Episode 128: Weston Chat (Bentley)

Bentley had an insecurity that stretched nearly as far back as his memories, and concerned Drey.

Everything in the universe seemed to revolve around that man, and sometimes it annoyed Bentley that he had become entangled in his family, even if it was unavoidable. Shea, he would never give up for anything.

Drey, though…he wasn’t much older than Bentley. Neither was Nell. Drey had a veiled past, shadows he was always running from until they’d finally caught up with him and taken his life. Drey’s genetic companion of nefarious origin, Mel, had his own shadows too, although he did a better job being unfazed by it all. Or at least seeming that way.

Nell had his kingdom, which he also hid from.

Bentley…he’d lived a nicely cushioned life, padded by everything he could ever want or need. He was never going to be the kind of seasoned adult that they were. He hadn’t even helped in their war, despite that they were allies, because he’d gone and made himself four years old again so he could be with Shea.

He could have waited, and he hadn’t.

They were men. He felt perpetually twenty-five. Maybe even younger.

Today, he’d worked in Gean Hwels once he’d settled things with the asshole that brought them a little kid, to work for money that he thought would be paid to him.

Bentley had very carefully worded that contract. Every cent of earnings would go to Marj, not to the uncle. Whoever he really was, Benny knew by intuition that he had ties to Ionia. The girl was Aadya’s granddaughter, Shea’s niece.

He heard a thudding of hooves behind him on the road. Some days, he rode the Light or the Darkness to and from his errands. It was important for people to see that he was skilled with the thing that made up most of Nivern’s economy.

Other days, he walked. It was important for people to see that he was just a guy. He could talk to them, stop at diners to eat, be an accessible ear for their problems.

People didn’t usually ride horses so hard on the main roads – it wasn’t safe for foot travelers – but there were two, coming up fast.

He stepped out of the way, just in time to hear someone yell, “Benny!” and toss him a pair of reins and a lead.

His grandfather. No wonder he’d charged down the road like that; he’d know if there was any danger to others.

Bentley caught the reins. The horse – a gorgeous dapple mare who looked like snow falling on ashes, circled around him huffing. Bentley drew her in, shortening the lead until she was close enough to mount.

He pulled himself onto the saddle seat and pranced the horse over to his grandfather.

“I knew she’d let you ride her,” his grandfather said. He took off down the road, further toward the palace, at a fast gallop.

Bentley sighed.

All the adults in his life were obnoxious. They all wanted something from him. None of them would just let him be.

He pressed in the mare’s sides with his knees and followed his grandfather down the road, through the grasslands that surrounded the track. “Who is she?” he called, still at a gallop.

“A yearling that’s been giving people trouble.” His grandfather sped up a little more. Either he wasn’t interested in talking or he was trying to piss Bentley off, or both. His money was on both.

That was okay; Bentley had a bone to pick with him anyway.

He caught up again. “Even Jiacomo?” he asked.

“Couldn’t touch her more than getting her dressed up for you. She’s worth it, can you tell?” His grandfather wanted him to use the luck magic.

He’d found a tree along the track, and he stopped there and tied his horse to it. Bentley stopped too, but he let the mare range. She needed it.

While he stretched his back, he delved into whatever his grandfather wanted him to sense about the mare. Yes, she was good. Almost great. If he bred her with the Darkness, it would be a winner. Maybe a couple of winners out of her.

“I should breed her with the Darkness,” he agreed with his grandfather.

Weston.

He was a king now, he could call him Weston. Especially if he’d been in on the whole faked death thing.

“You think?” Weston asked. He sounded entertained. “How are you, Benny? King Benny.”

He faced Weston with a sturdy look. He wasn’t backing down on this one. “Did you know?” he asked in a tone that was way calmer than how he felt.

“Not because she told me,” Weston said.

Great. His magic, which he was probably here to lecture Bentley about.

“I should be happy,” Bentley complained. His mom was alive, he should be celebrating that. He had centuries, maybe millennia, with her. “I am happy,” he lied.

“You should be pissed,” Weston argued. He sat down with his back against the tree. “What else is she hiding from you?”

Who knew? Who cared, with her moved on from ruling. She could go have her happy little family with Jiacomo and not have to deal with responsibility anymore.

He was way too bitter.

“You tell me,” he challenged. Then, as an afterthought, he added, “I made her adopt my son’s father-in-law.”

Weston picked a spray of little white flowers and studied them, probably so he could avoid looking at Bentley. Maybe pathetic immaturity ran in the family. “When I passed the throne to her,” Weston told him, “I did the same thing: A test. Greater than the trial. A test of your magic and your instincts.”

So it was Weston’s fault. He started a sick, twisted tradition and now Cheyenna had passed it along to Bentley.

That felt good, calling her by her first name too.

“I failed because I thought it was real?” Bentley clarified.

Now Weston met his eyes.

It would be nice if they…somethinged. They could look haunted in an ominous way, or maybe remorseful. Nope. He looked like a teacher, about to get to the point of the lesson, weaving his way towards it.

“You have yet to fail or succeed,” Weston told him. Nice and cryptic.

Bentley leaned his head back and looked up at the sky. If he were Niels, he’d be telling Weston off by now, in a sarcastic way. If he were Mel, he’d be finding a backdoor route towards coming out in control of this situation. If he were Drey, he’d be lecturing Weston about the logical fallacies of his little test. If he were Bentley’s own father, he’d be laughing.

He was Bentley, so he shared his opinions in the most straightforward way he could think of: “Well, respectfully, you both suck.”

Weston laughed. “She felt the same way.” He reached into a little rucksack slung over his shoulder and passed Bentley a ruche, a sweet vegetable that was only native to Elesara. Nivern and Wyvern, more precisely. It was long-stemmed and red, with a sweet aftertaste that made up for the initial bitterness.

Bentley ate some, lost in thought about what his test might be. Maybe it lasted until he was done ruling, so he’d just be always trying not to fail. Like a game.

“When does your test end?” he asked Weston.

Weston shook his head and reminded, “This isn’t my test; it’s hers.”

“Yeah,” Bentley muttered. Honesty wasn’t the order of the day, apparently. He was wasting his time and he wanted to be home with Shea, to hear how the outing with their niece had gone, how she’d settled in, Shea’s plans for keeping her.

Not this, not these mind games with his grandfather.

He whistled for the mare. He’d never get away from Weston on foot, but he was confident that the mare could outride Weston’s gelding.

Weston started humming an old Nivernese tune about a wandering sheep.

“What?” Bentley snapped.

“I’m just here to help,” Weston said with a shrug of his shoulders. He couldn’t even be smug and give Bentley an excuse to leave, annoyed.

“When does her test end,” Bentley asked, snarky, “since you’ve decided to take my questions literally today.”

Weston picked another spray of flowers. “After you sign the treaty with Wyvern. Or die.”

All the air sucked out of Bentley’s chest. “Wyvern?” he laughed. “What good is a treaty with them? They won’t hold it.”

“Not one your mom made,” Weston qualified pointedly. So she’d stepped down because Bentley needed to make the treaty, and instead of just telling him that, she’d copied Weston’s bizarre test method and faked her own death.

“She wants me to solve a problem even you couldn’t fix with your magic soldier toy?” he scoffed. Not everyone knew the full Weston/Konrad history, but Bentley, growing up in Weston’s family, knew the gist of it.

If Konrad and Weston, working as a team, couldn’t do it, then Bentley sure wouldn’t be able to pull it off.

“Nivern needs you to,” Weston stated, flatly. “Our family has made this too reasonable of a place to conquer.”

Right. Make it look easy to deal with the earthquakes and tornadoes and climate hostility, and suddenly everyone would want it. Then they’d take over, realize it was a ton of work, and let the country fall apart again.

It wasn’t the first time in Nivern’s history that it had happened.

“Great,” he muttered.

“Any ideas?” Weston prodded.

None that were realistic. “Maybe we can go back to the old system of paying tribute,” Bentley suggested, annoyed.

“I liked that system,” Weston mocked lightly.

“Good,” Bentley challenged again.

He was tired of this. Maintaining Nivern was one thing – fixing the Wyvern issue was something else, unattainable and not worth all the effort he’d have to put into it.

“Anything else you need advice on?” Weston asked, teasing. “Like your magic you refuse to use?”

“No?” Bentley said. He knew this was going to turn into a lecture on magic. “I was thinking we could just destroy Nivern and no one will want it.”

“Your name still fits you, you know,” Weston said with an amused tone.

All Bentley’s life, whenever he got angry, that was the running joke: He got bent out of shape too easily. Bentley decided to find his own amusement in the fact that Weston had gone from telling him he had a right to be pissed, to making fun of his temper.

Weston stood: Apparently the conversation was over. Bentley wished he knew some kind of mocking tune about a bossy shepherd, but since all the songs were written by the shepherds and not the sheep, there didn’t seem to be one of those.

“What’s her name?” he asked, patting the mare.

“What makes you think I don’t use my magic?” Bentley asked. Weston could guess the horse’s name if he really wanted to know it.

“My magic,” Weston corrected, because being an ornery bastard ran in the family too, apparently. “You use it, but not enough.”

Not to Weston’s approval, anyway. “How am I supposed to use it?”

“The same way you use your arm or your mind or your lungs: As part of you, as part of everything you do.” Weston had moved to his gelding now, and suddenly Bentley had a memory.

He was young, his first childhood, still learning. He’d looked at his grandfather – they’d been drawing together, on the floor of his bedroom – and asked if he could have a gelding mare for his birthday that year.

His grandfather had laughed, because Bentley was only five and didn’t fully understand horse terms yet.

Bentley had cried, because Bentley was only five and his grandfather was laughing at him.

And Weston had hugged him and said he wasn’t laughing at him, he was laughing with him. At five, Bentley hadn’t understood the difference.

Bentley looked at the horses now. He had a strong intuition that Weston’s choice in horses today was deliberate.

This wasn’t an attack. It wasn’t a lecture at it was a conversation. Free advice.

He needed to calm down.

“It gives me an unfair advantage,” Bentley explained. “Plus, I’m sick of telling people bad news just because I know about it and they don’t.”

He thought about the other day when he’d told Niels and Zero about the pending attack on their family, the way Zero’s shoulders had tensed and Niels had gripped the edge of the table. Both of them so controlled, both of them so stressed.

Because of something he’d said.

“Why tell them?” Weston asked.

“They asked.” That should have been obvious. It wasn’t like Bentley and Shea went door to door predicting everyone’s futures, which honestly probably would have been a lot less stressful than ruling.

“If I asked you how the Darkness is,” Weston said in a measured tone, “because I don’t know, would you be as irritated?”

“Why would that irritate me?” Bentley asked. He got Weston’s point, but asking about a horse and answering about future deaths were very different.

“Why would telling me anything irritate you?” Weston countered. “It’s the same question, in the end: What do you know about something that I don’t.”

Fine. He didn’t want to annoy Weston with questions, but maybe Weston liked being used for his magic. “Do you have any ideas about Wyvern?”

A grin swallowed the lower half of Weston’s face. “I have a theory about it and your mom.”

“Yeah?” Bentley asked. He ran his hands along the worn leather lead the mare wore; Jiacomo had been trying with her for a while.

“Have you ever heard of Maelchor?” Weston asked.

Bentley dropped the lead. “Who?” he asked, sarcastic. Gee, no Weston, he’d never heard of anyone named Maelchor before.

“He blessed me, with my luck, with a daughter,” Weston said.

Great. Bentley could see where this one was going too. “He also blessed my mom with a daughter,” Bentley said in a voice that was too-cheerful.

“Who rejected her magic and it cost her her life,” Weston said.

Bentley clamped his mouth shut. Gemmy hadn’t wanted to die. She’d been trying to save their dad. For Weston to make that claim, about his own granddaughter.

He frowned at Weston. “Maelchor’s blessing me with sons,” he said. By legend, a daughter was better than a son, especially for an heir. By fact, they were fairly comparable and some made-up religion wasn’t going to change reality. Men and women were different, but equally competent.

“It’s interesting,” Weston mused, like an old professor wending his way to the end of the lesson, “that your mom is having a son, and you’re having two, while Wyvern is having a new princess.”

No way. “Declan is already taken,” Bentley argued. He wasn’t selling his sons off. “Tristan…will be complicated. I’m not promising away my mom’s son unless he volunteers, either.”

Weston waved his hand, dismissive. “You don’t want your crown heir to be married to Wyvern, it would join the kingdoms,” he said. “But the second in line…just beyond the crown heir…”

Bentley’s teeth clenched together briefly. “When Tristan is old enough, we can talk about it.” When he was old enough to have a say, to understand the implications of a decision like that.

“Why is Declan allowed to be taken an Tristan not?” Weston demanded.

Because Declan, and his bride, would live at home. Bentley didn’t have to sign any treaties today, or next week, or next year, that would obligate him to marry anyone in particular.

“Because,” Bentley hedged. “I can feel his wife. We found her dad the other day.”

“Use your magic, Benny,” Weston started.

Call me Bentley, Weston, he thought. But he didn’t say it. There was no reason to prove his immaturity to Weston.

Bentley thought about it, the idea of King Tristan of Wyvern. He could sense the ripples, the cascade through time of his heirs and his luck magic, passed on to another kingdom, forging ties between Nivern and Wyvern that would last for millennia if everything went well.

“What makes you think they’ll agree?” he asked, just to be argumentative. He could already feel the rightness of it. “They don’t gain anything.” Except the very obvious luck magic, plus Nivern’s small army of war horses.

“Use your magic,” Weston insisted.

Fuck him. Bentley shoved his hands in his pockets and sifted through different possibilities until he found one that felt right; Reshad, the king of Wyvern, had wanted Shea.

He wasn’t a bad person, outside of being Nivern’s enemy and outside of the fact that he ate horses, but he definitely wasn’t Shea’s type.

“Shea never would have gone for him,” he stated. He could feel it, that this king would love the idea of his daughter marrying Shea’s son. It wouldn’t have anything to do with the luck magic or the war horses; for Reshad, this would be personal.

Weston laughed. “I don’t think she ever looked at anyone but you,” he said, and then amended, “except during your trial.”

Weston was the last of Bentley’s family, before it turned out that Cheyenna faked her death, so he’d been Bentley’s only representative during his ascension trial to take the throne. He’d watched every idiotic moment of the dumb thing, in one of the selkies’ scrying bowls.

Bentley would’ve blushed, if he did that kind of thing. Instead he just stood there.

“You know,” Weston said, more conversational, “My magic has failed me before.”

“When?” Bentley scoffed, doubtful.

“Which time,” Weston countered with a light laugh. “But it as given me more than not having it, and when you run into trouble there is always another way. The trick is to keep trusting it.”

“And listen to my grandfather?” Bentley mocked mildy. He patted the mare again, decided now on what her name should be. “She’s named Intuition,” he informed Weston.

Weston didn’t care. Bentley thought it was a pretty fitting name, and showed he was listening, but Weston just glossed over it. “I’m not too old to be useful yet,” he told Bentley. “I’m entering the Alder races you opted out of. Good thing you didn’t choose to bet against me.”

Bentley laughed and let himself relax into some banter. “You don’t think I could take you?”

“How does it feel,” Weston asked, patting Bentley on the back, “to be a twenty-two-year-old king? Not how you spent your first twenties.”

No, it wasn’t. He’d been a homebody the first time around, helping in the kingdom and reveling in the fact that Gemmy was the one who had to rule, not him.

This time around, he was already ruling.

“Did you see that coming too?” he asked, about Shea and deaging himself so that she could grow up with him.

“”No,” Weston murmured in a pensive tone. “I didn’t expect her. She shouldn’t even exist.”

Bentley cleared his throat. He didn’t like this avenue of thought, and what it might reveal about Shea’s lineage if someone found out.

“Maybe that’s why I never got a good feeling about anyone else,” he joked. He needed to shift the conversation elsewhere.

Weston took care of that for him, probably intuitive luck at its finest. “How worried about her are you?” he asked.

That was unexpected. “Should I be?”

“You didn’t want to rule, in some ways. I assumed you were fixated on her, and her life.” Weston looked at Bentley, clearly curious, expectant: The real question here was, Why did you put it off so long?

“She’s only twenty,” Bentley confirmed. “I bet no one made my mom rule as soon as she was an adult. Shea hasn’t even been to college yet, which she wanted.” He wanted to be sure that Weston understood where his unhappiness came from. “I’m sure my mom has good intentions, but she messed up something that mattered to Shea and would have helped Nivern.”

“When should she go to college?” Weston asked, way too innocently. He was about to make some other point.

“She’ll do best in about 25 years. She can do it when we just have the twins, but she won’t do as well,” he told Weston. He’d planned the whole thing out to be sure she would get to do her architecture degree and he wasn’t going to let anything get in the way of that.

“So she can still go,” Weston noted. “Nothing is black and white,” he told Bentley in a firm voice. “When you make it so, you limit your ability to make good predictions.”

Which would be a crying shame, if he got a break from telling people bad news in the hopes that they’d find a way to prevent it in time.

“You know this because…” Bentley said.

“I once limited someone, to death,” Weston said.

He needed a monocle. That was how superior and lecture-y he was being.

“And they didn’t die,” Weston went on. “I was wrong, and I caused someone a great deal of grief because of it.”

“Wait,” Bentley said, with an incredulous laugh. He could barely believe it. “Wait, so you were wrong and it still worked out in your favor?” Only Weston could predict someone’s death and be wrong. The only thing between Weston and god-hood was death and being born again.

“Have you ever considered,” he asked Weston, “that the luck might be getting watered down in every generation?”

Finally, it was Weston’s turn for a little surprise. “I hadn’t,” he admitted. “There are other luck fairies. You could always encourage some family to breed back.”

Great. One son, to Dakai’s daughter. One to the heiress of Wyvern. How many to preserve the luck magic?

“I could,” Bentley said, “and it would probably be good for the family.” Some of them anyway.

“But…?” Weston asked.

“I don’t think it would work out well for me, personally,” he explained. He just had this feeling. Maybe about Shea, about another girl out there somewhere with incredibly compelling logic.

He’d stay out of it.

“What does that mean?” Weston asked, but Bentley could tell he was already sifting through ideas until his mind came to rest on the answer. Weston’s face went blank with understanding.

“I’ll just stay out of it, if they do,” Bentley said. It should be easy enough.

They stood there in silence. Bentley wondered if Weston was mulling the other girl over, comparing her queenliness to Shea’s. Bentley wasn’t. He adamantly wasn’t.

“Is there anything else you’d like to talk about?” Weston asked after a few minutes. “Your mom’s behavior?”

“I’m still sorting through it,” Bentley said. He could tell Weston was done here. He’d said what he wanted to say. “Thanks for…stopping.”

“Anytime you want to talk,” Weston promised. “I’m actually hoping to be hired as an advisor.”

“I’ll talk to Maelchor’s wife about it,” Bentley said sardonically. He knew Weston would enjoy that laugh, Maelchor’s wife instead of my wife.

Weston hesitated, eyes on the dusty path, and then met Bentley’s eyes. “What does your luck tell you about Maelchor?

“That,” Bentley started automatically, because he hated religion and he wanted to just give a generic answer and be done.

He got hit with a barrage of information…Maelchor, the long-dead king, wasn’t so dead. He was somewhere, in hiding. They needed him. Not so much Nivern, but Shea’s family.

“Huh,” he said to Weston.

The grin returned to Weston’s face. “Have a good day, Benny,” he said, amused. He mounted his gelding. “When you’re done processing your revelation, find me.”

“You’re going to help me find him?” Bentley asked.

Not now, not today; they had to deal with Wyvern first. But then…

“I will,” Weston promised.

Bentley whistled for the mare, who came over like a docile lamb. He mounted her, amused that she’d given Jiacomo so much trouble. “Thanks,” he said.

He was a little surprised to realize he meant it.

“You’re welcome,” Weston said. He sounded equally surprised.

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