Chapter 8 #3
‘Kjersti,’ the cook snapped.
‘Sorry, sorry.’ She threw an impish grin at the others as she disposed of her load by the giant sink, then scurried towards the gangly and equally red-haired young man who stood chopping dill next to me.
Leaning over to him with a conspiratory twinkle in her eyes, she added in a pressing whisper, ‘I’m staking two coppers on them fucking.
Naucelle is practically throwing herself at him. ’
I almost dropped my knife.
The dill boy – her brother, I suspected – pointed an elbow at me without looking up from his herbs. ‘Not making my bet yet. D’you know she’s Givron’s servant?’
‘Really.’ Kjersti’s eyes lit up as she swivelled towards me. ‘Is he in the habit of getting it on with young widows?’
Death’s arse.
Durlain shagging anyone at all was very much not a possibility I wanted to think about, and with half a dozen kitchen hands visibly perking up their ears around me, I was very much forced to do so anyway.
Would he?
He could, of course. I had no reason to give a damn if he did.
Quite the opposite; while he was busy in another woman’s bed, at least he couldn’t threaten me with unpleasant questions or treat me like the mud beneath his boots.
Really, he could bed half the inn if he felt so inclined, as long as he revived Lark in the end …
so where did that prickle of discomfort come from, the slight hesitation to open my mouth and join in on the gossip?
Surely I didn’t feel loyal to the bastard – as if I had to uphold his honour, somehow?
‘Not a habit, really,’ I said, painfully self-aware with my hands covered in beet juice and my face sweaty from the heat of the fire. ‘He’s … picky, I suppose? All talk, little action.’
‘Hmm.’ Kjersti chewed on her bottom lip. ‘Naucelle is damn pretty, though.’
My guts drew tighter.
Mists take me – what was wrong with me? If Naucelle’s tastes were that poor, she could bloody well have him; I had no claim on Durlain fucking Averre, nor did I want it. Lark was all I needed. More than I deserved already. I just …
Well. I just wasn’t sure what Durlain was doing. Why he was doing it.
A good enough reason for nervousness, surely, under the current circumstances?
‘Kjersti!’ a burly man yelled from the other side of the kitchen. ‘Plates for the Mabre family!’
‘Oh, shit.’ She shot up, shooting me a last devilish smile as she turned. ‘Want to come take a look?’
No.
Yes.
This was madness. I didn’t care. If the prince of broken hearts wanted to add another name to his list of victims, he could go ahead and do it without me, and—
‘Report back,’ dill boy said from the corner of his mouth, knife never faltering. ‘Cook can’t tell you to stay, can she?’
Oh.
Balls. If they all expected me to go take a look …
I pretended not to see Cook’s withering glare as I wiped my purple hands on a nearby rag and slipped out after Kjersti, who was balancing five plates with mouth-watering salmon fillets on her hands and forearms. Despite that burden, she was moving towards the dining room at impressive speed.
‘Don’t go in,’ she cheerfully warned me without turning her head. ‘Frode will kill you and then strangle me with your guts if the guests see you.’
I hoped that was a joke, although the beady eyes of the boar above the double doors seemed to be glaring a warning at me. ‘I’ll stay out of sight.’
I always do.
‘Good.’ She sailed into the room with a bright, polite smile on her face, towards the human nobles and their children sitting in the back corner of the room.
Durlain had sneered at the mention of them.
Most fireborn I knew would have done the same – tolerating the Seidrinn landowners of old for their money and their connections but deriding them behind their backs.
All the same, the Mabre company looked rich and quiet and excessively well-mannered, and the couple sitting closer to the door managed only one out of those three.
Lady Naucelle Garnot was pretty. Wine-red hair, doe-like eyes, and small, elegant black horns decorated with delicate golden chains.
She was giggling uncontrollably and gave the impression she hadn’t stopped doing so in the last half hour.
By her side, resplendent in black and gold and purple, Durlain was so very much Lord Givron Averre that it was like watching another person entirely – loud, cocky, and possibly more than a little tipsy.
‘… no clue what they’re thinking,’ he was telling her, an arrogant, lopsided grin on his face. ‘You didn’t hear this from me, but last time I heard him on the subject, Varraulis was saying he’d rather dine with donkeys for the rest of his life than ever deal with your king again …’
‘Lord Givron!’ Naucelle protested, giggling harder.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon.’ His look at her was positively saucy. ‘Just curious what possessed him to send Ancelet to the east after all these years. No complaints from me, though, because if you and I had been at war …’
I didn’t care to listen to the rest of that sentence, pressing myself against the wall outside the door and squeezing my eyes shut. My heart was pounding. My mind was spinning.
Ancelet Averre. Who’d been sent to House Garnot as an emissary.
Was that why Durlain had been so eager to claim a Garnot lady as his dinner partner – to work out why? To keep his father and his sister’s captor from finding an ally in one another?
In the distance, I heard Kjersti’s chipper voice, describing the food she’d brought in with perfect servant’s manners.
I’d have to tell her something. Something that wasn’t I don’t think they’ll fuck, he’s just fishing for gossip about her king, or, more pathetically, I’m trying so, so hard to stay away from court politics for the rest of my life, and why is all of this happening to me? Perhaps I could just say—
‘And what is this?’ a male voice enquired, suddenly close.
I gasped, eyes flying open.
A familiar face frowned back at me.
For a single moment – a single but everlasting moment, my heart stopping dead in my chest – I thought it was Aranc.
Same broad, bullish jaw. Same deep chestnut hair, curling around a pair of short, jutting horns.
This man didn’t have Aranc’s scar, though, that vicious gash down the left side of his face; he wore a row of five golden rings in his right ear that certainly wasn’t Aranc’s style.
The name popped from my fear-blanched thoughts a second later. Belloc.
The king’s brother.
Staring at me with unmistakable puzzlement in his deep-set eyes, like a man grasping for a memory.
Time seemed to slow – seemed to narrow down to nothing but the loud, hollow beats of my heart in my ears and the piercing weight of his browned-eyed gaze.
Any moment now, he’d open his mouth. Would speak my name.
Would wrap that brutal fist around my throat the way Aranc had done so many times, palm hot enough to hurt but just not hot enough to burn, and—
‘Have I seen you before?’ Belloc mused out loud.
My heart skipped another beat.
He didn’t know?
He had seen me around the Estien court. I had seen him too, after all, too many times to count – Aranc’s heir and Aranc’s witchling bird, pillars of his reign.
And yet here that same heir stood, looking at me as though I were little more than a stranger – a passerby he’d noticed in the street before, perhaps.
Had he ever truly seen my face?
Or had I only ever been a tool to him – a useful weapon in Estien livery, irrelevant but for my knives and magic, and unrecognisable in a woollen tunic with beet juice on my hands?
‘My lord?’ Some panicked part of me had the presence of mind to switch to the strongest west coast accent I could muster, that thick, rural drawl I’d picked up during our Hjarn Bay years. ‘I … I don’t think we’ve met, my lord. I travel with my master. With Lord Givron.’
Belloc’s eyes shot to the open door beside me. ‘Oh, do you?’
I didn’t dare to breathe.
Did he know Durlain?
His niece’s murderer. One court’s heir, another court’s prince – mists take me, what were the chances they hadn’t met? Although that had to be at least four years ago, before Durlain’s death – but then again, that knife-edge face wasn’t one you’d easily forget …
‘You do strike me as familiar,’ Belloc continued in that same contemplative tone, returning his gaze to me … and I forgot to think again. I knew that tone. I’m confused, it meant from Aranc’s lips, and without a shred of doubt, that is your fault. ‘You haven’t worked at the court, by any chance?’
I almost, almost told him that I’d never been anywhere near Mount Estien in my life … but I hadn’t met him. I didn’t know him. I had no idea what house he served. ‘I have been at Mount Averre with Lord Givron, my lord, if that is—’
‘No, no, not those scheming cowards. The Estien court.’ He settled one hand against the wall beside my head, eyes never leaving my face. Something was quirking around his lips – yet another Estien royal, enjoying their hunt. ‘Oh, this is most intriguing. I have seen you before. Have you—’
‘’Scuse me?’ a slurred voice interrupted from the doorway, brimming with wine-infused displeasure.
Durlain.
Glass in his hand, lips stained a sumptuous red – leaning against the frame as if he was one sip away from stumbling. He was wearing elegant evening gloves, I numbly registered. Smooth black silk, hiding his scars.
Hiding his powers.
‘Ah.’ Belloc turned his muscular bulk towards the door, his hand still resting casually beside my head. ‘The illustrious Lord Givron, I presume?’
‘My pleasure, my pleasure.’ Durlain didn’t meet my gaze as he gestured at me with his glass, wine sloshing over the rim. ‘Is the girl bothering you? Ought to be ironing my clothes – did you iron my clothes yet, girl?’
The last was aimed at me and pronounced twice as slowly, as if I was some village fool unaccustomed to the language.
I swallowed. ‘No, Lord Givron. The cook—’
‘The cook doesn’t pay you, you witless creature.’ He rolled his eyes at Belloc, then added in a lower voice, ‘I should just have killed her father, merciful fires.’
‘What was that?’ Belloc asked, interested rather than shocked.
‘Her father.’ Durlain gave a little hiccup as he waved his glass in my direction again. ‘Killed my last servant. Thought I’d take her for payment. Should’ve known she’d be hopeless. Peasant girl, you know. Never even left her village. Now why are you still here, girl?’
I flinched. ‘My lord—’
‘Up,’ Durlain interrupted, meticulously enunciated, illustrating the word with an upward jerk of his wine glass.
Fuck him.
Bless him.
I didn’t meet either of their gazes as I ducked beneath Belloc’s arm and hurried out as if my life depended on it, only just catching Kjersti’s guilt-stricken look from the corner of my eye.