Page 108 of Seducing the Sorcerer
Morgrim nodded and made a noise that might have been “Gods, yes.”
They lay there, for a time, panting. Fenn smoothed Morgrim’s hair away where it was tickling his neck. “That did the trick all right. How you feel now?”
Morgrim was gazing up at the hatchment, at the black tower on the red background. “To be honest—it was a bit humiliating. Having you do that. Having you know I want that. With anyone else it would have been embarrassing.”
“Tsk. Plenty of blokes like to dish it out. Be a sad world if there weren’t none wanted to take it.”
“It just feels a bit ridiculous.”
“Ah well, that’s the human condition right there, ain’t it? Lot of it feels a bit ridiculous. But it turns out sublime if you let it.”
“True.” Morgrim turned to him, kissed his cheek. “Gods, I love you, Fenn.”
“I love you and all.” Fenn frowned. “Hey, you sound all sensible and normal.”
Morgrim snorted. “Thank you very much.”
“No, I mean, you ain’t gone funny. We had sex and you’re talking to me normal afterwards.”
Morgrim cocked his head as if realising. “So I am.”
“Losing the magic already, are we? Used to be like you were drunk after.” Fenn smiled, a little sadly. Of course he couldn’t expect Morgrim to feel the same fever pitch of excitement for him forever.
“We’ve not lost anything,” Morgrim said.
“No?”
“Now I just feel it all the time.”
“What, horny?”
“No. Well, actually—but that’s not what I mean. I still feel marvellous from the sex. There was still transference, I think the results are just less of a contrast now, because these days I feel the magic all the time.”
“You mean your magic’s coming back?”
“I don’t know about that.” Morgrim shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “I mean I feel happy. Hopeful. In love. All the time.”
“You know.” Fenn felt suddenly shy. “There is a bit of magic I want to give you permanently, like. Thing is, I been giving worple horses to all these other magicians. Hope you didn’t think I’d forgotten you. I kept the best black silk one by, thinking you might like him.” He ran a strand of Morgrim’s long hair through his fingers. “Bloke like you ought to have a horse of starlight, really, with diamonds for eyes. But it ain’t in me to conjure up a horse like that. Don’t know why it should be that some people can turn the sea to fire and others can make a herd of worple horses, but there it is. So anyway, you want this one, he’s yours.”
Morgrim rolled on top of him. “Fenn, I’d love a black silk worple horse. I’d much prefer it to one of starlight.” Morgrim kissed him, and when he pulled away, his eyes were wet with tears and he smiled like a man who’d been given more than he’d ever dreamed.
“Now, I’ve something to tell you,” Morgrim said. “The paperwork hasn’t come through yet, but I can’t wait any longer. Parliament’s offering you a permanent position: Master of Horse of the Unket Tower. If you agree, it’ll mean you’re as much the court sorcerer as I am. It’s unorthodox to have two of us, but they’ve agreed. So, you’ll get a salary—three hundred talents.”
Fenn could scarce believe his ears. About any of it. He seized upon the last thing Morgrim had said, as being perhaps the most remarkable. “Three hundred talents? A year?”
“That’s right.”
“My stars. That what they pay you?”
“Well, they used to pay me four. But they agreed to six hundred for the two of us, to be split equally. And I told them they must pay you arrears for the month just gone, so that’s twenty-five talents you can draw immediately, without signing anything.”
“And I thought five silvers was a lot,” Fenn said, weakly. There were a hundred silvers in a talent.
“But the money’s not all. Because the tower comes with the job. The state owns it, but you’d have right of abode. For your whole life. And that includes rights to the stables and the mustering ground. Yours. If you want it.”
“The tower. Mine?”
“Well, it would be ours.”
