by J. M. Frey
“Not one for children, Kintyre?” Andvari asks in that rumbling contralto of hers.
Nyrath narrows her eyes at my lover, but says nothing. Neither does Kintyre.
“It’s not that Kin dislikes children,” I say, and I’m reminded, sharply, of when Pip had once called me Kintyre’s walking apology. At the time, it hadn’t annoyed me, or even really registered as an insult, because that was part of my relationship with the man who had been first my master, then my friend, and then my brother-in-arms. But now, sitting beside him on the floor of a queen’s salon, holding the heir presumptive, Kin’s Paired and supposedly now equal in rank to Kin, I’m still making excuses for his poor behavior, enabling his entitled assumption that I would smooth things over, that I will hold what Kintyre doesn’t want to, that I will fetch and carry and cook and bow my whims to his.
Bloody aggravating.
“Then why?” Nyrath asks, forcing me to continue the lame half-explanation, half-veiled request for forgiveness for the insult of passing off a prince like he was a sack of rotten meat.
“He just . . . doesn’t really know what to do with them until they’re old enough for him to roughhouse with,” I say lamely. “He likes my gaggle of nieces and nephews, to be sure enough, but more so now that they’re all walking and talking on their own.”
The dwarves seem to take this at face value, and attention turns back to conversation. In my lap, Virfur wobbles his way upright. The boy doesn’t seem to mind whose lap he’s in, as long as he can explore the oddity of a smooth face. Kin and I indulged in a shave with hot water and proper lotions before we answered the queen’s bidding, and it feels fantastic to finally be scruff-less, after so long on the road. Must be odd to the boy, though.
Oh, that will be one of the advantages of our return to Turn Hall, to be sure. A daily shave, with proper tools. Sublime.
But Pip’s words are circling in my mind now, distracting me from what’s being said, taking on a sharper and sharper tone with each repetition. Kintyre’s walking apology. Aren’t you sick of it, Bevel? Something querulous and cranky lodges in my guts, something shapeless but quickly solidifying, something unspoken but pushing against the hollow of my throat.
Something . . . something . . .
I’m the only one in my immediate family who is unmarried and childless. While Kin and I are officially Paired, we haven’t made it known that we are a Romantic Pair by pledging our Troth. It hadn’t seemed important before, when all I wanted was a visual acknowledgment that Kin was mine. Let others see our shared Colors and assume we were only pledged as brothers-in-arms, if they prefer. What does it matter to me if their assumption is wrong?
But now, watching Andvari pull her pregnant wife in beside her on the wingback chaise, the pleased curl of their mouths and the striking picture of their very different skin tones mixing together as they clasp hands, seeing the way Sviur joins us on the cushions so he can lean back against his wives’ legs, the way they are all so content and unashamed and casually public in their displays of affection . . . I’m struck, suddenly and hard, with a kind of envy I never thought I would experience.
Married.
I want . . . I want to . . . I want. But I don’t know what it is I want, exactly.
It’s not skin, or warmth, or sex. I have those. It’s not even affection, because Kin gives that freely, too, gifts it like a lord bestowing bags of grain to the pathetic, needy, starving peasants he has made pathetic and needy and starving by his own blind and selfish nobility.
No, it’s something else that I want.
Kintyre is too busy chatting, already sharing news of our latest quest—how we had fled Turn Hall in our individual rages, how we had separated and come back together, how we had confessed and hashed out our relationship, how we had scented Bootknife’s trail when we stopped in Nevand to commission our Colors, how we had followed him down to the Valley of the Tombs—to see the upset on my face.
I feel it growing out of my guts, infecting my expression, my posture, and I’m . . . I’m angry, and I can’t . . . I can’t . . .
Virfur catches it, and babbles something sweetly soothing at me in the secret language of the dwarves, one that I’ll never have the privilege to learn.
If you put on the Shadow’s Mask, you would know it. The thought jars against my wallowing self-pity so quickly that the room spins. You would understand the boy if you put on the mask. You would understand everything.
“And what about you, Sir Dom?” Sviur asks, and I blink, hard, trying to wrench my brain around to the question he asked.
“What?”
“I asked you how you felt the morning of your Pairing. I had a stomach filled with bubbling sulfur the whole week before Andvari and I got married.” He flashes a brilliant smile at his first wife, and she threads her free hand through his hair, affectionate. “What were you like before your wedding?”
Resentment boils up faster than I can contain it. “Yeah, well, we’re not really married, are we though?” I say, and then click my teeth shut hard enough that the whole room can hear it.
By the Writer’s left nutsack, is that what’s been brewing in the cauldron of my frustration?
“We’re Paired, though, Bev,” Kintyre says affably, like all the hurt in what I just spoke has passed him by completely. “And it’s not like two blokes can get married among the humanfolk anyway. Not married, married.”
“And since when have we ever cared about what humanfolk normally do?” I say, and in my arms, Virfur plops down on my knees, making me wince. He reaches for the lute and strums the strings in a discordant twang, looking up at me with the expectation of praise and a grin that matches his father’s. Instead, I hand the boy off to his mother. I cannot bear to have a child in my arms right now. A child that’s not . . . that’s not . . . but there never will be, never could be a child that’s . . .
Andvari gathers Virfur up, and he hides under her beard, both of them startled by the abrupt arrival of my foul mood. I swallow hard, trying to pull this strange, roiling ball of emotion and confession back down into my chest. But I’ve repressed my discontent for so long it seems like now the cork has been popped from the bottle, I can’t just jam it back in.
“I . . . thank you for the invitation, and the drink,” I say, waving at my untouched glass. “But I’m tired.”
“Bevel—” Andvari and Kintyre say at the same time, but I’m already on my feet.
“Goodnight, Your Majesty, Your Highnesses,” I say with a curt bow, and then I run away with my tail between my legs.
✍
“Why are you so pissy?” Kintyre grumbles at me when he crawls into bed a few hours later. I wasn’t asleep, lucky for Kin. I would have walloped him if he’d woke me up from a comfortable sleep on a real feather tick, especially after so many sleepless nights on the hard ground with only a travel-worn bedroll. His breath smells like liquor, and his hands are too warm. Likely he and Andvari have been playing that palm-slap game that rock-headed dwarves and thick-skinned human heroes seem to love in equal measure.
“I’m not pissy!” I snarl, which just proves how much I’m lying.
Those warm hands land on my shoulder and suddenly I’m on my back. Kin knows how much I hate it when he uses his size against me. I kick him in the jewels and he curls in on himself and falls off to the side of the mattress, gasping in pain and looking at me with big, stupid, betrayed eyes that are just so damned blue I want to scream.
“What . . .” he gasps. “That was dirty! What did I do to deserve that?”
And it was dirty. It’s awful, the pain of being sacked, and I have no idea why I did it, how I could do it, to my lover, let alone to a part of him I enjoy so much. Only that maybe it’s the symbol, the center of everything that’s annoying me and I’m a warrior, rough and brutish, and I attack those things I can’t control, that annoy me, that make me angry.
And how’s that for insight? Forssy would be so proud! Ha!
But at the same time, I’m still angry. I’m utterl
y filled with a tickling, twitching, zinging energy, and it’s not arousal, or hunger, or hatred. I don’t know what it is, except that it’s awful.
Kin gingerly levers himself onto the bed. I shove the blankets back and clamber up onto his torso, pinning his arms against his sides, controlling, the one in charge for once, and kiss him hard enough that I taste blood.
“What? Bevel, stop, ow, off—” Kintyre mutters, words smeared into my mouth, and with a fancy bit of calisthenics, he has our position reversed again.
“No!” I snarl, shoving hard at his shoulders, kicking his knee out from under him and squirming off the bed in a display of pretty impressive calisthenics myself. “No!”
“No, what?” Kintyre says, kneeling, hands out, palms up as if he expects to have to plead for his life. And I don’t know; in the mood I’m in, maybe he will. “I don’t understand what’s going on here!”
“Neither do I!” I snap, and the words froth and boil in my mouth. Words that I don’t understand, that I’m scared of saying because I don’t know what they’re going to be.
“Then what in the name of the Writer’s blue balls has gotten into you?” Kin snarls back.
“I can’t do it anymore!” I shout, and it’s loud enough that the sound of my voice rings across the high stone ceiling of our chambers. Probably loud enough that the guard in the hall heard it. Probably loud enough that Andvari and her spouses heard it in their own bedchamber.
“Do what?” Kintyre shouts back, though at half the volume. “You’re not making any sense!”
“Anything! All of it!” And I fist my hands in my hair because I can’t find the words. Oh, the blessed unbelievable irony of it! Bevel Dom, scribe to the Great Hero of Hain, the man who singlehandedly turned the bumbling adventures of a stupid, selfish man-child into a thing of gorgeous poetic eddas: speechless. “I can’t . . . I can’t be . . . I can’t do . . .” I pace in a circle, scrubbing, tugging, and the pain in my scalp matches the pain itching, itching on the underside of my skin, the writhing, wrathful thing in my belly.
Kintyre slowly shuffles to the edge of the bed, reaches out to wrap soothing arms around me, shushing me as if I was his Writer-be-damned horse, and I duck away. I don’t want to be shushed, and soothed, and petted like I’m some stupid fretting maiden.
I want . . . I want . . .
“It’s not fair!” I finally bawl, the dark, writhing thing inside me vomiting up out of my mouth. “Why didn’t the Writer make it so that two human men could have children?”
“What?” Kintyre asks, and he looks exactly how I feel—utterly poleaxed by what I’ve just said.
But the puking confession isn’t over, apparently. Even though I back up, press myself against the wall, turn my face away, screw my eyes shut, smash my fists back against the ornately carved stone, I can’t seem to shut up.
“It’s not fair!” my mouth says again. “Dwarven women can get children on their wives, why not human men?”
“That’s what all this is about? A baby?” Kintyre asks, that frown I know so well furrowing down between his eyebrows.
“No!” I say, then, with a grunt of frustration, “Yes!” Then: “No! I don’t know! It’s . . . it’s . . . it’s the way you hand everything off to me, Kin! I’m not your tag-along, or your squire, but you dump the gear on me! You toss the baby at me! You think a Pairing is enough, and I’m somehow, someway, always . . . always . . . always . . .”
“Always what?” Kin asks warily.
“Less!” I snarl. I turn my back to him and punch the wall again. It smarts, and my knuckles make a sharp cracking sound. The scent of blood fills my nose, but I pull back my arm for a third strike.
Kin’s big hands grab both of my elbows before the blow can land, and he pulls me backward, hauls me off my feet in exactly the way I don’t appreciate, entitled and pushy and bigger than me. We tumble back again onto the bed, him on his back, me on his chest, and he wraps his giant thighs around my waist and his giant biceps around my upper arms. He makes me feel small, and it’s hateful.
“Peace, Bevel, peace,” Kintyre says as I squirm and struggle.
“No, no, let go!” I snarl. I gnash at the air, and I’m certain that if the stupid oaf tries to cover my mouth with his hand, I will bite the officious bastard. “I hate this! I hate it when you do this! I hate you!”
“You don’t hate me, Bev,” Kin says, but his voice is tinged with a desperate, gulping hurt I haven’t heard in it since the night we fought and raged and confessed our love. “You’re just tired. You—”
“Don’t you condescend to me, Kintyre bloody Turn, lord’s son and Chosen One!” I hiss. “Don’t you dare.”
“Is that what this is?” Kintyre asks. “Going back to Turn Hall and—”
“No! Yes! All of it!”
“All of what?” Kintyre thunders. “Speak!”
“I can’t . . . I can’t do it,” I say again, and there’s some stopper in my throat, something that is keeping the right words from escaping me. “The . . . going back. Being just your Paired, being the lord’s . . . bum-boy. The arrogant little goblin-snot from a nothing village on the forgotten border, always one step behind, the seventh son of the seventh son, unmarried and childless, the scribe with no more stories to tell, useless.”
And there. There it is.
There it all is.
The anger and fear and fury fly from me so suddenly that I feel like a zombie whose necromancer has been abruptly slain—I flop back against my lover’s wide chest, all tension gone, stringless and boneless. Tears form behind my eyes in a hot, burning lump, and they are equally tears of relief, and shame, and embarrassment at what I’ve confessed, how I’ve behaved. I turn into Kin’s shoulder, and he loosens his hold enough to allow me to turn over and bury my flushed face in his neck.
“What if Forssy made a mistake?” I whisper, because I can’t talk about the rest of it. I can’t say it again. I can’t even admit that I just said it. “What if I’m not good enough for the mask? I’m no hero, Kin. I’m just the sidekick.”
“Oh, oh, Bevel,” Kintyre says, petting my hair, and it doesn’t feel condescending now, only comforting and kind. “Oh, Bevel, how can you not know? It doesn’t matter what the rest of the world thinks about you. You’re my hero.”
Part Two
Kintyre’s insistence that I’m his hero is all well and good, and our make-up sex is as spectacular as it always is. But in the morning, I’m still left feeling agitated and hollow. Itchy and frustrated, dazed as a bloody mooncalf, and useless as tits on a bull. Being Kin’s hero doesn’t solve any of my other problems, or lay to rest any of my other fears.
We stay in bed late. My sleep is heavy and hard, and I wake like a punch. When I open my bleary eyes, it’s clear that someone’s been in the room. A dwarven servant cleaned up the mess, and replaced last night’s clothes with the freshly laundered and repaired set, stealing yesterday’s away for the same treatment. There’s tea, strong and thick with honey, waiting for us on the hearthstone, staying warm. There’s also a fresh bath drawn.
Thank the bloody Writer for that. I feel like I’ve stepped into a jousting arena with a Writer-be-damned rock golem. My hand is throbbing and swollen, punishment for being enough of a fool to throw a punch at a stone wall. I deserve it.
I stumble out of bed, weaving like I’m punchdrunk, bleary-eyed from my misery, head aching from my confession, mouth dry. I feel hungover, though I only had a few sips of the dwarven liquor last night. My hair is sweaty, and matted, and there’s seed dried to the hair on my belly.
Without even waiting for Kin, I sink into the bath and rinse my mouth. I clean the cuts on my knuckles, wincing, and curse myself for being an idiot. Kintyre slides in beside me a few minutes later, looking just as rough as I feel. Though he has an actual hangover. There’s a bright blue bruise on his inner thigh, and I wince as he gingerly sits in the tub.
“Sorry ‘bout the sacking,” I say. He grunts, nods, and sips the tea he’s got with him,
then hands the mug to me wordlessly to share. Apology accepted, then.
When we emerge from the bath, wrinkly, steamed, and silent, there’s a tray of sweet rolls, fruit preserves, and more cheese on the foot of the freshly made bed. The second cup of tea is still hot, so we share that between us, too.
It’s not tension that fills the air between Kin and me. Not really. But there’s . . . the acknowledgment and memory of my confessions. And a big fuzzy gap where both of us are still searching out the meaning of what I said, how it affects the us that we’ve forged, and what—if anything—we can change. Or at least, try to change.
Bugger all and blast it, besides.
Me and my big mouth. It was good before, wasn’t it? I had Kin, and I had the road, and soon I was going to have fresh bread and regular baths, daily shaves and warm feather beds, and I would get to grow old with Kintyre. Beside Kintyre.
One step slightly behind and to the left of Kintyre.
Blast it.
Normally, when we have an afternoon with no villains to roust, no road to travel, no armies to drill, no plans to hatch, no supplies to collect, no schemes to unravel, no horrors to fear, Kintyre and I sit in companionable silence in a tea room, or tavern, or inn, and work on our artistic pursuits. Kintyre will scratch away at his charcoal illustrations, or painstakingly transfer the images to a wood block he carves and whittles into a stamp. And I, in our early days, would practice my hard-earned skill of reading, or writing. Once I’d mastered that, my practice grew into chronicling our adventures in a collection of journals. Which, one drunken night, I let a desperate printmaker convince me to allow him to print. Which then put me in the position of turning bard, writing everything out in scrolls peppered with Kin’s woodcut illustrations. Which then, somehow, brought us fame across the four kingdoms, and enough clink to keep us in travel rations.
The same Kingskeep printmaker has been made a very wealthy man on my scrolls and Kin’s stamps. He’s also sent three messenger hawks in as many months asking after another tale for his shop. Except I have none to give him. None that I feel I could share, at any rate. At least, not without some heavy fibbing, and some fabrications, and . . .