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Word of a highblood daring to speak of the Sufferer's teachings spreads like so much blood through fresh linen.
After three nights in three separate taverns, Mindfang takes you far from everything you've ever known. Not merely away from the salt of the sea, from the courtblock you once broke your back bowing to, the heart of your forest and her castle up in the hills; and not simply away from the mansions she has taken you to, the pirate infested ports and the towns brewing and bubbling with criminals that have become your makeshift home, the corners of forgotten maps where treasure falls back into memory, and then into your hands, solid and shining, shattered and spoiled. Where she takes you feels uncharted, as if you have stumbled across a lost civilisation, quite on purpose.
For nights you travel astride Pyralspite, Mindfang in front of you, knowing corners of the world you cannot begin to comprehend. You've yet to figure out how old she is, and rumours tell you she is fifty, a hundred, five hundred, older still; she happily takes credit from crimes that you believe to be before even her time, and you do not doubt that there are a thousand troubles that have scoured Alternia's surface, not yet linked back to her.
When you do stop, sun creeping above the horizon, you sleep rough, outside of towns. Mindfang doesn't want to to be sighted, and though you can only be so subtle while travelling on dragonback, you sleep in caves, rich, sodden earth making your cheek damp. If either of you require anything, Mindfang seizes control of the closest troll and has them bring supplies back. In this way, you never go hungry, and there is more discomfort to be found in boredom than anything else.
Mindfang speaks little, if at all, while you eat. She picks at the food, from time to time, but drinks more than she eats; and she indulges in silence far more than she drinks. Not once has she attempted to kiss you, but you do not think for a single moment that she fears the loss of another limb, metal or otherwise. Occasionally, she'll place her hand against the back of yours, and tap your knuckles twice, gesturing for you to turn the palm upwards. If and when you do, she traces shapes across your palm, indiscernible, and then nothing more.
She is making a show of patience. It peels off her in layers, and like a moult, that impression of her placing her hand against yours, feigning disinterest by staring into the distance and ceasing all movements with a weighty sigh, as if only then realising that she was letting her fingers twitch at all, sticks in your mind. That you might be giving off tell-tale signs of your own doesn't sit well with you. Though she is as unable as ever to read your mind, there are a thousand other gestures that could give you away. The thought of Mindfang knowing that you wouldn't draw your blade, should she kiss you again, makes your insides churn and lurch. Someone has gutted you, hands wrist-deep in your stomach, and is making a noose of your intestines.
The air changes as you draw closer to your destination. The seasons slip out of accordance with how the sweep should be presenting itself, and a cool breeze progresses to a pleasant one, before becoming little more than a bluster of heat. On Pyralspite's back, the ground feels further beneath you than it should, the clouds too high up, and the heat resolves itself as dampness, as if the air itself is sweating. It tastes black there, and the earth smells deeper than it has any right to. Thick, like you're inhaling the vital core of something.
When Mindfang tells you that this is where much of the Empire's metalwork takes place, the smelting and shaping of the Empress' warships, you aren't surprised. There's a tang in the air that seems to galvanise in your throat, and though Mindfang suddenly perks up, as if she has never once played at being silent or withdrawn, it is of little comfort to you. You are no longer amicable to her conversation, filthy from travel, exhausted in a way you cannot imagine ever sleeping off.
The inn she takes you to is unlike anywhere you've ever stayed before. There is no tavern beneath the private blocks, and it is entirely separate from any of the buildings around it. A tall, iron fence surrounds it, no doubt locally produced, and the foyer is large and clean; it smells of soap that nobody has yet got their hands on, worked their palms against its surface and reshaped.
But just because it is spacious and lavishly decorated, and more expensive than a perigee's worth of your usual lodgings, does not mean that it's a respectable place. You notice it first in how little anyone says. The woman behind the desk asks only how many nights Mindfang will be staying for, and when Mindfang states that a week should suffice, for now, nothing more is said, beyond a mere mention of the price. Names are not exchanged, money is passed over with the shake of a hand, and the woman does not presume to ask Mindfang if that will be all, or if she needs any help finding her block.
It is, you expect, the sort of establishment that the upper castes might escape to, out of the watchful gaze of their matesprits, in order to indulge and shorten the already dwindling lifespans of a lowblood slave or two with their appetites. Mindfang takes one block, and one block alone, and you are neither surprised, nor nonchalant enough to let her know that you expected this all along. You say nothing, because conversation is tiresome and your eyes already weigh like rocks in your skull.
The floor is carpeted, it springs beneath your step, and all the way to your and Mindfang's block, you come across nobody else. You do hear things you rather wouldn't through locked doors, however; things that no one but you would have the misfortune of picking up on, you're sure.
Mindfang opens the door, you step in, and she locks it up behind her. Being in the block with Mindfang is entirely different to being anywhere else in the world with Mindfang, and you do not think back to the first time you were with her like this, throat burnt from the friction of a noose, body grazed and bruised from where she half led, half dragged, you across stony paths; you think of only the present, and you almost falter.
She steps away from you, towards the centre of the block. She sits, and something soft shifts beneath her. Not a bed, you think, there isn't quite enough spring in the sound as you'd expect from a place like this. A sofa, more likely than not.
You move towards her, knowing how she'll have arranged herself: sat in the centre of the seats, arms spread wide, draped across the back of the sofa. Your knees bump against hers, and with an agitated curl of your lip, you knock them to the side, and stand between her legs. Her hands move up, very slowly, to find your waist, and though she measures her movements carefully, she isn't tentative in the least.
When they settle on your hips, you feel the shape of them singe right through the fabric of your cheongsam, despite knowing that Mindfang's skin is cooler than your own. You do not shift, or sway, because you are not afraid of her. You have taken her vision seven times over, and her arm twice, so she knows what you will and will not do; she knows that you have left your cane propped against the door frame because you don't need it, not against her.
“I have not been this far north in decades,” she says, one hand moving to the small of your back, drawing you closer. If she leant forward, she could press her words against your sternum. “I wonder how the courtblock here will react, upon learning that Marquise Spinneret Mindfang has returned.”
You place a hand against her shoulder, and then as if to prove that you haven't done so for balance, you let your fingers find their way into her hair, against the back of her head. Her touch at the small of your back tenses, grows hotter, as if to mimic your nails against her scalp.
“I do not doubt that your absence has lulled them into a false sense of security.” A stray thumb finds her ear, and swipes around the edge of the shell. “And now they cannot subsist on rumours of your escapades alone.”
Your reply pleases her. Or not the reply itself, so much as the fact that for once, her efforts are not met with mounting frustration alone. You are disappointed in yourself, until she tilts her head, turning her jaw to sigh into your palm.
“Darling—” Her lips part around the syllables, almost like a kiss. “Take a bath. Every muscle in your body is wound in knots.”
The ablution trap – or bathtub, as she insists – is in an adjoining block, and you turn the lock behind you. Slowly, as if you do not want Mindfang to hear; as if the clunk of the bolt sliding into place will give her the idea of trying to turn the handle in the first place. You peel off your boots, and then the rest of your clothing, letting your belongings coil around each other in a pile on the floor. There is somewhere to deal with the mess your outfit has become on the premises, no doubt, but you cannot begin to think of having your clothes dry cleaned while you yourself are still a mess.
The washblock tiles are smooth and glossy beneath your feet, warmed in a way that makes you never want to move again; as if you have been lured into quicksand, but are only stuck, not sinking. You rest one hand on the edge of a bathtub big enough for three, twist the taps, and the sound of water bursting out and pelting against marble is enough to rouse you from the trance-like stupor tiredness has drawn you into.
You are not in there for particularly long, and nor do you need to be, with how effectively the hot water unspools every ache in your body. You wash quickly, using the first bottle of shampoo your fingers bump against to work the blood and dirt from your hair, take hold of a bar of soap you nudge with your toes, and scrape away layers and layers of grime from the whole of yourself.
Not fifteen minutes have passed since the bathtub was first filled, and already the water glugs as it drains away, plughole slurping greedily. You dry, wrap yourself in one of the cotton robes folded neatly on a shelf, and then join Mindfang, back in the main block.
She stands, making ready to pass you, but then pauses to look at you. You can always tell when she's staring without any intention of converting her observations into mockery or new attempts at making you uncomfortable, because she concludes the action with a slight shake of her head, hair stirred just enough for you to hear, as if she has been momentarily caught in her own thoughts.
Heeding her own advice, Mindfang draws herself a bath. Unlike you, however, she keeps the door open, but you do not take this as a deliberate invitation; there's little need for her to hide herself from anyone, let alone a blind woman, and you have given her nothing but space in the past.
She takes her time. Luxuriates in it, as with everything she chooses to do. You sit on the sofa, where she was moments before, head tilted back, eyes closed, and do not reflect on what led you up to this very moment, or where your life is headed. Instead, you think of now nice it is to be able to sit back, clean, warm and comfortable, knowing that the courtblock isn't about to break down the door, knowing that you are freer outside the safety of the law than you were while protected by it.
You think of how the washblock smells of red berry and mimosa, where Mindfang hasn't chosen the first soap or shampoo she came across, and promptly decide that the twenty minutes she has already spent in there is more than enough time devoted to doing nothing.
The water sloshes as she turns a little to greet you, waves swaying against the side of the bath as you sit on the warm floor, cross-legged. She asks if she has kept you, if you have become bored of waiting, one arm on the edge of the bath, chin propped against the back of her wrist. You tell her you only wished to know whether she wanted a drink from the bar or something to eat, as you're feeling spirited enough for the former.
She says no, not right now, and you do not retreat. Even through the salts she has poured into the steaming water and the soaps she has worked into lathers, you can smell her skin beneath it all. You remember when you had her naked and bound, knelt before you on the floor of her block, with the roar of the local drunks in the tavern below, still not causing enough of a ruckus to drown out the sound of your heart blaring your ears. Her submission had been for her own entertainment, to try wrapping you around her finger in some new way you might not be expecting, and even then, she would not have hesitated to let you do what you wanted.
Because you didn't know what you wanted. You'd been so sure of yourself, so convinced that deluding yourself into following an empty justice system was all you were ever meant to achieve with your life. But she knew that obedience and acceptance without questioning the order of things wasn't how you were supposed to live.
You may not have figured out exactly what it is you want, not yet, but you have a better understanding of what you can do. Waiting is something you've always been particularly good at, but even your patience is wearing thin with Mindfang. If she won't act, then you will. After all, it isn't up to her to initiate each and every last thing.
You lean forward, kissing her. Your hands remain folded in your lap, and Mindfang doesn't reach out to touch you. She still has shampoo lathered in her hair – it drips down, onto the tip of your nose – and as you kiss her, head tilted to the side, lips barely parted, you gain just as much satisfaction in knowing that she'll have nothing cutting to say about this afterwards as you do in the act itself. You keep your lips pressed to hers as you move to stand, crouched before the bathtub, rising slowly, so that she's forced to tilt her jaw up, before you break the kiss off.
Back in the main block, she calls after you, “Perhaps a drink would go down well, after all.” You mix something together at the bar, and though it's hardly expertly made, it's strong, which should cancel out any complaints. You place Mindfang's drink on the coffee table, and sit back on the sofa, glass in your hand. You bring it to your lips, and the drink disappears into your throat, like the tide being ripped towards the shore.
It doesn't take long for Mindfang to join you, sat close enough for you to feel her matching bathrobe brush against the side of your knee. She leans forward, claims her drink, but doesn't relax back against the sofa. She sips on it, hums in appreciation, and places the glass back against the table, clink. You're trying so hard to focus on anything but Mindfang that you can practically hear the condensation rolling in beads down the outside of the glass; which only makes you think of the way she must've smeared the drops with the pads of her fingers, and that they must now be cool, though the rest of her is still warm from the bath.
Mindfang does you a favour in turning your thoughts away from her fingers, a feat which she achieves by blithely kissing your neck. She tilts her head and moves towards you all in one motion, mouth pressing so firmly against your pulse that she must've had her eyes fixed on that very spot for some time, she must've been planning this all out, right down to the very last curve of her lips as she smiles against your skin. She works easily, as if she has done this a thousand times before, and you tense, not from discomfort, but from fear that you will react too quickly, too boldly.
Mindfang isn't just kissing you. Her hand is on your knee, and her fingertips are cool, brushing past the edge of the bathrobe; but her touch is weighted, and for a moment, you can't imagine it not being there at all. You try not to move. She isn't just kissing at your throat, she's grazing her teeth across your skin, sucking down on your flesh, as if she's trying to wear the whole of you away, until she gets down to the white of your bones.
She bites you, laughs when you start, and the noise rumbles through you, low. Her grasp tightens at your knee, and you know in that moment that there is no victory for Mindfang to gain in your movement; only self-satisfaction for her to find in having paralysed you. She kisses the line of your jaw, your damp hair sticks to her face, and you move a leg over her lap.
After that, your actions are no longer purely your own, and Mindfang's movements are no longer hers; nothing is as smooth as it should be, nothing flows, but it all comes together in such a way that the only real hitch is in your breathing. You were all bones long before Mindfang's mouth made you feel as if your skin was peeling away, but you slot against the muscles of her thighs, the rounded width of her hips, without the need to struggle and strain.
Her mouth leaves your neck, finally, though she has scarcely covered every last inch of it, and her kisses creep across your cheek, mouth finding your ear. She grazes her lips across it in the same way that you ran your fingers across hers, and you don't realise until that moment, with your back arched, how long you have been waiting to let out a shiver.
Mindfang's hand is on the small of your back again, and once more, she draws you closer towards her. You think she's taking her time, teeth scraping and digging along the shell of your ear, but you soon turn any blame towards your own impatience; when she exhales, the sound of her breath is louder than anything you've heard before, wind howling through a canyon. It fills not only your ear but the whole of you, twisting downwards and sparking off every nerve in your body, red and orange and bright, bloody blue, colours coming up behind your eyelids like fresh bruises.
And then, when Mindfang rolls her tongue across your ear, and all the blood in your body surges with heat, causing you to feel it everywhere – though in some places more than others – you hear that something in her breathing has changed. It's done so subtly, too slight for you to notice immediately, but her inhalations are sharper, and she exhales shallowly against you. She is not, as you imagined, entirely unbreakable in these regards. Her steel fingers may run up and down between your back and thighs, but she is more flesh and blood than she is metal, and you suddenly become overwhelmingly aware of the fact that she'll buck and writhe, if you sink your nails into her.
Your intent becomes obvious enough, hands at the collar of her bathrobe, pulling it down, over her shoulders. You press your mouth to her shoulder, tongue tracing the contours of the muscles there, and as she begins to rise, Mindfang has you wrap your legs tight against her waist. When she lowers you against the bed, you keep your ankles crossed behind her back, and her long hair falls around your head, like the branches of a willow.
You had thought yourself more disciplined than Mindfang; you had believed that your hands would not move of their own accord, that your mouth would press and lower only where you wanted it to; but nothing truly happens as you expected it to. You do not take your time. You do not divide the moments into taking in the feel of her bare skin, the pull of her muscles, and you do not devote whole minutes to mapping out the ink splayed across her skin. Nor do you kiss without touching, or touch without kissing, and you do not have time to discern how she tastes on your tongue.
Nothing happens in an ordered, coherent way that you can then look back on: the two of you are working against one another and together all at once, and everything unfurls simultaneously, or seems to. It is all but impossible to imagine her fingers crooked inside of you without recalling her breath on your throat or her hips grinding against your thigh, and you cannot remember how she bent her knees and lifted her hips to meet your mouth without first thinking to the feel of her fingers bundled tight in your hair.
After, you're certain you should feel as if your respective baths were all but wasted. There is sweat on your skin and that's just the start of it, and she insists, still, on scattering kisses across your shoulder. Mindfang lies by your side, smiling, almost gasping out her ahs of satisfaction, and without thinking it through, you place a hand on her stomach. She trembles – with delight, you think, but it's always difficult to tell with her – and pulls you flush against her.
It almost feels indecent, to be that close after the act has come to an end, but she lazily strokes one hand up and down your back, and you find that the initial burst of heat hasn't faded completely, not yet. You kiss her, and only now does she seem to be very, very aware that your teeth could shred through her lips and tongue like blades through weather-worn sails. She does not let you lead the kiss, so much as you take charge, slow and languorously, never once uncertain of yourself.
She has had you, but you are not depleted. She has held you down with her body and her hands, and hasn't used you up; there is more to you now than she could've dared to hope for, in the same way that there are things about her hidden away in touch and taste, in the sounds she makes so honestly, that you could not have imagined before.
You turn from her, and Mindfang moves onto her side, one hand on your arm as she kisses along the backs of your shoulders. She has not talked you into this with tales of the Sufferer, with promises of a new world order you can create from the ashes of this one. Indeed, as she kisses harder at the nape of your neck, you find it difficult to picture this having happened any other way than by your own choosing, the twisting of your own mind.
You close your eyes, and let her hands slide around your waist, across the curve of your hips. For once, you relax wholly, sink into the warmth you've produced from her body, and focus on the cool of your pendant against your chest, until her fingers distract you entirely.