Sonata Form Page 2

  “But, syr,” Bethan objected, even as she reached to take the horse’s lead from Andras. “Dillie’s only still training, and she’s only just—”

  “She is, at the moment, more prepared for this post than you.” Ellis flicked his gaze to encompass Andras too. “Than either of you. Wellech has not had the honor of hosting a coven for longer than I’ve been alive, and I won’t have reports of inhospitality preventing us from hosting another.”

  With an absent pat to the horse’s neck, he unhooked the lamp from its sling and shoved it at Andras. “Don’t drop this one, yeah?” He turned to Milo. “I see no luggage.”

  “No, I...” It took a second for Milo’s brain to adjust to the jag in conversation. “Your mam sent a hire car to the station for us. I felt like a walk, so I sent my bag along with Mam and told her I’d meet her at the Bluebell.”

  “Ah!” Ellis grinned. “So you’ll both be staying at Rhediad Afon with Mam, then? She didn’t say. I’d been wondering why she’s had the kitchens in a dither, but she wouldn’t tell me.” Before Milo could answer, Ellis gave Bethan a brisk “Off with you, then, quit your gawking” then took hold of Milo’s elbow and tugged. “C’mon, I’ll walk you to the Bluebell.”

  “YOU SHOULDN’T have told them what you did. That ‘greasy ash’ thing you said.” Though there was mild censure in Milo's remark, he suspected the grin behind it was audible. “They were clearly keyed up about the prospect of magic in general, and just the word ‘Dewin’ seemed to scare them spitless. Feeding the worry will only make them more—”

  “Hidebound?” Ellis cut in. “Narrow-minded? I’ve been trying to nip that kind of twaddle where I can, especially in my own ranks, but it’s getting more and louder, and it just… well, it pisses me off.” It was angry, but the touch to Milo’s arm was gentle and the tone more placid when Ellis said, “Lift that light a bit, would you? I can’t see ten paces ahead.”

  Milo gave the magelight a bump; it rose, its glow enhanced to burn more brightly against the fog as they reached the end of the Reescartref Bridge and stepped onto the path eastward.

  What memories it brought back, being here with Ellis beside him. The weather was all wrong, nothing like to the summer nights spent traipsing like puerile sharpers askulk, jubilant and bug-bitten, with the whole of the world laid down at their grubby bare feet. The mood was off too, uncomfortably charged and unfamiliar now, when everything Milo remembered about his summers here was sundrenched and silt-scented.

  “So, what I’ve heard is true, then,” Milo ventured carefully. “You’ve taken the Wardenship from your tad.”

  And knowing Folant Rees, it must have been quite a show.

  Ellis sighed, breath curling out in a long plume to melt into the fog. “It wasn’t a matter of taking, really. More like just… stepping into the gaps, I guess, and daring him to stop me.” He paused, thoughtful, then said, “There were a lot of gaps.” A shrug bumped his arm into Milo’s. “Things sort of went on, and the title shifted along with them.”

  That wasn’t even close to what Milo’s mam had told him, and she’d got it from Ellis’s. Obstacles thrown viciously across every path Ellis took for the first few months, trainee contracts deliberately breached, low-ranked novices sacked for following orders, and high-ranking old hands demoted based on nothing more than whim and spite. Until Ellis began to plan around the interferences, thinking around his tad’s corners and cutting him off before he got to them.

  Ellis had moved out of Oed Tyddyn—the sprawling estate that was the only thing Folant had really proffered his contract bed besides his contribution to the making of his son—and taken the Croft for his own. It had been, according to Milo’s mam, a quietly violent struggle, carried out through procedure changes and training methods and patrol schedules, and Folant was as unapologetically and publicly bitter about losing it as he was about his once-almost-cariad having no use for him once she’d quickened with Ellis.

  “And Pennaeth?” Milo asked. “Will you ta—fill in those gaps too?”

  Ellis’s smile was grim. “I guess we’ll see, should the need become more needful.”

  He should, really. From what Milo had heard, Folant remained chief of Clan Rees, and thereby the parish head of Wellech, only because Ellis had pointedly allowed him to keep the title. Ellis was the one fulfilling the responsibilities of it—which, Milo now suspected, was the only reason the coven had been extended the invitation to meet here after what could most kindly be called a decades-long snub.

  Milo had been a bit dubious when his mam had relayed the gossip, to be honest. He’d known Ellis as a callow, somewhat overconfident boy—eager to shirk a day’s chores for a swim in the river; unabashedly brandishing his family names to avoid all manner of consequences. Ellis never suffered so much as a willow-wand to the bum nor cross word from the locals for any of his boyhood mischiefs. His mam was a different story, but still.

  Milo spent a great deal of the summers of his youth wondering why he wasn’t resentful and jealous of Ellis, because Milo would certainly never get away with any of their more questionable adventures on his own. In truth, he hadn’t minded much. He’d benefitted from Ellis’s overconfidence countless times just by being in the same adolescent orbit.

  And, every goddess in the pantheon, it had been fun.

  Seeing Ellis now, the man he’d become… well. It had only been a small fistful of time, no more than a few furlongs’ walk yet, but there was something about him—the set of his shoulders; the careful expressions; the jut of his jaw—that told Milo he’d missed an awful lot of growing up when it came to Ellis Morgan dy Rees.

  “Needs, by definition, are always needful, I think,” Milo said then changed the subject. “Did I hear you say you’ve got someone called Dilys training with the Wardens? That’s not little Dillie Moss dy Rydderch, is it?”

  “Ha!” That brought a grin to Ellis’s face, the sternness wiped clean and replaced by open fondness. “She’s not so little anymore. Well, I mean, she is, but you wouldn’t know it by the way she handles herself. Flipped me three times the last time we sparred.”

  “Dillie did. Dillie did?”

  “And I was trying!” Ellis shook his head. “I admit I was dubious when her application came in. And even more dubious when Dillie showed up.” He turned to Milo with a smirk that looked downright doting. “But she hadn’t been idle, our Dillie. Still a little dab, but stout with it, and balanced out just so. I haven’t set her to train with a rifle yet, but she’s already worked her way through just about everyone in hand-to-hand, and her archery skills are probably the best I’ve ever seen. Even without magicked arrows, she’ll nail the bullseye more than not.”

  “She’s always been crackerjack with a bow,” Milo agreed. They’d certainly had their turns at the targets, but they’d never hunted together as children, and they’d only dared the smallest, most benign magics in Folant Rees’s jurisdiction. “Your mam’s training her, then?”

  “Well, Mam says it’s more a matter of taking Dillie through the tests and handing over the ‘adept’ marks when they’re through. Apparently, no child of Terrwyn Rydderch will be caught short and without the proper training, so he’s been putting Dillie through her paces since she hit twelve.”

  “And yet he still won’t have anything to do with a coven.”

  “Well.” Ellis snorted. “A Rydderch admitting anyone has authority over them besides the Queen? Please. Terrwyn barely acknowledges that much.”

  Milo laughed. “True, I suppose. Still, though. I wish I’d at least had Dillie at Llundaintref with me. If not for the comfort of familiar company, I could’ve used her on my rounders team.”

  “I dunno,” Ellis said lightly, “if she’d been in Llundaintref with you, I wouldn’t’ve got to see her for ten years either.”

  Deliberately lightly, if Milo was hearing what Ellis wasn’t saying.

  “I wrote you. I wrote you lots.” Milo kept his own tone as peaceable as he could. “And you never wrote back.”
<
br />   “I did so!”

  “Twice.”

  “Twice is more than never.”

  “Twice. Once for my eleventh birthday, which I’m pretty sure your mam made you do, and one Highwinter card a couple of years later.”

  “…It still counts.”

  “Two posts over ten years does not a correspondence make, Elly.”

  Nor a friendship wafted faintly at the back of Milo’s mind.

  “You couldn’t have been too broken up about it.” Ellis’s voice was low, night sounds and the damp of the fog nearly swallowing it. “You never came back, after all.”

  “I hardly ever even got to go home, Elly, let alone have a holiday.”

  “You went home every Reaping and Sowing, at least that’s what—”

  “Yes, because it’s migration season, and even before Nain died, there were maybe ten other people in the whole of Màstira who know how to care for old, sick, or crippled dragons besides me and Mam and Howell, and they’re not dragonkin.”

  “I… ehm.” Ellis was quiet for a moment before he said, “I was sorry to hear about your nain.”

  Milo looked away. All he could manage for a moment was a gruff “Ta, Elly” because it hadn’t been much more than a year yet and it still felt fresh. The loss had only been made more difficult by knowing that through it all—the wake and the funeral and the burial—there’d been a polite yet vicious fight going on behind the scenes between Kymbrygh’s MP and Ceri’s solicitors over whether or not Milo would be allowed to go back to school when it was over and leave Old Forge with no dragonkin. As it was, he’d still been wearing his mourning band when he’d had to sit his final exams.

  “I would’ve come,” Ellis said. “It’s only… things were a bit, ehm. Well, everything was very unsettled then, and I couldn’t—”

  “I know. It’s all right.”

  “You’d’ve come if it’d been my bamps. So I think it’s not, really.”

  Milo didn’t argue, though it really was all right. He’d barely made it home in time himself, missing the first days of vigil entirely and only showing up after the wake had already started.

  “How is your bamps?”

  Ellis huffed something that might’ve been a snort but didn’t sound amused. “Sometimes he actually remembers me.”

  Sundown sickness they called it. Old and frail before one’s time, and it might not be quite so heartbreaking if it didn’t start with one’s mind. Ellis’s bamps had been a force back in the day; he’d already been a more-often-dotty-than-not scarecrow of an old man in a bath chair by the time Milo started spending summers in Wellech.

  All Milo could offer was, “I’m sorry.”

  “Ta,” Ellis said, short and clipped. “You were saying?” Which meant he was done talking about it.

  Milo would like to oblige, but—“I forget what we were talking about.”

  Ellis laughed then, a quick bark of it, genuine and deep. “You were telling me why my best friend abandoned me for a posh exclusive school miles and miles away on a whole other island, and then never came to visit.”

  Best friend. Abandoned.

  Milo tamped down the tiny bit of brittle indignation that flared at the accusation. Because it wasn’t actually an accusation, though Milo wasn’t entirely sure what it was. A bid for reassurance, maybe, from someone who’d never admit, even to himself, he might need it.

  “…Right. Anyway.” Milo pulled in a rough breath. “There’s no other dragonkin in Kymbrygh now, let alone anywhere close to Old Forge. Mam and the Kymbrygh MP demanded a leave at Sowing and Reaping be in the contract when I started at the school. I had no say in any of it.”

  You, on the other hand, Milo only just stopped himself from saying. Instead he scowled and watched his boots tromp the muddy path to hide it, deliberately kicking at a clump of rotted leaf-fall so his sigh wasn’t too obvious. Everything was abruptly entirely too serious, and it was stupid.

  It shouldn’t still sting the way it did. They’d been children. Back then, three months of summer once a year was the only worthy sum of a too-young life. Concentrated companionship made a best friend before they’d been old enough to even know what “friend” meant, let alone “best.” Children were capricious and callous, trading companions for convenience. Memories became fine, gossamer things with age. Precious, too-malleable treasures to take out and dote on once the adult had finally arrogated the child, abandoning him to his jacks and conkers at the twilit edge of grownup reminiscence.

  Still.

  It did sting. As though some part of Milo was still that ten-year-old, all alone in a new school, a new city, a new life—no friends, nothing familiar—and waiting to hear his name called every Midsday when the post from home came. Waiting for a letter from someone other than his mam or his nain. Waiting for something from the boy who’d been hardest to leave, and wondering why it never came.

  It took a moment for Milo to realize Ellis had stopped, head down, thoughtful. The magelight was bright, beating back the fog for a good thirty paces around them now, but Milo couldn’t see Ellis’s face beneath the brim of his hat. Not until Ellis huffed and looked up, a smile that was several parts embarrassment tilting at one cheek.

  “I suppose I was… angry.” Ellis shrugged when Milo frowned at him. “I didn’t understand why you went away to school. I’d thought you’d come live here, actually. Or at Rhediad Afon, I mean. Have my mam teach you the magic.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. Grimaced. “And then, after I wasn’t angry anymore, it just....” He rolled his hand. “I didn’t know how to… pick it back up, I guess.”

  “Elly.” Milo took a step closer. “You know I had to go, right? I wasn’t leaving you, or even—”

  “I know. I do.” Ellis rolled his eyes, seemingly at himself. “Llundaintref is the only place someone like you could go. I know that. I knew that. It’s only....” He shrugged again, halfhearted. “It didn’t help. The knowing. Not back then.” He spread his hands. “I missed you.”

  You had a funny way of showing it, Milo couldn’t help thinking, that ten-year-old still biding somewhere at the back of his heart, looking for a letter that would never come. But Milo wasn’t that ten-year-old anymore, and neither was Ellis.

  Maybe it was the almost forgotten scent of river silt that lifted Milo’s heart just a touch and made him smile. Maybe it was the memory-sound of splashing river water and laughter and hoots of approval for a particularly impressive dive. Maybe it was Ellis—taller, stronger, changed and grown into something… well, proper lush, if Milo was honest, but still Elly beneath it all—standing there with a rueful grin he wouldn’t let quirk and an apology in his eyes he’d never voice.

  It had been years ago. They’d been children.

  Milo stepped in, slung his arms around Ellis’s wide—great Goddess, the muscles—shoulders, said, “I’ve missed you too,” and waited, abruptly warm and content, until Ellis hugged him back.

  It only took a second or two.

  Chapter 2—Theme

  : the main self-contained melody of a musical composition

  “… Being very forthcoming just now. It’s not quite worrisome yet, but it could be soon enough.”

  “Then I don’t see why we’re discussing it now. Our agenda has been planned and approved, and is too full for—”

  “It’s our job to discuss it, Arbenigwr Idwal, regardless of your agenda.”

  “It’s our job to discuss a lot of things, Meistr Eluned, most of which we won’t have time for if we don’t stick to the agenda!”

  Milo just sort of watched the byplay around him and tried not to gawk too much. And also tried not to look at his mam, who’d been trying to catch his eye for a while now. Milo knew if he let her, he wouldn’t be able to keep from laughing. And he really didn’t want to get kicked out of the first coven he’d ever sat as a full member.

  …Well. Full member once they finally got to the rites, but that wasn’t until the end, for no good reason Milo could discern except to keep him
quiet one last time while they still could. Newyddian—novice—status meant he wasn’t allowed to speak unless addressed directly.

  They were talking over each other now, Idwal getting red-faced and irate, Eluned calm but clearly getting more annoyed, and now Saeth was chiming in acerbically, but Milo thought that was only because she had too much fun watching Idwal get riled into near-apoplexy. To be fair, it wasn’t terribly hard to do. And watching the color climb up Idwal’s wattled neck, over his pale cragged face, and then basically consume the whole of his shiny bald head was kind of entertaining.

  The volume was rising, though the warding charm around the table had been set by Milo’s mam, so there was no danger of any of it leaking out to the ears of the other patrons of the Bluebell’s common room.

  You wouldn’t know it by Ellis. Two of his mam’s sleek little herding dogs had basically mauled him with happy yips and slobbery kisses when he and Milo entered the inn. Ellis had been so involved in greeting them he hadn’t even noticed when Milo stepped back to allow some space, then, feeling a bit superfluous, skulked away and took his seat at the coven’s table. The dogs now lay at Ellis’s feet, begging the occasional scrap from a random patron, but mostly content to snooze and enjoy the fire.

  Ellis, though.... This old-new Ellis was difficult to read. He’d commandeered the snug but left the doors open, holding casual court from a sturdy chair tipped back against the wall, muddy boots propped on the arm of another, and a jar of the inn’s bitter summer ale in his hand. He’d been ostensibly socializing with some boyos but really keeping an eye on the coven’s table since he’d sat down. Smirking, of course. Milo would find it annoying, maybe a little insulting—covens were Serious Business, after all—but he himself had been keeping in sighs and dutifully not rolling his eyes for some time now. He supposed he couldn’t give Ellis the stink-eye he really wanted to without being a flaming hypocrite.

  Milo had been wrong, back at the bridge. Well, really the magelight had tricked his eye into seeing memory more than reality, but it came to the same thing—he’d been off in his assessment of Ellis and all his changes. Ellis’s hair was more gold now than auburn-on-ochre, brighter in the firelight that rosed his brown skin. His grin as he relayed some story that seemed to require a lot of expansive hand gestures to his mates was more wry and knowing than puckish. The way he sprawled in his seat was relaxed and confident, rather than the cocky pose Milo remembered.