Six Feet of Ridiculous

By Wendy Palmer

A virus has spread through the kingdom of Aspermonde, transforming women into alien creatures known as Mosaics. Once they were treated as collectible, but Captain Simon Cant broke the Mosaic trade and rescued them.

Now, Simon and his loyal lieutenant, Hal Bracken, are escorting the last of the emancipated Mosaics to their new home. Simon's looking forward to seeing Augusta and having a lot of fun watching Medic Nathan Worth try and fail to seduce Hal. Nathan's six feet of pure ridiculous and all he wants is a little attention from Simon's straitlaced second-in-command.

When war unexpectedly comes back to Aspermonde, the three veterans are faced with the nightmare of returning to Middledark, the battlefield that almost destroyed them ten years ago. Simon has one chance to stop the new war, but first he's got to deal with his sick lieutenant, his secret-keeping lover, a stroppy medic, a very angry Mosaic, and a young firebrand who wants him to lead a rebellion against the king. When did it get so hard to be a big damn hero?

Sequel to Bastard's Grace, but can be read as a standalone. Contains mature m/f and m/m scenes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Winterbourne Publishing
• Release date: May 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9780987451118

Wendy Palmer

Wendy Palmer lives in Bridgetown, Western Australia with her partner, son, dogs, goats, alpacas, bees and chickens. She's patted tigers, ridden elephants, dog-sledded across glaciers, faced down lions in the Serengeti, swum with whale sharks, and camped in the Sahara, but she not-so-secretly prefers curling up with a good book.She writes fantasy fiction with entertaining characters, enjoyably perilous adventures, romantic entanglements, some dark undertones, but always happy, hopeful endings.

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Six Feet of Ridiculous

Wendy Palmer

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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Six Feet of Ridiculous. Copyright © 2021 by Wendy Palmer. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please support the author by purchasing only authorised electronic editions and not participating in or encouraging electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

ISBN 978-0-9874511-1-8. First published in 2021 by Winterbourne Publishing.

The Fell Types are digitally reproduced by Igino Marini. www.iginomarini.com

Is there a Henry in the world who could be insensible to such a declaration?

– Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey.

(Yes. Yes, there is.)

Part One

At Least Someone’s Having Fun

One

NATHAN WAS JUST drifting off in his lover’s arms when the heavy thudding came at the door of his private quarters.

‘Nurse Worth?’ called a muffled voice, portentous with authority.

‘My shift finished three hours ago,’ Nathan shouted back, though he was already sliding out of his narrow and currently crowded bed and fossicking around for his breeches.

He presumed that yet another sickly, starving Mosaic had been turned up in the home of a rebellious collector. Were emergency shifts still counted as emergency when they became routine?

His temporary lover—what was the man’s name?—groaned and pulled a pillow over his head, while the intervening voice confounded his assumption by announcing, ‘Army business.’

Nathan sighed without actually managing to sound put out. The evening had started so promisingly. He’d gone to a bar with two other nurses, one a woman, one another man, in the hope of entertainment of some variety. Those two had gone back to quarters to entertain each other and very rudely failed to invite him along. He’d obtained his own tension relief with the blond hunk of ruby-born muscle now swearing to himself under the blankets.

Still holding his breeches, he unbolted and opened the door. ‘Army business?’ he repeated sceptically, only to be confronted with an actual army officer, on the short side, and looking startled, since he—whoops, very plainly a she, despite the spiky-short blond hair under the shadowing cap, and the skinny form under the smothering coat—was being confronted in her turn with Nathan’s long and lanky nudity.

‘Oh, could you dress, please,’ said the female sergeant severely, shielding her eyes. The brown-haired private with her grinned cheekily.

‘What’s this about?’ Nathan asked, wriggling into his breeches one-handedly, leaning his shoulder on the doorframe for balance and enjoying watching the sergeant blush horribly. ‘Aren’t you Cant’s crew? Problem with a Mosaic?’

Nathan was assigned to the military hospital, and for the last six months a full half of that facility had been turned over to the care and rehabilitation of the newly freed Mosaics. Nathan had become quite the expert on both Mosaics and on the many varied effects of long-term charlotte use, dependency, and withdrawal.

‘No,’ she said. ‘We have a requisition order for you.’ He gave her a quizzical look and she clarified, ‘We have a requisition order which reassigns you to the Mosaic Escort troop.’

‘Lovely,’ Nathan said. ‘I’ll have a little chat with your Captain Cant, shall I?’

‘Ha!’ the sergeant said. ‘Cant’s on home-leave. You’ll be having your little chat with our Lieutenant Bracken, and he’s harder to shift than Cant is, so good luck to you, my friend.’

‘Ooh, Bracken, why didn’t you say so!’ Nathan popped his head back into the room long enough to pull on his boots, snatch up his shirt and say to his erstwhile lover, ‘You stay in here, I really like this one, I don’t want you muddying things.’

Like this one was an understatement. Bracken had been the star turn in Nathan’s dreams, fantasies, and sex-games for six months.

‘Rude,’ muttered the man in his delicious ruby-born drawl. Nathan had had a weakness for Skysend noblemen ever since a mostly-cosy relationship had ended about five years before. ‘Is that what passes for civilised behaviour these days?’

‘You want civilised, next time buy me more than one drink, you cheap bastard,’ Nathan told him cheerfully, and shut the door. He shrugged into his shirt and ran his hand through his tangled hair. ‘Do I look all right?’ he asked the private, since the sergeant was already gliding off down the hallway that led out of the nurses’ quarters.

‘You don’t look wholesome…’ said the private.

Nathan buttoned his shirt, licking his top lip. ‘Maybe Bracken doesn’t go for wholesome.’

‘I do not speculate,’ the private informed him, rather primly.

‘Sure you do, tiger,’ Nathan said, giving him a flirty whack on the shoulder before bouncing down the steps to the courtyard, passing the sergeant.

‘What’s a tiger?’ he heard the private ask the sergeant doubtfully before the two soldiers formed up and formally escorted him across the yard to where the lieutenant, compact and elegant, waited with what looked the entirety of the rest of the troop.

‘Why do I feel like a prisoner?’ he asked Bracken as he efficiently rolled back his left sleeve so it didn’t tangle with his stump. He should get his shirts tailored for it, and never bothered.

‘I cannot imagine,’ the lieutenant murmured in reply. ‘Larimy, Hales. You can move aside now.’

‘Sir,’ they chorused.

They melted back into the crowd of strapping young men, Nathan’s age or younger, and an endearingly convivial mix of corniche and valley-bred. The cornichers were mostly pink or olive with hair ranging from mousy brown to true white-blond, cropped short, and eyes of blue or green or hazel. They wore iron godmouth necklaces on thick chains in allegiance to the Starving God.

The valley boys, most of them taller than the corniche lads—the tallest of them still shorter than Nathan—were shades of tanned, and usually dark eyed and dark haired. Their necklaces were the colourful rectangular enamel pendants, known as prayers to the White Woman, on thin chains or leather cords. The ones with hair long enough for braiding—military regulations not withstanding their captain’s example—sported the traditional beads.

Many had a frippery, a single large ornament, woven in as well. Mostly that was an extra prayer to the White Woman, apt for soldiers, or bits of shiny metal or feathers or leather plaits or even jewellery. One tattooed soldier, giving Nathan a gratifying head-to-toe onceover with valley intent, wore what looked like a sapphire or a decent paste version of one as his frippery. Nathan returned his attention with a coy smile, much to their mutual pleasure.

Most of the troop were not wearing their grey army coats and the ones who were looked untidy. This, and the wan look on many of their faces, told Nathan they were coming in off a Skysend leave period.

Lieutenant Bracken handed Nathan a folded piece of paper, which he opened and skimmed by lamplight. He had indeed been reassigned to the Mosaic Escort troop. Tomorrow morning—dawn tomorrow morning, less than eight hours away!—he was due to report to Bracken and accompany Troop Escort on its regular run south to the perched villages by the sea.

On the way, he was to attend medically to both the troop and the Mosaics they were escorting, and once there, he was to attend the population of Mosaics spread over the seven Mosaic-occupied perched villages along the coast. There was no end-date on this new king’s-own assignment.

Having assimilated these instructions, Nathan considered Bracken, trying to not notice how enticing his warm amber eyes were or how much his slight smile appeared to be some kind of secret invitation. Nathan doubted very much that it was.

He knew the man found him attractive; he had said as much, assessing Nathan as worth three flourishes and a saunter, the valley slang phrase that implied a partner was so stimulating it would take several fast bedding attempts before one could control oneself enough to slow down and really enjoy it. That had been especially flattering, even if Bracken hadn’t intended him to overhear it, because the traditional saying involved two flourishes before the saunter. He had rated three, something that kept him warm at night.

Despite that, and putting aside one exciting incident in a hospital storeroom, the lieutenant had kept an annoyingly proper distance. Nathan had therefore not gotten to know him very well, even with his regular attendance at the military hospital to organise the consignments of Mosaics to take down to the perched villages. Nathan thought the straitlaced Bracken seemed more relaxed tonight than usual, in an indefinable way, but he really couldn’t have sworn it.

However, the first thing anyone learnt about the man was that he took his duty very seriously. Nathan knew he wouldn’t look kindly on any complaint or shirking on Nathan’s part in the face of these new orders. He might be sympathetic about the short notice, but not give any leeway.

But…God chew it all, Nathan had been so looking forward to getting rid of this last lot of Mosaics and being done with it—probably like much of Skysend. Partly, it was a certain natural wariness—everyone who had been involved in the Sandstream Mosaic rescues had been pardoned by the king, but he was not sure That Bastard Cant was as forgiving—but there was more to it than that.

‘A word, Lieutenant?’ he asked.

Bracken nodded grave assent and allowed Nathan to lead him off a few paces for privacy.

‘Look, I don’t want to work with Mosaics,’ Nathan blurted.

‘Oh,’ Bracken said. ‘That’s strange, because you were specifically selected because of the exceptional work you’ve been doing in the hospital with the recovering Mosaics.’

‘Right,’ Nathan said slowly. ‘Specifically selected…’ He echoed the words and then couldn’t help but half-ask: ‘By you…’

‘No,’ Bracken said. ‘It was the captain’s decision, and your ward matron approved it, not happily, and so did Semper Augustus.’ The very slightest edge had entered his voice but his expression remained mild and detached. Then he shook his head. ‘Sorry, I should say, the council of Mosaics approved it after Augusta recommended it.’

Nathan marvelled at a man who could correct himself in the light of some reprove even when the person who had given him the reprove was not present to reprove him again. He was also impressed that Augusta’s so-called recommendation had been accepted, since almost every recovered Mosaic would have passed through his care at one time or the other, and he doubted he’d left as good of an impression as Bracken might hope to imply.

But the most important part was that first bit.

‘Are we being match-made, Lieutenant?’ he asked brightly, flirting without much hope. Bracken had failed to show a flicker of interest in him, past those crowded minutes after Nathan had waylaid him into the storeroom.

The man was in love with his captain, and Cant owned him body and soul and wasn’t the type to share. They’d been paired since Middledark, and Nathan knew better than to mess with a war partnership. Bracken was known as Cant’s hunting dog in some quarters. To say he was loyal was to say rain was wet and valley boys were easy.

Bracken grimaced, running a hand over his short-cropped coppery hair. ‘In his subtle and well-thought-out way, the captain could be trying to do something nice for me, yes.’ He glanced at Nathan. ‘You’re quite upfront, aren’t you?’

‘Aren’t I, just,’ Nathan agreed. He was surprised by Bracken’s answer. But Captain Cant was valley-bred, a notoriously relaxed people concerning matters of the blanket—maybe he did share, after all. ‘You should hear me talk dirty in bed.’

‘Should I?’ Bracken said. Nathan saw him clock the bruises around Nathan’s throat, touching his own throat unconsciously. ‘Could you tell me why you don’t want to work with Mosaics anymore?’

Nathan looked down at the palm of his hand. It was crisscrossed with a network of thin red cuts, legacy of a shattering bottle. They would heal.

Bracken lowered his voice and prompted, ‘Did you sleep with one? Because—’

‘No, no,’ Nathan hastened to tell him. ‘I mean, I sleep with women, if they ask me to. Sleep with just about anybody, if they ask nicely enough.’ That’s yet another hint, Bracken. It did no good; Bracken could not fail to know Nathan wanted him. He just didn’t want Nathan back. The medic sighed. ‘But never a Mosaic.’

‘They wouldn’t have been in a position to ask,’ Bracken said.

The Mosaics, had, until recently, been drugged into insentience by the secret administration of large quantities of charlotte in their government-administered food. Charlotte was a miracle drug, brilliant—in small doses—for fast healing and, to a certain extent, for relieving pain. It kept their soldiers alive.

But a big dose, given too long, could destroy a person—thin their bones and melt their minds—and it had shattered the small population of Mosaics, who were really just women with bodies made alien by a virus. Women turned into collector items, slaves, and victims by one man who so feared the effects of that virus that he had organised their systematic doping to keep them under control.

‘I… um.’ He tapped his fingers on his thigh. ‘Have you read my file?’

‘Yes,’ Bracken said simply. ‘I was entitled to review it under regulation—’

‘Oh, I don’t mind, laddie,’ Nathan said. ‘You know I was assigned to the eastern border, for the regiments there?’

Bracken nodded, and Nathan went on, with difficulty. ‘It was also a trade community. They needed to know if the foreign merchants coming through were vulnerable to the Mosaic virus.’

Bracken nodded again. Nathan knew he understood, then, but he did not hand the words to Nathan—he waited for the nurse to admit it out loud. ‘I tested them for susceptibility. I took blood from a Mosaic to test for immunity among the traders. If I had known…’

It was a lament heard often in Aspermonde now, six months after Captain Cant and his troop had exposed the auditor’s trick and revealed the Mosaics as still sentient, still human, still with a soul.

Nathan had spent several perfectly pleasant years taking a Mosaic, slicing open a vein on its arm to take fresh blood, mixing that blood with water to dilute it, and applying the mix to a patch of unbroken skin of anyone wanting the test. A rash meant risk. No rash meant immunity. Most men were immune and the ones who weren’t died. Most women were susceptible and the ones who were transformed.

All those shallow cuts. All those times he had cut into the naked and flinching flesh of a Mosaic, a creature specifically bought for testing, because it was not as pretty or well-formed as the Mosaics taken by the collectors. It was little consolation that the charlotte ensured that the pain was numbed and the cut would quickly heal.

Hundreds of shallow cuts. Three Mosaics, in all, dying one after another, probably because of the virus and overdosing with charlotte. Perhaps because of the constant blood-letting.

He liked to think he had always taken care, the same care he took with human patients. He didn’t think he always had.

Nathan rallied. ‘But, see, now, I’ve done six months. I’ve worked my guts out for them. I was hoping to be done with it.’

‘You think you’ve done enough.’ Bracken nodded yet again, his impassive expression unchanging.

Nathan bit his bottom lip, frowning at the smaller man.

The Mosaics were strong and coming off a powerful drug; even as the withdrawal pangs reached their zenith, their strength was recovering in bounds. At first, they were as messy as infants. Then, as they surfaced to sentience and good health, they fought like madwomen to get hold of charlotte.

Over the past months, he’d been vomited on, pissed on, shat on. He’d been bitten, scratched, kneed in the groin, punched in the face. He’d been spat at and slapped at and clawed at. He’d come off shift with fractured fingers and blackened eyes, bruised ribs and vicious scratches down his face. Just last week, a Mosaic had done her god-chewed best to throttle him and it taken three other nurses to drag her off him. His lover tonight had put his hands around Nathan’s neck to marvel at the livid streaks the bruising had left.

He’d not turned down a single extra shift this whole six months, even in the early days when he’d had to run four shifts in a row because they couldn’t get enough nurses in to relieve him, and had only gone off duty when he’d collapsed and his ward matron had made him.

He’d done his job. He had the right to be proud of how well he’d done it, but he had only been doing his job.

Just like at the border.

He looked at his hand again, the healing cuts on his palm. That last Mosaic—she’d been trying to get a bottle of charlotte off him. He’d held on to it even with the life half-choked out of him, held on to it so tightly it had shattered in his hand and propelled shards of glass into the skin of his fingers and palm.

His cuts would heal. The dozens of shallow cuts he’d made on each of the three Mosaics, those were white lines across the flesh of their arms, permanent scars on permanently dead flesh.

‘Guess not,’ he muttered.

Bracken put his own hand out to block Nathan’s view of the cuts. ‘Don’t dwell on it, Nathan,’ he said. ‘All of us did things we’re not proud of.’

Nathan laughed. ‘You didn’t.’

Bracken gave a single firm shake of his head. ‘I helped Captain Cant bring in Mosaics for the king’s garden. Do you think we did that nicely? We all did things we’re not proud of.’ He briefly patted Nathan on the shoulder. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, when we come to collect the last batch of Mosaics.’

Nathan stayed looking down for one more moment before his natural good humour re-asserted itself and he lifted his head. ‘Oh, I don’t think so, Lieutenant.’

The lieutenant paused in mid-step, looking back over his shoulder and holding a perfect expression of calm enquiry. Despite the man’s serenity, Nathan knew that if his offhand comment revealed itself to be a refusal to obey orders, Bracken would have him arrested.

‘I got a whole parcel of med checks to do here,’ he said, indicating the waiting troop with his chin.

As expected, he provoked a flurry of outrage from the men. Hales, the private who had come with Sergeant Larimy to collect him, summed it up neatly. ‘Sir, we’re all technically still on leave.’

‘That’s true,’ Bracken said thoughtfully. ‘I was just making sure they got back to barracks in time for curfew, but they are still off duty.’

It was a familiar complaint from the soldiers Nathan treated that their last night of leave was always cut short because they were expected to be back in the barracks by a late curfew. Their logic was that their duty did not start again till dawn, so why should they be in by midnight? The logic of the military tribunal appeared to be along the lines of the stockade for anyone who didn’t answer the curfew roll call.

Bracken was taking responsibility for rounding his troop up even while he himself must still be on leave, because he didn’t want to have to waste time in the morning doing the paperwork to get them out of the stockade. That knowledge, that Bracken wanted an early start, gave Nathan a certain level of influence.

His irrepressible sense of humour bubbled up. He waved his re-assignment orders under the lieutenant’s nose. ‘This attaches me to your troop.’

‘Yes,’ Bracken said. A slight twitch of his mouth suggested he knew what was coming.

‘Which activates my military standing.’

Bracken nodded, then added, ‘Yes, sir,’ since Nathan’s nominal rank was high—major—given his relative youth. ‘In medical matters, anyway. It’s not fully activated unless the Medic Corp becomes active.’

Which, as he had taken a certain amount of subtle glee in pointing out to Nathan six months ago, only happened when Aspermonde went to war. It’d been just over ten years since the last time, ten years since Nathan had lost his left arm to the elbow to poor medical care in the aftermath of a Middledark battle.

Nathan ignored the judicious qualification, which meant his title would move from Nurse to Medic but not all the way to Major, and that Bracken did not actually have to call him sir at all.

He was too entirely pleased with himself to be distracted. ‘And gives me absolute authority in medical matters relating to Mosaics.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Oh,’ Nathan said, cheerily gloating. ‘So I have military and medical authority over you, Bracken.’ He was taunting the lieutenant for his refusal of those exact things six months ago. ‘So it’s either right now, or it’s tomorrow morning, but either way, these men pass my med check or they do not deploy.’

‘Sir, yes, sir,’ Bracken said, speaking in a precise manner he no doubt habitually adopted with officers of superior rank who were annoying him, but looking like he was trying hard not to laugh. He gestured to his sergeants. ‘You heard the man. Line ’em up, lads.’

‘We’re very disappointed in you, sir,’ said a tall, ash-blond cornicher with a corporal stripe on his shoulder and a wide mouth.

‘And look who just volunteered to go first.’ Nathan slung his arm about the corporal’s shoulders and marched him from the yard that fronted the long and low nurses’ quarters, around the corner into the much wider and better-lit square in front of the hospital. ‘Now you just have to decide which hole you want the thermometer shoved into.’

He heard the rest of the troop break out into slightly nervous laughter at the corporal’s expense as they followed.

Bracken had been back writing out a quick note, using one of the new fountain pens from the east, to excuse his troop from the curfew. Now he trotted up beside Nathan, got him to add his own scrawling signature to Bracken’s neat flourish, sealed it, and sent it off with a bright-eyed valley-bred soldier, about as young as Nathan had been when he’d taken to the field at Middledark for his first and only battle.

‘And you come straight back here afterwards, Hooganhout,’ Bracken said sternly. ‘And Buck, it’s not a euphemism, it’s actually a thermometer. He’s only teasing you because you’re making it easy for him. And Worth, I expend no little effort persuading the lads the hospital doesn’t need to be feared…’

‘Oh, this is the second time tonight you’ve ruined my fun,’ Nathan exclaimed, leading Buck into the clinic room nearest the hospital’s main entrance and waving the rest of the troop onto the wooden chairs of the bare waiting room beside it.

‘You will be duly compensated in due course,’ Bracken said mildly, just as Nathan shut the door.

He stood with his hand on the doorknob, tempted to fling it back open and demand what that poker-faced officiousness had meant.

‘D’you think it’s remotely possible he’s flirting with me?’ he asked Corporal Buck.

‘It turns my stomach to think about it,’ Buck snapped.

‘Then don’t think about it, princess,’ Nathan said, smiling with a perfect pleasure he knew could not fail to irritate the soldier.

The corporal sighed heavily. ‘Couldn’t you keep quiet, like…others…do?’

He meant Bracken, of course. Nathan smiled his prettiest smile. ‘Up on the bench, precious, and stick your tongue out, it’ll shut you up for five seconds.’

Buck reluctantly obeyed and Nathan went into the procedures of the routine health check, saying as he did so, ‘I’ve tried to hide it precisely once in my life, laddie, and ended up losing the arm. Never bothered to try again.’

He wasn’t being quite honest; he’d tried to hide being a molly only once, but he had offered to hide it a second time, when his nearly-five-year relationship with ruby-born Lord Alexander was coming to a close five years ago.

Their parting hadn’t been voluntary: Alexander had inherited a barony when his older brother died, and suddenly had to marry and raise heirs. Their relationship had survived the inheritance, the legalistic courtship—and what a long and fascinating process a ruby-born courtship was—the marriage, and the birth of Alexander’s first child.

It had ended about three days after the birth, when Alexander woke up to his responsibilities to his newborn son and broke off all contact with Nathan from fear of bringing down scandal on his family’s head.

Nathan, to his chagrin now, had pleaded with Alexander to change his mind. ‘I can be discreet,’ he had said. ‘Please, Alexander, no one will know, I’ll play boring-side.’

‘Then you wouldn’t be you,’ Alexander had said simply, kissed him a last time, far more gently than had been his recent habit, and sent him on his way.

Nathan had just finished his nursing training and signed up to serve the army; though he’d been invalided out of the military arm, he was welcomed enthusiastically into the medical arm with a higher rank than he’d ever expected, possibly due to the medal he’d earned at Middledark. He got himself assigned to the eastern border. Two years ago, that rotation had finished, and he’d come back to the Skysend military hospital.

He was happy there. He never saw Alexander, who had no reason to visit the military district. And he did quite often get to see Bracken, who had plenty of reasons to visit the military hospital and who managed to feed Nathan’s fantasies without giving him any sort of encouragement whatsoever.

Nathan put his mind back to his job. He cheerily waved his stump at Buck in a way he knew people found both fascinating and grotesque. The corporal tried to say something that came out mangled, and Nathan removed the metal tongue depressor and raised both eyebrows.

‘Pah, that tastes disgusting,’ the big blond complained. ‘You tried to hide being a molly by joining the Middledark fight?’

Again, past times tugged at his empty sleeve. Ten years ago, Nathan had been sixteen and homeless, thanks to a not-under-my-roof decree from his father. He’d more been following the soldiers for free meals than thinking of war, but the sudden adolescent impulse to enlist, act like his father’s idea of a man, kill something, win some medals, return home a hero, and shove those prigging medals down his father’s throat… Well, it had been irresistible.

It had also been rather stupid, but he’d had to pay an arm to find that out.

‘All those fit young men and their muscles,’ he replied now without so much as a pause. ‘It seemed such a masculine place to be.’

Buck had started to look nervous again. ‘Oh, don’t get yourself in a pother, sweetness,’ Nathan said. ‘I’m hardly interested in you.’

‘Why, what’s wrong with me?’ the corporal immediately said, sounding genuinely hurt.

Nathan opened the door and said, ‘Bracken, I’m guessing your whole troop’s a pack of smartarses?’

‘No kidding,’ Bracken said wearily, without even looking up from the paperwork he’d spread out on the chair next to him. ‘You wait till you meet—’

And then he cut himself off and swept his soldiers with an endearingly provocative look that had them all looking at each other to work out who he’d meant. Bracken returned his attention to his work, only the slightest of smiles giving away exactly who the chief smartarse of the troop was.

Grinning, Nathan shut the door and focussed on his job. The medical check was straightforward—a look in the eyes and ears and at the tongue and teeth, just like checking a horse; a check of the pulse and breathing; a poking and a prodding to catch any areas of swelling, pain or tenderness, all those were easy enough and the soldiers put up with it.

It was the list of questions the nurses had to ask that the soldiers hated, the questions about drug use and dangerous sex and risk-taking and suicidal thoughts asked straight out like they were expected to give an honest answer.

Nathan was a tall, lanky, extremely pretty man and played on his androgynous looks and openly-molly manner by adding a calculated flirtiness that he used to disarm, alarm or generally nonplus the young soldiers into answering those frightening questions without too much demure.

It worked well but was a game he had to be careful about; valley boys lapped it up but some corniche soldiers did react aggressively. But Nathan knew how to block a punch—and, since he had little natural aggression himself, how to take a beating, too. He also knew how to manage himself when the belligerency turned out to be disguising a deep desire to make love, not war. He’d gone to bed not a few times keeping a blunt instrument by his one hand just in case the belligerency reasserted itself at a delicate moment. Those last few years with Alexander had added a certain frisson to that kind of sex that he still sought out when the mood took him.

Neither outcome—a beating or sex—was a risk in this case, with Bracken keeping the soldiers company. Nathan amused himself through the dull process of forcing forty young men to answer personal questions about their risky health behaviours by trying to guess how the lieutenant knew what his men wanted him to do.

Sometimes he’d accompany them into the room and stay quietly in the corner for the whole interview. Sometimes he’d walk out after a minute or two, once they’d seen Nathan wasn’t planning on stripping them naked and having his way with them; sometimes, as with Buck and most of the valley-bred soldiers, he wouldn’t come in at all.

Mostly, he kept quiet. A few times he cleared his throat pointedly; the soldier under examination would blush and his answers to the proscribed questions would miraculously change. At least twice, the lieutenant just up and left the room, and the answers promptly changed then.

Nathan was unable to catch any exchange of signals or glances that might have been guiding the lieutenant, right up until the sergeant—Larimy, the girl, who seemed to have little idea of just how much fresh valley air, exercise, and food had done for her figure, if not her secret.

Though there was no subtle exchange of signals or glances here, either. She was very plain about her wishes.

‘No, sir, I shan’t,’ she said flatly, even as Bracken’s hand planted firmly in her back and refused to let her retreat. They stymied each other in the doorway and came to a tangled stop.

Bracken shot a look over her head at Nathan. The medic had been unconcernedly watching the drama, dying to ask how in the Ovens she’d got past the Mosaic test—if she’d failed it, she wouldn’t be in Troop Escort, but the odds of a woman passing it were minimal, so she would have had to send someone else to get their blood tested in her place, carrying her pass. He wondered if he should put a note up through the command chain to have the test more stringently supervised and cross-checked. There were a surprising number of women hiding in the army.

At Bracken’s look, Nathan straightened. ‘Excuse me, I have something to attend to.’ He loped out and sent in another nurse, female, to do the girl-soldier’s examination.

When Larimy had been set free and Nathan returned to the room, he was gratified by Bracken’s quiet nod of thanks for this little favour. Now there were just two soldiers left, though no doubt Bracken thought there was just the one—Private Hales, his open, cheerful face currently set in an expression of gloom. Bracken quietly followed him into the examination room and closed the door.

The last few hours had dulled Nathan’s high spirits. He was both tired and fully immersed in the routines of medical duty, so he didn’t bother to tease Hales or dance about the bush. The private had already betrayed himself by being even more reluctant than Larimy to undergo the check. It didn’t take very much time for Nathan to pinpoint the problem, given the bruising on his torso.

In fact, it took exactly the length of time required to make a man yelp with pain after Nathan’d got him to breathe in deeply and simultaneously thumped his side.

‘You’ve got cracked ribs, tiger,’ Nathan informed Hales shortly. ‘You’re out.’

‘But—’

‘Go tell it to your mother, precious.’

‘Sir,’ Hales said, looking to his lieutenant.

‘Look at that, you did!’ Nathan rolled his eyes and the private blushed but kept the plaintive expression on his freckled face.

‘Hales,’ Bracken said. He was leaning against the sink in the corner, and rapped his fingers against the porcelain thoughtfully. ‘You do what you like on your own time, but you can’t come back injured and expect—’

‘Sir, Troop Ratchet was saying stuff about Sergeant Larimy.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Hummingbird and stuff.’

‘Ooh,’ said Nathan before he could help it. That was army slang for someone who habitually got on their knees for men’s pleasure. He was a hummingbird; he was fairly sure Larimy was not.

‘Larimy can defend his own honour,’ Bracken said.

Nathan raised his eyebrows at the clumsy juxtaposition of pronoun and chivalry and then understood. Women weren’t allowed in the army; if the other soldiers fell into the habit of referring to her as a her, they risked giving her away with a slip of the tongue in front of officers who might report her…as opposed to private soldiers, who seemed to just want to give her a hard time.

Bracken went on. ‘It’s not an excuse to start a fight and I expect better from someone being considered for promotion.’

‘Sorry, Lieutenant. It won’t happen again, sir.’

‘Well.’ Bracken folded his arms and smiled minutely. ‘Be sure it doesn’t.’ He glanced at Nathan. ‘Can you give him some charlotte?’

‘Of course,’ Nathan said, reaching for the supply in the cupboard against the wall.

The cupboard was kept locked and bolted when not in use. Given how much you could sell a vial of the clear and tasteless liquid for, it wasn’t just locked up against predations by the desperate Mosaics.

Charlotte sped up healing, and by that alone had pulled more soldiers back from death’s grasp than Nathan could count—including Bracken’s precious Captain Cant—but the soldiers valued it more for its ability to numb pain. Nathan could never decide if it truly numbed pain or just dulled the memory of it, like it dulled all the other faculties. Women giving birth swore by charlotte and still had to be strapped down while they screamed.

Nathan’s stump began to tingle. The charlotte had done its work when he’d been strapped down, tethered on a filthy bit of canvas while a blunt saw ripped through torn and bleeding flesh and severed off the infection before it could eat the rest of his arm. Had he truly not experienced the pain or had he just forgotten that he had? Did it matter?

It was not a theory he talked about, not even with the other nurses who had to think much the same thing. Even wilfully oblivious Nathan could see that the last thing Aspermonde needed right now was to suspect that the Mosaics had felt something of the pain that had been inflicted on them when their owners had thought them soulless animals. Charlotte was more than just a physical comfort right now.

On the other hand, pain and the memory of pain also had its own function in life, and that was about protecting the body from further pain. Nathan waved the vial at Bracken. ‘But he’s out, you got that? He’s not running the valleys with cracked ribs. He can stay here and recover properly.’

‘Sir.’ It was almost a wail and Nathan gave another dramatic roll of his eyes along with a flounce of his shoulders, which made Hales blush again but not withdraw his plaintive appeal to his lieutenant.

Bracken remained patient. He approached the bench, put his hands flat about Hales’s ribs and pressed, the fingers spread wide. The lad winced but made no outcry.

The lieutenant shrugged. ‘Strap him, dose him, he can do it.’

‘That’s your medical opinion, is it, Bracken?’ Nathan asked icily.

‘That’s over fifteen years’ experience of the limits of men,’ Bracken said.

He took down a bandage off a shelf, and Nathan, sighing, pushed him aside, and did the job for him, employing his stump for leverage and wrapping the strapping tight around the damaged ribs, daring Hales to complain.

Only after he’d given the lad three drops of pure charlotte did he half-realise and half-remember the troop had been on leave and Hales had been in pain; both were encouragements to excessive drinking. But he’d already swallowed it.

‘Thank you, sir,’ Hales said enthusiastically and fled without even buttoning his shirt or having to answer the questions, since Nathan was too distracted to stop him—or to warn him he was about to get weepy then fall flat on his face.

He firmly shut the door behind him and turned to Bracken. ‘That,’ he said. ‘That was blatantly…’

He took a breath, not to calm himself, but rather to maintain a sense of indignation that was already fading. Nathan had a very fast temper—he lost it fast, got it back faster, and found it impossible to hold grudges.

He was, really, fine now but he managed to say with a level of sternness, ‘Lieutenant Bracken, that was a medical decision, that’s my jurisdiction.’

Bracken did not seem contrite. ‘In your honest medical judgement, the lad can’t make the run?’

‘He can. Doesn’t mean he should.’

The lieutenant shrugged. ‘Sorry. But if I show up a man short, the captain will give me the kind of trouble you can’t even approach.’

‘You will find out how much trouble I can cause,’ Nathan muttered, then added, ‘One man left behind and he harasses you about it?’ He knew Cant was a bastard, but…

‘He lost six younger brothers at Middledark,’ Bracken said. ‘He gets a little funny about the young men under his care going absent.’

Nathan huffed out. He frankly suspected it wasn’t Cant, of the two Escort commanders, who had trouble letting his lads out of his sight. ‘Don’t you throw your war-dead at me, laddie, I’ve got plenty of my own.’

‘When it matters, yours is the only voice that will count.’

‘I say when it matters.’ Nathan theatrically stalked over—he was over six feet tall, most of it leg, and had an impressive stalk on him—and flung the door open.

In the waiting room, as he had expected, Hales was out cold on the floor surrounded by his alarmed mates, one of whom, Sergeant Larimy, was crossly informing another, ‘He told you he loved you too, it doesn’t mean a god-chewed thing.’

‘Back to barracks, lads, and see you all at dawn,’ Bracken said from behind him. ‘Benz, see that Hales gets back.’

‘Put him to bed on his side, laddie,’ Nathan added. ‘Let him sleep it off.’

‘Yes, sirs,’ the troop’s other sergeant said with a precise salute.

He and another soldier half-carried and half-walked Hales out, followed by the rest of the troop. Bracken nodded to Nathan and started off after his men, not without one of those tiny knowing smiles that tended to raise the hairs on the back of Nathan’s neck.

Nathan, his usual carefree demeanour restored, let him get far enough to think he’d made his escape before he cleared his throat hammily. ‘Where d’you think you’re going, soldier?’

Bracken looked at his boots. Then, exceedingly meekly and with no surprise at all, he returned into the examination room, lightly brushing against Nathan as he passed him in the doorway.

Nathan shut the door slowly, hearing the click of the latch like the hour chime on one of the delicate mechanisms made by his father the watchmaker. His mood, the moment Bracken had brushed against him, had abruptly flipped—he was no longer tired, no longer at all irritated…and no longer in the mood for merely teasing.

His thoughts had moved firmly from flirting to seducing. He reminded himself he was still on duty.

‘Up on the bed—bench.’ Oh, he could have slapped himself.

Bracken’s eyes were downcast and he obeyed without looking up. Without having to be asked, he unbuttoned his shirt, revealing his well-muscled chest with its light sprinkle of coppery hair.

It was more than edging towards Nathan’s fondest imaginings. On duty, on duty, on duty. ‘Put your tongue out.’

Bracken responded again with mute obedience, except this time he raised his clear eyes and looked at Nathan steadily. Nathan had to step away, overwhelmed by a sudden flash of their shared moment in the storeroom…

…while Bracken was giving his captain time to escape from the care of the hospital.

That reminder was enough to quieten any rushes of blood. ‘And to think,’ he said, ‘this had the potential to be so awkward.’

He was rewarded with Bracken’s sudden, quick, smile. ‘Yes. About what happened, Nathan…’

‘You’re not planning to apologise, are you? I hate it when men apologise for having sex with me.’

Not that men did. Nathan rather felt he should be the one apologising, since Bracken had been in a bad place when Nathan had offered him a sympathetic shoulder—or any other sympathetic part of his body the lieutenant felt like availing himself of—and thus inveigled him into the storeroom for a too-brief encounter that still woke him up at night.

Bracken looked wry. ‘I know it was a rather busy few minutes, but I don’t think it got so far as…’

‘Feagueing me in a supply closet?’ Nathan suggested lightly.

Feagueing was a valley-bred practice that involved a stick of ginger and a horse; it was a curiously apt expression that Cant used when he wanted to alarm his quiet lieutenant.

‘The man has a way with words, doesn’t he?’ Bracken said, shaking his head but speaking fondly.

Nathan sighed. Bloody Cant. There was a starvin’ lucky man. He forced his mind back to duty and started running through the checks.

‘You seem more relaxed than usual,’ he said, gripping Bracken’s wrist gently with his two longest fingers against his pulse. It was rapid, and he frowned.

‘I’m off duty till tomorrow morning,’ Bracken explained. ‘Well, this morning, by now. The morning being…the morning.’

Nathan nodded, only half-listening as he put his hand over Bracken’s heart, focus intent. He saw Bracken shake his head and sensed he was smiling, but he didn’t look up as he counted the beats.

The lieutenant gently lifted his hand away and said, ‘Shall I just go down the list? In order, it’s no, no, no, yes but a long time ago, no, no, yes but not recently, no, no, yes, yes but it’s an old injury, no, no, and, last, no, unless what I’ll be doing in, oh, let’s say five minutes, counts.’

By the time Nathan had worked out Bracken was answering the prescribed questions, he was lagging badly, so the last answer—to the bald question, Any other risks to your health you’d like to report?—and Bracken’s accompanying and decidedly mischievous smile caught him off guard.

‘That depends what you’ll be doing, Lieutenant Bracken,’ he said. He wrinkled his nose at how prudish he’d sounded. He didn’t care what the soldiers did; he had no moral ground to stand on.

The lieutenant laughed. ‘Am I being subtle, Nath?’ he asked. ‘Or are you being tactful?’

‘Feel free to assume I’m being slow,’ Nathan said, before he finally caught up. ‘Ooh, me?’ he asked, bouncing delightedly on the spot, all thoughts of his responsibilities entirely banished by the thrill of figuring out that Bracken wanted him.

‘Yes,’ Bracken said, laughing again. ‘And you can probably call me Hal.’

Nathan flung himself into Hal’s arms to kiss him with six months’ worth of fantasies to fuel his enthusiasm, but found it in himself to hesitate. ‘Am I encroaching on Cant’s territory here?’

‘Territory?’ Hal repeated, with raised eyebrows. ‘What am I, virgin lands ripe for exploration?’

Nathan felt both the need to apologise and the slightly more urgent need to push the soldier down and kiss him hard, before he caught Hal’s wicked eye and burst out, ‘You’re a terrible flirt when you’re off duty.’

‘So I am, whoever would have guessed it?’

Starver knew, Nathan never would’ve. Hal was so god-chewed impassive when on duty that it was hard to imagine him behaving in any sense romantically. Though that hadn’t stopped Nathan from doing so, in a wide array of torrid scenarios that in no way made up for Hal’s seeming lack of interest.

Hal hadn’t exactly answered the question, just then.

The soldier took Nathan’s face in his hands and kissed him, his tongue flickering lightly and rhythmically between his parted lips. Nathan completely relaxed into the kiss, rejoicing. It was better even than he had remembered, and he had a god-chewed good imagination and an even better whack of experience to enhance the memory too.

The moment was rather spoiled, though, when his hand slid along Hal’s ribs, feeling the ripple of scar tissue and the starkness of bone just under the skin. He was startled enough to break off to exclaim, ‘Blessed Starving God, you’re so thin!’

Hal had managed to take his mind off the examination he was supposed to be doing, but a rapid pulse and weight loss were not good signs. Nathan pressed his ear against Hal’s chest to hear his breathing.

‘I was injured six months ago, remember,’ Hal said. ‘It’s hardly odd that I’m a little thinner than I should be. I’ll put it back on.’

‘And your breathing sounds funny,’ Nathan said, lifting his head again.

He was utterly torn, because Hal had slipped a hand under his shirt and was sliding gentle fingers up and down his spine in a way that was making his own breathing sound funny. His duty told him to finish the exam because Hal was borderline on being declared medically unfit. His lust warned him he didn’t want to be making any rash decisions on that front until he’d screwed the man, because any affection Hal might hold for him wouldn’t last three seconds past such a declaration.

‘My breathing sounds a little off to you because I lost a lung at Middledark.’ Hal’s voice was gentle and soothing, matching those stroking fingers. ‘Would’ve died, if the field-medic hadn’t poured undiluted charlotte directly on the wound.’

Now Nathan was torn three ways, and this third blade neatly sliced through the agonising between duty and lust. ‘They wouldn’t have done that.’

It just wasn’t possible that a medic would apply charlotte directly to a wound; the drug didn’t work externally in that fashion. If Hal had been as badly hurt as a lung injury implied, he probably hadn’t been aware of what the medic really did. He had to have mixed up a delirious dream with reality. The proof was in his inaccurate phrasing: he wouldn’t have lost a lung, he would have just ended up with massive scarring on the lung that had been hit.

‘Too expensive to waste that much charlotte on a soldier?’ The lieutenant’s tone was still mild.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Nathan said, and Hal immediately dipped his head in apology, showing no further offense.

The nurse briefly wondered what Hal would be like when he was angry. It’d be nice to see him display some sort of uncontrolled emotion, because even as delighted as Nathan was with the unexpected direction of his night, he could see that Hal was not particularly carried away with passion.

That was all right. Some men simply weren’t passionate by nature, and used sex solely for physical release. That was hardly going to stop Nathan dragging the man into bed now he’d finally indicated interest.

Except—he had his bloody duty to deal with first. ‘I just meant,’ he went on. ‘It wouldn’t work, charlotte doesn’t work like that, that’s all, so the medic wouldn’t use it like that.’ He put his head back against Hal’s chest and added, ‘All right, but your heartbeat’s—’

‘I think you’ll find my heart is beating rather fast,’ Hal said.

He slid his hand into Nathan’s long, curly hair and pulled back with just enough pressure to make him raise his head. Hal, keeping his hand lightly on the back of Nathan’s neck, drew him into his embrace by hooking his knees about Nathan’s hips, put his mouth over Nathan’s, and kissed him until he forgot all about duty.

Later, he would guess that that had been the man’s exact intention.

Now, though, all he could do was run through a familiar calculation: where to take his latest lover to bed. They couldn’t go back to his private room in the nurses’ quarters because he’d left a blond nobleman sleeping it off in his narrow bed, and he didn’t think Hal was up for that…yet. They couldn’t go back to Hal’s officer quarters because that would involve openly waltzing past a bunch of military types and he didn’t think Hal was up for that either.

Here, then. Why not? There was the bench and a lockable door, and a whole lot of props he’d be happy to employ. As soon as he’d had the thought, Nathan broke off to lock the door.

And then he made a very bad tactical error.

He was a flexible lover, highly influenced by his valley-bred cousins and a certain stretchiness in his morals. It was his well-established habit to work out what his partner would enjoy best in bed and enthusiastically provide it.

Now, based on Hal’s relationship with that arrogant, overbearing bastard Captain Cant, Nathan decided the lieutenant would enjoy being forcefully dominated.

That assumption, the mood, and what felt like his shoulder were broken in pretty smart order about ten seconds after he bounded back across the room and, growling with as much—pathetically little—menace he could muster, tried to knock Hal flat onto his back.

The next thing Nathan was aware of was Hal saying, ‘Sorry. Best not to surprise me.’

He said this so calmly that Nathan had no idea what had happened or where the startlingly pain in his shoulder, back, and neck had come from. He slumped, blinking, against the bench, completely helpless because it was his right shoulder and it had incapacitated his right—and only—arm.

Hal used the flat of his hand and the wall to slot Nathan’s shoulder back into place. Only then did Nathan realise the soldier had reacted so aggressively to Nathan’s domination attempt that he had dislocated his shoulder for him.

Setting the shoulder was just as painful as the original dislocation; Nathan had a disturbing revelation about himself when, in the very moment that Hal caused him this second white burst of pain, Nathan fell in love with him.

Two

CAPTAIN SIMON CANDERBILT, hero of Middledark and saviour of the Mosaics, was digging a new cesspit for his home-farm at Grace-above-Merrivale. There were certain things medals and commendations didn’t do for a man, and this was one of them.

He was enjoying the physical labour, the healthy flex and pull of his back and shoulder muscles as he rhythmically plunged the