19. Lukas
19
LUKAS
L ukas sees the sun going down outside the room’s small window. He looks at Elric naked, kneeling on the floor between his thighs and all he knows is, he is not ready for this day to end. Not yet.
“We should eat,” he says, standing from the bed. “Let’s go down to the public room and see what they have.”
Elric looks up at him. “Is that wise? I thought you were a wanted man in Lunatum?”
Lukas weighs this up. Elric is correct. Sparrows’ Hall is known for its tolerance of enemies of the Empire, but that doesn’t make it safe. It would make the most sense to stay in this room. But he is hungry and the last thing he wants to do is ask Inga to go and fetch him some food. He looks at Elric and says, “I’ll be careful. Besides, we ought to check what Marko is up to down there. Hopefully, the cook of this place hasn’t used her to add flavour to the stew.”
Elric gasps in horror, then looks furious, “Silverhand, that is not funny.” And he turns away to dress, still pouting. As he does, he says, “Will you keep him? Marko?”
“I would like to. I think Red Wolf would have wanted that. I will have to ask Abul.”
Lukas dresses quickly, but for Elric, it's a more complex operation. As Lukas has ruined the fastenings of most of his clothes. They manage to use his belt to hold his breeches. And to close his shirt, Lukas ties a piece of the rope around Elric’s chest in a rough harness. Which makes Elric smirk.
“Still your captive,” he says darkly as Lukas finishes the knots.
Lukas kisses Elric on the nose. “Yes,” he says. “Still the captive of your Bastard Prince.” He pauses and thinks for a moment. “Zai, I think I will have to ask Inga for some coin.”
“I have coin,” Elric says.
Lukas looks at him in surprise. “You do? You have coin?”
“Of course I do. I’m a Lordling, remember.”
“You’ve had coin all this time? Why did you never say so?”
“What would have been the point? I’ve not had many chances to spend it in the Fanosti grasslands.”
“Where is it?”
Elric shrugs, “Here. In the pouch on my belt.” He reaches for it. “You know,” he says with a smirk as he draws out two gold dals, "you never searched me.”
Lukas takes the coin with a smile. “If I had I would have found that bottle of oil and known you were a slut right from the start,” he says. He turns the coins over in his palm. “This will buy us a feast tonight, Lordling.” He says it happily but his heart feels strange and sore.
There is something about a Lunatum tavern that smells familiar. Lukas feels almost nostalgic as he breathes in the yeast and sweat and stale smoke in the crowded, noisy public room of Sparrows’ Hall. He’d never call Lunatum his home. But Lunatum had taken him in when he had nowhere.
Lunatum had also chewed him up and spat him out when it was done with him and it had kept his hand as part of the deal. His hand and part of his soul.
As they walk down the stairs, Elric says, “I cannot wait to eat some roasted fowl. Do you think they have peach wine?”
Lukas turns on the stair. “Peach wine? Here? I doubt that very much, Lordling. We will be lucky if there is a choice between strong ale and weak ale.”
Marko comes yipping up to them wagging her tail as soon as they step into the public room. Elric scoops her up, fussing into her fur as if he really is relieved she has not been made into stew.
The smell of food coming from the kitchen behind the counter makes Lukas’s stomach twist. He orders a jug of strong ale and a roast fowl and leads Elric to the most tucked-away table, a secluded one in a dark corner. Perhaps he ought to have worn the hooded cloak. But it’s too late now for such concerns.
Lukas pours them each a cup of ale and Elric lifts his, “To our journey to Lunatum,” he says. “To Abul and his wife and babes, to woodland and grassland, to eating berries and mushrooms, to luxoli in the woods, to the Zhilvar pool, to Marko. And to Red Wolf.”
Lukas charges his own cup. “The Red Wolf,” he says, feeling the loss of Red Wolf, a sore spot on his heart.
The food comes quickly and Elric looks delighted. “Oh, I am looking forward to this,” he declares looking at the glistening fowl on the platter between them. “I have had enough travel vittles to last me for the rest of my life. I cannot wait to have a proper meal.”
“Really?” says Lukas, tearing a leg off the fowl and sitting back with it in his hand. “But you’ve had your mouth full all day.”
Elric gives Lukas a withering look as he helps himself to the other leg. “I cannot live on your cock alone, Silverhand,” he says.
They eat quickly, both greedy and perhaps both hoping to get back upstairs for another fuck. Lukas drinks more than his share of the ale and enjoys the way it makes his body soften. Marko appears from wherever else she had got to in the public room and begs sweetly enough that they both feed her table scraps.
When the fowl is almost gone. Lukas picks a few of the last shreds of meat from the bird’s carcass and holds his fingers out to Elric across the table. The grease glistens in the candlelight.
Elric licks the unctuous shreds of meat from Lukas’s fingers. It looks so delightful that Lukas takes another scrap with his hook, he offers that across and Elric plucks it from the hook point with a flash of his sweet pink tongue, eyes dark with lust. Lukas is hard under the table.
From some way across the room, someone shouts, “This ain’t the fucking luxoli house, you sly fucks. Take it to the dockside.”
Lukas looks over. The shouter is a red-faced, oily-looking man. Lukas feels rage boiling up. With a snarl twisting his lips he raises his hook, making sure the oily man sees it, but Elric puts a hand on his arm, “Don’t,” Elric says. “You’re being careful, remember.”
Lukas sits back. Elric scans the room warily. But most of the patrons have gone back to their business. Not caring. “Perhaps we should go to this luxoli house,” Elric says. “Then we can do as we please.”
Lukas thinks of it. The luxoli house. The Exiled Emperor. He’d made a home there for years. “Oh, Lordling,” he says, “I told you, it is a foul pit. And I would definitely be recognised there.”
Elric laughs. “I suppose you would. The famed Lucky.”
Lukas shakes his head and stands up. “I’m going to visit the privy.”
Elric gives Lukas a wary look. “Truly?”
“Yes, Lordling. I need to piss.”
Lukas winds his way through the crowds thronging the busy public room and finds his way to the yard outside. He was not lying. Although, if he had happened to meet the man who had shouted at them out in the dark, perhaps he would have dispatched him with a hook through his throat. But he does not. He relieves himself in the privy without incident. Back in the public room, he buys another jug of ale, which takes a while as the place is thronged, and goes back to find Elric.
He reaches the corner table and Elric is gone. His seat empty.
Lukas feels a sudden jolt of panic. He sets the jug down on the table quickly, spilling a puddle of ale onto the wood.
Lukas scans the room.
Elric has run, he thinks. He left him here, unguarded. Unbound. What did he expect to happen? He wonders if a secret part of himself had done this purposely. Had wanted Elric to run. He had thought the night before that if Elric tried, he wouldn’t stop him, but he didn’t expect it to happen suddenly like this.
In the middle of the room is a large crowd, they’re rowdily singing a song. It’s in Juran, Lukas thinks. An old folk song. His Juran is rusty, but he thinks it is something bawdy about a fae maid and a demon. Three women are playing pipes of different sizes and a big man is playing a drum. The song ends and the crowd all laugh. And as they laugh, they move. And as they move…
… a flash of red hair…
It’s Elric.
Elric. In the middle of the crowd, cheering, with Marko in his arms.
Lukas’s legs seem to weaken with relief. He moves towards them. He can hear Elric now, saying, “I only know all the words to one. An Ambolk song. The Seamstress’s Cunt. Ar-lily Kush.”
There’s more shouting, a wild agreement that they will sing that next, and then the song begins. A group of singers laughingly crooning along with Elric as he sings the tale of the seamstress who ripped open her work every night. Elric’s voice is not strong, but it is sweet and pleasant.
Lukas reaches Elric and grabs him by the shoulder. He spins and Lukas spits, “What the fuck are you doing?”
Elric looks at Lukas in surprise, then back to the singers who are continuing the song without him. “Nothing. Just making friends,” he says back to Lukas. “You were gone a long time.”
Lukas is amazed at how relieved he is. He notices the oily man who shouted at them is part of the group, also singing merrily.
“I got more ale,” Lukas says.
A young woman comes up behind Elric. The song has reached the fast part of the tune where the seamstress is ripping back her work frantically over and over. The crowd is singing, “ Ar-lily, ar-lily, ar-lily kuuuuuush .”
The young woman grabs hold of Elric’s arm and spins him around. Some people are dancing. The young woman is grabbing at Elric, quite insistently, trying to get him to dance with her. Lukas steps forward. He puts his hand and hook on Elric’s waist and turns him back. “If you're dancing,” Lukas says, “You’ll dance with me.”
“ Silverhand? ” Elric says as Marko jumps down from his arms, chasing after another dog. Clearly, Elric is shocked at the idea they might dance together in a public place. Two sly men, not hiding it.
But Lukas will hear no complaint.
He drags Elric into the dancing crowd in the middle of the room and they spin and twirl together, both singing, “ Ar-lily, ar-lily, ar-lily kuuuuush. ”
They dance until they are breathless. Through all of the endless last chorus of Ar-lily Kush and some other bawdy Juran song, Lukas doesn’t know.
As the music finishes with a discordant flourish, Lukas looks around at the laughing crowd, before his gaze falls on Elric’s pretty breathless face, gazing at him.
He feels good. So good. He raises his hook and shouts, “Death to Emperor Selim!”
He feels Elric go tense next to him. Lukas looks at his shocked face, enjoying how easy it is to upset the Lordling’s Rose Palace sensibilities.
But the crowd around them erupt in a wild cheer. “Death to Emperor Selim,” several people echo. A tall man claps Lukas on the back.
Merry and still laughing Lukas leads Elric back to their table. As Lukas pours out more ale, Elric says, “Bastard, I cannot believe you did that.”
Lukas passes Elric a cup. “Lunatum is not Attar, Lordling,” Lukas says. “And Sparrows’ Hall attracts a certain type.”
Elric sucks on his bottom lip. “You can shout the greatest treason here, but they will still complain if you let me lick your hook,” he says, thoughtful.
“That was but one man,” Lukas says. “Forget him.”
They quench their thirst with big gulps of the strong ale. Sitting together on the same side of the table, Elric nestled close to Lukas. Elric holds Lukas’s hook in his hand, fingers trailing over it. It’s strange. The hook is not part of Lukas, not truly, but somehow, whenever Elric strokes it, Lukas feels like Elric is touching his skin.
Softly Elric says, “I know you lost your hand here, and I know that it was a punishment for stealing. You never told me what you stole.”
Lukas slides his arm around Elric’s waist. “I never told you? It’s no secret. I stole a sword.”
Elric lifts an eyebrow as if this surprises him. “A sword? Was it a nice sword?”
“Oh, it was a beautiful sword, Lordling,” Lukas says. He feels a soft tingle as he thinks of it. An old ghost of a feeling. How it had felt to look at it. His sword. “At the time, I thought it the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was called the Blue Blade of Ismagaar. The steel of it seemed to glow as if it had blue light trapped inside. The merchant who was selling it said it was made by the ice fae. You mentioned them once. The Bell-ai who still live in the frozen waste far to the north across the sea from Ismagaar, where no men can survive. I’d never seen anything like it, but at the same time, it reminded me of something. Like an old memory, I couldn’t place. I knew somehow, that sword was meant for me. From the moment I saw it, I could think of nothing else. But it was very expensive. The merchant wanted forty dal for it. I was a whore earning copper pennies for sucking. I could never afford to buy such a sword. But I had to have it. So I broke into that merchant’s shop at night and I took it. And I got caught. And I lost my hand as punishment.”
“That’s a harsh penalty. They do cut off hands for thieving in Attar but usually for known thieves. You wouldn’t lose a hand for stealing once. Even for a valuable sword. You’d get a flogging.”
Lukas smiles. “I think they might have let me off with the lash, but I wouldn’t tell them where I’d hidden the sword. They never got it back.”
“You let them take your hand rather than give up the place you had hidden the sword?” Elric stretches his eyes wide. As well he might.
Lukas nods. He knows it must sound like a kind of madness. And it was. He was taken by a form of frenzy in that last moon’s turn he spent in Lunatum. Even thinking of it terrifies him. He couldn't return that sword. It belonged to him. Or so he had thought then. In a soft low voice, he says, “You asked me once if I had ever seen magic. I believe I may have. Once. And not seen it. Felt it. I think that sword had some kind of magic in it. It bewitched me. It took me to the edge of madness. I would have given anything for that sword. Back then, anyway.”
“So, Silverhand, where did you hide this magic sword?”
Lukas kisses Elric’s cheek. “I didn’t tell the Lunatum enforcers and they took my hand, why should I tell a cocky little Lordling like you?”
Elric gives Lukas his sweetest smile. “Because of how my mouth feels on your cock.”
Lukas looks down at Elric in his arms. “Kiss me and I’ll tell you.”
Elric laughs nervously. He glances around the room. “You don’t think that will call attention to us?”
Lukas looks around too. The centre of the room is still busy with dancers, pipes and drums playing some kind of raucous tune for people to spin to with reddened faces. He cannot see the man who shouted at them earlier. Later, Lukas thinks, he might still find that man and show him the consequences of upsetting his precious Lordling. A hook sunk deep in the man’s belly, perhaps. But right now, he has other concerns.
No one is looking in their direction. No one seems interested in the way Lukas has Elric almost in his lap with his arms wrapped around him. Elric, Lukas thinks, might not be as shameless as he likes to pretend. He is still steeped in the morality of Attar and the Rose Palace.
“Dare you risk it, Lordling?” Lukas whispers. “My greatest secret has a price.”
Elric turns in Lukas’s arms, to look up at him. His eyes are bright. His lips look more delicious than any sweetmeat. “Very well,” Elric says, voice breathy, thick with desire. He leans close, offers his lips. Lukas takes the kiss from them, letting their mouths touch quite sweetly. He pulls back early, leaving Elric gasping for more.
With their mouths still close together, Lukas whispers, “So here’s my secret, Lordling. A secret I let the Lunatum enforcers take my hand for rather than tell, but your sweet lips have loosened from me. The blade is in the luxoli house.”
Elric laughs. For a moment he looks like he thinks Lukas is teasing him. Then he frowns, “Truly?”
“Yes. Where else would it be? That was where I lived for years. I hid it in my room.”
Elric shakes his head. “They never searched your room?”
“The luxoli house is full of secrets. It has to be. Officially, it’s just another tavern called the Exiled Emperor. Although all of Lunatum knows what it truly is. And even in the public room, you can pick up a sly whore or do much more than we are doing now. But the real business of the luxoli house is on the floors below. They call it the Underground. A warren of pillow rooms and pleasure halls. And it’s not that the enforcers of Lunatum don’t know that it’s there, but the people who know about it gain enough from it to let it continue. And they’re certainly not going to search the Underground of the Exiled Emperor for some sword worth forty dal. So that’s where I hid it.”
Elric takes Lukas’s hook in his hands again and says, “And still, when they roped your wrist down on the block, you did not want to cry out and tell them where the sword was.”
“I did not,” says Lukas. “I could not. Even then, I would not give up its hiding place. That is the strange hold it had over me. That sword cost me dear.”
“But you had to have it.”
Lukas shakes his head, feeling a little hollow. “I did. When I was here, in Lunatum, I had a single plan. I meant to find a way to return to the Rose Palace and kill Emperor Selim. I meant to complete the mission that failed. I thought that would prove where my heart truly lay and win me back the trust of the Mortingales. That was what the sword was for. When I took it, I meant to use it to take Selim’s head. It reminded me of the Amber Blade. The prized sword held by the Darek Emperors. I thought that meant it the perfect weapon for my task.”
“Do you still want that?” says Elric softly. “When you say Death to Emperor Selim, do you mean it?”
“Yes,” says Lukas bluntly. “More than ever.”
“But you do not want to retrieve the sword you meant to do it with? Now you are here? You could go and fetch it.”
Lukas kisses Elric’s head. “I will kill Selim, but not with that sword. I cannot go back to the Exiled Emperor. It’s too dangerous. I am known there. And besides. I have no hand to hold the Blue Blade. My sword hand was the one they took.”
“You have another hand.”
“I do not want it, Lordling.”
“You do not want it after it cost you so dear?”
“I do not want it because it cost me so dear. That blade is truly cursed. And I am not the man I was when I took that sword.” Lukas pauses and sighs. He has told Elric too many things this evening. Things he shouldn’t have told him. Things he has never told anyone.
But there is something else. More of the wounds he took in Lunatum. He leans forward and puts his chin on Elric’s shoulder. “Fetch Marko from wherever she’s got to,” he murmurs. “There is more to tell. Let’s retire.”