Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Lord's only offspring stirred awake.

Eyes of hazel slit in disdain into the deepnight gloom of her bedroom. Even if they could've been, Rose's dreams were never worth remembering, but it was nonetheless insulting that they should be prematurely concluded by frenetic footfall near her private quarters. Stilling her breath, she detected voices just outside her door, hushed but not trying hard enough for her liking; her practised ear knew they belonged to the youngest and most exasperating of her maids, Betsy and Tamara.

The girls sounded irked — which she could understand, they weren't usually still on duty at this hour — but their escalating exchange of complaints concerning whatever they had been tasked with would frequently degenerate into fits of giggles, which was also to be expected of the pair. Ditzy or not, didn't they know what time it was? Had they all forgotten that she was to sit in on Father's trade meeting later this morning?

(They couldn't possibly have – this was how Father had excused her demeanour all week. The two weeks before now, it had been chalked up to the symptoms of her natural cycle, and the week before that ... oh, who could remember.)

She was not so flattened by the tedium of the previous day that she was content to simply roll over and take it. It was Mason who doused her fire and urged her toward a more cautious approach. The Captain of her Father's Guard was rarely known to let fear rock his voice, or any emotion for that matter. 

"I thank each of the stars that we were able to keep our good Lord safe!"

She opened her door an indiscernible fraction to help her eavesdropping and was stunned to see a flurry of activity in the hallways of her family's castle. Servants were barrelling in all directions, many still donned in their nightwear. It seemed that all of her staff had been called to action, not merely the lowliest of them.

"And where is he now, Mason?"

She withdrew into her room at that vinegary enunciation. Not just the staff, she cheerlessly noted. 

"In that old barn by the well, my Lady."

"In there? But you said he wasn't–"

"While the women clean him. Trust me when I say you do not want him in the castle in his… current state."

"I'm not sure I want he — it — in the castle at all.” Aunt Ainsley sighed brusquely. "But it'll be my word against my brother's, and we all know how that'll pan out. You are sure you encountered cave-folk? I find it highly questionable. They have never descended from the mountains before."

"I have not one doubt. We lacked the light, but their malodor is unmistakable," Mason uttered grievously. 

"And it was with them?"

"It would appear so. We found him in a briar patch by the bridge – Lord Muchty thinks otherwise, but our Lord suspects he must have managed to escape from where the beasts were holding him, and was hiding. Yet..."

"Yet?"

"This still wouldn't explain why he—"

Their voices mixed indistinguishably with the castle's clamor as more staff were roused and recruited from their quarters. The eavesdropper scorned herself for being deterred by her aunt's presence. Now she would have to wait until the morn to know the whole story, and what if it was all over by then? 

A blessing assumed the unlikeliest of forms. A diminutive figure hobbled toward her room with a stack of fresh towels — he was so short, he could not see above the peak of the pile. She threw out her hand, grasping the page boy by the front of his uniform and thrusting him inward.

"Good Gods–!"

"Eustace, tell me what's going on," she demanded.

The servant had scattered his stack onto the floor, which he ignored in favor of clutching his jackhammering heart. "M-My Lady, on any other night I could tolerate this kind of handling, but not after events such as these—"

"Such as what? Speak, Eustace!" 

The mousy fellow laboriously regained his stolen breath, but now there was the matter of trying to formulate words into coherent sentences. "Eh, d-don't you have a m-meeting with your Father tomorrow? Or that'll be today, now. You really ought to be resting—"

"Tell me, Eustace!" She snapped. He recoiled as if struck. "Why is everyone running around like headless poultry at this hour? And why are you back so late? We were expecting the carriages to return by supper."

The page boy knew he was badly needed in the courtyard. Every hand was required to clean the carriage, and especially those that could afford to be dirtied; there were few whose hands were more dispensable than his. But Lady Rose had a titanium grip on that part of his arm which was supposed to flaunt bulging muscle. Instead, it was limp and scrawny, much like the rest of him. Eustace lowered his chin in resignation. 

"As you wish, my Lady. We were making excellent time on our return from visiting the Lord and Lady Tober, with the Lord and Lady Muchtys riding along beside us on their way back from the Twin Temples," he explained. "We had every intention of taking the Golden Trail, but there had been a landslide at the Blue Path, so we were forced to reroute through Thorny Gulch."

"At the base of the mountains," Rose voiced thoughtfully. Even the bottom percentile of the land knew what lived out there.

"Which took us to the Garten Bridge—"

"Yes, yes, I've heard this part," she said, flicking her wrist as if swatting a gnat. She was trying to sound encouraging, but she was snippy as a default, and this did not inspire confidence in Eustace, who was already chronically deficient. 

"Mason halted us so some of the men could fetch water. I was supposed to stay with your Father, but he insisted I leave to stretch my legs... him being so kind and generous of heart..."

"Get on with it, Eustace."

"I was helping with the horses when... Mason sounded the alarm."

"Was it really trolls?" Rose spoke with unguarded wonder. In the pause that followed her question, Eustace's freckled and embryonic face darkened forbiddingly.

"W-Well, I never saw any myself, but that's what the others said," he clarified. 

"What did you bring back?" 

"I... well, I chose to stay with your Father, to try and see that he was protected." His thin voice deflated to a mumble. "I could never have forgiven myself had I left him unattended during the ambush. Of course, there were others who were more physically equipped than I, but I still couldn't have left him."

Rose scoffed harshly. She knew Eustace wasn't trained for combat. Everyone knew that. "That's not what I asked you," she said. "What did you bring back, Eustace? What's out there in the old barn?"

"It's hard to say, my Lady. If I were certain of it, I would tell you, but I'm not — no one is!" Eustace exclaimed. "Lord Muchty wanted to kill it then and there. He said it was an affront to civilised people. But your Father took pity on it. On him. He's offered him respite in his Court."

Rose thought the broken sleep was catching up with her. She requested he repeat himself.

"Your Father has decided to keep him here."

She did not respond, nor even breathe, she was sure, for several clockticks. She knew her Father was soft of heart, sometimes to her and her aunt's vexation — but this was taking it to new extremes.

"We are hosting a troll in my Court?"

"No, not a troll!" Eustace's laughter was hysterical and hollow, petering out with an audible gulp as his mouth rapidly parched. "Well, uh, not exactly..."

Rose grabbed her overcoat. "Take me to him, Eustace."

"But m-my Lady—"

"That's an order, page boy!"

"No!"

You did not say 'no' to Lady Rose lightly. Eustace trembled beneath that withering glare. 

"M-My Lady, you do not want to see him tonight, believe me! We — we suspect he might be suffering from illness. It could be likely to spread, although I'll pray to the Gods that it won't," he winced. "It took me moons to get over last year's flu, and what came out of him in that carriage was…"

His trembling gave way to one exaggerated, nauseated shudder.

"Profuse," he whispered, haunted. 

"Eugh — really, Eustace?"

"I'm sorry, my Lady, but I am needed there now." He kneeled to reclaim his towels. "We'll be cleaning all night, in preparation for you and your Father's trade meeting. There'll be no trace of his filth left, I assure you."

Knowing there was no sense in arguing no matter how much she wished to, Rose nodded stiffly. "I won't stop you. That'll be all, Eustace. And thank you."

He bowed to her and respectfully backed out of the room. She was unready for the complete absence of noise in the halls when he opened her door. Everyone had been assigned their role in tackling this crisis, and those who were not on the frontlines, but in the know — like her — would be left to toss and turn and puzzle it over until the sun swallowed the stars again. She could visit her aunt and try to pry some more information from her cold, cracked lips, but spending any time in her reptilian company shaved years off of her life; Rose was convinced of it. 

So she locked her door. More to keep herself in than anyone out.

There hadn't been a chill in the air when she had retired to bed. Now Rose crept toward her window with the intention of doing no more than closing it; it had been wedged open all summer, but even she lacked the authority to slow the seasons. She found herself lingering there, watching the bustling courtyard. It was strange to see it so busy at this time of night.

Despite being the offspring of the region's reigning Royal, she was still the youngest of her three cousins. Naturally, her kin selected quarters with balconies that faced the ocean, or the fields of barley and wheat maintained by the villagers. For once, Rose was grateful she had been left with an unspoiled view of that old, dilapidated barn. The Gods only knew why Father had insisted on leaving it standing all these years. Such a sentimental old fool, he was. She loved him infinitely. 

Candlelight flickered, casting shadows that played on the barn's rotting walls. The crunch and groan of the spare carriage parts and rolling barrels of oil and tallow being evacuated to make space drifted up toward her, as well as her staff's excited and fearful chatter. There had to have been twenty servants convened in there. It was impossible to make out what was going on, but whatever it was would be the talk of the Court for days to come.

She did not observe for too long, knowing there was no use in expecting to lay eyes on whatever her Father had adopted. Not if it had anything to do with the mountains. It wouldn't be able to so much as skip in any direction without a ring of armored men closing in on it. Not in a Royal Court, no matter how mellow Father was. 

When Rose finally climbed back into her opulent bed, she slipped effortlessly into a deep and fitful sleep; for the first time in many moons, her late mother never made an appearance.

On this night, she dreamed of beasts.

Chapter Text

The last of the summer moons shimmered starlight on the vast water of the northern ocean, and cast its dusty, violet luminance over the rolling hills and romantic pastures of her home, her county of Campion. It was not true pitch, so Rose did not need to carry a torch, and this she was grateful for, because it would draw less attention to her being in the courtyard beyond curfew. 

The animals were subdued in their sheds except for the occasional lowing of a restless heifer, undoubtedly ill at ease because of all the racket coming from the nearby rickety barn. She picked her way across the clutter that was still strewn from two nights previous to this one, when the stranger took up residence in the grounds of their castle. The only thing more distasteful and unbeckoning for a Royal Court was the gathering of flies that had found something even more tempting than cow shit to obsess over: the stranger's bedsheets and clothes, dumped by the door of his new domicile. 

Inexplicably, she was lured ever closer. 

Contrary to her reputation for frostiness, Rose would pardon the mess. She had an especial fondness for the female staff — and from what she could currently hear of her maids, they had enough on their hands. There was much shrieking, and barking of orders, and insults lobbed in all directions — most landing on the newcomer, who was the cause of all their quarrelling and sorrow. 

"Hold him down! HARDER! Debra, are you even listening? Tallulah, another cloth, more water! Now! Oh, don't you even think about—stop it! THAT'S ENOUGH! Och, I've had my fill of this!"

Rose fell back as the door was flung open. Martha was their longest-serving maid and had been her nanny as a child. If Rose had to describe her in one word, it would be durable. She had never looked closer to the opposite than tonight. Her hair had come loose from what Rose had once considered to be a shatterproof bun, and strands of it lay across her perspiring forehead as she gasped for breath. 

"Rat-faced basta— oh! Why... if it isn't our Lady!"

She would never have been expected to curtsey, being such an old friend of the family. She spread her arms wide to wrap around Rose before faltering.

"In fact, keep your distance — I fear I've inherited some of his muck. What gives you cause to wander from your quarters at this hour, dearie? Does your Father know you're out?"

There was a glint in Rose's eye that the fat maid knew all too well.

"I wish to see our guest," she stated calmly.

The fingers that had been fixing hair in vain pinched the bridge of Martha's stub nose.

"Rosalie, we have been over this. Your Father told me he planned to have strong words with you concerning the beast."

"When has Father ever had strong words, and especially for me?" The young woman smiled impishly. "Come now, Martha, wouldn't you find it alarming if you had someone living on your grounds and you had never even seen his face?"

"He is living on my grounds — and it is alarming," Martha countered, wiping her big, calloused hands on her uniform, and grimacing at the earthy smear that was left behind.

"For how much longer will he be living in this barn? Hardly seems dignified for a guest of our Court."

"I would not worry myself about honoring his dignity, Lady Rose. The creature would have to have some first."

"And how many women does it take to give a grown man a bath?" Rose inquired. Whoever was on shift with Martha tonight was shrieking in chorus. 

"That thing hardly qualifies as a man. And not only because of his incivility; he looks to have only a year or two on you, Rose, and you're but a pup to me." Her affection for the motherless girl stirred inside her chest, knotted her expansive stomach and benumbed her lenient expression. "No. I will not bid you entry. He is unruly, and it is unwise. Your Father is convinced he can be made noble, but he isn't the one scrubbing him thrice a day…"

There came a splash, followed by a gargling scream. One of the apprentice maids staggered through the door, soaked to the bone, then tore off across the black courtyard, caterwauling. 

"That animal pulled me in! I want to go hoooome!"

"Oh, Debbie! Debbie, get back here! For Heaven's sake!"

Rose saw her chance to sneak past and took it. She was soon scruffed.

"Rosalie! You still wish to see him after that? You foolhardy lass!"

"He is my guest — I do not wish to be rude!" Rose innocently protested, trying to wriggle out of her grasp.

"That is not a concern he shares with you!" She held the younger woman still by her shoulders, and implored her: "Rose — it is one thing to look upon him, and to know he lived among those lawless brutes — that's plenty to turn one's stomach, but then to smell him—"

"You forget that this poses no problem for me," the other arrogantly chipped in. She was banking on her anosmia giving her leverage here.

"Aye, aye, I know last year's flu dulled your nose, but that does not make him any less…" Martha squirmed. "Oh, Rose, he is terribly uncouth, and he has picked up bad habits from those caves. Mannerisms a Lady should not be exposed to. Don't make me utter any more—"

"He's flatulent," Rose said frankly. Martha looked both relieved that someone else had said it and also deeply embarrassed that it had been so candidly vocalized. Rose rolled her eyes.

"Yes, Martha, I'm aware. The page boys won't stop harping on about it. But he'll be in the presence of a Royal. He'll behave accordingly."

"Listen to you!" Martha laughed bleakly. "Sounding so sure of yourself. Look at Debbie, for Merlin's sake! Do you think that's all he's capable of?"

"Your girls have been talking plenty, too. They say he can speak the Plaintongue as though it were his natural inclination. Therefore, I believe he knows more than he lets on," Rose shared insistingly. 

"Oh, he speaks it just fine — as fluent as you and I! But that does not mean he has any respect for our ways, or for any of us!" 

The maid rested her hands on her abundant hips and tipped her head back to search the empty twilight. If the Lord wished for them to continue with this severe bathing schedule, they would need rain and lots of it. They hadn't enough staff to spare for trudging down to the shoreline to fill up the buckets multiple times a day. The last three days had felt like a year's worth of toiling, and she was getting to be too old for it.

Rose's timing couldn't have been smarter. Martha was in no mood to duel with such a strong-willed whippersnapper. More than that, she trusted Rose — she understood Rose more than most. She was just about the only one in the Court who knew better than to underestimate her.

She levelled her with a look, and sighed midly through her nostrils.

"Suit yourself, lass. But—" She raised a pudgy finger before Rose's satisfaction reached full bloom. "I have warned you, and you will inform your Father of that should anything disagreeable occur in my absence, won't you?"

Rose tamped down her enthusiasm, perfectly poised. "Yes, you have my word, Martha. I'll take full responsibility."

"Then I'll go fetch Debra. She better not have run off into the woods, lest the wolves find her 'fore I do. Although with his stink on her clothes, I reckon they'll take one sniff and turn tail! Rose?"

Already halfway into the barn, Rose looked back over her shoulder.

"Please be careful around him," Martha pleaded. There was as much concern in the wrinkles of her beet-red face as there would be if Rose were headed into the woods. The young woman nodded once, paying no heed to the fear that fluttered her heart, then stepped inside the steamy barn.

The oily residue on the straw-covered floor was the only clue as to the barn's former purpose as a storage place for all things mechanical and cumbersome. As much space as possible had been cleared and inadequately dusted. A cot had been erected in one corner, and a stove and a table and a stool, and dozens of candlesticks were situated around its claustrophobic circumference — it would have been cosy, had it not been for the occupant.

Where the floor sloped to allow for drainage stood a clawfoot bath. In the tub was a young man. 

Or what looked to be.

The remaining maid, who was only slightly less drenched than Debra, but much greener in the face — her reward for having endured his tricks was to continue breathing his fragrances — tried her best to greet her employer amiably, dipping into a curtsy that went unseen.

For Rose and the stranger had locked eyes.

Slowly, his lips curled into a smirk, and he eagerly inclined sideways. The maid knew what was coming and gave a frail whimper before hiding her face.

BbbRRrroOPHHPPRT!

A muffled explosion sounded beneath the water, prompting bubbles to dance hectically on its scummy surface. The maid failed to stifle a gag and looked undeservedly ashamed by her behavior.

"Leave us, Tallulah," Rose quietly ordered. To the man's confusion, she hadn't so much as wrinkled her nose at his emission.

"Gladly," Tallulah croaked, hurrying past her.

Rose circled the tub, her eyes never straying from his. Nor did his from hers. The bubbles were incessant; not as bombastic as his introductory blast, but small, consistent disturbances to the surface of the murky water, which protected her from seeing the lower half of his torso.

She was unnerved by how Common this troll appeared. Not at all like the picture books of her youth, nor any of the depictions rendered by the World's so-called adventurers and experts. No fangs were protruding from his mouth, nor jagged claws from his fingers; she could not vouch for the lack of tufted tail, but his complexion was an acceptable shade — not green or blue or grey. The only anomaly in what she could see of his appearance was his hair. All of the men of her Court and the land beyond it grew theirs to their shoulders, but his didn't even reach below his ears, and sat on his head like a pair of scruffy, flaxen blond curtains.

She was further discomfited by how naturally the Plainspeak rolled off his tongue, and the abnormal eloquence of his speech... abnormal only because it was coming from the likes of him.

"We finally meet," he said. His smirk flourished, mouth lifting at the corners, exposing rows of charmingly crooked teeth. "I've heard much about you, Miss Rose."

Chapter Text

"Lady Rose," she corrected. His phrasing gave cause for one of her brows to inch upward and for a shred of hope, overlooked only by her, to tenderise her voice. "Good things?" 

"Only the finest of things." He watched the redhead pace like a hound outside a foxhole. "You can sit, should you like; if you're planning on staying. Although..." 

Those inquisitive eyes had been trained on her throughout. Even now, as his gurgling tank visibly clenched and he issued a brisk, huffy grunt, they didn't deviate. A succession of beefy bubbles was the product of this effort, agitating the steaming water. He even had the audacity to sigh after the dreadful flatulence had hurtled out of him, reaping the foul benefits of what he had sown!

She had to clamp her teeth into the lining of her bottom lip to hold her jaw in place; it very nearly met the floor. How could one be so openly graceless? She had never encountered the likes of it before…

"I'm not sure I would if I were in your place, Lady Rose!"

Rose's gaze hardened against his brazen insolence. Her body language bore an uncanny likeness to her aunt. If someone had informed her of this, she wouldn't have hesitated to kick them into the day after three tomorrows.

"I don't need your permission to sit, nor for anything else for that matter," she replied, tone inflexible. 

"But I shall grant it anyway, being of the charitable sort."

His puckish and imperfect smile was frustratingly disarming, and his behavior around her criminally lax — and even if she were not the daughter of a Lord, it would still be utterly appalling.

The tell-tale bubbles did more than confirm the page boys' banter concerning his digestive proclivities, and this was far more drastic than the dodgy tummy her Father had blithely mentioned in passing. The beast's farting was ruthless, putrid, and unabashed. The water couldn't stop boiling with the fervor of his unceasing supply, and he was impossibly serene about it. She, too, could be charitable; she chose to attribute his flaunting of such a repugnant attribute to animal ignorance rather than the disrespect Martha had claimed.

His eyes drifted toward the door, which he pouted at sullenly. "Isn't Debbie coming back? No one's scrubbed under my toenails yet."

"And this is not something you can do yourself? You seem able-bodied enough."

"I don't make it a habit, but your Father seems to consider it essential, cleanliness being closest to Lordliness, and all that." His chest, coated in a downy layer of fair hair, expanded with a shallow inhale, and presently he fired out a wet rattle of a belch. Then he smacked his lips, as though he hoped the act might have supplied a sample of his latest meal. "And only a woman's touch can fulfil his standards, apparently. Your women have been bathing me thrice daily — we've been having great fun!"

Fun.

Fury cast a stormy shadow across her immature face as Rose approached the clawfoot tub, burly shoulders rolled back, chin high, intending to lecture him up close with a spiel about how a maid's life was hard enough without some flatulent slob making a mockery of their devoted services. But she soon stalled, setting her sight heavenward instead. Her mouth turned down into a thoughtful frown as she tried to visualise beyond the ceiling — had they been anticipating a storm? No wonder the heifer was so uneasy; from what they could both sense, thunderclouds gathering over the barn's roof were readying to release the most violent of deluges. 

"Oogh…"

Her frown deepened and became queasy. She had lowered her chin only to see pain and trepidation contorting his smug expression. As soon as she realized that the rumbling was coming from him, for not only was the sound becoming clearer and more intense, but the dirty water was actually quivering with the inner workings of his disturbed stomach, she had the wit to take a step backwards. 

Her belly squeezed, rigid and taut, no doubt in an effort to seal up its swilling contents as he let fly from his unseen orifice. The thick, heavy fart's vileness was liberally released into the water — a ghastly tune, and the sight of those bubbles exploding around him even more so, yet she couldn't look away from the mechanisms of his clean-shaven face, each of which she keenly, carefully interpreted — the wrinkling of his skin on his forehead and the puckering of his brows as he pushed the gas along his tract, or more likely as he relinquished control over himself in his animal fashion, and the smoothing of rumpled flesh once he was free of his intestinal disturbance... at least for the time being.

His skin had colored only from exertion. Shame was not part of his emotional inventory; it was as far from his psyche as Campion was from the mountain range. It was mesmerising to behold — it had the same sick captivation as watching a corrupt man be hanged, she thought. She deduced that the droplets beading on his temples were sweat, not his bathwater. Maybe he was infected.

Rose took another healthy step backwards.

"Not great," he groaned, mopping his damp, hairless upper lip with the backs of his fingers. "But… better." 

She had no idea whether that was a comment on the state of his health or if he was scoring himself on his expulsions.

"You are ill?" The question was void of concern.

He yawned vastly, his gaseous output briefly and forcibly increasing before the bubbles reduced again.

"It probably seems that way to you lot," he tonelessly speculated.

"Martha tells me they've had to collect a week's worth of water for you already. You are so filthy, the water browns as soon as you lie in it — even after several baths," she detestably described. She hoped that by making it clear how much he disgusted her, he would cork it, or at least have the good grace to blush about such an inelegant condition as chronic flatulence. She was baffled when met by his nonplussed reaction.

"That was true enough of the first two days," he admitted. He had wedged his pinky in his left ear, which he was now freely swivelling around. "But there was an incident this morning that could not be foreseen."

Insecurity reared its ugly head. Too often, Rose was kept in the dark about the goings-on of her Court. She gave him more of her trust than she ought to have, and it would not be for the last time. "Of what nature?"

"I'm not sure a Lady like yourself wishes to hear of it."

"I am the Lord's daughter," she indignantly replied, "it is not only my right to know, but my duty."

The flesh on his bottom squeaked and skidded against the ceramic as he adjusted his seated position, part of which involved lifting a buttock. Even the most slow-minded of lowborns could have predicted what happened next. 

He relented with a modest exhale as the bubbles quelled again. "As you wish, then. The essence of it was that I placed too much faith in a fart and sha—"

She shrilled girlishly and made a slashing motion across the air with her hands. "Stop! Enough. How dare you speak like that in front of me!"

"Well, we cannot be the victor in all of our battles, Lady Rose," he countered mildly, head tilted sideways, eyes squinting quizzically as they took in her reaction through the poisonous plumes rising from the water. As if she were acting disorderly! 

"I'll ask you only once to refrain from doing that in my presence!" Being a redhead, her face became luminescent at the drop of a hat. Currently, her cheeks could cut a clear path through a foggy marsh. His eyes threatened to penetrate her armor; she had no choice but to turn away from this beast.

"I generally try to refrain from sharting," he casually replied.

She spun around again. "Not that!"

"Then what?"

Sitting there with an unrelenting hoop of bubbles burbling around him, he looked aggravatingly innocent.

"You know what," she hissed.

Something about him made her flesh tingle unpleasantly — the head-scratching contrast of his everyday appearance and this barbaric behavior, and the fluidity of his speech and the... and the other sounds he made, all too often and much too overtly.

"Please contain yourself in my presence, and don't speak so crassly, either," she added testily.

"Why?" 

"Because I am the daughter of the reigning Lord of this region!" She laughed mirthlessly. "Good Gods, surely you have noticed by now?" 

"I'm sorry, Lady Rose, but I do not follow. Do princesses never have to relieve themselves of a little gas every once in a while?" 

BRRRBbLlLPpRRRPPPBbLLLRROORP! 

He giggled, which suggested to Rose he hadn't timed that. It had just worked ever so wonderfully for him.

"I am not a princess." Her lips, like her patience, thinned. "And this is not little,” she added pointedly, gesturing to the unending bubbles. "And you are not doing it every once in a while. You haven't ceased to flatulate—"

"Flatulate?! That's a new one!"

"—since I arrived. Such functions are to be carried out in desolate quarters," she explained, as one would with a child. She was scraping the bottom of her barrel of tolerance, but how was a troll-born to know of the proper conduct? On that note, her building pity for him leaked forth; she openly looked down her nose at this repulsive creature. Meanwhile, his eyes continued to search her. Fearful of what they might find, and disturbed by their traces of kindness, she turned her back to him, feigning interest in the barn's meagre furnishings.

Eventually, she heard him submerge himself.

"Respectfully, Lady Rose, I don't think it would be wise to ask me to hold it in. From experience, it's never ended particularly well for those in my company."

The bubbles never stopped, popping and bursting intermittently as his stomach roiled. Listening to those squishy, squidgy rumbles while her oval face sizzled in the gentle, ambient candlelight, she vaguely recalled her adolescent studies about the anatomy of cave-trolls, a famously understudied species. (She had an affinity for biology and the sciences, and actually possessed the will to retain the information shared in these classes — not that having an interest in anything mattered, when your destiny had long been foretold.)

Something about a carcass of theirs revealing more than one stomach, or one large stomach made up of several chambers... not unlike the physiology of a ruminant. It had to be so that he had a more complicated system and biome than her own; if he was not ill, there was no other explanation for it.  

Not one that could be described as logical, anyway.

Her interest in his loathsome environment soon grew to be more than artificial. She had spotted a satchel by the cot. He had spotted her spotting it, too.

"I find it hard to believe you'd ever have company," she remarked when he caught her.

His laughter was light and unaffected. 

"You've made no complaints about your dwellings, from what I've heard," she continued. She observed a well-gnawed chicken bone on a chipped plate – her Father's deerhounds left nicer-looking scraps, though the ants didn't help. Rose grimaced. "You are content to live in a barn?"

"Perfectly content. Other than being trapped here against my will, of course…"

"It's your good fortune that Father didn't change his mind after the mess you made in the carriage," Rose reminded him. "He could've just as soon handed you over to the Muchtys."

He had been picking his nose behind her back — there was no wax left to scoop out of his ears, sadly — and when she glanced over to see what he made of her comment, he still had a finger up there. "You... know about that?" 

"I'm the Lord's daughter; I know all. Yes. I rode in it the very next day, in fact."

He chortled, then lowered his head and murmured apologetically, even shyly, "I trust they aired it out for the good Lady."

"I understand you were taken ill on the journey here, so perhaps I should not cast aspersions."

"If that's what they told you, I will not speak out of turn."

"If you ask me..." She ran a handkerchief over the stool by his table, discarded it on the plate, and unbuttoned her overcoat to drape it across her knees as she sat. "I think it was a protest."

The room was balmly from the heat of his bath (and the fart-drenched atmosphere had a lot to answer for.) She was well-dressed for it, bearing only a silver pyjama set beneath her overcoat. A blouse and shorts. If ever there was a time for his eyes to wander, to intrude, she expected it to be now. 

And... she was nothing less than gladdened that they did not, of course! To be oggled at by a smelly, cave-dwelling monster — was there anything worse?

ThhHHBBRRBBRPPPRLLT!

She dragged the stool further from the clawfoot tub. He rested an arm over each side and let his eyelids droop.

"You're clever. And fearless, to be unattended around someone like me," he reflected.

"I hope you don't mind my visiting at such an hour. I've been curious about you."

"Not at all." His nose scrunched in what she soon learned was an act of concentration, and following another grunt, he broke wind excessively. The rhapsody was unlike anything she had heard any man make, nor even any of the Knight's horses. Even their Clydesdales would struggle to announce the activity of their digestion so bombastically.

A second later — stirred by the lack of coughing or gagging — he cracked an eye open. "How peculiar this is!"

"What?"

"That my scent doesn't deter you. You must have an iron stomach — if that's true, I'm envious. Even roasted chicken does a number on me, as you might have noticed."

"I can't smell you nor anything else," she answered. "I lost my sense of smell after suffering the flu last winter."

"Oh! In that case—"

"Don't," she sternly warned.

Too late. He had squinched that same eye shut again, raised a cheek, and after lifting a finger in a wait for it gesture, farted generously. "Clever, fearless, and lucky!" He laughed while his backside cooked the water into a frenzy.

"And curious," she repeated with a sigh. So much so that she was willing to soldier on through this foulest of displays.

"I expected as much." He leaned forward to scratch his back with cut, grubby nails. "I've been known to be curious myself. I've never met a Lady before," he shared, "nor set foot anywhere near a Royal Court."

"Nor I a beast," she said. His nails stopped their scratching; he had grown unsettingly still. If she hadn't known better, Rose might have thought she had spoken out of turn. "The women here call you that. The men, too. But you look like an ordinary man to me. Common, even."

"Hm." He sniffed, once, and looked at her sidelong. "And are you disappointed by this ordinary man?" 

"No. For you could still be a beast — only the kind that looks like us," she suggested. "And for that reason, we could be fooled into trusting you until it's too late."

"Therefore, you must watch my every move closely..." He smirked, and his face pinched tellingly. She tried to convey how bored she was by this routine, but not to any great success; he farted several times and belched just as much.

"Dodgy tummy, my arse," she muttered.

"What was that?" 

"I said you're not making good on your promise to refrain."

He scoffed. "I don't recall promising. May I have that soap?"

She followed his pointed finger and picked out a dented bar of (unfortunately unscented) tallow and fat from a pail beside the stove. She extended it toward him. "You're going to use it?"

"No, Lady Rose, I'm going to eat it. I take it back, you're not so clever!"

Perhaps it was her lack of experience in having lowborn scum spouting off at her like this that stunned her into a thoughtful silence. She soundlessly watched as he ran the bar over his hair until it was suddy.

"What is so beastly about me?" His nails ground into his scalp; his eyes were tightly shut to avoid the soapy rivulets that soon raced down his face, so he could not see whether he had riled her. He could only trust in it.

"I use your Tongue, and I haven't lashed out—" He interrupted himself with a belch, followed this with another, seemed to try for a third, and to his own surprise (though decidedly not hers) he farted. "I've never laid a finger on any of your people without having good cause to do so — what of me suggests beastliness?”

"You're hideous, and a pest to my maids, who deserve more respect than you could ever earn in limitless lifetimes," she bit back with unflappable apathy as far as his feelings were concerned. If he had any. "And it is your origins that concern us most of all. Didn't Lord Muchty want you killed for it?"

His eyes watered as they bore into her. Maybe it was because of the stinging run-off that they seemed all of a sudden especially large and fragile to Rose. "What of my origins?" He asked.

"You must be the first of your kind." She hesitated, gauging how wise it was to come so near, then pulled herself and the stool closer to the tub. "I must know how you came to exist. It's the strangest thing..."

"Don't tell me your Father never had this talk with you?"

She did not give him the satisfaction of blushing. Such talk had never bothered her — fatigued her, more like. "I'm speaking of your parentage. How they met, how this affair started — and who is the troll?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, was the monster your mother or father?"

He laughed joyfully, and clearly at her expense — she was too distracted by how bizarrely clean his teeth looked to notice or take offence. "My mother — but she is my mother by everything but blood," he said. "She is the mother of my heart."

"I… don't understand."

"I expected as much." He splashed the discolored water at his armpits, unheeding of the bar of soap bouncing by his hip.

"But if you are not troll-born, what else could you be?"

"Hungry," he answered, then inclined in the opposite direction and shamelessly blasted two loud expulsions at her. She recoiled and gaped at him. "Martha has been restricting my portions. Poor woman thinks it'll make a lick of difference. Would the Lady be so kind as to give me a tour of wherever your provisions are stored?"

"L-Later," she said, distractedly. "So you are…" Her head felt light; she blamed it on the toxicity of his gases. "Common-born? But surely..."

A dense rush of air rumbled beneath him for close to a minute. She didn't think she could be more flustered until that happened.

"Ooft, dearie me. Does that disturb you more than an unnatural mating, Lady Rose?"

"H-How did you come to live among them? You must have been stol—"

"Adopted," he interjected, and with a firmness that suggested she probe no further. 

Her voice dripped with condescension. "You expect me to believe you were adopted by the cave-folk?"

Rather than answer, he slipped underwater; when he surfaced, it was boisterously enough to drench her, and if that hadn't worked, he haphazardly shook out his wet hair.

She knocked the stool over as she scurried back. "You've been soiling that water this whole time! How could you do such a thing?" 

He spat over the side of the tub and dug his nails furiously into his scalp. "If I find out you've given me lice as well as stealing me…!"

"Oh, as if! It's more likely to be you carrying parasites! Probably because of your hair. I've never seen a man with hair so short, it's not right."

"Longer tresses are more liable to become tangled and dirty. You wouldn't want me to be dirty, would you, Lady Rose?"

"How… how did you come to be adopted by trolls, then?" 

The pipes supped throatily at the water; ignoring her, he had triggered the drain lever.

"Between you and me, you may wish to educate your cook for when I move into the castle tomorrow — steer clear of dairy, and any of those spices from the east," he advised. "Your Father is going to have a room set up for me, then," he added, when it was clear this information had not yet been revealed to her. "And I believe I have to attend classes of some sort, though I'd like to see them try — your Father wishes for me to be an upstanding citizen for when the Lords meet at the harvest moon."

"Yes — yes, I know," she said, huffily; she did not know. 

"They're to decide what will be done with me, then. I suppose that means killing me isn't out of the question yet." He sighed forlornly and shook his damp head, as though there was nothing one could do but grin and bear it. He recovered quickly from this momentary despondency to flick water in her direction. The tub was draining with worrisome swiftness, uncovering more of his anatomy.

"I can be upstanding, Lady Rose." He grinned cheekily. "Just so long as the rest of you aren't downwind."

"Fear not, beast — my Father would never allow that to happen," she said. 

"Pah! But he has the constitution of a feather pillow!" 

"Excuse me?"

"That's what Lord Muchty said," he indifferently reported.

She was too disoriented by these cryptic clues to defend her Father or challenge Lord Muchty. "None of this makes the slightest bit of sense."

"I don't know," Jules mused. "Seems a rather weakhearted fellow to me, but there's nothing wrong with that, so long as you have a spine when it counts most. That Lord Muchty, on the other hand, needs a good, thick boot up the—"

"Not Father," she said. "You."

He pointed a finger at his chest and mouthed Me?

"If you were only adopted by trolls… and their filth has not tainted your blood, then why are you still… so… why are you this way?"

The tub was nearly empty. Cat-like, he pounced and thoroughly soaked her this time with the crud-infused dregs. Much like Debbie, she shrieked, but he paid her no mind as he fetched a towel.

"You are unclothed!" Rose wailed, willingly blinding herself. "Idiot!"

He was in no hurry to pat his face dry before wrapping the covering around his midriff. "Yes, Lady Rose, that's usually the state in which one bathes..."

For purely scientific purposes, she willed herself to open her eyes and take a good look at this phenomenon. There was definitely no tail, nor any other suggestion of the mountain folk, only a body marred with the bruises and scuffs of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors.

One exception to this was an ungodly welt throbbing across his spine and neck.

"That's the work of your Knights," he said. He did not have to look to know what had caused her to fall quiet.

Oh.

Still, her eyes lingered. He was fit enough, but there was an appealing roundness to him that the Knights lacked, and which made them almost grotesque to her; in his jaw, his nose, and the fullness of his lips; in the swell and overhang of his downy tummy, and in his rear — which she was staunchly ignoring, for fear of what might abruptly and plentifully exit from it. One thing that particularly sweetened her to him was those red boils of adolescence outstaying its welcome, speckled along his jawline and to a lesser degree on his right cheek. Just like her. At least she wouldn't be alone in enduring her cousins' taunts anymore. 

"They never told me your name." He turned and gave her a strange look — strange because it seemed so close to vulnerable. "What is it?"

"Why, you're the first to ask, Lady Rose. The others were content to call me a beast and no more." He smiled crookedly, then swooped down into a dramatic bow. Of course, he farted enormously; she was surprised he hadn't blown his towel clean off. "I am Jules." 

"And where will your quarters be, Jules?" 

"I thought you knew everything? As far from yours as possible, if I had to venture a guess."

"Certainly — Aunt Ainsley would never tolerate your functions."

"Aunt Ainsley, Aunt Ainsley," he thoughtfully repeated. His head popped out the neck hole of his original shirt, ripped and sullied from the brawl, and he sported a temporary frown, before his face brightened in sudden recognition. "Oh! Yes, I believe we met. The one that looks like a constipated lizard?"

Rose buried her grin in her hands, pretending to stifle a yawn.

"I'm keeping the Lady from her rest." Here, he did an excellent imitation of Martha, "How uncouth of me!"

"I believe I'll heed your advice. Even having only spent a short time around you, I'll schedule a meeting with the kitchen staff," she said. "Though I fear it doesn't matter where you are in the castle. We'll be smelling you all the same."

"All except you, of course," he said.

"What do you mean?"

His brown eyebrows ticked upward. "Why, I thought you said you could not?"

"Oh — oh, yes. That's right."

"Your fear is entirely justified," he agreed. She could hear him farting steadily beneath the towel; not as thunderously as before, but the fabric could do little to muffle it. "But it's noble of you to think of your subjects. I suppose that is what a Lady must do, isn't it?"

She looked away while he pulled himself into clean undergarments. It required more effort than she would have preferred to reject morbid thoughts of how long they'd stay clean for.

"I intend to keep an eye on you," she said. But this promise was made to the straw-covered floor.

"Yours won't be the only, I suspect. Beasts are accustomed to being stared at. Perhaps your men could build me a cage of some kind, and I could be put on display for all the village people."

This bitter suggestion piqued her interest, especially since she had given him many reasons to become acid-tongued before... and he hadn't.

"I would never allow them," she returned, with all the confidence and authority she could muster. "Beast or otherwise, you are a guest of my Court, Jules."

They exchanged a final, inquiring look.

Her parting was delicately delivered. "Sleep well."

He bowed his head. "Good night, Lady Rose. Would you like to take one for the road?"

"Take what—"

TtHhHhHhFFBbBFfRrRRPPPPpRRUMPT!

"You should've seen that coming," he said, pittingly. He just about managed to keep his amusement to himself at the way she flinched as the brassy, moist flatulence careened out of him.

"You're right," she coolly returned. "I should have."

"Sweet dreams. They're bound to be sweeter than mine — phew! Keep that door ajar for me. You're lucky to lack a nose! I swear that Martha must've tampered with my chicken…"

She disobeyed him, slamming the barn door behind her — that same insomniac heifer started lowing again — and once she understood she could not make it back to her quarters in enough time, she took refuge underneath the window of the groundskeeper's shed, where she squatted, panting like a pursued rabbit in a forest barren of burrows.

Rose could feel the tendrils of panic constricting her throat. She had felt them several times in the years since her mother's passing, and she had taught herself how to break free. She had to teach herself; there had been no one else to.

Removing herself from the situation was always a solid first step, but what was she to do when what she was so frightened of was protruding from her own face?

She gagged thickly and dry-heaved into the gravel. There was nothing to bring up. Whatever had been swirling in her stomach was not the remnants of dinner. It was a disorder without so instant and complete a cure.

Rose hadn't been able to smell anything since the trees had last fallen bare. No freshly baked bread in the mornings, no lavender wafting from the gardens, no salty bromine rolling in from the northern sea—

Until tonight.

It is not his stench that excites you, she lectured herself. Just the fact that she could smell again, that his not-trollstink was so pronounced it was able to revive a dead-as-a-doornail sense. And the mystery of him. How had her bumbling Father managed to capture someone who had lived beside the most elusive and dangerous of species, even though he be not of their kind? And here he was, contained in her Court, hers to study and investigate! She could make a name for herself, all by herself, that had nothing to do with her bloodline. Anyone would be excited by that. That was what riveted her so.

Right.

Right?

Willing the muscles in her stomach to cease their fluttering, Lady Rose steadily breathed the cool night air and looked to the stars — not for rain, like Martha had, but for answers.

Chapter Text

Three days later.

This vision of blundering through a complex warren of dank, bleak tunnels was fast becoming impressively tangible. Even knowing that what existed around her was false — the fantastical work of the subconscious of an overcluttered mind — Rose was truly convinced that she could feel the stinking, putrid damp of those slimy-walled caves seeping into her pores and irritating the inside of her recently reactivated nose, inciting her to groan and curl that abused organ (as well as her toes, but that wasn't importan—)

Wait.

There was no almost or not-quite about this: she was feeling something assault her nostrils. The worst kind of something.

Her eyes sprang open — only to make the terrible acquaintance of the rogue's fat posterior. At least it is clothed, she thought, though this thought was not nearly as vehement and comforting as it should have been. The consequence of his nearness was unsurprising, yet even a Lady of a Royal Court was powerless to stop it.

"J-Jules—"

BbbbRRRAAAPPHHURRPPFRT!

Squealing, she forcefully rolled herself over to the other, safer side of her humongous mattress while his hot and starchy flatulence attempted to enshroud her. Locating one of her slippers, she impulsively threw it at his head.

"JULES!"

He was still bent over, assuming his most dangerous of stances, when the slipper concussed him. The newcomer to Campion's Royal Court composed himself enough to turn around and greet her, where Rose watched the jewel-encrusted rings and chains of gold and silver falling conspicuously through the cracks of his fingers. 

"Oh, you're awake, Lady Rose," he neutrally observed. "Excellent aim, by the way. I'm very much seeing stars!"

"Yes, I'm awake now," she groused. She maintained what dignity she had left by swaddling herself in a lamb-fleece blanket. The night had been cooler than the last, and her silk sheets deliciously toasty; she had slept in little more than her brasserie and underwear. "Thanks to you, repulsive lowborn that you are. Eugh. I suppose that means further words with the kitchen staff will be necessary…"

It was hard to say whether his gas had been made more putrid by the Court's culinary offerings, but what was clear was that it was uninterested in dispersing through the open window and relieving her bedroom of its nightmare bouquet. It preferred to loiter and ripen in their midst, hanging in the air like the lattice canopy above her bed. Undeterred by her attitude and insults, of which he had become an hourly recipient, the dishevelled young man rested his hands on his hips and inhaled mightily. 

"Fine morning, isn't it, my Lady? Crisp!"

The Lady rose drowsily from her bed and shuffled barefooted toward the brass coat stand. 

"Do not turn around," she instructed in a rasp from her parched throat, but even if he had, he wouldn't have seen much, given what he had taken out of his pockets to play with. "What are you doing in here? Who let you in here?"

Normally, her indignation burned inside of her, carried around like a festering wound until someone looked at her the wrong way or told her no too many times, and then her tongue would lance, producing words that cut like knives, and she was liable to ruin someone's day — more often than not, her own.

But not today. Nor yesterday, or even the day before that! She felt secure in her knowledge that Jules disobeyed everyone in equal measure; she had quickly learned not to take it personally, and for once, she believed that.

"Lady Rose, if this is what remedies your sight, I dare say you'd be better off living in caves than me."

Only once she finished tying her robe across her shapeless waist did she find the strength to lift her head and perceive him. She vented laughter in a single, weak huff. "Those are sunglasses, you fool."

The glasses were small and round, and their lenses tinted purple, her favorite color. They had been especially made just for her, much like everything else.

Jules stumbled around the room, arms extended in front of him as he set out on an uncertain navigation.

"That can't be so. You can hardly see in them!" He protested. 

"Because the light is too dim in here. We're blessed by plentiful sunshine here on the coast — we wear them so we can enjoy the sun without it searing our retinas," she explained, laying a hand on his chest to still him, and gently picking them off his face and folding them into her own pocket. "If only they made something for smells that threaten to do so, hm?"

"What if I wanted to have my retinas seared?"

"I asked you a question first," she reminded him.

"I was raiding your drawers." He wagged a finger when her face crimsoned. "Now, now, my Lady! Don't go twisting my words into something most foul."

Bbbbbrrlllprrrt-thhhrrtt-prrffrmp!

She had been too busy ensuring her face would not take on a permanently scorched appearance throughout the remainder of this delightful interaction to heed the rumble of his tank, signalling the release of a chain of low-pitched farts that thoroughly perfumed the air. If he knew he had committed this social offence, he did little to acknowledge it; if he hadn't noticed that he was directly responsible for the befouled atmosphere, that was worse.

She sighed impatiently and beat a hasty retreat from his incoming vapors. "They were already foul — just like the rest of you." Her nose was covered only once he resumed his blatant pilfering — it was important to her that he not know that she could scent him as plainly as the rest of her Court, for reasons she was too tired to recall.

Later that day, Rose would visit the kitchens — midweek was their busiest baking day — and Hank the groundskeeper's greenhouses, where he grew his own hybrid lilies and zinnias, and enjoy those fragrances she had been deprived of for so many moons. But for now, she had to be suffocated by his, she had to suffer through this beast's diabolical pungency! At least it would make the lemon tarts all the sweeter...

"You're a lousy thief, Jules. Might I suggest waiting until I'm not in the room?"

He gestured to the open window with one hand; in the other, he lazily swung a pocket watch that Father had given her as a present on her sixteenth birthday.

"After my morning run, I tried to return to my quarters, but I climbed up the wrong draping of ivy. I'm still learning which is my balcony, you see. I didn't intend to end up in here, so it was not true trespassing," he asserted. "Just in case any of those sword-bearing men standing outside your room start poking their noses where they're not wanted."

BbbRrrOoOPpRT!

They'd have to have noses of steel. "Funny, that, since I know that you know our quarters are nowhere near each other," she remarked.

His smile was sly but without malice. "You must forgive me, Lady Rose. I've been told I'm rather simple-minded." 

TthhBbbRrPRT!

"Among other things," she dryly supplied.

And he was worringly light-footed — she only knew he was following her so closely because of the funk that consistently pre-announced his presence stalking after them.

"Do you need instruction on how to use the stairs?" She teased.

"I like to challenge myself. It was a stellar workout. Are my muscles rippling yet? I thought they'd ought to be bursting the seams of my shirt by now!"

"And by morning run — excuse me." She unceremoniously shoved him aside so he would no longer block entry to her walk-in wardrobe. "That wouldn't mean running from someone, would it? Someone who might never be able to climb up the ivy after you, or beat you up the stairs?"

"It was you who assigned me Eustace — surely you knew of his shortcomings when you did so," he replied. That was precisely why Rose picked Eustace: for his many beautiful shortcomings, and his inclination to spill every last drop of inside information he possessed when even moderate pressure was applied.

Jules' sordid tang overwhelmed her in here. He had squeezed into her personal space like one of Father's gangly hounds trying to make a bed out of your lap. They were virtually matched for height, though the rogue's build was stronger and he seemed all the wider (earlier, she had unhappily and unfairly deduced that he couldn't be that much heavier than she was.)

Once one became adjusted, if they ever did, to the top layer of perished meat and spoiled eggs, they had to contend with the sour piquance of his sweat. It took everything she had not to gag.

"My, what a lot of suits you have in here. Am I to assume these belong to your beau?"

"I don't have a beau. They belong to me. Move, Jules! You're in my way."

"You wear these suits, Lady Rose?"

"I prefer them to dresses." She made a note to ask Martha to bring her autumnal and winter wear out of storage. Today, she would have to settle for layering up and hoping there was no bite to the coastal winds.

BbbbBbrrUUmmphhurrt!

There was certainly a bite to his. With her back to him, she safely conveyed her disgust, though the contortion of her face was at odds with the passionate rouge on her cheeks. She listlessly muttered, "Dresses are fine — just not on me..."

The notification of his bowels was too vivid to be ignored this time. She heard the floorboards creak as he shifted his weight, though it was not loud enough to disguise the squeak provided pipingly by her mouth when he rested a hand on her to anchor himself. She sucked in the taut muscles of her pillowy belly as his fingers squeezed her shoulder, an act which somehow bettered the passage of a Herculean fart from between his large cheeks.

When its thunderous flow slowed, she felt him tense and heard him grunt, and through staggered staccato bursts of wet brass, it eventually reached its devastating conclusion. Shortly after, they were submerged in the richest and densest of stenches. Rose was haunted by the possibility that it could attach itself to her clothes. 

"Cheers for that." Jules jovially patted her on that same shoulder, then belched.

"...I don't even know what to say."

"Well, you said I could do it in quarters, Lady Rose."

"I said desolate quarters," she whispered through gritted teeth.

"But the window's open!" He insisted. "Hmm, albeit, all the way over there..."

Outraged — though this reaction was not strictly reserved for him — she grabbed a handful of his shirt and yanked him the short distance down to her blazing face, where he had a private audience with her infamous withering scowl.

"Firstly, do not touch me. Ever. Secondly, does that make any difference when it comes to your backside? If we polled the Court, I think the results might surprise you — and you alone, it seems! Aren't you disturbed by your aroma? The rest of us are!" She released him with a flourish. He righted himself all too smoothly; she had wanted him to fall.

"Oh, your people exaggerate, my Lady. And what would you know of my aroma?"

She held her tongue in place with her teeth.

"Your nose isn't in working order, so there's no one here to suffer my stenches but me." Believing that — for he had no reason not to — he paused, presumably clenched, hefted another grunt, definitely unclenched, and out blasted another oversized emission from his terrible rear, drenching the closet in its unwelcome smog.

"And we've been inseparable for so many years, I only take notice when the rest of you complain." He yawned, drumming his fingers on his malfunctioning stomach, and much to his amusement, watched Rose stomp out of the wardrobe. He met her surliness with an affectionate smile. "What're you doing now, my Lady?"

"You're too much of a nuisance. You're impossible to be around, actually, and not only because of your stenches. I'll pick out my clothes later."

At this hour, she lacked the brainpower to decipher why she was entertaining his impertinence. Apparently, so did Jules, since he had failed to take the hint to leave. He sauntered into her room with his thumbs hooked into the loops of his trousers and his head tilted sideways.

"Surely this is the task of another less worthy?"

"There is no rule that decrees that a Lady must be totally useless," she snipped.

To her surprise, he appeared on the opposite side of the bed. To her astonishment, he began to lend a hand in its making. This was more alarming to her than the uncertainty of when he had last washed his hands.

She went on, fighting a stammer, "So you're simple-minded, flatulent, and a lousy thief. A winning combination, aren't we, Jules? Are we certain that the cave-folk didn't want rid of you?"

While she watched the silk sheet they had vigorously flapped out float idly down to rest upon the mattress, Jules unbuttoned his shirt. He snaked a hand along his breast. Then he whistled. He was accustomed to causing the color to draw out of one's face, so her fear did not immediately register. 

"Where did you—" Her eyes flitted toward the upturned drawers, and the mess of jewellery on the floor. She scrambled toward him so suddenly that he was startled enough to jolt backwards. "I— I don't care for the rest of it, not really, but that—!"

"Please don't fret, Lady Rose." What a thing to say when he would not return the locket to her, giving cause for her heart to race as her outstretched hand was continually refused its bounty. Her only solace was the fact that he was treating it with more care than the rings or the chains. "I would have returned them all, once they had served their purpose," he explained. "This was to be my — what do they call it? A bargaining chip?"

"Ha! What would you be bargaining for? An extra meal?" Her nerves rendered her flippant, not to mention breathless. (More breathless than she already was around this revolting creature, at least.)

"My freedom," came his soft-spoken answer.

The pair considered one another for one still, flatulence-free moment.

Her guilt had yet to abate, but she rose above the sinking feeling his words induced in her. Above all else, Rose had to stay loyal to her Father; had to trust in his decisions, his intent... however dubious it seemed to her. "No amount of gold shall grant you that. We've too much to glean from you. The ways of the cave-folk. Their patterns, their motivations, what they're plotting. You're too valuable, Jules. I'm sorry, but… this is the way of things."

Where her eyes had self-consciously wandered, his held on. He exhaled shallowly, directing his gaze toward the ruby skies.

"Yes. So I feared."

"I'm going to bathe now," she awkwardly announced. "This I can do alone, without a squadron of women holding me down," she added pointedly, with a flat snort. Then hesitated, to steal one last glance at the treasure in his grasp. "I trust you'll return that to its proper place?"

The frailty in her voice endeared her to him, for it made her seem all the more mortal. He nodded once, solidly.

"You can trust in me, Lady Rose."

Heat threatening to nestle in her cheeks, she hurried into her ensuite. It had been silly of her to panic that he would never return the locket — all it would have taken was to call upon one of the Knights who guarded her room; they would have thrown him to the floor at the snap of her finger. But she supposed, if nothing else, she had offered him an opportunity to prove himself as an ally — yes, that was it! Let's pretend that had been the intention all along. Clever little Rose!

She had expected that to be the end of it. Then, throughout brushing her teeth, that dreamy, faraway look when he spoke of his freedom fogged her head like his stench with her nares, and it was just about the only thing that occupied her mind more than staring down those stubborn red boils that dressed her own face. No amount of scrubs and lotions from Sadhbh, Campion's witch, or any of the promises made by salesmen in the village marketplace would make them budge.

What must Jules think of her? A Lady of the Court with a face full of blemishes and a mop of unruly carroty hair, a voice known to waver, a tongue prone to tying…

She squinted into the mirror. Where in the Heavens had that come from? What did she care what this disgusting disorderly animal thought of—

TttHHHBRRRPPRT!

She started out of her reverie — and cursed herself for being utterly ridiculous, given how often she heard this now. She was less offended by the flatulence and more by the flapping that accompanied it. Rose thrust open the door, her mouth overflowing with foam, and though she expected nothing less, she was appalled to see him using her bedding to buffet his reek away from his behind.

"Stop sullying my blankets, you bea— you scoundrel! Out! Get out of here!"

He was lounging upside down, one elevated leg crossed over the other, the toe of his boot tapping at empty air. "And go where, exactly, without my designated escort?" 

"To your quarters, where you can break wind as much as you please and where you'll stay until I come fetch you! Honestly, Jules! What don't you understand?" 

"The Lady of the Court, visiting my quarters? My, I'll have to brush up!" 

Rose loathed that she could not confidently discern whether he was being sincere or having her on. She scoffed (and pretended not to see the foam she accidentally spat onto the floor) and forced the door shut; she made a point of locking it with theatrical flair. Jules laughed to himself as he rolled out of her bed.

He scooped up his previous bargaining chips and dumped them into their point of origin. It would not close correctly, even after adjusting the individual compartments. A short investigation revealed that the issue was not the inner contents but something behind the drawers; an unhung painting had slumped askew and wedged itself into the space where the drawer was meant to fit.

He glanced back at the bathroom door. Once he detected the sounds of a filling tub, he slid it out from its hiding place. 

It had to have been a young Rose. That hair! It had been defying combs for decades! Here was his Lady being embraced by a brawny woman, almost as hefty as Martha, but much more strapping. The woman was cradling Rose close to her copious bosom; the pair were clearly smitten. Though his eyes desired to linger on the Lady, he was just as riveted by the heavyset woman. Her round, handsome face boasted a most intriguing blemish: a scar that curved along her jawline, so that it resembled a second smile. Jules, familiar with scars and the scuffles that resulted in them, knew there was a tale for the ages behind this one, and he was at once hungry for it.

He frowned. He would remain starved, for there was not one in the castle who looked anything like this, least of all the women here, but... he had seen this face before, had he not? He cast his mind back. Had a woman Knight been riding in any of those carriages on that fateful night?

No.

The locket.

He tried to pick it open again; it hadn't budged before, and it wasn't any easier now. This was a door unused to being opened, he deduced, with no small measure of sadness for Rose. Jules used his fingernail to carefully and slowly pry it ajar. At last, he was staring at that small, aged photograph; here was the same strong and unusually scarred face.

And her eyes stood out more clearly here than in the old oil painting. They were hazel.

They were Rose's eyes.

He ran his thumb over the photograph in one slow and tender stroke, then returned the locket ever so attentively to its resting place, before he left the room in the conventional manner, without pinching or mussying anything else.

He may have farted, though.

Possibly more than once.

(And certainly once again, purely for good measure, when the Knights outside her door looked ready to ask him questions he had no suitable answers for.)

It was worse than Rose imagined it could be.

(And that was truly saying something.)

She was unable to summon the appropriate words as she scanned the sorry state of the man's quarters, which had previously belonged to their Head of Staff, Mr. Ambrose. Mr. Ambrose's living situation had now been upgraded; he no longer resided on the same floor as his numerous underlings, a fact which he had very much allowed to inflate his head. They were basic quarters, though, having once been designated to the Head of Staff, one exception was the private restroom. All the other servants had to use shared facilities. 

Ambrose excelled in the art of good manners and etiquette, qualities befitting of his title. There was an irony Rose was too nauseated to appreciate in how his former space was now occupied by his exact opposite. The bed was unmade — despite Jules evidently having some familiarity with how a bed was supposed to look when one wasn't in it — and he had somehow managed to acquire a collection of blankets that surpassed even her own. Moldy plates littered the floor like land mines, muddy footprints carved a path through his unwashed garments to his balcony, and though the racket of flies wasn't quite deafening, yet, it was rivalling that of the goats' pen.

She noticed a hastily-scrawled sign tacked to the ensuite door. She hadn't asked, but he had provided an answer anyway.

"Someone is due to fix my facilities. For now, I'll have to use the other privvies."

"I do not need to know wh—"

"I clogged it," he declared over her, and promptly passed gas.

When she tried to speak, he farted again. When he promised that was the last time, he instantly proved himself disloyal.

"Are you done?!"

"For now..." His stomach challenged this with a watery whine. "I think."

"Do you want to live like this, Jules? Or is this what the cave-folk taught you was the proper way of living?"

"Does it strike you as unnatural, Lady Rose?"

She didn't miss a beat: "It strikes me as unholy." 

"I'm not in my natural environment, so why should I live naturally?" He shrugged and proceeded to kick a half-arsed trail through the trash and grime. "You can rest in my bed, should you like, since you were so kind as to offer yours."

"I didn't, and I will not. And stop telling me what I can do — I know what I can do. I'm the Lady of the Court!" She could not bring herself to take even a half-step closer into this scandalous den. "Have the servants not been attending? It wouldn't seem so. How odd..."

"Oh, they try, but I rarely let them in."

"You will from now on."

"I would rather—" But one look at her face, and he was compelled into obedience. (If only she knew how needless it was, all that worrying about her image.) "I'll permit them entry, Lady Rose, but what if they're still frightened of me?" 

"Why should they be? You're nothing to fear." After a thoughtful pause, Rose added, "unless you've recently eaten. But we could have them attend before that."

Yet she didn't know he was nothing to fear. Not for certain. She watched him closely in the moments that followed, for any hint toward something untoward hidden within him, but he only shrugged again, though without his customary insouciance. 

"I do not wish to scare them, my Lady. Even with my Common appearance, they remain wary. Even after so many nights living peaceably among them, they still give me a wide berth."

Had her ears recorded a sorrowful chord?

"That likely has more to do with your digestive tendencies, don't you think?" She knew the air would be questionably breathable in here, but she had not expected her eyes to smart from a potency comparable to a decaying onion. "Please treat my servants with decency, Jules. Especially the women."

"I have never behaved otherwise–"

"Debbie."

"...ah." His smile was wan, his tone haughty. "Well, I had good reason to mistreat her."

Hers was unfriendly. "Do share."

"She spoke ill of my mother."

A deadpan delivery concealed her empathy and understanding. "Your mother... the troll?"

His smug demeanour did not reach his eyes, which failed to shield his innermost feelings. Rose was reminded of their first meeting, and she thought it wise to forget any further exploration of his origins.

"Excepting Debbie, do not toy with them. It is my Father's decree that you should live here; they do not choose to run around after someone of your ilk. It is my wish that their lives could be made easier."

"Then perhaps you ought not to work them so hard? Offer them an additional day's respite? Increase their wages?"

One could have heard a mouse sneeze.

"...excuse me?" 

"I think that was me, actually. Although I'd be impressed if it weren't! Lady Rose, you have my word that I will try not to antagonize your women. But I hear what they all say about me, and I'll admit it's hard to play nice when being called such things, either to my face or behind my back — or when one's mother is included in their slander."

"Yes... I know." Her recovery from his earlier retaliation was a slow one. It played on her mind as the words tumbled from her numb lips. "Then I shall speak to the servants about that, too. You deserve to be treated with respect, however hideous you are."

"Please!" He guffawed scornfully and folded his arms across his chest. "I'm a grown lad, Lady Rose! I do not need you to—"

"I want to. It is my Father's wish that you are cared for. I'm happy to personally see to that."

"You... are?"

"Come," she said, jutting her head toward the hallway and stairs, and noting privately the hope that was not altogether masked by his otherwise incredulous reaction. 

"Where to?"

"We'll start with Eustace."

Chapter Text

They found the page boy in the stables by the training arena. His grooming of one of the Lord's prized Shire stallions was absent-minded at best; most of the time, he was combing the Baroque leather saddle, not the mild-mannered equine. His attention belonged to a band of off-duty Knights carrying out their drills and engaging in mock-skirmishes. 

"Go join them, Eustace!" Jules bellowed, startling the smaller man out of his trance. "We'll take over for you."

"L-Lady Rose!" Eustace recovered, dipping his torso as the pair came to stand before him. "And… you."

When he lifted his chin again, he had a glower reserved especially for the smelly new arrival. It was apparent that this deference did not extend to Jules.

"Me," Jules agreed, grinning down at him.

"I'm returning your assignment, Eustace." Rose's head angled with an air of expectancy. "Care to tell me how you two came to be parted?"

"You ought to ask that of the animal beside you, my Lady, for he was the one who took off out of nowhere—"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't recall you going to great pains to chase after me, Eustace—"

"Please! As though I would willingly subject myself to being downwind of you?!"

"Quiet! You keep out of this," Rose instructed Jules. "I entrusted Jules to you personally, Eustace. I did so knowing you have proven yourself to be reliable and devoted to your tasks. Was I wrong to do so?"

"N-no! I mean yes! I mean t-that it is an honor to hear you speak such praise for me, Lady Rose, but— I can't—" When fumes no less pervasive than brimstone flooded their nostrils, they reflexively glanced at the stallion, whose coarse, swishing tail was adorned with flies. Then their gazes shifted to accuse another.

"Wasn't the horse," Jules confirmed. Rose and Eustace sighed simultaneously.

"Lady Rose, am I permitted to speak freely before you?" 

"You may, though you'll look me in the eye while doing so," Rose informed the diminutive servant. 

With difficulty, Eustace summoned the nerve to address her directly, though it was somehow easier to endure the beast's observable and undeserved arrogance than to be scrutinized by the hotheaded Lady Rose. 

"I do not agree with keeping this thing in the castle," he timidly opined. "As it is your Father's decree, I must not question his thinking. However... I find it nothing short of insulting that I should be made to babysit it."

"For what reason?" Rose questioned, as though Eustace's distaste for this chore had never crossed her mind.

"For what reason?" Eustace exhausted a single joyless laugh. "Why, he is so foul, so crude—"

"Oh, do go on," Jules provoked. 

"Be quiet. Eustace, I had no one else in mind for this task," Rose deliberately reiterated. "In a Court full of capable people, do you understand what that means?"

"I'm not sure I do. Am I being punished? If this is the case, I would much rather serve my sentence in another manner — dock my wages, triple my duties, but don't— do you mind?" He hissed at Jules. The fumes had been replenished with a vengeance. 

"Not particularly," the rogue merrily replied.

"Ignore him — and that,” Rose said, fighting to resist protecting her nose from the savagery of his stench.

"It's nigh on impossib—"

"I know, but you must try, Eustace. No, you are not being punished. As you trust in Father, I know I can trust in you."

"But there are other page boys, Lady Rose, Maurice and Declan are bigger and stronger and—"

"But they're not you," Rose insisted. She smiled down at the puny aide. They had only been children when Eustace had been brought into the care of the Court, and in another lifetime, they may have frolicked and played together on the beach and in the forest. Her fondness was as persuasive as it was unexpected. 

But — mystifyingly, especially to himself — Eustace stood his ground.

"I was employed to serve the Lord of Campion," he recited unyieldingly. "And he has not asked me to have anything to do with this beast."

Her genial gesture was immediately revoked. Eustace's regret was just as instant.

"In doing so, you pledged eternal loyalty to our family name — meaning you answer to his daughter just as readily," Rose snapped back. "Or is that not so, page boy?"

Jules' eagerly anticipated Eustace's next move — what a thing it was, to witness a man sprouting a backbone before his very eyes! The silence stretched. Eustace shivered in the cool of the morning and, remembering himself, exhaled slowly, his breath visible on the unsettingly still air.

"... yes. Yes, it is so, Lady Rose. I shall do whatever you wish of me..."

"My wish is for you to remain together, as a pair," Rose requested evenly. The concealment of her satisfaction at coming out on top of this battle of wills was masterful; it had taken years to unlearn her natural desire to gloat. "Jules is to attend lessons with Sir Sagmore — these begin two sunsets from now. This will give you time to attend to other matters. I would like you to show him the rest of the castle today while Father and his men are out on the hunt. Help him to become acquainted with the various rooms and facilities, and make sure to show him the banquet hall, as he'll be invited to dine with us at some point—"

"What?!" 

The stallion, spooked by its groom's plaintive cry, echoed it with a whinny. Jules' shoulders quivered with inaudible laughter, though his ongoing flatulence was anything but.

"F-Forgive me, Lady Rose," Eustace stammered breathlessly. "I'm unsure what came over me there."

"Quite," Rose muttered.

Jules laughed, disguised it with a cough, and then covered that with an unapologetic honk of brass from his overactive back-passage.

Eustace had been stroking the Shire's velvety flank to quell its nerves as well as his own. Now he sighed sharply. "Can't you at least try to control yourself?" 

"This is me trying," Jules answered.

"Oh, I'm sure. I was better off smelling the horsedung!"

"Now, now, Eustace — our Lady wishes for us to play nice," Jules barbed. "Don't you, Lady Rose?"

"At the very least, stay together." She looked purposely at her Father's windy detainee. "No running off. No straying. You must promise me and Eustace, Jules. Remember what we discussed about respect?"

"Yes, yes, you earn only as much as you give." He pouted while he dourly considered Eustace. "I suppose one can only try..."

"And try you will," Rose said. "I have work to do, boys. I'll see you at lunch, Eustace. And Jules—"

In the new day's sun, cold but brilliant, he seemed almost… handsome. Not like the Knights — not chiselled and overly wide-chested, with glossy hair and lustrous beards, anything but it, actually... but this was not to his detriment. 

Somehow.

Rose hastily returned an errant strand behind her ear and cleared her throat once it became plain that her response was unusually delayed. "F-Farewell."

"Farewell," Jules cheerfully returned, then raised his index finger, already inclining sideways, "One for the road, my la—"

"Not this time!" She cried over her shoulder, taking off smartly, her hooded cape swelling out behind her as she marched back toward the castle. Jules tracked her until she was out of sight. Eustace scowled at the emotion that had been drawn into the beast's face. It was worrisome to imagine it could be in the neighbourhood of desire.

"Your thoughts better be cleaner than the rest of you," he quipped. 

"She is most impressive," Jules murmured. "What those Knights described in the carriages when we journeyed here… I knew they were wrong about her, Eustace. Men like that are frightened of women like Lady Rose."

"They have good cause to be," Eustace reluctantly agreed with him. 

"Not frightened like how you're frightened. Frightened because of how capable she is, how daring she is — I never thought someone like her could be so..."

"Enough of that! She is none of your concern, beast," Eustace mocked. Now that they were alone, he mistakenly assumed the power dynamic swung in his favor. "You are lucky she is so tolerant and forgiving, as is my Lord. For the sake of my gorge, we'll start this tour outside, around the grounds. I might as well show you our woods, too. Maybe if I'm lucky, the wolves'll be hunting by day."

Jules clapped his hands once. "A grand idea! I've missed the outdoors something terrible. Tell me, young Eustace — is there a privvy on the way?"

"No." Eustace halted mid-stride, paled, and hesitantly turned to look back at Jules. "Don't tell me you still have the trots? Oh, Gods, is that why you smell especially ghastly this morn?"

"The jury's still out on that one — but you better grab a shovel, anyway, and be swift about it," Jules advised, patting the page boy on the shoulder as he overtook him at the exact moment an even fouler cloud descended upon the stable. Some free-roaming sheep lost interest in hoovering up forgotten-about oats and vacated the premises. Even the stallion turned its long face and gave them a contemptuous look. 

"I'll spare these poor horses, but you won't be so lucky. Hurry along, Eustace! It won't get much better from here on!" 

Eustace closed his eyes and issued a woeful moan. He called upon one of a selection of mantras; he felt he would work through his entire repertoire by the day's end. 

It is an honor to serve my Lord, it is an honor to serve my Lord...

Work to do was an interesting turn of phrase. Rose's capacity for work was defined by how much her Father wished, or was allowed, to include her. His advisors had more tact than Aunt Ainsley when it came to her participation in the matters of the Court and the management of Campion, although Rose sometimes felt it was worse to be humored and mollified by old men than outright disapproved of by a resentful widow. At least, in that way only, Aunt Ainsley was honest. 

She supposed being invited to sit in on the trade meeting was a step forward, something to be grateful for, given her relative youth and inexperience — but this did not satisfy her. That was the way things should be: the moment she abandoned her ambitions was the moment she abandoned her mother.

Enough of that.

Factually, with Father out hunting, it was Aunt Ainsley whom Campion must answer to. But she was in the habit of spending her days cooped up in her room like a sullen teenager; Rose was the one who was most visible throughout the working day, demanding regular reports from the servants and the Knights and offering feedback and guidance in turn, and generally overseeing the goings-on of the castle and Court. The only item of note from that morning was a burst pipe in the main kitchen. Rose delegated who was to mop up and who was to repair, and what was to be done in the meantime.

It wasn't much, but what did that matter in the grander scheme of things? Every display of competency would pay off someday. Campion would fall to their knees before her in no time. Rose had to believe that. No one else would for her.

It was from the kitchen that she took two sticks of cinnamon, and now, several storeys above and idling by one of the castle's most expansive windows, she was furiously trying to smell them. How could it be? She had smelled Jules as plain as the new day — his flatulence and body odor were unavoidable. She had been too distracted by the locket, now hanging around her neck for the first time in more moons than she would ever admit to, to take notice of the peony soap she used during her bath, or the honeycomb infused in her hair treatment. In hindsight, she knew she should have suspected something when Martha told her that Cosgrach, the castle chef, was baking his first maple syrup and brown butter cake of the season — her favorite. She hadn't discerned a single nutty waft. And when it came to the cinnamon, she might as well have been smelling an actual stick.

How was it possible that she could scent the rogue and nothing else? Perhaps Sir Sagmore may have an enlightening notion to share. She would pick her old tutor's brain, though she hoped that by the time he returned to Campion from his travels, her scent would have righted itself. It had been defunct for so long — like all things, it probably needed a little time to reach its full potential. And with Jules being so ridiculously offensive to all senses — perhaps barring the eyes, and the eyes alone — it made sense that she could smell him above anything else, for he overpowered all else. Even now, a shadow of him clung to her. Though she harbored some concern that she may be blamed for the pong, it made her feel less lonesome on the noiseless third floor. 

She watched the two young men as they weaved through the courtyard, having finished exploring the surrounding grounds. Her servants dodged and swerved to avoid Jules. It was comical to her, and perhaps a mite sad, knowing that he really was so placid in nature, though their reactions were perfectly excusable; they knew nothing of him other than his origins and his digestive issues, both of which were solid reasons to steer clear.

And she wasn't that much better off herself. She knew far less than she should have known by now — less than she wanted to know, given her personal intrigue, and less than Father needed to know, given the doubt of his advisors in his 'project'. Father was counting on her to crack his shell. She hoped recruiting Eustace would prove fruitful. Only time would tell. Time... she had spent so much of her life sitting around, waiting for the minutes to pass, waiting for something to happen, to begin.

She halfheartedly sniffed the sticks as her dedicated gaze traced Jules' movements through the square.

"Master Winslow, p-perhaps a break to rest?"

"There's no time to rest! Up, up, up we go! Come on, lads, it's only a couple'a dozen staircases! Hop to it!"

The clinks of valuables stashed away in cloth bags were more frightening to Rose than the clash of shields and the drawing of swords. She had wandered onto this floor without thinking twice about who inhabited it. It was a dead-end, and if she were to turn back, she would walk squarely into them. 

She stuffed the cinnamon sticks into her pocket and observed the courtyard with haughty purpose, hands behind her back, spine board-straight. She would play it cool — she would make herself known before they had time to notice. "Back from the market so soon, cousins?" 

The twins and Winslow were damp from a light shower that had misted the rolling hills as the morning proceeded, but this had not quashed their good spirits. A shopping spree guaranteed the closest thing to a good mood. The servants hauling their bags were soaked, though mostly with sweat in their cases, particularly the two men who were in charge of transporting a brass statue of a gryphon for Winslow. 

"We might have stayed longer if Mother wasn't so concerned about us leaving the castle with that thing skulking around," Celeste complained. She was trying to fix her eyeliner; her younger-by-seven-minutes sister, Luna, held the mirror for her.

"Yes, that thing," Luna echoed. 

"Splendid merchants this week, Rosie!" Winslow mussed her hair which she had toiled to control after her bath, then effortlessly avoided Rose's swiping hand. "There was even a stylist from the grasslands territory who could've made you look good! Albeit for a kingdom's worth of riches..."

"How have you spent the morning? Being a little spy for Daddy?" Celeste teased. 

"I hope she's not been snooping in our quarters," Luna suggested forebodingly. She snapped her fingers at one of the guards. "Oi! You'd better be doing your job properly, Luther!"

"Without a doubt, Miss Luna," was his emotionless reply. He was one of the oldest Knights, well-trained in the Once Ways; despite his proximity, he was appropriately remote from their conversation.

"I've been keeping watch in Father's absence," Rose told them. Don't do it, don't say it, don't... Her tongue tingled perilously. "While your mother lounges like a stupored lizard." At least she'd dropped the constipated part.

"And she still does a grand job better than your Father when he's here and wide awake!" Winslow shattered what might have been a tense silence. "Well, don't just stand there gathering dust! Put everything in my quarters!" He roared at the servants.

While he dictated where his purchases were to be laid and assembled, Celeste and Luna flanked Rose.

"Is he still out there?" Celeste asked worriedly. 

"Yes, he is," Rose mumbled. Eustace was pointing out the various figures carved into the stone — the Lords of Old, of Once Before. Jules was picking his nose. How she wished she were out there with them! What had convinced her that she was above a task as menial as a tour? At least she'd be in better company, even if it was pungent.

"That's the first good look—"

"And smell—" Luna added grimly, pinching her nostrils shut. "Phew!"

"We've had of him," Celeste finished. "Stars above, is he ugly. That hair!"

"And those spots!" Luna contributed.

"All chopped up like that — and so oily!" 

"He's almost as spotty as you, Spots!"

"Makes Eustace look a hell of a lot better, I tell you what," Winslow remarked; he had changed into his smoking jacket, and from what Rose could see, was breaking in a brand new pipe that looked to be made of tanzanite. "Of course, you would have to be part-troll to make Eustace look better, the weasly little runt."

"Jules isn't part anything," Rose said authoritatively. "He's Common-born."

"Yes, that's what he's told you, Rose — he'll tell you anything he thinks you want to hear," Celeste scoffed. "Don't be so naive!"

"The little lambie has always been naive," Winslow joined in. Rose could feel his dark eyes — like two gungy stains — boring into her, awaiting her reaction to the use of her mother's cherished pet name for her. She was outwardly unmoved, though the cinnamon sticks were feeling the brunt of the increasing pressure of her fidgeting fingers.

"So naive," Luna pointlessly echoed. That was Luna summed up; a pointless, seven-minutes-too-late echo. 

"But he doesn't look like a troll, does he?" Rose asked the group. 

"It's for the medicine man to decide what he is," Winslow said. "Whatever he is, I want no part of it. I don't understand why you're trying to make a friend out of him, Rose."

"Because she hasn't got any others," Celeste muttered. She and her twin exchanged looks and secret, sardonic smiles.

Something panged below Rose's ribs. It did not show in her voice, as profound as it was. "We'll learn nothing by being hostile. We want him to trust us."

"We want to learn nothing! We don't care! We don't want anything to do with trolls!" Luna exclaimed.

"You wonder how such a thing can be allowed to happen." Celeste voiced what all of Aunt Ainsley's offspring were thinking as the quartet watched the not-troll and the page boy make their way back toward the castle.

Jules had unintentionally scared a maid carrying a bushel of apples; Father's oldest and stiffest of hounds, spared from the strains of the hunt, tried to see how many they could fit in their slobbering maws. Notably, they did not ambush Jules like they did to Eustace. His was not a derriere worth the risk. 

"Lord Muchty was right to want him killed; trolls are less than animals, and animals don't care what happens to each other," she went on. "They can't be missing him, whatever he was to them. A slave, or a plaything. One bladestroke across his throat. That would've been the end of it. If only..."

"He couldn't have been more to them than food," Winslow proposed. "Perhaps they were raising him like we do with pigs — maybe what they were feeding him makes him so foul."

"All these 'perhaps' and 'maybes'," Luna carped. "Who cares what he is? To them or to us!"

"You don't find it the least bit interesting?" Rose asked her. "Who else in history has ever had a story like his? And we don't even know the half of it yet."

"It would be interesting if it were happening to Lord Tober's family, not ours," Celeste protested. "Then we could be spectators, rather than living with this monster!"

"All the embarrassing things happen to us," Luna bemoaned. "If only your Father wasn't so—"

Winslow wisely shushed her. The back of Rose's neck prickled. 

"Winnie's right, Luna. You'll make Spots angry, and when Spots get angry, her spots look ready to burst," Celeste snickered. "I don't want to get splashed by all that pus!"

Winslow gagged as heartily as Eustace currently was in Jules' presence. Rose's fingers and thumb curled into a fist, grinding the cinnamon into splinters.

"My Father was right to do what he did," she said firmly. 

They gawked at her wordlessly.

"This could be important. Not only an accident. This could mean something. And if Jules trusts us enough to tell us what he knows, what we could learn about the trolls could change how we live beside them. It could change everything."

"I agree," said Winslow, baffling his younger sisters. "It's like what the Knights were saying in the carriage today. His condition could be a new kind of sickness, brewed in the mountains. It could be the evidence that these cave-trolls are not to be mixed with, the proof we need to hunt them to extinction — just like we did with the rest of that filthy lot."

"What? That's nonsense," Rose countered. "Wherever did the Knights get that idea?"

"Nonsense? Have you heard what he did to his privvy? They're going to have to pull the whole thing out and build it afresh; it's so befouled!" Luna cried. Celeste swayed dangerously.

"Say no more, please," she begged. 

"Wait and see what the doctor says tomorrow," Winslow said with finality. "He'll be able to tell us if it's catching. In which case—"

"Off with his head!" Luna said, slashing a finger across her jugular.

"We're all doomed if it is catching," Celeste said, causing the others to fall silent. Her pretty face was grave. "It might be too late for us."

"We already are doomed if Rose is interested in him." Winslow grinned and elbowed her enough to wind her. "Just how interested are you in the freak, little lambie?"

"Oh, don't even joke about that!" Luna shrieked. 

"If anyone's going to fall for a pig like him, it would be Rose!" Celeste howled.

Rose's complexion had seared scarlet to the point of feverishness, undeterred by her best efforts to restrain her anger. "I never once said I was—" But then the lunch bell tolled, and she was old news to the trio, who pushed and shoved one another in their effort to be the first to the staircase.

Both sticks crumbled into dust in her pocket.

It had been useless trying to reason with them. She wasn't irritated at their ignorance and stupidity, which she could always count on. She was frustrated with herself for taking the bait. It was behaviour she could have pardoned when she was a child, when there was less expected of her, when she had fewer responsibilities and obligations and concerns regarding her image and her impact on Father's legacy. When she had a mother who knew the right words to say to dispel any problem.

Not now. She knew better now; she had to know better. She loved her Father, and her faith in him was ultimately unwavering, but she could not expect him to handle her issues and Campion's the way her mother had.

The rain Martha had wished for had moved in from the west to settle above their castle. The winds of an approaching storm whipped the sea, churning teal waves. 

Its patter upon the windowpane drew her eyes back to the square. She hoped to see the pair — surely Jules would be up to something that would promote good spirits in her, maybe even tease a smile onto her wounded face — but they were gone. 

Chapter Text

The peal of the bell arrested Eustace. Even a few minutes' tardiness meant slim pickings at the scores of servants' tables. He had to ask himself which was worse: an empty belly, or falling short of Lady Rose's expectations?

It didn't require contemplation. He resumed turning the key in its lock.

"Touch nothing, for this is the most important room in the—"

"Wow!" With a single shove, Jules knocked his guide aside. He was careless of how the page boy met the ground in a manner not dissimilar to a tossed sack of potatoes as he sauntered nonchalantly into the spacious dwelling. "My, my! Listen to that echo!"

Eustace sluggishly picked himself up. "Yes, I know," he grumbled. "I've served in this Court since I was five—"

"No, Eustace — really, truly listen," Jules theatrically urged him. Cautiously, the other fell quiet. There was talk of sagely spirits who walked these floors at night. It made sense that a half-troll's abilities would be more acute than a human's, and the beast did look riveted by whatever he spoke of—

PpHhHOoOVvfFRrRTTRRRHUMPPppHhhRRSSPPpRLRRTPP!

A gush of chunky flatulence split the air, reverberating several times in the lofty space and growing more uninviting with each repetition. Eustace very nearly ended up on the floor again, thanks to the shameless expulsion. "Ack!"

Jules shut the door when he slumped against it, clutching his plump stomach, though this had less to do with the aches and pains of the brewing gases and more with the shuddering swells of his unhinged laughter. His vile brand — an unhealthy miasma Eustace was unfortunately becoming fastly familiar with — slowly and wholeheartedly violated the hallowed room.

Eustace covered his mouth with the excess of his shirt and snarled through the scalding of his nostrils.

"What did I tell you about doing that, you filthy wastrel?" 

"Oh, probably the same thing everyone else tells me — stop that, don't do that, how could you, what did you eat — the list is endless," Jules answered languidly. He stood straight and winked at the smaller man. "I'll bet you've been storing up a spiel about this place all morning. Let's hear it. What do we call it, then?"

"This," Eustace announced with purpose — after several moments of recuperation from Jules' ill winds, which the beast appeared to be used to, and patiently waited out — "is the Lord's Chamber."

The last of the sunshine pulsed through the stained glass lining the walls and ceiling, so that the room became a prismatic tangle of striking light and dramatic shadow. Three formidable chairs, each of marble, were the centerpieces of this domain, and were elevated above the floorboards by a carpeted platform. Long wooden benches fringed them on either side. 

Jules strolled freely. He ran a finger along a shelf, marking a wonky line through a rind of dust and soot, which he lazily inspected. "This must be where your humble villagers come to kneel before their Lord, pledging their devotion and allegiance for another sack of corn, or however it goes with you lot?" 

Eustace and the other page boys were not permitted to set foot further than the alcove which stored the incense (he could do with burning some of that right about now, but he did not trust the beast around an open flame) and the scrolls of ancient texts. Even now, with the flatulent cave-dweller as his only visible company, this is where he remained. Weren't the Gods watching always?

"They bring their problems and maladies here, seeking wisdom and resolution." He could afford to stand a distance from Jules (what a blessing) — the room was more or less soundproof. They could hear each other and nothing else. "Our Lord opens the floor twice weekly to the village, and any else who calls Campion home."

"Problems and issues that were caused by the Lord's mismanagement in the first place," Jules answered in opposition. The inflammatory half of his sentence fought to be heard around a burbling burp. He thumped his chest twice with a fist, disentangling a string of gurgling bursts of tuneful air. "Ooft! Forgive me, Eustace. That'll be the four bowls of porridge for breakfast." 

"You speak out of turn... among your many other disgraces. But you are not to blame. What do trolls know of an orderly system, or the proper workings of society? What do trolls know of civilization?" Eustace posited snobbishly. "You're all—"

"Animals. Yes. So you've said. Many times."

"I believe I heard Rose's cousins speaking similarly in their carriage as they passed us," Eustace snickered, fully rubbing salt in it.

"Did you, now? Surprised you could hear anything over the paint on those wenches' mugs. You've served since you were a boy, did you say?" 

As a general rule, Eustace was not an overly guarded young fellow. "Yes, I have." 

"How did a child come to serve in the Lord's Court? Were you 'prenticed?" 

That was how it was commonly done. It unnerved Eustace that Jules should know this. "N-No. I was… a means of repayment, actually."

"What do you mean by that?"

The page boy thought it wise to wait and assess Jules' intent first. He had not expected someone like him to react with what he could only interpret as something skirting sympathy, and why should he have earned that from this aberration? It wasn't as though he had received it from his own kind.

Finding no reason to withhold (except for Rose, who already knew of his history, none else in the Court engaged with the beast), he gingerly explained, "My father died when I was barely walking — he had no family for my mother to turn to, and she had none of her own. Because of me, she was unable to work; therefore, she could not pay our taxes. She came to this very room with me many years ago, expecting it to be the last time she would see me—"

"What?!" Jules had been somewhat preoccupied with following a mouse on its trail back to a cranny in the wall, but now he was alert and invested in Eustace's troubles. "They would have killed her for it? A new widow, with such a young bairn? Surely not!" 

"Heavens, no! Under the regime of Lord Muchty, perhaps..." Eustace's cheeks pinked, and he cleared his throat uneasily. Shouldn't have said that. (He was unused to having company who wished to hear him talk of himself, and unaccustomed to captivating anyone's attention the way he currently had with Jules.)

"T-They would have kept her here to repay her debt, and being in her situation, this would be a lifetime of repayment. I would have been taken from her, to the orphanage in the village — possibly welcomed into a home beyond Campion, unlikely to see her ever again. But our Lord is so generous," he effused, "he offered to take me, instead, to raise me within his notable Court, and to allow me to become something. More than I ever could have in the village, that's for certain."

"And your aspirations are limited to being a page boy?"

"It is the title I've been given."

"Based on?"

"Why, how my Lord sees fit to use me!" Eustace answered breezily.

Jules' eyebrows pointedly crept upward, and he whistled lowly. His pity encouraged the rouge to branch out from his cheeks and spread all across Eustace's face.

"Uh — that's quite the yarn, Eustace," he added, courteously, when he noticed its effect. 

"It's not much, but it's mine," Eustace muttered, eyes glued to the floor. He was beginning to wish he hadn't said anything at all.

"Yes. And generous of you to share with someone as ignoble and indecent as me."

When Eustace raised his head, there was a gentle smile waiting for him. He could not help but make a small, awkward noise in the back of his throat at this. The beast was smiling at him.

"Ask me something, so that I may repay this gesture," Jules told him. "I know our Lady wishes for you to learn all that you can."

Eustace was suspicious of his forthcomingness. "And you are willing to offer?" 

"To a point." 

He determined which was the most pressing of his and the Lady's curiosities. "How did you come to speak the Plaintongue so eloquently for a cave-dweller?" 

"Eloquently? You think so?" 

"It's the only proper thing about you," Eustace teased, though his intrigue restrained him. "And you are strangely well acquainted with the ways of our people. Before you came to live with trolls, did you live anywhere else? Perhaps there was a Common village near the mountains?"

"Do you ever see your mother?" Jules asked him instead, after a noticeable pause.

"Oh, yes. I get leave from my duties every once in a while. I stay with her in the village. They say your mother is the troll..."

"They being Debbie, I presume." The taller of the two snorted weakly as he picked up a silver gauntlet, tearing it away from its network of cobwebs, and looked it over with mild interest. The metal was scratched and stained with the wine of centuries ago. (At least, Jules hoped it was wine.) "In all fairness, she assumed correctly. Though not by… blood, since that seems to mean so much to you people. I am Common-born, as you would say."

"I thought as much. You don't take after them in appearance, just in their..." Eustace struggled to assemble a tasteful description. "Gaseous talents." Something about that didn't add up, but he powered on, "You must have lived with other Common people for a spell, then. So what happened to make you live with the cave—"

"What is your mother's name?"

Eustace was noticing a pattern. 

"Aimilia." His voice honeyed at her memory. "And yours, beast?"

"I'll tell you only if you promise not to call me beast anymore. I call you Eustace — not page boy, or squire… or shrimp, as the Knights refer to you. And they have said it plenty in my short time here. Not that I pay much attention to them," Jules stressed, lip hitched in disgust. He averted his eyes, not wishing to witness the way the other had visibly wilted. "Might you call me Jules, instead?"

"Very well," Eustace shyly obliged, yet to overcome the other's recognition of his poor image within the Court. "Jules, it is."

"Good. What was your question?"

Eustace's hopes stayed firmly grounded. "Your mother... the troll's name?"

"Ah." As Jules' lips moved, so did his fingers, signing expertly. "She Who Makes It Right — ʄǟɮǟɛֆǟɢɦ."

This banished his dejection in one fell swoop; as though witnessing a magician's impossible trickery, Eustace's face transformed and gladdened with amazement. He had never heard the Trolltongue befor — he knew that no one who had ever stood in this room had, be they Royal or lowborn, and how long had a Lord ruled over Campion from this very Chamber? And he, a humble page boy, as the very first!

Pimples broke out all across his flesh, and his heart began to pick up speed, and not from the anxiety he was usually oppressed by. He had forgotten all about the Knights. 

He repeated it as best he could in his head, and — while facing away from Jules — tried it out on his own lips, but he could not mimic it. Not like Jules could. Yet, if they were both Common-born, weren't they both equipped with the same anatomy? How could he manipulate his mouth in such a way to create those granite sounds? And why had he made those gestures with his hands? He turned back to Jules with all these inquiries and more, overwhelmed with his yearning to learn.

"Say that ag—"

He froze. 

Jules was eyeing up the Lord's chair. The one in the middle; the grandest of the three, with the most luxurious fabric furnishings. Eustace studied his face and feared his view.

"Don't even think about it, Jules."

"Just look at those cushions, Eustace," Jules tempted. "I'll bet that chair's the comfiest of the lot. What do you think?"

"Don't. Even."

"Best seat in the hoooouse!" Jules cackled naughtily as he avoided Eustace, who — bless his heart — tried with all his might to block his access to where Rose's Father presided over his people. "Oh, wow! It's even better than I thought! If only every arse in Campion could be so lucky!"

"Jules!" Eustace screamed.

"Ah-ah, Eustace! I got here first. Fear not, you'll get a turn next."

"I would never—" Eustace growled out his frustration, for there was no other way to act upon it. That same invisible but impenetrable barrier prevented him from joining Jules on the platform; even if his only intention were to drag him back down to where lowborns like them belonged, he would not cross it. It had been bad enough that he had left the alcove. "J-Jules, you're c-committing an offence!" He warned.

Jules scoffed derisively as he scooted around, obnoxiously digging and grinding his loathsome rump into the lavish material. Despite the maids' toiling, who knew when it had last been sufficiently scrubbed?

"What, by sitting?"

"Yes! You are seated in the Lord's chair, in the most official and sacred of rooms in all of Campion—"

"You seriously think I'm committing an offence?" 

"What part of that sentence are you confused by? This is not yours to enjoy! Get off! Get off or — or I'll else I'll have to… I'll…"

A grim and evocative melody, drifting towards him from Jules' awful midriff, snatched at his speech, leaving him mute. The rogue's face wore the most devilish of grins.

"I'll show you an offence."

Eustace mumbled unintelligibly and stumbled backwards. "You're making a terrible m-mistake," he managed to stammer. "Wait until they find—"

"Let them find out! Go fetch those presumptuous Knights! Let's see what they make of this!"

Rotating his hip to hike up a cheek, Jules unleashed a torrent of flatulence into the fabric. Eustace worried that the fabric had actually been torn from the force — so powerful and plentiful was his emission! This was merely how it sounded, though it wasn't difficult to believe that the stench would inflict some damage; the question was how easily it could be stripped by the laboring of their maids…

"Jules!"

"Woohoo! More where that came from, Eustace!"

When his debut blast wrapped up on a single, punctuated ejection, deep-toned and worrisomely humid, Jules inhaled sharply, grunted, and unloaded another massive fart. What began as a strong but muffled pummelling upon the cushion soon swelled like the uplift of the most repugnant orchestra, as his abdominal muscles squeezed and released with trained precision. It blossomed brassily, the note sustaining for upward of ten seconds, expelling with frightful ease and unconcern from his rump, so that all that stewed inside of Jules was shared with Eustace. Jules' teeth yielded their hold over his bottom lip and he slouched faccidly.

Eustace had been driven back toward the Chamber's doors, where he was now bent over and trying not to recreate his breakfast onto his shoes. None of the windows was designed to open, but would it matter even if they could? This was the same man who could ensure a horse would always win second place in a showdown of the sphincters.

"There's your offence!" Jules hollered across to him, while his arse continued to provide a medley of juvenile chords.

"Oh, Jules..." The air was hazy and harmful with his rancid, protein-heavy concoction; the oats in the porridge mixing dangerously with the cave-poison that the bacteria in his gut were no doubt permanently altered by. "That is — beyond unpalatable—"

"Pardon my vulgarity, Eustace, but no shit. It's hardly going to smell like daisies, is it? Tell me, were they going to open the floor anytime soon in here?" 

"Uurgh — n-no, not until next week, now..." Eustace moaned and coughed miserably. It hurt to do both. His streaming eyes widened despite their nipping as he realized he was hearing even more farting. "Jules, that's... that's unbelievable! I would laugh if my lungs could spare it. How does your stomach revolt so? Oh, Gods, please don't let you have an attack of loose stools in here..."

"Better make that open house next moon," Jules winced. A hand cradled his excessive paunch and he tentatively leaned forward, allowing for more space to aid the flow. The fart's baritone pitch revved into an unembarrassed trumpeting. The young man clasped his hands together, the skin of his forehead creasing with effort as he endured the ceaseless bluster of his backside.

Eustace was positively alarmed — for a myriad of reasons. Even knowing that Jules was not fully of their kind, despite his deceptive appearance, he had broken wind uninterrupted throughout his tour. (Probably more than Eustace truly understood, when they passed the more fragrant areas of the Court: the outdoor privvies, the pig sties.) 

How did he store it all? And why exactly did he have so much of it? He was as digestively challenged as any troll, yet his stock was Common. He couldn't have access to any food other than Cosgrach's offerings, and no one else in the Court was affected in this way. And though he clearly enjoyed these displays of his atrocious ability, and the crimes against decorum that they enabled him to commit, one did not need to be overly observant, nor a medicine man by trade, to know that his condition posed a significant burden to him. Perhaps he didn't pass it purely to agitate, but to relieve himself of the hardship — and badly, clearly, since his sighs and exhales were never convincingly satisfied...

And if what the Knights said was true (and it usually was, as Eustace had bitterly accepted), was this a sickness they were all to anticipate suffering from? Would they all be so deploringly mannerless? Eustace couldn't even handle the sniffles, forget about this!

And Campion... Campion would become a laughingstock! Thanks to the hospitality of their Lord, welcoming in this graceless brute as though he were a nobleman who had lost his way... it was already well on its way.

"The trots? Ogh, I wish. Your food has blocked me up terribly; I can hardly breathe with this bloat!" TTTHHHBRRPT! "But don't fret, Eustace — I shall not let them blame you for this!" BBBllOORPRT! BBhhharrppPUUUuUUVVVRP! "This is my own act — of my own doing! And— ugh—" TthhBbFfRRrPPRT! "Whew... sure to get me banished from the Court and Campion, ugh, wouldn't you say?" 

"What... is that what this is? Oh, for Heaven's sake, if we were only so blessed!" Eustace barked out spiteful laughter, soon choking on the toxins he had unwittingly ushered into his craw. "Fortunately for you—ooh, wow—"

He gagged as the smell ripened dramatically. He knew that Jules had passed a boatload of silent sulphur; the rogue had pulled a similar trick with Betsy and Tamara when Eustace had been showing him where the laundry was organized. Admittedly, he had been amused by the girls burrowing their noses into unwashed garments, these being preferable to another second spent whiffing the atmosphere Jules left in his wake.

Eustace pinched his nose with a steadfast grip. "You would have to do a lot worse to earn your exile. Our Lord has plans for you. He wishes to make something of you — may the Heavens help him, for even he'll need their help...!"

Jules' disposition darkened uncharacteristically. "I decide what to make of me," he asserted with a growl. "No one else!" 

But his resolve wavered. Something was changing inwardly, for the worse, enough to make him moan and mewl. He wriggled his backside with less enthusiasm than before, with blatant discomfort, stroking his stomach in small, careful motions; even from all the way across the floor, the isolation of the Lord's Chamber from the outside World meant Eustace could clearly hear his distressed inner-workings. If he didn't know better, if he thought this outsider could feel pain like they could, he might have asked him if he was feeling alright. Jules didn't really look it.

Yet it still did not discourage Jules from his nefariousness. "A lot worse, did you say?" 

"Oh, Gods, yes. Much worse," Eustace croaked. He had forgotten all about lunch, and at this rate, he could afford to miss dinner, too. His nose smarted from the intensity of his grip. He had no choice but to let go of it and settle for waving his hand in front of his face, which was more work, though neither could ever be effective enough. "This is worse than a nightmare! I shall never forget this! How are we to air this out for our Lord? We servants will pay for this, you know!"

"Ha. Your Lord will cope. Try living with it all your life."

"... all your life? Do you mean to say you have been like this since—"

"Best get to work, then, shouldn't I?" Jules spoke over him. They had reached the point he had alluded to earlier. "Just as well I love a challenge, Eustace. And it looks like you're all going to learn that the hard way! Ha! Ha! — oh... eugh..."

His worsening condition subdued his boasting. Eustace heard the watery jostling of his bowels and was at first glad that the result of this was merely another fart — but this gladness died a quick death, as the sputtering gale acquired a damp density that the page boy believed could be rich enough to cause the paint on the walls to flake. 

"Oops," Jules remarked, indifferently coquettish. "Not quite as pleasing as birdsong, is it, Eustace? I fear I might have found that dreaded second wind of mine. But you know what might make us both feel better?"

Nauseated beyond speech, Eustace's puffy eyes sceptically searched his fiendish face.

"Paying Betsy and Tamara another visit!"

Chapter Text

The next day.

"Careful, doctor."

The rogue revelled in the sound of those rapidly retreating footsteps — just audible and no more over the rain smashing the roof of the castle. The storm forbade any lasting sunlight from finding its way into the storage room, and the Knights had warned Sir Thaddeus to limit the use of fire, as not to put the antiques at risk of voyaging cinders. Of course, he did not need to be told twice to avoid igniting the air around this particular patient.

The soundless, miasmic cloud, distributed liberally from Jules' hindquarters, drove the royally-appointed physician into a not-distant-enough corner of the disarranged space, as well as engulfing the rest of it in a pitiless acridness. 

"Tch! A little late for a warning!" 

"Then let me be so kind as to warn you now." Jules unhurriedly swung his chin over his shoulder and smirked unpleasantly. "That will happen again."

Grumbling disapprovingly (but nevertheless recommencing his work), Sir Thaddeus observed the misfit from as much distance as his profession could allow, describing a wide circle through the disarray, taking care not to tread on any of the mislaid valuables. His skilful eyes surveyed and scrunitized Jules' form.

"Do you think you're the first patient to have broken wind in front of me?" He asked matter-of-factly.

"I should think not, or else you can't have been practising for too long. And how's that supposed to reassure me?" Jules' attention was locked to the physician, his head turning this way and that without ever breaking his statuesque stance. His pale eyes were shrewd, hawk-like. Whenever he decided he was getting too close — and whether Sir Thaddeus had an instrument in hand or not — he would fire off another malodorous repellent. Sometimes he would do so even when he hadn't gotten too close. 

"But I'd wager I'm the very worst," he airily boasted.

The lack of reply affirmed what he already knew. It had also failed to daunt Sir Thaddeus, who was proving to be tough to discourage. Supplying a grumble of his own, Jules folded his arms across his downy chest and impatiently bounced his left leg. No amount of flatulence seemed to be getting him closer to the end of this examination, nor was it changing how exposed he was, standing bare before this stranger, unclothed and unprotected.

"How much longer? It's been close to an hour now. Haven't you considered I might get a chill at some point?"

"It wouldn't take so long if you were not being deliberately ill-mannered." Sir Thaddeus hummed and ran his fingers over his white stubble, and this gave Jules cause to worry, for he had come to know what this gesture preceded. 

"Oh, not again—"

The physician saw a chance to throw Jules' smirk back at him and gleefully took it as he unbuttoned another compartment of his bulging bag. His hand fetched a metal rod, bearing a yellow sphere at one end and a green triangle at the other. 

"Yes, again. What do you take me for, boy, a roadside charlatan? I'm a Royal physician!"

"Whoopee..."

"Stand at peace. Arms tucked in. There's a good lad. I trust you haven't behaved this improperly in front of the Lord, or else you wouldn't be here still, would you?"

"Haven't you heard that this Lord is most forgiving?" Jules' nails scraped his lower back, just above his tailbone, scratching indulgently at the scored flesh that was only now beginning to heal from where the Knights had lashed him during his capture. Whatever Sir Thaddeus could achieve with that tool, the doctor had deduced it was unnecessary — before Jules knew it, he had exchanged it for a strip of tape, which he unfurled along his patient's broad shoulders.

"You did this already, at the very start," Jules objected. 

"I promised your Lord I would examine you thoroughly." Sir Thaddeus confirmed his earlier measurements, then moved on to press two fingers to various points along Jules' neck. He tugged his earlobes, squeezed his collarbone, and counted the grooves in what he could make out of his spine beneath a layer of unsparing fat. It was a trial to stand so close.

Even for an elevated peasant (for that was all this outsider was, really), his odors were extraordinarily offensive. That brutal musk which baked all day long in his armpits and nested in other humid zones across his anatomy would have made a believer of a doctor of lower intelligence, for surely no human could smell so badly. There was no other reason Sir Thaddeus needed him to keep his arms latched to his sides; he could tolerate the sweat or the farting, but not both. 

A low growl of displeasure drew his attention to Jules' rotund stomach, though it was not easily concealed. It had been complaining as fearsomely as the skies themselves since the examination began, erratically bubbling like an untended pot.

"With the amount of wind you suffer from, I would expect more distension than this." And what he thought was under his breath — "How does this work, I wonder?" 

"You're not exactly inspiring much confidence in your expertise," Jules grunted. 

"And you're not exactly a normal patient. Are you in pain?"

"The tedium of this inspection pains me dreadfully, yes."

"But if I were to make contact with your stomach, would it cause you any great discomfort?"

Jules chewed on this for a moment, then slapped his gut, loosing an amusingly high-pitched fart from between his bald cheeks. "Let's find out!"

Why shouldn't he take advantage of some free kneading? It was tiresome tending to himself all the time. Sir Thaddeus graced the pouch around his belly button with a series of calculated strokes, some erring more on the side of poking and prodding, which incited Jules to twitch and groan, and some that were more considered, slow and circular, and received most pleasurably in his hips and around the small of his back. The racket of his overloaded cavity increased as the knots dissolved under Sir Thaddeus' consummate hands and the air swifted along his tract. The physician, who had a habit of muttering his observations, had much to mutter about Jules' bloated state. 

"Remarkable — feels almost bovine in nature..."

With uncomplication made grimmer by Sir Thaddeus' assistance, a spurt of crackling flatulence was suddenly and explosively untethered from Jules' bowels. The ten-second blast steadily held its course, and along the way the rogue drained his lungs with a relieved sigh.

"Most definitely like a cow," Sir Thaddeus added, after issuing a single pathetic cough in protest of the growing smog.

"Your fault," Jules professed. He tutted and shook his head. "You've only gone and caused me the greatest of discomforts, Sir Royally-Appointed… wait, wait. Hold on, now. We may have an encore on our hands!"

He masked his mischief with an impression of intense concentration, leaned the slightest bit sideways, and eased out a thick and meaty sputter. Then another. Then a disorderly batch of cacophonic bursts that rang in Sir Thaddeus' ears for seconds afterwards. "There we go. All better. No harm done, really."

"That is debatable," the doctor griped.

Compared to others of the Court — Eustace and the maids, chiefly — the physician was unfazed, and this Jules found vexing. Perhaps he should have judged his audience more wisely; Sir Thaddeus had probably attended to his share of plagues and disease breakouts. But he was not without some small wins. The black man's nose was running as though he had ingested severe spice. He had, in a way, since last night's mutton stew had a dangerous kick to it, Rose's guidance having clearly fallen on deaf ears. (And thanks to the kitchen's laxity, the castle staff now had burnt noses, too.)

Ridding himself of the snot trail with his sleeve (Jules of all people would be the last to comment on such a habit), he turned over the young man's hands, artfully twisting his thumb to raise the veins further down the forearm. Presently, he half-scoffed, half-gagged, and was forced to remove his glasses as he blinked the water from his small mole's eyes.

"You bloody fiend!"

"That was all me, that time," Jules needlessly announced.

Sir Thaddeus wandered from him then. His departure was not as hasty as it had been previously. He occasionally looked Jules over with a distinctly frustrated mien as he buffed his eyeglasses.

"Well?" Jules asked.

The thumb on one hand caressed the curve of his gurgling gut. The physician's efforts appeared to have counted for nothing, for just as much gas as before stirred restlessly within his chamber. His was not a pantry that stayed empty for very long. An impossible bounty of rancid flatulence was coiling in his pipes, gripping at his tender, overworked innards. It was the sort of feeling he hoped he would have become numb to by now. 

Not so.

The physician shrugged dejectedly.

"'Well' what, boy? You're as healthy as a horse."

Bemused by his downtrodden reaction, Jules scoffed a laugh. "Alright! Try not to sound so bloody gutted about it."

"No irregular appendages, no unusual keratin growths..." 

"Oh, for goodness' sake — do you people not communicate with the Lord and Lady Rose? I have already declared that I am Common-born. Oh, what's that now—"

"I am not you people — I am a professional," Sir Thaddeus said. He wagged the narrow tool with its tiny mirror before Jules' nose. "And I have personal standards to meet. My last look, I promise. Open up."

"Oh, but..."

"Open up."

With more gentleness than the rogue's attitude truthfully deserved, he clasped Jules' round jaw and examined his mouth.

"Nof 'angs," Jules tried to say, hindered by the awkward contact. 

"I know you have no fangs." Sir Thaddeus exhaled wearily. "I'm more curious about these remarkably unspoiled teeth…"

"Eh-mar-kuh-bly? ‘ow ‘ery ‘are you, ‘ir!"

"For someone in your situation, they're in fine condition. Healthier than most of the villagers I see! This is not what I would expect from someone living in the veritable wilderness."

His grip on Jules' jaw became unnervingly solid, so that Jules felt a sharp stab of fear enter below his ribs. The knife twisted as they met eyes. It was not only gas filling his belly, now, but dread.

This time, the muttering was purposeful, meant to be heard: "I wonder if that has anything to do with those herbs in your satchel..."

The younger man's brows shot up in surprise — at the very same time that a pocket of hot air rocketed up his throat and blasted Sir Thaddeus in his face. 

"Oh shit—"

"Charming!" Sir Thaddeus spat, making Jules stumble when he forcibly released him. 

"Now that was an accident, truly!" The fear wormed in Jules' middle and compounded the hubbub of his bowels. "H-How do you know about those?"

"The Lord handed your belongings over to me to investigate." Unbothered by the young man's plummeting jaw, Sir Thaddeus lifted a quill and scribed neatly on a parchment sheet. 

Jules gaped disbelievingly. "Did he now? And who exactly permitted him to take it, and for you to stick your hairy nose into it?" 

"Don't be a dunce, boy. You've been here long enough to know how it works. I did not anticipate needing my botany texts today, but I would assume that those herbs are natural."

"Of course they're natural," Jules crisply returned. "I do not take anything to do with anything that's not. They are all from what Mother Earth provides. I use peppermint for my teeth — I rub it on my gums. Works just as well as that awful paste some make out of it, and it doesn't smart half as much. And I thread my teeth twice daily, to get rid of any stowaways. It's like having seconds, sometimes!"

"And the others?"

"The other what?"

"Don't be coy. It doesn't suit you. We both know you had much more than one sack in there."

Had? What did that mean for the rest of his stash? Tamping down his concern, Jules jerked his shoulders in a careless half-shrug. "I am not a medicine man like you. I am a gatherer. It's not for me to know what they are for."

"Gathering for whom?"

"My mother. Our people's healer."

The feathery pen abruptly stilled. Sir Thaddeus' small eyes found Jules through the darkness closing in. They widened hungrily.

"The troll?"

When Jules begrudgingly answered with a small nod, the doctor smiled and pulled a stool toward the worn children's school desk, as though the tale would be gladly recited for him then and there. 

"Most curious business, this is. The Lord — or rather, the Lady Rose, told me that they took you in, but I wasn't sure they weren't having me on. How long have you lived among them?"

"Are you aware that I'm still naked?" Jules gestured to the unmissable starkness of his body, then to the leisure robe draped over a moth-eaten armchair. "If you wouldn't mind, doctor."

The maids had taken the opportunity to wash (or, as Mr. Ambrose advised, destroy) the clothes Jules had been wearing when he was brought to Campion. He was deplorably devoted to them, choosing the stained, threadbare and sweat-drenched garments over any of the overpriced fashion stocked in the wardrobe in his quarters. He would have a new set of daywear waiting for him upon his return, and no choice but to don it. 

"Did you hear me?" Sir Thaddeus asked as he handed the pile to Jules.

"Yes. For the better half of my life." Jules buried himself inside the heavy, decadent material. The pressure was comforting, like being swaddled as a babe, though the feeling was fleeting under these circumstances. "I'm not sure I like that look on your face. What else are you thinking?" 

"I estimate you to be twenty-four or five years old, by your teeth. Does that sound right? How many of those years were spent with the beasts?"

"I already told you that I don't know. Is it all that important? You said I was healthy enough. Oogh..." A tremoring moan was pried from his lips. Both hands massaged his painfully full stomach, creaking with the weighted pressure of its growing burden, and shortly after, he passed gas without any of his former deliberateness.

"How long have you lived with the cave-folk?" Sir Thaddeus repeated. He was unaffected by the younger man's sneer, and only wrinkled his nose at the massive, dung-rich effusion. "You cannot blame a man for being curious."

"I can when the intent is not always to learn, but to judge and be critical," Jules coolly replied.

"By trade, I must be impartial. I have seen many strange things in my time — though I must say, none as strange as this."

"Hm."

"My interest is not in criticising them, but in alleviating any suffering caused by them. Surely you know how unique your situation is. I feel like a child, at the feet of my grandfather, listening to him weave tales of Old…"

Jules now stood before Sir Thaddeus. The physician wondered whether he would be subjected to a foul prank, but instead the young man gripped the sides of the desk and pushed his stomach against an edge which had been sanded down by time and repeated use. Breathing slowly, he used the angular solidness to help him force the jammed air pockets through his pipes. A sickly-slow series of wet farts was soon plucked from his garmentless behind, and he moaned once more after the very largest and last of them released in a bass-full drone. 

"Stomach giving you especial trouble today?" Sir Thaddeus questioned politely. 

"And tomorrow and the next," Jules huffed, nearly breathless with the mounting tension. The bloat was enough to crush him. "Won't be too long before I'll get you a shit sample to go along with that," he said, indicating the bottle of urine on the floor.

"I know it won't enlighten me. Your humors give me no cause for concern. Your digestion is another matter, but I don't have to tell you that." Sir Thaddeus tented his fingers. "You're a little soft around the middle, but I think you'll grow out of it. Your youth lingers. You're a young twenty-whatever-you-are, Jules." 

The physician fell silent, bowing his head and fatiguedly rubbing his temples with an index finger. 

"I told you it would happen again." Jules mistook the reaction as being attributed to another cloud of his. "Perhaps it'd be best if I left you now, hm? Unless you're keen to discover more of what I had for breakfast, which I'm starting to think I might not be on the best terms with..."

His stomach painted a dramatic picture of rage with its most recent rumble. Sir Thaddeus glanced up, opening his mouth at an inopportune time; Jules had lain down another blanket of his oppressive stink. 

"This castle food — Gods above," he complained around a tight frown.

"You don't really think it's the food doing this, do you?"

Sensing a shift in the stale air that hung between them that he could never have articulated, Jules' pale eyes steeled. Sir Thaddeus held his gaze.

"I do hope you know what you're doing, boy."

Dread washed over Jules from head to toe. "What do you—"

Sir Thaddeus looked at the door, as though it had been knocked. Jules' eyes followed. Sir Thaddeus made a beckoning motion with his finger, the other pressed to his lips. Both men moved toward the one dirty, cobweb-streaked window, as far in these closed quarters as they could be from listening ears.

"I already know I won't find anything in an additional sample that will convince me that the cave-folk have infected you with something — or at least something that makes you symptomatic in this manner," Sir Thaddeus whispered. "But this will not be acceptable to the Lord and his Court. There must be some explanation. Now you see where our problem lies, don't you?"

"No." He did, he just didn't want to admit it. The crushing weight of his bloat was migrating up to his chest and sitting heavily, suffocatingly, at the base of his throat. "Speak plainly now."

"I place the laws of my trade before all else. I serve this Lord gladly, for — and believe me, boy — he has a heart that the others lack, or have even knowingly discarded in favor of bettering their position. But even he—"

"Tell me what you know." Jules' voice trembled, like the last of the season's leaves, clinging to the bare branches with a final, wretched hope, afraid of the fate waiting to meet it on the forest floor.

Sir Thaddeus fixed him with a meaningful look.

"Your attempts to deter me when I was behind you failed. I saw your mark, Jules."

The physician's words stole his breath. Jules hadn't felt this cold even when he was unclothed.

"The Lord can never learn of this, nor anyone in Campion. Nor anyone anywhere, for that matter."

"Do you think I don't—" But Jules' breath had hitched, fatally catching just as his voice had begun to pitch in terror, and he looked away curtly, in case this terror had melted the ice in his eyes.

He felt as though the walls were pushing in on him. He desired fiercely to break free of this awful lair, surrounded by the gluttony of the Royals. It was as stomach-turning as being encircled by knife-bearing men. Here was a treasure trove brimming with riches enough to pay off a hundred villager debts, with all the room needed for a bed and a fireplace to warm someone without a home of their own... forgotten, tossed aside, and left to rot.

His building panic ebbed into a misplaced fury. This castle was no different to the other cages he had known. He loathed this place, these people. He hated being cooped up all day long, only ever permitted to leave when accompanied by another who wanted nothing to do with him, and said as much to his face. Unable to choose for himself when to have a fresh breeze thrill his skin, the sun warm his back...

He could not see down into the courtyard through the grime that had crusted over the glass, nor could he find comfort in admiring the trees in the nearby forest. The nightly frosts were teasing the yellow and reds out, so that the susseration flurrying the canopy made it dance like firelight. He would stay out there forever if Eustace could tolerate it. (The page boy had terrible allergies — and poor reflexes, and nonexistent stamina, and…)

Sir Thaddeus cleared Jules' mind — shoved his terror right back at the forefront, unignorable. The elder's voice rose as much as he could afford it to, wishing for his warning to be heard without question. "There are circumstances that render even him powerless. When all is said and done, your Lord works for the King; he adheres to his agenda, his wishes, his laws..."

"He is not my Lord, and I know all this!" Jules snapped miserably. "I know," he added, weak and desolate.

Sir Thaddeus' tone gentled. "How long have you lived this way?"

Jules strove to make something out through the cobwebs and dirt, to escape in the only way he could, but the bleared glass was too murky. His future now felt similar.

"I was born like this," he said flatly.

"And it has never been disclosed to a reigning Lord? Were you born in Badlands, some patch of lawless territory?"

The only response was that of his fingernails shearing away some rotten wood on the windowsill, and the forever-tumult of his stomach.

"I wish to help you, boy. I will do all that I can, but I must know your story."

"You do not need to know—"

"I must know something, at least!" Sir Thaddeus pushed in, braving the stench. "I need facts to bolster my version of your situation. How else am I to sell it to the Lord? How else can he be convinced? How else can we save you?"

Panic ruled Jules' mind. It thundered in his chest, jolted his muscles to harden for flight. He wanted to run, fast and far.

"Why help me?" He demanded to know. "Are you not disturbed to even stand so close? You of all men should revile me. Aren't I a contradiction to science and fact, to all you believe in?"

"Do not attribute such malignancy to me!" Sir Thaddeus passionately retorted. "You do not know me, boy. Do not pretend to know my beliefs. What happened to you goes against everything I believe in — as a nobleman and a professional! I am one of the few who believe that none of you deserve what happened to you, no matter the events that may have led to it. I do not wish to see a young man lose his life for something he has no control over. Please tell me what you can, Jules. It doesn't have to be everything. Just enough."

Jules' fingers sank into the plush material of the robe, curling into a fist. His nails were too short to draw blood, but it did not stop him from trying. 

"Jules," Sir Thaddeus coaxed. 

"In a village." The physician had to strain to hear him over the howling wind driving the rain against the glass. Thunder rolled over the castle, and a crack of lightning dressed the room in a blinding white flash. In it, Sir Thaddeus caught a glimpse of how despairing Jules looked, before he was all shadows again. "I was born in a Lord's village."

"Where?"

"On the other side of the sun's shadow. I do not remember its name — I remember nothing about it, really, except for swathes of red sand as far as the eye could see. The Lord there was as negligent as they come. He did not abide by the Code; his ways were not the Once Ways. He did not want the King's attention. When he learned of it — of my birth, and all that had come with it — he ordered my mother and father to move into an old cottage on the outskirts, beyond his territory. Separated from our community. He never reported it, and he struck fear into the hearts of anyone who may have dared to. He cast us aside, forgot about us."

"A desert? Near the mountains?" 

"That is not where I met my people — the trolls," Jules said, allaying the doctor's confusion. "They rescued me when I was still in my boyhood, but it was years after I left the village." 

"So they did not steal you from here?"

Jules scoffed shakily. "You cannot steal what is not wanted, can you?"

Another aresnic-white scar of light divided the sky. This time, Jules had the sense to turn his face away from its revealing illumination.

He added, "They never took me. I wanted to be with them."

"So you were hiding with the cave-folk. They had not captured you. The Lord's men... they captured you. Tore you from the animals to which you feel you belonged. Is that so?"

Jules pressed his forehead against the glass, clouding what was visible with a sigh shuddering its way into a sob.

"I have betrayed them — I have put my people's lives at stake; I should never have ventured out!" The guilt that had been eating away at him hurtled up his throat, as uncontrolled as any other sickness. "One among us fell ill, and my mother could do nothing for her. The ever-root grows in the valley below the mountain, beyond the safety of our tunnels. The eagles had warned of men in their hordes travelling through, owing to the landslide on the trail they ordinarily take. It was too risky for my people. But I could not bear to see my mother blame herself any longer." 

He grew quiet, and still.

His mother.

Confronted with her image, longing wrenched at his chest violently enough that he was sure it had caved in. How he wanted more than anything to be near her, now and forever! If it was true that Death granted each of them, be it man or beast, one last look into the life that was to be left behind, to carry with them into Beyond so that they might not forget themselves among the stars, his would be to be there with her in their welcoming den. Listening to her sing as she ground her poultices, to the rake of her trusted spoon as she stirred the sap that was reducing into life-sustaining ointments… how he was doted on by her, understood by her the way no one else had bothered to — cushioned and comforted by her tenderness, asked for whenever his head tipped, a request for reassurance that the warm weight of her heavy hand dependably fulfilled. 

She would hold him as long as he needed — sometimes, when he tried to move away, she would carefully guide him back into her love; she had an insight for knowing exactly when things had been made all right. Some medicine was made from ingredients unseen. Her claws, dextrous enough to stitch wounds with, fine enough to chisel jewels from clods, sturdy enough to crumble rock, had never dented his fragile skin.

Homesickness brittled his voice, robbed him of his bravado. "I left. I only wanted to help," he croaked. "It was my duty, my promise to be useful to my people — it was my gift that I could be visible, to go where they could not. I had never been anyone's gift before. And now I am here, and this Lord intends to wring every last drop of information from me..."

Sir Thaddeus expected tears to spring. He did not anticipate Jules' resolve to have been so thoroughly revived, to have been made all the stronger by his outpouring of grief.

"But he shall not have it," Jules promised resolutely.

"What if he learns of what you are? It would matter not whether they strike a deal with you — your freedom in exchange for your knowledge. If he knows what you are…" 

Jules locked unblinking eyes with him. "They can spill the blood they seek. All that these so-called noblemen can stomach. I shall die with my secrets. That way, I can keep my family safe."

"This is not going to be simple — to hide the truth, I'll have to weave a tale that may threaten the trolls even more. I will have to tell them that this condition of yours comes from the caves. From your... your people," Sir Thaddeus intoned remorsefully. The word felt strange in his mouth, but he had said it, and that was more than others of the Court had managed.

Jules' pulse galloped. "Then they will be targeted even more than they already are. Perhaps it is best to confess."

"No! You cannot sacrifice yourself for these monsters!"

"They are not—"

"They are to everyone else! For Merlin's sake, Jules, you were Common once. You know this! Whether you are dead or alive, they will be persecuted," Sir Thaddeus argued. "Lord Muchty — he works closely with the elves. He owes them many favors... and your Lord has much to prove to his associates. You have no idea how precarious this can get."

The storm raged on.

"I have done what was asked of me," Sir Thaddeus' voice was thin and quiverous, as though coming out of a reverie. He had never meant to get in so deep, and the enormity of the task ahead was beginning to smother him more than the rogue's musk. He backed away from Jules, distractedly collecting his bag and shambling for the door. "I have fulfilled my duty to the Lord... the rest, whatever happens after, has nothing to do with me..."

Jules watched him leave. "But you will not confess to your knowing of what I am?" He asked, in a small, hopeful voice.

"No. On that, you have my word. But I must have your word, also, that you will not contradict our tale. You must be careful what you say to these people. What has been said in here can never be repeated," he instructed. "Be wary of those who look to be allies, at first. Be wary of making friends."

Jules snorted feebly, turning to look away again. "That's never been an issue for me."

"And what about her?"

He flinched. "Her?"

"I misspoke. The Lady Rose. She is fond of you."

For a single heartbeat, joy overwhelmed him, blotting out the sadness. Only the longing remained, though now it was reserved for more than only his mother.

"Fond of… me?" He faintly echoed.

"Perhaps it was not clear to her Father—" The doctor knew little ever was. "But it was crystalline to me. No one else in this Court speaks of you that way. No one sees you the way she has chosen to. You have earned her affections, somehow. The mind boggles to think of how. By that look on your face, I dare say this is not one-sided. You will want to exercise the utmost prudence. Master your temptations."

Jules shook his head once and laughed mirthlessly. "There are none to master. It matters not what the Lady Rose thinks of me. I have nothing to fear in that regard. I will always be beneath her. Beneath all of these people. I could never be her friend. Only a pet — or a jester. Something inconsequential."

Sir Thaddeus considered him with sympathy that would remain unspoken.

"Luck has been on your side, Jules. There could be no other rational explanation for how you have come this far. But you are marked for life, and a man in your situation must never forget it."

The Knights spoke lightly to Sir Thaddeus as he exited, and with less respect to Jules, when he finally felt ready to face them again.

The rain had confined all but the watchmen to Campion's castle. Aware of his tendency to roam, and once more at the advice of Mr. Ambrose, Jules was to be escorted back to his domain. He trailed mindlessly behind the Lord's Guards, their path taking him far from the attic and far from the domiciles of the rest of the castle's occupants. Jules was atypically barren of jokes and jabs, and any gas passed was without intention; a consequence of his condition. Where everything else he knew and loved was gone, that one element endured. It was the only thing in his life he had learned to count on.

Marked for life.

"Will you pick up the pace, beast? Don't you think we have better things to do than smelling your fat arse all day?"

"Gods, and doesn't he stink worse with each new dawn?"

"Those bloody women don't help; they're supposed to be bathing him. They can't even manage to pull that off successfully, the useless lot..."

"And yet how they whinge about how tired they are!"

"Blame them not. A pig and its filth are not easily parted."

A man in your situation

"What's wrong, beast? You're never so quiet. Is our speech too refined for you?"

"Perhaps we would be better understood if we grunted and snorted instead!"

"Too right!"

"Would you like that, beast?"

Must never forget it.

"We could take him back to the barn, lock him in there–"

"He'd have all the mud and slop he could handle!"

"I said, would you like that, beast?"

"Answer him now, rogue!"

"Brute!"

"Beast!"

As if he could. 

Chapter Text

Elsewhere in the Court.

"So y'see, m'Lord, we had no choice but to help 'em!"

The rain had made greasy rattails out of the cobbler's shaggy hair. Mangy clothes hung from his undernourished frame like a sloughing second skin, soaking the freshly-buffed floor.

"We was so caught up in the move," he explained, "that we forgot to declare it to your good selves, but it weren't on purpose!"

"We're happy to do so now," his just-as-soggy wife rejoined, gulping for breath stolen by the hike to the castle, and nodding frenetically, so much so that the page boys felt dizzy for her. "Before you an' the dear Lady Rose."

"Ahem?"

Aunt Ainsley's disgruntled expression plunged the temperature in the old palatial Chamber by another degree.

"An' the honorable Lady Ainsley, a'course!" The wife offered a homely, placating smile. Aunt Ainsley tilted her chin up and considered the pair humorlessly, trading this harmless gesture for a look that was more brooding than bored. 

"Stars above, will you listen to that weather!" Her brother's jollier intonation rang companionably around the revered room — a once-venerated space, where the incense's floral smoke trails had been strangled by a heinous residue that evoked imagery of expired cabbage pickled in used privy water. "Poor Hank. His sunflowers will be taking a beating, I dare say!"

"The lowborns have finished their little speech, Douglas," Aunt Ainsley prudently mentioned.

"Oh! Yes, yes, how charitable it was of you all to open up your home!"

The Lord stood to spread an arm out to each side, milky-white curls bouncing atop his head as he brandished an everlasting grin to all present parties. His rosy, round cheeks sparkled with a woodland sprite's zest for life.

"And how lucky it was that their carriage had not burned down, too, so that they might journey to join you here in Campion!"

"Eh?" The cobbler's unkempt brows clumped together.

"In fact, I dare say it was their good fortune to have their original home reduced to embers, for they may never have known the glories of Campion without such a turn of events. Wouldn't you agree?"

Struck dumb, the cobbler and his wife regarded one another mutely. They needed no greater motivation than an impatient sigh from the chair to the right of the Lord, occupied by that sleek, sophisticated authoritarian.

"But a'course!" The cobbler suddenly cheered. 

"That is certainly one way to look at it, m'Lord!" His wife shrilled. 

"A sunnier way to look at it," the Lord amended, beaming just as brightly, and tapping the smelly air with a finger. "Why, when this tale began, I thought it was all going to be doom and gloom!"

"Don't speak so soon, brother."

The villagers huddled together as Aunt Ainsley stared at them down her hooked nose. Stalling only slightly, as though he actually considered unheeding her, the Lord awkwardly sank into his seat again.

"Do you mean to tell us that you have had additional bodies living under your roof, able-bodied enough to work and pay taxes, but they have not?" 

"W-well, it was like we was saying 'afore." The cobbler tittered and wrung his bony hands. "We was so caught up in it all, y'see, helpin' 'em to settle in and the like, it honestly slipped our—"

"Surely you could not forget that they still owed taxes, even if their residency hadn't officially been declared?" 

"But w-with everythin' that was happenin' with them, my dear Lady—"

"Perhaps you feel it is up to your Lord to chase you for payment. For he has all the time in the World to run those little errands, doesn't he?"

"A'course not!" The cobbler's wife asserted, indignation reinforcing her quivering voice. "We would never think such a thing!"

Conversely, her husband's fraying nerves had weakened his knees to jelly, and he leaned with more weight than his beloved could afford to support. (It was hard to say whether the blame lay entirely with the tension. That cloying, overstaying reek would appal even the pig farmer, whose turn with the Royals was next.)

Knowing she must go on alone, the wife looked pleadingly to Campion's governer, who had become distracted by the shine of one of his many rings.

"My Lord — please, please 'ear us! Our intent was not to 'arm or inconvenience thee. We are terribly sorry for putting you out so!"

"Putting him out? We're talking about the bloody backbone of Campion, woman. How else are we to build your bridges, maintain your water supplies, repair your roads without having the money to do so? Think, for once!" Aunt Ainsley berated. 

"A-Arthur, the 'usband, he's going to work in the fields startin' from Monday, an' his missus will be lookin' after the bairns so that we can do double-time with their eldest boy in the shop," the wife hastened to explain. They had been practising what to say on their journey, while the hail pelted them, chiselling them down to something even smaller than they knew they already were. "Nick will take him on as a 'prentice soon as they've settled. Won't you, my darling?"

Her crumbling husband babbled incomprehensibly.

The wife desperately proclaimed, "A-an' in doin' so, ensurin' Campion has a first-rate cobbler for years to come!" 

"That sounds wonderful!" The Lord cried. 

"Oh, goody," Aunt Ainsley snidely voiced, "problem solved, then."

"Sounds like it!" The Lord earnestly agreed. Aunt Ainsley gaped at him, baffled by his density. 

"We'll have that money in no time, m'Lord. To that, you 'ave the Kobbi's family's most honest promise!"

The Lord chortled benignly. "Oh, my dear woman, with conviction such as yours, I have no doubt we will—"

"Have that backdated money by tomorrow, sunhigh at the latest," Aunt Ainsley interrupted, stunning all three. "Or else you and your new lodgers will both be without a home. Send the next lot in, Oswald. I believe we're finished here."

"B-but—"

"Oh — goodbye, then, you two!" The Lord called, gaily waving them off as the cobbler and his wife were shepherded out of the room by four of his Guard. The heels of their shoes — fittingly tattered, as the old proverb suggests — squealed across the damp limefloors all the way toward the Chamber doors, and could be heard even outside the Chamber, mixing with a surge of gasps and a rush of chatter as they passed the other villagers herded in the hallway, all awaiting their chance to answer for their offences or state their cases before the Lord.

Envious of their departure, Aunt Ainsley pressed an embroidered handkerchief over her mouth and nose and heaved a long-suffering groan.

"Dear Gods. We've burned through two moons of incense this morning alone, yet it persists. How? HOW, Douglas?" 

The Lord clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Oh, Ainsley, it's not that bad. You know the peasants don't wash as often as we do. It is not their way."

"Not them, you fool! This bloody project of yours!" She thoughtlessly cast the handkerchief aside. Two page boys crashed into each other in their haste to fetch it. "I cannot believe that runt could have been so idiotic as to allow him to set foot in here!" 

She pinned Eustace with a dirty look. The undersized squire had been the subject of vicious ribbing all morning concerning his participation in the great Chamber's soiling, as well as a broader mockery of his assignment to Jules. Those crammed into the alcove wasted no time in deserting him, exposing him fully to Aunt Ainsley to receive her contempt.

Blanching, he hectically shrank back. The best he could do was to mask his face behind a leatherbound book.

"I've half a mind to order the Knights to break one of these windows, you know," she grumped. "I'd rather be chilled to the bone than be forced to breathe his filth any longer."

The Lord chewed indecorously on an eroded thumbnail. "I really wish you wouldn't speak to the villagers so savagely, Ainsley. They might begin to take it personally, you know."

"Oh, do grow up."

"It is vital that our people should feel warmly toward us. Didn't you hear about that uprising, in that county in the south—"

"Vital? Oh, certainly, it would be nice if they liked us," Aunt Ainsley insincerely opined. "But what's vital is that they listen to us, and they're hardly going to take you seriously if you pander to them." She exhaled sharply and leaned forward to lecture the occupant of the chair on his left. 

"You see how it's done, Rosalie? Rose? Oh, she's dreaming again, Douglas! This girl, I tell you! Her head's never out of the clouds, these days. Of course..." Here, the gaunt woman dropped the act and became boorish, crossing her arms and slouching in her seat, "when you're as unseemingly tall as she is, that's the only place it ever will be…" 

The Lord chuckled fondly. "Wake up, Rosie! There's work to be done!"

"NoIwasn't–!" Rose lurched forward, sucking at air, and in doing so, coating her lungs in even more of Jules. Predictably, she swiftly hacked it all back up. Gathering herself together, she smoothed a hand over her disobedient locks and turned to them tentatively, mouth set in a tight smile. "...what were we talking about? Someone was to run errands, I believe?"  

"Dear Gods," Aunt Ainsley scoffed. "And this is our successor!"

"Did the rain put you to sleep? It always does with me," her Father replied amiably. How anyone could sleep through this ruckus mystified Aunt Ainsley. Accompanied by a hellish fanfare, those bold streaks of crackling electricity made nightmares out of the legendary figures depicted in the stained glass. Thoughts of the villagers making their way home over the ruined backroads in the storm gave her cause to snicker to herself. 

"No, no — I was deep in thought," Rose fibbed.

"Anything to share, my girl?"

How could she share where she had been? She had slipped into another dream — that damned veil had unravelled over her again, shifting reality out of focus and giving an intoxicating clarity to her innermost visions. Seedling visions, that had been watered — no, flooded into flourishing — by Jules. And his... delinquency. His alluring delinquency.

How could she admit to that? She could not even accept that it was happening to her. She was without a beau by choice. Her avoidance of men was deliberate. They intruded on a woman's ambitions and goals. They interfered. They overshadowed. 

After Eustace had owned up to Jules' misconduct in the Chamber, he readily offered his own head for the pike when he discovered that the Lord would, in fact, be opening the floor to Campion the following day, owing to a rescheduled meeting with his advisors. He was flummoxed when Rose assured him that no harm would befall him for such a silly oversight.

Lady Rose, I wouldn't speak so hastily. There is nothing silly about this. You and your Father will be doing everything you can to ensure all will be right for our people, and his stench will be there to challenge you. It is not a fair fight. Your will is much stronger than my own, of course, but even you might succumb to his smog...

Succumb. Eustace could be so peculiar, sometimes. What a word to employ for something as daft and meaningless as... flatulence.

She had slept soundly that night, protected from the wind and hail by the depth of her dreams. She was humbled by the limits of her imagination, for not even her wildest flights of fantasy could conjure anything close to what awaited her in Father's very real, and very sacred, domain. How complete Jules' contamination was! The humidity of even his staling aroma was as profound as that which characterized an August afternoon, but without any of the agreeableness. It had nearly knocked one of the page boys out cold when they first unlatched those huge, heavy doors, and that thick, rich cloud rolled out to greet them ever-so-sinisterly. They were fast running out of incense to keep it at bay. How could an ordinary man's bowels produce something so endurable?

But he's not ordinary, is he, little lamb? No ordinary man is capable of what he can do... 

"N-no, not particularly," she replied, many moments too late. 

"And to think your Father wants you to sit here next time, taking my place." Aunt Ainsley's familiar derisory guffaw grounded her, for the time being. "I'll be there to watch you make a perfect fool of yourself. I shan't come to your rescue, girl. All these weeks you've had the opportunity to shadow me, and you've squandered it. I suppose you think it'll just come to you naturally." 

"No, Aunt Ainsley." Rose's fingers probed a forehead which threatened to throb. Perhaps this was the beginning of this rumored sickness. Her heartbeat was patchy, and her skin was slick with sweat. This... may have had more to do with the visions, she supposed. Not of her mother, and not of beasts... not of true beasts. It wasn't something she would be in a hurry to ask Sadhbh to interpret. She'd sooner take it to her grave, in fact. But it was not one she wanted to... forget, either. Even a blade to her throat wouldn't produce an answer as to why...

It is not his scent that excites you.

It is not his scent that excites you.

Eustace had his mantras. Lady Rose was beginning to depend on a few herself.

Aunt Ainsley considered her distracted restlessness with the utmost distaste. "It will come to me because of how hard I have studied the texts," Rose answered stoically, set on not allowing her inner agitations or her aunt's intimidation to get the better of her. "The Code will keep me from straying to the wrong path, as is its promise to anyone who abides by it."

"She carries it in her heart," the Lord said, affectionately squeezing his daughter's shoulder. She instantly recalled Jules doing the same thing in her walk-in closet. Her flesh crawled. 

Her Father fought to speak over an unbridled yawn. "Just as her mother did...!"

And look where she ended up, the widow thought. Aunt Ainsley pursed her lips.

"The texts are outdated, child. Things evolve faster than the scribesmen can write them. And as for the Code… well, where exactly is the part that describes taking A TROLL IN?" Even after projecting her voice, her brother remained blissfully unaware that he was being addressed. He was blissfully unaware of most things.

"He's not a troll — if you were observing, you might have known that." Rose didn't make as much effort as she intended to say this under her breath.

"Some bright idea it was of yours to let him come in here with the shrimp attending to him, as if he could restrain the beast when he becomes unruly — you're lucky you can't smell his leavings, Rose. It's simply unearthly!" Aunt Ainsley comforted her nauseated stomach, then slammed a small, neat fist onto the arm of her chair. "Damn that worthless runt! Maurice or Declan would've given the beast a good throttling, had they been appointed. They would've never been so irresponsible!" 

The laughter of those older and burlier page boys was hard to ignore. Rose was quickly realizing she held feelings of true pity for Eustace, who braved his mistreatment as best as anyone in his situation could. 

"I trust you made good on your promise not to punish him, Aunt Ainsley. It was my doing, after all. I asked him to show Jules all of the rooms. He was only obeying my word."

Rose singled him out of the gaggle of young men. It wasn't hard; Eustace was often alone and excluded from their affairs. Naturally, it had worsened since she tasked him with Jules' care. She watched him dust and tidy the shelves, taking extreme care around the artefacts. He showed an extraordinary respect for his role, despite the absence of recognition and thanks, and the abundant hate that overflowed in Aunt Ainsley's slitted eyes. 

Overthrowing a reflexive resistance to ever being in the wrong about anything, she reiterated, "If anyone is at fault, it is I."

"I have better things to do than to waste my time on Eustace, Rose. But even if he were following your orders, you would think he'd have the sense not to believe the beast when he claims to act properly, as I'm sure he would have. Celeste and Luna tell me that lying comes as naturally to the half-troll as his... well, you know what. He's spun many a tall tale for your willing ears, apparently."

"He is not a troll," Rose tiredly repeated. 

The widow's eyes drilled into her. Her aunt was reading her, and Rose only cottoned on when she had already seen too much. 

"You're right, child. Your little pet is much worse than that," she sneered. "He's an aberration. Some freak of nature that your Father has decided is ours to host, as though he were of decent lineage, or at the very least character. Lord Muchty wouldn't have him sleeping in a servant's quarters with a bed and a bath and countless maids at his disposal. He'd have him in a dungeon. Oh, yes, that Lord Muchty has a decent head on his shoulders, that's for sure. There's someone I'm due having talks with…" 

Apprehension chilled Rose's fever. She didn't want to think of Aunt Ainsley and Lord Muchty having private discussions. It didn't need to be said that they would be behind her Father's back. That was always implied.

"Oswald! Where are the next lot of peasants?" Aunt Ainsley bellowed.

"Oh, goodness me!" Wrenched out of the nap the drumming rain had lured him into, the Lord started gracelessly and spluttered at his sibling, "Ainsley, now really, there's no need to shout so—"

"Forgive me, my Lady! It is the medicine man calling." Sir Oswald entered from the hallway, swooping down into a flamboyant bow before his superiors. "Are you willing to close the floor to the villagers, so as to hear his report?" 

"Send the whole lot out to the courtyard, and Sir Thaddeus in at once!" Aunt Ainsley ordered.

Rose glowered at her. She nudged her remaining parent.

"Father, Sir Oswald says that Sir Thaddeus is ready to speak to us," she coached him.

"Oh, fantastic! Do send him in, Sir Oswald!" The Lord instructed — pointlessly, since the Knight had already left to do just that. "We're most eager to hear his report!"

No more daydreaming, Rose. She breathed through the unforgiving stench and toward the other side, willfully clearing her mind. Nothing less than her whole attention would have to be in attendance. Jules depended on her.

"Nine days he takes to journey here, and no doubt we're to hear what we already know," Aunt Ainsley muttered sullenly, though the compulsiveness with which she fixed her dress suggested she was as anxious as the rest of them to learn of what might be the fate of their Court and county. 

"Ainsley, you know that Sir Thaddeus is the finest of all the physicians. The fact that he is so in demand says it all," the Lord told her.

"The fact he did not prioritise us speaks louder," Aunt Ainsley hit back. "This is an emergency, Douglas! What with these rumors and the like, and the fact we don't know for certain that he is—"

The Lord had become an expert in letting his attention drift from his sister without her catching on. Tired of her prattling, his hand settled warmly over his offspring's. "Did I ever tell you that Sir Thaddeus was the doctor who attended your birth, Rosalie?" 

"Once or twice," Rose answered, politely.

"Ah." His bashful smile made him seem even more cherubic. "Forgive me, child. I can't help myself. Every time I see him, I am reminded of what a joyous night that was for us. The night the stars delivered their most perfect blessing!" He inhaled, chest expanding pridefully, seemingly none the wiser to Jules' putrid imprint. 

Even now, he would not speak of her; he would tiptoe around her, allude to her, as though her mother were some unmentionable thing. The lie she told herself was that it was not a matter of refusing to, or worse, having forgotten, but closer to reservations about reopening a wound. A decade-long wound.

"No matter how awful the news may be, I shall think of that, and feel light of heart once again," he whispered.

Not quietly enough for Aunt Ainsley. "Let's see how well that trick works this time," she goaded, as Sir Thaddeus took to the floor.

"My Lord — Lady Rose, Lady Ainsley." The stout physician bowed. "I have—"

"Wait, doctor. Leave us, men. All of you." 

The page boys were accustomed to being excluded from important affairs, often removed from a meeting or ceremony at a moment's notice, and they put up no fight. The Knights exchanged glances with each other and intentionally straggled. They had privileges that far exceeded those of their undeserving underlings. They were unused to these being revoked or tested.

Eustace and Rose shared a parting look. She could see that his callow face was creased with worry. Her one thought was that Eustace was concerned for the fate of his health, having been forced to spend so much time around Jules. No doubt the other squires had isolated him even more for that reason, too.

Her pity rankled into self-resentment. 

Aunt Ainsley did not return her attention to the doctor until she was sure the Chamber doors had been secured. "Proceed."

"Tell all, my good man," the Lord invited genially.

The physician clasped his hands behind his back and stood to attention. "First of all, it is as he claims, my Lord. Your guest is as Common as you or I."

Aunt Ainsley emitted a choked squeak. Even Rose was not above covering her mouth in shock.

"Beg pardon?" The Lord asked, mildly peeved.

"As I am, I of course meant to say," the doctor amended, humbly lowering his head again, and sensibly refusing to lift it until he knew all was well. "Forgive me, my Lord and Ladies. It has been an interesting morning... unlike any other in my career. I'm still rather shaken by the nature of your guest..."

"You are perfectly understood, sir," the Lord said kindly. "I have asked of you what no physician could ever be trained for. So it is that he is Common. You have no doubts?"

"There is no indication of his blood being mixed. He may have lived among the cave-folk for some time, but he is human."

"Unbelievable! Where could something like him come from?" Aunt Ainsley questioned.

"He originates from a desert territory, or so he says."

Rose's focus sharpened as she met the physician's eyes. They had been awaiting her, anticipating her interest. 

She asked, "A desert? Where?"

"He did not say," Sir Thaddeus answered. "He claims not to remember."

Aunt Ainsley grimaced. "Inbreeding, no doubt. Or something in their water. They don't have much of it, you know."

"Well, yes," Rose replied. "That's what makes it a desert."

"Fascinating!" The Lord furrowed his brow and gave a slow shake of his head. "And to get all the way to the mountains — he's a long way from home, isn't he? Whatever drove him out of the desert, I wonder?"

"It's a mystery for the ages, truly. Now explain his — his unseemliness," Aunt Ainsley anxiously demanded. "It is a concern for all of our Court whether it may be passed or stay contained within him. Not that anything stays contained within him for very long..."

"Might I ask that you be more specific, my Lady? Our meeting was brief. I understand he has shown all kinds of crude behaviors before you all."

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, man," she winced. Sir Thaddeus simply raised his white brows innocently, his expression guileless and pleasantly expectant.

"His wind," Aunt Ainsley hissed discreetly. 

"His — wind," Sir Thaddeus haltingly repeated. Rose felt laughter build in her throat as she considered that the doctor was being purposely obtuse to force the prissy Aunt Ainsley into elaborating further, providing more detail than she could stand. "You mean to say that byproduct of the digestive proce—"

"That perpetual, ceaseless FARTING."

Aunt Ainsley's declaration was given new life over and over again, in the fantastic echo of their grand Chamber. The Lord groaned and held his head. Amusement played on her lips, but Rose's stomach clenched. Not with dread. Not with sickness. With feelings she could not — would not — pinpoint.

She lowered herself even further in her chair, crossed one leg over the other, and stiffened when this produced, or made her even more aware of, a strong tingling spreading inside her thighs. She tried the other leg. Reversed them. Nothing could smother it. 

"Ainsley, please," the Lord wheezed, embarrassed at her vulgarity. "Speak as a Lady should!"

"For Merlin's sake, Douglas, it's all we've been listening to for near enough a fortnight! There are no words for his melodies, his stenches! How it doesn't seem to bother you two, now that's a mystery! How can we even call him Common, with that severe an ailment?"

"Of course it bothers us, but Rose and I are not so rude as to make the beast feel any the less for his animal tendencies," her brother retorted. "It is clearly outside of his control. It is a habit that has been enforced upon him by the monsters. He knows no better."

"Yet how he flaunts it, parades it, as though he were proud of his inelegance! Proud to be so... so gassy!" Aunt Ainsley shrieked. "Eugh! I can't believe he's made me say it, the rotten bastard!"

"No one made you," the Lord grumbled churlishly. 

Proud to be so… so gassy!

This echo came from within. Rose suppressed a groan. Something pulsated longingly; the veil was falling, draping over her, smothering her... blurring her focus, clouding her attention with those noxious, no-holds-barred visions she found herself craving every second she wasn't having one.

"I have not one true answer for his — er, his flatulence troubles," Sir Thaddeus admitted. "Only theories. But wouldn't the Lord like to be reassured that his guest is otherwise perfectly healthy? Barring the injuries sustained from the Knights, he is in fine condition. Better than I would expect for a man of the wild, actually."

"Wonderful!" The Lord shouted. "I'm perfectly elated to hear it!" 

"Man! Pah! That is no man," Aunt Ainsley objected fussily. 

"He's certainly no troll, my Lady," Sir Thaddeus replied.

"That is good news," Rose spoke only once she was sure her voice could maintain an even pitch. She did not take notice of the huskiness of her speech, and convinced herself that neither did they.

Aunt Ainsley's verbiage wasn't without some truth. Rose did feel affection for Jules, though no more than one would with a stray mongrel you occasionally tossed your scraps toward. Always being careful to keep your distance, for mongrels could bite.

Some didn't know they had been bitten until it was too late.

"And… indicative of his sense for survival, and perhaps even his place within the beasts' tribe," she went on, self-conscious of how much she perceived herself to be talking. Sir Thaddeus nodded encouragingly. 

"Yes, it is, isn't it? And to think of him as being without one's basic resources. I believe he may be a year or two older than you, Lady Rose, though you may have already deduced this from your conversations. I understand it is you he spends most of his time with, isn't it?"

"N-not really." She answered without any conviction. "It is Eustace, our page boy, who is his formal guide. I assigned him to Jules' care."

"Though Rose is managing his care at my request," the Lord added. "He's as much Rose's project as he is mine. Isn't he just as much yours, Rose?"

Her forehead wasn't throbbing, but something else might've been. Rose mumbled an affirmative. 

"Now, isn't his speech fabulously fluent for one who has lived among those monsters? I find that most curious. Do you have any theories as to that?" The Lord wondered.

"Oh, yes, because that's what's important — that he's a potential bard," Aunt Ainsley snarked. 

Ignoring her (not for the first time), the Lord asked again, "How do you suppose he knows the Plaintongue so well, good sir?" 

"Did you know he speaks the Trolltongue, too, Father? Eustace has heard him. Eustace says he can switch between the two without even stopping to think about it. Isn't he something?" She commented, dreamily. 

The Lord giggled boyishly. "How marvellous! What a neat trick!"

"This suggests intelligence," the doctor said supportively. "Certainly, it demonstrates a great capacity for learning that he should know more than one tongue, and to transition so easily between them—"

"But the Plaintongue, being the one, true tongue," the Lord butted in pompously, "he must have known the Common-living, once, to be so well acquainted with it. Yes?"

"He did speak of his mother and father to me. His birthparents," Sir Thaddeus circumspectly revealed.

Intrigue sank its fangs into Rose. "What of them?"

"Not much, my Lady. Only that he did live with them for some time, before he was taken... or adopted, as he puts it, by the cave-folk. I would assume he stayed with his parents or other Commoners long enough to know our tongue as well as he does, as our Lord suggests. Though he claims to have left his birth village before meeting the trolls," Sir Thaddeus noted. "This period between was not discussed."

"To have two Tongues at your disposal is most advantageous in any situation," the Lord pontificated, "but the Trolltongue — no Commoner's ears have ever heard such music. I'll have to ask him to recite a few lines. Perhaps he could be our dinner entertainment!"

"The beast is lucky he still has a tongue in his mouth!" Aunt Ainsley yelled. "I would order it to be carved out the second he dared to mouth off to me. Which he has!" 

"Really? When?"

Aunt Ainsley pulled a face at her niece, annoyed by how delighted the young woman was with the idea.

"Never you mind when, you imp. Will you listen to yourselves? The banality of those beasts will have polluted any real intelligence he might have once had. This animal is no more intelligent than a hog in a sty, or worse, his is a dangerous intelligence, one to be used against us," she suggested sourly.

"His name is Jules," Rose corrected firmly. Aunt Ainsley glared at her. Rose's visions, however troubling, however thrilling, had filled her with a powerful, protective drive for the rogue, and she returned the heat in her eyes as solidly as she received it.

"Let us hear your theories as to his condition, doctor," the Lord said, breaking aunt and niece apart from their furious exchange. "There has been too much talk among my staff, which I have traced back to my Guard. These ideas were not doubt seeded by my associate, the Lord Muchty, from the night of our travels from the mountains. Lord Muchty is many things, but a medicine man he is not! I trust your professionalism before I'd take his word for it. Please share, with undiluted honesty, what you think is going on here."

"Well..."

Sir Thaddeus' gaze swept across the trio, assessing their beliefs, their suspicions, their agendas. He couldn't predict their reactions any better than he could the future. It was some comfort that the Lord and Lady Rose had a vested interest in keeping Jules alive, but Aunt Ainsley... 

Could he say enough of anything to change the boy's fate? He could modify their view of him, but what of the rest of the World?

"It could be the transition to a new diet," he offered, charring his pride; to shield the truth, his conclusions had to sound so basic, so ineffective. There was nothing rational or average about the properties of Jules' illness. They knew it as well as he did. Aunt Ainsley's subsequent rant about Cosgrach's excellence in delivering only the finest of cuisine went largely unheard.

"It could be sensitivities or intolerances to certain types of foods he is unused to. But I have treated these ailments before in Commoners, and I've never known a case as terrible as his. His flatulence is unlike anything I've ever seen in any human — the frequency is staggering to behold, and the potency is... well, I dare say I do not need to tell you all about it. Was he... in here, recently, by any chance? Or does the smell normally permeate the castle as widely as this?"

"Don't make it so by suggesting it." Aunt Ainsley wrinkled her nose, her disgust deepening as the doctor continued sharing his assessment.

Rose was hooked on every word for the wrong reasons.

She had intended to listen with a scientific interest. (Now, she would settle for even a neutral one.) That had been her mission. That was why she fought to sit with Father and Aunt Ainsley on this day — who wanted to spend hours being whimpered at by the villagers? She needed to be there, to absorb everything the physician had to say about Jules. To catch what Father would invariably miss. She had to, for his and Father's sake. It was critical that she listen.

Enjoying it wasn't a requirement. No one would be expected to, given the gruesomeness of its content. 

Yet... she was.

She was afraid of just how thoroughly she was sponging it up. She was sweating to a degree that was just absurd — moistening the fine little hairs on her neck, lathering her spine in her natural oils. Meanwhile, her heart bashed frantically against her ribs. Listening to the physician's findings, she felt she was going wild with elation and desire.

"Most curiously, I would expect him to be more… well, more swollen," Sir Thaddeus said. "His stomach is full of gas, always churning, always producing—"

"Yes, you can hear it whenever you are in his presence, can't you?"

The offhanded delivery of her Father's observation made Rose's fingers grope for the rounded edge of the chair's arm.

It is not his scent that excites you.

"But it isn't half as well-reflected on the outside." Sir Thaddeus had sounded very faraway to Rose, at the start. Now his voice out-thundered the brutal activity of the skies. "Certainly, it is not natural, whatever it is. It causes him a great deal of pain to hold so much air, for he has just as much pressure but not half as much room as needed to evenly disperse it. If you were to imagine filling a sack with thrice as much as the sack was ever designed to carry, yet it never strained at the seams! All of it is condensed inside, to a crippling extent. Each emission only makes a short-lived dent in it, for more is always on the way! It is a strange mechanism, one I can't claim to have seen before in a man. And I believe lunch is right around the corner, so I'll refrain from detailing the irregularities of his other excretions."

"You've truly spared us," Aunt Ainsley grumbled ironically, stifling a sickly belch.

The storm tested the sturdiness of the Chamber's prehistoric structure. Nature was determined to pound their extravagant dwelling to a pulp. The veil occluded all of it. Rose yielded to the trance, nose-diving into the flames of her soul. Her skin felt as though it had shrunk two sizes too small; her lust compressed her, constricted her, squeezed her with such vehemence that all those hidden folds of hers were sure to ooze out. She pined, she ached, she hungered. The daughter of a Lord, the sole heir to all his fame and riches, and here she was, wanting.

Succumb, succumb, succumb!

"In other words, my Lord, I do not have the expertise to comment too certainly on it. I would be tempted to call it a birth defect and nothing more, but his condition defies all physiologic understanding. At least from a Common perspective. Which brings me to my final theory."

Had she been more awake, Rose may have seen what her elders failed to clock in the physician suddenly clamming up, as though stricken with stage fright.

"When you're ready, Sir," the Lord graciously prompted.

"I believe Lord Muchty is onto something." Sir Thaddeus did not broadcast this deduction. His impartiality fluctuated; his distress diminished him. Had it not been for a lull in the tempest and the stately acoustics of the Chamber, he would have been ordered to speak up. "Yes, I... I suspect he has developed this condition from his time spent with the trolls, my Lord."

"Didn't I tell you!" Aunt Ainsley exploded. "Didn't I protest! Still, you invited it in here, to live and breathe among us! You twit!"

"Oh, dear," the Lord said, feebly. "What a pity." 

Rose was utterly crestfallen. "He… he is ill?" 

"In a sense, yes. It could be the environment, or something in their food that has altered him, rather than a disease as we know it. He shows no signs of the condition manifesting elsewhere in his physiology; it's confined to his stomach. And I have no reason to think it would, or could, spread," Sir Thaddeus told her. Yet he sounded weary, near enough hopeless.

"For now," Aunt Ainsley said, wagging a finger. "For now, doctor! Who knows what it could turn into, if given the time? And my brother here seems to be allowing him all the time he needs to ruin us!"

"You don't know that," Rose challenged lamely. She had to say something, seeing that her Father clearly could not find the courage to do so. She hadn't the presence of mind yet to construct a more noteworthy argument. 

"Sir Thaddeus, speak plainly. Fear not the consequence of your words. Has my brother invited a plague upon us?" 

"My Lady, that is not something I can soundly verify at this stage—"

"We must warn Campion! Evacuate the castle and Court! Rid our World of that hideous man, so our mistake may not be repeated by another!" 

That one, solitary word wrested Rose into the present, shattering the rose-tinted glass and tearing away the veil with absolute finality.

"Father, no! Listen to her not!"

"You stay out of this, puck!"

"I cannot truthfully answer that, my Lady, and to speculate would only generate unnecessary fear!" Sir Thaddeus raced to deliver his verdict, to drown out Lady Ainsley's speech. He feared eavesdroppers in the hallways — the Knights, or even some of the villagers. It could not break the confinement of the castle. Jules wouldn't stand a chance if it did. "I am sure we do not wish to cause unnecessary panic and put a social blight on Campion's image."

"Certainly not! Campion must not suffer for my mistake!" The Lord's majestic timbre trembled. "What do you advise we do, good Sir? How do we mend this?"

"I am not sure you will approve, my Lord. Plans have already been put in place for the rogue, it seems."

"Adjustments can be made," the Lord claimed.

"Oh, they certainly can," Aunt Ainsley said darkly.

"Then I advise you to relinquish him at once."

An arrowhead of fear spiked Rose's heart. "Father, we can't! We mustn't!"

"Just let the beast go? Like he's a hornet trapped in a jam jar?" Aunt Ainsley squawked.

"If your fear is of his illness spreading, then return him to the mountain range before the sickness has the chance," Sir Thaddeus advised the Lord and Ladies. "You can carry out a thorough detoxification of the castle and monitor your staff and people for symptoms. Though if it was going to spread, I would have expected to see some signs by now, and no one has reported any to me."

"He should be killed, not returned to those monsters! What if he breeds with them? And think of all he has witnessed and learned already. He might have been scouting for weak spots in our parameter! He could come back with those beasts and overthrow us!" 

"Father, you can't let him go! Jules is too... singular in his situation. There cannot be any other like him in this World. To think of losing such an opportunity..."

"I should hope he was alone in his depravity!" Aunt Ainsley cried.

"To think of letting him go all because he… is disorderly, and... offends the senses." Not all of them, huh, Rosie? the veil teased. She flushed, but pressed on furiously, "You said yourself, he knows no better! No one else has ever spent so much time with these creatures. He knows their Tongue! He could translate for us! Think of what else he could tell us, how we could learn from them!"

"My Lord, what is there to learn of or from the trolls, really?" Sir Thaddeus posited. Rose's fearsome look was intended to silence him, and was nearly successful. "They have left us alone for as long as even our oldest elders can recall. If I may speak freely, I have never agreed with our desire to meddle."

"They're merely biding their time, you fool!" 

"Yet you profess they lack the intelligence to do so!" Rose snarled at her aunt. "They're either dumb as rocks, or plotting our demise! Which is it?"

"We have to be prepared for all eventualities," Aunt Ainsley answered evasively. Her unfeeling eyes scanned each of them, and she was disgusted with the blind ignorance that stared back. "Have none of you thought about what this means? Has it occurred to any of you that this might not be a coincidence, a chance happenstance? That the trolls might have sent him to us on purpose?"

"With what purpose?" The Lord asked, trying to sand the edge off the sombreness. "To arrange a date for afternoon tea?"

"To serve them as an agent, dear brother. As a spy."

Even Rose quieted.

"It makes no sense to war with them," Sir Thaddeus spoke into the eerie silence. "All because of this one misfit. He has lived with them since boyhood, and they haven't harmed him yet. If anything, his health suggests they have cared for him. Perhaps they even... loved him."

"Doctor, are you hearing yourself?" 

Sir Thaddeus soldiered through Aunt Ainsley's cackles, though they bounced off the stone walls, closing in all around him.

"He is uncouth and frequently unpleasant, but he is not a thug, my Lady," he said evenly.

"He's right, Father—" 

"He's deluded, Douglas! Do not listen to this balderdash!"

"ENOUGH." This rare demonstration of his authority astounded them all. No one dared to even breathe audibly. "Goodness, if only our banquet conversations were as lively as this! This — this is not a decision one can make in a single afternoon, you understand. Before I say anything else, I must consult with my trusted advisors."

Rose and Aunt Ainsley found common ground by groaning at this.

"What do they know?" His daughter complained. 

"Your advisors know nothing of this," Aunt Ainsley added. "They have the privilege of being removed from this; they are so caught up in their own affairs. Have any of them even come down from the tower to lay eyes on him?"

"Then they shall learn, girls. Doctor, will you visit me in the advisor's suite after joining us for dinner? Each of us can pick your brain, then, should you be so kind as to listen."

"I shall do whatever you ask of me, my Lord." Grateful for a chance to escape, Sir Thaddeus thumbed over his shoulder. "I have notes to refine. May I...?"

"Yes, yes. Off you pop!" The Lord chuckled. "Oh — but wait!" He ushered him back. "What of his belongings? The satchel the Knights took from his quarters. Didn't you say there were unusual contents?"

Eventually, Sir Thaddeus came to his senses and turned back. He nodded once, thumbing his glasses back up his nose.

"That's right. Herbs and roots, as it turns out. I thought they might be irregular, but they are all natural. I believe he was making rudimentary salves from them, or perhaps they were for sustenance. None of it is poisonous. I see no harm in returning it to him; they will have started to decompose by now, anyway. I hope you don't mind my doing so, Lady Rose, but I left it in your quarters until we had the Lord's permission to return it."

"Well, if that's the case, I see no harm," the Lord said. "But I'll leave that up to you, shall I, Rose?"

Rose didn't answer. Sir Thaddeus' small eyes were exploring her face, brimming with a respect forever absent in Aunt Ainsley's, but there was more to it than only recognition of her position in the castle. They appealed to her, entreated her to... understand. He bowed to her and her alone. Unseen hands pulled open the doors from the other side as he approached.

The Lord slapped a knee. "Goodness, that was riveting, wasn't it? How about some tea before we carry on here?"

"You can't kill Jules, Father. You must promise me you won't."

Shocked by the sorrow in her voice, the Lord looked upon her sympathetically. "Oh, my Rose! You're unwell!" He pressed a hand to her forehead and cooed lovingly as he attempted, poorly, to fix her hair. "This business has certainly shaken you, hasn't it, petal? Maybe this was a step too far, too soon..."

Rose couldn't find the gall to protest, nor could she look at him. Neither would Aunt Ainsley.

"I cannot believe the pair of you. Willing to put your authority and social standing at risk for the sake of learning about the lifestyles of these bottom-feeders. They breed, they kill, they spread disease. That's all there is to them. And now they're spreading it to us!"

"Ainsley, for Merlin's sake, how many times must I tell you that it is not so simple—"

"And for you — yet to prove your worth and to make your mark, to support this!" The widow fumed at her niece, and Rose loathed herself for being startled by something she ought to have been used to by now.

"Ainsley," the Lord warned.

"To show more interest in that freak than you've ever shown in any of our lessons. I do not understand your motivation, but I do understand one thing, girl. You're turning out to be as big an ass as she was!"

"That's quite enough, Ainsley!" His eyes burned her, and turned to Rose only once they had cooled again. "Rose, my dear, sweet child, something of this magnitude cannot be dealt with rashly. I have no reason to wish harm upon the beast, and you know my feelings on needless warfare."

"Jules."

"Pardon?"

"His name is Jules. Please call him Jules, Father," Rose whispered. Her eyes were dewy, but they did not break away from his. 

"Yes, yes... er, Jules. Nothing will be decided until the assembly at the harvest moon. He was captured by my and the Lord Muchty's men. I can discuss the hind legs off it with my noblemen, but this is his decision as much as it is mine."

"Too right," Aunt Ainsley chimed arrogantly. 

That's what I'm afraid of, Father.

"But he lives with us," Rose insisted. "Lord Muchty has no idea what Jules is like. You and he both, Aunt Ainsley. You have this impression of him that we now know isn't true. Jules hasn't hurt anyone. No one has fallen ill on account of him. Without proof, none can attest otherwise. These rumors have not a grain of truth. To kill him simply because he's strange is nothing short of sinful. For all his crudeness, he lives peacefully among us."

"Peacefully! I can't remember the last time I had a decent kip, knowing he is so close. Or enjoyed a meal! For sooner or later, you catch whiff of him, and your stomach curdles like milk left in the sun! None of us can rest easy. Surely you hear how the staff talk, Douglas. Not only do they fear him turning on us, for that wildness has imbued him with a penchant to be perilously unpredictable, but they feel they are being toyed with. I can't blame them: I know about as much as they do! How much longer can you keep us in the dark as to your intent?"

"Father," Rose's interrogation was gentler, "what is your intent?"

The Lord stared listlessly out into a morning that could have easily been mistaken for midnight. A spindly branch clawed against the glass, as though beseeching them to let it take shelter with them.

"I believe we have something to gain from him," he mused. "Whether it be a confirmation of this new strain of sickness — in which case, it is in the best interest of the kingdom, not only Campion, to share what we know.... or a greater understanding of the ways of the cave-folk. We all know how bare the texts are on that. There is something to be gained. Though... perhaps you're right, Ainsley..."

Once frantic, Rose's heart decelerated until she was sure it had skidded to a complete stop. 

"Perhaps he was sent down from the mountains for a darker reason." He frowned, troubled. "It is up to me, it seems, to determine what that is."

"You're not alone, Father," Rose told him, and this time it was her turn to rest her hand on his. "I'll help you."

By that, the Lord's spirits were restored, and he flashed a wide, jubiliant smile, cheeks as glossy as ever.

"And all this time, you've both neglected to look at it from his perspective! After so long living in those sordid caves, won't the boy be enchanted to live here, in the most fabulous abode, to enjoy our facilities and share in our abundance? He shan't want to return to his brutish captors, anyway — we shall make a true man out of him yet!"

"They're not his captors. They're his fa..." Rose let the word die in her throat, like her mother's name on Father's lips. She would have to believe it before she could say it.

"Tonight is the night," the Lord cryptically declared.

"For what?" Aunt Ainsley asked, disconcerted that her brother wasn't as emotionally spent from the meeting as the rest of them. 

"He shall dine with us. Tonight. In the hall, seated at the table, like a true nobleman! It is time he enjoys a real feast, don't you think?"

He was as giddy as a child.

"Oh — er, are you sure, Father? I thought we were going to wait, and introduce him at a smaller gathering," Rose supplicated.

"You're out of your mind," Aunt Ainsley chuckled lifelessly. "You've actually lost it, this time. Well and truly."

"Hardly not!" The Lord huffed.

"I'm not coming, Douglas."

"You won't be missed," Rose jibed. Her Father looked at her crossly. "I mean, with Jules and the doctor joining us, it'll be a crowd enough."

Aunt Ainsley's mouth slowly stretched in a smile that showed too many teeth.

"Then perhaps I will come, Rosalie. Just to see how you tolerate your pet's ill manners. After all, isn't his behavior a direct reflection of your guidance, your shaping? As far as I'm concerned, he is as much your responsibility as he is your Father's — if it fails, it fails because of you two. I'm taking nothing to do with him. May the stars be my witness to that."

"You will come because I'm your big brother, and I said so," the Lord jested. He playfully shoved Rose out of her chair. "Go tell Eustace to prepare Jules for this evening. I suspect he'll need the extra time. Have him source Jules some suitable dining wear, and you can be his guide tonight. Tutor him in the proper conduct, my girl, for there's no one better to show him. Oh, and what timing, too! I just remembered — Cosgrach tells me it's roasted swan stuffed with garlic and thyme, and all the trimmings!" 

"Garlic?" Rose's motion came to a full stop. Concern was written on every pinked inch of her oval face. Her rekindled fever was too slow to add its own impure inscriptions. "Oh, Father, I've asked that he be fed only bland meals, in the interim, while his system adjusts. Is this... wise?"

"Sir Thaddeus declared him to be a man, did he not? You can try, Rose, but I'd like to see any man alive refuse a whopping great plate of meat and onion gravy, and plenty of beer to wash it all down!"

"That's it!" Aunt Ainsley threw up her hands. "I'm finished here!"

"Nonsense, you'll stay with me. We promised our people the day, and they shall have the full day," the Lord proclaimed.

"Not with this. With everything. Sir Thaddeus tells us he's never met a man with digestion so atrocious. And we're giving him onion gravy and beer. Therefore, I am finished, Douglas. You can put my name down for the next hanging. At the very top of the list."

Despite it all — the weight of her responsibilities, the sense of duty to Sir Thaddeus that she was yet to comprehend, and that blasted veil and its unchaste visions — Rose had to chuckle.

"Rosie, tell them to send the next lot in! And have them bring tea!"

"Tea?! Damn the TEA. HAVE THEM BRING MORE INCENSE!" 

Chapter Text

That immense burning disc made steady progress in its quest to torch the horizon, closing out this stormy day sooner than it had the one before. What light it cared to spare Campion during the waking hours was fine and unlingering. As the dark side of the year neared, true sunshine grew sparse. So did time. The Lords of the North would assemble for the harvest ceremony in no more than one moon. 

In a fragmented migration, the lion's share of the castle's residents headed toward the banquet hall for a well-earned spread. Rose had agreed to meet Eustace and Jules in one of the narrow servants' passageways ahead of the feast — she was early to a fault to everything, and tonight that only gave her more time to agonize. It would be a paramount debut for Jules, with a large company in attendance. She could already hear the conversation building on the other side of the passageway's secret door, though none of it was as loud or as seizing of her attention as Aunt Ainsley's threat roaring between her ears.

After all, isn't his behavior a direct reflection of your guidance, your shaping? As far as I'm concerned, he is as much your responsibility as he is your Father's – if it fails… it fails because of you two.

She didn't need to say 'when' instead of 'if'. She had said that much and more without it ever passing her lips.

Judiciousness and sagacity — qualities assumed to be inherent in, or to come naturally to any Lord deemed fit enough to serve — were being thrust under an unforgiving spotlight. Her Father's decision to take Jules into his Court had been made without consulting his advisors; in the jittering aftermath of the morning, it occurred to Rose that it may very well have been the first and only decision he had made alone, without their opinion being considered, or Aunt Ainsley hissing in his ear… or him having taken private counsel with her mother, something they once both believed would always be available to them.

If his plans fell through, it would degrade his character and his people's trust in him. Rose was not alone in living in the shadows, for he, too, lived in that which had been cast by her mother's sacrifice. The handling of this situation was as much a chance to prove himself to Campion as it was for Rose to define her leadership. 

She had suffered a personal stagnancy in the years since her death. Until Jules' arrival, there had been no cause for her to confront that. No one, not even Aunt Ainsley, dared to so much as imply that she had become complacent in her hiatus. How could a grieving child be expected to resume her role with as much gusto as before, to shoulder new duties and responsibilities without her one true mentor there to absorb the weight until she gained the aptitude and strength needed to carry it alone?

Aunt Ainsley was a poor substitute. Even Father had to know that. 

Her mother's lessons had never felt like lessons, though her daughter came away knowing she had been changed and improved each time. Unlike Sir Sagmore's masterful tutelage or watching Aunt Ainsley at work in the Chamber, her mother's idea of an education took them far beyond four walls. Twice weekly trips into the village to be among their people, to experience how it was to live and work and raise a family in Campion, and lend a hand in their chores in exchange for their time and their stories — remember that unseasonably warm February afternoon, when they had planted carrots for the Dodds? Or trekking through the forest, picnic baskets swinging by their waists, learning the history of the land they called home from its oldest residents, the eucalyptus and wollemi pines.  

Gone were those days. Rose had camouflaged herself in her Father's shadow, thereby allowing Aunt Ainsley to step up where she should have stood. She could not look at the situation any other way than her self-demoting from burgeoning leader to directionless daughter. She and Aunt Ainsley both lost the loves of their lives on that snowy evening ten years ago, yet Aunt Ainsley hadn't let the death of her husband stop her from assuming Rose's place — even if she did spend more time in her room than Rose remembered from childhood. But she couldn't fault Aunt Ainsley for that. Isolation was an old friend of hers, too.

Maybe her only.

Rose only mingled with the children of the other Lords when celebration or ceremony called for it, so she could only guess that they were more advanced and experienced in their involvement in their county's management than she was in hers. This did not stop her from considering it to be a hard fact, and resenting herself for it. Now she could do more than ascend the ranks — she could change the course of history! Wouldn't that shut all those voices up, starting with the loudest in her head? Wouldn't that prove them wrong? The reward to crown all rewards had fallen into the palm of her hand overnight, quite literally.

So how could she be in two minds about this? 

How could Jules, of all candidates, be the cause of this indecision?

And how — how! — could she ever earnestly prevent or correct his crudeness the way Father expected her to, needed her to, to hone Jules into a true nobleman so that the other Lords would consider him more favorably come the time of the assembly — when she was so drawn to those qualities that set him apart? Nothing in the last decade had inspired and rejuvenated her as much as this crass, outspoken outcast.

Could she be the first victim of his sickness? The idea had been playing on her mind for nights now — infiltrating, though sadly never quite expelling, her lustful visions. Was the revival of her sense of smell the byproduct of a secret infection? Had this infection planted this twisted desire, seeded it within her — not sown feelings that had been lying dormant all these years, waiting to blossom not like her namesake, but some vile swamp-weed? Maybe the illness didn't look like what they thought it would. Maybe it was akin to magic… of the twisted, unspeakable sort.

The servant's reedy voice floated up the shady passageway, pulling her back from the cliff-edge of a panic attack in just enough time. 

"Now remember what I said about the order of the cutlery. It goes outermost fir—"

"Exactly how could I forget? You've only chewed my ear off all afternoon about it. Do you want to sit there and spoonfeed me, too, Eustace? Would that pleaseth you mightily?"

Grateful for their timely distraction, Rose turned to look upon them good-humoredly. "Now, now. Play nice, boys. Tonight should be a time of…" 

Speech thoroughly abandoned her. 

She might have been able to forgive her heartbeat for spiking, for she had only seen him dressed in those grungy garments for well over a week. Now Jules stood before her as a contemporary might.

Eustace had fitted him in a high-collared, short-sleeved velvet tunic the color of expensive wine. The deluxe material padded out his torso and accentuated the strapping broadness of his shoulders. Its color contrasted pleasingly with a dark undershirt and pants, the latter of which was held up by a belt, and more closely-fitted than those he had sported before, though by how much Rose dared not assess. Hanging down his back was a hooded cape, much like her own.

His hair, though recently washed, remained a tussled mess; they could do nothing about the nonconformative length, and clearly Eustace hadn't had much success combing it through. As though a woman might apply blush, dirt was smudged across one cheek and over his nose. Except for that, and his harsh scent, he might have been convincing for the part of the son of a Lord.

...perhaps that was a step too far.

At the very least, he looked cleaner, and that was a start.

She reached for words and still came up empty-handed. Jules watched her, bemusedly puzzled at her reaction, while Eustace took no notice of her shock, his head being fixed in its respectful dip.

"Here he is, my Lady. Presenting Master—"

FffffrfrttVvFFfbBfFrRRRRRRPPPPPRRHHARRRRPT!

He broke off on account of the long, rasping horn-blast Jules effortlessly vented from his backside. Rose couldn't help providing a shaky gasp as she saw his cape billow behind him, the ends flapping like any other flag caught in a gust. Her thumping chest was set alight while the rest of her erupted into cold gooseflesh. The tight passageway was infused with that which brewed in Jules' tight passageways. His stomach gurgled in the aftermath, as though threatening them that this was only a preview; a threat they knew very well he could and would make good on.

It did not bode well for the evening that lay ahead.

Chapter Text

"Not half as delightful an echo in here, compared to the Lord's Chamber," Jules fastidiously complained, as his latest onslaught of abominable vapors expanded their range to befoul all that they came across. "What a pity!"

"I knew I shouldn't have given you a cape," Eustace sighed.

"Yes, well. You did."

"Making his usual entrance," the squire continued, his announcement void of pomp and circumstance, "I present to you... Master Jules."

"Master? Where's that come from, then? You weren't calling me Master this afternoon. You were calling me all sorts of nasty, 'orrid things, but not—"

"—the Lord decreed you to be a man today. You're a beast no longer, and you have been given a new title to separate you from lowborns such as myself," Eustace answered snappily. For once, he had to force an air of respect toward a superior. (Jules. A superior. Goodbye, appetite.) "You are now a Master of his Court, Jules. It's an honor to be referred to as such and I would suggest you act accordingly—"

PppHhUuBbUuRrPP-PpFFrrPT!-PhhhHVVffRRMmFFRPT!

"...might anything pass my lips without your arse contributing?" 

"Let me check for you." POOT! "No."

Rose fractured the fragrant air with an uncontrolled burst of convulsive laughter. She shielded her mouth with her hand, but the damage had already been done. Eustace frowned at this unbefitting reaction while Jules winked at her, patted his stomach, and ruffled Eustace's shiny hair with more affection than Winslow would ever show toward Rose.

"Get off of me!" Eustace growled.

"Merely clearing some space for this feast, chaps," Jules told them cheerfully. "I have no intention of offending the kitchen staff. My plates will be licked clean, and then some!"

"I don't know what's more grisly a thought. The image of you behaving like a boar at its trough, or what will happen when that gut of yours tries to make heads or tails of our cuisine." Eustace poked Jules' musical middle and shuddered at the rumble that responded, as unnerving a warning as that of a tiger disturbed from rest. One could just about trace an outline of his dangerous gut beneath the bulky tunic, though its constant noise meant it could never be truly obscured.

"You've been eating nothing but boiled chicken and potatoes for two weeks. The Gods only know what you were eating with the monsters! How will your insides handle the complexities of dark meat and fibrous vegetables?"

The thought had crossed Rose's mind, too. Over and over... and over again...

"No more of this talk, Eustace, I'm already half-starved," Jules protested, then belched to the contrary. 

"I'm afraid I was unable to convince him to get into the bath, my Lady. And being that I am not Martha, who is visiting her sister in the village this evening, none of your women would listen to me."

"Think you'll find a lifetime of that ahead of you," Jules snickered.

"I was able to procure some cologne, but even that is only going so far." The motionless, fusty air obtained a lung-crushing pressure during his statement, thanks to another ample donation of stomach-turning stink. "As you may have noticed," he added bitterly, pinching his nose and moving as far from the culprit as was possible. 

It did not alarm Rose that she hadn't detected the cologne, or the attempt of it. She had accepted this personal eccentricity more than she would ever her unthinkable attraction. Jules was all she could smell. Jules, and nothing else. Perhaps it may never be mended. 

Now there's a grisly thought, she dreamed. One that definitely wasn't responsible for her increased respiratory effort. If that was the way it was to be, why fight it? Hadn't she enough conflict in her life?

"So far-t." Jules grinned. He was the only one to laugh, but that didn't appear to matter to him.

"Thank you for preparing him, Eustace. I know he'll have made you work for it. I promise to find a way to pay you back."

"Oh, well, t-that's not necessary, my Lady! It is always my privilege to serve you." The stunted servant bowed again, though this time only to hide his face. With their matched heights, there wasn't anywhere for Rose to hide from Jules. He smiled at her with teeth — more asymmetrical than Aunt Ainsley's, but infinitely more attractive.

"What?" Rose warily inquired.

"Nothing."

Be wary of those who look to be allies, at first. 

Jules' sense of preservation may have been in agreement, but his soul challenged this pertinent reminder. When had he listened to any of these people? He wasn't about to start with some Royal know-it-all, was he?

"Well, not nothing," he added. "I found myself missing you today."

"Missing me? That's nonsense. I couldn't have been more than two rooms away at the most."

The rogue sighed dismally. "Oh, it may as well have been a ravine between us. Our fleeting encounters are always memorable, and I expect that with these lessons with Sir Sadsack coming up, they'll become even more fleeting. We must cherish the time we still have together, my Lady."

"Listen to him, Eustace, getting soppy on us," Rose joked, hoping it would detour the blood currently sprinting toward her ears and cheeks. Her hope held out until Jules' stomach sounded off sickeningly. He belted another damp pocket of frizzling bass into the stagnant atmosphere. This action only seemed to induce more gurgling in his belly.

His subsequent moan made her thighs shiver. 

"Now that you mention it... I do feel some strong sensations overcoming me. Oh, oh — waaait..."

"No," Eustace hopelessly mewled.

"Sorry," Rose told him, knowing she had set them up for this, though not a bit of her meant it.

Jules extended a hand behind him to hold up his cape through the shocking barrage that poured from the crack in his behind, as if it needed his assistance. The combination of power and excess fuelling the unstoppable current was enough to ensure the fabric would never have the chance to even graze his rump for as long as he continued to pass gas. His profound putridness attacked the limited space; with nowhere to go, it could only mix and intensify with his existing stenches to concoct a godforsaken medley. 

Eustace was its primary victim, and as he always would, the page boy acted the part. As the gigantic fart tapered off, Jules exhaled his relief, as though he had been lugging a boulder up seven staircases and had finally come to his rest-stop. The flutter in the pit of Rose's stomach, though becoming as familiar and as involuntary as blinking, was no less disconcerting. 

"Sir Sagmore," Eustace corrected, briskly waving a hand before his burning nose. "That's it, no more seconds at lunch for you. It's obviously doing us no favors."

"What did I say?" 

"You know what you said."

"He's learning, my Lady!" Jules cried, thumping a surprised grunt out of Eustace as he enthusiastically pounded him on the back, before slinging an arm around his neck and holding him so that they were almost cheek-to-cheek. "Two days ago, he would have said Sir Sadsack right back at me; I might've gotten him to say it three times over before he'd notice!"

"And how lucky for some, to only know you fleetingly!" Eustace yelped, trying to escape.

"Don't be envious. I'll miss you, too, Eusty. Might you miss me back, perhaps?" 

"Like a hole in the head—"

Rose didn't wish to put an end to their bickering, though she must. She found them to be a rib-tickling match; maybe even well-suited to each other, in their own curious way. Eustace would never have dared to speak his mind like this around the other page boys. Being of such low standing in their group, they would have corrected him in the most violent manner they could get away with without the Knights intervening — not that they were ever in much of a hurry to do so.

Jules had given him the freedom to show a side of Eustace that he typically kept tucked away. Rose couldn't recall a single instance in twenty years where Eustace had ever talked back to anyone, much less poked fun at them. It was heartening to behold this new confidence, and ultimately, it reassured her that though Jules was an undeniable pest, he truly posed no threat to anything besides nostrils, especially to someone he could more than easily act a tyrant toward. To receive and return his banter required some level of trust and comfort on Eustace's part, did it not?

"Sir Sagmore was my tutor throughout my youth," she began, silencing Eustace mid-tirade. "To call him a fountain of knowledge is an understatement. He is one of the most superb minds the World has ever known. You're most fortunate that he agreed to return here to help you, Jules. You shall learn more from him alone than you could learn anywhere."

Jules wrinkled his nose, as though in a delayed reaction to his fetor. "Quite the sales pitch. I'll be bright and early to our first lesson in the morn. Perhaps Cosgrach'll lend me an apple to polish and present for his desk." His eyes stopped mid-roll to squint at her. "Say, are you alright, Lady Rose?"

"Yes. Why?"

"You're looking a mite…" He finished this with a reference to his own face. Though, unlike hers, his wasn't unnaturally a-glow.

This only worsened her condition. "I'm perfectly fine," she guffawed. "Just a trifle hot. These tunnels aren't built to loiter in."

PHHHARP!

"I'll say," Eustace sulked. 

"It's only expected that our encounters should be brief, Jules. I'm the Lady of the Court, and I have work to do," Rose continued stuffily.

"Yes, you do. So unlike those cousins of yours, eh? All they're good for is wasting taxpayer money, by the looks of things."

Gobsmacked at this brazen statement (only one of a number that Jules had delivered), and intrigued to record her reaction, Eustace watched Rose vigilantly. 

"They can afford to be so carefree, for they're without position in Father's Court," Rose returned. Her eyes flicked between them both before she allowed herself a slow-growing smirk. 

"And ooh, how they must seethe about it!" Jules crowed at the sight of it. 

"Where will you be seated this evening, Eustace?" Rose asked, instead of indulging in answering that. "I should like to have you near."

"You would? I m-mean, I w-wasn't scheduled to, but I requested serving duties. I thought it might help. We can keep him right together."

"As a team!" Rose chirruped, and nodded eagerly. "Yes, wonderful thinking, Eustace! Well done!"

Overwhelmed, he seemed to consider ducking his head again, but thought better of it when he read the genuine admiration in her eyes and noted something equally as pleasing in Jules'. Accepting that he must have truly been deserving of praise, he smiled modestly at both. 

A bell tinkled further down the passageway.

"There's Cosgrach's call. I'll have to leave you two now." He dusted the front of Jules' tunic. "Mind my advice. Chew slowly, with consideration. Don't be as greedy as you normally are. You'll only take in more air if you wolf it down, and the Gods know you've got enough as is! Timid, civil bites, that way you can really savor the flavor and—"

BhhHAAARRRUUrrRP!

The behemoth belch sent the page boy reeling backwards with a terrorized scream. 

"Savor that, Eusty!" 

"That was right — in — my — FACE, you big bastard!" Eustace frantically swabbed at any droplets that may have landed upon him. "Lady Rose," he whined, injured more by the fact that she should find it so obviously delightful than by the brick he had rammed his skull into when he fell back.

"Oh, Eustace — I'm sorry! Are you alright?" She tried her best to sound convincing. The giggles complicated her performance.

"Bring on these lessons with Sir Sagmore — Jules can be his problem!" Eustace peeled his spine from the wall, taking a moment to ready himself for all that lay ahead, always sustaining his petulantly baleful stare at Jules, who returned it with the most grating demonstration of nonchalance.

The castle's resoundful chatter spilt into the passageway as Eustace stepped through the door ahead of them and into the bright hall. It faded as the door gradually shut itself, driven by its own weight, until all Rose could hear was Jules' stomach popping and squishing in the lamplight. She could have listened to the chatter had she tried, but her ears had become highly tuned to his symphonies, whether she liked it or not.

(She liked it.) 

"You're a rotter," she told him.

"Don't pretend that didn't tickle you, my Lady."

"It's the way he jumps—" Rose stifled another spurt of chuckles right before her voice cracked. "You can do that at will, can't you? How loathsome you are."

"I'm full of tricks," Jules boasted.

"Among—"

"—other things," he finished with a tuneful trumpet blast, and they laughed together at their shared line of thinking. Given that it was for their use, the passageway was closest to the servants' tables. Predictably, they could hear Betsy and Tamara echoing their own giggling. Rose and Jules laughed even harder when they heard Maurice and Declan, who were not on serving duties, begging the duo to please, PLEASE... shut up.

They were only a snippet of the bigger picture. All who lived and served in the castle would be collected in one space that evening, many of them having known Jules only in passing and counting themselves lucky for it. Rose wouldn't have called what she was feeling true nerves, but she had never anticipated a banquet as much as she was this one. If she were to keep Jules, she needed him to make a good impression.

PphhhBbFffFFRrPppRrRPPRT! Thhhhsssbbvvrrbbbrffrrrppp... pphhrrumphrt!

Easier said than done. "Still making space, are we?" She searched him for any fixable flaws, picking off some fluff that Eustace had missed, or more likely couldn't reach, from the shoulder closest to her. "Does everything fit?" 

He wriggled as though someone had dripped melted ice down his back. "Everything itches so! And it's snugger than I'd like. Why are your clothes so heavy? Are you all worried you'll fall off the Earth otherwise?"

"We could have them tailored."

"We better. I've never fondled my own arse more than in the last two hours — it keeps riding up! How do you people live like this? There wasn't even anything wrong with my old set!"

"For Merlin's sake, your old clothes were falling apart! Any longer, you would've been walking around in the nude!" Rose exclaimed. 

"You should be so lucky," he crabbed. 

"You must make an effort not to fix yourself like that, in front of the others." She raised her voice in an effort to smother his laughter: "And to speak more gracefully at the table!"

"Hey! According to you and Eustace, I'm perfectly eloquent!" 

"True as that may be, you have an unfortunate habit of peppering it with unclean colloquialisms," she countered.

"Now that's eloquence," Jules said impressively. "Whew! Did Sir Sadsack teach you to speak like that?"

Rose borrowed his technique of avoiding a question by deploying one of her own.

"How did you come to be so eloquent, anyway? Even if you lived in a Commoner village, your manner of speaking suggests a strong education—"

"How do you know that?" 

She was taken aback by the hardening of his pale eyes, an unpleasant focus being given to the steel-grey buried in the calming blue. "Know what?" She asked.

"The village. My village."

"Sir Thaddeus reported his findings to us earlier. That is when we discovered that you were truly Common, a human man... without doubt."

"You still had doubts?" 

"I didn't. They did." Rose's gaze appraised him alertly. "Most Commoners don't speak with that trained a tongue. Ours don't. Are desert villages more educated?"

"I wouldn't know." Wishing to avoid her assessing stare and targeted questions, Jules fixed his gaze rigidly ahead, studying the outline of the passage's seamless door. "I never lived in the village."

"But Sir Thaddeus said you—"

"He didn't tell you I was raised on the outskirts?"

"No... he didn't. Why is that?"

"Because my parents — they were—"

He quieted, gave a frustrated sigh, then shifted restlessly, wherein a wet fart blurted out abruptly, surprising him and her. It pulled his mouth down into a rueful grimace once its stench became gravely apparent. With her nose being exclusive to his aroma alone, Rose took immediate notice that it was more rancid than the others had been. Her gorge complained; her desire didn't. Not yet.

"My father…" He spoke up shyly, faltered, and sighed again, voice lowering in what Rose could have been convinced was actual shame, if she didn't still carry doubts he was capable of truly feeling that. "Well — we were very poor, Lady Rose. And my father had a tendency toward unruliness. The village did not wish for us to be near."

"That's where you get it from," Rose teased. The wounded look on his face made her wish she could revisit the last few seconds and stop herself.

"I was not permitted to attend school with the other village children. These lessons with Sir Sagmore will be my first in a classroom, actually." He smiled, but it lacked vitality. "I developed my vocabulary after I left the village, or its outskirts, from a man we called the Professor. We travelled all over together. I saw much of the World, Lady Rose, all before I was thirteen. I'm familiar with many dialects. You can pick them up easier when you're young. Tundra-talk, lowland-lingo…"

Be careful what you say to these people.

"Well," he added limply, after prolonged delay, "it was all so long ago."

"You travelled with your family?" 

"No. I left my mo... her and my father in the desert. We were not a family, the Professor and I, and... the others." His eyes softened again, drawing her in. "I didn't know what family was until I came to live with trolls. They taught me what that means."

Unable to think of anything to say that wouldn't sound painfully false, she confessed, "I've never been anywhere."

"No? Not beyond this castle?"

"I've visited a few of the other castles. I've been as far as the Ninth Temple, I think, which is as far as you can go on land around here. But that's about it."

"Oh, but you must try to, Lady Rose!" Jules impassionately expressed. "It is unnatural to see so little of how others live. You musn't let all you know come from only this one place. Not when the World has so much to offer, and you are to preside over one corner of it. You cannot learn without experience."

"I can't just up and leave, Jules," she laughed weakly.

"I know the feeling."

Rose's chin dropped to her chest.

"Why did you travel with these people?" She asked, before the silence could stretch too uncomfortably. "What was your purpose?" 

His stomach answered before any other part of him could. Pain bloomed across his tightening midriff as his gut began its babel, tensing his jaw and darkening his face, though this pain was secondary to that which was crippling his common sense. Here was the temptation Sir Thaddeus had bade him to master. Some of the heartache of his separation from his people had lost its sting, though no hard layer would ever grow over this wound; until he found his way to the mountains, there would forever be a weeping scar across his heart.

He had once been denied companionship and community. It was cruelty to have experienced it with such abundance only to become impoverished again overnight. He wanted his mother and mate most, but he would settle for something close to a friend.

Lady Rose took that shape no matter how fervently his common sense tried to paint her as a sheltered, small-minded brat.

"Nothing good," he mumbled. 

The cape fluttered lightly behind him. The smell that snuck out from underneath the fabric was pure rot. Rose felt her throat lurch accordingly; even her desire had to reject this poison. Her head turned away in a whipcrack, breath crackling as her throat itched to retch and heave.

"...and there's that. Another thing I loathe about this attire. What a bloody pain this is, stripping me of my element of surprise. But look at this!" He grabbed a handful and flapped it out heartily, swirling those invisible toxins around into a disgusting cyclone. "A handy device when you've got a backside as aromatic as mine, eh, Lady Rose?"

All ten of her digits curled into fists to prevent her from fanning his unhealthy reek from her face. She distracted herself by asking, "Is this your first banquet?"

Jules arched a brow.

"Sorry. Silly of me to ask. I suppose I was wondering if trolls ever sit down to meals like this."

"Of course we do. Food and community go hand-in-hand. Trolls are grazers — they eat much more than humans throughout the day, but we make the effort to eat at least once a day as a clan," Jules explained. 

"Because of all the stomachs, I presume? Do you have more than one?"

"Spiritually, I do," Jules chuckled, releasing his cape and using that same hand to slap his gut. "I certainly hunger as if I do!"

"Clan, you said. Not tribe?"

"That's right."

"Clan," Rose repeated pensively. She nodded. "Yes. Yes, I'll remember that."

Against his better judgment, his face reflected his deep appreciation for her commitment to learning.

"I can't imagine the smell after you all eat." Though Rose already had been, as soon as Father invited Jules to the feast.

"You'll get an idea of it shortly. It starts while we eat. Not that any of us mind."

"Are there windows in the caves? Sources of fresh air?"

"You get used to it."

Stupified laughter barked out of her. "How?! You've been here two weeks and we... I see the others struggling around you. How did you adjust to it? Did it take very long?"

He shrugged; a rough, impatient motion. "I wasn't in a position to judge when I came to live with them." 

The chatter on the other side of the door had increased tenfold. Rose's internal clock informed her that Father would be taking his seat soon, ready to ring the first of the six-course bells so that all may dine. Desire weaselled in her stomach every second she spent around the flatulent misfit, but she had become aware of its emptiness, too, and a squeeze not of lust, but the stiff yawn of hunger.

"Does everyone in the castle attend this, Lady Rose?" He was stroking his middle, like one might when trying to calm an agitated animal.

She observed the rise and fall of his chest. It was getting faster.

"Not everyone — the night watchmen won't be there, for example, the Knights have their own rota for that..." 

"So everyone will be here," he reiterated. His eyes had grown as wide and as frightened as Eustace's.

Hers narrowed thoughtfully as she tilted her head. "I suppose they will. Are you... feeling fretful, Jules?"

"No!"

It was an enormous task to steel herself against this latest toxic spillage. It was easier to pretend that she couldn't notice it when it seemed to be something he wasn't meaning to do, which made for an interesting and enticing change of pace. Jules seemed to want to take accountability for his wicked emissions in a way he hadn't before; when he flapped out his cape again, trying to dissipate the hellish cloud, elements of abandon and gloating were crucially missing.

"It's only that — I've never attended something like this, and I've never particularly enjoyed being the center of attention. And…" He swallowed tellingly. "Crowds." 

"You need not worry. Practically everyone has laid eyes — and nose — on you now. You're not half as exciting as you once were. Old news, some might say."

"Not every eye and nose has known me at once," Jules murmured pessimistically. He recalled something, and soon mischief chased his fear away, and he was reunited with his crooked smile. "Eustace said you were working with your Father in the Chamber today. How did your Aunt Ainsley take to my little surprise?"

"The smell on the chair glued to Father's clothes." Jules clapped his hands once and collapsed against the wall in floods of laughter. "It's not funny, Jules! They couldn't be saved, and that was his favorite kirtle. You might think yourself a jester, but Eustace took the blame for your disgrace. Did you consider that when you were seeking banishment?"

"Are you two talking behind my back?" 

"I can't imagine anyone doing much of anything behind you," Rose wryly countered.

"You're right. On both counts." He resumed airing out his fierce weapon. Embracing the fact that he still believed her to be anosmic, she angled her face toward the staling, less intrusive — by Jules’ standards, anyway — stench being buffeted around, as though she might with the sun in May. "I did not consider Eustace being punished. Actually, that's not entirely true. I did, just not as much as I should have." Concern stole into his face, furrowing his forehead and retaining the largeness of his pupils. "Was he, my Lady?" 

"I made sure he wasn't." His concern reminded her of her own. "Should I worry for Eustace, Jules?"

"The Gods know I do. Poor chap hasn't got a morsel of real confidence to call upon! One of these days, I'll have to change that."

"About your sickness. Is he at great risk? I could not bear to be the reason he falls ill with whatever you carry."

Jules' eyes hardened again. "You worry for him, but not for yourself?" He suddenly leaned in, urging Rose to cower back. "What if you catch it? A fine thing that would be, for a Lady of the Court, to behave as I do!" 

She had considered that, but this was one instance in which she was determined not to put herself first. "Because I decreed that he should be assigned to you." She proceeded forward twice as much as she had retreated, driving him back. "He had no say in it. I could choose to avoid you. I have that freedom."

"Yet you don't wish to use it? To stay very far away from the likes of me? Someone so repulsive, so ugly — so sick?"

"I do not believe it's a sickness I should fear. Only something to pity."

What she saw in his eyes surprised her, and her face said as much. 

"And... and though he has not said as much, I believe Father feels that way, too," Rose went on, gentler than before. "He wouldn't have invited you tonight, otherwise. I believe he wishes for you to have a good time, or as much as is possible under these circumstances — to stay in your good graces, as much as you should be mindful to stay in his."

"And what a time I'm having!" Jules cried, gesticulating mockingly. "I shall have to leave a glowing review upon my exit! Which will be when, by the way?"

"Jules — we've been over this."

Jules trembled, breaking the illusion that nothing ever boiled and brewed beneath the still surface. Nothing that wasn't wind, anyway. 

"He wants me to share all that I know of my people and their customs, Lady Rose. Some things I can part with — but what I suspect he really wants... I hope he knows these things could never be bought or bribed."

"I do not wish to force you into speaking of anything you don't wish to share." The sincerity behind her delivery must have been convincing, for he risked a sensitive look. It may have even been trusting. "I want this to be a fair exchange between us. I will not prod about your history until you feel ready to tell me of it... if you ever do. I don't wish to bully you into it, to throw my power around... whatever I have of it, that is. I see it in your face, Jules. I see that some things... hurt."

At first, she was exhilarated to see a reflection of herself when his flesh reddened, before panic crumpled his expression in a way that only Aunt Ainsley could have been immune to.

"You're only saying that, you don't see anything—"

"We all have things like that, Jules! The Gods know I do." The last thing she wanted was for him to withdraw again. "But please answer me one thing. Please?"

They locked eyes. Only now did she truly feel the weight of her dilemma. Only now did she fear this man they once called a beast.

"... are you truly sick?" 

Just when the responding silence had become unbearable, Jules broke it, along with their physical connection — eyes ripping from hers, latching to the door again, as blankly resigned as his answer.

"Not in the way you would define it."

"But this condition of yours, Sir Thaddeus has never seen the likes of it in any Commoner, therefore it must originate with the trolls, therefore—"

"I'm not like you people, Lady Rose."

"Heaven's sake, what does that mean?" Rose's voice pitched in exasperation. "Seems to me that you want to be othered! What are you, if you're not a troll and you're not a Commoner?"

"It means that I'm not like you," Jules snapped. He controlled himself enough to aim his fury at the door. Rose was not the reason for his hurt. Memories of bygone years shuddered through him, strangled his breath to a wheeze. "So you shouldn't worry about me spreading anything. It's my illness, my sickness. My... my burden." 

His jaw and voice rocked perilously.  

"No one else's," he uttered, broken, yet still with a finality Rose could not bring herself to defy.

In another corridor of the castle, Aunt Ainsley and her spawn progressed toward the busy hall.

Chapter Text

Winslow didn't care to watch where he was going — not generally, but especially not when he was packing a pipebowl. The castle's mousers knew better than to scream when one of their tails was trodden on by his plodding feet. "Well, this ought to be good."

"I, for one, made sure to have second helpings at lunch," Luna briefed the group. "Knowing that he'd be joining us, I doubt any of us'll be doing much in the way of eating this evening..."

"Don't know why you thought that was wise — you're only going to throw it all back up again once he starts," Celeste chided. "I'm on a hunger strike until the Lords assemble, I've decided."

"You are? Then I shall be, too."

"Of course you'd say that, Luna—" 

The back of their mother's hand flew up ahead of them, fingers long and veiny, nails filed to immacuately painted points. At once, as one, they hushed.

Aunt Ainsley turned and cast a long, inspective look along her row of offspring.

Her late husband lived on in their tawny-brown skin and high-bridged noses. Elegant and striking, suggestive of sophistication and authority. Not beak-like, like hers. She had always been thankful to the stars that they had modelled her children so closely after Sid, and not herself. Following his untimely death, she had all the more reason to appreciate it.

The twins stood elbow-to-elbow; they almost always did, not even parting ways during their most serious of quarrels. Luna, brimming with the same anxious drive to please her mother as Ainsley's childhood spaniel had. Celeste, cunning and seductively self-absorbed. Winslow, her Winnie, her firstborn... her future Captain of the Guard. 

Mason was only the acting Captain (though he had been acting the part consistently and devotedly for over a decade), but it was not up to Mason, who knew as well as she and his Lord that Winslow should have been learning the ropes from his father, to decide when his training should begin. She turned down countless invitations to drills and patrols on Winnie's behalf, so that her beloved boy never needed to concern himself.

"You know what you're to do, don't you?" 

"Stay away from him," her youngest answered dutifully.

"Though you need not instruct us on that," her sister added grouchily.

"Must we attend, Mother? I haven't the will to sit through such a detestable parody," Winslow objected. 

"Yes, Winnie's right. Can't we have our food sent to our quarters instead?" 

"Oh, wonderful idea, Celeste! That'd be so much... b-better..."

Luna trailed off nervously as their mother's eyes blazed out of their sockets. 

"And give him that power and control over us? Ha! No child of mine shall cower from him. You are highborns. Royalty. Royalty does not submit to animals."

"It's not cowering," Winslow protested, sore from the suggestion. "It's... why, it's taking a stand against Uncle's insanity."

"By allowing him to dissuade you, you're sending a clear signal that he decides how things are to be around here," his mother tersely returned. "This beast — this freak — is lowborn, and beneath us. No matter how they dress him up tonight. Do you understand?" 

"We do—"

"But we don't believe Uncle does," Luna cautiously finished for her twin.

Celeste stared challengingly at their mother. "Or haven't you heard that he is calling him Master?" 

The color, or what little there was of it, washed out of Aunt Ainsley's slender face. That had to have been agreed upon after she had finished in the Chamber.

"It's ludicrous," Luna pacified.

"Perfectly obscene," Winslow agreed.

"You have your uncle and cousin to thank for the beast's delusions. You will call him no such thing." She laid a hand on her chest until she was sure her pulse had calmed. She would never let herself appear this upset in front of the staff. 

Master?

Her mother had decreed that she serve alongside her simpleton brother on her deathbed, derailing Ainsley's ambitions to leave Campion and sail east. It had only taken his first moon as Lord to understand why she had begged her to comply with her final wishes. Douglas was supposed to listen to Ainsley — wait for her to decide for Campion, or, failing that, heed the word of his advisors, each of whom their parents had hand-picked. The one time he had acted impulsively, off his own accord... and look where they were.

She'll be rolling in her grave.

Her son's hand wrapped around her reassuringly. "At least everyone will remember how you acted during this. That shan't be forgotten easily. Not by us, nor our people."

Her ego, stirred and encouraged by his words, reared up and drove back her fear. "Yes, my love. I believe you may be right on that count."

"How are we to put up with this for another moon?" Luna whined.

"I myself have taken to imagining his hanging," Winslow answered, giving his mother's bony shoulder a final squeeze before he fixed his impeccably styled hair. "Always cures my blues!"

"What hanging? Uncle and Rose are about ready to award him Knighthood! We'll be stuck with this creature for the rest of our days!" His eldest sister bemoaned.

"You forget about Lord Muchty, Celeste," Winslow told her. "He'll correct this situation in a manner most satisfying. Won't he, Mother?"

Aunt Ainsley nodded at the silent doormen, who pulled the doors open in unison. Her chin stuck outward, so that no one in the hall would miss her self-approving smile.

"He and I, darlings," she purred. "Together."

Pride swelled out her chest as the staff and noblemen hurried to stand and celebrate their presence. 

Respect. Obedience. Adulation.

This is what you hold onto, Ainsley.

This is what you must fight for.

"Why are we only coming out once everyone else is seated?" 

"It's to mark the importance of your arrival," Rose answered temperately. She hadn't expected Jules to say much else — not after he had rolled over and exposed his emotional underbelly. It was her questioning that had caused him to. She would've locked into a stony silence, had the shoe been on the other foot. "You... you may wish to know that Father and his men will be having further discussions with Sir Thaddeus following this feast. Soon, we will all know what lies in store for you. Oh!"

She had to strike out a hand and grip what she could of the wall when his stench whammed her. Even one drop of this could be enough to wither a lavender field, surely! The only cure for her repulsion or attraction — she wasn't quite sure how she felt about this level of his foulness yet — was the injury on his face, heavier and truer than Eustace's had been when she had laughed at his misfortune. His shallow breaths were deafening in the dark, dank passageway. 

Dark and dank... like tunnels.

Might this space remind Jules of that from which he had come? Is that why he had felt protected enough to reveal a sliver of himself to her? Because he felt safe here, more than he did anywhere else in the Court? She considered, perhaps for the first time since he had arrived, how homesick he must have been.

Even if, from the Father to the lowest of lowborns, his idea of home appalled them all.

"It's... it's okay, Jules. I will not let anyone harm you."

"Why?" There was neither rage nor sorrow. Only a lethargic scepticism. "Because you have something to gain from my capture, and can't stand to see such chance escape you?"

She reached out a hand, hesitated, then, much like Eustace finding the will to embrace their praise and meet it head-on, she found the courage to lay it on his upper arm. Her chest tightened when he flinched, almost from instinct, it seemed, before he was able to relax.

Reluctantly.

"Because you're a guest of my Court, fool," she affectionately teased. "Didn't I tell you that once? I mean what I say." She enjoyed a burst of hope when she saw his lips quirk up. 

"You know, you're not at all like what I imagined a princess would be, as a boy," he commented. 

"That would be because I am not a princess. I'm a Lady of a Court."

"Eh. Same thing."

"It is not the same thing!" Rose cried, retracting her hand and folding her arms grumpily. "The princess is the daughter of the King. I don't know what she does, truthfully... but I doubt if it's very much. That's why the King has Lords, to manage his kingdom for him. There is work for a Lady to do—"

"If she is permitted to do so."

Surprised by the lack of snappy retort, and then understanding that his words had resonated as much as they had, Jules was struck by a cold shaft of panic.

"I hope I don't sound callous, for I do not mean to be. But — why should the likes of your Aunt Ainsley have more of a say in how things are run than you do?" He frowned. "The daughter of the Lord, the rightful governness? You're of age, aren't you? I hear the staff, how they speak about her, and how they speak about…"

"About me?" She rolled dewy eyes when he fumbled for the rest of his sentence. "You can tell me. Merlin knows I'm big and ugly enough to take it."

"You're neither, Lady Rose," he softly opposed, canting his head. His gaze probed her lightly. "I did not mean to suggest they speak ill of you, for that is not the case. I… I simply believe you deserve to be doing more than you are here. That's all."

She was discomfited by the sincerity she had not imagined him capable of. Nor did she feel deserving of.

Thawing from her shock, she inhaled shakily, hoping to be soon cured of the lump in her throat. She breathed him in. All the way in. She did not complain like the others did, but this had nought to do with that which inspired her visions. His stench was a reliable source and so potent as to be needfully distracting, grounding, when her mind was apt to wander into dangerous terrain. 

She had thought of Jules as becoming an ally, once. Then, she had been kidding herself, but now…

"I'm trying. I — I haven't always been, if I must speak my truth. But I believe it's time to change that." She lifted her chin and nodded, trying to empower herself. "Yes. I will continue to prove myself until I need no one's permission, until I have no one's doubt. Especially my own." 

"I have no doubt." He smiled; a small, sweet thing sprouting from the corner of his mouth. "I see you trying, Lady Rose. Thank you for... for trying for me. I am lucky to have you as my voice here. The Gods know I'm not the easiest to get along with, am I? I haven't had many try as hard as you have in my life. The last thing I expected was for a Lady of a Royal Court to. Funny how things turn out, isn't it?"

Funnier than you can ever know.

She did not know how to begin expressing her feelings about this admiration and growing kinship. And would it have been felt as intensely as this had it come from the likes of another? Eustace, perhaps? She shrugged clumsily and dropped her arms to her sides, fingers toying with the fringes of her own tunic.

"I'm not much of a Lady, at present, but perhaps this — you — might be the making of me," she suggested. She snorted derisively, laughing at herself before he could. "I don't look like much of a Lady, but I'd look even worse as a princess. What kind of a princess has spots!"

"I like your spots."

She chanced a glance at his face and only panicked more at the honesty broadcast there. No smirk. No slyly squinted eyes. His face was open and bewilderingly beguiling. 

"You have them, too," she stammered. "So you would say that."

"Well, yes, but if I were not such a repugnant beast — if I were a girl in your village, perhaps," Jules mused, "I'd feel better knowing the Lady of my county bore spots, just like me. It would make her seem more than this unattainable presence, barking orders from her tower but never coming down to see how it looks when you're the girl on the ground looking up. Someone I could see myself in. Be proud of your spots, Lady Rose. Long may we both wear them!" 

He pumped a fist above their heads. What was supposed to be courteous laughter, expertly masking her gratitude for his support, morphed into a piercing shriek when Eustace suddenly opened the door. 

"Almost time, you two!" He advised the pair. "I'll knock once they're ready for..." His face scrunched and he desperately drew back into the hall. "Oh, Jules, honestly." 

"Wasn't me."

It was so ridiculous a notion that even Eustace had to laugh.

"Er... are you ready, my Lady?"

Undoubtedly, the squire was inquiring because of the shock that was charring her face from Jules' compliments. "Y-yes!" She squeaked.

"We're just peachy, Eusty."

A burp tried to elbow its way in through a delivery that was already strained and trepidatious. Rose and Eustace could hear the commotion starting inside of him, and this time, after exchanging anxious glances, the page boy helped the door along in its closure, not willing to wait until it got there itself.

Jules tentatively kneaded that bubbling cauldron he called a gut and shook his head apprehensively. "I really am going to be sorry about this one, Lady Rose. Honest."

Rose heard him sigh — did she detect a note of disappointment? — as he leaned against the wall and lifted his hip, but the extensive splutter of flatulence was so desperate to be evicted that it had already begun to blare out of him. The passageway seemed too small to contain all he had to suddenly unload. Barely discernible underneath his colonic calamity, Jules was moaning with the exertion of having to release so much rotten air all at once, in a single, violent emission. As the echoes of the enormous blast were still ringing down the tunnel, and the stench claimed the passageway, another spate left him in short, breezy rifts.

"Oops. Didn't know those were in there, too."

"Good Gods!" 

He chuckled listlessly at her reaction. Then grit his teeth. "Ooft, just as well. I doubt they could handle that at the Round Table!" 

"Jules, we're in a passageway." She was more annoyed at her inability to hide what she thought had to be an obvious reaction to his awesome funk, though he remained ignorant. She could hardly keep her eyes open when they were being abused by the irritant that stained the air.

"I'm aware. But I did warn you, and that's more than I do for most."

"That reminds me. When we're in there, if you feel the need to break wind—"

"If? Lady Rose, haven't you learned by now that—"

"I know you cannot control it half as well as you like to pretend, but you cannot behave like this before these noblemen!" She was growing weary of having to disguise herself when he was constantly providing her with an opportunity to slip up. She forced herself to let some sympathy shine through, hoping she would seem all the more convincing for it, in spite of her thin-lipped smile. "I understand you'll… have to pass some at the table, and that can't be helped, but if you can try and get the worst of it out now then—"

"It's all the worst of it," Jules said plainly.

Her eyes closed in frustration. "Yes, I know. But some effort must be made at holding it in." 

"Nope. No can do."

And sprang open, flashing with incredulous impatience. "Jules! It's a bloody banquet!" 

"And?"

"Jules…" Stop. Breathe. Think. She could now add try not to huff gag to her mother's words of wisdom, thanks to him. She would not throw a tantrum, nor would she beg. 

She collected herself and went on, "For Father and I, at least, you have to try and act with decorum. I do not want these people to think of you as something you're not. Don't you see that you do a disservice to yourself that way?"

He pouted childishly. "And what am I not supposed to be, then?"

"Some moronic, asinine slob!"

He considered this and shrugged. "Sounds about right to me." 

"You're more than that," Rose countered fiercely. "You're witty. Charismatic. And… I think you might even be..." 

"Handsome?" Jules smoothed back his floppy flaxen hair and grinned jocularly. 

"Kind."

His hand froze, his grin fleeing the scene.

"I... I already told you, Lady Rose. It is unwise for me to contain myself. My stomach... it can be vengeful. Most vengeful. But..." The hand that had been on top of his head plastered itself to one side of his noisy abdomen, and the other to the opposing side. "If it's your wish that I must rid myself now…"

He rubbed his hands down and along and all over his paunch. Shortly, it gave a mighty, churning rumble.

"Jules," she warned. Her thighs were prickling. "N-not my wish, just — a recommendation—"

A thick gust exploded out of him, startling her with its force. Then... nothing. Until Jules inhaled sharply and grunted, hands still making their adept, guiding motions. Gas began to crackle between his cheeks, quickly building in volume until it flowed seamlessly into one bombastic release. It was as though someone had popped his cork. If anything could cease Betsy and Tamara's giggling, it would be this. Even if the Lord had arrived now to rapturous applause, neither Rose nor Jules would hear it over this sonorance. 

"Jules!" Rose didn't want it to stop, but it had to stop — it had to stop, or else she'd— "I didn't mean for you to unleash it all, you big dolt!"

"Oh, don't worry, Lady Rose," Jules answered with a yawn, as though gas wasn't spilling tumultuously from his hidden hole. "There's always plenty more to go around!" 

She couldn't take it. Not the sight of him pushing it along with his hands, or the effort projected on his face, which had acquired a sheen of sweat. He was trying to appear nonchalant, he always was, but she was treated to occasional snippets of relief there, and in other areas of his physique... and, more often than not, the creasing and pinching of ongoing, unrelenting discomfort. 

She watched as his teeth teased at the pink flesh of his bottom lip and how his mouth fell open as an especially large pocket of wind swelled out his cape. Her heart was doing overtime, and the tug in the pit of her belly stretched down into her groin. She had never understood the term burning loins before. Just where were the loins, exactly? Now she knew. She had found hers, and they were verging on molten.

"Stop it! Jules! Stop—"

The world slowed down, like a dwindling carousel. 

She had coughed. 

In reality, nothing had come to a halt, though Jules' stream had reduced to a trickle of quieter, beefier rips. His eyes narrowed. He wasn't confident he had heard what he thought he heard over his backside.

"Lady... Rose?"

It was her turn to lose control. She hacked up a monstrous wave of dry heaves. She was doubled over, hands on her knees, lungs violently disobeying her.

"Lady Rose!" 

His panic had him bouncing on the spot while he was still trying to connect the dots, before his hands rested on her back in clumsy consolation. She shoved them off savagely.

"Yes! Okay! I can smell you! You — you — great big scallywag! Are you quite done, now?"

"Oh, Gods!" Flummoxed by this turn, he had to laugh, but his face had whitened, and his hands now worked double-time to clear the air. One flapped the cape out while the other fanned pathetically, at a loss for how to be remotely effective. It had, at last, occurred to him that there was nowhere for his miasma to go.

He tried to comfort her from the distance she would permit.

"Oh, my Lady, had I known, I might not have emptied myself so. You ought to have said something! When did this change?"

"You know now," she answered evasively.

She would be lucky to taste a single morsel of her dinner. Rose spat unbecomingly on the ground, wiped her chin, and, groaning, placed two hands on the small of her back. She glared at him.

Jules looked sheepish, but his impish nature was always simmering beneath the surface — he was mostly pretending that he couldn't abide seeing her staring at him. "Is it..."

He giggled.

"Spit it out," Rose ordered.

"...worse than you imagined?" 

"I don't know how we're to cover it up before you go out there. At least you look the part, or near enough. But that smell…"

Like the innards of a diseased animal that had rotted to goo, then been basted in sewage. She tremored from scalp to toe.

"I don't look too hideous?" 

He said it with jest. But that couldn't stop her from recalling Aunt Ainsley in the Chamber. She shook her head vehemently.

"No! Not at all!"

Her adamancy confused him. Now she looked sheepish.

"I — I shouldn't have called you that before, either. I'm sorry for that, Jules."

He hadn't been the least embarrassed by his attack of severe flatulence, yet could not stand to see her so unnecessarily shameful. He waved her apology away as though it were another of his farts. 

"Och, I didn't mind any. I've been called worse!" 

She smiled weakly. "Well, I mind."

Even knowing, and mostly believing, that such friendliness between them could never lead to anything good, he returned her smile. Until it disintegrated into an expression of deadly seriousness.

Rose started at this sudden change. Where had she gone wrong? "W-What? What's the matter?"

He took a step forward. Toward her.

"...Jules?"

Head angled to the side, and down as he approached, though there wasn't much of a gap to bridge between them. Was... was that his lips opening? Hoping to meet… her lips? Her heart was in her throat, or else she would have protested, as he came closer and—

BbbUuUuUuUHHHHARPPP!

Gas flew from his mouth in a magnificent torrent. He laughed gratingly, then pursed his lips and blew the smelly air precisely into her face. Rose raised her hands as if she were trying to block a punch.

"Wouldn't speak so soon, my Lady!" He sung. "I'd say that's rather hideous! Oh — come on! Don't give me that look. You saw me do it to Eustace! You ought to have known I'd be saving some for you!"

That look was one of sheer, unbridled desire, but she was glad he had misinterpreted it as an unfathomable offence. "I just told you I can smell you now, you hog!" 

"And you think that's going to stop me? Besides, that's a sign of affection in our clan. My ʟǟʊɨȶɦɨռɨ could tell you all about it!"

"I find it hard to believe anyone could find it affectionate!" Rose exclaimed, knowing she could, knowing she was. "You're a demon, and nothing less than that!"

"But I can't help myself! I love to annoy her."

"Her? Her-who?"

"Her. My ʟǟʊɨȶɦɨռɨ."

Her jaw fell open — her body understanding and reacting before her mind did, that she was hearing his tongue in action for the first time. But Eustace hadn't mentioned anything about his hands. How they danced while he made those rough, clipped sounds.

Jules' brows furrowed, then unwrinkled as he blinked. "Oh, yes, I see. I haven't spoken in that tongue before you yet, have I? It means — I suppose you would say betrothed, here. Soon-to-be-one, is a better translation."

Her awe died. "Betrothed? You're... betrothed? To whom?"

"To my mother's apprentice. ɖɛǟʀɢʀɨօռ. Born Under The Red Star."

"A she-troll?" 

"I'm afraid I'm not that much interested in the men." 

"But you can't be betrothed," Rose blurted, then looked appropriately aghast at herself.

Jules tipped his head back and laughed heartily. "It surprised me, too! I'm not much of a catch, Lady Rose, as hard as you might find that to believe." His expression grew wistful. "Yet it seemed to make sense. She is my rescuer. Once in boyhood — and now as a man, or a grown beast, or whatever I am, she has rescued me again."

Yearning to know more of him, Rose listened as much as her envy would allow.

"Troll men are nomadic, Lady Rose. They leave the clan once they mature. Clans are matriarchal, you see—"

"Like dragons!" 

She squealed so enthusiastically that Jules jumped and accidentally broke wind with the motion.

"S-Sorry! Oh, Gods, not again—" 

"You need not be," Jules said, chuckling fondly, puzzled as he was. "Do you... er, like dragons, Lady Rose?"

"Just a little." She looked away. Like how she enjoyed Jules' smell just a little. But she hadn't been obsessively studying and chanting facts about that since he was five. She had been scolded in the past for going on so much about them. Those old feelings tried to cloud her focus; she clung needfully to his pleasing, benign voice.

"I wouldn't survive in the mountains, not alone. I'm not equipped like their men are. They can be territorial, though not half as much as Common men. So she took me as her life-mate. Troll women are very fond of each other's company, and ɖɛǟʀɢʀɨօռ is much sought-after among the women our age, let me tell you! The males can be companions, and of course they help with traditional breeding... but to take one as a life-mate is an exceptional privilege. This way, I can live with my clan forever. Or… that was the plan. Our ceremony was supposed to be held after the first thaw of the New Year..."

He gave a quick shake of his head, pulling himself together again.

"I talk an awful lot about myself, Lady Rose. I know you wish me to, but I think it's only fair that I should learn as much about you."

She answered without considering the bitterness that had come up from her stomach to flood her mouth. "I'm not betrothed."

"I'm sure it won't stay that way for long."

"Are you telling me because you believe that, or because you believe I wish to hear it?" Where had she heard that before? When the image of her cousins' sneering faces entered her mind, her heart sank. "Jules, I'm sor—"

"Because I believe it," Jules interrupted. "Unless to be unpartnered is your wish, which I could also understand. You seem to be someone who knows her own mind."

So I've fooled you, too.

"May I ask you something, my Lady?"

She nodded distractedly, too lost in her thoughts to care to read what his face had to offer.

"The locket. The woman in it. Might she be your mother?" Rose looked stricken. "I'm sorry, I should have asked before I—"

She shook her head briskly, quieting him. Aware of the weight of it against her breastbone, her fingers traced the necklace's outline beneath the tunic. "No, of course you would have looked. Yes... this is my mother."

"She doesn't live here, does she?" 

"She lives among the stars, now. She died ten years ago. Almost ten."

His laughter shocked her. 

"It's only — that scar. It's legendary. Wish any of mine looked like it," he confessed. "It must have been a wicked story–"

"She had many scars," Rose said, managing a wry smile. "She was something of a collector."

"I should have liked to have met her, to have heard the tale straight from her mouth."

Despite envy's poison spreading far and wide within her, her eyes stayed gentle. "This is going to sound ridiculous, but I think she would have liked you, Jules."

Jules snorted. "O-kay. And why should that be ridiculous?"

"That she would like you as you are. She wasn't like the rest of us very much, you see. She was…"

As big an ass as she was!

Another headache threatened if she dared go further. "Never mind," she whispered.

"I'm sure you're very proud of her," he said warmly.

The lump in her throat was back. This time, she could tolerate it. She nodded mutely, like a scolded child.

"What was her name?" 

"Heidi."

"My mother is ʄǟɮǟɛֆǟɢɦ," Jules told her. "She is the sister of our matriarch and our clan's healer. Although, what mother isn't a healer? If you were to meet, she would thank you for the kindness you've shown me."

"It is no more than basic decency, of which we are all deserving," Rose mumbled, knowing in the past she had been a hypocrite. 

"Perhaps. But you've been kinder than most I've known here. Or anywhere."

Rose wondered what anywhere meant for him. "What is your name, Jules, in their tongue?"

"քӀąìժҽհɾąìց." 

He had made a gesture that reminded Rose of hunching up one's shoulders in cold weather.

"What does that mean?" She asked.

"He Who Is So Smart And Well Endowed."

"Pfft, yeah, I'm sure. Say your mother's name again. I'll watch you closely."

"I could say it a thousand times and never tire," Jules effused. He was glad she was fixated on his hands, though he would never let fall the tears that scratched at his eyes. "ʄǟɮǟɛֆǟɢɦ. ʄǟɮǟɛֆǟɢɦ, mother of my heart!" 

"ʄǟɮǟɛֆǟɢɦ," she echoed. Her untrained hands attempted to recreate the gesture, clumsy but honest.

"Hey-hey! Look at that! You did better than Eustace. We could make a fine troll out of you, Lady Rose!"

Knuckles rapped on the door, and reality re-sharpened around them.

Jules' stomach whined uneasily. "Showtime?" 

"It's your first banquet, so no one's expecting much." She bumped him playfully with her elbow. "Try to enjoy yourself, for that's all Father wishes of you. Relax, Jules. Take a deep breath."

The whining had increased into an ambience that wouldn't have sounded out of place in a bog. "I won't advise the same for you," he said lowly.

"Is there something you would be better releasing before we join the rest?" 

"You're not going to like the answer." 

"Try me."

Curiosity lit up his eyes in an otherwise downcast face. Rose quickly made a point of sighing theatrically and covering her nose.

"Baptism of fire for your brand new nose, eh?" The wings of his laughter were clipped by unseen pain. Whimpering just enough for Rose to hone in on, he wrapped an arm around his midriff, trying to show his stomach a little tenderness and receiving nothing but hate in return.

It sounded so furious with him that Rose had to step away — as much as she could, in this space, anyway. How his hand shuddered as it rested on his gut, jostled by what raged within. She was struck by the possibility (and anything seemed possible with him) that it might be capable of producing even worse odors than she had been exposed to so far. Eustace had observed that he had only been eating easily-digestible food until now, and looked at how it had reacted to that!

More olfactory horrors than she could ever imagine, even in her sultriest of dreams, awaited her.

(Oh, she had definitely found her loins.)

"Oogh-oh… may the Gods preserve your appetite, Lady Rose." 

Chapter Text

Almost every head turned.

The flautist piped an awry note, the drummer, shocked by the not-troll's unannounced appearance, spasmed and tossed his stick, hitting the lute player in the face midway through a line about a misunderstood wench. The three-man musical group promptly collapsed into chaos. 

"Oh, Gods, there's a band?" Jules wheezed. "Why is there a band? Do you people really need a concert every time you eat mashed potato—"

"Shush."

But she was lenient with him, knowing his prattle was a (blessedly less eye-watering) product of fear. Never had the hall been so imposing. Never had she had to face such frank judgment and wholesale scrutiny — from her contemporaries, which she could grudgingly admit to having some previous experience with, but from those beneath her? With Jules as her company, respect, even from the staff, was a far-fetched concept.

"You're fine," she reassured. "We're fine."

I think. I hope.

Stop. Breathe. Think. Hadn't there been something else? 

Forward's the only way, little lamb.

A warm memory passed through her, as comforting as sinking into a bath. "Come on."

She ducked her head (the passageways were much more appropriate for those Eustace-sized) and stepped out confidently. His feet stayed where they were. Glancing back, she commiserated with his notable terror and reached for his hand to coax him along. She had meant his sleeve, and hastily corrected this, though not before his sweat-sticky palm had melded with hers.

(Not so hasty that she didn't have time to notice it was a good fit.)

Father was the only one who did not acknowledge the obvious. Once the youthful governor at last took notice of the pair, he shot up out of his chair so passionately he rattled the florid glasses and pewter tankards along the High Table, and an army of over-eager hands reached out to grab them before generations of heirlooms perished.

"There you are, my girl! And here he is, everyone — our guest of honor!" 

A round of weak, uncertain applause cautiously accompanied this joyful declaration. Not a soul wished to applaud nor believed the so-called honorous guest deserved it, but when their Lord bade it be so…

"Come, children! Take your seats!"

Rose led the way. The hall may not have been as cosmic as she and Jules' fear depicted it, but it was still twice the size of the Chamber. Wrought-iron chandeliers embedded with crystals dangled from the ceiling, where painted angels looked down benevolently. The Lord's table, exclusive to those who ranked highest in his Court, was almost the same length as the room, and its marble inlay was dressed in the finest cloth. Like the Chamber, this area was elevated from the floor, lifted above that space allocated to the lowly servants. 

Jules covertly gauged its occupants as he and Rose grew closer, not wishing to directly meet any of the eyes that were tracking his every move. Aunt Ainsley and her offspring were seated to the left of the Lord. An unoccupied chair surely designated for his daughter was to his right. The other diners were comprised of unarmored Knights and liver-spotted men buried in monks' robes.

There was not a single nose at the table that wasn't being pinched, shielded, or outright plugged.

He knew only one other face here. Its eyes were milder than most, though no less watchful. Sir Thaddeus' skin was a deep onyx; just as that made the soft snowiness of his stubble pop, it brought out the worst in the appearance of his stately-looking neighbor, whose flesh was the pearl-blue of a body washed up on the shore. This man's nose required no covering; an impressive moustache suffocated it.

From here, Jules was at least spared the scorn of the staff. The servants ate separately at undressed wooden tables, in perfect view of the Lord and his associates. No doubt so that they could be quickly corrected should their lowborn tendencies endanger the evening, Jules thought surlily.

Rose took no notice of anyone, particularly Winslow and the twins — no matter what they were mouthing at her. She showed Jules to his seat — opposite hers, as she had requested. What she hadn't asked for was for Jules to be sandwiched between Captain Mason and his right-hand man, Sir Kane. Aunt Ainsley's predatory smile confirmed that this had been her interference.

Not that her niece had questioned that for a second. 

"There are too many here to individually introduce, my lad, though some may be known to you already," the Lord said, sidetracking Rose from the rage sparking within her. "But I'm sure all will become familiar to you, and all will be on good terms by eve's end!"

She appreciated her Father's dependable and prevailing goodwill, and for once, his obliviousness, since Jules' reception was otherwise markedly unwelcoming. Rose dutifully took her seat.

Jules did not. The Court ogled at the last man standing. His dishevelled, inappropriately lengthed hair, his dirt-dusted, acne-spoiled face, and that stable-like stench — all laughably counterbalanced by his fradulent, fancy clothes. Eustace could have dressed him like a King; it would not change the body he had been born with, the blood he had been born with.

He felt like one of those little dogs he had once known, from that place, in that life. They had been of the wire-coated and yapping variety, and stuffed into costumes made from scraps of peasants' wear, dyed and stitched to look like the garments of jesters or jousters. They were outfitted, then sent up the rickety ladders. Reaching the spiring platform, the boldest — or the hungriest; for all of them, be they dog or man or monster, this was the only way to earn their suppers — jumped with no hesitation.

The pups always needed to be pushed.

One way or another, each would hurtle downward. Before the inexorable impact of the hard-packed earth snapped their necks, the jester in the shadows would miraculously find that misplaced bucket of soapy water or mushy, decomposing vegetation. Ker-splat!

(How they would grin! How they would cheer!)

That had been the perfect training ground for learning to be ogled at. In that place, in that life, Jules had been trained hard.

"I'd lend you my comb, beast, if I thought you'd wash all the lice out of it afterwards," Winslow taunted, replacing the outsider's unpleasant past with his unpleasant present. "But seeing as how you can barely wash yourself—"

"You may sit, Jules," Rose instructed, glaring at her cousin.

Jules scratched at where his collar was irritating him and gestured shyly.

"Shouldn't... shouldn't I be seated with the other lowborns?" 

"Oh, Gods, no!"

Gasps and stifled laughter from the wooden tables. Mr. Ambrose's closest colleagues strongly advised him to can it. 

"Now there's an idea," Aunt Ainsley acerbically suggested to her brother.

"Certainly not!" Rose contested. "You'll sit with us." She stared unblinkingly at her aunt. "You belong with us."

"Ew," Celeste articulated. 

Her mother raised her brow and said no more.

Another moment's deliberation — until he could no longer bear the resemblance to that former life — and Jules pulled out his chair. As soon as his buttocks pressed into the bare wood (his was the only one without cushioning, since Mr. Ambrose refused to demean any of his staff by asking them to clean more of Jules' effects than they were already forced to), there was a near-deafening scraping and shuffling, as those closest to him sought to distance themselves as much as their configuration around the table would allow. 

Mason and Sir Kane were the only exceptions, though the latter did begin to scoot over before Mason stopped him. Jules gave an almost inaudible sigh and slumped.

The Lord leaned forward, shortly withdrew at the stink that clung to the outsider, especially after recently ventilating his bowels in the passageway, then smiled genially. "And how are we tonight, be–AST!"

Rose removed the heel of her shoe from her Father's toes.

"...J-Jules?"

"Very well." Jules felt Rose's gaze — along with everyone else's. Though hers was austere, it was void of their derision. "My Lord," he added obligingly. She nodded approvingly.

"Hungry?"

"Only always." Jules granted him a truer smile. 

"No surprises there."

The Knights and the Lady's offspring snickered together. Rose had a feeling they would be providing Aunt Ainsley with a reliable supply of that tonight.

"Decided to join us after all?" There was an unmistakable hint of disappointment in Rose's question.

"Didn't I say I would, child?" There was an unmistakable hint of sadism in Ainsley's. "Let it be known that I never fail to meet my word." 

"Everybody comfortable?" The Lord asked the hall. His Court responded apathetically. Rather than withdraw into himself, as Rose believed he would, and as she surely would have — knowing he was the centre of the worst attention, and the recipient of such poorly-screened hostility — Jules had an unexpected change of heart. A renewed radiance. He stretched back in his chair, causing it to creak dangerously, and slapped a hand on his gut, which wobbled gelatinously.

"Absolutely, m' Lord! Bring on the grub."

"Ha-ha!" How eager the Lord was to please him, that he'd overlook this imperfect vocabulary. "Then I shall make you wait no longer, Master Jules."

His wording triggered an involuntary full-body jerk in his sibling.

"Let our feast commence!"

He rang a golden bell by his even golden-er chalice — the only chalice on the table. There came a distant rumbling sound that Jules mistook for himself, though there was no accompanying pressure amassing at his rear.

"What the–?"

"Please don't be too disappointed, Jules," the Lord distracted him. "As this is your first banquet, Rose felt it wise to shave off a few courses. We ordinarily enjoy six, oftentimes eight or more at the festivities — a selection of appetizers, entrees, then the main course and dessert, and cheese and crackers for afters. Sometimes with little jars of preserves, if the season's right for–"

Some familiar steering from Aunt Ainsley: "Douglas."

"Oh, yes! Yes! Tonight, we will simply enjoy one course, and dessert, though it will be no less stupendous. Cosgrach could deliver nothing less! You've met Cosgrach, haven't you?"

"Certainly," Jules replied. "He's boiled me many a chicken."

"Forget that! Tonight's showpiece is swan, and maple cake for afters!" The Lord squealed and clapped the redhead's shoulder. "That's our Rosie's favorite. She's eaten a whole pan herself before!"

This proclaimed fact already earned her bashfulness, even before Celeste's deliberate snort. Jules smiled supportively.

"Then I'll have to try it, for Lady Rose has fine taste."

"Now there's a view that's most subjective," Winslow remarked.

"You shall try it. You'll have as much as your heart desires!" The Lord sighed briskly. "Eventually. Did they hear me?" His bejewelled fingers made to swing the bell again, just as the hall erupted in an awesome din.

And it really wasn't Jules, this time.

The servants' doors buckled under the deluge of staff. From each opening, they pelted out, wheeling trolleys laden with tableware and glass decanters of wine and spirits, carting buckets of ice and hauling trays on their shoulders, persevering through the heat melting through their uniforms to avoid the wrath of Cosgrach, the stick-thin, bald-as-the-day-he-was-born chef, who led them in their precise formations, holding nothing but his head up, high and proud. 

Jules straightened his slouch and attentively watched the parade. Rose fondly watched him as he took it all in. The eye couldn't linger for long on one dish, so fast was the flurry as they loaded the High Table. 

On display were a rainbow of fresh vegetables, oiled, salted and baked with rosemary; fluffy mashed potatoes, roast potatoes glistening with goosefat, glossy oysters, gleaming lobsters, juicy turkey legs and succulent beef joints, loaves of fresh bread, and dishes of cheese, cranberry and apple sauces. It took two grown men to carry the pot of onion gravy, and three for the centerpiece swan.

Cosgrach barked out orders to his platoon.

"Put a spring in your step! Don't keep our Lord waiting!" 

The staff buffed and polished the elaborate dining-ware with hot rags. The world's fastest and quietest game of rock-paper-scissors was carried out to decide who would have to place a plate before Jules.

Hunger, that most profound of needs, chased away the peculiarity of the evening. Seeing the scene unfold in its usual manner, the band were motivated to strike up a jaunty tune. Soon, the High Table was engaged in their customary babble — the Knights reporting their findings from whichever corner of Campion's border they were assigned to patrol, or discussing how the noblemen's projects were coming along in the village. The noblemen waffling on about their plans to improve Campion, making the same false promises they had for years. The servants tried to stave off the ache of their empty bellies with idle gossip. Not one of them was half as invested in the latest rumors as they were in awaiting the High Table to finish being served, so that they might enjoy their allowances.

"Cosgrach, how wonderful you are! How inventive you are!" The Lord clapped avidly as the smug chef approached the table.

"Let it be known, my Lord, that though I am limited to only one course…"

"Though not one sentence, unfortunately," Mason whispered to Sir Kane, who kicked his shin in playful reprimand.

"And though tonight's guest hardly warrants it—" Cosgrach looked sidelong at Jules, and shuddered theatrically. "The meal is as impeccable as any other I have had the privilege to serve you."

"No doubt, my good man, no doubt! What a treat for the senses it is already! The sight of it! The smell of it! It is simply—"

"HORRIBLE! What is this STENCH?" One of the noblemen yowled.

A sulphuric shadow had been cast over those delectable, savory aromas by a dastardly cloud. Captain Mason retched throatily and blushed about his sensitive gag reflex, though he was scarcely alone in having his tested. Jules was universally accused.

"Don't know what you're looking at me for. Perhaps the swan's gone bad in the time it took for old Cosgrach to get his words out!" He quipped.

Until now, the league of sleepy noblemen had only heard tales of the rogue's malador. Tasked with surviving it themselves, they had never been so excited. 

"Stars above, what maliciousness is this!"

"There was never such a stink!"

"It's unacceptable! It's unspeakable!"

"Not that unspeakable, clearly," Jules said. The men looked to their Lord to correct this lowborn like he would any other, but he was too engrossed in the servant who was carving his portion of the swan, ooh-ing and aww-ing as a river of juice flowed, the marriage of garlic and sage just and no more blocking out Jules' dung-like drifts. 

Jules laughed gleefully. "That's cute! That's cute, that they think this is so bad, isn't it, Lady Rose? I'm hardly getting started!"

Aunt Ainsley swiped her mouth with her napkin, though it did not erase her grimace. "Why should Rose know anything about your filth, beast? Her nose has been dead for moons."

Thanks a lot, Rose's look scolded him. Jules' laughter died in dribs and drabs. His grin drooped into a frown, one of confusion and hurt.

"Jules has — has gifted me my sense of smell," she warily informed the table. There were predictable gasps and concerned murmurings.

"Of course he has," Winslow said. "Even someone with a dead nose could smell him. He's the foulest thing to have ever lived!"

"It is as it was before the flu, my Lady?" Sir Kane wondered.

"Well..." Rose gave her a fork a thorough inspection. "Not… entirely. Everything else is rather… somewhat... muted, except for… him." 

She forced a small cough. Cautiously lifted her eyes. She already knew she would meet those pale blues before any other. 

Jules blinked owlishly at her. 

"Hardly curious, Lady Rose," another Knight said. "How can anyone else smell anything but him?"

"With great difficulty," his companion added.

"Hardly curious? I disagree. You're suggesting you can scent him, and none else? None at all?" Aunt Ainsley tapped a single finger against the stem of her glass. "You say that as though it were unordinary."

Rose hesitated, though not for any reason that might have cossed her aunt's mind. Oh, dear Gods, I hope not. "I do not understand any better than you do. I planned to ask Sir Sagmore. Being of such acclaimed education, I thought he might be able to advise." 

"Why, you can ask him now, child," her Father said. "Here's over yonder. He arrived while we were in the Chamber — I'd have thought the man would have wished to rest after coming such a long way, but who can turn down a dinner as splendid as this!"

BbbHHOOURP!

Jules startled each of them by sharing an unconstrained burp. Their widespread shock was met with a yawn as he lifted an arm and stretched it behind his back, to scratch at where his tunic tickled his nape; his indifference stayed unchanged when several of the guests recoiled as his offensive sweat rolled out to mist them, though even he noted the heavy fabric of these new garments had created a toastier environment than his armpits were used to. 

"Certainly not I, my Lord," he lazily reciprocated.

The aghast highborns beseeched their Lord — at the very least, they desired some reaction, some show of authority and leadership. The cherubic man chortled nervously. Rose's gaze sent a clear signal to Jules to stop that and sit up straight. 

Still stinging from his previous misunderstanding, he derived great pleasure in ignoring her.

"Oh, Eustace, go serve the other side, will you!" Winslow swiped at the squire as though he were an invasive blue-bottle. "You're too slow for us!"

"Or perhaps you're too greedy," Rose suggested as Eustace drove his trolley down the line. "I'll take some spring water, please. Cold." 

"And I'll take beer." One finger, to Eustace and Rose's horror, was scraping perilously at the rim of Jules' nostril. "Need not be cold, but it does need to be plentiful."

"Uh — er, do we think that is wise?" Eustace was really asking Rose, who shook her head insistently. 

Jules scoffed at them. "Hel-lo? Am I to drive a carriage after this? I'll take beer, Eustace. Now!" 

Rose's mouth opened to protest.

"I'm here to enjoy myself, Lady Rose," Jules asserted defiantly.

"No reason not to mind your stomach," she warned through a clenched jaw.

"My stomach wants beer." He clicked his tongue impatiently at her critical look. "Did you not say that was your Father's wish, for me to enjoy myself, to enjoy your riches?"

"It is exactly that!" The Lord ignored one of his advisors, who was trying to provide him with a summary of a land settlement agreement. "I wish for nothing less than your complete satisfaction, Master Jules! And surely you must wish this for yourself, lad? What a treat this will be for you, after years of making do with meagre offerings of..." His wispy brows knit. "What is it that trolls eat?"

"Meat, as you do." Jules gave Eustace a one-finger salute once the servant had finished filling his pewter all the way to the top. He raised it, slurped loudly at the still-bubbling foam, then sighed and smacked his lips once he had drained half of it in one great glug.

"Men who have lost their way, I presume?" Winslow delicately swirled his glass of white wine.

Jules mopped his foam moustache with the back of his hand. As soon as Rose thought they were safe, his tongue proceeded to lick it clean.

"No. Men are scarce in the mountains, fortunately."

"Enough horsing around," ordered Sir Roscoe. The eldest and therefore wisest of her Father's advisors, he was perhaps the only one Rose could bear listening to, for though he was old, he had not become incurious. "This is a chance for us to learn. Isn't that the point of this exercise, my Lord? To learn from the creature?"

"Oh! Why yes!" 

"Then share your story, beast. Educate us, for the World knows little of the ways of the caves. What is their diet? How does a monster sustain itself in such hostile conditions, isolated from all else?"

"Educate you? Don't think I have enough time for that." Jules chuckled indulgently, watching the bubbles as they sprang to the beer's amber surface. He was met with pin-drop silence. Shrugging carelessly, he lifted the pewter and drained what little was left. He hadn't intended to, but the beer was so flavorsome and remedying, and slipped all-too-easily down his throat. 

"Phew! Right-o. Let's see. Well, there's mountain hare, rock pigeon, caribou, wild boar, pheasants, weasels..." He counted off on his fingers. "Those who also call the peaks their home. More beer, Eustace. And when meat is scarce, and hunting conditions unfavorable, such as before the thaw—"

"You sneak into the village and raid houses of their infants," Celeste said. Sir Roscoe's fleshy jowls shook with indignation at the laughter this generated.

"No. We turn to insects."

Wine geysered out of Celeste's pretty little mouth.

"Outrageous!"

"Did he say what I think he said?"

"My Lord, we can't listen to this!"

"Aren't you crude enough as is, hog?" Aunt Ainsley spat, handing her daughter a napkin. Luna mopped diligently at her sister's chest.

"What I say is perfectly true. 'ang on—" Jules effortlessly knocked back another third of his new pint, strainlessly engorging himself. His stomach had been making its usual racket, sounds the Court had come to associate with him — that forever-burble of air shifting and swelling in his diseased intestines — and each of them possessed an identical thought that the beer would not improve matters. 

Jules slammed the empty pewter on the table and pushed out a long and overly satisfied exhale. "Wow. Wow! Got quite a kick at the end, don't it?" He hiccuped and beamed. "Homebrewed? Mighty good stuff, my Lord! Top notch!"

The Lord raised his chalice in solidarity. "Hear, hear!"

Rose's flutter was simple to ignore, for once — perhaps because of how annoyed she was with his behavior. Jules had to be pulling their legs, all for the sake of seeming ruder than he habitually was, and for what reason other than to nettle her?

"Insects? Really?"

"We raise them the same as one would with pigs and goats in the lowlands, Lady Rose. As you do here, at your castle." Breathless, Jules' palm kneaded his chest, massaging out the rest of the hiccups. "They breed incessantly, and their husbandry is far less demanding. And they're nutritional... almost as much as meat. They're an excellent source of fiber, for example. Not that I need much help with that." 

"We know."

The little squire cringed when everyone glanced at him, and made haste with his trolley.

"Beetles are a particular delicacy," Jules went on. "Especially humboldt beetles, the ones with the irredex–irradense… uh, the shiny scales. They have this sort of cream inside." He stuck a pinky in his ear and dug. A pleasured whine squeezed out of him once he hit the right spot. He squinted as he searched for any wax he might have mined, and, dissatisfied, swivelled some more. "Actually, it becomes a cream once you start crunching 'em. They're not one you just chuck in and swallow, you really want to spend some time mushing them up. Not one to waste on a quick bite!"

The carvers moved down the table parallel to Eustace. Those who were next in the queue to dictate which meat and how much of it they wanted had fallen gravely silent, horrified by the turn the conversation had taken. Even the servants, who typically couldn't bear to wait — the Gods knew the highborns took their time most nights, only to leave most of it untouched — had found that their saliva had dried up, and their stomachs were perfectly content being vacant.

"Or a scorpion." Jules gasped, growing livelier. "Now there's a crunch! My people are immune to their venom; I'm not, and you best believe I didn't forget to crack the tail off ever again after that first time! Good thing my mother, the troll, is ever so talented. Their larvae are fantastic toasted by the fire, 'specially with a touch of slime."

A wary gulp. "A little… what?" 

Jules kissed his fingers. "A little rock snail slime, Captain Mason. And a sprinkle of salt. That's all a rock snail needs. No cookin', no boilin', no peelin'! Just chuck on a little salt, shrivels 'em up, an' then you get the fun of sucking 'em back out—"

"Master Jules." Nausea and fury were fighting neck-to-neck within Rose. Jules smirked.

"My Lady, do you think that swan looked half as lovely as it does when it was plucked and stuffed? How do you think it got stuffed?" 

"We're all familiar with the process," a nobleman with a prominent receding hairline remarked. "Thus we do not need to analyse it in great detail at the dinner table."

"Well," Jules hiccuped. "You did ask."

The beer was fast-acting — or perhaps it had loosened and worsened what was already waiting in the wings. Jules' stomach captivated them as it rumbled dramatically. Encumbered by the carbonation roiling in his stomach, he groaned, one hand making circles in that plushest area of his belly above his groin. Sir Thaddeus, wise to the outcome of this manoeuvre, took his last good breath and protected his nose.

Just as Sir Roscoe inquired about the trolls' hunting tactics — whether they hunted in packs, as many scholars believed, and was it with sophisticated spears, or did they simply lug rocks at the heads of their prey? — Jules raised a hand, requesting silence.

That hidden part of Rose stirred, revved, and eagerly established its pounding pulse.

Jules casually rolled up one hip. Out spluttered a muggy release from his crack. There was more air to relieve himself of than he suspected; tired of maintaining his awkward pose, he lowered his hip, so that the foul wind still volleying out of him had nowhere to go except to batter against the wooden chair, reviving the cacophony.

An outcry and more screeching of chairs followed swiftly. If one was seated too closely to the band to make out Jules' announcement, then the fermented whiff that assailed the table made it impossible to miss. 

The appealing rosiness of the Lord's cheeks faded. Something greener took its place. "I say..."

"We're just about to eat, you swine!" Sir Kane roared.

"Ohhhh. Is that what all the plates are for?" Jules asked.

"Behaving like this in the presence of the Lord — have you no shame?!"

Many other Knights joined Sir Kane, each of them armed with their own complaints and insults, until one solitary voice — measured, but innately commanding — cut neatly through the tangle.

"This is my student-to-be, I presume?" 

Jules raised his pewter in a friendly wave. Sir Sagmore's moustache bristled as he considered him coldly.

"I thought you said he was civilised. I was promised he would be civilised. Is this what you consider civilised, Douglas?" 

Both Sir Thaddeus and Rose glanced worryingly at the scatterbrained viscount.

"Douglas?" No doubt secretly relishing this, Aunt Ainsley spoke in a falsely gentle tone. "Sir Sagmore—"

"I heard him, Ainsley."

The Lord met Sir Sagmore through the steam rising from his overfilled plate, which he alone was still looking forward to tucking into.

"He... he will be, Sir. In time. Ahem. Now, Jules..." Though desperate, he did not repeat his mistake of leaning in. "I understand your… digestive challenges are not your doing. And this behavior was probably acceptable, perhaps even encouraged, among your tribe. But that is not the case here. Look around you, boy. You are seated among highborns, in Royal company."

"Well, tonight it will be the case." Jules' natural arrogance or the beer was giving him dumbfounding levels of courage. "Though perhaps after dining on your fine, civilised food this evening," he suggested mockingly, face twisted, "it may cure me of my unsavory behaviors."

"Could it happen that soon?" The Lord asked Sir Thaddeus, as hopeful as a child on the eve of Yuletide. 

"The boy jests, my Lord," Sir Thaddeus patiently answered, before his furrowed brow warned Jules to stand down.

"Hard to imagine even a lowborn child finding such a thing a-musing," Sir Sagmore countered. He deigned to take notice of the servants. "Do you find it a-musing, lowborns?" 

Most chorused "No, sir!" like schoolchildren. Some of the older employees answered only in the most generous of definitions, in listless mumbles, and Mr. Ambrose, whose napkin was so tightly pressed over his mouth it may have been stitched to it, uttered not a word. He wouldn't acknowledge the scholar. Yet what he had heard was music to the moustachied man's ears, that much was plain. Jules would not soon forget that.

"Eustace says the beast speaks the monster's tongue," Winslow told the table. "Just about the only part of him that's worth my time. I do not intend to sit through this much longer, so you better speak some now, beast."

"A fine idea — good thinking, Master Winslow," Sir Roscue agreed. Even some of his fellow noblemen had to grumble in favor of it.

"But you won't understand a word," Jules reminded Rose's eldest cousin.

"I know that. Obviously. I'm not a beast like you."

"That's what I mean. You won't understand a word of what I say, so don't tempt me to speak freely."

Raising his pewter, he saw Aunt Ainsley's mirthless eyes tunnelling into his over the rim. He tipped his head back even further, flooding his throat, avoiding her.

"Is that a threat?" She asked. 

The hall was static.

His eyes had grown unfocused from the alcohol. He lowered the pewter, licked his lips, and held his hairless chin in his hand, smiling gratingly.

"You'd like that, I'm sure. Then it might finally justify your cruelty toward me."

His gaze roamed, seeking out Rose, who was watching him transfixedly — probably hating his guts, Jules guessed, but his guts knew no other treatment — and soon found Eustace, who stood at a distance, gripped by their exchange, yet still artfully assessing the table for anyone close to needing a new refreshment. When would Eustace get to eat? After midnight, at this rate. When he did, would there be anything left except for bones? 

Jules' eyes sharpened.

I'll make sure there is.

"And countless others. I may be coarse and unrefined... a moronic, asinine slob." He looked to Rose again. As her cheeks fell victim to that well-known, betraying blaze of rouge, he happily addressed the room. "Am I missing anything else? Anyone?"

He let those pale blues slide back to Aunt Ainsley.

"I may be all of those things, and worse, but what I am not is some stone-hearted ice queen. And I am glad for it."

"That's it!" Those hands weren't eager enough this time. As Winslow jumped out of his chair, numerous glasses tumbled to the floor, shattering. The servants rushed over from their tables, sworn to remove all traces of it in a timely manner, for this had to have been their doing all along. They hadn't balanced the glasses properly in the first place, or the glasses hadn't been dried sufficiently after washing. Someone would pay the price, and if the culprit weren't identified, they would all feel the pinch.

Aunt Ainsley's hand sailed upward.

"Enough!"

She rose from her chair like a serpent from its woven basket. Side-stepped to stand between her brother and Rose, to tower over him, to intrude on his space the way this worse-than-lowborn had intruded on her home.

"All who sit here bear witness to this mouth of yours, and to this sickness, which has so evidently spread to your head. I promise you, beast, a day awaits you wherein you will come to regret every word you ever—"

"Oo-ogh..." 

The gurgling wouldn't be ignored any longer. It gave them no choice but to listen.

Rose dreaded what was to come, perfectly interpreting those clues written on Jules' tortured face. Yet this was not what evoked a shiver when she saw his tunic quail with what surged up from his revolting stomach... 

Breathing laboriously, lungs crushed by all that which was bulging and expanding within him, he lowered his chin toward his chest. 

"Oh shit," Mason remarked, his battle instincts recognizing a weapon.

His head cranked up, his jaw dropped open, and a gargantuan belch hurled from him, gusting spiced and stale air all over Aunt Ainsley. 

She twitched.

Jules whooped.

"Wow! Wooft. Wow! Did I mention there's a kick? Oh, you need not take my word for it — 'm sure you're all smelling it now! Gods above, hope I'm not feeling that on the bog tomorrow, I tell you!"

Rose released a breath she hadn't known she was holding, which, upon its exit, sounded remarkably similar to a high-pitched laugh; fortunately, it was widely mistaken for a disgusted squeal. She marvelled at the sight of Aunt Ainsley, who was being attended to by dozens of female servants who came equipped with napkins-turned-fans, sinking into her seat the way she had so often caused her Father to. Father's advisors were getting nowhere fast with trying to shake some life back into him, though at least the Lord was upright.

Ignored by all, Sir Roscoe slid out of his seat in a dead faint. One of the meat-carvers immediately tripped over him, and his knife plunged into the back of Sir Sagmore's chair, missing his vertebrae by inches.

"That's what I meant," Sir Thaddeus uttered morbidly to the scholar, "when I told you he was tempestuous."

Unbothered, Jules repeatedly thumped his fist on the table. 

"What're we all waiting for? Let's eat!"

Chapter Text

"All is forgiven!" The Lord's timbre could not be impaired by even an unsparing mouthful of swan meat and swede — nor could so much of those combined delicacies tone down the keening quality of his laughter. "All is forgiven! Ho ho!"

His hope was that if he shouted it enough times (and he was shouting, at this point, for none was a better judge of that than Rose, whose persecuted ear was his closest neighbor, and whose eye hadn't missed a single instance of Eustace refilling his chalice), it might come true. For the rest of his Court, there was no choice but for it to be true, though not one of them had the verve to respond convincingly, if they responded at all. 

Wasn't the meaty mingling of turkey and beef, the delightful grouping of garlic, thyme and sage, the lively music, the engaging conversation, enough to have them forget all about those ubiquitous fumes dispensed so efficiently by their honored guest?

No.

No, it was not, actually.

Much to the distress of those poor, sworn-silent servers (come to think of it, much to the distress of everyone), Jules had constructed a tower of mashed potatoes upon his plate, helped himself to two of the plumpest turkey legs, eight round, flaky pastries portly with mincemeat, and depleted the supply of broccoli and sprouts. He showed unexpected restraint when it came to the stuffed swan, but only because by the time his turn came, there wasn't much left, and he already had his eye on the pork shoulder.

Eustace had traded his trolley for a carving knife; he was the only one willing to get close enough.

"I know I've been known to give you a hard time, old boy, and perhaps some would say I have it coming." His scant portion, consisting only of two flimsy, fat-trimmed slices, rendered Jules heartbroken. "But does the crime quite fit this punishment?"

"You'll thank me for it." The page boy's hand rested on the knife sunk into the mouthwatering mound to buff the latest poisonous puff away from his nose, and more importantly, away from the meat. "You haven't eaten anything but white meat until now, generally trusted for its uneventful feedback, when it comes to every stomach bar yours," he reminded him in a whisper. "There's enough sausage and onion in those pastries as is, and I wouldn't describe your gut and the beer as being on friendly terms. Would you?"

"But it's not dark meat," Jules disputed. "It's pork. Pork's— well, pork's... pink meat? What is pork?"

"A gray area that will remain unexplored. Again." Eustace dropped another, final humble slice onto Jules' crowded plate. "You'll thank me for it."

Jules' disappointment was almost enough to sober him. "I won't, but they might," he conceded, speaking of the array of chunderous faces watching him with apprehension. He slurped his tankard and whistled to gain the attention of those in charge of the gravy pot, beckoning them near with a crooking finger. 

Two ladlefuls would've been enough to cover even the most substantial plate. Rose watched his fourth serving rain down the sides, discoloring the tablecloth.

"I like to make a little pool in my potato, you see," Jules elucidated.

"A pool? That's a bloody lagoon!" She was filling in for her aunt, who by all accounts had been conquered. They hadn't heard a peep from Ainsley since Jules' literal outburst. 

Rose knew they had come alarmingly close to ruining her and her Father's chances of ever endearing Jules to their Court, though she couldn't honestly disagree with anything that he had said — and she had some small, half-crazed idea that there was a handful in the room who may have felt similarly to her, and maybe even admired Jules for it, in their secret hearts.

PppHhHBbPpHhhFfRrrT!

"Whoops! 'scuse me. Just making more room for this first-rate grub, my Lord!"

If only they could learn to overlook the rest of him.

The day's work surely should've pocketed healthy appetites, yet the Court's view of their suppers was indifferent, with only the need to satisfy their Lord motivating them to pick up their knives and forks. Joining them, Rose jabbed hers into a wedge of roast potato, which she dipped into gravy and chewed on while she planned how to prevent a repeat performance occurring between Jules and anyone else he might be likely to lock horns with. He had butted heads with Aunt Ainsley enough for one night; at least one episode between them had to have been expected, she supposed.

In spite of his stench swamping the High Table, and that queer effect it had on her and her alone, Rose's mouth sang. Her mind shooed away all its misgivings thanks to the salty, crispy heavenliness. Enticed, she cleared more than a quarter of her plate when she noticed Jules was still longingly admiring his. 

"You may eat," she invited him. "We do not chant for the Gods in this house, Jules. Not at these times, anyway. Go on."

"I'm waiting for it to cool." He was surprised to be alone in this. He watched the others, who may have appeared to be wolfing it down, but who were actually trying to outpace the wicked workings of his fearsome gastrointestinal system and make the most of this rare window where he wasn't fuelling up that tank of his.

He sighed, defeated by his own impatience. 

"Oh, very well then!"

As the silky-soft swan melted on her tongue, Rose waited to see what he made of Cosgrach's talents. That was until the same sick captivation she had become acquainted with watching him in the bathtub during their first meeting paid her another visit.

Salivating hound-like, Jules scooped up mashed potato with one hand, gravy dripping between his fingers and scaling down his wrist, and rammed it into his mouth. He moaned with appreciation as the soothing starch disappeared down his gullet and shoved in twice as much more. The other hand maltreated one of the mincemeat pies, crumbling it into pieces to infuse into his potato tower, which he stirred with his finger. He hunkered down over his plate, as though he might actually have been aware of how much was missing his entrance and spilling onto his tunic, instead. He seemed not to take notice enough to slow down.

Or perhaps he was guarding his spoils. It seemed a given that the beasts should come to blows at mealtimes, Aunt Ainsley thought, watching with equal measure of revulsion and mean-spirited fulfilment behind her wine glass. She had recovered, thanks to his reliably grotesque demonstrations. She knew she didn't need to waste any more of her precious energy making arguments against his value to anyone in Campion and beyond, when he was making one just by being his detestable, hideous, hoggish self.

Jules shovelled in sprouts, crunched on cauliflower, chomped carrots, and altogether devoured his meal like a prisoner. The individual components of his plate became an unidentifiable mush. The band had decided on a slow-tempo tune as the dinner progressed, expecting the castle residents to be deep in their discussion and not wishing to hinder them, and without competition, Jules' mastication was abhorrently pellucid. The lip-smacking, the slobbering, the huffing and puffing and gulping and grunting, all of it in excess, all of it disruptive, and all of it, despite the Lord's pronouncement, doubtlessly unforgivable.

Eventually he began to lose steam, soon panting from his extreme efforts, chin shimmering with grease and juice and his own spit. 

Silence.

And then the terrible, tell-tale bubbling.

Here it comes, Rose thought, lips parting open. As if readying herself to squeal in horror... as if to taste the air.

His air.

And sure enough, there it came: a draconic belch, infeasibly sustained for no less than ten appetite-wrecking seconds.

"Ooooughhhhhgggguuuhh," he moaned, unnecessarily long and grotesquely indulgent. The bubbling boosted to a guttural gurgle. Out thundered a row of obnoxious farts, each earning a relieved grunt from Jules. He rewarded himself with more potato.

Rose was frozen stiff, liable to drift away on the clouds of desire into a world composed entirely of her visions, had she not been moored by an embarrassment for him, and for her, verging on physically painful.

She attempted to admonish him — honestly! — before Celeste spoke for the first time in almost thirty minutes. (A personal record for her.)

"Good Gods!" Her cousin could hardly get the words out from gagging. "Eugh! It's an insult to even lay eyes on you!"

Jules looked up from where he had resumed laying waste to his plate, pale blues glazed, jaw mindlessly rotating like a cow with its cud. Somehow, he was taken aback to find that everyone was still staring at him instead of tackling their own plates. An inquiry into this was supposed to depart his mouth, but instead another belch did.

Though smaller than the last, the force of the naughty deed blew out a piece of beef that had become jammed between his molars. It landed exactly in Aunt Ainsley's hill of peas.

Mason's beer went down the wrong tube. The twins screamed. Gasps breezed down both sides of the High Table like the seawinds whipping the pampas grass. 

Jules picked it off her plate, tossed it in the air, and caught it in his smeared gob with a neat click of his jaws, which might have been disgraceful behavior but was rather impressive all the same, since it was achieved between savage bites of a turkey leg (which, when his teeth weren't rinding its skin to shreds, he was dunking into the lagoon of gravy.)

Sir Kane began to laugh once he had finished whacking Mason on the back. He was joined by his inferiors in no time — they believed Sir Kane had permitted them to uncover the amusement they had so desperately been trying to ignore within themselves. Their amusement was not sided with Jules, and never would be. Soon, the entire length of the High Table was partaking in the mocking uproar, and they met their match in the servants' tables, who provided a perfect echo.

Excepting the oldest noblemen, and Sir Thaddeus, who looked pityingly at the scruffy young man, and Sir Sagmore, who was as humorless and intolerant of this situation as Aunt Ainsley, and the Lord, who thought it best to keep his mouth closed where possible, since he looked like he was ready to meet the fate of Sir Roscoe or worse. (One of the page boys was already upturning one of the ice buckets; if not to catch spew, it might catch that which was flying from Jules' plate as he continued his relentless attack.)

"Rose. Correct him." 

The Lord did not raise his voice. In fact, there was a downshift in pitch, where instead of splitting their ears like the lion's assertion of its place within the ecosystem, his cordial tones had obtained an unshakeable solidness that was even more likely to stiffen one's spine and run their blood cold. His voice rusted the ear. He was angrier than she had heard him in moons. Maybe the angriest she had ever heard him.

Jules neglected to notice the Lord's fury, or that the young Lady's heart was in her throat. Rose could feel the weight of her Father's expectations like chains around her neck yet her gaze couldn't meet his and grant him the respect he deserved. They were too busy raking over the slob! 

Now had come the moment she had feared most. Challenging her for the right to rule her completely was that most insistent and impassioned part of her, that sick seedling that had been growing and blossoming dangerously these last days, in no small part because of the nightly watering during her sordid, sultry dreams. That side of her she wished to keep unlit and anonymous. To the World, certainly, but to herself most of all! Desiring sole control of her senses was that version of Rose that wanted to encourage him, to maybe even... stuff food into his mouth for him, to contribute to this disgrace, to take private counsel with his filth—

No! You don't mean that! You... can't mean that.

Don't we?

It's only the shock of it, the absurdity of him. That's what makes these thoughts obsessive and intoxicating. You're trying to figure him out, you're trying to make the irrational rational! For how can it be? How can a Common man, born to Common parents, be so– well... so... 

Who are you kidding? Waking up in the middle of the night, sweat lashing, desire somersaulting and soaking your basement, with the shadow of whose name on your lips? Yes, that's right! One day it’ll tear you in two, rip you open, spilling your secrets! What will Aunt Ainsley think? What will Father think?

It won't happen! I won't let it.

But you want it!

I couldn't want that! Who could want that? Who could want him?

Just how interested are you in the freak, little lambie?

"STOP IT."

Harsher than she had meant to be — so that when Jules lifted his head from his plate and up toward her, since she had rocketed out of her chair — gravy snaking down his jaw and soiling his new collar — her breath caught at his inexplicable fragility. Her vexation deflated at the fear and confusion warring in his eyes. Like a dog that didn't know why it was being punished, and therefore did not know how to rectify it, could only wag its tail... and hope.

Aunt Ainsley gave one of her trademark throat-clears. 

"How could you forget to instil basic etiquette into him before sitting him down to this meal? You didn't even think to teach him to use cutlery, you brainless puck!"

"Ainsley—" The Lord sternly cautioned.

"That is not true!"

Jules' brutish hunger vanished witnessing Aunt Ainsley's derision being directed at Rose instead of him, where it surely belonged.

"She didn't forg–bOooHhUURP!"

The rest of his sentence... also vanished. Fortunately he had swallowed all of the meat in his mouth this time. Rose was ensnared in Aunt Ainsley's trap, led astray by her baiting, and she was therefore deprived the chance to speculate on what might have aroused such color in Jules' appearance.

"Eustace has been teaching him." Rose knew Eustace took his breakfasts and lunches with Jules, who presumably had been eating his oatmeal much like his mashed potatoes all this time. The squire had never remarked on it to her before. Perhaps he assumed that she would have assumed that Jules was incapable of anything more.

"Eustace has been teaching him, she says! Why, that makes all the difference!"

Aunt Ainsley's offspring made themselves useful in the only way they ever did with their larking — backed by the Knights, who would always be loyal to Aunt Ainsley, as they had been so devoted to her late husband. They made for quite the choir.

This trend was embraced by the page boys, who chucked choice words at the shyest and smallest of them, with Maurice and Declan spearheading the campaign. Eustace tried to endure it, but shame tucked his chin into his chest.

Rose looked at Jules and begged him the way Sir Thaddeus had begged her in the Chamber. "Outermost first? Remember?"

He gulped and stared blankly back at her.

She slammed her hands on the table. She didn't care that she startled him.

"Don't you ever listen, Jules?"

He searched her desperately looking for that woman he had confided in only a short while before now, but he could not retrieve her. Perhaps she didn't want to be found. Not in this company.

He smiled a big, shit-eating smile, and smashed mashed potato into his greedy hole.

"You bloody—!"

"Rosalie." Unlike her, the Lord knew how to hold his temper. "You will show him the right way to enjoy his meal, please."

Sir Sagmore was watching her closely. So were the noblemen.

So was everyone. 

Rose clasped her hand around Jules' sticky wrist. 

"Use your knife and fork. Now!"

Unmistakably, his pulse jumped. It could not slow to less than a canter. Hunting beyond that familiar territory, that careless exterior he always wore, she was touched by how truly lost he was underneath.

"Those tools beside you. We use them to carve our food, Jules. Your fingers need not touch anything on your plate."

"Bah-hah! The oaf doesn't have a clue what to do!" 

Winslow's twin sisters provided their predictable chorus, filling the air with their hyena song, pelting Jules with insults. 

"Ignore them." Her eyes stayed loyally on his, hoping despite herself that he perhaps knew how her cousins treated her; that way, he would know that he had her sympathy. But his nostrils flared. His jaw ground. Rose knew she was losing him. The bull saw no hazel, saw nothing but red. "Jules, listen to me—"

"Didn't you live with other Commoners, beast? Even the poorest villagers know to use cutlery." Most unhelpful, Aunt Ainsley primly sampled her wine. Her plate had been untouched from the beginning and would stay that way. This was not her first glass. It wasn't even her third. Rose knew how well she could hold her drink. 

She also knew the effect it had on her tongue. 

"I may have forgotten to tell you that he was raised on the outskirts of society," Sir Thaddeus chipped in, hoping to come to Rose's aid. The noblemen grumbled, their shared opinion unswayed by this information. A Knight remarked how that was hardly news. "Only his mother and father to influence him."

"And I ate my meals alone," Jules said, eyes deep inside of Rose's, and she saw him as he had been. Small, and needful, and forgotten.

"Of course you did."

Aunt Ainsley's contribution was greatly appreciated by the High Table. Rose despised all of them twice over. 

You must be calm. For him. For Father.

She would guide him back to that place only they knew. That place they had founded in the passageways, their makeshift tunnels. That place where he had felt safe with her.

You can be safe with me anywhere. I'll show you.

She tapped her fork against her plate, then held both that and the knife up. "Like this. Watch." 

She cut into her remaining meat, pushing that, along with an acceptable serving of mashed potato and a bundle of greens, onto her fork before raising it to her mouth. The laughter reached an intolerable peak when Jules attempted to mirror this. Rose had to remind him to wipe his hands first, and when he tried to do that on his tunic instead of a napkin, Sir Sagmore, who so far had considered himself above such banal entertainment, betrayed his superior taste. Those snickering jackals warmly received him, always happy to welcome another into their growing pack.

Jules' heart slugged at the walls of his chest like a trapped bird throwing itself illogically at a window. Their laughter was everywhere, inescapable. Enough to fill the hall. Enough to fill ten Lord's Chambers, ten castles! Enough to fill... a tent.

A hundred tents. In a hundred different backwater villages. Yet always drawing in the same crowd, each with the same ill, vacant hearts...

Mindless, cheap, heartless, ignorant laughter. Never as loud as the yawping of those terrorised puppies or those unruly jesters, or the crack of Topps' tireless whip as it struck the air, or the back of his mules, or the back of an unwilling participant, and there weren't many among them who had been willing.

Never loud enough to drown out tears shed in the solitude of the night's darkest hours when the show was long over, when each of them washed off their woes and the paint on their faces and retired to their caravans, to gather strength from each of their dwindling stores and figure out how they would survive the same ordeal the next day.

Or the animal pen, in his case.

Though Jules had been shut out from both worlds — his condition considered too hazardous for the naturally strange, yet too uniquely repulsive for those who knew his journey and his story best, for it so resembled their own — his heart heard theirs, and ached in tandem.

How they would laugh! How they would cheer!

How they would jeer, how they would call, how they would scream

"Damn this! Why can't I use my hands? What's the problem?"  

"It is improper." Rose's pity salted his wounds. "But you're doing fine. Don't listen to—"

"It's barbaric!" Captain Mason proclaimed. "Even the dullest-brained lowborns know to use cutlery, for Merlin's sake!" 

"How many times must you be reminded that you are not living among trolls anymore?" Sir Sagmore barbed. "I thought there was some element of ex-aggeration in your Lord's letters, but now I see it to be perfectly true. You are not merely a graceless peasant, boy. You are an animal, a lowly beast."

"Ah — there we go." The rogue dropped the cutlery with a definitive clatter. "I knew that was the problem. It's a question of civility — as it always is. The earliest Commoners used their hands, long before there came to be such tools. From what I know, they didn't seem to mind."

He reached over Mason to snatch a bread roll from the basket.

"They survived just fine, or else you and I wouldn't be sitting here, making such pleasant conversation," he relayed between munches. "All must eat, no? Only the Gods are above that most basic demand, yes? You're no more or less an animal for eating, for hungering, for nourishing yourself. How it enters your mouth is irrelevant. Just so long as it gets there. Now, I'll admit it makes navigating the gravy tricky, but that's what you lick the plate for!"

Rose might've let out an eep.

Jules laughed. "I won't do that, Lady Rose, don't you wo— ...ooogh...." 

He had a hard time swallowing the dry bread, so he washed it down with beer, which made it all the more necessary to massage his twisting gut. When the burbles escalated to a boil, he gave it a solid slap and belched sonorously.

Rose's nose curled, but did not reject it. While all the other nostrils in the room were desperately boarded up, hers rolled out the red carpet for his miasmas. While the High Table cried their displeasure and further pushed their chairs away from the acrid cloud, napkins and hands fixed over their noses, Rose stayed put. Her hands were quite happy exactly where they were.

"My Lord?" Jules happily mopped his gravy up with the roll. "Did I not hear that you granted me the title Master?"

The Lord was dabbing his forehead with a cool cloth that had been procured by one of the page boys via Mr. Ambrose, and which had also been prudently sprinkled with lavender water. "Oh. Why, yes I did, Master Jules. Only just today, mind you."

"Then how is it that your Court," he fixed them all with an evil eye, "still call me beast?" 

Enlightened, Campion's governer threw aside his cloth and addressed them crossly. "You're right! The insubordination, the cheek of it! You are so content as to rebel against your Lord? That is an official order!"

"So it is!" Rose relished in the panic that was spreading as straightforwardly as Jules' stink. "Not only does it disrespect our honored guest, but more crucially, it disrespects my Father."

Aunt Ainsley sneered at her nerve — and at how immediately the High Table abandoned their senses, wriggling and shifting and uttering and doubting.

"You cannot manufacture reverence, Douglas," Sir Sagmore overbearingly intoned, "particularly when we can see with our eyes, and know with our noses, that he does not in the least deserve it."

"Not yet, but with guidance and time—"

"My thoughts exactly, Sir!" Aunt Ainsley, the only one among them who could talk over the Lord and never pay a price, raised her glass to the worldly scholar. 

"You know, that's the most sensible thing you've said so far," Jules said, "and it never even came out of your mouth! At least call me Jules. Or is even that too hard for you?"

"Oh, why restrict yourself to one name, Jules, when I can think of a hundred others?" Her suggestion was so glacial, icicles dangled from each word.

To that, Jules looked her dead in the eye, lifted a cheek, and sounded off his foul horn. 

"Whooft!" There was an identical outcry from the unsuspecting servants who had been idling too close, which he had now scattered like rats in a cellar. "Oh, sorry, folks. Blimey! Where did that come from?"

"One can only guess," Sir Kane grouched.

"Perhaps you're full?" Captain Mason wondered pitiably. 

"Ha, yeah, perhaps not." Jules snorted and assessed the table. "Right-o! Who's not eating their sprouts, then?"

The answer, tragically, would be everyone. Rose giggled, and she did not rescind it, not even for her aunt. The twins possessed none of the true telepathy sometimes rumored in their type, but it wasn't necessary. Not here. Not now. Not with him around.

When they looked at each other, they understood each other perfectly. Even Winslow picked up on and shared that very same brainwave, which was remarkable given how marinated his was in wine.

It was the beaten thought of those who know they are fighting a losing battle.

This is going to be the longest night of my life.

Chapter Text

The good news was that it wasn't going to be even a fraction as long as they feared, thanks to Jules.

The bad news was, well... that it would be thanks to Jules.

The unsettling symphony that was the man's pernicious gut endeavouring to digest its immoderate repast was enough for all but two to push their plates away and, to the best of their abilities, mentally extract themselves from the funereal proceedings. None except for Winslow dared ask if their corporal form could also be excused early, for decorum and tradition denied it — unless good cause was given.

"Eh? You're not serious? What greater cause could I need?!"

His request had been rejected by his ruling uncle, though not without some minor insinuation of apology.

Only the Lord and his honored guest continued to partake, and the former purely for show's sake. The castle chef had an air of omniscience about him at mealtimes. Cosgrach claimed to suffer separation anxiety from his kitchen, which mysteriously flared in accordance with the nature of the guests in attendance. Never had he ever experienced an attack quite like tonight's, and he would retire to bed only after having prayed on each star that it should never be repeated.

Still, ego demanded that he pay some attention, though always from within the shelter of the servants' passages. How despairing it was to see that foul freak enjoying it more than any other! Stripping the rest of their right to be pleasured by his culinary aptitude! There was no alternative outcome than for his craft to be utterly wasted on this ne'er-do-well's cheap palate and harmful bowels.

(It did not, at the time, cross Cosgrach's mind that his craft would serve as the detonation's gunpowder. Later, once the dust and stench clouds had settled, he would be assured a hundred and one times that he would not be held responsible for the evening's pandemonium.)

Though wishing to take a visible stand with her Father, Rose was barely aware of her plate, even with her shockingly intact appetite. The hunger she felt could not be slaked by anything Cosgrach could throw together. She was mesmerised watching Jules tirelessly fill space she couldn't imagine anyone possessing, trollborn or not, and especially with only one Common-sized stomach available, as he himself had earlier informed her. How carelessly he pushed all those rich, oily offerings down his throat, despite how his tested innards protested, which each of their ears could clearly detect. It sent shivers down their backs. Hers most of all.

How he passed absurd amounts of gas from both ends with that unashamed ease she would never comprehend, only…

Appreciate. 

Her teeth gnawed her lip, as his tore at the last shred of gristle clinging to the turkey leg, at each crumb of pastry, at every glob of gravy and ribbon of radish, and all those reluctantly-donated sprouts. 

And it was that which was causing the trouble.

BBhhhhOOUURP!

...though the beer wasn't totally blameless.

It had been some time since Jules' digestion had to answer to fibrous material. Trolls were not herbivorous; what vegetation populated the peaks was left for those whose bodies were designed to break it down with effective efficiency. After all, these were the bodies that would soon fill their bodies.

Eustace's primary concern had been that the heavier meats would further impair Jules' unnatural functions, but in fact it was the leafy greens that were presently fermenting dangerously in his chamber to bloat him up. The rogue could be heard gulping for breath between bites, the need to fill his squashed lungs having been underprioritised by the demands of his swelling stomach. When he slopped beer down himself, the other guests assumed he was intoxicated. No one guessed that an unsteady hand was his only tell that he knew he was taking a risk with each additional mouthful. 

Just as no one would've guessed that he couldn't stop himself, even if he wished to.

Nothing could compare to the impact all this gorging was having on his rump. It had been blasphemously fragrant and musical to begin with, as they could each attest, but some Gods-forsaken metamorphosis had transpired over the course of the meal, transforming that dreaded orifice into a faulty faucet, one that leaked an infinite stream of noiseless toxins so that the servants would no longer pass behind him. They served their Lord by making awkward, time-consuming detours. 

The Lord thanked them heartily for bringing more roast potatoes from the kitchen. He had no plans to eat them — only to use their delicious scent as a shield against Jules' odor, which had become absolutely emetic, and which could not be overthrown in its domination of the airspace, as he so soon realized.

"Er… eh, best send them back."

The attending servant bit their tongue and made their voyage in reverse.

Never mind the beer and wine! The High Table appeared to be drunk on Jules' fumes — this being suggested by their teetering and swaying in their chairs, and their rueful groaning as though their hangovers had arrived twelve hours early. His abundant releases stacked on top of one another, foulness layering on foulness, with no reprieve in sight. Somehow, the Lord was still able to produce a smile as he watched the misfit lick each of his fingers, his slippery mouth making a pop! with each poorly cleaned digit.

"More dinners such as these, and you'll be a nobleman in no time, young Master," he said jovially.

"I must say–BhhhOOoUuuARPHURP! – whoof. I admire your optimism."

"Ha! We must be optimistic. What other choice do we have in this one Earthly life?"

He intercepted Aunt Ainsley's inevitable comeback. He was not the blind fool she always took him for, as his wordless warning suggested. He could see the evening for what it was as plainly as anyone else here: a stark reality check that his project would take more work than he could ever have imagined on the night of Jules' rescue.

It was not only Jules' survival that depended on the success of this experiment (as Lord Muchty had unsubtly alluded to, before their carriages thankfully split paths.) It would be all too easy to resent him for his crudeness, which even the Lord considered if part of it wasn't willful, yet all that was at stake for both of them was still not enough for the governor to look upon Jules and see the beast his Court contempted. 

Abnormal, unpurified — in appearance and manner and, well, everything — but that did not make him some stray to be shunned and derided. This was a boy they should pity and foster as a community. Come together to heal and fix. This was a boy in need of salvation. A boy who had been sent to him, by some external force... one he had been tempted to christen with a name he hadn't called upon in a moon, or several… so that he and his daughter may turn his life around, and find meaning in theirs.

This crude outsider was to guide them to Destiny herself.

"Some of my advisors suggested you be left to your own devices during your stay. Some even thought you should remain in that barn until the assembly, but I — I was the one who saw fit to bring you into our castle, and into our lives," the Lord proudly described. "To bring out the true man in you, I knew you must shadow our ways. You shall soon feel the benefit of the Common heritage which you reject. We shall remind and revive you of your intrinsic decency. For you belonged to decent folk once, before they stole you away."

Either indignant of the Lord's take on it, or too busy assembling a sandwich out of torn rolls, mincemeat, mashed potato and peas (which naturally rolled back out, time and time again), Jules only grunted.

"It'll all return to you, Master Jules. All in good time! How to live as a lowborn, firstly, and we can build from there to a more worthy status. When the Lords meet next moon, you'll be as dignified as..." The Lord surveyed the table for a victim. One was too late in averting his eyes. "Why — our Master Winslow!"

Whatever volume of alcohol was necessary for Winslow to disassociate is what Winslow had ordered of the servants, but he was not yet so fargone as to let this offence stick. His lips drew back over his teeth, eyes shrinking to an impression of his mother's reptilian slits.

"I should say not, Uncle!" 

Jules screwed up his soiled face. "Blegh! Should hope not." 

"Say that again, Jules." 

Tiresomely, he raised his glazed gaze to her. There wasn't a drop of unidentifiable mush left on his plate (though plenty on his tunic), and he gave more thought to whether he had room for another turkey leg than to responding wisely.

"You ought to have Sir Thaddeus check your hearing while he's here. This is becoming an awful habit. And I'd know about those." 

Aunt Ainsley remembered to look away when he hiked up a cheek, this time. She forgot not to flinch.

"Ha! But you heard that just fine, didn't you? Now, how's about this?"

Her glare was murderous. "You wouldn't dare, you inbred dullard—" But of course he would.

Celeste chose this time to force her presence upon her cousin, who considered herself cruelly robbed of a prime opportunity to listen to Jules' explosive emissions (not that she could ever not hear it, even when engaged in conversation with another, and not that it would be his last). She had rolled up her napkin and tossed it over her uncle and mother, where it fell in the puddle of gravy on Rose's plate, splashing her front.

"Nice aim," Rose mocked.

"You know he must be bad," Celeste ruthlessly scanned what was left, "if he's put you off your food. Hm?"

"Just as well, I'd say. You're looking heftier than ever these days, Rosie-posie. Perhaps Daddy needs to buy you a new mirror."

"Exactly what I was thinking, Luna. Like a pig. You and the bea—Jules," the elder twin corrected, after glancing at her oblivious uncle, though it clearly hurt her to do so, and though it was clearly needless given his short attention span. "Are a perfect match."

"Not two peas in a pod — two pigs in a pen!" 

"Fat like a pig?" Winslow joined his sisters' huddle, dropping his voice only enough to miss the elders' ears. "Or fat like her mother?" 

Rose vaulted over her Father to grab Winslow by the lapels and shake him and break his neck the way his hounds killed rabbits in the wood. They made it look easy enough. 

She would have succeeded, had the yell not arrested her. It was not the anger in it that sealed her mid-lunge; it was the rare and heavenly sound of someone else rushing to her defence. 

"Oi! I'll have you three gutless gits know that your Lady looks—!"

A piece of something or other had stuck in Sir Thaddeus' throat, as one nobleman alerted the table. Most were too stupefied to learn that one among them had continued eating through this to intervene. Two servants came to his aid (Sir Sagmore merely stared as though it were an offence that Thaddeus could draw so much attention to himself), but the doctor swiftly sorted himself out, though not a second before Jules had looked over and read his message.

The blond's hackles lay flat at the unvoiced words of caution. He resentfully quieted while the twins and their brother snickered in his ears. He understood why it was to be so, that he should stay separated, the onlooker. Be the outcast he was born to be. It did not mean he had to agree with it. And surely it did not mean he had to sit back while Lady Rose was mistreated?

According to Sir Thaddeus, whose eyes were yet to turn from him, it did.

Rose's eyes were on him, too. He could feel them burrowing into his face. He couldn't be sure that he hadn't embarrassed her again with his outburst (though surely one from his mouth was preferred), and he did not wish to find out and further sour his mood. Pouting like a chided child, Jules threw the turkey bone at his plate and crossed his arms, narked by the injustice of this promise he must make, burdened by this obligation to be no more than a silent spectator. 

And then pained by something much more tangible. 

Something that would not be resolved silently.

His inner tide was turning.

"Gutless!" Winslow's disdainful laughter fogged up the inside of his empty glass. "He's got enough guts for each side of this table, the gluttonous swine!"

"Hear, hear," Captain Mason concurred, warily considering Jules, who had sat up in his chair, slow and stiff, rigid with palpable discomfort. The de facto leader of the Knights had an unfriendly inkling that something was amiss with the beast. He didn't care about that. What he did care about was that he was sitting right next to it.

It was not that Jules had become all of a sudden aware of how terribly full his gut was, of all that grumbling and sloshing and churning; he was always aware of its agitation, of its heightened sensitivity and frantic production — how could he not be? It was never quiet or subtle about these things. But now it was giving him no choice but to take notice, and — as he understood, with well-versed regret — to serve his punishment. Publicly.  

This had often been the case in his childhood, and he hadn't altogether phased out of it in his adult years, either. That he would eat and eat, deaf to the no more! rumbles, the stop this! gurgles, resistant to the spasms, the tightening, the convulsing, the horrendous weightedness of his filling bowels, until it was too late. Until it felt like his stomach was being unbearably tugged at by four sets of hands pulling on opposite sides. Until he couldn't move an inch, even with the good intentions of sparing other nostrils, without being violently reminded that it was a very, very bad idea. Eating was a way to fill all those empty holes that existed within him, not only those belonging to his abdominal cavity. Fat lot of good it ever did him, of course. Him... or anyone in his vicinity. 

He tried to make peace with his airways and calm his heart with exercises his mother had taught him long ago when his body and mind, accustomed to the expansive outdoors, first had to adjust to cave-living. How he would forfeit each corner of the Earth to be there now. Each draw of breath stuck in his throat — really stuck, unlike Sir Thaddeus' false distraction. Don't panic. You know it makes it worse. Jules peeled his tongue from the dry roof of his mouth. He had no spit left to swallow.

As though attempting to make friends with a jungle creature, he carefully laid a hand on his jutting stomach. Its tremors shivered against his sticky palm. He spread his legs; this gave his stomach more room to hang and bulge, though to the naked eye it had hardly changed. Not more paunchy than it already looked. That was part of the— the nature of... it. So that others might think he was... normal. Be tricked into coming closer, if his odor hadn't already discouraged them. Tricked into thinking he might be like them.

You need not be a medicine man or a worldly scholar to deduce that these new irritants were clashing with his system. There was a skirmish taking place in his intestines that was heading toward a full-scale brawl. The gas bubbles were multiplying at an impressive rate, fed and fuelled by all that foreign fiber, and what was already there was ballooning. Some bubbles found their way higher up in his tract. He belched and felt a mite emptier for it. A mere drop in the ocean, however. Jules could only half-listen to the conversation around him, which sounded as unfocused to him as it might if someone had shoved his head underwater.

"And so concludes a pointless exercise to crown all pointless exercises." Aunt Ainsley tapped one finger against the stem of her glass, clink-clink-clink. Her unblinking gaze accused her brother, who was delicately dabbing his mouth, and — amazingly, given how nauseated the rest of them were — dreaming of dessert. 

"I wouldn't say that, exactly," her niece mechanically objected. Rose's voice was clear, even if her head was bent. Her face was a mask of artificial indifference. When Spots got angry, her spots looked ready to burst. Didn't want that, did she?

The only one she wanted to look at had made it clear he didn't want to look at her. Had Jules been repulsed to see how much she had eaten compared to Celeste and Luna? Compared to half of the men here?

Fat like your mother?

Or maybe as big an ass as she was?

What will it be? Take your pick, Rose...

"Quick, someone fetch the village crier," Aunt Ainsley deadpanned. "Isn't that a shock?"

"Rose is right, as she so often is." Her brother's smile contained an understated superiority that puzzled and revolted Ainsley, not unsimilar to how she felt whenever she looked at Jules. "Pointless? What were you expecting, Ainsley? A boy raised in the style of cave-dwellers to be perfectly mannerly at the Lord's table?"

The depth of Jules' next burp called to mind the caves their Lord spoke of. It did not warrant turning any heads at this point, but it was the apprehensive whine that followed that drew Rose out of one dark hole, and toward another.

Concern swept through her, taking everything else with it. His complexion was as washed out as her aunt's, his eyes sunken in their sockets, and he had grabbed hold of his stomach until his knuckles popped. Rearing and bucking with the defiance of an unbroken stallion, and he was fighting to maintain control of it; all this she could understand without the need to frame a question.

Now, as for framing an appropriate response — one of alarm and disgust, instead of illogical anticipation…

"What I expected of him was exactly this," Ainsley answered, gesturing to Jules without turning her head. But the others did. They saw the not-troll wriggling and writhing in his seat, both hands clutched at his stomach, now. Their responses were appropriate. "My expectations were realistic, and they were met. Nay, exceeded. And triply so. You were the one hoping for a miracle, brother. Don't deny it."

Aunt Ainsley knew each of his noblemen would vote with her, and that none but Sir Roscoe (who had been transported by no less than six page boys to recover in a spare room) would have voiced his disagreement should it be felt. 

"Miracle, Ainsley? It was a miracle that we should encounter the likes of him!" Her brother also did not notice Jules' worsening condition, though he pointed straight at him. "That he has managed to survive all of these years confined with those monsters! That is the miracle! To rewire and repair and restore him, that will take work! Gruelling? Certainly! Impossible? Only if we have attitudes like yours. Tonight heralds a life anew. Tomorrow, Sir Sagmore will lead us in the next stage of—"

"Do not remind me." The moustachioed scholar was watching his new student with a morbid curiosity. 

"What the young Master has witnessed here tonight has... why, it has planted a seed that shall grow within him. In time, with more of these experiences to water it, it will bloom, until one day he's bursting with nothing but good grace and princely propriety!"

BBHHHHAAAOOOUUUUUUURP!

Jules moaned sorrowfully.

Rose had been about to reach over and offer a consoling hand. Instead, she drew back with one of fifty-some gasps. A rumble rang out in the great hall, its pitch so patently ominous as to make it very clear that something wicked was coming their way. 

And that whatever was coming was coming thick and fast.

Eustace, arguably the closest to an expert on Jules, was the first to know that there was still time for them to be faster. He darted to the side of the High Table farthest from his assignment, then decided that wasn't far enough and sprinted into the nearest passageway. 

Maurice and Declan, knowing that Eustace knew Jules best (and how they didn't envy him for it) shared a look, and were soon in pursuit, though for once they had no plans to beat Eustace senseless once they got there. (Not unless they got bored.)

They were followed by Betsy and Tamara. They were chased by a herd of the other youngest servants. All ignored Mr. Ambrose, who was threatening their job security as well as their lives.

"My... m-my Lord..." Jules ground out between shallow pants. "My... Lord...?"

"Your pessimism disappoints me, Ainsley, though it is unsurprising. Sometimes, if I didn't know any better, I could be convinced to think that you wanted to see me fail—"

Another thick, chundering rumble. Jules' spine cracked as he shot up in his seat. Eyes dilated, his hand repeatedly hammered the table, upsetting the silverware.

"MYLORDMYLORDMYLORD."

"What is it? Ah! I say, boy! You look as though you've seen a spirit. Are you quite alright?"

"I m-merely want to – BbhHHOUUURP! – to say that this– OooHhUOoHUURP! ...isn't a reflection of how I feel about your–bbbHHHOOOURRRRP! – hospitality... oogh. Nor is it a reflection of… your staff's… standard of cooking…oooouggggh, shit!"

"What in Merlin's name is he doing now?" Aunt Ainsley complained.

Illogical pressure soared southward, gurgling all the way through him. Sweat sheened his forehead, wetting the side of his skull that appeared shaved beneath those flaxen curtains, before slipping down his cheek. Another rumble. Solid. Urgent. Primal. He sucked air through his teeth as though stung by the whole hive, fingers curling into the tablecloth as the latest wave coursed through.

The band had packed up their instruments. No one saw them leave, nor would anyone see them again for the rest of this night or any other. The dingy wooden tables were rapidly emptied, though they hadn't been excused and though Mr. Ambrose hadn't quite yet permitted them to run and take cover. No matter, for he and his colleagues were no longer present to rebuke them for it. The hall quaked with the sound of fleeing feet, but even this failed to dial down the groans and whines.

Or those ghastly rumbles. 

His greasy fingers now desperately fingered his belt buckle.

"Doctor! Sir Thaddeus! What ails him?" The Lord cried over the racket.

Sir Thaddeus had been calmly backing away from the table, in opposition to the stampede. Sober-minded and able to think rationally, he had already figured out what the others were now having devastating revelations about. They had arrived in staggered intervals. Now, each of them wished to exit at the same time. The servants' passageways were too narrow to allow for more than a handful to use at once, so a large crowd had assembled and jammed itself at the main entrance. There was nowhere to go. Certainly not with the haste they longed for.

"I believe he is reacting to the food, my Lord. To the excess of it, to be specific. The reintroduction of particular—"

BbbHHAAAARRRUUUUUURP!

"...aggravators, for the gut. Though I suspect the real damage is that he may have eaten more than he can handle."

"No shit!" 

Captain Mason held the panicking Sir Kane in place, level-headed enough (though his rising gorge was threatening to humiliate him) to wait for Ainsley's permission. To escort her, if needs be. 

Aunt Ainsley needed no escort. Towing the twins and Winslow after her, and screaming at those blocking the entrance to make way, she had abandoned her brother to suffer his own foolishness. The noblemen and the lesser Knights had found no success so far in thrusting their statuses upon the servants, who outnumbered them by the dozen. Each was as trapped as the other.

At the deserted table, Rose sat, tranquil and transfixed.

"Ooogh, Gods!" She listened to Jules whimper remorsefully. "I promise–BBHHHOOUURRP!–I'll never–never eat another–BBhHHhAUUUHHURP!"

Air rippled through his terrible gut, jostling his tunic. His stomach was a wild animal outwitting those who dared to cage it.  

"A reaction?" The Lord gave a weakhearted laugh, barely parsing the unfolding chaos. "Surely not! Cosgrach's food is the finest in all the land! He grows everything himself and thoroughly assesses each animal before slaughtering. And wouldn't the rest of us—"

"It is not the food, my Lord," Sir Thaddeus had no choice but to yell, now, since he was now standing half a hall away. "It's him!" He would've been even further away, preferably closer to the exit, if the Lord hadn't still been addressing him. "In layman's terms..." He took a final look at Jules and had his theory confirmed. He supposed he couldn't have asked for him to control all of his impulses, not to satisfy some of his needs. Better his hunger than his misguided attraction for the Lady Rose.

Or... maybe not.

Resignedly, he concluded, "he is about to blow."

"Right," Jules added weakly, just as his wet fingers got hold of and unclicked the belt buckle. Releasing the mechanism, releasing the bloat, and—

Rose was sure her heart had stopped.

This simple action allowed for a hellstream of flatulence to flood out. An indescribably mammoth fart muted the chairs being kicked aside (as those still on the fence about disobeying their Lord had their minds made up for them), the knives and forks and bowls and plates and pewters and toppling and smashing, the gagging, the retching, the screaming, as the hall was snowed under his vivid, tear-inducing stench. There was also a minor chord, a whoosh!, and smoke enriched with the distinctive scent of burning hair. Not that anyone noticed.

"ʄɛųɱცɧą ɬɧą'ʂıŋ!" Jules cried out with a grateful sigh. No one heard the Trolltongue either. The heat of his flatulence baked the hall's helpless occupants just as it was baking his undergarments; dew collected on the windows below the roof, and many bodies melted onto the stone floor. Jules melted into his chair, head lolled back as he ran a tongue over his lips, tasting salt on the pink. "That's... better..." 

Oh, is it now? 

He pulled his loose belt off at the first indication of more air whisking down his tract and clustering mightily between his cheeks. He lifted his bulky tunic and the dark undershirt beneath, over that soft, well-cushioned belly, the milky-white set off by a thin trail of downy hair sprouting up from his nethers. Unashamedly, the heel of his hand pressed and pushed into his pouchy midriff. With no more than a semi-second interval between each blast, and each blast accompanied by its own grunt, Jules milked out the rest of the irritants. They were comically blustery farts, long, drafty and earthy, the kind each of the castle's stablehands was used to hearing and smelling from the Knight's horses. From men? Not so much. 

The wailing and retching dimmed as the crowd managed to disperse into other areas of the castle. Eventually, the only sounds were those of Jules' gusts, his complaining gut, and his strains of effort and hums of relief.

And then a clink.

Aunt Ainsley was long gone. It was Rose's seared nose that was dripping onto her plate. She wiped it, and then even more urgently mopped at the drool that had pooled at the corner of her mouth, stealing a look out towards the servants' tables to check if any had noticed. But none were there. 

She tried to speak, and found that not only was her throat on fire but her voice had burnt out, too. Or blown away, perhaps, like most of the napkins. 

"J-...Ju-...Ju…"

Jules jolted, eyes snapping open, startling a little cry from her.

"Wait!"

He belched and suddenly farted a pants-tearing encore. Not before cocking up a leg, so the gas had all the space it could need to pelt out of him, blowing out the tablecloth. He sighed victoriously and slumped into a stupor. Softer farts could still be heard pumping and thrumming into the wood underneath him, and would be for the rest of the evening.

"There we go!"

Unlike Jules' thighs, Rose's knees were pressed together as tightly as they could be. Pointlessly, since the damage had been done. There was evidence she would need to face later when she was wringing it out in her bathtub. A stain where there hadn't been one before. She could wash it away with her peony soap, and she would, maybe more than once, but her hands could never work hard enough to remove that mark on her soul, her character. 

And she wasn't referring to the spit Jules had belched onto her cheek.

Which, for all the fidgeting she was doing with Celeste's rolled-up napkin, she had not yet considered wiping off.

If Aunt Ainsley had been looking for a miraculous transformation of character this evening, she need not look further than her niece. 

"Good, but not… great?" 

It had taken a minute more of watching Jules lounge so gratuitously before her voice would return. She thought he might have drifted off in the meantime, but he cracked open a dozy eye. Brows flicking upward in surprise, he laughed and waggled his finger.

"Precisely, my Lady! Precisely. I didn't think you'd still be here. I thought… oof… hang on, now… arse is going t'sleep..."

With some freedom gained, Jules was able to lift his legs — and blast a fart, naturally, the strident force of it knocking over a receptacle of salt — to prop them up and cross his feet on the table. The heels of his boots squelched into upturned bowls of cranberry sauce. 

"Ah! Much more like it. Now, Lady Rose, I expect you'll have some feedback for me on my first banquet. Don't hold back, now. I know I certainly haven't. Let's 'ave it!"

"Well," she began, and that was as far as she got.

"Oh. Oh. Oh dear."

Rose and Jules cried out as one. Neither had noticed the Lord. They hadn't noticed that Jules' flatulence had ignited one of the candles and that the Lord's face was now shrouded in a sheet of soot, either, until he was staring between them disorientedly. 

"My Lord!" Jules shrieked.

"Father!" Rose jumped from her seat and reached first for the man's hand, which was clammy and cool. "Oh, Father, are you alri—"

"Jules."

She and the newest Master of the Court fell back and cringed, awaiting the scolding they knew Jules deserved.

"You... you..."

Jules awkwardly extended the last remaining napkin as a humble peace offering. It was soaked in yellow mustard. But it came in peace, and surely that had to count for something.

This is it, Rose thought. This is the end. For him. For us.

"You... poor, poor child!" 

The Lord's charred eyebrows crackled as they knit together, face crumpling in agony. Jules' gravy-crusted jaw dropped and hung. 

"Oh, my boy! My dear, dear boy! How those monsters — how they have infected you so! The demons! The barbarians! This is the most wondrous of spreads, yet your stomach makes a nightmare of it! The doctor — w-where is he, my lad?"

"Er – v-vomiting into that big plant pot, I believe." Jules cleared his throat and tried to scurry past his shock. "Um… it is not the good doctor's fault, my Lord. He put up a worthy fight during my examination, but... I didn't have broccoli in me, then."

Phhhhrrrppprpt! PhhhFfFFfArrRPpPRP! BbbHhRRMP!

When a group of not-indiscreet farts exploded into his tortured underwear, he was hit by a flash of panic, and fanned behind him to see that their residue might vanish. (His tactic, massively.)

"I do hope he has a tonic he can recommend." The Lord's breath rattled like coins in a tin. He coughed grotesquely into the mustard-soaked napkin; his daughter and his project looked the other way when soot fired out of his nostrils. "I would hate for you to miss out on all we have to offer here, all because of a — a dodgy tummy..."

"It would not be all so bad, my Lord. Means more food for the servants to enjoy." Regardless of the results, the grub had been exquisite. Jules picked at his teeth to scour for seconds. Or sixths, in his case. "Or perhaps the needy in your village might benefit?" 

"The village? They would want it?" 

He was so earnest that Jules couldn't bridle at his ignorance. 

"Yes, I should imagine they might. You could donate it. Pack it up. Cart it into the village before it spoils."

Rose stopped wiping the soot from her Father's face, struck by the simple novelty of Jules' proposal. "That's... a fine idea, actually. Could we? They'd surely appreciate it, and think you quite generous. More than you are thought of as already, of course."

"I do have fine ideas, from time to time," Jules bragged. The Lord was looking at him with burgeoning admiration, the very thing all of his Court longed for, and which any would have lapped up. But Jules had eyes only for his daughter. 

That his Rosalie just as soon set her eyes on him, and with just as much endearment, it, too, was seen exactly for what it was, and squirrelled away in the folds of his jumbled mind.

"After it's been coated in your farts?! I'd rather eat old shoes! Eugh, this bloody reek! It's leaking through the passageways already, all the way into the rest of the castle — Mr. Ambrose is about ready to keel over. It's the Chamber all over again, except worse this time, since there's more to decontaminate. Imagine the incense'll it'll take! It's going to be weeks before—"

Eustace screamed and threw himself to the floor, genuflecting.

"F-Forgive m-me, my Lord! I — I had not the presence of mind to know you were still—!"

"Eustace!" The Lord beamed and encouraged him to rise. "Such tenacity! Such devotion! Where the others make off without even asking for my permission, you remain! Such loyalty! Such character!"

"Uh—weh—eh?" 

"And to have been undeterred by Master Jules'... er... gastric misfortunes! Rose chose wisely, I see."

"I did," Rose quickly agreed. "Eustace has been an enormous help with Jules, Father. Hasn't he, Jules?"

"Yes, what a fine fellow!" Jules cheered. "A credit to himself! And to his mother. Uh. Since you're here, any beer left, Eusty? Asking for a friend."

"Jules didn't mean to disrupt the evening, Father." Rose dotingly brushed the crumbs from his ornate robes before setting them tidily. "As Sir Thaddeus testified before us, he cannot help it. It is that cave-sickness he spoke of."

"Couldn't help that one, anyway." Jules winced. Eustace had almost gotten to his feet when he receded at the unannounced emission, its noxiousness so unpleasantly sharp as to cut. Eyes widening, he slapped a hand over his mouth.

"Forgive me for that, my Lord and Lady. Haven't had a gut as nasty as this since I won that stinkbug dare. My mother made me sleep in another cave that night, and didn't that prove to be a wise decision! Be careful where you roam, Eustace — I'm no longer in control of what's happening back there, it would seem."

He offered a hand to help the page boy up, though Eustace staunchly refused it. He knew where it had been. "Were you ever?" He choked out.

"Well... my advisors will be waiting... we... we shall try again, children — b-before the assembly. Hopefully, your stomach will adjust to our cuisine the more it is exposed to it, Master Ju—ooh!" 

When there was no more table for the Lord to hold onto, he wobbled precariously backwards. Eustace swooped in to prop him up, forgetting, of course, their significant weight difference. 

"Oh! Whoops! Too much beer!" The Lord laughed merrily.

"Lady Rose!" Eustace squeaked.

"No, no, Rosie! Leave me! I'll… I'll be fine." Her Father righted himself, fixed his head-piece (to refer to it as a true crown would be shameful, when he was not the King), and stuck out his chin and his chest, the way he had been taught to as a boy when he was feeling unsure. He strode forward confidently, only wobbling every seven steps or so.

"Send the doctor up to the tower once he's finished, please. Heavens, what a banquet! That swan was beautiful, wasn't it? So tender! So moist! The envy of every tongue in the land...!"

"He is forgiving," Jules blinked. "And... possibly concussed?"

"I wish I could say I was surprised," Eustace crankily remarked. "But I never had any doubt you could clear a room of over a hundred people. People don't even run that fast when the war bells toll."

"Thank you for believing in me." Jules took Eustace's hand as Rose had taken her Father's and patted it just as tenderly. Eustace retracted with a hiss and a shudder. "And it's not only banquets, you know. Weddings, funerals, milestone birthdays…"

His stomach sounded off. Quieter but no more agreeable. A violent fart battered the chair.

"I can see if there's any essence of ginger in the servants' pantry, if you're uncomfortable." The squire had begun to clear away the remaining plates without even noticing he was doing it.

A gentle smile touched Jules' lips. "Oh, I'm used to uncomfortable, Eustace. But thank you." BbbHhhRrRRrRTTT! PphhHHWWAArrRPRT! BBBWWWOOORPHT! "Gods above! This'll be me all night, now. No visiting my quarters tonight, you two! Strictly off-limits!"

"Who would dare?" Rose scoffed, as though she hadn't dreamed of it.

"And isn't this you every night?" Eustace teased.

Rose quickly joined, "And every day?" 

"Every hour?"

"Every minute?"

"Every secon—"

"Alright, alright! Understood. You're both very clever. Well, what are you standing there for, Eustace? I'll forgo the ale, but didn't someone mention cake? Two helpings, sir, on the double! Forgot those plates, we'll clear 'em away later, or what's left of 'em. You've been rushed off your feet all evening — come rest by me. On my good side, mind you. Upwind!"

How disturbing a concept! They being the ones to clear the plates, or a servant dining at the High Table. Imagine her surprise when she realized she had pushed the chair closest to her out. 

"I'll spare you the grief of such agonizing proximity, Eustace," Rose said. "You can sit by me, instead. Three plates, if you please."

"We should go eat it outside Celeste's door! And chew twice as loud, so that... a-heh..."

Jules' grin fell apart at the seams at the change in her. It was not only the most obvious suffusion of color in her cheeks that broke him.

"Oh... y-yes. Of course," she stammered, "what was I — Eustace, don't bother—"

"My wind's making her delirious, Eustace! You saw what it did to her Father. She doesn't know what she's saying. Three plates!" Jules waited until the smaller man was out of earshot to lean over. "Hey. Pay her and others like her no mind, Lady Rose. We are all only flesh and bone to the stars. It's that light which burns from inside that they know and judge us by."

He purposely broke wind, which was enough to rekindle his good spirit, though she was content to keep her mouth set in an expressionless line. 

"And is mine burning tonight! How would you rate me for my first banquet, then?"

"Room for improvement." She remembered to pinch her nose, but hadn't the heart to maintain the masquerade. She glanced at him, once, then back down to the tablecloth. "You're stupidly foul, Jules. Has anyone ever told you that?"

"Once or twice. Heh. Room for cake, more like. Might make my backside smell sweeter, hm?"

"Wouldn't start making bets on it." 

"Och, well. Better it's out now than around Sir Sagmore tomorrow!"

Rose denied herself a comment that he would have to correct himself in his presence much more than merely holding in his excessive flatulence, though only because the evening was catching up with her. She nodded mutely.

"Something on your mind?" He asked lightly. 

"Only that... Father has his work cut out for him. As do I." Finally, she smiled. Slight and wry, but still the kindest he knew around here. "You shan't become a nobleman overnight, Jules. That much is becoming glaringly clear to us all."

"Work." Jules blew air through flattened lips. "Work and talk of it can wait until the morrow! Tonight... we play." He smiled back, with that imperfect slantedness that confusingly endeared him to her. 

She shook her head and rested her chin on her folded arms atop the table, indicating how silly he was and how tired she was of it. Of him. He canted his, watching her watching him, their staring unintrusive and affectionate enough to comfort and soothe him in a way ginger ale could only dream of.

His betrothal did not require him to lie. ɖɛǟʀɢʀɨօռ would be the last to discourage him from admiring the beauty of women, anyway. He was a simple-minded man, and this was a simple fact. Her striking height, her wild, uncooperative hair, her glowing ears, her raw, untrimmed and blemished face — all of it was to be savored much more than any stuffed swan. Those who couldn't see that were to be pitied. Or perhaps he was to thank them, since it meant more for him.

Master your temptations.

He could. He had! He would enjoy her beauty. Distantly. Just as he would enjoy her company. Which happened to be close, at this moment in time. He would enjoy it all the more knowing that the Lord and his men were in their tower planning to take it all away from him.

Like stormclouds encroaching on a picnic, he recalled her leading him into the hall. How she pulled her hand away from his just as soon as their flesh met...

His heart stonied. Stupid, really, to be hurt by it, stupid to think that she—

Fond of me?

Hadn't... hadn't Sir Thaddeus said something to that effect?

A pet, or a jester. 

Something inconsequential.

Yes, he had. And that was how Jules had processed the observation. Correctly. Realistically. Sir Thaddeus had gotten it wrong. All wrong.

Jules' hopes crashed before they ever got off the ground. Good! Maybe they'd stay there for once.

But... Rose had said something too. Earlier, about his smell. (He had to rifle through a hundred remarks made on that subject this evening.) She could scent him… and nothing else.

His stomach panged. He wished it were the greens, but he knew this pain originated far deeper. Rose was murmuring something across from him — something about Sir Sadsack's lesson plan — and for all appearances, he was listening, though he was no longer at the High Table.

He had racked up quite the mileage since his arrival in Campion. Every night while the castle slept, Jules would return to the only place he had ever been met with love and acceptance. He would dream of his mother; only in his dreams did he seem to remember her lullaby. He was there now. But this was no dream, and this was no den. Her song was not on the air. Something howled and whistled, instead, arctic wind squeezing through the narrow cracks in prehistoric stone...

It made the instruments sway and tinkle above his head. Not the kind his mother used to heal. These were used to see. To predict. To understand.

The cold was keenly felt in the matriarch's lair, but by now, քӀąìժҽհɾąìց had deadened to the cold. That did not mean he hadn't been chilled.

From the moment he arrived, he had been little more than ignored by her, but she was aloof with all of them except her sister and daughter. She could not be distracted when so many lives depended on her acumen. Now they sat as close as they had ever been, with a bowl placed between them. Nothing special, much the same as the sort that they ate out of. It was piled with rockdust, brown and fine and glittering with specks of crystal and gems, and leaves and roots he recognized because he collected them for his mother from the hills or down in the basin, near the road men seldom travelled, though he didn't know why she wanted them or what they were for.

And tatters of the clothes he had worn on the night he escaped. He had grown out of them long ago. The clothes, like the boy, had not yet grown out of the circus. Mule hair. Wagon oil. Manure and bonfires and canvas sheets. As one smell led to one bygone memory, it unlocked doors to a thousand more–

poor mother–don't know what stinks worse boy you or that attitude–she go in't that village an' they'll all see to it–what else do you think you're here for–knows she'll never be more than–there look you want'it so bad there that's the name you–bitch that whelped that ugly dross–these folks come to see how strange this World can be come to laugh come to be scared–earned, that's your name, that's who you are, that's all you'll ever

She saw what he was. She thought she might have known the moment her daughter brought him to their mountain. It was tied to him, part of his aura; to the right eye, he could never hide.

She saw more of him now than she could ever bear to tell him.

But he had begged.

So she had. She was as gentle as his truth could afford.

And should one of your kind open their heart to you, their dues will be heaviest. For them, the Bad Work will be felt most. 

The notion of his 'kind' accepting him was the hardest thing to believe in this exchange. She needed no tools but those she was naturally equipped with to predict what he would say next.

Will there ever be someone like that?

Not many.

Will they feel it the way I do? 

No, but they will know the worst version of you.

Worse... than this? 

Yes. Even if only for a breath, they'll have wanted you. քӀąìժҽհɾąìց, you were designed to be unwanted.

Here in the hall, his slant smile never dissembled. "I happen to feel noble already, you know."

Rose didn't mind being interrupted. She was too sleepy to imagine she was saying much of note, anyway, and he already listened to her more than anyone else. "You know that's probably wind, yes?"

"I'm not so sure it can't be both." His chin jutted challengingly. When he passed gas, she could tell by the look on his face that it had been inadvertent. It made her laugh, and the joy in her laughter made it worth it.

"Yes. Or maybe it's wind, Jules."

"Perhaps. Maybe. Yet I feel..."

Marked for life. 

And wanted.

A man in your situation must never forget it–

That one plain, isolated truth. 

"Something."

You want me, Rose. That's why you smell me and nothing else. 

"When I'm with you."

And only when I'm with you.

She was impressed by how unwavering she was. It helped to be in the habit of low expectations. "That so? Something on your mind, Jules?" 

"You... see me differently. Not like the others here. I wonder if you have from the very start. As though I were..."

He hadn't her nerve. Her grit. He chuckled dryly, emptily, squared shoulders sloping.

"Forget it—"

"No, you're right." She appraised him as though for the first time. When it had been the first time, she had wondered at how Common he seemed. How everyday. How like her and the rest of them. Now she knew better. There was no one else like him. No one else but him, for her. "I do see you differently."

"But... how can you? No... no one else..." 

The haze of her visions crept in, blurring the edges. She steeled herself against them.

Because whatever you're sick with, I'm sick with.

"Haven't you heard," she told him, "that I have my mother's eyes?" 

Eustace's wheezing shattered their bubble all too soon.

"Cosgrach... crying in the pantry! So... I was able... to grab the whole pan! D-Do you think he'll mind? What am I saying, of course he will, I'll just go—"

"He'll only mind if we leave any evidence." Jules picked up a fork. Dazedly, Rose took hers. Jules threw the page boy his to catch; they patiently waited as he retrieved it from the floor.

Jules raised his and asked they do the same. "A toast!"

"On forks?"

"Yes, on forks, Eusty, seeing as someone is refusing to find me more beer — can't imagine why. Anyway, we'll toast to good grub, good health, good company, and— and, er... help me out, people—"

"To breathable air?" 

"Ha. Yeah. I'm not a bloody genie, Eustace. Try again."

"To what lies ahead?" Rose's mouth numbly suggested. It gave him pause.

"Indeed."

He heard an echo of himself, somewhere inside. Small and needful, but not forgotten anymore. Will there ever be someone like that?

Not many, came the answer. He had not been so immature as not to understand that was another way of saying just one.

Foolishly, but happily, as fools so often were, it was enough for Jules to know there was one, and that the stars, with their mystifying systems had decided that he should live long enough to be brought here to find her.  

Might you let me live long enough to know more of her? He begged of them. To learn more from her? To see what she sees with her mother's eyes? To

"—what lies ahead, my Lady Rose."

End of Act One.

Chapter Text

"Well," he added limply, after another prolonged delay, "it was all so long ago."

These dunes had shaped him, toughened him and coarsened him, but he was still only a boy, and all boys dream.

A desert child. Child of nothing. The span of short life had played out on a shifting sea of grain beneath a white-hot dome that capped this forgotten corner of the World. He no longer felt its abrasive scratch as the sand sifted over his restless feet. The man's unchanging growl was what stung. No number of years could inure the boy with the chicken feathers in his hair to that.

"Y’want what?" 

"My name," proposed the boy. "T’learn it."

"Are ye so dull-skulled ye don’t know y'—"

"A name that stays, papa.” One small finger, impotent soil embedded under the nail, drew their attention to the schoolhouse shivering distantly in the ruddy haze. "Like t'others get when they go t’there. A name that stays where y’want it to."

His father spat, the only blotch of green the land would ever see. “Waste of time t’try and learn ye, wi' yer brains as thick as hogshit.” His hard gray eyes assessed the child unforgivingly. "Ye ain’t earned my time!"

“Could try, papa," he softly expressed.

"And? Y'never try 'ard enough!"

"I could do more chores an’ I could—"

"Y'mother knows that best. Don’t she?" The man’s sneering mouth was electric with sick satisfaction. The child looked only at the prints stamped in the sand.

"Maybe I'll think on it," he artfully added.

The joy fizzing in his chest never flowed to his face. The boy knew better.

"But y'get the name y'earn, an' only that, an' when a name stays, that's the name y'have f' Always. We best be clear on that."

"I'll earn it f’you, papa," the boy heartily promised, though he knew he was alone now. He made Papa ill when he tarried too close.

Not quite alone. The hens clucked condolences at the desert child's ankles. It was safe to creep out from the nettlebushes when the man was headed back to the ramshackle cottage, to answer the bottle's timeless call. He hungered and so did they. They reached up and pecked gentle reminders at the tattered hems of his shorts, though the boy would never forget them, even with all that filled his head.

Possibility bloomed in his small and simple mind — a growing garden that scarcely knew water. In this static place of wither and decay, there could be nought more special than something that could last for Always...

Chapter Text

"Oh, there you are. I've been searching high and low for you!"

It asked much of Lady Rose to convert the tumult of nervous excitement cartwheeling around her sternum into something deceptively relaxed. The hand that had lain on the door handle sank into a pocket as she greeted the little squire with a friendlier air than he had once known from her — nor would he ever know that tepidness again. How could he, after the evening they had shared? 

"Here I am, Eustace. The morning report, I presume?"

"My apologies for its lateness." Eustace's liquid brown eyes quickly found the satchel cradled under her arm. "Oh. Is that—"

"Sir Thaddeus assured Father and I that there was nothing of concern in its contents. It's all he has left, now, after we destroyed his original clothes. I thought he might like to see it," she explained. 

"Yes, my Lady, I'm certain he will. It might cheer him up, in fact!" Eustace seemed to be as revitalized by it as he hoped Jules would be. "He was distracted at breakfast. Rather... low. And that's really all there is to today's report. No capers today! Well... there were capers, plucked fresh this morn, of course — but no capers from him. We left him in good enough spirits last night, I'd say, but perhaps once he was alone, he started to mull over these lessons today — started to let his imagination get the better of him. Pffft, don't I know what that's like—"

"Eustace," she broke in.

"Yes?"

"You have a very large spoon in your hand," she informed him. 

An indentation was made on his brow. He turned his head and sighted the utensil, which, as Rose politely perceived, unjustifiably surprised him. "Oh? Oh. Yes — er, yes, I do." One narrow smile later, the tool was hidden behind his back. "Very observant of you, my Lady. It was from breakfast. Porridge for both of us."

"And you felt the need to take it on a walk?" 

"Most witty, my Lady. I suppose Master Jules isn't the only one who has something playing on his mind today." A guilty countenance more deserving of the slovenly not-troll's face applied itself to Eustace's as he chewed his lip. "I should be shining armor at present, but I've been restless. I could not help but wander, to..." 

He cast a look behind him, toward a location he need not name. 

"Do you think he's getting on all right, my Lady?" 

"You worry for Jules, Eustace?" Rose lay bare her mirth. "I suppose I should take that to mean you no longer see him as something to babysit?"

"I didn't say that," Eustace blurted, knowing he didn't need to.

"You're not being condemned for it. Father will be glad to hear it, in fact," she told him sweetly, knowing she had entertained those very same worries. "For what we hope to achieve with Jules, his clay could be in no finer hands than Sir Sagmore's," she reassured them both. "We needn't worry for him."

"Y-yes, yes, of course," Eustace answered non-committally. Rose heard fingernails anxiously drilling the spoon's long stem. "Still," he added, and seemed to forget the rest.

She made a point of glancing at Jules' quarters, but it was lost on Eustace. She could not say she felt truly slighted by this distraction from this chore. 

"You being absent-minded doesn't quite address your spoon being afflicted with giantism." Rose wondered if it really was that large — more of a ladle than something to scoop oatmeal with — or if it was because its wielder was so petite. 

"He seemed unusually interested in our etiquette lessons this morning," Eustace said. "He isn't normally that attentive, as you well know. Perhaps yesterday's affair inspired him. I felt that, with a spoon being easier to manipulate than a fork, the larger it was, the simpler it would be to—"

"What in Merlin's name is that?" Rose broke in again. The floor had begun to quake, rattling the statues in their corners and the vases (there had been twice as many set out since Jules had moved in) on their tables. Rowdy, full-throated baying put an end to the calm of the late morning, with Declan's shouts barely registering above it — not merely because of the excess of canines rounding the corner, but also because he was doing the least he could do to corral the Lord's hounds.

Though there were many (Rose doubted if any were missing from this mob, even the greyest-muzzled of them), they approached as one singular, writhing unit, and Eustace was effortlessly swept out into a sea of bristling fur, screaming futilely. Some of the dogs took this to be his version of a howl and greeted it with their own.  

"Get back," Declan lackadaisically chastised the pack. "Go on, get back with thee, you lot of dumb, flea-ridden buggers–"

Rose whistled on her fingers and roared a two-word command. 

The hounds braked bluntly. Claws scraped and screeched for stabilisation on the floors, their scrambling paws bunching up the long, hand-woven rugs. They dropped to their haunches as soon as they could to appease their Lady.

The sudden dispersal of the unit revealed Eustace, drenched in slobber and panting with exertion twice as much as they were, though his tongue did not loll from his mouth to drip. He never considered using the giant spoon to drive them back. Rose had never known an animal to be so attracted to a person as her Father's dogs craved the smallest page boy in the Court. Perhaps it was because Eustace gave them the least amount of attention he possibly could that their desire had grown so unbearable that they could not control their passions. She could not blame dumb animals for lacking control.

She could, and would, blame dumb men.

"Good dogs!" chortled Declan, mighty proud of himself.

Rose turned on him viciously. "You clod. Do you suppose Eustace and I were standing here for the sake of it?"

Declan was too occupied lapping up the sorry sight of his inferior, who was trying to push twenty-some damp noses away from his crotch. "No, 'course not—"

"Look at me!"

Declan's jaw sensibly clicked shut, trapping any further act of insolence. He turned his dull eyes on her listlessly.

"He was relaying vital information, as is his instruction, which is my instruction. How dare you impede on it! How dare you disturb us with such carelessness!"

"Terribly sorry, Lady Rose. They got away from me, that's all."

"So did your wits, apparently. Both of you, get the dogs to wherever they're supposed to be," she ordered, though not before stroking one shepherd-type in the down behind its ears. Acting as the spokesperson for the canine race, it had padded over, wagging its feathered tail pacifingly. 

The last look she got from Eustace was one of pure gratitude. Her public favoring of him may have been enough to see him through the scheduled beating once they were out in the courtyard, where the supervising Knights were rarely moved to intercede. The dogs were herded down the stairs painlessly; they would do anything for Eustace, though just as he hadn't considered his spoon, he would never think to sic them on his antagonizers, the way Rose had more than once considered training them for the purposes of dealing with Winslow and his sisters.

Finally, she breathed. Alone at last! She could pass out from relief.

Or... something else.

Not that anyone would be suspicious of that. From window to wall, Jules had marked the servants' floor with his grotesque signature. If the servants weren't oppressed enough as is, the musk that cast off his rump after a night of overfeeding crushed even the proudest among them. Rose knew that even if she could smell it, she would detect no hint of the maple cake they had enjoyed well into the wee hours as a newly-formed trio.

She had overheard Tallulah and the other maids talk of the thunder during the night as they stripped her bed linen — the tectonic trumpeting that had disordered the floor just as Father's hounds had. She had swiftly demanded they speak of something else, anything else. Ashamed to be caught speaking so offensively around her, they took vows of silences. Her imagination failed to follow suit.

Those depraved details consumed her. She could delude herself that her thrashing heart and scalded complexion were borne of hearing such material discussed so openly, or she could be honest and accept that she was furiously envious of them for being primary witnesses. Neither option struck her as palatable.

Rose faced the door to Jules' quarters, standing tall. (Never mind that it was the only way she knew how to stand.)

"No more distractions," she spoke aloud. 

Inner mantras had proven fruitless. It was time for a new tactic. Whatever it would take to break this spell. Father needed her. Jules needed her. And she didn't need this — this rotten attraction, this impure fixation. Hadn't she enough shortcomings as a Lady without it? If Jules could overcome his disgraces with training and exposure to the finer things in life, then she could overcome hers with willpower.

Feeling the weight of the satchel under her arm — it might cheer him up, my Lady — she entered his quarters, latching the door behind her before she had the chance to abscond. His smog was delighted to see her. It ushered her in as an old friend, pulled her into the center of his putrid dwellings, and begged her to stay as long as she could stand. She didn't feel as though she had walked into the ogre pit the maids spoke of. She felt as though she were walking across a meadow on the freshest of spring mornings, when the swaying tufts of new grass were bathed in heavenly washes of rose-gold light that teased a time of bounty, of prosperity and promise. His foulness didn't make her come undone. It made her come alive. 

Her fingers groped the satchel.

Stop. Whatever you do, don't breathe. Just think.

She had devised a simple plan: enter, deposit the satchel, and get out in a matter of clockticks. Though Jules was good to his word and had since allowed the maids entry, this did not rectify the issue of none of them wanting to enter his domain. Rose knew it had come to drawing straws or promising to cover additional shifts, even if it meant sacrificing their one day of rest. The frosts had killed the flies off, but the grime they were so besotted with remained in every aspect of his living situation. The fusty room was as much a haven of filth as it had been on her first visit. 

Her shoes had already marked her presence here, printing in the dried rind of whatever his own boots tracked in each day. She hadn't taken more than ten steps before she broke a plate — buried beneath towels from his daily baths. Did he drop them as soon as the maids hurried out of his ensuite, as it so appeared? How long did he spend in his rawest state before donning new clothes?

Focus.

Her vision soaked up the strewn garments, setting and honing in on his underwear. With reproach pinching and prickling her all over, she tightened her jaw and forced her gaze aside, knowing she was searching for stains that did not have a glossy sheen like hers, stains that were much darker and muddier and not so simply removed…

This is not focusing, Rose!

Knowing that Mr. Ambrose had left behind only that which he could not carry, the bed was her only option. She could smell the age of his crumb-covered sheets. If she placed the satchel down in the state the bed was currently in, she wondered if he would even find it. She had noticed the mound of blankets before — the visual was not unlike that conjured by the child's myth of the princess and the pea — but at the time of that first visit, she hadn't noticed how icy his room was. She had been too captivated by the mess. Now they were deeper in the season, and the cold, like her lust, could not be glossed over. 

The balcony doors were propped open by a boulder collected from the woods. (Had he carried that up the ivy himself? Her fluttering heart asked. She silenced it mercilessly.) Silk curtains floated outward on the thread of a breeze that may have been refreshing had it been remotely distinguishable. Her attention moved from the balcony to the fireplace. Ironically, it was the only feature of this room that was spotless. The servants fought over their coal allowances during the dark side of the year — it was something of a currency among them, she knew — and Father had ordered two buckets a night for Jules. A quick calculation determined that he hadn't used a single bucket since arriving in Campion. Rose understood then that it was not the servants who had opened the balcony doors to air out his stench, and that Jules wished for his personal space to be this frigidly uncomfortable. 

Of course, she thought, something masquerading as sympathy grounding her to one spot.

He was trying to recreate the mountain caves.

Distractions were forthcoming in here. The note she had read on that first visit was still tacked to his privvy door, though she could see it had been retacked many times, presumably blown off by a gust of wind. (Blown in from the balcony, rather than blown out of who boarded this room.) 

After what no one could be convinced would've been a truly thorough investigation, his privvy, the maintenance servants concluded, was not salvageable. ("We can't save 'er, m'Lord," Tucker the plumber had mourned to them in the Chamber, plunger drooping.) Rose's mind started to meander down a path Eustace had unwittingly etched out by feeding her snippets of skin-crawling tales of Jules using the servants' bathrooms. The rogue favored the outdoors where he could (Rose had heard the stablemen's theories that the muck they were cleaning up was not completely equine) and Jules was, as Eustace so flippantly described, in the habit of being caught short (Rose had also heard Sir Galshiel complain to his mentor, Sir Fergus, that he had trodden in animal scat he had never seen before near the old well, and again by the paddocks.)

When he did make it to the privvies, the servants not only had to suffer smelling his movements, but also listen to him pass them. No one had ever noticed the lack of acoustic privacy before, but Jules' instruments were not normal. These were snippets Rose fleshed out in her head each night. Snippets that were presently evoking a queer swooping sensation in her stomach, as though she were in a carriage careening downhill.

"No more distractions!" She snapped at his filthy bed, which had done nothing to justify being snapped at. It was hardly its fault that there was more than enough room for two.

She would need to find someplace else to set down the satchel. The table and its stool by the fireplace might work. She grouped mugs of old tea and placed them by the door for the maids, reasoning that was probably as far as they ever travelled in here, anyway. She swept up crusts and apple cores into a handkerchief, and this she shoved into one of the coal bins, upturning the coal into the fireplace where it belonged. On this new space, she laid down the bag, hand-stitched with no shortage of pockets and pouches, and heavy with the jars she had already inspected in her room.

Earlier this morning, when only she and the sparrows who nested in the tower were awake, she had lined them up on her rug, just as she had as a child with her birthday presents. Back then, and still now, there was nothing she liked better than to categorize items. It didn't matter what they were, so long as they were in order and all accounted for.

The glass jars, she scribbled in her journal, were probably once a larger army than this, judging by the shards that littered the bottom of the bag. Those that had survived Jules' capture were imperfect in their mold, crafted by those whose understanding of glasswork was poor but serviceable. Each had contained withering plantlife.

The peppermint and hillweed she easily identified. The rest were mysteries, and in most cases, too decomposed to be worth consulting her textbooks. Most of the jars were partway filled except for one that had been packed with what looked like lichen. It was a shade of blue she didn't know existed in nature. Fitting, she supposed, since no one knew that someone like Jules could exist in the natural world, either.

There were strips of cloth, too, for bandaging wounds or wrapping more delicate materials. In their own moss-lined casing was a set of quartz tools. Two looked like shovels for dollhouses. Rather cute. Not something you could use in a hurry. Whatever he extracts with these, she wrote, he handles with care. Perhaps it's important that he must.

There had also been a stone.

In no protective casing, yet considered enough to be buttoned inside a pouch. Sir Thaddeus had made no mention of it. There was a chance he hadn't seen it, Rose guessed. Or if he had, he thought it wasn't worth mentioning.

She respectfully disagreed.

Rose brought out that same small, round artefact from her trouser pocket. She held it close, searching for clues in the stark light. The sky was overcast on her side of the castle but brilliantly blue on his. Another sub-zero night lay in store for them.

The stone was not so uninteresting to her. This was a stone without a middle. Nature had been interfered with. It could have been made as a crude ring — a ring for his beloved she-troll, perhaps. It was heavy, as stone is, but heavier than something this small ought to be.

She had held it while scribing these same thoughts, enclosing her fingers around it as it rested on her palm. She didn't know when it had begun to grow hot; she only knew that before she could unclench her fist, her fingers had numbed. Fighting unhelpful adrenaline, she eventually wrenched those roasting fingers free with her opposite hand. When she dropped it, she missed her plush rug; it landed on the exposed floorboards instead. 

She hadn't noticed where it had fallen because it hadn't made a sound.

When she had repacked the satchel — his whiff clinging to it in a way that would cling to her rug (and mind) for the rest of the day — she reconsidered whether she should include the stone. Might she hang onto it? See if Sir Sagmore had ever seen such a thing in all of his worldly travels? What could this humble stone tell them, if the right eyes perceived it? 

Equally as possible was that Sir Sagmore would reject her questions. The scholar was spare on enthusiasm when it came to all things concerning his newest student. Then she would have to ask Jules himself. But if she asked Jules, it was only too likely he would want it back.

And this may be all that remained of him once the Lords gathered.

Father and his advisors had talked late into the night, long after she left Eustace and Jules in the desecrated banquet hall. She had planned to eavesdrop, but found she could scarcely drag herself up the stairs to her quarters. She hadn't slept. Her head brimmed with nightmares. Wicked images of the only outcome to her inaction, her failure. Costing the rogue his life – strange and unseemly as it was, it was still a life. And the respect of their county. Perhaps she and Father could recover from the latter, but they would not survive the loss of another innocent.

Especially not his, her heart whispered.

This time, the mantra was delivered with conviction.

"No more distractions." 

She retreated from his satchel and his bed. Brittle leaves crunched underfoot on the balcony terrace. Like her, he had no view of the northern ocean. Unlike her, and the rest of her family, he could see most of Campion's village, and behind it the fog slithering over the Cort Conic hillrange.

Rose drank at the bitter air, letting it wash over her, cleansing her of her fears, but more imperatively of him. The hills were losing their handsome reds and browns to a soulless gray. In the summer, the colors of Conic cress could be seen and enjoyed for miles. Once it bloomed, the mountains that loomed beyond seemed much less impressive. 

Her heart leapt. 

The mountains could be seen perfectly from here. In the dark side of the year when the seaclouds thinned to unveil a sky thick with hard, bright stars, as they would tonight, if the weather was any indication, then this was the only balcony in the castle from which they could be visible. Mr. Ambrose often paraded that fact near Yuletide, as if he didn't have enough to boast about. 

Funny coincidence.

And here was another reason for him to leave those balcony doors open. On a night like tonight, it might feel like he could reach out and touch home.

Rose scoffed a cloud of mist into the air. The notion of a sludge-filled grotto deep inside the earth, teeming with filthy brutes, being home. Even if it were a joke, it would be in bad taste...

"Hurry it up, men! Before he rips him to pieces!"

"Lady Ainsley foretold of this–"

"Quickly, quickly!"

Sir Oswald was the last to pass Jules' door — almost dislocating his neck when he looked back to verify that his eyes had not been bewitched and it was indeed the Lady Rose emerging from there. Servants whose duties were not required until the afternoon peeked their heads out of their quarters. The same question was on all of their lips.

"Oswald!" Rose shouted after him. "What do you hurry for? What's going on?" 

"Stay exactly where you are, Lady Rose! You servants, too!" Sir Oswald's hand was readily poised on his scabbard. "If you value your lives, stay put! The beast has attacked Sir Sagmore!"

Chapter Text

A snarl befitting of his monstrous epithet fastened itself around Jules' mouth.

"Be still, ingrate," rasped the pockmarked soldier closing in on his left. Their target squared his shoulders, concreting his core. Hawk's eyes flitted between the three advancing Knights, never letting any move go unchecked.

"Doesn't look like I could be much of anything else right now, does it?"

Those words rolled off smooth as ice, as though he hadn't already been cornered. As though his most vital organ wasn't clobbering a chorus of terror against his fat-tucked ribs.

They're never supposed to get this close.

In another corner, Sir Fergus squatted by the schoolroom's robust cherrywood desk, trying to assess the stunned scholar. "Where do you hurt, Sir Sagmore? Should I call for the medicine man?" 

"My dignity's what's most wounded! To be expected to tolerate one as loathsome and puerile as this!" Sir Sagmore fished out a square of muslin cloth from inside his robes, which he pressed to his nose in the first instance — he had meant to swap it for his weeping forehead, at some point, if only they weren't being strangled by incontestable evidence that yesterday's banquet was proving problematic for the gastric capabilities of their Lord's honored guest.

"This scar'll be permanent, I don't doubt! Damn that imbecilic, odious lump of lard!" He rebuked. 

"Let us see," Sir Fergus encouraged. All he and his mentee could make out on the elder's papery skin was a nick something no larger than a thumbnail could inflict. 

"Perhaps it's mostly internal?" The inexperienced Galshiel timidly posited from over Sir Fergus' shoulder.

"Aye, lad, perhaps..."

"Your Lord is beyond all hope if his strategy relies on turning an ordinary man out of this walking dungheap," Sir Sagmore went on hissing and writhing. "Forget about a blasted nobleman!"

"Blasted?" Jules slimmed the snarl into something slyer. "Heh, he's certainly got me pegged there, hasn't he, lads? If you think this place has had it rough, you ought to stop by my quarters—"

"On the floor, if you know what's good for you! NOW!" Coming straight from an eventful patrol, with corded muscles still thumping, Sir Kane was the only armored one among them. His sabre was singularly unsheathed. Jules knew that wouldn't be the case for long.

Even this didn't seal his mouth.

"You lot think you're all so high and mighty, don't you? All so—"

Rose's breath snared in her lungs like a hare in a thornbush. 

Her arrival coincided with Sir Kane's hand flying out with a python's precision. The skull-bashing caused a portrait of her grandfather to slide off its hook, glass exploding into litter. Kane released once a wet, red thread was tracing a path from Jules' burst ear to wind around his throat, and only then. His sturdy frame buckling, the conquered beast slipped down the wall and hit the mess of shards with a spent groan.

"You all heard me," Sir Kane told his men, sniffing lightly as he flagrantly flexed his smarting fingers. "I tried to reason with it, but it would not listen. It retaliated, it tried to—"

The crack of Rose's hand dismantling his self-approving profile rent the pungent air.

Sir Sagmore stopped his fussing. The lesser Knights collectively snatched in the same awestruck breath. Jules' audible discomfort could hardly make a dent in a silence thick enough to slice. 

Mortification wrung her insides as Rose dropped her fist to her hip, pupils fattening with the dread of hindsight. Slapping Kane had been like slapping a steel casket. Her fist may've shaken; her gaze did not. Each word was fitted with its own protective spur. "Leave. Him. Alone." 

Slowly, flaunting the calm she did not possess, Sir Kane's raw face turned to meet her.

"Right on target," he deadpanned.  

"You should not be here, Lady Rose!" Sir Oswald's voice was a wisp of its usual, prideful ring. "I told her not to follow, Kane, and I have witnesses to that, the servants—"

"I thank the Gods that I did follow you!" That slow-rising tide of anger surged into a tsunami, plowing shame and regret out of its path. "He didn't touch you, Kane! I know he didn't lay a hand on you!"

"No. But you did."

The broken glass may as well have been lining her throat, given the short, jagged quality of the breath she couldn't seem to take enough of.

"That temper, Lady Rose. Tsk. Is this how you plan on settling your disagreements with your fellow governors?"

"Let him go," Rose stiffly repeated. She scarcely skimmed over the prone Sir Sagmore before she latched onto him — he was watching through the watering slit of an engorged eye. The longer her focus was on Jules, the more she was freed from that whirlwind of fury and fear.

And then Sir Galshiel baulked, "After what he did to Sir Sagmore?"

What had been simmering discharged volcanically — she rushed into the middle of the pack, her rage revolving around them, dolled out ruthlessly and equally across their group. "Were any of you here to witness that? Six against one, some battle that is! Why did so many of you come running? Is it because you can only feel what my aunt tells you to feel? Has she honestly convinced you that Jules is someone to feel threatened by?"

A greasy racket shredded through the grave atmosphere. The flatulence was about as appropriate as an off-key chord in a funeral march. Not a living soul was entertained by the rude interruption, and that, for once, included the culprit, whose subsequent sigh was heavy with defeat. Sir Sagmore gave a moan of despair; below his excessive moustache, his mouth ran about it being this way all bloody morning long.

"Threatened, Lady Rose? By a man who cannot bathe himself?"

Appreciating the levity, Kane's men received his jibe with liberal snorts and snickers — once they had stomached the latest dose of Jules, that is.

"There has never been a more ridiculous waste of time. To think your Father thought I could bear to even sit in this long enough to—"

"What happened here?" Rose cut off her former tutor.

Sir Sagmore glowered. He could rise above her terseness, but not the lack of honorifics. Giving a snooty little hmph, he crossed one spindly leg over the other. "All I asked the dunce to do was write his name, to see if he was capable of even that. Rather than admit to what I already knew, your pet lashed out at me."

"You lying toad—" Jules was prevented from making any further objections by a savage kick in the ribs.

"Stop it!" Hearing Jules in pain pared back her voice to some shrill, hysterical thing, cracking the shell to expose what they would see as the mere thin-skinned girl in her. "He's on the ground, unarmed! Will you leave him alone!" 

"Oh, child. Let us men handle this, please. We shall hold the beast here until we can find someplace to confine him properly, then your aunt and I will decide—"

"Nothing! You two will decide nothing!"

Sir Sagmore spluttered but never gained purchase on the right set of words to chastise her. Struggling to navigate through stench and status and her own overwhelm, she still managed to address the room brutally: "I am not a child, I am the Lord's sole daughter, I am your Lady of the Court. And I ordered you to let him go. You dare to hesitate at my word?"

The lesser Knights waited, watching their deputy. Sir Sagmore's mouth fell ajar as Sir Kane considered her speech, then gave Sir Luther a resolute nod. On the count of three, the Knight lifted the boot that pinned Jules to the floor. He sprang back dextrously, one hand extended out behind him to defend Sir Sagmore, the other on his leather scabbard, but the outsider lay there as motionless as a slug, as silent as the cave-sickness allowed.

In an instant, driven by compulsion as unmistakable as dawn break, Rose crossed the room to kneel at Jules' side. 

Sir Fergus cleared his throat. "Er, I must insist on a visit to Sir Thaddeus, Sagmore. His trained eye will see what we cannot."

"He left already." The scholar clapped his hands twice at Sir Galshiel; the youngest Knight was avidly watching Rose while she looked the rogue over with the same attentiveness and devotion he and his mentor had shown the wisest one. "Early this morn. Did little more than sneak out, mind you. Urgent business elsewhere, apparently. Too urgent to ask me if I wished to share his carriage."

"One of Ambrose's men is a medic, and we have a legal witch in the village," Sir Galshiel offered, handing him the stag-head cane with a servile bow. "You will find she is well-versed in the Earth's medicine—"

"You need not tell me that, boy. I called these castle walls home longer than you have! No. I'll soldier on." Sir Sagmore rose elegantly from the cherrywood desk, rapping his old friend affectionately with skinny knuckles. He leaned on his cane as eyes faded by time swept thoughtfully over the gathered men. "I'm fortunate you were so close at hand. Douglas should have stationed two of you in the room from the beginning, of course." 

His attention, like the others, was held by a macabre fascination of Rose consoling the barbarian. His unshackled thoughts were aired soberly.

"I saw it in the animal's eyes as soon as I sat down to that wretched meal last night. That wildness — but something more than that. What character he possesses is buried by shadow. It marks him, spirit and soul. His inner world is a dark climate. You daren't even blink around him for fear of what he might do with the opportunity. You men must have your work cut out for you."

"Feels more like a sideshow we're running these days." Any voice would've carried with ease in this tense schoolroom, but Kane made a point of raising his. With a gentle and steady hand, a serene contrast to what frothed and foamed inside of her, Rose pushed locks of damp flaxen hair aside to examine Jules' ear. Anger's serrated and unsweetened clasp on her relaxed as soon as her flesh found his. 

"Come, my Lady. We shall station men in here to watch him."

"Best make it at least four," Sir Sagmore added to Kane's order. "He's looking wily after that attack, I shan't be surprised if he tries again."

"Come with you where?" Rose refused to give Sir Kane even the basic courtesy of being directly spoken to. Instead, she concentrated on pressing her personal handkerchief, her name embroidered in purple, to Jules' wound, to dam the leak.

"To report this to Lady Ainsley and your Father, naturally. We will have to keep him here until a decision is made as to whether it remains sensible for him to reside within the castle," Kane said.

Knowing her ignited wrath would crumble this illusion of composure — though concerned that how horrified she was by the prospect of being separated from him would stand out starkest — she did not turn. "I shall stay with Master Jules. Not your men." She placed a hand where Sir Luther's boot had ruined Jules' new clothes. He must've bruised him, for Jules jolted, muscles hardening against the hurt.

Unless it was her touch that still inspired that need to recoil.

"And… I shall tell Father of what occurred. No one else."

"Lady Rose—"

"Not a word about this until I have spoken to my Father, Kane!" She shouted. "Must I make myself any clearer?"

Sir Sagmore's cane tapped abruptly against the floor in her direction. 

"Rosalie, I wish to speak to you privately. Now."

"Later, Sir Sagmore, I must—"

"Just go," urged a soft, hoarse voice. Just enough for her to hear. 

"May... may I have a few moments with him first? He is my responsibility; I have to see that he is well." Glancing over her shoulder, she raised a lofty chin to the Knights lined behind Sir Sagmore. "I do not need anyone here to watch over me, for I do not fear him." The Lady laid her hand firmly on Jules, claiming him.

"No matter what you all say," she declared.

Sir Sagmore's hand clenched the stag-head. Rage rattled the aged bones of his wiry body. 

Sir Kane spoke in a low, enigmatic tenor. "Come, Sir. We cannot convince her otherwise."

"I will wait for you outside," Sir Sagmore shot down at her as he passed.

"Close the door," Rose coolly requested. "Master Jules and I wish to have privacy."

An uttered comment near the head of the flock earned sputters of juvenile laughter from those at the rear and a biting statement of revolted concern from Sir Sagmore. Rose didn't hear either; she was waiting for the safety of the lock.

"They're gone, Jules. Can you get up?" 

She fell back with a yelp at the blur of fiery motion — again, with that unexpected litheness for a man his size — as he collected himself with fluid ease. As soon as he was back on his feet, Jules brandished two erect middle fingers to the closed door. 

"Bastards! Braggarts! Bollocks to the lot of them! To think of the King appointing some dirty old buzzard like that as a keeper of knowledge! What is this World coming t'—"

She seized his collar and pulled him the negligible distance toward her face. "Are you TRYING to get yourself killed?" 

As if her heart wasn't under enough stress, his mouth had to go and pour her a loud, harsh serving of steaming air! Squealing, she quickly retreated from him, trying to hide the blush his belch now served to reinforce.

"Questions, questions, it's always questions with you people! If I can't touch you, Lady Rose, then you can't touch me."

She puffed and huffed like a child unfairly scolded. He stuck his tongue out at her in much the same fashion.

Then his eyes narrowed with foxy intelligence.

"Or at least, not without asking, eh?"

Finding herself breathless once more — with passion, foremost, unfortunately, for his unbridled gas was gloriously, blisteringly foul, charring her nostrils as it was all the way inhaled — and rage, at his jackassery, at how bloody pigheaded he always had to be — and then, finally, importantly, shock. The vessels in his left eye had blown open, red weaving through the white. The yellow welt staining the surrounding skin deepened and greened more with each passing second.

"He hurt you," she sadly pronounced.  

"Pah! Yet you're turning whiter by the clocktick. Deep breaths, as you'd say!" Even the unluckiest man could've placed a confident bet on what happened next — Jules hiking up a leg to usher out a grandiose expulsion from his other exit, its depth sickeningly suggestive of him having kept it pent up longer than he would prefer. All that basted meat and tough fiber that had been slow-cooking overnight in his poisonous juices enrobed her.

He screwed his face up and made a great show of fanning his hand. She only stared with forced disinterest.

"Cor! Or maybe not. Good Gods, are we entirely sure Cosgrach actually cooked any of those meats? My gut surely isn't! You ought to have heard the night I had, Lady Rose, drums of war couldn't have drowned out my... oh, wait. You probably did hear it, didn't you?"

Her voice, like her face, was humorless. "You can't be this dense."

He impudently winked his good eye. "Believe it." 

"I wasn't expecting you to come out a perfectly learned man after a single morning, but I was expecting you to try. With everything that is at stake for you, why are you so opposed to trying to become more than what you are?"

"Why should I try?"

His unmovedness churned the acid still bubbling in her belly. She sighed something that sounded much like his name, correcting the red tangles that obscured her face, then, sighting his infuriatingly detached expression, she shook her head, the tangles coming loose again and bouncing madly. The fury that had coursed through her, that had fuelled Rose through the seven-on-one confrontation with her Father's Guard and Sagmore, was rapidly ebbing.

Her will to defend Father's project would have to prevail, but not without using up whatever was left of her.

"Don't you see? Don't you care? When the Lords assemble, and might I remind you that it is sooner than you think, Father and I will have to plead your case, to prove that you have reverted to what you were before—"

"An interesting concept, that, given you have no idea how I was before," he scoffingly cut in. 

"Before the trolls! Before you became — whatever this is," she gestured to him with a tetchy, half-hearted flick of her wrist. Jules rolled that one good eye. "You were something, once, Jules. Someone like us. I know you were."

"Oh, please—"

"Their assertion is not only that you shall be like this forever, but that others could be modelled in your image," Rose barreled on desperately. "You claim it is yours to suffer alone, but Sir Thaddeus cannot say with his whole heart that the cave-sickness won't spread, therefore we have to allay those fears, or else even we shall have no way of convincing them otherwise." Panic visibly rocked her form, and she cared not what he made of it. "We have to prove to them that you can be more than what the trolls reduced you to!" 

The bruise around his blackened eye stretched inky fingers to mar the rest of his complexion in a mask of dark resentment. Rose could feel the energy shift and calcify between them, could almost reach out and touch the indignation rising from him, and briefly, ever so briefly, she considered whether it had been wise to send her trained men away.

"That is your wish, Lady Rose." His tone was discomfitingly measured. "Not mine."

"I know your wish," Rose soothed him, after what she considered a necessary intermission; he had stalked off, straying as far from her as he could. "Your wish is to return to the mountains, to the caves, and that... may be possible, still..." 

She had been forced to reconsider Sir Thaddeus' plan. Without any meaningful progress achieved from the efforts of her and Eustace, sending Jules away may be the only way to save him, though not without consequences. For him, and for her. Lawfully, socially, Royally... personally.

She braced her chest, foreseeing its laden pang.

"But not unless they can see that you are not so far gone, Master Jules," she persisted. "That this sickness has its limits, that its impact can be reversed or mitigated—"

He looked up crossly from where he had been trying to convince himself he could successfully ignore her. "Do not call me that." 

"Don't be a fool. The Lord granted you a respectable title. It is unwise to reject it just because you're feeling burnt."

"I don't care what he did! Don't call me that anymore!" His adrenaline peaked and plummeted in an overt descent. That terror he had strapped down and hid from the Knights suddenly broke free, seizing him. "I do not want to be called that!"

Rose's curiosity came from a good place, and she tried to make this known, but the living nightmare blinded him more than any blackened eye.

"Why is that?" 

"Because I haven't earned it! Because I don't want it! Because—shit—"

Expelling depthless breath in brisk, forceful gusts through flared nostrils, his chin quivered hopelessly, child-like.

How often had she wished others would extend the same courtesy when her temper ruled her? Rose scrubbed his name from her lips. She would ignore him, for his sake.

She made a seat out of the end of the cherrywood desk, the very same Sir Sagmore had shown her the World from. The books, the maps, the chalkboard — the same poorly-mended fracture in the corner, from a science experiment gone awry — all the props from her days of yore. Recalling them lifted her trodden spirit. The golden days before Sadhbh's foretelling. When the air in here wasn't rich with Jules' intestinal failings but with limitless possibilities. A time when Rose's future was an open road, winding out into the forever of an excitedly undefined horizon...

The lunch bell tolled. A distancing rumble of footfall helped convince her that they were truly all alone.

"What really happened in here, Jules?" 

He studied the ant-sized villagers through his half-vision. They heeded no tolling of the great castle bell; there couldn't have been many pantries down there that could spare a lunch. Gradually, he grumbled, "Bear in mind I already had a bloody great bumping headache before he started spouting off—"

"Thanks to the copious amounts of beer, I'd presume," Rose tried for a joke.

"He asked me to—"

"Spell your name, yes. And you took offence?"

"It was the way he asked me," Jules growled. "Like I wouldn't... and then when I tried, he—" His jaw turned to iron, and his head snapped around, so he could eye the door hatefully. "Lady Rose, if I am to learn nobility from that man, then I shall want nothing to do with your nobility. True, though I am no expert on the subject, there is nothing noble nor especially educated about your Sir Sagmore."

"Right."

"You don't agree. How very surprising."

"Well, I've known him longer, haven't I? I spent most of my youth in his company. He was... kinder, then. Not so cynical. The stories he'd tell me — they were the best parts of his lessons. If I were clever about it, I could make them last the whole day." Her smile was trimmed before it could bloom. So many of Rose's best memories were borrowed; false remembrances of experiences that had never been hers.

She kicked her legs idly, swallowing the rising bile.

"...he's the most wonderful wordsmith. I wish I had half as many stories of my own. If you had only gotten to hear of all of his adventures and feats…"

"Surely you hear how he speaks of the others, Lady Rose?" 

Her legs stilled, head inclining. "What others?"

"Any others!" Jules laughed dryly. He searched her face, begging his eyes to find more than this superficial indifference. "Didn't... didn't you hear how he spoke to the servants last night? And that's just him getting started; you should've heard his opening spiel this morning. If he was intending to inspire me—"

"Now you're just being ridiculous." Rose neatly hopped off the desk. "He is so much more well-travelled than any of us here. Didn't you say that you can only learn by seeing the World?"

"He has an arsehole that's tricked itself into thinking it's a mouth," Jules muttered churlishly.

"Jules!"

"Well, he has! And I already know enough about arseholes, Lady Rose. I am of the mind that a man who revels in talking about only himself hasn't ever got all that much to say. I don't need someone reminding me of all that I am not. The World has never been slow to enlighten me on that."

The cloudbank from Rose's side of the castle skudded into view. Jules oversaw the peasants as they tended their Lord's land beneath a lustreless sky. Standing by his elbow, Rose considered whether it was not just his injury that made his eye misty. 

"Jules..."

"I am sure your servants feel similarly," he went on. "Just because someone doesn't have much of a formal education, it doesn't make them any less intelligent. Or any less anything." His voice became a blade. "All this lowborn and highborn nonsense you lot go on about. It's all a heap of hogshit!" 

"It is not!" Rose shouted.

"Well, if my ear wasn't bleeding before," Jules taunted, after pretending to flinch.

Stop. Think. She exhaled out the irritation before it knotted her gut. "I'm trying to be patient with you. I'm not sure if you've noticed that I'm often the only one around here who is. I can understand your frustration about how this morning has unfolded, but that is the rightful way of things, and you know it."

Jules turned and regarded her a second too long. Rose surveyed him sceptically. His bulk sauntered forward, his approach lazy but dominating, as he invited himself into her personal zone.

"You say you're a Royal, Lady Rose, but tell me this: what makes you any different to your lowly servants? Aren't you and your Father servants to the King?"

He crowded her until they were nose to nose.

Rose's hazel eyes daggered him.

"What?" He chuffed a laugh at her, blowing a red curl back, his breath warming her face. "You're surprised to hear it, Lady Rose? You shouldn't be."

"How dare—"

"Yes, yes, how dare I!" Jules jumped aside and pranced around. "Ooh, how dare anyone suggest that your family are not perfection embodied, Lady Rose! Alright, you want a lesson? I'll give you a lesson even Sir Sagmore hasn't the brains to teach you — you're not lowborn or highborn. You're just born! Sometimes you're born beautiful, sometimes you're born wise, sometimes you're born into wealth, sometimes you're born with naught but dirt and rags to your name and sometimes you're born—"

"Well, go on," she goaded, when he came to a full and unexpected stop, as though a ditch blocked his merry path. "Spit it out!" 

He cut himself down to size with his secretive answer.

"Wrong."

Provoked, she hurled her cruellest laugh at him. "'Wrong?' What's that supposed to mean?"

"My point is that no one gets to choose," he seethed, "that we are what we are. We just are."

"You told me you had no education," she said carefully, giving him space to cool. "Why not take the opportunity to get some, Jules? What else do you have to do until the assembly, anyway?"

His face took on the same unhealthy finish of anyone who had ever had the misfortune of loitering behind him for too long. "I'm sure I could think of something better than this."

"Could you? This is a rare opportunity for someone like you. You've never been taught in a classroom before, have you? Wouldn't you like to know how to spell your name? Read a line in a book unaided? Wouldn't… you… er." 

Shedding her superior act, she had the decency to appear as embarrassed as she felt.

"You think I'm incapable of spelling my own name?" 

"I – okay. P-perhaps that was wrong of me to assume."

"Merlin's beard, I'll say."

"Though I do have my doubts," Rose added, her voice adopting a wry lilt. 

"You do, do you?"

"Perhaps Sir Sagmore also felt this way. Given your proclivities, you didn't seem naturally suited to traditional learning."

"He assumed that I could be nothing but a dunce because I flatulate?" Jules barked an empty laugh and shook his head. "Is that what you think of me, my Lady?"

She was committed to a serious answer. "You know I don't."

Jules tilted his head back, leisurely reviewing her.

Rose dipped a hand into her trouser pocket, fingers freezing as they brushed the strange stone, before she laid down a stub of chalk on the windowsill.

"Prove him wrong. Show me what you can do. Then we'll show him together."

Did she notice fear distort his smug exterior as he reached for it, before he snatched his hand away as though he was sure it would bite? Were her eyes playing tricks on her now that they were so close, and his stink had its hypnotic hold of her?

"I have nothing to prove to you, Lady Rose. And besides, this is too easy, anyway."

"Yet I don't see you picking it up," she countered.

They shared a look. Heated and profound. Not necessarily an angry one, Rose slowly realized, as confused and clumsy urges tried to ripple her still, supercilious surface. 

Remembering herself, she tore them cleanly apart. 

"Sir Sagmore waits for me. Hear this, and believe it," she echoed him, "this will be mended one way or another."

"So you say," Jules groused, his attention returning to the peasants.

"You might not care for your future. Fortunately for you, I do. And you can count on it staying that way."

She waited for him to look over and query her apparent hesitation in opening the door, to hit him with a taste of his own medicine: her lips arranged themselves in that same bothersomely carefree smirk of his.

"If you can count."

Blank-faced and button-lipped, Jules described what he thought of that by canting his hip and letting it rip, as only a beast could.

Chapter Text

Safe in his isolation, he handled the chalk-stub like poison in a timorous and inexpert grip.

He hadn't learned with tools like these. In rooms like these. His first classroom, doubling as his bedchamber, had been a rubbling shed, an insignificant blemish out there in that endless track of sterile wasteland, where the only thing the holes in the roof ever let in was dust and vulture droppings.

Later, there had been the pen shared with nature's castaways — striped mice trained to jump through hoops, horned badgers, donkeys with hides as yellow as lemons, tortoises with eyes obtruding from the back of their globular heads, and Topps' home-grown herd of piebald mules; all those yapping, wire-coated dogs (and once, all too briefly, a two-headed calf he named Moe.) The horizons would change. The pen and her cast-iron bars would not. 

His chalk was his steadiest finger, or the sharpest end of a stick. 

Despite how close to confidently he carved the word out, despite the time spent laboring, scribing until the nerves screamed and the flaps of skin connecting each digit chafed and split and wept, the name never stayed the way Papa promised. Not in the red grain. Not in the dirt and loam. A wise man would attribute that to the shifting winds, the cleansing rains. The beast blamed himself.

The beast never tried hard enough.

His ears rang from each blow of Kane's hand, yet coming high and clear through the din was the Court's castle-wide derision, the crowd's vacant-hearted heckling, and that constant, gravelled refrain, an echo Jules would never unhear. Never outrun. No matter how far the circus took him from the deadland. No matter where the stars decided his journey would end.

Mistake.

Wrong.

Sick.

He firmed his grip and took a breath like it would be his last.

The stub met the board. He diffidently manoeuvred, making the first of the shapes. The chalkdust formed a tacky paste on moist fingers. The altercation with the Knights had left him dripping, saddled with his own unforgettable musk. His stomach, cumbrous and disagreeable from the evening's gorging, charged by his encounter with Kane and with Lady Rose, broiled and rumbled marshily. Each wave of blunted pain compressing his taxed intestines loosed another shameful quantity of rancid fumage and gave his tongue back an old taste. 

Make the line all the way down, then up to the sideways circle, do it just like Papa showed—

YOU ARE WHAT HURTS HER

All of him convulsed, wresting back from the board, fear volleying up his throat as though Kane's fist had a scrunchful of his hair again. The stub fell to roll under the desk that the wintry scholar had watched Jules slump down in, descending further and further as the ill-conceived morning progressed. Why should Sir Sagmore notice his blatant boredom when that was how he saw all others anyway, sunken and beneath him?

Sagmore and Papa.

The verbiage changed; the meaning did not.

You are not worth my time.

The board was toppled on its side. Its crash might summon the Knights, but at least it would screen his outcry.

A hot, tight ball of feeling welled up in Jules' breast, stacked up in his throat, pricked the backs of his eyes. He blinked and blinked and when that failed to erase the evidence, he ground his knuckles into his sockets and upbraided himself viciously, scorning and punishing each fallen droplet. Every breath was a challenge. His formidable build tremored as it fought to bind the eddying hurt of now and then. His tears had been heard before, but never had they been listened to. Even as a dull-skulled boy, he knew that shedding them was only wasted water — foolish anywhere, but especially in the desert.

His mind was like the spider's webs architected in the castle's sooty joints. His memory trapped the places and people he wished to bury and forget, preserving them, wrapping them up for safekeeping, and deeming all else trifling, sentenced to slip through the thread. Through the mind's clutter and jumble, through the ear's din, he searched for her song. The mother of his heart. Her lullaby like cool cave water scaling over round, flat rock, soothing and salving. Claws catching his tears, tucking snugly under his chin, turning his head up toward that cover of twinkling black above the peaks.

Heaven had never been so close.

Use the stone, my Little Blanket. See for yourself what you are made of.

Even she, master of medicines, sometimes seen and other times only felt, could not unburden him of this.

To what lies ahead?

Bleak resignation dried and shadowed his face.

Home.

Slipping through the strands.

Jules let it.

"ƈɦɨɖʀɛ ȶɦǟʍօ ʀɨʊȶǟ."

This time, there was no music for his fingers to dance to.

Blood that had wet down the fine fuzz on his nape dried and crusted. It felt like sand gritting his skin.

"Legacy. How do you define it, Rose?"

"…are you asking for a textbook definition?"

"I am asking what it means to you."

She hadn't found him outside the study, but in another likely place. His band of ardent Knights had been called elsewhere. Sir Sagmore, elbows propped on the railing, his dimpled chin resting on interlaced, arthritic fingers, oversaw the activity of the central entryway. Their castle had no ballroom, but there was an abundance of floorspace to clear and titivate for dances and rituals. The rite of harvest would be the largest ceremony her home had hosted in years. She surmised that her Father had selected the floor below as the fulcrum of the celebration.

If things continued as they were, she would be doing little in the way of that.

Back against the wall, feeling unfit for any level of conversation, Rose mustered the will to trudge forward and stand by his side. She dropped her eyes to where Mr. Ambrose, with militant vigilance, strode the line of servants scrubbing the floor.

"I suppose..." Words came sparse and slow, with the risk of being censured circling her predatorily, "I would say—"

"It means a great deal to me." 

Defying his sapless appearance, Sir Sagmore's voice knifed her.

"It means a great deal to your aunt, and it should mean a great deal to your Father, though you would be pardoned for believing otherwise. How he ever thought taking in that heathen would bolster our confidence in his governing!" 

His papery features writhed anstily, and he depleted his lungs of a year-long sigh.

"It was his decision," she said crisply.

"It was an extreme decision. As far as I know, no one coerced him into it. Lord Muchty was glad to be the one to spill its blood. Your Father intervened." An astute eye roved her. "Has he enlightened you as to why he did so, perchance?"

"I am sorry that you and Jules got off on the wrong foot, Sir."

"Understatement doesn't even begin to cover that."

"I have given the matter some thought. I believe he trusts me, and I've come to know him as well as he'll allow anyone. Tomorrow, I will sit with you and assist in his instruction."

"Tomorrow?" 

"For his next lesson," Rose said. 

The old man brayed a laugh, parading a mouth of yellowing teeth. "You're not serious?" 

Up until now, she had marvelled at her sedate conduct. (If only Kane were here.) Her hold on that was becoming buttery. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"Oh, Gods help us — there will be no further lessons, Rose. I will have nothing to do with this malarky. I can see ahead far enough. I refuse to have a hand in this charade any longer."

"B-But you said—" 

"I said I would try. I remember clearly the desperation in your Father's letter, and the generous patience in my response. Unlike your pet, I have tried, Rose, and after this morning, my reserves have run dry. I had my reservations on the journey here; I have twice as many now. Oh, my child…"

The vacuous commiseration on his waxy face curdled her gorge.

"Surely you can see how absurd your Father is being? This thing cannot be taught. You're asking me to enlighten a gormless animal. Would you send me out to the paddocks to teach the rams to read, too?"

"He is a man," Rose insisted. The leaking aggravation she was battling to staunch flinted her voice dangerously. "Sir Thaddeus declared him so. Do you doubt the word of the doctor?"

"In biology, perhaps, but in character?"

Rose momentarily shut her eyes. "He is not always as... as brash as that. There are times when he shows great potential of character, in fact, and... remarkable heart, given his—"

"You cannot instil a desire for self-improvement in one of his kind, Rose. Without that desire, the mission becomes futile."

"He says things that suggest as much," she admitted, "but he is bullheaded and doesn't understand the depth of his situation, nor that—"

"Rosalie, you are blinded by loyalty. If he honestly wished to please you and your Father, to return his graciousness, to pay thanks for the mercy shown him, he would not deny himself the chance," Sir Sagmore pressed on.

Suddenly, he became enraged: "Your pet knows of my reputation, Rose! I even did him the courtesy of summarising my credentials at the beginning of class. He was so moved by it that he almost stopped snoring! The nerve of that flatulent scruff! Do you know how many lowborns wish on each night's star that one day they may become literate? Throwing themselves at my feet as I step through their squalor and mess, begging me to see them, and this — this — whatever he may be — most rotten-to-the-core bottom-feeder I've had the displeasure of encountering in all my travels — dares to question my experience, is audacious enough to ask me what my motives are – well, hear this, one and all! He is my last act of charity!"

He had plotted for his speech to be recorded by the servants toiling on their knees. A couple raised their heads to where he and Rose stood. Their wandering attentions were swiftly corrected by Mr. Ambrose.

His hue made healthy by sallow sunlight streaming in from one of the long windows, Sir Sagmore nodded self-importantly. Then his complexion wanned once more; he wrinkled his nose, mouth pursing in offense. There was nowhere in the castle that Jules could not be scented. It was only a small comfort to Rose now.

"Eugh... in some ways, I have the hog to thank. His awfulness has moved me to face my own ignorance. I've been too generous with these lowborns. It is time that I follow in the footsteps of my esteemed colleagues. I shall stick to nurturing Royal minds, and theirs alone. Higherborns have an innate capability for learning. Certainly, you were a testament of that, weren't you, Rose? A stupifying intelligence, considering your Father's – well… and your mother being of such low stock herself. She was another anomaly. But that is all she was: an anomaly, an exception. Most lowborns possess not the ability to make use of the World's wisdom. They do not appreciate the gift of knowledge, for it's so rarely something they can hold in their hands, like their tools and their livestock. They're simply not built for it. And frankly, it can be unwise to let them know too much. We are born what we are for a reason. Time has proven that it is better for all of us if they don't understand."

Someone sneezed. Responding to this crime, Mr. Ambrose, in a semi-elegant fit of rage, launched his foot at their bucket of soapy water. It poured out in a wide arc, covering every possible inch of where the speck may have dared to land and stain. He demanded that each member of their row dry it with rags and start over.

"Seems I have no choice but to try and enjoy my stay in Campion." Sir Sagmore made the idea sound like a dirge. "No sense leaving when the weather's about to turn. You've heard that Sadhbh has predicted snow? Hasn't snowed this close to the sea since—" He checked himself a heartbeat too late — and checked in on Rose several too late. Only Jules wouldn't have known when the snow had last fallen. Her oval face's picture of shellshock was solely deciphered as grief, and with all his travelling and tutelage, Sagmore hadn't had much time left over to learn how to offer genuine solace. 

"...er... though, that hasn't stopped Thaddeus. Fancy scurrying off like that without so much as a goodbye. Hmph. Oh, which reminds me. Here."

A sealed letter was produced from his robes. Rose took it unthinkingly. A hand that wouldn't make a cleft in a pile of jelly coming down on her shoulder occasioned her to gasp. His skeletal fingers sent chilly illness burrowing deep inside her husked-out figure as they tried to rub away the woe, as though it were nothing but a smudge.

"Don't chide yourself too harshly. Your outburst must be addressed by your Father, and an apology owed to Kane and the men, but dysregulation and naivete are expected of a young woman. And the likes of that thing will always take advantage of your type. I strongly suggest that you listen to your Aunt and let the Knights do as they must. Nothing good will come of you interfering, all to shelter scum like that!"

"If I don't see my own self winking back at me in that dolomite, people, then we'll be here 'til nightfall and beyond! I don't care if you break your bloody backs! Get on with it!"

Mr. Ambrose's idea of a motivational speech filtered through the film that shrouded Rose as suffocatingly as the veil, tearing a hole just wide enough to let in the sound of Sir Sagmore chuckling indulgently at Ambrose's tactics, to let her watch as he winded down the descending staircase to acquire a better view, but not to hear the footsteps coming up from behind, not to feel anything but those tendrils strangle her throat.

She missed the wall, but hit something just as solidly unfeeling.

"You rat-faced puck. When will you learn?" 

Celeste's pert mouth curved to match her leer. Rose's fought for breath.

"Don't you know this is Rose's great, big, important project, Celeste?" Luna joined, materialising at her sister's side.

"A silly little project," Celeste taunted, a painted nail fingering a curl of red, "for a silly, stupid little girl."

Rose crushed the letter against her hollow and airless trunk.

"Nothing little about Spots!" Luna mocked.

"I suppose your lizard of a mother's already put her spin on it, has she?" The film was melted by her ire. Hearing herself hurl an insult back meant she could breathe again — and Rose's relief rendered her recklessly lucid. "What did she have you believe this time? That Jules rent Sir Sagmore and the Knights to shreds? Ate their viscera in front of them?"

"Don't be so bog-mouthed," Celeste reproved. "That animal's rubbing off on you more and more each day."

"And he's leaving a mark for everyone to see-eee," Luna sang. Their transfer of knowing glances was maddening.

"Get out of my way," Rose ordered.

Celeste did not.

"Mother's yet to be told of it. She, Uncle and Winslow are out in the market, with Mason, picking out fabrics for the ceremony. Luna and I have half a mind to take a carriage and deliver the news ourselves."

"You'll do no such thing. You'll stay in the castle under my order, Celeste. Both of you."

The twins tuned a chorus of sarcastic 'ooooohs'.

"Your order?" 

"Or what'll happen, Rosie-posie? What'll you do to us if we do as we please?" 

"What do you ever do, Spots, besides whine to that dumb Daddy of yours?"

"I'm contributing. I'm involved. What do you two ever do?" Rose demanded to know. "Ever wonder why your mother keeps you detached from our business? Maybe it's because she knows you’ve only got half a mind to share between the pair of you, if you're lucky!"

"You think we want your life, Spots? What would you know of our business besides? You only went to your first trade meeting a moon back. You do realize Lords send their children to represent the county alone? What does it say about a big, grown girl like you, riding around with Daddy all day long?" Celeste crowed coldly at Rose's intensifying blush. "How glamorous it must be to tell the cooks in the kitchen what to do when they find out their potatoes are moldy! Who wouldn't envy you?"

"Some bloody Captain of the Guard Winslow's going to be! Picking out fabrics, puffing his pipe! Everyone knows he's as spineless as they come, can't even hold a sword correctly, the brick-head! I wonder if your mother and father knew he'd never be fit for it, and that was why Mason—"

"Keep my father," Celeste stabbed a nail into Rose's throat, "out of your fat mouth."

Rose loured. Trembled. Considered it, knowing how she felt when her mother was in theirs.

Then exploded.

"Come and shut it yourself, you trollop!"

She dodged Celeste's fist, but the same hand risked another shot and was rewarded when it plunged into Rose's tangle of red to wrench unforgivingly. The Lady's nerves cauterwauled. A crash of knuckles, the bending of bones, and Rose was shortly compensated. Celeste's howls laved her in a deliciously dark satisfaction.

Luna screamed; her only notion of defense. No one came running fast enough, so she screamed again. Overwhelming her with her mass, Rose flung them to the floor, hoping to crush her, but Celeste rolled her over before she could use the weight they so often ridiculed for to her advantage. She demanded that Luna shut up and hold her arms down while she slashed her nails across Rose's scarlet face.

"Contributing, she says! You're contributing to the downfall of this family! This mess your brainless Father has made will be ours to clean up and the stars only know what state we'll be in then! It's just too bad your ugly lowborn mother got herself killed and took all the brains with her, isn't it!"

Her ravaging nails hadn't soaked Rose's face enough to her liking. She supplemented this with spit, and Rose unwittingly helped, watering her burning cheeks.

"That's it, Spots! Do what you do best and cry! Cry, cry — eugh, what's..."

His unmistakable signature dressed the hallway with abhorrent simplicity. Celeste squealed and fumbled for her sister.

He looked at the twins, then at the broken body on the floor. 

Rose shrinkingly brought her knees to her chest. With a view only of her back, he could see her head hung low, her body jerking with misery she could not halt. Her nose was too full of snot to scent him.

Unbraced for any continued assault, she scrambled blindly from the twins, finding her feet as she ran straight into him. He reached out to her and was rejected fiercely.

"You!" 

He wasn't so dull-skulled as to not see that there was no room for a playful Me? here.

They shared a bleary, tear-blurred look  — just as bottomless as before, except now Rose was drowning in it. Tears made awry tracks through the smear of blood and spit and spots. She thought of knocking him with her shoulder, decided the last thing she wanted to do was touch or be touched by him, and soon the door to her quarters was tottering on its hinges, prey to a wrathful thrust powered by a temper tantrum the castle was no stranger to. It induced Celeste to scoff.

"So bloody embarrassing—"

"Shut up," Jules commanded.

Luna gasped. "How dare you speak to her like—" 

"You as well. And they call me dirty." He grimaced. "Look at the way you fight."

"Someone's supposed to be watching you," Celeste fumed.

He took only a single step forward. They shuffled back with extravagant terror, holding onto each other, moving as a unit.

"Does it look like anyone is?"

"Stay away from us!" Luna warbled. 

"Keep going, or I'll eat your viscera."

He tutted as they dramatically departed, a pair of wailing banshees. He hadn't known he would miss them. Her anguish was articulated with unbearable authenticity; she could not know that she called to him like a reverse siren song. He bashfully raised his bruised knuckles to the wood.

The echo hit him like a missile.

SHE NEVER WANTED THIS

He turned sharply on his heel. First walking, then running as she had, opposite to where Mr. Ambrose and two of the senior servants were flighting up the stairs, witnessing not a Master of the Court trying to earn forgiveness from his Lady but a prolific perpetrator fleeing the scene.

"It's him—knew it—"

"Call for Kane!"

The oil paintings of the Lords and Ladies of Once and Before on the walls fused into one face rejecting him as Jules hastened, uncaring of those in pursuit and what their fists had in store, only driven by a solitary goal of outpacing those terrible sobs, but more than that the need to answer to and heed them, to comfort and protect and relieve of all her trouble and trials, a need like instinct, enticing, demanding but more than that, necessary, compulsory, essential...

...and always, ceaselessly, uselessly... trying to outpace Papa.

Mistake.

Wrong.

SICK.

Chapter Text

I can't take you anywhere. Art by crafting-mojo.

"Thank you very much, Eustace! That'll be all for us. You run along, now, and have yourself a hard-earned kip!"

The Lord's gaiety was unshakeable, and in its own undervalued way a worthy foe. It stood in brave defiance against a hopelessness of Goliathian proportions that otherwise ruled over his quarters as the page boy set down an assortment of biscuits next to a pot of tea.

Eustace dipped his head in humble recognition. Imperceptibly, his face lifted as he neared the door, wherein he tried to catch the attention of the figure bundled up on the Lord's four-post bed, to offer that same faith and optimism she had earlier impressed on him and looked as though she was in dire need of now. But Lady Rose could not register his being there, seeing that she was intent on killing herself through the means of a duckfeather pillow.

Her Father, taking for himself a finger of shortbread which he was most zealously anticipating dunking, concluded that the act may have been inappropriate while his daughter was smothering herself beside him.

"...quite the day, wasn't it, Rosie?"

"Mmmmffph—"

He laid down his teacup and plate and gracefully extracted her from the pillow. Offering her all of what he had in the way of brawn, she was helped into a seated position and gathered closely to his side, with many solid pats landing between her large, twitching shoulders.

"How's the stomach now, my sweet petal? Any better?"

"Tea's helping. A little."

She shrank from his nearness, curling in on herself. This pleasant reception didn't feel even marginally deserved. 

"You know, I could've sworn you just had your cycle a moon ago," he noted with unease. "Should we be concerned?"

Rose swallowed a comment about that being how this worked and had always worked since she was eleven, plus another mouthful of calming chamomile. She eyed the dregs as though she might find the wisdom among the soggy leaves; if this day had taught her anything, it was that she could not find it within herself. 

"I think it may have had something to do with me striking Kane. Though..." Her voice sank to a repentant mumble, "That does not excuse it."

"It certainly does not, Rose. Kane has served our family loyally, and I expect you to apologise to him and the Guard tomorrow."

"Of course, Father."

"And Celeste."

"...eh—"

"Rose," he urged.

It was a limited inner debate; she confirmed she would fulfil his instruction with one dopey, dour nod. Deeming the resolution close enough to satisfactory, the Lord took his shortbread and drowned it in his teacup. A trebling noise of unadulterated delight as his mouth was immersed in melting sugar inched a smile onto Rose's puffy face, in spite of her best efforts.

"Divine! Simply scrumptious! Though I really shouldn't be having something this sweet so close to bedtime — the chamomile'll counteract it, I hope. Perhaps we might send some of this tea over to Master Jules, hm? Though knowing his appetite, we'd need more than one pot, wouldn't we? Ha-ha! Some lad, so is he!"

That name sustained her silence.

Those happy munches slackened. Studying her sidelong, he flicked crumbs from his fingers. A spotted hound cunningly positioned by his slippered feet soon got to work.

"Of course I shall have to hear his personal account of this morning's episode before I can resolve it," he tactfully posited. "I admit that Sir Sagmore's retelling does not paint the most flattering portrait."

"Of course it wouldn't. He acted like a — a bloody beast." A growl scratched her throat, made her dotted jaw gnash. "Because he is a bloody beast! And I hate how he makes me—"

"Now, now. Merely a spanner in the works. We must remember that this is a major transition for him. Though birth, or rebirth, in our case, is a celebration, it is never without trial."

"But we don't have time for spanners, do we? The Lords will shortly come together, they'll see him, hear him — smell him—ugh!" She stopped herself, and then let pass a scant, abject laugh. A knuckle sponged her snotty philtrum.

Their noses could never know it the way hers did.

Her appearance was duplicitous to the few who may have seen her as anything other than awkward and flumpy. She was nowhere near as stalwart as she appeared. Not enough for this project. Never enough for this vexatious desire. Its existence alone magnified her cramps.

It was a skin-crawling notion, being so close to someone as humane and tender-hearted as her Father, with him having not the slightest idea as to the shockingly gruesome impurity sleeping inside of his late-blooming daughter, or that its hibernation was drawing to a close faster than she could think up a cure...

"We could always return him to the mountains," she glumly croaked. "Say that he escaped."

"What? Rose—"

"I would take the blame, naturally, being that I am young and inexperienced and… naive. It could be my fault, not yours, so our people would not doubt your—"

"No! I would never allow it! My Rosie? Naive? Pah! Allowing something like that to occur? Psht! The Lords would never buy it!"

Nausea, whether cyclic or not, came for her without mercy, hearing in his voice and reading in each dip and pit of his cherubic face how confidently he believed in that. In her.

She exhaled shudderingly, spine rigid as the knots flamed the lining of her midriff. Her fingers sought the locket. Unlike Jules' stone, its fine, metal feel would only numb what was inside. That was precisely how she wanted it.

An undeserved rage bubbled up when his hand held hers still. The question came bit by bit, overly careful, as though he were afraid of the answer.

"What's... that you've got on, Rosalie?"

The clash with Celeste had resuscitated her possessiveness. Rose did not regret her actions, however sophomoric that may be, and she would overlook the swollen engravings Celeste had left on her face which would surely last the rest of the week; she hadn't much reason to take in her own reflection, and even less to be proud of it. You could not sully what was already homely, could you?

She could not feel much of anything except for this magisterial self-flagellation. To have allowed her mother's image to come into such a vulnerable position twice was unforgivable.

Now his hand threatened her, and this third time she would not be so insensate.

"Just an old chain," she lied. "Nothing worth—"

"Just an old chain!" Chuffing reprovingly, he presented his palm. 

She couldn't deny him. Heidi had been his long before she had been Rose's.

Lifting it over her head and dully dropping it, she watched as he unlocked the tiny door on his first attempt, unhindered by the rusting of years gone by. And there she was, mouth and scar smiling jointly back at them.

Rose waited to become the audience for an anger she knew too well, or the grief she had come to deny herself. When that didn't immediately surface, she scoured his innocent mein for plain, ordinary, minimal acknowledgement of this unhealing puncture wound in their family tapestry, this crater on their soul's landscape, this anomaly and exception they had both worshipped and been worshipped by. She would not tolerate being faced with nothing.

"I dream about her," she blurted. "Every night, but it never… do… don't you ever think of her too, Father?"

That boyish face crumbled, and Rose disintegrated with it. His voice became a pitiful impression of its usual plenteous register. "How could you think I do not?" 

"I didn't mean—" The torque of self-disgust crushed her lungs, deprived her of the air needed to fix this, leaving only enough for two, which were unwisely spent: "They lie!"

"Rose?"

"It does not get easier, not like how they say! I feel her absence more with each new day. Though for moons, no day had felt new since she left, then... then he arrived... and... distracted me, for a bit, but at night... there it is again. And there she isn't."

"Rose, you know there's nowhere you can go where she won't be beside you."

"Yes, but..."

"You can call upon her whenever you need her. You are part of each other, Rose, don't you see?" He quiveringly implored. "Though her spirit be among the stars, so much of it lives on through you. And I thank All Sixteen that it is so!"

Nightly communications to those sixteen Heavenly warriors and their luminous cavalry had fallen silent years ago. She had wearied of the disappointment, of sending out questions that the systems never answered, if they were even heard.

"Father, I'm forgetting."

Whispering them did not make her any less ashamed to hear those words.

"What she sounded like, what she felt like to touch." Rose remembered a painting she had torn down from her bedroom wall — commissioned by her Father, for a birthday, she couldn't remember whose. "How it felt to be... touched, and held by her. And her lessons — I fear that so much of who I am was what she was and without her—"

"Half of you is missing." His shimmering eyes held fast to the picture in the locket. "I know the feeling, Rose. Oh, very well indeed."

She gingerly tested this silence. "Father?"

"I was... thinking, there. About last moon. How I did not wish to visit the Lord and Lady Tober."

"Really? You didn't let on about it. We all thought you were looking forward to the trip. Are they not your oldest of friends?"

"Yes, they are, and more," he passively claimed. "They publicly supported your mother and I when your grandparents had no faith in our marriage; that I shall never forget, and will always be indebted to. I relish their company... but I become crazed with jealousy in their presence. Not that they would sense that. You know I am not the type to engage in any fracas, much less instigate it — yet the fact their love is allowed to blossom more beautifully and bountiously each year, while mine was taken so causelessly—" 

"You know that's not true," Rose quickly gentled his turmoil, plastering her body to his side as he had originally wished. She would soon find herself holding him up. "It will never be without cause, Father. She died for the county. For us."

"I know, Rose, but—" His stout voice fractured, and he clamped the locket, wringing out whatever life might be left in it. His gasping, dry sobs rattled all through Rose, eroding any fight she had left. "Oh, memories can be such heavy burdens to carry!"

Yet she had scarcely looked away when his fingers tipped her dipping chin up, inviting her to lift her head so he could bestow the necklace upon her, carefully working around that lawless bushful of red despite how his gaze blurred. 

"I was going to feign sickness," he began. "I had a whole scheme devised — was even going to paint pox-spots on myself, as I did as a boy. I drew the hottest bath I could tolerate, so that when the medic checked on me, he'd think I was feverish. Shortly thereafter, I fell into a strange sleep. Your mother comes to me most nights, Rose, for she is my only dream — yet as the years charge on, her image has become less and less herself — an interpretation, rather than the real article. You know that paintings and pictures don't quite capture one's essence? To my mind's eye, which for her is my most trusted window, she has become like the sun that can't quite break through the clouds, however hard it beats. I see her but barely, as though she is shrouded by some fog, some awful veil—"

He didn't notice his daughter start as though slapped backhandedly, too lost in the aisles of his inner larder.

"On this evening before my leaving, she came to me, and this time — oh, Rose! This time, when I called on her, she was as real as you and I! I could see her in every detail — those eyes, that scar on her brow, where I planted so many kisses and harvested them as often as she could stand — everything as it was, as she was — and I caressed her, and we renewed our love. I woke, soaked in tears, but feeling as full of life as she so surely had been, for I knew this was not only a blessing from the stars, Rose, a gift to me: it was a sign! Why on this night did she come to me, defined as she had been here on Earth? I feared it may have been because... it would be her last visit, before she left me for the stars forever..."

He listened to his daughter's uneven breath, shivering the chain hanging between her modest bosom.

"Rose... to have something as exceptional as a run-in with cave-folk occur at the end of that trip — well, even I could hardly let the significance of that pass me by, could I? Then Master Jules said something at our last dinner that — that made me wonder… about the villagers... giving them our surplus food…"

"I… I don't understand—"

"Rose," the Lord laughed elatedly. "Your mother once proposed the very same thing. I had forgotten until this morn. Ainsley overruled it, fearing the village would become overreliant on us, expecting more and more. Your mother had wanted to do the same thing! And I understand now why she came to me! She was telling me to keep my eyes and heart open, as she always did, but this time to better understand what was to come because it was to come from her—"

Rose, inarticulate with confusion but desperate beyond measure to feel as close to her as he did, could only stutter out purportless strings of empty half-words.

"He has come as Heidi's messenger, my child."

"He—"

Her face rumpled. Gears turned. Then she doggedly shook her head.

"No! No? Surely — not... Jules?"

"Those first handful of nights, they housed him in that same barn your mother to me proposed in. It couldn't be more obvious! And that look in his eyes, that lack of fear—"

"My mother proposed to you in a BARN?!"

She made a ferocious terrier-type explode with a train of venomous yips. The horde of hounds needed no further pressing to take up their song. Their bedlam broke a fatal rift in the dam that the years had built up in them both, spilling gallons of cleansing laughter that washed away all traces of the meeting with Kane, the argument with Jules, disgracing herself before Sagmore and the twins and all the watchful eyes of the castle. Father and daughter, heads together, laughed until they wore the same shine in their eyes.

"You never told me that! What sort of nonsense was that?"

"Because I never tell you much of anything about her. Because I thought... she would always be there to tell you herself. She was always a better rancetour than I was. A better everything."

This time, he withdrew from her; her nearness discomfited him in a way he hadn't thought possible with his only offspring. There had been a time when Martha had to practically dislocate his arm to get him to let go of Rose, so he could at least pretend to be attending to his duties. It didn't feel as long ago as it was. Time, and everything else, had lost its credibility on a snowy evening ten years ago.

"That is no excuse for my being reticent, but it is why," he weakly confessed. "I am half of myself without your mother. And I was never much to begin with."

"That's not true! That will never be true! I understand why you didn't speak of her, for I know you hurt just as much—"

"It is not okay — do not make excuses for me! A greater man would not be silent on such a matter of importance, would never have allowed things to unfurl as they have since she passed! But I will never be a great man. I am what I am, Rose, and no more."

My point is that no one gets to choose... that we are what we are.

The echo in her head didn't sound so unreasonably acerbic to her, now.

She had much more brawn to call on, pulling him back as he tried to resist, and used it; she encased both of her hands around his.

"It is enough to be a good one," she told him.

His tears flowered a loving smile.

"Aren't you just like her? Your mother saw potential in me that I hadn't known was there. Helped me to see for myself over time. Now, without her, I am a boat with no sail, no guiding wind. It is why I allow your aunt to lead us — and to speak so awfully to you, my — our little lamb."

One of his deerhounds looked up, whined and thumped its tail, sensing his master's anguish and wishing, like Rose, to be able to take it all away.

"I wondered if that was what you needed. How could I teach you, when your mother was my teacher even at my old age? I know all of my shortcomings well, and Ainsley is so much more Worldly and intelligent than I. If we hadn't your aunt, I don't know where we would be."

He took her hand to his mouth, and kissed.  

"How marvellous it is that my half hasn't weakened you, Rose. That her whole self lives on in you. Her passion, her nerve, her wit. That determination, and that awesome, courageous heart... please don't let anyone quash it out of you. Our county deserved a leader like Heidi, and they deserve a future with you."

"Father," she raggedly breathed, "I promise to support you as much as I can, but you have to let me in. You have to hear me — especially around her. You cannot let her decide always. I do not deny that Ainsley has her strengths and experience I would be foolish to disregard, but I... my values do not… align with hers, and it is becoming more obvious to me with each encounter. I cannot stand it anymore."

"I'll try, Rose, but you know she can be quite—formidable—"

"Let us start now, please."

"Now?"

"I know the night wanes…"

"What is it, my child?"

"...would you tell me about that evening? The evening of Jules' capture?"

Many biscuits and two refills of tea later, her Father had recounted the fateful journey up to where his recollection merged with Eustace's.

"And Mason readied the men for battle, and Eustace — may They shine starlight forever on his soul — looked as though he would've torn the throat out of anyone who dared to merely glance at our carriage. He was too busy seeing to the doors and windows to take much notice of what else was happening in there, and — oh, Elmer, my love, come here. It's you we must thank, really, isn't it?"

The Lord whistled and gestured. More than once. His most ancient sighthound rose creakingly from the floor, his balding tail wagging devotedly behind him despite the grief it so clearly caused. He tottered stiff-legged toward his master.

"He's deaf as a post, my poor darling," the Lord cooed, "but don't be fooled, those eyes don't miss a trick."

He stroked with both hands the long muzzle tapering down to a cracked black nose. One finger delicately picked out the sleep beading in the corners.

"Or perhaps it's another, older sense: who knows with creatures? I took him with us on the trip. He sired Tober's bitch, so we thought we might have ourselves a family reunion. Old, wily Elmer, sharp as a whip! He sighted them before any of our men did. He still remembers his days from the hunt, you see. Never let forth a sound. Only directed his nose to where my eyes should be. And so I pulled back the curtain — and what else did I see but trolls, Rose? Real trolls!" Her Father giggled and stamped his slippered feet. "I had a better view than anyone else did, and that's a fact!"

"What did they look like?"

"Funny, squat-looking womenfolk. I thought I counted four of them pursuing Jules through the brush. Stout beastwomen, with arms like tree-trunks and eyes of bile; that was how I could follow them through the murk. We hadn't much of a moon that night, and Mason swung a lantern over them — purely by accident, it was the blind leading the blind out there on that road for longer than any of them care to recount in their retellings — and that was when I saw Jules for the first time. Clockticks before he dived into that briar patch. One of the beastwomen tried to pull him before he dove — and I saw — I thought I saw him resisting, Rosie, to free himself from their clutches, but — why free himself, to then dive into the briar? That can't have been his plan, surely.

"But it was. And... and he struck one of the women, Rose. Struck her a nasty blow across the face. I presumed he was trying to fend them off, but — it came to mind that — that I thought was so silly, really, but I couldn't shake it—"

Fallen steeply inside this tale, she eked out murmurs of encouragement. The ball of one thumb rubbing the back of his bejewelled hand froze at the gravity of what came next.

"Rose, I believe he was trying to get her to run. He couldn't beg or convince her enough with their version of words, so he had to hurt it into her, that she and the others must leave before Lord Muchty could make a trophy out of them. He was protecting her and the rest, but this one, the one he hit, he was especially trying to save—"

"His she-troll," Rose said. The stone, the imperfect ring, made her trouser pocket droop. Miraculously, it had survived the scuffle. "His... lauth-eney, or something or other..."

"Beg pardon?"

"He was betrothed to one of them." Equally miraculous was her voice staying level under the pressure placed on her heart. "They were to marry in the spring. After the thaw, he said. I suppose it must be their custom."

This revelation sank in. He leaned back, nodding slow, heavy, thoughtful nods, while tapping his furry chin. "Yes. Yes, that would be her, then! She was inconsolable, and the cry she let out — it almost seemed… human. Mason and the men knew where he was, then. The other beastwomen fled, back up their mountain, but if he hadn't struck her — Rose, could you imagine if we had captured a real troll? Lord Muchty would've slaughtered her with no consideration for how she might be of use to the King. Jules must have known that this was not a hunt, that the spoils would not be preserved, even if only temporarily; it was an extermination, and he exchanged his life for theirs in accordance."

"But why stop Lord Muchty from killing Jules?"

This terseness, icing over the calm, snuggliness of his quarters, surprised her more than him. Why are you so desperate to know?

To despise her Father for it for the rest of her days, knowing he had sentenced her to this rotten fixation by bringing the outsider into her life?

"Why not let Jules be sacrificed, given how he attacked Mason and the other men? Didn't you think he might be fatally wild, because of the trolls?" 

His dewy eye was steady as it set on her. "When the men captured him, and so brutally, might I add, though I understand we couldn't take our chances — when they finally got him on the ground, and Lord Muchty angled his blade to Jules' throat — I saw it in his eyes, Rose. I saw my Heidi."

The word barely fluttered out. "What?"

"I saw that same look that Mason described when they drove out the last of the invaders, and we learned of the casualties. He was not afraid to lose his life, because he was losing it so that others may keep theirs." Fresh tears sheened his face, but he did not falter. "But I was afraid for him, Rose. I could not save Heidi, Sid, or any of those poor, brave people who fought that night for Campion. I could save Jules. And I chose to."

Rose, confining a sob, searched for her handkerchief to tend to him. When she found it and remembered who could be attributed to its maroon dye, it freed those last and very worst tears from her.

"Whatever they think of me now for it — some soft-hearted, sappy, milksoppy fool," he waved his hand dismissively. "True as it may be, I do not regret what I have done! Oh, Rose, Rose, Rose—" He hugged her steadfastly. "He did go on to defecate in that carriage for the entire length of time it took to cross three counties, so perhaps he was a trifle afraid, hm? Oh, child, I am sorry for the trouble he causes you. It is my mistake. If you need someone to blame, it should be me."

"He — …it is not a mistake. What you did." Rose gulped for a stable breath and drew herself together as much as her hormones would permit. "I want to save him, too, Father, more than anything. But—" She tried to hold it, but the squeal would be heard, and her legs kicked in tandem. "Gods, he is just impossible! He frustrates me to no bloody end with his boorishness, for I know he can be more than that! But even when I want to tear that smug look off his stupid bloody face, I still…"

"Yes?"

A sensation both frightening and exciting tickled under her ribs.

"I... quite like him."

His smile was serene, but she could see his tongue prodding at his inner cheek, tamping down the truer expression trying to bloom in that corner. "I see."

"I mean as an acquaintance."

"As an acquaintance. Yes, of course."

"Father, for Gods' sake, not like that—"

"I have said nothing to the contrary," he said, exasperating her with his convincing indifference as he reached for the teapot one final time. "After all, whatever your feelings are, Rosie, they belong to you."

"But it matters not how I feel, does it? He does not wish to be kept here, and so long as we act against his wishes, he will rebel against us. He'll get himself killed and take your reputation with him—"

"Rosalie." The governor was addressing her now. "This is a minor misstep, and one I should have foreseen. Desperation hampered my judgment; Sir Sagmore was not an appropriate choice. But... I believe I may have found the perfect replacement."

"Really? Oh, so soon? Father, that's wonderful news!"

"Don't go celebrating yet. I am still to ask her."

Her grin wilted, forehead wrinkled... then ironed out with the sharp ascent of her bushy brows.

"Me?"

"You."

"Father, n-no, that's not—why me?"

"Because I believe he'll listen to you." I like him, his daughter said. And she needn't have said it, because he would not soon forget the look shared at the banquet. He spooned another sugarcube into his teacup. "Have you considered that perhaps he needs a friend more than a tutor? Or why not both? He can find both in you, can he not? A companion and a teacher? Your mother was certainly both to me."

"I never considered myself much of either to him. Not now, or ever…"

"You could teach him a thing or two — you and Eustace together, when he doesn't have his duties, though it may be in our best interest to relieve him of that for the time being. The Lords are not expecting Master Jules to recite the Texts back-to-front; merely to be presentable and courteous, as much as his sickness will allow. A strong suggestion of what could be. You could do that, couldn't you? You seem to see it already within him." His eyes crinkled affectionately. "Just as Heidi saw it in me."

"You really wish for me to instruct him?"

"Only if you feel up for the job."

"I… but it would take up a large amount of my time. Less time to study the Code and to help you—"

"You would be my greatest help if you did this," he assured. "And think of all you'll learn of the Code through restoring him, Rose. When he is noble of body and spirit, then that shall be your glory, child. Unless… your fear is shared with Sir Sagmore, and he truly cannot be taught?"

The answer came fast and firm. "No. I believe he can be. I believe he wants to be. He is not as thick-headed as he'd have you think, or as the others speak of him. I believe he desires to learn and better himself, in his own way, and his demands are not great. He only wishes to be respected."

"Please assure him that I am trying to correct that," her Father sighed regretfully. "Ainsley encourages bad etiquette among the Knights. Today I have seen that plainly. Oh, yes — Luther came clean, in the end; the Code bade him to. Kane has been removed from his duties temporarily, and my morning announcement will outline strict orders that no Knight shall touch Jules, and that any further comments on his beastly origins, or anything related, will no longer be tolerated. It matters not whether they are lowborn or highborn; if they fail to comply, they will be punished."

Rose felt like a kite caught in a sun-kissed gust, knowing the difference this would make in allowing Jules to assimilate in the court. A pathway to nobility might now be smooth-paved!

Newfound hope reanimated her.

"Then... I shall do it. Yes! I pledge to do my very best for you, Father!"

"Restore him, Rose!" The Lord raised his teacup for a toast. "The courage displayed that night was proof enough to me that a man was still in there: a man worth saving! Find him, lure him out, bring him into the light, so we all may know hi—"

"DOUGLAAAAAAAS!"

"Merlin's beard!" The Lord slopped down his nightshirt. By now, the tea was less than lukewarm, and Elmer, too deaf to hear how the other dogs had reacted to Aunt Ainsley's screech, didn't wait to be granted permission before lapping it up.

The door, bashing a dent into the wall, shut the hounds up. Her silk gown left little to the imagination, and her face was slathered in one of Sadbhb's creams, giving her an even ghostlier complexion than she ordinarily wore. She had a traumatized twin in each hand.

"Oh my Gods it was everywhere Uncle it was EVERYWHERE," Celeste reported.

"Good Gods, Ainsley, is your face supposed to be that shade?"

"You!" The ghostly Ainsley roared at Rose. "You did this, you weasel!"

"It was ON my BED," Celeste went on.

"Did what?" Rose had to glue her line of vision to the blank space on the wall just behind Aunt Ainsley's head. Between the three of them, each as hysterical as the last, there was too much here to tempt her.

"HE—"

Belching wetly, Luna dashed for the Lord's ensuite, where they heard her supper splatter its surface.

"Heavens!" Her Uncle peeped.

"Her privvy!" Aunt Ainsley hugged Celeste to her before the astonished young woman crashed to the floor. "He— Douglas, he—"

Mason, looming behind her, made himself known with a subtle throat clear.

"If I may, my Lord, there's — er. Been an incident."

"He was complaining of being constipated, some days ago," Eustace remembered.

He and Rose were watching the unluckiest of servants, swapped out every five minutes so that they may stand by a window and revive themselves, freighting frothing yellow buckets of wasteful water out of Celeste's ensuite, with the sleepy Knights supervising — remotely. Rose noted that some of these same servants had spent their afternoon scrubbing the entryway floor. It made her think twice about how her own day had turned out.

"Well, he's not constipated now," she guffawed. "Where is he? His privvy isn't usable, either."

"Oh, Gods, don't say that, if he's diarrhetic and using our toilets..."

"Isn't the idea that we know where he is at all times, Eustace?"

"Oh, well, of course."

Eustace buzzed nervously.

She looked down at him.

"Well..." Eustace glanced up. "He's a person, too, isn't he?"

Rose frowned, but only lightly. He felt it was safe to go on.

"I feel it is necessary to give him his space, and not only because his flatulence makes me dizzy. He does that, every once in a while — just disappears. Perhaps to think. Perhaps so that he doesn't have to endure people ogling at him so much. This life, our way of life, is as strange to him as his is to us, so you can see why he would want to slip away every now and then, can't you?"

"Yes," she doubtfully agreed. A hard thud signalled that another servant had lost the war against Jules' stench.

"How would he even get into Celeste's room, though?" Eustace asked, stepping aside as they were dragged past.

"Sometimes having a balcony isn't all it's cracked up to be," Rose replied, recalling her own incident with the ivy.

"He's the only person in this Court who could do such a thing and not be hanged for it. Or at least, for now." Eustace tried to drop his reedy voice an octave. "I heard about Sir Sagmore, Lady Rose. I am sorry that he disappointed you—"

"No, that's alright, Eustace. All is well. I have a plan. Actually," she brightened, "we do."

"We do? Oh, er, here comes—"

He bowed, hasty and awkward, as Aunt Ainsley emerged from her daughter's violated quarters, abused nostrils flaring. She stared at Rose. Rose stared back. 

"Goodnight, Eustace," Rose muttered, following her down the hall.

The gaunt woman hurried.

"No — you misunderstand," she spat over her shoulder. "I do not wish to talk to you, I don't even wish to look at you. Go away."

Makes two of us. Rose lagged to lose her. "I just assumed you'd only feel better if you coughed up a confession from me," she sniped, "that I ordered him to relieve himself all over Celeste's ensuite, but never mind—"

Aunt Ainsley whipped around, her unfluctuating voice carrying maliciously down the dark hall, "I suppose you find all of this terribly comical, don't you, Rose?"

"Not at all. I find it all terribly predictable and avoidable. He doesn't have his own facilities as of now, and if the servants' bathrooms are all occupied, then he'd have to—"

"Shit all over my daughter's quarters?! That's predictable now, is it? Our castle is a mockery because of him!"

"…it was bad luck, I'll admit," Rose added, after 'SHIT' had stopped repeating for what felt like miles.

"He couldn't have used your quarters, being that you're so friendly? Oh, yes, don't think I don't see—"

"Well, he was caught short," Rose interrupted, beating her oncoming blush. "He might not have been able to wait."

"For Merlin's sake, he's not a bloody PUPPY. If that happens again, you are cleaning it up — GLOVELESS."

Rose pulled herself together to offer a sombre nod. Her shoulders buckled watching Aunt Ainsley striding down the hall, and beyond her, Celeste and Luna being comforted by Winslow, who refused to touch either without a handkerchief.

This time she noticed him before they collided. He was cloaked by shadow, but that blase smile signalled like a beacon. 

"Probably could've waited," he said.

And she could hear something else, something that sounded a lot like him scratching his back against grandfather's suit of armor. She was too gladdened to know his location to take offence, or be dwarfed by the magnitude of the humiliation he had earlier witnessed.

"Come into the light, Jules," she requested.

"Why? You can hear me fine."

"Why did you do that? You didn't get yourself into enough trouble today? You're seriously testing your boundaries—"

"Because I don't like bullies, Lady Rose, and I never have."

Rose was suddenly feeling lucky that he had not agreed to step out. "Wh... what? They're not— them?" She scoffed flimsily. "That's just — how it is. With us. How it's always be—"

"They're bullies, they bully you, just like their mother does your father and the rest of this county. Makes me sick to my stomach." And she heard that smile grate and rise into his loose, wonky grin. "And out the other end."

"No, they don't," she uselessly protested. "Why even get involved at all? Why seek out trouble for yourself? What is there to gain?" The questions came faster than she could assess them. "Did you do it for me? I didn't ask you to—"

He found the light, and startled her with the raw ugliness of that sole blackened eye, and the unflapping obduracy worn around his brow. He was not accepting an argument at this time.

“You didn't need to ask. I don't like bullies."

She lost count of her own heartbeat, for how the backlighting framed him. She thought he might have looked this way to Mason and the two Lords' Guards, the fire of the travelling lanterns too weak to make clear that floppy hair, the acne left behind from adolescence, or that sweet, disarming roundness. The shadows painted him as something towering, rugged and dangerous... something wild.

And that made the following bow, and his gentlemanly goodnight, all the more alluring.

He became all shadows again. Rose listened as long as she could make out his stealthy footsteps, until she was alone with nothing but her grandfather's buffed armor and an estimation of where he was off to next.

She would let him have his space.

This time.