Against The World

Chapter 66: Twenty Candles

I woke to someone kissing my forehead.

For a moment, I kept my eyes closed.

It seemed unwise to interrupt.

“Happy birthday,” Evelyn whispered.

I opened one eye.

She was propped on an elbow beside me, her dark hair loose over one shoulder. Morning light had found the edge of her smile.

“Is it morning already?”

“Yes.”

“Could we negotiate?”

“I have secured you another half hour.”

“With whom?”

“Everyone.”

I considered the effort that probably required.

Then I pulled her closer.

“An excellent gift.”

She laughed against my chest.

“You haven’t seen your gift.”

“This one is very good.”

We stayed there until the sunlight reached the pillows.

For once, I did not count what I might have accomplished by getting up.

The Castellan greeted me while I was trying to find my second stocking.

“Your Majesty. Felicitations upon the anniversary of your birth.”

“Thank you.”

“Twenty-eight Flowerwane has been entered in the royal household calendar as a recurring observance.”

I looked toward the golden eye in the wall.

“May twenty-eighth.”

“The corresponding date in your original calendar, yes.”

Hearing it aloud made me pause.

May twenty-eighth.

It belonged to a world of familiar streets, terrible birthday singing, and Caroline claiming that being eighteen months older made her qualified to give advice.

Then Evelyn handed me the missing stocking.

I took it.

“Twenty,” I said.

“Your age has been correctly calculated,” the Castellan assured me.

“Good. I would hate to do it twice.”

Evelyn sat beside me to fasten her shoes.

“Any advice for the coming year?” I asked him.

The golden eye brightened.

“Your household has requested that I refrain from offering maintenance recommendations before tomorrow.”

“I meant personal advice.”

A pause.

“Your breakfast is cooling.”

Evelyn nodded solemnly.

“Wise counsel.”

There were flowers on the breakfast table.

There were also eggs, fresh bread, honey, and a small dish of strawberries that made me look twice.

“Valewood’s sheltered garden,” Evelyn said.

“You imported breakfast?”

“Mother sent them yesterday.”

I picked up one of the berries.

It was small and slightly crooked.

It tasted like summer arriving early.

Mary came in carrying a flat parcel. Melody followed with another tucked beneath her arm.

I looked at Evelyn.

“I thought gifts were tonight.”

“Some people were unwilling to wait.”

“I have been waiting for weeks,” Melody said.

She set her parcel in front of me.

Inside was a pair of leather gloves.

I looked up.

She grinned.

“These are different.”

They were.

The palms were reinforced, the fingers supple, the stitching fine enough that I could hardly feel it when I put them on.

A small crown had been worked into each cuff.

“They’re for the sword,” she said. “Your other pair can continue losing arguments with baskets.”

I closed my hand.

The leather moved easily.

“They fit.”

“I know.”

“How?”

She glanced at Evelyn.

My wife reached for the honey.

I decided some investigations could wait.

Mary’s parcel contained a bound book.

I opened it cautiously.

The first page was blank.

So was the second.

I looked at her.

“No accounts?”

“No.”

“Hidden accounts?”

“Uriah.”

I ran my hand over the paper.

There was a ribbon to mark my place, and the cover was a deep blue, plain except for a narrow line around the edge.

“For whatever you wish to keep,” Mary said.

I looked toward Evelyn.

She shook her head slightly.

She had not told her about the letter.

Mary watched me for a moment, then adjusted the book so it sat squarely on the table.

“You spend a great deal of time writing what other people need.”

I swallowed.

“Thank you.”

Melody broke a piece from her bread.

“You should write down every time Alistair says you are improving.”

“It is a large book.”

“You’ll have room for illustrations.”

We went into the city late in the morning.

There had been some discussion about whether a king should spend his birthday wandering through the market.

It ended when I asked whether anyone had a better suggestion than sitting indoors while people whispered outside the door.

Evelyn took my arm.

Alistair and two guards followed.

The flower seller spotted us first.

She called out a greeting, and within moments a dozen people were wishing me well.

Nobody knelt.

A baker came out with flour on his sleeves and insisted I take a warm roll.

A woman leaning from an upper window shouted that twenty was hardly an age at all.

“Come back when you have knees worth complaining about!”

“I’ll remember!”

“Write it down!”

Evelyn squeezed my arm.

“You have a book now.”

At the corner near the school, Abigail’s class was waiting.

That should have warned me.

Lettie stood at the front holding a roll of paper nearly as tall as she was.

Davren waited behind her, leaning on a walking stick. He looked tired, but he was standing in the sunshine, and when his daughter turned to check that he was watching, he smiled.

“We made you something,” Lettie announced.

“I can see that.”

“You have to hold this end.”

I did.

Two other children helped unroll it.

It was a picture of Greykeep.

The castle leaned somewhat. Its towers were different heights. The blue washhouse roof occupied a much larger part of the city than geography supported.

There were people everywhere.

Someone had drawn Melody with ears taller than the gate.

Mary appeared beside a rat of uncertain proportions.

Evelyn wore a green dress and held my hand.

I had a crown, a sword, a hammer, and what seemed to be three elbows.

“It’s very good,” I said.

Lettie pointed to a small brown shape near the bottom.

“Those are your boots.”

“I recognize them.”

“They have mud.”

“Accurate,” Evelyn murmured.

Abigail stepped closer.

“They wished to include everyone. We ran out of wall before we ran out of people.”

I crouched to examine the corner Lettie was indicating.

There was a little house beside a field.

“That’s ours,” she said. “When we go back.”

Davren’s hand settled on her shoulder.

I looked up at him.

He nodded.

“Soon.”

I studied the picture again.

“May I put this in the castle?”

Several children answered at once.

The loudest was Lettie.

“That is where you live.”

Apparently it had been a foolish question.

By afternoon, I had acquired a loaf, a ribbon, three flowers, and more advice about getting older than I could reasonably use.

We returned to our rooms to find a long, narrow case on the bed.

Evelyn stopped beside it.

“This one is mine.”

I set the flowers down.

“Should I sit?”

“I would.”

That made me look at her.

She seemed suddenly less certain than she had while managing breakfast, the market, and my entire birthday.

I sat.

Inside the case lay a small painting.

Two figures stood beside a garden wall.

Evelyn’s hand was tucked through my arm. My head was turned toward her. There were flowers behind us and an uneven patch of stone near our feet.

No crown.

No weapons.

I was smiling.

I stared at it.

“The painter came with Mother’s dressmaker,” Evelyn said. “You thought he was measuring the windows.”

“I thought he was very thorough.”

“He made several sketches.”

I remembered a quiet man sitting near the courtyard while we spoke with Eleanor.

I had hardly noticed him.

“When was this?”

“The day you brought me the flowers.”

The bent stem stood in a jug in the background.

A small detail.

One I had not expected anyone else to remember.

I looked up.

“Is that how I look at you?”

Her uncertainty softened.

“Sometimes.”

“I look happy.”

“You were.”

I set the painting carefully aside and stood.

Then I took her face between my hands.

“I am.”

She kissed me before I could say anything else.

For a while, the gift remained on the bed.

Eventually, we put it on the mantel.

We had to move the wooden horse.

Evelyn placed it beside the little house, where it could face the painted garden.

“There,” she said.

I stood behind her with my arms around her waist.

It suited the room so well that I found it difficult to imagine the mantel without it.

The supper room smelled of roasted herbs and warm bread.

Someone had opened the windows to let in the evening air. Flowers stood in low jars along the table, leaving room for people to see one another.

Helena had obeyed the agreement.

There was no receiving line.

No herald announced my entrance.

She simply came forward, kissed my cheek, and said, “Happy birthday, dear.”

For a moment, I forgot to answer.

Then I hugged her.

She held me firmly.

When she let go, Garrick offered his hand.

I took it.

He pulled me into a brief embrace as well.

“Twenty,” he said.

“So I am told.”

“A good age.”

“Do you remember it?”

Evelyn made a startled sound.

Garrick looked at me for a long moment.

Then his mouth twitched.

“You may have improved at fishing by thirty.”

We sat down laughing.

Beatrice remained in her chair for most of the first course.

This was achieved through the efforts of two senior kitchen hands, Helena, and Evelyn, who had arranged for every serving spoon to be placed beyond Beatrice’s immediate reach.

She noticed.

“You have all been discussing me.”

“Yes,” Helena said.

Beatrice considered objecting.

Then someone passed her the potatoes.

At the other end of the table, Jalen was telling Aldren about the school curtains.

Eleanor was listening while pretending not to.

Merrow had taken the chair beside Eliza. They spoke quietly at first, then laughed at something I could not hear.

Mary had no papers.

I checked twice.

Melody caught me looking.

“She left them upstairs.”

“Voluntarily?”

“Eventually.”

Alistair passed me a dish.

“Eat while it is hot.”

For once, no one followed the instruction with news of a collapsed wall.

I ate.

The conversation moved around me.

A story about Valewood’s cook. An argument about whether a particular fish counted if it escaped after reaching the bank. Melody’s account of her mother and the stolen pie, which Helena enjoyed enough to request the entire story again.

I found myself talking more than I expected.

About Caroline’s birthday cakes.

About a game from my old world that sounded increasingly impossible as I tried to explain it.

About how I had once believed nineteen was old enough to know what I was doing.

“That was optimistic,” Garrick said.

Eleanor lifted her cup.

“Give it another forty years.”

Helena waited until the plates had been cleared.

Then she stood.

I glanced at Evelyn.

“One toast,” she whispered.

Helena looked along the table.

She had prepared something. I could tell by the way she held her cup, and by Garrick’s expression.

Then she looked at me.

Whatever she had planned changed.

“When Evelyn first left for Greykeep,” she said, “I asked her to write honestly.”

My wife closed her eyes briefly.

“She did.”

There was a ripple of laughter.

“Over time, her letters changed. She still wrote about the city. But she also wrote about a young man who forgot to eat when he was worried, who was far too willing to stand beneath falling stone, and who seemed surprised whenever someone chose to stay beside him.”

I felt Evelyn’s hand find mine beneath the table.

Helena’s voice gentled.

“Uriah, I am very glad we get to celebrate you today.”

She raised her cup.

“To many more birthdays, with people who love you.”

Everyone drank.

I tried to say thank you.

It took a second attempt.

Helena sat down without making me finish.

The cake required two people.

I stared as they brought it in.

It was round, dark, and covered in chocolate, with a slightly uneven edge that told me it had been made by hands rather than magic.

Twenty slender candles burned across the top.

Beatrice watched me closely.

“Through it,” she said. “And on it.”

I laughed.

“Yes.”

“This is the correct number?”

“Exactly.”

Melody leaned forward.

“What happens now?”

“I blow them out.”

“All of them?”

“That is generally the aim.”

“With air magic?”

“No.”

She looked disappointed.

I closed my eyes.

For a moment, I was somewhere else, listening to Caroline tell me to hurry before the wax reached the icing.

The memory hurt.

Then Evelyn’s thumb brushed my hand.

I opened my eyes to the faces around the table.

I drew a breath and blew.

Nineteen candles went out.

One remained.

Melody pointed.

“A formidable opponent.”

I extinguished it on the second attempt.

The room applauded as though I had won a battle.

Beatrice cut the cake.

The first bite was warm, rich, and a little heavier than the cakes I remembered.

I loved it.

When I told her, she smiled before she could stop herself.

There was music afterward.

The fiddle sounded much better than it had the previous afternoon.

Garrick danced with Helena. Jalen persuaded Beatrice to stand, then discovered she knew the steps better than he did.

Mary refused Melody once.

Only once.

I watched them turn past the open windows, Mary concentrating fiercely while Melody grinned.

Evelyn stepped in front of me.

“Your Majesty.”

I offered my hand.

“Your Majesty.”

She drew close as we began to move.

I knew the steps now.

Mostly.

“You seem pleased with yourself,” she said.

“I have not stepped on you.”

“The evening is young.”

We turned slowly beneath the lamps.

Her dress brushed my legs. Her hand rested easily on my shoulder.

“Was it too much?” she asked.

I looked around.

At the empty plates.

The candles.

The people lingering because nobody was quite ready to leave.

“No.”

“Good.”

I drew her a little closer.

“It was what I wanted.”

She smiled, and for the rest of the dance I watched her.

Later, back in our rooms, I opened Mary’s book.

Evelyn sat beside me, removing the pins from her hair.

“Writing already?”

“Just something short.”

On the first page, I wrote the date both ways.

May 28.

Twenty-eight Flowerwane.

Then I paused.

There had been so much to remember that I hardly knew where to begin.

Evelyn leaned against my shoulder.

I wrote:

Today I turned twenty. Beatrice made chocolate cake. Everyone stayed late.

Below it, I added:

Evelyn danced with me.

She read the lines.

“You should mention that you managed all twenty candles.”

“Eventually.”

“History needn’t be cruel.”

I smiled and set down the pen.

From the mantel, the painted version of me stood forever in a garden, looking at my wife.

The real Evelyn took my hand.

“Come to bed, birthday boy.”

I closed the book.

For once, there was nothing I wanted to add.

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