"Do you live here alone?"
"All alone," Mallory said, and kissed Rien on the mouth, lightly, full of questions.
"I don't like men," Rien said, though she could not look away for a second from Mallory's eyes—blacker in the half-light than Rien remembered them from sun—-under the witchy mahogany frizz of bangs.
"How fortunate for me that I'm not one," Mallory answered, and kissed Rien again.
Rien fancied herself not uneducated in passion. She was sixteen; she had done her share of groping and kissing and more than kissing, in coffins and behind tapestries and even in beds. She thought she knew how it was done.
She was not prepared for Mallory to pull away before Rien thought the kiss was half finished, quickly nipping Rien's lower lip and then pressing a finger against it. And then it was dark eyes, brown and transparent as coffee, with green and amber flecks swimming under the surface—and Mallory's breath across her mouth.
"Wait," the necromancer said, and kissed her around that silencing finger. "Gently, Rien. It's not about getting it over with as fast as possible, my sweet."
Rien nodded, to show she understood, then kissed Mallory's fingertip before she drew back. "Before we ... um. Is there someplace I could pee? I was asleep a long time, and ..." she gestured to the IV site in her arm, nothing but a red pinprick now.
"Pick a bush," Mallory said, and dug through the pack to find a hand spade and toilet paper.
Rien thought she could figure out what she was in-tended to do with both, and absented herself briefly to heed nature's call. When she returned, she found Mallory shaking out the pallet and folding the blankets into a neat rectangular pad. After divesting herself, Rien knelt and reached for Mallory's hand. They kissed again, and this time, she was softer, and tried to match Mallory's pace.
As if in slow motion, Mallory lay back on the pallet, and drew Rien over. Rien pressed close, parting Mallory's thighs with her knee, turning her head and leaning a little aside so their breasts could nest together. Mallory made a noise into her mouth, and their tongues were warm and sweet together until, panting, they broke apart.
"You're beautiful," Rien said, letting her fingertips just brush Mallory's cheek. Warm skin, and the flutter of a pulse beside the ear, begging to be kissed.
"You're fierce," Mallory replied, and fingers in Rien's hair pulled her down again.
And Mallory was right. Rien would have hurried it, left to her own devices, raced through, eager to know everything all at once. Instead, they kissed in the shadows, and Mallory's fingers found Rien's collarbone, and Rien's mouth found Mallory's throat, the little softness beneath the chin and the ringed hardness of the larynx. And then Mallory slid influential hands across Rien's shoulders, and the next Rien knew, she was on her back, the dirty tank top nuzzled upward and her dirty belly caressed. She stroked Mallory's hair, as she'd wanted to, felt it fuzzy here and ringlets there, full of tangles. She pressed down her hands; the bones of Mallory's skull were under it.
And Mallory's hands were on her breasts, and she had to let go her grip and lift her arms as the necromancer pulled her tank off, and then kissed what there was to kiss. Mallory's erection indented Rien's thigh, and Rien expected to find it distasteful. But Mallory smelled right, and tasted right, and the skin was silk and satin under Rien's hands as she traced the lines of Mallory's spine and shoulder blades and the wiry muscles that defined them.
Mallory's hands skimmed her hip bones, found the edge of her trousers—they were a mess now, ripped in two places, the hem torn ragged at the back—and slipped beneath. Rien stroked the necromancer's hair again. "You, too," she said.
And then she met Mallory's eyes over the undulations of her own breasts and belly, and read the question in the necromancer's expression. "Well," she said. "You said you weren't a man. I believe you. Let's see it."
"All this," Mallory answered, with a head shake and a crooked smile, "and she also plays guitar."
As Mallory knelt, Rien stripped off her own bottoms and kicked them aside. Mallory's trousers involved a belt and snaps; it took a little longer. And when they went down—Rien wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but a perfectly average erect penis wasn't it, not exactly. She'd been with boys—Head always said you couldn't say you didn't like something until you'd tried it—and this wasn't anything she hadn't seen before. Except where a boy would have a scrotum and testicles, Mallory had what looked just like girl parts behind.
"Did you do it that way on purpose?" Rien asked, holding out her hand.
"Of course," Mallory said. "If you hate it I can change."
"Don't be silly," Rien said, and wrapped her fingers around Mallory's warm bony wrist. "I don't love you. You shouldn't change yourself for me."
Mallory bent down and kissed her again, and this time there was no hesitating for clothes or negotiation, except the little sounds of question and permission they made that weren't—quite—words. Awkward, sometimes, and sticky, and Rien kept wishing she'd had a shower. But Mallory didn't seem to care, and by the time Rien pulled Mallory down and covered everything that she could reach with kisses, she was done with caring also.
11 her own salt
It rains into the sea
And still the sea is salt.
—A. E. HOUSMAN,
"Stars, I Have Seen Them Fall"
When the suns emerged from behind the shadow panel, the others came looking for Perceval. She was glad to see them. She was starving, and she'd spent the time while she was waiting—once she'd analyzed and bathed in a clean trickle that flowed through a cracked bulkhead—performing exercises and walking among the trees, which dusted her hair and the parasite wings with petals. Some of those petals were the basilisk's— Gavin's—fault; he paced her, flapping heavily from branch to branch, companionably silent.
She welcomed the company; she was trying not to think about the wings. They weren't heavy enough to restore her balance, and they had a disturbing manner of shifting on her shoulders, demonstrating an eldritch intelligence.
She had paused to watch ants ladder up the trunk of a peach tree when Mallory hailed her. The necromancer's voice echoed off the roof of the Heaven a split second later, making Perceval smile as she turned to face them.
She knew what they had been up to, of course; it would have been hard to miss it, between the giggling and the scent of sex—and nobody had ever warned her how disturbing it would be to hear a necromancer .giggle—but that was all right, wasn't it? Rien was in clean clothes, her hair combed and braided, and Mallory was holding her elbow. They laughed every time they accidentally looked at each other.
Save me, Perceval thought, and said, "What's for breakfast?"
"There was fruit.. ." Mallory gestured to the plum tree they happened to be standing underneath.
"And pluck uninvited, in someone else's garden?"
By the necromancer's expression, Perceval thought Mallory was chewing that over for double meanings. But after a moment, Perceval was rewarded with bright laughter.
"There are stories about that, aren't there? I'll cook, then."
Perceval followed the necromancer back to the campsite. Somewhere along the way, Rien detached herself from Mallory and came to take Perceval's hand; the tension across Perceval's shoulders eased a little, despite the unweight of her wings. They went speedily, though Mallory stopped once to dig ramps and a second time to nick a bunch of mushrooms growing from the stump of a tree. The necromancer had a boot knife, a finger's length and sharp as a razor, to judge by how neatly it parted the fungus's flesh.