The Silenced Tale, стр. 12

“No. No, I . . .” The childish shame is back, sliding up Elgar’s back, surging out from where Juan is touching him. “Thank you for coming, all the same.”

“All good, boss. It’s what you pay me for.”

“I don’t pay you to walk out on your dates.”

“Ah, now that was a favor,” Juan says with a wink. “I have to go back now and break it to him that no bookie means no nookie.”

“Good luck.”

Juan pats himself down, making sure he still has his wallet, keys, and cell phone. His grin is brilliant, sparkling, his worry for Elgar wiped away in the face of returning to his date, for all that he says he intends to break the poor bastard’s heart and blue-ball him all in one go. “Thanks! I’m gonna need it!”

Elgar waits for Juan to say his goodbyes to Linux, and locks the door behind him. Then he stands, grabs the salad, and goes out into his backyard through the kitchen porch. His trash can is in the corner of the yard, against the fence. Elgar throws the salad—bowl, fork, and all—straight into it.

Forsyth

There is a saying in the Overrealm that the weather of the month of March either begins as a lion or as a lamb, and ends the opposite. This year, it seems, March intends to arrive as a Library Lion. For even now, in the last week of February, we find ourselves surrounded by slushy snow that refuses to melt away, and weather that is much like that mythical creature—large, buffeting, and leaves my hair standing up in odd wet swirls.

“Pray tell, wife, what has caused you to be so obsessed with fitness, recently?” I smile at Pip as I ask this, for she has diverted our afternoon outing so that we may collectively glance into the window of a newly opened studio space. The printed advertisement blaring out over the high street in dayglo colors proclaims the availability of classes and personal instructors for all manner of the martial arts, including—

“Look, fencing,” Pip says, pointing to the sign. “And stage combat lessons.”

“I see that,” I say, not bothering to turn my eyes away from my wife’s face.

Below us, where her stroller has been pushed up beside the glass, I can hear Alis slapping her palms against it. Somehow, she’s pushed her way out of her hateful, hateful knitted mittens. I am quite glad that they are clipped to the cuffs of her jacket, or she would have relieved herself of the burden of having mitts at all the instant we first put them on her. She must also wear her knitted toque, which she finds equally unacceptable. And I am equally glad that she is unable to untie the dongles when we knot them under her chin, or our brazen girl would be bareheaded, as well.

“Maybe you could—” Pip says, and then looks up, catches the expression on my face, and halts herself. “Don’t you miss it?”

“Of course I miss sparring,” I say.

“Sooo . . .” Pip says with a small, hopeful grin that nonetheless is too tight around the corners, shows too much teeth between her plum-slicked lips.

“So, what interests me more than a studio where I may practice with Smoke opening within walking distance of our neighborhood, my dear, is how you have clearly brought us three blocks out of our way in order to appear to accidentally come upon this sign.”

Pip deflates. “Busted.”

“Indeed.” I raise an eyebrow at her, Spock-like, and add, “Fascinating,” just to make her smile. This smile is a real one, for all that it is watery and a little tremulous. “Was this your attempt at being subtle?”

“Maybe?” she says.

“You’ll have to try harder to trick a Shadow Hand of Hain,” I scold gently, and turn the stroller back out onto the sidewalk. We resume our slow meander down the pavement, shoppers and errand-runners flowing around us like fish amid the reeds.

Pip reaches out and takes my nearest hand. I am well able to steer the stroller with one hand at this pace, so I curl my gloved fingers around my wife’s and bring them up to kiss her breeze-chilled knuckles. Like her daughter, Pip dislikes gloves.

“And this failed subterfuge of yours, wife?” I say amiably, keeping my tone light so she knows that I am curious, and teasing, not accusing. “Is this your way of saying that I am getting fat again?”

Pip snorts. She whips her hand out of mine, slides quick fingers as cold as eels under my pea coat and button-down shirt together, and pinches the little bubble of flesh over my hips that is caused by my belt.

“Yow!” I protest. “Pip, your hands are cold.”

Grinning, Pip flattens her whole palm against the small of my back, and I jump. Alis giggles at my discomfort, the traitor, but everything is made better when Pip slides her pinky and ring finger a little lower, dipping the pads of her fingers into my undergarments and scratching lightly at the upper swell of my buttocks.

“Stop,” I mutter. “Or I will be in no fit condition to remain in public.”

Pip giggles, free and happy, and that pleases me. Whatever worry brought us to the studio, it seems to have cleared now. Pip removes her hand from the back of my clothes and wraps it around my own once more.

“You’re not fat,” Pip reminds me. “And you never were.”

“But I am far more sedentary than I used to be. You must admit to that,” I point out.

“You can always come to the gym with me.”

I make a face at that, for Pip knows how greatly I dislike exercise for the sake of exercise. It is repetitive, and boring. If I were to exercise, I would much prefer for it to have a point—to work on skills like fencing, or archery, or to at least include a lovely view of the countryside, like horseback riding.

“I’d . . . I’d like it if you came to the gym