“Especially since they’re too drunk to be subtle,” Darya said as they passed through the inner gates. A line of a song floated out from a window in the barracks, slurred but enthusiastic:
“The captain’s daughter, she was there, and had them all in fits…”
“That,” she added, “sounds like someone’s been keeping a personal flask back. The herbalists wouldn’t be pleased, if they knew.”
Not necessarily,Gerant said.Two pints of good ale will make more soldiers merry than they like to think—particularly the young ones.
“Nerves, too, are their own kind of liquor,” said Amris.
“Oh, it’s all the ladies back,”the singer went on,“with their arses to the wall—”
There were deep voices in the chorus, and the high ones could as easily have been women as young men, but it was hard to tell. And yes, there was an edge to it that ale or even spirits couldn’t explain—the high spirits that came with being desperate not to think.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she said. She wasn’t too drunk to look at Amris while she walked straight ahead, and the sight of him, thoughtful and clear-eyed despite the ale and with no reforging to account for it, was comforting. “It’s not just that you know what we’re facing out there, but you know how these things work, and what they feel like. I don’t think anyone else here does. I know I don’t.”
The keep’s staircase was more or less deserted. The barracks were on the lower floor, and Hallis and the others were in either their rooms or someone else’s. Dark—there were no servants to change the torches, and the torches themselves might be more useful elsewhere—and empty, it seemed like another ruin to Darya in that moment.
“It does me good,” Amris said, “to know you think it worth your while to have brought me back.”
He was joking, with his eyes crinkling at the corners and his mouth almost straight but curling up just enough to give it away. Darya laughed under her breath. “Oh, definitely,” she said, “you’re at least as good as a candlestick or a mirror. Better, as I don’t have to carry you.”
“Only wait a few days. Battle changes any number of things.”
“So you’ve said.”
At the top of the stairs, Amris paused and turned to face her, no longer joking. “You would’ve defended me back there,” he said, “and I thank you for it.”
“Of course,” and the next words, the lighthearted ones about him being useful, or Gerant killing her otherwise, wouldn’t come. He looked too grave standing there, and there was a softer expression on the clean-cut planes of his face than Darya was used to seeing from him. She’d found his presence comforting, but he’d been actively comforting people for the last two days, and he knew enough to fear more than most of them. “Any of us there would, you know. Branwyn. Even Emeth, if she’d been present. Olvir, certainly—Olvirdid.”
“Olvir likes me well enough, but he has a duty to his god. And I thank him for it, but—” Amris shrugged. “It meant a great deal to have people angry on my behalf. Selfish as that may have been.”
“I think you’re allowed a little selfishness, considering,” said Darya.
He smiled, and it was the loneliest thing she’d ever seen. Impulse, ale, and her own set of nerves drove her forward and reached her hand up: his hair was too short to push back, but she stroked her fingers through the dark curls and down the side of his face. “This is a hell of a thing for you, Amris. Even aside from us all maybe dying. I–I wish I could make it easier.”
“You do.” He spoke quietly, and his voice was thick. Beneath her palm, his face was warm and faintly rough with stubble.
Gerant was silent, and the sword at Darya’s hip was a weight in her mind as well. She dropped her hand. Already, she wasn’t sure how much she should apologize. So far, it had been just a gesture, not much more than what might pass between close friends, but she wanted too much more to escape guilt. “Sleep well,” she said. “We’ll all need it.”
* * *
Spearpoints skewered hay bales, left holes as the soldiers pulled their weapons back and thrust forward again. Amris walked up and down the lines, repositioning a shoulder or nudging a foot back, calling out verbal advice, and clapping his hands between times to set the pace. Sweat dripped down his face. It hadn’t been very long since his own morning training, facing off against Olvir and Emeth in the yard, and he hadn’t given himself time to rest.
He had to keep distracted, after all.
Amris had never been one to take himself in hand in shared quarters. The previous night, not knowing when Olvir would walk in, he’d set his teeth and ignored the heavy fullness in his groin when Darya had left him. She’d meant the touch for kindness, no more, but he’d sprung to life nonetheless, and all of his possible partners had long departed—
—and he couldn’t truly turn to any of them, regardless. He was the commander to most. A few of those left were to his taste and might be amenable, but as Amris took to his solitary bed, he’d realized that a night with any of them would only be a substitute for what he really wanted—a shabby trick to play on a bedmate who didn’t realize it, and not a situation to enter in limited company, even if he’d wanted to explain his situation.
The morning, thus, had been an exercise in working himself ragged, to the point where Emeth had raised her eyebrows at the end of the bout and advised him to save a bit of himself for the Twisted. She was right. Amris wished otherwise, and he could justify more effort when training, for his exhaustion mattered less than the skill of fifty others.
Working them too hard would be worse, though, so he brought the exercise to a halt with no hint of the reluctance he felt. Amris dismissed the men, turned to find the nearest butt of water, and felt Darya’s approach.
The spell was going to be the death of him—a more pleasant one, granted, than Thyran or his troops probably had in mind.
He lifted his head from the water, turned, and saw her approaching, once more in green and with her hair down around her shoulders. As always when she had a clear destination in mind, she moved like a fired arrow, all purpose and speed, but as she got closer, Amris felt her trepidation. “Is all well?” he asked as soon as she was close enough.
“Relatively speaking,” said Darya. There was color in her cheeks that her walk didn’t account for. The bond didn’t tell Amris all of what she felt, and he didn’t want to pry, but he sensed that not all of her discomfort was bad. Some was embarrassment, some the effort not to hope.
