“No.”
“No,” I said, testing out the syllable. “Hard to know what that means without a little more context.”
“It means that until this is finished, you’re not going to disappear again.”
I tried to look cool despite the sweat beading on my face. The meeting had gone just as I hoped: Ruc knew I was in the city, was curious about why, and intended to keep me close, at least for a while longer. He had taken the bait; all that was left was to set the hook.
So why, I asked myself as I watched him watching me, do I feel like the one caught?
8
“I figure there are two possibilities,” Ruc said.
I’d followed him out of the pool, into the warren of benches and cubbyholes, wooden trunks, hooks hung with robes, and ranks of narrow closets running the length of the long northern wall. He’d been studying me silently as we toweled ourselves dry. My skin was still flushed with the water’s heat, a fact for which I was both irritated and grateful. I didn’t want him to think I was blushing; on the other hand, I wasn’t sure I wasn’t.
It’s amazing how easy it is to be naked around someone who doesn’t interest you; bodies are simple, straightforward, no more worth noticing than the walls. Add attraction, however, and all that cool composure goes to shit. As Ruc twisted and stretched to dry the difficult spots, I couldn’t figure out where to put my eyes. Whenever I looked away, I felt like a cloistered milkmaid, but whenever I let my gaze linger—on his ass, on that perfect joint where his leg met his hip—I felt the blush burning up through my cheeks.
He didn’t seem to share my dilemma. His skin was darker than mine, which gave him an advantage in the blushing game, but I suspected that even if he’d been pale as the moon my nakedness wouldn’t have fazed him. He’d been watching me with such frank curiosity as we dried then dressed that when he finally spoke, the words were a relief.
“You were working with the Neck,” he went on, pausing with his pants half buttoned to gauge my response. “Working with him or about to start. The note I found on his body was from you. That’s why you’re here.”
“That’s one possibility,” I conceded.
“The question is what kind of work you hoped to accomplish. That’s where we get to the possibilities.”
I glanced casually over my shoulder. A knot of women occupied the far end of the bench, laughing, chatting, and getting dressed, but they were a few paces away and paid us no mind.
“Either,” Ruc said, raising a finger, “you’re working for Annur, which puts us on the same side. Or you’re working with Dombang’s seditious priests, in which case things start looking a lot less rosy for the two of us.”
“I’d tell you the answer,” I said, “but I can see you’re having so much fun figuring it out all on your own.”
Ruc flashed me a smile. “Why don’t I tell you a story,” he suggested. “There was a woman, born in Dombang, who wanted nothing more than to drive Annur from her city—”
“Lousy start.”
“I thought,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “you were going to let me work it out on my own.”
“It’s the storytelling I’m objecting to. Don’t tell the listener everything in the first sentence. You’ll spoil the mystery.”
He picked up his sheathed belt knife, slapped it contemplatively against his palm a few times, then threaded it through his belt. “I find you can skip the mystery as long as there’s enough screaming and blood.”
“Nothing like playing to a crowd’s finer sensibilities.”
“And sex,” Ruc added, winking at me without cracking a smile. “Let’s not leave out the sex.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. If we can’t have decent storytelling, at least we can enjoy the violence and fornication.”
Ruc pursed his lips. “A pretty sound approach, I’d say.”
“So…” I bent to strap my own knives to my thighs. “According to this tawdry tale of concupiscence and blood…”
“Our protagonist,” he said, nodding to me, “this daughter of Dombang, tailed me six years ago.”
“For the sex,” I asked, straightening up, “or the blood?”
“The one was a means to the other. She tried to enlist me in the city’s uprising, plying me with all her feminine wiles. When she failed, she vanished. Now here she is again, reappearing just days after someone has begun spanking my city bloody with red-painted palms.”
I felt less exposed with the weight of my blades strapped to my thighs. Less exposed but still naked. I started to pick up my pants, then left them where they lay. This whole thing—the story, the indifferent pace at which he was getting dressed, the tapping of his knife against his palm—it was all the circling and feinting before a fight, and I’d be fucked if I let him see me flinch. Instead, I stepped closer, put a hand on his bare chest, traced a line down his stomach to his belt, then tucked a finger in behind the leather and the cloth beneath. He was still warm from the water. Not just warm—hot.
“I’m waiting to hear why this woman, one of Dombang’s chief conspirators, was planning to meet with the Neck, the Annurian legionary responsible for dismantling her carefully planned revolution.”
Ruc glanced down at my hand, made no effort to move it, then met my gaze. “For the same reason she found me six years earlier: she hoped to seduce the Neck into some kind of collusion.”
“Your grasp of female characters leaves something to be desired.”
“Oh?”
“For starters, the woman in question, this revolutionary genius, seems to rely somewhat single-mindedly on her vagina.”
“I shouldn’t have made her sound so simple,” Ruc conceded. “She also excels at punching.”
I smiled. “Let me tell you a story. I call it Betrayal of a Native Son.”
“Lighthearted.”
“You’ll die laughing.”
“The title seems to give away the mystery.”
“Not if you don’t know who’s going to be betrayed.” I ran my finger back up his stomach and chest, up to his neck, lifting his chin. “The fun is in seeing it play out.”
“Sure that fun is the right word?”
“Oh, the most vicious stories can be the best—provided you’re not the one living them. Are you going to listen or keep interrupting?”
Ruc put a hand on my bare hip. “I’m listening.”