Chương 34: 1.33. Eat Shit

The wet, warm spot where she'd kissed him was already cooling. Seth wondered if his hyperawareness of it would ever fade, or if he'd bear it forever, an invisible badge of nerve endings eternally nostalgic for the plump black lips that once graced them. The bemused clicking of Ofelia's tongue brought him back from the fugue Annalise's kiss had placed him in.

"Oooh, Seth. She hit you with the Santiago special."

"I veto that," Tiago said.

"The name, that is. I will keep my thoughts re: the kiss to myself."

"I think it's all rather charming, don't you? Mother's got a crush." Tiago maintained his death mask blankness.

"Sure." The carriage door slammed open. Anna al Ydris, shoulders bunched and eyes narrowed, slunk down its step to the Sondam clay, her black horse tack jangling in her hand. She raised the harness up and out; Demetrius trotted to her on cue, and her razorcut scowl softened for a moment. Then she looked past her pink-skinned steed to Seth, and it slashed itself back on. The leather harness snapped its slack out in her hand.

"Let's get this done," she said, and clipped the first tether around Demetrius' neck.

"You're coming along, il Gutierre."

"Ma'am." Tiago stepped forward.

"You instructed us to stop you if—""It's all right." Seth held a mollifying hand up.

"What do you need me for, Anna?"

"Hunting," she said.

"You climb trees?"

"I climb whatever you want me to." Her whiskers twitched.

"Fine."

"If I'm the hunter and not the bait this time, I'm willing to give it another try."

"Good." She scowled down her little button nose at him.

"Cause last time I left you out of my sight with my daughter your idiocy got her stabbed. What part of get her back to the carriage didn't translate?" She returned to her business with Demetrius.

"Hey, Anna."

"What," she grunted, not turning from her harness.

"Eat shit," Seth said. That detached her from her preparations. She whirled from Demetrius and bared her murani fangs.

"Watch yourself, il Gutierre."

"I'm doing what you told me to, boss."

"This isn't Annalise at the fuckin' reins, you hear?" Anna's hand tightened on her smallsword's plain spherical pommel.

"Try and bring that grab-ass smart-mouth shit around me and see what happens." He folded his arms.

"What happens?" She took a menacing step toward him, right into his face. He didn't move.

"You think you're gonna get in my good books just because you're fuckable, il Gutierre?"

"I think you called me fuckable," Seth said.

"That's got to put me in the table of contents, at least."

"Fucking Annalise." Anna hacked an unkind laugh.

"Acting like you're some pureheart. Pretending like we're sparing your innocence for some yokel hick to give you a hick family. As if a two-bit con like you'd have kids." Seth shrugged.

"No argument here." She dropped her voice into a menacing whisper.

"Little fuckin' freak. You think I don't notice? Tripping over your dick? Sniffing my fucking saddle? Pathetic."

"I don't sniff your saddle." Though one time he had laid a palm on it for a few seconds while grooming Demetrius. It had still been warm.

"You know what I think? I think you've put on Anna because you think it'll make me fold and decide you're not worth the squeeze." He tutted.

"Won't work, al Ydris."

"I put her on because I'm hunting a seraph, fool."

"Okay," he said.

"So hunt."

"Shut your trap and I will." Seth obeyed, and watched Anna's preparations with trap firmly shut. Anna loaded her spear onto its sconce, reached for her saddlebag, and paused to cast a dark look at him.

"What?"

"I didn't say anything." She scoffed and turned from him.

"Get your things loaded up." Seth picked through the halfway-organized carriage interior. Tiago furtively joined him by its frosted window.

"You want to stay, I'll back you up." Seth shook his head and gave the man in a youth's body a pat on the shoulder.

"I'll pitch in."

"Are you trying to impress her or something?

"I doubt that's possible when she's Anna." Seth tapped the toe of his right boot against his left. Stiletto accounted for. Hello again, strange new friend.

"Maybe I'm trying to impress you." Tiago smirked.

"I don't know impressed. But you're not what I expected you'd be, give you that." Seth found his cutlass and tested the pull on the scabbard again. As long as he held it fast, it came out okay, though there were still flakes of blackened blood on its fuller.

"What'd you expect?" If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. Tiago observed his test draws impassively.

"No comment." Seth approached Anna with his kit. She flapped a hand dismissively toward Tiago, who was unhooking Draco from his yoke.

"Not on my horse. You ride with him."

"I could just take Draka."

"Too much horse for a reedy little thing like you. Break your neck." Anna whistled to Tiago.

"Boy. The thief rides with you."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"And, uh." A quirk of Anna's scarred lip, almost a smile.

"This is a gray feather, like I said. Thought it was a good chance when I was the other one. Now I'm sure." Tiago's perpetual stoicism cracked.

"Does that mean—""Means you keep your distance, if you're insisting on using the fuckin' thing," Anna said.

"Too close and it'll dud your mites. And the sword has to finish them."

"But I can bring it?" It was brief, but Anna graduated to an actual smile at her son's boyish excitement.

"You carry it, fine." Tiago pumped his fist and hurried into the carriage. He emerged with a molded leather case, lumpy and oblong like a brass instrument carrier. Seth approached inquisitively as Tiago flipped the case's clasps. Lisa played the sax. Did Tiago have a trombone?

"What's in there?"

"What's in here, Mr. il Gutierre, is a wonderful reminder that, in this life of carriage and candle…" Tiago lifted the lid.

"There remain moments of glorious modernity." He reached reverently into the case's sable interior and removed a machine gun. The Verdugo Through the scaffwood trees and the midplain ferns Anna al Ydris stalked. Petrichor and pine on her nose. Things growing, things dying. The primeval honesty of the taiga wood. Her whiskers shivered. She was no muran, not really. But it touched something in her half-borrowed mind. Her boy's pace behind her was accompanied by the metallic rhythm of his machinegun.

Clink-clack-clatter. Clink-clack-clatter. Soft as he could make it, she knew without demanding. That was fine. It was an ambush tonight. She loved an ambush. They found a clearing where the tree roots criss-crossed and gnarled at the edges of a shallow shelf of rock, like a hardened scar on the forest face. Anna's boot went from a forest-floor squish to a firm thud atop the stone. She kicked away the mat of leaves and found the hand-chiseled markings beneath it.

"Ritual circle," she said.

"This is the spot. Find a spot to set that MG up, boy. Use the stand. No firing from the saintfucking hip."

"Yes, ma'am." Tiago crouched by the fans of bracken and loaded the drum into his newfangled murder machine.

"You haven't let me practice hipfire enough for that, anyway."

"And I won't." She peered into the dappled dusk as the leaves' shadows blended with the cooling day's, looking for Seth.

"Tying up the horses can't take this long. Where is that thief?"

"So, uh. Mother." It was rare that Tiago called her mother when she was Anna. She looked his way warningly. He was sitting cross-legged, the wooden stock of his machinegun propped on his leg. So attentive, her boy. So keen. As Annalise, she felt a pang sometimes, meeting his shadowed gaze, at the wariness in it. A hauntological guilt over the childhood he hadn't had, of the pretends never played, the frogs un-caught, the moments of panic he used to have in rooms when an adult stood in the way of the only exit.

When she looked at him through Anna's eyes, she saw a warrior who'd faced the worst of the world young, and would never allow it to inflict itself upon him or his family again. She took a cold pride in it.

"What's happening there?" he asked.

"Talking of the thief."

"Worried about the pillowbrains going cozy on him, huh?" That was what she and Tiago called Annalise and Lisa.

"They'll catch up."

"It's not that," he said.

"It would be all right. I mean— I would be all right." She raised a silver eyebrow.

"I would," he insisted.

"You're a grown-up, he's a grown-up, I'm a grown-up. Appearances aside."

"What's happening there is nothing." She leaned against a tree and adjusted her breastplate's shoulderstrap.

"He's a syndicate castoff. Trash in the gutter-catch."

"All right," he said.

"You disagree?" He shrugged.

"You waited till I was Anna to ask me," she said.

"Tells me something."

"I knew if I told that to Annalise, she'd say oh, Sunshine and want to buy me a snack and sit down somewhere to talk about it and my feelings and all that," Tiago said.

"And Anna would want to change the subject as quick as possible." Anna scoffed and looked past him. You aren't used to being looked at how he looks at you. That's all. You'll shake him off.

"Where is that thief," she murmured.

"Here he is," said a voice behind her. A moment of violent motion occurred and arrested itself with her spear's tip a fingerspan away from Seth il Gutierre's sternum. She lowered it to his stomach and paced backward to allow him into the clearing.

"Never fucking do that again," she said.

"Never sneak up on me again." He stood contrapposto in the jade remnants of the sunset.

"I don't think ten feet away counts as up on. Hey, Tiago." Tiago nodded from the underbrush.

"Il Gutierre." Anna sank the spearhead into the ground.

"I want my space kept, thief."

"All right." He held his hands up.

"Sorry." He was using his friendly voice on her. That was not proper.

"You say you climb trees?" she demanded. He nodded.

"What should I—" She pulled her head off. The eerie feeling came to her, the unclenching of something that hadn't clenched in the first place. Seth's consternation magnified as she held her head out to him.

"Take me up," she said.

"What?"

"Find a scaffwood," she said.

"A tall one. Get me an overlook. Unless you can't climb a tree one-handed?"

"I didn't say that." He reached for her. She drew herself back.

"Not by the hair," she said.

"I'm not a turnip sack." He rolled his eyes.

"I hadn't planned on it. You want up or not?" You want up. Like she was a toddler. She handed herself to the thief. Her vision jostled and swung as he tucked her under his arm and planted his foot against a thickly gnarled root. Great. Now she had to deal with il Gutierre's body odor.

"Stay frosty, Tiago," Seth said, and with feline grace and silence he was climbing. He showed no real hesitation or discomfort with an occupied hand. He leaned a bit more, perhaps, kept his body closer to the rough-hewn bark. But still he moved with birthright familiarity. Here was something he could do excellently that Anna could not. She didn't like that. There was a callus on his index finger, on the outward edge between first and second knuckle. How'd he get that, she wondered. His hand smelled like lavender.

And oakmoss, maybe? It must be leftover from the shaving cream he used on that weaselly little face of his. The smell intermingled with the peppery scent of his underarm. She took another inhale of it before she remembered she was annoyed and disgusted. She breathed through her mouth instead.

"This is normally something a thief tries to avoid," Seth said, as they ascended." Climbing the scaffwood. That's a syndicate phrase for—""For what a Verdugo does to them," Anna said.

"I know. Focus on your work."

"This only halfway counts, really." His boots scraped against the bark as he mantled onto a broad branch.

"Mostly I've climbed trees when I'm running away from people. Or dogs. It's nice to slow down and enjoy it. Oughta do this more often."

"Find something that'll support our weight," she said.

"Shouldn't be hard with your twiggy ass."

"I don't know. Your head is heavier than I thought it'd be."

"Weak." He sat cross-legged at the base of a thick bough forty or fifty feet above the forest floor, and placed Anna in his lap. Looking up at him from this angle, up his little weasel nose, she had to bite back more invective. He was doing this on purpose. To belittle her.

"You know," he said.

"First I was surprised that a Verdugo was one of the kindest people I'd met, and then I was surprised at how such a kind person could have such a mean side. I didn't get it. But you know what I think?"

"I know you'll insist on telling me."

"Now that I've gotten to know the rest of you better," he said, "I think you're pretty cute."