No Return (34 page)

“Tecas,” Churls answered. “Two. And glasses of water, iced if you have it.”

The server ignored her and lingered for a moment, as if she expected Vedas to speak. He glanced up, eyebrows raised, and then looked away. The girl’s exhalation was audible. Churls laughed out loud, breaking some of the tension constricting the muscles in her chest.

“What do you think they’ll charge for the water?” she asked.

‡

She watched his hands, which were thickly muscled and large enough to envelope her own. She hated stubby or tapering fingers, but his had grown to the perfect length and thickness. Though somewhat obscured by the fabric of his suit, even the veins on the backs of his hands crossed flesh and bone in graceful arcs.

She had long ago noticed the way he touched himself constantly, compulsively, running his hands over the hard contours of his body—testing the springiness of his ridged abdomen with his fingertips, caressing the inside of his thighs—laying a palm over his heart, rubbing his heavy pectoral muscles as though reassuring himself of his own existence. He did these things, and it did not seem to matter where he was. She assumed the actions were subconscious, automatic, an expression of the sensual he did not otherwise allow himself.

She could not blame him. The things she would do with his body if she inhabited it.

In truth, there was no end to his allure. Sometimes she hated his beauty, considering its existence an affront to her desire. A gross injustice, being subjected to it every day. It had been decades since she had felt so selfconscious about her own looks. Not so much the quality of her appearance, but the differences between her and Vedas.

Walking the streets of Danoor, she had been especially aware of the disparity. Reading judgment in the dark gazes around her was easy. Knosi, after all, were famed for their flawless complexions. Her freckles, a feature she had always been proud of, suddenly seemed like so many imperfections on her sun- and wind-burnt skin.

She ordered a second round, and he did not object or bring up the time.

“A plate of bread, as well,” he told the server, for which Churls was grateful. They had not eaten since noon, and the alcohol intensified her hunger.

They continued talking of inconsequential matters, lingering on details of their trip, avoiding any mention of the tournament. His gaze never drifted to the prostitutes, many of whom had situated themselves on couches closer to him. He looked at his drink, his hands. He met Churls’s eyes more often as they drank. In order to eat the highly spiced food, they both had to lean toward the table. Twice, they reached for bread at the same time. Once, his hand brushed hers and did not immediately pull away.

An hour stretched to two as business picked up. It became too loud to talk softly, but she did not mind holding her tongue. Apparently, neither did he. She ordered another round, another plate of food. He leaned back and she could not stop her eyes from drifting to the bulge of his genitals outlined by the fabric of his suit.

He folded his hands on his lower belly and sighed. She heard a signal within it, dreaded hearing the words it presaged:
I have to go.

“I’ve rewritten the speech.”

She blinked, quickly reorganizing her thoughts and suffering a pang of guilt. She had managed to shuffle his speech to the back of her mind, had failed to make her opinion of the document more obvious. It was important. He had asked for her help. But the crash on Tan-Ten had turned her world upside-down. She had spent the last month flinching at every shadow, staying close to campfires for fear of encountering Fyra again.

And the claims the girl had made? Churls avoided thinking of these at all costs. Only the proximity of Danoor had been enough to tear her away from obsessive evasion.

“Oh, yes?” she finally said, hating the tremor in her voice. “You’re happy with it?”

He sat up and rested his forearms on his knees. He offered a wan smile. “Happy’s not really the word. I’m satisfied with it. I’ve said what I want to say, instead of what Abse wants me to say. I’ve...” He gestured vaguely. “I’ve come to terms with the things I’ve seen since leaving Golna. I’m not the same man. Abse won’t like what I have to say. Many people won’t like it. But it’s better than the alternative, which is more of the same violence on a larger scale.”

She leaned forward. “What about the Tomen?”

He grimaced. “They’ll still attack. I don’t see a way anyone can stop that. The longer I think about it, though, the more likely it seems that violence will erupt even without the Tomen threat. I can’t explain how, but I feel it in the streets, the nervousness. I felt it on the trail, too. Hopefully my message will at least sway the fighting in a different direction, away from innocent people.”

He licked his fingers clean, and then frowned. He looked toward the door, making her heart sink. “This talk reminds me, I have to get going. I have a little dust left. Not much, but I should help you pay.”

“You don’t have to go,” she said.

“Yes, I do. The first rounds are tomorrow. You...” He stood, shouldering his pack. His eyes eventually met hers. “You’ll be there? For the final fight on the eve?”

Her right hand twitched in her lap. Only a short reach to grab his hand.

Only two words:
Don’t go.

“Tell me you will,” he insisted.

“Yes,” she answered, and watched him leave.

‡

Two hours later, she emerged from the whorehouse, drunk and lightened of nearly eight grams of dust. Berun was nowhere to be found, so she bought a packet of sempa resin from a street vendor and smeared it on her gums. After fifteen minutes of searching, she located a normal inn crowded with reveling travelers. She ordered a lager and sat down to survey the crowd. A number of nationalities were represented, though porcelain-skinned Ulomi men comprised the majority, and Tomen were absent altogether.

At a table in the center, a group sat playing kingsmader, a Stoli tile game at which Churls possessed no skill. She knew the rules, but nothing of the nuance.

The inn’s banker weighed her dust and counted out four grams in bone chips. All she had left.

She sat down, nodded to her fellow players, and selected her tiles. Across from her sat three young Ulomi men with straight backs and even straighter teeth. The youngest appeared no older than sixteen, and when he moved his arm to raise the bet his robe parted, revealing the white elder-cloth suit he wore underneath.

He caught Churls’s stare and smirked. He whispered to the largest of the three, causing this man to wink at her.

She ignored them. It soon became clear that she was not the only one. The couple on Churls’s right, a Stoli merchant and his wife by the look of them, frowned at the table every time one of the three men spoke. The cauliflowereared Castan, a fighter obviously, stared right through them and did not so much as twitch at their bawdy jokes. Only the olive-skinned woman, shaven-headed and ethnically ambiguous, noted their presence with any enthusiasm. She eyed the thinnest of the three, the one with the smattering of light freckles on the bridge of his nose, as if she intended to eat him.

Churls hemorrhaged chips. Before long, she became the butt of the youngest White Suit’s jibes.

“You know what they call a woman in the Castan badlands?”

“There are two types of people who can’t gamble. One of them is in this room.”

“Ever heard of a bluff?”

“What’s the difference between an Adrashi whore and an Anadrashi whore?”

She listened and smiled when he or one of his mates announced the punchline. All the while anger stewed in her stomach. Though the boys were young and most likely had not yet mastered the use of their suits, she knew backing away from the table, getting away with a portion of her money, would be the smart thing to do.

Unfortunately, she was not in a smart frame of mind.

The scrape of her chair against the wood floor signaled a situation that would soon get out of hand. A hush fell over the room. The bald woman frowned, picked up all but two of her chips, and left the inn.

“You owe me an apology,” Churls said. Her heart boomed so loud she did not hear the words.

The youth rolled his eyes. “I said a lot of things. Which one hurt your feelings?”

Churls leaned forward, knuckles on the table. “Stand up.”

The largest called over his shoulder to the bar. “Get her a drink. Maybe then she’ll have the courage to ask for a fuck.” He looked Churls up and down. “We could fuck you.”

A smile touched the corners of Churls’s mouth. She switched her grip and overturned the table, sending chips and tiles to the floor. Surprised by her maneuver, the three White Suits tumbled out of their chairs and backed up close to the bar.

She rounded the table and followed with a smile so wide it hurt.

‡

The boy’s cheek collapsed under her knuckle, accompanied by the satisfying crack of shattering bone. She followed her fist forward with two quick steps, shoving the boy into his companions. The three fell backward, toppling and tripping over bar stools. Someone screamed and the bartender pulled a crossbow from under the counter. The movement might as well have been in slow motion. Churls hopped forward and slapped the weapon from his hand.

“The fuck you will,” she said. “Stay put and shut up.”

The boy with the dented face remained down, but the other two regained their feet quickly. The smaller moved away from the counter, putting tables and chairs between himself and Churls. He was not her main concern. He had not been running his mouth. One of those who had was already down, possibly dying, and the other would soon join him.

Blood pounded in Churls’s veins violently enough to make her whole body shake. She could not have anticipated how the sempa resin and alcohol would interact in her system, but discovered she liked it.

Fear could not touch her. Vedas was a distant memory.

All that remained was rage, pure and simple.

The big man, barely more than a boy himself, shrugged off his robe and pulled his elder-cloth hood over his head. He smiled and flexed his chest. Like the other two, he was beautiful, broad and sculpted and sheathed in white. His teeth were alabaster tiles, his bone-pale skin shone with health. Unlike his smaller companion, he did not look scared in the least.

“Glad you did that,” he said in his thick Ulomi accent. “Been looking for a fight all night. It’s too polite, this city.”

As he spoke, the material of his suit thickened visibly along his shoulders and forearms. The hood covered his temples, rose over his chin and onto his cheekbones—far slower than Vedas managed with his own suit.

Churls returned his grin. “Pretty boy doesn’t want to get his face ruined.”

The man gave himself away too easily. The twitch of his right pectoral signaled the punch. As it flew, Churls gripped his forearm in her left hand and twisted inside his guard, pressing her back against the solid wall of his torso. Using his own forward momentum, she bent at the waist, levered down on his arm and threw him. A table split in two under his weight.

To his credit, he rolled clear and stood rapidly, guard up.

She had not moved. “Come on. Clear a way. We’ll wrestle.”

He kicked the rubble of the table to one side. “Castan fucking bitch. My grandparents have a row of your ancestors’ heads mounted above the hearth. You know what grandpa says about them? Know what he says their mouths are good for?”

Churls pushed off from the counter. “I don’t care.”

The man shrugged. As his shoulders dropped, he slammed both palms into Churls’s chest. The graceless, full-bodied attack took her by surprise, forcing the air from her lungs, and she stumbled backwards into the bar counter. He followed with quick jabs, the first two of which grazed her temples.

Buoyed by alcohol and drugs, the light battering amused her. He was not a formidable opponent, despite the speed and strength his suit granted him.

Laughing, she batted the third punch aside, planted both hands on the counter behind her, and thrust her kneecap into his groin. He grunted, unharmed, just as Churls had expected. It was meant as a distraction.

She slammed her forehead into his nose, relishing the crunch of crushed cartilage. He reeled back and tripped on a splinter of wood, crashing to the floor.

She stepped forward and stopped, sword halfway out of its scabbard. The man was dead.

“Shit,” she said. “Shit.” She set chair upright and fell into it. “Shit, shit, shit.”

She felt eyes upon her and looked up. “Get the fuck out,” she told the remaining White Suit. “If your other brother’s still alive, take him with you. No. Don’t say a fucking word. If you say anything, I’ll have to kill you.”

Only words. Her anger had expired the moment her backside hit the chair. She watched the man check his dent-faced brother for a pulse—another sign of inexperience. Just a glance at the boy, and she knew he was alive. Take him to a good healer, and he would be as good as new. Being young and resilient had its advantages.

The young man lifted his brother over his shoulder and walked out the door without a word. Undoubtedly, he would return with other members of his order. They would scold him for sneaking out of camp, but they would come nonetheless.

Churls sighed and dropped her chin onto her chest. Anger flared again as her thoughts touched upon Vedas.

In one evening, she had made a mess of everything.

“Barkeep,” she called. “You there?”

Nothing. He had probably exited out the back. Very likely, he was now gathering a few reinforcements.

Having been in similar situations more than a few times in her life, Churls considered which would be better: leaving, or pouring herself another drink for the wait.

THE 26
^th
OF THE MONTH OF ROYALTY, 12499 MD
THE CITY OF TANSOT, THE KINGDOM OF STOL

E
bn breathed in the heavily magicked air, the almond-and-bloodscent of elder semen and menstrual fluid mixed with her own juices. “You have been careless,” she told Pol.

He lay on his side, tangled in his bed sheets, unconscious. Naked, she sat cross-legged before him, caressing his cheek with the back of one finger, watching the last drop of the spell of compulsion disappear into his ear canal. Her eyes lingered over his form. She outlined the fists on his chest with a clawtip. A tingling moved into her thighs. Warmth spread throughout her torso, rose into her neck and filled her head.