Work Text:
“Listen,” Beau says, hand clapped over the lead monk’s mouth. “We’ve got solidarity here, between us. Both monks. If I give you my word as a monk not to tell, will you just. Stop singing everything.”
He glances pointedly down at her hand, but she doesn’t remove it.
“Nod or shake, pal. I’m not here to listen to another sixteen bars.”
Looking around to confirm that they’re alone in the cloister, he eventually nods.
Once she pulls back, the monk straightens his habit and says, “In times of spiritual crisis, we’re allowed to counsel in alternate ways. Are you in or planning to be in a spiritual crisis?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Beau says, turning away from him to face the sunny courtyard. It’s truer than she’d like on a good day, with the Traveler and the Wildmother and all the Uk’otoa shit, and this has not been a good day. Oh, the experimental dunamancy is fine, Beau, she thinks sarcastically, no, you definitely won’t have to step in and pull Caleb out of the way of some weird explosion. And it definitely won’t send you into some weird place where everyone’s singing all the time. Surely not, you’re being paranoid.
She can feel him watching her, a little more perceptive than she’d like. For people who sing all the time, the monks here are sure good at picking up on unspoken cues.
“You should meet my mentor,” she offers, just to break the silence. “You’ve almost got them beat where it comes to meaningful silences.”
“A lot of people make confessions to me,” he says, and she can hear him shift to settle more comfortably against the stone wall that rings this inner garden. “I’m a pretty good listener, Beau, if you wanna talk about whatever’s wrong.”
I don’t know where I am, Beau means to say, but what comes out is, “I’m worried about my friends.”
He makes an agreeing hum. “Seems like there’s a lot of that going around. Not too long ago there was a pretty big battle around here.”
Looking around the peaceful grounds of The Order of Our Father of Perpetual Refrain, it seems hard to believe. Every breath she takes here feels a little strange; she’s not used to the lack of tension in the air, the absence of the need to lie. She’s been here long enough to ascertain that she’s nowhere near Xhorhas or the Dwendalian Empire, examined their maps and their library and found nothing referencing anywhere she’s ever heard of. No references to their gods, not even a sketch of anything close to Exandrian.
“This wasn’t the battlefield,” he continues, “but it was a battle to decide the fate of this country. And Hortensia. We’re in Valencia right now, in case you were wondering; I saw you take the map from the library.”
Beau doesn’t apologize and he doesn’t ask her to. They sit in silence for a while, watching a couple bees buzz by. If she strains her ears, she can catch the four-part harmony coming from the belltower.
“I need to get home,” she says at last. “They need me—if I’m not there to protect my friends, nobody else’s gonna do it.”
“Sounds pretty important. You think you need magic for it?” he makes a little gesture when he says magic, something where he splays out his fingers and wiggles his hands. It’s weird.
“Yeah,” she sighs. “Only I don’t do magic; hitting stuff is more my specialty.”
“Well,” he drawls, coming threateningly close to a musical note. “I don’t know any local magicians, but there’s a wedding a couple kingdoms over and I heard the wizard Xanax is gonna be there. He’s probably your best bet.”
“You’re saying I need to go get invited to a stranger’s wedding a couple kingdoms away and convince some wizard with a wild name to send me back home.”
“Pretty much,” the monk pushes off from the wall, coming up to stand beside her. “Except you don’t need an invitation, since all the monks are invited. And hey, you’re a monk.”
Beau closes her eyes and briefly imagines navigating a completely unfamiliar social scene, full of nobility (guaranteed to be assholes) and guards (highly likely to be assholes.) There will probably be singing involved. Fuck, there will definitely be singing involved, that’s just her luck. She brings a hand up to pinch the bridge of her nose.
“How many kinds of wine did you say you’ve got, again? I’m gonna need some fortification.”
Humming a few bars of the entry song, the monk gives her a grin.
---
They arrive at King Richard’s castle two days before the man’s wedding, Beau barely hanging on to her temper. The trip showed her that she has a deeper well of patience than she ever thought: she didn’t stun anyone until their third day on the road, even. The wine had helped, some—Beau’s as much of a wine expert as they’ve ever met and the singing paused when she was tasting, waiting for her to say whether it was bright or sharp or full-bodied.
Still, it means she’s arriving at the castle with a low-grade headache, not in the mood to entertain the guards at the gate.
“I'm the smart one,” one of the monks begins, to the delight of the gatekeeper.
“I'm the cute one,” another croons.
“I'm the shy one,” the other monks mime peeking out from their hands as he looks around, blushing.
“I'm the bad boy,” the tallest monk sings, stepping aside to reveal a figure leaning against one of the stone pillars that support the castle entrance.
“And I’m the one who doesn’t sing,” Beau says.
There’s a moment of absolute silence, broken when a woman's snort comes from the road behind them. Beau turns to look at the party approaching as the lead monk goes into, “And we’re the monks! Hey, hey, we’re the monks!”
The slight woman has her hand up to her mouth, laughter dancing in her eyes. Her other hand is in the grasp of a similarly-built man with a puffy red hat. He’s smiling too but he’s looking at his partner, not at Beau. It’s honestly sorta sweet.
With them is a packhorse weighed down by various cooking pots, being led by what might be a bard; Beau has no other explanation for the colorful clothes, or a hat with bells on it. Strange fashions, here, but she might bring the hat up to Jester once she gets back.
“I’m Gwynne,” the woman says, reaching out to shake Beau’s hand. “This is Vincenzo, and that’s Steve with the horse.”
“Beau,” Beau says, wincing a little when a sunbeam cuts through the clouds to hit directly in her eyes.
“Are you alright?” Vincenzo asks, stepping forward.
“Lotta wine last night, that’s all. Headache, you know how it is,” she answers, shoulders slumping in relief when the sun goes behind a cloud again.
“I could fix you up something for that,” he offers, and Beau figures, fuck it.
She nods and he promises to put something together from the kitchens, something greasy to eat and a tea Gwynne swears by for headaches. Steve is shifting from foot to foot, looking a little nervous in the direction of the gate guards.
“Poor dear,” Gwynne murmurs in an aside as they all approach the entrance, “you get thrown in one dungeon and you’re nervous about it for the rest of your life.”
“Vincenzo and Gwynne,” Vincenzo says proudly, handing over their invitation.
“Who’s that, then?” the gatekeeper asks, nodding at Steve.
“Oh, an old friend of King Richard’s,” Vincenzo waves a hand, but the gatekeeper doesn’t seem convinced.
“He’s our plus one,” Gwynne pipes up, and Beau hears Steve choke a little behind her.
If this is an improvisation, it’s one that Vincenzo has no trouble rolling with. He nods, and the gatekeeper lets them all in with one last dubious look.
Beau falls back a little, walks next to bell-hat Steve as Vincenzo begins leading them all to the castle kitchens. He’s as red as his hat, swallowing a few times to clear up that sudden coughing fit.
“You good?” she asks him, seeing the way he watches the join of Gwynne and Vincenzo’s hands.
“Yeah,” he sighs, before blinking hard. “Yes, I mean, yes I’m fine.” There’s another pause as he seems to be looking for something to say. Beau, ever merciful, decides to fill the silence.
“Seemed pretty nervous back there, with the guards. It true they threw you in the dungeon once?”
“Yeah, a few years back. I was, ah, involved with the queen at the time and she didn’t take it very well when I wanted to break it off. Haven’t been in any castle of Richard’s since then, actually.”
“Are you concerned about a grudge?” she asks, but he doesn’t look very worried.
“Oh, Richard and I are fine. We exchange letters now and then, with jokes and things, and I have no plans to make a move on the queen-to-be. She’d knock me flat.” No, he’s still watching his friends, the little pastoral picture they make navigating through livestock pens.
Beau, who comes lately from Nicodranas where a man has a contract on Jester’s life for a practical joke, is struck once again by a sense of dissonance. Or it’s the singing pair of farmers they pass, carrying vegetables toward a few stalls set up at the base of the castle itself. Probably that.
When they reach the kitchen, Vincenzo shoos a few other servants out of the way and gets in an argument with the castle chef (an argument that he wins, while Gwynne and Steve start teaching Beau a Hortensian card game at a nearby countertop) before proceeding to make a pot of tea and a fried egg sandwich.
Beau toasts the three of them before downing her mug of tea. It’s disgusting, bitter and sour with something strangely like cinnamon. She manages a smile, teeth clenched as she swallows again, trying to keep it down.
“Interesting spice,” she manages, and Vincenzo frowns a little.
“It’s not meant to have any spices,” he says, reaching for another mug. “It’s a little bitter, but. Well, here, I’ll try—”
Alarm bells ringing in her head, Beau’s hand snaps out to grab his wrist before he can drink. She can feel it now, the twist of ki, the shift in the rhythm of her body.
She looks between the three of them, Gwynne’s concerned eyes and Steve’s hand of losing cards, Vincenzo’s pulse jumping with fear under her fingers.
“What do you know about poisons?”
---
They go over every dish, Vincenzo demanding a temporary reinstatement of his old position as royal chef. He claims it’s his wedding gift to the king and he throws his weight around a little; apparently he’s the first in four generations to leave royal service outside of a coffin, and the older servants all still look at him with familiarity and fondness. It turns out that there was something painted on the inside of the teapot, a revelation that Beau immediately demands they keep quiet.
“The wedding is in two days,” she hisses as the four of them duck behind a tapestry. “There are plenty of people coming and going, and any of them could be responsible. We can’t scare them off now.”
“What are we meant to do about it, then?” Gwynne demands softly, well-practiced at hushed conversations in castle hallways.
“Keep an eye on things,” she instructs. “Narrow down what they used and find an antidote. Listen to what people are saying and pay attention to what they’re not saying, anything strange and you bring it straight to me.”
“I can keep hold of the kitchens until the ceremony,” Vincenzo says, “Hell, I could keep hold of the kitchens until we leave, period. King Richard misses my soups.”
“I’ve got some new material,” Steve offers. “Nothing the court has heard before; I can mingle with the highborn folk, get a few laughs.”
Beau tilts her head a little, wondering why exactly that’s a ticket into high society.
Seeing her move, Steve shakes his head a little and the bells on his hat jingle. “I’m a jester, you know?”
“Yeah,” Beau says, mouth a little dry at the thought of blue hands cupping her face, “Yeah, I know plenty about jesters.” I miss her, she thinks, I miss them all so much right now. Still, she shakes herself and pushes that away. Later. She can have a little breakdown later.
Gwynne sighs, unaware of Beau’s internal struggle. “Never wanted to go back to being a handmaid, but I suppose I could say someone sent me ahead to see to their arrival. Princess Isabella’s coming, isn’t she? With Galavant?” At the nod from Vincenzo, Gwynne speaks again, “She won’t mind the lie. There, I’m the downtrodden servant of a demanding noble, pushed ahead to make sure their luxury is never interrupted, though I will never experience that luxury myself. The downstairs crowd’ll talk to me.”
“Great. Great teamwork,” Beau says, surreptitiously slipping back to the tapestry that covers the alcove.
“What’re you planning to do?” Vincenzo asks, and Beau smiles a little because this is finally something she understands.
“Investigate.”
She steps out of the alcove, barely shifting the fabric, and when they look up and down the hallway, she’s gone.
She’s perched on an exposed wooden beam overhead, actually, but people rarely look up.
---
They have a pretty nice library in this castle; half the books are missing dedications, front pages torn out. A few others are embossed with various coats of arms that seem pretty stylistically different from the ones Beau’s seen around here.
What does that tell you, the part of her brain that’s always caught up in what Dairon would be saying pipes up.
Conquest, Beau allows. War, she thinks, paging through a very fine collection of maps with fortifications marked out on them. But there’s been no mention of wars, not from the monks or from her new friends. Well, there was the battle for Valencia and Hortensia, and what accounts of it she finds are meddled and chaotic but. But, that doesn’t mean this kingdom is at war.
(It’s strange to look at their maps, all the little kingdoms laid out, borders shifting from decade to decade. Beau’s lived her whole life in a world of empires; city-states are something from the history books. Not that Zeenoth was right when he told her to pay more attention in his lectures but, uh, maybe she’ll send him a note once she’s home.)
She loses an entire day to the library, picking through accounts of Queen Madalena and the circumstances of King Richard’s rule. Trouble with a brother—it’s always family, isn’t it? There are a few books on poisons that she spends two hours cross-referencing, narrows the teapot poison down to three possibilities, which isn’t terrible. It’s just... not enough, either.
Their culprit could be Madalena, maybe, whittling down the king’s supporters, but it doesn’t quite feel right. From what she gets from the librarian’s notes and what Gwynne tells her, the lady was getting into dark magic; from the portrait of her in the fancy genealogy, the cut of her clothes and the crown twined in her hair, Beau gets the sense that a quiet poisoning from afar just isn’t dramatic enough.
So at the end of the first day, the wedding and the wizard just one more day away, Beau has three poisons and an incredibly long list of suspects. Kitchen staff have access to the dishes, nobles have money and power and some of them are definitely displeased with King Richard’s shift towards peace in his lands, anyone from Valencia who wants revenge could be making a play for it—there’s too much, too many loose ends.
She trudges her way to the rooms the monks are occupying, pausing outside the door until the Goodnight to you, Goodnight song dies down. They’ve left one of the cots for her, a warm blanket folded at the foot of it, and her heart gives a little pang. It’s colder here than she’s used to, autumn instead of spring, and they must’ve noticed her shiver on the road.
(She’s been a dick this whole time, ever since she landed on their doorstep. She won’t sing, asks them not to even though it’s their way; she drinks their wine and eats their food and isn’t kind at all, and they’re still taking care of her. They’re good people. How strange, to find good people.)
Beau pulls the blanket up to her chin and curls up on the cot and if she can’t get to sleep for a long time because she can’t hear Jester breathing, well. That’s her business.
---
When the morning comes, Beau tries to be a little... nicer. She doesn’t sing, doesn’t start complimenting people or anything, but she folds her blanket and thanks them for it and then obligingly loses a hand of cards to Steve.
Vincenzo is in his element, moving among stoves and bubbling pots of porridge and sizzling pans of bacon. Gwynne ducks into the kitchen at one point, informing them that the rest of the servants are unhappy, but the usual amount of unhappy. Nobody who actually runs the castle seems to have crossed the threshold into murder plots.
“I wish Gareth were here,” Vincenzo says, settling down next to them with a plate of eggs. “He’s... sometimes-evil, actually, but he really does care about Richard.”
“Didn’t he perpetrate a coup with Madalena like three years ago?” Beau asks, and everyone in the breakfast nook nods.
“Three years, though, that’s ages,” Gwynne offers. “He was very loyal for all the years before that. But I’m glad he’s not here; no sense of subtlety, that one.”
Beau casts a pointed look at the bells on the jester’s hat.
“Ah,” he laughs, “but I can keep a secret.”
While they eat eggs and argue over the last piece of bacon, everyone else reports on what they’ve learned in the last day. It’s not much, but it isn’t nothing; no one suspicious has been in the kitchen, which is good, and there are three sets of nobles one bad argument away from a feud, who Beau rules out as suspects. It’s possible that they’re going to move against the crown, but far more likely that they’ll move against each other first.
“Galavant and Isabella arrive today, though,” Steve offers, and Vincenzo and Gwynne both relax.
“What does that mean for us?” Beau pushes her last bite of eggs around on the plate, definitely not thinking about what it would taste like if she added some of the mushrooms in a nearby basket. Well, she’s thinking about it, but she’s thinking about Caduceus thinking about it.
“Friends,” Vincenzo says with a smile. “Allies, friends, heroes, take your pick.”
“Nice.” Outside, Beau can hear a sheep baa-ing and once again feels a little strange; she’s worried about the poison, but it doesn’t feel so urgent as it would in Xhorhas or the Dwendalian Empire. The four of them are speaking in low voices, but aren’t worried about being scried on. And when the chef says friends are on the way, she believes him.
“When are they supposed to arrive?” she asks.
“The head housekeeper told me ‘before the first ray of the sun touches the western horizon, and the evening nymphs begin to awaken,’” Gwynne says.
“So...”
“By my count, like four o’clock,” she clarifies.
---
There is a great trumpeting of trumpets, when the delegation from Valencia arrives. More trumpeting than four people really need, if you ask Beau, but whatever. It’s royalty.
“Presenting,” the herald announces, “Princess Isabella Maria Lucia Elisabetta of Valencia and her husband, Sir Gary Galavant! Their children, Princess Philomena Anetta Marianna Isabella and Young Sidney!”
This is her first time seeing the heroes of these lands, and they’re just... people. People with children, no relic weapons or magic items in sight. The kids are young, a baby in the knight’s arms and a toddler holding her mother’s hand.
This is her first time seeing King Richard, too, as he rushes down from the dias where his throne sits with a joyful cry. Sir Galavant smiles, throws his unoccupied arm around the king’s shoulders and lets him waggle his fingers in the baby’s face. He bows to the princess as well, a little stiff, awkward around the edges. She curtseys, and there are a few disgruntled looks from nobles around the room; Beau assumes she didn’t do it low enough or something, but if the guy who waged a bloody war against your kingdom three years ago was the groom at a wedding you were attending, she figures you can act however the hell you want.
“Bobby wanted to be here,” King Richard is saying, “but there was some trouble in the last storm, damaged a few farms. She’s overseeing the repairs.”
“She’ll be here tomorrow, then?” Sir Galavant asks, laughing a little. “You do need the bride to have the wedding, I know you know.”
“Yes, yes, she’ll be here.”
Beau, watching the crowd, catches a ripple of what might be approval at the mention of the new queen. People... people like her, then. They like the idea of a hands-on ruler, no, maybe it’s that she’s invested in the farms on their lands; King Richard’s been involved in at least some measure of border warfare since he was crowned, up until three years ago. Maybe people like a counterpoint to that kind of rule.
There’s a disturbance at the entrance to the assembly hall, someone shouting something, and Beau has a flash of insight: oh, it’s about the Valencians, not the king.
It makes sense; Vincenzo called them friends so easily, Vincenzo made the tea, presumably for himself along with his guests. Sir Galavant and Princess Isabella, you don’t let those people meet up with their friends if you can help it, even if said friends are ‘only’ a cook, a jester, a handmaid.
If the heroes of Valencia and Hortensia were to die eating at King Richard’s table, well, that’s a war and a half. But if you’re a poisoner who’s been discovered already, if you don’t think you can chance the cook and the handmaid and the jester conferring with the heroes—
Almost without thinking Beau is dropping from the support beam, twisting as she falls to snare the first crossbow bolt. It vibrates in her hand, a foot from Sir Galavant’s unarmored back. For a moment, everything is frozen.
In the corner, a minstrel begins tapping on his drum; Galavant thrusts Young Sidney into King Richard’s arms, drawing his sword. Princess Isabella lets out a fierce string of curses and passes her daughter to a nearby guard, taking the spear from his unprepared hands.
They move, Beau the point of the formation, and the crowd of mercenaries rushes forward to die.
---
The battle passes as battles do, fast and almost incoherent; there are moments where Beau has to pull back, abandoning a maneuver because her fellows don’t know how she fights. It never feels like impossible odds, not really, but her blood is pumping and her ki thrums. It never feels impossible but there are so many of them, more coming up through the castle gate all the time, and Beau starts to sweat a little.
All along there is the drumbeat, picking up tempo until it’s just a roll, background noise that is suddenly punctuated—
Beau hears a sound she knows, a dragon roaring and she ducks instinctively as a curtain of fire descends from the sky.
“Tad Cooper!” she hears Galavant yell. “You are a dragon!”
“What the fuck?” Princess Isabella shouts. “Who gave Richard a dragon?”
“Ah,” Galavant ducks a swipe from an enemy halberd, “did I never mention Tad Cooper? You remember the Jewel—” He breaks off once more to stab a man through the shoulder.
“Could we maybe,” Beau pants, “have this conversation later.”
“Oh we are having this conversation later,” Princess Isabella calls.
The dragon—Tad Cooper?—roars again, igniting a cluster of mercenaries close to the gate. The others turn to look at each other, look at the swathe of destruction Beau is part of, look up to where the young dragon is flying circles in the sky, and.
Well, they run, of course.
Beau keeps her eyes on the sky, even as guards emerge to haul away the dead (and the still-breathing) enemies away. The princess and the knight cross the charred grass, Galavant with a grin and Princess Isabella with a curious look.
“I don’t think we’ve met,” she offers.
“Hey, hey,” Beau says, overcome with a wave of post-battle endorphins, “I’m a monk.”
---
They arrest someone, or send a letter about arresting someone, it all works out somehow; normally Beau would be a lot more interested in the results, but hey, she’s not sticking around here forever. Also, the king just has a dragon, which doesn’t make her very comfortable asking questions.
Princess “call-me-Isabella” Isabella, after checking her children over, turns to Beau and says, “You’re not like any monk I know.”
“The lack of singing, right? Yeah, that’s not really my thing.” It’s so weird to talk to royalty that doesn’t seem entirely inclined to execute you. It’s almost fun, almost like talking to a friend, albeit a friend you just met on the battlefield.
“Yes, and you’re a little more... martial, I guess.” Isabella smiles, punching Beau’s shoulder. It hurts a little, but she smiles back.
“Are you here for the wedding, then?” Galavant asks, coming up beside them.
“Yeah, you could say that. I’m looking for a wizard,” Beau finds herself telling them, “I’m from another—I’m from really far away, and I need help to get home. Magic seems to be the best way.”
“Well,” Galavant says, “magic can do a lot, but I’m not sure about wizards on the whole. There are plenty of bad ones out there.”
Beau cracks her knuckles, a little bit of lightning dancing over the back of her hand. “I can take them.”
“So you can,” Isabella smiles once more, taking her husband’s arm.
It’s almost... it’s almost nauseating, being near the two of them. They’re so in love it makes Beau’s teeth ache. Even more than Vincenzo and Gwynne, who smile at each other in the quiet moments, Galavant and Isabella seem so sure of themselves; it’s like nothing in the world can ever separate them. The way they’d fought, covering each other’s backs so well, she thinks it would take a lot to do it.
(But something could. She almost wants to shake them, wants to shake them like the monks in their abbey, like she wants to shake this whole happy world. There are dangerous things, she wants to tell them, how can you be happy, how can you not plan for the worst. It’s like, three years ago when the big battle happened, people thought that all of the bad things had happened. That there would be no more unexpected bends in the road.
She’s a little jealous of them, honestly. It must be nice for things to feel simple, happily ever after having come to pass.)
---
The wizard doesn’t show up to the wedding. The bride does, which is nice for King Richard, but the wizard sends a hunk of firewood and a thoughtful card.
Beau tries not to be gloomy, leaning against a wall at the reception as the other monks sing a blessing for the happy couple. It’s apparently a very momentous moment for the peace; King Richard’s men had devastated their kingdom, yet there they were, showing him kindness. Giving his union an element of religious weight that hadn’t been present in the previous one.
Good people. It must be exhausting, to be good people all the time.
The song ends and various guests wipe their eyes on tastefully monogrammed handkerchiefs. There’s applause, and the musicians in the corner begin something instrumental, something for dancing. Someone walks up beside Beau, and she looks over to take in Roberta Steingas, now a ruler of the realm.
“Congrats on getting hitched,” she tells the new queen, who gives her a brilliant smile. “You’re... sure about this, then?” Beau gives a nod in Richard’s direction, to where the king is telling an absolutely painful series of knock-knock jokes to a laughing Steve.
“I’m sure,” Roberta says, with the patience of someone who's been asked the question before and will be asked it again. “Maybe we seem funny from the outside, but it’s very nice to love and be loved.”
Through the crowd, Beau catches a strange flash of green light. “That does sound nice,” she says. “If you’ll excuse me—is something wrong with that fire?"
One of the nearby fireplaces is full of colored flames, green shifting slowly to blue; a blue Beau would know across a dark room, the color of Jester's hair. That’s where the light came from, she assumes.
"Oh, no," the queen reassures her, "it's a special property of the wood. A log from the Forest of Coincidence; it's a wedding gift from the wizard, I can never remember his name. Merlin’s successor. Apparently they're good luck to burn."
“I could use some good luck,” Beau says, thinking about how she now has to go hunt down this wizard and maybe beat some magic out of him.
She watches a tendril of smoke drift out of the fireplace, curling in the air. Through it she sees another flash of green; a familiar cloak.
Beau blinks. The cloaked individual is still there, looking over a table of hors d'oeuvre.
“Happy wedding,” she says, pushing off the wall and starting across the room.
He’s moving, pausing to say something in the king’s ear before doing a few steps at the edge of the dancefloor. She sees him slip a book under Gwynne’s party hat, on the chair where she’s abandoned it to wear Vincenzo’s.
Beau, undeterred, follows him like a hunting dog. She’s got him, once he’s close enough she hisses, “Traveler.”
He doesn’t react, going to continue his turn about the room.
“Traveler,” she tries again, and he pauses, tilting his head.
Fuck it, Beau thinks, fuck it, and corners him at the fireplace.
“Artagan,” she growls, and the fey turns to her, wide eyes under the shadow of his hood. He’s... he’s different, than the times she’s seen him. Same long ears, same sharp smile, but something is missing.
“Oh but how do you know my name, Beauregard,” he says, something slick about his voice.
“No, how do you— nope. Nope, not playing this game. This is such a coincidence,” she muses, breathing in a little smoke. “I need your help, I need to get back to Jester.”
He tilts his head, nothing softening about his expression. There’s something about the fey, Beau knows, something about the Feywild, something—time.
Fuck, time, dunamancy, this whole mess she’s in. Of course there’s something about time on top of everything else. What a coincidence.
“Look, I was born in the Dwendalian Empire and my best friend is also your best friend, and I need your help to get back to her. And all the rest of my friends.”
“Why should I help you? What will it get me?” He’s contemplative, which is something, at least.
Beau breathes in again, a deep inhale. Be patient, she reminds herself. Be patient.
You need to do this for Jester, she means to say, but what comes out of her mouth is, “It’ll be something new. Sending me back where I need to be, you’ll see me again and I’ll tell you all about this. Has anyone ever told you about meeting you?”
When she says new, his eyes go sharp and hungry. “Agreed,” he says, waving a hand in the direction of the kitchens. “Go through the door to the south garden, and you’ll be back where you mean to be.”
---
It would be a lie to say she doesn’t look back at the wedding, a lie to say she doesn’t toast with one more cup of wine that the monks brought with them, a lie to say she doesn’t give a little wave in the general direction of the tapestry-covered alcove she’d seen Gwynne and Vincenzo pulling Steve into for a private conversation.
It just... it feels good to be here, where happily ever after has come to pass.
Beau considers this place, the peace of it all, and turns away to head for her friends. The next battle, as always, waits over the horizon.