LITMIR.BIZ

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from her.

      Without a word, I mounted her and then possessed her. Blind lust drove me, and she gasped, ‘Tom!’ shocked at my fierce ardour. My hands were cupped on her shoulders, my mouth covered hers, and she rose to meet me. A sudden terrible need for her overtook me. To touch, skin to skin, in closeness and passion, to share myself completely with another being, to leave behind the sense of being isolated in my own flesh. I held nothing back, and I thought I carried her with me.

      Then, as I lay dizzied with completion, she said in a small voice, ‘Well. You’re a hasty man, Tom Badgerlock.’

      My hoarse breathing as I lay on top of her made a hideous silence of its own. Shame drenched me. After a terrible stillness, she stirred under me. I heard her draw a breath. ‘You were hungry!’ Perhaps she regretted her words of disappointment, but that did not call them back. Her gentle attempt at making light of it brought the blood to my face and completed my humiliation. I dropped my forehead to the pillow beside hers. I listened to the wind outside in the streets. Some people tramped by in the street, just on the other side of the plank wall. A man’s sudden shout of laughter made me wince. Up in the attic loft, I heard a thump and a squeak. Then Jinna kissed the side of my neck and her hands moved gently down my back. Her voice was a soothing whisper. ‘Tom. The first time is seldom the best. You’ve shown me your boy’s passion. Shall we find your man’s skills, now?’

      So she gave me another chance to prove myself, and I was shamefacedly grateful. I proceeded in a workmanlike way that soon rekindled both of us. There were several things Starling had taught me and Jinna seemed pleased with my second performance. It was only at the very end, as we lay panting together, that her words stirred a misgiving in me. ‘So, Badgerlock,’ she said, and then drew breath beneath me. ‘So that is what it is like for a she-wolf.’

      Incredulous, I lifted myself a little from her so that I could look down into her eyes. She blinked up at me, an odd smile on her face. ‘I’ve never been with a Witted one, before this,’ she confided to me. She drew another deeper breath. ‘I’ve heard other women speak of it. That such men are more …’ She paused, seeking for a word.

      ‘Animal?’ I suggested. The word as I spoke it was an insult.

      Her eyes widened, and then she laughed uncomfortably. ‘That isn’t what I was going to say, Tom. You shouldn’t take insults to yourself where a compliment is intended. Untamed, was what I was going to say. Natural, as an animal is natural, with no thought of what any other may think of his ways.’

      ‘Oh.’ I could say no more than that. I wondered abruptly what I was to her. A novelty? A forbidden indulgence with something not quite fully human? It was unnerving to wonder if she saw me as bestial and strange. Did our magics set us so far apart in her mind?

      Then she pulled me down upon her breasts again, and kissed the side of my neck. ‘Stop thinking,’ she warned me, and I did.

      Afterwards, she dozed briefly beside me, my arm around her and her head pillowed on my shoulder. I judged that I had acquitted myself well. But as I watched the sunlight’s passage on the wall, I realized it had been a performance. Neither of us had spoken of love. It had simply been a thing we had done together, something that felt good, something I was reasonably competent at. Yet if our first coupling had left her unsatisfied, the later ones left me feeling incomplete in a deeper way. With a sharpness I had not felt in years, I suddenly longed for Molly, and how simple, good, and true it had been between us. This was not that, any more than my partnering with Starling had been. It wasn’t even sharing a bed. At the heart of my discontent, I wanted to be in love with someone the way I had been that first time. I wanted someone I could touch and be held by, someone who made everything else in the world more significant simply by her existence.

      This morning, Kettricken had touched me as a friend, and that had held more meaning and even more true passion than this had. I suddenly wanted to be gone from here, for none of this ever to have happened. Jinna and I had been on the path to becoming friends. I was just beginning to know her. What had I done to that? And Hap was stirred up in this stew as well. If Jinna wanted to carry on with this, how would I manage it? Openly flaunting yet again all the rules I had taught him, for how a man should conduct his life. Or in secret, hiding it from Hap, furtively coming and going from Jinna’s bed?

      I was deathly tired of secrets. They seemed to spawn all around me, to fasten to me and suck the life from me like cold leeches. I hungered for something real and true and open. Could I change my relationship with Jinna to that? I doubted it. Not only was there no foundation of deep and honest love between us, but once again I was enmeshed in the secret business of the Farseer intrigues. There would be secrets I must keep from her, secrets that would eventually endanger her.

      I had not realized she was awake. Or perhaps my deep sigh stirred her past the edge of drowsing. She set her hand to my chest and patted me lightly. ‘Don’t be troubled, Tom. It wasn’t all your failure. I had guessed there might be a problem when the charm by the bed near unmanned you. And now your spirits grow bleak and grim, do they not?’

      I shrugged one shoulder. She sat up beside me in the bed. She reached across me, her flesh warm against mine, and lifted my shirt off the bedside charm. The sad little thing hunched there, forlorn and alone.

      ‘It’s a woman’s charm. It’s difficult to make, as it must be very finely tuned to the individual woman. To construct this sort of charm, you have to know the woman from the skin in. So a hedge-witch can make one for herself, but not for anyone else … at least, not one that is certain. This one is mine, tuned to me. It’s a charm against conception. I should have guessed that it might affect you. Any man who wants children so desperately that he takes in a foundling to raise on his own has that longing down to his bones. You may deny it, but that little hope burns in you each time you lie with a woman. I suspect it is what must drive your passion, Tom. And this little charm took that idle dream away from you before you could even wish it. It told you our joining would be futile and barren. That’s what you feel now, isn’t it?’

      Having something explained to you does not always solve it. I looked aside from her. ‘Isn’t it?’ I asked, and then winced at the bitterness in my voice.

      ‘Poor boy,’ she said sympathetically. She kissed me on the forehead, where Kettricken had kissed me earlier. ‘Of course not. It’s what we make it.’

      ‘I’m in no position to be a father to anyone. I didn’t even come to see Hap last night, when he told me it was important. I’ve no wish to start another little life that I cannot protect.’

      She shook her head over me. ‘What the heart longs for, and what the mind knows are two different things. You forget I’ve seen your palms, sweet man. Perhaps I know more of your heart than you do yourself.’

      ‘You said my true love would come back to me.’ Again, despite myself, my words sounded accusing.

      ‘No, Tom. That I did not. Well do I know that what I say to a person is seldom what that person hears, but I’ll tell you again what I saw. It’s here.’ She took my hand. She held the open palm close to her near-sighted eyes. Her bare breasts brushed my wrist as her fingers traced a line in my palm. ‘There is a love that twines in and out of your days. Sometimes, it leaves, but when it does, it runs alongside you until it returns.’ She lifted my hand closer to her face, studying it. Then she kissed my palm, and moved it back to her breast. ‘That doesn’t mean that you must be alone and idle while you wait for it to come back,’ she suggested in a whisper.

      Fennel saved us both the embarrassment of my declining. Want a rat? I glanced up. The orange cat crouched on the edge of the loft, his catch squirming in his jaws as he stared down at us. It’s still got a lot of play in it.

      No. Just kill it. I felt the red spark of the rat’s agony. It had no hope of living, but the life in it would not surrender easily. Life never gives up willingly.

      Fennel ignored my refusal. He launched from the edge of the loft, dropping down to land beside us on the bed, where he released his prey. The frantic rodent scuttled towards us, dragging a hind leg. Jinna exclaimed in disgust and leapt from the bed. I snatched

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