Chapter Nine
With Maximillian’s busy schedule, six days passed before a chance arose to catch up on the fight. Cyrus carried the rush all
the way home, but with only Soulripper and the sprites to hear his tale, the euphoria soon fell flat. As the days crept on,
Cyrus might have wondered if he’d conjured the nemesis scheme from an idle daydream, if not for his aching muscles and the
coverage in Athaca News.
Page two again, and a pleasing headline.
Earthshaker Ambushes Maximillian: Signs of a Growing Feud?
On the fifth day, a raven arrived. A young sprite amused itself by chasing the familiar blue ribbon affixing the letter to the bird’s leg as it trailed in the breeze, darting swiftly away when the raven snapped its beak.
Cyrus pretended not to feel a leap of excitement as he leaned in his doorway and cast an eye over Maximillian’s brief scribble, letting him know he’d visit the following morning.
He’d signed off as M, as though Cyrus needed any help distinguishing him from hordes of nonexistent guests.
When Maximillian arrived, Cyrus tried to maintain an impassive expression as he opened the door—it wouldn’t do to let him
think that Cyrus had looked forward to his visit, that was far too embarrassing, and anyway, he hadn’t. He was just in a good mood, that was all.
He found the champion bent over Cyrus’s begonias, peering down at a cluster of sprites who liked to doze there when they had
drunk their fill of tree sap. Distracted from their snoozing by the unusual prospect of a visitor, the creatures peeked out
from between the leaves, whispering to each other. The bravest among them flew up to inspect the newcomer in more detail,
minuscule wings whirring. Maximillian reached out but the sprite flitted to the shelter of the honeysuckle, the movement almost
too quick to catch.
Hearing the creak of the door, Maximillian straightened up. He wore a quizzical expression as he looked from the sprites to
Cyrus.
Damn it. This didn’t exactly look professional. A fearsome wrongdoer, tolerating a gaggle of sleepy-eyed sprites in his flower
beds? He should pretend that he didn’t realise they were there. He didn’t want to stamp on his begonias, but he probably still
had some sprite spray somewhere. He could give them a good spritz, they’d get over it, not that he cared if they didn’t—
“You’ve a lovely garden,” Maximillian commented before he could, his tone casual.
Cyrus squinted at him. There was a note to his voice that almost sounded teasing. That was . . . interesting. But Cyrus could give as good as he got.
“Ah, you noticed,” he replied, just as casually. “As it turns out, corpses make wonderful fertiliser.”
Maximillian’s mouth dropped open. But after a moment he caught the grin quirking at Cyrus’s mouth, and he smiled too, his
eyes crinkling at the edges.
Then he turned and called over his shoulder, “Hurry up, would you?” and Cyrus’s grin vanished. Balthazar was tethering their
horses to a birch at the mouth of the path, flapping in agitation at another pair of sprites as they buzzed around his ears.
His grey mount looked stumpy in comparison to Maximillian’s handsome chestnut. It figured.
At least his presence was a reminder that Cyrus had appearances to maintain. “Come on, then,” he muttered, moving back into
the lair. Maximillian brushed by as he stepped inside. His cologne was familiar by now: patchouli, maybe, with a woodiness
to it that made Cyrus want to breathe deeper whenever he caught the scent. It made him think of dappled sunlight on tree bark,
the warmth of summer.
. . . No, that was entirely too flattering a comparison. Cyrus caught himself before he could inhale again and made a mental
correction. Old, rotting tree bark. Slimy moss. A wood louse. That was more like it.
Maximillian made himself comfortable on Cyrus’s couch like he belonged there, even moving Cyrus’s favourite cushion and plumping
it up behind him. He stretched an arm out along the back of the couch and said, “Fetch us a Champion’s Bane, would you?”
Cyrus had half turned towards the kitchen before he registered that he was doing as Maximillian had asked. He dithered in place for a moment, then decided it looked worse to backtrack. Maximillian had better appreciate that Cyrus was only doing this because he wanted a drink too.
Balthazar marched in, casting Cyrus a baleful look and tipping his chin up as though he expected a challenge. Then he looked
from the bottle of mead in Cyrus’s hand to Maximillian, immediately disapproving.
“Should you really be drinking that?”
“Relax, he’s not going to poison me.” Even with his back turned, Cyrus could sense Maximillian’s eye roll. “There’s no audience
here, it wouldn’t be worth it.”
“I meant should you be drinking something called Champion’s Bane?”
“Relax,” repeated Maximillian. “It’s just a name.”
When Cyrus stepped back into his living quarters with a drink for himself and one for Maximillian (Balthazar could lick the
dew off the walls for all he cared), he stopped and stared. Maximillian was hogging the couch with his arm out like that,
so Balthazar had pulled up a chair to sit across from him. Cyrus’s brooding chair. He opened his mouth to object—the harmony
of his home, disrupted!—before he caught Maximillian watching him. There was a hint of amusement in his expression, like he
knew what Cyrus was thinking.
Cyrus wrestled the objection down, offering the goblet wordlessly and fighting the urge to withdraw at the cool brush of fingers against his. Then he sat down on the couch next to the champion, harder than was necessary. Maximillian would just have to move over.
He didn’t. Cyrus let a large sip of Champion’s Bane roll over his tongue, honey with a bite of heat, commiseration for how
close Maximillian’s knee was to his own.
“So, the fight in Cepha.” Maximillian looked perfectly at home in Cyrus’s lair, his lounge casual and comfortable. “We should
debrief, I think, before we plan the next one. I wanted to do it straight after, but—” He glanced at Balthazar, mingled impatience
and tolerance in his expression. “Bal pointed out that it was better to go straight to Heliarth following the fight.”
“Make sure your people were sufficiently awed?” Cyrus drawled.
Balthazar frowned. Or perhaps his constant frown simply deepened; his expression permanently looked like he’d smelled something
pissy. “You told him everything?”
“I wasn’t about to agree to a champion’s suggestion without knowing why he was suggesting it, was I?” Cyrus muttered. “I’m not a fool.”
The glint in Balthazar’s eye suggested he was more than ready to argue against that, but Maximillian interrupted before he
could. “We’re here to talk about Cepha, remember? First off—that leap onto the stage. That was impressive. I mean, yes, for a moment I did think you were going to break your ankle and ruin the whole thing. But you pulled it off.
And some of those moves—never thought I’d be complimenting a wrongdoer, but you’re lethal with those daggers.”
Cyrus found himself smiling again as he soaked up the champion’s praise. Maximillian was right, Cyrus had been great. He was glad it had been noticed.
He let Maximillian keep going, rambling on about the fearful letter the governor of Cepha had already sent, begging him to
step in should Cyrus ever return; the way he had heard from two new brand ambassadors following the fight (a footwear company
keen to have Maximillian model their latest range of leather boots, using the tagline “Kick wrongdoers out of your life”;
and a Cepha-based bakery looking to ice Maximillian’s face onto their goat milk cookies). Maximillian couldn’t keep the self-satisfied
grin off his face, hands as animated as his face as he gesticulated. His goblet tipped precariously with every movement.
“And listen—they didn’t like you at all,” he confided. “The brand ambassadors, I mean. Found you really sinister—in fact,
they were a bit worried about that, weren’t they, Bal? The bakery considered icing your face onto cookies too, so they could
have wrongdoers versus champions and make a whole thing of it, but they were too afraid you’d come after them if they did.”
Cyrus would have shoved the cookies up the baker’s nose. Before he could say as such, Maximillian’s smirk morphed; became,
possibly, a little more genuine.
“Perfectly done, really. We should be proud.”
Cyrus was proud; exceedingly so. He’d secured himself attention in the news and he’d frightened a lot of people. Who cared
if it had been Maximillian’s idea to start with? Cyrus recognised a good deal when he had it. He nodded his agreement.
A beat passed, then another. Maximillian looked expectantly at him. Cyrus looked back, still smiling. Maximillian’s eyebrow performed a delicate arch.
“I thought I was pretty good too,” Maximillian hinted.
“He doesn’t know how to be nice to people,” said Balthazar.
Maximillian’s head turned, frown already in place. “Bal,” he admonished, “don’t say—”
“It’s true,” Balthazar said. His beady little eyes burrowed into Cyrus. “Isn’t it?”
The knowing look on Balthazar’s face rankled. If he was anyone else—or at least, if he was under anyone else’s protection—Cyrus
would peel that expression off him. Literally.
“Wrongdoers don’t say nice things,” he hedged.
Maximillian laughed. “You must have said a nice thing at some point in your life. Go on, say something nice about me.”
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” Balthazar muttered.
“Um,” said Cyrus, through a flood of panic that he was working very hard to keep off his face. This was way out of his comfort
zone. And there was something in Maximillian’s question that doubled his discomfort, made him want to drop his goblet on the
ground just so he could leap up under the pretext of needing a new one. He could, perhaps, think of one or two nice things
to say about Maximillian. Maybe. About his—the way he moved. In a fighting context, of course. The way he looked. Sometimes,