Natia and Leske had been kicked out of the tavern. They'd been surprised they'd lasted as long as they had, but eventually the soot smudged over their brands had sweated off in the close thick heat of the bar, and their Smith caste disguises were busted. Natia had argued with the bartender, swinging her mug of lichen ale in a wide arc when they'd been told to get out, but they'd had the very distinct misfortune of being at the exact tavern where a regiment of King Endrin Aeducan's soldiers were enjoying some time off.
Natia landed roughly on the stone beside Leske. One particularly brutish soldier (who at least would have a black eye tomorrow, thanks to her) muttered something about the casteless not even being worth dirtying a blade on, and the door of the tavern slammed in their faces. She spat a string of swears after him, too late.
"Take it easy, salroka," Leske said, laughing. She seized a rock from the road and threw it at the door. It bounced harmlessly off the metal with an unsatisfying clink.
"I hadn't finished drinking. I can still feel my legs," she growled. "If I had my dagger those nug suckers would need the entire rest of Aeducan's army just to pick up the pieces."
"It don't matter," Leske said. "I swiped us some compensation." He pulled out a dark brown bottle that had been tucked somewhere among his "borrowed" clothing. Natia's eyes sparked as he bit down on the cork and pulled it free.
"What is it?" she asked. Leske shrugged and took a long swig. He coughed.
"Never mind!" she crowed, laughing and holding out her hand. "Good enough for me. Give it here."
Whatever it was, it was far better than the dirt-ale the bartender had pushed as his house special. The pair of them stumbled through the street back towards Dust Town, matching each other drink for drink. They passed the bottle back and forth between them, sometimes challenging one to drink until the other stopped counting, and it was not long until neither of them could think past 'two.'
"I'd still like to get m'hands on that slodding soldier," Natia slurred as they reached the far edge of the Commons. "He's not th'king, he can't tell me what t'do or where I can drink." She threw the empty bottle against the stone where it shattered. She jumped a little at the sound.
Leske barked a laugh. "The king? You wouldn't listen to that oat-rolling lyrium crack even if he were right in front of you an' you know it." He slung an arm around her shoulders. They staggered a little and she clung to Leske's waist with an amused shriek. "You don' even listen to Beraht half th' time."
"Nope! An' why should I?" She shook her head and grinned with drunken pride. "If I had a copper for every copper I skimmed from his jobs without his noticing, I'd have…" she tried to count and immediately gave up, "…well a lot more than I've got now, that's f'sure. At least twice as much. I can't have an respect for a nug-greaser like that."
"I almost feel sorry for the bastard," Leske said as they entered Dust Town with weaving steps. "It can't be easy looking like the wrong end of a Bronto and being half as smart."
"Wait, are you talking abou' Beraht or Jarvia?" Natia snorted. "'Cause, 'cause if Jarvia didn't have a brand I don' think I could tell'm apart. She's got a beard y'know, she shaves it off. I seen it—"
Leske hushed her too loudly, although there was no one on the streets, and besides, he nearly giggled himself. "Don't let her hear you say that. She'd kill you."
Natia waved her arm in dismissal as he turned them down a shadowed alley, a shortcut to her house in the slums of Dust Town. "Ooh, I'm real scared. I could take anyone, and I sure as Stone could take a pit stain like her. Her an' her stupid beard, I'm not afraid of it, I got razors."
"Not by yourself you couldn't." Leske laid a heavy hand on top of her head and ruffled her hair. Natia's temper flared slightly at the gesture. At least she thought it was her temper.
"You think you could?" Natia stopped walking and turned to him, poked him in the chest so he backed against the crumbling wall of the side street. "Think you're so tough, huh? Why don' you just march right on down to that special Proving tomorrow, you're so tough. Or maybe you're jus' jealous 'cause she can grow a better beard than you?" She continued to jab at him until he grabbed her wrists. They both laughed as she fought back, twisting her hands as their opposing strength forced arms up in an arch.
"You're not gonna win this, salroka," Leske chuckled as she squirmed in his grip (she'd never noticed how strong his hands were). Their bodies drew closer together with the struggle and Natia could smell the drink on him, the soot on his face, the cling of sweat. And underneath was the smell of him, Leske, familiar and strange. Suddenly she felt dizzy and desperate to touch him.
"Oh, no?" she said. She stopped pushing with her arms and instead let her body fall against him and pressed her lips roughly to his. Never before had she been this close to him, and never while they were out of armor; she could feel his body through the thin stolen shirt, and all of him was warm. After a brief hesitation, she moved her thigh between his legs, a trick she'd learned watching whores on the street, and Leske arched forward slightly in response.
When she stepped back he still held her wrists tightly, and she met his eyes and they were dark and she suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable for what she had just done. But he grinned, widely, and said in a low smooth voice, "Well."
He placed her hands on his shoulders and dropped his own to her waist, pulled her tightly to him and slid rough fingertips under the hem of her shirt. Her skin tingled where he brushed along her sides with a restrained lightness. Clothes felt too tight, in the way. Her body was strong—it had to be for what she was—but pressed up against him, all solid chest and wide shoulders, she felt in comparison the soft curves she was actually made of. It made her squirm and tilt her hips and want nothing more than to wrap her legs around his waist and fill the ache that burned for him in between.
Natia waited for him to do something else, but he just stood there, smiling like a sodding fool until she clenched her hand tight in his braids and pulled his face down to hers again. His tongue parted her lips and she shuddered and pressed herself as tightly against him as she could, as if she were trying to remove all distance between them. One of his hands finally slid down behind her, deliciously, and rested at the back of her right thigh. Leske hitched her leg up and she ground against the stiffness that strained his pants. He moaned softly, then broke from the kiss to nuzzle her neck.
"You sure about this, salroka?" he murmured, so close and quiet she wondered if he wasn't part of her already. The scratch of his stubble rasped against her cheek and he traced his tongue along her ear, then nipped at the lobe as if to convince her. Natia wondered if maybe he was the one who was unsure, or maybe he wasn't quite the mad stallion he made himself out to be.
He trailed kisses down her neck, possessive things with his teeth and tongue, until he reached the hollow at her shoulder and she said, "Why, you afraid you can't deliver?" His head snapped up and she stared him down. It was both joke and challenge, and she pressed her palm against his erection.
"Make me scream, Duster."
Leske was still for a moment, then without warning he swung her around so she was pinned between him and the wall. He threaded fingers widely through her hair and pulled; her head tilted back and he covered her mouth with his own. Natia groped for the ties on his trousers and had him free in her hands when he seized her firmly behind the thighs and lifted her up so she gave a startled yelp. Braced against the stones of the alley wall, locking her legs around him for balance, her skirt bunched up between them, she felt him nudging against her, insistent; she reached down and moved her smallclothes aside and he pushed in, then immediately pulled back out. Just once, one stroke, a warm wet slide she felt pass her fingers, and she whimpered and clung to him. He was teasing her, and she squeezed her eyes shut, rocked her hips forward, willing him to fill her again. Head spinning and body blazing, she dug her nails into his back and tried to clench around nothing, to relieve some of the ache, and she managed one desperate word:
"Please."
He plunged back in, all at once and hard, and she arched from the suddenness of it. Leske continued to thrust in her (by the Ancestors, he was inside her, the idea was madness, or maybe the madness was realizing she had wanted it so badly) and her breath came quickly shallow and rhythmic and she barely recognized it. Hearing it out loud propelled her, lit every nerve with fire. Natia rose and rose, writhing against the wall, and when she felt her body finally push her to the edge she dropped one hand to the one sensitive spot just above where their bodies slammed together and rubbed—
Everything crashed all at once and she screamed high and breathless as she plunged through climax. Leske gave a strangled, throaty gasp and she felt him give one last push, then shudder and slump against her.
He lowered her legs so her feet touched the ground, but they stayed joined and couldn't quite stand, so they sank together to the chipped cobblestones of the street.
"Someone must have heard that," he said, but he made no movement away; rather, he rested his forehead against hers, taking deep steadying breaths while their heart rates returned to normal.
"Doesn' matter," Natia replied quietly, blunt as ever. "Nobody in Dust Town is gonna care about one scream in the dark." His only response was to cup her face in his palm, then brush the pad of his thumb over her right cheek with something frighteningly close to genuine tenderness. It took her a very long time to realize why the pattern he was making felt so familiar. He was tracing her brand.
A terrible loneliness swept over her when he finally pulled out. She spoke to fill the silence while they put their clothes to rights, to finish her thoughts, but more to stave off whatever emotion was creeping up on her through the haze and slipping between her ribs like steel.
"It's pointless, a Duster's scream." She thought of all the people they'd killed working in the carta, so many lives ended because Beraht or Jarvia gave the word. Nobody had come looking for them either. "Everyone here looking out for themselves, it's not the ones doing the screaming anyone is worried about. For all they know, we're dead."
Leske had risen to his feet, and he held out a shaky hand to Natia.
"Sometimes it feels like I already am, salroka."