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That’d been before the storm, and the rockslide, and the loss of everything Aric had known. The ancestors had not helped. The ghosts, and the gods above them, had not intervened.
Adren and Korah Heddle had died on that mountain. Aric, sixteen years old and needing immediate money and a physician for Berd’s broken leg, had put his muscles and his size to work for pay, and had not ever gone back to look for the family tokens. Long buried, by then.
He figured his family probably understood. His parents knew about practicality, as merchants. The tokens themselves weren’t really important; they were representations, symbols, assistance. If his ancestors did happen to be around and really wanted to make themselves known, they could.
He looked at Emrys, in their bed: a short slender marvel of a fairy-creature, very present and very human at the moment, naked and scarred and sitting up amid tumbled worn bedsheets to watch him.
Aric came back over, plopped the extra blanket on his other half’s head, sat down. “I grew up thinking my grandmother would pop in over my shoulder just to tell me I was setting up a market-display wrong. Or accidentally giving a customer too many pennies in change.”
Em emerged from fuzzy knit to lean a shoulder into his. “She sounds fun.”
“She was deadly with a crossbow, I remember that. Protection, on caravan trails.” The rain drummed like the repetition of memory over the windowpane.
Em traced a hand along Aric’s thigh, affectionate, lingering across muscle and golden hair and the old scar from the spear-throw at Glasstone, healed long before they’d met. That’d been an ugly fight, getting Lord Ethbert’s brother out of an enemy’s dungeons, Aric plus three other hired mercenaries; only two of them, plus the brother in question, had escaped. They’d been well paid, at least.
He did not say, about Em and his grandmother, She would’ve liked you; she wouldn’t’ve. He’d grown up seeing his family make signs of aversion against elf-curses and the fairy-folk. He put his hand over Em’s.
“We’re, what, a week’s ride down to Ambrosium?” Emrys considered time and roads and weather. “Maybe two. With the storms. Should we send a message about any delays?”
“Nah, Berd knows better than to expect us any specific day. We’ll get there eventually.”
“It’ll be good to see him,” Em said, “and also that house, with the private bathing-chamber…”
“I know what your priorities are.” His brother did like Emrys, which Aric had been glad and somewhat relieved about. Berd was fairly unflappable, a good quality in someone paid to help plan and organize and direct the new sprawling city; he’d taken the introduction to his older brother’s half-fairy, lightly shapeshifting, magic-wielding partner with a small pause, a nod, and the comment that maybe someone magic could get Aric to remember to leave muddy boots at the door instead of tracking dirt into the house.
He slid back down into the bed, tugged Emrys close, wrapped them both up in a bundle of blankets and limbs, his own big gold fuzziness nestled against Em’s comforting hedgehog spikes of hair and slender dangerous muscle. “The roads’ll be bad even if we do wait a couple of days.”
“We can wait, though. We can afford it, and you said we’re not in a hurry.”
“Agreed.” He tucked his face into Em’s hair. The closest ear still held an upswept point; Em was relaxed and comfortable. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Fine. Which you know. Not even stiff.”
“Speaking of stiff—”
Em wriggled against him. “In the morning. We’ve got a proper mattress, not a forest clearing, and I want to appreciate it in as many ways as possible. Go to sleep.”
“Love you,” Aric agreed, and shut his eyes.
He fell asleep easily, but not comfortably. Awareness like a prophecy. Shivers along his back.
He knew he was dreaming; in the dream he and Em were considering the pass through the Spine, which made no sense because it was out of their way, and Em was saying, well, of course they’re not quiet, ghosts don’t like thunderstorms, as if that were perfectly logical, while wearing clinging leathers the same sky-blue as a scrap of silk buried with his parents’ caravan, plus an incongruous white flower behind her ear.
I don’t know how to comfort ghosts, Aric told her, and anyway it’s not our job, and you’re recovering, and I wouldn’t know where to start. But even as he said it he was looking at the pass, in the rain.
You rescued me, Em said, and took the flower out of her hair and held it out to him, while her clothing changed, shifted, a novice’s robe flecked with fire and soot. Her eyes were peaceful.
Aric woke up breathless, heart echoing the thunder, Em’s hair brushing his face. He hadn’t moved, still in place in bed, arms around the other half of his heart. The rain danced and dripped from the inn’s eaves and puddled outside in the dark.
Em hadn’t woken, so that hadn’t been anything magical. Not an omen, not a foretelling, not a slip past Em’s usual impressive senses.
Just a dream. Only that.
They were, Aric decided, definitely going to avoid the pass; and he held Em a little tighter and went back to sleep, safe and secure.
Chapter 3
In the morning Aric woke to Em’s fingers trailing across his chest, down his side, to his hip; he saw Em’s smile, feline and tempting. The rain sang.
