The chaunceyhorse and the all-hands toll

Since it was already eight o’clock, and today was only Seconday, when we got to our local there was no difficulty getting one of the good booths up by the front window.

“I wish summer wasn’t almost over,” I said a little wistfully, once the owner's daughter Elena had served us each our standard ale order and promised to bring us a fish pie piping hot and straight from the oven. “I know it’s counter to literally the whole point of the season, but Harvestide always makes me think of stuff ending.”

“Yeah? I don’t remember you ever mentioning it.”

I shrugged. “I probably didn’t.”

Curry tilted his head to one side, considering me, then took a drink from his pint. “How come it makes you feel that way?”

“I don’t know,” I said, then reconsidered that. “Or, maybe I do, actually. I think it was about Harvestide when that Rook priest got back to Semprisport with me. He was being really careful to remind me all the while we traveled, that I’d be living at a big home with other children, and I wouldn’t see him so much anymore, once that happened. But all the same I think after six weeks on the road with him I was pretty well convinced he was my new dad. He was really nice to me. And interesting. He was so good at telling stories.”

Curry smiled. “Is this storyteller why you love the chaunceyhorse so much?”

I smiled back. “Yeah, actually. They don’t tell those stories in Mivia. Probably because good Arvinterites are supposed to pretend Estahar doesn’t even exist. Anyway, Rolf the Rook was the first person to tell me any of them—he started with one about the chaunceyhorse and Prince Rabbit—you know that story, right?”

He nodded.

“Well, I liked that one so much and asked so many questions about it that he told me the pigeon and peafowl one next. And then—” I enumerated them on my fingers, “—the fox’s chancery, the winged trout, the lily forest, the counting house, the lying parrot, the poor sick cat. All the old standards. And then I’m pretty sure after some point when I kept pestering him for more and more chaunceyhorse stories he just started making them up. Or maybe he took other stories he knew and just shoehorned the chaunceyhorse into them for me. I was as dumb as any other little kid so I wouldn’t have known any different.”

Curry took a drink of his ale, then propped his chin in his hand, listening. “How'd you come by your chaunceyhorse nursery toy?”

“From him. He did his best to prepare me, but I’d got awfully attached so I had a rough go when it was time for him to leave me behind. He stayed a couple days to settle me in, and got one of the nuns to take extra time with me. I think it must have been her who told him how much I cried at night for missing him. Anyhow, he brought me that velveteen chaunceyhorse. I’d never had a toy of my own before, and he had to explain it several times that it was mine to have, and I needn’t share it with the other children unless I cared to.”

I stopped and took another drink of ale to wet my throat. “When I felt frightened at night, or homesick for him, I should hug my very own chaunceyhorse and tell myself one of the stories. And actually, it helped—that toy was so beautiful, when it was new. Believe it or not my chaunceyhorse used to be quite lush. The velveteen was this lovely, deep Lytie-red. I wish I could even describe how vibrant it was! Or—later I’ll let you stick your finger in her ear. That’s the only part of her that was protected from getting worn, so it’s still soft and plush in there.”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been made such a generous offer.” Curry and I shared a sentimental smile about my chaunceyhorse, which having gotten on considerably in years by soft toy standards, was now distinctly piebald. “I can't believe we've never talked about this before. You got to see him again, right?” Curry asked. “This priest.”

Elena came back then with the largest fish pie Marwick’s sold, quicker than either of us expected, and slid it onto the table, slapping down a fork and a plate for each of us. “Another pint?” she asked Curry, and he nodded.

“I saw him sometimes, yeah. Not for a few years now, but he made a point to drop in when he was around on Rook business. He used to be around lots more, but a few years back he started spending most of his time on the road doing I don’t know what.”

Curry picked up his fork and scraped the tines experimentally over the butter-crisped whorls of mashed potato topping our pie. “Lovely sound, isn’t that?” he sighed, then dipped straight into the pie and forked up a steaming bite.

“I don’t know why Elena pretends we’re going to use these,” I said, stacking the plates and setting them aside before scooping up my own forkful and blowing on it.

“You feeling better than earlier?” he asked, shoving the fork in his mouth and making a noise of satisfaction.

“Kind of,” I said. “I guess I was a bit down because…” My throat got a little unexpectedly tight and I had to wait a few moments for that to pass. Finally I got my voice back and smiled sheepishly at Curry. “Because you’re sort of my first real family. And it makes me sad to think that we would have to be careful how we are with each other, just because other people don’t understand us, or want to cheapen us so they feel better for the comparison.”

Curry nodded through this entire statement. “Me too,” he said, once I was through talking and he was through chewing. “What did Lamb say about it?”

“He said when stuff gets bad that way, you put your attention to your work and your partnership and say fuck it to the rest.”

Curry stuck his fork in the fish pie again. “That sounds like good advice.”

“How bad is verification?” I asked when I was done with my bite. “I mean, a pain in the ass, I’m sure, but how hard is it to just re-attest every season that—surprise!—we still aren’t fucking?”

He had to finish chewing again before he could reply. “I think it’s more that you have to be careful not to break any watch conduct rules, not just the fraternization ones. They can ask you about anything at all.”

“Is it that hard not to break code of conduct? And it only goes back a year,” I pointed out, then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand so I could take another sip of my barely-touched pint.

Curry considered that. “Good point,” he said finally. “And… it’s possible part of why they catch so much grief is that neither of them ever got married.”

“True,” I agreed. “Though, just so you know, I’m not eager to fall on that particular sword.”

“Well, not yet, sure,” he agreed. “But I’m going to. One day.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, why oughtn’t I,” he said.

“Your kids will be cute, at least,” I offered. “I’m for it as long as nobody asks me to change a diaper.”

Curry flashed me a grin. “Then fuck everybody else. We’ll walk around arm in arm if we fucking want to, and just let them report us. We don’t have anything to hide.”

I raised my pint to him. “Cheers.”

Curry already had his in hand. “Cheers,” he said, knocking his glass against mine. We both drank, then each took another forkful of our fish pie.

“Gods, this is good,” he said a minute later.

“Isn’t it?” I agreed. “It’s always good, but I don’t ever remember it being so perfect as this.”

“Eh, maybe it’s just the company,” Curry said, kicking his boot against mine under the table.

“That’s probably it.” We grinned at each other. “I do feel better,” I admitted, then took another bite of our approaching-legendary fish pie.

Someone ran by the window outside, the sudden movement startling me a bit. Curry and I laughed. “I guess I’m jumpy after the day we had,” I said.

“Oh, I forgot—you said you had stuff to tell me, after you’d gotten down a pint or two.”

“Well, I’m still on my first one, aren’t I?” I held it up.

“Drink faster, then,” he told me. “I want to hear it.”

I raised my glass and downed the rest of it in one go.

Elena came back with two pints, even though I hadn’t yet asked for a second. We grinned at her. “Thanks,” Curry said.

“All right, all right, I’m catching up,” I said, and drank down half mine in one gulp.

Curry laughed when this made me burp loudly.

“Shut up,” I told him, and downed the other half. “There you are,” I told him triumphantly, hitting my glass against his. “Beat you to it.”

“Enjoy your momentary lead,” Curry said, picking up his own glass in one hand and digging out another fork of fish pie with the other. In the distance the Vox Castle bell began to sound the hour.

“Fuck, I must be drunker than I thought already,” I said, talking with my mouth part full. “Or I just talked too long about the chaunceyhorse. It doesn’t feel like nine yet.”

“No,” he agreed, scooping up another bite of pie.

We sat there in contented silence, working on our pints and dinner, when something strange occurred to my drink-fuzzed brain: the castle bell was still tolling. “Hey. Is that more than nine?” I asked him, puzzled.

Somebody in a patrol constable uniform with a sixth ward armband ran past the window then, and Curry and I both turned to look, confused.

“Wait, is this an all-hands toll?” he asked me, because the bell was still ringing in the distance, knocking its slow clang out across the fourth ward. An all-hands meant that all currently able officers who weren’t already on duty were meant to report to the nearest watch house, and that most civilians were meant to observe a curfew to keep them safe and out of the way of the guards during whatever emergency was taking place. For obvious reasons it was extremely uncommon that the city should declare such a state of emergency.

“Uh—” I began, and then we exchanged a confused look of alarm when someone in citadel livery stalked quickly by. “What the fuck is going on?” I wondered aloud.

Curry was already sliding out of the booth, with a regretful last look at the unfinished fish pie. He tossed a gilder on the table and waved me off when I reached for my belt pouch. “You can pick it up next time, right now we should hurry back and figure out what in all the hells is happening.”

Outside there was a bit of general confusion, since nobody was used to the castle bell clanging so many times in a row, with no sign of stopping. People were beginning to come out of buildings to look around, and obviously hadn’t got to the part of the gawking process where they gave up and went back inside.

“When do you think the last one of these was?” I asked Curry, who was doing his long-legged best to slow down and let me keep apace with him.

“Dunno, must have been when we were kids?” he guessed.

“What was it that time?”

“I think it was the time somebody pushed the Lord-Mayor-elect off the citadel roof.”

“Great, so just any little thing qualifies, then,” I said.

Neither of us laughed.