by J. M. Frey
Frowning, I push back just enough to meet Kin’s blue, blue eyes, but not far enough to give the impression that we’re done with our little game.
“Is this you hating your privilege, or hating that your privilege comes from that elfcock arsehole that sired you?”
Kintyre shrugs and bites his bottom lip, looking away. His hand wanders down my belly, down, down, and I let him, flex my hips back to give him room to work, because he can’t answer this one, I don’t think. Maybe he doesn’t know himself. And he’d just get angry and frustrated, and my chances for a second round of sweaty, athletic evening would be ruined in the process.
“No big trothing ceremony?” he breathes into my ear while twisting his wrist, and that is dirty, that is cheating, that is foul play, because that Writer-be-damned arsehole knows that I will agree to anything he asks when he does it like that.
“F-fine,” I stutter out. And then I grab him by those big stupid ears of his and drag his mouth onto mine.
✍
The next morning, Kintyre and I join the ladies in their parlor—the lovely salon with the squashy furniture, which I resent that they’ve taken control of. They’re all thrilled, of course. They fawn, and fetch tea, and the Farnith girl demonstratively bemoans our dearth of instruments, or else she’d play something for Kin. They are all fluttering like a flock of self-important pigeons.
When everyone seems as settled as they can be—Kin on the sofa with five women ringing him in like a hydra, and me by the window with the sweet, small little thing who seems to think her way into Kintyre’s bed is through mine—Kin holds out his hands for silence and says, “I have an announcement to make.”
A titter washes through the assembly, and I hold back a grimace.
“An announcement about what, Sir Turn?” the Gyre girl flutters, and she’s the only one of the gaggle who refers to my Pair by his soldierly title instead of his noble one. I wonder what she thinks that will achieve.
“Well, my marriage, of course,” Kin says, flashing that toothy, heroic smile at her that he saves for official ceremonies he despises, and events he wishes he could run away from.
Another titter circles the flock, and this time, I can’t hold back my snort.
“With so many fine representatives of the Great Families of Hain here,” Kin goes on, and I have to bite my cheek to keep from laughing at the way he’s winding them up. Oh, it’s cruel, no doubt, but it’s also just so damned funny. “It makes sense to do it now. Of course, it was difficult to come to a decision.”
“But you have?” the one who was wanting music asks, the question bursting out of her like an arrow from a mishandled crossbow.
“Indeed,” Kintyre says. He takes a deep breath, relishing the way the ladies hang on his every word, and then says, with great pride and pomp: “Bevel and I have decided to be trothed the day before Solsticetide.”
Air rushes out of the lungs of all six girls in one long, confused groan. Forget needing instruments in this salon, because that is the most beautiful sound I have ever heard.
Kintyre goes on: “Bevel and I are so humbled that your families chose to send you as representatives for the ceremony, and we’re only sorry that we had to make you wait so long for us to decide when to hold it. We’re utter rotters,” he says with a mischievous twinkle, deliberately pretending to misconstrue the reason the women are here. “But Cook tells me you have Solsticetide well in hand for Turn Hall, so we thought that could free us up to plan the trothing. It’s so kind of you to do so!”
There’s a sniffle, and the little woman beside me turns her back to the room and covers her eyes with one hand, the other fisted into her stomach. All the glee I had felt at pulling off our prank boils away in my swift and sudden shame.
“If you didn’t want us, you should have just said so,” she hisses at me damply, when I try to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. She ducks out of the way so she can glare at me full in the face with wet eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. “There was no cause to be cruel.”
“We didn’t mean to—we didn’t invite—”
“You think you’re so clever, but you’re not,” she says. “You’re just an entitled elfcock, like every other noble bastard of the blood.” And then she spits on my boot.
“What—” Kintyre says, standing immediately, but he doesn’t go on when the woman turns on her heel and marches out of the room. The rest of the women hiss and glare, close ranks, and follow after her.
Kin looks at me, helpless.
“I thought it was funny,” I say, and Kintyre shrugs.
“Women,” he says, dismissing their emotional overreaction with a hand wave.
✍
Four of the six women depart before breakfast the next day, and the remaining two—Gyre and Farnith—remain ostensibly to help us with the trothing ceremony preparations. Of course, they also drop less and less subtle hints about surrogacy, and bloodlines, and heirs each time we are forced into a room with them to discuss flower arrangements and ribbon color schemes.
Still stinging from how badly our early bit of cleverness turned on us, we are very clear and blunt. I explain to these two women that we are entirely aware that an heir needs to be discussed, but that it will not be with two relative strangers and in advance of our trothing.
The Farnith girl departs the day after that. But Gisella Gyre, in a moment of resolve that impresses me enough that I decide to learn her name, just thrusts out her chin and says, “Perhaps not now, but eventually, you will need a woman. I have nothing at home, and there are no other prospects for me. I can be patient. And until such a time as you decide you want me to be the mother of your Pair’s child—if, indeed, you ever do decide you want me—then I’m resolved to be your friend, Bevel Dom. The Writer knows you will have few enough of those when it becomes clear that House Turn is gamboling happily toward its own extinction. Now, amethyst and russet, of course, in the ribbon arrangement, but what do you think of Sheil-purple, and a bit of white to brighten things up, as well?”
The only thing I can do is nod, dumbfounded and poleaxed.
I didn’t expect to find an ally among my enemies.
✍
We hold the trothing the day before Solsticetide, so that the staff needn’t decorate twice. The mid-winter evergreens are enough for us, interspersed with some hothouse flowers in amethyst, peach, russet, and deep purple that Gisella sourced from Writer knows where this time of year and wouldn’t let us pay for.
“My gift,” she said, when I asked her how she’d managed it. “The realities of nobility aside, I’ve never seen a Pair so revoltingly smitten with one another. That’s something worth celebrating with some flowers, no matter how much the cost, wouldn’t you say?”
Gisella Gyre is either going to be my most strident opponent or my most vicious supporter one day, and the more time I spend in her calculating, clever company, the more I realize I want her on my side. The coquettish mask she wore while trying to lure Kintyre has completely fallen away, and I find I prefer this thoughtful, blunt, intelligent woman instead. She reminds me of Pip.
I’m not changing my mind about sharing Kintyre with a woman, but if I were to see fit to enter a dwarvish arrangement, I wouldn’t mind it with Gisella, I think. Except that there’s something about her that is just . . . so decidedly unsexual. I don’t desire her in the least, and I don’t think Kintyre has even contemplated her in that way. I want to do right by her, yes, but more like a . . . a mentor than a conquest.
I have a sudden vision of Gisella in the Shadow’s Mask, and wonder if I have, perhaps, found my own successor. Of course, to have a successor, I first have to be the Shadow Hand, and . . .
I keep telling myself that it’s because I’m busy. There’s the trothing to plan, and Solsticetide, and after that, the planting season, and it’s just never the right time. The mask can wait. There’s no hurry.
The Shadow’s Mask is still in the back of my cabinet, still shrouded in its black velvet bag, and it would be
easy to just . . . tell Gisella the Word, give her the mask, and . . . let the responsibility go. Almost as immediately as I think that, my guts curdle. No, I can’t betray Forsyth’s trust in me like that. I can’t just . . . give it up because it’s difficult. Because it scares me.
I may not think myself a good man, but I know for certain that I have never been a coward.
And then the trothing day is here. The sun has risen, I have bathed, and Gisella and I are in my study, where she is putting the final touches on my ensemble. Kin and I are both wearing black leather trousers and riding boots. Our shirts are cream silk, and each of us were fitted for brand new waistcoats of Turn-russet picked out in gold-thread stripes and keys, and sashes of Dom-amethyst embroidered with the hammers that are my House Sigil. The flower crowns we’ll both be wearing for the ceremony are a secret, though. We wove them ourselves, for one another, and we were allowed to keep them understated—thank the Writer—and void of the girlish trailing ribbons that younger couples usually indulge in. Gisella has been kind to us in that.
I look up at myself in the mirror that Keriens had hauled into my study so that Kintyre and I could get dressed apart. I look as fine as I have ever looked in my life: well-rested, fresh-shaved, my hair trimmed, my clothes neat and new, and a small, ridiculous smile curling in the corner of my mouth.
Would I look so foolishly happy—would I be so recklessly, foolishly happy—had I not faced down all those other things that had scared me? The way the mask scares me still?
What if I had not run away to the Urlish wars with Kintyre? What if I had never stayed away, roaming the roads with him? What if I had fled the battlefields, quit the combat lessons, shoved aside the pencil and parchment because I was ashamed of my inability to read, and humiliated by Kintyre’s patient attempts to teach me? What if I had given in to Bootknife, or the Viceroy, rather than clenching down on my fear and accepting the pain they doled out as the price for remaining unbroken? What if I had never screwed up my courage and confessed my feelings to Kintyre? Where would I be, now, if I had never done what scared me?
Certainly not here.
So I put aside, forever, thoughts of handing the Shadow’s Mask over to Gisella. Instead, I lead her through the servants’ passages down to the back courtyard, where the bowl of the fountain has been piled high with brush for tonight’s bonfire, and a freshly made broom stands upright in a stone holder, waiting for Kin and I to jump it.
Part Six
After we have each goggled at the handsome sight of our Pair in our trothing finery, after we have spoken our vows, after we have wreathed the broom with our flower crowns, after we have set the brush of the broom alight, and after we have jumped it, hands clenched together and laughter ringing across the courtyard at the ridiculous spectacle we make of our athleticism, there’s a feast. We move inside to the ballroom, which has been reclaimed as an entertaining space for the night. Cook has outdone herself, especially considering that all of Lysse will be descending upon Turn Hall in the morning, and she’s been busy preparing for that. The small group of friends and family we’ve invited early to Turn Hall eat well and dance long into the night.
All six of my brothers, all six of their wives, and all thirteen of my nieces and nephews have made the journey to Lysse, along with my pa and mum. The Dom horde brought along wines and cakes, and food enough for their contributions to the Solsticetide festivities, for they have been invited to stay for those as well, and Cook has accepted the help of my sisters-in-law in the kitchen gamely. From the Turn contingency, we invited all the staff as guests, and made it clear that everyone in the household would have to serve themselves tonight, because no one is to be working. The Pointes attend as well, of course, and Capplederry is the star of the after-dinner entertainment, chasing young Lewko and all the Doms under the age of twelve around the snow-covered lawn. A very select handful of representatives from Turnshire are also in attendance—the mayor and his family, the head of Kin’s tenants’ group, and the hapless schoolmaster, into whom Gisella digs her claws quite early in the proceedings. The man seems to be happily caught, though, so I don’t bother to effect a rescue.
We drink barrels of ale and winter sherry, and dance until our feet ache. Before the clock strikes midnight, I pull my trothed up the servants’ stairway, into my study, and from there, into our bedroom. Some cheeky servant or two has put fresh linens on our bed—white, as if there was a hymen to break here!—and sprinkled it with amethyst and deep russet petals and leaves, an inviting carpet of foliage that gives off a splendidly intoxicating fragrance when I lever Kintyre up, bodily, and drop him onto that delicious, plump arse of his right on top of it.
“Steady on!” Kintyre slurs, and our entire world is golden and syrupy with drink and happiness.
We have all the time in the world, and our lovemaking is slow and intense. The room is filled with the musk of sweat and sex, and I’m unaccountably grateful for the pitcher of cool water the selfsame cheeky servants left on our bedside table. When Kin and I have curled around one another above the blankets, we recount the day, petting each other’s chests and stomachs, reluctant to be out of touch.
“I thought I looked ridiculous with flowers in my hair,” Kin says. “But they made you look dashing.”
“I’m many things,” I tell my trothed, “but dashing will never be one of them.”
He harrumphs and kisses my fingertips.
“So, now what?” I ask.
“Well, now we sleep, I think,” Kin says, deliberately misunderstanding what I’m asking. “Unless you’ve got another one in you.”
“Har har,” I say. “I mean . . . Solsticetide, and the New Year.”
“We’ll take it as it comes,” Kin says.
“And the other things?” I ask, my worries eating at me even now. Even in my marriage bed. “What about an heir?” I ask into his hair.
“It’ll sort itself out,” Kintyre says. “We’ve got lots of time.”
“Not too much,” I caution. “Or you’ll be like poor Pointe—needing to take an apprentice because your own son is too young.”
“Apprentice,” Kin says thoughtfully. “It’s appealing. Wish we could. Just pick some clever orphan lad, one who already knows his sums and his manners.”
“A babe,” I counter. “One we could raise on stories of his old pa’s adventures.”
“You sure like them when they’re small.”
“And you sure don’t,” I point out.
Kintyre grunts and shifts. “Afraid I’m going to squash them, aren’t I?”
I kiss him again, soft and sweet. “Don’t worry. I won’t let you squash ours.”
“Who says we’re having one?” Kintyre says, wrapping his arms around my back.
“Kin, you need an heir of your blood,” I say reasonably. “And I think, now that we’re trothed, I could handle you . . . sowing your wild oats one final time for a good cause.”
“Oh, would you?” Kintyre snorts. “How magnanimous of you, dearest.”
“You say it like I don’t intend to be in the room with you,” I say with a sharkish grin.
“Or in the bed.”
“To an extent. The child has to be yours, unaccountably. And of course, I’d pick the woman.”
“Oh, you would, would you?” Kintyre says. He leans back, and runs his hand through my hair. “She’ll have to be short. Blonde. Dark blue eyes.”
“Why?”
“So the babe looks like you, too,” Kintyre says softly.
“Oh, my soft-hearted lump,” I whisper against his mouth.
“No, no, use the other word,” Kintyre says, pulling back, refusing to kiss me properly until I’ve given in. “I like that one best.”
“My trothed,” I say, grinning, and so what if I sound like an infatuated sop? I am one.
“Trothed,” Kintyre agrees. “Let’s just be that for now. The father part of things can happen later. Now, trothed, come up here.”
✍
It’s spring,
and love is in the air. Much to Pointe’s chagrin. His apprentice Menkin runs off with the kitchen lass as soon as the first blossoms are on the pear trees. Capplederry, too, is in love, though only in the way that cats love doting on young boys. He has abandoned us forever, it seems, to take up residence at Law Manor. I can’t say our groom is too put out by this betrayal, though.
Turn Hall is finally void of all maidens, even Gisella. I think she still hoped that after our trothing, we would announce our intention of Kintyre siring a child, and that her proximity would make her an attractive candidate, but she is also a woman who lives without illusions. If we didn’t pick her before, we weren’t likely to pick her now. She returned to Kingskeep after Solsticetide, but keeps me well furnished in her own brand of dark and sarcastic gossip from the capital.
Besides that, she seems to have taken up a correspondence with Turnshire’s schoolmaster. I have a feeling she’ll be telling her noble father to go stuff his head up a gryffon’s arse about his nagging her to net herself a noble marriage soon enough. I’d like it if she moved into Turnshire. I could begin teaching her swordplay, then. Maybe float the idea of teaching her how to translate what she knows about managing household accounts into managing bribe purses—though I suspect this woman might be better at information gathering and informant management than I may ever be.
And while Kin and I have been batting around the idea of an heir, we both agree that we would never seek a mother from one of the other Great Families. No, that’s too complicated. We’re thinking of spending the summer getting to know the farmers and tenants around Turn Hall—we’d pick one of those women, sturdy and clever and kind, someone from Lysse, someone who’d have no agenda or desire to pull political strings, but who could be nearby and involved in the babe’s life if she so chose. Kintyre, having had his own mother ripped so cruelly from him at such a young age, has no desire to inflict that kind of pain on a young woman doing us the very incredible kindness of making us fathers.
