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He scowled. “I saidnot here.”
“Not here. Not now. Not ever. Whatever form your ‘no’ took, it was your right to say it.”
He bit his lip, chewing on it so fiercely it started to bleed. “I still got hard.”
“Because the prickdruggedyou! But even if that wasn’t the case, so what? Consent can’t be inferred from a body’s physiological reaction. You may get off on being dominated, Nat, forced and roughed up,” – I glanced away, unable to meet his eyes – “but that doesn’t mean anyone can justdothat to you. It doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to decide when and with whom, or if at all. You told him fuckingno.He disregarded that, Mathias, and if I was willing to give the fucker even asecondmore of our time, I’d have taken him apart slowly,” I promised, fighting to keep my tone level. “Starting with his hands so he couldn’t magic himself fucking better.”
Mat hummed, not in dismissal like I’d expected but amused consideration. Had the asshole actually listened to me for once?
Then he lifted his head to the wintry sky and squinted at the ravine ahead that seemed to cut the ground in two. “We need to move quicker. I don’t even want to imagine what Welzes is getting up to in your absence.”
“Nothing good for Quareh,” I agreed, noting the unsubtle change of subject but choosing not to comment on it. Our travels had been slower recently, attributable to the tougher terrain, less light, and our growing exhaustion. It was taking too long to reach Stavroyarsk, and like Mathias, I feared what Welzes and Navar might be doing to my country and how many of my people would be suffering for it.
I frowned as two figures on the opposite side of the ravine appeared from the tree line and moved onto the bridge we were heading for. It looked sturdy enough, if a little weathered, but the snow that coated everything this far north – the ground, the trees, the concealed dips and ditches I’d fallen prey to more than once – gave the structure a serene, almost magical quality, as if the wood had been dipped in ice and preserved. “Speaking of nothing good,” I murmured as the pair inexplicably stopped in the middle of the bridge rather than completing their crossing. “You have your knife?”
Mathias flashed me a wild grin. “Always.”
Yet it had been too much to hope for that the people waiting for us wouldn’t be armed themselves, and a bow on the shoulder of the one on the left and a staff in the hand of the other gave my confidence a good kick as we drew close enough to make out such details. Mat, not hesitating even for a moment, strode right onto the bridge and pushed the hood back from his face even as I sank further into mine and tugged it lower. I hadn’t needed the hostile reminders of the townsfolk we encountered when buying supplies to know that southerners weren’t welcomed this deep in Temar, regardless of my identity.
“Dobar den,”Mathias greeted the pair, feigning a casual cheer he surely didn’t feel.
The strangers deliberately stepped into our path, blocking the narrow bridge, and we both drew to a reluctant halt.
“A good day indeed,” said the one on the left, and as I didn’t dare look up, it was their voice rather than their features that gave away their gender. She laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “We always enjoy welcoming strangers to Paluk, dunna we, Milord?”
“I consider it our civic duty, Milady,” the other responded. “There are many dangers around here. Wolves.”
“Wolves,” she agreed, and under the lip of my hood I saw her unhook the bow from her shoulder. “Snowdrifts.”
“Snowdrifts. Oh, and terrible,terriblefalls. Big, deep, falls that would surely render a person naught but fragments of bone by the time they were to hit the ground.”
“Like that one there, perhaps?” Mathias asked, his voice low and unassuming, and I glanced sideways to find him gesturing down into the ravine.
“We have a clever one here, Milady,” the man remarked. “He gets it, he does.”
“I don’t suppose you fine people know the best way to avoid such a fate?” I asked, copying Mat’s accent as best I could.
“Two clever ones, Milord. I think we should help ‘em.”
“Just what I was thinking, Milady. Wouldn’t want anything nasty to happen to either of these fine, upstanding gentlemen.”
“D’ya think they’d be generous enough to donate a gold piece for our troubles?” the woman asked. “To compensate us for the years we’ve spent gathering such worldly knowledge?”
The man’s staff clunked onto the wooden boards beneath our feet. “I think they would, Milady.”
I tensed, wondering if Mat was going to object as vehemently to this act of extortion as he had with the captain in Máros, but he obligingly reached into his pocket and pulled out one of our remaining coins. Look at him, thinking all bigger picture and shit. I was proud.
“That seems.” Mathias cleared his throat and gritted out the last word, not bothering to keep the irritation from his tone. “Fair.”
Our companions chuckled.
“Glad we could come to such an amicable arrangement.” Boots shuffled in the snow as payment was made, and then stepped aside from our path. “You and your mysterious companion can head to Mazekhstam safe in the knowledge that all you needa do to avoid a nasty fall down that ravine there, is tonot fall off the fuckin’ bridge.”
“Worth every speck of gold they paid, advice like that, Milord. Good day, friends.”
Mathias didn’t move. “Mazekhstam? Why do you think that’s where we’re going?”
“Your accents. We got an ear for these things, dunna we, Milord?”
