Page 51 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

“Well, yeah,” Robbie said easily. “You’re great.”

Robbie switched the nail polish brush into his right hand, taking a much more careful swipe at his left thumbnail, his tongue peeking out the corner of his mouth as he concentrated. His hand shook slightly from the effort and the polish got onto his cuticle.

“Fuck. It’s so hard to do my off hand.”

“You do this every week,” Callum teased.

“Yeah? Well, it never gets any easier,” Robbie said defensively. “This hand always looks like shit.”

“Here,” Callum said, reaching for the bottle and brush. Robbie hesitantly handed them over and held out his hand. Callum put the brush back into the polish and grabbed the cotton swab from earlier, wiping away the errant color. He gathered more polish on the brush and took Robbie’s left hand in his own left hand, painting carefully with his right.

“When I was learning to hold a sword, the weapons master made me train with both hands,” he said softly.

“How did he do that?”

Callum snorted. “He belted one arm behind my back.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did he make you learn with both hands?”

“In hand-to-hand combat, the easiest way to incapacitate your enemy is to damage his sword arm. If ye sever the muscles and tendons, he cannae hold his sword, which gives ye the advantage. And if your opponent has that great an advantage?—”

“You’re fucked.”

Callum bit back a smile as he switched to Robbie’s pointer finger. “Aye. You’re fucked. But if ye can take up the sword in your other hand, ye are nae fuckedquiteso badly.”

“That makes sense.”

“It’s also a good diversion tactic. If ye charge into battle with the sword in your left hand, they think you’re left-handed and that your right is weaker. Less defensible. So they go for it. And if ye can quickly switch hands, and learn to time it right, well, ye can beat nearly anyone.”

“Misdirection,” Robbie said as Callum painted his ring finger.

Robbie’s hands were rough and callused, with dahlias tattooed on the backs and the words HOLD FAST across his knuckles.

“What do these tattoos mean?” Callum asked, blowing on Robbie’s nails to dry them before going back for a second coat, as he’d watched Robbie do before.

“Oh. They’re old.”

“Still.”

Robbie sighed. “Well, the legend goes that sailors used to tattoo their knuckles like this to help them hold onto the ship during storms or fights. So they wouldn’t fall overboard.”

The irony struck Callum so sharply that he shook his head. “How fortunate that wasnae a practice when I was at sea. Had I held on to the ship, I would have been killed or gone down with it and drowned. Sometimes ’tis better to jump. The trick is to know the difference, I suppose.”

Robbie was quiet for a moment. “I think that you have a lot of stories, boss.”

“I think you would be right on that.” He chuckled and started a second coat on Robbie’s thumb, the iridescent color captivating in the fluorescent kitchen lights. “But to what were ye holding fast?”

“Myself.”

Callum looked up at him, at the tight set of Robbie’s jaw. “And the flowers?”

“My mama always told me that dahlias represent change.”

“And ye wanted a change?”