Page 6

Chapter Six

L yford’s servants, of course, were all on holiday for the summer Idle Days, so Tam had to watch as Lyford lit the fire in the fireplace of the washing room, set two great pots of water to heat, and hauled in buckets more that he poured into the huge bathtub. When the pots were steaming vigorously, he poured them into the bath and scooped out a great bucket-sized bowl of the mixed warm water for Tam’s first wash. “Soap, washcloths, and drying cloths are in that cabinet. Scream bloody murder if you need anything.”

Tam hauled himself painfully to his feet and forced himself to say, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Lyford said, brisk and businesslike.

“Why are you being nice?”

“I don’t care to be interrogated at the moment,” Lyford said calmly. “Enjoy your bath.”

He left. Tam dragged himself out of his clothes and sat on the washing stool to scrub off the worst of the sweat and road dust. Of course, this was Lyford’s house, so the stool was a little marvel of carved Sdeshen teak, and the so-called wash-bucket was a confection of delicately painted porcelain with gold-leaf detailing, but that was all immaterial.

When he was reasonably clean, he crawled into the tub—blessedly hot, healingly hot.

Twenty minutes of soaking in silence blunted the edges of ache and soreness through his body and went a long way toward making him feel more human again. He was tired, still so very tired, but it was a healthy sort of tired now, not the painful exhaustion of his body screaming at him to just stop .

There was a tap on the door, and Lyford said, “You haven’t fallen asleep and drowned, have you?”

“No,” said Tam.

“I’ve made tea.”

Tam groaned. “Do I have to get out to have some?”

“That’s up to you. I’d offer to bring it in, but I’d rather not be accused of having some kind of nefarious sexual agenda.”

Tam groaned again. “Yes, fine. Bring it to me.” He added, belatedly, “Please.”

Lyford opened the door and brought in a tea tray, which he placed on the chair beside the bath without looking at Tam. “I brought ointment for your blisters as well. And willowbark for the pain, if you’d like some.”

It was so kind and in such perfect alignment with Angarat’s domains... No wonder he was her chosen favorite. It infuriated Tam—or it would have, if he’d had the energy for it. Now, drained of everything but the raw, mangy core of himself, he just felt crushingly small, humbled, and guilty: He himself was not so kind. He had never been kind like that. He would not have done the same for Lyford. He would not have even thought to do it. “Thanks,” he said in a tiny voice as Lyford poured him a cup of tea and doctored it with sugar and cream.

“My pleasure.” Lyford handed him the cup. He had to look at Tam for that, and Tam almost expected Lyford’s eyes to flick over him appreciatively—he was lying naked in the bath, after all. But Lyford only looked at Tam’s hand long enough to place the cup and saucer in it, and then he looked away.

Apologize, he remembered in Angarat’s voice. “Can I say something?”

“Certainly.”

Tam shifted awkwardly, the water sloshing gently around him. “Will you sit down?”

There was another fancy little stool by the fireplace across the room. Lyford calmly sat on it, crossed his legs, folded his hands on his knee, and looked at Tam. Tam supposed the lower vantage point meant the edge of the bath hid Tam’s modesty, which was just so.... teeth-grindingly respectful.

Tam could be the bigger man. He could rise to the challenge, and drag himself out of the rut, and force himself to grow as a person. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

He couldn’t say yanking you around by your feelings. It felt... invasive. It was something based on gossip, in essence—things that other people had told Tam, rather than anything Lyford himself had confessed. “I haven’t been very nice to you. I’m sorry for the name-calling yesterday, and for... being cruel and dismissive when you extend a polite invitation.”

Lyford was quiet for a moment. When Tam dared to glance at him, Lyford’s brow was knotted and his hands were gripping each other so tight that his knuckles were pale. “Alright,” he said slowly. “I’m glad you’ve noticed that.”

Tam winced and took a sip of his tea. “I met Angarat today.”

Lyford’s breath caught. “Did you.”

“She gave me that pitcher—it had elderflower cordial in it. She gave me lunch, too. And... some advice.”

“She’s very good at that. What advice did she give you?”

“That I should think about not being quite so much of an awful little goblin. Not in those words,” he added as Lyford snorted. “But that was the gist of it.”

“Well, you are an awful little goblin,” Lyford said, but there was the faintest touch of a smile around the corner of his mouth, so it didn’t sound quite like an insult. “You drink straight out of teapots and pitchers, and you assume I’m insulting you every time I say anything nice, and no matter what I do, you get angry with me because I should have done the opposite. And you call me names, and you lie about volunteering for the festival committee just because I had the unmitigated gall to suggest some foreplay and a second round of sex—” Tam flushed hot and sank down into the bath, keeping his tea just above the surface. “And you talk loudly to someone else about how much you don’t like me when you’re sitting ten feet away from me.”

“Maybe I should just leave for the city after all, then,” Tam said miserably. “I’m not fit to be around people.”

“There are a lot more people in the city than there are here. Are you still not wanting to be interrogated, or am I allowed to ask why you were haring off to the city?”

“I was upset. I... I went to Idhenge last night. Mrs Hatter caught me kissing someone.”

“Brassu’s balls, I told her not to get involved,” Lyford snapped, sounding more fiery and real than he had in the whole conversation. “Fuck. What did she say?”

“Frankly, I don’t remember. I was rattled and upset—Angarat was mad about it too. She said Mrs Hatter was a crow picking at the marrow-vine of your growth opportunities or something.” Lyford snorted, which was rather a balm to Tam’s soul in this awful, wretched, nerve-chafing moment. “She said Mrs Hatter was an old biddy who thought she knew better than Angarat how to do Her Abundance’s job.”

“Blessings to the Lady of Lambs, Seed-sower, Home-grower,” Lyford said. “I’d laugh if I wasn’t so furious. Did you think I’d sent Mrs Hatter after you?”

“You did .”

“I didn’t.”

“You told them about me,” Tam said, scrunching down further in the bath and burning as the remembered humiliation of the night before washed over him. “You talked about me behind my back and she thought she had to do something about it.”

“I never actually used your name,” Lyford said. “I was always vague. Always. I swear it on Angarat: I never told them anything about you that could have been an identifying detail. I was venting and asking for their advice in how to navigate my way through our... situation. I did not ever ask them to do anything—and in fact, when they did offer to arrange something, I declined vigorously.”

“But they clearly made a correct guess as to who you were talking about,” Tam said bitterly. “Because they stuck us in the matchmaking tent together on purpose. ”

Lyford sighed, and when Tam peeked over the edge of the bath, he was pinching the bridge of his nose again. “I know. That was why I was late to arrive yesterday. I was trying to tell the committee to send someone else to take a shift, that it wasn’t fair to overwork us like that just for the sake of forcing us to spend time together, and that if you wanted another job, they should find one for you.” He dropped his hand from his face and looked away. “I won’t be speaking of you to them again, even in the vaguest terms. And if they bring you up to me, I’ll be quite firm that I don’t wish to say anything more. I’m sorry Mrs Hatter interrupted your evening—she had no right, and if I had known what she was doing, I would have been the first to send her off.”

Tam squinted suspiciously at him. “I was kissing someone else.”

“I have no claim on you,” Lyford said quietly— too quietly. “You haven’t given me permission to care about who you choose to pass the time with. You would rebuke me in the most strident tones if I tried.”

He wasn’t wrong, and that stung. Strident tones, as if Tam wasn’t capable of moderation—but maybe he wasn’t, when it came to Lyford.

“Was that all you wished to say? You’re sorry for how you’ve behaved, and you’re thinking about being less of an awful little goblin, and you were upset at me and Mrs Hatter enough to... to leave, and you came back because my Lady of Lambs talked some sense into you?”

Tam shifted. “That wasn’t all the sense she talked into me.”

“Oh?”

Why was it so difficult? He hated this—gods, he hated this. It was wretchedly difficult. He sipped his tea. “She said it would be a lot harder for other people to meddle in my affairs if I made the effort of resolving them first.”

Lyford was silent.

Tam swallowed hard. “She said I ought to give you clear information about what I want, instead of yanking you around and throwing myself out of windows. Figuratively.”

Lyford released a long, slow breath. In a voice that was only slightly uneven, he said, “I would greatly prefer that to the... current state of things.”

Tam cringed to himself and wondered if the bath was really the best place for this kind of conversation. Except it was so warm and comfortable, and he would start aching again as soon as he got out, and he was so tired... And it felt right, on some level, that he should be naked and vulnerable for this—it was symbolic. The literal standing in for the figurative. His own voice was as shaky as Lyford’s when he finally forced himself to speak: “Do you remember when we were nine and you smashed the marrow I’d grown for the vegetable competition?”

“Yes.”

If Lyford was an absolute prick about it, then Angarat would owe Tam a horse and a bag of gold and a beautiful stranger. She’d promised. She’d promised. It didn’t make it any less wrenchingly painful and terrifying to claw the words out of his soul and throw them on the floor: “I want you to say sorry.”

It came out raw and frighteningly emotional, so obvious that he felt sick. Lyford would make a joke, or deny it, or brush it off and say that it didn’t matter, that it was nearly two decades ago—

“Is that why you’ve always been angry at me?” Lyford asked, as gentle as Angarat had been. “Because of that?”

“I worked hard on it. I tried so hard, and it was—it was for her, you know, it was for your Lady of Lambs, and—and then no one comforted me when it broke, because everyone was paying attention to you. ”

“I broke my wrist,” Lyford said, still very gently. “The table toppled over when I fell, and the edge landed on my arm. I was crying.”

Tam didn’t remember that. He swallowed hard again.

“I’m sorry,” Lyford said. “It was an accident, but I’m sorry it happened, and I’m sorry no one paid enough attention to see that you were just as hurt as I was—or more, maybe.”

The horrible thing was, it didn’t actually fix anything. Tam had been hurting for nearly two decades over that, and all the other things that had happened afterward that fit into that pattern that it had established. Lyford saying sorry did absolutely fucking nothing. It didn’t touch the hurt—he could barely hear the words that Lyford was saying, the hurt was so great and present and persistent.

Perhaps he would never escape it.

“Do you feel better?” Lyford said.

“No,” Tam said, looking down into his tea.

“Apologies often don’t do much to help, I’ve found. All they do is sound nice.”

The room suddenly seemed very big, and very cold, as if there was a great gulf between them that could not be crossed. “Do you feel any better? Since I said sorry?”

“No,” said Lyford simply. “Not much. You’ve been hurting me for years.”

Tam burned with shame. “Why are you talking to me, then? Why are you... bringing my teapot back, and fetching me water, and buying me lunch, and taking me to your house to bathe?”

“Because it doesn’t cost me anything to be kind, and because you’re an awful little goblin that I...” He fell silent for a long moment. Tam didn’t dare to move or breathe. “An awful little goblin that I like very much,” Lyford finished softly. “Despite your manifold goblinish habits. Perhaps because of them, sometimes.” Another silence. “Was an apology all you wanted from me?”

“I don’t know,” Tam said miserably. “Yes. No.”

“Every possible answer,” Lyford said, still so gently. “What a great job you’re doing at providing me clear information. Her Abundance is very proud, I’m sure.”

“I want your dick,” Tam said, because that at least wasn’t really secret.

“...Which brings me to the question of whether I’m allowed to give you clear information without you throwing yourself out of a window to escape.”

“I’m too tired to throw myself out of any windows,” Tam said, miserable. “I’m a captive audience.”

“I’m not going to sleep with you again.” The bottom dropped out of Tam’s stomach, and he spilled his tea into the bath, scrambling for the cup so it wouldn’t crack on the bottom of the tub. He looked at Lyford in confusion and horror. “You called me Idunet just for asking you dancing, and it hurt. You’ve rejected me every time I’ve reached out for anything other than your body—and you’ve rejected me for that too, and then changed your mind fifteen times until I don’t know which way’s up anymore or what I’m supposed to be doing to please you. I don’t want to play that game anymore, Tam, I’m tired of it. I want—” Lyford’s voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “I’m favored of Angarat , Tam. Not Idunet. Do you understand?”

Tam had once more flushed hot with shame. Of course he understood—Lyford didn’t want sex and hedonism and empty, self-centered pleasure. He wanted... he wanted the gifts of Angarat: Love, and marriage, and family, and domesticity.

It went against everything that Tam had ever thought he knew about Lyford, but... it was becoming very clear that maybe he didn’t know Lyford at all. “I understand.”

“Are you sure?”

“Well enough.” He worked his jaw for a moment, glaring down at his knees in the bathwater. He felt so angry and bitter and small, and he couldn’t understand why, except that... “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go,” he bit out.

Lyford sighed. “How was it supposed to go?”

“I don’t know. Better than this. Her Abundance gave me the impression that I’d come out of this with... with something. She said that if you screwed it up, she’d give me some kind of magic horse and a bag of gold and a handsome stranger to fuck me cross-eyed.” Lyford snorted again, but it was a rueful one. “And she said if you didn’t screw it up, then I’d have... I’d have the knowledge that there was someone who cared about what I wanted. But now I don’t feel like I’ve gotten either one, so what’s been the point of all this bullshit? You don’t want me—”

“I never said that.”

“You did, though, sort of.”

“I said I am favored of Angarat, not Idunet. I don’t want to play the games we’ve been playing. I don’t want to be guessing what’s going on in your head and what I should be doing. I said I’m not going to fuck you again, because right now I don’t see how I can keep doing that without making myself miserable. There are other things I want, but... frankly, Tam, I don’t think you care much for those things. If you do, then you don’t care to have them with me.”

“What things?”

Lyford had leaned back against the fireplace breast and crossed his arms. It was a long, miserable moment before he spoke. “I don’t want to tell you. For the same reasons I didn’t tell you that I was favored of Angarat. I’m afraid you’ll reject me again.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do then?” Tam cried, throwing his hands in the air and flinging drops of water everywhere. “You won’t tell me what you want from me, if anything— so what is there that’s left? ”

“Do you want anything from me besides my dick and an apology for the marrow I smashed when we were nine?”

“Maybe forgiveness? Something besides ‘Wow, Tam, I’m glad you’ve noticed you’ve been an enormous bastard to me for years’?”

Lyford closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall too. He looked as exhausted as Tam felt. “You said you’re sorry, and I believe you. But I don’t trust that you won’t change your mind again, and I don’t see why you claim to care now, when just the other day you were telling Mrs Hart that you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Tam muttered. “I wouldn’t keep fucking someone I actually hated. I just think you’re a prick.”

“Because I smashed your marrow when we were nine, and I teased you mercilessly when we were teenagers?”

“You said mean things to me—just as mean as what I say to you.”

“I was pulling your pigtails, Tam. I thought you were cute and you wouldn’t pay any attention to me except when I was bloody obnoxious. And I was fifteen. Gods, man, you could hold a grudge for a thousand years, couldn’t you. Even after all those times I’ve made you come so beautifully, and whispered sweet nothings to you, and kissed you for hours, and invited you dancing— nothing’s ever going to balance out the fact that I was a stupid little idiot when I was fifteen and I did everything I could think of with tuppence worth of wit just to make you notice me. Fuck’s sake, and then you with your pockets full of grudges have the gall to sulk about forgiveness! You may well be the worst person I know.”

Tam peered at him over the edge of the bath again. “You thought I was cute?”

Lyford put his face in his hands and made a sound of absolute, gritted-teeth frustration.

“Calm down,” Tam said, peevish. “Pull yourself together.”

“Yes, goblin, I thought you were cute. Why else would I go to such elaborate lengths to lure you into my father’s hayloft and practically beg to kiss you?”

Tam thought about this deeply. “I don’t know, and I don’t like your tone. What, am I supposed to just know things like that?”

Lyford banged his head back against the wall several times. “You could glean it from context clues, you infuriating little wretch.”

“Now who’s name-calling!”

“Do you deny it?”

“I liked goblin better.” That had sounded almost like a pet-name. Lyford had never given him pet-names before. It sat strangely in his head—strange, perhaps, because he didn’t want to cringe away from it the way he had from the invitation to go dancing.

“You are certainly also the most infuriating and wretched goblin of my acquaintance.”

“Then throw me out of your house.”

“I wouldn’t be favored of Angarat if I were the sort of person to throw someone out of my house. Especially when they’re hurt.”

“I’m not hurt. ”

“You walked more than twenty miles today. I gather from your current state that this is not typical for you. You’ll probably be too sore to walk tomorrow. That counts as hurt. You don’t have to be bleeding to be hurt—oh, except you are bleeding, aren’t you? Your socks are right over there on the floor to prove your feet are in a state.” Lyford paused. “Shall I set up one of the guest rooms for you, or would you like a ride home on horseback? I’d offer the carriage, but it’s put away and it takes at least two people to get it out.”

“I could help. I’m a person.”

“You’re an invalid, goblin.”

“Invalids are people too,” Tam snipped, and was unsurprised when Lyford laughed. Lyford did laugh sometimes—often—when Tam said things like that. It was one of the things that Tam had never quite gotten around to hating about him.

“Home and fending for yourself? Or here where there will be people to bring you dinner?”

“Here, I suppose,” Tam said, fishing his lost teacup out of the bath.

“Glad to hear you’re being sensible about this.”

Tam had his bag with him, thanks to Lyford’s foresight, so at least he had a spare change of clothes and didn’t have to borrow some. He was still sore and bone-tired when he got out of the bath, but he managed to get himself down the hall to the guest room and crawled miserably into bed. Lyford brought him more tea and a book, and then, in one of the most alluring and arousing moves Tam had ever witnessed, left him alone for several hours to nap.

Instead, Tam spent that time staring up at the bed hangings. He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d been this cared for , even when he’d been sick as a child. To be fair, he hadn’t been all that sickly. A cold or two, a few days of sniffles, and he’d been back on his feet. His aunt had needed too much help around the house for him to be able to have the luxury of staying in bed to rest. But Lyford had done those things like they were the expected thing to do, as if it was effortless for him to be generous with his hospitality, as if there was an abundance beyond what he himself required—so much abundance, in fact, that he could give it away freely and never miss it.

Tam had never had that. The tea shop did well enough that he could close up for the holidays, but not well enough that he ever felt really secure in what he had. He knew, intellectually, that there was enough—that he had money to keep the shop going, that there was food in the pantry, that the roof wasn’t leaking, that he had good clothes on his back—but the fear was there, always, that he’d wake one morning and find all of that shattered on the floor too.

Was he a terrible person? He wanted to believe it of himself. It might have been easier, if he could decide that he was simply awful by nature and there was nothing to be done about it. Then it would be a permanent state of being, and he wouldn’t have go to any effort to change it. But was he awful by nature, or was he simply impoverished in spirit and love, so much so that he had to be miserly with what pennies he had? Was there any difference?

Lyford tapped on the door just as the sky was turning that strange green-purple of Idunet’s twilight and let himself in with a tray of food. “I thought you’d prefer to eat in here,” he said, setting it on the night table. “I didn’t think it was a day to try to civilize the goblin by inviting him to the table. There’s silverware, but you needn’t use them if you’d prefer to shovel food into your mouth with your hands.”

Tam levered himself up with a great effort and surveyed the tray: Toast and eggs and a few thick slivers of ham, and a bowl of mixed summer fruits, and a glass pitcher shaped somewhat like the one from Angarat, which Lyford had filled with something dark. “Is that wine?” he asked suspiciously.

“No, goblin.” Why did Tam like that name so much? Why did he like it from Lyford’s mouth? “I thought if I brought you wine, you’d turn your nose up and accuse me of trying to intoxicate you. It’s blackberry cordial.”

Tam liked blackberry cordial better than wine. He scooted to the edge of the bed and took the pitcher in both hands, sipping from the rim—it was sweet and rich, with a full , round flavor like he’d stuffed a whole fistful of bursting-ripe blackberries into his mouth at once. “It’s nice. Tell the cook I said thank you.”

“I’m the cook, so you’re welcome. Everyone else is at the festival. Do you need anything else?”

Tam set the pitcher down and pretended to occupy himself with inspecting the food on the tray so he wouldn’t have to make eye contact. “Oh, you know, I’d like to feel like I’m not a complete failure of a person, but that doesn’t seem to be working out. I’d like to not be talked about, but fat chance of that. I’d like it if people got their noses out of my business and stopped trying to fix things for me.”

Lyford poured himself a glass of cordial—ah, the one glass on the tray had been for him . Of course. He perched on the edge of the bed and leaned back against one of the posts at the foot. “I’ve been wondering something. Neither of us felt better for receiving an apology. Did you feel better after giving yours?”

“No.”

“May I make the conjecture that it is because you know on some level that you haven’t earned it?” Lyford took a long, slow sip of the cordial—it stained his lips a little, adding just the barest pink-purple tinge, as if he’d been kissing for hours. “Words are cheap, as you’ve told me many times. I’m half-expecting you to change your mind at some point, as you often do, so I think I won’t feel better until I see some actions as proof of your sincerity.”

“A quest,” Tam said blankly.

“If you like.”

“Angarat set me a quest.”

Lyford blinked. “Did she?”

“A quest to apologize to you for yanking you around by your feelings and jumping out of windows.”

A whisper of a smile quirked at the corner of Lyford’s mouth. “You like quests, then?”

“I’m the worst person anyone knows and an awful, intractable goblin,” Tam said, prodding at the pile of scrambled eggs on the plate with a piece of toast.

“You do get absolutely hopping mad when I dare you or challenge you.” Lyford put his head a little on one side.

“It’s like a disease.”

“Mmm. And a quest is just a dare with a bit more direction.”

And a bit less... competition. A bit less of the feeling that the other person was an opponent. All the quest-givers in fairytales that weren’t the gods themselves were people like princesses offering devoted knights the opportunity to... Tam flushed red. The opportunity to win their hand.

That wasn’t what he was doing with Lyford. He just wanted to be past this, to heal his hurts and do anything that would take off some of the suffocating pressure that he felt every time he thought of the great gulf there was between the two of them. Him and Lyford , who irritated him more than anyone, who had smashed his marrow and not apologized for twenty years, who had brought him his teapot, who had fetched him water and bought him lunch and helped him and drawn him a hot bath when he was hurt, who had said sorry when Tam had asked, who was favored of Angarat while Tam was beloved of no one at all. He couldn’t stay in that horrible, choking place of stagnation—that rut of his own devising, as Angarat had said. He wanted to get out. Gods, he just wanted to get out, no matter what he’d discover lying in wait on the other side of it.

“Set me one, then, if you think it’ll help.” Tam shoved egg and toast into his mouth—he couldn’t bear to look at Lyford, with his hair all soft around his face, precisely the same golden as the color of the wheat fields, with his mouth berry-stained from the cordial, with his eyes so gentle and heavy. Of course he was favored of Angarat. Of course he was. How could he be anything else?

Lyford set his glass of cordial aside and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Tamerlin Becket,” he said, the tone formal but his voice low and soft like it was sometimes when they were in bed together. “I charge you with a quest to complete three tasks for me, as they do in the stories.” Tam felt a thrill up his spine and a sudden settling all through his nerves. It was a ritual. Rituals were meant to mend things that even weak little apologies could not mend. He couldn’t help but look at Lyford now. “My lady charged you with a quest to repair the rift between the two of us, so the first task I will set you is to repair the rift between you and her. I would like you to give her a gift.”

A gift. It flashed through Tam like shimmering water. He had to lick his lips before he spoke—he tasted blackberries, a mouth full of them. His mouth must be just as stained as Lyford’s. “What kind of a gift?”

“I want you to grow her the biggest marrow I’ve ever seen,” Lyford said, firm and quiet, his eyes so warm , as if he were setting Tam a challenge that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Tam could best... if he wanted to.

He could see the shape of the task he had been set—he understood what was being asked of him, and why. He could have wept with gratitude for it.

It was healing. It was a second chance. It was the kindest fucking thing that anyone had ever done for him.