Joanne

The posting on the park board was simple. Warehouse audit. The guild's ledgers hadn't matched stock in two seasons, and someone clever was wanted to find out why. Boring work, honest pay. Boring suited me fine.

The woman already arguing over it did not look boring. She looked built for anything except work. "But Maren, I'm wonderful at counting. I count everything. Buttons. Birds. Men."

"You're a witch, Joanne. The guild won't hand their books to a witch alone." Maren spotted me over her shoulder. "James. You did the tollhouse job. Take it with her. A pair, or nothing." A witch. Every man on Gilgamesh knows what that means. But I have kept my head this long, and honest pay is honest pay. "Fine by me."

"We'll split the reward, of course," Joanne said, turning that smile on me like sun through glass. "However you like, sweet thing." That smile was trouble. I knew it, and I took the job anyway.

The guild office smelled of ink and dust. I pulled five seasons of ledgers and got to work while Joanne perched on the stool beside me, chin in her hands, watching my pen move like it was a magic trick. "Show me what you're doing? I'm ever so hopeless with numbers."

So I explained. Invoices in, manifests out, all of it cross-checked against the warehouse tallies. Twice she asked what a manifest was, and both times she had forgotten by the time I finished answering. She listened with wide grey eyes, and when I flagged the first bad column she gasped like I'd pulled a coin from behind her ear.

"You're so smart," she said, squeezing my arm. The compliment settled over me like sunlight, warm and humming. "However do you hold it all in your head?"

By midday I had the shape of it. Goods signed out under a clerk who died two seasons back. Not theft exactly. Quiet rot. Someone had been fudging manifests and pocketing the difference for a year, and the whole paper trail was still there.

"Smart and handsome," Joanne murmured, leaning in to peer at my page, close enough that her perfume made the numbers swim. "Hardly fair to the rest of us."

"You could read the numbers yourself," I said, and she laughed like I'd said something adorable. "That's what I have you for," she said, tracing a line of figures with one jeweled finger. "You have lovely hands. Go on, do the clever thing again."

She twirled a raven curl around one finger and watched me work, and having her that close all morning was doing things to me that had nothing to do with arithmetic. I'd been reading the same row for a while now. Joanne was more distracting than helpful.

We ate at a corner table in the Gilded Scale, where I learned that Joanne could make an order of stew sound like flirting. She wanted my history, my work, whether I had a girl waiting anywhere. Somewhere between questions her chair migrated around to my side of the table, and her knee found mine and stayed.

"You're so good at all this clever work," she said, licking a crumb from her thumb, grey eyes on mine. "But even you must make mistakes sometimes." "Everyone does," I said. "Of course, of course." She patted my hand like I'd confessed something brave.

"We should focus," I said. "The afternoon is the warehouse."

The walk back took longer than it should have. At the second corner I stopped. "Which street did we want, again?" "This one, sweet thing." She took my arm. "You'd be lost without me."

The warehouse was crates and cold air and dust drifting through high windows. Tallying was simple work. Count, stack, match against the manifest.

Joanne helped, in her way, calling counts from atop a crate across the aisle. "Twelve, thirteen, fifteen..." "Fourteen." "Fourteen," she agreed, beaming like I'd hung the moon. "You're so clever."

I had done an hour of it when I lost count of a stack of forty. Twice.

"Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty," Joanne said from atop the next stack over, not even looking up. "Forty-one."

"I know how to count."

"Of course you do, sweet thing." She hopped down from her crate and pressed against my side to steady herself, then stayed pressed there, soft and warm. "You've just been thinking so hard all day. It uses a man up." She patted my cheek like I was a slow but beloved hound. I started the stack a third time. Halfway through, I caught myself watching her mouth instead of the crates, and had to begin again.

The bonded stockroom held the valuable goods, and the guard at its door was a slab of guild muscle with no interest in auditors. "No writ, no entry," he said, for the third time.

Joanne slid past me before I could start on him. "Hello, darling." She twirled a raven curl around one finger, and her lips moved through a few soft words I didn't quite catch. Her fingers shimmered, faint as heat off summer stone.

The guard's face went slack and pleasant. "No writ," he agreed, dreamily, and stepped aside.

"What did you just do?" My voice came out sharper than I meant. Open witchcraft, on a guild guard, right in front of me. Every instinct that had kept me alive on this planet pulled taut.

"I charmed him." She examined her rings, unbothered. "I did tell Maren I was capable." Then she stepped close and took my hand, and grey eyes filled the whole world. "You're not frightened of me, are you, James?" I had been. I was certain of it a heartbeat ago. But her thumb stroked my knuckles, and the fear slid sideways out of my head like water through fingers. "No," I heard myself say. "Course not."

Inside, the rot was obvious once you knew the look of it. Goods signed out under the dead clerk's name, dates clustered around shipment days. Two quiet hours of work and we had the whole scheme mapped, though somewhere in the second hour I had stopped leading.

"You see?" Joanne said. "The guild was wrong about us both. You're clever, and I'm honest." She laughed at her own joke and hooked her arm through mine, pressing the whole warm length of herself against my side. All afternoon I kept circling back to the guard, and every time, the worry slipped through my fingers before I could grip it. Worrying about her meant thinking about her. I did not yet understand what that cost.

"A long day makes a man slow, you know," she said, tilting her head up at me. "And you look so tired, sweet thing."

"I am tired," I said, my eyes fell to her breasts. She caught me looking and smiled like I'd handed her something.

At the warehouse door she stopped, rose on her toes, and kissed me. Quick, soft, gone before I understood it had begun. My head rang like a struck bell.

"We should take a break," she said against my cheek. "Big day tomorrow, tying it all off."

"Good idea," I said. I was starting to like agreeing with her.

She came down to the common room and every conversation near the door stumbled. I forgot what I had been about to say, which was becoming a habit.

"You keep looking at me," Joanne said, sliding into the seat across from mine.

"You keep letting me."

"Mm." She turned her wine glass slowly on the table. "You like me in this new outfit, don't you, James."

"I do," I said. It came out easily. It was the truth.

The innkeeper brought stew I barely tasted. She asked easy questions and I answered every one, and every so often her foot found mine beneath the table and stayed.

"About that kiss," I began, once. "Which one?" she asked, and laughed at whatever my face did. "There'll be more, if you ask nicely."

We ended up in her room with the day's notes spread across the desk, going over them. Or she went over them, and I watched her hair fall across the pages. I wanted the case solved before sleep. One more pass through the numbers, tie it off, hand it in tomorrow. That was the plan, and I was sticking to it.

"You did so much today," she said. "All those numbers. Are you sure you're feeling well? You seemed slow near the end." "Slow?" "Forgetting your counts. Losing the thread at lunch." She worried at her lip. "It's alright. Clever men burn bright and burn out. It's the price of all that thinking."

"I'm fine," I said. "Just tired, I suppose."

"Let's be honest, sweet thing." She set her pen down and looked at me. "You'd rather be doing me than doing this."

I looked up from the work and couldn't help but stare.

"The review can wait," I said.

"If you're sure," she said, all innocence, and I came around the desk and kissed her.

I walked her backward to the bed, kissing her the whole way, my hands everywhere at once. "James," she murmured against my mouth, making no actual effort to be anywhere else. "Shouldn't we be working?"

"Tomorrow."

"The review," she reminded me, the backs of her knees finding the mattress. "You wanted it finished before sleep."

"Changed my mind."

"There, you see?" Her arms looped around my neck, delighted. "I do love being right." She rolled us over in one smooth motion, and then I was on my back and she was above me. "Let me do the thinking tonight." Her mouth traced down my chest, my stomach, lower, and my back arched off the bed.

The world was red and gold and her. Every worry I had carried all day lifted away with each slow pass of her lips.

"Joanne," I gasped. "Hush. Clever boys talk. Just feel." I felt. God, I felt.

She rode me slow and unhurried, grey eyes half-lidded, fixed on my face like she was reading something written there. Every crest of pleasure left me lighter. Emptier. Better.

"You must really like working with me," she breathed, jewelry swaying and catching candlelight.

"Yes," I said. "I really do."

"Good boy." She leaned down and kissed me, and I came apart with her name in my mouth. She sighed like a woman tasting summer wine. The last thing I knew was the blanket settling over us both, and her heartbeat, slow and satisfied, beneath my cheek.

I woke heavy-headed, the morning light like cotton wool. Joanne was already up and dressed, glossy and awake in a way the rest of the world refused to be.

"Morning, sleepy." She tossed me my shirt. "Feeling better?" "Tired. A little slow." I rubbed my eyes. "Can't seem to focus." "Of course you can't, sweet thing. You worked so hard yesterday." She tilted her head. "Do you remember what we found in the bonded stockroom?"

I reached for it. The memory was there, round and warm, and it slipped when I grabbed. "The dead clerk. The manifests." "Good boy." She kissed my forehead, and something in my chest glowed at that, glowed like I had won something. "That's all you need to remember. I'll handle the rest today."

Everything she said made sense. Everything about her was easy to look at. I watched her gather the ledgers and thought about very little, and it was a lovely way to start a day.

I meant to help with the final numbers. I truly did. But she kept bending over the desk to turn pages, and her outfit drew me to her mind melting body. I tried to read the same column six times without registering a word.

"Eyes on the numbers, sweet thing." She didn't look up. "Well. I suppose the numbers are mine today, aren't they?" "Guess they are," I said, and giggled. Giggled. I didn't even mind.

I kept finding reasons to touch her. Passing her a pen. Brushing her hair back. A hand on her waist when I leaned in to point at something. My skin felt two sizes too small, and she smelled incredible, and every sweet thing rolled through me like spiced wine.

"You're very handsy today," she observed, catching my hand and pressing a brief kiss to my knuckles. "You're very pretty today." "I'm pretty every day. Focus, darling." She slid a page toward me, lips curving. "Can you add these two figures for me?"

I looked at them. They wobbled. "Nope," I said happily.

She finished it in an hour, the whole ugly scheme untangled. A junior receiver, skimming shipments and covering it with a dead man's signature. She wrote the report in a looping, elegant hand while I sat beside her and watched her bracelets slide up and down her wrist.

"There." She signed it and blotted the page. "All done. You were very good help." "I didn't do anything." "Silly. You were right here the whole time." She looked at me, soft and warm. "You're so much smarter than me, James. All those numbers you did yesterday."

That didn't sound right. "I think you're smarter than me," I said, and saying it out loud was the click of a lock, deep and satisfying. "By a lot." "There, you see? Honest, too." She gathered the pages, pleased. "Come along, sweet thing. Let's go get paid."

The office sounds were muffled around me, far off, like the world heard through a wall. Only she was clear. She was so clear.

The walk to the guild hall was warm and bright and a little blurry at the edges. Joanne kept one hand flat against my back, steering me through the streets, and I leaned into it the way a boat leans into current.

"I do enjoy questing with you," she said. "Other partners argue every little point. You just let me be smart." "You are smart." "And what are you?"

I thought about it. It took a while. "Handsome?" She laughed, delighted, and squeezed my waist. "That too, sweet thing. I do the thinking, and you do the being handsome. Best team I have ever had."

The guild hall steps rose ahead of us, sun-warmed stone. I remember thinking they looked soft enough to sleep on. Her hand pressed me onward.

The waiting room had a long table and hard chairs. Maren was with another client, the clerk said. Soon. Joanne sat close beside me, her hand resting high on my thigh. "Relaxed?" "Mm." I watched the door without really watching it. "What's the discrepancy again?"

"Wouldn't you like to know." Her hand moved up, found my belt. "Here's all you need to know, sweet thing. I found it, I wrote it, I'll present it. You sit there and look handsome and agree with whatever I say. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes," I said, instantly, and the word sank into me like a stone into a pond. Being told what to know was so much easier than knowing.

She worked me free beneath the table, slow and light, and my breath went ragged. "Joanne. Someone might." "Shh. Maren won't be a minute." Her fingers wrapped me, unhurried. "And you'll be good and quiet for me. Won't you?" I nodded, gripping my chair, dizzy.

Maren swept in with a folder already open. "So. The audit. Walk me through it." Her eyes landed on me. "James, you led this. How did you find the discrepancy?"

Beneath the table, fingers tightened around me, slow and deliberate. I opened my mouth. Everything I had known yesterday sat behind fog and glass, and the fog was winning.

"He found it by being excellent company," Joanne said smoothly. "And I found it by being excellent with numbers. Between us, the work is done. You're welcome, Maren." "It was all her," I said. It came out warm and easy. "She did everything." "Did she, now." Maren looked between the two of us.

"Practically everything," Joanne agreed. "Which is why the split ought to be seventy-five to twenty-five. My work, his charm. Fair is fair. Isn't that right, James?" Her hand gave one long, slow stroke that turned my vision white at the edges. "Fair is fair," I managed.

Maren snorted. "Fine. Better than I expected, honestly. Wait here and I'll draft the payment."

The door clicked shut behind her. Joanne turned to me, eyes bright, her hand never stopping. "Now then. Where were we, sweet thing?" "I don't remember," I panted, grinning.

"We were agreeing we should quest together again. I'll be the brains." Her thumb circled, maddening. "And you'll be the brawn. Wouldn't you like that?"

"Yes. Yes, please." And I came, shaking, into her waiting hand. Light poured out of me, a golden thread spooling from my chest into hers, visible if I had had the wits left to see it. She arched, inhaling it, and sighed the way she had sighed last night.

"Good boy," Joanne murmured, straightening her rings. "Rest now. We have so many quests ahead of us." I slumped against her shoulder, empty and warm and utterly hers, and I had never agreed with anything harder in my life.