Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Twenty-One
When Ashe awoke, a little stiff and definitely hungry, the grass was heavy with dew and the sky to the north was a fine, light blue, with not a cloud in sight. Some distance off she could see smoke rising. Rising smoke might mean a settlement, and a settlement might mean food. Ashe smiled, then remembered that she had no money at all with which to pay for food. When did she ever? Oh, I’ll offer to do some chores for them, she thought, as payment for food, forgetting – as she always would, and continued to do throughout her life – that to name herself or her relationship to Betany would have meant a free passport anywhere.
*****
It had been such a wonderful night and it was such a fucking awful morning. Bad enough to have had such dreams after so much pleasure, but to wake from them only to find that the waking world held images even more awful, was appalling. I felt my stomach twist and threaten to turn inside out. And it was just unbelievable: she lay there amidst the sheets, all empty and dead, with her blood everywhere. My hands were heavy with gore, sticky with it. I staggered over to the basin to vomit until I thought my stomach was going to rip itself out.
I was too concerned with being ill to pay much attention to my visitor until she passed me a damp cloth with which to wipe my mouth. Red blossomed out onto the clarity of the cloth. When I looked at her she said, “Of course they’ll take you straight back to your prison. I doubt they’ll have the nerve to execute you. It’ll be a burden on their necks but they’ll bear it, even if it takes you a few decades to die.”
I was desperate enough to be angry. “Things are bad enough without some evil spirit in my room. If you can help me, then do so. If not, get out to whatever sewer you came up from.”
She laughed. That surprised me. She laughed with real amusement. Then she said, “No sewer, though a spirit is what I am. I can offer you an allegiance.”
“And I get my soul back when?” She grinned again.
“Your soul will still belong to you. But I need your help, and I think that at least one of your enemies is mine, also.”
I stared at her. Gone were my dreams of conquering the known world, and in the place of them all I could see was a dark and all-enveloping fate, left to rot in a cell somewhere. But her voice, cracked and evil as it sounded, was not entirely unwholesome to me in that state. “What help can you give me? I’m not going to be put off by vague promises. Prove your worth.”
She grinned at me and waved a hand in the direction of the bed. As I watched, the bed began to slide back from the sheets and the floor toward the girl. I saw the wounds close, and the girl turn in mild and comfortable sleep. I looked down at my hands and saw that they were similarly unstained. I stared at my visitor.
“Proof enough?”
I had to sit down. The release from murder coming so hard upon a belief that my own life was damned and finished had gone straight to my head. For the second time that morning my body refused to support me.
“I ask again, proof enough?”
My mouth was dry and my heart was pounding. She came toward me, the stump of her hand concealed by the cunning twist of her cloak. She stood before me so that I could look into those light, mad eyes, and put out her remaining hand to me. “Allies?” she asked.
And – I still can’t believe my actions – I put out my hand to her and felt her take it. I felt the unnatural chill of her flesh against my own. And she smiled at me..
“Then I shall leave you to satiate your appetite.”
“When… When will I see you again?”
“Soon.” She spun around, the cloak flared out and then she was… gone. I had not even asked the name of our mutual enemy. I shook my head but even that failed to clear my thoughts. I took a step toward the bed, and the woman in it woke and smiled and opened her arms to me. Trembling in every limb I went toward her, my legs threatening to betray me, all the way across the floor.
*****
Gods, but was she ever hungry. Ashe had followed the sweet wood smoke and had reached a small settlement. There was even an inn, which doubtless fulfilled the role of council chambers, theatre and any other necessity that came along. The main door, a stable-door type, had only the lower part closed, and that swung open easily enough when Ashe put up her hand to it.
The first thing she was aware of, as she walked across the floor to the counter, was that everyone in the place – a scant half-dozen including the innkeeper – had stopped doing whatever they were doing to stop and stare at her. The old Ashe might have minded that, but the more-tested model cared not at all. She faced the inn owner across the drink-stained counter and put down her hands flat on the wood. She said, “I need breakfast, and a bath, and I have no money at all. Is there any work I could do to claim both?”
A wash of something like… relief? rolled over the room. It was almost tangible. The inn owner even produced a smile – no small task after the depth of the expression of great severity that she had been wearing – and nodded. “That’s a bargain. I’ll get your breakfast right off,” she said. “Take a seat over there.”
Well, that was useful, if a bit odd. The other oddity was that the inn was far more spacious than it need be: it held very few tables and even fewer chairs. But she accommodated herself with both and it was nice to take the weight off her feet. The atmosphere in the inn seemed to ease a little and Ashe heard one or two soft and ironic laughs. She kept her eyes open and her senses on the alert, but could detect no real threat in the place. But when the food came, it was really good: the bread was fresh and sweet, as was the butter, and the plate of stew, while it wasn’t something she had thought to eat for breakfast, was certainly satisfying. That wasn’t all, evidently it was going to be a big favour: the innkeeper had included a plate of the sweet pastries she’d always liked when they were served in the Lascan palace, heavy with fruit and dripping honey. Ashe managed two then stopped to draw breath. What a shame it was, she thought, that she had no second stomach.
The only disadvantage to the place – apart from the almost obsessive manner in which the inhabitants still regarded her – was the odd noise that never wholly stopped or went away. If Ashe had not known better she would have sworn the sound to be that of something systematically breaking up the place. She washed down the food with a mug of sweet tea and sighed deeply.
“A good meal, I think you’d agree,” said the innkeeper. Ashe raised her dark eyes to the woman’s face as she cleared away the plates.
“An excellent meal,” she said.
“And when you’ve given it time to digest, there’ll be your chore.” Someone sniggered again and Ashe scowled, got to her feet and faced the collective assembly.
“Just what the fuck is the big joke? If you’re going to laugh at me, you might at least let me in on the secret.” She had no weapon to hand, but did not need one: the look on her face and the strong set of her shoulders marked her out as someone who was not to be toyed with. At that moment, comfortable and replete as she had felt, she have happily have taken on the whole assembly.
The innkeeper flushed to the hairline. She glanced away from Ashe and in the moment of hesitation there came another crash from upstairs. This time there could be no denying that something was wrong. Ashe was still scowling. “I’ll tell you.”
Ashe turned around to see a young woman who’d been mopping down the remaining tables and putting out jugs of beer and wine on the counter. She raised her eyebrows: “Yes?”
“No. It’s my problem.” The innkeeper looked more sheepish than ever. “I should explain.”
“It’s our other guest,” said the girl, coming forward to Ashe. “She came here a few days ago and ordered a room and a jug of wine.” Ashe waited.
“And…?”
“And she took our best room and has been there ever since, drinking wine, threatening to beat to death anyone who even tries to cross her and…”
“Trashing the place?” Ashe’s scowl deepened. “And my payment for my nice breakfast is what…? Throwing her out? Getting beaten to death? If she’s been drinking wine all this time you won’t have helped the matter.”
“We tried not giving her the wine she called for,” said the girl, “and then she began throwing furniture down the stairs.
Ashe looked across the room and saw for the first time the stacks of splintered timber in the far corner. Several benches and tables were already fit for little more than the fire. “Oh,” she said. She sighed and took off her coat.
“You’ll be the third one to try,” said another of the customers, a tall, dark woman with a black eye. The very distinctive stiffness with which she sat was explained when she indicated her face and added, “I was the first. She blacked my eye and cracked two of my ribs.”
“The second and third?” asked Ashe, bleakly.
“Are bruised but still with us. Katie she threw over the railings.” Katie would be the young girl. Ashe nodded toward her. “And that was after she’d only been drinking an hour or so.”
“Stella’s the village blacksmith,” said Kate, “and she’s the strongest of all of us.”
“Not the nicest trick,” said Ashe, glancing toward Stella and Stella’s black eye “handing out breakfast and then asking payment in blood. Still,” moving toward the stairs, “it was a good breakfast.” Halfway up the stairs she paused and added, “And I trust that you’ll provide me with an equally good lunch, or an equally good funeral, whichever way it goes.”
The innkeeper managed a rather sick smile. “Get rid of that one and you’ll get the best we have to offer.” She nodded toward Kate, which seemed to suggest to Ashe that another meal was not the only aspect to her potential reward. Then she let her smile fade as she added, “She was asking for more wine just before you came in. She’s wanting still. I give you my word on it: get rid of her and I’ll give you whatever you want,” said the innkeeper. Ashe signed deeply and set off up the stairs.
She couldn’t miss the room in question: behind it she could hear someone pacing about. Periodically there came another sound came, like that of someone falling down and getting up again, each effort sounding a little more demanding than the last.
Ashe tapped at the door. For an instant there was silence, then a voice demanded, “Have you brought my wine? If you haven’t brought it, you can go to hell.”
Ashe considered the question for an instant and then said, “No wine. Just a message: the innkeeper would like her room back. I understand that they’ve reneged on their offer of accommodation. Here: open the door and I’ll help you carry out your bags.”
“I don’t have any fucking bags!”
The door flew open and an empty jug flew through the air. Ashe stepped aside and the pottery shattered against the wall. “I expect they’ll ask you to pay for that,” she said, cheerfully, “and I can’t even begin to imagine what your bill will be like.” She strode into the room and ducked as another jug came her way. She saw the inhabitant’s face and stopped dead. “Oh. Hallo, you.”
*****
Cairo understood that two of the other Guardians had arrived. With Teinne that made three. Ashe didn’t count at present, which meant there were two more to come.
She had spent the time staring at the map into which Ashe had fallen. The edges had pulled together after being torn. Cairo was on the verge of hoping that it might open up again and allow her to follow on; Teinne was irritable and doubtless the other Guardians would be equally stiff with anyone not on their exalted plane. Ashe had never even felt like a Guardian, that was the problem: there had never been anything snobbish or superior about her manner before or after she understood something of her roots. Oh, fuck it. Ashe wasn’t going to coming back any time soon.
Preferable to leave than to be dismissed: Cairo went to her own rooms and stretched out on her bed. It wasn’t long before her eyes closed: it had been a difficult time, and she’d missed out on sleep too many nights running.
Cairo had a trick to memory that she’d once told Ashe: if she could centre her concentration to saturation, she could take an idea or an image, or a person, into her dreams. This time she wanted to see Ashe, even if it was only in a dream, and apologise to Ashe, and to tell her that the issue of parenthood wasn’t something that she herself had thought to mention: Teinne had mentioned it often enough. Come to think of it, Teinne had seemed quite proud of the parentless fact, as if it made the Guardians better than ordinary people. Ashe had never come across as being any better than she was. Gods, back in Lammor she’d been pretty fucking low on the social scale.
It struck Cairo for the first time that if Teinne had wanted to drive a wedge between Ashe and herself, she couldn’t have done or said anything more effective than the small truth she had encouraged Cairo to say. Pointless really to try to separate Ashe from Betany: Cairo had seen the steadiness of that affection. Easier to let cities fall…
Oh, to be back in Lammor. To be back in the old days before everything got totally fucked and without the slightest hint of what was to come. To be on the roof drinking perle with Ashe, while the moon rose high above them, or sitting before the fire in Rhea’s tower room as the year descended into winter. Nice simply to be captain of the stables again, to be making her way through as many women as she could charm… She’d never been more than a week between lovers in all her adult years. But why had she never made a move on Ashe? Well, there was the whole Laure thing, but even that didn’t explain it: Cairo had known that Laure fucked around, but Ashe never had. The poor sod had been cheated on left right and centre and yet she still never suspected. Maybe she and Ashe could have had a thing together: she’d always had a bit of thing for Ashe. Cairo opened her eyes to look at the ceiling. Had she always had a thing for Ashe? Maybe it wasn’t that easy. Maybe what was closer to the truth was that she had always felt a little possessive of Ashe. Laure might have had Ashe in her bed whenever she wanted her there, but Ashe didn’t talk from the heart to her, as she had with Cairo. Laure wouldn’t have wanted to know about Ashe’s heart, in any case. Maybe she’d never even admitted its existence. On an emotional plane, she and Ashe had connected as Laure and Ashe never would.
Drifting into proper sleep it struck her once again that the afterlife in which she was… living? existing in, at least, wasn’t nearly as much fun as she might have thought it would be.
*****
Of all the people she hadn’t expected to see again. Now she understood better the wreckage all around them both. She said, “Hell, Alexis, what have you been doing to yourself?” Mercia’s former captain looked like all hell. The clothes she wore were filthy and she’d clearly stopped washing. In the time between meetings, Alexis had gone over the edge. Her descent had been as much physical as mental: her face was blurred with alcohol and her eyes were red.
The room was a complete tip: everything but the bed had been broken. The bed itself had been dragged halfway across the floor and its blankets scattered in all directions. The floor was a mass of broken pottery and ripped sheets. “Wow,” said Ashe, almost admiringly. “When you decide to trash a place you really make a job of it.”
Alexis was nastily pale. Her voice sounded dry and cracked as she stared blankly at Ashe and said, “You’re… what? A demon come to haunt me? I’ve seen enough of them in the last days and nights.”
“Nope,” said Ashe, cheerfully. “No demon.” She went back and closed the door: no reason that the entire inn should know their business. She walked over and started picking up the blankets, heaping them on the staggered bed.
Alexis stumbled across the room to face her. She put her hands on Ashe’s shoulders and blinked hard at her. Her eyes were not focussing properly. “You’re not a demon? You must be. I killed Ashe. Who are you? What are you?”
Ashe said, “Just me.” She looked more closely at Alexis. “Is that why you’re doing this, because you killed me?”
“I saw you dead. I saw your body burn. Rhea said you’d be out there – somewhere – but I didn’t know where to begin.”
“Okay. I know you killed me, but I don’t remember much about what came after.”
Alexis took up her sword from the floor and offered it to Ashe, hilt first. Ashe said, even as she reached out to take it: “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Kill me. Execute me. I asked Betany for my freedom and she trusted me. I found you and then I killed you. You were better off at that fucking Temple than with me., and that place was hell on earth. I’ve been waiting here for them to send up someone tough enough to kill me, but they’re not up to it. You could do it, though.”
Ashe balanced the weight of the sword in her hands. “A nice blade,” she said. “Well-turned.” Then she put out a hand to test the edge and promptly cut herself. “Fuck it.” She looked at the blood with mild distaste. “And fucking sharp,” she added. “Here,” she said, handing back the sword. “I think it’s more you than me.”
She turned a fallen bench right-way up and sat down on it to regard Alexis. “Downstairs they’re hoping I’m going to throw you out.”
“They’re a bunch of weaklings,” said Alexis. She sounded almost offended by the fact. “No-one would fight me.”
“Oh, that’s hardly fair,” said Ashe, absently. “I think they gave it a go. But maybe black eyes and broken ribs are as ambitious as they get. The village blacksmith ain’t none too keen on you right now. Nor anyone else in the inn,” she added, thoughtfully.
“Was she the one I threw over the stairs?”
“No. I think that would have been Katie. I think the blacksmith is called Stella.”
“Oh.”
“I could be wrong, of course.” Ashe swung her feet back and forth. “Anyway, enough of this joyful reunion: they’re waiting for me to do something constructive. What do you fancy? Shall we go downstairs with our arms about each other or do you think we should give them a round or two first?”
Alexis stared at her. Ashe smiled and stood up. She said, “It’s not the time and it’s not the place, but sooner or later you and I are going to fight. Not with swords, though: I’d probably stab myself on yours,” she added.
Alexis looked at her and an expression of something like hope passed over her fact. The doubt struck again and she said, “You’d pull your punches.”
“Me?” Ashe was almost comically surprised. “Fuck off. Last time you didn’t give me a chance: now you owe me a fight. I swear on your sword: I won’t pull a single punch.”
Alexis moved forward. She almost ran forward. Ashe thought: Gods, I hope I can take her, but then she had the weight of Alexis’s body charging at her and she gave up all rational considerations.
If they had been different people: if they had been almost anything even close to friends, sex might have sealed the contract and made a mockery of the animosity that still burned in either heart. Ashe was aware of no anger, more of a kind of savage delight in the conflict. She knew too that she would have to fight Alexis if she was ever going to get the two of them moving in the right direction. In any direction. Be it at Caer Arianrhod or the Red Temple, she could use Alexis’s strength, and for the first time, in the wealth of chaos and the fallen look on Alexis’s face, Ashe felt almost sorry for her. It was just a matter of exorcising the blend of angers between the two of them, thought Ashe. A sensible move, really.
And it would feel so very good to kick the shit out of Alexis.
*****
Things go wrong. They wait a little time and then they go wrong again. Sometimes it felt as she was going to go mad. Laure sat on the steps in the fading light, her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms tight around herself. The news had travelled briskly enough: Ardan was dead, had taken her own life, and soon her body would be buried in the cemetery outside Caer Arianrhod: there was no family to claim Ardan’s remains. Had she demanded it, surely Betany would have agreed to have Ardan’s remains sent back to Lammor, in which she had spent most of her life? But the idea hadn’t occurred to Laure. In a sense it was easier, not seeing the body, or not regarding the grave. In this way she could believe, if she tried hard enough, that Ardan had simply left.
What a fucking mess. Laure didn’t often damn her own behaviour, and was still quick to blame any third party available for whatever was going wrong, had gone wrong, but now her world was becoming more of the dead than of the living. She was running out of living beings to blame.
Was it not enough that things had gone so astronomically wrong, without adding the final insult of Ardan’s death? Laure stood up, turned round and ascended to her own room.
She lay down on the bed, and closed her eyes again. It was too much, just too much. Her mother was dead, Jura was dead, Ruth was insane, Ashe was gone and Ardan had killed herself. She did not like much to touch on the final consideration, that Calypso, for whom she had been willing to sacrifice so very much, was dead, too.
This was too much. Much too much. What vast and cosmic debt was she being called to account for? There had been nothing wrong with her decision to choose Calypso over Ashe; none at all. The joint rule would have worked out admirably.
So if it was anyone’s fault, then it was Ashe’s own. Who else? It was all thanks to Ashe. If Ashe had only done as she was supposed to, and backed calmly and easily out of the limelight, there would have been no further problems. Laure would have had Calypso and power, and a forceful future. And instead she had nothing: a ruined palace that was being replaced in such an inglorious fashion; three graves to visit, if she chose to do so, and an empty bed.
Life sucked.
*****
They were as close to being evenly balanced as they would ever be. Alexis was a little slow; exhaustion, guilt, fury and alcohol had all taken their toll. Ashe, on the other hand, was feeling brighter and sharper than she had in weeks. Since leaving the Red Temple, come to think of it. Gods! That place had sapped her strength from the moment she heard of it, and her sojourn there had made things far worse. But coming through the water… The water fixed something inside Ashe; she understood that, and she knew why it was. In the water she was – even if they were miles and miles apart – close to Calliope, and something very good and very comforting seemed to encapsulate her even while she was wringing out her wet clothes. Ashe had loved Laure, in a rather hopeless manner, and after Laure there had been that period of solitude, into which Calliope had flowed. Then it had been the three of them for a little, very good, time. Ashe thought, too, that Calliope might have been happy to see Ashe wipe the floor with Alexis.
Of course, the equation might work more effectively the other way around. Having decided that Ashe was serious about the punches, she had thrown herself into the struggle, no-holds-barred. Ashe managed to shake her off the first time, and when Alexis came for her again she side-stepped, leaving Alexis to bounce off the door. Ashe had an instant in which to decide that the listeners, downstairs, should feel that they were getting good value for their money. She put up her hand without thought about its use, and Alexis ran straight into it. Later Ashe would be convinced that she’d broken at least one digit. Alexis growled, and rushed Ashe, who managed to catch the hold and drive it back against the bed. They went right over the bed, driven by Alexis’s momentum, and the wood creaked ominously. Ashe cracked an elbow on the bed-frame and that drove her on, suddenly furious, but still controlled. She caught Alexis’s blow on her left forearm and punched back so hard and immediately with her right hand that she heard Alexis’s teeth snap together.
She leapt onto the bed to avoid the new blow, because Alexis had come back roaring. Alexis’s head driving into Ashe’s stomach knocked all the air from her lungs and as Alexis reached for her again she performed that very occasional but nearly always effective manoeuvre. She brought her forehead down on the bridge of Alexis’s nose. Alexis went straight down, the breath blasted out of her lungs when she hit the floor. Ashe winced at the bright pain that flamed across her forehead, but the effort had decided the fight: Alexis had gone down and it was some little time before she got up again. Ashe wiped her mouth on her sleeve and noticed the blood there. She’d cut her forehead and the warm blood was trickling through an eyebrow and threatening to blind her. She might have asked for time out, but Alexis was still sitting still and when Ashe put out a hand to pull her up, she accepted it for the peaceful move it was.
Ashe backed toward against the wall, still wiping away blood, and allowed herself to slide gently to the floor. Alexis was moving as if she doubted every limb, and she had one hand held hard against her ribs. When she had breath enough to speak she said, “Fuck you, Ashe. I think you’ve avenged the blacksmith.”
Ashe laughed out loud. Then she said: “I never took you for a comedian.”
For a moment Alexis looked from Ashe to her sword but stopped when she realised that Ashe wasn’t laughing at her but with her. The room in which they stood looked as if a cyclone had visited it, and neither of them looked good at all, but for the first time in a long time, Alexis gave in to the suggestion of humour, and laughed, too. Then she winced violently and held her ribs tighter still. “Fuck you, Ashe,” she said, but almost gently this time. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
Ashe wiped her face on a piece torn from one of the ruined sheets and put it away from her in order to assess how badly she was bleeding. She wrapped a length around her own bloodied knuckles and then gave Alexis a quick smile. “Now? You ready to go? We’ve got a whole load of things to do.”
Alexis looked hard at Ashe. From the beginning of the fight she had felt easier within her own skin. And it had been no simple grudge fight; Ashe had stuck to her word and pulled no punches. She felt her ribs again and wondered if she honestly wished that Ashe might have pulled one or two. When she spoke, they could both hear the change of tone in her voice; the tiredness had gone, the anger too. “Wait up, Ashe,” she said. “Could you give me a hand to wrap these up, Blacksmith Avenger?”
Ashe grinned and helped her. She tore up the rest of the sheet (what was the innkeeper going to say?) into a number of narrow strips that she then wrapped around Alexis, who stood up very straight and proud, trying desperately hard not to wince. There was a short moment when Alexis lifted up her ragged shirt and Ashe saw the scar of that much earlier wound. It looked fierce and unforgiving and it chilled her blood. No scrap that: there had been nothing overtly natural about that hurt.
With Alexis bandaged up and her belongings gathered up, they stood in the centre of the room and looked at one another. Alexis moved forward and gave Ashe the briefest and the most tentative of hugs. They eyed one another with a – on the one hand – a new respect, and on the other, a kind of apologetic kindness. For the immediate future at least, they were on the same side. “Come on,” said Ashe. “Let’s go.”
Alexis followed her down the stairs, straight-backed, pale, and with an expression that none of the inn’s population chose to meet: that smouldering aggression was too much for most people. Ashe stopped at the inn counter and said, “I fulfilled my part of the deal. I’ll make sure she doesn’t come back.” They had agreed this small piece of pantomime, which meant that her words did not make Alexis burn.
“Your payment…” the innkeeper looked truly uneasy.
Ashe raised an eyebrow. “Save it. Put it toward some more furniture.”
The Blacksmith Avenger. Oh, yeah.