In anticipation of the first stars, the champions gathered in the small dip that lay beyond the crest of First Hill, behind their barracks, called the warrior stables. Uncle Bertrand’s bloc anchored one end; Feilan had jostled Torben all the way down to the far end.
Bertrand had been sensible: he had known contenders might like to watch the hunt, if only to catch out cheating, but had also recognised that the monster, if on the run, might circle up towards them. The barrack’s flat roof had been cleaned off and laid with big cushions for seating, and wooden steps with a railing had been built to safely lead up there. The flames of pitch-torches at the roof corners were dancing in a paltry breeze powerless against the rising mist.
The mist was going to make things interesting, Feilan thought. He’d accounted for it; he wasn’t sure how many of the other champions had. It was summer, if an early and very northern summer, and that was not normally a time for mist – except here in the ever-damp Riverlands, where cold and warm air relentlessly mixed and blanketed the world in white.
He’d dressed in thick wool, much the same as he’d done the first time he’d gone raiding, and sported his borrowed sword shoulder-slung like Torben did. When he’d returned, somewhat sore, from his unaccustomed morning sword work and his usual afternoon errand, Remy had given him a leather jerkin to wear as well. Torben was mostly in wool and brown leather, and had his studded wooden shield in addition to his longsword. He looked good, but he always looked good.
‘What’s that?’ Torben asked, gesturing at the small silk sachet tied to Feilan’s wrist.
Feilan lifted his wrist to give Torben a better look at it, scenting its aroma of mugwort and cedar oil, earthy and woodsy brown notes. Remy had pressed it on him, a second gift to accompany the jerkin, or perhaps a third, if Feilan counted the herbal tea brew. He felt strong and clear-headed in a way some of the other heavily-drinking warriors perhaps didn’t.
‘A local luck charm, I believe,’ he said. ‘Remy made it for me. I think he asked for a blessing for it at his shrine.’
His husband, it occurred to him with mild surprise, was worried about him.
‘Didn’t make one for me.’
Feilan dropped his arm. ‘You didn’t marry the little witch, did you?’
‘Just like your mother didn’t make me a protective amulet.’
‘Are you angling for Freyja’s talisman, Mighty Thunder Bear?’
‘Bugger it, yes,’ Torben said.
‘And bugger off if you think you’re getting it.’
They both sniggered, received reproving looks from the rather grim warriors nearby, and sniggered again. Feilan’s nerves were jangling; he needed Torben’s complacent confidence to help settle him, and Torben seemed to know it.
Feilan whispered, ‘Does your commander put you in charge of the first-timers?’
‘Every. Single. Time,’ Torben agreed, sounding both aggrieved and baffled. He squinted at Feilan, twirling a finger at his face. ‘Ah, what is this look you are giving me now?’
‘It’s fondness, you jolterhead.’
‘Well, knock that shit off,’ Torben said, and they both snorted. He sternly folded his massive arms. ‘Would you try to take this seriously, Little Wolf?’
This time Uncle Bertrand, standing at the edge of the roof about to address the cluster of champions below him, glared at their childish chortles and turned a reproving look on Remy, seated in the front row on a cushion by Adeline. Eschewing his usual plain and practical clothes, Remy had dressed as the minor prince he was, softly lovely in green and grey velvet and a thin band of gold about his head, bright against his hair, still tightly bound back.
It also occurred to Feilan, with even more surprise, that his husband had made an effort to dress up for him, the contender representing the champion just as much as the other way around.
He was, however, now looking censorious, angling his eyebrows meaningfully. Feilan and Torben nudged each other into respectful silence.
‘Now, in the dark of the moonless night,’ Bertrand dramatically began as soon as they’d subsided, ‘comes the time when warriors shall be tempered—’
Feilan and Torben started laughing again; that was another Vaer metaphor for sex. Bertrand rubbed between his eyebrows and continued to talk, but Feilan was distracted by then. All the warriors were distracted by then, because a new champion was striding onto the field.
She was immensely tall – Feilan was the shortest on the field – fat and broad, her greying dark hair tightly plaited. She bore the same sorts of scars as Torben, those worn by all blade fighters, but her nose looked like it had been broken several times, and one of her ears was mangled, as if she fought by hand, too. Her legs were slightly bowed, a memento of a childhood on horseback. A large curved sword hung at her waist, and she was fully outfitted in leather armour plating.
‘We didn’t meet her last night,’ Torben said.
Feilan took a quick look at his friend. Women warriors, among the Vaer, were rare, and had a complicated relationship with the highly masculine bear-god and His associated cult-like male followers. But Torben sounded more admiring than disapproving. He’d been raiding for too many summers to not have encountered the women warriors of other peoples.
Torben laughed suddenly. ‘You know, whenever I see your mother, I’m always surprised by how tiny she is. And now I realise this is what I picture when I think of her.’
‘She’ll find that hilarious,’ Feilan said.
‘I’m hardly going to tell her.’ Torben grimaced, which Feilan took as silent acknowledgement of the justice of his ill-advised comment that morning.
He said, ‘I will, though,’ and earned a rib-bruising elbow.
The woman’s appearance had created some consternation; some of the champions hissed at her as she strode past them, face stony, and on the spectators’ rooftop, a minor commotion had arisen. Feilan glanced up there. He could only make out gesturing, but he could guess some of the contenders were arguing about whether a champion was allowed to be a woman.
The woman, magnificently aloof from the hisses and catcalls of the others, paused as she came abreast of Feilan, eyed him up and down, and then took up position beside him. He knew why: he looked safe.
She was older than he’d thought, faint lines about her eyes and mouth the sole indication that she was somewhere between his and Freyja’s age. She had high flat cheekbones, a firm wide mouth, and a large brand high on her right cheek, the pattern standing out raised and palest pink against her bronze skin. Although abstract, it made a recognisable eye, staring unblinkingly out disconcertingly close to her real eye. It was the mark of a slave from the eastern markets.
‘Evening,’ he said in Midlands.
‘Why so chatty?’ she replied in the same language.
Feilan grinned, and then said, ‘Alliance?’
‘No chance,’ she said. ‘My price is the freedom mark.’
That went on over the slave brand, negating and announcing the bearer as manumitted, a freedman – or -woman. It could only be applied by a handful of officials, using a secret technique and a secret ink, which made it unfalsifiable. Slaves who tried were burned alive.
It was a regretfully powerful motivator. ‘I probably don’t need to ask if your master would be a kindly regent to Queen Adeline?’
She stared at him. ‘I wouldn’t leave him alone with her.’
Torben leaned until he could see past Feilan, though the two warriors could very well see each other over his head. ‘How about I thrust my longsword—’
‘Torben.’
Torben smacked the back of Feilan’s head and finished, ‘—through your master’s throat and we call it good?’
Her face set in contempt. Feilan explained, ‘She’ll still be marked as a slave. She’ll just go to his heirs, if they don’t execute her horribly for colluding in her master’s murder. She needs the freedom tattoo.’
‘It’s not for me.’ The woman jerked her chin up at the rooftop, where a feminine figure, curvaceous in the playfully flickering torchlight, knelt lithely on the cushions in the second row, attending an aesthetically thin shape. ‘It’s for her. Aminah.’
Torben unwisely let out a low whistle, presumably because he assumed the freedom tattoo was in the way of a love-gift, which to be fair, Feilan had been too, slightly disapprovingly – it was too big of a gift to make the girl anything but beholden to her rescuer and thus not much freer than she had been.
But he’d seen the look on the woman’s face at Torben’s crude admiration. He stepped smartly back as she shot her arm out like a striking snake and grabbed Torben by the throat.
‘Aminah’s my daughter,’ she said, which actually made Torben pause in the middle of jerking his fist up for a retaliatory throat-punch. ‘Go near her and I’ll rip your stones off.’
‘Speaking of,’ Feilan said, tapping both her shoulder, and Torben’s, settling them both and bringing their attention to where everyone else’s was riveted, a second late arrival gliding onto the field of champions.
Feilan remained the shortest: this one was tall to the point of gangling, with long, toned limbs, narrow shoulders and waist, wide hips and strong thighs, contrastingly slender calves, and a beardless face. He was dressed in light silken garments, with a sash cinching his waist, and carried no visible weapons.
Once again, the new arrival assessed the musclebound warriors and decided that the best place to stand was at the end, with the short one and the woman, somehow contriving to lounge there while standing completely upright.
After a moment of silence, broken only by snatches of conversation from the rooftop as the rules of the contest were consulted, Torben leaned in again.
‘What are you, friend?’ he asked in Midlands.
‘My name is Micah Alexei,’ the new arrival said, staring straight ahead. His voice was light, but not what Feilan would have thought of as feminine.
The woman placed a hand over her chest where it flattened out oddly. ‘I am Noura Alikarmi.’
‘I said what, not who.’
‘Torben.’
‘I am a eunuch,’ Micah said wearily.
‘What’s that?’
‘Thunder Bear,’ Feilan said in Vaer. ‘How can you not know? You spent all those years raiding.’
‘Yeah, it’s not a cultural exchange, Little Wolf.’
Feilan was perhaps being unfair; Torben might simply not know the Midlands word. ‘He’s a gelding. One of the Incised.’
‘They caught him young and cut his balls off for his singing voice?’ He switched back to Midlands, and addressed both newcomers. ‘We’re mid-Vaer.’
‘He means we’re not slavers. We had a queen—’
‘I am more accurately one of the crushed,’ Micah informed them, having parsed the Vaer. ‘I was placed naked into a basin of warm water as a baby, and then when my cockles were soft and pliable, they squeezed—’
‘That’s—’ Feilan started.
‘You can stop,’ Torben rumbled over him.
‘And so we will now refrain from asking if we do not wish to hear the details,’ Micah said.
The woman warrior snorted and offered him a fist bump, which he accepted with a carefully precise touch of his knuckles to hers without taking his challenging gaze from Torben.
‘But does your cock still work?’ Torben promptly asked. Feilan nudged him.
‘Come to my bunk, darling, find out firsthand.’
‘Don’t know why you assume I wouldn’t.’
‘Ignore the jolterhead,’ Feilan said. ‘Would you be interested in an alliance?’
‘No,’ Micah said. ‘Observe, up there among the spectating contenders. The boy sitting next to yon young queen? He is Prince Afzal.’
Adeline had indeed been joined by another child, with whom she was delightedly conversing while the argument continued around them. Between the distance and the low and uneven light, it was difficult to tell ages, but he seemed her age, perhaps younger.
‘The boy’s father was my dearest friend. Unfortunately, he did not choose his second wife wisely. Before he died—’
‘Was that related to the unwise matrimonial choice?’ Feilan asked.
‘Unproven, and yet indubitably,’ Micah said. ‘He called in the life-debt I owed him to pledge me to keep the boy safe. Unfortunately, this means I must win the regency for his stepmother. She intends to wed her wards then, one to the other, and rule over them both. If I fail, she will slit Afzal’s throat.’
‘Obvious question…’
‘I cannot slit her throat first,’ Micah said coolly. ‘She keeps the boy by her side at all times. He sips from her cup, eats from her plate. If she sees me coming through her phalanx of bodyguards with her death in my eyes, if she doesn’t see me coming but her men start dropping, if a snake comes too close and she decides it was me, she will kill him with her last breath, merely to make me suffer.’
Feilan nodded. ‘I take it she put you in as champion rather than one of her guardsmen with similar sadistic reasoning?’
‘To watch me risk my life just to keep the boy alive but delivered ever further into her clutches via a marriage alliance with a child-queen she also controls… It is to her great delight.’
‘A real treasure,’ Noura said.
Feilan nodded, resisting a heartfelt sigh. These two perfectly decent people were his and Torben’s enemies. All the other champions only had coin on the line. These two had flesh.
‘She’s buggered herself, though,’ Torben said. ‘Look at you, Sveltlar.’
That roughly translated as Skinny Shanks, and was somewhere in the marshes between a compliment and an insult.
Micah bowed to contemplate his own stork-like length. ‘Yes?’
‘Can’t see you winning.’ Torben shrugged. ‘Sorry for the kid.’
‘I will win,’ Micah said. ‘I am a trained assassin. I know one hundred and six ways to kill a man. I imagine at least one of the techniques is adaptable to taking the head of a monster.’
The argument over the rules ceased then. Noura was not dismissed from the field. Uncle Bertrand, somewhat stilted, finished his little speech, to the great boredom of the warriors it was ostensibly aimed at, and the hunt began.
The champions turned en masse and headed down the hill, vanishing singly and in clusters into the thickening mist, fanning out as they went. Some of them, jolterheads who’d be dead soon, uncovered small horn-paned lamps as they went.
Feilan hooked a few fingers into Torben’s leather shoulder-strap, subtly slowing his pace until they were lagging behind the others. Then, hidden by mist, he tugged him westwards, crossing the north face of First Hill low enough to avoid the eyes of the spectators, moving carefully through the dark. He angled him up and over to a sheltered outcrop of rock he’d explored previously, facing northwest over the broad bowl behind Seven Hills. They were above the enveloping white shroud up here, with an open view as far as the starlight allowed, and the rock at their backs.
Torben immediately raised his face to the sky and made a genuflection towards the great wash of the Gods’ Way. So thick with stars it made a white bridge overhead, it was the main contributor to the subtle skyglow that let them see anything at all, along with the light reflecting back from the copious lamps and torches lining Seven Hill’s arcades and buildings.
All was quiet. The mist was real fog in the dips between hills, thick enough to muffle sounds, though the occasional clink and call carried to Feilan’s ear as the warriors moved across the hunting grounds to established their own positions, or perhaps even to dutifully begin to trace the monster’s tracks.
‘Little Wolf—’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Feilan said softly. ‘We’re hidden by the mist, but we don’t want any attention.’
Torben exaggeratedly whispered, ‘Why are we cowering here?’
‘Calculated risk. You’ll see. Shush.’
His friend managed that for all of a handful of heartbeats before saying, ‘It’s boring out here.’
Feilan translated that as Vaer for eerie. It was, the gloam-moon hiding away until dawn, the skyglow only enough to discern the occasional eddy in the mist below as the cool night breeze began to pick up. Faintly, he could hear something that sounded like a cry for help, which he knew was the distraught bleat of a goat separated from its herd. Otherwise, thanks to knowing who was out there and what could be out there – men and monster, respectively – it was the kind of ominous quiet that raised the hairs on the forearms and made the breath want to catch in the throat.
Torben cleared his throat. ‘Can I ask a stupid question?’
‘You so often do.’
‘Shut it.’ Torben flicked him on the ear. ‘Does this seem like bear country to you?’
Feilan turned from scanning the mist for signs of movement. ‘You noticed.’
‘Do you think it’s really a monster?’
‘I do.’
Torben nodded. He looked satisfied. ‘Makes it more interesting. Can we get on after it?’
‘Not yet,’ Feilan said. ‘Probably not tonight.’
Torben paced away, and then back, the mighty warrior righteously stalking. ‘I’m restless,’ he announced. ‘I readied myself for a fight.’
‘Poor baby,’ Feilan said, smiling to himself.
It only took Torben a single step to be standing too close. He placed a single finger on the laces at the neck of Feilan’s leather jerkin. The very tip of the finger brushed Feilan’s bare skin, and his heart beat faster.
‘It occurs to me,’ Torben said, ‘that I might owe you a suck.’
Feilan, still smiling, said, ‘You think? It’ll have to wait.’ To Torben’s sceptical look, he said, ‘I’ll ruin the game for Remy if I fuck around.’
‘We’re out here alone, no one will see.’
‘Anyone could come out of the mist, and us all unawares. The monster could, if I’ve miscalculated.’
Torben gave a little ground, eyeing him. ‘Are you remembering your marriage is a sham, Little Wolf?’
‘Of course.’ Reflexively, he added, ‘I barely even like him.’
His friend tapped his wrist, whereupon Feilan discovered he was absently stroking the silk of the small sachet Remy had made and blessed for him – stroking it very much as Remy had stroked his face that morning, slowly working his way up to more.
Feilan looked at his own fidgeting with raised brows. ‘I don’t even like him,’ he repeated, thinking, Shit, I think I like him quite a bit.
‘Then let me have at you,’ Torben rasped, once again closing in on Feilan with all of that height and breadth and muscle. His hands slid under the heavy jerkin, thumbs hooking into the band of Feilan’s trousers, tugging against the ties.
‘I – ah.’
He was saved from a rather urgent decision when the mist swirled below them, a shadow approaching from within its depths. As Feilan nudged Torben’s attention to the disturbance, a figure emerged above the white starlit sea, the silhouette distinct enough to be identifiable as the eunuch, Micah Alexei. Like them, he’d been sensible enough to eschew light and wait for his eyes to adjust to the night. He stood with his head angled up towards them, body poised as if he might turn and melt away back under droplet-laden cover.
Instead he chose to stroll closer, until they could make out each other’s faces. He watched them with his head to one side, bird-like, but he also looked all about, assessing the outcrop at their backs and their panoramic view over the hunting ground.
‘Did I,’ he said, ‘interrupt something? Carry on.’
‘Move your shit along,’ Torben said. ‘We’ve staked this position.’
‘Hmm, and I do wonder why,’ Micah said in his precise tones, sounding more like a particularly officious majordomo than an assassin. ‘I do wonder why the one you call clever decided to bring you this way instead of joining the hunt with the rest.’
‘Yeah, me too. Doesn’t mean he’s handing out any answers, the cagey lortr. Sertha af, Sveltlar.’
Micah smiled thinly. ‘I think I might hold right here, actually.’
Torben turned so his powerful body was facing off to Micah’s long, thin form fully. He didn’t otherwise make any threatening moves, but cast a sideways look towards Feilan, questioning.
Feilan weighed it up. Micah and Noura were the biggest threats to Torben’s ability to deliver up the head for Adeline. Most of the other champions, when it came to it, had already been paid, and wouldn’t knowingly risk their lives merely for whatever bonus had been promised for success. Some would do it for pride, or because their blood was up and they couldn’t resist the challenge. But none had the same sort of urgent motivation as the pair of latecomers.
Noura likely wouldn’t be a problem after tonight. Micah was proving smarter. But not so smart that he hadn’t put himself in reach of two armed barbarians out of sight of anyone who might accuse them of cheating.
‘I remind you,’ Micah said, ‘I know one hundred and seven ways to kill a man.’
Torben grinned. ‘I thought it was one hundred and six.’
‘I invented another one just for you, darling,’ Micah said. ‘It is particularly slow and painful.’
Folding his arms, Torben looked hopefully at Feilan, though it was very difficult to tell, even with the benefit of years of knowing the man, if he wanted permission to attack, or permission to let him live.
‘Leave him be for now,’ Feilan told him.
‘Ah. So you are the one giving the orders.’
Feilan was once again saved, this time from Torben’s kneejerk reaction to the thought of being ruled by a Cursed, by a disturbance in the mist, the one, finally, he’d been expecting. It was a shout, abruptly cut off, and then an outbreak of less distinct noises, muffled enough that it was difficult to tell if they were cries or the thumps of bodies running or clashes of weapon or claw.
‘You buggered it, Little Wolf,’ Torben said, smacking him hard in the shoulder. ‘They found the m— bear and we’re miles off.’
‘I have already supposed it is not a bear.’ Micah stared down at the mist blanketing the great bowl below them, as if trying to read the indeterminate noise. ‘And I do not think your friend has, in fact, buggered it.’
‘They’re killing each other, Torben.’ Feilan spoke Midlands for Micah’s sake, though the eunuch seemed to have the usual grasp of Vaer exhibited by any people subject to their piecemeal raids.
‘They’re…’ Torben blinked. ‘They’re what?’
‘Killing each other,’ Feilan said. Torben fought side by side with comrades; there was no other way for a Vaer man to fight. He could fully see the logic of knocking off Micah as a competitor and yet still not expect wholesale bloody treachery. ‘The uncle’s bloc, taking out other champions while the mist hides what’s happening. Others will have had the same idea.’
Torben was silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘I hate that.’
‘I know.’
‘But you should have let me down there. If they won’t play this game with honour, I’ll play it their way. I’d have taken care of a few.’ He glanced at Micah, who shifted his weight to his back foot, ready to leap away. Torben smirked. ‘More than a few. Didn’t you think I could?’
‘They would have gone for you exclusively,’ Feilan said, surprising him into silence again. ‘It was more risk than I wanted to undertake on your behalf.’
Torben’s mouth tightened – oh, that bersverdr pride – before he abruptly chose to ignore the insult from Feilan, or accept the compliment from the other warriors. ‘Serthing right, they would have tried,’ he said loudly, preening.
A little way around the bowl, a figure immediately discernible as Noura emerged out of the mist. She was panting heavily, and, as she came closer, Feilan could see that her leather armour was rent in multiple places. Her great curved sword, bloodied, hung from one big hand, almost dragging.
A gang of men came out after her, five of them moving together in a loping prowl after the exhausted and injured woman. That was an alliance knit together by bribery; Feilan had watched it form at the feast.
‘Ah,’ Micah said.
Feilan shook his head. ‘I thought they’d go for her, too. Not even in with much of a chance alone, but they didn’t like a woman on their field.’ He paused, then added judiciously, ‘Drafdritar.’
Torben muttered, ‘Run, die tired,’ and charged across the slope towards her.
Feilan shouted his name, and then smartened up and backed away from Micah, watching him narrowly.
‘I’m not going to kill you tonight,’ Micah said. ‘You remain useful.’
‘Thanks,’ Feilan said, only moderately sarcastically. ‘I’m still not turning my back on you.’
Micah gave him a lazy smile and loped off into the mist, cutting towards where Torben had crashed into the fight. The big man hadn’t given much indication, thundering down upon them, as to which side he was going to be on, which meant he split two heads with two mighty blows before the other three even responded. By the time they’d moved to try to flank him, Noura had turned and Micah had materialised, and it was quick, if savage, work to dispatch the aggressors, shocking blue flashing across Feilan’s vision as the scent of blood and entrails released into the damp air. He didn’t expect Noura to survive it, but she was still on her feet when the flurry of fast and brutal activity was over.
Feilan sauntered to meet them, holding up his hands in a peaceable gesture as Noura and Micah raised their blades towards him and Torben, as if sure the truce had been a short one. Noura, in particular, looked wild-eyed, fully prepared to be turned upon in ambush again.
Keeping his palms up and open towards her, Feilan said, ‘Alliance? For the night, if no more.’
‘I’m wounded,’ she grated, not letting her sword drop, though the tip wandered tellingly.
‘I can see that,’ he said. ‘Are you wondering why we don’t finish you off?’
‘I am wondering that,’ Micah said, though he’d obligingly lowered his wicked blade, a needle-thin knife he’d used to slither in close and pierce the vital point under his opponent’s armpit.
‘I’m not not wondering that,’ Torben admitted with a shrug.
‘I want the alliance,’ Feilan said calmly. He pointed to Micah. ‘Both of you. You’ve seen the lie of the land now. None of us have a chance alone.’
‘Only one head,’ Noura said flatly, to Micah’s nod. ‘I have to win it for my girl. Any alliance is a cracked lie, the moment the body hits the ground.’
‘I’m asking for truce now,’ he said, ‘and then for you – both of you – to come hear me out tomorrow. That’s all.’
‘And if we come across the monster before the end of this night?’ Micah asked.
‘Have at it,’ Feilan said.
‘You either think your friend can deal with both of us and the monster, or you believe we will not see the monster tonight.’
Feilan smiled. ‘Or, indeed, both,’ he said, mocking the other man’s coolly exacting tones.
Micah narrowed his eyes, but he gave a single nod of agreement, and made his knife disappear about his person in a stealthy fashion befitting his claim to be an assassin.
‘Do we want to go hunting?’ Torben said, looking into the mist. ‘Not the monster. Those cheating dogshits?’
‘I know it goes against every fibre of your being,’ Feilan said, ‘but I’m asking you to play it safe for now, old friend.’
Torben gave a grunt that was both annoyed and acquiescent, and bent to loot the bodies in a desultory fashion born of habit more than greed.
Micah, meanwhile, addressed Noura. ‘If we are allied, will you allow me to bind your wounds?’
‘You can keep your distance for now, mate,’ she said casually.
She kept her face turned towards all three men, and the thicker mist beyond them, while she carefully used ripped linen from her undershirt to pad her injuries – a bad one in the meat of her shoulder that would limit her movement, a cut across her neck where the very tip of a sword must have almost found her jugular, and, once she’d unembarrassedly dropped her leather pants, a couple of gashes across her thighs, surrounded by mottling that would become bruises. The other champions had gone for her hard.
She had to be strong as iron, to still be on her feet. Torben presented her with a salute with his blade and Micah offered up a respectful nod. Feilan, never sure if the warriors of other peoples were as touchy as the bersverdar about taking acknowledgement from weak men, merely silently vowed to do whatever it took to win her into a proper alliance.
They moved in a watchful silence, each alert for dark shapes coming out of the mist in ambush. Their position was good, however, and while other clashes rang out several times, they were not disturbed.
Noura accepted Feilan’s shoulder to lean on as they made their way back upslope, jerking her chin for the other two to walk ahead as if they were the only ones who could shove cold steel between her ribs. It was a good sign, that she trusted him enough to accept the assistance; a bad sign, that she needed it.
Once they were almost in sight of the spectators, she pushed herself upright. ‘Have to walk in under my own power,’ she said. ‘Disqualified, otherwise.’
She knew the rules as well as Feilan did. He’d not neglected the terms of the contest itself during his information-gathering, yet had forgotten them in the moment. But she’d have to know them cold – she would have had to know women and slaves weren’t expressly disallowed before she bothered negotiating terms with her master.
As they came close enough to be visible in the light of the flaming torches encircling the immediate vicinity of the old barracks, gasps and murmurs arose, and a few of the spectators began to get up. Noura, drenched in blood, was probably the most exciting thing they’d seen all evening, between the mist and the size of the hunting ground.
They weren’t really here to watch the hunt, though. They were here to drink and feast and witness for themselves the moment one triumphant champion carried in a great monster head to fling to the ground in the flickering torchlight.
Remy rushed towards them across the sheep-cropped grass from the far side of the building; he must have been one of the people who had leapt up upon spotting Noura, and come flying down the stairs.
But he wasn’t looking at the injured warrior at all. ‘Are you hurt?’ he demanded of Feilan.
Feilan followed his husband’s frightened gaze, and realised the sleeve of his tunic and his bare skin were dyed bloody from where Noura had leaned on him. The stain must have looked black and glistening in the chancy torchlight.
‘No, but Noura Alikarmi needs your assistance.’ He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Will you accept? You can trust the little witch.’
‘Not a witch,’ Remy said. He peered at Noura’s visible wounds with a wince. ‘I can salve and bandage these, but…’
‘I will sew the worst of it up first,’ Micah said.
‘You?’ Noura said, doubt rippling over her stoically stony expression.
‘Assassin,’ he said. ‘It means I know where the arteries lie.’ He laid a palm flat to his chest. ‘My honour on it, I will do no harm to you, not tonight.’
Noura still hesitated a long moment. At last, she nodded. ‘Don’t help me,’ she snapped when Torben stretched out his hand. ‘I walk myself, or I’m out.’
‘Take her to my—’ Remy stopped; it had obviously occurred to him that Noura would struggle to walk the entire undulating arcade to his cave, or even to Third Hill East. ‘Go to the foyer of First Hill and rest there. I will bring what I need. What do you need?’
This last was to Micah, who said, ‘Clean water, clean needle, strong spirit, strong silk thread.’
‘I’ll bring it.’
Noura walked slowly on. Her master, thin and bald, with unpleasantly cold eyes, had come down the stairs, slower than Remy, but she merely looked at him sternly as she made her way with small and pained steps towards the arches of First Hill. Her daughter, Aminah, was in attendance on the man, holding a jewelled goblet of wine. She had the same slave mark as Noura over her high cheekbone, and wore diaphanous layers of clothing that left her arms and legs bare.
No look passed between mother and daughter, but the young woman squeezed her eyes tight shut very briefly before she brought her expression back to the pleasant neutrality required of a slave. When her master snapped his fingers, she was ready with a meekly bowed head and the wine goblet. Feilan didn’t know what had happened for Noura to be sundered from her steppe people and sold into slavery, but he was certain her daughter had been born into it.
As Noura’s master, apparently satisfied his champion was still in the contest, returned towards the stairs to the rooftop, Remy stepped closer.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered as he put his arms around Feilan in a full embrace. ‘We have a little time before she limps her way to First Hill, so…’
‘Worried about me?’ Feilan said, patting his back.
‘No!’
‘Oh.’ He’d been amused, in a slightly superior way, and was taken aback by the vehemence of the denial.
Remy pulled back to look at his face. ‘Isn’t it insulting if I was worried about you?’
‘Only for a real Vaer man.’
‘But you are a— Oh, this is a Cursed thing, I suppose. All that aside, the other contenders have realised you are both far too clever for comfort and only in the contest on a suspicious-looking marriage contract, and we have to very much act like a love match now if we don’t want them strongly agitating for your disqualification.’
Feilan looked up at the rooftop. He was certain any talk of disqualification aimed his way would be at the insidious instigation of Uncle Bertrand, slyly spreading gossip as if he didn’t know the effect it would have. He didn’t need to play innocent with his nieces and nephews, who seemed incapable of doubting their beloved, faithful uncle; those outside observers, and Adeline’s maternal relatives, were his audience now.
Remy squeezed against him to hold him tightly again. Feilan, entirely confused as to whether he was being genuinely hugged out of relief or if Remy was merely putting on a show, shrugged. He could enjoy the warmth of the slender body either way, and savour the memory of him stepping between his thighs that morning, fingers trailing along his cheek, intent in his eyes.
Remy added, ‘I know you don’t kiss, but it’d be very helpful if—’
Feilan said, ‘I kiss.’
He clasped both hands about Remy’s scalp, hating the tight braid that stopped him burying his fingers in silky carnelian locks, and lifted Remy’s face so he could have his mouth.
Remy gasped under the sudden onslaught and then his lips parted wider and he took Feilan’s tongue with a whimper, body sagging into him until Feilan had no choice but to press one hand to his lower back to haul him in even closer, their mouths moving ever more urgently, Feilan tracking every stutter of Remy’s breathing as his husband’s hands scrabbled at his chest as if trying to claw his clothes off.
When Feilan finally let him go, Remy actually staggered. ‘Oh,’ he said, touching his mouth with one thumb. He looked astonished. ‘I should tell you I know you don’t do things more often.’
‘Tell me you know I don’t suck cock now,’ Feilan said helpfully.
Both blushing and looking rather tempted, Remy blurted, ‘Thank you, I am sure that was exceedingly convincing for our audience and I really must help your friends now.’
He gave Feilan one last, long, look, before hastening off towards the First Hill foyer.
Feilan strolled after him, absently stroking the silk sachet about his wrist.