by J. M. Frey
Bevel Dom and I walk at the head of the party, with Pip and Alis just behind us. Alis is desperate to squirm down out of her mother’s arms every time Pip fails to allow Alis to investigate something she’s pointed out. It seems that Alis is determined to finally walk on her own. Not for the pride of it, but so that she can steer her mother back around to look at flowers, and little stones, and the frog that is sitting on the piled-slate boundary wall between the fields and the road, croaking, “Ka-iss meh, ka-iss meh!”
“‘Isses, ‘isses!” Alis says, reaching for the creature.
Pip shoots me a concerned look, and I double back to hoist Alis onto the wall beside the frog. It is about the same size as my hand, and it sits still as she pats its dry skin gently between its bulbous eyes.
“Ka-iss meh, ka-iss meh,” the frog pleads, blinking wetly at my daughter, and she chants, “‘isses, ‘isses,” in time with its croaking.
“Can she?” Pip asks. “I mean, is it safe?”
“Yes,” I say to my wife, and then to my daughter: “Now, my sweeting,” I tease. “Don’t be disappointed. Those frogs don’t actually turn into princes.”
The frog shoots me a dirty look and croaks in reproach for ruining its fun. All the same, Pip scoops up the frog and holds it up to Alis.
“Gently now,” Pip cautions, and Alis puckers and brushes her lips very carefully against the frog’s back.
“Muah!” Alis says.
The frog sags, disappointed, then pecks Alis’s cheek in return and hops off Pip’s hands and away, back toward the ditch.
“What was that all about?” Pip asks, wiping her palms on her dress and using her cuff to clean Alis’s face.
“We know the Kissing Frogs never turn into princes,” Bevel says, coming to join us. “But they don’t. They all secretly hope, yeah?”
“That’s . . . actually kind of sad,” Pip admits.
“Yah, yah, yah,” Alis says.
Bevel hops over the low stone barrier into the field and takes one of Alis’s hands. With her other wrapped tight around two of my fingers, Alis deigns to wobble along the wall, dancing in delight to have the sun on her face and the attention of three adults.
The sun. I take a moment to close my eyes, turn my face up, and smile. Behind my lids, the sunlight is pink, and I can feel the shadows of the trees that grow along the road passing cool and green over my skin. My freckles will be horrendously prominent after this promenade, but I don’t mind. I have learned to love freckles; Pip’s are my favorite, and mine are hers. We both hope that Alis has some, as well, and seeing as our daughter inherited my eye color, and her skin is lighter than her mother’s, it seems likely.
Oh, how I have missed a good, mild Lysse spring after suffering the deep Canadian winter. With my eyes closed, a stone in the road—though it is hardly a road by Victoria standards, more like a hiking path—snags against my boots and I stumble. Luckily, the wall is there to catch me, and I don’t topple Alis down with me.
“Whoops!” Pip laughs, a few paces behind us. She is now walking on the wall as well, skirts rucked up to her knees in a very unladylike (but very Pip-like) manner, the excess fabric crammed behind her belt. “Watch where you’re walking, bao bei.”
“Yeah, watch it, Forssy,” Bevel sneers. “Reading too much has obviously made you clum—” He stops, snapping his mouth shut on the automatic insult, his sapphire eyes widening in mild horror. “Sorry,” he says immediately. “That was . . . wow, that was incredibly rude of me. I’m ashamed by how instinctual that was.”
He shoots a look over his shoulder, mortified, but Kintyre, who is about twenty paces behind us with Wyndam, hasn’t heard him. Though I cannot hear them, in return, I can see the pedantic way my brother is moving his arms, and I can only guess that the lad is getting the sort of self-important lecture that I used to have to suffer when we were younger, and Kintyre thought himself the cleverer of the two of us. My poor nephew.
Though, unlike me, it seems as if the lad is soaking in this fatherly attention, like a lizard on a sunny rock.
Perhaps, though I sense that I am more scholarly inclined than Wyndam, I ought to have a conversation with the lad about looking up to heroes and living in shadows. I very much wish some caring relative had been around to pull me aside and tell me that I did not, actually, have to be exactly like the great Hero of Hain, despite being his little brother.
“That you stopped and corrected yourself is apology enough,” I say to Bevel, bringing my attention back to his chagrin.
“Still, all the same . . .” Bevel says, scuffling his feet like a guilty boy. “Authorial Intent is strong, but I like to think we all have the ability to change our characters.”
“That we do,” I agree, thinking of my transformation from background character in my own life, to being the hero of it instead. “And, speaking of changes, how goes the business of the Shadow Hand?”
“Well enough,” he replies, deliberately cagey, knowing that his non-answer would needle me. He smiles slyly.
I do not regret leaving the Mask, and its knowledge, and the duties attendant therewith, to Bevel Dom. But I do very much dislike being out of the loop, as Pip would put it. And he very much likes riling me up.
Since he became my brother’s squire, Bevel has been an irritation to me. First, because he usurped what I had thought was my deserved position as the great Kintyre Turn’s sidekick and chronicler. Then, as he earned his own knighthood and wealth, he became the brother to Kintyre that I should have been.
And he rubbed it in viciously when we were still at odds. Now that he is my brother’s Trothed (a position that I do not, I can admit wryly, covet in the least), and the closest thing to an in-law our world allows for, our animosity seems to have cooled into gentle teasing. I would like to be a friend to Sir Bevel Dom, seventh son of a seventh son, the Bulldog of Bynnebakker, and perhaps I am. His manners have always been good, his mind sharp, and his wits quick. But his tongue is also silver, and he is a teller of tall tales; he likes too much to take his humor out of the tempers of others. And I had quite the temper whenever Kintyre and Bevel showed up at Turn Hall, ate my provisions, took what they wished, did nothing that befitted my brother as the eldest, and left.
But I have learned patience of a sort in Pip’s world that I did not think I could ever possess. Kintyre often accused me of being high-handed, officious, stuffy, and bossy. Living in a world where I had to accept that I was not the cleverest, that there was much to learn and absorb, where things were awkward, and new, and strange, and frustrating, has taught me humility.
So instead of rising to Bevel’s bait, I snort at him. Bevel grins and stoops a little to pluck up a stalk of wheat from the field on the other side of the piled-stone wall. It is knee-high and fresh green, and looks ridiculous as he clamps the stem between his teeth and grins at me, daring me to make another comment.
I oblige. “You know, I still remember everything,” I say. “You are perhaps the first Shadow Hand in the history of the service to have a predecessor who still lives. I can hack into your work very easily, Bevel Dom, and if I am unsatisfied by your performance, I may just take the Mask back.”
“I should like to see you try, Forsyth Turn,” he says back with a smirk. “Though you’ll have to tell me what you mean by ‘hack.’”
“Oh,” I say, feeling my cheeks flush with embarrassment. “It’s a . . . ahem. It’s a term from the Writer’s realm. It means to . . . well, to access information by rifling through files, but doing so in a sneaky, through-the-back-door manner that is . . . usually less than legal.” Bevel nods along, not at all judgmental of my slip, and so, puffing a little with pride, I add: “It is now my profession.”
“You collect information illegally for money?” Bevel asks, and this time, he’s frowning. Of all the people he knows who would voluntarily work contrary to the law, I am probably the last person he’d expect. “That . . . surprises me.”
“Not technically illegally,” I say. “I am in service
to my government there, as I was to my king here.”
Though that is not entirely true. Frankly, I am not at all a fan of the way Ottawa goes about its business. More than once, I was tempted to bypass firewalls and “accidentally” infect some of the Prime Minister’s more hateful bills into unreadability. I am an admirer of democracy, for I have seen the ills of dictatorship in other realms. But I will be the first to admit that I sometimes miss the, well, not “pliancy” of King Carvel Tarvers, but more his willingness to be counseled, to weigh his options, to listen. As a country lordling, I had a perspective that the noblemen of Kingskeep did not. And as his Shadow Hand, it was my duty to advise. In that, I was able to subtly steer the course of Hain toward what I felt was a more fair and ethical path.
In Canada, I am but one voice among thousands, one vote among millions. And while that is a fair method of governing, it is, I determine, not enough. Not for me, at least. Not for the way I was written.
“So you ‘hack’ for this new king of yours,” Bevel says, trying to understand, and generously allowing Alis to pull the wheat stalk from his lips, which she waves about like a parade banner. “How did you offer your services to him?”
“I found a hole amid their security and sent them a letter through it,” I say, which is, at its most basic, true. I had toyed with the idea of simply using a GIF of a gentleman removing his hat and bowing, but that seemed . . . teasing. And unnecessarily smug. Not at all classy. The email I’d sent instead read formal, and stuffy, according to Pip, but I would much rather be too polite than taunt them into going after me.
“Oh, I remember it word for word!” Pip offers with a laugh, and before I can protest, recites:
“Dear Sirs,
I do humbly beg your excuse, but I couldn’t help but notice, during my wanderings through your mainframe, that there is an excessively, startlingly large gap in your firewall protocols at this IP address. Quite large enough to fit through, I might add, though you must be reassured that my respect for the brave intelligence officers and spymasters of the Dominion of Canada is such that I refrained from the temptation of doing so.
If you require any further information or aide from me, I would be pleased to offer it.
Yours in Trust, F.”
Bevel howls with laughter. “That’s classical Forsyth, yeah? Hired you on the spot, did he? Did your new king send you a purse at once?”
“Ah, that is harder to explain,” I say, truthfully. “In essence, yes.”
In reality, in return for my good deeds, I take one cent from each Canadian government bank account I can track down, once per pay period, and I transfer it into either my own shadow bank account, or into an equally obfuscated trust for my daughter’s future education and needs. The withdrawal is programmed not to appear on bank statements as such. It is not a great wealth, but it is a modest beginning, and in Pip’s world, there is such a thing as compound interest. And if it is less than entirely legal, well, I have looked true evil in the face and know that what I do helps to prevent it in my new adopted home. I simply cannot do it with no income. My own morals stretch enough for my conscience to remain appeased.
“How noble of you,” Bevel says. “I’m not certain I would choose to remain a hero had I the option. Being Shadow Hand is almost like being on holiday compared to what Kin and I used to get up to, but even then, there’s something appealing about the dream of heading down to Brystal and buying one of those funny skinny houses they build up on the cliffs. I could sit on a terrace facing a sea that is blood-warm, and do nothing but drink wine and listen to music for the rest of my life.”
“You’d get bored,” Pip says. “I know you too well. Forsyth’s the same. All of you would get wall-climbingly bored. That’s the way you were written.”
Bevel cringes at the way Pip so casually mentions our creator, but does not comment.
“Yes,” Bevel muses as we reach the gate to Law Manor’s grounds. “No matter where you are, or what your occupation is, you have to remain true to yourself. That is something I do understand.”
✍
What had appeared to be a great prank and great fun to me is, I realize as soon as Sheriff Pointe arrives to welcome his guests, horrifyingly shocking to him. He pulls open the door, a smile on his lips, and immediately freezes. Pointe’s face goes gray as his house-robe, and he actually wobbles, grabbing at the door handle with a white-knuckled intensity that frightens me. He makes a few inarticulate, garbling noises, and then sucks in a deep breath, his eyes going wide as tea-saucers as his chest puffs up.
“Forsyth!” he croaks, when he finally has his breath. “Writer’s balls! Are you a ghost?”
“Oh, oh dear,” I say softly. I take a step up onto the manse’s front gable. Pointe visibly flinches. “My dear friend, no. No, I am not.”
“You live,” he says, and reaches out a hand to me. I take it, press it between my own, and let him feel how warm and pliant my skin is.
“I live,” I say, and before anything else can be said, he draws me into the tightest, most desperate embrace I have ever known. His fingers dig into my shoulders through my clothing, his arms tight enough to squeeze the breath from me, his face jammed against my neck.
“My Lord Bevel said you had gone away, to a faraway land,” he hisses against my skin, sucking in deep gulps of air and trying, I believe, not to weep. “I thought he had just been trying to be kind. But no, it’s true. You live.”
“I live,” I say gently, reaching up to steady him. “And I am come back.”
“I missed you, my friend. Fiercely.”
“And I you. I missed you very, very much.”
“Thank the Writer,” Pointe gulps.
“Actually,” I say with a grin, drawing back to wink at my friend. “About that. You recall telling me that you did not believe in Readers, in the Final Chapter, in a Writer who scribes the Books of our lives and sets them on the Shelf when they are done? All that?”
“Yes,” Pointe says, red-rimmed eyes narrowing at me in reluctant confusion. “We made a bet.”
“Indeed we did,” I say with a smirk. “And now, you must pay up. For I have met him. I have taken drink with him.”
Pointe stares at me as if I have lost my head entirely and replaced it with that of a Sphinx. Then, for the first time, he seems to notice my family ranged behind me along Law Manor’s entry courtyard. His silver eyes snag on Pip and Alis.
“You better come in, you sly old bastard,” he sighs. “And explain.”
✍
Dorthi Pointe lets out a breathy shout of delight when I lead our little party into her afternoon tea room, and folds me into an affectionate hug no less desperate and tight than her husband’s. Lewko, who has grown into a fine young boy in my absence, clings warily to his father’s leg. His memories of me must be vague, at best.
Dorthi runs her thumb over the scar on my cheekbone, the signature of Bootknife’s titular blade, then pinches my cheek and calls me handsome. She has always called me handsome, though for many years I did not believe her, and it puts a lump in my throat to hear her say so again.
“Ah, my wife says the scar makes me look roguish,” I say. “Though my figure is no longer so trim. I admit I eat perhaps too many of the delicacies of her kingdom.”
“Wife?” Dorthi asks, and peers around me. “Oh, Miss Piper!” she crows, and sends a look of triumph toward her husband even as she is bustling toward Pip. “Or is it Ladyling Turn?”
Pip smiles and accepts the kiss on the cheek, and doesn’t speak to confirm or deny the name change. Instead, she holds up our daughter. “This is Alis Mei Piper Turn,” she says, dropping her into Dorthi’s hands. Dorthi is instantly smitten, and too distracted to pepper Pip with any more invasive questions. My wife has learned well the distracting value of a baby.
“Oh, you beautiful wee lady!” she says. “You come sit with me, and we will pour you some milky tea.”
“Ma!” Lewko says, following his mother to the table, aghast at her intense ad
oration.
“You too, my wee manny,” she says to her son. Lewko is old enough now to get himself seated and pour milk from the glass jug into his own earthenware cup, then the second cup that Dorthi fetches from the sideboard. Dorthi then sits beside him with Alis on her lap. The Pointes have servants, which was something I was careful to ensure their estate could afford when I entailed Law Manor to the local sheriffdom, but Dorthi prefers to do as much as she is able on her own.
“Yah, yah!” Alis opines as Dorthi settles her.
Pointe, looking proud as a peacock, ushers us all into our own seats, and the servants appear to pour tea, distribute tasties, and see to our needs. Kintyre asks for whiskey, and Bevel kicks him under the table. I am happy to see that the potential for our father’s alcoholism to transfer to my brother is being thwarted by his Trothed. Wyndam seems to find the whole affair tedious and says nothing, even when asked a direct question, slurping at his tea with alarmingly bad manners as he stares out the window.
I must remind myself more than once that Wyndam is not my son, and it is not my place to correct him. Besides, perhaps his behavior is considered perfectly acceptable among pirates, and he is only behaving as a Prince of the Seas ought and sees no fault in his own conduct. I dare not reprimand him in front of others unless I am certain. I would not wish to mortify the lad publically.
Pip and I spend the meal dodging what questions we can, and making up mild fibs for the rest. Kintyre and Bevel catch on easily enough that we do not wish to tell Dorthi and Lewko about the Writer and his realm.
When the meal is over, Lewko’s shyness has evaporated. He is enchanted with Alis and, with Pip and Dorthi’s permission, takes her hand and leads her in a stumbling walk toward the back-courtyard door, babbling excitedly about introducing her to their cat.