Laurell Hamilton - Never After

I shrugged again. What did it matter? She had been eager enough to jump into the marriage bed with a man old enough to be her father. “At any rate, you can see why I am not so interested in your advice on how to make a happy marriage.”

She continued to keep her gaze on me. “Your father wants a son,” she said. “The minute he has one, you will be shoved aside—forgotten. I recommend that you make sure you are safely married off to a man you like and admire before your father gets his son, or your life will become wretched in the extreme. There. I have just given you another piece of good advice that you will no doubt ignore.”

“I suppose it’s very lucky for me that you have so far failed to provide him that son,” I said.

“I suppose it is.”

I spread my hands in an impatient gesture. “Why do I find it so hard to believe that you have my best interests at heart?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “Why do you?”

Shrugging again, I turned my back on her and once more gave all my attention to the tumble and gaiety in the courtyard. “Thank you for your concern,” I said, my polite voice obviously insincere. “But I think I can manage my life without your interference.”

I waited till after dark. And then I put on a plain, brown cloak, pulled the hood over my head, and stole down the servants’ stairways, out the kitchen exit, and into the vast courtyard. Soon I was winding my way through the variegated tents, jostling bodies, and loud merriment that had taken over what was normally a very formal space.

It was hard to take it all in. Servants and pages were racing past the irregular campfires, carrying messages and fetching food. Some of the men were outside their tents, arguing and practicing swordplay. Some were inside; I could see their shadows leap and gesture on the cloth walls, lit from within. The smells were diverse and suffocating—smoke, meat, ale, mud, horse, leather, and excrement, from man or beast or both. Now and then I heard a woman’s laugh or high-pitched squeal over the lower rumble of men’s voices.

The sounds surprised me and I found myself frowning. I had a low opinion of any man who brought a doxy to a competition to win the hand of a princess. Shouldn’t all my suitors be pure of heart as well as strong and brave and brilliant? I would have any man disqualified if he consorted with low women while he was wooing me. If, of course, I could figure out which ones they were.

I had wound my way halfway through the courtyard when I spotted the big bruiser who had caught my eye during the joust. He was sitting on an overturned barrel, but he was so heavy it looked as though his body weight was slowly forcing it into the ground. In one hand he held a hunk of charred meat hacked off the bone; in the other, he held a slovenly woman whose breasts were so big her dirty white camisole could hardly contain them. Three comrades lounged nearby, calling out advice. I hurried on before I could quite decipher what that advice pertained to.

No. He would not be an acceptable bridegroom by any measure.

He could not win my father’s competition, could he?>

I wandered on, drawing my cloak more tightly around my body to fend off the chill of the autumn evening. I was a little reassured to come upon a corner of the camp where no one was wolfing down overcooked meals or enjoying the attention of questionable women. There were plenty of sober-looking young men sitting contemplatively before their fires, or oiling their blades or mending their tack. I even saw one reading a book. He was a tall, lean fellow who looked to be mostly ribs and elbows. I couldn’t imagine how he’d made it through the joust without being unhorsed, but I guessed he would fare well during the test of intelligence. Standing in the darkness, I studied his face by flickering firelight. He looked humorless, severe, fanatical. I would not want to be married to him, either.

Though I would choose him over the big brute with the greasy skin.

If I was allowed to choose.

I pushed away my anxiety and moved on.

At the very last tent pitched just inside the palace gate, I saw a man practicing magic.

It was difficult at first to get a glimpse of him, because he had drawn a small crowd of onlookers who ringed him about, murmuring astonishment. I found a discarded trunk with a broken lock and stood on it to get a better view. And then I, too, was gasping with delight at the show unfolding before me.

A slim, handsome young man stood in a circle of spectators, his face and body lit by the curiously brilliant flames of a low fire. But no—it was not an ordinary fire; it was a blaze made of jagged blocks of golden quartz, each tendril of flame tapered to a point, the whole thing glowing like a harvest moon. While we watched, he twisted his outstretched hands, and the colors within surged to red and hunkered down to purple. He snapped his fingers and the light disappeared completely—and then suddenly sprang back to life, crackling and leaping like an ordinary little fire.

“How’d you do that?” someone asked in a stupefied voice, speaking for all of us.

“Magic,” said the young man, and then he laughed.

He was plainly visible in the light from the natural fire, and he was adorable. His shoulder-length blond hair had a rogue curl; his face wore a rascal’s smile. The mischievous look was counteracted somewhat by deep-set eyes, a generous mouth, and a patrician nose. His hands were elegant and expressive; he reached for the sky and I swear every person in the audience looked up to see what he might pluck from the air. A bird, as it happened, squawking and indignant, who shook itself and leapt from his palm to wing back into the night. He laughed to see it go, his expression purely joyous.

“Are your tricks real or just illusions?” someone demanded.

“What makes you think illusions are not real?” he replied. He picked up a block of rough firewood and squeezed it in his hands; it lengthened and changed colors and leafed out between his fingers, becoming a switch of live greenery covered with white flowers. Just as I had convinced myself that this was a mere visual trick, he snapped off one of the blossoms and presented it to a woman in the audience, a little older and a little less debased than the one I had seen on the big fellow’s lap. She cooed and tucked the bloom into the front of her bodice, then shared a kiss with a man who had his arm around her waist.

“What else can you do?” someone called out.

“What would you like to see me do?”

“Can you change coppers to gold coins?” another man spoke up.

The blond man laughed. “I’ve found that it never pays to tinker with the king’s coin,” he said. “So the answer is no.”

“Can you turn water into ale?”

“Make a woman love you?”

“Heal a broken limb?”

“Change a person’s face?”

It was this last request that interested him. “Whose face? Your own? Come closer and let me look at you.”

A young man broke free of the shadows and stepped into the circle of firelight. He was of medium height, a little heavyset, with an unfortunate collection of features. Droopy eyes under thick brows, a nose both large and broad, huge ears, bad teeth, the whole covered with a pocked and scarred layer of skin. “I wouldn’t ask to be made a handsome man,” the youth said in a quiet voice, “just better-looking.”

The magician studied him. “I believe I can improve you without making you unrecognizable to your friends.”

Again the crowd murmured, a little bit awed, a little bit unnerved. I had to admit my own emotions were much the same. “How long would such a magic last?” the boy asked.

The blond man shrugged. “Forever. It will be as if your face was resculpted, down to the blood and bone.”