Page 62 of The Serpent King

“But,” Gary said, “that’s not the whole story. Lydia clearly did her homework and discovered an obscure interview I did before any of you were born, in which I talked about what a special place I have in my heart for my rural fans who dream of a bigger world than the one they inhabit. And I know this because Miss Lydia had at the ready for my agent the population statistics for…” He snapped his fingers.

“Forrestville,” Lydia said.

“Ah, yes. Forrestville. And my agent would be in big trouble if I weren’t at least given the opportunity to spend some time with one of my small-town readers who made the trip all this way. So we changed my flight to the red-eye so I’d be able to spend some real time with you.”

“I can’t even tell you both what this means to me,” Travis said. He wanted to cry. This was already the best night of his life.

“My pleasure,” Lydia said. “I had to go big.”

They arrived at Five Points Creamery and got in line.

“Mr.—Gary, please let me pay for you,” Travis said.

Gary laughed. “My boy, it’s no secret to you that I have sold many books. I am a millionaire many times over. I will be buying the ice cream this evening for all of you, thank you very much. Buy Deathstorm when it comes out if you must repay me.”

“Oh, I will. You better believe I will.”

Gary approached the young man behind the counter and pulled a fat, intricately tooled wallet from his pocket. “I’ll be paying for my young friends here. And whatever they order”—he leaned in with a conspiratorial wink—“make it a triple. All around.” He drew a circle in the air with his finger.

They all sat down with their ice cream.

“So, Travis, what house are you?” Gary asked, spooning ice cream into his mouth and grunting with delight.

“Oh, Northbrook. Definitely Northbrook,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation.

Gary pointed his spoon at Travis. “Indeed! I had you pegged as a Northbrook, but I was prepared to talk you out of whatever other ideas you may have had. House Tanaris? House Wolfric? Who knows how people think.”

Travis beamed.

“All right, then,” Gary said. “Let’s put your friends in their rightful houses, shall we?”

“Yeah! Dill’s a musician. So…”

“Minstrels’ Brotherhood,” Gary and Travis said simultaneously. They grinned.

“All right, Lydia…she’s supersmart and she loves to read and write…so…House Letra?” Travis said.

“Yes, yes,” Gary said, rubbing his chin. “Or…The Learned Order?”

Travis considered the proposition tentatively, not wanting to contradict his idol, but realizing he might have no choice. “Only thing is that there’s a lifelong chastity vow.”

“I forgot about that,” Gary murmured.

“Nope,” Lydia said. “My chastity vow extends only to high school. I’ll take the other choice. Hey, I don’t want to interrupt the Bloodfallery, but Gary, how did you become a writer?”

He finished a bite of ice cream. “I grew up on a farm in Kansas. Wheat. Corn. We had some animals. We worked from dawn until dusk. I loved the books of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Robert E. Howard. As I worked, I would create worlds in my mind. Characters. People. Languages. Races. Battles. It was my escape. Pretty soon, I had too much for my head to hold and I needed to put some on paper.”

“I do that!” Travis said. “I work at a lumberyard and I imagine stuff while I work. What did your parents think about you becoming a writer?”

A wistful smile. “My father…was not a kind man. He drove me hard and he thought writing was foolishness. And maybe he was right. But you couldn’t have told me that then and you couldn’t tell me that now.”

A moment of quiet. Gary finished another bite of ice cream. “Are you a writer, Travis?”

“Oh no.”

“Why not?”

“I mean…I can’t write.”