Chapter 20
Torver loves being drunk.
He loves the feeling, how it softens the edges of the world. How the aching pit inside him seems to fill with it, so that he begins to hazily suspect that he might be normal after all.
So he gets drink after drink—nettle whiskeys and local ales, fruit wines and acorn liquor. He buys them for Lavellin, and Lavellin is bought drinks by apple-cheeked men allured by its glamour. It shares the spoils with him, their fingers brushing when it pours the precious concoctions into his cup.
The bard is the best Torver’s ever heard and he dances in and out of the crowd, spinning Lavellin in a twirl, its raven hair splaying out like wings.
He goes and bothers Bassen and Winander, the three of them all singing along with the sanctioned songs they know the words to, raising their drinks in the air to listen to the songs they’ve never heard before.
Lavellin can’t sing, but it bounces and dances to the best of its ability, its forehead dewy with sweat and concentration.
Emlin has the crowd in raptures, flitting about the stage with the effortless showmanship that only a generational bard can possess.
His voice fills the room, the pure notes and the undulating riffs reaching the back of the tavern with such richness that Torver thinks he must be airmancing his voice.
His songs are the history of the People’s Kingdom—a jaunty song about King Dunmail and his rule, blue and bawdy tales of ancient lovers, raucous jigs about the fae.
How they are soulless, cruel, and full of tricks—never to be trusted and always defeated in the end by great heroes.
It’s clear why the tavern would risk hosting an evening of non-sanctioned entertainment—the drinks alone bring in more yan than Torver has ever seen exchange hands inside a tavern.
And as the evening passes with the ferocity and energy of the lightning storm still raging outside, the crowd grows only more jubilant.
Until, eventually, Emlin croons that he’s going to, “Bring it down a peg.”
He strums a minor chord and the throng stills.
As does Torver, the familiar notes stirring his chest. The drinks have hit him hard and he’s swaying. He leans into Lavellin, staying upright with a hand on its waist. His lips brush its ear when he tells it, “I love this song.”
It smiles, showing the blunted points of its glamoured teeth, and Emlin begins the song that Torver had heard so long ago—the lament for the changeling children of the north.
The ones stolen by the evil fae, searched for by weeping mothers frantic with loss, then found again.
Empty-eyed and trembling. Forever changed, unable to speak of what happened to them, but welcomed home all the same.
The notes swell in the air and the crowd sways together, letting out occasional whoops and cries as Emlin belts out the melancholy lyrics.
Torver finds himself with his drunken head lent against Lavellin’s shoulder.
Its sharp collar bones and the muscles of its shoulder, even through the glamour, dig into his cheeks, but he doesn’t care.
Just lifts his cup to his lips over and over, listening, forgetting.
Growing warm in his belly. He looks up at Lavellin and it looks down at him; he feels its breath on his lips.
He sways when he rights himself as Emlin ends his song. Torver claps and cheers and whistles with the rest of the audience. They beg for one more song as Emlin threatens that he’s done for the night, that his singing must end at some point.
“One more song! One more song!” The chant builds through the crowd until Emlin, grinning through his painted ruby lips, shouts back.
“One more song then, my friends!”
The tavern erupts in cheers.
Emlin laughs raucously, tuning his lute to a new key, and strums out a few testing notes.
“Now,” he declares to the crowd, his airmancy amplifying the sound so that right at the back, where Torver and Lavellin stand drunkenly swaying, it sounds as if Emlin is beside them.
“This next one is especially unsanctioned. My great-great-great-great grandfather, Aneirin—I don’t think you’ll have heard of him—”
Inebriated laughter resounds around the stone walls, between the glowing sconces where torches flicker.
“—he wrote this one about the Beast. Our very own Beast below. So make sure you tell no one of what you heard here tonight—obedience keeps it asleep, don’t you know?”
The song that Emlin launches into is upbeat and boisterous. The crowd claps along, hollering with delight.
And Torver does too—at first. Until the song begins to fill him with dread.
Emlin sings of the gods-sent dragon of centuries ago.
How it manced air to fly on enormous, scaly wings, how it wielded fire from its own lungs to burn whole villages alive, to boil tarns until their every drop became steam, how its claws were coated in a sickly poison so that every place it trod became barren dust. The creature who could be slain by neither sword nor arrow.
Who killed half the kingdom in its fury—until King Dunmail.
King Dunmail, the wisest and most selfless of all, the most powerful man alive.
He fought with it in a tarnside mountain pass alongside his men, who wanted him to step back, who wanted to protect their king.
But Dunmail took the gold and ruby crown from his head and threw it into the tarn, declaring he was no longer a king, but a man no worthier than they.
Using every drop of the unfettered magic within him, Dunmail attempted to kill the dragon. But he couldn’t.
They all know this part of the tale, but the crowd gasps when Emlin’s voice hits a bittersweet note, elongating it like the mournful howl of a wolf.
He sings of how Dunmail’s magic could only subdue the Beast to sleep, how the result was the very first magic consequence.
In exchange for overpowering the Beast, the magic demanded Dunmail’s life.
And since then—the people of Dunmail’s old kingdom have faced consequences.
Their magic no longer unbound, but in a delicate balance of give and take.
It may be the drink, but Torver feels hot and hollow when Emlin’s song ends. The crowd throws coins onto the stage, cheering and hollering for the legendary bard, but Torver only feels sick.
It feels real—really, horribly real. That Beast in the song, that dragon from his dreams, that creature under the cairn…that’s what they’re heading towards. What they’re going to kill. If Bassen even can kill such a creature.
The tavern spins in front of him, and he stumbles sideways into Lavellin, who catches him in firm hands.
He forgets for a second who it is, sees only a beautiful raven-haired woman who brushes the curls from his unfocused eyes.
He wants to kiss her, wants to grab handfuls of her body, wants her to let him.
He blinks hard, remembering who she really is. He nearly trips again.
“Maybe you were right,” Torver shouts over the crowd, slurring his words as he does so. “When you said we were too blasé about this.”
It can’t reply, only looks at him steadily with a quirk of its eyebrow.
“In the boat, all that time ago! Do you remember? Remember how we stole that boat? I can’t believe we stole that boat…”
He tries to lead Lavellin to the bar to buy yet another drink but it pulls him back with a hand fisted in his shirt.
It presses him gently to the wall and keeps him there.
His head lolls back and smacks into the brick, but the pain is muted by drink and he barely feels it.
It leans over him, one hand against the wall, a mirror of how he had stood earlier.
“Do you remember that?” He rolls his head against the cold stone, enjoying the sensation of it scratching the back of his scalp. “Eskam. The day after you told me about your scars.”
He drags two fingers down either side of his chin, mirroring where the parallel lines of silver mark Lavellin’s perfect face.
“You said it hadn’t sunk in that we were facing a dragon.” Whiskey strong on his breath, he pulls Lavellin close to him, a hand around its waist. A soft gasp leaves it that Torver can’t hear over the thrum of the tavern, but he feels it soft against his cheek. “You were right.”
He rests his forehead against its shoulder.
“I’m scared,” he mutters.
It seems unsure of what to do; he feels its body tense. It decides after a moment to place its hand on his waist, where it rubs soothing circles with a soft thumb.
Eventually, the crowds thin. People leave to fetch wagons from the stables, or they head to rented rooms above the tavern. The candles burn low, the sconces drip wax in tallowy stalagmites on the wooden floor.
Bassen and Winander find them, each with a beer in hand. Bassen hangs from Winander’s arm, barely able to pull her eyes away from the man.
“Torver!” Bassen clatters over, her voice hoarse like she’s been shouting and singing. “This was the best night of my life!” she cheers, then leans in close and whispers to him, louder than he thinks she realises, “No one recognised me at all! I’ve never felt so normal!”
She practically bounces up and down and Torver is pleased for her in his fluttering chest. She’s spinning slightly in front of his eyes.
In fact, the whole room is.
“I reckon it’s safe to stay here for the night,” Winander drawls merrily. “There’s no Enforcers around and Bassen’s right—no one knows her here. We should go and pay for rooms before they all get taken.”
Torver launches forward, throwing his arms around Winander’s shoulder. “You’re soooooo right, Winander,” he gurgles. “You know, I’ve always trusted you. A good man, this one!” he congratulates Bassen, who rolls her eyes.
Winander politely extricates himself, laughing slightly. “I suspect you might want a tankard or two of water, young man,” he advises. “Unless you want to feel like someone tried to crack your head like a nut tomorrow morning.”