Chapter 11 #2
Lowick’s curly brown hair is tousled and he makes pleasant, vapid conversation about his journey through the fells.
How he’d been relieved when it hadn’t been Enforcers opening the bothy door, because he would definitely get at least a warning for unnecessary travel.
It turns out that Torver’s generalisations had been correct—Lowick is indeed a farmer.
And apparently, some of his best heifers have a skin complaint, so he’s trekking over to the Wen to pick up salve from his auntie there who’s a herbalist and to visit his step-cousin’s new baby, while he’s at it.
He tells this story entirely too loudly and Torver tries his best to laugh along with Lowick’s thinly-veiled misogynies, slapping his knees and not meeting Bassen’s eyes across the room.
“Yeah, it’ll be good to see the old bitch.
Hopefully she can spare me a few yan so I don’t have to sleep in a dosser’s bothy on the way back,” Lowick says ruefully.
“The job scrolls that make it out of the Wen are all few and far between, you know. Pay’s too low to do much with, but the Court of Works says we don’t need the yan—we’re all self-sufficient on our farms apparently.
But what about when my beautiful girls get rashes?
Salves don’t grow on the wheat stalks, do they? ”
Lowick talks about his cows with more reverence than human women and Torver laughs along with the required level of enthusiasm.
But he’s grateful when Bassen returns, having been caught herself by the stew man, trapped in a conversation with him for several minutes.
The friendly anonymity of the bothy is a strange and foreign thing.
The stew is potentially the most delicious thing that Torver has ever tasted and it makes him think of the Mere.
His mother, how she used to cut the carrots lengthways instead of into orange and purple coins.
Presently, big chunks of meat swim in a flavoursome gravy, interspersed with similar vegetables.
He practically inhales the stuff, still steaming on his spoon from the heat of the firemancer’s flames. The roof of his mouth is swiftly parboiled.
At this point, Torver expects Lowick to leave and go back to his boot-cleaning on the other side of the room, but he doesn’t.
He sits among them amicably while they eat, and Torver notices the attention he’s paying Lavellin from the corner of his eye.
He wonders if he should be nervous, if the glamour is holding up to scrutiny.
“So,” Lowick asks conversationally, leaning back on the cool stone wall behind him. “What are your magics?”
Torver chokes on his stew.
He splutters and coughs before an audience of risen hackles, Bassen flashing her eyes at him, Lavellin clenching itself further on his other side. Lowick thumps him on the back, laughing.
Torver hopes the discussion of magic will be forgotten as he spits out the offending string of soft, green celery that had tried to climb past his teeth unchewed. But Lowick carries it on so casually, so unaware of the widening eyes around him.
“Mine’s transformation magic,” he announces proudly. “Watch this!”
Lowick fixes his gaze on Torver’s spoon.
It shifts and moves in his bowl, slowly curving into a circle, a snake eating its own tail.
Torver forgets to look impressed for Lowick’s benefit, his mind instantly going back to the Dodwood rats, how someone like Lowick had transformed them into vicious caricatures of what a rat might be.
“Wow, fantastic,” he says with all the enthusiasm he can muster. Lowick returns the spoon to its former state, and Torver carefully uses it to place a chunk of lamb into his mouth. Lowick elbows him.
“Go on then,” he says, his voice deep and gruff. “What’s yours?”
Torver feels kicked in the teeth. Bassen stares daggers at him over her quickly disappearing stew while Lavellin blinks vacantly.
“Bet it’s an embarrassing one, isn’t it? A really girly one,” Lowick leers at Bassen and Lavellin, leans towards them, lowering his voice for the first time since he’d wandered over to them. He turns back to Torver. “Go on, what is it?”
Torver sighs and selects from his rotating list of fakeable magics. Today, he’s a soothsayer. A purveyor of vague warnings from the future. And his consequence of underuse is gradually forgetting his past, he adds for good measure.
“Woah,” Lowick whistles. “I’m well impressed—that’s such a cool magic! My consequence is stupid, I just transform things in my sleep. I was so busy last calving season I woke up one morning and my bed had turned into a bale of hay.”
Torver nods, satisfied that he has at least derailed Lowick’s questioning of the three of them as a group. He eyes the remaining food and thinks about how soon they’ll be able to leave.
“Go on then,” Lowick says, elbowing him again. “Tell me what’s in my future. I showed you my magic, so you have to show me yours.”
Torver’s breath catches. He cleverly disguises it with a cough.
“I don’t know,” he clears his throat some more, pushing the remainder of his stew around with his spoon. “I’m not very powerful. It’s probably not even worth it. I can only say small sooths.”
“Oh, go on,” Lowick pleads.
Torver exhales, carefully avoiding Bassen’s eyes because he already knows she’ll be wearing her eyebrows in the position that means what did you expect?
He fixes his gaze on Lowick’s broad, acne-scarred face. He lets out a low hum, feigning some imagined magic coursing through him, teasing out the threads of Lowick’s future. He feels stupid, yet somehow jealous of himself.
“I predict,” he says at last. “That when you visit your auntie, she’s going to get mad at you about something.”
At that, Lowick nods, impressed.
“Sounds about right,” he says sagely. “She’s a moody old cow. I’ve got actual cows with a better attitude. But she’ll give me free salve if I show up and ask, so there’s that.”
Torver doesn’t have chance to mentally congratulate himself for that speedy cover-up because Lowick turns his attention to Lavellin. He leans towards it, shuffling closer.
“What about you, love?”
Torver doesn’t like the way he says that, the dropping of his voice, the darkening of his eyes.
The flaring of his black pupils. Torver wonders if he should put his hand on Lavellin’s knee.
Would Lowick back off if he thought they were—he doesn’t know—together?
But he does nothing. Just frowns, wondering if these are his thoughts or Lavellin’s dirty pheromones tricking him again.
“Oh, you’re a shy one, aren’t you?” Lowick leans closer to the glamoured fae.
Lavellin’s eyes widen, the dew of sweat making its forehead glisten.
It looks unwell, jaw gritted in feverish concentration.
But the glamour doesn’t waver; its ears remain short, its hair blond and dull, eyes an unremarkably human shade of blue.
The silence between them extends awkwardly, until Lowick breaks it.
“Your friend here isn’t much of a talker, is she?” Lowick says curiously.
She. Torver frowns at the word. He supposes Lavellin could pass for a woman in its glamoured state, if the beholder was so inclined. Long hair, full lips, a vacant expression—Lavellin is probably the woman of Lowick’s dreams.
“Uh, yeah,” Torver replies. “She’s, um—mute. She’s mute, yeah.”
Lowick nods, as if impressed. Lavellin stares forward and when Torver’s eyes follow the lines of its lithe arm, the hand that ends there is white-knuckled.
Torver swallows and doesn’t allow himself to think. He does what he feels he must, covering Lavellin’s hand with his own and gives it a reassuring squeeze. Lowick’s eyes follow the movement.
“You don’t meet a lot of mutes,” he muses, sitting up and away from it at last. “Well, good on you. Don’t let them get you down, love.”
Lowick raises a fist to eye-level in a show of solidarity. Lavellin smiles politely and returns the gesture with some measure of difficulty.
They finish their food and all the water they can fit inside themselves, rising and thanking the men of the bothy.
Before they leave, Bassen asks one last time if she can’t contribute a few tan or tethera for what they ate and drank.
But her firemancing friend, and Lowick to boot, insist that it’s absolutely fine.
How could they charge two pretty ladies in need of rest and sustenance?
Torver doesn’t let his expression sour as he holds the door open for his ladies. He arranges his face into a polite smile for them instead.
“No gods, no kings,” one of them calls.
“No gods, no kings,” Torver replies, shutting the door firmly behind him.
At the clunk of the closed door, Lavellin’s glamour drops. Its ears spring to their usual length, its hair returns to its fiery shade, and its gasping mouth hangs open. Its spine curves forward, palms pressed to each of its knees.
“That was terrible,” it moans, making a noise quite like a grunt.
“You’re telling me.” Bassen rolls her shoulders. “I forget how annoying it is spending time around men I haven’t personally trained.”
Torver beams with pride at that, looking away from Lavellin’s melodramatic panting.
They pile back into the boat and this time, Torver rows. Slowly, because he’s pacing himself, he insists, looking down at his arms and wondering if they flex and bulge in the same mesmerising way that Lavellin’s had.
While this is happening and the bothy disappears behind the riverbend, he and Bassen, at last, answer its questions about Bassen’s magic.
How human magic behaves. How there are common magics like elemental mancing, and rare magics like soothsaying and flight.
How magics have a consequence when they’re underused.
How generations pass between the apparition of new magics, but how that can be the only explanation for Bassen’s death magic. Her peerless affliction. A magic that lives to take life; a magic she can’t ignore without fatal consequences. How she has no choice but to do as her passenger demands.
Lavellin listens, sprawled over the stern, one hand trailing a line on the river’s surface. Whether it’s tired from the day or small under the weight of what it’s hearing, Torver can’t tell. Seeing it quiet and unsmug is strange.
“One each,” it mutters, frowning at the wake the boat leaves in the water. “One magic each. How could the gods do that to you? Their children.”
Torver shakes his head.
“I’m no one’s child but my mother’s,” he says sourly.
The sun hangs low in the sky when they moor the boat for the final time that day, looking at each other with trepidation. Torver isn’t sure where they are, but the land is green and rolling on either side of the river. Large trees and patches of wild garlic scent the air.
“What are we doing?” Torver asks, squinting into the orange sky, the day dying around them.
“Grand scheme—no clue,” Bassen replies, blinking heavily. “Short term—you’re sleeping in this boat, and we’re figuring the rest out in the morning.”
“And I thought Torver’s bed was lumpy,” Lavellin grumbles.
“You not sleeping in the boat?” Torver asks. Bassen shrugs with slightly too much vehemence.
“I’ll sleep on the bank. It’s a warm night. If anything or anyone comes for us in the night, then I’m the best person for them to run into first, aren’t I?”
After a second, Torver nods. “There’s probably lynxes this far out from the city.”
“Lynxes,” Bassen agrees, her thin hands crossing her ribs. “We can try and find a village or something tomorrow. See if we can’t buy a map. Figure out the way to the cairn before the Rath launch their attack.”
Lavellin looks away for a brief moment, its slender face angled to the ground.
“The further away from the Wen the better,” she says, her voice pensive. “Everyone there just thinks I’m fueled by bloodlust anyway…”
Soon, the three of them are taking turns to strip to their underthings and rinse off the sweat and anxiety of the day in the cool river.
When it’s Lavellin’s turn, Torver has his back to the water, watching Bassen potter around, gathering berries for breakfast. He should help her.
But he wants to talk to Lavellin more. He knows so little about it, its own magics, its life back in Rheged.
He asks these things over his shoulder, but its responses are vague and cagey. Torver doesn’t like that.
He turns, frustrated, to see it striding out of the water, body bright and almost glowing in the evening light.
Its wet hair hangs low, the waves of it stretched by the weight of water so that the tendrils cling to its curves.
Torver blinks. Then he realises—every trace of the rat attack is gone. It’s completely healed.
“You look…good,” he says.
Lavellin doesn’t hesitate. “I know.” It winks at him.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said.”
Torver grunts.
“You’re impossible,” he sits down on the river bank, warily eyeing the orange sun as it sinks beneath the rolling vales. Lavellin sits beside him. Close enough for him to see that the only scars on its body are the vertical lines either side of its chin.
He’s horrified when he sees his own fingers rise in front of him, reaching to softly brush one of the raised silver lines.
“What are these?” The scar is smooth beneath Torver’s thumb.
Lavellin shudders under his touch, turning its warm face away from him.
“I got cut accidentally with an iron blade,” it says softly, after a moment. “That’s why they’ve scarred. Iron burns us. The marks have faded—but they’ll never disappear entirely.”
Torver nods and retracts his hand, embarrassed. He doesn’t know why he touched it, makes a mental note to steel himself against its strange pheromones, its deceptive fae allure.
He wants to say more. But Lavellin rises from its place on the grassy bank and meanders gracefully into the boat, declaring a less-than-enthused intention to sleep. It seems to have never slept rough before, settling on the floor of the boat with the demeanour of a wet cat.
As Torver watches it, he realises that it’s surely impossible to get cut accidentally in perfectly parallel lines.
The dusk deepens and he shrugs the thought away.
The day has drained him, peeled him like a fruit.
The day and the knowledge that somewhere in the north, the Beast and his mother are both waiting.
So when Torver collapses into the prow of the boat, Lavellin curled stiffly in the stern, he doesn’t comment that it’s his third night sleeping on a hard floor. Sleep greets him so eagerly that he’s barely aware of the sound of muffled footsteps on the riverbank.