Errant, p.9
Errant, page 9
Every time Charm was Charm, which was all the time, and branch, leaf, and root, the woman had turned Aspen’s brain to mush.
Except Charm wasn’t Charm all the time. She was a professional actor and a thief on the side. Aspen didn’t sleep with people she didn’t trust. She definitely wasn’t going to sleep with Charm, even though Charm suggested it with a frequency and brazenness that Aspen found both enticing and appalling, and by all the Trees in the fucking Wood, Aspen had to stop thinking about the kiss.
She nudged Mouse into a trot as if her house could carry her away from her thoughts.
“Hey!” Charm called. “Don’t leave me behind.”
“Your horse can also trot.”
“I don’t think she understood me,” Charm said. “Translate for me.”
Aspen laughed. She slowed Mouse to a walk so Charm and Ruby could catch up. “That isn’t how it works. People of the Wood can’t talk to animals, not the way we talk to humans. We just understand each other. And Ruby knows what you want. She doesn’t accept your authority.”
“Does she accept yours?”
“She will,” Aspen said, as much to reassure Charm as to warn Ruby.
If horses could laugh, Mouse would be laughing. Aspen didn’t give her a lot of orders. They stuck together because Mouse liked her.
Ruby, on the other hand, wasn’t the type of horse to answer polite requests. But Aspen wouldn’t countenance any funny business. At the first hint of danger, it was Aspen’s instincts that would be obeyed. She said to Charm, “Ask Ruby again like you mean it.”
Instead of tapping her heel into Ruby, Charm kicked her into a canter. Ruby, who never missed an opportunity for wickedness, obliged. Charm shrieked. Her long dark hair streamed in the wind for an instant and then dropped over her shoulders in curly chaos as she was dumped into the road. She landed safely on her butt.
Charm groaned, but Aspen was pretty sure it was theatrics. She knew what a bad fall looked like. Charm might have a bruise, but she hadn’t broken anything.
“Ruby,” Aspen yelled.
Ruby stopped her gloating little jaunt down the road, turned, and walked slowly back.
Aspen dismounted and helped Charm to her feet. She did not think about how warm Charm’s hands were even through her gloves, or how they might feel bare, because Aspen had trained for years to develop a warrior’s extraordinary mental discipline and focus. She refused to be undone by one woman’s elegant right hand.
Charm dusted her skirts off. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“I’m trying to teach you to ride a horse,” Aspen said. “It was a good fall. You can’t be a good rider without a few falls.”
“Ugh.” Charm scowled at Ruby.
“Do you want to ride Mouse instead?” Aspen asked. Mouse had never taken to anyone but Aspen, but a few days ago, in an astonishing turn of events, she’d been sweet and demure for Charm. Aspen still felt duped. You thought you knew a horse...
“Yes,” Charm said eagerly.
Aspen let Charm step into her joined hands to mount. Even her boots were pretty. No. Stop that. The proximity of her thighs to Aspen’s face could not be contemplated, not even for a second.
“I love you, Mouse,” Charm cooed. “You’re a nice horse.”
Mouse had bitten and kicked too many bandits for that to be true, not to mention her habit of passive-aggressively shitting in the proximity of any human or horse she didn’t care for. But Mouse was preening under Charm’s attention, and Aspen’s toes were too close to Mouse’s hooves to mention any of that aloud.
“You didn’t have to come, you know,” Aspen said. She mounted Ruby and set off down the road at a sedate pace.
Both Charm and Mouse glared at Aspen for her rudeness, which was a betrayal of the highest order on Mouse’s part.
“I’m just saying,” Aspen said. “You’re not a rider.”
“If you’d wanted to go alone, you would have left while I was still asleep.” Charm smirked.
Irritatingly, it was true. Aspen could have left when dawn was breaking. She’d even considered it, slipping out while everyone was asleep. But she hated the idea of leaving without seeing Charm. One of these times, it would be the last.
Besides, if Charm wanted something, she couldn’t be stopped. And she would always do whatever was most inconvenient to Aspen, which meant she would have followed on her own, and then Aspen wouldn’t have been there to help her up after Ruby tossed her into the road.
It would be a bad idea to say any of that.
Aspen sighed. “You’re right that you’re better at people than me. You might be of some use when we talk to Hope. Maybe. If you don’t improvise too wildly.”
“I beg your pardon,” Charm said. “I excel at improv.”
“I don’t,” Aspen said. “Not with people I don’t trust.”
Charm’s expression pinched with hurt. Shit.
“I’m sorry, it’s just—we don’t know each other,” Aspen said. “Not like we’d need to know each other in a fight.”
“We’re not planning to fight Hope, just talk to him,” Charm said. “I seem to recall saving you with some wild improvisation a mere few days ago.”
“I’d prefer to avoid anything like that,” Aspen said. Her skin was mottled with bruises from being hit with chairs and thrown through walls. There were dark marks pressed into her throat from where Cooperation had nearly succeeded in choking her to death. It was Charm’s timely arrival, and her troupe’s raucous distraction, that had given Aspen the edge in the fight. “If things go wrong with Hope, I’ll handle it.”
Charm’s gaze lingered on Aspen’s side where she wore a bandage over a healing stab wound, the worst of the injuries from the fight. She raised the dark arch of one eyebrow in eloquent silence.
Aspen opened her mouth, searching for the words to salvage this conversation, but they arrived at Hope’s farmhouse too soon.
Ah well. Maybe he’d be evil and then Aspen could fight him. She was good at that.
Hope was not evil.
He was also not helpful, not even in the face of Charm’s best persuasive techniques, which Aspen had to admit were more varied and subtle than she’d given Charm credit for.
But a man couldn’t give an answer he didn’t know, and Hope had nothing to offer them on the subject of whether more of Aspen’s ex-colleagues might be hanging around the valley threatening and extorting innocents—or hunting Aspen.
They left the farmhouse dejected, and Aspen was faced with a long ride home and another conversation she’d inevitably screw up.
“You were good in there,” Aspen started. Charm was riding Mouse again. She probably didn’t know what an unbelievable act of generosity this was on Aspen’s part, but Aspen was too embarrassed to explain that. “I’m sorry about what I said earlier about not trusting you. It’s just that—”
“It’s just that you don’t trust me,” Charm said.
“I—” Aspen didn’t even get a chance to make her argument before Charm held up a hand to silence her. Worse, Aspen shut her mouth at the nonverbal command.
“Don’t pretend, you’re not any good at it.”
“That’s just it.” Aspen took a deep breath in order to sort out her thoughts. “I am, at my core, predictable. If you know me, you can predict what I’ll do. The people I work for, wealthy merchants, trade caravans, they’re predictable. Actors, chameleons who can change at any moment, they’re not.”
“Predictable is boring,” Charm declared. “So I hesitate to admit this. But I am, in fact, entirely predictable. You already know the only thing you need to know about me: I always do exactly what I want.”
“You can’t live like that,” Aspen said, horrified for reasons she couldn’t name.
“I assure you, you can.”
“But—but there are rules, and right and wrong, and other people, and—” Aspen stopped. She’d been on the verge of saying something she’d never live down, like you can’t trust anything that makes you feel good. Comradeship had made her feel good at the the Hanging Scale, and look how that had gone. Instead, she said, “And I don’t know what you want.”
“I make that clear every morning and every evening when you do your showing off,” Charm said.
“It’s exercise,” Aspen said, throwing her hands up. “I stretch to prevent future back pain. How many times do I have to explain this?”
“Probably as many times as I have to explain what you could do with your superb athleticism,” Charm said.
Saying outrageous things never flustered her. Meanwhile, Aspen had yet to remain unaffected by a comment on the strength of her shoulders or the dexterity of her hands. How could one woman twist her into all these knots? She wanted Charm’s attention and then, once she had it, she wished she could hide. By now she really should have gently explained that she would never sleep with anyone she didn’t know and trust and preferably have some kind of sworn commitment to. The words stuck in her throat.
“See?” Aspen said. “We can’t even talk about exercise without miscommunication. And we had plenty of assumptions gone wrong on our last adventure. I don’t know you well enough to guess what you’d do in a given situation. And you don’t know the same for me.”
“We can learn. And while we’re at it, we can learn from each other,” Charm decided. “I’ll teach you to be better with people and more spontaneous and fun. And you can try to teach me...” She waved her hand in the air as if she couldn’t think of something Aspen could teach her.
“Order?” Aspen offered. “Structure? How to ride a horse? How to throw a punch?”
“Psh,” Charm said. “Maybe some of those fancy knife tricks. I could work them into one of our performances. But why do you care so much about order and structure? I thought you fighting types would prefer unpredictability. If your opponent knows you too well, won’t you run into their knife?”
“I’d have to be incredibly bad at what I did to run into my opponent’s weapons,” Aspen said. “But, to your point, I don’t want to be predictable to my enemies. Only my friends.”
“Are you saying you want to be my friend?” Charm asked. “It’s a little less carnal than what I was thinking, but I can work with that.”
Aspen’s mind blanked. Did she want to be Charm’s friend? Aspen didn’t have a lot of friends. When she was with the Hanging Scale, she had her mentor and trainer, Integrity. She had people she worked with like Strength. Her only true friend was Ayzeh. Maybe that wasn’t true anymore. She hadn’t seen him since he left the Scale and she stayed. That was five years ago. A lot of things could change in five years.
Did she… was she friendless?
Frugality had had friends, but they’d never been hers. Was Tescui her friend? No, Tescui was a cranky old woman who sometimes set her broken bones in exchange for Aspen fixing stuff around her house. Not a friend.
She had one friend. Maybe. Possibly. Two, counting her horse. That was depressing.
“I’m making sure there are no more Scale around causing trouble for the local farmers and then I’m moving on,” Aspen said. This was why she didn’t have friends. She wasn’t in one place long enough to make or keep them.
“Where are you headed?”
Aspen shrugged. “Asemnu Eyzo, maybe.”
“The Sun Realm?” Charm sounded eager, even interested.
Aspen needed to cut that off at the pass. “You’re part of the Traveling Harstead Players. It means you stick close to Harstead.”
“The troupe does.”
“You’re the lead actor,” Aspen reminded her.
“I have an understudy.” Charm offered a wide smile. “You’re the one who wants to be friends. Friends travel together.”
“I don’t—” Aspen was saved from saying something horrifying like I don’t want to be your friend by a high-pitched scream. Aspen kicked Ruby into a gallop and they ran toward the sound.
As they rode around the bend of the hill a thatched-roof farmhouse came into view, sturdy and whitewashed, with flowers in the windows and a tidy yard in front. A person in skirts stood on the doorstep, hands over their mouth, while two people in trousers tussled in the dust of the path up to the door.
“Stop!” the person in skirts cried, dropping their hands to hug their waist, and yes, that was definitely the voice Aspen had heard screaming moments ago. “Rex, just stop it, please! You’ll kill him—or he’ll hurt you!”
The fighters were probably men, then. Which one was Rex remained unclear.
The men ignored the plea. The one on top landed a hit, driving his fist into the other one’s ribs. Reading a fight was one of Aspen’s skills, but this one brought her up short. They could have been twins. The one on top wore a brown tunic and scuffed boots. The one on the bottom wore a white shirt and trousers and his boots were newer. They were both pale-skinned and brown-haired. Maybe their faces would have been distinct if they weren’t squirming in the dust. For now, clothes were the only way to tell them apart.
White-shirt grunted and kneed brown-tunic in the balls. Aspen had seen enough. She slid off Mouse, dropping the reins, and strode forward, grabbing white-shirt by the scruff of the neck and yanking him to the side, dropping him in the dirt. He went limp, gasping on his back, as brown-tunic scrambled upright.
Aspen put her hands on her hips and looked from one to the other, then at the person on the steps. They met her eyes, theirs wide and deep brown and brimming with emotion, and burst into tears.
Aspen took a step forward toward her and was distracted by a flash of movement on her right. She pivoted to catch brown-tunic around the waist as he lunged toward white-shirt, then tossed him back in the dust again.
The person on the steps wasn’t crying audibly anymore. Charm had embraced them. They were a little taller than Charm and had averted their face from the fight. Charm patted them on the back and gave Aspen a meaningful look.
Aspen had no idea what its meaning actually was, so she ignored it. “Get them inside,” she said instead. “I’ll find out what’s going on with these two.”
2
Charm could get a life story out of anyone, but with Audacity Granger, she didn’t even have to try.
They sat on wooden chairs in Audacity’s neat little kitchen. Audacity rested her elbows on her knees and massaged her temples. She had dark brown skin and a soft halo of tight black curls. “I didn’t know he was different,” she said. “I thought he was the same man.”
“They do look similar,” Charm agreed. She hadn’t gotten much of a look at the two pale-skinned, thirty-something men wrestling in the dirt before Aspen had broken up the fight, but she’d seen enough. Neither of them was handsome enough to deserve Audacity, but then again, Charm really didn’t go in for men. They were fine to flirt with, but she lost interest after emptying their pockets. “Rectitude and Rex.”
Audacity covered her face with her hands. “I lied. I did know they were different.”
Far be it from Charm to judge anyone for lying. She waited.
“Rectitude was… he was a hard man to be married to,” Audacity said. “He drank.”
Charm reached out and patted Audacity’s wrist. “It’s all right,” she said.
“When he disappeared—” she swallowed audibly, shook her head. “I was so confused. I thought he’d found some new woman, that he’d stay away. I missed him, but I was glad at the same time, you know?”
Audacity held both of her hands like her emotions could only be conveyed through touch. Charm let her squeeze. “When did he leave?”
“Three years ago,” she replied. “And then Rex came back in the spring.”
“This year?” asked Charm. “And said he was Rectitude?”
“And he looked like him, and he knew his history, knew about me and about our life and it was—” She closed her eyes and dropped her face into her hands. “He let me be. He was kind. I hadn’t—I hadn’t realized how marriage could be. It was easier to pretend he was my husband. I told myself he was just an extra hand to help the girls and I work the farm, but—it was more than that.”
“Girls?” Charm asked. There wasn’t anyone else in the house. “Do you and Rectitude have children?”
“No, no, I, ah—drank a tea against that. Didn’t want him to treat a child the way he treated me.” Audacity raised her head and made eye contact with Charm. “I know I should have left him. Should have tried to prove grounds for a divorce.”
“You can’t just get one?” Uninterested in marriage, Charm knew even less about divorce. “You have to prove you need one?”
“You do. The magistrates don’t always grant it, either. And I could have run, but where? And it sounds silly now, but I guess in my heart, I hoped he’d change. I liked the man I married.”
“I understand,” Charm said. It was what Audacity needed to hear.
“Anyway, I told Rectitude that my tea was headache medicine and he was never the wiser. The girls I took in after he left. They needed me and I needed them. They’re out today and I’m so glad they didn’t see that fight. Wouldn’t have been able to keep Percy out of it. If Rectitude takes the farm…”
“They’re not his children, so they’ll have nowhere to go,” Charm finished. “When Rex arrived and you thought he was Rectitude, were you angry?”
“I was, but he won me over. He’s good to me. Good to the girls, too. It was like a dream. The man I married, but the way I wanted him to be—kind, helpful, loving. I fell in love with Rex.”
“Only natural. He was everything you wanted,” said Charm, watching Audacity’s eyes flick to the door, still cracked ajar.
Aspen and the two men’s voices drifted through occasionally, raised but not clear enough to understand the words. Aspen’s tone was commanding, one of the men’s sullen, the other with a hint of a whine. Charm was glad she was in here getting the real story rather than dealing with them.
