Chapter Nine

The necessary goodbyes delayed them several minutes—the children were persuaded to let go only with the promise of another visit, soon, extracted from them both.

Frankly, Nicodemus wasn't quite sure what to think of that, especially when their mother seconded the invitation, and gave him a quick little hug that he couldn't quite jerk back from in time to avoid. He stood stiffly a moment, unsure precisely why Rapunzel was embracing him, bewildered as to how to react, and then she drew back, lovely smile undimmed by his lack of response, returning to her mate, where he stood holding their youngest child.

From there, they'd paused in the Gypsy camp, where he'd received heartfelt thanks from Domhnall Gypsyking, a wild-haired giant of a man, for the rescue of his youngest-born son—despite Nick's doomed protests.

Hours later, sheltered in a woodsman's abandoned hut, trying to dry out before the fire, he was still unsure of what to make of Rapunzel's uninhibited embrace, or the Gypsyking's insistence that he be properly thanked, and contemplated the fire broodingly, sternly forcing himself to think nothing at all, while he waited for Roarke to return from checking on Tala and Damh (safely ensconced in the adjoining shed, happily munching arbhar) for the final time before they turned in.

The door opened moments later, drawing his attention to the dripping mage.

"The animals're fine. Gods, t'is terrible oout there." Roarke shook his head, as though to shake the water from his face and hair, but succeeded only in flinging out a small shower of the droplets, and quickly began stripping out of his wet outer robes. The driving rain had soaked them through; even with the short amount of time he'd been exposed to it; and the tunic beneath it damp and uncomfortable, though it didn't drip as he pulled it off. He scrubbed at his hair with it, slicking away the worst of the moisture, before laying his clothes out before the fireplace, draped over one of the two chairs, where Nick's discarded outer-clothing already hung, dripping sullenly. His braes, save for an inch or so around the hems, were mercifully dry; flicking a glance at Nick, taking in the stony expressionlessness of his features and fixed gaze on the fire, he decided the man didn't need for any more shocks at the moment.

"'Ave ye eaten anathing, Nick?"

"Mm," he agreed, never taking his eyes from the dancing flames. "There is stew, o' a kind. Dried venison, arbhar, some o' the dried vegetables. A bit o' wine, tae thicken the broth. Salt, pepperoot, pinch o' ginger. There's plenty. Help yerself."

Roarke thanked him quietly, filling a bowl, still eyeing his reluctant companion. Detached was the word for him at the moment; Roarke may not have existed, for all the attention he garnered.

The stew was good, thick and well seasoned for trail-fare, and above all, warm and filling. Roarke, however, was far more interested in the man who'd made it. That Nicodemus had made it at all was indicative of a great deal of time spent on the road—favored or not, no brother to the Emperor would go hungry in Cabhadh-làir, and unless Nick had a previously unsuspected love for the culinary arts, he'd have provided his own meals only when deprived by distance of the Royal Kitchens. Too, the use of some of the ingredients implied prosperity, or particularly wicked bartering skills; not the most expensive of produce, it was true, but ginger was certainly not among the cheapest or most easily obtained, either, nor was pepperoot. He was good at what he did, was Nicodemus Secondson.

"Cards," Roarke remarked, standing and taking his plate and utensil to the wash-bucket that stood in the corner, washing them briskly. It was early in the evening—the storm had brought with it nightfall. Sleep would not be soon in coming.

"Beg pardon?" Nick's attention was finally dragged from the fire.

"Cards," Roarke repeated succinctly, rising and setting the bowl by the hearth to dry before returning to his seat on his spread out bedroll. He didn't meet Nick's searching glance, instead reaching for his pack, which, with some rummaging, birthed a small oilskin packet, in turn revealing well-loved deck of stiffened parchment cards. Just visible, the Fool grinned out, firelight flickering across it and making inked eyes dance. And then long, pale fingers flashed, shuffling with sharp, careless movements. "Ye ken Tarok*?"

"…In theory, yes," Nick allowed, suspicion narrowing his eyes.

"T'is easy enough. One o' us deals, the other keeps the scores. D'ye want tae cut?"

Nicodemus unfolded from the chair, a fluid, strangely feral movement that Roarke watched from beneath fiery lashes, and crossed to the bedroll in a few short strides before sinking into a cross-legged, stiffly straight-backed seat slight more than an arm's reach away, holding out a hand for the cards. He cut them, shuffled once, and then again.

"Dinna ye trust me, lad?" Roarke brought his gaze up from the dancing cards; or perhaps more truthfully, the slim, clever hands that manipulated them tenderly and dexterously, as he might a fragile relic; to fix on the too-familiar silver gaze of his companion, his mouth quirking wryly.

"No," Nicodemus replied, blunt as a club. "How many each d'we get?"

"Fifteen. The rest go tae the center, face-down. T'is a game o' tricks, aye? We each play a card o' the same suit, an' the 'igher card trumps the lower. Major Arcana go by card order—the Fool's first, straight through tae the World, which'll trump ana Major Arcana."

"Hmm. Wot are we playin' for?"

"A risk-taker, are ye, then?" He was inexplicably pleased by it, and was amused when the observation brought a hectic flush of color to flame-light washed cheekbones.

"And I s'pose yer aren't?" Nick shot back, flicking the final cards into the piles before each of them.

"Ah, true tha'," the mage replied, scooping up his hand while Nick straightened the draw-pile's corners, contemplating what could be wagered. He had little interest in playing for whatever gold Nick had on him, or the pouch of it that he carried—money had long since ceased to be a motivator of any strength.

Information, on the other hand, was a far more precious commodity.

"Questions. We'll play fer questions."

Nick stared, his brows beetled, his expression simultaneously wary and curious. "What d'ye mean?"

The black-eyed mage felt the smile, small and not entirely innocent, tug on the corners of his mouth. "Whell, lad, fer each trick, the winner o' tha' trick gets tae ask the other a question, in addition tae the points. An' 'ow 'boout the winner o' the game gets tae decide 'is own prize?"

The suggestions were met with ringing silence, but there was no give to the challenge in Roarke's face, and finally, Nick sighed, and lifted his cards.

"'ow d'we start?"

As it turned out, the game was easy enough once one got into the flow of it. The winner of the last set asked his question, and placed the cards he'd won to the side, and started again. It was enough of a game of skill to force his brain to work, and the uncertain luck of the draw kept him from slipping away into the cool, goal-oriented persona that had for years kept his more unsavory victories at a painless distance. And Roarke, he was pleased to note, was as gracious a loser as he was a winner.

He was also, Nick was convinced, quite strange.

"Yer favorite food as a wee lad?" Roarke asked, sweeping his Queen of Staves and Nick's Page of the same to his collected pile of vanquished cards.

Nick blinked; the last question had been his preference of cats or dogs (the answer, as it happened, was cats, though he didn't mind dogs of the larger, un-yappy sort). There was, quite honestly, no way of predicting the man's questions.

"Lamb," he remarked, contemplating it with a vague frown of contemplation. "There was never verra much o' it left in the kitchens after Court meals, so t'was a treat, if'n Úna," his nurse from moments after birth to the age of fourteen, as another question had yielded, "could get some."

Roarke nodded his satisfaction with the answer, and play continued with a Ten of Chalices, this time in Nick's favor.

"D'you have ana family?"

"None tae close; mah parents've been gone a score o' years each, a' least, an' m' brother tae. Ah've some cousins, tho', an' mah brother's children." Not that he'd seen them since Áedán's death, nigh-on a decade ago; the youngest of his cousins and grand-nieces and -nephews would remember him only vaguely, if at all. It was for the best, though; he was mage, they were folk to whom magic was further beyond their ken than was comfortable. They were as safe as his wards and charms could make them; he'd leave them to their own devices as was necessary.

Nick's head cocked as though he would ask more, but he glanced down at the cards again, and played another. Diplomatically, Roarke folding his lips to keep the grin that threatened to bloom in his face. The other man would misconstrue the meaning of such a smile, and he wouldn't appreciate the possibility that Roarke might find him amusing. He certainly would never guess, nor take kindly to the possibilty that the mage thought him as awkwardly, defensively adorable as a kitten fluffed to the full with its ears flattened and eyes wide. He glanced at Nicodemus's card, the Hermit, and selected one of his own, tossed his smaller card down and ignoring with ease Judgement's stern inked face from where it stared up at him from his hand.

Damn if he didn't want to hear the question that had written itself on Nick's face.

But Nick didn't oblige him, instead asking some inconsequential question about snow-shoes to the Far North of Cabhadh-làir, moonstone eyes averted and blank. But the mild pang of disappointment only fueled his determination to get under the mask; there was no way anyone as visibly and prickly held-separate from others as Nicodemus wasn't hiding himself.

The game continued more quietly now, Nick stubbornly sticking to impersonal questions, Roarke poking here and there before flitting away again into the baffling.

"The names o' yer past three lovers."

For the first time in nearly a quarter-hour, the younger man's eyes flew up, something akin to horror written there. "Wot?"

"Ye 'eard me," Roarke reproved with an arched eyebrow. "Spit 'em oout."

"I don't—ergh, fine. Nona, Lucy, an' Jia."

Roarke's expression didn't change, but his eyebrow crept a bit higher. "Ye dinna lie whell, d'ye, even wit' all yer time in Cabhadh-làir? The roight names, naow, lad." And for the lad's sake, he hoped no one else had noticed Nick's tell; a minute flicker of his lashes, hardly noticeable unless one was watching closely. Beside that, he was a quick lad, and skilled enough to dribble truth amid untruth, to put exasperation where discomfort would have lain for anyone else. But now, caught in the lie (a small one, though, and forgivable), his expression closed, silver went hard and reflective.

"…Keegan, Bree, an' Nona."

The mage didn't let his features shift from their easy expression, didn't even let his surprise flicker in his eyes. "Nae sae hard, eh? 'Ere, make o' tha' wot ye can," he said, tossing down a six of pentacles, and sat back to watch his opponent play.

Bree and Nona, he had no interest in. Feminine and unassuming, they were the sort of names servants gave their daughters, in hopes that they would grow up sufficiently plain to avoid the eyes of the court's men. Roarke didn't doubt that whatever realationships had lurked there, it was the promise of mutual, emotionless release that was common among people in the precarious situation that was the Royal Court at Cabadh-lair that had drawn them together.

Keegan was a similarly unassuming name; strong, sturdy, masculine, befitting a lower seneschal or some such post. And it was 'Keegan' that pleased him, for it meant that Nick had entertained the notion of a male lover enough to, at the very least, experiment.

Roarke very much intended by now that Nick share his bed if circumstances and Nick himself allowed it; Keegan, whoever he might be, may very well have smoothed his way, especially if Nick has reconciled himself to what wasn't necessarily a sin, but certainly wasn't the norm of their society.

With that pleased thought, he turned his attention back to the game that was slowly reaching its completion. The draw-deck was gone now; Roarke himself had just lifted the last card.

"We play 'til we're oout o' cards, then count 'em oop. Usually we'd play again 'til someone 'ad a thousand points, an' when tha' set was over we'd count, but it'll take hours yet. 'nless ye want tae keep on?" Truly, he didn't mind one way or another, as he'd had more rest in the last several days than he needed in two weeks, and he likely wouldn't do much more than doze, but Nick, with that damned bind still on him, would need the sleep.

Nick nodded his agreement, and the game of Tarok played itself out, their remaining questions innocuous and barely worth asking.

"Major Arcana are fif'een points, kings twen'y-five, queens twen'y, knights an' pages fif'een, and the others're face value."

Roarke knew his cards intimately—they were tools, as well as amusement, and were treated as such. A deck of seventy-eight yielded eight hundred and fifty points for one set; he was in possession of only four hundred and twenty of those points.

He wondered what Nick would choose as a prize.

"I've four hundred an' thirty," Nick announced, when he'd finished counting.

"Ye win, lad. Ah've only four 'undred an' twen'y."

Nick blinked, as though he hadn't quite expected it, though he must have known the game was a close one, and froze. He'd had a number done to him, Roarke thought, disturbed and saddened, if he wasn't even sure of how to handle the commonstance social etiquette of winning a card game.

Now he wondered if Nick could choose a prize, taken so completely outside his area of comfort, and set adrift in a situation where he didn't fully understand the unwritten, unspoken rules, or if he'd stay frozen. What would—? How far—? Roarke had cared for too many awkward, terrified children not to be familiar with the reaction. He'd never yet found a good way of dealing with it.

But Nick surprised him again; the dark, unsure look faded from silver eyes. "You take first watch. Tha's mah prize."

The mage could only smile at him. "Tha'll do."

The rain stopped an hour past midnight, trailing away to gentler sounds of dripping water and a rushing creek nearby. The fire was banked, but it kept the chill of the night at bay. Roarke had eschewed the uncomfortable-looking chair for a seat against the wall, where he could see the door, the fireplace, and everything between. Nick slept quietly nearby, curled under the blanket of his bedroll. Roarke didn't doubt that the slightest unusual noise would bring him awake, with the dagger he'd surreptitiously slipped beneath his pillow gripped in his fist, eyes flashing and wary—he'd watched fighters sleep before, and slept the same way himself, more than once. He didn't settle calming energy over the man, though he would have liked to, and, in normal circumstances, would have without compunction or hesitation.

Stupid, bloody bind, he thought, shifting slightly to let his back rest on a more comfortable section of the wall.

It wasn't for another hour that Nick's sleep deepened sufficiently to send him into the realm of dreams and phantasms. Within moments, however, he was struggling against his blanket, face growing grey in the dim, red-gold light and sweat was beginning to bead on his forehead, despite the relative chill of the hut.

Roarke was no stranger to nightmares, either.

"Come on, lad, none o' that naow," he murmured, moving carefully to Nick's head before he shook the man's shoulder, in hopes of avoiding a blade in his ribs. "Open those pretty eyes, Nick, lad, lemme see yer awake, aye?"

Nicodemus came awake much as Roarke had predicted he would, with a wildcat snarl and his dagger slicing the air where a man more foolish than Roarke would have crouched, all before Nick's eyes had even cleared. The mage didn't give his a chance to do more; he had Nick's right hand captured in an unbreakable grip, and forced it down, pinning it efficiently to the bedding. His other arm snaked around the younger man's ribs, preventing him from twisting or pulling away, getting any kind of leverage that could be placed behind a fist or another concealed weapon. The struggle was brief, as Nick became aware of his surroundings.

"A' ease, boy-o, yer alright. T'was a nightmare, nae more. D'ye understand me?" he could feel Nick's chest heaving beneath his arm, hear the too-quick throb of his pulse beside his ear. And he felt his nod, as dark hair and red hair brushed and tangled, before pulling gently apart again.

"A-aye. Ah'm—I'm alright." The nightmare had come in vague, indistinct snippets of memory and premonition, but they had been terrifying all the same; the Leóghann's claws, his first battle, the Empress's faceless men following, following, all jumbled and interwoven, with danger, danger, danger pulsing through him like blood.

He became aware of Roarke's arm as the mage removed it, and was abruptly torn between discomfort with the touch and a curious sense of loss as it was taken away. But his attention was diverted to his wrist with barely a delay—his fingers still clutched the hilt of his blade, and Roarke's remained locked around his wrist. Something cold shot through him.

"Are you 'urt?" His voice was hoarse, nearly inaudible. He couldn't seem to look away from the gleaming steel, trying to find the blood that stained it.

"Eh?" Roarke shifted closer, as though to catch the hint of sound.

"Are you 'urt? D'I catch you?" Nick managed to repeat himself, adding volume. It was the last thing he wanted to have done—intrusive, irritating, and far too clever, Roarke might be, but he didn't deserve to be injured for attempting the kindness of dragging him out of one of his not-so-infrequent nightmares.

"Nae, lad, ye've nae 'urt me. 'Ere," those long hard fingers released his wrist, only to grasp his shoulders and turn him, that he could see the whole, unbloodied expanse of the mage's chest. "See?"

It was said with a smile, kindly, and without the gently mocking overtones Nick had come to expect of the man. Black eyes were warm, without the firelight's aid.

He almost didn't trust them. He certainly didn't want to—trusting anyone, mage or not, Northerner or not, was dangerous. And kindness tended to be an expensive, fleeting thing.

"Alright naow, are ye?"

He nodded, and groped under his pillow for the dagger's sheath.

"Gud. When ye've calmed, go back tae sleep. Ye've bruises 'neath yer eyes." Dark ones, too, like paint on his pale skin.

"The second watch—" Nicodemus started.

"Nick, Ah've 'ad more rest in the past week than Ah can stand. Ye've a many-layered bind on ye tha's drainin' evra ounce o' yer extra energy. Trust me when Ah tell ye tha' ye need the sleep far more than Ah."

He agreed, after a time, and meekly lay down again—an indication, Roarke realized, of how out-of-sorts Nick was, that he had given in with comparatively little fuss.

"Stubborn little bugger," he muttered, when he was sure the man was asleep again. If Nick had been stronger, the mage didn't doubt he'd still be awake, and they'd still be arguing over it. Then he smiled.

Strong-willed was good; he didn't need or want a student without a spine, but one who could stand on their own and give him hell, if that's what was called for—too, reliability was necessary. Roarke hadn't a doubt that Nick would kill himself trying to do something if he'd said he would. Loyalty helped; they'd see quickly enough if that lay in Nicodemus' repertoire.

Irritating, though, that they were the same qualities he looked for in a lover.

"An' tha's sayin' naught a' all 'boout ye bein' the sexiest bluidy thing on two legs, Nick, lad, tha's wandered mah way fer an age," he whispered, curbing the impulse to stroke his hand through the thick, dark hair that looked so soft on the man's head; no need to wake him again, was there?

So he settled back against the elderly wood of the hut's wall, and waited for morn.

*Tarok is a real game, incidentally, played with the Tarot. More information can be found here: .. Comments are love!