Living With My Flirty Stepbrother

Chapter eight

The copper coins the commoners used to buy small-beer were always stamped with the image of a three-headed trout, but by the time a piece reached the Low Quarter, the fish were usually rubbed down to flat, greasy silver discs that smelled of vinegar and horse-sweat.

Aurelia sat on the floor of her small dressing-closet, using her teeth to tear a strip of linen from the hem of an old shift. Her left hand was still stiff from the encounter with Eli Obsidian, but it was the three-inch slice along her right forearm—courtesy of a stray splinter from a practice buckler—that needed the tallow-grease today. The palace was entirely silent around her, wrapped in the heavy, suffocating noon-heat that always smelled of the tallow-rendering vats down by the docks.

Her brother Kael sat on a low stool opposite her, his small knees tucked up to his chin. He was holding the silver straw the King’s engineers had delivered after the match—a long, hollow tube of polished metal no thicker than a crow-quill, its tip pierced with tiny, microscopic holes that looked like a sieve.

"Does it hurt?" Kael asked, his voice a dry, papery rattle that made her chest ache. He didn't mean her arm; he meant the tube. He had watched the alchemists grease it with lard before they set it on the cedar tray.

"It doesn't hurt at all," Aurelia lied, wrapping the linen around her forearm with a sharp pull that made her teeth click. "It feels like a piece of cold well-water going down your throat. Like when we used to steal the ice from the fish-monger’s cart in July."

Kael looked down at his own small, gray-stained fingers, tracing the polished silver of the pipe. "The man who brought it had dirt under his nails. He said if I dropped it in the privy, the King wouldn't give us another one unless you took the ears off the next boy."

"The next boy is a cousin of the house of Gideon," Aurelia said, her fingers tightening on the knot. "He doesn't have ears worth taking. He looks like a turnip."

Kael let out a small, wet chuckle that turned quickly into a hard, hacking cough. He leaned forward, his forehead pressing against his knees, his small shoulders shaking under his oversized wool smock until a thick, gray glob of sputum hit the checkerboard tiles between his boots. It didn't look like spit; it looked like the grease they used to oil the axle-trees on the coal-wagons.

Aurelia didn't flinch. She took a scrap of the torn shift, wiped the stone clean, and tossed the cloth into the small charcoal brazier she kept hidden behind the laundry-basket. The smell of burning linen and old fat filled the small closet, sharp enough to make her eyes smart.

"You're late," a voice said from the curtained doorway.

Bastian didn't pull the hangings back. He simply leaned his shoulder against the oak frame, his dark coat unbuttoned to reveal the grey linen waistcoat he wore when he was supposed to be reading the grain-ledgers for the western bailiffs. His face was pale, his eyes rimmed with red from the smoke of the council room, but he had a fresh loaf of white lard-bread wrapped in a piece of clean butter-paper under his arm.

"The girl from House Amber spent the morning vomiting in the gallery," Bastian said, stepping into the room and tossing the bread onto Kael’s lap. "The King told her father that if she can’t keep her broth down by the third bell, he’ll replace her with one of the bastard sons from the timber-felling districts. Her uncle is currently in the courtyard trying to buy three ounces of dried ginger from the spice-merchants to settle her stomach."

Kael looked up at the bread, his eyes widening. White bread was for Sundays and funerals down in the Low Quarter; this loaf was so fat with lard the paper was already turning clear and yellow from the grease.

"Go eat it on the back-stairs, Kael," Aurelia said, without looking at the prince. "And don't leave the crumbs for the mice. The tire-women will state in their reports that we’re keeping salt-pork under the floorboards again."

The boy didn't need to be told twice. He caught the bread against his ribs, scrambled off the stool with his small boots clattering against the tiles, and ducked past Bastian’s hip like a stray dog clearing a gate.

When the curtain fell back into place, the room felt instantly smaller. The noon-sun was hitting the leaded panes of the high window, turning the air into a hot, yellow soup that made the clove smoke from Bastian’s fingers feel like grease in the back of Aurelia’s throat.

"You didn't take the broth they sent," Bastian said, walking over to the wash-stand. He didn't look at her; he began filling the small pewter basin with the gray cistern-water, his long fingers stirring the scum off the top before he dipped a coarse piece of flannel into the tub.

"It smelled of poppy-heads," Aurelia said, sitting back on her heels. Her green velvet dress was gone, replaced by a common gray wool kirtle that had belonged to a dead servant, the sleeves pinned up at her shoulders to keep the linen out of her sores. "Your father’s alchemists think I’m too loud when I turn. They want me soft for the Gideon match so the boy can look grand in front of the marshals."

Bastian walked back over and knelt in the dust beside her, his long legs crossing automatically under his coat. He took her right arm by the wrist—not with the fierce, punishing grip of the midnight gallery, but with a slow, heavy pressure that felt like an iron weight being laid across her skin. With his free hand, he began to undo the linen bandage she had just tied, his fingers rough against her knots.

"The Gideon boy is twenty-two," Bastian said, his voice dropping into that flat, unbothered register that always made her want to stick her thumb into his eye. "His father gave him three hundred ounces of liquid silver to drink when he was fourteen to harden his ribs. It worked, but it turned his teeth black and his water smells like horse-piss. He can’t move his head more than three inches to the left because the muscle has calcified along the collarbone."

"Is that supposed to make me happy?"

"It’s supposed to tell you that he can’t see a low strike coming from the gutter," Bastian said. He pulled the bloody linen away from her arm, revealing the three-inch splinter-wound. The edges were yellow with lard-grease and red with fresh blood where she had torn the scab with her teeth. "He’ll expect you to fight like Julian—all high thrusts and noble posturing for the boxes. If you drop to your knees in the second turn, you can take his hamstring out before he can clear his chin from his gorget."

He pressed the wet flannel against the cut. The cistern-water was freezing, sharp enough to make Aurelia let out a small, hissing gasp through her teeth, her left hand flying up to catch him by the collar of his grey waistcoat.

"You're doing that on purpose," she whispered, her face six inches from his.

"I’m cleaning the lead out," he said, his eyes never leaving the wound. The amber in his pupils was dark today, the gold flecks buried under a heavy film of gray fatigue that made him look thirty instead of twenty. "If the silver from the buckler stays in the meat, the arm turns green by Friday and I have to find a new girl who knows how to climb a water-pipe."

"You could find ten tomorrow," she said, her breath hot against his nose. "The Low Quarter is full of girls who would kill their own mothers for a loaf of that white bread you just gave Kael."

"They don't have the reservoir," Bastian said softly. He stopped wiping the cut, his hand remaining flat against her forearm, his thumb resting over the small, blue vein that ran down toward her wrist. "They have street-dirt and small-ambitions. They want to buy a pair of ribbons for their hair or a clean blanket for the winter. If I put them in front of my father, they’d curtsy until their knees split and then tell him everything he wanted to know for five pieces of silver."

"And I won't?"

"You won't," he said, his gaze finally rising to meet hers. His face was so close she could smell the sour white wine he had been forced to drink with the grain-merchants, mixed with that sharp, dry winter-mint he chewed to hide the tobacco. "Because you know that if you tell him anything, I’ll have Kael’s silver straw stuffed down his throat until he chokes on it. We understand each other, Aurelia. We’re both small, ugly things trying to stay out of the ditch."

Aurelia looked at his mouth—at the tiny, split seam on his bottom lip that had started to bleed again from the dry heat of the closet. The anger that had been sitting behind her ears all morning didn't disappear; it turned into something thick, heavy, and hot that settled straight into her stomach.

She didn't pull her arm away. Slowly, with her left hand still bunched in his grey wool collar, she pulled him down until his forehead bumped against hers with a small, dull *thud*.

"You're a beast," she breathed against his lips.

"I am," he whispered back, his hand sliding up from her forearm to catch her by the back of her neck, his fingers locking into the short, crow-feather strands of her hair. "But I'm your beast for the next ninety days. Don't forget that."

He kissed her then, his mouth coming down over hers with a sudden, desperate violence that felt less like affection and more like an arrest. It tasted of salt, cold water, and the bitter spice of his cigarettes, his tongue sliding past her teeth with a rough, heavy stroke that made her ears ring.

Aurelia let out a low, ragged moan into his throat, her fingers tightening on his waistcoat until she heard the small, distinct *snap* of a horn button coming away in her palm. She didn't care about the button. She shifted her weight on the tiles, her knees sliding around his hips, her gray wool skirts bunching up around her thighs as she pressed her chest against his. The white coat he usually wore was stiff and cold, but this grey linen shirt was thin—she could feel the heat of his skin through the weave, the hard, frantic drumming of his ribs against her own.

Bastian groaned, his other hand coming around her waist to lift her off the floor, pulling her up until she was pinned between his thighs and the low cedar shelves of the closet. A small box of starch-powder fell from the tier above, landing with a soft *pffft* that covered his dark coat in a fine, white mist, but neither of them looked up.

He kissed her until her breath came in short, dry gasps, his teeth grazing her bottom lip until she tasted the copper of her own blood. It was a terrible, bruising thing, a transaction made in the dust between a thief and a murderer, but as his thumb slid up under her gray smock to find the bare skin of her hip, she shivered against him, her legs tightening around his waist with a force that made his boots scrape hard against the checkerboard tiles.

"Bastian," she choked out when he moved his mouth down to her throat, his lips hot and wet against the small hollow above her collarbone.

"Be quiet," he muttered, his breath burning against her skin. His fingers were digging into her hip-bone now, leaving five small, red dents in the flesh that she knew would turn to purple bruises by nightfall. "The clerks are at the gate. If they hear you screaming like a fish-wife, they’ll think I’m trying to drown you before the match."

"Let them think it," she gasped, her hands flying up to catch his hair, pulling his head back up so she could look into his eyes. The gold flecks were wide, bright, and terrifyingly clear now, glowing in the dim light of the closet like a pair of lanterns in a fog. "Let them think you've killed me. Then you can go find your timber-girl."

Bastian looked at her for three long seconds, his chest heaving against her ribs, his mouth wet with her blood and his own spit. A small line of white starch-powder was running down his cheek from his hair, making him look like a theatrical ghost.

Slowly, the sharp, dangerous smile returned to his face—the one that showed the edges of his teeth and meant someone was about to lose their horse-market franchise.

"The timber-girls are too fat," he whispered, his thumb catching the drop of blood on her lip and rubbing it into his own split seam until they were both stained with the same red circle. "And they don't know how to use the iron spike. Now wash your face. The King wants the champions to inspect the arena-lines before the third bell, and I don't want Julian’s father to see my button in your hair."

He released her waist, stepping back into the small center of the closet with a fluid, easy grace that always made her feel like she was made of old timber. He shook out his dark coat, the white starch-powder flying off the wool in a small cloud that settled over her bare feet.

He didn't look back when he reached the curtain, but as his hand caught the heavy velvet hanging, he dropped a small, heavy iron key onto the stool she had been using.

"The key is for the lower cistern under the laundry," he said, his voice returning to that flat, public register that belonged to the Prince. "If Kael’s cough gets redder before Friday, take him down there. The air comes straight from the river-vaults and it tastes of the mud. It’s better for the stone than the alchemist’s vinegar."

The curtain fell, and Aurelia was left alone with the smell of clove, the white powder on her toes, and the small horn button still locked tight in her left fist.