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The Viking was going to depart in three weeks, so Rhys challenged his wife to a duel.
They would do it properly, formally, in the ancient arena by the river Shatter. They invited all their neighbours, who came for the spectacle, and their daughter's friends, who came to cheer.
"There's a bet going on again," Lucasta whispered to him, the night before their duel, in the sweaty and comfortable darkness.
"What are the odds?" he asked.
"They say you'll win."
"They always do." Rhys smiled into his wife's hair. "And they're always wrong."
"Maybe not this time," she said, running her magic-blackened hand over his chest. It was only a few shades darker than the brown skin of her arm, but it looked unnaturally smooth, as though it had been melted into glass. In the past month, they had both got used to it. But they didn't know how it would affect Lucasta's skill. Dragons were great inventors and their attempts to stop magic were becoming more and more insightful.
Rather than offering uncertain platitudes, Rhys shrugged - whatever happened, they would be well - and kissed a trail from her unfeeling fingers to the soft crook of his elbow, and then further up.
---
Lucasta did not have friends in the village, but she had admirers, and slowly they were becoming as loud - though still not as numerous - as those who disapproved.
When she lost her hand, protecting the valley from the dragon, there were whispers of Anor's Village changing its name to Lucasta's. This happened every few generations, when a magician was powerful enough to deserve the honor. The village had carried a woman's name twice, but never a Mainlander’s.
If she lost the duel, that wouldn't happen. She thought it didn't matter, but, when she walked into the arena and felt the crowd's anticipation, she understood that it did.
She bowed to Rhys, because they always honored the traditions, out of both respect and spite. She caught his gaze and smiled, and they both turned their minds to water.
Rhys did not spare her: he started with a circle of ice around her abdomen, which she cracked rather than bothering to melt it. She swept Rhys away before he could coax out more ice, but he took control of the stream she'd summoned and threw it back at her. She returned with a whirlpool that obscured his vision and stole his breath. (Their first duel, she was scared of drowning him, and she almost - almost - lost. Since then she had become aware of every breath he took.)
Before he could attack, she sent water down his throat - an invasive, nasty trick that had saved her life one time when the dragon came - and reached for the river Shatter. Summoning it needed complete dedication, and she would be entirely vulnerable for a few moments.
She closed her eyes and thought of the river, flowing around her, chilling her into calmness. It was a feeling she learned as a child, living by the sea and it was as familiar as an embrace.
Rhys had recovered and was concentrating too - she could feel his control, laxer and wider than hers, coming over Shatter as well. She narrowed her focus and made sure to include the strange memory of having waves wash over her damaged hand - of knowing the current but not feeling it. There was a brief disconnect from her body - unimportant, now that she could feel all of Shatter's length and width. It flowed and she flowed along with it, and her will was now among Shatter's currents.
She tugged, just a little, politely, and a thin stream lifted from the riverbed and hit Rhys in the chest. It was symbolic, and he knew himself overpowered. He bowed and surrendered, and cheers sounded, lead by their daughter in the front row.
Lucasta smiled, let go of the river, and made a decision.
She raised walls of water around her and Rhys and kissed him first, then asked a question.
He considered it and agreed, as gracious as the day when he saved her from her chains on the seaside.
She lowered the walls and turned to their neighbours.
"I have won the privilege to acquire riches for my family and glory for the Village. But because of the more frequent attacks, I will stay here, to protect our children and our home. I am very lucky that Rhys has agreed to go in my stead. Perhaps it is time to reconsider who we send away to war, and who should stay."
Before her hushed crowd could respond, she bowed and left, still soaking wet and arm in arm with her husband.
---
“No,” Rhys said to the creek-lord. “No, it’s not a sacking expedition.”
“This is why one shouldn’t bring civilians,” the creek-lord sighed, a civilian himself. “We aren’t sacking anyone, we’re gathering intelligence. They will have warning of our arrival.” He fingered his gilded horn. “We sound alarms to announce ourselves. Those who wish can flee, and those who stay are fair gain.”
Rhys’s job was twofold: protect the ship from pirates on the way to the Mainland, and help steer the ship back safely to the Island. The idea of stealing disgusted him - and from Mainlanders, who were for the most part helpless - but he could not risk losing his reward.
The monastery was small and looked shabby even to Rhys’s inexperienced eyes. The soldiers and the creek-lord’s staff grumbled about the lack of riches. Then one of them discovered the cellar, and Rhys was left alone.
He trawled through the deserted, stuffy sleeping rooms, and found a nicely-carved door he couldn’t open. He forced a gust of water on it - with difficulty, as the monastery was very dry - and found himself in a library more humble than the one in his house.
Even as he considered the possibility of keeping some of the strategically useless books - after all, the creek-lord would just forget about them - he became aware of someone breathing, heavily, in the closet beside the bookshelves.
“Open the door,” Rhys said very levelly. “And drop your weapon.” He aimed a shard of ice at the door, a warning.
“It’s not a weapon,” said a man from inside the closet. “I - I surrender.”
The door opened to reveal a man holding a cane - as support, not as a threat. He was bent and wheezy but looked to be Rhys’s own age. He had rich brown hair, tied back, and his high forehead was sweat-dampened.
“Surrender to the lord of the creek Riba,” Rhys recited.
“I surrender,” repeated the man, wary. “My lord.”
“No, I’m just his - consulting bodyguard. I shall hand you over when he stops - ” drinking and robbing, “when he comes inspect the treasures of your library.”
“Of course.”
“You can step out of the closet now.”
“I’m quite comfortable,” he said with a vague dishonest smile and an obvious tremor. He was also leaning against the back of the closet.
“How long have you been in there?”
“A few hours. Since you sounded the horn.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
“It was. Discouraged.” The vague smile was now a grimace of pain. “I am quite slow.” Rhys bit down on his reflexive pity.
“Sit,” he said, pulling out a chair. “I think we’ll be a while.”
The man collapsed on the chair, resting the cane against it. Rhys saw that he was lanky, though his legs seemed too-thin and bent. His skin was pallid but his grey eyes seemed clear, and calmer already.
“Why did you hide there?”
“It was that or the cellar. I had hoped that everyone would -”
“Get drunk and forget we could read?“
“I didn’t know Islanders could read our books.”
“Wouldn’t stop us from taking them,” Rhys said, and his hostage looked away.
It was an awkward, ugly silence. Rhys leafed through the closest books he could find but nothing truly caught his interest.
“What will happen to me?” the monk asked him. “Will I be executed?”
“Interrogated.”
“But I don’t know anything!”
“Right, you should start practicing that.”
“I really - I mean it. I came here about a month ago, and only because I had made a deal with a dragon.”
“You talked to a dragon?”
“Yes, but I didn’t learn anything tactically useful. She told me how humans taste similar to pork and how this means we’re disgusting. And I already knew that, anyway.”
Everyone knew that the only reason humans could be was that dragons hated the taste of their flesh.
“And after the interrogation,” - if you survive, Rhys thought but did not say - “I become a slave, right?”
“A servant. Who is not allowed to leave.”
“A slave. Right?”
“Right.”
The monk reached for a book - checking to see if he was allowed - and soon began reading quite calmly. Rhys, restless, paced through the library - then, behind the closet, he discovered a walled-off tunnel.
“Oh, that,” Rhys’s hostage said. “Nobody’s been able to get into there. We don’t know where it leads.”
Removing water from a rigid substance was much more difficult than summoning it from the ground, but Rhys had some experience since re-building his father’s great family home. Slowly, he dried out the mortar, and eased away the stones out piece by piece.
His hostage had gripped his cane and was staring at Rhys in fascination. Here was a possible escape route. And only Rhys blocking the way. It felt so absurd and uncomfortable that Rhys closed his eyes in brief meditation.
“Do you swear you know nothing useful against dragons?” he asked the hostage, who narrowed his eyes.
“They are the most vulnerable before they get their fire at age one.”
“Everyone knows that.”
“No, then.”
“All right.”
Rhys stepped aside from the hallway. “You’re free to go. Just don’t mention you ever met me.”
The hostage did not waste time on disbelief, but stood up - firmer than before. “Thank you,” he said, and Rhys felt awkward in his gaze - or humbled, perhaps.
“Y-you should change,” he found himself saying. “If they catch you, don’t let them know you’re a monk.”
“What?”
“Pretend you’re a servant.”
“So I won’t be interrogated?”
“You will be, but with different - methods. And by different people.” He did not want to go into the hatred monks received as traitors, and the rumours of a particularly vile water-priest who made interrogations into a blood sport.
His monk hesitated. “We’re not allowed to deny what we are...” he grinned, suddenly, a wry but fetching sight. He let down his hair. “I suppose it’s only strongly discouraged.”
Rhys turned away as the man changed into servant-garb he found in the closet. Then he listened to the receding footsteps. He placed the closet back to the entrance of the tunnel, and tried to ignore the fading taps of the cane.
---
He did not react at all when his hostage got caught, making his slow way across the vinyards.
“Rhys.”
“My lord?”
“You’re a learned man. Would Mainlander monks take in this as a servant?”
“They like to regard themselves as charitable, my lord. Does he say he is a servant?” The hostage caught Rhys’s eyes for a moment.
“Yes.”
“Monks aren’t allowed to deny their station.”
“Right. Thank you, Rhys.”
Rhys did not allow himself to watch the man be dragged away.
On the way home, they only met once, and the man was bleeding from a cut on his cheek - the interrogation had begun. Rhys tried to say something, but it only came out as a mutter, and then they just - stared. Later, Rhys retreated to his cabin and was scarcely seen until they arrived home.
---
About the third year of his enslavement, long after they'd stopped asking him questions, Adrian let go of the hatred. He was shopping for his master and his legs were giving out - the milk he was spilled all over the street, and he stared at it in disbelief, because this was horrifying but funny, because, the milk had spilt, and now all he could do was cry.
He did not cry. The woman who was selling it, a thin stork-like lady who kept goats, took him by the arm and gave him a cup of sweetened milk and then refilled his spilled bottle, for free. He did not have the words to thank her kindness, but she didn't need them.
After that, he could no longer wish a dragon would descend upon the city and burn it down. His hatred froze within him, and so did everything else.
---
Even in the crowd, even in the noise, Lucasta noticed the change in Rhys. His stride became purposeful and his breathing too-even. She followed his gaze to a foolish creek-lord, and his entourage.
"What did you see, love?"
"My - the monk."
She inhaled, then allowed herself to gawp, as country bumpkins ought. There was no need to ask which slave he was - his limp was noticeable even from here.
"They cut his hair," Rhys said, and Lucasta had to take him away from there, somewhere they could think.
---
She put aside their finery and bought a humbler set of clothes. She collected all their savings and found the jeweler, who quivered with professional excitement as she gave her the pearl.
"It will be an excellent dowry," the jeweler said in a knowing voice. Lucasta smiled and waited patiently until the coronet was done. There was a mirror there, and she looked wonderfully mismatched in the near-rags and the near-crown.
---
The creek-lord drank loudly. Lucasta positioned herself near him, and looked impressed with his boasts.
It wasn't long until he noticed her, the pearl luminescent even in the yellow tavern light. With a wide, thin-lipped grin, the creek-lord bowed to her and took the chair beside her.
"Not from the city, my dear?"
"We are only here for the fair - my husband and I."
"And where is your husband?"
Lucasta let her braids hide her face. "He is - he has met with some friends. I hope he will come back soon."
She pushed her hair back with her missing hand, and he recoiled ever so slightly, though his smile did not falter.
He coaxed her into conversation, and she wove him a sordid little story of an unhappy marriage of two orphans, in which the man settled for her despite the injury, and she accepted him despite his great and insatiable thirst for men’s flesh.
She could see the plan forming in the creek-lord's mind, and clicking into place when she mentioned she could fight, and was hoping to win something to impress her husband.
“Are you good at dueling?”
“My sisters always said so,” she said from behind her hair, and then it was only too easy to negotiate a duel, offering the pearl in exchange for a male slave of her choosing.
---
Thought she tried to draw it out, for politeness, her victory was swift and humiliating. Rhys was among the onlookers, out of sight. She smiled - no longer able to keep the pretense of shyness - and chose the monk from a line of shivering slaves.
"The cane, of course, is mine", the creek-lord said, and yanked it away.
The monk fell, and Lucasta rushed to his side. He was burning up - a dangerously high fever, with the cough Mainlanders developed when they lived in soggy conditions. Lucasta knelt beside him, feeling the creek-lord's fish-like gaze fixed on her.
The monk turned on his side and threw up, a pitiful puddle which she washed away from them with a gentle warm stream.
She had to get him out of the street, and into a bed.
"Look at me," she said. "I own you now. You need to come with me."
Sickness and despair took their toll on him but he responded to command. She made him get up, despite his whimpers, and let him lean on her, and felt him faint as they were engulfed by the crowd.
---
It was dark behind his eyelids and soft underneath him, and Adrian did not want to wake.
But after a while lying motionless and free of pain for once, curiosity - a long-forgotten sensation - began to overcome him. Who was his new owner and why had she chosen him? Where was her mysterious husband, and what would he say when he saw Adrian?
Warily, he opened his eyes. His owner - in much less patchy clothing, now - was dozing on a chair on his bedside. Guarding him, he guessed, though of course there was no way he could get up even if he had a cane.
The thought halted when he saw a simple wooden cane laid at his bedside. He could tell it was the wrong height, but its handle seemed comfortable. His hand gripped it without thought, but his fingers were too-stiff and the cane fell.
His owner jerked awake and he stared straight into her eyes, frozen in horror. Then he began to cough, in strong fits which almost spared him from having to think.
His owner lifted his head and wiped away the tears of exertion when he was done.
“That sounds much better,” she said. “Stay here.”
She left him then and said in a calm tone to someone in the other room.
“Get up, love, he’s awake.”
Instead of the lecherous husband of his imagination, Rhys stood in the doorway, the man who spared him and then helped him and then said he was sorry.
It wasn’t a fever dream, he knew, because there was no Annelise, and no dragons. They stared at each other, as they’d done on the ship, and Adrian could feel strange laughter bubbling up in him.
“Hi,” Rhys said, with a smile that looked unusual on him. “Do you remember me?”
Adrian remembered overhearing his would-be savior’s name. He also remembered, suddenly, that they were no longer on a ship, and that he was no longer a clueless monk with no sense of etiquette.
“Of course. Rhys. Sir. My lord?”
“Still not a lord. Not even a bodyguard anymore. Do you remember the duel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My wife, Lucasta, was the one who won you. You will meet her in a moment. Can I - what is your name?”
Adrian felt chilled at the question, and coughed to buy himself time. The proper response among the Islanders was that he was nameless - he had never gone on a name-quest and never been granted powers. He had been taught so by his lord’s fists, but also by his household’s sneers.
But he did not think the proper response was called for here.
“It’s Adrian,” he said carefully, prepared for whatever consequence.
“Very pleased to finally meet you,” said Rhys, and the smile on his face did not look so out of place now.
---
“Rhys?” Adrian called softly. He’d been told to use his owner’s names. This was much easier in one case than the other.
Lucasta opened the door, and he averted his gaze quickly.
“He’s out, shopping for books. He thought you’d like to join him, but you were sound asleep.”
“I’m sorry,” Adrian mumbled.
“Would you like some bedtime reading now?”
“I’m - sorry?
“You can borrow one of our books. This was a one-week trip, so we brought more than enough. Can you read our language?”
Adrian nodded. There wasn’t much difference between their spoken languages, but Islander script was entirely different. He had learned it as a child, before the monastery, from one of his sister’s suitors.
Lucasta showed him some histories and some novels, a large encyclopedia and a tiny tome of poetry by Edua of Niss.
Adrian hesitated on the poems.
“You might like those. She wrote them living on a reef. She didn’t like people much, but she understood them very well.”
He nodded again, parting his lips slightly.
“Mmm?” Lucasta said, looking somewhere beyond him. “Were you going to say something?”
“I think poetry might flow better in your language than mine,” he said.
“I’ve not read enough to tell,” she shrugged. “But it makes sense. It’s not my language, though, I’m a Mainlander too - from further in. Still, you will tell me if it does flow better once you’re finished with Edua.”
He didn’t know if it was a dismissal, but Adrian bowed and retreated, the book clutched tightly in his off-hand.
---
In the carriage, his owners slept soundly.
Adrian had time to study them by the moonlight. His mistress - she was an enigma, a dangerous one. She was the most powerful fighter he’d ever seen, but she seemed content to let Rhys dote on Adrian - even allowing him on the seats of the carriage. She had looked so sweet and lost, in the pub, but now she seemed powerful to him, with her regal braids and the hidden lines along her forehead and beside her eyes. She did look benevolent in her sleep, but so did most people.
Rhys was a different puzzle, one of perception. In his fever dreams and daydreams, and furtive desperate sex dreams, Adrian had altered Rhys into someone taller and darker and always somber. It was difficult to reconcile that image with the man who was drooling onto his wife’s shoulder, who had boomed with laughter as he told Adrian the gossip he was supposed to remember if he wanted to make his way around the village.
(And Adrian did remember, all the names and details and the topology of the foreign streets. He would do everything he could to stay as long as possible, until everything was taken from him again.)
---
“You can sleep here for now, in our daughter’s bed, until she comes home.”
He remembered how dirty the Islanders thought he was, being unable to summon his own bath. He bowed his head, uneasy. “Thank you.”
Then, because he was encouraged to ask questions, “Where is your daughter?”
“On her naming quest. It’s only been a month, but we - we miss her.”
“Of course.” He knew the name quest was the most important event in an Islander’s life. “I’m sure it’s going well.”
He paled as Lucasta went rigid, and with a strained tone said, “It’s bad luck to - one shouldn’t really talk about it, not until she’s home.”
“Please, I - I’m very sorry.”
“We’re not superstitious in this house,” she said, with a truly horrible false smile. “Don’t worry yourself.”
She left him sitting on his bed, with his thoughts.
---
He was too lost in morbid daydreams to understand the knock on his door.
“Are you asleep?” Rhys asked softly, and Adrian opened the door for him. Rhys was carrying fish and cheese on a platter. Adrian had been imagining him charging in to beat him up for insulting his wife.
“I thought you’d like to stay here tonight.” Rhys put the platter down on the bed. “I don’t mean - you are welcome with us in the kitchen. But Lucasta is in an odd mood and I don’t want you to worry.”
There was something infuriating about that, as though Adrian’s worry about punishment - obviously fallow - was more important than Lucasta’s fear about her daughter. But Adrian put the rage aside, along with the still-present fear.
“I am very sorry for causing offence,” he said, which was more or less true.
“You didn’t, truly. We’re really worried, and Lucasta - she had a horrible naming quest. Or rather, her welcome home had been horrible. Do you want to hear the story?”
“I don’t know if - would she want me to hear it?”
“Lucasta wants to brood, alone, now. I expect she’ll go out for a swim later and feel better. But we definitely want you to know things. We tell each other things, in this house.
Rhys sat and took a piece of cheese and Adrian followed his example.
“Her quest was long and difficult and she found the pearl she used in the duel. When she returned home, she was welcomed, but her parents were oddly sad. A great feast was thrown for her, and in the morning - when she was hungover, and tired of dancing - her people put her in chains, put the pearl in a sack around her neck, and tied her to a rock on the seaside.”
Adrian dropped the cheese. “I don’t understand.”
“She was left for the dragons - a peace offering.”
“Dragons don’t want people. We taste horrible, and anyway - “
“But dragons do want the treasures of the sea, don’t they? So, the pearl was the tribute and Lucasta was just the - seasoning. Her parents were hated in the village - too dark-skinned, too clever - and her father decided he could spare a daughter if it meant peace and acceptance.”
“What happened?”
“She stood on the sun for days and days, starving and sore. And then I arrived. And then the dragon did.”
“A benevolent - I mean, a female?”
“No. A male, on a screeching rampage.”
“They don’t care about the treasure.”
“No. But they enjoy chained-down prey, even if it potentially tastes like pig.”
“How did you escape?”
“Well, I couldn’t break her chains so I smashed the rock she was chained to.” Rhys shrugged. “The most power I could ever produce. I drained away right after, but she was free to chase the dragon away.”
“And what happened to the village?”
“They had an offended dragon to deal with, I imagine. We never - she never went back, and I certainly didn’t.”
Adrian felt sick and fascinated, but he saw Rhys’s good mood had slowly dissipated. He would not ask more questions, not tonight.
“I’m sorry,” Rhys said, getting up. “I think I should go for a swim as well.”
Adrian bowed his head and lay back down on his bed. The food lay forgotten.
---
Rhys knew Adrian wasn’t healed. He still had bruises, his walk was as heavy as it had ever been, and he still reacted with fear whenever either of them showed the slightest displeasure - with themselves or each other or even the weather. The tenseness was hard to bear sometimes, but they would get through it.
The washing, he didn’t understand. He thought it was a monastery quirk - had celebrated Adrian getting back into his old habit - but then he witnessed, by accident, the ferocity with which Adrian scrubbed himself (four, five times a day, and maybe during the night as well), and he realised it was something entirely different.
“You should ask him,” Lucasta advised. “He’s not as scared of you. Just make sure to - oh, you know.”
Rhys did know. He had to sound casual but respectful, without implying Adrian was doing anything wrong by scrubbing off layers of his skin. He would do it - soon, truly, as soon as the right opportunity came along.
In the evening, he sat in the garden, brooding on his daughter’s absence, when he heard yelling from the kitchen.
Lucasta stood against the wall, looking fascinated underneath her calm mask. Adrian was throwing dishes, yelling about about how they weren’t clean enough, how Lucasta didn’t understand how hard it was to make them clean.
Then, all of a sudden, Adrian fell to his knees. That had to be extremely painful for him, but Rhys held back, watching as his - as Adrian sank to the ground, his hands wet with dishwater, his face squashed against the wooden floor.
Rhys caught Lucasta’s eye. Together, this time they would handle it together. They approached in slow tandem. Rhys knelt in front of Adrian and slowly lifted him by the shoulders.
When he met his eye, Adrian began apologising - a desperate but quiet stream in both dialects. Lucasta gently held him around the waist. They lifted him up and onto a chair. He shut up then, and looked at them.
“Did I hit you with the plates?” he asked Lucasta.
“No. Were you aiming for me?”
“No, the wall - I wanted to break them.”
“Wooden dinnerware,” Lucasta shrugged. “Sometimes it’s a nuisance.”
“If you’re absolutely sure you need to break something,” Rhys said, “I have a mug that I’m not that fond of.”
Adrian ducked his head. “No,” he said, too-even. “I can’t - you can’t let me do things like this. I - thank you, for forgiving me, but this was -” He shook his head. “You have to - do something. About me.”
Rhys covered Adrian’s hand with his own, let himself feel the tremors. Lucasta slowly, slowly began caressing Adrian’s hair. It was growing nicely though it still did not regain its old richness. Rhys thought for a moment he felt his hand squeezed in response.
“What we should do,” Rhys mused, thinking it over very slowly. “The right thing to do now is to take a bath.”
Adrian stiffened all over. Lucasta disentangled her fingers from his hair, and nodded. “I feel like a bath would suit me nicely.”
They lead Adrian to the tiny bay where they had complete privacy. Lucasta warmed the water and Rhys made the currents settle entirely.
He took his clothes off, not daring to hesitate, and met Lucasta in the pool, already naked and covered to her neck with the dark water. The stars were reflected around her.
“Would you like to join us?” Rhys asked, catching Adrian’s gaze and keeping it.
“Please?” Lucasta added.
He didn’t say anything.
“We can wash you, if you like,” Rhys offered, and then, finally, something in Adrian seemed to change.
“I will wash myself,” he said, and disrobed in front of them.