Only One of Us

I know this. I grew up on the marsh, and the marsh drowns somebody every spring. My mother taught me what to do about it before she taught me to read.

Flat on her back. Head tipped.

And somebody kneels on the step across from me, up to his waist in the sea, and takes her head in both hands and holds it exactly where I put it.

I don’t need to look up. I do anyway.

Grey eyes, very light in a face the sun has turned brown. Dark brown hair, soaked near enough black, shoved back off his forehead with one hand and falling forward again before he’s finished. And along his jaw, from his chin to under his ear, a thin pale line.

I gave him that. Two summers ago, from flat on my back in the reeds.

He came through our whole flank to get to me. He killed Tam Hobb on the way, the old man who put my first sword in my hand. Then he had his sword at my neck, and he laughed, and let me go.

Ever since, half the south shore has whispered about what I must have given him to walk out of there alive.

He doesn’t say a word. He just holds her still for me, and my face is a hand’s width from his.

So I breathe into a stranger’s child with my enemy’s thumbs beside my mouth.