by Wayne Meyers
Journeyman Krellus turned toward Marcos. “Wait here for Brent, then head back to the guild with due haste. We shall be along momentarily.”
Marcos nodded, his own face split by a huge grin. “Alas, you deny me the joy of seeing my brother Hofen cured, but I shall do as you direct.”
Spaldeer led the way across the street and into a small park, in the middle of which sat a large, bowl-shaped fountain with water gushing high into the air from the mouth of a curled, stone dragon in its center. A good body-length of water churned between the dragon and the concrete lip, more than enough room for what I realized they had in store for me.
“I think I can walk, now! Please put me down and let me show you.” Several early-risers along the street were watching us curiously, some grinning as they, too, understood the purpose of our party.
Captain Sodalus chuckled. “Stuff and nonsense. The beer we drank last night paralyzes the uninitiated, particularly when consumed in large quantities.”
Journeyman Krellus sighed, shifting my body across his back. “I am sorry if I forgot to mention that.”
“To be fair,” Spaldeer said, “we did not expect him to drink quite so much.”
I wanted to punch him in the face. “You’re walking fine.”
Journeyman Krellus patted my back with his supporting hand. “When we noticed you were not drinking, I may have ordered something special for you, since we were celebrating, in part, your great accomplishments.”
I frowned. “Special?”
We arrived at the fountain. Solace was in the southeastern corner of Bellisprodus, and quite warm compared to other cities, but it was still the height of our winter and early morning, well before the rising sun would take the sting from the chill. Breath misted before our mouths. The water looked cold.
“Yes, special. Something to help you with your, er, first performance.”
Spaldeer chimed in. “Don’t worry, altbrud. This will restore your usual…buoyancy.”
Before I could respond to either of them, my body flew from Journeyman Krellus’ shoulders and into the fountain with a startled splash. My head went under as the freezing water chilled me from skin to bone. My eyes shot open and I screamed underwater. Every pore of my skin went rigid. Ice pumped through my veins instead of blood.
Strong hands pulled me to the fountain edge where I sputtered and coughed for several minutes before realizing I was standing again, albeit hunched over the fountain lip. Looking up at my three grinning companions brought a smile to my own face as well. “See how soon I go drinking with the lot of you again.”
They burst out laughing before Captain Sodalus pushed me back into the water.
We made a merry group that morning, marching back through the guild gates in the highest of spirits. Spaldeer and I headed for our class, which of course was already in progress. Fortunately, the early morning sunshine had mostly dried out my clothing.
Journeyman Wohl exhaled in mock relief. “Ah, there you two are. I had feared your beds were too comfortable to get out of this morning. Since you need a little help getting started today, do sit-ups until I say otherwise.”
Our classmates chuckled for they all knew well, as Journeyman Wohl did, that we had been out all night with permission. Still, Spaldeer and I lay down on the ground and began doing sit-ups, while the remainder of the class went back to their lessons. As my head went up and down with my body, I saw snatches of Babette glaring at us while practicing the low-step form. If only I could go to her and explain that nothing had happened, but that was impossible. Instead, I suffered in silence knowing she believed something intimate had occurred.
There were no opportunities to speak during class, but when we sat down in the dining hall for lunch I found my chance. Spaldeer and I took our trays of food over to the end of one table in the back of the hall, where Babette had chosen to sit alone.
It took a powerful effort not to throw my arms around her. “Good day.”
She sniffed, staring off in another direction. “As you wish.”
Spaldeer and I exchanged glances, but he shrugged and bit into a sandwich. I made another attempt. “We missed you last night.” A fighter I may be, but my knowledge of women left much to be desired.
Her head snapped in my direction as she snorted, then replied in a tone more frigid than my morning bath. “Oh, I’m sure you did.”
“Uh, I think I see someone I want to talk to over there.” Spaldeer took his tray and relocated himself far from our table.
Several awkward moments passed while she stabbed chunks of beef with her fork but did not lift them to her mouth.
“I drank too much.”
Her eyes flashed. “I’m not at all surprised.”
“I have a frightful headache from it.”
She smiled for the first time, albeit momentarily. “Good. And you stink, too.”
My mouth seemed to move devoid of what little sense I might have had. “Well, other than a cold bath this morning I haven’t bathed since yesterday.”
She snarled. I swear it, she really did. “You needed a cold bath, huh? Why, so you could make it back here without any further dalliance?”
My head shook rapidly back and forth. “No, my legs wouldn’t hold me up, so Journeyman Krellus carried me to a fountain and threw me in.”
Her glare deepened and her voice dropped. “Legs all worn out? I hope you enjoyed yourself, still stinking of her perfume and stale smoke and ale. I hope that you had a wonderful time!”
“Perfume?” I sniffed at myself, realizing Glimma had been all over me, and therefore her scent must have rubbed off. “Wait, you don’t understand. I didn’t conduct any…business at the demimonde guild.”
A sliver of doubt pierced the fury in her gaze. She stared deep into my eyes. “You didn’t?”
I managed a shy smile. “No. I was very drunk, and they put us into a room together, but I couldn’t go through with it.”
She tilted her head, her voice softening. “And what could possibly stop you from that?”
I lowered my head, my cheeks flushing. “Well, your face appeared before me, and I pushed her off.”
“Look at me.” She barely whispered her reply, but her eyes intensified as they trapped mine. “Really? Is that what really happened?”
My throat choked with emotion. There were so many things I needed to say to her just then, more than one mouth could utter in the brief moment we had to ourselves. She needed to know how much she meant to me, how I needed to be with her forever, guild or no guild. How we would find a way, because a love as powerful as ours could never be contained.
“Hey, Hofen.” Apprentice Fruno sat down next to me, slamming his tray on the table. “Heard you kept Glimma going all night, and she can’t wait for you to come back and do it again. Way to go, brother.” He slapped me solidly on the back and began discussing my intimate prowess to several others who had joined him.
Babette’s face went from pale white to bright crimson. Her eyes shot a long, painful death in my direction before she slowly—deliberately—rose and left the table. I yearned to go after her but could not without making some sort of scene, and I could not afford to take that chance. Sighing, I hoped there would be another opportunity to straighten things out, but my heart continued to break in the meanwhile. Unsaid words choked me as I swallowed them back into seclusion.
After lunch, Babette did not return to class. Journeyman Wohl muttered something about her feeling ill before having me do hand-stand pushups for being too curious for my own good. The blood rushing down my body did not help my aching head, either.
After an agonizingly slow afternoon, during which I made far too many mistakes and earned Journeyman Wohl’s first rebuke, it was finally time for our evening meal. I hurried back to the dining hall leaving Spaldeer behind, and eagerly searched each hungry face. Clusters of apprentices gathered about the many tables while more waited in queue for their food, but none of them bore the face I had hoped to see.
Spaldee
r sat down next to me. “She’s in the sick room.”
My eyes widened as I stared at him. “Why?”
He shrugged. “High-Master Chendor has excused her from all chores and practices for the rest of the night. I overheard two journeymen mentioning it.”
“Great.” I drummed my fingers on the table top. How was I going to explain what had happened—or not happened—to her now?
Marcos, Brentor, and several other apprentices sat down around us, all in animated conversations about something or other while my mind drifted off into space. This relationship thing was a lot harder than I had imagined it could be. Everything had seemed to be going well until this happened.
The evening stretched on with maddening slowness. There was only one way to resolve this tonight, and that was to sneak to the sick rooms upstairs after lights out. Normally I’d get together with Spaldeer, Babette, and whoever else I could convince to practice sparring, but instead I remained in my room and planned my strategy to visit her.
“Let me come with you,” Spaldeer offered when I explained what I was going to do after the room darkened. “I mean, not into her room, but to help as a lookout.”
“No.” I shook my head firmly. “Not this time, my friend and brother. If I am caught, it will all be on me. I won’t risk your reputation on this foolish endeavor.”
“At least you realize this is crazy.” He shook his head. “Why not just wait until morning? I’m sure she will feel better by then and probably be in a better mood as well. And this time, just tell her nothing happened with Glimma right away. Don’t dawdle.”
My teeth ground together. “I know, I know, but I couldn’t just say it. She was glaring at me, and I was frightened.”
He rolled his eyes. “She did not appear to be glaring to me, and I’m sure if she had heard that first off none of this nonsense would now be required.”
“Well, I could tell she was glaring.” I folded my arms across my chest.
“Fine, fine.” Spaldeer waved his hand at me dismissively. “Let’s focus on the plan, then.”
“Yes,” I said. My brow furrowed. “I wait until after lights out, sneak out of the room, walk to the stairwell, go up one flight and turn right to where the sick rooms are located.”
“How will you know which room is hers? There are half a dozen of them, and any injured or ill apprentice might be in any one of them.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ll open each door if I have to until I find the right one.”
“And if you open the wrong door and they see you, they may ask someone why you were there.”
“I’ll cover my face.”
Spaldeer nodded, but his voice was skeptical. “Seeing a masked figure could create more alarm than seeing you standing there.”
I grimaced. “What do you suggest, then?”
He closed his eyes and hummed to himself for a moment before opening them again. “You need to be sick, too. They’ll place you in one of the rooms which will narrow down your options, and if you happen to open the wrong door, can just say you were coming back from the bathroom and made a mistake.”
My face twisted into a grimace. “But I’m not sick.”
“A stomachache might be best,” Spaldeer continued as though I hadn’t spoken. “Loud and painful, making it impossible for me to sleep. That should give you a night in a sick room without too much concern about your morning recovery. And it eliminates any chances of discovery skulking around the halls after lights out, except for when you slip into Babette’s room and back.”
“Spaldeer, I’m not sick. How am I going to get into a sick room?”
He stood up and stared at me. “You can’t fake it?”
I shook my head. “Lie? No, I’m not good at that.”
“I see.” He rubbed his chin between two fingers. “Can you close your eyes for a minute?”
“Why?”
“To get some ideas on what face you should make when I summon the journeyman-on-duty.”
Shrugging, I closed my eyes. “Fine, but I’m telling you I don’t know how to pretend to be—OW!” My body doubled over in agony centered at the pit of my stomach as the air fled my lungs.
“That should do it. Now hold onto that expression while I hurry off.”
With an effort I managed to draw a gasping breath. “You—you punched me when I wasn’t looking!”
The closing of the door to our room was my only response.
True to plan, Journeyman Viermint saw me groaning on the floor and quickly took me upstairs to the sick room wing where I was forced to swallow some vile-tasting medicine and allow a medicinal compress that smelled even worse to be placed on my stomach. By the time he finished and bade me rest up, I thought I might actually be as sick as I was pretending.
Silently thanking Spaldeer for his genius, I threw off the compress and blankets and tip-tied over to the door, listening carefully. There was no sound from the hallway, so I recklessly threw open the door with great excitement to see Babette and explain all this nonsense away.
But in the doorway stood Journeyman Krellus with arms folded across his chest. “And just where do you think you’re going?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven—Growing Up
I—I—was just going to the bathroom.” My hands rubbed my stomach, which still hurt from where Spaldeer had sucker-punched me.
Journeyman Krellus nodded, unfolding his arms to pat my shoulder. “You be sure to come straight back here after. I know you, and you’ll try to sneak out and practice even when you’re ill. Sometimes it’s best to just rest up even after the medicine takes the worst of the stomachache away.”
A pang of guilt struck me, but I managed to simply nod in agreement. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Journeyman Viermint let me know he brought you here so I wouldn’t disturb Spaldeer in the morning for your early morning lessons. I was about to open the door when I heard you walking toward me and decided to surprise you instead, just in case you were thinking of sneaking out. Rest is best.”
“Yes, sir.”
He patted my head and hurried down the hallway toward the staircase. “I’ll stop up here in the morning to see how you’re feeling. These things usually clear up by then, so don’t worry. I’m sure we can still have our usual lesson.”
After the stairway door closed behind him, I counted to ten before glancing around the hallway for any other signs of peacekeeper activity. Not a sound. It was time to find which of these rooms held Babette.
I grasped the knob of the door next to mine and quickly opened it just wide enough to peer inside. It was empty.
The door across the hallway did have someone lying in the bed but it was a large, sleeping male, and definitely not her. With a great effort I shut the door as quietly as possible.
The next two rooms were also empty, but in the third a smallish figure lay on the bed awake with the covers tucked under her chin. Her eyes widened when she saw me.
“What are you doing here?” Babette whispered sharply.
After closing the door behind me as quietly as I had the other, I replied, “To see you.”
She sat up in the bed and tossed long strands of hair from her eyes. “Have you completely lost your mind?”
I sat on the bed next to her, noting the red, puffy eyes and swollen nose from the moonlight streaming in through the window. “Yes, since the day I met you. You mean everything to me, sweet one. Your happiness is all I want from this world, not this.”
Her lips tightened. “Is that what you told Glimma before you bedded her?”
I took her face between my hands and peered deep into her watery eyes. “This nonsense stops here and now. You are making yourself ill for no reason. Nothing happened last night but talk, mainly about you. Glimma was a friend to me, so she did not tell anyone this. And it is better they think of me the way the stories tell rather than suspect the only reason that could keep me from Glimma’s arms.”
Babette took my hands in hers and squeezed them har
d. Her sniffling faded, and at last she looked up at me, nodding with a fragile smile. “This is all new to me. When my father sent me here of all places, I never imagined I’d find my heart’s deepest desire. Yet, here you are.”
I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Here we are.”
“You know, I’m not really sick, but it was becoming too difficult to hide my emotions, so I thought it best to pretend to be.”
“That was very smart of you,” I said.
She kept her grasp on each of my hands with her own, squeezing them both hard. “Is Glimma very beautiful?”
“Yes, but you are by far her better.”
She shook her head at this, but her smile deepened. She pulled my hands together in front of her chest. The covers had slipped down to her waist, and I could feel her warm softness through the thin fabric of her sleeping clothes. Her voice rose. “You came here to console a foolish girl. It is too risky—you must go back to your room. If anyone finds you here—”
Taking her warm body into my arms, I held her tight against me. My heart thumped in my chest and my own cheeks had moistened with relief. “No, there are things I must say to you now, things I have little chance to utter no matter how much my heart aches for you to hear them. What I feel for you is special beyond words, and I could not pollute it by sharing something so cherished with anyone else but you.”
Babette’s voice took on a little girl’s tone that melted my heart. She pulled away from me a bit so she could see my face. “Then you do—” Her lower lip trembled, unable to complete the sentence.
The words came easy for me knowing now she felt the same. “Of course, I love you. I have from the moment I first saw you.”
Her musical laugh. “You tried so hard to look brave after those animals beat you. I thought to myself, you must be crazy trying to impress a girl you didn’t even know.”
I held her tighter, feeling the vibration of her heart beating close to mine. “Crazy for you.”
A strange thing happened then. There came a surge of emotions that overwhelmed me, freeing feelings long suppressed and contained. All this time I had wanted something with Babette, something more than just friendship, something beyond anything I had ever before felt, but exactly what that was had eluded me.