Chapter 117 - 116: A Servant’s Dream.

Chapter 117: Chapter 116: A Servant’s Dream.

Castle folk live for nights like tonight. In their lavish quarters ladies dream of glistening silver, and the songs of bards rising over roaring hearths, and gorging themselves on roasted meats, while their fathers, and their brothers, and their husbands all get stupid on wine and ale.

And the men dream the same dream. It’s one that’s beautiful, and merry, and carefree, and lasts long into the night.

​For a servant, however, nights like this are the stuff of nightmares.

​The food, and the sheer quantity of it, is only part of it. All day and all evening they scuttle back and forth like mules with wings, catering to the every whim of the hordes of nobles they’re serving.

Each empty platter needs to be cleared, returned to the kitchen, and replaced with another, and before anyone notices it’s empty.

The drink, too, runs endless and free till it’s overflowing, and takes inhibition with it. And heavens knows that when that starts to happen, it’s best not to be a servant.

Men get loose with their words, and with their hands, and become ever more volatile as the evening wears on.

​It’s safe to say that it makes for a particularly stressful night. Long, too, and sleepless, because long after the food is gone, and the fires burn low, and their king’s guests are slumbering peacefully, the servants remain at work; toiling by candlelight to clean up the mess the revelries have left in their wake.

​Every good servant knows that tonight, of all nights, he should keep his head down, and bite his tongue, and bury himself in his work like there’s a whip at his back until the night has finally worn itself out.

​It’s a real pity that Binny’s never been a very good servant.

​He’s learned, over the years, how to fake it as easy as a smile, but for all the things he’s good at, servitude isn’t one of them. It’s not that he doesn’t have the makings of a fine servant, because he does, he’s light on his feet, and deft with his hands, and has sharp ears and even sharper eyes.

​It’s just a shame about his mouth.

​Servants should be rarely seen, and never heard.

​He’d learned that the hard way. A number of times, actually.

​He supposes that means he never really learnt.

​Binny’s tried, really , he has --his parents were servants, and their parents before them were servants, and his own children should he be blessed with them will probably also be servants --but in days of late he’s finding it’s getting harder to pretend that he’s happy that that’s all he’ll ever be.

​Maybe that’s why he’s here tonight, out wandering the far-flung corridors of the castle while the noblemen of this castle and every other make his family and friends miserable, celebrating a union they despise, and toasting men they would never wish to know, or understand.

One of those men isn’t even there, and if they notice they don’t even care. And Binny knows this, because instead of drinking along with the privileged few and boasting of his triumph over the day’s events, that man is here, in a dingy, forgotten courtyard, alone under the moon, with a bow in hand, and a quiver of arrows at his side.

​People say that Vogrid Vector is gifted, and it’s true that he is. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t work just as hard as anyone else. Harder, even.

It’s something even Binny hadn’t realised for the longest time, and had discovered completely by accident on a night not unlike this, many years ago. No one came this way back then --still don’t, really --but Binny was a child curious to a fault, and had chanced upon a young Vogrid training here, in this very courtyard, because he spoke what he was thinking, and it was rarely kind, and none of the other children would suffer him.

​On that night, Binny had hidden, in this very spot, and watched. He must have been there for hours, because when he finally got home his mother had scolded him something terrible, and he hadn’t had any better reason for her than he’d lost track of time.

​He was usually much better at coming up with excuses, but it was the truth. There had been something almost spellbinding in the steady rhythm of his movements, and the way he had kept his eyes fixated on that target, like every shot he made was the one that would count.

​People had never understood him.

​Not many had ever tried.

They always wrote him off as prickly; abrasive, and unfriendly, and curt to the point of rudeness.

​And to their credit, they weren’t exactly wrong. He was all of those things, and so, like most of the other castle kids, Binny had tried to steer clear of him.

Children can be just as petty, and jealous of those to whom things come effortlessly to as adults, after all.

​But after that night, things changed.

​Not Vogrid, because he was ever constant in his criticism of the other children, and his general insufferability, but the way Binny saw him.

He must have watched him fire hundreds of arrows that night without faltering, each movement as calculated and deliberate as the last, and each arrow striking straight and true, and it struck him that such precision --and without rubbing his fingers raw --could have only come from hours upon hours of practice.

Practice, and dedication that no one, to Binny’s considerable knowledge, ever seemed to acknowledge.

​And because he was incurably curious, he went back. Just to test his theory.

​And Vogrid had been there again, with more arrows, and a fresh target, since the last had been so riddled with holes it was unrecognisable.

​Binny stayed longer, that night.

​Even after they became friends --or rather, when Binny had decided that they were going to be friends --he would still sneak out to that abandoned corridor and watch from the shadows, and Vogrid would pretend not to know he was there.

​Then one day, he’d asked him to join him.

​And, like an idiot, Binny had done as he was bid, and just like that he’d sealed his fate.

Vector had given him a taste of a world he was never meant to be a part of, and he had loved, and taken for granted, every second of it.

​Tonight, he misses it.

​Nostalgia is something he’s grown accustomed to staving off, but it’s hard, in this place.

It’s a place of firsts, for him, and despite the time of the year it still smells like spring, when the blossoms are in bloom, and his world was green.

Binny might have thought the place to have fallen into neglect over the years, but the creepers have been kept under control, and the target set at the far end of the courtyard is new, if dented.

There’s even still an old training dummy gathering dust in the corner --no one really comes here but servants, and they all seem to know better than to remove it.

​(Apparently Vector hasn’t thought to, either.)

​He wonders if he knows he’s there. He always used to, but things change.

​It’s probably better if he doesn’t know. He’s not meant to be here, after all.

​It’s probably bad that he doesn’t even care.

​It’s hard to, when Vogrid Vector is still as entrancing as the day Binny had first stumbled upon him.

The face is older; sharper, and more elegant, if that were possible, with his high cheekbones and long lashes, and skin that glows alabaster in the moonlight, but the intensity in his eyes hasn’t aged a day, and his movements are as crisp and timeless as ever.

​Binny had always liked watching him. It turns out, he still does.

​So he watches, chin in hand, as he readies another arrow, delicately plucked from the quiver, nocks it, and releases it in a smooth, precise motion, each shot identical to the one before it, and the one that comes after.

He barely seems to register the soft thunk it makes as it hits its mark, splitting the previous arrow clean in two; already reaching for his next arrow.

​It’s truly incredible. He’s already spent the better part of the day with a bow in hand, but where his competition is busy drinking until they’re stupid and couldn’t find the sharp end of an arrow with their face, he’s here, in a forgotten part of the castle, tirelessly back at work.

​And if their past is anything to go on, he’ll be that way for hours.

​And no one will ever be the wiser. And Vector won’t care.

​"Don’t worry, Vector," Binny finds himself whispering as he watches, finding himself admiring the way the sharp edges of his proud profile catch the light. It’s been a long time since he’s seen him like this --he’s still Vector, but his silhouette is less willowy than when they were young, and his sharp eyes catch the lithe strength of a trained soldier hidden under all that finery.

He’ll be a real catch for any lady of suitable birth, one day. Soon, probably. "It’ll be our little secret."

​He lingers a while longer. Not too long, because he’s still a servant, if not a good one --he has work to do, after all, and Vector would scold him, if he shirked it, especially since he’s working so diligently --but long enough that the moon has shifted where it hangs in the sky, and Binny can keep time with each one of Vector’s methodical movements the way he always used to.

​(It’s surprisingly easy, like he’d never forgotten how.)

And despite himself --despite how long he’s spent pretending, and how hard he’s tried to forget what he once had --he finds himself wishing that this was a different time; one where he didn’t have to hide away in the shadows, and didn’t have to leave until Vector bid him go.

After all this time, he still misses it; what it felt like to stand by his side as an equal.

​In the end, that’s why he has to leave.

Passing him by in the castle like they were strangers is one thing, but here, in this place --a place Binny had always secretly considered theirs --he doesn’t quite trust himself not to say, or do, anything he shouldn’t.

​So he leaves; just slips away into the night without a sound, as if he were never there. And, like how Vogrid had so oft pretended not to see him, Binny pretends not to notice the way green eyes venture out into the shadows after him, and linger.