James West - Queen of the North

He reached for his door, but found it standing open a crack. Neither he nor Nesaea ever left without closing it. His sword flashed out, all his good thoughts blowing away like ashes. Rathe slammed open the door and dropped into a guarded crouch, sword poised.

Instead of an intruder, he found Nesaea sitting on a cushioned chair, her legs crossed. She was facing partly away from him, peering into a small mirror hanging on the wall. She held a hairbrush frozen in mid-stroke through her fall of dark waves. She was also completely naked.

“Gods, woman,” he growled, shutting the door behind him. Without taking his eyes off her, he ran the bolt home. “I could’ve been anyone bursting in here.”

She finished pulling the brush through her hair, and then placed it on a low dresser. “Not unless that ‘anyone’ could mimic your footsteps,” she said, voice husky.

He thought to tell her about the foolish young priest, but when she stood up, his mouth became too dry for words. Before she could take a step toward him, he set his sword aside and went to her.

Caught in a pleasant and satisfied reverie, Rathe slowly ran his hands along the smooth length of Nesaea’s legs, one settled on either side of his waist. His caress continued over the narrow flare of her hips. Her breasts seemed to float before his eyes. He reached out, cupping them in his palms. At his light touch, she rocked gently, a wicked smile playing over her lips. A ripple worked its way from his belly to his loins, and he bit back a groan.

She abruptly sat up straight and pushed her hair back over her shoulders, her smile widening. “We’ve only just finished, and you’re ready again?”

Looking into her violet eyes, he matched her grin. “You give me little choice.”

“You must forgive me,” she said playfully, her breath coming quicker, her rocking more insistent.

“Of course,” he said, pulling her down for a lingering kiss that gave rise to many more.

Sometime later, they were both lying crosswise on the bed, Rathe on his back, and Nesaea on her side with one leg thrown over both of his.

“I could get used to all this lolling about,” he said.

“Is that what you call this?” Nesaea asked, running her fingertip around one of his nipples.

Laughing, he caught her hand and kissed the palm. “Gods, woman, do you ever stop?”

“I was merely getting ready for dinner, when you barged in and threw yourself at me.”

“I’d say you laid a trap for me … unless most women are given to sitting naked in cold bedchambers while brushing their hair?”

She laughed.

“So you did lay a trap for me?”

“I suppose I did.”

“As far as ambushes go, yours was not half bad.”

“I deserve more praise than that,” she said, her fingertip now tracing a scar angling across his chest.

He tried to remember how he had gotten it, but each time he reached into his mind to pluck out a particular battle or face, they all converged on one another.

“So much hurt for one so young,” she said distantly.

He turned his head, eyes wandering over her own marks of past pains. Before she had founded the Maidens of the Lyre, Nesaea had been sold into slavery. She had told him very little of the abuses she suffered as a pleasure slave in Giliron, but he knew those wounds were deeper than any made by a sword. “Seems I’m not alone.” He hesitated, then asked, “Does it ever end?”

She met his eyes. “The pain?”

Rathe looked back to the ceiling. “Not just pain … but all that causes it.” After the silence stretched long, he began to fear what she might say, so he abruptly changed the subject.

“It seems we’ll not be sailing for a few days,” he said, and told of Captain Ostre’s problems with the Lamprey . Then, still trying to keep from going back to his vague, yet unsettling question, he said, “Stiny and the others haven’t seen anyone suspicious around the village, so I paid his final wages and told him to stop looking.”

“Perhaps that’s for best,” she said. Like Loro, Nesaea was of the mind that after Rathe had bested the Shadowman at Ravenhold, he had fled.

“I think so, too.” He didn’t tell her that Stiny had offered to find him an assassin.

Nesaea propped herself up on one elbow and peered intently at him. “You never let me answer you.”

“I’m not sure what I was asking, so maybe you shouldn’t.”

“I want to.”

“Very well,” he sighed, but she remained silent for a time.

“Every day begins a new round of battles,” she said at last. “Not all of them are bloody or painful, but they are battles nonetheless.”

He could agree with that, but the idea of such endless struggle wearied him. “What if we choose not to fight?”

“Some folk can decide to flee their troubles, but your troubles cannot be outpaced.”

“Because of the Black Breath,” Rathe said. He had never believed in demons harboring in folk, until he had seen the Khenasith with his own eyes.

“Once the demonic spirit of the Khenasith has chosen its quarry,” Nesaea said, “it feeds off the misery inflicted upon its prey.”

Rathe shuddered at the memory of that creature of smoke, with its horned head covered by four ghoulish faces. He saw again how it had ripped free of the woman who had briefly taken it from him in a bid to tap the demon’s power for her own ends. Yiri, Horge’s sister, had been little more than a waif, but she had also been a born witch. The powers she sought to hold had ultimately destroyed her. Afterward, the demon had returned to Rathe, making his soul its home.

“I turned my back on a fight today, if not a true battle,” he said, frightened and exhilarated at the same time. Nesaea gazed silently at him, and he added, “Just before I came to you, I met a man, Edrik, some priest or other. He wanted me to come with him. When I told him no, he drew a dagger, and I took it away. I itched to plant that blade in his heart…. Instead, I let him go. I let him live .”

She touched his face, her fingers cool and soft. “It’s good that you denied the Khenasith its desires, but the demon won’t always allow you to do so.”

“I know,” Rathe said just above a whisper, imagining he could feel the demon’s ire building in his heart.

“I have something for you,” Nesaea said at length.

“A gift?” Rathe asked, surprised.

“Yes … but after what you told me, I’m not sure I want to give it.”

He laughed wryly. “There’s nothing you could give me that I would not want.”

“Very well.” She bounded off the bed and padded lightly to the wardrobe shoved against one wall.

He watched the sway of her hips. She cannot help but dance wherever she goes, my goddess of snow and silver . He tried to look away when she opened the doors and bent to root about on the lower shelf, but his eyes had a will of their own.

“Here it is!” she announced, spinning with a scabbarded sword held in her hands. He guessed her delighted expression had more to do with catching him looking at her, than with the weapon she held. Trapped me again. He smiled, because her traps were hardly traps at all.

As she came back, Rathe sat up, curious.

“I had it forged for you,” she said, holding out the sword. “Captain Ostre might count it bad luck that we’ve stayed in Iceford this long, but for me it’s been a blessing.”

The scabbard was of tooled black leather covered in intricate silver filigree. He gripped the leather-wrapped hilt above a silver crossguard fashioned into a pair of scorpions locked claw-to-claw. With a soft whisper of steel sliding over leather, he drew the burnished blade. The edge was free of nicks and deadly bright, and an etched chain of scorpions marched along the length of the fuller. The balance of the weapon was perfect. The sword was masterwork, making his previous weapons seem like crude utensils. It was also of virgin, unblooded steel. He wondered how long it would remain so.