The Sworn Shield

He wrings out a cloth and the water runs down the inside of his wrist and off the point of his elbow, and I follow the whole of it to the ground like an idiot.

Six years of standing between me and doors has built him a certain way. Heavy through the back, nothing spare anywhere else. He came up out of my father’s stable yard and there’s still some of the yard in how he handles a bucket — like it weighs nothing and he’d rather it did.

He sees me.

Three seconds. That’s his limit; it has always been his limit. Three seconds, then my mouth, which I don’t think he knows he does, then the ground.

“You don’t have to do that.”

He has known that about my horse since she was foaled. I found it out last winter.

“Rhun.”

He looks up.

And the skin of his throat goes red above the collar — properly red, all the way up, the way it has done since he was twenty-two — and he turns to the bucket so I can’t watch it happen.

I have spent years deciding that means nothing.

I’m extremely good at deciding things mean nothing.