((For clarification, part of this post references events resulting from stuff happening in The Hunt is On - To Catch a Shade, an ongoing RP in which a gang of outcasts band together to fight a creature from another world, but less like Stranger Things than it sounds. To summarize the referenced section, something very ugly concealing something very pretty brings about a sunrise in the Neath, for but a brief few moments. It’s an excellent RP.))
Elton Grim.
In Search of Knights.
He flips the card over, checking it a third time for anything on the back though he knows there isn’t.
Just those words.
On the ride back from the palace, the entire night at home, the second he awoke, on the carriage ride here, he’s been looking it over, reading it, fingering it, turning it over and over between his index and thumb absentmindedly.
Elton Grim.
In Search of Knights.
Well, he qualifies.
The estate isn’t particularly distinct. A mansion, to be sure, and the proud home of a rich man, but there is nothing to suggest this is the home of the founder of Grim Vineyards, nor the leader of some Order. It is white, brick, in a warm and inviting style not unlike the Americans use - Thomas supposes you wouldn’t want the house of a sommelier to be too cold or harsh.
He looks back down at the card.
He is still looking at it when the door opens.
“Are you getting cold?”
Thomas looks up.
A young man stands in the doorway, his appearance not unlike Thomas’. His hair is a touch messy, his eyes look out from behind spectacles, and he lacks the Royal Navy’s formal uniform (Thomas felt he shouldn’t arrive under-dressed), but, were they both attending the University, the two would not have stood out from other determined, fit youths of the rugby teams. He does not look exceptionally rich, nor injured in any way, yet carries a cane.
One with a lion’s head.
“You’ve been standing out here for some time,” he says, “Were you planning on ever knocking?”
Thomas is wordless for a moment, then shakes himself from his revery.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “Lost in my thoughts. I’m-”
“Sir Thomas Sketch,” the man replies, grinning, “The uniform gave it away. Do you wear that all the time? Grim said you were wearing it when you saw him, too. It looks spiffy, I must admit.”
“Thank you,” Thomas replies, “The Admiralty would rather I slept in it.”
“I’m sure.”
“Oh, um, Mr. Grim gave me this,” Thomas says, and extends the card.
“A formality,” the young man replies, taking it and tucking it back in Thomas’ breast pocket, “We’ve been expecting you. Burn it when you get home, though. We keep things hush-hush. Come in.”
The young man closes the door behind Thomas as the bluejacket steps over the threshold into a large parlor. A fireplace crackles gently before a table lined in tea saucers, all the cups drained and containing extinguished butts.
“I’ll fetch Grim. The name’s William, by the way,” the young man says, extending a hand.
Thomas takes it, thanking him and sitting by the fireplace as William strolls out of one of the parlor’s doors. The seaman’s hand convulses in the air for a second before realizing it is no longer holding the card. He feels the sudden longing for a cigarette and wonders if it would be impolite to light one now - the previous residents of the table were certainly smokers.
A moment of hesitation.
Hell with it - he reaches for his back pocket and finds a lit Gypsy Queen between his lips quicker than a gunslinger.
Never be afraid, those were the words.
He was dead, Thomas was grown, but those were still the words, seared somewhere on Thomas’ heart. The carbon burn of cigarette smoke always made them a little louder; no better cure for anxiety than some of the heaviest words a father could ever speak to his son.
The zailor doesn’t have to wait long; after a few moments of steeling his nerves, he hears the creak of a door interrupt the porcelain quiet of the room and William is back, hands dug in his pockets and a grin carved on his face.
Thomas rises from his seat, hastily extinguishing the cigarette in one of the teacups.
“Sir Thomas Sketch, you’ve been summoned by the Throne. Come along.”
One knight follows another.
In a room of red and gold, fourteen men wait for Thomas Sketch in a half-circle; they close around him as he steps in the center.
In a room of red and gold, The Boar is holding a cane topped with the head of a lion, and from it he draws a blade.
“Are you ready, Sir Thomas?”
Never-be-afraid.
“I am.”
In a room of red and gold, The Boar smiles, and gives Thomas Sketch a sword with the hilt of a lion’s head.
“Who are you, Sir Thomas?”
“Sir Thomas Sketch, son of Charles Sketch and Daniel Rye.”
“You hold a sword in your hands, Sir Thomas. Who are you?”
The words.
In a room of red and gold, a knight with a name to restore says, “I, Sir Thomas Sketch, am hereby a Knight of the Order.”
“Then kneel.”
In a room of red and gold, for the second time in his life, Thomas Sketch kneels, and The Boar takes the blade from his hands.
One by one, the Knights of the Order tap the zailor against the neck with the same sword, the circle revolving, til finally the Boar stands before Thomas Sketch again.
“Look up, and give me your hands.”
The Boar sheathes the sword within the cane again, and places it within Thomas’ hands.
From behind, the zailor feels something warm, soft, drape against his back - fur tickles his neck and cheeks.
“You will keep safe that which is safe, and that which is a threat at bay, will you not?”
“I will.”
“Then rise.”
Thomas Sketch stands, and in a room of red and gold, the Boar makes him a promise.
“Your name will be restored, Sir Thomas Sketch.”
Thomas runs his thumb along the cane’s top - the lion.
Steel, carefully carved and freshly forged. It gleams in the light coming from the mansion windows, an open maw of steel teeth shining back at Thomas.
The Navy uniform is hidden beneath a fur overcoat, a soft mane about the top warming Thomas’ neck. For a coat, it is oddly heavy, and Thomas suspects it is reinforced - it protects him from the chill of the evening. If it were the Surface, the sun would have set by now, though it would have been up when Thomas entered the mansion.
After the short ceremony, a celebration followed. The fourteen- correction, fifteen- filed out into a dining room. Cigarettes, liquor, conversation - it wasn’t unlike one would expect a party of Grim’s to be, save that there were only fifteen people and all carried oak canes with a lionhead top. Entering the room in a daze, visions of red and gold still dancing before his eyes, Thomas had stuck to himself for most of the celebrations. The other knights didn’t seem to mind - they talked happily amongst themselves, a large cast of men and women mostly young, fit folk, but amongst their numbers two Drownies and three Tomb Colonists. Thomas watched the Order blearily from the couch by the fireplace, a glass of chardonnay in his hand and the warmth of the fire against his side. The eyes, there was their similarity, what bound the Drownies and the Tomb Colonists with the rugby players and rough-and-tumble men and women. An intensity - a quest. It shone as brightly in their eyes as the fire against the polish of their canes, as the sword had shone in that red and gold room only a few moments before.
He had spent the rest of the evening like this, in thought, staring into the fireplace with a bottle on the table and a glass in his hands, til William had strolled over and sat down next to him, lighting a cigarette.
“What’s going through your head?” he asked after a few minutes.
The initiate appeared to struggle for words for a moment, then paused.
“I know the general promise, ‘keep safe what is safe’ and all that, but what do you lot do most days? What do Knights of the Order do?”
“Most times?” William asked, “Help one another with our ambitions. We’re a rum lot, but we’re all quite ambitious. Grim’s plans to get in Parliament. Terrence’s vigilante business. Oliver’s wedding; that’ll be a blast - you’re invited, by the by, all the knights are. Occasionally the ambitions of outsiders we deem worthy or necessary - politicians, scientists, explorers; all those important people we help make an impact to help us make an impact. And, when the need arises, and it often does, answer the Call to keep what is safe safe and that which threatens what is safe at bay. Do you get how I mean now?”
A moment of silence.
“Yes, I think I do.”
“And it’s not ‘you lot’ anymore. You’re one of us. You took the oath, you’ve got the sword. And the nice coat, to boot. We don’t wear those all the time, by the way, only when it’s cold or we’re going into battle.”
“Into battle?”
William winked.
“That’s the part where all this gets exciting,” he had said.
Thomas grins, now, as he looks at the lionshead, alone on the front porch of Grim’s mansion.
Chardonnay buzzes in his head and something like the future swirls in - his heart pumps.
Some feeling, unique to this moment, unlike he felt as he toiled years to rise the Navy ranks, unlike he felt as he knelt before the Empress somewhere dark and cold, pulses in his chest.
Purpose, for the first time.
The rest of the night is a blur, as it always is when Thomas gets properly excited. A carriage to Wolfstack Docks, to the bar, to pint, and another pint, and another pint, pints all the way into a fight, into another fight, into pints again, somehow, into women, into more, into an empty purse and an emptier tavern.
Somewhere, amidst a crowd of giggling half-clothed men and women, Thomas gets home and drunkenly stumbles past something beautiful - half the crowd splits off, and the beautiful thing is lost in the splendid colors of the brothel as Thomas navigates his father’s old house into an old bed and spends the night the heathen way. Everything smells of whiskey and sweat, everything feels of heat and exercise, the beautiful thing is forgotten in a worship of bare skin and needs to satisfy. The blur has no exact stopping point - somewhere Thomas’ eyes close and the world, a spinning phantasmagoria of hedonism, slips away.
Sleep.
The pulsing headache is there before Thomas’ eyes open.
He shuts them tighter, groaning loudly.
There is no more movement about him - the bed is still and he feels no warmth of fellow bodies, the sheets have dried of whiskey and wine and are now stiff and stained. His legs, his arms, feel entirely devoid of energy and impossible to lift, weighted by the mistakes of last night.
“Oh God.”
How peculiar it is that sometimes one goes to bed and awakens feeling more exhausted than before.
Though Thomas is used to the sensation, it never grows less annoying.
He cracks his eyelids apart and rises, stutteringly, from the bed with another groan. He stops once he is upright, cupping his head in his hands.
“Oh God.”
The room is a mess on top of a mess; the piles of paintings, prose, notes, diagrams, left behind by Charles Sketch are covered now in discarded clothes, bottles, stains, even one woman, still, lying atop a table covered in drawings of storms still snoring lightly. She mutters Khanate words in her sleep, clutching a half-empty whiskey bottle to her chest. Thomas elects not to wake her.
Tea is hissing, from beyond the door.
Another straggler, perhaps - what time is it? They should all be gone by now, like their friends.
Thomas rubs his head again as he slips on a robe and ties it, covering his bare body. He snatches up the Order cane resting by the door before he opens it, in case the mysterious teamaker is less than friendly.
He pushes the door open, and stops.
A figure, at the window, gazing at London.
Slim, golden-haired, causing some unknown sense of dread in Thomas’ stomach right before the world explodes, and explode it does.
Light.
The suTHE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE
The London horizon is bathed in light - the figure is lost in gold.
Paintings of beautiful things seem alive once again, turning to look at a sun in London.
The Neath is alight for a moment, and in that moment Thomas hears a sharp intake of breath - his own lungs are frozen.
And then, the world is dark again.
The Neath roof hides itself.
The London horizon glimmers with false-stars.
The paintings sleep.
The figure at the window is back.
“Does that happen often?” he asks, in an accent.
Italian, mixed with Dutch, light and feminine.
Thomas’ heart freezes, and the reason for the dread is explained - his mind is aswirl, still dancing with the sun, what in bloody Hell was that?
The figure turns.
Thomas is still paralyzed, the Sun, the Sun, what the Hell was that, who the Hell is this, this is his brother, this is his brother, what the Hell was that beyond the window, this is his brother, this is his brother.
Rory Sketch looks at Thomas from across the room and is impossibly beautiful.
“I’m Ro-”
“I-I know.”
The sun.
Christ.
In a flash, Thomas breaks from his paralysis and stumbles to a nearby chair, dropping the cane to the floor with a clatter and collapsing.
“Thomas!” Rory cries, hurrying over to him, “Are you alright?”
The bluejacket looks up at him, shuts his eyes tight and ducks his head.
He cups his face in his hands.
It’s all too much - what was outside the window, the youth in front of him, the hangover. His eyes hurt, his brain flames.
Even now, the sun in London and a beautiful face dance in the darkness behind Thomas’ closed lids, but it is better than before. He wonders if he will ever open his eyes again.
He breathes deeply, slowly, steadying himself.
“Do-do you smoke?” he stutters.
“No. Would you like a cigarette?” comes that voice, that accent, marking him as one of the latter children of Charles Sketch.
“Very much.”
Light feet pad away.
Thomas brainstorms for words, but before he can think of anything to say, the feet are padding back.
“Open your mouth.”
Dumbly, he does, and clamps down again when he feels the cigarette slip between his lips. Unseen hands strike a match and light it - he fervently grips it and takes a deep drag.
The sun, the brother, the splitting pain in his head.
“The-there’s, um, there’s vodka in the cabinet. If you’d be so kind-”
“Of course,” comes the voice, and the feet pad off again.
A moment, and the sound of a drink of being poured.
Delicate piano hands place a glass in Thomas’ own hands.
He downs it.
An unseen refill, he downs it again.
Silence.
The noise of the loveseat as Rory sits down.
“I’m your brother, Thomas,” he says quietly.
“I know. Could you fill me up again?” Thomas asks impatiently.
Liquid, pouring.
Thomas throws it back.
Sting down the throat, buzz in the head.
He exhales throatily.
“Oh God,” he moans, yet again, and buries his head in his hands once more.
“You’re quite hung-over.”
“What the Hell was that?”
“The sun.”
“There is no sun in London.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” Rory responds quietly.
Silence - Thomas takes the longest drag of his life.
“I wish you’d open your eyes, Thomas.”
He blows out a train of smoke til he is devoid of breath.
A long inhale.
“Oh God, I hate you, Lizzie,” he whispers.
“Careful, Tommy. That’s my sister you’re talking about.”
Finally, Thomas opens his eyes. He peers at Rory, silent.
“You have his eyes,” he mutters, his own filled with their characteristic intensity as they gaze at the ice-blue pair across from them, so terribly like the kind you find at the head of a table in a ballroom in your worst memory. Kinder, though. Sunlight touches the ice, forever on the verge of melting and flourishing with the aquatic life below.
“You have his appetite,” Rory dryly replies, fingering a pair of lace undergarments dangling from a nearby lamp.
Thomas stares at the undergarments for a moment, then fills himself another shot of vodka. He throws it back.
“Don’t you think you’d better stop?” Rory politely asks.
“Quite the opposite,” Thomas says in the breath before another shot.
Rory watches Thomas as the zailor continues drinking, smoking. He smiles.
“You’re very cute when you’re drunk. Red cheeks,” he says, pushing his own up for show, “I can see why those girls liked you.”
“Were you here last night?” Thomas asks.
“I was. The girls were very nice. Flirty. Friends of yours?” Rory asks.
“No. No, just, uh, just Dock girls,” Thomas replies.
“Prostitutes,” Rory says.
Thomas glances at him.
Another shot.
“Some of them,” he mutters.
Rory pushes the bottle away as the zailor goes for another refill.
“Thomas, it’s me. Your brother. Aren’t you excited to see me?” he asks.
“I don’t know you.”
“You know of me. Lizzie said you do. I’ve always wanted to meet you.”
“Why?”
“You’re my older brother! You were Papa’s first chi-“
“Papa?”
“I suppose you call him ‘Father?’”
Thomas nods.
Rory smiles.
“So English,” he says.
“I am English. Father was English,” Thomas says.
“He was Danish.”
“He was English,” Thomas snaps.
Silence.
“Why do you want to fight with me? I didn’t expect our first meeting would be like this,” Rory says.
“Nor did I,” Thomas murmurs.
He reaches for the bottle again; Rory grabs his wrist. Thomas glares at him, but the piercing eyes don’t seem to work like they do on his sister or most people. Rory holds his grip, surprisingly strong for his feminine hands.
“Stop,” the younger brother commands.
The zailor leans back, begrudgingly obeying.
“What do you want?” he asks.
“To get along. Speaking of which, the tea is ready.”
The ectomorph pops up from his seat, scampering off to the kitchen. Thomas stares out the window.
“Milk and sugar?” Rory calls.
“Thank you.”
“I take mine with honey. Lizzie likes hers black, I know; she’s quite dedicated to the whole ‘tough’ thing. Very tough. You knew Papa when he was a sailor-“
“Zailor.”
“A zailor, excuse me. Was he very tough back then?”
“The toughest,” Thomas says, and then blushes, realizing he sounds like a schoolchild bragging about his dad, “A-as you put it.”
“Did he tell you stories? He would always tell us stories of his days as a captain,” Rory asks, “Terrifying water beasts and all that.”
“Yes. Yes, um, he told me stories.”
“Did he tell you the one about the Starstone?”
“Yes, uh. Yes, he did, um…”
“That one was one of my favorites. The way he described it, oh! It was one of the reasons I started poetry,” Rory says as he enters the room, carrying two tea saucers, “The sparkle of the stars in the night, ‘peligin black, like the bottom of the zee, with holes punched in it showing the glowing core of the worl-‘“
“I don’t want to talk about Father,” Thomas interrupts.
“Oh. Well, we don’t have to,” Rory replies, smiling as he sits and sets tea before Thomas, “I’m far more interested in you than I am in Papa.”
He smiles, and it makes Thomas feel dread the same way as it does when Lizzie smiles, because it’s so real. Completely real, completely beautiful, completely wanting to just be his friend, but this is even worse - he’s like some angel, sitting before Thomas, so gorgeous, so friendly, so Surface-touched, Thomas can’t tell if he wants to kill him, worship him, or just die and not have to deal with the sons and daughters of Charles Sketch any longer (especially himself).
“Tell me about yourself,” Rory says.
Thomas gazes at him for another moment, captivated with some odd emotion, then looks down at the table. He swallows, takes a drag. Exhales, collects himself.
“My name is Sir Thomas Sketch. I was born somewhere in London, around 1871; I never knew those who birthed me and a man named Daniel Rye adopted me - he was a Presbyterate man and honorable. He married a zee captain named Charles Sketch, from whom I took my name. Being a scoundrel-“ Here Rory frowned “-he abandoned us when I was small. Daniel Rye died a few years after.”
He pauses - some dark memory floats through the ebony eyes. He clears his throat, taps his cigarette, and continues.
“I’m a lieutenant in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, and a knight of England,” he says, “Which is half hogwash and full shite. What else do you want to know?”
“Who was your first love?”
Thomas blushes - he quickly pours himself more vodka. Rory smiles.
“What?” Thomas asks, after having downed the shot.
“Your first love. Even if it was unrequited, you must have had some first love by now. I want to know about you, Thomas - you tell your story like an obituary. I’m a poet. Tell me something poetic,” Rory says.
Thomas glances at him.
He hesitates.
“There was a girl,” he mutters.
Rory’s face lights up - he leans forward and rests his chin between his hands.
“Tell me about her.”
“You have to let me drink.”
“Of course.”
And so the two begin passing stories. Poetic stories, and they keep passing them as the clock swings by. Thomas gets drunker and drunker, but Rory doesn’t mind - he comments again on the vodka-fueled cuteness of Thomas’ rosy cheeks and this time the zailor laughs. They both tell stories of girls, of boys; Rory reads a poem and Thomas asks for more. The hours wheel by and all thought of the sun in London is forgotten - a knight and a poet talk in a dead madman’s home and become something like brothers, at least while one of them is drunk. At some point, the Khanate woman stumbles out of the bedroom and hurries out before either notices her, not that they would, enraptured in each other’s discussion. By nighttime, Thomas drunkenly agrees to let Rory stay (“Hell, it’s not even my- hic my house!”) and the poet helps guide the knight back to bed. Thomas collapses and Rory tucks him in, laughing.
“You’re going to have an awful hang-over, Tommy,” the poet says.
“I-I love you,” the knight slurs.
“I love you too, brother. Say it again when you’re sober, though. Sleep well,” he says, turning for the door.
“Whe-hic where’s that girl go? Wh-where is she?”
“Good night, Thomas.”
“I wanna see the Khanate girl.”
The door closes.
“Where is she? She-hic Oi, where’s my cane? My cane? Ro-Rory! Rory, where’sh my cane? Hic Oh, he left. He left. Hic That’s-that’s sad. Ugh, I’m sleepy.”
A pillow, scrunched against the face.
Another hiccup.
Sleep.