Apprentice's Luck - now in paperback!
Nov. 14th, 2023 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luninosityLots of news, including this year's JMS Books Advent Calendar, and more! (My Advent Calendar free story will be available December 20 - but more soon...) But for today, a happy bit of news - Apprentice's Luck, the new novel in the Middle Lands (the world of Magician), is now out in paperback!
It's high fantasy m/m romance, set ~150 years before Magician (you might recognize a name or two - no one knows where Lorre is, at the moment!), so it's got all new main characters; it'll stand alone fine if you've not read the others. And it's about Talis, an apprentice magician who doesn't think he's very good at magic, and Jer, a royal guardsman who thinks he's overheard a threat to the King...but no one else believes him...but perhaps a magician can help...
And of course there's falling for each other along the way. And tea. And Talis having a lot of emotions while watching Jer be quietly competent at weapons training. And opera-related jokes.
Jer and Talis have honestly become some of my favorite characters (I might have to write one more story for them...), so I hope you like them too!
It's high fantasy m/m romance, set ~150 years before Magician (you might recognize a name or two - no one knows where Lorre is, at the moment!), so it's got all new main characters; it'll stand alone fine if you've not read the others. And it's about Talis, an apprentice magician who doesn't think he's very good at magic, and Jer, a royal guardsman who thinks he's overheard a threat to the King...but no one else believes him...but perhaps a magician can help...
And of course there's falling for each other along the way. And tea. And Talis having a lot of emotions while watching Jer be quietly competent at weapons training. And opera-related jokes.
Jer and Talis have honestly become some of my favorite characters (I might have to write one more story for them...), so I hope you like them too!
Amazon here!
Also at Barnes & Noble, etc!
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Date: 2023-11-15 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-11-15 02:41 am (UTC)They will get a sequel, mostly because I love them so and also because they have a lot to deal with, now...new jobs, new responsibilities...actually navigating a relationship...oh, and Jer's family (at least a couple of them) unexpectedly showing up... *ominous music* Here, teaser?
(Also, how've you been? *hugs*)
#
“So,” Jeryn’s best friend said, wandering into Jer’s still-new Captain’s office at the back of the Royal Guard training ground, “you coming, or have we lost you to paperwork?”
Jer, mid-sentence—a requisition about cold-weather gear for the northern patrols, for the scouts—stopped with pen in hand. Stared at Teague, baffled.
“You know,” Teague said helpfully. “Jade’s birthday.” He had a cheerful face under a mop of dark hair, and was nearly as good as Jer with a short sword, and had once upon a time taken a very young country farm boy to a library, and an opera, and an all-night drinking round at multiple taverns. Jer to this day couldn’t recall exactly how many.
He put down the pen. Ran a hand through his hair. Realized he had ink on his hand, which probably now meant he had ink in his hair, black against pale blond. “Is that today?”
“I think it’s tonight, already.” Teague leaned a shoulder against the door-frame, propping it up. “Busy, are you?”
“I have…” He waved at his desk. Papers, neatly stacked, waved back: his own inventory, his recommendations for promotions, the question about why the king’s guard paid for three stables’ worth of horses when they only had enough mounts to fill one… “I think Captain Tremaine thought we were an army. Or he wanted us to be. I’m finding enough weapons requisitions to conquer the Mountain Marches with halberds and pikes, assuming Amet had ever approved any of them—”
“Which he didn’t, because he’s not a conquering sort of king.”
“Thank Her for that. And why do we have a store-room full of ornamental helmets with expensive plumes? Was he planning a parade? Am I supposed to organize a king’s guard parade?”
“I think I’m not paid enough for this.” Teague held up both hands. “Your job now, Captain. Is your adorable scary magician joining us?”
Talis. Talisman Morning, the love of Jer’s life. He knew his face had probably become softer, smiling, fond; he did not care.
Talis had been his luck, his joy, for the last month. Since a chance meeting in a tavern, and Jer’s decision to ask an apprentice magician for help uncovering a palace plot. And Talis had wanted to help, had tried to, even while possessing no real confidence in himself or his abilities.
But that was the sort of person Talis was: someone who knew about the dirt and scars and wounds of city streets, someone who’d never known his parents but who loved the street musician who’d raised him, someone who hummed with magic like a beehive but grew flippant and self-deprecating when told he’d be the next great magician of the age.
Talis had touched him, a hand on his arm, that first night. Jer had found himself walking up to the School, breathless, the next day.
He’d told himself he wanted Talis’s help. That had been true. Another truth had been the way his arm remembered that touch. A glittering shining awareness. A generous heart and astonishing shortness and glorious autumn hues, red hair curling in the rain, eyes like copper and bronze and wet brown leaves.
“You’re so in love it’s ridiculous,” Teague said comfortably. “I’m glad I don’t do any of that, if it would make my face look that way. Are we seeing him tonight?” Talis and Jer’s scouts—his former unit, before his shiny new title and insignia—had bonded over late tavern nights, a love of risqué ballads, and affection teasing regarding Jer’s tendency to buy new books without any consideration of shelf space or, in fact, arm-carrying capacity. A few of the histories had made it to this office, mostly because Jer was out of room at home and also because they might be useful.
He said, “I think so,” and got up from the desk. “He’s been busy, too. But he sent me a message this morning saying he’d be there.”
The message had been perfectly ordinary, delivered by the courier who sometimes brought communications between the King of Averene and the magicians up on the hill in their walls of white marble. Talis had written, in careful practiced printing, I love you and I’ll see you tonight. Don’t bother to send a reply, we’ll be up at the stone groves.
He’d meant the standing-stones, the older ring behind the School, places that might connect more clearly to his particular magic; a messenger would not necessarily dare to find the magicians there.
The lines of ink had twisted Jer’s heart for a moment. He knew that his other half had not grown up literate, on the back streets and in the less reputable inns and taverns of the Isle of Averene; he knew Talis had learned to read and write because it was useful, because eventually Talis’s adoptive father had thought that might be a good idea.
Jer found his cloak, found his keys, nudged Teague out of his doorway. “Move or be locked in.”
“So serious, you are. With the new rank and all.” An odd emotion laced Teague’s voice, for a second. It wasn’t envy; he’d never been ambitious. “Is anyone else coming?”
“I don’t know,” Jer said, surprised. The weather had become spring, over this past month, but a damp version of spring; the practice yard shone wet as they went out. The cobbled streets and slanted rooftops of the city dripped, though the rain had paused to take its turn in listening. “You, me, Goose and Elodie, Jade and her girl of the week, Talis. Should there be anyone else?”
“No.” Teague dodged a small waterfall from a building’s eave, a downspout. The usual tavern lay just round the corner. “Or maybe. I don’t know. Have you talked to the home guard division, much, lately? Or the river wardens?”
“I mean,” Jer said. “Of course I have. I’ve met with their lieutenants, to find out what they might need, what I can do for them, as captain—” He looked sideways at Teague’s face. “That’s not what you meant.”
“You’re going to a birthday celebration,” Teague said, “with all your old unit, Captain. And no one else. And you’re in a relationship with a magician, and you got the post because that magician said you deserved it.”
Jer, several steps from the tavern door, stopped walking. A drop of rain slid down behind his collar, cold.
Teague waved a hand. “It’s probably me exaggerating.”
“Probably?”
“Well…no one’s saying you shouldn’t have friends. Or fuck an absolutely beautiful tiny and powerful magician.”
“You don’t even do sex.”
“I’ve got eyes and aesthetic appreciation. Look, it’s not a problem.”
“Yet,” Jer said, standing in stray flecks of rain. “It’s not a problem yet.”