by J. M. Frey
But it’s different when the subject of your stories is reading your descriptions of their own adventures. I want Kin to like it so much. I study every eyebrow twitch, every swallow, every motion of the left corner of Kintyre’s mouth, seeking out the approval that the crinkles in the corners of his eyes signal, or the confusion that comes from the corner of his lip. It all means something—boredom, amusement, that he thinks the prose is too purple, or that he’s found an error in the way I wrote the events. It’s torture, and now that I’m published and out of his tutelage, he rarely says anything beyond “s’good” when he’s done.
For all that Kin has a deep and intense love of the arts, he keeps his opinions held close to his heart, and doesn’t like to speak out against errors or interpretations. I’ve always guessed that it’s because of the way his father believed that real warriors had to leave the feminine pursuit of artistic knowledge to women. Patient enough to teach me but dismissive in praise, Kintyre is a study in juxtaposition when it comes to his father’s beliefs, and how they clash with his own passions.
Kin is a man imprisoned by the expectations of a mean drunk ten years in his grave. I sometimes wish that I’d broken Algar Turn’s nose when I had the opportunity. It’s too late now, unless I want to spend an hour shoveling first.
Instead, I settle on reading the parchment upside down, my eyes following my own messy first-draft scrawl along with Kin:
The cavern reeked of mold and leaf-rot, and the faint tang of whatever liquid was in the preserving bottles around us. The air was both humid, close, and yet oddly stale. The cobwebs in the high corners surged and bobbed as air passed through the tunnel, like a giant’s faint snore was disturbing them. They were tattered and collected dust, silvery in the half-light of our lanterns, hanging like a fop’s silver-laced cuffs spilling from his court robe sleeve.
And the shelves, oh, the shelves. Gleaming clean, they were, not a speck of dust allowed to fall and remain on this beloved, morbid collection.
We kept along silently, Kintyre Turn and I, and as we did, I ruminated on why it is that the terrible, most possessive, and creepy practitioners of the Dark Magicks prefer, above all other things, the eyes of a person.
Sometimes it’s literal, like when they try to claw you in a fight. I would pass judgment and call it unsporting, but when it is a contest of life and death, then all the rules hang.
Heed me in this: there is no such thing as unmanly fighting. There is winning, and there is dead. And I tell you, my listener, that the Golden Hero and I both agree as to which side of that coin we’d rather be on.
But more often than not, it is one’s eyes that they, in the most physical and literal sense, wish to own. Perhaps it is because eyes are the doorways to the soul? Possess the eyes and you own the soul?
In the stale chill closing in around me, fetid and foul, I shudder, for I cannot help the surge of disgust at the thought of my own soul cradled in the foul, soiled hands of the Viceroy.
With Kintyre’s attention on the parchment, I think about the lines that I hadn’t written down, the confession that had been on the tip of my pencil, but had seemed too personal to invite the rest of the world to read. I grind the heel of my hand against my right cheek, doing my level best to dispel the ghost-memory of Bootknife’s blade sliding clean and neat along the wrinkle of my bottom eyelid. There’s a scar there, just a small one, and it has mostly become lost in the folds of skin I’ve seemed to acquire with age. It goes unseen by any who don’t already know to look for it, and that’s as small a mercy as I can hope for, really.
I’m not vain. I know I am sort of bland, and short, and going gray, especially compared to Kin. But I’d feel ten kinds of ashamed if I knew Kin was looking at my face and seeing only the scar. I don’t want him to remember my fear and pain. Or to only see the blood, and sweat, and— yeah, I’m not too proud to admit it—the tears that my terror had wrung out of me when I thought, when I realized, that Bootknife was going to put out my eyes.
Kintyre grunts and stops reading when he catches me scrubbing at my face. He looks up, his fork suspended between tureen and lips, and dammit, I haven’t been subtle enough. He is looking at the ruddy scar now.
At least he’s still got enough of his Turnish manners not to mention it, though. He taps the parchment with the butt-end of his fork, slopping a bit of gravy on the edge—twat—and says, “I’ve never understood why you write like this. You never sound like you. Sometimes, it’s like someone else’s got control of your quill.”
“It’s called having an artistic voice, Kin.” I sneer back gamely.
“S’ weird.” He taps the parchment again. But he doesn’t add anything else.
The strange antagonism from earlier flares back up, making my shoulders tight and my belly burn. I take back my scrap and swipe away the gravy. Bugger him, then, if he doesn’t like it. I don’t write for him, do I?
We pass the next long moments saying nothing to one another, too used to each other’s tempers to know that speaking right now would just make it worse. I have enough manners to not lick the tureen clean, at least, unlike the lord’s son sitting across from me, and after the Goodwoman clears our table, I sit back and pack my pipe with the sticky herbal mash I learned how to make on the decks of The Salty Queen. I light it with a long match and suck in a white, fragrant mouthful, reveling in the heady, soft taste.
It floods my lungs, burning at first and then becoming prickly, soothing, and I blow it out of my nostrils, feeling playful and dragonish. I like the way it makes my nose hairs singe.
“That’s a disgusting habit,” Kin says with a grunt.
“You pick your teeth,” I point out, jabbing at the air in front of his face with the stem of my pipe. I take another deep puff in defiance.
“But it doesn’t make me smell like the ass end of a tannery when I’m done.”
I clench the stem of my pipe between my teeth, hard enough to make the bone mouthpiece creak. “It’s an orange-blossom hash. How is it even remotely like boiling urine?”
The Goodwoman laughs behind her apron as she delivers another round of her excellent ale and says, “You sound just like my parents. You must be very much in love.”
Kintyre snorts and says nothing, eyes turned out the window, and I work very, very hard to beat down a blush. Bloody buggering hells, I think. Is the whole of Hain determined to see Kintyre and I Paired and rogering each other stupid?
“We’re not,” I blurt. “Trothed, I mean.”
“But I am in love” remains unsaid.
The Goodwoman cuts a glance between the two of us, and a quick, short look of pity flickers in her gaze when she turns it back to me. “Well,” she says, and I’m grateful to hear that her tone has turned formal and brisk, backing away from the uncomfortable topic. Good. She should feel bad. “Perhaps at the festival, then.”
“Festival?” Kin asks, reaching for his ale and turning his light eyes to the Goodwoman. She wears a marriage bob in her ear, but that doesn’t stop him from turning on the charm. His smile is warm and luminous, and my stomach twists, my heart lurching to the side.
Bastard.
“Oh, aye,” the Goodwoman says with an actual, honest-to-Writer titter. “The Fire Flower Festival? It is why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Just passing through, actually.” Kin smiles wider. “We stopped for provisions—and lucky we did, for Pern has the most delicious ale and pie we’ve had the honor of tasting, and we’ve supped at the table of King Carvel himself, haven’t we, Bev?”
I nod as the Goodwoman giggles, and do my best not to roll my eyes. Maybe Kin should have been a theatre-player instead of a hero. He certainly seems to come by his ridiculous charm naturally. Writer, Kin is laying it on thick. Is he really so desperate for a warm body between us tonight that he’ll pounce on the first woman who flutters her eyelashes at him?
Well, she does have really perfect tits. It seems a shame not to even try for them, I suppose.
“But now that we
know it’s a festival night, we’ll have to stay,” Kin says, as if we weren’t planning to do exactly that anyway. Writer.
I don’t protest, though, because Kin seems to be making strides. The Goodwoman’s cheeks flush and she says, “Aye, well, then why don’t you and your, um, friend, join my family’s fire circle tonight? Wouldn’t do to have you outside a circle. And in the meantime, why don’t I fetch you both a bit of sweet cheese?”
“That’s very thoughtful of you, thank you,” Kin says, and I scoff and grin down into my ale, because of course the only time Kintyre Turn remembers his “pleases” and “thank yous” is when he’s playacting the gallant. And he only playacts the gallant when he wants to get a leg over. Arse.
The Goodwoman bustles back to the bar, and I level an unimpressed look at my friend. “She’s married. Look, she’s got a little boy behind the bar wiping the mugs.”
“I see no spouse,” is all Kin says.
“Writer preserve me,” I sigh.
“Speaking of,” Kintyre says, reaching across the table to pull my hand toward him. He turns it over slowly, unwinding the bandage that wraps around my wrist. His touch is dry, and warm, and absolutely does not send lightning skittering up my skin. Kintyre bares my swollen joint to the air and I gasp at the light touch of his fingertips against the very sensitive underside of my wrist. “How is this? Do you need some of the pain tea?”
“Not mixed with my ale, I don’t,” I say. All the same, I let Kin massage my arm gently, soothingly, discovering all the places where the pain lingers, inspecting the ligaments and the bones.
I should pull back. I should keep my distance. I should bloody well stop torturing myself with this.
Kill. I am going to kill Dargan. It will be violent. I will enjoy it.
“Not broken,” Kintyre murmurs, golden head bent over his task. The tail of his hair brushes into the pile of wood chippings and some tangle into the ends like cockleburrs. It shouldn’t be endearing. It is.
“No,” I agree. “Barely even sore anymore. I’ll be pure as unicorn piss come Turnshire.”
Kintyre chuckles at my crassness and grins up at me. His eyes are crinkled around the corners in new ways, ways that speak of our long years of friendship, of the sun and the wind and the salt spray we’ve both endured, of the cold and the heat, of the pain and the laughter. There are small white hairs in his eyebrows and at his temples, but luckily his hair is light enough to disguise them. Kin looks simultaneously aged and ageless, still like the brash young man I first met, swinging his well-formed thighs across Stormbearer’s back to dismount before my Da’s forge. And yet he also looks like a man who is well into his middle life, the way I know we both are. His eyes have not changed, though. They still sparkle like northern ice cliffs in his mirth.
Bastard. It’s not fair.
I look my age, scarred and weather-rough, hair sprinkled with a dirty white, the corners of my eyes crinkled like a lady’s badly-closed court fan. Blast and bugger Kintyre Turn for remaining gorgeous while I age. Bastard. Twat. Arse.
Kin sits back, and I leave my wrist unwrapped. I tap the ash out of my pipe and repack it. The Goodwoman returns with another tureen, and this one is fragrant with the scent of baked apples, onions, and cinnamon. Kintyre perks up and sends her another one of his beaming smiles, and, deciding that I like his plan, I offer up a grin of my own, reaching out slowly to brush the backs of my fingers against the edge of her apron, just casually enough for it to look like an accident. Her eyes follow my hand, and I curl my fingers up, close to the apex of her thigh, suggestive without being too lewd.
“Sorry,” I say, but I wink to show her that I’m not, not really. Her ears flush pink, very sweetly.
If I can get her into bed, then I can touch Kintyre, kiss him, have him, and then maybe get this madness out of my blood, strangle the weed that Dargan planted behind my ribs.
The Goodwoman, flustered, thumps the tureen onto the table, slaps the plate of cinnamon-infused flatbread down beside it, and scuttles away. Kintyre meets my eyes with a pleased smirk. I lift the lid off a pot of melted goat’s cheese mixed with stewed apples and onions, and file away the flavor combination to try in one of my own dishes when we’re on the road later.
We take our time with the sweet cheese. Kintyre returns to his carving, and I scribble some more of the story, enjoying the fragrant smoke that curls around my head, and we have several more tankards of ale. We both flirt and charm the Goodwoman whenever she returns to the table, arousal slow and syrupy in my limbs, and she blushes but does not avoid us, or scold us. To my mind, this is as good as a “yes.” Lovely.
In this drowsy, golden-sweet way, the afternoon passes.
We have nowhere pressing to be. We bought all our cold rations for Miliway, and it seems as if we’re attending a festival tonight. Two festivals, if things with the maybe-not-really-married Goodwoman goes our way.
When the dinner crowd begins trickling into the taproom, the Goodwoman comes back.
“Your rooms are ready,” she says. “Were you wanting dinner, or did you want to go up?”
“Up,” I say. I’m tempted to add, “and will you join us?” But it’s too soon for that. Don’t want to tip my hand just yet. “And if we’re off to your festival tonight, then perhaps we should bathe as well. Can you ask your husband to bring up your tub for us?”
“Husband!” The Goodwoman snorts. “I reckon not. The hall boy took it up an hour ago. Figured you’d want it as soon as I caught a whiff of you both. My son will fill it now, if you like.”
“No husband, then?” Kintyre asks, and under the table, I step down hard on his foot, warning him not to be so obvious so soon.
The Goodwoman snorts again and crosses her arms under her breasts, which makes them even more plump and . . . yeah, I can’t wait to bury my face between them. Writer at His desk, they look so soft.
“No husband, nor wife, neither,” she says. “Not no more.” And she nods once, firm, and leaves it at that. “Now, up the stairs with you both. You’re stinking out my regulars.”
Kintyre and I laugh and go. She’s not wrong, is the thing. Our last bath was in Estagonnish—we do reek. Splashing around in a river will never replace what hot water and good soap can do.
“There’s only the one tub,” the Goodwoman says, as a parting shot, and then seems to think better of it and hesitates. Kin waves her concern away.
“We’ve shared before,” he says.
The Goodwoman smiles, nods, and then cuts another curious glance at me. I resolve then and there to ask her what she meant by “Perhaps at the Festival.”
✍
Thinking about sex, and thinking about domesticity, and thinking about murdering Dargan, has led me to thinking about marriage. Never a good place for my imagination to go, especially lately. All the same, sitting in this room and watching Kintyre disrobe, I figure that if I were to exchange promise tokens with Kin, I’d like the tokens to be clothing.
Swords and weaponry are traditional for soldiering Pairs pledging a troth, but Kin has Foesmiter, and I’ve got my compact bow and my own sword, and after seventeen years, we don’t really need any other weapons. Our kit is already perfected, comfortable. It would make no sense to change it. Likewise, we already buy each other pipes and quills, carving tool wallets, boots and tack. We’ve always bought each other the kind of gifts that trothing Pairs do, not to show our dedication but because, inevitably, somebody’s money purse will get left behind in the middle of the night, or accidentally slide down some monster’s gullet, or get stolen by a conquest. And then we’ll have to share coinage until we have the chance at another reward, or can swing through Turnshire or Kingskeep for more. Because of that, anything else we’d buy (or craft) one another wouldn’t be, well, as meaningful.
But clothing, clothing would be good. Neither of us can make clothing, so the purchase would mean something. And frankly, I hate that Kintyre still wears the color of his mother’s House, as if everyone doesn’t know that he�
�s a Turn. Seventeen years ago, when Kin was running away from home to join the border guard, it made sense. Now it just seems forgetful, and gives him the air of being ashamed of his family.
True, the only time I met Algar Turn, he was a drunk-flushed, boil-covered, pus-weeping elfcock. And Forsyth is bossy and skittish and annoying. But the Turns have done great things in their history. It’s a grand legacy that Kintyre has augmented honorably, and he should be proud of his lineage. He should be wearing Turn-russet, even if only to make it clear that he is a member of a Seated House when we’re on the road. Preferential treatment is nothing to be frowned at. It’s dead useful if you’ve been in a fight with some horrible monster and the master of the estate has a beautiful, grateful daughter.
And of course, I wouldn’t mind being able to wear Turn-russet myself, to declare myself part of that same great House, that same honorable lineage, to tell the world that I love and am loved . . . to be a part of Kin’s family.
Uhg. I’m so sentimental I’m making myself sick.
And, yeah, I can admit that I’m a possessive little bastard. I’d like to see Kintyre wearing the same colors as me, to be clad in the same shade, so that when we walk into a room together, it’s obvious that Kin is taken. And that I’m the one that took him.
But the thought is fleeting, even though it’s complex, and drops right out of my head the moment Kintyre finishes unlacing said Sheil-purple jerkin and drops it onto the end of his bed. The flex of Kin’s shoulders through his thin, much-abused shirt is momentarily distracting, and I have to swallow hard to banish the dryness in my mouth.
By the Writer’s left nutsack, this is torture.
Two bloody decades of torture, and still I can’t seem to walk away, or put myself out of my misery. My fingers twitch with the desire to touch. Instead, I hook them into the laces of my own shirt and turn my eyes away.
The Goodwoman’s son comes into the room, without knocking first, to dump another kettle of boiled water into the travel tub. I’m suddenly grateful that I didn’t give in to my urges. That would have given the boy more of a show than I think he would ever want. It’s the fifth kettle of hot water, and the boy is dawdling so much that I figure the whole lot will be cold before Kin and I ever get the chance to get into the tub.