The Unconventional Relationship

Giles, Rogue King of the Wyverkiiri, has charmed his way through harpies, sea-hags and one very forgiving bridge-troll, and the court keeps the bills. What he does not keep is appointments. So when Countess Merlo fishes him out from under a bed with a broom and offers him a choice — marry the Lady of Darkness, or watch Tyrunvern march to war — Giles does what any legendary coward would do. He elopes.

His weakness has an exquisite nose and a leather bag of knitting: Daudet, an alchemist who knits thneeds, rifts and, quite by accident, eternal life. Together, plus a plush unicorn and a pooch with opinions, they vanish into the wilds and leave a throne standing empty.

An empty throne is a problem. An empty throne beside a scorned Lady of Darkness is a catastrophe. Abigail of Hereth keeps her palace dark, her temper sharp and her heart stitched shut, and she means to settle the matter with a competition: the handsomest fellow in Tyrunvern shall be her Lord, and Baron Parcy's Rule of the Thread says no nose under three threads need apply.

The court's answer is so mad it might work. Find the one fellow the Lady's sealed letter actually reached — a humble beet farmer named Yam, with a wonky smile and a wheelbarrow of screaming vegetables — knit him a royal nose, a pair of teacup-handle horns and a beauty-wart that whirs whenever its wearer lies, and walk him into her party wearing the Rogue King's face. The escort is a countess with a ladle, a count who writes everything down, and two hairy grandmothers of suspicious gender who are not grandmothers at all.

It nearly works. The courtiers are fooled. The pooch loves him on sight. The Lady is not fooled, because the Lady wrote to a farmer, not to a crown, and she has known since a farmer cried into her brandy over a letter carrying her own seal. What follows is a courtship conducted in beets, brandy and catastrophic acting: a king who says "we" and means "I", a wart giving the whole game away, one long-overdue clobbering for the real Giles, and a wedding in a jewel garden where the ghouls agree not to eat anyone who applauds.

Then a dragon the size of geography lands on the dessert table, drawn by the smell of pyes and a choir of whirring warts, and sneezes jewels into the flowerbeds — exactly as the oldest tales say the Wyverkiiri gardens were planted.

By spring there is a baby with a King's nose and her father's beets. By the next telling there is a ballad with a battle in it, because Count Bordo insists there was one. And somewhere up the road, travelling as nobody in particular, a King of nothing and an Alchemist of everything go looking for somewhere it won't make sense.

Bawdy, sharp-tongued and thoroughly irreverent, this is the story of how the wrong King married the right farmer — and how everyone concerned lived madly, dishonestly... well, honestly, ever after.