Malostra and I have been exchanging for years. At first, we were novices simply trying to hone our skills. We sat on the stone floor, palms touching, transferring energy back and forth. Then we held flowers and passed the life around. Girls make up strange games when cloistered together. We saw each other’s bodies through theawkward years of growing pains, first bloods, everything. Then something shifted as we grew. Our experiments became less playful, more earnest, and suddenly there was a desire we couldn’t name but recognised as mutual.
Malostra kisses me and it’s delicious. I want to crawl under her skin as I feel her body under mine. Her dark hair falls away and I watch the pulse jump in her neck. I kiss her, warm her, make her burn bright. When she’s hot enough to burst, I look at her pulse again. I imagine it stopping, her neck cold and still. I reach into her mind, soothing the desperate fluttering thing inside. My fingers are cool, a soothing balm, a healing poultice. I place my hands on the supple skin of her neck and think of the symbols on my tattered pieces of paper under the flagstones in the bathroom. I make the skin dance under my touch, sucking the heat of her into my flesh. I press down and she cries out, shuddering beneath me.
‘Stop! Hanan, you’re choking me.’
When I look at her face she’s crying, her baby hairs slick against her hairline, damp with sweat. There are scratches on my hands, her fingernails bloody as if she had tried to claw me off. I barely felt a thing.
Her hands leap to her throat, to the imprints of my fingers and the broken blood vessels. ‘Holy Aistra, what did you do?’ she chokes.
‘A little death,’ I whisper, rolling off her. She lies there, prone, breathing hard.
I know what I should say but I can’t; there’s a beast stopping my voice. Malostra looks at me like I’m a stranger or a feral animal on the attack, eyes wide and terrified like a bushaella. Her breathing is shallow, and an unholy wheezing pours out of her throat.
‘That was intense,’ I say quietly, turning to face her.
‘Intense?’ she repeats, her voice a croak.
I reach for her, and she shrinks away. We both say nothing for a moment.
Eventually her breathing slows, and I hear her swallow hard. ‘I wasn’t sure you would stop.’
‘I’m sorry, Malostra. I got carried away.’
‘Carried away?’ She sits up and gets off the bed. ‘There’s something wrong with you, Hanan. I want you to stay away from now on.’
chapter ten
finlyr
When Isagani saidthey knew a place to hole up, I didn’t expect an inn at the heart of Umasa. We stand awkwardly at the wooden desk and watch the guests filter in from the day. It’s bustling, unlikely they’ll have any space for us, especially with the little we have to our names. I can smell the oniony stench of my own pits, the fearful sweat rolling down the back of my exposed neck. So many folk in close proximity.
‘Everyone passes through here,’ Isagani says. ‘I imagine more so now, now that Paranish’s ports are open.’
‘And how do you know of this place?’ I ask.
‘Narra’s always got trimmings going. She’s been kind to me,’ they say, growing red.
I ignore their embarrassment. No shame in helping each other out.
‘You’re both new.’ A woman appears behind the desk and hands us two tankards. Her countenance is bright and open, with dark attentive eyes and an unruly mane of dark curls. ‘I’m Ligaya. What brings you to Narra’s inn?’
Now I hear it, the lilt of Lassren.
‘I’m Larkin. My daughter Isa and I are passing through Umasa,’ I say, giving her a small, polite smile.
‘Please help yourself to jellied zoa.’
‘Jellied zoa?’ Isagani asks, with genuine curiosity.
I look at the swirling purple liquid inside the cup.
‘A popular beverage in Lassair. I’ve fashioned my own version, something more like your piyata cider, I think,’ Ligaya says.
The liquid fizzes on my tongue. It’s only lightly fermented but the thick globules of jellyfish burst with spice and earthiness on my tongue. It pales in comparison to the real stuff from Lassair, but it’s not half bad.
‘You’re merchants, you said?’ Ligaya asks.
‘From Nila on the Summer Isle,’ Isagani chimes in quickly.
