by J. M. Frey
“By the Great Writer,” I say, following her finger. “Then, judging by the prophecy . . .” I retrieve a bottle of blue ink from my desk drawer and uncap it quickly, then catch up the quill. “We will need to stop here . . . then.” I point to a small isthmus where a squiggle of river runs right over a painted cliff. “Three ought to be somewhere in this vicinity, by the Salt Crystal Caverns; then back east here, to the Lost Library”—I slash a little ‘x’ over the prairie in the middle of Hain—“and then south and west again, along the Long Pond Lake to . . . possibly here?” I tap the map with one finger, where the lake narrows into foggy marshland. “The Valley of the Tombs.” I skim south one last time, the thick emerald ink of a forest making the blue line hop and the nib scratch. “And then finally over to one of the Eyre coves in the Cinch Mountains.”
Pip’s eyes shine with a kind of abundant glee that makes them sparkle like a child spying the dessert table at Solsticetide. They look greener like this, glittering as they hop over the map, taking it all in. “And we should be able to summon the Deal-Maker from there. Et voila! See? All the hard work is done. Now, all we have to do is go out and actually get this stuff.”
“And before the blue moon.” Which, luckily enough, happens to be occurring in two month’s time. I squash the very great desire to sweep Pip into my arms and kiss that quick, clever little mouth of hers. “Ah! And the feather!” I say instead.
I retrieve the sketch that one of my Men brought to me the day they rescued Pip. It is the one of the silver filigree feather, all spattered with sapphires.
“See, Pip. The Quill that Never Dulls. I remember where I saw this before—it is a Gyre family heirloom. Lordling Tritan Gyre wears it in his cap, and his mother before him wore it on a torque. They have had it for centuries, though no one can recall its origin. The Viceroy must have been researching it as well.”
“Lucky for us that your guys scooped his notes, then. And that this is a world where automatic backups to an external hard drive don’t exist.”
“Genius, just genius,” I whisper. “A hero’s quest made the purview of the intellectual instead of the adventurer! How marvelous.”
“They don’t call me Doctor Piper for nothing,” she says, and raises her cup of wine in a salute.
I fetch my own cup from where I left it on the mantle and return the toast.
I reach out and brush my fingers across the corner of the Excel on which Pip has scrawled the moon phases. The ink is slightly raised—she mixed it too thick, and it warms me to realize that, as clever as Pip is in the abstract, working with the physical tools of my trade is still a frustration to her. She is clever; she is a Reader. But she is human, and she errs.
“Amazing,” I breathe, because she is. Pip is amazing. I have been gifted with a whole new way of learning to think, and beyond that, she has expended all of this talent, all of this imagination, all of this skill on me. For me. “You’ve taken what my brother does and . . .”
“And made it something you can do, too,” she says, and there is no small amount of drunken smugness in her voice. “There’s nothing you can’t do, if you can think your way around it.”
I am stunned. I am humbled.
“Lucy Piper . . . you enthrall me,” I whisper. I take my courage into my hands and lean down to press a sweet kiss on her forehead. I feel the skin there heat under my lips and know she is blushing. I linger perhaps longer than is polite, but for the first time in a very long time, I do honestly believe that I am not imposing, that my continued touch is welcome. It is a thrilling feeling: to be accepted. Wanted.
Eventually, I pull away and turn to the credenza behind my desk to fetch up the decanter of wine. I pour for myself, and then bring the jug over to the hearth to refill Pip’s cup.
“And now what?” I ask, setting the decanter down on the mantle.
She raises her glass to me in an informal pledge and clinks the side with mine. The low chime that fills my study also slithers into the heat pooling low in my belly.
“Now,” she says, taking a sip. “I’m gonna start jogging again. I’ve been dying to see your gardens.”
✍
Later that evening, I go up to her room, hoping to share a nightcap with Pip. I hear the sobs before I ever reach her door and do not bother to knock. I keep walking instead, fingers closed around the neck of the bottle, and return to my own rooms. I do not have the heart to open the wine, and leave it to languish on my bedside table.
Sometimes, I forget that Pip is not here of her own volition—would not choose to be here, could she help it.
Sometimes, I forget that the Viceroy has torn her from everything she holds dear, from everyone she loves, and that Turn Hall and I will always, and only, be that place where she seeks to hide from the misery of missing her old life.
She laughs, and she smiles, and she teases and touches; and she is sad every moment of every day.
✍
In the morning, Velshi wakes me earlier than I am wont and bids me come to the window. He presses a warm drink into my hand as I obey and stand by the curtain, sipping, waiting for the haze of sleep to clear.
“What am I looking at?” I ask.
“Just watch, my lord,” he whispers.
I turn more fully to the window and let my gaze roam the garden, the cup in my palm spreading warmth up my fingers and across my skin. A light mist is burning off as the sun rises, leaving dewdrops in its wake. The manicured lawn and the tight rosebushes under the window appear adorned like a noblewoman, all flashing diamonds and gold in the sunrise. At the bottom of the lawn, where the covey forest begins, I see a smear of red and wonder if it’s my fox-mother, or one of her kits. There is the rainbow sparkle of fairy wings above the fishpond in the middle of the lawn, flashing too fast for me to catch a glimpse of the bodies attached. A trout leaps and snaps, and I wonder idly if the fairy escaped or just became breakfast.
All of the plants I can see are green and fresh, and trembling just on the cusp of summer, blossoms held tight and selfish against the last lingering chill of spring. Then, Velshi points. Down, at the very edge of the forest, where the Turn Hall gardens are separated from the first of my tenant’s fields by a low stone wall, there is the shape of a person. It is moving toward us, the pace steady as it moves in a long-strided clip along the wall before turning to pace the forest. Not quite a run, but rhythmic all the same.
It looks like a young boy, clad in tight trousers and a cast-off tunic too large for him, and, for a moment, I wonder what village child this might be, traveling to see his lordling or to fetch help, and how Velshi knew he was coming. But as he grows closer, I realize that this is no boy at all. This is Pip.
And she is smiling, too, of all the bizarre expressions to be wearing. She is not running fast. She must be prevented from it by the lingering pain in her back, but she is moving faster than a walk.
“Did you know about this, sir? She’s been making circles of the estate for an hour.”
“I did,” I admit. “I am sorry; I forgot to inform someone. Don’t bother Miss Piper. She is merely exercising.”
“Exercising,” Velshi murmurs, eyes back on Pip’s approaching figure.
Pip looks up and catches sight of us, framed against my window. She grins and waves. I wave back, and watch with awe as she makes a tight corner and follows the lawn around to the other side of the house.
“It’s normal, where she’s from,” I say. “Well, apparently.” I’m having a hard time thinking of much more to add, because that had just been a brilliant answer to the question of what young women wore while doing this so-called “jogging.”
“Very well, sir,” Velshi replies. There is a wealth of other things he is not saying underneath those words, and foremost are ones of disapproval. But he is too professional to actually voice them.
“Call for a bath for Miss Piper,” I say, turning away from the window. “And bring just an ewer for me. Let her know that I’ll meet her in the breakfast room when she’s done t
his morning.”
“Very well, sir,” Velshi says, and departs.
I linger at the window sill, sipping my tea and smiling to myself.
✍
Pip flops down into the rickety little chair opposite mine wearing a grin as wide as her face. She is still wearing her jogging attire. A thin sheen of sweat wreathes her hairline and soaks the shirt between her breasts, making it cling in a way that forces me to concentrate very hard on the papers spread out on the breakfast table before me.
“That felt great!” she enthuses, as she reaches for the pitcher of water. “And thanks for the bath. I’m going to go up to it in a minute. It was too hot.”
“You’re very welcome. I still don’t see the appeal,” I admit, sipping at my third cup of tea, “but if it makes you happy, then I am pleased for you.”
“I just missed it, you know? Moving. Getting into the headspace. I think I’ll have to find better shoes than your old fencing boots, though, and I didn’t go for as long as I normally do, but I think I can be forgiven, seeing as I was flat on my face for three months.”
I am startled. “My old fencing boots?” I check under the table, and sure enough, she is wearing the ratty brown ankle boots I’d first learned to fence in as a boy.
“Hm, yeah.” Pip reaches for a warm roll. “It was the only thing Neris could find in my size. There was no heel, and that’s all I wanted.”
The thought of Pip wearing my clothing, even my discarded clothing, sends a wonderful, proprietary shiver up my spine. I wonder if I can coax her into one of my house robes, just to know that the scent of me is so close to her skin.
“I was thinking,” she says, buttering the roll, “that if we’re going adventuring, I don’t want to wear dresses. The women in the stories always trip up when the hems get snagged on roots in the forest, or they’re mistaken for whores, or princesses, or whatever. I’d much rather have some nice warm trousers and shirts. Can we arrange that?”
“I, er, I can summon a tailor . . . and a cobbler,” I add, realizing that Pip would probably appreciate a pair of her own boots, made for her own feet, rather than wearing my old ones. “But, Pip, it’s not entirely decent . . . and, according to your notes, we’re going to have to visit Kingskeep.”
“I can pack a nice dress,” Pip assures me. “I just don’t want to wear them all day. Surely you can see the logic in that.”
And I can. I can envision the logic quite well . . . as well as the way Pip’s legs looked in the trousers this morning. I swallow more tea in an attempt to quell my blood and nod.
“Yes, very well.”
Pip bounces from her chair and presses a kiss to my cheek. “Thanks!” she says, as she grabs another roll from the basket and vanishes from the breakfast nook.
Oh, dear Writer. If this is Pip healthy and happy, I wonder what I’ve got myself into. She is still and silent while at work in academia, but filled with the spirit and high blood of exercise, she is as chipper as any squirrel and twice as bouncy. Combined with her by-now-legendary stubbornness . . . I am a doomed, doomed man.
Very happily doomed.
Nine
A fortnight later, when the moon is full and all the right aspects are aligned, Pip and I steal out of Turn Hall on horseback. No one is to know that the lordling and his guest are absent, and so we ride into the forest instead of down the path through the village. We have even arranged with Pointe that he will continue to visit Turn Hall for our sparring matches, so that, for all outward observers, it appears as if we are still in residence.
We have packed bedrolls and first-aid salves, dried rations, water skins, fire-making supplies, and a scroll onto which I have copied all of our necessary information and directions. Pip has the Excel, folded carefully like a map so we can unfold it to specific sections when necessary, and her leather-bound notation book. And, for reasons that I cannot fathom but find eminently practical, Pip has also insisted that we do not forget our pocket handkerchiefs.
We also each have a sword, and now that Pip’s back is healed, I have promised her that we will be stretching her skin in sword practice, keeping her scar-knitted muscles limber as I teach her how to defend herself with a blade. If she is going to dress like a young man, I am determined that she will be able to defend herself like one as well.
Our comfortable relationship hovers somewhere between very affectionate siblings—or, rather, what I imagine an affectionate sibling relationship would resemble—and chaste lovers. We have lain together in bed as I read aloud to Pip, her fingers threaded between mine; there have often been affectionate touches, cuddles in the library, muddled limbs and reaching around while packing, knees bumping and pressing together under the breakfast table, but there have been no exchanged kisses, no promises beyond the one to try.
I find this slow courtship remarkably calming. It is rare and odd, and I am enjoying it immensely. There is no pressure to jump into carnality, with which I have no direct experience outside of witnessing the trysts required for Shadow Hand work. Though, thankfully, Pip has—or so she has hinted—enough to make up for my lack of knowledge. And I don’t have to deal with any of that “at first sight” fairy tale twaddle. I am able to be just me, and it is . . . a relief.
All the same, I find myself looking forward to sharing a campfire tonight and, I assume, having our bedrolls side by side next to it. Kissing may be in the hazy, unpredictable future, but holding Pip close and knowing that I may . . . that is more immediate and will be just, I think, as satisfying.
We make camp a day’s ride out from Kingskeep. We stop, right around dawn, in a clearing used often by my Men. The starflowers glowing in the night-darkened meadow are pinpricks of pearlescent luminescence still. No larger than my fingernail, they reflect in the boggy ponds that fill the lowlands, looking like nothing more than a reflection of their heavenly counterparts. The clearing is thick with starflowers, and as dawn approaches, they wink closed, one by one, like shy clams.
As I had hoped, Pip lays her bedroll directly next to mine. I expect the usual “just for body heat” objections that maidens claim in the epic tales, but she makes no such excuses. Pip never makes the usual maidenly excuses for taking what she wants from me, and it is shockingly attractive. I observe from this that Pip wishes merely to be close to me, unashamedly, and take comfort from it.
The rising sun masks our campfire smoke as I spread flat-bread dough from Cook on one of the stones in the embers. This will be our only chance for fresh-baked bread on the road, unless we buy more uncooked dough when we leave Kingskeep. It cannot last more than a day wrapped in damp cheesecloth before it becomes dry and useless. I could have used the room in our packs for something that travels better—dried apple chips, or hard cheese—but I know how much Pip considers fresh bread a delicacy. She says the bread in her world never comes fresh-baked; it is too much hassle. They buy it days old and wrapped to keep from going stale, and never warm.
We enjoy our dinner of bread and fresh stone fruits, mixed with a little of the soft cheese she adores so much, using up all of our perishable provisions in one fell feast, and then take to our beds. I bank the fire before lying down on the ground, a careful distance between us just in case Pip has changed her mind.
She falls asleep before I do and rolls into my side, snuffling against my armpit, so I take this to mean that her intentions remain true. All the same, I wrap my arm around her shoulders cautiously, just in case I alarm her.
I fall asleep to the sound of waking birds, happy not to have to set any magical wards tonight, for I am too exhausted to get back up and do so. The Minchin Forest is populated with only the most non-magical of animals. The older forests are filled with all manner of magical creatures, but this growth is still quite young, planted in penance by a dragon who accidentally destroyed an elder-dryad’s copse a hundred years ago. Magical things like old places, and this forest won’t be ripe enough for their liking until I am well dead and dust.
That is part of its appeal, of course—
nobody likes to wake with gnome-knots tied into their hair or covered in the graffiti of particularly drunken fairies—but the other part is that it means we will have several hours to sleep before we make our way to the capital city. It is vain, but I want to see the look on Pip’s face when we steal up to the Queen’s Gate at sunset, and the light glances off the great crystal dome of the Palace Keep for which the city was named. It is breathtaking, and I do so want to take her breath away.
✍
Around noon, when I have already woken and am, in turn, waking the embers of our campfire in order to heat a small packet of travel-stew for our breakfast, Pip finally stirs from her sleep.
“Christ, ow,” Pip says as she sits up from her bedroll.
“Your back?” I ask, concerned that we have perhaps sped along her healing faster than she could handle.
“My thighs,” she moans, spreading them wide and kneading the muscles on the insides of her knees with her fists. I drop my eyes back to the business of stirring stew, and do not, do not look at the shadow cast by apex of her legs. Pip is wearing her freshly made riding clothes. While I’d agreed with her that dresses were no sort of wardrobe for adventuring, the way the trousers she commissioned from the tailor cling to her legs is moderately indecent. To add to that, she is also not enamored of the knee-length sleeveless robes most people wear—she says they get in the way—and has instead purchased a short leather jerkin like Pointe’s.
We have packed both a dark purple short-robe and the fine dark blue dress, just in case we need the clothing to make Pip less conspicuous wherever we end up, but right now, she is wearing only her trousers, my old socks, and one of my old rough-woven Turn-russet shirts. Her boots, and the black leather jerkin, are piled on the ground beside her roll.
I try not to think about how gloriously intimate it is, my clothing touching her body, and instead set aside the pot of stew and stand.
