Page 12

Chapter Twelve

L yford—whats-his-name, that guy, Nicolau— had arranged for Tam’s tea shop to be looked after while he was away. It was so strange to think of going back to it after such a long break that, the next morning, Tam first trailed after Lyford to Anghenge and sat by the plot where he’d grown his giant marrow during the morning’s services.

They hadn’t left the marrow in the plot, of course. It had been removed, and Lyford said that he’d had it cut up and distributed to the poorest families of the manor and the surrounding area. That felt like the right destiny for the marrow as an offering to Angarat, and moreover it was the right thing for Lyford to do as the lord of the manor—a very Brassu sort of thing to do, a mark of good leadership.

Tam turned the thought over in his head. The right thing for Nicolau to do. Nicolau, the lord of the manor. That didn’t seem right. Lyford was the lord of the manor. Nicolau was... fuck, Tam didn’t know. Some prick with a beautiful prick, who kept being patient with him while Tam fought and struggled with himself, who kept forgiving Tam for stomping on his toes all the time like a really, really bad dancer.

Tam dragged himself over to his tea shop before the Anghenge morning rites finished.

There was a vase of sunflowers on the little table outside the shop. The windowboxes had been given a fresh coat of paint. The rusted hook for the hanging sign over the door had been taken down and either beautifully repaired or entirely replaced. There was a new woven-straw doormat.

When Tam let himself inside, Mrs Hart was puttering around behind the counter, and her new baby was asleep in a bassinet nearby.

“Good morning!” Mrs Hart called as the bell above the door jangled. “Oh! Tam! Welcome back!”

“Thanks,” he said weakly, looking at the baby. “Congratulations. When did that happen?”

“About a week after you left. She was early.” Mrs Hart sighed. “The midwife said she might not make it, but she’s been fighting through so far, Lady of Lambs bless her.”

Well... yes, quite. Tam tiptoed over to the bassinet and looked in—the baby was very small.

“I’ve been bringing her here in the mornings, before all your customers start arriving,” Mrs Hart said softly. “His Lordship said it might help, since... well, you know, that business with that marrow you grew. His Lordship thought having her in your place might help her along, and he comes after the Anghenge services to sit with her as often as he can.”

“What’s her name?”

“Angharad. His Lordship and Granny Pella advised that a goddess-name might be extra protection for her. But we’re calling her Daisy.”

He wasn’t very good with children, certainly not with infants. But he’d gotten all that practice with the farmers’ fields on the road up to the Highlands, and this couldn’t be much harder. “Can I hold her?”

“Yes,” Mrs Hart said immediately. “Yes, please do. Thank you.”

Tam gingerly gathered her up—she was swaddled into a snug little bundle shaped like a rather large jam roll, and he immediately got the sense that she wasn’t quite as delicate as she looked. “I, uh. I’m going to sit by the window.” The windowboxes, the flowers that someone had tended while he’d been away, the tiny field of growing things. “If you need help with anything...”

Mrs Hart shook her head quickly. “No, no. It’s nice, doing these things—getting out of the house and taking care of something different, you know? I’ve been enjoying it. All your wonderful jars of things, all the interesting smells, and your teacups...”

He settled down in one of the squishy chairs by the window and turned his attention to the infant.

Oh, names. That was going to be a theme, wasn’t it. Daisy, they were calling her, but Lyford— Nicolau?— had told them to give her a goddess-name. Angharad, one of the dozens of lesser variants of Angarat’s name that people used to align their children with her. It happened for most of the gods—Old Trac was named for Ystrac; there were hundreds of Mattys and Maddies and Gatties and Tegs running around for Mategat; Bracs and Brazas and even a Baras or two for Brassu; Talsyns and Synnas and Talas and Talens and Tallies for Talesyn; Angies and Garrets and Ratas and Angharads for Angarat; Dunnies and Nettles and Idas for Idunet; Nevs and Ainies and Naivas and Vainas and Nyes for Nevainy?...

“Angharad,” he murmured to the so-called Daisy, holding her so the sunlight wouldn’t shine into her eyes. “Hello, Angharad.”

He really wasn’t any good with babies, but he’d been good with those farmers’ fields, and it couldn’t be that different. He reached for that ghostly something on the edge of his consciousness, and he imagined settling in with the wheat waving gently above his head and his hands buried in rich black earth. He should have gotten his hands grubby in his marrow plot—he should have earth under his fingernails.

He let his eyes fall half-shut, and he deepened his breathing, and he looked down at her the way he would look out at a troublesome field to see what it needed.

He couldn’t latch onto it. It wasn’t at all like blessing a field. It was like catching smoke in his hands; it was like looking into one of those ferociously complicated mechanisms that priests of Mategat sometimes brought around to the village to educate people on natural philosophy and mathematics and all that artificial rot. They’d never made any sense to Tam, but that’s what it was like, looking into Angharad—something as natural as a field of wheat, but as complex and impossible to understand as a Mathenge priest’s machinery. And it kept moving , that was the other thing, dancing and darting like the unpredictable swirl of the wind-tossed wheat.

He furrowed his brow and focused harder. Angarat, he thought to himself, and then louder, more demanding: ANGARAT!

The bell above the door jangled, and Lyford said, “Morning, Mrs Hart.” And then, ruefully, “Alright, that’s not remotely fair.”

Tam dragged himself out of his deep focus to glare at him, and found Lyford—fucking Nicolau or whatever—gazing right at him looking all disgustingly soft. It was immediately alarming, and Tam briefly contemplated the window right next to him, within easy reach for him to throw himself out of had he not been holding Angharad. “Do you mind ?”

“Not at all. What are you doing, goblin?”

“My job , apparently.”

Lyford—Nicolau? That wasn’t a real person’s name—looked curiously at him. “Alright. May I join you?”

“I won’t notice if you do or not,” Tam snipped. “I’m busy.”

As Lyford sat in the other squishy chair beside Tam, he looked more amused by this than anything—the sort of objectionable expression that was the entire reason why Tam had not historically given Lyford/Nicolau/the local prick any morning sex after he’d accidentally slept over. (The night before, alas, he had intentionally slept over, which meant the rules were different in the morning. Really, what was he supposed to have done, when Lyford-Nicolau-whatever had been all golden and irresistible and sleepy-eyed and he’d smiled at Tam and rolled over and slid his cock between Tam’s thighs? What was Tam supposed to have done? How was he supposed to function under these circumstances?)

Tam was paying for it now. Lyford was fucking glowing , unmistakably a man who had gotten his rocks off three times in the last twenty-four hours. Tam was going to have to shut the shop down and drag him upstairs and roll around with him in his own bed, which would make it four times in one day, and that was his entire allowed ration of sex for the month.

He’d missed two months, though. So it didn’t count, not really.

“Tea, your Lordship?” Mrs Hart said brightly.

“If it isn’t too much trouble,” Lyford said. “Shouldn’t you be sitting down and resting?”

“I sit all the time when I’m at home with her,” Mrs Hart said, opening the cupboard that had all of Tam’s jars of tea. “It’s nice to move around—and to do things for people who know how to say please and say thank you.”

Lyford laughed and made some little small talk about her other children. Tam paid this no mind and sank down into concentration again.

He still couldn’t latch onto it, even after enough time had passed that Tam had shifted twice to keep the sunlight out of Angharad’s eyes and Lyford was halfway through the pot of tea that Mrs Hart had made.

Tam huffed in frustration and came out of his focus again. “Give me some of that,” he said to Lyford, flapping his hand at Lyford’s teacup. Lyford— Nicolau, gods damn it all—handed it over mildly, and Tam quaffed off the rest. “Babies are hard.”

Lyford gave him a bewildered look. “What?”

Tam gently jostled Angharad at him. “Babies! They’re hard! Difficult!”

“That’s the truth,” said Mrs Hart, who had perched on the tall stool behind the counter with her own cup of tea. “Take a lot of stamina, babies.”

“What’s difficult about holding a baby and glaring at her?” Lyford said, amused. “Has she personally offended you already, goblin?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not glaring at her.”

“You’re glaring at her a bit,” Mrs Hart said. “But I figured you probably glared at the marrow too.”

Tam glared at Lyford. “I told you, I am doing my job.” He handed Lyford the teacup and slumped back in his chair. “It’s easier with fields.”

“Fields?”

“Fields! You know, fields! Farmlands! You walk out into a field, you stick your hands in the dirt for a bit, think about stuff, and there you have it! You know.”

Lyford was staring at him. “What?”

“What do you mean, what ? You’re her favored, you know how to do shit with fields.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Like the marrow! Stuck my hands in the dirt, got a giant marrow.”

Lyford—Nicolau, what kind of a name was that—blinked. “But that was a miracle.”

“Yes? Yes, and? Obviously? So then you just go out and do that in fields.”

“You can’t replicate a miracle,” said Lyford, bewildered.

“Tell that to most of the farmers from here to the Highlands,” Tam snapped. “I did it all the way there. Would have done it all the way back, but I was sad because of someone’s stupid quest .”

Lyford was either not the sort of person to cling on to guilt—which was plausible, bastard—or three rounds since yesterday evening had been a serious balm to his spirits and general morale. He only gave Tam a lightly reproachful look. “ How do you do it?”

“Like I said, you stick your hands in the dirt, and you... I don’t know, talk to Angarat a bit? Say, ‘Please will you bless this field?’ And then the crops perk up.”

Lyford’s brow furrowed. “That’s never happened to me.”

“Well, maybe you’re not any good with plants.” Tam eyed him. “Haven’t you been holding Angharad every day? Didn’t you tell them to name her Angharad? Didn’t you have them bring her here ? What have you been doing if you haven’t been trying stuff ? What was all that for, if not stuff ?”

“It was for helping her, but I just hold her and hope. Sometimes I say a blessing of Angarat over her, but I don’t think it does anything more for me than it would if anyone else said it.”

Tam spluttered. “Asshole, what about all those blessings you folded at the festival!”

“Tam,” Mrs Hart said, chiding. “You can’t talk to his Lordship like that.”

“Angarat sends her gifts when she wants to,” Lyford said, spreading his hands. “I don’t know what to tell you—I don’t demand anything of her.”

“Fuck’s sake. Fuck off. Here, no, shut up, take her.” Tam said, all but shoving the bundled infant into Lyford’s arms. He paused for a moment. Ah. Lyford was right, the sight of a gorgeous man cradling an infant really wasn’t fair at all. Tam shook it off sharply. “Right. Now you look at her.”

“Glare,” said Mrs Hart helpfully.

“Right, yeah. You glare at the baby. And you sort of imagine yourself in a wheat field with your hands in the dirt, yeah? And you—when you do your hoping thing, do you feel some smoke? Or something like a cobweb?”

Lyford was frowning down at Angharad. “No,” he said slowly.

“Fine, can you sort of look into her? As in, you look at her and she suddenly seems really complicated?”

“Oh, that happens with all babies,” Mrs Hart said. “You mean when you hold them and suddenly realize, ‘Angarat’s mercy, that’s a person ’?”

“No, not like that,” snapped Tam.

Lyford shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean, I’m not grasping it.”

“Fucking gods, Lyford, it’s not hard— fuck it. What are you doing today? Lord of the manor business, is it? I’m coming along, I’ll show you on an easy thing first. Babies are too hard.”

The problem with Lyford Manor was that the fields which hadn’t already been harvested were in wonderful condition. Very perky already. Tam glared at one of them. He glared at Lyford—Nicolau—and gestured at them. “You didn’t bless this field?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Lyford said.

“No, that doesn’t make any sense. You’re doing something to it. What do you do about the fields?”

Lyford shrugged. “I go to Anghenge services every morning, and I pray for the farmers to have the blessings of the Lady of Abundance, for their crops to grow plentiful and their livestock to thrive and their families to be healthy.”

“Right. How long have you done that?”

“As long as I can remember. It’s just what you do.”

Tam remembered Kel Gauda again— fucking Kel Gauda, that dick, being right about everything. He’d said something about Lyford not noticing that Tam was favored of Angarat because they’d known each other all their lives and the shine of divine favor on Tam probably seemed normal and unremarkable.

Tam seethed. It was just like Lyford to take everything for granted—just like him to get things without having to work for them like Tam did. “Fine. What about animals? You ever blessed a cow? A sheep? Goats? Chickens? Doves? Pigs? Horses?” Lyford shook his head for each one. “Wow. Asshole. Not even Piggy? You don’t even say a single blessing over Piggy?”

“I say them, I just haven’t noticed that it has an effect. Piggy still gets colic sometimes, or throws a shoe. Chickens are still eaten by foxes, or get egg-bound. Cows still die of bloat from time to time.”

Tam tore at his hair. “ Think, man ! There has to have been a time you did it on purpose. She fucking likes you, she’d do things for you!”

Lyford looked uncertain. “Maybe... When my sister Magda was first married, she had trouble getting pregnant—I don’t know if you remember, but I kept having to go visit her? She had four miscarriages, and I...”

“You went to see her. You probably prayed to Angarat for her, yeah?” Tam said intently.

Lyford looked deeply unsettled. “Yes,” he said, quiet as he had been the night before with his face tucked against Tam’s neck.

“Did you feel something?” Tam flailed an arm at the field. “I look at the field, and I can see something. I can see the soil is tired or it needs more rain or sun, or there’s a fungus starting, or too many moles chewing the roots. Did you look at her and see that?”

“I... imagined something. It was like a clock pendulum swinging out of time.”

“AHA!” Tam screamed, pointing at him. “What do you do with fucked-up pendulums! You touch ‘em a bit to make them swing properly! Right? Did you touch it? ”

“Yes,” Lyford said.

“And you never had to go back to visit her after a miscarriage again, did you.”

Lyford shook his head silently.

“And how many niblings do you have now? Just from her.”

“Seven,” Lyford said in a small voice.

“ Angarat’s tits .” Tam paused. “Maybe you’d better go back and see if she thinks seven is enough yet. Maybe she’d like that clock pendulum tweaked again.”

Lyford blushed and looked shifty. “There was another time.”

“Oh, no, that can’t be true,” Tam said flatly. “Miracles can’t be replicated, Lyford, everyone knows that. What did you do. ”

“Mr and Mrs Presser, two years ago—they also had trouble having children. They kept coming to Anghenge for blessings, and I, ah...”

“ Looked at them,” Tam said primly. “Didn’t you. What’d you see? Pendulums swinging out of time again?”

“No, it wasn’t her.” Lyford cleared his throat. “I saw a farmer sowing his field from an empty seed bag.”

“So you touched it. Didn’t you. Didn’t you. You said to the bag, be abundant. Didn’t you!”

Lyford raised his hands. “They wanted children!”

“How many children do they have now!” Tam snapped.

“Three!”

Tam gave him a withering look. “Welcome to doing stuff, Lyford .”

“Nicolau.”

“Neeeeeee-co-lau,” Tam simpered. “See? I can do it. I’m doing it, I’ve done it. Fuck off.”

Tam stomped back to his tea shop and found another person behind the counter—Lys Notter, his friend—idly reading a book. He looked up and grinned. “Heard you were back.”

“What’s happening,” Tam said. “Why is everyone watching my shop?”

“His Lordship asked for help while you were gone,” Lys said, closing the book. “A bunch of folks have been signing up for an hour or two every week. We put the takings in a tin, and then Lyford uses it to order stock of whatever’s running out. All your fancy teas and such.”

“Nobody’s stealing?”

Lys gave him an amused look. “You’re not a man of luxuries, Tam. And as we’ve all found out, tea shops aren’t all that profitable. Anyway, we’ve got systems—anytime somebody new comes in, the first thing they do is count the money tin. If there’s no money in it, that’s odd, and we can check to see who was watching before we were. Only happened once.”

Tam squinted. “Who was it?”

“Young Hawk Martley, you know him? That pimply snot-nosed kid who wants to go off to the city? So smart he’s stupid? Thought he’d save up some coin to get himself started. His Lordship went and talked to him, told him stealing was wrong, told him he should have asked his Lordship if he needed help, told him that’s what his Lordship is for. Kid said sorry and promised not to do it again, his Lordship offered ‘im a scholarship to go study in the city if he agreed to come back to the village with all his smarts and book-learning for a year or two after he was done. Good man, his Lordship. So who needs to steal when you can just ask?”

“Is he paying you to work here?”

Lys shrugged. “No. Everybody usually helps themselves to a cup of tea, though. It’s nice. Quiet. Cozy-like, too, everyone pitching in and doing a bit together. Gets me out of the house, too, and you remember Rose was after me about that.”

There had to be some kind of a catch. “So you come sit here and read a book for an hour or two, and make yourself a cup of tea, and make tea for whoever else comes in, and Lyford looks after the ledgers and the restocking?”

“That’s the long and short of it, yeah,” Lys said. “Can I make you a cuppa?”

“Sure,” said Tam, bewildered. “What the fuck.”

He was still looking for the catch when Lyford came by at the end of the day, walked in, blinked at Tam, and said, “Oh. Right.” He smiled. “I forgot I wouldn’t need to collect the day’s takings.”

“What the fuck,” said Tam.

“Unless you’d like me to? I’ve been getting my housekeeper to add the shop’s inventory to the rest of our orders, so it’s no trouble. Your profits are in the box under your bed.”

“What the fuck,” said Tam.

“I’m having trouble determining whether you’re annoyed or not,” Lyford said tactfully. “It’s just that I’ve never gotten the impression that you liked running the shop—or at least not the bookkeeping parts, and it didn’t seem right that you lose the income of your livelihood while you were off in the Highlands.”

“What the fuck,” said Tam. “Why would you do it?”

“There’s quite a lot of bookkeeping involved in running an estate, Tam. And yours are extremely simple. It takes me five minutes a day.” He came forward and leaned over the counter, pointing to Tam’s junk drawer. “All the receipts are in the book.”

Tam shot him a suspicious look and opened the junk drawer, which someone had organized , and which now contained a handsome leather-bound ledger. When he opened it, there was a neat column of credits and debits in Lyford’s elegant copperplate, and at the end of each day there was a note of the total takings, accompanied by a much messier signature or a simple X with tiny lettering in Lyford’s hand of someone’s name.

“It’s so there was always a witness to verify how much I collected at the end of the day,” Lyford said as Tam squinted at it. “I couldn’t find any of your books, so I wasn’t sure what kind of system you used.”

Barely any kind of system. Tam’s aunt had been terrible at keeping on top of the books, and Tam himself wasn’t much better. Lyford was right that he didn’t like that part of things—he liked listening to the gossip, and having people come in as if they were visiting him so that he didn’t have to go out to visit them .

“What the fuck,” he muttered again, and snapped the ledger closed. “Fine. If you want to do the boring part, that’s your problem. I didn’t ask you to do that bit.”

“I know. I wanted to make sure everything was tidy when—when you came back.” There was barely a whisper of hesitation there, and Tam remembered that Lyford (Nicolau, this fellow Tam sort of knew) had worried that maybe Tam wouldn’t come back at all.

He mentally gave himself a firm whap upside the head. “Alright. Thanks. It is very tidy. And I am back.”

“Yes, you are,” Lyford said softly, looking at him with those fucking cow eyes like he always did.

The energy in the room shifted. “Do you want a cup of tea?” Tam said, because Lyford—Nicolau—was constantly offering tea when Tam turned up on his doorstep. It was the human thing to do.

“No, thank you,” Lyford said, which was usually also what Tam said when the energy in the room was like this. He was going to invite Lyford upstairs. He already knew he was going to do it, and it made his heartbeat go funny, like a jumpy rabbit.

He’d been doing a lot of work, lately. He’d been trying very hard to be somewhat less of a goblin, and to be helpful with the fields and Angharads he came across, and to be civil to Lyford.

Nevertheless, Kel Gauda had said, he’s going to say no thanks to me, because he’s in love with you .

Tam had dismissed it immediately. Lyford wasn’t, was he? No one was in love with Tam. Lyford might have feelings for him, but that was different. Lyford was just a sad-sack who had to live in this village where there were very few options of attractive people to fuck, and Tam apparently had the perkiest arse for at least ten miles in any direction. Maybe Kel just hadn’t been Lyford’s type. Maybe Kel’s bottom was very flat, or covered in warts and poisonous snakes. Tam had not taken any notice.

“Why’d you have Mrs Hart bring the baby here , anyway? You’re Angarat’s favored. Why not your house?”

“You grew a giant marrow in a week,” Lyford said. He was looking at Tam’s mouth, which was unfair. “And you have a pitcher gifted to you by the Lady of Lambs. I hoped there might be some lingering whispers of miracle that would be good for her. And I don’t have anything like that.”

That was true. Lyford Manor belonged to the Lyfords , and it was just... Nicolau who belonged to their Lady. Him and Tam. “Yeah,” he said, his mouth a bit dry. “And with the amount we fuck in your house, it’s probably consecrated more to Idunet now than Angarat.”

“Angarat has dominion over sex too.” Lyford was still staring at his mouth. “That’s how you get... abundance. Fertile fields. Livestock. Babies.”

Ah, fuck it. Tam swallowed hard. He didn’t want to throw himself out any windows, but breaking the habit of looking for them was so hard, and he felt a bit cornered without one. He also felt like he was about to catch on fire if Lyford—Nicolau—kept staring at his mouth like that. “If,” he said, his voice cracking. “If you’re going to keep sending people here, do you think we’d better—”

“Yes,” said Lyford immediately, and actually climbed over the counter to get to Tam and push him up against the teacup cabinet, even though it would have only been two or three steps more to go around.

Tam’s bed was much smaller than Lyford’s, and his mattress was stuffed with straw rather than whatever fancy shit a lord slept on. As they caught their breath in the afterglow, Tam said blearily, “Reminds me of—”

The bed really was not very wide. Even with Lyford beside him, they were still partially tangled together. “Hm? Of?”

Tam gritted his teeth against the urge to quickly dismiss the topic. “Of fucking in your father’s hayloft.”

It took Lyford a moment to catch on—he laughed breathlessly. “Oh, the straw tick?” He wriggled a little to make it crackle beneath them. “Nostalgic for the hayloft, goblin?”

“No. Maybe.”

“Personally I prefer having you in a bed, but if the hayloft is calling to your heart—”

“It is not.”

“No? Not even for old times’ sake?” Lyford was quivering with silent laughter, his lips smudging against the back of Tam’s neck. “That bottle of oil is still up there in its hiding spot, probably. Don’t think I ever brought it down.”

Tam scrunched his nose. “It will have gone rancid by now, I guarantee it.” Lyford hummed in vague agreement and nuzzled closer. He was very warm and sticky, and Tam couldn’t really push him off without tipping one or both of them out of bed. He nobly endured the cuddles. “Do you think it’ll help?”

“What? Rancid oil? Honestly, as adults, I think we do not have to resign ourselves to the aphorism of ‘beggars can’t be choosers’—”

“No, I meant fucking in here. To...” He waved his hand. “Consecrate it to Angarat or whatever.”

“It would probably help more if you’d called me Nicolau at some point,” Lyford said, because he was a sly bastard like that.

Tam seethed. “This isn’t a fucking joke, I’m being serious.”

“I was serious about your quest too.”

“The quest is not the point !” Tam flailed to turn over and sit up. Lyford raised his eyebrows as if he were surprised, but that just annoyed Tam more. “ Do you think it helped ?”

“I truly don’t know—why?”

“Fuck off, what do you mean why? Because of Angharad!”

Lyford’s expression softened and grew serious, compassionate. “We’re doing all we can for her, Tam.”

“We’re not,” Tam snarled. “Not even you are—you haven’t sent for a physician or anything, have you?”

“Granny Pella is an excellent midwife,” Lyford said calmly. “A physician would not have any knowledge that she lacks. In fact, a physician might do more harm than good, trying something new and experimental. Mrs Hart and Granny Pella are caring for little Daisy as best they can. You said yourself that she’s too complicated and difficult for you, and I cannot even begin to see the way you can. All we can do for her is to be proxies for Angarat’s embrace—”

Tam had never been so offended in all his life. “What, that’s it? ‘It’s too hard, there’s nothing we can do’? Fuck’s sake, I spent six weeks in the Highlands on your wild goose chase, and now this? I didn’t know you were a fucking quitter, ” he spat, and added venomously, as if it were a mortal insult, “ Nicolau .”

“I’m not a quitter, goblin, I just have a relationship with Brassu that isn’t as codependent as yours. Anyone would be a quitter by comparison.” He gave Tam one of those calm and patient looks that Tam hated so very much. “And I haven’t given up with you .”

“Asshole, yes, you did! At the festival—”

“I don’t think that counts,” motherfucking Nicolau said calmly. “Seeing as how I hadn’t convinced myself in my heart, and how I immediately gave you another chance as soon as you asked for it and said sorry.”

Too much, too much. Too much, with him saying those things about his heart while lying in Tam’s bed. “You’re quitting on Angharad,” he said mulishly. “You’re not trying.”

Tam’s personal nemesis propped himself up on his elbows and kept being hideously patient. “What would you like to try, then?”

“Anything. Something.” He noticed he was gripping a fold of the quilt so tightly that a few lines of the stitching were straining. His voice sharpened. “We’re favored of Angarat, we ought to be able to do something. What’s the fucking point of having her favor if we can’t do anything with it? What, it’s supposed to be for decoration ? A fancy little pin we can wear on our coat as we go around smarmily telling everyone that we’re special?” He cast a withering look at Lyford. “Much like a lordship, when you think about it.”

Nicolau—which was a stupid name—was giving him a strangely intense look. “It really matters to you,” he said quietly.

“What of it?” he snapped. “Why shouldn’t it matter to me? No, don’t answer that. I understand. You think I’m heartless. You think I’m a selfish goblin that doesn’t care about anyone else but myself, and I’m not civilized company for anyone to spend time with, and that includes not having a scrap of human empathy even for a baby that came too early through no fucking fault of her own—”

Lyford sat up and tried to take his hands. “Hey. Stop.”

“ It’s not her fault ,” Tam screamed in his face, eyes burning.

He was distantly aware that he was, perhaps, not feeling entirely rational about the situation, in the same way that he had not been able to be rational about the marrow that Lyford had smashed when they were nine. The thought kept circling urgently in his head, pulsing like a thundering heartbeat— it’s not her fault— but even he couldn’t have explained what that was supposed to mean or why it was so piercingly important as to bring him to the edge of furious tears.

“It’s not her fault,” Lyford agreed.

“Shut up. It’s not .”

“It was an accident. It’s not her fault. What do you want to do?”

“I want you to get your head out of your arse,” Tam snarled. “I want you to think of how you’re going to feel if she dies and you didn’t do everything you could for her. I want you to try. ”

“Alright,” Lyford said, still infuriatingly calm. “We’ll try.”