by J. M. Frey
Unsure of what he wants, I say, “Thank you, that will be all,” and he rolls his eyes. The rudeness of the gesture startles me.
Pip heaves herself toward her purse, fishes out two silver-and-gold coins and presses them into the boy’s hand. He smiles, nods, thanks us, and closes the door.
“You must pay them to go away?” I ask.
“You tip them for the service.”
“Does the inn not pay them?”
Pip chuckles. “Yes, but not a lot. If you tip really well, they’ll pay extra attention to you.”
“So, we are paying extra for a level of service that we should receive anyway, and the inn does not pay them a fair wage in order to make them servile to our whims? Ridiculous.”
Pip shrugs. “I never said everything in this world makes sense.”
We resume our seats in the armchairs and our perusal of the city, this time with proper, decent coffee. Pip has a plate of French fries balancing on her stomach, and they nearly topple when the baby stretches and kicks it. We both can’t help but laugh.
Twenty-Two
When it is time for dinner, Pip showers and changes into fresh denim trousers and a soft, floaty green shirt that covers her scars but leaves her impressive bosom on tasteful display. I exchange my t-shirt for a waistcoat in Turn-russet, which matches my trousers, and a button-down in cream. I leave the top two buttons open, and even now, eight months later, having no neck cloth feels indecent. So does leaving my bottom visible in the trousers, with no house-robe to cover it.
“So posh,” Pip murmurs, running her hands over my chest and down the lapels of my waistcoat. “You sure do clean up nice, bao bei. Put me to shame.”
“Not at all,” I demur, and hold open the door for her.
We go down to eat in the hotel restaurant, and it is a buzzing field of fans and friends indulging in the ability to take a meal together. The room is filled with the soft, far-storm grumble of accents that are slowly becoming more familiar to me. Some are new, though, and I try to turn my ear toward them without appearing that I am eavesdropping.
“American accents,” Pip says, knowing me and my body language well enough to guess what has caught my interest. “Not deep south, so I’d guess maybe mid-coast? And that one is pure Texas.”
I turn my head the other way.
“Indian, I think, but I’m not sure,” Pip offers. “Possibly not. And that’s Chinese.”
“That I knew. It is like wai po when she attempts English,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Why is your mother’s accent not as noticeable?”
“She trained herself out of it. And I grew up here.”
“Of course.” I smile at the gift Pip has offered me—a room full of people to catalog and learn about—and sit back as the waitress pours us glasses of water. She inquires over beverages, and Pip requests ginger ale (which has no alcohol, despite its name), and I ask for whatever red wine they have the most of. Then I sit forward, ignoring the menu for a moment, and say: “This is a gathering of geeks. But beyond that, I know nothing of why we’re here.”
“It’s a surprise,” Pip says.
I twist my mouth into a bit of a frown.
“I know you’re not keen on surprises, bao bei, but trust me on this one?”
“Of course.” The wine arrives, and I take a sip to cover my dissatisfaction. It mingles unpleasantly with my tiredness and the stresses of the day, the “too much new.”
We order our meals (such a variety of choices!) and almost immediately, the woman from the bus approaches our table.
“Hi again,” she says.
“Hi,” Pip replies, ever polite.
“My friend wanted to see Forsyth,” the woman explains, gesturing to a man hovering behind her shoulder. “He didn’t believe me when I said I’d seen the best Forsyth Turn ever on the bus.”
I startle so hard that the wine glass nearly topples. I manage to catch myself quickly and put it down on the table. Pip rises, but I wave her back. There is only a small red spot on my trousers, and I reach for the table salt quickly to absorb it.
“Sorry,” the woman bleats.
“No, all is well,” I say. “But may I ask, how did you know who I am?”
The woman grins. “The Turn-russet? The accent? You’re really good. The scar, though . . .”
I raise my fingers to the thin puff of white that runs across my cheekbone. It is nothing so as horrific as the scars that Bootknife left on Pip, but it is a daily reminder of that villain’s hand in our lives.
“Bootknife,” I murmur. “We dueled when he tried to steal the Shadow’s Mask.”
The woman claps her hands and squeals in delight. “Of course! That’s really smart! I love fanon back story! Listen, can my friend get a picture with you? Real quick, I know you’re eating.”
Pip sits back, hands folded over her generous stomach like a smiling Buddha statue, amused.
“I do not know why, but very well,” I acquiesce. Something is beginning to wriggle at the back of my mind, a puzzle squirming into existence, its disparate pieces beginning to coalesce. I do not know what picture these pieces will make, but it is early, yet.
I stand, and the young man hovering behind the woman comes forward. He slings an awkward arm over my shoulder and smiles at the camera. I fold my hands in front of me, loathe to touch someone I have not even been introduced to, and smile as well.
The photo flash attracts the attention of others, and quickly, there is a small crowd of cameras popping at me.
“Camera tribbles!” Pip laughs, and I plaster an expression of desperate pleasantness on my face as person after person asks me to stand with them for a picture. Only, I cannot understand why.
Comprehension slides abruptly closer the moment a pair of young women dressed in foam armor and Sheil-purple robes sidle up to take a photo with me. They are attempting to imitate my brother and his lover, as far as I can tell. One girl wears a long flaxen wig, and the other has contact lenses in to make her eyes the same dark sapphire shade as Bevel’s.
Understanding strikes like lightning.
These people do not know I am Forsyth Turn. They think I am like them, a fan who is approximating Forsyth Turn by looking and speaking and dressing—albeit in clothing of the current fashion—like Forsyth Turn.
And then all rational thought flees because someone has their hand on my arse. Fingers squeeze, and I yelp, startled.
“Hey!” Pip snaps, surging to her feet with a speed that her pregnancy defies. “Hands off, kid.”
The young woman dressed as Kintyre grins wickedly, shrugs in half-hearted apology, and waggles her dyed eyebrows at me. Ugh, my brother’s seduction face, and it is being aimed at me. My stomach rolls over entirely, and the wine burns at the back of my throat.
“No,” I say. “Stop that.”
“What?” the woman asks, falsely nonchalant. “I’m Kintyre Turn; I can flirt with the pretty ones.”
“If you are Kintyre, then I am your brother,” I protest. “Please stop.”
The young lady dressed as Bevel giggles. “Turncest is hot.”
“Turn . . . what?”
“Fan fiction,” Pip clarifies, pushing her way between the lecherous young ladies and me. The crowd of cameras, embarrassed by their fellow fans’ behavior, has vanished. “Literary fantasies. And there’s nothing wrong with it on paper, or on a screen,” she says to me, and then turns her attention and her masterful scowl to the interlopers. “But when a human being’s body is involved, you ask, and you don’t assume.”
“But it’s my character. It’s just cosplay—”the Kintyre protests, her breezy entitlement melting under the glare that Pip had cowed the Viceroy with.
“Costumes are not consent,” Pip snaps. “And Cons are not spaces filled with people who exist solely to please you. Learn that, grow the hell up, or get out. I’m not going to call Con security, because you seem to genuinely not understand that what you’ve done is not only unwelcome but completely in
appropriate, but so help me if I catch you using your costume as an excuse to violate other people again. I will have the Stormtroopers on your ass so fast.”
The girl’s eyes go wide, and her friend tugs her away. They flee the restaurant to a smattering of applause aimed at Pip. She waves to her adoring audience and turns back to me.
“You okay?”
“I’m okay,” I say. “A lesser man might be humiliated by his wife riding to his rescue, but all I can think is how attractive you are when you are defending my honor. And what’s yours.”
“Fuck,” my wife sighs as she sits, but grins, as I hoped she would. “Did she pinch you hard?”
“There may be a bruise,” I admit. “It’s possible you will have to kiss it better.”
Pip snorts into her ginger ale.
✍
After dinner, we take a stroll through the hall of vendors to help settle our digestion, and my nerves. Pip likes the stretch, and moans, as she always does, about missing her morning runs. She has threatened to strap the infant to her back and take it running with her once it is old enough, and I, having seen how her speed saved our quest and lives more than once while on our adventure, have no reason to dissuade her.
Now that I know what I am seeing, I catch sight of a great many folks masquerading as people from my world. There are others, of course, from films and television programs that Pip has shared with me, but there is by far a greater number of “Turnies.” It is both flattering and disconcerting, and, in some cases, when the costumer particularly resembles someone I know and love, vertigo-inducing. Pip wraps her hand around my elbow and steers me through the crowd when my knees lock up, or my breath is punched from my chest.
I am very quickly becoming overwhelmed perusing the costumes.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m coping.” I say it with the most sincere tone I am able to conjure, but it must not be very convincing. My whole body feels strung as tight as a longbow string, and I can barely open my mouth enough to force the words between my teeth, the way my jaw clenches.
Pip narrows her brown eyes at me and puffs out her cheeks. “Right, no, it’s okay. Let’s go back to the room.”
“Yes, thank you.” I sigh in relief, and just like that, it seems the string is cut.
We take a shortcut through something called “Artist’s Alley,” and I am determined to simply keep my head down and save the gallery of creations for tomorrow, when I am better able to appreciate the talent on display. I cannot help but come to a halt, however, when I catch sight of a particularly well-painted scene of Kintyre and Bevel with their mouths locked. With a shaking hand, I reach out and lift the piece of paper—the print—from the table and show it to Pip.
“It’s good,” she concedes, her own tone filled with a little awe. “Looks exactly like them.”
“From where did you model their faces?” I ask the artist, a young woman with a rainbow of hair, who stands behind the vendor’s table looking pleased and eager.
“No one in particular,” she says. “I mean, not actors or anything.”
Nausea pulls at my stomach, my dinner sitting ill, but the woman’s answer is honest. She is not lying, I know that well enough. The body language and tells that I was taught and which I employed as Shadow Hand have not changed between worlds. This woman merely used her imagination and did not cross between, as I did.
She is no Deal-Maker. And yet, everything around me is uncanny, horribly familiar, and awfully not at all like home. A burning pull rises up behind my eyes, and I pinch them shut, rub at them for a moment with my free hand, hoping to encourage the mounting tension to dissipate. When I open my eyes again, I tilt the picture in my hand so I can get a better look at the lip-lock. “It seems as if I really was the last one to know,” I say, forced-jovial and trying to win back our light mood from dinner.
I swallow bile hard.
Pip chuckles, but it too is thin and sick-sounding. “Well, next to them,” she says, and takes the portrait from my hand, placing it back on the table.
✍
“I wish them to stop photographing me!” I say as I close the door to our hotel room behind us. We have been stopped three times between the hall and our room, and I am not-so-slowly losing patience.
“Change your clothes,” Pip says. “Did you bring anything that’s not Turnish?”
I manage to assemble an outfit of dark denim trousers, and I am broad enough of shoulder but thin enough in the waist that one of Pip’s t-shirts fits me fine. It is dark blue, and perhaps there is too much material at the stomach to be really flattering, but I manage to hide that by wrapping my purple silk scarf around my throat a few times and letting the ends dangle to the front.
I feel horrifically underdressed with no waistcoat, but when I look in the mirror, I am satisfied. Pip offers me a hairbrush, and I use it to push around the limp, gingery strands until they sit in a slightly different configuration. It feels strange on my head, and I have to consciously avoid brushing the part back to hide my high forehead.
“This is so frustrating,” I say. “To avoid being thought that I am in a costume, I must put on what essentially amounts to a costume.”
“Sorry,” Pip says. “It never occurred to me that you might be recognized here.”
“Why am I?” I ask. “Why are we here, Pip? What for?”
“It’s a surprise,” she starts again, but I have had enough.
The stresses of the day, compounded by my unhappiness over the handsy Kintyre woman and the lack of sleep have pushed me to the edge of my patience.
“No!” I snap, cutting her off. “Tell me!”
“Just . . . one hour, okay? Just give me one hour.”
“Now, Pip.”
“Forsyth, please.”
“Now! Why are we here?” I shout. I don’t want to be shouting at my wife. I don’t want to be standing in this tiny room, in this extravagant inn that smells faintly of other people’s feet, shouting at my wife. But I cannot seem to help myself.
“For this!” Pip says, and slams open the drawer of the bedside table. She pulls out a packet of papers and tosses them in the general direction of my head. A magazine flutters open, disrupting the trajectory of the papers, and they scatter around my feet and across my shoulders like the feathers of a fatally wounded bird.
Pip flops down onto the edge of the obscenely large bed and fumes, arms crossed under her breasts, resting on her belly, and the expression on her face makes it clear that she will say nothing else until I’ve picked up all the papers and examined them.
FantaCon 29, the glossy magazine’s title says, and the image painted on the cover fills me with an abrupt shock of homesickness so acute that I actually feel my legs give out from under me. I am somehow sitting at the foot of the bed, on the floor, my back against the mattress and my legs akimbo.
It is Lysse. My Lysse. It is the view of the Chipping from the rise that marks the boundary between Law Manor and the Turn estate. I know this view well, for this is the very route Dauntless and I would take when we returned from one of Mrs. Pointe’s excellent afternoon teas.
In the low of the land, I can see my trout pond, throwing up glittering reflections of the over-warm sunlight. A fairy hovers in a sunbeam there, a rainbow glitter that will surely be food for the fishes if she doesn’t stop admiring her own reflection quite soon. To the side is the small covey forest, and yes, a small dash of red against the canvas marks my fox and her kits, slinking from shadow to shadow, making their way to the low stone wall that separates my gardens from my tenant’s fields. The wheat beyond the wall is high, just starting to turn brown with an oncoming autumn. The forest’s rich verdigris is dappled with a few flecks of red and orange. The rolling hills are green and grand, and they lead the eye to the centerpiece of the painting—Turn Hall.
The stones are red, bedecked in the green ivy that Father had hated but that I had allowed to run rampant across the sills and stones, softening the harsh scowl of the dark house after h
is death. The path up to the back door—for it is toward the rear of the house we are looking—is wide and clear. Cook’s wooden garden shoes are small, light brown specks on the doorstep, and a pair of Turn-russet curtains are hanging out of the window of my second-floor bedroom, fluttering in the painted breeze.
And central to this beautiful, painfully accurate vision of my home are two men on horses, their backs to me as they make their weary way to the Hall. One is blond, broad of shoulder and thigh, wearing a Sheil-purple jerkin and Foesmiter on his hip. The other is smaller, shorter and slimmer but no less muscular, with short sandy hair and an eager air. He is dressed in a short-robe of Dom-amethyst.
My brother Kintyre and his lover, Bevel.
But they are not lovers here, not in this picture. Not yet. This is early. They are neither of them wearing the colors they adopted when they finally admitted their affection for one another, and I can see the glitter of the Blade that Never Fails in its holster at the small of my brother’s back.
A man clad in black, with a silver mask, waits upon the heroes’ arrival in the shadows at the lee of the house, and I know that this Shadow Hand is Lewko Pointe the Elder, and not me. He wears Smoke on his right hip, and I wore the sword on my left.
Without my knowing it, my hand touches my left leg, palm against the raised texture of my denim trousers, fingers splayed and searching for the sharp leather edge of my holster—and failing to find it.
I wear no sword in Pip’s world. It is illegal, she says, to wear any sharpened blade in public.
“Syth?” Pip says softly, and I turn my cheek into the hand she has laid on my head, petting through my hair and down to my neck.
“I’m okay,” I croak. “I just . . . I’m okay.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” She heaves herself to her feet and fetches a tiny bottle of water out of the very small fridge. The pricing guide on the door of the unit declares that the bottle is extremely expensive for water. Everything in this hotel room is hilariously disproportionate, and I stifle the frenetic giggle that threatens to burst across my tongue.