Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/13622178.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      機動戦士ガンダム_鉄血のオルフェンズ_|_Mobile_Suit_Gundam:_Iron-Blooded_Orphans
  Relationship:
      Gaelio_Bauduin/McGillis_Fareed
  Character:
      Gaelio_Bauduin, McGillis_Fareed, Original_Male_Character(s), Original
      Female_Character(s), Carta_Issue, Almiria_Bauduin
  Additional Tags:
      Princes_&_Princesses, Alternate_Universe_-_Medieval, Street_Rats,
      Implied/Referenced_Child_Abuse, Implied/Referenced_Underage_Sex, Implied/
      Referenced_Abuse, Emotional_Manipulation, Implied/Referenced_Underage
      Prostitution, Mistaken_Identity, Dancing, Dancing_Lessons, Seduction,
      Flirting, Bruises, Alcohol, Kings_&_Queens, Beaches, First_Kiss, Secret
      Relationship
  Stats:
      Published: 2018-02-19 Updated: 2018-03-30 Chapters: 12/27 Words: 34048
****** Royal Trappings ******
by tastewithouttalent
Summary
     "Someday, McGillis has decided: someday he will have everything, the
     power and the wealth and the steering of his own life, of his own
     future, to be managed by something stronger than the biting winds of
     winter that are currently slicing through the thin of his threadbare
     clothes." McGillis has never relied on anyone but himself and never
     turned away an opportunity. A mistaken identity and a gullible prince
     are exactly the kind of chance he's always hoped for, only to find
     himself struggling with the one thing that has never let him down
     before: his ambition.
***** Opportune *****
It’s the rainy days that are the worst.
McGillis has learned how to look after himself. He’s spent what years of his
childhood he can remember scrabbling survival from the city streets, in the
dark corners where adults don’t bother checking and fighting against the fists
and kicks of other children as desperate as he for a bite of food or a safe
place to steal a few hours of sleep. McGillis is too small to take on the
bigger children, and he lacks the collection of followers that might grant him
some staying power in the better corners of the city; but he’s fast, and he’s
smart, and that opens up options to him that aren’t available to the large,
slow stupidity that reigns among the rest of his peers. He can’t hold the
secure points of the safer alleys, can’t maintain a grip on one of the corners
that stay dry and even warm for most of the year; but the unlatched doors of
inns give way with silent ease to his careful touch, and he long ago learned
that a flat stare and a large vocabulary will buy him tolerance if not love
from any of the adults who might catch him. He can talk himself out of most
trouble, if he’s speaking with someone who hesitates over a blow at all; and if
he pushes too hard and strikes a nerve of self-consciousness at being outtalked
by a street urchin, the worst that he’ll get will be a casual backhand and a
split lip or a bloody nose. McGillis has had too many of both to much care
about a new addition to his collection, and if it pays off in a warm place to
stay or the heel end of a loaf of bread, it’s a risk he calculates well worth
taking.
The problem is the rain. Snow is colder but it’s less invasive, too; it’s
easier to build up a ring of a barrier as the stuff sticks to the ground, and
if McGillis can tuck himself into a corner it’s unlikely to melt and seep
through what tattered clothes he’s wearing at the moment. Sunshine is better,
even on those hot days that stick McGillis’s unkempt yellow hair to the back of
his neck with sweat and leave him dizzy under the weight of direct sunlight;
people are happier in the sunlight, more willing to toss him a glinting coin or
to offer him an apple or the edge of a sandwich in exchange for a few hours
spent plying a fan for some fainting lady or overbred nobleman. But rain gets
everywhere, it turns the shadowy corners of the city to mud and soaks through
McGillis’s clothes to strip his body of what heat he is able to muster; and it
leaves the streets empty of potential victims and employers alike, as everyone
with the means to do so retreats into the warmth of the candlelit inns or the
fortified walls of their own manors. McGillis is left to walk down the streets,
hugging to awnings over storefronts when he can and trudging through puddles
when he can’t, watching for opportunities he knows he won’t get while he waits
for exhaustion to peak high enough that he’ll be able to sleep through the
shivering cold bearing down on him.
That’s what he’s doing now, just as he does with every storm: walking down the
street with his head ducked down and shoulders hunched in instinctive but
ultimately futile resistance to the splash of the water trickling over the back
of his neck and under the ill-fitting collar of his coat. There’s no one else
on the street but him; the sun is sinking below the horizon already, and the
shadows of falling night are enough to chase away what wanderers may have yet
been willing to brave the storm. Even the thieves and pickpockets have
retreated to what comfort they can find, perhaps spending a few stolen coins to
buy entrance to the heavy press of bodies inside the overstuffed inns and the
dangerous possibilities they offer to those of most violent tendencies;
McGillis doesn’t fear those in any case. He has nothing to offer, as anyone who
can so much as glance at him can see; the only interest he might provide is to
those depraved individuals who crave nothing more than stealing another’s life
for no purpose at all, and McGillis has a knife slipped in close against his
skin to fight off any such. It’s a dull blade, to be sure, hardly a well-
polished weapon; but it’s enough to provide enough resistance to those who
might wish to lay hands to him for what little value his body and life may
offer, and that’s enough to grant McGillis comfort in his safety, if nothing
else. He has very, very little he can call his own, but that has just made him
the more jealous of that life that is the only hope he has of progressing to
something else, of clawing his way into that casual comfort the adults around
him take with such offhand ease. Someday, McGillis has decided: someday he will
have everything, the power and the wealth and the steering of his own life, of
his own future, to be managed by something stronger than the biting winds of
winter that are currently slicing through the thin of his threadbare clothes,
and he’s hardly about to let some malicious drunk in a dark alley steal his
only means of continuing forward to see what else his life may leave in the
reach of his ever-hungry grasp.
“Hey!”
McGillis’s head turns, his feet stop. There’s no one else on the street that
voice could be calling to, no one else who could serve as the intended
audience; but it still takes him a moment to believe it truly is meant for him,
that the rusty weight of that shout is aimed in his direction. He’s invisible,
nothing to nobody, so valueless he disappears from right in front of people’s
eyes, that nobles and merchants look right through him as if he’s not even
there; but there is someone looking at him now, there’s a pair of eyes fixed on
him from within the gold-illuminated doorway to the kitchen of an inn. McGillis
can’t see the speaker’s face well -- the bright from inside aches at his night-
adjusted eyes and washes out the other’s face to obscurity -- but he can still
tell the direction of their attention, even if there were any other options for
the subject of that shout. Still, the idea of being of interest of any kind is
foreign enough to hunch McGillis’s shoulders and set his mouth onto a frown of
distrust even as he raises his voice to call back an answer of his own. “Are
you speaking to me?”
The shadowy mouth cracks onto a grin, that rough voice drags over a laugh.
“Indeed I am, young sir.” McGillis grimaces at the mockery of the words,
feeling his shoulders tense with an urge to turn and keep walking rather than
respond to such teasing; but the shape in the doorway moves to lean against the
frame so the light falls over their face as they lift a hand to gesture
McGillis in, and McGillis can’t help the way his attention draws towards the
glow of warmth and comfort inside. “You’re unlikely to convince me you’re
happier standing out there like a drowned rat.”
McGillis bares his teeth in distaste at this particular description, however
apt it may be; but the other, the innkeeper, he assumes, is still standing with
the door open, and McGillis has his pride but it’s not enough to keep him from
taking this kind of unheard-of generosity. He turns, answering the summons of
the other’s gesture with as much deliberate slowness as he can manage even as
he draws near enough to smell the wafting scent of fresh bread and some kind of
roasting meat from inside, the heavy weight of both enough to make his mouth
water and his stomach twist on long-carried hunger.
“There you go,” the innkeeper says. McGillis can get a better look at him as he
draws closer; there’s a crease at the other’s forehead, long years of stress
written clearly into his expression, but his smile seems sincere, at least as
much as McGillis can tell. He leans back against the door as McGillis
approaches, settling himself into comfort against it as he considers the
other’s appearance in the light from inside the inn. “Are you always so
mistrustful, my lord?”
“Yes,” McGillis says without hesitating. He stops at the foot at the stairs
without taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the open door; the
innkeeper is too broad, he blocks half the doorway just from where he’s
standing, and McGillis isn’t at all confident in his ability to slip back out
even if he manages to lay hands to a loaf of piping hot bread or a nearly-done
roast. His gaze slides into the inside of the inn, to the movement bustling in
the kitchen over the innkeeper’s shoulder; but it’s only for a moment before
he’s looking back up to frown at the man before him again. “What do you want?”
The innkeeper’s eyebrows raise. “You speak right to the point of it, don’t
you?” he asks rhetorically. “I just saw you wandering through the wet and
thought you might like a bite of supper and a warm place to sleep.” He lifts a
hand to gesture inside. “We can as easily put up one small boy as everyone
else.”
McGillis doesn’t move. “And what is it you’d like from me in exchange?”
The innkeeper stares at him for a moment. “You are a suspicious one,” he says.
“How old are you, to have such distrust of the world already?"
“I’m past twelve,” McGillis lies. He’s not certain of his precise age in any
case, but he’s no older than eleven years at a stretch. Still, the difference
between one year and the next always matters to adults, that he’s seen. “I’ve
seen enough to know what is wise and what isn’t.”
The innkeeper snorts. “You look like a vagabond but you speak like a prince,”
he observes. “Where did you pick up that fancy speech from?”
“I listen,” McGillis says shortly. “What do you want?”
“Is it not enough to want to do a good deed in the midst of a storm like
tonight?” the innkeeper asks. The question is meant to be rhetorical; McGillis
just keeps staring at him to offer a silent answer in spite of that. He can see
the crease at the other’s forehead deepen, can watch his smile start to give
way at his lips; finally the man ducks his head and turns away to frown into
the bright of the room behind him.
“I’ve made note of you,” he says to the warmth inside without looking back to
McGillis. “You carry yourself with dignity more than most of your fellows and
you have the face to go with it, under that dirt and those clothes. There are
more than a few patrons who’d be the happier to pay an extra coin for a drink
served by a promising young lad like yourself.”
McGillis lifts his chin in understanding. “It’s whoring you want me for.”
The innkeeper’s head whips back around, his eyes go wide with horror. “What?”
he blurts. “No, nothing of the sort. You’re a child, and a boy, and…” He shakes
his head, grimacing in apparently sincere distress at the very idea. “You’re a
child.”
McGillis lifts a shoulder into a shrug. “Some places charge more for that.”
The innkeeper makes a sharp gesture with his hand as if to cut off McGillis’s
words, as if to push aside the entire line of thought. “No,” he says again,
lifting his hand to push through his hair as he shakes his head. “I don’t--we
don’t run that kind of a business here.” His hand drops, his gaze comes back to
settle on McGillis again; he looks pained as he considers the boy in front of
him. “We could use an extra pair of hands on busy nights like this one, and
we’ve got more than enough food and a warm corner or two in the kitchen even if
all the rooms are full up.”
McGillis lifts his chin into understanding. He’s heard of this kind of
arrangement of convenience happening to other children, those lucky enough or
sweet-faced enough to pull someone’s attention; an extra plate of food and a
corner to sleep in is far less of a toll on the pockets of ever-stingy
innkeepers than the wages an older or more experienced server might ask for.
Sometimes the children show back up on the streets a few days later, pockets
heavy with the coins they’re stolen and wild-eyed with their own recklessness
and good fortune; McGillis always counted those among the greatest fools, to
throw aside the opportunity of lasting comfort for the sake of a briefly-tasted
wealth too soon spent or stolen from the very hands of the thieves themselves.
Far wiser to seize such a chance in both hands, to take the benefits of such a
rare opportunity; even if it comes with unspecified demands on mind or body,
McGillis has always thought that a fair price to pay for the advantage gained
by association with a business rather than a damp street corner. He hasn’t ever
truly expected to be called out for such a chance; but with the door to the inn
open and the innkeeper still standing watching him, albeit with somewhat more
concern behind his eyes now, McGillis is the last person to turn his back on
this.
He ducks his head forward, letting his nod carry his gaze down to the muddy
ground and keeping it there as he picks his way forward. “Okay,” he says,
speaking clearly as he steps under the awning around the inn that sheds rain
from the tiles to spatter to puddles around the perimeter. When he lifts his
head to meet the innkeeper’s gaze it’s with the best smile McGillis can muster,
the full force of absolute appreciation while still staying just this side of
grovelling. “I’d appreciate the opportunity. I won’t disappoint you.”
The discomfort in the innkeeper’s expression eases, some of the strain across
his shoulders gives way. “No need to worry about that,” he says, reaching out
to press a hand against McGillis’s shoulder to steady him as he comes up the
steps to move towards the glow of the inn’s interior. “We’ll get you cleaned up
and fed first thing, and then we’ll see what we can do with you.” His tone is
paternal, his touch is gentle; McGillis wonders vaguely if the man has lost a
child before, to be so welcoming to what amounts to a complete stranger. “You
must have had a hard time of it. Don’t worry. I bet with a little soap and
dinner in you you’ll turn out to be that little lord you act like.” He sounds
satisfied, comfortable and pleased in himself for doing a good deed and
offering such unasked-for generosity; there’s a tinge of self-congratulation on
his tone, as if he thinks McGillis might really turn out to be some long-lost
nobleman’s son who will bring rewards and riches to his modest inn.
McGillis doesn’t bother trying to correct him. In the worst case he’ll just end
up back on the street again, no colder than he is now and hopefully with a
fuller stomach and a better night’s sleep; and if he can lay hand to some kind
of understanding with the innkeeper, or one of the maids, or even a patron, he
could rise far beyond anything that’s been available to him before, and
McGillis has never been shy about seizing opportunities presented to him.
The innkeeper is still talking, babbling about a warm bath and a cup of soup
and a change of clothes; but when McGillis ducks his head, it’s more to hide
the satisfied edge of his smile than in conscious agreement to the man’s
suggestions.
***** Motivate *****
McGillis does well at the inn.
There isn’t a catch to the innkeeper Conel’s offer, as it turns out. McGillis
was ready for one, prepared to be set to work as a pickpocket, or a plaything,
or sold to interested patrons no matter what the man said that first night; but
Conel seems to be one of those rare honest people in the world, or at least
reasonably kind in his treatment of McGillis himself, however much he may be
prone to shortchanging customers of their payments and adding additional
charges to the set cost of a room. It’s no worse than what McGillis hears and
sees at the other places around town, as his cleaner face and better clothes
grant him occasional access where he couldn’t go before; and it’s better than
most, at least judging from how many returning customers the inn has. McGillis
grows familiar with nearly a dozen faces, as the years pass and men and women
come and go, until by the time he’s grown to a height with the man who beckoned
him off the street he can place names to the patrons whose drinks he serves and
earn himself an extra coin for his own keeping. He has a small handful of those
tucked away in his pocket, now, kept on him out of childhood habit and the
constant possibility of a quick retreat or a sudden change of fortune; it’s not
enough to grant him any kind of independence as yet, but the innkeeper seems to
view McGillis as something like a son, if a somewhat prettier one than the
man’s own heavy jowls and stocky legs would be able to produce, and McGillis is
willing to reap the benefits of that even if he still doesn’t entirely
understand the man’s apparent affection for him.
For tonight, those benefits mean work. There’s some kind of a celebration going
on throughout the city, a party extending through all the inns and even
spilling out onto the streets in some of the more enthusiastic cases; McGillis
doesn’t understand why the birth of a second heir to the throne should be such
a cause for excitement, but then, he supposes it’s more for the excuse of the
event than from any expectation that the newborn princess herself will gain
anything from it. There’s certainly little thought of the royal family within
the walls of Conel’s inn; as far as McGillis has seen, everyone’s attention is
fully given over to the drink and dancing in which the event has allowed them
to indulge. The room is roaring with sound, laughter and shouts and the high,
piercing note of a flute laying down a rhythm for the stomping dance filling
the larger part of the space; McGillis is left to hold a tray of drinks high
over his head, maneuvering deliberately to keep from bumping into a patron or
spilling one of the mugs of beer before delivering them to their owners to
spill wherever they should choose.
He lands the mugs safely, in the end -- this isn’t the first time he’s taken on
this task, and if there’s anything McGillis can pride himself on it’s the
elegance of his motion -- and looks back over his shoulder to the bar to judge
if there’s another round yet waiting. There’s not -- one of the serving girls
is collecting the last before turning to brave the crowd before her -- but
McGillis still begins the process of returning towards the bar, this time with
significantly more ease now that he doesn’t have the burden of a full tray of
drinks to steer. With the tray pressing to his side he can move with all the
speed he picked up in his years on the streets, sliding between dancing couples
and laughing friends through spaces that would be far too small for someone
without his own lithe adolescence to guide them. McGillis ducks under an
upraised arm, presses close against the edge of the wall to maneuver around a
lady’s overlarge skirts, and he’s just approaching the bar counter again when
there’s a voice from the din behind him, a tone too sharp and deliberately
piercing for him to mistake it as directed to someone else.
“What do we have here?” The voice is high, pushed up past its natural range to
a breathless falsetto; it would be enough to make McGillis flinch, if he were
at all prone to showing his reactions so openly. As it is he just tips his head
to look at the speaker: a woman leaning against the bar behind her, her
position undoing what measure of composure her fine gown grants her. Her lips
are stained scarlet, her face painted to an illusion of more youth than she can
lay claim do; McGillis estimates that she’s aiming for a few years older than
his own early teens and is probably the far side of twenty, hardly old enough
to merit the attempt at youth for any reason other than to adopt an innocence
she lacks. Her smile is soft, her lips parted as if on sincere surprise, but
her eyes are hungry as her gaze trails over McGillis before her, marking out
the span of his body from shoulder to hip and down the length of his legs in
the simple breeches Conel provides for him. “A young lord in disguise,
perhaps?”
McGillis ducks his head in acknowledgment of the compliment. “I thank you,” he
says, and then he’s tipping the rest of the way forward into a bow that is far
more appropriate for the difference he is too keenly aware of between the
lady’s status and his own. “I am afraid I must declare myself to be no more
than I appear to your ladyship.”
“Well spoken,” the woman hums. “You certainly have the tongue of nobility to go
with your looks.” The flirtation is perfectly clear to hear, even before
McGillis straightens to meet the heavy-lashed consideration in the woman’s gaze
on him. He meets her eyes without flinching; he knows exactly how far propriety
extends, and where he can press against the hazier edges of it, and he counts
himself a good enough judge of personality to know when some shading of
impudence will be appreciated rather than offensive.
“You flatter me,” he says; the words sincere but his tone almost cold with
distant calm. “Your favor does honor to a humble innkeeper’s boy.”
The woman’s lashes flutter, her chin comes up. The shift in her expression
strips away the thin veneer of innocence from her gaze and grants it something
harder, sharper, more obviously calculating than what went before. “You might
return the same honor,” she tells him. “The ladies are in want of partners, it
seems. Would it not be to the inn’s betterment to fill the needs of its
guests?”
“Indeed it would be,” McGillis says levelly. “It’s unfortunate that my
education did not cover the finer arts of dancing.”
“You didn’t pick that up when you learned your fancy speech?” the lady asks;
but the question is rhetorical, as the sparkle in her eyes makes clear. “It’s
hardly a burden to learn. You have grace enough, I warrant you would do honor
to yourself with a bit of training.”
McGillis doesn’t so much as bat an eyelash at the barely-audible suggestion
draping itself over that last word. “I would be grateful to you to teach me,
should the demands of the inn allow it.”
The woman’s lips curl on a heated smile. “I think they shall,” she says; and
then she’s turning over the counter, tipping far forward over the edge as she
lifts a hand to draw Conel’s attention to her. There are a handful of men
arrayed alongside her, too tired or too drunk to be pulled into the dancing in
the main floor, but Conel turns to attend to the woman as soon as she tilts in
to let the light spill down against the neckline of her dress. McGillis can see
their lips move, although he’s too distant and the room too loud for him to
pick out the details of their speech; but he knows the structure of what must
be happening well enough that he’s stepping in to set his tray down and strip
his apron over his head to fold away even before he sees the woman reach into
the purse tied close against her waist. McGillis keeps his gaze on the glint of
the coin, alert for the possibility of gold that might indicate a arrangement
for a more private sort of dancing; but it’s silver that falls into Conel’s
hand, and McGillis doesn’t rate even himself as that cheap a purchase. That
means it’s just his time that’s being purchased, the span of an hour away from
his ostensible work, and McGillis doesn’t need to see the uncertain look Conel
gives him to step forward, stripped of the marks of his usual role to make
himself someone suitable for the arm of the noblewoman turning back to fix him
with self-satisfied possession in her eyes.
“My lady,” McGillis says, and dips into a bow suitable for the opening of a
dance in imitation of the men he’s been watching out of the corner of his eye
for the whole of the evening. It’s a close enough match for satisfaction,
judging from the smile pulling at the corner of the noblewoman’s lips as he
straightens and extends his hand palm-up in offering. “May I be granted the
honor of your hand for this next dance?”
The woman’s gaze slides down over McGillis, measuring him so closely he rather
suspects she has the knowledge to fit him for an entirely new set of clothing;
but when she looks back up to his face she’s smiling again, and when she lifts
her hand it’s to lay her fingers against his palm as gently as bird wings
fluttering to brace against him.
“There’s a good boy,” she purrs at him. “By the time I’m done with you you’ll
be dancing as if you were the one born in the palace.”
McGillis doesn’t care particularly about dancing any more than he really cares
about the woman’s smile, or the dark of her eyes on him, or precisely what use
she may fantasize making of him. But the mention of the palace is another layer
of polish, another opportunity to smooth the remaining rough edges on the
facade McGillis has spent the last years constructing, and if the coin weren’t
enough to pull a smile to his lips that thought proves more than sufficient.
***** Artifice *****
“Wow,” the girl presently in McGillis’s arms coos, fluttering her eyelashes up
at him as her lips part over the weight of the sound in her throat. “You’re a
really good dancer, did you know?”
McGillis huffs a laugh and lets himself flash a smile down at the girl. “I’ve
heard,” he says, and lifts his arm to urge her into a turn that sends her
twirling away from him for a moment. There’s a rush of skirts, a swirl of
motion expansive enough to brush the legs of the more reasonably attired
patrons around them; and then the girl is coming back somewhat more rapidly
than she quite ought to to return herself to the offer of McGillis’s
outstretched arm. McGillis replaces his hold on her, unhesitating and
unhurried, and the girl lifts her arm at once to replace her hand where she’s
kept it the whole of the evening, up a little higher on McGillis’s neck than is
quite appropriate.
“You’re just so graceful,” the girl continues, casting her gaze up through her
lashes at McGillis and letting her teeth fret the edge of her lip. “I don’t
think I’ve ever danced with anyone as good as you.” They patter through a
rhythm of featherlight steps, McGillis’s simple boots fitting easily against
the girl’s silken slippers to bring them across the room in a rush of
breathless motion. “I bet even the prince isn’t as good a dancer as you are.”
“I’m sure His Highness is skilled enough to put all the rest of us to shame,”
McGillis says; but he’s not really paying attention to the flippant lilt of the
conversation any more than he’s putting any thought to the shift of his feet as
he steers the girl around the room. She’s not terrible, all things considered;
she would be better if she kept her attention more on the dance and less on
pressing herself as close against McGillis’s chest as she can get, but it’s
hardly the first time he’s dealt with that. That’s become a regular part of his
life since that first evening of training and a few hours of practice with one
or another of the maidservants; McGillis has always been a quick learner when
it comes to things like this, and the easy physicality of dancing requires very
little effort from him at all, once he has the rhythm of it. It’s easy to fall
into, simple to offer the support of his arm for an hour or three when there’s
a highborn lady desirous of a turn around the inn floor; even Conel stopping
complaining about shirked duties, when he realized that McGillis’s latest
talent was drawing handfuls of young ladies to fill the interior of his inn
with custom of their own as well as that of the rougher men who are willing to
pay themselves into ale for the opportunity to linger over the sight of the
pretty girls who come to take advantage of McGillis’s grace for an evening of
their own pleasure.
It’s never been any more than dancing, and the occasional sliding hand or
stolen kiss at the corner of McGillis’s lips; McGillis is fairly sure by this
point that he has Conel to thank for that, in the end. He wonders, sometimes,
why the other resists; there’s decent money to be made in the buying and
selling of more physical pleasures, and the clientele McGillis is drawing
surely doesn’t lack for money. Perhaps it’s potential repercussions the rough-
voiced innkeeper fears, an angry father or suitor rattling at his door with a
mob out for vengeance for despoiling a girl more than capable of choosing her
own manner of corruption; or maybe he still holds to that morality he voiced
McGillis’s first night, whatever unusual purity there is in him that makes him
balk at the idea of collecting gold from the selling of someone else’s body.
McGillis wouldn’t mind -- it’s just another job, another way to turn a profit
to his savings that are steadily growing, courtesy of his silk-dressed admirers
-- but he doesn’t bring it up to Conel, and Conel doesn’t ask, and so they keep
on as they have been, McGillis setting aside serving tables to lead ladies
instead and Conel reaping the majority of the benefits in either case. It’s a
reasonable pattern, McGillis thinks, at least for now; and if he can feel
himself straining against the limits it imposes on him, his funds and his pride
aren’t yet so swollen that he is ready to turn his back on the closest thing to
a home he’s had for the last several years.
“Truly,” the girl says now, her voice clear and overbright with an attempt at
calm that goes so shrill with nerves McGillis’s attention is drawn back around
to her from the paths of memory he was wandering. He looks down at her but
she’s not looking at him; her head is ducked forward, her expression hidden
entirely behind the heavy fall of her dark hair. He keeps his attention on her
even as they pull into a turn and he twists her out into another flare of
brilliant skirts and flashing motion; when she comes back in she glances up to
catch him looking at her before ducking her head down even farther. When she
speaks again he can barely pick out the words at all from the dull hum of
conversation and music around them. “I dare say you’re a better teacher than
our rusty old dance instructor. He can hardly stand at all, much less show us
the steps he claims to know.”
McGillis makes a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat. “He must be
quite skilled, to teach dancing while being unwilling to dance himself.”
The girl’s tension cracks onto a humorless laugh. “He’s dreadful.” When she
lifts her head she’s smiling, her eyes bright with amusement and strain at
once; McGillis can see her expression soften as she looks at him, as her gaze
flickers away from the cool consideration in his eyes to the shape of his mouth
to linger overlong against the curve of it. “All stuffy and pompous and full of
rules instead of fun.” Her lashes flutter as she drags her attention back up to
meet McGillis’s steady stare again; when her mouth shifts it’s so she can bite
against her lip in a put-upon show of interest. “I bet you’d be a lot more
fun.”
McGillis doesn’t look away any more than he so much as dips his head in
acknowledgment of this overt flirtation. “I’m hardly a trained tutor. The only
things I can teach you are what I have picked up myself.”
“That’s more than enough,” the girl tells him. “You’ve probably learned a lot
of interesting things in the life you’ve lived.” She sounds excited by the
idea, as if living under the awning of a closed shop and going hungry for long
days is romantic in some way; it probably is, to someone who has never wanted
for necessities a day in her life. “I’d be much better off with you as a tutor
than that old man.” She lifts her head to toss the dark of her hair back from
her face. “I’ll tell Father so, and then you can come stay with us instead of
here in this rundown inn.”
Conel’s inn is far from rundown, compared to some McGillis has seen, but he
keeps any such correction tied to silence on his tongue as he ducks his head in
surrender. “My lady does me much honor.”
“You do honor to yourself,” the girl says. Her hand against the back of
McGillis’s neck slides to stroke against his hair; McGillis is reminded
unavoidably of a child stroking the fur of a beloved pet cat. “You deserve
better than this.” McGillis doesn’t say anything in answer to this, doesn’t so
much as shift at the motion of the girl’s hand, but some flicker of tension
must come through in his eyes, or perhaps the lady is able to read his silence
with the weight it carries in truth; her hand stills, her steps stutter. “You
will come, won’t you? If Father says you may?”
McGillis meets the girl’s eyes. There’s something like concern behind her gaze,
something almost like fear at the petulant pout of her lips; if she didn’t
carry so much of her spoiled upbringing in her carriage and attire she would
look like one of the maids that used to flirt with McGillis, the girls far
closer to his own status who wield no more power than their own charm in their
attempts to win his attention. McGillis lingers in silence for a moment,
appreciating that glimmer of tension, that expression of something far closer
to humanity than the puffed and polished artifice this girl wears as carelessly
as she wears the jewels at her ears; and then he ducks his head, letting his
gaze slip down to break apart whatever chill his stare might have carried on
it.
“Of course,” he says, his acquiescence smooth and unhesitating. “I will be
happy to take whatever opportunities my lady sees fit to bestow upon me.”
From the way the girl flutters and titters at this, she takes it the way she
was meant to; if there’s more honesty there than McGillis usually carries in
the structure of his flirtations, well, there’s no need for her to see through
his real motivations.
***** Priorities *****
“Oh.” The voice is high, breathless, nearly inaudible for the range it’s jumped
to in Margot’s throat; McGillis imagines he wouldn’t be able to hear it at all
were he not as close as he is. “McGillis, darling.”
McGillis doesn’t answer. He’s not truly intended to; for all the sound of his
name pulling into a plea against Margot’s lips he knows what he’s meant to do
in this moment as surely as if he’s following the steps of the same dance he
spent the last hours tutoring the noblewoman through. He stays where he is
instead, with his head ducked forward to kiss just against the line of the
girl’s dress, where her neckline is skirting the very edges of decency even
here within the walls of her own home. It’s a straightforward thing to keep her
occupied, an imitation of the desire he knows he’s meant to be feeling after a
few hours of pressing close together with the excuse of dancing to keep them
there; and his imitation has always been persuasive enough to pass for reality
except under the very harshest of scrutiny. McGillis would wager on his ability
to fool some of the sharpest eyes in the kingdom; and Margot’s fluttering
lashes and soft-parted lips are hardly among those.
“Ah,” she gasps now, her hand clinging to McGillis’s hair as she presses
forward where she’s perched on his lap, her skirts falling so heavy around them
both McGillis thinks it might be a miracle to find his way through them even
were he trying. “Oh, this is so wrong, I ought not to be doing this!” There’s
no real judgment in her tone; far headier is the excitement, the same thrill of
wrongdoing that McGillis is sure drew her fingers into his hair and her lips
pressing hard against his at the conclusion of their first lesson. He’s an
indulgence in disobedience, the more exciting for how much he ought to be off-
limits; and Margot is hardly the first girl to be taken with the idea of a
noble tutor too infatuated with her beauty to know his proper place. McGillis
never takes the first step over the line of propriety himself -- he’s not meant
to, in the structure of the fantasy he plays to -- but he acts out the part of
the lovestruck tutor whenever the girls press him to a wall, or a doorway, or
into the shadows of a classroom or their bedroom, for those more forward than
Margot. That’s what they’re expecting to see, after all, and expectations, as
it turns out, are everything.
“We must stop,” McGillis says now, adopting a tone of some strained effort, as
if forcing himself through words like bitter ash on his tone. “If someone were
to find us like this--”
“I don’t care,” Margot declares, with enough drama in the words to suit the
heroine of some tragic romance. Her arm slides tight around McGillis’s neck,
her breasts crush to his chest; McGillis lets his hand slide up to catch
against her shoulder to steady her, but she needs no encouragement to press
herself as near against him as she can get. “We could run away and be together,
I’d be happy to do anything if I could only be with you!”
McGillis refrains from asking exactly what her definition of anything entails.
“No,” he sighs, sounding suitably distraught. “I could never do that to you or
your family. I have already breached their trust this much.”
“It’s worth it,” Margot declares, secure in her status as her father’s only
daughter rather more than McGillis is as the recently hired tutor who barely
merits a room for himself in the mansion. “Everything we do we do for love, my
darling, I’d do it all again!” She ducks in to press a lingering kiss against
McGillis’s cheek; he lets her, as trapped to submission by her position over
him in the household as by her actual physical presence pinning him to the
chair. One kiss leads to another, leads to a tongue against his ear and the
heat of exhales gusting against the back of his neck, leads to Margot rocking
herself forward to press against McGillis beneath her, her hips marking out a
rhythm of clear intent. McGillis submits to it, for a few minutes at least;
it’s only once Margot is whimpering against the side of his neck and fisting at
his hair that he braces his hands at her waist to urge her back and away from
him.
“My lady,” he says, his voice dipping into the appearance of strain enough to
match the tremor running through his hands. “We should stop.”
“Why?” Margot whimpers at his shoulder. Her fingers are seeking for the buttons
at the front of his vest, striving to push them loose in spite of the stiff
resistance of the fabric. “Stay with me longer, McGillis.”
“My lady,” McGillis says; and then, after a suitable pause: “Margot,” as he
lets his voice break on strain. It’s enough to pull Margot’s head away from his
shoulder as her eyes open wide on surprise; McGillis keeps his head dipped down
to look up from under his lashes at Margot over him as he adopts the appearance
of breathlessness. “We must stop here.” He pauses, makes a show of taking a
breath, and then lets his head drop so his gaze is indicating the front of his
breeches, or where they would be visible were they not buried somewhere in the
lace and satin of Margot’s skirts. “I...I do not know how much more restraint I
have in me, if you continue like this.”
“Oh,” Margot says; and “Oh,” as she pushes away from McGillis with frantic
haste. McGillis has to catch against her waist to keep her on her feet and
prevent an outright fall as she scrambles off him; when he glances up at her
her face is ducked down, her attention pinned determinedly to her skirts. “Of
course. Yes. I should have thought.” Her cheeks are brilliant pink, her words
the perfect show of a young girl flustered by an acknowledgment of sexual
desire; it would be a fairly convincing show, McGillis thinks, if it weren’t
for the way her gaze skims back to the front of his pants and the catch of her
teeth at her lip as she tries and fails to bite back a self-satisfied smile.
McGillis clears his throat. “If you wish to stay…”
Margot twitches as if startled. “Ah,” she gasps. “N-no, no. I should--” She
lifts her hand to wave vaguely towards the door before she tucks a curl of hair
behind her ear. She takes a deep breath, visibly steadying herself, and
McGillis lets his hold on her hips go even before she takes a step back to draw
away from him. “We always have tomorrow, after all.”
McGillis offers her a smile as sincere as he can make it over the tension he’s
holding behind his eyes. “Of course,” he says, and pushes to his feet so he can
fold himself into a bow. “May your night be as pleasant as you have made my
evening.”
Margot titters over a laugh. “Ah,” she says. “Yes. Of course.” Her hand touches
against McGillis’s hair again, a brief, possessive contact; and then she clears
her throat again and turns towards the door in such a rush McGillis can hear
her skirts rustle. He holds his bow as she retreats; it’s only with the sound
of the door opening that he lets his head raise fractionally to look after her.
Margot is standing in the doorway, pushing at her hair to bring it back to a
semblance of decency as she steps out into the hallway; but she hesitates in
the entrance, as McGillis knew she would, before glancing back over her
shoulder. Their eyes meet, Margot’s smile breaks free of her hold on it; and
then she shifts her fingers in a restrained wave, and turns to step out into
the hallway with her head held high on self-conscious satisfaction. McGillis
watches her go, watches the door shut, waits for a moment; and then straightens
at once, abandoning his soft gaze and shallow breathing as easily as he does
his position. He pulls his vest back into place, realigning it over his
shoulders as part of the same motion that smoothes the wrinkles from the silk
shirt he’s wearing under it; it’s the work of a moment to refasten the top
button at his collar and to press his hands to his hips to lay his pants flat
to his thighs once more. He pushes his fingers through his hair, shaking his
head back to press the golden locks back into place, and then he’s as cool and
composed as he was when Margot arrived for her lesson this afternoon. He waits
another minute, delaying his departure to be sure she won’t be returning; and
then he strides forward towards the door to make his retreat out into the
hallways of the mansion.
There are few servants present. It’s late in the evening, long past the bustle
of dinner and the general buzz that fills the halls during the daylit hours;
there are few to take note of McGillis at all, and fewer still who care to
speak to him. The others have rest, or drink, or romance on their minds; no one
is willing to pause for even the outline of small talk, especially with one
occupying the awkwardly lofty position of dance instructor. The maids think him
pretentious, the serving men mistrust his looks; the family are the only ones
who consistently consider him to be one of the serving class, and even there
there are exceptions, as Margot aptly proves. It might be a strain, if McGillis
were interested in friends or had any intention of lingering here overlong; but
this is the third such position he’s occupied, and he has no more interest in
ingratiating himself with this household than he did in the previous ones. This
is a temporary position, a source of income and a way to build his own polish;
and most importantly, it grants him access to resources he wouldn’t have
otherwise.
The far wing of the mansion is deserted by the time McGillis arrives. Even the
family rarely visit these rooms; they serve as a statement of their status more
than something they truly make use of. It’s entertainment the noble-born favor
more than education; and so the opportunities available to them go unused even
when they have access right within the walls of their own home. McGillis can
appreciate the irony of it, if nothing else; and he appreciates the freedom
from any fluttering ladies or posturing lords hovering around him. The halls
are quiet, the lights dim; and when McGillis lays claim to one of the
candleholders set into an alcove just outside the doors he seeks, there is no
one there to tell him to desist. He carries the light forward with him as he
reaches out for the handle of the heavy wooden doors, imposing and well-
polished and never used; and then he pulls the weight of it open, easing the
oiled hinges until there’s space enough for him to slip through and let himself
into the library.
It’s silent within the walls. The candles in here are rarely lit, except by
direct order of the noble family; and they are all in their beds, or on the way
there, helped along by the elaborate meal they enjoyed and the long, lingering
baths their servants draw for them. There’s only one sconce in the whole space
that has had any use in the last long months, and it’s to that that McGillis
heads with his source of illumination. He draws back the cover, tips his candle
in to catch the well-used wick of the lamp inside; and then lowers the cover
again before blowing out the risk of the open flame in his hand and setting his
candle aside on the table. The glow of the sconce fills the space around him
with golden light, illuminating a corner well enough to read by while the rest
of the room remains dim with the weight of night.
McGillis leaves it as it is, turning his back on door and light alike to step
towards the racks of books and draw one free. It’s the same one he’s been
working on for the last few days: a history, one of the summaries of past
battles and monarchies written in such a flowery style it takes on something of
the tenor of myth in spite of its claim to accuracy. But there is information
in it all the same, underneath the layers of embellishment and equivocation;
and it’s that that McGillis wants, that he craves with far more desire than
what he pretends to have for the noble daughters whose interest buys him this
access. He would happily spend all his days teaching spoiled flirts how to
follow the steps of a dance, would grant them the seeming of attraction they
seem to so crave from him; all he desires in payment he can find in the silent
dark of these unused libraries. McGillis takes his book, cradling it to his
chest with a reverence sincere enough to reveal his imitation of such with
Margot as the charade it is; but there’s no one here to see him any more than
there is to interrupt him. He has the library, and the night, and freedom, for
a few hours at least; and that’s all he has ever needed.
With this kind of information at his fingertips, he doesn’t need to resign
himself to passively waiting. With enough knowledge, he’ll be able to create
his own opportunities.
***** Happenstance *****
The door to the carriage flies open before the horses have entirely stopped
moving. McGillis was ready for the sudden halt -- he’s been as pliant as he can
be, out of self-preservation if nothing else -- but it’s still enough to throw
him forward on the seat and leave him bruising his knees against the floor of
the carriage. He grabs at the edge of the seat before him, trying to push
himself upright and into motion out of the doors, but he’s not quick enough to
override the hand that fists at the back of his collar to jerk him up and
sideways.
“Get out of my sight” and there’s a shove, a force violent enough to send
McGillis toppling out of the carriage entirely. McGillis has the presence of
mind to go slack and keep himself from serious injury as he hits the carriage
steps and tumbles to the dust of the street below, but the impact is still
enough to blow all the air from his lungs and leave him staring stunned and
wide-eyed up at the brilliance of the sky overhead. “Take your damned face and
your fancy clothes and be grateful I left you with your life.” The carriage
door slams shut; McGillis gets an elbow under himself and pushes upright enough
to look up and meet the stormcloud expression of the red-faced man glaring at
him from the interior of the vehicle. “If I ever see you anywhere near my
daughter again you’ll find me far less benevolent.” He holds McGillis’s gaze
for a moment, as if to underline the force of his threat; and then he jerks the
curtain of the carriage window closed between them to break off the
interaction. The motion is the only warning McGillis has for the renewed motion
of the vehicle; it’s only by pulling his legs in close against his chest that
he gets his feet out of the way of the wheels and saves himself from a broken
leg or a shattered foot. Either might heal, eventually, if treated by a skilled
enough healer and with enough time to rest; but McGillis can’t afford the time
to recover, not if he wants to keep himself off the streets where he began. The
carriage doesn’t stop, either to ensure his well-being or to cement his hurt;
it just rolls away, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake to bring the few people
around coughing into their handkerchiefs and to burn at McGillis’s eyes. He
squints into the haze of it, blinking hard to clear his vision of the dust; and
then he pushes himself the rest of the way upright and gets to his feet,
careful with the bruises he can feel forming at hip and elbow and shoulder.
He’s stiff with the ache of it, his body protests his motion as he steps
forward; but it’s hardly the first time McGillis has forced himself into
action, and a few steps help to ease the first aching hurt from his body. His
limbs loosen, the few sideways glances at him pull away as the excitement of
the scene gives way to mundane concerns, and McGillis is left to make his way
along the street and to somewhere he can pause to catch his breath and consider
his next move.
It’s not the worst rejection he’s ever had. The girls who are so keen to secure
his employment may be happy to fawn over his good looks and flutter their
lashes into flirtation or somewhat more than flirtation, but their fathers are
less than pleased by this kind of behavior, and the fact that McGillis is never
the one to initiate such does him no good when it comes to defending himself.
He is an outsider, and a man, and of far lower social class than the girls he
is meant to teach; and that makes him the perpetrator, regardless of the actual
facts of the matter. McGillis has become unfortunately used to this; his
attempts at refusal only result in unmerited accusations with the same result,
and dalliances are inevitably caught out as discretion gives way to desire.
This position lasted him some months, thanks to a doting father’s blind eye
when it came to his daughter’s falsehoods; that it should end more dramatically
than the others is no more than a token of the same. McGillis has been all but
expecting this; aside from the bruises and the shouting, he has made out well
enough, with most of his wages and even his fine clothes still unharmed but for
the dust coating them. With a bit of brushing those alone would be enough to
buy him uncontested entrance to one of the finer inns in the city; from there
he can see to getting himself another employer, whether via the dancing he
relies on or the knowledge he is becoming increasing proficient with. Perhaps
he’ll do better as a history teacher, where he can keep more physical distance
between himself and the young women he’s meant to educate; but regardless, his
first step will be to find himself lodging for the evening, and the privacy of
a room to clean the street dust from his clothes and take stock of the bruises
across his body.
McGillis lifts his head from the street before him, his contemplation giving
way to determination now that he’s decided what to do next. There’s an inn a
little farther along this road; not one of the best in the city, but well
enough that his appearance in his present garb won’t cause much of a stir. He
can get a bath, and a meal, perhaps, before he heads back out for the evening,
and it won’t cut too sharply into those savings he’s built up so far. He steps
out into the street, his pace quickening as he thinks of the comfort awaiting
him within the inn before him; and there’s a yell, a shout of “Get out of the
way!” with an edge of near-panic on the words. McGillis’s head comes up, his
attention swinging around on instinct to track the sound as his feet stall
their movement in the road. There’s a rush of speed, a thunder of sound;
McGillis barely has time to make sense of a horse bearing a rider, barely
glimpses a flash of wide eyes and the rattle of long, ground-covering strides
barrelling down on him. There’s only a heartbeat of time to react; but
McGillis’s street-learned instincts serve him well enough to send him
backwards, throwing his weight into his second fall of the day rather than
keeping his balance and remaining upright to be run down by the horse and
rider. Were he in his full health he would be able to dart backwards and keep
his feet under him; it’s the lingering effect of the bruises from his first
tumble that drag his motions to unusual clumsiness and send him falling hard
against his hip as he tries to move out of the way. His ankle twists, a flash
of pain jolts up his leg; but there’s no time to flinch, he’s too busy throwing
himself aside from the force of those trampling hooves. The horse thunders
past, accompanied by the incoherent shouts from the rider clinging to the reins
set in its teeth; and then both horse and unlucky rider are skidding around the
corner, and McGillis is left lying in a cloud of dust for the second time
today, significantly more bruised and shaken than he was by his first
interlude.
It takes him longer to get to his feet, this time. He’s breathing hard from
adrenaline, for one thing; for all the angry shouting in the carriage, that was
no more than McGillis was expecting to encounter, and it’s hardly the first
time he’s dealt with as much. Getting almost trampled under the hooves of a
runaway horse is something new, however, and following so hard on the heels of
the first McGillis finds himself trembling until it’s all he can do to get
himself out of the road and leaning against the side of the building behind
him. More of a concern even than his present rush of adrenaline is his ankle:
he didn’t think of it until the horse was well past him, but when he first
tries to get to his feet the surge of pain that rushes up his leg is so much as
to very nearly send him toppling right back to the dirt again. He has to hobble
to get to the wall, and then he drops to sit without trying to even dust
himself off; he can feel the throb of his ankle running up the whole of his
body to short-circuit any thought of anything else. He knows he ought to get
himself to an inn, and rapidly -- the swelling he can feel starting against the
injured joint is only going to increase with time, and he’s already fast losing
his ability to walk under his own power -- but he will make it nowhere at all
until the fear for his life has ebbed a little, and so for the first few
minutes McGillis contents himself to staying where he is, his head tipped back
against the wall behind him as he consciously breathes through the panic that
so seized him.
“I’m so sorry!”
McGillis doesn’t know the voice. It’s that of a stranger, cast into the lilting
accent of the truly high-born, those well outside the range of even his vastly
improved social circles; he would hardly think the words were directed at him
at all, were they not so close. But they are, they’re shouted with clear intent
behind them, and that’s enough to bring his head forward from where he’s
leaning against the wall, and to bring his focus onto the speaker now stumbling
towards him in breathless haste. It’s a young man, his cheeks flushed with
exertion and his violet hair tousled around his face; his appearance, and the
dust clinging to him, is wildly out of keeping with the richness of the clothes
he’s wearing, from the gold embroidery outlining the purple of his jacket to
the sheen of the breeches dyed to a similarly royal color. McGillis recognizes
him from his clothes as much as his face, as the rider who so nearly missed
murdering him with his wild horse; and then the stranger stumbles in to drop to
his knees alongside McGillis, and it’s as he raises his gaze to meet the
other’s that McGillis is hit with a second jolt of recognition as he looks
straight into the eyes of His Royal Highness Gaelio Bauduin, crown prince of
the realm.
“I’m so sorry,” the prince says again, reaching out to clutch at McGillis’s
shoulder as if to underscore the sincerity of his words with the force of his
hold. His eyes are wide and bright, his lips are parted on the pant of his
breathing; there’s nothing at all in his expression but sincere concern, as if
he has any need at all to worry about who he inconveniences in what will
someday be his own kingdom. “Kimaris is a new horse. We’ve been trying to break
him in for weeks but I didn’t think he’d lose his head as soon as we made it to
the outskirts of the city. I hope he didn’t injure you?”
McGillis huffs an exhale verging against the edge of laughter as much
disbelieving as anything else. “He knocked no more than the wind out of and the
dust onto me, Your Highness.”
The prince breaks into a laugh of his own, the curve of it wide and
unrestricted enough to crinkle at the corners of his eyes. “I am glad you moved
quickly enough to get out of the way, I think he would have run right through
you if not. I’m afraid he’s a bit too much for me. Are you badly injured?”
McGillis shakes his head in a refusal short enough to keep the lie of his set
lips from being noticed. “I’m sure I’ll be fine with a bath and an hour’s
rest.”
“Let me provide as much,” the prince says. “It’s the least I can do in
repayment.” He pushes to his feet before looking down to beam at McGillis.
“Where’s your preferred inn? I’ll pay for a night’s lodging for you to recover,
or my men can take you back to your estate, if you’re from this vicinity.”
McGillis doesn’t so much as bat an eyelash at this massive overestimation of
his rank. “I’m just a visitor,” he lies without a quiver in his voice. “I was
intending to stay for a few days myself, I’m sure I can make my own way from
here.”
“Certainly not,” the prince says, with all the casual self-assurance his rank
grants him. “It was my horse who all but trampled you, it is my duty to look
after subjects and visitors to my realm alike.”
A smirk tugs at the corner of McGillis’s mouth. “I believe it was the ground
that did the damage, Your Highness, not the horse.”
The prince flashes a ready smile at McGillis. “In which case it is still my
responsibility, as the ground is part of my realm as much as the rest.” He
extends a hand to McGillis before him. “I insist.”
There’s not much McGillis can offer by way of protest to that. He lifts his
hand instead, uncomfortably aware of the dust coating his skin as he presses
his palm close against the prince’s, but the other doesn’t so much as flinch
before he closes his hold tight around McGillis’s hand and pulls to urge the
other to his feet. McGillis stands, letting himself be urged to upright by the
grip against his wrist; and then his weight shifts over his ankle, and his
vision flashes to white for a moment, the air rushes from his lungs, and he
throws out a hand in a desperate attempt to catch himself from falling
facefirst to the road again. His fingers close against the prince’s elegant
coat, his grip rumpling the fabric as his pitch forward throws him very nearly
into the other’s arms, and McGillis just has time for a rush of horror at his
accidental rudeness before there’s a hand closing tight at his elbow, a grip
steadying his balance even with the support of his ankle entirely absent.
“You are hurt!” The prince’s tone is sharper than it was before, with the edge
McGillis feared to put there, but he’s not shoving away the other’s sudden
weight against him or retreating from the desperate grab McGillis made at his
coat; he’s holding McGillis up instead, his hand against the other’s arm so
unshakeable McGillis thinks he might not be able to drag himself free even if
he tried. “You can’t stand, you need a physician.”
McGillis shakes his head and tries to free himself from the prince’s hold, at
least insofar as he is able to uncurl his grip on the other’s jacket and pull
back to take some of his weight over his own feet again. “It’s just a twisted
ankle, I’ll be fine. It’s nothing worth you worrying yourself over.”
“It is,” the prince says, his voice breaking so high on insistence he would
sound almost tearful, if there weren’t so much self-assurance under his tone.
“Your injuries are a result of my actions, it is only proper that I see them
well mended.”
“Your Highness!” It’s another voice, this one from the end of the street; the
prince turns his head in response as quickly as McGillis glances sideways,
feeling his shoulders tense with the reflexive panic at the approach of guards
he has never quite been able to shake, however fine his clothes may be. But
there’s no anger on the faces of the men approaching, no alarm at seeing an
entire stranger all but draped over their prince’s shoulder; they barely spare
a glance for the clothes that grant McGillis the seeming of wealth before their
focus is returning to the prince’s face instead. “Are you well? Did you fall?”
The prince shakes his head with the unthinking dominance of royalty, brushing
aside the sincere fear in his guards’ expressions with a toss of his hair. “I’m
fine,” he says with lofty certainty. “Unfortunately some harm has been done to
this visitor to the kingdom.” McGillis can see the flicker of confusion over
the guards’ faces in the moment before they process his presence as more than
part of the background; even once they’re looking at him, it takes them a
moment to notice the awkward angle of his leg as he holds his throbbing foot
just shy of the ground rather than risking putting any pressure on it.
The prince’s head comes up fractionally higher; McGillis’s attention is drawn
unavoidably up to track the motion as the sunlight sweeps out over the clean
lines of the other’s face and lights up the fall of his hair to the same royal
shade as his clothing. “I wish to see him cared for to undo some of the hurt
that befell him as a result of my misjudgment. Bring us a pair of horse so we
may return to the palace.”
McGillis tightens his grip on the prince’s shoulder. “Your Highness,” he
murmurs, speaking in an undertone that is as polite as he can make it. It takes
a moment for his words to make it through to the prince’s attention; when they
do his chin comes down at once, his innocent-wide eyes come back into focus on
McGillis’s face before him. McGillis ducks his head towards his foot and
grimaces by way of explanation. “I am not certain I can manage a mount myself
just at present.”
“Oh,” the prince says, his tone falling back to the casual ease he used with
McGillis before. “Of course, yes, I should have thought.” He lifts his head to
look back to the guards. “Just one will be sufficient. I’ll escort him back
myself. If you continue on down this street you’ll find Kimaris back at his old
stable; apparently that was where he was so bent on travelling. Bring him back
to the palace and we’ll resume retraining him tomorrow.” There’s a murmur of
assent from the guards and a shower of bows, but the prince isn’t waiting for
those; he’s turning back to McGillis to flash another one of those relaxed
smiles at him. “I’ll see you well again before you continue on your way, my
lord…?”
It takes McGillis a moment to realize the other is asking for the name of the
role he has assumed McGillis bears; he ducks his head forward into a nod,
hoping to cover his odd hesitation with the appearance of awe instead.
“Fareed,” he says. “McGillis Fareed, Your Highness.”
The prince’s laugh is as warm as his smile. “No need to stand on ceremony,” he
says. “I might have killed you, that makes us nearly friends, doesn’t it?” When
McGillis glances up the prince is beaming at him with nothing but sincerity
behind his expression. “Call me Gaelio, please.”
McGillis ducks his head into acquiescence. “Well,” he says. “Gaelio, then.”
It’s surprising how easily the name of royalty falls from his lips.
***** Audience *****
McGillis has never worn such a fine coat in his life.
It doesn’t entirely fit him. The shoulders are a little too narrow and the
waist is a little too broad; it’s clearly a borrowed article, to anyone with an
eye to such things. But the fit is near enough to pass a quick glance, and the
princely cut fine enough to be clearly preferable to the dust-stained coat he
arrived in; and the fabric itself is a rich, heavy thing, layered over with
such weight that McGillis can almost feel the gold of its worth like it’s
pressing close against his skin. He’s not easily awed, at this point in his
life, and even now he’s sure his expression is as calm and composed as he could
wish it; but he can feel his skin prickling as if with goosebumps, as if his
whole body is trying to fit itself into the outline of these clothes and
finding that it’s his street-rat heritage that doesn’t fit their perfect seams
more than the other way around.
McGillis doesn’t linger over his appearance. There’s a part of him that would
like to, that would appreciate the moment to relish in his present situation,
so much higher than even his loftiest dreams have dared to fly; but there’s a
servant standing by the doorway, hands folded and gaze distant but still
present in that quiet, pervasive way that servants always are. McGillis has
seen more than one noble forget those watching eyes, has seen the way the
expectations of the upper class disregard any servant who has the intelligence
to stand still for more than a few heartbeats of time; but his own history has
made him constantly aware of his surroundings, to dodge trouble and seize
opportunity alike, and he can no more forget the shadow waiting by the door
than he can fly. His facade will remain intact so long as he has any kind of an
audience; and so he turns away from the mirror before him with as much casual
grace as he can muster with his aching foot, and when he moves it’s to lift a
hand to gesture the man in towards him rather than bothering with trying to
make it to the door himself.
“Thank you,” McGillis says as the man approaches, dropping the words with
dismissive habit the way he’s learned from the nobles he’s worked for and the
ladies he’s entertained, and when he reaches to take the support the man offers
him it’s with the same assumption of aid, with as much offhand flourish as a
lady reaching out with an empty wineglass without looking to see the pitcher
waiting to refill her drink. McGillis braces his arm hard atop the man’s
offered elbow, leaning against it until he can trust his balance, and when they
move it’s at his indication, so smoothly it’s nearly as if the servant at his
side is reading the intention from his thoughts directly.
Even with support, it’s a difficult walk. McGillis’s twisted ankle has hardly
stopped aching; if anything he thinks the pain has grown worse, in spite of the
wrapping the physician pressed around the swelling and the bitter draught of
liquid the man claimed would strip the worst of the pain from McGillis’s
awareness. The only thing it seemed to effect was to twist McGillis’s stomach
and curdle at his tongue; but then again, if it’s doing what it’s supposed to,
he’s grateful to the bitterness for allowing him to retain some measure of
coherency around the throb of hurt running up his spine in time with each beat
of his heart. He doesn’t think he’d be capable of leaving the room at all were
it much worse; and one does not simply refuse a royal invitation to dinner.
The dining hall isn’t far from the quarters McGillis was shown to. He’s glad
for the shortness of the walk, if nothing else; he’s only paler than usual by
the time they’re drawing up to the door, rather than overheated with the pain
of his physical exertion. It’s enough for him to pause for a moment to catch
his breath, to steady his shoulders and straighten his position, and when he
ducks his head in permission the servant at his arm doesn’t hesitate in
reaching to push the door open and leading McGillis through into the space
within.
“Your Majesties,” the man says, in a clear, carrying tone sufficient to fill a
far larger room than even the expansive dining hall they have just come into.
“I present Lord McGillis Fareed, at your request.” The man draws the support of
his arm away to drop into a bow to underscore his words; McGillis is left to
steady his bad foot behind him as best he can and fold forward into a gesture
of respect suitable for the position he is assumed to hold. It’s still shakier
than he’d like, thanks to the uncertainty of his footing and the dull drumbeat
of pain against the back of his thoughts, but there is no excuse for
impoliteness under the circumstances, after all.
“I thank you for your graciousness,” McGillis says while he’s still tipped
forward into the angled shoulders and ducked head the situation demands. “Your
Majesties are as benevolent as the stories have made you to be. You do me much
honor by your consideration.”
“Indeed.” The voice is low, rich and dragging rough over the depth of its
range; McGillis doesn’t have to lift his head to know it as the king’s. There’s
a power under that tone, the expectation of obedience so bred-in it stands for
no resistance; McGillis’s spine prickles as if in self-consciousness of his
true standing, his knees tremor as if thinking of dropping him to the floor
where he ought to be, stripped of his false title and borrowed clothes. “We do
not often have such unexpected guests join us with so little announcement.
However, under the circumstances--”
There’s the sound of footsteps, the weight of boots thudding as they approach
down the hallway; it’s enough to tip McGillis’s head in spite of himself, to
straighten his shoulders enough that he can look back towards the door still
held open behind him. There’s motion at the other side of the door, a blur of
color and a scuff of shoes, and then: “McGillis!” in a voice as bright as the
smile that goes along with it. McGillis straightens without thinking, his
attention entirely captured by the beaming happiness on Gaelio’s face as he
steps forward into the dining hall and reaches out to clap his hand hard at
McGillis’s shoulder. “I went to meet you but the servants said you had left for
dinner already. You should have waited, I would have been happy to take you
down with me.”
There’s the sound of a throat clearing, the noise of it pointed enough to pull
McGillis’s focus back up and away even as Gaelio goes on smiling at him. “Of
course you’re met our son.” That’s the queen, this time, her eyes softer than
those of her husband seated at the table alongside her and her voice warmer;
she’s smiling as she looks at the prince at McGillis’s shoulder, her expression
obviously affectionate even as her mouth twists on something a little bit like
resignation.
“Yes,” the king intones, with significantly more weight on the word. “Who
insisted on taking out his favorite horse and nearly trampled a man to death
for his recklessness. We hope you’ve learned a lesson today, Gaelio?”
Gaelio ducks his head at McGillis’s side, his mouth twisting on something like
a grimace that ends up rather undermined by the bright in his eyes. “I have,
yes, father. But everything turned out alright in the end, after all!”
The king raises an eyebrow. “Your new friend may not be so casual about his
injuries.”
“He’s fine!” Gaelio insists; and then, turning back towards McGillis next to
him: “You are fine, aren’t you?”
McGillis hesitates for a moment, caught between the king’s expectant stare from
where he’s seated at the end of the table and Gaelio’s bright eyes just
alongside him; finally he clears his throat and lifts his head into the most
politic smile he has. “A minor injury is well worth the unexpected pleasure of
meeting the rulers of the realm so personally.”
“There,” the queen says. “You could stand to learn a thing about propriety from
him, Gaelio.” Her words are chastising but her smile is warm, and Gaelio’s
undampened cheer says he’s as aware of that fact as McGillis. When the queen
tips her head to consider McGillis again it’s with her chin very slightly
raised, and when she speaks the maternal softness has been swept aside to be
replaced with regal polish. “We are happy to welcome you to the kingdom, Lord
Fareed. Please take as much time as you need to recover as our means of
recompense for the harm our son’s thoughtlessness has caused.”
McGillis ducks forward into another bow. “I thank you again for your
generosity, Your Majesty.” He’s careful in straightening over his bad foot, but
even in his conscientiousness the tentative pressure he puts on his swollen
ankle is enough to flare a rush of blinding hurt across his vision. It’s only
in pressing his lips together that he keeps from crying out, and by the time
he’s blinking himself back into clarity there’s a hand holding hard at his arm
to serve as the answer for why he’s still upright.
“You really should sit down.” Gaelio’s voice is softer, now, without the tone
of proclamation he had before; it’s also much closer than McGillis expected,
enough to speak clearly to the identity of that support at his arm even before
he’s lifted his head to meet a pair of worried blue eyes fixed on him. “Ought
you to be walking at all?”
McGillis huffs a short laugh, the most sincere he can muster with his head
throbbing with the hurt at his ankle and his whole body tense on his need to
keep from trembling against the prince’s hold on him. “I could hardly refuse a
royal summons.”
Gaelio rolls his eyes expressively. “It could have waited,” he says, with all
the dismissive certainty of one who has never known anything but a lifetime of
sovereignty. “Father just wanted to make a show of chastising me for the
accident. He’s been going on about Kimaris being a danger for ages, you know.”
“Has he,” McGillis says, with only the faintest hint of dryness under his tone
as the prince’s bracing hold at his arm turns him towards one of the chairs
arrayed around the banquet table. “The animal seemed quite docile when I saw
him.”
“He is,” Gaelio says, with distraction audible on his tone. “Even after town,
he…” He trails off into silence; McGillis keeps his gaze on the table before
him, even as he feels the force of Gaelio’s stare weighting against his face.
“Are you teasing me?”
McGillis reaches out to catch at the arm of the chair before him to lean
against the support so he can ease some of the burden he’s been placing on the
prince. “Certainly not,” he says before casting his gaze sideways through his
lashes at Gaelio staring at him. “I would never think to toy with the crown
prince in such a fashion.”
It’s something worth remembering, to see the way surprise breaks across
Gaelio’s face: his eyes open wide, his mouth comes open, the whole of his
expression goes soft and slack. For a moment he looks no different than
McGillis alongside him; for a moment he looks years younger, a child startled
into delighted shock by an unexpected occurrence. “You are.” McGillis ducks his
head again to half-hide his face, but there’s a smile pulling at the corner of
his mouth, and the bright spill of Gaelio’s laugh a moment later does nothing
to ease the tension of it. “I can’t believe it.” Gaelio lets his hold on
McGillis’s arm go to grab around his shoulders instead and pull the other in
close against him for a brief moment of affectionate pressure. “I knew you
would be fun to have around, McGillis!”
It’s only McGillis’s hold on the arm of the chair that keeps him on his feet
against the pull of the prince’s grip on his shoulders, but if he has to think
about maintaining his balance, the satisfied smile at his lips needs no
attention at all.
***** Dupe *****
The prince’s laughter is bright enough to fill the whole echoing space of the
oversized corridor around them as he helps McGillis down the hallway towards
the other’s quarters. “You’re joking, of course,” he says, with such certainty
on the words McGillis doesn’t even try to argue with them. “What cause would a
lord have to be in such inns in the first place? You must have had tutors of
your own to teach you, surely.”
McGillis doesn’t have to try for the quirk of the smile at his lips. “I assure
you, it’s the honest truth,” he says, with enough twist to the words that
they’ll pass for the teasing they’re not. “I really did learn to dance in a
common room inn.” He leans in closer to Gaelio next to him and pitches his
voice softer, into the illusion of a whisper enough to draw the other’s
attention tipping in towards him in reflexive fear of losing some part of
McGillis’s speech. “I assure you, the maids at such are much more interesting
to dance with than some stuffy tutor.”
The words are meant to make Gaelio laugh, and they succeed, coupling the volume
of the other’s amusement with a flush across his cheeks that speaks more
clearly to his almost-embarrassment on the subject than McGillis thinks he
knows. Gaelio ducks his head forward, finally giving up the all-in focus he’s
been turning on McGillis’s face since they left dinner to watch their footing
instead; it’s a worthwhile subject, McGillis thinks, with both the prince’s
balance and his own so utterly dependent on the set of the other’s feet.
“You’re certainly the most interesting person I’ve ever spoken to,” Gaelio
says, without any trace of self-consciousness on his tone. It’s strange to hear
the compliment delivered with such innocence, the more so when it’s stripped of
the fluttering lashes and breathless tone the noblewomen McGillis usually
interacts with would grant it. “Most people I am meant to befriend are too
aware of my position, it’s as if I were trying to speak to a servant. But you
don’t seem to think about my title at all.”
McGillis’s shoulders tense; he becomes keenly aware of the weight of his arm
around Gaelio’s shoulders and the amount of force he’s resting upon the other
to keep himself on his feet. “I apologize,” he says, hearing his voice going
cool and distant even as he offers the words. “I have not had the honor of
interacting directly with royalty before. If I have done you any disrespect, I
assure you it was without intention, Your Highness.”
Gaelio hisses sharply past his teeth and shakes his head hard. “No, no!” His
hold around McGillis’s waist tightens for a moment, as if to pull free the
tension infusing the other’s posture by force. “Don’t do that, you mustn’t turn
into one of those bowing nobles who never see anything but my position. I won’t
have it.”
McGillis presses his lips together and fixes his gaze on the floor before him,
keeping his head ducked forward and his expression deliberately neutral as he
takes in the prince’s words. It’s hard to keep his thoughts clear; his injured
foot feels distant, now, the pain too far-off to be of any trouble to him, but
he’s paid for it with several glasses of wine, and his thoughts are fuzzy and
warm no matter how he tries to straighten them. It’s hard to calculate how he
ought to be behave, hard to balance propriety with the prince of the realm with
the easy taunting that Gaelio’s wide eyes seem to draw past McGillis’s lips;
the temptation to offer teasing to startle another laugh from the other is too
much for McGillis to avoid, at least when he has the weight of wine filling his
head with a warm, hazy sense of security. He considers his words carefully,
turning them over in his mind as if feeling out the edges of them for
unexpectedly rough corners; and then he huffs a silent breath of resignation,
and gives up the attempt to restrain himself. “Will you order me to disrepect
you, then?”
McGillis wonders what the guards trailing in their wake must think of Gaelio’s
constant ripple of laughter. Is he always this lighthearted, is this some ease
that comes with never going hungry, with never wondering where you will rest
your head? Or is it something innate to Gaelio himself, some brightness of
character that McGillis lost when he was too young to remember, or perhaps
never had in the first place? McGillis doesn’t know; McGillis tries to avoid
the curiosity to find out that flickers at the back of his mind.
“That would be counterproductive, I suppose,” Gaelio says. “Shall I ask nicely
then, without the order behind it?”
McGillis lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “It would be worth a try,” he says, and
lifts his hand to gesture towards the door they are approaching. “These are my
quarters, Your Highness.”
Gaelio turns accordingly, obeying the motion of McGillis’s hand like it’s an
order; McGillis is reminded briefly, unavoidably, of the shift of his dancing
partners, of the easy grace with which they submit to his lead. It’s a fair
comparison, on the surface of it; in the moment, in relation to the prince of
the realm, it’s dangerous enough to knot something very like fear into his
stomach. He presses his lips close together and blinks hard, trying to center
himself on the present moment as distinct from the rush of intoxication glowing
so warm in him, and when Gaelio comes to a halt McGillis draws free of the
other’s support as gracefully as he can, limping forward to reach and catch
himself against the handle of the door before him before he turns and ducks
into the best bow he can manage under the circumstances.
“Thank you,” McGillis says, offering the words with as much sincerity as he can
give them before he’s even begun to straighten from his bow. “Your generosity
today has more than proven your royal blood to my eyes, Your Highness.”
Gaelio snorts inelegantly by way of answer to this, his mouth quirking up onto
a smile as he steadies his footing anew without the burden of McGillis clinging
to him to stay upright. “It’s the least I could do after nearly running you
down,” he says, without any particular concern on the words. “I can’t have
visiting lords going back injured with tales of my family’s cruelty, now can
I?”
It’s a joke, even if it’s a weak one. McGillis is meant to laugh, he knows, he
can see the structure of the suggestion under Gaelio’s words; but his
intoxication twists, as it is sometimes wont to do, turning from warm
contentment to a chilled edge in the space between two heartbeats and the next,
as McGillis wonders how much his clothes are to thank for his present
situation. Would the prince have been so concerned about the urchin McGillis
used to be, or would that smile and those bright eyes have carried on down the
street without even glancing at the hungry children that cower in the city’s
shadows? It’s a more bitter thought than McGillis expected it to be; it dampens
his laughter and strips even the easy lie from his expression, until it’s a
struggle to muster so much as a smile. He does so -- he can hardly let the
prince’s teasing go unanswered -- but the tension is too clear, McGillis can
see it reflected back as Gaelio’s own smile fades, as his eyes widen. McGillis
takes a breath, bracing himself at the door as he reaches for an excuse, for
something to soften the blow of his unamused response, but:
“You’re in pain,” Gaelio says, speaking for McGillis without a flutter of self-
consciousness at doing so in his voice. “I should have thought. You’ve been
bearing with it the whole evening to keep me occupied and here I am forcing you
to stand while I babble at you.” He steps in over the distance to McGillis
before him and reaches out with that easy contact of one who has never known
any true danger in his life; his hand at McGillis’s elbow is warm and steady,
as if it’s carrying the same focus that Gaelio offers behind the bright of his
eyes and the apologetic curve at his lips. “Please get some rest. Send word in
the morning, the kitchen will send up breakfast to your quarters if you’re in
too much pain to come down.”
McGillis’s smile eases a little; he can feel his expression warming with slow-
growing sincerity. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
“Gaelio,” the prince says, shaking gently against McGillis’s arm. “Or will you
force me to make an order of that too?”
McGillis huffs a laugh properly at that and ducks his head forward. “No,
Gaelio.”
“Good.” Gaelio’s fingers tighten at his arm for a moment. “It is good to have
someone here I can talk to,” he says, speaking softly enough that McGillis
thinks even the guards won’t be able to catch the details of the words. “Thank
you.” He lingers for a moment, staying close as if to punctuate his statement;
and then he lets McGillis’s arm go and steps back out to the more reasonable
distance he was at before.
“I’ll send the physician in the morning,” Gaelio announces in a more carrying
tone. “Until then, may you sleep well and recover quickly!” McGillis ducks his
head in assent and stays there until Gaelio has turned to begin moving away;
it’s only once the prince and his pair of guards are well down the hall that
McGillis turns back to the door, and only once he’s limping into the shadows
inside that he lets his smile fade from his lips.
It’s dark inside, with only the glowing coals in the fireplace to cast any kind
of illumination over the room, but McGillis doesn’t stir them alight and
doesn’t reach for the bell to call a maid to do so either. He doesn’t need more
than a little to see by, and the shadows make it easier for him to let his
expression fall into the weight of consideration without fear of having that
darkness glimpsed by someone it isn’t intended for. He shrugs out of his fine
coat to drape it over the back of a chair, sits at the edge of the same to
struggle free of his boots and breeches; and then makes for the bed without
spending the time to search for more appropriate bedclothes than the shirt he
is left in. His ankle is throbbing again, the aching heat of it a match for his
heartbeat in his chest, but McGillis doesn’t think his rising headache can be
blamed on his injury any more than he can pin it on the wine he drank. He
climbs into the bed -- softer and wider than any he has slept in anywhere
before -- and pulls the downy weight of the blankets up over him, but even with
his head on the layers of thick pillows and the room deathly quiet compared to
the servant’s quarters and thin-walled inns he’s slept in before, rest is a
long, long time in coming.  McGillis tells himself it’s the ache from his
ankle, and the excitement of the day, and the heady rush of his sudden rise in
position, that are keeping him so restless; and when the dreams come, he gives
them the name of nightmares instead of the legitimacy they would be granted by
the more accurate term of memories.
***** Orchestrate *****
McGillis feels better in the morning.
That was almost a certainty. He’s had a long day, after all, between his falls
and the abrupt upset of his social situation and the unexpected interactions
with some of the most important people in the realm; after several glasses of
wine all he can think to do is be grateful he didn’t cause more trouble than he
did and fall into bed with the throb of his ankle to lull him into uneasy
sleep. But the bad dreams give way at some point as the pain retreats to an
ignorable level, and sometime after midnight McGillis slips into true sleep,
deeper and far more restful than what came before. He sleeps without moving, or
if he does he doesn’t recall it, and by the time the morning comes his good
cheer has returned as if to take the space of the hurt of his foot that has
faded almost out of noticing. It twinges when he gets out of bed, and the ache
has resumed more sincerely by the time a servant arrives with a tray of food
and a jacket that fits him far better than the borrowed coat he wore the night
before; but it’s a dull, distant thing, without the blinding pain that came
with the first day of damage, and more to the point it leaves McGillis able to
pace around the confines of his quarters until he’s certain of his own footing.
He eats standing up, more to test his balance and secure his comfort than for
any other reason, and by the time there’s a rap at the door to announce the
physician returning to examine him McGillis is finished with his meal and
dressed carefully in the palace-fine clothes now provided for him.
The physician’s examination of his ankle is a quick thing, far more perfunctory
than the considered attention he gave the day before with the prince in
attendance. McGillis wonders at first if it’s a function of his audience, or
rather the lack thereof, that has allowed the man to retreat to such
brusqueness; but when the doctor straightens and nods there’s enough
satisfaction in the gesture to cast his distance as professionalism rather than
the disdain McGillis took it for.
“The hurt is not as bad as I feared,” the man declares as he pulls his coat
back into alignment over his shoulders. “It will heal better if you can keep
from putting too much pressure on it, but I expect there will be hardly any
pain by the end of the week. Keep it wrapped and rest will do all that is
needed.”
“May I walk on it?” McGillis asks as the man turns with every apparent
intention of leaving with that as his final statement. The question gets him a
wave of the hand and no more than a glance of the doctor looking back at him.
“Certainly.” The physician draws the door open and steps out into the hallway.
“I daresay some light exercise will work through any stiffness and you’ll be
the better for it. Mind that you rest if it begins to hurt too badly, though.”
McGillis nods understanding and the doctor moves away to let the door swing
shut behind him. McGillis is left in the quiet of his visitor’s quarters with
no audience, and no attendants, and nothing at all to do with himself.
It feels strange to be so idle. McGillis has never made it to such rarified
heights of society before; even in the lapses of supposed free time he eked out
for himself in his various roles as tutor and serving boy and presumed seducer,
he was always aiming towards some goal: information, or manipulation, or
affection, depending on who he was with and what he was doing. But there is no
one around him, nothing he can seek for; he can hardly aspire to be higher than
here, within the walls of the royal palace, and even if he doesn’t belong here
he has an open pass for at least as long as his injury and the prince’s good
graces grant him. The experience is his to relish, his to revel in; and he has
not the least idea what to do with himself, with nothing that needs doing
pressing down on him.
He leaves his rooms, eventually. The quarters are large but beyond the plush
weight of the bed and the rich carvings of the dresser and ornate mirror
there’s not much to do; everything is polished and tidy and spotlessly empty,
as if waiting for the influx of possessions a true lord would bring with him on
a visit to the royal palace. The thought makes McGillis uncomfortable, as if
looking into empty drawers is a little too close a match for his own hollow
facade; and he wants to move, in any case, he hardly wants to fritter away the
possibilities of this opportunity on pacing over his rooms. He might be able to
find a library if he goes looking for one, or perhaps even an art collection,
in the high wings of the palace; and he’s supposed to exercise his ankle, in
any case, by the physician’s vague orders. So he smoothes his hair, and tugs
his coat into order, and once he’s assured himself by aid of a gilded mirror
that he is as lordly in seeming as he knows himself to be common in truth, he
steps out into the hallway to begin a slow circuit of the castle.
It’s a large space. McGillis can guess at the number of servants employed here,
from maids and footmen to cooks and stableboys, but even with so many to keep
the halls spotless and the rooms in good keeping he sees almost none as he
winds his way from one long corridor to the next. Perhaps they are tucking
themselves into staircases of their own, the narrow, winding servants’ paths
that McGillis knows exists from his more immediate use of the same in some of
those noble mansions; perhaps it’s simply that the palace is so expansive that
the odds of actually running into a servant are vanishingly small in the first
place. Regardless of the cause the result is the same: McGillis is left what
feels like utterly alone, wandering through endless, arching hallways while he
tries to keep his mouth closed to hold his sense of awe inside the span of his
own thoughts rather than leaving it clear on his face for anyone to see. Not
that he has to worry about that; even his usual awareness of his surroundings
gives no indication that he has any kind of an audience. He’s too honored a
guest to require the escort of a guard, but apparently the palace servants have
more important demands on their time than to take a visiting lord on a tour of
the grounds. McGillis has no doubt he could obtain a guide if he were to ask
for one, suspects he could even get himself a smile for the duration of a
conversation were he to initiate some kind of interaction with any servant he
happens to see; but he knows too well what it’s like to be on the other end of
that interlude, and he has no interest at all in basking in attention he knows
to be forced. Better to be left to his own devices, however lonely they may be;
and in the meantime, he gains the benefit of wandering through the palace halls
with enough freedom to grant him the illusion of truly belonging to these
gilded spaces.
He thinks he’s imagining the music, at first. It’s a faint thing, so distant it
seems to ebb and flow with each step he takes; the sound of his footsteps
against the tiles underfoot is enough to all but drown it to silence, however
softly he may tread. But he can pick out the high notes when he stands still,
can almost piece together the rhythm of a melody around the empty spaces of
music lost across the distance between the source and his ears; and he can
follow the lilt of it, if he walks slowly and listens carefully. It’s something
of a challenge -- the corridors are winding and the music isn’t bound by the
same restrictions of motion that McGillis himself feels -- but it grows easier
the nearer he draws, until he can take the last few turnings without
hesitating. He proceeds forward with ease, even if his usual grace is somewhat
inhibited by the ache of his injured foot; and when he finally approaches the
door from which the music is spilling, he is so certain in its source that the
idea of pausing over reaching to push it open never so much as crosses his
mind. He steps forward without waiting, the satisfaction of victory bright in
his thoughts as he grasps the handle; and then he draws the door open, and
music spills out and into the hallway with his gesture.
The sound is coming from a piano set up at the far side of the room from where
McGillis is. It’s an enormous thing, large enough to suit a room all but empty
except for the instrument itself; McGillis has never seen anything of similar
proportions, even in the most overblown of the mansions he has visited. The
sound spilling from the open lid fills the whole of the room, ringing off the
walls until McGillis feels a little like he’s stepped into the interior of an
instrument itself for how clear the sound is; he can see, now, why he was able
to hear it from so many corridors away. The instrument is enormous, the music
spilling from it immersive; for the first moment those two facts are so much
that McGillis has trouble even making sense of the musician drawing such
resonant tones from the piano itself. It’s a girl, young enough that her feet
are hanging loose over the edge of the piano bench rather than anywhere close
to reaching the pedals; but she’s playing with surprising skill in spite of
that, as she leans far to the side to reach for some of those high trilling
notes that carry so far through the palace. Her playing is hardly worthy of a
concert in its own right, to be sure -- it’s bright and lively, more the kind
of thing to dance to in a common room than the sort of overwrought elegance the
nobility might listen to on their own -- but her intention in the action is
admirable on its own. McGillis stands in the doorway for a moment, intrigued in
spite of himself by the girl’s efforts to play an instrument so vastly
overlarge for her; and then there’s a mistaken note, a sour sound obvious
enough to even his untrained ear to draw a flinch from him, and the music cuts
off abruptly as the girl’s shoulders lift in a physical representation of a
similar grimace.
“Don’t you say anything, Gaelie,” she says in a bright tone that carries with
the same edge those high notes did as her hands drop from the keys and she
braces herself to turn towards the door. “I did much better yesterday when you
didn’t interrupt--” and then she lifts her head, and she sees McGillis, and her
words die to a sharp inhale of shock. “Oh.” She rocks back on the bench,
flinching away from McGillis as her eyes go wide. “You’re not Gaelio.”
McGillis ducks his head in assent. “Indeed I am not,” he says before dropping
forward to kneel into a bow lower than propriety requires but better suited to
the apology he intends to offer. “I am sorry. I heard the music and wished to
know its source.”
“Oh.” The little girl slides forward and off the piano bench to come forward;
McGillis looks up but doesn’t get to his feet, to keep himself just below her
eye level rather than towering over her. She regains self-possession as she
approaches; by the time she’s standing in front of him she has all the formal
bearing to give away her identity even if the shade of her hair and the wide
bright of those eyes so like her brother’s didn’t do it for her. “You must be
the visiting lord. Gaelie’s friend.”
McGillis coughs over a laugh. “I am indeed the visitor,” he says. “As to the
friendship, I’ll have to leave that to His Highness to decide.”
The princess’s smile comes as easily as her brother’s. “Gaelie likes you very
much,” she says, with all the unselfconsciousness of a little sister spilling
her sibling’s secrets. “I don’t think he talked about anything else the whole
of breakfast. I’ve been hoping to meet you, although he said I shouldn’t bother
you.”
McGillis flickers a smile. “Well then,” he says, and he lifts a hand to offer
it palm-up for the young princess. She lifts her own without hesitation, the
motion elegant enough to speak to her familiarity with the gesture, and he
ducks his head to skim his lips into the outline of a kiss against the back of
her silk glove. “I am doubly glad for the chance to make your acquaintance,
Your Highness.”
“Oh,” the princess sighs. “You really are just like a prince yourself, just
like Gaelie said.” McGillis lets the princess’s hand go and lifts his head but
stays kneeling; the princess draws her hand back but only to clasp before her
as she beams attention at him. “What is your name?”
McGillis ducks his head. “Lord McGillis Fareed, your humble servant.” The lie
tumbles from his lips easily now, granted confidence by repetition; he doesn’t
even feel the flicker of familiar tension in his chest that usually accompanies
an untruth, as if he is forcing reality to conform to his lies by the speaking
of them. “It’s an honor to meet you, Princess.”
“McGillis!” The voice is distant, muffled by the weight of the door behind
McGillis, but the tone is clear enough to carry its owner’s identity as surely
as the name itself. McGillis glances back over his shoulder, his attention
shifting as quickly as the princess’s does; from the hallway there’s the sound
of boots as someone approaches with a hasty stride. “McGillis?” The door
shifts, the weight of it comes open; and Gaelio steps into the room, his hair
tumbled to disheveled curls around his head and his eyes wide and bright with
enthusiasm. He sees McGillis first, his attention centering close on the other
before him, and when he steps into the room it’s with a smile spreading across
his face to make the welcome of his outstretched hands the clearer.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he says as he claps a hand to McGillis’s shoulder
and offers the other for McGillis to clasp. “What are you doing out here?”
McGillis accepts the offer and lets himself be pulled to his feet by the
prince’s urging. “I thought to test my ankle with some walking,” he says. “When
I heard music I followed it back here to find an unexpected artist at her
work.”
Gaelio scoffs a laugh at this overt compliment. “It’s just Almiria’s piano
practice,” he says as he glances at his sister with a dismissiveness only made
possible by his own higher rank. “You’ll be stuck here all morning if you let
her talk you into listening.”
“I didn’t talk him into anything,” Almiria protests. “He said he wanted to meet
me, Gaelie, not that I was a trouble like you said!”
“Of course he did,” Gaelio says. “You’re a princess. He has to say that so you
won’t have him exiled.”
Almiria huffs and crosses her arms. “I wish I could have you exiled.”
“Too bad for you I’m the heir,” Gaelio says with airy unconcern as he pulls at
McGillis’s shoulders to urge the other towards the door. “Go back to your
music, I’ll take over entertaining my guest myself.”
“Goodbye,” Almiria calls with something like tension on her voice. “Will I see
you again, Lord Fareed?”
McGillis looks back over his shoulder to dip his head into a nod and flash a
smile at the princess as Gaelio urges him out the doors. “I certainly hope you
shall.” Almiria beams at him, her whole face lighting up with simple happiness
before Gaelio draws them out into the hallway and lets the door swing shut
behind them.
“Freedom,” Gaelio sighs. “I hope you weren’t stuck entertaining my sister for
terribly long.”
McGillis offers a smile in answer. “I had barely arrived, in fact. I hardly had
a chance to hear her play at all. She’s quite good, isn’t she?”
Gaelio snorts. “You don’t need to butter me up by complimenting my sister,” he
tells McGillis directly, and pulls to urge the other into forward motion down
the hallway alongside him at a pace less than perfectly comfortable for
McGillis’s aching ankle. “Yes, of course she’s good. She ought to be, she’s
been studying since she was four.”
“She’s made great progress,” McGillis hums. “It’s only been a few years, then?”
Gaelio’s laugh is bright enough to fill the whole of the hallway; his rapidfire
stride slows, as if to make space for the brilliance of his amusement. “A few,”
he repeats. “She’s going on five years now. She’ll be nine at her next
birthday.”
“Ah,” McGillis says. “My apologies, I took her for somewhat younger than she
is.”
“That’s because she’s such a waif,” Gaelio says, with no indication on his tone
now of the irritation that was so briefly there. “She’s still a child, extra
years or no, and there’s not much fun to be had in entertaining those, even
royal ones.” He tightens his hold on McGillis’s shoulders and leans in close;
when McGillis tips his head in answer Gaelio’s hair skims his own, from how
near the other has drawn himself. “I’ve got something a lot more fun for you.
The guards are about to start their archery practice out on the training
grounds. If we hurry we won’t miss more than the first few, and they always
save the most skilled archers for last.” In spite of his words Gaelio is still
moving more slowly, apparently content to speak of the enjoyment to be had in
his planned outing rather than rushing to actually obtain it; if anything his
pace is slowing as he finds the flow of his words and begins sketching out the
setting awaiting them. “I’ve asked some of the maids to bring us tea while
we’re out there, we can linger the whole morning if you’d like.”
“I thank you for your consideration,” McGillis says. “Might there be a bench at
the training grounds where I could rest for a few minutes?” He gestures towards
his foot. “My ankle is doing well, but…”
“Oh,” Gaelio says, his eyes going wide with realization. “Oh, of course, yes!”
He looks away from McGillis and out into the hallway; there’s a maid at the far
end of it, just about to turn the corner, but his shout is enough to draw her
back. “You there!” The maid turns to offer them both a curtsey, as much to
McGillis as to Gaelio alongside him, and Gaelio draws them to a halt. “Have a
blanket brought out to the training grounds at once for us to sit upon. We’ll
be spending the morning watching the archery.”
The maid ducks her head. “Certainly, Your Highness.”
“There,” Gaelio says, sounding self-satisfied as the maid moves away to obey.
“How’s that, then?” He’s smiling all over his face, his eyes as bright as the
smile he turns on McGillis still caught under the weight of his arm. “How is
your experience as a guest of the palace treating you so far?”
McGillis gives Gaelio a smile as warm if not as impossibly bright as the one
being bestowed upon him. “It’s wonderful, of course,” he says. “I can hardly
imagine leaving.”
McGillis thinks he can find plenty of value in entertaining royal children,
heirs to the throne or otherwise.
***** Favored *****
McGillis doesn’t leave at the end of the week.
It’s not that he injures his foot again. In actual fact the sprain is all but
gone by the third morning he wakes, and he’s moving entirely without a limp a
day before the physician declares him to be fully recovered; but he doesn’t ask
when he should leave, and every morning Gaelio tracks him down to declare some
new delightful outing he has in mind as a means to entertain his guest. He
never asks for McGillis’s input, whether he’d prefer dancing or reading or
hunting; he just provides, in excess, entertainment upon entertainment until
McGillis is all but drowning in the pleasures Gaelio is ready to heap upon him.
It’s dizzying, too much too fast, a feast spread before a starving man; but
McGillis isn’t about to refuse the opportunity to ensnare himself further into
royal good graces, even if he ends no better than that starving beggar gorging
himself to death on too much rich food. He’ll linger as long as he can, as long
as he is welcome; and between the prince’s ready smile and the princess’s
flushed happiness, McGillis suspects the span of that welcome to be lengthening
on itself with every passing day.
“Are you certain you’re up for this?” Gaelio asks now, turning to walk
backwards down the overwide corridor that will lead both himself and his
presumed-noble guest to the courtyard where he assures McGillis he has an array
of horses ready and waiting. “If your foot isn’t better all you have to do is
say so. Even if we stay inside I’m sure we can dodge Almiria and find something
more fun to do than sitting through another of her recitals.”
McGillis smiles and ducks his head in acknowledgement if not acceptance of
this. “I would hardly say no to another chance to hear Her Highness play,” he
says, with the strict edges of politeness crisp at the corners of his words;
and then, with a glance through his lashes and a curl of his lips to buy
himself more of Gaelio’s goodwill: “But my foot is entirely well enough for a
bit of horseback riding, if that is your Majesty’s wish.”
Gaelio’s smile is as brilliant as the gold inlaid into the gilding at the
walls. “Polite as ever,” he says. “Good thing I have plenty of excuses to show
you a far better time than what you’ll find in the palace.” He turns on his
heel, moving so gracefully he makes the action look like the fluid line of a
dance as he darts forward to catch at the handle of the heavy door leading out
to the courtyard. “Come on then and I’ll show you what I have to offer
instead!” The prince draws to the side, holding the door open for McGillis with
a smile as bright on anticipation as if he’s offering the whole of paradise on
the other side of the entrance, and McGillis smiles and ducks his head in
surrender and steps through.
The door lets out onto a courtyard, one of many that encircle the palace.
McGillis has had occasion to see the one that serves as a training space for
the palace guards, and the one circled with trees just starting to give up
their flowers for the first signs of unripe fruit forming at their branches;
he’s even visited the rose garden arranged for the princess, with Almiria
clinging to his hand as she points out her favorite plants among an array of
pink blossoms that look the same to McGillis but for location. This is a new
one, with a smooth array of paving stones marking out a circle as McGillis
steps through the doorway; and in the middle of the space thus indicated there
are three horses. Two of those are standing still, held to careful attention by
a stableboy and a footman; the third is prancing at the edge of the space,
kicking its feet in disregard of the peace otherwise filling the yard. It’s not
the doing of the horse, or at least not the horse alone; McGillis suspects the
animal’s excitement has at least as much to do with the stiffly proper position
of the rider perched atop it, a young woman in an elegant riding dress and with
her pale hair styled to careful precision around her face. Her chin is lifted,
her nose is in the air; McGillis can all but see the nobility of her position
clinging to her in every line of her stiffly haughty demeanor even as the
prince of the realm follows him out into the courtyard and drapes a casual arm
around his shoulders.
“Unfortunately I’m afraid we can’t go anywhere on horseback without Carta
butting in,” he says in a tone pitched loud enough to carry across the whole of
the courtyard. The woman’s head tips, her gaze slices sideways, but she doesn’t
dignify Gaelio’s comment with the respect of a complaint; she just heels her
horse into a loop of the courtyard, guiding it with such sure grace that
McGillis can hardly see her hands move on the reins.
“She’s something of a show-off too!” Gaelio shouts, not even pretending to aim
the words at McGillis at his side; and then, as the woman’s head whips around
to glare at him, he laughs and tips in to speak to McGillis directly. “Honestly
Carta’s the best rider I’ve ever seen. She’d be more tolerable if she weren’t
so determined to prove that to everyone she meets, but…”
McGillis laughs as the woman draws up to a halt in front of them in a clatter
of hooves. “I’m sure I won’t be giving her any competition,” he says, and then
turns smoothly from Gaelio to duck his head into the acknowledgment suitable
from one noble to another. “Your display has already put my own meager skills
to shame, my lady.”
Carta sniffs, lifting her head to toss a lock of dark-tipped hair back from her
face. “A flatterer,” she says, sounding dismissive but with her eyes lingering
on McGillis before her. “At least you’re not ashamed to admit when a woman has
you bested.”
“He hasn’t even gotten on his horse yet,” Gaelio protests, speaking loud before
McGillis can put words to any kind of a response. “It hardly counts as a
competition when you’re on a horse and we’re just standing here.”
Carta tugs at the reins of her horse to draw it dancing back from the other
two, looking as composed as she did in her approach. “Go ahead, then,” she
says, ducking her chin in haughty allowance towards the other horses. “Do you
think I’m trying to stop you?”
“I was simply waiting for an introduction,” McGillis says, speaking up before
the crease of rising irritation at Gaelio’s forehead can coalesce into an
actual snapped reply to Carta’s teasing. “It’s a bit more challenging to make
someone’s acquaintance from horseback, I find.”
Carta sucks in a sharp breath of air, her cheeks flushing deep red at this
minor bite; but at McGillis’s side Gaelio snorts a laugh, the sound clear to
hear in the moment before he lifts a hand to press against his mouth as he
struggles to shift the giveaway reaction into a cough instead. Carta’s gaze
cuts from McGillis to Gaelio, her expression hardening from hurt to irritation
as quickly as her attention shifts; and then she’s moving at once, rising in
her stirrups  and bracing a hand against the pommel of her saddle in
expectation of dismounting.
“Very well,” she says, still in that elevated tone as if the motion is all her
own idea. “If the prince himself refuses to stand on ceremony I suppose I can
grace you with a few minutes of my time.” Her boots hit the pavement, she turns
in a swirl of skirts and a toss of her hair, and when she strides forward it’s
with aggressive confidence in her step, the kind of put-upon swagger that would
draw knives were she in the kind of dark alleyways McGillis grew up in. But
there are no touchy patrons here, no robbers ready to accept any suggestion of
a fight, and when Carta steps up to McGillis and extends her hand with
peremptory speed there’s no one to interrupt the assumption of her motion.
“Nice to meet you.”
Gaelio heaves a sigh from over McGillis’s shoulder. “McGillis, this is Carta
Issue.”
Carta’s chin tilts, her nostrils flare. “The Lady Carta Issue.”
“The Lady Carta Issue,” Gaelio repeats, with enough pedantic rhythm on the
words to make a mockery of them in fact if not in meaning. “She fostered here
at the palace when she was a girl, after her father’s death.”
“Only for a few years,” Carta says at once. “I’ve been in charge of my own
estate ever since I reached my majority and could take charge of governing my
own people.”
McGillis ducks his head into a nod. “I’m sure they are grateful to have such a
competent guide,” he says without meeting Carta’s aggressive gaze. When he
lifts his hand he keeps the motion low, almost deferential as he braces his
fingertips against Carta’s palm to steady her hand for the not-quite touch of
his lips to the soft leather of her riding glove. “As I am grateful to be given
the opportunity to make your acquaintance.”
“This is McGillis,” Gaelio says, in far softer tones than the teasing lilt he
used for Carta’s introduction. McGillis lets his touch at Carta’s hand go and
straightens again to meet her gaze; both of the other two are looking at him,
Carta with her eyes wide and her lips parted as of on words left unvoiced and
Gaelio from alongside him, with a smile at his lips so warm it looks almost
possessive as his blue eyes fix on McGillis next to him. “He’s a foreign lord
visiting the country. He’s been staying here as my guest for the last few
weeks, since I ran into him by accident in town.”
“More literally than otherwise,” McGillis says, in the same polite tone he used
with Carta before he cuts his gaze sideways to catch Gaelio’s gaze. McGillis’s
expression stays smooth, but Gaelio breaks into a outright laugh at this gentle
teasing, all his composure giving way at once to unabashed amusement. McGillis
can feel the corner of his mouth twitch with laughter of his own before he
smoothes it back to calm; when he looks back to Carta she’s frowning at Gaelio,
her mouth drawn into a petulant pout at this evidence of some joke in which
she’s not invited to share. McGillis clears his throat to draw her attention
back to him, while Gaelio is still collecting himself back to calm; it’s only
when Carta is watching him again that he lets his mouth curve onto a polite
smile and ducks his head into another nod. “I am honored to be graced with your
presence, my lady.”
Carta’s head lifts again, her lashes dip to shadow over her eyes. “Of course,”
she says. “It’s only right that you would be grateful for the opportunity to
meet one of the Issue family, Lord…”
“Fareed,” McGillis says easily, without so much as batting an eyelash.
“Lord Fareed,” Carta repeats back. There’s something almost uncertain on her
tone, like she’s trying out the shape of the words, or maybe lingering over
them as much as her gaze is clinging against the line of McGillis’s jacket and
the fall of his hair; but it’s only for a moment, and then she’s turning on her
heel to offer McGillis a view of her back instead of the color still staining
her cheeks.
“Hurry up then,” Carta says, speaking loud so her voice will carry without her
having to turn around from the elegant display she’s making as she remounts her
horse. She ducks her head as she settles herself again, occupying her attention
with smoothing her skirts even as she clears her throat to speak in a tone of
pronouncement more than request. “If you boys aren’t interested in riding after
all, I’ll go back and amuse myself without you.”
“Give us a minute,” Gaelio protests. “McGillis is injured, after all.” That’s
patently false -- McGillis hasn’t so much as missed a step in days -- but he
doesn’t give voice to a protest to this statement any more than he draws his
arm free of Gaelio’s hold when the other catches at his elbow to support him.
“Here, I’ll see you safely settled.”
McGillis falls into stride with Gaelio without complaint. It’s simple enough to
submit to, in any case; and if the heir to the throne wants to lead him bodily
to his horse before they head out for the afternoon, he won’t resist the
support. Gaelio brings him to the pair of horses being held at the far side of
the courtyard, opposite from where Carta has resumed pacing her mount in long,
sweeping arcs around the perimeter, and when he reaches to tug against one of
the stirrups it’s with his head ducked down to half-hide his expression as he
speaks in a tone low enough to be inaudible to anyone other than McGillis and
the stoic footman holding the horse steady for them.
“Carta’s always like that,” he murmurs, his tone so soft as to make the words
nearly conspiratorial. “She’s head of her own family now and determined to
prove she doesn’t need a husband to help her manage it.” Gaelio lifts his head
and his hand at once as he reaches up to pat heavily at the shoulder of the
horse standing calmly before them; his lips are curving on a smile, but his
gaze still flickers sideways to consider McGillis next to him with something
like concern. “Although she might make an exception for you, I think.”
McGillis raises an eyebrow. “Really?” he says without looking back over his
shoulder to where he can hear Carta pacing her horse around the perimeter of
the courtyard. “She doesn’t seem particularly friendly towards me.”
Gaelio snorts a laugh and looks back to the weight of his hand against the
horse in front of him. “You don’t see her with other people,” he says, with a
weight to the words that catches McGillis’s attention to vivid focus. “She’s
never as nice as she was just now.”
McGillis considers Gaelio for a moment: taking stock of the tension at his
fingers and the set of his mouth, even as he holds to the smile he adopted. The
expression is clearly fixed, struggling for purchase at the other’s face;
McGillis wonders idly if it’s ever convinced anyone, if the people around
Gaelio really are so blind as to take this half-formed attempt at deception as
persuasive truth. Maybe it’s enough, for someone with a rank as high as
Gaelio’s to keep people from mentioning his obvious true feelings; maybe it’s
just that they never bother to see anything more than the status glittering in
the shine of his clothes and the sleek curl of his hair. McGillis tilts his
head for a moment, gauging the set of the other’s eyes and the tension at his
jaw; and then he reaches out to touch at the edge of the saddle before him, to
catch the very edge of the leather in his fingers as he looks at it instead of
at the prince.
“I wouldn’t worry,” he says, as softly as Gaelio spoke. “However much she may
appreciate the respect of a lord, a prince’s affection must by necessity carry
far more weight.”
Gaelio’s head swings around, his eyes open wide. “What?” he asks, sounding so
genuinely confused that McGillis doesn’t need the aid of sight to see the
sincerity of the shock painted clear across the other’s face. He looks up and
sideways, carefully, keeping his expression deliberately uncertain; Gaelio is
staring at him, his blue eyes wide and framed by the dark of his lashes. His
mouth is soft, now, the tension at his mouth stripped away entirely by
surprise; as McGillis looks at him he huffs a breath with shock audible at the
back of his throat. “You think I...Carta?” He scoffs an exhale and shakes his
head hard. “It’s not like that.”
McGillis keeps his attention on Gaelio, keeps watching those blue eyes, that
soft mouth for a flicker of tension, for any indication of deception or
equivocation. “No?”
Gaelio shakes his head hard. “No,” he says, and breaks into another laugh too
sudden to be anything but real. “No, not at all. There were talks of a
betrothal when we were young, and again when Father began looking for
engagements for me a few years ago but…” He grimaces so hard McGillis almost
expects him to stick out his tongue to indicate his disgust at this idea. “It
would be like marrying my sister. My older sister. She’d do nothing but boss me
around all day.”
McGillis lifts his chin. “I see,” he says. He turns his gaze back to his hand
at the saddle; when he slides his thumb against the pattern at the edge of the
leather it’s with intention, the appearance of uncertainty even as his
heartbeat thrums steady, as his breathing keeps smooth. He lets the pause go
long, just enough to take on the seeming of uncertainty, the edge of
uncomfortable shyness; and then, quickly, like he’s tumbling over the words
that fit with perfect precision to his teeth: “She would have been lucky to
stand alongside a man like you.”
It’s a simple statement; there’s nothing in it but flattery, no more than the
meaningless compliment McGillis might offer to any one of those fluttering
noblewomen he has tutored over the past years. But he delivers the words like a
secret, like they’re something fragile and delicate; and he hears Gaelio’s
breath catch, sees the flickers of Gaelio’s lashes as the other looks up at
him. It’s a clear answer to the question McGillis is really asking, too obvious
to be mistaken, and when McGillis glances up it’s already knowing what kind of
softness he’s going to see in the prince’s face, what kind of surprised
affection will be caught at the curve of his lower lip. They gaze at each other
for a minute, Gaelio’s whole expression clear to read; and then, from the other
side of the courtyard:
“Are you just going to go on standing there?” Carta calls, her voice lifting to
the very edge of shrill frustration as the clatter of hoofbeats against the
paving stones announces her approach. “I thought you said you wanted to go for
a ride, Gaelio.”
“Ah,” Gaelio blurts, sounding as startled as if he had forgotten anyone else
was there. He ducks his head and drops his hand from the side of the horse
before him, flinching back like a child caught doing something he shouldn’t.
“Yes. I’ll take the other horse, then, McGillis, if this one suits you.” He’s
turning away before McGillis has even had a chance to duck his head in answer,
much less to give any voice to a possible protest, and he’s mounting as
quickly, moving with more haste than composure. McGillis is slower about his
own action -- his experience with this is painfully limited, and he doesn’t
care to risk the startled motion Gaelio’s horse makes in response to the
other’s abrupt movement -- but it’s still hardly a minute before he and Gaelio
are both mounted and taking the reins from the servants standing holding them
with the long-suffering patience of palace staff. McGillis takes a moment to
settle himself, to make certain of his seat and his grip at once before he tugs
against the reins and presses his heel to the side of his horse to guide it
into a careful turn.
“Finally,” Carta says, still with that edge of petulance clinging to her voice
and her eyes still fixed on McGillis before her. “I could nearly have made it
back home and returned before you were done gossiping, Gaelio.”
“I wasn’t gossiping,” Gaelio protests, in such a strangled tone that McGillis
doesn’t bother turning to see the flush he can hear in the other’s voice. “I’m
being a good host. Something you could serve to learn yourself.”
Carta huffs and tosses her head. “We’re not at my home,” she says, and urges
her horse into a turn so she can take the lead towards the entrance to the
courtyard. “If we were I would be able to put you to shame.” Her lashes dip,
her gaze slides sideways; for a moment her attention draws over McGillis like a
touch, her teeth catch against her lower lip in a gesture McGillis recognizes
with perfect clarity. “You’ll have to make a visit to my estate before you
leave the country, Lord Fareed. I’ll see to it you have an experience of
truehospitality.”
McGillis ducks his head. “You’re too kind,” he says, his tone polite and warm
with assumed appreciation.
“Good,” Carta says, sounding as self-satisfied as if McGillis’s words were
overt agreement and not the meaningless compliment they were. “Let’s go, then.”
And she kicks her horse into motion, tipping forward and in as her mount leaps
forward into a sudden surge of action.
“Hey!” Gaelio shouts. “Wait for us!” And he’s moving as quickly, if with a
somewhat more delayed reaction; McGillis is left to press his heels into the
sides of his own horse, and rock his weight forward in his saddle, and let the
example of the other two guide his own motion. His thoughts are spinning, his
mind full of possibilities that shift and reform with every patter of his
horse’s hooves beneath him; and he lets them wash over him, surrendering to
their flow as gracefully as he rides the rhythm of the trot his horse has
fallen into.
He doesn’t know yet what use he’ll be able to make of this new information, but
that’s okay, for now. He’s never been at a loss when it comes to making the
most of an opportunity.
***** Tang *****
“Look over there,” Almiria says, gesturing with one hand while she reaches up
for McGillis’s sleeve with the other. “Isn’t that a beautiful dress, Mackie?”
McGillis looks in the direction of the princess’s pointing finger. There are a
dozen dresses in the window, all of them in various combinations of silk and
satin and lace, but it’s abundantly clear which one Almiria is talking about,
if only from the relative size of the child’s gown displayed in the corner of
the polished window. “Ah,” he says, stepping forward obediently in answer to
the tug of the fingers against his sleeve. “Yes, Your Highness, it’s lovely.”
“I want to try it on,” Almiria declares, and pulls harder at McGillis’s wrist
before looking up to supplement the force of her urging with the full impact of
her wide blue eyes. “Will you come with me, Mackie?”
“I don’t think I’d be welcome in a lady’s dressing room,” McGillis tells her.
“I suspect the seamstress and her assistants are better able to give advice on
fashion than my own uncultured tastes.”
Almiria’s mouth draws into what would be a sulky pout on anyone without the
rank of royalty to grant her a kinder description. “You’re not uncultured,” she
insists. “I don’t want to get a dress you don’t think is pretty on me.”
“Your Highness is lovely in everything,” McGillis says in his most convincing
tone of sincerity. “It is my privilege just to linger in the artistry of your
own taste.”
Even this isn’t quite enough to ease Almiria’s frown. “But Mackie--”
“Are you at this again?” That’s another voice, brighter than Almiria’s and more
direct than McGillis’s; both of them turn as one to look back down the street,
where Gaelio is approaching with a stride both rapid and unconcerned. He has an
orange in one hand and is tossing it up and down to catch against his palm; his
grin is brilliant with easy taunting. “You can’t hoard his attentions to
yourself all day long, Almiria.”
Almiria hisses, sounding more than a little like an injured kitten. “I’m not
hoarding him, Mackie likes spending time with me!”
“The princess is a most pleasant companion,” McGillis says politely. “It’s an
honor to serve as her escort through the city.”
Gaelio snorts, sounding patently unconvinced. “I still think she can manage to
try on a dress by herself,” he says, and waves his hand to shoo Almiria off.
“Run along and fuss with your lace.”
Almiria lets go of McGillis’s sleeve, but the motion is clearly unwilling even
before McGillis looks to see the way she’s frowning up at him. “You’ll still be
here when I get out, won’t you?” she asks. “You won’t run off and hide
somewhere with Gaelie?”
McGillis gives her his best smile, the polished one he’s practiced on the
noblewomen he used to train, and ducks into a bow the deeper to account for the
difference in their heights. “I won’t move from this spot,” he promises.
“You’ll be able to see me the whole time you’re within.” It’s a simple promise
to make, after all, and it gains him the favor of a beaming smile from the
princess in place of the unhappy frown that went before.
“Very well,” she says, with the bred-in formality of the words a harsh contrast
to the childish tone she takes for them. “Wait right here for me!” And she
turns to make her way to the door of the shop with a self-assurance that
hesitates not at all in drawing the door open and stepping inside. She’s hardly
alone, of course -- Gaelio ducks his head to gesture the handful of guards
trailing their tiny party inside after her -- but she doesn’t seem to notice
the silent strength of her entourage any more than McGillis has ever seen
Gaelio bothered by their followers. It’s a strange thing to see, for someone
who has learned to prize what moments of solitude he can claim for himself;
it’s one of the few things McGillis finds he doesn’t envy Gaelio even
fractionally.
Gaelio heaves a sigh as the last of the guards steps into the shop to follow
Almiria, the arrayed span of them en masse more than enough to fill the
otherwise-empty interior. McGillis’s attention shifts, drawn away from the
glass-hazed image he can make out of the princess within and to the prince at
his side, now just moving to lean his elbow hard against the edge of the fence
so he can turn in and grin up at McGillis.
“I’m sorry you got caught playing babysitter,” he says. He still has the orange
in his hand, is still tossing it up and down with idle intent, but his gaze is
all on McGillis, his head angled up so the sunlight catches at the curl of his
lashes to cast drifting shadows across the blue of his eyes. “If you were a
little less nice to her you wouldn’t end up acting as nursemaid all day, you
know.”
McGillis offers Gaelio a polite smile, something deliberate enough to tread the
line between necessary agreement with the prince and polite interest in the
princess. “I don’t mind,” he says, turning away from the focus of those eyes on
him to gaze unseeing at the street. This is one of the better parts of town,
where nobles do their shopping and royal children come for an experience with a
few more trappings of what Gaelio calls rusticity than can be offered within
the polished walls and expansive chambers of their home. McGillis came here
once when he was a child; he made it two blocks past the border before a well-
dressed guard caught him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him back to far
more dingy alleys, all the while hissing threats that McGillis knew better than
to take for empty words. He had escaped from that with no worse than a sprained
wrist and a bloody nose; he had been luckier than some of the other children,
in that. “It’s always a pleasure to accompany any part of the royal family, of
course.”
Gaelio snorts. “Yes, you’re very polite, I know that already.” The orange
flickers in McGillis’s periphery; his attention is drawn sideways in spite of
himself, his focus pulled to the motion without his conscious intention. “I
didn’t invite you to stay at the castle because of your graciousness, though.
What do you really think?”
McGillis blinks to refocus himself on Gaelio’s face, on the tipped-down angle
of the other’s chin and the shadow of his lashes weighting conspiratorial
darkness over his eyes. He lets his forehead crease, lets his mouth dip towards
the very beginning of uncertainty as he meets the other’s gaze. “I would never
lie to--”
“You would” and Gaelio is straightening at once, unfolding from the fence to
stand almost toe-to-toe with McGillis before him. The prince has the advantage
of height, if only barely, but Gaelio wears his height as casually as he wears
his fine clothes, and his gaze meets McGillis’s without any indication that he
even notices the slight gap between their eyes. There’s a smile at his mouth -
- McGillis has almost never seen Gaelio without it -- but his eyes are serious,
now, hard enough with certainty that all McGillis’s instincts warn him to tread
with care. “I know Almiria eats up all this polite nonsense as much as Carta
does but it’s just words. You’re speaking through a mask, when you talk like
this.” Gaelio tips in closer, just by the distance to rock himself in over his
toes instead of his heels; McGillis isn’t even sure the other knows he’s doing
it. “I want to know how you really feel.” Gaelio’s head tips, his lips curl
onto a smile; he looks almost pleading, now, like a child begging for some
favorite treat from a doting parent. “Please, McGillis. We’re friends, aren’t
we?”
McGillis presses his lips together and takes a slow breath. “We are, Your
Highness.” A pause, a dip of his lashes. “Gaelio.”
Gaelio’s expression softens, his smile goes warm. “There,” he says, sounding
deeply satisfied over the word. “That’s the McGillis I know.” He leans back and
away again, returning to his languid lean against the fence behind him as he
resumes his idle tossing of the orange in his hand. “I thought I might have to
drag you into an inn and pour wine down your throat to get you to be honest.”
McGillis’s smile breaks free from him in spite of himself, unintended and
unstructured. “And break my promise to your sister?”
“Almiria’d forgive you anything,” Gaelio says, his gaze fixed on the orange as
he bounces it against his palm. “She’s too besotted with you to think
straight.”
“It’s flattering for you to say so,” McGillis says. “It’s quite a compliment to
be the recipient of the princess’s favor.”
Gaelio’s laugh is warm enough to crinkle at the corners of his eyes; McGillis
can see the dark of his lashes press together to a moment of shadow with the
flash of the other’s amusement as Gaelio looks back to him. “You do encourage
her.”
McGillis lifts a shoulder into a shrug. “It’s wisest to stay on the good side
of royalty, don’t you think?”
“Of course.” Gaelio is still smiling at McGillis; it’s harder to keep watching
the soft of his eyes than McGillis would have credited. “Polite with the
princess and honest with the prince, as we demand of you.”
McGillis ducks his head in surrender to this point without giving up the easy
curve of his lips. “Some are easier to please than others.”
Gaelio just laughs in answer to that, rather than laying claim to one or the
other of McGillis’s references. He looks back to the steady arc of the fruit in
his hand as he tosses it up and catches it, the rhythm taking on the pattern of
rote now as it continues. They’re both silent for a moment, as if the
conversation is over, before Gaelio takes another breath to speak.
“It is politeness,” he says without quite letting the phrase swing up into a
question. His gaze is fixed on the orange in his hand, his attention apparently
caught by the bright curve of the fruit; his attempt at feigning disinterest is
as clear as the strain underlying his voice on the words. McGillis watches
Gaelio’s throat work over the high collar of his shirt, watches his shoulders
hunch to tension under his fabric. “You’re just flirting with Almiria to be
nice, right?”
McGillis almost laughs. It’s the wrong response to have, the more so when
Gaelio’s mouth is falling towards the flatline concern of a frown instead of
his usual smile, but he can hardly fight it back. There’s something charming
about the question as much as the strain that goes with it, something directly,
unequivocally normal about this display of almost-envy from someone who has so
much. For a moment McGillis sees: not the prince, not the heir to the throne of
a country, but a young man no older than he and innocent with his years, still
caught in the adolescent fear of rejection however fine his coat may be. It
seems to soften the curl of Gaelio’s hair, seems to darken the shadows of his
lashes, and McGillis’s lips curve onto a smile instead of that held-back laugh
as something strange and warm presses against the inside of his chest as he
looks at the dip of Gaelio’s worry-softened mouth.
“Gaelio” and McGillis is reaching out to touch his fingertips against the edge
of Gaelio’s sleeve, to skim the calluses of his palm over the silk of that
richly dyed coat. Gaelio’s head turns at once, his put-upon attention to the
orange in his hand collapsing as quickly as McGillis’s fingers brush his
sleeve; the worry in his eyes is as soft as the pout of his lips. McGillis
meets that uncertain gaze, feels his heartbeat fluttering in his chest, and
when his smile expands it’s with more sincerity than he expected to be there.
“I don’t mind playing nursemaid to the princess.” That’s all he intended to
say, just that polite equivocation with the comfort of a touch and the warmth
of a smile; but his mouth is still moving, words are coming free from the cage
of his chest and McGillis doesn’t close his lips to stifle them. “But I’m
happiest in these moments with you.”
Gaelio’s eyes widen, his lips part on surprise. McGillis can sympathize; he
hadn’t know he was going to say that, hadn’t intended to let those words pull
free any more than he intended the resonance of sincerity they bore. Gaelio’s
lashes dip, his attention slides down McGillis’s face to drop from his eyes to
his mouth, to linger against the curve of his lips; and then there’s a thud,
the sound soft but clear in the echoing silence of the moment, and they both
look away at once to where the orange has missed Gaelio’s outstretched fingers
and fallen to roll away across the dirt.
“Sorry,” McGillis says, speaking too quickly to allow himself to muster a
structure for the words beyond the casual speech he’s used the whole of his
life. He pulls his hand away from Gaelio’s sleeve and takes a step away from
the fence so he can move out into the street in pursuit of the fallen fruit.
“I’ll get it.”
“Don’t bother,” Gaelio says, waving his hand to sweep aside this action.
McGillis looks back to the fence; Gaelio is turning away from the street
already, tipping in to lean against the fenceposts with complete disregard for
the dropped fruit. “I’ll just get another, it doesn’t matter.”
McGillis huffs a laugh and takes another step out into the street. “Surely it’s
worth the trouble to pick it up, Your Highness.”
“Of course not,” Gaelio says, the words so unhesitating they stall McGillis
where he stands and pull his attention back around to the other. Gaelio is
lounging against the fence, the very picture of regal grace; he only glances at
the fallen orange, and then it’s with a curl of dismissal at his lips. “It’s
dirty now.”
McGillis rocks back, startled in spite of himself by this casual finality. “The
peel might be, perhaps, but surely the fruit is fine.”
Gaelio grimaces and waves a hand. “I’ll buy myself another,” he says. His eyes
widen, his expression brightens; when he looks to McGillis’s face his smile is
immediate and warm with invitation. “And you too, if you want one. Do you?”
McGillis gazes at Gaelio for a moment. The prince’s face is open, his eyes are
bright; he’s as thrilled by this idea of buying a gift for McGillis as a child
might be at receiving one of their own. It’s charming, in its way, endearing as
Gaelio so often is; and yet McGillis is still standing in the middle of the
street, already halfway towards picking up the fruit that the prince has
already swept aside as contaminated. It’s just an orange, it’s not as if it
matters to either of them or to any one of the noble visitors who traverse this
part of town; but McGillis’s wrist aches with remembered threats, and his
stomach twists on the hunger he’s never been able to entirely shake, no matter
how well-fed he may be now. He looks into Gaelio’s shining eyes, considers the
other’s generous smile; and then he turns away, ducking his head so the prince
won’t see the look on his face as he moves forward towards the orange.
“This one is fine,” he says as he bends down to catch the dropped fruit in his
grip. The orange is a little dusty from its fall, the peel faintly sticky
against one side where the impact with the ground crushed some of the oil free;
McGillis can smell it strong in the air as he straightens and catches the fruit
between both hands. He keeps his head down as he turns to come back, his focus
fixed on the dig of his fingernails into the peel as he pulls it open with
force enough to offer up a mist of tangy sweet into the air before him. He’s
drawn the fruit apart by the time he’s rejoining Gaelio at the edge of the
fence and exposed the segments inside for the glow of the sunlight against the
bright color; he keeps his gaze on the orange as he leans back against the
support behind him and pulls to urge a segment free. The fruit is sweet when
McGillis bites into it, the flavor of it bursting over his tongue as the
segment gives way to juice; he eats it without noticing and without raising his
gaze to meet Gaelio’s lingering stare.
It’s the prince who breaks the quiet, eventually, with a huffed laugh that
frames itself more around confusion than anything else. “I didn’t know you
liked oranges so much,” he says. “I’ll ask to have them with dinner next time.”
McGillis works another segment of the orange free from its peel without
answering; Gaelio tips in closer, near enough that McGillis can see the curl of
his hair falling alongside his face. “Aren’t your hands dirty?”
McGillis lifts one shoulder in a shrug to dismiss this concern. “It’s good,” he
says, biting off the words to some edge of curtness. Gaelio rocks back, his
weight shifting as he moves away as if McGillis had pushed him, and McGillis
glances up in spite of himself to see the other’s face. Gaelio is watching his
hands and not his expression, his gaze holding to the movement of McGillis’s
fingers rather than meeting the other’s gaze; there’s a crease at his forehead
and a flicker of tension against his lips as he frowns at the movement of
McGillis’s hands. He looks wounded and desperate at once, like a puppy trying
to determine its sin after being kicked; there’s no judgment anywhere in his
expression, no trace of malice behind his eyes. He just looks confused, lost
and a little bit wanting; and McGillis can feel his chest tighten on sympathy
in spite of himself even before Gaelio’s head comes up to answer the weight of
McGillis’s stare. They look at each other for a moment in silence, Gaelio
blinking at McGillis like he’s trying to read a book in a language he’s never
studied; and then McGillis sighs an exhale and essays a smile, careful as the
motion of his hand as he holds out the orange segment in his fingers.
“Here,” he says. “Try it for yourself.” Gaelio’s gaze drops at once, his eyes
going wider as his frown evaporates; when he reaches to take the peace offering
there’s no hesitation at all. He takes the fruit from McGillis’s outstretched
hand and brings it to his mouth at once to bite into the segment; there’s a
spray of juice, a sudden, sharp tang of orange in the air, and Gaelio offers a
soft, incoherent sound as he draws the segment back from his mouth and lifts
his other hand to shadow his lips. It’s clearly a note of pleasure, even if
McGillis weren’t watching the flicker of appreciation pass over the other’s
expression, and his own mouth is tugging on a smile as Gaelio lifts his face to
beam delight into McGillis’s own.
“It is good,” he says, sounding as startled as if he truly doubted McGillis’s
words. McGillis huffs a laugh as a grin breaks over his face, but Gaelio is
already bringing the segment back to his mouth for another bite. His teeth
catch at the fruit, the white of them bright in the warmth of the midday sun;
the juice spills over his lips, a drip of it catches at the corner of his
mouth. Gaelio hums delight around his mouthful of fruit and brings his hand up
to cover his mouth in shade again; but McGillis keeps watching to see the
motion of Gaelio’s tongue catch at the juice and swipe against the shine
coating his lower lip. Gaelio glances back up at him, his eyes crinkling with
pleasure as he beams up at McGillis, and McGillis blinks, and breathes, and
smiles back.
He doesn’t have to reach for the expression at all.
***** Metered *****
The week after their ride together, Carta throws McGillis a ball.
That’s not the excuse of it, of course. It’s framed as a celebration for the
lesser nobles in the surrounding estates, a gesture of generosity from the
Issue family to host the enjoyment of the other houses. But McGillis receives
an invitation all his own, sent by a messenger distinct from that sent to the
royal family, and his suspicions are confirmed as much by the frown on
Almiria’s face as by Gaelio’s laugh about who the real guest of honor is.
McGillis accepts, of course -- it would be unthinkable to refuse such a direct
invitation, even if his position as a guest of the royal family might give him
the clout to manage it -- and the night of finds him disembarking from the
carriage drawn up alongside the Issue estate with both the crown prince and
princess waiting for him before they all three join the crush of nobility
winding its way towards the sound of music and the hum of conversation spilling
out from the ballroom before them.
“The Issue estates are the largest in the country,” Gaelio tells McGillis,
leaning in close to be heard. He still has to nearly shout to make his voice
carry; the sound of the crowd alone is deafening and the music is loud enough
to be heard clearly over whatever attempts at small talk may be being made.
“That’s why Carta’s so good with horses. With the miles of forests she was
encouraged to ride as much as she wanted.” He lifts a hand to gesture towards
the spill of satin and silk filling the room as they step through enormous
doors thrown wide for the choking mass of humanity. “Big parties like this are
just a side effect of the size of the estate.” McGillis ducks his head in a nod
-- any attempt at speech in response is clearly futile before it’s begun -- and
then a hand touches his elbow, a voice declares “Lord Fareed,” with enough
force to carry even over the roar of the crowd, and when he turns in response
he looks right into the upturned chin and fixed stare of Carta Issue.
“We’ve been awaiting your arrival,” Carta says. “You’re later than I thought
you’d be.”
McGillis ducks his head in a nod. “The crowds delayed us somewhat,” he says,
wondering vaguely if Carta can hear his response at all. “And we made a later
departure of it than we intended.”
Carta sniffs. The noise of it is utterly lost, but the tilt of her chin and the
dismissive cast of her lashes carries all the important details of the reaction
clearly even in silence. “I should have known,” she says, giving Gaelio a look
better suited to an innkeeper considering a muddy urchin off the street than
nobility looking upon her prince. “Gaelio’s far too accustomed to taking
advantage of his title to arrive late to every function to which he’s invited.”
Carta shakes her head as if to dispense with the subject and lifts her other
arm to loop through the angle of McGillis’s elbow without waiting for Gaelio to
muster a response. “Come along, you’ll be dancing with me for the first of it.”
McGillis glances back at Gaelio, who rolls his eyes dramatically as soon as he
has the other’s attention before ducking to take Almiria’s hand and leading her
away to the quieter fringes of the hall. The corner of McGillis’s mouth
twitches in an attempt at a smile, or maybe of outright laughter, but he lifts
a hand to cover it and by the time he’s turning back to Carta he’s replaced
amusement with an appropriately doting display of awe. He ducks his head in a
nod of surrender as an easier response than trying to give voice to a reply,
and when Carta tosses her head and pulls to urge him out onto the ballroom
floor McGillis lets himself be led without complaint.
It’s harder work than he expected to dance in such a space. The room is
enormous, it would be cavernous were it stripped of the crowd filling it, but
with what must be hundreds of people within the air is stifling, the music
deafening. Carta pulls McGillis to the middle of the room, elbowing past her
own guests with little to no concern for their own motion, and when she turns
to face him she seizes his hands with as much force as if she intends to take
the lead rather than ceding it to him. McGillis gives way to the demands of
Carta’s hold, surrendering to the desires of the lady of the house more than
fretting over his own, and when she brings them into step with the music he
lets her steer him with only enough resistance to keep from outright running
into the other couples around them. Carta’s not a bad dancer, all things
considered; it would be easy to soothe her into true elegance with very little
effort on McGillis’s part, were he looking to instruct her. But she’s not
looking for instruction, as the set of her face and the rhythm of her steps
makes clear, and so McGillis submits to being led around the floor as surely as
if he were one of Carta’s horses with a bit between his teeth instead of a
deliberately polite smile on his lips.
He escapes after a dance or two. Carta is the heir of the household, after all,
which puts her in some demand as a partner, and McGillis is quick to lose
himself in the crowd as soon as he is free. There are other women he can and
does claim for a dance, and a smile, and a half-shouted flirtation; but his
primary interest is in working his way to the fringes of the crowd while
spending enough time dancing to avoid causing offense. He dances with blondes,
and brunettes, and a girl with her scarlet hair curled to ringlets all across
her expansive bosom; with girls willow-thin with their first adult height and
matrons who eye him with more hunger than he suspects to be quite proper. It’s
easy to muster a smile, and a bow, and to offer himself as the steady hand for
an uncertain young girl or the pliant plaything of the more determined women
around him; and finally he makes his way to the stairs leading up to the second
floor balcony overhanging the ballroom, and he retreats with a show of
shakiness in his movements and a flush at his cheeks that will serve as an
excuse for his departure.
It’s quieter upstairs. There are tables set around the second level, with
chairs comfortable enough to suit the supposed chaperones who are too busy
getting themselves tipsy on the profusion of wine to look to their charges.
There is food to be had as well, arrayed across elegant banquet tables that
seem more designed to be admired than used; McGillis is just looking at one of
these when there’s a touch at his shoulder, the contact casual enough to prove
his company’s identity even before he turns his head to see the crown prince’s
smile.
“Escaped from Carta’s clutches at last,” Gaelio observes, his tone light and
amused enough to strip the words of any real bite they might carry alone. “I
thought she’d keep her hold on you until you collapsed of exhaustion in the
middle of the ballroom.”
McGillis’s mouth catches on tension to curl up sharply at the corner. “I’m not
certain she’d let go even then,” he says, borrowing the easy curl of Gaelio’s
tone for his own lips. Gaelio snorts a laugh that brightens the whole of his
face with warmth and McGillis turns aside as he tries to restrain his own smile
to a reasonable level. “Have you been hiding up here the whole time?”
“Not entirely,” Gaelio says. “I danced a round or two before I made my
excuses.”
McGillis’s gaze drags sideways in spite of himself as his eyebrow arches up
into a skeptical curve. “How did you break free yourself?” he asks. “The Lady
Issue notwithstanding, I’d think the heir to the throne would be in high demand
among the noblewomen.”
“Oh I am,” Gaelio says, so easily it’s clear he takes this interest as more of
an assumed right than the compliment to his title it is if nothing else.
“That’s why I brought Almiria.” He turns away from the edge of the balcony to
gesture back towards one of the tables against the far wall. When McGillis
follows the direction of Gaelio’s gesture his attention is drawn to the vivid
purple of royal silks, the shade a more saturated version of the striking hair
the princess shares with her brother. Almiria is playing with the glass in
front of her rather than looking at them, and McGillis only glances at her
before he looks back to Gaelio beside him. The prince is smiling with the full
flush of self-satisfaction over his features; when he tips his head to meet
McGillis’s gaze the gesture is as much an invitation to share in his amusement
as anything else. “I can’t leave the sweet princess to fend for herself, now
can I?”
“Oh yes,” McGillis says without looking away from the color of Gaelio’s eyes
fixed on him. “I can see you dote upon her.” His tone is sincere enough to pass
for the honesty it’s not, but the dimple of Gaelio’s grin says the other heard
the sarcasm McGillis can feel tightening in his throat. The amusement presses
the corners of Gaelio’s eyes to tension and catches the sweep of his lashes
against each other, and McGillis looks away before he can get caught in their
shade.
“Your Highness,” he says instead, speaking clearly as he steps away from the
balcony and towards where the princess is sitting. He times his approach
precisely; he’s dropping into a bow just as Almiria is lifting her head to look
at him, ducking out of eye contact even as she catches a breath of pleased
surprise at his sudden appearance. “I’m lucky to have my retreat from the dance
floor be met with such beauty.”
“Mackie!” Almiria slides off the edge of her chair without any concern for the
sleek fall of the skirts so carefully arrayed around her; she has her arms
around McGillis’s waist by the time he’s upright and is pressing her face
against the smooth of his jacket without concern either for the clothing or for
appearances. “I didn’t think you’d come to find us.”
“Of course,” McGillis says. He has a polite smile ready as soon as Almiria lets
him go enough to step back and look up into his face; from the way her cheeks
flush and her smile brightens, it’s persuasive enough to serve. “I couldn’t
refuse our hostess’s request, but it’s always a pleasure to spend a quiet
evening with Your Highnesses whenever I am given the chance.”
“You always have the chance,” Almiria says, but her forehead is creasing and
her mouth is tensing on a frown in spite of this reassurance. “I suppose you
would want to dance with the grown-up ladies, wouldn’t you?”
McGillis shakes his head. This, at least, is easy to deny, if not for the
reasons Almiria will read into his words. “I cannot refuse them, of course,
should they ask. But I’m glad to have the excuse to spend as much time as I may
with you.”
“Really?” Almiria says. Her expression is easing into softness, her eyes are
wide and bright as she looks up at McGillis; she might as well be begging to be
comforted with whatever pleasant fiction McGillis might concoct. “Instead of
dancing with the noblewomen?”
McGillis lifts a shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “Dancing is pleasant enough,”
he allows. “These kind of crowded ballrooms aren’t the right kind of place to
do it justice, though. There’s hardly room to move.” He ducks down and lowers
his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “And I can’t let the nobility see me
sweat like a commoner.” This brings a laugh from Almiria, startled into
brightness not unlike her brother’s, and McGillis is smiling as he straightens.
“We could do a better job of it up here in any case,” he says, considering the
clear space between the mostly-empty tables and the corridor leading farther
into the shadows of the mansion. “There’s space enough for real dancing up
here, if you have the inclination.” He pauses for a moment, just long enough to
make the thought seem unstructured, before he looks back to Almiria still
standing before him. “Have you been taught to dance, Your Highness?”
Almiria’s breath catches on sharp, sudden surprise. “Me?” she says. Her cheeks
start to flush to pink. “Of course I know how to dance. But--”
“Excellent,” McGillis says, speaking into the space while Almiria is still
struggling to fit words to her obligatory protest. He ducks forward into a bow
again, keeping this one more shallow so he can offer his hand to the girl. “May
I request the honor of the princess’s hand for a turn, Your Highness?”
Almiria presses her lips tight together and ducks her head forward, flushing
pink enough that McGillis has no expectation of refusal, even if it takes her a
moment to lift her hand and accept his. He waits her out, holding to his smile
and his open position alike, and when Almiria finally reaches out to accept his
offer he’s expecting it well enough to close his hand around hers with easy
grace.
“I’m not tall enough,” Almiria protests, the words weak as McGillis closes his
hand around hers and reaches to hover his other fingers just over the elegantly
tailored line of her ballgown. “We can’t properly dance together.”
“Proper dancing is overrated,” McGillis tells her. It is harder to match the
steps when he’s tipped forward as he needs to be to let Almiria reach his
shoulder, but the words taste of sincerity all the same. “I’m having more fun
now than I have the whole of the evening.”
“People will stare.” Almiria’s head is down, the dark curls of her hair falling
in front of her face, but the flush across her cheeks is still perfectly clear
to see. “Someone like you shouldn’t be dancing with a child.”
“It’s my honor to be dancing with the princess,” McGillis tells her without
missing a beat of the conversation or of the music. He lifts their clasped
hands and touches just against Almiria’s waist; she takes the turn as
indicated, more smoothly than many of the noblewomen McGillis has had occasion
to dance with even tonight. She wasn’t lying about her training in this;
McGillis can see the marks of well-learned grace in the unthinking ease with
which she moves. “That’s all I care about and that’s all anyone else should
too.” That pulls a smile onto Almiria’s face, even if she still won’t look up
to meet McGillis’s gaze, and it stops the rest of her protests.
They finish out the rest of the song without speaking to interrupt the sound of
the music much-softened by their distance from the musicians. By the time the
last notes are giving way Almiria’s smile looks to be a permanent fixture on
her face, even if her blush appears to be as certain, and when McGillis lifts
his hand from her waist so he can sweep it behind him and duck into a bow she
even manages to raise her chin to look up at him with eyes bright and clear
with happiness.
“Thank you for the indulgence,” McGillis tells her, shifting his hold on her
hand so he can draw her gloved fingers in the general direction of his mouth
and duck his head into the seeming of a kiss even if it doesn’t land at the
fabric. “Your kindness does me honor.”
“The pleasure is mine,” Almiria says, careful words of politeness made strange
by the childish pitch of her voice. McGillis lifts his head to smile at her,
and for a moment she smiles back in spite of the self-conscious flush she’s
wearing all across her round cheeks.
“Alright,” comes a voice, the sound clear and carrying bright over the hum of
the musicians below. McGillis straightens, glad in himself for the excuse to
step out of the awkward hesitation between himself and the princess, and Gaelio
steps in as quickly to close the distance between where he’s been leaning
against the balcony and the other two. “It’s my turn to cut in.”
Almiria’s mouth turns down at the corners, her brows draw together to a
stressed angle. “You can’t dance with Mackie, you’re both boys.”
“And you’re a little girl,” Gaelio says without turning to look at her. “If he
can dance with you he can dance with me.” His tone is teasing as he throws the
words over his shoulder at his sister but his eyes are dark when he meets
McGillis’s gaze, his smile edged with strain enough to undo the casual seeming
of his tone. He ducks his head into a desultory bow and extends his hand
towards McGillis. “May I have this dance?”
McGillis doesn’t even try to hold back the twist at his lips as he lifts his
hand to touch his fingers against Gaelio’s palm. “Of course,” he says. Gaelio
closes his hold on McGillis’s hand and steps closer; McGillis backs up without
looking, following the guidance of the prince’s hold with entire trust.
“Forgive me my clumsiness, I admit I’m unfamiliar with taking this role.”
“You’ll be fine,” Gaelio says, but he sounds distracted and looks more so as he
turns his hand up to support McGillis’s palm against his and reaches out for
the other’s waist. His hold is firmer than McGillis’s on Almiria, but McGillis
doesn’t think the difference is by much. “You know what you’re doing to make
dancing with Almiria look so good.” His hands settle into place, his shoulders
dip with the force of an exhale, and Gaelio lifts his head to meet McGillis’s
gaze again. He’s smiling still, the expression too warm to be feigned, but his
eyes are dark and McGillis can feel the tension in the support of that hand
against his. “Shall we?”
McGillis lifts his free hand from his side, careful in the motion as he
imitates the gesture he’s only ever been the recipient of before. It’s strange
to do it backwards, like trying to fit himself into the mirror of his thoughts,
but with Gaelio’s hand at his waist the gesture feels more reasonable than
otherwise as he lets his hand alight just against the gold-thread embroidery of
the other’s coat. “Lead on, Your Highness.”
Gaelio does; or, rather, Gaelio tries. They do well enough for the first few
steps: McGillis is paying close attention to what he’s doing, and Gaelio is
moving slowly enough that they steady to McGillis’s comfort rather than urging
for something faster. Their motion is awkward and uncertain, tentative as if
it’s their first time attempting anything like formal dancing, but they’re
hitting all the right steps, if with a stiff intent that makes McGillis feel a
little like he’s a puppet going through the motions without really feeling
them. Gaelio’s head is ducked down, his forehead creased on attention he
shouldn’t need to pay to their feet; McGillis wonders distantly if he’s always
this nervous or if it’s just the unfamiliar warmth of someone else in his arms
that is doing this, if he’s the more self-conscious for the lack of a crowd or
the shape of his partner. It’s certainly doing McGillis no favors; Gaelio is so
tentative about his hold that McGillis is left to lead them both from the wrong
position, inverting and committing to his motion rather than just following the
guidance of the prince’s hold. He takes a step back but goes too far, his
stride too much and Gaelio too slow to follow; when Gaelio tries to catch up he
stumbles in too-fast and out of rhythm with the music, nearly toppling them
both over at once.
“You’re terrible at this, Gaelie,” Almiria puts in. Gaelio’s awkward movements
stutter to a halt and McGillis turns his head to look to where the princess has
resumed her seat and is watching them with her head tipped to the side on what
is clearly the weight of judgment. “You’re much better with your tutor. Did you
have too much wine?”
“I’ve hardly had any at all,” Gaelio protests. His voice is skidding high and
his cheeks are flushing dark when McGillis looks back at him; the prince isn’t
looking in his direction, but the tension at his mouth says the absence is
intentional rather than accidental. “It’s hard to lead, you don’t understand.”
“Mackie’s doing fine,” Almiria says, sounding as proud of this fact as if it’s
her own doing rather than McGillis’s. “He was good at leading, too.”
Gaelio huffs a sharp exhale, frustration as clear in the sound as embarrassment
is crimson across his cheeks. When he turns back to McGillis it’s with so much
force to the motion that he might as well be slamming a door in Almiria’s face,
and McGillis braces himself for the too-forceful lead that would naturally
result from being in a temper. He’s ready to go pliant, to let Gaelio steer him
and ease the other’s excess as best he can; he’s not expecting Gaelio to drop
his hold outright to leave McGillis’s hand as unsupported as his waist.
“Here,” Gaelio says, and he reaches out to catch his hand against McGillis’s
shoulder instead. McGillis blinks at him, caught more off-balance by this than
he wants to admit, but Gaelio isn’t waiting for an answer before he catches at
McGillis’s hand at his shoulder and pulls it away to clasp their alternate
hands instead. “Let’s try it this way.”
McGillis’s eyebrows jump in spite of himself; but Gaelio is already holding to
the support of his hand, and well-trained reflex is guiding his feet forward
and his hand towards Gaelio’s waist even as he hesitates over the motion. “Are
you sure, Your Highness?”
Gaelio nods and tightens his hold on McGillis’s hand. “We can’t dance with me
leading you, clearly,” he says, and then he lifts his gaze and his eyes are
brilliant even before he flashes that brief, blinding smile. “I always liked
the idea of following anyway.”
McGillis huffs an exhale that turns itself into a smile against his lips. “Well
then,” he says, and he settles his hand against Gaelio’s waist and steadies his
footing. “Shall we try this once more?” He tightens his hold on the prince’s
hand, curling his fingers into place so he can urge back against the other’s
palm, and Gaelio moves at once, as if the guidance of McGillis’s touch is
steering him. There’s no hesitation, no fumbling uncertainty; he just moves,
immediately, following the lead McGillis gives him without question. McGillis’s
heart skips, his blood going warm with the flush of power, with the control he
can feel radiating from his fingertips; but the music is in his ears, and his
hold on Gaelio is steady, and when the next cue of the music comes he’s moving
in anticipation of it to guide Gaelio back by another step, to steer him into a
rhythm as smooth as if it’s the music guiding them both. Gaelio’s balance draws
back, McGillis’s foot comes forward, and they’re moving in time, now, their
bodies finding a pattern for their action as smoothly as anyone McGillis has
ever danced with before.
“There,” Gaelio says. His hand in McGillis’s hold shifts; his thumb slides in
against the other’s skin. It might be accidental. McGillis doesn’t think it is.
“It’s much better like this.”
McGillis breathes out. His exhale winds into Gaelio’s hair. “Your grace
compensates for my clumsiness.”
Gaelio’s snort is as entirely inelegant as the delighted amusement in the
glance he casts towards McGillis. “You’re just better at leading,” he says.
McGillis’s fingers press to Gaelio’s waist, his hand sliding in against the
other’s back, and Gaelio moves in answer, his body curving to McGillis’s touch
as if he’s following some unvoiced instinct. “If you could dance with Almiria
you could dance with anybody, I think.”
McGillis’s mouth twitches on a smile but when he speaks he fights to level his
voice to polite distance. “Your sister is a very accomplished dancer for her
age.”
“Sure,” Gaelio says. They’re drawing closer and McGillis didn’t even realize;
his whole hand is weighting at the dip of the prince’s back, now, their legs
are nearly pressing together every time they take a step. Even their clasped
hands have lowered from the strict propriety of a few inches of distance from
their bodies; they’re between their shoulders, now, as if the catch of their
fingers against each other is a secret they are caging between them. “It must
be easier to dance with someone who’s a better match for you, though.”
McGillis lets the corner of his mouth catch onto a smile to dodge this question
instead of giving voice to a potentially dangerous answer. He’s willing to run
any number of risks in pursuit of a goal -- danger isn’t foreign to him any
more than power is. But his heart is racing faster than it should, faster than
the rhythm of the music spilling up around the elegant shape of the balcony
supports, and for all that his feet are moving in graceful rhythm he’s not
thinking about the act of dancing at all. He can hear the sound of Gaelio’s
breathing dragging to unreasonable speed against his shoulder, can feel the
tension in Gaelio’s fingers pressing against his hand; there’s anxiety in the
other’s grip and damp heat against his skin, sweat to speak to the fever in his
blood as clearly as the color burning across his cheeks and spreading out to
glow over the whole of his face. McGillis can see the dark of Gaelio’s lashes
if he looks sideways, can see the stick of moisture clinging to the other’s
barely-parted lips and sticking a few strands of hair against his forehead, and
there is danger here, he can taste it on his tongue and smell it in the air and
hear it in every ripple of music that splashes over them. Gaelio’s hand is
shifting, his fingers at McGillis’s shoulder drawing up towards the other’s
neck instead, his lashes raising to meet McGillis’s gaze; and then the music
demands a step forward, and McGillis moves and Gaelio doesn’t. For a moment the
surprise is enough to startle McGillis back to himself, to scatter away that
strange, immersive focus on the details of Gaelio before him; and then he comes
back to reality, returning so rapidly he’s catching his footing even as Gaelio
stumbles at the impact and starts to fall.
“Your Highness,” McGillis blurts, the words spilling from him as his gentle
hold on Gaelio turns into a clutch to keep the other on his feet. Gaelio’s hand
at the back of his neck tightens sharply, dragging so hard McGillis is afraid
for a moment he’s going to pull them both down at once, but then his boots
catch at the floor, he manages to steady himself, and they’re both left
breathless with adrenaline enough to pull apart all the brief elegance of their
movement together.
“Mackie!” That’s Almiria, of course; she’s leaping off her chair and darting
forward with speed enough to speak to her concern if not enough to really help
in the moment that has just passed. “Are you hurt?”
McGillis shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says, but he’s not really thinking
about the question any more than he is noticing the bruise at his shin where
Gaelio’s leg caught his own or the pain at his fingers from the prince’s sudden
too-tight grip. He steadies his hold against Gaelio’s hand and pulls to urge
the other back to his feet, this time at a somewhat safer distance from
McGillis himself than what they had edged into. “Are you well, Your Highness?
Are you injured?”
Gaelio ducks his head and huffs over a breath. “No,” he says, with more
amusement under the sound than pain. He sets his feet carefully against the
floor and lets his hold on McGillis’s shoulder go to push his hair back from
his face instead. When he emerges from the shadow of his hand he’s grinning,
his eyes bright as he meets McGillis’s gaze. “Thanks to you stopping me from
pulling you down atop me, I think.”
McGillis cracks into a smile without thinking about it. “I can hardly be called
a dancer at all if I can’t keep on my feet.” It’s only after he’s spoken that
he realizes the words can cut in a way he didn’t intend -- a sign of his
distraction in the moment -- but Gaelio laughs instead of leaping to insult.
“I suppose that makes me not much of a dancer myself,” he says. “At least I can
claim the excuse of being a beginner to dancing with a lord.”
McGillis ducks his head into a nod. “You did splendidly,” he says, his voice
bright with barely held-back amusement of his own. “A little practice and
you’ll have men and women alike clamouring for your hand.”
“Indeed,” Gaelio says, his eyes sparkling with amusement enough to say he’s
taking McGillis’s sincerity as teasing. “I shall be counting on you for that
practice, McGillis.” His hold on McGillis’s hand tightens; McGillis can feel
the warm pressure of it run all the way up to his shoulder.
McGillis doesn’t look down and away from Gaelio’s face until there’s a pull at
his sleeve, an impulse urging his attention to follow even before the force is
enough to drag his hand apart from the prince’s. He does look, then, blinking
like he’s just coming back to himself, and finds Almiria to be the cause of the
force, with her eyes pleading and her voice ringing with a plaintive chord all
out of keeping with the demand she is exerting on his sleeve.
“It’s my turn next,” Almiria says, her voice quivering on insistence as her
lower lip curves into a pout. “It’s not fair for you to keep Mackie all to
yourself, Gaelie.”
“I’m the heir to the throne,” Gaelio informs her in an excessively haughty
tone. “I can do whatever I like, fair or not.” Almiria looks away from
McGillis’s face to her brother’s, her forehead creasing on hurt, and Gaelio
sighs theatrically and turns away. “Fine, do as you like. I need to catch my
breath anyway.”
“Worn out already?” McGillis asks. “I’d hoped for a bit more stamina than
that.”
Gaelio’s head swings around, his attention veering to McGillis at once.
McGillis meets the other’s gaze levelly, staring straight into those brilliant
eyes without flinching away from the taste of flirtation warm on his tongue,
and in the end it’s Gaelio who breaks first, who colors pink and breaks into a
smile to answer.
“I’ll be sure to practice,” he promises, and steps back towards the support of
the balcony behind him to lean against the railing once more. “Will that suit
you, sir?”
McGillis doesn’t answer aloud, but he thinks his smile speaks for him even more
clearly than the dip of the head he gives before he turns aside to occupy
himself with charming the princess back into good humor once more. He doesn’t
deliberately look back to Gaelio -- to Almiria’s eyes, he’s perfectly devoted -
- but he can feel the other’s gaze lingering on him like a touch, and if his
smile tastes like wine on his tongue, he knows who to blame for his
intoxication.
***** Indulgence *****
McGillis should leave.
He knows he should. He can feel the weight of his deception growing with every
passing day as the shape of his lie takes on texture and form with every smile
from the princess, with every laugh from the prince. He is a guest in the
palace on credentials not his own, with the assumption of an existence he lacks
possession of; and even if friendship will cover any minor slips on his part,
the longer he lingers the more likely his absence of responsibilities will
become clear, the greater Gaelio’s curiosity about “Lord Fareed’s” estates will
rise. McGillis should take his good luck and depart, should vanish back out
into the world that he used to live in with the polish and memories of the
palace to keep him company; or he should commit to the lie, should dig himself
so far into Almiria’s good graces that he can keep himself as a periphery of
the royal family even in the event his true history comes out. Almiria is more
likely of the two to be forgiving, more likely to let childish innocence sway
her in his direction when the truth inevitably comes clear; and yet McGillis
smiles when she smiles, and humors her highbred whims, and takes every
opportunity to duck away and into Gaelio’s presence instead. That is a danger
all its own, one that offers him none of the possible safety that the princess
can provide; and yet McGillis keeps reaching for it, acting on some unconscious
desire as keen and deep-rooted as hunger. He can’t make himself let go, can’t
persuade himself to back away; and so he starts every morning telling himself
this will be the last, that he will mention his struggling estates today and be
gone by the evening, and every night Gaelio smiles a good night to him and
McGillis shuts his bedroom door with the resignation to his failure as bitter
as the bite of wine on the back of his tongue.
There’s an impact against his forehead, the force of a blow without any of the
pain an intent to harm would bring. McGillis lifts his head at once, startled
out of his thoughts and into the present moment by the contact, to see Gaelio
still leaning over the table, his lips still curving on a grin and his hand
still outstretched from the flick he’s just delivered to McGillis’s head.
“Hello in there,” he says, his voice light with teasing. “Lord Fareed? Are you
still with us?”
McGillis blinks hard and tries to bring himself back into the moment as Gaelio
brings his arm back to the table so he can lean against both elbows instead of
just one. There’s a chair behind him that he could recline into but he stays
where he is, canted far across the table and with a smile pulling against his
lips that looks as irrepressible as ever.
“Your Highness,” McGillis says. He shakes his head and lifts a hand from the
book before him to push through his hair, buying himself a moment of shadow for
his face as he huffs a laugh that he hopes sounds more sheepish than panicked.
“My apologies, I lost track of time for a moment there.”
“Clearly,” Gaelio says without so much as a flicker in his smile; if anything
it goes wider to spread across the whole of his face. “You haven’t turned a
page in almost five minutes. You didn’t even answer me the first two times I
tried to get your attention.”
McGillis offers an apologetic smile. “I am sorry, Your Highness. I would never
have deliberately ignored you.”
“How many times must I tell you to not call me that?” Gaelio asks, with a smile
wide enough to make his lack of sincerity in the words clear even as he reaches
out to push against McGillis’s forehead again.
McGillis submits to the force without offering any more resistance than that
effected by a smile. “Gaelio.”
“Much better.” Gaelio subsides to the other side of the table, dropping to sit
at least at the edge of his seat instead of leaning in over the distance
between them, but his shoulders are still tipped forward, and his gaze is still
lingering on McGillis’s face even as the edge of teasing in his smile gives way
to the soft of contentment. “Penny for your thoughts, then. What had you so
distracted?”
“Are my thoughts worth so little to you?” McGillis asks, but with a smile to go
with the same so Gaelio just grins in answer rather than protesting. He lets
his head duck forward, returning his gaze if not his thoughts to the text
before him as he frames the structure of his response in his head. It would be
easy enough to lie, to smile and laugh and give some insincere response; but
McGillis is finding it harder and harder to lie to Gaelio’s face, as if he’s
betraying some of that sky-bright in the gaze that lingers on his with such
dedication. It’s all another reason to leave, to distance himself from the
palace and those within it as soon as he can; and it’s with that thought in his
head that he takes a breath and offers truth carefully structured into a
different seeming. “I was reflecting on my welcome here.”
Gaelio’s laugh is as warm as a touch. “I hope it remains to your liking.”
McGillis’s smile pulls wider in response; he can feel the tension at his lips
like a pressure against his temple. “It’s not my enjoyment that I was thinking
of.”
There’s a pause. McGillis wonders if he shouldn’t take a breath and state his
concern more clearly even than he has, if he shouldn’t give voice to the
needling sense of imposition that has been building in him day by day; he
wonders if Gaelio won’t need to be confronted with the question outright in
order to realize what it is McGillis means. But when Gaelio takes a breath
McGillis can hear the catch at the back of it, can pick out tension in the
sound as if the prince is responding to a blow, and he knows that his point has
carried through if not his intention.
“You don’t mean you doubt my word.” Gaelio’s voice has dropped towards
certainty, his tone catching the intense edge that always makes him sound a
little shrill. He would sound frantic if he were someone else, if he hadn’t
been raised as he has; with the surety of his rank to back him the strain gives
him a suggestion of command until his words sound nearly a threat even as he
voices them. “You know we all love having you here.”
McGillis lets his smile go wry as he looks up through his lashes at the prince
across the table from him. “Your sister might, perhaps.”
“No” and Gaelio is moving, too fast for McGillis to react, too rapidly for him
to shy back and away. His shoulders come in, his hand comes out; when he
clutches against McGillis’s hand the force is enough to still any motion the
other might have been thinking of making unformed. Gaelio’s eyes are very
bright on the other side of the table; with his smile melted by the heat of
intensity he looks softer, as if the innocence that he wears as comfortably as
his fine clothes is pulling childish pleading free from the clear of his eyes.
“I do. I want you here.” His fingers tighten on McGillis’s hand, tensing as if
to chase away the start of a tremor McGillis can feel in the other’s grip.
“That is enough, isn’t it?”
McGillis’s mouth fights to break into a smile that he knows doesn’t reach his
eyes. “Will you order me to remain a guest in your home, Your Highness?”
“If I must,” Gaelio says, in that self-certain tone again; and then his eyes go
soft and his mouth gives way. When his hand tightens on McGillis’s wrist it
feels like a plea, as if he’s struggling to find stability more than reaching
to pin the other in place. “Don’t you want to stay here, McGillis?”
McGillis does. He has a plethora of knowledge around him, rich clothes on his
shoulders and extravagant meals laid before him every day; he has a bed to
sleep in, in a room warmed by a fire kept burning through the whole of the
night without even bothering with tamping it to coals. This is more than he
could have ever hoped to attain, certainly more than a boy from the street
deserves; but it’s not a sense of morality or of guilt that burdens him in this
moment. McGillis did away with both of those long ago, he would hardly have
survived this long or done this well for himself if he held to them; which is
all the more reason why meeting Gaelio’s steady gaze feels so much like inching
towards the edge of a cliff, like falling into an ocean too blue to tell it
from the sky overhead. There’s something there that McGillis can’t put a name
to, something dark and shadowed and dangerous in a way all his instincts tell
him to flinch from; and Gaelio is leaning in, and reaching out, offering
himself up for the taking with every shift of his lashes and every part of his
lips. It makes McGillis’s chest tighten, makes his mouth all but water with
hunger of a different sort than his usual; and he ducks his head, and fixes his
gaze on the table as he draws his hand back and free of Gaelio’s hold.
“Of course I want to,” he says, carefully, calmly, as he sets his fingers to
the edge of the book before him to draw it back across the table towards
himself. “I think I’d be happy just to live in a corner of this library, if I
were permitted.”
Gaelio’s laugh is sincere for all that it catches on the edge of the tension
McGillis can see curling the other’s empty fingers against the table before
him. “You are strange about books,” he says, finally subsiding to the soft of
the chair pulled back at the other side of the table. “One would think you had
never seen one before in your life. Didn’t you get enough of tutors when you
were young?”
“Perhaps mine were simply more pleasant than yours,” McGillis suggests, safe
enough in this teasing to glance back up to Gaelio. The prince is watching him,
as he always is, his head tipped to the side and his smile warm enough to more
than undermine any claim he might make to frustration.
“Maybe you just don’t have enough exposure to better things to do with your
time,” Gaelio says, and braces his elbow at the arm of his chair so he can prop
his chin in his hand. “Carta’s ball didn’t seem to interest you any more than
riding did. Would you prefer archery? Or perhaps something calmer, like music?
Say the word and I’ll scour the kingdom to provide you anything.” He speaks as
if the words are teasing, as if he doesn’t mean them in absolute truth; it’s
only the shadows of his eyes that give away his sincerity, that turn friendly
banter into more truth than McGillis suspects Gaelio knows. McGillis keeps
watching him for a moment, considering the clear of that blue, the shifting
shadows in the depths below; and then an idea presents itself, a remnant of a
childhood dream so long-buried he had forgotten it was there, and he coughs
into a laugh before he can think.
“The ocean,” he says, the words offering themselves to him as quickly as he
reaches for them, as if they’re an extension of Gaelio’s invitation in
themselves. “I’d like to see the ocean.”
Gaelio blinks. “Just that?” he says, sounding taken aback. “Have you never
been?”
McGillis shrugs. “My estates are landlocked,” he lies. It’s easier to find the
words for that than for the honesty he just offered up. “I was intending to
make for the port town myself before my tour of the country was cut short by a
most fortuitous accident.” He couples this jibe with a smile to soothe the edge
from any hurt it might do, but Gaelio is already laughing.
“A tragedy indeed,” he says. “Is that all that has you restless? You should
have told me sooner that I was keeping you from your goal, I would have
remedied the lack immediately.” He leans forward over the table again, but this
time it’s just to brace his hands at the surface so he can push himself to his
feet. “I shall see to arranging an outing at once.”
Gaelio turns to make for the door. McGillis watches him go, parsing the relief
of movement in the speed of the other’s action, in the clear happiness to be
doing something more than sitting still and quiet in the peace of the library.
He can almost see the plans forming themselves in Gaelio’s mind, can imagine
the sumptuousness of the travel that will surely result if he lets the other
go; and words rise to his lips, forming themselves to the shape of his voice
before McGillis even realizes he’s going to speak them.
“Let’s go alone.” Gaelio stops with his hand on the door handle, his head
turning to meet McGillis’s gaze as his eyes widen to offer blue-eyed shock at
the other’s words. McGillis presses his lips tight together and swallows as if
that will let him call back the too-hasty impulse of his words; but Gaelio is
staring at him now like he’s waiting for direction, and McGillis can’t help
himself from reaching out to fill the plea for command in those clear eyes.
“Just you and me. We can bring a meal with us and make the travel by
horseback.”
Gaelio’s lashes dip over his brilliant stare. “I’ll have to take guards with
me,” he says, but it’s an apology and not resistance, and McGillis is already
reaching out to lay claim to the submission implicit in Gaelio’s tone.
“We’ll sneak out of the palace.” This is foolish, absurd in idea and worse in
speech, but Gaelio looks breathless and bright with excitement and McGillis’s
mouth is running away with the both of them. “If we leave before dawn you can
order a stableboy to silence and we can slip past the guards at the gate while
they’re changing their shifts. With only us we can be back by the dinner hour;
if we take any others it’ll take well into the night before we’ve returned to
the palace.”
Gaelio’s throat works. His fingers are still on the doorhandle but McGillis
thinks he’s entirely forgotten he’s holding it. “You’re asking me to place
responsibility for my safety solely in your hands for a full day.”
“I am,” McGillis says. He doesn’t look away from Gaelio’s eyes, doesn’t blink
to break the connection between them. “Do you trust me?”
Gaelio stares at McGillis for another moment, his mouth soft and eyes wide.
Then his lips curve, a smile shaping itself to his face even as his gaze
lingers in the soft warmth of flattered surprise. “Of course I do,” he says,
the words coming easy to lips that have never known betrayal, to eyes bright on
childlike innocence as he looks at the lie McGillis has made of himself. “I’ll
go anywhere with you, McGillis.”
Fool, McGillis thinks.
“Good,” McGillis says, offering Gaelio a smile before he turns back to his
book. “I won’t let you down.”
It’s easier to lie to those eyes when he’s not looking at them.
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