Work Text:
Utowin was not gifted at magic. He could barely complete the basic spells necessary for life in the far north: lighting fires, walking on snow, conjuring light, melting ice into drinkable water. The spells he did manage to produce, he did with no great beauty or skill, the results rudimentary at best. Nothing like Olruggio.
It was a name spoken widely in the villages of the north, especially Ghodrey. A bright young witch, master-less, for he had exceeded the talents of what the witches of the north could teach him. The Torch, they called him, for he had drawn fire spells relentlessly for three days and three nights during a white out, casting alone without sleep or respite before a compliment of fully grown witches were able to brave the blizzard snows and assist him. The Star, they named him, because he brought light in even the darkest of times. And what did they call Utowin? Mostly, ‘you, boy’ and ‘that rascal’ when they called him anything at all. The greatest act Utowin had to his name was scaring away an ice quadryphon that had wandered too close to town, and even that had earned him a scolding rather than praise. Didn’t he know better than to put himself between an ice quadryphon and a host of witches capable of driving it off? Apparently not.
Utowin wanted to help people, was the thing, but he never wanted them to look at him the way he had seen them look at Olruggio. With expectation. He had seen Olruggio after the winter storms, when whole villages had frozen in their beds, crops buried, livestock dead, wood scarce. He had seen the boy crushed beneath the obligations that being gifted at magic had placed on his shoulders, the weight of all the lives he could not save bending his young shoulders. And if the Torch of Ghodrey could not save them, what good was Utowin?
He had left Ghodrey as soon as he was able and hadn’t once looked back. He’d carved its accent from his tongue and traded it for the rolling vowels of the Great Hall. He had shed the heavy layers of the north for Moralis red, had traded ink and pen for the banner-spear of the knights, the expectation of salvation for the grim rewards of justice. Utowin had never been gifted at magic, but he excelled as a Knight. The training kept his attention as spellwork never could. He grew fast, strong, relentless—until the Utowin of Ghodrey was buried in his past.
So it came as a shock when he first saw Olruggio in the Great Hall. The years had not been kind to the boy. His young shoulders were still stooped with the weight of a heavy northern cloak and his eyes, when Utowin looked at them, seemed full of an incurable sorrow.
Utowin grunted at the sharp crack of Easties training staff against his hand.
“Who’s that?” Easthies asked, voice sharp and cool, his interest piqued by Utowin’s strayed attention.
“No one,” Utowin answered automatically, driven by some compulsive need to shield Olruggio from the knife’s edge of Easties’s attention, or perhaps by the need to keep that same attention on himself. Either way, he wasn’t going to interrogate the impulse. He swung his staff at Easthies, who blocked it easily. “Just someone I thought I recognized.”
This answer and Utowin’s redoubled attention to their sparring match seemed to satisfy Easthies’ interest. Utowin was better at hiding his interest in Olruggio after that.
*
There was no reason for Olruggio to know him. Ghodrey was not large, but it was big enough and Olruggio had always been immersed in his studies or out helping the other witches while Utowin was stuck in remedial spellwork or cutting class entirely. A fizzling spark, invisible from within the bright halo of Olruggio’s constant flame. Still, he found himself invested in the boy’s progress at the Great Hall.
Olruggio didn’t seem to have many friends. Just the strange, silver-haired boy whose presence made Easthies’s lip curl in a sneer. Utowin didn’t know what to make of him. He’d heard the rumors of course: Brimmed Caps and buried coffins and Unknowings brought to study magic in the Great Hall. He didn’t understand why everyone was so caught up on this last point. There hadn’t been many Unknowing villages in the bitter north, but clearly Qifrey had more talent for magic than Utowin ever had. But what did he know? He was just a guy with a pennant spear—good for following orders and holding the line, not questioning why that line was drawn or which direction it pointed in.
Through the years, just as he had in Ghodrey, Olruggio made a name for himself. Even in the splendors of the Great Hall, the very heart of witch society, he was talented. Still, he was reserved. Whenever Utowin saw him, he was usually with Qifrey. Occasionally, he could be found in the company of another witch, Alaira, and more often than not, dodging the devotions of a younger apprentice, Hiehart.
This last made Utowin smile. Olruggio was too kind for his own good. While Olruggio evaded Hiehart when he could, once he’d been caught he always grudgingly allowed the young apprentice to follow him around and explain spellwork to him. If their positions had been reversed, Utowin thought he would probably relish the praise and devotion fawned onto him, but then, Olruggio had always been a better person than him.
“Olruggio of the Torch,” Easthies said, coming to stand next to him. Utowin didn’t move from where he leaned on the banister overlooking one of the main thoroughfares of the Great Hall, caught watching as Olruggio gestured expansively as he explained something to Hiehart. “He’s from Ghodrey,” Easthies continued when Utowin didn’t say anything. “You recognized him.”
Utowin huffed a laugh. Easthies had always been sharp. Stupid, to think he could hide anything from him. “Yeah,” he admitted.
“Why didn’t you say?”
Utowin shrugged. “Maybe I was tired of being compared to the great Olruggio, savior of Ghodrey,” he said, making his voice as sardonic as possible, accentuating the crisp consonants and rolling vowels of the Great Hall. Anything to put distance between him and the snowy reaches of his past.
Easthies studied him and he felt near impaled by the weight of the gaze. “Hm,” Easthies said at last, turning back to look down at Olruggio. “A shame he spends so much time with that Unknowing witch,” Easthies sneered. “He doesn’t belong in the Great Hall.”
Utowin tilted his head to look at him sidelong. “They used to tell me I belonged in an Unknowing village too. That I’d be better off there, since I was so shit at magic.”
Easthies snorted, waving this away. “You’re a witch Utowin. More than that, you’re a Knight Moralis.” He rested his hand on Utowin’s shoulder. “You belong here.”
The weight of Easthies’s hand on his shoulder felt grounding, solid. Irrefutable.
“Yeah...” he said, letting his gaze wander back to Olruggio. The other witch was shouting and waving to someone in the crowd. Qifrey. He reached out a hand as he caught up to the pale witch, resting it on his friend’s shoulder. Claiming him. Grounding him. Irrefutable. “Yeah, maybe.”
*
“Higher,” he instructed Ekoh, knocking his spear up a few inches. “Don’t let it dip.”
Etlan subtly lifted his spear higher as well, mirroring his twin’s chagrined expression.
“Again,” Utowin instructed them.
“This is boring,” Etlan whined when Utowin made them do the same exercise for a third and then a fourth time. “When do we get to do the fun stuff?”
“When you can hold your spear without letting it drop,” Utowin informed him, nudging the boy’s spear back into position. “Again.”
“Utowin,” a voice called. Sharp. Imperious. Easthies. Utowin glanced over his shoulder at him, raising a sardonic eyebrow. He’d been even bossier than usual ever since he’d been appointed squad leader.
The twins’ eyes went round and their posture straightened, spears snapping up to almost chin Utowin in the jaw.
“Walk with me,” Easthies commanded, and Utowin went like the dog he was.
“Galga, Luluci” he called first. “Come take over for me.”
Luluci took advantage of Galga’s distraction to knock the bigger knight on his butt where they sparred across the ring. The twins snickered until Luluci snapped her gaze their way, then they straightened nearly as tall as they had for Easthies. Smart kids.
Luluci offered Galga a hand and hauled him back to his feet before the two knights headed over to take over the twins’ training.
“You called, boss?” Utowin drawled, falling into step just behind Easthies, who hadn’t paused to watch the training knights. Utowin slipped his hands into his pockets and walked with an insubordinate slouch.
“You do well with them,” Easthies noted, not bothering to look up from the report he was reading.
Utowin was surprised. Easthies wasn’t generally one for handing out praise. “They’re good kids. Just need a bit of discipline.”
“Hmm,” Easthies hummed, “sounds familiar.” He slid a sly look to Utowin from the corner of his eye and Utowin pulled up short, letting his mouth fall open in mock affront. It wasn't often Easthies was in a humorous mood.
He held a hand to his heart. “Easthies, you wound me.”
Easthies smiled, just a little. It hooked Utowin’s heart like a cordfish on a line. He kept walking and Utowin waited a beat, letting his heart resume its normal pace, before starting after him again.
“Did you summon me just so you could mock me?”
Easthies ignored him. “Did you ever think about taking the fifth test?”
For a second time, Utowin pulled up short. Easthies was full of surprises today. “Fifth test?” Utowin demanded, incredulous. “Hells, I barely passed my fourth test, Eas! I half think Vinanna bribed Beldaruit to pass me just so she could get me out from under her feet.”
Easthies snorted in amusement, one of the less elegant gestures he was inclined to make. “You’re a good teacher, Utowin, you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.” He said no more on it after that, moving on to discuss the report he was reading and his plan to up patrols around Thristas and the surrounding villages. Utowin nodded along, but a part of his mind was caught on Easthies’s words. Would he have made a good teacher? He was just a screw up from Ghodrey who couldn’t even figure out how to walk on top of snow. Who would want to learn from him?
It was late in the evening when Utowin finally took some time to unwind. He was at the pub with a few of the other knights—not Easthies, never Easthies, too uptight and rigid to have a little fun with the squad—when he heard a name that caught his ear from the booth behind them.
“Come on, Olruggio. You didn’t even consider it.”
“I don’t want apprentices.” Apparently even years spent living in the Great Hall couldn’t scrub Ghodrey’s accent from Olruggio’s voice. The rough sound of it, burred as mountain thistle, unexpectedly tugged at something in Utowin’s chest. Something like homesickness. Something almost like regret.
“Why ever not? You’d make a fine teacher,” the crisp, formal tones of his companion replied.
“I’m not anybody’s master,” Olruggio said decisively, the words only running together a little from drink.
“You taught me,” the other voice wheedled. “And you’re a master craftsman, Olly. You’d have plenty of people lining up to be your apprentice.”
“I’m just a screw up from Ghodrey with a penchant for fire,” Olruggio insisted dismissively. “Who would want to learn from me?” There was a thunk as a drink was put down just a touch too heavily on the table. “No Qifrey, don’t be reductive. You can be both a genius and a screw up: they’re not mutually exclusive. Besides,” Olruggio carried on louder to drown out the protests rising from his companion, “we’re here to celebrate you passing the fifth test, not harp on about why I don’t want to take it. Soon enough you’ll have apprentices lining up outside your door and you’ll have that atelier you’ve been dreaming of.” A thoughtful pause. “S’pose you’ll be needing a Watchful Eye first though.”
“Well, actually—”
Utowin blinked. It felt suddenly too hot, too loud, too crowded in the booth squashed up against Galga’s side. He mumbled something about needing air and slithered out from between his fellow knights, pushing his way into the cool night. Once he was outside, he leaned back against the stone wall of the pub, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He craned his neck to look at the stars before remembering he was at the bottom of the ocean. That was one thing he could never get used to. The stars in Ghodrey had always been countless, so crisp and clear it felt like you could reach out and scoop them into your palm. But there had always been one Star that shone more brightly than the rest.
Just two screw-ups from Ghodrey, huh? Maybe they weren’t so different after all.
*
Utowin had always wanted to be the kind of person that could offer comfort to someone. As a child, he thought perhaps he could comfort Olruggio, a gifted kid with too much weight placed on his shoulders. But a witch’s mistakes were permanent, and he was barely a witch at all. He was never going to be the one able to comfort Olruggio.
But then had come Easthies. Proud, stoic Easthies who needed someone to remind him that he was still a person and not just the walking embodiment of protocol. Then Vinanna. Galga and Luluci. Ekoh and Etlan. His family. He found the people who were willing to give him a chance to be more than a screw up from some backwater northern village. People willing to trust him with their lives, and who he could rely on in turn. They rarely said as much, of course, but he knew it all the same. It was there in the way that Easthies left his left side unguarded, knowing Utowin would fill the gap. It was there in Galga’s strong hand reaching down to help him up from getting his butt kicked in the sparring ring. It was in Luluci’s gaze, hard and unyielding, as she snapped her pennant around a Brimmed Cap lunging for Utowin’s throat. It was there in the twins’ whining as he ran their drills again and again, in how despite their complaints they never once gave up or let him down.
He tried to show them that he was grateful. He burned the midnight oil with Easthies as his squad leader strategized and schemed and planned. Sometimes he complained he would faint from hunger if they didn’t go get food, because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Easthies eat and he seriously doubted whether Easthies could tell him if he asked. He taught self-defense classes with Luluci on their days off, letting her jab and knee and pummel him in demonstration before a gaggle of wide-eyed apprentices. He went for drinks with Galga and let the big knight lean on him when they stumbled their way home. When he made his reports to Vinanna, he always gave them in person because he knew she secretly hated reading them nearly as much as he hated to write them. Neither of them had ever been very good at sitting still.
Yes, he had found his place here in the Great Hall among the Knights Moralis, but even after all this time, he wasn’t sure the same could be said of Olruggio. The young witch was well regarded, to be sure. His contraptions were met with acclaim and his name was oft spoken with admiration in witch society. But his shoulders were perpetually bowed and his eyes still hid traces of that old sadness. He had many admirers but few friends.
This troubled Utowin. He wondered whether he should have tried, at some point over the years, to befriend Olruggio. If that would have been something the other witch would have welcomed. Somehow, he doubted it.
But everyone needed someone to comfort them.
He was dragging Easthies to go get dumplings when he noticed it. A long flutter of black satin. A ribbon pinned to the point of a hat. Olruggio’s ribbon. Decidedly not Olruggio’s cap.
Utowin slowed, letting Easthies pull ahead as he paused to watch the pair of witches. They were walking together, Olruggio telling some story with his hands as much as his voice, Qifrey leaning in, watching him intently, his expression almost indecently fond.
Olruggio’s ribbon trailed out behind the pale witch as they walked. Utowin watched it flutter and twist, remembering how it had trailed in the snow behind Olruggio when they were little until he had come up with some clever piece of spellwork to keep it twisting and levitating out of his way. Every time he had seen that ribbon, a sharp twist of envy had spiked through Utowin. It didn’t now.
That ribbon had been a symbol of everything Utowin wasn’t. All of Olruggio’s skill and talent. Everything that made him the witch that he was. And now he had given it to someone else.
From the point of Olruggio’s own cap swung a golden tassel. Utowin could only assume it had once graced the point of Qifrey’s cap, though he couldn’t recall ever noticing it before. It was just a tassel. Short and simple. Unassuming. It looked good on Olruggio’s hat.
The two witches paused beside a windowway and Qifrey rested his hand on Olruggio’s shoulder as he said something. Whatever it was made Olruggio laugh, head thrown back, golden tassel shaking and swinging merrily. Utowin smiled. So he found someone who could comfort him after all.
“Are you coming?” Easties asked, his voice imperious. But he paused on the top step of the staircase they would need to take to get to the dumpling stall, looking back at Utowin. Waiting for him.
And Utowin knew that no matter where he went, he would follow him.
“Yeah,” Utowin smiled. “I’m comin’.” And if the barest trace of Ghodrey’s accent stuck like a burr to his tongue—well. There were worse things.
***epilogue***
“That knight is always watching you,” Qifrey said suspiciously, eyeing the retreating pair of Knights Moralis as they climbed a staircase on the other side of the courtyard. “I don’t like it.”
“What’re ya talkin’ about?” Olruggio groused, only half paying attention as he crouched to finish drawing the seal on the windowway that would take them to the Naakiwan Downs.
“Utowin.”
“Who?”
“Easthies’s shadow. That red haired Knight.”
“Sure. What about him?”
Qifrey swatted at him. “Be serious, Olly. You haven’t noticed him watching you?”
“Lotsa people watch me,” Olruggio huffed with amusement and a careless shrug. “I’m the Torch of Ghodrey!” he joked, spreading his arms wide with self-deprecating humor. “Besides,” he added, holding his thumb and forefinger up to frame his newly grown beard and tilting his head up to look at Qifrey with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, “I’ve been told I’m quite handsome. Why shouldn’t he look?”
“You should be careful of the Knights,” Qifrey insisted, trying to keep his voice stern, but he couldn’t help the grin that tugged at his lips anyway. It was true that Olruggio’s beard was quite fetching on him.
“Oh lighten up, Qif! I know you don’t like the Knights, but it’s not like I’ve been doin’ forbidden magic in secret or anything. I think I’d remember a thing like that.”
A muscle twitched in Qifrey’s jaw and perhaps an astute observer would have wagered that he blinked one time too many, but only if they were looking very closely. “...Of course not.”
“We’ve got nothing to worry about,” Olruggio assured him, standing and slinging an arm over his best friend’s shoulders as the windowway flared to life. “Now let’s go start that atelier you’ve been dreaming up all these years.”
“Yes,” Qifrey agreed, wrapping his arm around Olly’s waist in answer. “Let’s go home.”