FIC: The One About Dragons 3/?
FIRST: MOST EXCITING THING EVAR. This story now has fanart! Go look, marvel at the serious hotness of Kurt in black leather, tell eira-cannaid how awesome she is. :D :D :D
Title: The One About Dragons
Rating: PG-13, this part; eventually, NC-17
Warning: DUBCON AND CHILD ABUSE. (Um. Not in the same place.) The dubcon will likely be mild, but the abuse will be very present, and ongoing for at least the first few chapters. Later chapters will also (likely) include graphic violence.
IN THIS CHAPTER: All largely implied and off-screen; some reference to violent homophobia
Disclaimer: Glee belongs to Ryan Murphy and Fox. I own nothing.
Summary: Blaine's always been told that the dragon you know is safer than the dragon you don't.
In this chapter: In which one particular dragon zigs instead of zags
Notes: A little longer than a week this time, apologies! Next chapter should be next Thursday or Friday, but there is a reason I always feel bad about promising things, guys :(
Thanks as always to crown_of_weeds, who tells me she is not a beta, but is still the best story-support I could ask for.
On the third day of the barbarian envoy’s presence on the parade ground of Castle Lima, and Blaine’s second full day with Kurt, he showed up at the barbarian encampment even earlier than the day before, belt pouch heavy with as much gold as Blaine could quickly and safely gather up. Not all of it, not the little stockpile he kept in the hollow between his wardrobe and the floor. He almost never spent out of that. He didn’t even know what it was for, really. It was just...in case.
“So,” he said when Kurt appeared, this time summoned by a dark-haired shieldmaiden with a truly terrifying glare, while Blaine waited under the watchful eye of a totally silent man with neatly-trimmed facial hair and a very large broadsword. “Did you have any idea what you wanted to see today?” Blaine is hoping, but who knows how Kurt will turn, here.
“Nothing in particular,” Kurt said. “Did you have suggestions?”
Blaine patted his belt pouch, and said, “Well, it’s a market day, so I thought we might go down and look around the town. If you’re interested?”
Something in Kurt’s eyes sharpened acquisitively. “You should wait right here for just five minutes,” he said. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
So Blaine waited, itching under the silent barbarian’s gaze, while the minutes ticked by. It didn’t really take all that very long before Kurt reappeared, plump leather satchel slung over one shoulder.
“Trade goods,” he explained to Blaine’s glance. “Or cooking ingredients, if I can’t get a decent price for them. Do you know how much Xi Tsdaerb spices are going for right now?”
“No, hey, you’re a guest of the crown,” Blaine said. “Let me take care of whatever you want.”
“And if I want to get a decent price for my trade goods?” Kurt countered.
“Then...we’ll find a spice merchant,” Blaine allowed. “Shall we?” The quiet barbarian’s stare was starting to get unnerving.
Castle Lima sat atop a high ridge at the northeastern edge of the city of Westerville, straddling the Naebamil River. To the west, the Naebamil flowed out through Koobecaf, and eventually, to sea; to the east, two days’ ride would put you well out of the civilized parts of Ander into the hills. Most of the good farm country was off to the south, tucked between much smaller hills than Blaine supposed Kurt was used to, little towns kept in valleys and dales just trying to go about their business as best as they could. Of course, to the south was also Sylvestra.
Castle Lima, with all its grounds and orchards, was near the size of a small city itself, and its battlements didn’t intersect with the walls of Westerville at all. There was no way to get Kurt out of the palace grounds and into the city without at least taking him near some of the walls, but Blaine’s father had been the one to suggest it. Maybe, if they stuck to the same grand north gate that the barbarians had arrived by, and he distracted Kurt on their way descending into town, it would be all right.
So Blaine started talking the moment they left the parade ground for the path towards the north gate, about anything he could think of: the history and founding of Westerville, the ten generations of kings who’d called Castle Lima home, the principle imports and exports of Ander that traveled the River Naebamil between the hills and the sea. Kurt seemed to be listening, an astonishing relief; Blaine could usually distract any one or two of the lordlings his own age for as much as an hour at a time, but it never worked on his father.
They followed the long string of pesants and trade wagons through the eastern gates of Westerville and down the wide main avenue to market square. Traders and peddlers had been set up there, Blaine knew, since even before dawn--dozens upon dozens of them, from sturdy wood-built things bolted into the dirt ground and even brick-and-mortar shops around the edges of the square, from flimsy tents and farmers selling produce right off the back of their carts. It reeked of horses, people, garlic and baked things and a dozen different stalls’ unidentified hotpots. It clanged and clattered so loud, they could hear it from three blocks away.
Blaine didn’t make it to market day often--most of the little allowance he drew from the palace treasury either went to the royal tailor to keep himself fitting with the proper Appearances or into the cache beneath his wardrobe--but it had grown familiar enough, when he did. There was something sort of comforting about being able to lose himself in so much of a crowd.
Blaine had taken three steps off Main Avenue into the market plaza before he realized Kurt wasn’t next to him any more. He stopped, already berating himself--of course, Kurt was only a barbarian, they couldn’t possibly have anything like this out on the eastern plains, maybe it was too much to take in--and turned to find Kurt standing on the curb, arms folded, sweeping an incredibly calculating gaze over the entire marketplace.
“How much of this will still be here tomorrow?” Kurt asked.
“Um...” Blaine glanced back over his shoulder, thinking. “About a third of it? Anything not nailed down leaves at the end of market day.”
“Well,” Kurt said, and adjusted the strap of his satchel on his shoulder. A wary, nervous sort of feeling began building in the pit of Blaine’s stomach as Kurt stepped briskly forward towards the throng. “I guess we’d better get started.”
Kurt was beginning to almost enjoy Ander. It was no rich and golden Xi Tsdaerb, or the halls of the crafter guilds of Yste, and every place was a far cry from the glitz and endless market miles of the capitol of Kroywen, which Kurt had only ever seen once. It had its own charm, though, inasmuch as a nation of people who seemed to think Kurt was there to make off with their babies and eat them for supper could be charming. Well. He said charm. He meant, relatively inexpensive silk and lapidary imports from the west.
And there was Blaine, of course. Kurt had every intention this morning of loading Blaine up with as many purchases as he cared to make, but royalty or not he took it with so much humility and politeness that Kurt was feeling bad about it by lunchtime. Blaine told ridiculous stories, and glanced away when Kurt glanced over, and was really, truly, terrible with a sword. Kurt didn’t know much about how outlander royalty was supposed to be raised, but he’d never have expected a prince like Blaine.
Kurt didn’t change before dinner, this time. He wanted to take a needle and tailor in his new jacket before wearing it out in public, and besides, there was no need to give Santana any more ammunition than she already had.
Prince Blaine and his brother sat at the head table, to the right of the King and Queen of Ander, flanked by some nameless knights or nobles that Kurt recognized from his one afternoon in the negotiations. Burt sat to the king’s left, and beyond him, all nine of the Wise Warriors managed to squeeze into a space that was never meant to seat more than six. Kurt had used that as an excuse the very first night to escape to the lower table, and it allowed him to slip in now and find a seat between Quinn and the floppy-haired theorbo player’s chapped-lipped friend. He was starving. They’d stopped for lunch, this time, since Blaine had insisted Kurt try some crunchy, fried, vegetable-filled roll made by some merchant from the Salonga Islands, but that had been seven or eight hours ago. Shopping was hungry work.
Then Santana elbowed one of the other members of the honor guard out of the way and slid into the chair directly across from him. Kurt sighed.
“You can cut the act,” she said. “I know.”
“Know what?” Kurt asked, with a single arched eyebrow. Servants were starting to come around with big carafes of wine; he was going to need it, to deal with Santana.
“That you’re boning him,” Santana said. “Or if you haven’t yet, you’re going to be.”
“What it must be like, in that delirium haze of a world inside your head,” Kurt said pleasantly, and snagged the wine jug right out of the grasp of whoever was reaching for it first. Kurt could take most of the rest of the honor guard in a duel, and besides that, he was the one sitting across from Santana. He needed it more.
“Santana,” Quinn said, with her tightest smile. “If the Anderians hear you saying something like that--”
“Relax, they’re off talking about their goats and their farms and whatever.” Santana shut up when the next servant came by, though, with a platter of hot, crusty bread, another behind him with a tureen of fresh butter. Outlanders did always have the best butter.
Quinn waited, smile fixed on her face, until the servants were off at the next table, then hissed, “If you sabotage this alliance by talking like that about their prince--”
“This alliance that we don’t even want, you mean?” Santana asked. “You know the only reason we’re here is because Chief Burt wants to see how desperate the king is. Anyway, I’d be surprised if half the court doesn’t know already. I mean, yeah, they’re outlanders, but they’ve got eyes in their heads.”
“I haven’t seen any signs that Prince Blaine is interested in men at all,” Kurt said. Admittedly, it wasn’t a skill he’d had to test much in the past several years. Usually he discovered that someone preferred other men by finding himself serenaded, gifted with small trinkets, or challenged to a duel for his hand in marriage. It rather took the guesswork out of things.
“Yeah, because he’s still playing that ridiculous stripling game where he looks at anything else in the room whenever you look at him,” Santana scoffed. “Seriously, follow his line of sight tomorrow. He’s about as interested in women as Quinn is.”
Kurt rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help but glance up towards the head table, away to his left. He caught just the edge of movement from the far end of the table, as Blaine ducked his head down to his soup.
Kurt turned back to his plate, but he kept the corner of one eye trained on the prince all night.
On the fourth day of the barbarian envoy’s presence in Castle Lima, Kurt had shouldered his pack and gone out to the north end of the parade ground to wait before Blaine had even shown up. He’d laid out a map of the market for his father last night, mostly as a tool in describing just what sort of merchants and wares Ander appeared to be drawing and why the Seventeen Tribes should care, but there was nothing wrong in making a little use of the knowledge himself. He’d left all the native Westervillian traders for this morning.
Ander was in trouble. Kurt wondered if Prince Blaine knew just how clearly he’d demonstrated that yesterday. Probably not; Blaine had no guile whatsoever, and Kurt was an expert in playing the empty-headed chief’s son, or the awestruck barbarian gone a little mad with greed while shopping.
There were a dozen different signs, though, that it was all going wrong for the king of Ander. Everybody Kurt saw was reasonably well-fed, maybe even a little better than the staff he’d seen around the palace--but eight out of ten merchants selling chickens or fresh spring produce or grain came straight from Koobecaf’s storied endless villages and farms. There was good metalwork all over, the water pumps in the street, the blades at people’s waists, but all of it either worn rusty with age or forged with a distinctly Western flair. Everywhere Kurt looked, some frustrated merchant from the Salonga Islands was giving in to prices much lower than Kurt had seen for similar goods anywhere else. He didn’t know quite what kind of trade agreements were still in place there, but Blaine had said himself that most of the merchants were there because his mother was Salongan. That was one marriage arrangement that had apparently been keeping Ander on its feet for years.
No wonder Sylvestra had picked now to declare war. Ander had the manpower to field their own army, but he’d asked two different Koobecaf merchants about buying on credit yesterday and been laughed right out of their stalls. Unless the king had vast hidden stockpiles of gold somewhere, he was going to be buying this whole war on credit, and Kurt for one didn’t know how pleased he felt about being asked to supply it.
“Good morning,” Blaine said, and Kurt smiled. All right, so he had three goals today: find a really good bolt of silk to make Carole that dress he’d promised her, find out if the Anderians had some booming production industry of their own that he’d seen no sign of yesterday, and decide once and for all whether Santana had a point or he should be telling her where to shove it. A full day’s work.
“Shall we?” Kurt asked, and gestured for Blaine to lead the way.
Blaine was interesting. He wasn’t arrogant, and of all the things Kurt would expect from an outlander prince, he’d never predict that. He laughed at Kurt’s jokes. At first, Kurt had assumed he made Blaine nervous, but Blaine was just as precise and controlled around everyone they’d met yesterday. He was just...Blaine, and maybe Kurt would make a point of watching him a little more circumspectly, today.
They didn’t even pretend for longer than it took to get through the gates into Westerville that Blaine would be in charge of their route today; Kurt pointed south down Green Lane, and Blaine followed immediately. Convoluted castle hallways were one thing, but plan a route through a crowded marketplace? Kurt had got this.
Blaine sank into his seat at the tavern gratefully. He’d begun to worry that Kurt was going to keep going all day again without a stop. At least it was a little less crowded around the shops today, although Blaine had noticed yesterday that the presence of a fully-armed hills barbarian all in leather tended to earn one quite a bit more elbow room than was quite usual at the weekly market.
Blaine had learned a lot about Kurt over the past two days. He could be utterly charming when he wanted something, as dozens of merchants and shopkeepers could attest. On the other hand, twice people had tried to elbow in ahead of him at stalls or shops: richly dressed, important people, one of them Blaine knew from court as the son of a noble. Kurt hadn’t hesitated to lay his hand on the hilt of one of his swords as he turned, drawing himself up to his full height, and sneered with the promise of a much more painful price were the man not to step back out of the way. Moments later, he’d been back to chatting to the stallkeeper, as companionably as a sparrow, any sign of danger forgotten.
None of it could be trusted, then, though Blaine didn’t know what else he’d expect from a barbarian. At least with his father, Blaine knew when the signs were building; it seemed the whole castle grew tense and charged according to the king’s mood, like a strike of lightning. Kurt seemed to flicker between the calm and the deadly without more than a moment’s warning. Blaine would stay on his toes.
The shopping was interesting, at least. Kurt had an eye for style, and pretty things, even though Blaine couldn’t always see what his purpose was in talking to one trader or another. He’d spent more money yesterday than Blaine could have hoped to put together, and he could only be grateful that Kurt hadn’t taken him up on his offer to let the crown foot the bill, or they’d have run out inside of the first hour. Blaine had always been able to appreciate the fashion and fine clothing of the courtiers, though he knew better than to look too closely at any one person. Wandering around the market next to somebody with exotic tastes and a huge budget had almost been something like a treat.
But it had been a day and a half filled with more walking than Blaine usually did in a week, and his boots had begun pinching like something unholy, and breakfast had been a single withered orange saved from last night’s dessert table. So when Kurt had started expressing a desire for a mug of something cold and a bowl of something hot to go with it, Blaine had steered him into the Greengrass Tavern without a second’s thought.
It might have been a better plan, Blaine was realizing now, if he’d thought about just how large a mug of ‘something cold’ Kurt would be expecting him to drink. Blaine didn’t hold his alcohol well. He particularly didn’t hold it well on an empty stomach, but Kurt had taken one look at the greasy skin on the stewpot hanging over the tavern hearth, flashed a little gold, and demanded the tavernkeeper “go roast something”. So, ale it was.
“You know,” Kurt said, leaning back comfortably in his chair, “when we’re waiting for something like this in the hills, we have a game we like to play.”
“Oh, really?” Blaine asked, pleased to find he didn’t sound nervous at all. “What’s that?”
“It’s simple,” said Kurt. “We look around the room, and I say something like, I bet the next person to walk in the tavern door will be a man by himself, and if I’m right, you drink.”
“Oh,” Blaine said doubtfully. “All right.”
“Will you look at that,” Kurt said, and Blaine glanced over his shoulder towards the door. “A pair of men. My drink after all.” He sipped from his ale with a Sphinx-like smile, never once taking his eyes away from Blaine.
Kurt, Blaine found himself thinking most of an hour later, just a little blearily, was really good at that game.
“I would bet,” Kurt said, leaning over the picked-clean remains of a plate of chicken, “that the barmaid over there with the enormous bosoms would take off her skirt for you in an instant if she knew you were the prince of Ander.”
Blaine knew he was supposed to look, you were always supposed to look, so he did, a fleeting glance. The girl was tall, with brown hair and freckles, and Kurt was right, a man could lose a hand down that cleavage if he wasn’t careful. He took a quick, deep gulp from his pint.
“Forfeiting?” Kurt asked.
“She’s not my type,” Blaine said, and hoped that would be the end of it. He had a whole prepared monologue, he knew, for when the lordlings at court started goading him to say what his type really was, but most of them really only cared to make sure Blaine wasn’t going to try to go after their girls. He wasn’t entirely sure he was clearheaded enough to remember it right now.
“Hmm,” Kurt said instead of pressing, and Blaine let himself relax for just a moment. “All right, do you see that man over at the dartboard?”
The man in question was about their age, perhaps a year or two older, and a courier of some kind; Blaine could see his bag tossed over a chair at such an angle that he couldn’t, quite, make out the insignia. His hair was long, and the color of sawdust. He was right in Blaine’s line of sight, though Blaine had been avoiding looking at him since the first time he’d bent down to pick up a dropped dart, twenty minutes ago. He was wearing very tight pants.
“I would bet,” said Kurt, “that he’d be out of those pants almost as quickly as the barmaid, if the prince of Ander told him to.”
It took Blaine a few moments, longer than it should have, really, to even process what Kurt was implying. By the time he figured it out, it was too late to leap up and run from the tavern, never stopping for breath until he reached the Salongas. Instead, Blaine went very, very still.
“I’ll do anything you ask,” he said, quietly, looking down at his hands. “Please.”
If he betrayed the kingdom over this, his father would kill him. Blaine had no doubt in his mind about that. Of course, if Kurt let his secret out, the executioner would kill him anyway.
“Please what?” Kurt asked, and Blaine took a slow, ragged breath. All right. Kurt wanted him to beg. He knew how to do that.
“Please spare my life,” he said, keeping his tone as even as possible, focusing intently on his hands. “Please let me live. I know you have no reason to bother, but you stand nothing to gain with my death, and I will give you anything in my power if you keep my secret. Please.” If Blaine was very lucky, it might even work.
“Blaine...” Kurt began, and Blaine concentrated on keeping his head respectfully bowed instead of looking up. “I don’t want to see you killed,” and Blaine finds that he can breathe again, just a little more easily.
“You’re the king’s son,” Kurt said, and Blaine stiffened, because there it was, the price, but Kurt only continued, “They wouldn’t have you executed.”
“Hmm.” Blaine smiled tightly. “Nobody is above the law,” he said. He’d heard it from his father often enough. “Not even me.” The bitterness in his voice shocked him. Blaine must be drunk. Usually he would never allow himself to sound like that.
“Tina was right,” Kurt said musingly. “Ander is full of barbarians.”
Blaine’s head was swimming, and he’d apparently begun missing logical connections somehow; he looked up, finally, in confusion. “There’s barely more than a score of you,” he said.
Kurt’s chair scraped loudly across the stone floor as he pushed himself back from the table. “Come on,” he said. “Time to walk it off.”
Blaine spent dinner that night staring into his plate more intently than ever before. Most of the alcohol had cleared, leaving him with a sour stomach and a persistent ache in his head that he didn’t think he could chalk up entirely to the ale. He toyed with the food on his plate, and wished he dared skip dinner with the barbarian envoy in the castle to ask awkward questions about his absence.
He only glanced up at Kurt twice, over the course of the meal: Kurt, who was as exotic as a wyvern and just as deadly, who knew as much about fabric weave as he did about knives, who was breathtakingly beautiful and knew, now, that Blaine must think so.
Why was it only the really dangerous ones who saw through Blaine so easily? Or was he just fooling himself, did the whole castle know, and Kurt and his father had been the only ones to dare mention it?
(He’d be dead already, though, even his father couldn’t stop that, he’d been saying so for more than ten years. The only way Blaine had ever known that he was hiding well enough was that they hadn’t dragged him out to the block yet. And they hadn’t, even now, so either the really dangerous dragons in his life simply had sorcerous powers such that Kurt could tell in less than three days, or people had realized, they must have realized, and yet they never...he never....
It must be that Kurt and his father shared mystical powers. That was the only real explanation.)
On the fifth day of the barbarian envoy’s stay, Kurt and Blaine couldn’t go down into the city at all, for it poured rain all day long.
Spring was blossoming up, sliding into the warmest, wettest days before Beltane, and Ander, apparently, skipped the roaring hail-and-lightning-filled storms of the southern hills in favor of steady dripping downpours that turned everything to mud and gray. Kurt doubted that this particular storm would summon up flash floods or tornadoes, but he didn’t have to want to be out in it. Blaine probably didn’t, either--although after yesterday afternoon, Kurt wasn’t entirely sure Blaine wouldn’t take him on a walking tour of the royal hunting forest in a driving storm of sleet, if he asked.
Kurt didn’t like Ander. Kurt didn’t like outlanders, period, for all he’d frequent their markets and trade their wares. Would Ander execute their own prince for eyeing up an attractive stableboy? Maybe not, but even in fabled Xi Tsdaerb, land of peace and honey, Kurt got odd looks sometimes. The people of Finn and Carole’s native tri-river area preferred exile. The stories of the last few meagre bands roving the shattered ruins of Ecapsym spoke of shunning, or stoning; some of the little coastal towns around the sea of Oiho practiced worse.
Kurt wasn’t above a little life-threatening blackmail, when the occasion called for it, but he wanted nothing to do with this. It wasn’t right, and if the Wise Warriors or the Council ever found out that he had something like this on the King of Ander’s son and refused to use it, well. They could take it up with Kurt in single combat, if they really wanted to.
If Kurt didn’t meet him along the way, Blaine would probably wander into camp and stand, dripping, until one of the honor guard dared the rain in a run for the privy. Very well, then. Kurt had a much better memory for directions than Blaine probably realized. He knew which doorway Blaine usually came out of on his way.
So it was that, twenty minutes later, hurrying down the corridor towards the southwest castle door, Blaine was stopped in his tracks by the sight of Kurt leaning against one stone wall, carefully fixing his slightly-damp hair by the reflection on his knifeblade.
“For the record,” Kurt said, eyes fixed on the reflection of one particularly unruly hair he was attempting to tease into place, “I still think castles are some sadist’s idea of a deathtrap for the unwwary, but it’s miserable out there, so I suppose we’d better stay inside today.” There; perfect. He flicked the dagger around and slid it cleanly into its sheath, then finally looked over at Blaine. “So where to?”
“Um.” Blaine looked taken more than a little aback, licking his bottom lip nervously and darting a little glance back down the hall whence he came. “I think that’s up to you!” he said, with some forced cheer.
“Hmmm,” said Kurt. “I have no particular plans. Show me...” He really did just need to kill a day, before he could find some way to get Blaine to take him by the barracks, and he’d like to apologize for yesterday, more or less. “Show me your favorite place in the castle,” he said. “The one where you spend all your time.”
“Okay,” said Blaine. “Okay, the library it is.”
The royal library of Castle Lima was genuinely impressive, Kurt had to admit. The ceiling soard up into a beautifully-painted dome, blue and gold with some...king, or hero, or holy man, or something, frescoed underneath it, and the bookshelves all around rose as high as three tall men standing on each other’s shoulders. There were a few small study tables by the windows, and an ingenious sort of ladder on wheels that Kurt wouldn’t be getting on for any amount of money, and a pervasive, heavy scent of dry rot and dust. Kurt wasn’t much of a reader, but he supposed he could understand the attraction of this place, for someone who was.
“It’s beautiful,” he said honestly, wandering slowly and quietly towards the aisles of shelves. There were a handful of scholars seated at the tables to the right, pens and inks and vellum at the ready, restoring old manuscripts or illuminating new ones, Kurt couldn’t quite tell. Better to stay out of their way.
Kurt reached up to trail curious fingers over the worn leather bindings of the books they passed, and behind him, Blaine made a small noise. “Oh,” he said. “That’s right, I didn’t even think. Can you read?”
Kurt smiled. “My father was the blacksmith before he became a chief,” he said. “He taught me.”
All tribe blacksmiths could read. It was a rule, Kurt thought, written somewhere, so they could haggle with outlanders without getting cheated and send each other written messages about things that any other tribe member could never understand, and also because the blacksmith is always trusted and wise and knows things that others do not. Burt had been good at that last part, though Kurt could only barely remember it.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to--”
“It’s fine, Blaine,” Kurt said, glancing over his shoulder. “Most of the tribe can’t. Though some of them will make up some impressive stories if you ask them to.” Santana, particularly, knew just enough to be really convincing. Kurt was pretty sure Brittany was still the only person who could tell every time how much she was lying.
“Still,” said Blaine. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”
All right, it was time to be done with this. Kurt turned to face Blaine square on, most nonthreatening smile he could imagine on his face.
“You know if we executed people for that in the tribes, we’d lose half our best warriors,” he said. “Not to mention starting an argument between the chiefs that would take two months and a dozen rounds of single combat to resolve.”
Blaine froze like a rabbit caught in the gaze of a cat. Kurt waited patiently.
“We’re in the middle of Ander,” he said finally, warily. Kurt nodded.
“It’s still not right,” he said simply. Blaine darted a quick, nervous glance back towards the scholars at their work.
“Please,” he said. “Can we not talk about this here?”
Kurt shrugged and turned back to the spines of the books. “We don’t have to talk about it at all,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know.”
Blaine didn’t understand, couldn’t trust, couldn’t make heads nor tails out of Kurt at all, so of course, after lunch he brought Kurt to the only real sanctuary he had beyond his own room. He was beyond a real self-preservation instinct, here. All he could do was give Kurt whatever else he had, in hopes it might be enough.
Only the third and smallest music room was free, but Kurt didn’t seem to mind. He ran his fingers over the harpsichord keys in apparent fascination. Of course; you couldn’t exactly bring one of those along on a ten-day ride, could you.
“Do you play?” Kurt asked, glancing up. Blaine nodded, stepping forward on automatic.
“Does your tribe...like a lot of music?” he asked. Kurt smiled, and stepped back to let Blaine at the keys.
“Every culture I’ve ever met likes music,” he said. “We have lutes, and folding harps, and drums, but nothing like this.”
“Do you play something?” Blaine asked. Somehow, he’d never thought about it, Kurt the barbarian warrior, playing a lute. Kurt was nothing but contradictions. It was fascinating, except for how terrifying it could be. Just when Blaine thought he could predict which way Kurt would turn, he’d go another.
“No,” said Kurt. “I sing.”
Probably, Blaine figured, beautifully.
“Play something?” Kurt asked. “I don’t know much Anderian music.”
Blaine settled onto the bench in front of the harpsichord, rested his fingers on the so-familiar wooden keys. “What do you want to hear?” he asked.
“Anything,” said Kurt. Blaine’s fingers found the first key before he’d even realized he’d decided.
Kurt was staring at him, Blaine could feel the eyes on his back, but bizarrely it only began to make him feel better. Blaine understood performing. The performer could stand in the middle of a crowd and keep himself untouched. Playing for little knots of ladies and lordlings was the only sort of strange power Blaine could ever really call his own. Until the last note fell, the performer was the safest person in the room.
“This dance will never end, my love, until the end of time, for I would always be so young as we are tonight.” Why had he picked such a love song? He’d been practicing this one for weeks, on whichever instrument came to hand, until all the fingerwork and chord changes came naturally as anything. Kurt wouldn’t think anything of it. There was nothing at all to think.
“And oh, I would give you my body, my all, if you would dream of me as young lovers do this night.”
Well.
Fuck.
It was down to a hard drizzle, by dinnertime. Kurt walked through it in a daze back towards the tents. Santana, he thought dimly, was never to know about this.
Of course, it would probably be hard to keep it a secret when he kidnapped Blaine out from under his father’s nose and carried him off into the sunrise over the front of Kurt’s saddle, but Kurt wasn’t dwelling too hard on details right now. Well, no. He was dwelling much too hard on certain details, like the spark that lit in Blaine’s eyes when he started to sing, and how sure his fingers were dancing across the harpsichord keys, and how those fingers might feel in other places. ‘Hard’ was not a word to dwell on in the context of Blaine’s fingers right now, either.
So this was how it felt, to realize you’d met someone who surprised you. Someone beautiful, and funny, and quiet, who didn’t look at Kurt like he was the sun god descended but just like the most interesting person in any room. Someone who sang like he meant every single note.
And he was afraid of his own government, and he might or might not still be afraid of Kurt, and he was a terrible swordsman, and Santana was never going to let Kurt hear the end of it, but Blaine was...
Well, he was every single thing that all those suitors over all those years had ever not been. He was soft, but not like some of the callow, foolish youths who’d thought to compose Kurt ballads over the years. He was kind. He was, quite probably, everything Kurt had ever wanted.
Which was a problem, because Kurt wasn’t actually sure what you were supposed to do with someone like Blaine. He knew how courting went. You showered somebody with gifts, trinkets, still-beating hearts, composed them epic sagas if you were feeling really creative at the time. If worst came to worst, you challenged them to a one-on-one duel for their hand in marriage. Kurt was very good at winning those sorts of duels, but it didn’t really seem like the sort of thing that would impress Blaine.
And now Kurt was getting all damp in the rain, and if he didn’t fix his hair before dinner he was never going to impress Blaine, and Santana had probably smelled desperation from the other side of the camp, and really, he just wanted to pull Blaine up onto his saddle and keep him forever, and he was really going to need a plan for this.
Fortunately, he knew one person in this camp who’d done this before. Sort of. Without the ‘prince’ part, and the ‘disrupting massive political negotiations’ part, and all of the other parts making this even more complicated than it already was.
“Tina?” Kurt said, a little plaintively, ducking through her tent flap before he’d finished calling through. He’d seen both Tina and Mike naked enough times not to care any more. “How do you court an outlander?”
Title: The One About Dragons
Rating: PG-13, this part; eventually, NC-17
Warning: DUBCON AND CHILD ABUSE. (Um. Not in the same place.) The dubcon will likely be mild, but the abuse will be very present, and ongoing for at least the first few chapters. Later chapters will also (likely) include graphic violence.
IN THIS CHAPTER: All largely implied and off-screen; some reference to violent homophobia
Disclaimer: Glee belongs to Ryan Murphy and Fox. I own nothing.
Summary: Blaine's always been told that the dragon you know is safer than the dragon you don't.
In this chapter: In which one particular dragon zigs instead of zags
Notes: A little longer than a week this time, apologies! Next chapter should be next Thursday or Friday, but there is a reason I always feel bad about promising things, guys :(
Thanks as always to crown_of_weeds, who tells me she is not a beta, but is still the best story-support I could ask for.
On the third day of the barbarian envoy’s presence on the parade ground of Castle Lima, and Blaine’s second full day with Kurt, he showed up at the barbarian encampment even earlier than the day before, belt pouch heavy with as much gold as Blaine could quickly and safely gather up. Not all of it, not the little stockpile he kept in the hollow between his wardrobe and the floor. He almost never spent out of that. He didn’t even know what it was for, really. It was just...in case.
“So,” he said when Kurt appeared, this time summoned by a dark-haired shieldmaiden with a truly terrifying glare, while Blaine waited under the watchful eye of a totally silent man with neatly-trimmed facial hair and a very large broadsword. “Did you have any idea what you wanted to see today?” Blaine is hoping, but who knows how Kurt will turn, here.
“Nothing in particular,” Kurt said. “Did you have suggestions?”
Blaine patted his belt pouch, and said, “Well, it’s a market day, so I thought we might go down and look around the town. If you’re interested?”
Something in Kurt’s eyes sharpened acquisitively. “You should wait right here for just five minutes,” he said. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
So Blaine waited, itching under the silent barbarian’s gaze, while the minutes ticked by. It didn’t really take all that very long before Kurt reappeared, plump leather satchel slung over one shoulder.
“Trade goods,” he explained to Blaine’s glance. “Or cooking ingredients, if I can’t get a decent price for them. Do you know how much Xi Tsdaerb spices are going for right now?”
“No, hey, you’re a guest of the crown,” Blaine said. “Let me take care of whatever you want.”
“And if I want to get a decent price for my trade goods?” Kurt countered.
“Then...we’ll find a spice merchant,” Blaine allowed. “Shall we?” The quiet barbarian’s stare was starting to get unnerving.
Castle Lima sat atop a high ridge at the northeastern edge of the city of Westerville, straddling the Naebamil River. To the west, the Naebamil flowed out through Koobecaf, and eventually, to sea; to the east, two days’ ride would put you well out of the civilized parts of Ander into the hills. Most of the good farm country was off to the south, tucked between much smaller hills than Blaine supposed Kurt was used to, little towns kept in valleys and dales just trying to go about their business as best as they could. Of course, to the south was also Sylvestra.
Castle Lima, with all its grounds and orchards, was near the size of a small city itself, and its battlements didn’t intersect with the walls of Westerville at all. There was no way to get Kurt out of the palace grounds and into the city without at least taking him near some of the walls, but Blaine’s father had been the one to suggest it. Maybe, if they stuck to the same grand north gate that the barbarians had arrived by, and he distracted Kurt on their way descending into town, it would be all right.
So Blaine started talking the moment they left the parade ground for the path towards the north gate, about anything he could think of: the history and founding of Westerville, the ten generations of kings who’d called Castle Lima home, the principle imports and exports of Ander that traveled the River Naebamil between the hills and the sea. Kurt seemed to be listening, an astonishing relief; Blaine could usually distract any one or two of the lordlings his own age for as much as an hour at a time, but it never worked on his father.
They followed the long string of pesants and trade wagons through the eastern gates of Westerville and down the wide main avenue to market square. Traders and peddlers had been set up there, Blaine knew, since even before dawn--dozens upon dozens of them, from sturdy wood-built things bolted into the dirt ground and even brick-and-mortar shops around the edges of the square, from flimsy tents and farmers selling produce right off the back of their carts. It reeked of horses, people, garlic and baked things and a dozen different stalls’ unidentified hotpots. It clanged and clattered so loud, they could hear it from three blocks away.
Blaine didn’t make it to market day often--most of the little allowance he drew from the palace treasury either went to the royal tailor to keep himself fitting with the proper Appearances or into the cache beneath his wardrobe--but it had grown familiar enough, when he did. There was something sort of comforting about being able to lose himself in so much of a crowd.
Blaine had taken three steps off Main Avenue into the market plaza before he realized Kurt wasn’t next to him any more. He stopped, already berating himself--of course, Kurt was only a barbarian, they couldn’t possibly have anything like this out on the eastern plains, maybe it was too much to take in--and turned to find Kurt standing on the curb, arms folded, sweeping an incredibly calculating gaze over the entire marketplace.
“How much of this will still be here tomorrow?” Kurt asked.
“Um...” Blaine glanced back over his shoulder, thinking. “About a third of it? Anything not nailed down leaves at the end of market day.”
“Well,” Kurt said, and adjusted the strap of his satchel on his shoulder. A wary, nervous sort of feeling began building in the pit of Blaine’s stomach as Kurt stepped briskly forward towards the throng. “I guess we’d better get started.”
Kurt was beginning to almost enjoy Ander. It was no rich and golden Xi Tsdaerb, or the halls of the crafter guilds of Yste, and every place was a far cry from the glitz and endless market miles of the capitol of Kroywen, which Kurt had only ever seen once. It had its own charm, though, inasmuch as a nation of people who seemed to think Kurt was there to make off with their babies and eat them for supper could be charming. Well. He said charm. He meant, relatively inexpensive silk and lapidary imports from the west.
And there was Blaine, of course. Kurt had every intention this morning of loading Blaine up with as many purchases as he cared to make, but royalty or not he took it with so much humility and politeness that Kurt was feeling bad about it by lunchtime. Blaine told ridiculous stories, and glanced away when Kurt glanced over, and was really, truly, terrible with a sword. Kurt didn’t know much about how outlander royalty was supposed to be raised, but he’d never have expected a prince like Blaine.
Kurt didn’t change before dinner, this time. He wanted to take a needle and tailor in his new jacket before wearing it out in public, and besides, there was no need to give Santana any more ammunition than she already had.
Prince Blaine and his brother sat at the head table, to the right of the King and Queen of Ander, flanked by some nameless knights or nobles that Kurt recognized from his one afternoon in the negotiations. Burt sat to the king’s left, and beyond him, all nine of the Wise Warriors managed to squeeze into a space that was never meant to seat more than six. Kurt had used that as an excuse the very first night to escape to the lower table, and it allowed him to slip in now and find a seat between Quinn and the floppy-haired theorbo player’s chapped-lipped friend. He was starving. They’d stopped for lunch, this time, since Blaine had insisted Kurt try some crunchy, fried, vegetable-filled roll made by some merchant from the Salonga Islands, but that had been seven or eight hours ago. Shopping was hungry work.
Then Santana elbowed one of the other members of the honor guard out of the way and slid into the chair directly across from him. Kurt sighed.
“You can cut the act,” she said. “I know.”
“Know what?” Kurt asked, with a single arched eyebrow. Servants were starting to come around with big carafes of wine; he was going to need it, to deal with Santana.
“That you’re boning him,” Santana said. “Or if you haven’t yet, you’re going to be.”
“What it must be like, in that delirium haze of a world inside your head,” Kurt said pleasantly, and snagged the wine jug right out of the grasp of whoever was reaching for it first. Kurt could take most of the rest of the honor guard in a duel, and besides that, he was the one sitting across from Santana. He needed it more.
“Santana,” Quinn said, with her tightest smile. “If the Anderians hear you saying something like that--”
“Relax, they’re off talking about their goats and their farms and whatever.” Santana shut up when the next servant came by, though, with a platter of hot, crusty bread, another behind him with a tureen of fresh butter. Outlanders did always have the best butter.
Quinn waited, smile fixed on her face, until the servants were off at the next table, then hissed, “If you sabotage this alliance by talking like that about their prince--”
“This alliance that we don’t even want, you mean?” Santana asked. “You know the only reason we’re here is because Chief Burt wants to see how desperate the king is. Anyway, I’d be surprised if half the court doesn’t know already. I mean, yeah, they’re outlanders, but they’ve got eyes in their heads.”
“I haven’t seen any signs that Prince Blaine is interested in men at all,” Kurt said. Admittedly, it wasn’t a skill he’d had to test much in the past several years. Usually he discovered that someone preferred other men by finding himself serenaded, gifted with small trinkets, or challenged to a duel for his hand in marriage. It rather took the guesswork out of things.
“Yeah, because he’s still playing that ridiculous stripling game where he looks at anything else in the room whenever you look at him,” Santana scoffed. “Seriously, follow his line of sight tomorrow. He’s about as interested in women as Quinn is.”
Kurt rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help but glance up towards the head table, away to his left. He caught just the edge of movement from the far end of the table, as Blaine ducked his head down to his soup.
Kurt turned back to his plate, but he kept the corner of one eye trained on the prince all night.
On the fourth day of the barbarian envoy’s presence in Castle Lima, Kurt had shouldered his pack and gone out to the north end of the parade ground to wait before Blaine had even shown up. He’d laid out a map of the market for his father last night, mostly as a tool in describing just what sort of merchants and wares Ander appeared to be drawing and why the Seventeen Tribes should care, but there was nothing wrong in making a little use of the knowledge himself. He’d left all the native Westervillian traders for this morning.
Ander was in trouble. Kurt wondered if Prince Blaine knew just how clearly he’d demonstrated that yesterday. Probably not; Blaine had no guile whatsoever, and Kurt was an expert in playing the empty-headed chief’s son, or the awestruck barbarian gone a little mad with greed while shopping.
There were a dozen different signs, though, that it was all going wrong for the king of Ander. Everybody Kurt saw was reasonably well-fed, maybe even a little better than the staff he’d seen around the palace--but eight out of ten merchants selling chickens or fresh spring produce or grain came straight from Koobecaf’s storied endless villages and farms. There was good metalwork all over, the water pumps in the street, the blades at people’s waists, but all of it either worn rusty with age or forged with a distinctly Western flair. Everywhere Kurt looked, some frustrated merchant from the Salonga Islands was giving in to prices much lower than Kurt had seen for similar goods anywhere else. He didn’t know quite what kind of trade agreements were still in place there, but Blaine had said himself that most of the merchants were there because his mother was Salongan. That was one marriage arrangement that had apparently been keeping Ander on its feet for years.
No wonder Sylvestra had picked now to declare war. Ander had the manpower to field their own army, but he’d asked two different Koobecaf merchants about buying on credit yesterday and been laughed right out of their stalls. Unless the king had vast hidden stockpiles of gold somewhere, he was going to be buying this whole war on credit, and Kurt for one didn’t know how pleased he felt about being asked to supply it.
“Good morning,” Blaine said, and Kurt smiled. All right, so he had three goals today: find a really good bolt of silk to make Carole that dress he’d promised her, find out if the Anderians had some booming production industry of their own that he’d seen no sign of yesterday, and decide once and for all whether Santana had a point or he should be telling her where to shove it. A full day’s work.
“Shall we?” Kurt asked, and gestured for Blaine to lead the way.
Blaine was interesting. He wasn’t arrogant, and of all the things Kurt would expect from an outlander prince, he’d never predict that. He laughed at Kurt’s jokes. At first, Kurt had assumed he made Blaine nervous, but Blaine was just as precise and controlled around everyone they’d met yesterday. He was just...Blaine, and maybe Kurt would make a point of watching him a little more circumspectly, today.
They didn’t even pretend for longer than it took to get through the gates into Westerville that Blaine would be in charge of their route today; Kurt pointed south down Green Lane, and Blaine followed immediately. Convoluted castle hallways were one thing, but plan a route through a crowded marketplace? Kurt had got this.
Blaine sank into his seat at the tavern gratefully. He’d begun to worry that Kurt was going to keep going all day again without a stop. At least it was a little less crowded around the shops today, although Blaine had noticed yesterday that the presence of a fully-armed hills barbarian all in leather tended to earn one quite a bit more elbow room than was quite usual at the weekly market.
Blaine had learned a lot about Kurt over the past two days. He could be utterly charming when he wanted something, as dozens of merchants and shopkeepers could attest. On the other hand, twice people had tried to elbow in ahead of him at stalls or shops: richly dressed, important people, one of them Blaine knew from court as the son of a noble. Kurt hadn’t hesitated to lay his hand on the hilt of one of his swords as he turned, drawing himself up to his full height, and sneered with the promise of a much more painful price were the man not to step back out of the way. Moments later, he’d been back to chatting to the stallkeeper, as companionably as a sparrow, any sign of danger forgotten.
None of it could be trusted, then, though Blaine didn’t know what else he’d expect from a barbarian. At least with his father, Blaine knew when the signs were building; it seemed the whole castle grew tense and charged according to the king’s mood, like a strike of lightning. Kurt seemed to flicker between the calm and the deadly without more than a moment’s warning. Blaine would stay on his toes.
The shopping was interesting, at least. Kurt had an eye for style, and pretty things, even though Blaine couldn’t always see what his purpose was in talking to one trader or another. He’d spent more money yesterday than Blaine could have hoped to put together, and he could only be grateful that Kurt hadn’t taken him up on his offer to let the crown foot the bill, or they’d have run out inside of the first hour. Blaine had always been able to appreciate the fashion and fine clothing of the courtiers, though he knew better than to look too closely at any one person. Wandering around the market next to somebody with exotic tastes and a huge budget had almost been something like a treat.
But it had been a day and a half filled with more walking than Blaine usually did in a week, and his boots had begun pinching like something unholy, and breakfast had been a single withered orange saved from last night’s dessert table. So when Kurt had started expressing a desire for a mug of something cold and a bowl of something hot to go with it, Blaine had steered him into the Greengrass Tavern without a second’s thought.
It might have been a better plan, Blaine was realizing now, if he’d thought about just how large a mug of ‘something cold’ Kurt would be expecting him to drink. Blaine didn’t hold his alcohol well. He particularly didn’t hold it well on an empty stomach, but Kurt had taken one look at the greasy skin on the stewpot hanging over the tavern hearth, flashed a little gold, and demanded the tavernkeeper “go roast something”. So, ale it was.
“You know,” Kurt said, leaning back comfortably in his chair, “when we’re waiting for something like this in the hills, we have a game we like to play.”
“Oh, really?” Blaine asked, pleased to find he didn’t sound nervous at all. “What’s that?”
“It’s simple,” said Kurt. “We look around the room, and I say something like, I bet the next person to walk in the tavern door will be a man by himself, and if I’m right, you drink.”
“Oh,” Blaine said doubtfully. “All right.”
“Will you look at that,” Kurt said, and Blaine glanced over his shoulder towards the door. “A pair of men. My drink after all.” He sipped from his ale with a Sphinx-like smile, never once taking his eyes away from Blaine.
Kurt, Blaine found himself thinking most of an hour later, just a little blearily, was really good at that game.
“I would bet,” Kurt said, leaning over the picked-clean remains of a plate of chicken, “that the barmaid over there with the enormous bosoms would take off her skirt for you in an instant if she knew you were the prince of Ander.”
Blaine knew he was supposed to look, you were always supposed to look, so he did, a fleeting glance. The girl was tall, with brown hair and freckles, and Kurt was right, a man could lose a hand down that cleavage if he wasn’t careful. He took a quick, deep gulp from his pint.
“Forfeiting?” Kurt asked.
“She’s not my type,” Blaine said, and hoped that would be the end of it. He had a whole prepared monologue, he knew, for when the lordlings at court started goading him to say what his type really was, but most of them really only cared to make sure Blaine wasn’t going to try to go after their girls. He wasn’t entirely sure he was clearheaded enough to remember it right now.
“Hmm,” Kurt said instead of pressing, and Blaine let himself relax for just a moment. “All right, do you see that man over at the dartboard?”
The man in question was about their age, perhaps a year or two older, and a courier of some kind; Blaine could see his bag tossed over a chair at such an angle that he couldn’t, quite, make out the insignia. His hair was long, and the color of sawdust. He was right in Blaine’s line of sight, though Blaine had been avoiding looking at him since the first time he’d bent down to pick up a dropped dart, twenty minutes ago. He was wearing very tight pants.
“I would bet,” said Kurt, “that he’d be out of those pants almost as quickly as the barmaid, if the prince of Ander told him to.”
It took Blaine a few moments, longer than it should have, really, to even process what Kurt was implying. By the time he figured it out, it was too late to leap up and run from the tavern, never stopping for breath until he reached the Salongas. Instead, Blaine went very, very still.
“I’ll do anything you ask,” he said, quietly, looking down at his hands. “Please.”
If he betrayed the kingdom over this, his father would kill him. Blaine had no doubt in his mind about that. Of course, if Kurt let his secret out, the executioner would kill him anyway.
“Please what?” Kurt asked, and Blaine took a slow, ragged breath. All right. Kurt wanted him to beg. He knew how to do that.
“Please spare my life,” he said, keeping his tone as even as possible, focusing intently on his hands. “Please let me live. I know you have no reason to bother, but you stand nothing to gain with my death, and I will give you anything in my power if you keep my secret. Please.” If Blaine was very lucky, it might even work.
“Blaine...” Kurt began, and Blaine concentrated on keeping his head respectfully bowed instead of looking up. “I don’t want to see you killed,” and Blaine finds that he can breathe again, just a little more easily.
“You’re the king’s son,” Kurt said, and Blaine stiffened, because there it was, the price, but Kurt only continued, “They wouldn’t have you executed.”
“Hmm.” Blaine smiled tightly. “Nobody is above the law,” he said. He’d heard it from his father often enough. “Not even me.” The bitterness in his voice shocked him. Blaine must be drunk. Usually he would never allow himself to sound like that.
“Tina was right,” Kurt said musingly. “Ander is full of barbarians.”
Blaine’s head was swimming, and he’d apparently begun missing logical connections somehow; he looked up, finally, in confusion. “There’s barely more than a score of you,” he said.
Kurt’s chair scraped loudly across the stone floor as he pushed himself back from the table. “Come on,” he said. “Time to walk it off.”
Blaine spent dinner that night staring into his plate more intently than ever before. Most of the alcohol had cleared, leaving him with a sour stomach and a persistent ache in his head that he didn’t think he could chalk up entirely to the ale. He toyed with the food on his plate, and wished he dared skip dinner with the barbarian envoy in the castle to ask awkward questions about his absence.
He only glanced up at Kurt twice, over the course of the meal: Kurt, who was as exotic as a wyvern and just as deadly, who knew as much about fabric weave as he did about knives, who was breathtakingly beautiful and knew, now, that Blaine must think so.
Why was it only the really dangerous ones who saw through Blaine so easily? Or was he just fooling himself, did the whole castle know, and Kurt and his father had been the only ones to dare mention it?
(He’d be dead already, though, even his father couldn’t stop that, he’d been saying so for more than ten years. The only way Blaine had ever known that he was hiding well enough was that they hadn’t dragged him out to the block yet. And they hadn’t, even now, so either the really dangerous dragons in his life simply had sorcerous powers such that Kurt could tell in less than three days, or people had realized, they must have realized, and yet they never...he never....
It must be that Kurt and his father shared mystical powers. That was the only real explanation.)
On the fifth day of the barbarian envoy’s stay, Kurt and Blaine couldn’t go down into the city at all, for it poured rain all day long.
Spring was blossoming up, sliding into the warmest, wettest days before Beltane, and Ander, apparently, skipped the roaring hail-and-lightning-filled storms of the southern hills in favor of steady dripping downpours that turned everything to mud and gray. Kurt doubted that this particular storm would summon up flash floods or tornadoes, but he didn’t have to want to be out in it. Blaine probably didn’t, either--although after yesterday afternoon, Kurt wasn’t entirely sure Blaine wouldn’t take him on a walking tour of the royal hunting forest in a driving storm of sleet, if he asked.
Kurt didn’t like Ander. Kurt didn’t like outlanders, period, for all he’d frequent their markets and trade their wares. Would Ander execute their own prince for eyeing up an attractive stableboy? Maybe not, but even in fabled Xi Tsdaerb, land of peace and honey, Kurt got odd looks sometimes. The people of Finn and Carole’s native tri-river area preferred exile. The stories of the last few meagre bands roving the shattered ruins of Ecapsym spoke of shunning, or stoning; some of the little coastal towns around the sea of Oiho practiced worse.
Kurt wasn’t above a little life-threatening blackmail, when the occasion called for it, but he wanted nothing to do with this. It wasn’t right, and if the Wise Warriors or the Council ever found out that he had something like this on the King of Ander’s son and refused to use it, well. They could take it up with Kurt in single combat, if they really wanted to.
If Kurt didn’t meet him along the way, Blaine would probably wander into camp and stand, dripping, until one of the honor guard dared the rain in a run for the privy. Very well, then. Kurt had a much better memory for directions than Blaine probably realized. He knew which doorway Blaine usually came out of on his way.
So it was that, twenty minutes later, hurrying down the corridor towards the southwest castle door, Blaine was stopped in his tracks by the sight of Kurt leaning against one stone wall, carefully fixing his slightly-damp hair by the reflection on his knifeblade.
“For the record,” Kurt said, eyes fixed on the reflection of one particularly unruly hair he was attempting to tease into place, “I still think castles are some sadist’s idea of a deathtrap for the unwwary, but it’s miserable out there, so I suppose we’d better stay inside today.” There; perfect. He flicked the dagger around and slid it cleanly into its sheath, then finally looked over at Blaine. “So where to?”
“Um.” Blaine looked taken more than a little aback, licking his bottom lip nervously and darting a little glance back down the hall whence he came. “I think that’s up to you!” he said, with some forced cheer.
“Hmmm,” said Kurt. “I have no particular plans. Show me...” He really did just need to kill a day, before he could find some way to get Blaine to take him by the barracks, and he’d like to apologize for yesterday, more or less. “Show me your favorite place in the castle,” he said. “The one where you spend all your time.”
“Okay,” said Blaine. “Okay, the library it is.”
The royal library of Castle Lima was genuinely impressive, Kurt had to admit. The ceiling soard up into a beautifully-painted dome, blue and gold with some...king, or hero, or holy man, or something, frescoed underneath it, and the bookshelves all around rose as high as three tall men standing on each other’s shoulders. There were a few small study tables by the windows, and an ingenious sort of ladder on wheels that Kurt wouldn’t be getting on for any amount of money, and a pervasive, heavy scent of dry rot and dust. Kurt wasn’t much of a reader, but he supposed he could understand the attraction of this place, for someone who was.
“It’s beautiful,” he said honestly, wandering slowly and quietly towards the aisles of shelves. There were a handful of scholars seated at the tables to the right, pens and inks and vellum at the ready, restoring old manuscripts or illuminating new ones, Kurt couldn’t quite tell. Better to stay out of their way.
Kurt reached up to trail curious fingers over the worn leather bindings of the books they passed, and behind him, Blaine made a small noise. “Oh,” he said. “That’s right, I didn’t even think. Can you read?”
Kurt smiled. “My father was the blacksmith before he became a chief,” he said. “He taught me.”
All tribe blacksmiths could read. It was a rule, Kurt thought, written somewhere, so they could haggle with outlanders without getting cheated and send each other written messages about things that any other tribe member could never understand, and also because the blacksmith is always trusted and wise and knows things that others do not. Burt had been good at that last part, though Kurt could only barely remember it.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to--”
“It’s fine, Blaine,” Kurt said, glancing over his shoulder. “Most of the tribe can’t. Though some of them will make up some impressive stories if you ask them to.” Santana, particularly, knew just enough to be really convincing. Kurt was pretty sure Brittany was still the only person who could tell every time how much she was lying.
“Still,” said Blaine. “I shouldn’t have assumed.”
All right, it was time to be done with this. Kurt turned to face Blaine square on, most nonthreatening smile he could imagine on his face.
“You know if we executed people for that in the tribes, we’d lose half our best warriors,” he said. “Not to mention starting an argument between the chiefs that would take two months and a dozen rounds of single combat to resolve.”
Blaine froze like a rabbit caught in the gaze of a cat. Kurt waited patiently.
“We’re in the middle of Ander,” he said finally, warily. Kurt nodded.
“It’s still not right,” he said simply. Blaine darted a quick, nervous glance back towards the scholars at their work.
“Please,” he said. “Can we not talk about this here?”
Kurt shrugged and turned back to the spines of the books. “We don’t have to talk about it at all,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know.”
Blaine didn’t understand, couldn’t trust, couldn’t make heads nor tails out of Kurt at all, so of course, after lunch he brought Kurt to the only real sanctuary he had beyond his own room. He was beyond a real self-preservation instinct, here. All he could do was give Kurt whatever else he had, in hopes it might be enough.
Only the third and smallest music room was free, but Kurt didn’t seem to mind. He ran his fingers over the harpsichord keys in apparent fascination. Of course; you couldn’t exactly bring one of those along on a ten-day ride, could you.
“Do you play?” Kurt asked, glancing up. Blaine nodded, stepping forward on automatic.
“Does your tribe...like a lot of music?” he asked. Kurt smiled, and stepped back to let Blaine at the keys.
“Every culture I’ve ever met likes music,” he said. “We have lutes, and folding harps, and drums, but nothing like this.”
“Do you play something?” Blaine asked. Somehow, he’d never thought about it, Kurt the barbarian warrior, playing a lute. Kurt was nothing but contradictions. It was fascinating, except for how terrifying it could be. Just when Blaine thought he could predict which way Kurt would turn, he’d go another.
“No,” said Kurt. “I sing.”
Probably, Blaine figured, beautifully.
“Play something?” Kurt asked. “I don’t know much Anderian music.”
Blaine settled onto the bench in front of the harpsichord, rested his fingers on the so-familiar wooden keys. “What do you want to hear?” he asked.
“Anything,” said Kurt. Blaine’s fingers found the first key before he’d even realized he’d decided.
Kurt was staring at him, Blaine could feel the eyes on his back, but bizarrely it only began to make him feel better. Blaine understood performing. The performer could stand in the middle of a crowd and keep himself untouched. Playing for little knots of ladies and lordlings was the only sort of strange power Blaine could ever really call his own. Until the last note fell, the performer was the safest person in the room.
“This dance will never end, my love, until the end of time, for I would always be so young as we are tonight.” Why had he picked such a love song? He’d been practicing this one for weeks, on whichever instrument came to hand, until all the fingerwork and chord changes came naturally as anything. Kurt wouldn’t think anything of it. There was nothing at all to think.
“And oh, I would give you my body, my all, if you would dream of me as young lovers do this night.”
Well.
Fuck.
It was down to a hard drizzle, by dinnertime. Kurt walked through it in a daze back towards the tents. Santana, he thought dimly, was never to know about this.
Of course, it would probably be hard to keep it a secret when he kidnapped Blaine out from under his father’s nose and carried him off into the sunrise over the front of Kurt’s saddle, but Kurt wasn’t dwelling too hard on details right now. Well, no. He was dwelling much too hard on certain details, like the spark that lit in Blaine’s eyes when he started to sing, and how sure his fingers were dancing across the harpsichord keys, and how those fingers might feel in other places. ‘Hard’ was not a word to dwell on in the context of Blaine’s fingers right now, either.
So this was how it felt, to realize you’d met someone who surprised you. Someone beautiful, and funny, and quiet, who didn’t look at Kurt like he was the sun god descended but just like the most interesting person in any room. Someone who sang like he meant every single note.
And he was afraid of his own government, and he might or might not still be afraid of Kurt, and he was a terrible swordsman, and Santana was never going to let Kurt hear the end of it, but Blaine was...
Well, he was every single thing that all those suitors over all those years had ever not been. He was soft, but not like some of the callow, foolish youths who’d thought to compose Kurt ballads over the years. He was kind. He was, quite probably, everything Kurt had ever wanted.
Which was a problem, because Kurt wasn’t actually sure what you were supposed to do with someone like Blaine. He knew how courting went. You showered somebody with gifts, trinkets, still-beating hearts, composed them epic sagas if you were feeling really creative at the time. If worst came to worst, you challenged them to a one-on-one duel for their hand in marriage. Kurt was very good at winning those sorts of duels, but it didn’t really seem like the sort of thing that would impress Blaine.
And now Kurt was getting all damp in the rain, and if he didn’t fix his hair before dinner he was never going to impress Blaine, and Santana had probably smelled desperation from the other side of the camp, and really, he just wanted to pull Blaine up onto his saddle and keep him forever, and he was really going to need a plan for this.
Fortunately, he knew one person in this camp who’d done this before. Sort of. Without the ‘prince’ part, and the ‘disrupting massive political negotiations’ part, and all of the other parts making this even more complicated than it already was.
“Tina?” Kurt said, a little plaintively, ducking through her tent flap before he’d finished calling through. He’d seen both Tina and Mike naked enough times not to care any more. “How do you court an outlander?”