Free Spells of Blood and Kin by Claire Humphrey Page A

have not the strength,” she whispered. Maksim could barely hear her over the pleasant buzz of evening in Cadiz, gulls crying over the rooftops, hooves and wheels on the cobbles, the distant chime of bells from the ships shifting on the harbor waves.
    â€œAnd if you had the strength, that is what you would do? Spend it on stabbing me?”
    Her chin dipped in a nod. There were other people passing the mouth of the cul-de-sac, children playing with a hoop, bright saffron and poppy frocks catching the sunset light, and this woman had no thought of calling for help. She only clenched her blood-slick fingers closer around the hilt of her knife.
    Maksim said, “You have a fine spirit for a woman.”
    The woman’s eyes looked strange and flat; he wondered if she was still awake, really, and if she was afraid. Her heart was not beating so fast now. It skipped and started, the way a sparrow closes its wings in flight and then flutters them hard again.
    The blood scent was too much; Maksim had kept himself on a leash all week at sea. He stopped considering and bent down to taste the freshest rivulet at her temple.
    She twisted like a snake and bit him.
    â€œI think you are meant to live,” Maksim said. “Here.” And he laid his opened arm to her lips and let her taste what it meant to be kin .
    She spat and fought him for a moment, but he bore down, free hand tight on her jaw. Then she bit him again, right on the fresh cut, making him jerk and laugh and lap at her face. She was shivering now, heartbeat picking up again, stronger under the grip of Maksim’s thumb.
    â€œEasy,” he crooned to her. “Easy.” And her shivering abated until he could barely feel it, only a hint of it traveling through his frame as he lay with his head pressed close to her sternum and licked the dried blood from over her throat.
    After a while, the woman’s breath slowed to long, shallow sighs, and her eyes fell nearly shut, and her hand cupped lax over Maksim’s elbow, almost cradling his arm to her slack open lips. Maksim sat up and spat on a handkerchief and wiped his face clean. He made bandages for the woman’s gored hand and breast, as well as he knew how; the loss of blood would maybe have killed her if Maksim had not happened by, but more likely, it would have been a long death by fever, infection, her humors unbalancing themselves while she lay abed. That would not happen now. He felt almost as if he had done a good deed.
    Maksim pillowed her head on his folded coat and went back out into the street. He felt lovely now, blood-drunk and exhausted and surging with life, all the tension of the last week spent. His head nearly spun with it, as with the best liquor, and he had to school his face to sobriety before he met someone.
    Two women, Spaniards, came his way, carrying bolts of cloth. He called out to them in English, “There’s been a crime. A lady is hurt.” He pointed back toward the wall.
    His own disarray, his unsteadiness, the blood on his clothing must have spoken for him. The women led him to sit against a salmon-colored wall at the edge of the cul-de-sac, and one of them gave him a drink from a wineskin while the other sought whatever passed for the law here. The siege might have left the city battered, but in the half year since it seemed to have rebounded thoroughly—the street and the nearby plaza buzzed with people, sailors and soldiers of all the allied armies, fisherfolk and blacksmiths, priests and clerks, and, once they were aware of the incident, every one of them seemed to have a reason to come over and look at Maksim and the lady he’d found.
    In no very long time, Maksim was following quite a procession uphill farther into the town: a litter carrying the injured woman, a pair of young men in official-looking uniforms, and a rabble of attendants, including the two women Maksim had approached and several young children, all of them chattering in