The Beaver King, Cautionary Tales of Medieval Dysfunction

Baylor first knew Hayrick Sear at the Beaverton Revival, during one of King Robert’s religious seasons—those loud, emphatic stretches when faith was worn like proof. Their families attended. Everyone did.

They were five years old. At that age, friendship required very little. They went to each other’s houses. They played what games Hayrick would tolerate. Baylor ran and climbed and scraped himself open. Hayrick stayed inside. He had no taste for noise or competition, no interest in exertion. He preferred stillness. Containment. Baylor noticed the difference without naming it. He carried it the way one carries a small stone—always present, never examined.

Hayrick was pulled from primer school in grade seven. The school could not help him with his Script-Tangle, the way letters refused to hold their place for him. After that, he vanished from Baylor’s life. The timing coincided neatly with one of the Beaver King’s OFF periods, though Baylor would only recognize that pattern much later.

For years, Hayrick Sear existed only as a childhood fact.

When they found each other again as adults, it felt natural—almost inevitable—as though the years between them had been miscounted. They drank ale together. Rode wagons. Talked about the lives they meant to build. The future was still broad then, forgiving.

Hayrick liked this version of Baylor. Baylor had left King Robert’s house, stayed with the Dowager Queen until he was of age, and secured a house of his own. It was solid. Earned. Baylor didn’t mind sharing it at first, but he noticed how Hayrick leaned into that stability—how he stayed long, arrived unannounced, treated the place as something he could inhabit without contributing.

It was during this time that Hayrick drifted. The dreams they once shared loosened and slid apart. Hayrick fell in with the wrong crowd and took to Black Sap and Glass-Ash, the drugs Beaverton whispered about but rarely saw. He grew restless, dissatisfied with the town’s slow mercy. He spoke often of Vireholt—the capital. Of money. Of movement. Of selling the very things that were hollowing him out.

Baylor felt the shift before he understood it. Some things announce themselves only after they’ve already begun.

Hayrick left for the capital.

He stayed briefly with a cousin, a professional fighter who tolerated no drugs. When Hayrick was found out, he was thrown out just as quickly as he had arrived. He returned to Beaverton and tried to manage what he imagined was an empire from afar. Beaverton noticed. They always notice.

Hayrick was summoned by the Three and taken by the Concordant Standard. The drugs were highly illegal. He was dealt with accordingly.

Then he vanished. For half a year, Hayrick Sear was not seen. No one ever said what happened during that time.

When he returned, he claimed to be changed. He found Baylor and spoke earnestly of starting over. Baylor the Bound wanted to believe him, but the truth was smaller. Hayrick drank from morning to night. He lingered. He worked odd jobs when pressed. He brought nothing new with him.

He had returned with a long, stubborn case of the Quiet Punishment, the Beaverton sickness no one liked to name aloud. It was the same Hayrick. Only without the drugs.

The night everything broke open came quietly.

The Beaverton hometown boys—The Clearing 7—sat around a low fire, drinking, being what they always were. Lord Baylor was there, along with Jorek “Ox” Drowell, Little Lord Brentin, Jacoby Drowell (younger brother of OX) , Eaven the Stubman (the town sot and dwarf), and Samlet Toots of Robertson Hollow. Bottles ringed the dirt. The fire burned unevenly.

Hayrick was drunk enough that his words stopped waiting their turn. He said it suddenly. Without care. Without preparation. At first the words didn’t settle. Then he kept going.

He spoke of what had happened while he was held under the Concordant Standard, during the months he disappeared—when his body no longer belonged to Beaverton or to himself. He spoke of being confined in custody with a man-woman, someone the Standard had placed in the same dungeon with him. He spoke of submission. Of obligation. Of being made to kneel. Of using his mouth because that was what was demanded there, because refusal was never an option in custody.

He stared into the coals as he spoke, his voice level, familiar, untroubled.

The fire snapped.

Ox’s hands curled into the dirt. Samlet went still.

Eaven tipped and caught himself.

Jacoby looked away.

Baylor felt his stomach turn cold.

What made it unbearable was not only what Hayrick said, but how he said it. There was no anger. No shame. If anything, there was comfort.

When Hayrick finished, the silence stayed. All of them understood something had crossed a line.

All but one.

Brentin did not recoil. He did not look away. His face held no offense—only a thin, unreadable calm, as though the words had confirmed something rather than introduced it. Baylor noticed. Later, he would remember the rumors the Dowager Queen once spread—dismissed as bitterness, never proven, never spoken again.

They met the next day, minus Hayrick. Earlier. Quieter. No fire.

Without ceremony, they agreed that The Ugly Talk had been nothing more than drink and rambling. Something blurted out. Something that did not count. They buried it where they stood, tamped down with silence. Business resumed as normal.

Days passed. Weeks followed. The Ugly Talk waned—not because it was resolved, but because it was never named again. Hayrick never mentioned it. In time, it seemed he did not even remember saying it.

Thank God for ale.

Baylor and Hayrick remained friends. They drank together. Worked together. Spoke as they always had.

And when Baylor’s life later changed—when this Minstrelle entered it, altering everything—it would be Hayrick Sear who stood closest.

Close enough to hear. Close enough to watch. Close enough to betray.

Some betrayals do not come from enemies. They come from the ones who stayed.