The Sea Thy Mistress (23 page)

It didn’t hurt at all, and that was worse.

He gasped in tormented pleasure, reliving rapes both physical and of the soul.
It’s what you’ve wanted all along,
the Wolf whispered inside him.
To be ravished. You liked my kiss. And you like this, too.

No,
Cahey thought, but he wasn’t as certain of his answer as he wanted to be.
I want it not to hurt anymore.
But it didn’t hurt at all as she pressed deeper, curled her piercing fingers into a hook, and laughed softly against his steaming skin when he chewed his mouth bloody against the forbidden outcry.

The Suneater whispered,
But you want it; you asked for it. You like the humiliation, don’t you? But you can’t admit it. If you could ever surrender to anything, it would make you stronger.

Instead, your shame shows anyone who knows the way to master you.

Shut up, Mingan, you son of a bitch.
He welcomed the distraction, honestly. He expected—hoped for—more mockery, and was surprised and disappointed to feel the Wolf-shard chuckle and withdraw with a smiling parting shot:
If you hate it so much, beautiful little boy, you can put a stop to it with a word
.

He mouthed the word.
No.
Almost gave it voice, and thought instead about the investment he had already made, the worth of what he was trying to buy. Felt the savaged skin on his wrists and ankles break open as he yanked once more against twisted cloth. It wasn’t enough; the blood in his mouth wasn’t enough to let him hold on to his fury, which was rapidly twisting into the shame the Wolf-shard spoke of—shame, and despair.

Astrid.
He called her face up against the blackness of the blindfold.
I can do this for you. I can do anything for you. I’ve had my lifetime. Seventy years, more or less, not bad ones, and you gave me almost sixty of them.

You deserve your lifetime, too.

“Your body betrays your will,” Gullveig whispered. She leaned over him, hands still moving slowly, rhythmically. Her tongue traced spirals in liquid fire across his chest. “You like to be fucked like this. It’s all right, love. I’ll show you what you need.” Teeth nipping the smooth skin of his chest, the smell of her sweat and heat, so close.

Light, and in my own house, too.
Not that it was the first time for that, either.
I will not give her the satisfaction…,
but he couldn’t stop shaking, and he suddenly couldn’t stop his hips from moving, either—in time to the sensual rhythm of her touch.

Her voice was breathy, controlled. “We have hours before I have to be home to your son. Plenty of time for everything.”

He felt her weight shift, and her hair swept down his belly, accompanied by the heat of her breath. Again, she thrust into him. Her mouth sweltered on his skin.

It robbed the last bit of his control. From the rush of cool air down his throat he knew he cried out in torment and indulgence.

Sensation, sorrow, memory buffeted him. He foundered.

Went under.

Drowned.

50 A.R.
On the Twenty-fifth Day of Autumn

Cathmar walked through what he was coming to think of as
his
city, watching the light slide up the west walls of crumbling buildings like a counterbalance to the setting sun. He’d ranged far, through Hangman and among the broad bases of the karst-shaped arcologies, their streamlined summits casting the ways between in deep shadow. Now he joined the evening traffic, moving against the bulk of it, his companions students in threadbare robes returning to the University after a rest day spent in the city.

He smiled at his neighbors, and the ones who weren’t likely to cause trouble smiled back. They were all getting to know him now, and not just the moreaux. It had taken a while, but he was finding a place in the rhythm of the city.

I’m a guardian angel,
he thought, with amusement. He was getting a reputation, he supposed. He liked it. It made him feel grown-up.

I wonder what it was like when my mother did this sort of thing.
His hand rested on Nathr’s hilt for a moment as he rounded a corner, boot splashing into a puddle. He imagined her hand on the same hilt, her boot in the same puddle. But there had been nothing, then, but the city. And now there was a whole world beyond.
When she did it, it was probably harder.

A crier’s voice echoed in the distance, and Cathmar cocked his head to listen, smile widening. Calling the faithful. There was some little church on every street corner, and all of them disagreed.

Cathmar enjoyed knowing the real story.

And he enjoyed walking through Eiledon at nightfall. But still, it might be a good time to head home and find Mardoll.
I can try out a new recipe,
amused at himself for cooking for her. Even though he was getting pretty good at it.

He waited on the curb to let a ground-taxi go past, then headed back toward the river. It was full dark before he felt the familiar creaky stairs under his boots: he’d stopped to intervene in yet another mugging, and was still flushed with excitement as he ran up the steps.

It wasn’t that long ago when I was the one being mugged. So many things have changed in the past two years.

The door to the flat was locked, but the bolt wasn’t slid, so he opened it with his key.
I wonder where she is.
Concerned but not yet worried, he walked inside, the floor creaking.

The apartment was dark, but otherwise just as he’d left it, and it felt empty. Cathmar palmed the light on and walked around once, noticing that the bed needed to be made. He flipped the covers up and wandered into the kitchen to make tea.

Three hours later, when he finally heard her step on the stair, he was pacing.

He had the door open before she got her key turned in the worn brass lock. They stood eye to eye for a moment before she managed a smile. “Hi,” she said.

“I was worried,” he answered, stepping back so she could come inside.

She brushed past him. “I need a bath like you wouldn’t believe.” Some scent that hung around her caught his attention. Familiar—he was sure he would have known it at once, in context—but he couldn’t quite place it. Traces of sand clung to the hems of her slacks.

“Where were you?” He shut and locked the old panel door. She stripped off her shirt as she walked farther into the flat, dimming the lights in the main room in passing.

She looked back over her shoulder, tossing her hair. “Big girl, Cath. Remember?”

He caught himself absently picking at the peeling paint on the doorframe, and forced himself to stop. “Even big girls’ boyfriends worry about them.” He heard his father’s voice.
You think you’re a grown-up now.…

Yeah, Dad. I think I know what you were talking about, now.

And then he heard Mingan’s voice, and a warning.

She shut the bathroom door behind her. He heard the lock click and water running, heard the sizzle of the gas stove as she started warming the kettle.

He picked her discarded shirt off the creaking tile floor and carried it toward the hamper in the bedroom. Felt grit against his fingertips. Holding it up to the light in the hall ceiling, he examined the edge of the sleeve. There was a stiff, colorless blemish along the hem, and he identified it by the scent.

Salt water and sand.

She’d been down to the sea.

50 A.R.
On the Twenty-sixth Day of Autumn

Halfway there,
Cahey thought, watching the sun go down over the water.
Halfway dead,
another part of his mind remarked. He turned and glanced east, where a waxing moon was tracking across the twilight sky.
There will be moonlight tonight.

You could say good-bye.

But then Muire would know what he was up to.

She’d never let him go through with it. But she must know. So why hadn’t she done anything? If she loved him … no. Of course she didn’t. He put a stop to that pretty quickly.

A little shard of her love, remnant of her kiss, spun at the center of his being: proof, if he cared to take it, that she had adored him out of reason. He chewed his swollen lip absently and then flinched at the pain.

Idiot. Moron. Einherjar. You never even had the guts to tell her you were in love with her.

No wonder she left you.

Who would have thought it would come to this? Random footsteps carried him down by the water. The waves rolled up on the sand, almost brushing his bare feet. He stopped and dug his toes into the cool, damp sand.

The last rim of the sun bloodied the ocean and slipped under, staining a spatter of clouds in daylily shades. The sky behind them burned orange before it faded to periwinkle and then indigo.

One by one, pinpricks opened in the night. Still Cahey stood and watched the moon slide across the sky, waiting for the Imogen to come and take the aching weight off his soul. His body hurt as if he’d gotten the worse end of a fight, and his spirit felt thin, bent and stretched.

I’m alone,
he thought.
Where is she?

A sense of presence stole over him as the gibbous moon rose higher. A few strands of his hair ruffled in the wind. The evening tide rolled in, and he took a step away from the advancing waves.

“Muire,” he whispered at last.

Into a silence as loud as the whole world-girdling sea holding its breath.

A silence that begged to be filled.

He tried. “I…” But his voice broke on it. He cleared his throat. Saw the way the moonlight pooled on the suddenly still ocean. Closed his eyes.
Idiot.

Yes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and turned and strode quickly away, up the beach.

He was at the top of the grassy dune when he realized that there was somebody in the cottage. The lights were on, and he could see a shape moving around inside. The door was propped open.
At least I cleaned up the living room before I left,
he thought. A wave of self-disgust curled his lip.

He walked up slowly, his hand resting on Alvitr’s hilt. Twenty yards from the door, he caught the tenor of a baritone voice singing an old marching tune.

“Aethelred?”

“Cahey!” The old priest came into the doorway, wiping his hands on a rag. “Hope you don’t mind that I let myself in.”

“No,” Cahey answered. “No, not at all.”

Aethelred took his wrist and led him inside, examined his face in the light. “You look three days dead, kid.”

Cahey winced as Aethelred squeezed his bruised wrist. The priest looked down, pursed his lips, and whistled. “Bearer of Burdens,” he cursed. “What the Hel?”

Cahey shook his head. “I’d rather not talk about it,” he said.

“I hear tell you don’t want to talk about much of anything, lately. That’s a rope burn. A mean one. Who did that to you?”

Cahey tugged his wrist away gently and sat down in the chair beside the door. Without looking up, he knew when Aethelred turned away and walked into the kitchen. He came back with a pack in one hand, and two gray-glazed pottery bowls in the other.

The pack held—among other things—a bottle, from which Aethelred decanted them each a large measure of liquor. He shoved one into the einherjar’s hand and clinked his own against it before dragging a straight-backed chair over. “Cahey,” he said, all seriousness, “are you in some kind of trouble, kid?”

Cahey examined the brown fluid in the bowl before sipping it. He choked, downed the whole thing in a gulp, and held it back out. “I remember the last time you got me drunk,” he said. The sting of the liquor took him back over fifty years, into a little bare room and the taste of sugar and alcohol and a spill of bitter words. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You’re getting me drunk enough to be honest.”

Aethelred snorted as he sat down knee to knee with the young angel. After refilling Cahey’s bowl he sipped from his own. “This is a wake,” he said. “There are rules. We’ve got to kill the bottle, we’ve got to see the sunrise, and we’ve got to tell the truth. All right?”

Cahey considered. “Whose wake?”

“Mine, at the rate I’m going. Muire’s. Astrid’s. Maybe yours, if you keep it up. Plenty to choose from, you know. Now tell me who the Hel has been tying you up hard enough to hurt you that bad? That doesn’t look like … fun, Cahey.”

“A wicked woman,” Cahey answered, after a while. It wasn’t the first time he’d sold himself, after all. He’d never had to hide anything from Aethelred. “But one who maybe can give me something I want.”

“What’s that?” Draining his bowl, Aethelred poured himself more and topped off Cahey’s drink as well.