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Marion Lavorre stirs from a light doze over the accounts book of the Lavish Chateau to the sound of knocking and voices in the street. For a bleary instant she is again running through the streets of Nicodranas, hunted on all sides by nameless faces and the threatening sky, with only the press of Jester’s friends and the fearful thread of her daughter’s voice to guide her.
She comes back to herself with an unpleasant jerk. She is in her warm study. The fire is low and her clock is quiet, and someone is calling up to her from the street. Marion pulls her dressing-gown close around her, shuts her accounts book on its dry blotting page, and goes to undo the window-shutter fastened tight against the rain.
Her fingers are clumsy with sleep and the dregs of fear. She always dreams ill when she’s afraid for Jester. What had her dreaming of that night?
The window breathes a cloud of damp into her face as it opens, and with it comes the recollection of the wretched tone in Jester’s voice earlier that day, arriving in her head from afar, leaving Marion’s nerves jangling. Her daughter in distress. Marion’s own excitement and worry.
There is a single man knocking below on the kitchen door of her Chateau. When the glow of light from the opened window falls into the street, he looks up at her. She can’t make out his features through the rain and darkness, but the voice is familiar.
“…Marion?”
“Fjord? Is that you?”
He appears in her study with a thunderclap instead of answering. Jester’s boy looks almost as weary as she’s seen him. Considering the circumstances she’s witnessed her daughter’s friends in, that does not ease her heart. Further out to sea, she knows the droning rain outside must still be a storm; the smell of rainwater and pitching sea rolls heavily into the room with him.
“Is she-?”
Marion takes in the way he’s wringing his hat in his hands. There’s no blood. She had no reason to expect blood. The relief comes to her all the same.
“She’s fine. I left her sleeping.” Fjord clears his throat gruffly.
“Oh. Good,” Marion says faintly, sinking into her desk chair. “You came and for a moment I thought-“. She was, she realizes, clutching the back of her chair so hard her nails dug into the fine cherrywood.
Fjord’s voice is quick with regret. “-No ma’am, the storm’s still heavy but Jessie’s settled now. She said she was feeling better enough for some food at supper. She ate half a plate of pancakes and she’s been out like a light since.” Marion takes a fortifying swallow of the fine whisky Babenon left at her elbow when he retired. It heats her throat going down, stronger than she usually drinks, smoothing through her jangling nerves. She takes another gulp and lets her posture bow, sweeps her hair over her shoulder.
“I’m sorry to disturb your night-“ Fjord begins.
“It’s all right,” Marion waves him off. “It’s worth it to hear my dear Jester is well. Thank you for coming all this way. As you can see-“ she gestures to the stoked fire, the lit lamps and the inked pen at her desk, the closed door of her bedroom – “I wasn’t sleeping.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him squirm. It’s sweet. He’s always been sweet, both to her and Jester.
“I’m sorry if I worried you more,” he says gruffly, “I just, ah, with Jes asleep finally she can’t Send to let you know - I figured I’d better come tell you myself that she’s resting well.”
“Thank you,” she murmurs. Marion takes him in, running her fingers through her hair as her own tension continues to dissipate. She’s cultivated the ability to wake quickly and see how people are feeling over many years. He’s still damp; he was clearly out in the storm for a while, for all her daughter’s apparently been sleeping peacefully for a few hours now. She can see the dark shadows of a restless night starting to form under his eyes.
“The storm’s calming out there,” he tells her. “Orly’s hopeful we can bring in the ship to dock at high tide tomorrow. “I’ll let you rest yourself now,” he adds softly, trying to prop his twisted hat back on his head. “Jessie didn’t want you up worrying.”
Marion sets her glass aside and stands, moving to the couch before the fire. She pats it invitingly. “Fjord. You didn’t come all this way just to tell me that my daughter was sleeping. Won’t you sit for a moment?” She lets the softness of the hour show on her face, shows him her gentleness as she eases the hat from his hand. He lets her take it.
The brim is badly crumpled, she sees as she sets it aside. The rain has worked deeply into it, maybe over hours, and his fingers have twisted it out of shape. The ridiculous, swaggering feather her daughter bought for the unswaggering man she loves is a sad, limp flag. Marion does her best to smooth the feather out, restore a little bit of the curl, before she sets it aside. She sits down on the sofa and rearranges the pillows for them both, pats the seat next to her more firmly when he hesitates to sit.
Fjord coughs awkwardly. “My clothes – your couch – Marion, I’m still damp-“
“It’s all right,” she says with a twinkle, and reaches into the battered ship’s chest she’s been keeping by her sofa for the last few months. She draws out a blanket and spreads it with a flick over the couch. “Now sit,” she says, with all the motherly firmness she can muster.
He sits down heavily beside her. Without the hat to fuss with he fiddles with his knuckles. Up close, she can see his cheeks are ruddy and wind-lashed. She wants to take his hand. If it were Jester she would call for warm milk, but she doesn’t know him as well. Instead she sits close and waits for him to tell her what he needs.
She lets the pause draw out into awkwardness before Fjord clears his throat damply. “It scared me to see her that sick. Jes was hanging over the side most of the day and I couldn’t do anything for her. Even healing didn’t work.”
“That’s not so strange, with morning sickness,” Marion adds quietly.
Fjord sighs. “Yeah, I get that now. But at first I didn’t know what it was. You know, she hasn’t really been seasick since our first voyage? That was one of the first times we really talked. One of the first times I was more honest with her. Jessie calls that our first date.” A smile flicks over his face, though it only reaches his eyes for a moment. “I just found out today that she was pregnant. She’s had a few troubles that way and I think she was trying to spare me until she was sure it’d stick.”
Marion feels a soft pang for her daughter, still trying to carry all her burdens alone. “What changed her mind?”
“Sheer frustration, I think. She shouted it out in the middle of losing her lunch over the side.” He gives a fond little laugh. “She says thank you for your advice about the ginseng brew, by the way. That helped her a lot.” His fingers knit and unknit restlessly. “…. I wish she’d told me sooner. Even if it hadn’t lasted – I want to be there for her.” He runs a hand over his face. “But I’ll take that up with Jessie when I go back. “And uh.” Fjord’s smooth voice is stumbling now. He’s still got control of himself, but she can see he’s starting to come to what had him out walking in the storm while Jester slept warm and safe in their bed. “Trying and failing for a kid – that’s not what scares me so much, anyway.”
Marion hums understandingly and lets him come to it at his own speed.
Fjord trails off for a long moment, looking out the window at the veil of the storm. Marion wonders what he sees in the darkness. Beyond it she knows rides the Nein Heroez at deep anchor in the outer bay, riding out the rain-whipped waves until she can be brought within a dinghy’s reach of shore.
“I, uh. I just worry, y’know,” Fjord says mildly, rubbing the cropped hair at his nape. Marion recognizes Jester’s hand in the brisk, playful lines of his long-short cut hair that his fingers toy over now, restlessly combing. “I don’t have much experience with kids.”
Ah. That’s what it is. She’s seen it eating at him, unspoken, since she learned more about his upbringing around the time of their wedding.
“They didn’t like me much even when I was one.”
“It sounds like you haven’t had much chance to be loved by children,” she says mildly, watching him from under her lashes. He keeps the flinch off his face effortlessly, but she sees it twitch through his fingers, digging into the upholstery.
“No,” he says with a glassy smile, “I’m afraid I haven’t given them many.”
She smooths out her dressing-gown, heart heavy. “I know that’s not all true. I’ve seen you with Yeza’s young ones.”
Fjord smiles, diffident, and shrugs. “That’s different,” he says. “They already have their own parents. They don’t need so much from me.”
Marion feels a pang and recalls how her parenthood began: finding herself pregnant, her lover gone, her own mistakes that followed.
Not without irony, she looks around at the fine things in the room, her elegant study ill-suited for children, considering the upper floor and whole of her business. Just a few doors down the hallway are the private rooms where Jester spent so many of her early years.
She takes a deep breath. It’s caught under her ribs, sharp and aching. “Fjord. You’re here. You’re thinking about what’s good for them. You’re already doing well.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know what I’m doing and I can’t let her down –“
She rests one of her hands on his, gentling Fjord’s fingers where he’s gripping at his knees, and when he doesn’t shrug her off she takes one hand gently and draws it into her lap, warming it between hers until he can speak. His skin is cool from the rainwater, a little clammy. Marion chafes it gently between her warm palms.
“How’d you know you could do it?” Fjord asks. “Have her and raise her without destroying her? How’d you know you’d be able to take care of her?”
“I didn’t know,” she tells him. “And I’m not sure I managed.” He scoffs, rough in his throat, but she’s serious.
“Fjord.” She puts her hands, still holding his, on her knees and leans in to catch his eye. “I’m not blinded by partiality when I say you will do better than I. I’m not sure I didn’t do worse by her than my mother did by me in turn. But I wanted to try. To give her a chance.
“And I had friends,” she adds gently, thinking of Fjord’s fierce friend in blue and her gentle wife. The clever-eyed tiefling who still sails into Nicodranas’ port sometimes and pays a visit to the Lavish Chateau. Thinks of fierce little Mrs. Brenatto up the road. Of Bluud, all but a brother to her, of the companions and friends who’ve helped raise and care for her sapphire and the Chateau both. She likes to think the varied crew Jester grew up among helped inspire her child to bravery, drew her to explore so many far-off places. “I hope Jester has forgiven me for the ways I failed her.”
Fjord looks stricken. “Marion – believe me when I say – she has. She loves you.”
“I know,” she demurs. Love shouldn’t blind one to hurt, Marion’s always believed. But this conversation isn’t about her, whatever regrets she may carry. Instead she squeezes his hand and tells him what decades of careful study of her fellow mortals have taught her: “Nobody really knows what they’re doing, my dear. You’ll try your best anyway. And someday you hope they’ll forgive you your mistakes, because you love them. You already do.”
At that Fjord puts his face in his hands and makes a strangled noise. “I can’t. That’s what I’m afraid of. I can’t forgive mine,” he tells her. She feels her mouth tremble, and busies herself by turning away to pluck at the blanket. When she masters herself, Marion pulls the blanket down around his body, smoothing it over his shoulders to tuck him in. She tilts his attention toward her with a gentle hand on his arm. His eyes are glassy.
“If you can’t forgive them, that’s fine. But you should forgive yourself.” Marion meets his eyes as she says it, for as long as he needs before Fjord looks away, swallowing hard. She tucks the blanket the rest of the way around his body, and says nothing as he bows his head, mastered by emotion. He doesn’t weep; she can see his face is dry. But his breath struggles out of him, choked, for long moments. Marion makes soft soothing sounds and once, hesitantly, runs her hand over his hair, which makes him settle against her side with a groan like an excised ghost.
With Fjord leaning against her, Marion takes his weight and puts an arm around his shoulders. He accepts it with a sigh.
Her heart is cracked open with tenderness for him, for herself. Marion strokes his salt-and-pepper hair and watches the embers, and tries not to dwell in her regrets. She thinks Fjord sinks into a half-doze, feeling the tension and strain of the day run out of him under her hand. While she sits with him she slowly coaxes his hat to dryness with murmurations of a cantrip, one of the few magics she knows, while he rests. The fire pops and fades.
Selfishly, Marion hopes Fjord will stick around. She has a vision of him teaching a little blue toddler how to weave magic and say no to archfey. She wants to see it play out in her tavern floor.
The bong of her clock striking the four-in-the-morning hour stirs her as the light of the Mother’s Lighthouse sweeps through the darkened room. The rain has slowed, she realizes. Fjord sits up with a snort.
He looks around blearily, as though puzzled where he is, and then emits a jaw-cracking yawn.
“I’d better get back before Jessie misses me,” he says sheepishly, rubbing blearily at his face.
“Will you make it back all right?”
“Ahhh, I’ve got enough magic left to make it out to the ship. And the rain doesn’t sound so bad anymore.” Fjord wipes sleep from his eyes and stands from the couch, blanket puddling in the seat without him. “Thank you for- thank you for hearing me out. And for getting me to talk in the first place.”
“Of course. I’m glad you stayed.” Marion stands to join him, and reaches up to prop the dry hat back on his head. “You’ll be all right,” she tells Fjord, projecting earnestness and conviction. “You don’t need to know the right path. You know why?” The feather twists fluffily as she straightens his captain’s hat. “I trust that you’ll figure it out. And more importantly, she trusts you. Have faith in her.”
He stands there blinking at her for a moment, then looks away. He sniffs. Is he-? “She’ll raise a terror,” Fjord says with a croak in his voice. Yes, he’s crying now, just a few tears rolling down his bearded jaw.
“She’s already raised one in herself, you know,” Marion tells him. “Yours together will be her masterpiece.”
He bows his head to her with a softness in his face. “I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll see you in the morning. With Jessie.”
“Go back safe to her, Fjord.”
With the whisper of an arcane wind he is gone.
Marion takes her time damping the fire, airing out the blanket, locking away her account book before she leaves her study for the night. She needs the time to gather herself. But when her bedroom door clicks shut behind her, Marion finds that the lights are up inside, despite the deep hour of night. Babenon is reading in the plush armchair by the fire; Vandran is just sitting up groggily in bed.
“What happened?” Vandran asks. The sheet is somewhere around his knees; Marion lets herself admire the view.
“Just a midnight call from family. Fjord needed to talk with me.”
Vandran throws his legs out of bed, coming to alertness at the mention of Fjord’s name. “Is it that snake-? Does he need aid?”
Marion settles him with a hand on his wrist. “Not that kind of problem, my dear.”
“He needed a mother’s touch,” Babenon adds wryly from his chair. Of course he was eavesdropping. “A realm where you and I have little further to offer him, I’m afraid.”
Babenon closes his book and stands to offer one of his handkerchiefs to Marion. “Your face is wet, my dear.”
So it is. She blows her nose with a little laugh, and tastes salt.
Lying drowsily in bed as she waits for sleep to claim her, Marion recalls the ghost of her earlier nightmare. Her heart is eased now and she can let the memory move through her without pain. The fear for her daughter has lingered with her, and the terror of the outside, the desperation of their flight through Nicodranas’ streets. The wretchedness of leaving her home behind and not knowing who could be trusted with what remained or what might become of them. But there are other parts of the memory that have stayed with her too. A smooth voice, saying Come with us. You’ll be all right. A strong hand, sword-and-rope-calloused. An anchor at her elbow, keeping the world from spinning away and swallowing her whole.
She sleeps, and dreams of wrapping her children in her arms.