Page 124 of Silverbow
“Every eye in this city belongs to one man or another,” Oryn answered. “We had to ensure we weren’t followed.”
Enya swallowed the first bit of her pastry. It would have been delicious, had her mouth not gone dry. “And the eyes here? How do you know they don’t report to Peytar or Pallas?”
“Don’t forget the spymaster,” Aiden grinned, plucking a pastry of his own off the tray. “Lovely man, Brone Vyrwel.”
She was about to ask if the spymaster and the king kept separate spies, but Oryn’s answer cut her off. “Because they report to me.”
Enya was still blinking at that when as if summoned, Master Kimball pushed open the door and beckoned in a line of serving girls with bowls of fish stew and platters fit for a feast. He shooed them away as soon as the dishes were put down. After confirming their rooms were to their satisfaction, he bowed himself out. At least that explained the bowing.
Enya took her first skeptical bite of stew, wrinkled her nose, and was passing it to Aiden when the innkeeper’s reappearance stilled the quiet clinking of cutlery.
“Apologies for my interruption, Master Turner, but there is a young man in the common room asking for you by name.”
“A man?” Oryn asked.
The innkeeper nodded and mopped his brow. “Bit of a rough fellow. I told him he had to wait until you finished your meal at least, but he’s making a fuss, I’m afraid. Has the look of a beggar.”
“Just because I’ve been singing for my supper innkeep, doesn’t make me a beggar.”
“Doesn’t it?” Aiden muttered.
Master Kimball’s henchmen paused in the hall as the innkeeper continued making his apologies. Enya stopped hearing them over her own thundering heart. She didn’t even notice the red wine that blossomed over the white tablecloth from the goblet that slipped from her hand.
The man filling the doorframe scratched at the patchy stubble on his jaw. “You know, when I told you to light me a beacon fire, I didn’t mean half of Estryia.”
Oryn
There was much he knew about Liam Marsh by the time he dropped into the chair beside Enya that Colm had vacated. Where she smelled of all the finer parts of the stable, the lower had been bred into the stablemaster’s boy. Horse sweat, manure, and well worn leather were almost drowned out by the reeking stench of the Foreshore. He looked haggard and worn, and a dark stain clung to the slice through his coat where a blade had been driven through. The road had not been kind to him.
But from the moment he stepped into the room, it was as if Oryn and his companions were intruding on a dance meant only for two people. He didn’t need to see the way he cupped her cheek and raked his eyes over her, or the way his handcame up to tug affectionately at the end of her braid. He’d already known just by looking at him on the threshold. Liam Marsh was desperately in love with the girl who sat opposite Oryn.
But Enya… He watched her over his goblet. He’d heard her mutter his bloody name enough times that he’d thought she’d been in love with the boy too. At his arrival, she dissolved into a babbling jumble of choked sobs and laughter. She’d hardly strung more than two words together that made any sense. She danced the steps with him, but there was something that left Oryn unconvinced they were dancing the same dance. Selfishly, that brought him no small amount of relief.
“How did you find me?” Enya asked. She blotted at her eyes with a napkin as she tried to get a grip on herself.
The boy scrubbed a hand through his hair and glanced around the dining room as if just noticing he and Enya were not the only two people in it. He turned gray eyes on Colm. “He told me where you’d be,” he said, and lowered his voice to a whisper, “In a dream.”
Enya hiccupped a laugh. “You beautiful, wonderful-”
Aiden cleared his throat. “Are you going to introduce us Ansel or just keep complimenting Andril?”
“Oh, right.” She pulled herself together enough to remember to use the names on their papers. She fingered the hole in his coat again. “I thought you were dead. I saw…I saw…”
He shrugged. “Wise woman patched me up well enough, sent me on my way. Long days though without any coin. I’ve been mucking stables for my keep.”
“Explains the smell,” Aiden muttered quietly enough the mortals didn’t seem to hear.
“The wise woman,” Enya asked. “What was her name?”
“Magda, I think,” he answered.
Brows rose all around the table. Magda was a common enough name, Oryn supposed, but it was not lost on anyone that it was the name Hylee had given for the witch Enya put an arrow through in Innesh.
“Did she require a payment?” Colm asked.
The stable boy shrugged. “Said something about her sister’s generosity.”
“What did she look like?” Enya asked.
