Post by Seek on Oct 4, 2010 3:08:38 GMT 10
Title: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Note: Sorry, had to truncate it. It would NOT fit into the title box, rofl. James Joyce fans, forgive me. Hell, James Joyce, forgive me.
Rating: R
Length: 3328 words
Category: Tortall
Summary: Alan/Liam, across the gap of the intervening years. Some Liam/Dove, Alan/Taybur, Lerant/Dom.
Peculiar Pairing: Alan/Liam, some Liam/Dove, Alan/Taybur, Lerant/Dom.
-
1.
I am maybe five, maybe six.
The sword thrust into the gate looms over me, casts a shadow that my small hands will never touch, and the sword thrust into the gate casts a shadow on my mind that I will spend the rest of my life trying to grasp.
2.
I am six.
I spend the night discarding sketch after sketch like loose leaves that flutter to the floor. There is always a sword, dark-edged, and a boy, reaching out tentatively to the soot-blackened hilt.
I am frustrated; I cannot capture his face, and I do not know who that boy is, only the question he daren’t ask – the question without an answer.
3.
In the morning, I gather the discarded leaves and tie them together with a red cord and shut them away in my desk.
Aly can pick locks, but somehow, I know she will not touch them.
4.
At seven, one of Papa’s agents return from Tyra.
He brings with him something called pastels, and that night, I sit up and try again, splashing colour all over the sketches, but the sword defies colour. There is no colour – just a stained grey blade, in a white gate, and all around is darkness.
I still cannot see the boy. He is a vague figure, maybe pale, maybe dark.
I can only begin to see the shape of the undefined question.
5.
When I am ten, I do not ride to Corus in the fall.
Mama says nothing; Papa smiles and tells me I can be whatever I want to be, and no, I don’t have to be a knight. Aly is unhappy, and I turn away from swords for a time, and to the dissatisfied lines of her face, her mischievous smirk, and the red-touched-gold of her hair.
Thom is at the University, and I sometimes try to sketch him, his red hair, and his sharp green-hazel eyes and maybe the slightest flare of his Gift around him.
I ride horses, and sit on the sea-cliffs alone and feel the sea-breeze and the sea-spray and the mournful cry of the seagulls, and wonder if I’m hearing voices.
At night, a champion’s sword dreams in the darkness, waiting for the boy who will claim it.
Am, I ask, but I never get beyond the first word.
6.
Aly wants to be a spy, and she spends more time at Court, flirting, and then at the University, bothering Thom.
There is a harder line to her features now, in the sketches, and Mama is even more weary and Papa is smiling but part of it flakes like paint.
Thom is a bit of a stranger, a sharp figure whose hands burn with purple fire and when Mama sees the sketches, her jaw tightens. I learn to leave them out of her sight.
At least, I want to say, you know what you want.
7.
You could go to the University, Mama says. They teach painters and Court artists now, if that’s what you want to do.
I could be a knight, he blurts out. Like you.
He will remember how the smile lights up Mama’s purple eyes, and he will place that sketch with the others of Mama.
I don’t want you to be like me, she warns. I want you to do what you want.
I don’t know what I want, Alan thinks, but he says, I think I want to.
Mama looks younger when she smiles.
8.
This is Liam; neat black hair, never disordered, page uniform exactly so, collar straightened. Jasson’s dark hair, brown-hazel eyes, polite smile, and generally withdrawn. This is Liam, quiet and serious, the rock to Jasson’s energetic colt.
Capturing a person has never been so difficult, Alan thinks. Aly is bright and mischievous and unrestrained, Thom is studious, maybe a little hard, and Mama is tired and determined and always in motion and Papa is languid and everywhere –
But something in Liam shifts everytime he tries to pin it down, and he stares at the sketches in frustration and binds them and slips them into his desk and tries to forget about the urgent, feverish desire for his fingers to know every nuance of Liam’s expression and his smile.
9.
This is the sixth sketch: Liam’s short hair messy, left eye faintly swollen purple-black, lighter around the edges where blue light glimmers, and his body a map of bruises.
Alan considers it, and then adds a spark of Conte blue to Liam’s eyes, and sits back, dissatisfied.
He is ambidextrous, so the fact that his right arm hangs in a sling doesn’t bother him. What does is Liam striding into the fray, cold fury on his face, and the way he can’t seem to translate memory into charcoal image.
10.
This is Liam, who comes into my room at night, fingers running deftly across each bruise, as if by mapping the shape of my body with his hands, he will be able to say – this is the empty space inside of you, and this is your question, and this is your answer.
He doesn’t really say any of that.
His fingers linger after every bruise and cut is healed, and I close my eyes, because as long as we pretend I am still hurt, then there can be nothing read into his desire to know the hard, heavy angles of muscle, and the curve of my back.
11.
He doesn’t talk about how after a while, my fingers will curl when I talk to him, as if they long for charcoal to again attempt to capture the essence of his features.
Or how I trace his smile and then pull away.
12.
Sometimes, he will close my fingers with his.
And we will say there is nothing extraordinary in that.
13.
This is the sword in my hand; heavy, and graceless.
This is the sword in Liam’s hand; light, graceful, and supple like quicksilver.
“I should be better,” I will say. “I’m the son of the Lioness, you know,”
And he will look at me with those solemn eyes and say, “You don’t have to be.” He will uncurl my fingers from around the sword hilt and say, “You’ve practiced enough for today. I’m capable of defending myself, you know.”
Later, he will add, with a quirk of his lips, “And you.”
14.
He shows Liam some of his sketches, one day, in the courtyard where the trees are busy shedding leaves, and Liam raises an eyebrow and comments, “That’s beautiful.”
“Thanks,” Alan says, grinning.
He doesn’t show Liam the others. The sword and the boy and Liam – those are things that cannot be spoken of in the day, and that the night must shun.
They owe each other that much.
15.
Draw something, Liam asks.
He gazes at Liam for a time, and wonders if he should dare.
16.
He doesn’t.
Liam gets a sketch of the cliffs outside the Swoop, stark, empty, waves crashing against the shore. This is too easy, but Alan squeezes his eyes shut and tries again and again until he can hear the seagulls and the drowned echoes of the past speak.
There is something about sharing his childhood hidden spot with Liam, as if to speak of it would be to remove just a little of its privacy, to peel away the layer of solitude that covers his sanctuary like the skin of a ripe orange.
When Liam holds the sketch, breathes, and loses himself in it, Alan is surprised to see that it isn’t so much of a loss, and more of a rediscovery.
17.
Scanra’s not too far from Tortall, Liam says one day.
Alan says nothing. The charcoal stick snaps in his hand.
18.
Liam doesn’t know about the sword practices in the morning, breathing ragged, sweat pouring down his face.
Liam doesn’t know about how often he grips a sword until he is certain the hilt must burn itself into his hand, that the only purpose of the human hand is to close itself around the hilt of a sword and to never let go.
Liam doesn’t know about how he continues until the drills and the footwork must surely be written into every inch of trembling muscle, where he must force himself to keep going where his body fails him.
Alan doesn’t know; only that the first movement, the beginnings of an answer must be found in the trembling tip of the sword.
19.
Alan doesn’t know about how Liam must keep himself together; only that a human being must be like glass and that an echo in the depths of the glass will slowly swim to the surface.
He knows that one day, the sketches of Liam start looking like aspects of Liam, and he names each and every one of them in his head, and then proceeds to draw other things, other people, and other places.
But he always returns to Liam.
Liam-beneath-the-tree, Liam-amused, Liam-practicing-the-sword, Liam-whose-hands-are-gentle –
The last he never sketches. How, he asks, can he capture the textured feel of Liam’s hands in a sketch?
(The truth is, in those grainy attempts, Liam’s eyes are too soft, too knowing in a way they seldom are in real life, his flesh is too languid with desire and Alan locks those away. He can’t bring himself to discard them but neither can he put them with the other sketches.)_
20.
Alan stops sketching for a time when he rides with Raoul and the Own.
His knight-master asks why. “You’re a good artist,” Raoul says, one night. “Your mother says so.”
“I know,” Alan says.
The next night, his fingers automatically move to shape Liam’s face and he hurriedly tears it up and tosses it into the fire.
He draws other things instead; villagers, faces cracked with mud, and the Own and Lerant around the fire, laughing and talking to Dom and he notices the way Dom’s arm snakes around Lerant’s shoulders and doesn’t shift –
And the way in the next moment, they separate slowly, as if their bodies still long to drift together.
Their expressions hardly change, but Alan is an artist, and in that moment, he is sharply aware of how the body expresses far more than faces or words can.
21.
When they are back in Corus for a time, Alan sees the way Liam leans forward, just a little, with new eyes.
The new sketch is called Liam-in-a-chair, leaning forward, chair tipped just slightly.
He is surprised to discover his fingers know Liam too well and the drawing takes shape in under two bells.
Liam traces the raised pale line the spidren-sword has left across Alan’s back, and says nothing, but Alan feels the soothing coolness Liam’s Gift leaves in its wake.
22.
They are off the next day, answering an emergency in Tasride.
That night, Alan watches Dom and Lerant, deep in thought.
He will sketch them, and then hide it among a series of other sketches; Lord Raoul, Drum, the view of the night sky through broken branches and leaves.
23.
Sometimes, he thinks of the sword as a far longer and sharper charcoal stick. He paints the universe scarlet with blood, and then throws up later.
24.
When the leaves start to change, they are back to Corus.
Alan closes his eyes and is acutely aware of how he holds Liam’s hand, fingers interlocking and how Liam stands stiffly and doesn’t allow himself to breathe until the order is announced.
Everyone stands between the two of them.
“Well,” Liam says, “It’s time.”
“Yes.” Alan manages. He does not look in the direction of the chapel of the Ordeal. “It is.”
25.
The day before Liam’s Ordeal, they spend the time walking in the courtyard, through the palace gardens, and looking at the sky, clear of a tangle of branches and a bright, clear blue.
Liam says nothing. His shoulders are tight. He manages a smile before he walks away to the ritual baths.
Alan waits, and Lord Raoul sits with him through the night. He doesn’t look for his charcoals.
26.
Liam’s mouth is a thin white line as he leaves the Chamber, shoulders too tight, hands clenched into fists by his side. But he is alive.
Alan breathes.
There is a question in Liam’s eyes, one that Alan doesn’t dare to answer.
27.
When the first faint traces of sunlight creep into Liam’s room through the shutters, Alan leaves.
Liam makes no sound, no movement to hold him back.
They both understand that which passes between them belongs to the darkness. It must slip away like a dream with the dawn.
28.
Roald catches Alan in the corridor. He’s a grown, serious version of Liam without the smile or the easy loyalty.
Together, they present Liam with his shield, and Alan smirks and adds another few sketches to his collection.
29.
The day before Alan’s Ordeal, Liam finds him in the catacombs, staring at a gate.
This is the question; Alan still doesn’t know the shape of the answer, only that this is not the answer, this sword, wiped clean that is wedged firmly into the gate. It does not give beneath his grip, it doesn’t fit there and in the end, he lets go, head bowed, and walks away.
This is the end of one dream, one answer.
He isn’t the Lioness. He’s her son.
That isn’t enough.
“You don’t have to be my champion, you know,” Liam says.
“I know,” Alan says. But, he thinks, what else can I be?
30.
This is the bath; rising through layers of cold water, through layers of words and history and duty, until it seems that he can almost see the memory-ghosts of so many previous squires (Liam) in the water droplets he scatters.
31.
This is the Chamber, maw wide open to swallow him whole and he tosses and spins and cries out in the belly of the leviathan and then it chews him and spits him out.
32.
It taunts him with the question he cannot voice or answer.
33.
When he emerges, Liam is there, to lead him away to rest and his rooms.
34.
It isn’t Liam who presents him with his shield. It is Aly, grinning widely, and Thom, who nods and Ma and Da beam proudly.
His Sight sees the spells Thom or maybe Ma has placed on the shield; he later learns that some of it came from Liam.
35.
That night, Liam presents him with a sword.
This is the sword that awaits him, blued steel of Raven Armory, not the hero’s blade still waiting in the darkness of the catacombs for history to be written.
He takes it, slices his palm, and bleeds on it and offers his oath of loyalty.
Liam pulls him to his feet, embraces him, and kisses him.
Later, he will heal the cut, so the edges close together in a thin, pale, line.
36.
It isn’t Scanra.
It’s the Copper Islands.
37.
Dovasary is a slip of a girl, plain, and yet fiercely intelligent. Dove, she says. She’s anything but a dove, Alan thinks, and in charcoals, she’s a creamy mixture of dark and light but her eyes are always bright and shining.
He finds he can’t bring himself to hate her.
38.
He stands in as Liam’s best man, even though they both know Liam is more than capable of answering any challenge to the marriage.
He would say something, except that he knows this has to happen for Tortall. It’s maybe worse for Dove, Aly says, watching the proceedings with an amused grin. She’s seven years younger than him.
I know, Alan says.
39.
He stays in the Copper Islands for a while, and then heads back to Tortall, but never for long.
Always, Liam looks for him. Always, Liam draws him back.
40.
Taybur Sibigat says nothing.
Sometimes, they share guard duty together.
There is a sharpness to him, amusement dulled, and something diminished and hollow, and he is sharp, slanted angles, and dark, haunting eyes.
On a whim, Alan adds highlights of inky navy blue.
41.
Sibigat is strictly professional. He is all for his own amusements, and all for doing his job, but never together at once.
The palace servants and maids are off-limits.
Alan wonders where that places him.
But Taybur is a bit of a charmer, and free with his affections, once they’re off the palace guard, and Alan thinks, well, maybe he doesn’t mind.
42.
He starts a new collection of sketches the next morning.
All of them are of Taybur Sibigat.
43.
The children are another anchor, little Junim, Ulasu and Ochobai clamouring to speak to Uncle Alan, demanding sketches of all sorts of things.
He obliges them, because those are always simple – draw Aly, draw Nawat, Dove, Taybur, maybe the horses, or Fesgao.
Liam is a different matter. He just throws off a simple sketch, strokes in charcoal that lack any of his usual skill. It is a bad drawing, and he knows it, but the children are satisfied, and they never again ask for Liam.
44.
This is Taybur, charming, good-looking, and solidly-built. Alan knows the feel of Taybur’s lips closing on his, the strength in Taybur’s hands, tempered by gentle caution. Taybur is a swordsman, like Alan, like Liam, and the calluses on his hands reflect that.
This is Taybur, half-haunted by failure and a child-king, with a ready smile, and jokes in his casual manner.
This is Taybur, and they ignore the names that die, unspoken, on their lips.
They deal with the materials the gods give them.
Out of such things, our lives are sketched, he thinks. Out of such things, their lives are painted.
He wonders what the portrait will look like.
45.
Dove gives birth to a girl, with black hair and brown eyes, and the same creamy skin as her mother.
Liam asks him to be her godsparent, and Alan swallows, feeling the questioning weight of Dove’s eyes on him. He says yes.
46.
He leaves for Tortall soon after.
He is acutely aware of the way the nape of Dove’s graceful neck fits into the curve of Liam’s arm, the way they glance, half-shy, half-uncomfortable at each other, just barely beginning to build something, and he feels like a voyeur, peeking from behind the drapes at something he cannot describe, at the edges of understanding.
Little Sarugani and Taybur Sibigat aren’t sufficient reasons to stay.
47.
The Swoop is quiet, now, and the seagulls still cry, and Alan still listens, wondering if those are voices he hears and what are they saying.
48.
The world shrinks after Ma’s funeral.
Alan meets Liam there; they meet each other’s eyes, nod, and walk away.
They are strangers now.
49.
Liam is in his rooms, that night, and Alan learns that some things are buried too deeply to be forgotten; the way Liam can hold him, the way he can allow himself to sob and the way they will sit, the way the shape of their bodies will accommodate each other.
They allow themselves to go no further.
50.
After the next few days, Liam leaves for the Copper Islands.
Alan goes with him.
He doesn’t allow himself to think of anything else, except the life half-lived, things unfinished waiting for him there. A question – and an answer he still hasn’t found, after all these years.
Taybur Sibigat, because they take what pleasure they can get, and Alan isn’t particularly disturbed by how Sibigat sleeps around.
Little Sarugani, who has something of Liam in the structure of her face and her cheekbonees.
He glances at the familiar lines of Liam’s slender figure, and thinks, so this is how it is going to be.
-
Note: Sorry, had to truncate it. It would NOT fit into the title box, rofl. James Joyce fans, forgive me. Hell, James Joyce, forgive me.
Rating: R
Length: 3328 words
Category: Tortall
Summary: Alan/Liam, across the gap of the intervening years. Some Liam/Dove, Alan/Taybur, Lerant/Dom.
Peculiar Pairing: Alan/Liam, some Liam/Dove, Alan/Taybur, Lerant/Dom.
-
1.
I am maybe five, maybe six.
The sword thrust into the gate looms over me, casts a shadow that my small hands will never touch, and the sword thrust into the gate casts a shadow on my mind that I will spend the rest of my life trying to grasp.
2.
I am six.
I spend the night discarding sketch after sketch like loose leaves that flutter to the floor. There is always a sword, dark-edged, and a boy, reaching out tentatively to the soot-blackened hilt.
I am frustrated; I cannot capture his face, and I do not know who that boy is, only the question he daren’t ask – the question without an answer.
3.
In the morning, I gather the discarded leaves and tie them together with a red cord and shut them away in my desk.
Aly can pick locks, but somehow, I know she will not touch them.
4.
At seven, one of Papa’s agents return from Tyra.
He brings with him something called pastels, and that night, I sit up and try again, splashing colour all over the sketches, but the sword defies colour. There is no colour – just a stained grey blade, in a white gate, and all around is darkness.
I still cannot see the boy. He is a vague figure, maybe pale, maybe dark.
I can only begin to see the shape of the undefined question.
5.
When I am ten, I do not ride to Corus in the fall.
Mama says nothing; Papa smiles and tells me I can be whatever I want to be, and no, I don’t have to be a knight. Aly is unhappy, and I turn away from swords for a time, and to the dissatisfied lines of her face, her mischievous smirk, and the red-touched-gold of her hair.
Thom is at the University, and I sometimes try to sketch him, his red hair, and his sharp green-hazel eyes and maybe the slightest flare of his Gift around him.
I ride horses, and sit on the sea-cliffs alone and feel the sea-breeze and the sea-spray and the mournful cry of the seagulls, and wonder if I’m hearing voices.
At night, a champion’s sword dreams in the darkness, waiting for the boy who will claim it.
Am, I ask, but I never get beyond the first word.
6.
Aly wants to be a spy, and she spends more time at Court, flirting, and then at the University, bothering Thom.
There is a harder line to her features now, in the sketches, and Mama is even more weary and Papa is smiling but part of it flakes like paint.
Thom is a bit of a stranger, a sharp figure whose hands burn with purple fire and when Mama sees the sketches, her jaw tightens. I learn to leave them out of her sight.
At least, I want to say, you know what you want.
7.
You could go to the University, Mama says. They teach painters and Court artists now, if that’s what you want to do.
I could be a knight, he blurts out. Like you.
He will remember how the smile lights up Mama’s purple eyes, and he will place that sketch with the others of Mama.
I don’t want you to be like me, she warns. I want you to do what you want.
I don’t know what I want, Alan thinks, but he says, I think I want to.
Mama looks younger when she smiles.
8.
This is Liam; neat black hair, never disordered, page uniform exactly so, collar straightened. Jasson’s dark hair, brown-hazel eyes, polite smile, and generally withdrawn. This is Liam, quiet and serious, the rock to Jasson’s energetic colt.
Capturing a person has never been so difficult, Alan thinks. Aly is bright and mischievous and unrestrained, Thom is studious, maybe a little hard, and Mama is tired and determined and always in motion and Papa is languid and everywhere –
But something in Liam shifts everytime he tries to pin it down, and he stares at the sketches in frustration and binds them and slips them into his desk and tries to forget about the urgent, feverish desire for his fingers to know every nuance of Liam’s expression and his smile.
9.
This is the sixth sketch: Liam’s short hair messy, left eye faintly swollen purple-black, lighter around the edges where blue light glimmers, and his body a map of bruises.
Alan considers it, and then adds a spark of Conte blue to Liam’s eyes, and sits back, dissatisfied.
He is ambidextrous, so the fact that his right arm hangs in a sling doesn’t bother him. What does is Liam striding into the fray, cold fury on his face, and the way he can’t seem to translate memory into charcoal image.
10.
This is Liam, who comes into my room at night, fingers running deftly across each bruise, as if by mapping the shape of my body with his hands, he will be able to say – this is the empty space inside of you, and this is your question, and this is your answer.
He doesn’t really say any of that.
His fingers linger after every bruise and cut is healed, and I close my eyes, because as long as we pretend I am still hurt, then there can be nothing read into his desire to know the hard, heavy angles of muscle, and the curve of my back.
11.
He doesn’t talk about how after a while, my fingers will curl when I talk to him, as if they long for charcoal to again attempt to capture the essence of his features.
Or how I trace his smile and then pull away.
12.
Sometimes, he will close my fingers with his.
And we will say there is nothing extraordinary in that.
13.
This is the sword in my hand; heavy, and graceless.
This is the sword in Liam’s hand; light, graceful, and supple like quicksilver.
“I should be better,” I will say. “I’m the son of the Lioness, you know,”
And he will look at me with those solemn eyes and say, “You don’t have to be.” He will uncurl my fingers from around the sword hilt and say, “You’ve practiced enough for today. I’m capable of defending myself, you know.”
Later, he will add, with a quirk of his lips, “And you.”
14.
He shows Liam some of his sketches, one day, in the courtyard where the trees are busy shedding leaves, and Liam raises an eyebrow and comments, “That’s beautiful.”
“Thanks,” Alan says, grinning.
He doesn’t show Liam the others. The sword and the boy and Liam – those are things that cannot be spoken of in the day, and that the night must shun.
They owe each other that much.
15.
Draw something, Liam asks.
He gazes at Liam for a time, and wonders if he should dare.
16.
He doesn’t.
Liam gets a sketch of the cliffs outside the Swoop, stark, empty, waves crashing against the shore. This is too easy, but Alan squeezes his eyes shut and tries again and again until he can hear the seagulls and the drowned echoes of the past speak.
There is something about sharing his childhood hidden spot with Liam, as if to speak of it would be to remove just a little of its privacy, to peel away the layer of solitude that covers his sanctuary like the skin of a ripe orange.
When Liam holds the sketch, breathes, and loses himself in it, Alan is surprised to see that it isn’t so much of a loss, and more of a rediscovery.
17.
Scanra’s not too far from Tortall, Liam says one day.
Alan says nothing. The charcoal stick snaps in his hand.
18.
Liam doesn’t know about the sword practices in the morning, breathing ragged, sweat pouring down his face.
Liam doesn’t know about how often he grips a sword until he is certain the hilt must burn itself into his hand, that the only purpose of the human hand is to close itself around the hilt of a sword and to never let go.
Liam doesn’t know about how he continues until the drills and the footwork must surely be written into every inch of trembling muscle, where he must force himself to keep going where his body fails him.
Alan doesn’t know; only that the first movement, the beginnings of an answer must be found in the trembling tip of the sword.
19.
Alan doesn’t know about how Liam must keep himself together; only that a human being must be like glass and that an echo in the depths of the glass will slowly swim to the surface.
He knows that one day, the sketches of Liam start looking like aspects of Liam, and he names each and every one of them in his head, and then proceeds to draw other things, other people, and other places.
But he always returns to Liam.
Liam-beneath-the-tree, Liam-amused, Liam-practicing-the-sword, Liam-whose-hands-are-gentle –
The last he never sketches. How, he asks, can he capture the textured feel of Liam’s hands in a sketch?
(The truth is, in those grainy attempts, Liam’s eyes are too soft, too knowing in a way they seldom are in real life, his flesh is too languid with desire and Alan locks those away. He can’t bring himself to discard them but neither can he put them with the other sketches.)_
20.
Alan stops sketching for a time when he rides with Raoul and the Own.
His knight-master asks why. “You’re a good artist,” Raoul says, one night. “Your mother says so.”
“I know,” Alan says.
The next night, his fingers automatically move to shape Liam’s face and he hurriedly tears it up and tosses it into the fire.
He draws other things instead; villagers, faces cracked with mud, and the Own and Lerant around the fire, laughing and talking to Dom and he notices the way Dom’s arm snakes around Lerant’s shoulders and doesn’t shift –
And the way in the next moment, they separate slowly, as if their bodies still long to drift together.
Their expressions hardly change, but Alan is an artist, and in that moment, he is sharply aware of how the body expresses far more than faces or words can.
21.
When they are back in Corus for a time, Alan sees the way Liam leans forward, just a little, with new eyes.
The new sketch is called Liam-in-a-chair, leaning forward, chair tipped just slightly.
He is surprised to discover his fingers know Liam too well and the drawing takes shape in under two bells.
Liam traces the raised pale line the spidren-sword has left across Alan’s back, and says nothing, but Alan feels the soothing coolness Liam’s Gift leaves in its wake.
22.
They are off the next day, answering an emergency in Tasride.
That night, Alan watches Dom and Lerant, deep in thought.
He will sketch them, and then hide it among a series of other sketches; Lord Raoul, Drum, the view of the night sky through broken branches and leaves.
23.
Sometimes, he thinks of the sword as a far longer and sharper charcoal stick. He paints the universe scarlet with blood, and then throws up later.
24.
When the leaves start to change, they are back to Corus.
Alan closes his eyes and is acutely aware of how he holds Liam’s hand, fingers interlocking and how Liam stands stiffly and doesn’t allow himself to breathe until the order is announced.
Everyone stands between the two of them.
“Well,” Liam says, “It’s time.”
“Yes.” Alan manages. He does not look in the direction of the chapel of the Ordeal. “It is.”
25.
The day before Liam’s Ordeal, they spend the time walking in the courtyard, through the palace gardens, and looking at the sky, clear of a tangle of branches and a bright, clear blue.
Liam says nothing. His shoulders are tight. He manages a smile before he walks away to the ritual baths.
Alan waits, and Lord Raoul sits with him through the night. He doesn’t look for his charcoals.
26.
Liam’s mouth is a thin white line as he leaves the Chamber, shoulders too tight, hands clenched into fists by his side. But he is alive.
Alan breathes.
There is a question in Liam’s eyes, one that Alan doesn’t dare to answer.
27.
When the first faint traces of sunlight creep into Liam’s room through the shutters, Alan leaves.
Liam makes no sound, no movement to hold him back.
They both understand that which passes between them belongs to the darkness. It must slip away like a dream with the dawn.
28.
Roald catches Alan in the corridor. He’s a grown, serious version of Liam without the smile or the easy loyalty.
Together, they present Liam with his shield, and Alan smirks and adds another few sketches to his collection.
29.
The day before Alan’s Ordeal, Liam finds him in the catacombs, staring at a gate.
This is the question; Alan still doesn’t know the shape of the answer, only that this is not the answer, this sword, wiped clean that is wedged firmly into the gate. It does not give beneath his grip, it doesn’t fit there and in the end, he lets go, head bowed, and walks away.
This is the end of one dream, one answer.
He isn’t the Lioness. He’s her son.
That isn’t enough.
“You don’t have to be my champion, you know,” Liam says.
“I know,” Alan says. But, he thinks, what else can I be?
30.
This is the bath; rising through layers of cold water, through layers of words and history and duty, until it seems that he can almost see the memory-ghosts of so many previous squires (Liam) in the water droplets he scatters.
31.
This is the Chamber, maw wide open to swallow him whole and he tosses and spins and cries out in the belly of the leviathan and then it chews him and spits him out.
32.
It taunts him with the question he cannot voice or answer.
33.
When he emerges, Liam is there, to lead him away to rest and his rooms.
34.
It isn’t Liam who presents him with his shield. It is Aly, grinning widely, and Thom, who nods and Ma and Da beam proudly.
His Sight sees the spells Thom or maybe Ma has placed on the shield; he later learns that some of it came from Liam.
35.
That night, Liam presents him with a sword.
This is the sword that awaits him, blued steel of Raven Armory, not the hero’s blade still waiting in the darkness of the catacombs for history to be written.
He takes it, slices his palm, and bleeds on it and offers his oath of loyalty.
Liam pulls him to his feet, embraces him, and kisses him.
Later, he will heal the cut, so the edges close together in a thin, pale, line.
36.
It isn’t Scanra.
It’s the Copper Islands.
37.
Dovasary is a slip of a girl, plain, and yet fiercely intelligent. Dove, she says. She’s anything but a dove, Alan thinks, and in charcoals, she’s a creamy mixture of dark and light but her eyes are always bright and shining.
He finds he can’t bring himself to hate her.
38.
He stands in as Liam’s best man, even though they both know Liam is more than capable of answering any challenge to the marriage.
He would say something, except that he knows this has to happen for Tortall. It’s maybe worse for Dove, Aly says, watching the proceedings with an amused grin. She’s seven years younger than him.
I know, Alan says.
39.
He stays in the Copper Islands for a while, and then heads back to Tortall, but never for long.
Always, Liam looks for him. Always, Liam draws him back.
40.
Taybur Sibigat says nothing.
Sometimes, they share guard duty together.
There is a sharpness to him, amusement dulled, and something diminished and hollow, and he is sharp, slanted angles, and dark, haunting eyes.
On a whim, Alan adds highlights of inky navy blue.
41.
Sibigat is strictly professional. He is all for his own amusements, and all for doing his job, but never together at once.
The palace servants and maids are off-limits.
Alan wonders where that places him.
But Taybur is a bit of a charmer, and free with his affections, once they’re off the palace guard, and Alan thinks, well, maybe he doesn’t mind.
42.
He starts a new collection of sketches the next morning.
All of them are of Taybur Sibigat.
43.
The children are another anchor, little Junim, Ulasu and Ochobai clamouring to speak to Uncle Alan, demanding sketches of all sorts of things.
He obliges them, because those are always simple – draw Aly, draw Nawat, Dove, Taybur, maybe the horses, or Fesgao.
Liam is a different matter. He just throws off a simple sketch, strokes in charcoal that lack any of his usual skill. It is a bad drawing, and he knows it, but the children are satisfied, and they never again ask for Liam.
44.
This is Taybur, charming, good-looking, and solidly-built. Alan knows the feel of Taybur’s lips closing on his, the strength in Taybur’s hands, tempered by gentle caution. Taybur is a swordsman, like Alan, like Liam, and the calluses on his hands reflect that.
This is Taybur, half-haunted by failure and a child-king, with a ready smile, and jokes in his casual manner.
This is Taybur, and they ignore the names that die, unspoken, on their lips.
They deal with the materials the gods give them.
Out of such things, our lives are sketched, he thinks. Out of such things, their lives are painted.
He wonders what the portrait will look like.
45.
Dove gives birth to a girl, with black hair and brown eyes, and the same creamy skin as her mother.
Liam asks him to be her godsparent, and Alan swallows, feeling the questioning weight of Dove’s eyes on him. He says yes.
46.
He leaves for Tortall soon after.
He is acutely aware of the way the nape of Dove’s graceful neck fits into the curve of Liam’s arm, the way they glance, half-shy, half-uncomfortable at each other, just barely beginning to build something, and he feels like a voyeur, peeking from behind the drapes at something he cannot describe, at the edges of understanding.
Little Sarugani and Taybur Sibigat aren’t sufficient reasons to stay.
47.
The Swoop is quiet, now, and the seagulls still cry, and Alan still listens, wondering if those are voices he hears and what are they saying.
48.
The world shrinks after Ma’s funeral.
Alan meets Liam there; they meet each other’s eyes, nod, and walk away.
They are strangers now.
49.
Liam is in his rooms, that night, and Alan learns that some things are buried too deeply to be forgotten; the way Liam can hold him, the way he can allow himself to sob and the way they will sit, the way the shape of their bodies will accommodate each other.
They allow themselves to go no further.
50.
After the next few days, Liam leaves for the Copper Islands.
Alan goes with him.
He doesn’t allow himself to think of anything else, except the life half-lived, things unfinished waiting for him there. A question – and an answer he still hasn’t found, after all these years.
Taybur Sibigat, because they take what pleasure they can get, and Alan isn’t particularly disturbed by how Sibigat sleeps around.
Little Sarugani, who has something of Liam in the structure of her face and her cheekbonees.
He glances at the familiar lines of Liam’s slender figure, and thinks, so this is how it is going to be.
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