Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Sixteen
Betany lay in bed watching the world change outside. All at once autumn was fully fixed in place and summer was already little more than a memory. It was early morning, the palace was still quiet. In another hour’s time the cooks would begin baking the bread they’d put to rise the night before, and that same sweet and utterly reassuring scent would creep though the palace. The days were a little shorter already, the nights just that much longer. Soon the year would begin the descent into darkness and chill, and Gowdie was still a karg and Ashe… Ashe just wasn’t there.
Except that she was. Betany, aware of some change in the room, looked towards the door. Ashe came quietly inside, a half-smile on her face, her clothes dusty and worn. She came to the edge of the bed and put a hand out to Betany’s cheek. “You look very lovely, pregnant,” she said, “but of course you looked very lovely before. Maybe being pregnant makes you completely irresistible rather than almost entirely irresistible, but who knows.” She sat down on the edge of the bed, Betany moving back beneath the covers to make room for her.
“Is this a dream?” Betany had had so many daydreams and actual dreams about Ashe’s return that she couldn’t be sure that this wasn’t just another of the same, albeit it a more startling vivid version. She put out a hand to Ashe and felt the warm skin. “You don’t feel like a dream, but – ”
“It’s not wholly a dream,” said Ashe. “But it’s not wholly real because where I am I can’t reach you properly. But,” and she smiled and looked almost angry for an instant, “for today I can. Being a Guardian isn’t wholly without its good points.”
Betany said, “So you know? I thought that Guardians never…” she hesitated. “Ashe, are you dead?” The thought was just too terrifying, and it made her blood run cold.
Ashe shook her head. If as a Guardian she could visit people in dreams, then she sure as fuck could lie effectively. She said, “There are things going on that are getting between you and I. I want to come back to you more than anything in the world, but if I do come straight back, I’m not sure that there will be a world left.” She laughed, mockingly, and added, “Don’t I sound grand? As if I can alter the way of the world. No,” she added, “I don’t sound grand. And there’s nothing good about the situation. Gowdie’s suffering because of it, and she’ll not be the only one. Betany, just as your first loyalty is to Caer Arianrhod, mine is off out in the wild blue yonder, fucking things up. There’s stuff I need to help with, but I said I wasn’t doing anything until I’d had the chance to talk to you.”
Betany thought: it is her. Dream or daydream, nothing could be as real as this. She said, “The baby. Are you…” she didn’t know how to complete the sentence. It suddenly occurred to her how little time she and Ashe had had to themselves. And now everything would be changed. She said, “You left. I understood – I told myself I understood why you left – or I said that I did. And I’ve missed you ever since then.”
“The news about the baby is wonderful,” said Ashe. She smiled, and looked for a moment so entirely human, so wholly less-than-Guardian-like that Betany couldn’t help smiling back. “It’s the best thing that’s happened since…” she was going to say, “since you and I and Calliope,…” because that had been about the happiest moment of her life. But that wouldn’t be the right thing to say. She ended the sentence instead with, “since I met you.”
Betany reached out her arms and put them round Ashe’s neck, pulling her down. They kissed, Betany with wide-open eyes, because she couldn’t wholly believe Ashe’s presence, and Ashe with eyes closed, because she wanted to commit every aspect of their time to memory, to hold it close when she would have to go away again. Betany sat up, the better to pull Ashe down, and twisted round so that Ashe was a little beneath her. She laughed to see Ashe a little helpless again; it was the first time in months. She said, “It’s nice to see you at my mercy for a change.”
Ashe scowled. “You want me at your mercy?”
Betany considered the question and then nodded. “Of course I do,” she said. “If you’re at my mercy you can’t go flying off; you’re mine to do with as I choose.” She added, as Ashe’s scowl became marked, “I know I don’t own you, Ashe, but I do love you. And there are the hormones, you know.” Ashe began to smile but stopped when Betany added, “There are times that I’ve felt so… hungry, for want of a better word, that I’ve started eyeing up the palace staff.” To make Ashe laugh she said, “I was beginning to find Alexis quite easy on the eye…”
Ashe produced a smile that was wholly convincing, even while some part of her fought back the desire to howl. Betany continued, “She’s looking for you. I assume she must have found you; after all, you know about the baby.”
Ashe just lied. She had fought for this time with Betany and it had been hard-won. She said, “I haven’t seen Alexis yet. I’m sure she’ll find me soon enough. I knew about the baby just from looking at you.”
Ashe thought: if she doesn’t believe me now, I’m lost. For a person whose life usually revolved around comparative honesty it was hard to put up such a determined front, but she didn’t have any choice. Betany said, “You’re not here for very long, Ashe, are you?”
“No. It’s a lightning visit: I have until sunset.” At which time I turn into what? A bunch of grapes? A cup of wine? “And we can spend the time anyway you like. Conversation? Dinner? Well, breakfast, I guess. Or – ” but Betany shifted so that she sat over Ashe, her hands busily unbuttoning Ashe’s shirt. “Or whatever you think best,” she finished up.
Betany, through whose body simple animal hunger was burning, gave up on the unbuttoning process and simply tore the shirt open. She slid down Ashe’s body and applied the same polite brutality to the remainder of Ashe’s fastenings. The water Guardian wondered whether her powers extended to some way of gathering up her clothes when sunset came around and she had to go. A fine figure she’d make with her trousers round her ankles…
Betany shifted so that she could kiss Ashe, who lifted herself off the bed as far as she could in order to wrap her arms around Betany, pull her in and hold her tight. Betany’s skin smelled warm and fragrant and entirely intimate. Ashe smelled the slight sharpness of Betany’s own desire and for a moment it was hard not to simply drag Betany down and ravish her, but she held off, returned Betany’s kiss, and tried to imprint as much of their contact as she could onto her heart, to revisit the moment when she was gone. She thought: I want to grow old with her. Oh, gods, what a ridiculous thing to say: she’s young, I’m young, what’s the preoccupation with age? And at the same time, at the back of her head she heard a voice that whispered: make the most of what you have, Ashe.
There was that blind hunger that ran through both of them, the hunger that requires not simply satisfying but purging. Ashe was gentle with Betany, for the sake of the baby, even though Betany would have welcomed some roughness, some show of force. So the roles were swapped around and Betany got to dominate Ashe as she had in the old days, on those rare occasions when she had forced Ashe to give up her almost constant self-control. And Ashe welcomed every moment of it; forgetting, for the shortest but most essential of moments, who she was, and what she was meant to do. For a little while Ashe got to forget all about being a Guardian, and Betany got time off from ruling a country. Betany afterwards remembered, almost with shame, fucking Ashe and asking her at the same time to whom did Ashe belong?
She hadn’t needed to ask, but it was satisfying to hear the words, all the same.
When the wild excesses of the day were almost done, the bed resembling nothing more than a shipwreck, with disordered sheets and pillows scattered in all directions, they lay quietly together, Betany’s head resting on Ashe’s shoulder. Ashe felt the welcome weight of Betany’s body and tried not to think about the shadows that were beginning to grow and slide across the room. Ashe could feel the beginning of separation within herself, felt the setting become slightly less fixed, and sighed. Betany heard the sigh but shut her eyes tightly. She said, “You have to go.”
“Yes.” Ashe’s voice was determinedly steady.
“But you will be back, won’t you?” Betany hesitated, then said, “No. I know that you’ll be back. And I know that you’ve good reasons for going. I can’t help wishing that I could keep you here.”
Ashe, who wanted nothing better than to say, I won’t go, felt the beginning of an ache inside. Impossible to say, but I never was here, because for the two of them, she had been. Instead she gently slid free of Betany and got out of bed. The last image Betany had of her, before the mist came down and took Ashe off, was of the former Lammoran companion and occasional soldier, saying, in lost terms: “How the fuck am I going to keep my trousers up?”
Betany blinked, and Ashe was gone. The world had revolved a little too quickly once again, and nothing had been settled: Gowdie was still a karg, Ashe was still away, but the lost feeling with which Betany had been greeting each day was gone, and the day itself had been… The day had been almost perfect. Some days were.
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