Havemercy Page 15

  I caught his fingers and held them tight; and then we were running together, slipping in the mud, along the banks of the engorged river, laughing and shrieking into the howling wind and rain, half-blind in the downpour. No doubt we nearly lost our footing on more than one occasion, and were both perilously close to being swallowed whole by the gurgling river. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Hal’s fingers were ice-cold in my own, and there was a form in the distance, just visible through the sheeting rain.

  That, I understood, must be the boathouse.

  We tumbled inside the door, gasping and choking and still laughing. The hinges were rusty and we nearly knocked the damn thing in, and the wind was blowing so hard that we almost couldn’t close it again, but eventually we managed, collapsing back against it with our legs shaking and our whole bodies trembling with the cold.

  At last, when I could speak again, I said, “It’s very dark in here, isn’t it?” then we both collapsed into laughter again, Hal sliding down the wall sudden and hard. Soon after, my knees gave way and I followed him.

  This wasn’t going to do either of us any good. We needed to light a fire, get out of our wet clothes, and glean as much warmth as we could from one another until the rains had passed and we could return to the house.

  Realization hit me like a punch beneath the belt. We should have done this—but we couldn’t.

  Rather: I couldn’t.

  “Is everything all right?” Hal asked into the silence, as the wind slammed itself again and again against the thin wooden walls and the rain made the whole roof shake.

  “Yes,” I said. “Quite. I was simply trying to think of how we might best get warm.”

  “Oh,” Hal said. “Yes, of course; you must be cold.” His words were hard to understand, as his teeth were chattering, but I knew my own limits. I couldn’t allow myself to reach over and warm him with my own body for a number of very real, very compelling reasons. Yet at the same time I couldn’t let him fall ill due to my own shortcomings as a reserved and unselfish individual. “I’m sorry,” Hal added, after a long moment. “This is my fault really.”

  “Is it?” I asked, my tone of voice not betraying my darker thoughts. “I wasn’t aware you controlled the skies. How marvelous!”

  “Oh,” Hal said again, and I knew without having to see him that he was blushing.

  “You might have said something earlier,” I went on speaking, in order to give my thoughts as little entertainment as possible. “It’s a useful Talent, that.”

  “No,” said Hal, warm and familiar. For better or worse, he’d come to recognize when I was joking, and he knew what was serious and what wasn’t. “I didn’t mean that.”

  “I am aware,” I assured him, and cast a glance around the long, low building for anything that we might see fit to burn. I did not wish to incur my brother’s enmity by destroying any more of his possessions than I already had—though to be fair, I hadn’t seen them use it much—so the squat little rowboat leaning up against one wall was out of the question. So too the oars, I assumed, though I knew myself that if it came to a choice between freezing to death and the family’s recreational pursuits, I would take the blame wholeheartedly.

  As if to add to my conviction, Hal lifted his hands to rub at his arms, one enormous quaking shiver at my side. He must have noticed me looking at him, for he offered a sheepish smile. “It’s not as warm in here as I thought it might be.”

  “Do you know if there’s anything that we might burn?” I asked.

  The look in his eyes told me I’d phrased the question wrong, or perhaps the memory of the dining-room table was altogether too fresh in his mind. “I mean, for a fire. I am not always in the habit of exploding property. During times of peace, in any case, when I’m dining with my brother’s family or taking shelter in my brother’s boathouse.”

  “It might,” Hal began, forcing the words out between his chattering teeth. “If you can, I mean, that might be the only way we’ve got of starting a fire. I didn’t think to bring matches.” He smiled at this, as though I’d been the one to teach him sarcasm.

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Well, or, there’s an oil lamp in the back corner,” he said, using the wall to lever himself into a standing position once again. “Of course, that might burn the whole boathouse down, which would be warm, but . . .”

  “Not entirely the solution to the problem I was hoping for,” I agreed, following suit and standing as well. The wind drove itself into the boathouse walls with a force that set them trembling as surely as Hal was. Remaining in this state was most certainly not an option.

  Further exploration of the boathouse yielded a small skiff with the bottom torn out. William, Hal explained, had thought it just the perfect size for a sled down the gravel mountain that was all that remained of an old quarry upriver, and the boat had been quite ruined by the time it reached the bottom. I thought that as a source of wood it would serve quite marvelously, and set about dragging it to the center of the boathouse, praising William all the while.

  “Here,” said Hal, pale and tinged with blue. “What can I do?” He was dripping all over the floor, and my own feelings on the matter made themselves known as surely as though I’d been kicked in the chest.

  “Clear everything else out of the way,” I said, for fires were only ever a good idea when they were controlled, and with my wits and hands half-frozen, I wanted to take no chances.

  Hal nodded and picked up the oars, taking them to the very back of the boathouse. I circled the wooden skeleton of the boat my nephew had destroyed, trying to judge whether it would indeed be safer to use oil from the lamp. I knew that it wasn’t, and that even entertaining the thought was simply a means for me to ignore the fact that I was reluctant to use my Talent again so soon, and in front of Hal. I was too old for such flights of fanciful self-consciousness, but there it was. If I were being perfectly honest, I assumed that it was only that I did not want him to look at me in a different way, which was patently ridiculous.

  If I’d wanted that, I might have taken a care not to send the dining-room table out of the house in splinters.

  “Are you going to light the fire?” Hal held his arms tightly, as if by doing so he could keep himself from shaking. A thin rivulet of water trailed from the ends of his hair, down his nose and mouth. Something shifted within me, sharp and bright.

  My Talent for combustion—or exploding things, as seemed to be the layperson’s preferred definition—had proved particularly useful during the war. The Esar had never bothered to learn the specifics, once he knew what it was I could do, nor did it seem to matter much after that. All I really needed was the oxygen readily available in the air. The scientists had explained it all very concisely, chemical reactions resulting in a great deal of heat. Theoretically, my explosions began as all fires did, and all that dictated their intensity was my own level of concentration. It was for that reason, among others, that I had had to learn very quickly to control my temper. Mishaps like my brother’s dining-room table couldn’t happen. They shouldn’t happen.

  “Stand back,” I said quietly. Hal stepped back, though his eyes were on me, clear and pale as the rainwater.

  I concentrated, drawing on my own store, the Well of my own power, from within, where it lay coiled like an enormous, fat serpent. It could strike as easily as allow itself to be charmed, and without the proper experience many magicians could quite easily end up destroyed by their own Talents, poisoned from within.

  The boat lit with a soft whooshing noise, a pale echo of the wind and rain that howled outside. The fire was large, though, and rose crackling and cheery toward the ceiling, so that the room was flooded with a shaky orange light.

  I could see Hal still over the curling edges of the flames, face framed by fire like the burning portrait of a lover. “That was . . .” he said at length. His voice was still shivering but it had grown quiet and restrained, as though he were trying to quell his shivering—which of course wouldn’t help in t
he slightest. “That was very . . . Well.”

  “Come here,” I said. I had to ignore the fluttering within my own damned chest that so mirrored the flames. I held out a hand and smiled without regard for anything else in the world, the rain or the wind, or my own considerable discomfort in clothes both clammy and frigid.

  Hal crossed to sit next to me at the fire, taking off his sodden jacket with an unself-conscious shrug of his thin shoulders. “In . . . in the last roman I read, they went into a lot of detail about the best ways to . . . to get warm again when you’re cold,” he explained, and I knew by the quality of his voice and the uncertain way in which he would not quite meet my eyes that his thoughts had been the same as mine.

  Well, likely not exactly the same as mine.

  I nodded, acquiescing to at least this bit of wisdom. My own jacket was a soaked weight over my shoulders, clinging and useless. I peeled it off, and pushed it a careful distance closer to the fire to let it dry.

  “This is a right sight better than the marsh,” Hal said, almost cheerful now that his teeth had stopped chattering so violently.

  I laughed, as I often did at the unexpected glimpses of glib good humor Hal possessed. Then the sound died in my throat, swift and abrupt, as he lifted the hem of his shirt and tugged the wet garment over his head.

  “Here,” I said, and my voice snagged on something low and dangerous, so that I had to clear the propriety back into my throat. “Here, let me.” Thoughtless of my actions, I reached over to help him, freeing his arms and, in a moment, the rest of him.

  “Oh,” said Hal, his dark hair mussed in places and stuck to his scalp. The freckles on his face stood out like ink dots, sharp against his pale skin. His lips were still tinged blue, and he had freckles on his shoulders as well as on his shoulder blades. “Thank you.”

  If he smiled then, I knew quite well that I would be lost, and so I turned away quickly. “It’s nothing,” I answered, quiet and gracious. Careful.

  There must still have been a touch of what I was wrestling around in my voice, however, because he put his hand on my arm.

  “Is—Are you quite sure everything’s all right? You sound as though you may be getting a cold.”

  I laughed again, but it was at my own expense, and not a kind laugh. How I had ended up in this situation was immaterial, as it was most certainly my own fault and therefore my responsibility to keep my private feelings at bay. “I’m quite sure, Hal. Thank you.”

  He brightened, as he always did when I used his name, and set about kicking off his boots with a thudding sound against the wooden floor of the boathouse. “You should start getting your clothes off, too—that is, if you don’t mind me saying so, of course,” he added quickly, as though I were staying clothed out of some insane obstinacy that wouldn’t allow me to take the advice of a country ward.

  “Well,” I began. This was not a proper beginning at all, and so I elaborated. “I’m not all that cold, actually.”

  He tossed me a look full of a fondness that made my chest ache, and which also suggested that he thought me insanely obstinate. No doubt he was right. “Of course you are. You were caught in that rain same as me. There isn’t any place for modesty; you could catch fever same as I, if you don’t take better care of yourself.” His voice was uncertain, unused to taking charge and yet armed with the simple conviction that he was right, and this gave him courage. “I’ll close my eyes, if you like. And keep them closed until the rain stops, too.”

  “That really won’t be necessary,” I said, smiling in spite of the trap that had sprung up around me. With the air of a man headed to the noose, I began to undo the buttons of my shirt.

  Hal looked away, and I had to assume it was out of a real sense of modesty rather than any promise he’d made me one way or the other.

  I removed my shirt in precise, deliberate motions that meant nothing; I dropped it on the floor next to Hal’s by the fire. The boathouse gave a particularly violent shudder, followed by an ominous creak.

  Hal whistled low. “It could go on all night, by the sounds of that.” When he did look at me, he kept his eyes cast down, so I knew that, for all his sensible talk, in some ways this was as difficult for him as it was for me.

  Only in some ways, of course.

  “Hal,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the storm that raged outside—but only just.

  “It’s a good thing we’ve got this fire going,” he went on as though he hadn’t heard me, hands traveling to his belt. “Going by the size of the boat, it could last all night if we needed it to, without having to burn the one whose bottom hasn’t been torn out.”

  “Hal,” I repeated. The light from the fire stained our white skin to a deep, flushed tan, as though it was the height of summer and the cold season was not upon us. It was warmer without clothes, and I was no fool. I knew perfectly well how to survive a winter in the mountains, or a wet night in a boathouse. This was simply a road I could not take, and the knowing of it overwhelmed all the sense in my head.

  His belt hit the floor with a dull clunk. I caught his arm above the elbow, so that he turned to look at me in surprise. “Margrave?”

  Our mouths were too close. I could feel his breath against my lips, warm and hitching and uneven. I knew what I’d intended all this time. To think that I’d pretended to myself that I’d even considered resisting him! I was much more of a fool than I could ever have guessed.

  I could have kissed him.

  I almost did it, forthright and honest. And it was a very rare occasion on which I was perfectly honest about something, with someone.

  I had been honest with Erik. I was honest with Hal.

  I could have kissed him, and I almost did. He must have sensed it in me, for he made a small noise in the back of his throat and his lips parted as though he was expecting my mouth on his. It was an invitation, however clumsy and inexperienced, and with it his arm came up to lock thin and tight around my neck, pleading with me to wait—just a moment.

  That was when I forced myself to draw away.

  He was too much younger than I, too desperate for anyone’s affection. Even though it was not my place to decide for him whether what he thought he wanted was what he actually did want, I couldn’t have that uncertainty drawn between us. I didn’t want to have to doubt him for any reason; likewise, I didn’t want to give him cause to doubt me. Above all, I was the elder, and it was my duty to protect him from at least the same blunders I’d once made myself when I was his age. It wasn’t so very long ago as all that, and because I cared for him, I refused to kiss him.

  It took all my strength not to do so, to turn my face from his and toward the firelight. I was still holding tight to his arm, and we were close enough yet that I could feel as well as hear the sound he made, as if I’d doused him quite suddenly with ice-cold water.

  There must have been something I could have done to reassure him, yet for the life of me I couldn’t think of a single thing.

  We were silent for a long time. Hal didn’t remove his hand from the back of my neck, nor did I entirely release him. To do so now would be to scorn him completely, and that would have taken advantage of his position just as surely as kissing him would have done.

  He made that sound a second time, softer than the first. I felt him stir against me; his hair tickled my neck, so that I knew he’d bowed his head.

  Above all else, I told myself with sudden remonstration, I couldn’t allow him to think this a defeat of any sort.

  “Hal,” I said.

  There was an unfamiliar quality in my voice—it said too clearly all that I was feeling torn, ragged, on the edge of some deeper need—and his fingers tightened against the back of my neck. I didn’t know who’d moved first to make it so, but quite suddenly he was tucked in close against my chest, warm and impossibly soft. Everything important about Hal was softness, I decided, his hair and his mouth, the sweet curve of his jaw, and the way it fit neatly into my palm. I ran my thumb along the line of his cheek, markin
g its shape the way I’d only ever had occasion to with my eyes.

  And there we were. I held him against me, his skin clammy and cold and still damp against mine, and his lips parted, his half quirk of a sorry smile. I could feel his heart pounding inside his chest, against my forearm, which was trapped between us and would soon start cramping.

  Now should have been the time when I used this leverage and maneuvered us apart from each other. Now should have been the time when I put my wealth of experience in these matters to good use, to the task of keeping him as far away from me as was possible in the small boathouse.

  But now wasn’t the night for it. And at least I’d mustered strength enough not to kiss him.

  Then, his fingers clutched at the base of my neck, tangling in my hair. He murmured something that sounded like my name, and I allowed myself to harbor the foolish notion that it was exactly that. He was young, I thought wildly; he was separated from his parents and desperate for affection in my brother’s cold, uncaring, selfish house. We’d grown very close. We were intimate friends, and Hal had obviously longed for such companionship. He didn’t know what it was he asked for, the fingers of his free hand seeking purchase against my shoulder.

  Yet, the treacherous shadow-half of me whispered, these lies would be to demean him. Hal was no idiot country boy, and inexperience was quite another thing from stupidity. I longed to rationalize his actions within the context of what I presumed him to be thinking—yet for all the time we’d spent together, I realized I had no way to judge or measure his thoughts at all.

  “Hal,” I said again.

  At last we pulled away from each other, and Hal let his hand fall to his side, fingers curling against his palm. In my terror and self-aborted desire, I’d made certain my hand moved no farther than where it remained, still cupping his face against the palm.

  I could see his eyes, blue flecked with gray, and they were shining for me.

  “I didn’t,” he said, and licked his lips. “I—”

  “It’s warmer now,” I said lightly, not betraying even so much as a shred of my feelings. “Isn’t it?”