Trickster's Queen [Piper/Trickster]
Canon Status: AU, dear gods yes.
Genre: Fantasy, adventure, romance.
Rating: PG.
Characters: Hartley [Pied Piper], James [Trickster].
Pairing: Piper/Trickster.
Warnings: Crackitycrackcrackcrack.
Notes: Dear Tamora Pierce, I am so, so sorry. Written for the piper_trickster Alphabet Challenge, prompt "Q is for Queen". Follows Trickster's Choice
Summary: Introducing our (other) hero, who is somewhat disconcerted by the situation in which he find himself.
The twelfth day of Ice Month, commonly called the Feast of Kings, in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Edward V. Central City on the Mercury Islands.
Hartley was running away. Not in the leaving-home-forever sense; childhood attempts had taught him that that would never work. He was too important a name to be allowed to disappear. Rather, he was willing to settle for running away long enough to avoid the “informal” (meaning only three courses and one servant to each guest) luncheon his parents were giving for the Feast of Kings. He had been hoping that, if he managed to get into enough trouble beforehand, they would refuse to allow him to be seen in public. Unfortunately, his parents knew him too well for that and had “requested” that he be present. Thus, he was running away. If he was very lucky, his parents would be so embarrassed by his absence that they would say he was sick, and he wouldn’t have to attend the feast at the palace that evening.
Having left Eagletown District without attracting attention thanks to a little tune he had perfected on previous excursions, he mingled with the crowd in Newmarket. Hartley smiled as he let the music of the streets soak into him. He loved escaping for a while and just listening.
“You call this fresh? I call it-“
“-live lobster! Two silver-“
“-for a pound, it’s-“
“-disgraceful, how she’s behaved. My sister says-“
“-best wishes to your wife. Hope to be seeing-“
“-some changes around here soon. The new Magistrate-“
“-said to me, ‘Why not get some rice for a change?’ And I-“
“-thought better of Michael than that, I must-“
“-be going now. Maria gets cranky when she’s left-“
“-from last week, don’t think I can’t tell-“
“-him from me, you call that-“
“-fresh?”
Hartley knew he could hear more than the other people at the market, but it saddened him sometimes that no one else seemed to be listening at all. Even for ordinary ears, the sounds of people talking, coins clinking, hard-soled boots and the occasional horseshoe clattering on the cobblestones, the wind blowing past the Feast of Kings banner, all could have had meaning. However, it seemed that he was the only one who bothered to mix them all together into the symphony that was a normal Newmarket street.
“Thief! He stole my purse!”
Most of the time, Hartley ignored the occasional cry after a thief or pickpocket. Here in Newmarket, the merchants and most of the shoppers were well-off at least; a thief almost certainly would make better use of the money. This voice, though, he recognized even from a street over.
Between the street he was on and the one the cry had come from there was a narrow alleyway, exactly right for a thief to duck down and become just another respectable member of society. Hartley leaned casually against the wall next to the alley mouth. When the boy came out, trying hard to walk casually and not succeeding, Hartley’s hand closed around his arm before he knew what was happening.
Hartley’s hand really did close around his arm; the boy was as thin as a rail. Hartley resisted the urge to just let go. The contents of Luna’s purse would make a lot of difference to this scrawny child…but at least as much difference to the four almost as scrawny children he knew were waiting for Luna to get home. Instead, he said, “Give it here, kid.”
“M’lord, I don’t-“
“It’s dark red, tied with a plain cord, and there’s a crescent moon embroidered on it in yellow. Luna’s eldest girl made it for her for her last birthday. Come on-what’s your name, kid?”
The boy looked on the point of bolting. “…Ludovico, m’lord.”
“Well, Ludovico, let’s make a deal: you give me Luna’s purse so I can give it back to her and her children can eat this week, and then,” Hartley produced four silver pieces from his own, better-concealed purse, “you go get yourself a decent meal, and next time you grab someone’s purse who looks like they can afford to lose it. Deal?”
Cautiously, the boy pulled Luna’s purse out of his ragged tunic and dropped it into Hartley’s hand, grabbing the loose coins in the same movement.
Hartley let go of the boy’s arm and watched sadly as he ran away into the crowd. He wished there was more he could do for the boy, but there were so many like him, and these days there was only so much money his parents would allot him. It was almost enough to make him…but he’d promised Wally, no more.
He found Luna on the next street, still searching the crowd. “Lose something?” he asked from behind her, dangling the purse over her head.
“Hartley!” She seized the purse with delight. “How did you--?”
“I have my ways,” Hartley said, smiling. Luna’s purse was a little heavier now than it had been when he had received it. She was too proud of her self-sufficiency to let him help her with money if he offered, so he had simply stopped asking permission to slip a few coins he could easily spare into her purse.
“I wasn’t expecting to run into you today,” she said as they walked down the street together. “I thought sure you’d have something to do with your family.” Luna was one of the handful of friends he had in Central City who knew exactly who he was. According to everyone else, he was Hartley-no-family-name, whose parents had made a lot of money in trade or something and didn’t approve of his friends. It was only partly a lie.
“I do,” he replied. “Why do you think I’m here?”
She laughed. “Poor Hartley, having to spend time in a warm room eating good food when he could be out in the cold being bumped into by twenty different people every minute!”
Hartley stepped out of the way of the woman who was about to be the seventeenth to bump into him. “I’d still rather be here,” he said seriously. “That, it’s all fake, a fancy lace cloth trying to pretend that the table underneath isn’t there. Besides, only my parents’ friends are going to be there. I’d die of boredom. At least this evening they won’t be able to stop me from talking to nobody but Wally and Linda.”
Luna shook her head slowly, a smile on her face. “I’ll never get used to you, Hartley. You sound almost normal, and then I remember your friend Wally that you talk about so casually is the King’s cousin, and you’re not going to just any party for the Feast of Kings, you’re going to the palace.”
Hartley smiled wryly. “I wish you’d stop remembering. Seriously, Luna, I’m not any different from anyone else.”
“Only someone different as you could even say that,” rejoined Luna. “I know you hate having to live in the real world, but there’s a big difference between your kind of people and mine, and until that changes, saying there ain’t is just daydreaming. Which reminds me, have you seen Jack yet today?”
“Not yet. Why?”
“He was asking around for you a couple days ago, wanted to know when you’d be by again.”
Hartley was surprised. Jack knew as well as anyone that, although Hartley couldn’t always get away, he never missed one of the informal meetings of the group of friends and part-time do-gooders that included him, Jack, and Luna. “I thought we were meeting again a week from tomorrow. That’s what we planned last time.”
“Yeah, well, he said something came up and he wanted to see us all, soon as possible. Wanted us to meet someone, he said.”
That made it slightly less mysterious. “Today won’t do, obviously, not if he wants to meet in the evening. Do you know when the next time is that everyone else can be there?”
Luna did some quick calculations on her fingers. “Not until Endweek, anyhow, with Limp working nights these days. Three days. Can you make then?”
Hartley did some calculations of his own. “Unless I manage to be officially confined to my room after this, and probably not even then, I should have no trouble.”
“Same old time and place. I’ll tell him. You look after yourself in that pit of vipers you call a home, Hartley.”
“I always do.”
Luna walked off into the crowd, on her way to finish her interrupted shopping. Hartley looked at the sun and guessed that he had a least another two hours, in all likelihood more, before his parents’ luncheon had finished and it was safe to return home. That was time to wash out the bitter taste dealing with Luna’s purse-snatcher had left in his mouth.
The staffs of the restaurants in Gardensedge District didn’t know Hartley Rathaway, whose family would never dream of coming closer to such “common” establishments than it was necessary to do in riding through the streets, but they had gotten to know Hartley, who came around every week or so to pick up leftover food, quite well. Chatting with those unfortunates who had been stuck working on the Feast of Kings left Hartley happier with the world in general.
His next stop, the Dockside District, came close to taking his hard-won good cheer away. As always, there were too many thin and ragged children who came running for the food Hartley was handing out, too many grownups as thin and ragged as the children, and not enough food to give some to everyone who needed it badly. By the time his bag was empty, Hartley was selfishly relieved to be heading home. Warring against that relief was the desire to take all the well-fed and complacent nobility he would find there and bring them to Dockside to rub their powdered noses in the poverty none of them cared enough to stop.
* * *
“Hartley!” To his enhanced ears, his mother’s voice at its most piercing was almost a physical pain. Hartley regretfully gave up on making it back to his room without incident. “Where were you this afternoon, young man?”
“I went out,” he replied shortly. He spoke as little as necessary to his parents, and most of the time they returned the favor.
“That was already clear. I told you myself that I desired your presence at my luncheon. Lady Hallen’s girls were both there.”
Hartley sighed inwardly. “I apologize, Mother.”
“As I have told you a thousand times, it is beyond time for you to be thinking of your duty to the family name. Whatever your…personal wishes may be, you are your father’s heir, and you have an obligation to see to it that the Rathaway name continues.”
Hartley resisted the urge to flee up the stairs at once. This was why he had been so careful to make himself scarce. His mother, he was beginning to realize, would never leave him alone until he had married someone she considered suitable, and in all likelihood nothing short of extremely public scandal would make the daughters of her friends cease throwing themselves, or being thrown by their own mothers, at his head. “Mother,” he began, choosing his words carefully, “I truly appreciate your concern, but I’m not ready to be married, nor, I think, are they. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a slight headache.”
He managed to make it up the stairs and around a corner before his mother had thought of what to say next. Sitting in his bedroom, surrounded by the musical instruments that were his Gift and his one true love, Hartley could almost forget about the specter of the palace feast looming over the evening. Endweek could not possibly come quickly enough.
* * *
Olimpio, more commonly known as “Limp”, was waiting for Hartley at the inn their group used as a meeting place. It was on the edge of Dockside District, only barely within the respectable confines of Gardensedge, the kind of place no one with a full purse went after sundown. Hartley’s purse, though hidden, was full, but he wasn’t worried. The slow tune he was playing on a small flute as he walked took care of any potential trouble before it happened.
“Evening, Hart,” said Olimpio, a man of few words.
“Good evening to you too,” Hartley replied, unaccountably cheered by the man’s sour demeanor. He had never seen Olimpio smile, nor did he know anyone who had. He wasn’t sure the man could smile at all. “Is everyone else inside?”
“No. Change of plans. Jack’s place.”
“Really? Why?”
Olimpio shrugged.
“Well, we’d better go, then. I’d hate to keep everyone waiting.”
Jack’s house was in Dockside, but Hartley started playing his flute again as he and Olimpio walked through the dark streets, and they arrived without incident.
As unprepossessing as the outside of Jack’s house was, the inside was warm and well-lit, Jack’s small Gift doing the work of fireplace and candles. Instead, orange spheres of witchfire floated above the heads of the group gathered there. Including Hartley and Olimpio, there were ten of them, although they had other associates, mostly friends, scattered around the city.
“That’s everyone,” said Maeve, a hard-eyed woman whose hair matched the witchfire that shone down on it. “Except Jack’s mysterious guest.”
“What’s this about, anyway?” Hartley asked, enjoying the opportunity to sprawl gracelessly in a chair. “Luna didn’t know when she told me.”
“Someone with-an interesting story, let’s just call it that, contacted me a week ago,” Jack said, coming into the room last of all. “He said he wanted to make a business deal. I thought you’d all better hear it, if it’s half as crazy as his story.” Not much worried Jack, but he was worried, chewing on his thumb as he did whenever he was uncertain. “We’re here ‘cause he said he wanted to make it private, no one to overhear.”
“So where is this unknown man with a crazy story?” Luna asked impatiently. Hartley didn’t blame her; she had a home she needed to be getting back to.
“He’s right here.”
They all jumped, especially Hartley. The voice had come from directly behind him, away from any doors, and it was one he didn’t recognize. He hadn’t seen any stranger in the room before, nor had he heard someone enter.
Behind him, a man seemed to peel himself forward from the wall. It must have been a camouflage spell, and a good one, to have fooled them all, even Jack, who looked as surprised as the rest. The man, faced with twenty staring eyes, smiled cheerfully and bowed. “Weren’t you expecting me?”
“How did you get in here?” Jack demanded.
The man kept smiling. “I’m afraid I came a bit early. I like to be early to business meetings; it shows keenness.”
Hartley heard the telltale crackle of Carlo, next to him, readying his Gift. He could throw the stranger out of the room without touching him, if it came to that. “Don’t,” Hartley whispered to him. “Not yet.”
His own Gift wouldn’t work unless the man gave him time to start playing, and if he was good enough to craft or buy a camouflage spell that could to fool ten people at once, he wouldn’t make that mistake. So Hartley only waited. He could hear the man’s heart beat, if he focused on it, slow and even, as though he had nothing to fear. Either the man was a spectacular pretender, or he had his own safeguards.
Maeve scowled at the man. “You wanted to talk. So start talking.”
“All right. I want to employ you. Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but it’s a good place to start.”
“Employ us for what, exactly?” asked Luke, glowering threateningly across the table at the man. It might have worked, if Luke were six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier.
“Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that. Mostly, to keep doing what you’ve been doing, but on my behalf. I would provide funds, of course, but to start with I want you to let people know, subtly, that I’m supporting you.”
“Who are you?” Hartley thought that was a reasonable question to ask.
The man smiled even more broadly than before. “I thought you’d never ask. You can call me James. I’m going to be your next king.”
Maeve stood. “You are crazy. I don’t know why Jack wanted to talk to you. I’m out of here.”
“Am I?” said James, if that was really his name. “Stay just for a minute and watch closely.”
It took a few seconds for Hartley to notice what was happening. James seemed to be growing taller…but when Hartley looked, he saw that the man’s feet were no longer touching the floor. He didn’t move otherwise, just rose slowly into the air, until he hovered a foot above the ground, his head just barely brushing the ceiling. Hartley’s family was of the Neronic nobility, but his passion for music had led him to old folk songs, including several called “The Trickster’s Promise”. He knew the words as well as anyone in the room, and he knew that it was said the Trickster’s kings had been able to fly.
Maeve sat down again abruptly.
James’s heart was beating a little faster, but his breathing was still slow and even. He didn’t show any sign of having cast an illusion spell this strong, and while Hartley had heard of mages powerful enough to create an illusion that would fool all the senses, he had never seen one.
“As I was saying,” James said, still floating on nothing, “The man who suggested you to me is one of my more important supporters-generals, if you will. He said that you do a lot of good around here with not much to work with. You’ve probably noticed, but you’re the only ones in Central City doing anything. His “royal majesty” certainly couldn’t care less about the people he lives off of. I’m going to be different, and I’d just as soon use what’s already available.”
“Use us,” Carlo said, still suspicious.
James shrugged. “If you want to see it that way. I think of it as a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
Luke spoke up again. He worked for one of Central City’s better (and more affordable) advocates, and he was always the one to discuss anything that even sounded like a legal contract. “Under this agreement, you would provide us with monetary and personnel assistance, in exchange for which you would require…?”
“Your word for me, mostly. People like you. They know you care about them. If they hear I’m helping you, they’ll be easier to convince that I care too.”
“But you don’t, do you?” Hartley said, almost too quietly for the rest to hear.
James had sharp ears. “I care, but all the caring in the world won’t do me much good if my head’s hung over Newmarket as a failed rebel. The more people I can get behind me, the better. If you want to help the people, you can help me, and I promise to try my very hardest not to get killed, or you can stand back and watch the Regent slaughter me and mine and ignore the rest, and you’ll have lost your last chance for a long time, maybe ever, to change it. Your choice.” He grinned. “I’ll be outside when you’ve decided.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, they were talking. Hartley could pick out Luna’s expressions of faith, Luke’s professional deliberations, Rick’s angry mutterings, and all the other threads of one-ended conversation. The others, he knew, heard only cacophony.
Carlo slammed his hand onto the table, which shook beneath the impact, and they quieted. “One at a time,” he said. “Jack?”
Jack seemed to have aged five years in five minutes. “I don’t know why you’d think I know what to do,” he said slowly. “I’m no smarter’n any of you. But here’s how I see it: anyone who wants to can join him and his if they want, but the group has to decide what we’re going to say as a group. Do we think he’s going to follow through? Do we think he’s for real, even? Do we think it’s going to make anything better? So we all get to say in or out, and then we’ll see how it goes. I’m in, or I wouldn’t have asked you here. Luna?”
“He’s the Trickster’s choice,” she said simply. Hartley had known her for years, and he’d never seen as clearly as he did now how devoted she was to the god her people had lost. “I’m in.”
“If he can get rid of Axel,” said Rick, spitting on the floor at the name, “I’m all for him. In.”
“I believe him,” said Matteo, whose trust in people a life in Dockside didn’t seem capable of destroying. “I’m in.”
“We could use the money,” said Luke, “and it doesn’t seem a particularly risky position to be in. I say in as well.”
Olimpio simply said, “In.”
“I’m not sure I believe him,” said Liam, “but if he really does have the Trickster on his side, I’m not fool enough to say no. Neron doesn’t care about us. The Trickster, he’ll remember. In.”
Hartley was torn. He had heard of the Trickster only as a part of old stories, as something gone for good. If this turned to civil war, people would die. His family was Neronic nobility. His few noble friends were as closely tied to the Neronic crown as he was, or closer. There was a good chance they would die. He thought of them, and then he thought of the starving children in Dockside, of the anger he always felt on seeing the nobility who cared nothing for the thousands who labored in poverty so that they might sleep on silk. It wouldn’t turn to violence immediately. There was time, and if this man was smart he would understand that wholesale slaughter would never help. Hartley could try to convince him, if he stayed. If he chose strangers over his family.
What else had he been doing all his life? “I’m in,” he said. The words were nothing out of the ordinary, but they rang in his ears like a bell.
Carlo nodded. “You can count me in, too. My brother was talking about something like this, didn’t know what he meant at the time. I’d end up in it anyhow.”
Maeve shook her head. “He won’t remember us later, you know. He’ll use us and throw us away, like everyone else.” She smirked. “But there’s no reason not to milk him for all we can before that. I’m in, and that makes all of us.”
“I guess that’s that, then,” said Jack. “I’ll go tell him.”
* * *
That wasn’t the end of the meeting; even after Luke had argued out the exact details of their agreement, James had several suggestions to make about making things more efficient. He also turned over a purse fatter than the one Hartley had surreptitiously slipped into Jack’s hand in the course of the evening. He was willing to make good on that part of his promise, at least.
When it was over at last, Hartley wanted nothing more than to get home and sleep. It had been a long day. However, it seemed that his rest would have to be put off; James had pretended to leave, but when Hartley stepped out of Jack’s house, James was standing next to him before he had even begun to play his flute.
“It isn’t safe to be walking through Dockside alone at this time of night,” said James with a friendly smile.
Hartley wasn’t fooled. “It probably isn’t much safer with you. If you don’t mind, I can keep myself out of trouble.”
“You see, that’s the thing. I didn’t just decide to make my offer to your little group without checking if any of them were likely to run straight to the Watch. I have a fair number of eyes and ears in this city, and some of them I sent after each of you, just for safety’s sake. And I found out a lot I didn’t particularly want to know about all of you…except for you, ‘Hartley’. Is that your real name, by the way?”
“Is James your real name?” Hartley returned. King or no king, god or no god, he wasn’t about to let a stranger with no reason to trust one of the Neronic nobility know who he really was. He didn’t fancy being found dead in an alleyway.
“Fair enough. But we’re talking about you. The thing is, my people followed you all home from your little get-togethers, and for everyone else that was pretty much all they needed to do. It worked just fine on your friend Jack, for example. But you, each and every one of the people sent to follow you lost you almost as soon as you stepped out the door. Now why is that?”
Hartley grinned. “It’s a gift.”
“I’d wager it is. Funny you’d choose to use it for a little thing like walking home.”
“You said yourself, it isn’t safe to walk through Dockside alone.” Hartley tried not to show how nervous he was.
“And I’d expect you to walk with someone else, like all the others do, not vanish yourself from anyone who might notice you. That’s the kind of thing you only use your Gift for if you can’t afford to be found out. So, ‘Hartley’, why shouldn’t I expect you to show up at one of these meetings with a squad of the Watch? What assurance do I have that you’re not off to report to old Eagle Eyes the spymaster right now?”
When he put it that way, there was no reason at all why he shouldn’t expect Hartley to be a spy. Except, of course, that several of the others knew exactly who he was and why he went home alone, but he couldn’t say that. James had been smiling all evening, but he wasn’t anymore, and Hartley was uncomfortably sure that revealing his identity now would be the last thing he ever did.
“Because if I were a spy,” he said, being as honest as he could afford to be, “I would’ve been the one following you. I’m not going to. You’re safe from me. Do you want me to swear a blood oath on it?” James must know as well as Hartley did that anyone who broke an oath signed in blood died as all the blood left their bodies at once. The gods took such oaths very seriously indeed.
“Nah, I don’t think so. Not if you show me how you do it.” Just like that, the smile was back. “Seems like a useful trick.”
Hartley tried to keep his voice from shaking with relief. “It is.” There was no harm in showing James. It didn’t make him any less vulnerable to the effects of Hartley’s Gift. He pulled his flute from the folds of his cloak and started to play as he walked off into the night.
It wasn’t possible, but he thought he felt James’s eyes on him all the way.
* * *
The fourteenth day of Chill Month.
It was difficult at best to sneak up on Hartley. Even when he was engrossed in tinkering (so his parents disparagingly called it) with one of his many musical instruments, he could hear footfalls and the sound of breath from outside his room. So it was a testament to the intruder’s skill that the first Hartley noticed of him was the sound of someone landing lightly on the floor by his window.
He spun around with a start. It was James, standing just inside the room of Hartley’s family home, and Hartley was sickeningly afraid for a fraction of a second that he was about to be killed for what must seem like a betrayal. Then James smiled reassuringly and held his hands up, showing that he was unarmed.
“Relax. I’m just here because I thought you might like to know that I know. Keep you from being so twitchy every time I look at you, you know?”
Hartley flushed. He had been “twitchy”, if James wanted to call it that, mostly because every time he saw James looking at him he was afraid that the other man had caught his own looks, which were not nearly as detached as the ones he received in return. James was handsome, and the self-confidence he projected all the time only made him more so. Hartley couldn’t help staring, as much as he told himself that nothing could possibly come of it.
“How did you find me?” he asked, wrenching his mind away from dangerous territory.
“Wax in my ears,” James said cheerfully, already sitting casually on the floor next to Hartley as though this were his home. “If I can’t hear your music, it doesn’t affect me. I didn’t tell anyone else about your Gift, by the way. It seems like a nice trick to keep in reserve.”
Hartley shrugged. It was something of an open secret. “The others already know,” he pointed out.
“Oh, your people, yeah, but my people includes more people than your people does, if you know what I mean. Including people who are going to give me an earful when they find out I didn’t tell them about you, but what can you do? People are people.” James paused. “I’m not sure ‘people’ has any meaning for me anymore, after saying all that.”
Hartley couldn’t help laughing, some of the tension creeping out of him. James laughed too, the same friendly laugh Hartley had heard several times over the past month. When only Hartley could hear it, though, it felt different, special, as though James were laughing just for him.
He quashed that line of thought. He should focus on being grateful for his whole skin. “I thought you’d be angry when you found out.”
James seemed genuinely puzzled. “Why? You’re no more likely to turn on me than anyone else. Less, really. And you aren’t the first noble I’ve convinced to join me.”
Hartley looked up, startled. “Really?”
“Really. You may be the one who needed the least convincing, though.”
Hartley knew he was going to spend the next several palace functions he had to attend looking at the other nobility there and wondering if any of them were secretly working for or with James as well. “So, did you come here just to tell me I’m obviously a soft touch?” he asked, smiling. He had smiled more in the last five minutes than he usually did in a week spent in this house.
“Ah, not exactly. The thing is, my information net covers Keystone quite neatly, and most of Central, but I haven’t yet been able to get nearly as many people as I’d like to keep an eye on the Eagletown nobility. At this point, I have a handful of servants here and there, but they can only really keep an eye on one household…and you.”
“You want me to be a spy for you?”
James shrugged. “Not the way you’re thinking, the sneaking around eavesdropping kind. Just go do your noble thing, and then tell me what people are saying about the upheavals and minor rebellions, who’s saying what, what the Regents look like they’re planning, that kind of thing. Who among the Neronic nobility might be worth talking to, especially: it’s going to come to fighting, in the end, and they have the resources to put up a fight. I’d rather at least some of them were doing it for me.”
Hartley thought about it. He could see where he could be useful here, more than he was in the streets, and he could do both at the same time. And maybe if he made enough of an effort to convince the few members of the nobility he cared about to support James, he could stop feeling like he was being stretched slowly in half by the increasing conflict.
“I’ll do it,” he said, then made a face as a thought occurred to him. “I suppose you want me to stop escaping from all my parents’ social functions now.”
James laughed. Part of Hartley felt like the sound, and the knowledge that he could make James laugh, made him feel warm and happy. The other part knew that, if he was feeling that way already, he should take care not to be alone with James again. “Sacrifices must be made,” he said with obviously mocking seriousness. Then, in a voice with nothing mocking about it at all, “I trust you.”
Hartley felt himself flushing again. “You probably shouldn’t.”
“I know. And I do, anyway. Do you know why that is?”
Hartley shook his head, then abruptly stilled as he felt James’s hand brush softly against the back of his neck. He heard as much as felt his heartbeat speed up, as he suddenly dared to hope. He turned his head slowly.
James was smiling, and his eyes were the brightest things Hartley had ever seen. “Because I want to believe I’m not about to do something incredibly stupid.”
Kissing James was everything Hartley had tried to convince himself not to want, everything he knew he could never have for more than a hasty, furtive moment. He knew this would last only a little longer than those few too-casual affairs, and that if he was lucky, knew he was letting himself hope for something experience had shown him he wasn’t going to get, but as he tangled his fingers in James’s hair to pull him closer and lost himself in the music of their heartbeats he couldn’t bring himself to care.
When they parted, James was still smiling, but it was a different smile, one Hartley already knew he would do anything to bring to James’s face again. “You know, I’ve gotten used to expecting second thoughts to mean that what I’m about to do is, in hindsight, incredibly stupid. You’re messing up my decision-making.”
“Do you ever not do those incredibly stupid things?” Hartley couldn’t help asking. Only a month’s acquaintance had taught him that James saw no problem with taking unbelievable risks for uncertain benefits.
“Well, no, but that’s not the point.”
“Yes, it is,” Hartley replied, drawing James closer again.
“You make a compelling argument,” James said a minute or so later, after Hartley had mostly forgotten what he had last said. “But you’re not supposed to contradict your king, you know….Say, if I’m the king, does that make you-“
“No,” said Hartley as flatly as he could around the urge to laugh. He predicted a ridiculous number of such mood shifts in the future.
“When you think about it, ‘Queen Hartley’ really has a nice ring to it.”
“You’re not king yet.”
“It’s important to plan these things in advance, so you can get used to it.”
Hartley tried not to let James see how much he wanted to believe that what he was used to would still matter to James by the time James was crowned. He wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. He had come to terms years before with the fact that any kind of relationship he was involved in would be brief and transitory, as the men he might love found women to love and marry instead. He knew he would have to marry himself one day, so it was selfish to want something that would last, to want someone he would be with forever. But it seemed he was a hopeless romantic that way. He couldn’t stop himself from hoping that this time, it would be different.
“Is it still regicide if you’re not king yet?” he asked to distract himself from becoming maudlin.
“I don’t think so,” James replied.
“Do you want to find out?”
James grinned, but before he could reply Hartley heard footsteps outside his door, probably a servant sent to summon him to dinner. “You should go,” he said. “Someone’s coming.”
Without asking how he knew, James stood and peered out of the window. “Nobody’s watching this way. Hey-your mother goes shopping in Oldmarket a lot. Offer to join her, and I’ll find you.” With that, he was gone, flying away over the wall around the Rathaway town house.
Hartley went down to dinner, trying not to let his stunned delight show on his face. He couldn’t, however, keep himself from humming the happiest song he knew.
Genre: Fantasy, adventure, romance.
Rating: PG.
Characters: Hartley [Pied Piper], James [Trickster].
Pairing: Piper/Trickster.
Warnings: Crackitycrackcrackcrack.
Notes: Dear Tamora Pierce, I am so, so sorry. Written for the piper_trickster Alphabet Challenge, prompt "Q is for Queen". Follows Trickster's Choice
Summary: Introducing our (other) hero, who is somewhat disconcerted by the situation in which he find himself.
The twelfth day of Ice Month, commonly called the Feast of Kings, in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Edward V. Central City on the Mercury Islands.
Hartley was running away. Not in the leaving-home-forever sense; childhood attempts had taught him that that would never work. He was too important a name to be allowed to disappear. Rather, he was willing to settle for running away long enough to avoid the “informal” (meaning only three courses and one servant to each guest) luncheon his parents were giving for the Feast of Kings. He had been hoping that, if he managed to get into enough trouble beforehand, they would refuse to allow him to be seen in public. Unfortunately, his parents knew him too well for that and had “requested” that he be present. Thus, he was running away. If he was very lucky, his parents would be so embarrassed by his absence that they would say he was sick, and he wouldn’t have to attend the feast at the palace that evening.
Having left Eagletown District without attracting attention thanks to a little tune he had perfected on previous excursions, he mingled with the crowd in Newmarket. Hartley smiled as he let the music of the streets soak into him. He loved escaping for a while and just listening.
“You call this fresh? I call it-“
“-live lobster! Two silver-“
“-for a pound, it’s-“
“-disgraceful, how she’s behaved. My sister says-“
“-best wishes to your wife. Hope to be seeing-“
“-some changes around here soon. The new Magistrate-“
“-said to me, ‘Why not get some rice for a change?’ And I-“
“-thought better of Michael than that, I must-“
“-be going now. Maria gets cranky when she’s left-“
“-from last week, don’t think I can’t tell-“
“-him from me, you call that-“
“-fresh?”
Hartley knew he could hear more than the other people at the market, but it saddened him sometimes that no one else seemed to be listening at all. Even for ordinary ears, the sounds of people talking, coins clinking, hard-soled boots and the occasional horseshoe clattering on the cobblestones, the wind blowing past the Feast of Kings banner, all could have had meaning. However, it seemed that he was the only one who bothered to mix them all together into the symphony that was a normal Newmarket street.
“Thief! He stole my purse!”
Most of the time, Hartley ignored the occasional cry after a thief or pickpocket. Here in Newmarket, the merchants and most of the shoppers were well-off at least; a thief almost certainly would make better use of the money. This voice, though, he recognized even from a street over.
Between the street he was on and the one the cry had come from there was a narrow alleyway, exactly right for a thief to duck down and become just another respectable member of society. Hartley leaned casually against the wall next to the alley mouth. When the boy came out, trying hard to walk casually and not succeeding, Hartley’s hand closed around his arm before he knew what was happening.
Hartley’s hand really did close around his arm; the boy was as thin as a rail. Hartley resisted the urge to just let go. The contents of Luna’s purse would make a lot of difference to this scrawny child…but at least as much difference to the four almost as scrawny children he knew were waiting for Luna to get home. Instead, he said, “Give it here, kid.”
“M’lord, I don’t-“
“It’s dark red, tied with a plain cord, and there’s a crescent moon embroidered on it in yellow. Luna’s eldest girl made it for her for her last birthday. Come on-what’s your name, kid?”
The boy looked on the point of bolting. “…Ludovico, m’lord.”
“Well, Ludovico, let’s make a deal: you give me Luna’s purse so I can give it back to her and her children can eat this week, and then,” Hartley produced four silver pieces from his own, better-concealed purse, “you go get yourself a decent meal, and next time you grab someone’s purse who looks like they can afford to lose it. Deal?”
Cautiously, the boy pulled Luna’s purse out of his ragged tunic and dropped it into Hartley’s hand, grabbing the loose coins in the same movement.
Hartley let go of the boy’s arm and watched sadly as he ran away into the crowd. He wished there was more he could do for the boy, but there were so many like him, and these days there was only so much money his parents would allot him. It was almost enough to make him…but he’d promised Wally, no more.
He found Luna on the next street, still searching the crowd. “Lose something?” he asked from behind her, dangling the purse over her head.
“Hartley!” She seized the purse with delight. “How did you--?”
“I have my ways,” Hartley said, smiling. Luna’s purse was a little heavier now than it had been when he had received it. She was too proud of her self-sufficiency to let him help her with money if he offered, so he had simply stopped asking permission to slip a few coins he could easily spare into her purse.
“I wasn’t expecting to run into you today,” she said as they walked down the street together. “I thought sure you’d have something to do with your family.” Luna was one of the handful of friends he had in Central City who knew exactly who he was. According to everyone else, he was Hartley-no-family-name, whose parents had made a lot of money in trade or something and didn’t approve of his friends. It was only partly a lie.
“I do,” he replied. “Why do you think I’m here?”
She laughed. “Poor Hartley, having to spend time in a warm room eating good food when he could be out in the cold being bumped into by twenty different people every minute!”
Hartley stepped out of the way of the woman who was about to be the seventeenth to bump into him. “I’d still rather be here,” he said seriously. “That, it’s all fake, a fancy lace cloth trying to pretend that the table underneath isn’t there. Besides, only my parents’ friends are going to be there. I’d die of boredom. At least this evening they won’t be able to stop me from talking to nobody but Wally and Linda.”
Luna shook her head slowly, a smile on her face. “I’ll never get used to you, Hartley. You sound almost normal, and then I remember your friend Wally that you talk about so casually is the King’s cousin, and you’re not going to just any party for the Feast of Kings, you’re going to the palace.”
Hartley smiled wryly. “I wish you’d stop remembering. Seriously, Luna, I’m not any different from anyone else.”
“Only someone different as you could even say that,” rejoined Luna. “I know you hate having to live in the real world, but there’s a big difference between your kind of people and mine, and until that changes, saying there ain’t is just daydreaming. Which reminds me, have you seen Jack yet today?”
“Not yet. Why?”
“He was asking around for you a couple days ago, wanted to know when you’d be by again.”
Hartley was surprised. Jack knew as well as anyone that, although Hartley couldn’t always get away, he never missed one of the informal meetings of the group of friends and part-time do-gooders that included him, Jack, and Luna. “I thought we were meeting again a week from tomorrow. That’s what we planned last time.”
“Yeah, well, he said something came up and he wanted to see us all, soon as possible. Wanted us to meet someone, he said.”
That made it slightly less mysterious. “Today won’t do, obviously, not if he wants to meet in the evening. Do you know when the next time is that everyone else can be there?”
Luna did some quick calculations on her fingers. “Not until Endweek, anyhow, with Limp working nights these days. Three days. Can you make then?”
Hartley did some calculations of his own. “Unless I manage to be officially confined to my room after this, and probably not even then, I should have no trouble.”
“Same old time and place. I’ll tell him. You look after yourself in that pit of vipers you call a home, Hartley.”
“I always do.”
Luna walked off into the crowd, on her way to finish her interrupted shopping. Hartley looked at the sun and guessed that he had a least another two hours, in all likelihood more, before his parents’ luncheon had finished and it was safe to return home. That was time to wash out the bitter taste dealing with Luna’s purse-snatcher had left in his mouth.
The staffs of the restaurants in Gardensedge District didn’t know Hartley Rathaway, whose family would never dream of coming closer to such “common” establishments than it was necessary to do in riding through the streets, but they had gotten to know Hartley, who came around every week or so to pick up leftover food, quite well. Chatting with those unfortunates who had been stuck working on the Feast of Kings left Hartley happier with the world in general.
His next stop, the Dockside District, came close to taking his hard-won good cheer away. As always, there were too many thin and ragged children who came running for the food Hartley was handing out, too many grownups as thin and ragged as the children, and not enough food to give some to everyone who needed it badly. By the time his bag was empty, Hartley was selfishly relieved to be heading home. Warring against that relief was the desire to take all the well-fed and complacent nobility he would find there and bring them to Dockside to rub their powdered noses in the poverty none of them cared enough to stop.
* * *
“Hartley!” To his enhanced ears, his mother’s voice at its most piercing was almost a physical pain. Hartley regretfully gave up on making it back to his room without incident. “Where were you this afternoon, young man?”
“I went out,” he replied shortly. He spoke as little as necessary to his parents, and most of the time they returned the favor.
“That was already clear. I told you myself that I desired your presence at my luncheon. Lady Hallen’s girls were both there.”
Hartley sighed inwardly. “I apologize, Mother.”
“As I have told you a thousand times, it is beyond time for you to be thinking of your duty to the family name. Whatever your…personal wishes may be, you are your father’s heir, and you have an obligation to see to it that the Rathaway name continues.”
Hartley resisted the urge to flee up the stairs at once. This was why he had been so careful to make himself scarce. His mother, he was beginning to realize, would never leave him alone until he had married someone she considered suitable, and in all likelihood nothing short of extremely public scandal would make the daughters of her friends cease throwing themselves, or being thrown by their own mothers, at his head. “Mother,” he began, choosing his words carefully, “I truly appreciate your concern, but I’m not ready to be married, nor, I think, are they. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a slight headache.”
He managed to make it up the stairs and around a corner before his mother had thought of what to say next. Sitting in his bedroom, surrounded by the musical instruments that were his Gift and his one true love, Hartley could almost forget about the specter of the palace feast looming over the evening. Endweek could not possibly come quickly enough.
* * *
Olimpio, more commonly known as “Limp”, was waiting for Hartley at the inn their group used as a meeting place. It was on the edge of Dockside District, only barely within the respectable confines of Gardensedge, the kind of place no one with a full purse went after sundown. Hartley’s purse, though hidden, was full, but he wasn’t worried. The slow tune he was playing on a small flute as he walked took care of any potential trouble before it happened.
“Evening, Hart,” said Olimpio, a man of few words.
“Good evening to you too,” Hartley replied, unaccountably cheered by the man’s sour demeanor. He had never seen Olimpio smile, nor did he know anyone who had. He wasn’t sure the man could smile at all. “Is everyone else inside?”
“No. Change of plans. Jack’s place.”
“Really? Why?”
Olimpio shrugged.
“Well, we’d better go, then. I’d hate to keep everyone waiting.”
Jack’s house was in Dockside, but Hartley started playing his flute again as he and Olimpio walked through the dark streets, and they arrived without incident.
As unprepossessing as the outside of Jack’s house was, the inside was warm and well-lit, Jack’s small Gift doing the work of fireplace and candles. Instead, orange spheres of witchfire floated above the heads of the group gathered there. Including Hartley and Olimpio, there were ten of them, although they had other associates, mostly friends, scattered around the city.
“That’s everyone,” said Maeve, a hard-eyed woman whose hair matched the witchfire that shone down on it. “Except Jack’s mysterious guest.”
“What’s this about, anyway?” Hartley asked, enjoying the opportunity to sprawl gracelessly in a chair. “Luna didn’t know when she told me.”
“Someone with-an interesting story, let’s just call it that, contacted me a week ago,” Jack said, coming into the room last of all. “He said he wanted to make a business deal. I thought you’d all better hear it, if it’s half as crazy as his story.” Not much worried Jack, but he was worried, chewing on his thumb as he did whenever he was uncertain. “We’re here ‘cause he said he wanted to make it private, no one to overhear.”
“So where is this unknown man with a crazy story?” Luna asked impatiently. Hartley didn’t blame her; she had a home she needed to be getting back to.
“He’s right here.”
They all jumped, especially Hartley. The voice had come from directly behind him, away from any doors, and it was one he didn’t recognize. He hadn’t seen any stranger in the room before, nor had he heard someone enter.
Behind him, a man seemed to peel himself forward from the wall. It must have been a camouflage spell, and a good one, to have fooled them all, even Jack, who looked as surprised as the rest. The man, faced with twenty staring eyes, smiled cheerfully and bowed. “Weren’t you expecting me?”
“How did you get in here?” Jack demanded.
The man kept smiling. “I’m afraid I came a bit early. I like to be early to business meetings; it shows keenness.”
Hartley heard the telltale crackle of Carlo, next to him, readying his Gift. He could throw the stranger out of the room without touching him, if it came to that. “Don’t,” Hartley whispered to him. “Not yet.”
His own Gift wouldn’t work unless the man gave him time to start playing, and if he was good enough to craft or buy a camouflage spell that could to fool ten people at once, he wouldn’t make that mistake. So Hartley only waited. He could hear the man’s heart beat, if he focused on it, slow and even, as though he had nothing to fear. Either the man was a spectacular pretender, or he had his own safeguards.
Maeve scowled at the man. “You wanted to talk. So start talking.”
“All right. I want to employ you. Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but it’s a good place to start.”
“Employ us for what, exactly?” asked Luke, glowering threateningly across the table at the man. It might have worked, if Luke were six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier.
“Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that. Mostly, to keep doing what you’ve been doing, but on my behalf. I would provide funds, of course, but to start with I want you to let people know, subtly, that I’m supporting you.”
“Who are you?” Hartley thought that was a reasonable question to ask.
The man smiled even more broadly than before. “I thought you’d never ask. You can call me James. I’m going to be your next king.”
Maeve stood. “You are crazy. I don’t know why Jack wanted to talk to you. I’m out of here.”
“Am I?” said James, if that was really his name. “Stay just for a minute and watch closely.”
It took a few seconds for Hartley to notice what was happening. James seemed to be growing taller…but when Hartley looked, he saw that the man’s feet were no longer touching the floor. He didn’t move otherwise, just rose slowly into the air, until he hovered a foot above the ground, his head just barely brushing the ceiling. Hartley’s family was of the Neronic nobility, but his passion for music had led him to old folk songs, including several called “The Trickster’s Promise”. He knew the words as well as anyone in the room, and he knew that it was said the Trickster’s kings had been able to fly.
Maeve sat down again abruptly.
James’s heart was beating a little faster, but his breathing was still slow and even. He didn’t show any sign of having cast an illusion spell this strong, and while Hartley had heard of mages powerful enough to create an illusion that would fool all the senses, he had never seen one.
“As I was saying,” James said, still floating on nothing, “The man who suggested you to me is one of my more important supporters-generals, if you will. He said that you do a lot of good around here with not much to work with. You’ve probably noticed, but you’re the only ones in Central City doing anything. His “royal majesty” certainly couldn’t care less about the people he lives off of. I’m going to be different, and I’d just as soon use what’s already available.”
“Use us,” Carlo said, still suspicious.
James shrugged. “If you want to see it that way. I think of it as a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
Luke spoke up again. He worked for one of Central City’s better (and more affordable) advocates, and he was always the one to discuss anything that even sounded like a legal contract. “Under this agreement, you would provide us with monetary and personnel assistance, in exchange for which you would require…?”
“Your word for me, mostly. People like you. They know you care about them. If they hear I’m helping you, they’ll be easier to convince that I care too.”
“But you don’t, do you?” Hartley said, almost too quietly for the rest to hear.
James had sharp ears. “I care, but all the caring in the world won’t do me much good if my head’s hung over Newmarket as a failed rebel. The more people I can get behind me, the better. If you want to help the people, you can help me, and I promise to try my very hardest not to get killed, or you can stand back and watch the Regent slaughter me and mine and ignore the rest, and you’ll have lost your last chance for a long time, maybe ever, to change it. Your choice.” He grinned. “I’ll be outside when you’ve decided.”
As soon as the door closed behind him, they were talking. Hartley could pick out Luna’s expressions of faith, Luke’s professional deliberations, Rick’s angry mutterings, and all the other threads of one-ended conversation. The others, he knew, heard only cacophony.
Carlo slammed his hand onto the table, which shook beneath the impact, and they quieted. “One at a time,” he said. “Jack?”
Jack seemed to have aged five years in five minutes. “I don’t know why you’d think I know what to do,” he said slowly. “I’m no smarter’n any of you. But here’s how I see it: anyone who wants to can join him and his if they want, but the group has to decide what we’re going to say as a group. Do we think he’s going to follow through? Do we think he’s for real, even? Do we think it’s going to make anything better? So we all get to say in or out, and then we’ll see how it goes. I’m in, or I wouldn’t have asked you here. Luna?”
“He’s the Trickster’s choice,” she said simply. Hartley had known her for years, and he’d never seen as clearly as he did now how devoted she was to the god her people had lost. “I’m in.”
“If he can get rid of Axel,” said Rick, spitting on the floor at the name, “I’m all for him. In.”
“I believe him,” said Matteo, whose trust in people a life in Dockside didn’t seem capable of destroying. “I’m in.”
“We could use the money,” said Luke, “and it doesn’t seem a particularly risky position to be in. I say in as well.”
Olimpio simply said, “In.”
“I’m not sure I believe him,” said Liam, “but if he really does have the Trickster on his side, I’m not fool enough to say no. Neron doesn’t care about us. The Trickster, he’ll remember. In.”
Hartley was torn. He had heard of the Trickster only as a part of old stories, as something gone for good. If this turned to civil war, people would die. His family was Neronic nobility. His few noble friends were as closely tied to the Neronic crown as he was, or closer. There was a good chance they would die. He thought of them, and then he thought of the starving children in Dockside, of the anger he always felt on seeing the nobility who cared nothing for the thousands who labored in poverty so that they might sleep on silk. It wouldn’t turn to violence immediately. There was time, and if this man was smart he would understand that wholesale slaughter would never help. Hartley could try to convince him, if he stayed. If he chose strangers over his family.
What else had he been doing all his life? “I’m in,” he said. The words were nothing out of the ordinary, but they rang in his ears like a bell.
Carlo nodded. “You can count me in, too. My brother was talking about something like this, didn’t know what he meant at the time. I’d end up in it anyhow.”
Maeve shook her head. “He won’t remember us later, you know. He’ll use us and throw us away, like everyone else.” She smirked. “But there’s no reason not to milk him for all we can before that. I’m in, and that makes all of us.”
“I guess that’s that, then,” said Jack. “I’ll go tell him.”
* * *
That wasn’t the end of the meeting; even after Luke had argued out the exact details of their agreement, James had several suggestions to make about making things more efficient. He also turned over a purse fatter than the one Hartley had surreptitiously slipped into Jack’s hand in the course of the evening. He was willing to make good on that part of his promise, at least.
When it was over at last, Hartley wanted nothing more than to get home and sleep. It had been a long day. However, it seemed that his rest would have to be put off; James had pretended to leave, but when Hartley stepped out of Jack’s house, James was standing next to him before he had even begun to play his flute.
“It isn’t safe to be walking through Dockside alone at this time of night,” said James with a friendly smile.
Hartley wasn’t fooled. “It probably isn’t much safer with you. If you don’t mind, I can keep myself out of trouble.”
“You see, that’s the thing. I didn’t just decide to make my offer to your little group without checking if any of them were likely to run straight to the Watch. I have a fair number of eyes and ears in this city, and some of them I sent after each of you, just for safety’s sake. And I found out a lot I didn’t particularly want to know about all of you…except for you, ‘Hartley’. Is that your real name, by the way?”
“Is James your real name?” Hartley returned. King or no king, god or no god, he wasn’t about to let a stranger with no reason to trust one of the Neronic nobility know who he really was. He didn’t fancy being found dead in an alleyway.
“Fair enough. But we’re talking about you. The thing is, my people followed you all home from your little get-togethers, and for everyone else that was pretty much all they needed to do. It worked just fine on your friend Jack, for example. But you, each and every one of the people sent to follow you lost you almost as soon as you stepped out the door. Now why is that?”
Hartley grinned. “It’s a gift.”
“I’d wager it is. Funny you’d choose to use it for a little thing like walking home.”
“You said yourself, it isn’t safe to walk through Dockside alone.” Hartley tried not to show how nervous he was.
“And I’d expect you to walk with someone else, like all the others do, not vanish yourself from anyone who might notice you. That’s the kind of thing you only use your Gift for if you can’t afford to be found out. So, ‘Hartley’, why shouldn’t I expect you to show up at one of these meetings with a squad of the Watch? What assurance do I have that you’re not off to report to old Eagle Eyes the spymaster right now?”
When he put it that way, there was no reason at all why he shouldn’t expect Hartley to be a spy. Except, of course, that several of the others knew exactly who he was and why he went home alone, but he couldn’t say that. James had been smiling all evening, but he wasn’t anymore, and Hartley was uncomfortably sure that revealing his identity now would be the last thing he ever did.
“Because if I were a spy,” he said, being as honest as he could afford to be, “I would’ve been the one following you. I’m not going to. You’re safe from me. Do you want me to swear a blood oath on it?” James must know as well as Hartley did that anyone who broke an oath signed in blood died as all the blood left their bodies at once. The gods took such oaths very seriously indeed.
“Nah, I don’t think so. Not if you show me how you do it.” Just like that, the smile was back. “Seems like a useful trick.”
Hartley tried to keep his voice from shaking with relief. “It is.” There was no harm in showing James. It didn’t make him any less vulnerable to the effects of Hartley’s Gift. He pulled his flute from the folds of his cloak and started to play as he walked off into the night.
It wasn’t possible, but he thought he felt James’s eyes on him all the way.
* * *
The fourteenth day of Chill Month.
It was difficult at best to sneak up on Hartley. Even when he was engrossed in tinkering (so his parents disparagingly called it) with one of his many musical instruments, he could hear footfalls and the sound of breath from outside his room. So it was a testament to the intruder’s skill that the first Hartley noticed of him was the sound of someone landing lightly on the floor by his window.
He spun around with a start. It was James, standing just inside the room of Hartley’s family home, and Hartley was sickeningly afraid for a fraction of a second that he was about to be killed for what must seem like a betrayal. Then James smiled reassuringly and held his hands up, showing that he was unarmed.
“Relax. I’m just here because I thought you might like to know that I know. Keep you from being so twitchy every time I look at you, you know?”
Hartley flushed. He had been “twitchy”, if James wanted to call it that, mostly because every time he saw James looking at him he was afraid that the other man had caught his own looks, which were not nearly as detached as the ones he received in return. James was handsome, and the self-confidence he projected all the time only made him more so. Hartley couldn’t help staring, as much as he told himself that nothing could possibly come of it.
“How did you find me?” he asked, wrenching his mind away from dangerous territory.
“Wax in my ears,” James said cheerfully, already sitting casually on the floor next to Hartley as though this were his home. “If I can’t hear your music, it doesn’t affect me. I didn’t tell anyone else about your Gift, by the way. It seems like a nice trick to keep in reserve.”
Hartley shrugged. It was something of an open secret. “The others already know,” he pointed out.
“Oh, your people, yeah, but my people includes more people than your people does, if you know what I mean. Including people who are going to give me an earful when they find out I didn’t tell them about you, but what can you do? People are people.” James paused. “I’m not sure ‘people’ has any meaning for me anymore, after saying all that.”
Hartley couldn’t help laughing, some of the tension creeping out of him. James laughed too, the same friendly laugh Hartley had heard several times over the past month. When only Hartley could hear it, though, it felt different, special, as though James were laughing just for him.
He quashed that line of thought. He should focus on being grateful for his whole skin. “I thought you’d be angry when you found out.”
James seemed genuinely puzzled. “Why? You’re no more likely to turn on me than anyone else. Less, really. And you aren’t the first noble I’ve convinced to join me.”
Hartley looked up, startled. “Really?”
“Really. You may be the one who needed the least convincing, though.”
Hartley knew he was going to spend the next several palace functions he had to attend looking at the other nobility there and wondering if any of them were secretly working for or with James as well. “So, did you come here just to tell me I’m obviously a soft touch?” he asked, smiling. He had smiled more in the last five minutes than he usually did in a week spent in this house.
“Ah, not exactly. The thing is, my information net covers Keystone quite neatly, and most of Central, but I haven’t yet been able to get nearly as many people as I’d like to keep an eye on the Eagletown nobility. At this point, I have a handful of servants here and there, but they can only really keep an eye on one household…and you.”
“You want me to be a spy for you?”
James shrugged. “Not the way you’re thinking, the sneaking around eavesdropping kind. Just go do your noble thing, and then tell me what people are saying about the upheavals and minor rebellions, who’s saying what, what the Regents look like they’re planning, that kind of thing. Who among the Neronic nobility might be worth talking to, especially: it’s going to come to fighting, in the end, and they have the resources to put up a fight. I’d rather at least some of them were doing it for me.”
Hartley thought about it. He could see where he could be useful here, more than he was in the streets, and he could do both at the same time. And maybe if he made enough of an effort to convince the few members of the nobility he cared about to support James, he could stop feeling like he was being stretched slowly in half by the increasing conflict.
“I’ll do it,” he said, then made a face as a thought occurred to him. “I suppose you want me to stop escaping from all my parents’ social functions now.”
James laughed. Part of Hartley felt like the sound, and the knowledge that he could make James laugh, made him feel warm and happy. The other part knew that, if he was feeling that way already, he should take care not to be alone with James again. “Sacrifices must be made,” he said with obviously mocking seriousness. Then, in a voice with nothing mocking about it at all, “I trust you.”
Hartley felt himself flushing again. “You probably shouldn’t.”
“I know. And I do, anyway. Do you know why that is?”
Hartley shook his head, then abruptly stilled as he felt James’s hand brush softly against the back of his neck. He heard as much as felt his heartbeat speed up, as he suddenly dared to hope. He turned his head slowly.
James was smiling, and his eyes were the brightest things Hartley had ever seen. “Because I want to believe I’m not about to do something incredibly stupid.”
Kissing James was everything Hartley had tried to convince himself not to want, everything he knew he could never have for more than a hasty, furtive moment. He knew this would last only a little longer than those few too-casual affairs, and that if he was lucky, knew he was letting himself hope for something experience had shown him he wasn’t going to get, but as he tangled his fingers in James’s hair to pull him closer and lost himself in the music of their heartbeats he couldn’t bring himself to care.
When they parted, James was still smiling, but it was a different smile, one Hartley already knew he would do anything to bring to James’s face again. “You know, I’ve gotten used to expecting second thoughts to mean that what I’m about to do is, in hindsight, incredibly stupid. You’re messing up my decision-making.”
“Do you ever not do those incredibly stupid things?” Hartley couldn’t help asking. Only a month’s acquaintance had taught him that James saw no problem with taking unbelievable risks for uncertain benefits.
“Well, no, but that’s not the point.”
“Yes, it is,” Hartley replied, drawing James closer again.
“You make a compelling argument,” James said a minute or so later, after Hartley had mostly forgotten what he had last said. “But you’re not supposed to contradict your king, you know….Say, if I’m the king, does that make you-“
“No,” said Hartley as flatly as he could around the urge to laugh. He predicted a ridiculous number of such mood shifts in the future.
“When you think about it, ‘Queen Hartley’ really has a nice ring to it.”
“You’re not king yet.”
“It’s important to plan these things in advance, so you can get used to it.”
Hartley tried not to let James see how much he wanted to believe that what he was used to would still matter to James by the time James was crowned. He wasn’t sure how well he succeeded. He had come to terms years before with the fact that any kind of relationship he was involved in would be brief and transitory, as the men he might love found women to love and marry instead. He knew he would have to marry himself one day, so it was selfish to want something that would last, to want someone he would be with forever. But it seemed he was a hopeless romantic that way. He couldn’t stop himself from hoping that this time, it would be different.
“Is it still regicide if you’re not king yet?” he asked to distract himself from becoming maudlin.
“I don’t think so,” James replied.
“Do you want to find out?”
James grinned, but before he could reply Hartley heard footsteps outside his door, probably a servant sent to summon him to dinner. “You should go,” he said. “Someone’s coming.”
Without asking how he knew, James stood and peered out of the window. “Nobody’s watching this way. Hey-your mother goes shopping in Oldmarket a lot. Offer to join her, and I’ll find you.” With that, he was gone, flying away over the wall around the Rathaway town house.
Hartley went down to dinner, trying not to let his stunned delight show on his face. He couldn’t, however, keep himself from humming the happiest song he knew.