Faith Hunter - Host

I stretched in the steam, eyes closed, head down, water pouring over me. The shower door opened. I whipped into battle mode and struck out fast, flowing into the claw—fingers curled and stiff. I aborted the savage-chi move, just as Audric caught my wrist in his big paw. “Audric?”

I tried to cover myself, grabbing the towel from the door and holding it over me. “Get out!” I said, my voice sharp in the confined space.

“No. Turn around.”

“You’re not welcome in my bathroom, champard,” I said, retreating into formality.

“You are my mistrend. You face battle tonight. You are not up to your usual strength or speed. You need a massage to loosen your muscles. Turn around.”

I stared at him, feeling the towel molding itself to my body as the shower wet it through. I backed into the stall corner, tile icy on my spine as he entered and closed the door, trapping me.

Audric was a big man, nearly seven feet tall, with skin the brown of his African ancestors, a bald head, and steady eyes. In one hand he held a bottle of oil, in the other was a loofah and a cloth. Clothed, the half-breed was intimidating. With a towel wrapped and tied around his waist, the fabric just as wet as mine, his hairless, naked chest streaming and his feet bare, he was even more daunting.

“I’m not really comfortable with this,” I said stiffly, knowing that, if I had stayed in Enclave, such massages, and even casual nudity, would have been part of my daily life. My champards would have lived with me, sharing every detail of my day. But I had grown up in Mineral City, with its stern kirk and unyielding elders, its repressed sexuality and its unremitting cold. Naked skin was seen only on hands and faces and, very rarely, on arms and shins. Never in my shower except for Lucas. My face burned from more than the hot water.

Audric, standing patiently, being blasted by water, raised his brows in amusement. I was a spot of comic relief to everyone today, it seemed, and it stiffened my spine against the cold tile. “I am your champard. A mule,” he said, enunciating the insulting term. “While I could break every bone in your body, I can’t rape you. It’s not physically possible.”

I couldn’t stop the glance at his midsection. “You could try,” I said. And blushed a deeper shade when Audric’s laugh rumbled through the hissing shower. “Meaning the broken bone part,” I clarified, mortified.

“Turn around.” So far as I knew, Audric hadn’t seen the wound on my side. And he’d never seen me naked. Well, except for the times he and Rupert had cared for me after my injuries. Which had taken days. Weeks. Okay. I was being stupid. And I hated that.

Audric held out the cloth in his hand. It was a pair of my undies. “You may put these on if it makes you feel better.”

You could have told me that first, I thought. I took the soaked panties and made a little “turn around” motion with my finger. Audric laughed harder and turned around. I pulled them on and held the towel to my front again, as I faced the shower stall wall and leaned into it. “Okay,” I said. And when I heard the grudging tone, I added, more politely, “I’m ready. Thank you.”

Audric said nothing, but his big hands descended onto my shoulders, fingers and heels of his hands pressing into the tight flesh. My blush melted away like soft wax. I groaned, sounds of physical bliss that resembled sexual pleasure. Sounds that would have had Lucas charging in with battle-lust in his eyes. After a moment, I mumbled, “You can shower with me anytime.”

“Move your hair,” Audric said, still with the timbre of laughter in his words, and I gathered the long mass to one side, giving in to the relief of the massage. So much for the stern kirk elders. Pleasure—one point; rules and regs—zilch.

When the hot water part was over, Audric dried me off as if I were a child and carried me to the bed, where he finished my rubdown, his hands efficiently working my muscles, stretching my joints and tendons, and prying up under my shoulder blades. As he worked, he talked and I mumbled responses and the rare question. I learned a lot of things, some important, some not, but one that had been troubling me was resolved. Audric had never heard of a mage who could blend a skim and mage-sight into one scan. Until me. Lucky me.

When he was done, it was five, and night was falling fast. Feeling really good, better than I could remember, maybe ever, I plaited my hair into a battle braid and let Audric help dress me, strapping and binding me into the new dobok and fastening the teal belt across my chest. I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but the belt was tooled and dyed with tiny scarlet leaves the color of my hair. The color of Raziel’s wings.

“I’ve filled all the vials on the bottom of the belt with holy water,” Audric said, tapping the four at my hip, “and all the ones on the top with salt. The throwing knives in the middle are positioned to be drawn with either hand, hilts turned for easy withdrawal. Drinking water is in your cloak, lower down, near the hem.”

He spun me as he talked, rechecking the position of each blade, some of them my old ones, some the new ones gifted me by Cheran. “But it won’t be like drawing weapons from your old dobok. The straps are new and stiff. I would prefer you had a few weeks to get used to fighting in it, but your old one is ruined. It needed to be replaced the first time you went below ground. Same with the new blades, but they’re sharper and keener and better balanced than the old ones. I think you’ll find them more than acceptable after a few passes.

“That’s the good news. The bad news is that the military is delayed. They’re putting down an incursion on the outskirts of Atlanta. A couple million spawn massed at sundown yesterday and attacked. They got through the mage-shield that protected the town.”

If I had been building any confidence at all, those words knocked it out of me. My plan had depended on the army and the EIH showing up to kill spawn by the thousands. Audric patted my shoulder awkwardly. With the exception of the massage, he was better at killing things than offering comfort.

“Where’s Cheran?” I asked, as Audric knelt and held out socks for my feet. I let him slide them on and then inserted my feet into the boots he steadied, stepping forward to force them on as we talked.

“He’s in the city jail, his visa, amulets, and papers piled up on the desk nearby but out of reach. He’s tied up with antimage shackles left by Durbarge and the Administration of the ArchSeraph Investigators. The witch-catcher effectively stopped him from using his conjures, and the manacles are holding him tight.”

A witch-catcher was a mask with rods that inserted into the mouth to stop a mage from speaking a conjure. They were said to be quite uncomfortable. Guilt flared at the thought of the mage’s discomfort, but then—he had tried to kill me.

“Metal rods?” I asked.

“Replaced with wood,” Audric said, as if I’d insulted him. Which I had, by not relying on my champard to do all that was necessary for my protection. But the pique didn’t last. He grinned. “He’s getting splinters.”

I laughed with him and after a moment, he added, “Eli found the shackles and offered them to us.”

I absorbed that. “Eli did? Not the town fathers?”

“Eli,” Audric repeated. “If it should be proved that the man who would swear fealty to you is an assey, undercover for the AAS, I will kill him.”

“Yeah. Well. Let’s try not to kill any of our friends until after we bind the Dragon, okay?”

“Step down, harder,” he directed, eyes on my boots. “And, yes, I will endeavor to obey my mistrend’s commands.” There was amused sarcasm in his words.

The new boots molded to my feet, supporting my ankles and instep, but leaving enough toe room to splay for balance and for fighting. I loved them instantly, and turned my ankles to see them better.