On the Beach

Martin helps Folly far enough up the beach that the tide won't submerge them immediately, and the two of them collapse on the sand. It was a very tiring swim, even after the hearty meal and the long sleep that preceded it.

"There'll be somewhere to stay thataway," Martin says, gesturing in the direction of the lights. "We'll walk up after we've rested."

Folly nods; she is still a bit out of breath. She lays a hand lightly on Martin's shoulder to steady herself while she recovers.

After a few hard breaths, her gasps for air become gasps of laughter.

"That," she says, looking at Martin through eyes shining with joy and excitement, "was awesome."

Martin grins. "I'm glad you liked it," he says. "It's my favorite way of getting around. Nothing but me and the water--and you."

Folly smiles.

"Also, conveniently, it breaks your trail against most types of pursuit. Without a trump or sorcery, anyone looking for us will have a hard time figuring out where we've gone. From here we can go to Texorami in the morning."

Folly nods. She scans the beach, and the lights of civilization beyond, taking in the sights and sounds and smells and comparing them to her remembrances of home, working out what is the same and what is different.

"What's tomorrow's mode of transportation?" she asks.

"Car, or the local analogue."

He adds, "You remember offering to sing me there? You're going to have to, because Dad didn't leave me any birds to follow."

"B--?" she begins, but then figures it out. She smiles, a little wistfully, wishing not for the first time that she could've met Martin's grandfather.

"I'll see what I can do," she says. "It's the rhythm, mostly, and the smells are the notes. Sort of like --" She taps out an odd little rhythm against his arm that really does rather feel like ocean and motorway and bustle and electricity all rolled into one. "But with a petrol-and-coffee bass line, and a citrus trumpet, y'know?" She has become very animated, the way she always does when the topic turns to music. "It... well, you'll see."

She settles down again, a little, but she's grinning in anticipation of tomorrow.

Martin has caught the grin bug too.

"Tell me when you're ready, and we'll walk up the beach. We can stay down here a while, if you like. I've kind of had enough of people for a while, personally, but not so much enough I can't handle it if you want to go up now."

Folly stretches, extending her arms slowly out and back and tilting her face to the sky as if to embrace the whole world. "And cut short all this glorious lounging about on the beach? No way!"

Her smile softens, then, and she casts a sidelong glance at Martin. "And anyhow, I could use a little bit of nobody-else-but-us time, too."

Martin scoots a little closer on the sand and turns sideways, ending up with his head on Folly's stomach. "I could use that too. I can't believe it was, what, yesterday-and-a-half ago? that we talked in your room. It seems like it's been months."

"Doesn't it, though?" Folly agrees. She cleans most of the sand from her hand by wiping it against the side of her swimsuit, then commences running her fingers slowly and soothingly through Martin's damp hair.

Martin makes a quiet, probably involuntary, happy noise and his shoulders shiver slightly when Folly touches him. His head tilts to one side so he can look at her; she can see that he's still grinning.

"I'm not sure whether I'd rather we'd been more right or less right about the things we'd talked about, though," she says quietly after a moment. She breathes deeply of the night air and lets it out slowly, not really wanting to spoil their time together by talking of unpleasant things, yet knowing they probably won't have another good chance to talk for some time to come. So she continues, "That Dara could pass so easily as Cambina is... worrisome." Her fingers stray to his shoulder, near the bandage, then return to his hair. "She could've hurt you a lot worse."

Martin's smile flattens a little. "Yeah, that worries me too. I don't think I was the target, though. I don't think Dad was either. I think she was just twisting my tail because she could."

Folly frowns. She doesn't like the implications of that at all.

He continues: "She or one of her buddies ate one of the guards down by the Pattern chamber. My best current theory is that she was going to put the redhead on it, or maybe bleed him. Probably not; Clarissa's still a Queen."

Folly looks a bit puzzled by this statement, but before she can work out a question, Martin continues:

"And the other guy grabbing Brita was just sheer chance, I think."

"Wha--?!" Folly's muscles tense, and she looks wide-eyed at Martin.

"Oh, shit, you didn't even know about that, did you? There was a third guy there and he took Brita, and Dad didn't know where they went."

"He took Brita?!" Folly asks, alarmed. Then, even more alarmed: "He took Brita?!" She blinks. He can't mean by force, surely, Brita would've--

Suddenly she remembers the crash from the side room.

"By himself?" she adds meekly. "Fu-u-uck." This is getting worse and worse. "Was she--- Did she--- Do we know if she's OK?"

"Dad didn't know anything when he was patching me up," Martin says, sounding concerned. "I think it was just the one guy, though. So, yeah, that makes him pretty tough. But Brita's not just tough, she's canny. And even Dara will think twice about crossing Clarissa, not to mention the redheaded sorcerer. I think she'll be fine."

Folly nods, a tiny bit reassured.

By the end of it, he sounds a little reassured too.

He sits up and pulls Folly close. "You know anybody who comes after you has to go through me, right? I won't let anybody hurt you. I promise."

"I know," Folly says, "but that's just it." She rests her head against his chest and wraps her arms around him. "It's not so much me I worry about, love."

Martin's chest rises and falls in a deep breath.

"I try not to worry about things I can't do anything about. I don't know why Dad wanted me to do this, not when there are so many other things I could be doing. Except I know he wants you to Walk afterwards, which means I can't let you get torn up by flying cards or duel with one of our cousins with live steel. I can't do anything for Brita, and I can't do anything for whoever was killed in Dara's attack, and I can't do anything about Aisling and Valeria and any number of other problems I've left back in Amber. What I can do is protect you to the best of my ability, and that's what I'm going to do. The rest of it I'll deal with when I get home."

He drops a kiss into Folly's damp, sandy hair.

Folly's arms tighten around him in a gentle squeeze, and then she draws back far enough to look at him. "Yeah, OK, I get it," she says with a slight smile. "I just wish I could protect you the way you protect me. I -- I guess instead I should just promise not to do anything too stupid, so you'll have less to protect me from." Her smile deepens and she relaxes, leaning back and letting Martin reclaim his resting place on her stomach.

"You do so much for me already that I can hardly ask for more," Martin says, settling down.

When he is settled again, she says, "Clarissa -- you mean, who used to be married to Oberon and is..." Her fingers trace the air as if she's running them along the branches of an invisible family tree. "...Brita's grandmother?"

"Yes," Martin says. "She's Dara's aunt, and Aisling's too. As much as those terms have meaning on the far side of Ygg, anyway."

Folly ponders that, and her eyes widen. "So, wait, you mean she's a Chaosite? And she's still around?"

She ponders a bit more, and blinks. "And she's descended from her ex-husband?"

She doesn't sound alarmed, really, just amazed.

"Yes, yes, and yes," says Martin. "Suddenly Eric's plan to marry me to Cambina sounds that much less strange, huh?"

Folly lets out a snort of laughter. "Oh, why doesn't that surprise me? And I never even knew Eric."

"You know Jerod and Cambina, though. 'Nuff said."

Folly can feel rather than hear his own laughter.

She grins and resumes stroking his hair.

He lets her do that for a while. At about the point when Folly thinks she's ready to drop off to sleep, he says, "Folly? .... Did I tell you about Valeria asking me to marry her?"

Folly is very quiet and very still -- so much so that Martin may suspect she actually has fallen asleep -- but just as he is about to give up on getting an answer, Folly says, "I think I'd rather you married Cambina."

"That," Martin responds firmly, "is not on the cards."

Folly props her head on her hand, in part to rouse her sleepy mind and in part so that she can more easily look at Martin. "You think she thought of it all on her own?" she asks, trying to keep her tone light but not quite succeeding.

"Quite possibly. I think it's an internal Rebman power play of some sort, because Valeria doesn't seem to put much stock in my interest in Amber, or my father. Jerod says our grandmother has taken in a ward from one of the Seaward kingdoms, and my best guess at the moment is that Valeria wants to get her bid for my hand in first. It was a very generous offer, too. I can keep you if I like, but I have to reserve children to Valeria."

Folly doesn't say anything, but the rhythm of her fingers against his scalp falters for a moment.

He smiles, but the moonlight washes away the kindness in it and leaves only a little bitter humor. "It's funny. There was a time when I would have given just about anything for so much influence in Rebma as she offered me. And now that I have it all--Rebma and Amber, an embarrassment of riches--I find I don't want any of it."

"I sorta know what you mean, sweetheart," Folly replies. "I grew up wealthy and famous, the things everyone else seemed to struggle so desperately to become; but the thing I wanted to be most desperately was no-one-in-particular." She smiles wryly. "Fine job I'm doing, huh?"

Folly falls silent for a moment, thinking. "I've heard you say before that your marriage is a 'matter of state'. How much say do you feel you have over who -- or whether -- you marry? At least some, I guess, if Valeria is making her case to you rather than to your grandmother."

It is completely obvious to Martin that at least part of what she's asking is, "Could you tell them all to fuck off, if you wanted to?"

Martin rolls half over toward Folly. His gaze meets hers with a surprising and sudden intensity. "I will marry for love or not at all," he says with absolute conviction.

Folly lets out a soft involuntary gasp; her heart is pounding, suddenly. She draws her fingers slowly through his hair, along his cheek, to his mouth, and touches his lips softly with her fingertips.

"Don't say that too loudly, my love," she says, "lest Fate decide to prove you wrong."

"She and I are old adversaries, and I'm still here casting despite in her teeth," Martin says, and his voice has gone a little lighter, but still carries a little too much intensity. "Besides--" and then he cuts that line of thought, whatever it was, cleanly off.

He reaches up and takes Folly's hand in his own. "To answer your question, in theory my father and my grandmother should approve my marriage, since I'm a potential heir to both thrones. In practice, I've walked the Pattern and it's damned hard to compel me to do anything I don't want to do." He smiles grimly.

"Unless you think it's the right thing to do," Folly reminds him with a grim smile of her own. Her fingers tighten around his, gently but firmly.

"But," she adds, and a twinkle creeps into her eyes, "I shall take comfort in supposing that Valeria does not fall into that category."

Martin grins broadly for a moment, then says in a perfectly deadpan voice, "No, Valeria's absolutely not the right thing for me to do."

His expression shifts a little then, as if he's considering whether or not to say something.

Folly offers him a gentle smile of encouragement, but remains silent.

After the space of a few breaths, Martin says hesitantly, "But ... that's what Paige got so mad about ... you know?"

Folly's brows draw together quizzically. She can think of several things he could mean by that. "That she couldn't -- didn't -- compel you, at least not quite the way she hoped?" she ventures.

He shakes his head once, and his eyes slide away from hers. Folly can feel the tension in his body where he's touching her. "Third parties," he finally says.

Folly's first response is immediate and physical: she shifts and relaxes slightly under him, almost as if trying to absorb some of his tension.

The verbal response takes a bit longer, though, for she has to force all the things she wants to say to queue up and wait their turn.

After a moment, she lifts his hand in hers almost to eye level. "This," she says, her voice low but full of its own intensity, "is real, and nobody but we two can change that. Rightly or wrongly, I believe that to my very core."

Some of the tension starts to drain out of Martin at her words.

"We're neither of us naturally monogamous people, and yet.... There is something here that I haven't found anywhere else I've looked. So I can afford not to be jealous, because I know nothing else is this." Her fingers tighten around his, and she gazes at him in joy and awe and wonder and also maybe a little bit of fear, like an adventurer contemplating new and exciting but unexplored and possibly dangerous territory.

Martin's eyes lock with hers, and he breathes, "Yes." His fingers tighten around hers.

He adds, slowly. "It's just--I don't want to make you unhappy. If I thought you were unhappy because of something I did, I don't know what I'd do. There's no other woman I want as much as I want to make you happy. And it doesn't bother me about Ever, and it only bothers me a little about Paige, not enough for me to really worry about. And it's why I think I'll get through it when you sleep with Dad again. But I want to be sure that nothing I'm doing upsets you the way Paige got crazy about Violet. Do you see?"

Folly gives a slight nod, but her mind is grappling with a tumble of thoughts and conflicting emotions.

With his thumb, he slowly strokes the back of her hand. Then he slides his hand free of hers and reaches up to touch the corner of her lips with one finger.

Folly shivers; her lips part slightly, reflexively, and she half-closes her eyes. For a moment all other thought is abandoned as she concentrates the entire force of her will on not letting herself go any further.

God, but she wants to, though. She exhales slowly; her breath is warm against Martin's hand.

But, wait, weren't they talking about something?

Folly forces her mind back onto the topic at hand -- no, not the hand she longs to taste, but the other one -- and opens her eyes again, slowly.

When her thoughts finally order themselves, she responds, "Your father said something to me about how he sometimes thinks 'we' should keep 'them' at arm's length, for their own protection. And I sort of knew what he meant. It's why I'm not actually sleeping with Ever." She pauses and looks at Martin. "It's why I feel kind of like a shit for what we're about to drag Soren into, even if --" She cuts that line of thought off with a slight shake of her head, for it is too complex a subject to interject into the middle of this one.

Martin nods once.

She continues, "That, if anything, is what concerns me about your relationship with Violet. It doesn't make me unhappy, I just...." She pauses again, trying to figure out how best to put it, for she is not entirely sure she has her finger on it yet herself. "I'd hate to see anyone get hurt, y'know? I've heard the rumors -- about how she gave up all her other clients not because she could afford to, but because she's in love with you. And I believe them, of course, because who wouldn't fall in love with you?" She flashes a smile that becomes a chuckle as she finally wraps her head around the issue.

"Right, okay, apparently the thing I'm worried about is that I'm going to make your mistress unhappy."

Martin chuckles quietly as he sits up. "I knew you were going to say something like that. She'll live with it. She knew when we took up together that I had other liaisons. I'm just glad you don't want me to get rid of her. It would be an immense blow to her prestige if I did that now, as if she weren't good enough to be the mistress of a Prince. And I had already told her I wanted to move her out of Red Mill, into a place of her own. Not only would a home of her own be nicer for her and more appropriate for the king's only son, it'll be cheaper for me once I pay off her contract." He quirks a bit of a grin at that last as he shifts to find a balance point that doesn't involve an elbow in Folly's belly.

Folly smiles and adjusts her own position slightly to help them both get more comfortable.

"But anyway, apart from my obligations to Violet, I am genuinely fond of her. Just like you're genuinely fond of Ever. I'm kind of sorry that you're not sleeping with him, because everybody thinks you are anyway."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Folly interjects with a smirk and a comical eye-roll.

"And you and Dad are both genuinely fond of Soren, and maybe I will be too; I just don't know him yet."

"He's a good guy," Folly says. She seems about to add more, but instead she just smiles a melancholy smile.

Martin strokes her face again with his thumb as he speaks. "You say you feel guilty about dragging Soren into things, but what happens if you cut yourself off, Folly? What happens if you stop relating to other people because you're scared telling them the truth about you? I tried that, and it didn't work. If you lie about who and what you are all the time, it begins to tell on you. That's why Dad really needs Soren, not this bard thing. He needs someone whom he can trust implicitly, who'll watch his back, and who he doesn't have to lie to about all the shit he has to lie to the rest of the family about. If you don't have people like that, you go mad. So it's a risk, loving people, but it's a necessary one.

"Does that make sense?"

Folly closes her eyes and tilts her cheek softly against Martin's hand. "Yeah, but wouldn't it be nice if I loved a less complicated collection of people?" she asks quietly.

When she opens her eyes again, Martin can see unfallen tears glittering in her lashes.

Martin sits up at once and pulls Folly into his arms, letting her bury her face in either his shoulder or his salt-stained shirt, whichever seems right to her.

She leans against his shoulder and slides her arms around him. She is trembling.

After a long moment and a couple of deep breaths, she continues: "I should tell you -- about your father, that... that... I don't know. I really wish I could tell you you're wrong, that I'm not gonna sleep with him, because I know it would be really fucking stupid for a whole bunch of reasons, not least of which is that it would hurt you. But I don't know. If he came to me with his need, I would probably meet it. But I don't know if he will, especially after I...."

She trails off and lets out a melancholy sigh. "I - I'm not even sure what I'm going to tell him -- except that I love you -- when I finally have a chance to talk to him about it. I sort of knew, before, but then all this King shit happened and it kind of threw me for a loop."

Martin pets Folly's damp, sandy hair, saying nothing, for a moment, then says, "Yeah, it kind of threw me for a loop too. It makes things public and dangerous in a way I don't like, and it means what you and I do, and what you and he do, have a lot of political ramifications."

Against his shoulder, Martin feels Folly nod her heartfelt agreement.

"It's one of the many reasons Aisling sniffing around you pisses me off so much. What if she'd blown us publicly? We need to tell Dad about us, not her."

His rising tone of concern and anger falters, then. "I mean, whatever you're gonna tell him."

His chest rises and falls as he lets out a long breath, and he pets her hair again. "I mean, I know you're gonna sleep with him again. And I'm probably gonna sleep with Paige again." A definite sigh follows that sentence.

Folly's arms tighten around him comfortingly. Yeah, okay, she thinks, he definitely gets the bloody-stupid-but-inevitable part. Forever is a long time.

Martin continues: "I guess what I want is for him not to ask you, and that's not ... asking you doesn't do any good. And it's not something I can talk to him about, y'know?"

Folly remains within the comfort of Martin's arms, but sits up so that she can look at him. "Hell, I'm not even sure I can, and I have to," she says.

She withdraws one hand from around his waist and reaches up to touch his face, tracing his jawline with her fingertips. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. I really didn't want to come between you two."

Folly feels the muscles move in Martin's face as he offers her a tentative smile. "It's not your fault. If there weren't so much room between us, none of the people who are in there would fit."

A slight smile quirks the corners of Folly's lips and she runs her fingers through his hair. Her eyes speak of comfort and reassurance; her mouth, though, can't seem to come up with the right words.

So instead she leans forward and lays a tender kiss on Martin's cheek.

Martin closes his eyes and accepts the kiss, unmoving. After Folly pulls back, he shifts his weight to one side, unzips the pocket of his trunks, and fishes out the sealed packet containing their Trumps. He slides his other arm from around her back and opens the packet, feeling around inside it with his fingers.

After a moment, he pulls out a familiar black cord and offers it, and the stone that hangs from it, to Folly.

For a moment, she just stares at it hanging there, glinting in the moonlight, all the things it once stood for now turned on their heads.

No, not quite all....

She reaches out and closes her fingers around the stone, so familiar to her that she could recognize it by touch alone. "Thanks," she murmurs as she takes it from him and slips on it over her head.

"You're welcome," Martin says, and then shrugs, a little helplessly, as if he doesn't quite know what else to say about that.

Folly stares at the stone for a moment more before tucking it into the top of her swimsuit. Then she looks at Martin and grins. "Funny, isn't it? You hand me something rock-hard, and it reminds me I'm not s'posed to have sex with you yet."

Martin gets a big goofy grin, and leans forward a little, looking downward. Then he looks up at Folly through his long wet bangs, which he does not shove out of his face, for a change.

Folly laughs and runs her fingers through her hair, knocking some of the sand out. Her expression grows pensive as her mind wanders down a tangent.

"So, um, as long as we're talking about potential relationship roadblocks," she ventures, a bit hesitantly, "-- Do you want kids?"

Martin's own expression grows pensive, and he looks down. After a moment, he says quietly, "Yeah." He looks back up at Folly tentatively. His gaze grows intense again, and he says, "I want to sire your daughters." Then he drops his eyes again and flushes slightly.

Folly's eyes grow wide, and she bites her bottom lip and looks away.

But she is smiling. Overwhelmed, perhaps; surprised by the strength of his response, certainly; but she is bursting with joy at the unexpected rightness of it.

After a moment of trying to find her breath again, she returns her gaze to Martin. Limned in moonlight, he seems almost unreal -- or perhaps so much more real than everything around him that he stands out in contrast.

"You're going to be a wonderful father," she says at last. "Even if we have boys instead."

Martin is peeking through his bangs, watching her reaction. He lets out a slow breath he probably didn't know he was holding in sort of a relieved half-laugh, and as he does so the wide grin returns.

"I like to think I did all right with Merle," he confesses.

"Yeah, definitely," Folly agrees. "Merle grew up in madness, and yet seems to have come out sweet and likable and caring and courteous -- and, having now encountered his mother, I sort of doubt he got those qualities from her."

Martin leans forward, still grinning, and cocks his head to one side, shrugging.

She smirks, then grows pensive once again.

"You know, on the one hand I think we're completely insane -- I mean, how can we possibly think it's a good idea to bring more kids into this fucked-up family, this skewed universe? But on the other hand...."

Folly reaches out to stroke Martin's cheek with the back of her finger. "On the other hand, I love you. I love you so much that our two bodies can't possibly contain it all. How could a child born of that kind of love -- and not out of schemes or politics or power plays -- be anything but a blessing?"

Martin's grin doesn't exactly fade: his lips are less curved upward, but the smile is still in his eyes. "Yeah," he says, as if it's the only thing he could quite manage to think of to say.

"I'm kind of glad we have to wait, because I'm not sure I could keep you from catching if we made love right now. I mean, what you said about not being able to keep it all in. You know?"

Folly smiles. "Sort of, yeah, but only in outline form. I know we're supposed to have some control over it, but I don't really know how it works."

"You're gonna know really soon. As soon as we're done with this thing in Texorami and whatever Dad wants us to do right afterward, I'm taking you to Paris. I told him we ought to ditch this Texorami deal and go with Corwin, but he wasn't having any." Martin frowns. "I think he's going back up to the other Pattern, to do what Fiona couldn't. I think he wants you to walk there."

Martin's frown subsides and he pushes his hair out of his face. "I'm worried about him, you know?" He meets Folly's gaze to be sure she does.

She nods. She's more than a little worried herself.

"Anyway, about the other thing, I kind of can't explain it, other than to say it's kind of like the wanting is a tune running on the 23rd track of your mind at a level you almost can hear but not quite. And it sort of doesn't matter anyway, because nobody ever caught a baby from me all the years I lived in Rebma and I didn't sleep alone much. Family history suggests we're not that fertile. Which is a good thing, because we can't manipulate probabilities near a Pattern. Once Dad fixes things in Amber, we'll be chancing it every time. I kind of think we should wait a few decades before we have any kids to be sure you're all grown up and everything, but if you don't want to we can do it now. Well, for values of now that equal real soon, anyway."

Martin trails off, uncertain of what to say next.

"No, no, I'm not in any rush," Folly says, a bit hastily. "I mean," she adds in more even tones, "I sort of think we should, y'know, date first." She grins.

In a more serious tone, she continues, "I like the idea of at least a few years of settling into being a couple first -- I mean, a couple that... couples, y'know?" She flashes another grin. "Not to mention letting things settle down a little in Amber -- and, yes, maybe letting me grow up a little more. But on the other hand...."

She pauses thoughtfully. "If we oops before then, I... I think I'll be okay with it. Once the initial shock wears off, that is."

"I was more worried about physically," says Martin. He touches her cheek. "For an Amberite you're very young. I wouldn't want to mess up your innards by getting you pregnant too young."

"Oh --" Folly blinks. Then, "Oh," she says again, looking wide-eyed and a little helpless as she grasps the implications.

Folly falls silent. Her mind wanders back to the Pattern -- or, more accurately, Patterns. After a long moment, she asks, tentatively, "Do you think it would be better for me to walk the Paris Pattern than the other one?"

Martin reaches up and holds out a strand of sticky salt-dried hair. "See this? It's blond, not red. I don't know. I guess it depends on the shape of the Pattern. I mean, I know what shape I left it in the last time I was there," and he tries to hold a smile through it but doesn't succeed, "but I think that's all supposed to be cleaned up now, right? Best guess is it doesn't matter so much, but I could be wrong."

Folly shivers and leans closer to Martin for mutual warmth and comfort. "I was just thinking -- S--... your father said something to me before, about walking the Pattern -- this was before Fiona had come back -- that he thought he could draw me a better hand. I don't know what he's up to -- but I do know that I trust him a hell of a lot more than I trust Corwin."

"I hear that," says Martin, petting Folly's hair again as he speaks. "But if that's the only Pattern we've got, it's the one we use. If the Rebman Pattern is still intact, I could get us in there. Maybe." He nibbles on the inside of his lower lip thoughtfully.

Folly looks into Martin's eyes and says firmly, "Only as an absolute last resort. Unless you're actually in the mood to go back to Rebma, that is." The thought of Martin returning to Rebma seems to frighten her a little.

"Yeah, on a dry day," Martin says querulously. He's stopped petting Folly. "I have to go back there sometime, but I'd rather it weren't today."

Folly nods but doesn't say anything.

After a moment, he adds, "You can call him Syd. It's OK."

Folly sighs. "Is it? I don't know. I'm not sure what to call him anymore. Just about anything is better than 'Uncle', though, I guess."

Martin shrugs. "People will ask you about the Syd thing, so maybe it's not so good. But it's OK with me. I'm not gonna freak if you want to talk about it." The comment sounds more prescriptive than descriptive. "Although I would appreciate not knowing all the details. I mean, I'll tell you anything you want to know about me, because I trust you, but I don't really like to talk about that kind of thing. And I'd just as soon not hear about it from you, unless there's a reason. You know?"

"Yeah, I... uh, yeah," Folly replies, deciding to leave it at that. "I'll try not to make with the TMI."

"I know," Martin says. "But I kind of needed to say it. I'm not very good at talking about, you know, stuff. But I know you won't hold it against me if I say something stupid, like I kind of just did."

Folly regards him with a lopsided, affectionate grin.

She shivers again, this time probably from the cool night breezes off the ocean rather than from any emotional response. She rubs her upper arms to get rid of the gooseflesh.

Martin gathers her close to share body heat. "We can go up to where the people are if you're cold," he says, a bit of reluctance creeping into his voice.

Folly considers that option... for about a millisecond. "Nah, this is better," she says, snuggling into his arms. "And anyhow, maybe the cold will encourage me to keep my clothes on, y'know?" she adds, grinning impishly.

Martin grins back. "As long as snuggling up like this doesn't encourage you to take them off--too much, anyway."

Folly makes a quiet, happy noise of assent. She is still grinning.

After a moment, he adds, "Besides, every step further down the road is one more step to sharing you with everybody else. I'm selfish. I want you all to myself for a while."

"Tonight I'm all yours," she replies. A relaxed, drowsy tone has crept into her voice. "Maybe we should just camp on the beach -- it's been ages since I've done that."

"Maybe. I don't know how much sleep I'm likely to get, though. I've got a lot on my mind. This knighthood thing, the duel, the mess in Rebma--it's not enough to make me not want to go back, but I'm not sorry to have a few days to sort through it before I have to do anything. You know?"

Folly's brow wrinkles in a sympathetic look, and she nods.

He draws Folly even closer. "I don't know if you know how much you help me with that stuff just by being here. Sometimes when I'm all tense, just holding you makes me relax. I think that'll help me, even if you're asleep."

She holds him close, running her hands soothingly up and down his back. "And I think I've still got a little more awake-time in me, if you're in the mood to talk out any of it before then...."

Martin leans into her, making little happy noises as her palms slide over the muscles of his back.

Her mind plays back over the topics he mentioned. "'Duel'...?" she starts to ask, but then her muscles tense. "-- Shit, you're talking about Aisling, aren't you?"

Martin pulls back a little, enough to meet Folly's gaze. "Yeah, it's a mess," he says, not particularly pleased. "Since I already know one of the things I need to do with the new order is fix Dad's screwup in not honoring the members of the Regency Council, it's going to suck if the first encounter between the two orders ends on the field of honor. Don't worry, though. It'll probably only be to first blood. I won't hurt Aisling too badly."

"How long are you willing to wait for an apology, before you go through with it?" Folly asks, brow furrowed. What she means, of course, is _If she doesn't offer you an apology immediately upon your return to Amber, I'll talk to her._

It doesn't even occur to her to question that Martin would win, despite his little souvenir from the sparring match with Lilly.

Martin shakes his head, more in answer to the unspoken comment than to her words. "I need you to stay clear of this. Aisling can't apologize and neither can I. If Aisling apologizes, it effectively admits that it was spying on me, and it can't have that. If I apologize, I effectively give it free license to snoop around, and I can't have that. If Aisling simply takes the pounding I'm going to give it as an etiquette lesson and behaves better in the future, we'll all be better off."

It's the first time Martin has spoken of Aisling in Folly's presence that he hasn't hesitated over the pronouns.

Folly's brow furrows slightly at his choice of pronoun, as if it makes her a little uncomfortable; but she doesn't otherwise object.

At his assessment of the situation, she presses her lips together in a thin line, sighs, and nods. She doesn't like it, but she gets it. "I -- I just hope it doesn't spark a new round of family in-fighting, y'know? It'd be --"

Martin nods. "Suck," he finishes her thought for her.

Something else he said finally clicks. "Wait, you're not planning to knight the whole Regency Council, are you?" she asks, sounding a little overwhelmed.

He grins widely again and leans forward. "Why yes, I am, Dame Folly", he says, rubbing noses with her as he says her name.

Folly's eyes widen. "But -- but that's...." She blinks. She doesn't really feel like Knight material, no matter which way she tries to look at it. She looks into Martin's eyes as if searching for an anchor.

Pulling away far enough that they can see each other's faces, Martin adds, "You all deserve a knighthood for the work you did keeping the kingdom together. Dad's an idiot to have honored one set of nephews and nieces but not the other. It'll do nothing but breed resentment. This will be an easy way to fix that. So you're just going to have to suck it up and be a Knight as well as a Lady."

Folly smirks and raises an eyebrow in a way that suggests she'd really rather be neither. "'Be a Lady.' 'Suck it up.'" She grins wickedly. "Not often one hears both of those in the same sentence...."

He adds, "I think that one of the duties of Card should be defense of the monarch's person, given the circumstances of the founding, so I can make Lilly an honorary member. That ought to help convince the Ruby people that my annoyance is limited to Aisling."

Folly nods slowly, thinking. "Yeah. Yeah. Defense of the monarch -- I can handle that." She still sounds a little like she's trying to convince herself.

But, "Yeah, it seems like a good, fair solution," she says, more resolutely, after a moment. "Maybe you're right, maybe there would be resentment otherwise. I don't know. I, uh, I didn't especially feel slighted, though. I mean, 'Congratulations on being responsible! Here, have some more responsibility!' I'd've been happy with, I dunno, a nice vacation or something. Lounging on the beach under the moonlight."

She looks at Martin and grins. "I think I'm babbling now." She is starting to look very tired.

"You look it. I should take you up there," Martin gestures vaguely in the direction of civilization, "and find you a nice soft bed to sleep in. Or make a nice sand pillow for you or something."

"Mmmm. Sand pillow." Folly smiles fondly at Martin and then looks up and down the beach. Realizing that they're still inside the high-tide mark, she adds, pointing to the softer sand outside the range of the water, "But... up there."

She lets Martin give her a hand up, and together they walk about fifty paces farther from the water. Folly spots a dark splotch that turns out to be an abandoned beach blanket, quite serviceable once they've shaken the sand out. She suspects Martin had something to do with its existence.

Martin says nothing, but he might look a touch smug.

They settle onto the blanket, and within moments all the worries of the day seem to melt away. Folly lets out a contented sigh and snuggles up to Martin, being careful of his injured shoulder.

She is halfway to sleep when she asks in a low, drowsy voice, "Do you believe in the Unicorn?"

"I'm not quite sure what you mean," Martin says, his brow furrowing slightly. "'Believe in' implies faith without proof. There are enough eyewitnesses to what happened at the Abyss that 'without proof' wouldn't seem to apply."

He shifts slightly to make himself, or perhaps her, more comfortable. "Or do you mean something else?"

"Mmmm." Folly thinks a minute, her eyes half-closed. "I mean, your father is in charge because a mythical beast handed him a shiny rock. Doesn't that seem kind of.... I mean, not just that it happened, which is freaky all on its own, but that everyone seems to be okay with it?"

"If I were cynical, I'd say that everyone was so glad they didn't have to be King that they were perfectly willing to let Dad have the job," Martin says with sort of a half-chuckle. "But it is a pretty powerful rock. It lets you change the weather, I mean really change the weather, and you can shoot red lightning with it, and who knows what else. They say Dad held off that black storm with it, the one you and I almost got caught in."

He pauses a moment to let that sink in.

Folly's eyes widen in awe. She shivers a little at the memory.

"So the rock's nothing to sneeze at. And if the Unicorn fetched it out of the Abyss, she's pretty powerful too. And Merle says Grandfather said something about the succession being on the horn of the Unicorn, so I guess I'm not surprised that everybody was willing to let him have the rock on her recommendation."

Folly nods. After a minute of quiet rumination, she says, "Yeah, okay, that makes sense, but.... Well, if I were cynical...."

She puts on a comical gangster-type voice. "'Well, Louie, those Amberites kicked our asses on the field, but I've got a way to get 'em back. Go shapeshift yourself into -- uh... come to think of it, they don't actually trust anything, do they?

"'Hey, I got it -- they got this thing for Unicorns, see, so you shapeshift into one a' those, and you go get the rock, and you give it to the kid. That'll fuck 'em up for a while.'" She smiles wryly.

"Not that I actually think it happened anything like that," she adds in her normal voice. "And not that it really makes a difference to me -- I mean, he'd've had my loyalty no matter who ended up with the rock. I'm just sayin'."

"Yeah, I know," Martin says. She can feel as much as hear his voice as she curls against his body.

"But there are a few things that militate against that explanation. First, that would require them to know who was a 'bad candidate'. Not that I'm sure any candidate the family would have supported would be a bad candidate, and not that I think they'd have done anything but line up behind anyone who could reasonably be considered a consensus candidate. Besides, if they'd wanted to pick a real loser, they'd have gone for Llew or Flora. After all, they're neither interested or fit." The tone of the last sentence can only be described as sarcastic.

The corner of Folly's mouth quirks upward into a wry smile.

"And the Unicorn thing, for them to really get it, they'd have to have a real expert in Amber manners on the spot. Clarissa would count, but I don't get the feeling she was there. Ditto for Dara, and Clarissa probably trained her. Borel was dead by then. And, of course, there was Madoc, who may have had the knowledge from a little birdie but, of course, wasn't really allied with Dara.

"Last, but not least, I don't know whether anything has come out of the Abyss before. So 'go get it' may not have been a viable plan. So," he says, and leaves it at that.

"Mmmm," Folly says again in sleepy acknowledgement. Martin's words seem to have had a calming effect on her, for she is now very relaxed. Barely stifling a yawn, she continues, "Good to know, I suppose. Powerful beastie, probably on our side."

It isn't at all clear which subset of people the 'our' refers to.

She indulges in a languid stretch, letting her body's instincts take over as she settles into a comfortable, secure position for sleep. Absently, reflexively, her legs entwine with Martin's, and she yawns deeply. As she exhales, she murmurs:

"But I thought... unicorns liked...."

She is asleep before she finishes the thought.