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She’d woken before him.
It had been that way in Anoun. Vignette remembered teasing him about his lack of prowess in regards to having an alert ear for danger, and he’d retorted that he was, in fact, a lighter sleeper while on the move with his unit. He’d said it was just something about the library that made him sleep like a baby, unheeding of danger. Comforted and safe.
Maybe he felt the same way now, cocooned in the furs on the stone floor with her. Or maybe he was just exhausted.
Vignette slipped out from under his arm and sat up so she could study him. The bruises on his stomach were horrendous, and she’d glimpsed matching contusions on his back before they’d surrendered to sleep. The cuts on his wrists from when he’d fought against the shackles kept reopening and bleeding. He was going to be in pain when he woke up.
She could help him. It had been so, so long ago when she’d first read the texts on herbal medicine, but she remembered how she’d run to Mima Roosan in excitement whenever she’d learned how to identify a new plant. All she’d wanted was to be able to help people.
The hallway was still dark as Vignette made her way down to the kitchen and located the herb that Tourmaline had told her was always stocked in the brothel. The kitchen was in shambles due to their frantic scrambling the night before as they’d tried to tend Fleury’s gunshot wound. Vignette put as many of the glass jars back into place on the shelf as she could before she went back up the stairs.
At the top of the staircase, she saw light peeking out from underneath Fleury’s door. Whoever was currently sitting vigil with her was awake. Vignette knocked lightly on the door and pushed it open.
Tourmaline’s familiar eyes jumped in panic before she closed them in relief. “Vignny, it’s too early to be scaring the shit out of me like that. I thought you were the constabulary, come to take Fleury away.”
“You would have heard pounding on the stairs, not a knock on the door,” Vignette pointed out, but gentled her voice when she saw the bags under her best friend’s eyes.
“That just may be, but I’m too tired not to worry.” Tourmaline stood up and embraced her, sighing so deeply it sounded like sob to Vignette’s ears. “Dr. Sylvanus, the Puck butcher, told me Fleury will probably make it. But I’m so tired, Vignny. What kind of life is she going to have here, trapped on the Row? She wanted out.”
“She’s going to have the life she chooses, Tourmaline,” Vignette whispered back, barely able to keep her voice low because she felt like shouting the words. “We’re all going to.”
*****************
He reaches out, but she’s gone. They’ve lost each other.
Panic floods his mind as something constrains the arm he stretched out. Now he’s shackled again, behind bars, unable to reach her. Someone hits his head –
Philo jerked awake as his head connected with the stone floor. There was just enough light from the sunrise leaking through the curtains for him to see that he’d rolled off the furs he and Vignette had been sleeping on.
Even though he was free of the nightmare, his panic didn’t subside. Vignette was no longer beside him.
The stone floor was cold against the bare skin of his back, as cold as her body would be if a constabulary officer shot her down from the sky. He lurched to his feet, but before he had time to reach for his shirt, the panic left him.
She was standing in the doorway, a wooden bowl in her hands.
They both took two steps forward and found the places where they fit against each other perfectly.
“Sorry, sorry,” he muttered against her neck. “I just woke up scared for you.”
“We’re together, Philo,” she whispered back. “We’ll be alright, together.”
The promise eased away some of the fear in his blood, and he felt his body relax until the rhythm of his breathing matched Vignette’s. But the peace was broken after a few seconds when her stomach growled, and she drew back with a groan. “Unless we starve together. Then we’d be slightly less than alright.”
“When was the last time you ate?” he asked. He’d heard the sarcasm in her tone, but he couldn’t keep concern out of his own voice. He knew there would be food shortages with the Row now ghettoized behind barbed wire.
“I had a few mouthfuls of the slop soup offered in the constabulary holding cell.” Vignette’s steely gaze didn’t waver from his, and he knew she wasn’t lying. “What about you?”
So he wouldn’t lie either. Never again. “No. I can’t remember the last time I ate. The slop soup menu was too refined for the likes of a former Burgish soldier.”
“I’m sure we can find some food around here that’s less fancy,” Vignette replied, but he could see that her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Before we hunt down breakfast, though, I want to put this on your wounds.” She held up the wooden bowl she’d brought into the room. “Arnica plant.”
“I don’t have wounds, Vignette.”
“You’re saying I’m hallucinating the swelling and bruises all over you?” She clunked the bowl down on the stone floor beside the furs they’d slept on and sat down beside it.
“No. I’m just saying, I have bruises, while Fleury is in the room beside us with a bullet wound in her stomach. I don’t need to be the reason we run out of medicinal herbs, especially when only the Martyr knows when we’ll be able to resupply.” He covered the worst bruise on his side with his hand and sat down beside Vignette, ignoring the bone-deep ache that spread across his abdomen.
“Arnica plant is mostly used to reduce bruising,” Vignette countered. “And the brothel has a stockpile of it for when the clients are abusive shitholes. I think we can afford to use a little Arnica on ourselves. But if you won’t take it, I won’t either.”
“Blackmail,” he grumbled, but reached for the bowl.
When he looked up again, Vignette was unbuttoning the lower half of her chemise, and the pain in his side suddenly had nothing to do with how many times he’d been punched.
It had been seven years since they’d sat like this, together, half-dressed on a pile of furs on a cold stone floor. They could have had seven years of mornings like this, if only he hadn’t been a fool. He’d caused her far more pain than the beatings she’d suffered at the constabulary and at Piety Breakspear’s hand, and the salve for that pain seemed far harder to acquire than Arnica.
They took turns applying the poultice to the worst of each other’s contusions. Philo’s hand shook as he smoothed the medicine against her rib cage, where her soft pale skin had turned deep purple and red, and traced the contusions until they disappeared under her bralette. His former coworkers had done that to her. Men who he’d shared tobacco with had drove their fists into her ribs and struck her across the face.
Vignette captured his shaking hand and held it. “Philo, we’re alive. We’re together. I’m letting you touch the underside of my breast instead of stabbing you in the neck. Try not to think of anything else.”
There was so much to think about. His father was the Chancellor. His father was dead. Vignette had nearly lost her life. They were trapped in a city that hated them. They were hungry and hurt. But she was letting him graze his thumb against her cloth-covered breast and she wasn’t slicing his throat.
Vignette was right, as usual. All they had was the moment.