The Untold Tale

Nine

We enjoy our dinner of bread and fresh stone fruits, mixed with a little of the soft cheese she adores so much, using up all of our perishable provisions in one fell feast, and then take to our beds. I bank the fire before lying down on the ground, a careful distance between us just in case Pip has changed her mind.

She falls asleep before I do and rolls into my side, snuffling against my armpit, so I take this to mean that her intentions remain true. All the same, I wrap my arm around her shoulders cautiously, just in case I alarm her.

I fall asleep to the sound of waking birds, happy not to have to set any magical wards, for I am too exhausted to get back up and do so. The Minchin Forest is populated with only the most non-magical of animals. The older forests are filled with all manner of magical creatures, but this growth is still quite young, planted in penance by a dragon who accidentally destroyed an elder-dryad's copse a hundred years ago. Magical things like old places, and this forest won't be ripe enough for their liking until I am well dead and dust.

That is part of its appeal, of course—nobody likes to wake with gnome-knots tied into their hair or covered in the graffiti of particularly drunken fairies—but the other part is that it means we will have several hours to sleep before we make our way to the capital city. It is vain, but I want to see the look on Pip's face when we steal up to the Queen's Gate at sunset, and the light glances off the great crystal dome of the Palace Keep for which the city was named. It is breathtaking, and I do so want to take her breath away.

❧✍❧

Around noon, when I have already woken and am, in turn, waking the embers of our campfire in order to heat a small packet of travel-stew for our breakfast, Pip finally stirs from her sleep.

"Christ, ow," Pip says as she sits up from her bedroll.

"Your back?" I ask, concerned that we have perhaps sped along her healing faster than she could handle.

"My thighs," she moans, spreading them wide and kneading the muscles on the insides of her knees with her fists. I drop my eyes back to the business of stirring stew, and do not, do not look at the shadow cast by the apex of her legs. Pip is wearing her freshly made riding clothes. While I'd agreed with her that dresses were no sort of wardrobe for adventuring, the way the trousers she commissioned from the tailor cling to her legs is moderately indecent. To add to that, she is also not enamored of the knee-length sleeveless robes most people wear—she says they get in the way—and has instead purchased a short leather jerkin like Pointe's.

We have packed both a dark purple short-robe and the fine dark blue dress, just in case we need the clothing to make Pip less conspicuous wherever we end up, but right now, she is wearing only her trousers, my old socks, and one of my old rough-woven Turn-russet shirts. Her boots, and the black leather jerkin, are piled on the ground beside her roll.

I try not to think about how gloriously intimate it is, my clothing touching her body, and instead set aside the pot of stew and stand.

"I could tell by how you took your seat yesterday that you're not an experienced horsewoman," I admit. "I wish I had noticed earlier. I assumed that, as a landowner, your father would have had horses. I regret now that we did not make time for riding lessons."

"What can I possibly be doing that's so wrong to make my legs scream like this?" Pip asks. She winces and rubs her knuckles along the small of her back, as well, and I know that pain intimately, had experienced it myself before Father taught me the proper way to roll my hips with the gait of the horse. "All you have to do is sit on the thing and let it do all the work, right?"

"Not precisely," I admit, moving to stand directly behind her. "May I?"

She stiffens, the way she always does when she realizes that someone wants to touch her. And then she nods curtly, just once. I slip down onto the ground behind her and press my thumbs into the spot just above the dimples at the small of her back, right on top of the curlicues where Bootknife's art begins. She groans again, a mix of pleasure and pain.