by J. M. Frey
The Viceroy means to plunge it into the back of my wife’s neck.
“Pip!” I shout, but my voice is lost beneath the Viceroy’s howl of rage.
Twenty-One
Wyndam gets there first, thank the Writer, and intercepts. The dagger clangs off his sword. Pip pushes Isobin out of the way of the rebound strike and lunges. The Viceroy, still weakened from his ordeal and now off balance, misses his swing and goes down hard on the floor. His head makes a thick crack sound. Pip lands hard on his chest, but he bucks her off. She rolls to the side, the momentum flipping her over and over. The Viceroy scrabbles to his feet.
He is knocked right back down by Wyndam’s well-placed kick to the back of his head. He slams face-first into the stone, and the crunch of his nose is loud even with the thunder churning overhead. Wyndam swings his foot down to land in the exact center of the Viceroy’s back, and the villain howls.
The Deal-Maker, overcome with fatigue and grief, crumbles where she is, despite grappling with Kintyre, and falls to her knees.
“Spare him!” she begs, as Wyndam rests his curved sword against the Viceroy’s neck. “Spare him, please!”
“Why should I?” Wyndam snarls. “Your son is the source of every evil in my life! If it wasn’t for him, my mother would never have met Kintyre Turn! If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have wanted to adventure with my father so badly, would never have made this Deal with you, or lost my voice, or put my uncle and his family through so much torment! If it wasn’t for him, you would never have walked the world and stirred up those Red Caps, or made Lanaea’s father send her away. If it wasn’t for him, she would be alive right now! So give me one good reason!”
The Deal-Maker presses her hands against her breast, folds her fingers, pleads even as the tears run out of her eyes, and her jewel-blue blood runs out of her wounds.
“I love him,” the Deal-Maker whispers. “Please. He is my son.”
“He is evil!” Wyndam reposts.
The Deal-Maker hiccoughs a soft, sad sob. “And yet, he is still my son.”
Pip, limping, goes to Wyndam and puts her hand on his shoulder.
“Do you want to kill him?” she asks, weary. Sore. Done.
“Yes!” my nephew yells. “Yes!”
“And when he’s dead, will you be able to sleep? Will you be able to live the rest of your life happily, knowing that you have killed him?”
Wyndam presses his sword closer, nicking the villain’s filthy skin, and a bright red pearl wells up against the steel. “Yes!”
Pip releases his shoulder. “Then be my guest.”
The Deal-Maker howls, and Kintyre is forced to grab a handful of her hair to keep her from throwing herself between Wyndam and the Viceroy. Wyndam swings his arm back, clearly aiming for a decapitating blow. He lets it drop, and then . . . halts.
He hesitates. He draws back again, but now his sword is shaking.
“I . . .” he says, grinding his teeth, snarling, frustrated. “I . . . I can’t . . .”
“The difference between heroes and villains, Wyndam, is what you do when someone is at your mercy,” Pip says softly. “It’s okay to not kill him. It just means you’re the good guy.”
“But they killed Lanaea!”
“They have killed many people,” Pip says. “Will you add bodies to that pile, too?”
Wyndam drops his sword to his side, arches back, clenches his fist, and screams at the sky.
Above him, as if terrified of his rage, his newly returned ability to make noise, to be heard, the storm boils and thunders, and then shrivels up and evaporates. The Deal-Maker collapses onto her side at Kintyre’s feet.
Pip limps over to him, and holds out her hand. Kintyre deposits the phial of Deal-Maker blood in her palm. She kicks the Deal-Maker, forcing the witch onto her back so she can meet her eyes, and then cleverly steps back, staying out of grabbing range. I finally feel it safe enough to edge closer.
“I was willing to Deal with you. Squarely. Fairly,” Pip snarls, absolutely no-nonsense. “And now, I will force it on you.” She lifts the phial of Deal-Maker blood. The Deal-Maker’s eyes widen with dismay. “So here is the Deal you are going to take. You and your bouncing baby boy will be stripped of all magic in this world, and you are going to promise me that you will return to the farm where he was born. You will live a quiet life there, together, where you will harm no one ever again, either by intent or by accident. You, Deal-Maker, will be fully human, and fully mortal. And you, Viceroy, will never again have access to the magic in your blood.”
“And in return . . . you will make my final act as a Spirit to sacrifice all that I am to return you to your world?” the Deal-Maker sneers.
“You know what?” Pip says. “I don’t actually trust you to keep that Deal. Especially since we’re not exactly your favorite people right now. Forsyth and I will find a different way back. Or, failing that, we’ll bargain with a Deal-Maker who isn’t a total cunt.”
“What are you asking for in return, then?” the Deal-Maker snarls.
“In return? You get to keep your lives.” Pip looks pointedly over her shoulder at Wyndam and Kintyre. Father and son have never looked so much alike as they do now, with their swords and teeth still bared.
“You are being too compassionate,” Kintyre says.
“Maybe,” Pip says. “But this is a vicious circle in these books. There’s been enough violence. Enough dead people, don’t you think? I’m offering you a chance for redemption, Varnet. And I’m offering you, Deal-Maker, exactly what you’ve been wishing for—the rest of your life with your son.”
The Deal-Maker is silent, staring. Her expression is filled with hunger and resentment in equal measure. And then, slowly, just once, she nods.
Pip reaches down and shakes her hand.
As soon as her hand is released, the Deal-Maker and the Viceroy vanish. And with their disappearance, the Deal-Maker blood in the phial boils away. Pip uncaps it swiftly, and a small puff of swirling blue steam glitters and winks in the weak sunlight before it evaporates entirely.
Pip stumbles backward, surprised.
“Did it work?” Wyndam asks. “Do you think it worked the way you wanted it to?”
Pip nods grimly. “It has to. I believe it has to.”
“Why?”
Pip turns to him. “Because we are the family of Kintyre Turn. We are the heroes. And heroes always win.”
Wyndam’s posture relaxes, and he lets a small smile curl over the corner of his mouth. “I hope you’re right, Aunt Pip.”
Pip grins back at the honorific. “I hope I’m right too, Nephew Wyndam.”
We all slump and curl in on our hurts now that the danger has passed. Isobin goes immediately to check on the small gash on her son’s temple. Hands shake as the leftover adrenaline burns off, fingers are flexed, eyes scrubbed. Gusty sighs ring out through the tower as we all, nearly as one, yawn. It is like a glass of cold beer, this frothy, intoxicating sensation of relief. From below, there comes a great cheer of victory from the crew of The Salty Queen.
Even the sea is calm, smooth as the surface of a looking glass, and just as quiet. Sunlight sparks off the few remaining ripples, throwing up diamonds.
But we still have to make our way down the tower. And back onto the ship. And then all the way back to Lysse. Blast and drat. Even the thought of moving exhausts me. But I make myself move, anyway.
I move just enough to curl myself around my wife. My beautiful, strong, incredible, clever wife.
My wife, who lifts her face and smashes her mouth against mine, kissing me like she could swallow me whole, pull me into her, hide me forever within the space between her heartbeats. And I kiss her back in such a way as to say that I would welcome it.
“You’re safe,” I moan against her lips as we catch sips of air. “You’re here.”
“Shhh, bao bei,” she soothes, petting my hair. “I’m here.”
“I was so scared,” I sob, and suddenly I am crying, clinging to her, d
ropping to my knees and burying my head against her stomach, weeping with relief and burning-off terror.
“Me too, bao bei,” she says, and crouches, pressing herself into the space between my thighs, under the warm shelter of my arms, protected by the canopy of my torso. “God, I thought I’d never see you again. I thought I’d have to . . . to kill myself, to keep him from. . . . I love you. I love you!”
“I love you, too,” I whisper.
And while my wife and I reassure one another, I trust my brother and brother-in-law, my nephew, and his mother to keep watch over us. I trust my family to care for us as we celebrate, and comfort one another.
✍
Another hour sees us all safely back aboard The Salty Queen and sailing north, toward the Icedance Sea. The pack ice will be breaking up soon, and it will only take us a week to sail around the northeast passage, stop in Erlenmeyer to resupply, and make port at the very small sliver of land in Lysse where our Chipping abuts the Sunsong Sea. From there, we will dispatch someone to fetch the cart out of the Stoat Forest, if it is even still there to fetch.
Isobin’s first mate willingly gives up her cabin for Alis, Pip, and I, and we share a warm, tear-filled and sleep-framed reunion. Caerdac and Bradri keep to the deck, with Wyndam and Capplederry. The bo’sun informs me the next day, when my little family emerges in search of food and what Pip gamely calls an after-action debrief, that Kintyre and Bevel disappeared somewhere below decks yesterday, and haven’t been seen since.
“Though,” she informs me with a salacious smirk, “we ‘eard an awful lot of bellowin’ and gruntin’ down by the powder storage, didn’t we, wenches?” A bawdy roar of agreement rings along the deck.
I pinch the bridge of my nose, hold up the hand that doesn’t have Alis tucked pliant and sweet against my ribs, and say, “And that is the precise limit of what I need to know.”
The bo’sun laughs, tosses hair the color of carrots over her shoulders, and saunters away to share her saucy gossip with the pilot.
Our group slowly congregates in the captain’s cabin over the course of the afternoon. First Pip, Alis, and I arrive to find Wyndam already seated with his mother on the daybed, chatting affectionately. Kintyre and Bevel follow in after the food when the cook brings it in. Word is sent to Caerdac and Bradri, who promise to come as soon as the dragon has finished washing away the blood on her scales.
We are picking at our mostly empty plates and indulging in Isobin’s fine, pilfered Brystalian wine and crisp Gadotian ale, when Kintyre asks, “So, what do we do now? What can we do, I mean? About . . .” He gestures between Pip and I, and it is clear that he means to ask how we intend to return to the Writer’s realm with no Deal-Maker blood to strengthen a Deal enough to do it.
“Nothing,” I admit, and the words are ashen in my defeat. “Absolutely nothing.”
“So, what will you do, then?” Bevel asks. He is tucked as close to Kintyre as he can be, and while I can see that Isobin is amused by it, that she thinks he is being jealous of Kintyre’s attention and demonstrative in his claim, thinks that Bevel is unnerverd by her, Bevel’s unease actually stems from how close we came to losing Alis. Though I often compare Bevel to a bulldog or a hedgehog, when it comes to children and families, he is rather more like a dragon.
“Now?” I say. “Now, we return to Lysse and research more Deal-Makers, I suppose.”
“And sleep,” Pip adds. “I am so done. I personally would like to sleep for at least about, oh, another week before we start on another adventure.”
“Another adventure?” I tease, pulling her close against me and relishing the feel of my whole family in my arms. Pressed between our chests, Alis is still and soft, radiating happiness and clutching at both of our collars. “Surely it will only be the denouement of this one.”
“I’m never sure anymore,” Pip says into my neck, her free arm slipping around my waist to hold me tight. “Even the Excel didn’t really help this time. So much for my hundred thousand dollar education. What a waste of wealth.”
“Your what?” Isobin asks, startled.
“It means . . . well, a hundred dollars is roughly equivalent to a gold coin, so it . . . it’s quite . . . er . . . expensive,” I finish, lamely.
“For an education?” Kintyre boggles. “Sister-in-law, what is it that you are trained to do that is so dear?”
“Well, ah, it’s kind of like, um, what Forsyth did, but on a . . . you know what? Never mind,” Pip says. “Let’s just say I paid a lot to be a clever clogs.”
“Very well,” Kintyre acquiesces, and with no little reluctance.
“But did you get to choose it?” Wyndam blurts suddenly. He has been mostly silent until now, packing away what food he could get his hands on and gazing longingly at the ale when he thought no one else was looking.
Pip swings to face him, blinking, startled. “Of course I did,” she says, sounding baffled. “Why would I pay so much for something I didn’t enjoy?”
Wyndam looks down at his plate and marshals a few remaining crumbs into a regimented line with the tip of his knife instead of answering. A thoughtful, resentful sneer in the corner of my nephew’s mouth as he ponders over what he wants to say reminds me, startlingly and wholly, of my father.
“Come now. Out with it then, lad,” Kintyre says gruffly.
Wyndam starts, looks up and around at all of us waiting for him, and then clears his throat. He is, of course, out of practice at speaking, and his voice makes several crackling noises that might have embarrassed him if he was less eager to say his piece. All this time, I had imagined my nephew would have the same deep baritone voice as his father, but it is more in the tenor range. And his accent and cadence is definitely like that of his mother.
“Not sure I should say anything,” he mutters at length, after several grunts and grumbles. “Won’t much matter, I don’t think.”
We adults exchange glances around the cabin.
“We’re glad to have you be part of the conversation again, Wyn,” Bevel says, clapping the boy on the shoulder. “Don’t mute yourself now.”
Bevel hands Wyndam a cup of ale and bids him to drink up. It is a solemn gesture of import—Bevel is making a point of offering Wyndam the alcohol, of treating him as a man, after his adventure. It is a deliberate show of considering Wyndam an adult. And thus, an invitation for Wyndam to speak his piece equally. It is the kind of subtle cleverness in emotional manipulation in which my brother-in-law is so excellent, and yet he is so oblivious to his own prowess. Just as Elgar Reed wrote me as the consummate spy, he wrote Bevel as the ultimate diplomat. He has to be, as Kintyre’s walking apology. No one else would be so fine a match for my brother.
The ale finished, Wyndam visibly girds his loins and says: “As long as you actually are listening to my part of it, old man.” He is trying to make light of it, to fracture his own tension with laughter. Bevel chuckles obligingly. Good. For all that my brother-in-law has always been quietly desperate for a baby, I think Wyndam has always been desperate for a father. And in Kintyre’s absent and casual affection, he has genuinely tried to find one in Bevel.
“Yes, er, about that . . .” Kintyre begins.
“Didn’t ask you, Kin,” Bevel interrupts his trothed. Kintyre snaps his mouth shut. He huffs, then quaffs his own ale mutinously. Well, now, it seems that with Bevel’s talent for handling pouty Turns, I should be glad he never deemed my foul moods worthy of his attention.
“It’s just that . . . well, did anyone bother to ask me what I wanted?” Wyndam grouses to us all. “That’s what I wanted to say. Aunt Pip is a woman, and she got to spend all her money on an education that probably a lot of folk might say she got no right to. But I was a prince! And I didn’t get no say at all!”
Isobin draws herself up, taking a breath to argue, but I hold my palm up from the table, a subtle and small gesture that she nevertheless catches; a quiet plea not to interrupt Wyndam. We must hear him out.
“No. Ma wanted me to be a landed noble,
when I used to be a prince,” Wyndam says, arms thrown skyward, exasperation flooding out of him, along with the crashing waters of his long-damned confession. “Father wants me to be Lordling Turn, and I don’t know nothing about it, or why it even matters! Bevel wants me to be a son and child for him, when I’m seventeen already. Pointe wants me to be Sheriff! Aunt Pip can do anything she wants, but I’m a man, and I’m a Turn, and I’m a lordling and a prince, and I still don’t got a say at all! Uncle Forsyth is right—you’ve all just treated me like a convenient prop! What about what I desire? What about—”
“Well, then,” Bevel interrupts, striking at the heart of the matter. “What is it that you desire?”
Wyndam blinks at him, his tirade cut short by the straightforward inquiry. The wind goes out of his sails, and he slumps in his seat, the anger-induced flush retreating from his cheeks.
“I . . . miss being the Prince of Pirates,” Wyndam says softly, swallowing his words in his sudden shyness, embarrassed that he must be so blunt, so honest, in front of so many.
“But you cannot,” I say softly, and they look up at me. Wyndam gestures for me to go on. “Queen Isobin allows only women on her ships. Unless you care to unman yourself?” I ask archly, trying to bring the conversation back around to humor to give my nephew the opportunity to regroup.
“No!” the lad protests, covering his crotch hastily, as if fearing I would descend upon him immediately with a pair of garden shears. “No.”
“You could still go back to sea, if you miss it,” I say. “If you choose to go as Wyndam Turn. I know the king could be talked into commissioning you. Or, if you prefer to go as the Pirate Prince, I know there would also be those lads who long for a life of adventure on the high seas, and who would help you man the first ship of male pirates.” I frown meaningfully. “Not that I approve of that sort of behavior, of course.”
“I don’t want him on the water,” Isobin says, voice rough. “It’s too dangerous.”
“But surely it’s his choice,” I counter gently. “And he has more than proven himself in battle.”