Commitment Hour Read Online Free PDF Page B

roiled with bubbles, as if every twelve-year-old boy who’d ever gone swimming was farting under the surface. The knight shot upward, clouds of smoke billowing from his boots as they broke clear of the creek. I quickly held my breath and spun away from the smoke, anxious to avoid more vomit-gas. This smoke, however, was nothing like the previous kind; its smell was foul but its effects harmless.
    When I turned back toward the creek, knight and Neut were gone, leaving only broken reeds to show their path. Slowly I lowered the bow and violin, as quiet awe filtered into my mind.
    I had defeated Master Disease.
    True, he hadn’t been reduced to a stinking pool of lava, but what could you expect from a finger exercise? Especially one in the key of C.
    I wished I’d stayed with E flat minor. He might have burst into flames.

THREE

    A Shoulder for the Mocking Priestess

    Cappie dove under the water. When she surfaced, her face was cleaner and she once again held my spear. She laid it on the shore and clambered out beside it, water pattering off her clothes onto the soft mud bank.
    Men’s clothes or not, she was clearly a woman now: her nipples pressed tautly against the wet fabric of her shirt. I thought of the feel of them, in my fingers, my mouth, and was suddenly more hungry for her than I’d been in months. With Master Disease banished, I was keen to celebrate my triumph.
    “Cappie…” I started.
    “No.”
    “You don’t know what I was going to say.”
    “You’re so obvious,” she said, walking over to the Neut’s knife and picking it up. I liked the way she walked—bold as a man, but with a woman’s hips. “When you want to grope and fumble,” she continued, “you always get the same tone in your voice and put on a moronic expression. Is that your idea of a sly grin?”
    “What is this?” I cried. “Half an hour ago, you were singing “Our Love Will Fill Us,” and now you’re made of ice. Not to mention that you’re dressed like your father. Have you been smoking dizzy-weed with the Mocking Priestess?”
    “We have to go home and warn people,” she said, jamming her shirttails back into her pants. There was a swipe of mud on her nose; I was furious with her, but I badly wanted to dab that nose clean with kisses.
    “It’s Commitment Eve,” I reminded her. “We can’t go back to the cove tonight. We’re in isolation.”
    “Check your priorities, Fullin,” she snapped. “A Neut and a scientist show up in the marsh, and you don’t want to tell people?”
    “We can tell people,” I said. “Later. After. Come lie down.”
    “Do it with the damned violin,” she replied. “You aren’t doing it with me.”
    Tossing me an angry glare, she picked up the spear and ran. A sleek and easy run. A warrior’s run. I opened my mouth to demand that she wait for me, but stopped myself in time. She wouldn’t wait, no matter what I said, and a man loses face when his woman doesn’t obey orders. Finally, I called, “You better not break my spear!” but not loud enough for her to hear.
    Now I had no choice but to go back to the cove, Commitment Eve or not. If Cappie showed up and I didn’t, the Elders would say I’d sent a woman to deliver a message I was too timid to deliver myself. Not to mention that she’d surely give a distorted version of what happened. She was, after all, possessed by a devil. I kept forgetting that.
    But I knew how to take care of devils. I tucked the Neut’s violin under my arm and started for home.

    Soon I regretted letting Cappie get away with the spear—every stone in my path looked like a snapping turtle. I thought of rapping those rocks with the violin bow, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it: I kept thinking of the crunch a snapper would make biting off a mouthful of wood and horsehair. Just imagining the sound gave me the shakes. I told myself it wasn’t my bow, but that didn’t lessen my queasiness. Musicians are sensitive people.
    I took to veering away