Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  “Well,” said Lily, in her imperturbable manner, “that’s a good outcome. Control yourself, though, until an appropriate moment.”

  “Of course.”

  Much as Hope wished for their oathbinding, she didn’t want a minimal, cut-down ceremony like Rosie and Dignified’s. She wanted her friends to be there, and Patient’s, and that meant a delay while arrangements were made.

  The day before the ceremony, she took a few personal possessions down to Redbridge on her red-and-gold airhorse, driving carefully. She would leave the furniture in the flat for Briar and whoever moved in after her, since Patient, naturally, had better pieces already.

  Hope had never visited Redbridge before. Patient had always come to her. It was a pretty little village, with a stream running through it, in which a small group of elderly men were pretending to fish as an excuse to spend time together and pass around a stoneware flagon. She asked them where the carver’s shop was, and they directed her to a lane leading off the main street between the post station and the warden station. No wonder he wrote so regularly, she thought, if the post station is just down the lane.

  Patient met her outside his shop and joined her on the airhorse to direct her the last part of the way to his cottage. They crept down a winding lane at the back of the village and drew up in front of a tidy dwelling rather larger than her flat.

  “When you said ‘cottage,’” she said, “I was expecting something smaller than this.”

  “Well, it’s not a mansion,” he said. “But it’s home.”

  He dismounted the airhorse and fished for his key. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “I have something for you.” He passed her a key on a chain.

  “What’s this to?”

  “The front door. I thought you should have one.”

  She hugged him. “Thank you, Patient. Can I try it?”

  The key fitted and turned, and she swung the door open and peered in curiously.

  Sunlight lay across a clean wooden floor scattered with well-coordinated rugs. Several easy chairs and couches, with small tables beside them, formed an arc, and beautifully carved wooden pieces decorated the walls.

  “You like it?” he said, putting his arm around her and looking over her shoulder.

  “I love it. Do I get a tour?”

  He led her through the front room into a neatly organised, but old-fashioned, kitchen, dominated by a huge black iron range and a water pump. A well-scrubbed kitchen table and carved chairs stood to one side.

  “Those chairs were my graduation piece for the Guild,” said Patient, and she ran her hands over them in admiration.

  “They’re beautiful.”

  He shrugged. “I’m better now. There are things I’d do differently.”

  At the back of the cottage, a small, cramped, old-fashioned bathroom with a half-bath fed by an ancient boiler, a separate lavatory and two bedrooms completed the roster of rooms.

  “No!” said Patient, as Hope put her hand on the doorhandle of the main bedroom.

  “No?”

  “I have a surprise for you in there, for after we’re oathbound.”

  “Intriguing,” she said, but left the door alone.

  “I still sleep in here, at the moment,” he said, swinging open the other bedroom door. Hope saw a tidy space, a narrow, carefully-made bed with a carved headboard, and a beautifully polished wardrobe. “This has always been my room, and when my parents died I never quite got around to moving.”

  Hope was tempted to try the bed with him, but they were due at his aunt and uncle’s inn soon, where the ceremony would be held, and she reluctantly tore herself away and concentrated on carrying in her boxes. She had hired a small cart to tow behind the airhorse.

  Once all Hope’s possessions were stowed away, Patient took her out to the garden at the back. A shady porch overlooked it, which would be lovely in the warmer weather. Hope started to get an idea, and paused by the bathroom window to check the thickness of the wall.

  “What?” asked Patient.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  As they prepared to ride off, a cheerful voice greeted them from across the hedge which separated Patient’s front garden from the neighbour’s.

  “Hello,” said a balding, fiftyish man in a Silver tradesman’s clothes. “Is this your young lady, Patient?”

  “Productive!” said Patient. “Yes, this is my promised oathmate, Hope at Merrybourne. Hope, Productive Victualler. He’ll be my witness.”

  Hope blinked for a moment. Victualler had been Faithful’s name of affiliation, and even though she knew there was no connection (Faithful had been from Inner Province, far up the river), it gave her a moment’s pause. The curse might be broken, but that didn’t mean that her feelings were all resolved.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

  “We’re just moving her personal items in, and then we’re off to Uncle Pleasant’s,” said Patient.

  “Good, good,” said Productive. “I’ll join you there this evening.”

  Patient’s Aunt Peace and Uncle Pleasant, his only close living relatives apart from their near-adult son Sterling, lived in a village near Redbridge, and kept an inn. They were happy to provide a venue for the celebrations, and as many rooms as they had free, and they had even found a marquee from somewhere which would provide somewhere for the gnomes to sleep. The whole manufactory, all twenty gnomes and their families, were invited, along with Gizmo, Briar, Rosie and Dignified. A large farviewer at one end of the inn’s front courtyard would allow Sincerity, the Countygold, and Hope’s parents to watch.

  Briar, naturally, was Hope’s witness, and accompanied her to the traditional pre-oathbond talk the night before the ceremony. Aunt Peace, a plump, middle-aged lady who cooked like Dignified invented, took on the responsibility, as the only woman involved of the correct generation and oathbond status. Sincerity, who wasn’t oathbound, didn’t qualify, and while Hope had exchanged a couple of tentative letters with her mother, geography wasn’t the only reason for not having her participate.

  Both Hope and Briar managed to keep straight faces while Aunt Peace covered the topic of sex as quickly as possible. Not looking at each other helped.

  “So,” said Aunt Peace. “With that out of the way, let’s talk about the real business of being oathbound. Pleasant and I have been very happy, mostly, and it’s down to two things. Putting up with each other’s quirks, and being thoughtful.”

  “How do you mean, Aunt P?”

  “Pleasant’s a man who doesn’t steer easy,” she said. “Like a big old oxcart, he is. If you want to change his direction you need an early start.”

  Hope smiled to herself. From what she had seen, this was an excellent summary.

  “That’s what I mean by a quirk,” said Peace. “With Patient it’ll be something different, but there’ll be something, you can be sure. It’s his quirk, and it’s not for changing.”

  Hope nodded.

  “But you’ll get far by being thoughtful. Think about what he needs and prepare to give it to him. Watch him and study his habits. I know what Pleasant wants before he does, half the time, these days. It builds goodwill, and when I want or need something it inclines him to listen more than if I was taking all the time. And he does the same for me, of course. Now, mind, it’s not ‘I do this for you, so you have to do that for me’. It’s both people giving as they see need and opportunity.”

  Hope nodded again. “I don’t think that will be a problem,” she said. “He’s the most generous man I know.”

  “He’s a good lad,” said Peace, showing that habit older relatives have of being blind to their younger relatives’ maturity. “Doesn’t mean he has no quirks, or that he doesn’t need thoughtfulness. Bear that in mind, you’ll have a long, happy life together.”

  The morning of the ceremony started early, with a strategy breakfast which included Briar, Bucket, Wheel, Aunt Peace and Uncle Pleasant, their son Sterling, Productive, and Grateful, the Asterist scholar who would perform the
ceremony.

  Grateful, who served the Redbridge congregation that Patient attended, seemed nonplussed at the charts, diagrams and checklists that Wheel had helped prepare, not to mention the fact that he stared at Bucket and Wheel as if he had never seen gnomes before. Perhaps he hadn’t. He didn’t say anything, though, as Hope went through the plan. They would be holding the ceremony on the little green across from the inn, and using the inn’s kitchen to prepare the feast, and its dining room to serve.

  “Any questions?” she said, sitting back at her place and taking another bite of bread and preserves.

  “You’re proposing to have an Earthist as your witness?” asked the scholar. He eyed Briar with a hint of disfavour.

  “Yes. Is that a problem?”

  “I don’t know if it’s canonical,” said the old man.

  “As far as the secular law is concerned,” said Briar, “anyone who has had their adulthood rite is qualified to witness an oathbinding. Two witnesses, besides the couple and the celebrant, are all that is required. There is no religious test.” She met the elderly scholar’s frown with her no-nonsense professional face and added, “I’m a lawyer.”

  Grateful subsided without further comment.

  “No other questions?” asked Hope. “Good. Wheel, if you’d give out the checklists, then, we can be about it.”

  Wheel was Hope’s appointed deputy to marshal the troops, leaving Briar to help her friend get ready. They withdrew to Briar’s room in the inn. Patient was using the room where he and Hope would sleep that night as his base of operations, ably assisted by Bucket and Productive. Sterling would act as a runner for messages.

  Grateful’s temple choir could faintly be heard rehearsing as Hope changed into her garnet-red Victory suit. She was, of course, wearing her silver mage bracelet, set with the gems she had earned through hard work and determination at the university, and to the bracelet she attached the Realmgold’s Civilian Honour, Gold, with Moon that she had received for her wartime work. Not only was she proud of it, but she wanted Patient to wear his.

  The same gnome who had made their racing jackets, a cousin of one of the manufactory gnomes, had embroidered the traditional oathbond sashes which both Hope and Briar would wear. As was the custom, they had completed the last few stitches themselves the previous day.

  With no more than the usual number of problems, they managed to get Hope’s hair done, her eyes rimmed with kohl, and her feet into a pair of Briar’s shoes before Sterling tapped at the door to ask if she was ready.

  Stomach churning like a milkmaid, she clumped in the impractical footwear to the front of the building, where she awaited her soon-to-be oathmate in the porch.

  Her heart nearly stopped when he appeared. Patient, as a tradesman, didn’t own a Victory suit, but he had kitted himself out in a new pair of green trousers (the ones he had worn on their ill-fated dinner engagement had been irretrievably stained) and a well-cut linen shirt. His Realmgold’s Military Honour, Gold, with Sun and Moon hung round his neck on a dark-green cord that indicated his service in the Unification War. Beneath it, the hexagonal Recognition of Injury in the Line of Duty flashed silver in the light, as did the silver mountings on his best cane. His eyes, though, seemed brightest of all, and fixed themselves on her face like a man who comes over a mountain pass and sees his home country on the other side.

  Her heart thudded at the sight of him, then soared like a falcon, and she gave him a beaming smile and offered her arm.

  “Shall we?” she said.

  “By all means,” he said. “Let’s.”

  The choir struck up the first hymn, and they walked side-by-side towards the waiting scholar.

  Grateful invoked the Ninefold Divine with great thoroughness, keeping one eye on Briar the whole time as if expecting her to do something impious, or possibly burst into flame. When she didn’t, he continued by introducing the couple, also at length.

  Hope had tuned out by the time he finished, and came back to attention with a start when he produced a calligraphed scroll with the oaths written in three triangular sections. His words were in one triangle, Hope’s in another and Patient’s in the third.

  Hope, as the younger, gave oath first, and in response to Grateful’s prompt she declared, “I, Hope at Merrybourne, come willingly to give you, Patient Carver, oath of lifebond, joining together our lives, our property and our inheritance.” She smiled at him.

  He smiled back and recited the same formula.

  “As you are willing, so let it be done,” said Grateful, and joined their hands together. They spoke in unison, saying each other’s names and then continuing, “I am your lifemate. I swear to you abiding fidelity and devotion, to be linked always by oath and binding, one heart until death.” Hope’s oathsense of him sharpened and deepened. She could feel his steadfast stance, planted on the earth, anchoring them both, and the abiding love he had for her burning like a sun.

  Briar handed them the rings, which Patient had lovingly carved out of hardwood into the form of a stylised falcon and eagle, with matching garnets like the one in Hope’s bracelet forming the eyes. They slipped them on each other’s left hands, the hand of the heart, and kissed, keeping it seemly in front of the scholar even though they longed for each other.

  A couple more hymns followed, to which Hope was all but oblivious, and Briar had to take her friend by the arm to get her into position for the procession. Patient’s family and friends, his neighbours, fellow craftspeople and old military comrades, lined up on one side of a track marked out with flowers, and the gnomes, Rosie and a medication-calmed Dignified on the other. The newly oathbound couple walked down it, accepting congratulations first from their oathmate’s side, and then, turning round and coming back, from their own side. Briar and Productive walked behind carrying a symbolic arch that represented a new beginning for the pair.

  They spent several days after the ceremony in the beautiful Valley of Uld, which involved a certain amount of walking, and Patient’s leg was stiff and aching in a gentle, steady rhythm when they finally walked through the door of the cottage. Their cottage, now, not just his. Even as he slumped into a chair near the door to rest his leg, that thought made him smile.

  “I could really do with a soak in your bathtub back in Illene right now,” he said.

  “Funny you should say that,” said Hope. She had an odd look on her face, almost a smirk.

  “Why?”

  “Come and look.”

  He heaved himself to his feet and hobbled to her. She took his hand and led him to the bathroom door.

  He looked at her, puzzled. She gestured at the door.

  He opened it, expecting to see his cramped, dark little bathroom — and blinked as the light flooded out of the spacious, modern room. An enormous tub steamed at the back, between three walls made largely of translucent glass bricks. After a moment of confusion, he realised that the back wall had been removed and the room pushed out onto part of the back porch.

  “What the… How?”

  “You gave me a key,” she said.

  “And?”

  “And I talked to the gnomes, and they knew some people who could install a heat gate in the kitchen range at short notice and…” she gestured largely, “do this. As a surprise for you.”

  He took his new oathmate tenderly in his arms. “Three things,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “First, next time you renovate our cottage, please ask.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Second, thank you, it’s wonderful.”

  He felt her relax under his hands.

  “And thirdly, why are we still out here wearing these clothes when there’s a wonderful hot bath right there?”

  Relaxed and warm, some time later, they dried each other tenderly and enjoyed a deep kiss with no risk of oathconflict reaction.

  “Do you want to see my surprise now?” he said.

  “It’s in the bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s exact
ly the kind of surprise I’m in the mood for.”

  He smiled, and led her down the short hall.

  She gasped as he opened the door of the main bedroom to reveal the enormous bed.

  “My grandfather carved the headboard for his oathmate,” he said. “My father carved the footboard likewise. And I carved the canopy.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, almost whispering, raising her hand as if to trace the leaves and vines of the carving.

  “You want to try it out?”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed.

  Afterword

  Thanks for reading Hope and the Patient Man. If you enjoyed it, please leave a review where you bought it or on Goodreads.

  The next book in this series is Mister Bucket For Assembly, due out in late 2016. To make sure you hear about the release, please join the book announcement mailing list at http://csidemedia.com/nb2ml.

  Mike Reeves-McMillan's website is http://csidemedia.com/gryphonclerks.

  Lhind the Thief

  Sherwood Smith

  Lhind has been on the run all her life.

  Stealing what she needs, using magic for disguise, she never stays anywhere long. Lhind even has secrets from herself, for she has few memories, and those are troubling.

  But life is good until she gets caught by Rajanas the warrior-prince, Thianra the bard, and Hlanan the scribe. And that’s when adventure begins, because someone very powerful wants them all dead.

  As they evade pursuit and work to uncover their enemies, Lhind struggles with the invisible bonds of friendship and trust, while Hlanan begins uncovering her secrets one by one.

  Copyright

  Copyright 2013 Sherwood Smith

  1

  “Stop the thief! Robber!”

  A couple of stones thumped me in the back.