twining through their animated conversation like flowers blooming on lush vines. Salena had her back to him, and he wondered what they were discussing. Hoped it wasn’t him.
Astar frowned at Jak. “I can call for footmen to bring it, if this cask is too heavy,” he offered.
Jak looked affronted. “The day a man can’t carry his own cask of mjed is a sad day indeed.”
“Oh, good,” Rhy said blandly, “then you don’t need my help after all.”
Jak poked him in the chest, hard enough to hurt. “Too good to help a common guy with a menial task, Prince Rhyian?”
“Not really a prince,” Rhy muttered under Astar’s booming laugh.
Astar clapped him on the shoulder. “Jak got us there, cousin. Let’s see this enormous cask.”
It was enormous. Astar and Rhy stood back, surveying the man-sized barrel in one of the outer courtyards near a service gate. Rhy coughed into his fist. “Ah, Jak, why under Moranu’s gaze did you bring a cask this huge?”
“It’s a big party.” Jak gestured at the looming edifice, its towers white against the night sky.
“What I want to know is how you got it here.” Astar scanned the courtyard as if an answer might present itself.
“A wagon,” Jak replied. “It’s this device with wheels that common people use to cart heavy things around when you don’t have footmen to do it.”
Astar and Rhy exchanged glances. “Why didn’t you leave the wagon here?” Rhy asked.
“Or at least bring the cask inside?” Astar added.
Jak gave him a look of exaggerated patience. “Because, you royal ass, the wagon had other stuff to deliver, and I told my folks that we could handle it between the three of us. I didn’t know you guys had gone soft.”
“Can we just get this done?” Rhy asked. “It’s colder than Danu’s tits out here.” Though it was still early in the evening, no light remained in the sky, and the wind bit even harder, the rivets holding the banners rattling on the battlements high above.
“It’s going to have to be in human form,” Astar said, eyeing the cask. “Too bad, as my bear form could probably hold it, but I can’t return to human form and still be wearing these clothes. Still can’t do that trick.”
He looked so mournful that Rhy shrugged in solidarity. “Neither can I.”
“And some of us can’t shapeshift at all,” Jak declared, then flexed his muscles. “But I bet I’m as strong as either of you. We can lift it.”
Astar tried wrapping his big arms around it, barely reaching halfway around. Grunting and straining, he hardly budged it. “There’s no good leverage.”
“Idiots. We all three have to lift, which will work better with it sideways.” Jak grinned at them. “Teamwork. Rhy, stand there and be ready to catch it when I tip it toward you.”
Rhy studied the giant—and heavy—cask with a jaundiced eye. “No.”
“I’m calling the footmen,” Astar said.
“An army of them,” Rhy advised.
“You two give up too easily,” Jak said in exasperation. “Stand aside, then, and I’ll show you. I can carry this by myself.” He shrugged out of his scarlet coat, unbuckled the sword belt, then climbed the cask like a monkey, clipping on some straps.
“All right.” Rhy put his hands on his hips and stood well back. “Let’s see this.”
“Wait,” Astar said, holding up placating hands. “That thing is seriously heavy. We don’t want—”
“Jak says he can do this,” Rhy replied blandly. “Are you impugning his Dasnarian manhood?”
“Right.” Jak scowled. “Watch this.”
“I’m watching all right,” Rhy called cheerfully.
“You are a troublemaker,” Astar muttered.
Rhy grinned at him. “Love you, too, cuz.”
Jak put his back against the cask, looped his arms in the straps, and leaned. Slowly, improbably, he lifted the thing. He balanced there with the cask on his back, grunting, breath puffing out white in the torchlight…
Until his legs gave.
Jak managed to drop the cask to the side, so it didn’t come straight down to crush him. The cask hit the courtyard stones—fortunately buffered with snowdrifts—then rolled down the slope of icy snow, whipping Jak helplessly toward the sky as it went. With a shout, Astar and Rhy leapt to stop its roll before it smashed Jak beneath its considerable weight. Serendipitously, with a loud crack, the cask fetched up against the stone-well housing in the center of the courtyard—with Jak still trapped in the straps facing upward, kicking like a squashed bug. Rhy burst out laughing at the sight.
“You all right, man?” Astar called, then glared at Rhy. “Don’t laugh, he could be hurt.”