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“It’s not nonsense. But it gives me a terrible headache, going walking on the other side.”
“It sounds unnatural to me. Especially with Náli as teacher. What does he know about anything besides corpses? Going off with him into dreamland sounds like a good way to wind up a corpse yourself.”
They’d had this argument before, and so Tessa didn’t argue back this time. Only hummed, and picked up her skirts as they stepped around bits of twig and new, stinking puddles where a horse or two had parked out to relieve themselves before getting tied up on the picket lines.
“What will you do,” Estrid continued, “if you run into one of those black hole things your sister told you about? The kind that Sels come pouring out of?”
Tessa frowned as they paused and allowed a trio of men with a deer slung on a spit to pass in front of them. They ducked their heads and murmured her title in deference, once they saw who she was. “I’ve thought of that,” she said, as they began walking again. “And the truth is, I don’t know what I’ll do. Try and close it, I suppose. Blood does the trick, and Rune’s given me a knife I keep on me at all times.”
Estrid snorted.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just you with a knife. Ready to spill your blood.”
Tessa had learned not to take that sort of comment as an insult, because it wasn’t meant as one. She’d even learned to enjoy surprising Estrid, and Northerners like her: there was a certain satisfaction in disproving people’s assumptions about you.
Náli’s tents were set a little apart from the others, the plain gray and white of his house colors, his skull banner affixed to the central of three, set in a horseshoe-shape around a fire. All of his Dead Guards wore the same tunic, and boots, and sword belt, and cloak, wore their hair in the same style, with shaved sides and a single, tight plait down the center of the skull that hung down to mid-back behind. She’d learned their faces and names, though, and knew that it was Klemens who sat in front of the lord’s tent, and Einrih who was breaking sticks into smaller pieces and feeding them into the fire.
Klemens glanced up from the knife he was sharpening, hands stilling, and said, “Ah. You’re early, your grace.”
Her smile froze on her lips, and she pulled up opposite the fire. “Is that a problem?”
A muffled, indistinguishable sound, and a rustling of the tent flap behind Klemens’s back left him exchanging mildly amused looks with Einrih, who shook his head.
“No,” Klemens said, and went back to his knife. Over his shoulder, he called, too loudly, “Princess Tessa here to see you, my lord.”
“Shit!” That was Mattias’s voice.
Followed by a loud, put-upon sigh from Náli. “Fine. One moment,” the Corpse Lord called.
Estrid’s nose wrinkled. “Really? We’ve been in camp an hour? It’s only just now gone dark!”
Klemens shrugged.
A beat later, Tessa realized what they were implying, and her face heated.
Estrid chuckled, and elbowed her. “Married and still blushing?”
“Shut up.”
Both men grinned.
“You can shut up, too,” she said, effect ruined by the wobble in her voice.
Estrid laughed.
The tent flap lifted aside, and Mattias ducked out. His normally-tidy braid was fraying, little wisps poking up at odd angles atop his head. His face was flushed, and his tunic half-laced. Because Estrid was right, and Tessa was married, she knew well the reason a man might be pink-cheeked and hastily-dressed. It was a look she found charming and alluring on Rune – embarrassing on someone else.
“Your grace,” Mattias greeted, a trifle breathless. “My lady.” He held the flap aside and gestured. “Won’t you come in?”
Tessa wanted to hesitate – it felt wrong to enter a place where two people had just been…doing what two people did together, alone in a tent – but in the spirit of becoming more Northern, she nodded and ducked inside.
Inside, a small coal brazier had created a curtain of heat that enveloped her – and which heightened the scents of fresh sweat and sex. She fought not to make a face, and instead focused her attention on Náli – which didn’t really dispel her acute knowledge of what had occurred in here moments before.
He sat cross-legged – bare-legged – on a rumpled heap of furs, wearing a loose gray shirt with a white wolf fur draped across his shoulders. His hair was loose, pale face flushed, though his expression completely composed, as though he wasn’t barefooted and gleaming with sweat.
“Ah,” he said, and sipped from a steaming pewter mug. The scent of lavender wafted from it, once she was seated beside him, and its rich, floral smell covered some of the sex musk. “You’re early.”
