Кейт Новак - The Wyvern's Spur

Finally, having moved half the closet’s interior into the hall, the young noble gave up and let out a bellow.

“Thomas!” he shouted toward the back hallway. “Where are my boots?”

Alerted by the sound of chests, shoes, and walking sticks being thumped about, Thomas had already decided to investigate the racket and had put aside the silver tureen he’d been polishing. He was just coming out from the kitchen as Giogi called his name. Beneath the archway separating the front hall from what Giogi termed “Servant Land,” the gentleman’s gentleman paused.

Thomas looked askance at the closet’s contents strewn about the hallway and tried not to blanch. He wasn’t more than three years Giogi’s senior, but many more years of responsibility had given him an aged, wiser-than-thou look. It was a look that the servant used now on his employer.

“Is there something that Sir requires?” Thomas asked evenly.

“I can’t find my boots,” Giogi declared. “I know I left them in here.”

From the chaos before him, Thomas drew out a pair of recently polished black boots with narrow heels and sharp, pointed toes. “Here you are, sir,” he said without a trace of annoyance.

“Not those things. I won’t wear them ever again. They pinch my feet. Take them away and burn them. I want the boots I bought in Westgate. The knee-high, brown-suede clodders with wide brims. They’re the most comfortable boots in the Realms.”

Thomas raised a single eyebrow. “Comfortable they may be, sir, but they are hardly a gentleman’s boot.”

“Tish! I’m a gentleman, and they’re my boots, ergo, argumentum ab auctoritate ,” came Giogi’s riposte. “Et cetera,” he added.

“I thought, sir, now that your travels are through, that you would wish to dispense with the accoutrements of your journey. I have already retired the boots.”

“Well, bring them out of retirement, and please hurry. I need to leave for Redstone.”

“I understood that your Aunt Dorath was not expecting you until after supper.”

“That’s right, and since I thought I would walk to Redstone and would like to arrive on time, I need to leave now.” Giogi sat on the hall bench and kicked off his silk slippers, anticipating that Thomas would produce his boots out of thin air.

Thomas surveyed his master with disbelief. “Walk, sir?”

“Yes. You know, one foot in front of the other,” Giogi explained patiently.

“But what about your own supper, sir?”

“Supper? Oh, sorry, Thomas. Write supper off. After that magnificent lunch and all those wonderful raisin cakes at tea, I’m completely full up. Couldn’t eat another thing. Thanks anyway.”

Thomas’s look of incredulity turned to one of concern. “Are you feeling all right, sir?”

“Splendid, except that my feet are getting cold,” Giogi said with a grin.

Without another word, Thomas spun about and disappeared through the archway into Servant Land.

Giogi twisted sideways on the bench to keep his stockinged feet off the chilly floorboards. He ran a finger along the smooth parquetry worked into the wooden bench’s high back. One of his earliest childhood memories was of his father explaining to him the picture in the bench. It depicted the moment the family had gotten its patronymic, “way back,” as his father used to say, “in the days before we knew which spoon to use for the soup course.” In the design, Paton Wyvernspur, the family founder, stood before a great female wyvern. Two tiny hatchling wyverns played at the monster’s feet, and behind her lay the corpse of her mate. Bandits had killed her mate and stolen her eggs from her nest, but Paton had tracked down and vanquished the thieves and restored the young wyverns to their mother. In gratitude, the female wyvern had sliced off her mate’s right spur and conferred it upon Giogi’s forefather with the promise that his family line would never dwindle while the spur remained in the family’s possession.

Later, when he was older and had learned that wyverns weren’t considered very nice beasts, Giogi often wondered why Paton had helped the female wyvern. By that time, though, Giogi’s father and mother were both dead, and Giogi couldn’t bring himself to ask Aunt Dorath or Uncle Drone. He sensed instinctively that it would be branded a question only a fool such as himself would ask.

He wasn’t fool enough to part with the bench, though. It had been a wedding gift from his mother to his father, and while the other Wyvernspurs scorned the wealthy carpenter’s daughter that Cole Wyvernspur had wed, they all coveted the bench. The carpentry was solid, and the parquetry picture positively hypnotic. Aunt Dorath had suggested a number of times that the bench ought to sit in the hall of Redstone, the family manor, and last year, before his marriage to Gaylyn Dimswart, Giogi’s second Cousin Frefford had hinted it would make a lovely wedding gift, but Giogi declined to part with it.

Bored by inactivity, Giogi bounced to his stocking feet and began tossing back into the closet all the things he’d tossed out.

Thomas appeared in the archway, holding out the knee-high, brown-suede clodders, which, by his master’s own declaration, were the most comfortable pair in the Realms. “Please, sir,” the servant requested, “don’t trouble yourself with putting those things away. I’ll be happy to do it.”

Giogi halted in midtoss of a lone wool mitten. Something in Thomas’s tone revealed the servant’s anxiety. Giogi noticed that the inside of the closet was now as untidy as the outside. “Sorry, Thomas,” he apologized meekly.

“That’s quite all right, sir,” Thomas said, setting the boots beside the bench.

“Ah, my boots! Excellent!” Giogi sat back down on the bench and pulled the right boot on, then slipped the stone into the brim.

“Are you certain, sir, you wouldn’t rather ride?” Thomas asked.

Giogi, one foot still unshod, looked up at his manservant. “It may surprise you to know, Thomas, that when I was on my mission for the crown, I often walked great distances.” Giogi did not feel it necessary to add that he had walked great distances whenever forced to because some scurrilous cove had stolen his horse or some equally evil beast had devoured his mount.

“Indeed, sir. I did not mean to suggest you weren’t up to the task. I just thought that after your strenuous journey you might prefer the luxury of riding. If not in the carriage, I can saddle Daisyeye.”

“No, thank you, Thomas,” Giogi said, finally pulling on the other boot. “Daisyeye deserves a good, long rest, and I really want to walk.” He rose, whipped his cloak about him with a flourish, and stomped to the front door. “Don’t bother to wait up for me,” he suggested. “I expect I’ll be quite late. Good night,” he called out before he plunged outside.

In town, everything was brown; the buildings, the grass, the muddy roads, the wooden carts, even the horses and oxen, were shades of umber and tan. Townhouses blocked out the late afternoon sun and cast long chocolate shadows on the earth. Women shouted out the windows at dirt-caked children in the streets. It was as if the gods had run out of other colors by the time they reached that part of Immersea, left it etched in one shade, then hadn’t bothered to mix new paint to fill in the color.

Giogi walked east, away from the center of town, then turned south onto a trail that led from town to the Wyvernspur estate. A low wall surrounded the land, and the lanky noble swung his legs over it easily and entered another world, one that the gods had colored. Stalks of winter rye glittered like jade in the setting sunlight; purple-specked crocuses sparkled with gemlike raindrops; a great flock of wild geese honked overhead in the deepening blue sky. Giogi felt his spirits rise and shook off the gloom that had gripped him in his own house.