Page 11

Chapter Eleven

H e came home at the beginning of Idunet’s hours, which came earlier and earlier as the year waned away. Here, the leaves were still mostly green, but he saw hints of yellow limning the edges of them, and the golden wheat fields had already been shorn. Six weeks. He’d been gone six weeks.

He rode up to Lyford Manor House, crushed under the weight of shame, failure, exhaustion, grief. He wasn’t a hero. He couldn’t do anything marvelous but grow marrows. He was just plain old Tam Becket—the worst possible thing to be—and that truth was so unavoidable that it felt shocking, inevitable, wrong. He didn’t want to be Tam Becket, but there was no escape from the fact that he had to be, that he didn’t get a choice in it. The only thing as inevitable and certain was death.

There were lights in the windows of the manor house, glimmering warm and kind and inviting through the gloaming. As he came up the lane, Piggy suddenly tossed his head and whinnied, jerking and prancing for a moment and whipping his tail as if he’d been bitten by a horsefly. Piggy had been so calm and level and unflappable for weeks, and Tam could not remember even once when Piggy had made a noise louder than a whuffle or a heavy sigh. He swore under his breath and got the horse under control, but it was one more thing to throw him off-balance, and it shattered the last of his will.

He was shaking hard when Piggy stopped as abruptly as he’d started, flicking his ears around as if to say, What was that about? Just as Tam cued him to walk forward again, the front door of the manor slammed open and—

And Lyford was running down the path towards him, no coat, no hat, only house slippers for shoes. His white shirt was the only bright thing in the twilight, and Tam’s heart twisted at the same time that the last of his strength crumbled. He burst into tears again, sliding off of Piggy’s back and collapsing onto the ground like a treacle pudding off the edge of a table.

Within moments, Lyford was there, gripping Tam’s shoulders and babbling desperately. Tam couldn’t hear anything but the wail of despair within his own heart and a rush of relief at homecoming so profound that it hurt. He toppled against Lyford’s chest, sobbing. Why wouldn’t it stop? Why couldn’t he claw himself apart to make it all stop?

Lyford’s arms wrapped around him, held him together, gripping him tightly. Between one hitching sob and the next, he heard Lyford say, “I’m sorry,” which hurt all over again even as it shocked Tam to his core. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Tam, I shouldn’t have done it, I’m sorry—”

“I tried,” Tam choked out, which was the thing that had been so impossible to say at Angarat’s standing stone. “I tried, I couldn’t, I kept looking, it wasn’t there— ”

“I’m sorry, goblin , I’m sorry , I shouldn’t have set you that quest, I was wrong. I set you the wrong quest, I knew as soon as you’d gone—I rode after you to call you back but I couldn’t find you—I’m so sorry, Tam, I’m sorry, I was wrong.”

None of that made sense, but Lyford was kissing his hair and hugging him tight and stroking his back, and even though Tam’s nose was too stuffy to smell anything, the warmth of him against Tam’s face was still so, so familiar. Tam clung to him, bawled against his shirt, felt Lyford shaking in his grasp and heard him sniffling in between his fervent whispering.

It was nearly full dark by the time Tam lifted his head and found that Lyford was surrounded by glimmering fireflies like some stupid bug fiend. A trail of them led back up to the house, enough to light the way. Lyford took Tam’s face in his hands and rubbed the tears off his cheeks. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Lady of Lambs, I was so worried. Almost two months , Tam, why did you stay out so long?”

“Because you told me to catch the Ram, and...” His breath hitched, and he hiccuped painfully. “And I couldn’t find it, so I kept— hic , ow—I kept looking, and... And...”

“And you didn’t want to give up, because you’re the most stubborn creature in existence. Fuck. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Tam, it was the wrong quest—”

“I know that ,” Tam wailed in his face. “I fucking know it is, because I failed, I gave up! I couldn’t do it!”

“It wasn’t your fault, it doesn’t count. You haven’t failed at anything. I did it, I—fuck.” He scrubbed a hand over his own face. “Come on, let’s go inside. Please, Tam, let’s just go inside and have something warm to eat and drink, and we can talk about it. Please.”

Lyford’s whole fucking household was standing at the doors and windows to gawp at them, which was convenient when Lyford handed off Piggy to a stablehand and asked one of the maids to bring them hot cider in his sitting room.

“I want to wash my face, please,” Tam said in a tiny voice, to which Lyford replied gently, “Of course, goblin, of course you can,” and took him to the washroom. He stood there wringing his hands while Tam splashed water on his face from the basin until he felt somewhat more human.

A steaming teapot of cider was waiting for them in the sitting room, accompanied by a plate of apple cookies—the earlier of the two varietals in Lyford’s orchards had already been taken in, then. Tam had missed it. He nearly wept all over again.

Lyford gestured him to sit on the couch and poured him a mug. Tam buried his face in it. The cider was rich and heady with spices and sweetness, as crisp and fresh as the first crunching bite of an apple plucked straight from the branch, balanced by a tang of tartness that evened out any of the cloying, honey-thick flavors less fine apples would have produced.

Tam scrunched down over it and pulled his legs up until it felt like all of him was wrapped around this one warm mug. Lyford clucked his tongue and found a lap blanket to drape around Tam, and then he sat on the edge of the low table in front of him. “I’m so glad you’re alright. And I’m so sorry I sent you away.”

Tam sniffled and sipped his cider. It was very difficult to be wracked with the pain and grief of failure when his mouth was filled with the sweetness of the familiar flavors of the Lyford Manor apples. Tart Tallies , this varietal was called, after some far-off Lyford ancestor. “Why wouldn’t I be alright?” he said dully.

“You were gone for nearly two months , Tam.” Six weeks. A month and a half. But it didn’t feel that long. It felt like a week, and also a thousand years. “And you didn’t send any letters home—I didn’t know if you’d been killed by bandits, or if you’d fallen off Piggy and broken your neck, or...” Lyford stumbled to a stop, visibly collecting himself before forging on. “Or if you’d decided to go to Brassing-on-Abona or somewhere and start a new life. I thought you’d vanished. ”

He wouldn’t know where you’d vanished to, Angarat had said. It’s going to hurt him very deeply when he finds out you’ve gone.

Tam sniffled. “Just spent a while being stupid in the Highlands. Can’t show my face there again, they all think I’m a lunatic. Anyway, here I am, with no Ram to show for it.” A hard lump came into his throat, and he clutched his mug close. “Sorry,” he said thickly. “I just... couldn’t.”

Lyford didn’t say anything, and when Tam glanced up at him, his eyes were soft and full of hurt and compassion and—and an openness, like he was listening and Tam could keep speaking if he wanted to.

Tam took several shaky breaths. “It was really cold,” he said in a small voice. “And I tried , alright? I tried, and I couldn’t do it, and I—I was running out of money for inns, and one night I stayed out so late I had to beg Idunet for help so I wouldn’t die of the cold or the wolves, and I slept in an abandoned cottage—barely a cottage, more like a pile of rocks...” Lyford made a hurt sound, like the very idea of Tam having to sleep somewhere that wasn’t someone’s home was viscerally painful. Very favored-of-Angarat of him. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t find the Ram, so I gave up. ” He felt the sharpness rising in him, and he hated it, and he couldn’t stop it. He wanted to cut his soul to ribbons. “I had one job, and I fucked it up. I’ll go back out if you want me to, I’ll find your bloody Ram, I just can’t go out in the cold, Lyford, I can’t, I’m so tired— I’ll go in the spring when it’s warm again— ”

“ No, ” said Lyford. He reached out and... well, he couldn’t reach Tam’s hands, since Tam was curled up so tight around the mug, but he clasped Tam’s knees, his arms. “No, Tam. You won’t go again. It was the wrong quest. It wasn’t Angarat’s work that I sent you on.”

“Had to do with a taming a sheep,” Tam muttered into his cider. “So it kind of was.”

“No,” Lyford said more firmly. “I sent you away from your home. I sent you off to be a hero , and that was wrong . I realized it after you left. It’s not Angarat’s domain at all . I went to Talhenge and got one of the traveling minstrels there to sing The Geste of the Ram for me and... Tam, even the original quest was for Brassu. The Ram had been destroying cottages and cotes, and Brassu sent Sir Cavendir to capture it or vanquish it so that there might be peace and order. Yes, Sir Cavendir prayed to Angarat for assistance, but the quest wasn’t for her .” Lyford’s hands slid off Tam’s arms, and he rubbed them over his face. “Gods, Tam, I’m sorry. I misremembered—it’s been years since I read the Geste or heard anyone tell those stories. I was wrong, and I shouldn’t have sent you away in the first place, and I have no words for how terrible I feel. I’m sorry.”

Tam was faintly aware that this had been an opportunity for him to be angry with Lyford. To blame him for nearly two months of wasted time and effort, and for Tam’s failure and all the hurt and disappointment and frustration that came with it. An opportunity to lash out and hold it over him and call him an absolute prick, and pretentious, full of himself, vain for fancying himself the sort of person who could have the Ram of the Highlands for breeding stock.

He was too tired, and too heartsore, and the cider was too sweet and too good. It didn’t feel like Lyford was at fault for setting an impossible quest—nor for misremembering how the first iteration of such a great deed had happened. Tam turned it over in his head. It was a stupid mistake, certainly. But it was a human mistake. It was the sort of mistake Tam himself had made, and probably everyone else too. How often had someone sent a friend on an errand with bad information, only to realize it after they’d already left? Lyford hadn’t meant to, and he’d tried to come after Tam... And he really did look like he was almost as miserable about it as Tam felt.

Tam sniffled and mumbled, “Don’t be an ass. We both did it. I didn’t remember anything about Sir Whatshisface either.” He swallowed the hard lump in his throat and forced himself to add, “Probably stupid to run off without... doing any research. Just got excited. Overconfident, after... you know. My huge giant girthy thing that you liked so much.”

Lyford gave a watery little laugh. “I did like it.”

“Took one look at it and swooned. Never seen one so big, have you.”

“Biggest I’ve ever seen.”

Tam wiped another couple tears off his cheeks with the cuff of his sleeve and hid his face in his mug so no one could see that there was mirth and motherfucking good humor stirring up under his misery. He wasn’t ready to let it go yet. He wanted to hold onto it. He wanted—to be held. To be surrounded by warmth the way his hands were filled with it.

He unscrunched just enough to disentangle an arm from the lap blanket, caught a fold of Lyford’s sleeve, and tugged.

Lyford moved to sit beside him immediately, and when Tam toppled against him, Lyford wrapped his arms around him, holding him just as tightly as he had out on the road, burying his face against Tam’s hair.

“I smell bad,” Tam mumbled to his mug of cider.

“You smell like road dust and cut wheat and horse,” Lyford said, not unkindly. “And sweaty Tam.”

“Never complained about that one before.”

Another watery little laugh, more of a vibration in Lyford’s chest than a noise. “Not complaining about it now,” he whispered into Tam’s hair. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

Tam closed his eyes. After a moment, he said, “Did you meet Kelavigo?”

“Who?”

“Kel Gauda.”

“Oh, him. He passed through—he said he’d met you at an inn. You’d only been gone four or five days.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Did you fuck him?”

Tam could almost hear the blink of confusion. “No? He asked to stay for a few days, and we talked about Idunet and Angarat, and then his lord called him away.”

Tam seethed. “Asshole.”

Lyford sighed in what sounded like resignation; Tam’s heart clenched up in alarm. “I see. Was I supposed to fuck him, then?”

“No,” Tam said quickly, his heart thundering. “No, I meant him, not you.”

Lyford paused. Relaxed. “Oh.”

“I don’t like him. He was smug. Pretentious. Smarmy .”

“Certainly he exhibited elements of being an incorrigible twit,” Lyford said.

Tam lifted his head and peered at him. “You’re just agreeing with me so I won’t be grouchy.”

“Who, me? No, not at all, wouldn’t dream of it. Things are so interesting when you’re grouchy. Kel Gauda? Can’t stand him.”

Tam grumbled and scrunched back down over his cider. If that meant that his head was on Lyford’s shoulder, nearly tucked under his chin, then that was an unintentional side effect. Lyford’s hands moved slowly up and down his back and his arm.

“I want a bath,” Tam said before he knew he was going to speak.

“Baths are very doable,” Lyford said softly, speaking right against Tam’s hair. “Shall I get up and call for one?”

It struck Tam suddenly that he had assumed—that they’d probably both assumed — that he was going to be spending the night. It was another little strange, dull shock, like Piggy’s sudden whinny earlier. Part of him jolted to alarm and wanted to look for the nearest window to fling itself out of.

He took hold of his own reins firmly. He didn’t want to fling himself out of a window. He wanted a bath, and Lyford’s bath was markedly better than his own little washtub in his kitchen at home. He wanted a bath, and—and he wanted to be kissed. He wanted to be kissed in the bath. And held just like this. Except, presumably, naked. Because of the bath. Naked, in the bath, being held and kissed—by Lyford, yes, fine—

His mind supplied an image of what else might be done in the bath, and rather than skittering away from it, he tightened the reins and forced himself to look at it. Did he want sex in the bath? Or at least foreplay, since the logistics of actual sex might prove a bit unwieldy? Yes, he did. There.

There, was that so hard? He shot a smug mental look in Idunet’s direction, wherever he existed when he wasn’t bossing around Kel Gauda or showing up to make pointless offers to Tam Becket about palaces and fancy things.

He hadn’t answered Lyford’s question yet, so he spoke carefully: “Yes please.”

Lyford extricated himself and went to find a servant to start the water heating. Tam stared down into his cider, now only lukewarm, and contemplated how strange it was that he was fully preparing to climb Lyford like a tree, yet he had the sneaking feeling that he wasn’t going to be annoyed with himself later, and he wasn’t going to throw himself out of any windows, and he... might not turn down a second round this time, if Lyford offered.

He chugged the rest of his cider and set the mug aside. Lyford came back, reclaiming his seat beside Tam as he asked, “Would you like any more?”

Tam shook his head. Lyford seemed hesitant to wrap around Tam again, at least until Tam nudged into his space and prodded his arm. Still, his hold was looser now, and when Tam glanced up at him, his expression was a little guarded, a little unsure.

He wouldn’t flirt with Tam, not like this—not when he felt so wretched about the quest being wrong, when he knew that Tam felt wretched about failing...

Sex would make them both feel better, probably. At least it would give them something else to think of besides moping.

Tam put his hand on Lyford’s knee. Lyford stopped breathing for a full ten seconds before he exhaled and breathed, “Ah. Hello, goblin.”

Tam inched his hand higher on Lyford’s thigh, just to make his meaning very clear. “Do you want to get in the bath with me?”

“Am I welcome?” Apparently his meaning was not yet clear enough. He moved his hand an inch higher. Lyford swallowed hard. “Yes, I do.”

It was Idunet’s hours, and sex was one of Idunet’s domains, and Tam had a bargain with Idunet to fulfill. Not the Lord of Temptation , he remembered Kel Gauda saying. The Lord of Consent. ‘Idunet offered me a choice, and I said yes, because I wanted it.’

He wanted comfort and warmth and familiarity after two long months alone and cold in the Highlands. He wanted to scrub clean in a proper bath, because none of the inns had proper baths, not like Lyford’s giant tub. He wanted Lyford’s hands on him, his mouth, his beautiful cock—gods, Tam missed his cock. He wanted to see what it was like, just once, if he paid attention to the absurd things Lyford babbled in bed, and if he didn’t scramble away as soon as they were done, and what the second round was like.

Conclusion: It was good. Disturbingly good. Good in a way that pierced an arrow of uncertainty at Tam’s deepest sense of self, which was terrifying at a distance of several miles away, because Tam was very busy having an extremely good time .

He’d felt Lyford up on the settle, trailing his fingers up and down Lyford’s inner thigh in silence while Lyford sat there and held him and breathed and fidgeted, grown visibly hard and wanting in his trousers, until someone came to tell them that the bath was ready. Lyford had led him to the bathing room with as much decorum as any gentleman should have, shut the door, shoved Tam against it, and kissed the sense out of him.

Then Lyford had gotten his hands on Tam’s arse and gave such a heartfelt groan that Tam briefly thought the prick might have been stabbed in the back by an assassin—maybe that fucker Kel Gauda or someone. “Idunet’s eyes, Tam— fuck. ” He put his head down on Tam’s shoulder and laughed weakly. “I’ve fucked myself.”

“Bwuh?” said Tam, who was still reeling from the kiss and the dizzying relief of how sharply and suddenly better he was feeling.

Lyford mouthed at his neck, kneading Tam’s arse like a purring cat on a cushion. “Sent you off on a horse —two months of riding, every day, for hours and hours... Fuck, goblin, your bottom didn’t need any more help.” As Lyford fumbled to undress them, Tam reflected that perhaps there was something to this ‘listening to Lyford’s babbling in bed’ business after all.

The next thing was when they were deliciously skin to skin, Lyford still groping at his arse like a man possessed while nursing gently at a spot on Tam’s neck and driving him to distraction about it, until he remembered that there was a hot bath over there which wouldn’t stay hot forever, and he was sick of being semi-grimy from the subpar options of inns’ bathing facilities. “Want a bath,” he managed to garble, and Lyford groaned against his skin.

“Fuck. Bath. Yes. Washing. Please let me lick you.”

Tam had never let him do that before, partly because it had usually been a second-round activity that Lyford offered, but mostly because Tam had instinctively felt like it was the sort of thing that he would not be able to come back from as himself. He pried Lyford off of him, which meant prying the prick’s prick away from him— tragic. “I’ll think about it.”

“Great,” said Lyford, wobbling a little on his feet as if he were drunk. Tam pointedly did not look at his dick, because he didn’t need to be doing something embarrassing at this point, like bursting into tears and falling to his knees in joy at their reunion. He wriggled out from between Lyford and the door and went to sit on the fancy little bathing stool with the so-called bucket for his first wash.

When he dunked his head in the bucket, Lyford made another broken, assassinated noise. Tam peered up at him through the curtain of wet brown hair hanging over his face and said, “What’s wrong with you?”

“Your thighs,” Lyford said, frozen in the middle of climbing into the tub.

Tam peered down at them. He supposed they were somewhat more muscular than they’d been before his stupid fucking quest, but not by that much. It had only been not-quite-two months. He hadn’t noticed much of a difference, except for the way his trousers sat around his hips and how he’d stopped being in agony from the saddle at the end of the day. “They’re just thighs,” he said crisply. “Calm down.”

Lyford took a breath, shook himself, and laughed. “Goblin,” he said, but it sounded more like a reminder to himself than anything else.

Lyford, of course, was just Lyford, and Tam could calm down about the prospect of climbing into the bath with him, even though by the time he’d rinsed off the worst of the grime and road dust, Lyford was soaking in the steaming water, golden and glorious with the ends of his hair stringy with water and just brushing past his shoulders, and his hand stroking loose and slow around his cock...

This was far superior to a tumbling-down abandoned cottage in the Highlands. Far superior even to a warm bed with that motherfucker Kel Gauda. Tam got in.

Right, so there might have been something to Lyford’s babbling, and there might have been something to Lyford’s idea about bathing together—there was certainly something to Lyford’s idea about bending Tam over the edge of the bath and licking his arse, which was fantastic but (to his great relief) not to the point of shattering his entire sense of self. There was something to how fixated Lyford was on his thighs, as well—he kept running his hands over them and groaning against Tam’s skin and saying something about wanting them wrapped around his head, which... Maybe there wasn’t something to Lyford’s babbling, actually, because it was kind of distracting.

There was something to foreplay, too, which Tam had historically not bothered with more than absolutely necessary, since it meant having to spend more time in Lyford’s presence than he had cared to. But by the time the water in the bath was going cool, they were both mad for it, and Lyford kept fucking babbling about wanting to get Tam into bed, wanting to make it good for him and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.

They stumbled into Lyford’s bedroom, still mostly damp, and Lyford tumbled him into bed and crawled over him, biting at him and whispering, “Want it on your stomach? Fuck, you love it like that, you moan so sweet like that. I could fuck your thighs, gods, Tam, your thighs...”

Tam could not have said whether Idunet made a polite little ahem in the back of his mind or whether he merely imagined it—maybe there was something of Idunet that lived in the back of everyone’s mind, and that was the part that whispered to you about what you wanted and tempted you to do it.

He did have a bargain to pay off, so he pushed Lyford onto his back and... made good on the deal. Made very good on the deal, if he did say so himself, because by the end, Lyford was scrabbling at his thighs and grasping at his arse and hips and writhing—and, yes, gasping Idunet’s name as frequently as Tam’s. Perhaps there was something to all that horseriding, too, because Tam’s thighs had only just started burning and he was barely out of breath by the time Lyford wheezed like he’d been punched in the gut, coming shuddering and silent with his head thrown back and his mouth open and his golden hair mussed and tangled all over the pillows.

Tam propped himself on Lyford’s chest with one hand and finished himself off with the other in a handful of strokes—Lyford usually did that part, but Lyford was barely conscious, whimpering under his breath and apparently incapable of moving or speaking, which was a different kind of satisfying than the afterglow of pleasure. More of a languorous smugness, Tam reflected as he gingerly pulled off Lyford’s beautiful fucking cock and collapsed next to him to catch his own breath, staring up at the hangings over the bed. He could definitely go for seconds, if Lyford could manage to piece himself back together into some semblance of a human after that.

Lyford wheezed in a way that sounded both incredulous and inquisitive.

“Had to bargain with Idunet, like I said,” Tam explained breathlessly. “Told him I’d do that to you if he helped me find shelter. That was the night I slept in the abandoned cottage.”

Lyford wheezed incredulously again and raised his hands in the position of prayer used to offer thanks for divine blessings and miraculous abundance.

“You’re welcome,” Tam said, though Lyford had probably meant the gesture for Idunet.

Lyford wheezed softly. As he lowered his hands, Tam added, “We can go again if you’d like to.” Lyford whipped his hands back up.

After the second round, the bed was a wreck, they both needed another bath, and now Tam was the one gently wheezing and trying to collect his words and his sense again. Lyford was sucking sleepily at the mark on Tam’s neck, draped on Tam’s back with his full weight and still inside him, and Tam felt properly warm. That whole waste of time in the Highlands felt very far away and a very long time ago.

Tam licked his lips and rasped, “Need another quest.”

“Fuck’s sake, goblin,” Lyford mumbled against his skin.

For a time, it seemed like no other answer was forthcoming, but then Lyford rumbled on top of him with a thoughtful hum and said, “I have a quest.”

“Let’s hear it,” Tam mumbled into the bedding.

“If you don’t like it, I can give you another.”

“Great.”

Lyford lifted his head a little and lipped at the edge of Tam’s ear. “It’s an Angarat kind of quest this time. Properly hers, like the marrow.”

“Learned your lesson about stupid fucking Rams, then.”

“Yes,” Lyford said, and paused. He hugged Tam close for a moment. “Don’t run away if you don’t like it.”

“Angarat’s arse, how bad is this bloody quest? Just tell me.”

Lyford whispered, “Call me Nicolau.”

Tam froze.

“Asshole,” he said. Then: “Fuck. Habit. Sorry. Fuck off. Gods, shut up— that was at me. Just—dammit—give me a fucking minute , alright?”

“Sure,” said Lyford, so Tam pulled one of the pillows over his head and screamed. “Should I pull out?”

“No. Fuck. Sadistic prick .”

“For offering to pull out, or for the quest?”

“You know what you did,” Tam hissed from under the pillow.

Lyford propped himself up on his elbows. “I did say you wouldn’t like it,” he said in that tone of patience that meant Tam was hurting his feelings again. Gods. Dammit. Fuck. “I can think of another one.”

“It’s not—argh! Stop it. Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Being sad! I haven’t—fuck off— I haven’t done anything except complain! I’m not—” Tam gritted his teeth. “Lay back down on me,” he snapped.

“Why?”

“So I can’t fucking run away, you absolute prick .”

Lyford paused. “Ah,” he said, and lowered himself again, giving Tam his full weight.

There, that was the first problem solved: He couldn’t throw himself out a window, even if he wanted. “Now give me a fucking second before you start sighing like a bloody martyr—I’m not—” Turning it down . He couldn’t say it.

“It’s alright,” Lyford said gently. “I’ve got habits too, that’s all.”

Call him Nicolau. Call him Nicolau. Call him Nicolau.

Tam grimaced, moving his mouth in the shape of each sound. It felt foreign on his tongue.

He was distantly aware that he was being ridiculous. Lying here in a man’s bed, with that man’s prick up his arse after two magnificent rounds of sex, with love bites on his neck and shoulders, and he couldn’t say Lyford’s given name.

He thought wistfully of the Highlands. They hadn’t been all that bad, had they? Sure, there had been a severe dearth of the prick’s prick, and the weather had been miserable, and the people all thought he was crazy, but—really, was that so bad? The scenery had been nice, some days. The cold and damp had only sunk into his bones a little bit.

Call him Nicolau. Angarat’s fat ass .

It was an Angarat kind of quest, that was the worst part. It was... intimate. Familiar. Domestic. Soppy. Horrifically challenging to all of Tam’s worst character flaws.

Looking for the Ram had been an easier prospect, and maybe that was the whole problem. It had turned out to be impossible, but it had been impossible in the wrong way. This was impossible in exactly the right way, and that was the evil fucking genius of it.

Tam cleared his throat. “Nn,” he said.

“Great start,” Lyford murmured.

“Nni. Ic. O. Llllau.” Tam exhaled in a rush. “There. There. I’ve done it. Happy?”

“Hm,” said Lyford dubiously. Fuck. “Maybe you need to practice.”

Tam swore into the pillow.

“You were right to scold me for sighing too early,” Lyford continued, like the absolute prick he was. “Marrows take at least a week to grow. Apparently. I suppose it’s not fair of me to expect you to do something hard right away. Wouldn’t be a very good quest if it were that easy, would it.”

“You’re the worst person I know,” Tam said.