This will be fun, p.24
This Will Be Fun, page 24
Now Vandra looked down. “The creature surprised me when I was . . . attending to someone. In the stables. Obviously the moment was completely ruined. She did not even leave her address.”
Clare laughed, one loud guffaw. “Embarrassing on several fronts, then.”
His chiding earned Vandra launching a bottle his way, relying on his instincts to catch the wine without spilling, which he did. He grinned in welcome of the challenge to come.
“You must know I won’t go easy on you, Grandhart,” Vandra warned.
“Ooh, perhaps we’ll finally figure out the truth of his magical gift,” Elowen speculated.
Clare lifted his chin. “Do your worst,” he replied. “Dare.”
“Worst performance in the bedroom.”
The very idea cooled Beatrice with displeasure. Yet, she consoled herself, the dare was not the most terrible Vandra could have demanded. Indeed, the present premise was probably the one occasion on which Beatrice would not despise the idea of Clare’s intimacy with other women.
“Personally, I don’t wish to see that,” Elowen interjected.
Clare, however, looked unperturbed. He leaned back, visibly cocky. “None exists,” he informed them. “I’m always spectacular. Honestly.” He held out his palm for Beatrice. “Go look. You’ll find nothing.”
She hesitated. She did not really want to clasp his hand.
Vandra watched them, her eyes darting from one to the other. She looked unnervingly like she’d managed to win a game with no winners.
“Very well,” Vandra said with a much darker sparkle entering her eye. “What about something else?”
In the uneasy quiet, Clare waited, refusing to concede.
“Best night of your life,” Vandra proposed.
Beatrice caught the way Clare went quiet. His reaction, she found, consumed her. The whole realm vanished right down to the way he—
“Once again,” Elowen chimed in, halfway drunk, “I must insist we leave as soon as Clare’s butt makes an appearance.”
In the next instant—yes, relief flickered with the firelight on his features. He was glad he could grasp onto Elowen’s humorous jab instead of—of—what? “How are you certain my butt is involved?” he protested in playful indignation.
Elowen’s glance was withering. “Of course it’s involved.”
Clare snorted.
Then his gaze went to Beatrice. The vulnerability in his crystal eyes held everything.
She wondered whether she’d cheated disaster or lost something precious when he rounded to face Vandra. “Let’s return to the first one,” he requested hastily. “Worst performance.”
Vandra slowly shook her head. Oh, the perils of having friends who were wicked.
Beatrice watched Clare, clinging on to his every movement, his every shift, the merest inflection fleeting over his features. She was, she found, at once terrified and desperate to know what night Clare held fondest in memory. With the way his eyes held hers, pleading preemptive mercy, she knew she was part of the night in question.
What was it Galwell had said in the scene she replayed in Keralia?
Legends never wait.
She outstretched her hand.
Clare placed his palm in hers. Whatever drink did for the fluidity of her magic, Clare Grandhart’s touch did tenfold. The past unwrapped with an ease she’d never felt, like the memory wanted her to return there.
Where the conjuration found them was not unlike where the four of them sat. Rough stone walls. The quiet of night. The cave of Clare’s memory was hushed except for the soft sounds of sleep.
Except past-Clare wasn’t sleeping.
Beatrice’s breathing hitched. She knew what night he’d conjured. She’d never revisited the memory herself, yet she required no magic to remember every detail. For Clare’s dearest night, she realized in heart-racked wonderment, was one of her own.
Earlier, the Four had escaped cursed fog in the forest they were navigating. The fog embraced them without warning, enshrouding Clare first. Only Galwell’s grip had wrenched him free. If the fog had consumed him, he would have died. While Beatrice could only watch in helpless horror, he very nearly did.
When nightfall ushered them into the cave, Beatrice had let down her walls. Her persistent resistance of him, her everything. She positioned her sleeping roll near his, needing to be close to him. To remind herself he wasn’t gone.
With Elowen and Galwell and her pride in the cave with them, she couldn’t speak, couldn’t say what she was feeling. I was scared today. Don’t leave me.
Instead, she faced him in the darkness and took his hand in hers. While his eyes widened in silent surprise, she held on tight. With the comfort of his closeness, she could permit herself something like slumber.
Her own memory ended there.
Clare’s, she found, did not.
While the Beatrice of the past slept, her grip relenting on their entwined fingers, he watched her. He looked . . . The only word she could find to describe his expression was enraptured. While she dreamed, he’d let down his own guard. His cocksure carelessness, his rugged ribaldry.
His eyes wide open, gazing upon her sleeping face, he looked like he was seeing the stars for the first time.
The memory ended there. The four of them emerged from Beatrice’s magic, their rowdiness subdued. Not surprisingly, no one quite knew what to say.
She looked to Clare instinctually, and found him watching her. The sparkle of his eyes was not like the memory. Not hostility, either, nor embarrassment. In one of her youth’s only years of consistent schooling, she remembered learning how the immeasurable pressure underneath mountains could change metallic ore into glittering gemicyte stones. What improbable gems had the past decade pulverized Clare’s regret, his resentment—his passion—into?
He severed their gaze suddenly. Into the stilted silence, it was he who managed to dispel everyone’s discomfort. Clare Grandhart, king of jokers.
“I think we can agree that was much worse than my naked butt,” he commented.
The wink he shot Beatrice let her know he was only jesting. It left her impossibly grateful. No matter the rigor of exposing his deepest feelings, he wanted her to know he held their happiest moments dear.
She was touched. “Well,” she replied, her heart light, “your naked butt is fairly spectacular.”
“Sliiiiiiiime,” Elowen said.
Clare tossed his head back and laughed. The others joined in. Magic Beatrice never, ever expected started to work, for she found herself disregarding her effort to find the right name for her group. Questing crew, questriots—it didn’t matter.
They were her friends.
The game drew on for hours into the night. Everyone unveiled his or her share of revelations. Elowen’s first kiss—the daughter of their village’s finest weaponeer, when they were fourteen. Vandra’s first paid mark—the Duke of West Waverly, who tortured his peasants when they could not pay his tithes.
Drunkenness inspired them. With minutes passing, they found themselves growing less guarded. It was harmless, except when it wasn’t. Beatrice noticed it in Elowen first. The hunger pervading the other woman’s eyes was one she would never permit in daylight.
It worried Beatrice. It blazed in her so brightly Beatrice knew someone was sure to be hurt.
Like dark magic, upon her noticing, Elowen passed the wine right to Vandra. “Truth for you,” she said.
Vandra frowned. “That’s not how this works.”
Waving her hand, Elowen dismissed the objection. “Have you,” she pressed, “ever been in love?”
It was the rare demand to elicit no reaction from the rest of the group. No scandalized cheering. No laughter. Only quiet. When Vandra’s eyes tightened, Beatrice suspected she was less drunk than she’d let on.
“Yes,” Vandra said.
Elowen looked like she expected the revelation—or perhaps like she knew how she would feel no matter what Vandra said. “With who?”
Vandra’s pause opened chasm-like, promising to swallow the four of them. Finally, she set the wine down, the glass clinking disharmoniously on the rocky ground. “I think maybe I’m done playing for the night,” she declared. “This game grows dull.”
Elowen pouted. “You’re no fun,” she slurred.
Grimacing, Vandra rose to her feet. “I rather remember being only fun,” she said bitterly.
Beatrice could hear the double-edged sword of the remark. While she did not know its hidden meaning, Elowen undoubtedly did—she frowned into the fire, saying nothing, letting her paramour leave without following her.
It saddened Beatrice. Elowen was eternally closed off, portcullises down, drawbridges up in her fortress of sorrow. Beatrice wished she could encourage Elowen to simply follow Vandra. To speak to her. To show her feelings. But Elowen’s heart magic only went one way, and Elowen had no interest in extending herself the other.
Gazing emptily forward, Elowen finished the wine Vandra had set down. Knowing what doldrums waited in the depths of drink, Beatrice caught the deepening change in Elowen’s eyes instantly. She looked—defeated. The dull edge of despondence.
“I have a dare for either of you,” she intoned. “Favorite memory of Galwell.”
Of course the night would end here, Beatrice thought. Especially now, with Vandra gone, the empty hole in their group opened large.
With her own senses dulled, however, she did not feel the stab of panic the mention of Galwell ordinarily induced in her. Instead, what descended over her like cursed fog was only wistful sadness.
Then Clare held out his hand. “I have one,” he said softly.
Beatrice interlaced her fingers with his. He did the same with Elowen. Beatrice’s magic coursed into them, the cavern vanishing.
The tavern in which they found themselves was worse for the wear. No fault of the establishment’s, Beatrice remembered. Crimes of intimidation had been growing more common. In the vision, the tavern owner was boarding up the windows for security.
Fear was sweeping the land with the widening of the Order’s hold—the way they emboldened their followers to strike at everyone who looked different from them, who spoke different, who felt different. The realm was witnessing how easily rich men who loved themselves could change into cheerful cultists who hated everyone else.
In the pub, the Four were getting drunk. Beatrice could not remember what they were celebrating or commiserating—the night was gone from her own memory. She felt inexpressibly grateful drink had not wiped it from Clare’s.
Even Galwell, who rarely drank, held a goblet of mead in his hands. Ever perceptive, ever sympathetic, he noticed the mood in the room. While the rest of them imbibed, he hefted himself on weary legs from his seat.
He crossed the tavern, where one of the musicians on his off hour sat with his lute. When the musician nodded in unspoken permission, Galwell carefully lifted the polished instrument. He played familiar chords. Then, in the midst of everyone, he sang.
“My home is Mythria,” he started slowly. “My love is here.”
Heads rose from goblets. Conversations died in solemnity. Only Galwell’s resonant voice filled the room, singing the first lines of the realm’s famous reverent hymn.
Until one more voice joined him.
The tavern owner, pausing in his work, hammer in hand, voice wavering.
“My home is Mythria. I hold her dear.”
With the first chorus, everyone joined them. Not one person didn’t know “My Home Is Mythria.” Poor singers and melodious, young and old, drunk and keen-eyed—everyone was singing. Everyone was united.
Including them, even Elowen. Beatrice, watching herself, heard Clare next to her—the true Clare, not the memory—join the chorus. Elowen did the same. Finally, her eyes wet, Beatrice sang, harmonizing with the voice of her past self.
They remained in the vision until the song was over. When Clare removed his hand gently from Beatrice’s, the magic ended.
Except it didn’t, not exactly. She found herself wrestling with shadows, struggling with the strange sensation that the vision they’d just left was what was real, while the cave in which she found herself was the conjuration. The nightmare, haunted by the echo of the voice they would only ever hear in memory.
“It should’ve been me,” Beatrice heard herself say.
No one spoke until Clare, paused in the effort of reemerging from her magic, looked to her. “What?”
She knew what the wistful sadness was now. It was clarity. The cold zeal of the conviction she hid even from herself. She spoke it plainly now.
“I should have died instead of him,” she said. “He was . . . the hero. The inspiration. The everything. I’m just . . . me. But the truth is, I’m glad to be alive, and I hate myself fiercely for it.”
Clare watched her, his expression like stone.
It was Elowen, however, who spoke. “Don’t,” she said.
Her voice was firm. Beatrice was not certain she’d heard right until Elowen went on, removing her doubts.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” she said. “Even though I’ll miss my brother every second for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t ever wish you to trade places.”
Elowen rose. Their game was over.
Touched beyond words, Beatrice sat in front of the warmth of the fire long into the night.
24
Clare
When he was younger, Clare Grandhart invented Hangover Corn-Toast. Never did his recipe find widespread endorsement—not unless one counted various well-fed groups of wayward men in the eastern reaches of the Vast Plains where he grew up. Indeed, never was he credited for the culinary masterwork.
Yet invent them he had.
One started with ordinary corncakes, obviously. However, he would then fry them together with runny dawnjay egg yolks, where they would combine in the pan with the porous cornbread into his fluffy yet filling delicacy.
Stumbling back to the cave from where he’d relieved himself in the morning light, he remembered Hangover Corn-Toast fondly. In his youth, Clare could have drunk twice what he did last night, fortified himself with one plateful of his marvelous food, and considered himself ready to stake out competing mercenaries on the Vast Plains’ hottest reaches for hours without retching once.
Everything felt possible back then, drink-related or otherwise. He could fall in love so easily. He could get his heart ground underfoot, then move on to the next lover the next fortnight, having washed his sorrows into drunken oblivion.
Now, however—
Ugh.
Clare Grandhart was feeling too old for lots of things lately. Loving—not just romantically—was harder when you knew its painful costs. Fame and fortune were starting to feel like placeholders instead of prizes. Heroism was proving fucking impossible. Drinking?
Well, it made heroism look easy.
Clare had woken fortunately without vomiting, but with the powerful need to urinate. Sunlight pervaded the foliage cover, leaving his head splitting. He was certain no quantity of Hangover Corn-Toast could save him from how he felt now.
His only consolation was knowing he was not unique in his discomfort—he’d heard several instances of Elowen retching during the night. Of course Beatrice held her wine comfortably and slept in peace.
Outside the cave, Clare found Vandra the only one up, packing her tent onto her horse. She looked sullen, her eyes dark-ringed, not glancing his way when she passed him.
While he had no capacity to offer comfort in his present state, it dispirited him. Discouraging Vandra was not easy—whatever was going on with her and Elowen had evidently wounded her deeply—and Clare sympathized.
He sometimes privately felt he understood Vandra in ways the others did not. No one was always cheerful. High spirits could mask low moods. He knew sadness was hard, of course. He just knew happiness was sometimes harder, for no one expected you ever to hurt.
He sat outside the cave entrance near his horse, wincing in the freckled sun, with absolutely every muscle in him focused on holding himself upright.
Food. He grasped desperately onto the notion. If he could not have his Hangover Corn-Toast, perhaps protein from their conservative rations would help. Stomach rolling, he reached into his horse’s pack for his ration of jerky.
Right when he was lifting the jerky to his lips—
He was attacked, a horrible screeching sound splitting the sky and his skull. He cried out loud, enveloped in a clash of claws and a flurry of feathers. “Please,” he heard Elowen call miserably from the cave, “if you’re being murdered, Clare, kindly scream more quietly.”
“It’s not me,” he managed to reply, wrestling with the furious wings. “It’s—”
He constrained his attacker into compliance.
“Wiglaf!” he exclaimed.
For on his forearm, jealously eyeing the jerky—and looking invigorated from his attack—sat Clare’s pet eagle.
Delight filled Clare. No headache, even the considerable one he had now, could overcome the joy of Wiglaf’s surprise visit. He respected his eagle’s independence and knew of Wiglaf’s preference for occupying himself with winged pursuits from week to week. Nonetheless, while Clare did not feel homesick for his Farmount terrace’s comforts, he had missed his feathered friend.
“Hi, buddy,” he enthused. “How you doing? Oh, look how long your talons have gotten!”
He often felt the eagle could understand him perfectly, every word. Reinforcing his conviction, Wiglaf chirped in what was obviously gratitude.
“No, no, no,” Clare replied gently. “You’ve got to file those down before you perch on Dad. I’m sorry.” He lowered Wiglaf, who reluctantly hopped onto the rocky ground. “You’re very handsome, though,” Clare went on. “Who is the prettiest eagle there ever was?”
Wiglaf lifted his beak, his invitation for “chin rubbies.”
Of course, Clare obliged.
Wiglaf produced the soft cooing in the back of his throat that Clare knew were groans of ecstasy. They were Clare’s very favorite sound.
“Yes, that’s the spot, hmm?” He scratched vigorously, feeling the contours of Wiglaf’s perfect fluffy chin.
