Ember to Ash

I was thirty-four that autumn, and I thought I knew every kind of tired.

The drake disagreed.

Her name was Cinder, which was optimistic of me. She was flame-scaled, four feet of bad temper, and she had decided this morning that the Ember Ring was her personal insult.

"Again," I said, and snapped the signal rope.

She refused. She sat down in the middle of the arena like a scalded cat and glared at me with both copper eyes.

Fine. Two can play.

I didn't shout. Shouting at a beast is just noise with sweat in it. I crouched instead, slowed my breathing, and waited. The crowd up in the stands rustled. Market day always brought them. Farmers, traders, a few vials of magic changing hands at the canvas stalls above. Nobody important.

Except somebody was important, apparently, because I felt watched. Properly watched. Not the idle stare of a man counting the seconds until the ale tent opened. Something with weight to it.

Cinder surged up and finally ran the paces. Fire from the throat gutter, catching the iron targets in sequence, left to right. Then the weave, through the staves, claws shrieking on stone. Then the hold, which is the hard part. Fire wants to spend itself. A trained drake holds it in her chest like it was a swallowed coin and gives it out a mouthful at a time.

She gave it out perfectly. Six seconds, seven, eight.

I dropped my hand. She shut her jaws and the flame died with a hiss, and the ring went quiet, then noisy.

"Good girl." I gave her the salted mutton from my belt pouch. She took it with all the grace of a pickpocket.

The crowd clapped the way crowds do. Halfhearted, mostly. A few coins rattled into the collection shield. My apprentice Tam would sweep those up later and grumble about the split.

The watcher didn't clap. He stood.

That got my attention. Most people sit through a demonstration like it's weather. This one came down the ring stairs with a courier's stride, long and purposeful, and stopped at the sand's edge with his boots a polite foot from the boundary line.

Cross-Realms Post colors. Grey and blue, road-worn. Saddle-bag still slung across his chest, which meant he'd come straight here off his rider, dust on his shins and all.

"You held her back," he said.

I looked at him. He was maybe twenty-nine, black hair cut short and uneven, the way a man cuts it himself with a belt knife. A thin scar through one eyebrow. Hands that had done a lot of holding of reins.

"She held herself back," I said. "I just asked nicely."

"No. You crouched. You waited. She was being contrary and you gave her the choice instead of the whip." He said it flat, like a man reporting road conditions. "Most trainers would've gone to the whip."

"Most trainers get bitten."

One corner of his mouth moved. Not quite a smile. A draft of one.

"Geoffrey Rosen," he said, and didn't offer a hand, which I appreciated. My gloves were still bloody from Cinder's breakfast. "Cross-Realms Post. I'm carrying a sealed dispatch west to the Fenward station. Stopping one night."

"One night," I said.

"That's the rider's rule. The road doesn't wait and neither do we."

Well. That was refreshingly honest, if a bit reminiscent of a man reading his own terms aloud. I wiped my hands on my thighs and considered him. He didn't fidget under it. Couriers don't, I suppose. A man who carries other people's secrets across three realms learns to stand still.

"You want something, Master Rosen," I said. "Beyond stating your itinerary."

"The demonstration. I've watched beast work in six towns this year." He glanced at Cinder, who was finishing her mutton with the dignity of a duchess. "Most of it's tricks. This wasn't. The hold, especially. Eight seconds is, what, regional standard?"

"Seven is standard. Eight is mine."

"Then that's the finest handling I've seen, and I wanted to say so to your face instead of shouting it from the stands like everyone else."

Huh.

I'm not a woman who gets flustered. I've had affairs. Two years back there was a vintner who came through Last Glade and stayed a week, and before that others, brief and pleasant and forgettable, travelers passing through like weather fronts. I know what attention looks like when it wants something.

This didn't look like that. Or it did, underneath, but the praise itself was real. He'd watched the work. Nobody watches the work. They watch the fire.

"Thank you," I said. And meant it, which surprised me.

Cinder chose that moment to amble over and shove her hot snout against his arm. He flinched, then held still, and I watched a man very deliberately not panic while a creature that could boil his blood breathed on his sleeve.

"She'll burn you," I warned.

"Will she?"

"Not unless I tell her to. Or unless you're rude."

He put his hand flat on her neck scales, above the heat line, the correct spot, and I hadn't told him the correct spot.

"You've handled drakes before."

"Thornbreak relay keeps one for the winter passes. Her name is Boil." He scratched. Cinder made a noise like a kettle agreeing to a truce. "She's meaner than this one."

"Cinder's not mean. She's opinionated."

"Cinder's opinionated," he repeated, dry as the sand under us. "Is that what we call it."

"Yes. And you can tell Boil I said so."

He laughed then. Short, rusty, like a door that hadn't opened in a while. I liked the sound more than I meant to.

The light was going amber over the ring wall. Market stalls were folding up. Tam was hovering at the arena gate with the rake and the expression of a boy who wants his supper, and I realized I'd been standing at the sand's edge talking to a stranger longer than I'd talked to anyone all week.

"There's a tavern," I heard myself say. "The Tallow Lamp. The food's bad and the wine's worse, but the fire's good and nobody bothers couriers because everyone wants their letters to arrive."

He looked at me properly then. Taking my measure, the way I'd taken his.

"That an invitation or a warning about the stew?"

"Both. Separately."

He shouldered his bag. Cinder watched him go with her head tipped, then looked at me, and if a drake can smirk, she did.

"Don't," I told her.

She hummed a low note. The one she makes when she thinks she's right about something.

We walked out of the ring together, the three of us, into the amber light, and I caught myself already thinking about the evening ahead and hating myself a little for it. One night. One night, the road calling at dawn, and a rule that nothing ties a courier to a place.

I'd heard that rule before. I'd even liked it, once, because it kept things clean.

It didn't feel clean this time. It felt like standing in front of the hold, watching a flame you knew was going to spend itself, and counting the seconds anyway.

The Tallow Lamp smelled like tallow, unsurprisingly, and burned mutton, and thirty years of spilled ale nobody had ever mopped properly. The fire was good, though. That was the honest sales pitch and the fire delivered.

We took the corner table. The one with the bench that didn't wobble, which I guard with my life.

Geoffrey set his saddle-bag against the wall, ordered two tankards of the smoked ale without asking what I drank, and I decided that was a point in his column. A man who reads a room. Or a man who just drinks whatever's poured. Hard to say at this stage.

"So," he said, settling. "Opinionated."

"Deeply. She once refused to run the paces for a week because I changed her feeding bowl."

"What fixed it?"

"The old bowl. Which I had thrown out. Which I then dug out of the midden and scrubbed, at midnight, like an idiot apologizing to a lizard."

He laughed. The rusty door sound again, easier this time. Second hinge. "Boil did that with her perch. Moved it two feet and she sulked for days."

"There it is. Drakes are tyrants with wings and we're the staff."

"We're absolutely the staff." He drank. Made a face. "Gods, this ale."

"Told you. Bad food, worse wine."

"This isn't wine."

"The wine's worse. Pace yourself."

The fire cracked. Somewhere behind us a trader was loudly misquoting the price of a luck token, and someone was correcting him, loudly. Normal noise. Good noise.

We talked beasts for a while. Feeding schedules. The odd trick that works and the hundred that don't. Then it drifted, the way talk does when neither person is trying to steer it.

"You travel alone," I said. It wasn't quite a question.

"Mostly. Riders pair up on the long runs sometimes. Last year I had a partner on the eastern circuit." He turned his tankard a slow quarter turn on the table. "Three weeks out of Thornbreak, sharing a bedroll when the passes let us. Then the route split and that was that."

"That was that," I repeated. Courier's phrase. Clean edges.

"You've had that."

"Vintner. Two years back. Stayed a week, left a wine stain on my floor I still haven't scrubbed, and I haven't seen him since." I shrugged. "Others. Travelers. Weather fronts."

"Weather fronts." He nodded slowly. "That's a fair way to put it. Warm while it's over you."

"Warm while it's over you," I agreed. "Then gone, and you're grateful for the drying off."

He looked at the fire. I looked at him looking at the fire, which is a thing I do when I think nobody's watching. Tam says I have a staring problem. Tam can sweep and keep his opinions to himself.

"It's a lonely trade," he said finally. "Carrying other people's words. Nobody writes anything to you."

That landed harder than it should have. "And mine's shouting at fire until the fire loves you. Same coin, different side."

"Same coin," he said.

We drank on that a while. The fire spat. The trader gave up on his luck token argument.

"Miriam," I said.

He blinked. "Sorry?"

"My name. You've been circling it for an hour. Miriam Fong. Master trainer, thirty-four this autumn, owner of one opinionated drake and one wine stain."

"Geoffrey Rosen. Twenty-nine. Owner of one saddle-bag and no permanent address." He raised his tankard. "Miriam."

"Geoffrey."

We clinked. The ale really was terrible. I finished it anyway.

Here's where I'll admit something to you, reader, since you've come this far with me. I had already decided. Somewhere between the kettle noise and the weather fronts. I hate that about myself, the deciding, the little sinking feeling of knowing you'll regret the morning and doing it anyway. But I was thirty-four years old and tired of being grateful for the drying off, and he was here now, and warm, and he watched the work.

I stood. Took his hand. His hands were exactly what I'd guessed, reins and rope, rough across the palm.

"Come on," I said. "My quarters are above the arena. It's warm and the bed doesn't wobble, unlike everything else in this town."

He didn't ask if I was sure. He looked at my hand on his, then at my face, and said, "Yes. Please."

Good answer. Please. A man who says please is a man who knows it can be refused.

We went up the outside stair, past Cinder's yard. She was bedded down in her sand, one copper eye open, watching us pass with the smugness of a creature who called it hours ago.

"Not a word," I told her.

She hummed the note.

At the top of the stair I stopped with my hand on the latch. "One tankard each, and the cold air," I said. "I'm clear-headed. Are you?"

"Clear as water," he said. "Still yes."

"Still yes," I agreed, and opened the door.

The lamplit room was small and smelled of leather and beast and the particular smoke that never leaves a trainer's hair. I didn't apologize for it. He didn't seem to expect me to.

He got the door shut and I got my hands on him and there wasn't a lot of ceremony after that. The kiss was impatient. Ale and fire-night and his stubble catching my jaw. His bag thumped to the floor somewhere. I had his collar open before I'd decided to open it.

"Off," I said, tugging.

"You first." He had my laces half undone already, quick fingers, courier fingers, used to knots.

We stripped each other in the doorway like a pair of thieves in a hurry, and I want to tell you it was graceful, but his boot got stuck and I laughed into his mouth and he swore at the boot and it was better than graceful. It was real. Clumsy and warm and both of us breathing like we'd run the paces.

His chest was lean and there was an old white scar down his ribs. I put my mouth to it. He made a short sound.

"Bed?" he managed.

"Door first."

"Door first," he agreed, and pressed me back against it, and the latch dug into my shoulder blade and I did not care one bit.

His mouth went down my throat. I got my fingers in that uneven black hair and pulled, lightly, and he groaned against my collarbone, and I thought, oh, he likes that, filing it away for later, except there wasn't going to be a later, was there. One night. Counting the seconds