Page 40 of Seducing the Sorcerer
On the evening of the fifth day, they said goodnight as usual at the tower door. Fenn went back to the stables and lay on his blanket in the hay, quivering with frustration. It was ridiculous. Why couldn’t Fenn just say something? What about it? You and me, eh? You fancy it? I fancy it. Something like that. Easy.
Only it wasn’t easy.
In the past, it had always felt so simple to get what he wanted from men. Sex had just seemed to happen. He’d gone somewhere likely, bought a pint, and watched. If someone had given him the eye and he’d liked the look of the bloke, he’d lifted his chin. Then he’d gone outside and waited. And let the man come to him. Or not. Simple.
But this was different. It felt new.
The problem was, it mattered. And because it mattered, he was too bloody scared. Not of Morgrim himself, any longer, but of ruining things. So, the direct approach was out. But perhaps something a bit more sophisticated? Something a bit more like Morgrim must be used to. Because surely Fenn wasn’t the first man to want him. Morgrim was gorgeous and important. He must’ve had hundreds of courtiers and so on wooing him over the years.
So, what did fancy people like that do to show someone they liked them?
Well, they paid compliments. They wore fancy clothes, and wrote poetry and sang songs. Aye. Moonlight serenades. Dead romantic.
Fenn closed his eyes in horror. He could whistle and maybe join in a drinking song, but the idea of serenading Morgrim was so mortifying it made him want to die. Perhaps there were men who sang songs to the men they fancied and managed not to look right noddies. Fenn was not one of them. The very idea!
What about gifts? Little things that showed the other person you cared about them. Flowers and suchlike. Flowers were nice, after all. Most people liked them. Geraniums weren’t bad. Red ones brightened up a stable yard just right. But geraniums would die here in the rain and anyway Morgrim didn’t seem a flowery sort of bloke. There was nothing pretty about his clothes or his great cave-like rooms. He was all drama and darkness and grandeur. The idea of giving Morgrim flowers was about as appealing as the idea of singing to him.
Anyway, flowers were bog standard. What would Morgrim actually like? A skull? A picture of skeletons doing something horrible? A book? Only how could Fenn choose a book for a man who already had so many?
Fenn sighed. What was he doing even thinking of things like serenades and flowers and gifts? He was going soft in his old age, that was what. Men like him didn’t seduce people. They especially didn’t even consider trying to seduce blokes like Morgrim. No, Fenn would be singing no soppy songs. He’d be buying no presents. Of course, bloody not.
The next day, however, he fixed a wonky shelf in the library.
Morgrim said “please don’t trouble” but Fenn rolled up his sleeves and did it anyway. Morgrim hovered, watching, and saying “really, you mustn’t put yourself out”. But at the end, when the job was nearly done and Fenn was putting all the books back, Morgrim said, “thank you” and, to Fenn’s surprise, blushed like a boy.
After that, Fenn took all Blaze’s tack apart again, cleaned it with double his usual care and put it back together.
He also scrubbed lichen from the back of the marble pavilion in the mustering ground.
And cleaned out the stable yard gutters.
And rooted out the dead and rotting plants from the four stone troughs in the courtyard, dug over the soil, collected a sackful of ferns from a marshy place in the shadow of the pavilion and planted them. They looked fresh and green and they’d do well in the constant wet. And they were handsome without being pretty.
He also set out to give Jasper a hand and put him at his ease, helping the boy collect horse droppings from the mustering ground and showing him the best way to groom a horse from crupper to poll. The lad was all right around horses: a bit nervous, but respectful.
Fenn spent time with the worple horse. Riding it on the mustering ground, teaching it to be led and not to chew through its lead rope if it was tied up, feeding it his old clothes that Jasper had laundered and some mouldering tapestries once he’d beaten them to remove the moths. The horse still wouldn’t eat grass or drink water, and it had no droppings either. This last quirk made Fenn anxious for days, because checking a horse’s manure was second nature. How could he tell it was healthy? And surely it couldn’t go on eating tapestries forever without nothing coming out the other end? But the days passed, and the horse showed no ill effects. It had as much energy and interest in food as ever. Fenn began to accept that this was just another of its peculiarities.
He did hope every morning he’d wake to find the creature just a little more like a real horse; a little less gormless and dodgy-looking, a little less made of sackcloth and a bit more glossy. But every morning he woke to find it the same: rough-coated, odd-shanked, goggle-eyed and draggle-tongued, as peculiar as the day it had come into his life.
At first, he called it “mate” if he felt he had to call it something, but after much thought, he named it Squab, because it put him in mind of a young bird. It looked so unprepossessing and it ate like young bird too, wolfing down whatever rags he could scrounge it. And that single blunt syllable seemed to suit it. It was inelegant, and yet there was something strong and pleasing about the plain sound of the word.
But he didn’t dare to fly again. He didn’t want to risk being carried off to foreign parts when he was getting free bed and board at the tower. And that was the only reason. Because the fact that Morgrim lived at the tower had nothing to do with it whatsoever.
Sometimes Fenn puzzled over a few pages in the treatise on the geometries of puissance. He spent time with Blaze and the other horses from the palace, polishing their coats until he could see his face in them, checking their hooves, combing their manes and tails, generally fussing over them.
He met Mr. Anjula, the groom from the palace who came over daily to check on and exercise the palace horses, sometimes with Jasper’s help. Mr. Anjula seemed to like the lad, but Fenn noted that he always put him on the calmest, quietest horses.
One day, Mr. Anjula seemed inclined to linger and they had a very satisfying conversation about the merits or otherwise of each animal. At the end, Mr. Anjula suggested a drink one day soon at the Green Gate, one of the inns in the town. Fenn agreed, more than pleased. He liked the man’s calm way with the horses and pleasant manner toward Jasper, and he reckoned Mr. Anjula liked him. He just hoped it wasn’t the good-fellowship spell making trouble again.
And all the while he completely failed to bring up the topic of prison and the fact that he’d once been there.
Although he did swear every evening that he’d tell Morgrim tomorrow.
***
On the morning of the tenth day, Fenn woke early. He wanted to go into town to pick up a couple of things. He couldn’t have the horse eating all the soft furnishings and the moth-eaten tapestries were nearly gone. And overnight he’d thought of the perfect gift for Morgrim; something good and practical and beautiful too. A black one, if he could get it, because Morgrim liked black.
He’d give it to the sorcerer before they went riding.
