Osmund threw back his fifth cup of the sweet-smelling liquor and slammed the empty glass down on the low table. Over the roar of his buddies, Nienos laughed at him.

“Slow down, little Tolmish!” his companion cautioned, though he was obviously thrilled. “Drinking like orc!”

“I don’t care,” Osmund said in his firmest voice, sounding rather upsettingly like a four-year-old child told he needed to have a bath or he wouldn’t get a fruit tart like his sister. Clearly, the fix for this was more alcohol! “I need this!”

He went to pour himself more drink, but Nienos actually grabbed his arm. “You drink more, you end up on ground,” the orc said wisely. “Or in it, if not careful. Relax. We talk!”

They’d found a Sulamese merchant in the dining hall and had managed to cajole him (with a careless handful of coins, that is) into parting with a few bottles of imported wine. It wasn’t the finest of his wares, but that was just fine by Osmund, and his drinking associates certainly weren’t raising any objections.

They were seated around two low tables long after the other diners had all retired to bed, and together, they were causing a huge ruckus. Osmund thought that it felt good to be the one causing a ruckus for once.

He glared peevishly around the room and, for a moment, couldn’t remember for the life of him what there actually was to talk about. He just knew it would all come out naturally as soon as he opened his mouth. “It’s not fair,” he croaked, finally. “I would’ve been happy with a woodcutter!”

“Is practical career,” Nienos nodded, barely listening, as one of his buddies did a handstand on the second table and then pretended to walk like a crab. “Always wood to cut.”

“I never wanted to get caught up in all this—this business about magic swords or secret battles for succession or any of that!” Osmund complained. “I just wanted a simple life for once! And to sleep with someone attractive and nice without it getting so stupid and complicated! Not that I even made it that far before he remembered he had a soulmate and decided to hate me.”

“Mmhm.” A few seconds passed and then Nienos did a double take. “Ah! You hold interest for Şehzade Cemil? Hoho. I see.”

Osmund groaned and faceplanted into the table, the grain of the wood digging into his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. The drink was starting to make him unpleasantly dizzy, but without the numbing buzz that usually came with it. At least he no longer cared if people knew where his sexual preferences lay. “I’m a fool,” he agreed, redundantly.

“Young is good time to make mistakes, do crazy thing,” Nienos said, adopting a wise affect again. “Or you can keep up crazy thing until my age and listen to people make judge. Enjoy young while it is. Heh heh!”

“You know, I speak Meskato better now,” Osmund said. “Do you want to switch? Your Tolmish isn’t so good.” Oh, he definitely hadn’t meant to say that!

But Nienos only whistled as if he were impressed, a challenging smile on his battle-beaten face. “Okay, okay, Tolmish man,” he laughed, switching briefly to Meskato, which he clearly knew slightly better. “I speak two, three, four human language. How about you learn Khangue and Lagheste? Orc languages. Then we have real conversation.”

Completely fair response. “If I survive this mess? Deal,” Osmund replied snippily, still in Tolmish. “Maybe I’ll try life in one of your kingdoms next.”

“Come! Always welcome. Best alcohol there is!”

It wasn’t the worst idea, Osmund thought. If all orcs were like Nienos—which, admittedly, he had no idea about—he could get along with them okay. He liked the way the man wore his heart on his sleeve and how he said what he was thinking whenever he thought it. That was an admirable trait. What was one or two more languages to learn?

“Who is this person, anyway?” Osmund grumbled. “This person who can write to Cemil after leaving him in the dust for years and then calling him over to his side like he never left!”

“Oh,” Nienos said, appearing to recognize the description. “You mean Al-Katib.”

That was how Osmund realized he’d never learned the name of Cemil’s lost lover. The picture of perfection was so complete, it was as if it could only be sullied by putting a label to it. “Al-Katib? That’s his name?”

“Heard rumors, at least. A title, I think it is.” Nienos said. He shrugged. “Met once only. Serious fellow. Not so interesting to man like me.”

The underwhelming response brought a choked laugh out of Osmund. After hearing the servants back at the house gush for nearly a half hour about this flawless emblem of Meskato grace, dignity, and poise, it was almost refreshing to hear him spoken of so casually. “I thought he was supposed to be unspeakably beautiful?”

“Too skinny,” Nienos proclaimed, and Osmund laughed again. “No. Boring man. No need for little Tolmish to fear him!”

Whether the orc was saying this to make him feel better, Osmund wasn’t sure, but it was nice all the same. The image of the lover was always shifting in his mind, from an unassailable vision of beauty to an unimpressive stick of a man who wouldn’t turn anyone’s head in a crowd. Either way, he still saw those haunting, melancholy eyes from the painted portrait.

His mind turned now to other topics, which he had been trying very hard to convince himself he didn’t care about. “What about the sword?” he prodded. “What do you know about it? The, um, enchanted one kept by Cemil.”

“Ah. Magic sword?” Nienos seemed, if Osmund wasn’t imagining it, a little discomfited. “Strange thing. I don’t know. Magic stuff, I leave to mages.” The orc sized him up. “You, mage?”

“Well, no.”

Nienos’s gaze shifted. He was watching his friend, the tall human woman with the red braid, who was currently belting out a song in some other language. (Osmund had learned her name was Gudrun, or something like that.) Nienos kept his voice low, but there was no way anyone but Osmund would hear him over the din. “Sword frightens others. Say words like ‘cursed’. Bad stories, we hear, about making of it.”

Cursed. That was the word he and Cemil had been dancing around.

Any Tolmishman on the street could tell you about cursed artefacts. Back in Osmund’s former life, his royal father had kept a bona fide dragon’s hoard of weapons, amulets, and other such things in the bowels of the castle. Each had been seized from noble hands all across the kingdom. “For peace”, Father said. He must’ve feared, rightly, what that kind of weapon could do in the hands of the wrong rival. The usurper queen wielded one such artefact. Osmund had seen it with his own eyes.

A power that came with a price. The stories all agreed on that.

Osmund snapped himself out of it in frustration. No. He told himself yet again that what Cemil did with the sword wasn’t his problem. And if Emre the illusionist popped up before him again, Osmund would tell him that very thing.

“Hey,” Osmund began boldly. “You know all these people here. How many are like me? You know…men who like men.”

But Nienos only laughed at him. “I tell you when less drunk.”

“I’m not drunk,” Osmund protested hotly, the words beginning to slur together. “And I’ve decided I want to get laid! You don’t even know what I’ve gone through trying to get some ordinary relief in this—wicked country!” The last he’d said purely for spite. The truth was, compared to in his homeland, the people of Meskat had been excessively kind to him since he’d arrived here, and he knew it. But right now he was tired of living on their pity.

“Maybe you sleep now,” Nienos suggested, making it obvious how unmoved he was with Osmund’s little display. “Alcohol stop being fun for you. Things better with clear head in the morning. Go.”

“Fine,” Osmund gritted out, staggering to his feet and immediately swaying. Nienos was decent enough not to laugh at his obvious intoxication. “I’ll find someone myself!”

“Have good sleep!” Nienos called after him as he stumbled out the door. “Thanks for booze!”

Osmund trudged bitterly through the open courtyard, scanning the entrances to the simple rooms, where he saw the various lumps of soldiers and mercenaries passed out in their cots. The gate through which they’d entered had been sealed shut for the night; he couldn’t enact his idiotic plan to try and run away with Banu. This was for the best. He might’ve been just drunk enough to try it.

“Osmund?” Cemil’s voice said.

Slowly, with a scowl still frozen on his face, Osmund turned and blinked at him. The shape of the figure who had spoken was hazy around the edges. Why is he even talking to me? Osmund wondered. But the answer was clear. This Cemil was a figment of his drunken imagination. “Go away,” he declared pettily. “I don’t want to see you.”

He turned in the other direction and managed a few determined steps before his ankle buckled. Figment-Cemil caught him just before he crumpled to the ground, which was competent of him, considering he wasn’t even real. “You’ve been drinking heavily. I just want to make sure you don’t hurt yourself,” the figment said, in a quiet and annoyingly handsome voice. Osmund struggled until Cemil obligingly let him go. Then he sank to the ground on his knees.

“I don’t understand,” Osmund cried, letting his forehead brush the dirt as he curled in on himself like a beetle. “How can you be so warm and then so indifferent to me? What is it you want?! I can’t take it! I-I know I’m daft and useless, but I’m a person too!”

It was satisfying to finally let it out. The alcohol had loosened his tongue. What’s more, Osmund knew he was right, and that was an immensely powerful thing. He didn’t deserve to feel this way. He’d done nothing wrong!

Cemil, whether he was real or not, said, “You’re right.” And then, sometime later when he apparently hadn’t left him alone, “Osmund, please come out of the cold.”

“S’not cold.”

“Please. I’m not going to leave you out here.”

Osmund considered the dirt beneath him. It actually had become quite a brisk spring night, and he was feeling the chill now that he thought about it, although the alcohol warmed him somewhat. He wondered if Banu was comfortable. He attempted to rise to his feet with the half-baked idea of checking on her, but it was so difficult. He was so tired.

He felt a warm, strong arm weaving around his shoulders. “Just until you get inside,” Cemil’s voice said. “Walk.”

Osmund put one foot in front of the other, which was considerably easier with Cemil supporting his weight. He let his head lull against the other man’s chest and his comforting body heat, and got a good whiff of his scent, completely forgetting to be angry at him. “I like how you smell,” he said absently.

Cemil, mercifully, did not comment on this. “Almost there,” he said. “A bit further.”

By the time Cemil had got him inside one of the humble little rooms around the courtyard, Osmund was feeling pretty pliant and happy. He liked that Cemil was paying attention to him again. And he liked the other man’s hands on him as he maneuvered him into a cot and removed his boots for him. Cemil was just finishing this task and rising to leave when Osmund caught his arm, fingers sinking into the folds of his tunic sleeve. “You can stay,” he mumbled contentedly.

“I can’t, Osmund.”

“But you’re so warm,” Osmund coaxed, his eyes drifting shut. “Please. It’s so cold. I need you.”

He felt Cemil’s sleeve slipping free of his grasp. The weight of a blanket settled over him instead. There was a rustle of fabric like the other was rising to go. That wasn’t very good at all, Osmund thought. He would much rather he stay here. But it was a faraway sort of wanting. The simple cot felt so comfortable, and his mind was sinking down, down.

That was the last sensation he knew until morning came.