"The Pig-Botherer & the Songbird Maiden"

On the off chance you've never seen them, there are a few prose stories on the Unsounded site, in the Miscellany section. There's another oft-referenced story buried on Tumblr to do with Duane and Leysa's very first meeting. Do give it a read, if you never have~

A darling on Tumblr requested a version of it from Leysa's POV which was a fine idea, but I thought a sequel would be more useful. I've always wanted to set Adelier history down somewhere. This is very Aldish, domestic, and a bit cloying, so be certain you're in the mood~~

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To my window wend the devious wrens,
Vainly vying with their odds and ends
Of song to outmatch and to defend
Their beauty ‘gainst yours, songbird maiden.

So often do I visit our ghers community house these past few weeks awaiting your missives, my brother thinks I have taken a lover and I am keeping her bound in the piggery behind the postboxes.

Have I not? In some sense?

Darling Miss Leysa of mien fair and manner mild, pray tell your good father I will call upon your household after services next week, ere the dinner bell’s exultations. I am a man possessed; a febrile penitent, imagining marble Ssael gesturing an advance by the lambence glow. In the curve of the midnight moon I see your countenance. Mingled in birdsong, your laughter; in every towheaded moppet that toddles into the chapel, our merry future, if the khert is merciful and you still will settle for this pig-botherer. And if ever again I see you in our shared waking world? I may not survive it. Yet with eyes thinned, fists pressed ‘gainst my hips, armoured by need I shall try.

Look for me. I beg you tolerate me.

Yours,

Duane Adelier

—

Good Mr Adelier,

Nothing would please me more than to speak and laugh with you again. My father is very willing to have you and my mother is my mother. Please do come, and share a meal with us! And please do not forget the port for my father. He is jolly in his cups and thinks highly of men who know good liqur!

Yours,

An Unbothered Pig

—

In her house shoes, Leysa paced.

The evening’s bread was rising, filling the flat with that heady, hoppy beer aroma that often was the precursor to papa pouring himself an afternoon drink. From the pantry, every can and jar had been temporarily removed and all the shelves scrubbed and relined. It hadn’t been Leysa’s day to help clean the bathhouse but she’d gone regardless when Snaefhe begged excuse for monthly troubles. A full morning, then, descaling the great basins and sanding down the common areas, to say nothing of the changerooms, each with a hundred cubbies, most of them used by children who’d not yet mastered the art of kicking the mud and hound mess off their boots before venturing indoors.

Leysa should be knackered. Instead she paced.

Across the sitting room mainly. From the pale green sofa to the curio cabinet of tidily dusted and arranged Tiersun porcelains to the vintage Tainish tapestries of the Soud Vaghal and Mmekagib Enchal; then the long way to the kitchen where with each circuit mother sighed at her restlessness; then into her bedroom where she could frown at her reflection in the mirror over her writing desk; finally back down the hall to papa’s office, wherein he was scratching numbers into ledgers and had probably already forgotten Duane Adelier was coming tonight to ask for his daughter’s hand.

“I hate a clever bastard,” he called after her, distractedly.

Oh, he did remember.

“I know, papa!”

Mother, the old peahen, had found her trove of letters from Mr Adelier. She had told papa of his intentions before Leysa could. After some tears, papa had agreed to the meeting, but most of the night had railed against the tone of the correspondences, taking those he declared the most egregious with him to his mate’s across the way, to play skipcross. To play skipcross and jeer, she imagined. Oh, poor Mr Adelier. Papa had apprenticed to his own father as a boy and, in spite of an intense longing, had never had the opportunity to go away to school. A regret that pained him to this day, a regret that had twisted into an indiscriminate, hot aggravation towards “clever bastards.”

But that was NOT Mr Adelier.

And so these were NOT nerves making her fingertips cold, Leysa was certain. No, no! Marrying him was the correct course! After all, she’d not suffered one moment’s hesitation taking the houndcart to the Temple weeks ago to accost the man. She had never been so unafraid of a thing in her life as she had been then. How could she have been afraid! She’d had no choice. She had not been making a decision so much as finding herself falling, falling– and thrust out a hand to grasp another’s.

Tonight… Oh, tonight she was not so certain.

Perhaps because, then, she’d been the active party there inside the temple with him, with her giggling friends and her silly secret disguise? Everything she’d done to Mr Adelier had been on her terms, for her own benefit; to pacify her own desperation.

Because… she simply could not marry anyone from this ghers. She was not MEANT to, she knew. Some of them were upstanding gentlemen, successful and sound. Certainly not clever bastards at all. But when she looked at them; at Gerard Davies, the son of papa’s old business partner, or Remiul Eaucort the widowed barrister, or Jon Jakovae the Lions officer… well, it was like looking down a long, dark hallway echoing with the cawing of crows. She would fall down that hallway, down that cavern, down that pit… fall and fall and be nothing at all…

No!

She was getting older. Neither her parents nor the ghers elders would tolerate her reticence for much longer. An unmarried woman was a burden on her entire community, on her family. She had to put her body towards its intended purpose, for their benefit.

Leysa knew this for what else was there to know? Yet need everything be a foregone duty? Must her life feel like someone else’s life already lived a million trillion times before, and her participation in it limited to choosing the colour of the drapes as she fell through it? As she fell through that rustling and downy and smothering dark corridor?

Her choices were limited.

But so long as there was more than one choice available, she WOULD choose. She would be the one to choose.

“An adventure,” she’d told her friend Snaefhe, “Someone different, who’s seen different things, who must want different things himself if he’s come so far from where he started!”

“He’s poor as a widow’s keddy,” Snaefhe’d sniffed, “His father prints up the newsletter, and does all Ninny’s songbooks. Now his son’s gone to the temple for certain, but there’s no money in that so here he is applying to ghers 34 to find a woman to treat like a bank. Use that head of yours as something more than a hat stand.”

A printer’s son… Leysa knew it was supposed to conjure up images of dirty fingernails and squinting eyes, but instead it put Leysa in mind of the small horde of romance novels and historical accounts she kept inside her writing desk. Had the Adeliers printed any of them? Would he know any of the authors?

“You’re not listening to a word I say,” Snaefhe had sighed, “What of his limp then? Gangly sunworn underfed Copper who walks across a room as though he is falling. Of course he must enter the Lions as a spellwright - how can such a cripple swing a sword! And do not think the lads don’t resent his ascension to officer without first working through their ranks!”

“He was in the Council Army,” Leysa admonished,” And a magery before that. He is a soldier but a scholar foremost. That trip in his step is so small, you are so mean!”

“Until he topples over onto you!”

Leysa paced.

This time when she passed into the kitchen she slid the fragrant round bread from the proofing box, stripped off the dishclout, and slid it into the crackling mouth of the oven. The roasted lamb leg beneath was coming along nicely. She knelt there a moment, turning her fingers over in front of the warmth.

“Of course you cleave to the one that is the greatest inconvenience to us,” her mother sniped, intent on her sewing, “If we were stronger stuff, we’d…”

“Strong enough to make me miserable?” Leysa cut her off, gently, “Aye, always that is a parent’s privilege. What recourse would I have?”

“Ach, don’t be so dramatic. Save that for when you are begging us to pay the midwife’s fee, begging us to pay for your lamp oil, begging us to pay for-”

“I would beg strangers on the street before I begged either of you!” her daughter pronounced.

“Oh, Leysa. Songbird maiden. Write an opera about how terribly cruelly your parents treated you by encouraging you not to starve.”

“Perhaps I will-!”

Like a malevolent windchime, like a devious wren, the front door bell suddenly jingled. Leysa shrieked. Her mother gave a start, tucking the shirt she was mending away in her sewing box and standing from the table with a pained expression. “Are you quite ill?” she asked, grasping Leysa’s arm, “He is only a suitor from ghers 14, he is not bloody Shadwe-”

“Be kind to him,” Leysa begged, “He’s the one I want!”

“You go to your room and papa will call you when he is ready!”

“But my lamb!”

“Fine! But you stay in the kitchen!”

“I’m going to make my currant sauce!”

“F-fine?”

Mama released her, tidied her hair in the reflection in the glass panes of the dinnerware cabinet, then shuffled out. Mama was really quite fetching: tall and willowy and with a lovely voice, unhappy though it often was. She had lived through very black days, and lost three children to sickness, and a brother last year to a stabbing on the Bridge.

Leysa heard the creak of papa’s chair. His footsteps in the hall. Another strangled jangle came, as though someone had started to pull the front bell again but self-consciously thought better of it. An ember popped in the oven, setting Leysa’s heart to hammering in another direction, but with a sucking pop of cold air the front door was opened, and she crept to the threshold to listen.

“Good afternoon, sir!” she heard Mr Adelier sputter through a half-caught breath. Leysa grinned into her hand, suddenly giddy to hear his deep and halting voice. Oh, she wanted to see him… “We… met briefly last week at the ghers council, and I wondered if we might speak today concerning a pertinent matter. Duane Adelier, sir.”

“Of course,” said papa, “Adelier. Come in, come in. Orlina, take his coat.” A shuffling of wool and leather as outerwear and boots were shed. Leysa spun in place five times, knotting her fingers together under her chin, then walked a wide arc to the counter and dumped seeded currants into a saucepan. A splash of brandy followed: one for the fruit, one for her.

“The glamour incident was no notion of mine,” Papa continued after another round of pleasantries and an invitation to sit, “I still have no idea whence she obtained that pymaric though I do suspect one of her brothers. They are godly men but they still are young, and prone to mischief. They are also deeply protective of their younger sister and, I think, too easily swayed by honeyed importuning.”

“She explained her motivation, sir,” Mr Adelier replied evenly, “It spoke well of her.” A pause. “...I’ve come to understand that a heart moved by great passions will not be chained by the bounds of propriety.”

“That is still no excuse!” interjected Mama, and she heard Mr Adelier laugh.

“Good Madame demonstrates my thesis.”

Leysa could imagine mother’s thin lips curling into a sour knot. Papa’s next words were warmer, more relaxed.

“I love my Leysa too much,” he said, “I’ve spoiled her, but it’s not ruined her in the least. She is a good woman, an excellent housekeeper and cook, and she will be an asset to one very fortunate man. But he must be the correct man.”

Adelier shifted. “Good sir guesses at my intention then.”

“I do. Leysa told me you have been pursuing her, but not in any manner I can fault you with… proprietarily speaking, in any event. The ghers does want you. By others I have been told you are expected to climb far in the Temple’s ranks, and you are already quite the asset to the Soud. Yet I know also you have oft leaned on charity - and unfortunately must continue to do so as you seek a wife-”

“Sir, I must not,” Mr Adelier contradicted firmly, “I will pay for the chain and I will pay for a home here. It will take some time but I have already begun a plan of action.”

“That may be, but your schooling was sponsored, was it not? Yet you never graduated? Is it possible you have some difficulty meeting your obligations?”

Leysa could imagine their guest’s brow furrowing. Papa was an accountant - he appreciated the reality of a round and steady paycheck!

“I did not graduate,” Mr Adelier admitted, “It was not possible. I discovered intolerable injustice in that institution, and was left with no choice but to expel myself from it. I offered recompense to my patron afterwards, but he was pacified by my deployment. Furthermore, my recent promotion to the Temple has delighted him; vindicated him, he said. He sent me… well, he sent me a basket of fruit!”

Oh, no. Leysa heard him thunk something down on the sideboard. It sounded like a…

The derision was palpable in papa’s voice. “You cannot lease a flat with a pear.”

Mr Adelier’s laugh trilled nervously. “B-but if so, better a grape estate than a lemon I think, sir.”

Oh, no! Leysa grimaced into her cupped hands. Papa continued, with more ice: ”I do not like a clever bastard, sirrah.  You served in Chinoll, but it was a short deployment. Why?”

“I- I was only a year with that company but two years in Fachlyne among the quarantine forces. I left Chinoll once the Foi-Hellick Affair was soundly concluded, and I had a recommendation to the Temple to serve as Spellmaster to the Lions! Sir, it has not been entirely accurately reported that I number among the clergy there! Clerics receive no salary, it is true, but I am training spellwrights, and so I shall! Once I have proven some success with them, that is.”

“Hm. One pickle of a recommendation to shift from training Plats to training our own good paladins.”

“Indeed!”

Leysa heard little pride in that utterance; only the man agreeing, and sounding equally as surprised by the nature of recent events in his life. “My brother and I showed ourselves well; put to rout a Salt Lizard and brought to safety Amadwe Argenti’s wee son. They say we saved the whole of Chinoll but I think that is an exaggeration. It was Chinoll that chased away the Crescians and the last of the Vampire’s men while we Adeliers still were struggling beneath the earth. And of course we had no success capturing the Etalarche.”

“Because you were intent on rescuing the Amadwe’s child,” Papa clarified.

Now, if Mr Adelier were conferring with sultit - a man of the other castes - he would be in a precarious position here, for admitting he’d allowed the escape of Roger Foi-Hellick would instantly lower such a man’s regard of him. The Dammakhert did not have Soud so caught up by the ear though, and so Mr Adelier was able to consider a moment, and then affirm:

“That is correct, sir.”

It was the right reply. Leysa had not doubted, and had known the truth of the affair from the letters she and Mr Adelier had exchanged. Papa had known it too. She heard his tone shift again. Heard him inhale deeply from his pipe. “A good and righteous sort,” he deemed, “Wouldn’t you say, Orlina?”

“...it is evident he is not a monster,” replied Mama guardedly, “If you had slain the Etalarche, you would not be here now. You would be the most famous spellwright in Alderode and the men of White Slope would be clamouring to have you as a son-in-law.”

Mr Adelier hmm’d. “If that is meant to make me regret my choice, good madame, it has failed. I say, I do not wish any of the women of White Slope. I wish your bold and bright daughter Leysa.”

Leysa took another swig of brandy as the currants began to break down and simmer. She added a handful of sugar, lemon shavings, then moved the pan to the edge of the hob. But she did not need the drink, nor to be standing so near the fire, to feel so warm. Warm right down to her toes.

Papa sounded much more relaxed now, and there came the merry tinkle of crystal and the pop of a cork. “What of your health? That limp, Adelier; a souvenir from your salt lizard escapade?”

“Ach, no, sir. I was struck by a houndcart as a boy. Two broken legs and my pate stove in like a whaleboat.”

“My word!”

“I was a hellion at the time and far too busy to stay on the doctor’s hobble as long as he prescribed. It troubles me not one whit.”

“It troubled the salt lizard, some.”

“Haha, I suppose so!”

“I’ll not mince words, Adelier: I delight in the idea of a fighting man in the family. The Gefendur are bold as cockerels as the plague grinds on, and I think a time will come within my span of years when men of Ssael must again reach for their swords, and not their scripture. My Leysa should be with a man who can protect her and my grandchildren.”

Mr Adelier made another noncommittal noise. “I… pray it will not be so. I served alongside many good Gefendur men in Fachlyne. I know good Gefendur men here now, in Durlyne. I wonder if our spleen regarding them and theirs regarding us, comes of the phantoms that creep into our heads when we go too long without conference with them. We live in our ghers, work and shop in our cloistered districts; but we are all of us Aldishmen here, where Ssaelit are free. And those Aldishmen forget, too, that their particular Gefendur predilections are unwelcome in the south. We heretics all have more in common than we allow ourselves to realise.”

With this, Mr Adelier used the word “Aldit” for Aldishmen - for all of them, including the Soud. This was a word used by some of the more dissident of their caste to refer to refer to the rest of the country. THEY are Alds; THEY are of Alderode; we Soud are of Tain, long ago invaded and subjugated by the first Aldish King! But Mr Adelier took a gamble with Papa, to be sure they were politically aligned in favour of Alderode, and not Soud separatism. This interview could go two ways, Leysa thought!

But she was not concerned.

Papa poured them both drinks and chuckled indulgently. “So all we Aldit are, Adelier. Leysa! Leysa come here and sit with us!”

Now she was very concerned.

She spun four more times. So thickly simmered the sauce she thought it was her own scrambled, pickled, gory-red guts. Lamb, are you still sizzling kindly? Yes? Bread? It smelled so good, but another four minutes. What was her hair doing? Fine, fine. Cheeks pallid, she gave them each a pinch. Then Leysa took a deep breath and turned into the short passage to the sitting room.

It was not a crow-dark passage, this. The warm firelight of the kitchen streamed behind her. The smoke ahead, all lit cool and blue from the front windows, smelled like papa; like her own dress skirts in the evening when she was changing, because she’d sat out with him too long reading as he skimmed the paper and his economic periodicals.

She turned the corner.

In the sitting room, Mr Adelier looked both larger than he had in the temple, and smaller too. He was a ghastly tall man, a head higher than his hosts, and didn’t seem to know where his hands should be as he perched on the edge of the room’s finest upholstered swayback, the one reserved for guests. But he was also not in his spellmaster uniform. No susserating silks and fine green midcountry wool. No red ribbons lining his cuffs and hems. He was instead in shabby woollen trousers, a white shirt, and a waistcoat with only a little simple embroidery about the buttons. Surely his finest but she wished he had worn his uniform… His scuffed boots looked like they should be on an old man; wretchedly out of fashion with their squared toes and high heels. They were probably his father’s hand-me-downs, she thought. Perhaps his grandfather’s.

He seemed to be trying to grow a beard, too, and something would have to be done about that. His hair also looked even worse than it had at the temple, which was without question a sign from God he would die, very soon, without a wife.

Yes, in their fine sitting room, he was more like a labourer come to whack the pipes than another ghersit. Mother shifted in her seat, perhaps worrying he’d brought in fleas. Their family was one of the wealthier in their ghers, and their pretty things reflected that. Father oversaw many accounts from White Slope businesses and mother had in her boudoir several velvet gowns and jeweled tiaras she’d wear with him to fine affairs at the Temple, and the mayor’s suites. The sitting room curio held a real Kav Ulukhersu from Tain, a wee porcelain lion with jeweled green eyes, and not one of those glass fakeries from Sharteshane. Leysa noticed suddenly that mother had moved it to the front of the display at some point today, along with her great great Uncle’s Thorns and Council chains, and a fragment of Dauph’s Wall, against which, Sonum Ssael had supposedly rested his shoulder during the siege of Inughal.

Mr Adelier gave a start to see his quarry. His hand situation worsened; they crawled over each other in his lap like crabs. Leysa bowed prettily and he rose to fold in return, one hand creeping towards his forehead for a humbler salute, but then thinking it too formal perhaps, and dropping awkwardly to fist at his chest. Leysa saw the ruby red bottle opened on the sideboard. Oh, he had arrived with it! The Sevencrow Port! Just as she’d suggested. It was terribly expensive - one of the season’s special editions, with the glowing label! - but there it was. Leysa felt sore suddenly for asking it of him.

Yet there it was.

“Thank you for visiting us, Mr Adelier,” she stammered, “What a thoughtful gift!”

“A little bird told me it might be appreciated,” he replied generously.

“A little songbird maiden?” asked mama, but Mr Adelier didn’t seem to hear her. He didn’t seem to hear or see anyone but Leysa. She beamed, reflecting his light.

“You brighten the room, Miss,” he said, and half-bowed again, “Thank you for gracing us.”

Papa sucked a long drag off his long-stemmed Tainish pinpipe, regarding the pair as they sat. “Mr Adelier ventures he is the husband for you, my girl. What do you think of him?”

Leysa trained her eyes on the young man’s face, which seemed to disarm him terribly. It was heady, somehow, this small power; this huge question. She crinkled her gaze shrewdly. “I think I am the wife for him,” she answered, as though choosing a hedgeapple at market. Oh, and there was his patron’s pear on the sideboard. Bruised, dented. He had been keeping it for a while. This was very funny, and very sad, and she wanted to embrace him very badly.

Papa grunted. “You smell like brandy.”

Leysa nodded. “It would be peculiar if I did not, for I have had two glasses of it today.”

Mr Adelier laughed suddenly, explosively. Leysa did too, grateful for the tacit permission. Mama and Papa explored different ways to frown.

“She does not drink regularly I assure you, sir,” said mother.

“There is stewing in the kitchen my famous brandied red currant sauce, for the shortcake!” explained Leysa, “One does want enough zip in one’s desserts to give the children an honest reason why they must not have any.”

Mr Adelier laughed again. Leysa loved the sound: a strong, confident shout of a laugh, like a happy dog barking. The accompanying visuals too; the way his green eyes dimmed dark, and sparkled. “My grandfather would do the same with stews!” he said, “My brother and I would have our share, and then he would empty a bottle into the crock so he could claim the rest. He was a good man but neither blood nor charity stood between him and filling his stomach!”

“Was he a printer too?” asked Mama. Mr Adelier shook his head.

“As a boy, my father apprenticed to my Great Uncle Ernest and took over the print shop when he fell ill. My grandfather was a spellwright in the Council Army and later an officer of the Durlyne guard. My brother and I followed his path, and so I fear the Adelier name will for not much longer be associated with that very important and honest, but sorely unlucrative business.”

A tsk from papa, who set about refilling his glass. “A family in decline?” he wondered.

Mr Adelier’s expression softened to something inscrutable; something drawn and tight. It reminded Leysa of her mother’s expressions betimes, when the neighbour’s children, all shrieking joy and bedevilment, came to collect their dinner scraps for the pigs and chickens.

Mr Adelier’s response caused them all to sit up.

“Good sir recalls the Red Night some fifteen years ago?” Leysa knew of it. Every Soud did. One Tirnasday evening when the guard had been drunk and drowsy with the day’s festivities, the wells in the working class Soud ghers had been poisoned. More than a hundred Soud had died, and though the city guard blamed Crescian saboteurs, it had been Gefendur devout from a Bronze ghers that had claimed responsibility. Neighbourhoods had burned for weeks. VITS deployed the Council Army. “That atrocity hit the Adelier family with particular devastation,” Mr Adelier explained. “I lost a young sister, my grandmother, great grandparents, and much of my extended family. My mother was ill for a year afterwards, and my father believes that consequent weak state is why she did not survive my brother’s coming.”

“That is a hard lot,” apologised papa, shaking his head. His glass was half-emptied in one clipped swallow.

“So it goes,” said his guest, waving a hand nebulously, awkwardly, “I was young; it was hardest on my father. In any event, we cannot… foresee any event, can we, haha...”

“Ssael fhikemun rish. Your own prospects now, you feel you will remain at the Temple?”

“For a certainty. I have wished to serve in the Temple of Song since I was in shortpants.” He paused, looked to the smoke-darkened ceiling for inspiration, then said: “Ssael has laid for me a challenging way - his spellwrights are in a disarray - but should they heed my say I’ll save the day, and teach them how to spell and slay.”

A clever bastard!

Leysa’s hands went cold at this second ungodly display of wordplay. She clutched her skirt and swung her fearful gaze to Papa. He had been known to have poets arrested if they busked on their street corner! She tried to convey this to Mr Adelier - no more rhyming! - but he was… well, he was looking at her bosom, wasn’t he. She stared at him until his gaze snapped guiltily up to hers, and he sucked his lips over his teeth into a hard, self-conscious line.

Leysa rallied. She had to save him! Leap bodily upon the pymaric explosive!

“Thine eyes do stray, Mr Adelier!” she blurted! “Or, if thou were not a gentleman, so would I say. Keep those pernicious green orbs at bay!”

His ears burned red as corned mutton, but a naughty smile broke the hard horizontal. “THEY are not the most potent orbs today arrayed.”

Mother gasped!

Papa clapped his hands on his thighs and stood from his chair. “Well, damn my eyes, you two deserve each other. Ssael fhikemun rish! Orlina, come into the library with me.”

“Simon!” Mother didn’t want to leave them in the room alone together, Leysa knew. Oh, what would Mr Adelier do? Croon a few more lascivious lines? Fall upon her with his clumsy huge hands and fish the orbs out of her bodice? Father touched Mother’s arm and she was left with no choice but to follow him into the rear of the flat, shooting daggers over her shoulder until she’d rounded the hallway corner. Leysa giggled into her hands, caught in Mr Adelier’s uncertain, radiant smile.

“That was…” he stammered, “Forgive me. I am only six months from service and betimes - ofttimes - the ribald ways return. You do overcrow my better judgement, Miss Leysa.”

“Do you forgive me for my humbug then?” she wondered, crossing her arms over her knees? “My glamour?”

“Naught to forgive. You required research on a crucial topic, and you pursued the necessary data with courage and cleverness. Though in truth… a part of me feared it a component of a far more elaborate prank. I thought I might call here today, and the whole of your ghers would be crouched behind the door, waiting to leap at me and laugh to the rafters.”

“You’re charmingly self-effacing, sir. If half of what’s said about you is true, you must show more confidence!”

Mr Adelier sighed and spread his too-large hands helplessly. “Martial prowess is a matter of repetition and priority. Such skills do not translate to… whatever this is.”

Leysa nodded sympathetically. “I must recommend brandy, sir.”

He laughed, but a little sadly. “We work so hard to sharpen our wit, and yet for some of life’s dearest trials, we fare best with that wit dulled.” It was true, Leysa thought. Everything would be easier for her, she knew, if she was duller. If she wanted less. If she had quaffed deep enough of whatever soporific it was that let so many of her friends trust their futures to their father’s or brothers’ or uncles’ discernment.

“It must be pleasant to be stupid,” she mused. Mr Adelier closed his eyes and cocked his head diplomatically.

“Perhaps. Yet I fear “stupidity” is largely a violence wrought upon us by others. It is its own trip in our step. And so my heart aches for the stupid, even if they develop fewer lines across their brows. Tell me, what are your brothers like?”

“Speaking of the stupid?”

“No, no, I meant no such thing!”

His nerves were charming, and she well understood how a pair of disapproving and protective older brothers could for him spell havoc. “Jevon and Guiscard well-like this match,” she assured, “Jevon feels as father does, that you are a fighting man of rising class who could protect our family. He is a customs officer by day but wants a go at you on the greens!”

“He is a spellwright?”

“Oh, no, a fierce swordsman!”

“I use a quarterstaff-”

“That is his wish! None use it seriously here, it is a peasant’s tool, and he wishes to measure his sword against a man who better knows its use.”

Mr Adelier grimaced. “I will try not to kill him.”

“Oh, do try. He is my favourite. You might kill Guiscard if you like. He is content enough with this but like father, he questions your purse. Last quarter the khert blessed him with a second son after he clipped his whole head in humility, and ever since he has acted like a man chosen, laying out his decrees with all of Ssael’s certainty.”

“Sounds a pip,” said the Spellmaster, looking queasy.

“Like I said, Mr Adelier, you can kill him if you like. He fumbled through all of his training as a boy and cannot fight a hen. He works with Papa and is making good money as his head of staff which I do not think entitles him to the opinions that he has, but most men interpret a surfeit of pocket change as permission from God to exercise their will upon the world. Of course I love him, but if he fell in a puddle of mud on a cold day I would laugh, a little.”

Mr Adelier nodded. “I will do my best.”

“Now, you tell me something you do not like about me.”

“E-excuse me?” he choked, flinching as though with cramp. Leysa leaned a little closer, cheeks bunching up around a smile. Jevon had told her to do this. He said that a man who did not love his sweetheart’s shortcomings would discover them too late, and punish her for trapping him with them.

“My shortcomings,” she pressed, bobbing her head around to catch his gaze, which was fluttering from wall to wall now like a panicked moth, “Hm? You saw one easily enough that morning when I had glamoured my countenance. What else is a mark against me now?”

“N-naught presents itself-”

“Am I too cheeky, Mr Adelier? Am I too bold? Do I stink of brandy like a washerwoman?”

“None of those qualities present themselves in excess-”

“My right eye is slightly larger than my left and I fear too much jaw wraps ‘round my face, lending it a mannish impression, mother says.”

“No!” Mr. Adelier exploded, and did so with such passion that Leysa drew back, and regretted upsetting him.

“One thing,” she encouraged more gently, smiling.

His gaze sunk to his lap, and she thought all the tomes of the libraries of the Temples of Song and Wind flapped and flipped in his mind. Ach, how ridiculous that he would not simply say that her braided hair was overwrought or her dress was too-

“Your last letter,” he began, shaking his head as though about to condemn her to the Pit. Or as if… as if in judging her, he was opening himself up to judgment… “Your last letter.”

“Yes, sir?”

His huge right hand scratched at the back of his left. “I am certain it was only an odd quirk of your pen, but you… you misspelled ‘liquor.’ It is L-I-Q-U-O-R.”

Such devastation darkened his expression that she could not laugh. Pain tore a line across his forehead, or was that the cast shadow of a dangling noose, and he the condemned beneath it, awaiting the choke of the hemp? Surely it was all over for him now, the lettered man, the fastidious scholar, the proofreading printer’s son, the joyless, nitpicking pedant–

One-hundred quips tickled Leysa’s brain… but she knew, somehow, they would wound him. So instead: “Thank you for telling me,” she said softly, earnestly, “In its way, it is a happy thing to discover one is incorrect. After that point, one has the knowledge to mend that mistake, and never in that way be incorrect again. A critique, frankly and kindly expressed, is not a critique at all but armour; a gift of armour to shore up a vulnerability.”

From his forehead, the line melted to memories. Every purple-bellied stormcloud cleared from his face, dissolved, undone by the light of a breaking smile. “Oh, Miss Leysa,” he whispered, reaching impulsively for her hands, “I am afraid I do love you very, very much. To every beseeching utterance, the khert knows the correct response and you are, I see, the same. The very same.”

She let him clasp her fingers, only laughing a little, feeling as though she was full of drunken bees, on a ship at sea.

“And what is something you do not like about me?” he asked, “Anything. Say anything and I will rectify it.”

“Your beard, sir. I confess I am in particular not a-”

She gasped! Before her eyes, he smeared his right hand across his jaw and every last blonde whisker vanished! Gone! In a whiff of hissing green light! As though they had never been!

“Oh, that is marvellous!” she whispered, dipping close enough to ruffle his forelock with her exhalation, so she could see his face so freshly shorn. Chin smooth as a snow drift! Truly gone! How magical pymary was! “You did not speak it! The spellwords!”

“I need not. I will, in the future, if you prefer it.”

“You cast as you like!” Leysa insisted, and wanted more than ever to hold this magician of a man, this impossible fool.

“The both of you return to your seats!” mother barked. They shot apart like like-aligned magnets, whumping against their chair backs. Leysa’s fingers tingled. Mr Adelier looked breathless. “Where is your beard?” Mama demanded, as though he had stuffed it under his bottom or had fed it to a kedis.

“Oh, Mama,” Leysa chided, “Mr Adelier is a spellwright. Such details do not concern him. There is not a word he cannot spell; nor a single whisker of hair either, for that matter.”

I love you beyond all reason, he mouthed.

“Stop that now,” bade papa testily, fanning a small stack of papers as he came again into the sitting room, “I’ve had drawn up the usual contract, Mr Adelier, and a chain fee very appropriate to Leysa’s station and your own.” Leysa watched her fiance’s face as he took up the proffered contract - her FIANCE! The edge rounded off the sharpness of his delight, but he did not seem overly startled by the sum of money requested of him there inside the dreadful papers. “I wish the marriage blessed both here and in Tain and I wish a grandchild within a year of your first night. You have one season from today’s date to raise the fee, and then this offer is broken. Leysa is not of an age where she can wait about kicking her chin as you dig up another sponsor. No fruit baskets accepted in ghers 34.”

Mr Adelier took the contract but he did not take the bait. He stood, tucking the papers into his waistcoat, and bowed deeply and with great solemnity. “I will not disappoint you, sir.”

Leysa jumped up herself. “Oh! My bread!”

“I rescued it already, wee airhead!” said mama, batting her away, “And saved your currants too, which were near to making a mess of the hob. Let us adjourn to the dining table, and you can taste for yourself if you have chosen wisely in wives, Mr Adelier. She’s made everything from the lamb to the bread to the pickles.”

Ach, mama sounded so miserable that Leysa found her own elation tempered; but then, a most extraordinary thing. Rather than take his beloved’s arm, Mr Adelier tripped a few loping steps forward to touch her mother’s elbow, offering his own to her. Mama juddered as though burnt. Bewildered, she turned up her face to him.

“I know, good madame, that any skills Miss Leysa boasts will be ones imprinted upon her by the attentive mother and fastidious homemaker that brought her into this world.”

“Is that so, sir?”

“Oh, good Madame, I know that it is so. Too young I was when I lost my mother; it left me less of a man than I might have been. I pray you will tell me when I falter, and finish the education that fate unjustly denied me. My mother cannot ask this of you, but I beg it, in her stead.”

Papa guffawed, but said nothing when his wife carefully, measuredly, took the younger man’s arm. Mr Adelier patted her hand, all aglow with triumph, and then gestured to the curio in passing as they proceeded down the hall. “You honour me. Now, I wonder if you might favour me also with the origin of your Tiersuns there? I thought I recognised the mounted soldier as one of Night Niergunt’s but surely that is a clumsy error on my part. How could such a rare and masterful antique be here, and not safely secreted inside a museum!”

Mama smiled, flattered, and Leysa’s heart swelled. “That IS a story worth the hearing, Mr Adelier!”

“Will you please call me Duane, good madame?”

“I will not, Mr Adelier, but I will tell you the story… My grandmother was thirteen years old when the Mmatont took East Harbour, when that great fire swallowed up the waterfront and the chapel there of Vaosa Rach…”

Leysa hung back a moment as they proceeded, admiring the curve of the Spellmaster’s broad back and shoulders, unobscured today by the cloak of a uniform. Perhaps it was fine he had not worn it... Papa chucked her chin, then followed the pair to supper. “Clever bastard,” he scoffed. Leysa wasn’t sure which one of them he was talking about.

There was much she wasn’t sure of. She didn’t know what plan Mr Adelier could possibly have to raise the extraordinary amount of money delineated in that contract, nor where in the ghers they might establish a household in time to accept a new babe, nor how she would fare as a mother herself, nor how Mr Adelier would treat her after his deification of her had dimmed and she was fat as Yerta with child, asking for money to buy flour and lye. She did not know much at all, save all she knew she did not know.

And perhaps one other thing. Maybe the thing that would matter most.

She knew that, come what may today, tomorrow, or fifty years hence, none could say she had fallen down that black and unsounded corridor between girlhood and wifery. She had not fallen.

Leysa Adelier had taken hold of what she wanted, and what she wished for, and she had LEAPT.

“Do not yet serve the sauce, mama!” she called, walking quickly to beat mother to the stove, “It needs at least two more splashes of L-I-Q-U-O-R!”

Mr Adelier barked his happy laugh again.