King Jareth was real.

REAL.

Exactly as advertised.

Except that he was old and ugly, all that youthful liveliness and voluptuousness withered like a plum becoming a raisin, soured like wine becoming vinegar.

And Bitch-Queen Varonah was real, and in Ostmont, and a good friend of Ald–Silver, and had escaped the ravages of time, and gone completely mad in return.

Bitch-Queen Varonah had thrown nuts into his hair. It wasn’t at all like he thought it would be. He fully expected, in a half-hearted way, to someday meet Her (and Him) because that was what one did on the Continent: One met and was corrupted by King Jareth and Bitch-Queen Varonah. Having come through the experience, he was dazed, and slightly disappointed, and no more corrupt than he remembered being.

He wondered if he weren’t intriguing enough to be corrupted. He was convalescent, after all. Under the weather. But that made no sense; he was still him. Maybe his lack of interest in King Jareth was too obvious. The man was handsome enough, startlingly so in the right light, but only if one took him as he was now. The comparison between now and then–it was too painful.

That must have been it. His disinterest. He would have to pretend more carefully next time. He didn’t want to be corrupted by King Jareth, but it would be a pity to lose a chance to not be corrupted.

Aldridge. He had to find Aldridge. Where did he say he would be? “Working the festival.” No help there. Celino went on tiptoes, scanning the crowd for the unmistakable pattern of blue and white. Everything was turning blue in the lowering dusk, but Celino was sure he could pick out that particular blue anywhere and anywhen.

—–

Being on duty during a festival was a little like being dropped into the middle of a tornado, and being told to ‘tidy up’. One might be able to neaten the very small area that was the eye of the storm, but there was no escaping the knowledge that in every direction beyond utter chaos reigned and you could do precious little about it until the whole thing had blown over.

SsillvrR did not enjoy damage control. Preempting problems was infinitely more efficient, but short of obliterating the idea of holidays altogether (and stopping up any and all available casks) it was impossible to prevent civil issues from breaking out all over the city like chicken pox. Festival nights meant many things to many people. To the elf, they were generally sleepless, but not for the same reason most people found themselves awake to greet the dawn.

But it was early yet, and this far incidents had been limited to a few drunken shouting matches, and a loose dog muddling up the bull fight. Rather than throw a perfectly serviceable wish away on something that could never be (like the night’s events being limited to those that had already transpired), SsillvrR wished pragmatically for a relatively uneventful evening. A fight or two would be fine. Maybe even an attempted burglary (harvest night never passed without at least three), or an ill-conceived duel between two hot heads (that could usually be resolved, so long as you kept them apart long enough for cooler heads to prevail).

With the sun’s slow death, bonfires were being lit on nearly every street corner. Anything flammable within reach was considered fair game (inevitably someone lost their shutters, and a few establishments would be ordering new shingles painted as soon as their proprietors were sober enough to stand) and there was generally some contest between neighbors to see who could afford to be frivolous enough to destroy something of actual value in the name of the year’s end.  In the great houses fires were restricted to the symbolic; small alchemical bowls crackled with cool flame that politely destroyed only the slips of scented paper provided to the guests should they wish to destroy the sins of the previous year that they could start out fresh on the morrow. Here and there figures in crudely made horned masks drifted, casting odd shadows as they waltzed dramatically from fire to fire, tin plates affixed to their feet to mimic the clop of an unshod hoof. There were those who swallowed fire, those who juggled knives painted with sap from Ralk trees, that they glowed eerily as they flew, while dancers linked arms and leapt merrily to whatever tune was available. If there were any particular meaning behind any of these actions, any religious subtext left at all, no one drew attention to it.

—–

Too busy scanning the crowds to pay attention, Celino backed into someone. He turned around to offer an absent-minded apology, and came face-to-face with a creature from an even older book than King Jareth: a horned man dressed all in rags, hair wild, hoofed feet that should have walked on leafmould clattering on the dirty cobbles. Between the flickering light of the bonfire on one side and the silent dark of the new night on the other, Celino saw strange things under the mask, animal lines drawing human skin into new contours, eyes that were not human looking out the slits of the mask with a gaze like a man’s. Then another partygoer jostled the horned stranger, and the illusion was broken–an ordinary town boy in a mask and old clothes, knees bent to mimic the turned-back legs of a goat, smelling of beer and greasepaint and working his way toward being sick in a gutter before midnight. Celino bowed to the vision he had had, then nodded to the boy who was, and with a murmured apology backed out of the cluster of revelers.

As he walked between gatherings more carefully, still looking for a flash of blue, he mulled the meeting over. He wasn’t a religious man. He rarely looked to the spirit for answers; they were usually there in flesh and bone, or in the curlicues of the human mind. Even the “demons” he sported with were earthy things. But he also knew what that was, the–the more-than-man back there. What was he meant to make of it?

He was so absorbed that he almost passed over Aldridge. He looked again–and there he was, shining white, a religious procession of one. “Ald–Sil–Captain Aldridge!” Celino called, breaking out of the crowd with a grin. The sight of the man made him want to glow. He wondered briefly if he still could. “Fair festival!”

—–

There were several things within visual range of the pair that could have been accurately described as glowing. Three were whirling blades, one was a fire, and the others were poured out of a silver flask by a square-faced man whose mask tettered precariously atop his skull into any cup that passed within his reach. The drunk gave off an unhealthy sulphurous yellow luminescence, and the smell was enough to convince any but the most hale of drinkers to stick with something a little less exotic. Alchemy was useful for any number of things, but had a lousy track record where the enhancement of foodstuffs was concerned.

When Celino broke from the crowd like a porpoise through the crest of a wave, SsillvrR was making himself unpopular with a small group of young men who, while doing nothing of obvious note besides milling, had the twitching fingers and darting eyes set in tense faces of those who were at least contemplating something treacherous. Either that, or concerned about being caught with liquor purloined from the family cabinet. The call jerked an ear sideways in its direction; SsillvrR gave the group a polite smile that would, because it was pointed at malcontent teenaged sons of merchants, be recieved as smug and even challenging, before turning to address Celino.

Who was grinning like a carved jack-o-lantern.

“Good weather for it,” SsillvrR said pedantically, still firmly entrenched in the sort of public persona that went hand in hand with being on duty. On the other side of the fire, four pairs of teenaged eyes exchanged flashing glances and a stolen flask. SsillvrR’s ear swung in their direction.

—–

“Cool, dry, and wild,” Celino said. “One wonders what’s going on in the forest tonight.” He wanted to take Aldridge’s hand and issue an invitation–come dance with me, come see the sights with me, come see what’s happening in the forest with me–but one didn’t do that in Ostmont. At least, not with the buttoned-up sort. And oh, did Aldridge have his captaincy buttoned all the way to the chin tonight. Celino’s eyes followed the swing of Aldridge’s ear, and he smiled. “Just some lads who haven’t figured out where the girls are yet,” he said. “Come, walk with me. I have something to tell you.”

—–

“The sort of party I’m not invited to,” SsillvrR said with the sort of authority that suggested he had first-hand experience in the matter. Ostmont’s celebrations were of a sort more civilized than what the forest would see this evening; that however, was beyond boundaries drawn in around his guard and involved crimes against decency rather than the prosecutable sort.

Celino was smiling as he pointed his gaze at the sullen group lurking across the bonfire. Someone threw a heavy pine bough atop the blaze, and it began crackling madly almost immediately, throwing a heavy sharp scented smoke into the air. “The blond one is Reth Welland’s son; and if he doesn’t want to have strips peeled off him, he’ll get home before his father figures out he’s missing.” The elf’s voice caught its target, when across the blaze one pair of eyes widened briefly then vanished as their owner broke into a dead-run, heading for the manor he’d climbed out of when all signs had pointed toward his father having already left for the evening. Mission accomplished, SsillvrR inclined his head northward toward the city’s old quarter, then followed the indicative gesture with his feet. When they had moved past the crush of the crowd into the dim of an empty stretch of street, SsillvrR glanced sidelong at Celino. “This about the wells, or is there a new medical crisis I should know about?”

—–

“Are you so certain you haven’t received a single invitation?” Celino asked with a sly smile. The shadows danced, stirred by the growing bonfire, and for a second Celino thought he saw the shadow of horns at Aldridge’s temples. He smiled a little wider. Yes.

He let Aldridge scare off the boy–”That was mean,” Celino commented mildly as he and Aldridge passed out of earshot–and followed him away from the crowds. The dark street was full of possibility, as though it were only the space between two bubbles, and could be swept away at any moment by another rush of light and merriment. Celino reached for Aldridge’s hand. He aborted the movement halfway, remembering too late that Aldridge wouldn’t take it, and awkwardly ran the hand through his hair to draw it back from his face. The night was abruptly cold; the press of the crowds and the heat of the bonfire had drawn a light sweat on his temples. “Neither,” he said. “I wanted to–” just talk to you “–there was something I needed to tell you. Damn! What was it?” It came to him in a rush, breaking through his thoughts of hooves and horns. “Oh! I believe you now,” he said, and this time he did reach for Aldridge’s hand. The memory brought with it a surge of adrenaline; he fought not to bounce excitedly on the balls of his feet. “About–her son. The other one. He’s here. I met him.” He grinned triumphantly. “He’s horrible.”

—–

To that comment, SsillvrR gave the man a look that suggested he would offend the forest-skulkers by even suggesting such a thing. While in looser more private moments the elf could have convinced himself that there was some primal satisfaction in leaping around a bonfire in the middle of a woods; even some religious precident as far as shamanistic rituals and transmogrification went, there were no circumstances in which he could see himself playing any integral role. The elf receiving an invite to a forest meet (apparently all the invitations were written on oak leaves with walnut dye, and no one ever saw them delivered) would have been the equivalent of giving a fisherman a seat on the horse trader’s council.

“I know his father. Mean is what he’ll get if he’s caught,” SsillvrR corrected, unapologetic. Welland had only one son, and temper enough to keep a string of six unruly boys in line. Not that the boy had any reputation for trouble-making; but when the archer has an itchy finger it’s best not to go skulking around the woods in antlers.

Without the ruddy glow of firelight, the houses dissolved quickly into shades of blue. Only here and there was the monochromatic dark broken by the golden glory of a candle, filtered through the carved maw of a turnip or lumpish squash. The tiny grinning lanterns squatted like botanical goblins on doorsteps and window wells, flickering determinedly when a little breeze tickled their flames. SsillvrR kept a judicious eye on the unlit windows above them, ears hanging at a comfortable slant that belied what was almost an expectant air. It evaporated like dew in the blazing sun as Celino’s fingers curled around his own; SsillvrR had the sense to keep walking, though at least two steps bore the sort of hesitance that suggested his instinct went against sense.

“You what?” the elf blinked, then waved the question off like a mosquito. “Oh. Well…–” Fingers twitched absently inside the circle of Celino’s, as their owner having been blind-sided both by the knowledge and the simple gesture, reorganized his thoughts.

If he were in Ostmont, it wouldn’t be for long; SsillvrR was ashamed to admit that was something of a relief. Giving Celino a brief examination SsillvrR smiled slightly, amusedly. The fact the physician was grinning meant one of two things; either Jareth was tired, or Celino had been deemed unimportant enough to escape harrassment. Probably for the best, whichever it was. “Ah…–well…–he’s not so bad as all that. So long as you don’t owe him any favours.”

—–

“I know better than that,” Celino said happily. He ignored Aldridge’s offended look. Lovemaking on a bed of moss, oh horrors. “Don’t owe him favors, don’t be owed favors–I read all the books. All of them. Even the ones whose chief virtue was that they were printed on soft paper.” He squeezed Aldridge’s hand, walking a little closer. “He was always my favorite. Of course, he doesn’t look a thing like he ought to.” He looked up at Aldridge and was struck by the man’s smile, so private and so entertained. Whatever else Aldridge was feeling, Celino was succeeding in amusing a hard-to-amuse man, and that was success indeed. “Older. Too old. He should eat more. You have a beautiful smile. He was exactly as sarcastic and abusive as one could want; and he had a curious interest in a cactus. That was never in any book. I can’t believe I’ve met him.” He did bounce a little, and just barely stifled the impulse to hug Aldridge. He rubbed his thumb over the back of Aldridge’s hand, missing the scars. Damned glove. He would have to peel it off Aldridge. “Are you entirely certain,” he said, walking a little closer still until their shoulders touched, “that you haven’t received a single invitation, not one in the least, to see in the dawn in some still corner of the forest where no one else goes?”

—–

Celino’s hand was warm; SsillvrR fixated briefly on that warmth, radiant even through the abused leather of his glove before realizing that the continued sound in his ears was in fact, language. Coming into the conversation on the tail end of a sentence, the elf blinked a bit. “The books?”

A raccoon lumbered across the street ahead of them, a dripping twist of butcher’s paper clutched between its jaws and from somewhere ahead the breeze carried them a wisp of fiddle music. “If you ever see him again, don’t say any of those things, unless you want to get a personal tour of an oubliette,” SsillvrR indulged, brushing a thin coat of exageration over the facts. The odds of Celino running into Jareth again were not the sort anyone would lay money on, nor was it likely anything the physician said could induce so drastic a move… still, in the interest of detering the free-speaking Celino, a little exageration wasn’t out of line, as the elf reasoned. There was another phrase bracketted by comments about the king that was processed, and shoved aside in the same moment. Days, women, horses and flowers and jewelry were beautiful. Anything outside of those preordained brackets did not merit the word’s use, and anyone who strove to apply the term to an object or body not therein was only engineering an awkward situation. The best course of action was to ignore it, and move on.

Particularly when it was Celino, who the elf was more or less certain would argue his point until he was blue in the face and so far removed from the original subject as to be entirely lost in the conversational woods.

Was he…–bouncing? One ear twitched back, and the raccoon picked up a waddling trot, before disappearing into an alleyway. Curiousity jabbed at him, until with a badly counterfeited casualness he inquired, “Was there anyone else with him? Say, a tall skinny guy with black hair?”

Elryn would have been insensed at being called skinny. SsillvrR felt just the slightest satisfaction knowing that.

Celino bumped absently against him, and the action seemed to jostle the knowledge that he was technically speaking, on duty, back into place with an almost audible click. SsillvrR stiffened a mote, then wiggled his fingers and waited favouring the physician with an expectant look. “Do I look like the sort to you?”

—–

“You know, the books. About him.” Celino avoided giving titles; they would be dead giveaways to whom he and Aldridge were talking about. “He really uses oubliettes?” It was a pleasant distraction from the local wildlife. Ring-rats; it was a wonder they hadn’t been exterminated yet. “I always thought that was over the top. Really? Have you seen one? Where are they? Is it true about the spiked machines?” Celino turned sideways so he could watch Aldridge’s face as they walked. He really was beautiful, even looking bewildered. Were all elves that way? Celino had seen many, many creatures tha looked like elves, but none as beautiful as Aldridge; and if some of those elves were in fact not-elves, maybe they all were except for Aldridge. Maybe elves were rarer than the books said.

“Skinny? No… no, it was only him and Her. Why? Who is that?” He racked his memory, and turned up only a handful of courtiers and heroes whom he was reasonably sure were fictional.

Ah. The Captain was back, the one Celino had gotten so far in dispelling. Celino took his hand in both hands–don’t expect me to be the one to break it off, Captain–and said, “You look like the sort who would rather not make noise in a crowded inn… or a crowded barracks.”

—–

SsillvrR rolled his eyes, flashing silver like a startled minnow in the dim light. The orange glow of another distant bonfire threw long spidery shadows up the street at them; he stood within the cool blue of one as Celino blithely ignored polite social signals and took both his hands. Gods, how did he survive behaving this way? SsillvrR answered himself; by being the weird foreigner. Whereas you are the ordinary foreigner.

Somewhere, under the concern for appearances, worry about being distracted by improprieties with glowing smiles who bounced when they were excited and the generalized anxiety that one of the guards was going to ride around the corner and force him to either pretend he’d been practicing dance-steps with a physicial in an empty street, or say something even less plausible, there was the thought that Jareth would be tickled pink about being the subject of fairytales.

“Yes, all over the place but I think primarily around the capital, and no. And nobody–…nevermind.” SsillvrR abruptly felt the sting of embarrassment at having even asked. Of course Elryn was probably playing host while Jareth irritated Tourmaline; Elryn was good at making conversation with nobles, smoothing ruffled feathers and collecting gems of information. Elryn did not get tongue-tied, or forget what to say, or worst, to whom he was talking.

Hands… a small sing-song voice reminded him. SsillvrR smoothed the wrinkles out of his expression like one might a freshly made bed and offered Celino a small tight smile bracketed by concerns. As peace-offerings went it was flimsy. He’d opened his mouth to speak when the physician trotted out a particularly shiny gem about making noise in crowded places. That was enough to snap the elf’s jaw shut again with an audible click, and the seconds that followed were a silence in which he gathered up his scattered thoughts for the second time in so many minutes. “This,” he lifted his hands demonstratively, and Celino’s came with them, contrastingly dropping his voice, “…is not…–” words slithered out of his grasp like greased snakes. SsillvrR cursed under his breath and rolled his eyes heavenward for a moment. “Bad time.”

—–

Celino sighed. This was going nowhere he wanted it to go. He gave up and released Aldridge’s hands. Idiot Ostmonters and their idiot prejudices. He composed his face into something resembling businesslike, and edging far more than he liked into worried. He leaned forward to keep his words confidential. “Please tell me, are you doing a nutcracker impression because I’m breaking a rule, or because you are genuinely uninterested in seeing in the dawn with me?”

—–

If nothing else, Celino could have found consolation in the fact that SsillvrR’s brief embarrassment was smote by guilt at his sigh and the slow sink of his shoulders. Celino looked like someone had snuffed his candle, and being as there was no one else around to have done the deed, SsillvrR found it fairly difficult to escape the notion that the mage’s deflation was his fault.

Oh…well…that explained the theme of Celino’s persistent comments. “Ah…” the elf lifted his hands palms-up in a gesture of helplessness coloured around the edges by chagrin. “Missed the insinuation completely. I ah, do that… quite a bit.” Unflattering honesty was at least a respectable peace-offering.

—–

Celino blinked, then settled into wry dubiousness. “I’m trying to think of how I could be more blunt next time. ‘Come have sex with me in the woods’?” he said sotto voce. “‘Let’s make love loudly where no one else can hear us’? I thought you wanted me to be more respectable.”

He leaned back, amused, and the elf’s last sentence caught him flat. He did what? Went into the woods quite a bit? Saw the dawn in quite a bit? In the same way that Celino meant? But he said he hadn’t–for ages. A misunderstanding? A rare moment of truth? Celino was so boggled that all he could say was, “You–what?”

—–

SsillvrR didn’t drag a hand down his face; that would have been too obvious an expression of exasperation. Though the urge remained, he transmuted it through careful force of will into nothing more telling than the slight drop of his chin, and the subtle twist of his right ear.

Did he sit in his room at night, making lists of inappropriate things he could say, then devise ways to work them into conversation? Celino, SsillvrR decided might well be an author. There were probably obscure volumes of ‘anti-etiquette’ floating around the expanses of several bibliophiles’ private collections, pages filled with helpful hints and simple recipes for ruining polite conversation and making one’s conversational partner gap like a dying goddamned fish. The left ear twitched this time.

Somehow, the bluntness was actually better than Celino’s open ended ‘what’. Four simple letters, like some arcane key opened a vault of entirely inappropriate options, any seven of which could have been what Celino was obviously envisioning. SsillvrR scrambled to stuff everything back into that vault, while the bright strains of fiddle music grew louder. “…miss insinuations.” The correction was like a lead hammer, with all the weight of his frustration at the handle.

—–

Celino–who would have been surprised to hear that he and SsillvrR were making polite conversation–watched the delicate twisting of Aldridge’s ears. First right, then left, like a dance move. Did that mean he could annoy half of Aldridge at a time? Was there a difference between the right side and the left? It bore looking into, perhaps some day when there was no recovering the conversation.

Miss insinuations? What? Celino reparsed the sentence. OH. Aldridge missed what Celino was saying, this was to be a regular occurrence, no answer offered to Celino’s question. “I see,” he said. “What did you think I was insinuating? Whatever it was, it offended you more than my actual offer did, so it had to be something educational.

“But–look–” he said, waving his hands helplessly, “I didn’t pull you aside to shock you. I wanted to talk to you about–” anything, just smile again “–two things that can’t be talked about in front of people, and maybe enjoy part of the evening with you. This part of the evening,” he amended, “not the part I was talking about earlier. Like normal people. As normal as you and I can get without boring you, O collector of eccentrics.” He smiled. “Consider it practice for speaking to you without making you glare like a wet hen, if you need a practical reason to do it.”

—–

Cranedance: (They were just chatting. Did you have another idea?)
TheWormwood: (Yes, but the timing, she restricts said chatting. SsillvrR’s answer is probably going to close with, “…I’m on duty.” And that’ll be that.)
Cranedance: (OK. Then pick it up after the festival has wound down?)
TheWormwood: ((Much better idea, particularly if there’s a practical reason for said chat/meet-up.)
Cranedance: (”We need to talk shop,” says Celino. “What kind of shop?” says SsillvrR. “The kind where the door locks,” says Celino. “Oh, you mean the Six Cups business,” says SsillvrR. “If you like,” says Celino.)

…and on to 22: Harvest Night – The King’s Guard.

Related pages:

1. 20: Harvest Night – The Baiting Tourmaline bet on the bull. That was more or less...
2. 18: Fire in the Dark Celino waited for the door to close, then settled into...

That was more or less customary; the bull’s odds were longer than a week of wet Tuesdays just about every year, and for good reason. A pike was usually more than a match for even the longest horns.

This year’s variety was a giant brindled monster, a colour of smoke gray that breeders would have referred to as ‘blue’. His shoulders bulged, coming to a high crest of muscle that twitched irritably as he eyed the pudgy looking man stuffed into an ornate jacket the colour of blood and barley. The man had opted against the use of a dog, which was uncommon; a good baiting dog could usually distract the beast long enough for it to be dispatched with relative safety. A really good dog could grab onto the bull’s nose or throat, and keep it exceptionally distracted.

Mistress Swift yawned into a tarred leather mug that was completely out of synch with the layers of satin and lace that had her bound up like a smoked ham. Tourmaline had not made that particular comparison aloud; not out of courtesy, but for the want of a good opportunity.

Swift was by virtue of form, not. A soft, round faced woman whose breasts were snugged up to her clavicle by an expensive looking corset in a shade of bruised plum, she filled the seat she occupied and then some. Side by side, neither Tourmaline nor Swift benefited from the contrast; Tourmaline’s height and stiffly self-possessed posture made Swift into a sinking pudding, and Swift’s exaggerated curves made Tourmaline into a stick putting on airs. The assessment would not necessarily have displeased her either.

The square had been taken over almost entirely by the spectacle. A system of high iron gates set into small but deep pits in the stone work separated bull from spectators, and movable banks of seats and boxes had been arranged at intervals around the ring they form by the gating. Between banks lesser entertainers plied their trades with varying degrees of success; (as it turned out no one was terribly amused by the dog who could pick pockets, and the jugglers were of poor quality this year). Tourmaline and Swift occupied one of the small boxes closest to the actual gate. Rights to the box had been won by the Mistress during the previous years festivities and Tourmaline had at the time imagined she might enjoy the spectacle. Having been knee deep in some of Mistress Swift’s more expensive employees at the time (and perhaps experiencing a number of drinks more vividly than she’d realized at the time), Tourmaline was forced to accept that the decision was heavily influenced.

“Ooo! Almost got him there!” Swift’s thrust her mug out excitedly as the bull swung his enormous head sideways, nearly sweeping the man off his feet. Tourmaline picked through a small plate of toasted nuts absently, and contemplated tossing one over the bank’s edge where the man with the trick monkey was. Monkeys ate nuts, didn’t they?

“Alvie’s having a bit of a to-do later on. He’s finally finished that hideously enormous garden of his this year; just in time for the frost to kill the lot of it I imagine. He’s a dear man, but he’s a god-awful bore. Keep me company?”

Tourmaline reminded herself that she was not fond of peanuts by eating three in quick succession. “Alvie would be infinitely more interesting if he’d admit to half of his oddities. Honestly; the man dotes on his dog more than his children, and changes his shoes sixteen times a day. That pleasure is entirely yours; why in the name of god would you accept his invite in the first place?”

“Business,” Swift sighed painedly, reaching out a free hand to collect a few pecans from the dish. “His oddities go all the way to the bedroom. Masks and something about birds
I don’t remember exactly.”

Tourmaline snickered, and wiped the salt from her fingertips on the arm of the empty chair at her hip. “Poor birds.”

—–

The crowds washed back and forth through Muddy Bottom, packing every pub with screaming townspeople and making the streets nigh-impassable. Celino coasted on the excitement for a while, letting himself be shoved this way and that. But then the heat of the day grew and the crowds got drunker and none of it helped his mood; so shoved, pushed, elbowed in the head, and spilled-on, he wriggled free and into a back alley. Here the locals were feeling the festival spirit, too, but they were feeling it quietly. Celino ignored the people pissing or vomiting in the corners, and started to feel cheerful again once he passed the fourth courting couple. Ah, festival.

He used to love festivals–the streamers, the ribbons, the girls’ unbound hair swaying over their shoulders as they danced, the golden streets of Pentexoire scrubbed clean and bright in the sun, chilled wine in dripping jugs, sticky sweets in sparkling glass bowls, sitting on a terrace and watching the spectacle pass or plunging in like he’d plunge into a bath. The finest singers leaving the cool of their opera houses to sing in the streets, the most fabled of courtesans and dancers performing in the squares–Vittoria, her diamonds like cascades of ice against her coffee-black skin, kicking off her sandals and leaping up to dance in the Verdianii Fountain, smiling over her shoulder at a kennel-boy far too poor to ever have her.

But there the streets weren’t made of mud and the spectacle of choice wasn’t drinking contests and the people made way for him. He was finding this increasingly important as the day wore on. He had no idea how anyone got anywhere on festival days without guards–and there his inner monologue was interrupted by another look-around for a very particular shade of blue. Nothing. Celino slid around a corner and skirted the crowd in front of the Vigorous Unicorn, heading upstreet toward the better part of town and the parks. A ring of girls did one of the odd Ostmonter skip-dances to the tune of a mouth-harp, and here the crowds were almost thin enough that Celino found the dance charming. The crowds thinned a little more, and he had hope; more still, and the hope bloomed into expectation; and then he ran into a wall of people.

Bugger.

The entire park belt was crammed with people, laughing, shouting, shoving, screaming, drinking, pointing, repeating themselves endlessly because everyone wanted to talk and no one wanted to listen. Celino made a few forays through back alleys, and finally found a weak spot in the defenses where he could get through. He broke into a square where the people were watching a-watching a what? Celino fought his way to the fence and squinted. Watching a bull-baiting? Oh, this was too much. What was next, cockfighting? Spitting contests? Bowling?

He found an emptyish spot near some man and his wretched monkey (Hah! Work for Tyr) and contented himself with people-watching.

None of them were blue.

It was going to be a long festival.

—–

Tourmaline picked a bit of salt out from beneath the shell-like curve of a pointed nail and frowned. The little man in his expensive costume was playing coy with the bull, sauntering around in what appeared to be an attempt to show off his well muscled calves rather than a clever tactic. Several of the other boxes had begun to make their dissatisfaction known, throwing roast chestnuts, little currant buns and rounds of fried dough both in the direction of man and beast. A bun bounced comically off the bull’s flank, and the animal gave its great head a toss that made the ribbons festooning its horns flutter.

“I wonder if he realizes how pudgy those pants make his bum look,” Swift mused, popping another pecan past her rouged lips.

“Hmm,” said Tourmaline, who was just wrapping up deliberations on the subject of tossing nuts over the box’s side on the off chance the monkey would get them. An almond sailed over first, and hit the stones with a click.

“What are you doing darling?” Swift, who called everyone from priest to pauper darling, began leaning as Tourmaline abandoned her chair entirely to peek over the edge. The monkey was picking at the pigtails of a small girl, who was cackling wildly while her little brother scowled in verdant envy.

“Damn. Hmm? Oh, trying to feed the monkey.”

Swift made a face. “Nasty little creatures. Fleas and all kinds of nonsense. Be a dear and get the attention of that excellent little beer vendor. I’m going to be positively desiccated if I don’t have another.”

Tourmaline’s focus however was on her aim, which left something to be desired. As the monkey hopped down from the shoulders of the pigtailed girl, she tossed a walnut, which landed on a head of hair and lay there, like an egg in an auburn nest.

“All apologies my good man. I was aiming for the monkey.”

—–

Celino ducked his head as something–pigeon dropping? monkey paw?–landed in his hair. Oh, wonderful, the squalor had gone interactive. He plucked the thing out of his hair and scowled at it. A walnut half. What was a walnut half doing airborne? It was cleaner than either dropping or paw, but it was salted, which meant that now he had to comb his hair again or itch as soon as his sweat touched the salt. He looked about for the walnut-thrower with thunder in his eyes.

“All apologies my good man. I was aiming for the monkey.”

Oh, her. What was she called? Jasper? Turquoise? Tourmaline. Bitch-Queen Devorah pretender gone madwoman Tourmaline. He still hadn’t decided to believe her–here he made an unconscious pass of the crowd for blue–but she was entertaining, and she was sitting out of the crowds. He approached the box, turning the walnut over in his fingers. “This is the second time you have put food in my hair, Madam,” he said with a slight bow. “Once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is a hobby.”

—–

Pigtails eeled past Celino with her still scowling brother in tow to cling to the steel fencing. Tourmaline blinked a few times at the man she’d festooned. Celery, Cilantro, Cel
–something certainly. And he bowed; how quaint. Tourmaline considered throwing a larger nut, or perhaps one still in its shell.

“Did I? Well, perhaps if you had ornamented yourself properly, I wouldn’t feel so instinctually compelled to add whatever I have handy.”

Mistress Swift appeared over the box’s edge, her face like a full moon hovering in the cloudy black night of her hair. “Darling, if my company wasn’t entertaining enough for you, you might have said something. Although,” she sucked a bit of salt from her fingertip, “one could see why he might be entertaining. Do join us, whoever you are. Two is not a proper cheering section. Three is at least slightly better.”

A footman appeared rather like a well-clothed ghost to open a door in the half-wall that seemed upon first glance no more than another section of paneling. “I had no idea you were familiar with exotic-looking men!” Swift batted at Tourmaline’s arm, while the myrath found her seat again, peering with some longing at the door.

“Several, believe me. This flavour belongs to our good Captain I believe. Isn’t that right Cel
–oh bloody hell. What IS your name?”

—–

Victory! Celino sauntered up the stairs to the box. Oh, the shade was bliss. And “exotic-looking” was the kindest thing anyone had said to him since he arrived in Ostmont. He smiled with genuine warmth as he entered the box. “Celino XVII, madam.” He nodded to Tourmaline’s companion–she was a promising little dumpling, though he sensed a warning in Tourmaline’s comment. Well, he only wanted to flirt. They did flirt for fun here, didn’t they?

“The question of whom I belong to has reached a pleasant ambiguity,” he said, smiling like a cat as he stopped behind the empty seat and rested his hand on the back. Oh, plush. Oh, heaven. “If you find me underornamented, I can rectify the situation, though I warn you, there will be feathers involved. The peacock robe and hagoromo,” he added to his purse, and held it up overflowing with silk to demonstrate.

Was Tourmaline supposed to be talking openly about the Captain’s tastes? He was fairly sure she wasn’t. He wasn’t. Maybe this dumpling-woman was safe? He was absolutely sure one wasn’t supposed to correct the Dowager Queen of the Underground on points of decorum. He planned to do it, just like he planned to throw food at her–just to say he’d done it–but he knew enough to choose his battles; and this battle, though high in stakes, was too risky to fight in public.

—–

Boredom; Tourmaline gave a name to the apathy that washed over her like a tepid wave, in the hopes that it would be by it banished. Poking absently among the remaining nuts, she noted it remained firmly entrenched, and vowed to swear off all invitations for the next three weeks at least. Or perhaps chance scenery altogether. The house in Lyalwhyte had been empty for months now, and they had all that interesting business about pheasant hunting this time of year. The hunting itself seemed a terribly arduous affair; but the feathers were lovely. Maybe she could keep a pheasant as a pet, and simply collect the feathers as it molted. Pheasants molted, didn’t they?

While her companion made grandiose if unorthodox plans involving game birds, Mistress Swift cooed like a plump little rock dove. “The pleasure is obviously all mine! Mistress Swift, at your utter disposal.” A dimpled elbow found Tourmaline’s shoulder and she snapped out of thoughts of relocation long enough to pass the nuts. “Pfft!” Swift hissed, giving Tourmaline another elbow, which was received this time with a tolerant sort of smile. “The captain indeed. Stiff in all the wrong places if you get my drift.”

Tourmaline half choked on a little giggle at that assessment. “If anyone would know, I’m sure you would. Merely trying to interject a little life into the terribly stale rumour mill.”

“Bless you for trying darling, but you just don’t have the knack for it. It needs to be plausible at least. Alvie
–you could have claimed he was Alvie’s beaux and I might have–Lord! Whose dog is that?”

It eeled through the bars of the fence, the long brush of its tail giving pigtails’ little brother’s nose a tickling. Lean and rangy with neat conal ears that sat up interested, it trotted jauntily into the ring while an onlooker or two called for its removal. The baiter, who was by now trying in earnest to get close enough to the bull to earn his pay while still living to enjoy it jerked his gaze around nervously for the dog’s owner.

“What kind of dog is that?” Mistress Swift’s fingers froze about the tray of nuts now balanced atop her thighs.

Tourmaline had lifted a hand to her eyes, tenting long fingers across them. “A stupid one.”

—–

Celino worked a bow and a “Madam, your servant” to Mistress Swift into the contortions he needed to get into the voluminous peacock-silk robe in the confined box. The hagoromo, at least, went on easily; he swooped it over his shoulders and collapsed grandly into his chair, which overflowed with silk and feathers like a pasha’s throne. Celino sprawled contentedly. Oh, softness. “Thank you for inviting me into your box,” he said to Tourmaline. “It’s so much more pleasant than being among the groundlings. Barbarous place; one gets pelted with walnuts.

“And the company is so much more–” he said to Mistress Swift, then sat up, compliment forgotten. He watched the beast trot into the ring. “That’s not a dog,” he said, fascinated. “That’s a wolf.”

His interest temporarily negated even the slight sulk he was nursing at being told he wasn’t plausible as Aldridge’s lover. (And who was this Alvie?) He slid to the edge of his seat to see what the wolf would do.

—–

Celino’s hasty wardrobe amendment earned a little ‘ooo’ of interest from Mistress Swift, who having had a good look at the unlikely interruption ringside, was ready to pay attention to more attractive distractions again. “Like sittin’ next to royalty,” Swift purred happily. Tourmaline’s eyebrow didn’t so much as twitch; though that may have been due in more than part to the intensity with which she was glaring at the dog. “A wolf? Surely not! In the middle of the city?”

“Oh dear gods,” Tourmaline mumbled under her breath, dragging the hand down from her brow with what looked like an effort while the baiter’s attention was quickly turned toward the interloping canid which was trotting half circles behind the man. Its tongue lolled like a wide pink ribbon between ivory canines, as it darted toward the man and danced back again. The baiter’s options were poor; either move toward the bull (who looked rather as if he meant business) or back up and move toward the ‘dog’.

Someone else called for the dog to be chased out; the greater portion seemed happy enough with the unusual inclusion. Forepaws splayed playfully, the rangy canid made a half hearted leap at the man’s calves sending him scurrying straight into the angry bull’s range. With a snort and a buck, the brindled monster heaved forward faster than one might have imagined, and using a horn like a sling tossed the hapless man a good twelve feet. He landed with a thick thud, and there were sympathetic ‘ooos’ from every direction. As the help scuttled out to collect the groaning baiter (who was trying without success to raise himself onto his elbows, while the dog meanwhile taunted the bull a bit) Mistress Swift blew out an annoyed sigh.

“Well, I suppose I owe you twenty crowns don’t I?”

Tourmaline’s lips were an unreadable shape for a moment, before she seemed to shake herself out and find a cache of unused composure. “Never mind that now. A dog on the play
its hardly fair. And now I’m going to be horribly rude and run off on you; if you manage to ruin Alvie’s party, by all means come tell me about it.” Hastily collecting a long layered cloak, Tourmaline stole a glance back at the ring only to find the ‘dog’ trotting merrily toward the box.

—–

“Like sittin’ next to royalty,” Swift purred happily.

Celino preened, shooting her his proudest and fiercest grin. He liked this little woman. She wasn’t nearly as interesting as Bitch-Queen Devorah, but she was good for the soul. He was going to return her compliment, but once more the wolf drew his attention back to the ring.

“It has to be a wolf. Look at the proportions, the muzzle… It’s not a well-kept wolf,” he added dubiously. “It’s too thin. The coat’s unaffected, but I’ll bet you that whomever has been keeping it underfeeds it to make it a better hunter. That never works,” he added with disgust. “Hungry animals don’t function any better than hungry humans. But it seems good-tempered enough, maybe a little too playful–someone should–” He rose, meaning to say, “–drive it from the ring,” but the baiter landed with a thud. Celino sucked air through his teeth. That was broken ribs for sure. He felt for his purse. “Do they have real doctors at this thing, or just those bloodletter people?”

Then Tourmaline made to go, and the wolf aimed itself at the box. Celino watched it, blinking with bemusement. “Madam, is that your wolf?”

—–

Swift was definitely a dose of honey amid a plethora of salt. While her flattery played a role in Tourmaline’s continued friendship with the woman, her business helped a great deal too. Tourmaline could not help but wish she’d spent the evening there and forgone this whole silly nonsense. Damnedable brandy-inspired congeniality

“It’s not a wolf,” she snapped, causing Swift to jerked her gaze up from the nut tray with a look that was profoundly ‘kicked puppy’.

“No need to get your nose out of joint darling. Perhaps dinner didn’t agree with you?”

Happy enough to take the excuse offered, Tourmaline dragged on the fur-trimmed cloak and flashed the woman a small apologetic sort of smile. “Entirely possible. I’m sure a few hours of rest will put me to rights again. My apologies Swift. Some other time, when I’m not
out of sorts.”

Rest, yes, good idea. Throttle him first, and then rest. Mistress Swift to her credit took this all in stride, and waved pleasantly to her companion as she trotted hastily down the short set of stairs.

She’d reached the platform which connected all the boxes by the time Celino opened his fool mouth. Tourmaline lifted her gaze, and gave the man a look that would have splintered the tree of life like a brittle matchstick. “Certainly not. I don’t keep wild animals-”

The wolf’s nails clicked musically against the wooden platform. Polite as can be, the leggy canid sat down at Tourmaline’s ankles, and turned an immense toothy grin complete with lolling pink tongue at her.

It would not have been amiss to suggest the woman looked as if she were trying to set the wolf on fire by will alone. After a moment, when it became apparent the wolf intended to do nothing more than smile up at her doggishly, she cleared her throat.

“Whoever owns you should have had you neutered a long time ago,” she hissed.

The wolf’s ears twitched and it cocked its great head.

“Oh yes, very funny. I suppose you think that was helpful do you?”

A blink. The pink tongue rolled up long enough for the wolf to swallow, then tumbled down again.

“Go away right now.”

—–

Celino gave Mistress Swift a “what can you do?” shrug and frown, and sat down with his elbows on the railing to watch the show. He’d seen the kind of beasts she kept around her house. The notion that she had a free-ranging pet wolf was natural, even to be expected.

—–

There were a few disappointed jeers directed at the baiter, who was laid out on a long board and carted off by a pair wearing the white arm bands that designated them healers of an ‘official’ position. Whether their haste was inspired by the man’s injuries, or the taunts of the money-losing crowd was a subject open to debate. Mistress Swift sighed dramatically as Tourmaline, apparently choosing to now ignore the creature paced off in an easterly direction, parting crowds with the force of her expression alone. The wolf capered about a bit (making the monkey scale his handler shrieking bloody murder), played a brief game of chase with a small dark haired boy who made a bold attempt to grab its tail, then set off at a mile-eating trot after her.

“She has a way with beasts you know. I’ve seem all manner of them come to her out of the blue. Great big stag,” here she mimed a spread of antlers with her hands, “once came upon us while we were having lunch in the park. Birds and cats too.” Giving Celino a friendly pat on the shoulder (careful not to ruffle any feathers) she set the remaining box of nuts aside. “But I’ll be late if I don’t dash. Lovely making your acquaintance. Come see me sometime darling,” the thick red lips pursed then parted in a brilliant smile, and then she was gone, bustling off in the direction of a giant spring-box carriage.

—–

“My,” Celino assayed at Mistress Swift’s description of Tourmaline’s talents, then got in a hasty nod and the politest farewell (”Goodbye, thank you, enjoy your party, a pleasure, I will”) he could slip into the few moments he had. Snatching a handful of nuts from the box, he hurried after Tourmaline. HERE was a woman who knew how to make crowds give way.

He was as inconspicuous as a flock of quetzals in a sparrow-cage as he followed in her wake, feathers a-flutter. He wished briefly that he hadn’t dressed up. Ignoring giggles and comments, he strode through the crowds until he found a place, if not at her side, then at the wolf’s side. He looked down at it. “Needed to stretch your legs, did you?” he said. “Do you often take part in sporting events?”

—–

By the time Celino caught up, the wolf was pacing along at Tourmaline’s heels, shoulders rolling liquidly beneath a thick ruff of wheat coloured fur. The crowds were thinner here, composed mostly of family groups kindling bonfires over which to burn their offerings of thanks to the growing gods. Thick sheaves of wheat were hung from almost every lintel, tied with coloured yarn and thread, or ribbon in the case of the grander homes and fat little gourds sat on steps and sills, some sporting candles that would be lit once proper darkness had fallen.

Tourmaline threw a look over her shoulder; first at Celino, then at the wolf. “Don’t talk; you’ll just encourage him.” Why Celino was following her at all might have been a prudent question, but Tourmaline was too busy fuming to make practical inquiries. The wolf gave the hulking lion statue a sidelong glance as they passed, and came to a bouncing halt at the gate. Tourmaline patted herself down for pockets in which the keys might be hidden, growling under her breath in frustration when her search yeilded none.

“And now I’ve forgotten the keys somewhere.”

While a second search of her various pockets was conducted, the wolf sidled up to the gate and gave it a good prod with his nose. The latch slipped, and he slithered through without waiting for Tourmaline, who simply sighed and raised her hands vaguely at the sky as if begging divine intervention.

—–

Celino sidled up beside her with his hands in his robe slits. “It’s a useful servant,” he said, “if a bit insubordinate. Maybe if you denied it doggy treats…” He pondered. “Or had it fixed…”

The situation was slowly creeping past “I have no earthly idea what’s going on” to “I have no earthly idea what I’m doing here.” But Tourmaline hadn’t chucked him yet, and it was still more interesting than the festival. He glanced around–no blue–then back at Tourmaline. “What can I do to help?”

—–

She seemed to shed some of her pique once the gate was closed safely behind her. Down the street, someone had made a great pile of brush and garden rubbish in the center of the street in preparation for later fireside festivities. Tourmaline spared a thought for several plans that were now shelved, while a pair of gargantuan hounds came trotting around, only to slink away with their tails tucked up to their bellies. The wolf ceased hackling, sneezed, shook himself out and then thrust his nose at the door which popped open obligingly.

Seeming to collect herself mentally again, Tourmaline blinked sideways at Celino as if only having just realized he was there at all. “Great gods what are you wearing?” This came out almost as one word. “It looks like seven peacocks exploded around your head, and all their shiny bits just started orbiting
”

The house was dark inside, the servants having been dismissed to their own gatherings earlier in the afternoon. Tourmaline swore softly as her fingers grazed the table in the foyer, only to be rewarded by the jangle of her forgotten keys.

“You better not have put those there just now,” she mumbled, jerking the heavy cloak free as she wound her way between items of furniture. Discarding the voluminous paprika coloured thing over the back of a sofa, she made her way through three rooms and a hall before reaching the solar. Having so titled it had been a bit of a joke; the fact that two entire walls were glass allowing the sitter to take advantage of sun without the bother of the actual out-of-doors had as much to do with its title as privacy. Potted trees in miniature decorated the floor space, while other plants ran riot across eleven different kinds of shelf and stand. Small green sprigs sprung up from the most unlikely vessels; alchemical crucibles housed cacti of various bristling personalities, vines curled lazily out of soup bowls, and tea cups filled to the brim with rich black earth sprouted green tipped bulbs.

Jareth taunted a small cactus with a gloved fingertip, brushing the spines sideways that they could find no purchase.

“Very clever. Productive use of your time too I’m sure. Did you think that was funny?” Tourmaline was a steaming teapot, and all evidence suggested there was a tempest within.

Jareth did not look up, but chuckled, moving his attention to a white-throated orchid, its spindly stem sured up by a reclaimed wooden spoon and some thread. “Rather, yes.” The grin he flashed her was all white and wolfish, despite having abandoned the guise. “You might be grateful; you would not have won the bet otherwise.”

“I’m sure you did it out of sheer altruism,” Tourmaline snorted and tossed herself into a chair with a little huff. “Celino!” A finger stabbed at him, then a chair. “Stop hovering like a floating damned peacock.”

[Once more called off on account of sleep. Tourmaline and Jareth got into a fight, and Celino got shooed out into the harvest-night streets to search for blue.]

Related pages:

1. 21: Harvest Night – In the Streets Evening was setting in on the streets of Ostmont, and...

—–

In a word, boring. In another few words, boring protected by a lock that was worth precisely one wet shit from a dying dog. It was Van’s professional opinion that though the mechanism was a touch rusty, a determined six year old with a butter knife could have jimmied it. The reason for Celino’s lack of concern was clear; Van had been given little time to examine the room itself in previous instances, being otherwise occupied with fighting, then fucking. Dimly, he recalled the pillows were a bit dusty.

The walls were plaster, and Vanguard first made an examination of the various cracks and dents in them. From there, he moved onto an indifferent examination of the tiny table, the smallish bed, and the pillows, which were in reality less dusty than previously imagined. The window offered a dazzling view of the wall of the building opposite. To kill a little more time, Vanguard practiced cracking the lock on the window as well; it wasn’t as lousy as the door, but once one figured out that the catch was sticky, it wasn’t hard either.

As plans went, it was rather a good one; the only snag was Celino’s timing. In the mage’s absence, once the redhead had tried to stave off boredom by surveying everything within the lackluster room worth surveying (the list was woefully short and consisted primarily of comparisons between it and his own), he was left with little else to do. Eventually, the initial plan evolved in the name of entertainment; Vanguard even had time to wander back to his own room and procure a book then wander back again. By the time the door handle jingled warningly, the redhead had curled cattishly amid a heap of Celino’s pillows, and was picking his way through a the tin of tiny dessert squares he’d brought while picking his way through a book of inappropriate wood cuts.

First impressions might have included a concern that the halfling was in fact drowning in a sea of black fabric. This was of course, a hazard involved with stealing items based on their colour without taking size variation into consideration (and to be perfectly honest, anyone who was stupid enough to hang a good silk shirt out on a line two measly stories above street level deserved to lose it). The collar, meant for broader shoulders than it currently graced hung crookedly where it was not hidden by the lazy russet spirals of his hair. While the shirt clearly belonged on a body thrice his breadth, the fawn coloured breeches beneath it fit perfectly enough that it was quite unthinkable that they could have been made for any other. Consequently, ignoring the little gathering of wrinkles that bracketted his bent knees, one might have succumbed to the illustion that they were painted on.

—–

It was so late, it was early, and Celino whistled cheerily at the sleepy potboy as he let Celino in. If the potboy was up it was four o’clock; six to the smells of breakfast, seven to get up, that was three hours of sleep, and that was fine, just fine; all of life was fine, the potboy was lovely, the creaky stairs were lovely, the cave-dark upstairs hall was lovely, and loveliest of all was the guard captain who smiled cheekily in Celino’s mind. Celino bounced upstairs to his room borne on clouds of bliss that were a very particular shade of blue, and opened his door to find–Vanguard, curled up in his bed like silk-clad temptation.

Celino looked from Vanguard’s too-pretty face, to his shirt that cried, “Take me off, I’m drowning!”, to his breeches so fine and close that they looked like they couldn’t be taken off (but memory reminded him that they came off just fine), to his bare pink toes. A fluff of black sock lint dangled from one toe, and that was painfully adorable. Celino looked back to Vanguard’s face and tried to ignore the way Vanguard’s mouth looked as he bit into something gooey and sinful. “I thought you hated me,” he said cheerfully as he closed the door behind him.

Now, how to get the boy out of–into–something. A preposition change was required. Celino’s imagination offered up a couple of examples, neither of them likely to be Captain-approved.

—–

Silk shirts are delicate creatures, and not likely to withstand the sort of abuse Vanguard was currently heaping upon it well. At Celino’s tardy entrance, the halfling gave his shirt an apologetic brushing-off, which scattered crumbs in all directions, and took pains not to get any of the cherry filling on his front (a small darker spot about nipple-high suggested he was in fact trying not to get MORE of the cherry filling on his front).

“Just ’cause you’re an arrogant jackass?” Vanguard swallowed a mouthful of cherry and chocolate and smiled pertly. “Actually, it#s a religious visit.” For a minute the freckled features managed a patch on solemn, then that smile returned ruining the illusion of piety. “Not supposed t’be alone for harvest’s dawn ‘n all.”

—–

“Oh, is that the tradition around here?” Then why didn’t Aldr–Silver invite me to stay? Right–work. He works too hard at all the wrong times. This must be fixed. Celino kept his eyes on Vanguard (for security, not to admire him) as he toed off his low boots and untied his belt. He left his purse on the table, satisfied that Vanguard had learned his lesson about it. “And you couldn’t find a single person who wasn’t an arrogant jackass?’ he teased. He sat on the edge of the bed, his weight tipping the tin of dessert squares toward him. “Not a single man who wasn’t a know-it-all, a puff, an asshole, a–what was it you called me? The really charming name, the one you came up with when I–” He made an expressive gesture with his left hand. With his other hand, he loosened the buttons at his collar. He grinned at Vanguard, focusing on his face and not on the chocolate on his fingers or the drop of cherry filling in exactly the wrong place on his shirt. Blue, blue, think blue.

—–

“In this end of the country it is,” Vanguard shrugged absently, transfering the mangled remainder of the little chocolate square to his right hand that he could flip pages properly. One or two of those already bore the chocolately smudges of fingertips not properly licked clean, but given that it had been a cheap book anyway, he paid them no mind. Vanguard peered with a scholarly interest at the present page, and went silent a moment as he considered whether or not the act pictured was physically possible. At the litany of insults, he flicked his gaze upward again, and made a vague gesture at the bottle on the floor at the bed’s edge, dangerously close to where one might put a foot. “Less talk, more opening. I can’t get the stupid cork out. I can call you names later when m’not dying of thirst.”

—–

Celino glanced at the bottle. It was a heavy red, rich and expensive. He wondered whether Vanguard stole it, or stole the money and then bought it. “I appreciate the gesture,” he said, “but there’s hard work in the morning and not nearly enough night between now and then. If you want a bed partner for the dawn, I’m willing–” He paused to pull his robes over his head and shake out his rumpled hair. “–but it will have to be literal. Clean robes, keep together,” he said as his servant drew the robes into the purse.

—–

Vanguard, who had cocked his head ever so slightly to better appreciate the obscure angle at which bodies connected on the page in his lap, glanced up again at Celino’s tone more than the words. Oh, there was the telltale ‘but’ in there; it wasn’t however the sort he was looking for. Balancing the remains of the decadent square between his thumb and forefinger, Vanguard let out the kind of sigh that usually produced an immediate concern in those within hearing range as if by magic. It was not magic of course, but rather a honed skill. Packing such suffering, such disappointment, such pain into one small exhalation was no small feat.

“The blue pillows are mine,” Vanguard pointed out, eyeing the mage rather than the book while robes were removed. The tousseled hair thing was cute, in a weird sort of way. Like a cat with its fur brushed backwards. Popping the sticky remains of the chocolate square between his teeth, there was some rustling of blankets, and a general reorganization of bedding that had more to do with his appropriating two of three pillows and the heavy quilt than anything else. Slithering under the covers, he was even polite enough to move over. “What’s this hard work thing anyway?”

—–

Celino ignored Vanguard’s long-suffering sigh. He’d had a teenaged daughter. He’d had a teenaged daughter who took after him. No mere sneak-thief, even a lusciously beautiful one with cherry and chocolate on his breath, could equal her. It had been a long time since Celino had to ignore a long-suffering sigh, but he noted with pleasure that the mechanisms were still well-oiled and efficient. He felt not a pang of guilt as he untied his trousers and fed them into the purse. His servant obliged him with a nightshirt–only slightly sweaty; the other one was with the laundress–and he slipped into bed with a clean and shining conscience.

His easy sink into bed was interrupted by a flurry of brushing and patting when he discovered the crumbs Vanguard had so thoughtfully scattered (better than peeing in the corners, Celino thought, but maybe next time he could mark his territory less stickily), but at last Celino nestled against Vanguard, face tucked into the curve of his shoulder. Vanguard’s body was sharp against him, and tiny–Celino was perpetually surprised by how small Vanguard was. He already looked undertall when he was puffed out with attitude and stolen clothes. Touching him burst the remains of the illusion. He was waifish, delicate. It was a pity, Celino mused, that he couldn’t be taught to play the part of an aristocrat. With his slenderness and features, he could be the fine-boned aristocrat that Celino only appeared to be.

It would be like shaving a chimp, his judgement reminded him.

But a beautiful chimp, his libido countered. His body, fitted close against Van’s, said, Yep.

Blue. Think blue. Cold, cold blue.

“It has to do with heavy lifting and diplomacy,” Celino said. “You wouldn’t like it. Do you always sleep in your trousers?”

—–

He would have been more dismayed by the fact his sigh offensive yielded no positive result had not that been a mere#–well#–a mere vanguard of a tactic. An opening volley of proverbial arrows, just in case the enemy could be caught with their shields down. And having failed, he was just as happy to move onto a secondary line of attack. The addition of a nightshirt; that was an insult right there but in a moment of magnanimity Vanguard ignored it.

Vanguard couldn’t ignore the crumb-brushing fury that followed, and so instead gained some mote of satisfaction by remaining an intentional obstacle to the mage’s attempts to brush off his side of the bed. When Celino had finished, Vanguard felt that the minor crumb-victory had gained him some ground. Sinking back down amid the huddle of his stolen blankets and pillows, he was reminded almost instantly that Celino’s bed was a great deal less comfortable than his own. It figured the man would want a boring bed to go with his boring room.

Celino at least did not attempt to curl into an isolated little ball on one side of the bed. Though the mage’s vantage point wouldn’t offer a view of it, the half elf’s lips drew up in a cattish bow, all smugness and contentment at once as if he might break into a purr at any second. Celino was warm, and chilly fingers were unapologetic about their heat-stealing operative pressed against the mage’s belly.

“Politics and back pain; no thanks,” Van mumbled, turning his hands over when his palms had warmed adequately. Hard work seemed to Vanguard a ridiculous undertaking; particularly since most people made it permanent. Snugged up against Celino, the halfling threw a casual leg over the mage’s thigh and twisted slightly that he could find new places to put his hands, having sucked the warmth out of a stretch of stomach. “No–I just thought y’were in an all-fired hurry to go to sleep.” Some more wiggling ensued, demonstrative of an apparent discomfort. If his long suffering sigh was an A, then his innocent face was a flawless A+.

—–

Celino gasped and sucked in his stomach as Vanguard contravened of all rules of bed etiquette. “Can’t you shove them against my lower back like a normal person?” he said. “Your fingers are made of ice! What have you been doing, juggling snowballs?” He caught the boy’s hands and held them to his lips, breathing warmth into them. “I am in a hurry to go to sleep, but–” But the wiggling is distracting, either stop it or turn around and–blue, blue. He placed a firm hand on Vanguard’s hip and stopped the wiggling. Now Vanguard was wedged against him. Tightly. Warmly. Blue. Checkers. “–but I didn’t expect you to hop into bed fully dressed. You can keep your trousers on if nothing sticky or enterprising is going to roll out of the pockets, if that’s what you really want.”

This was the fourth bout of arousal he’d suffered this night, and his body was running out of patience. His skin tingled. You’re pressed so close to him that you’re practically inside his trousers, his libido said, and his trousers are so tight they’re practically inside his skin, so for all intents and purposes you’re already inside. What would one more little degree of “inside” hurt?

Wouldn’t hurt at all, his body said, and another aborted wriggle from Van provided illustration. Celino’s breath caught in his throat. He disguised it as an exasperated sigh, grateful that his face was still hidden against Vanguard’s throat.

Vanguard’s white throat, which was still faintly scented with the lavender soap he’d–

Blue checkers. A field of icy blue checkers.

—–

Bed etiquette was one of those things that Vanguard had been aware of since the approximate age of five. It was at or near this point that having been made aware of the general unpleasantness most people associated with having icy hands slapped against their stomach without warning, Vanguard began to do it on purpose. Etiquette was after all, just a prissied up word for rule–and plus, the faces people made were worth it.

“What?” Feigning ignorance was hardly a stretch, but helped to blot the glee from his tone at Celino’s spluttering protests. “‘Case ye hadn’t noticed, it ain’t terribly warm in here.” And there, things began to take on a wonderfully familiar tilt, and Vanguard decided the world was all roses and rainbows again.

Van’s thoughts were naught but a satisfied purr as Celino’s hand clasped his hip, ostensibly to make him stay still. Vanguard pretended to have found a comfortable position as the mage’s breath trickled between his fingers, pretended not to feel the thigh beneath his, or the hand on his hip or the warmth quickly accumulating beneath the protective cocoon of blankets. “Define enterprising.” Luckily, the smirk in his voice was likely to be drowned out by the physician’s desperate introspection. And when enough time had passed to suggest the halfling was considering just how uncomfortable his pants were he said, “Erm#–” A little wiggle of indeterminate intention followed, “my fingers are all stiff from cold.”

—–

“If what I’m doing isn’t enough, stick them in your armpits,” Celino said on automatic. Then, remembering this was Vanguard, he raised a hand to block him and said, “Your armpits, not mine. And stop wriggling like a worm on a hook.” That was good, keep the disgusting images coming.

—–

Vanguard managed an exasperated look, though it was little more than a thin sheet dragged over naked conceit. Fine, the look said, I don’t need your help anyway. Twisting that he could reach without elbowing Celino in the chin, Vanguard made a feeble attempt at the buttons of his trousers with apparently cold-numbed (and chocolate smudged) fingertips. A little moue of effort split his lips, and a sigh trickled out. Vanguard was careful not to look up and ruin the whole act; he’d done that before and the consequences had been disappointing to say the least.

Disappointing and expensive#–but that was a long story, and he’d never been one to dwell on failures. Particularly when they were his own.

“Just tryin’ to get comfortable,” the halfling pointed out obdurately.

—–

Celino sighed. He slid his free arm under Vanguard’s shoulders, then, drawing his face out of the way, flipped Vanguard abruptly. There. Now you don’t have to nuzzle his throat or worry about where his hands are. “More space to work in. Are you happy?” Now he’s spooning with you, his inner voice said gleefully. Yep, his body said.

Damn.

“Shuck whatever you’re going to shuck and get to sleep,” Celino said, trying to work a little roughness into his voice. “I have work in the morning.”

—–

Vanguard was not necessarily unaccustomed to being man-handled. Matter of fact his childhood, having included two older sisters had provided him numerous opportunities for the younger halfling to become acquainted with being shoved, flipped, pushed, thumped and sat-upon. Granted, Celino was not likely going to either pull his hair or try and dig his thumbs under his spine, but the generality of being moved like a piece of errant furniture was the same. He was however, not truly expecting to be flipped as efficiently by a physician. Somewhere in Vanguard’s mental ‘big book of rules’ (which was right beside Vanguard’s mental ‘big book of rules for Vanguard’, which was a substantially edited version of the former) it said nice proper professional types didn’t turn you over like a piece of grilling salmon.

There was a small croaky sound of surprise from the red head, followed by a smaller crisper sigh. Well, no reason to suspect this was indicative of an impending failure. Wriggling out of his trousers was most definitely a job which required two hands and the whole of his focus anyway. Though it could not have been said he did much to minimize contact, Vanguard was ready to plead a case of narrow-bed syndrome if Celino made a fuss.

And it seemed as if he might. He was in one powerfully fussy mood.

“Leave your balls in the office today?” Vanguard’s arm arched over head briefly as the trousers went sailing window-ward. They hit the sill with a whump that suggested they were of a heavier fabric than one might have suspected, and slithered to the floor defeated.

—–

Balls + office + Celino’s “blue, blue” mantra = Celino entirely absorbed in a sudden vivid image of Aldridge bent over his desk, panting, and too busy to protest Vanguard’s strange notions of where clothing should go. The squirming and bucking as Vanguard struggled out of his trousers were no help at all. Blue, he thought, then Balls, then, Blue balls, exactly. Why am I putting up with this? “Master Bax,” he said coolly, “if you don’t settle down and go to sleep, I’m going to start asking myself some most topical questions about why I’m allowing you to stay in my room.”

—–

“Grahph–#” mumbled Vanguard, in a decidedly exasperated tone. This was starting to sound terribly serious. Serious, as in not at all fun or interesting; troublesome, since ‘fun and interesting’ were arguably the halfling’s two primary life goals. Vanguard gave the wall an ugly look that was ruined briefly by a smirk made invisible by the darkness.

Bax. Ooooh right.

Celino likely had enough of a feel for the halfling’s character by now not to be too disconcerted by the snide little chuckle emanating from his half of the bed. False names and mattresses that were far too hard aside, Vanguard considered doing as suggested for two point six seconds before realizing that was hardly the purpose of his visit. All things considered, two point six seconds of obedience wasn’t bad.

“Right#–so, let’s ask some topical questions then.” Vanguard wrangled with the covers for a moment before managing to free himself, giving Celino’s shoulder shove enough to roll him onto his back. The excess of his overlong shirt puddled around his thighs as he straddled the physician’s hips and placed bracing hands to either side of his rib cage.

“Whhhhy,” he drawled musically, “d’ye think I’m here?”

—–

I know! I know! said a portion of Celino’s anatomy, loudly and pointedly enough that Vanguard could scarcely have missed the answer. Looking up at Van straddling him predatorily, Celino had a flash back to the first time they met. Except that now, instead of threatening to stick Celino, Vanguard was demanding that Celino–

Enough of that thought.

Vanguard’s wicked little laugh had been disconcertingly sexy. And that was enough of that thought, too.

Celino grinned up at him. “You like having sex with people you hate?” he said. “You couldn’t find anyone else? You enjoyed our first meeting so much that you want to go through it in reverse–first the snuggling in bed eating goodies and reading dirty books, then the climbing atop and threatening me, then the…” He trailed a hand down Vanguard’s side, the silk gathering in little folds and riffling between his fingertips. “Remind a tired old geezer what happened before that, would you?”

He hit you, his memory supplied obligingly. If we’re being picky.

I don’t think he’s wearing anything under the shirt, his libido said. Forget the history and find out for certain. For science.

And ohhh, Celino could see nothing but the curve of Van’s cheek and the point of his shoulder in the light from the inn’s courtyard, but he could feel him. not nearly enough of him, just tantalizing brushes and curves and–Press upward, his body suggested, and he kept his hips firmly on the mattress. Aldridge was waiting for him in the morning. He could get through this, and maybe even insult Vanguard enough to count it as a victory.

—–

Portions of Celino were certainly getting the message. Other portions were talking, when clearly the answer being sought was not verbal.

Flaming fucking hells, what was wrong with him? While Celino was making clever comments about the order in which events had previously transpired, Vanguard having grown tired of listening, started a little investigative work with his mouth. There was a stupid shirt in the way (its status as stupid related directly to its location; between his mouth and Celino’s skin), but being moved abruptly had pulled the neckline enough to bare a narrow slice of chest.

A questioning tone interrupted a focused examination of a clavical curve by the halfling’s lips. “Huh?” Celino’s grin was a blade underwater in the dark. Something about happening#before? “Ah#–s’not dwell on the past, yeah?” The ticklist trickle of silk followed Celino’s hand, and Vanguard twisted into the brief touch, groaning irritatedly when the contact was broken.

“What?” Annoyance sharpened the edges of his habitual drawl. The filmy light that filtered in through the tiny square of a window outlined the corkscrew contours of his unbound hair, and sapped the eye-watering red from each strand rendering it a colourless inky jungle. “Mother’s love man! You fixing to join the priesthood or what?” The pert point of his nose shifted as he wrinkled it. “Scared you’ll get pregnant?”

—–

Celino had lost count of the number of times someone’s mouth had been on him that day–and on chaste, public parts of him, no less–and it was starting to drive him mad. Shivers ran across his sensitized skin, making him painfully aware of the brush of Vanguard’s lips and the pressure of his hips and thighs. He ached where he was trapped against Vanguard’s body.

“Ah–s’not dwell on the past, yeah?”

Celino laughed. Mockery on autopilot. “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it,” he said, trailing his hand down, around the point of Vanguard’s hip, lower still until he cupped a cheek in his palm. His fingers brushed ticklishly along the cleft. Vanguard’s arse was round and warm and stay here a while, his libido pleaded. Give me a minute, he said to it, then drew his hand back and delivered a stinging slap.

—–

Vanguard would have pointed out that bitching about being the subject of interest from numerous parties was a positive, not a negative. Particularly if they were either of the attractive or wealthy variety. The best were both, but finding those ones was a bit like chasing rainbows looking for ends. Vanguard for his part was willing to settle for attractive and broke sexually; the unattractive and wealthy could always be conned.

Well#–usually.

Sometimes.

Where lips encountered the pebbled texture of goose bumps, they split in a grin. Tangled curlicues of hair dragged ticklishly after him as he inched his way up the man’s throat to the underside of his jaw. Had inter-libido exchange been possible, Vanguard’s would have sided with Celino’s. Since that particular brand of magic had not yet been discovered, the halfling relayed the message with a good old fashioned grind against the hips he pinned.

All was going swimmingly, until Celino got clever again. Vanguard jerked up from where he’d been busily painting the mage’s neck with purple, suspiciously mouth-shaped marks, eyes flying open. “Oi!” Remarkably, he managed to make a fairly ridiculous syllable sound properly indignant. Sitting up again the milky half-light painted his features in a stark achromatic spectrum. “Not funny. Not funny.”

—–

The grind nearly undid Celino. He groaned loudly into Vanguard’s curls, and the tension added extra force to the slap. Then Vanguard’s warmth was gone. Celino grinned up at the indignant thief. Bit off more than we can chew again, have we? “I thought it was hilarious,” he drawled. “You rather enjoyed it, too, last time. What’s wrong?” He half-sat, avoiding any unnecessary pelvic motions (his libido complained), and drew Vanguard back down with an arm around his shoulders. The boy was hot against him, the silk shirt no barrier. “Do you like it only if you’re pinned?” On pinned, he tightened his arm, holding Vanguard to his chest, and delivered another slap.

—–

“Hilarity,” Vanguard glowered, the force of his irritation losing some of its intensity in the low light, “not the mood m’tryin’ to cultivate issit?” Celino was grinning again. More importantly, Celino was talking again. Godsdamnit, did he ever shut up?

And for the second time in so many minutes Vanguard found himself manhandled into an elegant position pressed against Celino’s chest by an arm that was apparently strong than it looked. “Ever heard of ‘go with the flow?” The halfling inquired snappishly, rolling his shoulders so that his scapula jabbed the pinning arm unpleasantly. The second slap knocked the curve out of his spine briefly, rendering him stiff with a mixture of increasing annoyance and embarrassment.

“You know what would be hilarious? If ye let go, and I didn’t have to bite off your nipple. That would be side-splittin’.” Vanguard chose that moment to drop all resistance, letting himself lie with a boneless grace atop Celino’s chest, not accidentally reinstating the pressure to more sensitive portions of the mage’s anatomy.

—–

The sudden pressure startled a gasp out of Celino. Oh. If he was going to tease the boy out of his bed, he had to do it soon, or he wouldn’t do it at all.

Is that what you’re really trying to do? his libido asked.

Yes.

Really?

Absolutely.

All along?

For the last ten seconds, and that’s good enough for you. Shut up and let me get back to work.

He shifted his arm out of the way of Van’s various points (You need to feed him), doing his ragged best to ignore the feel of the body draped over his. It had been so very long. He vaguely remembered a larger body, stronger, pressing him close, fumbles in the darkness, but nothing had come of it and it couldn’t possibly count and when was that, anyway? He breathed in, inhaling the scent of Vanguard’s hair. “Remembering why you hate me?” he purred, and administered another slap.

—–

If nothing else, being clamped to Celino’s chest like a badly fitted jacket put him in the perfect position to bite. Matter of fact, there were scant inches between the halfling’s mouth and the previously threatened nipple. Tendrils of hair swishing across Celino’s throat Vanguard leaned forward and nipped sharply. Celino’s slap was ill-advised given its timing; luck had the halfling let go before the third smack, else he might have done just as he’d promised however inadvertantly.

This was approaching ridiculous, and he was at least briefly, stupidly grateful that it was dark enough to hide the smear of powdery-pink painting his cheeks…. both fore and hind, as it were. At the slap, his hips jumped and this time a creaky little groan crept past his clenched teeth.

Fuck.

“M’ startin’ to,” he growled, rearranging himself in an attempt to shove the mage’s arm off. “Whatever the point is, I get it okay?”

[We never did finish the scene, and left Vanguard's success up in the air. At this point, it looks like Vanguard did, in fact, fail.]

Half an hour later, Celino was settled in the armchair with a harder chair under his feet; then he wrapped a blanket around himself; and then he was asleep, with the book open in his lap and his chin on his chest.

—–

Ordinarily there was some savour for the elf in ferreting out the truth of an issue, and using it to engineer a solution. There were complications involved with people-work that manual labour lacked, and often that was interesting. Today, it was a wood rasp against his patience… among other things. The room, an area which while ostensibly serving as storage for the kitchen’s larger stock was generally understood to be an acceptable place for a late night game of cards or dice. From the look of things, the gathered had been involved in the former before pride was badly lacerated on several sides. It took scant seconds to discover that the issue was purely numerical; one woman, two men. That neither man had been aware of the other previously factored largely. Apparently it had come out over a hand, and Merick, who was usually the sort pulling hot-heads apart, had discovered in himself the capacity for temper. One nose was least was out of joint as a result (not figuratively at all), and there were a number of big ugly threats floating like black clouds over the gathered by the time SsillvrR arrived. On the simplest level, the issue was dissention. Unfortunately, the simplest level did nothing to deal with the very personal hostility between the two guards who were expected to be able to work together at whatever they were assigned. That didn’t stop the elf from seriously considering giving them both a night in cells to think about it. And of course, that urge had nothing to do with who was sitting in his room waiting. Allowing Celino’s waiting presence to influence his judgment would have been irresponsible at best, and so, SsillvrR waded through forty agonizing minutes of back and forth until cooler heads began to prevail. When the threat of a fight was really and truly dead, everyone was dismissed; Merick, Reath and Allen to their bunks, and Jonquil to the healer to have his nose set. SsillvrR recognized his decision to mete out some manner of discipline later a lapse in protocol but could not by that time bring himself to care too deeply. So long as no one else was going to be bruised, blackened or broken, as a direct result they could damned well wait until morning to find out whether they’d be scrubbing floors or whitewashing stalls.

The darkness he slipped into was thick and full of stars that stared down coldly. The wind off the water had picked up again, and pushed briskly past and had all but ruined the relative neatness of his unbound hair by the time he was once more inside.

SsillvrR would have liked to say his resolve remained firm the entire time. That’s exactly what would have happened in a book; there was a kind of dramatic symmetry to one’s desire being unshakeable. Truth be told, there was no time to give much real thought to the situation while playing intermediary. Being focused on his role as a mediator meant the issues surrounding sex and Celino were distilled down to their basest form, which could have been described succinctly as ‘yes’. The walk back down that hall was considerably longer this time. The door to his room was unchanged by harboring a guest, but the elf looked at it just the same, as if given a moment more it might explain exactly why this was beginning to feel like the sort of bad idea one couldn’t just gloss over. Hells, Celino hadn’t given him so much as a sign before tonight. And SsillvrR himself was forced to admit, the thought hadn’t crossed his mind, it had crashed into it headlong… but it had taken Celino standing no more than an inch away with that look on his face to do it. Possibly not the soundest foundation for… well, nothing really. Another snag; Celino was unlikely to consider this more than a brief diversion, and SsillvrR himself was not at all certain this was anything more than a fling. That concept had for him long since soured; looking at the impulse that had lead him to bring Celino back to his rooms in an analytical light didn’t do much for his self respect. Under a microscope, it looked opportunistic and shallow.

SsillvrR decided he was finished staring at the door when his thoughts circled back on themselves for the second time. Inside, the room was patterned with several kinds of darkness. Thinner, dustier shades coloured the space nearest the small window where a cool moonlight illuminated a fine crack in the windowpane. Stouter shadows collected on the farthest side of objects, fuzzing the edges of a bookshelf, the bed, a chair and obliterating entirely several other articles of furniture. At first, Celino was simply a shape growing out of the chair. Gradually as his eyes adjusted the line of a limb resolved itself, then the cover of a book splayed against his chest, and the side of his face broken into sleeping planes by the moonlight. A burnt-out candle sat on the table at his side, and without it, he could not make out which book the mage had chosen before falling asleep.

It was as good an answer as any. SsillvrR considered quietly pulling the door shut after him that this was probably as clear a signal as anyone could ask for from the fates. His inclination to be fatalistic only when it agreed with his own assumptions notwithstanding, he sank down indecisively onto the edge of a chair which had been given new purpose as repository for books and tried to find the best way to deal with this in the shadows that gathered around Celino’s sleeping features.

—–

Celino woke in darkness and knew he was being watched. There was something in the shadows. He could hear the ghost of its breathing, feel the weight of its gaze. It took effort to stay relaxed with his blood turned to adrenaline in his veins. Opening his eyes would give him away; the glitter would be the first thing an attacker looked for. Where was he? Bed? No, he was upright. In the street? He was wrapped in something. Vines? The forest? Was it a dretch? a sarezaros? creepweed? something dead? The thing moved. Just a little motion, maybe a stretch. Maybe gathering for a pounce. Celino rolled his head to the side and muttered a few sleepy words in scholars’ tongue as though he were sleeping. At his hip he heard his servant obey. He shifted dreamily and laid his hand over the mouth of his purse. A handle slid into his hand.

The burning dagger made a ripping sound as it described an arc through the air. SsillvrR was looking down eighteen inches of polished steel pointed straight at his heart and all aflame; and in the light of the flames, Celino’s eyes were mad.

—–

SsillvrR had plenty of experience with the sort of intrigues that involved threatening gestures in the least expected places; most of them involved a particular patron who rarely if ever needed (or admitted to needing) defense in any such situation. He understood the psychological mechanics of such a tactic, what sort of adversary was likely to choose such a tack. He could theorize, given the layout of a building and the habits of the target, how such an attacker might gain access and when they might attempt such a trap. He could even forecast the sort of weapon an assassin might use in such a scenario, given a little knowledge of them (later he would recall Celino admitting an affinity for fire, which would explain the sheath of flames that twitched impossibly along the length of smoothed steel). What he lacked, was personal experience. By virtue of circumstance, and perhaps his position as a relatively inoffensive creature, SsillvrR had never had the pleasure of encountering a flaming blade in his bedroom–imperfect metaphors notwithstanding.

It was not a conscious decision, but rather a schooled reaction that brought his arm up to bat the blade aside with a forearm. This would ordinarily have been a clever maneuver, had he encountered the threat under ordinary circumstances. In his own bedroom, and more importantly out of uniform he noted just a little too late that he lacked the bracers which would have otherwise taken the bite of the blade for him. The pain was at first, little better than a sting as if his arm were not yet sure if it were hurt as badly as all that. SsillvrR nonetheless clamped his hand around it to close the lips of whatever slice Celino’s blade had rendered.

“What the hell was that for?” SsillvrR hissed, flexing his fingers against his heating arm experimentally. Stickiness; fabulous. That meant he was down to one non-uniform shirt that lacked for bloodstains.

—–

Celino had just a second to register Aldridge’s shocked face in the firelight before Aldridge knocked the dagger out of his hand. The room flickered crazily as the dagger spun through the air, then it bounced on the floor and the unfueled flames sputtered out. The dagger clattered to a stop in darkness. Celino brought up a hand in reflexive panic to stop Aldridge’s next blow; then Aldridge’s voice cut through the night, annoyed and resentful, and Celino relaxed.

“It was dark,” he said reasonably, “and you were silent. How in hell was I to know who you were?” He knocked over the guttered-out candle as he fumbled for it. A couple of soft curses later, he had it righted in the candlestick and lit. “You shouldn’t lurk in the dark like that–a veteran like you should know that. Here, let me see your arm.” He set the candlestick on the table and held out a hand.

—–

“It’s dark?” SsillvrR blinked incredulously at the figure, visible only as a collection of dusty shadows against the richer inkier black of the background. Privately the elf made parallels between Celino’s apparent paranoia and the sort of monstrosities that six year olds insisted lived beneath their beds. Having decided that yes, it was hurt, his arm began to throb irritatingly; SsillvrR mapped out the length of the wound with his fingertips and frowned into the darkness. Not deep, but long enough to be noticeable.

One, two, four. Eight or nine stitches?

“I don’t expect to be attacked in my own room by someone who…” the elf made a small sound that could have been either pain or frustration before deciding he couldn’t put that to words, “should have been expecting me.” The light was a feeble orange corona in the darkness. It rendered the blood oozing lazily from between his fingers glistening ink.

And to think, you thought his having fallen asleep was as clear a sign as you were going to get. SsillvrR held out his arm with a sigh, resisting the urge to wipe the blood from his free hand on his trousers. “Are you always this jumpy?”

—–

“I used to spend days at a time in the Spires,” Celino said composedly. He took Aldridge’s arm by the wrist and turned his forearm to do a superficial examination. Under the professionalism of Celino’s firm grip was a tremor, and his heart still beat too fast. Calm. Calm. Nothing happened. He kept his face smooth as he examined the cut, but when he unbuttoned the cuff to peel Aldridge’s sleeve back, his movements were a shade too jerky. He spread his free hand on the arm of the chair to steady it, and covered by peering intently at the wound. It was bad, definitely; hard to tell with the shirt in the way, but it looked deep. Straight across the muscle, probably. From the fact that Aldridge could flex his fingers, it hadn’t bit too deep, but by rights Aldridge should be making far more fuss. Hands steady yet? No. “All manner of horrible things happened to me out there,” he said as placidly as a matron discussing a family picnic. “Waking in the dark in an unfamiliar place with something moving nearby makes me uneasy. Next time, say, ‘It’s me!’ You’d be surprised at how few monsters do that.”

—–

“You’ve mentioned the Spires before. I’m guessing that’s not slang for a cathedral.” Haunted cathedrals; now SsillvrR could name six of those. At least six that were reportedly haunted. Monks and nuns, for being supposedly pious people seemed to be involved with a great deal of murder and suicide.

SsillvrR flexed his fingers while Celino peered a shade too intensely at the wound, a stickily jeering mouth in the candle light. SsillvrR himself observed it for a moment or two, rather as one might a puddle of coffee quickly soaking into a favorite rug. It argued with the elf’s natural pragmatism to do so while a physician sat staring at it, but SsillvrR considered his other options quickly. The healer (who was in her annoyance at being woken likely to be vicious with her stitches), or possibly Tourmaline, who was probably still awake, but would either flutter at him or yell.

“Only the smart ones,” the elf muttered absently, curling his fingers into a fist to keep the muscles beneath the separated skin taut. “Not to be picky, but if you’re not up to stitching this then say so now. The bloodstains probably won’t do much for the rug’s pattern.”

—–

“Cockaigne was raised from the ocean floor,” Celino said. “Clean rags, roll of needles, catgut, bandages, two basins, wine, ready a supply of water. A ring of mountains rose first, then Porfirio the First formed the inner valley and the outer ledge. In the process, the mountains splintered, creating shards of bedrock that rise hundreds of feet into the air.” As he spoke, his hands moved automatically, catching supplies as they dropped into his lap and laying out the operating space. He pressed a wad of cloth to the wound to mop up the blood, then lifted it and drew a finger down either side of the wound. Blood stopped welling into the wound as the capillaries squeezed shut, and the wound went numb. “Hold this,” he said, and left Aldridge pressing the cloth to the wound again while he laid out two basins and filled them with water from his purse. His hands were almost steady; the routine was clearing his head.

He washed his hands briskly in one basin, then dumped the water back into the purse and refilled the basin. “The Spires form a ring around the capitol city several miles thick, like a–” He groped for a metaphor a Continental would understand. “–like a forest of stone. Parts of it split into canyons so deep they clove the Underdark open, while other parts are flooded, or are piled together like great hills made of shards, or are wreathed with vines so the Spires themselves seem to be alive. They’re our wilderness. They are–” He smiled reminiscently. “–where the wild things are.” He held up a threaded needle. “Give me your arm.”

—–

Geomancy had long since been enveloped by the section of magics considered mundane in the Underground. Geomancers were more or less limited in their craft to the location of mineral veins and ore blooms. Some of the particularly clever ones could aid the miners who usually employed them by suggesting areas where tunnels would be safest, and moving small quantity of rock. General opinion put them somewhere between well-witchers and charm-crafters; trying to envision the sort of power Celino described was just disturbing enough to distract him from the angry throb of his arm. It occurred to the elf that people whose titles included things like ‘the first’ or ‘the founder’ were often ascribed greater powers than they truly had as time went on, and it was on the tip of his tongue to ask if that wasn’t perhaps the case. Tact pulled him up short; Celino talked about Cockaigne with a sort of wistful affection. The topic animated him, curled the corners of his lips in a strange little smile, and SsillvrR couldn’t quite bring himself to voice his thought lest it ruin either.

The cloth removed was thoroughly pinked and SsillvrR gave it a sidelong look that suggested he had assigned it some blame in the matter before the sensation suddenly stopped. It was not the bitter stinging distraction of ice, which he’d used often enough to draw the worse of the feeling from a cut or a puncture. Nor did it come with the heat of some of the expensive salves generally reserved for the flesh wounds of the nobles choosing to affect a dashing recklessness. Rather it was simply not there. The pain snapped its jaws shut and ceased keening, but with it went the elf’s ability to feel anything else. He rubbed the tips of his fingers together experimentally and found he was aware of the pressure, but little else. SsillvrR blinked.

Handy, that.

The splash of water into a newly appeared basin drew him back again. “This place left you jumpy enough to pull knives in the dark, and you miss it,” he observed, pulling the cloth back carefully before extending his arm.

—–

“It was adventure, and companionship, and solitude,” Celino said. He dabbed the blood from the wound with a rag dipped in wine. The wound was as deep as he expected–it would need internal stitches as well as external. “I could go there and be alone with my friends, or alone with myself, or alone with the monsters that lived there. It was no small mercy when I was fourteen and all the world had its narrow eyes on me, even better at sixteen or seventeen when all those eyes turn eager and no one would leave me alone long enough to cross the street. It was like the world’s biggest treehouse, or–do you play at dragons and knights here?” He pressed the lips of the wound together with one hand and started stitching it closed. “It was like playing dragons and knights where all the dragons are real. Of course, Old Bloody-Bones brought home to me right quick that it wasn’t all fun and games, but that made it better–there the city was, snug in its hole, barring its windows and doors against the horrors in the night, and there I was under the wild stars with the wind in my hair as I wound among the spires, on my way to play chess with the greatest horror of them all.” He smiled to himself. “I think it pleased her I came back to her because I was afraid of her. It made her feel that she was my teacher.” He looked up at Aldridge as he snipped the thread of the second stitch. “She told me that if I ever betrayed her to the city, she’d tell them all I was her protege.”

—–

“Mmm,” SsillvrR said, watching the needle flash in the dark like a minnow. This of course meant several things at once; that fourteen-year-old boys desiring privacy where that privacy extended to include other people was not necessarily a wish that ought to be granted, that the need for a kind of solitude that included miles of unfriendly terrain between you and the nearest person was something he was well familiar with, and that his vision of Celino-the-seventeen-year-old included some fairly melodramatic sighing and smoldering. All of the above would have involved fairly complex responses and SsillvrR accepted without rancor that all his thoughts at present were likely beyond his ability to convey verbally. Conversations were easier when neither side were offering more than a superficial interest in the topic at hand. SsillvrR was relatively good at those sorts of conversations; no one would ever have accused the captain of being a chatty individual, but his ability to talk about the fishing or the quality of the grain being brought in on a given year was enough to earn him the description ‘friendly’ from those he’d had a fleeting exchange with.

This was not one of those conversations. Almost it would have been nice if it were; SsillvrR tried briefly to detach himself from the desire to hear Celino continue talking this way. The effort was naturally futile, but the unpleasant pull of the mage’s tiny stitches was at least enough to distract him from his own over-analyzation.

An apparent long-standing fascination with monsters. Well, it could have been worse.

He could have played checkers.

The elf was not disbelieving, but remained unable to peel off the last shreds of his skepticism where the ideas of ancient horrors were concerned. Logically it was a stupid skepticism to hold onto; he was more than aware of the existence of things which had no right existing outside copper-chit novels meant for late night thrill seeker’s entertainment. The quiet thickened a mote, and SsillvrR became aware of his own silence in a single awkward moment. He then offered the last month of his life to whatever deity happened to be interested for something clever to say. The ringing silence earned his half-hearted contempt; it was hard to focus that sort of intensity while having one’s arm sewn shut, even if it were numb.

“My first thought is that you’re absolutely mad, but having said that, I suspect I’ve just said exactly the wrong thing,” SsillvrR improvised. “I’d prefer to believe those sorts of things don’t exist, which is utterly stupid really, given some of the things I’ve seen. Sometimes I think that kind of skepticism is a coping mechanism for those of us who’d rather not play board games with horrors.” There were after all, plenty of human shaped horrors to contend with, never mind the archaic evils in monstrous bodies.

It was far too late for this conversation, and the elf used his free hand to push the hair out of his face while trying to figure how they’d come to this particular place. From healing to conspiracy to enlisting Tourmaline’s help towhat the hell was that about anyway? The elf’s ears twitched even as he tried to hold them level. Accosting people in the middle of the street, under any circumstances was so far out of character, the elf was left wondering if he hadn’t merely imagined all that.

No, libido whined peevishly, you didn’t.

Fingers that were used to busy-work in conjunction with this sort of thinking spread out across the arm of the chair leaving thick slices of shadow between where the light could not reach the weary green fabric.

—–

The silence stretched on and on. Aldridge stared at him as though he’d said exactly the wrong thing–exactly, Celino noted, as a Cockaignese would have done. Here he’d thought Aldridge was ignorant of what was and wasn’t done in Cockaigne. “Of course I wasn’t her protege,” he said, forcing a wry smile. “Quite the opposite. I was what held her back from treating the city as her personal larder.” It occurred to him that with him gone, the city was learning just how much he’d done for it. He wondered exactly how sorry they were now. He turned his face toward the stitches so Aldridge couldn’t see his secret smile. “But if she told the city she was my teacher–well, whose word would they have taken? It would confirm the worst of what they suspected of me.”

“My first thought is that you’re absolutely mad, but having said that, I suspect I’ve just said exactly the wrong thing,” SsillvrR improvised. “I’d prefer to believe those sorts of things don’t exist, which is utterly stupid really, given some of the things I’ve seen. Sometimes I think that kind of skepticism is a coping mechanism for those of us who’d rather not play board games with horrors.”

Celino looked up, the smile wiped from his face and bafflement in its place. “You don’t believe in Old Bloody-Bones?” he said. “Whyever not? Not believing in monsters is like not believing in tables.”

—–

SsillvrR’s fingers stretched and resettled again restlessly. Even candle light could not make them pretty hands. They were neither delicate, nor pale and a number of minute scars from various nicks and scrapes left little pale lines in places, as if bits of coarse threads clung there. Idleness robbed them of the competence that was perhaps their best attribute.

“Nothing about the notoriety of being a monster’s protégé appealed to you?” SsillvrR was smiling somewhat crookedly again, curling the fingers of his free hand until his knuckles cracked. Conversational waters were growing deeper and a dark shape or two sliced easily beneath the surface. There were a few too many boundaries for comfortable discussion to result. Perhaps pettily, the elf sought to avoid being backed into a position where the only sensible questions he could ask were about Celino’s apparent exile. So when Celino looked up fixing him with an incredulous look, he was undeniably relieved.

“I didn’t say that… I said I’d prefer not to believe in them. I’d prefer to believe the fates are a trio of little old ladies who knit slippers and mittens when they’re not baking sugar cookies, all evidence to the contrary. There are enough monsters walking around in daylight that I’d rather not have to think about the ones skulking around in darkness.” His fingers tingled briefly, and he turned his gaze back to the mage’s stitches before the sensation faded again.

“About earlier…” the words were out of his mouth before he knew it, and he trailed off a moment, resisting the urge to gesture that it would ruin Celino’s handiwork. “It might have been a little…rash of me.”

—–

“Notoriety is for dashing highwaymen,” Celino said flatly as he tied off the last surface stitch. He readied a longer length of catgut for the internal stitches. “Old Bloody-Bones eats people. She used to reach in through windows and pull people out of their beds, then people on the edges of the city built their windows smaller and she learned to use a forked stick and pick children who were little enough to fit. There wasn’t any romance to it.” He slid the tip of his longest needle into the end of the wound and started weaving it back and forth, catching first one side of the wound, then the other. “The romance was in being the one who stood between her and the city. And…” He shrugged awkwardly. “…after a while the memories of what she had been faded, and well…” He tried to focus on the wound, feeling faintly ashamed of himself. “She had a certain coarse wit that was hard to find at the time.”

It was too easy to forget that old Bloody-Bones was not only a monster, she was monstrous. Celino preferred not to remember. He pursed his lips uneasily as he worked at the stitches.

Aldridge’s next comment was a welcome diversion. “I thought it was unlike you,” he said, relaxing. “If we’re not going to frame the Cups, what’s your plan for trapping them?”

—–

“And people who like to wear their titles like big feathered hats,” the elf added, his grin tightening only slightly as Celino’s thread pulled taut. Celino arguing against his interest in attention was an indefensible position, but SsillvrR was too tired to point that out. Experience assured him it would only make the mage puff-up like an offended parrot anyway, and you don’t want the person sewing you up going defensive.

Celino ruined what was beginning to feel like a more comfortable discussion with a vivid description of his monstrous chess partner. The teasing grin dropped without ceremony, his lips flattening into a fine line who’s hardness found a momentary equal in his gaze. Their grey was suddenly the grey of a good stone breakwall. SsillvrR blinked mildly and said nothing, not for a change, because he could think of nothing to say.

“Yeah, it was.” The agreement came more easily than he’d expected, and with it the momentarily disorienting feeling that this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Rather than name that some kind of disappointment, SsillvrR decided it was merely a sort of surprise at things working out so well. This really was the best case scenario; the less reaction from the mage the better. Why then (he assured himself it was simple curiousity asking) was Celino being so cavalier about it?

“The simpler the better,” he explained distractedly, watching the light behind Celino’s sleeve made the edges of the fabric and his arm both glow. “But I can’t finalize any sort of plan until I talk to Tyr. We’ll all need to talk about this, and shortly. The sooner the better, since the Cups aren’t going to be the sort to take the time to formulate a good solid plan.” SsillvrR frowned and flexed his fingers again, wishing suddenly for Celino to hurry the hell up. The desire for solitude ambushed him, and the dull edge of weariness robe in with it. “If you can manage it, we should aim for tomorrow night. The night after at the latest.”

—–

“Agreed,” Celino said. “Time and complications are the enemies of any good plan. Shall we meet tomorrow at dinnertime–lunchtime, I think you people call it? And then a rousing round of intrigue and skull-cracking.” He snipped the end of the thread, leaving a tail of thread dangling out either side of the wound. Another quick bathe in wine and a swirl of bandages later, the wound was treated and dressed.

“Give me your other hand,” Celino said in the matter-of-fact voice he’d noticed Aldridge obeyed. He lifted it to its lips, noting its scars, its knots, its calluses. Hard hands. Capable hands. Adventurer’s hands, even if Aldridge didn’t recognize it. Celino pressed his lips to the back of Aldridge’s fingers, then smiled mischievously. “Then maybe a night of something even more rousing?”

—–

SsillvrR was more than a little certain Celino was not going to like even the bones of the plan he had thus far. Tyr–well, Tyr would understand it with no explanation needed. The trick would be assuring Celino that it was the best course of action, and not nearly as dangerous as it would sound. While Celino dressed the fresh stitches with an efficiency that spoke of experience, SsillvrR listed the things which would need to be done then arranged them in the proper order.

“I really don’t care for intrigue,” SsillvrR felt compelled to point out. “Tomorrow’s Elrathin,” and because it was Celino, “think harvest festival. A great deal of eating, drinking–heavy emphasis on the drinking– I’ll leave word for you as soon as I know when and where.” Tourmaline would need a timeframe to work with as well; he’d have to go back to her either after that or in the morning. No, strike that, definitely not in the morning. Intrigue made him tired. The weariness was like a great hand pushing him down into the chair. Damn you Tyr.

Extending his hand without a though, the elf flexed the fingers of his bandaged arm. “Is this going to stay numb for much longer?” His efforts were rewarded by a dim tingling, but again it failed no sooner than he’d recognized it. He’d only begun to consider how he was going to explain a fresh wound tomorrow when the mage’s lips pressed against the backs of his fingers.

No, certainly no numbness there. A small, rather down-trodden little voice in the back of his mind made a sound of some excitement; he wasn’t really listening closely but it sounded rather like ‘yay!’. Never mind that three minutes previously he’d been assuring himself this was a poor idea at best, SsillvrR was inclined to echo that sentiment. His ears at least complied. Having exchanged passion for pragmatism earlier, as one might vests, the elf’s interests were buffered by reality. Tomorrow was going to be an exceptionally long day with an uncertain outcome and “A fight can’t break out between two guards two nights in a row.” SsillvrR’s lips curved in a crescent of a grin as he grazed the underside of Celino’s jaw with those fingers.

—–

“Oh indeed,” Celino murmured. He turned Aldridge’s hand over gently and kissed the cup of his palm. It wasn’t the done thing to molest patients the minute you finished stitching them up, but the patient didn’t seem to mind. “Or twice in one night,” he added, grinning.

A work question? Aldridge asked a work question. Oh. “At least another hour,” Celino said, “longer if you like. Stop clenching your hand, you’re pulling the stitches. Here–” He guided Aldridge’s wounded arm down to the table. “Rest it. No tension. Forget about that hand.” He kissed the tips of Aldridge’s other fingers, nipping a finger teasingly. “Concentrate on this hand.”

—–

There were certainly some interesting things going on with that particular hand. Celino#s lips were warm and something about the candle light made his eyes glitter; neither of which was quite enough to negate the fact that a festival day#s dawn was scant hours away. #Celino## SsillvrR hesitated a guilty moment, just long enough to drink in the sensation of a warm mouth against his skin. #Its going to be dawn in a few hours.#

Which was in reality, a more concrete concern than some of the others floating around happier, more enthusiastic thoughts.

—–

“Is it?” Celino lifted his head reluctantly. “I slept that long? What on earth was the fight about that it took most of the night? No, don’t tell me.” He bowed his head over Aldridge’s hand again and pressed his lips to Aldridge’s palm. As he raised his lips, he sighed. Aldridge’s wrist was inches in front of his eyes, all that soft and sensitive skin just begging to be–no. “You have your work, and I have mine,” he said, and opened the hand that was holding Aldridge’s arm still so Aldridge could take his hand back. “Tomorrow, dinner at…? Not the Dog and Bacon.”

—–

SsillvrR wondered if his initial instinct to supress the wave of weariness washing over him was some childish attempt to prolong the simple contact of Celino’s fingers. “Let’s put it this way; there are only two things guards or soldiers fight over, and it wasn’t money.” Celino’s breath feathered ticklishly against his palm, and SsillvrR sighed. “Tomorrow,” he echoed before withdrawing his hand, “I’ll find you when I can.” It was not necessarily a satisfactory solution, but it was better than running headlong into an absolute mire simply for the sake of running. Tomorrow, any lingering doubts about dismissing Celino’s offer would evaporate. And if they didn’t, at least he’d be too damned busy to consider just what he’d said no to.

—–

“Then I’ll be looking for you,” Celino said. Around every corner. “Good night, Al–Silver.” He leaned forward and, hand on Silver’s thigh to brace himself, kissed Silver good night.

Related pages:

1. 21: Harvest Night – In the Streets Evening was setting in on the streets of Ostmont, and...

hair, ensuring that they were going to be there for days unless he combed his hair fiercely once it was dry. He made a low sound of exasperation. As low as he could, he asked Aldridge, “Who is she, really?”

—–

The mole-man was lurking in the foyer, presumably the ensure the guests didn’t pinch any of his mistress’s items on their way out, and SsillvrR gave him the sort of dazzling smile usually the sole province of more charismatic sorts. The mole’s eyes vanished in the folds of his scowl again, which seemed to amuse the elf, who waved in a friendly manner before closing the door after Celino. The night air was cooler than it had been at dusk, and the scent of rain rode the breeze warningly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” SsillvrR raised an eyebrow at Celino as the giant grey dog snuffed inquisitively at them from a distance. “She’s Tourmaline.”

-----

“But she thinks she’s–oh, come on,” Celino said. “Outside.” Once past the manor’s walls and out of earshot of passers-by, Celino said, “She thinks she’s Bitch-Queen Varonah. Presumably she really is someone important under all that, or your plan wouldn’t work, but who is she?”

-----

SsillvrR stuck his hands in the pocket of his vest, a thigh length thing which was the sort of off-white that suggested it probably had been white at one point and was merely as tired as the rest of the elf’s personal garments. Giving Celino a sidelong look that included a very mobile brow and one cocked ear SsillvrR chuckled. “She IS. Or…was. Except the bitch part. She’s much sharper now than she ever was as queen from what I’ve heard.”

-----

“I contest the bitch part,” Celino said. “There are cookie crumbs in my hair. I also contest that I am anything like her.” He sniffed. “Eccentric, my pink and rosy bottom. She’s mad! How on earth could she be Bitch-Queen Varonah?”

-----

“You did sort of imply she was…ah…ancient. Plus, in some ways I think she enjoys the infamy associated with being the king’s mother, so long as she’s the one who gets to reveal that anyway.” The streets were quiet in this section of town, where tall walls encircled expensive buildings and richly manicured lawns where the last lush growth of the season prepared itself for the coming cold. Their footfalls echoed crisply against the cobbles.

“What? Neither of you cares one bit what anyone else thinks of you. The pair of you read the same stuff too.” The elf scoffed. “She’s not mad, she just plays mad. One day, I think she just decided she was finished living up to everyone else’s standards.” He shrugged thoughtfully, pulling the shoulders of his shirt and vest tight. “Since then she’s been well… the way she is. And you can stop calling her that anytime,” the elf gave Celino a sideways look.

-----

“I did not!” Celino huffed. “This region is thick with kingdoms. She could have been the dowager queen of any of them. Or of potatoes and butterscotch, given the way her mind works. Besides, what’s wrong with being old? She’s quite beautiful. Older women can be ten times as interesting as younger women–when they’re not crazy.” He buttoned his collar against the lowering chill. “Look, do you have any proof that she’s Bitch-Queen Varonah?”

-----

SsillvrR considered giving Celino a cuff upside the head for using the word old again on Tourmaline’s behalf. “There are only seven kingdoms on the damned continent, and we’re weeks ride from any of the other six. Just which one were you referring to?” The elf’s shrug again raised his shoulders, his ears held thoughtfully that they were nearly parallel with them. “Given that the concept’s fairly abstract to me, I guess she is.” This time, at the word crazy SsillvrR did lift a hand in mock threat. “She isn’t crazy.”

“Proof? Oh come on!” The elf laughed disbelievingly, “I’ve known her since I was, twenty, I think. Maybe less. Haven’t you ever seen a painting of Varonah? Nobody else looks like that!”

-----

“We’re how many weeks from any civilized place in the Underground?” Celino shrugged. “One kingdom is as likely as another, and more likely than positing that homegrown royalty would be swanning around here.

“And yes, I have seen pictures of Bitch-Queen Varonah. Dozens. Hundreds. That woman was not wearing a dress held together largely by the pressure of a thousand lustful gazes, or holding any babies, and there was no bonfire anywhere. I counted. Twice. Her hair isn’t red, her skin isn’t notably white, her teeth aren’t pointed, and she looks about thirty years older than the oldest portrait I’ve seen. So. Even making allowances for flattering portraits and the possibility that there was no sabbat scheduled for tonight, how am I supposed to believe that woman in there is Bitch-Queen Varonah?

“Besides,” he added, tugging his collar higher, “if you knew her for all those years, you’d have met King Jareth, and you don’t seem debauched at all.”

-----

“Maybe a week, if you’re not riding hard.” The elf looked with some amusement at his co-conspirator then, eyes crinkling at the edges with the force of his humor “You really aren’t from around here are you? If there was visiting royalty, they definitely wouldn’t be in Ostmont. As notable spots go, Ostmont’s…more or less on the bottom of the list.”

“Babies, bonfires and skimpy dresses?” SsillvrR blinked, sidestepping a trash tin being ravaged by an giant tabby tom. “You might want to put down the romances and pick up a history. Her hair WAS red, but she’s gone blonde now. Her skin is the same color it always was, and her teeth are only kinda pointy. She never was one for skimpy dresses though. Last warning; use that word again to describe her and I will cuff you for her.”

Met.
Ha.
“Yeah well… I’m a stubborn sort.”

-----

“Who knows what other countries are like? Maybe Ostmont is a paradise to them.” Celino shrugged. “I won’t judge them for their lack of taste. After all, the rest of us are here when we could be elsewhere.

“You met King Jareth? Let me guess–he’s a middle-aged man with raggy hair, a little gut, a laugh like a horse, and a rose garden that he shows off to all his visitors. He grumbles about ‘me tum’ after meals, and under his desk, where he used to keep spare lovers for entertainment during long meetings, he now keeps a hot brick for his gouty feet. He has a thing for cookies, too.” Celino shoved his hands through slits in his outer robe and laced his fingers together over his stomach to keep warm, creating an odd bulge above his belt. “Oh, and Aldridge?” He looked up at him with an expression of half dubious amusement, half warning. “If you strike me, I strike back. And I won’t have to use my fists.”

-----

“Touche,” SsillvrR muttered, giving the broken lamp they passed the wry look he had thought better of pointing at Celino. All tolled, that had gone much better than he’d expected. Having schooled himself to expect as little as possible from situations always helped sustain his optimism; coming away with very little after expecting nothing at always made it more bearable. That Tourmaline had agreed to help… well, she was probably bored.

The elf’s lips pressed together hard enough to turn white before the unsteady wall of his resolve crumbled and he laughed the kind of laugh that sent the stray cats scrambling and disturbed sleeping shop keepers overhead. “Oh yeah,” the elf stole a breath between gales, rubbing the water from his eye with a knuckle. “That’s him all right.”

And somewhere, far away, Jareth probably found himself scowling for no apparent reason.

“Tell that to Tourmaline next time you see her; she’ll get a kick out of that. I’m going to assume then you haven’t seen any paintings of him lately either.”

“That’s alright,” the elf, who had gotten himself more or less under control again (save for the twitching of his right ear) smirked at the mage, “it’ll give me reason to throw you in a cell again.”

-----

Celino grinned broadly as he reduced Aldridge to howling with laughter. Visiting the madwoman had a most relaxing effect on the man. Celino had to get him back to her house as often as possible before she and her pirate sailing teacher tacked lee into the starboard whatever and sailed off for another year. “I’ve seen plenty of paintings of him, too,” he said, “youthful and sarcastic and luscious and–well, let’s just say that Evil King Jareth has had a formative effect on generations of young Cockaignese.” He smiled. “He’s always the villain, but that rarely stops anyone.”

He leaned against a wall while Aldridge recovered, kicking his heel idly against the foundation. The wall was still warm from the day, breathing a mossy scent into the night in the last few minutes before the cold sank in. It was an incongruous touch of the forest in the middle of the overbuilt oldest section of Ostmont. Celino wondered when he was going to have a chance to go into the wilderness again.

Not until that monkey was out of the city, that was for sure.

“That’s all right,” the elf, who had gotten himself more or less under control again (save for the twitching of his right ear) smirked at the mage, “it’ll give me reason to throw you in a cell again.”

“Another round of locked-room-and-three-things?” Celino said, smiling. “Me, a warm bed, and a cup of coffee didn’t work last time. What will it be this time?” He stretched his arms lazily over his head and crossed them at the wrist. “Me, a wall, and a set of chains?”

-----

SsillvrR chuckled, and decided not to weigh in on the accuracy of those particular portraits. Youth was a fairly touchy subject with Jareth anymore, and he was not particularly certain that last word (which he couldn’t quite bring himself to think let alone say) was right. Sarcastic was spot on anyway. Smartass wouldn’t have been too far from the truth either, but that was a term altogether too irreverent to share with someone who didn’t have the same ‘old friend’ status that might have allowed him to escape Jareth’s considerable displeasure.

“I’m sure he’d be ah… tickled scarlet,” another little snicker, “to know that.” Having never displayed the common aversion to being cast into the villain role everyone else seemed to, Jareth frequently took being so named as a compliment. SsillvrR had a theory on that that involved both laziness and the desire for attention, but didn’t dare air it.

Regaining his stride, he waiting for Celino to fall into step before giving the curve of the street ahead of them a crooked grin. “Eh, the whole idea of chains isn’t really my style. They’d be devilishly loud.”

-----

Celino decided to let the subject of King Jareth and Bitch-Queen Varonah drop. It was annoying him for reasons he couldn’t put his finger on. It was wasted breath because all of it was nonsense, but there was something else, something just out of reach. Here Aldridge was being merry and mischievous. Why waste the opportunity on pointless gossip?

“Eh, the whole idea of chains isn’t really my style. They’d be devilishly loud.”

Case in point. Did he just say that? Did he just mean that?

“Ropes, then,” Celino said, testing a theory. “Or just the force of the law and the threat of being impaled upon your mighty sword.”

-----

Celino’s continued disbelief in face of the elf’s insistence might rubbed him the wrong way if he’d been aware of it. Luckily Celino had kept that to himself, thus leaving SsillvrR’s uncharacteristically chipper mood untarnished. That the pieces were falling into place so easily had left him near giddy. There was something undeniably invigorating about a properly executed plan, arranging and coordinating every aspect of it, devising contingencies and viable exit strategies. SsillvrR, though not a thrill seeker by nature was focused, condensed even by challenge. Even if it happened to be a shade or two outside his beloved black and white moral boundaries

This time the elf rolled his eyes, tilting his head back to peer at the sky overhead where clouds clotted like spilled cottage cheese. “That’s the kind of line that makes you popular with the sixteen-year-old girls I’d bet.”

-----

“‘Chains would be too loud’ is your idea of subtlety, is it?” Celino said. He pulled his hands out of his robe and laced them together behind his head as he strolled along beside Aldridge. “Besides, you leap to conclusions. Why would I do something illegal? You can’t haul a man in for–” He drew a hand out of his hair and described a slow undulation in the air that could be a dismissive wave or could be a dance move. “–dancing, can you? Or for telling a city guard perfectly legal, if private, stories from one’s own experience?”

-----

“Hey, I didn’t use the word sword,” SsillvrR grinned, watching a light in one of the second story shops wink out, “there’s a line, and you danced right across it.” Watching the artistic twist of the mage’s wrist, reminding him abruptly and intensely of that whole incident. SsillvrR wondered, finding some humor in his memory’s ability to conjure up a replay with such precision and replay, if there wasn’t a bookshop somewhere nearby that had a volume or two on obelisks.

“I sincerely hope you’re not talking about the sorts of experiences I think you are. If so, I’ll give you a piece of free advice. The only people who want to hear the intimate details of someone else’s relationship are those who haven’t had their own. Again, more of a sixteen year old girl thing.” The grin that surfaced was slow, and considerably more thoughtful and had much to do with the sort of hip movements the elf was envisioning.

Maybe he meant dancing experiences?

Hmmm.

-----

“Oh, is that why you read entire books about those kinds of details?” Celino said. “Or is your interest in the likes of Auron and Corelis merely military? Perhaps you admire the skill of the fencing and the smoothness of the spying operations, and take notes on, oh, the clever way they manage supply lines?” He glanced at Aldridge and was captured by the reminiscent smile on his face. That… was sexy. Unconnected to any of the words coming out of Aldridge’s mouth, but wickedly alluring. On autopilot, he said, “Did you pick up any new military soaping tips from de Maris’s latest?”

-----

“Fictional,” SsillvrR defended himself quickly, one ear turning down as if his shoulder were muttering something important. “None of those things are real. I don’t have to look one of their characters in the eye on a regular basis and not think about the kinds of faces they make mid-coitus! Plus, that whole fencing scene? It made zero sense. Only an idiot uses a foil when your opponent’s wearing armor. Unless you happen to get lucky and hit a joint, the best you’re going to do is scratch it.” SsillvrR gestured with the fervor of his disgust before returning his hand to his pocket, as if he might forget it if it wasn’t kept in a safe place.

“Did you happen to get any tips on bedside manner from it?” SsillvrR had a terribly difficult time coming to the conclusion that there was anything alluring about someone recovering from a head injury (or having sex on the kind of cot Maris described… very cramped) but was willing to concede Maris probably wasn’t as familiar with injuries as he was.

That didn’t however, excuse the shoddy fencing scene.

-----

“Oh, the medicine is garbage,” Celino said blithely. “Auron should have been vomiting like an unburped infant with a concussion of that kind. The details about the infirmary cot were accurate, though. You really do have to brace your knees on the rails like that, or you’ll shove the flimsy mattress right through the slats. It’s unsteady, though. Leads to tipping at inopportune moments. Better to brace one foot on the floor, or better, if you’re young and flexible and the cot is narrow enough, brace both. You have to ride pillion, naturally.” He ran his hand through his hair, dislodging a few more crumbs that obligingly rolled down his collar. “One suspects de Maris had personal experience with infirmary cots.” He grinned. “One wonders exactly how much.

“Does it bother you to imagine how people look when they’re having sex? They fall into two main categories, after all: the majority who look like they’re in pain, and the minority who grin all the way through. When you’ve seen someone in pain and you’ve seen them grin, you’re 90% of the way to knowing exactly how they look in media res.”

-----

“But that wouldn’t have been particularly atmospheric. If Maris wanted a damned cot involved, Auron should have had… I don’t know, some minor flesh wound. At least that would have made the sex believable,” the elf wrinkled his nose absently as if he were just a little too familiar with the sort of sick Celino was describing. That didn’t however change the fact that he was holding forth on the subject of Maris’s literary works in public with another man. SsillvrR social conscience snorted in its sleep, and rolled over.

“You’ve spent way too much time considering cot sex,” SsillvrR assessed laughingly. “Either that, or you and Maris have done matching research.”

The clouds had thinned near the sliver of a moon hanging overhead, dispersing the wan light in a gauzy halo. SsillvrR considered it long enough to ascertain the approximate time before examining the contents of his pockets with his fingers. “Have you ever tried to give someone orders when you know exactly what they look and sound like during sex without letting anyone else know you know? I think I’d rather have a broken ankle.”

-----

“If you’re not familiar with wounds, you think that head wounds involve moaning and looking wan, and flesh wounds involve screaming and stitches. Head wounds always win.” He grinned at Aldridge’s accusation. “I worked in an infirmary from the age of sixteen or seventeen. Just you ask a 17-year-old to keep his belt tied all the way down two long corridors when there’s a lovely empty ward right through the next door.”

Aldridge’s next question startled a laugh out of him. “How on earth do you ‘let someone know you know’?” He mimed a drill sergeant going down a row of recruits. “Simons! Polish your boots. Willits! Retie all your points and get that smudge off your jacket. Lansings!” He stopped in front of Aldridge and took a half-step forward into his personal space. His eyes were sultry and his voice low as he purred, “Button up your vest.” His fingers traced the edge of the vest, the backs of his fingers brushing Aldridge’s chest through the thin material of his shirt. “If you can’t keep all your buttons done, private, I may need to send you to the brig for some–” He leaned forward until his nose was an inch from Aldridge’s like a drill sergeant’s, but his voice was breathy as he said, “–punishment.”

He could feel the warmth of Aldridge’s skin under his fingers. This close, Aldridge smelled clean, with a hint of cedar from his rarely-worn civilian clothes and the underlying scent of… himself. His look of passion wasn’t entirely an act as he waited to see what the “private” would do.

-----

SsillvrR rolled his shoulders again as the bank of clouds veiling the moon was prized apart by the fingers of a breeze that swept in off the water. The smell of salt came with it, and the damp scent of promised rain. The elf’s thoughts deviated briefly from the consideration of wounds and sex to the notion of a night rain, which would probably leave the barracks yard a giant sucking mudhole again. It still hadn’t recovered from its previous wettening; several pairs of his nice white trousers were stubbornly refusing to be white again as a result. “I think I’ll be keeping all doors adjoining the infirmary locked from here on out. Our healer’s got a sixteen year old apprentice,” the elf grinned wryly, turning a coin he’d found in his pocket over the back of his fingers carefully.

Celino’s laugh was met with a snort. “Start turning red around the ears and stammering and someone’s bound to take a guess at it. Guards are worse than school girls for gossip. If there isn’t any to be had, they’ll make some up. The best you can hope for is to be unremarkable enough that you’re not worth making up stories about.” Half-way through his imitation, the elf started laughing again. It didn’t dampen to a chuckle until sergeant Celino took one authoritative step into his personal space, at which point the ‘private’ offered him a cheeky grin. “Nobody actually talks like that.”

And then Celino’s eyes were all warm like melted chocolate and his words all smudged and soft around the edges like a charcoal drawing and SsillvrR’s eyes got a little bit larger.

Oh.

Wow.

There was a persistent thumping sound in his ears, and it took another moment or two (in which Celino purred something else in a buttery voice) for him to realize that was his pulse. Had the mage taken a step or two backwards, restoring that all important bubble of personal space to its owner, SsillvrR might have been able to realize he was toeing a precipice and yank himself back from it. But Celino didn’t. In fact he leaned forward even further, and that thinking, reasoning, considering part of his brain winked out like a candle in a draft. Several seconds later SsillvrR found his fingers buried in the still damp hair at the back of the mage’s neck, and every nerve in his mouth tingling where it touched Celino’s.

-----

Celino’s eyes went wide as his “private” snapped out of role. A firm hand on the back of his head, a burst of warmth as Aldridge closed the distance between them, trapping Celino’s hand against his chest, and–that was lips. Aldridge’s lips, and didn’t they feel good? prompted his hindbrain as his forebrain boggled uselessly. After a shocked second, Celino slid back into his body, and yes, they did feel good. He kissed back, moaning softly into Aldridge’s mouth. His free hand found its way under Aldridge’s vest and around to his back. He pulled Aldridge closer, instinctively planning for the moment when Aldridge awoke from this wonderful dream and tried to pull away. Aldridge’s mouth was delicious; Celino teased his lips open with the tip of his tongue, and moaned again when Aldridge responded.

This was success beyond understanding. While his sensual, physical self reveled in the sensations, his analytical self tried to unravel the questions it raised. Aldridge was sincerely interested in him? Aldridge was still playing along? This was a momentary passion brought on by a good mood and too much warming talk? Mmm, if you flip your hand over and run it over his chest, you can find his–focus. What are you going to do if he regrets it instantly? What are you going to do if he’s fine until the morning after? Will there be a morning after? A little presumptuous, aren’t we, and just a little hasty? Oh, there it is, so if you rub–focus. What about the monkey? Are they done, did the monkey turn him down again, is Aldridge just not interested? Will he have to fight the monkey for Aldridge? Presumptuous again, get through the next five minutes first, if you touch him this way he’ll–oh, to hell with focus. Celino melted against Aldridge and enjoyed everything he offered, taking as much as he could until the next turning point came.

-----

There was a distinct darkness in the elf’s thinking mind, the one which was concerned chiefly with moral and ethical governance, as well as how to do things which were not instinctual, like button vests. A number of thoughts blundered around in that darkness, bumping into one another and apologizing in mumbles as his baser instincts glowed like hot metal.

Well damn, they snorted, exactly why do you avoid this? SsillvrR couldn’t answer. There was probably a good reason, probably one of those very important reasons that usually got capitalized by his rational half. But there were some fairly pressing reason not to look too hard for a reason to break that kiss. Celino’s mouth, which was obscurely sweet (cookie, he recalled dimly, was probably the culprit) and pliant was reason enough, but there were also hands to consider and the strands of hair brushing ticklishly against the curve of his cheek. Pulling his fingers through the mage’s hair brought them down his neck to where the collar of his robe stood up against the night’s chill. The skin beneath it was contrastingly warm, and beneath the callouses his fingers discovered the twitch of a pulse.

What just what the fuck are you doing? SsillvrR conscience, bleary eyed from oversleeping gave his consciousness a good backhand. The elf blinked, going still a moment before a second shrill demand made him draw back albeit haltingly. Public street…not that late… fragmentary reasons why this was a damned stupid idea filtered down through a fog of endorphins and it took a moment or two to put them into an order which made any sense at all.

Celino was looking at him.

And now what do I say? ‘Oh sorry, momentary slip up. Don’t mind me, just terribly repressed. Ha! So, you were talking about books or something?’ Yes, that was perfect. About as serviceable as ‘Do you mind terribly if I just pretend that never happened?’ (Here the elf’s instincts shrieked bloody murder at the mere suggestion that the kiss be relegated to the ‘ignore’ pile. SsillvrR decided they had the right idea.)

You have to say something. Something good would be preferable, but anything is better than blinking at him like a damned headcase.

“Uh…”

Bravo.

-----

“Yes, they’d catch on if you did that,” Celino said, smiling. He and Aldridge were still pressed together. One of Celino’s hands was splayed across his lower back, the other across his chest. He felt Aldridge’s pulse racing. “Don’t you dare pull away,” Celino said, tempering his firmness with gentleness as best he could with his own blood on a boil. “Here–” He meant to say something reassuring and take-charge, but Aldridge was looking at him with the most bewildered and vulnerable expression, and his mouth was still flushed and wet from the kiss, and– Celino cupped Aldridge’s cheek in his hand and kissed him hungrily. Mmm. Mmm.

He broke the kiss abruptly and said, “It wouldn’t look strange if you were to take me to your rooms to talk business this late at night. Yes?”

-----

Who would catch onto what now?

Evidently that had something to do what whatever they’d been discussing previously. As in before some factors of an undoubtedly mystical nature (they had to be since they were beyond his grasp) conspired to smash his resolve into itty bitty little pieces not unlike the crumbs still dusting Celino’s collar.

The collar that stood up around his throat. The pale one, with the very soft skin that smelled like soap and–okay no. Just–
no. SsillvrR’s hand had inched its way up again during this internal dialogue, and was in conjunction with a few other anatomical features being completely unresponsive to his directions. Rather than drop to his side obligingly, it curled around the curve of the mage’s jaw, thumb brushing the edge of a smile that was, by gods one of those ones that would have made him forget how to spell his own name.

“I wasn’t going–” –to. There were those lips again, and the hand splayed against his cheek. SsillvrR’s eyelids dropped like guillotine blades and the hand at Celino’s jaw was joined by a second that he bracketed the man’s face with them.

“Yes,” SsillvrR agreed abruptly, then blinked as if he’d been knocked between the eyes with a two by four. “I mean no! I mean–oh fuck, this isn’t a good idea.”

-----

Celino chuckled as he turned his head to nuzzle one of the hands bracketing his face. Aldridge’s hands were warm and smelled of salt… salt and something else. Celino brushed his lips along Aldridge’s fingers, enjoying the alternation of calluses and tender skin. He pressed a kiss into the center of Aldridge’s palm. Leather, that was the other smell, the leather of Aldridge’s sword hilt. He tasted the tang, mingling with the sharpness of the salt and the dry roughness of the calluses, and for a moment he was kneeling beneath one of the Spires by firelight, kissing another sword-roughened palm, one side of his body hot from the campfire and one side cold from the night and all of him burning. He came back to the present with the taste of Aldridge on his tongue and Aldridge’s hand in his hair, where it had slid when he turned his head, and all of him cold from the night, and all of him burning.

He turned his head just enough to look up into Aldridge’s eyes, lips against the man’s pulse. “Aldridge,” he said softly, breath hot on Aldridge’s skin, “my passion for you far exceeds the matters of the body, but if you don’t find us someplace private–to talk, if that’s all you’ll let me have–then by the gods I’m going to disgrace myself.”

-----

Later he would be ashamed at just how important the touch of Celino’s lips against his fingers seemed. Though the street was empty of all save shadows and wind, had a troop of jugglers in motley silks covered in bells leading a painted elephant caroused past, the elf would not have noticed them. His mouth brushed over the ugly ridge of flesh that streaked down his palm between ring and middle finger, and the elf’s eyelids seemed suddenly weighted.

Bad idea; let me count the ways! One, you’re in the middle of a public street. (More to the left of center really, SsillvrR argued). Two, it’s not nearly late enough for this street to be reliably deserted. (But it is by all appearances. Unless you count that raccoon over there, which doesn’t look like the blabbing sort). Three, what are you thinking?

SsillvrR lifted the damp weight of Celino’s hair experimentally, fingers skimming the neck beneath. What are you thinking? Not a whole hell of a lot really. Except that maybe whatever pride I have is starting to equate this extended period of celibacy with various inabilities. Inability to find someone (who won’t leave again when your back’s turned–
), inability to make time for anything that isn’t work related, inability to admit that this whole monk phase is getting a little old
–

Disentangling himself from the mage, SsillvrR’s lips still warm from the attention lavished upon them quirked. “Quit calling me Alderidge like I’m your damned errand boy then.”

SsillvrR retreated into his head for the remainder of the walk, hands jammed in his pockets. His expression explored a variety of flavors of ‘thoughtful’, waxing and waning from merely considering to deeply concerned though his ears remained angled sharply in a manner that suggested his thinking mind were not in control of them just now.

A circuit was leaving the barracks yard as they arrived, and its head paused long enough to give the elf a friendly nod. Returning it with a distracted haste, he waited long enough for Celino to catch up before ducking into one of the long low buildings containing the officers’ quarters.

Down a corridor whose major decorations included walls, a ceiling and floorboards, SsillvrR angled an ear sideways as if expecting ambush. It wasn’t until his fingers held the key poised against the lock that it came, in the form of a cheery looking man with sandy hair and wide brown eyes. The soldier, whose arms were heaped with clean towels peered past the captain to Celino then back again. “Workmen still in your office Captain?”

Workmen? Oh–
the roof. Right. “No.” Well then why aren’t you taking Celino there? Hmm–
good question. “But have you tried sitting on one of those chairs for more than a few minutes at a stretch?”

The man snorted seemingly in agreement before heading off in the direction they’d come. SsillvrR breathed out a long slow breath that felt as if it were composed primarily of concrete dust. The door shut tight against the rest of the barracks, a devious grin drifted up from the depths of the elf’s concern splitting his lips against teeth that were white in the dark. “Well
–I didn’t lie at any rate.”

-----

“Errand boy?” Celino drawled, amused. “Do you know the trouble I’ve had finding something to call you that won’t remind you that you’re the damned captain of the guard? What do you want me to call you?” He reluctantly allowed Aldridge to draw away. We have to step apart to walk, he reminded himself. He’s not leaving, he’s just… going over there. His side felt cold where it had been pressed against Aldridge. He jammed his hands into the slits in his overrobe and fell into step beside Aldridge, trying not to sulk. Several of the alleyways they passed looked clean enough for a quiet ravishing. Only Aldridge’s absorbed silence kept him from suggesting it. He hoped the man wasn’t going cold and stale while he was lost in his own head; desire needed to be kept warm, or it went clammy and congealed into uglier emotions. He hoped, fervently, passionately, that Aldridge was still mulling over his first thoughts and not moving on to second ones.

Celino’s fingers tingled with repressed energy, and as street after street passed in silence, his own surging emotions condensed into twitchiness. Talk, Aldridge, damn you.

Nothing.

So what were they doing? Was Aldridge expecting a fling? Or one night of release, then back to dirty wells in the morning? Or something much longer than either? Or just a long talk that ended with, “It’s not you, it’s me”? With another man Celino would have played it by ear, gone loose and casual while his quarry made up its mind. He didn’t have that luxury with Aldridge, he suspected. Courtship was all about ambiguity, and Aldridge hated ambiguity. Either he pinned him down one way, or Aldridge would pin himself down the other.

But he wasn’t sure he wanted Aldridge, either. The man was a fine companion and easy on the eyes, but his perfection could be wearing. Maybe he wasn’t right for Celino (Don’t be stupid, his hindbrain snapped), and then Celino would have committed to him with no good way out.

Agh. Agh.

He wished he could read Aldridge’s ears.

Celino pulled out maps and tucked them under his arm to aid in the subterfuge. He had no need to carry maps in the open even if he did genuinely need them, but the soldiers didn’t know that. He was tempted to talk about wells, but Aldridge’s continuing silence discouraged him. He followed mutely, feeling like he was sneaking into a boy’s room under the eyes of a hundred fathers, a hundred mothers, and a hundred and fifty gimlet-eyed little brothers. He wanted to smack them all–what did he have to be ashamed of?–but this was what Aldridge wanted, so this was what he would get.

“Well
I didn’t lie at any rate.”

He was grinning! Wickedly. That was a good sign. Oh, a very good sign. Celino flung the maps off to the side and entrusted them to fate. He pressed himself eagerly to Aldridge, planning to grab him and fling him down and improvise, with great speed and energy, but when his hands touched the man, his mind said, Slowly. Savor it. He drew his hands up from Aldridge’s waist, across the flat plane of his stomach, feeling the contours of his muscles and the ridges of scars. Over his chest, feeling the strength knotted up in his muscles, more scars, the nubs of his nipples. He stopped with his hands spread over Aldridge’s chest and leaned forward, slow and deliberate, inviting him into the kiss. His blood was pounding again, breath heavy, eyes half-lidded. Stop thinking for once and join me.

-----

During the walk, the elf was aware of Celino the way a freezing man was aware of a fire. He turned a corner, and Celino turned with him, a step or two to the left, a smear of color out of the corner of an eye and the sound of footfalls on cobbles. All the while his mind swam in frantic, ever tightening circles like a minnow caught in a jar. ‘Bad idea’ seemed to be the overarching theme, but he could not get a close enough look at the ‘bad’ to determine is specifics. Having been forced to describe it, he would have had to admit that it was really just a ‘bad feeling’ about the whole notion.

Of course he hadn’t really considered the extent of that notion either. What do you plan on doing once you get back to the barracks? SsillvrR slide sideways away from the query by deciding what he was not going to do, such as sweep the floor, clean stalls or shave. Evading the issue meant that by the time the door clicked shut behind them, he really and truly wasn’t sure what he intended.

More of the same would have been…well, wonderful frankly, but that all pointed in a terribly predictable direction, and SsillvrR balked at the concept of sex on a whim. He was in this assuming Celino wouldn’t decide somewhere along the line that this was exactly the sort of lecherous behavior associated with elves in general, and take himself off in an indignant huff. While he couldn’t say with certainty it would happen, he couldn’t discount it either.

That was the problem really; neither of them knew each other in any meaningful way.

And then Celino was there, the fabric of his robes folded heavily about his hands, the ones that were sliding up his stomach with a slow sort of confidence that made the elf’s knees feel as solid as the filling of a butter tart. Peering into eyes that glimmered beneath heavy lids, SsillvrR had to hand it to him; he did that face awfully well. Tipping his chin down, the elf caught the man’s lower lip between his teeth in a teasing nip. The kiss that followed was full of teeth and amusement, and broke only that he could map out the contours of Celino’s throat. “Please…tell me you’re not,” lips grazed the curved shell of the mage’s ear, seemingly fascinated by its shape, “going to change your mind.”

-----

This was far more chaste than any lechery Celino associated with elves, but then, Aldridge was far more chaste than the average… governess. Broke the curve, actually. So if after (some indeterminate time longer than) a whole week of acquaintance, after decorously retreating behind locked doors, Aldridge wanted to savage him like a wild Eastlander, Celino was willing to make some allowances.

Except that this wasn’t savaging. This was kissing (mmm) and nibbling (mmm) and what Aldridge was doing to his ear was probably prohibited by several religions, but– But the thought never got where it was going because Celino’s full attention was on Aldridge’s lips. He made small urgent noises, fingers curling in Aldridge’s hair and breath coming in little pants. Aldridge was saying something. What? Some kind of request. Words, he expected words back. “Whatever–” He gasped, fingers twitching. Oh, god. No, words, more words. “Whatever you want,” he said.

-----

Which was, in combination to the gasping, painting little sounds Celino was making as resounding an assurance as he could have hoped for. One of the elf’s ears tipped forward to catch a peculiar sound that might have been the squeak of an indignant field mouse, and SsillvrR smothered a sound of bright amusement against the curve of the mage’s neck. His teeth pinched tauntingly, before soothing the offended flesh with a warm swipe of the tongue.

Okay so, maybe this wasn’t a bad idea.

Celino’s fingers knotted in his hair, yanking heavy swathes of it free from its confining plait.

Maybe this was a very good idea.

It would be, SsillvrR considered, hands bumping against the clasps of the mage’s walnut colored outer robe, a better idea without so much fabric.

-----

Aldridge’s lips moved from Celino’s ear to his throat, and his mind cleared a little. He opened his eyes and found himself looking over Aldridge’s shoulder at the back of his door. Hadn’t gotten very far, had they? He smiled as he caught Aldridge’s earlobe between his teeth. It was still cold from the walk. He nibbled at it, flicking the earring, then tried to follow the rim of Aldridge’s ear higher. Pressed to his chest, Celino could do only so much; this was going to take cooperation from Aldridge. He nipped the now-warm lobe. “Tilt your ear this way,” he murmured.

Why are you fussing with his ear? his nerves shouted. Aldridge’s hair was twined around his fingers, his mouth was doing the most wonderful things to the curve of Celino’s neck, his hands were–well, that could be fixed. His body was hot against Celino’s, and Celino’s body responded with urgency and a certain prominence. Hands! his nerves said. “Do me a favor,” he said, still breathing a little hard. “Don’t make me redo all the buttons. If you undo my belt, the robes come off over my head.”

—–

It really was neither the time nor the place for such thoughts, but SsillvrR’s mind was uncharacteristically heedless of such propriety as it pointed out that garments with this many buttons were usually worn by the kind of people who weren’t accustomed to having to do them all up by themselves. If such a task would have been onerous first thing in the morning, then it was downright irritating under present circumstances. It was not necessarily that the buttons were small or the button holes tight, both were perfectly adequate sizes (and here SsillvrR reminded himself before any comparisons might be drawn that that sort of thought pattern was crude beyond crudity). The issue was simply that undoing them occupied his hands, which the rest of him suggested could be exploring things more interesting than clothing fasteners. As a secondary issue, having his hands engaged at Celino’s buttons meant the rest of him could not get any closer. Celino was not helping much either; his fingers periodically fell still as the mage’s mouth moved along his ear. That something as simple as a mouth could so badly impair the elf’s motor skills was probably laughable; SsillvrR however wasn’t going to do or say anything that might distract Celino’s mouth from its current course. So when the mage murmured a request, the ear in question followed without consulting his brain, and its owner realizing a moment later muffled an amused sound against the curve of his jaw.

“Mm?” SsillvrR reordered what appeared at first to be a collection of pleasant sounding syllables into words, the recalled the meaning of each in order that he could respond properly. No, apparently Celino didn’t hold with the idea of having someone else dress him after all. SsillvrR gave him bonus points for that, but subtracted one for the fact that the mage insisted on wearing such impractical gear to begin with. Feeling pleasantly obtuse, SsillvrR plucked another button free and feigned deafness.

—–

The length of Aldridge’s ear was cool against Celino’s cheek. Celino nibbled his way up it until he could suck on the tip. Aldridge was still guddling with his buttons–silly man. Celino ran a hand down his back and over the curve of his backside–oh, that was highly distracting, think, Celino, you have work to do. “If you want to keep doing it that way, you’ll have to take the time to undo every–” He pressed himself harder against Aldridge, rubbing his desire against a similar bulge in Aldridge’s trousers. “–single–” Grind. “–button.” Grind. “Undo my belt and lift my robes over my head.”

Men drunk with desire were much like men drunk with wine. Subtlety was lost on them. You needed clear orders, a confident tone of voice, and, other parts of his mind added, Aldridge naked and writhing in under two minutes.

That sounded like a plan.

—–

SsillvrR might have protested the mage’s manner and methodology; direct orders in combination with that sort of manipulative tactic seemed a strange mix, and as a target he was fond of neither. However there were a number of things going on at a level much deeper than the one on which existed his complaints re: Celino’s approach. One, the physician’s teeth were doing some remarkable things to the tip of his ear. Remarkable enough that the elf wondered fuzzily if Celino hadn’t had a run-in with a member of his own kind before; one who responded better to having their ears examined (yanked). He was neither quick nor concerted enough in his effort to entirely suppress the shiver that ensued, but by that time Celino was busy giving him a more intimate introduction to that little hip roll movement he’d called ‘dancing’ earlier and SsillvrR felt better that it would go unnoticed.

Thus, the battle was won, decisively. Dropping arms in surrender, the opposition found the belt was a great deal less time consuming an option (one belt verses, what, thirty buttons?). Happy to concede defeat, SsillvrR managed to find his voice again (the one that made more than monosyllable sounds of approval) by the time the belt had been dispatched. “Good point.” There was a robe, and then, there wasn’t. This was, the elf’s libido asserted, a large step closer to their goal, which was because it belonged to SsillvrR, referred to as the ‘mission objective’. There was some evening out to follow that involved the removal of a shirt. Nearly anyone else would have let it drop where it may, or flung it carelessly aside as proof positive of their passion. SsillvrR did neither, instead leaning that he could drop it over the back of a chair. This might not have been particularly significant to Celino, who wasn’t aware of the number of times nocturnal activity had been paused that he could fold discarded items of clothing.

The mage, as it turned out, was the owner of more layers than SsillvrR had expected. There was in fact almost a whole other outfit underneath it; it was probably inappropriate on some level (there were rules to interpersonal engagement that the elf had no manual for), but he laughed anyway. His only concession was that it was both a short and quiet one. This development implied that this was another Cockaigne custom, but asking would have involved a verbal response which would have wasted precious time.

Had he stopped to examine why he was concerned about time before the knock on the door, SsillvrR might have had to give a second thought to the idea of precognition.

There was no mistaking it for a knock; it was the sharp, assertive sort perpetrated by a knocker who believes their message urgent. SsillvrR went still a moment, as if he expected the person on the other side of the door might be able somehow to see him, and grit his teeth.

The knock came again; SsillvrR lips flattened briefly. “What?” There was a pointed, unfriendly edge to the word that gave the man on the other end of the door pause.

“Lieutenant Carpele requests your assistance; there’s a bit of a situation and–”

“Why?” SsillvrR hadn’t yet bothered to open the door, and was in fact leaning against it as if he expected duty to burst through and grab him. The guard’s pause was hesitant, and in those silent seconds the elf’s ears swiveled backward.

“There’s a bit of a personal…disagreement between Merick and Jonquil; something about ah… Jonquil’s wife, as I understand it.”

SsillvrR grit his teeth harder, and counted to ten in his head.

Then counted to ten again before letting his head fall back against the door with a thunk. “Fine.” When no footfalls signaled the man’s departure, SsillvrR added “Dismissed,” in a manner that made it sound more whip crack than word. An unfriendly expression was pointed at the rafters that they did not deserve when the sound of departing footsteps reached them.

A sigh wiped most of that expression off leaving a mixture of frustration and apology in its wake. “Wait for me?”

—–

Celino would have been annoyed at Aldridge. There was no reason for the man to be surprised that he had two robes on. He’d seen Celino change his outer robe; what did he think the underrobe was, a shift? But Aldridge did a delicious little shiver in response to… well, there was a lot going on, but there was a shiver and it was a response and Celino intended to perform some careful experiments and catalogue all of Aldridge’s shivers by quality and stimulus. As Aldridge pulled off his shirt, he slid into the circle of Aldridge’s arms to try a few with lips and tongue and the new expanses of skin Aldridge had so thoughtfully exposed.

He was in the middle of one such experiment when the rap came on the door behind them. He groaned softly. “I’ve met Jonquil,” he said, leaning his forehead against Aldridge’s chest. “Let Merick have her if she wants him.” He felt twitchy, as though there was something he was supposed to be doing, and remembered: Oh yes, those raps used to come on his study door all day long. He pulled away from Aldridge, combing his fingers through his hair to untousle it. “Yes, all right,” he said. “Do you want me to come? Is there something I could do?”

—–

Celino was regularly annoyed at SsillvrR; the elf was beginning to feel that given their current proximity and state of undress, annoyance was to the mage linked with more favourable feelings. Those feelings were not however going to deal with whatever juvenile disagreement was cutting into his personal time (important personal time). In that concern for time and its interruption, SsillvrR recognized the apprehensive assumption that this offer of Celino’s, whatever it was may have an expiry date. That consideration insinuated an ugly little tendril of awkwardness into the moment. SsillvrR felt the tickle of Celino’s breath against his skin, and found he was not at all sure that Celino wouldn’t have changed his mind by the time he got back.

He’d have time to think; time to consider the fact that this clearly was looking at it from any angle, a bad idea. The sort of idea that gave birth to complications not by ones, but in litters. Recognizing the strains of selfishness in his own desire NOT to give the mage time to better consider what he was doing, SsillvrR felt a trickle of guilt poured over his frustration.

That his selfishness wouldn’t have a chance to alter his actions in any telling way salved that guilt, but he felt an unreasonable resentment toward both Merick and Jonquil the moment Celino pulled away. Tugging his shirt back in a feigned decisiveness, he didn’t bother to tuck it in again. It was probably giving them too much credit to assume such a subtly would be noticed, but SsillvrR decided if they did, they’d understand just how interrupted he’d been.

“No…” SsillvrR frowned, pulling his hair back before realizing its tie was no longer to hand. Oh well; a second subtly for them to observe. “If I turn up with you in tow at this hour, there will be some interesting conjecture as to why by breakfast. I’d prefer you didn’t have to see me play nursemaid to grown men who should know better anyway.” SsillvrR felt the edge of his annoyance run beneath his restraint like a knife below fine fabric, and wondered if this wasn’t the sort of thing he was allowed to lose his temper over. A lock of hair flopped over one eye briefly before being swiped back behind an ear; he smiled briefly, small and tight with irritation. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

—–

“Of course.” Celino smiled back more naturally. “One more thing–” He kissed Aldridge, using the distraction to tuck Aldridge’s shirt back in so he wouldn’t look like he’d just rolled out of bed. He pulled his hands out from under Aldridge’s belt and squeezed him briefly before letting him go and stepping back. There, that would give them both something to think about. He considered giving Aldridge a little more to keep in mind–or to fix his mind in place–but time was wasting and grown men were having fits somewhere in the barracks. “Stay warm,” he said, and gave Aldridge a last kiss. “I’ll be here.”

—–

Celino’s ability to handle the interruption with such grace made SsillvrR feel as if he were the brat in the market square, throwing a temper tantrum. Needless to say it was not something he was otherwise accustomed to and the mage’s helpful clothing adjustments only reinforced the notion. He might have gone on to pick apart the comparison in search of hidden meaning had not the mage’s hand moved on, dipping down to where a considerably more optimistic portion of the elf was refusing to admit this little session was at end, even temporarily. The touch turned the breath sideways in his lungs that it came out as an emphatic groan quite without permission. Celino for his part looked perfectly composed, as if he’d done nothing more noteworthy than shake hands. SsillvrR closed his mouth just as soon as he realized it was open and briefly wondered if he could come up with a viable excuse for not leaving the room at all.

Sickness? Maybe, although he hadn’t mentioned it when the message came, which would hurt his credibility.

Forgetfulness? No precedent there.

Death? Difficult to explain when he turned up for breakfast. Temporary death was a hard sell at the best of times.

Damnit.

SsillvrR’s sense of duty managed to chase his libido away from the controls long enough for him to get to the door, but it couldn’t stop him from sighing as he closed it behind him, leaving Celino to his own devices.

SsillvrR would have leaned against the lion while he waited, if he didn’t feel as if the lion would have taken offense. It had that particularly unfriendly look about it that cats often sported, the one that read in no uncertain terms, my station exceeds yours, and if not heeded, involved claws. Instead, he leaned against Harsholt’s wall, which was a miserably artless creation and suffered badly from any comparison to the sleek feline grace of the lion. SsillvrR felt a little sorry for the wall, which having been built to dissuade any would-be-thief had no need for decorative beauty.

Feeling sorry for walls and intimidated by stone lions was, he realized, a good sign. He was rarely able to give into the assertions of his psyche unless he was feeling optimistic about something (truly optimistic, not doggedly). It was really, not a bad plan. Moreover, he had a good feeling about it. That sentiment rarely flew with anyone who wasn’t familiar with uniformed duties however, so the elf vowed to keep it under his hat so to speak. Spouting off about hunches and good feelings wasn’t going to instill confidence in Celino, who seemed hesitant still.

Despite that, the fact he was thus far in agreement left the elf feeling as if he’d missed key elements of the man’s character in his earlier assessments. Celino struck him as a good sort under the bluster and arrogance, but not really the sort to willingly enter into the sort of fracas he’d proposed. Specifically without visible benefit to himself. To save a man who’d been sent to off him no less.

Pulling his thoughts up short, SsillvrR supposed it was pointless to stare a gift horse in the mouth. Celino would help as much as he wished, and that was more than he could have hoped for. Now all they needed was for Tourmaline’s mood to be fair to good.

—–

One inventory, scrub, and hurried shampoo later, Celino was damp and full of apples. He pulled on his last set of clean robes, brown underneath and russet on top, and considered his gold top robe sadly before stuffing it back in the purse. If Aldridge’s notion of Tourmaline’s fashion sense was wrong, Celino could put better robes on later.

He finished his last apple just before the ivory lion came into sight and stopped behind a corner to see that his fingers were licked clean. Properly groomed, he strolled into the square. Aldridge was already there, lounging gracefully against a wall and looking as though he were pondering–apples, suggested Celino’s subconscious. Celino brushed it aside, but in the process lost his train of thought. Ah well.

He considered the lion for a moment. The beast was alert and on guard like any good servant, but what was it guarding? He leaned against the pedestal, resting his head on its carved flank. A glance along its line of sight revealed nothing of immediate import. Hmm. “Who built this?” he said offhandedly to Aldridge, then almost as offhandedly, “When did she say she would meet us?”

—–

Celino looked properly respectable, for a man in outlander gear. Maybe it was the color; brown was a nice humble color, solid, sturdy, dependable old brown. SsillvrR considered that if he were a color, he wouldn’t mind at all being a good earthy shade of brown. Something like good soil, or the underside of a nursery log. The elf’s clothes were considerably less polished. Inventory: One pair of nondescript riding breeches (the first thing he happened to grab), one matchingly non-descript shirt rolled up over his forearms (the sleeves were too billowy and got in the way), and a vest that was a tired looking shade of gray green like the underside of a safe leaf. Had he picked up a position behind Celino, his garb was such that he might have been taken for a servant.

“Who? I have no idea. It’s not bad though,” the elf considered peering up into the planar face that stared stonily past him. “Its all angles and points, but it still feels like a lion.” Hands in his pockets, he pushed off the wall with his shoulder and fell into step with the mage. “She didn’t. We’re ah, dropping by. Surprise visit.” A cheeky grin lifted both lips and eyebrows briefly as he inclined his head at Wrenmarch’s ugly gate. Neither the main gate nor the foot gate was locked by any visible means as it happened which seemed not at all unusual to the elf, who slipped in only to find himself faced by what looked like a giant grey footstool. With teeth.

“Ah… ” the elf grimaced, shuffling hastily through mental notes on a language he was only fleetingly familiar with. What the hell was that word? “Vournahan? Vourdanan!” With a skeptical whine, the dog’s curled lips dropped and a pink tongue lolled briefly, mockingly, before it padded off again.

Giving Celino a brief apologetic grin over his shoulder before they continued to the door, the elf shrugged. “Two languages are all I can manage. The third just won’t stick.”

The door, a broad wooden panel whose innately stately design was somewhat ruined by the fetching shade of robin’s egg blue it had been painted popped open before they could even announce themselves with a knock. A short, dour looking man stood framed within it, his eyes all but consumed by the pouches of fat surrounding them. He squinted moleishly up at the pair of them.

“Your business?”

SsillvrR looked detachedly amused. The man was obviously new if he expected Tourmaline’s guests to readily announce their business. “Is my own thanks. Could you please tell the lady the ‘other’ son is here?”

The mole’s eyes disappeared entirely with the force of his scowl, but he seemed able to navigate by other means for he spun about top-like and trundled into the dark foyer leaving the door open. Some unspoken rule of etiquette kept SsillvrR from following; he waited patiently until a warm voice echoed at an unlady-like volume from somewhere within the depths.

“That joke is nearly as old as I am, and the pair of us are fading fast!”

SsillvrR slipped inside after ushering Celino in first, and let the door click shut behind them. “As much as I like to yell, where are you?”

“Two lefts and a right.”

There was a sitting room, a small affair used for personal guests, then a short hallway and finally a grander room which at a glance was not terribly unlike the average. There were high windows, and nice curtains hung on nicer rods with little twisty metal ends. There were items of furniture; chairs and tables, couches and a chaise with several immense pillows. And in the middle, there was a construction somewhere between a dais and a couch, populated primarily with pillows and drapery in the middle of which sat a young woman wearing nothing but a handful of hairpins and a serene look.
SsillvrR did a double take.

“Don’t be rude,” said a canvas. “Margarette, this is SsillvrR, who is among other things, a bit of a jackass.”

SsillvrR was still trying to work out how this situation fit into his understanding of etiquette when he managed some kind of greeting before jerking his gaze back to the talking canvas. “What in the gods names are you doing?”

“Learning how to telekinetically strip a woman,” the voice said, with a humor that was like the tinkling of glass bells. “Don’t have a heart-attack, I’m painting. I think. Mostly I’m just pushing the paint around on the canvas, but I think I’m beginning to get it now. There’s a great deal of bullshit involved. I think if I can come up with a decent line to explain why it looks like a puddle of cat vomit rather than lovely Margarette here, I’ll be accepted into the art community.” A face appeared around the edge of the stretcher then, long and ovaline with too many edges for it to ever be called beautiful. A fine network of lines gathered at the edges of her eyes, and her lips though thin were flexible, and made echoing crinkles when she smiled. “Who are you, and what do you think of my painting?”

—–

The [i]other[/i] son? Celino’s eyebrow went up. He pondered that all the way through the house, which was richly decorated but nothing notable; stuffy, like all Continental houses.

And then there was a woman, notably unstuffy. Celino took one look for reference and then kept his eyes on her face. Ah. Eccentric, yes. He was impressed that she considered herself old (but perhaps elves were like that… but she looked human… but if not everyone who had pointed ears was an elf, then maybe not everyone who had round ears was human) and could bellow like that without looking red in the face seconds later. Then the canvas spoke and the situation became slightly less eccentric, though even in Cockaigne one did not lay out undressed people as decoration during public visiting hours.

If this was Aldridge’s point of comparison, he didn’t see why his own foreignnesses shocked the man so. He was junior league compared to Tourmaline.

“Celino XVII, at your service,” Celino said with a middling bow, the one that said “I respect you and acknowledge your high station but as yet have insufficient evidence that it’s groveling time.” He added a second, shallower bow for Margarette, the one that said “I have no idea where you stand socially but respect you all the same, and also you are naked.” As he strolled across the room and circled the canvas to stand behind it with Tourmaline, he reflected that despite wearing rather more clothes than Margarette, Tourmaline was a distractingly handsome woman. Bony and planar, with strong features that were marked by laugh lines but could probably do a fearsomely competent “fierce” face. Tall, that was a bonus, though being at least four inches taller than Celino was daunting. She seemed to have hit the sensible part of the female life cycle with force and enjoyment. This interview was going to be terribly interesting.

All the same, she looked nothing whatsoever like her “son.” Aldridge [i]would[/i] explain the joke if she wouldn’t, Celino was going to make sure of that.

He considered the canvas, arms behind his back. “You have not yet captured the essence of the sitter’s personality,” he drawled, “but you have the curve–” He indicated the line from shoulder to hip to flank with a graceful mirroring gesture. “–down nicely. Which art community are you trying to get into, artisanal or society?”

—–

SsillvrR, who was paying a lot of attention to the edges of the canvas; specifically the white bits such as they were neither the nudity, nor a portrayal of that nudity, completely missed Celino’s careful little bows. Which really was just as well, since Tourmaline did too, having returned her gaze to the pinkish blots in the center which SsillvrR supposed, stealing a glance now that the initial shock was wearing off, were supposed to be Margarette.

“It’s very
–pink,” the elf pointed out while Tourmaline rearranged the contingent of brushes balanced somewhat precariously behind the delicate point of her left ear. Her laughter was bright and unapologetically loud. Margarette, her eyes closed in a dozy cattish fashion, smiled absently.

“Well she is mostly pink. I also find myself having purchased a great deal more red than I really require, strictly speaking, so I’m trying on ‘economical’ as well as ‘painter’ and using as much as I can before it goes crusty and useless. Perched atop a high backed stool at the edge of a long dining table Tourmaline certainly looked the part. SsillvrR considered that was probably not accidental. “Margarette dear, do you need a break?”

“My arm is getting a little tingly,” the woman confessed while her painter traced the line Celino had indicated with a fingertip, smearing the paint hopelessly.

“Bitch,” Tourmaline hissed at it, and proceeded to make matters worse by attempting to coax it back into place with the same finger. “Well, you’ve ruined it Celino XVII. I suspect you are not an artist.” And then to her model, who was stretching stiff muscles gingerly as she climbed into a long robe of a considerably more cozy sort than Celino’s, “stretch your legs then, and find something to eat in the kitchen while you’re at it.”

Fingers bearing the evidence of her error, she began removing brushes from their various hiding places and plopping them one at a time into containers of muddy looking liquid.

“I’m attempting to get into whichever art community would irritate my son most. So, you’re here to ruin my paintings and gawk at my poor model?”

—–

“I am not an artist,” Celino agreed amiably. “When I wish to enjoy the exercise of craft, I do magic; when I wish to be pretentious and smug, I point myself at someone I dislike and dive into it freeform. I admire your attempt to impose discipline upon your natural desires.” He considered the ruined canvas. “It’s not a bad start, all in all. You have the outlines of everything right; it’s the internal details that are off. If you worked with them a bit, you might have a painting that wouldn’t annoy your son at all.” He glanced at Aldridge. “Your other other son, I mean.” Aldridge was taking a keen interest in the painted draperies. Celino doubted Tourmaline could be convinced to wrap them around Margarette, even if they used up more red paint.

—–

Tourmaline listened to Celino while rearranging her brushes in a manner that seemed to have no particular reason whatsoever, then began wiping her paint-smudged fingertips on her smock front. “You are confused Celino XVII; the irritation is my aim.” SsillvrR made a small sound that seemed amused and exasperated as he pulled a chair out from beneath the table, whose only other occupants were a variety of painting paraphernalia and some strange looking potted plants. And then to the elf, “Thank you incidentally, for continuing to use that ‘joke’ despite my obvious annoyance with it. Do it again and I will take it upon myself to create thirty or forty paintings of your favorite guardsmen nude and have them displayed prominently in council chambers. And the barracks mess hall. I might even put your signature on them, if I can remember how to spell your damnable name.”

SsillvrR chuckled this time, pushing a small pot of pearly white paint aside. “You’d be bored of the project by the second painting. I think I’m relatively safe.”

“Hmhh,” said the blond woman, turning a piercing gaze on Celino again. “Neither of you came here to discuss paintings and familial rivalries. Let’s have it then.”

—–

“In that case, I advise you to change nothing, but when you start on the series of guardsmen, use nothing but red paint. Insist that the outlines created by your brush strokes are enough. Throw around phrases like ‘the visible hand of the artist’ and ‘tactile painting.’ Interlard it with rambling explanations of the ‘other son’ joke, or, if you don’t feel like it, let me have the rambling explanation now.” He seated himself across from Aldridge, placing his elbows carefully to avoid a splotch of blue paint.

So Tourmaline knew about Aldridge’s predilections. Iiiiiiiiiiiiinteresting. And Aldridge wasn’t turning colors and squirming. Even more interesting.

Celino looked expectantly at Aldridge. He wasn’t going to launch into the explanation of this mess.

—–

Tourmaline savored a good laugh at Celino’s suggestions, while pushing small glasses of water in varying shades of brown about with an air of half-hearted searching. “He’s clever, but he has a touch of the entitlement complex you seem so very fond of,” she assessed looking pointedly at SsillvrR, who was absently arranging the cups of dirtied paint water in order of size. “One of yours?”

“A friend,” SsillvrR corrected with a half grin. “And fellow conspirator.”

One brow, arched severely that it hung in a permanent slant over a murky bronze eye. “A friend and conspirator to whom you’re going to have to explain the measure of your ‘joke’ to personally. You can consider it penance for letting my old age in with you.”

“Justice thwarted. Look, I’ll level with you-”

“Please, do.”

“I need a favor You know the Six Cups?”

“In between the four and five cups I imagine.”

SsillvrR made a small sound of amusement, gleaning an affirmation in her tone if not her words. “I need something expensive of yours to turn up in their possession.”

“How about that damnable statue? Tell them they can keep it. I’m not fond of having that damned thing staring at me day in and day out.”

—–

Entitlement complex! Of all the–what had he said that was entitled? Celino’s color rose. While he was working up a proper splutter, Tourmaline and Aldridge cut through it with “One of yours?” “A friend.” And the words before had been–”…you seem so very fond of.”

Huh.

Huh.

But Aldridge still wasn’t changing color and squirming, which wasn’t as good a sign as it could have been. If he was being so casual about it, maybe Celino was the type of lover Aldridge favored, but Aldridge still didn’t favor him (occupation, race, nationality, what was wrong?), which sunk the whole enterprise. Ahhhh, this was getting worse and worse.

Celino forced himself to surface from his brown study in time to hear he wasn’t going to get his explanation. Tourmaline also knew about the Cups, which was strange if the Cups were as do-nothing as Aldridge told him. And she owned the statue? “Why does it face the house?” Celino said. He lounged back in his chair to give Aldridge more room for his puttering. (Oh, soft chairs. Celino remembered what they felt like.) “It’s bad geomancy, directing that kind of opposition toward the house. It should face away.

“But I think that even a bunch of fine strong lads like the Cups would have trouble carting it away. What about the painting? An outfit like the Cups might think it was worth stealing on provenance alone.” That was a stab in the dark. Celino still had no idea why this woman was important, apart from having evidently transmuted her social qualms into great pots of cash. “The furor surrounding its theft and recovery would generate enough celebrity to annoy a dozen sons.”

—–

No, SsillvrR was neither squirming nor pinking. He was in fact, having finished arranging the containers of water from smallest to largest in a typically obsessive compulsive manner, now ensuring all the brushes within them pointed at Celino. At Tourmaline’s suggestion the corners of his mouth turned up a a pinched kind of smile, the kind one might offer at the sharing of a private joke. “Celino has a point. Plus, I would prefer if we could not involve him if at all possible.”

Tourmaline snorted indelicately, and having located the glass of brown water which was in fact NOT paint water, but an expensive aged scotch, took a sip. “Nobody’s told me yet why you would like me to deliver something of mine into the hands of some sort of criminal organization. But don’t tell me; wait.” Tenting her fingers over top of the glass, she peered with an intense scrutiny into ceiling over the doorway by which they’d entered for a moment. “This is most certainly a personal affair, or I would not be graced with your company. An item of mine in the possession of criminals at your request, paired with the fact you’re not here alone suggests to me this has something to do with you,” she paused to stab a finger tipped in a delicately pointed nail at him. Following, she lifted a hand to her mock in an expression of mock horror. “My dear elf, are you involved in some kind of… unlawful undertaking?”

SsillvrR’s ears swung out as he looked up from pushing a paintbrush back and forth between his hands. “Admittedly what I’m proposing stretches the limits of my conscience… but the ends I think justify the means.”

Tourmaline waved a hand, flippantly dismissing the debate such a statement could have provoked. She let her fingernails clink against the glass before slanting her gaze at Celino. “It faces the house because its gifter is an arrogant prick who thinks he’s being clever. Now someone give me the whole story, and hand me the biscuits on the sideboard while you’re at it.”

“He’s merely making a point. You were being a little reckless a few years back, associating with those kind of-”

“Don’t you dare defend him when he’s not here to give you brownie points for it,” Tourmaline pointed her glass at SsillvrR with a scowl, and the elf lifted his hands in surrender, but not without a badly smothered smirk.

“The cookies first, then the story.”

—–

Aldridge teasing Tourmaline like a small boy! That was easily the sexiest thing since he’d said dirty words. Celino kept his face neutral and pleasant as he fetched the biscuits from the sideboard, but inside he made small incoherent sounds that, if he were not a man in the full dignity of adulthood, would have been called squeaking. He offered her the tray, taking the seat beside her as he did so.

“It started about a week ago, when I sat down to have a glass of ale and enjoy the ambiance of the Cups’ tavern. They didn’t have ale or ambiance, so over a glass of cat piss, we enjoyed a lively debate about our respective mothers, which I won.” He leaned back, letting his hands hang bonelessly over the griffins’ heads that thrust from the ends of the armrests. “Over the course of the debate, several of the Cups attempted to steal my purse and wound up in my purse, where they stayed for the night and much of the following morning, until Captain Aldridge was prepared to take my statement regarding the attempted theft. This made me rather unpopular with them, so a few days ago, they hired a dribbling monkey with a large axe to break my ribs. After meeting me and trading several remarkable stories about the quite remarkable Captain, then going off to dribble upon the Captain himself, the monkey declined to do the job.”

Celino looked at Aldridge expectantly. Your turn.

—–

Tourmaline’s fingered hovered indecisively over the various biscuits while Celino explained, before choosing a variety that was decorated with small curls of cherry flavored white chocolate.
“Now you don’t get a cookie,” she told SsillvrR pointedly when Celino finished. “He does.”

SsillvrR was feigning disinterest in said cookies, ears swiveled outward. “Two months ago,” he corrected. “And there was technically an episode of subsequent incarceration following that drunken debacle.”

“Is that how you meet all your friends?” Tourmaline broke the cookie in two and dipped it in her scotch. “And this monkey is going to play a key role I imagine.”

SsillvrR gave Celino a look that suggested he was disappointed enough to consider upending some paint water over the mage’s head. “The man in question was in the service under my command at Yalesbury.”

The woman lifted her gaze before letting out a bright ‘ha’ that startled a sleeping cat off the back of a chair piled with anatomy books. “Lovely! I’m beginning to understand now. You feel some misguided duty to this disgraced monkey, particularly since he was kind enough to spare your friend here and are therefore looking for a reason to justify
what, some kind of rescue mission?”

Looking a little dour, he shook his head. “Well, not rescue per se. Preventative measure let’s say. The cups aren’t going to be happy about that broken contract, and his current ah
transgressions are something I think it would be wise to keep under wraps considering his former position.”

Tourmaline nipped at the edge of the cookie and smiled. “And he’s agreed to help you out of some similarly misguided sense of loyalty?”

SsillvrR glanced sidelong at Celino and shrugged a bit.

—–

“And there was technically an episode of subsequent incarceration following that drunken debacle.”

“Ah, yes.” Celino smiled creamily. “We got to play the three-things game with a real locked room and ‘me, a warm bed, a cup of coffee.’” He selected a green cookie filled with butter frosting and topped with pistachios, and spent the rest of Aldridge’s story licking the filling out. He envied Tourmaline’s glass of scotch. It had been ages since he’d tasted spirits.

But–two months? Surely it hadn’t been that long. He riffled through his memories. There were a lot of days cluttering up his memory, but it didn’t feel like much more than a week.

He ignored Aldridge’s disappointed look, licking his cookie like it was the most absorbing thing in the world. He stood by what he said. The man was a monkey beyond doubt. It wasn’t Celino’s fault that Aldridge couldn’t see that, or that Aldridge was the very definition of misguided loyalty.

“Certainly not,” Celino said indignantly when Tourmaline accused him of the same flaw. “The Cups are still after me. I need to make them call off. And,” he tilted his head toward Aldridge, “he asked me for help.”

—–

At Celino’s elbow Tourmaline laughed under her breath, a smoky sort of chuckle that involved a sidelong glance at the elf, who was if only briefly wearing a fairly suspicious face. “So, you would like something of mine to appear in the hands of said gang of baddies so you can justify cleaning them out and thus preventing them from causing further trouble for your absent simian associate and Celino the somethingth. Seventeenth, was it? Well I have a large concern with the current proposal. It would require me to step forward wreathed in titles and cry foul. You know very well how I feel about that. Ostmont society is more or less ignorant of my existence and that tickles me scarlet.”

“Pink,” SsillvrR said.

“Scarlet,” said Tourmaline meaningfully. “Also, how do you propose to link the Cups to that item? Offer to take inventory of their stolen items for them?”

—–

“It’s not at all what you think,” Celino murmured in response to Tourmaline’s chuckle, exuding innocence. When she was done talking, he said, “Seventeenth. But you may just call me Celino. There are no other Celinos in the town to confuse me with.” He stretched out his legs under the table and hitched a foot up on the polished length of one of the crossbars. “Please pardon my ignorance, madam, but what are your titles? The Captain hasn’t seen fit to enlighten me.”

How did the Captain plan to catch the Cups out? That was a good question. Celino had a vision of himself playing bait in the Cups’ den, and hoped fervently that Aldridge had a better idea. He bit one of the halves of his cookie in two as he waited for whatever answers or evasions the present company produced.

—–

“And your predecessors were mages I assume from that bit about purse-incarceration? No, he wouldn’t either. I’d wring his neck. Or rather I’d pay someone to wring it for me; I’ve never been one for violence.” Tourmaline munched the last of her cookie, rolling her eyes dramatically that they seemed to gleam orange in the lamp light. “First lady of eccentricities. Unless I agree that information is classified master Celino. And don’t eat the last chocolate wafer; I’m saving it for Margarette”

“You may as well tell him,” SsillvrR, having run out of things to arrange was tapping his fingertips absently against the arm of his chair. “What’s the worst possible outcome? Its Ostmont. He’s not what you’d call terribly popular here-abouts. No socialites are going to be breaking down your door trying to curry favor The social climate being what it is, the worst you could expect would be a few rotten tomatoes thrown at your door.”

“I don’t particularly care for tomatoes either,” Tourmaline retorted before blowing out a long sigh. “Explain to me how you intend to catch the Cups with my things first.”

“That’s not difficult. We’d need to choose an item that is expensive enough to be exciting, but not so expensive that the Cups couldn’t find a likely fence for it. So long as its something that’s relatively unique to your collection, I can find it again. I know the fences they use on a regular basis, and none of them have lofty enough connections to be able to go directly to a buyer.” SsillvrR stopped drumming his fingers and made a small open handed gesture. “You know I wouldn’t ask if I could possibly manage this any other way. I don’t particularly like having to ask in the first place, but this isn’t something I can mange in an official capacity. I can’t fix this on my own.”

“You could have asked him.”

“You’re not going to hold the favor over my head,” the elf shrugged mildly, looking almost guilty. “I can keep the drama to a minimum if I’m in control. Its also, just faster.”

Tourmaline sighed again, and examined the points of her nails, picking absently at the surface of one, which gleamed with subtle nacre. “Oh alright. Only because I like you. And I may in future, hold this over your head,” her grin was broad and feline as she snatched another cookie, the wafer she’d professed to be saving before turning a blithe smile at Celino. “First lady of eccentricities, as well as queen mother.”

—–

Denied and extensively insulted, Celino rolled his eyes and sat up. “I can keep secrets,” he said, taking a cookie dipped in pink icing. “As a physician, I’ve held information that could have broken a thousand marriages and ruined ten thousand lives. Keeping secrets is part of the job. You–” He pointed the cookie at Aldridge. “–may not appreciate my openness with details of my own life, but you can’t fault my discretion with your own life. A little trust, if you will.”

He sat back and munched discontentedly while Aldridge explained the plan and he and Tourmaline made confusing banter about a mysterious “him.” Then Tourmaline smiled at him as though some great secret was going to be revealed, and–oh. That was odd. “Queen mother of what?”

—–

“As many venereal diseases contracted by philandering husbands as you’ve treated, you’ll forgive me my suspicions. I have worked long and hard to distance myself from any and all responsibilities, and I’m tired. I have no interest in being dragged, accidentally or otherwise, back into that whole mess. Politics may hang by a silk handkerchief for all I care.” Snapping the wafer in two, Tourmaline proceeded to nip off equal sections from either end.

This time, it was SsillvrR’s turn to laugh. The elf’s ears twitched with the effort it took to contain that mirth, even as he cleared his throat. Tourmaline looked mad as a wet cat. “The king?”

—–

“Oh, it’s not you, ma’am. I was angry at yon giggling baboon.” Celino looked from Tourmaline, to Aldridge, to Tourmaline. “Ah. Which king?”

—–

Tourmaline broke the remainder of her wafer over Celino’s head. “Exactly how old do you think I am?!” The crumbled bits of its shattered end tumbled in a sugary landslide down the front of his robe.

SsillvrR laughed all over again, and this time found himself being frowned at by both Tourmaline and Celino. “Sorry,” he grinned in a manner that belied his apology.

“Now you owe me two favors,” Tourmaline growled under her breath, holding the remainder of her cookie up threateningly. SsillvrR held up a hand to ward off any biscuit projectiles before explaining as delicately as he could manage.

“The present monarch Jareth, whom am… I think you’ve made mention of before.” In less than favorable light.

—–

Celino made an undignified gak and hid behind his hands as the madwoman assaulted him with a biscuit. He shook it out of his hair with a toss that sprayed crumbs across the carpet and stood to brush down the front of his robes, making sure to pat hard enough to cause crumbs to leap off his robes and into the bottles of paintbrush water. A tiny one landed in the glass of scotch and floated there, dimpling the surface.

Ah. The woman was not eccentric, she was crazy. Aldridge could have warned him. He vented his anger by glaring at Aldridge as he brushed off his robes, then sat down again majestically.

Tourmaline wasn’t a thing like Bitch-Queen Varonah. If this was her idea of proper Varonahish behavior, Celino was at a loss as to how to cater to her. A sneering, strutting, arrogant bitch with a dress slit all the way up to heaven, breath that smelled like roast babies, and a late-night appointment with her own son–that he could handle. Varonah had never been his favorite character, but there had been a period in his adolescence when she seemed like the most desirable woman imaginable (mainly because she could make Agnesia Torrissii jealous, but oh, that dress), and he could have extrapolated something usable from that time. An elderly eccentric with a taste for the arts… No, he had nothing. He was going to have to wing it. As he recomposed himself, he wondered if the poor thing had ever had a real son of her own.

“My apologies, Your Grace,” he said politely. “I was asking which country, not which generation, as I could not understand why a lady of your eminence would be found in Ostmont. I will keep your secret with the greatest of care.”

—–

SsillvrR watched, one arm draped over the back of his chair as Celino’s expression went through several distinct stages. It was a bit like watching a child come to the realization that they were not going to be able to weasel out of a predicament. There was surprise first, then disbelief, anger (presumably at him for not informing him sooner) and acceptance. Although Celino’s acceptance had a skeptical quality to it that made SsillvrR snicker under his breath, using the opportunity to steal a shortbread.

Tourmaline frowned quietly at the crumb floating in her drink, and mumbled something unflattering about him while trying to fish it out again. “Call me ‘your grace’ again and I will wash that cookie off with the nearest paint water.”

SsillvrR grinned. “She’s not joking, she’ll do it.”

Obviously resisting the urge to sigh, Tourmaline managed to extricate the cookie bit, and brushed it off on Celino’s sleeve. “So then, I would appreciate it if you did keep your mouth shut. Moving on; for an item, what about my mantle clock? I’d have to hunt up the certificate that came with it, but I believe it will have the clock’s number on it.”

Still grinning, the elf agreed. “That should work. My next question is-”

“Can I put it among their things. Yes, I can, but not now. Now, the pair of you have given me a headache, and absolutely murdered my artistic inspiration. Come up with a location where you’d like it put; someplace I’ve actually seen would be best, for tomorrow. Or…what is tomorrow? Monday? Yes, Monday’s fine. But not until the afternoon.”

“Thanks Tourmaline,” SsillvrR stood with a fairly respectable bow, and a cookie sailed over his bent back to explode against the very nice wallpaper behind him. The elf, though chuckling, sensed his cue and jerked his head at Celino in the door’s direction. “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon, or baring that I’ll send a note.”

“Yes yes,” the woman waved a long fingered hand and emptied the contents of her glass. “Good night boys.”

—–

“Madam.” Celino rose and bowed to her deeply, then scooted out behind Aldridge. Once out of cookie-chucking range, he stopped and went over himself once more, sending a fine cloud of sugar drifting onto the antique rug. There were still crumbs in his hair. There were still crumbs in his damp hair, ensuring that they were going to be there for days unless he combed his hair fiercely once it was dry. He made a low sound of exasperation. As low as he could, he asked Aldridge, “Who is she, really?”

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