Chapter 18 #2
“Well, we’ll see about that.” Conise flicks her ashen eyes over Torver once more. “Papers, if you would.”
“Right away!”
Winander has thickened his country accent slightly. He seems friendlier, more self-effacing when he pulls his papers from his pockets and passes them upward to Conise.
The Enforcer drops her reins, letting them hang low either side of her shire’s neck, as she examines the documents. Just when Torver expects her to ask for his papers, her eyes widen and she gestures for the other Enforcers to come and look. They pass Winander’s papers around.
“So you’re that Winander?” One of the bronze knights, a middle-aged man that had been at the back of the group, looks at the retiree with a quiet wonder.
“You’re the old man with life magic! I was posted out in Patter for a few years—I helped organise the supply drops to your village.
We all thought it was amazing how you still look so young.
You were born in the same year as my great-aunt! I can’t believe I’m meeting you!”
Winander pretends to fan his face with his hands, like he’s trying to cool an embarrassed blush.
“Guilty!” He chuckles. “What can I say? I bear my magic’s consequence just like anyone. I bet it’s a trifle compared to what you strapping young people must put up with! You look like you’ve all got—let me guess, amazing magical strength?”
Conise passes his papers back to him and Winander manages to be so endlessly charming that the thought of checking Torver’s papers is lost to raucous laughter and laddy chat.
Particularly when they realise that Winander had had a brief dalliance with the youngest Enforcer’s grandmother fifty years prior.
“She still talks about you sometimes!” The cherubic young man laughs. “It drives Granddad insane.”
“Glad to hear I’m that memorable,” Winander winks. “Now, I know I shouldn’t stray too far from my village, but I just wanted to take my grandson for a day out—I’m not getting any younger, am I?”
The mannish chuckles of the four Enforcers permeate the air like rolls of thunder and Torver is so relieved to have the focus taken from him, so grateful for Winander’s rescue, that his face is slacked and gormless.
“So, can you forgive a beautiful old man and his hapless grandson for wandering in some useless old ruins that we found? I reckon he’ll drop me back off in my village soon, won’t you, son?”
Winander envelopes Torver with an arm over his shoulders, rocking him affectionately.
“Um, yes… Pa.” Torver doesn’t know where to look.
“And if we hear about that horrid death girl with the white hair, we’ll find an Enforcer straight away.” Winander taps his nose knowingly. “Don’t you worry about it.”
Even Conise is charmed by Winander’s confidence. Torver sees the woman smile for the first time, the movement making lines around her eyes and mouth.
“I’ll let you boys carry on,” she says, gathering her reins back up.
“We need to get back on their tails. You make sure that you’re back in your retirement village as soon as possible, you hear?
You’re not exempt just because you’re known for having an interesting magic, even if you’re too old to ever use it. Obedience keeps the Beast asleep.”
“It certainly does,” Winander croons. “I wouldn’t dream of misbehaving. No gods, no kings.”
“No gods, no kings!” the Enforcers chorus in reply, nudging their mounts away in a lolloping trot that rattles the earth. The refrain echoes through the temple ruins.
It is only when they’re long out of view, the noise of those gigantic hooves silent, that Torver breathes properly.
His ribcage expands fully at last, and he gulps in air. They’re safe. For now at least. He can only hope the Enforcers will lose their trail.
He turns to Winander, who is sheepish, his grandpa persona once again put away.
“Thank you so much.” Torver gasps the words as he pulls Winander’s broad body into his arms. He hugs him with his head tilted down, his lips pressed to the top of Winander’s shoulder.
“You—I don’t even know how you did that.
You just swooped in and—how did you think of what to say? You saved my life, Winander.”
Torver feels the glamour drop and Lavellin emerges from a distant bush. It’s dew-faced and breathing hard. The buttons of its shirt hang open, like it’s tried to cool itself, and the fabric billows around its smooth body.
Torver lets Winander go.
“I can’t believe that worked.” Torver allows a small smile to possess his mouth. And before he can think it through, he pulls Lavellin into a celebratory hug as well, unwittingly breathing in a soft lungful of its scent. “That glamour held perfectly—thank you, Lav. That was amazing.”
It trails its thumb down the blade of his shoulder. “Any time, sweet thing,” it tells him.
“Where’s Bassen?” Torver turns back to Winander.
The man runs a calloused hand through his golden hair. “We were—walking. Walking in the east section of the ruins when we heard voices. I stuck my head around a pillar and saw the armour glinting in the distance.”
“Yeah, they’re hardly subtle, are they?” Torver casts a look over his shoulder, at the now-empty path behind him.
“They never have been,” Winander shrugs. “When I was a kid, they used to have these big purple sashes with the sigil of the Beast on them—garish things, they were.”
Torver smirks at the image, sharing a look with Lavellin, who steps closer to him again, surveying him as if to check he’s still whole.
“I didn’t think it was you at first, but Bassen told me about—glamouring, do you call it?” Winander says.
“One of the many blessed fae magics,” Lavellin says proudly, glancing reverently over Winander’s shoulder at the remnants of the temple. It clutches its slate pendant.
“She wanted to run over and save you—she assumed you’d put your foot in it eventually. But I told her to go back to the cart and hide, and that I’d sort it out.”
And with that, the celebration is over. Torver feels punched.
She assumed you’d put your foot in it eventually.
The worst part is, she’s right.
“And she trusted you to sort it?” Torver blinks. She didn’t trust him to save himself… and she shouldn’t have.
Winander’s wizened eyes don’t roll, don’t narrow at him.
“She’s my soulmate,” he says simply. “And I’m hers. She trusts me.”
“Well, she was right.” He knows he shouldn’t be surprised. “As usual.”
There’s a swirling heat in the depths of him as he tries to remember where the wagon is, which arches and pillars he has to go through. Winander smiles at him. Lavellin, too. He turns his back on the pair of them.
“I’ll go and update her,” Torver says coolly.
Before either of them can say anything, Torver turns. Walking slowly at first, he eventually breaks into a jog through the shattered stones and over the ancient mosses of the temple.
When the wagon appears, Bassen sat atop it, he coaxes his legs into a longer stride, inelegantly jogging toward her.
“Bass!” he calls. “It’s all clear. Your boyfriend fixed it.”
Her face softens in relief. She slips from the wagonside and into his arms. Their hug is jolted by his heavy breathing.
“Thank the gods,” Bassen mutters, in a tone only half-joking.
Torver tries to ignore the heavy feeling inside him. “You’ll get in trouble talking like that.” He squeezes her slightly before letting her go. “The gods are forbidden, or did you forget?”
“Must be the scenery,” she smiles. “Corrupting me.”
“Yeah,” Torver titters, and then, because he can’t help himself: “Good thinking, sending Winander. He stopped me from ruining it all.”
She goes to reply but Torver cuts her off, continuing.
“For a second, I was worried he was working with them and he was going to turn us all in. But he really is on our side, isn’t he?”
Bassen blinks up at him, runs a hand through the dark roots of her hair.
“Of course he is, Torv,” she says, frowning like she’s trying to parse his tone. “Our souls are like—bonded. I told you the day we met him that we can trust him! You shouldn’t be so jaded.”
Torver shakes his head, fishing a waterskin from the back of the wagon and taking a long drink.
“You’re always so suspicious of the people trying to help you…” Her mouth quirks to the side.
“It’s justified,” Torver shrugs bitterly, wiping his mouth. He offers her the remaining water, but she refuses with a small shake of her head.
“You don’t trust anyone, do you?” she says.
Torver doesn’t have to think about it, still sore with his own inadequacy. “It’s gotten me this far,” he points out.
Bassen cocks her head.
“You didn’t trust Lavellin at first—I mean, fair enough—but you didn’t trust Winander at all until he saved you?”
Torver shrugs. “Nope!”
And why should he have? He doesn’t understand how Bassen is growing irritated when he is the one she didn’t trust to resolve the situation. The fact that she was right about that just makes it burn all the more.
“That’s stupid, though!” Bassen exhales.
Torver recoils at her tone, her choice of words. She’s as stressed about nearly being caught as he is, but why is she taking that out on him? It’s not like he’s left a trail of carcasses for the Enforcers to follow…
Bassen crosses her arms in front of her, something passing between them that Torver can’t quiet.
“You can’t be suspicious of everyone,” she grumbles. “You won’t even try and make friends outside of me, you’ve never had a girlfriend or boyfriend. You distrust everyone except the one person you should… You’re unbelievable.”
Torver’s breath catches, and he freezes half way through putting the waterskin back into the wagon. His spine tingles like hackles are rising.
“What do you mean?” he says, turning his head. “Who is the one person I shouldn’t trust?”
Bassen’s enthusiasm wanes suddenly. She unfolds her arms.
“I…” She blinks heavily. “I didn’t mean anything by it—it just came out.”
Torver shakes his head. “Don’t do that, Bass. What did you mean?”
He asks because he knows exactly what she means. He wants to see if she’ll say it. This has been simmering between them for years. How quickly this has gotten away from him.
“Well…” She looks around uncomfortably. “Your mother.”
Torver’s teeth feel too big for his mouth; he grits them, his jaw jutting forward. “What the fuck do you think—”
“Torver,” she cuts him off, his own name in that tone of voice that makes him listen, that small control she’s always had over him.
“You—you can’t be in denial about it forever!
She kept you from the schoolhouse when your magic didn’t grow in, you weren’t allowed friends, and the second you grew old enough, she turfed you out of the house!
To wander the fells like a lost lamb! You nearly died. ”
“Because she loves me, Bassen! She was protecting me! She loves me and she didn’t want Enforcers to find out that I’m broken! She just—”
“She never loved you, Torver! A loving mother would never do that!”
Bassen almost shouts the words to be heard over him and they fill him with an anger like he’s never felt. It’s molten in his chest, his throat, behind his eyes.
“She’s my mother!”
He yowls the words into her pale, blinking face.
How can Bassen say those things to him? About the woman who birthed him, fed him from her body, gave him his name?
“I don’t have a father! No brothers, no sisters, no friends—only you and her,” he hollers. “She loves me! She misses me! And I’m going to get the right papers and I’m going to go back to the Mere and you’ll see. You’ll see!”
The air is still when Torver’s shouts cease. The volume of his voice made stark by its sudden absence, the small chasms between ruined walls and pillars aching with it.
Bassen’s strained face wavers in front of him as if floating beneath the surface of a tarn. Only when she heaves a sigh and looks away does he realise that he’s looking at her through a swell of tears.
“I just…” she says softly. “I just don’t want to see you hurt, Torver. You deserve people who love you. Who you can trust. Who won’t send you away when you’re inconvenient. Because I know how that feels.”
Trying to swallow down his angry tears, Torver fishes his string loop from the depths of his pocket.
The piece of twine he had been holding when his mother had found him in the barn, among the herdwicks, when she handed him a pack and told him he had to leave.
He puts it back on his finger. Twists it over his skin, winces at the familiar, comforting burn.
“You know how it feels?” he grunts, wiping his face with his sleeve.
“Yes,” she replies. “Because what do you think happened to me when my magic grew in?”
Torver opens his mouth, but all that exits is air.
“You said…” He blinks heavily. “You said you left by choice.”
Bassen pierces him with a bitter expression. “Well, I lied!” she snaps. “I’ve been fending for myself as long as you have, Torv. But I don’t use it as an excuse to hurt myself.”
And before Torver can say anything—before he can even think anything coherent—Bassen turns and marches away. Her long, black dress flutters behind her as she goes back to Winander, whose distant form is approaching at an easy walk. Back to the warm arms of her soulmate.
And Torver has never felt more guilty in his life.