A Treaty Between Friends
A conversation between Cleon and Neal after Neal realises Cleon is after Kel.
Cleon's POV:
His gaze made me squirm. Clear green eyes that looked into my very soul and seemed to say, 'I know exactly what you want. I know what it does to you when she smiles at you, when those bright, strong eyes look straight into yours and linger for a sweet innocent moment. And I don't like it.'
The cruel threat in Neal's smirk sends a cold sweat down my spine, and Kel's suspicious glance between us causes my stomach to churn like fresh butter. I am suddenly sorry I ever teased Neal for his imaginary flings with unattainable beauties. But none of Neal's ladyloves had bands of squires sworn to protect them, he never knew their father or slept in their house, he was never squire to their brother.
I don't know how I engaged in the conversation through dinner. Perhaps I didn't – perhaps I sat silently as my eyes flicked restlessly between Kel, Neal and my plate, not noticing that my friends were muttering something about soothing drinks – at any rate, I remember nothing of it. I watched as Kel left the hall, it's not a sin to look, knowing my reprieve was up.
The sarcastic drawl never came. Instead, a whisper in my ear as he cleared his plate, "If you were not a brother to me…"
I know the end of that sentence. I've been the end of that sentence: a difference of opinion settled in the jousting lanes, at the tip of a sword and, more often than not, a romp in the dust that leaves the philandering fool 'out of service' for a while. And perhaps I enjoy it a little too much, past the adrenaline of a good fight, possessiveness making my punches fall harder and jealousy whispering dirty tricks to my elbows and knees. Because we swore to protect her.
I lie in my bed at night as images flash through my brain – the most innocuous mixed amongst the typical perverted boy's fantasies: holding her hand, kissing her, talking about anything other than the latest battle, bringing my hands up along her pale, naked ribs to cup her small breasts… I will admit that as the hour gets later, fantasies involving clothes become fewer. There was, after all, a perfectly practical reason Wyldon forbid us boys from visiting her, alone in her rooms.
But always, I was drawn back to the pact I sealed with blood. I pact I had thought nothing of as Neal finalised the wording and I sliced myself with the Ravenswood Armoury knife that had been passed around the room. I was more concerned with the quality of the blade than what I was signing! Neal could have had us all sign away our inheritance and every penny we ever earned when he brought out that knife, and I feel certain I would have sold my own mother if he had let me hold his brother's broadsword, propped in the corner.
"I do swear by the light of Mithros that I will show Keladry of Mindelin the proper respect due to a page, a squire, a knight and a lady. I will not slander her name or blot reputation by words or deeds. I will honour her with purity."
The words were simple, child-like, but they did not matter. In a blood pact such as this it was the meaning each individual took from the words, the ceremony, than the words themselves. There could be no finding loopholes in your conscience and soul. So we had signed: Merric first (because he had suggested it after that first incident of protecting Kel's honour), then Neal (confidently, knowing he would never desert Kel), the knife passed from hand to hand, slicing shallow, stinging cuts into thighs, biceps, dripping and smearing the blood into the page. Faleron was the only one to pause, but then, Garvey would never have conceived that particular insult without witnessing Faleron's obvious crush. Still, we all thought it best he sign the paper.
Who was I to know that the twelve year old Yamani Lump would grow into a tall, glorious woman?
We stood and watched the blood cake and dry, all of our blood, mixed together, soaking the best velum Neal could find. When it is almost dry, but not cracking, Neal steps forward with a sharp quill. Scratches his name out so it appears, bright and creamy, on a deep maroon background. We all follow, a list of eight neat names.
My understanding of those few short sentences at the tender age of fourteen now spelt out a very simple set of rules. Look, don't touch. Think, don't act. And don't let on to the castle gossips. Still, sometimes I am resentful, Neal had been sixteen, and by all accounts experienced. He should have stopped us.
My sleep was fitful. Filled with good dreams and bad.
I curse incoherently when I wake to find Neal sitting on my bed, swearing blindly until I remember the non-events of last night. And then I realise that by some miracle Neal was up before me, before the sun!
"Get dressed. We're going to the practice fields." This was certainly not Neal. Neal, did not wake up in the dark, did not appear on other boys beds and never suggested 'practice courts' so cheerfully. The whole situation was dangerous.
I fumbled with the buttons of my trousers and the laces of my shirt. Pulled on my boots, unlaced. Stood considering my swords, chose the live blade. Neal can act like this is routine all he likes, but I think I will carry a live weapon.
"Put that down, you clod! We're going to have a few practice rounds, not slice each other to pieces. Gods. Do you always think with your beef?" Now the sarcasm sinks back in. And I blush. The obvious heat in my cheeks creeping out to my ears, the curse of all red heads. Yes, I had taken this to be a competition, determining whether I would face that masked axeman that was my friends, but it was now clear Neal had found the compassion to give me a fair trial. Well, a trial at any rate.
We have been through two rounds (I have won two rounds) before Neal begins. And here are the bouts he will win. He started with an observation.
"I noticed you have forgotten our pact."
"Forgotten it? That error hems me in, every time I go to compliment her, tell anyone how I feel, smile at her!" My intensity was lost, or perhaps increased, by my panting as I swept my sword in a butterfly movement, doubling back just as my sword moved back into Neal's field of view and snaking the dull blade down the side of his neck to rest at the base of his neck.
"That pact only stops you doing what you decided would be dishonourable when your mind was not so clouded by lust. We all drew our lines, the pack only made them walls, and they are only as strong as your honour." Neal managed to say all this at the point of a blade. "Again."
"So it is dishonourable for me to fall for a lady?" Sweat was working its way into my eyes so I shook my head as I spoke, confident enough that Neal would not best me in that short lapse. "You knew then, Neal. Knew that any one of us could fall for her and be ripped apart by that pledge we were making. We were just silly little boys."
"You knew that then! Faleron already did feel that way about her, and you didn't think it so wrong to force his hand." Neal was making ground now, on the offensive, his fitness never flagged and his sudden anger pushed him forward. "You knew then that what you want would taint her reputation, that she would have been thrown out of page training." Neal made the final cut then, swept fast across my legs with the flat of his sword then completed a tight loop and a lunge to ram my chest.
I stepped back. "What did you decide? What meaning did you gather from those few short words?"
"You're right, I was older. I understood. I took advantage. She had come back from summer holidays looking more like a girl than a lump, and she didn't even realise it. I'd known as soon as I saw her that year that they would start making comments, putting her in bed with half the palace. Do you know what I'm saying? I knew, I noticed." He thumped his chest with the hilt of his sword, but it was not for effect, not a players gesture – he would have bruises there tomorrow.
"And I was sixteen. My perverted little mind wanted everything you want right now: courting, kisses and not having to share her with the rabble. She was twelve. So I promised she would be my little sister and my best friend, and never any more. Whether in fifty years or in my imagination. Now my blood binds me to it."
"I – I'm sorry?" I stumbled over my words, shocked at this revelation. It felt like my eyes weren't quite focussing, my ears were fuzzy, my hands were wrapped in thick mittens and my nose was stuffy. Every sense was betraying me, the information I was getting was irreconcilable to what I knew, that the earth was flat, the Gods ruled over us, and that Neal had never liked Kel.
"It doesn't matter anymore. It was a long time ago." Neal turned away from the issue and I was shocked to find I could quite easily ignore it too while falling into the silent rhythms of the dance: block, parry, arc, sweep, parry, thrust. I won the next bout.
As I returned to my rooms, it returned. Was this always in the room with him, when he spoke with Kel, whenever she was mentioned, whenever a lady caught his eye? He could have had her, they would have been sweethearts half an hour before Wyldon sent Kel away. I am not fool enough to think otherwise.
Neal watched me over the next few days, and he watched Kel. Our eyes would meet looking at her, though his were always guarded now. He had never expected to be on the back foot while protecting Kel. He could win this – watch me suffer and laugh at the circular fairness of life – watch a friend suffer.
It was the first night of Midwinter when he approached me in the Great Hall, "Come on, I'm giving you an out." He turned and walked off, leaving his squire duties to Merric. I quickly did the same, confused but drawn in: an out from what? Serving wine? Walking away was not 'an out'.
He kept his silence as we wove through the rat's warren of the palace to his rooms, connected to those of Lady Alannah. It was not until he opened his desk and began rummaging through pieces of parchment and rolled velum that I realised what I could be released from.
"But you can't. There isn't an out, I swore it in blood in the eyes of Mithros." Neal ignored me, instead unrolling and re-rolling scrolls, and I lost patience, "By the Gods, how many blood pacts have you made?"
He found it then, unrolling the scroll still stained and warped with all our blood, now dark and leaching into our names, with it two sketches of Kel riding her gelding and a poem. Neal indicated them with a sharp silver knife, "Faleron's drawing's are good aren't they? My poetry, not so much."
Neal's hand, darting out to grab my wrist so he could cut my hand – a clean slice, parting the skin to reveal firm, pink lines of muscle, already hidden now as the red blood pools – and smear it over my name. I swore. Loud. It wasn't a transformation, no frog to prince metamorphosis, it was only slight and it felt more like something was slightly off, like walking in new shoes: a little uncomfortable and not what I'm used to, but no longer too small.
"Did you feel that last time? That change?" My question was hurried, but not yet frantic, I was raised to trust the healers.
"Yes, but my experience, and Faleron's, was probably different. Like getting put into a cage, a nice cage I didn't want to leave, but entrapment none the less." Neal paused for a moment as he looked me up and down. "I expect you did not because what you were saying was already what you believed to be true. At any rate, magic no longer controls you but I still expect a certain level of respectability. Now out. Before too many notice that Merric is the only squire serving wine."