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I stumbled up to Lord Golden’s chambers very late at night, and very drunk. At some point in the evening perhaps I had known what I was doing, but if I had it had been hours ago, and many drinks besides. I had had a plan, I was sure, for how to right everything between the Fool and me, but as with most plans conceived in taverns, I’d lost the thread of it along the way. Now all that was left to me as I ascended the tower was the same ache in my chest that had been my constant companion since our quarrel.
Lord Golden was still entertaining, and I poured myself through the door to the surprise and displeasure of several minor lords and ladies. They sprang up at the sight of their host’s erstwhile manservant, lurching into his parlor as though it were the deck of a storm-tossed ship.
Lord Golden, however, did not seem particularly surprised. He stood also, more slowly, and held himself with an air of chagrin and disgust. His expression was much the same as one who smells his own dog’s leavings somewhere in the house.
“Tom Badgerlock, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Now here is a man who cannot hold his liquor. He is often sick when in his cups, I’ll warn you, and it is often explosive. I regret our best course may be to adjourn.”
I glowered at him. A young noble looked between us with alarm at my boldness. “My lord, allow me to remove the cur.”
I thought, were he to move any closer, I would see him laid out upon the rich tassled carpet. Lord Golden feared the same of me; I could see a hint of reproach in his tawny mien.
“You are so kind, Lord Rosewood, but no. I fear what damage Badgerlock would wreak upon the keep were he loosed in this state. There is nothing for it. We must part. But do call on me tomorrow, won’t you? All of you. I insist.”
He reached around the party, clasping hands in fond farewell. They needed little more encouragement to make for the door. Even Lord Golden’s would-be defender left with alacrity. The greasy, sweaty Tom Badgerlock was clearly not so alluring or diverting as other of Lord Golden’s eccentricities. Perhaps, I thought blackly, Lord Rosewood had hoped not to leave my master’s rooms at all. Seeing his plans stymied, he had seen no reason to remain.
“By Sa, man,” hissed Lord Golden when the door was latched. “Have you no decency? Or did you forget your behavior reflects upon me also? You fairly stink of drink, and no Jamaillian brandy, that.”
“No. That’s the cheapest Buck tavern ale.”
“Only the finest for you, Tom.”
“As you taught me, m’lord.”
He curled his lip at me, and blew out a breath so forcefully his golden hair trembled about his face. For a blink he seemed to droop, but then he hardened again, drawing himself up. “You do know how to ruin a night’s festivity.”
“Lord Rosewood?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
“He flew the coop at speed, I thought. Pity for you.”
“You are insubordinate, Badgerlock.”
“I’m tired and drunk,” I said. “I’ll go to bed.”
I was tired, much too tired for all of it. I could no longer remember what I’d been thinking at all. I should have waited until he was asleep and stolen up into Chade’s workroom. I should have passed out drunk in the street and prayed for Laudwine to find me there. I shrugged away from Lord Golden and took a step toward my door. He stopped me with a hand to my chest, searing cold through both his glove and my shirt.
“You’ll retire when I dismiss you, and not before,” he said.
“Oh?”
He frowned. “You’ve spoiled it,” he said, a touch too thickly for the entitled whine he was aiming for. “You’ve spoiled everything.”
“Let me go then.”
He wagged his finger at me. “What do you imagine my guests think is happening now?”
I narrowed my eyes, unsure what he was playing at. “That you’re telling me off, probably. Sending me to bed without my supper.”
“Oh, remonstration, of course. But use your head, Badgerlock. I am becoming known for my strange appetites.”
“They can’t think you’d wish to—to bed me like this.” Or ever, but I already despaired of that.
Lord Golden raised his eyebrow. Despite the late hour he was richly attired as ever, his lissome form shown off to great advantage by tight breeches and a scandalously low-cut silk shirt. His hair gleamed as though polished—he must have oiled it, or used some technique for tamping it down, for it had lost some of the wild downiness the Fool’s hair always suffered from. He flipped it over his shoulder and back as though he knew I studied it, studied him. My head spun.
“There is no limit to what they think,” he said. “My very personage is an invitation to imagine anything. Who knows what we get up to in Jamaillia. My drunken manservant must hardly make the list. But he is what I have tonight, and surely my hasty dismissal of my guests is proof enough of my eagerness for him. Perhaps it is even a regular game we play.”
“Fool, this is no game.”
He shoved me backwards. I stumbled and fell, sprawling back onto the rug and barely missing clocking the back of my skull on the low table. I cursed. I was drunk, yes, but as ever I was surprised by the force he generated.
“I have tolerated much from you, Badgerlock, but I will not tolerate name-calling.”
His rebuff stung, but its meaning was clear: the Fool was not here with me tonight. Whatever strange energy had come into the room had nothing to do with him, and if Lord Golden was shocked at his own violence towards me he gave no sign.
When I moved to stand, he set his booted foot upon my stomach. “Stay,” he said, and the command seemed to draw all fight from me. I lay back on the floor, and he knelt over me, no less fluid for his intoxication. That, at least, was reminiscent of the Fool, but I look no comfort in it.
“It’s a funny thing, to be the focus of rumors,” he said. “They are living things, you know. They grow legs, and it almost doesn’t matter what has or hasn’t happened. Perhaps I have already had you, Badgerlock, just as they all say. It would hardly matter, then, if I were to have you again.”
“No,” I heard myself say. “I don’t suppose it would.”
He smiled, Lord Golden’s usual aristocratic sneer. “I thought you might see it that way. You’re a smart man when you want to be.”
He reached out and drew his hand along the waistband of my trousers. With a flick of the wrist he untied their laces. I watched him, powerless to intervene, and felt like I had a head of Smoke in addition to the ale. Maybe they’d been burning it before I returned, though Lord Golden had no censer in his rooms that I had seen.
“Wait here,” he said, springing to his feet. “And take those off.” He glided out of the room, into his bedchamber. I was left to stare at the ceiling and obey his command.
What was I—were we doing? Was it a game after all? Was the Fool testing me to see how far I was willing to go? Why was I going along with it, when I had insisted so strenuously I would never desire this? And yet—I did desire it. My blood had stirred at Lord Golden’s first haughty comment to his peers and had only grown hotter from there. But I knew I had reached a decision point. If did not obey him now, when he came out of his room he would speak snidely to me and most likely banish me to my chamber. Surely letting that happen was the wisest course.
But it was not the course I would follow. With haste I stripped my boots, trousers and smallclothes off.
The banked fire in the hearth kept the room warm, staving off the Fool’s tendency to cold. I was glad of it now, for coupled with my nerves I felt sure any chill would have caused me to shrink unbecomingly. As it was, excitement and awareness settled in my lap through the fog of drink.
Lord Golden stalked back into the room. I gasped at the sight of him. He was carrying a glass of brandy in one hand and a tiny bottle in the other. He was bare-legged and barefoot. He wore only his shirt, which draped to the middle of his thighs. Beneath it, to my horror and fascination, was the suggestion of his manhood.
Hysterically my mind cast back to the Fool’s ridiculous jingle, performed so long ago for Starling’s benefit. At last the solution to that riddle presented itself. From what I could glimpse beyond the fall of shirred silk, it was a fulsome answer indeed. I swallowed. I looked up at him. His hair was down and he had removed his jewels, save my earring. The sight of him stirred my heart. He was not my Fool, but for a moment, in this softer aspect, he did not seem wholly the arrogant noble.
When he saw I’d heeded him he smiled. I think it put him at his ease to see we were clad alike. Without being asked, I pulled my shirt off over my head and cast it aside, and lay before him naked in the firelight.
He spoke softly. “My, my, Tom Badgerlock.”
I made a small noise of discomfort at my exposure before him. As though to veil me, he dropped to hands and knees atop my supine body, but that did not make it better. I could feel the drift of his shirt against my stomach, and so close to him I clung to fiction.
“My lord,” I whispered.
He ran the back of one hand over my cheek. “I am a demanding master, aren’t I,” he said, with a sigh of what sounded like regret. “But I demand nothing of you now.”
I understood. Even so deep into our game, he would allow me to forfeit. Perhaps he expected me to. We were both breathing heavily. The intensity of his gaze upon me was almost painful. Until the very last moment I expected myself to put a stop to it. Instead I sat up, leaning back on my hands.
“I am offering.”
At this he made his own small sound of pain. It was the muffled groan of one who takes a mortal wound, but he swallowed it almost as soon as it emerged, and resolved into Lord Golden again to glide down upon me like a bird. His hair fell around us, and I smelled his resinous perfume. He did not kiss my mouth but set his lips to the pulse point at my neck. He whispered in my ear.
“What do they say of me in the taverns? How do they imagine I have you?”
I didn’t really know. I knew what they muttered in the steamhouse, and what Starling had thrown at me in the street. I knew, generally, the way men laid with men. Surely there was only one way a man of Lord Golden’s standing would deign to have his servant.
“That you take me, I suppose.” My voice sounded like I hadn’t used it for a century.
Lord Golden laughed. “I have always found it passing strange how you Six Duchies folk behave. Imagine believing that how one beds a lover is the measure of a man. In Jamaillia we care little for such trivialities. We care only for our pleasure.”
I could not think what he was saying. It was difficult to think at all, for he had draped himself over me and was mouthing at my neck again, down over my shoulder where the Forged one had once taken a chunk of me. I shut my eyes. I heard the pop of something opening, and then I smelled a gentle scent as of some foreign wood.
“What is that?”
“Hush, Badgerlock.”
I heard his breath hitch, and then he sighed. The brandy on his breath was sweet, and I was bidden back to our sojourn on my little farmstead so long ago now. It seemed each day since he returned to me was two in one; surely I felt twice as aged by them. But those nights we’d sat up drinking together had been the sweetest of my life. I’d made such a mess of things between us, I could hardly remember what such simplicity felt like.
He moved over me. I couldn’t see his body for the shirt, though I could look down its neckline and see the flat planes of his chest, his belly, down to his narrow hips. I dared not focus on what lay beyond, nor think on what his hand was doing, reaching back behind him.
“Fool,” I groaned.
“No names,” he breathed. “Oh—”
“What’s happening?”
His gloved hand played across my chest. I caught it and kissed the palm. A bold act for a servant, but perhaps I was lost in the moment. Perhaps, if we used no names, I was imagining someone else. But I was not, and he knew it. He watched me with his brandy eyes, here dazed, here intent, as though dragged back from the edge of sleep or from a Smoke-reverie. Then he moaned, a high sound, and something caught fire in me.
Who was that man who’d convinced himself he could not want this? Surely it was not me. For I would not turn my friend away, he who was beauty and grace incarnate, he who perched on me light as a feather.
“Kiss me,” I gasped.
I know not how my face looked, but his answering expression was of pity. For himself or for me, I could not tell and would not dwell upon.
“Please, kiss me.”
He did, and as he did he closed his cool, oiled fingers around my cock. I shouted into his mouth. We parted, and then it happened: he sank down upon me and took me into his body, without warning or permission.
I am sure I made the sound of a dying man. I must assume no one passed Lord Golden’s chamber at that moment, for anyone who had would have been honor-bound to cry murder and fight his way inside. He slew me then; I was sure of it. He was hot as fresh tea and tight as a beast’s burrow. He harboured me. I went to ground within him. I would never come out.
I cursed, very loudly.
“Hush,” he sobbed, “Oh, hush!”
I was angry at him, but I could not get any words out. How dare he hush me when he was giving me this? Had he done it before? The thought was untenable, but it seemed so from the practiced way he tamed his breathing and sat still upon me, and then began to move.
“So you see how Lord Golden takes his pleasure.”
He had recovered himself, and his voice was almost not shaking at all. I was incapable of coherent speech. I could do nothing but recline on my outstretched arms and let him sit on my lap. I wanted to ooze back down onto the carpet, but more than that I wanted to be close to him, where I could better spy the cracks in his façade, better watch for my Fool the way I peered through the chinks in the walls of Buckkeep, into its beating heart.
He was very hard beneath his shirttail. Once I noticed it I could not stop stealing glances at that, too, trying to recall when, if ever, I had seen my friend’s body. I thought never, in its entirety. Glimpses only, though I think in our time at Jhaampe he saw all of mine and handled most of its secretions. Now the jut of his cock beneath the cloud of fabric seemed the most shocking thing I had ever seen. I was terrified of it, yet still I wanted to see it bare, perhaps even to touch it. Eda and El, he had made such a liar of me, and he knew it.
It stood to reason a man lithe and limber as he would be a superior bedmate. For all his indulgence, Lord Golden had maintained a tumbler’s form, and he sat a horse with practiced skill. He brought that same skill to bear on me, posting up and down and circling his hips. I was like a hotblooded colt beneath him, soft-mouthed and responsive, needing only the barest touch.
“How you quiver and shy,” he said. “How’d you take a spur? Would you buck me off?”
“Try it,” I growled, and he laughed.
It was the Fool’s laugh. I had not heard that sound in so long, that shattering delight. My eyes stung, and I looked up at the ceiling.
“Is it good?” he whispered.
“It’s so good,” I said. “You feel so good. It is more than I deserve of you, this feeling.”
Silence fell between us. There was only our breathing and the sounds of our sex, of our flesh together, closer than any two could be. I came very close to speaking to him as ourselves. I think I would have done it, if he had not spoken first.
“Look at me,” Lord Golden said.
I swallowed. “My lord—”
“Look at me, Badgerlock,” he ordered.
So look I did, and my lord rode me home.
I have found the aftermath of casual trysting to be awkward; one knows not how to conduct himself, how to cast off the cloak of intimacy. The aftermath of this was far worse. It was not casual at all, yet it meant nothing. He was my dearest friend yet we moved as strangers. He’d caught his seed in his shirt and when he stood he held it wadded away from him. I did not look as he moved away, yet I did not miss his ginger step, nor fail to think of my own seed inside him.
I thought he might shut his door and have done with me, but he returned after a moment in a voluminous robe he held tight against his body and handed me a damp cloth.
“Thank you.”
I’d sat up and piled my clothing in my lap. He picked up the boot I was missing and set it next to me.
“Thank you. That was diverting, Tom.”
I had no reply to that. I laughed, a horrid dry thing. I bit the inside of my cheek. Focus on what you will say, Chade told me once. His lesson on surviving torture.
“My lord,” I said finally. He had already gone.