Page 35 of Seducing the Sorcerer
“Funny I never twigged, ain’t it? All them facts I learned but I still couldn’t figure that out. Remember Aurelia’s bonnet? That funny wicker thing as looked like a bird’s nest? Set a fashion, it did, on Mandillo. All the girls wanted one.”
“It was the same here. How old-fashioned they seem now.”
“Aye. Well. It’s thirty years since.”
“Citizens’ Guide to Our Political System,” Morgrim said. “Remember that one?”
“Aye, I read it. You too? Really?”
“Madam Malovelent gave me a copy. It was the first thing she did. I knew her, you know. She was very ill, but she saw me as much as she could before the end. She told me to memorise that book.”
“And did you?”
Morgrim’s eyes lost focus. He recited: “‘Our system of government is uniquely just because we have representation from all three tiers of society: the aristocracy, the clergy and the people. Each tier has ten votes in parliament, with the monarch retaining the casting vote in the event of a tie. In this way, all important issues are decided fairly with representation from all. Our neighbours’ monarchs rule by royal decree alone, which is neither fair nor equitable, and which means their decrees are unlawful and unshriven by our standards.’”
“Ah, bit different now, eh?” Fenn said. “Ain’t three tiers no more. There’s the fixers’ votes now. And all the extra people’s votes. A lot fairer now, ain’t it? Though I thought it was fair enough back then. Funny, how things change.”
“We’ve done what we can.”
Fenn noted the “we” and nodded, impressed. He realised, with a small shock, that he was enjoying himself. He caught Morgrim’s eye and it felt as if something was passing between them. Not a come on, but some kinship; an acknowledgement of shared experience.
Fenn tried to imagine Morgrim as a boy of thirteen, living in this very tower. Fenn would have been sixteen, with a cramped room above the stables on Mandillo. How strange to think of two such different boys, with such different paths ahead of them in life, reading the same book and feeling the same dawning understanding of the wider world. What would they have thought of each other, back then, if they had met? At sixteen Fenn had mostly been interested in horses and sex. He’d probably have thought of Morgrim as a child and barely noticed him.
It was striking, somehow, to think of Morgrim reading a Citizens’ Guide. Fenn had never considered how people like Morgrim came by the knowledge with which to govern. If he’d thought about it at all, he’d imagined they were somehow born to the knowledge, or that they absorbed it without effort the way a plant draws up rainwater. To think of Morgrim as ignorant as Fenn himself had once been, reading a book to learn more; it was an oddly humbling idea.
“Can’t have been easy, taking all this on at thirteen,” Fenn said.
Morgrim made a graceful noncommittal gesture somewhere between a shrug and a smile and a bow. It looked courtly and well-rehearsed and it felt as if a door was being closed gently but firmly in Fenn’s face. Getting onto personal ground again. Fenn changed the subject back.
“And you reckon there’s a book or two about worple horses in this library, eh?”
“I can’t promise that, I’m afraid. I’m not sure anyone’s written one. But the tower library holds the books of every sorcerer who’s lived here. And their letters and ledgers and spell books and decrees and other documents. There must be mention of worple horses in all of that. The palace had several of them once. It was likely the court sorcerer of the day who made them. I feel sure you won’t hunt in vain.”
“I see.” Fenn’s heart sank and he took a big mouthful of spiced fish by way of consolation. He could read quite well, but the idea of spending days at it seemed a wearisome task when there were horses just across the courtyard. “You can’t magic the right book out for me, then?”
“Alas, no. But I can suggest likely places to start searching. I can help you look.”
“That’s right kind.”
It came out a bit gruff. Truth was, he felt shy about the offer. It was one thing to ride with the sorcerer, or eat dinner with him, because surely Morgrim would be doing those things anyway, whether Fenn was here or not. But to have Morgrim helping with a job that didn’t involve him—
“Tell you what,” Fenn said, raising his glass. “Let’s have a toast. You been right decent, giving me a place to stay and offering to help me and that. So, I’d like to drink your health.”
They touched glasses and Morgrim smiled and met Fenn’s gaze as he drank and suddenly Fenn was sweating and his pulse was loud in his ears. He’d meant the toast as friendly but now it felt as if he’d done something daringly intimate: the two of them, sitting here alone, clinking glasses like lovers.
Because there was something about the way Morgrim looked at him, some tension, some undercurrent, some unspoken recognition. Fenn knew it. He’d known it since this morning. Morgrim might have designs on this Queen Aramella, but he likely fancied blokes as well, and he wasn’t married yet.
It was difficult to think straight. It was like this morning out riding, only now it couldn’t be the magic of that enchanted meadow giving him ideas out of turn. Morgrim might well have stolen the rain clouds and be planning any number of reprehensible deeds involving queens and thrones, but when Fenn was with him it was all too easy to forget those things. Because in the flesh, Morgrim seemed a bloke and a half. He was good company. Not stuck up. And not that frightening. In fact, there was something indefinably sad about the fellow that made Fenn long to cheer him up. Look at the way Morgrim was having dinner, not with any of the hundreds of fancy court folk just over the way, but with Fenn, his guest, a nobody from the street.
Also, Morgrim set the table nice.
And looked as if he’d fuck like a polecat.
Fenn had a bright vision of pushing Morgrim down over the table and having him right there, Morgrim’s pretty hands scrabbling for purchase on the dark wood, arse red in the firelight, cock hard in Fenn’s grip, helpless against Fenn’s thrusts.
Flustered, Fenn put his glass down harder than he’d intended and some slopped out onto his fingers and the tabletop. He wiped his hand on his trousers and only then remembered the snowy napkin that was meant for the purpose.
What an oaf he must look. Not what Morgrim would be used to. But it was too late now. And anyway, Fenn was what he was. If he tried to ape court manners then he’d really look a ninny. He took another forkful of food and chewed it, pretending to concentrate on the meal. Eventually, he risked a glance at Morgrim. The sorcerer was watching him steadily over the top of his wine glass.
