“I sweat like a bull,” Brax said ruefully one day when we were all rubbing ourselves down afterwards. “But you always smell so good.” I smiled and pulled my tunic on quickly to hide the shudders that still trembled through me.
It was a few days later that Ro approached me after supper, squatting down beside me near the fire. We smiled at each other and spent a quiet time stripping the bark off sticks and feeding it to the flames. Eventually, he said, “Share my blanket tonight?”
I’d seen from the first night how it was between them, bedding two at a time but in a relationship of three. I had already guessed at their idea of what a quad should be. I wondered how sophisticated people handled this sort of thing.
“No, but thank you,” I said finally. “It’s not you, Ro, you’re a fine person and I’m pleased to be part of your quad. It’s just—”
“No need to explain,” he said, which only made me feel more awkward. But the next day he treated me not much differently. By the afternoon I had recovered my equilibrium, and I’d noticed their quiet conversations, so I was only a little surprised to find Lucky at my elbow after practice.
“Let’s take a walk,” she said cheerfully. “Fetch water, or something.”
“Fine,” I said, and went to gather everyone’s water skins. “No need to rush,” Braxis said. Ro nodded agreeably.
“Fine,” I said again, and off we went.
We found a stream and loaded up with water, and then sat on the bank. I laid back with my head on my arms while Lucky fiddled with flower stems. Then she leaned over me and kissed me. Her mouth was dry and sweet. But nothing moved in me. I sat up and set her back from me as gently as I could. She didn’t look angry, only amused. “Would Braxis have been a better choice for water duty today?”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Don’t you know what you like, then?”
“You know what?” I said, “Let’s go back to the others so I only have to have this conversation once.”
We all sat around, and they chewed on hand-sized chunks of bread while I talked.
“Anyone would be proud to have you as lovers, all of you.” It was nice to see the way they glowed for each other then, with nothing more than smiles or a quick touch before turning their attention back to me. “It’s not about you.”
I stopped, long enough that Braxis raised an eyebrow. It was hard to say the next thing. “If you need that from your fourth, then I’ll help you find someone else when we get to Lemon City, and no hard feelings.”
We were all quiet for a while. Finally Braxis wiped the crumbs off her hands. “Oh, well,” she said. “Of course we don’t want another fourth, Mars, we’d rather have you even if we can’t have you, if you take my meaning.” Lucky hooted, and I went red in the face, which just made Lucky worse.
“No, truly,” Braxis went on when Ro had finally put a hammerlock on Lucky. “We like you. We’re starting to fight well together. We learn from each other. We trust ourselves. We can be a good quad. The other,” she shrugged, and Lucky made a rude gesture, “well, it’s nice, but it isn’t everything, is it?”
It stayed with me, that remark, while I did my share of the night chores, and later as I lay on my back in the dark, listening to Ro’s snores and the small, eager sounds that Braxis and Lucky made together under a restless sky of black scudding clouds. It was strange to think about sex with them so intent on it just a knife-throw away. It’s nice but it’s not everything, Brax had said: But for those moments it sounded like it was everything for the two of them.
I hoped they stayed willing to take me as I was. I didn’t know if I could explain that what they did wrapped in their blankets was like being offered the lees of fine wine. I could tell they thought I was still grieving for Ad, or Tom: Let them believe that, if it would obscure the truth of what I had become and what stirred me now. Keep your mouth shut, Mars, I told myself, and twisted onto my side away from them. They’ll never understand and you’d never he able to explain. They’ll think you’re insane or perverted or worse, and they’ll send you packing back to your no-name village before you can say “oh, go ahead and fuck me if that’s what it takes to let me stay with you.”
I never was much good at cheering myself up: But in spite of it all I finally fell asleep, and I woke to a hug from Braxis and pine tea from Ro, to a sleepy pat on the shoulder from Lucky, and for the first time in oh-so-long I felt the hope of belonging.
It took weeks to get to Lemon City, mostly because we were in no hurry. There was always so much to do each day, so much exploring and talking and the hands-on work of turning ourselves into a fighting partnership. And other kinds of work, as well. In spite of what they’d said, the three of them made a concerted effort to seduce me, and I did not know how to reassure them that they had already succeeded, that they had turned me into a banked coal with a constant fire in my belly. “Damn your cold heart, Mars,” Lucky spat at me one day, “I hope someday someone you really want turns you down flat, and then see how you like it!”
“Luck, it’s not like that!” I called out after her as she stalked off down a side trail into the woods.
“Leave her,” Ro advised. “She’ll accept it. We all will.” He and Brax exchanged a wry look, and I felt terrible. I must be cold, I thought, cold and selfish. It was such a small thing to ask, to make people I loved happy. But it wasn’t just my body they wanted, it was me, and they would never reach me that way, and then we would all still be unsatisfied. And I was not willing to explain. So it was my fault, my flaw. My failure.
I was packing my bedroll when Lucky came back. “Oh, stop,” she said impatiently. “You know what I’m like, Mars, don’t take it so personally. Just stay away from me tonight and I’ll be fine in the morning.” And she was; and the next afternoon, when she took hold of me so unknowingly, I gave her myself. I gave to all of them, a dozen times each day.
“The hardest part about all this,” Brax said one evening as we all stretched out near our fire, “is overcoming all the sword training.”
“Whaddya mean?” Ro mumbled around a mouthful of cheese.
“Well, the sword makes your arm longer and gives it a killing edge, so that you still strike or punch, sort of, but it’s with the blade. But the stormfighting, well, like Mars is always saying, the whole point is to become the center of the fight and bring your enemy in to you. So with the sword we keep people out far enough to slice them up, and with the storm art we bring them in close enough to kiss. It does my head in sometimes trying to figure out where I’m supposed to be when.”
“You think it’s hard for you?” I replied. “You’re not the one with half a dozen cuts on every arm and leg trying to learn it the other way around. I always let Lucky get too close.”
“So maybe there’s a way to do both.” Lucky reached out to swipe a piece of cheese from Ro’s lap.
“What do you mean?” Ro asked again.
“Pig. Give me some of that. I mean that maybe there’s a way to combine the moves. All the sword dances I do are based on wheels, being able to turn and move in any direction with your body and the sword like spokes on a wheel. It’s not that different from being at the center of a wind, or whatever.”