Post by rainstormamaya on Apr 3, 2010 9:19:05 GMT 10
Title: Where He Gets His Orders
Rating: PG
Length: 1,791
Character: Merric
Summary: Merric and Kel, give and take, and the disaster that is Merric’s protective instinct.
***
“What does it feel like, I wonder,” Garvey said idly to the crowded inn, “taking commands from a woman?”
Merric had last heard that amount of venom put into a single word when his father was sounding off about taxes, but that didn’t occur to him as his hands clenched tightly on his tankard and his teeth gritted. His gods-damned luck- of all the nice, bustling country inns, he had to take a room at the same one Garvey had, and because of the fact that they’d been pages together, he had to acknowledge him for politeness’ sake. He usually wasn’t very good at the politeness thing, but over the years Kel had dropped gentle hints about his manners in much the same way as she’d dropped gentle hints about Neal’s neglected vegetables, and the net result was that these days Neal ate half his vegetables, as opposed to none, and Merric only accidentally insulted people unprepared to tolerate him, as opposed to everyone.
Again, his gods-damned luck. It was Kel’s mild insistence on courtesy that was leaving him open to the possibility, nay, probability, of starting a tavern brawl in the very near future.
“Just the same as taking commands from anyone else,” he growled into his tankard. “I didn’t think you’d be familiar with the idea.”
Score one to him. Garvey smiled thinly. “You like taking commands, do you? My dear Merric, you’re setting yourself up to be a hen-pecked husband.”
“And you’re setting yourself up to be a wife-beater,” Merric retorted. “You do realise everyone knows why Lady Tamasin moves stiffly and wears long sleeves after you’ve been on a drinking session?”
“Tamasin acknowledges my rights over her as her husband.”
“Didn’t your mother teach you you’re meant to respect women?” Merric demanded. “Laws of the Goddess? Marriage is a gods-ordained bond between equals?”
“I never took you for a gods-botherer... My mother never taught me I should take orders from my womenfolk. Yours clearly did.”
Merric went suddenly very still. Garvey did not notice.
Merric had a quick temper, mostly speaking; in eight out of ten cases, it erupted into burning heat very fast, and burnt out as soon as his opponent was on the floor with a bruised face. In one out of ten cases, he said and did nothing immediately, but bided his time, waiting for an opportunity to take his grievance out in blood. In the last one out of ten cases, the reason for his losing his temper touched on an old sensibility, and flared white-hot, implacable and far more controlled than the grudges or the quick flashes, enough to put a man in the healer’s charge for weeks on end. One such sensibility was Kel, and Garvey had just jumped up and down on it with hobnailed boots.
“What,” Merric said, as precisely as possible through such tightly gritted teeth, “are you trying to say?”
“You’re a good match,” Garvey informed him, still smiling. “You’re commanded; she commands. I can see how it would work!”
“Garvey,” Merric growled in warning, his face white with anger, red blotches burning high on his cheeks and his freckles standing out harshly against his pale skin.
“Tell me,” Garvey said, unnecessarily loudly, “does the beloved Protector of the Small use that bloodless voice of hers to give orders in the bedchamber? I shouldn’t care for it myself, but doubtless it’s somebody’s per-“
Merric tossed back the last of his ale, and smashed the tankard into Garvey’s face, causing the other man to yell a muffled swearword and clap a hand to his broken nose and bleeding face, but Merric was already behind him, forcing him forward and mashing his face into the tavern’s bar, one hand gripping the back of the other knight’s neck as if it wanted to strangle. Garvey tried to shake him off, but Merric had him trapped hard against the counter, and he could only flail.
“You talk like that about Lady Knight Keladry once more, and I’ll meet you on the duelling field, and you’ll never walk again,” Merric threatened. “The lady knight is better than you are. She’s better than you ever have been. You aren’t fit to say her name.”
Garvey spluttered, but Merric wasn’t waiting for a response. He hauled the other man – who was a full head shorter and, unless Merric was very much mistaken, had been letting himself go in terms of battle-readiness, of which some part of Merric that had paid attention to Lord Wyldon thoroughly disapproved – across the inn, a path of astonished commoners opening before them, tersely thanked the pot-boy who helpfully opened the door for him, and shoved Garvey roughly outside, into the snow. For a moment, he wished Faleron was present. With his cousin, he could have lifted Garvey clear off his feet and thrown him into the three-foot snowdrifts outside. Watching him flounder would have been very satisfying.
He dusted his hands off, and stamped back to his seat. The entire rest of the inn was staring at him now, which was embarrassing. Never mind.
“Another ale,” he requested, rather gruffly, and the innkeeper brought him one. Slowly, the chatter of people talking and laughing and drinking returned to normal, and Merric relaxed a little. Garvey went into the inn by the kitchen door, unnoticed by Merric (who couldn’t have cared less if he’d seen Garvey; the anger, by this point, had turned to blistering contempt) and demanded of the innkeeper’s wife that she call in the best local healer.
Later that night, Merric tried to pay his bill before going up to his room, since he planned to leave early in the morning. The innkeeper accepted only half of his money, and Merric frowned at him. “I’m not going to cheat you, man.”
“I wouldn’ let ye, sir knight,” the innkeeper said blandly, and then treated Merric to a look sharper than he was accustomed to get from commoners not native to New Hope. “Folk know who’s their champion. The Lioness fights her gran’ battles for the kingdom, but it’s Lady Kel who looks to us. Someone oughter fight for her, too.”
Merric chewed his lip, and grinned reluctantly. “You’re right.” He paused, and then said as an afterthought: “Add the difference to Sir Garvey’s bill. He’s too thick to notice.”
The innkeeper grinned back at him, and pocketed the half of Merric’s payment he’d accepted. “Maybe I’ll do that, sir.”
Merric went up to bed surprisingly heavy-hearted, for one who’d just won a fight and had his bill halved. He shut and barred the door, reasoning that Garvey was too much of a coward to come after revenge, but if he did it was as well to be prepared. For the same reason, he slid a knife ready under his pillow before kicking his boots off and stripping off his clothes, then climbing into bed, meaning to get a good night’s sleep before the last stretch of his journey to Corus.
He found that he couldn’t. He shut his eyes and waited impatiently for sleep to overwhelm him; he stared hard at the ceiling in the hope it would bore him to sleep; he even counted sheep. When he got somewhere in the hundreds and lost count for the third time, he gave up, and allowed himself to think about what was really bothering him.
What had Garvey said? My womenfolk. As if his wife (poor woman) or any of his succession of mistresses from the village at the foot of Runnerspring Keep belonged to him- the one time he had passed through Runnerspring had been a disgusting experience for Merric, on whom the ideals of chivalry weighed more heavily than most. Women didn’t belong to you, and you didn’t belong to them, either. Merric had learnt, slowly and painfully, that people were not property, regardless of their station in life; you always treated them with the appropriate respect. Grievances should be heard; harm should not be done, except in the defence of the innocent; and the world did not revolve around nobles: there were several thousand Tortallans who managed their lives beautifully without interference from nobles.
Merric’s father, startled by a progressive son at the end of the Scanran war, had thought that Kel was responsible for Merric’s newly found views, and so did more or less everyone else, except Kel, Neal and Neal’s remarkable wife Yuki. Actually, it had had a lot more with his squads of convict soldiers. The revelations that convicts weren’t necessarily irredeemable, sometimes had reasons for committing crimes, and were human with stories, lives and families too, had brought Merric sharply down to earth. Kel probably hadn’t noticed at the time, to Merric’s chagrin, but then, she had been working every hour the Goddess sent her, and occupied with other problems, such as a war.
Merric felt that those issues summed up almost all his problems with Kel, which Garvey had stung so badly. He didn’t mind that she got the recognition for changing his views, not really, even though it robbed the men he still liked and respected: she deserved credit from her peers for something, or at the least she deserved for them to take notice of her, rather than assuming that as a Lady Knight nothing she did could have been that special. He wished that she would notice him, realise that he’d seen that she was special and different and knocked every idea about women being unfit for combat into splinters, and that he’d given her his loyalty unconditionally for years now, that he cared about her, probably more than he really should. Most alarmingly, part of him wanted Kel to be his: to be able to hold her close against him and keep her safe from her mad notions, or at least help her execute them in a slightly less suicidal fashion, to be able to kiss her and touch her, to know what it felt like to hear her breathing quicken in attraction, see her lips part and her eyes widen, to tell her how brilliant she was, and that she didn’t have to work like that, she didn’t have to do everything, she had nothing to prove. He wanted to put his heart in her hands.
Merric’s fists clenched on the bedclothes, but it was true. Garvey was right, in his own twisted, stupid way: Merric did know who he took his orders from, even though with the end of the Scanran war he was no longer directly under Kel’s command, and he would do anything for her.
And when he said he wanted to put his heart in her hands, part of him knew that what meant was I want her to know it’s there.
Rating: PG
Length: 1,791
Character: Merric
Summary: Merric and Kel, give and take, and the disaster that is Merric’s protective instinct.
***
“What does it feel like, I wonder,” Garvey said idly to the crowded inn, “taking commands from a woman?”
Merric had last heard that amount of venom put into a single word when his father was sounding off about taxes, but that didn’t occur to him as his hands clenched tightly on his tankard and his teeth gritted. His gods-damned luck- of all the nice, bustling country inns, he had to take a room at the same one Garvey had, and because of the fact that they’d been pages together, he had to acknowledge him for politeness’ sake. He usually wasn’t very good at the politeness thing, but over the years Kel had dropped gentle hints about his manners in much the same way as she’d dropped gentle hints about Neal’s neglected vegetables, and the net result was that these days Neal ate half his vegetables, as opposed to none, and Merric only accidentally insulted people unprepared to tolerate him, as opposed to everyone.
Again, his gods-damned luck. It was Kel’s mild insistence on courtesy that was leaving him open to the possibility, nay, probability, of starting a tavern brawl in the very near future.
“Just the same as taking commands from anyone else,” he growled into his tankard. “I didn’t think you’d be familiar with the idea.”
Score one to him. Garvey smiled thinly. “You like taking commands, do you? My dear Merric, you’re setting yourself up to be a hen-pecked husband.”
“And you’re setting yourself up to be a wife-beater,” Merric retorted. “You do realise everyone knows why Lady Tamasin moves stiffly and wears long sleeves after you’ve been on a drinking session?”
“Tamasin acknowledges my rights over her as her husband.”
“Didn’t your mother teach you you’re meant to respect women?” Merric demanded. “Laws of the Goddess? Marriage is a gods-ordained bond between equals?”
“I never took you for a gods-botherer... My mother never taught me I should take orders from my womenfolk. Yours clearly did.”
Merric went suddenly very still. Garvey did not notice.
Merric had a quick temper, mostly speaking; in eight out of ten cases, it erupted into burning heat very fast, and burnt out as soon as his opponent was on the floor with a bruised face. In one out of ten cases, he said and did nothing immediately, but bided his time, waiting for an opportunity to take his grievance out in blood. In the last one out of ten cases, the reason for his losing his temper touched on an old sensibility, and flared white-hot, implacable and far more controlled than the grudges or the quick flashes, enough to put a man in the healer’s charge for weeks on end. One such sensibility was Kel, and Garvey had just jumped up and down on it with hobnailed boots.
“What,” Merric said, as precisely as possible through such tightly gritted teeth, “are you trying to say?”
“You’re a good match,” Garvey informed him, still smiling. “You’re commanded; she commands. I can see how it would work!”
“Garvey,” Merric growled in warning, his face white with anger, red blotches burning high on his cheeks and his freckles standing out harshly against his pale skin.
“Tell me,” Garvey said, unnecessarily loudly, “does the beloved Protector of the Small use that bloodless voice of hers to give orders in the bedchamber? I shouldn’t care for it myself, but doubtless it’s somebody’s per-“
Merric tossed back the last of his ale, and smashed the tankard into Garvey’s face, causing the other man to yell a muffled swearword and clap a hand to his broken nose and bleeding face, but Merric was already behind him, forcing him forward and mashing his face into the tavern’s bar, one hand gripping the back of the other knight’s neck as if it wanted to strangle. Garvey tried to shake him off, but Merric had him trapped hard against the counter, and he could only flail.
“You talk like that about Lady Knight Keladry once more, and I’ll meet you on the duelling field, and you’ll never walk again,” Merric threatened. “The lady knight is better than you are. She’s better than you ever have been. You aren’t fit to say her name.”
Garvey spluttered, but Merric wasn’t waiting for a response. He hauled the other man – who was a full head shorter and, unless Merric was very much mistaken, had been letting himself go in terms of battle-readiness, of which some part of Merric that had paid attention to Lord Wyldon thoroughly disapproved – across the inn, a path of astonished commoners opening before them, tersely thanked the pot-boy who helpfully opened the door for him, and shoved Garvey roughly outside, into the snow. For a moment, he wished Faleron was present. With his cousin, he could have lifted Garvey clear off his feet and thrown him into the three-foot snowdrifts outside. Watching him flounder would have been very satisfying.
He dusted his hands off, and stamped back to his seat. The entire rest of the inn was staring at him now, which was embarrassing. Never mind.
“Another ale,” he requested, rather gruffly, and the innkeeper brought him one. Slowly, the chatter of people talking and laughing and drinking returned to normal, and Merric relaxed a little. Garvey went into the inn by the kitchen door, unnoticed by Merric (who couldn’t have cared less if he’d seen Garvey; the anger, by this point, had turned to blistering contempt) and demanded of the innkeeper’s wife that she call in the best local healer.
Later that night, Merric tried to pay his bill before going up to his room, since he planned to leave early in the morning. The innkeeper accepted only half of his money, and Merric frowned at him. “I’m not going to cheat you, man.”
“I wouldn’ let ye, sir knight,” the innkeeper said blandly, and then treated Merric to a look sharper than he was accustomed to get from commoners not native to New Hope. “Folk know who’s their champion. The Lioness fights her gran’ battles for the kingdom, but it’s Lady Kel who looks to us. Someone oughter fight for her, too.”
Merric chewed his lip, and grinned reluctantly. “You’re right.” He paused, and then said as an afterthought: “Add the difference to Sir Garvey’s bill. He’s too thick to notice.”
The innkeeper grinned back at him, and pocketed the half of Merric’s payment he’d accepted. “Maybe I’ll do that, sir.”
Merric went up to bed surprisingly heavy-hearted, for one who’d just won a fight and had his bill halved. He shut and barred the door, reasoning that Garvey was too much of a coward to come after revenge, but if he did it was as well to be prepared. For the same reason, he slid a knife ready under his pillow before kicking his boots off and stripping off his clothes, then climbing into bed, meaning to get a good night’s sleep before the last stretch of his journey to Corus.
He found that he couldn’t. He shut his eyes and waited impatiently for sleep to overwhelm him; he stared hard at the ceiling in the hope it would bore him to sleep; he even counted sheep. When he got somewhere in the hundreds and lost count for the third time, he gave up, and allowed himself to think about what was really bothering him.
What had Garvey said? My womenfolk. As if his wife (poor woman) or any of his succession of mistresses from the village at the foot of Runnerspring Keep belonged to him- the one time he had passed through Runnerspring had been a disgusting experience for Merric, on whom the ideals of chivalry weighed more heavily than most. Women didn’t belong to you, and you didn’t belong to them, either. Merric had learnt, slowly and painfully, that people were not property, regardless of their station in life; you always treated them with the appropriate respect. Grievances should be heard; harm should not be done, except in the defence of the innocent; and the world did not revolve around nobles: there were several thousand Tortallans who managed their lives beautifully without interference from nobles.
Merric’s father, startled by a progressive son at the end of the Scanran war, had thought that Kel was responsible for Merric’s newly found views, and so did more or less everyone else, except Kel, Neal and Neal’s remarkable wife Yuki. Actually, it had had a lot more with his squads of convict soldiers. The revelations that convicts weren’t necessarily irredeemable, sometimes had reasons for committing crimes, and were human with stories, lives and families too, had brought Merric sharply down to earth. Kel probably hadn’t noticed at the time, to Merric’s chagrin, but then, she had been working every hour the Goddess sent her, and occupied with other problems, such as a war.
Merric felt that those issues summed up almost all his problems with Kel, which Garvey had stung so badly. He didn’t mind that she got the recognition for changing his views, not really, even though it robbed the men he still liked and respected: she deserved credit from her peers for something, or at the least she deserved for them to take notice of her, rather than assuming that as a Lady Knight nothing she did could have been that special. He wished that she would notice him, realise that he’d seen that she was special and different and knocked every idea about women being unfit for combat into splinters, and that he’d given her his loyalty unconditionally for years now, that he cared about her, probably more than he really should. Most alarmingly, part of him wanted Kel to be his: to be able to hold her close against him and keep her safe from her mad notions, or at least help her execute them in a slightly less suicidal fashion, to be able to kiss her and touch her, to know what it felt like to hear her breathing quicken in attraction, see her lips part and her eyes widen, to tell her how brilliant she was, and that she didn’t have to work like that, she didn’t have to do everything, she had nothing to prove. He wanted to put his heart in her hands.
Merric’s fists clenched on the bedclothes, but it was true. Garvey was right, in his own twisted, stupid way: Merric did know who he took his orders from, even though with the end of the Scanran war he was no longer directly under Kel’s command, and he would do anything for her.
And when he said he wanted to put his heart in her hands, part of him knew that what meant was I want her to know it’s there.