Chapter Eleven Nevermore the Trumpet’s Call #2
It took everything to make the joke, though.
The sting of tears still threatened, and crying would be awful.
They really looked that bad. That weak. That hurt by Kell’s disregard—but they weren’t.
They were just tired from wringing every last scrap of power and wit it took to hand-deliver that ungrateful little—
“We have had quite a day so far,” Jubilee said. “And we haven’t stopped to rest or eat for miles.”
“I’m all right. I saw an inn back there.”
Even their voice was weak and lost. Pathetic. No poise. No polish—
Timtim’s warmth on their ankle withdrew. Verandil had swept them off their feet, carrying them like the maiden of a heroic tale. Saeldian looped their arms around his neck by reflex.
“The Silver Goblet?” Verandil scoffed. “Thieves and robbers. You’ll eat in the village, and you can rest in the wagon bed. It’ll be comfortable enough.”
Saeldian, no longer standing through grit and willpower, couldn’t even get up the energy to struggle. “I’m really all right, it’s not far to—”
“Shut up,” Verandil said kindly. “I’m driving the gruit back to the Brewmistress. You’ll have your supper, and you will sleep on sweet herbs and a soft bed. You brought Kell back to me.”
“No,” Kell said. “Don’t—”
Verandil ignored him and said, “Thank you.”
Kell spluttered.
Verandil smiled down at them. “I owe you. I swear you are safe.”
Saeldian was too tired to control their expression. Verandil owed them? He said it out loud? Why?
“But—”
“Hush.”
Verandil sang softly as he carried them to a wagon. It soothed Saeldian’s urge to cry, to lash out at people, to bottle themself back into an uncaring idol of beauty and allure and never show an emotion that wasn’t flawlessly performed. Saeldian relaxed and let Verandil carry them.
He leapt to the wagon bed easily as climbing a stair; Saeldian’s eyes shut as he lowered them to lean against a barrel sack of yarrow and set a smaller one under their knees. Saeldian breathed in the smell of dry green herbs and let reverie fold over them, the wagon rocking like a cradle.
It didn’t feel real, but it was. Verandil Merrynote drove a wagon heaped with dried herbs for beer—yarrow, mugwort, rosemary, and juniper, to Kell’s nose—pulled by badgers who were smaller than ponies but stout and eager.
Verandil sang a bit of one song as if it played endlessly in his head and pointed out the landmarks as they went by one business or another, through groves left wild that pulled at Kell’s senses, and through the aura of the weaveglass spire, which felt like a minor chord on a half-tuned lute.
No one lingered near the thing. The magic of it vibrated inside Kell’s ear, and Verandil didn’t sing again until they’d cleared its range.
“I knew you’d come back,” Verandil said. “I prayed to Skerrit that you would find us quickly—that wherever you made your return to the Feywild, your path would bring you to Eightbridge, and it would be close to here. Or that you would hear my seeking song.”
“Your what?”
“I wrote a song about you. Finder, find me, come back true, all the refuge waits for you…”
“You’re joking.”
“Don’t be like that,” Verandil mock-scowled. “It’s a bit rubbish, but the vocal range is one octave, beginner chords, sentimental…everything you need for a song to go far and wide.”
“You penned doggerel in my honor.”
“I’ll write you a masterpiece now that you’ve come home,” Verandil said, and his grin moved the scar on his cheek like it stretched the skin too tightly.
Kell looked at it until his brother looked away.
There was a bridge on the road ahead, but whatever lay on the other side wouldn’t stay still.
Thatched-roof stone cottages became an aspen wood became a pass between mountains, and its refusal to stay still made Kell a bit woozy, so he turned back to his brother and the ragged pink curve that came too close to his eye.
“Do I already know how you got that scar, Verandil?”
“Probably.” Verandil let the team of badgers pick up speed once they reached the open road. “I’d rather know how you found us at last, since it wasn’t my song.”
“How bad was it?” Kell asked.
Kell didn’t have to ask when it happened. He knew.
“It was a war, and we were children in it,” Verandil said. “I have a scar on my face, and I lived.”
“You don’t want to tell me,” Kell said. “Who lived? Did Dad—”
Verandil glanced Kell’s way. “He lived. He’s in the village. Let’s wait to speak on it until then.”
“But—”
“I promise you, it’s fine. How did you find us?”
Verandil’s hooves were dug in, then. “It’s kind of a long story.”
“Tell me in one line.”
“I led an urchin’s life of crime, became the best thief in Baldur’s Gate, escaped the hangman, and reformed myself with the help of Lorzok here.”
“And the beautiful warlock snoozing in the yarrow?”
“Can hear you,” Saeldian called. “I was the life of crime and best thief in Baldur’s Gate part.”
“They’ve reformed too,” Jubilee said.
“I haven’t, really,” Saeldian objected. “But we can argue that later.”
“And you, my joy…” Verandil winked at Jubilee. “Do you play music?”
“I play lanceboard,” Jubilee said. “Do you play?”
Timtim nudged at Lorzok’s hand and got scratches in reward. Verandil looked a bit rueful. “I know how all the pieces are supposed to move. Sprites must always move forward, treants only forward or to the side, moth knights—”
“Moth knights! You have knights who fight on mothback?”
“Oh, sure. Owls too, the bigger ones. But moth knights always swerve in flight, don’t they?” He winked. “But I really only remember that much.”
“Oh, sure,” Jubilee said with a laugh. “I believe you. No one in Waterdeep would, but I do.”
“Though I hope you like gathering honors.”
“Oh?” Jubilee asked. “What’s that?”
“It’s a card game. Cards are all the fashion here. You need at least four people and two decks, but you can go to eight people with four decks. You have a partner, and you bid…”
Jubilee knew perfectly well how to play gathering honors, because Kell had taught Saeldian back when they were partners.
He and Saeldian had won walking money in card houses—they left while they were ahead, but not far enough to reveal how well they played.
But Jubilee listened to Verandil’s explanation, asked questions he could correct, and frowned in all the right places.
Should Kell tell his brother that Jubilee could probably make a deck of cards do tricks?
He glanced at Lorzok and shared a grin. As long as the stakes were low, why spoil the joke?
“Well, I think I understand how you determine lead suit and ruling card, but the seasonal determination is still eluding me. Maybe you’d better be my partner when we play.”
“Jubilee,” Lorzok said. “You wouldn’t be planning to fleece a table full of fey at cards, would you?”
Verandil chortled. “You got me! I was sure you didn’t know.”
Jubilee laughed. “Sorry! I can’t help it. If you were from a Waterdhavian house I didn’t like, you’d be walking out of the High Flagon in your smallclothes.”
“In that case, I insist that I partner with you. To provide guidance, of course. Is it a date?”
Jubilee considered for a moment. “Oh, why not? It’s a date.”
It was so strange how this felt like a normal day, to be crowded on the front bench of a song-shaped wagon full of fragrant herbs, laughing at his brother’s jokes and helping him woo a woman who’d decided that she wanted to be wooed.
Like they’d done this last tenday, and every tenday before, and would run this errand again for something else. But he hadn’t.
The badgers pulled the wagon onto the bridge, and the land across the river settled.
Kell shivered as the breeze changed direction, charged with the wild magic at its seam.
Essanderon’s Rest had been alone in the truewild, and this felt more like Faer?n, if centaur farmers herded sheep and pixies played tag with honeybees bumbling in the clover.
“Not like home, is it?” Verandil said.
“I’m that easy to read?”