“Well, welc’m to th’ world, breyn stranger.” He pushed his arms into the sleeves and began buttoning his shirt. “Was wonderin’ when y’d wake.” He went to check the soup, tasted it and turned, holding up the ladle. “Hungry?”
“What is this place?”
“I’m as temp’ry as you, blown here by the wind. Whoever lived here left long time ago.” He started ladling soup in a pannikin. “Name’s Simms Nadaw, out of Dirge Arsuid.”
“Long way from home.”
“Way it goes.”
“Maks. Passing through everywhere, lighting nowhere. Recently at least.”
“Right. Feel good enough to sit up?” He took the pannikin and a spoon to the hearth and set it on the tiles, went back to the stove. “Get some of that down you. Start warming your insides well as your out.”
“Give it a try.” After a small struggle Maks managed to raise himself high enough to fold his long legs and get himself balanced with his shoulder to the fire. “Weaker ‘n I thought. Soup smells good.” He tasted it. “Is good.”
“Hot anyway.” Simms spread a square of cheesecloth over his mug, poured himself some tea, rinsed the cheesecloth and repeated with another mug, then filled another pannikin with soup. Over his shoulder he said, “You want some tea? It’s yours, I poke through y’ things, they over there.” He nodded at the table.
Maks looked amused. “See you found my mug.”
“That I did. Take it that mean yes.”
“Take it right.” He set the pannikin down. “The mules?”
“Parlor. With Neddio. M’ horse. Bad tempered mabs, an’t they.”
“Not fond of freezing, that’s all.”
“Mmh. Shu’n’t keep ‘em so hungry then, they were doin’ their best to eat ol’ Neddio. Me too. Got toothmarks on my butt. Want some more soup?”
“Just the tea for now. I don’t want to overload the body.”
“Odd way o puttin’ it.” Simms took the tea to him, collected the empty pannikin and rinsed it in the channel. He turned it upside down over the tank and went back to leaning, on the wall beside the stove, enjoying the warmth radiating from the bricks while he ate his soup. He was immersed in flickering shadows while his visitor was centered in the glow of such light as there was in the kitchen. The firelight loved Maks’ bones, it slid along them like melted butter, waking amber and copper lights in his dark skin, face and hands and the hollow where his collar bones met.
“Listen to that wind howl. Bless ol’ Tungjil, I wouldn’t want to be out there now.” He had a rich deep voice, flexible, musical, Simms thrilled each time the man spoke; he had trouble concealing his response to the sound, but he worked at it, he didn’t want to disgust him or turn him hostile.
“Blessings be, on heesh an’ we.” Simms finished his soup, rinsed his pannikin and spoon in the channel, set them on the stove. “We were both Iuckier’n we deserve running across a place like this.” He gaVe himself some more tea. “Too bad the steader were chase out, a spring like this ‘n is flowin’ gold.”
“Chased out?”
“‘M a Reader, Maks; walls remember, walls talk. Blood and screams, ‘s what they tol’ me. But it was all a long long time ago. Ne’er been this way b’fore. You know how long Grass storms us’ly last?”
“It’s still early winter. This one should blow out around three days on.”
“I put the dulic in a shed out back. I don’ know how much good it’s gonna do you if there’s a couple feet of snow on the ground.”
“We’ll see what we see.” He chuckled, a deep rumbling that came up from his heels. “There’s no horse foaled that’d carry me.” He yawned, screwed up his face. “My bladder’s singing help,” he said, “you have any preference where I empty it?”
“You see the spring here, they led a channel off from it under the tiles the next room over, what we call straffill in Arsuid, there a catch basin, for baths I s’pose. Got a hole in the floor, a spash-chute on th’ wall, leadin’ to the hole. You wanna shoulder t’ lean on?”
Maks bent and straightened his legs, rubbed at his knees. “Give a hand getting on my feet, if you don’t mind, breyn Nadaw.”
“Simms, y’ don’ mind.” He offered his hands, braced himself and let Maks do most of the work. When the big man was on his feet, standing shaky and uncertain, he moved in closer, clasped Maks about his thick, muscular waist, grunted as long fingers dug into his shoulder and the man’s weight came down on him, not all of it, but enough to remind him vividly of the effort it took to haul hiin inside.
“Not too much?” ‘
He could feel the bass tones rumble in the center of his being as well as in his head, he felt the in-out of Maks’s breathing, the vibrations of his voice, the slide of muscles wasted but still bigger than most and firm. “It’s not something I’d do for the fun of it,” he said, almost breathless, though that definitely didn’t come from fatigue.
“Let’s go then.”
2
He lay listening to the wind howl outside and the steady breathing of the man he shared the hearth with. Now and then he heard Neddio or the mules moving about in the parlor, the clop of iron shoe on wood floor. He turned his head. The fire was low, but he could leave it for a while yet. He closed his eyes and went back to listening to Maks. Maks… it was his name… it fit in his mouth with a familiar easiness… it wasn’t the whole name. He thinks I’d recognize the whole name. Maybe so maybe not. He wanted to touch Maks, but he didn’t dare, not now, not when he might wake and know he was being touched. Not yet. Simms drew his hands down his own chest. What was wrong with him? He was lively enough when he came out of that trance or whatever it was, unperturbed by his condition, but there was that… that something… The man’s spirit was so vital, so… absorbing, entrancing… Simms smiled into the fire-broken darkness… it obscured that other thing. Almost. Part of him wanted Korimenei here so she could work her magic on Maks. Part of him didn’t want to share Maks with anyone, anything. Even if their enforced cohabitation came to nothing, there would be at least three days alone with him, time out from the world.
Round and round in his head, was he sick with something? Will he love me will he hate me will he look through me like I’m nothing? Round and round until he had to move, do something. He slipped out of his blankets and added wood to the fire, chunks of tough hard fence post that’d burn all night. He bent over Maks before rolling into his blankets again, touched his fingertips light, light, feather-light to the man’s brow.
It took him almost an hour to get to sleep.
The house rumbled and rattled and shook under the blast of the wind as the blizzard settled around them.
Maks slept heavily while Simms fed the mules and Neddio, used an old cedar shake to scoop up their droppings and carry them into the straffill where he dumped them down the hole. He brewed tea, ate one of Maks’ trailbars and put a new pot of soup to simmering on the stove. He washed his shirt, trousers, socks and underclothing in the waste channel, looked over Maks’ clothing, brushed the mud and debris off the outercloak, washed the undercloak and the other things, hung them all to drip dry on a cord he’d stretched between two pegs in the straffill. It helped the morning pass. Now and then he went over to Maks, squatted beside him, worried about the long sleep, but there was no sign of fever or other distress, so he went away again and let him sleep on.
Maks woke an hour past noon. He stretched, yawned, looked relaxed and lazy as a cat in the sun. He turned to Simms, gave him a wide glowing smile that sent flutters running round Simms’ interior. “What’s the time?”
“You couldn’t tell it from out there,” he nodded at the shuttered window, “but it’s a little after noon.”
“Ahhhh. Perfect. I hate mornings. Best way to greet the sun is sound asleep.”
Simms chuckled. “So I see.”
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those pests who leaps out of bed at dawn caroling blithely. They should be swatted like flies.”
Another chuckle. “Ne’er uh blithe, but up, yeh. When I wan’t workin’.”