Post by wordy on Feb 15, 2012 11:57:04 GMT 10
To: kris11
Message: Surprise! I hope you like the fic, it was a lot of fun to write. Happy Valentine’s and all that. ♥
From: Em
Title: grow up and blow away
Rating: PG13
Word count: 3,615
Wishlist Item: #1 Rosto/Aniki
Summary: A roll of the die.
A/N: Title is the song by Metric.
It was easy. Too easy, Aniki thinks, shrugging inside her fur-lined coat, a useless attempt to dispel some of the clinging heat and sweat. It bothers her, that Nordersted has grown to matter so little.
She wouldn’t be waiting for a mug of sour ale in a nameless tavern by the river if home still mattered.
Rationing down her few belongings had taken no time at all; that came from being a rusher. Travel light. Think on your feet. Be ready to leave town at the smallest hint of trouble. Make sure you get paid; having enough coin ready for the journey had been the only thought running through her head as she’d packed up her room. Now, the heavy weight of her sword at her hip is more than enough, and the warm coat on her back.
The warm coat on her back. She runs a finger under the collar and grimaces. There are still a few hours to kill. The weather outside is blustering and cold, but here inside the air is warm and yellow and cloying. If she were half a fool she’d just take her coat off; some smart fellow would surely like to help relieve her of it, once her back is turned for no more than an eye-blink. The tavern is full of dishonest men, with still more crawling in from the moonlit riverside like rats, eye beady and hearts greedy.
Her ale arrives and she takes a sip, mouth twisting at the biting taste of it. She turns to survey the room, wipes her mouth on her sleeve.
She’s looking for one rat in particular.
The Bloody Throne is free for the taking once more, the bravest of the clans circling it like dogs, eager for power. Eager for bloodshed.
It’s no wonder, really, that the docks are swarming with people. She’s hoping that most of them will cut across the Vassa, then overland. By the time she’s drained her ale, she’s sorted out the city folk from the farmers, the sea-goers from the land rats; the odds seems in her favour, but it’ll take days to know the truth of it, whether she can make it good on some ship or not.
Piracy had never been her calling. Not that it matters now, one way or another.
Her eye catches on a familiar face across the crowded room and she downs the last sour dregs of her ale, then slams it down on the bar.
“Jaeden,” she says, pulling up a chair at his table. He’s in the middle of a dice game. The other men glare at her, tough sorts the lot of them. It makes her want to laugh; he’ll never learn. Death will find him eventually. She only hopes it isn’t her who has to serve it.
Still, he’s smart enough to know when he’s cornered. Jaeden fidgets under her gaze, a pitiful figure with his bristled chin and watery eyes. Not nearly enough man for the trouble he’s in. She lays a hand flat on the tabletop, and waits.
“Here now,” a man across the table speaks up, “we’re in the middle of somethin’, ain’t you got eyes?”
Jaeden remains silent. His fingernails are bitten to the quick, she notices, before he tucks his hands under his arms.
“I’ve just come to collect,” says Aniki. Her eyes flicker to the man who spoke, to the pale man beside him. “Any way I need to.”
There’s a stiff silence about the table, strange amongst the rowdy noise of the tavern. She could hear a coin drop in that silence. It doesn’t bode well for Jaeden.
She turns back to him, lowers her voice, soft enough for those around her to draw in. “Do you have the money owed me, friend?”
It’s been nigh on two years since the last good crop. Common knowledge, it is, even to the city folk who live on politics and intrigue and not much else. Every man’s as starved as the next, and in a country where food is precious, coin’s even more so; one bit of gambling here or there makes no matter, but all that money starts to add up. Beside her, Jaeden’s trembling. There’s a kerchief round his neck that looks newer than the rest of him. He smells cleaner than the whole tavern put together.
She wonders how many of the folk round the table have diced with him before, and how many have been paid. The tension makes her skin crawl. He still hasn’t answered her.
“I’m sure he’s got it,” says the man next to Jaeden, a friend mayhap; he looks more nervous than the rest. “He wouldn’t be fool enough to play unless he was good for it.”
Aniki darts her eyes about the table, taking in the expressions of the other men. They’re starting to doubt, she can tell. And a man who doesn’t pay his debts is no man at all. The pale-haired one catches her gaze, his mouth twitching.
“Do you have the money owed me?” she asks again.
The whole table seems to hold its breath.
She’s trying her new vest on for size when a thin shadow falls across the dirty pavers in front of her. She tenses, but relaxes again when the pale-haired cove from the gaming table steps out. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his breeches, all kinds of nonchalant.
He admires the vest for a moment, eyes lingering on her chest where she’s trying to stretch the stiff material across her breasts. She gives it up—vests are useless things, anyway—and picks up the belt from the ground in front of her. From the corner of her eye, she tries to assess him in the light spilling out from the tavern.
“Did you kill him?” he asks, as though he were enquiring about the weather. Even in the gloom of the alley and the silver of the moonlight, it’s obvious that there’s no anger or other strong emotion in his expression. But he was dicing, after all, Aniki reasons; he’s probably worked at being unreadable.
“If I killed him, the lesson would hardly stick,” she says. The belt sits nicely about her hips; the few coins and trinkets go in her pockets, then on with her fur-lined coat once more. It’s cooler out here, and the wind’s struck up a little: it’s cold on her face. She flips her braid out from the neck of her coat and turns to take a better look at the man, sizing him up from head to toe.
What she mistook for blond hair is actually white, tied back from his angular face. He’s slim and well-muscled. The sort of man who carries knives; she wonders how many she could find, if she stripped off all his clothes.
She wouldn’t much mind a task such as that.
He spreads his hands under her silent appraisal. “Nothing up my sleeves,” he says, and smiles, as if sharing the joke. His smile his sharp, and not a little devastating, but she’s fallen for prettier coves than this.
She steps towards him and extends her hand; his grip is strong and sure, but not testing. “Aniki Forfrysning.”
“Rosto the Piper.”
She raises an eyebrow and extricates her hand from his. “The Piper?”
Rosto smiles again, inclines his head. “How else would I entice fair ladies, from the border to the Emerald Ocean?”
“Certainly not with charm or good looks,” she murmurs, grinning when he laughs. He’s a likable fellow, this Rosto the Piper. Dangerous, to be sure.
He takes a step closer, and for a moment her heart sprints faster, but then there’s a crunch and a puzzled expression crosses his face. He moves his boot back and they both look down at a broken tooth, crushed against the paver. The look he gives her is unreadable once again, though the corner of his mouth is twitching up in that way of his. “Not yours, I assume?”
Aniki smiles, showing her teeth. Her knuckles ache in sharp pulses, the crisp night air cutting against her cheeks, and the way this Piper smiles at her melts her insides like a sword thrust gone true.
After her third ale the sour taste is starting to fade and her mouth feels hot and numb, the strong spices tickling her throat. Rosto reappears through the crowd, another mug in hand, and slides into his seat across from her. The pounding in her ears could be from the unholy noise in the tavern or an oncoming headache; either way, she decides it’s time to cut straight to whatever it is they’ve been dancing around the whole evening. It seems Rosto has had the same idea.
“Come with me,” he says.
She licks her lips, clears her throat. “What?”
“You said it yourself, and being at sea’s no life for the likes of us. You’re a rusher, Aniki, and no amount of saltwater or decks pitching under your feet will change that. It’s not the same.” He leans forward and looks her in the eye. “Forget going downriver. Come with me to Tortall.”
“Tortall.” She lets the name wrap its way around her lips. When she glances up, he’s still watching her. It’d be so easy to have him then let him go, like countless others she’s crossed paths with over the years; a chance meeting means nothing. Should mean nothing.
“Well?”
“I think I need more convincing than a pretty little speech,” she says, because she can’t think of what to say. The pounding in her ears seems louder. “Every rat along the Vassa will be heading to Tortall.”
She expects to be convinced; maybe she wants to be. But Rosto says nothing, instead reaching into a pocket of his shirt. He places the die on the table, pushes it across to her.
She takes it in hand, rubbing her thumb over the rough surface, feeling the small indentations where the spots have been painted over. She glances up at him. “I only gamble when I can win.”
“So do I.”
He takes the die back. “Odds,” he says, “and we go to Tortall.”
She wouldn’t be drinking a mug of sour ale in a nameless tavern by the river if home still mattered. Rosto rattles the die in his cupped hands, and she keeps her eyes fixed on his, hears the die drop on the tabletop and scatter, hears it roll to a halt in front of her, and his eyes are so dark they’re black, like the night sky, like the sea, and she couldn’t look away if she tried.
“Tortall,” she says.
The sun beats down on the back of her neck. Aniki rubs her palm across the spot, knowing it’s probably red and burnt by now, her thighs straining from two days’ walking. Her sword feels heavier than before, weighing her down on one side. But Scanra is behind, and before doesn’t matter.
At midday, or thereabouts, they stop under a tree, the only one around for miles, its canopy spread above them like a sending from the gods. There’s no breeze, but she feels cooler nonetheless.
“I’m assuming you have a plan,” she says.
Rosto looks at her, all innocence. “What do you take me for, some foul schemer?”
Never has she met a man before who is so effortlessly charming, and so insufferable. She takes her sword from its scabbard, the steel ringing, and places it on the grass before her crossed legs. It’s not gone to rust just yet. She feels lighter without it. Rosto doesn’t bat an eyelid. She sighs heavily, and he gives in.
“Kayfer.”
Raising her eyebrows seems like too much effort. She flops down on her back, twisting until she feels more comfortable on the cursed hard ground. Grass tickles its way along her arms. She curls her fingers into it. “Kayfer?”
From where she’s spread, she can just make out his pale face. He nods, decisively, then rises from his tailor’s seat and goes round the other side of the tree, probably to take a piss. She sighs again and looks up at the leafy covering, sun and blue sky winking through. She’s never had brothers, but she’s met enough coves to put together an idea of what a brother might be like. Rosto’s worse than the lot of them.
He’ll tell her eventually, she knows that to be true. Back in Scanra, food and coin were power; for some people, knowledge is a weapon fit for any man who’ll take it. She just has to wait.
Under the shade of the tree, halfway between old-home and new, Aniki mouths the word again.
The land they walk over is markedly different to the rocky ground of Scanra, the mountains hardly more than sloping colours in the distance. Aniki’s grateful that her boots are well-made, though by the time they’re finished walking she’s sure they’ll be worn down to the soles.
Rosto is good company. Apart from his tendency to fall behind, no doubt to ogle her arse as she walks. It doesn’t really bother her overmuch, but after hours of marching along the same boring road it begins to irritate her, like a tic.
“Five paces in front, prettyboy,” she tells him sternly, crossing her arms and waiting as he complies with a grin. They set off again, and if the new arrangement happens to give her a chance to ogle him a little, well, that’s neither here nor there.
When night falls, they sleep under the open sky. The two of them trade stories of coves they’ve worked for and Rosto tells her about his mother, his voice soft and sweet.
Aniki watches the stars, and wonders if they look the same no matter the land you’re tied to.
She’s ducking to fill her cupped hands with water for her face when she thinks she hears a sound. There was no one on the road as far as the eye could reach, no one but the two of them, only a wasteland of dirt and grass. The stream trickles quietly, and she shakes her head and carries on.
The blow connects with the back of her legs.
She struggles to keep her balance, arms flailing, reaching, pulling, but the two of them go down anyway; the water shocks her heat-stricken body, knees scraping the bottom, a fistful of shirt in her hand as her head breaches the surface and she gasps in air. Rosto is laughing.
“Are you touched in the head?” she yells, twisting away, trying to untangle herself before changing her mind and deciding to throttle him instead. The two of them are soaked; it will take hours of daylight to dry her clothes, and the sun’s already dipping low in the sky.
Rosto raises his arms in defence, still laughing breathlessly, then manages to grab a hold of her wrists. He’s strong. She’s half on top of him, water swilling around them, and she can feel her hair dripping wetly down her back, which is as wet as the rest of her. Her chest is heaving, and Rosto is smiling beneath her, long fingers still circling her wrists; his hair has come loose from its leather thong and is floating, ghost-like, in the water around him.
She leans down and kisses him.
Between them, Aniki can feel her heart thundering in her chest as their mouths move together, soft and slow. The taste of him is like silk, slippery and cool. She can feel water dribbling down her face, between their lips; he’s released her wrists to cup the back of her head, her neck, and when she opens her eyes and pulls back to breathe, fine droplets of water cling to his pale eyelashes.
He’s breathing as hard as she is, and when he licks his lips it’s hard not to let her thoughts run away; the burning desire in the pit of her belly stirs with every movement he makes beneath her. It would be so easy.
With effort, she sits up. Rosto makes to follow, but she squeezes her legs around him and pins him in the shallow water with a hand to his chest. She scowls, letting her earlier anger return; it warms her in a different way. “I’m completely wet,” she says.
He raises an eyebrow.
She shoves him down harder. “I could kill you in your sleep,” she points out.
“I wish you would,” he says, voice low, and it sends a shiver through her. But she’s dripping with water and the cool breeze is chilling through her wet clothes and she’s too tired to deal with feelings and double-talk right now.
She kicks water over him as she gets to her feet. It feels even colder away from the heat of his body. “I’d watch my back if I were you, Rosto the Piper,” she tells him, and trudges out of the stream and away, though not before she sees him smile and flop back down into the water.
“—one for protection, one for health, and for luck.”
Aniki looks down at the coins in her hand, different coloured threads tied through the round holes in their middles. “These things work?” she asks, skeptically.
There’s a touch of fondness in Kora’s expression as she rolls her eyes. “Not as quick to believe as some, are you?”
“Oh?”
Kora glances over her shoulder before leaning in close, a smile tugging at her lips. “I sold your Piper friend five, for three times the price.”
“You never!” Aniki finds herself grinning, liking this woman already, for all that she’s a mage.
“I did.” She ticks them off on her fingers as she speaks. “Health, luck, protection against hair loss, one for fine skin, and another for sweet dreams.”
Aniki laughs and so does the mage, then her cat-like eyes slide demurely from Aniki’s face and her mouth curves into a smile. “I don’t suppose you’re in the market for another kind of charm; I sell those too, you know.”
Unbidden, Aniki’s gaze flickers over the mage’s shoulder, to where Rosto is haggling with a stallowner. He looks completely at ease amongst the dirt and squalor of the market, in his white shirt and dark breeches, hair tied back to reveal his cutting cheekbones and the pale, slender line of his neck; even looking at him makes her flush.
Kora is watching her, amused, when she glances back. Aniki smiles wryly, like a secret shared, and twitches aside the edge of her shirt collar to reveal a gleam of silver and the leather cord around her neck. The mage’s eyes positively light up. “I’m afraid you’re some weeks too late to make a profit,” Aniki tells her.
Kora laughs and shakes her head. “I like you, Aniki Forfrysning.”
“I was just thinking the same about you.”
The lights of Corus are a welcome sight. The three of them stop on a rise overlooking the place, and Aniki crosses her arms in the dark. Beside her, Kora meanders to a halt with a soft jangle of bangles. “It’s pretty,” she says, voice quiet.
“Time to get to work,” says Rosto.
“Come on, Aniki,” says Rosto with a grin, “tell me, and tell me true – you’re jealous.”
He’s cocky now that Kayfer knows his name. If he were another cove she might have been worried for him; for all that the Rogue’s a useless sack of waste, he’s still dangerous. But so is Rosto.
“Jealous?” She takes off her boots and places them by her chair. She can feel his eyes on her. The room’s smaller than she would have liked—both she and Rosto had lost the big one upstairs to Kora—but there’s a row of windows looking out onto a cramped courtyard. It makes the room seem bigger than it is, though the space between them feels like just a lungful of air. She looks up at him with eyebrows raised. “I’m perfectly satisfied with how things turned out.”
“Besides owing that Dog money.”
“Besides owing that Dog money,” she agrees, then pauses. “Dawull will be good to work for, I can tell.”
“You sweet on him?”
“Jealous?” she mocks.
Rosto laughs, throwing his head back. “Of a cove with hair that colour?”
“I take it you have no complaints about Ulsa and Prettybone District?” she asks, serious once more.
“All clear. It seems as though things are looking up.” Aniki slouches back in her chair and watches as he crosses the room, a heartbeat for every footstep, the open window fluttering the thing curtains behind him. She had once thought that coming to Tortall had been a gamble, maybe the right choice, maybe not, but a gamble either way; they’re balancing on the edge of a blade now, and she knows as only a rusher can, as someone who’s seen blood and pain and dealt it out in kind, that if they don’t get it right, they get dead.
The thought sends gooseflesh running over her body. She licks her lips and can almost taste the blood.
Rosto stops in front of her, drops to his knees on the dusty floorboards. He runs a hand up her calf, slowly, dark eyes fixed on hers. And maybe they’ve just exchanged one Bloody Throne for another, trekking overland in search of home and hope and other impossible things, but life’s too short for a rusher not to take chances when it counts.
Aniki hooks a leg over his shoulder and leans down to kiss him, drawing him close, mouth hovering over his, and makes it count.
Message: Surprise! I hope you like the fic, it was a lot of fun to write. Happy Valentine’s and all that. ♥
From: Em
Title: grow up and blow away
Rating: PG13
Word count: 3,615
Wishlist Item: #1 Rosto/Aniki
Summary: A roll of the die.
A/N: Title is the song by Metric.
It was easy. Too easy, Aniki thinks, shrugging inside her fur-lined coat, a useless attempt to dispel some of the clinging heat and sweat. It bothers her, that Nordersted has grown to matter so little.
She wouldn’t be waiting for a mug of sour ale in a nameless tavern by the river if home still mattered.
Rationing down her few belongings had taken no time at all; that came from being a rusher. Travel light. Think on your feet. Be ready to leave town at the smallest hint of trouble. Make sure you get paid; having enough coin ready for the journey had been the only thought running through her head as she’d packed up her room. Now, the heavy weight of her sword at her hip is more than enough, and the warm coat on her back.
The warm coat on her back. She runs a finger under the collar and grimaces. There are still a few hours to kill. The weather outside is blustering and cold, but here inside the air is warm and yellow and cloying. If she were half a fool she’d just take her coat off; some smart fellow would surely like to help relieve her of it, once her back is turned for no more than an eye-blink. The tavern is full of dishonest men, with still more crawling in from the moonlit riverside like rats, eye beady and hearts greedy.
Her ale arrives and she takes a sip, mouth twisting at the biting taste of it. She turns to survey the room, wipes her mouth on her sleeve.
She’s looking for one rat in particular.
The Bloody Throne is free for the taking once more, the bravest of the clans circling it like dogs, eager for power. Eager for bloodshed.
It’s no wonder, really, that the docks are swarming with people. She’s hoping that most of them will cut across the Vassa, then overland. By the time she’s drained her ale, she’s sorted out the city folk from the farmers, the sea-goers from the land rats; the odds seems in her favour, but it’ll take days to know the truth of it, whether she can make it good on some ship or not.
Piracy had never been her calling. Not that it matters now, one way or another.
Her eye catches on a familiar face across the crowded room and she downs the last sour dregs of her ale, then slams it down on the bar.
“Jaeden,” she says, pulling up a chair at his table. He’s in the middle of a dice game. The other men glare at her, tough sorts the lot of them. It makes her want to laugh; he’ll never learn. Death will find him eventually. She only hopes it isn’t her who has to serve it.
Still, he’s smart enough to know when he’s cornered. Jaeden fidgets under her gaze, a pitiful figure with his bristled chin and watery eyes. Not nearly enough man for the trouble he’s in. She lays a hand flat on the tabletop, and waits.
“Here now,” a man across the table speaks up, “we’re in the middle of somethin’, ain’t you got eyes?”
Jaeden remains silent. His fingernails are bitten to the quick, she notices, before he tucks his hands under his arms.
“I’ve just come to collect,” says Aniki. Her eyes flicker to the man who spoke, to the pale man beside him. “Any way I need to.”
There’s a stiff silence about the table, strange amongst the rowdy noise of the tavern. She could hear a coin drop in that silence. It doesn’t bode well for Jaeden.
She turns back to him, lowers her voice, soft enough for those around her to draw in. “Do you have the money owed me, friend?”
It’s been nigh on two years since the last good crop. Common knowledge, it is, even to the city folk who live on politics and intrigue and not much else. Every man’s as starved as the next, and in a country where food is precious, coin’s even more so; one bit of gambling here or there makes no matter, but all that money starts to add up. Beside her, Jaeden’s trembling. There’s a kerchief round his neck that looks newer than the rest of him. He smells cleaner than the whole tavern put together.
She wonders how many of the folk round the table have diced with him before, and how many have been paid. The tension makes her skin crawl. He still hasn’t answered her.
“I’m sure he’s got it,” says the man next to Jaeden, a friend mayhap; he looks more nervous than the rest. “He wouldn’t be fool enough to play unless he was good for it.”
Aniki darts her eyes about the table, taking in the expressions of the other men. They’re starting to doubt, she can tell. And a man who doesn’t pay his debts is no man at all. The pale-haired one catches her gaze, his mouth twitching.
“Do you have the money owed me?” she asks again.
The whole table seems to hold its breath.
She’s trying her new vest on for size when a thin shadow falls across the dirty pavers in front of her. She tenses, but relaxes again when the pale-haired cove from the gaming table steps out. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his breeches, all kinds of nonchalant.
He admires the vest for a moment, eyes lingering on her chest where she’s trying to stretch the stiff material across her breasts. She gives it up—vests are useless things, anyway—and picks up the belt from the ground in front of her. From the corner of her eye, she tries to assess him in the light spilling out from the tavern.
“Did you kill him?” he asks, as though he were enquiring about the weather. Even in the gloom of the alley and the silver of the moonlight, it’s obvious that there’s no anger or other strong emotion in his expression. But he was dicing, after all, Aniki reasons; he’s probably worked at being unreadable.
“If I killed him, the lesson would hardly stick,” she says. The belt sits nicely about her hips; the few coins and trinkets go in her pockets, then on with her fur-lined coat once more. It’s cooler out here, and the wind’s struck up a little: it’s cold on her face. She flips her braid out from the neck of her coat and turns to take a better look at the man, sizing him up from head to toe.
What she mistook for blond hair is actually white, tied back from his angular face. He’s slim and well-muscled. The sort of man who carries knives; she wonders how many she could find, if she stripped off all his clothes.
She wouldn’t much mind a task such as that.
He spreads his hands under her silent appraisal. “Nothing up my sleeves,” he says, and smiles, as if sharing the joke. His smile his sharp, and not a little devastating, but she’s fallen for prettier coves than this.
She steps towards him and extends her hand; his grip is strong and sure, but not testing. “Aniki Forfrysning.”
“Rosto the Piper.”
She raises an eyebrow and extricates her hand from his. “The Piper?”
Rosto smiles again, inclines his head. “How else would I entice fair ladies, from the border to the Emerald Ocean?”
“Certainly not with charm or good looks,” she murmurs, grinning when he laughs. He’s a likable fellow, this Rosto the Piper. Dangerous, to be sure.
He takes a step closer, and for a moment her heart sprints faster, but then there’s a crunch and a puzzled expression crosses his face. He moves his boot back and they both look down at a broken tooth, crushed against the paver. The look he gives her is unreadable once again, though the corner of his mouth is twitching up in that way of his. “Not yours, I assume?”
Aniki smiles, showing her teeth. Her knuckles ache in sharp pulses, the crisp night air cutting against her cheeks, and the way this Piper smiles at her melts her insides like a sword thrust gone true.
After her third ale the sour taste is starting to fade and her mouth feels hot and numb, the strong spices tickling her throat. Rosto reappears through the crowd, another mug in hand, and slides into his seat across from her. The pounding in her ears could be from the unholy noise in the tavern or an oncoming headache; either way, she decides it’s time to cut straight to whatever it is they’ve been dancing around the whole evening. It seems Rosto has had the same idea.
“Come with me,” he says.
She licks her lips, clears her throat. “What?”
“You said it yourself, and being at sea’s no life for the likes of us. You’re a rusher, Aniki, and no amount of saltwater or decks pitching under your feet will change that. It’s not the same.” He leans forward and looks her in the eye. “Forget going downriver. Come with me to Tortall.”
“Tortall.” She lets the name wrap its way around her lips. When she glances up, he’s still watching her. It’d be so easy to have him then let him go, like countless others she’s crossed paths with over the years; a chance meeting means nothing. Should mean nothing.
“Well?”
“I think I need more convincing than a pretty little speech,” she says, because she can’t think of what to say. The pounding in her ears seems louder. “Every rat along the Vassa will be heading to Tortall.”
She expects to be convinced; maybe she wants to be. But Rosto says nothing, instead reaching into a pocket of his shirt. He places the die on the table, pushes it across to her.
She takes it in hand, rubbing her thumb over the rough surface, feeling the small indentations where the spots have been painted over. She glances up at him. “I only gamble when I can win.”
“So do I.”
He takes the die back. “Odds,” he says, “and we go to Tortall.”
She wouldn’t be drinking a mug of sour ale in a nameless tavern by the river if home still mattered. Rosto rattles the die in his cupped hands, and she keeps her eyes fixed on his, hears the die drop on the tabletop and scatter, hears it roll to a halt in front of her, and his eyes are so dark they’re black, like the night sky, like the sea, and she couldn’t look away if she tried.
“Tortall,” she says.
***
The sun beats down on the back of her neck. Aniki rubs her palm across the spot, knowing it’s probably red and burnt by now, her thighs straining from two days’ walking. Her sword feels heavier than before, weighing her down on one side. But Scanra is behind, and before doesn’t matter.
At midday, or thereabouts, they stop under a tree, the only one around for miles, its canopy spread above them like a sending from the gods. There’s no breeze, but she feels cooler nonetheless.
“I’m assuming you have a plan,” she says.
Rosto looks at her, all innocence. “What do you take me for, some foul schemer?”
Never has she met a man before who is so effortlessly charming, and so insufferable. She takes her sword from its scabbard, the steel ringing, and places it on the grass before her crossed legs. It’s not gone to rust just yet. She feels lighter without it. Rosto doesn’t bat an eyelid. She sighs heavily, and he gives in.
“Kayfer.”
Raising her eyebrows seems like too much effort. She flops down on her back, twisting until she feels more comfortable on the cursed hard ground. Grass tickles its way along her arms. She curls her fingers into it. “Kayfer?”
From where she’s spread, she can just make out his pale face. He nods, decisively, then rises from his tailor’s seat and goes round the other side of the tree, probably to take a piss. She sighs again and looks up at the leafy covering, sun and blue sky winking through. She’s never had brothers, but she’s met enough coves to put together an idea of what a brother might be like. Rosto’s worse than the lot of them.
He’ll tell her eventually, she knows that to be true. Back in Scanra, food and coin were power; for some people, knowledge is a weapon fit for any man who’ll take it. She just has to wait.
Under the shade of the tree, halfway between old-home and new, Aniki mouths the word again.
***
The land they walk over is markedly different to the rocky ground of Scanra, the mountains hardly more than sloping colours in the distance. Aniki’s grateful that her boots are well-made, though by the time they’re finished walking she’s sure they’ll be worn down to the soles.
Rosto is good company. Apart from his tendency to fall behind, no doubt to ogle her arse as she walks. It doesn’t really bother her overmuch, but after hours of marching along the same boring road it begins to irritate her, like a tic.
“Five paces in front, prettyboy,” she tells him sternly, crossing her arms and waiting as he complies with a grin. They set off again, and if the new arrangement happens to give her a chance to ogle him a little, well, that’s neither here nor there.
When night falls, they sleep under the open sky. The two of them trade stories of coves they’ve worked for and Rosto tells her about his mother, his voice soft and sweet.
Aniki watches the stars, and wonders if they look the same no matter the land you’re tied to.
***
She’s ducking to fill her cupped hands with water for her face when she thinks she hears a sound. There was no one on the road as far as the eye could reach, no one but the two of them, only a wasteland of dirt and grass. The stream trickles quietly, and she shakes her head and carries on.
The blow connects with the back of her legs.
She struggles to keep her balance, arms flailing, reaching, pulling, but the two of them go down anyway; the water shocks her heat-stricken body, knees scraping the bottom, a fistful of shirt in her hand as her head breaches the surface and she gasps in air. Rosto is laughing.
“Are you touched in the head?” she yells, twisting away, trying to untangle herself before changing her mind and deciding to throttle him instead. The two of them are soaked; it will take hours of daylight to dry her clothes, and the sun’s already dipping low in the sky.
Rosto raises his arms in defence, still laughing breathlessly, then manages to grab a hold of her wrists. He’s strong. She’s half on top of him, water swilling around them, and she can feel her hair dripping wetly down her back, which is as wet as the rest of her. Her chest is heaving, and Rosto is smiling beneath her, long fingers still circling her wrists; his hair has come loose from its leather thong and is floating, ghost-like, in the water around him.
She leans down and kisses him.
Between them, Aniki can feel her heart thundering in her chest as their mouths move together, soft and slow. The taste of him is like silk, slippery and cool. She can feel water dribbling down her face, between their lips; he’s released her wrists to cup the back of her head, her neck, and when she opens her eyes and pulls back to breathe, fine droplets of water cling to his pale eyelashes.
He’s breathing as hard as she is, and when he licks his lips it’s hard not to let her thoughts run away; the burning desire in the pit of her belly stirs with every movement he makes beneath her. It would be so easy.
With effort, she sits up. Rosto makes to follow, but she squeezes her legs around him and pins him in the shallow water with a hand to his chest. She scowls, letting her earlier anger return; it warms her in a different way. “I’m completely wet,” she says.
He raises an eyebrow.
She shoves him down harder. “I could kill you in your sleep,” she points out.
“I wish you would,” he says, voice low, and it sends a shiver through her. But she’s dripping with water and the cool breeze is chilling through her wet clothes and she’s too tired to deal with feelings and double-talk right now.
She kicks water over him as she gets to her feet. It feels even colder away from the heat of his body. “I’d watch my back if I were you, Rosto the Piper,” she tells him, and trudges out of the stream and away, though not before she sees him smile and flop back down into the water.
***
“—one for protection, one for health, and for luck.”
Aniki looks down at the coins in her hand, different coloured threads tied through the round holes in their middles. “These things work?” she asks, skeptically.
There’s a touch of fondness in Kora’s expression as she rolls her eyes. “Not as quick to believe as some, are you?”
“Oh?”
Kora glances over her shoulder before leaning in close, a smile tugging at her lips. “I sold your Piper friend five, for three times the price.”
“You never!” Aniki finds herself grinning, liking this woman already, for all that she’s a mage.
“I did.” She ticks them off on her fingers as she speaks. “Health, luck, protection against hair loss, one for fine skin, and another for sweet dreams.”
Aniki laughs and so does the mage, then her cat-like eyes slide demurely from Aniki’s face and her mouth curves into a smile. “I don’t suppose you’re in the market for another kind of charm; I sell those too, you know.”
Unbidden, Aniki’s gaze flickers over the mage’s shoulder, to where Rosto is haggling with a stallowner. He looks completely at ease amongst the dirt and squalor of the market, in his white shirt and dark breeches, hair tied back to reveal his cutting cheekbones and the pale, slender line of his neck; even looking at him makes her flush.
Kora is watching her, amused, when she glances back. Aniki smiles wryly, like a secret shared, and twitches aside the edge of her shirt collar to reveal a gleam of silver and the leather cord around her neck. The mage’s eyes positively light up. “I’m afraid you’re some weeks too late to make a profit,” Aniki tells her.
Kora laughs and shakes her head. “I like you, Aniki Forfrysning.”
“I was just thinking the same about you.”
The lights of Corus are a welcome sight. The three of them stop on a rise overlooking the place, and Aniki crosses her arms in the dark. Beside her, Kora meanders to a halt with a soft jangle of bangles. “It’s pretty,” she says, voice quiet.
“Time to get to work,” says Rosto.
***
“Come on, Aniki,” says Rosto with a grin, “tell me, and tell me true – you’re jealous.”
He’s cocky now that Kayfer knows his name. If he were another cove she might have been worried for him; for all that the Rogue’s a useless sack of waste, he’s still dangerous. But so is Rosto.
“Jealous?” She takes off her boots and places them by her chair. She can feel his eyes on her. The room’s smaller than she would have liked—both she and Rosto had lost the big one upstairs to Kora—but there’s a row of windows looking out onto a cramped courtyard. It makes the room seem bigger than it is, though the space between them feels like just a lungful of air. She looks up at him with eyebrows raised. “I’m perfectly satisfied with how things turned out.”
“Besides owing that Dog money.”
“Besides owing that Dog money,” she agrees, then pauses. “Dawull will be good to work for, I can tell.”
“You sweet on him?”
“Jealous?” she mocks.
Rosto laughs, throwing his head back. “Of a cove with hair that colour?”
“I take it you have no complaints about Ulsa and Prettybone District?” she asks, serious once more.
“All clear. It seems as though things are looking up.” Aniki slouches back in her chair and watches as he crosses the room, a heartbeat for every footstep, the open window fluttering the thing curtains behind him. She had once thought that coming to Tortall had been a gamble, maybe the right choice, maybe not, but a gamble either way; they’re balancing on the edge of a blade now, and she knows as only a rusher can, as someone who’s seen blood and pain and dealt it out in kind, that if they don’t get it right, they get dead.
The thought sends gooseflesh running over her body. She licks her lips and can almost taste the blood.
Rosto stops in front of her, drops to his knees on the dusty floorboards. He runs a hand up her calf, slowly, dark eyes fixed on hers. And maybe they’ve just exchanged one Bloody Throne for another, trekking overland in search of home and hope and other impossible things, but life’s too short for a rusher not to take chances when it counts.
Aniki hooks a leg over his shoulder and leans down to kiss him, drawing him close, mouth hovering over his, and makes it count.