Ghosts: An Accidental Turn Novella Read online

  That had always been the plan, anyway.

  Grow up, work with Da in the forge, marry a farmer’s daughter, build a croft, raise a brood, and spend the rest of my life shoeing horses and being loved.

  But then a handsome lord’s son had come along, and that was the end of those dreams. I could have a wife, a home, the children, if I wanted. But that would mean no Kintyre.

  A sudden thought drops into my stomach like a fire-warmed stone: I’m tired.

  This is not the grief-born weariness I was feeling this morning. This is something else, something deeper, something that has soaked into my skin and settled in the dark marrow of my bones. This is something that is etched on the very fiber of my muscles, the pull of my tendons, the lining of my stomach. This is something born of Dargan’s careless teasing, yeah, but also the contemplation that his words have caused over the weeks since I was in that tavern with him, both of us a little too far into the keg.

  I am tired.

  I am tired of walking, tired of traveling, tired of having nowhere to call home, no place to call my own, no pillow and bed waiting at the end of the day, no surety of the next meal. I am tired of following after Kintyre Turn and wanting. I am tired of not having.

  I am tired, and I want to stop.

  I could pay for somewhere to call my own, true; I’m not much for banks and moneylenders, but I’ve squirreled away the reward purses I didn’t give over to Mum over the years. I don’t need to build a croft now—I’ve got more than enough clink to buy a cottage, a few acres, some pigs. Probably a calf. Or five. Or ten, really. Right, so there’s actually probably enough to buy a title and the estate that goes with it.

  Hells, King Carvel has offered me one often enough. Maybe I could just write to him and tardily accept. Though what on the Writer’s hairy backside I’d do with the trappings and responsibilities of a lord, I don’t know. I wasn’t raised to it. I’d have to hire someone to do all the actual work, and the life of an idle gentleperson is not even close to appealing.

  The only thing I am certain about is this: Kin would never live with me.

  Even if Kintyre Turn did finally settle down, turn in his sword for a ledger or a plowshare or a guardsman’s cap, it would be with a buxom woman who could gift him with little Turnlings. More likely, it would be with some nobleman’s daughter or simpering princess, and it would be on the coin of a king, or the late Aglar Turn’s estate, where his brother Forsyth would maintain the responsibilities of Master while Kin enjoyed the luxuries with which he’d been raised.

  If Kin stopped, that would be it. There would be no room in Kintyre Turn’s life for a Bevel Dom, his questing partner, sword-mate, and dogsbody. And a life for Bevel Dom with no Kintyre Turn in it is a life I’m afraid I might not actually have the strength to live.

  I know with the surety of a man who has been in love for half his life with someone who will never be aware of it that I will die of heartbreak, or maybe by my own hand, the day Kin marries someone else.

  And Writer, that sounds melodramatic as bloody anything. More fit for my scrolls than my thoughts, but there it is. I jam my fists down harder in my pockets and hunch, chewing on my bottom lip to keep from scowling.

  And the bastard is still walking, just a few paces ahead, like his long legs can’t be bothered to shorten his stride for the sake of anything as banal as a short companion. Fine.

  So I do as I have always done: I put one foot in front of the other. I shove the weariness away, raise my chin, squint to keep the sun out of my eyes, and follow after Kintyre Turn.

  The tiredness can be ignored.

  ✍

  He’s unpleasant from the moment he dismounts, is how I introduced Kintyre Turn in the epic scroll-series that documents our adventures. But that’s a much kinder way to think of it than how I really felt.

  “What an elfcock,” was what actually came out of my mouth. The twat had wanted me to drop what I was doing to replace a thrown shoe on Stormbearer, which was both arrogant and entitled. And he hadn’t even been willing to pay extra for the inconvenience.

  Now, watching the way Kin’s swagger increases the closer to the village we get, the same sentiment rolls between my ears.

  Though I’m not annoyed enough to admit that the thought of finding a nice warm bed with a nice warm woman does sound appealing, but for reasons different to Kin’s. I torture myself with it, I know, the thought of finding a way for it to be okay to reach out, to touch, to stroke . . . damn Dargan anyway!

  All the same, my own swagger is probably just as pronounced, so I say nothing about it. The view from a few paces behind Kin is a nice one, after all. Kin’s customary leather trousers seem to be especially tight today, and his Sheil-purple jerkin leaves very little to the imagination.

  I catch myself licking the road-dust from my lips and decide to be optimistic. A bed tonight, shared sleep rolls for the next three, and six days on the road with just Kin for company, except for the taverns or inns we’ll stay at. No battle stress, no strategies, no deadlines nor swords looming over our throats. No insidious plots, no villains to roust, no blood.

  Just nice, calm, congenial conversation, honestly earned sweat, and at the end of all that, Turn Hall with its feather mattresses, large copper tubs, and fresh baked bread waiting for us. Even the adventure Forsyth proposed in his missive seems more like a walking holiday than a quest—escort damsel in distress from Turn Hall to her far-off home? Easy!

  Maybe there’ll be some bandits en route, which will keep my sword arm from getting too rusty. Maybe there’ll be some fancy politics and fast talking when we get the damsel in question to where she’s meant to be, just to make it clear that we weren’t the ones who took her in the first place—that will keep my wits from atrophying. But most likely it will be boring, easy, and finish in a feast. We’ll have forged yet one more ally, have one more community in which we’ll be welcome, maybe even one more castle from which we can draw supplies.

  And, if the damsel in question is amenable, the nights of the journey will be warm for other reasons. I like the adventures like that.

  Either Kin will try to seduce her first, or I will, but neither of us leaves the other out. Hard to, when you’re on the road and there are no walls between you. I do like that about traveling with Kintyre—everything we have, we share. The burdens, the battles, the packs, the blood, the joys, the feasts, the wine, the women, and sometimes, though we never talk of it, the nightmares. That is something I will never grow tired of. The sharing. Not the nightmares. Those can just go right back on whatever Shelf the Writer pulled them off of.

  By mid-afternoon, we’ve reached the outskirts of a small market village. The sign by the side of the road depicts a festival of sorts, something with fire and foliage, as well as the place’s name.

  “Gwillfifeshire,” Kin reads, carefully parsing out each of the tangled syllables.

  “Gilsher,” I correct, the side of my mouth quirking up at his gaffe.

  “But there’s—”

  “It’s pronounced gil-sher, Kin,” I insist.

  Kintyre points indignantly at the sign.

  “Yeah, I see it,” I say mildly, determined to hold on to my self-imposed good mood. I hook my thumbs into my belt and nod. “But that’s how they pronounce things ‘round this area.”

  The wind goes out of Kin’s sails when I refuse to rise to the verbal spar and his shoulders slump. Instead, Kintyre readjusts his pack, head high and fingers curled lightly on Foesmiter’s pommel, and leads the way toward the small square as if he actually remembers being here before. He doesn’t. I know he doesn’t, because he never does.

  The square is the only open space amid the cramped, close buildings of the village. There are three or four layers of buildings separated by cobbled streets spreading back from the square, which get progressively smaller, made of more wood than stone, and finally give way to an open meadow. In the distance there’s a knoll, and atop the knoll is something gray and crumbling, probably an old monumen
t, or the remains of a castle. Many of the house walls are made of that same gray stone, so it was probably dismantled for building materials a century or two ago.

  There isn’t much use in statues and monuments, I guess, when there are houses and barns to build and hewn bricks already on hand. I approve of the sensible repurposing, but Kin, who grew up in a manor house with a wing to himself rather than amid a pile of brothers in a three-room cottage, is always vaguely upset that the beautiful architecture and statues have been pulled down.

  He’d never own to it, of course, but Kin is secretly a great admirer of the arts. The deep well of his affection for anything creative always raises froth and waves when something beautiful is destroyed—more so if it was vandalized or dismantled so long ago that there’s no way to even know what the original art looked like.

  Kin is predictably glowering at the top of the knoll, huffing in indignation. He gets that wrinkle between his eyes, and he fingers the small whittling knife he carries in its own leather sheath alongside Foesmiter, and chews on the outside corner of his mouth. He looks like a drakeling. It’s hilarious.

  Just once, I gave in to the urge to reach out and press my thumb against that swollen, abused lip, but Kin didn’t meet my eyes, didn’t look up, didn’t lean forward, so I’ve never done it again. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to, though. Resisting the urge, I say, “Draw it for me. The way you think it looked.” He usually does, when I ask him, and it makes him feel at least a little better about it all.

  In the seventeen years we’ve been traveling together, Kintyre has acquired a sword, a questing partner, maidenheads and titles, prize purses and scars. But I firmly believe that the most important thing Kin ever picked up in all that time was a pencil. He’s always so much calmer, so much more content when he’s had the time and tools to draw. There is no better way to distract Kin out of his agitation and worry than to put him in front of a blank piece of parchment.

  Maybe tonight, we’ll forget finding someone to seduce and go out to that knoll with a torch and our stationary cases. Kintyre will sketch the statue as it once was, and I can lean back against him, spine to spine, our ribs pressing together warmly with each of Kin’s inhalations, sharing support and warmth as I compose the tale of The Eerie Eyes of Estagonnish.

  The scene I create in my mind fills me with a hot swell of yearning, as appealing as my little domestic fantasies from earlier, and no less ridiculous. I can almost feel the cool night breeze on my cheeks, the backs of my hands, the hollows of my wrists—along with the ache in the small of my back from carrying this ruddy pack all day and the pain in the bottom of my feet from the walking. I’m north of forty now, and yeah, the Doms are long-lived—Da is going on seventy soon—but that doesn’t keep us from feeling our age. Still, I can almost smell the pine pitch, the grass, and the special butter soap that I hoard and only dole out in small shaved curls for scrubbing away road-dust when we can hire a proper tub. There would be graphite and stone, and the crisp spring of grass under us. If I close my eyes, block out the harsh sun and the reek of the open gutters, I can just feel warm skin, a wet mouth as we both lay aside our tools, a hot push against my stomach, and . . .

  Stop, I snarl at myself, and open my eyes. Kin is nearly around the next bend, all but lost to sight. I’ve been dawdling as I daydreamed and rush to catch up, moving as fleetly as possible to hide that I was ever gone. Secret. Shamed.

  As the fantasy ebbs, I feel both empty with want, starving for touch, and at the same time, strangely at peace. I can’t deny that I desire what I do: the small domestic instants, the quiet, the stars. Dargan was right—things that didn’t seem important fifteen years ago, ten years ago, Writer, even three years ago, seem as vital as water and bread now. But these small, stolen moments will have to feed me. I consume them greedily, stockpile them carefully, and turn them over and over in my mind on days when things are bad.

  And if I’m honest with myself—I should be, it’s the least I owe me—if I’m really, truly honest, I know that this is all I’ll ever have. The small moments, and the horded memories, and the oblivious companionship of Kintyre. I will never have more.

  At least until we’re old enough to stop adventuring and settle in one place. If we settle together at all. I think back to that croft, that cottage, that estate I’ve been building in my imagination, but instead of a hearth with a rocking chair, surrounded by puppies and babies, a wife in the chair opposite me placidly cross-stitching, I conjure up Kintyre with his pencil and sketching book. Maybe Forsyth will take pity on a graying old adventurer and let me live out my retirement in Turn Hall. No babies. Maybe puppies. And wouldn’t that be a sight: three old bachelors, sniping at each other until we die, heirless and cranky, surrounded by slobbering dogs.

  If we live to retire, of course.

  I rub my wrenched wrist and frown. I may fantasize about the domestic life, but I also have no illusions about the sort of life I lead. I stretch out my arm, circling my left hand under its bandages.

  A few paces ahead of me, Kintyre stops so abruptly that, lost in my wool-gathering, I nearly run nose-first into his pack. He’s peering up at a painted sign, hanging above a large, clean window of lead-mullioned glass cut in the shape of diamonds.

  “What about this one?” he asks. His gaze drops to the window, and he smirks, then throws a smug look over his shoulder at me. “Seems perfect to me.”

  “The taproom?” I ask with a chuckle. “Or the truly spectacular tits behind the bar?”

  .

  Part Two

  The tavern is called Pern, probably after the someone’s beloved nag or something just as sentimental, but it’s the cleanest one on the thoroughfare. Even better, it lets beds above the taproom. Good enough for me. The perfect tits behind the bar turn out to belong to our landlady, and she brings them over to the booth we settle in to take our food, ale, and rooms.

  Kin is scratching idly at a wood block, scraping away a careful layer of shavings into a tidy pile on the tavern table. It’s a terrible habit. But I’m sick to the teeth of asking him not to do his carving over our dinners. I’ve lost that battle for seventeen years running. I have no illusions that I’ll be winning it today.

  Instead, I crane my neck and try to figure out what the picture is supposed to be.

  “What’s that, then?” I ask around a mouthful of a really, really tasty savory game pie. I’m going to have to ask the Goodwoman what herbs she used. There’s an unexpected, spicy sweetness clouding up the back of my nose, and I love it. Spices make all the difference when foraging on the road. They can make each meal taste like something else, something new and interesting, especially if you have to keep using the same boring old road rations. And they absolutely make up for the fact that I currently have to eat with the wrong hand.

  Kintyre holds up the block, and I can make out the beginnings of a reversed image—Foesmiter, and some sort of craggy outline that could be either a cliff or the beginnings of a forest. I cast my mind back over what I saw Kin smudging into a piece of vellum a couple of nights ago, right before we went into the Dark Elf’s cave. Ah, yeah. It’s the maw of an entrance, and the beginnings of figures that are probably supposed to be us standing in front of it. He always draws me too short, the twat.

  “Oh, ah, that’s for the eyes story?” I ask, sitting back.

  Kin nods. “If you decide to write it up.”

  “Of course I’ll decide to write it up,” I say. “You’re already illustrating it. I have to now, don’t I?” I shrug, trying to sound jovial about it. It’s not like I wasn’t already working on it anyway.

  Kin grunts, his mouth twisting into an aggravated line, and he sets down the block with a thunk that rattles my fork against the metal tureen. He picks up his own fork and stabs at the center of his pie, rich brown gravy oozing from the wound.

  “Oh, come on, Kin, I didn’t mean it like that—” I cut myself off when Kintyre just shovels a steaming heap of lunch into his mouth and turns his blue, blue eyes out t
he dirt-streaked window. “Fine then, be a snit,” I say, and reapply myself to my own pie. “Not like you can’t actually see that I’ve been writing.”

  Kintyre grunts and holds out his hand. I would like a “please,” but I know I’m never going to get one, any more than I will ever get him to stop flicking curls of wood shavings into my cooking. I gave up on that a while ago, too.

  I hand over the scrap of paper I’ve been scratching at between bites.

  I’ve also long since stopped being precious about my writing. When I first met Kin, I was as illiterate as every other title-less peasant in my Chipping; he’d taught me to read and to write. He’d helped me craft letters back home, letters that my mum still needed to pay a scholar to read to her, and to reply for her. But I had kept my first, coltish forays into fiction—a sort of sensational journal of our adventures—to myself. I never liked to share anything but my best work when I was a blacksmith’s apprentice; I had felt the same about my writing. But Kin found the first of the story scrolls and had sat with me, patient, for many long nights as he taught me story structure and punctuation, and coaxed description and depth of narrative out of me. I’d been ashamed of my work, but he had likened it to smithery. I had the tools, he said, now that I could read and write. I just needed to work on the skills, the little tricks and shortcuts that masters knew, the muscle memory of the thing. I just needed practice.

  Kin drops his eyes to the parchment and reads, chewing thoughtfully. His praise made me a writer, and his diligent generosity made me a great writer, and that is as close to divinity as worn-out, tired old Bevel Dom is ever going to get. So I can’t help but watch his expression, my stomach twisted into knots, as he reads.

  My work is recited in salons all over the world, and every one of the royal libraries has leather-bound, gilt-edged copies on display. I never pay for drinks in taverns and public houses where I read my scrolls. And I always have company to bed when I’m done.