by J. M. Frey
Pip, startled by the compliment, flushes. “Um, thanks,” she says, at a loss for words and clearly stumped by the protocol of accepting such a congratulations.
Keriens then winks at me. “Seems Sheriff Pointe had it all hashed out correctly. I think there was a bet to it, wasn’t there, sir? I assume you’ll be collectin’ on that this afternoon. He was right; you certainly are more relaxed and carefree with a beautiful woman in your—ahem—arms. Though the babe’s eyes aren’t green, sir, and—oooh, no, stop it, sir! Ah, abuse! Such abuse!” He laughs as I make a show of swatting his shoulder with the tassel of my dressing robe.
“Hush, you cheeky miscreant!” I order, but there is no anger in me. How could there be? I am too overjoyed. “Be off with you and your wagging tongue, and send up the bath.”
“Yes sir, please sir,” Keriens says with theatrical cringing, and with one last bow to us, he scuttles away. He is barely out the door before I hear his laughter wafting back up the hallway.
Pip is chuckling when I go to pour us both tea, and fetch an earthenware cup of juice made from the bounty of Turn Hall’s apple orchards for Alis.
“He was right, you know. You are more relaxed,” Pip says between sips of her tea. “You’re more open.”
“I do not have the stress of managing the household, the Chipping, and my duties to the king weighing upon my shoulders.” I shrug. “As the younger son, I finally have all the pleasures and advantages of position and wealth, but none of the troubles. And the king’s concerns are Bevel’s now, not mine. I need not be a role model.”
Pip makes a bit of a face. “But your language has gotten more formal.”
“Ah,” I say, pausing to reflect on what I just said. “Yes, I suppose it has. Habit, that. Does it . . . bother you?”
Pip turns her face up for a kiss I am happy to gift her. “No,” she says. “You sound more comfortable, actually. Less like you’re rehearsing everything before you open your mouth. I didn’t realize before how . . . hard it was for you, how much you were working to fit in back home.”
“Back home,” I murmur against her hair, struck by the incongruity of that assertion. My wife calls our house in Victoria our “home.” And yet here, in Turn Hall, surrounded by servants who missed me and a brother and brother-in-law who, for the first time, have opened their arms and welcomed me into their hearts as family, and a nephew who is . . . well, I’m sure affectionate in the way of young lads who resent their parents for simply being their parents . . . and with my greatest friend just one estate over . . .
Well, it is here and now that I feel the word “home” resonating for me.
Pip senses my hesitation and leans back to study my face. “What is it?” she asks, but already I can see the warm joy of domesticity and a well-spent morning sliding away.
“It is nothing, truly,” I say, but Pip levels her “I know you’re not telling me everything” look at me, against which I am helpless, and I blurt, “Only, to me, this place is home. I know what you meant—I understand, Pip—but I . . .”
“You don’t feel the same?” Pip asks, stepping back. Alis, unhappy that the warm snuggle she was receiving from both her parents was severed so quickly, whines. I set my teacup on the mantel to give myself time to contemplate my answer, and Pip follows suit with Alis’s juice.
Finally, I say: “I don’t . . . I’m not sure.” It’s not an answer, not really, but she deserves something.
Pip breathes deep, clearly attempting to forestall another shouting match and to maintain her calm. We neither of us want another fight. Especially so soon after the last one.
“It’s fine,” Pip grits between clenched teeth. “Of course I understand. I don’t like it, but I understand. You’ve lived here your whole life. Of course you were homesick.”
“But it’s more than that, Pip,” I say. “This is Alis’s chance to grow up the daughter of a noble family. This is your chance to see what it means to be a lordling’s wife. Your time in Hain was so filled with pain and peril. We don’t know what has brought us here, nor how, but when that mystery is solved and the dangers dealt with . . . imagine, Pip!”
“Imagine what?” Pip gasps. “Imagine staying?”
“Yes!” I say, and then amend it to: “For a while, at least. Perhaps a few years? Not forever. I am certain I could find a boon large enough to trade with a Deal-Maker, or a spell from a Warlock to send us back after that.”
“A few years?” Pip asks. “I was gone for six months last time, and you saw how much of a hassle it was with my family, and my landlord after that. What sort of train wreck do you think we’d come home to if we stayed a few years? They’d declare us legally dead, Forsyth! They’d auction off the house! There’d be nothing to come home to.”
“Then we could simply remain here,” I say, feeling defensive and stubborn.
“Besides the fact that I could never do that to my family, could never let them think I was dead or vanished or run away, I absolutely refuse to let my daughter grow up in Elgar Reed’s world.”
“It’s not all bad!” I protest. “Am I not a feminist?”
“You are. Of course you are! But who else is?” Pip challenges. “Pointe, okay, but what about the Lord Turn? Will your brother have any qualms about selling his niece off to the most advantageous ally when she’s old enough by his standards?”
A surge of doubt slides oily and cold into my guts. “I . . . surely we’ll have her whole adolescence to change his perspective,” I argue, but it is a feeble one, I know, and my words betray my doubt. While my brother has never been actively cruel, he also has never believed women to be equal to men. The fact that the only human being he could have ever thought to hold important enough to love and wed was a fellow man says—I am ashamed to realize—a lot about how highly esteemed women are in Kintyre’s eyes. And Elgar Reed’s.
“And what about the next kid?” Pip asks. “Because there sure as hell aren’t any condoms or pills or vasectomies here, Forsyth. And my IUD is probably only gonna last another year. Maybe two, if we’re lucky. Could you live without sex for the rest of our lives? ‘Cause I don’t want to, but I also don’t want to have to go into labor here, I can tell you.”
“Oh,” I admit. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I can’t stand corsets. I love my culture’s food. And, Forsyth, I like teaching.”
“There is the free school in Turnshire—”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, Pip. I promise I do,” I say, desperate, and hurting because she is so summarily rejecting everything that I loved here. “I’m not requesting that we remain forever. Just for a little while. Just to experience life here. Alis deserves to know that side of her heritage, too.”
“I’m not sure I want her to!” Pip snaps.
I jerk back, stung. The back of my eyes burn, and my heart presses hard against my throat. “Is it s-s-so te-ter-terrible?” I whisper, unable to make my voice louder, unable to shout or weep, too hurt to even breathe. “Is-s th-the l-l-land of my b-buh-birth so hate-hateful?”
Pip sighs and sets Alis down in her cradle. Alis shoves her fist in her mouth, wide eyes wet and worried. Then Pip reaches out and draws me against her breast, cradling me as if I were the child. I am not ashamed to admit that I wrap my arms around her waist and hold on, shaking.
“Oh, Forsyth,” Pip says softly, petting through my hair. It feels safe, good, and this feels like home, too. I am torn. Oh, I am torn. I thought I had worked through this pain already. That I had moved on.
But now I am here, I am back, and it is no longer a far-away wish, but a reality, and I cannot express how much it tears at me to have two homes, and to be strung between both like a man on the rack.
“I just . . . I just thought you might be pleased,” I say softly.
“And on what planet do you think I’d be fucking pleased?” Pip says. The words are abrasive, but her tone is soothing. She is trying; she is making the attempt to remain calm, to understand, and for t
hat, I am grateful.
I straighten and fold her hands between my own, bringing them to my lips for a kiss, pressing my cheeks against her palms, desperate for her caress and understanding. “I tho-thought you would-d l-li-like it, the chance to be sim-simply a moth-mother! You s-say s-s-so often how fruh-frustrated teaching makes you, how muh-much you miss Alis when you are away working! How for-for-fortuitous, I th-thought! Pip m-may be the mo-mother she wishes, will be accorded all the advantages of being a ladyling! And my da-daughter will be raised with all the r-respect, and w-we-wealth, and p-pr-privilege she deserves! That was my only thought, Pip, I s-s-swear.”
Pip cups her hands around my chin, forces my face up so that she may meet my gaze. Her eyes swim with a love that I feel blessed to call my own each time I witness it.
“Oh, bao bei,” she says, and kisses me. Her kiss is sweet, and slow, and sad, and I cling to her lips with my own, for it has been too long since she has called me that, her precious one. Too long.
When we separate, she resumes petting my sparse, gingerish hair, and I reach up to fold my hands behind her neck, to circle the puff of scar-tissue on her nape, shaped like an ivy-leaf with my thumb.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry for not understanding what this means to you.”
“Pip—” I begin, but don’t know what it is that I mean to say.
“I see now, okay? I get it,” she reassures. “This isn’t you hating my world. This is you wanting to provide for your family, wanting us to live the kind of good life that you want us to.”
“We could have that, here.”
“But we have that there, too, don’t we?” Pip asks softly. “We both have good jobs we enjoy. Alis is never alone, or made to feel unloved. We have a nice house. We live comfortably, don’t we?”
“Yes,” I admit.
“Are you really worried about me being a stay-at-home mom?”
“If you would rather work out of the house, then it is your prerogative.” I shake my head. “I am certain; I am very happy and very privileged to be a stay-at-home father. I adore my days with Alis. I find hacking fascinating, and engaging. And I know that the university makes you happy, despite how often you call down curses on your students over the dinner table.” I risk a smirk, and she echoes it. “I know that.”
“But you feel torn.”
“And wouldn’t you, Pip? What if you’d had to stay here, and now we were in your world, among your comforts and what was familiar to you? The clothing and the cuisine, the friends and family that you had missed?”
“I get it,” Pip says. “Honestly, I get it. I’m sorry.”
“Me, as well.”
Another kiss, another long and quiet moment, listening to each other breathe and feeling the tension, the disappointment, the anger dissipate.
“Look,” Pip says at length. “We’ve got time here. It’s not like there’s Google. I’m sure there’s going to be days of research to figure out what happened and how we ended up back in Hain, and, knowing the way that Reed builds plots, there will probably be another quest. We’ll get the chance to get out, see your world, experience it. And we’ll have plenty of time at home, here, too,” she says, emphasizing the word with a deliberate warmth. “And at the end of it, we’ll find a way to go back, just like you said. And I—” Her voice hitches, broken for a moment, and alarmingly damp-sounding. “I hope you’ll want to go back with me. Bu-but if you don’t, then I . . . we can talk about it, and . . .”
“Oh, no, no, Pip. Never,” I promise, kissing it into the skin of her neck, her forehead, over her eyes, against the tears rolling down her cheeks. “Where you go, so will I go.”
“But you were going to ask Reed to write you back,” she sobs.
Ah. And here is the real kernel of Pip’s distress.
“Only as an alternative to forcing you to watch me fade away and die,” I reassure her, feeling the tears building in my own eyes spill over in a slow trickle. “Only if it came down to that.”
Pip sniffles and nods miserably, wiping her nose on the cuff of her robe. “Okay. Okay. I’m sorry.”
We hold one another for a long, long moment, each of us unwilling to be the first to let go. In the end, it is Alis’s sobbing “Adadadamamamaaaaa” that has us separating. I fetch Alis, and Pip picks up our tea cups. We sit in the wingback chairs that bracket the cold fireplace, and sip. Alis is soothed by my rubbing her back, but still looks worried.
A knock at the door announces the return of Keriens, and with him comes servants enough to carry and fill the copper tub, Velshi with wardrobe selections for all three of us, and a serving girl with a basket of soaps, hair potions, and cosmetics for Pip. The girl looks eager to work with Pip, and I guess that she has a wish to be elevated into the position of a ladies’ maid. Judging by her hands, she is the scullery, and hasn’t had any opportunity to practice in this household of men.
I feel instantly sorry for her, for beyond a bold slash of wing-tip liquid eyeliner and a plump gloss-slicked vibrant lipstick when there is an occasion requiring it, Pip wears no makeup and does not dress her hair elaborately. Perhaps I can talk Pip into indulging the young woman for the sake of her practice, call upon Pip’s sense of duty to the Chipping to allow it. Pip is, I have learned, as generous to students of all stripes as she can be.
The tub is set up quickly, and we are left to our ablutions. The tub is not large enough for two grown adults, alas, so we take turns holding Alis and scrubbing ourselves, and her, clean. When we are dry, I summon my valet and the serving girl back.
Soon enough, I am attired again as befits my station: brown leather riding boots, buckskin breeches, a waistcoat of fine Turn-russet brocade patterned with rows of keys, a proper lawn shirt with my favorite tanzanite cufflinks, and a Turn-russet riding coat to finish it off.
Pip wears one of my mother’s day dresses. The kirtle is a rich indigo—the darkest shade that could still safely be called Sheil-purple—under which she has chosen to wear a shift of dark teal silk that stands out brilliantly between the slashed sleeves and in the split of the skirt. She is wearing no corset, of course, because she refused, and only a low belt with a long tail around her hips, in Turn-russet. Alis is wearing the uniform of all infants in this world—a cloth diaper, knitted socks that she is even now attempting to rid herself of, and a billowing tunic that ends at the knee so as not to impede little ones by tripping up their early attempts at locomotion, with tie-on sleeves of a white that I know will not last unstained.
Having changed my daughter’s clothing as often as three or four times daily, I do not envy the laundress who will need to boil Alis’s tunic to get it clean. Perhaps I should suggest to someone that all of the baby clothes currently in storage at Turn Hall be dyed black to avoid showing the stains, save us all the headaches of the work.
But I cannot deny how proud I am, how happy I feel, when I see my family attired thus. Pip and Alis wear matching purple ribbons wrapped around their heads, though it is obvious that Alis is already plotting against hers, and will be rid of it as soon as she has succeeded with the socks.
Library has also been given a purple ribbon by the serving girl, tied in a neat bow directly under the little feathery puff of fur at the end of his limp tail.
“Well then, how fine we look,” I say. “I wish I had a camera.”
“Camera, sir?” Velshi says, raising a butlery eyebrow.
“Never mind.” I wave the comment away and wonder if this is how Pip felt when she tried to speak about items that were commonplace in her world and completely unheard of in mine. It feels a bit like if I were a clockwork toy and someone were winding my springs too tightly. I produce a smile that is probably too wide, and too much of an attempt at earnestness, and say: “Well, what do you think, Pip? Shall we save our research for the afternoon, and spend this morning a-visiting?”
“Yah yah yah yah!” Alis opines, and Pip and I both blink at her.
“That’s a new word,” Pip says.
“Yes,” I agree. “And that, I think, is Bevel’s provincial accent I hear behind it. Well, my sweeting, we’ll have you trained out of that soon enough, won’t we?” I ask Alis, kissing her nose, and then nuzzling it with my own. “Yes? Yes, yes, yes?”
“Yah!” Alis insists, and I can see that I have my work cut out for me in raising my daughter as a noble lady.
Lamps
In Araii, it is a tarnished oil lamp. Solinde has traveled far to the north, to the places where the ice barely melts, even in high summer, and the Dark Elves rule the sparse Winter Woods that grow, twisted and harsh, among the tundras of white.
There is a Queen of Elves, Cassiopith, who is human, and it is in her chambers that the oil lamp resides. It is in the back of a cupboard accessed only by the magical maidservants who refill the lamps during the long winter nights. Cassiopith’s husband, the Night King, Bearer of the Iridium Crown, keeps the palace locked down tight. Even so many years after Kintyre Turn came to fetch Cassiopith back to her father—and in the end, came to an accord with her father to let her stay as Cassiopith had learned to love her captor—the Night King fears that someone else will take issue with their cross-species marriage and do his wife harm.
Dark Elves are practically immortal. Human women are not.
Thus Solinde chooses to wreak no havoc. Dark Elves are also wickedly keen with their ice daggers. And Deal-Makers can be killed, if someone is persistent enough. She merely slips in and out in the livery of a serving maid. When the lamp is in hand, she flees across the tundra. Under the dancing, rippling lights of the Emerald Sky Fire, she summons down her lightning and melts the totem, resident djinn and all.
Seven
The morning sees Kintyre’s letter to Law Manor requesting a luncheon visit replied to in the affirmative, and so the six of us dress for the walk—and perhaps an afternoon’s ride—and set out for the neighboring estate. I had asked Kintyre to pen the request because I wanted to surprise Rupin Pointe, and he knows my handwriting too well. It will be nice to see my friend again, and I am anticipating quite the laugh when he realizes who exactly has come to call.