“A toast,” Nell said as the nymph held the bottle out to Shrike. “To the new season and the Oak King.”
“To the new season,” Shrike conceded, accepting the bottle from the nymph with a nod of thanks. He took a swig, and Wren took no small pleasure in watching the swallow travel down his long and slender throat—a throat which begged for bruised kisses—as he threw his head back.
Shrike made as if to return the bottle to the nymph but paused as he caught Wren’s expectant eye. After a moment’s hesitation, he offered it to Wren.
Wren received it from him and tossed back a swallow. He braced for a burn like the gin he and the Restive Quills had found themselves reduced to drinking after Oxford.
Instead he encountered the bubbles of champagne.
It tasted of honey and star-anise and something more Wren couldn’t quite discern. It tasted the same way the fiddle had echoed through the Court of Hidden Folk, as if the wine had bubbled forth from the mountain’s depths and shrieked in wild abandon as it danced down waterfalls into the bottle and would continue on dancing through his veins.
The taste lingered on his tongue. He lowered the bottle to find Nell, the nymphs, and Shrike all staring at him—Nell and the nymphs with varying degrees of curiosity, Shrike with something that bordered on concern.
“Not bad,” Wren blurted, and found his words hoarse. As if he’d spent the night previous carousing and then drunkenly singingTwa CorbiesandThree Ravensin an alternating loop to compare the lyrics until he’d utterly lost his voice and thoroughly annoyed his friends. Not that such a thing had ever happened before. Certainly not at Oxford.
Nell laughed and accepted the bottle back from him.
“We should withdraw,” said Shrike, surprising Wren.
“What for?” Wren asked.
“To make way for the second round of the dance.”
“You’ve brought a blade,” Nell interjected. “Shall you not join us? Or have you had your surfeit of dancing?”
“It’s a dance of swords,” Shrike explained in the face of Wren’s evident confusion.
“And Butcher cuts quite the handsome figure in it,” Nell added. “For those who admire such things.”
Perhaps it was the fae wine. Regardless, Wren heard himself declare, “I should like to see it.”
Shrike shot him an astonished glance.
Wren, his head full of Yorkshire Morris dancing and the memory of how Shrike had looked with a sword in his hand, met his gaze steadily. “If you’re willing.”
The rosy hue returned to Shrike’s high cheekbones alongside his shy smile. “I’m willing, an’ it so please you.”
Nell grinned. “You’re an excellent influence on him, Lofthouse.”
And with a cheery wave, she strolled off, nymphs in tow.
No sooner had she passed out of earshot than Wren developed second thoughts. “There’s no danger in it, is there?”
“None aim to wound,” Shrike replied.
That wasn’t quite what Wren had asked, but he supposed the answer would suffice.
Shrike drew out his sword. The blade glistened. Wren had watched him sharpen it on one Sunday afternoon, sitting on the rock by the stream, his hair falling to frame his face as he bent to ply the whetstone. Shrike looked no less handsome now, holding it forth with far greater strength of arm than Wren himself could boast.
Over Shrike’s broad shoulders Wren espied other fae unsheathing their blades. Several bore silver similar to Shrike’s. Some, however, had weapons of more peculiar make—a bronze gladius pitted and tarnished with barnacles clinging to its hilt; a flamberge whose waving edge seemed to flicker with its own inner candle flame; a longsword of polished wood with dried vines curling down its length; a scimitar whose smooth and gleaming milk-white edge looked uncomfortably as if it were carved of bone; and a blade of pale translucent blue that might have been either glass or ice. The only sword-dancer Wren recognized, apart from Shrike, was the spiderweb fae, who drew out a slender silver rapier from its cane-sheath.
All the while, as the dancers drew their weapons and assumed their positions, unarmed fae withdrew from the tree. Wren followed suit and perched at the rim of the crowd near enough to watch Shrike’s performance with eager and hungry gaze.
Shrike did not disappoint.
The music of the fiddle and flute rekindled. The sword-wielding fae gathered in groups of five. Each raised their blade in their left hand. At the first beat of the tambourine, two blades crossed, the others following one-by-one in time with the song’s rhythm. When all swords had crossed, the dancers spun like the spokes of a wheel, and each five-spoked wheel in turn began to whirl around the tree.
Then, as the fiddle unleashed a joyous shriek, the wheels burst. Swords uncrossed and lashed out anew to strike each other in time with the beating of the tambourine. The rhythm increased in rapidity and the sword-wielders redoubled their efforts to match it with thrusts and parries enough to dizzy any mortal fencing master. Over, beneath, and between these blows the wielders danced, Shrike amongst them.
