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“This,” the King said as he pressed his hand into Arthur’s, “is my favor.”
He let go, and Arthur peered down into his palm: in it sat a trinket the size of a large coin, twisted out of what looked like bone, with gemstones woven through it with gold fabric. A length of twine of the same made it into a medallion to be worn. Arthur recognized its curves as the sigil carved into Carcosa’s gates, and embroidered on the scalloped banners that blanketed the castle. The name of the King in Yellow.
Arthur ran his thumbs along its edges, which were as unnaturally warm to the touch as Hastur’s robes were. It made him smile. “Did you make it for me?”
“I did,” said Hastur, and a few of his tentacles curled at their tips. “For the next time you go into the market. Show that to any vendor, and they’ll give you whatever you want.”
“Give me?” Arthur frowned and leaned back. “So just because I fuck you, I get whatever I want?”
Hastur cocked his head. “You fuck me?”
Arthur scoffed to hide his blush. “I don’t want it,” Arthur said, but then seeing the slight shift of Hastur’s cloaks, he pulled it closer to him. “I mean, I’ll take it, of course, since you went through the trouble of making it and all.” He scratched his nail against one of the tendrils and felt a chill. “Is this bone?”
“Yes?”
“What kind of…?” Arthur started to ask, but then he thought better of that, too. “No, don’t ans—”
“It’s my bone,” said Hastur.
“Fuck.” Arthur took a deep breath. “That’s… well, that’s very romantic. Thank you, truly.” He rallied himself again. “But you know I don’t like the idea of that much charity—people just giving me things because you say so.”
Hastur sighed, leaning back against his rear tentacles. “My ‘charity’ hasn’t bothered you so far. Have you not been living in my castle, eating my food and partaking of all amenities?”
Arthur flushed. “Well, yes, but…” He caught himself thumbing the edge of the medallion over and over. “It’s different if I have to look a stranger in the face and demand they hand over the fruits of their labor to me, just because.”
“What would the alternative be, Arthur?” Hastur retorted. “Would you prefer I give you an allowance?”
“Well I… maybe?” Arthur frowned some more as he twisted the medallion around and around. “Ideally I would like to… earn my keep, eventually. Somehow.”
“If it makes you feel better to call it a stipend, or a salary,” said Hastur, “it makes no difference to me.”
“That’s not quite…” Arthur sighed, realizing through Hastur’s gruff needling how ridiculous he must have seemed. “Know what? Never mind, for now.” He slipped the twine over his head, so that the bone and fabric rested against his chest. He could feel its warmth even through his cotton shirt. “I’ll give it some thought, but in the meantime, I’ll happily wear it when I go to market.”
Hastur regarded him from the darkness beneath his hood. “You’re not going to use it, though.”
“I don’t know—it’ll depend on if I see anything I want.” Seeing that he was only making things worse, Arthur cleared his throat. “But I really do appreciate it. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” said Hastur, but his manners had lost a great deal of their warmth. He shifted back. “I’ll see you at supper.”
“Yes, but…” Arthur squirmed from foot to foot as he watched Hastur leave, but he couldn’t think of something to say that would improve things. “Until then!” he called after him, and then with a sigh he turned to climb the spire.
His private suite was at the top of this particular spire. Despite what must have been hundreds of steps, it never seemed to take more than a minute, and he was never left tired. As he reached his bedroom, he moved to the south-facing window that overlooked the best view of Carcosa.
It was every bit as breathtaking as it had been the first time he had beheld it from this tower: the jeweled eaves and loping streets that spiraled out from the king’s palace, glittering night and day, chittering always with song. Arthur was relatively accustomed to it by then, but it still managed to set his heart fluttering each time he spotted some building of unusual architecture he didn’t remember, or a twisted statue rising up from what had once been an empty alley. There was even, sometimes, evidence of decay: cracked walls and slumped rooftops that would, in an hour or a day, crumble out of sight, to be replaced by something new born of the wreckage. He wondered often what means brought this evolution about.
Arthur took the medallion off, contemplating it anew beneath the purple sun. The light caught the edges of the bone and weave brilliantly, and the entire thing seemed to glow in his hands. A piece of the King in Yellow himself. He thought of soldiers shipped off to war with a lock of their beloved’s hair tucked in a pouch and wasn’t sure what to feel.
“Ungrateful,” sang sharp notes.
Arthur turned and was unsurprised to see a pair of dancers in his doorway: Tidire, youngest and fondest of him, and the eldest of her “sisters,” whose name she refused to share with him. Though Tidire swept forward, light as air, the eldest remained at the far end of the room, scrutinizing him with her blank face and folded arms.
“Hello, Darling,” Arthur greeted Tidire, who stopped just beside him and shyly presented her cheek. He kissed her, humming the notes hello. “And you, my dear.”
“Ungrateful,” the eldest sang again, drawing out each note as if suspecting he hadn’t understood the first time.
“Yes, yes, I know.” There were times Arthur found her blatant dislike of him amusing, and he enjoyed putting forth efforts to make her come around, but he wasn’t quite in the mood at present. He set the medallion down on the window sill and moved toward one of his many wardrobes; there were so many, he wasn’t always sure which ones he’d even been in. “Don’t be jealous now; it’s not the first gift he’s given me.” He motioned to Tidire. “Come help me pick something for supper, won’t you?”
Tidire hurried over, though her shoulders were sloped in deference to her elder. She was always rather quiet, but Arthur sensed an extra layer of discomfort, and he sighed. “I’m not ungrateful,” he said as he pawed through the various robes, surcoats, and shirts Hastur had prepared for him. “In fact, I’m looking for something that will show it off well enough.”
Tidire ducked her head, and with Arthur’s gesture of permission she reached into the wardrobe to part the offerings around a sheer robe—more a suggestion of clothing than anything. Arthur blushed hotly and shook his head.
“Ahh, that’s a little more audacious than I would wear to supper,” he said with a chuckle. “Let alone the market, after.”
“But that is what you are,” sang the eldest, followed by a string of notes he hadn’t learned yet. “No?”
“Is that how you say ‘audacious’?” Arthur chirped, and he hummed the notes back until Tidire nodded that he’d gotten it right. “Thanks very much for that: sure to come in handy.”
The dancer bristled and stalked into the room. Another grumbled melody from her had Tidire stepping closer to Arthur defensively.
“My King would not want you to speak to Arthur that way,” Tidire sang.
“It wasn’t for Arthur,” the eldest retorted. “Arthur doesn’t understand.”
Arthur rolled his eyes and went back to the wardrobe. “It’s all right, love, I don’t mind. She can crow however she likes.”
The dancer’s veils rustled more with irritation—she hated him comparing her song to birds—as she moved across the room to regard Arthur’s new trinket. She dared not touch it, but her envy was clear. Arthur tried not to pay her any attention that would draw the encounter out longer than it needed to be. Any of her sisters he might have confided in, but this one…
“Carcosans would kill their kin for this,” sang the eldest.
“I’d imagine so,” said Arthur, distracted from his wardrobe search even though he continued moving the items back and forth. “Like I said, I am grateful. But it’s not that simple—you wouldn’t understand.”
She turned toward him; Arthur had to admit that her faceless stare was still rather intimidating. “What don’t I understand?”
Arthur’s face screwed up, which he tried to disguise by leaning further into the wardrobe. But she didn’t relent, and beside him Tidire was quiet and curious as well, and at last he let his breath out. “You’re not human,” he said, clear and light so that Tidire at least wouldn’t take offense. “You’re a part of him, I gather. So you don’t understand how it feels to want to have a little independence, once in a while.”
Tidire whimpered softly, as if the very concept was a little frightening to her. “You want to be apart from my king?”
“No—goodness, no.” Arthur flushed, turning away from the clothing to give her his full attention. “It’s just, where I came from, I took care of myself. I worked—like anyone else in Carcosa—to earn myself food, and clothing.” He gave a handsome kurta a shake. “Not always very well, mind, but it feels strange now, to not have that as a means of…” He frowned, feeling uncertain of the words the more he spoke. “Of identifying myself, I suppose. People on earth can take great pride in their professions, and their ability to… to provide for themselves, and their… f-families.” He swallowed. “Maybe it’s just old habit, but I don’t like the idea of simply being handed riches.”
“You cannot work hard enough to earn what our king has given you,” sang the eldest.
Arthur rolled his eyes again. “Of course I can’t exactly work off an entire spire of a castle in my lifetime, but—”
Arthur stopped. Though there were plenty of times since coming to the city that he had doubted his eyes, he was especially confused then to see what looked like a hand reaching through the open window to the south: wide, knobby, with rounded, flabby fingertips. The skin shifted in color to match the sil it was patting, and it wasn’t until it had snatched up Hastur’s bone medallion—until both dancers whipped about in alarm—that Arthur fully registered it was real.
“What—” he began, but the hand had already disappeared back out the window.
The eldest threw herself at the opening, emitting a clicking, clacking noise Arthur had never heard any of her kind make. In an instant she had flown through the window. Arthur and Tidire hit the sill a moment later, peering down at the wholly unexpected spectacle: the dancer giving chase to some creature down the side of the spire. The castle’s walls, twisty and organic in design and flashing in the purple sun, gave plenty of hand holds and crevices, and was so dazzling to the eye that Arthur couldn’t clearly make out the shape of either pursuer or quarry.
Tidire dashed away from the window to the door, trilling urgently in meaning Arthur barely understood to be a call for her sisters. Arthur gave chase without thinking. In bare feet he rushed down the stairs—each one seemed to meet his foot perfectly, encouraging him in his flight. When was the last time he had run? There was something nostalgic in the adrenaline as he burst out onto the next floor and dashed to the closest window just as Tidire and two of her kin leapt out of it.
The chase was still going on. Arthur’s heart pounded at the sight of the elegant dancers flying down the side of the tower, their veils fluttering, as their quarry—some kind of large, bipedal toad-thing—evaded them with startling dexterity. The creature leapt to the next spire over with a powerful thrust of its back legs that the dancers couldn’t match. As it continued its descent, more dancers appeared out of the windows, and Arthur raced again to the stairs. It wasn’t until he had gone down another flight that he even remembered what had been stolen.
The spire was on his side: he reached the music room on next floor in no time. Arthur ran again to the window to see the creature’s progress and was bowled over at the thing itself barreling into the room with him. As he lay wincing, he finally got a good look at the dancers’ new enemy. It was a moon beast, but not quite as he was used to seeing the King’s beastly servants: at least seven feet tall if it were upright, muscular limbs with wide, knobby hands and feet for gripping and climbing, but without the extraordinary mass. Its pot belly and hunched back again reminded him of a toad, except that it had an extra pair of arms, and its flat, clam-shaped head sprouted a mess of wriggling tentacles like oyster tongues.
It didn’t pause to take note of him—just charged past toward the opposite window, Hastur’s favor dangling from one of its tentacles.
“Hey!” Arthur shouted, but he wasn’t able to chase: a flock of dancers gusted through the window it had come from a moment later, whirling across the music room and out the opposite wall after it.
“Son of a—” Arthur forced himself up and rejoined by taking another flight. He caught glimpses of a fight in the windows as he passed—they were rounding the building with him as the moon beast struggled to find some escape, or maybe another angle to propel itself to safety. Though it was clearly skilled, Arthur had at least some practice now in interpreting the faceless denizens of the Dreamlands, and he sensed its panic. It had picked a very poor time to attempt a robbery.
Audacious! Arthur thought, and he barked with laughter as he reached the next floor.
Hastur was there in Arthur’s study, not on the lounge but huddled on the floor in a great golden heap with a book in his “lap.” He raised his hood to regard Arthur as he crossed to the next stairs. “Arthur, what are you doing?”
“Chasing something!” Arthur panted as he rushed on.
“Ah.” Hastur lowered his head again. “Have fun.”
Arthur continued down, listening to the dancers chattering just beyond the wall. He would have to remind them later to teach him words that applied to a situation like this. Just as he reached the next floor—the recessed bed adorned with drapes and cushions—he heard a sharp series of wet curses, a furious trill that sounded like it could have been the eldest dancer, and then the moon beast again abruptly shoved itself through an open window. A long gash stretched down the length of its shoulder, oozing thick, dark blood, and two of its tentacles had been severed. The creature let out a gurgling hiss as one of its four hands twisted at a grotesque angle to try to staunch it.
“Just give up already!” Arthur shouted. He was at the creature’s wounded side, and the medallion was dangling from its “mouth” in easy reach, so of course he ran toward it, heedless to all danger. With one hand he grabbed the tentacle that held it, wrenching down—with the other he reached for what was rightfully his. But by then the creature was off and moving again, sweeping Arthur clear off his feet. The abrupt movement startled him so much it didn’t occur to him to simply let go until they were swinging out of the next window together with that option far removed.
Arthur’s breath rushed out of him. He was too used to the sick feeling of the ground disappearing from below him, and he clung to the beast’s mess of tentacles as Carcosa’s idyllic panorama spun dizzily all around him. “Oh Jesus,” he wheezed, eyes darting to the wispy golden shapes of the dancers. Several were already darting lower, he assumed—he hoped—with the intention of catching him, should he fall. He wasn’t nearly so high up as he had been, but a drop into the twisted eaves of the palace would still skewer him easily. “Oh Jesus Christ…”
The beast-thief grunted in alarm, and the arm it had been using to cover its wounded shoulder twisted securely around Arthur’s waist. Its great, flat head tilted at an angle toward him, and Arthur gaped as a collection of eyes jostled together just below the surface of its translucent skin, gaping back at him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the creature demanded in a tone Arthur recognized even in the inhuman: exasperation.
Arthur blinked dumbly. His hands were still tangled in the tentacles, and though the thief was holding him tightly enough that he wasn’t afraid of falling, his feet still dangled in empty air that sent his instincts spiraling. His mouth flapped uselessly for a moment before he found his voice. “G-Give this back!”
“Arthur, let go!” sang Remiso from below, echoed by several other dancers.
“Wait—not without—” Arthur pulled at the medallion—the tendril holding it curled tighter, and others pushed and slapped at him to thwart his efforts. “Hey! Fuck off—this is mine!”
“You don’t need it!” the thief retorted. “But apparently I need a hostage now just to get out of this.”
They let go. Arthur’s heart pounded up into his throat as they dropped, and all around the dancers cried out in alarm. Seconds later they were wrenched to a halt, and then the thief kicked out again with their powerful legs. They sailed through open air, not exactly graceful but effective. Arthur clung to his reluctant captor, ready to be sick, as they hit the next tower with a bone jarring impact. When he turned his head to see how the dancers were responding, he—and seemingly the thief as well—was struck by the sight of them sailing after, boosted by their kin in an elegant and terrifying arch of flesh and fabric. The eldest landed just above them against the side of the spire, and her foot lashed down at them, cutting through one of the beast’s arms nearly to the bone.
So naturally, they fell.
Arthur’s stomach again almost turned inside out. He glimpsed the dancer above, her body tight and shocked to see him plummeting away; the creature gurgling curses in some inhuman tongue he hadn’t learned yet; the city streaking past. Deep down he knew that if he was in real danger, Hastur wouldn’t allow it. Or maybe he would simply stitch Arthur back together once they split on the rooftops, like he had Tidire—
The beast shoved Arthur into their face, where the tentacles stretched and twisted, locking him close. With the arm they had been using to secure him, they then snatched a jutting eve against the spire, whipping them about toward yet another window. Arthur saw the golden outline rush toward them, and he just managed to get his mouth and wits around the words, “L’vghava rhui!”
The interior of whatever room they had been about to plunge into vanished, and in its place blossomed the familiar embrace of a verdant temple. As the thief let go, the pair of them were tossed into the garden, its lush grasses easing the fall and allowing them to skid to a gentle halt. The flowers bowed and turned curiously at the intrusion. Arthur lay there panting a while, still held tight to the thief’s wriggling mouth, trying to get everything to stop spinning. A dismayed trill drew his attention back toward the exit.
The dancers were crowded around the doorway, Carcosa’s sunset wreathing them in purple light as they jostled for a view though they dared not enter. “I’m okay!” Arthur called to them. “I’ll be right back!”
“We’re coming to get you!” Remiso promised, and as the spell dissipated the eldest was the last face he saw, peering back at him. Then only the closed doorway of the garden remained.
“Blood and ichor,” the thief muttered. “Where are we?”
Arthur returned his attention, and before the creature could begin righting itself, he reached into the mess of tentacles and snatched up Hastur’s medallion. “Ha!” he crowed as he yanked free and then stumbled back several steps with prize in hand. “I’ll be taking this back, thank you.”
The moon beast groaned as they rolled onto their knees. Now finally still and quiet, Arthur took them in properly: their pale skin had taken on a blue sheen that seemed to be its natural color compared to the milky white of other moon beasts, and Athur could see now that there were colorful bands wrapped around their wrists and ankles like jewelry. The garden’s light even caught in small chains and piercings tucked in among their tentacles. As he watched, the thief tilted their head back—back further than seemed healthy or even possible, so that their collection of tentacles now resembled thick locks of swept-back hair. Beneath the stretched skin that Arthur had thought of as its neck, the eyes re-collected, and a once-pursed slit of a mouth opened and smacked.
“Why would you go and do something like that?” the thief grumbled.
“What?” Arthur blinked himself back to full clarity. This isn’t the weirdest face you’ve seen, he told himself, reminded of some kind of shark or stingray. “You mean, take back what’s mine?” He slipped the medallion over his neck and then shoved it down the front of his shirt for safe keeping.
“Jumping out a window,” the thief clarified. They hissed, which in their toothless mouth sounded more like a raspberry, as they devoted their many limbs to staunching their wounded shoulder and arm. “Do you know what would have happened to me, if you got hurt?”
“Me?” Arthur scoffed mightily and set his hands on his hips. “You dragged me out that window! And, stole from me in the first place!”
“Yes, but, you weren’t supposed to notice that.”
The thief relaxed more heavily on his haunches while Arthur sputtered indignantly, surveying the garden that was leaning in around them. “Where are we?”
“The King’s private garden,” Arthur said, and he took some cruel amusement in watching the creature startle with alarm. “You’re not allowed in here, so he’s probably going to show up and smite you any moment now.”
“But you’re allowed in here?” the thief retorted, groaning as they pushed upright. They headed toward the exit.
Arthur gave chase—though at a considerably slower pace than the last time. “Of course I am. I’m his…”
Arthur hesitated, and a few of the thief’s eyes cocked in his direction. “What?” they asked. “Pet?”
Arthur’s indignation spurred him past his embarrassment, and he bristled. “His lover.”
The thief was taken so far off their guard they stopped walking entirely, and they squatted down to fix Arthur with all their eyes, at his own level. “Lover?”
Arthur gathered himself up. “Yes. And?”
“That’s…” The thief’s tendrils curled up on themselves, which Arthur was at a loss to assign to any particular reaction. “Huh. Haven’t heard that one before.”
“Well, audacious is my middle name.” Arthur shared a quiet chuckle with himself before turning back to accusatory. “Though not any more so than you, stealing from the King in Yellow—at least, attempting to—in broad daylight!”
“The purple sun isn’t any broader than the others,” the thief retorted, and they straightened up to resume their path to the exit.
“That’s just nonsensical.” Again Arthur followed. “What did you want it for?”
“Want what?”
“The King’s favor, of course!” Arthur pressed his hand to the medallion through his shirt, and the heat of it—as familiar to him as any of Hastur’s tentacles curling across his skin—gave him goosebumps. He swallowed. “There are a lot of things someone could do with a piece of a god. Did you really think you’d be able to get away with it?”
“I wouldn’t have tried it, if I didn’t.” The thief rolled three of their shoulders in what Arthur took to be their form of a shrug. “Wasn’t even sure what I’d find up there—the spire was empty last time I was here. Thought I’d have a peek. What’s the point of a King if he doesn’t get robbed occasionally?”
Arthur scoffed, ready to declare their logic lacking, but then the thief tilted their broad head toward him. “Besides,” they said, fixing Arthur with most of their eyes, “you seem like someone who understands wanting to get the blood pumping once in a while.”
Arthur stared back, a strange mix of indignation and intrigue pulsing out of his chest. It took him longer than he would have wanted to find his retort. “Whatever your reasons, you’re lucky this much fuss is beneath the King of Dreams. Hastur himself was in that spire the entire time.”
Again the thief flinched sharply—this time at the King’s name. Their tentacles curled in tight and a few of their eyes darted beneath the glossy sheen of their skin in paranoia. “Should you… be able to say that?” they asked in a lowered tone.
“Say what?” said Arthur, slow to take their meaning. Then a rustle of movement drew his attention to the garden entrance, and he stopped.
Hastur stood in the doorway. The thief choked on what sounded like another curse and dropped to their knees, folding down smaller and tighter than Arthur would have expected possible given their size. Seeing their immediate subservience sharpened Arthur back to his full senses; as Hastur swelled into the room he moved quickly in front of the moon beast, putting himself between them.
“Wait,” Arthur said. Hastur’s tentacles were digging into the earth as he came forward, tattered cloak billowing with foul temper. Moments from gruesome murder, no doubt. Arthur gathered himself up. “Just wait.”
Behind him, the dancers crowded at the entrance to see, but a wave of one tentacle sent the doors clanging shut, enclosing the garden once more.
“Arthur,” said Hastur, his voice echoing out from the darkness of his hood with greater authority than Arthur had heard in some time. “What is this thing doing here?”
“Nothing,” Arthur said automatically, and a nervous chuckle sprang out of him that startled him. With his hands tucked into his robe, tendrils drilling into the garden soil, Hastur looked suddenly a lot less like his lover, and more like the Unspeakable King in Yellow. There wasn’t still some tiny animal part of his brain frightened of that, was there? Arthur cleared his throat. “We were in a bit of trouble, up on the tower, so I used that spell I know just to get us out of danger. That’s all.”
“And you’re all right?” Hastur reached forward with one tentacle to circle Arthur’s ankle in a familiar gesture. “It didn’t hurt you?”
Arthur made a show of dusting off his shirt and slacks. “No, not at all. See?”
“Good.” Hastur gave him a tug. “Then step aside so I can deal with it.”
“No.” Arthur planted his feet; his ankle not held by Hastur was closer to one of the thief’s hands, which he could feel trembling closeby. “Wait—you don’t have to do that.”
“It doesn’t belong here,” Hastur insisted, anger coiled tight in his voice. “This thief stole from and kidnapped you.”
“And I got it back—” Arthur patted his chest “—and I’m fine, so no harm done.”
“That’s not how this works!”
“Of course it is!” Arthur gestured to him. “You’re the King—you can do whatever you want, and that includes not eviscerating one of your subjects in this beautiful garden.”
Hastur growled—a long, bestial note of displeasure that gave Arthur an instinctual shudder. Even so, Arthur kept his back straight. “Look, it was just a bit of sport. Send them on their way and it’ll be over.”
Hastur didn’t reply, letting the wrathful silence drag out. Then he leaned forward, looming over Arthur so that the black beneath his cloak drew his gaze and wouldn’t let go. “I do not suffer trespassers in my castle to live,” he said.
Arthur gulped; he was keenly aware of how fiercely his heart was pounding, and how he was certain to feel its echoes long after this encounter ended. It was… exhilarating. “Then kill it,” he said, tilting his chin up. “I know you don’t actually need me to step aside to do it, so you might as well go ahead, because I’m not moving.”
Hastur regarded him for a moment longer—his eyes gleamed angry gold from the depths of his skull—but at last he sighed, and he rose again to his full height. “Very well,” he said, and Arthur’s stomach turned, trying to spit up some further protest, but then Hastur continued. “They can live, so long as they vow never to take from me again.”
Arthur let his breath out with relief and turned in place. The thief had turned its head forward again, hiding its mouth, only two eyes gazing up through a thin layer of skin in amazement. “I think… it might be unwise for me to make a promise like that,” they said.
Hastur huffed, which made the thief tighten, but Arthur recognized it for dry amusement. “Maybe so,” Hastur said. “Since you won’t remember having made it anyway.”
He reached one hand through his robes, and with a surge of now probably foolish courage, Arthur snatched it up in both of his. “Wait,” Arthur said. “You’re going to make them forget all this?”
“You haven’t left me a choice.” Hastur gestured to the garden around them.
“Okay, but…” Arthur squirmed, uncertain himself where his discomfort was coming from. “Maybe you could make them think this conversation took place somewhere else?” He managed to call back a bit of his humor. “So I can tease them about being caught, if we meet again?”
Another sour huff. “So be it.” Hastur raised his other hand.
An orange light began to form under the thief that Arthur recognized; he let go of Hastur to turn back one more time. “My name’s Arthur Lester,” he introduced himself hurriedly. “What’s your name?”
The thief rolled their shoulders, and a glassy look overtook their eyes just before being sucked down through the King’s portal. They vanished without a trace, leaving only soft grass behind.
Arthur let out a long sigh as the tension at last drained from his shoulders. He turned to face Hastur once more. “Thank you,” he said, though when he saw that Hastur was still stiff and unwelcoming, he cleared his throat and tried again, more sincerely. “Really, I appreciate it. I know you can’t just go around excusing things like that.” He laughed, hoping to jar his lover into better spirits. “Almost as brazen as me, that one, don’t you think?”
“Yes,” said Hastur. “Almost.”
His tentacles gave him away: a tiny flip of two tendrils half hidden in his cloak, which then twisted tightly around each other. Arthur watched them twine with restraint, and a fresh heat blossomed up his neck. He stared hard into the unyielding darkness of Hastur’s hood. “You…” he began, thought better of it, then shook his head and thought even better. “Were you acting just now?”
Hastur sucked the two wayward tentacles under his cloak. “Acting?”
Arthur squinted at him harder. “You were, weren’t you.” When Hastur splayed his hand over his chest as if insulted, Arthur heaved a heavy groan. “You don’t give a fuck about that thing, do you?”
Hastur at last relaxed: shoulders sloped, tentacles idly curling against the grass. “Don’t you think I would have ‘smote him’ on the spot, if I had?”
“Asshole.” Arthur thumped down among the flowers. He didn’t know what to make of the mix of emotions jumbling about his chest: was he disappointed? Embarrassed? “So you were just fucking with me? Because obviously it wasn’t for the thief, if you were going to erase its memory anyway.”
“Don’t be like that, Arthur—you were enjoying yourself.”
Hastur joined him, curled up in a charming hunch like he had been in the tower. Arthur watched him, heart whip-lashing after recognizing only minutes ago that his “lover” deserved as much shock and confusion as the thief had devoted to the concept. “A little revenge for hurting your feelings earlier?” Arthur asked quietly, fingering the medallion under his shirt. “Or did you listen in on my conversation with Tidire and her sister?”
“I understand why you’re feeling restless,” Hastur said, patient but not without his own lingering sense of frustration. “But there’s only so much I can do to help that, when I’m part of the cause.”
“Yes, and I’m not…” Arthur frowned as he tried to wade through his thoughts, only to realize he was again rubbing the medallion against his chest. He forced himself to let go. “I don’t know,” he concluded. “But it was… fun. And I’m glad it didn’t end with violent death.”
Hastur fell still, and again Arthur felt his heart thump a little in response. “So am I, but don’t mistake me, Arthur: I don’t want them or anything else in here ever again.” He reached out again with one tendril to curl around Arthur’s leg. “This garden is very important to me, because of what it represents for us. I want it to stay meaningful.”
His tentacle tightened. “So please don’t let or bring anything else in here, or I will kill whatever it is and make sure you don’t find out. All right?”
Arthur took his next breath slowly. “I would find out, but fair enough. I won’t open the door for anyone else.”
“Thank you.” Hastur’s cloaks rustled as he pushed himself upright. “Now. Supper?”
He offered his hand, which Arthur accepted in helping him to his feet. “I’m starving,” Arthur agreed.
They headed for the exit together, and as the doors swung open Arthur shook with deja vu: Hastur leading him to where the dancers clustered reminded him almost too strongly of that night when he first accepted the hand of the King of Carcosa. He had to admit, he understood Hastur’s urge to want to keep the garden for them alone.
The dancers cooed and fretted as he joined them, stroking his hair and back and all asking at once if he was okay. Their fond concern was almost overwhelming.
The eldest of them didn’t offering any condolences, but when Arthur looked at her, her shoulders hitched. “Sorry,” she sang, and she looked so uncomfortable that Arthur couldn’t find any amusement in the idea of teasing her for almost sending him falling down the side of the castle. So he just nodded.
“Thank you,” he said, patting his chest, “for helping me get it back.”
She ducked her head impishly, and Arthur smiled, and they all returned to Carcosa to feast.