Page 8

Chapter Eight

S everal mornings later, Tam waited on the footbridge over the creek on the path that led from Lyford’s manor to the henges. It was raining lightly and he had forgotten his umbrella, but he did not care. The rain was dewing in his hair and sticking his shirt to his skin, but it was the end of summer and still warm enough to be tolerable. He slurped his tea out of the pot as Lyford came around the bend and spotted him. “Oi,” Tam said smugly. “Got something huge for you.”

Lyford fought back a smile. He hadn’t forgotten his umbrella—it was oiled silk, dyed green with wax-resist yellow and white leaves tumbling around the rim. “Good morning, goblin. You’re in a good mood.”

“Do you want to see the huge thing I have for you?” Tam purred.

He was gratified when Lyford’s eyes flicked over him and he had to clear his throat before he spoke. “For me, or for Angarat?”

“It’s so big .”

“Is it.”

“You won’t believe how big my thing is.”

Lyford’s shoulders were shaking with barely-repressed laughter. It made the rain dance off of the umbrella’s surface. “I don’t know, goblin, I’ve seen quite a few things of surprising and amazing proportions.”

“Mine’s so big I can’t even carry it in a wheelbarrow. I have to get a cart and a few friends to help me lift it in.”

“What an inconvenience.”

“Huge, huge inconvenience,” Tam agreed. “But it’s worth it when everyone who sees it gasps in amazement and says, ‘Ooh, Tam, I’ve never seen one so big!’”

“Do they.”

“They say, ‘Oh, there’s too much of it, we’ll never be able to get it inside.’”

Lyford’s eyes were dancing—Tam had never seen him looking so delighted, so amused, so appallingly handsome. “Goodness. Can I see it, then? Your big, huge, enormous thing.”

“And girthy,” Tam added, which made Lyford crack and cover his mouth to muffle his laughter. “So rude, Lyford. You won’t be laughing when you see how girthy my enormous thing is.”

“Show me, then,” Lyford said, composing himself with some effort.

“What, in public?”

“How would we be able to look at it in private? Your thing sounds like it’s too big to fit through any door.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll make it fit.”

“Goblin,” Lyford said, but it sounded outright affectionate. Tam didn’t know what to make of that. He couldn’t remember ever making Lyford laugh like that, even with the snippy comments. It was... nice. It was really nice. It made Tam quite as pleased with himself as the sight of his marrow had that morning. Lyford walked past, jerking his head in the direction of Anghenge. “Well? Are you coming?”

“Gods, man, slow down and at least let me get my big huge thing out first.”

Lyford stopped thirty or forty yards off from the marrow and raised his eyebrows. “Well. That is quite large, isn’t it.”

Tam crossed his arms and beamed proudly at the marrow. “The biggest you’ve ever seen.”

“It has to be,” Lyford said slowly, turning his head from side to side as if he were looking at the marrow out of the corners of his eyes. “Tam, did you...”

“Hm?”

Lyford shook his head and strode across the rest of the garden until he was within spitting distance of the damn thing. Tam followed, chortling to himself. The marrow was longer than he was tall, too wide—girthy, haha—for him to have been able to wrap his arms around, and at least two or three times his weight at a conservative estimate.

“Can I touch it?” Lyford said.

“You want to touch my enormous thing? Sure, but be gentle, no one else has ever touched it but me.” Tam asked, hoping for another laugh.

Lyford didn’t laugh—just silently reached out and brushed his fingers against the marrow, exhaled, turned his head from side to side again...

“What are you doing?”

“I’m looking at the blessings on it,” Lyford said. “ Gods, Tam, this might as well be a holy relic of Angarat. How many days did this take you?”

“About a week, I think.”

Lyford took a shaky breath. “Did you know you could do that?”

“I mean, I didn’t do all that much. Just planted it and watered it and, y’know, micromanaged the living daylights out of it. Fed it milk and manure.”

“And sat with it to have tea every morning. And... prayed over it, presumably.”

“For a limited definition of the word pray,” he said with a shrug.

“You asked Angarat for help.”

Tam bridled a little and kicked at the grass. “It wasn’t cheating. You didn’t say I couldn’t. You just said, ‘grow the biggest marrow I’ve ever seen in my life.’ Here it is, asshole.”

“Here it is. Enormous. Out of season. In seven days. ”

“Yeah, what of it?”

Lyford turned to him—there was that weird light in his eyes, that favored of Angarat light. A sharp thrill raked up Tam’s spine. It was... attractive, that light. It made his blood stir, made him prickle with warmth all over, despite the fact that he was quite damp from the rain. In a low voice that was not as eerie-strange as the light, Lyford whispered, “Tamerlin Becket, do you know what you are?”

Tam felt the reflexive urge to hurl himself out of the nearest window to escape whatever this was. “Uh. Good at growing marrows?” He swallowed. “A goblin?”

“Favored of Angarat?”

“Haha,” Tam said loudly. “Funny joke. No I’m not. That’s you. Fuck off. What’s the next task? You said there were three. What’s the next one?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Lyford said, blessedly turning his gaze back on the marrow and therefore away from Tam. The release of pressure was almost intoxicating. “I need to think of something else. This changes things.”

“Does it?” Tam laughed nervously. “I don’t think it does. I think it’s normal.”

“Will you come up to the manor this evening?”

“To hear the next task of my quest?”

“And for dinner, if you’d like.”

Tam’s breath caught and the tingling warmth in his blood rushed with new heat. Dinner was a euphemism Lyford used sometimes, which historically had meant no dinner at all and Tam screwed over whatever flat surface he could pull Lyford against, and then a couple slices of rarebit at home after he fled.

He met Lyford’s eyes—gods, he looked like he’d heard what he said, like he was remembering, like he was thinking about Tam against the wall or bent over the settle in the parlor or the table in the dining room, or his desk the study, or in his bed...

Lyford swallowed. His eyes dropped to Tam’s mouth. “Just dinner,” he said faintly.

“Alright.” Lyford had said he wasn’t going to sleep with Tam again. He’d said so. Tam was fairly sure in this moment that’d been a damned lie—as much a lie as his own persistent refrain of ‘we shan’t do this again’—but... Gods, he was the one who was so good at breaking the mood, wasn’t he? He was the one who’d have to back them out of this, because Lyford was a horny bastard who had feelings for him, and Tam had apologized and told him a lot of funny jokes and was being so nice right now, and that was probably incredibly sexy of him, so the prick wasn’t necessarily going to be able to just ignore that... “Yep. Just dinner. Because you’ve seen my big thing and it’s hideous. It is grotesque to you. Repulsive. You have not been seduced by the sight of this enormous, uh, turgid—”

Lyford made a small noise and bit his lip. Not in a coquettish way, but as if he were physically preventing himself from saying anything. His eyes cut to Tam’s marrow and he shifted a bit, as if... as if maybe he was a little bit seduced by—

“Pervert,” Tam said flatly. “You’re horny for the marrow. Do you want to fuck the marrow?”

That seemed to drag Lyford out of it. He took a deep breath and shook himself. “I do not want to fuck the marrow, thank you, goblin.”

“It’d probably still be in Angarat’s domain, marrow-fucking. Plenty of ladies around here could tell you about, uh, vegetables.”

“ Goblin. ”

Tam held up his hands. “Fine, fine, you’re not that ardent for the Lady of Lambs—let us not make the obvious sheep joke that’s lying right there in the open—”

“Thank you.”

“And on that note, I will come to dinner,” Tam declared. “As long as we are not having mutton.”

“Whatever the next task is, it’s going to be sheep-related now,” Lyford sighed, turning towards the henge and walking off. “Good day, goblin.”

Lyford did not serve him mutton. There was roast chicken, and turnips, and cabbage fried with bacon, and wine, and then more wine, and Lyford’s eyes hot and intent on him the whole time until Tam was distracted and didn’t know which way was up. His body refused to listen to his reminders that this was not the same situation as it had been for the last ten years of dinner invitations, and he kept almost demanding that Lyford take his pants off and get to it already.

Tam had never been the sort of person who could face someone else’s topic-left-unspoken with any kind of grace or tact, for all that he could go decades without resolving the ruts of his own devising.

He set his glass of wine down a little harder than he needed to, and a few drops splashed over the edge. “Fuck this. Lyford. Why are you looking at me like you’re thinking about ramming me through the mattress?”

The problem with Lyford—one of the many problems with Lyford, in addition to his absolutely perfect cock and how good he was at kissing and the things he groaned against Tam’s skin and the way he laughed at Tam’s jokes and catty comments—was that he almost never blushed. “Likely because I am, a bit,” Lyford said.

“You said you weren’t going to sleep with me again.”

Lyford raised one eyebrow. He hadn’t looked away from Tam. He hadn’t even batted an eye. “You say that all the time, but I always let you get away with changing your mind.”

“You weren’t thinking about it a couple of days ago.”

“For one thing, I didn’t know what you were up to with that marrow a couple of days ago, other than sitting next to it.”

“You saw it growing fast.”

“There’s a difference between plants growing fast and a harvest that abundant .” Lyford’s tongue lingered over that word. “Plenty of people get a blessing or two from Seedsower. Not everyone gets a marrow multiple times their own bodyweight, even when they ask for it.”

“That’s not much evidence,” Tam said weakly.

“No? What about that pitcher she gave you? Not everyone gets gifts. ” Lyford had lounged lower in his chair, his hands draped on the arms, looking like a king, or a wolf, or a plate of sweetmeats with a little label that read Tam Becket’s dessert.

“It’s hardly a magical pitcher.”

“Are you sure? Have you tried it?” Tam shook his head, and Lyford tilted his head in a well, there you go gesture. “And she met you on the road. Spoke to you, fed you. Set you a quest.”

“I called her a bitch.”

“And you think she’d care what rude names a mortal calls her? Imagine a puppy you adore calling you something shocking. You’d laugh. You’d think it cute . ” Lyford leaned forward, elbows on the table, his fingers interlaced before his mouth. “That marrow you grew when you were nine was pretty big too. Big enough to enter in the vegetable competition.” That was true. All the adults at the time had seemed surprised. “Is it so unlikely to believe she might favor you? In my view, it explains... a great deal.”

“About what ?”

“Things she’s told me in dreams. Signs she’s given me.”

“What signs?”

“I’ll tell you if you complete the second task of my quest.”

“Oh, rewards? I get rewards for each task now? What do I get as a reward for the first one, though?”

“The fuck of your life, if you’d like it,” Lyford said, almost casual but for that look in his eyes.

Gods, Tam missed his perfect prick. Nearly two weeks without it—it was a wonder he hadn’t gone mad. He might have, if he hadn’t had the marrow soaking up all his attention. “Sounds great,” he said, managing to be very nearly as casual as Lyford was. “What’s the second task?”

Lyford’s mouth curled behind his fingers. He studied Tam for a long moment, tapping his lips with one knuckle. Tam felt as though he were being weighed like a marrow. “Part of me wants to say that I underestimated your capabilities with the first task, but...”

“It was important.”

“Yes,” Lyford said softly. “It was. There was an imbalance, and we have struck it from the record-books.” Tam was trembling with anticipation, with desire, with the thrill of challenge. “The next is to find the true limits of your capabilities, since growing a thirty-stone marrow was something that could be shrugged off in a week.”

Gods. What signs had Angarat given Lyford, that this was the task he had to do to earn that reward? “Right.”

That glittering light of intent and delight and desire sharpened in Lyford’s eyes. “Why don’t you be a good boy and bring me the Ram of the Highlands.”

Tam’s jaw dropped even as a surge of raw, nerve-raking lust clawed through him. “I beg your fucking pardon?”

“The Ram of the Highlands,” Lyford said calmly, smiling like it wasn’t the most audacious, improbable, impossible thing that had ever been asked. “I want it.”

“ There’s no such thing ,” Tam shrieked, loud enough that it set the wine glasses ringing.

“That’s not my problem.” Lyford was grinning now. Fucker. Villain. Tam had always known this about him. Cad. Rake. Entitled, obnoxious, evil prick. What a good show he put up, being that sweet Angarat’s boy and going to the morning rites at her henge nearly every day, and having her favor shining from his eyes, and being so generous with pleasure—

“ Lyford ,” Tam shrieked again after a beat of incredulous silence. “ It can’t be done .”

“Of course it can. It was done eight hundred years ago. It’s commemorated in the song cycles.” Chipper. The bastard was chipper about this, all twinkling and merry at Tam. “There’ll be someone at Talhenge who can remind you, if you need a refresher.”

“I don’t,” Tam snapped. “How the fuck am I meant to—it’s supposed to be as big as an ox, you know! And you’re sending me off with nothing but a good luck, Tam, do your best! I don’t know anything about sheep—I don’t have a sheepdog—”

“So you know one thing about sheep, then, which is that they are herded with sheepdogs.”

“I’m supposed to walk all the way to the Highlands? Alone? Just to get you a huge fucking ram? What do you want it for?”

“Matchmaking for my ewes?” Lyford said innocently. “I just want to see what the lambs look like and if their fleece is any good.”

“You want to invent a new breed of sheep. That’s what you’re telling me. You want the Ram of the Highlands to sire a bunch of lambs for you just to see what happens .”

“And the bragging rights. And if any of them come out with golden wool, I thought that might make a good gift for Angarat.”

Tam put his face in his hands. “I can’t believe this. The actual Ram of the Highlands—the actual one, you meant, not just some loose ram I find wandering around in the Highlands while I’m stomping around in the rain and the mud.”

“Yes. The actual Ram, with the capital letters and the fiery eyes and the teeth made of iron and the hooves of flint and the horns of obsidian. I’ll lend you a horse and a sheepdog, if you like. And a rope. Or a chain—chain might work better.”

“I cannot believe you.”

“Take as much time as you like,” Lyford said, quaffing off the last sip of his wine with a horrible, smug little smirk. “Would you care for dessert? Or shall we retire to the study for a glass of something stronger than wine and perhaps a card game? Or did you want to go straight to the... other kind of dessert?”

“That one,” Tam said, shooting to his feet.

Lyford kissed him all the way up the hall to his room, stripped them both naked while Tam made snippy comments under his breath, as he always did, about how Lyford was taking too long—Lyford laughed at these, as he always did, and only replied that he thought he’d get scolded if any of Tam’s buttons popped loose.

As soon as he got Tam naked, Lyford ran a proprietary hand down Tam’s flank and sighed. “Hope this isn’t a bad idea,” he murmured into Tam’s starving kisses.

“Mmn?”

“You,” Lyford said, bearing Tam down onto his back on the bed and propping himself up to look down at him. His mouth was all red and kiss-bitten, because Tam had never really figured out how to kiss without teeth, and his eyes were hot and dark and—guarded. “Don’t let me down, alright?”

“What d’you mean?” Tam said breathlessly. He was a bit distracted by his favorite person ever, otherwise known as the prick’s prick, which was right there and all for Tam, gorgeous and girthy and perfectly shaped, and such a feast just to look at, so warm in his hand, beautifully firm yet velvety-soft.

Lyford let out a long, shaky breath, not quite a groan, as Tam grabbed at him clumsily. “Just—hah—just don’t make me regret this.”

“Sure, sure, fine, definitely,” Tam said, pulling him down by the back of his neck into another kiss and winding his legs around Lyford’s hips so he could rub against his favorite person ever.

It wasn’t the best sex they’d ever had, in hindsight. Lyford wanted to fuck his thighs, which was a little unusual and also historically Tam’s least favorite thing, on account of it made his legs tingly all over and he felt all shivery and fragile-feeling when he came into Lyford’s hand, and then for days afterwards, he’d keep imagining the first scorching brush of Lyford’s prick against the soft, tender skin of his inner thighs and then the hands guiding his legs closed and the voluptuous, oil-drenched thrusting between them, and he’d get all breathless and needy and desperate again , which of course was exasperating in the extreme.

No, that wasn’t the reason it wasn’t the best sex they’d ever had. It was that Tam could sense Lyford holding something back. He kept his mouth pressed against Tam’s shoulder, panting against his skin, and not talking, which Tam should have been pleased about, because Lyford would insist on saying the most insufferable things about how good Tam felt, or how enthusiastic Lyford was about whichever of Tam’s body parts he was attending to, or how hard Tam made him, or how close he was getting and how much he wanted to come for Tam.

It was good sex—it was always good sex—but it just wasn’t to Lyford’s usual immaculate caliber. That itching distraction of knowing that Lyford was thinking so loudly rather than mindlessly running his mouth kept Tam from getting as caught up in the moment as he usually did, and left him bewildered and unsettled and... some emotion six inches adjacent to the deep suspicion and affront that this behavior would have merited a few days ago.

Still, he came panting and squirming as Lyford stroked him, with Lyford’s gorgeous prick smearing between his thighs, obscene and dripping, and afterwards he even managed not to say anything like “What the fuck is wrong with you?” or “What do you call that?” or “Why are you wasting my time if you’re just going to half-ass it?” so that was something. Progress. Personal growth.

Lyford came with a long, low groan, the first actual sound he’d made besides wild panting, and stayed pressed up sticky and radiantly warm against Tam’s back as he caught his breath. This was normal, and that was momentarily reassuring—until Lyford pulled away.

Lyford was never the first to pull away. That was simply not the way sex worked between them, and it was not the script that Tam was familiar with. The familiar script was: Tam came; Lyford came; Tam lay there in the afterglow as he tried to figure out how to get his knees to work again or how to reel in his brain from where it was floaty and giddy somewhere on the ceiling; Lyford either attempted to cuddle or made a salacious suggestion about having a snack or going for a second round; Tam launched himself out of bed, declared they weren’t going to sleep together ever again, and figuratively hurled himself out a window.

But Lyford pulled away first, flopping over onto his back on the other side of the bed. Tam did not know what to make of this, except to be mildly peevish that his back was cold. He clawed himself up far enough to reach the nightstand drawer where Lyford kept a tidy stack of fancy washcloths and cleaned up the mess between his legs.

There was an... awkwardness. An expectant, resigned kind of awkwardness, Tam sensed. He didn’t know what to do. He dropped the washcloth over the edge of the bed, moving very carefully, suspicious and guarded—both of the situation and of himself.

He was scared. This was different and strange and he didn’t know what he was supposed to do—he didn’t know what Lyford was supposed to do—he didn’t trust himself not to be a horrible little goblin. He didn’t want to be in that muddy rut anymore, and that meant that it would be the wrong move to say something sharp and throw himself out the window again.

Lyford wasn’t saying anything. The awkwardness was drawing taut and tight, like a braced muscle. Tam cleared his throat. What would a normal, non-goblin sort of person say?

“Thank you for the sex, it was nice,” he attempted, and immediately cringed hard at himself. “Idunet’s fucking eyes. Well, I tried! I’ll be throwing myself out a window now, but this time I swear it’s not you, it’s me.”

“You don’t have to throw yourself out a window,” Lyford said quickly. “It’s fine. You’re... welcome.”

Tam was still paralyzed by wariness. The question of whether Lyford wanted him to leave was impossible. Tam very much wanted to leave, because leaving was easy and familiar, but Angarat had dared him out of the rut, and he was enough of a Brassu’s boy to slog his way through anything, even if it made his teeth itch and scared the living daylights out of him. Something, something, he had to say something— something civil, something nice, something that wouldn’t make him cringe so hard he wanted to peel his own skin off. “Would you like a cloth?” he said very carefully.

Lyford paused. “Yes, thanks.”

Tam handed him one from the drawer and sat back against the headboard with his hands folded in his lap, looking everywhere except at Lyford as he wiped himself off and discarded the cloth. Tam tapped his fingers nervously against his thighs. “Is this a new bed curtain?”

“No, it’s the one I’ve always had.”

“Ah. Yes. Of course. Good.” Was this what he was supposed to be doing? Was this climbing out of the rut? He was failing to see any merit in it so far. It seemed too open and exposed up here. What was wrong with grubbing about in the mud anyway? Angarat liked mud. “I am not in the mood for a second round today,” he said, just a little bit too loud. “In case you were thinking about offering. But I, I appreciate the, um, thought. If you were. Thinking it.”

He was faintly expecting for that to be the thing that set Lyford off—a sad, disappointed look, or some kind of contemptuous allegation that Tam had not changed and might never change and was maybe incapable of changing. But Lyford just said calmly, “Alright. Thanks for saying so.”

Don’t let me down , that’s what he’d said. And before that, a few days ago, you’ve been hurting me for years . How was Tam supposed to stop? What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t give up his whole personality and simply become a different person. He was sure that wasn’t what Angarat had meant, nor what either she or Lyford would want. He was supposed to keep being Tam— just a Tam that was maybe a touch more considerate, a little less of a goblin, a little more aware of other people’s feelings.

He didn’t want to go around hurting people. But Lyford was both so familiar to him and so strange and unknown to him, and Tam knew that Lyford had feelings for him, and he truly didn’t know where to step to avoid stomping on them.

He cleared his throat again. “What the name of the horse?”

Lyford turned towards him slowly, pillowing his head on his hands. “What horse?”

“The one you’re lending me. To get the Ram of the Highlands.”

“Oh. You... don’t have much experience with riding, if I recall?”

“Mostly just your dick, yeah,” Tam said, and snapped his mouth closed. “Uh. Sorry.”

He risked a glance at Lyford, who had closed his eyes and pressed his lips together and looked like he was holding back either laughter or a groan of agony. “Horses, Tam.”

“Could probably manage a lazy mare just fine,” Tam said quickly. “But that might not be so useful for—for Ram-catching. Maybe a cooperative and particularly mild-mannered gelding, if you have one.”

“Yes. His name is Piggy.”

“I will not be caught dead on a horse named Piggy,” Tam said immediately.

“This is Piggy,” said Lyford the next morning when he took Tam to the stables.

Piggy was, unfortunately, the only viable option of steed. There had been a great deal of discussion about this the night before—it had been rather heartening to debate with Lyford over something, and Tam felt like everyone ought to be proud of him for not lashing out or escalating the debate into an argument or throwing himself out a window. They’d just sat there in Lyford’s bed, buck naked, while Tam insisted that he would not come within twenty feet of a horse named Piggy and Lyford insisted, gently, that his other horses were not so mild-mannered, that he could not guarantee the steadiness of their nerves when confronted with a legendary Ram, and that Piggy was easy to get along with and wouldn’t spook and throw Tam off and abandon him to be trampled.

Tam glared at the horse—it had big splotches of brown and white all over, and... and ears and feet and all the other bits you would generally expect from a horse, and that was the limit of Tam’s equestrian knowledge. At least it wasn’t awfully tall like some of the big horses Tam had seen plowing farmers’ fields in the spring or pulling the big wagons of hay.

“I’ll just call him something else,” Tam said.

“But he knows his name, look.” Lyford leaned over the stall gate and held out his hand with a little whistle. “Piggy. Hello, Piggy, come here.”

Piggy turned slowly in his stall and nudged his nose complacently into Lyford’s hand.

“Good boy,” Lyford crooned, scratching Piggy’s nose. “See? He knows.” Tam grunted in reply, and Lyford rolled his eyes at him. “Come pet him.”

“Maybe I should just walk.”

Lyford raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to walk to the Highlands and catch the Ram on foot?”

“I can if I want to.”

“Certainly.”

“Maybe Angarat doesn’t want us to use horses, did you ever think of that? They don’t belong to her. They’re Ystrac’s .”

“They’re both, I think,” Lyford said, stroking Piggy’s neck as the horse stepped closer and craned his head over the stall door to snuffle at Lyford’s coat pockets. “Roads and travel belong to both of them, so why not horses? They’re used for hunting, which is his, but they’re also used on farms, and sometimes they’re pets. That makes them hers too.” He smiled at Piggy and smacked a kiss on his forehead, evidently unconcerned with Piggy’s investigation of his pockets. “Do you want to take him or not? It’ll be cold in the Highlands, and you’ll stay warmer with a horse under you, even if you end up catching the Ram on foot.”

“Ugh. Fine .”