If I’d known three days ago that all he needed was a shower and some art supplies, I’d have introduced those things to him sooner.
“So here’s what I’m thinking.” He gestured with a piece of bread. “We should go back to where I landed. The field. Maybe there’s something there. There could be a mark, a portal, a big glowing circle on the ground, something. Because if I got here, there’s a way I got here, and if there’s a way I got here, maybe we can figure out why.”
It was, irritatingly, not a bad idea.
“You want to ride six miles into the countryside to look at a field?”
“I want to ride six miles into the countryside to look at the field where I appeared out of thin air through what may or may not have been a magic mirror. Yes. Unless you’ve already investigated.”
“We have not,” I said. “Thyren stayed behind after we picked you up, trying to determine where you came from and found nothing.”
“Perhaps I could spot something he wouldn’t notice. A clue!”
The Queen’s orders for me had been characteristically unhelpful: “Keep him. Learn more. Try not to let him touch anything.”
A return to the arrival site was arguably within the scope of “learn more,” and it gave me something to do about his boredom.
Not that I was in charge of his entertainment.
“I suppose we can make an effort. I do not have anything on my schedule today,” I said.
He squealed and clapped his hands, leaping to his feet. “Do we leave now?”
I stared down at my breakfast, then sighed and led him down to the stable.
The morning air was sharp as we crossed the stable yard. Thom had Bram saddled and ready, because I had sent word ahead, and because Thom was efficient. Bram assessed Pip with the long, measured stare of a creature who had seen everything the world had to offer and found most of it wanting. Pipwaved at him. Bram did not wave back, on account of being a horse, though his expression suggested that even if he could, he wouldn’t.
“So,” Pip said, looking at Bram with the wary respect one might give a building. “About the horse situation.”
“What about it?”
“I can’t ride.”
“You rode yesterday.”
“I sat in your lap yesterday. That’s different. Riding is a skill that requires lessons and practice and, where I come from, money that I didn’t have, because horse lessons were for the kids whose parents showed up to things.” He said it lightly, the way he said everything, but there was a wire of something harder underneath it that I recognized from the interrogation room. Perhaps this was the truth, dressed up in a joke so you wouldn’t notice it hurt.
I could have assigned him a gentle mare from the lower stables. There were several, calm-tempered beasts used for transport, perfectly suited to a beginner. This would have been the sensible thing to do. The appropriate thing. The thing a commanding officer would do when escorting a detainee on a routine investigative outing.
I held out my hand. “Let me lift you up.”
He took it without hesitation, and I pulled him up into the saddle in front of me. He settled against my chest, and every point of contact tested my discipline: the backs of his thighs against my legs, his shoulders against my chest, and the heat of his skin where it was bare against mine.
Bram turned his head and gave me a look that said many things, none of them complimentary. I ignored him, clicked my tongue, flicked the reins. He held his stare for a quick beat, just long enough to let me know that he was only trotting because he felt like it, then began to move.
The ride south from Feravael was the same route I had taken two days ago with my company, through the winding streets and past the market stalls and out through the city gates. The morning traffic was lighter, the road less crowded, and without Thyren, Vaelith, and Ilyndra providing conversation, there was nothing to distract me from Pip in my lap.
He shifted. It was a small movement, an adjustment of weight, the kind of thing any rider did in a saddle. But Pip was not a rider. Pip was a dancer, and his body moved with a dancer’s awareness, and the shift pressed his backside directly and firmly against my cock.
I kept my eyes on the road.
“This is beautiful,” Pip said, seemingly unaware of what he was doing to me. He was looking at the countryside, the rolling green hills of Clovermere spreading out on either side of the road, the wildflowers, the improbably blue sky. “It looks like a movie set.Like someone said ‘design a place that’s too pretty to be real’ and then just went for it.”
“It’s Clovermere,” I said. “Nothing special.”
He turned to look at me, and the motion twisted his body in the saddle, and his hip ground against me in a way that sent a pulse of something directly from the base of my spine to the part of my brain that was supposed to be making smart decisions. “Maybe you’ve looked at it so long you can’t see it anymore?”
The question was unexpectedly perceptive, and I did not have a good answer for it, so I said, “Watch the road.”
