Chapter 1
Northern Cymru
Early winter, 526 CE
Safir counted the tokens in his palm again and slumped back against the wall.
Just as few as when he’d counted them a few minutes before: two thin silver coins, a copper brooch, an iron ring about a thumb’s length across, and a badian seed. The coins might secure his bed and board at the brothel for another week, no more. The brooch was pretty but plain, and the pin a bit loose; might be traded for a fuck, if the other party was feeling charitable. He really ought to keep the iron ring. It was well-wrought and strong, and such things were useful on campaign.
The badian seed? Worthless, really, in his current circumstances. He’d fished it out of his spiced ale the night before because its eight-pointed symmetry was such a contrast to the bustle of Rhys’s hall. And, well, because he’d had a recipient in mind.
A movement at the eave drew his eye, and he smiled. “I was just thinking of you.”
With a rush of air, the magpie flapped down to land next to Safir’s elbow on the small table.
Turning his hand over, he spread the baubles before the bird. It ducked its shining head to poke about the meager worth of his life. As it nudged the coins, he took a chance and stroked a single finger—lightly, softly, down its neck. The magpie seemed to shiver, an action that spread the feathers of its wings and tail. If they’d been outside, some of those feathers would have caught the sun and shone a deep blue, but here, in the small, dark chamber he’d taken after his last mission, he had to imagine those flashes of color.
“You’re still pretty, my friend.”
The magpie looked at him sidewise. From a person, that look might have been one of suspicion or disbelief. Or a coy invitation to elaborate on his compliments. When the bird arched its back up against his fingertips, he decided on coy.
“Did I say pretty? I meant beautiful, of course. Elegant. Quite dashing.” He stroked to the end of its long tail. “Extraordinary. And strangely loyal. Even my own brother gives his best to someone else these days. I wonder what keeps you coming back.”
The magpie hooked the brooch on its beak and lifted its head. The copper glinted dully as the piece swayed. But just as Safir was about to tease it for vanity, the bird dropped the brooch. It clicked its beak on the iron ring next, but instead of picking it up, the magpie pushed it toward him. It would have fallen off the edge of the wooden table and into his lap if he hadn’t caught it.
He chuckled. “All right, all right. I won’t offer up such base things—ah.”
The magpie had noticed the badian, finally. With the tip of its beak, it nudge one of the eight points of the seed’s casing. Then, with a deliberate precision Safir wasn’t expecting, the magpie spun the seed on its stem, so that it resembled a tiny cartwheel.
“Clever you. What do you think?”
Without warning, the magpie fluttered up onto his shoulder, its claws piercing his shirt to press into his skin. It was surprisingly heavy, and just as he was thinking that this was a first, the creature gave him another. Ducking its head again, it stroked the smooth length of its beak up his cheekbone.
His turn to shiver. Eyes falling shut, he let it ripple through him, down his neck and out his limbs, leaving a soothing warmth in his body.
The shudder disturbed the magpie. It hopped off his shoulder to the table. After a couple of attempts, it clamped its beak on the badian seed. Then it flew up to the eave again and dropped outside.
In its wake, a sudden loneliness fell over Safir. Only… not just loneliness. Purposelessness. And, all right, maybe a little desperation. He was about to run out of what comforts his mercenary’s pay could afford him. He tipped the bits left behind by his magpie friend into the pouch at his belt and stood.
When the sun rose, he would have to pay a visit to Lord Rhys. He needed his next job.
And maybe to stop counting a bird as one of his best mates.
~ ~ ~
Morien sank onto his soft bed, cock already in hand.
He had time—it was dark yet. Dark enough that few were awake. Dark enough to conceal how his body thrummed. Dark enough to imagine eyes even darker.
Almost black, and as soft as the voice that accompanied them. Gripping the hard shaft of his prick, he listened for that voice. It was in his mind whenever he wished to call it up, which was too often but he wouldn’t think on that just now. This moment—this gift of time before the sun rose and his duties demanded his undivided attention—this was for that voice. Those eyes. And the hands that had never touched him.
Until this morning.
They had long fingers, those hands. Long but graceful, and strong. He had no trouble at all imagining them wrapped around the grip of a sword. He’d seen that many times, and as pleasing as the sight had been on its own, he’d always replaced that sword grip in his mind. There, those long, graceful fingers—fingers that had killed as many men as they’d stroked—wrapped instead around his cock in a lazy curl. Lazy, like the man himself.
Which wasn’t fair, and Morien punished his prick with a hard squeeze. The man’s easy demeanor was earned by the otherwise hard life he led. If he chose to rest between missions, to take some respite from skirmishes and burglaries and whatever other mischief he got up to for coin, it wasn’t Morien’s place to begrudge it. Loosening his grip, he made his fingers soft and teasing, like those eyes and that voice, and he stroked his cock until it lay heavy on his belly, begging for release.
Begging like he would do.
Begging like he would never do.
Even if his breath were coming in gasps as it was now. Even if his hips jerked of their own volition, if his feet pushed at the bedding. His hand sped its pace, rubbing harder now, squeezing, strangling, and he could no longer hear the voice but he could still see the eyes, so deep he wanted to dive into them and drown, and he came, his body nearly cramping on the spasms, the man’s name a stuttering sigh between his teeth.
He gave himself a few full breaths to feel his muscles relax back into the mattress and to recall the man’s scent… and then he rose and bathed and dressed for the morning meal.
~
He heard Gwen’s sons long before he saw them. If one lad’s a crow, his mother had always said, two are an entire murder, and Medraut and Galahad proved her right nearly every day. Whether they were playing or arguing, the result was always the same: a cacophony of whoops and shouts of the sort only two headstrong youngsters could produce.
To the pain of their mothers. As Morien entered the family’s private dining chamber, Gwen slapped a hand on the table between the lads. “Enough!”
“But, Mama—”
“Hush! Keep it up and the sun will turn and flee back into the night, and the nights are long enough already!”
Galahad giggled. “No, it won’t.”
“It will.” She pointed a warning finger at him and then at his older brother. “And don’t you go testing it.”
Medraut scowled. “Gally started it.”
“Did not!”
“Did so! With your silly talk of magpies and gifts—”
“It’s not silly, it’s true—”
“Boys!” Gwen saw Morien then and gave him a wide-eyed look. “Morien is here, and he’d like to break his fast in peace.”
Galahad wasted no time. “Morien, look what I found on my blanket this morning.”
“Put there yourself,” Medraut muttered.
For once, Gally ignored him, and Morien rewarded that temperance by picking up the small object and turning it over to examine it. A seed pod, of a sort that came to Cymru from across the world. The seeds gave a spicy warmth to food and drink, and the people here favored it in hot ale and wine in the dark months of winter. Morien closed it in his palm, out of sight. “How many points?”
“Eight,” Galahad said promptly. “As many as my years.” He narrowed his eyes at Medraut. “So I know it’s for me.”
Medraut rolled his own eyes. “What do I want with seeds? Tell your magpie to bring something useful, like a sword. Or a muzzle,” he added with a smirk.
“Can we plant it in the garden?” Gally asked Morien.
He smiled. After his mother, what he missed most from his boyhood home was the garden he’d kept. Water had been precious, but his mother had indulged him, and he’d tried to repay her trust by growing useful things for their people. Soon after he’d come to live here in Lord Ban’s household, to help his daughter, Elain, and her Gwen, he’d requested space for a small plot. When each of their sons was old enough to dig a hole with his hands, he’d shown them how to bury a seed and care for the resulting plant.
“We can,” he said, “but no promises. This one’s been in someone’s ale. But look here.” He set the seed pod on the table before Gally. With a flick of a fingertip, he set it spinning.
Both lads oohed over that, then began to take turns spinning the little pod.
They were still doing so a few minutes later when Elain swept into the chamber. She set a kiss to Gwen’s hair and smiled at their sons. “To what do we owe this peaceable meal?”
“To whom,” Gwen said. “Morien, as usual. My hero.” She sent him a grateful glance, and he nodded.
“And mine,” Elain said, “but our hero has been called away. At least for the day. Morien, a messenger from your father. He asks that you go to him directly.”
Morien stood. “Is he well?”
“The messenger said he’s fine. Shall I send for your horse?”
He turned down the offer and bid them a good day. He ate the rest of his bread as he strode back to his chamber. Inside, he took off his boots. Then his socks and trousers and vest and shirt. He stowed them all in the trunk at the foot of his bed.
When he was naked, he stood and stretched. As they always did, his fingers touched the peach pit at his chest. He wore it on a cord there—part reminder, part hope, as all seeds were. Promises of warmer seasons to come, of good things to be had if one were only patient enough to wait for them. Carefully, he lifted the pendant from his neck and looped the cord a few times. This smaller ring he slipped over one big toe.
Then he crouched on the floor of his chamber and shifted his human shape into his other one.
When the full-body shudder ceased, he ruffled his feathers to settle them. A few prods of his beak brought a stray blue wing feather into place among the black. Curling his claws around the cord of his pendant, he lifted his body to the top of the wall, dipped under the eave, and then climbed high into the sky, winging toward Rhys’s hall.
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