The food on offer was broiled chicken and asparagus. He remembered hating asparagus as a child—a distant memory, now that he was a worldly thirteen—but had come to love it, partially due to having been forced to eat it anyway.
Apple pies and tarts were for sale as well, alongside yesterday's corn muffins, still perfectly good as food goes.
He didn't recognize everyone here, and thought it was odd, being gone only four days and not knowing every face in the room.
He ordered, paid his thaums with the familiar spark of mana leaving his soul, and wolfed down the food.
From a corner booth, he heard a sudden, loud declaration.
"I have a g-ffft metabolism!" said the taller of the two women, newcomers to the tavern. She gestured with a half-eaten chicken leg for emphasis.
Her companion, a shorter woman with striking white hair that seemed at odds with her unlined face, muttered something indistinct in reply.
Mana was moving.
Dalliance felt it, watching, though that wasn't the right word for the sense. Heat coiled.
"[Attune Air]," Dalliance cast.
Nothing happened in particular.
Again, he cast, this time forced to say the words of power slightly more loudly. Still, it was probably a murmur at best, though the man behind the bar looked at him oddly.
So that's what it did.
He could feel the ribbons of air: that was the best way he could describe them. The fire from the hearth produced one, rising up and splitting, then splitting again. Each ribbon curled and coiled, and split, until it wasn't bright, anymore, and began to fall along the corners and walls of the tavern.
More bright ribbons rose from cuts of chicken, bowls of broth, and cups of tea.
The ribbons near the white-haired woman's cup went straight from bright to dark, with no in-between.
Mana. Yep, that was it. Magic.
Dalliance used his skill [Prediction]. Would the spellcaster be dangerous? A friend? Did he need to leave? Or . . . .
Huh.
He moved to a closer table, without the women seeming to notice.
"—obviously not a tomboy. If we need to access the tomb, all we need is to talk to someone local who used to climb fences and dare each other to touch the mausoleum. There's a way in, and someone knows it."
Dalliance grinned. There was only one tomb in the area, after all.
"Ashy?" said the other woman, nodding in Dalliance's direction.
Curiosity warred with his mood. Curiosity won. He grinned brightly, and as innocently as a thirteen-year-old wasn't. "Need some help?"
"No chance at all you were minding your own business?" asked 'Ashy'.
"Nope!"
Her companion, currently finishing pushing an apple tart into her mouth, smirked at his words. Okay, so he seemed cute. Good.
"I could, you know. Help."
"I suppose I did just recommend this path," Ashy said. "Join us?"
The tarts were gone. The tea wasn't steaming at all. [Attune Air] wore off. That was not a long duration. The description hadn't said.
"Couldn't help but notice you were using magic. On the tea," he said, adding the detail at her first reaction: clear doubt. The doubt vanished, replaced by a weighing. He felt pressure and saw her eyes widen fractionally.
"Aeromancer," she murmured.
"You?" asked the other.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But that seems rather rude."
"Oh. Jasmine," said the other woman. "My apologies. The one without manners is Ashley. You're an [Aeromancer]?"
"Dalliance," he said.
"No, we're just friends," said Jasmine.
"My name. Dalliance Rather."
"Charmed," said Ashley. "You can get us to the tomb?"
"Dead easy. Nobody guards it. Just gotta go around back, through the goblin woods." It didn't take long to describe the route. He'd played archers with Whimsy amidst the gravestones too, waiting for Da to finish trading.
"Hmm," said Ashley. "I think I can work with this . . . and, for a fellow mage, I'd of course need to compensate you. Can you learn a spell through watching?"
"I don't know."
"Finish your food," she said. "Let's find out."
The three of them stood in a clearing in the pine forest, sunlight dappling the ground beneath the trees. Ashley turned to Dalliance, a teacherly smile on her face.
"Would you like to see a spell?" she asked.
"No."
The voice was a sliver of ice in the warm afternoon, utterly final. It came from the very air beside him. Jasmine gasped and stumbled back, her eyes wide. Ashley, however, didn't even flinch. A slow, knowing smile touched her lips.
"Ah," she said, her tone amused. "Your guardian."
The air between Dalliance and Ashley shimmered, then ignited. A light, a blue so brilliant and pure it forced him to shield his eyes, blazed into existence. In the center of the radiance hovered Topaz. Her tiny form radiated a palpable pressure that made the pine needles on the ground stir and flow away from her in a slow, frost-glittering drift.
He had only seen his friend like this once before.
"I know what you are," Topaz said, her voice the grinding of glass. "He does NOT need your magics."
Ashley’s smile didn't waver. She held up her hands in a placating gesture. "Just a frost spell," she said lightly.
A tense, humming silence fell. Topaz blazed, a furious blue star. Ashley stood her ground, unreadable. Dalliance stood between them, frozen, caught in the sudden collision of his two secret worlds.
"We wouldn't," Jasmine interjected. "Right, Ashy?"
Her friend nodded after a second.
The silence broken, the blue light pulsed once more, then the blinding radiance faded. Topaz circled and landed on Dalliance's shoulder, a tiny, glittering jewel with her face set in a scowl.
"See that you don't," she hissed.
Unfazed, the cryomancer turned her attention to a nearby pine tree. She murmured a command, and a wave of absolute cold washed over it. The tree frosted over. Bark cracked and flaked away, pine needles shattered like glass, and smaller branches snapped off, the lot landing in a scattering around it.
"That is a curse," Topaz said, her voice tight.
"Of frost," Ashley countered innocently.
"FINE," Topaz snapped. "I shall teach him, . . . [Necromancer]."
"[Cryotheurge]," Jasmine corrected softly.
The faerie said nothing.
"I'd better be off," Ashley said after a long, awkward silence.
"I'm going back to town," Jasmine said. "I'll follow the kid."
Dalliance glanced at his shoulder, but the faerie was already gone.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
"Walk me back?" Jasmine asked him, a playful, nervous light in her eyes. "Not sure how well I'd handle a goblin."
He rolled his eyes. "There are no goblins in these woods anymore. Probably."
With strained courtesy, he offered her his arm.
Dalliance watched the spellcaster go, her friend (or sister?) remaining behind. "And she's off again," said Jasmine. "As she always does. Going straight for the throat."
Dalliance glanced at her. "So to speak," she said quickly. "So what was it like, growing up here? Faerie godmother and everything."
Topaz had left in a huff, after promising to share his new curse with him later. Dalliance wasn’t sure how to feel about this label for the new Cold spell. It hadn't seemed that far removed from [Chill], not that he could get this other one to work.
"I’m sorry," said Jasmine, noticing his silence. "I must have been insensitive."
Dalliance shook his head. The taller woman walked in step with him, shortening her strides to match his. Sun through the leaves overhead threw dappled shadows.
A dragonfly buzzed and zipped through the air. Just like when he'd first met them, Dalliance didn’t see any likely outcomes where this woman would hurt him or tell him much about herself. But curses . . . now, maybe that opened up another avenue.
"I'm not used to talking about her," said Dalliance. "Trafficking with the fae is illegal; but maybe you don’t care about that so much."
"How do you mean?" she asked, her gaze flicking to his in the way the light was very good.
"Your friend curses people," he said, an instant's stillness belying the denial that followed.
"Ashley is a wizard. A Cryotheurge. And she means well," Jasmine said. "Just hard done by: Ashy's doing the best she can."
Dalliance watched as she considered a diatribe to the effect that who’s to say the law isn’t wrong, but as quickly changed her mind.
"I have no cause to point fingers," he said quickly. "Not after the way my Hunt went. Just curious, is all."
"I'm sure you're very much steeped in crime. That's another thing: the castle. Why did you know the way? Or tell us?"
His know-how wasn’t being met with the amazement he felt it merited.
"Oh well," Dalliance said, trying to sound casual, "I broke in once. Got all the way into the sleeping quarters." She looked like she was deciding whether to be impressed or disbelieving, but was settling on impressed to humor him. "Why?" she asked.
"I was going to poison someone," Dalliance admitted. "But then I didn’t."
They walked in silence for a minute. That had killed the lighthearted banter.
"Why not?" she asked.
Dalliance looked at her in puzzlement.
"If they needed it," she said. "Bad enough to try in the first place, but then you'd wasted all that effort too."
"He wasn’t there," Dalliance admitted.
"And you told us how to get in because you hate his family?"
"No," he said, shaking his head. "I heard you say 'he is buried there', something like that, and it’s nothing you couldn’t have figured out on your own. So you weren’t going to hurt anyone, and I still got something out of it, I guess."
"Why would you even need something from us?" she asked. "If you have a secret friend?"
"My secret friend isn’t allowed to be too generous," he said. "Gifts come with prices. But so do lies, so you got her to agree to teach me, and she will. So I get a gift, you get a bargain, and the gift's from you. Sort of."
"Okay," said Jasmine, a dogged note entering her voice. "But you didn't know that before you talked to us."
Dalliance put on the air of a petulant child. "I have no idea what you’re talking about," he said.
He had. A little. But there was no way she was going to believe him.
They reached the main street, the one that ran from the castle to the malthouse. Dalliance stopped.
"Do you live nearby?" she asked.
"Not exactly," was the true answer. "But I am going home. So. It’s been a pleasure meeting you," he said, all pretenses dropped. "I think maybe not all evil wizards are bad."
Her eyes crinkled at the corners. "I don't . . . ."
But he was a rushing wind, fading into wisps of smoke from scorched grass as he rose up and up, above the Goblin Woods, above the reservoir, and sped east along the aqueduct towards home.
Dalliance wasn't woken by the brassy tones of the trumpet this morning, as he'd been the nights before, but a respectful knock still woke him several hours later, the House Mother herself, Detective Rainy, standing at his door with a pensive frown on her face.
"Dalliance," she said upon his opening the door wide enough to admit a package. "You’ve received a summons." And she slid the package through the gap in the door. It was wrapped in brown paper, stuck together with wax. No seal, but the stamp of a blood-red sword.
"Have you been fighting?" she asked seriously. "Because I believe our charter was quite clear on the use of maleficium within our hall."
He just shook his head, opening the note. It was surprisingly brief.
Dalliance Rather, you are summoned as immediate family of Cadence Rather on this, the day of his duel with Parsimony Pleasant on a matter of honor touching your family.
As arbitrage has been declined and both parties stand ready for the challenge, the family of the challenger has the right to appoint a second. The challenged has himself appointed Solidarity Rather as interim second, pending the decision of your family.
The duel will take place on the village green of Tolbotton at noon.
Dalliance glanced at the timepiece. "There isn’t a lot of time," he said. "I think I have to skip class. My father's in a duel."
"I see," said Rainy.
He offered her the letter, which she accepted after a moment of hesitation and quickly scanned. "I will inform your professors. Instructor Tempest will likely desire a make-up session before her next class. Speak to me upon your return."
There was a question in her tone, but he didn’t think it was a request.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, channeling his inner Cadet Rather once again.
"I work for a living," she said mildly. "As you were." And with a quirk of a raised eyebrow, she swept off.
The sun was bright. The clock read ten. He was so tired, up all night fretting, and it hadn’t done him a bit of good.
He prayed, but his godmother didn’t answer.
Dalliance Rather donned his best suit, unconcerned about wear and tear from traveling: he'd be flying. He didn’t quite look as posh as a little noble, but he took the time to shine his shoes, apply pomade, and brush his teeth. The clear complexion in the mirror, and the calm face wearing it, felt alien, removed from the person within. But it was the least he could do.
Dalliance was already feeling guilty for a crime he hadn’t committed yet. He shook his head and called himself a fool, for all the good that did. "Can you think your way out of second thoughts?" he mumbled, and splashed his face with water. It wasn’t the time for that.
Zephyrus bore him away, across tiers and towers, walls and fields, hamlets and forests, to Tolbotton and his reckoning.
Dalliance was somewhat bemused to see Jasmine standing on the outskirts of the dueling ground. She didn’t know any of the contestants, after all. But, as he coalesced from the wind next to her, she, after she jumped, admitted that she’d recognized the name and thought he might be there.
He accepted the chocolate chip muffin that she offered him. Awkwardly. It didn’t feel like he deserved it.
"You’re stressed," she said. "Stands to reason."
You have no idea, Dalliance thought.
The maypole had been removed. That was the first thing that he noticed looking at the field. The Rather clan was mostly assembled. None of them approached him, and Dalliance didn't doubt he knew why. He had marked himself. It hadn't been Solidarity; he couldn't have possibly been the one. It hadn't been Industry. Industry would have known that Chastity wouldn't benefit from it. Though perhaps she might be the most plausible; but in the end, he was the only one likely to have placed the letter. And he'd thought he was so clever, putting it up anonymously.
No one wanted to talk to him because he had started the fight, and whatever happened was his fault. Likely as not, he was getting someone killed.
Jasmine didn’t seem to understand the underlying vibe; instead chattering happily.
"I mean, look at your dad," she said. "That is a big man. I wouldn’t care to bet against him."
Dalliance nodded. Absolutely. Because his Da was a big man, after all.
"Does this sort of thing happen often?" she asked.
He broke the muffin in half. After considering possible alternatives: if he asked her to be quiet, she would feel hurt, or at least she would look that way; if he told her his father was an abuser and needed to die, she would become extremely uncomfortable; he came to a solution. If he gave her half the muffin, she would eat it in silence, broken by occasional attempts at communication around a mouthful of food.
He handed her the half muffin. "Do you know why they’re fighting?" he said instead. She deserved some of the information; this seemed like it would explain enough.
"My whole life, I've been calling the big one 'Da,' just like you would. And my whole life, as far as I know, my mother has been pursuing an affair with the wizard, Parsimony Pleasant. Over there, in the orange robes and pointy hat."
"They're both my father, in a way," he said, after a brief pause. "Where did my blood come from? Where did my blond hair come from? But then, who taught me to take responsibility and clean up messes myself?" He knew his tone had turned frosty on the last phrase, but he couldn’t help it.
"All this over a woman?" said Jasmine incredulously, around her muffin.
"People do strange things for love," Dalliance said flatly.
She snickered and tried to tell him something, something apparently quite amusing. He didn’t understand exactly what she'd said, but it was about Ashley, and it sounded like 'doesn't know her head from her bottom.'
He probably misheard.
"So that’s why you’re standing here," she said, pausing between mouthfuls for a sip of tea. As the only one eating at the duel's ringside, Dalliance privately thought she might be being a little bit gauche, but then, nobody here was nobility, were they?
Parsimony and a stern-looking old witch paced off two legs of a square, taking up the majority of the Green. On his side, Cadence and Solidarity Rather did likewise. His uncle glanced at him, and Dalliance couldn't read his expression.
Dalliance saw Cadence's black-bladed glaive lying on the table. [Halberdier], he'd been told, was the class to do with polearms that weren’t spears. The best melee class, in his father‘s humble opinion, for versatility. With a weapon like that, an artifact, Dalliance could imagine why.
Brandish stood in the center of the Green, a large red handkerchief fluttering from his waist. It made him look dashing, in the way some of the models on his mother's chapbook covers had done—sashes and flowing fabric, bared chest muscles—although Brandish had no such affectation. Instead, the lethal scout's crossbow rested on his back. Dalliance wondered if it would have any effect on his father at all. Either of them. Brandish probably knew what he was doing.
"We’re going to have a fair fight today!" he announced with parade-ground, clarion clarity. "Walk twenty paces. Turn. Engage on my mark. Beforehand, this is your last chance, gentlemen, to withdraw from the field of honor through reconciliation."
Cadence shook his head. Parsimony did likewise, then rolled his eyes, the motion only visible because he took great care to tilt his head back. "Mad. Like father, like son," he said.
Dalliance had never known his grandfather, but the insult still stung. That the old man remained in chains in the Citadel after all this time was hardly a mark of honor for the family, something his dad and his uncles cared about very deeply. But again, Dalliance had never known him. Perhaps there was a good reason, after all. People said that his Da was just like the man.
"So be it," said the arbiter. "As reconciliation has failed, let your retribution be proportioned and just."
No chance of that, Dalliance thought.
There were three ways this could end. One of them could quit the field, surrendering to whatever forfeit had been agreed upon by the families, and live life branded as a coward. One could faint or yield, being unable to continue. Or one could die. Dalliance knew which one his father would prefer. Parsimony, he probably knew too.
"This is a lot of ceremony," Jasmine said, "for a couple of men to rough each other up."
"My Da has never yielded in a fight in his life," Dalliance said softly. They were pacing away from each other now.
Jasmine inhaled sharply, but Dalliance didn’t spare her a glance. The kerchief was falling, and his fathers were on the move.