Chapter 4

Would they hear him if he called to someone for a bit of help? He tried to imagine the picture he must make....

Right, then. No calling for help.

He tugged at the sleeve and stopped immediately at a very distinctive *riiiip*. It was his best coat. One of only two still wearable coats, actually. And a trip to the tailor's was simply not in the budget this month.

Damn it, he was going to have to call for some help, wasn't he? He was never going to live this one down. One time he goes pub-crawling, *one time*, and look at what happens. On top of that, he was going to have to face that halfway patronizing aw-look-how-cute-my-drunk-boyfriend-is look on Alex's face again when he came out to find that Lucas had managed to get himself into a brawl with a bush. It wasn't fair. It wasn't Lucas's fault, damn it, and anyway, the bush started it! If only he could--

"Mathlasa thei scontun."

Lucas paused at the voice behind him. He repeated the statement--question?--in his head, but no, it was just as nonsensical as it had sounded the first time. He sighed. Pinned to a bush, needing to piss almost desperately, and now it seemed he'd lost the power to interpret speech.

He angled a look over his shoulder, caught a flash of platinum hair atop a tall, lean frame, and sighed again. Damn it, it *would* be Slade, wouldn't it. Clara was never going to forgive Lucas if her new suitor decided her family was too bizarre a potential addition to his respectable family tree.

"Slade." Lucas said it slowly and carefully, because it looked bad enough as it was; he didn't need to add slurring. "I wonder if you could maybe give me a hand here. I seem to have got myself hung up on--"

"Mathlasa thei *scontun*," Slade said again. "Scontun, scontun!"

Lucas frowned. Slade hadn't seemed drunk before. Was Lucas the one speaking in tongues? Maybe the things coming out his own mouth sounded more like "Flurgle gurp" to the world that existed outside of his head.

"Yes, scontun, whatever." Lucas flexed fingers quickly going numb. "Only, would you please...?" He tugged lightly on his arm, just enough to rustle the bush and get his point across, and tried to angle another look over his shoulder. He scowled. "Hey, you're not Slade."

Easy mistake, Lucas thought. There weren't many about with that platinum hair. But now that Lucas was actually looking, he could see the difference in the features, and the way this man's face was set in a grim look that Lucas didn't think had ever crossed Slade's perpetually pleasant, almost dreamy countenance. And this man was definitely older than Slade.

Oh, no. This couldn't be *Mister* Slade, could it? It would be bad enough, Slade catching Lucas--the Master of Rolling Green and pseudo-guardian to his hopefully future bride--drunk and stuck to a bush, but his *father*....

Lucas felt a little sick.

"Sl-l-a-a-ade." The man repeated the name, only it came out thick and clumsy, as though he had gravel in his mouth. He seemed to chew on it for a moment then shook his head, eyebrows snapping down. "Scontun!"

"Scontun." Lucas blinked a bit myopically through his lightly fogged spectacles. "Mister Scontun?"

Scontun, Scontun, where had he heard that name before? *Had* he heard that name before? Not someone from the village, Lucas was sure. He didn't exactly socialize, but he knew all the names, at least. This one didn't have the familiarity of knowledge, but it was ringing a faint bell in the back of his muzzy head.

"Mathlasa thei scontun," the man insisted, then he went on to babble a string of something that sounded very urgent by his tone, but Lucas couldn't pick out anything in it that made sense except the repetition of that one word. The man finally wound down, flopping his hands at his sides in apparent exasperation, before he reached over, took hold of the tail at Lucas's nape and gave it a tug. "Libe-aar-in." Slow and careful. "Red. Libe-aar-in."

Lucas frowned. "Red" he got. It nearly made him roll his eyes, but he at least understood it. The other, though.... "Librarian?"

"Ma!" The man gave Lucas what was probably meant to be a happy bit of a thump between the shoulder blades.

Unhappily, it sent Lucas's face into a clump of thorns which, had it not been for his spectacles, very likely would've taken out his left eye. "Hey! Do you mind--?"

"Libe-aar-in," the man repeated. "Red liba-aar-in--scontun."

"Scontun." Lucas said the word again, more slowly this time. He frowned as he tried to get a better look at the man from under his arm, but quickly righted himself again. As it were.

After his head stopped doing loops, he asked, "D'you mean scounttune?"

The man blinked at him.

Lucas blinked back, then sighed yet again. "No, of course you didn't mean scounttune, because that would mean you're trying to speak the language of the Daimin, and that would make me the most reasonable person here at the moment, although the more you babble, the more that looks like an actual possibility, since--"

He puffed a dubious snort and shifted a shrug aborted by confinement. Vaguely, he thought he heard a burst of noise coming from the direction of the inn's front door, which meant someone was either coming out or going in, which in turn meant that his chances of getting caught by someone else in this predicament were increasing a little too steadily. Annoyed now, Lucas let his chin drop down to his chest and tried very hard not to whine. He very nearly stomped his foot, though.

"Look, d'you think you could help a fellow out here? We can go over all the reasons why you shouldn't later, but right now my fingers are starting to go numb and tingly, my stomach is doing things it probably shouldn't be doing, I think you took a flap of skin off my cheek with your glad-handing, I'm getting colder by the second, and I *still* have to *piss*!"

"Who are you talking to?" Alex strode swiftly into Lucas's view through the hawthorne branches. "And what...?" Alex paused, mouth hanging open, the corners twitching suspiciously upward.

Yes, Lucas knew exactly what it looked like, thank you, Alex.

Lucas set his teeth. "The bush started it."

"I... see." Alex tracked the position, the upside-down coat, the thorns. "Lucas," he said slowly. "Love." He tilted his head. "How--?"

"Don't ask."

Alex's mouth snapped shut, but Lucas could tell by the way he curled his lips around his teeth and pressed them tight together that he was not nearly as concerned as he was pretending to be.

"Do you really think I can't tell by now when you're laughing on the inside?" Lucas didn't wait for Alex to answer. "Just help me get loose, will you?" To his credit, Alex moved immediately to start working at the coat snagged up in the thorns, while Lucas ranted on, "This Scontun-whoosy-whatsis fellow has been no help, and I don't care if he does turn out to be the Master of All Things Slade and forbids the family to have anything to do with the battier branch of the Queen's family tree, I'm going to have--Ah! Alex, you're a marvel!"

Lucas's arms flopped down to his sides, immediately queering his dubious balance. Alex caught him before his face ended up in the thorns again, untangled him from the coat, and draped it over his shoulders. Lucas wilted into Alex's chest, dubiously shaking out his tingling hands before lifting his arms to slide them around Alex's torso. And if Mister Scontun wanted to mock him some more in his babbling pretend language--

"Mister Scontun can just go hang."

...Drat. Lucas had had no idea that ale made it so all his inner thoughts slipped immediately into outer idiocy. He was going to have to watch that in future.

"Mister Scontun?" Alex asked.

Lucas growled. "Him." He waved a hand vaguely behind him then lifted his head. "The man who--Hey, where'd he go?" Lucas blinked around the empty yard then up at Alex.

Alex lightly stroked Lucas's cheek. "You'll need a plaster for this." He leaned down and dropped a soft, warm kiss to the tip of Lucas's cold nose.

Lucas's glasses fogged a little more in the wake of Alex's warmth. "I've not had my piss yet." He tipped deliberately into Alex's chest, not even caring when he felt a suppressed chuckle rumble through it.

"C'mon, love." Alex prodded gently until Lucas found himself semiupright and pointed toward the inn. After slipping his arm across Lucas's shoulders to steady him, Alex pulled him in so Lucas was fitted snugly to Alex's ribs.

"I've got us a room. Let's go sleep it off, shall we?"

"Yeah, fine." Lucas leaned more heavily into Alex's side and fixed a death grip onto the lapel of his coat. He wobbled a bit, but he managed not to actually fall down as he leaned up and finally got his lick--a nice, long, sloppy one right along the cords of Alex's throat. "But tomorrow we burn that bloody bush."