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Barthom went to all fours and was violently sick for a while. When his inner ear finally stopped screaming at him that the entire universe had just turned inside-out and then exploded, he began to catalogue his surroundings. Beneath his hands: wet sand of a stunning blackness more absolute than he would have believed could exist in nature. To his left: the sand was wet because it was bathed in ocean waves, their pure turquoise color even more beautiful than the black sand. To his right: a subtle difference in lustre probably indicated the line above which the sand was not often wet, and above that line he could see grasses, shrubs, palm trees, flowering trees that made his fingers itch for a field guide… and beyond the trees, a rising riot of black glass, like leaping waves frozen in mid-motion, some of the shapes so finely-wrought the blazing sun shone right through them and scattered rainbows across the black.
Barthom was no geologist, but if islands like this existed (where he was before? When he was before?) he would surely have encountered illustrated books about them at some point and shared them with his chantling.
Oh, gods, his chantling. He sat up on his knees to bury his face in his hands. He’d let the four magi take the boy - the young man, really, nearly sixteen and his body the most endearingly comical mix of puppy fat and rapidly-lengthening bones that might someday do justice to his outsized hands and feet. He’d let them lead his chantling through a final set of ceremonies, the boy’s lion eyes bright with curious wonder, then dimming with exhaustion, until finally he slipped into a clearly-unnatural sleep and the magi bundled him with great care but no affection onto an ornamented stretcher and some of the guards carried the stretcher away. No sooner were they out of sight than the remaining guards had turned to Barthom and asked him (politely, but without meeting his eyes) to come with them. Without even taking his hand out of his pocket Barthom had put on the ring he kept there, the ring given to him by a lion-eyed black man five years before. His chantling had taken him to the man’s house on one of their magical excursions, and the man had pled with tears streaming from his eyes - those eyes! - for Barthom to do as he asked, but said nothing about intervening in the matter of the boy. (Please, he prayed, please let it have been the right choice to allow the magi to take his chantling away as planned, please let it be a necessary step on the path that led to that free and passionate soul in that beautiful friendly house.) He’d put on the ring, and then came the feeling of the universe turning inside-out and exploding, and then he was puking up his guts here on this beach.
Speaking of which, his mouth tasted vile, and it was very warm here. He badly wanted a drink of water. He looked up at the glass peaks of the island; there would be no glacier-melt streams trickling down from there. He looked around, and further along the beach he thought he could see a structure. Having absolutely no better ideas, he started toward it.
The island wasn’t large, but walking on sand was very tiring, and he wasn’t dressed for the climate. Less than halfway to his target - it was a small building of some sort, he was sure of it - he had to stop to remove his overtunic, roll up the sleeves of his undertunic, and remove his boots to roll up the legs of his trousers. The dry black sand was painfully hot to his bare feet, but he didn’t relish putting his boots back on, so he carried them with his overtunic and waded where the water was ankle-deep. It was so much the sort of thing he used to do back when his chantling took him adventuring that he suddenly felt the lack of a small, excited presence at his side like a missing limb. He swallowed against the lump in his throat and kept going.
The structure turned out to be a shack on stilts, of humble materials but clearly very stout construction, and best of all the roof funneled into a rain barrel. Barthom used the dipper hanging on the wall nearby and drank gratefully; the water was warm and stale, but right now it tasted wonderful.
With his mouth clean and his thirst quenched, Barthom was able to notice the glare of the sun in his eyes, and the tight, tender sensation on much of his exposed skin which presaged a sunburn that would get worse if he didn’t find some shade. He looked up the shore at the tree cover, but it was spotty at best, not forming a proper canopy at all; he wasn’t familiar with these species but if he had to guess, he would say none of the trees here were more than a few years old at most (perhaps recovering from a fire?). He looked at the door of the shack.
“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” he said under his breath. He twisted the ring on his finger. He didn’t think the man - his chantling, all grown up? Oh, he hoped, he hoped - would have gone to the trouble of giving him such a powerful artifact only to send him somewhere bad, or even somewhere random. The sea and sky had the same feel as the beautiful floating city where they met the man. In the absence of any other information, he was going to behave as though the man wanted him to be here. He knocked on the door.
There was no answer, but when he examined the door more closely he saw that it had no lock, only a simple latch on the outside. He lifted the latch and ducked inside.
It was dim within, the only light coming from the doorway and through slits in the bamboo window blinds. The darkness came as a relief to his dazzled eyes, but after a minute or two his curiosity got the better of him and he set about opening the blinds - also very sturdy, tied down like shutters until he rolled them up and tied them again. They were the only things covering the windows, clearly meant to keep weather and animals from making a mess of the interior.
Not that there was very much to make a mess of, only a tidy collection of trunks, baskets, and clay pots, and one rope bed frame with a thin mattress resting on top. The bed was large, ludicrously so in the tiny shack, taking up most of the surface area of the floor and making the primary purpose of the shack abundantly clear. Barthom told himself there weren’t currently five nobles having a Late Bastard Decadent orgy on the bed, and so he would not be deterred from continuing his investigations.
“I’ll even sleep on you later, a plain old working man’s sleep with nary a riding crop in sight, just you watch,” he muttered at the bed.
The sight of the bed prepared him for one of the clay pots turning out to contain an abundant supply of grease. The smell was so mild and pleasant it could just be a cooking oil, but Barthom still carefully replaced the lid and set it aside. Further poking around revealed no sex toys more obvious than some coils of well-conditioned hemp rope, and even that was the same rope he could see incorporated into the construction of the shack. Whoever came here to make use of the shack required very few accessories, or brought them with them.
All the other supplies were eminently practical. There was an assortment of pillows, blankets, and towels, and pottery and utensils with designs both familiar and not; he got excited when he discovered coffee beans (which smelled wonderful) and a grinder, then realized whatever method was used to boil water was not currently set up. More useful were the sizeable parcels of dried fruit, nuts, and - wonder of wonders - a thickly-wrapped leaden brick that turned out to be a rum-soaked fruitcake. He snacked on these treasures and felt much restored. Another packet turned out to be dried fish, which was so salty it drove him back out to the rain barrel for another drink. He wasn’t sure it was even meant to be eaten straight, but rather used as a cooking ingredient, like the dried mushrooms and what he thought might be dried seaweed. There was a first-aid kit with several pungent salves; Barthom sniffed them hopefully, but nothing was familiar enough he was willing to risk rubbing it on his sunburn.
But the most interesting find was undoubtedly a book. It turned out to contain dated entries in several hands. The most frequent hand was exquisitely neat. It mostly stuck to notes about the very supplies Barthom had just explored himself, recording what was used and what would need to be restocked, and observations on the weather, the progress of the plant life - Barthom was gratified to find his impression of the trees was correct, and they'd only been establishing themselves for a few years - and what birds and fish had been sighted. There were, however, a number of dryly funny asides to other parties, presumably the occasional writers in other hands responding to the first writer's notes.
The second most frequent hand was much messier, slanted and spiky, prone to getting larger when excited, and so familiar Barthom felt like his entire torso was being squeezed in a giant fist. Had he not witnessed a careful, childish wobble evolving in precisely this direction over the years? Did he not recognize his own lessons in composition in the format of the rhyming verses that made up most of the entries? The verses were sometimes odes to a new plant or animal recently seen on or near the island, and sometimes complaints about uncooperative weather, but mostly they were nakedly affectionate praise for a lover. Barthom got the distinct impression that it was always the same lover, the first writer with the neat hand, this "Kip". Taken as a whole these entries expressed such an exuberant happiness that Barthom had to stop reading to wipe his eyes.
And then he turned a page and found his own name written in the spiky hand: an entry addressed to him, about three years from the start of the logbook and five years before the most recent entries:
BARTHOM PENSBEL,
If you're reading this, then you used the ring, and have arrived safely on the island of Navanoa in the Vangavaye-ve on Zunidh. It is approximately a day's sail from our house in Gorjo City.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for trusting me!!! I'll know immediately that you've used the ring, and Kip and I will be coming to meet you with the very greatest haste, although if we're not currently at home in Gorjo City it may take us up to several days more before we reach you. Please make use of all the amenities in our humble beach house. At the bottom of the linen chest there is an illustrated field guide to common flora of the Vangavaye-ve, although Navanoa is both new and god-touched and I'm told a number of species here are much less common. I invite you to try to identify which ones!
There is so much I never got to say to you, Master Tutor, more than I could ever hope to write. Only know that I love you, and I'm on my way to you right now.
See you soon,
Fitzroy Angursell (Savelin Chantling)
P.S. Kip wants me to add that despite the (he says) embarrassingly obvious primary purpose of the hut, we all make sure to launder any used bedding after every visit, so please don't hesitate to use it as needed!
P.P.S. Kip also says there is a hat stored with the field guide, recommends you avoid going out entirely while your shadow is half the length of your leg or less, and passes on from Conju that the salve which smells like neither fish nor flowers is the best one for sunburn. Between you and me, I think he's nervous - he has precious little experience meeting in-laws.
Barthom had to put the book down entirely then, for his hands were shaking too hard to hold it. He pressed them to his mouth as a great sob rocked him, and then he remembered how completely alone he was at present and let himself indulge in a cloudburst of crying. He cried for the stress of the last several years, as his charge grew ever more compliant and placid under ever-thicker layers of enchantments and Barthom writhed internally with the agony of not knowing if he should let the obscenity continue, or die in some aborted, symbolic attempt to intervene. He cried with relief, that it seemed he chose right, and his chantling won free somehow and found happiness and love - and even remembered Barthom fondly! He'd tried - oh, he'd tried, in his roundabout way, "punishing" the boy with learning more and more languages in which to read romantic epics about clever, bold heroes who answered riddles and found loopholes in the circumstances binding them and never hesitated to flee from their enemies leaving confusion in their wake. He'd never quite dared to hope that might be enough, knowledge the only gift he could pack for his child's journey. But here Barthom was, under his child's protection, safe and cared-for even by people he'd never met. Had yet to meet.
('In-laws'! As if his chantling - Fitzroy, what a name! - considered him family in turn!)
The next entry was in Kip's neat hand: It's not between you and him, Fitzroy, we can all read this. And of course I'm nervous, as much about leaving a pale-skinned velio alone on Navanoa as anything. Dominus Pensbel, please don't try to start a fire if the apparatus for doing so is unfamiliar to you! There should be abundant provisions ready to eat without cooking.
Barthom sniffled, laughed, and ate another chunk of fruitcake.
There was both a botany book and a wide-brimmed hat at the bottom of the linen chest. Barthom wanted to go out and start identifying species right away, but considered Kip's advice on avoiding the sun at its peak and chose instead to apply salve to his sunburn and read the book for a while. When he found himself nodding over the book he helped himself to a pillow and laid down on the (really unnecessarily large) bed for a nap.
It was afternoon when he woke, a little shaky from the unaccustomed daytime sleep but still feeling better for it all the same. And his shadow was now long enough that Kip would approve of him venturing out.
He passed a splendid few hours acquainting himself with the plant life of Navanoa. The book was very good, naming species both in Shaian and the language of the Wide Seas Islanders, and listing traditional uses, of which there were an astonishing number for almost every entry. Barthom even found a mango tree, picked a ripe fruit, and cut a slice with his pocketknife - then moaned aloud at the spectacular taste and devoured the rest of the mango on the spot. He seriously considered eating another one, but they were rather large fruits and new to him, so he probably shouldn't challenge his digestion any further. He buried the peel and pit in a spot that looked like it could fit another mango tree, and went back to identifying species.
When evening had advanced enough he was struggling to read the book, he made his way back to the shack. The dried fruit was less appealing after the superlative fresh mango, and he wanted to conserve the fruitcake in case he was here for several days, so he munched on nuts and a sliver of dried fish (he kept a large mug of water at hand, but the taste was growing on him), sitting in the doorway with his legs dangling, looking out at the sea and the stars. Many of the constellations were the same as at the red house in Old Damara, just in altered positions; he was, after all, still on Zunidh.
He thought again of the way the guards had avoided his eyes as they asked him to go with them, and shivered. If he couldn't be with his chantling, then he would prefer being alone here to whatever fate his Radiancy had planned for the man he hired to raise a relegated, enchanted Imperial scion in the most remote secrecy without even a name.
And he had every reason to hope he would get to be with his chantling again. Fitzroy Angursell. It was so obviously a name the boy chose for himself, and not while feeling placid. It was ridiculous. Barthom loved it.
He went inside and laid down again. He acknowledged the fact that Fitzroy and the mysterious, efficient Kip regularly made love in this bed, and then let it go. He was glad his child had that in his life. They were considerate enough to keep the bedding clean. He drifted to sleep to the sound of the waves, with a gentle breeze blowing in through the windows.
In the morning he woke to the raucous cawing of a crow. There were a few birds on the island, but none of them were particularly noisy without a fully-populated ecosystem to squabble over. The crow's squawking was, therefore, very noticeable, even distant as it was - getting louder, though. Barthom stumbled to the door of the shack to see what entertaining crow nonsense was afoot.
Outside, it became clear the crow was not on the island, but flying toward it from the open sea, calling near-constantly all the way. It was, in fact, heading straight for the shack.
Barthom could tell the instant the crow spotted him. It halted its approach to wheel in a mad circle, not cawing so much as screeching, then dove and flapped right through the open window. Barthom turned in the doorway just in time to see the crow transform into a man. The man. His chantling, his ward, his child. Fitzroy Angursell.
“That’s new,” Barthom blurted.
“Ha!” said Fitzroy, tears already standing in his eyes, and with a single stride of his long legs he crossed the shack and yanked Barthom into a fierce embrace. His arms were long, too - he’d grown into a lanky man, lean-muscled and tall. Barthom hadn’t really looked at him during their first encounter, seeing only Imperial and assuming a cousin, somehow free until the last instant, when the magic was already pulling him and the chantling back.
“You finally grew into your feet,” Barthom choked, and Fitzroy spluttered into his shoulder.
“Thank you,” Fitzroy said fervently, “thank you for listening, thank you for using the ring, thank you for not going with the guards.”
“Do I want to know what happened when I did?”
“Nothing good. If Eritanyr ever did any good thing in his life I have yet to learn about it.”
“How did you get free of him?” Barthom pulled back long enough to look Fitzroy in the face. There were lines around his eyes, and strands of silver in his wild cloud of natural hair. “How long has it been? Tell me everything.”
Fitzroy laughed, a deep, rich laugh, well-used, that almost made Barthom start crying again from sheer joy. “That’s ‘a long story of the sea’, as Kip would say. More than one!” He beamed, pulling Barthom over to sit on the bed. “And we shall have time to tell them all.” Then he sobered. “But first, I should say I’m probably not - your chantling. My magic didn’t wake up until I was nearly eighteen, and I have no memory of traveling the way your small companion did that day.”
“You wouldn’t,” Barthom said. “The traveling started when you were ten and stopped when you were twelve, after that year’s cycle of ceremonies. You didn’t remember any of it.” His lip quivered. “I’m sorry. I knew what the priest-wizards were doing was- was wrong, but I couldn’t think of any way to stop them that wouldn’t simply fail and leave you more alone than ever.”
“No, no,” Fitzroy said hurriedly, “I’m glad you didn’t. I’m only myself for having gone through all that.” He smiled crookedly. “And don’t think I don’t know what you did, filling my little head with all those adventure tales in languages that hardly anyone speaks. I barely lasted two years in that tower.”
“What tower?”
“The Collian Marwn tower, which was also the Tower of Harbut Zalarin, and all his Antique Shaian books were still inside, and because of you I could read them. I promoted a random necklace to Marwn - I transferred most of my bindings to it and left the rituals running on an automatic loop - I packed a bag and named myself and was a poet-adventurer for fourteen years.”
“And then?” Barthom had no idea what a Marwn was, but from context he assumed it was the role Fitzroy had been so laboriously enchanted for.
Fitzroy grimaced. “And then my uncle died, and his son Shallyr the day after, and the last and most powerful of my bindings were all yanked on at once and they made me be Artorin Damara, Emperor of Astandalas.”
“You were his nephew,” Barthom whispered in horror.
Fitzroy nodded. “The son of his sister, and a threat by my eyes, my health, and the popularity of her husband. So he made me Marwn. No Marwn has ever taken the throne before. To this day I wonder if that contributed to the Fall. Surely it was like folding an axle in half and expecting both wheels to still turn and hold up a cart between them.”
“The Fall?”
“‘Fourteen years, four months, four days, seventeen hours, and then the Fall’,” Fitzroy recited, in an eerie, desolate tone. “Alinor still stands - all the worlds still stand - but the Pax Astandalatis is broken, and with it the Empire. The Palace of Stars teleported itself to Solaara, here on Zunidh. There was - damage, of many kinds, on an enormous scale, everywhere. Time was particularly badly affected; it’s been ten years on Alinor, twelve thousand on Ysthar, and both thirty and over a thousand here.”
Barthom was glad he was already sitting down.
Fitzroy went on, “I was in a coma for one hundred of those years, and when I woke up I was made Lord Magus of Zunidh on the spot, so that office and what remained of the role of Emperor became conflated. My magic was - wounded, by the Schooled bindings, it wouldn’t settle, I was so useless,” he snarled, then paused, and a new smile broke out on his face: tender, wondering. “And then,” he said softly, “and then I met Cliopher Mdang. Kip.”
“Your Kip from the logbook.”
Fitzroy chuckled. “The very same. He’s like that all the time. He was first assigned as my secretary in a convoluted attempt to get him executed for missing some point of etiquette in ‘The Presence’.” His disgusted tone told Barthom exactly how well that plan went, and a great deal about how Fitzroy had felt about being Emperor.
“What they didn’t know was they were sending me a political genius, the most brilliant statesman in the entire history of the Empire. He’s amazing, Master Tutor-”
“Barthom, please,” Barthom cut in, then added, “Fitzroy.” Fitzroy gasped quietly and fresh tears welled up in his eyes. “Let us enter an Age of Names with each other.”
“An Age of Names,” Fitzroy echoed. “Oh, I like that. Anyway - Barthom - Kip is simply the best person I’ve ever met. The smartest, the kindest, the bravest, the funniest, the most handsome - I was half in love with him the day we met and the situation only grew more dire over the next nine hundred years. We healed Zunidh together. I patched up the magical damage, and he rebuilt the government into something new, something better. By the time I made him my Viceroy and went on a quest to find my heir to be World Magus so I could retire, she was the only heir I needed. He stepped down and his position was taken up by a Chancellor who’s never been ennobled. He dismantled the monarchy from under the feet of an entire council of princes! Right in front of their faces!”
Barthom supposed this was what came of feeding a child a steady diet of subversive heroic fiction for fourteen years.
“Oh, I can’t wait for you to meet him!”
“He’s behind you, then?”
“We sailed most of the way together. I took wing when I could see Navanoa on the horizon. I know how to transform him, too, but someone has to look after the boat.” He blinked. “You say the traveling stopped when I was twelve?”
“Yes.”
“I concocted a ritual at thirteen and accidentally stuffed my shapeshifting into the Diamond of Gaesion. I think it’s how I survived the Fall.”
Barthom laughed. “You’ve just been popping up after getting pushed down ever since the beginning, haven’t you?”
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. I’ve been retired for eight years. Nobody pushes me down anymore.” He smirked. “Except Kip, in a good way.”
“Ugh!” Barthom poked Fitzroy in the shoulder - his naked shoulder, he finally noticed. Fitzroy was wearing nothing but some sort of short tied skirt and a necklace. “I see you also found a way to be almost naked in everyday life, as well. Why am I not surprised? I never did cure you of flinging your clothes off and prancing about like a toddler.”
“I think we both know you didn’t try very hard to cure me of that,” Fitzroy said, and hugged him again. His skin was warm under Barthom’s fingers, in a way that would indicate a dangerous fever in anyone else, as it had been as long as Barthom had known him. As it had been when he embraced his chantling for the last time just yesterday morning, and now here he was again, older than Barthom now - older than almost anyone! - weathered by suffering yet hale and joyous, smelling of ocean breezes and sunshine and healthy exertion. It was more than Barthom could ever have imagined, let alone dared hope for.
At length Fitzroy gave him an extra squeeze, then let him go, saying, “Where is Kip, anyway? He wasn’t that far behind me.” He got up and poked his head out the door, then laughed and waved. “He’s down with the Tui-tanata, probably giving us some privacy. Are you ready to meet him?” He looked around the shack. “Actually, are you ready to come home - back with us to Gorjo City?”
“One moment.” Barthom rewrapped the fruitcake and other packages of food and stowed them back in their trunk, then did the same for the rest of the things he’d used or at least examined. He thought about Fitzroy’s swift self-correction. If he was following Fitzroy’s account right, it had been over forty years on Alinor; everyone he left behind (no one so dear to him as his charge had become) would be long dead of sheer old age even if they had weathered the disasters Fitzroy mentioned unscathed. “I hope you don’t mind me staying for a while.”
“As long as you want,” Fitzroy rasped. “Anywhere I have a hearth is a home for you.” He cleared his throat. “Keep the hat and botanical field guide,” he said, rolling down and retying the bamboo blinds, “they were always yours.” He picked up Barthom’s boots and overtunic, and they stepped out of the shack and latched the door behind them.
Not far down the beach was a sailboat clearly built with the same philosophy as the shack: humble materials, admirably sturdy design. Standing next to it was a broad-shouldered man with golden-brown skin, wearing a skirt much like Fitzroy’s and several more necklaces. His hair fell in dark, silver-shot waves past his shoulders. Cliopher Mdang, Fitzroy’s beloved Kip.
They waded over to him, Fitzroy using the same trick Barthom had figured out of using the water to traverse the otherwise-scorching black sand. Cliopher Mdang bowed to Barthom Shaian-style, and then, after a glance at Fitzroy, reached out and gripped Barthom’s wrists in his hands, and leaned in and touched their foreheads lightly together.
“My name is Cliopher Mdang of Tahivoa. My island is Loaloa. My dances are Aōteketētana. My family calls me Kip, and as you were the only person brave enough to love my fanoa in the first stage of his life, you are most certainly family to me, Dominus Barthom Pensbel.” His eyes were a warm brown and ferociously intelligent, his mouth serious at the moment but clearly quick to turn to good humor.
“Barthom, please,” Barthom repeated, “if we are to be family. Kip.”
Sure enough, his face lit up. “Simple as that?” he said to Fitzroy. “No great feats? No tumbling between worlds?” His gentle sarcasm implied these were standard elements of being in Fitzroy’s company.
“I’ll have you know, considering the magic that went into that ring to get him here, the great feat is preloaded.”
Kip laughed. “Fair enough. Well then, Barthom, let me invite you aboard the vaha Tui-tanata, which means ‘Song of the Home Fire’ in the Islander language, which everyone in the Vangavaye-ve simply calls language, as if it’s the only language worth knowing even as they’re speaking about it in Shaian, which is the shortest possible primer on Islander culture.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll get a longer one,” said Fitzroy dryly, stowing Barthom’s overtunic, boots, and the botanical field guide in some sort of storage compartment in the boat, and indicating for Barthom to put on his hat. “It’s a small boat, and nearly a full day’s sail home.”
“I’m not going to talk the poor man’s ear off the whole time, Fitzroy,” Kip argued. He and Fitzroy pushed the boat back out into the shallows with the unspoken ease of long practice. “I need to leave room for the two of you to catch up. He’s your parent, after all!”
Fitzroy froze. “Um.” He looked uneasily at Barthom, as if gauging his reaction.
“It’s alright,” Barthom croaked. “Truthfully, I’ve always thought of you as my child.” And then he had yet another armful of lanky, weeping Fitzroy. Kip patted both their shoulders and then busied himself keeping the boat in place now that it was floating.
“This is entirely too much crying in one day,” Fitzroy said at last, wiping his face. He hopped onto the boat and gave Barthom a hand up. “We’re going to get dehydrated.”
“So get some waterskins out of your Bag,” Kip said slowly, as if this were obvious.
“Once we’re underway, beloved.” They moved in concert getting the boat under sail, just as they had getting it off the beach.
“So tell me, Barthom,” said Kip, as Fitzroy was digging in the storage compartment for waterskins, “did you enjoy Fitzroy’s island?”
Barthom looked at Fitzroy. “Your island?”
"Oh!" Fitzroy exclaimed. "I forgot to tell you! I made Navanoa! Kip bartered Ani’s mirimiri back from the House of the Sun, and to thank us she opened a channel to the seafloor so I turned us both into crows and we flew down there and found the first of our efanoa,” he fingered the small, scarlet-lined clamshell that hung in pride of place on his necklace, which was the same as one of the necklaces Kip wore, “and then I made a very strong bubble around us and pulled up a seamount of molten obsidian until it broke the surface and became an island! And then Vou’a and Ani sped up making some sand and soil for it so things could grow and we could anchor the fuck sha- errr, the shack,” he finished, looking mortified.
Kip laughed uproariously. “I thought you wanted the all-audiences name to be the Mdangursell Makeout Mansion,” he wheezed, wiping his eyes. “You need to practice using the name sometimes if you want to get in the habit of remembering to use it at all.”
Barthom could have told them he grew up during the Late Bastard Decadent period, knew a fuck shack when he saw one, and was not bothered unless such a shack was occupied by people with enough rank to kill him for fun. He could have said that, if his head weren’t spinning from the tale Fitzroy had just narrated with such childish excitement. He was reasonably sure the names Fitzroy dropped were gods. And pulling up molten rock from under the earth’s crust? On the seafloor? He didn’t need to be a geologist to know that represented a ridiculous amount of power. Just how strong of a wild mage was Fitzroy? “I think I need to sit down,” he said faintly.
Now Fitzroy looked concerned. “You are sitting down.” He handed him a waterskin, and Barthom was yet again grateful to drink warm, stale water.
“I’m fine,” he said as he handed it back. “It’s just going to take some getting used to, how grown-up you are. For me it was two days ago that we were struggling through fractions together, and here you’ve been moving tectonic plates around.”
“He still can’t do fractions,” Kip drawled.
“I don’t think I helped much with that. I only ever pretended to understand them myself.”
“Like father, like son,” Kip offered, watching them both carefully, and looked satisfied when they smiled.