![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Can I keep him? Can I keep him?
Aaagh. This is not the greatest. But here it is. Continuation of the Baby Dragon And Boy Antics I wrote a little while back. Very rough. In short: Baby Dragon Decides to Bring Boy Home.
Home turns out to be a little strange.
“Palace,” said Horatio.
It was another cavern entrance. It stretched downward between two boulders, yawning like a ragged mouth. One could walk along the pass and accidentally trip into it, obscured as it was by the angle and by the snow.
Somehow, he’d expected this.
“Yes,” said the young dragon. Horatio could feel the body under him swell with pride. “The greatest of the seven peaks. You may dismount now. It shall be an easy walk for you from here.”
Staring down the slope leading from the cave’s mouth, Horatio wondered what a dragon’s standard for ‘easy’ actually was. He slid off, at any rate, relinquishing his hold on the spines along Malcolm’s neck to stand beside him. It was still snowing, some. Malcolm stretched a wing out over Horatio’s head. It was a less thoughtful gesture than it appeared. The dragon used its bony edge to herd Horatio down into the gap. Horatio tripped all of two steps in—it wasn’t his fault, his boots had worn down and the stones were slippery. He threw his arms around Malcolm’s neck. So much for easy!
“It is a pity you do not have wings,” sighed Malcolm. Horatio wasn’t sure if that counted for sympathy. At the next step the dragon stumbled, claws giving an awkward scrabble and a screech as they sought purchase in the rock. The reason for this was, much to Horatio’s shock, because they’d reached a set of stairs.
It was carved into the floor. Up ahead, where the cavern took a sudden steep drop, it wound around the walls into a deep spiral. Along the way pockets had been notched in the walls. In those pockets, someone had screwed brass basins where burning torches offered light to the unfortunate travelers who thought such a route was a good idea.
Something seemed wrong about those flames. They burned low, emanating a light that nevertheless extended adequately across the steps. The tips swayed more slowly than a normal blaze. The scent that filled the cavern was a warm, spicy one.
“Your doing?” asked Horatio. He knew of the properties of dragon fire. Every winter Lord Malvolio used to send an allotment of it to the ailing villages along the slopes. They would be set out along the town borders, a hardy light that kept out most manner of beasts and raiders. The fire that burned this year hadn’t been nearly as strong or slow burning. Horatio’d watched the last one die as he’d left.
“No,” answered Malcolm, a little sourly. His upper lip curled. “I am not yet allowed. It is Grandmother’s policy.”
“I thought you were the crown prince?”
Malcolm’s eyes flashed. He stopped with his forepaws a few steps down, stretched in a half circle in front of Horatio. “And I am!” He looked away. The feathery flare of hair between his horns looked wilted. “But Grandmother is the crown princess, so she may do as she likes as well, and she is larger than me, so I must be polite. You will have to be, too.”
A strong picture of a dragon’s grandmother roared into Horatio’s head. “I’ll remember that.”
The small dragon bobbed his head in approval. “Grandmother prizes good manners.” The knotted spur of his wing gave Horatio a nudge. They started down the stairs again. “Anyway, I do not worry much for you. You speak well, and are interesting. Grandmother shall approve of you.”
“His Majesty continues to honor me.”
“Of course. Only the most interesting things belong to me.”
Horatio stumbled over the next bend. “That so.”
“Interesting things. And everything else, you see,” added the dragon, much like Horatio’s mother used to say ‘oh, and that ugly old quilt’. “That belongs to me as well.”
“Because you are the crown prince?”
“Yes.”
The boy shook his head. “Ah. How did I know?”
“We are here,” interrupted Malcolm. Horatio looked up.
Apparently, they were. The stairs spiraled down to a massive set of doors. Horatio nearly cracked his neck looking at it. They rose high up to the cavern’s ceiling, and when the pair stepped off the stairs, it rose higher still. They must have been bronze. They looked gold, polished as they were and glittering in the fire light. It was made out of twelve panels, and every one of them was engraved with episodes from the many lives of the King. In the center panels a large dragon lounged around a elaborately etched hoard.
Malcolm trotted up to these doors and put his forelegs up in the wall. He batted, with one paw, ‘till his claws caught a rope Horatio had not noticed hanging down beside the gates. He tugged, trotted back, and laid that covetous wing back over Horatio’s head. A bell rang, and the great gates creaked open. The engravings seemed to come alive in the altered light. Horatio gasped.
“Yes, yes. Now come.” Malcolm nosed him. He remembered his legs worked, let Malcolm walk him in, and then forgot all movement as he saw what lay beyond.
It had to be the grand hall. It had to be. There could be nothing else so vast. The floors were a polished white marble. The walls were a polished red. It extended into a fuzzy dot in the distance, vaulted arches occasionally leading off into side halls Horatio could barely see. The walls between these intervals were hardly bare. They were decorated nearly all the way up and down with great stone reliefs, and now and then a tapestry. The space immediately in front of him was occupied by a large black stone statue of a woman. It had been put in the middle of the hall, which seemed strange to Horatio, until the woman uncrossed her arms and he realized that she was alive. The wing over his shoulders went tight.
“Hello, Grandmother,” said Malcolm.
“I might have known you’d use the back door,” said Malcolm’s grandmother. Her voice was much deeper than his, like the hollow clink coal made when tapped against a stone. “What is this?”
Horatio had an immediate feeling of eyes boring into him. He could only guess, though. The woman’s face was covered by a black and silver laced veil. It matched her black dress, embroidered at the hem with silver thread and fastened shut by silver buttons. This matched her black gloves. Only the vague cut-out shape of a woman showed beneath this. All told, it was hard to see a resemblance.
“This is Horatio, Grandmother,” said Malcolm, bending his head so that his voice came from near Horatio’s shoulder. “I found him in the storm and decided he should return with me.”
“Hello, Your Grace,” added Horatio.
The black shape of a woman stiffened at him. “Your Grace? I am Veil Princess Portia Drache. Did you know this?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Now that you do, do not forget.”
“I won’t,” said Horatio. “I promise.”
“Hm.”
Horatio wasn’t sure what to say to that. Veil Princess Portia Drache turned hidden eyes back on her grandson. “You should not have been out.”
“I wished to see my peaks, Grandmother. It is my duty to do this.”
“You are a quarter grown hatchling who heard a story about a sword. You have ruined those clothes.”
“I have not!” sputtered Malcolm. He shifted on his forepaws, looking ready to say more. His grandmother raised a finger. His jaws clacked shut.
“We will speak. Your Horatio may wait in the small parlor. We will discuss this, as well. Emilia.”
A young girl appeared so suddenly that Horatio was sure she must have popped out of a wall.
“Take him.”
The girl bowed her head, and gestured quickly for Horatio to come her way. Of all things he had expected out of being brought home by a dragon, being passed around like a sock ball was not one of them.
“I shall see you soon,” said Malcolm. His tail brushed the floor dejectedly as he went.
The girl took Horatio’s hand and led him away. She wore black and silver, like the princess, but unlike the princess her face was visible and lively. She strutted ahead, casting constant sneaky glances back at Horatio. She looked a few years older, and a head taller. She also looked very eager to speak, and once they’d left the royal pair far enough behind, she practically burst with it.
“You’re a boy!”
“Is that strange?”
“Yes,” said Emilia. “We don’t get many of you. Horatio, is it?”
“Right.” Hah! He thought. So much for the dragon’s claim. “Does the Veil not like boys?”
“It’s not that, Horatio.” She tried out his name with a gleeful relish. She took his arm at the elbow and steered him down a surprise corner. “There’s Rolfe in the kitchens. And there’s the steward’s husband. And Klein--that’s the gentleman of the bedchamber. But they’re all old.” She pulled a face. “Dragons don’t hate men. It’s just that they like women better. They ask for young girls from the villages, so they can train them up.”
Horatio thought on that. Malvolio had always sent soldiers down from the peak. They delivered the winter’s allotment of fire, made seasonal sweeps, and picked up the village’s Tribute. When the Tribute required was not ore or wool or other cuts of the village’s produce, it was usually people. These people were usually young girls. In retrospect, the soldiers themselves were, in fact, women. Horatio wondered how many smart-suited figures he’d seen marching down the paths without realizing that not a one of them had a beard. “So that’s what happens to them.”
Emilia raised both eyebrows at him. It looked as though only a good training in manners kept her from laughing in his face. “Well...yes. What did you think the lords did? Eat them?”
“No!” said Horatio, quickly. He didn’t ask what happened to the occasional boy.
She stopped him in front of the door of what was apparently the small parlor. The small parlor deserved the name as much as the back door. It was small in the same way. Horatio was sure a boy of moderate size could get lost in the room. It did not have the same severe stone walls as the outside halls, tempered by the addition of dark wooden paneling, and a large blue and white rug thrown over the floor. It soaked in the heat from the stones beneath. Emilia showed him to a large sofa padded with blue velvet cushions. They swallowed him as soon as he sat down. He was to be devoured after all.
“Um,” he said.
Emilia took no notice of his plush predicament. She wandered around the parlor, finding ways to look busy. She fiddled with the dragon fire lamps on the walls. She fixed objects on the mahogany tables. Polished quartz weights, white stones that curved suspiciously like claws, stone coasters—she inspected each one for dust. The whole time, she talked. Horatio said very little. He didn’t mind. It was a nice break from Malcolm’s endless questions. Through a good deal of smiling and nodding, Horatio learned that Emilia had three sisters in the service, one older, one younger. She did maid work, mostly. She was being trained up to serve Prince Voltemand. She found him fussy and disagreeable, and he had an ugly smattering of freckles. Horatio tried to picture a freckled dragon and failed.
“But he’s the oldest of the cousins here, you see, so it’s only the next step down from the Prince or Princess themselves.” Horatio thought this might be a good time to ask which dragon Portia had married to gain the title, but by the time the words formed in his head Emilia had already moved on: “And he eats a lot. So I’m always running in and out of the kitchens. No one asks if I grab something tasty for myself.”
This was of more immediate interest than Malcolm’s strangely shaped grandmother. “You can just do that?”
Emilia twiddled a pigtail and smirked. “Could do it now, if you--”
“Yes, please.” He hadn’t eaten since the night before. His stomach remembered this with a healthy growl.
“Okay, then!” laughed Emilia. She returned with a steaming bowl of some kind of cream soup and a loaf of fresh bread. Horatio didn’t dare ask after the ingredients, just tire the bread and shoveled it spectacularly while Emilia talked and talked and talked. He learned that the stone floors were kept warm by the natural heat radiating from the mountain. He learned that the line colors were black and silver—so there was no avoiding it, even if you had red hair and it didn’t suit at all. He learned Princess Ophelia painted her nails. He fell asleep around this point. The storm and the journey had taken far more out of him than he’d thought. Mother was shaking him. There’d been snow overnight. The front path needed doing and the mending needed to be delivered to town by noon...
When he woke up, the plates were gone, and a blanket had been thrown over him. A servant who was not Emilia (Prince Voltemand called her away) stood over him.
“You’re wanted in the drawing room,” she said.
“What’s the difference between a parlor and a drawing room?”
The new servant eyed him narrowly. “One of them has the Prince in it. Come.”
Confused, and still thinking his mother would want him home soon, Horatio did. She led him back through the winding halls, taller and pointier and far less interested in him than Emilia had been. It was a pity, because in a way this girl was more interesting to look at it. She was pale and fair-haired. No one from the mountains had hair that light. Horatio’d heard it was common in the lower countries, but this was the first time he’d really seen it for himself. He missed Emilia, anyway. Emilia had been nice, even if she’d talked an awful lot. She’d given him her name, at least.
“Here,” said this girl, opening the door.
“Ah, what’s your--”
He was pushed through. On the other side, a scrawny, pale boy in a black suit sat slouched low in a very nice chair. It was one of several pieces of furniture arranged facing each other. It looked an awful lot like the small parlor, save for this one occupant. The boy inspected his cuff with eyebrows firmly knit. As the door clicked behind Horatio, the boy glanced up, and he glanced back down. He turned his skinny wrist. Silver buttons winked.
“She is wrong. It is perfectly fine,” he was saying. His black hair spread behind his head in two alarming flares. Horatio stood awkwardly at the door, casting an urgent look around. He wished the girl hadn’t just left him there. It seemed there was kind of mistake. Then the boy looked up again and pinned him with a long, bloody stare.
Horatio nearly knocked his head leaping back into the door frame.
“I may keep you,” said Malcolm, because it was Malcolm. The voice wasn’t quite as flute-y as before, but it was unmistakably his. “Grandmother has said I was allowed, as I had intended. She wished to put you in the servant’s wing right away, but that will not do.”
“You are a boy.” Horatio goggled.
Malcolm rolled his bright, ringed eyes. “Yes. I said this already. You are to be bathed, and dressed. And then you are to attend me at tonight’s meal. It is not normally done this way, but you will be with me, so it is all right.”
“Yes,” said Horatio. He felt a little numb. “S’pose it will be.”
“Now sit with me,” said Malcolm.
Horatio did.
Home turns out to be a little strange.
“Palace,” said Horatio.
It was another cavern entrance. It stretched downward between two boulders, yawning like a ragged mouth. One could walk along the pass and accidentally trip into it, obscured as it was by the angle and by the snow.
Somehow, he’d expected this.
“Yes,” said the young dragon. Horatio could feel the body under him swell with pride. “The greatest of the seven peaks. You may dismount now. It shall be an easy walk for you from here.”
Staring down the slope leading from the cave’s mouth, Horatio wondered what a dragon’s standard for ‘easy’ actually was. He slid off, at any rate, relinquishing his hold on the spines along Malcolm’s neck to stand beside him. It was still snowing, some. Malcolm stretched a wing out over Horatio’s head. It was a less thoughtful gesture than it appeared. The dragon used its bony edge to herd Horatio down into the gap. Horatio tripped all of two steps in—it wasn’t his fault, his boots had worn down and the stones were slippery. He threw his arms around Malcolm’s neck. So much for easy!
“It is a pity you do not have wings,” sighed Malcolm. Horatio wasn’t sure if that counted for sympathy. At the next step the dragon stumbled, claws giving an awkward scrabble and a screech as they sought purchase in the rock. The reason for this was, much to Horatio’s shock, because they’d reached a set of stairs.
It was carved into the floor. Up ahead, where the cavern took a sudden steep drop, it wound around the walls into a deep spiral. Along the way pockets had been notched in the walls. In those pockets, someone had screwed brass basins where burning torches offered light to the unfortunate travelers who thought such a route was a good idea.
Something seemed wrong about those flames. They burned low, emanating a light that nevertheless extended adequately across the steps. The tips swayed more slowly than a normal blaze. The scent that filled the cavern was a warm, spicy one.
“Your doing?” asked Horatio. He knew of the properties of dragon fire. Every winter Lord Malvolio used to send an allotment of it to the ailing villages along the slopes. They would be set out along the town borders, a hardy light that kept out most manner of beasts and raiders. The fire that burned this year hadn’t been nearly as strong or slow burning. Horatio’d watched the last one die as he’d left.
“No,” answered Malcolm, a little sourly. His upper lip curled. “I am not yet allowed. It is Grandmother’s policy.”
“I thought you were the crown prince?”
Malcolm’s eyes flashed. He stopped with his forepaws a few steps down, stretched in a half circle in front of Horatio. “And I am!” He looked away. The feathery flare of hair between his horns looked wilted. “But Grandmother is the crown princess, so she may do as she likes as well, and she is larger than me, so I must be polite. You will have to be, too.”
A strong picture of a dragon’s grandmother roared into Horatio’s head. “I’ll remember that.”
The small dragon bobbed his head in approval. “Grandmother prizes good manners.” The knotted spur of his wing gave Horatio a nudge. They started down the stairs again. “Anyway, I do not worry much for you. You speak well, and are interesting. Grandmother shall approve of you.”
“His Majesty continues to honor me.”
“Of course. Only the most interesting things belong to me.”
Horatio stumbled over the next bend. “That so.”
“Interesting things. And everything else, you see,” added the dragon, much like Horatio’s mother used to say ‘oh, and that ugly old quilt’. “That belongs to me as well.”
“Because you are the crown prince?”
“Yes.”
The boy shook his head. “Ah. How did I know?”
“We are here,” interrupted Malcolm. Horatio looked up.
Apparently, they were. The stairs spiraled down to a massive set of doors. Horatio nearly cracked his neck looking at it. They rose high up to the cavern’s ceiling, and when the pair stepped off the stairs, it rose higher still. They must have been bronze. They looked gold, polished as they were and glittering in the fire light. It was made out of twelve panels, and every one of them was engraved with episodes from the many lives of the King. In the center panels a large dragon lounged around a elaborately etched hoard.
Malcolm trotted up to these doors and put his forelegs up in the wall. He batted, with one paw, ‘till his claws caught a rope Horatio had not noticed hanging down beside the gates. He tugged, trotted back, and laid that covetous wing back over Horatio’s head. A bell rang, and the great gates creaked open. The engravings seemed to come alive in the altered light. Horatio gasped.
“Yes, yes. Now come.” Malcolm nosed him. He remembered his legs worked, let Malcolm walk him in, and then forgot all movement as he saw what lay beyond.
It had to be the grand hall. It had to be. There could be nothing else so vast. The floors were a polished white marble. The walls were a polished red. It extended into a fuzzy dot in the distance, vaulted arches occasionally leading off into side halls Horatio could barely see. The walls between these intervals were hardly bare. They were decorated nearly all the way up and down with great stone reliefs, and now and then a tapestry. The space immediately in front of him was occupied by a large black stone statue of a woman. It had been put in the middle of the hall, which seemed strange to Horatio, until the woman uncrossed her arms and he realized that she was alive. The wing over his shoulders went tight.
“Hello, Grandmother,” said Malcolm.
“I might have known you’d use the back door,” said Malcolm’s grandmother. Her voice was much deeper than his, like the hollow clink coal made when tapped against a stone. “What is this?”
Horatio had an immediate feeling of eyes boring into him. He could only guess, though. The woman’s face was covered by a black and silver laced veil. It matched her black dress, embroidered at the hem with silver thread and fastened shut by silver buttons. This matched her black gloves. Only the vague cut-out shape of a woman showed beneath this. All told, it was hard to see a resemblance.
“This is Horatio, Grandmother,” said Malcolm, bending his head so that his voice came from near Horatio’s shoulder. “I found him in the storm and decided he should return with me.”
“Hello, Your Grace,” added Horatio.
The black shape of a woman stiffened at him. “Your Grace? I am Veil Princess Portia Drache. Did you know this?”
“No, Your Grace.”
“Now that you do, do not forget.”
“I won’t,” said Horatio. “I promise.”
“Hm.”
Horatio wasn’t sure what to say to that. Veil Princess Portia Drache turned hidden eyes back on her grandson. “You should not have been out.”
“I wished to see my peaks, Grandmother. It is my duty to do this.”
“You are a quarter grown hatchling who heard a story about a sword. You have ruined those clothes.”
“I have not!” sputtered Malcolm. He shifted on his forepaws, looking ready to say more. His grandmother raised a finger. His jaws clacked shut.
“We will speak. Your Horatio may wait in the small parlor. We will discuss this, as well. Emilia.”
A young girl appeared so suddenly that Horatio was sure she must have popped out of a wall.
“Take him.”
The girl bowed her head, and gestured quickly for Horatio to come her way. Of all things he had expected out of being brought home by a dragon, being passed around like a sock ball was not one of them.
“I shall see you soon,” said Malcolm. His tail brushed the floor dejectedly as he went.
The girl took Horatio’s hand and led him away. She wore black and silver, like the princess, but unlike the princess her face was visible and lively. She strutted ahead, casting constant sneaky glances back at Horatio. She looked a few years older, and a head taller. She also looked very eager to speak, and once they’d left the royal pair far enough behind, she practically burst with it.
“You’re a boy!”
“Is that strange?”
“Yes,” said Emilia. “We don’t get many of you. Horatio, is it?”
“Right.” Hah! He thought. So much for the dragon’s claim. “Does the Veil not like boys?”
“It’s not that, Horatio.” She tried out his name with a gleeful relish. She took his arm at the elbow and steered him down a surprise corner. “There’s Rolfe in the kitchens. And there’s the steward’s husband. And Klein--that’s the gentleman of the bedchamber. But they’re all old.” She pulled a face. “Dragons don’t hate men. It’s just that they like women better. They ask for young girls from the villages, so they can train them up.”
Horatio thought on that. Malvolio had always sent soldiers down from the peak. They delivered the winter’s allotment of fire, made seasonal sweeps, and picked up the village’s Tribute. When the Tribute required was not ore or wool or other cuts of the village’s produce, it was usually people. These people were usually young girls. In retrospect, the soldiers themselves were, in fact, women. Horatio wondered how many smart-suited figures he’d seen marching down the paths without realizing that not a one of them had a beard. “So that’s what happens to them.”
Emilia raised both eyebrows at him. It looked as though only a good training in manners kept her from laughing in his face. “Well...yes. What did you think the lords did? Eat them?”
“No!” said Horatio, quickly. He didn’t ask what happened to the occasional boy.
She stopped him in front of the door of what was apparently the small parlor. The small parlor deserved the name as much as the back door. It was small in the same way. Horatio was sure a boy of moderate size could get lost in the room. It did not have the same severe stone walls as the outside halls, tempered by the addition of dark wooden paneling, and a large blue and white rug thrown over the floor. It soaked in the heat from the stones beneath. Emilia showed him to a large sofa padded with blue velvet cushions. They swallowed him as soon as he sat down. He was to be devoured after all.
“Um,” he said.
Emilia took no notice of his plush predicament. She wandered around the parlor, finding ways to look busy. She fiddled with the dragon fire lamps on the walls. She fixed objects on the mahogany tables. Polished quartz weights, white stones that curved suspiciously like claws, stone coasters—she inspected each one for dust. The whole time, she talked. Horatio said very little. He didn’t mind. It was a nice break from Malcolm’s endless questions. Through a good deal of smiling and nodding, Horatio learned that Emilia had three sisters in the service, one older, one younger. She did maid work, mostly. She was being trained up to serve Prince Voltemand. She found him fussy and disagreeable, and he had an ugly smattering of freckles. Horatio tried to picture a freckled dragon and failed.
“But he’s the oldest of the cousins here, you see, so it’s only the next step down from the Prince or Princess themselves.” Horatio thought this might be a good time to ask which dragon Portia had married to gain the title, but by the time the words formed in his head Emilia had already moved on: “And he eats a lot. So I’m always running in and out of the kitchens. No one asks if I grab something tasty for myself.”
This was of more immediate interest than Malcolm’s strangely shaped grandmother. “You can just do that?”
Emilia twiddled a pigtail and smirked. “Could do it now, if you--”
“Yes, please.” He hadn’t eaten since the night before. His stomach remembered this with a healthy growl.
“Okay, then!” laughed Emilia. She returned with a steaming bowl of some kind of cream soup and a loaf of fresh bread. Horatio didn’t dare ask after the ingredients, just tire the bread and shoveled it spectacularly while Emilia talked and talked and talked. He learned that the stone floors were kept warm by the natural heat radiating from the mountain. He learned that the line colors were black and silver—so there was no avoiding it, even if you had red hair and it didn’t suit at all. He learned Princess Ophelia painted her nails. He fell asleep around this point. The storm and the journey had taken far more out of him than he’d thought. Mother was shaking him. There’d been snow overnight. The front path needed doing and the mending needed to be delivered to town by noon...
When he woke up, the plates were gone, and a blanket had been thrown over him. A servant who was not Emilia (Prince Voltemand called her away) stood over him.
“You’re wanted in the drawing room,” she said.
“What’s the difference between a parlor and a drawing room?”
The new servant eyed him narrowly. “One of them has the Prince in it. Come.”
Confused, and still thinking his mother would want him home soon, Horatio did. She led him back through the winding halls, taller and pointier and far less interested in him than Emilia had been. It was a pity, because in a way this girl was more interesting to look at it. She was pale and fair-haired. No one from the mountains had hair that light. Horatio’d heard it was common in the lower countries, but this was the first time he’d really seen it for himself. He missed Emilia, anyway. Emilia had been nice, even if she’d talked an awful lot. She’d given him her name, at least.
“Here,” said this girl, opening the door.
“Ah, what’s your--”
He was pushed through. On the other side, a scrawny, pale boy in a black suit sat slouched low in a very nice chair. It was one of several pieces of furniture arranged facing each other. It looked an awful lot like the small parlor, save for this one occupant. The boy inspected his cuff with eyebrows firmly knit. As the door clicked behind Horatio, the boy glanced up, and he glanced back down. He turned his skinny wrist. Silver buttons winked.
“She is wrong. It is perfectly fine,” he was saying. His black hair spread behind his head in two alarming flares. Horatio stood awkwardly at the door, casting an urgent look around. He wished the girl hadn’t just left him there. It seemed there was kind of mistake. Then the boy looked up again and pinned him with a long, bloody stare.
Horatio nearly knocked his head leaping back into the door frame.
“I may keep you,” said Malcolm, because it was Malcolm. The voice wasn’t quite as flute-y as before, but it was unmistakably his. “Grandmother has said I was allowed, as I had intended. She wished to put you in the servant’s wing right away, but that will not do.”
“You are a boy.” Horatio goggled.
Malcolm rolled his bright, ringed eyes. “Yes. I said this already. You are to be bathed, and dressed. And then you are to attend me at tonight’s meal. It is not normally done this way, but you will be with me, so it is all right.”
“Yes,” said Horatio. He felt a little numb. “S’pose it will be.”
“Now sit with me,” said Malcolm.
Horatio did.
no subject