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It had never been a problem before. Two years they’ve travelled together and in that time they’ve slept in stables, wrapped up in the same blanket; they’ve slept in tiny, crooked huts on tiny pallets, taking turns using the pillow and being one; they’ve slept in gutters and fields and inns, wrapped up in each other, safe and warm.
Tonight, Ashton steers them to an inn he knows and counts out coin for three rooms. ‘Fuck. For two silver a night, you’d better have feather-fucking-mattresses…’ He squints at the tiefling manning the counter, trying to read the name embroidered on their vest. ‘Faley?’
‘Baley.’ The tiefling shrugs, runs an eye over their group. Lingers on their weapons. ‘I can throw in breakfast.’
‘Done.’ Ash slaps the counter before Baley can backtrack, slides the coins over with that pinched look he always gets when handing over more than a silver for anything.
‘We can pitch in,’ Orym adds from down around Ashton’s hip.
Ashton studiously ignores the offer. Dipping into his purse again, he pulls out a gold, holds it temptingly between two fingers, moving it ever so slightly so it catches the lamplight. Not bothering not to sound suspicious, he says, ‘If anyone asks about us, we aren’t here, we weren’t here.’
‘It helps,’ Baley says, and folds their hand around the coin, ‘that I have no fucking clue who you are. Rooms four, five, and seven. Here are your keys. Breakfast ends when the cook runs out of food.’
Ashton grunts, takes the keys. He holds them way up over his head, laughs when Orym easily makes the jump with a little ‘Hup!’ of effort, and springs to snatch them out of his palm.
After weeks together, it’s thoughtless, the way the party divides.
Orym and Fearne head off first, protective and gleeful, respectively. At his soft, ‘Wait a moment, please,’ Fearne actually listens to him, face going a bit feral, a bit grave, a bit soft - a riot of expressions only she understands, and waits at the doorway to each room as he checks them over for traps and other unsavoury elements, hand on blade, shield dropped down into his palm. She doesn’t wait patiently, claws scratching against the wood of the doorjamb, but she waits. When he’s done, relaxing into his position a half-step behind his friend, they wander through each of the rooms again—this time, just to touch. Fearne switches the blankets in the first and third room, little tail wagging happily.
Ashton takes the first room in the hall, already stripping off their boots before they get to the door. FCG trundles along behind them. Chetney wavers for a moment—eyes tracking Fearne down to the end of the hall—and Ashton leans out of their doorway, winks him into their room. Their teasing ‘C’mon, old man. You can keep me warm if Fearne won’t have you,’ drifts out into the hall before the door clicks shut.
Imogen and Laudna take the second room.
The mind-on-mind-on-mind-on-mind-on-mine never really ends, never stops, so when Imogen sees the bed—bed, singular, small—her thoughts go to Fearne and the way her mind had gone quiet and light when she’d flounced away from the second room, this room, and now that Imogen is really thinking about it, the sound of it had been like laughter, felt like the weightlessness of jumping on a bed, that moment right at the top of the arc, and it matches perfectly with how Fearne’s mind sings when she’s playing a trick, picking a pocket with a deft hand. And then, unbidden, Imogen is thinking about the man outside, two streets south, who—maybe I should go with the curry tonight…or the bread and dip? had that last night, so good, could have it again? can’t go wrong with that maybe I should try something new he always said I wasn’t adventurous but I know the dip is good—can’t choose between two meals for his dinner and Imogen pushes his-all-other thoughts out of her head with a clench of her jaw. The pressback is immediate, a dull ache.
Opening her eyes, the room is as it was. The only change is in Laudna, also staring at the bed, who has nearly worried one of her fingernails from its bed in the time that Imogen has been preoccupied with her-their thoughts.
‘You take it.’
Laudna doesn’t seem to hear. She worries at her nail and she worries at the discordant strings of her own mind, pulling and plucking and pulling.
‘Laudna.’
‘Hm?’
‘You take the bed.’
Laudna tilts her head to the side, squints curiously across at her like Imogen is speaking in a language she’s still learning. ‘I’m not tired quite yet –‘
‘I mean tonight. I’m going to sleep with Fearne and Orym. Somethin’ tells me they’ve got a bigger bed.’ Not waiting for Laudna to respond one way or another, Imogen hoists her bag onto her shoulder and steps out into the hall.
The door closes behind her—she is the one who pulls it closed, can’t blame Laudna for that—and Imogen buckles. She stands still, not trusting her trembling legs, knees like fucking water, to hold her. Has to lean back and brace against the wall as Laudna’s mind remains empty for an awfully long time—unnaturally so, like an endless breath drawn in and in and in.
Imogen’s lungs sting as she holds her breath, waiting for Laudna’s thoughts.
Maybe if she listens more carefully? She drops her guards and he finally decides on his dinner—yes, that’s what I’ll do, curry. I’ll have the curry—and she watches, dreamily, as the grease-stained and muscle-bound mechanics work on the crawlers—good gods and bad, what I wouldn’t give for her to sling me over her shoulder and—and climbs up to the roof where they pick seeds from slices of fruit, handfeeding them to their pin-prick taloned familiar—one for you, one for me-ow! okay, okay, another one for you, greedy little thing—and more and more and more and she waits, searches, sifts through for Laudna’s thoughts, her music.
Laudna can’t keep them to herself, Imogen can’t ignore them; Laudna can’t hide, Imogen can’t be alone. It’s not something she gets to be but if she can bury herself beneath the weight, pressure, of something she chooses to submerge herself in, that can block out all the rest a little. She wants to hear her; not the words but the familiar tenor, wants to be soothed by the ease of it, that familiar mind against, around, on her own.
And yet. Laudna is quieter than she usually is.
Will she take this away too ? It’s a bitter thought, unkind. Laudna cannot control her mind the way Imogen can. It’s a sharp thought, deserved. Laudna should have controlled herself, the way Imogen trusted her to. It’s too much blame, misplaced, mishandled—but Imogen has nowhere else to put it and nowhere else she wants to go as much as she does the past, two days ago. Not two decades, not twelve years, not before the powers when life was smaller and simpler and sweet. Two days. Laudna and the rock at her side.
Imogen rolls her head on her neck, lowers her chin to her chest. Her back and shoulders are sore, tense. She reaches out—can rest against Laudna’s mind, even if she can’t hear it. It’s easy to find Laudna’s mind. Imogen thinks, even if she lost her powers right this second, she could still find Laudna’s mind, knows the shape of it. Knowing like loving, like she knows her father’s voice in a crowd, like she knows the meadow path behind her home blind. Buries the thought beneath a half-dozen others the way only she can. She reaches out—touches against Laudna’s mind, and wants to cry, scream, rage. It’s different. Heavier. Denser, too. She doesn’t want that.
Flinches, tears away. Her feet ache, her shoulders ache, her head aches. She doesn’t want to carry Laudna too. But even as she flinches away, she returns because what if her mind is the only piece, the last piece, keeping Laudna’s together? Settles back in because yeah, she’s hurting, but her hurt isn’t enough to make her forget that Laudna is hurting too.
Laudna’s mind, Imogen knows, is a haunted house. The wood is rotted, bored through with woodlice. She is fragile and always-mended; she fills her home with lovely, lovingly restored furniture and friends, upholstery restitched, cracked skulls mended. There is a woman in the attic who can look and sound just like Laudna and if there is a lock on that attic door, it is from the inside, and that woman holds the key and the candle, holds a knife, holds the rope that winds and binds, and from every beam in the house dangles a noose, and Laudna hangs herbs from them and rats and decorations and pretends that the rope is just rope and it’s not enough it’s—
Imogen opens the door.
‘Oh. Hello. I thought you were bunking with Fearne and Orym? Did you – forget something?’ Laudna asks. She has made herself comfortable on the bed, black ligaments strung between her fingers and Pâté, perched on her knee. The pages from the Conservatory—Imogen’s notes—are laid out on her other knee.
‘What are you doing with those?’ Imogen bites the inside of her cheek hard. Squashes resentment—Laudna still has her comfort, still has Pâté—and suspicion—she promised, she promised, is she going to stop this, going to break this too?—down as far as they’ll go. ‘My notes?’
‘I – reading them. Again.’ Pâté shivers under Imogen’s caged glare. No. Laudna’s fingers tremble. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t discovered anything new. I’m s-‘
‘Maybe there isn’t anything to find.’
‘Nonsense,’ Laudna says, scolds in that never-scolding tone, ever so sweet, ever so wise, like an ever-twenty girl could possibly know everything there is to know of the turning of the world. ‘There’s an answer for every question. Maybe not in these just yet,’ she allows, shuffling the pages into order and returning them to the dream journal she keeps for Imogen. ‘But somewhere, there are answers. We just have to find it.’
‘Is there an answer for us?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is it?’ She needs to know. She needs the certainty, the comfort, the solid-ground that her mind can’t give her. She’s sick with it, the press of minds against her own weighty then weightless; she’s dizzy with it, straining for coherence, for pattern in the unrelenting chaos. ‘What is it?’
Laudna offers Imogen no answer. She offers Imogen a smile. It’s an impossible smile. The joy in it, the love, is a mockery of life. There is no heart alive that can love so unrestrained. It is as though death has lifted those limits on her; in recompense for what was stolen, Laudna is permitted to love in excess.
Imogen closes the door of their room. ‘I’m so upset with you. Angry, I’m actually angry with you.’
‘I know. And I’m – I am so sorry, Imogen. Beyond what I can say.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘I know.’
‘Promise me. No more lies. You’re all mine.’
Laudna does not promise.
Imogen presses forward with her mind—Promise—and Laudna’s will wavers, but holds firm. She does not promise. Her eyes are wide and wet and she wants to, that much is obvious, but she doesn’t, won’t give Imogen that. Laudna does not promise and part of Imogen knows that it's probably a good thing she doesn't, that they can't take another promise broken so soon. It is safer, it is kinder, it is harder, it is cruel. Imogen has no stable ground; she is walking on a rope in the air, a breath from over-balancing. Laudna is on the rope with her and it makes it harder but, Imogen thinks, and buries the thought somewhere shallow, it would be worse to go through it alone.
Turning her head, Laudna sighs shakily. Stands. Turns down the sheets of the bed. Moves around Imogen, past her—her sleeve brushes Imogen’s arm and they both, each of them, lean closer as she passes—to pour a glass of water from the pitcher by the door. Carries it back. On the way back, she is careful to keep space between them. Setting the glass on the nightstand, Laudna moves Pâté to her bag, tucks him in.
‘I don’t want to bunk with Orym. He kicks.’
‘Do you think he knows?’ Laudna screws up her face, thoughtful. ‘Or is it just us. Me, most likely,’ she absolves. ‘I know I have cold feet.’
Imogen shrugs. Steps closer to their bed, drops her bag next to Laudna’s. Touches Pâté on the beak.
‘He says goodnight,’ Laudna tells her.
‘Goodnight, Pâté.’
Imogen climbs into bed. Laudna climbs into bed. It is narrow and uncomfortable. Laudna’s elbow is sharp when it digs into her side by accident. She doesn’t apologise out loud, but Imogen feels Laudna’s mind tilt and tip sideways, pressing against Imogen’s, and the weight of it is almost as it should be. It doesn’t hurt. Imogen has slept in worse places, and Laudna always makes it comfortable. Despite everything, tonight is no different.
Outside the little flap of a window, the moon glints. Something tells her that she won’t dream tonight, but she’ll fall asleep terrified that she will. Imogen is already tired, thinking of having to wake up tomorrow morning. Her mind churns.
How much will she forgive Laudna for, just because it doesn’t hurt to be close to her? How much is that worth? How much more will she forgive Laudna for, because of that smile, all for her? How much more will she ask of Laudna because her mind was the first that didn’t hurt, because her mind is the best and freely shared, a comfort in a way that nothing else can match? Not even the stone. That fucking stone.
‘Sometimes, I think that if you were the one who could read minds, we wouldn’t be here.’
Laudna is laying an inch away from her. Her feet are cold, like she said. Her hands are probably cold too. Imogen rolls over to face her, mindful that the edge of the bed is right at her back, and takes Laudna’s hands in hers. Stars to rub warmth back into them. She does it most nights. Tonight is different; tonight is not so different.
Dark eyes watch Imogen’s hands, reflect the lowlight of lightning scars. Tonight is different; Laudna would not watch her so carefully if it were not.
‘Whyever would you think that?’
‘Even before,’ she says, and Laudna knows the before’s—before power, before the incident, before Laudna came to town—so she does not say which one, ‘I never was good with people. Never liked them much.’
‘You think I wouldn’t have chosen you?’
‘If you could see into my head…’
‘There’s not a thing in your mind I have not loved yet.’
‘Not even the other night?’
Spindly fingers curl around her hand—spindly fingers curl around the crystal. They’re both thinking about it, she knows, but Imogen doesn’t pull her hand away. She might, if it had been another crystal, but it’s her hand and that’s safe with Laudna. Her heart, too. Any part of her.
‘You think I don’t know fear? Loss? Heartache? Anger? You think such things are not sublime in you? That they do not make you so very human, so very dear to me?’ One hand unfurls. Lifts to curl a lock of hair, twist lilac about her finger. She brushes it back behind Imogen’s ear. The weight of her mind, the weight of her regard brush against Imogen too, the press of a cold hand. ‘Do you think,’ she murmurs, ‘I would not bow my neck to you for retribution if you asked it of me?’
Imogen’s hand finds her neck. She rubs little circles into it, massages out the tension, and leaves her hand there. Warm.
‘I’m not kind like you, Laud.’
‘You’ve been kind to me.’
‘I’m going crazy, I think.’
‘I’m quite past that point myself.’
Imogen rolls her eyes, smiles. Brushes her thumb against Laudna’s temple. Shuffles closer, until she can lean her forehead against Laudna’s. Maybe, if they’re close enough, she can step right inside that haunted house in her head. She wouldn’t mind. Being in a place where every fear is a work of art. She wonders what Laudna would do with her fears.
‘You said there’s an answer for everything. What if – what if the answer is that I’m evil?’
Laudna’s breath catches. ‘Imogen, no-‘
‘Or if not now, soon? What happens if I use my powers too much and I start attacked people? Everyone? Controlling them? You saw what I did with the lightning—’
‘And I did the same, not but a few seconds later.’
‘It’s not the same.’
Laudna nudges her nose to Imogen’s. Her breath drifts cool over Imogen’s heated cheeks, heated thoughts.
‘Perhaps it isn’t,’ she says finally. ‘But—whatever your purpose is, Imogen, it is mine as well. Whatever questions you have, I want to ask them. Whatever my mind is—broken or helpful or some muddle in between—and whatever the origin of my powers, they are yours. You never have to fear controlling me, taking what I am not willing to give. It is already yours. And,’ she says, and her fingers creep upwards, tap lightly to Imogen’s temple like a tree branch against a window, ‘it doesn’t do to dwell on the may-be’s and what-if’s, darling. They are only so kind in your head because they aren’t real.’
‘Real hurts,’ Imogen grumbles. She wriggles forward until she is tucked into Laudna, head beneath her chin, until in the narrow space of their bed they are wrapped in one another’s arms.
‘Not always.’
There is a slow heartbeat beneath her ear. There is a blanket, warm and smelling of leaves and the flower-sweet soap Zhudanna used for their laundry, and Laudna tugs it up over her shoulders. There is a mind leaning against her own, pressure perfect, volume enough to lull her to sleep. Nothing is settled; everything is as it should be, for tonight.
‘Not always,’ she agrees.