EQUALS OR NOTHING

I avoided him for three days.

This was not difficult. There were things to do. There was a Gauntlet to be returned to, in eleven weeks. There was Hawk's loft to be cleaned, and a dozen minor repairs, and a standing correspondence with Mabel that grew more frantic with each post. There was Nimbus, who had begun to molt in clumps and would not be consoled. And there was a sword to be re-tempered, a coat to be mended, a pair of boots to be resoled, and a thousand other small mechanical tasks with which a sensible woman fills her hands when she does not wish to think.

I did them all. I did them with a ferocious, grim, joyless thoroughness, like a servant being watched. I took no meals at the table. I left the house at dawn and returned after dark. When Declan came into a room, I found a reason to go out of it.

On the fourth morning, he stopped me in the yard.

He did it simply. He stepped out from behind the water-barrel, with his arms at his sides, and stood in my path. I had a bucket in each hand. It was a cold gray morning, with mist on the ground and the smell of rain in the air. A pair of crows were quarreling on the fence-rail.

"Tamsin."

"Excuse me."

"No."

"I have the horses to feed."

"Hawk has fed them." He did not move. "You have been avoiding me."

"I've been busy."

"You have been avoiding me with great energy." He tilted his head. "I find it rather flattering."

I set down the buckets. I straightened. I met his eyes squarely.

"Declan," I said, in my coldest voice. "I think we had better be plain."

"I think so too."

"I am here to win the Gauntlet. I am here to destroy House Whitlock. I am here to find the Engine and burn it, and the man who runs it, and everything he has built. I have a list. It is a long list. It has taken me a year to draw up." I took a breath. "There is nothing on it that has to do with roofs."

"I see."

"I do not need romance. I have had romance. It was a catastrophe. I do not need a protector, or a patron, or a devoted admirer." My voice was brittle. "I need an ally. Someone who will tell me the truth and fight at my back. That is all."

"That is all?"

"That is all."

He studied me. His expression was unreadable. A faint wind stirred the mist about our boots. One of the crows flew up, shrieking.

"Very well," said Declan.

I blinked.

"I will be your ally," he said calmly. "I shall tell you the truth. I shall fight at your back. It is a very fine arrangement. I have no objection."

"You have no—"

"None whatever." He folded his arms. "I should like to state, however, for the record, so that there is no misunderstanding later, that I find you the most remarkable person I have ever met. That I admire your mind, your nerve, and your temper. That I would follow you into the Senate with a pistol in each hand." The gray eyes held mine. "And that if, at some future time, you should wish for something more than an ally, you have only to say so. I will not press. I will not hint. I will not flirt. But I should not like you to say, afterward, that I did not warn you."

My mouth had gone dry.

"Warn me of what?"

"That I am not a moderate man," said Declan Marrow. "When I take a thing in hand, I take it entirely."

…

I should like to say that I replied with dignity.

I said nothing at all. I stood in the muddy yard with my fists clenched, and I looked at him, and the mist moved between us. I felt a heat climb my throat. I felt a hot, ugly, confused anger rise in my chest, anger at his calm, his courtesy, the maddening reasonableness of the whole proposal. He was giving me exactly what I'd asked for. He was handing it to me on a plate. And I wanted, with a savage, shocking, bottomless want, to take the plate and throw it in his face.

"You are impossible," I said.

"So I have been told."

"You are the most arrogant, overbearing, self-satisfied man in the entire Republic."

"Probably."

"I should have left you in the chains."

"You would have been very bored."

"I hate you."

"No," said Declan gravely. "I don't think you do."

I hit him.

I did not mean to. It was the stupidest thing I have ever done. I took a step forward, and my fist came up of its own accord, and I struck him square in the chest. It was like hitting a wall. He did not flinch. He merely looked down at my knuckles, with a faint furrow between his brows, and then up at my face.

I hit him again.

He caught my wrist.

Not roughly. His hand closed round it like a manacle of warm iron. I tried to wrench free. He did not release me. He held me there, in the mist, in the muddy yard, at arm's length, with the full cold weight of his regard on my face.

"Tamsin."

"Let go."

"Not yet."

"I said—"

"I heard." His voice was very low. "I heard. And I am going to ask you one question, and you are going to answer it honestly, because you do not lie."

I glared.

"Do you want me to?"

The yard was quiet. The crows had gone. A drop of rain fell on my cheek.

I did not answer. I could not. The word no was on my tongue, hard and clear, a single syllable. It would have been the truth. It would have been the easiest thing in the world.

I kissed him.

…

It was not a kiss in any romantic sense.

It was a collision. It was a bar-fight. It was the sort of thing that happens when two armies, having glared across a field for a very long time, finally decide to settle matters with their hands. I seized the front of his coat in both fists and dragged his head down, and our mouths met with a clash that rattled my teeth. His arms closed round me. He lifted me off the ground. He tasted of smoke and iron and cold air, and his beard-stubble scraped my chin, and I bit his lip. Hard.

He made a noise in his throat. It was low and rough and half a laugh.

He bit back.

I think there was a good deal of swearing, if not of the vocal kind. I know that I got a hand in his hair and pulled. I know that he pushed me back against the water-barrel, and the barrel rocked, and a cascade of cold water slopped over us both. I know that I did not care. It went on, and on, in a series of hard, hot, hungry, furious exchanges, like a fencing match, each of us giving ground and taking it back, neither willing to yield. It was a debate with no moderator. It was the most honest conversation I had ever had.

When at last I wrenched away, I was gasping.

I stood against the barrel with my hands flat on the wood. My lip was bleeding. So was his. My hair had come down. My whole body trembled, and I could feel my heart going like a runaway engine, and for a moment the world swam, bright and tilting and unreal.

He stood a foot away, panting, with his hands at his sides.

"Equal," I said.

My voice was a croak.

"Equal," I repeated. "Do you understand? It is equals or nothing. I will not be kept. I will not be handled. I will not be managed, or forgiven, or protected, or reassured. If you ever once think to decide for me what I can bear, I will break your nose and leave."

"Understood."

"I will not follow you. I will not obey you. If we are to do this, we do it as two. Two. Not one and a shadow."

"I would not want a shadow," said Declan. His voice was ragged. "I have had one for forty years. I know what it is worth."

"Then say it."

"What do you wish me to say?"

"Say that you will give me nothing that I do not earn. Say that you will ask nothing that I do not choose. Say it's fair."

He drew a long breath. The gray eyes were bright. His mouth, swollen and red at one corner, quirked into the beginnings of a smile.

"It will be fair," said Declan Marrow. "I know no other way."

…

Something behind us made a sound like a snort.

I turned my head.

On the top rail of the fence, with his tail wound around his feet, sat a very large white cat. He had grown. In the past month, on the strength of a single stolen crystal, he had put on a hand's breadth of shoulder and a foot of body, and his wings, which had been pitiful ragged things, now spread behind him like two silver sails. His eyes were the color of mercury. His expression was one of profound, weary contempt.

"Are you finished?" said Nimbus.

I could feel my face go scarlet.

"I have been sitting here for ten minutes. I have watched the whole of it. I should like it noted that it was exceedingly boring."

"It is not your concern."

"It is entirely my concern. I live in this house. I have a nose." He turned his head and surveyed the Warlord of the Iron March with an air of cool appraisal. "I will say, he is large. That is something. But he shouts."

"I did not shout," said Declan.

"You shouted internally."

"That is not a thing."

"Everything is a thing," said Nimbus, "if you have sufficient hauteur."

He jumped down from the fence and stalked off towards the stable, tail erect, with his wings folded. At the corner of the barn he paused. He looked back over his shoulder. For one moment, I could have sworn that he winked.

Declan looked at me.

I looked at him.

And, helplessly, we both began to laugh.

…

We were still laughing, a little, when the boy came up the road.

He was Hawk's telegraph-runner, a skinny lad of fourteen with red ears and a satchel, and he ran as if the devil were after him. He came flying through the gate and nearly fell over the buckets. He stood there gasping, with his hat in his hand, and his freckled face quite white.

"Mr. Boone said—said to bring it—" He thrust a yellow slip at me. "He said it was urgent. He said to give it to Miss Reeve, in her hand."

I took it. My own hand, I noticed, was not quite steady.

It was a telegram. The paper was coarse and thin. The letters were smudged. It had been sent from the Ravenport office at six that morning, and signed with a single initial.

TAM STOP URGENT STOP WHITLOCKS HAVE GONE MAD STOP PATRIARCH SOLD EVERY ACRE STOP BOUGHT SOMETHING FROM A DEALER IN THE SOUTHERN PORT STOP NOBODY KNOWS WHAT STOP HOUSES ALL TALKING STOP FAIRCHILDS AND BRANDTS AND ALDRINS MARSHALLING STOP THEY SMELL BLOOD STOP COME NOW STOP — M.Q.

I read it twice.

"What is it?" said Declan.

I handed him the slip.

He read it. I watched his face change. The warmth went out of it as a flame goes out in a draught, leaving only the cold bone beneath. He lifted his eyes from the paper to mine.

"The forbidden rite," he said.

"What?"

"The Patriarch is desperate. He has lost the crystal and the Exchange. He has lost the Heart. He has lost his heir's nerve, and he is about to lose his House." The gray eyes were hard as flint. "A man in that state does not retire. He does something unforgivable."

I folded the paper.

"Then we had better be there," I said, "to forgive it."