Chapter Ten #2
off, and grabbed at another table to steady himself. But he slipped and fell, bringing that table down with a resounding crash.
Beef and gravy went everywhere, a yell of outrage rising above Cyrus’s snigger. Then everyone was shouting and gesticulating
and a pie was sailing overhead. Cyrus watched with interest as it nailed its target right between the shoulder blades.
For a slip of a second, Cyrus caught Maximillian’s eye. He saw the same urge to laugh mirrored back at him. Then Maximillian smothered it under a performance of righteous anger and hefted his sword again.
Cyrus took the hint, and ran for it.
The report in the news was pleasing. Starting a mass brawl and food fight hadn’t been Cyrus’s intention, but wrongdoing was
wrongdoing. He enjoyed the drawings of people screaming with bits of pie in their hair. The drawing of himself he enjoyed
less, because someone had clearly snitched to the press about his outfit. He didn’t add it to his scrapbook collection.
Two and a half weeks passed before they could fit another altercation into Maximillian’s packed schedule. At least, Balthazar
claimed that was the case. Cyrus thought it more likely that Balthazar was just hogging the champion’s diary as much as possible,
but he said nothing. He didn’t want to look eager. That would just be undignified.
The days crawled by. Cyrus filled his time with day-to-day wrongdoing—heckling an amateur theatre production in Ranragh in
which a champion with a dodgy wig nobly overcame a wrongdoer who kept forgetting her lines; sidling in through a tavern’s
kitchen door to steal all their spoons. A minor earthquake rattled Dorre overnight, which people took as his retribution for
the winemaker’s furious railing against Earthshaker in the news. Usually, that would have been enough to give Cyrus a spring
in his step. But it seemed unsatisfying in comparison to the chaos he and Maximillian had been wreaking together.
It was only that it was something new, he reasoned, something different. He could hardly be blamed for enjoying a spot of creativity.
When the next opportunity arose to showcase their feud, it was at least a fun one. A wedding. Cyrus had never been to one of those. Oddly enough, nobody had ever thought to invite him.
When Maximillian showed up at Cyrus’s lair for their planning session, he and Balthazar were halfway through an argument about
the merits of the idea. It sounded like they’d had the argument several times already. Maximillian was annoyed and dismissive,
Balthazar almost treading on his heels as he tried and failed to convince him.
“I just think that—”
“I know what you think.” Maximillian sounded exasperated as he flung himself down onto Cyrus’s couch. Cyrus couldn’t blame
him. He would be exasperated too if he had Balthazar fussing about him every day, though that would never be the case, because
he would have pitched Balthazar headfirst down the mountain by now. “You think it’s unfair to target a wedding. You think it’s
bad press because everyone will associate me with someone’s big party getting ruined.”
“It is bad press—”
“I think it’s a wonderful idea,” Cyrus said from the door. They ignored him.
“Can’t you just trust me to make it work?” Maximillian implored, frustration brimming in his tone.
Balthazar hauled the brooding chair closer.
He had, unfortunately, made it his usual spot.
However, he failed to notice the pair of sprites curled up on the cushion, and jolted with an undignified squawk as he tried to sit down.
They buzzed about his face indignantly, butting against the hands he threw up to shield himself, before zooming out of the window.
Cyrus watched them go with a smile. He’d only allowed them inside (and coaxed them to snooze on his brooding chair with a spoonful of sugary water as a bribe) in the hopes that this would happen.
He did love it when a plan came together.
Shaking the cushion again before he sat, Balthazar’s mulish mutter was still audible. “You just want to upset Mayor Korral
by spoiling his daughter’s wedding.”
Maximillian’s head snapped up. Balthazar had pushed him too far, his exasperation chased out by something narrow-eyed and
hostile.
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” Balthazar was a strange one. He invariably submitted to Maximillian’s demands and seemed to go out of his way to
cater for his champion’s whims, and yet he constantly argued. He nitpicked and complained and sulked, even as he did exactly
what Maximillian said. “You didn’t like what the mayor said about you at the yearly summit, it stirred up a lot of talk—”
Maximillian rolled his eyes. “Of course I didn’t like what he said about me.
He called me idle.” He tossed his bronze head back against Cyrus’s couch with a huff.
“Me,” he repeated, staring up at the jagged ceiling.
“Idle, after everything I’ve done.” From his prone position he looked at Cyrus as though he expected fervent nods and agreement.
Cyrus blinked slowly at him, deadpan. Maximillian smothered a smile.
“Not that I don’t get a real kick out of listening to your domestics,” Cyrus began, finally moving away from the door. Maximillian
huffed again. Balthazar flushed an ugly shade of red. “But seeing as Maximillian wants to interrupt the wedding, and more
importantly I want to interrupt the wedding, I’d say that’s what we’re going to do.” Balthazar turned his head away with an irritated noise.
From the minute working of his clenched jaw, Cyrus imagined that he was silently muttering to himself.
Sitting up straight, Maximillian drew his attention back. “You’ve got the documents, Bal,” he said. He was cheerful again,
now that he’d got his own way. Balthazar opened his leather bag and took out several rolls of parchment, placing them reluctantly
on the table. He’d managed to acquire the timings for the event, the seating plan, even the wedding menu. At least he was
efficient. Everybody needed something going for them.
An hour passed and their plan started to form.
They were adept at it by now, bouncing ideas off each other until the best route forward emerged.
There was plenty of potential here, no matter what Balthazar thought; perhaps it would be their most dramatic showdown yet.
Cyrus’s suggestion that he could explode out of the wedding cake and chase the bride and groom around the hall was sadly vetoed, despite his best efforts to add it to the plan.
Apparently he couldn’t expect to throw food in people’s faces every time they planned a fight, no matter how much he enjoyed it.
“I’ll have lodgings arranged close by—you can call after, if you can be discreet about it, and get changed,” said Maximillian,
head bent low over a piece of parchment as he examined the menu. “It says here they’re serving blackberry syrup with the dessert,
sounds like it’ll stain . . .”
Balthazar looked up sharply. “I’m not sure that’s a—”
“Good idea, yeah, we’ve heard all about your disapproval,” Cyrus cut in. There was no way he was going to skip out on an opportunity
to clean up just because Balthazar was the realm’s biggest killjoy. “Why don’t you go and be boring somewhere else? We’ve
got everything we need from you.”
Balthazar’s eyes slanted to Maximillian. Cyrus saw the hesitance, the ingrained urge to step in on Balthazar’s behalf worn
down by the nagging and constant disapproval, and he saw the moment Maximillian decided not to help. “There aren’t any other
champions in attendance. So we don’t have to worry about that, at least,” he mused, seating plan now in hand, as though Cyrus’s
put-down had never happened. “Korral’s probably only had me invited so he can corner me afterwards and start bleating on about
politics.”
Balthazar stood up. “I can take a hint,” he said stiffly.
“Can you?” said Maximillian without looking up. Cyrus grinned at the barb. Perhaps he was a bad influence.
Balthazar’s mouth tightened. He turned on his heel, leaving the door ajar behind him. Probably on purpose. No doubt he loathed the idea of leaving Maximillian alone with Cyrus for even a second.
Cyrus’s eyes slid to the champion. He was still examining the seating plan.
“Why d’you bother with him?”
Maximillian glanced up. “Bal? He’s . . . well, he’s been with me for a long time now.” His mouth twitched, rueful. There was
the dimple again. Cyrus was getting used to seeing it; he no longer felt the need to quash a physical recoil of disgust every
time Maximillian smiled. And he smiled a lot.
“Anyway, he’s got his uses.” At Cyrus’s doubtful expression, he grinned and pushed the parchment away, stretching and turning
to face him. Their legs almost touched. Cyrus tried not to be so aware of it.
“He does, truly,” he confided. “There’s so much to do when you’re elected champion of somewhere like Heliarth. A lot of it
is so dull. You wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork.”
“Balthazar does love being dull,” Cyrus agreed.
Maximillian tried not to smile and failed. “He’s good at what he does. He just gets a bit . . .”
“Annoying,” said Cyrus. “Like a bug.”
“I was going to say fussy, but—”
“A bug that you want to splat.”
Maximillian laughed quietly. “You would say that.” Did he sound fond? Cyrus couldn’t tell. He also couldn’t tell how he felt about it. “Well, the fact that he does all the paperwork means I
don’t have to bother. I’d put up with any amount of fussing from him if he’ll spare me from the most boring side of being
a champion.”
Cyrus couldn’t help but think of Maximillian’s words in the Athaca News interview, the frustration he admitted to. Then in the woodland clearing, when they practised their fight, he spoke of wanting
to get away from it all. For the first time, Cyrus wondered if Maximillian really had, at any point, dreamed of escaping the
champion life. Whether he would admit it, if such a dream existed.