Treason's Shore (56 page)

Tau made a movement of protest. Hadand said quickly, “I know. After I got my own feelings out of the way, I saw just how much Evred would hate that. Who wants a pity tumble? That’s why I haven’t—” She smacked her hand against the wall in exactly the same way Inda often did. “But that road leads to thinking oneself a victim. There are no victims where there was no attack. Inda doesn’t like men for sex, and Evred knows it. I love Tdor dearly, but I don’t want to crawl into bed with her. We’re made the way we’re made, and anyway, Inda has Tdor
and
Signi—when would he have the time for Evred, too? He’d have to spent his nights hopping from room to room, unless it would occur to him not to leave one of his women out, as they got along so well when Signi was here, but oh, no—”

Tau concentrated on the rapid flow of words, the tremble in Hadand’s voice and the disjointed thoughts convincing him that the real issue was not Inda’s selfishness in not sleeping with both women together. “Tdor would hate a threesome,” he observed.

Hadand tapped her fingers on the knife hilt in her other sleeve, the angry flush fading from her cheeks. “I know.”

The calm in her voice, her honest gaze caused him to broach the real subject. “Evred would hate a threesome.”

“I know.” And again she struck the wall. “I’ve been wishing that you and Evred being together would somehow come to include me. He hasn’t come near me in a year. I think he’s relieved that you spend your nights with me when you’re not with him. Then he doesn’t have to.”

“Have you asked him?”

“No. I used to wait outside his study for him to end working, and I’d fall asleep on my feet. He’d always worked hard, but this working through nights began around the time that Inda and Tdor came.” She rolled her brown eyes. “And didn’t stop until you returned and made him stop.
How
long did it take me to see what everyone else seems to have known?”

“First things first. I don’t think a threesome would ever happen, whoever the third was. Not Evred. One at a time is about all he can bear.” Tau grinned. “Threes only work if the connections go equally all ways.” And because she was too close to the devastating discovery that her brother unwittingly had the place in her husband’s heart that she would never have, he said with a mild air, “And it can be lots of fun. Four, now, that’s even more rare, but it can be quite fun, too.”

“Four? You’ve sported with four people?” She laughed. “You’re joking with me. How would that even work?”

“I’ve done it. For triple pay, I should add. People being made the way they are, one must be agile as well as imaginative, but even so it’s almost impossible to avoid a knee smacking into a nose. And there are always way too many feet.”

She chuckled, and as he described some unfortunate instances illustrating the impracticalities of human design versus imagination, she finally gave way to gusts of laughter, then wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Her anger was gone.

“No, I’m not fair to Inda,” she admitted. “Everyone loves him, and he loves everybody, but he doesn’t expect it. It just
is
. He just doesn’t see how Evred’s feelings are—”

“Unswerving.”

“I was going to say unyielding. Sometimes it frightens me, how
intense
Evred’s love is. And his trust. Maybe because they are both so interdependent. I just wish . . .” She shrugged, her mouth bitter. “He’d hold me. But as much as he’d hate a pity tumble, I’d hate pity hugs.”

“Evred knows nothing about affection, because the only person who gave him any was you, then you stopped. Yes, yes, I remember what you told me, and yes, he stopped coming to you for comfort. Whatever his reasons were, they no longer hold true, do you see? He has no defense against tenderness, just a lifelong dearth of it. With me, he can shed passion with violent play because I can take it and give it right back. I hope it’s done him some good, despite the fact that he’s sending me away.”

“Maybe he’s afraid to think so,” Hadand said, with that narrow gaze so much like Inda’s when he was evolving a plan. “He would see that as dangerous weakness.”

“Could be.” Inward laughter accompanied Tau’s thought,
I sound so all-knowing
. “I just hope that when I’m gone he’ll be sensible and go back to the House of Roses.”

Hadand looked down.

Tau stepped away from the windowsill and took her hands. “I need to get my things ready. I’ll ride out well before morning. Prevent awkward leave-takings. Here’s my second thing. If you want your beloved in your arms all night, then you’ll have to make your wishes clear. If you ask with no attempt at guilt, you will not get pity.”

She backed away, hands pushing out. “I can’t beg.”

“So don’t beg. But ask. Pity is not the only emotion that brings people together when the fire doesn’t burn for both. People who grew up with no affection seldom know how to offer it. You cannot force the fire to burn, but you can teach people tenderness.”

He kissed her and left.

He was gone before the sun rose on a new day.

That night, Evred was surprised when Hadand did not part from him with her friendly “Good night,” as had become their custom, but invited him into her bed.

He stood there looking down at his hands, thinking of all the work he’d set aside for the night watch. But he chanced to look up, and there was Hadand with her own hands pressed together in a way he had not seen for a long time.

An unpleasant wash of guilt chilled his nerves. When he drew in a cautious sniff, he did not catch the distinctive astringency of the gerda root that women took when they wished to conceive a child. So she had stopped drinking the steeped herb and he had not been aware.

He looked up gravely and said, “I have been remiss. I beg your pardon.”

Remiss? There was no sense in arguing the word. She would take him as he was, just as she’d promised when he’d come home to find his father dead and offered himself, saying
All I ask for myself is truth between us
.

And so he came to her bed once again. Afterward, when he customarily rose to depart, she said, “Please stay, Evred. At least try, just to rest, like we did when we were small.”

He hesitated. Hadand asked so little of him. He assented, and to his surprise, he did fall asleep, and stayed asleep through the night, waking just before dawn to the comforting stroke of her fingers through his hair, just as she had done when they were children.

Chapter Thirty-five

J
EJE braced the tiller against her hip as she eyed the two faces before her.

Mutt and Nugget glared at one another, bodies leaning into the slant of
Vixen
’s deck.

Jeje flicked her gaze down the length of the scout. Three of the five new ship rats were busy forward, chattering with one another as they tended sail under the direction of Loos Fisher.

The allies had waited until they had a strong, steady wind out of the northeast, but at dawn, when the Chwahir sailed across the front of Jaro Harbor shooting fire arrows at the anchored Venn fleet, the wind had inexorably shifted, bringing rain.

First things first. “You two,” Jeje said, “are going to sit here tending stinking fish oil unless you make a truce. And convince me it’s real.”

“But he’s been acting like a—”

“But I’m first mate now! Fox says, after the next battle—”

“I’ll deal with Fox,” Jeje cut in. “He’s let the two of you divide up the old ship rats in your stupid feud. Maybe he thinks it’s funny. I don’t. You’re going to get along, or it’s fish oil duty. I don’t care how good you were in that attack off Llyenthur, or how much you think you deserve a jump.”

They did deserve a jump—a promotion—and they had been good when a blizzard had driven the Fox Banner Fleet to the north side of the strait, and ships swarmed out of the old Venn-rebuilt harbor at Llyenthur to attack them.

Mutt sidled a glance at Nugget. He was still amazed at what she’d done, swinging around upside down from
Sable
’s tall masts, switching from line to line with a coil or two around her knees as she used her single hand to whap enemies from above.

But he wasn’t going to say so, not after the way Nugget had been strutting on
Sable,
with Captain Eflis laughing and cheering her on between loud, smacking kisses.

Nugget fumed every time she thought about how amazing Mutt had been, commanding the
Skimit
so that it knifed between two of the attackers with a handsbreadth to spare, cut booms out to rake the rigging of the biggest one. Why hadn’t
she
been on board, in the tops?

Oh, she was glad to have been on
Sable
when those two galleys boarded from either end. She’d discovered that a belaying pin was as good as a knife. Maybe better. With a knife you had to slash fast because you were swinging and had nothing to brace against, but whacking a wooden mallet on the skull of somebody trying to gut a shipmate sent you arcing away fast, if you knew how to control the arc. And she did. After all that practice, she did!

That knowledge brought her chin up. “If
some people
think they’re too good for
other
people who might have made some mistakes, well, I’m not going to talk bad about
them
, like
some people
do to others.”

Mutt scowled, sure there was an insult somewhere in all that. Jeje ignored Nugget and gauged the speed of the lumbering Chwahir round-hulls doing their best to get away (slow) the Venn in their formidable arrowhead (fast and getting faster), and her own speed (very fast). Though she was the fastest craft in view, she might not be fast enough for this crazy maneuver.

She checked the choppy gray sea, the cloud-streaked sky, and the arched prows of the Venn warships just emerging from a band of heavy rain. They looked like plunging dragons with wings outspread. “Right. Get out the flat pans. You two are on oil duty.”

“Oil!” Mutt protested. “The ship rats can do oil!”

“Eflis promised me I can—”

“If,” Jeje said as she tightened her grip, “you yap any more, it’s going to be for the next five battles. We’re coming up on
Death
next, so I can report. Shall I have Fox put you two in the hold instead?”

The sounds of two scampering pairs of feet were her answer. Jeje swung round.
Vixen
’s tiller vibrated in her grip, sending shudders up through her bones and skull, making her grin so wide her teeth chilled. It was more exhilarating than wine or sex or fire to be at sea again, driving every stitch of sail to that trembling point between speed and disaster, running against a clear enemy, and, best of all, she was aboard her beloved
Vixen
while doing it.

It would be beyond best if Tau were here, but she was used to that wish.
He’ll be back. Just like the sun. I have to make sure I’m alive to see him
.

The sky changed dramatically as a last, determined winter wind tumbled under the warmer air of spring and once again the Venn were shrouded by thick rain.

The roll and thump of barrels recalled her attention. From just forward of the mast a few paces away, on the other side of
Vixen
’s enormous, curving mainsail, came Nugget’s voice. “. . . no, they can’t just suddenly appear. If there were hundreds of Venn, well, Fox and Eflis would have seen them coming up the strait.”

“But th-th-they c-c-came s-s-suddenly at Tr-tr-ad Var-ruh-ruh- adhe.” The boy’s intermittent stutter was always worse when he talked about home. “C-c-come dawn. Th-there they were. On the wuh-wuh- water. Far as you could s-s-see.”

For a moment everyone, including Jeje, considered how that must have felt that terrible morning. Then Jeje sniffed and swiveled to eye the seascape as the wind whined a steady note in the rigging. If it shifted around to the south . . .

Nugget said, “The Venn woulda had to come down last summer. You can’t sail a fleet against the east wind.”

“But
we
did,” one of the older rats said.