Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (29 page)

Nora turned, looking for the voice dripping with sweetness. Two young women blurred into her vision behind her. The one who had spoken reminded her of the baker’s wife, tugging at her shawl with a pinched expression around her mouth.

Nora looked away and saw Garreth’s huge frame leaning against a remaining wall. He lifted a tankard the size of her forearm to his mouth, and his grin made his scarred face look like a demon of the ancient days. She raised her own half-empty cup. He was watching Master Cumi weave her way through the gathering families.

“I think some of those babies will be born earlier than autumn, my dear.” The two women laughed shrilly, and Nora’s focus switched back to them.

She frowned, but they didn’t seem to notice; they were too busy slandering the couples in front of them. Village gossip.

One raised her hand to speak behind it into the ear of the other. “What a shame that poor Willem’s bride is a whore.”

Nora stiffened. Her head felt hot. With that word, so much hurt was caused, and didn’t she know that already? She gripped her cup tightly, listening to the giggles behind her.

“She has a pretty face, to be sure,” the other woman said. “So she’s particularly attached to all her admirers and knows them to be so much attached to her.”

No. Nora couldn’t take their giggling.

“What a disgrace that her family doesn’t have the propriety to attend to and properly guard their daughter,” one woman was saying.

Nora whipped around, splashing the remnants of her drink in the faces of the two women. They shrieked in horror, and a shocked hush fell over the marriage ceremony participants.

“What the fuck is wrong with you!” she yelled at them, hurling the cup at their feet. Her shaking hands curled into fists as the women raised their hands to their wet and spoiled faces and then raised their voices, too.

“Noraya!”

Master Cumi stood in front of the crowd of people, all watching her.

“Explain yourself.”

Master Cumi approached, but Nora pushed herself free. She stormed past the two young women, knocking one of them to the side.

“Bushes are over there,” Garreth called as she stumbled past him.

She let herself be carried by a wave of faceless shadow people, circling the fire. Calla and Shade were on the other side, finally resting. Sweat streamed off their bodies as they drank their fill. Calla’s ash-blonde braid had come undone and strands of white hung around her face, softening it. She had a sleeping newborn baby in her arms, and she was talking to the baby’s mother. Shade’s eyes met Nora’s over the rim of his mug. He cocked his head and gestured for her to meet him under the red gates. She shook her head and pushed her way around the people to reach the gates, noticing him do the same on the other side. She groaned. Please, not now! The drummer started to play a sharp staccato and a fiddler joined him.

“Hey!” Shade leaned in close to her ear.

“Hey!”

“You’re leaving already?”

“I can’t…can’t find Owen.”

He took her hand to make her stay. His warmth sent a jolt up her spine, and he pulled her close. So close his lips brushed against her earlobe when he spoke. It prickled. She glanced down at their clasped hands.

“We haven’t danced yet.” His hand held hers tightly, and his breath smelled of spices.

“I don’t dance. I told you.”

“Come on, it’s just like fighting, only to a beat. You’ll be great.”

Nora was about to decline, tell him her rhythm was off and he’d get bruised, when someone jostled against Shade, throwing both of them off-balance. She let herself fall and rolled to the side, coming up on her feet. Drunk, with a dress on and all. Ha! Shame Diaz hadn’t seen it. But at least all that so-called training hadn’t been for nothing, then. Her head hadn’t quite caught up with her body, but she was standing.

Shade wasn’t. He was rowing with his arms and grabbed her by the waist, dipping her low. And then they both fell over, sprawled onto the stairs. His forehead kissed her nose violently. White pain stung in her eyes and she clasped her hands over her face. He braced himself up on an elbow, one hand holding his forehead, and cursed in a language she didn’t understand.

“You all right?” Shade grinned. A red blotch formed on his forehead.

“Am I bleeding?” Nora lifted her hands, wiping under her nose. The back of her hand was clear of blood.

“Don’t worry. You’re still pretty. It’s me I’m worried about.”

He helped her up. They stood close to each other, brushing off the dirt. Shade scratched the back of his head and then squared his shoulders.

“Well, wasn’t that a bit embarrassing? Go on, find Owen if you must. But come back down after and I’ll…sing you a song.”

He squeezed her hand briefly and let her go. Nora made no promise and walked on. When she reached the first platform of the stairs, she looked down on the festivities and courtyards below, her heart swelling with indignation at the injustice dealt out so casually and cruelly. Shade was doomed to die. Of course, from a certain standpoint, they were all doomed to die, given a long enough time span. So much life. Dancing corpses. But then again, even the gods had died.

T
here was nothing quite like
dancing and revelry, Master Diaz thought, as a charming amusement for young people and those who considered themselves as such. On numerous occasions throughout the year, people found reasons to dance, but never so much as on Solstice, when the long winter night changed even the most rational of beings into insipid celebrators of nothingness and self-import. Overeating, overdrinking, and generally overindulging. It would be insupportable to pass many such evenings in a year. Especially since the noise shook the temple walls, the drums beating a steady rhythm that made peace unthinkable even in the dead of night, even in a haven of quiet as he had found on one of the topmost levels of the temple. In a few hours, thank the gods, it would be over and everyone would be worse for wear.

However, his solitude was disturbed even here. He heard the clack of heels on the stone steps. It seemed someone was intent on enticing him to dance, he thought. It was probably Talitha Cumi come to remind him of how he was shirking his responsibilities by not stoically standing on the sidelines throughout the festivities. He shrank back into the shadows close to the door. The staccato continued in a brisk walk past him, toward the balcony the alcove opened to, then skipped down two dark steps underneath a stone-carved gazebo that cast its silver patterns, speckling the marbled floor with starlight.

It was Noraya. She had run up the stairs, and the exercise had flushed her cheeks red as much as the mead made her eyes shine. Someone enticing to dance with, indeed. He smiled to himself and made to go before she saw him. She slowed down to stand under the gazebo and looked up into the night sky through the white carvings, enthralled. Her fingers played with the thin beams of light and shadow and then trailed the delicate stonework as she strode to the edge of the balcony. A sharp night wind blew the long dark hair out of her face, flapping the folds of her dress against her legs. It was always windier up here. She should have brought a thicker cloak. He stood on the threshold to leave as she leaned over the hip-high balustrade and took a deep gulp of the wild air. Below her was only a pitch-black drop of several hundred feet.

He moved instinctively toward her. But he needn’t have worried. Reeling back, she laughed drunkenly.

“The night sky amuses you?” he asked.

Nora yelped. Hand held over her beating heart, she whipped around, her face twisted in fear, and peered into the gloom. Diaz stepped out of the shadows and into the cold starlight.

“I nearly toppled over.” Nora frowned. Then she smiled when she recognized him. “I didn’t see you.”

He cocked his head.

“I was right here. You ran past me without looking. Forgive me scaring you. It was not my intent.”

“You didn’t scare me.” She grinned. “All right, you did scare me a little, jumping out at me like that. But if you were here first, I don’t want to disturb you. I can go now. It’s late anyway. Or early.”

She let go of the balustrade and turned to leave, only he was in her path. He should let her go. A man and a woman alone…tongues would wag. If they found out.

“You enjoyed the Solstice festivities?” he asked, stepping into the gazebo.

“Yes, it was great. Is great, I mean, of course.” Nora halted.

“And yet you’re here alone,” he prompted.

Nora nodded and turned to the western sky, tapping the stonework with her knuckles. Diaz stepped toward the balustrade and rested his elbows on it, hands suspended over the long drop below. He peered into the night. For a while, they stood together, over the pitch-black vastness before them, wind tearing at their garments. Side by side, it felt like they were back on the Plains together and he could just reach out and take her hand again. It had seemed so natural then. But of course, he couldn’t. Not now. Not here in the temple. Nora shivered.

“Cold?” Diaz asked.

“Do you smell the snow?” Nora asked. “It smells like there’ll be more snow.”

He inhaled deeply. There was a scent of honey and summer rising around her.

“You liked the mead?” he asked.

Nora chuckled.

“I think it liked me more. It’s quite powerful. Wait…how do you know?”

“The scent lingers on your lips,” he said and looked away as she touched her fingers to her mouth. “How is your shoulder?”

“Much better. Thank you.” Nora felt her scar, then brushed her fingers through her hair. Her hands settled on the balustrade once more and she stole a glance at Diaz’s hands next to them.

The sleeves of his shirt were bunched up around his elbows. He caught her staring at his runes, tattooed onto his skin. The back of his right hand was covered in a deep crater of white scar. Puckers of dark color could still be seen, the rune on that hand burned away. He covered his right hand with his left, caressing the scar, reminding himself of how it had been burned. A fleeting echo of a touch flickered over his skin. The sound of a woman laughing. The memory of a time when he
had
danced. He cleared his throat. Nora saw that he had followed her gaze, and quickly looked away.

“Aren’t you ever cold?” She raised her chin high.

He shrugged.

“Wights can endure extreme temperatures better than humans. Cold and heat do not affect me as they do your kind.”

“That explains why you’re always so hot.”

He waited, allowing her the time to check the last sentence in the awkward moment that followed it and saw her redden.

“I meant—when we slept together on the Plains…wow, thank you, mouth. Always when I need you. This is just getting worse and worse. I meant to say—”

Diaz smiled. “I know what you meant.”

“What do the marks mean? Owen said they’re wightish runes.”

“Quite right.”

Diaz lifted a hand and turned his arm to let her see the marks more clearly. He pointed to groups of runes as he spoke.

“They are marks of identity. They tell those who can read them who I am, who I was born to, which tribe I belong to, my rank and status, that I am a master pilgrim, a warrior adept with blade and spear and bow.”

She continued staring at his arms for a moment.

“Interesting concept. To flaunt that information on your skin,” Nora said.

Diaz laughed.

“You have the same concept,” he said.

Nora frowned and leaned closer. “The only people I know with tattoos are sailors.”

“You dress, yes? Clothes make a man or woman, don’t they? You can tell what rank a man has in life by judging what clothes he wears, what state they are in, how well he scrubs his boots.”

“Well, yes. But—”

Diaz took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

“Noraya Smith. Always wearing the same leather leggings you used to wear while at the forge. Leather is hardier than cotton or wool, more practical as work wear. You wear your hair loose, uncovered, unless it’s not washed. Then you fasten it out of your face. So you’re not a married woman, and neither do you care for elaborate styling. Your cloak is made with the thick rich wool of the Northland breed, I suspect from the sheep that graze near Owen’s Ridge. Your boots are good quality. They’re buffed to a shine, but well worn.”

He watched the blush rise in her cheeks.

“Your brother isn’t the only one who observes his surroundings. Everyone does it all the time. We judge what we see. Just by looking at you, I know you’re from a small village in the north, not married, a hard worker, and a woman who cares about what she wears but doesn’t give fashion a second thought.” He tapped his forearm where a dark spiral crawled over his skin. “Marks of identity, yes?”

Nora looked down. She was wearing a new dress, a rich dark blue, spun of wool with silver thread embroidery. It suited her well. Very well. Around her torso, a high-collared fur tunic kept her warm. She had made some effort on her hair, knotting the top part together at the back of her head with a leather band. The rest spilled over her shoulders in soft waves. His fingertips tingled with yearning to run a hand through it.