Laurell Hamilton - Never After

The homely boy took a deep breath. “Then change me, if you will.”

Someone behind him called out, “Calroy, you fool, you didn’t ask him for his fee first!”

The magician laughed again. “There’s no fee. I’ll do it for the challenge alone. Hold still now.” And Calroy closed his eyes and turned motionless as a tree stump. The blond man frowned in concentration and laid his hands over Calroy’s jaws, his eyes, his unruly hair. Everyone in the audience, myself included, was leaning forward to watch, but Calroy’s back was to most of us and there was very little to see. Another flutter of his fingers and then the magician stepped back.

“Don’t turn around yet,” he ordered. “My sister will hand you a mirror. If you don’t like what you see, I’ll change you back.”

Calroy stood obediently passive, while a woman sitting at the back edge of the circle came to her feet. Sister? I thought with some derision, remembering my walk through camp. But this one looked enough like the magician to make the blood tie plausible. By firelight, her hair was redder, thicker, and without that springy curl. But the curve of her mouth and the line of her profile matched his own, and her smile looked just as playful. In her hand was a small mirror, which she angled for Calroy’s view.

He bent forward, and then he gasped, his hands flying up to touch his face. “Show us!” someone from the audience demanded, and Calroy pivoted on one foot.

There was first silence and then a murmur that was half admiration and half fear. For Calroy stood before us definitely altered and yet still clearly himself. The heavy brow had been shoved back, the outsize eyes reshaped. The nose was much refined, and the mouth—stretched wide in a smile—showed even teeth without a hint of decay. He certainly wasn’t a man who would turn the girls’ heads, but neither would he draw the mockery of young boys. He was a little better than ordinary, with a look of happiness that gave him extra appeal.

“Well?” asked the magician. “Are you satisfied?”

“More than satisfied. Thank you—thank you—I do have a few coins with me, not nearly enough to pay for something like this—”

The magician waved a dismissive hand. “The work of a few moments. I was glad to do it. All I would ask is that if you have the chance to do an easy kindness for someone else, you take that chance.”

“And this will be my face from now on? For the rest of my life?”

“Forever,” the magician confirmed.

“I must go show my brother,” Calroy exclaimed, and dove through the crowd and disappeared.

The others drew back to let him pass, and then turned to one another to express their amazement at what they had just witnessed. I had jumped off my trunk, ready to sneak away, but I got caught in the general disorganized movement of the crowd. A few murmured apologies, a few bodies gently pushed aside, and I suddenly found myself a few feet from the magician and his sister. I could not see them through the press of bodies, but I recognized his voice and guessed at hers.

“That was the most fun magic has brought me for a while,” he said in a jaunty tone.

Her voice was a lilting alto. “I suppose you’re hoping Princess Olivia will hear of your kind deed and favor your suit?”

He laughed. “Yes, or her father. Why should they not learn that I am gifted and generous? Who would not want such a man for a husband?”

“I love you, Darius, but you would make a very bad husband. And an even worse king. I don’t know why you’re even in this competition.”

“Have you seen her, Dannette? She’s beautiful. That hair! That skin!”

“They say she has a temper. And a strong will and a stubborn heart.”

Eavesdropping in the dark, I couldn’t help but nod. All true. I wondered which servants or local lords had provided Dannette’s information.

He laughed at her. “She sounds delightful.”

“So you’re really going to try to win her hand?”

“I really am.”

I managed to choke back my squeal of excitement. At last! A man I could love, and a man who was already halfway enamored of me ! A handsome, charming, talented man, blessed with a kind heart and a cheerful manner! How could he have been better? I was tempted to step forward and introduce myself, but the group of spectators that had absorbed me in the dark now began to shred apart, and I decided it was wiser to move on. My head was humming with elation; my heart was pattering with glee. After all, my father’s competition to find my husband was turning out very well indeed.

I was thinking so blissfully about Darius that I was careless when I returned to the palace, with the result that I ran into Harwin within a minute of slipping in through a side door.

“There you are,” he said in his measured voice, the syllables heavy with disapproval. “I should have guessed. Wandering through the contestants’ camp, I suppose, picking out your favorites.”

I gave a guilty start upon first hearing his voice, and for a moment I looked up at him like a small child waiting for a scold she knows she deserves. Unlike me, Harwin was properly dressed in formal evening clothes. The dull brown color of his jacket did not do much to lighten either his expression or his olive skin tones, though the garment was finely made and nicely showed off the width of his shoulders. I remembered that he had handily won his events in the joust. I was not used to thinking of him as being any kind of athlete, but he was big enough, and apparently dexterous enough, to handle himself with competence on the battlefield.

Then my natural insouciance reasserted itself. I tossed back my hair and dropped my hands instead of tightly clutching the cloak as if I wanted to hide inside it. “And what if I was?” I said breezily. “If I’m going to marry the man who wins my father’s competition, shouldn’t I learn about all of the contestants?”

“If that is really how you plan to choose a bridegroom, I will win the three competitions,” he said.

His cool, blockish, unimaginative certainty inspired me with sudden rage, though I tried to tamp it down. “I have already said I will not marry you,” I replied. “You have already been eliminated from the lists.”

“Do you reserve the right to refuse any other contestant who might be successful?” he said with a little heat. “That clause was not in the proclamation that I heard.”

I leaned forward, still angry. “I will never marry a man that I cannot stand,” I said. “No matter how he is presented to me or what obstacles he has overcome.”

Harwin’s face smoothed out; almost, I would have said, he was relieved. “I told your father this competition was ill-advised,” he said. “I told him he could not possibly predict what kinds of rogues and ruffians might show up on his doorstep, prepared to go to any length to win a spectacular prize. There are plenty of villains who can wield a sword and solve a puzzle. Those are no criteria for deciding who will wed your daughter—and who will rule the kingdom after you.” He gave me one long, sober inspection. “I do believe you have the courage to refuse any man who is not worthy of you.”

I supposed that was a compliment in its heavy-handed way. “I wouldn’t think my father plans to hold the wedding ceremony the very day the competition ends,” I said. “No doubt I will get to know my prospective bridegroom during our engagement period. I’m not afraid of scandal—I’ll break off the betrothal if I find he’s not the man he seemed.”

Harwin’s eyes took on a sudden keenness. “Yes, that is a most excellent idea,” he said. “Tell your father there must be an engagement long enough to enable you to assess the worth of your victorious suitor.”