Chapter 22 #2
The bedraggled group of my defenders walked gingerly to the nearest upright table and began eating and drinking as if they’d not just been violently assaulted.
Eydis, one of the courtiers who played games most often, pulled up a chair.
She wasn’t particularly pretty, but she was clean and unbruised so compared to her company, she seemed to glow with freshness.
She nodded in my direction. “Look at her, she cares not one bit the four of you are sore and broken.”
“She has no obligation to,” Fell said, taking a sip of mead and then—appallingly—he swished it around in his mouth and spit it back into the cup. “She did not choose to be here.” His eyes flicked to mine. Mirthful. Daring.
He is mad, I decided. He looked to be enjoying himself entirely, which made no sense at all because surely he was sore.
“I, for one, would prefer her cold heart to warm just a little for me,” Reedman said.
“My heart is not cold,” I said, hesitantly coming closer to the group.
“I have offered myself to you three times,” Reedman said. “I have counted. You have given no answer.”
Eydis snorted, spitting out some of her mead. “It has been so very sad to watch.”
“I keep thinking, ‘maybe she has not understood?’ and then here I am, battered, with not even a softening of your face to show for it.”
I hadn’t understood a single of Reedman’s offers.
From my perspective, we’d played music together many times.
That was it. But when I thought more on it, I could recall Dania telling me I needed to look at him less or more.
I’d been drunk when she said that, and I asked after her meaning, but she’d refused to elaborate.
Fell’s eyes were on me and that I did understand. He was enjoying the tale he was hearing, and I was wishing he would look away because I needed to breathe.
“I am learning Norsern slowly,” I said, trying to politely avoid addressing Reedman’s woes.
“Ha! Cold, heartless woman.”
“That is not… uh… fair,” I said. “I feel… sick, or no… that is not the word—bothered! I feel bothered by all your bruises.”
Hallbjern laughed. “Your face says you do not feel bothered in the least.”
“Quite honestly, the entire…” I knew the word for court. I knew it, but still, I couldn’t find it. “You all spend too much time discussing my face.”
“You make her nervous,” Ivar said to Fell as he walked around the table to examine Hallbjern’s bloody, swollen knuckles. “She speaks better when you are not around.”
I would rather have been mud than a person when he said that.
By good fortune, Eydis was still caught on an earlier part of the conversation, so the topic reverted. “What does he mean you did not choose to be here? I have heard nine tales of your arrival, but none about you being lost.”
“This man,” I pointed at Fell. “He mistook me for someone else. He was supposed to be rescuing someone. Instead he took me captive.”
Fell’s grin was a tidal wave. “It was a little more complicated than that.” And he began to tell our tale—the story of how we met, how I’d struck him with the vault’s sting, how lightning had come for both of us and, according to him, I’d saved him.
I interjected when I felt like his version was missing crucial information.
Every time I spoke, he laughed at what I said, and I grew more confused.
No one could be enjoying my company this much.
He looked at me far too often, and I kept telling myself to stop drinking and then ignored myself and poured more mead.
At the end of the story, Hallbjern slapped his thigh. “Ha! You will be lucky if she does not infuriate everyone on purpose in retribution for your error.”
Fell was still smiling. “I am lucky she has not struck me down already.”
So began a night of reckless fun. We played Two Cups and each time the egg came for one of my goblets, Fell caught it and paid my attacker back three times over.
When we played another game, and the winner of each round gave out two drinks, Fell would defer to me when it was his turn to dole: “Who should drink?” I spilled mead on him, and he didn’t mind in the least. I got drunk enough that twice I forgot what language I was speaking and told a full story in Islish.
Fell frowned and nodded along and commented as if he could understand me.
“No! What next? You did not…” until I realized my error.
When everyone was drunk enough to forget the pains of the brawl, we played a hiding game, which was my specialty.
I’d won every single time I played with the court as I was exceptional at finding places no one thought to look, so I never had to dash away and outrun my hunter.
I simply waited until the game was over in my superior hiding position.
But in our drunkenness, Fell and I hid together beneath a clothed table in one of King Arik’s sculpture rooms. It was a terrible hiding place.
Obvious in every way. The first place anyone would think to look immediately upon entering the room—and not far at all from our starting positions either.
But it was big enough for both of us—just barely.
Our knees were almost touching. I looked at him and he looked at me and it seemed impossible that being looked at could feel so good, but it kept happening, and I was too drunk to question the lightness of the feeling.
Broder was the one seeking people out to begin with.
(The rules of the game dictated that every found person must join in the hunt for the others, so eventually everyone would be looking for the one remaining hiding person, but to start, one person would be wandering around looking for anyone.) Broder’s drunken steps were shuffled and obvious as he sang, “I know there is someone hiding here. Come out now, or I will drag you out…”
I’m certain my expression said to Fell, we will be found any moment now. The room wasn’t large, and there were very few places a person could fit.
Fell’s eyes widened.
The corners of his mouth twitched in a way that let me know he knew something I didn’t.
And then the brazen fool shot out from our shared hiding place, and ran for the door, drawing Broder away. I heard Broder charge after him, cawing like a hawk, and the two of them colliding in the hall. And though Fell knew where I was, he didn’t reveal my place now that he was hunting as well.
I pulled my knees against my chest and tucked my chin in and felt warm and weightless and as soft as lamb’s wool. I felt protected and noticed and a hundred other naive, silly, girlish things.