by J. M. Frey
“Blimey,” Bevel adds. “And you just have to get to . . . ?”
The sound of paper rustling drifts in the mist, and I can well imagine Pip spreading out her Excel to show them. “The Desk that Never Rots. Oh. A bit clunky, that epithet.”
“I can’t read this,” Bevel says.
“It’s written in my alphabet.”
Kintyre makes a sort of confused sound that I haven’t heard from him since we were boys. “But you’re nearly done, and you’re only on day forty-two?”
“Incredible what can happen when you research and plan a quest, instead of just heading out and bashing things, eh?” Pip is smug when she answers, and it is good to hear something beyond detached suffering in her voice, even if she is deliberately winding my brother up.
I stop a few paces away, still hidden by the mist, to see how Kintyre will reply.
“Yeah, well. Leave it to my brother, then, to take all the fun out of it.” He sounds sullen.
Pip actually makes an aborted sound that might have been the beginnings of a laugh. “Roaming the wilds, fighting trolls and battling monsters and duplicitous princesses is ‘fun’?”
“Part of it,” Bevel says. “The rest of it is the adventure, you know? Never sure where you’re going to go next, where the next step will take you. What lands you’ll see. What people you’ll meet! What things you’ll learn!”
Pip hums. “Yes, I can see the appeal. But we are on a bit of a . . . deadline.” There’s a sound, like uncomfortable shifting from all three of them: shifting fabric, a cleared throat, an aborted attempt to speak before Bevel finally groans.
“You can’t stay?” Bevel finally asks, breaking the silence.
I can’t help my swiftly indrawn breath, and close my lips around the hiss, hoping none of them heard it. Because, yes, Bevel, yes, ask her—ask the thing that I cannot, dare not. Ask, and make her answer.
Nobody calls out, so perhaps I am safe. I shouldn’t eavesdrop. I should go up there, be brave, face this conversation myself, but I am still too shaken by what I saw in the mirror, and too curious as to how Pip will answer. I know how I want her to answer, but what will she say? Will she lie?
“I can’t,” she says. “I don’t . . . I would have said before that it’s because I can’t, I can’t taint this world. But now, it’s because I don’t want to.”
I’m sure one of them must hear the crunch of the frosted grass as I stagger back a step. The pain that blossoms under my sternum is sudden but not entirely unexpected. Still, nobody calls my name. Nobody comes.
“Huh,” Kintyre says. “That’ll shatter Forssy.”
“As if you’re concerned about him!” Pip snaps.
Kintyre makes another confused sound. “Why wouldn’t I be concerned?”
Pip scoffs. There is another pregnant pause, and I twist my hands around the straps of my sack, dithering. I want to see his face, I need to know what his expression is betraying, but I am afraid. I am afraid of what I’ll see, and I am afraid that, if I interrupt now, Kintyre will shut down and not explain. And I need him to explain. I need to hear it.
Something that I can’t see happens, an exchange of expressions and eyebrow waggles and stretching or pouting lips. A whole conversation happens in the silence that strains across the star-dappled, mist-muffled sky.
“You actually do like him,” Pip says, at length. Her voice is low and breathless with awe.
“Of course I do,” Kintyre allows, and his tone says, without saying: You’re stupid. “He’s my baby brother.”
They are discussing me, I think all of a sudden, which is absurd. Of course they are. I can hear them, but I cannot fathom it. Why? What is appealing about me? Why am I the center of their discussion? Is it only because they all know me, that I am the only thing, really, that they have in common?
Imagine, anyone at all deciding that Forsyth Turn is a worthy topic of discussion!
“Well, you sure don’t act like you like him when you’re around him,” Pip snaps.
I edge closer, crouching around the side of the portico to peer over the steps at their faces in the orange glow of the flames. Kintyre shifts on his bedding, looking distinctly uncomfortable. He shoots a desperate look at Bevel, who shakes his head stoically and purses his chapped lips. He’s not rescuing Kintyre this time.
My brother sighs, sounding put upon. His hands, however, have wound themselves around and around the tail of his shirt, bunching and twisting the fabric between white fingers and knuckles. I realize, with a start, that he is embarrassed.
“Our father wasn’t very . . . fond,” he says, pursing his lips around the word as if it were sour.
Pip snorts. “The alcoholic, abusive father background shtick. I wonder if men get as annoyed with the lack of depth in fictional father characters as women do with the virgin-or-harlot trope. I mean, not every father in the world is an unmitigated asshole or Clark Kent. There’s gotta be something in the middle.”
“Who?” Bevel asks.
“Never mind. How is this the elder Master Turn’s fault?”
Kintyre clears his throat. “He showed his sons affection in only the roughest sense. Claps on the back, carousing, shouted insults. Father was a soldier first and a lordling, second. He took mastery of the Chipping only when his father forced it on him. Perhaps if Mother had survived the fever, there would have been some more . . . kindness.” He tugs on his ponytail, fussing over the broken ends of his hair as an excuse to avoid Pip’s gaze. “It’s just . . . Forssy uses these big, stilted words that I don’t understand and makes pronouncements on what you’re going to do simply because it’s what’s good for you. He never asks, he just tells. I hate it.” His face screws up. “I know he means well. It just . . . drives me mad when I go home. I don’t want to fight with him all the time. So I don’t. Go home, that is.”
“You’re not perfect yourself,” Bevel says, and lays his hand on my brother’s thigh. “You scrunch your feelings so far down inside of you that you try to pretend they don’t even exist. And then, when you get mad, or hurt, you blow up, and it surprises you that you feel so much, all at once.”
Kintyre turns an affectionate glance to Bevel. “And you wear every emotion and thought on your face. I always know what you’re feeling.”
“Not always,” Bevel retorts indulgently. “Took Pip telling you straight out for you to know my most hidden feelings.”
Kintyre curls himself down and ghosts a kiss against Bevel’s mouth. Bevel makes a noise of satisfaction, a purr in the back of his throat, as if he were part leo-kin. Jealousy, sharp and cruel, stabs at my gut. I bite my lip to keep all sound in. Pip just looks away, misery painting her skin pale in the firelight.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Pip says, after giving them enough time to remember they have company.
Kintyre shrugs. “He’s my brother. He’s smart. He’s . . . my brother. We’re all we’ve got. What else can I say?”
“Why haven’t you said any of this to Forsyth?”
“It’s hard,” Kintyre wheedles, and I feel myself bristle.
Hard! Hard to tell your brother you like him! Hard to behave as if you do like him while in his presence, instead of just treating his home like any other rough waystation or taverna on the road! Hard to respect him! Ha!
“It’s not that hard,” Pip counters, speaking my own thoughts. “You could, I don’t know, be kind to him when you see him. Ask him about his work. Respect his household and his guests.” A pointed glare, and Kintyre resumes twisting his shirt. Bevel’s ears go pink again.
Kintyre is right. His companion is terribly easy to read—Bevel is currently remembering the disaster of a dinner party, and his role in causing said disaster.
“We are sorry,” he mumbles. “We behaved . . . inappropriately.”
“If you’re aware that you did, why did you do it in the first place?” Pip asks, the line of her shoulders and the tone of her voice screaming exasperation.
“Because Forssy’s sk
in is so thin,” Kintyre says. “Because it’s fun to wind him up.”
“He doesn’t think so,” Pip snaps. “I don’t think so, either.”
“I was trying to toughen him up,” Kintyre says, defensive. “He was always into such . . . smart things. Books and maps and studying things. It made Father think he was a sissy. Made him . . . a target, I guess.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Forsyth,” Pip says. “And there’s nothing wrong with being cerebral instead of physical, or being an introvert instead of an extrovert. It’s just how he’s built. You have to accept that.”
“He has to—”
“He doesn’t have to do anything,” Pip interrupts. “Except to accept your faults and work harder to make you understand that he loves you, too.”
“Does he?” Kintyre challenges. “He’s certainly never told me he’s proud of anything I’ve accomplished! None of my tapestries are on display in the family hall! He doesn’t ask Bevel to tell any stories.”
“Probably because he’s sick of hearing them. He has them, though. Every one, every single scroll—the expensive illustrated ones, too. They’re in his library.”
“He does?” Bevel squeaks. “Really? That’s . . . that’s surprising. And, um, flattering.”
“He is proud that his brother is a hero,” Pip presses. “He just wishes you’d let him get a word in edgewise.”
“I would if he would ever get a damn word out!” Kintyre challenges. “He just stoops and stutters like a stupid old man, and it drives me mad! And how do you know how so much about my brother, huh? Just because you’ve slept together?”
“Kintyre, hush!” Bevel scolds.
I feel my own stomach twist at the mention of our forced intimacies. This is not acceptable. But before I can stand and begin to scold, Pip jumps up and points a sharp, shaking finger at his face. The gesture is doubly dramatic in the firelight, with the Shadow’s Cloak billowing around her like smoke.
“We’ve known each other for months,” Pip says. “We’ve spent most of that together. And unlike you with your conquests, I actually talked to him after! You can’t say the same. I’ve seen the look in his eyes when he talks about you. He is proud, and when you come in and shout him down and get all me-me-me, he gets angry, and he can’t say anything.”
“Well, he doesn’t listen.”
“He listens fine. Do you listen back?”
“Of course I do!”
Pip laughs. “You don’t even know what you’ve done to him, do you?”
“What have I done?” Kintyre sneers. “Please, go on. Tell me how I’ve ruined my brother, if you know him so well.”
“You’ve made him feel worthless, that’s what you’ve done,” Pip says. “And I hope you’re happy about it. Because all that stuff you don’t like about him? The lack of self-confidence and the stuttering and the stooping? That’s your fucking fault. You and your useless father.”
That’s it. I’ve heard enough. I cannot let Kintyre embarrass himself further. And I cannot let Pip defend my honor when I should be doing it for myself.
I step from between the pillars of the portico, back into the firelight, and wait for them to notice me. Kintyre and Bevel’s gazes hop over to me immediately, their warrior’s skills serving them well, and Pip’s follow a fraction of a second later when she realizes they’re looking at something behind her.
“Forsyth!” Kintyre exclaims, dropping his shirt tails and trying to smooth them out against his wide thighs. “Er . . .”
“How much did you hear?” Pip asks, lethally calm. Her eyes slide back to Kintyre, and I am warmed to see that the judging expression in them is leveled at him, and not me.
“A-a-all of it-t, I th-think,” I say. “E-e-enough, a-at any ra-rate.”
Bevel turns to stare at Kintyre, and my brother is gawping at me like I am one of his slain monsters returned to life. Then, surprisingly, Bevel kicks Kintyre sharply in the calf. Kintyre shoots to his feet at the reproach and skirts around the fire to stand directly before me. I have to crane my head back to meet his eyes. It occurs to me, for the first time, that we have the exact same expressions when we’re nervous and choosing our words carefully. I have seen that same slight dip of the eyebrows, the stubborn thrust of his chin in my mirror at home many times before.
And then, without any warning, he launches himself at me. I put up my hands to defend against the attack, but he wraps his arms around my back at the elbows and squeezes, and I am unable to get my hands up to protect my face. I think he is going to bite my ear or my neck, because he sticks his face right into the hollow behind my jaw and presses his cheek against my hair. And then he doesn’t move at all, save to incrementally increase the pressure of his hold.
Fuck, I think, feeling that Pip’s favorite expletive is entirely appropriate. He’s hugging me!
Carefully, slowly, in case I am wrong, I raise my own arms at the elbows and wrap my skinny hands around the small of his back. He gives an all-over shudder when my palms settle against him, and with horror, I wonder if he’s begun to cry. The back of my neck is damp with his moist breath, so I can’t tell if there are tears there, too.
“I’m sorry, Forsyth,” he mutters against my skin. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Y-y-es, well,” I bluster, because I have no words, literally no words to express how I am feeling right now.
I want to scream. I want to punch him. I want to demand he tell me why it took this long, why it took the scathing accusations of a woman who isn’t even a part of our family—not the way Bevel is— to force him to admit the way he feels about me. To force him to begin to evaluate his behavior over the last two decades.
I want to yell, to tell him everything I’ve kept bottled up since childhood. I want to tell him that he is my older brother and he is supposed to love me. He was supposed to protect me, that’s the way of the world, that’s how it’s supposed to go. He is my brother, so he is supposed to defend me against those who attack me, either with blades or words; that is his duty.
And that he didn’t.
That it hurt all the more when he joined my tormentors instead of chasing them off. That he abandoned me with our callous father’s heavy hand when he went off to have his adventures, and that it made me feel worthless.
That it made me feel even more worthless when he came back from those adventures with Bevel Dom in the place that ought to have been mine—squire, apprentice, eventually partner in arms and friend; stupid, stolid Bevel and his dishwater hair and hedgehoggy eyes and unwavering loyalty. I want to tell him that I could have been that loyal, that good, if I had only been given the chance.
I want to tell him that he is my brother, and I love him anyway, and he is forgiven.
I want to tell him to get out of my sight and never, ever try to see me or talk to me again.
I want to tell him to shove his apologies up his ass, and that he can suffer as I have suffered. I want to tell him to go throw himself on his sword.
Instead, I say the only thing I can: “Right. Yes. Of course. You can let go of me, now, Kintyre. I’d quite like to have my feet back on the ground, please.”
I shutter my expression in time for him to meet my impassive Shadow Hand mask when he sets me down and pulls back. He flinches, as if the set of my mouth was a slap across his face, and I feel vindictively pleased by his miserable slump.
Pip is watching my face closely, her expression as closed and unreadable as my own; but her hands betray her. They are folded together between her knees, her knuckles white. She is anxious, and hopeful. She wants me to relent, to accept Kintyre’s apology and work with him to repair our broken filial bond.
I am feeling so much, am so overwhelmed, that I cannot feel a thing. It is like a whirling storm behind my larynx, and I fear that, if I open my mouth, it will all come out in a swirling, screaming mass.
I will try to say all of it, and, in doing so, say nothing. And ruin everything.
Until I’ve had the time to sort ou
t exactly what I would like to say or do next, it is best that I say nothing. I nod slowly, once, to Kintyre, and then I step out of the circle of his arms and make my way over to my bedroll. My body is cold where the heat of his touch vanishes, and my knees shake with unspoken emotion, but I manage to make my steady way there and fold myself into the blanket.
Then I pull it over my head and bite down hard on my bottom lip and hope against hope that the crackle of the fire is enough to muffle the sounds of the rolling sobs that wrack me.
✍
In the morning, Bevel announces their intentions to join us for the rest of the quest, and I admit that I am not surprised by the assumption that they would be welcome. Of course they are, the more party members, the safer we are, but it is the lack of asking that rankles.
The skin around my eyes is raw and tender to the touch, and probably red enough that they can all see what I did when I went to bed.
My cheek is equally tender, warm from the ointment and the healing, and itchy as all hell. Is this how it had been for Pip, but all over her back? I can’t imagine how she didn’t go mad, trying not to scratch.
Pip had slept on the far side of the fire from me, Kintyre and Bevel between us. I had woken groping across the marble for her, missing her warmth and the comforting wonder of waking beside—and entangled with—another human being.
I am torn between telling Bevel and Kintyre to shove off, that this is my quest and I don’t want them with us, and thanking them for staying, because they know better than I do what needs to be done. If news of Bootknife’s death hasn’t reached the Viceroy already, then it will soon, and I would much rather have my brother and his Foesmiter between me and that maniac. But Kintyre and Bevel are also between me and Pip, and if they weren’t here, I might manage to have a private conversation with her, see if I can smooth things over. But then again, perhaps not being alone with me is the best thing for her, for the healing process, because of what happened and what the sight of me must represent for her.
Ugh! Too many thoughts!
In the end, it’s all moot anyway, because there is literally nothing I can do, perhaps beyond the devious use of some Words, to keep Kintyre and Bevel from following us to the next Station.