Magic's Pawn

'Well, she is not going to have her prurience satisfied, I promise you,' Tylendel said firmly. 'I am not going to share you, and that's that.'

Vanyel entered their room through the garden door, blinking until his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness after the noontide sunlight of the gardens. He was carrying his lute by the neck in his right hand, and holding his left, wrapped in a handkerchief, curled against his chest.

Ye gods, I should have known better, he thought ruefully, as his left hand throbbed. I am such a damned fool.

' 'Lendel?' he called into the outer room, racking the lute with care, still using only his right hand. 'Are you out there?'

'Of course I am.' Tylendel strolled in, a half-eaten slice of bread and cheese in one hand. 'It's lunchtime, you know I'm always here when the food is!'

Vanyel began unwrapping his hand - slowly -

Tylendel stopped chewing, then tossed his lunch, forgotten, onto the table.

'Gods, Van - what did you do to yourself? Sit!'

The ends of Vanyel's fingers were blistered, and the blisters had broken and were bleeding. The muscles of the hand were cramped so hard he couldn't have gotten his fingers uncurled to save his soul. He looked at the wreckage he'd made of his hand with a kind of pained disbelief.

Tylendel pushed him down onto the bed, and took the injured hand in both his own.

'I made a fool of myself, is what I did,' Vanyel told him, regretfully. 'I told the girls yesterday that if they'd leave me alone I'd play for them this morning. I forgot how long it's been since I played - and, well, I'll tell you the truth, I forgot I lost some feeling in those fingers when the arm got broken. I didn't even realize what I'd done to my finger-ends until after the muscles in my hand started to cramp.'

'Stay right there.' Tylendel went to the little chest at the foot of the bed that he'd moved into Vanyel's room with the rest of his things, bent over it for a moment, and came back with bandages and a little pot of salve. 'I'm no Healer,' he said, sitting down and taking Vanyel's hand back into his, 'but I've banged myself up a time or two, and this is good stuff.'

He took some of it on the ends of his fingers and massaged it into the palm of Vanyel's hand. A pleasant, sharp odor came from it, both green and spicy, and his fingers began to relax from their cramped position, both from the warming effect of the salve and the massage.

'What is that?' Vanyel asked, sniffing. 'I'm going to smell sort of like a pastry.'

Tylendel laughed. 'Don't tempt me this early in the day, Vanyel-ashke. It's cinnamon and marigold. Good for the cramped muscles and the poor, battered fingers.'

He had worked all the way out to the ends of Vanyel's fingers; the cramps were mostly gone, and the salve, rather than burning as Vanyel had half feared it would,, was numbing the areas where Tylendel was spreading it.

'Now just let me get you bandaged up.'

' 'What was that you just called me?''

'Ashke? It's Tayledras. Hawkbrother-tongue. All those feathered faces and masks Savil has on the wall out in the common room are from the Tayledras; she studied with one of their Adepts, Starwind k'Treva, and they made her a Wingsister. That's like a blood brother for them.'

Tylendel was wrapping each finger carefully and taking his time about it. Vanyel didn't mind in the least. Now that he wasn't in much pain, there was something a bit sensual about Tylendel's ministrations.

'She uses a lot of their expressions when there isn't a good word for the thing in our tongue. Like shay'a'chern - it translates as - oh - 'one whose lover is like self,' with a sexual connotation to the word 'self that makes it clear that they aren't talking about incest or similar interests. It's a very complicated language.' He looked up from his bandaging, and Vanyel could see laughter-glints lurking in the depths of his eyes. 'You smell delicious; are you sure you have lessons this afternoon?'

'We promised Savil we'd be virtuous today,' Vanyel reminded him, feeling greatly tempted anyway.

Tylendel heaved an exaggerated sigh. 'Too true. Well, ashke translates simply to 'beloved.' And it's part of your name already - ashke, Ashkevron. See?'

He tied off the last bit of bandage with a flourish.

'Ashke, ' Vanyel mused. 'I - like it.'

'It suits you, ashke; Savil says the Hawkbrothers seldom go by their born-names, they take use-names when they become mages. Maybe that's the name you always should have had. Now let's go eat lunch and be virtuous - before I decide to break my sworn word to Savil!'

Savil looked up from her book and rubbed her tired, blurring eyes. Tylendel and Vanyel had taken over the couch across from her to study. Candlelight from the lantern beside them made a halo of Tylendel's dark gold curls and highlighted the golden brown of his tunic; beside him, in deep blue, Vanyel seemed to be an extension of his shadow. They shared Vanyel's history text; it rested on their knees with each holding a corner. Tylendel's arm was around Vanyel's shoulder, their heads nestled closely together. From time to time Savil could catch the murmur of a question from her nephew and Tylendel's slightly higher reply.

Strange that it's the older who has the tenor voice and the younger who's the deeper, she mused, blinking sleepily at them. Though the pairing is strange all around. I would never have reckoned Vanyel for shay'a'chern. Not with Withen for a father.