‘A good death,’ murmured Blue Jenner.
Raith tossed his shield clattering down on the walkway. ‘A death, anyway.’
Mother Sun broke through the clouds as Bright Yilling wiped his sword, making the diamond pommel flash, the blood on his face glisten. He looked like Death’s chosen indeed, smiling among a harvest of corpses with Uthil’s body at his feet.
‘I will come back for the rest of you!’ he called as he turned towards the breach.
So that was the end to the day’s murder.
Dreams
Skara liked sharing her bed.
Considering the fuss that had always been made of it, she wasn’t sure how much she enjoyed the coupling. It seemed to her messy, strange and uncomfortable. Faintly ridiculous, even. She might have laughed the first time had he not been taking it so seriously. Some sticky fumbling. Some awkward grunting. Some clumsy peeling and unpeeling of skin with no grace or romance in it. In her dreams they had both known just what to do. In reality she hardly knew what she wanted, let alone what he did.
But she liked his body beside hers afterward. She liked the strength, and the roughness, and the warmth of him. She liked the way her chest fitted against his broad back, the way her legs twined with his, the way his ribs swelled against hers when he breathed. She liked the way he twitched and shuddered in his sleep, like the dogs used to by the firepit in her grandfather’s hall. She liked the sour-sweat stink of him, even, which had no business being pleasant but for some reason she could never breathe in deeply enough.
She liked not being alone.
She touched his shoulder. Felt the rough skin of a scar under her fingertip. Followed it down to where it met another, then another, then another.
‘So many scars,’ she whispered.
‘In Vansterland we call ’em warrior’s rewards,’ she heard him say. Not asleep, then. She would have been surprised if anyone in Bail’s Point was. Why sleep through your last night alive, after all?
‘They feel like whip marks.’
He was silent, and she wondered if she should have said nothing. She had no notion what the rules were between them any more, but she was learning that baring your body to someone didn’t make baring your heart any easier. Harder than ever, maybe.
Raith’s shoulders shifted as he shrugged. ‘Before I was Gorm’s servant, I was bad. After, I wasn’t always bad enough.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered. Sorry that he’d been whipped. Sorry that she hardly knew what to say about it. They were so different, in every way. It made no sense that they could fit together. But when she slid her arm over his side and he slipped his fingers through hers they fitted together well enough. Maybe any living hand fits when Death is offering you hers.
‘What are we doing?’ he asked.
‘Holding hands.’
‘Tonight we are. What about tomorrow?’
‘I didn’t think you were much worried about tomorrow. It’s one of the things I like about you.’
‘Tomorrow used to seem a long way off. It got close of a sudden.’
The truth was she had no idea what they were doing, now or tomorrow. She had spent a lot of thought on what it might be like to have him. None at all on what she might do once she got him. It was like that puzzle box an emissary from Catalia had brought as a gift for her grandfather. Four days it had taken her to get it open and, once she had, there was another box inside.
In spite of Raith’s warmth she gave a shiver, whispered the words into his battered ear. ‘Do you think Bright Yilling will come tonight?’
‘He’s in no rush. Reckon he’ll wait for dawn.’
She thought of the blood tapping from the point of Yilling’s sword in the darkness and pressed herself tighter to Raith’s back.
‘King Uthil’s dead,’ she muttered. He had seemed a man forged from iron, indestructible. But she had seen him laid out pale and cold before Bail’s Chair.
‘Death waits for us all,’ said Raith. ‘All it takes is a stray pebble and no skill, no name, no fame can shield you from her.’
Skara glanced towards the door, torchlight around its edge. Out there, she had to be strong. Had to show no fear and no doubt. But no one can stay strong all the time. ‘We’re doomed,’ she whispered.
Finally he rolled towards her, but in the darkness she could hardly tell more from his face than from his back. Just the faint gleam of his eyes fixed on her, the hard set of his cheek. He didn’t speak. He didn’t deny it.
She gave a ragged sigh. ‘I missed my chance to jump off Gudrun’s Tower.’
‘I’ll admit it’s a lot lower than it was.’
She touched his chest, ran her fingertip through the few pale hairs there. ‘I suppose I should be ready to jump off one of the others.’
He caught her hand in his bandaged one. ‘Might be Blue Jenner could get you away. Like before.’
‘So I can be the one who always runs? A queen with no country? An object of contempt?’