Except now their palms were pressed to the bark, instead of the book, and it was spring. The air was raw and quick and full of birdsong, and the sap hummed greenly beneath their hands.
The knight said, ‘But,’ and then, ‘how.’
The scholar, who did not always understand when questions were rhetorical, answered, ‘Honestly, I’m not sure. Vivian told me it was God’s will that the book sent us where and when it did but given that she lied almost constantly about everything else…’ He shrugged. ‘It was never God’s will. It washers.So why couldn’t it be mine?’
The knight looked out at the wood, which she knew in all its seasons, as she would know the face of a dear friend. But the wood had changed, as though her friend had grown suddenly much older. The great yew still stood at the center, with its gnarling, deep-furrowed bark, its vast roots, its dense green crown—but the forest around it was subtly incorrect. There was shade where there ought to have been shafts of sun, giants where there ought to have been saplings. At her feet, something rusted between the roots: a scrap of metal, long since swallowed up by the earth.
‘So,’ said the knight, ‘when did you send us, boy?’
The scholar blew out his breath. ‘Sometime in the first regency? About a hundred and thirty years after you died, and eight hundred or so before I’m born.’ He shrugged. ‘I figure we’re safest in times without a queen on the throne.’
The knight, who was very brave, had no talent for running away. She asked, uncertainly, ‘And where will we go now?’
The scholar, who was a coward, answered grimly, ‘As far and fast as we can.’
And they did.
They ran and left everything behind them: the yew and the wood, the dragon and the grail, the legend of their lives and the queen who told it.
They left their names, too, inventing new ones for each curious shepherd or bored tavern-keeper. In a Nornish village they left most of the knight’s long flaxen hair, sheared away and buried in the churchyard. What remained they soaked in madder and vinegar, so that it curled muddily around her ears.
The scholar left his red coat, and the knight left her shining armor, bundled together and tossed overboard as they crossed the Slant Sea. Theknight missed her armor sometimes—the certainty of it, the punishing weight—but not half so much as she missed her horse, who they had left wandering alone in the woods more than a century ago.
They left even their sexes behind, dressing sometimes as two men or two women, binding or stuffing their chests, lengthening or shortening their stride. This, at least, came easily to them, for neither of them had ever quite been what they were supposed to be, or acted how they ought to act. They were too manly or too womanish, too loud or too soft-spoken, too tall or too slim, too strong or too weak. It was no hardship to trade one disguise for another.
They left so much behind them that they were not always sure what, if anything, remained to them.
It was especially hard in the beginning, in those lean and hunted months when they were still learning how to run. The scholar was lost and often afraid and strangely ashamed, a more thorough deserter than his father ever was. The knight was bewildered, uncertain of herself, adrift, reaching always for the sword she no longer carried. She found herself reaching instead for the scholar, canting toward him—but he held himself carefully away from her.
If he touched her, it was only impersonally, accidentally. If he slept beside her, it was only for warmth. The knight lay next to him, baffled and aggrieved. His pulse had raced when she touched him; his breath had caught when he looked at her. But perhaps it had been a passing attraction, hot and brief as a fever. He’d said he loved her—but perhaps it was the chaste, courtly love of which bards so often sang.
Or perhaps it was her legend that he loved, a woman who no longer existed, or never truly had. In her place there was only the nameless knight, without oath or honor. Who, loving a painting, would want the raw canvas beneath it?
But then one morning the knight woke to the feel of the scholar’s arms around her, his breath panting in her ear, his cock stiff and urgent against her hip. He woke abruptly, on a gasp, and rolled away from her. ‘I’m sorry.’
She remained still, curled away from him, feeling the prick of horsehair through the mattress. Perhaps he had been dreaming of someone else. ‘There is no call for apology.’
He swore, softly. ‘The hell there isn’t.’ The mattress shifted as he climbed from the bed. He kept his head ducked as he fumbled for shirt and spectacles. They were in the drafty attic of a boardinghouse, and the beams werelow. He said, stiffly, ‘I don’t—I wouldn’t want to presume any intimacy, between us.’
He was blushing hard as he said it, and the knight found that some unkind, desirous part of her wanted to make it worse. ‘I’ve died in your arms more than once. Is sex so much more intimate than death?’
‘No—of course not—it’s just…’ He raked his fingers through his curls. ‘You were hers, before. Because you had to be.’ He scowled at her, blush deepening. ‘You don’thaveto be mine. You don’t have to be anyone’s, ever again.’
Was this why he had not touched or kissed her, all these weeks? The knight swung her legs over the edge of the bedstead, marveling at him. ‘We all belong to someone,’ she said, gently. The whole of her world was a system of allegiances, long chains of bent knees and bowed necks that ran from sinner to pulpit, from peasant to throne. It disoriented her even to imagine herself outside of it; no link could be removed from the chain unbroken. ‘We all serve someone. We all command someone. Butwho…’She caught his eyes with hers. ‘That choice, at least, is now ours.’
She shrugged, and the loose collar of her shirt fell down over one shoulder. The scholar’s eyes fixed on her skin, helpless and avid and black as fresh ink, and she knew it was her he wanted, after all, and not chastely.
He said, a little desperately, ‘But what if we didn’t choose, not really? What if it was only—proximity?’ His mouth twisted around the word, as if it tasted bad. ‘What if it’s not real?’
The knight let her eyes fall to his trousers and said, filthily, ‘Looks real enough to me.’
The scholar choked a little. ‘I—I want to be sure you choose freely, that’s all. You deserve to be free.’
‘Who is free, who loves another?’ the knight asked lightly, but she could see the question troubled her scholar. His thoughts drew his brows down and pressed his fine lips together, and she decided he ought to have fewer of them.
The fashion in this era was for flowing, silly shirts that laced up the front. She pulled the laces free and slipped her arms from the sleeves, so that the cloth slid and pooled at her waist.
The scholar tried not to move. He tried, as he had tried for weeks now, to take nothing he wasn’t expressly offered: The knight had spent the whole of her life serving at the pleasure of others, and he was determined that she would not serve his.
