Page 52 of Paladin's Hope

“Sorry, Earstripe,” Piper mumbled.

“Nah, nah.” The gnole flicked his ears. “Bone-doctor should not worry. A gnole prefers human mating-yelping to days of humans standing around stinking of longing.”

Piper put his face in his hands. His ears felt hot. Galen had the temerity to start laughing. “You can smell that? Really?”

“Surprised humans can’t.”

“It must be easier for gnoles,” said Piper, “being able to tell so easily if someone you like likes you back.”

“Eh.” Earstripe made an equivocating gesture with one hand. “Awkward sometimes. Mating season, eh, everybody wants, nobody cares. But sometimes a gnole gets mate smell with a gnole who isn’t mate, very awkward.”

“Like an affair?” asked Piper, puzzled. I know so little about gnoles. I don’t even know if they mate exclusively like humans claim to.

Earstripe shook his head. “No, like mate. Like…uh…” He seemed to be trying to think of a human equivalent. “A human marries another human, yes?”

“Sometimes, yes.” He carefully didn’t look at Galen.

“Yes. Humans are mates. But could a human marry another human who didn’t marry them back?”

“Uh…” This time he did look at Galen, baffled.

Galen nodded to Earstripe. “Not legally, but yes, I think I understand. If someone thought that they were in a close relationship, but the other person didn’t, or didn’t want to be, or was trying to get away.”

“Yes.” Earstripe nodded. “That. Embarrassing. Everyone can smell then. Worse if different caste. A gnole leaves then, usually, goes to another warren far away.”

“Maybe it’s better we can’t smell that well,” said Piper, imagining being so deeply in love with someone who wasn’t interested. If I was in love with Galen, say…

His stomach clenched in a way that he didn’t like and he could feel his cheeks heating again. If I was. If. Not that I am. Not love-love.

Just because he’s funny and handsome and intelligent and as brave as a lion and he accepted your weird gift as if it was nothing strange and he acts like he admires you, when he isn’t yelling at you for running risks, and he dropped everything to come on this trip because Earstripe asked, just like you, and he understands that gnoles are people and we have to learn more about each other in order to live together and also when he slid his hand over your cock, you thought you’d died and gone to heaven…

He cleared his throat and very carefully pushed all those feelings away, because they weren’t going to help but Earstripe could probably smell them anyway. “So,” he said. “Are we ready to try the next door?”

“A gnole is getting very tired of doors.”

“Maybe it’ll be the last one. We’re almost back where we started, I think.”

Galen stood, then reached down and pulled Piper to his feet with easy strength. “We can only hope,” he said. His fingers lingered in Piper’s hand for a moment, warm even through the kidskin. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”

They stood in front of the door and Galen reached out and tapped the mechanism.

The door opened onto a room full of clockwork bones.

* * *

“What happened here?” asked Piper softly.

“Dead machines,” said Galen, eyeing the pile of broken ivory that lay ankle deep across the floor.

“Did something kill them? Or did they just stop working?”

“Judging by the marks, they didn’t just stop.” Galen pointed to a piece of machine-stuff as long as his arm, the end splintered. “But why here, and nowhere else?”

Earstripe tossed an apple into the pile, where it lay forlornly.

“That’s an interesting question,” said Piper. “Someone must have cleaned the other rooms, except for the pits, which were presumably too hard to reach. Human staff? But why not this room?”

Earstripe lobbed a few more apples in.

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