…or, Yeah, That’s Way Too Obvious

Iason finally did come hunting around for me after dinner.

I was out by the smoking area at the time, alone. That is, Violet wasn’t with me. There was a group of girls I thought were from the floor above me, and a couple of guys I didn’t recognize. It sounded like they were from Burlew.

The sky was turning dark and the glow from the sidewalks was just starting to become visible. I stood off to the side of the smoking patio and watched the people coming and going, half-listening to the conversations around me.

A lot more people were heading out than in. I watched them moving east, towards the student union or the carriage stops, or turning south towards the fitness center. It was Friday night and they had plans.

So did I.

Marlot had promised to dig up some other sets of hands for a card game. She’d said it might take a while. As she’d put it, once everybody with lives had cleared out, everybody else would realize how bored and lonely they were.

I took my time with my cigarette, just watching and listening.

“Hello, Iamie,” Iason said right in my ear. I turned and was surprised to see he really was right there. He’d come around the side of the building.

“Hey,” I said. I noticed he was holding a gold box with a ribbon on it. “Oh, no.”

“No, what?” he asked, confused. “I had thought you suggested you would welcome my presence.”

“I welcome your presence,” I said. “But I’m not so crazy about your presents.”

His eyes ticked down to the box in his hands. Faint lines appeared in his forehead—a big deal for an elf.

“But Iamie, it is just a small token—”

“Got enough tokens to last me a while,” I said. “Thank you. You want to hang out, we can hang out. You want to screw, we can screw. You want to do something crazy like have a conversation or play a game that’s not ’see how far we can we get under Iamie’s skin’, okay. But I don’t need any more presents.”

“Nobody needs presents, Iamie,” Iason said. “That’s what makes them presents.”

“The fact that you don’t think I have a right to refuse this is everything that’s wrong with our relationship, wrapped up in a little box with a bow on it,” I said.

“Of course you have a right,” he said. “But I don’t understand your reason.”

“I don’t really have one,” I admitted.

He held out the box.

“I don’t need one,” I said.

“How can you say that when you don’t even know what it is?” he asked.

“A reason, I mean. I don’t need a reason to tell you no, and you need a reason even less.

“At least see what it is,” he said. “Then you can make a decision—an informed decision—about whether or not you desire it.”

I considered. He wouldn’t press this if he thought I’d refuse once I saw it. It was probably something harmless, not another stag bracelet. I’d seen Iason’s closet. It wasn’t full of ancestral artifacts with hidden properties, unless he’d inherited a lot of boots.

If I accepted it, though, he’d see it as him getting his way. The fact that I’d made the decision would pale in significance compared to the fact that it was what he wanted.

He took my silence as assent and started to lift the cover off. Probably not a good sign, but I could still walk away.

It seemed I had been dead wrong about what was inside the box. It was another wooden bracelet, of the same shape and style as the stag bracelet. He lifted it out and tilted the front to me, and I saw the design on it was a man in profile holding an axe. It was just a silhouette inlaid into the wood, but the shape of the axe was distinctive enough for identification.

He handed the bracelet to me. It was made of a similar wood, with a similar finish. It was newer, though.

While human enchanted items rarely showed any sign of wear, elven ones made out of wood aged gracefully. They matured but never decayed. My great-grandfather’s oak staff was worn smooth where he held it, but it would never wear through. The underside of the stag bracelet where it rested against my skin was the same way; rubbing up against generations of wrists had given it a polish that would be hard to duplicate.

The new bracelet had a nice finish on it, but that was all.

“It does not have quite the same provenance as the other,” Iason said. “But I thought it would present a more balanced image.”

“Is it magic?” I asked.

“My grasping little Iamie,” Iason said. “Is it not enough that I had it made specially for you?”

“I can tell,” I said. “I’m flattered. Is it magic?”

“Put it on,” he said.

I held it out to him.

“It suppresses the magic of the other bracelet,” he said.

“Really?” I asked.

“It is supposed to,” he said. “I will know when you put it on.”

“Does it come off?”

“Naturally,” he said. “You do not think I would voluntarily give up my mount forever, do you?”

“You could work a little harder at keeping me,” I said. His glanced at the bracelet. “Okay, that’s a start,” I admitted. “But you’re really just undoing your own mistake.”

“What mistake is that?”

“Getting me to put on a bracelet that lets you track me and transform me,” I said.

“That was not a mistake,” he said. “But you were unhappy with the results, and so I have arrived at a compromise. That is what you want, is it not? Compromises?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Now when you wish for me to able to find you and exert myself as rider, all you have to do is take off the man bracelet,” he said.

“Okay, but let’s make it clear,” I said. “Me not wearing the bracelet isn’t some kind of automatic go-ahead sign. If I decide not to wear it one day, that doesn’t mean I want you to sweep me off to the forest like an old timey elf ravishing an old timey human.”

“If that is your wish,” he said. “But think how much simpler things would be. Any time you felt like giving in completely, all you would have to do is slip off the bracelet.”

“It’s easy to give in,” I said. “How exactly would I take out?”

“You’d put the bracelet back on,” he said.

“Would I still have the bracelet?” I asked. “Would I be free to move? Would I have hands and wrists, or hooves?”

“You’re too suspicious, Iamie.”

“I’m not sure I’m suspicious enough,” I said. “You’re presenting this as something I can use to regain some control, but you’re trying to finesse me into a position where I’d have less.”

“You’re giving me too much credit,” he said. “I do not plan things out with that level of sophistication, Iamie. You should know by now that subtlety is not my hallmark.”

“Yeah, except one of the best ways to pull off a subtle trick is to make everything else you’re doing big and flashy,” I said.

As if to prove me right, he heaved a big, theatrical sigh.

“I wish I had been born in an earlier era,” he said. “Modern human society has stolen so much romance away from the world. I suppose my mortal blood has a bit of a blessing mingled with it, in that I will not live to see how far this trend goes.”

“What, because you can’t grab a guy and rape him any more?” I asked.

“What about spontaneity?” he asked. “All this tedious business of laboring over whether or not consent has been attained in advance, it diminishes the act of love. And what about the saying ‘How do you know you don’t like it until you’ve tried it?’”

“Yeah, this conversation’s not helping you any,” I said.

“But there are so many tales in the old poems of a young man or woman who was spirited away kicking and screaming by a bold knight only to find out once the deed was done that it was perfectly to their tastes,” he said.

“Stories,” I said.

“Can you tell me that, had you not grown up in circumstances that were, shall we say, conducive to experimentation, forcing me to be more aggressive in my suit, that you might not have come to love me the same as you do now?”

“Love? You’re getting ahead of yourself there, Sir Knight,” I said. “And it’s not exactly cute that you’re referring to yourself as the one who would be forced, in that situation.”

“But the point stands,” Iason said. “If I had needed to overcome that of sort of resistance to attain you, would you still not enjoy the end results?”

“I think you’re underestimating the inherent attractiveness of not being a rapist,” I said.

“I am not advocating for rape!” he said.

“No?”

“I am just saying that we should be more free to, ah, make bold with one another,” he said. “To interpret subtle signals, to look for signs of interest no matter how deeply they may be buried. Life would be more exciting if we did not have to be so careful with each other.”

“And what if you ‘make bold’ and you’re wrong about those signals?” I asked.

“Then you apologize, but hopefully everybody had some fun all the same,” he said. He gave me his crookedest grin.

I scowled. What did I say, though? He’d grown up with epic poems about rape and plunder as his history lessons. The previous owners of his stag bracelet had probably simply grabbed an attractive man who caught their attention and put it on him, then rode him—in both forms—until his will was gone.

Even in human society, there were some elements of that. Back when my fantasies about girls had involved more elaborate plotlines—before I knew about sex, in other words—there had been a bunch of sweeping-off of feet and unannounced kissing.

It didn’t matter if the girl hated me in real life, or just didn’t know I existed. She’d still swoon and give in.

That sort of thing was exciting and it was romantic, and it was the sort of thing that got you slapped in real life, either with a hand or with a restraining order.

“Are you going to put it on?” he asked.

“What else does it do?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “I wanted to layer more protections on it, but with the level of antimagic it has to exert to overcome the magic of a stag bracelet, the enchanter deemed it unlikely for any further enchantment to be successful.”

“It’s not going to interfere with any of my other equipment?” I asked.

“No, it’s precisely targeted,” he said. “But he said that it went to the nature of the device, if it blocked magic or produced it. He said it would be possible for it to do both, but it would require considerable time and care to arrange it just so.” He smiled. “I was not patient enough. My apologies.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I slipped the bracelet on, then pulled it off to make sure before I put back on and left it there. It weighed a bit more tha the original, or maybe I just wasn’t used to the weight. Side by side, they looked pretty close to identical, except for the emblems. “I like it better this way. I think you owed me this. If it had a shield spell on it or something else it would be gratuitous.”

“All of a sudden, you have a dislike for gratuitousness?” he asked.

“It has its place,” I admitted with a smile.

“Let us go up to your room and find it, then,” he said.

I shook my head.

“We’re going to be playing cards,” I said. “Marlot and I. And other people. Come up and join us.”

“Gambling?” he asked.

“Yeah, if we get any takers,” I said. “For coin, though. Not booty.”

“A wager can be exciting, no matter what is on the line,” he said. “I think I will accept your offer. But, after—”

“Yeah, after’s fine,” I said.