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Jimmy has two lovers.
The Copper King courts rot dutifully, making offers of jasmine perfumes and peaches delivered by messengers so no onlooker could claim impropriety in the ways their hands touch in exchange. The Copper King offers chaste, warm smiles from across meeting-halls and steps in with diplomatic expertise Jimmy cannot hope to match. The Copper King writes poetry and writes it well, Pixandrian verse Jimmy can’t read accompanied by Academy translations and annotations singing the thought poured into every line. The Copper King cares in the way kings care for their brides.
Jimmy’s other lover is… different.
No poems, no messengers, no clever saves when everyone is looking. No, Jimmy’s other lover is, for a time, known only through gifts. Clay dolls. Bone dice. A very Mythic-looking dagger Jimmy promptly throws into the depths of the swamp. A goat skull, for some reason. Gifts, varied as they are confusing, left in rots bedchamber without fanfare, without calling card, and – incredibly – without a soul ever realizing rot had been visited. Rot tries, truly, to catch rots benefactor; late nights left sleepless, traps set in the house, bribes to have others watch. At last, rot asks a favour of his suitor: advice.
Pix smiles like the crescent moon through bare trees. “A phantom, perhaps.”
“A— a what? Like the demons that eat people?” Jimmy’s mask hides the consequences of sleeplessness, but the shrill cries of night-stalkers don’t easily fade from memory.
“A ghost,” he corrects, though his tone isn’t particularly convincing. “Although… it is said phantoms – kokkovairhi, I believe? – are guides: to the Great River, when the time comes; to the place of dreams and visions; and, in some cases, to wisdom.”
“I don’t think a goat skull is really giving me wisdom, Pix.”
Silence is part of talking to the Copper King. It never gets more comfortable.
At last: “Come to Pixandria. The Festival of a Thousand Lights approaches us quicker every sunset. You’ll like it.”
And that, apparently, was all Jimmy was getting.
Pixandria’s gardens are unrivalled, if one is the type to appreciate cascading vines laden with heavy fruit or soft beds of moss stretching artfully in precise curves. Maybe Jimmy would be, were rot not so preoccupied. Maybe rot would like the opportunity to share peaches at a distance where rot can see the person rot would be sharing with, whose token rot still wears out of some half-fumbled attempt at courtship. Maybe rot would appreciate the way people here bow without stopping to ask what rots business is. Maybe these things belong to another Jimmy, to a Jimmy whose heart caved in like a corpse’s ribs long ago; but this Jimmy, worried and worrying, leans over Pix’s balcony like a dead fish.
Everything is flame and glow. The Vigil holds enough candles to turn pinpricks to a bonfire, to an eternal sort of sun’s reflection. Above her, lantern swirl and dance; the tethered lanterns of magic and mourning, yes, but between them hundreds and hundreds of hand-painted paper things. Flowers, fruits, natural scenes – anything one could imagine missing – all float upwards with the candle-born draft. A blind man couldn’t miss the beauty of it.
“A favour for a favour?”
Jimmy turns, startled. Pix smiles his fisher-cat smile and bows his apology. “A favour for a favour, your majesty.”
“Sure.” Because being here wasn’t a favour; being here was a gift and an obligation and proof they’re together, but not really a favour. Favour implies he didn’t want it, and he did.
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet. A… a friend of mine; loyal, useful.”
Useful’s a weird way thing to call a friend. “Okay. Is he here? Is this a now thing or a later thing? Because I could stand here all night, really.”
Pix’s smile shifts from enigma to funeral dirge. “Stay. I’ll have it meet you. But, Jimmy…”
“What? What?”
Pix shudders. “No; nothing. I’m sure you’ll handle yourself.”
Pix’s friend arrives with the turn of midnight, which Jimmy only knows from the soft sounds of fabric at rots back. Rot turns and reels from the shock. Pix’s friend isn’t a diplomat; it isn’t even a servant.
A leather cuirass protects its chest, dyed the same night-deep blue as the fabric cloaking its form and the night-stalker mask upon its face. It kneels, head bowed, and dips one hand from its forehead. Submission.
“Right. Yep, yeah. Uh. Stand, please?” The stranger does, which is sort of a relief and sort of definitely not a relief. “Right. Yeah, yeah-yeah-yeah. Who are you? Do you— have a name?”
The stranger’s hands leap with spider’s precision, tracing a crescent under its eye and flicking into its spare hand. Jimmy curses rotself. That’s not a sign rot knows.
“Okay, uh. I don’t know what that means, could you… spell it? Maybe?”
It can, only Jimmy doesn’t know the sign alphabet it’s using, so the quick, gloved motions only serve to tell rot the stranger’s name isn’t long enough to be a full Pixandrian name.
“Cool. Cool, yeah, uh… this might be a little weird, but you haven’t been breaking into my house and leaving things, have you?”
It has.
Jimmy cycles through about ten questions – none completed before another takes its place in rots throat – before giving up and pivoting. “Can Pix tell what you’re saying?”
Its hands look a bit like a boat faltering on rocky seas, which isn’t exactly a clear-cut answer, but given the stranger knows what nodding is, Jimmy choses to interpret it as a solid maybe.
“Okay, so – and, I mean, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but I feel like a translator would help here, so – where is he, exactly?”
The stranger forms a sphere with its hands, then breaks its hands apart as if cracking a very large nut. If it’s a sign, Jimmy’s hopeless, but rot would have stopped signing by now if it were rot trying to get a random Pixandrian to understand, so rot decides to interpret this literally.
“Broken? Cracked? In pieces?”
A bow, which is definitely not an answer.
“Could you just — write it down or something? Or go get a translator? Please?”
When it disappears into the light of Pix’s home, it doesn’t return.
The gifts continue. Jimmy sets them aside rather than throwing them out; kings, rot has learned, are meant to treasure the things given by admirers. Love ennobles, at least according to Lizzie, who makes as good a model as anyone. Her ideas mesh well with Pix’s behaviour, which is the closest thing to a human mentor Jimmy’s got. Eventually, on a night dark with rain and thunder, something climbs through his window.
Crescent-Flick. Dark mask, dark fabric, soaked brown hair. It clutches a pouch in one hand and freezes on seeing Jimmy.
“Hi,” rot says.
“Hi,” it signs, Coddish as anything. Jimmy relaxes — it’s learning. It’s learning his language.
“Do you have a name I can understand?”
“They say Night-stalker.”
“Okay. Okay, okay. Are you Pixandrian?”
“Yes.”
“Do you work for Pix?”
“Yes.”
“Are you here for him?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
It pauses. It sets a hand over its heart, fist closed, and offers Jimmy the pouch. Rot takes it.
“What is this, anyway? Some sort of explanation, or— oh. Oh. Oh.” Coins. Old coins, mostly, all low-denomination. Some are wax-coated. “Where— no. No, no, I don’t wanna know. Don’t tell me.”
It signs something, hands moving in its willow-branch way. Jimmy doesn’t catch the meaning, eyes stuck on the stolen offerings. Rot wouldn’t, normally – wouldn’t ever consider it – but this… but this.
He cinches the pouch closed and sets it carefully on the shelf. Pix will want them back. A deep breath; a second. There’s one taboo no Codfolk would ever break and rot’s going to break it.
Bones and teeth, rot’s really going to do it.
Quick as a rip current, rot reaches out and steals Night-stalker’s mask away, held high and away.
Rot knows the face looking back at rot.
Rot knows. Of course rot knows; Pix has been there since Jimmy heaved rotself onto the sopping shoreline and declared the crown rots. Pix has been there at rots side, offering support and gifts since day one.
Something shifts in Pix’s – in Night-stalker’s – in Pix’s expression. “Codfather—”
“What? What?!”
“Sit, please. Sit.”
“You— the goat skull— and the coins—”
“Jimmy.”
Rot sits.
The conversation blurs in rots memory, but the facts remain: Jimmy has two lovers. Jimmy has the Copper King, proper and chivalric, who offers jasmine perfume and peaches from royal gardens handled by messengers to avoid the appearance of impropriety. This has not changed.
When the Copper King sleeps, Jimmy learns, it is not always sleep as rot would call it. Sometimes, the mind rests while the body walks, and it is a person who took the name of Pixandria’s guardian spirits for itself walking in Pix’s feet. Once, long ago, Night-stalker had been a tool of empire and little else.
“But—” This part alone is clear in Jimmy’s mind, sparking and leaping with the details of Pix’s curling voice and soft features. “I suppose it found an affection for you. Ask a man to guard the moon and see if he does not discovery poetry.”
Poetry. That’s the difference, in the end: Pix gives Jimmy poetry in the dawn, poetry of ink on parchment and beautiful things belonging to the world of court; Night-stalker gives Jimmy the objects to inspire feeling without the words in-between. Pix defends Jimmy in the realm Jimmy cannot walk without stumbling, but it is Night-stalker who navigates the swamp without hesitation. Pix is a man of two worlds and Jimmy — well, Jimmy has two lovers who will never quarrel for his hand.