So Silver Bright (11 page)

“It was a good meal and heartily enjoyed, more so for the company than the viands,” was Waschbär’s cheerful contribution as he lolled against a well-placed rock, a biscuit clasped in one paw and the ferrets balanced upon the other.

Cobweb looked at him askance. “That didn’t stop you shoveling in those viands with remarkable speed! I lost track of how many biscuits you ate!”

“If biscuits were stories,” Bertie said, fixing her gaze upon the fire, “I’d bake a pan of piping hot fables right this second.”

“Do fables have jam filling?” Moth wanted to know. “Or chocolate?”

“I think it’s allegories that have jam filling,” Mustardseed said. “And maybe parables.”

Not thinking it possible, Bertie realized she still had room for dessert. “Is there any more cake?”

Rummaging in the nearest hamper, Peaseblossom turned up the other half of the chocolate cake. “Here you go.”

Bertie broke off a piece and offered it to Nate. Ducking his head, he surprised her by taking the bite not with his hand, but his mouth.

“Ahem!”
Peaseblossom said, clearing her throat so hard she dislodged a bit of dessert along with her disapproval.

“Ye ought t’ see t’ that cough,” was Nate’s cavalier response. “Before it settles in yer lungs an’ th’ pneumonia takes ye.”

“I don’t have pneumonia—”

“Bronchitis, then.”

“We have forks,” Peaseblossom said, the sternest governess there ever was, “should you require one.”

“I’m fine wi’ her fingers, seein’ as my hands are completely preoccupied wi’ tendin’ th’ fire.”

“I’ll say the same to you as I said to Ariel,” the fairy lectured the pirate. “You’ll mind your manners and be respectful, or you’ll have to answer to me!”

Bertie said nothing, but when she offered Nate another bite of cake, she let her fingers linger about his mouth, encouraging the second kiss in as many minutes. With her mask left behind as payment to Serefina, she couldn’t hide her sudden longing to inhale the scents of soap and ocean on his clothes, to feel the heat radiating from his chest. The third piece of cake she fed him came with a tiny grazing of his teeth across her finger, and she was a sailor’s knot nearly undone.

He must have seen it written upon her face, for something flickered over his own features: a promise, perhaps, mixed with determination and some flavor of triumph. Mumbling something about a pressing thirst, Bertie scrambled to her feet, grasped a lantern, and fled. A narrow stretch of grass and a tiny copse of trees separated the campfire and the river, which burbled a pleasant welcome to her. Rinsing the worst of the frosting off, she left her hands in the cold current until her fingers began to go numb. Even then, the places where Nate had kissed her burned like a firebrand.

“Are ye all right?” Of course he’d followed.

Still kneeling, Bertie didn’t turn as she splashed the bracing water on her face. “Just needed a bit of a rinse. The chocolate—”

“It’s not th’ chocolate troublin’ ye.” Nate stepped toward her, brow knit, and pulled her to her feet. Tiny fireflies gathered about them, glowing with soft pink light and emitting an oddly happy humming noise.

“Just what we need, to be eaten alive by mosquitoes.” Bertie swatted at them, but the winged things looped about her shoulders, tracing rosy hearts upon her skin. Mortified, she squeezed her eyes shut and wished either for bug repellent or for a hole to open up and swallow her.

When neither manifested, Nate tilted his head to one side. “Yer silence is like calm water before a squall.”

“Complaints, complaints. You said someday you’d have silence from me.” It had been the same day they’d reenacted the tango, the same day he’d been kidnapped.

“Well then, mayhap it’s time t’ collect on th’ quiet.”

Though Bertie was expecting the kiss, she wasn’t expecting the rest of the world to fall away from her. As her eyes closed again, the silence he wanted spread through her until the river, the caravan, and the rest of the troupe faded into a darkness deeper than a blackout, leaving only the two of them. With nothing and no one to stop them this time, Bertie wrapped herself about him.

Chocolate cake be damned—I want
him
for dessert.

Shoving her fingers through Nate’s hair, Bertie snapped the leather string holding back his plait. Flickering broken-glass bits of lantern light caressed his jaw, licked over the stubble on his chin, which Bertie realized belatedly accounted for the stinging around her own mouth. When she kissed him again, Nate’s hands gripped the back of her sweater, almost as though he’d like to tear it from her, but the next second he made an incoherent noise into her mouth. Bertie felt his balance shift wildly, then he staggered, and they both fell.

They landed in the river before Bertie could so much as squeak out a protest. It was deeper than it looked, and significantly colder than the shore eddies she’d used to wash her hands. With the frigid water working its way into her underwear, it was easy enough to picture ice-fed streams funneling down from snowcapped mountainsides.

Up to his armpits, Nate shoved the dripping strands of hair from his face. “A rock turned under my foot, curse it t’ th’ seventh ring o’ hell.”

Gasping, Bertie flopped over like a fish and headed for the shore. “I would have thought you’d have better balance, being a mariner.”

“Forgive me, it’s been some time since I kissed a lass aboard a storm-rocked ship.”

“How long, exactly?” Her teeth had started to chatter, but even the castanet clatter couldn’t disguise the snort of laughter that escaped. It was beyond comprehension that she was amused by the sudden and thorough dunking, but it had been most effective in dousing the fire inside her—for the moment, anyway—permitting a cooler and wetter head to prevail. Offering Nate her hand, she pulled him up and out of the swift-flowing stream. “Perhaps it was for the best.”

“An’ what d’ye mean by that?” Linen shirt dripping and leather breeches soaked several shades darker than they ought to be, Nate shook his head like a dog after a bath.

“I just meant that there are things to consider before anything else happens between us.” Trying to not stare at his mouth, Bertie could feel a flush nearly set her face on fire.

“Such as?” His hands were about her waist now, at once insistent and undemanding.

“Such as being responsible.”

He hesitated then asked, “Ye mean th’ chance o’ children?”

“Aye, children.” Mimicking his accent, Bertie couldn’t resist putting him in the spotlight. “Do tell, have you left one of those planted in someone’s belly before?” She jabbed him in the midsection and summoned a bit of
King Lear.
“‘She grew round-womb’d, and had, indeed, sir, a son for her cradle ere she had a husband for her bed.’”

Nate held up his hand, the one marked to match her own. “If it’s a husband ye want, a husband ye have.”

Bertie’s left hand sought out his right so that their handfasting scars met furrow to furrow, and she laced her fingers through his. “I don’t want a husband, nor a baby.” She didn’t mention Serefina’s desire for a child-not-born, nor the flask among the medicines that would have served to keep her safe from the other sort of offspring.

“What about Ariel?” Nate asked softly. “D’ye want him?”

“We didn’t leave him behind; he chose not to come with us. I am determined not to spare him a thought.”

“Mayhap that’s what ye want t’ believe, but that’s not th’ story yer face tells.” He brought up his other hand, thumb tracing her jaw with a gentle motion intended to erase all thoughts of his rival from her head.

“What story is it telling, then?” Bertie didn’t like the idea that there were stories without words; words were unpredictable enough, but this new alternative was even more dangerous.

“Naught I would say aloud, fer fear ye’d shove me back in th’ water.” Though it looked like he wanted to do much, much more—apparently she wasn’t the only one with her story written upon her features—Nate let go of her face and stepped back. “Ye need t’ change yer clothes again.”

“Sudden dousings seem to be my specialty lately.” Bertie shivered from more than the cold. She retreated, as though the river’s clear currents were poison that would slough the skin from her bones, the lulling burble transformed into the tattling voices of Sedna’s minions. “Do you think the water will carry word of our whereabouts to the Sea Goddess?”

Nate blanched. “We need t’ get away from th’ river right now. I should ha’e thought o’ that.” Taking her by the hand, he towed her through the trees separating them from the campfire, muttering all the while. “We need t’ douse th’ fire an’ pack th’ gear, move th’ campsite well away from th’ water—what in th’ name o’ all th’ hells?”

Bertie had to step around him to see what had brought him to an abrupt halt. Waschbär and his ferret cohorts were conspicuously absent, and the unusual tranquility of the night was safeguarded by the fact that the four fairies’ mouths were gagged with rag-clots. Tied together and suspended precariously over the fire by a woman of Amazonian proportions, the fairies flailed their feet and squeaked incoherent warnings. Nate must have understood them better than she did.

“Ha’e my back!”

Nate drew his sword as he turned, trusting she would protect his blind side. Years of onstage sparring had honed Bertie’s fighting instincts, and she fell in behind him, fists raised. Thirty or so shadows approached from all sides: men and women both, dressed in shades of midnight and onyx, strapped with weapons from ankle to armpit, a few with gold teeth winking in wide smiles. The largest of them leapt at Nate, wielding a knife that flashed silver-red in the firelight.

Taking advantage of Bertie’s distraction, a beefy-armed man twice her age and weight reached out and snagged her roughly by the elbow.

“Mind your manners,” he admonished her with a leer.

“Mind
this,
” Bertie countered as her solid right hook broke his nose with a sickly satisfying crunch. Before she could process the small victory, another arm clamped about her waist and a knife was laid alongside her neck. The world constricted to approximately six inches of incredibly, horrifyingly cold metal.

“Don’t move, if you please, or I’ll slit your throat,” instructed a husky voice. Bertie’s captor swung her around to see a new opponent jab the butt end of a gnarled walking stick into Nate’s barely healed wound. With a roar, the pirate rushed him, and the two fell arse over teakettle into the dirt.

“He’s a talented fighter,” Bertie’s dance partner murmured, his breath smelling of tooth rot and smoked meat. “Pity he didn’t teach you a trick or two.”

There he’s very much mistaken.

She followed the thought with an elbow to her captor’s gut and a well-placed stamp upon the tiny bones atop his foot. The man holding her hostage retaliated by grasping a handful of her wet silver hair and snapping her head back to expose her neck.

Not, Bertie noted through the red haze of shock and pain at being handled in such a brutal fashion, the way any of the Players would have reacted.

There will be no mustache twirling with this lot.

“I ought to slit your throat and have done with it,” her attacker said, digging the tip of his blade in deep enough to bring a whimper to her lips, and the warm trickle that followed indicated he’d drawn blood. “Suppose you change my mind by calling off your hound?”

“Nate,” Bertie croaked in compliance.

Heeding her voice, he turned, giving his opponent the advantage. In seconds, the pirate was eating a mouthful of dirt, a boot grinding into his back. His struggles ceased the moment he saw the knife to Bertie’s throat, his body going deadly still as his gaze flickered around the clearing.

By then Mustardseed had eaten through his gag. “We tried to warn you!”

“But the big one got the drop on us!” Cobweb squeaked seconds later.

“Shut up, you!” The lady brigand reeled the fairies into her hand and gave them a squeeze. Moth’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head with the pressure, and Peaseblossom’s face turned as pink as her namesake.

Forgetting she was in no position to issue orders, Bertie barked, “Stop that!”

The woman paused in her tender ministrations, eyes shifting to her Leader before her boa constrictor grip upon the fairies resumed.

Though they’d been tiny, fluttering menaces for all the years Bertie had known them, she had never before stopped to consider what delicate bones her friends must have: hollow, like a bird’s, and snapped as easily as campfire kindling. Their struggles began to subside, most likely due to lack of oxygen, and Bertie’s fears reached up her throat to similarly choke her. “Make her stop; she’ll kill them!”

“Nothing wrong with a bit of incentive, is there?” With his hands still gripping Bertie’s hair, the brigands’ Leader dragged her closer to the fire.

She wished she could spit in his eye but was fairly certain that, if she attempted it, all she’d do is spatter her own face and perhaps enrage her captor enough to make good his throat-slitting threat. “Just take what you want and go.”

“Thank you kindly, we’ll do just that,” he responded, “the moment you give us the journal.”

Bertie stiffened, wishing she could lie but knowing her utter lack of guile would appear upon her face. Still, she attempted it. “What journal?”

“Don’t play coy. You were seen with it in the Caravanserai.”

Damn.
She’d only taken it from Waschbär’s pack for a few seconds, but apparently that had been enough.

That didn’t mean she would admit it, though. “You must be mistaking me for someone else with silver hair.” The lie felt slick on Bertie’s mouth and added another thin layer to her new mask.

The man holding her didn’t speak, didn’t smile, giving no warning before he released her hair and used that same hand to slap her hard across the face. A rippling cascade of pain accompanied the fresh batch of starry tears that fell through Bertie’s field of vision, the diamond-brilliant bits pouring from her eyes and pattering into the dirt at her feet.