IT WAS COOL and dark in the Elderglass burrow of the Gentlemen Bastards, and far quieter than usual, when Locke awoke with the certain knowledge that someone was staring at him. He caught his breath for an instant, then mimicked the deep, slow breathing of sleep. He squinted and scanned the gray darkness of the room, wondering where everyone was.
Down the hall from the kitchen there were four rooms, or, more appropriately, four cells. They had dark curtains for doors. One belonged to Chains, another to Sabetha, the third to the Sanzas, and the fourth to Locke and Jean. Jean should have been on his cot against the opposite wall, just past their little shelf of books and scrolls, but there was no sound from that direction.
Locke listened, straining to hear over the thudding of his pulse. There was a whisper of bare skin against the floor, and a flutter of cloth. He sat up, left hand outstretched, only to find another warm set of fingers entwined around his, and a palm in the middle of his chest pushing him back down.
“Shhhh,” said Sabetha, sliding onto the cot.
“Wha … where is everyone?”
“Gone for the moment,” she whispered into his ear. Her breath was warm against his cheek. “We don’t have much time, but we do have some.”
She took his hands and guided them to the smooth, taut muscles of her stomach. Then she slid them upwards until he was cupping her breasts—she’d come into the room without a tunic.
One thing the bodies of sixteen-year-old boys (and that was more or less what Locke was) don’t do is respond mildly to provocation. In an instant he was achingly hard against the thin fabric of his breeches, and he exhaled in mingled shock and delight. Sabetha brushed aside his blanket and slid her left hand down between his legs. Locke arched his back and uttered a noise that was far from dignified. Luckily, Sabetha giggled, seeming to find it endearing.
“Mmmm,” she whispered. “I do feel appreciated.” She pressed down firmly but gently and began to squeeze him to the rhythm of their breathing, which was growing steadily louder. At the same time, she slid his other hand down from her breast, down her stomach, down to her legs. She was wearing a linen breechclout, the sort that could be undone with just a tug in the right place. She pressed his hand between her thighs, against the intriguing heat just behind the fabric. He caressed her there, and for a few incredible moments they were completely caught up in this half-sharing, half-duel, their responses to one another becoming less controlled with every ragged breath, and it was delicious suspense to wonder who would snap first.
“You’re driving me mad,” he whispered. The heat from her skin was so intense he imagined he could see it as a ghost-image in the dark. She leaned forward, and her breath tickled his cheeks again; he drew in the scents of her hair and sweat and perfume and laughed with pleasure.
“Why are we still wearing clothes?” she said, and they rolled apart to amend the situation, fumbling, struggling, giggling. Only now the soft heat of her skin was fading, and the gray shadows of the room loomed more deeply around them, and then Locke was kicking out, spasming in a full-body reflex as she slipped from his grasp like a breath of wind.
That cruelest of landlords, cold morning reality, finished evicting the warm fantasy that had briefly taken up residence in his skull. Muttering and swearing, Locke fought against his tangled blanket, felt his cot tipping away from the wall, and failed in every particular to brace himself for his meeting with the floor. There are three distinct points of impact no romantically excited teenage boy ever hopes to slam against a hard surface. Locke managed to land on all three.
His outflung right hand failed to do anything useful, but it did snatch the opaque cover from his cot-side alchemical globe, bathing the cell in soft golden light for him to gasp and writhe by. A carelessly stacked pile of books toppled loudly to the floor, then took several similar piles with it in a fratricidal cascade.
“Gods below,” muttered Jean, rolling away from the light. Jean was definitely in his proper place, and their cell was once again the cluttered mess of daily life rather than the dark private stage of Locke’s dream.
“Arrrrrrrrrrrgh,” said Locke. It didn’t help much, so he tried again. “Arrrrrrrrrrr—”
“You know,” said Jean, yawning irritably, “you should burn some offerings in thanks for the fact that you don’t actually talk in your sleep.”
“… rrrrrrgh. What the hell do you mean?”
“Sabetha’s got really sharp ears.”
“Nnngh.”
“I mean, it’s pretty gods-damned obvious you’re not dreaming about calligraphy over there.”
There was a loud knock on the wall just outside their cell, and then the curtain was swept aside to reveal Calo Sanza, long hair hanging in his eyes, working his way into a pair of breeches.
“Good morning, sunshines! What’s with all the noise?”
“Someone took a tumble,” muttered Jean.
“What’s so hard about sleeping on a cot like a normal person, ya fuckin’ spastic dog?”
“Kiss my ass, Sanza,” Locke gasped.
“Heyyyyyyyyy, EVERYBODY!” Calo pounded on the wall as he shouted. “I know we’ve got half an hour yet to sleep, but Locke thinks we should all be up right now! Find your happy faces, Gentlefucker Bastards, it’s a bright new day and we get to start it EARLY!”
“Calo, what the hell is wrong with you?” hollered Sabetha, somewhere down the hall.
Locke put his forehead against the floor and moaned. It was the height of the endless steaming summer of the seventy-eighth Year of Preva, Lady of the Red Madness, and everything was absolutely screwed up to hell.
2
SABETHA DARTED in, parried Locke’s attempt at a guard, and smacked the outside of his left knee with her chestnut wood baton.
“Ow,” he said, hopping up and down while the sting faded. Locke wiped his forehead, lined up again in the duelist’s stance, and touched the tip of his baton to Sabetha’s. They were using the sanctuary of the Temple of Perelandro as a practice room, under Jean’s watchful eye.
“High diamond, low square,” said Jean. “Go!”
This was more an exercise in speed and precision than actual fighting technique. They slammed their batons together in the patterns demanded by Jean, and after the final contact they were free to swipe at one another, scoring touches against arms or legs.
“Yeow,” said Locke, shaking his left wrist, where a fresh red welt was rising.
“You’re faster than this, Locke.” Sabetha returned to her starting position. “Something distracting you this morning?”
Sabetha wore a loose white tunic and black silk knee-breeches that left nothing about her lithely-muscled legs to the imagination. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair pulled tightly back with linen cord. If she’d heard anything specific about the disturbance he’d kicked off to start the day, at least she wasn’t saying much.
“More than one something?” she said. “Any of them attached to me?”
So much for the lukewarm comfort of uncertainty.
“You know
“Or might like to be, hmmm?”
“Middle square,” yelled Jean, “middle square, middle diamond! Go!”
They wove their pattern of strikes and counterstrikes, rattling their batons off one another until the end of the sequence, when Sabetha flicked Locke’s weapon down and smacked a painful crease into his right biceps. Sabetha’s only commentary on this victory was to idly twirl her baton while Locke rubbed at his arm.
