Viv stashed Excalibur back in the closet as soon as she got home. She didn’t even want to think about fairies. That night she left nothing out for the tomte. The rest of the weekend passed quietly; with Auterre out of town, and Viv simply in the mood to rest and recover, she spent most of her days in her futon bed, watching the tiny TV she’d set up beside the closet. Silk was delighted to have her home and curled up in her lap for hours on end, purring and kneading the blankets. Viv watched bad TV movies and wished her boyfriend was there to distract her. In the night she woke up thrashing from dreams of dragons and drowning.
On Wednesday her cell phone rang as she was at her desk: she saw it was from Auterre and flipped it open furtively.
“Hey babe—I can’t really talk, I’m at work...”
“There you are,” he said, and to her horror she heard his voice coming both from the phone and from over her shoulder. She stood up, looking over the cubicle wall, and there he was, putting his phone away and giving her a rakish grin. Her heart leapt at the same time that her stomach clenched.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she whispered desperately.
“I wanted to surprise you,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. “I missed you.”
She pushed him away. “Please—you have to go—”
But it was too late. Jennifer stood up in the next cubicle, looking purely shocked. “Auterre?”
“Jennifer,” he said warmly. “It’s been a long time.”
“I’m sorry,” Viv said quickly. “I didn’t—I didn’t plan—Auterre, please, can you give us a minute?”
“Of course,” he said. “I’ll wait out in the lobby. It’s nice to see you again, Jen.”
“We’ll talk,” she said, and Viv could not read her tone.
As Auterre loped off Viv stammered: “Jennifer, I’m sorry, I know he’s your ex, I should have told you, I just didn’t know how—”
“It’s fine,” Jennifer said tightly, “Let’s just be professional.”
“Oh, thank you,” Viv began, but Jennifer cut her off.
“Listen, Viveka, as long as we’re being honest, there’s a conversation I’ve been putting off for a very long time and we need to have it.”
Viv swallowed hard. “Okay.”
“It’s about your clothes. What you’re wearing now, Viveka, it looks like you bought it at the Salvation Army.”
It’s Chanel! Viv wanted to protest, but since she had in fact bought the kicky little black skirt in question straight from the Goodwill racks, she could only bite her lip and stare at her toes.
“This business isn’t about fashion,” Jen continued mercilessly, “but we have a certain standard to meet. Our clients are about sophisticated, cutting-edge technologies and that’s the image we have to project. For God’s sake, don’t come in with cat hair on your blouse. And it wouldn’t kill you to buy a pair of shoes that don’t look like a gift from your grandmother.”
“I’m sorry,” Viv said miserably, addressing her words to the stack-heeled leather shoes she had thought so timelessly chic. “I’m sorry, I’m just sorry about everything.”
“Do better, that’s all. Now finish up the Gelatin e-mail. Apparently I need to have a conversation with my ex.”
Viv sat down hard. She stared at the computer screen and listened to the clack of Jennifer’s heels diminish in the distance. She was acutely aware of all the other people listening in the cubicles all around. Eventually Jennifer’s footsteps returned: “I’m sorry, Viveka, but your boyfriend thought it best to go. I told him how busy we are and that you’ve already taken your lunch break today.”
Viv couldn’t bring herself to look up. “That’s fine,” she said tightly. “I didn’t ask him to come here.”
Jennifer answered only with a silent retreat to her own cubicle. After about twenty excruciating minutes Viv managed to focus long enough to bang out the e-mail. Then she sat for several more minutes, until she had gathered enough courage to stand up and walk to the bathroom, spine ramrod straight, eyes fixed directly ahead. Every head in every cubicle turned to look at her as she passed.
She locked herself in a stall and waited until the bathroom was empty to call Auterre. He picked up right away.
“Hello, beautiful.”
“Auterre! What were you thinking!” she hissed.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that awful scene just now.”
“Why does it have to be a scene? Jen seemed friendly enough when we talked.”
“Well, not to me. She’s not going to be friendly to me ever again, probably. Why did you come here! You knew she’s my boss!”
“But I did not know that I was your dirty secret,” Auterre answered, the irritation plain in his voice.
“You’re not a secret—it’s just, just plain courtesy—”
“I don’t want to do this over the phone,” he said. “Can I see you tonight?”
“Yes, all right—crud, no, it’s Wednesday, there’s a meeting I have to go to. How about tomorrow?”
“I can’t tomorrow, I have an interview scheduled back in Sacramento. One last push to get my source on the record. I won’t be back until Friday and then I’ll be writing most of the weekend—one way or another this story is headlining next week’s paper.”
“Friday I’ll be gone anyway,” she told him. “I told Noah I’d go to this thing he has over the weekend; I’ve already put in for the vacation time.”
“So cancel with him and spend the day with me.”
“I can’t. I kind of really owe him.”
“Viv, I have not seen you in almost a week. I miss you. And we need to talk.”
“Okay,” she conceded. “I’ll drop by your place tonight after work. But I won’t be able to stay long.”
“Good,” he said. “And relax. Jen is not a monster. Everything will be fine.”
“I hope so,” she said miserably, and hung up.
She could not stop thinking of Auterre for the rest of the day. She was angry at him for pulling such a thoughtless stunt, but she had also missed him, and even in that brief meeting she had been, as always, electrified by his physical presence. She hid in her cubicle until she heard Jennifer leave for the day, and then she dashed out the door. She made a quick stop by her apartment, then ran to catch the BART.
Auterre met her at the door to his apartment and her anger melted away as he pulled her into a forceful kiss. When he let her go he grinned down at her: “I really did miss you.”
“I really can’t stay,” she said regretfully. “But I don’t want to have a fight. So instead I brought you something. To help with your story.” And she drew Excalibur free and held it out to him, stretched across her upturned palms.
Auterre looked down at it, puzzled. “What is that, a sword? I didn’t even notice you had it.”
“It’s very valuable,” she told him. “I’m not giving it to you, I’m just letting you borrow it. Take it.”
He wrapped his hand around the hilt and lifted it. “It’s heavy,” he noted. “But what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Just keep it with you,” she said. “It’s—I can’t really explain, it’ll sound crazy. It’s like a good-luck talisman. Things will just go your way when you’ve got this with you. It’s especially good for—for cutting through deception, getting to the truth of things. I really think it will help with your story. Just humor me and keep it with you until I see you again.”
He quirked a smile. “All right.”
She stepped back to admire him. He cut a fine figure there in the doorway, tall and slim with shining black eyes, her modern-day knight wielding an ancient sword. “Good luck on your quest,” she said, and before Auterre could laugh at her fancy she leaned in for another kiss.
The Round Table Pizza was a cheery, brightly-lit joint occupied by a few families gathered around aromatic pizza pies, and some loners with their eyes glued to a television mounted in the corner. Viv wandered through the tables, looking for Noah: or, failing that, any group of oddly-dressed people. But none of the gathered patrons seemed either strikingly creative or particularly anachronistic.
Towards the back of the room, she heard voices and laughter drifting down a staircase. She went up, poking her head a little tentatively into the upper room. It was occupied by a long, wide table flanked by benches, upon which two pizzas, several pitchers of beer, and about ten people were gathered. None of them were wearing capes, but the general look of scruffy geekery—T-shirts with obscure slogans, or in a few cases pentagrams; glasses near-ubiquitous; long unkempt hair on the men and women alike—strongly suggested to Viv that she’d found the right place.
“Hi,” she said, venturing farther into the room. “This is the SCA meeting, right? I’m Viv, I’m a friend of Noah’s.”
There were hellos all around, and one of the girls volunteered: “He should be here any minute. Do you want some pizza? We have veggie and the pepperoni combo.”
Viv gratefully accepted a slice, and seated herself on one edge of the bench as the conversations resumed around her. One group was arguing about whether a particular heraldic seal would be considered “couchant” or “sejant,” while another was swapping recipes for bannock cakes. She sat quietly until someone passed her the pitcher of beer. It was running low, so she volunteered to go and buy the next refill.
Downstairs, as she was waiting at the counter for the pitcher to be filled, she caught Noah and Rob just stepping inside.
“Hey,” Viv said, waving them over. “I think they’re just getting started.”
“Cool,” Noah answered. “You remember Rob?”
Noah’s taller, heftier friend smiled at her, and she smiled back. “Hi again.”
They made their way upstairs, Viv carefully balancing the overflowing pitcher of beer. The group that had been arguing heraldry called Noah over to settle their dispute. He looked down at the figure traced on a sheet of paper: “Oh yeah, I see the problem. It’s that paw.”
“It’s sejant, right? To sinister forepaw raised,” insisted one party to the dispute.
Noah shook his head. “No, it just won’t work at all,” he said. “You can’t have a halfway pose like that. I’d just have it stand up and look passant.”
“Noah’s the resident heraldry expert,” Rob confided. “I do calligraphy. Tim over there is in the Brewer’s Guild, Bree is a crier, and those folks on that side of the table do Scottish country dancing.”
Viv topped off her beer and handed the pitcher on. “Who does sword-fighting?” she asked.
“Oh, well, most of us, to some extent. We don’t have any real champions though.”
“I thought Noah was a knight?”
Rob laughed. “He is, but he was knighted for service to the crown. He made our website. I mean, he knows the basics, but I wouldn’t bet on him in a duel.”
Noah lifted his head. “Because the true weapon form of the Middle Ages, the weapon of the people, was the quarterstaff. I will take all comers with a good stout stick.”
There were genial groans all around, and one of the girls protested: “Hey, if we’re talking business, we should get started.”
Bree called the meeting to order, and then they all spent a lot of time talking about the order of the lists, a conversation that Viv tuned out on almost as soon as it began. She focused her attention briefly when she heard her name, but it was just one of Noah’s friends offering to lend her some “garb.” “Sure, thanks,” Viv said, and went back to thinking about her boyfriend.
“I had a cruddy day at work today,” she whispered to Noah during a lull in the proceedings.
“I heard,” he whispered back. “What a drama queen.”
“Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?”
Noah gave her a strange look. “I wasn’t talking about Jennifer,” he said. “I was talking about Auterre.”
Viv sighed. “He didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Like hell he didn’t.”
Viv subsided into silence, and Noah went back to paying attention to the caravanning arrangements. Viv only noticed the meeting was over when everybody stood to leave.
“So you have everything you need, then?” Noah asked her.
“Um, sure,” Viv said. “Just, uh, remind me the day before? Of where I need to be and when?”
He gave her a level look. “You didn’t pay attention to a word, did you?”
“Please,” she said softly. “I really did have a cruddy day.”
He relented. “Me and Rob are picking you up Friday morning at 6 A.M. We got you covered for clothes, food, and water, but you need to bring your own pillow and blanket and clean underwear and stuff like that. And,” he dropped his voice, “—if you want to bring an air mattress nobody will have to know. But for the most part we try to only bring period stuff.”
“Food and water,” Viv repeated worriedly. “You make it sound like prison. There’s not going to be any Cokes, I’m guessing? Can I bring my toothbrush?”
Noah laughed. “If you’re discreet, yes.”
“Bug repellent?”
“Discretion!” Noah said significantly, and put a finger to his lips.
“Discretion is my watchword,” Viv assured him. “And I’m going to be, like, fighting in a duel? And stuff?”
“No, not just fighting,” Noah said—and then he astonished her, by sketching a florid bow there in the middle of the Round Table Pizza. “Lady Viveka the Brave,” he said, “you will be winning.”