Chapter 16 #2
“I never said it was about you.” Its pouting is made all the more ridiculous by its rolling accent and the deep velvet of its voice. Music to Torver’s ears all the same.
“Oh yeah, sure.” Torver leans back in his seat, stretching his legs out. He puts his feet in its firm lap in triumph, using it like a footstool.
It narrows its pale green eyes at him, before resting its lean hands on the toes of his boots.
Torver chuckles quietly to himself, feeling like he’s won something. He realises absently that at least he isn’t spiralling about the cows any more. He finds himself reaching for his string, but removes it instead. He works it off his finger and puts it in his pocket to avoid the temptation.
The journey continues in easy silence, stolen glances, and traded jibes. Lavellin’s feet eventually come to rest next to him on his side of the wagon and he notices the worn toes.
He wonders how many miles those boots have seen.
He wonders if it’s his place to ask.
Bassen halts the wagon when the sun is low in the sky; they can’t avoid rest any longer.
Winander had packed supplies of food when they’d left Watenlath that morning, and the herd of dead cows feels far enough away—the large tree they’ve stopped under should be a safe resting place.
And anyway, they deliberately drove through several streams and patches of mud so that their tracks couldn’t be followed, and there is no one in sight behind them.
They seem to have gotten away with it.
The food is good—pickled cabbage, bread and butter with thick slices of beef, pears and sweet apples. The tension of the day eases with each bite. Torver examines the map at length, and after spirited consultation, is able to confirm that none of them are sure if they’re going the right way.
“I knew where I was going when we went back to Watenlath because I could feel Win,” Bassen says, chomping on a chunk of meat. “I followed the pull…but I’ve never travelled on these pilgrimage routes before.”
“Oddly deserted,” Winander muses, picking the seeds from his apple core and throwing them into the grass. “I know Enforcers mainly use the proper, paved roads, but I thought we’d at least see other travellers.”
Bassen shrugs. “You probably won’t know this having been in a retirement village for however long, but there’s a lot less travel these days.”
Winander leans back with his palms to the grass and makes an inquisitive hum.
“The new Meddera cycle started last year,” Bassen gestures with the food in her hand. “These new four are harsher, keep a tighter grip on things. I noticed that fewer of the job scrolls allow for travel, and the Enforcers check for papers more when you’re on the proper roads.”
Torver’s head tilts. “The Meddera changed?”
Bassen sighs. “Torver, are you really that oblivious?”
He wants to defend himself but finds no suitable excuses in the recesses of his tiny mind. He swallows his shame and the last bite of his pear.
“Yes,” he replies.
“You really didn’t notice the new Meddera’s clampdowns? We were up to one public execution a week last summer!”
Torver reddens, trying to rationalise it in his head. He supposes a Meddera changeover does sound familiar, but… “I had—other things to worry about, didn’t I?”
“Like what?” Winander asks.
Torver manages not to blurt the truth. That’s he’s been hiding from Enforcers, renting a hut in the slums because a real landlord would want to see registration papers, siphoning Bassen’s wages in exchange for doing the grunt work, reconciling the ache inside him with refusing to become close to anyone.
Anyone who isn’t Bassen, at least. And their friendship certainly doesn’t extend to the ache in certain, specific areas of his body.
And while he’s totting this up in his head, Winander is looking at him and waiting for an answer.
Torver quickly runs through the lies he currently has on the go—he hasn’t told Bassen about Wast, and Winander and Lavellin don’t know he has no magic.
Lavellin thinks he’s a dreamwalker and he doesn’t know what Winander has assumed he is.
Torver swallows hard, trying to contain his spiralling thoughts. Lavellin’s fingers flex beside him.
“Torver was always scheming for extra yan,” Bassen says quickly. “Because you were going to buy a house, weren’t you, Torv?”
She looks at him wide-eyed until he nods.
“Yeah, that was it,” Torver says, abashed. “A nice house, away from the cider slums. I never liked the smell of the yeast. And the—poverty, I guess.”
“I kept trying to talk him out of it, saying there’s no need,” Bassen continues pointedly. “No use scrambling for yan to spend it on something like that. A house won’t undo the past, I told him. Luckily, he saw sense in the end and gave up the scheming and moved in with me. Isn’t that right, Torv?”
He shoots her a look. She doesn’t get it.
“That’s it exactly,” Torver announces to the group. His foot taps on the ground. “Bassen to the rescue.”
“As usual.” She winks at him.
After their meal, Winander and Bassen go for a walk, leaving Torver and Lavellin alone to light a fire to replace the light of the setting sun, and to make sure the ponies don’t get into any mischief.
Torver decides that Lavelin is best placed to be on pony patrol—it is a strange and unknowable magical being, after all. Its fae senses are surely better for keeping watchful eyes on things.
Meanwhile, Torver sits to the side, attempting to shave himself by feel alone, having rooted around in Winander’s pack for supplies. The crackle of the rising flames disguises his frustrated humming.
The task has been long overdue. He prefers himself clean-shaven, reckons it gives him a charming, boyish air. Recent upheaval, however, has interrupted his strict routine of shaving every second day, and his face has gone stubbled and roguish.
After Lavellin has double-checked the ponies’ tethers, it watches him work from across the fire. There’s amusement in the arch of its brow.
“Are you having fun?” it asks.
Torver, exasperated, throws Winander’s razor into the cup of water in his lap. It splishes onto his shoes and the bar of soap he’d had balanced on his knee topples to the floor.
“Do you have to put me off?” As he says it, he feels a dribble of soap-foam slide from his jaw to his neck.
Lavellin just laughs while Torver huffs. He tries again, working up a lather in the soap on his cheeks and scraping the blunt razor blindly down. He tries to angle it over his top lip but something stings and he doesn’t know what he’s done because he doesn’t have a fucking mirror.
He grunts with pure infuriation, fighting the urge to fling the razor into the fire. That would teach it.
“Stop laughing at me,” he warns the fae as it completely fails to hide its amusement. “Do you think it’s easy to shave yourself without a mirror? I’m used to seeing myself reflected back! This is an entirely different game…”
He rinses the razor in the cup and makes another stab at his jaw. Literally. The volume of his swearing frightens the horses. Both of their heads snap up from the grass.
“Here.” Lavellin moves next to him and takes the cup from his lap. It holds out its hand. “Give me the razor, I can have a go.”
Torver eyes Lavellin’s open palm warily. No one has ever shaved him before. He can’t think of a more repellant thought. Particularly a fae—they’re meant to be tricksy. What if everything up until now had been an elaborate ploy to gain unfettered access to a razor and his neck?
Though at this point, Torver wonders if he wouldn’t take a slit throat over continuing to shave himself blind.
“I thought you’d never ask.” He places the razor gingerly in Lavellin’s palm and inhales.
He tilts his head to it, offering it his soapy cheek, and is instantly regretful of his choices. He feels exposed, a little silly. Not helped by the fact that Lavellin is taking its sweet time.
It puts a hand on his shoulder as if to brace them both. Then comes at his face with the razor held like a fork.
“Woah! Hey—hey!” Torver flinches away. “You—you’ve shaved before, haven’t you, Lavellin? You know what to do?”
Lavellin pulls a face.
“I’ve never shaved anything in my life,” it says. “I was rather hoping it was one of those things that comes naturally once you start.”
“You’ve never shaved?”
Lavellin looks offended. “Why would I? I’m not a human man! I don’t feel the need to grow a crumb-collecting, energy-wasting mane around my mouth to show others that I’m, what? Sexually available?”
Torver blinks, incredulous.
“Ignoring that.” He takes the razor back and demonstrates. “It’s a scraping motion. You’ve got to tilt the razor like this, see?”
After much rolling of eyes and back-and-forth, Lavellin recommences its attempt at hair removal.
The mood shifts and Torver’s mouth remains firmly closed, not least because of the blade wafting about his lips.
Lavellin’s warm hands flit over his skin, its face held close in order to see what it’s doing with the jaw that Torver bares in its direction.
Cool breath skims across Torver’s soap bubbles and he suppresses a shiver at the broadening of its pupils.
It’s so close to him, its hands pulling his cheeks taut, or resting about his clavicle.
The fire grows hot and Torver grows bothered, the light dancing over the fae examining every part of his face. He feels very aware of his lips.
“I think you’re done,” it declares at last, with a final rinse of the razor in the cup.
“I’ll say.” Torver jumps to his feet, immediately gathering the razor, soap, and cup together.
“Was it that bad?” Lavellin laughs. It looks at him with a steady concentration that he can’t parse. His pulse quickens.
“Not at all.” Torver pauses, running a hand over his face now denuded of stubble. “Thank you—really. I needed that, and I probably couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Probably?” Lavellin smirks.