by J. M. Frey
Published by
Table of Contents
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
About The Author
Connect with J.M.
Copyright
Arrivals Copyright 2017 by J.M. Frey. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover design by Ashley Ruggirello
Edited by Kisa Whipkey
Book design by Ashley Ruggirello
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-942111-48-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locals is entirely coincidental.
REUTS Publications
www.REUTS.com
Also by J.M.
Novels
Triptych (Dragon Moon Press, 2011)
The Untold Tale (REUTS Publications, 2015)
The Forgotten Tale (REUTS Publications, 2016)
The Silenced Tale (REUTS Publications, Forthcoming 2017)
Novellas
(Back) (SilverThought Press, 2008)
The Dark Side of the Glass (Double Dragon Press, 2012)
Ghosts (REUTS Publications, 2016)
Short Stories
“The Once and Now-ish King” inWhen the Hero Comes Home
(Dragon Moon Press, 2011)
“On His Birthday, Reginald Got“ inKlien
(FutureCon Publications, 2011)
“Maddening Science” inWhen the Villain Comes Home
(Dragon Moon Press, 2012)
The Dark Lord and the Seamstress
(CS Independent Publishing, 2014)
“The Twenty Seven Club” inExpiration Date
(EDGE Publishing, 2015)
“The Moral of the Story” inTesseracts 18: Wrestling With Gods
(EDGE Publishing, 2015)
“Zmeu”inGods, Memes, and Monsters (Stone Skin Press, 2015)
“How Fanfiction Made Me Gay” inThe Secret Loves of Geek Girls
(Bedside Press, 2015)
Anthologies
Hero Is a Four Letter Word (Short Fuse, 2013)
Academic
“Whose Doctor?” inDoctor Who In Time And Space
(McFarland Press, 2013)
Part One
It’s too late to climb down a bloody mountain. Even with the skies clear and the night’s first stars starting to peek out. Instead, without asking whether Kintyre agrees with me or not—I’m not going to be the one who has to wrap up his ankle when he twists the ruddy thing because we can’t see where we’re walking—I hunker down by the small ring of stones we used to make a campfire last night and get to the business of making another.
Writer’s nutsack. Just last night, Kin and I had been sitting close, trying to see how much play we could get away with while Bossy Forssy and Pip sulked in the shadow of the Rookery wall. And now they’re . . . it feels a lot longer than just a day, what with all the fighting, the shouting, the tears, and the goodbyes. My shoulders are stiff, and I shrug and roll them out as I poke through the ash for some charred charcoal to prop up the kindling.
“Staying, are we?” Kin asks, when he realizes what I’m doing, and then, without me having to ask, he trots up the granite stairs. His silhouette is distinctive and, yeah, heroic against the lingering orange of the setting sun. I watch him collect dried scrub and fallen branches, and pause every once in a while to scan the horizon.
The chirrup and caw of birds slowly swells as the gloaming becomes complete. The riddling ravens have returned to the Eyrie with the Deal-Maker and the Viceroy gone. Up on the ridge, Kin makes sure that nothing and no one can sneak up on us in the night by sharing our travel crackers with them.
Down in the basin, waiting for Kin to get back, I rest against the Desk that Never Rots, my pipe clenched between my teeth, and decide it’s worth using up one of our precious few matches for a smoke. I’m gasping for a bit of time to myself and a bowl of my orange-blossom and molasses hash, and Kin’s not here to whine at me about the smell. I’ll use Pip’s trick of chewing dried peppermint after, so the taste will be out of my mouth before he can come back and kiss me.
A ridiculous, childish grin curls at the corner of my mouth, and I can’t help licking my bottom lip in anticipation. Kissing Kin is one of my favorite ways to pass the time. Lucky for me, it’s one of his favorites, too.
Dinner—dinner can probably wait until I’ve got my burly barbarian nice and kiss-fuddled. I’m feeling lazy, too; I can make a meal of the scraps we have left. We’ll hunt down in the Stoat Forest tomorrow, so we can afford to finish it all up today. Besides, I’m not keen on dragging everything back down the mountain after dragging it all up the damn thing in the first place.
“Here,” Kin grunts when he drops an armload of logs and brush by the cold firepit. I tap out my pipe, return it to my pouch, pop some peppermint into my mouth, and make my way back to start laying the fire.
One of the nice things about having been on quests with Kintyre Turn for the last seventeen years is that I no longer have to nag the oaf to chop the wood instead of just dumping it on the ground. He’s already got the small axe out of his saddlebag. Good. Before he applies himself to breaking up some of the bigger bits, he strips out of his Turn-russet jerkin and sweat-stained canvas shirt.
Ah, yes. Excellent.
Right. So, there’s one thing that’s changed about our quests. Now, when Kin parades around shirtless in the reaching dusk and flattering firelight, I can look.
Not that I didn’t look before. I’d have to be blind, a eunuch, and cursed by the Writer before I’d have been able to ignore a shirtless Kintyre Turn. But now, I can look openly.
Because Kintyre is mine.
The possessive curl deep in my guts flares warm and syrupy, and when Kin bends over slowly to pick up the first log, arranging it over another one for chopping, I know the cheeky bastard has caught my smirk. He’s doing it purpose. And that, Writer-be-blessed, is a damn good show.
As the seventh son of a seventh son, I had to make do a lot as a kid. Mum had taught all us boys the art of cookery, as she’d had no daughters to chain to the hearth. She’d taught us how to stretch the bread and water the soup so there was something for all the little bellies. I’d resented being tied to my mum’s apron-strings when I was a snot-nosed little goblin-turd, wanting always to be at the forge with Pa. Besides, I was going to get a wife who would take care of all the woman’s work for me, wasn’t I?
But when I followed Kintyre Turn out into the world—him still a narcissistic lordling fleeing his responsibilities with an enchanted sword he’d just found and didn’t yet understand—I was happy for the cooking lessons. And the sewing, too, turns out. ‘Cause I’ve done my share of repairing battle-rent clothes and stitching torn skin out in the wilds of Hain.
Kin’s always harassing me to add a tome of roadside recipes to my legacy of adventure scrolls, but the idea is even less appealing these days than it usually is. Mostly because I’ve been failing pretty spectacularly as a cook since Kintyre Turn became my lover. I have burnt, over-seasoned, and boiled-dry more of our meals in the last three months than I ever did in the first year of our adventures. And every single incident was Kintyre’s fault. Because the rat-bastard keeps doing things like this.
He keeps on chopping, long after there’s enough wood piled up by the fire, long after I’ve go
t the grub on the go. Because I’m watching. Right, fine then—I was going to wait until after we’d eaten, but if he’s keen for our usual post-battle celebration now, who am I to deny the Lord of Lysse his whims?
I snort at my own fanciful thinking.
This time, at least, I have enough blood in my brain to take the potatoes out of the embers and cover the stew pot before I go chasing down my shirtless, sweaty ruffian. And, hells, it feels good to be able to. To not have to second-guess myself or try to gauge how my advances will be received, or to wonder if I will be forever ruining our friendship. It’s easy.
It’s so good, and it’s so easy.
A little while later, the sun has set and I’m filled with a dusky kind of glow all my own. Sweat cools on my skin, and I feel the pleasant soreness of exertion well-earned, the burn of an over-extended stretch. Kintyre is finishing the last of the stew right out of the pot, intent on his spoon, starved in a way that only fighting, followed by a good bout of bedplay, can make him.
I’ve eaten, and have something else to preoccupy me. Firelight dances over the planes and elevations of the Shadow’s Mask. I turn it over in my hands again, and again, and again, silently reciting the Word Forssy whispered in my ear with each turn.
That’s it. Just one Word, one gesture, one moment, and . . . and I could be the most powerful man in Hain. Forget the king; I’d know all of his secrets, too. I know most of them anyway, but with the mask, with Dauntless, with the cloak, and with . . . well, Forsyth took Smoke into that strange place that is the home of the Writer, but I’m sure I can commission a replacement. One with a bit more heft to it, something a man can really swing. And once I have that, once I have all the trappings, I’d be the Shadow Hand of Hain.
Me. Scrappy, sassy, small little Bevel Dom, who’s never had a thing to call his own that couldn’t fit in a saddlebag before, and never minded a bit, besides.
It’s bloody terrifying.
I’ve stared down dragons, and kraken, and fought off flesh-eating sirens, and Iridium-mad Night Elves. At sixteen, I ran away from home to chase after a boy I’d fallen in love with at first sight, though I didn’t realize it until ten years later. I’ve abandoned my sleepy town, my sure place at my Pa’s side and in his forge, to travel the world and shiver in the open and cold, to never know where my next meal is coming from, to face starvation, and dehydration, and hypothermia, and dying of exposure, or infected wounds, or poison from politicos whose schemes I’ve thwarted. I’ve looked Kintyre Turn in the face and told him (my voice and hands shaking, my face burning with shame and hope) that Lucy Piper was right, that I did desire him, that I do love him, all the while bracing for the punch in the mouth and the shouted vow that Kintyre renounced our friendship and never wanted to see me again. A punch and a vow and a shout that, thank the bloody Writer, never came. (What had come instead was fists in my collar, and chapped lips on mine, and a kiss that was desperate, and wonderful, and just right, and terrifying in its desperate wonderful just-right-ness).
But nothing has scared me the way this does. This Shadow’s Mask, and all that it means . . . I don’t even really know what it all means. The responsibilities, and the knowledge, and the way that, if the mask doesn’t like me, it could melt off my face. The acrid smell of burning flesh and the memory of the way goopy strings of Bootknife’s skin came away on the metal makes me shudder. I could very easily lose not only my face, but possibly my life to the mask if I do this wrong. Or even, really, if I do this right, and everything else is wrong.
And the most terrifying thing of all: if I do this, there’s no going back.
Writer’s hairy left nutsack.
While I’m busy being horrified by the thing I’m holding, Kin plucks it out of my hands. His fingers are still smeared with grease from the last of the jerky, and he leaves cloudy prints on the silver, which seems just rude. Without wiping them away, he tucks the mask into its black velvet bag, then into the saddlebag by his knee.
“Kin, you shouldn’t—” I start, but the ruddy oaf pulls me tight under his arm, my head on his chest. The rest of my scold crumbles in my mouth as I listen to his heartbeat, smell the sweat and the sulfur of our fight, the blood and the leather of his jerkin, the musky aftermath of our bit of bedsport, the stew on his breath. I inhale deeply, close my eyes, and hold on.
We are both shaking, but it’s not from cold.
With our habitual post-fight celebration done, our meal eaten, and the last distraction set aside, we now have time to . . . to let the truth sink into our skin.
We did it. It’s over.
The Viceroy is gone for good. The relief leaves me feeling giddy and lightheaded, like I’ve had too much pipeweed or just that one ale too many. It’s joyful. It’s freeing.
The villain is gone forever. I have my hero, and he has all his limbs and all his wits. We are hale, and hearty, and we are lovers now. I close my eyes, wrap my arms around his waist, and squeeze. Kin grunts, but squeezes my shoulders back.
In every and all senses of the word: we won.
✍
The trek back down the Eyrie takes all of the next day. I kick Kin awake at sunrise, and we shuffle through breaking camp before the sky is really blue. We have a lot of practice erasing our presence in the landscape. After all, someone with ill intentions may use it to track us.
Though, I do wish we had brought the kettle up the mountain. Bugger all, tea will just have to wait until we’re back in the Stoat.
Of course, by the time we hit the foothills, it’s not tea I want anymore, but a good slug of dragon whiskey and a bitter ale to chase it down my gullet. It’s near supper by the time we get back to the clearing where we left Karlurban and Dauntless, and my belly is rumbling loud enough to scare off any creature that might be licking its chops as it watches us. There are no such creatures around the horses, of course. Though there’s some blood on Dauntless’s left forehoof that hadn’t been there before. The Shadow’s Horse is shod with dwarvish steel, so I’m not too surprised when Kintyre, distracted by his own rumbling belly, steps right in the smashed mess of a goblin scout’s skull.
“Oh, yuck!” Kintyre bawls, and wipes his foot on the grass like a prissish miss. Dauntless wickers like he’s laughing at Kin, and I can’t help but join in. “We’re not staying the night here.”
“No, best not to,” I agree, pointing at the red pulp in the grass. “They might wonder what happened to that one. Saddle up.”
Kintyre’s stomach growls again. It’s loud enough that Dauntless’s ears flick back. Then the horse—clever bastard—looks over his shoulder for his master.
“He’s not coming,” Kintyre tells the horse softly, and I’m startled to hear how shaky and damp his voice sounds. He reaches up and runs his hands over Dauntless’s neck, swallowing and blinking hard.
I’m just flat-footed enough by Kintyre’s emotional confession that I decide to leave him to it, alone, to not call attention to it. Because if I did, I would have to say something, and I have no idea what it would be. Instead, I check on Karlurban, and review the supplies we left with the horses in the lean-to of pine boughs. We’ve got four people’s worth of gear to juggle between us now, since Forssy buggered off. I’m very tempted to leave some of it behind, but good gear is good gear, and a waste is a waste.
Hells, we can sell the extras and doubles if we need to, anyway. No point leaving it to rust or rot out here when we could turn some coin on it. Never know when you’re going to need an extra bit of clink. Lysse is awful far away by messenger hawk, and there’s no lordling there anymore to send us a loan if we’re desperate.
A hot ball of grief lumps up in my throat and I swallow hard, blinking against the burning in my eyes.
Bloody hells. Forsyth isn’t dead, he’s just . . . gone. Unreachable. Forever. I shake my head, annoyed with myself.
He’s got his Happily Ever After, don’t he? No need to weep like a milkmaid over that.
Annoyed, I force my attention back to the gear. Everything is
still where it should be, at least. Though it looks like some small rodent has chewed its way into one of the spare packs and made off with a satchel of nuts. Little beggar.
There’s still another package, though. I toss the nuts to Kin and take some apple chips for myself. They won’t silence the beasts in our bellies entirely, but it’ll do us until we’re situated somewhere less filled with the pungent reek of dead monster.
We skirt the outer edge of the Stoat. The forest isn’t dangerous, really, but with goblins a possibility, it’s always best to stay along the foothills, where we have a clear sight-line. The horses, restless from their several-days’ boredom, filled with grass and tender shoots and skittish energy, are as ready to be far away from any potential violence as we are. They bolt into a canter that takes us around the edge of the forest and well toward the Valley of the Tombs by the time night has fully fallen.
We make camp on the edge of the forest. Kin and I are too hungry to do more than set snares, finish the dry rations from the saddlebags, and curl up together like a knot of naga. Ah, yes, body warmth is a lovely thing, even when there’s nothing else salacious about it. Waking up next to Kin, with his big rough hand on my hip, cradling me close like I’m more precious than Foesmiter? That’s nice, too.
There are rabbits in the snares when we wake. Kintyre cleans them while I harvest tubers and the last of the autumn berries from the shrubs at the growth line. Now that we’re clear of goblin territory, there’s no rush. It’s always good when we have the opportunity of a leisurely start. We roast one rabbit to break our fast, splitting the berries between us. The skins we clean, rinsing the fur free of blood, to sell to a tanner in the next town. The rest of the meat goes into a stew with the tubers and a few pinches of the precious spices I hoard in the small metal cylinders adorning my belt.
