A Typesetting Error in Chainmail

Under the redacted opening paragraph of the Brackenmere Incident Report, Kenta Vale had later inserted a cleaner lie: Weather conditions materially impaired morale.

This was technically true. Rain had kneaded the fairground into brown paste, and the banners of Solander Press clung to their poles with the resigned aspect of employees awaiting restructuring. Brackenmere advertised itself as an adult-only medieval reenactment fair; every retreat attendee was over eighteen, waivered, lanyarded, and apparently willing to spend a compulsory morale weekend dressed near a replica stocks.

At thirty-eight, Kenta held a leaking paper cup in one hand and a folded card in the other. Its title, written in his smallest handwriting, read RULES FOR AVOIDING RECREATIONAL SINCERITY.

Rule one: Do not describe colleagues as family.

Rule two: If asked to name a personal obstacle, name a scheduling conflict.

Rule three: In the event of corporate archery, develop a cough of sufficient literary distinction to require solitude.

The cup softened beneath his thumb. Paper, pencils, people: all were mechanisms designed to fail at the least flattering instant. He had learned this from publishing and from writing romance, which was publishing’s most elaborate form of public optimism. His novels sold with alarming consistency. Readers wrote to say his heroes had restored their faith in love. Kenta answered them politely and revised the next chapter until nobody survived happiness without paperwork.

He had not come to Brackenmere for personal growth. He had come for the fifteenth-century herb ledger kept in the fair’s archive: a cramped, foxed volume whose marginal notes might rescue a scene in his current book from botanical idiocy. He needed an hour to copy them, then he intended to vanish before somebody handed him a foam bow and asked what target represented his fear of vulnerability.

The obstacle had a name: Tsubasa Bell.

Tsubasa was Brackenmere’s herbmaster, keeper of the ledger, and Kenta’s rival from the municipal allotment competition. The previous summer, Tsubasa had won Best Productive Plot with a marrow so large that the judges had photographed it from several respectful angles. Kenta, having lost by half a point and possessing the self-command of a paper cut, had described the vegetable in the local newsletter as “a gourd with the manners of a municipal monument.”

Tsubasa had sent no reply. He had simply won the next category as well.

The archive occupied a narrow stone annex behind the herb garden, its doorway framed by rosemary and a notice requesting that visitors not handle artifacts with jammed hands. Inside, Tsubasa sorted labels into exact rows beside a locked glass case. He wore a dark green apron over black trousers, work gloves the color of moss, and the concentrated look of a man engaged in an argument with disorder and winning by several points.

At forty-one, he was irritatingly handsome in a manner that made Kenta feel personally accused. His face did not invite easy conclusions. His hands, however, did everything with such competent economy that Kenta had spent an entire growing season resenting them.

“Tsubasa.”

“Kenta.” The reply had the clipped courtesy of a gate left ajar only for deliveries.

Kenta lifted his paper cup. “I have a scholarly request.”

“Those usually begin with someone wanting a key.”

“I need access to the herb ledger. I’ll copy the marginalia, disturb nothing, and return it within the hour.”

“For the novel?”

“For research.”

“That distinction has never survived contact with you.”

Kenta allowed himself the expression he used at readings when an audience member asked whether he believed in soulmates. “I am trying to avoid making a fifteenth-century tincture sound like a cocktail invented by a man with a podcast.”

“That is almost sympathetic.”

“Then we are making progress.”

Tsubasa looked past him, toward the courtyard where a retreat facilitator in velvet shouted instructions about archery stations. Kenta imagined the man’s smile collapsing when informed that he would not be present for the bonding exercise. It was a private pleasure, small but nourishing.

Then Tsubasa set one gloved hand on the archive doorframe.

The gesture occupied very little territory. It nevertheless made the doorway feel barred by castle engineering.

“Competitors,” Tsubasa said, “do not receive favors for insulting prize marrow.”

Behind him, the ledger rested in its glass case, five centuries old and plainly determined to remain in better hands.

A brass bell began clanging in the courtyard with all the subtlety of a landlord collecting arrears. Tsubasa did not remove his hand from the doorframe.

“Your corporate archery has started,” he said.

“My condolences to everyone involved.”

A figure in blue velvet hurried around the rosemary bed, holding a sheaf of papers against the rain. Marion Prentice, Brackenmere’s logistical director, possessed silver hair, a dry pair of spectacles, and the tranquil manner of a man who had clearly delegated panic to other people. Today even he appeared pursued by it.

“There you are,” Marion said to Kenta. “Marvelous. The pageant is delayed, the herald has lost two verses, and someone has put the ceremonial goose in the finance tent.”

“Is it a real goose?”

“Nothing here is real except the invoices.”

Before Kenta could decide whether this was reassuring, Marion seized the folded pages protruding from his coat pocket.

“Ah. Copy.”

“That is not copy.”

It was, in fact, a page of notes Kenta had made during breakfast after being forced to pass a rack of borrowed costumes. He had written them in the vicious spirit of a man confronted by synthetic brocade: sleeves suggest a magistrate’s curtains; codpiece engineered by enemies of proportion; Bell somehow makes the green doublet look intentional, which is intolerable. Beneath that, in smaller script: competent hands, irritatingly handsome concentration, a menace to orderly thought.

Marion skimmed the page. His face settled into professional gratitude.

“Excellent courtly language,” he said. “I knew Solander employed writers.”

“It is an assessment of fabric crimes.”

“Exactly. It has texture.” Marion tucked the sheets into a leather packet marked HERALD—FINAL—DO NOT IMPROVISE. “You have saved us.”

“I have done the reverse of that.”

But Marion was already striding away, calling over one shoulder, “Courtyard in three minutes. Try to look yearning, both of you.”

Tsubasa’s eyes moved to Kenta with grave deliberation.

“You wrote about my hands.”

“I wrote about a doublet.”

“You wrote that my concentration was a menace.”

“It is. You make labels as though they have disappointed you personally.”

The bell clanged again. Around them, Solander staff drifted toward the covered dais, their woolen costumes darkened at the hems by mud. They wore the fixed cheer of adults who knew attendance had been recorded. A junior editor carried a foam arrow like evidence from a minor crime.

Tsubasa removed his hand from the doorway. “If this is meant to be amusing, Vale—”

“It is not meant to be anything. That is the problem.”

The herald, an adult man with a gilt circlet slipping toward one ear, mounted the dais and raised Marion’s packet. He had the broad, delighted expression of someone whose work had unexpectedly acquired romance and therefore an audience.

“Friends of Brackenmere,” he announced, “and valued guests of Solander Press, behold the opening observance of the Courtly Pairing!”

Kenta made a swift, doomed advance.

The herald began to read.

“‘Behold the keeper of herbs, whose hands conduct their work with such hateful competence that a man might abandon reason and begin cataloguing the movements of each finger—’”

Laughter broke across the courtyard. Not cruel, exactly. Worse: appreciative. The publishing staff, trapped by rain and employment, greeted public embarrassment as a legitimate recreational offering.

The herald continued, warming to his material.

“‘His concentration is irritatingly handsome. His green doublet should be prohibited by municipal ordinance. Any man who can make root vegetables seem like a moral achievement ought to be kept behind glass.’”

Kenta stood very still. He had spent years making readers feel exposed at a safe distance. Apparently the technique worked equally well when aimed backward.

Tsubasa’s face did not alter much. That was one of his more alarming qualities. His gloved hands folded neatly in front of him.

“You arranged this,” he said.

“I did not.”

“You expect me to believe Marion found those pages by accident?”

“Yes. Because Marion is a logistical catastrophe in velvet.”

On the dais, the herald declared, “Thus does Sir Kenta Vale petition the formidable Master Bell for the honor of courtly pursuit!”

A cheer rose from the retreat attendees. Someone from editorial called, “Get him, Kenta!” His supervisor, a man who had rejected Kenta’s last proposal for insufficient hope, applauded with both hands.

Tsubasa turned toward the dais. “Cancel it.”

Marion appeared from behind a painted cardboard tower, clutching a clipboard. “We cannot cancel it.”

“We can,” Kenta said. “Observe.” He lifted one hand toward the crowd. “This has been a misunderstanding—”

Marion caught his wrist with surprising speed. “The retreat package includes the pageant. If it is cancelled, Solander’s fee becomes nonrefundable, and the fair’s winter repairs become an interesting theoretical exercise.”