Havemercy (19 page)

“Stand back,” I said quietly. Hal stepped back, though his eyes were on me, clear and pale as the rainwater.

I concentrated, drawing on my own store, the Well of my own power, from within, where it lay coiled like an enormous, fat serpent. It could strike as easily as allow itself to be charmed, and without the proper experience many magicians could quite easily end up destroyed by their own Talents, poisoned from within.

The boat lit with a soft whooshing noise, a pale echo of the wind and rain that howled outside. The fire was large, though, and rose crackling and cheery toward the ceiling, so that the room was flooded with a shaky orange light.

I could see Hal still over the curling edges of the flames, face framed by fire like the burning portrait of a lover. “That was . . .” he said at length. His voice was still shivering but it had grown quiet and restrained, as though he were trying to quell his shivering—which of course wouldn’t help in the slightest. “That was very . . . Well.”

“Come here,” I said. I had to ignore the fluttering within my own damned chest that so mirrored the flames. I held out a hand and smiled without regard for anything else in the world, the rain or the wind, or my own considerable discomfort in clothes both clammy and frigid.

Hal crossed to sit next to me at the fire, taking off his sodden jacket with an unself-conscious shrug of his thin shoulders. “In . . . in the last roman I read, they went into a lot of detail about the best ways to . . . to get warm again when you’re cold,” he explained, and I knew by the quality of his voice and the uncertain way in which he would not quite meet my eyes that his thoughts had been the same as mine.

Well, likely not exactly the same as mine.

I nodded, acquiescing to at least this bit of wisdom. My own jacket was a soaked weight over my shoulders, clinging and useless. I peeled it off, and pushed it a careful distance closer to the fire to let it dry.

“This is a right sight better than the marsh,” Hal said, almost cheerful now that his teeth had stopped chattering so violently.

I laughed, as I often did at the unexpected glimpses of glib good humor Hal possessed. Then the sound died in my throat, swift and abrupt, as he lifted the hem of his shirt and tugged the wet garment over his head.

“Here,” I said, and my voice snagged on something low and dangerous, so that I had to clear the propriety back into my throat. “Here, let me.” Thoughtless of my actions, I reached over to help him, freeing his arms and, in a moment, the rest of him.

“Oh,” said Hal, his dark hair mussed in places and stuck to his scalp. The freckles on his face stood out like ink dots, sharp against his pale skin. His lips were still tinged blue, and he had freckles on his shoulders as well as on his shoulder blades. “Thank you.”

If he smiled then, I knew quite well that I would be lost, and so I turned away quickly. “It’s nothing,” I answered, quiet and gracious. Careful.

There must still have been a touch of what I was wrestling around in my voice, however, because he put his hand on my arm.

“Is—Are you quite sure everything’s all right? You sound as though you may be getting a cold.”

I laughed again, but it was at my own expense, and not a kind laugh. How I had ended up in this situation was immaterial, as it was most certainly my own fault and therefore my responsibility to keep my private feelings at bay. “I’m quite sure, Hal. Thank you.”

He brightened, as he always did when I used his name, and set about kicking off his boots with a thudding sound against the wooden floor of the boathouse. “You should start getting your clothes off, too—that is, if you don’t mind me saying so, of course,” he added quickly, as though I were staying clothed out of some insane obstinacy that wouldn’t allow me to take the advice of a country ward.

“Well,” I began. This was not a proper beginning at all, and so I elaborated. “I’m not all that cold, actually.”

He tossed me a look full of a fondness that made my chest ache, and which also suggested that he thought me insanely obstinate. No doubt he was right. “Of course you are. You were caught in that rain same as me. There isn’t any place for modesty; you could catch fever same as I, if you don’t take better care of yourself.” His voice was uncertain, unused to taking charge and yet armed with the simple conviction that he was right, and this gave him courage. “I’ll close my eyes, if you like. And keep them closed until the rain stops, too.”

“That really won’t be necessary,” I said, smiling in spite of the trap that had sprung up around me. With the air of a man headed to the noose, I began to undo the buttons of my shirt.

Hal looked away, and I had to assume it was out of a real sense of modesty rather than any promise he’d made me one way or the other.

I removed my shirt in precise, deliberate motions that meant nothing; I dropped it on the floor next to Hal’s by the fire. The boathouse gave a particularly violent shudder, followed by an ominous creak.

Hal whistled low. “It could go on all night, by the sounds of that.” When he did look at me, he kept his eyes cast down, so I knew that, for all his sensible talk, in some ways this was as difficult for him as it was for me.

Only in some ways, of course.

“Hal,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the storm that raged outside—but only just.

“It’s a good thing we’ve got this fire going,” he went on as though he hadn’t heard me, hands traveling to his belt. “Going by the size of the boat, it could last all night if we needed it to, without having to burn the one whose bottom hasn’t been torn out.”

“Hal,” I repeated. The light from the fire stained our white skin to a deep, flushed tan, as though it was the height of summer and the cold season was not upon us. It was warmer without clothes, and I was no fool. I knew perfectly well how to survive a winter in the mountains, or a wet night in a boathouse. This was simply a road I could not take, and the knowing of it overwhelmed all the sense in my head.

His belt hit the floor with a dull clunk. I caught his arm above the elbow, so that he turned to look at me in surprise. “Margrave?”

Our mouths were too close. I could feel his breath against my lips, warm and hitching and uneven. I knew what I’d intended all this time. To think that I’d pretended to myself that I’d even considered resisting him! I was much more of a fool than I could ever have guessed.

I could have kissed him.

I almost did it, forthright and honest. And it was a very rare occasion on which I was perfectly honest about something, with someone.

I had been honest with Erik. I was honest with Hal.

I could have kissed him, and I almost did. He must have sensed it in me, for he made a small noise in the back of his throat and his lips parted as though he was expecting my mouth on his. It was an invitation, however clumsy and inexperienced, and with it his arm came up to lock thin and tight around my neck, pleading with me to wait—just a moment.

That was when I forced myself to draw away.

He was too much younger than I, too desperate for anyone’s affection. Even though it was not my place to decide for him whether what he thought he wanted was what he actually did want, I couldn’t have that uncertainty drawn between us. I didn’t want to have to doubt him for any reason; likewise, I didn’t want to give him cause to doubt me. Above all, I was the elder, and it was my duty to protect him from at least the same blunders I’d once made myself when I was his age. It wasn’t so very long ago as all that, and because I cared for him, I refused to kiss him.

It took all my strength not to do so, to turn my face from his and toward the firelight. I was still holding tight to his arm, and we were close enough yet that I could feel as well as hear the sound he made, as if I’d doused him quite suddenly with ice-cold water.

There must have been something I could have done to reassure him, yet for the life of me I couldn’t think of a single thing.

We were silent for a long time. Hal didn’t remove his hand from the back of my neck, nor did I entirely release him. To do so now would be to scorn him completely, and that would have taken advantage of his position just as surely as kissing him would have done.

He made that sound a second time, softer than the first. I felt him stir against me; his hair tickled my neck, so that I knew he’d bowed his head.

Above all else, I told myself with sudden remonstration, I couldn’t allow him to think this a defeat of any sort.

“Hal,” I said.

There was an unfamiliar quality in my voice—it said too clearly all that I was feeling torn, ragged, on the edge of some deeper need—and his fingers tightened against the back of my neck. I didn’t know who’d moved first to make it so, but quite suddenly he was tucked in close against my chest, warm and impossibly soft. Everything important about Hal was softness, I decided, his hair and his mouth, the sweet curve of his jaw, and the way it fit neatly into my palm. I ran my thumb along the line of his cheek, marking its shape the way I’d only ever had occasion to with my eyes.

And there we were. I held him against me, his skin clammy and cold and still damp against mine, and his lips parted, his half quirk of a sorry smile. I could feel his heart pounding inside his chest, against my forearm, which was trapped between us and would soon start cramping.

Now should have been the time when I used this leverage and maneuvered us apart from each other. Now should have been the time when I put my wealth of experience in these matters to good use, to the task of keeping him as far away from me as was possible in the small boathouse.

But now wasn’t the night for it. And at least I’d mustered strength enough not to kiss him.

Then, his fingers clutched at the base of my neck, tangling in my hair. He murmured something that sounded like my name, and I allowed myself to harbor the foolish notion that it was exactly that. He was young, I thought wildly; he was separated from his parents and desperate for affection in my brother’s cold, uncaring, selfish house. We’d grown very close. We were intimate friends, and Hal had obviously longed for such companionship. He didn’t know what it was he asked for, the fingers of his free hand seeking purchase against my shoulder.

Yet, the treacherous shadow-half of me whispered, these lies would be to demean him. Hal was no idiot country boy, and inexperience was quite another thing from stupidity. I longed to rationalize his actions within the context of what I presumed him to be thinking—yet for all the time we’d spent together, I realized I had no way to judge or measure his thoughts at all.

“Hal,” I said again.

At last we pulled away from each other, and Hal let his hand fall to his side, fingers curling against his palm. In my terror and self-aborted desire, I’d made certain my hand moved no farther than where it remained, still cupping his face against the palm.

I could see his eyes, blue flecked with gray, and they were shining for me.

“I didn’t,” he said, and licked his lips. “I—”

“It’s warmer now,” I said lightly, not betraying even so much as a shred of my feelings. “Isn’t it?”

Hal began to blush, and quickly after that he looked away, ducking his head to hide it against my shoulder. I was sure that, considering how close we were, he was bound to hear the pulse at my throat beating wild and desperate for him.

The sound of the fire crackling, eating away at the poor ruined skiff, must have obscured the sound. I allowed myself to move my hand, to rest it against his pale back ghosted with freckles. His fingers tightened against my shoulder.

We should have spoken about it. We should have said something. We should have done anything other than curl against each other in silence, frozen in time, doing neither one thing nor the other.

I held my small triumph close about me like the mantle of a warrior, and said instead, “That was an adventure, wasn’t it?”

“It was,” Hal said. There was sadness in his voice, deep and dark.

I rested my nose against his temple and stared beyond him at the fire. We were holding each other because it was practical; I loosened my embrace though I didn’t let go entirely.

Soon enough I could hear the even keel of Hal’s breathing as it slowed. The storm had ended, and Hal was sleeping. When I tried to move he protested, mumbling in his sleep, and buried his face against my throat as if I were both his pillow and his bed.

I didn’t fall prey, as I’d thought I would, to unhappy thoughts. Instead I followed Hal’s example and slept comfortable and deep.

ROOK

So the morning after the professor spent the whole day trying to school us in appreciating other people’s feelings, with his whole face looking extra special on account of the big blue handprint, Adamo rounded us up and sat us down in a circle in the common room, where the professor—no longer blue, all the more the pity—was waiting for us.

“Right,” he said, like he was facing down a whole horde of Ke-Han. “Today we’re going to try something different.”

For a long time no one spoke, and it got pretty uncomfortable, and I was grinning the whole time.

“Ah,” Balfour said finally. The little snot. “What’s that, then?”

“We’re going to play roles,” the professor replied, “in order to better understand those who are different from us.”

Another silence. This time, though, it was Luvander who spoke up. “You mean like . . . role-playing?” he asked, all incredulous.

“Yes,” the professor said. “Exactly.”

“But isn’t that like when the redhead’s been a very naughty schoolgirl and the brunette’s also been very naughty and they’re spending all this time being punished by the blonde, who does it all with spanking—” Luvander began, but Adamo cleared his throat all of a sudden, and I supposed I’d have to ask Luvander for the rest of the story later, and who he’d been to see, and who I should ask for to make it happen.

The professor also cleared his throat. We were all looking at him now, and every man thinking the same thing: basically, that we weren’t playing schoolgirls for him or with him, no way and no matter if th’Esar himself commanded it be done.

“No,” he said patiently, though I could see him grinding his teeth and on the edge of his patience. “No, that isn’t the—Those aren’t the roles we’re going to be playing.”