Page 39 of Remmen

Otho looked around for what else the day had left him and found Rauf, down on one knee in the dirt where he’d let go of Mestyn, that ruined shoulder hanging.

“You. Clinic.” Rauf opened his mouth and Otho didn’t give him the room. “That arm’s gone bad already and you ran ten miles on it. Walk there now or I’ll have the mayor carry you, and neither of us wants to watch that.”

Rauf went, slow, but he went.

Then Otho glanced up at me, at me with the mayor’s arm over my neck and the mayor’s blood to my elbows, holding a man twice my weight upright by will alone. “You seem to have him well in hand. I could use an apprentice like you.” He jerked his chin at Remmen without slowing his hands. “Mayor, how do I get one of those?”

I felt Remmen draw a breath to answer. Ever the mayor, even bleeding.

“The mayor will deal with all requests later,” I snapped, and I turned him toward his place, and I walked him out of that square with all of New Knossos watching me do it.

Fuck it all, I didn’t care.

CHAPTER 17

REMMEN

I was leaning on Anne harder than I needed to, but her skin was soft and smelled like the soap she used. I couldn’t make myself pull away; I didn’t want to.

My side smarted and I was bleeding, but the fight with the gorrel wouldn’t have even rated a trip to the healers for a bandage back in the arena. A bit of water to wash the wounds and a cloth and I’d be good.

Still, I let her lead me inside.

She steered me to the bench by the cold hearth and pushed down on my shoulder until I sat, and I let her believe it was her weight that moved me.

The house looked different with her in it. I’d never given the front room much thought before. A bench, the one chair, a table I ate at standing up, a shelf holding a jar of nails and a lamp.

Until a few weeks ago I’d never once expected to want anyone to see the inside of it. She’d been here before. I still wondered what she made of a home a man had so plainly meant to keep empty.

Without needing to ask, Anne stomped into the kitchen and grabbed rags from under the sink and filled a small bowl with water before coming back to kneel at my feet. She glared up at me and I felt my lips twitch.

“Don’t you dare smile.” She scowled.

I had her in my house in the middle of the day, down on her knees at my feet with a bowl of water, scowling at me for bleeding.

It was the only thing I wanted. Not the office, not the town. Her, here, in the daylight, where I could keep her.

I would do whatever it took to make that true, and I would not be gentle about it. Whatever it cost me, I’d already decided I would pay it.

“I’ll always smile when you’re kneeling in front of me.”

Anne’s cheeks flamed bright red and I rumbled out a laugh.

“You could have internal bleeding,” Anne insisted, and swiped her damp cloth none too gently over the worst of the scratches.

“I know what internal bleeding feels like. I’m fine.” But I didn’t pull away from her touch.

Anne cleaned the wounds, eyes so intent on my skin that she might have forgotten the rest of me existed.

Out the window the square was still churning with the aftermath, someone sluicing water over the stones, two bulls dragging the carcass off toward the tree line by a rope around its back legs. That was what I had to offer her. A hard planet, a rough town, and me.

“Why’d you come here?” I asked. “We’re a no-name rock and we don’t even have any coffee. You could have gone anywhere.”

She wrung the cloth out over the bowl, folded it, unfolded it, hunted down a scrape on my forearm that had already stopped bleeding and gave it all her attention. Her hands were careful on me, gentler than the scowl she still had on, and I let her fuss over nothing because it meant she wasn’t leaving yet.

“I told you, the passage was free.” She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“Darling—”