Chapter 37
Richard woke at dawn to the dying embers of the campfire, a thick blanket draped over him.
Who’d put it there was obvious, and it only flared his irritation.
The thunder in his face must have been all too clear, for the troupe gave him a wide berth as the procession started its journey.
Thankfully, with Master Clemens bellowing that they’d better reach Vexmara before dusk, the pace was brisk, and the performers were too busy hitching wagons and clearing tents to start up a conversation.
The triplets paid no heed to Richard’s storm.
Two held his hands, while the other ambled cheerfully beside.
Daisy was with her parents—still shaken from yesterday’s events.
And Jeya trailed alongside the bear-keeper, swinging her sword endlessly, mimicking grand declarations of ‘You will die by my hand, witch.’ Richard let her be, though a part of him wished she’d come closer, if only to distract him from the man constantly in the periphery of his vision.
At the head of the procession, on the roof of the second wagon, Kaelen was bare-chested, tunic slung around his neck, and was hammering timber into place.
The way the morning light caught him through the trees was—Richard noted with a frown—terribly unfair.
The sweat on his shoulders gleamed. The long sweep of his back tapered to the narrow line of his waist, and each swing of the hammer highlighted the muscles of his arm and sides.
And most of the troupe would not stop staring.
“He could fix my roof any day,” Wren whispered to Tilda, merely an arm’s breadth away.
Tilda fanned herself. “Well, I have no roof and yet I should very much like him to fix it.”
They dissolved into giggles, which quickly stopped when they caught sight of Richard’s glower.
The hammer’s rhythm paused, and Kaelen’s head tilted, his gaze travelling past the line of wagons.
Richard stared down at his boots and did not lift his eyes until he heard the hammering resume.
“Clearly, those with great magic manage to stir you yet.”
How could Kaelen have said so? Kaelen, of all people. The man he’d bared his nature to in that underground spring. The man who’d responded with such gentle firmness, who’d said Richard was not broken, that the gods had crafted him special.
And now the same man uttered the same words as his father once did, ruminating that a special group of people was what attracted him so, that Richard did not himself understand his true appetite.
And then—
“You flirted with Druid Orric.”
Richard frowned at the road, tuning out Penn’s chatter about the pretty butterflies fluttering around.
Had he? He recalled the dinners, the conversations in the northern garden, the flower Orric had tucked behind his ear.
He recalled asking questions and leaning close to catch every word.
He recalled standing perhaps nearer than was needed, and feeling such awe and fluster for this new creature.
Was that flirting?
A memory surfaced, unbidden. He had been twenty, introduced to a library master of the same age—a prodigy by all accounts, Agnes had boasted, with elegant hands, meticulous organisation and a gift for narrating books.
Richard had sought him out for weeks, bending over his shoulder to watch him engrave books, bringing him pastries from the kitchens, joining numerous narration sessions to hear his favourite characters come to life, and questioning him thoroughly on his bookish opinions.
Until one afternoon, the man had laid down his quill and stammered, “Your Highness, this is improper. I am married with a child. I cannot give you what you seek.”
That had been a mortifying ordeal. Richard had avoided the library for two years after. Now, with the morning sun warming his hair and Pip’s sticky fingers clasped around his, he wondered if he’d been giving the wrong messages to all.
Had Orric believed Richard had been courting him? Did Flint, even? Did they all think he wanted to bed them when he only intended friendliness?
Heat crept up Richard’s neck. He could not say what was worse. That Kaelen had thought it of him, or that Kaelen might not have been entirely wrong about how it appeared.
Still. Kaelen should have known better.
Within the hour, the children had drifted from him. The triplets had gone to pester Tilda to lift them with her wind, and Jeya entered a wagon for a nap. Richard walked alone, hands behind his back.
A shoulder bumped his.
“All right, handsome?” Flint fell into step beside him, munching on an apple. “That’s a face on you. I’ve seen lighter brows on men marching to the gallows.”
“Leave me be, Flint,” Richard muttered.
“Mm.” Flint chewed. “Lover’s tiff, was it?
The whole camp heard our handsome friend bellowing last night.
Bit of a thin canvas, those wagons. Sound carries something dreadful.
Svetra has a wager going that you’ll let him back into your good graces by noon.
I told her she’s vastly underestimated my good friend’s stubbornness. ”
“If you have come to torment me, Flint, I would ask you to find more agreeable prey.”
Flint laughed and flicked the apple core into the hedgerow. “Suit yourself. I’d thought to enlighten you on a small subject concerning the realm of Painted Cards, but I shall save it for another audience then—”
“Wait.” Richard grabbed Flint’s shoulder. “The realm of Painted Cards? Is that what you call it?”
“Hmm?” Flint smirked sideways at him. “Interested now, are you?”
Richard could not help his answering grin. “Please, Flint. Tell me more.”
“Well, since you ask so prettily.” Flint pulled out his cards, a suit of illustrated characters.
Their gold borders sparkled under the sun.
Richard recognised The Empress, a glowering woman with an eerie palace behind her.
The Fool, too, with his jester hat. “The Painted Cards Realm—it is only a name I made for it. The realm lies elsewhere altogether. A different plane of existence, if you wish to be exact about it. Nowhere we could ever travel to on foot.”
“Another plane,” Richard breathed. “But how?”
“Who knows?” Flint asked. The road left the forest, its trees replaced by long fields of corn.
“It is a world of four countries. Swords, Wands, Pentacles, Cups. Each suit a kingdom unto itself, with its own people and customs and particular flavours of magic. And the people are alike to us, but different.” Flint grimaced.
“There is no real laughter, no feelings, no charm. Just pain and misery and a determination to keep surviving. For their sun only comes out a few hours, and the moonlight gleams red. It…it is a twisted place, handsome. A realm of nightmares.” He swallowed hard. “I do not enjoy walking there.”
Richard could scarcely believe it. A world in another plane. The castle’s archivists and researchers would champ at the bit for more information. “And The Tower from yesterday?”
“One of the Major Arcana. Godlike beings, of a sort, scattered across the Painted Realm. Some rule, some sleep, some wander. Each has its own nature, and all may be summoned into our world for a little while.” Flint shuffled his cards.
“But at a cost, mind. The Tower”—he twirled a painted card between two fingers—is on the gentler end, like I said.
We have an understanding. He asks for half my wellspring when I call on him.
I shall be tired for a day or two, and my magic will feel thin, and I shall be myself again. ”
He drew another card. The painted figure upon it was a naked woman with stars in her hair, kneeling at a pool.
“The Star,” Flint said. “She mends—but only mortal wounds, none else.” He paused.
“Asks for a decade. Whenever she comes, she takes ten years from the end of my life. I don’t feel it now, but I doubt I’ll live to see sixty.
Called her twice already, you see. Once for each of my lovers.
” He laughed at the horror on Richard’s face.
“I made my choices, handsome, and I’d make them again. ”
Richard peered at the cards. His blood ran cold at the sight of a goat-like beast seated upon a throne, with two humans chained at its feet. He tapped it. “And this one? What does he ask?”
Flint’s thumb hovered over the card. “Only the fool and the desperate call on the Devil. He’s a card you summon when you teeter on the edge.
He’s answered me twice. He’ll answer me a third time, should I call him.
And on the third answering, it is I who’ll go with him into the Painted Realm.
” A shadow crossed over Flint’s face. “And I shall not return. Such is our bargain.”
Goosebumps prickled Richard’s skin.
“That’s enough for now, I think,” Flint said briskly. The cards vanished into his sleeve, and Richard bit back his questions. Nearby, Tilda had summoned a gust to pick up the triplets. They floated in the air, dust stirring about them as they laughed and rolled around.
“So,” Flint said eventually. “What ails you, then?”
“Nothing of consequence.” Richard clenched his jaw and kicked at a loose stone. It skittered and disappeared beneath the wagon’s wheels. “The world does not seem made for me. That is all.”
“Oh, go fuck yourself.” Flint snorted. “Tell me, handsome, was there a poet in your nursery who taught you to mourn yourself so prettily? ‘The world does not seem made for me.’ As if the world owes you a thing.” He gave Richard an incredulous look.
“Was the world made for me, do you suppose? A bastard born in a back alley to a whore who could not afford to keep me, raised by a master who beat the soles of my feet blue and black when I coughed too loud. Was it made for Jeya there”—he jerked his chin towards the wagon where the girl slept—“who watched her mothers be devoured by a beast and lost her arm? Was it made for Edith, do you think? For Lyell?”
Richard flushed and rubbed his nape. “I beg your pardon. That was poorly done.”