5. A Good Start #5
“I haven't a clue how I'll manage to do that, either. Meet, and bed, my next wife.” Noble sighed. “My every invitation for the upcoming season has been rescinded.”
Aria gaped. The autumn ball season was the most enjoyable of the year—there were more casual functions in addition to the glitzy galas leading up to the winter equinox, Winterend.
That day in particular came with a citywide celebration, with hundreds of parties happening all at once, and Noble had undoubtedly attended the most exclusive Winterend soiree each year.
He squeezed Noble's arm, his God-given warmth sinking into his fingers. “They can do that? Uninvite you?”
“No, not really, but I received several letters of sympathy, and every single one said that they would understand my absence at their event.” Noble smiled without it reaching his eyes and helped Aria step safely off a curb and across the street, avoiding an approaching carriage.
“It's all subtle. Passive. If I dared to show up anyway, they'd be aghast, and I'd confirm their suspicions—that I’m a ghoul that doesn't understand the niceties of my ilk.
It'd be the final nail in the coffin of Former-Earl Yves St. Clair.”
Aria pinched a lip between his teeth as he mulled it over in his mind.
“In a way, you've been fired just as I have.” If they hadn't been mired in such terrible sadness, the similarities of their circumstances would have seemed a little amusing.
They were opposite in almost every way—elf, human.
Short, tall. Kinsme, not. Peasant class, title class.
And yet they both stood on the same rainy street, beneath the same damp umbrella, with the same broken heart.
“I suppose you get to keep the book, then.
We're equally pitiful. But at least I'll be busy busking.
You're the one who's going to have the time to sit down and read the thing.” Aria began to slip away, but Noble grabbed his hand gently, and held it between them.
Noble peered at Aria's fingers and knuckles with uncanny focus, and his thumb stroked idly upon his skin.
He was warm, but nonetheless Aria shivered, and purposefully did not consider why, even as his soul hummed in joy.
Noble broke the silence as he said, “We should share it. We can share it. Move in with me.”
Aria tripped over a crack in the flagstone at their feet, but Noble's hand on his own kept him upright. He fumbled with his words the same as with his steps. “I beg your pardon?”
They stopped walking, and Noble released Aria once he was stable again. But then Noble donned that uncanny, manic look that meant he was up to no good. “It's perfect. You're an elf.”
Uh. “Yes, very good,” Aria replied, slowly, as if addressing a child. “And…"
Noble scoffed a laugh and said, “I mean—you've no titles. You've made your own way in New Hieroph for a decade yet, as a common man. If I start bringing you about publicly, to events around town, it’ll improve my reputation. If I pretend, for a time, that you’re my adame.”
Aria let the idea sink in. “Hm. Yes, that may actually work to undo some of the ruin. Most nobles employ an adame.” And though some, like Ellor, engage in romantic relations, many others would not. Noble’s history as a womanizer would be a boon to him in this scenario. “You want to hire me.”
“No! Well, I mean, certainly I’d be happy to give you coin, but I would never expect you to perform for me,” said Noble.
“I mean it to be a farce. I don’t think nobles should be hiring elves to bolster their longevity.
But if I act like I’m turning over a new, high-class leaf…
And besides, you’d have a place to stay.
Permanently. Well, until I remarry, of course. ”
Aria considered it. His heart tightened some, but he had to admit the offer was tempting. It would solve a great many problems at once.
“I swear to treat you as a friend.” Noble paused.
And then he spoke, quickly and with a contagious enthusiasm, “We can be friends, can’t we?
And you’ll have full room and board. An adame’s salary to match.
And! Most importantly, you’ll get to come to the various galas and rub shoulders with others in the nobility.
You’ll get to fix your own reputation—as a bard.
We’ll bring your lute with each trek out, and I’ll queue opportunities for you to play for my supposed friends. See?”
Aria was struck with the same sense he had when he learned Noble saved Lima and Pinto from the stables.
Noble presented him with kindness and hardly recognized his own generosity in doing so.
And this was Aria's opportunity to return the favor—he was unlikely to ever be in this position again.
“Then, I agree. But without the salary.”
Noble's thick, dark brows furrowed together in concern. “Hm? But I've plenty—"
Aria held up a hand. “If I accept payment for appearing as your adame—” he wasn't sure why his cheeks grew warm at the word. He ignored it, and hoped the dim light of the street helped mask the color. “It’d be perilously close to being real. Neither of us wants that. I want to be a bard. This will give me the chance if I can focus on that alone.”
Noble stroked his chin, along the short, wiry hairs of his beard.
“But I fear your burden will be much greater than mine with this plan.
You deserve to get something out of this that isn't just another temporary bed.” He was quick to add, “Not that temporary. You may stay as long as you like, I swear.”
“Ha.” Noble's manic energy rubbed off on Aria, and his skin buzzed.
He pointed at Noble, and then himself. “Noble, if you gain me access to places, and to people, that I've not been able to access before?
I wouldn't even need to find a new bardic guild. I could truly strike it out on my own, as an independent.” Forget being blacklisted—if he charmed the right people, at the right places, he'd be whitelisted for gigs he'd never before been able to land.
“You'll move in? With me?”
Aria tried to remain casual and shrugged. His soul screamed yes. “I suppose it's not the most terrible idea. But it does ruin our other plans, you know. Usually this is the part where we part ways with fresh wounds and simmering fury.”
“Oh, that's not ruined.” Noble grinned. “Merely postponed. We can do that about a year from now, when I'm freshly wed, and you're amassing riches with a doting lover worshipping at your pretty feet.”
“Hm,” said Aria, staring up at the swirling dark sky of clouds above. “A thousand gold, you say? Very well. I agree.”
Aria couldn't blame himself too much for misunderstanding. His soul continued to proclaim it’s him every time Noble came into view, and would then fall into a cozy, peaceful silence within his company. Aria’s affection grew misplaced like a weed flowering between flagstones on the city street.
Destined to be crushed by an indifferent, oblivious man.
“The bistro set I've had since I first arrived in the city, actually,” said Aria, fretting around it on the street corner outside his former temporary apartment.
The landlady and her maintenance man helped Aria empty the small space he'd borrowed for less than a week—and now, as he and Noble and Morgan stood by the stoop, he was embarrassed by the volume of stuff.
They couldn't make it in one trip if they wanted to bring the table along.
Aria said, “Look. We can leave it for the trashmen to take. I really should have let it go years ago.”
Morgan had two suitcases and a duffle slung over his shoulder. He shifted his weight and said, “We'll come back for it.” Across town twice? No.
“It's too much work. Forget it,” said Aria, flushing red.
Noble, also hauling two suitcases and a duffle bag, hummed in thought. “Can you carry a chair?”
“A chair? Yes, of course.” Aria put his carpet bag's handle into the crook of his arm, and picked up one chair. He tested the weight—it was heavy, but not unbearably so, if he used both hands like this. “I really don't mind leaving it. It's terribly old. And probably worthless.”
“But look at that pretty design painted on the side,” said Noble, blissfully ignorant that Aria himself had painted that on.
“The little flowers? It's cute. And it'd look right at home in the kitchen, I think. There’s a nook by the back window that’s stayed empty. It’ll fit perfectly there.
” He tucked one of Aria's suitcases under his arm, freeing himself enough to loop the back of the second bistro chair onto his bicep.
And then he crouched down, put his enormous hand around the table's tulip-shaped iron base, and lifted it into the air.
With one hand. “Got it. That everything?”
Aria knew he was gaping, awed and incapable of hiding his astonishment. “That has a solid marble top attached to it, Noble.”
“Hm. Is it real marble? It's a little heavy. Not bad, though.” To make his point, he straightened his arm into the air, lifting the table like it was a bouquet of flowers, and not a solid heavy mass of metal and stone. Morgan visibly, and perhaps pointedly, rolled his eyes.
Long ago, Noble mentioned he had demi-god strength and Aria had never gotten to see it.
So, again, it wasn't exactly Aria's fault that his wires got crossed. He’d always been drawn to strong men.
When they reached Noble's townhome and unloaded everything into Aria's new room—which was actually two rooms, attached by an archway with pocket doors, and an enormous full bath—Aria's thoughts grew more and more frayed.
Noble marched through all of New Hieroph for him.
And did so with an impressive display of strength.
“Thanks, Morg,” said Noble as Morgan carried the second dining chair down the hall to the kitchen.
The front doorbell rang, and when Noble took a step towards the stairs, Morgan called out, “I've got it. Unload your bard.”
Your bard.