He’d never cried like that. Not ever in his life. All the beatings taken, all the things lost, all the hopes failed, he’d always had Rakki beside him.
But Rakki was dead.
Now he’d started crying he couldn’t seem to stop. No more than you can rebuild a burst dam when the flood’s still surging through. That’s the problem with making yourself hard. Once you crack, there’s no putting yourself back together.
She took him around the head, pressed his face against her shoulder, rocked him back and forward.
‘Shhh,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Shhh.’
‘My brother was the only family I had,’ he whispered.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Mine too.’
‘Does it get easier?’
‘Maybe. Bit by bit.’
She did his belt up for him, dragging the scarred leather through the scarred buckle while he stood with his hands dangling. Never thought much about having a woman fastening his belt, but he found he liked it. Never had anyone to take care of him. Except Rakki, maybe.
But Rakki was dead.
When she looked up her face was tear-streaked too and he reached out to wipe it, tried to be as gentle as she’d been. Didn’t feel like those aching, crooked, scabbed and battered fingers of his had any tenderness left in them. Didn’t feel like his hands were good for aught but killing. His brother had always said he was no lover. But he tried.
‘I don’t even know your name,’ he said.
‘I’m Rin. You’d better go.’ And she pulled back the curtain of the little alcove her cot was in.
He limped up the steps from the forge, one hand on the wall. Past a domed oven where three women were baking bread, men gathered waiting with their platters in a hungry crowd. He limped across the yard, lit silver by high, fat Father Moon, and past the burned-out stables. As burned-out as he was.
Raith heard someone laugh, jerked his head towards it, starting to smile. Rakki’s voice, surely?
But Rakki was dead.
He hugged himself as he trudged on past the dead stump of the Fortress Tree. Wasn’t a cold night but he felt cold then. Like his torn clothes were too thin. Or his torn skin was.
Up the long stairway, his feet scraping in the darkness, down the long hallway, windows looking out over glimmering Mother Sea. Lights moved there. The lamps on Bright Yilling’s ships, watching to make sure no help came to Bail’s Point.
He groaned as he lowered himself slowly as an old man beside Skara’s door, everything aching. He drew his blanket across his knees, let his skull fall back against the cold elf-stone. He’d never been interested in comforts. Rakki had been the one to dream of slaves and fine tapestries.
But Rakki was dead.
‘Where have you been?’
He jerked around. The door was open a crack and Skara was looking out at him, hair a mass of dark curls, wild and tangled from her bed like it had been the first day he saw her.
‘Sorry,’ he stammered out, shaking off his blanket. He gave a grunt of pain as he stood, clutching at the wall to steady himself.
Suddenly she’d slipped into the corridor and taken his elbow. ‘Are you all right?’
He was a proven warrior, sword-bearer to Grom-gil-Gorm. He was a killer, carved from the stone of Vansterland. He felt no pain and no pity. Only the words wouldn’t come. He was too hurt. Hurt to his bones.
‘No,’ he whispered.
He looked up then and saw she was wearing just her shift, realized with the torchlight he could see her lean shape through it.
He forced his eyes up to her face but that was worse. There was something in the way she was looking at him, fierce and fixed as a wolf at a carcass, made him suddenly hot all over. He could hardly see for her eyes on him. He could hardly breathe for the scent of her. He made the feeblest effort to pull his arm away and only pulled her closer, right against him. She pressed him back, sliding one hand around his sore ribs and making him gasp, putting the other on his face and pulling it down towards her.
She kissed him and not gently, sucking at his mouth, her teeth scraping his split lip. He opened his eyes and she was looking at him, like she was judging the effect she’d had, her thumb pressing hard at his cheek.
‘Shit,’ he whispered. ‘I mean … my queen-’
‘Don’t call me that. Not now.’ She slipped her hand up behind his head, gripping him tight, brushed her nose up along the side of his, down the other, kissed him again and left his head light as a drunkard’s.
‘Come with me,’ she whispered, breath burning on his cheek, and she drew him towards her door, nearly dragged him right over, blanket still tangled around his legs.
Rakki had always told him he was no lover. Raith wondered what he’d have to say when he heard about this-
But Rakki was dead.
He stopped short. ‘I need to tell you something …’ That he’d just been crying in someone else’s bed? That she was promised to Grom-gil-Gorm? That he’d nearly killed her a few nights before and still had the poison in his pocket? ‘More’n one thing, really-’
‘Later.’
‘Later might be too late-’
She caught a fistful of his shirt and dragged him towards her, and he was helpless as a rag doll in her hands. She was far stronger than he’d thought. Or maybe he was just far weaker. ‘I’ve done enough talking,’ she hissed at him. ‘I’ve done enough of the proper thing. We might all be dead tomorrow. Now come with me.’
They might all be dead tomorrow. If Rakki had one last lesson to teach him, surely that was it. And men rarely win fights they want to lose, after all. So he pushed his fingers into the soft cloud of her hair, kissed at her, bit at her lips, felt her tongue in his mouth, and nothing else seemed all that pressing. He was here and she was here, now, in the darkness. Mother Scaer, and the Breaker of Swords, and Rin, and even Rakki seemed a long way off with the dawn.
She kicked his blanket against the wall, and pulled him through her door, and slid the bolt.
Relics
‘This is the place,’ said Skifr.
It was a wide hall with a balcony high up, scattered with broken chairs, dim for the dirt crusted to the windows. A curved table faced the door with a thing above it like a great coin, ringed by elf-letters. There had been a wall of glass beyond but it was shattered, splinters crunching under Koll’s boots as he stepped towards an archway, one door fallen, the other hanging by broken hinges. The hall beyond was soon lost in darkness, water dripping in the shadows.
‘We could use some light,’ he murmured.
‘Of course.’ There was a click, and in an instant the whole chamber was flooded with brightness. There was a hiss as Father Yarvi whipped out the curved sword he wore and Koll shrank against the wall, feeling for his knife.
But Skifr only chuckled. ‘There is nothing here to fight but ourselves, and in that endless war blades cannot help.’
‘Where does the light come from?’ murmured Koll. Tubes on the ceiling were burning too bright to look at, as though pieces of Mother Sun had been caught in bottles.
Skifr shrugged as she sauntered past him into the hall. ‘Magic.’
The ceiling had collapsed, more tubes hanging by tangled wires, light flickering and popping, flaring across the tight-drawn faces of the two ministers as they crept after Skifr. Paper was scattered everywhere. Sliding piles of it ankle deep, sodden but unrotted, scrawled with words upon words upon words.
‘The elves thought they could catch the world in writing,’ said Skifr. ‘That enough knowledge would set them above God.’
‘Look upon the wages of their arrogance,’ muttered Mother Scaer.
They passed through an echoing hall filled with benches, each with a strange box of glass and metal on top, drawers torn out and cabinets thrown over and more papers vomiting from them in heaps.
‘Thieves were here before us,’ said Koll.