Chapter One | All That Glitters
Colony of Ire, Southern Coast "Huh," Zyric uttered, reaching back to shuffle a handful of fingers sleepily through the hair at the back of his neck and shaking his head with a yawn to wake himself as he eyed his house coming into view around the bend. "Funny," he said, still speaking halfway around his yawn as he walked, "…how…you leave a place, 'n stuff happens and you think, somehow things've
gotta be different when you get back but…" He shrugged. "Looks like this whole island might as well've been in a glass case since I left…"
"Mm," was Alroy's only reply, and when Zyric glanced over, he found his companion wearing a pensive, distracted frown.
Zyric tilted his head. "You a'right?"
Blinking, as if mentally shaking himself from whatever state he'd been in, Alroy looked over and forced a smile that didn't quite reach the convincing stage. "Yeah, sure, kid…just…" His glance strayed once, fleetingly, back towards the house as they approached, and his frown returned. "Just a stray thought, s'all."
Unconvinced, Zyric snorted, but he shrugged it off. "Yeah, uh-huh…next I see 'im, I'm tellin' Dee you've gone senile in your old a-"
Alroy knocked his shoulder up against him, not gently per se, but not roughly, and Zyric's words cut off in lei of a smirk. "Senile my ass," Alroy interjected in place of Zyric's silence, defensive purely on principle. "I'd say I have at least a good 'nother…" He considered a moment, "…three hundred to five hundred years before I have to worry about that, thank you very much."
"Welcome," Zyric responded without missing a beat.
Alroy let that one go.
They arrived in amiable silence, and once there, Zyric offered a quick 'bye-until-next-time' before making his way into the house. If he'd glanced over his shoulder, he would have noticed that Alroy lingered outside, not leaving immediately. But he didn't glance.
The instant he stepped through the door, though, he paused, a cool sliver of baseless alarm coiling low in his gut.
Something – though he could not immediately discern what – was critically and dangerously off. The place looked much like he'd left it: lived in, various items scattered about in the sort of natural level of disarray that came with making a place one's home. But more than that, it looked
wrong somehow. Frozen, like a still life, as though it had used all the way up to some precarious instant when its inhabitant abruptly and without forewarning dropped everything exactly as it was and abandoned it there.
It also smelled.
Zyric scrunched his nose with distaste, the odor highly reminiscent of the time a small rabbit had accidentally trapped itself in the house and died without their knowledge, and he lifted a hand to cover his mouth and nose. "Baba?" he called out. How his father could stand letting such a thing rot and swelter this long without dealing with it already was beyond him, but perhaps he was simply far too gone to notice or care.
Zyric never wanted to be
that drunk.
"Ai!" he called again, louder, when he received no answer. "Baba!" He stepped in, shutting the door behind him and crossing through the first main room which served as a living, cooking, and everything-other-than-sleeping area. "I'm home…are you here or not?"
Again, receiving no answer, he huffed, irritated. Could he still be
sleeping? At this hour?
Even with his hand over his nose, the smell increased as he started down the single hall – it wasn't a large house – and his stomach churned threateningly. Mele, even drunk beyond the point of coherency, how could his father
stand this? Stopping in front of his father's bedroom door, Zyric raised his spare hand to knock, rapping his knuckles against the wooden panels-
The door creaked, opening at the impact, already unlatched. And the stench hit Zyric like a physical wall.
Rotting meat. The sound of flies, buzzing in a monotonous, droning hum. And a-
Body.
Zyric's stomach lurched, roiling. His knees sagged, weakening with the overload as a fresh wave of bile hit up against the back of his throat, teetering on the brink of spilling. He was going to be sick. He swallowed, hard. Painfully. The bile stung his throat and rose again. He was going to be-
"
BABA!"
It was that cry – which sounded like some cross between a wail of anguish and a scream of terror even from outside of the house – that roused Alroy's attention, and he was inside the next instant: sweeping through the door, ignoring the stench, ignoring the state of the house, ignoring
everything, and moving for Zyric like a hound zeroing in on prey. He reached him, catching Zyric's shoulders just as his knees gave and jerking him around, away from the morbid scene in his father's bedroom. Zyric's body trembled under Alroy's hold, jarred and shaking, and as soon as he regained enough of his senses to move, he struggled, writhing, hands pushing ineffectually at Alroy's chest.
"No," he choked around the single word, "…no,
baba…let go, let…get…
off—I have to-"
"He's dead, Zyri-"
"No!"
"He's
dead!" Alroy snarled, this time shoving the boy around so that his back hit the wall and forcing him to look up, meet Alroy's stare, hard and heavy; no way to see into the room. Zyric's eyes were shipwrecks. Or the rough, beaten surface of a lake in a rainstorm, turbulent and battered, brimming to brink of overflow but not yet shedding tears, and his shoulders quivered under Alroy's pin, wracked with suppressed sobs as he shook his head.
"He can't-" He shook his head again, more sharply. "I should never've left, I should never've—if I'd
been here-"
"It's not your fault," Alroy said, keeping his voice cool and even, and speaking over Zyric's rising, panicked rambling. "It's not your fault," he repeated. "Do you understand me?
Zyric," he insisted, when Zyric's eyes darted anywhere but towards his, "…look at me…" He moved one hand up from Zyric's shoulder, and over, to brush against his cheek, thumbing away the salt tears now finally spilling there.
Instead of obeying, Zyric shut his eyes – clumped blonde lashes dropping wetly closed – and the sound that fell from his lips before he bit it back felt like a sharp, hot stab of iron through Alroy's gut, real as any physical force. And he wanted to slaughter whoever did this if only because seeing Zyric suffer made him want to spill guts, charbroil live bodies, and throw heads on spikes.
When Zyric's mouth finally opened again, it was to whisper, "I need to be sick…" so quiet and rasped that Alroy barely heard it, but he did, and he guided Zyric out, helping him up off the wall and holding him upright as he staggered towards the door.
Once out, Zyric immediately stumbled forward to break out of Alroy's grasp, fell to his knees in the grass, and retched.
The Siren's Cradle, Seven Miles off the Coast of Caspia "Many stomachs do not agree with sea travel," Natara said, not unkindly, and Baisyl – still sprawled rather inelegantly over the rail of the ship, Havana, having just lost what little remained of last night's meal to the chopping waves – accepted her offering of a glass of water dourly and without comment. He made quick work of taking a sip, sloshing his mouth out once to purge it of the remaining vile taste, and spitting over the side before taking a proper gulp. "Strange that it took this long, though," she went on. "Usually after several days out, your body grows more accustomed to its new conditions…"
"My stomach has never taken issue with the sea before," Baisyl grumped, irritated that anyone had to see him like this, irritated that he was
like this in the first place. "I've sailed…recently, and when I was younger, and I've never experienced so much as mild upset, let alone lost a perfectly acceptable dinner to it…"
When a brief twitch of a smile was all he received in answer, Baisyl tilted his head.
"Yes?" he prompted.
Natara turned her eyes to the waves before saying – not in a whisper, but certainly quietly enough that only Baisyl would hear, "'Perfectly acceptable' is a kind way of describing the meals on this ship."
In spite of himself, Baisyl's lips immediately cracked into a smirk, and he covered a chuckle with another sip of water. "I suppose you have a point," he conceded.
"We wouldn't have to practice today," she said, "…if you're feeling ill."
Baisyl snorted. "I've survived worse, I think," he responded. "In any case, I expect it will pass before long. I felt out of sorts yesterday morning after I woke – not so bad as
this, but not well – and I'd gotten over it completely by midday…"
It did pass.
They were eleven days out. Eleven days since they had left port in Carthak, and each day since then, despite the moderately limited space, Natara had worked with Baisyl on deck. From morning to high noon, each day at sea had become an exercise in – mostly – how not to allow himself to be tossed around like an inexperienced rider on an ill-tempered horse.
In the afternoons, as the sun headed back towards the edge of the sea, Baisyl worked with his brother, a less painful but arguably more frustrating and certainly more mentally exhausting venture involving the manipulation of magic and – on one particularly memorable occasion he prayed not to see a repeat of – the theatric explosion of a mopping bucket and broom at the expense of the cabin boy's sanity. He stood firmly by his original assertion that the incident was largely Rhyan's fault.
Another three days passed before they crossed through the Crying Straight and officially into the North Country. Cliffs – ragged and ominous as stone sentinels – rose up on either side their ship through the entire pass, and while on the open ocean the vessel felt sizeable enough, here, staring up at sheer black rock that stretched on and up until one had to crane their neck to even glimpse the sharp, glittering white lip of the cliff tops, Baisyl got the unshakable sense of being very, very small.
It crossed his mind, before he could catch himself, that he wished Kedean were there to see it. Quickly, of course, he suppressed the thought, but the damage was done and the thought lingered – like a tender bruise hit afresh – making longing knot in the pit of his gut. He shut his eyes, and for once, heard her footsteps before she spoke.
"Why does it glitter so?" he asked. "At the tops…is there snow?"
"Ice," Natara answered. "In the hottest of the summer months, water falls from the lips of the cliffs at places, spilling in rushing streams down the sides like the stones themselves are weeping…"
He blinked, and sure enough, on closer inspection, what he passed off previously as merely ragged edges were actually grooves, cut away, year after year, by the water when it flowed, and now in caught in a standstill, every now and then glinting from the shadows when the frozen remnants of falling water caught the refracting light.
"The Crying Straight," he observed, the origins of the name hitting him as his eyes dragged over the icy white 'tears' etched into the black stone cliff sides, and the corner of his lip twitched upwards with wry humor, "…how apt." Then, beset abruptly by a chill as a salty sea wind wound with a wounded moan through the narrow canyon, he frowned and brought his palms up to his forearms, rubbing absently for warmth. "It must never get very warm here…nearly four months yet before the onset of winter, isn't it?"
"Winter arrives eager and early in the North Country and lingers late," Natara answered, "…few places are colder."
Baisyl eyed her—the cool, carefully schooled neutrality of her expression and the distant, distracted set of her eyes—and tried to place who she reminded him of, but couldn't. At length, he said, "You've been here before." Since he made it a statement, an observation, not a question, she didn't seem to see fit to respond, but that was answer enough, he supposed. He took his time before making his next inquiry – one that had lingered for many days on his tongue without ever seeming appropriate to actually give voice to – and when he finally did, it came out serious, but also inherently curious because it truly was something beyond his comprehension. "How is it that you don't hate me?"
If it surprised her to hear, she didn't let on. She did, however, take at least as long to answer as he did to ask, and when she finally glanced to him, he felt that there ought to have been more of an expression there – more of a
hint at what she was thinking because as much as he disliked people, Baisyl had always found them
readable – but there wasn't, and he couldn't read her. She answered with a question.
"Why do you assume I don't?"
He opened his mouth. Considered. And shut it. "Wild guess," he said at last, and
there was that hint of amusement, not so much in her expression – still calm and glassy as an untouched lake – but in her eyes, which lit like the first glint of dawn on the horizon.
"I will tell you, then," she said. "I do not hate you because I have no reason to, and yes, it is that simple."
"Your emotions respond to reason," Baisyl observed, "how convenient."
Her eyes narrowed briefly, in warning perhaps – but he didn't heed it – and when he held her stare, she looked away. "Only some of them," she admitted.
Baisyl waited.
Eventually, slowly, and with the painstaking care of someone threading a needle or crossing a very narrow, very old bridge over a cavernous ravine, she said, "I might hate you for taking him from me…except for the fact that you didn't. I lost him long before you ever found him. And I might hate you for accomplishing what I never could…for winning his heart in so little time when I had years and never came close, but where is the sense in that? He never picked you over me because there was never an instant of
choice…he merely moved on, and I didn't." She shrugged. "And that is neither any fault of his nor yours…only mine."
Baisyl wondered, then, why it made him feel…not
guilty, but… He frowned. Well, yes, alright, perhaps a
bit guilty if he were completely honest with himself-
"Why?" Natara asked, and he blinked, drawn out of his thoughts. "Why do you ask? Do
you hate me?"
"No," he answered, and was surprised to find that it was entirely true. "I don't." '
Not anymore.'
The castle of the fey prince Tyrius Goldwind was invisible until the casual passerby all but literally ran into it. Then, it was breathtaking.
At first, Baisyl mistook it for floating because from a distance – as their ship pulled into Whitemoon Bay and suddenly merely being
human put him in the staggering minority – the only visible portion of it to catch his eye was dizzyingly high, and couched in a bed of clouds so white, they seemed to melt into the surrounding backdrop of snow and ice. Naturally, this made the distinction between what was solid and what was an illusory trick of reflected light vague and difficult to discern. On closer inspection though, he discovered that what he originally took as the castle itself was, in fact, only one of
many outlying pieces of glittering white and gold architecture, all of them attached to and wound around a single towering central spire which, as far as he could make out with his eye, pierced the sky and
never stopped, simply spiraling endlessly, endlessly up.
Someone low to his right cleared their throat, and Baisyl blinked, glancing over just in time to see the fairy captain flit her wings and bring herself up to a hover at eye level with him. "A word of advice," she said, and he lifted his eyebrows to show he was listening, "…whoever you are on your island, whatever human titles you have, whatever glories your father's name gave you in the lands you grew up: none of it matters here. Humans are of little consequence in these parts—their lives are too short for most elves or fey to pay them much mind—and if you want anyone to bat an eyelash in your direction, you'll focus on playing up the part of your bloodline that brought you here."
Baisyl pursed his lips. "With all due respect, captain, I've spent my entire life playing up the part of an 'inconsequential' human and playing
down the part of my bloodline that links me to giant, fire breathing lizards. It'll be a difficult habit to break, particularly since I know next to nothing about even the history of dragons, let alone how to act like one." He frowned, and after a moment tapped his fingers once, pensively on the ship's rail before adding, "I can't even make myself
look like one…"
Captain Desper gave a weary sigh – or perhaps an exasperated one, Baisyl couldn't quite decide. Maybe it was both. "Tyrius's library is nothing if not expansive…I'll find you some history books."
"Joy," Baisyl remarked drily. "I've always loved homework."
Baisyl's suspicion that this fey prince had a very 'particular' – if as of yet unspecified – relationship with the pirate captain was confirmed when he immediately sought out her company after their coming to port. Soon after her departure to answer said summons, a welcoming party – of sorts – took on the task of guiding Baisyl, his brother, and Natara to the castle, and though Baisyl had never thought specifically to imagine what they might look like in person, elves, as it turned out, were far taller than he expected.
Somehow "unspeakable elegance" and "ethereal beauty beyond the capture of even the most poetic tongue" had never translated into an image of persons who towered at least as high as Kedean. But elegant and beautiful they were, without a doubt, as well as predatorily graceful, almost to the point of eeriness, and as they guided them through the snow on horseback and towards the sky-piercing spire serving as a castle, Baisyl found himself humbled, insatiably curious, and – despite the presumable best intentions of their hosts – wary.
Best, he thought, to hold his tongue, watch, absorb as much information as would come to him in the time allotted to him here, and above all, preserve and, if possible, foster whatever cautious favor he had among these people. Never would he want these elves, who cut through the most bitterly frigid air as though it were nothing and moved as silently as though their feet never touched the ground, or the fey – who dwelled in staggering, icy peaks wreathed with more magic than he'd witnessed in the whole of his life combined – fighting against him on a battlefield. And even less so when he had nothing but his own skin to protect him.
They halted in a wide clearing still some distance from the castle itself, their elven guides' horses pulling up short ahead of them and snorting, their breaths making steamy puffs in the air and hooves clipping against the tiled surface underneath. On closer inspection, the entire 'clearing' consisted of said tiles, spiraling out in an intricate, clearly crafted mosaic of blue, white, and gold. Not a spot of snow marred the pristine surface.
Frowning curiously, because nothing covered the area, Baisyl looked up. Sure enough, no structure loomed overhead, but nor was there any snow falling, and, now that he thought on it, the wind, too, had stilled, as though tempered by some invisible buffer. A transparent barrier? A dome of magic, perhaps, safeguarding it from the outside elements?
On either side of him, Rhyan and Natara came to a standstill, too, on their horses, and waited with him. Ahead, their guides dismounted, speaking briefly amongst themselves in a language that sounded like flowing water and the whisper of a quiet breeze.
It struck Baisyl, as he sat, that as much as she stood out in their previous location, Natara looked even more boldly conspicuous here: surrounded by glittering ice and snow, all of them riding proud beasts as white as the ground they tread on, and guided by elves – with golden eyes that matched their hair and skin so fair as to challenge the luminous face of the moon. With her richly dark skin, hair, and eyes, she looked like someone from a land very, very far away indeed.
Not for the first time, Baisyl felt a brief pang of guilt at dragging her out with him. He hired her, yes, and she came willingly, yes, but regardless of those facts, it still felt like an injustice somehow.
He felt painfully out of place here, how must she feel?
She noticed his attention. "Is everything alright…my lord?" As they had agreed, as a sort of compromise, she only tagged on the formal title in the presence of company that was expected to see her as his guard and a subordinate. Regardless, she added it awkwardly, as they'd had the opportunity to be lax about it for all of the many days they'd spent at sea.
Baisyl blinked, drawn from his musings, and shook his head. "It is," he answered. "I merely…I was thinking of asking the same of you, is all," he admitted, and her eyebrows twitched up in silent inquiry. He debated before saying, with a definitive air of cautiousness, "You look…very far from home, here."
To his surprise, she laughed. The sound, genuine and bright, but not mocking, unraveled some unspoken knot of uneasiness within him, and he found his lips curving, barely, into a smile of their own regard. "You needn't fret over me, my lord, I'm quite used to it," she said, and she spoke the words kindly enough that he believed her. "Being far from home is a sentiment that becomes very familiar to those who have no home to speak of."
That threw him. Before he could think to respond, though, their guides seemed to have come to a consensus on whatever they were discussing, and turned to them.
"Dismount," came the first instruction.
They acted as directed, coming forward when beckoned and moving in until they all stood at the center of the circular mosaic. Each of the three guides stepped up, one for each of the three of them, and they put their hands out, motioning for them to reach.
"Touch," the elf in front of Baisyl instructed, his voice solid, but soft – so much so that he barely heard him the first time. Then, he obliged, and reality around him rippled.
For an instant, he experienced a sensation he imagined as something akin to being a pebble
as it was tossed out into the water: first, the swirling rush of wind, followed by a sense of plummeting, out of control; next, that instant of testing surface tension on impact with the water, where everything around him shuddered to fight sinking; and then finally, the moment of submersion, that engulfing
suck as surface tension broke and gravity dragged him down to be swallowed whole, air disappearing above him with nothing but endless, bottomless, black below and-
The sensation vanished.
Baisyl only just managed not to gasp on impulse. His lungs didn't need air. His heart, though, raced in his chest, beating wildly against it as though trying to break free, and he blinked, steeling himself so as not to stagger, his senses absolutely disoriented. As the room around him came into focus, he glanced to the side instinctively to assure himself that Rhyan had arrived with him and safely, and on confirming that, part of him relaxed.
Then, he noted that Rhyan was
blushing. Fingers still caught in his elven guard's grasp and cheeks pink as spring roses, his younger brother looked as though he'd just been told a very
dirty joke, and Baisyl's lips pursed thin with defensive disapproval without another moment's thought.
Before he got far with that, though, Rhyan jerked his hand back – not quite quickly enough to be rude, but certainly skittish – and dropped his eyes, an uncertain frown flitting through his expression before he masked it back to neutral. In the elf's defense, he looked surprised as much as anything, and Baisyl made a silent mental note to ask. Later. In private.
It was, as he predicted on landing, an inner room of the castle that they had relocated to, making Baisyl wonder how one might enter or leave without the aid of magic – and if there was even a way to do so – but he figured there would be time enough for such questions later and tucked the thought away for the time being.
Fortunately, their new hosts practiced the variety of hospitality that demanded new arrivals be presented as quickly as possible with the opportunity to rest and gain their bearings—as opposed to greeted and doted upon immediately and shown around their new living quarters like tourists without a chance to breathe. Thus, it was little over an hour later that Baisyl, already settled with a room and means of calling for assistance (food or otherwise) should he need it, took advantage of the chance to seek his brother out.
He found him in the adjacent room – as elaborately furnished and immaculate as Baisyl's own – running his finger reverently down the spine of a massive, red-leather-bound book with intricate, sweeping gold lettering, conveniently resting on his bedside table. At Baisyl's entrance, Rhyan quickly jerked his fingers back with a guilty, abashed look, reminding Baisyl pointedly of his reaction toward the guard not long ago, and Baisyl's eyebrows quirked upwards.
"Comforting to know," he commented ironically, "that you experience the same passionate, instant attraction to old books," He put heavy, amused emphasis on those two words, "that you do to statuesque elven men…"
Rhyan looked appropriately flabbergasted. "That wa—it was
nothing like that!"
"Oh?" Arms already folded and weight resting lazily against his brother's doorframe, Baisyl stood up, stepping in and guiding the door shut behind him with the back of his heel. "
Do tell," he prompted, "…this promises to be most enlightening."
Rhyan glowered; Baisyl waited. Eventually, Rhyan's posture sank with defeat. "It wasn't
attraction," he clipped. "That is, I wasn't…I wasn't attracted to
him…" He frowned, looking puzzled again, and Baisyl gave him a curious look.
"Something else, then?"
"There's magic everywhere here," Rhyan said, quietly, but with an air almost of talking to himself. "It's in…
everything. The walls, the floor, the books, the blankets…"
"I'm aware of that."
"It's like breathing something other than air," Rhyan said, and Baisyl blinked. Perhaps his brother felt the difference even more greatly than he did. "Something…rich, but addicting. I can't even…" He blushed, again, and cleared his throat. "When we touched, and the relocation spell activated, my magic reacted," he explained. "I can't say precisely how, but it did, like it wanted to…reach out and latch on or…absorb itself in that spell…take in
everything…" A healthy pause. Then, quiet again, he murmured, "This whole place just makes me feel…"
"Cold and claustrophobic," Baisyl provided helpfully.
"Alive," Rhyan answered.
"You like it here," Baisyl realized, surprised, not so much because he specifically
disliked it (because he didn't, he found it…tolerable, if slightly alienating and unnerving), but because Rhyan rarely took quickly to
anything other than books and peaceful seclusion.
"I…" Rhyan chose his words carefully. "I think it's…interesting." Apparently, Baisyl's raw skepticism showed, because Rhyan's look of abashment returned and he said, more honestly, "I think it's fascinating."
"Mm." After a moment's thought, a knowing smile curved gradually onto Baisyl's lips, and he watched his brother—perched on the lip of his bed, hands laced and folded in his lap, and brows furrowed lightly in distracted, pensive concentration—before saying conversationally, "I hear they have an impressive library."
As predicted, Rhyan's attention instantly darted up, face lit with rapt interest, and Baisyl's smile broadened to a laughing grin.
"Where-" Rhyan started to ask.
"I don't know where yet," Baisyl cut in. "You'll have to find someone who does."
Rhyan wasted no time doing just that.
As it happened – and as Baisyl expected, though he never took the time to voice his suspicions or complain, seeing as the benefits worked out in his favor regardless – 'stopping a war', for all that it sounded noble and complex when originally presented to him, turned out, at least for his part, to be an exercise mostly in waiting. Despite being a key component in the unfolding power struggle thanks to birthright alone,
having him seemed to be all that their hosts cared about. For understandable reasons.
What use were uninformed opinions to anyone, regardless of whose mouth they came out of? Not that Baisyl even had any of
those, yet, so he was, honestly, fairly grateful that no one called on him for them. And thus, in his ample spare time, he took the fairy captain's advice.
Fortunately, "expansive" proved to be a staggering understatement when it came to the fey prince's library, and his "homework" as he had so elegantly labeled it, turned out to be a far more engaging venture than he anticipated—and if nothing else, richly informative.
On the day of his initial introduction to the library—the second day of their stay—his guide (an approximately three-foot-tall fey woman, built like a wasp, who spoke Common at roughly twenty-thousand words per minute, according to Baisyl's most rigidly scientific estimate) explained that what he was actually looking at was only a grossly amputated version of the real thing. The rest of, unfortunately, was either lost in the last Great War (the specific name and details of which Baisyl quickly forgot, or perhaps didn't even catch to begin with) or was simply off-limits to guests and contained in another area entirely.
It took him relatively little time to deduce—actually, about the amount of time it took them to come to the third or fourth level of rooms as expansive as four or five
ballrooms sewn together—that he was, in fact, being shown around one of the outlying structures attached to the central spire of the castle that he had originally mistaken as a complete castle in and of itself. And the
entire area was dedicated solely to books. And scrolls. And maps. And diagrams.
Spellbooks, histories, books of poetry, ballads, memoirs, tomes of nothing but worn page after page of meticulously recorded research: it had
everything. Of the three Merseille brothers, Rhyan was inarguably the most inclined towards burying himself in books without surfacing for days on end, but particularly in Baisyl's younger years—before he had discovered other worthwhile means of distracting himself, including but not limited to guns, swords, cock, in general, and the most entertaining pastime of coaxing and/or brilliantly seducing young male servants into bed with him—Baisyl, too, had fostered a great love for books, and knowledge-seeking in general.
Naturally, that made the discovery of this library something like coming upon that one thing so ground-shatteringly amazing that it seemed all but absolutely impossible that he managed to wander through his entire life to date without even knowing such a thing
existed. It also meant that if/when he ever inherited his father's estate, he fully intended to expand the library. Immensely.
Time lumbered forward sporadically after that. At some points, the days seemed to trip rapidly, one after another, tumbling and meshing into each other until Baisyl completely lost track of the time. At others, they dragged, as though only
barely limping and hobbling forward, like an aging beggar. The only constant was that with each passing day, he found himself working progressively harder to ignore the looming ache in his gut, as though some essential part of him were being tugged away farther and farther beyond his reach.
He sank countless hours into reading to distract himself, burying himself almost as much in books as his brother, for once. At one notable point, the finer details of 'dragon mating rituals' kept him actively engaged for a good four days solid—because, apparently, there were many, many variants on the theme, as well as gradual change over time, and different practices and cultures depending on the specific circumstances of the binding.
During the occasions when breaks were needed, Baisyl continued working on his spellwork with Rhyan, an activity that grew drastically more entertaining thanks to the
sea of new spells available to work and practice with thanks to their newest resource. And when his body became restless, he returned to the familiar ritual of sparring with Natara.
It bore noting, he supposed, that the available area for physical training—which he assumed was made use of mostly by castle guards—was also extensive and more than enough to facilitate whatever they might want to attempt. He wondered, at the start, what Natara
did when not practicing there with him, but never actually ventured to ask.
Two months passed without incident.
Then, one morning on which Baisyl chose to start with exercise, he also opted to bring the last of his breakfast along with him – because, presumably due to the exquisiteness of the cuisine, Baisyl found himself loathe to let even a scrap of the food made available to him go to waste – and on spotting him enter, Natara's eyebrows quirked meaningfully upwards in a way he wasn't entirely sure he approved of.
He pursed his lips, and his response of, "What?" may or may not have come out slightly more defensive than absolutely necessary.
Natara cleared her throat and shook her head, refusing to comment. He waited, patiently. Eventually, she rewarded his patience with the briefest of amused smiles. "You mentioned something," she said, "…complaining some time back with the observation that you felt sure your…" She paused only a fraction of a second before continuing with all due delicacy, "…breasts were larger than normal, my lord?"
Heat edged up his neck, aiming for his cheeks, but Baisyl stubbornly held his ground. "Not," he began tersely, "that I see why you're bringing that up again now
or how that has to do with anything at the current moment, but yes, I do seem to recall complaining once, briefly about that—and I
wasn't making it up, by the way," he hastened to add, insistent. "They are absolutely-"
"I was only going to suggest," she cut in, her tone purposefully gentle and somehow that much more irritating for it, "…that…well…you have been eating very…well…since you arrived here, and…"
Baisyl blinked. "You think I'm getting fat."
Natara did a very poor job of masking her smile. "No," she answered calmly, with the air of someone explaining something to a very obstinate child. "I only meant that if you were consuming even a little more than you had in your diet before arriving, the change might result in-"
"Me becoming
fat," Baisyl repeated, this time with a theatrically exaggerated air of disbelief and a touch of wounded pride because he considered that fairly apt for the given situation. She said nothing, but her eyes danced, and she dropped them to examine the floor. "Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, approaching at a leisurely rate, "…but among women, making a derogatory suggestion about another's weight is…surely one of the highest tiers of insults, is it not?"
"Mm," She nodded, "…oh, yes. Without contest." Her gaze lifted again, still lit with good humor, and this time, she flashed him a proper smile. "Would you like to fight about it?"
"Definitely."
The first thing about fighting with Natara was that – contrary to what he had initially, rather foolishly, expected – it was never even remotely like fighting with Kedean. Despite a short list of similarities, they fought with vastly different styles, fine tuned and particular to their personalities and preferences, developed gradually over time, and – unlike Kedean – she never, ever let Baisyl 'lead'. Other than roughly letting him set the pace based on his skill level, she pushed him constantly, every instant testing his boundaries and exploiting his weaknesses until he adapted to cover them. Never for a moment letting up.
The second thing about fighting with Natara was that Baisyl
enjoyed fighting with Natara. That portion of it caught him off guard, and even after realizing it, it had taken him some time to come to grips with the idea. Like with anything regarding someone truly talented at a given art, though, it was equal parts beautiful and fascinating to watch her fight, and that much more exhilarating to become a
part of it when she did.
And yet, it was more than that. Because not only did he enjoy fighting her, but he was beginning to realize that more often than not, he genuinely enjoyed simply
being around her – conversing with her, working with her, trying to uncover what went on her head when her expression glassed over and her eyes became very far away – and for someone who had once upon a time (not so long ago) honestly wished she would up and cease to exist, that was a fairly striking concept to grapple with.
Luckily, he felt fairly sure the feeling was mutual, and together, they skillfully avoided ever bringing the matter any more attention than absolutely necessary, as though both of them feared that facing it head on might break some sort of fragile truce and remind them both that they were probably better off as tense acquaintances at best. Still, the more his mind turned the concept over, the more Baisyl started to wonder if, perhaps, it made
sense.
So, they had fallen in love with the same man. Surely that meant they had at least some interests in common? If nothing else, it signaled she had good taste in men, and that was an important trait in Baisyl's mind. And the same man had cared deeply for each of them in their own way; so clearly, a reliable source had found likeable, positive characteristics in both.
Did it not follow, then, that without the complication of the third party distraction, they might at least get along? If not foster some form of…tentative…friendshi-
Natara threw him. At the last instant, though, in the face of an impending faceplant, Baisyl pivoted his body reflexively, twisting midair to ensure that he landed with a solid thump flat on his back the next moment, and when his senses returned to him, he blinked, winded, up at his guard. For a fraction of a second, he actually thought she looked mildly impressed.
Then, she schooled herself, and said, "You're distracted today."
"My apologies," he responded. "I was…thinking."
"Oh?"
He debated only a moment before adding, "About you, actually, as chance would have it."
She snorted, but some part of her relaxed with subtle amusement, and she held out a hand to him, which he accepted. "Charmed as I am, my lord," she said as his hand fit into hers and she pulled him easily up, bringing them face to face, "…I'm afraid I'm not interested."
Because he could, he smirked. "Really?" he said, feigning disappointment. "Because they were
very flattering thoughts…"
She gave a sort of muffled choked noise that he took pride in eliciting before her eyes flicked once over him and she retorted with all due gravity, "Contrary to the assumption many seem to make, my lord, I have yet to find myself attracted to a single woman over the course of my lifetime."
He blinked, and glanced back at himself on impulse: small, shapely, shorter than Natara by a good half foot. Right. "Ah. Yes, well, I suppose I can't fault you on that front…neither have I." When he raised his eyes again, though, he found her expression changed—curious, contemplative, and almost confused. He frowned, unnerved by her abrupt concern. "Something the matter?"
She dropped his hand and rested hers lightly on his waist, her palm just grazing his stomach. "Baisyl…"
Coming to an instant conclusion, he huffed. "Alright, you were right," he clipped, defensive, "…I've gained a
little weight since arriving here, but I don't see how that's cause for-"
"Baisyl, when was the last time you bled?"
A/N: So much ground covered this chapter. On the one hand, I hope it doesn't feel rushed, but on the other, I really did not want to drag out parts that I figured the reader would find boring. I find long, winded descriptions of new places boring (and sometimes even skip over them when reading), so I tried to get as much information out there as needed as quickly as possible without over or under doing it. I'm...not sure how well I succeeded, but rest assured, each little section of this has an intended purpose, and I hope it was engaging enough to read.
Regardless, the end goal was to reach this exact point by the end of the chapter, and I'm fairly satisfied that for once, I actually achieved it in the space I allotted myself. Thanks for reading. :)
Also, to answer
attackegg’s question: I…plan ahead a
lot. But for the last book (TCatT), I didn’t write any notes. At all. The thing is, when a new story idea hits me, I tend to get phenomenally excited and just immerse myself in that world for a huge, drawn out period of time. During that time (usually while I’m typing up the first two to four chapters) I get a rough skeleton in my head for the entire story, start to finish. I have all kinds of ideas, different scenes from wildly different portions of the story fill themselves in, and the plot/plan changes a lot as I fill more thoughts in.
It’s a horribly disorganized process, and it’s dangerous when I have plot ideas that I haven’t completely hammered out before I put them in, but usually I have a good idea, and things get forcibly solidified when I actually get down to writing them out. With this book, because it’s a sequel and because I have a lot more to keep track of and get done (the characters are already, for the most part, developed, now I have to use them and keep the plot straight) I am taking a few notes as I go forward, and again, I have a basic (this time typed) plan for the entire thing, start to finish. I just hope this time I can finish it in one book. :)
