GRP Chapter 35

"Poppie!"

Rugel burst through the fortress gates trailing tears. The largest reindeer in the herd—heavy horns, muscles thick as old timber—ambled out from the mass of animals at an unhurried pace. Its gaze was deep and sharp, with nothing ordinary about it. Almost feral. That was Poppie? Garthe's subordinates watched the reunion of man and beast with expressions they had made no effort to improve.

Rugel bowed low and gave his thanks to "the master." He had intended to take Poppie with him no matter what happened to the rest of the herd, he said. The joy of this reunion seemed to outweigh both the successful sale and the smooth handover of five thousand head combined. Which meant the gratitude was aimed at the wrong person. Garthe's brow tightened slightly as he smiled. He had planned to slaughter the entire lot for frozen provisions. Whether Poppie had been among them had never entered his thinking.

He turned.

Mariaeks stood amid the chaos—silver hair stiff and arrayed in the exact directions that reindeer tongues had passed over it, one eye pressed half-shut from fur that had gotten in. The reindeer had loved her thoroughly. The evidence was comprehensive.

The herd had followed her back like ducklings trailing their mother. That five thousand animals had arrived safely at the fortress gates was entirely her achievement. What ten of Olgidphaenn's heroes could not accomplish together, she had managed alone.

Garthe observed the particular ability underlying that achievement. The pull he had felt vaguely since the moment he first met her—without quite being able to account for it. The fact that she was beautiful. The fact that she was a rare thing that quieted his curse. The fact that she was the only relief he had. Those straightforward truths weren't insufficient as explanations. They were simply not all of it.

"Lady Mariaeks. Open your eye. I'll get the fur out."

"That won't work. Ryaia, hold still—"

The Paldoa sisters had taken charge of Mariaeks, attending to her with an earnest, praiseworthy care. The objective was to remove fur from her eye. This objective did not stop the process from resembling an excavation. Mariaeks, her eye suddenly under assault, was leaking tears.

"How dare you show weakness! Such frailty has no place in this brutal world!"

"A woman cries exactly once in her life—at the moment of birth! Mariaeks!"

"No, this is just—"

"A woman does not make excuses!"

"Don't worry, Lady Mariaeks. That kind of weakness gets forged into something harder with enough work. Trust Ryaia alone in this. I will see you reborn as a woman with neither blood nor tears in her."

"I'm not—"

"A woman does not engage in pointless modesty! Keep that in mind!"

The Paldoa sisters were, in proportion to how differently they were built from ordinary humans, closer to beings of fewer generational removes from the divine. The stronger the divine power, the rawer the instinct—preference over principle, what they liked over what was right. No settled standards. Mood ran the operation. Good sensation. Good smell. An inexplicable inclination toward kindness.

Layer onto this the combat-species tendency to bear hostility toward powerful things and toward weak things in equal measure, and the result was that most beings never managed to earn the Paldoa sisters' regard. The full count of those who had entered their circle: Garthe, Oze, Samthyeon. One hand, with room.

Their companions they tolerated the way one tolerates ornaments accumulated long enough to make discarding them feel more effortful than keeping them. The companions understood this and were appropriately grateful—knowing well what the sisters showed newcomers. And yet those same sisters had tended to Mariaeks with care from the first moment they met her. The opposite of everything their nature should have produced.

The ability to draw others in. An irony, given the land where this now appeared. The god called Paradise had once ruled here and had held precisely this kind of power. But Garthe had experienced both. He could draw the line between them cleanly.

Paradise shattered the reason of others with divine force—broke in, and rearranged what she found. Mariaeks exerted nothing. She simply was. She breathed. And still, hearts were drawn to her.

If Paradise was bait—fishing with something irresistible—then Mariaeks was the sea itself. The place fish naturally belonged. Where they breathed, where they were born, where they would return.

Today had confirmed that he was not the only one who felt it. The reindeer. The Paldoa sisters. Samthyeon. The mermaid queen who had come through the window of the feast hall. The ones who had followed since.

Their common thread: instinct sharper than reason. The kind that knew, without being told, where it was supposed to be. The kind that could smell water from a distance.

Something beneath hearing and sight and touch—at the foundation of what made a living thing—responded to whatever existed inside Mariaeks. What was she, exactly. What lived in her.

The contemplation didn't last. He had something more pressing at the moment than the contents of Mariaeks.

Her exterior. Specifically: her exterior, which was soaked in reindeer saliva and smelled accordingly. His brow pulled tight with irritation.

Garthe returned to the fortress with Mariaeks tucked under his arm. His long stride did not stop until it reached the large bathing room inside the castle.

The damp stone walls exhaled a sharper cold for their moisture. Thin ice had formed across the surface of the full bathing tub. Garthe set Mariaeks down, cracked through the ice with his hand, and plunged it into the water beneath. The shadow that had settled on his face deepened and became distinct. Beneath the surface, a mass of fire took shape and grew.

Just as Mariaeks was about to register the sight as remarkable, water flew in every direction. White steam bloomed across the space in an instant. The cold that had been the room's only quality burned away into dense heat.

The air moved. With it came the thick animal smell of beast.

A huff of disbelief escaped Garthe—not quite a laugh. He had no particular investment in cleanliness and had encountered worse. And yet this specific smell found him unusually intolerable. He identified the reason shortly after. Anyone would be irritated if someone’s pet urinated on a favorite pillow—the kind kept close just to help you drift off. It was even worse when the thing defiled was a sleep-pillow with exactly the right scent. That was the situation.

Mariaeks was already removing her clothing—not because she understood why she'd been brought here, but because she could not bear the feeling on her own skin. She had no particular hesitation about undressing before others. She viewed humans the way one viewed insects or dust. There was no reason not to undress because a beetle happened to be present.

Good. Garthe watched her and smiled crookedly. By his measure, even a snail would have outpaced her. Her silver hair covered her face. The gloves that had been protecting her hands were now purely obstacles.

She was engaging with each knot of her outer coat in what could only charitably be described as an attempt at unfastening—it resembled stroking more than undoing. Since she regarded human witnesses as beneath consideration, she wouldn't object to assistance. Garthe was glad to hear it. He took hold of the knot and pulled. Her cloak flew off, and she watched it go.

While Mariaeks tracked where it had gone, Garthe moved through her buttons. Tuk-tuk. Monotonous, quick. Another layer gone. The total volume of clothing on her did not diminish perceptibly. Garthe's expression deteriorated.

"Why are you wearing so many layers."

Mariaeks glanced down at herself. All of this clothing had been brought to her by Garthe. This very morning. His memory was apparently not reliable.

More layers came off. The volume finally reduced to something reasonable.

"Hand."

She extended it. He stripped off her gloves.

"Raise your arms."

She raised them. Garthe took hold of the hem of her tunic—mid-thigh length—and lifted it straight up. The top half of her clothing vanished in one motion. Mariaeks shivered as the air reached her bare skin. A warm large hand pressed down on her shoulder. She didn't resist the force, and fwump—she sat on the edge of the tub.

"Feet."

Capable hands made quick work of the boot laces and removed boots and foot wrappings in the same motion.

"Stand up."

The moment she stood, Garthe untied the cord of her underpants. The loose fabric slid down her lines and dropped. His gray eyes moved down across Mariaeks's body slowly, tracing what was there.

Sharp eyes, level and steady. The slight upward curve at the corner of his mouth that never resolved into any clear expression. His usual face. But Mariaeks could read in it something that fell short of satisfaction.

"I don't know where the food goes. No reward in it."

Mariaeks touched her own thin arm.

In the meantime, Garthe filled a small wooden bucket from the tub and upended it directly over her head. Mariaeks received the full weight of water without managing to close her eyes.