//These characters belong to Tamora Pierce. The plot belongs to me. :)
//Warning for excessive swearing and Joren-torture (M won.)
Fairy Tale
Dirge
"Good afternoon oh gods good-bye." Joren strode calmly into the living room, took a look at the figures seated there, turned about and started to stride back out.
"Hold it, Joren," commanded Sir Paxton in a steely voice. The squire stopped in his tracks, took a breath and turned around.
"Is there something you need, my lord?" he asked, planting a falsely cheerful smile across his face. Paxton wasn't fooled.
"Don't be rude, Joren. We have a guest," the knight replied, his tone deceptively calm. He gestured to the man sitting in the tall-backed chair across the sitting table. "Be a good lad and pour him some tea."
Joren looked at the guest, smile faltering. "Of course, how inconsiderate of me. I'll be right back." He walked briskly into the kitchen, and once out of earshot began shuddering uncontrollably. "Fuck fuck fuck. I am fucked. What in Shakith's name is he doing here?!" But of course he knew exactly why Duke Turomot had come.
***
"More tea?" he heard himself asking, pouring the steaming liquid into the judge's teacup with a shaking hand. *Gods, I am a suck-up,* he thought, but he needed to gain all the favor he could. Lord Paxton, when angry, was the scariest thing Joren knew. Worse than the Lioness, who got red-faced and violent; worse than himself, who got cat-eyed and snarly; Sir Paxton got calm. And soft-spoken. And mean.
The knight had begun by explaining to Joren that Duke Turomot had had a run-in with an ill-mannered boy he seemed to think was Joren. "What was that he said? Something about his daddy and Mithros being like this?" He held up crossed fingers. Joren reddened and pretended to be engrossed in the mechanics of the teapot.
Duke Turomot nodded. "A very childish display of antics."
Paxton nodded gravely. "But it surely couldn't have been Joren. Not my Joren, whom I have lectured again and again on the importance of respect to authority and elders." His voice grew colder and harder with each word, normally friendly blue eyes gazing unblinkingly into Joren's wide ones.
*Fucked. Oh gods help. I will everything to Garvey--oh wait, I'm not speaking to him, better make it Ariose--I would like to be buried in my silver shirt and velvet blue tunic--*gulp* if there's anything *left* to bury...*
"Joren? Are you listening?" Both men were staring at him, and the blonde boy realized he'd been asked a question.
"I'm sorry, I didn't hear, m'Lord?"
"I asked," replied Paxton in the same even tones, "if you met Duke Turomot in the palace yesterday afternoon."
"I--I may have--" the squire began to mumble.
"Excuse me?" Joren winced at his master's uncharacteristically sharp tone.
"Yes, m'Lord." Paxton nodded, sipping at his tea unreadably, piercing eyes never leaving Joren's.
"And did you say to him what he has repeated to me?" Joren's heartbeat thudded in his throat, making speech nearly impossible. He wiped perspiration from his temples.
"Perhaps," he whispered inaudibly. "I might have said something to that effect, maybe--"
"Speak up," commanded Sir Paxton emotionlessly. "And don't mumble, it isn't attractive." He took another gulp of tea. "Just answer 'yes' or 'no'!"
Head spinning, heat beating like an out-of-control timpani, Joren found himself unable to look away from his knight-master's face. *Disappointment,* the boy realized. *He honestly expected better from me?* "Yes," he admitted softly, feeling something like shame and something like regret.
Silence.
The two men exchanged looks. Joren swallowed, heat thudding in anticipation. At last Paxton sighed.
"Joren," he began, his expression deepening his valet's guilt, "I have tried so many times to teach you this lesson, but nothing I do seems to help you understand. Since you refuse to stop behaving like a child, all I can think to do is punish you as I would a child."
Joren had a sinking feeling he wasn't talking about time-out.
Paxton set his teacup and saucer onto the sitting table, rose, and disappeared into his bedchamber. When he returned, Joren's heart nearly stopped.
A belt. He was carrying a belt. That meant only one thing. Paxton took a high-backed chair from the dining table and scooted it around, taking a seat. "Pull down your breeches," he ordered softly. His tone lacked any anger or disgust, but sounded forlorn at the necessity of what he was about to do.
Surely he was joking? "B-but m'Lord," began Joren, looking wildly between him and Turomot. "You can't. Can't. I'm too old--"
"Do as I say." Softly. Firmly.
But Duke Turomot was right there, for Mithros' sake! "But--he's--Duke Turomot is--"
"Do as I SAY!"
Sir Paxton never shouted. Not during Joren's many tantrums. Not even after the trial, with Joren in disgrace and Paxton's name sullied by affiliation. Not even before it, when the knight had spent hours--days--in front of Joren's closed door at Stone Mountain Castle, calmly convincing the boy who'd bitten off more than he could chew to come out and face the charges. But he was shouting now.
*Looks like I've bitten off more than I can chew AGAIN,* thought Joren, as his shaking hands sought to untie his belt and pull his breeches to his knees. He could handle this. His father flogged him all the time, hoping to draw words--of anger, of pain, of apology, of anything--from his taciturn son's lips. *Just grab your ankles and bite your lip and it's fine,* thought Joren, but as he began to bend over Sir Paxton stopped him.
"On my lap."
"What?" Hadn't Sir Paxton ever flogged anyone before. "That's not how you whip someone. They grab their ankles and--"
"Maybe not," Paxton interrupted. "But it is how you spank a child."
It was then, lying vulnerably across Paxton's lap with the knight's arm pressing against his back to keep him in place and Turomot just staring at him, that the fear really began to set in. And the shame. Joren's breath came in hitched gasps and his heart hammered so hard against his chest it hurt. His thin cotton undergarments were of such delicate weave as to provide no protection at all. His entire body shook as Paxton ran his hand across the boy's back soothingly.
"Please learn from this," his knight-master whispered, almost pleadingly, and the punishment began.
***
"I'm not sorry," muttered Joren rebelliously, shoving his fists into the pockets of his worn-out green coat. Twilight, and rain was pouring onto Corus in sheets, complimenting Joren's mood. It pleased him to pretend it was rainwater trickling down his pale cheeks; the alternative was nothing if not disgusting.
They weren't tears. Sure, he was embarrassed as hell to have been beat like that, but he wasn't like Garvey, who cried at every tiny thing. Hadn't Joren passed him just this morning, and seen his eyes all red and swollen? Garvey bawled like a little girl without the slightest provocation; he sobbed at mournful ballads and had cried his eyes out when the two of them had seen a furry black chunk of road kill all decked out in a hand-knit doggy sweater on the highway. He'd done the same when Joren's adopted alley-kitten Amelia died, tears streaming from his eyes all through the mock funeral Paxton had arranged.
//You cried too,// an internal voice reminded him. //They were so sweet to you, too.//
"Shut up," snarled Joren. "I'm pissed off at them, remember?"
//Weren't you feeling guilty just a minute ago? Or was it ashamed?// Joren wished the voice had a tangible form so he could harm it.
"Ashamed at being spanked like a three-year-old, not at saying those things to Mr. Walking-Deathbed. And I was only feeling guilty 'till that person whipped my ass."
//Well, now you're even.//
"You are so..." he didn't finish the sentence, suddenly noticing the odd looks he was receiving from the few other pedestrians on the street. "Anyway," he whispered, slipping into an alley to finish the mental conversation in private, "he didn't have to do that."
//Well, you aren't going to do it again, are you?//
"No..."
//Isn't that the purpose of punishment?// After a moment of silence, it added, //And no, it isn't possible to give your conscience the silent treatment.//
"Conscience, huh? So what are you doing here now instead of before I went and got myself in trouble with Turomot? Or for that matter, before I went and got the Lump's maid kidnapped? Or even when I bullied those kids as a page? Or when--"
//Maybe with your ass in pain it's somehow affected your ears and made it possible for you to actually listen to me.//
"Hnn." He trudged on wearily, footsteps tracing the labyrinth of streets and alleys that comprised Corus, with no particular destination in mind. *I can't go to Laurent's; I just came from there. Garvey's pissed at me, can't go to his place--Zahir I don't even want to ~think~ about--and no way in hell am I ever stepping foot in that man's home again.*
//Oh, cut the man a break for Shakith's sake. He loves you, he did it for your sake, and it probably ~did~ hurt him more than it hurt you.//
"My ass begs to differ."
//Besides, you need him. He's the only father- figure you speak to.//
"Formerly spoke to."
//You--! Be nice to the poor man. He cares about you. Paxy was trying to correct you, not break and kill you. Don't be so angry. He's probably right at your bedroom door right now, with your favorite meal, begging you to come out and have something to eat. He thinks you're still there--he knows you better than you know yourself and even ~he~ wouldn't guess you'd escape through the window, considering it's 150 feet off the ground.//
"You're joking. I've been walking for hours. Even Paxy--I mean, that man--would have figured out by now I'm gone.
***
"Joren, please come out." Paxton knocked again softly at the door. No answer. The blonde knight looked down at the plate of home-cooked mutton chops he'd prepared and sighed. He'd meant to teach the boy a lesson once and for all, not to gain his eternal hatred. If Joren was this mad, he probably wouldn't forgive Paxton within either of their lifespans. After all, the boy hadn't spoken to his parents in seven years--Paxton was forced to wonder if the incident leading to that particular grudge wasn't in some way similar to this one. Since Joren as a rule did not speak to his real father, Paxton had become something of a surrogate father to the boy, and loved him as he would his own son. Being of a more sensitive nature than the lord of Stone Mountain, the blonde wasn't sure he could bear the thought of Joren not speaking to him.
"I know you're hungry," he prompted once again. "You've been in there for hours." The knight attempted to waft some of the steam rising form the mutton through the door crack. "I've fixed your favorite--mutton chops with steamed vegetables and wild rice. I'll even let you have some of my red wine, if you want?" There was still no reply. Wearily the knight slumped down and leaned his back against the door. No way would Joren escape without his knowing...
to be continued...
/* Sorry this thing disappeared for a bit. The admin of ff.net took it off but didn't tell me why, and hasn't responded to my emails. I'll assume they wanted it rated higher, like R, so I'm reposting it under that and hoping they don't kick me and the story off, but the actual content level won't change or anything. Sadly all my reviews were lost : ( and I had 98 too! Almost a hundred! I won't lie, I like reviews. So you can help me out of my writer's block by helping me reach another hundred *grin* BTW the punishment wasn't supposed to be some weird pedophilic thing, just a mean thing. And this story can now be found at under the fanfiction section.
