A Knight, a Crone, and a Garden Party

The garden party was, by all reasonable standards, too much.

Which was exactly why it suited Snowdrift Bay.

Barnaby Blackbeard had opened the back garden of the Salty Kraken for the evening, and rather than simply hosting a pleasant outdoor gathering like a normal pirate-turned-tavern-owner might have done, he had transformed the space into something between a midsummer fête, a nautical fever dream, and a lightly supervised civic celebration.

Lanterns hung from tree branches in warm clusters of gold and orange, swaying gently in the evening air. Ropes and netting had been draped along the fences for “maritime ambiance,” according to Barnaby, though Yorn privately suspected Barnaby would have called it maritime ambiance if he’d nailed a trout to a birdbath. Small round tables were scattered through the garden beneath strings of lights, each covered with mismatched but charming tablecloths and crowded with platters of food that ranged from elegant finger sandwiches to things served on tiny skewers with no clear provenance. Flower arrangements exploded from ceramic pitchers and repurposed rum bottles in every direction, making the whole place smell like sea air, roses, lemon, and whatever spice Barnaby had gotten overly confident with in the kitchen.

It was loud, warm, crowded, and absurdly pretty.

Yorn liked it immediately.

He had arrived with Elara, Brenda, and Philip, which helped.

Elara moved through the lantern light like she had some kind of private arrangement with it, dark and elegant and perfectly composed, a glass of sparkling cider already in one hand. Brenda, beside her, looked delighted by nearly everything at once, her vibrant purple hair catching the gold light in bright flashes every time she turned her head. Philip, all cardigan and clicking bones, was trying very hard to look like he was simply attending a social event rather than mentally cataloguing it as if he might later review the evening for pacing.

Yorn, for his part, was doing his best not to seem overly pleased by all of it.

This was difficult.

Because he was overly pleased.

“You look suspiciously happy,” Brenda said as they stepped farther into the garden.

“I’m standing in a pirate’s flower party with a drink in my hand,” Yorn replied. “Why would I hide it?”

Philip glanced around at the lanterns, the tables, the crowd, Barnaby shouting something incomprehensible and cheerful near the back fence. “It does have a sort of reckless charm.”

“It has excellent lighting,” Elara said.

“That too,” Philip admitted.

Around them the party churned with familiar, increasingly ridiculous life.

Fabian Flamingo, in a pale rose jacket with an outrageously fitted waist, was standing near one of the central tables explaining to three trapped listeners why the floral arrangements were “holding emotionally, if not structurally.” Spike was trying to dance with a kind of bristling confidence that suggested rhythm was, to him, largely conceptual. Ramses stood near a tray of cucumber sandwiches in deep conversation with Zephyrus, who had arrived in wizard robes embroidered with silver piping and, for reasons no one had explained, a plumber’s wrench tucked into his sash. Barnaby himself moved through the crowd with a tankard in one hand and a kind of delighted hostly chaos in the other, alternating between offering people food and accusing them of ignoring “the best pickled herring puffs in three counties.”

Yorn took a cider from a passing tray and let himself settle into it.

This, he thought, was nice.

More than nice, really. Comfortable. The kind of gathering that only worked if a place had fully accepted itself, and Snowdrift Bay—despite all evidence that it should perhaps pause and reflect more often—had accepted itself with frightening enthusiasm.

He and the others gravitated toward a table covered in little sandwiches, herb tarts, and bright glasses of fruit punch that glowed just slightly more than seemed necessary.

Brenda picked up a skewer and squinted at it. “Do we know what this is?”

Philip leaned in. “No.”

Elara looked once and said, “It’s probably safe.”

“Probably,” Brenda repeated.

Yorn, meanwhile, had selected a cucumber sandwich and was examining it with mild approval.

“These are good,” he said.

“You sound surprised,” said Elara.

“I’m pleasantly surprised.”

He held up the sandwich. “Ramses would like these. They look a little mummy-adjacent.”

Elara laughed softly. “Please don’t say that to him.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

“You were absolutely planning to,” Brenda said.

Yorn smiled into his drink.

He was just reaching for a second sandwich when the mood of the entire garden changed.

It happened in the way weather changed: not all at once, but with an unmistakable shift in pressure.

Voices near the entrance dipped.
A few heads turned.
Somewhere beyond the lanterns, a cane struck stone with sharp, declarative taps.

Yorn’s shoulders tightened instinctively.

He turned.

And there she was.

The old woman from the bookstore.

Short, severe, and carrying herself with the rigid authority of someone who had mistaken personal irritation for public duty, she stepped into Barnaby’s garden as if entering enemy territory. Her floral blouse was buttoned all the way up. Her cardigan looked offended on her behalf. Her expression suggested she had arrived pre-displeased and merely intended to assign blame more precisely on site.

Her eyes moved over the party in one sweeping pass, taking in the lanterns, the tables, the crowd, the music, Spike attempting to pivot, Fabian gesturing dramatically with one long wing, and finally Yorn.

There.

That was it.

Yorn saw the exact moment she found him.

Her face sharpened with purpose.

“Oh, of course,” she snapped.

Brenda muttered, “Oh no.”

Philip, already watching over the rim of his glass, said quietly, “This feels targeted.”

“It is targeted,” Yorn said.

The old woman advanced several paces into the garden, cane clicking like punctuation.

“What,” she demanded loudly, “is the meaning of this chaos?”

Conversation around them began to stall. People were not frightened, exactly. More interested. The way one might react to spotting the opening movements of an argument one did not intend to stop.

Barnaby turned from across the garden, squinting into the lantern light. “The meanin’, madam, is a party.”

“This is not a party,” she barked. “This is an affront to atmosphere!”

Fabian placed one hand to his chest. “That is an insane thing to say in front of my arrangements.”

But the old woman wasn’t interested in Fabian.

She kept coming.

Straight toward Yorn.

Yorn, who had done nothing except exist near appetizers, set down his glass with slow care.

The woman jabbed her cane in his direction.

“And you,” she said, as if at last locating the source of all disorder in the county. “Why are you here?”

Yorn stared at her. “I was invited.”

“That seems unlikely.”

Barnaby shouted from across the garden, “I invited him, ye old menace!”

She ignored him completely.

Yorn, already weary, said, “I’m standing here with a sandwich.”

“Yes,” she snapped, “looming over the canapés.”

“I am not looming. I’m tall.”

“Same effect.”

Brenda put a hand over her mouth.

Philip looked down very quickly at his drink, shoulders clicking faintly with suppressed laughter.

Elara, beside Yorn, had gone very still in the way she did when becoming colder rather than louder.

The old woman swept one arm toward the garden at large.

“This was meant to be civilized,” she declared. “Instead it’s become a circus of eccentrics, shouting, feathers, thorns, linen, and oversized mountain creatures blocking the table settings.”

Spike turned from where he was standing near the punch bowl. “Hey. Some of us are delightful.”

“Not helping,” Philip murmured.

Yorn took a breath.

He had, in recent months, learned a good deal about not escalating things in public. This was partly because he was trying to be a better citizen, and partly because when he escalated things in public, they tended to become memorable from much farther away than he intended.

So he said, carefully, “I’m not blocking anything.”

The old woman gave a short, vicious laugh.

“You’re blocking several things. Light. Air. Social proportion.”

Philip actually choked this time.

“That’s not a phrase,” Brenda whispered.

“It is now,” said Philip.

Yorn looked at the woman in growing disbelief. “What does ‘social proportion’ mean.”

“It means,” she snapped, “some settings are not designed for your sort of scale.”

There was a beat.

Even for Snowdrift Bay, that landed poorly.

Elara turned her head very slightly.

Brenda’s eyes narrowed.
Philip lowered his glass.
Barnaby had started walking toward them from across the garden with the heavy calm of a man deciding whether to intervene or simply let events ripen.

Yorn, to his own credit, remained calm.

“I was invited,” he said again.

“Yes, yes, by someone with no discipline.”

“Madam,” said Elara, voice smooth and chilly, “I think that’s quite enough.”

The old woman swung toward her at once.

“Oh, don’t start with me,” she said. “I’ve seen you encouraging this sort of thing before.”

Yorn frowned. “This sort of thing?”

The woman whirled back toward him. “You! Large, disruptive, standing where people are trying to enjoy themselves without being made aware of your dimensions.”

That was such an extraordinary sentence that even Yorn needed a moment.

“I am not making anyone aware of my dimensions,” he said.

“You’re doing it passively!”

Before anyone could respond to that, a new voice rang across the garden.

“UNHAND HIS HONOR, THOU SHRIEKING CROW OF MISRULE!”

Every head in the garden turned.

From the far edge of the party, through an opening between two hedges and with the timing of a man who either heard destiny calling or simply never missed an opportunity to draw steel at a social function, Sir Reginald appeared.

He was in full armor.

Not partial armor.
Not “garden formal” armor.
Full shining knightly splendor, breastplate polished, cape trailing, sword already drawn, and moving at a rapid, clanking stride that suggested he had been somewhere nearby waiting for a reason.

Yorn shut his eyes.

“Of course,” he muttered.

Sir Reginald stormed into the lantern glow like the final twenty minutes of a play no one had rehearsed.

He planted himself between Yorn and the old woman with such immediate conviction that two nearby guests had to step aside to avoid being accidentally defended.

“Stand back, venom-tongued harridan!” he cried, sword raised with righteous fury. “Thou shalt not berate this noble being while Reginald yet draws breath!”

The garden held one perfect beat of silence.

Then Spike whispered, “Hell yes.”

The old woman recoiled in outrage. “How dare you speak to me that way, you armored lunatic!”

Sir Reginald turned toward her with all the solemn fury of a knight confronting blasphemy at a buffet.

“How dare you,” he thundered, “invade this joyous gathering and assail a good and honorable yeti while he stands peaceably among finger foods!”

Yorn put one hand over his face.

“That is not,” he said to nobody, “a sentence I ever needed spoken on my behalf.”

But Reginald was unstoppable now.

He stepped forward, sword still raised in one hand, his other fist pressed to his breastplate.

“I have seen many dark things in my years,” he proclaimed. “Cowardice. Treachery. Improper fencing. But never have I seen a woman so boldly confuse her own bitterness for righteousness!”

The old woman spluttered.

Around them, people had abandoned all pretense of returning to their conversations. Barnaby had stopped entirely and was now openly enjoying himself. Fabian was watching with horrified fascination, as if appalled by the conduct but unwilling to lose sight of it. Brenda had both hands over her mouth. Philip was standing rigid with the full-body stillness of a man one second from laughing his jaw off.

The old woman raised her cane. “I have every right to say what I please!”

Sir Reginald gasped in theatrical disbelief.

“No,” he said, “not at this garden gate, thou wilt not!”

And with that, to Yorn’s immediate horror and the crowd’s immediate delight, he advanced on her at once, sword brandished high—not swinging it, not striking, but herding her backward through sheer armored momentum and knightly indignation.

“Withdraw, thou scandal-sowing menace!” he bellowed.

The old woman stumbled back a pace. “Keep that thing away from me!”

“Then flee, and trouble this revel no more!”

He advanced again.

She retreated again.

Her cane flailed.
His armor clanged.
The sword flashed harmlessly and dramatically in the lantern light while the entire garden looked on as if they had all suddenly been given the exact entertainment they didn’t know they needed.

“This is not over!” she cried.

“It is over at the hedge!” Sir Reginald shouted back, chasing her across the path. “And over at the gate! And over beyond the gate as well!”

Brenda folded in half laughing.

Philip had to brace one hand against the table because his whole skeleton was clicking in distress.

Fabian said, in a tone of deep aesthetic offense, “This is intolerable,” while visibly refusing to miss a second of it.

The old woman made it halfway to the garden entrance before turning and jabbing her cane at Reginald in outrage.

“You people are insane!”

Reginald, undaunted, pointed his sword straight at the gate. “BEGONE!”

And with one final furious shriek of scandalized indignation, the old woman stormed out into the night, chased the last few yards by Sir Reginald’s clanking pursuit and a final cry of:

“AND TAKE THY MALICE ELSEWHERE!”

The gate slammed.

Reginald stopped just short of it, planted his feet, and held his sword aloft for one triumphant beat like a man who had personally won a siege.

Silence lingered for half a heartbeat.

Then the garden erupted.

Laughter.
Applause.
A few audible cheers.
One delighted whistle from somewhere near the hydrangeas.

Barnaby threw back his head and roared with laughter so loudly two lanterns visibly trembled. Spike was already reenacting Reginald’s stance with a breadstick. Fabian shook his head with deep aesthetic disapproval and said, “That was appalling,” in the exact tone he reserved for things he found wildly entertaining.

Sir Reginald turned at once to Yorn and dropped into a half-bow, one hand on his chest.

“Fear not,” he said with solemn warmth. “Thy dignity stands unbreached.”

Yorn looked at him for a long moment.

Then at the gate.
Then at his untouched sandwich on the table.
Then back at Reginald.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” he said. “But I need you to understand that you made everything much, much larger.”

Reginald nodded. “Naturally.”

“That was not a compliment.”

“No,” said Reginald. “But it was true.”

Yorn stared.

Then, despite himself, laughed.

That seemed to satisfy Reginald enormously.

Barnaby arrived at last, still grinning into his beard. “Well,” he said, clapping Yorn once on the shoulder and then Reginald on the back plate hard enough to ring him like cookware, “that livened the mood.”

“She insulted the floral balance,” Fabian said darkly, arriving seconds later. “Frankly, I think Reginald showed restraint.”

“Thank you,” said Reginald.

“I did not say good restraint.”

Brenda finally lowered her hands from her mouth. “I can’t believe he said ‘peaceably among finger foods.’”

Philip, still visibly trying to hold himself together, said, “No, for me it was the chase. The sheer commitment. The full armored pursuit of a woman with a cane. I don’t know that I’ll ever recover.”

Elara stepped closer to Yorn, handed him back his abandoned glass of cider, and said with perfect calm, “Are you all right?”

Yorn accepted it. “Yes.”

Then, after a beat: “I think so.”

She glanced toward the gate where the old woman had vanished.

“She certainly chooses moments.”

“She chooses me,” Yorn said.

“That too.”

Reginald, still standing proudly nearby, frowned toward the darkness beyond the hedge. “Should she return, I remain thy sworn protector.”

Yorn looked at him over the rim of his glass.

“No,” he said.

Reginald blinked. “No?”

“No sworn protecting.”

Reginald straightened, clearly startled on a spiritual level. “But I have already—”

“I know what you’ve already done,” Yorn said. “I was here for most of it.”

A faint laugh ran through the people nearest them.

Yorn set down his drink and faced him more directly.

“Reginald,” he said, gentler now, “I appreciate that you want to help. Truly. But I don’t need a sworn protector.”

Reginald looked stricken, though he tried nobly to hide it beneath knightly posture.

“You do not?”

“I do not.”

There was a pause.

Then Yorn added, “A friend, though—that I can use.”

Reginald went very still.

The word seemed to hit him harder than any vow.

“A… friend,” he repeated.

“Yes.”

“No sword obligation?”

“No sword obligation.”

“No formal oath?”

“Please, no formal oath.”

Reginald considered this with enormous seriousness, as if being offered friendship instead of fealty required a total reorganization of his internal code.

At last he placed one gauntleted hand over his heart.

“Then,” he said, voice rich with feeling, “I shall endeavor to be thy friend with all the loyalty I had intended for sworn protection, but with somewhat fewer interventions involving steel.”

Yorn nodded. “That sounds much better.”

Brenda whispered to Philip, “That’s weirdly sweet.”

Philip, still recovering, whispered back, “It is. I hate that it is.”

Reginald bowed—not a dramatic kneeling oath this time, but something smaller and more earnest.

“As you wish, my fr—” He caught himself. “Yorn.”

Yorn smiled.

“A strong start,” he said.

The worst of the tension had broken now, dissolved back into party noise and delighted retellings. Already the story was spreading across the garden in fragments.

“—and then he charged her right to the gate—”
“—no, the best part was the finger foods—”
“—I thought she was going to hit him with the cane—”
“—Reginald looked magnificent, unfortunately—”

Someone restarted the music. Barnaby demanded more cider on the side table. Spike resumed dancing with renewed self-belief. Fabian began trying to explain to a semicircle of listeners why the confrontation had ruined one sightline but improved the overall energy. Philip, emboldened by surviving the scene, attempted to balance three little tartlets on one bony arm and immediately failed. Brenda laughed so hard she had to steady herself against the table.

And Yorn, standing there in the lantern glow with cider in his hand and his ridiculous, beloved town vibrating warmly around him, felt the last of his irritation dissolve into something gentler.

This was Snowdrift Bay.

A pirate’s garden party.
A furious old woman materializing out of nowhere to accuse him of existing incorrectly.
A knight charging in as if summoned by the abstract concept of honor.
His friends laughing nearby.
Elara at his side.
The whole absurd, impossible evening held together by food, light, and a level of communal tolerance that bordered on supernatural.

He looked around at all of it and smiled.

Not because it had gone smoothly.

It absolutely had not.

But because somehow, in Snowdrift Bay, even a public showdown between a scolding old woman and an armored madman could become part of the warmth of the evening rather than a break in it.