Arrivals

by J. M. Frey

  “What’s the . . . Bevel!” Kintyre says, and he sounds aghast. “You’re not serious—you don’t—hey, look at me.”

  “No,” I pout. “Forget I said anything!”

  He grabs my shoulder and manhandles me around to face him, and I hate it. I hate it when he does that. But he’s kneeling back already, one hand hovering over his crotch to protect his stones, and I laugh. And it’s a dry, bitter laugh that crawls like dead rats out of my throat. Does he think I’m really that predictable?

  “I won’t forget, and I’m not letting this go. I know we don’t . . . we don’t talk about this stuff, Bev, but I’ve been trying, trying to be everything you want me to be, and I—”

  “I don’t want to—”

  “Then maybe you should move into another room, if all you’re going to do is fight in bed!” Kintyre growls, and throws back the blankets. He sits up and cold air rushes over me, my flesh pimpling up so quickly I actually spasm with the shock of it.

  “Me?” I snarl, side-swiped by what he’s said. “You’re putting this on me? Don’t—”

  “I’ve been trying to be a good lord! To . . . to think of things so you don’t have to tell me! To be—”

  “You’ve got everything that’s owed you: a manor, the wealth, the title, the respect. You could have a wife, too, if you—”

  “Oh, no! Don’t you dare, Bevel Dom!”

  “There are any number of nubile, big-bosomed morons downstairs who would just love to be the Lady Turn, to give you little blond Turnlings—”

  “I don’t want any big-bosomed—”

  “You don’t need me!” I shout. And that shuts him up. He rears back as if I’ve slapped him in the face. I sit up, wriggle my legs out from under him, and push back against the headboard.

  He shakes his head, like a prizefighter recovering from a spectacular right hook, and then his brow furrows, and the corners of his lips turn down, and his cheeks flush, and he is angry. “That’s complete and utter gryffon shit! Of course I need you!” he roars back. “Why wouldn’t I need you?”

  “I’m not good enough!” I snarl. “For . . . for Lysse, and for this—this life! Writer’s balls, Kin! Pointe thinks I’m a joke, though he doesn’t say it. I don’t know any of the court fencing rules, did you know that? The blasted cat doesn’t even listen to me! And the Writer-be-damned Shadow’s Mask—Forsyth made a mistake. You’ve made a mistake. I made a ridiculous, bloody mistake, and I shouldn’t have . . . I shouldn’t have—”

  “Shouldn’t have what?” Kin rumbles, but there’s danger in his tone. Warning. I don’t heed it. I’m a fool. I throw myself headlong into my confession, because if I don’t say it now, I never will.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you!” I blurt, and each word feels like ash on my tongue, but it’s true. “Maybe I shouldn’t have—have ever fallen in love with you! But I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it!”

  “And what? You’re saying you regret it?” Kintyre asks, and I haven’t seen grief so profound on his so-readable face since Stormbearer died. And even that annoys me, because I should mean more to the bastard than his Writer-be-damned horse.

  “Maybe I do!”

  Kintyre makes a pained noise, a huffing keen, like he’s been stabbed in the lungs from behind. He folds his hands over his chest, and for a second, I fear he really was stabbed. But no blood leaks out between the weave of his strong fingers. The hurt is not physical.

  Silence grows between us. It starts small, hangs on the end of our puffing breaths, our wordless fury, but it grows. It tendrils outward like curious vines, curling between us, thickening as the seconds pass. It feels . . . terrifyingly final.

  I don’t want it to be final.

  I don’t want it to solidify. I don’t want it to root.

  “Kin, I—” I start, not sure, exactly, what I mean to say next, but Kintyre puts one of his hands over my mouth. It’s not rough, not a slap. Just a cup, like he is trying to catch my words, or my breath. And against my lips, I can feel him shaking.

  He leans forward, slowly, giving me time to pull back if I want to. I don’t want to. He lowers his hand, takes my bottom lip between both of his, tender and tremulous, and even this is shaking, this kiss. But it’s not the cold. It’s too fine a tremor to be coming from the chill.

  “You were Written for me, Bev,” Kintyre whispers into my mouth, smearing the words against my skin. He pecks a kiss on my jaw, below my ear, on the top of its shell, on my temple, where the gray hair is starting to flock like sheep being rounded up by Old Man Time. “You’re my . . . my conscience. You’re my other half. You plan where I rush in. You’re calm when I’m quick to anger, and you’re angry when I’m still trying to figure out how I should feel about things. You’re just. You know parts of the world I never experienced as a lordling, showed me compassion and poverty and despair that I would never have known otherwise. You’re perfect for me.”

  “As your sidekick,” I mutter venomously. But Kin isn’t mad. He just whuffs a chuckle into my hair.

  “As my best friend. As my perfect complement.”

  “I’m not servile, not made—”

  “Writer, everything is a fight with you. Everything has always been a Writer-be-damned fight with you.”

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to—”

  “I love a good fight,“ Kintyre says, leaning back, eyes twinkling.

  “Good thing. ‘Cause that’s all we seem to be doing lately,” I say, echoing his earlier statement.

  “Keeps me on my toes,” Kintyre says wryly. “The Writer knows being Lord Turn doesn’t.”

  “Are you bored?”

  “Not as bored as you are.”

  I can’t help the chuckle that escapes me. “You’re not wrong.”

  “Being the Shadow Hand would help with that. I know you haven’t done it yet, put on the mask,” he says softly. “Go on, Bevel. Put on the mask. Then you’ll see. You’ll believe me. Forsyth didn’t make a mistake. I didn’t make a mistake. The Writer didn’t—the Writer could never . . .”

  I can’t help the huffing, snorting laugh that escapes me, even as I paw at my eyes, wipe the embarrassing tears away. “That’s not what Pip says.”

  Kintyre rolls his eyes. “Pip is a Reader. She doesn’t understand what it means to be Written. Not like we do.”

  I look over to my study, where I’ve hidden the mask behind the box holding my travel pipe and hash. Kintyre carved me that box, to keep my supply safe and dry, when he realized I wouldn’t be giving up the habit despite his nagging. He accepted my imperfections and made treasures of them. Including, it sounds like, my stubbornness and tendency to snap and snarl at him.

  A dragonet in need of soothing, indeed.

  “I don’t know if I can, Kin. That’s . . . it’s been eating at me since the Rookery. I don’t know if I can be the Shadow Hand. If I can . . .” I touch my chest. “If this is right.”

  “Has all of . . . all of this strife, this thundercloud over your head, has it all been about the mask? Because . . . because, if you want, I could . . . I could take it away from you. Do it instead. I mean, I don’t know if I’d be any good—”

  “No!” I blurt, as a sudden, panicked possessiveness comes over me. Perhaps it’s the persuasive magic of the mask, or maybe it’s just . . . just that I realize, suddenly, that if I give this away—if I give this to Kintyre, too—if I give it up . . .

  “No, the mask is . . . mine. Something . . . something for me. Just me. Something that isn’t . . .”

  “In support of me,” Kin says, and it’s not sad, not really.

  “I don’t mean it like that. I just mean . . . I don’t know what I mean,” I finish lamely, exasperated by my repeated inability to just figure out what in the hells it is I’m feeling and express it. Some damned bard I am.

  ✍

  It’s now a month out from Solsticetide, and the ladies have determined that since there’s no “woman of the house,” it’s up to them to collectively manage the preparat
ions for the Chipping’s annual pilgrimage to Turn Hall for the celebration. Never mind that Cook and Velshi have it well in hand, and have had it well in hand for decades. It’s not like there’s been a woman of the house since Kin’s mother died.

  When I sneak into the kitchen for raisin biscuits after dinner, the same night the ladies announce their intention, Cook corners me with a wild and desperate look in her eyes.

  “Master Bevel,” she says, clinging to my lapels. “These women are driving us all mad. Do something.”

  “It’s Kin you should be cornering,” I say, feeling sorry for her. “He’s the one who’s too terrified of offending the wrong people to send them off.”

  “Then, if you can’t be rid of them, at least stop all this Solsticetide nonsense. It’s your purview. Don’t let them run roughshod over you, my boy!”

  “What is?” I ask.

  “You’re the lord’s spouse!” she says. “It’s you who’s meant to take celebrations like this in hand. Tell them to bugger off!”

  “I am?” I say, wondering why no one told me they expected me to head up the event planning—and then the rest of what she said hits home. “Wait, I am?”

  “Or as good as!” Cook moans. “For the love of the Writer, just troth the fool lad and be done with it! Put us all out of our misery, Master Bevel! Trick him into it if you have to! I’ll put a potion in his tea, whatever it takes. Just get these bloody meddlesome women gone!”

  I make my platitudes to Cook and escape back upstairs to our room with the biscuits and a bottle of wine, and repeat her desperate pleas to Kintyre. Though I keep the part about getting him drunk and tricking him into a trothing to myself, just in case Cook and I decide we’re at our wit’s end and need to enact just such a plot.

  “How did I get it all wrong?” Kin groans, hands covering his face. I try to make him look at me, but he’s lost in his head. He’s so lost. My poor oaf. “How did Forsyth do all of this, and more? How did I . . . I thought it was going to be easy. Say some speeches, make some rulings, collect some rent money. There’s so much . . . there’s the Free School, and judging on petitions, and working with Pointe, and arranging our tenants, and making sure the taxes cover the cost of the road repairs without bankrupting a farmer who’s had a bad crop! And the women!” He groans, aghast.

  “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say that with despair in your voice,” I tease. “Come on, Kin. I think we’ve tortured the staff long enough for politeness’ sake. Time to dismiss the ladies.”

  “But how?” Kintyre moans. “We can’t just send them off.”

  “Sure we can. A trothing will make it stop,” I say smugly.

  “Ours, you mean?” Kintyre asks, suspiciously.

  “Of course.”

  “What if I need something from one of their fathers? What if I ruin an alliance?”

  “Won’t choosing just one of them ruin your alliances with the rest, anyway?”

  “No, not the way rejecting them all whole-cloth would.”

  I push Kintyre back into his chair by the fire and climb onto his lap, nibbling one of my biscuits. “I think,” I say, after a few moments of thoughtful munching, “that you’re failing to see an important aspect of this quagmire.”

  “And what’s that?” Kintyre asks petulantly, brushing the crumbs off his chest.

  “You are Kintyre Turn. There’s no Great House in the whole of Hain that would dare close its doors to you, or its goodwill. You have saved the kingdom more times than anyone can count. You are a friend of the king, and of many other crowned heads as well. You defeated the Viceroy.”

  “Lucy Piper defeated the Viceroy,” Kintyre corrects, settling his hands on my hips, fingers curled in the soft flesh of my backside.

  “Not in the version I’m writing,” I say. “Besides, she won’t mind a bit of creative rewriting. Or at least, she’ll never know the difference, not being here.”

  “Maybe she’ll read it, out there, with Forsyth.”

  I laugh. “And if she does, so what? She’s there, and we’re here, and there’s nothing she can do. And you, my silly lump, you are a hero. I have worked hard to make you one. And now we can cash in on that fame.” I lean in, watching his eyes flutter closed as I draw close enough for us to share breath. I kiss each of his eyelids gently. Cradled in the curve of my lover’s body, I pull his mouth to mine and indulge in a languid kiss.

  This leads to other things, and by the time the candles have burned low, Kintyre and I are gloriously naked under our sheets and sheened with the good, honest sweat of a perfect swivving. I can’t help the smug possessiveness that sweeps through my languor when Kin shifts off his rump and onto his side, wincing a little at the tenderness in his behind.

  “Oh, wipe that smirk off your face, Bevel Dom,” Kintyre says, his own eyes falling shut.

  “Never,” I say, and reach out to give that beautiful arse of his a firm squeeze.

  He grunts and buries his head further into his pillow, as if to say “sleeping now!” I roll onto my side and tuck up against his chest, and he throws one massive arm over my shoulders. I’m just about to drift into sleep when Kintyre says, “All right, all right, stop nagging.” As if we were in the midst of a conversation.

  I crane my neck and peer up at his face to see if he’s talking in his sleep. But his eyes are slitted open, and he is peering back down at me.

  “Kin?”

  “I agree,” Kintyre grumbles, as if he is capitulating under the most hateful and strenuous circumstances. “A-trothing we will go.”

  “Well, finally,” I say, giving in to the urge to kiss him soundly. Kin returns it with enthusiasm, which tells me that he’s just as thrilled about this next step as I am. “Why did you make it seem like such a hardship?” I ask. “I mean . . . if, as you say, trothing is just a different version of Pairing . . .

  “A more permanent version.”

  “Did you want an escape door?” I ask, and I can’t help but feel hurt by that.

  “No, but just . . . tying myself to only one person . . . and a man . . . I needed to . . . I needed time to be sure that I was still me when I was with . . . you.”

  “Kintyre Turn! Who you are with me?” I ask, indignant. I sit up and take his face in my hands, forcing him to meet my eyes. For good measure, I straddle his chest, so he can’t get away. “The more accurate question might be who you are without me? I’ve been by your side nearly every hour of nearly every day from the moment you turned eighteen years old. I have wanted you for every second of it, and loved you for a good majority of it on top of that. Who are you without me, Kintyre Turn? Might as well ask the moon what it is without the sun.”

  “So you have no big opinion of yourself, then,” he says, pinching my stomach playfully, and I jerk and squirm, but don’t give in.

  “You said it before,” I counter. “We were Written for each other. You just as much for me as I am for you. The only thing a trothing will change is how many breakfasts Cook has to send up on trays in the morning, and how many of our guest rooms the maids have to turn out. We’ll be the same old thick-headed Kintyre Turn and stubborn Bevel Dom. Except that our house will be free of female vermin.”

  Kintyre pushes himself up on his elbows and kisses me. “I don’t want a big trothing ceremony,” he says softly. “I know the Chipping wants it, but . . . I ran away from all of this because I hate being . . .”

  “Being what?”

  “You’re gonna laugh,” Kin says petulantly, turning away.

  “I won’t,” I promise, and bite down on the inside of my cheek to make sure I keep it.

  Kintyre huffs, and squirms, and pouts a little more. “I hate being the center of attention,” he finally mutters.

  I’m glad I’ve got my cheek between my teeth, because only a small giggle escapes me, one that I’m quick to turn into a snort. Not quick enough, though, because Kin scowls.

  “I knew you’d laugh.”

  “‘M not laughing, Kin,” I say, and s
tretch my neck to give him a soft, languid kiss, and myself enough time to calm down. “I just . . . you. You don’t like being the center of attention? So, what, all those knighting ceremonies and dinners in great halls where you sat at the head table and were feted and feasted were just torture?”

  “Those weren’t,” Kin says, and hooks his top leg around mine, hauling me back onto my side and closer under the blankets so our hips align. I give a little wiggle, to gauge his intentions, but it seems like he’s just after the warm comfort of connection right now. Kintyre always prefers to be cuddling when he’s making confessions, not that he would call what we’re doing by either term. “But stuff like this . . . when they want to . . . fete me just because I’m . . . because of nothing I’ve done . . .” He squirms some more, and I let him paw at my backside while he chews on his words.

  Normally, I’d take pity on the poor lunk. He hates talking about his feelings, and prefers to communicate through bedsport instead. But this is too important to let him off the fishing hook just yet. I shuffle closer, but keep my face away, out of kissing range for now. He grunts and huffs, frustrated when he realizes I’m not going to let him get out of this one just yet.

  “Tell me,” I say, and run one hand down his side, a teasing reward for trying to figure this out, and a promise for when he’s managed this heroic task. “Go on.”

  Kintyre buries his face in my hair, just over my ear, and blurts: “I don’t like being handed things just because of an accident of birth. Because of the blood I happen to have.”

  “But you’ve never shied away from demanding things because of who you are,” I say, and kiss his neck to encourage him to keep going.

  “Things I’m owed because of the things I’ve done,” Kin corrects, his breath humid on the shell of my ear. I shudder, and I can feel his lips curling into that seductive smirk I know oh so well, and adore oh so profoundly. “Give me a knighthood and wealth for performing services to the kingdom, sure. But I hate that Turn Hall and the running of Turnshire, the stewardship of Lysse, and all the wealth and ballyhoo that goes with it, falls on my shoulders just because I’m the offshoot of that old bastard.”