Tybalt smiled at Mariella, his eyes devouring everything from the slightly smiling, bright red face down to her flat, pale, bare midriff just below the hem of the skimpy undershirt she wore.

  “Yes, I’ll put my shirt back on,” she said, rolling her eyes a little but still smiling. “Turn around again, please.”

  “I need to go back down into the cave anyway,” he said. “Take anything of value from the bodies.”

  Mariella raised an eyebrow. “Gathering more bones? You can just say so. I know I… misunderstood earlier, but I swear, we’ll get along better if you’re just honest with me. I know you probably still have some secrets, but you can… you can trust me.” She looked away as if embarrassed at what she’d said. Maybe she was speaking in some noble code that meant she’d made a faux pas. Accidentally throwing herself at him or something. Or maybe everything was embarrassing to say when you were almost topless.

  Oh, if only it were true that I could just trust you. I’m pretty sure if I told you what I was really doing, you’d kill me or arrest me… which unfortunately amounts to the same thing. If I make it back to the Kingdom in shackles, I’ll hang.

  Tybalt felt the desire to share things with Mariella, but since he could feel that desire was particularly concentrated in a specific region of his body, he wasn’t going to give in to it without careful consideration beforehand.

  “Yeah, I’m going to try to get the bones I stuck into them back,” Tybalt said. “Maybe take extras. More importantly, I’ll get two of the bows those guys were carrying. They’re probably not especially high quality if they were made out here, but since we didn’t come equipped with ranged weapons ourselves, we might as well take advantage of free gear.”

  Mariella nodded, and Tybalt walked past her, back into the dark.

  There were two additional purposes to going back down into the cave that he hadn’t told Mariella about. First, there was more experience to be gained. One of the beastfolk was still alive, he had noticed, though the Lieutenant seemed to have knocked him deeply unconscious with a blow to the head. That beastman could be quickly and silently killed. And all three beastfolk could be turned into undead. He doubted somehow that Mariella would approve of him slaughtering a completely helpless enemy, let alone making minions from the bodies. Their shared disgust with unnecessary and unlawful killings was part of what had bonded them to each other, after all.

  But it was necessary for Tybalt’s progression, and he had done far worse already through his proxy, Baldwin.

  Second, though this was less important than the first purpose, the further he got away from the Lieutenant, the more clearly he could think.

  What in Abadd am I going to do with her? he wondered. I want her to be one of the people—maybe the only person—on the squad who I convert to my side, without killing her. But she’s only with me right now because of all the lies I’ve already told her, along with some unpleasant truths that I revealed. And maybe my kissing skills. At least a little bit my kissing skills. Right…? But if I suddenly come out as a servant of the God of Death, I think she’d probably have a pretty conventional reaction. How do you lead into something like that?

  Maybe it was just about progressing the relationship until the emotional attachment was more powerful than the ugly realities.

  He was almost certain that Mariella’s feelings for him were growing. She wasn’t good at hiding it. Either that, or she wasn’t trying very hard. Tybalt would be lying to himself if he tried to say he didn’t reciprocate. There was some level of affection that could smooth over everything, right?

  He reached where he could see the bodies and shook his head. Questions for future Tybalt.

  For right now, he bent down and quickly separated two bows, as well as what remained of the accompanying quivers of arrows—just a handful of shafts each for himself and Mariella—from the bodies. He set them aside, far enough from the bodies that they wouldn’t get blood on them.

  He retrieved a bone knife jutting out of one of the dead men and quickly restored its slightly nicked edge with Scrimshaw. Then he ran the blade across the survivor’s throat. A spurt of blood struck Tybalt’s sleeve before he moved back to keep the rest of his clothing clean. He watched from a few feet away as the beastman continued to bleed out.

  It was slightly fascinating. The body twitched a bit, but it didn’t have anything like the normal reaction to being fatally injured. Just heavy bleeding, no effort by the victim to save himself, and no apparent attempt by the body to wake him.

  Did Mariella render him comatose? Tybalt wondered. How? Just a single blow to the head?

  It didn’t matter now, except as a reminder of how formidable her strength was if some innocent, fragile necromancer was to piss her off for some reason.

  He edged around the slowly spreading pool of blood, grabbed the bodies that were entirely devoid of life, and made quick work of turning them to undead. He positioned his body to block the glow of his mana from being too noticeable further up in the cave, though Mariella would hopefully think he was just down here using Scrimshaw to extract bones.

  The surge of power and well-being swept over him in a pleasant rush.

  Mm, that feels good. And I’m pretty sure that level fixed my remaining injuries completely…

  “Graah—”

  Shut the fuck up, all of you.

  The zombies closed their mouths. Tybalt glanced over his shoulder and swallowed.

  She definitely heard that…

  He saw Mariella’s outline in the distance, moving against the light of the cave exit. She turned to face deeper into the cave.

  “Is there something alive down there?” Mariella called down, just loud enough to be heard where he was. She was probably still conscious that the other beastfolk could find them if they were careless or unlucky. “Do you need me?”

  “Just stubbed my toe!” Tybalt replied, trying to match her volume.

  “All right, well hurry up and get back up here!” she said. “We need to move on before the beastfolk circle back with more of their fighters.”

  Tybalt turned and saw the third beastman now lay completely still, drained of life.

  I’ll be right there, he thought.

  One zombie later, he walked back up through the cave to where Mariella was.

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  “Let’s go,” he said, handing her a bow and one of the beastfolk’s small quivers of arrows.

  She nodded and followed along with him.

  The pair stepped out of the cave and started walking. Tybalt led them through the valley, keeping close to the cliff face that had hidden them from the enemy beastfolk before. That would hopefully continue to be good cover.

  “So, what’s next?” Mariella asked quietly. “I mean, we’re getting to somewhere safe now, that’s naturally our first priority, avoiding pursuit, but what then? Negotiations failed, so…”

  “Negotiations essentially didn’t happen,” Tybalt said. “We spoke to people who were too low status to do anything for us. In some ways, it was my mistake as much as theirs. If I had realized they had a leader we could talk to, we’d have avoided them and sought out that Andric guy instead.”

  “The beastman who was talking at the top of the cliff earlier.”

  He nodded.

  “I admire your commitment to your plan,” she said carefully. “But what if the next attempt has the same results as before?”

  “Then we can go back to the squad, I guess,” Tybalt said hesitantly. He was on the verge of telling her something, but it was the sort of thing he couldn’t walk back later. She seemed to sense it, and she waited, silent as they kept moving.

  I’ll tell her about Vidalia later, if I have to, he decided finally. There was no reason to drop such a bombshell now. The fact that he had a contact among the beastfolk could make him look suspicious, and for whatever reason, he had observed earlier that Mariella still didn’t trust him completely.

  The silence settled over them for a while. Tybalt kept his thoughts to himself. He wondered how long he and Mariella would need to wait, after having killed three beastfolk, for tempers to cool somewhat, so they could try to negotiate. He considered options for how they might spend the next few days.

  He wondered if, instead of approaching Andric, he should try to figure out where the beastfolk’s mountain settlement was. He assumed there was a village somewhere on the mountain. Or maybe he should try to locate Vidalia specifically. He wasn’t sure if she lived in this hypothetical settlement or somewhat apart, but he remembered she had suggested he needed her there to vouch for him for negotiations to be successful.

  Mariella was the one to break the quiet of the walk. She didn’t ask him what he’d been thinking about. It was more personal.

  “I’d really like it if you’d tell me more about yourself,” she said slowly. “I spent all that time not getting to know people in the squad, partly because of the Commander’s advice. Partially because of… other things that happened. You said you liked me before, romantically, but you don’t even really know me yet. What’s my favorite color?” There was a pause, during which Tybalt didn’t answer. “Right? You have no idea. You’re attracted to me, and I assume you think I’m a nice girl, which I hope I am. And I have a fairly high opinion of you, too, after everything that’s happened. You’ve done well at leading me since you pulled me away from the squad. Maybe I know slightly more about you than you know about me, just because circumstances reveal character. Plus, people talk. The others in the squad knew more about you than about me. But I’d like to know more. Maybe you’d… also like to know more?”

  Her voice was soft, her body language open and tilted slightly towards him. The more he interacted with her away from the squad, the less she seemed like a military officer. More like girls Tybalt had known in the past.

  “I want you to know more about me,” Tybalt said slowly. “But I don’t want you to look at me differently because of what I tell you. Don’t go from thinking I’m this sexy, mysterious guy who’s been hiding a secret class and can handle getting the crap kicked out of him to feeling sorry for me.”

  Mariella let out a little burst of air as if she wanted to laugh, but she caught Tybalt’s expression and crushed that in an instant. She took a step closer to him and took his hand in hers, interlacing her fingers with his so that their hands swung together as they walked.

  “I don’t think I could lose respect for you based on what you say,” she said. “Unless your background makes me think you’ve squandered all your talents and wasted every opportunity you’ve had in life. Which I know enough to say you haven’t.”

  “Fine,” Tybalt said.

  He unfolded his origins, from being born a peasant to learning he was the Baron’s bastard son, to the humiliating cycle of attempting to get his father’s attention and investment, all the way to his mother dying and Tybalt joining the Army. He skimmed some of the less important parts, like instantly developing a crush on a girl who turned out to be his half-sister, but he was otherwise faithful to events as they had really happened. At least prior to the Salt Waste.

  When he had finished, there was silence

  “They really treated you like trash,” Mariella said in a tone of subdued outrage. She clenched her fists as she spoke, seemingly unaware she was doing it. “I could never forgive the people who did something like that to me.”

  “Well, I haven’t,” Tybalt said lightly.

  “If my father had a bastard, and I found out he abandoned him that way, I’d… I’d never speak to him again. I—” She shook her head, words apparently not coming. A visible tension ran through her whole body as she moved.

  “Well, I don’t talk to my dear old dad much either,” he said, a sarcastic smile spreading across his face.

  She glanced over at him, and her angry expression evaporated. “I’m… sorry about your mother.”

  “Me too. But she died the way she lived, not asking for or receiving anything from anyone. Maybe it’s what she wanted. Or maybe she just wanted me to see her live her last months with pride.” Tybalt found there was a strange lump in his throat. He swallowed a couple of times until it went down.

  “I can see that,” Mariella said in what felt like a carefully neutral tone.

  “What does that mean?” Tybalt asked.

  “I mean, I see that pride in you.”

  He raised an eyebrow but decided not to ask what she meant.

  “Well, you wanted to know a little more about me,” Tybalt said. “Now you know. I’m bitter, jaded, discarded—and they wonder why bastards are supposedly disloyal.”

  “That’s—I don’t even know if the way your father treated you is normal in the Kingdom,” said Mariella.

  Tybalt sensed she had instinctively wanted to deny it was normal, but the previous times she had tried to deny things he had said—about the squad, about Volusia—she had been wrong. So she had decided to be humble and acknowledge that there were some things about the Kingdom that she didn’t know.

  So I can persuade her, he thought. I just need to pull her along slowly, a little bit at a time. She’s willing to be open-minded. At least willing to listen to me.

  “I take it your father hasn’t made any bastards,” Tybalt said.

  “No,” Mariella said. “My father is an honorable man. If he had an indiscretion of that sort, he would own up to it and take the mother as an additional wife. And my Mom and stepmother would try to keep a closer eye on him going forward.”

  Ah. Her family is polygamous. It wasn’t at all unusual for noble families in Niet, but he knew they weren’t all like that.

  Tybalt nodded. “I approve. Whenever I’ve been with a woman, I’ve always taken precautions—oh.” He had spoken too freely, before he realized that it might bother Mariella to hear something like that. It was the first time he had felt strange about his own promiscuity.

  But she absorbed the statement with a shrug.

  “I know that men have… desires. Astara exerts a powerful pull, and men are weaker against her charms than women.”

  There was a faint hint of superiority there, and Tybalt wrinkled his nose. Sure, whatever. Women are just as lustful as men. They just deny it until they’re actually in bed…

  “All I was trying to say is that I wouldn’t risk making a baby with a woman I wasn’t willing to marry. And I wish my father had been as honorable as yours. More for my mother’s sake than mine.”

  She gave him a long, cryptic look, then nodded.

  “What do you think?” she asked, pointing a little ahead of them. “Is that cave a good place for us to hide out while I teach you basic mage combat?”

  He looked. The cave looked like every other cave they had passed, but he thought it was far enough away from where they had started out.

  “You still haven’t told me anything about you,” Tybalt observed. “That cave looks fine.”

  Mariella nodded.

  “I’ll tell you about myself while we get settled in, before we start training.”

  From the serious tone she used, Tybalt wondered if he really knew what he was getting into here.

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