Page 182 of Silverbow
Leon tapped the scroll. “A hawk arrived from Shorewatch not an hour ago. Peytar Ralenet has docked in my harbor.”
“On what pretense?” Oryn demanded. Beside him, Enya stilled.
“To inspect the royal vault,” Leon answered. “He’ll be here in a week. Longer, if you need me to stall him, but he’s demanded an audience.”
“With me?” Oryn asked incredulously.
“With her.”
“Absolutely not,” he snarled.
But Leon looked to Enya for her answer. She met his gaze with cool resolve. “He can’t drag me back to Estryia, can he?”
“No, my lady. Not without inviting war. You are protected by your claim of sanctuary.”
“A bit of parchment makes a flimsy shield,” he growled. Leon flicked a brow at his casual mention of the treaties, but neither Pallas Davolier nor Peytar Ralenet could be trusted. He didn’t want her anywhere near the High Lord of Pavia and neither did the gods calling his gifts to the surface, ready to fling their songs into the audience chamber.
She tapped a finger on the box she cradled in her lap. “I’ll take the meeting.”
Oryn’s head whipped toward her. “Have you forgotten how we left Misthol?”
“He won’t kill me.”
“You can’t rely on the visions of the future.”
She pinned him with a sharp look. “It’s not the vision, it’s the man. Ralenet wants me alive.”
“What makes you so certain?”
She pursed her lips in a look of distaste. “Corpses don’t make very good puppets, do they?”
Liam
After days of sleeping and stuffing himself and letting Aiden drag him through the taverns of Drozia chasing after cards and dice, Liam needed to find something to do with his hands.
His room in Colm’s townhouse was fine enough with its miraculous water coming out taps in the walls and vanishing down drains. Liam still marveled and uttered the word every time he turned one of those taps.Plumbing.More books than he had ever seen lined one of the walls of the sitting room, but Colm had told him if there was something else he wanted to read, he could fetch it from the library.
Liam scratched his chin. “The library is bigger than this?” He asked, gesturing to the wall of books.
“Of course. It is a library.”
Plumbing, libraries, those terrifying, rattling minecarts – Drozia was a marvel, but it was so dark all the time, even with the lamps litduring the day and the iridescent glow worms that shone blue during the night like little stars overhead.
The men that drifted through the taverns were always up for a game of stones or cards. They often talked of far flung places and wild beasts. He never could tell which tales were true and which were flights of fancy. Liam had lost some silver,Enya’s silver,he thought begrudgingly, to a silk trader from Durelli who surely had been trying to pull the wool over his eyes going on about the horned beasts of Zeskayra.
He had nearly fallen out of a chair when he glimpsed a trio of what had to be pureblood elves with their pointed ears and willowy grace. They wore long robes that swept over the floor stones and looked down sharp noses at Bade, Colm, and Aiden.
“Still licking Amiven’s almighty boots then,” Bade grumbled as he threw a griffin card away only to be devoured by Aiden’s dragon. Liam flinched when he saw their heads swivel toward the earth wielder, but they silently took their leave of the tavern. He took one look at Bade’s hard face and decided not to ask about the king of Oyamor.
Other than the day Enya had insisted he join her to tour the mines and ride in one of those carts she enjoyed so much, a ride that had Liam sicking up over the side, he had not seen her since the feast. Despite being closer to her in Drozia than he had been those long weeks on the road, he could not help but feel as if she drifted farther away with each passing day. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been so hard on her on the ship.
She remained in the royal apartments, which might as well have be unreachable. Well, perhaps notunreachable, any servant would carry a note to her, if he were inclined to send one and he was not forbidden from climbing there himself, he supposed, but it was a lot of steps.
He sighed. She was where she belonged in a bloody palace. Liam couldn’t complain about dwarven hospitality, he’d certainly been fed and clothed in more finery than he’d ever seen, but a man needed something to do with his days, so he found his way down to the stable beneath the mountain.
He’d had to argue with Rabream, the master of Prince Leon’s stable, to allow him in to see to Pips. The dark haired dwarf had taken affront at first to Liam’s being there, fretting that the outlander was unhappy with his service. Much to Liam’s chagrin, it had taken Oryn emerging from Kiawa’s stall to soothe the dwarf’s bristling pride.
Oryn Brydove was thelastperson Liam wanted to see below the mountain, but the Prince of Eastwood patted Rabream on the shoulder and departed, blessedly ceding the space to Liam.The stable boy. He gritted his teeth.
