Chapter 16
In Which I Am Considering What Sir Gareth Said to Me, and Am Having the Epiphany that My Own Self-Image Does Not Perfectly Mesh with How Others Perceive Me, and In Which I Am Realizing that That Is a Fucking Disaster.
The sorcerer treated me coldly in the days following our conversation. He left rooms soon after I entered, and all attempts to draw him into conversation led to either strained silence, or to a sneering dismissal.
“He did like me before. Didn’t he?” I ate alone in a hallway, not fussing over the breadcrumbs that dropped to the floor. Just creating future mess for myself to deal with.
A quadrupedal construct creaked past. Its head dipped slightly, flaming eye sockets evaluating the crumbs.
“I will tidy this!” I assured it, though from the dimming of its eyes I could tell the sorcerer had already gone.
Leaving me alone to speak freely. “Honestly, I can’t believe it’s something you care much about, given how you’ve let this place deteriorate.
The audacity of nitpicking about my cleaning while I’m chipping off layers of grime and vulture shit and tossing eggsacks out the window, but hey, if it makes you happy, then—huh! ”
Like a lightning bolt: a revelation. What if, rather than whinging solely to pick at me, the sorcerer had a genuine desire for and appreciation of a sparkling clean abode? If so, that might be the key to regaining his favour.
I crammed the rest of the bread down my throat so fast I nearly choked on it.
Then I lifted my dress with both hands, the better to run.
My strength had diminished with this change in bodily sex, but I appreciated the physical strain as I hauled buckets of water from the kitchen, seeing it as evidence of my own self-sacrifice and benevolence.
Foaming up the tiled stones with lard soap, I set to work polishing and re-polishing the hallway that led to his precious library.
Finally, my labour bore fruit. A tall black-clad figure stomped down the hall, arms weighted with quills and parchment.
Loping behind him was a bird-beaked construct, its wing-arms straining under an improbably tall stack of books.
Merulo kept his eyes fixed upward, the tensing of his mouth his only acknowledgement of me, and so stepped blindly into a patch of soap.
Parchments exploded into the air as the sorcerer fell backward, his legs sliding in opposite directions. The construct cracked into rapid motion, balancing its books on one wing, and snatching the papers that drifted through the air with the other.
“Why,” Merulo sputtered, attempting to find his footing, only to slip again. Suds drifted, iridescent bubbles settling on his greasy black hair like a fairy crown. “Why have you done this? Fuck!”
“Uh, well, you did something nice for me—”
“And for that, you’ve decided to kill me?” He scrabbled about for his parchments, bracing on all fours on the soapy tiles. His quill pot had shattered upon impact, leaving a smear of black across the otherwise spotless floor.
Skirting the wet patches, I approached him and offered a hand.
Merulo looked ready to ignore me, so I pushed it in front of his glowering face until he accepted, wrapping his bony fingers around mine.
Pulling the sorcerer to his feet proved remarkably easy; he weighed barely anything.
“It wasn’t deliberate,” I said. “I’d actually rather you remain alive. ”
“Of course. How else would you benefit from my protection?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but found myself shamed into silence, both by the perfectly true accusation, and by the closing off of his face, so near to my own.
The sorcerer pulled away and smacked at the bubbles nesting on his robe, flicking them to the ground.
It struck me, then, how much it mattered that I remain in his good graces. Each time he withdrew his regard, it was like he took with it some vital organ that made it harder for me to breathe. So, like, a lung.
Should I say that to him?
“I am trying to be of some use to you,” I tried instead. “With the cleaning. And if I can do more, just tell me.”
“Yes, Cameron, here’s what you can do.” The sorcerer drew himself up tall, the last of the bubbles popping on the tip of his sharp nose. “Stay out of my way.”
“Oh, okay, sure.” I crouched to pick at the scraps of broken glass. “I’ll just finish up here, then dust all the arrow slits or something. Say, if you have any appetite for dinner later, maybe we could coordinate?”
Air hissed out from between his teeth, then he muttered a quick spell.
The glass fragments jumped from my hand, alighting into the air like insects to coalesce in the sorcerer’s outstretched palm, the spilled ink following in a graceful black tendril.
Without further words, he pushed the door open, the construct marching to join him.
“Does that one have a name?” I asked, pointing in desperation at the bird-thing before they could disappear into the library.
The sorcerer paused. “Wilbur,” he said.
“That’s cute. I like that. My brother let me name one of his chickens once. I called it Pecky. Because it—”
“It pecked, yes. Chickens are known to do that. And I suppose if you were to name my constructs, you’d choose ‘Walky,’ or ‘Lifty,’ or—if you were feeling particularly inspired—‘Woody.’”
“Woody is nice.”
“Woody is nice,” he repeated in faint disbelief. Then: “I am indisposed for dinner tonight. Another time. And . . . thank you for your cleaning, even if it is inexpert.”
“Anytime, don’t even mention it!”
I remained scrubbing long after the door clicked shut, lost in my own satisfaction.
* * *
The following day, I couldn’t find the sorcerer. Eventually, having exhausted all the unlocked rooms (and pressed my ear to all the locked ones), I climbed the long, winding staircase that led to the battlements. There he stood amid the fog, constructs crouched frozen around him like gargoyles.
“Oh, hey,” I called, clutching my dress as a sharp wind tore at it, its passage whipping the fog into a roiling mass. “There you are. Say, were you thinking of lunch anytime soon? Because I’m feeling peckish, and I figure, if you’re not doing anything else, then—”
A construct stepped into my path, blocking my advance. “Well, that’s a bit much,” I shouted over the gale. “You only had to say, ‘No thanks, maybe later.’”
“Cameron!” the sorcerer shouted back at me. “I am in combat. Do not distract me.”
“Oh, against the Order?” I slipped past the construct, edging through the fog toward him, the wind stinging at my eyes. “That’s alright, I can wait.”
Some combination of churning fog and my own tearing eyes made me misjudge the boundaries of the battlement, so that I knocked into a corner with an “oof.” I’d only just begun to tip over the edge when wooden talons caught my shoulder, pulling me sharply backward. “Sorry! I’ll just, uh, sit right here.”
It got cold fast. The sorcerer’s flashing eye cast a green light against the surrounding fog, and his face furrowed in concentration, focused on something I could not see. If this was a regular habit, it was no wonder his face had so many lines.
For my part, I rubbed at my arms and tried to tuck my feet beneath the fabric of my dress. I hoped the chattering of my teeth wouldn’t carry, as no doubt that would lead him to further label me a distraction.
Something heavy dropped onto my shoulders. I jumped, before realizing it was a blanket.
It smelled of magic.
When I looked up, the sorcerer stood before me. Fatigue showed in his drooping posture, but his face was sharp, alive with fury and satisfaction.
I pitched my voice to be heard above the gusting wails. “Did you win, then?”
“I always do. If those mindless little knights would just—”
“They’re not completely stupid,” I interrupted, then stopped, surprised to find that the most tenuous thread of comradery persisted.
“Most are hoping to serve a few years, earn a convenient injury, then retire to lordship—or more provincial pursuits, for the lower born—with the Church’s favour secured.
And then, some are like me. It’s a fairly open secret that my father sent me off hoping I’d be slaughtered, so my brother could inherit.
” I smiled. “You see, even without the prophecy, I was already supposed to die.”
Merulo looked genuinely outraged. “That’s obscene,” he said. “Your own father? Granted, you can be quite annoying—”
“Oh, it wasn’t that. My father didn’t think I’d make a good heir, as I’m not appropriately masculine.” I sighed, my breasts heaving. “Which is ridiculous, of course.”
“Er, yes,” said the sorcerer, avoiding my eyes. “That is of course . . . an absurd notion.”
Another howl of wind thrashed the fog around us and set the sorcerer’s robes to flapping madly. With a shiver, I pulled the blanket close about myself.
“Aren’t you cold? I mean, you don’t have much in the way of insulation, if you catch my drift.” A worry struck me that I was being too opaque. “As in, I have all this fat and muscle, but you—”
“Yes, understood.” His eye flashed and he muttered something; cleaning up the last scraps of resistance, I assumed. “I don’t suffer from the cold easily.”
“No need to be stoic. It’s freezing up here, and you’re only human.” To use one of Glenda’s favourite expressions.
Merulo cleared his throat, looking about shiftily in a manner that had me scrutinizing his ears and skin tone, but nope: not a drop of elf blood.
I shrugged off the blanket and, standing on my tiptoes, threw it about his bony shoulders.
“From one human to another, this isn’t good for your health.
Don’t stay out here long.” Feeling bold, I pressed my mouth to his gaunt cheek, then withdrew, my own cheeks flaming.
Navigating the wind and fog, I scurried from the battlements before he could respond, only stopping when I was safely in the stairwell to catch my breath.
Free from the wind and cold, the muggy dark of the castle felt welcoming, homely even. “I can be quite charming,” I said, leaning against a wall and tracing its roughness with a finger. “It’s not just in my head; he looked absolutely smitten with me. Hey, watch it please!”
A construct lumbered past me on the spiraling stairwell, taking up most of the space so that I had to squeeze tight against the stone. “Asshole,” I called after it. “Piece of shit!”
It swung its head back at me, and I felt my stomach drop. “Sorry, sorry, Merulo. I didn’t realize you were in there.”
“It’s fine,” said the sorcerer, from the top of the stairwell. I waited for him to descend, watching with some satisfaction as he pressed himself flat to inch past another oversized construct. “I will say, this is not an ideal location for monologues.”
I hid my wince by looking elsewhere as he descended. “You heard?”
“Apparently, I’m being charmed, though by what I can’t imagine. By your complete lack of spatial awareness? Or perhaps the grace with which you pursue hypothermia? Or is it the constant neediness; is that what I’m being charmed by?”
The blanket still lay across his shoulders, a warm yellow against his black robes. I wondered if he’d forgotten about it.
“All of it, I think. You definitely like me.”
“No,” he said.
“Yes. Anyway, let’s eat together. If you activate your little kitchen gnomes, there’ll be scones in the oven by the time we arrive.”
As he reached me, Merulo stumbled on the stairs, and I caught his arm. “It’s tiring,” he said. “The fighting.”
“But you have enough energy for scones?”
“Fine, yes,” he said, and exhaled. “Damn you. But no destruction of my property, and I mean that.”
“Of course not. Time and place for everything, and you’re obviously spent.”
“No, there is not a time and place for destroying my kitchen. Do you hear yourself?”
Figuring it was a rhetorical question, I merely smiled. And even when we reached the stairwell’s base, then throughout the long walk to the kitchen, he failed to shrug off my hand.