by J. M. Frey
Isobin looks away, chewing on her bottom lip.
Wyndam shrugs, temporarily and voluntarily voiceless in his desire to not contradict her. But the silence strings out as we wait for him to find his words. He has demanded to be given space for his voice. We are giving it.
“I don’t know if I really want to go back to sea,” he says at length. “It’s just that . . . my opinion hasn’t mattered.”
“I suppose there wasn’t much consulting with you in regards to your own wishes,” Isobin says at length. “And I suppose I’m another of those who failed to ask. For that, I’m sorry.”
Wyndam crosses his arms, mutinous, his lashes spiky with moisture that he most likely does not wish to shed in front of his family.
“You just packed my sack,” he crackles. One of the tears escapes, and he dashes at his cheek angrily. He is filled with a rage I remember well from my own youthful years, when everything felt dire and people still treated me as a child, though I thought myself a man. “You handed it to me and chucked me into the catboat, and when I got to Turn Hall, no one talked to me!” he hisses. “Everyone talks at me!”
“Are we talking at you now?” Bevel asks.
Wyndam blinks some more, and scrubs at his eyes, and says, sullenly: “No.”
“Well, then.”
“I just . . .” Wyndam stops, and looks over at Kintyre. “I just wanted to be like you. Everyone talks about you; you’re a hero. The great Kintyre Turn.”
“And what did you think of this adventure?” Kintyre says softly. “Is it everything you dreamed?”
“It was awful,” Wyndam moans, miserable.
“They always are,” Isobin admits. “You were always too young to realize it before. But as thrilling as it sounds on the page, hardly any of it is actually fun.”
“Not even the girls?” Wyndam asks.
“Not even the girls,” Bevel jumps in, hastily.
“Well . . .” Kintyre begins, and is drawn off into laughter when Bevel pounces on his trothed and slaps a hand over his mouth.
“Don’t you say another word, Kintyre. You got all the fun parts of bedding without wedding, but it was me who had to sort out the tears and the hurt feelings after. So you just hush!”
Instead of hushing, Kintyre palms the nape of Bevel’s neck and kisses his trothed quiet. Isobin erupts into uproarious laughter at that.
“Oh, ew,” Wyndam says, and shuffles closer to my side of the table.
Both of us resolutely decide to focus our attention on the way Alis is battling sleep so valiantly. Her head keeps bobbing, and she is smacking her lips, trying not to yawn. She is also making little sniffly sounds, and I hope against hope that this is more symptoms of exhaustion and not a cold. But she has been in the cold and the wet for hours, and we haven’t any of Pip’s marvelous medicines here. A fear surges within me. After everything I have endured, might I lose my child to an illness that could be easily managed were we back in the Writer’s realm?
No. No, I will not stand for that.
“You know, nephew,” I venture in a whisper, shoving down the ball of fatherly panic. (Surely I must be all out of worry and fear. Surely I’ve used up my allotment for the day? Writer, being a parent is exhausting.) “Don’t forget that there is a great tradition of the heir to the Seat of Turnshire going off on adventures before the lordling settles down to his post.”
Kintyre must have heard me, for he looks up and shoots me a dirty look. I simply grin back, blithe and benign. I shoo him back to his occupations. “You are the son of Kintyre Turn,” I say with as much warmth as I can possibly infuse in the assertion. “The Writer will let no real harm come to you. You would be like a grandson to him; the child of the main character. Either on sea or on land.”
The truth of that sinks home, and I feel, for a moment, a hot shame building in my breast. Elgar Reed has been alone, save for his cat and his characters, his whole life. While I cannot praise him for everything he has created, and all the sorrows he has wrought on my family in the process, I must also accept that he is the author of many of my joys as well.
And that I have pushed him away, cruelly, and wholly, and perhaps even unfairly. Like Wyndam Turn, Elgar Reed is just desperate to belong somewhere. To have something to call his own.
Something that, in my righteous anger and fear of my creator, I have denied him. I am so willing to think that others can change, that they are good and honest, as the Deal-Maker Spirit taunted me, and yet, I have extended none of that benefit of doubt to my creator. In my own terror of the truth of what I am, why I was written, I refused to believe the best of my Writer.
How petty of me. How small.
How shamed I feel.
“The Writer’s grandson,” Wyndam echoes, awed. And thoughtful. Whatever it is that he decides he wants to do with his life, I do not doubt that the choice will be well considered.
“Yes,” I say. “But be aware that those around you might suffer by their association to you; especially the women. Let no one harm them only to punish you.” I reach out and wrap my arms around Wyndam’s shoulders, and he allows the embrace, albeit a bit reluctantly. “And know this, Wyndam Turn: if you love, love well, and love bravely. Do not be a coward like your father.”
“Father is no coward,” Wyndam protests, but presses his forehead to my shoulder all the same.
“Then why did it take him fifteen years to confess to Bevel?”
“Fifteen years?” Wyndam asks. He snorts a laugh when I nod. The mantle of gloom has evaporated, and his laughter is a fresh breeze, blowing away the last of the miserable, damp fog of uncertainty. “What an elfcock.”
“Agreed,” I say.
The cabin doors open then, and the last two heroes enter. Bradri slides into the room up to her shoulders, neck resting curved up so that her head is level with my shoulder. She smells briney, but it is fresh and not altogether unpleasant. Caerdac, knuckling his eyes and wiping away sleep, stumbles over to the table and fishes around for a fresh cup of tea. Wyndam pours him one and presses it into his hands. Caerdac offers him a sleepy, pleased grin.
Oh, dear.
I ponder the look the rogue had sent in Wyndam’s direction when they first met. My nephew can’t be more than two or three years the junior of the rogue, and I wonder, suddenly, if Wyndam’s romantic inclinations run more along the lines of his father’s—no care for physical sex or gender, and only for the person themselves. Wyndam watched Lanaea the way Caerdac is watching Wyndam now, and I wonder if Wyndam notices.
Bradri peeks over my shoulder and offers an inquisitive chirrup.
“The hatchling is sleeping,” Bradri says, and she sounds slightly disappointed.
I look down, and yes—Alis has fallen back into her exhausted toddler slumber, clutching Pip’s finger in one hand and the buttons of my shirt in the other. “She is,” I say.
“Oh.”
“You can visit with her later,” I promise the dragonet, and Bradri’s ruff wriggles, the sails of skin between her horns flushing a happy indigo.
And for a moment, just one hushed, peaceful moment, I feel content. My family is arrayed around me—intimate, extended, and adopted alike. We are safe. We are happy. We are together.
Things are good.
“Well, then,” the dragonet says, and then turns her attention to watching Wyndam carefully, covetously. Apparently, this dragon has collected a second human into her hoard.
“Did we miss much?” Caerdac says, hauling the last remaining chair up to the table by hooking his ankle around the leg and making a horrific scraping sound. “Are you all in here having fun without us?”
“Fun,” Wyndam snorts. “Oh, yes. Heaps of fun. You’d be so jealous.” He shrugs stiffly, nursing his left shoulder, cradling the arm he had been yanked down into the Rookery with, the one he has just wrenched again in battle.
“You’ll have to fill me in,” the rogue says, setting down his teacup to prod at Wyndam’s shoulder, earning a wince and a sharp intake of air,
and then a relieved groan as the rogue’s fingers find the right spot. “After Master Turn tells us what he meant by offering us a manor in return for our help.”
“A manor?” Kintyre asks, and there isn’t any true worry that I have offered the lad Turn Hall reflected in him. Not really. I think.
“And a sheriff-hood, don’t forget,” I add. Of course, I had done no such thing. Not out loud, at least.
Every pair of eyes swing off Caerdac and onto me, widening in surprise.
“It is the perfect answer,” I say, feeling slightly defensive at the looks of disbelief on Kintyre and Bevel’s faces. “The Sword of Turnshire oversees the sheriffs of the whole of Lysse Chipping, and he is sore stretched without help. There is a house, a serving staff, and even a large space for Bradri to call her own, though Pointe will need to find somewhere else to practice his swordplay.” I focus on Caerdac and Bradri. “Does this interest you?”
“But what about Wyndam—” Bevel starts, but Kintyre quiets him with a hand on his arm.
“Wyndam does not want the posting,” I say. “And I believe he communicated this to you many times before his voice was lost.”
Wyndam nods emphatically and crosses his arms, resolute. Then, seeming to remember that he can speak again, says, “Right!”
“I . . . I need to think about . . .” Caerdac hesitates.
“I don’t!” Bradri says. “Our answer is yes!”
“Dearest,” Caerdac moans, but looks happy to be defeated.
Wyndam laughs, and in revenge, Caerdac pinches his shoulder, hard, earning a jerk and a gasp, and then another softer, fonder chuckle from Wyndam.
Amused, Isobin nudges Kintyre away from the private conversation he was whispering with Bevel and indicates the two youngsters. Kintyre scowls and huffs, but Bevel rolls his eyes and pinches Kintyre’s side. Kintyre yelps and jumps.
“What was that for!”
“Nothing,” Bevel says, smiling. “Just . . . Wyn’s definitely your son.”
“Oh, that?” Kintyre says, waving a hand at Wyndam and Caerdac’s tête-à-tête. “That’s all his mother. Ouch!” he yelps again, as Isobin gives him a matching pinch on the other side of his stomach. “Leave off, you two!”
While everyone else is engaged in their own little worlds, Pip leans over to me and whispers: “I’ve been thinking about, you know, the mother thing. The overarching theme of this adventure, this novel. You know? And it occurs to me . . . that Deal-Maker . . . did we even know her name?”
“Her name?” I whisper back.
“I mean, we knew Neris, but this Deal-Maker . . .”
“No,” I admit, realizing it even as I say it. “I don’t think I ever heard it. No.”
“Jesus, Elgar,” Pip groans, and slaps her forehead with her palm. “The mother of the most powerful villain in the books, and he doesn’t even give her a damn name. Ugh. I think our whole adventure just failed the Bechdel Test.”
“Spectacularly,” I agree, frowning in distaste. “How annoying.”
Twenty-Two
When Wyndam Turn steps off of The Salty Queen this time, it is by his own volition, and with the blessing of his mother. We thank Isobin and her crew profusely for their generosity and hospitality as we disembark, and if we do so mysteriously lighter of a few coins and some relatively unimportant jewelery, well . . . pirates will be pirates.
Wyndam takes a private moment to say a meaningful and heartfelt goodbye to his mother, and they arrange to meet again in six months’ time, in this same spot, for a bit of family catch-up. It is heartening to see how well loved he is by the crew, and the bo’sun cannot stop sobbing into the chief gunner’s shoulder, wailing about how grown up her little boy has become.
If traveling out of Lysse with a cart, two horses, and a giant cat was a spectacle, returning without the cart but plus a young lad riding a scarlet dragonet the size of an elephant brings even more curious farmers and townsfolk to the side of the road to stare and holler welcome to the adventurers returned.
“There are hatchlings!” Bradri chirrups, as three bold, wee things escape their mother’s skirts to dance in the shallow, curving furrow her tail sweeps into the dirt of the road as she walks. “Hello, hatchling humans!”
“Hello, hello!” the children laugh as their mother collects them, fear in her eyes.
“All is well,” Caerdac assures the mother, craning around from his seat between Bradri’s wings to smile at her. “Dragons love children. They’re really very peaceful, clever creatures. They would never harm someone unless they were attacked first.”
“They also don’t like being talked about as if they are not there,” Bradri complains, and bucks and tumbles her rider into the dust.
Caerdac laughs and lets the children help him up.
Our return to Turn Hall is hailed by Pointe, who is startled and pleased in turns to be introduced to Caerdac and Bradri, happy that if we were not successful in our quest to find a way to send Pip and I home, we at least found out what had happened to the stars and brought him a new apprentice.
“Lewko’s missed Cap,” Pointe says. Wyndam tugs Capplederry’s ruff possessively, clearly determined not to be parted from his new friend. “Ah, well,” Pointe sighs, amused. “A dragon should make up for it for the wee fellow.”
“You have a hatchling, too?” Bradri asks, ruff perking upward, and I foresee Pointe being in quite a lot of bother chasing after the two of them in the near future.
“Dearest,” Caerdac admonishes. Ah, at least Pointe will have help in keeping the peace.
When all the sheriffs have left and all the Turns are safely inside Turn Hall, we each take our weary turns with the large bathing shed out back, rather than waiting for the indoor copper tub to be filled, and shuffle ourselves off to bed.
When Alis is in her crib, sound asleep, Pip and I fall into my mother’s bed together, too weary and road-sore and happy to be on a real feather-tick mattress, to do much more than wrap ourselves around one another and hold on tight.
“Forsyth?” Pip asks, and it is not fear in her eyes that I see when they meet mine. No. Not fear, but a deep and bottomless worry that carves chasms into the skin around her mouth, paints lines of white in her hair where no twenty-seven-year-old woman ought to have them, and makes her clench her jaw as if she could hold back the tide by simply holding her breath.
Three weeks ago, I had stood in my mother’s bedchambers in Turn Hall, attired as a gentleman of my station, and begged my wife to stay here, in this, my homeland, with our child. In my elation to be home, I had dreamed of fetes held in honor of my daughter, the ease of a life led as a nobleman’s younger brother. A life where taking up the hated task of paperwork, and visits to our tenants and people, from my brother would both free him to spend more time with his own newly forged family, and make him grateful and gentle toward me. A life where my wife could teach at the Free School, and my daughter could learn to ride a horse and draw a bow, and where I could aid Bevel in his work as Spymaster for the King without having to go out and become one of the Shadow’s Men myself. Where the good, honest work of the Chipping, and the good fresh air of Lysse, would serve us all well, and my family would grow hearty and rosy-cheeked and happy.
But in that intervening month, I have remembered the cruelty my creator has inadvertently written into this realm. Children die every day, all across Hain, for want of simple access to clean water. Fevers, and runny bowels, and a wound succumbing to sepsis and mortifying from something as little as a paper cut kills thousands. A fall from a horse is nearly always fatal. Education for the peasantry, where it happens at all, rarely goes beyond the basics of reading, writing, and sums, used to ensure that they aren’t cheated at market and little else. The woods are filled with monsters, the seas even more so, and the towns and hearts of men even more than the rest.
This place is a world where a woman had been imprisoned against her will, bound to a man who had stripped her of all her power and agency, and had tied her to him as his wif
e for no greater reason than his own bestial lust. A world where, to punish the woman for the sin of being a woman, my creator had sold her child into indentureship to a cruel old warlock, and separated them forever.
And then he’d had the temerity to call that child evil, and a villain, for trying to tear the world apart for that injustice. Had the gall to make that woman hysterical and ungrateful for wanting to murder her warden-husband and win back her son. And yet, also, to fill both of those characters with such blind hate that they could never comprehend the hurts they were doing to those around them.
No.
No, this is not the sort of world in which I want to raise my child.
“Let’s go,” I answer Pip, though she has never truly voiced the question. “Let’s go home.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I just . . .” She rubs her face against my chest, an adorable, frustrated gesture. “I need to know. Before we go back. Do you really resent having no place? No prestige?” Pip asks softly.
“Do you really regret asking me to be a part of your life?”
Pip looks away, biting her bottom lip, and I decide that if this conversation is to happen—and, I feel, it must, or else it will ferment and ooze between us—I must be the brave one and go first.
“Yes, a little,” I admit, and before Pip has the chance to misunderstand my honesty, I add: “But you must understand, Pip, that I also resented being tied to my lands here, as well. It was difficult to see the freedom of the world my brother had, and have no measure of it myself.”
“But as Shadow Hand . . .”
“The lion’s share of my duties involved sitting on my arse in my study parsing missives. I traveled to the capital as Shadow Hand only rarely. And when I went as Lordling Turn, it was only when I was bade come by the king or for the annual oath-renewing. Which, in itself, was a chore for one who finds crowds, drunken revelry, and excess as unappealing as I.”
“I guess, I just . . . all those times you said you wanted to work for Queen Elizabeth, or that you hated how long it was taking you to find a job that challenged you . . .”