Notes: Thank you so much for reviewing, it really means a lot! Glad to see there's still someone out there! We're hanging on lol. And I don't think I said before, but criticism is very welcome; I don't have a beta, so if you lovely folk notice something amiss please let me know!
Chapter II.
Magnus.
V.
Jane and Dragon had been a few months into their journey to search for other remaining dragons before Gunther had found the boy in the warehouse.
He'd heard a sickly little cough first. For a moment he'd simply listened, cocking an ear, his hand falling from the lock to his father's office and down to his dagger.
There it was again, quieter. Gunther took a deep breath and darted forward, pinning closed the thin gap between the stack of crates, blade at the ready. Though he could see a pair of eyes in the dim light, could hear a quiet gulp, he saw nothing else. He shifted a little so the lantern behind him shone through the dusty room.
It was a child. A boy no more than seven or eight. He trembled back against the wall, leaning away from the angled blade at throat's height, dirty from his bare feet up to his mud-colored hair. His breath hovered in the faintest whine through the silent room.
Gunther cleared the stagnant air from his throat and lowered his dagger a little. He was not used to pointing weapons at children. "What are you doing here?"
The boy's eyes didn't leave the knife's edge. "Not stealing nothing."
"Right," Gunther agreed, if only because the boy's clothes were threadbare enough to show there was nothing stashed in them. He saw then a pile of blankets gathered between two boxes, straw sticking out haphazardly. These crates would ship out in the spring — likely no one had checked their contents for weeks at least. The crack between them was too small for an adult, though Gunther's arm fit through just fine. He let the dagger fall to his side, a bit ashamed he'd kept it up as long as he had. "Sleeping here, though, I wager?"
The boy leveled him with a wary gaze and said nothing.
"Is it that much warmer?" Gunther wondered.
The boy took a moment to respond. "Drier too."
Gunther frowned. When was the last time he'd slept outside without a tent in weather like this? Had he ever? "Where were you before? You must not have been here long, or someone would have noticed. Your family—"
The boy shook his head.
"No?" Gunther blew out a breath.
When Gunther was the boy's age, he imagined he would have tried to sneak him into the Breech Manor, with all its extra rooms and all sorts of pastries to be smuggled from the kitchen if one was only clever enough. When he was thirteen he would have reported the transgression directly to his father, desperate for anything that felt like loyalty, and begged him then to find a way to employ the boy, or to feed him at the very least.
Gunther was old enough now to know begging Magnus Breech for anything could only end in failure. Or worse — in lingering, tilted promises, lasting so miserably and so long that they never turned out to be worth it.
"No one at all?" Gunther asked, though he knew.
The boy shook his head again.
Gunther frowned harder. "Do you know whose warehouse this is?"
The light was enough to see the boy's face lose a little color. "Breech," the small voice muttered, when it became clear Gunther expected an answer.
Gunther winced. He hadn't meant to, but it happened anyways. "Yes," he said, unnecessarily. "My father's." He looked at the boy, but the boy was looking right back at him, and any stirrings of resolve swept themselves neatly away. "If he finds you here, you will not be so lucky."
He'd meant it as a warning, but it felt like a threat.
Still a spark came to the boy's eyes. "Lucky?" He looked inclined to test just how much so, as his teeth were peeking into almost a smile. The front two were missing.
"Yes," Gunther said firmly. "And if anyone else finds you, I will say I have never seen you a day in my life, and that you are in dire need of punishment." But even as he said it he sheathed his dagger and unwrapped his dinner from the bag at his hip. It was only a simple meat pie, but when Gunther passed it through the gap, the boy's eyes positively glowed. His fingernails were filthy. "Eat that slowly. If you cram it down all at once it will make you sick."
The boy let out a few vigorous nods and some much quieter thanks.
Gunther cleared his throat, as if he could possibly regain even a fraction of his familial dignity after this whole affair. "I want you gone before first planting—" more body-shaking nods, "—and if I see a single sign of you in the warehouse before then, I will kick you out myself." (For your own good, he added in his head. Better him than his father.)
The boy's smile dimmed a little. He was cradling the pie against his heart. Still he nodded one last time. His 'yessir,' came out as a whisper.
Gunther gave a sharp nod back. "A deal then."
He pulled away. The boy inched over and the crates swallowed him again, the gap as innocuous as any of the others in the warehouse basement.
Gunther turned. There was the softest little sound, a 'thanks' he barely heard above the creak of his feet, but still he nearly smiled as he headed for the stairs. Foolish, yes, but right. Wasn't that always Jane's way?
His heart gave a hollow pang. She was over the ocean surely. Across the world.
She would like the story. The boy choosing here of all places, and Gunther responding in such a way — though of course he'd never tell it to her.
VI.
"Gunther."
"Hm."
"Are you falling asleep?"
"Mm."
"…Well?"
"No."
"Then why are your eyes closed?"
"They are not—"
"Well now they are not. If you fall off your horse I am not helping you."
"Fine by me. Leave me to sleep in peace and quiet."
"In the middle of the road?"
"Yes. At least the dirt knows when to hold its tongue."
Jane rolled her eyes and nudged her horse ahead.
Gunther held back a yawn. He truly was trying to stay awake. He had no desire to slip like melted butter from his saddle, as he had seen Sir Ivon do a time or two when overindulged or underslept. It had been stupid to get so little rest the night before. He'd mostly believed Jane would be unable to convince the king and Sir Theodore to send them both to Loefbury, silly as it was, but somehow she had. They'd left a couple hours before, right as the sun clambered over the horizon.
He watched Jane's braid bounce for a few minutes before his eyelids started to dip again.
But he wasn't falling asleep; it would be nearly impossible while trotting. (Besides, if he truly did fall from his horse, he'd never hear the end of it.) No, he was only resting his eyes — dozing at the very most. He could see the shape of Jane meld with that of her mare between blinks, smudging to a warm brown like polished wood.
The memory came dreamlike and strange, rolling in as transient as fog. His father was holding the box, the gleam of his many rings bouncing off the sheen of the wood. Gunther could only see a sliver through the cracked door, a man in patched clothes who gave something that looked nearly like a bow and then shuffled from the room.
The weighty silver ring round his father's thumb clacked against the box once, then again.
(The horses slowed once more to a walk.)
"It is beneath you to eavesdrop in your own home, Gunther."
Gunther gulped.
His father's voice sounded very soft and strangely mild. Didn't it usually sound more brusque than this? Now it was touched with a dreamy halo. "Come in, boy."
Gunther came in. If his father asked, he obeyed. But his father never asked anyways. He only told.
"See this," his father said. The box, he meant.
Gunther saw it. What he didn't see were its contents, and that was what he truly cared about. Knowing was half of having, after all.
His father lifted the lid. Inside were papers, and Gunther wilted a little in disappointment, for he'd pictured jewels, bars of silver and stacks of coins, judging by the sad set of the man's shoulders who had just left his father's office. Those were poorer shoulders than had entered the room.
"See this," his father said again. He carefully raised the top piece of parchment. "Right here."
Gunther could read, but the words meant little to him.
"This is the king's land, but the farmer promised to work it well and give the king his due in exchange for his tenancy. And yet the king has not paid me for months now. So until the king's balance is paid, the farmer will give me the king's due."
Gunther stared at the shaky scribble on the base of the parchment before him. He knew the farmer couldn't read or write.
"And he is far from the first." His father placed the parchment back in the box and set the lid on top. His voice was glowing, satisfied for once. "Boy, do you know what holds the most value of all I own?"
Gunther could barely count on one hand all the times throughout his childhood his father had reached for him gently. This was one of those moments, and Gunther nearly flinched as the broad fingers lifted his chin.
"Take a guess," Magnus said.
Gunther looked at his father's rings, then thought of the ship moored at the docks, then remembered, hazy and painful, the way his mother had smelled, expensive and spicy sweet. His father had brought her perfume from so far away Gunther could scarce imagine the distance.
His father patted the polished box.
Gunther frowned.
"Everything," his father said. "Every property the Breech family owns or manages."
Gunther stared at the box again. Everything.
His father folded his palms together. "And as they are mine, so they will be yours. This will be your responsibility one day — and not only managing, but leading. Soon enough I will find a way to get you a title and the deeds to go along with it." He paused. "The lord chamberlain has a daughter about your age. She could stand to inherit plenty."
Gunther felt his face scrunch. "I hate Lady Jane."
His father's grin grew wide and toothy. "Do not be so quick to hate those who are rungs to your success. You would never stoop to hate a ladder."
Gunther had kicked a ladder he'd tripped over in the courtyard only the week before, so he knew this wasn't true, but already his father had stood and pushed back from his desk. Gunther shrank aside to make room for him.
"You know where someone would come to steal from us."
It hadn't been a question. Gunther answered it after an unsure pause. "Here?"
Magnus nodded, sharp and short. "So where do you think I keep this box?"
Not here, Gunther wanted to say, but didn't dare, in case it was too flippant.
"The warehouse," his father said. "In a chest behind the office wall." He lifted a long chain from his neck where a small key dangled. "This is the only key. And one day, it will be yours."
Gunther's fingers twitched. Having was the best of all, of course.
"Gunther?"
His fingers twitched again on the reins. His horse was shifting beneath him, her walk growing more reluctant. His father's voice sounded muted and flimsy in his head. Gunther tried to remember how much of the scene was real and how much imagined, but could recall too well standing in Magnus's office, watching the key swing from his neck, to ever parse fiction from reality. Besides, he'd found that, replayed enough, the line between dream and memory grew much more indistinguishable.
"Shall we stop for water?" Jane suggested.
He shook the doze from his brain and patted his mare's neck. "Yes."
"Still with me?" she teased when they turned towards the nearby river. "I stayed close in case you slipped, but you never did."
"Finally growing a heart, Jane? I thought you said you would not help if I fell."
Her eyebrows rose. "Oh no, I planned to watch."
He almost wanted to laugh, or to throw something back, but could think of nothing.
Her eyes glinted. She resettled in her saddle, a little straighter than she'd been a moment ago. "Truly though, Gunther."
For a second he wondered if she would say what she'd hoped to say when she invited him for the walk earlier, what she'd hoped to accomplish with this whole pointless trip in general. He took in a breath. His thumbnail dug tight into the reins.
She grinned. "I am not without heart. I would have at least thrown a blanket over you."
His gathered breath turned to a snort, and he turned away, speeding to a trot, leaving Jane and her laughter behind.
VII.
Gunther's father had never hit him. Gunther knew that this was quite good indeed, but also knew that Jane had probably never even once noticed or marked that her own father didn't hit her, and the fact that he'd had the thought at all said nothing good.
Still, he was glad not to be hit. Magnus Breech hit other people, people who worked for him and made mistakes, which felt awful, but not as awful as if it were Gunther.
He could remember being six and watching his father's ringed hand soar over the face of the woman serving supper. The sound that accompanied it was strange and came somehow a second late, the smack of skin and maybe her teeth jarring against each other, her feet stumbling back over the floor.
Later that night Gunther cried into a pillow, from shock or fear or just from how his father had kept speaking right after, as if nothing had changed, and the same woman, come to bring something warm to drink before bed, rubbed Gunther's back and said nothing. She had the edges of jewels carved across her cheekbone.
He grew older. It kept happening. He knew he wanted to become a squire, and he knew what squires were supposed to do, and it wasn't nothing — and yet that was all he did, and so it kept hurting.
But (the thought wedged between his bones sick and horrible and relieved) not as much as it would hurt if it were him.
VIII.
He thought of it sometimes. Jane just returned, Jane holding his face, then her arms around him.
She had hugged him before she'd left, and it had felt so different, had really only meant something because they had perhaps never hugged before; they hadn't, because he would have remembered it. She had been as irritating as always, but there'd been a feeling in his lungs, a precognition of missing. Of the here-ness of her that soon would be there-ness.
He didn't hug her back the next time. He stood completely still as she trembled against him, her hair brushing his chin, splaying over his chest, as she said it once, and then again.
I am so sorry.
I am so sorry.
I'm not, he thought.
He had not thought that before. When everyone else apologized, he thought me too. I am sorry too.
But Jane was home and his father was dead and he was not so sorry as he should have been, or maybe he wasn't really sorry at all, and that was far more frightening than the piles of ledgers, than the owning everything, than the gravestone slab and the long hallways in a house that echoed and stretched and were empty without their master, for Gunther was not his father and never would be, never could be — thank God, he thought sometimes at that, standing in the hallway that connected his room and his father's. He filled the space so differently than Magnus did. Thank God.
When he'd started to shake, he knew Jane thought it was for a different reason than it really was, and so he pulled back, away, and Jane was left standing there, eyes wide and shiny wet, her arms open, loose, space for him that had never been there before, that he'd never realized how much he'd wanted. He pulled away further, and left that moment — left her standing there in that unbearable moment.
After that, she didn't touch him again.