In Kuroinu

The river was wider than Leonora's map said it would be.

We'd heard it before we saw it, a low rushing sound through the trees that got louder until we came out of the treeline onto a gravel bank and the ford spread out in front of us, brown and fast. The water was opaque with silt from the hills and the current was pushing hard enough to bend the grass along the bank flat.

Leonora dismounted and studied the crossing. She'd pulled a folded map from her saddlebag and was comparing the markings to what was in front of her and her mouth was getting thinner by the second. The map said knee-deep. The river said waist.

"Spring melt," she said. To herself, mostly. She folded the map and tucked it away. "We cross in pairs. I go first to test the depth and current. The swordswoman follows with the priestess. The archer takes the rear with the-" She stopped herself. "With Mila."

Filia caught it. She didn't say anything, but the corner of her mouth moved.

Llusse was already pulling off her boots. "I'm not ruining these."

"Leave your boots on," Leonora said. "The rocks are sharp."

"They're leather. They'll take a week to dry."

"Your feet will take longer to heal if you cut them open."

Llusse looked at her boots. Looked at the river. Put her boots back on and swore about it.

Leonora waded in. The water hit her thighs and she braced against the current and moved steadily across, finding her footing on each stone before committing her weight. She made it look easy. The push of the current against her legs said it wasn't.

She reached the far bank. Turned. "It's manageable. Stay upstream of the deepest channel, four steps from the far bank."

"Pair up," Filia said. She took Tianne's arm and they went in together, Tianne holding her staff above the water with one hand and gripping Filia's elbow with the other. The current pushed Tianne sideways and Filia steadied her and they crossed without incident.

Llusse waded in alone because nobody had told her she couldn't. Her ears were flat and her mouth was a thin line and she hated every second of being wet but she made it across through sheer refusal to ask for help.

That left me and Mila.

"Ready?" I said.

Her tail was tucked. She was looking at the water the way a cat looks at a bath.

"I'm fine," she said. "It's just water."

"You can hold my arm."

"I said I'm fine."

She made it to the middle of the ford before her foot went out from under her.

The rock she'd stepped on was slick and the current grabbed her legs and she yelped and went sideways and her pack swung wide and pulled her off balance and I caught her.

My arm went around her waist and I pulled her against my chest and the water was cold and fast around our hips and her pack was soaked and heavy and her ears were flat against her skull and her tail was rigid behind her, floating in the current like a wet black flag.

She was light. Lighter than any of the other girls. Her body against mine was small and warm despite the cold water and her fingers were gripping my shirt and her face was pressed into my chest and she was shaking.

"I've got you," I said.

"I slipped."

"I know."

"It was the rock."

"I know."

I shifted my grip. Got one arm under her knees and the other behind her back and lifted her out of the current. She weighed less than my pack. Her ears were dripping and her tail was soaked and trailing water and she looked up at me from the carry with her brown eyes wide and her cheeks going red.

"You don't have to carry me."

"Your boots lost their grip. The rocks are worse from here."

"I can-"

"Mila."

She stopped talking. Her ears folded down and she put her arms around my neck and pressed her face into my shoulder and her tail dripped a steady stream into the river behind us.

I carried her across. The current was bad in the last few steps, pushing hard against my legs, and the cold was up to my stomach and Mila's weight shifted when I adjusted my footing and her grip on my neck tightened. Her fingers were in my hair at the back of my head and she probably didn't realize it.

The far bank. I set her down on dry ground and she stood there dripping and her tail was starting to wag again, slow and uncertain.

I reached down and rubbed the top of her head between her ears. The fur there was soaked and matted and she went still under my hand and her ears pressed into my palm and her eyes half-closed and the wag picked up speed.

"Show-off," Llusse said from somewhere behind me.

I stopped. Mila's ears tracked after my hand for a second before she caught herself and stood up straight and tried to look professional.

Leonora was standing on the bank with her horse's reins in one hand. She'd watched the entire crossing. Her face was the same as before. But her hand was on her sword belt and her fingers were white around the leather and she was looking at the place where my hand had been on Mila's head.

She turned and mounted her horse without a word.

We wrung out what we could and kept moving. The road climbed out of the river valley into open grassland and the sun was warm enough to dry our clothes as we walked. Mila's tail was fully operational again within an hour, wagging at a steady background frequency that increased whenever she looked at me and thought I wasn't looking back.

I was always looking back.

The afternoon stretched. Leonora rode ahead as usual. Llusse was scouting the right flank, which today actually meant scouting instead of chasing birds. Tianne walked beside me for a while, then drifted back to talk to Mila about medicinal plants that grew near rivers. Filia was polishing her sword while walking, which was a skill I hadn't known was possible and probably wasn't safe.

Leonora was riding fifty yards ahead. Same posture, same silence. But she'd used Mila's name at the river. She'd said "with Mila," not "with the beastkin" or "with the support staff."

Filia noticed too. When Leonora dropped back to check the formation at midday, Filia fell into step beside her horse. The move looked casual. Filia had been watching Leonora watch us all morning.

I was ahead of them. Filia had waited. But the Blessing had been sharpening my senses with every partner and my hearing was sharp now.

"Is he always like this?" Leonora asked.

"Like what?" Filia didn't look up.

"With the women. The touching. The familiarity."

Filia was quiet for a few steps. Her hand was on her sword hilt and she was looking at the road.

"He makes you feel like the only person in the room," she said. "Even when there are four other women in it."

Leonora didn't respond. She straightened in the saddle and rode ahead.

Two hours. She didn't say a word, didn't check the formation, didn't look back. Her silence yesterday had been professional. She was chewing on Filia's answer.

The afternoon wore on. The road crossed a ridge and dropped into a wide shallow valley and the grass was tall here and the wind made it move in long slow waves. Llusse pulled a thorn out of her boot and complained about it for ten minutes. Tianne stopped humming long enough to heal a bruise on Mila's shin from the river rocks and the gold from her fingers was brighter than it had been in the capital. Mila's ears perked at that and Tianne said "It's the ambient magic. It's stronger this far north" and then spent the next mile explaining ley line density to a very patient beastkin girl who was listening more to the tone of Tianne's voice than to the content.

I walked behind them. The Blessing was humming in my chest, a low frequency that had been there since the threesome and hadn't stopped. Each girl registered as a different warmth. Filia was the steady heat of a forge. Tianne was the golden pulse that brightened when she used magic. Mila's was lower, like a warm kitchen. Llusse was sharp and spiky and changed with her mood.

Leonora was a blank spot. She wasn't bonded. The absence was noticeable.

The sun went orange and then red. Tianne was humming. Llusse was complaining about a blister. Mila was planning dinner out loud and nobody had asked her to but nobody wanted her to stop.

Leonora fell back.

She didn't announce it. Her horse just slowed until she was beside me instead of ahead. She was looking forward, spine straight, hands on the reins.

I walked. She rode. The others were ahead or behind and the road was quiet and the wind was dying and the grass on either side was golden in the late light.

After a while she spoke.

"You may call me Leonora." She was looking at the road. "Not Commander."

I looked up at her. She was silhouetted against the red sky and her jaw was set.

"Alright, Leonora."

She faced forward. Her jaw tightened. She rode ahead without another word and her back was very straight.

Filia appeared beside me.

"What was that?" she asked.

"She told me her name."

"You already knew her name."

"She told me to use it."

Filia looked at Leonora's back. Looked at me. Her mouth pulled to one side and her eyes narrowed.

"You're going to do this with all of them, aren't you," she said.

"Do what?"

"The thing." She gestured vaguely at the road ahead. "The being-nice thing. The tea thing. You're going to keep doing it until she cracks."

"I gave her tea."

"You gave her tea and your name and your attention and now she's given you hers and you didn't even have to try." She stopped. Took a breath. "It's annoying."

"What is?"

"How easy it is for you."

She walked faster. Caught up with Tianne and said something I couldn't hear and Tianne looked back at me with raised eyebrows and then both of them looked forward.

The sun was almost down. First stars showing. Somewhere ahead Leonora was riding point. She hadn't looked back once.

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