Chapter 36
The walk to camp was long. Though Richard carried Pip, and Kaelen carried the other two boys, Jeya refused to let herself be piggybacked. Her shackles caught on brambles and almost tripped her more than once, so the whole party had to slow their pace to match.
Richard did not mind. Indeed, it was the perfect way to corner Flint.
“And the card itself, then, is merely the conduit? Or is it the actual tether by which the Tower is held in our physical world? Because it seemed to return to the card, did it not, as though the card were its house. But surely the card is far too small to contain a creature of such greatness?”
Pip slept against his shoulder, drooling into Richard’s collar. Richard scarcely noticed the weight, trying to keep close to Flint’s elbow.
“I only wish to understand—does each card hold a single entity? Is it only the one Tower, or can you summon others—”
“For fuck’s sake.” Flint sidestepped a root, and Richard sidestepped with him.
“I’d never have placed you as a yapper. Those are my secrets.
The Arcana are not summoned from their world so easily.
Every card, every summoning, demands a cost. The Tower’s one of the gentler ones, as it happens.
It likes me well enough. Others—” He grimaced. “Others do not.”
“A cost.” Richard breathed. “What manner of cost? Blood? Years? Is that why you looked so weary when you—”
“Handsome,” Flint gritted out. “I’d thank you to stay out of—”
“And another world, you say? Truly another? Flint, that is extraordinary. Has it a name? Have you been there? Are there—”
Flint stopped walking and groaned. “Personal space, handsome!” He stuck a finger into the middle of Richard’s collarbones. “You’re invading it.”
Richard blinked over Pip’s hair. His lower lip jutted out. “But I simply must know. You summoned a being from another world and stomped a Baba Yaga into the dirt. Be reasonable, Flint. A man cannot be expected to walk quietly through a wood after such a thing.”
“You might well try, you ballsack,” Flint snapped.
Richard gave him an aghast look and cupped Pip’s ear.
“Oh, fuck off.” Flint rolled his eyes. “‘Ballsack’ isn’t going to corrupt their precious little ears.”
He turned past a boulder and quickened his pace. Richard resumed his pursuit. Dimly, he was aware of Kaelen plodding along behind, speaking to Jeya.
“At least tell me,” Richard called to Flint’s back, “does the Tower have to come when summoned, or is it more akin to an invitation? For a being like that must have agency, and—”
Flint groaned again. He made to turn left, and when Richard followed, spun right and ran. In a blink, the trees had swallowed him whole.
* * *
It was dusk by the time they reached camp.
The troupe descended on the children with predictable theatricality.
Talia crushed a mortified-looking Jeya to her chest. The triplets were swept up in much the same fashion by an assortment of performers, including Tilda and Wren, who sobbed into the boys’ shoulders.
In a matter of minutes, the boys were freed of their shackles by heavy-cutters, scrubbed about the face, and fed honey-cakes from the cook’s private store.
Daisy joined them, legs swinging as she munched on a sugared plum.
Richard stood at the edge of it all, brushing aside Master Clemens’ thanks and accepting the first bowl of dinner. He scanned the crowd for Flint and asked Svetra when he failed to find him. She had laughed.
“Probably drinking milk with Keith if you know what I mean.”
It took Richard a moment to parse the meaning of her wink, and another moment to try to mask his disgust.
“Best leave him to it.” Svetra laughed again. “He’ll be along in his own time.”
With a roll of his eyes, Richard sat on a log with his bowl. Nearby, Master Clemens was discussing travel plans with a few labourers—”We reach Vexmara tomorrow evening instead of morn. Makes no odds. We’re not booked to perform till two nights after, and the city won’t go anywhere in the meantime—”
Ravenous, Richard tuned him out to focus on the chicken soup. It was only once he finished that he realised.
Kaelen had not spoken a word to him.
The thought was accompanied by unease. Kaelen had spent the entire return journey in discussion with Jeya—about her sword, her dead mother, and her stances she’d memorised from watching tourneys.
Then, on reaching camp, he’d passed Richard his lost sword—retrieved from the cottage’s wreckage—and rushed off to check on the horses.
Richard’s eyes narrowed as Kaelen emerged from where the horses had been tethered. The knight ignored calls from some performers to join them for dinner, and instead strode towards Flint’s wagon.
Richard followed. He ducked through the wagon’s flap, letting it fall behind him. Inside, Kaelen was laying out the bedrolls, the lantern’s glow highlighting the stiff line of his shoulders.
“There you are,” Richard said. “I was beginning to think you had been eaten by the horses.”
Kaelen grunted, but did not turn.
Richard crossed to where their packs were bundled in the wagon’s centre. He bent over them, pretending to search for something.
“What a day,” he tried again. “Was it not extraordinary, Kaelen, what Flint did at the end? A summoned entity from another world, drawn through a tarot card. Never have I read anything of the like.”
“Hmm.”
Richard glanced at the bedrolls. Kaelen was plumping the pillows with his back turned.
“Kaelen.” Richard hesitated. “I have found you a squire.”
Kaelen’s back stilled. He looked over his shoulder, brows knitted. “What?”
“Jeya.” Richard gave a tentative smile. “The girl has talent. She executed a perfect Shortman’s Cleave against Yelka with that wooden sword of hers. And she is brave, ready to defend.” He spread his hands. “She needs a teacher. The arm matters not. You can train her to compensate.”
“No.” Kaelen kneaded the pillow with his fist. “I do not take squires.”
“Come now, Kaelen. Is it not in the knights’ rulebook to train a squire? After all, what use is a man who does not teach the future?”
Kaelen dropped the pillow and straightened to his full height. The tendons in his neck were corded tight.
“Then, pray tell me. What use is a knight who cannot protect?”
Richard frowned. “Do not be silly—”
“From the very start,” Kaelen continued, voice rising, fists clenching by his sides.
“From Caerwyn, then the Nightbourne Realm, then the witches, and Galdran—that damned monster! Not once have I been able to keep you safe! And today—today, I stood with a sword in my hand and a cottage bearing down on me, and I could do nothing but pray my death might buy you a small reprieve to escape.” His throat bobbed.
“And you wish to give me a squire? To ask a one-armed girl already beaten down by this world to look up at me as her exemplar? Why?” He sneered.
“I have nothing to teach her that is worth learning.”
Something about the defeated way Kaelen’s arms hung wrenched at Richard’s heart. He stepped closer and gentled his voice.
“You are being much too hard on yourself.” Richard raised his hand towards Kaelen’s shoulder. “What happened today was not your fault—”
“No.”
Richard blinked at the sudden glare that greeted him. His hand froze in the air between them.
“No,” Kaelen repeated. “The fault was yours.”
Richard let his hand drop. “I only released the children to play at the spring because—”
“I do not mean the spring,” Kaelen snapped.
“I talk about you running off after the crone alone! I talk about you not waiting even a single moment for me to follow! I talk about you ignoring the fact that I was thirty paces away, near enough for you to shout my name, but you decided that you’d rather charge unaided to face a creature whose powers you knew nothing of! ”
Richard gaped, then spluttered. “The trail was warm—”
“Do not make petty excuses!” Kaelen advanced a step, eyes flinty. “Can you even imagine—just try to imagine—what would have happened if you had been killed? If you had been killed on my watch? Have you any idea what I would have had to carry back home?”
“I had it handled—”
“You were tied to a chair, Richard!” Kaelen’s bellow resounded through the wagon, no doubt loud enough for the whole camp to hear. “You were reckless! You were a fool! You dove headlong into danger instead of waiting for me!” His fist thudded against his heart.
Richard bit his tongue to stop his retort, having shrunk back at each yell. He felt sick, though whether it was from the broth or from the furious twist to Kaelen’s mouth, he did not know.
“I understand.” Richard held out his palms. “I am sorry. I should have waited.” He was relieved to see Kaelen’s shoulders sag, fury ebbing from his eyes. “At least Flint was there.”
“Flint.” Kaelen raked a hand through his hair. The motion cast a shadow over his face. “Oh, Flint. Of course. Your new fascination.”
Richard squinted. What was that supposed to mean? “Flint is a friend—”
“A friend?” Kaelen’s laugh was bitter. “Like Druid Orric was a friend?”
Richard stared. “What?”
Kaelen rubbed a hand across his mouth, looking much like a man trying to suppress his words. But on meeting Richard’s frown, his glower intensified, and the words came tumbling out regardless.
“You do this with people you find interesting.” Kaelen’s lower lip trembled.
“You circle them and ask your questions, and you stand too close, and you listen as though they are the only voice in the room. Until I overheard your goodbye with Druid Orric in the courtyard, I’d been convinced you intended to marry him even. ”
“Kaelen, that is ridiculous,” Richard scoffed. How in all the gods had the conversation steered into this strangeness? What was Kaelen saying? Why the note of accusation? “Orric was a friend. I had much to consult him on, and in any case, he has a mate—a bear-shifter by the name of Dareth.”
He expected Kaelen to look surprised—perhaps even apologise—but Kaelen just folded his arms and snorted.
“That was not how you were behaving around him.”
The surliness in his tone shredded the last remnants of Richard’s patience. He stalked up to Kaelen and shoved the man’s shoulder.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Richard hissed. “I have told you this before. I do not feel desire. I have never felt desire. For any person—”
“For any ordinary person,” Kaelen shot back, his chin jutting up. “Clearly, those with great magic manage to stir you yet.”
For a heartbeat, Richard could not hear anything but a high-pitched ringing in his ears. Whatever expression had taken hold of his face was enough to soften Kaelen’s eyes.
“Wait.” Kaelen tugged at his hair agitatedly. “That—that came out poorly—I did not mean—”
“Did you not?”
“No, I did not.” Kaelen’s cheeks coloured.
“I only meant—well, Orric was hardly plain. A druid who could walk between forms as easily as a man changes his coat. And now Flint, who pulls forty feet of iron through a card. And the soldiers talk sometimes about how it is a different fancy altogether to lie with a magical sort, and I could not help but wonder if—”
“If I had lied to you about not lusting for men or women?” Richard was surprised that his voice came out so level when every inch of him quivered. “If I therefore harbour some appetite for people who are more magic than people?”
“No!” Kaelen blanched. “You are putting words in my mouth.”
“Then speak plainly.”
“I—” Kaelen pressed the heel of his hand against his eye.
“You flirted with Druid Orric. You took dinners with him, stood too closely, allowed him to place a flower in your ear, fussed over your appearance, and you stared at him with such affection that my mind wandered and wondered as to perhaps it is not that you feel no desire, but that the rest of us are simply too small for you to notice. That there was perhaps a shape to your wanting, and what stirs you is power, the uncommon and the marvellous. And it dawned upon me that I am none—”
“I was not flirting,” Richard said stiffly.
His chest felt tight, and bizarrely, his throat too.
“I was speaking with a man who appeared to have walked out of my storybooks. I was asking him questions because he had answers I yearned for. I was attempting—” He paused and waited for his throat to relax before continuing.
“I was attempting to make a friend, I suppose. I do not have many, you see. I have Princess Seola, and the list rather ends there, and I had thought perhaps Orric and Flint might be added to it.” A smile crooked his lips.
“I am sorry my behaviour struck you as so suspicious that you felt the need to discern my true appetite, hidden even from myself. I must look foolish from where you stand. How little you must think of me.”
“Richard.” Kaelen’s face crumpled. “My king. By the gods, I think the world of you. You are everything—”
But Richard had had enough. Enough of the conversation, of the churning of his stomach, and enough of this foolish, brash knight who welled within him such startling and tiring feelings.
Richard turned on his heel, stalked across the wagon and ducked out of the flap.
He drew in a slow breath as the night’s chill greeted him.
Around him, the camp was settling to sleep.
Passing the lyre player who was singing a doleful tune, Richard sat by the campfire and tugged on the grass, waiting for his hands to stop trembling.