Price of a Thousand Blessings

The last two years I’ve been working on a project that I truly love: Price of a Thousand Blessings. It’s a far-reaching fantasy adventure, set in a vast magical world and populated by a cast of characters with no end of secrets, powers and charm.

Or at least I think so. (I hope you will too.)

I plan on first releasing Price of a Thousand Blessings as a series—probably on Patreon— so that readers and I can exchange thoughts and theories with each other as the story is released. When the release is done, I’ll give my Patreon readers the complete ebook.

Winter treat from Master of Restless Shadows

First Dance

Zancoda

Autumn, 1350

Ariz peered from between the rose trellises, taking in the distant dancing figures lit by candlelight. Music drifted through the glassed doors and filled the darkness of the garden. Sounds of laughter and conversation seemed to drift on the honey scents of beeswax. He crept closer, keeping to the flickering shadows. 

He didn’t belong here. 

He couldn’t claim to number among the friends, family or schoolmates of the Grunitos. He hardly even ranked as a rival. Though that hadn’t spared him from being randomly shouldered off of walkways or taunted as he wandered the fairgrounds. Boys too cowardly—or perhaps too intelligent—to lash out against his upperclassman, Hierro Fueres, often vented their anger against Ariz. 

 If he was caught trespassing he could expect to be dragged out into the street, at best. At worst, Javier Tornasal would rally his gang of friends and followers to beat Ariz into to a pulp and leave him bleeding in the mud. That wasn’t considering what Hierro might do to him if he discovered that Ariz had slipped away from his sick bed in the church hostel to bask in the presence of Sagrada students. Hierro would lay his whip across the punishing wounds he’d already laid into Ariz’s back.

Still Ariz crept closer to the house. 

When he reached a small stone fountain he paused and studied the view through the costly panes of glass. It all looked so very beautiful. Friends laughing, lovers flirting and couples dressed in dazzling finery, their smiling faces dusted with gold. Glorious melodies swelled around them in an ebullient stream and the dancers swirled like cherry blossoms in its current. Ariz felt the music’s pull as well. He felt the rhythm bouncing through his feet and swinging around his hips. His cold fingers slipped from his sword belt and tapped the tempo into the night air. 

He loved to dance. 

Or, he had, before he’d become Hierro’s creature. As a child he’d gloried in mastering all the quick, clever steps and twists. He’d adored leaping high and feeling as if music alone lifted him. He’d taken every opportunity offered to partner anyone who would dance with him. More often than not his mother or his sister had allowed him to cavort around her. After his female relations tired, his uncle and father had both indulged him. His gleeful expressions and wild enthusiasm had always inspired their laughter.

Hierro on the other hand found it entertaining to shove razor sharp tacks in Ariz’s shoes and then then pitch hot coals at him and call that a dance. He’d roared with laughter watching Ariz flinch and hobble as the steel bit into his flesh and embers burned his skin. That experience had taught Ariz not to even sway to music, much less express an interest in dancing. 

Or in anything, else. 

It was safer to seem dull and disinterested, as leaden in demeanor as Hierro’s beaten, dead-eyed horse.  So, he’d sacrificed joy to save himself from agony and for two years he’d simply survived.

But this week he’d found the strength to defy Hierro. Kiram Kir-Zaki, the Haldiim youth whom Hierro had wanted him to thrash and humiliate bore a glancing wound across his forearm and had taken a tumble in the dirt but nothing more. And today Kiram Kir-Zaki had outmaneuvered Hierro and stolen victory from him with just a flash of sunlight across a locket. Despite Hierro’s spell, Ariz had felt something approaching exaltation in that moment. All those hundreds and hundreds of on-lookers gathered in the golden pavilion had witnessed the hell-branded Javier Tornasal and his Haldiim classmate best Hierro. Cheers had roared all around him and Ariz welcomed them, fantasizing that the crowd shared his joy in witnessing Hierro fail. 

He could be bested. Someday someone might actually kill the man. Ariz managed a dull smile at the thought. He wondered if he would survive and what it might feel like to live free of Hierro Fueres’s dominion.  He could hardly remember anymore.

He permitted himself to sway with the melody drifting across the garden as he drew near to the young men who’d snatched victory from Hierro. From the darkness, he gazed in at this happy multitude of students, friends and relatives. 

Ariz’s parents weren’t so wealthy that they could afford to travel far. Instead they entrusted his care to his upperclassmen, Hierro. And of course they expected that his older cousin, Genimo would look after him as well. If only he could have told them how misplaced their trust was. But the brand burned into his flesh kept him silent on pain of death.

A cold breeze rolled over Ariz, penetrating the thin fabric of his school jacket. He shuddered and then winced as the motion cracked half-scabbed gashes running the length of his back. He stilled, waiting for the worst of the pain to fade. Hierro had known just where to bring down his whip to ensure that Ariz would feel his displeasure with every motion.  

Ariz frowned. He didn’t want to think about Hierro tonight.

Now he saw only happy faces and music filled the air.   

Ariz gazed at the dancers as if they were flames radiating warmth enough to heat his chilled hands. Then he noticed Javier Tornasal, standing apart from the dancers and looking nearly as handsome and arrogant as Hierro. Older nobles briefly engaged Javier in conversation, but his aloof postures and mocking expressions appeared to drive them off after only a few exchanges words. Beside him stood his underclassman, Kiram Kir-Zaki. He looked striking dressed in black and silver, but he also seemed restless, stuck at his supercilious upperclassman’s side. Likely he would rather have spent the evening with his own family, instead of putting up with all these pampered Cadeleonian nobles. Ariz felt a pang of sympathy for the young man and hoped that he didn’t suffer too greatly while living under his upperclassman’s rule. 

Kiram’s attention, like Ariz’s own, wandered to the dancers. 

Then Ariz caught the glance that Javier stole when Kiram wasn’t looking at him. The affection that lit Javier’s face shocked Ariz. His conceit and reserve seemed to melt away leaving an adoring expression. 

Then Kiram turned back and Javier feigned interest in the cuff of his own jacket. He murmured something and Kiram regarded his Hell-Branded upperclassman with amusement. They shared a private smile, clearly enjoying each other’s company. Recognizing their delight in one another, Ariz felt a pang of loss.

Not that he’d ever experienced such camaraderie, much less been stripped of it. But once, years past he yearned so intensely to find this kind of acceptance—friendship—that it had proved his complete undoing. Hierro had never gazed at him with so much warmth, nor would he ever. And he’d seen to it that Ariz wouldn’t find anyone else who might appreciate his company either. 

Almost shyly, Javier extended his hand and just touched his underclassman’s elbow. He leaned close, whispering some confidence. They both flushed and smiled. Just watching them Ariz felt his heartbeat quicken with excitement, though fear filled him an instant later. They looked so happy together and that made them so vulnerable. If someone like Hierro ever suspected….

All at once Ariz couldn’t bear to gaze on the two of them. He didn’t want the power to betray them.

Instead he returned to admiring the sea of dancers. Swirling silk gowns and glittering dress coats flashed like bright flowers blanketing wind-swept hills. An air of grace enfolded men and women regardless of age or allure. He noted the infamous libertine, Atreau Vediya’s comely form. The middle-aged matron in his arms blushed as he gazed into her eyes. Ariz noted that Atreau’s footwork was better than competent but he seemed more interested in his partner than his own performance. Likely he’d offer pleasant support and conversation on the dance floor but he wouldn’t relish the intricacy of complex steps.     

As the couples swirled past the glass doors, another man captured Ariz’s attention. His grace took Ariz by surprise.  Normally, Fedeles Quemanor inspired stares but not the flattering sort that his cousins, Javier and Hierro commanded. His manic gestures, incomprehensible babbling, and wild grimaced grins masked both his beauty and his desperation. People thought him insane—his mind addled as a result of incestuous parentage or some family curse.  Those who couldn’t avoid him generally tolerated him as if he were some deranged mastiff that his cousin, Javier, insisted on dragging along with him.   

But Ariz knew the truth. He’d read several of the letters that Genimo sent to Hierro. Fedeles struggled in the grasp of a thrall, just as Ariz did—or perhaps even worse. At least Ariz could retreat to his own mind, when his body became a prison of bloody agony. But Fedeles…. The brutal spells that Genimo and Scholar Donamillio implemented offered no retreat or respite. They scoured his mind and soul entirely. Soon they would destroy the man and leave his body a desolate husk.

And yet in this moment, as he spun and bounded with the music, he danced as if he were whole and happy. He moved with such poise and grace that Ariz found himself unable to look away from him. He turned and twisted in perfect time to the music. All the while his gaze lifted far from the woman in his strong arms. Ariz could almost imagine that Fedeles looked out through the glass doors to when he stood, staring back. 

Instinctively, Ariz turned as well, spinning with the music and matching Fedeles’ fast sure steps. He lifted his hands and danced on, mirroring Fedeles’s transit around the dance floor, with his own promenade around the fountain. The music swelled. Fedeles danced on and Ariz followed him like a shadow.

He forgot his bloodied back, and empty stomach. He forgot the darkness surrounding him, the cold wind and his broken heart. He gave himself to the music—to the dance.

It wasn’t until the queressa began that Fedeles departed the dance floor. Belatedly, Ariz realized that some argument had disturbed the party. Scandalized voices rose loudly enough for Ariz to hear speculation about the intrusion of some common girl and a possible affair with a nobleman. Fedeles joined his cousin and the clot of his schoolmates—Hellions, as they called themselves. Ariz watched the group of them, curious about how easy and anxious they appeared as they looked to each other and shared confidences. He wondered if he could slink just a little closer.

 But then he noted a man and woman edge towards the doors, seeking the quiet privacy of the garden. Just across the lawn servants from the stables came running towards the townhouse with their lanterns held high. 

Ariz fled. 

But when he returned to his cold bed in the church hostel he felt changed somehow. As if his dance out in the garden had been its own kind of spell, rekindling a little of the happiness he’d thought that himself incapable of ever feeling again. A shadow of hope clung to him. And though no one else could see it, he felt as though he was truly smiling for the first time in years.

Somehow, someday he promised himself, he would see Fedeles Quemanor dance again. 

New Novella Out October 16--Read an Excerpt!

New anthology features “The Counterfeit Viscount,” a brand new novella set in in Crowncross, the world the world of Wicked Gentlemen.

The Counterfeit Viscount

Chapter One

The vast majority of days came and went for Archibald Lycrugus Granville, Viscount Fallmont, with the genteel luxuries of fresh-cut flowers, boots polished to a razor gleam, suppers served on gilded plates, and night after night of card games, at which he never lost more than he won.

Butter upon bacon, as Nimble would describe it.

Archibald owned a stable of high-strung racehorses and retained a vast staff at each of his estates—though he rarely strayed from his elegant townhouse to visit either. From time to time, he pretended to woo the latest foreign heiress released into the staid waters of the peerage, and on occasion he indulged the expenses of a handsome artist or pretty actress.

Aside from the wide red shrapnel scar hidden beneath the snowy breast of his shirt, he appeared wholly unmarked by hardship. Fair, tan, and slim, he passed for a blithe youth even now at twenty-five.

His could’ve been a carefree life, except for the one day every third month when he descended to the pits of Hells Below and paid his devil.

March 21st, he woke before daybreak and slipped away from his attentive staff and current houseguests. He walked through the wan blue light, alongside herb girls and the last of the night patrolmen. Somewhere to the west, men called out the wonders of their coffee carts, and Archibald imagined that he could smell the aroma of the bitter black stuff rising on the clouds of steam that drifted from the river and blanketed the streets.

Sunlight burned through the fog by the time he reached the cold, clean room he rented at the Briar Hotel. There he exchanged his fashionable sable coat, his glossy top hat, and his silver pocket watch for the oilcloth cloak and worn cap common to the multitude of vagrant war veterans he’d once numbered among. He took up his bludgeon of an ironwood walking cane and traded his calfskin shoes for the battered army boots that had been far too big for him when he’d first been issued them at fifteen.

The brass mirror on the dresser door cast him in golden tones, but he certainly didn’t cut the figure of Viscount Fallmont anymore. Just plain old Archie now, and not so important that it would do anyone any good to mind where he went or what company he kept.

He departed the Briar by a back door and clipped through the bustling streets, leaving the realm of marble facades and large green parks far behind as he passed through blocks of modest brick businesses, and tramped on across the Crown Tower Bridge. Out in the less seemly section of the city, he picked his way through narrow alleys of cramped tenements, roaring factories, and sparkling gin palaces already filling up with shadows of human beings seeking bright oblivion. Here a few people knew him as Archie—an apple seller and a cat’s-meat man. They exchanged friendly greetings and a little news, then went their separate ways.

At last he reached the towering granite arch that rose over the worn stone stairs leading down to Hopetown—much more commonly known as Hells Below. Archie descended into the humid shadows slowly, admiring the ornate, soot-stained beauty of the mosaics decorating the walls on either side of him. Even through the ages of dirt and in the dim light, he made out bright shards of color and fantastically graceful figures. The mosaics supposedly chronicled the glorious day, hundreds of years ago, when the terrifying and beautiful armies of Hell had ascended to accept salvation and conversion at the hands of the church. Gleaming serpents and winged lions numbered among the burnished gold figures of fallen angels and towering warriors. Satanel, Leviathon, Sariel, Rimmon. Archie traced his finger over the surface of the inlaid metal-and-glass tiles, admiring the magnificence of those beings who’d once claimed dominion over lightning, raging seas, and the souls of the dead.

Not that anyone like them persisted in the vast ghetto beneath the sprawling city of Crowncross nowadays. Their descendants were called Prodigals, and most labored in dark, hard, and hazardous industries, where their natures supposedly lent them resistance to poisons, smoke, and exhaustion. Many weren’t too easy to recognize at a distance, though up close their yellow eyes, black fingernails, and jagged teeth tended to give them away, as did the citric scent of their sweat. But beyond those superficial traits, most Prodigals had as much in common with their preternatural ancestors as Archie had in common with Lord Bottham’s pet macaque. There were the exceptions, however.

As had become his habit, Archie paused, studying the mosaic. One devil’s familiar figure always held his attention. Broad and bronzed, with black hair and eyes as yellow as lemon drops. Even obscured within a procession of infernal dukes and damned princes, that single devil seemed to gaze back at Archie with an unreasonably amused and assured smirk. That was the face of a devil who knew he possessed rare and wondrous powers.

Archie could have sworn it was his own Nimble Hobbs, just about to say, “One day every three months, you’ve sworn to be mine, body and soul. So, haul your pampered ass down these dirty stairs and pay me what you owe me, Archie.”

There were far worse ways to pay a debt than in Nimble’s arms.

Archie took the steps by twos and soon reached the vast cavernous catacomb that spilled out beneath the city. It seemed to burrow deeper yearly, as more and more sewer pipes and gas lines invaded from the city above. Churches and storefronts leered out of the stone faces of the walls, and chipped gravel studded the tracks of mud that passed for streets. Yellow gaslight flickered from the occasional streetlight, and oily droplets of condensation dribbled from the pitted stone ceilings high overhead. The air smelled like grapefruit, piss, and burning shoes.

Archie drew his kerchief up over his nose and mouth before they started to burn. A pair of goggles offered his eyes some protection as he strolled along the wooden walkways, greeting crews of miners, dyers, tanners, and hatters as they passed on their way back from working long night shifts.

A gray-haired, legless Prodigal soldier on a street corner hailed him, and Archie stopped to hear a little of his story; he’d defended Sollum Hill as Archie had, but hadn’t been lucky enough to have Nimble stand over his bloody body, safeguarding him through the last night of cannon fire and cavalry charges.

“We held that damn hill, though, didn’t we?” The soldier’s yellow eyes looked as faded as old newsprint. He gazed past Archie into a remembered distance.

Archie nodded and shuddered as a droplet of condensation from the cave ceiling spat down the back of his neck. “You fellows in the Prodigal battalions won us the hill and the war,” he said, and that was the truth. The Nornians had possessed better steel, more deadly bombs, and enormous cavalries, but hadn’t had Prodigals. They’d been utterly unprepared for the monstrous ferocity and inhuman endurance of those few Prodigal forces.

“If it hadn’t been for your lot, we’d all be speaking Nornic, using paper for money, and eating dry fish for every meal,” Archie added.

A flush colored the old soldier’s sallow cheeks. He studied Archie. “You must have been one of them infants they conscripted to drive the guns and carry the silver crosses. You kiddies did right by us, hauling up fresh water and ammunition.”

“Third Children’s Brigade.” Archie managed a smile, though the memories made his skin feel cold as clay slip. He’d not been called up in a lottery, like so many of the Prodigal children who’d been taken from their weeping parents. No, his uncle had handed him and his brother over, like pennies proudly tossed into a collection plate.

So, haul your pampered ass down these dirty stairs and pay me what you owe me, Archie.”

There were far worse ways to pay a debt than in Nimble’s arms.

Archie took the steps by twos and soon reached the vast cavernous catacomb that spilled out beneath the city. It seemed to burrow deeper yearly, as more and more sewer pipes and gas lines invaded from the city above. Churches and storefronts leered out of the stone faces of the walls, and chipped gravel studded the tracks of mud that passed for streets. Yellow gaslight flickered from the occasional streetlight, and oily droplets of condensation dribbled from the pitted stone ceilings high overhead. The air smelled like grapefruit, piss, and burning shoes.

Archie drew his kerchief up over his nose and mouth before they started to burn. A pair of goggles offered his eyes some protection as he strolled along the wooden walkways, greeting crews of miners, dyers, tanners, and hatters as they passed on their way back from working long night shifts.

A gray-haired, legless Prodigal soldier on a street corner hailed him, and Archie stopped to hear a little of his story; he’d defended Sollum Hill as Archie had, but hadn’t been lucky enough to have Nimble stand over his bloody body, safeguarding him through the last night of cannon fire and cavalry charges.

“We held that damn hill, though, didn’t we?” The soldier’s yellow eyes looked as faded as old newsprint. He gazed past Archie into a remembered distance.

Archie nodded and shuddered as a droplet of condensation from the cave ceiling spat down the back of his neck. “You fellows in the Prodigal battalions won us the hill and the war,” he said, and that was the truth. The Nornians had possessed better steel, more deadly bombs, and enormous cavalries, but hadn’t had Prodigals. They’d been utterly unprepared for the monstrous ferocity and inhuman endurance of those few Prodigal forces.

“If it hadn’t been for your lot, we’d all be speaking Nornic, using paper for money, and eating dry fish for every meal,” Archie added.

A flush colored the old soldier’s sallow cheeks. He studied Archie. “You must have been one of them infants they conscripted to drive the guns and carry the silver crosses. You kiddies did right by us, hauling up fresh water and ammunition.”

“Third Children’s Brigade.” Archie managed a smile, though the memories made his skin feel cold as clay slip. He’d not been called up in a lottery, like so many of the Prodigal children who’d been taken from their weeping parents. No, his uncle had handed him and his brother over, like pennies proudly tossed into a collection plate.

“Rifleman in the Fifth, me.” The soldier scratched at the stump of his left leg, then glanced away to glower at a fat black rat. He picked up a pebble and flung it hard enough to stun the rodent.

While the soldier appeared distracted, Archie slipped a generous contribution into his beggar’s canteen—enough to keep him through this year at least. Then he wished the man a good day and went on his way, up the wooden walkways and over the slate roof of the Blessed Medicine Distillery and through the doors of Mrs. Mary Molly’s Boarding House.

Inside the warm, well-lit establishment, Nimble stood strangling a plump little man dressed in a priest’s frock coat…

Hear Ginn read from her novella, "Get Lucky."

Ginn's reading can be found right here!

Excerpt of forthcoming Hellions book.

Working Title: Servants of the Unseen Shadow

Ginn Hale

Chapter One

Twenty days of road dust caked Narsi’s body, hair, and clothes. His dappled mare looked gray as clay. He wasn’t certain which of the two of them smelled worse or felt more relieved to reach the renowned city of Cieloalta with its great display of public fountains.

Local merchants in painted carriages rolled past him, while herdsmen with their droves of swine, cattle, and sheep bustled around the fountains on the way to the famous market grounds. Narsi rinsed his face and allowed his tired mare to drink.

Three stone stallions and a column of eagles rose from the center of the fountain. The horses Narsi recognized as symbols of Faith, Honor, and Strength but he couldn’t exactly recall which sermon the eagles represented. “Heights of Bravery” from the Book of Redemption? Or was it “The Rise of Courage” from the Epistles of the Holy Savior? 

It hardly mattered, for the sheer beauty of the carvings coupled with the relief of fresh water awed Narsi.

His sense of wonder only grew as he turned around, taking in the towering, angular Cadeleonian architecture that lined the wide, straight thoroughfare. Even in this modest quarter, building after building boasted blue-washed walls, bright yellow roof tiles and downspouts in the shapes of horses. In the distance, royal emblems and colors blazed still more brilliantly, where immense lapis lazuli inlayed walls supported gilded spires. Hundreds of indigo flags fluttered with the stark white form of the Sagrada stallion. Overhead, flocks of white messenger doves moved like clouds across the bright summer sky.

“It’s just as Lord Vediya describes it in his memoirs,” Narsi told his horse. “A royal city made so bright and proud that it would challenge the heavens if only they would listen.”

Narsi grinned and stroked his mare’s jaw. She ignored him and kept drinking.

He felt as if he’d stepped into one of the thrilling epics that he so loved to read. He wondered suddenly if he might be able to find the plaza where the notorious swordsman, Elezar Grunito had fought his bloody duels before going on to battle monsters in the savage northlands. Or better still, could he hunt through the narrow lanes surrounding the opera houses to find the green door of the kaweh tavern where Lord Vediya penned so many of his daring, brilliant memoirs?

Or should he head closer to the river where, veritable mansions full of exotic and medicinal herbs were maintained by royal decree. The doors opened to anyone bearing the silver signet of trained physician, or so they said. Narsi’s prospects felt infinite. For Cielalta was the city where the best and brightest people flocked to the patronage of princes, dukes, even the king, and where a young man like himself stood a chance of meeting them all.

“Make way, you brown bastard,” A sunburned pig herder shouted and Narsi reflexively stepped aside as the red-faced man and his squealing charges shoved their way past the fountain. Narsi’s mare snorted and stamped when a sow snuffled too near her legs. The herder paused to eye Narsi with the disgusted expression of a man confronted by a two-headed sheep.

His recent travels had familiarized Narsi with this reaction. Still, it was discomforting to be gawked at as if he were freakish beyond imagining. Even rural Cadeleonians living this far north had to have encountered Haldiim—or at least bands of nomadic Irabiim— and they saw one another day in day out. So Narsi didn’t understand why they so often appeared taken aback when laying eyes upon his mixed features. Did they really think it utterly impossible for Cadeleonians and Haldiim to interbreed? Or was such a union so blasphemous that they could not help but stare at the progeny?  

Narsi frowned at the dozens and dozens of Cadeleonians all around him on the street. Eight city guards, dressed in dun-colored uniforms and armed with pikes and swords stood behind him at the city gates. Farmers in their wagons, herders amid their animals, and several herb girls laden with straw baskets of fragrant dill and garlic scapes ambled past him. Narsi took in the uniformity of their stout bodies, pale faces and straight dark hair. It had been at least a week since he’d sighted anyone as dark-skinned or lanky as himself. He didn’t want to admit it, but that absence gnawed at his initial excitement and inspired a sudden feeling of uneasiness.

But he couldn’t let the sheer number of Cadeleonians surrounding him intimidate him. After all, the herb girls here traipsed by, ignoring him just as Haldiim herbsellers would have ignored him back home in Anacleto.

He wondered if three weeks of isolation had lead him to read too much into their dour gazes. There were reasons other than his race that the sight of him might strike someone as disconcerting.

Tall even for a Cadeleonian, his big hands and broad shoulders made the rest of his slim figure appear all the more gangly and adolescent. And he supposed the streaks of gray road dust and crusts of mud had lent a particularly ghastly pallor to his dark skin. Likely, neither the dirt nor sleeping in a bedroll on the roadside for weeks had imbued his normally wild, curling black hair with any sudden semblance of civility either. All and all, he probably looked like he’d stolen his horse, bags and gray coat from a real physician whom he’d throttled in the woods.

Narsi smiled to himself at the absurd thought and the swineherd shot him an even more suspicious glance before hurrying his pigs up the road to the butchers’ square.

“Better to be a traveler he disdains than the piglet he smiles upon and leads to slaughter,” Narsi murmured to himself.

He wondered if the thought was worth putting down in his shabby little diary.

Likely not.

Narsi rinsed his hands and face once more then straightened. What did he care if a pigherder and several of the goose girls now passing him gawked? He’d been summoned to serve Holy Father Timeteo in the Duke of Rauma’s household. Most of these nobodies could only dream of such an honor.

Still, he decided that he might want to settle into his rooms, wash, and change into clean clothes before he attempted to breeze into the haunts of famous authors and dangerous noblemen. He’d just mounted his mare and started down the crowded road when a man in the black and violet robes of a Cadeleonian priest waved to him from the mouth of a smaller lane.

“Berto?” For just a moment Narsi hadn’t recognize his childhood friend. He looked so much more adult and distinctly Cadeleonian now, with his formal robes, short-cropped hair and dapper cap. He’d filled out handsomely. By comparison, Narsi knew he looked like a scarecrow built from twine lashings and willow branches.

“Narsi, Lord bless me! You’ve grown even taller, haven’t you?” Berto’s broad grin briefly transformed his stern face back into the beaming countenance of the twelve-year-old classmate that Narsi remembered from when they’d both lived in the lively Grunito household. Berto lead his glossy, bay mare to Narsi’s side and then grasped Narsi’s shoulders in an embrace. Narsi hugged him back, taking comfort in the welcome after so many cold stares. But the thought of those glares reminded him that he was no longer among the Haldiim. Here in the royal city it would be unwise for a man to display too much happiness in the arms of another—particularly a man such as himself.

 He released Berto and stepped a little back from him.

“You haven’t been waiting here for me, have you?” Narsi asked. He’d had no way to send ahead and inform Father Timeteo of when exactly to expect him and yet it seemed an unlikely piece of luck that Berto should happen by just as he passed through the south gates of the city.

“I certainly haven’t been lingering around the public fountain for the sake of that swineherd,” Berto replied.

“But how did you guess that I’d arrive today?” Narsi asked.

“Father Timeteo asked the duke’s couriers to watch for you on the King’s Road. We’ve been kept abreast of your progress every other day or so.”

So he’d not entirely imagined the attention of other travelers along the road. But how like Father Timeteo to find a way to watch over him even across the miles of mountains and wilderness.

“And here I’d presumed myself traveling alone and unknown across a vast, strange land,” Narsi commented and Berto laughed.

“Has the Holy Father kept well?” Narsi asked.

Berto’s expression sobered.

“His spirit is stronger than ever but his body…” Sorrow showed so plainly upon Berto’s face that it alarmed Narsi. At once he remembered the terrible weeks when he’d nursed the Holy Father through a fever that had nearly wasted him away in Narsi’s arms.

“Has he kept anything down?” Narsi gripped his mare’s reins. There was no time to tarry if Father Timeteo had succumbed to grippe again. “I’ve brought powdered cloudroot but we may need to brew bluedust—”

“No, no. He’s not collapsed again. I wouldn’t be standing here chatting with you if he had, rest assured. No, he’s just been restless lately. Not eating or sleeping as he ought to. Nothing new. ” Berto’s long-suffering expression eased a little. “But he’ll be better once you’re with him. You always know how to convince him to show himself a little kindness.”

“That’s less my doing than my mother’s recipe for velvet soup. I can always tempt him to eat a little more than he thinks he needs.” Narsi tried not to let his pleasure in being capable of moving the Holy Father show. All too often people jumped to the wrong conclusions when they noticed Narsi’s resemblance to the priest. The last thing Narsi wanted was his affection to seem too familial and further burden Father Timeteo with another bout of cruel rumors of some illicit affair with Narsi’s mother.

“So how have you been?” Narsi asked Berto. He noted that his friend’s robe still bore the silver insignia of a scholar—not the violet of a priest—over the breast. He’d not yet taken the final holy vows of obedience and celibacy. “Is life as a scripture scholar and courtier in Cieloalta all you hoped?”

Berto laughed but his expression struck Narsi as bitter.

“I’ll tell you all while we ride.” Berto cast a wary glance back at one of the uniformed city guards, who slowly strolled from the shadow of the city gates towards the public fountain. The guard’s hand rested on his sword hilt and there was something about the man’s surly expression that reminded Narsi of a boy planning to kick a dog.

“Of late, the city guards have not been overly fond of men in priestly colors,” Berto murmured. “If relations between Prince Sevanyo and the Royal Bishop worsen we may well witness warfare in the streets. The bodies of two decapitated priests were found here at the south gate only a week past.”

Narsi glanced again to the city guard. He wore a captain’s epaulettes and glowered at the two of them as he stalked nearer. Narsi and Berto quickly mounted their horses.

Berto led the way down a narrow lane, refreshingly free of cattle, geese and swine. As they rode between carriages and oxcarts, Narsi asked about the degrading relations between Prince Sevanyo and his brother the Roayl Bishop but Berto just shook his head and refused to be drawn out on the subject. Instead, he entertained Narsi with descriptions of the exotic, odd and amusing occurrences in his life since he’d followed Father Timeteo to the Duke of Rauma’s palatial residence.

“I’ve actually met the duke several times now, though the first encounter embarrassed me to the core. I somehow mistook him for one of those good-looking grooms that are so fashionable just now,” Berto said, grimacing. “I handed him my horse’s reins. And then he humored me by actually accepted them! It wasn’t until I decided to tip him for seeming so attentive to my mare that he explained that he didn’t need my pennies as he owned all of Rauma.”

“I have heard that Lord Quemanor is quite strange in his own way,” Narsi commented.

“In many ways,” Berto responded. “But he and his wife have been very welcoming to Father Timeteo and myself.” Berto told him how he’d become acquainted with the duke’s ivory-skinned wife and her Yuanese parrot after driving off a mangy black cat.

“The bird’s wings are clipped so it doesn’t fly well. But just sitting on its perch the parrot makes a magnificent sight. Its plumes are gold and sapphire blue and it calls out a blessing for the king of Cadeleonian every time the noon bells ring. Such a strange creature though I daresay not the rarest to attend the court recently.” Berto smiled at some private joke. Then he went on to describe his single sighting of Count Radulf’s flame-haired sister, who had sailed from the wilds of northern Labara apparently just to horrify the Cadeleonian court with her casual references to her brother’s taste in men and her own prowess as a witch.

Even in the Haldiim district of Anacleto, people rarely spoke so blatantly of attractions or practices that transgressed Cadeleonian holy law—certainly never to Cadeleonians.

“Did the royal bishop have her arrested?” Having just read Lord Vediya’s scandalous memoir recounting his time in Count Radulf’s court, Narsi felt an odd attachment to the count’s young sister. Lord Vediya had brought her to life as proud, vulnerable, and so relentlessly loyal to her brother that Narsi couldn’t help but think protectively of her.

“He’s decried her as a heretic and has dispatched his varlets to throttle her,” Berto replied casually and Narsi supposed it showed how common noble machinations were here in the royal city that the plotted murder of a nineteen-year-old girl didn’t alarm his friend. “But Prince Sevanyo’s fourth son in rumored to have been enchanted—perhaps literally— by the girl and sheltered her from his uncle’s assassins.”

“The royal bishop can’t really be so rash as to order the murder of Count Radulf’s sister, can he?”  Only six years ago Count Radulf had singlehandedly defeated the Mirogoth Witch Queens who had previously fought the entire Cadeleonian army to a standstill. Murdering the man’s little sister seemed a quick route to plunging all Cadeleon into a war they might not win.

“Who truly knows?” Berto shrugged. “Courtiers’ gossip is half exaggeration and half lies. Most of mine is second hand on top of that so for all I really know the royal bishop is up in his chapel tower furiously penning love poems to Hylanya Radulf.”

 Narsi laughed and relaxed. Berto continued to regale him with gossip he’d gleaned from a variety of chatty ladies maids. Narsi enjoyed the stories but didn’t take any of them too seriously now. While Berto recounted the escapades of nobles, Narsi observed the city around him.

The blue facades of the houses and businesses lining the street cast long cool shadows and on the walkways, modestly dressed Cadeleonians greeted one another and conversed. Narsi hadn’t realized how much he’d missed the noise of a city until now. The clatter of carriages and wagons, someone practicing scales on a lute, and countless voices raised in conversation. It soothed Narsi with a feeling of surrounding safety and civilization. Even the sharp tang of urine, sweat, and smoke offered him a sense of familiarity. He was no longer alone in a wilderness.

But even as he took in the cacophony of busy life around him, he also noted how Cieloalta differed from his native Anacleto. Here he faced a uniformity of features, dress and language that would have been impossible to find in the port city. Here he didn’t catch a single word of Haldiim, Mirogoth, Yuaneses or even Labaran. He heard and saw only Cadeleonian. Even the scents drifting from taverns on the summer breeze struck him as odd—devoid of the pungent spices or choking pepper smoke that had so often assailed him in Anacleto. Where were the goat carts filled with vats of strange fermented pickles? Shouldn’t they have already passed several surly broadsheet sellers decrying each other’s publications?

By comparison the royal city struck Narsi as sedate and so perfectly composed that it might have been the world of a painting that he rode through.

But then he reminded himself that only a fool would expect every city he encountered to be the same as the one he’d just left. If that were the case what would be the point of traveling—aside from escaping ones creditors or relations? No, he chided himself, this wasn’t his home, but it was still a stunning, new destination. A city painted in all the blue shades of the sky and sea, and decorated everywhere with flourishes of gold. Even the cobblestones glinted with ochre and yellow flecks.

A woman with her hair tucked into a matronly snood dumped a pitcher of murky water from a second story window, while across the way a little girl gleefully tossed down marigold flowers. Narsi caught one and felt several others fall into the dark curls of his hair. The girl gave a startled squeal and then disappeared from the window.

“Already charming the ladies,” Berto commented dryly.

“It’s a wonder I’m still single,” Narsi replied as he shook several of the golden flowers out of his hair. Before Berto could comment on that, Narsi pressed on to another subject. “I had expected that you and Father Timeteo would have been received into the royal bishop’s retinue by now.”

“Oh, we were invited last fall. Bishop’s robes had already been cut, fitted and embroidered for Father Timeteo.” Berto glanced out to the shining gold spire of a distant towering steeple. He scowled. “But then at supper the royal bishop brought up the revival of Haldiim religious practices in Anacleto. I truly think he expected Father Timeteo to simply agree with his condemnations. Drag them all to the gallows, and such.”

“The royal bishop hadn’t encountered Father Timeteo before then had he?” Narsi met Berto’s gaze and they exchanged a smile of sad understanding.

Father Timeteo practiced brutal self-denial and was truly devout, but he also recognized miracles even when they occurred outside the consecrated halls of Cadeleonian chapels. He readily accepted Haldiim and Mirogoths into his household and collected holy texts regardless of their origins. He’d encouraged Narsi and all of the boys in his charge not to judge others too swiftly or harshly. And he’d even blessed Narsi’s decision to leave the chapel to study Haldiim medicine.

  In his own way Father Timeteo could be as much of a radical as his infamous younger brother, Elezar Grunito. Perhaps more so, since the Holy Father supported his assertions and arguments with scripture that not even the royal bishop could condemn.

“I suspect that the dinner was a test to see if the promise of a bishop’s title would bend Father Timeteo to the royal bishop’s will,” Berto replied. “Thankfully, the Duke of Rauma took us in the very next day.”

“And you immediately mistook him for a groom?” Narsi commented.

“Yes. You have no idea how mortified I felt.” Berto drew his mount to a halt at the top of a hill. He pointed beyond the surrounding squares of neat homes and boisterous businesses, past the two huge stone bridges to vast tracks of ornately planted grounds and what looked to Narsi like dozens of gilded palaces.

“There at the eastern point is the Sagrada Castle and north of it is the duke’s household where we’re bound.”

Narsi had memorized the map of the city that Father Timeteo had sent him two months previously without thinking too much about the difference between the neat little boxes that made up the properties south of the Peraloro River and those sprawling forms that filled the city’s northern grounds. Now looking out from these surroundings of modest houses and seeing acre after acre of rich grounds surrounding sprawling mansions he felt the rigid disparity between the common and noble of Cadeleonian society.

Then a flash from the wide green-gray river caught his attention and he was amazed all over again. There from the middle of the river rose the Shard of Heaven. Four furlongs wide and nearly as long, the bright blue stone rose high above the turbulent waters. Huge seams of shining gold flashed as the afternoon sun caught the angular facets of the stone. Truly it did look as though a piece of blue sky filled with rays of golden sun had fallen from the heavens and turned to stone.  

A bridge arched out from each riverbank as if to lash the Shard of Heaven down. The huge chapel squatting atop it would likely have looked resplendent anywhere else but compared to the effortless grandeur of the stone all those gilded buttresses, statues and spires struck Narsi as garish.

“How rare and wise is that man who recognizes the divine without crushing it beneath pulpits and palisades.” Narsi felt that he understood what Lord Vediya had meant by those words now.

“Tell me, that you aren’t still quoting that poxed whoremonger, Atreau Vediya.” Berto cast him a disappointed glance.

“He’s Lord Vediya, to you,” Narsi corrected, though he felt absurdly pompous the moment the words were out of his mouth.

“Fourth son of a destitute baron and some Labaran trollop.” Berto rolled his eyes. “His nobility runs as deep as my foreskin. Even he doesn’t call himself anything but Atreau.”

Narsi resisted the urge to argue. All of his books were proudly attributed to Lord Atreau Inerio Vediya.

He and Berto agreed on most subjects but Lord Vediya was a glaring exception and had been since the night eleven years prior when they had met the man. Berto blamed Lord Vediya for the pregnancy and departure of a kitchen maid who had often secreted them sweets. Narsi wished that he could have assured Berto that Lord Vediya had not been with the maid that night, but to do so Narsi would have had to reveal how he knew.

That was too dangerous for both himself and Lord Vediya. So, Narsi kept the knowledge to himself along with his vivid memory of Lord Vediya’s warm lips brushing his own—the scent and taste of the other man melding into the swell of distant music and the deep shadows of the dark garden.

“You know that he was nearly exiled for publishing his latest obscene epic?” Berto asked but then he went on. “The bishop’s men-at-arms and the royal city guards joined forces for the first time in probably a generation just to scour the city for every copy of that filthy book and burn them all.”

Again Narsi decided to keep his mouth shut. It would only annoy Berto to know that an entire library of Lord Vediya’s works had been translated and published in the Haldiim district of Anacleto. A copy of the most recently banned tome lay snuggly packed in the top of one of Narsi’s saddlebags at this very moment. Five Hundred Nights in the Court of the Scarlet Wolf, like Lord Vediya’s previous book, In the Company of the Lord of the White Hell, recounted his part as well as the roles of his friends in historic plots and battles. The books were also famed for their detailed and rather extensive erotic passages.

Narsi adored them all the more for those, but wasn’t so foolish as to say so to Berto.

“Atreau keeps company with gamblers, degenerates and Salt Islanders,” Berto grumbled. “And he calls Father Timeteo ‘Tim’ and refuses to attend chapel regularly nor is he often sober when he does appear.”

“He’s still in attendance in the duke’s household then?” Narsi asked, as if he’d not known. As if that didn’t account for half of Narsi’s excitement at the prospect of living in Cieloalta.

“He’s laid claim to a suite of rooms if you can call that attendance.” Berto shook his head. “What good he does the duke I couldn’t say. He’s certainly perverted a number of the pages and servants. And on top of all that he actually gave one of his obscene books to Delfia—”

“Delfia?” Narsi broke in before Berto could work himself up into one of his all-day rants.

“Hadn’t I mentioned her?” Berto’s expression brightened all at once and his voice turned gentle. “She’s the sister of the dance and fencing instructor that the duchess brought to the household to tutor her young son. The instructor is plain as a clod of dirt but his sister …” Berto’s gaze drifted as he seemed to struggle to find a word that could sum up this Delfia. “Well, she’s not young but not too old. Not exactly a beauty. I mean not to just look at. But when she’s speaking and laughing and dancing she’s so alive and vibrant she just lights up a whole room… You’ll understand once you meet her.”

“I look forward to it,” Narsi said and not just to keep Berto from further detailing Lord Vediya’s vices and failings, but because he tended to enjoy the good-humored company of the sorts of women who attracted Berto.

They rode on, descending past the shops belonging to woodcarvers, carpenters and smiths of all kinds. Berto pointed out the craftsman who’d made his silver prayer beads and another who’d created Father Timeteo’s spectacles. Narsi noted the designs of holy gold stars painted over both doors. Other shops displayed the rampant royal stallion, but none bore both symbols together.

As they neared the river, a square opened before them where flower sellers displayed glass cases of exotic botanical specimens as well as pots of native herbs and flowers. A plump auctioneer stoked the crowd to bid wildly on potted saplings, bulbs and embroidered sachets of rare seeds. The perfume of dwarf roses mixed with the scent of the riverbank where fishmongers and barbers plied their trades along the Gado Bridge. Narsi scowled at the sight of a filthy, sweat-soaked man using a pair of ugly iron pliers to wrench a bad tooth from a whimpering young woman’s mouth. Narsi started to rein his mare to a halt to offer a few drops of duera to relieve the poor woman’s obvious agony, but Berto shook his head.

“Best not to come between a barber and his business with Haldiim ways on your very first day in the city,” Berto said. “Save your skill for people who will thank you for it.”

Narsi guessed that Berto knew best, still he couldn’t help but think that the physicians who’d mentored him would not have approved. He had to resist the urge to look back and see if the barber at least rinsed the woman’s mouth with distilled coinflower. Instead he focused on the ships passing below the bridge and the way the afternoon light seemed to gild every building and statue in the surrounding city.

  As they rode through the crowds Narsi stole a brief glance back at the south side of the city. Lord Vediya and his haunts lay somewhere to the east, past the maze of billowing laundry lines and behind boisterous opera houses. Streets there were not safe and by his lordships own account, pickpocketing and mugging was nearly as common as a friendly greeting in other quarters. And yet Narsi yearned to explore the narrow avenues, drink hot, acrid kaweh and once more find the languorous Lord Vediya awaiting him amidst indigo shadows.

“Hungry?” Berto asked. “You look glassy-eyed and half-absent.”

“Sorry,” Narsi replied quickly. “I’m distracted. Too many nights on the road. A meal does sound like a fine thing indeed.”

“Very soon,” Berto promised.

Narsi nodded and forced his attention back to the road ahead. He’d waited eleven years to find Lord Vediya again. Another day wouldn’t kill him. It just fleetingly felt as though it would.

Fine shops filled with rare goods populated the northern bank. Ladies in glossy open carriages passed them as did mounted men dressed in bright silks with liveried youths running along side their stately horses. Armed guards stood watch at gateways and glowered with what Narsi felt was a professional disdain as he and Berto passed.

Narsi’s stomach grumbled as the scent of roasting meat floated to him from behind a high, stone wall.

And still they rode on. Shadows lengthened and the pale crescent of the moon lit the darkening blue of the sky. A figure seemed to break from the cover of the imposing hedges of hawthorn, but when Narsi glanced after the motion he saw no one.

“Here at last,” Berto called his attention to a white pebble drive which lead to a massive black gate. Pots burgeoning with yellow roses lined the drive and perfumed the cool air. On their way up the drive, a courier wearing the royal colors raced passed them and out to the wide streets. Another rider trailed far behind them, looking dour in his orange velvet doublet. Perhaps he resented the heraldry of his ancestors burdening him with colors that lent him an unmistakable resemblance to a ripe pumpkin.

 The two men-at-arms standing guard before the broad archway leading into the courtyard wore gold and green liveries and held deadly looking pikes. But unlike so many others Narsi had seen they smiled as he and Berto drew near. One of the men looked a stout forty and wore a neatly cropped beard, the other seemed neared Narsi’s age of twenty-three and appeared nearly as broad as he was tall. Their high brows and long noses made Narsi think they were father and son.

“Returned home with your catch, have you?” the older of the two men addressed Berto. But he cast a curious glance to Narsi. “Looks a little scrawny.”

“All skin and bone,” Berto replied with a grin. “But when you need a physician you’ll be happy I didn’t throw him back, I promise.”

Oddly, both the guards appeared far more impressed at the mention of his profession than Narsi would have expected. The younger beamed at him as if Narsi had proffered him a chest of Kir-Zaki candies, while the elder of the two glanced at once to the silver signet on Narsi’s left hand.

Berto introduced the elder guard as Usto and the younger as Treses and then he made a sweeping gesture towards Narsi. “This is Narsi Lif-Tahm who studied alongside me under Father Timeteo until he was lured away to a hallowed school of medicine.”

Narsi appreciated how neatly Berto left all accusation out of the story.

“Have you brought many babes into the world, Master Lif-Tahm?” The older guard seemed at pains to pronounce Narsi’s Haldiim name correctly. Narsi decided not to jest and ask if the man was expecting.

“I’ve delivered ten children,” Narsi assured him and then added. “All of them and their mothers are well.”

At this the younger guard, Treses, grasped his hand and, to Narsi’s shock, kissed his physician’s ring. Berto and the older guard looked on with amused expressions.

“My wife, she’s nearing her time we think,” Treses said. “And the previous physician told us that he feared that she would not survive without treatments. But the duke dismissed him before he told us more. Since then we’ve not had another physician in the household for more than a day.”

Narsi had heard rumors of Fedeles Quemaonr’s immense distrust of physicians. People said that he often dismissed one from his service the moment he laid eyes upon him. Once he’d supposedly fired a man even sooner by sending a courier riding directly behind the courier that his wife had dispatched to offer the position. There were so many tales surrounding the duke that it was difficult to know which to believe but this one sounded as if it might be valid. He felt a little relieved that he would be in Father Timeteo’s service and not directly answerable to the duke. Other wise his stay at court might be quite short.

“Is your wife very ill?” Narsi asked. “Has she bled?”

“Not at all. She’s strong, my Lucia, and healthy as a summer rose,” Treses replied. “But the babe has grown and grown more. She fears that if it gets any larger she won’t be able to rise to pass water much less attend to her duties in the scullery.”

Narsi caught himself before he could show a troubled expression and cause the guards further anxiety. The description of relentless growth brought a tumor to mind more than a child but he certainly didn’t want to jump to a conclusion before even seeing the women. Perhaps she was simply much nearer to delivering that the family expected.

“How long has she been carrying the child,” Narsi asked. Hopefully he wouldn’t be assisting a delivery before supper.

“Six months, Lucia is certain.” Usto provided this. “She felt the babe quickening nearly two months ago.”

“It moves a great deal?” Narsi asked. That would certainly allow him to rule out a tumor.

“The babe kicks and rolls about so much that I’ve felt it,” Treses said proudly. “It’s lively as a puppy chasing its tail.”

Narsi nodded but still felt uneasy. Had the previous physician deemed Lucia’s prospective labor dangerous simply because of the size of the growing infant or was there something else? “Once I’ve unpacked and washed I could call on your wife, if you would like?”

“I work most of tonight and Lucia needs her sleep. Perhaps tomorrow morning?” Treses suggested.

“Certainly,” Narsi agreed. Clearly the young guard felt quite protective of his wife. Narsi didn’t hold it against him if he didn’t want her to be alone with a stranger, prodding and poking at her.

Beside him Berto grinned and Narsi realized that he’d been planning this encounter all the time that they’d been riding. It was so like Berto to become more attached to the maids, guardsmen and servants who made up a noble household than to the lords and ladies who sponsored him. Narsi adored that about him and felt hopeful that he too could befriend these people instead of feeling like a foreigner in their midst.

He and Berto both dismounted though Usto still had a few more words to share with Berto, mostly involving the royal courier who’d only just departed. Berto and the guards speculated that at last the royal bishop had decided to allow his father, the king, to pass into holy immortality and thus make way for Prince Sevanyo’s coronation. The importance of that just registered in Narsi’s mind when he glanced to the dark figure leading a grey horse out from the courtyard.

His heart instantly began to pound in his chest as he recognized Lord Vediya strolling towards them. He was not as Narsi remembered and yet Narsi knew him without a doubt even through the twilight gloaming and fluttering shadows of messenger doves winging back to their roosts.

He remained just as tall as Narsi remembered but over the years his slender body had filled into the solid bulk of a grown man. His pale skin had tanned and freckled, and his once soot-black long hair now appeared streaked as wood grain from sun and weather. His rumpled, loose clothes conveyed nonchalance bordering upon sloppiness, but his expression was bright and alert. He smiled as he drew near their party and Narsi couldn’t keep himself from smiling back, though no sign of recognition lit Lord Vediya’s countenance.  

Closer up, Narsi could see that a decade of travel, war, and debauchery had carved the lines of those experiences into the handsome planes of Lord Vediya’s face. He looked older than his thirty years. Wrinkles edged his eyes and mouth, but to Narsi they seemed to convey character. A deep crease clearly marked his habit of arching one brow, while another etched the curve of his crooked smile.

Berto glanced up just as Lord Vediya drew alongside them. His condemning glower provoked a lewd grin from Lord Vediya then he lazily traced the sign of the holy star over his silver belt buckle. Narsi didn’t laugh but Berto’s incensed expression didn’t make it easy. The two guards simply nodded to Lord Vediya, neither of them bothering to acknowledge his rank with even a half-bow. For his part Lord Vediya appeared utterly unconcerned with any of them.

He narrowed his eyes, focusing on something in the distance, or perhaps simply in contemplation of his evening’s journey. His hand gripped his mount’s rein. In a moment he’d ride away, just as he had eleven years earlier. And Narsi would be left behind because he lacked the courage to simply speak his mind.

Narsi’s pulse raced and his hands felt clammy. Berto was going to be so disappointed in him, but he had to act, had to say something.

“Lord Vediya,” Narsi called and to his relief the other man stopped.

Narsi quickly dug into his saddlebag and drew out the book he’d poured over throughout his travels. Flowing Haldiim script curled in an elegant arch over scarlet wolf’s head design stamped into the leather cover.

Narsi didn’t look to see Berto’s expression or those of the guards. He rushed five paces to Lord Vediya’s side and held out the book.

“I’ve been reading your memoir and very much enjoyed the writing—I felt almost as if I was there with you when the Demon Lord awoke. The way you captured the chill and darkness of the city as that gigantic, fiery serpent rose up over the rooftops—it was beautiful and terrible all at once…” Even as the breathless words rushed out of him, Narsi felt like an utter fool. He hadn’t sounded this flustered and ebullient as an awestruck twelve-year-old. “I was hoping that you would do me the honor of signing the book for me.”

He had no doubt that behind him Berto was rolling his eyes in embarrassment, but Lord Vediya took the book.

“I’d not seen the Haldiim translation yet. It looks beautifully made.” He studied the cover for a moment then glanced to Narsi. “Have you a graphite stylus?”

“Yes. Of course!” Narsi silently cursed himself for not thinking of that before requesting to have the book signed. He quickly rifled through his saddlebag for one of the soft silver-gray styluses. He felt incredibly aware of everyone—possibly even the horses—watching his search. The bags weren’t huge and yet if felt as if hours passed while he felt around medicinal jars and reams of notes and maps. He heard another rider approaching as he at last found the stubby little remnant of a stylus and returned with it to Lord Vediya’s side. Out of the corner of his eye Narsi recognized the orange velvet doublet of the man he’d dubbed the Dour Pumpkin. He appeared to be on his way towards them. Armor clattered as the guards behind them straightened, but Lord Vediya didn’t seem to notice the approaching rider or his roan stallion.

“You’re a physician I take it?” Lord Vediya asked Narsi.

“Yes. Master Physician Narsi Lif-Tahm,” Narsi supplied hoping that his name might rouse some memory for Lord Vediya. It did not seem to.

“Have you much experience treating men kicked by horses?” Lord Vediya asked.

“Some,” Narsi wondered if the lord had suffered such an injury. He appeared at ease in his motions. Before Narsi could inquire, the man in the orange doublet swung down from his stallion and drew his sword. Instinctively, Narsi stepped back. Lord Vediya remained where he stood, but let his horse’s reins fall from his hand. His gray stallion trotted ahead but only as far as display of yellow potted roses.

“Atreau, you filthy shit!” The man in orange strode past the potted flowers and gray stallion intent upon Lord Vediya. “You will return my fiancé at once or I will kill you right here!”

  Narsi glanced back at the guards as they started forward, but then Lord Vediya waved them back. He smiled crookedly at the furious man in orange. Narsi thought he heard Berto call him but he couldn’t just abandon Lord Vediya, not when he hadn’t even drawn his own sword. Instead he simply held Narsi’s book in one hand and shook his head at the man stalking up to him.

“Suelita is not yours, Ladislo,” Lord Vediya replied. “No more than she is mine to take or give.”

Ladislo responded with a sweep of his sword, which Lord Vediya eluded with a quick step. Narsi’s hand went instantly to his hunting knife. He would not simply stand by and see Lord Vediya murdered. To his shock he felt a hand grip his arm and jerk him back. He spun to see Berto holding him.

“This isn’t a matter you want to become entangled in, Narsi,” Berto whispered to him.

“He’s going to kill Lord Vediya!”

“Trust me that degenerate can look after himself—” The rest of Berto’s words broke off as Narsi elbowed him hard and jerked free of his hold.

As he did so, Lord Vediya let loose with a piercing whistle. Suddenly his stallion slammed one it its hind legs into Ladislo and sent him sprawling across the pebbled drive. Then Lord Vediya sprang forward and easily launched himself into his saddle. An instant later he and his stallion were gone from sight. For a moment Narsi simply stood feeling stunned and staring at the haze of dust that drifted over the drive in Lord Vediya’s absence. Then his attention snapped immediately to where Ladislo lay sprawled on the ground. Obviously Lord Vediya inquiring about his experience in tending horse kicks had not been mere chance.

Narsi stepped over Ladislo’s fallen sword and knelt down beside him. Ladislo swore and wept at the same time, his face flushed nearly as red as the bleeding scrapes along the side of his head. At least one of his ribs was likely broken, Narsi guessed.

“I’ll bring you duera for the pain and then we can get you inside and tend to your—”

“Burn in the Black Hell you Haldiim whore!” Ladislo lashed out to strike Narsi across the face. Narsi caught his hand and Ladislo screamed, “Don’t touch me, you heathen shit!”

Narsi released the man’s hand and stood. Cursing and spitting blood from his split lip, Ladislo staggered up to his feet and then stumbled to his horse. After two attempts he managed to climb into his saddle. Then he rode away, leaving his sword behind.

“I told you that Atreau could manage for himself,” Berto said.

“You knew he’d do that?” Narsi asked.

Berto looked annoyed but both the guardsmen laughed. Usto strode to them and took up the fallen sword.

“Young Lord Bayezar is far from the first man to assume Atreau Vediya can be so easily pinned down by waving a blade about,” Usto said. “But that was good of you coming to the aid of a fellow of our household, Master Lif-Tahm.”

Narsi nodded, still feeling a little stunned. He’d only been in Lord Vediya’s presence for minutes before the man had yet again ridden away. Belatedly Narsi realized that Lord Vediya had taken his book with him.

Lord of the White Hell Fan Art Contest

My publisher, Blind Eye Books is holding a Lord of the White Hell fan art contest. Send them your pics of Kiram, Javier and the gang for a chance to win a $50 amazon.com gift certificate.

Long Past & Other Stories

At last the Long Past & Other Stories is available for preorder and will be coming out October 3rd. 

I'm excited and nervous to find out what folks will think of my take on an more diverse, weird west filled with dinosaurs, magic and steampunk technology. 

Grover & Betty from the title story on the trail with a mysterious mage.

What's in the Bag for October?

I adore this month, not only are the leaves changing and the winter squash coloring up to ripeness but there's my favorite holiday--Halloween, when strangers open their doors to seeming monsters and share treats, sweetness and laughter with them.

This month I have extra reason to be excited. Not only am I going to be at Gaylaxicon but Swift and the Black Dog has come out as a stand alone publication and Maze-Born Trouble is now available for pre-order.

My cauldron runneth over!

Ride that dinosaur!

With Magic and Mayhem now released, the first of my weird west stories is out in the world and I hope it's finding readers to entertain and delight.

I really enjoyed making up an alternate old west full of magic, machinery and dinosaurs; the setting inspired three novellas:The Long Past, Get Lucky and The Hollow History of Professor Perfectus.

 And I'm happy to say that all three have now found publishers! (Contracts have been signed and edits are underway, so I'll have release dates very soon.) Secretly I'm just excited to see a cover illustration, depicting the world I've spent a year researching and writhing about.

Though maybe not the horror of a giant sauropod throwing up... at least not on the front cover.

Basawar Holiday

John bounded over a mossy boulder, sending florescent green dragonflies scattering into the reeds at the creek’s edge. The chorus of gold-speckled frogs mating among orchids and irises quieted for only a moment and then returned to the trills and croaks of their courting songs. Softer rumbles echoed through the low-hanging branches of yellow blossoms as a troop of blue tree kangaroos passed overhead.

John paused to watch a bright blue joey stuff its nose into a cluster of scarlet blossoms and then yelp as the flowers burst apart in a flurry of annoyed hummingbirds.

Very rarely did John remember, much less miss, his old digital camera, but just now he would have loved to take a picture to share with Kyle. The wide-eyed expression of amazement on that fuzzy blue face cracked him up. An instant later, the young kangaroo skittered back into its mother’s pouch. John resettled the weight of his pack and continued down toward the camp.

Minutes later, he reached the circle of tents that overlooked the beach where their ship lay anchored. Most of the crew had come ashore to restock their fresh water as well as take in the astounding bounty of these lush tropical islands. A few of the crew stood guard, with their rifles at the ready, though so far the largest predators discovered were sleek olive green weasels. None weighed more than twenty pounds, but they hunted in aggressive packs and were fearless about raiding food from unattended supply tents.

Today, however, the local weasel pack napped under a stand of tree ferns looking fat and sated from their previous night’s hunt. Two of the more boisterous juveniles wrestled in the dappled sunlight, tossing up tufts of curly moss, while the adults stretched and snored. Their ears pricked up as John passed, but they’d already grown comfortable enough to largely ignore his presence.

He left his pack and its treasure of soil samples and seeds in his tent. Then he picked up the cleanest of his shirts and made a quick run to a small waterfall that trickled down from a steep cliff into the clear blue waters of the bay. He stripped, rinsing the dirt and sweat from his body. The fresh water felt chilly after so many hours in the sun, but John took a delight in absurd shock.

Neither hungry bones nor prowling sharks had shaken him, and yet here he stood, shivering, in a stream of merely cool water. Ludicrous.

 Still, he made quick work of the wash and then clambered up onto the sun-baked surface of a limestone outcropping to dry and warm himself. He closed his eyes and stretched, feeling nearly as lazy and relaxed as the sated green weasels.

The cool whisper of the Gray Space opening didn’t alarm him. Though, he did casually pull his discarded trousers over his naked crotch—just on the off chance that it was Pesha and not Kyle stepping out onto the stone beside him.

“Such modesty on my account,” Kyle remarked with a laugh. “Or are you defending your virtue?”

John looked up at Kyle’s striking figure. The long, tightly tailored coats and trousers now fashionable in Nurjima displayed his lean body handsomely. The scarf wrapped around his neck looked nearly as white as the snow that sprinkled his dark hair and scarlet coat.

“It’s snowing in Nurjima already?” John asked.

Kyle nodded and knelt down beside him.

“It’s the twenty-fifth day of the Snow Month.” Kyle set down a heavy leather satchel and then tossed aside his scarf, coat, and brocade vest. “Not that anyone would believe it here in the tropics.”

They did tend to lose track of days while exploring the islands. There was just so much to see—not just wilderness but ruins as well—and the shift of equatorial seasons seemed so subtle compared to the hot summers and cold winters of the north.

“Did you even notice how long I was gone?” Kyle asked.

“Ten days. You know for a fact that I was counting every one of them.” John sat up and caught Kyle’s hands. 

He stripped Kyle’s leather gloves off—the sight of the bare bone of his ring finger still arrested John but no longer shocked him—and he laid Kyle’s chilled palms across his own hot chest. “Tell me you don’t have to go back.”

Kyle caressed John but then drew away to pull his padded glove back on over his left hand. There were too many people wandering the beach and cliffs for Kyle to feel comfortable being so exposed. John understood that and so let it go. It was enough that Kyle knew that he wasn’t repulsed.

 “Saimura’s decided to go ahead and share some of Ji’s spells with the Domu’lam, so I don’t think they’ll need me back for negotiations. Oh, and Hann’yu invited us both to attend the wedding of his youngest daughter this coming fall. Nothing more pressing than that, so it seems that I’ll get to sail back with you.” 

“You look tired.”

Kyle shrugged and then pushed his battered satchel up against John’s naked thigh. The chill of the Gray Space still clung to the leather and the silver clasps felt almost frozen as John worked them open.

John lifted out an ancient tome and recognized it as the book he’d asked Kyle to translate for him what seemed like ages ago. A red ribbon bound it up like a gift, and as John turned it over, he noticed a piece of thick paper folded like a card and slipped under the ribbon.

“I know it took me long enough, but it’s done at last,” Kyle said.

John took the card and opened it. He recognized Kyle’s handwriting at once, though he almost never saw Nayeshi script anymore.

John, Happy Christmas.

And suddenly he remembered that he’d seen these exact words, in this exact script, once before but long, long ago.

##

At sixteen John already stood four inches taller than his father and could look both his older brothers directly in the eyes—not that he often did. He tended to keep his head down and his awkwardly knobby body slouched beneath shapeless layers of sweatshirts and coats.

But tonight he scratched at the tight, starched collar of the white dress shirt and scowled down at his black tie. Frost covered the surface of his window, but he continued to lean out into the cold December air. Snow blanketed the surrounding houses and drifted down from the dark sky. After a moment, he worked the tie off and considered throwing it out the second story window into the wild wind. His mother would be disappointed, he knew. He tossed the tie back onto his desk, then continued to gaze out at flakes of snow whirling haplessly on the twisting wind.

He’d done his best to look grateful when he’d unwrapped the gift box and seen that his mother had purchased yet another cheap shirt and tie set for his Christmas present. Between the poor fit of the shirt, his ugly buzz cut, and hand-me-down slacks, John felt certain he exuded all the sex appeal of a missionary with head lice.

Not that he wanted to be sexy, exactly, but it would have been nice if just once David Lewis—who had kissed him in third grade—even noticed him as they passed in the hall. Though, it would have been even nicer if Andrew Salazar didn’t notice him. 

John had already been suspended for fighting with Andrew before the Christmas break. His black eye matched the tie his mother had given him, though, given time, the bruises would fade. 

And John supposed he could take consolation in the fact that Andrew was probably having a worse holiday than him. After all, Andrew wasn’t going to get his teeth back.

John sighed. He was just feeling lonely and sorry for himself when really he knew he was lucky to have a family who gave him gifts—even if they didn’t suit him.

They meant well. Even now he remembered his pale, willowy mother’s hopeful expression.

“You’ll look so nice at Midnight Mass,” she’d assured him, though she’d frowned when her gaze had settled on his left eye. His father, seated in his favorite chair like a crew-cut Conan on his throne while the rest of them gathered around the tree, gave a derisive snort.

“Dress him up all you like, Anna, he still looks like a hoodlum with that face. Mark my word, Father Castello will be watching him like a hawk when the collection plate passes his way.” 

“Thanks, Mom.” John ignored his father and then picked up his other present.

It bore a tag claiming that it came from his father, but John knew that their mother did most of the holiday shopping. He also knew that the box wasn’t going to contain either of the items on his wish list. He felt like a spoiled brat for the disappointment that filled him even before he tore into the candy cane wrapping paper. He opened the box and then just stared at the glossy black leather of the Mizuno Global Elite baseball glove inside.

“You didn’t actually buy him those stupid books, did you?” His sister Mary craned her head to peer at him from the other side of the flocked and blinking tree. She, like John and Luke, strongly resembled their father. Neither her pink lipstick, fuzzy sweater, nor her long blond curls quite softened the masculine quality of her big-boned frame and angular face.     

“Don’t be silly,” their mother replied with a smile. She winked at John as if the botanical books he’d requested had been some kind of practical joke. “Father got you all something fun.”

“So what’d you get?” This time the question had come from his eldest brother, Luke, who was in his second year of college and just daring to wear his hair a little long. Their father had teased him about turning into a ‘damn hippie’, but John thought the look suited him. Paul, the baby of the family, now gazed thoughtfully at Luke’s hair while mouthing the caboose of his new toy train.    

Mark, who was only two years older than John, simply grabbed the box from his hands.

“Holy—” Mark just caught himself before he’d uttered an obscenity in front of their parents. He pulled the baseball glove out and then craned his head back to their father. “What did John do to deserve something like this?”

“It’s just a baseball glove.” Mary and their mother had exchanged a dismayed glance.

“This is a Mizuno. It’s the glove Ichiro uses!” Mark announced. “They cost, like, three hundred bucks or more.”

The room went very quiet. From the radio in the kitchen, Bing Crosby assured them that they were walking in a winter wonderland.

“Three hundred dollars?” John’s mother stared at her husband as if he’d gone out of his mind and John shared her sentiment. 

He played baseball, but not with any great talent or real enthusiasm. Unlike both of his older brothers, he wasn’t going to win any sports scholarships. His real passion lay in the sciences, botany in particular. Though his father didn’t seem quite able to remember that, no matter how often John, or his science instructors, mentioned it. It was almost as if his father couldn’t accept John loving something he didn’t understand.

John frowned down at his empty hands. If choosing botany over baseball was too much for the old man, John felt certain that he’d go apeshit if he ever discovered how far John had strayed in his other preferences. 

“Keep your panties on, Anna. I didn’t pay three hundred bucks. I bought it off of Lester after he got back from duty in Japan.” John’s father turned his cold gaze onto Mark. “Give your brother his gift back.”

“Yes, sir,” Mark replied automatically and then he hurled the glove. John caught it hard against his chest.

Great, now he and Mark had something new to fight over.

Fortunately, their father had picked up two Mizunos, and upon discovering his own, Mark’s resentment dissipated. The rest of the Christmas Eve gift exchange passed without incident. Luke graciously accepted his shirt and tie set as well as a pair of high-end cleats. Mary smiled grimly at the relationship book that their mother had picked out for her but seemed genuinely delighted when she saw that John had bought her the Natalie Grant album she’d recently added to her extensive Christian music wish list. 

Though he wanted to kick himself when he realized that now they were all going to have to listen to it. Even their mother, who never missed a Sunday service, looked less than thrilled as yet another insipid song of faith filled the tidy living room. After the CD ended, their mother turned the radio back on, renewing the tinny soundtrack of Christmas classics.

Everyone but Paul and Father helped in the kitchen. It was Father’s prerogative to relax with a tumbler of scotch whiskey in the living room while Paul lay at his feet, shepherding his train between his father’s polished shoes.  In the kitchen, Luke served as their mother’s human mixer, whipping and stirring anything handed to him, while Mary took full charge of recreating their great-grandmother’s traditional whiskey cake from the recipe that their mother had entrusted to her just this year.

“When you boys get married,” their mother said, “I’ll teach your wives my granny’s secret.”

“Bad luck, John,” Mark commented.

Luke reached out and offhandedly smacked the back of Mark’s head.

“What’d I do?” Mark demanded.

“I don’t know,” Luke replied. “Failed to evolve, maybe?”

John snickered over his heap of potato peels and Mark rolled his eyes.

“Nobody evolved,” Mary announced as she very carefully measured out cups of flour and raisins. “Evolution is a lie that atheists have used to weaken the faith.”

“Whoa, who failed biology?” Mark responded.

“Evolution is not a lie,” John stated. 

At the same moment Luke asked, “Have you lost your mind, Mary?”

It was a rare occasion when Luke, Mark, and John all agreed, but their mother obviously didn’t appreciate that their consensus was against their sister.

“Don’t you boys bully Mary. She has every right to hold her own opinions.”

“But evolution isn’t a matter of mere opinion—” John began.

“John.” His mother eyed him sternly. “We’re not going to spend Christmas arguing.  Leave your sister alone.” 

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mary stuck her tongue out at John over their mother’s shoulder, but John let it go. He bowed his head and kept his mouth shut. 

Once his uncles and aunts and cousins began pouring into the house, John went largely unnoticed. He became just one among the jumble of lanky blond boys and girls filling the seats at the dinner table and then later filling the church pew. After Midnight Mass, he slunk up to his attic bedroom and leaned out the small window to stare at the deadening uniformity of all the snow-cloaked houses surrounding theirs.

He wasn’t like the rest of them. And it wouldn’t have mattered so much, if he could have believed that his family could value his difference—or at least tolerate it. But where he’d gone ahead and bought his sister the album she’d wanted, despite the fact that he despised it, no one in his family seemed to even believe that John valued the books he’d requested. Instead, they’d chosen gifts that suited the boy they wanted him to be, not who he was.

John reached out and caught a drifting snowflake in his hand. It gleamed in glow of his bedroom light and then melted against his palm. 

He felt suddenly petty for sulking about a few presents. He didn’t get what he wanted. It wasn’t the end of the world.

An icy chill seemed to whisper across John. His father would hit the roof if he knew John had the window open in the middle of December. John drew back from the sill and pulled the window closed.

Unbuttoning his dress shirt, he turned, and for the first time, noticed a tattered brown paper package laying on his desk beside his discarded black tie. The paper felt surprisingly cold as John picked it up and opened the folded card. It took him a moment to read the oddly angular script.

John, Happy Christmas.

He tore open the brown paper and found a battered copy of Botanical Morphology inside. He lifted the heavy volume to his chest, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. He had no idea who’d left the gift up in his room, but he felt utterly indebted and thankful. Not just for the book, but because someone—maybe a cousin, uncle, or aunt—valued his oddness enough to track the old book down and give it to him.

It had been very little and yet that one gift had inspired John with a kind of hope. Someday, somewhere, he would find people who would know him and value him.

##

Now, basking in the tropical sun of another world, John caught Kyle in his arms and pulled him into a deep kiss. Kyle’s cool hands stroked John’s sun-baked bare skin. He returned John’s kiss with hunger and smiled when they briefly broke apart.

“Thank you,” John said.

“If I’d known it would make you this happy, I would have finished translating the dreary thing sooner.” Kyle’s playful smile broadened into a grin.

“Not just for the book,” John told him. “For everything.”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Jason's Sidecar

Jason’s Sidecar

by Ginn Hale

Jason frowned at himself in the mirror, yanking the uncomfortable noose of his tie in an attempt to get the thing straight. Somehow every adjustment he made only worsened the situation. Also it suddenly struck him that instead of recreating the stylishly ruffled look his hairdresser had managed with a single drop of gel, Jason had transformed the mop of his thick brown hair into something suggesting a bird’s nest in the aftermath of a hurricane.

And for that matter, did his black shoes really go with the russet suit he’d chosen?

His cat, Princess sauntered over, swiping her long red body across his pant legs and depositing a fine coat of shed hair before bounding up to her regular bird-watching perch on his widow sill. Jason wasn’t certain if she was having fun at his expense or was just trying to be encouraging in her own way. Meeting her approving gaze he decided to believe the latter.

“Thanks,” Jason told her. “It does add a dash of color and domesticity to the look.”

He heard Henry’s soft laughter from behind him.  

Then he caught sight of Henry’s reflection in the mirror and felt his hand clench harder on his already mangled tie. He’d always found Henry striking, but washed, shaved and dressed in a sharp suit he looked like another man altogether—like one of those polished, assured heroes from a spy film—tall, tan and rugged in a way that made Jason’s mouth go dry.

How could he go from a scruffy Philip Marlowe to a blond James Bond in twenty minutes?

“Are you trying to strangle yourself to get out of this?” Henry asked as he met his gaze in the mirror. “Because we could save your life and just cancel—”

“No. I want to go,” Jason assured him. And he did, but there was just so much uncertainty in meeting these people who he wanted so badly to like him. “I just can’t get this tie—”

“Well, the first step would be to stop choking yourself with it. Here, let me.” Henry pulled the length of gold silk from Jason’s hands.

“Windsor or Pratt?” Henry asked and for a moment Jason thought he was speaking in another language, but then he remembered all those diagrams he’d been studying online.

“I was trying for a full Windsor.”

“The knot of kings, huh?” With the nonchalance of decades of practice Henry effortlessly retied the Windsor knot and then straightened the collar of Jason’s shirt. There was something so comforting about meeting Henry’s eyes—seeing the affection in his gaze—and feeling his large, sure hands brushing so gently over the tender skin of his throat and then briefly caressing the short hair at the back of his neck.

“Nervous?” Henry asked.

“Yeah,” Jason admitted at last. “A little.”

“Look, you know that you don’t have to introduce me to them.” Henry said. “I’m not going to be offended if you go solo—”

“No, that’s exactly what I don’t want,” Jason said quickly. “The last thing I need is to be all alone with them. I barely know most of their names. The only one I’ve ever met in person is Bubbie Tillie, and that was one of the most awkward conversations I’ve ever had.”

Jason had been so excited, after months and months of searching to at last locate on of his father’s a living relatives. At the time he hadn’t thought that there might have been a reason his grandmother hadn’t been involved in his childhood. Nor had he considered how having him standing in front of her might remind her of how badly she and her son had parted ways and how brutally he’d been murdered ten years later.

Still she’d been kind enough to invite him to join the family’s Hanukah gathering. And when he’d risen from her kitchen table, and thanked her for the tea, she’d stood as well and then hesitantly reached out and hugged him to her frail body. Jason had returned her embrace gingerly as if she were a fragile piece of bone china, rather than a living person. 

Even now, he experienced a twinge of guilt, remembering his thoughts. Because he knew he was comparing her unfairly to an ideal grandmother—some woman who probably never existed outside of commercials for cookie dough and schmaltzy holiday films but who had come to represent his only knowledge of what extended family meant.

Or maybe he was thinking of Gunther’s mother, Mrs. Heartman, who, despite her terrifying appearance had clasped him to her bony breast like a beloved teddy bear and almost spun him off his feet when she’d welcomed him and Henry to their Summer Solstice celebration.

“Henry’s said so much about you,” Mrs. Heartman had told him and then laughed, the blood red slits of her eyes crinkling into crescents. “Your really gave those Sidhe royalists a well needed kick in the teeth, didn’t you?”

After that it had been easy to mingle and joke with the odd and alien beings who attended the gathering. Gunther and Keith had flown back from DC for the occasion and Jason spent some time chatting with Gunther’s tattooed, surly lover. Jason found him charming in the way he spoke so off handedly of Gunther, while watching his back like a love-struck teenager. Jason almost thought he could see little white hearts puffing off of the man and drifting after Gunther, but then he’d realized it was just steam rising from the vegetable grill that the Keith worked over.

  After the night of barbeque, fireworks and many cups of goblin cider had ended, Mr. and Mrs. Heartman had told Jason that he was welcome in their home. Bleary and tired as he’d been, he’d felt so thankful for their acceptance that it embarrassed him.

When he’d met his biological mother for the first time she’d looked at him with the perfect calm of beautifully carved marble and informed him that she would have devoured him at birth if she’d had her way. His biological father had murdered and tortured countless men and women in his quest to capture and gut Jason. He’d died trying. No love lost there. 

But Bubbie Tillie’s estranged son—Levi—had raised Jason and showered him with the wit and affection that he’d needed to survive later foster homes and psychiatric hospitals.

Jason didn’t know if he was just deluding himself, but it felt important to him to reach out to his father’s relations, to try to find what he could of a family. At least that had been his thought when he’d hired the detective who had eventually tracked the Shamir clan down in Los Angeles. But now the reality of this gathering began to terrify him. They didn’t know him—they probably didn’t want to know him. Fear of rejection welled up in Jason, feeling as inescapable as the sorcerous Stone of Fal, buried in his bones.

 They’re going to hate me.

Henry studied him, his blue eyes shining like gas flames.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Henry said. Jason couldn’t quite meet his gaze. “And I won’t be offended if you want this just to be you and your family—”

“No! I can’t—I really want you there with me.”    

“Sure but aren’t the new relations going to find it a little…queer?” Henry raised his blond brows.

“No... I mean, I don’t think so. Bubbie Tillie said that it would be fine if I brought along a friend.” Jason scowled at himself in the mirror. “Do you mind?”

“Always happy to oblige,” Henry replied and they both knew that he was humoring Jason.

“Thank you,” Jason told him. “I really wouldn’t have asked except that you always seem to know how to be yourself and still talk to normal people. And I… I really don’t.”

“Okay, okay I’ll be your conversational wingman. But honestly, Jason, you’ll do fine. You’re smart, good looking, and rich, who wouldn’t want you for a relation?”

“My birth parents come springing to mind, just off the bat—”

Henry grabbed him and shut him up with a hard, insistent kiss. The earthy taste and rough feel of him made Jason’s mouth almost water from wanting more of him. He invaded and invited Jason’s excited responses with confidence. Jason ran his hands over Henry’s solid body instinctively searching for the heat of his naked skin.  He found the buckle of Henry’s belt.

But then Henry pulled back, looking flushed and breathless.

 “You’re not going anywhere tonight, if we keep this up.” Henry’s right hand still rested on Jason’s hip.

“You started it.”

“Yeah well…” Henry ran his scarred hand through his blonde hair disheveling a few very gold strands and then gave Jason a crooked smile. “It was supposed to be reassuring. Calm you down a little.”

“Seriously?” Jason laughed at the idea of that hot, demanding kiss calming anyone down.

Henry shrugged and Jason understood. He’d been willing to distract Jason, even take the blame for keeping him in bed the entire evening if that was what Jason really needed. And he might just need it—but not until after he’d faced what faint hope he had with the remains of his father’s family.  

Jason drew in a deep breath building a calming blue melody in his mind—the chill of ice and mint filled his lungs while a lattice of cerulean blue dew formed a radiant halo over his head—then he released both spell and breath to wash the tension and arousal from his flesh.

“Wow, minty fresh.” Henry gave a short laugh. “I guess that means we’re off to eat latkes, then.”

Jason nodded, snatched up his coat, then at the last minute decided to wear his glasses as well. The evening was already going to be awkward, the last thing he needed was to get caught gawking at some gape-faced vampire or shimmering fairy that happened to be strolling past Bubbie Tillie’s wide windows.

##

 What Jason hadn’t counted on was that the unearthly creature he needed to stop staring at would be at the dinner party, crouching on the cream carpet wearing only a rhinestone-studded collar and leash. The scrawny brownie sported a little crest of curling pink hair on the top of his head as well as matching nail polish on his fingers and toes.  Though by studying the creature directly through the enchanted lenses of his glasses Jason was able to see what everyone else in the room saw—a snaggletoothed, knee-high mutt that looked like a cross between a Chinese-crested Chihuahua and a battered brown shoe. It had been recently taken to a groomer—thus the dyed pink hair and painted nails. Even from across the room, and disguised by some spell Jason could see that the thing looked miserable.

According to Bubbie Tillie, the creature had been abandoned to the care of Jason’s pretty thirty-something cousin, Sarah, after its previous owner had died Jason had heard the story earlier but hadn’t really registered it amid the flurry of introductions to his aunt, uncles, their wives, his five cousins, their spouses and dates as well as a herd of nieces and nephews— every one of whom looked more comfortable in their upwardly-mobile ensembles than Jason felt with this designer tie around his neck.

They gathered in the spacious, ivory, gold and beige living room, while a maid prepared the dining room for their meal. An elegantly dressed brunette in her fifties, poured drinks and from her amused expression and eclectic offerings Jason guessed that she was bartending for the challenge of it more than anything else.

The Shamir clan made for a large and intimidating crowd, counting no less than four doctors—two of them surgeons—three lawyers, two nurses, an architect, a professor of theology and a psychiatrist among them. The men, all of them shorter than Jason and most older, affected hard, white smiles as they circled Jason and shook his hand with mechanically firm grips. 

Stealing a glance over his shoulder, Jason noted the touch of amusement in Henry’s expression as he, too, received their polished, professional greetings. Though most of them faltered slightly when they noted his missing finger. Jason overheard one of the lawyers inquire about the injury. Henry informed him gravely that he’d lost the digit in an egg-rolling accident.

Most of the women air kissed Jason’s cheeks, enveloping him in the alien scents of cosmetics and floral perfumes, and then exclaimed at how delighted they were that he’d gotten in touch with Bubbie Tillie after all this time. But it wasn’t delight that Jason read in their beautifully made-up faces; it was suspicion. He could see them searching his angular Sihde features and bronze skin for any resemblance of their own pale, soft, human heritage and finding none.

And he supposed they had every right to distrust a young man who appeared seemingly from nowhere, claiming to be a long-lost relation. In the month since he’d contacted Bubbie Tillie he had no doubt that several of her children had hired detectives of their own to have him and his claims investigated.

He wondered if they’d flipped through pictures of him with his arms wrapped around Henry, attempting to steal sly kisses. Did they already know he studied music at Berkley or that he often strolled the park in the company of a vivid red cat? Undoubtedly they’d uncovered records of his years bouncing between foster homes and psychiatric hospitals. With that many medical specialists in one family they would have the resources and connections to obtain his files, he had no doubt. Half of them probably thought he was crazy.

Or maybe worse.

 Tillie Shamir was not a poor woman, and playing a long lost grandson wasn’t unheard of as a con game.

It was with those thoughts rolling through his mind, as well as a feeling of sudden nostalgia as he took in the large menorah waiting on a console table next to the window, that Jason caught his cousin Sarah’s explanation for the plastic dog kennel that she lugged into the house.

“I couldn’t leave him alone. Last night I came home and he’d nearly chewed through the back door.” Sarah slid the kennel between to beige armchairs. “I have no idea what I’m going to do with him.”

“Just take it to the pound.” That response came from the eldest uncle, Dr. David Shamir, just before he turned to ask Henry if he attended Berkley along with Jason.

“Doubt they’d admit me,” Henry had responded with a grin and then added. “I work for NATO—mostly in the field but I’m on holiday right now.”

It turned out to be the doctor’s wife, Ellen, who enjoyed concocting cocktails.  She handed Henry something called a vesper and bestowed a sidecar upon Jason. He cradled his glass in his palm, too nervous to trust himself to drink. All around him pieces of conversation rose and fell. Investments advice, entertainment commentary, gripes and punch lines, washed over Jason, disjointed from their meaning and filling the air like the bright colors of birdcalls.

Two of Jason’s young nieces careened past the long ivory couch, the skirts of their pastel dresses trailing them like tracers, while a slightly older nephew played at chasing them. Jason preformed a series of dance steps to avoid both the girls and their giggling pursuer. He made his way between clots of his unfamiliar relatives to reach Bubbie Tillie.

She smiled a little warily—and he realized that she’d grown more uncertain of him since they’d last spoken. He presented her with the box of chocolates he’d spent the last three weeks securing. She glanced down at the gold box, with its frill of thick ribbon and the flowery foil tag designating the dark chocolate selection as pareve. She looked back up at Jason questioningly.

“These are my favorite, but how did you know?”

“I remembered dad buying them for my mom once and saying that you loved them,” Jason told her though he regretted it almost immediately. Bubbie Tillie’s smile dimmed with sorrow the moment he mentioned his father. From across the room he noticed his youngest aunt, the psychiatrist, scowl at him.

“Well, thank you,” Bubbie Tillie told him but then she turned away and set the box of chocolates on an end table beside one of her many decorative vases. A gaggle of her granddaughters bounced to her side asking if they could light the menorah this year and if there would be latkes at dinner and if her cook had made a special dessert for them. Bubbie Tillie instantly brightened as she took in the circle of noisy little girls. She said something that inspired gleeful cries from them but Jason didn’t catch her words.

His cousin Sarah’s exasperated conversation with her sister and their uncle David swelled through the room.

“I was in shock,” Sarah pushed a lock of her curly brown hair back from her round face. “What was I going to do?  There she was standing on my doorstep telling me that her mother had just been shot by a burglar and asking me if I could watch the dog for the night. Of course I said I would.”

“But it’s been three weeks now, right?” her sister commented—Jason thought her name was Abby. “And nobody’s come for it.”

Sarah shook her head,

“I went over but the old woman’s house is completely empty. No sign of her daughter or anyone anywhere.”        

  “So take the mutt to the pound,” Uncle David repeated. He accepted another drink from his wife.

“But it bites,” Sarah objected. “And it’s ugly and really, really old. They’ll just put it down.”

“That might be for the best,” Uncle David replied.

“Not if the owners come back and ask for it. What would I tell them?”

Jason’s vague interest in the conversation fell away as he noticed Henry beckoning to him. He crossed through the amiable chaos of myriad adult conversations and rambunctious children.

“You look…” Henry trailed off with a frown. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine. I was just thinking of the last time I celebrated.”

“With your dad?” Henry asked.

Jason gazed at the menorah waiting there on the table and nodded. It was so much more ornate and elegant than the funky clay one that his father and he had made together, when Jason had been six. Jason’s mother had laughed at it but then agreed with Jason that what it really needed was blue glitter and a few dinosaur stickers.

The people gathered here would probably have been offended at the sight of the thing, but it had given Jason such joy and he’d always felt incredibly proud when he’d seen it shining in the window of their rundown apartment.

Horrifyingly Jason felt his chest tighten at the memory. He closed his eyes against their sudden sting. It wasn’t like him to get so choked up.

“Damn it, Jason—” Henry muttered under his breath.

Jason glanced back to him to see Henry’s troubled expression.

“I’m okay, really. It’s just, you know…” He forced a smile but couldn’t maintain it.

“Sure you are,” Henry replied quietly. He took the untouched drink from Jason’s hand and set it aside on a decorative table. “Orphans and family holidays mix about as nicely as bleach and ammonia.”

“What?” Jason glanced up in time to catch the concern in Henry’s expression.

“Tear gas,” Henry replied. “ Seriously. Do you need me to get you out of here?”

“No. I really am alright.” Just having the offer, strangely made Jason feel a little better. “But maybe you could put your arm around me.”

“With pleasure.” Henry caught Jason’s shoulder and pulled him closer.

Jason had suspected that many members of the family had been watching him surreptitiously. The wide variety of startled expressions that appeared all across the room as he leaned into Henry only confirmed as much.

Somehow remembering that crooked, homemade menorah and the joy it had brought him, freed Jason from caring so very much about the opinions of these strangers. He didn’t hate them—in fact he felt a genuine warmth for Bubbie Tillie and he suspected that if he got to know Sarah he might like her as well—but they were strangers and he wasn’t about to give their values more importance than his own happiness.

“So are you two—” Abby began, but just at that moment the dog burst free of its kennel. It dashed frantically around the room barking, while Sarah and several other family members attempted to catch it. The youngest children squealed or laughed as the small creature shot past. At last Sarah grasped hold of the dog’s trailing leash and animal came to a lurching halt.

It had been at that moment then, as Jason looked over the rims of his glasses that he caught sight of the gasping creature’s true form and realized that a naked brownie, with long drooping ears and fingers like spider legs, crouched on the carpet before them all. The polish coloring his fingernails and toenails looked weird against the knotted tough mahogany of his hands and feet. His pink hair hung in strings over his snouty face and obscured one gleaming black eye.  

“He keeps getting out of his kennel somehow.” Sarah gripped the pink leash so tightly that Jason could see her knuckles turning white.

“Where did you say you got him again?” Jason asked, and Henry gave him a quizzical look. Jason knew better than to simply blurt out the truth, not only would the Shamirs think that he needed to be shipped back to St.Mary’s for another round of electroshock therapy, but the Secrecy Act strictly forbid such revelations to the common public. He could get them all in trouble.

So, meeting Henry’s gaze meaningfully he simply said, “He is not a dog… from a breed I’ve ever seen before.”

Casually, Henry glanced down at his watch and Jason noted a flickering green number lighting up the point of the minute hand. Henry’s attention shifted immediately to the brownie. Jason wondered if he was silently trying to crack through the spell disguising the creature.

“No one knows what breed it is but it belonged to Sarahs’s old witch of a neighbor,” Abby announced. “She died and her daughter just left the thing with Sarah. What was their name again? Puce or something like that?”

“She wasn’t a witch. She was just cranky,” Sarah replied. “And her name was duPuce.”

“DuPuce…” Henry repeated then he looked to Sarah. “Mara duPuce?”

“Yeah…” Sarah blinked at Henry like he’d preformed a magic trick. “You know her?”

Henry nodded, but he appeared none too happy. Jason knew better than to ask why. More than likely this related to NIAD, which meant the woman—if she was a woman—had likely broken some law.

 “Well, great,” Uncle David snapped. “Maybe you two can take the mutt off Sarah’s hands. In the mean time can we please get him back in that crate.”

Uncle David’s wife took the empty glass from his hand. 

“I’m allergic.” She sounded almost apologetic. 

The brownie sighed heavily and, with an expression of profound melancholy, let flow a stream of bright yellow urine against the leg of Bubbie Tillie’s filigreed end table. 

“Oh for god’s sake!” Uncle David shouted, suddenly red-faced.

One of the younger boys laughed only to be swatted by his sister. Two of the girls howled in excited revulsion.

“Oh no! I am so sorry!” Sarah turned to Bubbie Tillie, pale with mortification. Bubbie Tillie simply shrugged.

“After five children, I promise you I’ve seen worse,” Bubbie Tillie assured her. “The maid will get it anyway.”

 Sarah beamed at her grandmother. But then the leash slipped from Sarah’s hand as the brownie made a break for the dining room doorway. It dodged between the family members, tearing across the carpet on its elongated fingers as much as its spindly legs. A cacophony of shouts came from the children but none of them carried over the boom of Henry’s voice.

“Stanley Longfinger!” Henry roared.

The brownie stopped suddenly and spun around to look at Henry… As did everyone else in the room.

“Stanley,” Henry said more softly and he knelt down onto one knee. “It’s Henry, remember? Come here and let me get you back home.”

The brownie stood motionless for a moment then with a weirdly distorted yip he raced to Henry, pressing himself up against his leg.

“You really do know him?” Sarah said.

“Yeah, well it’s a long, weird story,” Henry replied. “But Stanley’s real family have been looking for him for a while now.”

A silence fell over the room. For the first time Jason thought he could clearly hear Bubbie Tillie’s maid setting the places at the table in the dining room. None of the other Shamirs seemed to know quite what to do.  Henry crouched down and removed the leash from the collar, hanging around the brownie’s neck.

“You mean he didn’t belong to Mrs. duPuce?” Sarah asked at last.

“No,” Henry replied. “He was abducted along with some twenty others.”

“Really?” Abby asked.

Henry nodded.

“Okay, so you have to tell us…” Sarah rolled her hand.

Henry sighed and seemed to take measure of the people gathered around him then he glanced to Jason and smiled just a little.

 “A couple weeks ago duPuce got wind that the law was onto her. She and her partners ditched everything they could and made tracks for the border.” Very gently Henry patted the brownie’s bony shoulder.

“How do you know all this?” Uncle David demanded.

“Work. Mrs. duPuce has links to an international crime organization.”

“Of dognappers ?” Sarah asked.

“ Human traffickers. The Cruella stuff was just duPuce’s hobby,” Henry replied. “Anyway I can’t go into it in detail; a lot’s still under investigation.”

Again that confused silence filled the room. Jason had to suppress a laugh. These were definitely not people who lived among the surreal and strange.

 He could see that Uncle David wanted to object to Henry’s story, while Sarah and Abby obviously preferred to believe it to be in some way true. Degrees of excitement and skepticism showed on the faces of the adults and children alike. Though Bubbie Tillie seemed to be looking at the dog itself and Jason could see the gentleness and compassion in her expression. Then she glanced to Jason and their eyes met. She smiled at him and for the first time he recognized his father’s tender expression in her face. 

“Well, if you’ll all excuse me a minute,” Henry said. “I really ought to call this in and see if I can’t get Stanley back where he belongs. His family’s been pretty torn up since he went missing.”

Henry fished a sleek black NIAD phone from his pocket but then paused to assess Jason.

“I’ll be quick,” Henry assured him and Jason knew that he could have made an excuse and it he wished slipped away with Henry. But he realized that he wanted to see that big menorah all lit up and to share a dinner with these strangers, whom he might one day call his family.

“ I know. I’m good here,” Jason assured him.

Then with Stanley the brownie following on his heels Henry slipped outside into the balmy L.A. afternoon.

The moment the door fell closed behind him, Abby spun on Jason.

“Is he for real—”

“Are you and he dating?” Sarah demanded over her sister’s question.

“Yes,” Jason replied to both of them.

“That is so cool!” Sarah exclaimed and Abby too looked thrilled, though Jason wasn’t entirely sure if it was because they now had a gay cousin or because their gay cousin was dating some kind of animal-rescuing, secret agent.

“It does have its moments,” Jason responded.

He picked up his glass and finally tried the sidecar. It tasted of brandy and oranges.  He’d expected something much more dry and bitter, but now found this surprisingly sweet and warming.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Ring In the Northern New Year

Ring in the Northern New Year

By Ginn Hale

Music filled the air of the ballroom with tones as bright and rich as the perfume of beeswax and spiced wine. Guests, dressed in costly silks and furs, chatted, laughed, played cards and sipped drinks. But mostly they danced to rolling, sweet melodies.

Skellan watched couples swirling in circles beneath the gleaming of light of the gold candelabras and sighed. The joy in their expressions and enthusiasm of their motions lent even the most elderly and plainest of them a kind of grace. The beautiful amidst the gathering appeared almost luminous. His lanky sister, Hylanya, grinned in the arms of her favorite swordsman. Atreau Vediya led a pretty, love-struck woman in a lively promenade, while Kiram beamed in Javier’s embrace.

Skellan had enjoyed a number of dances himself already. He’d accompanied his sister and Cire across the inlayed dance floor twice each. Two charming young courtiers had made for pleasant partners as well but he’d not felt the thrilled delight that he recognized on the faces of so many of the people he saw around him. Of course, plenty of flushed glows arose from the wine as much as romance.

But Skellan had only to glance to Kiram and Javier and take in the way they seemed so enraptured with just each other–smiling those knowing smiles and hardly taking their eyes off one another—to feel certain that neither of them wanted to greet the New Year with anyone else. For them, no one else in the entire grand ballroom—or even the palace itself—mattered. They didn’t even have to know about the Labaran tradition: that those who greeted the New Year together would remain together.

Though clearly Cire had it in mind, from the way she lingered near Sheriff Hirbe at the card table. The sheriff appeared to share the idea and even lured Cire’s rat, Queenie, to him with a trail of nuts and seeds.

“So there’s joy awaiting the sunrise,” Skellan murmured to himself.  He slugged down another gulp of wine. The spices danced across his tongue. A year ago he could only have dreamed of swilling such costly grog. In fact a year ago he’d been dressed in rags, hungry and alone. Now he wore scarlet silk, supped on the finest meats and stood in a chamber sweltering with the heat of all his cheerful company. He’d been toasted and paid tribute in several absurdly heroic verses earlier in the evening. He could hardly move without guards flanking him and folk all around smiling at him.

Still, somehow, he felt unknown and alone. He knew that he had no right to—had no reason to—but the previous decade of isolation seemed to rise up like ghost, enfolding him in a melancholy chill.

The musicians struck up a new melody and someone at one of the dozen card tables let out a cheer of delight. New couples took to the dance floor and a few retired to the tables to drink, gamble, gossip and flirt.

Across the room, towering up from amidst a group of high-ranking military men, Elezar stood. He’d donned Skellan’s colors—scarlet and gold—and Skellan couldn’t keep himself from watching him. Even among his own broad-shouldered, straight-backed countrymen, Elezar presented a powerful figure. To Skellan’s eyes he was the most handsome man in the entire ballroom, regardless of his scarred hand and stern features.

From time to time he returned one of Skellan’s glances with a brief smile, but then his attention turned back to a trim Cadeleonian named Captain Mequero. The sea captain would be sailing the Duke of Rauma’s ship back to his home country with the new day’s tide. Captain Mequero possessed the lean, strong features that Skellan knew Elezar favored—he and the one-armed cavalry captain, Tialdo, both did. They made good company for Elezar as well, all three of them speaking low and intently as if choosing between the white and red wines required the organization of a scouting party and deadly political maneuvering to accomplish.

Skellan smiled at the thought and, catching Elezar’s eye once more, raised his glass to him. For a moment he thought he noticed color rise across Elezar’s tanned cheeks. Then Elezar and all the Cadeleonians surrounding him toasted Skellan in return. How like Cadeleonians to leave the words unspoken and rely on gestures alone.

In that case Skellan wondered what he should make of the small, ivory box that Elezar passed, so very carefully, to Captain Mequero. If he hadn’t been watching closely Skellan might have missed the captain’s momentary pause in accepting the carved box, as if Elezar offered him too precious a treasure. Beside them, Captain Tialdo’s smile slipped and his brow creased.

Skellan strained at every magical ward wafting on the air to catch Elezar’s response to Tialdo’s unspoken question.

“I’m certain,” Elezar said. Then to Skellan’s annoyance, their conversation turned to horses. Cadeleonians as a race were apparently bred and born with strong opinions concerning horseflesh—even life-long sailors. While one dance ended and another began the group debated and as far as Skellan could tell, no one among them altered the others’ preferences a bit.

Skellan downed the last of his wine and turned to one of the many arched windows lining the wall. Patterns of frost traced the glass with frigid beauty. In the night sky, flurries of snowflakes whirled on the hot breath of fiery torches, shining in the light and then burning to vapor. Skellan laid his hand against an icy pane. Somewhere far to the north and high in the mountains the great troll Master Bone-crusher sang a low, rumbling lullaby.  Skellan closed his eyes, feeling the faintest echoes of that distant melody as it drifted through the wards he’d hung across the earth and sky. The troll’s voice rumbled, deep and low, promising sweet dreams, just as he had years before.

But Bone-crusher protected other children now—orphaned trolls. Their voices rose to accompany Bone-crusher’s before they drifted to sleep. This song wasn’t meant for Skellan and he drew his hand back.  Droplets of melted frost fell from his fingertips like tears.

Skellan grimaced at his own maudlin turn of thought and absently wiped the condensation across the thigh of his silken breaches. If he was turning snuffly and morose over a damp window and the groaning wind then he’d either drunk too much wine or not enough. He wasn’t certain which.

“Something troubling out there?” Elezar’s voice sounded from just behind Skellan.

He whipped around and found his man contemplating him thoughtfully before turning his solemn gaze to the blustering snowstorm outside the window.

“Only the wind making merry, tossing snow about,” Skellan replied. “The weather will hold for your Captain Mequero’s departure.”

“He’s hardly mine,” Elezar replied. The idea seemed to amuse him and that alone brightened Skellan’s mood greatly.

“Well, that’s his loss then,” Skellan replied.

Elezar laughed softly at the suggestion but then fell quiet. Skellan eyed him. Elezar commanded as varied a range of silences as did his horse. He held himself with the confidence of a swordsman and yet Skellan recognized something like nervousness in his lowered gaze. He’d clearly crossed between courtiers and dancing couples to reach Skellan but couldn’t bring himself to say why.

A foolish hope fluttered through Skellan’s chest. He ignored the longing, knowing how uneasy Elezar still felt in displaying his affection publicly. With Cadeleonian captains looking on he’d be all the more on his guard against giving away anything he deemed a weakness. They might dance, but well after the new year began. Perhaps when they were alone in their shared bedchamber.

And yet he’d come to Skellan. That meant much. Even if they weren’t in each other’s arms, they could be together when the city bells rang out the first hour of the New Year. Skellan wondered if it would be too much to take Elezar’s hand in his own. He glanced down at Elezar’s long callused fingers.

“You’re not wearing your signet ring.” Skellan knew that Elezar sometimes removed the emblem of his noble rank during sword practice but at formal gatherings the red bull always gleamed on his right hand.

“No, I’m not.” Elezar replied. Though as far as advancing the conversation went, Skellan felt it wasn’t much better than saying nothing. Elezar ran his hand through his dark beard. If Skellan hadn’t known better he would have said Elezar was embarrassed.

“Did you lose it up a horse’s ass?” Skellan asked as quietly as he could.

“What? No! Where do you get these ideas?” Elezar shook his head and gave another soft laugh. “I gave my ring to Captain Mequero.”

 “Did you?” Skellan raised his brows. “That’s uncommon generosity.”

“Not like that.” Elezar’s lips curled into a wry smile. “You know, in Cadeleon we mark the first day of each New Year by swearing a resolution?”

Skellan hadn’t known, but he did now, so he nodded.

“After thinking on this a good while I’ve decided on mine.” The smile fell from Elezar’s expression and Skellan read a faint pain in his gaze. “I’ve realized that I needed to commit myself to my home.”

All at once Skellan felt afraid to hear anything more. He didn’t want to know what Elezar might have resolved to do and how it involved the ship that would be setting sail for Elezar’s homeland tomorrow. Skellan’s breath caught in his throat like splintered glass.

“I’m sending my signet back to my family,” Elezar spoke the words with a quiet intensity. “I’m relinquishing my claim to the Grunito earldom in favor of my brother, Nestor.”

The confession fell so far from what Skellan had expected that for a moment he couldn’t seem to grasp what Elezar meant. Then he realized.

“But your family—”

“My family will always be my family—for my part at least.” Elezar said. “But I’m not returning to Cadeleon. My home is here. With you.”

A grin that doubtless looked half-crazed broke across Skellan’s face. His blood felt as if it had gone from ice-cold to molten as dread burned away to radiant joy.

Outside, the first of twelve bells rang out and in the ballroom the musicians struck up the traditional Labaran New Year’s tune. Couples all through the chamber rushed to take the floor.

 “Will you dance with me?” Skellan asked. A second wave of bells rolled from the city’s towers.

Elezar’s lips parted but he said nothing.

Instead he simply took Skellan’s hand in his own and led him onto the dance floor. Bells rang, music rose and doubtless numerous onlookers murmured. But for Skellan, he and Elezar may as well have been alone, holding one another as the past fell away and the beginning of a new life arose in the grace of their shared embrace.                                                       

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

A Very White Hell Solstice

A Very White Hell Solstice, by Ginn Hale

Until he’d traveled far north into the Mirogoth wilderness Kiram hadn’t truly understood how profound and abiding the darkness of winter could be. Here the faint disk of the sun hardly rose above the horizon for a few hours before the biting cold of night closed in once more. The deep drifts of snow gleaming beneath the full moon seemed to radiate more light than the sky.

Kiram drew his reindeer cloak in close to his body and buried his mouth and nose in the musky folds of the ox wool scarf he’d bought from a lanky Irabiim mother two months prior.  Both the scarf and the heavy cap he wore pulled down over his ears had only cost him a set of carved, ivory buttons that he’d won from the woman’s son earlier in a dice game. Kiram suspected that the weathered old mother had made the trade less out of desire for the handful of buttons than out of pity for Kiram’s southern-bred sensitivity. While Javier hardly noticed heat or cold, Kiram had started shuddering and shivering soon after the autumn frosts appeared and long before their caravan reached the northernmost point of their winter travels.

Despite the cold, the Irabiim campfires numbered few and often seemed little more than beds of smoldering embers. These Mirogoth lands were not an Irabiim domain but belonged to the Grimma--powerful witch-queens whose minions hunted the fir forests in the guise of huge wolves, giant white bears and leopards with teeth like hunting knives. Not even a caravan of some thirty adults, traveling under the protection of two Bahiim invited attention by stoking great fires in this forest of twilight and darkness. In fact very few caravans traveled as deep into the Grimmas’ territories as this one Javier and he had joined.

“Which just goes to show that flipping a coin isn’t the best way to make a decision,” Kiram muttered to himself. Absently, he toyed with a bit of metal he’d managed to cast and polish into a small gold circle. If only Javier were here now to argue with him…

For just a moment fear seized Kiram as he allowed himself to admit that Javier had been away on the Old Road for far too long now. He should have returned weeks before the winter solstice, but now the shortest day broke, faint and pale but there was still no sign of Javier.

Kiram tried not to think on it and kept busy most of the morning trimming star tern plumes into writing quills. Between the heat of his hands and the ash coated embers of the fire he managed to thaw his ink well enough to even pen a few very rough letters on pieces of white birch bark--one to his mother and another to Nestor. Who knew when he’d ever have a chance to mail them, but it made him feel better just to image that he was in communication with friends and family.

 After that he repaired several harnesses as well as a few buckles for other members of the caravan. With access to a workshop or forge the small repairs would have been easy, but out in the snow and wilds, even simple work challenged Kiram to find novel ways to use the few resources and tools he possessed. He didn’t know if he would ever have stretched his imagination to such extremes had it not been for the necessities of a life lived in deprivation.

It frustrated him at times, but when he at last succeeded he always felt a rush of pride in his own ingenuity.

In the faint light of what passed for noonday, a particularly handsome young man named Mauz brought him a silver chain necklace with a bent clasp.

“You look so sorrowful,” Mauz commented. “Certainly my necklace isn’t too difficult for your great skill?”

The heavy-handed flattery brought a smile to Kiram’s face. Mauz was certainly handsome, his gold hair like Kiram’s own, slipped in wisps from beneath his hat and a lustrous sheen of perfumed oil lent a glow to his dark skin.

“No, your necklace is not about to break my heart.”

 “You still pine for your Bahiim lover?” Mauz shook his head with the same expression he’d worn when he’d seen Kiram toss a scrap of meat from his plate to the camp dog. “How heartless your Javier is, leaving you all alone so long. If he cared he would be at your side now warming your body with his own, not riding the Old Road in search of trouble.”

How many nights had Kiram thought the same thing? And yet he couldn’t help but defend Javier.

“That’s his holy calling. He wouldn’t make much of a Bahiim if all he did was heat up my cold nights.”

 Mauz cocked his head slightly. “But he’s been gone too long. Nakiesh and Liahn returned from hunting the Hill Ghost fifteen days ago.”

Kiram had no answer to that. Javier should have returned with the two Bahiim women and their huge flock of crows. But according to Nakiesh, he’d turned away from them in the demon-haunted darkness of the Old Road. They hadn’t known where he’d ridden but he’d seemed intent and they hadn’t thought it was their business to deter him.

“Perhaps he’s returned to his pampered Cadeleoninan life,” Mauz suggested “Maybe he’s enjoying some fat Cadeleonian boy tonight. You’d be in your rights to take another lover, particularly on the solstice.”

Kiram shook his head. He’d been willing to die for Javier—to abandon the sweetness, warmth, and wealth of his home for Javier—he wasn’t about to debase all of that for the fleeting comfort of just any warm body. 

 Kiram turned Mauz’s silver necklace over in his hands, admiring the delicate metalwork.  The nomadic Iarbiim weren’t likely to have smelted such pure silver, much less forged the flawless links of the braided chain. Native Mirogoths religiously eschewed both the fires and the mechanisms required for any such fine metalwork. They crafted most of their weapons and jewelry from stones, antlers, and bones.

“Is this lovely workmanship. Is it Labaran or Cadeleoninan, do you know?” Kiram asked.

“Cadeleonian but from Labara. Two years ago in Milmuraille I met a merchant and taught him to play my flute. He paid me well for it.” Mauz winked and Kiram laughed at the crude innuendo.

Though he had no doubt that a Cadeleonian man who found himself attracted to other men would have paid handsomely for the pleasure of Mauz’s body. Kiram could help but wonder if he was supposed to take the silverwork as a testament to Mauz’s skill as a lover or his going rate. 

“Has your Javier given you as pretty a gift?” Mauz asked.

Again Kiram laughed. As tall, weathered and tanned as he was, Mauz gave himself away as his mother’s favorite indulged son with a question like that. Kiram worked the clasp back into shape and then cleaned it with a rag and a few drops of oil.

“Javier saved my life. But I can’t say how pretty a gift you would think that was,” Kiram spoke jokingly so he was a little surprised to see Mauz’s face flush.

“I think you are beautiful,” Mauz said. “Obviously, you are the most handsome man here. Why else would I want to fuck you so much?”

Kiram felt his cheeks warming. He’d forgotten how blunt the Irabiim could be.

“If he doesn’t return to you tonight what will you do?” Mauz asked.

“I’ll keep waiting for him,” Kiram replied. “I’ll wait here until he comes.”

“But the caravan will leave in the morning. You can’t mean to remain here! Alone?” Mauz scowled at Kiram with an expression that was as much disbelief as outrage. “You’ll die. If you aren’t devoured by a troll or killed by a shape-changer then the cold alone will take you… That’s madness. How can a pallid Cadeleonian matter so much to you? ”

Kiram didn’t expect Mauz to understand. Two years ago he wouldn’t have understood such a decision himself. But this was where Javier had promised to return to him and so this was where he would wait. As much as he feared lingering in a valley filled with trolls and prowling hunters, he hated the idea of simply abandoning Javier more.

“When I say he saved my life, what do you imagine I mean?” Kiram asked.

Mauz said nothing but kicked at the snow.

“Here.” Kiram handed Mauz his necklace. “The clasp should lock closed now.”

Mauz took the silver chain and sighed. “You aren’t going to let me win you over, are you?”

“It isn’t that you aren’t beautiful or tempting, Mauz, but I gave my heart and my word to Javier. And I wouldn’t be a man worthy of your attention or time if I was willing to break both those simply because I felt lonely and cold.” As he spoke Kiram felt older and perhaps wiser, but Mauz simply regarded him with the vexed expression of a camp dog denied a bone.

Kiram stood and stretched in the faint heat of a shaft of afternoon sunlight. A group of crows briefly called out in alarm as a huge eagle passed overhead, but then quieted as the eagle was lost in the distance.

Mauz remained where he was, standing too near Kiram and looking flushed and uncertain. Clearly, he wasn’t the type to take a refusal at it’s face value and who knew what strange idea he’d dreamed up about the two of them becoming lovers?

So Kiram dropped back down to his makeshift seat of bent fir and tried another tactic.

 “Alright Mauz I’ll be honest with you.  I come from a very honorable and wealthy Haldiim family and I find it beneath me to simply accept a lover who hasn’t really put out all that much effort.” Kiram wiped the oil from his smallest set of pliers before returning them to his leather tinker’s apron. “ It took Javier months to win even a single kiss from me. Do you really believe I’ll go with you after only two weeks?”

“Months?” Mauz repeated.

Kiram had to fight not to laugh at his horrified expression.

“He offered me jewels and horses and the finest silks,” Kiram went on, though he had to bow his head over his kit of tinkers’ tools not to crack a smile. “I only relented after he mastered a shajdi and was able to bathe me in its glorious light.  So really, what are you promising me here?”

“I… You can’t be serious.”

“I assure you that I am. Ask Nakiesh if you don’t believe me. I don’t give the pleasure of my body to just anyone. I would expect that you at least open a shajdi for me.”

Mauz gaped at him dumbfounded. Kiram managed to maintain a serious expression for several moments before he cracked a smile.

“You bastard! You’re toying with me!” Mauz snapped.

“Yes, yes. I’m a monster,” Kiram said, laughing. “But truthfully you’d be wiser to pay a little more attention to Aaqil.”

At this, Mauz scowled. “His mother hardly lets me near him. You’d think I was a wolf from the way she watches me.”

“Solstice is a long, dark night and mothers have to sleep sometime,” Kiram replied.

“And here I thought you were such an upstanding man.” Mauz offered him a rueful smile. “But you’re more than willing to throw sweet little Aaqil into my clutches to save yourself, aren’t you?”

“Indeed I am,” Kiram assured him.  “Though somehow I think sweet little Aaqil will fare just fine in your clutches.”

Mauz accepted the compliment with a smile then he gazed up at the pale sky overhead. “I don’t know how your Javier won you but if—when he returns, you should tell him that he has my admiration.”

With that Mauz strode off across the camp to the rope pen, where Aaqil tended his mother’s hairy, hulking oxen. A small triumph but Kiram felt glad for it. 

After that, two Irabiim mothers approached Kiram about the lodestone they’d heard him describe. He spent a little time demonstrating the powers of the primitive compass he’d constructed. But soon the sky dimmed and Kiram put his tools and compass away.

The longest night of the year rapidly crept over the leaden sky. Solstice was truly here. Weeks before Javier had joked about the pitiful gift Kiram could expect from him.

“For your pleasure I’m creating a collection of erotic drawings so poorly rendered that I feel certain they will completely shake your belief in my understanding of human anatomy.”

In return Kiram had promised to write Javier a love poem, which he, as a Bahiim could have the honor of burning for the sake of all living creatures.

“Well, that,” he’d said, “or I’ll fashion you the ugliest jewelry that has ever been cast using a cooking fire.”  

They’d laughed and made love and in the morning Javier had left.

Now the solstice arrived but Javier hadn’t returned. Kiram studied the rough ring he’d managed to fashion but the sight of it only made his heart sink. He pocketed it.

Steadily the sky darkened and the caravan mothers stoked the embers of their fire to an orange glow while their children and grand children dragged out jars of fermented mares’ milk, dry sausages and brightly-dyed hand drums. Soon the air filled with their quiet songs and laughter as they drank and danced in the soft golden glow. Kiram shared the clutch of star terns that he’d brought down from a migrating flock the week before and several Irabiim women teased him until he allowed them to kohl his eyes like a proper Irabiim. They taught him the Irabiim wolf dance and he spent several hours dancing for the amusement of the dozens of Irabiim men, women, and children who were gathered around the glowing embers wrapped in glossy animal skins. Finally, Kiram learned the words of the Whispered Song of the Long Night from Nakiesh.

Her crows clustered on the overhanging branches of a dark fir tree, watching them all with glittering dark eyes.

The Whispered Song sounded nothing like the merry solstice tunes of his home, though the lyrics shared the common sentiment of a people joined together against darkness and hardship. As Kiram sang the eerie melody, a wave of homesickness rolled over him.

He missed the balmy port city of Anacleto so much and his family even more. If he were at home right now he would have been helping to decorate their house for the bands of singers who would come calling. His lamp would stand among others filled with perfumed oil and lining the windows with the promise of illumination. The aromas of dozens of feast dishes would waft out over him from the kitchen chimney while he and his siblings strung garlands of paper flowers through the bare branches of the fruit trees in the courtyard.

After The Whispered Song ended, everyone in the Irabiim stilled and settled around the fire. A white-haired old man crouched on the fir branches beside Kiram and shared his simple clay cup of fermented mares’s milk.

“You aren’t packed up yet,” the man commented.

Kiram simply shook his head and the man must have read something in his expression because he didn’t press the point any further but instead gifted Kiram with a flask of milk to help keep him warm when he was alone.

“Thank you—” Kiram wasn’t certain if it was the man’s resemblance to his own father or the effects of too much milk but he felt quite moved by the generosity of the gift.

“It’s nothing,” the older fellow replied with a kind smile. “It would have weighted me down to lug it around anyway.”

Kiram nodded.

Already most of the Irabiim had packed their belongings on their covered sleds and gathered their horses and storm oxen in make shift pens. Tomorrow morning their caravan would turn south with their hard won bounty of mountain goat and mink hides as well as nuggets of raw gold.

This sheltered valley had afforded an opportunity for young men and women to flirt and band together to hunt the huge wooly goats that descended from the jagged mountains only at the height of winter to graze on the mossy lichen. But now it was simply too dangerous to stay here any longer.  The Irabiim weren’t the only ones lured to these glades by the prospect of winter hunting.

The previous day Kiram had sighted two trolls—great snow-topped walking hillocks—moving with the speed of avalanches down from the mountain cliffs. Where trolls wandered, the wild creatures serving Grimma followed, intent upon hunting the trolls down and enslaving them in their queens’ stony sanctums.

Crouching in the dark, feeling hungry, tired and above all terribly lonely, Kiram realized that he wasn’t able to offer anyone decent company. So he straightened and bid a good night to the eldest mother in the caravan and to well as to Nakiesh and Liahn—the Bahiim who’s wards and incantations kept them hidden from the eyes of witches and wolves alike.

As he withdrew Mauz reached out and touched his shoulder.

“Won’t you be sad all alone?” he asked but none of his earlier flirtation sounded in his voice. He seemed simply concerned.

 “I’m not going to be alone,” Kiram pulled a smile. “I’m off to pay some attention to the other fellow in my life.”

Mauz’s pale brows rose in question.

“My horse,” Kiram explained and they both laughed. 

Then Kiram made his way to the horse pen where he found Verano and took a little time to make much of the gelding, brushing his bushy winter coat, and bundling him with a relatively clean ox hide blanket.

Overhead the moon rose, and from far away Kiram just caught the cries of wolves.

“That’s just Mauz crying out his desire to Aaqil,” Kiram murmured to Verano. The horse flicked his ears but didn’t seem particularly disturbed. Kiram gazed up at the moon and it struck him that it must feel abandoned. There it hung, alone in the dark, night after night with the sun always so far from it. Just looking up at into its radiance he felt desolate, and not because he was the abandoned one. He was surrounded by people who accepted and sheltered him. It was Javier who he thought of—pale and radiant but utterly alone in the hopeless desolation of the Old Road.  It was Javier who was lost in the night, and there was nothing Kiram could do to bring him back.

He remembered the demons that preyed upon loss and guilt in that realm of endless black. It tore at him to think of Javier trapped and dying there. He pressed his face against Verano’s warm neck, and clenched his eyes shut. Kiram wasn’t one to pray but tonight he did.

“Please let him find his way back to me,” Kiram whispered. “Please let him be alright.”

Kiram hung against the big horse and Verano, in his calm manner bowed his head and breathed gently against Kiram. Then the big gelding gave a soft greeting nicker and from a distance another horse answered. Kiram glanced up to see Javier leading Lunaluz slowly across the snow towards their crudely-assembled pen. Even in the dim light Kiram could see that Javier looked exhausted and tattered. He and his horse were spattered with mud and they doubtless reeked. Still, the moment Kiram laid eyes on Javier his heart pounded wildly and he raced out to meet him.

Javier’s dark gaze lifted as Kiram sprinted through the snow towards him and joy shot through Kiram as he saw Javier’s desolate expression suddenly lift into a brilliant smile. They embraced each other with hungry, almost bruising grips and clung together for several moments—simply feeling their reunion, breathing each other in and allowing their bodies to remember the relieving pleasure of their familiarity.

“I missed you,” Javier whispered and his hands dug into Kiram as if he were clinging to him for his life.

Kiram kissed him then, once gently—remembering the feel and taste of him after weeks apart—and then with a driving passion that left them both swaying and breathless.

“I take it you missed me as well?” A slow, smug smile curved Javier’s lips.

“Like a drunk misses his ruin,” Kiram replied.

Javier gave a soft laugh at that but something strangely sorrowful seemed to linger in his expression. Kiram almost asked what was wrong, but Javier stepped back from him.

“Help me with Lunaluz, will you?”

“Of course.” Kiram took Lunaluz’s reins from Javier and after greeting the stallion led him to where Verano awaited him. Javier pulled the saddle, blanket and bags from Lunaluz and Kiram noted that the stallion, like Javier had lost weight. Kiram fetched oatseed and thick fistfuls of lichen for Lunaluz and when he returned he found that Javier had brushed the stallion down and had dug wide scrape through the snow with his gaunt bare hands to expose the lichen and winterweed growing beneath. Lunaluz grazed hungrily.  Verano nibbled a few strands of the winterweed and then simply stood near Lunaluz, blocking the worst the wind, though whether that was by design or accident Kiram didn’t know.

“There’s goat stew, sausages and fermented milk by the fire,” Kiram offered Javier.

Javier studied the rest of the gathered caravan with a slight frown. A melodic howl went up from the gathered singers only to be broken by giddy laughter.

“Did someone get married?”

“No,” Kiram said, annoyed. Then he recalled the timeless quality of traveling the Old Road. “It’s solstice. You’ve been gone more than a fortnight.” He did his best to keep the anger from sounding in his voice, but the words still came out too crisply.

How strange that only after he knew Javier was alive and safe could he now acknowledge the frustration and anger that powerless anxiety had wrought in him.

“I didn’t think it had been so long,” Javier said.

“Nakiesh and Liahn returned weeks ago,” Kiram told him. “Since then I haven’t known if you were alive or…” Kiram didn’t want to go on. He didn’t want to think about how scared he’d been for Javier beneath the bravado he’d maintained in the face of Mauz’s flirtations and old women’s pitying glances.

Javier wrapped his arms around Kiram and Kiram allowed himself to be pulled close once again.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“But why did you go?” Kiram asked. “Where did you go?’

“Is that bower of fir branches we built still standing?”

Kiram realized at once that Javier needed to rest and wanted to be alone with him. “It’s still there. Come on.”

Javier swung his saddlebags over his shoulder and then followed Kiram to the snow-packed, pine-scented bower. They both fit so long as they hunched close, or slept curled together with their belongings packed up against the fragrant evergreen walls. Kiram had even managed to angle two polished metal plates so that they caught the faint moonlight and threw a pale beam into the dark confines.

“Here.” Javier pushed the saddlebags to Kiram and then stretched out on the bedding of reindeer and ox hides.

Kiram opened the bags and to his shock discovered a scroll of fine writing paper, two tins containing screws, bolts, pins and spooled wire, a sachet of his mother’s taffy and an assortment of bright, fragrant citrus fruit. But most startling of all were the letters. There wasn’t light enough to read them but Kiram recognized not only his mother’s and brother’s handwriting but Nestor’s square script as well.

“You went to Anacleto?” Kiram asked in wonder.

“The Sagrada Academy and then Anacleto.” Javier dug into the pocket of his long dark coat and held something small and golden out to Kiram. He took it and realized at once that it was a gold figurine of a horse.

“Fedeles wanted you to have it and he wanted me to assure you that Firaj is well… Actually, he might be a little bit fat but he’s certainly happy.”

Kiram felt almost too stunned to register Javier’s comment. He held the figurine and the metal grew warm in his hand. He’d missed his home so badly, why hadn’t Javier thought to take him with him when he’d decided to go?

“Is he… How is he?” Kiram managed to get out at last.

“Shockingly erudite when he wants to be.” Javier smiled. “I’d almost forgotten how clever he was.”

“And Nestor?”

“Third year, taking his responsibilities as an upperclassman very seriously.” Again Javier flashed a smile but it slipped away an instant later. “Elezar didn’t return to the academy. But according to Nestor he’s won two duels in the capitol and apprehended a highwayman as well.”

Somehow Kiram wasn’t surprised.

“My family?”

“All’s well,” Javier assured him. “The letters are full of details… though it might amuse you to know that your brother Majdi not only popped me in the face the minute he recognized me but demanded to know what I’d done to you and then after all that informed me that he’d put Atreau ashore in the Salt Islands but decided to keep Morisio.”

“Wait. Why did Majdi punch you?”

Javier shot him a glance as if he couldn’t imagine how Kiram could not know the answer to that.

“Because I stole you away from your friends and family not to live as a nobleman but like the lowest peasant?” Javier offered. “Because there’s a price on my head and so you’ve been pursued by bounty hunters, mercenaries and the royal bishop’s men-at-arms—”

“Yes, but I’m a fugitive in my own right as well, thank you very much,” Kiram replied.

Oddly, Javier met his gaze with a look that seemed almost physically pained.

“But you aren’t,” Javier said very softly. “I’d been pondering the Common Laws and Lords Laws for a while and I realized that you might not be wanted. Unlike me, you aren’t a heretic because you were born into the Bahiim religion and you hail from Anacleto—”

“I killed several of the royal bishop’s men,” Kiram pointed out. In fact he’d struck down more with his bow and arrows than either Javier or Elezar.

“But that was in my service,” Javier replied. “You, Elezar, Nestor, Atreau and Morisio were all acting in my service.  If you cast your mind back, you’ll recall that I was a duke and your upperclassmen. Legally, I was responsible.”

“So…” Kiram didn’t go on.

Javier looked grim despite his attempt to smile.

“So, I can take you home. That’s what I went back to Cadeleon to find out. I’m still a wanted man but you aren’t. You don’t have to live like this.” Javier gestured out at the field of snow and dark trees.

For just and instant, joy ignited within Kiram.

Home. He could just go home…

And then he realized the cause of Javier’s misery. Javier could take him back but he couldn’t stay there with him. Cadeleon would simply be too dangerous for Javier.

“No,” Kiram said. “I already made this choice.”

“But that was before you knew—before either of us really knew what it would be like to live as hunted men in the wilds of the north.  If you’d known then how cold and hard it would be…” Javier’s voice failed and he hid his eyes beneath his hand. “There’s nothing I can offer you in this life, Kiram. Not comfort, not wealth, not even a decent bed to lay down in.”

That was all true and yet, like the threat of trolls or the promise of Mauz’s company, it didn’t matter.

Kiram reached out and took Javier’s hand. Javier’s dark eyes gleamed like polished jet. Kiram pushed the saddlebags aside and stretched out beside Javier.

“It’s been harder than I could have imagined and I do miss my home and family,” Kiram admitted. “But I wouldn’t trade my life with you for all the candy and comfortable beds in the world. I love being with you. And as hard as this existence is, it’s shown me that I’m stronger and tougher and more resilient than I thought. And I’ve discovered that you are even more upstanding, brave, and honorable than I thought you were when I first fell in love with you.”

Javier gazed at him, studying him for a long while. “I’m not brave. I could hardly bring myself to tell you the truth.”

“But you did,” Kiram replied. “And I’m staying with you.”

The radiance in Javier’s smile made Kiram think for an instant that he’d opened the shajdi, but then he realized that the light in Javier’s face was pure joy.

“Thank you,” Javier said. “I couldn’t have hoped for a better solstice gift.”

Considering how far Javier had traveled and at what cost to his own strength just for Kiram’s sake, it seemed a very small gift. And yet as Javier pulled him into his arms Kiram felt that it was one he couldn’t have been gladder to give.

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