chuckled, pulling her sodden hood back on. “Mother Trelene, you don’t want to hear about it. You boys, especially.”
“Come now, out with it,” Ashlinn said, thumping the wagon bed.
“Aye, come on, ’Singer,” Sid laughed. “No secrets on the sands.”
The Dweymeri woman shook her head. “All right, then. Don’t blame me if it gives you gentles nightmares.” She lowered her voice, as if she were telling a fireside spook story. The thunder cracked ominously overhead. “The boy was from Farrow. Big strapping buck named Stonethrower I’d had an eye on for a few months. Face like a picture and an arse like a poem. We were at a beach gala for Firemass, bonfires burning all down the Seawall. Beautiful. Romantic. He gets enough liquor in him to finally put the word on, and I’ve got enough in me to like the sound of his tune. So we head up into the dunes and go at it. Now, I’m nothing close to his first, he’s known a few girls in his time. So he manages to last a little longer than Crossbow Sid up there.”
“You wound me, Dona,” Sid called from the front of the line.
Butcher whistled. “Right in the fucking eye…”
“Anyway,”’Singer said as an arc of blinding white crossed the sky. “I’m getting a little braver as we go along, so with his encouragement, I climb up on top for a ride. And we start going at it hard, and it’s feeling really damned good, and I’m bouncing up and down with such newfound abandon that he slips right out of me on the upstroke and I land right on top of him on the downstroke and I broke his poor cock almost in half.”
“O, holy fucking GOD!” Sid cried, wincing.
“Nooo!” Wavewaker looked at Bladesinger in horror. “That can’t happen, can it?”
“Aye,” the woman nodded. “Blood everywhere. Should’ve heard him screaming.”
“Black fucking Mother,” Ashlinn chuckled, covering her mouth.
“No!” Butcher cried, pointing at her. “No, that is NOT funny!”
“It’s a touch funny,” Mia smirked.
Bryn, meanwhile, was almost falling off her horse laughing. Wavewaker had a look of quiet horror on his face. Sid was bent over double in mock agony, shaking his head. “No, no, why the fuck did you tell us that story, ’Singer?”
“I warned you!” she cried over another thunderclap.
“I’m going to have nightmares!”
“I warned you about that, too!”
“In half?” Wavewaker breathed.
“Almost,” she nodded. “Apparently took over a year before it straightened itself out. He never let me near it again to check, of course.”
Every man in the group shifted in the saddle, while every woman guffawed.
“I can’t even remember my first,” Butcher said. “My da and uncle took me to a pleasure house when I was thirteen and I was too smoked to even recall the lass’s face … Actually, come to think of it, maybe I didn’t even see her face…”
“I broke the boy’s nose my first time,” Ashlinn volunteered brightly.
Mia frowned. “With your fist, or…?”
“No,” Ashlinn said, pointing down to her crotch. “You know … sitting on him … overenthusiastically.”
“O…” Mia put the puzzle together in her head. “O, right…”
Ashlinn nodded. “He kept going, though. He was a trooper, that one.”
“Vaanian boys,” Bryn sighed wistfully.
“Mmmhmm,” Ashlinn nodded.
“What about you, ’Waker?” Sid chuckled. “Any first-time catastrophes?”
“I’m hoping there won’t be,” the big man replied.
The whole group fell quiet, and even the tempest above seemed to still for a moment. Mia and everyone else turned to stare at the hulking Dweymeri. Wavewaker was a lump of pure beef, not at all hard on the eyes, and that voice of his hit Mia right in the sweet parts. She couldn’t believe …
“You’ve not…?” she asked. “Ever?”
He shook his head. “Waiting for the right woman.”
The ladies exchanged glances—all except Bryn, who simply nudged her horse closer to Wavewaker’s and gifted him a lingering smile.
“What about you, Crow?” Butcher asked.
“No real disasters, I’m afraid.” Mia shrugged, dragging sodden hair from her eyes and shivering. “Though … I did go out and murder a man immediately afterward.”
“Hmm,” Bladesinger nodded. “Strangely enough, that fits.”
More guffaws. Sidonius looked sidelong at Tric, who’d been walking alongside in silence the whole time, up to his ankles in mud. Being a good commander and not wanting the boy to feel left out, breathing or no, the Itreyan cleared his throat.
“And you?” he asked. “Any calamities on your maiden voyage?”
“NO,” Tric said simply.
Black eyes flickered to Mia and away again.
“NO, SHE WAS WONDERFUL.”
Thunder rolled as if on cue, and at its call, the rain started coming down in earnest—a