So they’d moved a bed for him, and kept the wine flowing for him, every cask worse than its predecessor, but it made his head swim wonderfully and he’d ravaged Myla for half an hour before he could finish. She had been timid at first, but later she moaned so loudly that her voice carried on the air and down the hill to the baron’s manor house, where John could only hope her father was forced to listen in rage.

Tickhill Castle, tall as it was, was made ever taller for sitting on such a perfectly round hill. Myla was lying on her back next to him, recovering, and John twisted her nipple.

“This is us…” he said, and traced his finger around her breast, “… this is the hill…” and down to her navel, “… that’s your father.”

She laughed and batted his hands away, fretting that he was tickling her. “I am. Tickling you. In Tickhill. I’m Tickhilling you. There’s a joke there, I’m sure, I just don’t know what it is.” He was wittier sober, but a better lover drunk. He had the day to meander between the two, and try at both incessantly.

“Show me the rest.” He vaulted to his feet, which had not been consulted on the idea and rejected it entirely. He opted to crawl. “I want to see what I can see. I am here to survey my lands. Show survey them to me.”

That didn’t sound correct.

Myla, still entirely naked, climbed onto his back and rode him to the edge of the room, a balcony that dropped sharply down to the green grass far below. Crawling had been a wise choice, as he would not have wanted to attempt standing so close to the lip.

She wrapped her fingers through his hair and tugged his head about. “I like your hair.”

Most girls did. Its red was so dark it was almost brown, but was all fire in the open air and sunlight up here. Hers grew down to the small of her back, unbraided. He could have spent a lifetime in the soft curve of her waist. Not his own lifetime, of course. Some lesser man’s lifetime. With every year that passed, his own future grew closer. So many hands pushing him closer and closer to the edge of responsibility. Rather like the edge of this tower, over the lip dizzying downward.

“That’s Sheffield,” Myla cooed, and pointed his head to the west.

“Which one?” He squinted at tiny specklings of towns, their colors faded to the same pale nothing of the rest of the land.

“It’s too far to see,” she laughed. “But it’s that direction.”

“Well that’s mine, then,” John said. “I own it. I can do whatever I want with it. Would you like to own a town?”