Mace might have agreed to bring his former colleague into the fold, but don’t think he wasn’t watching.
“You bring your bird on vacation?” he inquired casually, but his expression didn’t match his tone. It was overtly direct, searching, the firelight dancing brightly in his eyes. He tipped the bowl against his lips, not bothering with a spoon. As the dinner crowd expanded, Mace continued to observe Guy, noting the way he interacted with the rebels, the way his gaze kept drifting back in the direction of Tristan’s tent. The man was very keen to meet the King, it seemed.
“Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t,” he answered noncommittally, and slurped the last of the soup. It might have been an odd question – many commanders didn’t eat with their men, much less monarchs. But Mace had never been one of them, and shared Guy’s apparent belief that it was appropriate for their leader to show his face…especially when his followers had stepped outside the law to join him. He set the bowl on the log beside him, rolled his neck with a satisfying crack, pretending not to be studying the man beside him as closely as he was. Guy looked like he wanted to ask other questions, but was thinking better of them. When he finally did ask something, Mace had the distinct impression it was an evasion. “Well, we could use another trainer. Most of these kids have picked up a sword before, but their instruction was…let’s just call it academic. They all need more wilderness survival skills, more combat training, more practice working as a group…if you don’t mind “playing nanny,” that is…”
Somewhere in the middle of this description, Guy had stopped listening, and both his eyes and his familiar’s were trained on the same distant shape. Mace thought he could probably guess what – or rather who – they saw, but he followed their line of sight up the hill anyway. “That’s Celidon, The King’s Cu-Sith familiar. Safe to assume Tristan’s not far behind.” Whether or not he’ll make the arduous trek down here to dinner, however, is anyone’s guess, he thought, but did not say. Guy was leaning over to him again, his voice coming out a reverent whisper.
“That’s him,” Mace confirmed, but he wasn’t really looking at Tristan anymore. He was watching Guy again, eyes narrowing at the smile that he’d hastily wiped from his features, the interest that verged on fixation. What was the nature of that curiosity, exactly? He wanted to unravel it before introducing him to Tristan, but was (unbelievably) denied the opportunity by the latter’s sudden appearance around the camp fire. The crowd buzzed excitedly. Mace kept Guy in his peripheral vision, even as he acknowledged the King’s arrival with a nod.
“We’ll have him when he’s ready,” he grunted, through a half-smile. It was good to see Tristan out, talking to people, eating with them, looking like a leader. Even if he did take too long to notice the stranger sitting right next to him. Celidon was leaning against him like a recliner, for God’s sake. “Guy is one of the best soldiers I’ve ever seen,” he explained, factually. “I was on the panel that approved him for special forces. It seems he’s taken a shine to extracurricular causes, like someone else you know.” Tristan sized the stranger up while he elaborated, said something magnanimous. Then he turned and gave him a dose of his signature cheek. Mace raised an eyebrow, as if he found that flippancy tiresome, but there was a faint, relieved smile forming on his lips. He tilted his head in a half-nod, shrugged one shoulder. It’s a start.
Honestly, it was exactly what he’d hoped for.
But Tristan was not done ribbing him. “You mean, when I’m not breaking the laws of multiple organizations?” He shook his head a little, rolled his eyes at the idea he’d fashion himself as anything like an angel, snagged his glance on their faces as they turned toward each other conspiratorially.
His smile hardened abruptly into a line, as if a switch had been flipped. The blood in his veins ran cold.
Their profiles are exactly the same… Their noses, their mouths, hell, even their expressions were mirror-true, albeit a cloudy mirror. Mace didn’t know how he’d missed it the second he’d laid eyes on him. Guy had seemed familiar, but he’d just assumed it was because he knew him from before, not because he resembled someone he knew now. Someone whose face he’d studied carefully for months, checking in constantly for a whiff of that old irreverence, that strength. And here it was, in duplicate.
Mace didn’t know what that meant. But he knew he had to find out.
Josephine
”I’m coming,” she assured him telepathically, making a bee-line back from her patrol around the King's hill. Mace cleared his throat, dragged his attention to Tristan with an effort.
“Will you stay a while? I want to show Guy to his tent. We’ll only be a minute.” He stood, clapping his “friend” on the shoulder in an apparently playful gesture, but his grip tightened there, exerting some pressure to hurry him to his feet. He used that grip to steer Guy out of the ring of light, out of earshot, to a place between empty tents where the distant voices became a kind of heavy silence. Then he released him, circled around so they were standing face to face. At first, he did not speak.
“Who the hell are you,” he finally demanded, in a voice kept deliberately low. “And what the hell are you doing here. The truth, this time.”
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