Chapter 33 #2
“Come now, there’s no shame in it.” He tilted his head and spread his hands. “If you’re curious about anything—nervous, even—you have only to ask. I’m a generous teacher. No fee for friends.”
“I am aware of the mechanics.” Richard yanked the lacings tight. “I simply do not want to—”
His jaw snapped shut around what had nearly slipped out, and he headed immediately to his bedroll, busying himself with the blanket. Let it lie, let it lie, let it lie—
“Don’t want to?” Flint repeated. “What does that mean? Don’t want to with men? Women? Anyone?”
Richard heaved a sigh and slumped against the wagon wall, drawing his knees up. The wood was hard through his tunic.
“With anyone,” Richard said. “I have never felt it. The wanting. I do not look at a man or a woman and feel any urge to—to take them to bed. The very notion of the act is unpleasant to me. Always has been.”
Flint’s jaw dropped. “That’s the most tragic thing I’ve ever heard in my wretched life.”
Richard snorted. “I am well aware of my strangeness. You need not labour the point.”
“No, handsome.” Flint waved a dismissive hand.
“There are men who’ll not lie with men and women who’ll not lie with women, and there are some who’ll bed only one beloved their whole lives and call the rest of us mad for our excess.
Appetites vary.” He squinted as if Richard were a card he could not place in any suit.
“But to have no appetite at all—that I’ll grant you is rare.
I’ve not met its like before.” Flint chewed the inside of his cheek.
“Tell me, though. Have you simply never tried? A man does not know he dislikes strawberries until he’s swallowed one.
Perhaps the wanting comes after. Perhaps it needs to be coaxed loose by a clever mouth and a patient hand. ”
“I just know, Flint.”
“How?”
“I—” Richard scratched at the skin around his thumb. “I do not have the words for it. I know the same way you know your own hunger. I have never looked at another body and wished to touch it, or be inside it. I have never wished another body inside mine. That is all there is to it.”
Flint drew a card from the deck, made a face, and slid it back. “And alone? Do you tend to yourself? The hand-and-fist of a quiet evening?”
Richard grimaced. “That is hardly—”
“Humour me, handsome.”
“Well. Yes,” Richard admitted. “On occasion. Not—not to the thought of anyone. Merely because it feels well.”
And that had been a confusing discovery of his teenage years. To have learned such pleasure and yet not want another to inflict it on him. How could his body be defective in one manner and yet not in the other?
“There it is, then. You like the feeling. Why should you mind a handsomer or softer hand than your own about you, if the feeling is the thing?”
“No.” Richard’s skin crawled at the thought. “The pleasure of my own hand is sufficient. It is private. It does not require another.”
Flint had never looked so bemused. “This is a confusing little riddle, you are.” He grinned. “I mean, a man with that face and those shoulders, never bedded in all his years? It is a miracle of the Seven Realms. The bards ought to be told. Songs ought to be composed.”
Richard chuckled, despite the pang of resentment at his own strange nature. His gaze snagged on the burn that warped the left side of Flint’s face—the slitted eye, the puckered ridge along the cheekbone. Curiosity welled.
“And the scar?” he said quietly. “Since you are so eager to plumb my private histories. How came you by it?”
Flint’s grin thinned. “Ah. Well. That is a longer tale.”
“You need not tell it.”
“No, no. Fair’s fair, handsome. You’ve given me a riddle, I’ll give you a story.
” Flint shrugged. “The master of my orphanage was a fire mage, and a clever one. Knew how to keep a houseful of starving children in line with no more than a glance and a curl of smoke from his fingertips. He had a trade going. Threadbourne children fetched a fine price with the right sort of noble. Any child who revealed their magic—well, Master Aldwin’d write his letters and wait for the buyers to arrive.
He sold them as slaves to rich folk who fancied a pet with a parlour trick.
” Flint’s lip curled. “And to keep the rest of us obedient but looking sweet for the charity visits, he fed us only enough that our cheeks did not hollow.”
“By the gods,” Richard murmured.
“Lyell and I kept our magic hidden,” Flint said. “For years, we did well. But then, when we were nought more than twelve, the Crown Prince came to visit—your bloody namesake.”
Richard sat straighter. The blanket slid from his knees.
“I was laid in bed with a fever.” Flint continued.
“Edith, too. Two of us tucked into the same cot, hacking and miserable, while Lyell, along with the rest, got scrubbed pink and lined up in the yard. Master Aldwin had them up since dawn, polishing the front step. The Crown Prince was making a tour of the orphanages on his sixteenth birthday, you understand. Bringing baskets of presents. A great honour, Master Aldwin kept saying. A great honour.”
Richard’s mouth went dry. He remembered that birthday—the long trek through the eastern border where orphanages tended to cluster. Aralynn had urged him to go and bless others, and he’d managed seven orphanages that day. He could not, for the life of him, recall which had been Flint’s.
“Lyell snuck back to us while the prince was greeting the other kids. Glowing, he was.” A fond smile tugged the bandit’s mouth, and his good eye crinkled.
“Said the Crown Prince was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen—raven-black hair, a stern mouth, like some hero from the picture books.
Lyell was halfway in love by the time the prince was ready to leave, and he could not bear it.
” Flint’s voice softened. “The prince had turned sixteen, you see. And what was a present from a starving orphan to a prince who had everything? Lyell decided he’d give him the only thing he had.
A bit of magic. As the prince walked to the carriage, Lyell cast his own spell for flowers to bloom under each footfall.
Bluebells, I think he said. They sprang up behind the prince’s boots.
A trail of them, all the way to the carriage. ”
The words took a moment to land. When they did, Richard’s stomach plummeted, a wave of nausea wrenching through him.
He remembered. By the gods, he remembered—the hush that had fallen over the yard, the gasps from the children, his own startled delight at the sudden carpet of blue.
He had laughed. He had laughed and turned to scan the crowd and spotted—
A skinny boy with mousy hair, eyes flickering pink.
“He was sharp, that prince,” Flint said. “Too sharp for his own good. For ours. His eyes went straight to Lyell. Laughed and called him out to thank the artist.”
“He meant kindness,” Richard said hoarsely.