Chapter Two #2
But look! Across yon glowing tavern, with the walls moving and waving gently in the evening breeze, and the lights glowing ever so brightly. There was his enemy. His one great nemesis. The evil that had haunted his steps these many years.
“Bill,” Juniper said, with as much poison as he could infuse into his voice. He stood, the ground rushing up a bit faster than he had expected. He got his legs steady, raised his empty mug, and took a step forward. “Bill Bronson.”
Bill, stupid old Bill, had put his name on the quest list last autumn and left to hunt werewolves.
It was a dumb endeavor, especially because there were people—not people from sleepy little villages like Tús, mind you—who trained for this sort of thing, who treated the path of a successful mercenary as a stepping stone to becoming a kingsman.
In fact, these better-equipped groups of mercenaries left the capital city every day on kingsquests, and returned for their prize money sooner, too.
When Bill had left last year, Juniper had thought this would dissuade Mo from ever wanting to go: Bill was going to make a fool of himself, maybe get an embarrassing injury if they were lucky, and it was going to prove, once and for all, that a little farm village had no business being involved in a king’s stupid quests.
But somehow Bill had been the first successful mercenary from their village of farmers and tavern-lovers, and he had returned with dead werewolves to glory, fame, and more coins than Juniper had earned in a year of farming the land.
And Mo had watched the ensuing fanfare with a lost look in his dark brown eyes that made Juniper want to start fighting.
Which, as he understood it, was a normal and healthy response to witnessing human emotion.
Now, Bill staggered to his full height (only about three marks taller than Juniper, even if Bill claimed it was four and a half).
“You,” Bill said.
Mo leaned an elbow on the bar and watched them with a look of amusement. “Bill,” he said. “Had any dog encounters recently?”
It was Bill’s one sore spot: He was terrified of dogs these days. Every time one barked, he flinched.
Maybe it was the werewolf quest, or maybe Bill was just a coward now.
Juniper suggested that, just then. Or tried to. “Fake!” he proclaimed loudly, pointing a finger at Bill.
Oh, that wasn’t quite it. Bless the mead and damn the mead, as the saying went.
“You’re a fraud,” Juniper managed finally. He slammed his mug down.
“You’re a coward,” Bill said.
He was drunk, too, his face flushed red and his blue eyes sparkling with fight and vigor.
This was how Juniper liked ’em. Spoiling for a fight and ready to swing at a moment’s notice.
Mo would like that kind of challenge, too, wouldn’t he?
Juniper would feel the heat of Mo’s body right next to his, and Mo would have that spark in his eyes as if he’d finally forgotten the cold, and it would all be blurry warmth and light, and at the end, Mo would be roughly tipping Juniper’s face up to look at, to see if he was bruised or bleeding.
“I’m no coward,” Juniper told Bill, and also Mo, and Elaine, and everyone else in the tavern, because his voice was as loud as a goat being led into the barn after a lovely day at pasture.
“You wouldn’t sign up for a quest if the king himself asked you,” Bill said. “And did you know? I’ve actually met the king. And one of the princes.”
“ ‘I’ve actually met the king,’ ” Juniper repeated in a high-pitched voice. “And I’m the bloody queen.”
“You’re not the queen,” Bill shouted. He was next to Juniper now, so close to Juniper’s face that Juniper could smell Bill’s breath, enhanced a moment later by a resounding burp. “You’re just a bitch.”
Ah, there it was.
Juniper raised his fist and swung.
And there it was, that glorious, immediate blur of light and motion and impact of knuckles on skin and skin on knuckles. A beautiful, brilliant haze in which Juniper knew he would never be stopped and would never die. He was unstoppable. He was fully alive. He was a king among men.
He was being lifted out of a tangle of bodies by two large, familiar hands, and that was the very best part.
“There, now,” Mo said easily. He had that little grin on his face, the one that was just for Juniper. It was like having his own constellation of stars, that only he got to see.
Juniper grinned blearily at him, tasting iron from the lip Bill had split.
“You’ve had enough hits, and landed enough, too. They’re about to send in one of Elaine’s sisters. The one with the horns? And you’ve taken enough knocks to your head.”
Juniper lunged at Bill again, but Mo’s grip was steady, even though Mo was a few drinks in, too.
“Mo-o,” Juniper complained, stretching his friend’s name into at least six syllables. “Don’t you want to fight, too?”
Mo clapped a hand on Juniper’s shoulder. “Cheer up,” he said. “Look, you were right. The recruiters came today, and there are new quests. One close to Pointe Gan Filleadh.”
A shiver chased a path down Juniper’s spine, something that had nothing to do with the cool in the air. It felt like dread.
Or maybe Juniper just had to pee.
He couldn’t decide.
Juniper stared up, straight into Mo’s vibrant brown eyes.
Mo had left when he was nineteen winters. He had looked just like this, his eyes bright as a moonlit forest, something hopeful sparking there. Juniper had been so, so selfish, and asked him to stay. And Mo hadn’t.
Juniper didn’t care to gallivant off into the forest and sleep on tree roots and drink dew from little leaves and cry under a full moon, or whatever those outdoorsmen did.
“I’m brave,” Juniper announced. “Not like Bill. He wouldn’t be able to handle a winter alone.”
Bill would hate if his best friend left for an entire winter, and he had to decorate the Yule log alone, and get frustrated threading the cranberry garlands all by himself, and—and the point was that Bill was stupid, and Juniper would be fine.
Mo’s brow furrowed, as if he wasn’t quite understanding. “Of course you’re brave,” he said. “But—the quest? Pointe Gan Filleadh isn’t that far. What if we—”
“They’re saying it’s dragons.” A blue-eyed man, so beautiful he must have been part-sidhe, announced this spectacular bit of news from where he was sprawled drunkenly upon the floor.
He was looking at Mo now, the way people of many species always looked at Mo. Starry-eyed and rapturous, as if they were just waiting for the moment when Mo would toss them over his broad shoulder and carry them off to his bed.
Everybody’s storybook hero.
“Dragons aren’t here anymore,” Juniper told him flatly. “That can’t be real.”
“You’re not real,” the man shot back, before vomiting between Mo’s boots.
Mo sighed, nudging the man away with his knee. “You know I think the king mostly wants to keep people busy. And distracted. But the kingsmen swear to have seen a dragon clear a swath of forest near the Coulaith River. Nearly decimated an entire town, too.”
There was awe in his voice, like he would give anything to see something like that with his own eyes.
“Good for her,” Juniper said.
He imagined a dragon swooping over their very own village, melting the horrible little building where the businessmen worked and talked of economies and inflations, and in which they did a great deal of circling back to one another on raising the price of grain for their customers and lowering the price they offered to farmers like Juniper.
Let’s align, they were always saying. And they couldn’t say stupid things like that if they were on fire, now, could they?
Maybe a dragon could take a bite out of Bill Bronson while they were at it.
There was a wistful look on Mo’s perfect face.
His friend had the kind of features maidens swooned over and poets wrote about.
It was sometimes hard to look at him, if Juniper were being honest. And right now, he was staring across the tavern at the list of new quests and the men gathered around it.
“Mo,” Juniper said.
He didn’t say, Please stay.
He didn’t say, I’m scared you’re about to leave.
He didn’t say, I’ve been scared since I was nineteen winters old.
This night hadn’t gone the way it was meant to. Juniper was supposed to make Mo laugh and make him happy and make him want to stay, not make him sadder and quieter and—
“It’s all right, Juniper,” Mo said quietly. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
Mo’s smile was a little sad this time. That smile was just for Juniper, too.
Bill Bronson left soon after with some stupid friends of his, and the night got louder, rowdier, and drunker (or maybe that was just Juniper).
The weekly náiriú poiblí began, which meant there was a stage set up at one end of the tavern and a hollowed-out gourd to amplify your voice if you wished to sing.
Below the stage, there were some signs with the words to popular ballads—like “The Dancing Fairie,” or “The Brugganian Rhapsody,” and other drunken patrons could hold them up so you could see what you were meant to sing.
Often, someone played the lute along with it, though whether they played the same melody as the singer was a different story.
Currently, a young human man was midway through a slow rendition of “The Lay of the Village Roads” in a melancholy register. “ ‘Take me hoooome,’ ” the man continued into the gourd even as he fell. “ ‘Village rooooads.’ ”
As Juniper meandered past him, the man landed in a graceful heap and went to sleep.
“Let’s sing,” Juniper told Mo breathlessly. He was just drunk and they were enjoying themselves, that was all. That was why Mo was looking at him with those burning eyes.
“Get a room,” a mocking voice cut in between them.
Juniper jerked away from Mo. “Bill?” he asked wildly.
It was not Bill, but Juniper was drunk enough, and the man looked just enough like Bill, for none of it to matter.
Juniper didn’t wait a moment longer. He lunged at the man, fist raised, Mo’s warning shout echoing behind him.