Chapter Nineteen Hit Me as Hard as You Can, Second Encore #3
We slipped back to the castle together, light-footed as sprites in a glen. When we reached my room, Maude and the gargoyle were there, waiting. “Pith,” Maude said, taking in our wet, flushed faces. “What have you two been up to?”
“Training,” Rory said.
“Nothing,” I blurted at the same time.
Maude and the gargoyle shared a glance, she expectant, he practically brimming with delight—
A knock sounded upon the door.
All four of us froze.
“Avice?” Maude whispered.
“The Ardent Oarsman?” asked the gargoyle.
“If it’s Hamelin,” Rory hissed, “I’m ripping his intestines out.”
Another knock sounded, followed by a thin, sheepish voice. “Six?”
It was Benji.
Rory tensed, his expression darkened by the same heinous loathing it had worn when he’d first seen my wound.
Again, Benji knocked. “I know you don’t sleep. Let me in, Six. There’s something I’d like to discuss.”
“See what he wants,” Maude whispered.
Rory’s grip on me tightened. “No.”
The king knocked twice more, the door handle groaning as it turned.
“Give me a moment, Benji,” I shouted over Rory’s shoulder. “All of you—shut up and get beneath the bed.”
They piled on the floor, Maude stern, Rory seething, and the gargoyle still delighted. When I moved to the door and looked back, the only remaining sign of them was a shadow in the dim, unfriendly room.
I yanked the door open.
Benji looked into my eyes and jumped. He was at the threshold, wearing a plain sleep tunic and no crown.
He smelled of wine but carried none; the only thing in his hand was the Artful Brigand’s coin.
He held it long enough that I should see, then put it snugly in the pocket of his tunic, as if to show me he could have used it to go through my door had he wished to—and had exercised gallant restraint in not doing so.
“What?” I snapped.
“May I come in?” The king put his weight on his left foot, then his right. “It will only take a moment.”
I pushed the door open.
Benji entered, his gaze lifting to my hair, then dropping down to my chemise as he stepped into the room. “You’re breathing hard.” His eyes narrowed. “Why are you wet, Six?”
The door slammed. “I stuck my head out the window. Thought about jumping. Wondered if the fall would kill me.”
It didn’t seem to bother Benji that there were no torches, no candles lit in the room.
Perhaps this was the environment he associated me with—dark and locked.
“I think about that every time I go to a tall, looming place,” he murmured.
There was a creaky wooden chair near the bed.
He sat upon it. “The Cliffs of Bellidine, the top of the stairs at Castle Luricht or Petula Hall—” He swallowed.
“The tor. I always wonder, ‘If I fall, would it kill me?’ I think it so fervently I begin to suspect I actually want to fall, that I might finally answer the question.”
I watched him, jaw tight. “What did you want to discuss, Benji?”
He sighed. “The tournament.”
I stood before him, looming like I was the tall place that might kill him should he fall. “What about it?”
“The knave has won his event, and so has Maude. Whatever her game, whatever her intent to undermine me…” He shuddered, shaking off a ghost. “Neither of them will compete again.” He looked up.
“The feats of strength are without a doubt better suited to you than the joust or the melee—but you will not be competing, Six.”
“Oh, but I will, boy-king.”
He rolled his eyes. “Trust that I would enjoy seeing Hamelin outdone, he’s gotten so bloody peeving.
And of course folk have come to see you—paid for the privilege to win a Divination or vie against you.
But you can’t compete. You’re injured, pained, turning into stone.
Even if you weren’t, I cannot risk spending another noble’s gold on my tournament only to lose it.
The winnings will go to Hamelin, then back to his mother, and I shall keep her support. ”
When I said nothing, his voice thinned, a thread of his confidence pulled away.
“Don’t be obtuse. You’re the creature who drowns—a martyr.
Your job is to show Traum there is sacrality in service and sacrifice.
Of course I cannot make a champion of you.
Your power comes from the fact that you give it away. ”
Tory Bassett’s words echoed. The cathedral fell. It will join Der ewige Mond in the annals of time as another looming creature whose power, whose lore, was made all the more fantastic for being conquered.
“You never intended to let me compete, did you?” My throat clogged. “Was it you who told Dedrick to come to my room the night before the melee?”
There was a creak beneath the bed. Benji turned. Saw nothing. “You got your revenge,” he said. “I know it was you who destroyed the inkwell, Six.” He went suddenly still. “Pith. Was it you who broke the loom stone?”
I said nothing.
“It was, wasn’t it?” He made a noise between a laugh and a cough. “You really do hate me, don’t you, Six? And here I am, bending over backward to keep you out of harm’s way. Oh, don’t make that face, you ungrateful bit—”
He caught himself. Hauled in a breath. “Just because folk will pay to challenge you in the arena does not mean I would let them hurt you. You may be a martyr. A conniving, hateful woman, too.” His voice quieted. “But I still want to keep you safe.”
My voice was coated in vitriol. “If you never wished for me to join the tournament, why let me think I could?”
“I don’t know.” He shuffled his feet. “It seemed good for you, having something to believe in again.”
I went to the door. Opened it. “Tell Tory to bring my armor, will you? I’m well enough to wear it.”
The king’s gaze narrowed. It fell to my abdomen, and the signs were plain enough: I was more fortified than I’d been since the wedding. My back was straight, my stance squared, my fists locked. I could still taste the spring water in Rory’s blood on my tongue.
“You do seem stronger,” the king said warily. “But there will be no need to wield that strength—you certainly won’t need your armor. I’ve spoken with Avice, and we’ve agreed. To break, throw, and haul stones is not an enticing enough spectacle. The feats of strength have been changed.”
He gripped the Artful Brigand’s coin harder and gave me a pointed look. “There will be the breaking of stones, the lifting of stones, and a race across the basin. A swimming race.”
Then, ignoring the open door, he threw his coin, flickered through the wall, and was gone.
I stood in a hollow silence, unmoving and unblinking. Slowly, Maude and Rory and the gargoyle lifted themselves from beneath the bed, their faces marked with the same unwashed dread I felt in my body.
“I can still do it.” I slammed the door, my voice threadbare. “How hard can it be to swim, really?”
“You drowned in this basin six weeks ago.” Maude crossed her arms over her chest. “Had lots of free time to practice your stroke since then?”
“Fuck that,” Rory snapped. “She’s never drowning again. I’ll do it. I’m a good swimmer—”
“You can’t compete.” Maude blew out a hot breath.
“The king has lost the joust, the melee, the loom stone, the inkwell—and Regius Ormsby’s and Otto Lange’s fortunes along with them.
His list of allies is thin. So far, everything we’ve wanted has come to fruition.
” She ran her fingers through her hair, making it stand up.
“What’s a single loss? Folk of the Peaks can celebrate Hamelin Fischer, Avice will take the winnings, and the oar will remain a little longer. It will not be the end of the world.”
“Perhaps it will.”
We all turned and faced the gargoyle. “Did you know,” he said, his voice easy and conversational, “that gargoyles are long thought to be sprites? An old kind—the only one thought to be domesticated?”
“Yeah,” Rory said plainly. “We all knew—”
“And did you also know,” the gargoyle carried on, “that, while the body prefers its traditions, to be made of stone is a very peculiar thing?”
“You’ve demonstrated that fairly clearly,” Maude deadpanned.
I leaned in. “What are you getting at, Bartholomew?”
“Only that, in a place like the Fervent Peaks, where strength is the greatest marker of merit and cruelty against sprites made commonplace, wouldn’t it be a curious thing if a creature like me defeated these oarsmen at their own crafts?”
Rory and Maude and I shared a glance.
“For what is the end of the world, really, if not a total disrespect for life? A single loss may be nothing to you or me, but to the hungry or small or childlike, it may cost everything. And I, who saw many losses upon the tor, have decided not to concede even once more to the perpetuators of grievous harm.” Oh no.
He was trilling his fingers again. “Yes, I will compete. I think I will greatly enjoy flexing my feet of strength over these witless sprite-killing trawlers.”
He came up to Rory. Took the hammer out of his hand and weighed it in his own. “Once, a very long time ago, I used a tool like this. And while the mind so often forgets, the body…”
We waited for him to finish. “The body what, Bartholomew?” I asked.
“Hmm? Oh.” He waved the hammer in my face. “The body is good for smashing things.”
Maude and Rory shared another glance, their faces less clouded than before, but I was shaking my head. “No. Absolutely not. Your cracks will deepen. The effort will hurt you.”
He shrugged, swatting away my complaints like he was shooing away a fly. “It is the duty of a squire,” he said, “to stand in when needed. And I will always be your squire, Bartholomew.” He looked up into my face. “I will shoulder any weight you give me.”
I felt my heart fissure. “But you were a Diviner, too. You were never taught to swim.”
“That is true. I do not know how to swim. But since I am hewn entirely of stone… well.” He grinned. “I suppose I don’t know how to breathe either, do I?”