The walk to the road was almost pleasant. They were approaching Duciel, so there were more villages crowding the main road, and Rey stopped at a roadside stand to buy treats for Unicorn and slices of game pie for himself and Eli. They ate together with their backs to the cart, Eli closing his eyes in pleasure, and he seemed to enjoy it so much that Rey bought a loaf of bread studded with cheese and tomatoes to pick at on the road.
“I could kiss you,” Eli said, ripping off a hunk of bread and shoving it into his mouth like a pigeon horking down a muffin. “What?”
“Just admiring your grace and class,” Rey said, and danced away as Eli tried to kick him.
“If I’m not a noble anymore, I shouldn’t have to act like one.” Eli moaned faintly as he took another piece of bread. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed this, though, bread. I bet those squires back in your time used to fantasize about bread.”
“Kinky, but I doubt it. Bread back then was…not the best.” Rey made a face. “Too many wheat fields were trampled in the fighting, so it was mostly ground nuts and whatever you could stuff it with. The kings ate well, though. They were fun to rob. I mean, borrow from.”
“See, I don’t mind that.” Eli licked his fingers, and Rey found himself staring as he sucked oil off the pad of his thumb. “Stealing from people who can afford it, or tricking them out oftheir money. There are plenty of corrupt nobles out there who could do with a little humbling. My mother used to invite most of them to her parties.”
“Risky, though. Nobles have hunting dogs.”
“They also have actual gold.” Eli said. “Like my brother, technically, but he doesn’t count. He’s one of the good ones.”
“So you say.” Rey wasn’t so sure of that. Eli seemed so certain that Sabre was a paragon of virtue, but he also seemed certain that he wasn’t, when Rey couldn’t really find anything to fault him for beyond being a somewhat gullible youth.
They stopped at a secondhand shop for clothes. There were more secondhand shops now that people were spilling out of the overcrowded Duciel and into the surrounding countryside, and while that meant most of the clothes Eli and Rey found were a few seasons out of style, it didn’t matter too much. A country noble, particularly a distant cousin, wouldn’t be expected to keep up with Duciel’s fashion trends, and hired swords could care less. Eli balked at buying more than one shirt, but he left the shop looking almost like a respectable commoner instead of a mud-soaked wild man.
“We should seem like we’re so far removed from the nobility that we’re almost social equals,” Rey said, lying upside down in fox form in Eli’s arms. “I’ll be back from a semester in Gerakia—they let people in for free there if they aren’t rich—and I’ll be so clueless about Duciel’s social protocol that you’ll have to be the one to remind me. Servants pay more attention to etiquette than nobles do, anyway, so if I mess up or do something out of date, you can correct me without it seeming unusual.”
“Yes, my lord,” Eli said, moving one of Rey’s paws for him in a wave.
“Stop that. I’m your employer, you know.”
“Oh, yes, my lord, sorry, my lord.” Eli scratched Rey’s ears. It felt wonderful. “Or do I call you my fox, like this? Lord fox? Sir fox?”
“I’ll callyoucheeky.” Rey swished his tail in Eli’s face. “Twenty lashes.”
“I don’t think you’re the one who likes doing the lashing,” Eli said, and blushed when Rey went quiet.
“I don’t know if this is a conversation I can have as a fox,” Rey said, and wriggled out of Eli’s arms to jump into the cart. “Let a man put some pants on before you start talking about flogging.”
Eli laughed. Rey was starting to grow fond of his scratchy laughter and the hushed tone of his voice. It was risky—he couldn’t get too close to him, not when Eli clearly planned to throw everything out for revenge against King Tristan—but Rey couldn’t help but smile.
“It’s the de Valois effect,” he told himself, doing up his pants in his human form. “Stay strong, old fox.”
They slept just off the road next to a small village that night. People were playing instruments in the village square, and Rey and Eli hung back in the shadows to watch, Eli leaning ever so slightly on Rey’s shoulder.
They painted the cart to look like a country noble’s bland carriage instead of a cart of vvitch-made love potions, and bought candied orange peels at a roadside stand. Duciel appeared past the trees, a hillside city with the royal palace gleaming like the sun at its crest, and Rey caught Eli shuddering at the sight.
“You’ll be fine,” Rey said, and when he reached for Eli’s hand, Eli took it, squeezing his fingers briefly before letting go.
The road was crowded on the way to Duciel. People came and went down two lanes on the southern side, and they even spotted a noble carriage pulled to the side for a rest, guards dressed in perfect uniforms as they lounged in the grass.
They’d just passed the carriage when Rey saw Eli stop, tense as a wolf sighting prey, and then make a beeline across the road.
“Eli?” Rey whispered. Eli didn’t listen. He was looking at a pair of men on a horse, one a little older than the other, the younger one practically falling asleep in the saddle. Eli grabbed the reins, and the older man opened his mouth to shout before he stopped, staring down at him.
“Hello,” Eli said, as Rey debated whether to leave Unicorn unsupervised or to not intervene at all. “Your friend looks unwell.”
“It’s my son,” the older man said. He was still staring at Eli, his eyes lit with something that almost looked like hunger. “He’s not doing well. I’m taking him to the doctor.”
“But the best doctors are in Duciel,” Eli said, still holding the reins. “You’re going in the wrong direction.”
“I don’t think,” the older man said, and stopped as the younger man whispered something Rey couldn’t hear. Eli, however, seemed to hear it just fine, because he smiled brightly, reached for the older man’s leg, and wrenched him out of the saddle.
“Oh, fuck me twice,” Rey said, abandoning the cart to run over. The street traffic halted as Eli slammed the older man into the dirt road and broke his nose with a swing of his fist. “What the fuck are you doing?”
