Well-Deserved

The win goes to Moretti, technically. Even if the bell didn’t sound to signal the winner, everyone saw Thorunn go down…and everyone saw Moretti help him back up again. But even if Moretti technically broke the rules by causing a competitor to leave the ring, Thorunn is in no condition for a rematch. So Moretti wins by default.

With Moretti on one side of Thorunn and I on the other, we help him limp upstairs to tonight’s shared lodgings. The room is barely more than a stained mattress on a wooden pallet. Everything reeks of secondhand cigarette smoke. The oil lamps are empty and all three of us are too tired to head downstairs and nag the innkeeper to fill them, so we keep the curtains open to allow in the weak yellow streetlight. Beneath our feet rises the muffled drinking song of dozens of merrymakers. For the serious spectators, the night has only just begun. Those who won big tonight are drinking to celebrate, and those who lost everything are drinking to forget. I (who prefers to sleep in total darkness, in a clean bed, with complete silence) would normally object to such lodgings.

Tonight, I don’t care. All I care about is that Thorunn is alive.

Weak, yes. But alive. He heralded his return to the land of the living by breaking away from Moretti’s kiss and nearly throwing him across the basement, but I talked him down. Then, overwhelmed by relief, I kissed him like the world was ending. In the ensuing chaos, we had little chance to discuss amongst ourselves. The stingy owner of the tavern, frantic, begged us not to call a doctor or police, since the betting ring was less-than-legal, and distributed double of Moretti’s rightful share of winnings to ensure our silence. He was also more than gracious to let us stay in his fine establishment for the night, free of charge—“you’ve more than paid for it in profit, no worries, no worries,” as he said.

The obols jangle in my pocket as I help Thorunn lie down on the mattress, then sit beside him. Moretti is on the other side, and with the mattress being too narrow for the three of us, he kneels on the floor and clasps one of Thorunn’s hands between both of his.

“It’s a technique of the spiritus vitae school,” Moretti explains. He is still bleeding from his head wound and bruised all over. But he continues channeling, evidenced by the delicate swirls of gold weaving between the two men’s fingers. “In layman’s terms, I reinforce his life force by giving some of my own. Unlike the other healing schools, spiritus vitae needs no verbal incantation, only physical contact.”

“Spiritus vitae,” I echo. “The breath of life.”

I rest my hand on Thorunn’s chest. His eyes, half-lidded, flick towards me.

“Eloise…” Thorunn rasps. “I’m sorry.”

“Shh.” I kiss his cheek. “Rest. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“I told you he’s a cheat.” With great effort, he manages to turn his head to glare at Moretti. “Damned arcanist. No honorable man brings magic to a fistfight.”

“I’m not an arcanist,” Moretti replies calmly. “I’m a cleric.”

Thorunn sniffs. “Bah. What’s the difference.”

“Clerics can be excommunicated.” Moretti leans over and briefly touches the back of his hand to Thorunn’s forehead. “To be fair…you can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

That must have been what they were talking about, shortly before Moretti ended the fight. He was giving Thorunn a final warning before playing the ace up his sleeve, that final, devastating side kick—undoubtedly supercharged with magic, although I didn’t see any of the telltale residuals in the air that would give him away as a spellcaster. Maybe he has some method of hiding them from plain sight. The ace is not, however, without consequence. As Moretti stands up to wet a washcloth, he walks with a pronounced limp, shifting weight away from the foot which dealt the fatal blow.

Thorunn notices, too. “I demand a rematch,” he mutters.

“Absolutely not,” I tell him sternly.

“Without his cheap tricks, I would’ve pulverized him. He’s even weaker now. I could defeat him lying down.”

“You’re not making the homoerotic subtext any less textual,” Moretti remarks.

Thorunn, red-faced with embarrassment and unsure of how to respond, falls quiet. He drifts off to sleep shortly after. The gentle snores tell me that he is well and truly out, surely exhausted from his extensive injuries. For what feels like hours, I sit next to him, unable to take my eyes off of the rise and fall of his breathing. Only once the din from below dies down, signifying that the drunkards have gone home, do I finally relax enough to rest my head on the lumpy, stained pillow.

Again, Moretti’s glance flicks across to me. He has not released Thorunn’s hand, nor have the golden residuals faded.

Not wanting to wake Thorunn, I drop my voice to a whisper. “Be honest. Is he going to be okay?”

“He’ll be fine.” Moretti breaks eye contact. “I’m just channeling to keep him stable. I hope you don’t mind if I hold your fiancé’s hand all night.”

A smile rises to my lips, unbidden. “I don’t mind. He probably will.”

“He probably will,” he agrees.

“I didn’t realize you cared for him so much.”

“I don’t. But you do.”

He stubbornly refuses to meet my eyes again. I think back to what Edgar said: they’re fighting over you. If this was a competition, Moretti had an easy way to win it. Kill Thorunn, make it look like an accident, take me for himself. With this sort of power, it would be easy. And if I wasn’t there to witness, I would be none the wiser.

“If I wasn’t here,” I ask, “would you have still healed him?”

The question lingers in the air with the secondhand smoke. Stagnant, unbroken. Moretti does not respond. At some point in the night, I glance over, only to find that he has fallen asleep sitting up—hand still clasped around Thorunn’s.

The next morning, Thorunn is feeling much better. His bruises are gone and all of his internal injuries seem to have healed, with the sole exception of a missing canine tooth, probably buried somewhere in the pit sand. He looks a little funny, like a child who has just lost a milk tooth, but reassures me that it does not hurt and he can get it fixed at home.

“I will get a gold tooth, I think,” he tells me. “A…how do you say…tongue-in-cheek thing. Your political pundits love to illustrate the ‘Northern pirates’ with a gold tooth and peg leg, so I just need the peg leg, and I’ll be a walking stereotype.”

I am glad to see he has his energy back. The same cannot be said for Moretti, who sleeps soundly on the floor late into the morning. He is alive, just incredibly sluggish—whenever I try to shake him awake, he mutters an unintelligible response before drifting back off. We let him sleep. Thorunn and I are more than content to simply lie and rest together, basking in the morning sunlight, taking comfort in each other’s silent company. There is no rush to start the day.

Or at least, that is what we thought. Promptly at noon, a brisk and insistent fist knocks upon the door. It is the owner’s missus, informing us that our free stay is up and housekeeping needs to come in to “clean.” I doubt they actually intend to clean, but do not really feel like arguing with her.

We end up in the tavern, the three of us crowded around a cramped table probably designed for two, sipping on weak tea and nibbling stale bread. The kitchen offers some mysterious form of brown sludge which the other tavern patrons, mostly common laborers, seem happy to scarf down. Thorunn gives it the benefit of the doubt. But despite his usually voracious appetite, even he screws up his nose and elects for the bread. Although there are things I miss about the simple life of poverty I once led, the food is not one of them. Life is short. I refuse to waste any of that precious time eating shitty food, or suffering the consequences thereafter.

“Well,” Moretti breaks the silence first. “It’s been lovely spending time with you two. I have something urgent to attend to, so I must get going.”

“No, you don’t,” I tell him. “Sit.”

“Come to think of it,” says Thorunn, “I also have somewhere to be.”

I reach out and grab his arm, anchoring him to the seat. “Neither of you are going anywhere. You assured me that I would have an explanation in the morning.”

“Technically,” Moretti murmurs, “it’s early afternoon.”

“How about tomorrow morning?” Thorunn suggests.

“No.” I fold my arms. “I want an explanation now. What in the name of all gods were you two doing here?”

They exchange a glance. A silent conversation seems to pass between them—maybe it actually does, since I know now that Moretti is capable of beaming messages into people’s minds.

“You lost the match,” Moretti says aloud.

“So I should be the one to explain?” Thorunn replies. “That makes no sense. I died, you know.”

“And I brought you back to life.”

“Yes, but I died. I am ever so weak. I cannot form the words to explain.”

A deep sigh, and then Moretti relents. “Alright. Fine. The dispute was, originally, about the proxy engagement—how to seal the marriage while Thorunn is overseas for the summer. If you can’t marry immediately, there is no point to the proxy, is there?”

I had wondered as much, too. “And what, exactly, does that have to do with cage fighting?”

Another exchanged glance. “Well,” Moretti exhales, “I solved the problem. A proxy marriage doesn’t entail the usual formalities of a marriage—no kiss at the altar, no consummation, none of that. It’s a contract. It exists on paper only. So I pitched to Thorunn the idea of a double proxy: with Eloise standing in for ‘Elizabeth,’ and a second person standing in for Thorunn.”

“No, not a second person,” Thorunn interrupts, jabbing a finger at Moretti. “You. You standing in for me.”

“I never said that. Svara was another choice—she’s your cousin; she is from your country, so she symbolically represents your interests—”

“It would be him,” Thorunn tells me. “He wanted to marry you.”

“I told you, it’s not—ugh. Fine. For simplicity’s sake, it would be easiest if it were me. Svara is already busy protecting Lady Amira, but Eloise remains unguarded. Since she and I already work together, it would be no problem at all to protect Eloise during work. We could even be paid for the time we spend working on the proxy documentation—you too, Eloise; you would be eligible for hourly billing.”

I raise my eyebrow. “Hourly, like a lawyer? Tempting.”

“He has ulterior motives, of course,” Thorunn mutters. To make a point, he reaches across and clasps my hand. “Let us not beat around the bush any longer, Viscount. You fancy my betrothed, and you wish to take her for yourself. A paper marriage, but still a marriage.”

“Not a marriage. An engagement.”

“An engagement designed to turn into a marriage at the drop of a hat. Wouldn’t be surprised if you arranged some…incident, while I was away.

Moretti opens his mouth. Then he closes it and rubs his forehead. He has successfully cleaned up most of the blood and dirt from last night, but a few grains of sand now escape from his scalp onto his black shirt. He frowns and dusts them off.

“Suppose you are right, Jarl,” Moretti responds. “What then? Whether I have feelings for Eloise changes nothing. You are still leaving next Friday. And Eloise cannot go with you. She has work to do here, on this petition. And for all intents and purposes, she represents the unwedded hand of ‘Elizabeth’. Leave her alone in Saol Eile and you are leaving her as a pawn to be played at the Crown’s leisure. You might return in the winter and find that your betrothed has been given away to a different foreign prince.”

He has a point. Once Thorunn leaves, I am as good as unpromised. Free for the taking.

“When I first brought this to the Jarl’s attention,” continues Moretti, “you can imagine he was less than pleased. So I proposed a bet. If I win, I draft the paperwork for a double-proxy engagement. If he wins, I leave the engagement as is, and we see what happens.”

I pull my hand out of Thorunn’s. “So instead of asking me what I want,” I cut in, “you went behind my back and dueled to the death about it? As if I am some…some spoil of war to be squabbled over?”

Both men are silent for a very long time.

“Well, when you put it like that…” Moretti murmurs, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Eloise, that wasn’t—I didn’t mean—” Thorunn drags his hands down his face. “I couldn’t leave you with someone who could not defend you. I had to see for myself. I will admit, the Viscount has more than proven himself, but I’d half a mind to stay here. To hells with the summer festival, there will always be another one. I’d rather make sure you were safe.”

“And you never thought to tell me?” I ask.

They both fall silent again.

“In order to get the truth out of you two,” I state, “I had to dress up in this stupid disguise, stalk Thorunn for several miles across town, sit in that nasty basement watching half-naked men beat the shit out of each other for hours, and watch my fiancé die in front of me. And instead of just asking me what I wanted to do, you set up this elaborate bracketed fighting system just so you could face off against each other on Saturday nights—not to mention that you actually getting to fight each other was contingent on winning all of your previous matches—”

“That…wasn’t really a concern,” Moretti adds sheepishly.

“They’re all terrible fighters,” Thorunn agrees.

“That’s not the point!” I cry.

A bitter laugh escapes from my throat. This whole thing is ridiculous. It is truly the type of nonsense that only an adolescent boy could dream up. But that is who is courting me. Two barely-past-adolescent boys, oblivious to the world beyond their own fragile egos and sense of ownership over a woman.

“I’m tired of being fought over,” I tell them. “I never wanted to be tangled up in this mess, not for a minute. I’m not Elizabeth. I’m not royalty. My love life shouldn’t have political weight, and I don’t want this—this bureaucratic nightmare anywhere near my personal life. Even Edgar agrees! If you had just talked to me, I would have told you that the proxy engagement no longer exists. Edgar is going to tell his family and the Guildensterns that he misspoke. There is no proxy. You were fighting over nothing.”

“That’s impossible,” Moretti blurts. “He would have told me.”

“And why would he do that?”

He frowns, seemingly confused as to why I am asking. “Because…I’m his lawyer? Because I handle his affairs and property?”

Immediately, he seems to sense he has made a mistake, as he sucks in a breath and sits back. I lean across the table to close the distance.

“So there’s nothing for you to handle,” I say airily. “I am not Edgar’s fucking property.”

Then I stand up and leave.

For a long while, Moretti and Thorunn sit in silence.

“We really fucked that one,” Moretti mumbles.

“Who’s ‘we?’ You speaking Gallican?” Thorunn responds.

“Oh, shut up. You brought up the idea of a duel in the first place, don’t wash your hands of it.”

The barmaid saunters over. Moretti orders whiskey; Thorunn orders rum. “Two shillings to start a tab,” she tells them.

Moretti begins to fish in his pocket, then freezes. He looks to Thorunn. “Did I give you the winnings?”

“Why the fuck would you give me the winnings?” asks Thorunn.

At once, Moretti races to the front door. He looks out on the street. Left, right. No sign of Eloise. There is, however, a trolley turning a corner down the street—and, though it might just be wishful thinking, Moretti swears he can see a woman wearing a straw hat in the back row. Then she is gone, too far ahead for him to catch up in his sad, weakened state.

When he returns, disgraced, he collapses into his chair.

“Well?” the barmaid says. “You also gotta pay for the stew, y’know.”

“Even if I didn’t eat it?” Thorunn asks meekly.

“Thorunn,” says Moretti calmly, “have you ever been kicked out of a bar before?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been stranded because a girl took your wallet?”

“No…?” A short pause. “I see.”

The barmaid taps her foot.

“We deserve this, I think,” says Thorunn.

“Yes.” Moretti hangs his head glumly. “Yes, I reckon we do.”