Hold my beer

Outside, the castle bell was just tolling eleven and the castleyard was empty, which must mean the search for Ladd had begun.

Curry reached for my hand before I could reach for his. I gave him a fierce squeeze, which he returned, then kept hanging on to me.

“I don’t see how one day can be so wonderful and terrible at the same time,” he said finally, in a tight voice.

“Yeah. It feels strange that we only met them today,” I said. “It feels like we knew them longer. But I just liked Lamb so much. How could somebody make a difference to my life after only hours?”

“When we were in there,” Curry said miserably, “I couldn’t stop thinking about when Blanks told us that time, how they wanted to retire the same day.”

I stopped us in the street and pulled him into a hug. “We don’t know anything for sure, yet,” I reminded him. “He might still be a candidate for recall. The Rooks might sort it after all, and maybe it all comes to nothing worse than a bad patch in watch guard history.”

Curry clung to me. “But without Ladd? I can’t think of anything worse.”

“Yeah. Me too. But it’s early yet. They have two hundred people looking for her.”

Curry gave me a hard squeeze, as if reassuring himself that there were limits to the parallels we shared with Lamb and Ladd, then straightened up, sniffing back some congestion from his sinuses. “We should get back. I know Nan must be worried. Any kind of curfew makes her nervous.”

“Understandably.” Magda had grown up Csoglaran, and not a particularly fervent adherent of the Arvinterite faith, in far-east Mivia during a period of cultural turmoil that she didn’t like to talk about.

“Can I sleep in your room tonight?” he asked, after we’d walked in silence a while through the unsettlingly quiet streets. “I feel stupid asking,” he added.

“‘Course you can. Don’t feel stupid.” I squeezed his arm. “I’ll show you the inside of my chaunceyhorse's ear. I’m the only person who’s ever seen that and you can be the second.”

“I’m embarrassed how much I’m looking forward to that.” He gave me a rueful little smile.

I gave him a gentle shove. “Shut up. It’s not embarrassing. It’s an honor.”

He sighed. “I wish tonight had been just us finishing the best fish pie Marwick’s ever made and getting drunk and feeling hopeful about our futures. And then eating too much plum cake at home, or something.”

There was a short silence. “Something that I didn’t really understand before today,” I said slowly, after nodding my agreement, “was how much SCD really love each other. I wonder if it’ll be like that for us. Or if this will ruin it somehow.”

“Yeah. Just seeing Battenfeld like that.”

“Yeah.”

When we got home, some three hours later than usual, Nan was waiting up for us in the kitchen, knitting and wearing an expression that said she’d been rehearsing our scolding for not having sent her any note telling us we were fine even though the city had declared a state of emergency. But as soon as she caught a real look at us both she immediately sized up that today had been terrible, and generally just, a lot. “I made apple fritters,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek and me a kiss on the top of my head, instead of telling us our cavalier youth would be the **** of her.

“Maybe in the morning, Nan,” Curry said glumly, and she looked actually a bit startled.

“Some detectives got killed tonight,” I told her when she looked questioningly to me, clearly wanting some explanation for his mystifying, extraordinarily uncharacteristic, rejection of apple fritters. “Everybody’s taking it pretty hard.”

Nan nodded, looking a bit troubled. “Are you—”

“—actually, I’m going upstairs,” Curry said, already starting for the door. “I’m sleeping in Fuzzy’s room tonight.”

“I’ll be up quick,” I told him, and he nodded blearily.

“Today was pretty strange,” I said to Nan in Csoglaran when he’d gone. “I’ll tell you more in the morning. It was one of those truly mixed days with awful things that you can’t feel all one way about because good stuff came of the bad, too. So in the end you feel just muddled up and tired.”

She just nodded, reaching up and idly stroking my shoulder with one hand. “I know that kind.”

For some reason this made me **** up.

“What is it, my Fossy?” she asked, switching to Tetran so there was an excuse to use the silly mispronunciation of my name, then pulled me into her arms.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged against her. “I’m just sad. And today was scary. And I don’t like seeing Mag so upset. And I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She kissed me on the head again. “Magnus is lucky to have you. He’s always been a sensitive person, and you understand him. He needs you. I need you, too. You’re a very important part to our family.”

I hugged Nan back, hard. “I should take him up a fritter,” I said against her chest. “Later he’ll be sorry he missed it but he won’t want to come back down. We didn't finish supper."

“It’ll keep all right till then.” Nan let me go and pulled a cloth napkin from a drawer, then wrapped up two of the drop fritters in it, then gave my cheek a friendly little not-quite pinch and put the bundle in my hands. “One for you too. See you in the morning, mm? Things might not be any better, but they won’t feel quite so bad.”

“Yeah.”

Upstairs I set the napkin with the fritters on the clothes dresser and shut the door so I could change into my night clothes. “Ready when you are,” Curry announced from outside, since he knew what the closed door meant.

“Won’t be a moment,” I called, unfastening my bra and pulling on an undershirt instead. “I brought you up a fritter. Just in case.”

“That was nice of you.”

“I figured you might change your mind later.” I pulled on a pair of warm weather sleep shorts and tossed my leggings on the chair next to my bed. “Done,” I called.

Curry came in and flopped down on one side of the bed. I picked up my chaunceyhorse from the chair. “See?” I said, turning one of her ears inside out. “Just here.”

He extended one finger and gently touched the soft pile of the velveteen. “Promise me you won’t die,” Curry said in a small voice, instead of exclaiming over how remarkably pristine and deep red the material was.

“Nobody can promise that, Mag,” I told him, turning the chaunceyhorse’s ear right side out again and setting her next to him.

“I know.” He shrugged, curling his arm around the toy and absently running his fingers over a worn place. “Then promise me you won’t file a DNR.”

I stretched out on the bed next to him, propping myself up on my elbow. “That I can do. But you promise, too.” I presented him my pinky finger.

“Me too.” He hooked his pinky around mine. “Sorry I’m being such a baby about all this.”

“I don’t think it’s babyish to feel sad that two terrific people who didn’t deserve it might wind up permanently dead,” I told him. “Or that there are a bunch of future ideas we got attached to, and might not get to have with them now. I’m upset too. You just can’t tell ‘cause I’m such an ice queen.” This had the desired effect of making him snort with **** amusement.

“Come here.” I slid upward on the bed and let Curry rest his head in the crook of my arm, then pulled the chaunceyhorse over to me and twiddled idly with her ears while we lay there in silence and reflected individually on the events of the day. It didn’t take him long to slip into a half drowse against me, which kindled in me a fiercely protective sentiment for him that was peculiar, in that there was nothing that he specifically needed protection against except his own feelings. “Hey,” I said after a few minutes had gone by and I still hadn’t thought of anything particularly comforting I could truthfully tell him. “Mag.”

Curry blinked and cracked open one eye to let me know he was listening.

“Tell me if this is stupid. We don’t have a shift for two days. Do you think I should stop taking my psychesuppressants tomorrow? Probably he didn’t notice me because I’m on my stuff, but what if Lamb is still around? If I stop those maybe he’ll turn up and we can find something out.”

“Not stupid. I almost brought it up on the way home,” he said, “but then I thought it was a bit fucked up of me to volunteer you for something like that, since I’m not the one who turns into a spirit beacon and gets followed into the privy by headless people.” Curry had never witnessed any of this firsthand, but I had told him stories and he had been particularly horrified by the notion that there was no real privacy to be had if dead people were feeling at all determined.

“I can stand a couple days of it, I think. I don’t know. Maybe it’s dumb. Or maybe we’d be risking our spots on the unit if we get caught looking into an investigation we’re not even part of.”

“Or maybe we learn something useful and figure out a way to lead the others to it without them ever needing to know we were involved,” he pointed out.

“Do you think it means anything that I didn’t see Ladd tonight?”

Curry looked up at me. “I don’t know. You think she’s still alive?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t picture her not being there with him, if she weren’t.”

“Maybe Lamb will know,” he said.

“Maybe.” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I really liked him. I feel strange about it, like I’m sad for a far-off thing we maybe haven’t even lost, that we never exactly had in the first place. Today was a little taste of something good and it feels snatched away now.”

Curry moved his shoulders in a shrug, jostling me a little in the process. “I think that’s what it was when you were a little kid and you went to live with the Rooks. You were sad because you started to see a life you really wanted, and it felt possible, and then it couldn’t happen the same way you imagined.”

I stroked my chaunceyhorse’s threadbare nose without answering.

“Is that where you always used to pet her?” Curry asked. “That’s her biggest worn-out place.”

I nodded, and he reached over and petted the chaunceyhorse in the same spot.

“I’ll skip my dose tomorrow morning,” I said, “and see how quick it wears off. Probably late tomorrow, or maybe day after, I should be able to see and talk to anybody who wants to be seen or talked to.”

“If it gets too much, you don’t have to keep with it,” he said.

I shook my head. “We owe them. And what if Ladd’s not actually dead? We have to try, at least.”