The Desert Spear

door slammed shut. Everyone else glanced at one another.
    “Take as long back here as you like,” Smitt said, “I need to get out front.” He, Stefny, and Jona quickly filed out of the room, leaving Leesha alone with her fuming mother.
    “He’ll be all right, Mum,” Leesha said. “There’s nowhere in all the world safer than traveling with Rojer and the Painted Man.”
    “He’s a frail man!” Elona said. “He can’t ride with young men, and he ’ll catch his death of cold! He’s never been the same after the flux took him last year.”
    “Why, Mother,” Leesha said, surprised, “it sounds like you truly care.”
    “Don’t take that tone with me,” Elona snapped. “Of course I care. He’s my husband. If you knew what it was like to be married almost thirty years, you wouldn’t say such things.”
    Leesha wanted to snap back, to shout out all the horrible things her mother had done to her father over the years, not the least of which being her repeated infidelity with Gared’s father, Steave, but the sincerity in her mother’s voice checked her.
    “You’re right, Mum, I’m sorry,” she said.
    Elona blinked. “I’m right? Did you just say I was right?”
    “I did.” Leesha smiled.
    Elona opened her arms. “Hug me now, child, while it lasts.” Leesha laughed and embraced her tightly.
    “He’ll be fine,” Leesha said, as much for herself as her mother.
    Elona nodded. “You’re right, of course. He may look a terror, but no demon can stand up to your tattooed friend.”
    “Both of us right in one night, and Da not here to witness,” Leesha said.
    “He’ll never believe it,” Elona agreed. She dabbed at her eyes with a kerchief, and Leesha pretended not to notice.
    “So was that the same Marick you used to shine on?” Elona asked. “The one you ran off to Angiers with?”
    “I never shined on him, Mother,” Leesha said.
    Elona scoffed. “Sell that tampweed tale to someone who doesn’t know you. The whole town knew you wanted him, even if you were too prudish to act on it. And why not? He’s handsome as a wolf, and a Messenger on top. That’s man enough for any woman. Why do you think he used to make Gared so jealous?”
    “Everything made Gared jealous, Mum,” Leesha said.
    Elona nodded. “He’s just like his father: simple men, ruled by their passions.” She smiled wistfully, and Leesha knew she was thinking of Steave, her first love, who had died the year previous when flux took Cutter’s Hollow and the wards failed.
    “The Marick I saw when we were alone on the road wasn’t much different,” Leesha said.
    “And you used Gatherer’s tricks to keep him off you,” Elona guessed, “instead of taking it as the perfect opportunity to have a romp with no one the wiser.” It was true enough; Leesha had secretly drugged Marick into impotence to prevent his taking advantage of her on the road.
    “Like you would have?” Leesha asked, unable to keep the bite from her tone.
    “Yes,” Elona said, “and why not? Skirts lift up for a reason. Women have needs down below, just as men. Don’t lie to yourself and pretend otherwise.”
    “I know that, Mum,” Leesha said.
    “You know it,” Elona agreed, “and yet still you sew your petticoats shut, and think denying yourself somehow makes you heroic. How can you treat every body in the Hollow when you don’t understand the needs of your own?”
    Leesha said nothing. Her mother had a most unsettling way of reading her thoughts.
    “You should go up and talk to Marick while your other suitors are out of town,” Elona said. “He’s had years and tragedy to season him, and come out a hero. The folk outside can’t stop singing his praises. Perhaps he ’ll be more to your liking now.”
    “I don’t know…” Leesha said.
    “Oh, go on!” Elona said. “Take a plate of food up to his room and talk to him. It’s not like you have to let him stick you this very night.” She smiled and winked. “Though if you did, it’d be a better use of your night than fretting over problems that will remain come morning.”
    Leesha laughed despite herself, and hugged her mother again.

    Several times they passed scenes of slaughter; bodies, alone and in groups, torn apart by corelings when night fell upon them without succor.
    The Painted Man cursed the sights, spurring Twilight Dancer on harder, not bothering to stop after the first. The others who followed him, even Gared and the Cutters, were inexperienced riders