him, jaded, wary.
“Why do you think I’m doing this?” he asked, spent, not even close to sure about what answer he would get. “Do you think it’s because I-”
“I try not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” Aisling said, and she rolled over, grasping at her shirt and pulling it on. “Though, I do occasionally put a gift in my-”
“There’s the Aisling of old,” Cyrus said, not moving, feeling the hard dirt against his back. “I had thought that perhaps finally getting what you wanted would rid you of your desire to be crass.”
He saw the subtle shrug of her shoulders as she knotted the strings that knit up her shirt. “Have I gotten what I wanted?” She didn’t look back at him. “I did get you, I suppose, and I did always say I wanted this, so I suppose in that way I got what I wanted.”
“You were perhaps expecting me to be more … enthusiastic?” He rolled onto his side to watch her as she dressed, still squatting low and keeping her body down, out of sight of camp.
“I could hardly ask for a more enthusiastic partner, at least on a purely physical level.” Her legs folded around in front of her like a gymnast and she slid into her pants, taking care to knot them back up. “Especially so soon after being an invalid.”
“I’m not the same, am I?” He didn’t watch her now, he let himself lean back to the ground, felt his wet hair slop into the dirt.
“No,” she said, but her voice seemed cavalier and uncaring about the whole thing. “But who of us stays the same for our whole lives?”
“What would you have of me, then?” Cyrus looked up at the sky, the deepening shades of evening coming out now.
“Nothing that I think you would be capable of giving at present,” she said, and he watched her put her boots on, one at a time, her white hair bound over her shoulder and leaving water marks on her tan shirt. “Which is why I don’t ask.”
“Do you think me fragile?” He couldn’t seem to muster any umbrage for his question.
“I think you’re already broken,” she said, and stood, looking down at him. “But that’s all right. We all break some time; and I’m here, willing to take what you’re willing to give and willing to give what you need right now. Your spirals don’t concern me; you’re a big boy, and you’ll work it out in time.”
“Will I now?” He let a faint amusement creep into his voice, and he saw a whirl of white clouds tinged orange by the coming sunset. “That’s reassuring.”
“Be reassured, then,” she straddled him, her cloth pants against his abdomen, and she leaned over to kiss him, deep and full on the mouth. He felt her passion behind it, the force, but he had none of his own to match it with, just the slight stir of something detached, and far away, a physical reaction that told him that if she stayed where she was, her clothing would need to be removed again …
As if she could sense his line of thought, she broke from him. “See?” She gave him a faint smile, and the long incisors poked out of her lips again. Time was he would have thought them predatory, but now he saw the hurt, the edge behind her eyes, the strain that she didn’t intend to loose. She stood, and with a whirring of the grass, she took the first steps away.
He lay there by the stream, trying to gather enough energy to bring himself back to the water the clean off the grit accumulated during his and Aisling’s lovemaking. He couldn’t find it, though, and remained there, staring at the sky, until the first body came drifting down the current only a few minutes later.
Chapter 57
Vara
Day 1 of the Siege of Sanctuary
There were no catapults hurling rock through the air, no siege towers making their way over the plains, no arrows filling the skies above the wall. There was nothing but the sound of an army outside, the raucous cheers, the battle hymns, the shouts and glee of the invaders poised less than a mile from the Sanctuary walls, waiting, as though they would come across the open distance and split the walls wide.
“They sit, they wait,” Thad said, addressing the officers, who were gathered around the Council Chambers. “Of course they stop the flow of convoys along the major roads nearby, but that’s to be expected. We can’t see them, of course, but you know they’ll have taken all the grain that’s being shipped through the crossroad north of here.”
Alaric watched Thad from behind templed hands, as always. This time was different, Vara thought, in that the Ghost’s brow was stitched together like storm clouds on the horizon, as though thunderheads were bound to streak down his face and unleash fury on the first poor bastard to cross before him. “Every day they hold the crossroads is another day they hold the Plains of Perdamun in their grip, another day closer to the harvest, another day closer to the eventual starving of Reikonos.”
“Are we actively rooting for Reikonos now?” Erith said, causing everyone to turn and look at her. “I mean, I know we’re sympathetic to the humans, but the Confederation and the Council of Twelve? Bumbling idiots. They did want this war, after all.”
“The city of Reikonos is the largest in Arkaria with over two million people,” Alaric said. “Should the dark elves take it, they will not be merciful to the occupants-or the human race.”
“Oh, so we are rooting for the Council of Twelve,” Erith said, not chagrined. “Okay, well, that’s good to know.”
“Personally, I’m more worried about me, then the rest of you, then our members, then the applicants, and somewhere down the list, the flower garden,” Vaste said. “I’ll worry about Reikonos and the rest of the human race when the destruction of all of the above is not hanging over my head. Especially the flowers because they’re so pretty.”