Chapter 6: After Hours at the Stag
The noise from the common room below ground itself down to a sluggish murmur around three hours past midnight. Callis marked the passing of the evening from his lumpy straw mattress, staring up at the water-stained ceiling planks while the cold draft of Room Four crept through his thin wool blanket. His bruised muscles needed rest. Instead, his mind kept dragging him back out into the freezing rain of the Green March, replaying the moment the earth had burst open beneath his boots, mixed with Rhett Hollow’s blunt appraisal of the town's economy. The impending dawn meeting at the Ash Forge loomed over his thoughts, making the lack of sleep feel like a tactical error. A twisting cramp in his stomach finally forced him out of bed; the single heel of bread Mara had handed him had burned away hours ago, leaving a hollow ache that aggravated the contusions along his ribs. He pulled on his trousers and wrinkled linen shirt, shivering as the ambient chill hit his bare arms, and eased his door open into the dark hallway.
The wooden treads of the staircase complained under his bare feet, slick with a spilled mixture of dark ale and dried mud tracked in from the main thoroughfare. Reaching the bottom landing, he surveyed a deserted common room littered with overturned chairs and dented pewter pitchers left exactly where the last patrons had abandoned them. The central hearth had burned down to a cluster of pulsing embers, throwing just enough copper light to illuminate Derren Vell slumped heavily in a high-backed chair near the mantle. Derren snored with a congested, rhythmic wheeze, his chin resting on his sternum while a half-empty mug dangled precariously from his slack grip. Callis picked his way carefully across the floorboards to avoid waking the man, stepping around a discarded mop bucket to reach the thin line of lamplight spilling from the gap beneath the kitchen door. He set his palm against the rough planks and pushed inward.
Heat from the brick ovens met him at the threshold, carrying the heavy scent of rendered pork fat and lingering woodsmoke that chased away the stale beer stench of the tavern. Mara sat motionless at the long butcher’s block in the center of the room, her elbows braced on the scarred wood and her face buried in her palms. The room was quiet enough that he could hear the slow, ragged drag of her breathing. Strands of chestnut hair had slipped free from their binding to fall in damp tangles over her shoulders, and the top laces of her linen bodice hung loose against the stifling temperature, exposing the flushed skin of her throat. Callis hesitated, shifting his weight to quietly retreat toward the stairs. His bare heel caught the rim of an iron bucket, dragging it across the flagstones with a harsh scrape.
Mara’s head snapped up. Her face looked open, stripped down to the weariness of a woman who had managed a chaotic business for fourteen hours straight. She blinked away the haze of fatigue, her spine stiffening as her familiar authority settled back into her posture.
"You are supposed to be asleep, Callis," Mara said, her voice raspy from shouting over the crowd all evening.
"I apologize for the intrusion," Callis replied, acutely aware of how his polished vowels echoed against the kitchen tile. "I meant to let you rest. I was simply looking for—"
"Something to eat," Mara finished, lifting one eyebrow as Callis's stomach produced a loud, articulate cramp. A tired smile pulled briefly at the corner of her mouth. She gestured toward a stool on the opposite side of the workstation. "Sit down at the block."
Callis pulled the three-legged seat closer to the station and sat. The thick wooden surface bore deep grooves from years of cleaver strikes, the grain permanently darkened by old oil. Mara pushed herself upright, favoring her left knee slightly as she walked toward the cooling racks. She retrieved a dense loaf of dark bread from a high shelf, took a carving knife to a joint of roasted pork suspended from an iron hook, and sliced off a substantial portion of the meat. After drizzling a spoonful of salty rendered drippings over the cut, she placed the loaded wooden trencher directly in front of him. Callis stared at the heavy meal, cataloging the sheer amount of food before shifting his attention back to her face.
"Derren is asleep by the hearth," Callis said quietly.
Mara let out a short exhale that sounded more like a cough than a laugh. She leaned her hip against the edge of the cutting block and crossed her arms. "He has been asleep since the third keg floated," she stated, delivering the information like a ledger entry she had memorized years ago. "He will wake up at dawn, complain about a stiff neck, and yell at the scullery girl for failing to sweep the rushes while he rested."
He saw the weariness in the set of her shoulders, in the way her scarred fingers dug into her own sleeves. It was a quiet exhaustion the rest of the town gladly overlooked so long as the ale kept flowing. Setting aside the dining etiquette drilled into him by his estate tutors, Callis picked up the greasy pork directly with his fingers. He consumed the meat with fast, thoughtless bites, maintaining eye contact with her the entire time. Mara stayed by the block, watching him devour the food as the heat from the brick ovens thickened the air between them.
"Rhett Hollow hired me for tomorrow," Callis said, wiping grease from his chin with the back of his wrist. "A Bronze contract. Clearing the trade paths."
Mara’s eyebrows climbed toward her hairline. "Rhett took you on?"
"He considers me an idiot," Callis admitted. "He also considers me appropriately honest about my limitations."
"Rhett is a survivor," she said softly. "If he agreed to take you, he suspects you will manage to keep him alive. That passes for high praise in Hartsgate."
"I feel very little like a survivor," Callis observed, examining the inflamed scrapes across his knuckles. "I feel as though I spent the entire day being beaten by the physical geography of the March."
Mara uncrossed her arms, reached over the wooden surface, and grabbed his wrist. Her skin carried the warmth and heavy texture built by years of manual labor. She turned his hand palm-up, inspecting the blistered ridges left behind by the hawker's spear shaft. She released his arm, walked around the perimeter of the butcher's block, and stepped directly into his space, positioning herself mere inches from his seated form. The combined scent of dried rosemary and the salty perspiration of her long shift filled the narrow space. Because he sat on the low stool, the loosened neck of her linen bodice aligned perfectly with his eye level. Callis locked his gaze onto the stone masonry of the far wall, forcing himself to focus on the mortar lines to keep his attention fixed.
"You skipped the salve," she murmured.
"I applied it to my ribs," he lied, his voice cracking on the vowels. "And my leg."
Mara shifted her grip from his wrist to his forearm, pressing her thumb exactly where his accelerated pulse hammered against the skin. She studied the tension locking his jaw muscles and the flush rapidly climbing from his collar to his cheeks. The tavern patrons treated her as part of the architecture, a fixture to demand ale from, yet Callis sat frozen, immobilized by her standing this close. A sudden, unfamiliar warmth settled low in Mara’s stomach in response to the careful way he refused to look.
"Liar," she whispered.
She stepped forward to close the remaining distance. She slotted herself directly between his spread knees, letting the thick wool of her skirts press firmly against the insides of his thighs.
Callis released a ragged exhale and finally tipped his head back to look directly into her dark eyes, abandoning whatever polite distance he had tried to keep. "Mara," he managed to say, the single syllable sounding frayed at the edges.
"Take the shirt off, Callis." Her voice was a low, resonant instruction.
His hands trembled as he gripped the bottom hem of his linen tunic, pulling the fabric hastily over his head and tossing it onto the flagstones beside the stool. His pale torso displayed the lean muscle built from years of dedicated fencing drills, currently marred by the dark contusions wrapping around his left ribcage from the beast's attack. Mara drew a sharp breath, tracking her gaze over the bruising before letting it drop to the sharp lines of his hips disappearing into the canvas waistband of his trousers. She lifted her arms and pressed her open palms flat against his bare chest. Callis released a low groan as her warm skin made direct contact with his freezing torso.
"You’re hurt," she murmured, sliding her thumbs gently along the raised edges of the rib contusions.
"The pain matters very little," he said, the words catching in his throat.
He reached forward and wrapped his long fingers securely around the flare of her hips. Holding her with careful reverence, he pulled her forward until he buried his face against the heated curve of her abdomen, exactly where the linen bodice met the canvas apron strings. Mara gasped at the sudden contact, threading her fingers deep into his tangled brown hair to hold him against her.
"He looks right past you," Callis breathed against her skin, his muffled voice rough with an unexpected possessiveness. "He sits out there and sleeps while you carry the weight of this entire place. He is a fool."
Mara's knees shifted under her. For one dangerous second, the block behind her was the only solid thing in the room. Everyone else took her labor as part of the room. Callis had seen it, named it, and now clung to her as if she were the only solid thing in Hartsgate. She gripped the thick strands of his hair and tilted his head backward. Callis stared up into eyes that had gone entirely dark in the dim light. She leaned down and kissed him.
Her lips parted against his, carrying the sharp tang of cheap red wine and the salty sheen of perspiration. Callis made a wrecked sound in the back of his throat, sliding his hands upward to grip the thick curve of her waist. He hauled her downward, pressing the heavy weight of her chest directly against his battered ribs, ignoring the spike of pain it caused. Mara answered the pressure by forcing his jaw open wider, deepening the kiss while grinding her hips down into his lap. Callis jerked against her before he could stop himself, his breath breaking hard enough to shame him. He bucked upward to press the tension in his trousers firmly against her thick wool skirts. Mara broke the kiss with a ragged intake of air, burying her face into the curve of his neck to scrape her teeth lightly against his collarbone. Callis let his hands move over her back and sides, tracking the shape of her beneath the heavy clothes. His fingers fumbled with the trailing laces of her loosened bodice, slipping beneath the edge of the fabric to brush his thumb directly against the hot, damp skin of her breast.
Mara shuddered in his lap, letting out a soft sound that made his hands tighten. She rocked her hips down against him a second time. Callis released a strangled curse as his head tipped backward. The friction grounded everything else out. It left him with the immediate urge to sweep the remaining pork off the butcher's block and pull her down onto the scarred wooden surface. Mara felt the tremor in him before she saw it. His hands had gone too still at her waist. She trailed one scarred hand down the center of his chest, dragging her nails lightly over his contracting abdomen, and rested her palm directly over the straining ridge behind the canvas fly of his trousers. Callis locked his joints, his lungs seizing mid-breath. His body answered before his pride could intervene. Mara leaned forward to brush her swollen lips against the sensitive shell of his ear.
"You have a contract at dawn," she whispered, her breath hitting his neck in ragged bursts.
"Mara, please," Callis begged, the request turning into a fractured, helpless sound.
"If we finish this tonight," she said, tracing the outline of him through the coarse wool so he felt the exact weight of the denial, "Rhett Hollow will need a wheelbarrow to haul you out of Hartsgate. Furthermore, Derren will wake up."
She removed her hand from his lap and took a large step backward to break the physical connection entirely. Callis nearly pitched forward off the stool attempting to follow her, catching his balance on the greasy edge of the butcher’s block. His chest heaved erratically as he stared at her, his body vibrating with tension and his hair standing in disarray. Mara stood a safe distance away by the cooling racks, her own breathing compromised as she reached up to firmly re-tie the leather laces of her bodice. She studied his face. Whatever restraint he had brought into the kitchen had not survived her hand on him. A slow, confident smile spread across her mouth, replacing the heavy fatigue in her expression.
"Go upstairs, Callis," she ordered, letting the instruction hang in the quiet room. "Survive the Green March tomorrow. Prove to me you intend to keep breathing."
Callis stared at her from the stool, his pulse thudding hard against his bruised sternum. "And if I succeed?" he asked.
Mara turned back toward the massive brick ovens. The movement was deliberate enough to be cruel. "Then tomorrow night," she promised, pitching her voice over the crackle of the dying embers, "you will eat a much warmer meal."